Mark Stephens may read Slashdot, but Robert X. Cringley/Cringely doesn't exist. The name is a pseudonym for several writers; Mark's the 3rd (Robert X. Cringley III?).
Why in hell was this story posted at all? Is Taco now Cringley's bitch? If Cringley wants people to send him their predictions, don't post them to Slashdot, send them to Cringley. If you already read Cringley you don't need Taco telling you this, and if you don't read Cringley you probabley (like me) don't read him for a reason. I don't need or want Taco or anyone else telling me what I missed in this week's column.
What in hell is on-topic for this story? If you post a prediction here, you're doing it in the wrong place -- you should send your predictions to Cringley. If you bitch about Cringley, as the parent did, you're considered a troll. So mod me down, I don't care, but this is an opinion, not a troll. A troll is looking to hook newbies, and I'm not.
My Dad did the same thing for me, but I fooled him. I still have the first tools he gave me when I was about 6 or 7, and now that my boy's in 1st Grade I'm going to pass them down to him. OK, so how is that "fooling" my Dad? I took care of my tools and only broke his:-)
Funny, but if I used a PDA for email I'd want it to be my only email reader. So the issue for me would be how to sync it to the mail server, not how to sync it with a desktop mail reader.
What is the value in having email in two places? Where do you answer it? Where do you file it? If the answer is "the desktop PC" then why sync up your PDA? If you just want to have some email on the PDA for reference, why not transfer it over as text files?
Guess what? This problem isn't restricted to Open Source. At most Fortune 500 companies the Microsoft release cycle is problematic. Many companies are just now wrapping up their migration from Windows 95/98 to Windows 2000, and they have no plans to migrate to XP anytime soon -- especially since it seems the easiest way to switch to XP is to simply buy new computers. Word 97 does memos on a PII 233 just as well today as it did in 1997; "upgrading" to Windows/Office XP on a 1.2GHz box buys them nothing but "support" from Microsoft.
They could support OpenBSD releases for five years and it wouldn't be long enough for some folks.
the amount of time you get isn't enough for me to use OpenBSD at a customer's site. Eighteen months as the lifespan of a product isn't substantial enough, in my opinion.
Then, clearly, OpenBSD does not meet your requirements. Try another *BSD or switch to Linux or buy AIX or HP-UX or Solaris or something.
Contribute to whoever's running against them. Even $20 will be appreciated.
Put one of their signs on your lawn to let your neighbors know you oppose the dork in office. If they ask you about it, explain your reasons -- you might open their eyes and get more votes for your candidate.
Write a letter to the editor of your local paper, complaining that your congressperson is ignoring your views on vital issues and urging votes for their opponent. Be well-reasoned and no name calling! ("Congressman Doe opposes controls on baseballs because he thinks they would infringe on people's rights, but I disagree: Whiffle balls are much safer and just as enjoyable. Baseballs belong in the ballpark, not on the street. Nobody has the right to break their neighbor's windows." -vs- "I support baseball control but dorky Congressman Doe doesn't!")
Some of us have no real option. In my case, the local phone monopoly provides such a crappy circuit that we can only get 24,000 bps on a dialup, and NOBODY offers DSL here -- too far from the switch. We're damn lucky AT&T Broadband offers internet service (although if they raise our rates again we're gonna seriously consider going back to dialup) -- friends of ours further down the road can't even get cable TV (they're closer to TPC's switch, but still no DSL).
I like ISOs, simply because it's easier for me to download one file than it is to download dozens. Nobody seems to use tarballs anymore... I guess they're trying to support folks with dialup connections who want to download one file a night for a month, but I don't work that way.
And while I'm offtopic, I wanted to use Linux From Scratch but it isn't (from scratch), it's from an existing Linux installation, on an empty partition. I coulda loaded RedHat first, but my laptop doesn't have room for RedHat and LFS, so I tried Gentoo. It didn't support my (PCMCIA) network card. Being offline kinda stops Gentoo dead in its tracks. In all fairness to Gentoo, Mandrake didn't support my network card either, so I'm back to RedHat. I guess I'll try Lunar Linux and see if it can finally free me from Corporate domination of my desktop.
Don't "lean it between keyboard and monitor" -- the best solution is to have the book at eye level, next to the monitor. Use a cookbook stand, they're available lots of places. You can even make one yourself.
First, the court is half-female. Second, the decision was announced by a female judge, who clearly stated her disgust at the situation. Third, changing the law will undoubtedly be the first act of the Legislature when they next meet.
That said, the case wasn't on civil liberties, it was on the "peeping tom" law, which was written to protect people's privacy in their own homes. It wasn't written to protect the privacy of people out in public, which is why the Court, reluctantly, found the practice legal. Old law, new un-imagined situation. The short-term effect is that more women are wearing pants in public.
I'm running OpenBSD on my firewall, because after reading here and there I came to the conclusion that it might be a better choice for a firewall than Linux. I downloaded the files (no ISO, remember) and so far I'm happy with it. My plan is to buy the CDs of the next release. Am I a cheapskate because I didn't buy the version I'm using now?
I downloaded several Linux distributions before settling on RedHat; subsequently I bought two version of RedHat, 5something and 6something. Am I a cheapskate because I didn't buy all those other distros I tried before I settled on RedHat? Am I a cheapskate because I didn't buy every 5.x and 6.x release?
Remember, if I wanted to try Windows NT 3.5 on a server, and if I liked it go to NT 4.0 when it came out, I'd have had to buy both NT 3.5 and NT 4.0 -- and I might not have done the upgrade to 4.0. If I wanted to try Windows 98, Me, and XP Home before deciding which one is best for my mix of DOS and Windows games (yes, I still play Wolfenstein -- don't you?) I would have shelled out well over $500 for one PC.
Just because people take advantage of open/free software's free-as-in-beer licenses doesn't make them cheapskates, and it certainly gives the Open Source businesses a leg up on the competition. If I couldn't try Mandrake or SuSE for free-as-in-beer I'd really be locked into RedHat, and all three would suffer (competition makes them all better).
By blending materials that shrink when heated with more traditional substances that expand when heated, scientists could create a composite that neither shrinks nor expands as the temperature changes.
Scientists could create? Engineers already have! Boeing did this when they made the framework for the Hubble space telescope, by carefully balancing the mix of carbon fibers and resins. Hubble depends on this feature. You certainly can't have the distance from the mirror to the sensors changing as it goes in and out of the Earth's shadow.
unfortunately, to implement it would require that we have some way of imparting imaginary velocity, which at the present time we have no idea how to do.
Mandrake Linux 9.0 is the result of over four years of work to offer the most powerful Linux operating system and world-class applications to the public.
Gee, has it been four years since 8.2? It seems like it was just six months. Time flies!
Yeah, Red Hat's not forking the code or anything, just saying they prefer their defaults to the developer's defaults; anyone is still free to tell them both to "stuff it" and customize the look and feel all they want. Try that on Windows or a Mac! (just don't try to make your KDE desktop look like Windows or a Mac, or Gates and Jobs will sue your lame ass).
What concerns me is the idea that it prevents me from making and distributing copies of what I create. Not that I'm a great musician or filmmaker, but with DRM controls will I be able to video my kid's birthday party and email copies to his aunts & uncles?
What about software? With Palladium Microsoft is not only killing open/free software but also everything you can find at Tucows. That's gonna drive people to the Macintosh in droves.
This simply will not last. It may be like the 55mph speed limit, which took about 10 years too long to repeal, but eventually the people will get real tired of paying $15 a month here, $10 a month there, for services (like voicemail or video on demand) that replaced what they used to own outright (like answering machines or VCRs) in the good old days of the DRM-free 20th Century.
Palladium's just a symptom of a much larger disease, and eventually the public will give up on asprin and go for surgery. Or maybe just put the patient down and go back to books.
Gee, I sorta thought the Xbox would be the crossover platform -- write for the Xbox, make back the development costs, then do a quick port to the PC. I figured the lack of royalties to Microsoft would be incentive enough for the port, and the fact that an Xbox is really just a specific-purpose PC would make the port easy. Maybe it's too early to tell, but geeze, even Halo is coming to the PC, and you'd think Microsoft would be the last house to port their Xbox games to another platform.
WTF are you going on about? In Mozilla 1.0 for Windows the "Go" button is OFF by default.
This is yet another gripe about Mozilla -- they seem to configure it for each platform based on the personal preferences of whoever does configuration for that platform, rather than to some master plan. Mozilla out-of-the-box should look identical on all platforms, and not try to emulate anything else. At least you can change it to suit your preferences; too bad you have to change it if you use more than one OS.
There's an echo in here. Hey, AC, if you keep this up, I might have to go back to reading at 1; I read at 0 because sometimes an AC or two have something worth saying -- Don't ruin it for the rest of the AC's, parrot-boy.
You should read The Guns of the South, about some White South Africans who use a time machine to arm the Confederacy with AK-47s in an attempt to change the outcome of the U.S. War of the Rebellion (a.k.a. the Civil War). In it the author explains that the secret to automatic weapons is that some of the gas that shoots the bullet also cycles the gun mechanism, loading the next round. The problem is that with black powder the products of combustion will quickly jam the mechanism, so it's not so much a problem of design or machining tolerances as it is a problem of chemistry -- coming up with a propellant (a.k.a. gunpowder) that won't foul the gun. The chemistry just wasn't there in the late 1800s.
I don't understand your problem. He wants to unify the profiles on his cell phone, PDA, home laptop, and work computer. Are you suggesting that he can't trust those devices? They're his -- if he can't trust them, what can he trust?
Seriously, this is a great idea but for two things: 1) Cellphones don't have USB ports, and 2) With few exceptions, PDAs don't have host USB ports.
There are work-arounds, of course: You can upload the info to both the PDA and phone with appropriate connection hardware/software. But you'll still need a way (perl scripts?) to translate the data from some central format to the target software's preferred format.
Business plan: 1) Work out a solution for all the above. 2) Make it work with every PDA, cellphone, browser, email reader, etc. -- and continue to support it as those all change (tracking cellphones alone will keep you busy). 3) Package it up so any bozo can use it. 4) Profit!
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Why in hell was this story posted at all? Is Taco now Cringley's bitch? If Cringley wants people to send him their predictions, don't post them to Slashdot, send them to Cringley. If you already read Cringley you don't need Taco telling you this, and if you don't read Cringley you probabley (like me) don't read him for a reason. I don't need or want Taco or anyone else telling me what I missed in this week's column.
What in hell is on-topic for this story? If you post a prediction here, you're doing it in the wrong place -- you should send your predictions to Cringley. If you bitch about Cringley, as the parent did, you're considered a troll. So mod me down, I don't care, but this is an opinion, not a troll. A troll is looking to hook newbies, and I'm not.
What is the value in having email in two places? Where do you answer it? Where do you file it? If the answer is "the desktop PC" then why sync up your PDA? If you just want to have some email on the PDA for reference, why not transfer it over as text files?
They could support OpenBSD releases for five years and it wouldn't be long enough for some folks.
Contribute to whoever's running against them. Even $20 will be appreciated.
Put one of their signs on your lawn to let your neighbors know you oppose the dork in office. If they ask you about it, explain your reasons -- you might open their eyes and get more votes for your candidate.
Write a letter to the editor of your local paper, complaining that your congressperson is ignoring your views on vital issues and urging votes for their opponent. Be well-reasoned and no name calling! ("Congressman Doe opposes controls on baseballs because he thinks they would infringe on people's rights, but I disagree: Whiffle balls are much safer and just as enjoyable. Baseballs belong in the ballpark, not on the street. Nobody has the right to break their neighbor's windows." -vs- "I support baseball control but dorky Congressman Doe doesn't!")
And while I'm offtopic, I wanted to use Linux From Scratch but it isn't (from scratch), it's from an existing Linux installation, on an empty partition. I coulda loaded RedHat first, but my laptop doesn't have room for RedHat and LFS, so I tried Gentoo. It didn't support my (PCMCIA) network card. Being offline kinda stops Gentoo dead in its tracks. In all fairness to Gentoo, Mandrake didn't support my network card either, so I'm back to RedHat. I guess I'll try Lunar Linux and see if it can finally free me from Corporate domination of my desktop.
That said, the case wasn't on civil liberties, it was on the "peeping tom" law, which was written to protect people's privacy in their own homes. It wasn't written to protect the privacy of people out in public, which is why the Court, reluctantly, found the practice legal. Old law, new un-imagined situation. The short-term effect is that more women are wearing pants in public.
I downloaded several Linux distributions before settling on RedHat; subsequently I bought two version of RedHat, 5something and 6something. Am I a cheapskate because I didn't buy all those other distros I tried before I settled on RedHat? Am I a cheapskate because I didn't buy every 5.x and 6.x release?
Remember, if I wanted to try Windows NT 3.5 on a server, and if I liked it go to NT 4.0 when it came out, I'd have had to buy both NT 3.5 and NT 4.0 -- and I might not have done the upgrade to 4.0. If I wanted to try Windows 98, Me, and XP Home before deciding which one is best for my mix of DOS and Windows games (yes, I still play Wolfenstein -- don't you?) I would have shelled out well over $500 for one PC.
Just because people take advantage of open/free software's free-as-in-beer licenses doesn't make them cheapskates, and it certainly gives the Open Source businesses a leg up on the competition. If I couldn't try Mandrake or SuSE for free-as-in-beer I'd really be locked into RedHat, and all three would suffer (competition makes them all better).
What about software? With Palladium Microsoft is not only killing open/free software but also everything you can find at Tucows. That's gonna drive people to the Macintosh in droves.
This simply will not last. It may be like the 55mph speed limit, which took about 10 years too long to repeal, but eventually the people will get real tired of paying $15 a month here, $10 a month there, for services (like voicemail or video on demand) that replaced what they used to own outright (like answering machines or VCRs) in the good old days of the DRM-free 20th Century.
Palladium's just a symptom of a much larger disease, and eventually the public will give up on asprin and go for surgery. Or maybe just put the patient down and go back to books.
This is yet another gripe about Mozilla -- they seem to configure it for each platform based on the personal preferences of whoever does configuration for that platform, rather than to some master plan. Mozilla out-of-the-box should look identical on all platforms, and not try to emulate anything else. At least you can change it to suit your preferences; too bad you have to change it if you use more than one OS.
Seriously, this is a great idea but for two things: 1) Cellphones don't have USB ports, and 2) With few exceptions, PDAs don't have host USB ports.
There are work-arounds, of course: You can upload the info to both the PDA and phone with appropriate connection hardware/software. But you'll still need a way (perl scripts?) to translate the data from some central format to the target software's preferred format.
Business plan:
1) Work out a solution for all the above.
2) Make it work with every PDA, cellphone, browser, email reader, etc. -- and continue to support it as those all change (tracking cellphones alone will keep you busy).
3) Package it up so any bozo can use it.
4) Profit!