USB Host controller is the biggest thing missing IMHO. AND Integrated wifi is #2.
I have a Zaurus 6000 which has both of these features and for me neither one is a real killer. Remeber for USB host to be useful you still need drivers for the specific device you are connecting. That's not a problem for USB hard drives and keyboards but a lot of other devices don't have driver support. The built in WiFi is very handy but the range sucks just like most laptops with built in WiFi.
Don't get me wrong, my Zaurus 6k is incredibly useful and with the Debian arm distro installed it can take the place of my Thinkpad 90% of the time. It's also got some pretty neat toys. For example the speaker and mic are positioned such that you can use it as an IP phone and the kphone software seems to work great on it.
Often you can remove the small heatsink+fan and replace it with a much larger heatsink. The Arctic Silver folks have an epoxy version of their heatsink compound so you don't have to worry about clipping the new heatsink down. I've actually had good luck with Superglue but I have no idea what it might do to the plastic chip packaging long term.
Re:Give me RAID 5
on
Basics of RAID
·
· Score: 3, Informative
These days I think software raid is really the way to go, at least in comparison to the raid built into consumer grade raid cards. With software raid you should be able to move your disks to a working computer and boot up with a Knoppix CD and access your data if you have to. You can also raid individual partitions rather than entire disks. You could make a small non-raid boot partition on each disk which you sync regularly plus a larger data partition which becomes part of the raid.
The above applies to Linux, I don't think the non-server editions of Windows can do anything but raid 0 (maybe raid1?). Possibly a BartsPE CD could be used to recover a failed Win raid array.
Right, you worked at one of those rare companies that had an entire department on macs and you were STILL only at roughly 1 in 5. Do you really think they are that popular overall?
These are curious kids, not hardened criminals (yet). If you sent a shop student home with an engine you think it wouldn't come apart? Do you think the yearbook kids don't use the cameras/lab for naughty photos once in a while? There are a lot worse things kids could be getting into and giving them a criminal record is a good way to give them a head start towards being a criminal.
Hell, a kid in my district got 12 days out of school suspension for getting around the BESS Proxy wheres a kid who ripped a hunk of flesh off of another one's chest got 2 days in school suspension.
ACK! They'd have had to shoot half the kids at our school, and that was a fairly good school too.
True enough, but these ARE kids. Taking stuff apart to see how it works etc. is what kids do. If they sent 100 laptops home with kids and none of them messed around even a little bit THEN I'd be worried.
Last year a bunch of us bought Sharp Zauruses (Zauri?) from a guy on Amazon. At first he looked legitimate, lots of positive feedback etc. Unfortunately it quickly became clear that it was a scam and getting Amazon to do anything about it in a timely manner was impossible. I did eventually get my money back from Amazon via their guarantee but the scammer apparently got away with thousands of dollars and lived to go on and scam others because Amazon was completely unwilling to look into his behavior untill at least 30 days from the transaction.
One problem with the Amazon Marketplace is that it isn't as obvious as it should be that you're not buying from Amazon. I'm sure Slashdot readers can tell the difference but I couldn't send a friend or relitive there and expect them to notice.
Another problem with the Amazon Marketplace is that the feedback doesn't give you any clue to what the other person bought. As it turns out many scammers build up positive feedback by selling high volumes of nearly worthless goods (used/crummy dvds etc) and then suddenly switch to selling more expensive items. I thought at first maybe this was just an isolated incident but when I looked into it more I found hundreds of sellers following the same pattern. I've been on Ebay since some time in the 90's and never been scammed but managed it on my first try at Amazon.
My personal annoyance about the "tablet PC" market is that latter part... the "PC". When they first started the craze way back in 2000 or so, I thought, it would be a cool idea. Meaning just a tablet Something with a nice, readable screen (digital paper was all the buzz as well) that I could use to read normal 8.5x11 documentation on. Maybe take notes, but that's it
The problem is that with current LCD technology/pricing you're really not going to save much cost/weight/power by getting rid of the PC part and most consumers arn't going to pay $500-$1000 unless they can get rid of their laptop or pda.
I do know what you mean though. My last "pda" was a Cassiopeia PV-400Plus which for me was basically a pda sized version of what you describe. It was thin, B&W and ran for a month on 2 AAA batteries. In theory it had some PDA functionality but I just used it as a paper notepad replacement and for that purpose it was really pretty good. When the screen died I replaced it with a Sharp Zaurus SL-6000. The Z is much more capable and actually replaces my notebook for many things but for simply taking/reading notes the old Casio was actaully better and cost 1/4 as much.
The stated purpose of patent protection is to provide an inventor with a means to recoup his R&D expenses and make a little green on the side, but still allow the world to benefit from his knowledge.
No, the purpose of patents is to promote progress in science. Allowing inventors to publish their inventions without giving up the possibility of recouping their investment is a means to that end only.
Given that, I think a good test of the validity of a patent would be to ask "if someone skilled in the art wanted to solve the problem this patent solves, would it A) be easier/cheaper to look up and implement the patented solution or B) more effecient to just come up with a solution themselves? If A then grant the patent. The nice thing about that test is that it would naturally be more difficult to get a patent as the number of patents increased and as the patent application became more obfuscated. In addition the PTO could require patent apps. to include a maximum proposed fee for practicing the patent and that fee could be used as part of the above test. The patent applicant could still negotiate lower fees but couldn't demand more. This would encourage reasonable fees while at the same time encouaging the world at large to actually use the wealth of knowledge that patents generate rather than continuously re-inventing the wheel. Inflation would take care of making the patent irrelevent after a reasonable period of time.
When the "welcome" packages arrived from each I was rather surprised to see the EFF has of the order of ten times more members than the FSF! I'm FSF member #30xx, and the docs say there are 2,1xx active members. The EFF on the other hand has 24K something members.
Well, you do realize the numbers for the FSF are in HEX right?:)
Pre-Lenovo, the IBM laptop tended to be significanly more expensive than any of it's major competitors (not counting Apple). Therefore, IBM had already included the higher quality of their laptop in the price. The ThinkPad is a very popular purchase amongst corporations. Companies were willing to pay the extra price for the perceived quality and service that IBM provided.
One of the nice things about Thinkpads is that service manuals are free and parts are easy to get (and reasonably priced by laptop standards). Even a small IT department can have a broken laptop back in action in a few days (same day if they have the parts) while shipping a laptop off to Dell or Toshiba can take forever. Also the repairs themselves often arn't much harder than they would be on a desktop. I once had a Gateway apart to repair the power connector on the motherboard and there were over 100 screws between me and the motherboard!
The GNU zealots proclaim that propreitary software is unethical. However I wonder if they would say propreitary software that clearly does good things like help blind people use computers is unethical.
I support some blind users, many using various Freedom Scientific products. These products definately provide a level of freedom and productivity that make a huge difference in their quality of life. That said, if you've ever felt even a little trapped or restricted by MS, then depending on these products is 100X worse. Jaws for example costs nearly $1000 which means that most of these people have to depend on state assistance to even begin to afford this stuff. Many of these products have very restrictive licenses and PITA product locking schemes that personally I find degrading. Lost your activation floppy? Better call and beg FS for a replacement and you'd better be nice to them because if they won't send you a replacement you're back in the jail of not being able to work or communicate with the outside world. Want to upgrade from your old Win98/ME box to a WinXP one? Your old Jaws isn't licensed for that so you have to beg the state to drop another $1000 for a new Jaws license. Want to use Open Office or Mozilla instead of MSware? Too bad, they're not supported and FS doesn't care. Have a sighted friend who'd like to help you from time to time? Too bad, the demo license doesn't allow for that usage so your friend has to come up with another $1000 just to get familiar enough with it to help you. It's not unethical to help people and make a living doing it but using someones disability to exert control and drain public coffers doesn't earn a lot of good will from the likes of me.
Sorry for the rant but this has been bugging me for a while and in addition I'm still smarting a bit from a recent encounter with an arrogant FS support person.
I wouldn't be surprised if it had (or gained later?) the ability to rotate the display like my Zarus. You're right on the writing comfort issue though but it's not just the thickness. There is something about using a stylus on a screen that just doesn't feel as precise as using a pen on paper. On the other hand, having years worth of notes with you beats sorting through a box of note pads any day.
If you start reading critically you'll find tons of these examples. Where "scientists" (not very good ones clearly) will just pick a cause and an efect to play up some conclusion that is important to them.
I think you're confusing the "scientists" who do these studies with the reporters who re-interpret them in ways that make for good/contraversial headines. Scientists, for the most part, are pretty careful about this sort of thing but reporters are not. All it takes is for one scientist to say "maybe X causes Y" and the next thing you know reporters giving that "maybe" the same weight as the actual study results.
So, some government agencies use unsecured wireless networks, and some people might even be leeching off of them for internet access.
It sounds to me like "some" means "every one they tested".
That might or might not be a real security issue, depending on if they're using their wireless network for sensitive applications and if those applications aren't using end-to-end encryption for their applications and if their wireless networks aren't firewalled away from the rest of their network.
Well sure they might have taken steps to keep their important data secure while leaving the system itself wide open but doesn't it seem more likely that some moron simply plugged an AP directly into the network and it's broadcasting EVERYTHING to the outside world?
Stallman believes that if you like proprietary software then you're an idiot who does not deserve to use a computer. He also believes that all software should be "free" (but only per his definition of "free" - remember, to him BSD is not free, but to us BSD folks the GPL is not free, so it's a stalemate) and that all non-GPL software should be released under the GPL.
If this is what you are basing your opinions on you might want to check your facts first because none of the above is true.
Arrrg. Cisco makes great equipment but dealing with them can be a real pain, at least for a small fry like me. BTW wasn't Sipura started by ex-Cisco employees?
So your position is that I should be required to encourage non-Free software use and not to complain about the lack of freedom because otherwise I'm somehow stopping you from having a choice? That's really twisted.
I've got plenty of problems when they try to force me to make the same decision, or to conform to their view of the world (as the original person I was responding to was attempting to do).
I'm not sure how you got that out of my post, I wasn't trying to force you to do anything, I was trying to explain why some of us arn't willing to encourage non-free software use just to get more people to use Linux.
The problem is that there are people out there who do everything they can to eliminate said software in the name of "freedom" (the person I responded to falls into this category). So, their version of "freedom" means that I can't distribute or sell binary only software; it also means that I can't buy binary only software.
Slashdot Mirror
USB Host controller is the biggest thing missing IMHO.
AND
Integrated wifi is #2.
I have a Zaurus 6000 which has both of these features and for me neither one is a real killer. Remeber for USB host to be useful you still need drivers for the specific device you are connecting. That's not a problem for USB hard drives and keyboards but a lot of other devices don't have driver support. The built in WiFi is very handy but the range sucks just like most laptops with built in WiFi.
Don't get me wrong, my Zaurus 6k is incredibly useful and with the Debian arm distro installed it can take the place of my Thinkpad 90% of the time. It's also got some pretty neat toys. For example the speaker and mic are positioned such that you can use it as an IP phone and the kphone software seems to work great on it.
In the first picture it's the second from the left. In the second picture it's the middle one.
Often you can remove the small heatsink+fan and replace it with a much larger heatsink. The Arctic Silver folks have an epoxy version of their heatsink compound so you don't have to worry about clipping the new heatsink down. I've actually had good luck with Superglue but I have no idea what it might do to the plastic chip packaging long term.
These days I think software raid is really the way to go, at least in comparison to the raid built into consumer grade raid cards. With software raid you should be able to move your disks to a working computer and boot up with a Knoppix CD and access your data if you have to. You can also raid individual partitions rather than entire disks. You could make a small non-raid boot partition on each disk which you sync regularly plus a larger data partition which becomes part of the raid.
The above applies to Linux, I don't think the non-server editions of Windows can do anything but raid 0 (maybe raid1?). Possibly a BartsPE CD could be used to recover a failed Win raid array.
Right, you worked at one of those rare companies that had an entire department on macs and you were STILL only at roughly 1 in 5. Do you really think they are that popular overall?
These are curious kids, not hardened criminals (yet). If you sent a shop student home with an engine you think it wouldn't come apart? Do you think the yearbook kids don't use the cameras/lab for naughty photos once in a while? There are a lot worse things kids could be getting into and giving them a criminal record is a good way to give them a head start towards being a criminal.
Hell, a kid in my district got 12 days out of school suspension for getting around the BESS Proxy wheres a kid who ripped a hunk of flesh off of another one's chest got 2 days in school suspension.
ACK! They'd have had to shoot half the kids at our school, and that was a fairly good school too.
True enough, but these ARE kids. Taking stuff apart to see how it works etc. is what kids do. If they sent 100 laptops home with kids and none of them messed around even a little bit THEN I'd be worried.
Last year a bunch of us bought Sharp Zauruses (Zauri?) from a guy on Amazon. At first he looked legitimate, lots of positive feedback etc. Unfortunately it quickly became clear that it was a scam and getting Amazon to do anything about it in a timely manner was impossible. I did eventually get my money back from Amazon via their guarantee but the scammer apparently got away with thousands of dollars and lived to go on and scam others because Amazon was completely unwilling to look into his behavior untill at least 30 days from the transaction.
One problem with the Amazon Marketplace is that it isn't as obvious as it should be that you're not buying from Amazon. I'm sure Slashdot readers can tell the difference but I couldn't send a friend or relitive there and expect them to notice.
Another problem with the Amazon Marketplace is that the feedback doesn't give you any clue to what the other person bought. As it turns out many scammers build up positive feedback by selling high volumes of nearly worthless goods (used/crummy dvds etc) and then suddenly switch to selling more expensive items. I thought at first maybe this was just an isolated incident but when I looked into it more I found hundreds of sellers following the same pattern. I've been on Ebay since some time in the 90's and never been scammed but managed it on my first try at Amazon.
My personal annoyance about the "tablet PC" market is that latter part... the "PC". When they first started the craze way back in 2000 or so, I thought, it would be a cool idea. Meaning just a tablet Something with a nice, readable screen (digital paper was all the buzz as well) that I could use to read normal 8.5x11 documentation on. Maybe take notes, but that's it
The problem is that with current LCD technology/pricing you're really not going to save much cost/weight/power by getting rid of the PC part and most consumers arn't going to pay $500-$1000 unless they can get rid of their laptop or pda.
I do know what you mean though. My last "pda" was a Cassiopeia PV-400Plus which for me was basically a pda sized version of what you describe. It was thin, B&W and ran for a month on 2 AAA batteries. In theory it had some PDA functionality but I just used it as a paper notepad replacement and for that purpose it was really pretty good. When the screen died I replaced it with a Sharp Zaurus SL-6000. The Z is much more capable and actually replaces my notebook for many things but for simply taking/reading notes the old Casio was actaully better and cost 1/4 as much.
The stated purpose of patent protection is to provide an inventor with a means to recoup his R&D expenses and make a little green on the side, but still allow the world to benefit from his knowledge.
No, the purpose of patents is to promote progress in science. Allowing inventors to publish their inventions without giving up the possibility of recouping their investment is a means to that end only.
Given that, I think a good test of the validity of a patent would be to ask "if someone skilled in the art wanted to solve the problem this patent solves, would it A) be easier/cheaper to look up and implement the patented solution or B) more effecient to just come up with a solution themselves? If A then grant the patent. The nice thing about that test is that it would naturally be more difficult to get a patent as the number of patents increased and as the patent application became more obfuscated. In addition the PTO could require patent apps. to include a maximum proposed fee for practicing the patent and that fee could be used as part of the above test. The patent applicant could still negotiate lower fees but couldn't demand more. This would encourage reasonable fees while at the same time encouaging the world at large to actually use the wealth of knowledge that patents generate rather than continuously re-inventing the wheel. Inflation would take care of making the patent irrelevent after a reasonable period of time.
Their actions are so outragous all anyone talks about is that they look like idiots and ignore what they're concerned about.
FWIW I actually read the leaflet they were handing out that was shown in the Wired article. Maybe someone else did too.
When the "welcome" packages arrived from each I was rather surprised to see the EFF has of the order of ten times more members than the FSF! I'm FSF member #30xx, and the docs say there are 2,1xx active members. The EFF on the other hand has 24K something members.
Well, you do realize the numbers for the FSF are in HEX right?:)
Pre-Lenovo, the IBM laptop tended to be significanly more expensive than any of it's major competitors (not counting Apple). Therefore, IBM had already included the higher quality of their laptop in the price. The ThinkPad is a very popular purchase amongst corporations. Companies were willing to pay the extra price for the perceived quality and service that IBM provided.
One of the nice things about Thinkpads is that service manuals are free and parts are easy to get (and reasonably priced by laptop standards). Even a small IT department can have a broken laptop back in action in a few days (same day if they have the parts) while shipping a laptop off to Dell or Toshiba can take forever. Also the repairs themselves often arn't much harder than they would be on a desktop. I once had a Gateway apart to repair the power connector on the motherboard and there were over 100 screws between me and the motherboard!
No kidding. It would be nice if they would use normal units like "3 VW Beetle glove boxes".
The GNU zealots proclaim that propreitary software is unethical. However I wonder if they would say propreitary software that clearly does good things like help blind people use computers is unethical.
I support some blind users, many using various Freedom Scientific products. These products definately provide a level of freedom and productivity that make a huge difference in their quality of life. That said, if you've ever felt even a little trapped or restricted by MS, then depending on these products is 100X worse. Jaws for example costs nearly $1000 which means that most of these people have to depend on state assistance to even begin to afford this stuff. Many of these products have very restrictive licenses and PITA product locking schemes that personally I find degrading. Lost your activation floppy? Better call and beg FS for a replacement and you'd better be nice to them because if they won't send you a replacement you're back in the jail of not being able to work or communicate with the outside world. Want to upgrade from your old Win98/ME box to a WinXP one? Your old Jaws isn't licensed for that so you have to beg the state to drop another $1000 for a new Jaws license. Want to use Open Office or Mozilla instead of MSware? Too bad, they're not supported and FS doesn't care. Have a sighted friend who'd like to help you from time to time? Too bad, the demo license doesn't allow for that usage so your friend has to come up with another $1000 just to get familiar enough with it to help you. It's not unethical to help people and make a living doing it but using someones disability to exert control and drain public coffers doesn't earn a lot of good will from the likes of me.
Sorry for the rant but this has been bugging me for a while and in addition I'm still smarting a bit from a recent encounter with an arrogant FS support person.
I wouldn't be surprised if it had (or gained later?) the ability to rotate the display like my Zarus. You're right on the writing comfort issue though but it's not just the thickness. There is something about using a stylus on a screen that just doesn't feel as precise as using a pen on paper. On the other hand, having years worth of notes with you beats sorting through a box of note pads any day.
If you start reading critically you'll find tons of these examples. Where "scientists" (not very good ones clearly) will just pick a cause and an efect to play up some conclusion that is important to them.
I think you're confusing the "scientists" who do these studies with the reporters who re-interpret them in ways that make for good/contraversial headines. Scientists, for the most part, are pretty careful about this sort of thing but reporters are not. All it takes is for one scientist to say "maybe X causes Y" and the next thing you know reporters giving that "maybe" the same weight as the actual study results.
They are required to follow the rules in any country that they do business in.
In other news the farmer has just enlisted the help of a pack of wolves to enhance the security of his chicken coup. Film at 11.
So, some government agencies use unsecured wireless networks, and some people might even be leeching off of them for internet access.
It sounds to me like "some" means "every one they tested".
That might or might not be a real security issue, depending on if they're using their wireless network for sensitive applications and if those applications aren't using end-to-end encryption for their applications and if their wireless networks aren't firewalled away from the rest of their network.
Well sure they might have taken steps to keep their important data secure while leaving the system itself wide open but doesn't it seem more likely that some moron simply plugged an AP directly into the network and it's broadcasting EVERYTHING to the outside world?
Stallman believes that if you like proprietary software then you're an idiot who does not deserve to use a computer. He also believes that all software should be "free" (but only per his definition of "free" - remember, to him BSD is not free, but to us BSD folks the GPL is not free, so it's a stalemate) and that all non-GPL software should be released under the GPL.
If this is what you are basing your opinions on you might want to check your facts first because none of the above is true.
Arrrg. Cisco makes great equipment but dealing with them can be a real pain, at least for a small fry like me. BTW wasn't Sipura started by ex-Cisco employees?
So your position is that I should be required to encourage non-Free software use and not to complain about the lack of freedom because otherwise I'm somehow stopping you from having a choice? That's really twisted.
I've got plenty of problems when they try to force me to make the same decision, or to conform to their view of the world (as the original person I was responding to was attempting to do).
I'm not sure how you got that out of my post, I wasn't trying to force you to do anything, I was trying to explain why some of us arn't willing to encourage non-free software use just to get more people to use Linux.
The problem is that there are people out there who do everything they can to eliminate said software in the name of "freedom" (the person I responded to falls into this category). So, their version of "freedom" means that I can't distribute or sell binary only software; it also means that I can't buy binary only software.
I think you ass-u-me way too much.