Hooray! Seriously...it appears to have proper word count now (I haven't tried yet, but it *IS* the first thing listed on the new features list (and rightly so!).
Those of us with hundreds of gigs worth of music really need to take a hard look at their hoarding issues...
Nah, not really, with HD space as cheap as it is right now, why rip your music low bitrate? Go 320kbps MP3 and be stoked knowing you'll never have to re-rip your music. This, of course takes up more space, so at a high bitrate 100s of gigs is completely reasonable for a music lover's collection.
I have some money to blow on a toy for Christmas. Why should I buy an iPod over any of the other MP3 players out there like the Creative Zen?
Honestly, thats a good question (one that I have been asking myself recently as I am in the same position with some Christmas money to blow and I want an HD based MP3 player)
I have been trying to decide between the Zen and the Ipod and I have decided on an Ipod for several reasons (and I'm not even a "Mac person").
First and foremost I am choosing the iPod for build quality. Just holding it in your hand it feels more solid and well made than the Zen. Second, the design is the best, at least according to my tastes...it's very nice to use, look at and hold. Another thing is I have seen A LOT of negative reviews on the web regarding the Zen's build quality (particularly the headphone jack). There seem to be a lot of poeple out there who seem relatively intelligent (at least they were articulate and seemed compitent in their reviews) and are very unhappy with their Zens. Also, there are TONS of accessories for the ipod. Cases, battery packs, software utilities (even for Windows), from MANY manufacturers...this is not critical, but it's nice to have a selection of accessories to choose from when it comes to a product like an MP3 player.
There doesn't seem to be the option to make the 'search' bar integrate with the taskbar at all (which was what my initial pre-install impression was).
I have not downloaded this yet, but did you try right clicking on the taskbar, and selecting "MSN Deskbar" (or whatever it calls itself) from the context menu? This is how most deskbars are turned on (WMP, Samurize, Powertoys Virtual Desktop Manager, etc...).
Oh, I see where you're reading that it's $199.98 (here)...but that is with the hardware as well...
Xandros, the leading developer of easy-to-use Linux solutions, today announced that Wal-Mart.com is carrying a fully loaded Linux desktop computer with the pre-installed Xandros Desktop Operating System (OS) for only $199.98. Built by Microtel and available at Wal-Mart's online store,* the new desktop PC offers a complete suite of pre-installed software for home, school, and small office desktop use. Blah, blah blah (blahs added)
With that said, however, never once did I even ponder the idea of either downloading OR uploading recorded TV shows. Why?
1. Many people don't own PVRs, so downloading is their best shot at seeing a show they missed when it was broadcast.
2. It's completely on demand. I can hit up the ShunTV tracker or another TV Torrent site and get whatever I want when ever I want, no PVR necessary
3. On quality sites like ShunTV the files are very good quality (many captures are HDTV caps).
4. If you are someone like me, who watches very few shows, but watches them religiously (Jon Stewart fans should understand this), the torrent method is very convenient.
5. I, personally pay for full cable service, and watch shows when they air (sometimes), but enjoy the choice of having a digital file on my computer to watch again if I want. Other folks (like the ones who only watch one or two shows as referred to in #4 above) may not want to order a full cable package just to watch Jon Stewart or Mythbusters. If the cable companies would listen to their customers and make channel selection "a-la-carte", tv torrents would be unnecessary for many folks. but as it stands, many people don't want the Food Network and the Golf Channel and The "Fill in your genre here" channel...they just want basic channels and, say, Comedy and CNN, so they just grab the torrent(s) of the few things they *do* like instead.
6. On the geeky artist end of things, having a show downloaded onto the computer is great becuase nothing more needs to be done to utilize those files as I see fit. Perhaps I want to make a "mashup" with Fox news anchor footage and techno music that makes a political statement (Like The Party Party did on KGBTv), or maybe I want to sample "Aqua Teen Hunger Force" into a hip hop track I am working on (like the Kleptones did on "A Night At The Hiphopera"
Just my.02.
Re:Shouldn't this be posted Anonymously...
on
Preview of KDE 3.4
·
· Score: 1
There is one factor you are missing that/. takes into account: how often you visit slashdot. As I understand it, the closer you are to the "average" logged-in slashdot user, the better your chances of getting mod points (if you don't visit enough, or visit too much you have less of a chance for mod points). I can't remember where I read that, but from my own experience, it sounds about right.
Case in point: I had "positive" karma and visited slashdot four or five times a day (give or take a few visits). I got mod points twice a month for several months in a row. I set/. as my homepage, and visited ALOT more often when I was going through a stretch of unemployment, and (even though my Karma went to "Excellent" due to modding of my posts) I no longer got mod points (for months on end) because I was visiting too much. I got a new job, and changed my homepage, went back to visiting quite a bit, but not nearly as often as when I was unemployed, and *boom*, the FIRST DAY after/. was no longer my browsers home page...mod points. And again a week later. Interesting.
The only thing Windows handles being removed "gracefully" is a floppy (and I'd hardly say "gracefully", if you had a file open on the disk).
I'm not sure what version of Windows you are using, but in XP Pro (and I believe XP Home and Win2K as well) USB and Firewire drive handling is top notch.
I can plug in my external Firewire/USB 2.0 HD (nothing fancy, just a regular 200GB Western Digital Caviar desktop drive in an aluminum enclosure) and Windows pops open a window with the drives contents. Unplug and the Window closes itself.
Furthermore, if you go into the "Device Manager" (on the "Hardware" tab of the "System Properties" property sheet that is accessd by right clicking "My Computer" and selecting "Properties") you will then be able to right click on the drive itself, and change settings on the "Policies" tab, which has settings for write caching and safe removal. You can set the drive to operate for "performance", which requires you to disconnect it via the "Safely remove hardware" applet, or you can optimize write caching for "Quick removal" which turns off write caching, which gives you a performance hit, but allows you to connect and disconnect the device with impunity. "Quick Removal" is the default setting for external drives, so I'm not sure where your bad experiences came from unless you are referring to Windows 9X or perhaps some kind of proprietary drive that has it's own system (like some HD-based MP3 players).
It seems a bit ironic to me that later in your post you say "Sounds like he had one bad/erratic experience that he thought was related to disk removal, and created this entire issue around it" in reference to the Mac being criticized, but your opening statement seems like you doing the same thing toward the Windows platform.
I just loaded up Warty 0.8.2.2 on a Win2K box, and it was a NO GO on writing to NTFS. I must have gotten my live CDs mixed up, I know I have one around here that writes to NTFS, but I can't for the life of me remember which one...
On a side note, i was going to protest being modded flamebait in my GP post above (still not exactly sure who I was baiting flames from), but seeing as I was wrong, I suppose I deserve it.
I didn't extensively test it, but I'm fairly certain the latest version (I have 0.8.2.2) has write support enabled for NTFS.
I can't remember if I mounted the internal IDE or a firewire drive, but I remember being surprised that it had writes enabled (especially odd for a live CD that is semi-noob oriented).
I'll give it a check and post back here if I can verify.
I suppose that a lot of tools on both discs could be considered crossover tools as far as functionality goes. To me, something like Helix would have a little more usefulness due to the first section of tools listed on the Helix site (the Forensics section).
After taking a closer look at the Knoppix STD and Helix sites side by side, they do look very similar, though, as if the Helix guys were copying the Knoppix STD guys in their descriptions
Knoppix-STD is more of a set of security tools. It has lots of pentesting tools, a honeypot, AP scanner and wep cracker for Wifi, etherreal, etc...basically all the tools a security professinal would need...
Helix sounds more like it is geared toward IT people and technicians who are trying to diagnose and/or fix machines, and contains a COMPLETELY different set of tools (including, apparantly, tools that run when you insert the disc in Windows and virus scanning w/o having to enter windows)
And that's just one of the reasons why my BT client is configured to not use 6881-6889.
Configuring your BT client to non-standard ports will work to keep you under you ISPs radar if your ISP monitors traffic over common P2P ports (they could still catch you if they were looking, but you would be a *tiny bit* less conspicuous).
The nature of how bittorrent works is FAR from anonymous and like I said in the list, if someone interested in enforcing intellectual property laws joins a torrent that contains illegal files, and invokes "netstat -an", you're gonna show up on the list of ips in the torrent regardless of the port you are using (it's just the way BT works)
If you want to bump up your level of safety, you can try an IP blacklist.
1. Connect to bittorrent tracker 2. Determine that the.torrent in question points to protected intellectual property 3. "netstat -an" 4. Record all connetions to 6889 5. Subpoena ISPs 6. Litigate 7. Rinse and repeat
The whole concept sounds a lot like Aimster. I never used Aimster (because i havent used the AIM application since Trillian became available), but as I remember it, it was an application that "piggybacked" on AIM and allowed you to have filesharing circle with anyone on your buddy list. This "Grouper" thing just seems to run with that idea to me. Aimster ran into legal trouble and became Madster.
The whole concept sounds a lot like Aimster. I never used Aimster (because i havent used the AIM application since Trillian became available), but as I remember it, it was an application that "piggybacked" on AIM and allowed you to have filesharing circle with anyone on your buddy list. This "Grouper" thing just seems to run with that idea to me. Aimster (a href="http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/09/09/ 0049220&tid=141">ran into legal trouble and became Madster.
Thanks, that's good to know. I constantly hear folks touting Knoppix's "advanced hardware detection" and assumed that the version of Mandrake on the Globetrotter incorporated something similar. I have used Linux a bit and am comforable installing it and such but I wasn't too sure about being able to "plug and play" on different hardware.
I have left a nice solid 40GB partition unformatted on the disk, so I guess I know what my weekend project is going to be.
Knoppix on a HD?
on
Knoppix Hacks
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
Hopefully this is on topic enough:
Ever since I saw the Mandrake Globetrotter I have been really wanting to roll my own "portable linux virtual machine". I don't want to pay for the overpirced Globetrotter, so I bought a 200GB drive with an external Firewire/USB2.0 enclosure.
Now, I have found some excellent resources on installing Linux on an external firewire drive, but the thing is, this (and other articles) are written with the idea that the end result will be used on one system, my goal is to have something like the Globetrotter which is a FULL distro of Mandrake 10, with the awesome hardware detection of Knoppix at boot time (so it can used it on multiple machines with no problem, like a Knoppix disc).
My question is, how would one go about doing this? I have considered just using the Knoppix "install to hard drive" feature, but I would rather have a more robust fully featured distro from the get go. Mandrake does not make it clear on their site if Mandrake 10 has the inherant ability to detect hardware at bootime like the version that comes on the Globetrotter does...any ideas?
Slashdot Mirror
Ah yes...the Subservient Chicken. Even funnier was the list of stuff it would actually do!
Oh dear god... it's ESPRESSO no freakin' x
Maybe he thought it made pens.
Hooray! Seriously...it appears to have proper word count now (I haven't tried yet, but it *IS* the first thing listed on the new features list (and rightly so!).
Those of us with hundreds of gigs worth of music really need to take a hard look at their hoarding issues...
Nah, not really, with HD space as cheap as it is right now, why rip your music low bitrate? Go 320kbps MP3 and be stoked knowing you'll never have to re-rip your music. This, of course takes up more space, so at a high bitrate 100s of gigs is completely reasonable for a music lover's collection.
I have some money to blow on a toy for Christmas. Why should I buy an iPod over any of the other MP3 players out there like the Creative Zen?
Honestly, thats a good question (one that I have been asking myself recently as I am in the same position with some Christmas money to blow and I want an HD based MP3 player)
I have been trying to decide between the Zen and the Ipod and I have decided on an Ipod for several reasons (and I'm not even a "Mac person").
First and foremost I am choosing the iPod for build quality. Just holding it in your hand it feels more solid and well made than the Zen. Second, the design is the best, at least according to my tastes...it's very nice to use, look at and hold. Another thing is I have seen A LOT of negative reviews on the web regarding the Zen's build quality (particularly the headphone jack). There seem to be a lot of poeple out there who seem relatively intelligent (at least they were articulate and seemed compitent in their reviews) and are very unhappy with their Zens. Also, there are TONS of accessories for the ipod. Cases, battery packs, software utilities (even for Windows), from MANY manufacturers...this is not critical, but it's nice to have a selection of accessories to choose from when it comes to a product like an MP3 player.
There doesn't seem to be the option to make the 'search' bar integrate with the taskbar at all (which was what my initial pre-install impression was).
I have not downloaded this yet, but did you try right clicking on the taskbar, and selecting "MSN Deskbar" (or whatever it calls itself) from the context menu? This is how most deskbars are turned on (WMP, Samurize, Powertoys Virtual Desktop Manager, etc...).
PeerGuardian is what you are describing. It has multiple blacklists, including Spyware/Malware IPs.
Oh, I see where you're reading that it's $199.98 (here)...but that is with the hardware as well...
Xandros, the leading developer of easy-to-use Linux solutions, today announced that Wal-Mart.com is carrying a fully loaded Linux desktop computer with the pre-installed Xandros Desktop Operating System (OS) for only $199.98. Built by Microtel and available at Wal-Mart's online store,* the new desktop PC offers a complete suite of pre-installed software for home, school, and small office desktop use. Blah, blah blah (blahs added)
Where are you reading $199.98? From the final page of the article:
Deluxe Edition $89.95; Standard Edition $49.95; Open Circulation Edition is free.
With that said, however, never once did I even ponder the idea of either downloading OR uploading recorded TV shows. Why?
.02.
1. Many people don't own PVRs, so downloading is their best shot at seeing a show they missed when it was broadcast.
2. It's completely on demand. I can hit up the ShunTV tracker or another TV Torrent site and get whatever I want when ever I want, no PVR necessary
3. On quality sites like ShunTV the files are very good quality (many captures are HDTV caps).
4. If you are someone like me, who watches very few shows, but watches them religiously (Jon Stewart fans should understand this), the torrent method is very convenient.
5. I, personally pay for full cable service, and watch shows when they air (sometimes), but enjoy the choice of having a digital file on my computer to watch again if I want. Other folks (like the ones who only watch one or two shows as referred to in #4 above) may not want to order a full cable package just to watch Jon Stewart or Mythbusters. If the cable companies would listen to their customers and make channel selection "a-la-carte", tv torrents would be unnecessary for many folks. but as it stands, many people don't want the Food Network and the Golf Channel and The "Fill in your genre here" channel...they just want basic channels and, say, Comedy and CNN, so they just grab the torrent(s) of the few things they *do* like instead.
6. On the geeky artist end of things, having a show downloaded onto the computer is great becuase nothing more needs to be done to utilize those files as I see fit. Perhaps I want to make a "mashup" with Fox news anchor footage and techno music that makes a political statement (Like The Party Party did on KGBTv), or maybe I want to sample "Aqua Teen Hunger Force" into a hip hop track I am working on (like the Kleptones did on "A Night At The Hiphopera"
Just my
There is one factor you are missing that /. takes into account: how often you visit slashdot. As I understand it, the closer you are to the "average" logged-in slashdot user, the better your chances of getting mod points (if you don't visit enough, or visit too much you have less of a chance for mod points). I can't remember where I read that, but from my own experience, it sounds about right.
/. as my homepage, and visited ALOT more often when I was going through a stretch of unemployment, and (even though my Karma went to "Excellent" due to modding of my posts) I no longer got mod points (for months on end) because I was visiting too much. I got a new job, and changed my homepage, went back to visiting quite a bit, but not nearly as often as when I was unemployed, and *boom*, the FIRST DAY after /. was no longer my browsers home page...mod points. And again a week later. Interesting.
Case in point: I had "positive" karma and visited slashdot four or five times a day (give or take a few visits). I got mod points twice a month for several months in a row. I set
Shouldn't it be "virii"?
No, it shouldn't
The only thing Windows handles being removed "gracefully" is a floppy (and I'd hardly say "gracefully", if you had a file open on the disk).
I'm not sure what version of Windows you are using, but in XP Pro (and I believe XP Home and Win2K as well) USB and Firewire drive handling is top notch.
I can plug in my external Firewire/USB 2.0 HD (nothing fancy, just a regular 200GB Western Digital Caviar desktop drive in an aluminum enclosure) and Windows pops open a window with the drives contents. Unplug and the Window closes itself.
Furthermore, if you go into the "Device Manager" (on the "Hardware" tab of the "System Properties" property sheet that is accessd by right clicking "My Computer" and selecting "Properties") you will then be able to right click on the drive itself, and change settings on the "Policies" tab, which has settings for write caching and safe removal. You can set the drive to operate for "performance", which requires you to disconnect it via the "Safely remove hardware" applet, or you can optimize write caching for "Quick removal" which turns off write caching, which gives you a performance hit, but allows you to connect and disconnect the device with impunity. "Quick Removal" is the default setting for external drives, so I'm not sure where your bad experiences came from unless you are referring to Windows 9X or perhaps some kind of proprietary drive that has it's own system (like some HD-based MP3 players).
It seems a bit ironic to me that later in your post you say "Sounds like he had one bad/erratic experience that he thought was related to disk removal, and created this entire issue around it" in reference to the Mac being criticized, but your opening statement seems like you doing the same thing toward the Windows platform.
O.K. My bad.
I just loaded up Warty 0.8.2.2 on a Win2K box, and it was a NO GO on writing to NTFS. I must have gotten my live CDs mixed up, I know I have one around here that writes to NTFS, but I can't for the life of me remember which one...
On a side note, i was going to protest being modded flamebait in my GP post above (still not exactly sure who I was baiting flames from), but seeing as I was wrong, I suppose I deserve it.
I didn't extensively test it, but I'm fairly certain the latest version (I have 0.8.2.2) has write support enabled for NTFS.
I can't remember if I mounted the internal IDE or a firewire drive, but I remember being surprised that it had writes enabled (especially odd for a live CD that is semi-noob oriented).
I'll give it a check and post back here if I can verify.
I suppose that a lot of tools on both discs could be considered crossover tools as far as functionality goes. To me, something like Helix would have a little more usefulness due to the first section of tools listed on the Helix site (the Forensics section).
After taking a closer look at the Knoppix STD and Helix sites side by side, they do look very similar, though, as if the Helix guys were copying the Knoppix STD guys in their descriptions
Knoppix-STD is more of a set of security tools. It has lots of pentesting tools, a honeypot, AP scanner and wep cracker for Wifi, etherreal, etc...basically all the tools a security professinal would need...
Helix sounds more like it is geared toward IT people and technicians who are trying to diagnose and/or fix machines, and contains a COMPLETELY different set of tools (including, apparantly, tools that run when you insert the disc in Windows and virus scanning w/o having to enter windows)
Hop on the Helix Torrent and saturate my DSL (seriously, I'm only getting 22KiB).
The Gnoppix live-CD (based on Ubuntu) writes to NTFS out of the box (but like other posters have mentioned, it's not quite "safe").
And that's just one of the reasons why my BT client is configured to not use 6881-6889.
Configuring your BT client to non-standard ports will work to keep you under you ISPs radar if your ISP monitors traffic over common P2P ports (they could still catch you if they were looking, but you would be a *tiny bit* less conspicuous).
The nature of how bittorrent works is FAR from anonymous and like I said in the list, if someone interested in enforcing intellectual property laws joins a torrent that contains illegal files, and invokes "netstat -an", you're gonna show up on the list of ips in the torrent regardless of the port you are using (it's just the way BT works)
If you want to bump up your level of safety, you can try an IP blacklist.
1. Connect to bittorrent tracker .torrent in question points to protected intellectual property
2. Determine that the
3. "netstat -an"
4. Record all connetions to 6889
5. Subpoena ISPs
6. Litigate
7. Rinse and repeat
Oops...
The whole concept sounds a lot like Aimster. I never used Aimster (because i havent used the AIM application since Trillian became available), but as I remember it, it was an application that "piggybacked" on AIM and allowed you to have filesharing circle with anyone on your buddy list. This "Grouper" thing just seems to run with that idea to me. Aimster ran into legal trouble and became Madster.
The whole concept sounds a lot like Aimster. I never used Aimster (because i havent used the AIM application since Trillian became available), but as I remember it, it was an application that "piggybacked" on AIM and allowed you to have filesharing circle with anyone on your buddy list. This "Grouper" thing just seems to run with that idea to me. Aimster (a href="http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/09/09/ 0049220&tid=141">ran into legal trouble and became Madster.
Thanks, that's good to know. I constantly hear folks touting Knoppix's "advanced hardware detection" and assumed that the version of Mandrake on the Globetrotter incorporated something similar. I have used Linux a bit and am comforable installing it and such but I wasn't too sure about being able to "plug and play" on different hardware.
I have left a nice solid 40GB partition unformatted on the disk, so I guess I know what my weekend project is going to be.
Hopefully this is on topic enough:
Ever since I saw the Mandrake Globetrotter I have been really wanting to roll my own "portable linux virtual machine". I don't want to pay for the overpirced Globetrotter, so I bought a 200GB drive with an external Firewire/USB2.0 enclosure.
Now, I have found some excellent resources on installing Linux on an external firewire drive, but the thing is, this (and other articles) are written with the idea that the end result will be used on one system, my goal is to have something like the Globetrotter which is a FULL distro of Mandrake 10, with the awesome hardware detection of Knoppix at boot time (so it can used it on multiple machines with no problem, like a Knoppix disc).
My question is, how would one go about doing this? I have considered just using the Knoppix "install to hard drive" feature, but I would rather have a more robust fully featured distro from the get go. Mandrake does not make it clear on their site if Mandrake 10 has the inherant ability to detect hardware at bootime like the version that comes on the Globetrotter does...any ideas?