I'm not sure if this is really relevant - but (once you've got Linux or BSD running on old hardware it seems to make sense to run them as X terminals.
I've been involved in a project where we are using a number of low end Pentiums without much ram as X terminals to a more powerful machine with plenty of ram running StarOffice and displaying on each of these old machines.
It seems to work well at the moment, we are still in the testing stage, but it looks like the management of the machines will be much easier than the current Windows systems elsewhere.
I've also tried this same project with these machines running a stripped down version of Windows 95 and using Microsoft's Terminal Services client as the shell=. In our office, (since most people have Server on their machines) this provides a quick and easy way for them to access their machines from just about anywhere.
There is the old story about how to boil/cook a frog. For the purposes of this story it is important to remem ber that frogs are amphibians.
Now, If you just toss a frog straight into a pot of boiling water, this is not going to to anything but upset the frog and make the frog jump out of the pot. BUT, if you put the frog into the pot when tha water is cool, the frog will like it. If you then very gradually raise the temperature of the water the frog will not notice it. You can eventually raise the temperature of the water until it is boiling, and you now have one cooked frog dinner. NOTE, California bullfrogs, weighing in at about 3 or 4 pounds, have enough meat to make a decent meal.:)
How does this relate? Simple.
The long term strategy of MS is to slowly increment changes in the way things worked so that in the end, everything works they way they want, and they can dictate how it goes together. If they got greedy and tried to do it all in a year or so, then they would never get agreeement. But by implementing it bit and piece, they can continue to carve a large and larger section of the pie for themselves. All they have to do is think longer term than their opponents.
Actually, I am sure they have on a wall someplace their equivalent of a 5 or 10 year plan to conquer the known (software) world, subject to revision and new discoveries, etc. They likely planned killing off Windows about 3 to 5 years ago when it became obvious that the legal suites were beginning to be a real pain. They are not there yet, but they needed an escape plan. Part of the move to taking over the Internet was part of this escape plan, which is why Gates made sure it was the equivalent of a oceanliner coming to a halt and turning on a dime.
How to we handle this?
We need as far reaching an effort and long range vision as they do. A competitive Argument that resonates. Microsofts's sells to the inherently lazy streak in people, even if the PR is twisted. They sell to "we make it easier for you".
...can be found here. (That's http://www.paradyne.com/sourcebook_offer/ for the goatse weary.) It should be a little ways into exactly how DSL works, and why you'd be ineligible for it.
I know here in Texas, SWBell is rolling out "Project Pronto" - which is essentially moving the DSLAM farther out to the customers - but as I understand it, it's a different setup than just moving the DSLAM (as a previous poster pointed out, compacted enviromentally hardened DSLAM's would be a bit pricey).
Certainly, any large corporation should both secure themselves to the best of their ability, AND take out a policy.
Reading sites like CERT, l0pht and rootshell is never going to become useless, because at some point they will charge you so much for your coverage that you can no longer afford to remain in buisness. There will continue to be a need for security.
At the same time, I do think that for a short time at least, this will lead to lax security in companies which do purchase these policies. Some of them will doubtless reason that simply because they have purchased this policy they have all the protection they need.
That will last just long enough for them to lose some truly critical data or buisness which will seriously impair their ability to operate. At that time, they will take the money their policy pays out to them and hire a team of badasses to come in and secure their network, because they can't afford to have that happen again, even if someone does throw money at them when it occurs. Money doesn't turn back the clock, at least not yet.
All you security consultants are safe, but you might want to lay in some ramen for the next few months if you just got off a four month vacation.;)
Don't get me wrong... I like linux. I'm running it at work and at home on couple machines.
Why, though, would you want this in a handheld device? A standard unix startup includes device initialization, filesystem integrity checks, etc. and then login. In other words, it's designed to set up everything, then allow the user to work. In a handheld, I want to be able to work NOW. Initialize the IR port when I want to use it. Don't waste my time (and battery life) initializing it before I can work. When I'm done, shut it down as soon as possible.
This just-in-time device management is something that linux doesn't really have. While the device might be good for linux if it make that kind of management possible, I'm not sure that I believe that linux is good for a handheld device right now.
One of the arguments against CE is that Windows just doesn't scale down to a handheld device - a device like a Palm (or the late, lamented Newton, for that matter) that has an OS designed from the ground up specifically for handheld devices has big advantages over a downsized PC.
I'm not sure one way or another here. I own a Palm Vx (and I had a Palm III before that), and I used to have a Newton MessagePad 100, and before that a Sharp Wizard (with the touchscreen). I've used CE, and it's okay, but bloated as hell. All in all, I've been using some type of pocket device since about 1991 or so. The Wizard was great for it's time, but there was no easy PC synchronization at the time, and the pen was just for drawing and selecting on-screen buttons - it couldn't do even rudimentary data entry. On the other hand, it had separate batteries for operation and memory backup, and could go 6+ months of pretty regular use before you had to replace the battery. And it was pretty thin, so it worked well with a coat pocket.
Newton was a revelation when it came out. I saw it and immediately had to have one. The speed was OK, the battery life wasn't too bad (fresh batteries every couple of weeks), but it was bigger than the Sharp it replaced. The OS was smart as hell, despite the mediocre recognition (which got better with time) - it's still the only device where it was intuitive to tell it "schedule lunch with Bob tomorrow" and it could figure out what you meant! They were still too big when Apple Steved the whole Newton line, but if Newton had been allowed to keep on going it very well might have left CE stillborn at the high end and larger form factor.
My Palm is terrific because it's small, quick, and streamlined. Data entry is simple, synchronization is simple, and it works well with my iBook, Windows PC, and Linux PC. It's not as smart as my Newton was (natively), and I can't use real handwriting (Grafitti was originally a Newton software package before the Pilot existed), but it's small enough for the shirt pocket (the Holy Grail), and the battery life is the best since the Wizard. CE is a blivet in comparison.
CE still uses an old-fashioned filesystem metaphor, stores apps separate from executable space, and crams much of an interface designed at least for a 640x480 display into 1/4 the real estate. Despite improvements in the new version, how can that satisfy the needs of the computing/PDA mainstream? I'm afraid that Yopy will be the same. It's nice-looking hardware, but I don't see how Linux works any better than PalmOS or even CE as a PDA operating system. I'd much rather see Linux running on a system in the class of the CE "Jupiter" mininotebooks or even the handhelds rather than the palmtop-class hardware - I think the effort needed to put a usable distro onto a PDA isn't going to be worth it. I hope I'm wrong.
I just don't think Linux's strength lies in the PDA space - the only benefit I see is (theoretically) easier development because a Unix programmer should be able to easily write code for a Linux-based PDA like the Yopy. But writing Palm code is already pretty simple, and a lot of Win32 expertise can be re-used on CE (which, unfortunately, is a strength of CE). Sadly, I see Yopy getting squished in the market and that can't help the Linux cause at all - hopefully a failure won't hurt it, either.
My take on the death of the Trek series...
on
Voyager Eulogy
·
· Score: 3
There are a lot of reasons why Trek is in the state that it's in, but the main ones are Rick Berman and Paramount itself. In some ways, the death of Trek started in its own popularity.
Trek is a massive cash cow for Paramount, a major franchise for them. Because of this, they were far less likely to do anything that would cut off that revenue flow. Basically, they couldn't take risks whith the story, because that might cause people to stop buying Trek stuff, and take a few precious pennies away from Paramount.
Rick Berman is equally afraid of losing that income, because it would mean him losing his job. Now, I'll give him the benefit of the doubt and say that perhaps this is because higher-ups have tied his hands. He's not the kind of person who can revitalize the franchise.
By far, the best thing to do was to end Voyager gracefully and end the Trek franchise for a while. Bring it back with new blood in a few years, and bring it back to the spirit of the original, episodes and characters that actually take chances and make the audience think. Then, maybe, Trek can get back to where it should be.
One of the big bitches of electric cars is (besides battery life) the poor power/weight ratio of the electric engine against the gas (petrol) engine. Also, even more damning, is the relative reliability of the gas engine. What we really need are people putting alot more effort into making a better, lightweight electric engine.
We already have the parts to build a really good hybrid gas/electric car (which, face it folks, is the only kind of low-emissions vehicle you will see for years). We have the following parts:
Electric engine - provides the power to move the car. Also acts as a generator when braking/coasting, thus providing extra power!
High-efficiency gas engine - stick in a 300-400 cc motorcycle engine. They generate several kW of power, and can run at optimal efficiency (about 4500RPM) all the time, since you're not using them to directly drive the car. And the parts are readily available, and easy to maintain (and there is a repair infrastructure already in place - your local Kawasaki dealer...) Of course, I'd really like to see us use miniature gas-turbine engines, but I don't expect to see this anytime soon...
Zinc-oxide batteries - the so-called "air battery" provides excellent continuous voltage and storage. You may still need a couple of lead-acid around for instantaneous bursts, but probably no more than 2 standard ones.
High-speed Flywheels - easily the most efficient and compact way to store energy, a flywheel made of composites can be spun at up to 100,000RPM or more to store energy. And they don't lose energy much (you could leave one spinning overnight and probably only lose a couple hundred RPM, if that). Far more efficient than batteries, these are tre-cool, too.
The Honda Inspire and the coming competition from Nissan and Toyota are OK, but face it, we need something about the size of a Honda Accord, not a Honda Civic CRX. I can't see any reason (technically) right now why someone doesn't mass-produce a converted Accord. I mean, you can use the exact same design (maybe cheat and use alluminium body panels), just with a new powertrain (with an electric engine, you should probably have a continuously variable transmission, rather than an "automatic", and definately not a "standard") and still get at least 70+ miles/gallon (that is, 30km/l).
Hell, with the $4k US tax credit for buying a low-emission vehicle, and gas here at $1.75 in the DFW Area, I'd spend $5k more for a converted Accord over a normal one, and still make out like a bandit. So who're the morons in the Marketing Depts at the car manufacturers?
If you look at the message subjects, you'll find the single most important and fundamental truth of ergonomics.
We're all built differently.
There is no single solution. There is no solution that will work for more than a certain percentage of the population. Furthermore, when you start to push your limits, the percentage that a given solution works for drops drastically.
Let's apply this specifically to keyboards.
If you use a keyboard for an hour or two per week, you can probably get away with almost any keyboard on the market. If you use a keyboard an hour a day, then some general purpose keyboards won't work for you. Others will. If you use a keyboard eight hours a day (or more!), then you are pushing the limits of what your hands and wrists can sustain, and will have to find the _precise_ ergonomic solution that works best for you. In other words, you have to go out and try as many keyboards as you can to find the one that causes the least problems ***FOR YOU***!!! The guy beside you might have stronger forearm muscles, narrower shoulders, double-jointed knuckles, or a thousand other more subtle variations which would make his perfect solution a disaster for you. EXPERIMENT! Try 'em all out, and try 'em again.
However, there's another side to the coin. If you're looking to minimise pain and/or damage, there's a good chance you're spending too much time at it. With the death of mechanical typewriters and manual carriages, we're currently often spending eight solid hours typing (with the odd bit of mousing on the side--the next time you give your significant other a backrub, pay attention to where the tightest muscles are. If they use a computer extensively, I almost guarantee it'll be on their mouse side), without moving any other parts of our bodies. This is not what we were designed to do!
Make a point of getting some flexing in during the day. Get up and walk around for a minute every half hour or so. Shake your hands out after typing a long block (or after a wild hour of Counterstrike *grin*)
If, after finding a good ergonomic solution and loosening up your muscles, you're still suffering, take a (real--weeks!) break, and see a professional.
All that being said - aren't laptops supposed to be the mobile solution for people? If you're really looking for a longterm solution because you do a lot of typing on a laptop, wouldn't a docking station and a regular egronomic keyboard be better for you?
"How many times have users had to upgrade Office because the Word file format changed?"
As far as I know, the format itself has never changed. I know people still using Word 5 on Windows 95, and while they don't have all the bells and whistles of Word 2000 or Word 2002, it's possible for them to open documents created with the later versions (though some text formatting features specific to the new version may be lost...). Isn't the whole point of the purchase of the "next version" so you get some of those bells and whistles? I hardly think Microsoft has been holding guns to people's heads saying "You must upgrade or else." I know someone will bring up the idea of them not supporting legacy products after releasing new versions - but that is there perrogative. The amount of engineers required to support every version of every product would be overwhelming - even for a huge company like Microsoft. Would you really want the job of sittng around doing tech support for Microsoft B.O.B.?
I was wrong - after two seconds of searching, it wasn't Excite, it was Alcatel and their handing of the default DSL modem password issue (Slashdot story). While I can't find a link to the document (CPE_statement.doc) online, I'm looking at it right now with all the highlights and strike-throughs. Very funny stuff.
That I recall Office 2000 having some kind of a version control system in place. I remember at least one case (wasn't it Excite@Home?) got themselves in trouble because they left a.doc up on the web that had all the previous changes in it, so you could read all the internal snide remarks about the consumers. Oops.;)
I'm too lazy to read through all the comments to find out if this has been posted yet, but hit up http://archives.thebbs.org if you're looking for old BBS software. That and what seemed like endless pages of Tradewars 2002 add-ons.
This will probably get smacked down as flamebait and I'll get called a big anti-privacy freak, but...
Instead of making a big fuss out of the entire ordeal and getting everyone up in a big tizzy, wouldn't it have just been better for the Editors to remove the offending text and move on? I understand the recultance to do so, since traditionally Slashdot has been very pro-speech, but replacing the actual text with links to "offshore content" and web searches for the material/seems/ just as bad to me. This is just one of those examples where I (as a weblog webmaster), would have rather seen the situation move quietly into the night rather than to announce to everyone what happened.
That said, I'm almost happy they decided to replace it with some fairly informative material - some of those links are very good pointers to some excellent guides to the DMCA as well as informative guides to Scientology. Interesting stuff...
Oops! You might want to check that link before telling us coloc only costs $150 a month. You probably need to check the Verio DataCenter page where they offer REAL colocation - not just a "virtual" server.
Maybe I'm missing something, or missed an earlier/. post/story, but adding ethernet to a Pinball 2000 machine? Does it already run LInux/*BSD/something else? On the page it said he would have made links the the httpd sitting on the machine. I'll admit I haven't done any research on this as I'm posting, but is there something really special and cool I'm missing about this Pinball 2000 platform?
Other than that - very impressive hack for hack's value. Too bad real arcades don't have something like this set up so people could compete against other franchised arcades for high scores/prizes/etc.
Paid praise for one side versus the other... Sounds like Election 2000 all over again. Let's just not leave to Florida to decide who has the better OS.;-)
I have it in the know (mainly because I work there) that there are multiple ways to obtain your "activation code" - one of which is through the Internet clearinghouse, but you can also get your code over the phone.
Just an FYI - do a little more research before discounting "high security" installs.
"Most PABXs (like Lucent's Argent Office,...) come with Windows software, which is not an option for my employer."
Sounds like you need a new employer. Or one that realizes that companies like Lucent generally know what the hell they're doing when they make design decisions about their own PABX system. If your employer is so closed-minded to the open-source way, I would definately suggest a "career change."
Or what is an option with your employer? Anything that doesn't bear a logo with four primary colors in it? Nice Anti-MS sounding shop you work in.
I apologize in advance for being so damn offtopic... But don't you think this is a good time to use that "Don't apply +1"? I'm glad this comment was so important to warrant the score boost.
I really hate to reply and be so damn offtopic, but...
Look at the snippet of the headline for this story... "... it's called the KDE Leage. If they can get Green Lantern and Aquagirl to join existing members like TrollTech, Corel, HP, IBM, MandrakeSoft, and SuSE."
First off, the spelling leaves something to be desired. Secondly, (and while I respect the fact that this site has biases) if you're going to poke fun at this new organization, don't leave the world hanging on a fragment. If they can get Green Lantern and Aquagirl to join the existing members... then WHAT? they can defeat the evil underpants GNOMEs? What I think we really need some days are SlashDot Editor Editors.
Since the site seems to be slow as ass, and I'm just dying to get my DSL link slashdotted today, I've got a mirror of the screenshots up at http://www.trumpie.net/nautilus.
Well, maybe in a totally unrelated but still midly similar way, I remember checking out some information at http://www.calcaria.net/ about getting Linux to run on the Psion 5's. Sounds like the perfect solution to me - why develop sync utilities when you can just run your favorite Linux scheduling software on your palmtop?:) [Unless that software doesn't exist yet...] (And of course I know that the Linux7k kernel is far from being totally complete, and I'm sure most of your favorite console apps haven't been ported yet, but hey - That's why you hack away at code, right?)
Slashdot Mirror
So do you pronounce this "gee-pee-are-ess" or do you say jeepers! :)
I'm not sure if this is really relevant - but (once you've got Linux or BSD running on old hardware it seems to make sense to run them as X terminals.
I've been involved in a project where we are using a number of low end Pentiums without much ram as X terminals to a more powerful machine with plenty of ram running StarOffice and displaying on each of these old machines.
It seems to work well at the moment, we are still in the testing stage, but it looks like the management of the machines will be much easier than the current Windows systems elsewhere.
I've also tried this same project with these machines running a stripped down version of Windows 95 and using Microsoft's Terminal Services client as the shell=. In our office, (since most people have Server on their machines) this provides a quick and easy way for them to access their machines from just about anywhere.
There is the old story about how to boil/cook a frog. For the purposes of this story it is important to remem ber that frogs are amphibians. :)
Now, If you just toss a frog straight into a pot of boiling water, this is not going to to anything but upset the frog and make the frog jump out of the pot. BUT, if you put the frog into the pot when tha water is cool, the frog will like it. If you then very gradually raise the temperature of the water the frog will not notice it. You can eventually raise the temperature of the water until it is boiling, and you now have one cooked frog dinner. NOTE, California bullfrogs, weighing in at about 3 or 4 pounds, have enough meat to make a decent meal.
How does this relate? Simple.
The long term strategy of MS is to slowly increment changes in the way things worked so that in the end, everything works they way they want, and they can dictate how it goes together. If they got greedy and tried to do it all in a year or so, then they would never get agreeement. But by implementing it bit and piece, they can continue to carve a large and larger section of the pie for themselves. All they have to do is think longer term than their opponents.
Actually, I am sure they have on a wall someplace their equivalent of a 5 or 10 year plan to conquer the known (software) world, subject to revision and new discoveries, etc. They likely planned killing off Windows about 3 to 5 years ago when it became obvious that the legal suites were beginning to be a real pain. They are not there yet, but they needed an escape plan. Part of the move to taking over the Internet was part of this escape plan, which is why Gates made sure it was the equivalent of a oceanliner coming to a halt and turning on a dime.
How to we handle this?
We need as far reaching an effort and long range vision as they do. A competitive Argument that resonates. Microsofts's sells to the inherently lazy streak in people, even if the PR is twisted. They sell to "we make it easier for you".
...can be found here. (That's http://www.paradyne.com/sourcebook_offer/ for the goatse weary.) It should be a little ways into exactly how DSL works, and why you'd be ineligible for it.
I know here in Texas, SWBell is rolling out "Project Pronto" - which is essentially moving the DSLAM farther out to the customers - but as I understand it, it's a different setup than just moving the DSLAM (as a previous poster pointed out, compacted enviromentally hardened DSLAM's would be a bit pricey).
Certainly, any large corporation should both secure themselves to the best of their ability, AND take out a policy.
;)
Reading sites like CERT, l0pht and rootshell is never going to become useless, because at some point they will charge you so much for your coverage that you can no longer afford to remain in buisness. There will continue to be a need for security.
At the same time, I do think that for a short time at least, this will lead to lax security in companies which do purchase these policies. Some of them will doubtless reason that simply because they have purchased this policy they have all the protection they need.
That will last just long enough for them to lose some truly critical data or buisness which will seriously impair their ability to operate. At that time, they will take the money their policy pays out to them and hire a team of badasses to come in and secure their network, because they can't afford to have that happen again, even if someone does throw money at them when it occurs. Money doesn't turn back the clock, at least not yet.
All you security consultants are safe, but you might want to lay in some ramen for the next few months if you just got off a four month vacation.
Don't get me wrong... I like linux. I'm running it at work and at home on couple machines.
Why, though, would you want this in a handheld device? A standard unix startup includes device initialization, filesystem integrity checks, etc. and then login. In other words, it's designed to set up everything, then allow the user to work. In a handheld, I want to be able to work NOW. Initialize the IR port when I want to use it. Don't waste my time (and battery life) initializing it before I can work. When I'm done, shut it down as soon as possible.
This just-in-time device management is something that linux doesn't really have. While the device might be good for linux if it make that kind of management possible, I'm not sure that I believe that linux is good for a handheld device right now.
One of the arguments against CE is that Windows just doesn't scale down to a handheld device - a device like a Palm (or the late, lamented Newton, for that matter) that has an OS designed from the ground up specifically for handheld devices has big advantages over a downsized PC.
I'm not sure one way or another here. I own a Palm Vx (and I had a Palm III before that), and I used to have a Newton MessagePad 100, and before that a Sharp Wizard (with the touchscreen). I've used CE, and it's okay, but bloated as hell. All in all, I've been using some type of pocket device since about 1991 or so. The Wizard was great for it's time, but there was no easy PC synchronization at the time, and the pen was just for drawing and selecting on-screen buttons - it couldn't do even rudimentary data entry. On the other hand, it had separate batteries for operation and memory backup, and could go 6+ months of pretty regular use before you had to replace the battery. And it was pretty thin, so it worked well with a coat pocket.
Newton was a revelation when it came out. I saw it and immediately had to have one. The speed was OK, the battery life wasn't too bad (fresh batteries every couple of weeks), but it was bigger than the Sharp it replaced. The OS was smart as hell, despite the mediocre recognition (which got better with time) - it's still the only device where it was intuitive to tell it "schedule lunch with Bob tomorrow" and it could figure out what you meant! They were still too big when Apple Steved the whole Newton line, but if Newton had been allowed to keep on going it very well might have left CE stillborn at the high end and larger form factor.
My Palm is terrific because it's small, quick, and streamlined. Data entry is simple, synchronization is simple, and it works well with my iBook, Windows PC, and Linux PC. It's not as smart as my Newton was (natively), and I can't use real handwriting (Grafitti was originally a Newton software package before the Pilot existed), but it's small enough for the shirt pocket (the Holy Grail), and the battery life is the best since the Wizard. CE is a blivet in comparison.
CE still uses an old-fashioned filesystem metaphor, stores apps separate from executable space, and crams much of an interface designed at least for a 640x480 display into 1/4 the real estate. Despite improvements in the new version, how can that satisfy the needs of the computing/PDA mainstream? I'm afraid that Yopy will be the same. It's nice-looking hardware, but I don't see how Linux works any better than PalmOS or even CE as a PDA operating system. I'd much rather see Linux running on a system in the class of the CE "Jupiter" mininotebooks or even the handhelds rather than the palmtop-class hardware - I think the effort needed to put a usable distro onto a PDA isn't going to be worth it. I hope I'm wrong.
I just don't think Linux's strength lies in the PDA space - the only benefit I see is (theoretically) easier development because a Unix programmer should be able to easily write code for a Linux-based PDA like the Yopy. But writing Palm code is already pretty simple, and a lot of Win32 expertise can be re-used on CE (which, unfortunately, is a strength of CE). Sadly, I see Yopy getting squished in the market and that can't help the Linux cause at all - hopefully a failure won't hurt it, either.
There are a lot of reasons why Trek is in the state that it's in, but the main ones are Rick Berman and Paramount itself. In some ways, the death of Trek started in its own popularity.
Trek is a massive cash cow for Paramount, a major franchise for them. Because of this, they were far less likely to do anything that would cut off that revenue flow. Basically, they couldn't take risks whith the story, because that might cause people to stop buying Trek stuff, and take a few precious pennies away from Paramount.
Rick Berman is equally afraid of losing that income, because it would mean him losing his job. Now, I'll give him the benefit of the doubt and say that perhaps this is because higher-ups have tied his hands. He's not the kind of person who can revitalize the franchise.
By far, the best thing to do was to end Voyager gracefully and end the Trek franchise for a while. Bring it back with new blood in a few years, and bring it back to the spirit of the original, episodes and characters that actually take chances and make the audience think. Then, maybe, Trek can get back to where it should be.
...major improvements in electric engines.
One of the big bitches of electric cars is (besides battery life) the poor power/weight ratio of the electric engine against the gas (petrol) engine. Also, even more damning, is the relative reliability of the gas engine. What we really need are people putting alot more effort into making a better, lightweight electric engine.
We already have the parts to build a really good hybrid gas/electric car (which, face it folks, is the only kind of low-emissions vehicle you will see for years). We have the following parts:
The Honda Inspire and the coming competition from Nissan and Toyota are OK, but face it, we need something about the size of a Honda Accord, not a Honda Civic CRX. I can't see any reason (technically) right now why someone doesn't mass-produce a converted Accord. I mean, you can use the exact same design (maybe cheat and use alluminium body panels), just with a new powertrain (with an electric engine, you should probably have a continuously variable transmission, rather than an "automatic", and definately not a "standard") and still get at least 70+ miles/gallon (that is, 30km/l).
Hell, with the $4k US tax credit for buying a low-emission vehicle, and gas here at $1.75 in the DFW Area, I'd spend $5k more for a converted Accord over a normal one, and still make out like a bandit. So who're the morons in the Marketing Depts at the car manufacturers?
If you look at the message subjects, you'll find the single most important and fundamental truth of ergonomics.
We're all built differently.
There is no single solution. There is no solution that will work for more than a certain percentage of the population. Furthermore, when you start to push your limits, the percentage that a given solution works for drops drastically.
Let's apply this specifically to keyboards.
If you use a keyboard for an hour or two per week, you can probably get away with almost any keyboard on the market. If you use a keyboard an hour a day, then some general purpose keyboards won't work for you. Others will. If you use a keyboard eight hours a day (or more!), then you are pushing the limits of what your hands and wrists can sustain, and will have to find the _precise_ ergonomic solution that works best for you. In other words, you have to go out and try as many keyboards as you can to find the one that causes the least problems ***FOR YOU***!!! The guy beside you might have stronger forearm muscles, narrower shoulders, double-jointed knuckles, or a thousand other more subtle variations which would make his perfect solution a disaster for you. EXPERIMENT! Try 'em all out, and try 'em again.
However, there's another side to the coin. If you're looking to minimise pain and/or damage, there's a good chance you're spending too much time at it. With the death of mechanical typewriters and manual carriages, we're currently often spending eight solid hours typing (with the odd bit of mousing on the side--the next time you give your significant other a backrub, pay attention to where the tightest muscles are. If they use a computer extensively, I almost guarantee it'll be on their mouse side), without moving any other parts of our bodies. This is not what we were designed to do!
Make a point of getting some flexing in during the day. Get up and walk around for a minute every half hour or so. Shake your hands out after typing a long block (or after a wild hour of Counterstrike *grin*)
If, after finding a good ergonomic solution and loosening up your muscles, you're still suffering, take a (real--weeks!) break, and see a professional.
All that being said - aren't laptops supposed to be the mobile solution for people? If you're really looking for a longterm solution because you do a lot of typing on a laptop, wouldn't a docking station and a regular egronomic keyboard be better for you?
"How many times have users had to upgrade Office because the Word file format changed?"
As far as I know, the format itself has never changed. I know people still using Word 5 on Windows 95, and while they don't have all the bells and whistles of Word 2000 or Word 2002, it's possible for them to open documents created with the later versions (though some text formatting features specific to the new version may be lost...). Isn't the whole point of the purchase of the "next version" so you get some of those bells and whistles? I hardly think Microsoft has been holding guns to people's heads saying "You must upgrade or else." I know someone will bring up the idea of them not supporting legacy products after releasing new versions - but that is there perrogative. The amount of engineers required to support every version of every product would be overwhelming - even for a huge company like Microsoft. Would you really want the job of sittng around doing tech support for Microsoft B.O.B.?
I was wrong - after two seconds of searching, it wasn't Excite, it was Alcatel and their handing of the default DSL modem password issue (Slashdot story). While I can't find a link to the document (CPE_statement.doc) online, I'm looking at it right now with all the highlights and strike-throughs. Very funny stuff.
That I recall Office 2000 having some kind of a version control system in place. I remember at least one case (wasn't it Excite@Home?) got themselves in trouble because they left a .doc up on the web that had all the previous changes in it, so you could read all the internal snide remarks about the consumers. Oops. ;)
I'm too lazy to read through all the comments to find out if this has been posted yet, but hit up http://archives.thebbs.org if you're looking for old BBS software. That and what seemed like endless pages of Tradewars 2002 add-ons.
:)
Thank god for the internet.
This will probably get smacked down as flamebait and I'll get called a big anti-privacy freak, but...
/seems/ just as bad to me. This is just one of those examples where I (as a weblog webmaster), would have rather seen the situation move quietly into the night rather than to announce to everyone what happened.
Instead of making a big fuss out of the entire ordeal and getting everyone up in a big tizzy, wouldn't it have just been better for the Editors to remove the offending text and move on? I understand the recultance to do so, since traditionally Slashdot has been very pro-speech, but replacing the actual text with links to "offshore content" and web searches for the material
That said, I'm almost happy they decided to replace it with some fairly informative material - some of those links are very good pointers to some excellent guides to the DMCA as well as informative guides to Scientology. Interesting stuff...
Oops! You might want to check that link before telling us coloc only costs $150 a month. You probably need to check the Verio DataCenter page where they offer REAL colocation - not just a "virtual" server.
Maybe I'm missing something, or missed an earlier /. post/story, but adding ethernet to a Pinball 2000 machine? Does it already run LInux/*BSD/something else? On the page it said he would have made links the the httpd sitting on the machine. I'll admit I haven't done any research on this as I'm posting, but is there something really special and cool I'm missing about this Pinball 2000 platform?
Other than that - very impressive hack for hack's value. Too bad real arcades don't have something like this set up so people could compete against other franchised arcades for high scores/prizes/etc.
Paid praise for one side versus the other... Sounds like Election 2000 all over again. Let's just not leave to Florida to decide who has the better OS. ;-)
I have it in the know (mainly because I work there) that there are multiple ways to obtain your "activation code" - one of which is through the Internet clearinghouse, but you can also get your code over the phone.
Just an FYI - do a little more research before discounting "high security" installs.
"Most PABXs (like Lucent's Argent Office,...) come with Windows software, which is not an option for my employer."
Sounds like you need a new employer. Or one that realizes that companies like Lucent generally know what the hell they're doing when they make design decisions about their own PABX system. If your employer is so closed-minded to the open-source way, I would definately suggest a "career change."
Or what is an option with your employer? Anything that doesn't bear a logo with four primary colors in it? Nice Anti-MS sounding shop you work in.
I apologize in advance for being so damn offtopic... But don't you think this is a good time to use that "Don't apply +1"? I'm glad this comment was so important to warrant the score boost.
I really hate to reply and be so damn offtopic, but...
Look at the snippet of the headline for this story... "... it's called the KDE Leage. If they can get Green Lantern and Aquagirl to join existing members like TrollTech, Corel, HP, IBM, MandrakeSoft, and SuSE."
First off, the spelling leaves something to be desired. Secondly, (and while I respect the fact that this site has biases) if you're going to poke fun at this new organization, don't leave the world hanging on a fragment. If they can get Green Lantern and Aquagirl to join the existing members... then WHAT? they can defeat the evil underpants GNOMEs?
What I think we really need some days are SlashDot Editor Editors.
cheers,
"It's not just purely the potentially potent personal privacy problems that have me in a panicked protest..."
Yikes! Alliteration anyone?
*grin*
Since the site seems to be slow as ass, and I'm just dying to get my DSL link slashdotted today, I've got a mirror of the screenshots up at http://www.trumpie.net/nautilus.
Enjoy.
Well, maybe in a totally unrelated but still midly similar way, I remember checking out some information at http://www.calcaria.net/ about getting Linux to run on the Psion 5's. Sounds like the perfect solution to me - why develop sync utilities when you can just run your favorite Linux scheduling software on your palmtop? :) [Unless that software doesn't exist yet...] (And of course I know that the Linux7k kernel is far from being totally complete, and I'm sure most of your favorite console apps haven't been ported yet, but hey - That's why you hack away at code, right?)
--Chris