I have an account with csoft.net at their $10/month level. I wanted to upgrade to their $15/month level but I haven't been able to. The reason? They ignore email. I started by using their web form to submit a request to sales. Two days later I sent an email to sales@csoft.net and tech@csoft.net. I got back a one sentence email saying that sales is on vacation. I've been emailing both sales and tech every other day since then, but I haven't gotten any response whatsoever.
At this point I'm seriously concerned that they may be going out of business. From a technical perspective they seem pretty well set up, but I don't think they have any full time staff.
I love my Palm Pro (with the Palm III upgrade card) and have used it for years. I have no desire to trade it for a WinCE device. Still, I really hate the rabid PalmOS advocates who foam at the mouth at the suggestion that there may be any advantages to the WinCE platform.
The original question stated that they have an existing Visual Basic program and they aren't looking for an organizer, but rather a handheld platform for a specialized data collection tool.
The post you responded to listed lots of facts about the WinCE platform that you proceeded to bob and weave around while tossing in the occasional cheap shot.
Are you really incapable of even considering the possibility that the Palm may not be the ultimate handheld platform for every possible application anywhere?
The fact that they already have an existing Visual Basic application is certainly going to give them a hell of a head start in getting it running on WinCE rather than assembling a PalmOS development environment, learning a brand new and unfamiliar API and rewriting the application in a different language.
Plus, for a data collection application I would give serious consideration to the WinCE machines with keyboards. I wouldn't trade my Palm Pro for one, but then I'm not writing up accident reports on my Palm Pro.
The main thing stopping me from playing MP3s is the low quality of the output of my soundcard. They sound ok at a low background level from my PC speakers, but when I hooked it up to the receiver and floor standing speakers of my main sound system, the noise and static is awful.
The only soundcard that I've really seen recommended is the Soundblaster Live with digital output. I have a couple of spare digital inputs, but the Soundblaster is over $100. If this device for $150 gives good audio quality and can be stuck in a box (next to the stereo) with a 72 pin SIMM from a 486 I don't use anymore and a spare hard drive and spare power supply it could be a better choice.
The problem is who's signing the contract and who's being bound by it. In this case, they aren't the same.
By implementing the VSTi system, however, universities contractually agree to require at least three titles per curriculum topic. Therefore, the number of titles used by students increases significantly.
So VSTi wines and dines the university president and suddenly all the students are required to either pay the extortion or withdraw from that univerity. Students aren't buying books based on what they need, but rather on the university's contractual obligation. Universities in general aren't accountable to the students, so it's not hard to imagine that a sufficiently unscrupulous VSTi sales force get a large percentage of schools into contracts.
Actually, the "HTML" version is just a series of GIFs. This isn't an HTML issue at all. The GIFs were presumably created using a graphing program. I can't remember the name, but I've used a program on Linux that could have generated those pictures, and I never got it to display anything where the fonts didn't look like crap.
I hate to say it, but you can tell it's Unix by the fonts. Why do Unix fonts have to look so awful? No website created by a Windows user would have fonts that unreadable unless they were deliberately creating a k-rad eyesore. (Of course if you use a Unix based web browser to view a website created on Windows the fonts may suck even if they look great on Windows.)
PS. This is not a troll, it's an observation of the objective fact that Unix fonts suck.
I replaced my power supply with a super quiet model from PC Power and Cooling. It's much quieter, but still to noisy for an AV component. (and yes, that's with the hard drive spun down)
Can you even get a slimline case on hack-it-yourself machine? I thought the really compact machines were all custom built for Compaq and other name brand vendors.
I only use Linux and NT which both have lousy power saving features. I know Win9x supports suspend/hibernation features, but can it automatically wake itself up at scheduled times to record shows?
Now if you could get a Linux supported TV card in a Netwinder that would be a good, although substantially more expensive alternative to a TiVo/ReplayTV.
Also, when comparing the price of a TiVo, be sure to leave out the $200(or $10/month) subscription cost since your home built box will be like a TiVo without the TiVo service features.
I think you're overestimating your needs. A T1 is enourmous overkill for one person's email. There is really no genuine need to run a mail server for one person, it's just a geek vanity thing. Even if you're really popular and a really fast reader, setting your computer to retrieve mail every 2-4 hours by modem is plenty. What you really want is just an email address that will stay constant.
There's only one way to really be sure your email address will never change. Register your own domain name. I've used Domainmonger, but they aren't the only low cost registrar. If you've registered your domain name you can change hosting companies without changing email addresses and you never have to worry about the owner of the domain taking away your right to use the address of your choice (unless of course you get into the whole trademark/domain squatting thing).
Once you've registered your domain name, you just need to host it with a web hosting company that also provides email. I pay $10/month to www.csoft.net for web hosting which includes unlimited email forwarders and unlimited POP mailboxes, both configurable through a simple CLI (i.e. login to a shell via ssh). There are many other web hosts that offer similar service.
Like many technology folks, I have valuable skills. There is a high demand and any company that expects to benefit from my abilities had damn well be prepared to meet the market price.
That price is not just money. The three most important factors of a job for me are:
1) Continually learning new things
2) Solving challenging and worthwhile problems
3) Paycheck
Those are listed in order of importance, but any company that thinks they can ignore even one of them shouldn't waste their time having a headhunter call me.
Number 1 includes learning on the job, but it also includes formal training. If a company thinks they can offer me 2 and/or 3, and place conditions or restrictions on 1, that's nice but I won't be working for them. Most likely they'll have to settle for someone of lesser skill to get someone who'll accept those restrictions.
Isn't this a topic for one of the kernel mailing lists? Slashdot really isn't your best source of specific programming knowledge. I think you'll find that the vast majority of Slashdot readers (including myself) have never written any kernel or device driver code.
I'm not sure what part of what I wrote you are disputing (if any). Does your local computer shop has T1 or T3 NICs?
I did acknowledge that you could use a PC to link together a variety of legacy network protocols. If you're in a small company and you're fortunate enough to have the IT equivalent of a handyman/jack-of-all-trades who'll be working for the company forever, go for it. If your IT handyman ever leaves you'll wish you'd gotten a Cisco up front because the next IT handyman will probably declare that the first one's jury-rigging is crap.
If you are the IT handyman and you don't mind (or perhaps like the idea of) screwing the company when you leave then go ahead and patch something together. And make sure not to leave any network architecture diagrams laying around where someone might find them.
From my perspective, if it can be done by a PC it's hardly worth calling it routing.
When I think "router" I think of something that can support lots of T1s, a few T3s, and hopefully scalability to OC-3, 12 and 48. You're not going to find a PC that can do that. If you're just trying to bridge 2-5 Ethernet LANs in the same building you should be looking at Ethernet switches. If you're trying to connect diverse types of LAN (Token Ring, FDDI, CDDI) you could do it with a PC if your administrator is slave labor. If you pay your administrator any sort of respectable amount you'll waste more money troubleshooting and maintaining than you'd spend on a dinky little Cisco. I certainly wouldn't want to maintain a Win2K or Linux box with a variety of different kinds of NICs.
I use mserv to play mp3s and Penguin Power to control playback using RF wireless remotes scattered all over the house (including a couple of keychain remotes). MP3s allow a much larger collection than even the largest of CD changers and much better control of playback preferences. The X10 interface adds the ability to control it from all over the house.
The only problem is that Linux sound quality is lacking. My machine dual boots, and my Creative AudioPCI card sounds dramatically better under Windows than under Linux. I still use Linux though, because I haven't gotten software with the same functionality under Windows. I keep hoping that someday I'll upgrade the kernel and suddenly the sound quality will improve.
If Dell's player can be configured to decode and playback any MP3 pushed to it by a PC on the network I'd buy it and use it as an outboard decoder. That way all the intelligence of song selection could be handled by X10 triggered scripts on the PC.
I guess ThinkPads are OK, but all the ones I've seen are big and bulky and squarish. I've been contemplating buying a laptop to run Linux. (my company supplied Compaq has to run NT because I need the Nortel Extranet client and Outlook to access the intranet via VPN and get my work mail). I just can't see spending a bunch of money on a big short lived laptop though. I'm still hoping for Transmeta comes up with something more than vapourware. A low priced, light weight, long battery life Linux laptop would be great if it supported everything (including modem, sound, suspend/hibernation, and network). I don't need a superfast CPU or even tons of RAM or hard disc.
A layer 2 (i.e. Ethernet) switch is stretching the definition and a layer 3 switch is just marketing hype.
A switch is a circuit oriented device. A switch such as the 4E, 5E, or DMS receives a connection initiation and responds by connecting an physical source port to a physical destination port. Everything coming into the source port goes right out the destination port.
The so called layer 2 and 3 switches are nothing of the kind. They receive individual packets or frames and examine them and decide which output port each should be sent to. I don't care whether they're examining the IP address, MAC address, or some other "tag". The function they're doing is routing.
I will grudgingly grant you the term Ethernet switch because each port on an Ethernet switch is connected to a device with a specific MAC address. You can sort of pretend that each Ethernet frame is a mini call and the switch is establishing a circuit from source to destination for the duration of a single frame.
A layer 3 switch is really a router. I don't care how many ASICs it has, it looks at each packet and sends it in the general direction of its destination based on information derived from routing protocols.
My ISP only provides POP, not IMAP. If DSL or cable modem ever becomes available here I'd like to set up my computer to pull mail from my ISP's POP server and make it available through IMAP. Is that possible?
I've never used IMAP, but I'm assuming it provides similar funtionality to Outlook's ability to create folders on both the Exchange server. I use this extensively between my desktop and laptop.
My web provider is using a mechanism involving wtmp. I don't know the details and I haven't used it yet. They say that if you log in to a shell or ftp then the IP you logged in from will be able to relay mail for a limited time. Presumably they're using some home made script to manage the relay list dynamically.
You could probably modify your POP software (assuming it's open source) to log the source IP to a file. It should only be a line or two of code in the right place. Then set up a script to 'tail -f' that log and add IPs to the relay list. Purge the relay list on a regular basis so that IPs don't stay on it for too long.
I wouldn't bet on it. The terms of service of some cable modem ISPs prohibit VPNs.
Is that really true? VPNs are one of the best reasons to use a cable modem or DSL. If you only use it for "recreational" web browsing it's a bit of an extravagance to pay the prices that are charged by most providers.
I wish I had the problem of switching between cable and T1. I'm too far away from the CO for DSL and the only cable is one way. I.e. downstream over cable, but upstream over POTS modem (which is a tad slower than T1).
Slashdot Mirror
I have an account with csoft.net at their $10/month level. I wanted to upgrade to their $15/month level but I haven't been able to. The reason? They ignore email. I started by using their web form to submit a request to sales. Two days later I sent an email to sales@csoft.net and tech@csoft.net. I got back a one sentence email saying that sales is on vacation. I've been emailing both sales and tech every other day since then, but I haven't gotten any response whatsoever.
At this point I'm seriously concerned that they may be going out of business. From a technical perspective they seem pretty well set up, but I don't think they have any full time staff.
http://www.thinkgeek.com/brain/bazaar/mart/cart.cg i?action=view&type=item&itemid=364e appears to be a shipping product. Has anyone bought it? It doesn't do all the ZapStation claims it will do, but there's something to be said for a product you can actually buy.
PS. Slashdot is mangling the url. Delete any spaces manually.
Then what was that "turbo" button on my 386 for?
I love my Palm Pro (with the Palm III upgrade card) and have used it for years. I have no desire to trade it for a WinCE device. Still, I really hate the rabid PalmOS advocates who foam at the mouth at the suggestion that there may be any advantages to the WinCE platform.
The original question stated that they have an existing Visual Basic program and they aren't looking for an organizer, but rather a handheld platform for a specialized data collection tool.
The post you responded to listed lots of facts about the WinCE platform that you proceeded to bob and weave around while tossing in the occasional cheap shot.
Are you really incapable of even considering the possibility that the Palm may not be the ultimate handheld platform for every possible application anywhere?
The fact that they already have an existing Visual Basic application is certainly going to give them a hell of a head start in getting it running on WinCE rather than assembling a PalmOS development environment, learning a brand new and unfamiliar API and rewriting the application in a different language.
Plus, for a data collection application I would give serious consideration to the WinCE machines with keyboards. I wouldn't trade my Palm Pro for one, but then I'm not writing up accident reports on my Palm Pro.
The main thing stopping me from playing MP3s is the low quality of the output of my soundcard. They sound ok at a low background level from my PC speakers, but when I hooked it up to the receiver and floor standing speakers of my main sound system, the noise and static is awful.
The only soundcard that I've really seen recommended is the Soundblaster Live with digital output. I have a couple of spare digital inputs, but the Soundblaster is over $100. If this device for $150 gives good audio quality and can be stuck in a box (next to the stereo) with a 72 pin SIMM from a 486 I don't use anymore and a spare hard drive and spare power supply it could be a better choice.
The problem is who's signing the contract and who's being bound by it. In this case, they aren't the same.
By implementing the VSTi system, however, universities contractually agree to require at least three titles per curriculum topic. Therefore, the number of titles used by students increases significantly.
So VSTi wines and dines the university president and suddenly all the students are required to either pay the extortion or withdraw from that univerity. Students aren't buying books based on what they need, but rather on the university's contractual obligation. Universities in general aren't accountable to the students, so it's not hard to imagine that a sufficiently unscrupulous VSTi sales force get a large percentage of schools into contracts.
Actually, the "HTML" version is just a series of GIFs. This isn't an HTML issue at all. The GIFs were presumably created using a graphing program. I can't remember the name, but I've used a program on Linux that could have generated those pictures, and I never got it to display anything where the fonts didn't look like crap.
I hate to say it, but you can tell it's Unix by the fonts. Why do Unix fonts have to look so awful? No website created by a Windows user would have fonts that unreadable unless they were deliberately creating a k-rad eyesore. (Of course if you use a Unix based web browser to view a website created on Windows the fonts may suck even if they look great on Windows.)
PS. This is not a troll, it's an observation of the objective fact that Unix fonts suck.
Don't forget noisy, bulky, and power hungry.
I replaced my power supply with a super quiet model from PC Power and Cooling. It's much quieter, but still to noisy for an AV component. (and yes, that's with the hard drive spun down)
Can you even get a slimline case on hack-it-yourself machine? I thought the really compact machines were all custom built for Compaq and other name brand vendors.
I only use Linux and NT which both have lousy power saving features. I know Win9x supports suspend/hibernation features, but can it automatically wake itself up at scheduled times to record shows?
Now if you could get a Linux supported TV card in a Netwinder that would be a good, although substantially more expensive alternative to a TiVo/ReplayTV.
Also, when comparing the price of a TiVo, be sure to leave out the $200(or $10/month) subscription cost since your home built box will be like a TiVo without the TiVo service features.
I think you're overestimating your needs. A T1 is enourmous overkill for one person's email. There is really no genuine need to run a mail server for one person, it's just a geek vanity thing. Even if you're really popular and a really fast reader, setting your computer to retrieve mail every 2-4 hours by modem is plenty. What you really want is just an email address that will stay constant.
There's only one way to really be sure your email address will never change. Register your own domain name. I've used Domainmonger, but they aren't the only low cost registrar. If you've registered your domain name you can change hosting companies without changing email addresses and you never have to worry about the owner of the domain taking away your right to use the address of your choice (unless of course you get into the whole trademark/domain squatting thing).
Once you've registered your domain name, you just need to host it with a web hosting company that also provides email. I pay $10/month to www.csoft.net for web hosting which includes unlimited email forwarders and unlimited POP mailboxes, both configurable through a simple CLI (i.e. login to a shell via ssh). There are many other web hosts that offer similar service.
Like many technology folks, I have valuable skills. There is a high demand and any company that expects to benefit from my abilities had damn well be prepared to meet the market price.
That price is not just money. The three most important factors of a job for me are:
1) Continually learning new things
2) Solving challenging and worthwhile problems
3) Paycheck
Those are listed in order of importance, but any company that thinks they can ignore even one of them shouldn't waste their time having a headhunter call me.
Number 1 includes learning on the job, but it also includes formal training. If a company thinks they can offer me 2 and/or 3, and place conditions or restrictions on 1, that's nice but I won't be working for them. Most likely they'll have to settle for someone of lesser skill to get someone who'll accept those restrictions.
I've been looking at Windows mail clients lately. The best I've found is Pocomail http://www.pocomail.com/
200 ppi
2560" x 2048"
21" x 16.5"
two 8.5" x 11" side by side
2560/21=121.9 ppi
2048/16.5 =124.1 ppi
two 8.5" x 11" side by side = 11" x 17" portrait or 8.5" by 22" landscape
21" x 16.5" is slightly less than four 8.5" x 11" pages in a 2x2 grid.
So what are the real specs on this monitor?
Isn't this a topic for one of the kernel mailing lists? Slashdot really isn't your best source of specific programming knowledge. I think you'll find that the vast majority of Slashdot readers (including myself) have never written any kernel or device driver code.
I'm not sure what part of what I wrote you are disputing (if any). Does your local computer shop has T1 or T3 NICs?
I did acknowledge that you could use a PC to link together a variety of legacy network protocols. If you're in a small company and you're fortunate enough to have the IT equivalent of a handyman/jack-of-all-trades who'll be working for the company forever, go for it. If your IT handyman ever leaves you'll wish you'd gotten a Cisco up front because the next IT handyman will probably declare that the first one's jury-rigging is crap.
If you are the IT handyman and you don't mind (or perhaps like the idea of) screwing the company when you leave then go ahead and patch something together. And make sure not to leave any network architecture diagrams laying around where someone might find them.
From my perspective, if it can be done by a PC it's hardly worth calling it routing.
When I think "router" I think of something that can support lots of T1s, a few T3s, and hopefully scalability to OC-3, 12 and 48. You're not going to find a PC that can do that. If you're just trying to bridge 2-5 Ethernet LANs in the same building you should be looking at Ethernet switches. If you're trying to connect diverse types of LAN (Token Ring, FDDI, CDDI) you could do it with a PC if your administrator is slave labor. If you pay your administrator any sort of respectable amount you'll waste more money troubleshooting and maintaining than you'd spend on a dinky little Cisco. I certainly wouldn't want to maintain a Win2K or Linux box with a variety of different kinds of NICs.
I use mserv to play mp3s and Penguin Power to control playback using RF wireless remotes scattered all over the house (including a couple of keychain remotes). MP3s allow a much larger collection than even the largest of CD changers and much better control of playback preferences. The X10 interface adds the ability to control it from all over the house.
The only problem is that Linux sound quality is lacking. My machine dual boots, and my Creative AudioPCI card sounds dramatically better under Windows than under Linux. I still use Linux though, because I haven't gotten software with the same functionality under Windows. I keep hoping that someday I'll upgrade the kernel and suddenly the sound quality will improve.
If Dell's player can be configured to decode and playback any MP3 pushed to it by a PC on the network I'd buy it and use it as an outboard decoder. That way all the intelligence of song selection could be handled by X10 triggered scripts on the PC.
I guess ThinkPads are OK, but all the ones I've seen are big and bulky and squarish. I've been contemplating buying a laptop to run Linux. (my company supplied Compaq has to run NT because I need the Nortel Extranet client and Outlook to access the intranet via VPN and get my work mail). I just can't see spending a bunch of money on a big short lived laptop though. I'm still hoping for Transmeta comes up with something more than vapourware. A low priced, light weight, long battery life Linux laptop would be great if it supported everything (including modem, sound, suspend/hibernation, and network). I don't need a superfast CPU or even tons of RAM or hard disc.
A layer 2 (i.e. Ethernet) switch is stretching the definition and a layer 3 switch is just marketing hype.
A switch is a circuit oriented device. A switch such as the 4E, 5E, or DMS receives a connection initiation and responds by connecting an physical source port to a physical destination port. Everything coming into the source port goes right out the destination port.
The so called layer 2 and 3 switches are nothing of the kind. They receive individual packets or frames and examine them and decide which output port each should be sent to. I don't care whether they're examining the IP address, MAC address, or some other "tag". The function they're doing is routing.
I will grudgingly grant you the term Ethernet switch because each port on an Ethernet switch is connected to a device with a specific MAC address. You can sort of pretend that each Ethernet frame is a mini call and the switch is establishing a circuit from source to destination for the duration of a single frame.
A layer 3 switch is really a router. I don't care how many ASICs it has, it looks at each packet and sends it in the general direction of its destination based on information derived from routing protocols.
My ISP only provides POP, not IMAP. If DSL or cable modem ever becomes available here I'd like to set up my computer to pull mail from my ISP's POP server and make it available through IMAP. Is that possible?
I've never used IMAP, but I'm assuming it provides similar funtionality to Outlook's ability to create folders on both the Exchange server. I use this extensively between my desktop and laptop.
...and a crappy sound output.
My web provider is using a mechanism involving wtmp. I don't know the details and I haven't used it yet. They say that if you log in to a shell or ftp then the IP you logged in from will be able to relay mail for a limited time. Presumably they're using some home made script to manage the relay list dynamically.
You could probably modify your POP software (assuming it's open source) to log the source IP to a file. It should only be a line or two of code in the right place. Then set up a script to 'tail -f' that log and add IPs to the relay list. Purge the relay list on a regular basis so that IPs don't stay on it for too long.
Is that really true? VPNs are one of the best reasons to use a cable modem or DSL. If you only use it for "recreational" web browsing it's a bit of an extravagance to pay the prices that are charged by most providers.
I wish I had the problem of switching between cable and T1. I'm too far away from the CO for DSL and the only cable is one way. I.e. downstream over cable, but upstream over POTS modem (which is a tad slower than T1).
Is it true that Fox went after Buffy sites or are they just confused? I thought Buffy was owned by Warner Brothers.