I see this release finally includes drivers for RT2860 based wifi cards. This will definitely make my life easier as having to recompile the drivers manually every time a new kernel package came out was getting old. With that in place, this may finally be the first time I'll be able to install an Ubuntu system without having to hunt for any drivers.
Thankfully last time I did a frseh install, I remembered to put/home on a different partition, so I may just do another fresh install this time instead of upgrading.
Not quite... In 3G, the two frequencies are used together. One is for the uplink and one is for the download. 2100 in this case is the downlink. An iPhone wouldn't be able to establish the uplink via 3G making it unable to connect at 3G speeds at all.
ATT uses 850 for the uplink and 1900 for the downlink. Europe uses 1900 for the uplink and 2100 for the downlink. Hence the iPhone will work fine with ATT in the US and with carriers in Europe but not with T-Mobile (for 3G, that is).
T-Mobile and ATT use different frequencies for 3G. T-Mobile uses 1700/2100, ATT uses 850 and 1900. You can connectivity with EDGE but you won't be able to do 3G.
Anyway, just because it's contract free doesn't mean the phone is unlocked. It probably still has the ATT SIM card restriction in place.
If you're married to Toyota, check out the Insight. The '10 Insight doesn't quite match up to the '10 Prius in MPG, but it has a $3K lower base price. The math works out much better for the Insight.
Serenity sounds like a module where lady astronauts would go to take care of various lady business. They need to give these things more masculine names like "Power Eagle Hammer 8000 Type R AMG".
You're right, there is absolutely nothing about this that makes it iPhone specific. Any camera phone with a web browser (or any other combination of camera and web browser...) can do the very same thing.
Of course, adding "iPhone" to the title of anything suddenly makes it 100x more newsworthy in the eyes of fanboys:)
I have a pair of cheap Airlink adapters from Frys that have been running well for several months now, despite them both being enclosed in areas with poor airflow. I use them to connect the Xbox (running XBMC) in my bedroom with my router in the living room.
The connection is fast enough to play back downloaded videos with zero issues. I tried some tests using computers at opposite ends of the house and was able to get around 3 or 4 MB/s transfer between them. My 802.11n wireless network usually peaks at around 6-8 MB/s, so while it is slower, it's not noticable for most tasks and still enough to max out my FIOS connection.
You could have a connector standard that was a standard micro-USB port next to a standardized audio or audio/video port - basically break out the iPod connector into two smaller connectors. You could plug in just a micro-USB cable to the micro-USB side, just a AV cable to the AV side, or use a standardized wider cable/connector that'd connect to both simultaneously.
You can get symmetrical speeds with FIOS. Their 20/20 plan is $65/month. Of course, the usual disclaimers about limited FIOS availability apply.
I use their 20/5 plan which is $10/month cheaper. 5 Mb/s is fast enough for all of the time critical upstream I need (VOIP and the occasional video call) and it's fast enough that I can get to a >1 share ratio on torrents in a reasonable amount of time. I'd rather put that $10 into savings instead.
Sure, it's true people frequently lose power when a storm is right on top of them, but there's a long period of time where you know the storm is coming your direction but isn't close enough to disrupt your power. During this, having the TV on and tuned to the news is the best way to know how long you have until it hits and how bad it could get when it does hit, so you can make the appropriate preparations proactively.
TV is the primary source of news for a large amount of people. It's probably the only source of local news that is completely free aside from having to pay for the electrity to power the TV.
TV news is also invaluable if you live some place with frequent storms (e.g. anywhere in tornado alley). The local news often has more up to date and relevant information than the web. Radio is a fallback but the old saying "a picture is worth a thousand words" definitely applies to weather maps.
While I support the idea behind Vorbis, it's pretty much dead as far as I'm concerned. MP3 is transparent for most people at higher bitrates. Back when we used to measure flash device storage in megabytes and most people were on dialup, saving a few hundred kilobytes per file by using Vorbis at a lower bitrate was important. Now that flash storage is measured in gigabytes and broadband is widely available, most people just don't care about saving that now relatively minuscule amount of disk space. IMO, the window of opportunity for Vorbis to become a "mainstream" codec has come and gone, at least as long as CD audio is the "standard" audio format.
The fact that Vorbis is Free and MP3 is patent-encumbered is a non-issue for most people. They download an MP3, double click on it, and it plays, that's all they care about.
I've had a Linux box slow to a crawl for the same reason, so definitely good advice if you're experiencing random slowness regardless of what OS you're running. When I ran top I could see the "iowait" percentage was near 100% frequently and also saw many drive-related error messages in the system log.
So we always talk about how companies should open source software that is no longer being maintained or sold... then when a company actually does it, we say "who cares".
So, you have unlimited access to email and yet you still don't how you're going to keep in touch in friends and family? Is e-mail "only for old people" now?
If your concern is sending pictures back, a small JPG file should only be a few dozen KBs and will easily fit in your 1MB attachment limit. Keep the high resolution originals on your computer and promise your friends you'll send them the high resolution versions once you get back on shore.
AVI seems to have alot more overhead than MKV. There is a utility to convert AVI files to MKV files and I noticed the resulting file was often a a megabyte or two smaller than the original AVI file. When you're targeting a storage medium with a relatively limited amount of space (e.g. DVDs, MP3 players, etc.) I suppose it could help fit a bit more content on there.
I noticed occasionally I'd have audio sync problems on the converted files though so I stopped doing it since a few megabytes here and there doesn't mean much when you have a terabyte drive.
Profiles are useful when you use your computer for both personal and work purposes, since you're probably going to access a completely different set of bookmarks for each. My "work" profile has toolbar bookmarks for various Intranet pages and my "personal" profile has the toolbar bookmarks pointing to other things (e.g. Slashdot, Digg).
It's just a convenience thing for me since it says me a little bit of time versus trying to keep both things organized in a single profile.
The AM3 Phenom II's are supposed to be able to work in an AM2+ motherboard (and utilize DD2 memory). TechReport's review of the chip has some more details on this:
In one of the neater tricks we've seen along these lines, Socket AM3-capable Phenom II processors will, happily, be backward compatible with current Socket AM2+ motherboards and DDR2 memory.
So AM2+ is still a viable socket for the future since AM3 processors will fit in. I wonder if the backwards compatability will work both ways - could an AM2+ processor be used in an AM3 motherboard?
Every coupon that was issued has an expiration date on it. If the money does run dry and the government doesn't secure additional funding, what will happen is any new requests will go on a waiting list. As old coupons expire, they will send out new coupons to the people on the list.
This is what my/var/log/messages file looks like: Dec 31 16:03:45 puppet -- MARK -- Dec 31 16:23:45 puppet -- MARK -- Dec 31 16:43:45 puppet -- MARK -- Dec 31 17:03:45 puppet -- MARK -- Dec 31 17:23:45 puppet -- MARK -- Dec 31 17:43:45 puppet -- MARK -- (... below is when I noticed the box was hung and restarted it...) Jan 1 14:02:31 puppet syslogd 1.5.0#2ubuntu6: restart. Jan 1 14:02:31 puppet kernel: Inspecting/boot/System.map-2.6.27-9-generic
Every 20 minutes, I get those "-- MARK --" messages and the last one is at 5:43PM local time which would be 11:43PM UTC (also my system clock is set to UTC, not local time). The next "-- MARK --" should have been at 12:03AM UTC, so there's a good chance the leap second messed something up.
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I see this release finally includes drivers for RT2860 based wifi cards. This will definitely make my life easier as having to recompile the drivers manually every time a new kernel package came out was getting old. With that in place, this may finally be the first time I'll be able to install an Ubuntu system without having to hunt for any drivers.
Thankfully last time I did a frseh install, I remembered to put /home on a different partition, so I may just do another fresh install this time instead of upgrading.
Not quite... In 3G, the two frequencies are used together. One is for the uplink and one is for the download. 2100 in this case is the downlink. An iPhone wouldn't be able to establish the uplink via 3G making it unable to connect at 3G speeds at all.
ATT uses 850 for the uplink and 1900 for the downlink. Europe uses 1900 for the uplink and 2100 for the downlink. Hence the iPhone will work fine with ATT in the US and with carriers in Europe but not with T-Mobile (for 3G, that is).
T-Mobile and ATT use different frequencies for 3G. T-Mobile uses 1700/2100, ATT uses 850 and 1900. You can connectivity with EDGE but you won't be able to do 3G.
Anyway, just because it's contract free doesn't mean the phone is unlocked. It probably still has the ATT SIM card restriction in place.
When you buy a brand new keyboard for less than $5, then yes $69 is expensive.
The DSi has 802.11g connectivity, just not 3G like the iPhone. In that respect at least, it is competitive with the iPod Touch which also lacks 3G.
Don't confuse the regular DS with the DSi.
If you're married to Toyota, check out the Insight. The '10 Insight doesn't quite match up to the '10 Prius in MPG, but it has a $3K lower base price. The math works out much better for the Insight.
Serenity sounds like a module where lady astronauts would go to take care of various lady business. They need to give these things more masculine names like "Power Eagle Hammer 8000 Type R AMG".
You're right, there is absolutely nothing about this that makes it iPhone specific. Any camera phone with a web browser (or any other combination of camera and web browser...) can do the very same thing.
Of course, adding "iPhone" to the title of anything suddenly makes it 100x more newsworthy in the eyes of fanboys :)
I have a pair of cheap Airlink adapters from Frys that have been running well for several months now, despite them both being enclosed in areas with poor airflow. I use them to connect the Xbox (running XBMC) in my bedroom with my router in the living room.
The connection is fast enough to play back downloaded videos with zero issues. I tried some tests using computers at opposite ends of the house and was able to get around 3 or 4 MB/s transfer between them. My 802.11n wireless network usually peaks at around 6-8 MB/s, so while it is slower, it's not noticable for most tasks and still enough to max out my FIOS connection.
You could have a connector standard that was a standard micro-USB port next to a standardized audio or audio/video port - basically break out the iPod connector into two smaller connectors. You could plug in just a micro-USB cable to the micro-USB side, just a AV cable to the AV side, or use a standardized wider cable/connector that'd connect to both simultaneously.
You can get symmetrical speeds with FIOS. Their 20/20 plan is $65/month. Of course, the usual disclaimers about limited FIOS availability apply.
I use their 20/5 plan which is $10/month cheaper. 5 Mb/s is fast enough for all of the time critical upstream I need (VOIP and the occasional video call) and it's fast enough that I can get to a >1 share ratio on torrents in a reasonable amount of time. I'd rather put that $10 into savings instead.
Sure, it's true people frequently lose power when a storm is right on top of them, but there's a long period of time where you know the storm is coming your direction but isn't close enough to disrupt your power. During this, having the TV on and tuned to the news is the best way to know how long you have until it hits and how bad it could get when it does hit, so you can make the appropriate preparations proactively.
TV is the primary source of news for a large amount of people. It's probably the only source of local news that is completely free aside from having to pay for the electrity to power the TV.
TV news is also invaluable if you live some place with frequent storms (e.g. anywhere in tornado alley). The local news often has more up to date and relevant information than the web. Radio is a fallback but the old saying "a picture is worth a thousand words" definitely applies to weather maps.
While I support the idea behind Vorbis, it's pretty much dead as far as I'm concerned. MP3 is transparent for most people at higher bitrates. Back when we used to measure flash device storage in megabytes and most people were on dialup, saving a few hundred kilobytes per file by using Vorbis at a lower bitrate was important. Now that flash storage is measured in gigabytes and broadband is widely available, most people just don't care about saving that now relatively minuscule amount of disk space. IMO, the window of opportunity for Vorbis to become a "mainstream" codec has come and gone, at least as long as CD audio is the "standard" audio format.
The fact that Vorbis is Free and MP3 is patent-encumbered is a non-issue for most people. They download an MP3, double click on it, and it plays, that's all they care about.
Check out Puttycyg:
http://code.google.com/p/puttycyg/
Or Poderosa:
http://en.poderosa.org/
Both allow you to open a Cygwin terminal session without the need to have a local SSH server running.
I've had a Linux box slow to a crawl for the same reason, so definitely good advice if you're experiencing random slowness regardless of what OS you're running. When I ran top I could see the "iowait" percentage was near 100% frequently and also saw many drive-related error messages in the system log.
You've never heard of th Abobe Abrocat?
So we always talk about how companies should open source software that is no longer being maintained or sold... then when a company actually does it, we say "who cares".
Sales of "For Sale" signs have been increasing dramatically.
So, you have unlimited access to email and yet you still don't how you're going to keep in touch in friends and family? Is e-mail "only for old people" now?
If your concern is sending pictures back, a small JPG file should only be a few dozen KBs and will easily fit in your 1MB attachment limit. Keep the high resolution originals on your computer and promise your friends you'll send them the high resolution versions once you get back on shore.
AVI seems to have alot more overhead than MKV. There is a utility to convert AVI files to MKV files and I noticed the resulting file was often a a megabyte or two smaller than the original AVI file. When you're targeting a storage medium with a relatively limited amount of space (e.g. DVDs, MP3 players, etc.) I suppose it could help fit a bit more content on there.
I noticed occasionally I'd have audio sync problems on the converted files though so I stopped doing it since a few megabytes here and there doesn't mean much when you have a terabyte drive.
Profiles are useful when you use your computer for both personal and work purposes, since you're probably going to access a completely different set of bookmarks for each. My "work" profile has toolbar bookmarks for various Intranet pages and my "personal" profile has the toolbar bookmarks pointing to other things (e.g. Slashdot, Digg).
It's just a convenience thing for me since it says me a little bit of time versus trying to keep both things organized in a single profile.
The AM3 Phenom II's are supposed to be able to work in an AM2+ motherboard (and utilize DD2 memory). TechReport's review of the chip has some more details on this:
http://techreport.com/articles.x/16147
So AM2+ is still a viable socket for the future since AM3 processors will fit in. I wonder if the backwards compatability will work both ways - could an AM2+ processor be used in an AM3 motherboard?
Every coupon that was issued has an expiration date on it. If the money does run dry and the government doesn't secure additional funding, what will happen is any new requests will go on a waiting list. As old coupons expire, they will send out new coupons to the people on the list.
My Mythbuntu-based HTPC also froze up last night.
This is what my /var/log/messages file looks like: ...) /boot/System.map-2.6.27-9-generic
Dec 31 16:03:45 puppet -- MARK --
Dec 31 16:23:45 puppet -- MARK --
Dec 31 16:43:45 puppet -- MARK --
Dec 31 17:03:45 puppet -- MARK --
Dec 31 17:23:45 puppet -- MARK --
Dec 31 17:43:45 puppet -- MARK --
(... below is when I noticed the box was hung and restarted it
Jan 1 14:02:31 puppet syslogd 1.5.0#2ubuntu6: restart.
Jan 1 14:02:31 puppet kernel: Inspecting
Every 20 minutes, I get those "-- MARK --" messages and the last one is at 5:43PM local time which would be 11:43PM UTC (also my system clock is set to UTC, not local time). The next "-- MARK --" should have been at 12:03AM UTC, so there's a good chance the leap second messed something up.