To be even more fair, note the message that comes up when you enter the kpa diskset.
It warns you that the applications are alpha and unstable, even though many of them are quite stable, they simply have <1 version numbers. I can't live without many of those apps, Kuickshow, Gehieimnis, Korganiser, Kdevelop, Kcmdate, Kmysqladmin, Ksysv, and, of course Kfortune.
I went through both a long time ago
on
GPG vs. PGP?
·
· Score: 5
I settled on GPG, for numerous reasons, which I shall list:
GPG is much easier (for me) to use than PGP for UNIX (PGP for Windows is another matter altogether...). I like having one binary, as opposed to pgpv and pgpk, with GNU-style readable commandline options (--whatever) and informative, easy to read interactive text output
GPG is free (beer and speech)
Due to it's free nature, future free software has more reason to integrate GPG support
It's OpenPGP compliant, thus compatible with PGP
It's GNU. While RMS really bugs me sometimes (I'll not get into that...), GNU software is generally held to a high standard
I dunno, it just feels right
Now, for some reasons not to use GPG:
There is more software that is compatible with PGP (that's changing all the time, though..). Specifically, StarOffice and KMail
PGP is more well known
To finish, I'll mention some software that can use GPG:
Mail Agents
PINE
Mutt
XFMail
I assume Mozilla will at some point
Utilities
Geheimnis (formerly KPGPShell). I use this for key management
TKPGP. I use this for working with the clipboard, and for reading and saving sensitive information. I like it a lot
There's a GNOME package that works like Geheimnis (I forget the name), but wasn't as mature as Geheimnis when I tried it out
Hah, reminds me of one of the old contractors at my office. He had "Maximum RPM" sitting on his desk in his own building but rarely if ever went there. He decided to print it (actually he got me to print it because I ran Linux) at my office. Then he went downstairs to the copy shop to get it bound.
I should note that all those Es look awfully suspicious too. Could be a sign that they are funded by a large number of venture capitalists bent on expanding the use of the letter E and then copyrighting that letter.
I'm reminded of an old NFB film where a king decided that he didn't like the letter "E" and would have his men beat anybody who used the letter.
It's a fuzzy memory from when I was a kid, but the point stuck in my mind permanently.
Anybody know the film I'm talking about? It's animated...
Try hitting ENTER on a JPG file and quickly viewing it, then hitting ESC to go back, get the focus back and everything..
Go to the "command" menu and try "Extension File Edit." The file is a little convoluted in places (if you don't know regexes) but it is fairly easy to get up to speed.
I added/changed a bunch of filetypes so that hitting <enter> will open a file in my app of choice (for images I use KuickShow, which is very similar to ACDSee).
Example:
shell/.mp3
Open=xmms %f &
View=xmms %f &
Icon=sound.xpm
I recommend adding "&" to the end of each command line so that it runs in the background, allowing you to use mc while the viewer is open.
You can also have it prompt you for arguments or whatever easily:
I recommend checking out "Menu File Edit" as well. This file sets up the <F2> menu, which is useful for quickly creating tar.gz files (make a release) and for copying files to remote hosts. You'll have to edit it to use ssh, simply change "rcp" to "scp."
I'm part of a physical security project at my company. We are a Linux company, and would also prefer an open source solution, whether we write it ourselves or not.
We've been playing with Dallas Semiconductor's TINI boards, which are small, cheap, Java microcontrollers intended for use with their iButtons. Well, it's more than playing, we have 100 of them on order...
The controllers have many communication options, including Ethernet, EIA-232, CAN, and one-wire protocols. They're extremely cool, and they have a UNIX-like shell, Slush, which makes development fairly easy.
It looks like a very good solution, and if the software is open, we could collaborate.
Plus, it might be fun to use the TINIs for their intended purpose for a change:-)*
Knowing when to change batteries, or even HOW to change batteries is often well outside their abilities.
Oh come now, changing batteries in a remote control takes as much effort. Knowing when to is the same: "Hmmm, not working... I haven't changed batteries in a year... There, it works again."
The battery is not a "geek" concept. If you think you're oh-so-smart for knowing about batteries, then you're friggin' deluded.
You're right, I'm trying it on my mouse now. Squeezing horizontally would be bad.
However, the article says that pushing down on it will also produce a click. That doesn't seem nearly as bad.
Actually, I think it needs some sort of scroll functionality. Maybe not a wheel (I have a cordless wheel mouse and I love this damn thing) but, say, squeezing *vertically* and nudging up or down (hey, how about left and right, sweet). That doesn't seem too bad.
Of course, then you have to differentiate between a push and a squeeze...
A few weeks ago I went to California. I went to the Computer Literacy bookstore in Sunnyvale and bought SuSE 6.4.
They don't take bank cards!!!
That blew me away. Here I was, in friggin' Silicon Valley, and they're so backwards (the PCS coverage in SF sucked as well, but that's another story, Involving myself and 350 3Com guys shuffling around to get a decent connection). I use my bank card everywhere in Canada. I don't actually need cash, except for taxis. Plus it's all for a measly $5 a month. ($2.50 when I was a student)
I ended up using company money, intending to pay it back, until the president asked if I was going to put it on my company computer. "hell yeah!" "Expense it then."
Ok, enough rambling. It's just that the US banks sort of scare me, which is pretty crazy considering the way Canadian banks behave...
I highly doubt that Cobalt will move to 2.2 on the MIPS devices (Qube, Raq2).
Their latest and greatest Raq3 uses an AMD K6 and 2.2 is, of course, supported.
I have a Qube 2 under my desk at work, which I have abandoned due to the lack of 2.2.
If you need a small server like this and want Linux 2.2 on it, get a Netwinder. It's an ultra cool box, I recommend plugging in a monitor and keyboard. It's useable as a desktop machine. There's even a desktop version specifically for that which has NTSC I/O.
That circle thing on the side is a speaker, btw. A voice sounds "Welcome to Netwinder" when the system is properly up.
There are rackmount versions, too. You can fit two of them in a single 1u space.
Of course, the coolest thing is the hackability. Check out www.netwinder.org to find all kinds of great docs, software, and ideas. There's a pic there somewhere of a stack of netwinder guts set up as a Beowulf. The OS is a modified recent RedHat. You'll find it easier to get software compiled on it than the Qube.
Needless to say, one of these babies occupy a space on *top* of my desk.
They refuse to use banners, though. They are two-line text ads.
They had a questionnaire a little while ago and I said that I wouldn't mind ads, but don't like banners or popups. Appareently, I'm not the only one who responded that way.
The evaluation version is just a 1 cd trial for SuSE Linux. It doesn't have a lot of packages I use, but is useful for getting a system up quickly and trying out SaX and Yast.
I wanted to clarify something for the whiners who assume things they don't have a clue about.
The boxed 6-cd set has a lot more, but you don't have to buy it unless you want the commercial software and the excellent book (the books from Red Hat, Caldera, Corel, etc. really suck, though Corel's has a section on mc, which is cool). After you install the CD you can run Yast and set the installation source to ftp. It will automatically pick ftp://ftp.suse.com/pub/suse/i386/6.4/suse for a site. It's not there yet, it might be a week or two, but you can browse the 6.3 directory if you want. You can also change it to a mirror site like ftp.rpmfind.net if you want.
There! Now you can select a shitload of software. Anything from the boxed set except commercial software. There are commercial demos and trials, though, and MySQL and xv are placed under the commercial diskset. I believe it would take up ~5.5GB of space if you installed everything from the ftp site.
You can even grab a single boot disk and set the installation source to ftp and use the mostly complete ftp distribution.
Hard drive and microprocessor manufacturing both produce large volumes of highly toxic "stuff". Hopefully someone on Slashdot who knows more about how the biz handles this. It should definetly factor into any responsibly motivated purchasing decision.
I remember reading an article a few years back in AMD's "PC Currents" about how they reclaim the silicon waste and donate it to art schools and the like where it is used in pottery.
I couldn't find anything about it specifically on their website but I did find this.
Why did Sun feel it necessary to tar the single install file? It only makes the file slightly larger. Does anyone else think this is totally stupid?
It's not stupid at all.
Tar preserves the file attributes. Most of us don't mind chmod +x'ing a downloaded binary but most regular people won't be too keen on it, and that's if they even *knew* that they had to do that to get the damn thing to run...
I have a 10GB drive which the BIOS seems to think is 540MB (despite the fact that the BIOS date is 1998 and supports LBA). I have a 2 GB partition which LILO refuses to boot (It was windows, so I didn't care and simply didn't use it).
Bootman had no trouble booting it. I thought it wasn't going to work but I tried it anyway. It rules.
So I happily ran the BeOS installer, formatted the partition, and installed Be. I'm now hooked. It is a truly excellent OS.
The only problem now is that there are not a lot of apps that I use for it. I'd like to see implementations of the Linux libraries so that I can configure;make;make install any old piece of software.
Heh, now I sound like one of those Windows guys who seem to think that Linux has no apps...:-)*
The one piece of Linux software that eased my way into Linux from DOS so many years ago was Mouseless Commander. I'm still rarely without mc under an Eterm.
I couldn't really get into the icon based stuff. It's just not fast enough for me (yet).
I was surprised when I downloaded gmc and saw, well, MS Explorer.
Do you think there's a way to get the best of both worlds? A two-pane file manager that works like Explorer and mc?
I've been playing with the KDE 2 snapshots to see if Konqueror could do it. I then discovered a neat feature. I could have four panes: two containing files and two containing previews of whatever files are currently selected in each of the file panes. In mc there's a quick view feature, but I couldn't stand not having two file panes. Maybe I'm just an old coot...
Oh well, I guess what I'm really trying to ask is if the mc way is dead. Should I give in and use Gmc or Kfm/Konqueror the way other people do? Will I end up happy if I gave it an honest try? (I've given it tries before, but it never worked out. I kept reaching for the 'F3' key...)
Even if it's dead, I have to still thank you for providing what is(was?) the most important piece of software I have used (In my opinion, at least) under Linux.
I guess I wasn't clear. I, like you and many others, studied throughout college. I did my work. The people who crammed did so because they didn't do their work.
Big difference. The crammers didn't care about the courses they were taking. They cared about what their parents would think so that they would buy them a car. So they tried to put as much information in their heads the night and morning before the exam, knowing full well that they'll forget it upon leaving to go home (driving in their new car).
I went to school for me, not my parents. I even kept my books and I still read/use them like I did in college. I'd rather have a good X86 architecture book than ~$50.
What bugs me is when spoiled kids complain about getting low marks simply because they're used to getting what they want. (I grew up sorta poor so maybe I'm being unnecessarily bitter.)
...who are pissed because they got some bad grades.
I've seen this crap before. Remember those kids in your high school who got all these great grades because they crammed a lot? I never crammed, got a lot of bad grades in high school (except sciences and math, the useful stuff), yet approached a 4.0 GPA throughout college. (still not cramming) Most of those "promising" students ended up flunking or dropping out of college. The main reason was because their goal in high school was "get to college/university." When they got there they found out that they didn't have a goal beyond that. Ooops. The other big reason is that high school was easy for them, socially and academically. This will often create a high level of arrogance.
All of a sudden mommy & daddy are wondering what's wrong with little Suzie (ObProLinuxSlashdotStatement: Not SuSE. SuSE rocks!) or Billy, they used to get good grades. You see, College/University is a challenge. (academically and socially) I actually enjoyed it, which resulted in good grades. Many of these kids were used to the their high school routines, which didn't quite work so well in post-secondary.
So here we are, with these arrogant (often middle/upper class) kids who aren't getting their way and not realising that they simply suck at writing.
Just read those posts. I did. What I found was a lot of terrible writers complaining about a "hard" teacher. From my experience, the hard teachers are the best. You're lucky you can get one. The lazy ones may give you a good grade (most high school teachers, though I had a couple of great ones that everybody else hated, the hard ones), but you probably won't learn anything useful.
As for cramming, what's the point? If you don't know a subject you don't know a subject. Sure, you might get a good grade, but you'll know fuck-all two years down the road when you need it.
So if mommy & daddy are mad, maybe you should have taken a word processing course and became a secretary. How about driving a street cleaner? A garbage truck? You get a paycheck, I get someone to handle my calls or a cleaner neighborhood. Someone has to do it, and you can be sure that if you continue writing, I won't read it.
Sorry about the rant, but the comments on the site pissed me off. (especially the homophobic ones) There were some good criticisms, the teacher shouldn't have used a book he wrote in class. That's just wrong. However, I've seen a lot of kids complain about bad marks without realising that they earned those bad marks and should either improve or face the fact that just aren't cut out.
I bought a laptop about two years ago and wanted to find a good case for it. I spent hours going through the targuses et al at Staples. None of them were what I wanted. You can put a laptop in them all right, but there wasn't any room for books/binders. Just crappy "file" storage. I went to the net and found the Kensington Saddlebag. You can fit binders, books, etc. easily into it. The front pouch had room for storing pens/pencils, my TI-86 calculator, a zip drive and a floppy drive. The padding is good, too. It can be carried over your shoulder, in your hand, and there's a pouch in the back that stores bookbag style straps which are useful if you commute on bicycle.
Nowadays I'm rarely without it, even when I leave my laptop at home. It has the great feature of not looking like there's a laptop in it either. I highly recommend it.
Re:Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
on
Brainball!
·
· Score: 1
Can you just help me move my sofa out of the hallway?
Hmmm, unless you can warp space-time, I'd recommend a good chainsaw. You can get to the chainsaw store by following someone who looks like they know where they're going.
Re:Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
on
Brainball!
·
· Score: 1
Seriously, if there any geeks here who have NOT read the HHGTTG series, you need to. funny stuff.
Definitely. Also read the Dirk Gently books, they're a riot.
You should also play Starship Titanic (even though it's for *that* OS). A tip: ask the "surfer" talking robot if it likes Pink Floyd. I rolled when I did it.
Slashdot Mirror
To be even more fair, note the message that comes up when you enter the kpa diskset.
It warns you that the applications are alpha and unstable, even though many of them are quite stable, they simply have <1 version numbers. I can't live without many of those apps, Kuickshow, Gehieimnis, Korganiser, Kdevelop, Kcmdate, Kmysqladmin, Ksysv, and, of course Kfortune.
Now, for some reasons not to use GPG:
To finish, I'll mention some software that can use GPG:
Hope that helps, in some way or another.
Go read the GPL again. Did they change the kernel? Did they change Samba? (yes, but all of the code went back to the Samba guys)
Did they change lpr? Oh wait, that's BSD, they're not required to.
Did they write new software that *runs* under Linux? Probably, but the GPL doesn't require that all Linux software have to be GPL as well.
Do you really think Oracle would have ported to Linux if they had to GPL it? Not on your life.
Hah, reminds me of one of the old contractors at my office. He had "Maximum RPM" sitting on his desk in his own building but rarely if ever went there. He decided to print it (actually he got me to print it because I ran Linux) at my office. Then he went downstairs to the copy shop to get it bound.
Now it's sitting on my desk...
I'm reminded of an old NFB film where a king decided that he didn't like the letter "E" and would have his men beat anybody who used the letter.
It's a fuzzy memory from when I was a kid, but the point stuck in my mind permanently.
Anybody know the film I'm talking about? It's animated...
Go to the "command" menu and try "Extension File Edit." The file is a little convoluted in places (if you don't know regexes) but it is fairly easy to get up to speed.
I added/changed a bunch of filetypes so that hitting <enter> will open a file in my app of choice (for images I use KuickShow, which is very similar to ACDSee).
Example:
shell/.mp3
I recommend adding "&" to the end of each command line so that it runs in the background, allowing you to use mc while the viewer is open.
You can also have it prompt you for arguments or whatever easily:
# Makefile
regex/[Mm]akefile
I recommend checking out "Menu File Edit" as well. This file sets up the <F2> menu, which is useful for quickly creating tar.gz files (make a release) and for copying files to remote hosts. You'll have to edit it to use ssh, simply change "rcp" to "scp."
I'm part of a physical security project at my company. We are a Linux company, and would also prefer an open source solution, whether we write it ourselves or not.
:-)*
We've been playing with Dallas Semiconductor's TINI boards, which are small, cheap, Java microcontrollers intended for use with their iButtons. Well, it's more than playing, we have 100 of them on order...
The controllers have many communication options, including Ethernet, EIA-232, CAN, and one-wire protocols. They're extremely cool, and they have a UNIX-like shell, Slush, which makes development fairly easy.
It looks like a very good solution, and if the software is open, we could collaborate.
Plus, it might be fun to use the TINIs for their intended purpose for a change
Oh come now, changing batteries in a remote control takes as much effort. Knowing when to is the same: "Hmmm, not working... I haven't changed batteries in a year... There, it works again."
The battery is not a "geek" concept. If you think you're oh-so-smart for knowing about batteries, then you're friggin' deluded.
Then again, my mom prefers Linux
You're right, I'm trying it on my mouse now. Squeezing horizontally would be bad.
However, the article says that pushing down on it will also produce a click. That doesn't seem nearly as bad.
Actually, I think it needs some sort of scroll functionality. Maybe not a wheel (I have a cordless wheel mouse and I love this damn thing) but, say, squeezing *vertically* and nudging up or down (hey, how about left and right, sweet). That doesn't seem too bad.
Of course, then you have to differentiate between a push and a squeeze...
Oh my god, you're so right.
A few weeks ago I went to California. I went to the Computer Literacy bookstore in Sunnyvale and bought SuSE 6.4.
They don't take bank cards!!!
That blew me away. Here I was, in friggin' Silicon Valley, and they're so backwards (the PCS coverage in SF sucked as well, but that's another story, Involving myself and 350 3Com guys shuffling around to get a decent connection). I use my bank card everywhere in Canada. I don't actually need cash, except for taxis. Plus it's all for a measly $5 a month. ($2.50 when I was a student)
I ended up using company money, intending to pay it back, until the president asked if I was going to put it on my company computer. "hell yeah!" "Expense it then."
Ok, enough rambling. It's just that the US banks sort of scare me, which is pretty crazy considering the way Canadian banks behave...
They officially support the OpenBIOS project, of which I am a member (ok, so I haven't been active in a while, I got a Linux job, etc...)
SiS provides BIOS code *and* hardware, so there.
Stop trashing them, they're really on our side.
Wow, what an awesome movie. It's also referred to as "Royal Space Force." It just blew my mind.
Along with the Patlabor movies. (I wasn't privileged enough to see the series, just what Teletoon in Canada would show)
Those movies just made too much sense. The attention to detail was also awesome. I highly recommend those above anything else I've seen, anime or not.
I highly doubt that Cobalt will move to 2.2 on the MIPS devices (Qube, Raq2).
Their latest and greatest Raq3 uses an AMD K6 and 2.2 is, of course, supported.
I have a Qube 2 under my desk at work, which I have abandoned due to the lack of 2.2.
If you need a small server like this and want Linux 2.2 on it, get a Netwinder. It's an ultra cool box, I recommend plugging in a monitor and keyboard. It's useable as a desktop machine. There's even a desktop version specifically for that which has NTSC I/O.
That circle thing on the side is a speaker, btw. A voice sounds "Welcome to Netwinder" when the system is properly up.
There are rackmount versions, too. You can fit two of them in a single 1u space.
Of course, the coolest thing is the hackability. Check out www.netwinder.org to find all kinds of great docs, software, and ideas. There's a pic there somewhere of a stack of netwinder guts set up as a Beowulf. The OS is a modified recent RedHat. You'll find it easier to get software compiled on it than the Qube.
Needless to say, one of these babies occupy a space on *top* of my desk.
let's assume that the image itself is not involved, because you couldn't create a jpeg image without a computer.
Don't assume my friend, you can't post a web page without a computer either.
That image is easily drawn on a piece of paper. I have a feeling that the image and it's caption are very much involved.
Of course they could be there to throw you off the track...
They refuse to use banners, though. They are two-line text ads.
They had a questionnaire a little while ago and I said that I wouldn't mind ads, but don't like banners or popups. Appareently, I'm not the only one who responded that way.
The evaluation version is just a 1 cd trial for SuSE Linux. It doesn't have a lot of packages I use, but is useful for getting a system up quickly and trying out SaX and Yast.
I wanted to clarify something for the whiners who assume things they don't have a clue about.
The boxed 6-cd set has a lot more, but you don't have to buy it unless you want the commercial software and the excellent book (the books from Red Hat, Caldera, Corel, etc. really suck, though Corel's has a section on mc, which is cool). After you install the CD you can run Yast and set the installation source to ftp. It will automatically pick ftp://ftp.suse.com/pub/suse/i386/6.4/suse for a site. It's not there yet, it might be a week or two, but you can browse the 6.3 directory if you want. You can also change it to a mirror site like ftp.rpmfind.net if you want.
There! Now you can select a shitload of software. Anything from the boxed set except commercial software. There are commercial demos and trials, though, and MySQL and xv are placed under the commercial diskset. I believe it would take up ~5.5GB of space if you installed everything from the ftp site.
You can even grab a single boot disk and set the installation source to ftp and use the mostly complete ftp distribution.
Hard drive and microprocessor manufacturing both produce large volumes of highly toxic "stuff". Hopefully someone on Slashdot who knows more about how the biz handles this. It should definetly factor into any responsibly motivated purchasing decision.
I remember reading an article a few years back in AMD's "PC Currents" about how they reclaim the silicon waste and donate it to art schools and the like where it is used in pottery.
I couldn't find anything about it specifically on their website but I did find this.
Why did Sun feel it necessary to tar the single install file? It only makes the file slightly larger. Does anyone else think this is totally stupid?
It's not stupid at all.
Tar preserves the file attributes. Most of us don't mind chmod +x'ing a downloaded binary but most regular people won't be too keen on it, and that's if they even *knew* that they had to do that to get the damn thing to run...
I have a 10GB drive which the BIOS seems to think is 540MB (despite the fact that the BIOS date is 1998 and supports LBA). I have a 2 GB partition which LILO refuses to boot (It was windows, so I didn't care and simply didn't use it).
:-)*
Bootman had no trouble booting it. I thought it wasn't going to work but I tried it anyway. It rules.
So I happily ran the BeOS installer, formatted the partition, and installed Be. I'm now hooked. It is a truly excellent OS.
The only problem now is that there are not a lot of apps that I use for it. I'd like to see implementations of the Linux libraries so that I can configure;make;make install any old piece of software.
Heh, now I sound like one of those Windows guys who seem to think that Linux has no apps...
The one piece of Linux software that eased my way into Linux from DOS so many years ago was Mouseless Commander. I'm still rarely without mc under an Eterm.
I couldn't really get into the icon based stuff. It's just not fast enough for me (yet).
I was surprised when I downloaded gmc and saw, well, MS Explorer.
Do you think there's a way to get the best of both worlds? A two-pane file manager that works like Explorer and mc?
I've been playing with the KDE 2 snapshots to see if Konqueror could do it. I then discovered a neat feature. I could have four panes: two containing files and two containing previews of whatever files are currently selected in each of the file panes. In mc there's a quick view feature, but I couldn't stand not having two file panes. Maybe I'm just an old coot...
Oh well, I guess what I'm really trying to ask is if the mc way is dead. Should I give in and use Gmc or Kfm/Konqueror the way other people do? Will I end up happy if I gave it an honest try? (I've given it tries before, but it never worked out. I kept reaching for the 'F3' key...)
Even if it's dead, I have to still thank you for providing what is(was?) the most important piece of software I have used (In my opinion, at least) under Linux.
I guess I wasn't clear. I, like you and many others, studied throughout college. I did my work. The people who crammed did so because they didn't do their work.
Big difference. The crammers didn't care about the courses they were taking. They cared about what their parents would think so that they would buy them a car. So they tried to put as much information in their heads the night and morning before the exam, knowing full well that they'll forget it upon leaving to go home (driving in their new car).
I went to school for me, not my parents. I even kept my books and I still read/use them like I did in college. I'd rather have a good X86 architecture book than ~$50.
What bugs me is when spoiled kids complain about getting low marks simply because they're used to getting what they want. (I grew up sorta poor so maybe I'm being unnecessarily bitter.)
...who are pissed because they got some bad grades.
I've seen this crap before. Remember those kids in your high school who got all these great grades because they crammed a lot? I never crammed, got a lot of bad grades in high school (except sciences and math, the useful stuff), yet approached a 4.0 GPA throughout college. (still not cramming) Most of those "promising" students ended up flunking or dropping out of college. The main reason was because their goal in high school was "get to college/university." When they got there they found out that they didn't have a goal beyond that. Ooops. The other big reason is that high school was easy for them, socially and academically. This will often create a high level of arrogance.
All of a sudden mommy & daddy are wondering what's wrong with little Suzie (ObProLinuxSlashdotStatement: Not SuSE. SuSE rocks!) or Billy, they used to get good grades. You see, College/University is a challenge. (academically and socially) I actually enjoyed it, which resulted in good grades. Many of these kids were used to the their high school routines, which didn't quite work so well in post-secondary.
So here we are, with these arrogant (often middle/upper class) kids who aren't getting their way and not realising that they simply suck at writing.
Just read those posts. I did. What I found was a lot of terrible writers complaining about a "hard" teacher. From my experience, the hard teachers are the best. You're lucky you can get one. The lazy ones may give you a good grade (most high school teachers, though I had a couple of great ones that everybody else hated, the hard ones), but you probably won't learn anything useful.
As for cramming, what's the point? If you don't know a subject you don't know a subject. Sure, you might get a good grade, but you'll know fuck-all two years down the road when you need it.
So if mommy & daddy are mad, maybe you should have taken a word processing course and became a secretary. How about driving a street cleaner? A garbage truck? You get a paycheck, I get someone to handle my calls or a cleaner neighborhood. Someone has to do it, and you can be sure that if you continue writing, I won't read it.
Sorry about the rant, but the comments on the site pissed me off. (especially the homophobic ones) There were some good criticisms, the teacher shouldn't have used a book he wrote in class. That's just wrong. However, I've seen a lot of kids complain about bad marks without realising that they earned those bad marks and should either improve or face the fact that just aren't cut out.
Phew.
I bought a laptop about two years ago and wanted to find a good case for it. I spent hours going through the targuses et al at Staples. None of them were what I wanted. You can put a laptop in them all right, but there wasn't any room for books/binders. Just crappy "file" storage. I went to the net and found the Kensington Saddlebag. You can fit binders, books, etc. easily into it. The front pouch had room for storing pens/pencils, my TI-86 calculator, a zip drive and a floppy drive. The padding is good, too. It can be carried over your shoulder, in your hand, and there's a pouch in the back that stores bookbag style straps which are useful if you commute on bicycle.
Nowadays I'm rarely without it, even when I leave my laptop at home. It has the great feature of not looking like there's a laptop in it either. I highly recommend it.
Can you just help me move my sofa out of the hallway?
Hmmm, unless you can warp space-time, I'd recommend a good chainsaw. You can get to the chainsaw store by following someone who looks like they know where they're going.
Seriously, if there any geeks here who have NOT read the HHGTTG series, you need to. funny stuff.
Definitely. Also read the Dirk Gently books, they're a riot.
You should also play Starship Titanic (even though it's for *that* OS). A tip: ask the "surfer" talking robot if it likes Pink Floyd. I rolled when I did it.