I found out we have enough natural gas under the US to last something like a million years at current levels of consumption.
Does that mean enough natural gas to keep supplying the nation's entire fossil fuel energy demand for that long, or just the natural gas demands of the 1980s (presumably not that high, relative to petroleum use).
I haven't tried anything besides English myself, but Mandrake presents a long list of translations to install (you can even have multiple languages installed, so it may even be possible to install and configure in English and then switch it over to Spanish).
Just ask the Saab mechanic that has to pull the engine to replace the oil pan gasket. He'll tell you that function is not more important than form.
Or ask the owner who has to pay for that mechanic's hours of time to replace the gasket. There it shows that even though the customer need know nothing about the bad design, it definitely does affect them.
If it breaks, you fix it. If they break it, you fix it. That's what you get paid for.
Part of the point is that the consultant may royally screw things up that wouldn't go wrong all by themselves and that it's really annnoying to have to deal with that crap. Pay is nice, but not as much so when you tear your hair in the process of getting it.
Unfortunately, IIS typically runs as a relatively unpriviliged service that doesn't have rights to format the hard drive. Some of the IIS installs out there are bound to be running with system-level access, though..
I don't *think* that the Palm's AC adapter would actually have to connect to the serial port (I have a Palm Vx my self). The power from the adapter could simply be routed back to the cradle by a few extra wires in the cable. Why the adapter plugs into the serial connector, I don't really know - perhaps they assume that there's going to be an outlet close to the back of the PC and that only having one cable going to the cradle will allow it to be located more freely?
What's it like without a right mouse button? Everything about them sounds nice (decent speed, good battery life, decent prices) but I cannot imagine running X without two mouse buttons. Middle button pasting, middle clicking in Netscape for a new windows, and right clicking all over the place for numerous other functions. Sure, an external mouse would be possible - but not exactly feasible on the go.
I'll second that. I use a Dell Inspiron 5000e (PIII-750, 128MB RAM, 10GB HD, DVD, 15" 1600x1200 LCD) and it's a dream with Mandrake 8. The only things I'd like are 2x the memory, a wireless NIC, and perhaps a bigger hard drive.
Open source can still be a benefit, even if you don't do the programming yourself. Take this for example: I use Intuit's QuickBooks program at work, which is a closed source program. As it is, there are a number of features missing that would really save time. Since it's closed source, all I can do is call up Intuit, tell them what I'd like to see in a future version, and they 'think about it'. If it was an open source program, it would be possible to hire a programmer to add those features without waiting for the manufacturer, who may or may not even add them at all.
And I'm sorry, but if you open a file sent from someone you've never heard of promising to display a naked celebrity, you get what's coming.
The annoying bit about SirCam is that not are the people who open the attachment affected with a loss of privacy, but entirely random people have to sit and wait for sometimes huge attachments to download.
Re:Yeah, but they use proprietary protocols...
on
Pizza Without Wires
·
· Score: 1
DHCP: Deliveryperson Had Car Problem (30 minutes late and stone cold)
DNS: Did Not Slice (got a knife?)
Re:Yeah, but they use proprietary protocols...
on
Pizza Without Wires
·
· Score: 1
USB: Uncooked, Soggy Bottom (the restaurant is overloaded with orders and didn't have time to cook it fully)
1. You have an account with an ISP that you use for business purposes. The ISP has a maximum mailbox size of, say, 20MB. If the mailbox fills up, anything else gets bounced.
2. You usually check and download your email every hour or so, during business hours. You don't check it after hours or on weekends.
3. Over the weekend, someone who has your address in their addressbook or IE cache gets SirCam and sends you several multi-megabyte attachments, filling up your mailbox and preventing anything else from coming in.
4. An important client sends you an email but it gets bounced.
5. By the time you get to back work and sort out the mess, the bounced client is over deadline, costing you big money in lost business.
(Perhaps it wouldn't work exactly like that, but I think the idea is clear enough.)
Would you be able to collect damages from the infected individual, for allowing their machine to be used to (essentially) DOS you? It be argued that they were negligent by not keeping their antivirus software up to date and by opening the attachment in the first place.
Sure, it wouldn't be the nicest thing to do to someone, but I think I can see it happening in today's 'sue everyone' world.
What is an issue is the vast majority (care to argue this point?) of windoze users, many of whom are no more than kids, who simply click "next" until a program installs.
It's not just kids - there is a surprisingly large chuck of adults that are just point-'n-drool. Mind-boggling and frustrating as it may be that they can't comprehend relatively simple stuff, it remains true.
In terms of how much work it would be for an OEM to sell a computer with no OS, you are correct in saying that it's not hard at all. There is of course issue of Microsoft threatening OEMs that they will no longer be allowed to purchase Windows at all if they sell computers with anything except Windows. This was, as you may remember, one of the points in the antitrust case.
I've never had much trouble with Dells myself. We buy about 20 every year (small private high school) and the only spontaneous hardware failures we had were a few floppy drives that went bad in one of the Optiplex models. The users do however do quite a bit of damage to the removable drives ( intentional and accidental, most often a bad floppy gets put into the drive and the metal cover falls off inside and jams things up) but warranty replacement has always been prompt and painless. All I really need is a manufacturer that builds in some kind of auto-LART for when the lusers intentionally break/deface systems.
I'm using Mandrake 8.0 on an Inspiron 5000e. Everything works great (sound, video, even DVDs play in Linux) but it doesn't have integrated an modem/nic. For that, I use a dongle-less Xircom card. Unfortunately, Dell seems to have discontinued their 5000/7500 line. The 4000/8000 line has everything you need at a decent price (their latest flyer showed an Inspiron 8000 with PIII-1000, 256MB RAM, 20GB HD, 15" LCD, and DVD for about $2200).
Slashdot Mirror
ITYM CO, not CO2.
I found out we have enough natural gas under the US to last something like a million years at current levels of consumption.
Does that mean enough natural gas to keep supplying the nation's entire fossil fuel energy demand for that long, or just the natural gas demands of the 1980s (presumably not that high, relative to petroleum use).
I found out we have enough natural gas under the US to last something like a million years at current levels of consumption.
I haven't tried anything besides English myself, but Mandrake presents a long list of translations to install (you can even have multiple languages installed, so it may even be possible to install and configure in English and then switch it over to Spanish).
Just ask the Saab mechanic that has to pull the engine to replace the oil pan gasket. He'll tell you that function is not more important than form.
Or ask the owner who has to pay for that mechanic's hours of time to replace the gasket. There it shows that even though the customer need know nothing about the bad design, it definitely does affect them.
386 and 486 processors existed before 1990. The 286 was around before 1985.
If it breaks, you fix it. If they break it, you fix it. That's what you get paid for.
Part of the point is that the consultant may royally screw things up that wouldn't go wrong all by themselves and that it's really annnoying to have to deal with that crap. Pay is nice, but not as much so when you tear your hair in the process of getting it.
Unfortunately, IIS typically runs as a relatively unpriviliged service that doesn't have rights to format the hard drive. Some of the IIS installs out there are bound to be running with system-level access, though..
I don't *think* that the Palm's AC adapter would actually have to connect to the serial port (I have a Palm Vx my self). The power from the adapter could simply be routed back to the cradle by a few extra wires in the cable. Why the adapter plugs into the serial connector, I don't really know - perhaps they assume that there's going to be an outlet close to the back of the PC and that only having one cable going to the cradle will allow it to be located more freely?
And a pox on me for forgetting to check the 'AC' option when I posted the above. I had modded the original comment up to 1, but that got undone.
It's not modded down - ACs start at 0, logged in users start at 1.
Perhaps Netscape's SmartUpdate?
What's it like without a right mouse button? Everything about them sounds nice (decent speed, good battery life, decent prices) but I cannot imagine running X without two mouse buttons. Middle button pasting, middle clicking in Netscape for a new windows, and right clicking all over the place for numerous other functions. Sure, an external mouse would be possible - but not exactly feasible on the go.
I'll second that. I use a Dell Inspiron 5000e (PIII-750, 128MB RAM, 10GB HD, DVD, 15" 1600x1200 LCD) and it's a dream with Mandrake 8. The only things I'd like are 2x the memory, a wireless NIC, and perhaps a bigger hard drive.
Win2k was released in Feb, 1999 - 2 years and ~6 months ago.
Open source can still be a benefit, even if you don't do the programming yourself. Take this for example: I use Intuit's QuickBooks program at work, which is a closed source program. As it is, there are a number of features missing that would really save time. Since it's closed source, all I can do is call up Intuit, tell them what I'd like to see in a future version, and they 'think about it'. If it was an open source program, it would be possible to hire a programmer to add those features without waiting for the manufacturer, who may or may not even add them at all.
And I'm sorry, but if you open a file sent from someone you've never heard of promising to display a naked celebrity, you get what's coming.
The annoying bit about SirCam is that not are the people who open the attachment affected with a loss of privacy, but entirely random people have to sit and wait for sometimes huge attachments to download.
DHCP: Deliveryperson Had Car Problem (30 minutes late and stone cold) DNS: Did Not Slice (got a knife?)
USB: Uncooked, Soggy Bottom (the restaurant is overloaded with orders and didn't have time to cook it fully)
Here's a scenario:
1. You have an account with an ISP that you use for business purposes. The ISP has a maximum mailbox size of, say, 20MB. If the mailbox fills up, anything else gets bounced.
2. You usually check and download your email every hour or so, during business hours. You don't check it after hours or on weekends.
3. Over the weekend, someone who has your address in their addressbook or IE cache gets SirCam and sends you several multi-megabyte attachments, filling up your mailbox and preventing anything else from coming in.
4. An important client sends you an email but it gets bounced.
5. By the time you get to back work and sort out the mess, the bounced client is over deadline, costing you big money in lost business.
(Perhaps it wouldn't work exactly like that, but I think the idea is clear enough.)
Would you be able to collect damages from the infected individual, for allowing their machine to be used to (essentially) DOS you? It be argued that they were negligent by not keeping their antivirus software up to date and by opening the attachment in the first place.
Sure, it wouldn't be the nicest thing to do to someone, but I think I can see it happening in today's 'sue everyone' world.
What is an issue is the vast majority (care to argue this point?) of windoze users, many of whom are no more than kids, who simply click "next" until a program installs.
It's not just kids - there is a surprisingly large chuck of adults that are just point-'n-drool. Mind-boggling and frustrating as it may be that they can't comprehend relatively simple stuff, it remains true.
Bad example - Dell only sells direct. Dells are not available in stores.
In terms of how much work it would be for an OEM to sell a computer with no OS, you are correct in saying that it's not hard at all. There is of course issue of Microsoft threatening OEMs that they will no longer be allowed to purchase Windows at all if they sell computers with anything except Windows. This was, as you may remember, one of the points in the antitrust case.
I've never had much trouble with Dells myself. We buy about 20 every year (small private high school) and the only spontaneous hardware failures we had were a few floppy drives that went bad in one of the Optiplex models. The users do however do quite a bit of damage to the removable drives ( intentional and accidental, most often a bad floppy gets put into the drive and the metal cover falls off inside and jams things up) but warranty replacement has always been prompt and painless. All I really need is a manufacturer that builds in some kind of auto-LART for when the lusers intentionally break/deface systems.
I'm using Mandrake 8.0 on an Inspiron 5000e. Everything works great (sound, video, even DVDs play in Linux) but it doesn't have integrated an modem/nic. For that, I use a dongle-less Xircom card. Unfortunately, Dell seems to have discontinued their 5000/7500 line. The 4000/8000 line has everything you need at a decent price (their latest flyer showed an Inspiron 8000 with PIII-1000, 256MB RAM, 20GB HD, 15" LCD, and DVD for about $2200).