I disagree that Linux on the desktop is vaporware. I have actually been running Linux on my desktop for 11 years. I am a Unix sysadmin, but the user threshold for running Linux on the desktop is dropping every year. Three years ago, my wife and kids switched (about the same time as Code Red stormed the Internet). I think that Linux is actually getting very very close to the point that my mother, who lives 800 miles away could run it.
The most common comment I get when I say that my family runs it is "yeah, but they have a sysadmin living there." True, but I raise two points. If every windows user had a qualified system admin, a vast majority of the worms and virii out there would be stopped cold, since they tend to prey on the gullible and the uninformed. (I don't want to use ignorant, since it has such negative connotations. Most home computer users are experts in their own fields, but expecting them to be an expert in our field too is too much to ask.)
The other point I make to living with a sysadmin is that for the most part, my family (none of whom are geeks, I might add) have learned self-reliance. Most of the time, they search for their own answers instead of running to me to figure out where their minimized window went. Could they restore from backups? Probably not...But how many Windows users could? Can they reinstall the OS? Absolutely. Look at some of the installers. One of the guys from the Linux Link Tech Show actually had his 6 year old daughter install Ubuntu. The only thing he helped her with was the "big words." She made all of the decisions. In fact, Linux is getting to the point where it is easier to install than Windows.
So every year is the Year of the Linux Desktop, its just that the numbers are quietly growing and the demographic is expanding. I guess it depends on your perspective.
If the MPAA and RIAA had their way, every time you thought about a scene in a movie or every time you got a song stuck in your head, they would be able to charge and eventually sue (because just charging you won't make their bottom line look as good as getting random individuals to settle for thousands...
I agree with the poster. What incentive is it to behave responsibly when people know that the government is going to bail them out? I mean, look at it. My bank says they will never send me alerts through email or have me go to a website and update my information...But I got one in my email, and I just want to make sure its not for real. Now the bank is on the hook for it, leading to higher costs all around...
Most phishing sites have nothing to do with the original institution, other than nipping off enough content and visuals to make their bogus site look legit. Should the original institution be held liable for customers' bad behavior? I don't believe so. In addition, it could lead to a whole new type of low-level crime perpetrated by individuals who wish to punish or attack a particular institution, and do so by clicking on the phishing links.
The other thing is that having done auditing on bank IT infrastructures for a living, they are, for the most part, more secure than you might imagine. No security is perfect, however, banks are fairly good...A lot better than the government. So we should not reward bad behavior. Thats part of what has gotten our society in trouble. People have apparently forgotten that many lessons are best learned (and more importantly retained) the hard way, and that making the problem go away is not the best way to keep a person from making the same mistake more than once. If someone clicks on a phishing link and gets totally screwed, then you can pretty much bet that they won't do it again. OTOH, if you put the consequences on the banks, then what incentive does that provide the end user not to fall for it?
Indeed it is. And people don't treat this with the proper amount of respect. I live on a cul-de-sac in a rural area, and my neighbor was having some work done on their house. One saturday, when bringing my trash can back from the curb, I found, in the bottom of the can, a letter from the DMV and a utility bill, neither of which were mine.
Personally, I advise friends and family to buy a shredder. All bills, credit card applications, non-generic mortgage company offers (ones that have my name on the letter) and the like all go to the shredder...Then the shreddings go into the Weber when I barbeque.
Another issue with Palm's hardware is that the OS is generally speaking non-upgradeable. I used Palms from the IIIx, through the Vx to the Tungsten E. While earlier versions of the OS could be upgraded, it was a paid upgrade. With the Tungsten, it shipped with version 5.2.1. About 6 months after I bought the Tungsten, the first talk of OS6/Cobalt began floating around the Net. Palm's press releases and articles promised pie-in-the-sky functionality and stability. Release dates came and went, and I called Palm to check on it. I was told that they did not have an updated release date for Cobalt, and when it was released, I would have to buy a new Palm to get it. Buy new hardware to get the new OS? This felt so 1980.
The other problem with Palm's hardware is that newer PDAs have an issue with the display coming slightly loose and creating a 15kHz whine. I had two coworkers who bought the same model at different times and places, and theirs all had the same problem, along with all of the ones I ever saw in store displays. I bought my Palm with an extended warranty, exercised the warranty. I received it back, and the noise was louder. When I called the warranty provider, I was told that Palm did not consider this a hardware failure, even though the problem is common. I also called PalmOne to ask about a fix, and they recommended I overclock it, which does not solve the problem, but raises the frequency out of human hearing range...As well as voiding the warranty.
I have since bought a Sharp Zaurus, and will probably never go back to a Palm.
Err, wouldn't being able to identify the dead involve implanting the chip while the person was alive?
This would give the government and corporate entities years of alive time to abuse privacy using this chip before (if) it was needed to identify your body in case of a tragedy. Where are the privacy advocates in this?
I think it is fairly cynical of VeriChip to use a tragedy like this to drum up business. Akin to the undertaker measuring the gunfighter for a suit in the movies just before the showdown...
I recall only getting about 45 minutes of battery life when I was playing around with SSH, Kismet and the like.
It depends on the wireless card you use, some are more power-hungry than others. I get a couple of hours out of my Ambicom card, but I have heard reports that other cards are less power-conservative.
The Sony PSP uses the same battery as the Zaurus, so the accessories work. Pelican makes a device called a Power Brick, which holds nearly two charges and works great with the Zaurus.
Heh, Not everyone who comes here is a curmudgeonly reactionary barbarian...=)
As you say, different people have different needs, and as a security/IA engineer, the ability to run down a rogue wireless device is more important to me than keeping my calendar synced with my Outlook webmail.
That said, you now have me curious. I think I'll give syncing a try.
A couple of thoughts on that. Depending on what I am doing, I can usually get through a day...The legs are a little shorter than my T|E, but not much. The battery life appears to be about the same as the first-gen Tungsten series, as long as you aren't using the wireless card.
I have a USB sync cable from which I can draw power from my laptop. In addition, the PSP uses the same battery as the Zaurus. Pelican makes a Power Brick which works perfectly with the Zaurus, and at $20, gives you nearly two full charges, and can charge the Zaurus while you are using it.
IMO, the most important aspect of a palm is to carry around reminders, calendars, and for checking emails while in flight. All of these rely on synchronization with some form of groupware.
I haven't really delved into this aspect of the Zaurus (I didn't really do that much with my Palm, then again, the nature of my job is, at worst, local travel or an occasional overnight trip). That said, I am using the OpenZaurus ROM, and have the ko/pi and ka/pi, which are KDE's embedded calendar and addressbook. Being as they are KDE, and I run KDE on the laptop/desktop, I'm hoping that they should be fairly trivial to get synced.
My summary would be that the ability to edit Vi, to use SSH and SCP, and the general fun of using bash from a PDA are great, but as far as filling the needs of a traditional PDA, I thought it fell a bit short.
The shortcoming I have found in Palm devices was their lack of interoperability with other devices. You could sync, but not mount drives back and forth, not access the rest of the network, nothing. The other thing that irritated me was Palm's application-level dependence on Windows. If I wanted to upload a pdf to the Palm, I couldn't do it under Linux...I had to use Windows to do it. Since none of the boxes on my home network run Windows, it left me in a bit of a situation.
I also found that it was fairly unstable, requiring a hard reset every few months.
Perhaps I had a lemon of a Palm, but I had to reset my Tungsten E far more often than I have my Zaurus. I did end up soft resetting (flipping the battery cover switch) a few times in the last few months, but it seemed like every time I turned around, I was resetting the Palm.
I respect your opinion, coflow, it sounds like we have different needs.
I've owned or used PDAs for years (Palm III, V, M500, Tungsten), and bought the Zaurus for $140 from a friend who never used it. (My Tungsten had a high-pitched whine that made it nearly unusable, and Palm was useless in resolving it.) It was the best hardware purchase I have ever made in its class. I not only have the functionality of all of the palms I ever owned, but the added capabilities like real games, mp3s, watching movies, and especially being able to get online (I'm actually posting this from my 5500 sitting in a Paneras) give me new levels of functionality I never dreamed of with the palm.
I also do security for a living, and used the Z for wireless sniffing, vpn, and so forth. Best of all, since its Linux-based, there is an existing infrastructure of free/opensource software, much of which can be adapted to run on the Zaurus, and an excellent support community.
I'm thinking of buying a secondone in case anything happens to this one.
If you have the chance to get one and are even remotely interested in Linux, jump on it...
While I agree wholeheartedly with the respondent, is it not possible that the spammers may then change their tactics and set up click-throughs and hope for a backlash such as this? I know of people who have clickthroughs and go to sleep praying to God every night that they have something worthy of being slashdotted.
In theory, this would give the spammer the ability to remain anonymous, and turn the justifiable anger at spam (which they cynically refer to as vigilanteism) into profit.
Indeed. In fact, I have to constantly remind the Windows evangelists that the entire spyware and virus problem has created a cottage industry, and as long as Microsoft can make money off of it, they will choose never to solve it.
I was going to complain bitterly about Adobe's desire to munge the pdf before it could be downloaded to the Palm, and that the application for doing that munging was only for Windows/Mac...
But I got a Zaurus instead, which has qpdf (a port of xpdf) precompiled.
Once upon a time, I had the misfortune to receive a yellow fever vaccination with one of the military's needleless injectors. It felt like some steroid-pumped baseball player had swung a bat at my shoulder.
There was a guy in my unit in basic training that got a shot with one of the guns, and they apparently moved the gun as they administered the injection, and damaged a nerve. Over the next two weeks he started losing feeling in and then the use of his left arm...He was finally medically retired from the military.
I'll tell you one thing thats wrong with it. I have a Palm PDA, which has the Acrobat reader on it, and if I want to read PDFs on my palm, I have to use the windows version of Acrobat to "convert" it to a compatible format so the same application on the PDA can read it.
I don't have to convert my jpgs for Palm Photos to read it, nor do I have to convert my mp3s to play them on the palm. I just mount the sd card on my Linux box and copy to my heart's content (or until the card is full).
Why should Adobe try to force me to make an operating system decision, not on the platform in question (the PDA) but on a supporting one? Its not like Acrobat is unavailable for Linux...
The decision is easy...Use Plucker and download alternative versions of the documents.
Personally, I would rather carry two devices, in this case, than a combined device. The problem is that I use my phone as a phone, and my PDA for a slew of other things. Not only games, but mp3 player, password repository, one-time password generator, and other apps. I do information assurance for a living, and the main thing I use my PDA for is a portable mobile library for the manuals etc that I use on the job (yeeeaaah, Plucker). In addition, thanks to Baen Free Library, I do much of my leisure reading on my Palm. (Bosses get far less uptight if you pull out your PDA in a staff meeting than they do if you whip out a paperback during his diatribe...)
That said, they are completely different form factors. I like compact phones (I still have a Motorola V60), and hate talking on a pda form factor. On the other hand, the display of a phone is too small for prolonged reading. So I prefer separate devices.
I personally think its a shame that the PDA seems a dying breed.
I always keep multiple Knoppix CDs in my laptop bag, plus a couple of variants. I have two of the latest, one for emergencies, and one for Linux evangelism...Plus, when I was toting a Powerbook, I had to have a Mac Knoppix.
In addition, being a security engineer, I always have a copy of Auditor and a Knoppix STD "in case of emergency." Hey, you never know when you will be called on to...er, penetrate.
I actually did a presentation on this. My solution, while not perfect, works pretty well for me. I use WebVCRPlus to schedule and record, avidemux to de-commercialify, transcode and DVDrip to rip DVDs. When all said and done, I write DivX 5.0 (avi) format and burn to 700MB CD. I set this up before the days of reasonably-priced DVD writers, about 3 years ago, and the decision to burn to CD because I had to do some travel on my job, and taking along a CD carrier of movies with my laptop kept me from getting trapped in the $14.95 hotel movie system trap...DivX/avi also seems to provide the best quality-to-compression ratio.
I watch a lot of playback on my desktop (21" Sony monitor, SBLive! card with 5-way Altec-Lansing speakers) or my laptop...However, I just found a Philips DVP-642 DVD player that will play, among other formats, DivX4/5, so if I decide to watch on television, I have thte option.
Slashdot Mirror
The most common comment I get when I say that my family runs it is "yeah, but they have a sysadmin living there." True, but I raise two points. If every windows user had a qualified system admin, a vast majority of the worms and virii out there would be stopped cold, since they tend to prey on the gullible and the uninformed. (I don't want to use ignorant, since it has such negative connotations. Most home computer users are experts in their own fields, but expecting them to be an expert in our field too is too much to ask.)
The other point I make to living with a sysadmin is that for the most part, my family (none of whom are geeks, I might add) have learned self-reliance. Most of the time, they search for their own answers instead of running to me to figure out where their minimized window went. Could they restore from backups? Probably not...But how many Windows users could? Can they reinstall the OS? Absolutely. Look at some of the installers. One of the guys from the Linux Link Tech Show actually had his 6 year old daughter install Ubuntu. The only thing he helped her with was the "big words." She made all of the decisions. In fact, Linux is getting to the point where it is easier to install than Windows.
So every year is the Year of the Linux Desktop, its just that the numbers are quietly growing and the demographic is expanding. I guess it depends on your perspective.
If the MPAA and RIAA had their way, every time you thought about a scene in a movie or every time you got a song stuck in your head, they would be able to charge and eventually sue (because just charging you won't make their bottom line look as good as getting random individuals to settle for thousands...
--Storm
...The MPAA would say "Oh dear..." and vanish in a puff of logic.
Unfortunately, I do not believe this to be the case in our frame of reference.
I agree with the poster. What incentive is it to behave responsibly when people know that the government is going to bail them out? I mean, look at it. My bank says they will never send me alerts through email or have me go to a website and update my information...But I got one in my email, and I just want to make sure its not for real. Now the bank is on the hook for it, leading to higher costs all around...
Most phishing sites have nothing to do with the original institution, other than nipping off enough content and visuals to make their bogus site look legit. Should the original institution be held liable for customers' bad behavior? I don't believe so. In addition, it could lead to a whole new type of low-level crime perpetrated by individuals who wish to punish or attack a particular institution, and do so by clicking on the phishing links.
The other thing is that having done auditing on bank IT infrastructures for a living, they are, for the most part, more secure than you might imagine. No security is perfect, however, banks are fairly good...A lot better than the government. So we should not reward bad behavior. Thats part of what has gotten our society in trouble. People have apparently forgotten that many lessons are best learned (and more importantly retained) the hard way, and that making the problem go away is not the best way to keep a person from making the same mistake more than once. If someone clicks on a phishing link and gets totally screwed, then you can pretty much bet that they won't do it again. OTOH, if you put the consequences on the banks, then what incentive does that provide the end user not to fall for it?
--Storm
Indeed it is. And people don't treat this with the proper amount of respect. I live on a cul-de-sac in a rural area, and my neighbor was having some work done on their house. One saturday, when bringing my trash can back from the curb, I found, in the bottom of the can, a letter from the DMV and a utility bill, neither of which were mine.
Personally, I advise friends and family to buy a shredder. All bills, credit card applications, non-generic mortgage company offers (ones that have my name on the letter) and the like all go to the shredder...Then the shreddings go into the Weber when I barbeque.
Yeah? Where do you think Pluto came from? Too many Walt Disney cartoons when they were kids...
Another issue with Palm's hardware is that the OS is generally speaking non-upgradeable. I used Palms from the IIIx, through the Vx to the Tungsten E. While earlier versions of the OS could be upgraded, it was a paid upgrade. With the Tungsten, it shipped with version 5.2.1. About 6 months after I bought the Tungsten, the first talk of OS6/Cobalt began floating around the Net. Palm's press releases and articles promised pie-in-the-sky functionality and stability. Release dates came and went, and I called Palm to check on it. I was told that they did not have an updated release date for Cobalt, and when it was released, I would have to buy a new Palm to get it. Buy new hardware to get the new OS? This felt so 1980.
The other problem with Palm's hardware is that newer PDAs have an issue with the display coming slightly loose and creating a 15kHz whine. I had two coworkers who bought the same model at different times and places, and theirs all had the same problem, along with all of the ones I ever saw in store displays. I bought my Palm with an extended warranty, exercised the warranty. I received it back, and the noise was louder. When I called the warranty provider, I was told that Palm did not consider this a hardware failure, even though the problem is common. I also called PalmOne to ask about a fix, and they recommended I overclock it, which does not solve the problem, but raises the frequency out of human hearing range...As well as voiding the warranty.
I have since bought a Sharp Zaurus, and will probably never go back to a Palm.
A large man wielding a halbard?
Err, wouldn't being able to identify the dead involve implanting the chip while the person was alive?
This would give the government and corporate entities years of alive time to abuse privacy using this chip before (if) it was needed to identify your body in case of a tragedy. Where are the privacy advocates in this?
I think it is fairly cynical of VeriChip to use a tragedy like this to drum up business. Akin to the undertaker measuring the gunfighter for a suit in the movies just before the showdown...
It depends on the wireless card you use, some are more power-hungry than others. I get a couple of hours out of my Ambicom card, but I have heard reports that other cards are less power-conservative.
The Sony PSP uses the same battery as the Zaurus, so the accessories work. Pelican makes a device called a Power Brick, which holds nearly two charges and works great with the Zaurus.
Heh, Not everyone who comes here is a curmudgeonly reactionary barbarian...=)
As you say, different people have different needs, and as a security/IA engineer, the ability to run down a rogue wireless device is more important to me than keeping my calendar synced with my Outlook webmail.
That said, you now have me curious. I think I'll give syncing a try.
A couple of thoughts on that. Depending on what I am doing, I can usually get through a day...The legs are a little shorter than my T|E, but not much. The battery life appears to be about the same as the first-gen Tungsten series, as long as you aren't using the wireless card.
I have a USB sync cable from which I can draw power from my laptop. In addition, the PSP uses the same battery as the Zaurus. Pelican makes a Power Brick which works perfectly with the Zaurus, and at $20, gives you nearly two full charges, and can charge the Zaurus while you are using it.
I haven't really delved into this aspect of the Zaurus (I didn't really do that much with my Palm, then again, the nature of my job is, at worst, local travel or an occasional overnight trip). That said, I am using the OpenZaurus ROM, and have the ko/pi and ka/pi, which are KDE's embedded calendar and addressbook. Being as they are KDE, and I run KDE on the laptop/desktop, I'm hoping that they should be fairly trivial to get synced.
My summary would be that the ability to edit Vi, to use SSH and SCP, and the general fun of using bash from a PDA are great, but as far as filling the needs of a traditional PDA, I thought it fell a bit short.
The shortcoming I have found in Palm devices was their lack of interoperability with other devices. You could sync, but not mount drives back and forth, not access the rest of the network, nothing. The other thing that irritated me was Palm's application-level dependence on Windows. If I wanted to upload a pdf to the Palm, I couldn't do it under Linux...I had to use Windows to do it. Since none of the boxes on my home network run Windows, it left me in a bit of a situation.
I also found that it was fairly unstable, requiring a hard reset every few months.
Perhaps I had a lemon of a Palm, but I had to reset my Tungsten E far more often than I have my Zaurus. I did end up soft resetting (flipping the battery cover switch) a few times in the last few months, but it seemed like every time I turned around, I was resetting the Palm.
I respect your opinion, coflow, it sounds like we have different needs.
I've owned or used PDAs for years (Palm III, V, M500, Tungsten), and bought the Zaurus for $140 from a friend who never used it. (My Tungsten had a high-pitched whine that made it nearly unusable, and Palm was useless in resolving it.) It was the best hardware purchase I have ever made in its class. I not only have the functionality of all of the palms I ever owned, but the added capabilities like real games, mp3s, watching movies, and especially being able to get online (I'm actually posting this from my 5500 sitting in a Paneras) give me new levels of functionality I never dreamed of with the palm.
I also do security for a living, and used the Z for wireless sniffing, vpn, and so forth. Best of all, since its Linux-based, there is an existing infrastructure of free/opensource software, much of which can be adapted to run on the Zaurus, and an excellent support community.
I'm thinking of buying a secondone in case anything happens to this one.
If you have the chance to get one and are even remotely interested in Linux, jump on it...
...To see all the elderly-saving-the-day Hero tags on fark...
In theory, this would give the spammer the ability to remain anonymous, and turn the justifiable anger at spam (which they cynically refer to as vigilanteism) into profit.
Indeed. In fact, I have to constantly remind the Windows evangelists that the entire spyware and virus problem has created a cottage industry, and as long as Microsoft can make money off of it, they will choose never to solve it.
Dude! Don't give their lawyers any idea...Remember, those poor starving lawyers need to re-upolster their BMWs.
I was going to complain bitterly about Adobe's desire to munge the pdf before it could be downloaded to the Palm, and that the application for doing that munging was only for Windows/Mac...
But I got a Zaurus instead, which has qpdf (a port of xpdf) precompiled.
Thanks for all of your help, Adobe!
There was a guy in my unit in basic training that got a shot with one of the guns, and they apparently moved the gun as they administered the injection, and damaged a nerve. Over the next two weeks he started losing feeling in and then the use of his left arm...He was finally medically retired from the military.
I'll tell you one thing thats wrong with it. I have a Palm PDA, which has the Acrobat reader on it, and if I want to read PDFs on my palm, I have to use the windows version of Acrobat to "convert" it to a compatible format so the same application on the PDA can read it.
I don't have to convert my jpgs for Palm Photos to read it, nor do I have to convert my mp3s to play them on the palm. I just mount the sd card on my Linux box and copy to my heart's content (or until the card is full).
Why should Adobe try to force me to make an operating system decision, not on the platform in question (the PDA) but on a supporting one? Its not like Acrobat is unavailable for Linux...
The decision is easy...Use Plucker and download alternative versions of the documents.
That said, they are completely different form factors. I like compact phones (I still have a Motorola V60), and hate talking on a pda form factor. On the other hand, the display of a phone is too small for prolonged reading. So I prefer separate devices.
I personally think its a shame that the PDA seems a dying breed.
In addition, being a security engineer, I always have a copy of Auditor and a Knoppix STD "in case of emergency." Hey, you never know when you will be called on to...er, penetrate.
I watch a lot of playback on my desktop (21" Sony monitor, SBLive! card with 5-way Altec-Lansing speakers) or my laptop...However, I just found a Philips DVP-642 DVD player that will play, among other formats, DivX4/5, so if I decide to watch on television, I have thte option.
As I said, not perfect, but it works for me.