We actually *have* a servicable office suite called Applixware. It's payware, but on my system it as a whole is a lot more usable than Star Office.
I'm seriously underwhelmed with Star Office. Sure, it's free, but I can't imagine actually paying for software that is *that* poorly written. If I'd bought SO5, I'd have returned it.
As for Wordperfect, I've never really been a fan of that program anyhow, but I still would like to see what the whole suite looks like before damning the package.
| Things that Mac users take for granted, like | copy and paste, and consistent key shortccuts | across applications, are non-existant.
I presume you're using a two-button mouse under X11? X cut-and-paste (which does exist - it's how I pasted the text I quoted above) works much better when you have a three button mouse, as the middle button is used to paste. Note that this is for the most part text cut 'n' paste only, but it it there, and works with pretty much any X application. If you've got a two button mouse you can usually emulate a three-button by clicking left and right at once, but this is a far from optimal solution when you can get a 3-button mouse that'll work in X for dirt cheap.
As for the consistent key shortcuts, remember that X isn't a GUI.:)
| What does the IPX in Sun IPX mean? Is is a | reference to a (corporate) Novell network?
I think the Novell reference is probably unintentional. Sun put out a less powerful workstation (25 MHz sparc instead of 40 MHZ, bwtwo instead of cgsix framebuffer built-in) in the same "lunchbox" case called the Sparcstation IPC. A place to check our for more info would be www.sunhelp.com - they have links to various info on old and new Suns alike.
On the subject of Imac-like computeres and Suns, there were also the Sparc SLC and ELC systems. *Very* much like an Imac in design, excapt no internal hard drive. There was an external SCSI port that could presumably be used for that purpose, though.
Too big. it's a keyboard-and-cpu-in-one-unit design, but it's certainly not a "PC Keyboard" sized computer like the A600 or A1200 were. My Sparc IPX has less of a footprint.:)
| I want a full-power pc that will fit in the | footprint of a keyboard and not cost 3x as much | as the equiv desktop
This has already been done. Heck, computers for the home basically started out this way (C=64, etc.). More recently, Commodore basically had two products that were (for the time) baiscally what you describe - the A600 and the A1200. You could even hook them up to a television.
| If the only motivation is the need | for acceptance, then we all have some serious | social deficiencies to talk to a shrink about.
The thing that more commercial interest brings to the platform is more interest period - some from sources it wouldn't have come from initially. With more intersst in the platform, we have that many more voices with which to yell "Release specs for that video/sound/other cool card or we'll buy from your competitors!"
Having said that, I don't find the idea of proprietary kernel modules or the like very comforting, but as for applications like Wordperfect or Applix - why not use/welcome them? In the Linux environment, they have to compete on their own merits. It's fair. Ir's not hurting the platform. (I personally like not having to have another OS installed at all to get my work done!)
|Seriously, though... this feature is something |I've managed to use to convince a friend or two |to install Linux with. Very smart |for MS to do this.
My wonderings are: * Do all the client boxes have to be Win98? * How well does the MS solution work? Better than Wingate and/or Linux's IP Masq? At any rate, people selling Windows IP Masq solutions are now going to be in a world of hurt, even if they *do* work better than this new 98 feature. * Does anyone else get the screaming heebie jeebies at the idea of a Windows 98 box as a firewall?
It doesn't work on my Alpha either. Looks Intel-specific, though I'm certainly no guru on the subject. I might even be missing something as simple as a configure flag...:)
I happen to agree with Fidler's hands-on comparisons (the sidebar). All of the attempts at electronic books that I've seen have suffered from the limitations that today's inexpensive display technologies do. They're either hard to see (gameboy-ish displays), or they're backlit and weigh too much and suck batteries. Neither is particularly appealing for reading a long passage of text.
I don't necessarily agree that e-books must be all *that* different from (well-designed) "computers" to survive. People will get over their computer-phobia *eventually*. Besides, I don't think I could deal with an e-book that didn't have *some* buttons!:)
| There is an open sourced Shockwave/Flash plugin | available. It shouldn't be hard to get it to | work with Linux for Alpha
I actually tried this.:) Unfortunately, at the time I tried it, Mozilla would crash when trying to start the program. Whether it's the lizard or the plugin that's the problem I really don't know.
| I use a DEC alpha as my main computer and run | a remote shell netscape from my p120(yes, | i have a box dedicated to running netscape).
Seems a little extreme, but I suppose it's doable. It also solves the problem of other things like Realvideo and shockwave not being available for anything but Intel Linux either.
|I have tried mozilla, hotjava, and kfm on my |alpha but they all suck royally. Don't even ask |about em86.
Mozilla (old 102898 release) is at least somewhat usable. It's what I use on my Alphastation. Hotjava never worked properly on my Alpha - it would render the page you opened correctly, but if you tried to click a link it would render the new page behind the old one - which was still visible. This quickly got old.:)
Kfm is... well... kfm. A file manager and a WWW browser, but a master of neither. It does make a nifty FTP client, however. On the Alpha, it's probably the least crash-happy graphical browser.
I really wish Mozilla... well, worked. Or even *mostly* worked. The new rendering engine appears to be pretty nice (I was able to check out "viewer" at least - no real luck with "apprunner"), but without the interface around it, it's mostly an academic curiousity.
Price Comparisons ...K��>�?���~-?���>�?�
on
AMD Interview
·
· Score: 1
(Sorry about the mangled subject line if there is one. Blame NSN4.5 for S/Linux)
K6-2 chips compete pretty favorably with the PII in price, as AMD chips have always tended to be cheaper than their Intel counterparts. However, I'm not convinced that the K6-2 is a better buy than the Celeron, particularly and especially the slower Celerons than can be overclocked. I'm very happy with my 300A oc'd to 450. Since I needed a new mobo *anyway*, whether I went to Cyrix, AMD, or Intel for the new chip, the Celeron was a great value.
This isn't intended to bash AMD at all - I've owned systems with CPUs made by AMD *and* Cyrix in the past (and one other Intel) - with no complaints except for the Cyrix running hot on occasion. It's important that AMD and Cyrix are around - else I wouldn't have been able to afford that cheap Celeron!
Maybe by the time the K7 is out and affordable I'll be ready to upgrade again.
| It was crazy... she couldn't even sign on to | check her mail without all of these messages | popping up from strange guys asking | her what she was up to. She was almost | completely turned off to the internet from this | experience.
This reminds me of what I went through as a freshman in college. Everybody was given a mainframe account - and among its uses were such niceties as email and (local) chat.
Unfortunately for me, the login ID I was given ( "charlet" ) could apparently be mistaken by freshmen in drunken stupors for a "female" ID. (stands for CHARLEs Taylor). Eventually, I just turned off the chat/messages features altogether and told my friends to just send e-mail.
I can imagine AOL being worse by about a factor of... Avogadro's number.
What is (and isn't) wrong with Katz article...
on
Katz v Taco: Futurama
·
· Score: 1
| "a lonely Cyclops" | No mention that she is an alien. With Xena on | prime time, you might point out her purple hair | and non-human species. Cyclops is a greek myth.
Huh? The character herself said she was an alien in that whole speechlet about how she understands what Fry is going through.
[lightsabers] | And they aren't wimpy.
They were in Futurama. That's why that gag was funny in the first place.:)
It wasn't the red graphics or the headset concept that really killed the VB, in my opinion. It was the stupidly (in terms of something that would be considered a "portable") high list price for the system that made it stillborn. I didn't buy one until they were on the clearance shelves for a (finally) decent asking price.
Some of the VB games were actually really damned cool and made good use of the 3D effect. By the way, of all the VB games I've seen, only *one* uses wireframe graphics.
Please excuse my Sparc IPX from messing up the Subject line (again):)
Slackware can't be *that* manly. I mean, it doesn't run on Alphas yet, does it?
(Let's see if Sparc/Linux NS4.5 screws up the Subject: again...)
Sci-Fi can do better?Iverytime
on
Saving MST3K
·
· Score: 1
I'll have to question your assertion that "[SFC] can do a lot better than MST3K". Even if MST3K has gone down in quality since the Comedy Central days (which is of course debatable and depends on what episode you're watching), what evidence is there for any hope whatsoever that any of SFC's original programming could be "a lot better"?
Need I remind people about "Mission: Genesis"?
How about most SFC "original movies", most of which would be completely watchable only with the help of Mike or Joel and the bots?
I'm curious - what other SFC original programming might be classified as "good"?
| Personally I don't really care: I primarily | want Mozilla because there's no decent | browser on Linux/Alpha yet.
Now there's an idea for the Opera folks. Put out an Alpha Linux version. The old (100898) release of Mozilla is usable on Alpha/Linux systems - I mean, that's what I'm writing this message on, but it's certainly not stable and light on system resources.
I've tried compiling Mozilla with GTK on my Alpha and unfortunately all I get is a segfaulting apprunner.
Slashdot Mirror
We actually *have* a servicable office suite called Applixware. It's payware, but on my system it as a whole is a lot more usable than Star Office.
I'm seriously underwhelmed with Star Office. Sure, it's free, but I can't imagine actually paying for software that is *that* poorly written. If I'd bought SO5, I'd have returned it.
As for Wordperfect, I've never really been a fan of that program anyhow, but I still would like to see what the whole suite looks like before damning the package.
| Things that Mac users take for granted, like
:)
| copy and paste, and consistent key shortccuts
| across applications, are non-existant.
I presume you're using a two-button mouse under X11? X cut-and-paste (which does exist - it's how I pasted the text I quoted above) works much better when you have a three button mouse, as the middle button is used to paste. Note that this is for the most part text cut 'n' paste only, but it it there, and works with pretty much any X application. If you've got a two button mouse you can usually emulate a three-button by clicking left and right at once, but this is a far from optimal solution when you can get a 3-button mouse that'll work in X for dirt cheap.
As for the consistent key shortcuts, remember that X isn't a GUI.
| What does the IPX in Sun IPX mean? Is is a | reference to a (corporate) Novell network?
I think the Novell reference is probably unintentional. Sun put out a less powerful workstation (25 MHz sparc instead of 40 MHZ, bwtwo instead of cgsix framebuffer built-in) in the same "lunchbox" case called the Sparcstation IPC. A place to check our for more info would be www.sunhelp.com - they have links to various info on old and new Suns alike.
On the subject of Imac-like computeres and Suns, there were also the Sparc SLC and ELC systems. *Very* much like an Imac in design, excapt no internal hard drive. There was an external SCSI port that could presumably be used for that purpose, though.
| Commodore Amiga 500
:)
Too big. it's a keyboard-and-cpu-in-one-unit design, but it's certainly not a "PC Keyboard" sized computer like the A600 or A1200 were. My Sparc IPX has less of a footprint.
| I want a full-power pc that will fit in the
| footprint of a keyboard and not cost 3x as much
| as the equiv desktop
This has already been done. Heck, computers for the home basically started out this way (C=64, etc.). More recently, Commodore basically had two products that were (for the time) baiscally what you describe - the A600 and the A1200. You could even hook them up to a television.
| If the only motivation is the need
| for acceptance, then we all have some serious
| social deficiencies to talk to a shrink about.
The thing that more commercial interest brings to the platform is more interest period - some from sources it wouldn't have come from initially. With more intersst in the platform, we have that many more voices with which to yell "Release specs for that video/sound/other cool card or we'll buy from your competitors!"
Having said that, I don't find the idea of proprietary kernel modules or the like very comforting, but as for applications like Wordperfect or Applix - why not use/welcome them? In the Linux environment, they have to compete on their own merits. It's fair. Ir's not hurting the platform. (I personally like not having to have another OS installed at all to get my work done!)
|Seriously, though... this feature is something
|I've managed to use to convince a friend or two
|to install Linux with. Very smart
|for MS to do this.
My wonderings are:
* Do all the client boxes have to be Win98?
* How well does the MS solution work? Better than Wingate and/or Linux's IP Masq? At any rate, people selling Windows IP Masq solutions are now going to be in a world of hurt, even if they *do* work better than this new 98 feature.
* Does anyone else get the screaming heebie jeebies at the idea of a Windows 98 box as a firewall?
It doesn't work on my Alpha either. Looks Intel-specific, though I'm certainly no guru on the subject. I might even be missing something as simple as a configure flag ... :)
I happen to agree with Fidler's hands-on comparisons (the sidebar). All of the attempts at electronic books that I've seen have suffered from the limitations that today's inexpensive display technologies do. They're either hard to see (gameboy-ish displays), or they're backlit and weigh too much and suck batteries. Neither is particularly appealing for reading a long passage of text.
:)
I don't necessarily agree that e-books must be all *that* different from (well-designed) "computers" to survive. People will get over their computer-phobia *eventually*. Besides, I don't think I could deal with an e-book that didn't have *some* buttons!
Here's a link you can read without Javascript:
http://oj r.usc.edu/sections/features/99_stories/stories_tab let_040299.htm
Reading the story linked above with Lynx merely presents me with a nice blank page.
| There is an open sourced Shockwave/Flash plugin
:) Unfortunately, at the time I tried it, Mozilla would crash when trying to start the program. Whether it's the lizard or the plugin that's the problem I really don't know.
| available. It shouldn't be hard to get it to
| work with Linux for Alpha
I actually tried this.
| I use a DEC alpha as my main computer and run
:)
... well ... kfm. A file manager and a WWW browser, but a master of neither. It does make a nifty FTP client, however. On the Alpha, it's probably the least crash-happy graphical browser.
... well, worked. Or even *mostly* worked. The new rendering engine appears to be pretty nice (I was able to check out "viewer" at least - no real luck with "apprunner"), but without the interface around it, it's mostly an academic curiousity.
| a remote shell netscape from my p120(yes,
| i have a box dedicated to running netscape).
Seems a little extreme, but I suppose it's doable. It also solves the problem of other things like Realvideo and shockwave not being available for anything but Intel Linux either.
|I have tried mozilla, hotjava, and kfm on my
|alpha but they all suck royally. Don't even ask
|about em86.
Mozilla (old 102898 release) is at least somewhat usable. It's what I use on my Alphastation. Hotjava never worked properly on my Alpha - it would render the page you opened correctly, but if you tried to click a link it would render the new page behind the old one - which was still visible. This quickly got old.
Kfm is
I really wish Mozilla
(Sorry about the mangled subject line if there is one. Blame NSN4.5 for S/Linux)
K6-2 chips compete pretty favorably with the PII in price, as AMD chips have always tended to be cheaper than their Intel counterparts. However, I'm not convinced that the K6-2 is a better buy than the Celeron, particularly and especially the slower Celerons than can be overclocked. I'm very happy with my 300A oc'd to 450. Since I needed a new mobo *anyway*, whether I went to Cyrix, AMD, or Intel for the new chip, the Celeron was a great value.
This isn't intended to bash AMD at all - I've owned systems with CPUs made by AMD *and* Cyrix in the past (and one other Intel) - with no complaints except for the Cyrix running hot on occasion. It's important that AMD and Cyrix are around - else I wouldn't have been able to afford that cheap Celeron!
Maybe by the time the K7 is out and affordable I'll be ready to upgrade again.
| Mac in all caps like it's an acronym
...
But *Macintosh* is an acronym
"Machine Always Crashes If Not The Operating System Hangs"
| It was crazy... she couldn't even sign on to
... Avogadro's number.
| check her mail without all of these messages
| popping up from strange guys asking
| her what she was up to. She was almost
| completely turned off to the internet from this
| experience.
This reminds me of what I went through as a freshman in college. Everybody was given a mainframe account - and among its uses were such niceties as email and (local) chat.
Unfortunately for me, the login ID I was given ( "charlet" ) could apparently be mistaken by freshmen in drunken stupors for a "female" ID. (stands for CHARLEs Taylor). Eventually, I just turned off the chat/messages features altogether and told my friends to just send e-mail.
I can imagine AOL being worse by about a factor of
| "a lonely Cyclops"
:)
| No mention that she is an alien. With Xena on
| prime time, you might point out her purple hair
| and non-human species. Cyclops is a greek myth.
Huh? The character herself said she was an alien in that whole speechlet about how she understands what Fry is going through.
[lightsabers]
| And they aren't wimpy.
They were in Futurama. That's why that gag was funny in the first place.
That reminds me of the old saying.
...
... :) )
"Take only three data points, as somewhere in the world there is a sheet of graph paper that will make them a straight line."
Cable modem? Bah - when the local cable company gets those, everybody will be born with built-in T1s
(Let's see if my Sparc IPX can manage to post this without mangling the subject line
It wasn't the red graphics or the headset concept that really killed the VB, in my opinion. It was the stupidly (in terms of something that would be considered a "portable") high list price for the system that made it stillborn. I didn't buy one until they were on the clearance shelves for a (finally) decent asking price.
:)
Some of the VB games were actually really damned cool and made good use of the 3D effect. By the way, of all the VB games I've seen, only *one* uses wireframe graphics.
Please excuse my Sparc IPX from messing up the Subject line (again)
Slackware can't be *that* manly. I mean, it doesn't run on Alphas yet, does it?
...)
(Let's see if Sparc/Linux NS4.5 screws up the Subject: again
I'll have to question your assertion that "[SFC] can do a lot better than MST3K". Even if MST3K has gone down in quality since the Comedy Central days (which is of course debatable and depends on what episode you're watching), what evidence is there for any hope whatsoever that any of SFC's original programming could be "a lot better"?
Need I remind people about "Mission: Genesis"?
How about most SFC "original movies", most of which would be completely watchable only with the help of Mike or Joel and the bots?
I'm curious - what other SFC original programming might be classified as "good"?
| I bet 99% of all linux [users] just rebooted
| into [Windows] and downloaded the trailer from
| there.
Actually, I just downloaded the mpeg. Viewed it with mpegtv on my Alpha. Under Linux.
> You can buy a 27" RCA stereo TV for that.
Actually, a 27" *RCA* these days *is* pretty shitty. Those Panasonic GAOO models are pretty sweet, though.
[Re:subject]
:)
Linux might not have eyes, but X sure does!
| Personally I don't really care: I primarily
| want Mozilla because there's no decent
| browser on Linux/Alpha yet.
Now there's an idea for the Opera folks. Put out an Alpha Linux version. The old (100898) release of Mozilla is usable on Alpha/Linux systems - I mean, that's what I'm writing this message on, but it's certainly not stable and light on system resources.
I've tried compiling Mozilla with GTK on my Alpha and unfortunately all I get is a segfaulting apprunner.