I've set my mother up with an old machine running Linux (Fedora Core 1). Works like a charm, Mozilla for web browsing, Open Office for word-processing, and Mozilla mail for email - though I have a problem with that, as she's using pine at the moment and doesn't want to switch!
I think there are better arguments for caring about langage extinction. For a good overview, David Crystal's Language Death is a decent little book.
But it's a political (in the broad sense) question in the end - what aspects of human existence matter, and how are resources to be allocated between them?
French literature and physics
on
What You Can't Say
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
most physicists could, if necessary, make it through a PhD
program in French literature, but few professors of French
literature could make it through a PhD program in physics
I don't think this is true. Most physicists would have to spend five
to ten years attaining fluency in French, not to mention acquiring
the background in literary theory, before tackling a PhD in French
literature. For most of them, that would would be just as big an
ask as it would be for a professor of French to do the high school foundations and the undergraduate
degree in physics that would be a necessary prerequisite for a PhD.
After that, I think actually completing either program would be
largely a matter of determination.
(My sister has a PhD in French literature; I have a BSc with a
physics major.)
Mozilla and Firebird both have an annoying habit of freezing on me for five or ten seconds every so often (way too often). It's not a hardware problem, as it happens on my girlfriend's state-of-the-art machine as well as my 700Mhz Duron (with 385MB of RAM). Could be a RedHat thing, but I've tried both RH Mozilla RPMs and direct downloads, and they have the same problem. (It could be a "slow modem" problem, but it happens loading pages off disk as well.)
How seamless is the update from RedHat 9? (I have some 7.3 machines that need to be updated too... not sure if I should go to 9 first or try going straight to Fedora 1.0)
I was suprised to not see this, but here's a link to Dr Tatiana's Website
Thanks for providing that.
I included that link in the version of the review on my own website, but forgot to add a "for more information" trailer when I posted here.
The Vietnam version of Windows costs $140, while the annual per capita income of Vietnam is $2250.
The per capita income of Vietnam is only $2250 using Purchasing Power Parity adjustment. The per capita income using actual exchange rates is closer to $500. PPP comparisons take the costs of food, housing, etc. into account, but don't work well as a measure of ability to buy globally priced goods such as Windows licenses.
I used to think in 7-bit ascii, but the digital camera changed all that... In the last year I've taken over 5000 photos - 5gig of data - as well
as writing my usual couple of megabytes.
But only a fraction of that will make it onto my web site - I have maybe 60 megabytes of photos (cut-down to around 100k each) online and 10 megabytes of text on my web sites, and would be adding less than 40 megabytes a year to that.
Maybe I'll get a video camera, though, or put up some MP3s of my gamelan group...
Though much is taken, much abides; and though We are not now that strength which
in old days Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are.
I visited Northern Pakistan in 1999 - and I certainly wouldn't want to go driving anywhere there myself! The roads are often crumbling one-car-wide tracks cut into cliffs or landslides, and when vehicles going opposite ways meet someone has to reverse half a kilometre... I was happy to leave that to the local drivers to negotiate!
This photo shows a place (between the Shandur Pass and Gilgit) where we had to wait three hours while they re-dynamited the road...
It'd be nice if someone would download the SRPMS, build the RPMs and the ISO images, and provide update servers, for people who might pay a small amount for that but don't want to pay $$$ for support.
Telstra has revealed the reason for the e-mail delays many of its customers have experienced over the last two weeks.
Some BigPond customers have experienced diminished incoming mail performance, with messages often being delayed by several hours or more. Telstra spokesperson Kerrina Lawrence told ZDNet Australia the problem was with a software upgrade recently implemented by Telstra.
I know spam is a problem, but I'm not convinced it's become any worse in the last few weeks - it may just make a convenient scapegoat to distract from Telstra's screwups.
I disable cookies by default, enabling them for shopping baskets and forums such as Slashdot, and have rarely had any problems.
I estimate that 80% or more of sites using cookies are not doing anything with them that *I* care about.
Actually, the 33 was a complete furphy, the last estimate is about 6000. See this story for details. And that's just from the one institution, other museums and archaeological sites were apparently worse hit.
Apple has a tiny share of the market in countries like India and China, which are probably the fastest growing markets for computers. It's what is happening in those countries, along with the big corporate/government deployments, which will push the Linux desktop share past the Mac one.
Try out Google's new AdSense program. They accepted my site, with under 200 000 page views a month, and they target ads specifically for individual pages, selling them to their large AdWords customer base.
Getting readably long lines of text, for any user choice of font size, is doable. But it took me a couple of days fiddling with CSS to get a single column of text, centred on the page, of comfortable reading width... most of that was running around finding different versions of IE, NN, etc to test things with.
And there are still some bugs - try resizing my reviews to a very narrow window in Mozilla, for example.
I've just bought a USB 2.0 Compact Flash reader, but I can't get it to work on my Linux box. I suspect the problem is that the computer only has USB 1[.1] -- I'd just assumed a USB 2 device would downgrade and work with older computers, but a label on it says "Please make sure you equip with USB 2.0 mainboard or adaptor card while accessing this reader".
But it half works. When I plug it in I get
Jun 19 10:00:30 stravinsky kernel: hub.c: USB new device connect on bus2/1, assigned device number 46
Jun 19 10:00:30 stravinsky kernel: usb-uhci.c: interrupt, status 2, frame# 188
Jun 19 10:00:31 stravinsky kernel: usb_control/bulk_msg: timeout
Jun 19 10:00:31 stravinsky kernel: scsi2 : SCSI emulation for USB Mass Storage devices
Jun 19 10:00:34 stravinsky/etc/hotplug/usb.agent: Setup usb-storage for USB product 3538/14/101
but when I try to do anything to/dev/sda1 I get
Jun 19 10:02:11 stravinsky kernel: Device 08:01 not ready.
Jun 19 10:02:11 stravinsky kernel: I/O error: dev 08:01, sector 0
Jun 19 10:02:11 stravinsky kernel: FAT: unable to read boot sector
Any idea if this can be made to work? (It's a PQI Travelflash USB 2.0 CompactFlash Reader.)
Slashdot Mirror
Danny.
Danny.
But it's a political (in the broad sense) question in the end - what aspects of human existence matter, and how are resources to be allocated between them?
Danny.
Danny.
I don't think this is true. Most physicists would have to spend five to ten years attaining fluency in French, not to mention acquiring the background in literary theory, before tackling a PhD in French literature. For most of them, that would would be just as big an ask as it would be for a professor of French to do the high school foundations and the undergraduate degree in physics that would be a necessary prerequisite for a PhD. After that, I think actually completing either program would be largely a matter of determination.
(My sister has a PhD in French literature; I have a BSc with a physics major.)
Danny.
Anyone else experience this?
Danny.
Danny.
- The Marx Family Saga (Juan Goytisolo)
- The Viceroy of Ouidah (Bruce Chatwin)
- Ka (Roberto Calasso)
- China: Empire of the Written Symbol (Cecilia Lindqvist)
- The Visual Display of Quantiative Information (Edward Tufte)
- The Earthsea Trilogy (Ursula Le Guin)
Of course none of those were published this year, but my reading is rarely "cutting-edge".Danny.
Danny.
(Review of The Art of UNIX Programming )
Danny.
Danny.
Thanks for providing that. I included that link in the version of the review on my own website, but forgot to add a "for more information" trailer when I posted here.
Danny.
The per capita income of Vietnam is only $2250 using Purchasing Power Parity adjustment. The per capita income using actual exchange rates is closer to $500. PPP comparisons take the costs of food, housing, etc. into account, but don't work well as a measure of ability to buy globally priced goods such as Windows licenses.
Danny.
But only a fraction of that will make it onto my web site - I have maybe 60 megabytes of photos (cut-down to around 100k each) online and 10 megabytes of text on my web sites, and would be adding less than 40 megabytes a year to that.
Maybe I'll get a video camera, though, or put up some MP3s of my gamelan group...
Danny.
This photo shows a place (between the Shandur Pass and Gilgit) where we had to wait three hours while they re-dynamited the road...
Danny.
Danny.
Danny.
Danny.
Danny.
I disable cookies by default, enabling them for shopping baskets and forums such as Slashdot, and have rarely had any problems. I estimate that 80% or more of sites using cookies are not doing anything with them that *I* care about.
Danny.
Danny.
Danny.
And there are still some bugs - try resizing my reviews to a very narrow window in Mozilla, for example.
Danny.
But it half works. When I plug it in I get
but when I try to do anything toAny idea if this can be made to work? (It's a PQI Travelflash USB 2.0 CompactFlash Reader.)
Danny.