I have used unattended with great success deploying several hundred XP installations. http://unattended.sourceforge.net/. It won't let you slipstream an install disc, but it will let you do complete, brainless unattended installs over network, hence the creative name. It has the added benefit of easy long-term maintenance and updates, which is a win over the install-disc or ghosting method.
Still sounds sort of nifty, esp. at the price, but overall I'd still think that I'd rather go with a Tabletpc or an origami device with a full windows install, etc. They're not that much more expensive
I'm sure you're saying this based on the "about $500" that MS claimed when the UMPC's wrere announced. Well, hate to burst your bubble, but Samsung just announced pricing for the Q1 (and a May 1 launch) at about $1200. Apparently the other UMPC manufacturers are also struggling to get under $1000.
That's quite a bit more than $350, if you ask me.
The 770 is kind of an odd device though, I have to admit. In a lot of ways it seems that it's trying to fill a niche that doesn't really exist. Either people can get away with devices that are significantly smaller, or they need a real computer. This middle area that the 770 occupies seems to have very little real demand.
Because of my very diverse responsibilities, I do about 80% in office and 20% work at home / telecommute. This seems to provide a good balance of "social" and "go to work in my jammies". However, these past few weeks have been more like 80% telecommute, and I have _really_ enjoyed it, but I think long-term I would get stir-crazy staying at home all the time. I think that big-picture, close to 50/50 would be about ideal.
...High Def support is important to me and many others.
I don't think this is actually true. I think that a lot of people think this is important to them, because the ads all say it's important. I know a lot of people who are really into movies and TV and such. Only two of them have hi-def capable equipment, and only one of them actually cares that it's HD capable. The other one just got it because "it's one of those neat new LCD TV's!". Even with the one who cares, HD is the exception rather than the rule, most of his time in front of it is still in SD. I'm really curious just how big the demand for HD really is among the general public. I'd wager it's a lot lower than the TV manufacturers would like, and a lot lower than it is amongst the segment of the population that read/.
to paraphrase: "I have a weird corner case need. This review sucks because it doesn't address my weird corner case need, and instead addresses the needs of 99% of the people who are going to be reading it."
In the future when this basic train of thought is running around in your head, save us all some time and keep it there.
I haven't read their specific license in detail, but generally speaking, as they copyright holder of the Berkley DB code they can choose to change the license but only on versions they release in the future. They can't retroactively change the license on stuff that's already out there. That's how it works with every other OSS (or otherwise?) license I have in-depth experience with.
"Not a viable resource" means what exactly? Viable as a sole source of power? Almost definitely true. As an augmentation to other sources of power? I doubt that they made that assertion, and if they did, they ought to check their numbers.
For a personal example, there is a 5 KW solar array on the high school I used to work in that has paid for itself in the 2 years it was installed and I worked there, in the Pacific NW, a region not known for it's sunny weather... Granted, a 5 KW panel barely makes a dent in their power needs, but as of the summer of 2004, it was creating power for free.
You don't provide any sources for your information, so I have to assume it's just out of date. PV's have become significantly more efficient in recent years, and there are tax incentives and utility subsidies for commercial ventures installing solar, not just residentials. See the following for more optimistic (and current) information on solar in commercial settings:
Those were just the first few relevant hits on Google. I'm sure spending more than 30 seconds researching would yield better quality results, but I think those are good enough for now.
If you can, install solar panels on your roof. It will smooth the peak a little, and also reduce your overall expenditure. If you are in a sunny location, the investment can often be recouped after only a couple years. Most utilities will even subsidize such ventures.
If that's not an option, server consolidation and virtualization for the people whom it is appropriate for are the only other options I can come up with...
Ditto that, however, again according to the story dated November 23rd on http://www.mini-itx.com/ they've been spotted "in the wild" in Japan, heavily redesigned. They speculte early 2006 in the western world. But who knows? It gives me hope at least...
I take it that the mini-ITX stuff from Via et al is overkill / too big? If so, they are (hopefully) soon going to have nano-itx boards available that are more like traditional SBC's. http://www.mini-itx.com/ recently posted an article where one was spotted in the wild in Japan, so they might actually see light of day, finally. If you don't want to wait, there are a ton of SBC manufacturers that advertise in Linux Journal, surely one of them will do what you want. Pick up a copy of LJ and take a look.
Curious. On the page originally linked to: http://www.statetaxfreedom.com/ it says specifically "if you qualify" and then goes on to list the requirements beyond a big "Do you Qualify?" button. Go conflicting information from the same source! woo!
Almost everybody qualifies? Are you insane? You have to either:
-Qualify for the EIC (make hardly any money at all) -Specifically make less than $35,000 annually -Serve in the military.
While I know quite a few people who fall into those categories, I'd hardly say that's "almost everyone". That being said, I think it's really nice that TT is offering this service for free to people who can least afford to get shafted on their taxes.
Everyone else still has to pay to do the online thing, but that does work well, and what I plan on doing this year.
Can someone comment on why distro's seemingly *have* to have a different filesystem hierarchy? Typically when you distinguish yourself from a competitor you add value. I don't see the value here to anyone other than the distro vendor, in that given enough scripts and whatnot, if you wanted to move to a competitor it could be more of a PITA than it's worth to switch.
Well, it's been my experience that the differences are there because the developers working on them believe that making the change makes the system "better". I put better in quotes there because their rationale behind it may be as shallow as, "it's just how I like it" or as technically sound as something like, "doing it this way decreases boot time by 30%". A good example of this is how the differnt distros handle init scripts. There are tons of different ways that have been put forth to handle this, each with their own flavor, and some arguably better than others. In FS hierarchy, it's just more fallout from people being able to decide for themselves what is "better".
Further, I've not heard any arguments to why vendors cannot agree on a standard FS (not to say there aren't any - I just don't know of 'em)? Perhaps use symlinks to keep the old path functional and implement the new path. Am I just nieve?
There is the LSB http://www.linuxbase.org/ which various distros can more or less adhere to if they choose to. Most of the "big boys" adhere to it pretty closely these days, from what I understand. Remember that "Linux as a business" is a pretty new concept, and even the major vendors are still working out choices from the garage days where someone did something one way because that was just how they liked it.
Yeah, but see, stables are in barns and therefore it doesn't matter if they get out of their stables, but if they get out of the barn... now that's trouble....
Well, since the government provides unsufficient funding to deliver an educational program that meets the standards that the government itself sets forth, you have to "get creative" with other funding sources. The alternative of providing a sub-par education is not acceptible to me.
You would think working with the government would be simple and straight forward...
What planet are you from? I don't know of a single government on earth that could be classified as being simple and straightforward to work with. You are either an ET impersonating a human, or are young enough you've never done your own taxes...
I second this. I am the technology coordinator for a medium-sized district, and for any grants that are open-ended enough to allow it, I make sure 5-10% is skimmed off for support costs. Only way to do it.
I used to do network installations at a Major North American University. We would occasionally have installs where our "networking closet" was just a big steel box on the outside of a building. Along with all the networking gear that went in these boxes there was a little tiny heater with a thermostat on it. We set it to about 50 degrees F. When it gets that cold, it turns on.
Build a little cabinet to house your computer and put one of these in here. I think we bought them from Graybar, but I'm not sure, as I just installed them, I didn't buy them. I'm sure Google would help...
You can't just "swap teams" in this sort of game like you can an FPS like CS. This is persistent universe that saves it's state over time, unlike an FPS, where each "round" of the game is self-contained. The balance that people are talking about has nothing to do with numbers of players. It's all about certain abilities and combinations of abilities being grossly more powerful than nearly everything else. This kind of balance is tough to achieve. The various Blizzard games (Diablo 1/2, Starcraft, etc) had tons of patches before the balance got "right". Hmmmm.... I don't remember having to pay a monthly subsciption to those either...
ICQ was able to do this in ohhh..... I dunno, sometime about the time it was released in '97 or '98. Why current IM services that require contacting a central server _anywaY_ don't do this is beyond me...
Here's a question for you then, in the the context of a desktop system, how do you define "secure" and "security"? A big chunk of the problems that affect Windows users ( the viruses/spyware/other undesirables mentioned above) do so because of their own ignorance, not because of some "security flaw". They are caused by programs that the users _choose to run_. How does the OS know that the user doesn't want their actions tracked by third parties? How does it know that the user doesn't want to be sending out tons of malformed emails to random email addresses? Simple, it doesn't, and nothing in what you seem to think of as a "secure system" will address those issues. You could make it so that only Mail Application X can send/receive mail traffic, and only Web Browser Y can send/receive web traffic. How would we do that? Well, we'd have to have somebody cryptographically sign the executables, and then build a chip into the system that checks those and then either allows or denies them based on wheether or not they are approved... hmmm... this sounds a lot like Palladium, doesn't it? And I'm pretty sure that we all agree that is a Bad Idea.
As the parent said, at some point, Linux will be targetted by these undesirables. There are only two ways to combat them: Specific countermeasures (live AV software), and user education. Hopefully when Linux starts getting hit, the average users will be more clueful and it will be less of a problem, but I'm not holding my breath. Unless you want to totally hamstring the user and prevent them from being able to do anything, the kind of perfectly secure system you are talking about is impossible to create, and the sooner you accept that, the better off everyone will be.
I have the same problem. I print to a HP Laserjet 4100 at work connected via a jetdirect card, and an HP 6l connected via LPT at home. I use CUPS for both of them. I have basically two options, use one driver (the name of which I don't remember atm) and get very good print quality, at about 2 ppm; use another driver, and get mediocre to poor quality at about 10-15 ppm. It sucks. It's the one thing I always subconciously try to gloss over when talking to others about my setups because it is such a glaringly obvious weak point, and a silly one at that.
However, it is friggin awesome that when my Linux-using friends bring their PCs over that they plug into my network and can all instantly use the printer with zero setup. That is super nice.
I agree. I am sitting at my desk right now, in front of my laptop and Palm, and what do I use for todo's? My Yellow Legal pad. Write stuff down you need to do / remember, scratch it off when it's done or no longer relevant. I occasionally go through it and record anything that might have long-term importance into somepleace else, usually an address entry in my palm, or a text file relating to a particular project or what have you. I kind of use it as a task "buffer" and it complements the high-tech stuff I use perfectly. It's the only thing I've found that _actaully works_.
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I have used unattended with great success deploying several hundred XP installations. http://unattended.sourceforge.net/. It won't let you slipstream an install disc, but it will let you do complete, brainless unattended installs over network, hence the creative name. It has the added benefit of easy long-term maintenance and updates, which is a win over the install-disc or ghosting method.
Still sounds sort of nifty, esp. at the price, but overall I'd still think that I'd rather go with a Tabletpc or an origami device with a full windows install, etc. They're not that much more expensive
I'm sure you're saying this based on the "about $500" that MS claimed when the UMPC's wrere announced. Well, hate to burst your bubble, but Samsung just announced pricing for the Q1 (and a May 1 launch) at about $1200. Apparently the other UMPC manufacturers are also struggling to get under $1000.
That's quite a bit more than $350, if you ask me.
The 770 is kind of an odd device though, I have to admit. In a lot of ways it seems that it's trying to fill a niche that doesn't really exist. Either people can get away with devices that are significantly smaller, or they need a real computer. This middle area that the 770 occupies seems to have very little real demand.
Because of my very diverse responsibilities, I do about 80% in office and 20% work at home / telecommute. This seems to provide a good balance of "social" and "go to work in my jammies". However, these past few weeks have been more like 80% telecommute, and I have _really_ enjoyed it, but I think long-term I would get stir-crazy staying at home all the time. I think that big-picture, close to 50/50 would be about ideal.
...High Def support is important to me and many others.
/.
I don't think this is actually true. I think that a lot of people think this is important to them, because the ads all say it's important. I know a lot of people who are really into movies and TV and such. Only two of them have hi-def capable equipment, and only one of them actually cares that it's HD capable. The other one just got it because "it's one of those neat new LCD TV's!". Even with the one who cares, HD is the exception rather than the rule, most of his time in front of it is still in SD. I'm really curious just how big the demand for HD really is among the general public. I'd wager it's a lot lower than the TV manufacturers would like, and a lot lower than it is amongst the segment of the population that read
to paraphrase: "I have a weird corner case need. This review sucks because it doesn't address my weird corner case need, and instead addresses the needs of 99% of the people who are going to be reading it."
In the future when this basic train of thought is running around in your head, save us all some time and keep it there.
I haven't read their specific license in detail, but generally speaking, as they copyright holder of the Berkley DB code they can choose to change the license but only on versions they release in the future. They can't retroactively change the license on stuff that's already out there. That's how it works with every other OSS (or otherwise?) license I have in-depth experience with.
"Not a viable resource" means what exactly? Viable as a sole source of power? Almost definitely true. As an augmentation to other sources of power? I doubt that they made that assertion, and if they did, they ought to check their numbers.
For a personal example, there is a 5 KW solar array on the high school I used to work in that has paid for itself in the 2 years it was installed and I worked there, in the Pacific NW, a region not known for it's sunny weather... Granted, a 5 KW panel barely makes a dent in their power needs, but as of the summer of 2004, it was creating power for free.
You don't provide any sources for your information, so I have to assume it's just out of date. PV's have become significantly more efficient in recent years, and there are tax incentives and utility subsidies for commercial ventures installing solar, not just residentials. See the following for more optimistic (and current) information on solar in commercial settings:
-solarelectricalsystems.com
-solarelectricpower.org
-solar4power.com
-borregosolar.com
-Akeena.net
Those were just the first few relevant hits on Google. I'm sure spending more than 30 seconds researching would yield better quality results, but I think those are good enough for now.
If you can, install solar panels on your roof. It will smooth the peak a little, and also reduce your overall expenditure. If you are in a sunny location, the investment can often be recouped after only a couple years. Most utilities will even subsidize such ventures.
If that's not an option, server consolidation and virtualization for the people whom it is appropriate for are the only other options I can come up with...
Ditto that, however, again according to the story dated November 23rd on http://www.mini-itx.com/ they've been spotted "in the wild" in Japan, heavily redesigned. They speculte early 2006 in the western world. But who knows? It gives me hope at least...
I take it that the mini-ITX stuff from Via et al is overkill / too big? If so, they are (hopefully) soon going to have nano-itx boards available that are more like traditional SBC's. http://www.mini-itx.com/ recently posted an article where one was spotted in the wild in Japan, so they might actually see light of day, finally. If you don't want to wait, there are a ton of SBC manufacturers that advertise in Linux Journal, surely one of them will do what you want. Pick up a copy of LJ and take a look.
Curious. On the page originally linked to: http://www.statetaxfreedom.com/ it says specifically "if you qualify" and then goes on to list the requirements beyond a big "Do you Qualify?" button. Go conflicting information from the same source! woo!
If you qualify, and almost everybody does...
Almost everybody qualifies? Are you insane? You have to either:
-Qualify for the EIC (make hardly any money at all)
-Specifically make less than $35,000 annually
-Serve in the military.
While I know quite a few people who fall into those categories, I'd hardly say that's "almost everyone". That being said, I think it's really nice that TT is offering this service for free to people who can least afford to get shafted on their taxes.
Everyone else still has to pay to do the online thing, but that does work well, and what I plan on doing this year.
Can someone comment on why distro's seemingly *have* to have a different filesystem hierarchy? Typically when you distinguish yourself from a competitor you add value. I don't see the value here to anyone other than the distro vendor, in that given enough scripts and whatnot, if you wanted to move to a competitor it could be more of a PITA than it's worth to switch.
Well, it's been my experience that the differences are there because the developers working on them believe that making the change makes the system "better". I put better in quotes there because their rationale behind it may be as shallow as, "it's just how I like it" or as technically sound as something like, "doing it this way decreases boot time by 30%". A good example of this is how the differnt distros handle init scripts. There are tons of different ways that have been put forth to handle this, each with their own flavor, and some arguably better than others. In FS hierarchy, it's just more fallout from people being able to decide for themselves what is "better".
Further, I've not heard any arguments to why vendors cannot agree on a standard FS (not to say there aren't any - I just don't know of 'em)? Perhaps use symlinks to keep the old path functional and implement the new path. Am I just nieve?
There is the LSB http://www.linuxbase.org/ which various distros can more or less adhere to if they choose to. Most of the "big boys" adhere to it pretty closely these days, from what I understand. Remember that "Linux as a business" is a pretty new concept, and even the major vendors are still working out choices from the garage days where someone did something one way because that was just how they liked it.
Yeah, but see, stables are in barns and therefore it doesn't matter if they get out of their stables, but if they get out of the barn... now that's trouble....
Well, since the government provides unsufficient funding to deliver an educational program that meets the standards that the government itself sets forth, you have to "get creative" with other funding sources. The alternative of providing a sub-par education is not acceptible to me.
You would think working with the government would be simple and straight forward...
What planet are you from? I don't know of a single government on earth that could be classified as being simple and straightforward to work with. You are either an ET impersonating a human, or are young enough you've never done your own taxes...
I second this. I am the technology coordinator for a medium-sized district, and for any grants that are open-ended enough to allow it, I make sure 5-10% is skimmed off for support costs. Only way to do it.
I used to do network installations at a Major North American University. We would occasionally have installs where our "networking closet" was just a big steel box on the outside of a building. Along with all the networking gear that went in these boxes there was a little tiny heater with a thermostat on it. We set it to about 50 degrees F. When it gets that cold, it turns on.
Build a little cabinet to house your computer and put one of these in here. I think we bought them from Graybar, but I'm not sure, as I just installed them, I didn't buy them. I'm sure Google would help...
A nidghbor of mine is doing it, and he says the lenses are really uncomfortable. Seems to be working for him tho. *add salt here*.
You can't just "swap teams" in this sort of game like you can an FPS like CS. This is persistent universe that saves it's state over time, unlike an FPS, where each "round" of the game is self-contained. The balance that people are talking about has nothing to do with numbers of players. It's all about certain abilities and combinations of abilities being grossly more powerful than nearly everything else. This kind of balance is tough to achieve. The various Blizzard games (Diablo 1/2, Starcraft, etc) had tons of patches before the balance got "right". Hmmmm.... I don't remember having to pay a monthly subsciption to those either...
ICQ was able to do this in ohhh..... I dunno, sometime about the time it was released in '97 or '98. Why current IM services that require contacting a central server _anywaY_ don't do this is beyond me...
Here's a question for you then, in the the context of a desktop system, how do you define "secure" and "security"? A big chunk of the problems that affect Windows users ( the viruses/spyware/other undesirables mentioned above) do so because of their own ignorance, not because of some "security flaw". They are caused by programs that the users _choose to run_. How does the OS know that the user doesn't want their actions tracked by third parties? How does it know that the user doesn't want to be sending out tons of malformed emails to random email addresses? Simple, it doesn't, and nothing in what you seem to think of as a "secure system" will address those issues. You could make it so that only Mail Application X can send/receive mail traffic, and only Web Browser Y can send/receive web traffic. How would we do that? Well, we'd have to have somebody cryptographically sign the executables, and then build a chip into the system that checks those and then either allows or denies them based on wheether or not they are approved... hmmm... this sounds a lot like Palladium, doesn't it? And I'm pretty sure that we all agree that is a Bad Idea.
As the parent said, at some point, Linux will be targetted by these undesirables. There are only two ways to combat them: Specific countermeasures (live AV software), and user education. Hopefully when Linux starts getting hit, the average users will be more clueful and it will be less of a problem, but I'm not holding my breath. Unless you want to totally hamstring the user and prevent them from being able to do anything, the kind of perfectly secure system you are talking about is impossible to create, and the sooner you accept that, the better off everyone will be.
I have the same problem. I print to a HP Laserjet 4100 at work connected via a jetdirect card, and an HP 6l connected via LPT at home. I use CUPS for both of them. I have basically two options, use one driver (the name of which I don't remember atm) and get very good print quality, at about 2 ppm; use another driver, and get mediocre to poor quality at about 10-15 ppm. It sucks. It's the one thing I always subconciously try to gloss over when talking to others about my setups because it is such a glaringly obvious weak point, and a silly one at that.
However, it is friggin awesome that when my Linux-using friends bring their PCs over that they plug into my network and can all instantly use the printer with zero setup. That is super nice.
I agree. I am sitting at my desk right now, in front of my laptop and Palm, and what do I use for todo's? My Yellow Legal pad. Write stuff down you need to do / remember, scratch it off when it's done or no longer relevant. I occasionally go through it and record anything that might have long-term importance into somepleace else, usually an address entry in my palm, or a text file relating to a particular project or what have you. I kind of use it as a task "buffer" and it complements the high-tech stuff I use perfectly. It's the only thing I've found that _actaully works_.
I know it runs contrary to everything the Open Source movement stands for, but it might be worth paying real money for a real service.
Very, very valid point. However, you could also just find someone else who is still willing to give it away...