- This is either offtopic or just a stretchy tangent, take your pick;) But on the subject of specialized task-centric distros...
a) as long as it's inclusive rather than exclusive, I can see a lot of different specialized distros; that's partly just a matter of marketing / mindset though. If it's based on a Free software system with any sort of easy updater (apt-get, urpmi, emerge, or whatever tomorrow brings), distro's specialty is a starting point, not ending. It's more like taking a "taskset" as some distros divide apps into, and making it the focus. It doesn't *prevent* one from installing email clients etc on that box to make it more versatile, but it makes keeping a specialized box free of X factors easier.
b) The closest thing I've found to (circa 1993*) PageMaker is Scribus, which is a nice app. (KWord's frame orientation makes it similar, too, really, but it's obviously a word processor with some cool layout thoughts than vice versa, no offense intended either way -- good program:) )
I'd love to see (at the very least) a lot of high school newspapers decided "Hey, we're trying to put out a little paper and teach some quite generalizable skills... why pay tribute to Adobe?" (Or Quark, etc.)
There are a lot of items lacking or only partway there in the Free software world when it comes to running even a small newspaper idea-to-press -- and I would love to see a distro which integrated lots of publishing tools in one place, including tools for making an online edition!
How about one which included KDE and GNOME (for the libraries and apps, not necessarily for the DEs;)), Windowmaker for the desktop, and one or two "state of the art" programs for...
- image cataloguing, type conversion - vector art (sketch? sodipodi? OO?) - raster art (GIMP, and which other?) - word processing - layout (the two I named already, any better?) - web browsing (Mozilla 1.0, Konqueror) - html creation (not sure, I use pico for this;))
The big lacks:
- integration with existing copyflow systems - fonts for layout - integration with printers' systems (perhaps they can just print from giant PDFs burned on CD?)
On the other hand, if *most* tasks related to putting together a publication can be taken care of with Free software, then the remaining tasks can be handled on fewer machines. This is what goes on at many (I would say typical) publishers anyhow, even if for different reasons. Things like "the reporters get the tiny screened pieces of crap, the layout artists get the 21" monitors and fast computers with Quark / InDesign.")
timothy
* no insult here -- I just haven't used Pagemaker much since then, and I don't think Scribus is yet to the level of programs like Quark, partly for font reasons which are not under the control of the program's author!:)
My mom (strangely) has gotten at least 2 handwritten, snail-mail letters in the Greater Nigerian Spam family. One of them referred to her as "The President." She found it pretty amusing...
Over the phone, it took me a while to comprehend that she didn't mean email spam;)
They must have more than 6 people copying those bizarrely worded letters;)
I used mozilla rc2 when I went there; I don't have Flash enabled (read "I don't have Flash *working*), so I also used the html version. It was slow, Yes, but it worked, I did not get a lot of javascript errors.
[btw, one of the searches I did, and the one which most impressed me, was for the name of a friend of mine -- she has an unusual name, and is a writer with some things scattered around the Net. The results were surprisingly all actually her, and shown in one blob like that actually made sense. Wouldn't want that result style for all searches, but in this case it worked well.]
I've thought about using headphones for this reason (deep bass cheap, ignore other noises), too, though I've never actually built a home theatre worthy of the name. (When projectors are cheaper, maybe...)
Two solutions as far as "limiting the audience" though:
1) Wireless. Buy either one transmitter and multiple headsets (if they come that way for the model you choose) or multi sets of both, stick the extra transmitters in the closet as a hedge against murphy's law. They're anything but free, but they're getting reasonable nowadays, and if it's mostly you and a couple of friends, would not cost that much. When the neighborhood comes over to watch LotR on your home theater you can worry about more external sound;) These generally have volume controls right on the headsets, too, so each person can determine the right listening volume.
2) If the wires aren't going to be too much of a problem, you can use a (wired) headphone distribution amp. Good ones (studio grade) can be pricey, but like most things in the world of musical electronics, the *high* end is not where you even want to look unless you really know you want to be there, and there are often perfectly decent ones sold for less.
Curious about your sig, and where your figure of less than 3% comes from. Do you have a program which actually sorts / categorizes the software on your machine by license? That sounds like an interesting statistic, I wonder what various populations's result curves would look like in that case...
I learned from Craig Johnson's (hard to over-rate) LED Museum (www.ledmuseum.org) that KB Toys is closing out at least part of their line of Boogie Lights LED products (sounds funny, I know, but hey, whaddya do?).
Yesterday I bought 2 apiece of 2 different toys (from the KB store at the Mall in Columbia, Columbia, Maryland):
a) the Be Boppin' Boogie Electronic Groove Tube, a sound-activated plastic tube with 36 LEDs arranged in 3 rows which pulses with received sound (marked down to just under $10 apiece)
b) (I forget model name) scrolling LED sign; has a built-in keyboard for entering messages. Downsides: cannot be controlled remotely, with a serial port say, and can only hold a single, short (60-char) message; upper case only. Comes with a lot of quickly selectable generic messages, too, though, if you want to say "Happy birthday" or (?) "Remember it takes one to know one" among others. Marked down from $80 to $15. This was even less than I'd been told on the phone; I had been prepared to buy just the one scrolling sign for $26.
However, total cost for four toys was about 52 dollars. Now I can have "Ask me about your driving!" sign scrolling at all times, and have a pulsing light show on the sides of the wagon... at the price, hard to complain. For $150, you can get a big, more controllable LED sign though. Would be fun to have my voice-savvy car-droid react when I say "Droid! Give that jerk a piece of my mind!" but it won't happen with these cheapies.
Both toys use "C" batteries or a (not-included) AC adapter, btw. I have so far opened only one apiece, but the Groove Tube had old, corroded batteries which I had to disassemble the body to remove, but with fresh batteries it works fine.
A lot of people seem to favor computers truly and deeply built *into* cars. That's not what I want: I want my car (and other cars) to have somewhat standardized interfaces so that a quite separable, modular computer assistant can plug in easily.
I'd like something more like the R2 units which plug into X-wing and other Star Wars fighting craft. No domed head and swiveling is really necessary, though -- for instance, a laptop would be fine:)
Imagine slipping a laptop (with a microphone plugged into it's audio-in port) into a cushioned and cooled foam sleeve beneath the passenger seat, then hooking a single USB2, firewire, or ethernet cable to it from the car's "assistant" port. Or 802.11, or bluetooth, so no wire necessary. Heck, give that (whatever-it-is) connection the additional chore of carrying a bit of audio, and forget hooking a microphone line separately -- the mic is one of the parts I think could legitimately be part of the car's end of the system. Basically, I'd like one broadish-band connection from car to computer, but with the computer per se quite separate or at least separable.
What sort of things should the car tell the computer?
sensor readings -- lots of 'em, for instance...
Engine Temperature, RPMs
GPS and altitude (another set I think are OK to be in the car)
Radar signals (naturally)
Radio stations in order of reception strength
Internal and external air temps, precip types
apparent visibility
Level and pressure of various fluids (including tire air)
Horn use
Speed (this is one which should be wipeable:))
Gas tank level (mine tends to ride low)
Battery levels (a ridiculously underreported but important fact right now -- now even an LED bar indicated current charge)
Recent fuel efficiency readings
Cabin air quality -- might want an alert when it's below good levels.
Light check (headlights, dome lights, map light, keyslot light, etc -- all working and in good order?)
Doors shut / locked status
Weight distribution in car
Image / sound output, as applicable
Standard webcam stream with one or more cameras either streaming or sending time-lapse images,
Sonar / low-power radar / IR or whatever other imagery makes sense
Audio output, two mics each in engine and cabin (for stereo location help) plus
Direct feed from the a) the car's entertainment system as well as b) from a separate channel carrying any audio messages / warnings from the car itself (door-open buzzers etc).
What should the computer be able to effect through commands *to* the car?
General driver preferences
preferred temperature range and airflow preferences
radio station desires
Seat posture / height
Music played from hard drive -- doesn't fit neatly in this category though, but an audio stream out means that the hundreds of ogg files you've ripped as convenience copies from home can entertain you on the way to Nebraska.
Trip specific information
Cruise control speed settings
Fuel efficiency trade-off settings; these could be based on a complex mix of detected road conditions, known urban / rural areas gleaned from maps, and a dozen other factors, or (more likely) selectable from a short list of plausible choices (stop-and-go, highway cruising, suburban puttering).
Weight distribution (requires system of moveable counterweights, say in the undercarriage)
Landmark / convenience alert level ("I want to be told when I'm near historical roadside markers, and near gas stations only when I'm below a quarter tank.")
Turn alerts for current driving plot, if one is entered / active
Most (but not all) of what I'd like a car computer to do is *collect* data: the point is not what specific data is collected, really, so much as that a number of prioritizeable datastreams are available and self-identifying in a standardized, non-proprietary, format which my droid (whether it looks like a laptop or not) can examine and store, to the degree that I've asked it to -- and that my droid can effect changes both general and situational to make driving easier / more pleasurable / safer.
The car should have the senses (sight, sound, etc) but the brain shouldn't be tied to the car itself -- the most intelligent part of the *car* side of things should be the gathering point for all those sensor's data streams, which should be built to deal with yet-unavailable or un-thought-of streams, so they can be passed on for analysis to the droid when they're eventually implemented.
On the droid side of things, there's no reason there should only be one way to look at or deal with the various datastreams. One person might want a basic black box doing nothing but recording the engine readings, distances traveled and cockpit chatter to a CLI-based utility box stored permanently in the trunk; another might want the whole shebang, down to engine timings and dome-light intensity, controllable from a pretty GUI running on a PowerBook.
If the ins and outs are standardized and available, both of those would be completely feasable. If they're built with some room to grow, the same droid could be updated to recognize and control new things. ("Hey, I added a quartet of over-wheel cams to get a 3D sense of surrounding traffic. I want to record them on my droid.")
There are dangers, sure, but worth working around. I don't want someone else to be able to shut down my engine remotely, not even the California State Police. I don't want a thief to be able to tell my car via 802.11 to open the windows, pop the trunk, and use a built-in olfactory sensor to find money, then blow it out the windows with the fan. Naturally. Current thieves are doing just fine with low-tech methods, though.
OK, I close with a sound of hope, which is roughly "beepTWIRRRdeedeezzzhmmmbeepb'beepsigh..."
Related to some of the things you raise -- would be nice for a given route to be able to see a composite picture of road conditions, but stringing together a sort of film taken from multiple car-cams which would give a complete graphical view of the current traffic and weather situation.
concept: Cars alpha, b, iii, 4, V and six are are traveling in that order, perhaps a mile or so apart. (Chosen from an intelligent algorithm that looks for cars which are spaced from each other but traveling at similar speeds). Every several seconds (10? 30? 60?), a picture from their onboard cameras is taken and melded with the other cars' pictures. The result is 3D-feeling motion map, provided as a heads-up display on my windshield. With wide lenses (or multiple cams) the result could provide a fair amount of peripheral vision as well, make landmarks familiar minutes before they're actually seen by the real driver.
I must admit I've never used the Google toolbar (looks nice, but most of my searches are general google searches) -- but I love the way I can enter terms in Mozilla's URL / location bar, tap the Down arrow, and automatically search. It's configurable, but I've not seen a reason to use a search engine besides Google lately, so that's my default;)
I didn't know it had that capability -- even if it doesn't fit my whole laundry list, that's at least one good thing there;)
I'm guessing WMP (I'm sure this is conservative) is 1MB / minute (how off am I?:)), so, if one were to use it that way and allocate say 5GB to this purpose, that would be 5000 minutes of audio... that's quite a bit of time;)
Thanks for the info on that -- still not enough to make me buy an Xbox, but a positive point for sheer listening. Whether WMP is a positive point, well, not to me;) I have heard of that format, but that's all I can say.
Mupp252 wrote: Why are you interested? Because of the irony?
If you want to see Linux so badly on this machine (I assumed you meant Linux when you said "free operating system"). Tape a Penguin to the console, take a picture, and let it be. Don't be the billionth M$ hater sitting around with friends chanting "Wouldn't it be soo funny to see Linux on a Microsoft machine?
No:) If you've read other comments I've posted, you might know that I'm not a Microsoft hater. (Not much of a Windows fan, but not a Microsoft hater.) I think it's on the whole a good thing to have a robust market in gaming consoles, even if just for the side benefits.
I'm interested in seeing any Free OS for the Xbox -- I don't care if it's Linux in particular, though that does seem the most obvious choice.
It would be neat to get a machine that's more powerful than my current desktop system for far less money, as well as lighter and otherwise more portable. I find the x-box rather chunky for a game console (but I'm not into gaming -- I find most of the game consoles pretty big for what they are; YMMV), but an interesting size for a general-purpose computer.
Also, people who are interested in having multiple computers, whether for general redundancy, or playing with a desktop cluster -- whyever -- it looks reasonable to stack a couple of Xboxes together.
With an automobile DC-->AC adapter, it might also be a good system for the car. Certainly smaller than some PCs that people have adapted for under-seat or in-trunk use. While it's nothing but a game- and DVD-playing machine, though, not as many possibilities. If it were functioning as a decent x86 box (no longer high-end perhaps but no slouch), it could be a lot of other things, too. I'm not sure if the XBox can serve as a standalone MP3 player now (like a lot of DVD players can) but I bet it won't play oggs;) If it were de-crippled, it could do that as well as let passengers draw with the GIMP, play music in various formats besides those just mentioned, show on-screen updates from a GPS, etc, etc. Generally, be more flexible.
There are times it would be much easier to pop in a new box than replace more than one major component; if (should read "when" but who knows?) the projects to put Linux / NetBSD / whatever on the Xbox succeed, many more circumstances would warrant that. There's a pawnshop nearby where I could probably pick up an Xbox for $150 three months from now. (X-terminal? fine. Hey, might even buy a game to play on there and *not* replace the OS!:) )
Is this what the Xbox is meant for? No -- but so what? Life is more interesting when objects are re-used in ways that they weren't designed for. Is the price based on MS selling games to subsidize the console itself? Probably, though the comments in this thread point out that there's a huge range of estimates of what the box itself really costs MS. That's the concern of their marketing department, not me. There's something my brother calls the Las Vegas effect -- the shrimp and huge breakfasts are still free whether or not you choose to pay for the industry which makes them cheap. Same applies here.
I really don't chant against Microsoft, and I wish the government would a) stop harrassing them and b) simply refuse to buy non-open software (barring extenuating circumstances) on the simple grounds that it's bad stewardship of borrowed money (taxes). Lacks accountability, comes with too many thorns. That would be a much simpler answer to dissatisfaction with the effects of Microsoft than whining while buying their products. I don't think the MS-intervention currently being pursued sets a precedent that programmers should be proud of.
(I do think that MS has done some contemptable things; I just don't think that all contemptable things justify State intervention. And Yes, I believe for reasons I don't have time to get into here that most "Antitrust" laws are harmful bunk.)
Cheers,
gig wrote: "The way you distinguish directories from files is that the directories look like folders and the files look like pieces of paper."
Not in an xterm, they don't;)
Sometimes I like a graphical file manager (Konqui, Nautilus), but it depends what I'm doing. I can sometimes fit more useful information on the screen with an x-term, can sort with wildcards, etc -- and I like a nice green-on-black file listing...
timothy
The copy-protection scheme itself may not be, but the reliance on harebrained, short-sighted laws to bully people out of reasonable use of the products they buy (DMCA and the Hollings nightmares) could well be called "capitolism" -- in stark contrast to "capitalism":)
Err -- the submitter mentioned the card. I have never owned a cool video card, with exception --to me! I know it's no longer cool) of the Matrox G400 which I bought last year but thanks to several SNAFUs have not yet installed. (It's in another state right now;)).
Since I don't have a dual-monitor setup, even that won't be as cool as I might hope;) Maybe when LCDs come down a bit... I don't want to buy any more stupid, heavy, bulky, awkward, space-hogging, back-breaking, desk-bending, headache-inducing, power-slurping, ugly-like-mold CRTs.
Actually, Yes. I forget what the frequency is (day? week?) but they already have random users up there; I thought it might be nice to have one of the half-billionth-results winner, especially with the delay in announcing who it is. Having a little profile up is better than nothing, though.
But... thanks for the presumption and venting. Sheesh.
"Wouldn't it better to be popular because the software is good, not because it's a one-trick pony? "Sure, the installation was slick, and I had a blast playing tetris while the files copied, but once that was done I couldn't figure anything out,. That X thing sure is confusing and ugly."
I'm not quite sure what you mean here.
Where's the one-trick pony? Easy installation doesn't contradict any other sort of functionality. I find the default install of the Linux distros I've seen generally well-laid out, with plenty of built in "things to do." I know little about Windows, but the Windows default desktops I've seen have been considerably poorer. On common hardware, I don't think X has been a big drawback for several years.
Part of software being *good* is that it installs easily. In fact, to me, that's a very big part of being good IMO. Software that doesn't get installed isn't good or bad, it's just in limbo.
"You misunderstand me. I'm not advocating tough or confusing installers. I'm saying that there's a point when things are "good enough", especially when you're dealing with a very small part of the overall experience, and when you hit that point it's time to move on to other problems. Do you really think letting a user play solitaire while the files copy from the CD is a useful feature? Was it really worth spending development time (and possibly money) on adding that? One can even argue that making X-based installers was a waste of time and effort. Text-based installers don't have to be bad or confusing, and GUI-based installers are not inherently "easier". Point: "good enough" != "tough install" && X > "good enough" = "waste of effort"."
OK, I didn't say anything about whether installers should be X-based or not, or include a solitaire game, and frankly I don't care that much about either one, necessarily. You're right -- a pretty install isn't necessarily well-done, and a simple-text based install procedure can be just as good as any graphical one. There might be particular examples I'd say a graphical one would be better (sliders to allocate hard drive space visually would be nice, say), but in general, I have no argument with you there. We all have different ideas about what constitutes "good enough" but I think it's healthy to always look for improvements.
I don't know anything about your parents, but if they're like the majority of parents out there, Linux in any flavor is not right for them just yet and not because of the initial installation. Sure, maybe they'll be able to get through the install (possibly not -- most of those people can't even get through a Windows install (okay, upgrade, since most people will have Windows pre-installed)), but will they be able to do anything with it afterwards? And I don't mean with liberal help from you or others. I'm talking about being able to power up the computer, fire up a web browser, e-mail client, or word processor, do what they need to do, and turn it off. With Linux, probably not.
Well, I disagree with you there. My dad has no problem navigating either the KDE or Gnome desktops on my machines, opening browsers, typing in OpenOffice, etc -- why would he? (Oh, and Evolution is no harder to use than Microsoft Outlook, IMO, though I don't think he's tried that.) The similarities to either Windows or the Macintosh desktops are huge -- WIMP can be a good thing:) Not that Mac or Windows is tbe best of all possible interfaces, but someone used to either of those should have no problem with current desktop environments. [Some desktops take a bit more to get used to -- blackbox / windowmaker / enlightenment etc.]
The big weak point that I currently find with installing Linux for someone who never has before is disk partitioning. With a new, blank drive and an "automatic" setting, no problem, but trying to explain why one wants a/home partition (and others), must specifically set up a/swap partition etc is a pain. More pain if setting up a system to dual-book. This is a major point I'd like to see improved in installation procedures -- would be good to see a number of percentage-based disk-partitioning schemes set up to choose from, so people new to it could choose a plausible configuration to start with.
Mac OS 9 is what my mom and sister use, and they seem to like it.
timothy
a) I like free software to be popular, especially software for Linux or BSD, because that leads to more of it being available to me:)
b) for free software to be popular, people must be willing to install some of it; a tough install is a big stumbling block to get over.
c) I usually have at least one machine (not saying this is usual, just that it's the case) set aside just to experiment on. If a particular system is a pain to install, that's a bummer. I am not a masochist, I like things to be easy and good.
d) neither of my parents have even my small experience in installing things like Mandrake -- perhaps the easiest of the mainstream Linux distros to put on.* That's why I told my mom to get a Mac;) For my own hardware, I think putting on Mandrake is considerably easier than Windows + Assorted Drivers, but I have not installed Windows recently except for the idiotic ghosted-image-no-choices variety.
timothy
* Have not yet tried Lycoris or certain others which are also supposed to be easy...
"But this does happen to be my viewpoint - that your (editors as a group) great articles exposing the DMCA are undermined by your weekend movie reviews, etc., etc. The lack of a coherent message is OK if you're just reporting the facts, but by adding (often opposing) editorial viewpoints (both implicit and explicit) throughout the various stories, the overall impression turns out to be more schizophrenic than just incoherent."
Well, each of us (people in general, slashdot editors included) have various viewpoints on various topics, some of which jostle uncomfortably with each other. When you look at stories posted by several people, all of whom are affected by this, the result is bound to look a little strange if you're looking for consistency of message! We don't have ideology meetings or anything to make sure we present a single common face to the world...
I like movies and music (a subset of them, of course;)), including some made by people who belong to or support organizations I don't agree with... it's a tradeoff. I enjoyed watching Lord of the Rings more than I would have enjoyed depriving the movie industry of a small portion of my admission price. The world isn't always convenient that way... I prefer Free software, but if I found a greater benefit from using source-secret software, would I do it? Sure. I might gripe, and look for alternatives, but we all draw different lines in different sandboxes.
The D1 series (at least the latest ones) have white LED backlights. I wish the CP990s did too, because I can sure tell the difference in battery life with monitor on vs. off;)
I figure in 3 years, it will be the industry norm, which is great. (Especially since then 18MP or more could be the norm, too!;))
a) I guess your beef is with me, since I added that sentence-with-link.
b) I agree with you that FUD is overused etc....
c).. but not that it's misused in this case. Have you read the MS letter to which Nunez was responding? It's full of exactly the things that the acronym FUD is all about. Vague allusions to dangers and risks, no real data or evidence. That's the essence of FUD.
"Windows, like it or not, is the standard and children need to learn it."
Who says?
It's certainly widespread, and well-known, but that doesn't mean that "children need to learn it." Not that they can't learn about Windows, and certainly shouldn't be prevented from learning about it, but Windows is a particular operating system. The context kids should learn about Windows is one that places it in perspective -- "this is one way to interact with computers."
It seems that many schools try to teach kids that Windows == Computers in General, which is unfortunate. The hands-up, "oh well, it's the standard, and darn it we'd better be standard" isn't the only way to look at things, though.
(As far as I know, my school didn't try to teach anything about computers at all, except for 1 optional class in Pascal -- in the newspaper room we had some Macs, luckily.)
Those things which kids probably ought to know about computers (interaction skills with keyboard and mouse, confidence) I think should be tought with an emphasis on adaptability and generality, *not* a pointless reliance on a particular OS.
(Which the rest of your post is dead on about -- MS is trying to make sure that Windows *is* all kids see, by providing a huge disincentive to try anything else. And now it's even more standard, so kids better learn it, etc... )
The money that (public) school systems spend isn't theirs: it belongs to the public from whom their operating budget is extracted.
That means that incentives to spend less are only indirect, and battling incentives to spend more -- remember, the ideal spending situation for a public agency is just *over* the allocated budget, with a great show of austerity and belt-tightening. "Darnit, we still need more money in the next budget round I guess... for the children."
So hopefully they'll catch on that they can still spend the same of more of other people's money, but allocate it a lot differently, so more of the money is on hardware, networking infrastructure etc, rather than on licenses for software they don't have to buy in the first place, but it will take some convincing. Inertia rules the day when all change is grounds for criticism, and there's no profit motive.
dividing time between Knoxville (small-big or big-small town, depending how you see things) and Dandridge, which is small no matter how you look at it.
Walmart has its bad points -- fake congeniality, bland mainstream culture (not) elevated to an artform, some dreariness which cannot be erased, employees who mostly seem far left on the bell curve of indifference.
However, for many of the thigns that Walmart provides *there was no competition from local merchants* -- at least, not in the way fantasized by some Walmart opponents. 24-hour grocery? Moderate selection of electronics? A music / video / software store? Around here, there were some low-grade groceries and a low-performing Radio Shack, some pawnshops if you wanted to find stereo equipment that wasn't by Realistic or Optimus. Now there's a better Radio Shack --- across from Walmart, which brings enough traffic to support it, evidently.
I'm not trying to downplay all criticism of Walmart (I agree with some of it, in fact), but a) there's a fantasy world of small-town home-cooked goodness with friendly, cheap pharmacists on every corner who would give you free candy corn and fix your glasses for free while talking sports scores, and there's the reality of depressed, empty downtowns with listless or empty businesses which can't afford to keep open enough hours to be convenient... YSmalltownMV. There's also the larger point that despite any griping which may ensue, people don't generally go to a store and spend their money because they know they could be getting a better bundle of satisfactions elsewhere. Walmart is *not* the best grocery store in driving range, but it's the only one I've stopped in to pick up combinations like bananas and Mandrake. (The distro, not the weird plant.)
What OS do you use to run that printer, and have you encountered the software flakiness my dad has? (Something to do with the spooler being corrupt, he says, secondhand from the tech support guy at Minolta.) It seeems to work for a while, then go down for a while, then back up; the hardware checks out (via some sort of remote check I'm surprised they could do through his firewall, but Hey, I wasn't there, and maybe they were using an imaginary test device and guessing a lot;)), but the software seems to tend toward corruption even after reinstall.
Do you by chance run it with Linux or one of the BSDs? Any reason to think it would or would not work with those?
Slashdot Mirror
- This is either offtopic or just a stretchy tangent, take your pick ;) But on the subject of specialized task-centric distros ...
:) )
... why pay tribute to Adobe?" (Or Quark, etc.)
;)), Windowmaker for the desktop, and one or two "state of the art" programs for ...
:)
a) as long as it's inclusive rather than exclusive, I can see a lot of different specialized distros; that's partly just a matter of marketing / mindset though. If it's based on a Free software system with any sort of easy updater (apt-get, urpmi, emerge, or whatever tomorrow brings), distro's specialty is a starting point, not ending. It's more like taking a "taskset" as some distros divide apps into, and making it the focus. It doesn't *prevent* one from installing email clients etc on that box to make it more versatile, but it makes keeping a specialized box free of X factors easier.
b) The closest thing I've found to (circa 1993*) PageMaker is Scribus, which is a nice app. (KWord's frame orientation makes it similar, too, really, but it's obviously a word processor with some cool layout thoughts than vice versa, no offense intended either way -- good program
I'd love to see (at the very least) a lot of high school newspapers decided "Hey, we're trying to put out a little paper and teach some quite generalizable skills
There are a lot of items lacking or only partway there in the Free software world when it comes to running even a small newspaper idea-to-press -- and I would love to see a distro which integrated lots of publishing tools in one place, including tools for making an online edition!
How about one which included KDE and GNOME (for the libraries and apps, not necessarily for the DEs
- image cataloguing, type conversion
- vector art (sketch? sodipodi? OO?)
- raster art (GIMP, and which other?)
- word processing
- layout (the two I named already, any better?)
- web browsing (Mozilla 1.0, Konqueror)
- html creation (not sure, I use pico for this;))
The big lacks:
- integration with existing copyflow systems
- fonts for layout
- integration with printers' systems (perhaps they can just print from giant PDFs burned on CD?)
On the other hand, if *most* tasks related to putting together a publication can be taken care of with Free software, then the remaining tasks can be handled on fewer machines. This is what goes on at many (I would say typical) publishers anyhow, even if for different reasons. Things like "the reporters get the tiny screened pieces of crap, the layout artists get the 21" monitors and fast computers with Quark / InDesign.")
timothy
* no insult here -- I just haven't used Pagemaker much since then, and I don't think Scribus is yet to the level of programs like Quark, partly for font reasons which are not under the control of the program's author!
that might not take many people.
...
;)
;)
My mom (strangely) has gotten at least 2 handwritten, snail-mail letters in the Greater Nigerian Spam family. One of them referred to her as "The President." She found it pretty amusing
Over the phone, it took me a while to comprehend that she didn't mean email spam
They must have more than 6 people copying those bizarrely worded letters
timothy
I used mozilla rc2 when I went there; I don't have Flash enabled (read "I don't have Flash *working*), so I also used the html version. It was slow, Yes, but it worked, I did not get a lot of javascript errors.
[btw, one of the searches I did, and the one which most impressed me, was for the name of a friend of mine -- she has an unusual name, and is a writer with some things scattered around the Net. The results were surprisingly all actually her, and shown in one blob like that actually made sense. Wouldn't want that result style for all searches, but in this case it worked well.]
timothy
I've thought about using headphones for this reason (deep bass cheap, ignore other noises), too, though I've never actually built a home theatre worthy of the name. (When projectors are cheaper, maybe ...)
;) These generally have volume controls right on the headsets, too, so each person can determine the right listening volume.
o g/ headphones/headphoneamps.html -- this page has a decent looking fostex with 5 outlets for (some unnamed figure less than $279). Look used too, in anywhere that sells recording equipment to musicians. Stash it behind the couch, and let people plug in :)
Two solutions as far as "limiting the audience" though:
1) Wireless. Buy either one transmitter and multiple headsets (if they come that way for the model you choose) or multi sets of both, stick the extra transmitters in the closet as a hedge against murphy's law. They're anything but free, but they're getting reasonable nowadays, and if it's mostly you and a couple of friends, would not cost that much. When the neighborhood comes over to watch LotR on your home theater you can worry about more external sound
2) If the wires aren't going to be too much of a problem, you can use a (wired) headphone distribution amp. Good ones (studio grade) can be pricey, but like most things in the world of musical electronics, the *high* end is not where you even want to look unless you really know you want to be there, and there are often perfectly decent ones sold for less.
(http://www.taiaudio.com/right/sales/salescatal
Headphones have some big drawbacks, too, but for some circumstances, look really smart.
And if you're handier than me, there are a lot of DIY projects for building your own distribution amp on the web.
timothy
Dear Clue4All:
...
Curious about your sig, and where your figure of less than 3% comes from. Do you have a program which actually sorts / categorizes the software on your machine by license? That sounds like an interesting statistic, I wonder what various populations's result curves would look like in that case
timothy
Yesterday I bought 2 apiece of 2 different toys (from the KB store at the Mall in Columbia, Columbia, Maryland):
a) the Be Boppin' Boogie Electronic Groove Tube, a sound-activated plastic tube with 36 LEDs arranged in 3 rows which pulses with received sound (marked down to just under $10 apiece)
b) (I forget model name) scrolling LED sign; has a built-in keyboard for entering messages. Downsides: cannot be controlled remotely, with a serial port say, and can only hold a single, short (60-char) message; upper case only. Comes with a lot of quickly selectable generic messages, too, though, if you want to say "Happy birthday" or (?) "Remember it takes one to know one" among others. Marked down from $80 to $15. This was even less than I'd been told on the phone; I had been prepared to buy just the one scrolling sign for $26.
However, total cost for four toys was about 52 dollars. Now I can have "Ask me about your driving!" sign scrolling at all times, and have a pulsing light show on the sides of the wagon ... at the price, hard to complain. For $150, you can get a big, more controllable LED sign though. Would be fun to have my voice-savvy car-droid react when I say "Droid! Give that jerk a piece of my mind!" but it won't happen with these cheapies.
Both toys use "C" batteries or a (not-included) AC adapter, btw. I have so far opened only one apiece, but the Groove Tube had old, corroded batteries which I had to disassemble the body to remove, but with fresh batteries it works fine.
timothy
I'd like something more like the R2 units which plug into X-wing and other Star Wars fighting craft. No domed head and swiveling is really necessary, though -- for instance, a laptop would be fine :)
Imagine slipping a laptop (with a microphone plugged into it's audio-in port) into a cushioned and cooled foam sleeve beneath the passenger seat, then hooking a single USB2, firewire, or ethernet cable to it from the car's "assistant" port. Or 802.11, or bluetooth, so no wire necessary. Heck, give that (whatever-it-is) connection the additional chore of carrying a bit of audio, and forget hooking a microphone line separately -- the mic is one of the parts I think could legitimately be part of the car's end of the system. Basically, I'd like one broadish-band connection from car to computer, but with the computer per se quite separate or at least separable.
What sort of things should the car tell the computer?
- sensor readings -- lots of 'em, for instance
...
- Engine Temperature, RPMs
- GPS and altitude (another set I think are OK to be in the car)
- Radar signals (naturally)
- Radio stations in order of reception strength
- Internal and external air temps, precip types
- apparent visibility
- Level and pressure of various fluids (including tire air)
- Horn use
- Speed (this is one which should be wipeable
:))
- Gas tank level (mine tends to ride low)
- Battery levels (a ridiculously underreported but important fact right now -- now even an LED bar indicated current charge)
- Recent fuel efficiency readings
- Cabin air quality -- might want an alert when it's below good levels.
- Light check (headlights, dome lights, map light, keyslot light, etc -- all working and in good order?)
- Doors shut / locked status
- Weight distribution in car
- Image / sound output, as applicable
- Standard webcam stream with one or more cameras either streaming or sending time-lapse images,
- Sonar / low-power radar / IR or whatever other imagery makes sense
- Audio output, two mics each in engine and cabin (for stereo location help) plus
- Direct feed from the a) the car's entertainment system as well as b) from a separate channel carrying any audio messages / warnings from the car itself (door-open buzzers etc).
What should the computer be able to effect through commands *to* the car?Most (but not all) of what I'd like a car computer to do is *collect* data: the point is not what specific data is collected, really, so much as that a number of prioritizeable datastreams are available and self-identifying in a standardized, non-proprietary, format which my droid (whether it looks like a laptop or not) can examine and store, to the degree that I've asked it to -- and that my droid can effect changes both general and situational to make driving easier / more pleasurable / safer.
The car should have the senses (sight, sound, etc) but the brain shouldn't be tied to the car itself -- the most intelligent part of the *car* side of things should be the gathering point for all those sensor's data streams, which should be built to deal with yet-unavailable or un-thought-of streams, so they can be passed on for analysis to the droid when they're eventually implemented.
On the droid side of things, there's no reason there should only be one way to look at or deal with the various datastreams. One person might want a basic black box doing nothing but recording the engine readings, distances traveled and cockpit chatter to a CLI-based utility box stored permanently in the trunk; another might want the whole shebang, down to engine timings and dome-light intensity, controllable from a pretty GUI running on a PowerBook.
If the ins and outs are standardized and available, both of those would be completely feasable. If they're built with some room to grow, the same droid could be updated to recognize and control new things. ("Hey, I added a quartet of over-wheel cams to get a 3D sense of surrounding traffic. I want to record them on my droid.")
There are dangers, sure, but worth working around. I don't want someone else to be able to shut down my engine remotely, not even the California State Police. I don't want a thief to be able to tell my car via 802.11 to open the windows, pop the trunk, and use a built-in olfactory sensor to find money, then blow it out the windows with the fan. Naturally. Current thieves are doing just fine with low-tech methods, though.
OK, I close with a sound of hope, which is roughly "beepTWIRRRdeedeezzzhmmmbeepb'beepsigh ..."
timothy
Related to some of the things you raise -- would be nice for a given route to be able to see a composite picture of road conditions, but stringing together a sort of film taken from multiple car-cams which would give a complete graphical view of the current traffic and weather situation.
concept: Cars alpha, b, iii, 4, V and six are are traveling in that order, perhaps a mile or so apart. (Chosen from an intelligent algorithm that looks for cars which are spaced from each other but traveling at similar speeds). Every several seconds (10? 30? 60?), a picture from their onboard cameras is taken and melded with the other
cars' pictures. The result is 3D-feeling motion map, provided as a heads-up display on my windshield. With wide lenses (or multiple cams) the result could provide a fair amount of peripheral vision as well, make landmarks familiar minutes before they're actually seen by the real driver.
I must admit I've never used the Google toolbar (looks nice, but most of my searches are general google searches) -- but I love the way I can enter terms in Mozilla's URL / location bar, tap the Down arrow, and automatically search. It's configurable, but I've not seen a reason to use a search engine besides Google lately, so that's my default ;)
Does IE have that? (Honest question.)
timothy
I didn't know it had that capability -- even if it doesn't fit my whole laundry list, that's at least one good thing there ;)
:)), so, if one were to use it that way and allocate say 5GB to this purpose, that would be 5000 minutes of audio ... that's quite a bit of time ;)
;) I have heard of that format, but that's all I can say.
I'm guessing WMP (I'm sure this is conservative) is 1MB / minute (how off am I?
Thanks for the info on that -- still not enough to make me buy an Xbox, but a positive point for sheer listening. Whether WMP is a positive point, well, not to me
timothy
If you want to see Linux so badly on this machine (I assumed you meant Linux when you said "free operating system"). Tape a Penguin to the console, take a picture, and let it be. Don't be the billionth M$ hater sitting around with friends chanting "Wouldn't it be soo funny to see Linux on a Microsoft machine?
No :) If you've read other comments I've posted, you might know that I'm not a Microsoft hater. (Not much of a Windows fan, but not a Microsoft hater.) I think it's on the whole a good thing to have a robust market in gaming consoles, even if just for the side benefits.
I'm interested in seeing any Free OS for the Xbox -- I don't care if it's Linux in particular, though that does seem the most obvious choice.
It would be neat to get a machine that's more powerful than my current desktop system for far less money, as well as lighter and otherwise more portable. I find the x-box rather chunky for a game console (but I'm not into gaming -- I find most of the game consoles pretty big for what they are; YMMV), but an interesting size for a general-purpose computer.
Also, people who are interested in having multiple computers, whether for general redundancy, or playing with a desktop cluster -- whyever -- it looks reasonable to stack a couple of Xboxes together.
With an automobile DC-->AC adapter, it might also be a good system for the car. Certainly smaller than some PCs that people have adapted for under-seat or in-trunk use. While it's nothing but a game- and DVD-playing machine, though, not as many possibilities. If it were functioning as a decent x86 box (no longer high-end perhaps but no slouch), it could be a lot of other things, too. I'm not sure if the XBox can serve as a standalone MP3 player now (like a lot of DVD players can) but I bet it won't play oggs ;) If it were de-crippled, it could do that as well as let passengers draw with the GIMP, play music in various formats besides those just mentioned, show on-screen updates from a GPS, etc, etc. Generally, be more flexible.
There are times it would be much easier to pop in a new box than replace more than one major component; if (should read "when" but who knows?) the projects to put Linux / NetBSD / whatever on the Xbox succeed, many more circumstances would warrant that. There's a pawnshop nearby where I could probably pick up an Xbox for $150 three months from now. (X-terminal? fine. Hey, might even buy a game to play on there and *not* replace the OS! :) )
Is this what the Xbox is meant for? No -- but so what? Life is more interesting when objects are re-used in ways that they weren't designed for. Is the price based on MS selling games to subsidize the console itself? Probably, though the comments in this thread point out that there's a huge range of estimates of what the box itself really costs MS. That's the concern of their marketing department, not me. There's something my brother calls the Las Vegas effect -- the shrimp and huge breakfasts are still free whether or not you choose to pay for the industry which makes them cheap. Same applies here.
I really don't chant against Microsoft, and I wish the government would a) stop harrassing them and b) simply refuse to buy non-open software (barring extenuating circumstances) on the simple grounds that it's bad stewardship of borrowed money (taxes). Lacks accountability, comes with too many thorns. That would be a much simpler answer to dissatisfaction with the effects of Microsoft than whining while buying their products. I don't think the MS-intervention currently being pursued sets a precedent that programmers should be proud of.
(I do think that MS has done some contemptable things; I just don't think that all contemptable things justify State intervention. And Yes, I believe for reasons I don't have time to get into here that most "Antitrust" laws are harmful bunk.) Cheers,
timothy
Not in an xterm, they don't ;)
Sometimes I like a graphical file manager (Konqui, Nautilus), but it depends what I'm doing. I can sometimes fit more useful information on the screen with an x-term, can sort with wildcards, etc -- and I like a nice green-on-black file listing ...
timothy
Not a huge deal, but still.
Tim
The copy-protection scheme itself may not be, but the reliance on harebrained, short-sighted laws to bully people out of reasonable use of the products they buy (DMCA and the Hollings nightmares) could well be called "capitolism" -- in stark contrast to "capitalism" :)
Cheers,
timothy
Err -- the submitter mentioned the card. I have never owned a cool video card, with exception --to me! I know it's no longer cool) of the Matrox G400 which I bought last year but thanks to several SNAFUs have not yet installed. (It's in another state right now ;)).
;) Maybe when LCDs come down a bit ... I don't want to buy any more stupid, heavy, bulky, awkward, space-hogging, back-breaking, desk-bending, headache-inducing, power-slurping, ugly-like-mold CRTs.
Since I don't have a dual-monitor setup, even that won't be as cool as I might hope
Cheers,
timothy
... posted frequently on their website.
... thanks for the presumption and venting. Sheesh.
"Would timothy have posted that if it was a guy?"
Actually, Yes. I forget what the frequency is (day? week?) but they already have random users up there; I thought it might be nice to have one of the half-billionth-results winner, especially with the delay in announcing who it is. Having a little profile up is better than nothing, though.
But
timothy
I'm not quite sure what you mean here.
Where's the one-trick pony? Easy installation doesn't contradict any other sort of functionality. I find the default install of the Linux distros I've seen generally well-laid out, with plenty of built in "things to do." I know little about Windows, but the Windows default desktops I've seen have been considerably poorer. On common hardware, I don't think X has been a big drawback for several years.
Part of software being *good* is that it installs easily. In fact, to me, that's a very big part of being good IMO. Software that doesn't get installed isn't good or bad, it's just in limbo.
"You misunderstand me. I'm not advocating tough or confusing installers. I'm saying that there's a point when things are "good enough", especially when you're dealing with a very small part of the overall experience, and when you hit that point it's time to move on to other problems. Do you really think letting a user play solitaire while the files copy from the CD is a useful feature? Was it really worth spending development time (and possibly money) on adding that? One can even argue that making X-based installers was a waste of time and effort. Text-based installers don't have to be bad or confusing, and GUI-based installers are not inherently "easier". Point: "good enough" != "tough install" && X > "good enough" = "waste of effort"."
OK, I didn't say anything about whether installers should be X-based or not, or include a solitaire game, and frankly I don't care that much about either one, necessarily. You're right -- a pretty install isn't necessarily well-done, and a simple-text based install procedure can be just as good as any graphical one. There might be particular examples I'd say a graphical one would be better (sliders to allocate hard drive space visually would be nice, say), but in general, I have no argument with you there. We all have different ideas about what constitutes "good enough" but I think it's healthy to always look for improvements.
I don't know anything about your parents, but if they're like the majority of parents out there, Linux in any flavor is not right for them just yet and not because of the initial installation. Sure, maybe they'll be able to get through the install (possibly not -- most of those people can't even get through a Windows install (okay, upgrade, since most people will have Windows pre-installed)), but will they be able to do anything with it afterwards? And I don't mean with liberal help from you or others. I'm talking about being able to power up the computer, fire up a web browser, e-mail client, or word processor, do what they need to do, and turn it off. With Linux, probably not.
Well, I disagree with you there. My dad has no problem navigating either the KDE or Gnome desktops on my machines, opening browsers, typing in OpenOffice, etc -- why would he? (Oh, and Evolution is no harder to use than Microsoft Outlook, IMO, though I don't think he's tried that.) The similarities to either Windows or the Macintosh desktops are huge -- WIMP can be a good thing :) Not that Mac or Windows is tbe best of all possible interfaces, but someone used to either of those should have no problem with current desktop environments. [Some desktops take a bit more to get used to -- blackbox / windowmaker / enlightenment etc.]
The big weak point that I currently find with installing Linux for someone who never has before is disk partitioning. With a new, blank drive and an "automatic" setting, no problem, but trying to explain why one wants a /home partition (and others), must specifically set up a /swap partition etc is a pain. More pain if setting up a system to dual-book. This is a major point I'd like to see improved in installation procedures -- would be good to see a number of percentage-based disk-partitioning schemes set up to choose from, so people new to it could choose a plausible configuration to start with.
Mac OS 9 is what my mom and sister use, and they seem to like it.
timothy
a) I like free software to be popular, especially software for Linux or BSD, because that leads to more of it being available to me :)
;) For my own hardware, I think putting on Mandrake is considerably easier than Windows + Assorted Drivers, but I have not installed Windows recently except for the idiotic ghosted-image-no-choices variety.
...
b) for free software to be popular, people must be willing to install some of it; a tough install is a big stumbling block to get over.
c) I usually have at least one machine (not saying this is usual, just that it's the case) set aside just to experiment on. If a particular system is a pain to install, that's a bummer. I am not a masochist, I like things to be easy and good.
d) neither of my parents have even my small experience in installing things like Mandrake -- perhaps the easiest of the mainstream Linux distros to put on.* That's why I told my mom to get a Mac
timothy
* Have not yet tried Lycoris or certain others which are also supposed to be easy
You wrote:
...
;)), including some made by people who belong to or support organizations I don't agree with ... it's a tradeoff. I enjoyed watching Lord of the Rings more than I would have enjoyed depriving the movie industry of a small portion of my admission price. The world isn't always convenient that way ... I prefer Free software, but if I found a greater benefit from using source-secret software, would I do it? Sure. I might gripe, and look for alternatives, but we all draw different lines in different sandboxes.
"But this does happen to be my viewpoint - that your (editors as a group) great articles exposing the DMCA are undermined by your weekend movie reviews, etc., etc. The lack of a coherent message is OK if you're just reporting the facts, but by adding (often opposing) editorial viewpoints (both implicit and explicit) throughout the various stories, the overall impression turns out to be more schizophrenic than just incoherent."
Well, each of us (people in general, slashdot editors included) have various viewpoints on various topics, some of which jostle uncomfortably with each other. When you look at stories posted by several people, all of whom are affected by this, the result is bound to look a little strange if you're looking for consistency of message! We don't have ideology meetings or anything to make sure we present a single common face to the world
I like movies and music (a subset of them, of course
timothy
The D1 series (at least the latest ones) have white LED backlights. I wish the CP990s did too, because I can sure tell the difference in battery life with monitor on vs. off ;)
;))
I figure in 3 years, it will be the industry norm, which is great. (Especially since then 18MP or more could be the norm, too!
timothy
a) I guess your beef is with me, since I added that sentence-with-link.
...
.. but not that it's misused in this case. Have you read the MS letter to which Nunez was responding? It's full of exactly the things that the acronym FUD is all about. Vague allusions to dangers and risks, no real data or evidence. That's the essence of FUD.
b) I agree with you that FUD is overused etc.
c)
timothy
"Windows, like it or not, is the standard and children need to learn it."
... )
Who says?
It's certainly widespread, and well-known, but that doesn't mean that "children need to learn it." Not that they can't learn about Windows, and certainly shouldn't be prevented from learning about it, but Windows is a particular operating system. The context kids should learn about Windows is one that places it in perspective -- "this is one way to interact with computers."
It seems that many schools try to teach kids that Windows == Computers in General, which is unfortunate. The hands-up, "oh well, it's the standard, and darn it we'd better be standard" isn't the only way to look at things, though.
(As far as I know, my school didn't try to teach anything about computers at all, except for 1 optional class in Pascal -- in the newspaper room we had some Macs, luckily.)
Those things which kids probably ought to know about computers (interaction skills with keyboard and mouse, confidence) I think should be tought with an emphasis on adaptability and generality, *not* a pointless reliance on a particular OS.
(Which the rest of your post is dead on about -- MS is trying to make sure that Windows *is* all kids see, by providing a huge disincentive to try anything else. And now it's even more standard, so kids better learn it, etc
timothy
The money that (public) school systems spend isn't theirs: it belongs to the public from whom their operating budget is extracted.
... for the children."
That means that incentives to spend less are only indirect, and battling incentives to spend more -- remember, the ideal spending situation for a public agency is just *over* the allocated budget, with a great show of austerity and belt-tightening. "Darnit, we still need more money in the next budget round I guess
So hopefully they'll catch on that they can still spend the same of more of other people's money, but allocate it a lot differently, so more of the money is on hardware, networking infrastructure etc, rather than on licenses for software they don't have to buy in the first place, but it will take some convincing. Inertia rules the day when all change is grounds for criticism, and there's no profit motive.
dividing time between Knoxville (small-big or big-small town, depending how you see things) and Dandridge, which is small no matter how you look at it.
... YSmalltownMV.
Walmart has its bad points -- fake congeniality, bland mainstream culture (not) elevated to an artform, some dreariness which cannot be erased, employees who mostly seem far left on the bell curve of indifference.
However, for many of the thigns that Walmart provides *there was no competition from local merchants* -- at least, not in the way fantasized by some Walmart opponents. 24-hour grocery? Moderate selection of electronics? A music / video / software store? Around here, there were some low-grade groceries and a low-performing Radio Shack, some pawnshops if you wanted to find stereo equipment that wasn't by Realistic or Optimus. Now there's a better Radio Shack --- across from Walmart, which brings enough traffic to support it, evidently.
I'm not trying to downplay all criticism of Walmart (I agree with some of it, in fact), but a) there's a fantasy world of small-town home-cooked goodness with friendly, cheap pharmacists on every corner who would give you free candy corn and fix your glasses for free while talking sports scores, and there's the reality of depressed, empty downtowns with listless or empty businesses which can't afford to keep open enough hours to be convenient
There's also the larger point that despite any griping which may ensue, people don't generally go to a store and spend their money because they know they could be getting a better bundle of satisfactions elsewhere. Walmart is *not* the best grocery store in driving range, but it's the only one I've stopped in to pick up combinations like bananas and Mandrake. (The distro, not the weird plant.)
timothy
What OS do you use to run that printer, and have you encountered the software flakiness my dad has? (Something to do with the spooler being corrupt, he says, secondhand from the tech support guy at Minolta.) It seeems to work for a while, then go down for a while, then back up; the hardware checks out (via some sort of remote check I'm surprised they could do through his firewall, but Hey, I wasn't there, and maybe they were using an imaginary test device and guessing a lot ;)), but the software seems to tend toward corruption even after reinstall.
Do you by chance run it with Linux or one of the BSDs? Any reason to think it would or would not work with those?
Cheers,
timothy