This is a place for good old fashioned Victor Rat Traps. From your favorite home center. These are the 4"x8" oversized wooden mousetraps. Bait some of them with peanut butter and some others with bacon, hard salami or slim-jim. Be real careful setting them, because they can break your fingers. My advice is to start with at least a dozen traps (they are cheap)... If you can screw the traps down, so much the better. Use gloves when disposing of the dead rats.
I have no problem with the content producers getting paid for their content, and no problem paying for what I use, but I do have a big problem subsidizing somebody else's habit. If ESPN can do this, then what's to stop MTV, Hulu, Playboy, Vivid, etc... If they need money for their internet content, it's the specific end-users who should carry the cost...
I don't understand why existing well known business models cannot apply to internet TV: advertiser supported, like today's broadcast television, subscriber supported, like HBO, or a true pay-to-play, like today's pay-per-view.
So for the million dollar question: which distro does Torvalds himself use? "I want one of the 'large enough' community distributions that I can trivially download, install and update over the net, and that is proactive but not crazy about updating.
"That pretty much narrows it down to openSUSE and Fedora, with Ubuntu being a possible third one. And for the last few years, it has been Fedora," he reveals.
I was thinking pretty much the same thing... Except I did not include openSUSE, because it has the Stink of Novell on it. Fedora and Ubuntu are first-class, first-rate Linux distributions, widely available, and widely used. Either Fedora or Ubuntu can be simply installed onto most any modern PC, and provide functionality for free that would cost (literally) thousands of dollars for the commercial equivalents.
I think that this year (really!) will be the year for mainstream Linux desktops. Microsoft's missteps with Vista, and the general state of the economy will combine to get more people to look around for reasonable alternatives.
The real reason Linux has not better penetrated the market is the lack of high-end applications, ala Photoshop, that run on Linux. However, we get closer and closer with reasonable alternatives that meet 80% of the users needs: The Gimp, and Open Office, for instance.
Wow. I looked. you are right, there are hundreds of those converter boxes on ebay. I wonder how many of those were bought with taxpayer-funded coupons? I would bet that most were.
Uhhh, yeah. What beats dban, especially when joined with beer and or whisky, is putting your old hard drive on an anvil and having a couple first class whacks at it with a great big sledgehammer.
You should try it. It is much more comforting and entertaining that watching dban run.
Of course, if you smashed the drive while dban was running on it, that could be even more relaxing. Computer case and CRT optional.
Have you ever heard of S3 Sleep and Wake On LAN? Hello?
Suppose you work in a large corporate environment where there are maybe 3,000 PCs at. Suddenly your $75/per becomes $225,000. That's a couple peoples salaries!
There are other cost savings besides the savings in electrical power. In warm climates, and during Summer in the temperate climates, there is also burden on site HVAC to remove the heat from these 3,000 PCs.
IMHO, just putting the computers asleep at night is not aggressive enough. Put them to sleep after 10-20 minutes of inactivity...
I don't think it is the fault of the motherboard. Most modern motherboards should have no problem with S3 suspend.
I have PCs at home that are set up to suspend after 20 minutes of inactivity. That does not always work right, in fact, just running certain applications seem to prevent the system from ever going to sleep. I, too, have tried to debug this, with limited success. I suppose I should spend some more time on this, as the cost savings is certainly greater than just electricity alone.
Uhhh, a lot of the solutions mentioned in TFA are not open source, but they are cheaper than their more expensive competition. i.e. Basecamp, dimdim, etc. are not open source..
OTOH, SugarCRM, asterisk, open office are open source, free in both senses.
Both candidate's plans will exacerbate the deficit and increase the debt.
Cutting taxes is not the solution here. Cutting taxes and providing "fully refundable tax credits" (Obama) or cutting corporate taxes (McCain) are both plans that will lead to further economic ruin.
It is reasonable for us to demand that the government stop wasteful spending (including pork barrel project, ill-advised, expensive international entanglements i.e. Iraq, and most unfunded entitlements), that reasonable taxation (ala the "Fair Tax") is enacted, that the budget is balanced, and that the deficit gets paid down.
This sounds like the same kind of philosophy that said that "everyone should be able to go to college" and "everyone should be able to buy a big house."
Just plain stupid.
Life is hard, folks. A quality life is going to require a lot of hard work. If you cannot pass your classes in high school, there are still jobs to had, but don't expect that you deserve that 65" plasma TV and the S-class Mercedes.
That's a specious argument. Just because you can download some of the source of OS X, doesn't make Apple an "open" company. Their behavior demonstrates otherwise.
I dislike Apple less than I dislike Microsoft. However, if I want to run their OS, which is clearly superior to Windows, there is a > 25% premium on the hardware. Why can't I run OS X on a Dell, or Lenovo laptop? Why am I locked into Apple's hardware? Because Apple is a proprietary company.
Apple (who is even more proprietary than Microsoft) has seen amazingly significant growth in their user base.
Desktop Linux (this is the year! again.) is growing.
People don't want to pay $200 for their operating system and another $400 (or more) for application software, just to write a few letters, surf the web, balance their checkbook and (maybe) run spreadsheets or create presentations. That's just not worth $600.
Ubuntu, Fedora, or what have you, and you get all this for free.
Vista (the OS that nobody wants) is becoming increasingly irrelevant. Windows 7 will suffer the same fate.
I generally decommission hard drives with a sledgehammer and an anvil. I feel safe that my data cannot be recovered by anybody, including 16-Systems, all the data recovery companies, and agencies of the US Government.
However, if you would like to prove me wrong, send me $60 (which I will refund when you return the remains of the drive). If you can read my browser history (saying "you looked at Slashdot" is not going to do it) I will provide you with a tasty BBQ sandwich, the likes of which you have never had before. And you get to keep the baggie of crushed hard drive parts.
Seriously, the data recovery people are in business to recover **accidentally** deleted or damaged data. Deliberately deleted is another story all together.
Yep. Same experience. I tried it and was amazed by the speed (pages seem to load much faster than FireFox), but without NoScript and AdBlock, I'm not gonna use it. Plus I'd miss the wonderful "WebDeveloper" plugin on Firefox, too.
I'm waiting to see the battle royale between V8 and Spider Monkey too see which set of JavaScript optimizations win!
The good news here is that because Chrome is open-source, everybody wins! With the possible exception of Microsoft.
All TV costs money. Even OTA costs money, it's just that you are not the one paying for it, the advertisers are.
Look at HBO for a classic example of Pay TV. There are no commercials at all, and only promotional material for their programming between shows. Perfect. I'm paying $13 a month for this, and I watch 8-10 hours of it monthly. So my model of $1/hour would save me money.
I think that there is plenty of room for advertiser-sponsored internet television. You can have the show for free if you are willing to put up with the 12 minutes of advertising per hour (that you cannot fast forward through), or you can pay $1-2 for the show with no commercials. I'd love that. I want it.
As far as free (and I mean advertiser sponsored) OTA TV, have you tried to receive digital TV in a fringe area? It's not a picnic. You may need a large antenna, preamplifier, and possibly a rotor. Instead of the picture gracefully degrading into snow, or some ghosting, it just freezes, pixellates, or goes away entirely. Not good. For many viewers, OTA TV is going to be much harder to get, and they will be forced to use some other kind of service.
Thankfully, along with the cable TV providers, satellite TV is also in trouble. They do not have sufficient bandwidth to "narrow-cast" to individual customers.
I don't know how long it will take, but my guess is 10 to 20 years from now, the cable and satellite TV providers and quite possibly terrestrial TV broadcasters will be history.
You don't get it. It is **all** going to be on demand. Every bit of it. TV Broadcasting is dead, Cable TV is dead, they just haven't figured it out yet.
The future in video entertainment is all coming at you on Internet Protocol, or whatever succeeds it.
Cable TV is going the way of the dodo. And good riddance.
Cable TV as we know it is circling the drain already.
The whole idea of sending a 750 MHz wide signal (yes! nearly 3/4 gigabit!) of signal to a home, where only 3-6 MHz of signal is actually going to be used is just plain silly.
I cannot wait for IP-based television to become predominant. The television and video entertainment markets as we know them are going to be stood on their heads, and it could not happen to a nicer bunch. (You can already see this happening with Apple TV and the RoKu NetFlix player...)
This little tidbit seems to explicitly prohibit this:
"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."
I really don't want any Microsoft software running in my car. I have seen the BSOD too many times. If I cannot adjust the damn heat because the software is unstable, guess what! I'm not buying that car.
(Does anybody remember the problems with the BMW iDrive system?)
Slashdot Mirror
This is a place for good old fashioned Victor Rat Traps. From your favorite home center. These are the 4"x8" oversized wooden mousetraps. Bait some of them with peanut butter and some others with bacon, hard salami or slim-jim. Be real careful setting them, because they can break your fingers. My advice is to start with at least a dozen traps (they are cheap)... If you can screw the traps down, so much the better. Use gloves when disposing of the dead rats.
I have no problem with the content producers getting paid for their content, and no problem paying for what I use, but I do have a big problem subsidizing somebody else's habit. If ESPN can do this, then what's to stop MTV, Hulu, Playboy, Vivid, etc... If they need money for their internet content, it's the specific end-users who should carry the cost...
I don't understand why existing well known business models cannot apply to internet TV: advertiser supported, like today's broadcast television, subscriber supported, like HBO, or a true pay-to-play, like today's pay-per-view.
I was thinking pretty much the same thing... Except I did not include openSUSE, because it has the Stink of Novell on it. Fedora and Ubuntu are first-class, first-rate Linux distributions, widely available, and widely used. Either Fedora or Ubuntu can be simply installed onto most any modern PC, and provide functionality for free that would cost (literally) thousands of dollars for the commercial equivalents.
I think that this year (really!) will be the year for mainstream Linux desktops. Microsoft's missteps with Vista, and the general state of the economy will combine to get more people to look around for reasonable alternatives.
The real reason Linux has not better penetrated the market is the lack of high-end applications, ala Photoshop, that run on Linux. However, we get closer and closer with reasonable alternatives that meet 80% of the users needs: The Gimp, and Open Office, for instance.
Wow. I looked. you are right, there are hundreds of those converter boxes on ebay. I wonder how many of those were bought with taxpayer-funded coupons? I would bet that most were.
Ham is not an acronym, and should not be capitalized.
thank you.
Uhhh, yeah. What beats dban, especially when joined with beer and or whisky, is putting your old hard drive on an anvil and having a couple first class whacks at it with a great big sledgehammer.
You should try it. It is much more comforting and entertaining that watching dban run.
Of course, if you smashed the drive while dban was running on it, that could be even more relaxing. Computer case and CRT optional.
Have you ever heard of S3 Sleep and Wake On LAN? Hello?
Suppose you work in a large corporate environment where there are maybe 3,000 PCs at. Suddenly your $75/per becomes $225,000. That's a couple peoples salaries!
There are other cost savings besides the savings in electrical power. In warm climates, and during Summer in the temperate climates, there is also burden on site HVAC to remove the heat from these 3,000 PCs.
IMHO, just putting the computers asleep at night is not aggressive enough. Put them to sleep after 10-20 minutes of inactivity...
I don't think it is the fault of the motherboard. Most modern motherboards should have no problem with S3 suspend.
I have PCs at home that are set up to suspend after 20 minutes of inactivity. That does not always work right, in fact, just running certain applications seem to prevent the system from ever going to sleep. I, too, have tried to debug this, with limited success. I suppose I should spend some more time on this, as the cost savings is certainly greater than just electricity alone.
our small business uses Quickbooks for accounting.
I'm not sure whether I hate Quickbooks or Intuit (the vendor) more.
Is there a decent open source business accounting package that our accountant can deal with?
We are using it for invoicing, accounts receivable, check register, etc. Nothing fancy.
Uhhh, a lot of the solutions mentioned in TFA are not open source, but they are cheaper than their more expensive competition. i.e. Basecamp, dimdim, etc. are not open source..
OTOH, SugarCRM, asterisk, open office are open source, free in both senses.
Anyway, an interesting list...
M-x tetris
Yes, I am working, thank you very much.
Hear hear!
Both candidate's plans will exacerbate the deficit and increase the debt.
Cutting taxes is not the solution here. Cutting taxes and providing "fully refundable tax credits" (Obama) or cutting corporate taxes (McCain) are both plans that will lead to further economic ruin.
It is reasonable for us to demand that the government stop wasteful spending (including pork barrel project, ill-advised, expensive international entanglements i.e. Iraq, and most unfunded entitlements), that reasonable taxation (ala the "Fair Tax") is enacted, that the budget is balanced, and that the deficit gets paid down.
This sounds like the same kind of philosophy that said that "everyone should be able to go to college" and "everyone should be able to buy a big house."
Just plain stupid.
Life is hard, folks. A quality life is going to require a lot of hard work. If you cannot pass your classes in high school, there are still jobs to had, but don't expect that you deserve that 65" plasma TV and the S-class Mercedes.
That's a specious argument. Just because you can download some of the source of OS X, doesn't make Apple an "open" company. Their behavior demonstrates otherwise.
I dislike Apple less than I dislike Microsoft. However, if I want to run their OS, which is clearly superior to Windows, there is a > 25% premium on the hardware. Why can't I run OS X on a Dell, or Lenovo laptop? Why am I locked into Apple's hardware? Because Apple is a proprietary company.
Who cares?
Apple (who is even more proprietary than Microsoft) has seen amazingly significant growth in their user base.
Desktop Linux (this is the year! again.) is growing.
People don't want to pay $200 for their operating system and another $400 (or more) for application software, just to write a few letters, surf the web, balance their checkbook and (maybe) run spreadsheets or create presentations. That's just not worth $600.
Ubuntu, Fedora, or what have you, and you get all this for free.
Vista (the OS that nobody wants) is becoming increasingly irrelevant. Windows 7 will suffer the same fate.
I generally decommission hard drives with a sledgehammer and an anvil. I feel safe that my data cannot be recovered by anybody, including 16-Systems, all the data recovery companies, and agencies of the US Government.
However, if you would like to prove me wrong, send me $60 (which I will refund when you return the remains of the drive). If you can read my browser history (saying "you looked at Slashdot" is not going to do it) I will provide you with a tasty BBQ sandwich, the likes of which you have never had before. And you get to keep the baggie of crushed hard drive parts.
Seriously, the data recovery people are in business to recover **accidentally** deleted or damaged data. Deliberately deleted is another story all together.
Please explain what is good about a car that gets 20% better mileage on fuel that is 25% more expensive...
The E85 freaks are in the same basket... So the E85 costs 15% less than gasoline... But the cars get 25% worse mileage. There's no economy there.
I'm waiting to see the battle royale between V8 and Spider Monkey too see which set of JavaScript optimizations win!
The good news here is that because Chrome is open-source, everybody wins! With the possible exception of Microsoft.
Hell, I'm a lot older than Taco, but my user number is higher than his...
All TV costs money. Even OTA costs money, it's just that you are not the one paying for it, the advertisers are.
Look at HBO for a classic example of Pay TV. There are no commercials at all, and only promotional material for their programming between shows. Perfect. I'm paying $13 a month for this, and I watch 8-10 hours of it monthly. So my model of $1/hour would save me money.
I think that there is plenty of room for advertiser-sponsored internet television. You can have the show for free if you are willing to put up with the 12 minutes of advertising per hour (that you cannot fast forward through), or you can pay $1-2 for the show with no commercials. I'd love that. I want it.
As far as free (and I mean advertiser sponsored) OTA TV, have you tried to receive digital TV in a fringe area? It's not a picnic. You may need a large antenna, preamplifier, and possibly a rotor. Instead of the picture gracefully degrading into snow, or some ghosting, it just freezes, pixellates, or goes away entirely. Not good. For many viewers, OTA TV is going to be much harder to get, and they will be forced to use some other kind of service.
Thankfully, along with the cable TV providers, satellite TV is also in trouble. They do not have sufficient bandwidth to "narrow-cast" to individual customers.
I don't know how long it will take, but my guess is 10 to 20 years from now, the cable and satellite TV providers and quite possibly terrestrial TV broadcasters will be history.
I can't wait!
You don't get it. It is **all** going to be on demand. Every bit of it. TV Broadcasting is dead, Cable TV is dead, they just haven't figured it out yet.
The future in video entertainment is all coming at you on Internet Protocol, or whatever succeeds it.
Cable TV is going the way of the dodo. And good riddance.
Cable TV as we know it is circling the drain already.
The whole idea of sending a 750 MHz wide signal (yes! nearly 3/4 gigabit!) of signal to a home, where only 3-6 MHz of signal is actually going to be used is just plain silly.
I cannot wait for IP-based television to become predominant. The television and video entertainment markets as we know them are going to be stood on their heads, and it could not happen to a nicer bunch. (You can already see this happening with Apple TV and the RoKu NetFlix player...)
Yeah. You go ahead and do that. We'll all see you on TV as you are bundled off in chains.
Hmmm.
This little tidbit seems to explicitly prohibit this:
"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution
Of course, the current administration seems to like to use the Constitution for toilet paper, anyway.
But I would expect a challenge to this ruling on the basis that it violates the spirit and the letter of the 4th amendment.
I really don't want any Microsoft software running in my car. I have seen the BSOD too many times. If I cannot adjust the damn heat because the software is unstable, guess what! I'm not buying that car. (Does anybody remember the problems with the BMW iDrive system?)