How did you manage to get this far in the discussion without reading the Ask Slashdot question that's being discussed? Are you one of those people who can only post complaints and insults because you have no actual skills?
The original question is about unified messaging clients, i.e. programs that let you communicate with ICQ, AIM, and all other IMs using a single client. Kind of makes your message pointless, doesn't it?
The price of this unit is ridiculous. You could get the empeg for less money and have it fit in a car dashboard as well as being removable for anywhere use.
The problem with all these mp3 players and with building your own is quality. Not the quality of the mp3, but the quality of the sound hardware. There are lots of sites on the web that tell how to build your own mp3 player, but if you're using off the shelf components you have no way of knowing what the sound quality is going to be. I replaced my old Soundblaster 16 so I could listen to mp3s, but the new card wasn't any better than the old one.
If someone would put together a list of tested and proven hardware that sounds good it might only be a couple of hundred dollars. Without a list you could waste a bunch of money on components that just don't give decent quality. You never know if a certain motherboard or hard drive or ethernet card or video card is going to interfere and degrade your sound quality.
I think failure means that the software will need to be restarted, not necessarily reinstalled. In the machine tool industry I would guess that failure means the tool would need to be replace, or at least substantially overhauled. For a beta I would expect that there would be few enough bugs that the software could run for days or weeks if the user specifically avoided the bugs. For an alpha that is probably too high an expectation.
I think you neglected to read the article. The main sim that was mentioned was an F15 fighter jet simulator. If the simulation is sufficiently accurate then it is much closer to reality than shooting demons and monsters while absorbing ridiculous amounts of damage without getting killed. You seem to be thinking of some kind of battle campaign sim, which was not the primary focus of the article.
Re:Use ISO Time and Date formats!
on
Happy Odd Day!
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· Score: 0
I haven't read the ISO standard, but couldn't YYYY-MM-DD be confused with YYYY-DD-MM? I prefer to use DD-MMM-YYYY, e.g. 19-Nov-1999 There is absolutely no way to confuse any part with any other, the units are in increasing order from smallest to largest, and the alphabetic bit in the middle clearly separates the numeric bits. You can even write it DDMMMYYYY if you're lazy, since 19Nov1999 is more readable than 19991119 or 11191999.
Of course if you're writing a program it's slightly easier to deal with all numeric dates, but is there anybody here who thinks mapping twelve three character strings to numbers and back is the least bit difficult?
Unfortunately this method isn't very useful with older hardware. If you only have 1-2 MB or video RAM you need to reduce the color depth in order to switch to higher resolutions. XFree86, unlike Windows, can't switch color depth while running, so the hot keys mentioned above only work if you run in 8 bit color all the time.
What kind of configuration is needed to run Mozilla well? I've tried the last couple of milestones, including M11, but they are so slow on my Pentium 266. M11 is slower than Netscape 4.61 and much slower than IE4 on the same hardware. There's a 3-5 second delay on displaying menus and it seems like everything I do generates a delayed response. Are there any optimizations/configurations that can be tweaked? (Actually tweaked is probably an inadequate word, about a factor of ten speed increase is needed)
I use bash on my Linux box because the NCR and Solaris machines at work all use ksh. The struggle of constantly switching back and forth between ksh and tcsh was too much for me. Switching between bash and ksh just means fewer features rather than different commands (e.g. setenv vs. export).
The only problem is that tab completion in both bash and ksh is brain dead; tcsh is the only shell I've used that does it properly.
In bash you have two completion settings. 1) Complete only if there is a unique match. If there is ambiguous match, be stubborn and force the user to type more characters. 2) Cycle through all possible matches on multiple tab presses. This is done right in tcsh, but in bash if there is a unique match this style of completion won't complete it. You have to type it manually.
Netwinders were cool when they first came out, but overpriced. They're still overpriced, but now the coolness factor has worn off.
The fact that they only have 2MB of video RAM and can't use an add-on video card makes them unattractive as a desktop machine. The high price makes them unattractive as home server. I don't manage any rack mounted computers, so I can't comment on whether the small size is a big enough deal to overcome the CPU and RAM limitations.
Disclaimer: I work for AT&T, but I am not speaking for them.
I agree with you in principle, but you overlooked on point even though it was in your post. ISPs currently pay for their use of the POTS or ISDN infrastructure. The issue here is that AOL and others want free (as in beer) access to the new, faster infrastructure.
AT&T's primary goal is to be a carrier, not a content provider that's why AT&T sold DirectTV a while back. AT&T acquired TCI to get infrastructure (in the form of wires as well as trucks, vans, equipment, and employees). Since TCI owned content as well that came along for the ride, although much of the content production trades separately on the stock market as Liberty Media.
AT&T has repeatedly stated that it is willing to sell capacity on the cable infrastructure to content providers (i.e. ISPs) that want it. The only issue is that TCI had signed a contract with @Home giving them exclusive rights to provide ISP service over TCI's cable. As part of the acquisition of TCI, AT&T became bound by this contract. Since this contract has been found to be legal and binding, AT&T would be open to a lawsuit from @Home if they allow other ISPs to use their cable lines within the period of the contract (a couple more years I think)
If there were a legal way out of this contract AT&T would gladly let other ISPs deliver service over their cable lines since more content leads to more demand. AT&T markets phone service in partnership with a variety of other companies and organizations and would be glad to have dozens or even hundreds of special interest ISPs doing targeted marketing and paying AT&T for the infrastructure.
What AT&T is not willing to do is grant "open" (as in free) to anyone who petitions the government. Much of TCI's cable was crap and is being upgraded by AT&T. This costs money. If AOL or anyone else wants to send their traffic over the lines that AT&T is paying to upgrade they should be willing to pay a fair share. The whole "open access" debate is simply a ploy to get the government give away the infrastructure that AT&T is paying for.
Thanks, that works pretty well, although I haven't been able to get it to draw my system in the center with all the other systems surrounding it. I guess the next question is how to translate the output.
I guess I need to dig through the Ghostscript documentation to figure out how to get Postscript into a web viewable format.
The 1371 isn't necessarily good. I have one, the Creative Ensoniq AudioPCI. It works flawlessly under Windows 98, but I can't get rid of the static under Linux. I've tried muting all unused channels and turning down the volume on all unused channels but there's still an annoying level of static. It's probably a driver problem with some unlabeled revision of the 1371, since it sounds great using Win98 dual booted on the same machine.
You seem to be under the impression that these ASP are subject to the kind of strict regulations that apply to banks and other financial institutions. I didn't see any evidence to support that belief.
Banks are generally not "fly-by-night" operations because there are fairly severe penalties for people who run their financial business in a casual anything goes manner. Since ASPs are so new, I doubt that there are any regulations. The individual ASPs will probably be making up their policies as they go along and doing whatever they can get away with.
How? I use Wine to run Agent (a combination mail and news reader for Windows) on my home machine. It's not as powerful as MS Outlook which I use at work, but at least it's possible to get up and running with a trivial amount of effort. The hardest part was setting up the winerc file.
To read mail with Agent: Step 1 Set up Wine Step 2 Run Agent Step 3 Go to the option menu and enter POP server, userID, password, SMTP server. Step 4 Click the "Get Mail" button
To read mail with Mutt Step 1 Read fetchmail manual Step 2 Write a fetchmailrc file Step 3 Read sendmail manual (Go ahead and claim sendmail is easy to configure, I dare you) Step 4 Configure sendmail to fix the error about the wrong host Step 5 Wonder if you're going to get hacked now that you have sendmail running (After all, what do I know about sendmail security? At least when it was turned off I felt fairly safe) Step 6 Read the Mutt manual (With no menus and no point and click don't count on figuring it out just from guessing unless you have years of experience with Unix mail clients) Step 7 Oops, I forgot I only ran fetchmail once. Better read some more documentation to figure out which file to add it to so it runs automatically. rc.local? ifup-ppp? ifup-post? crontab? Step 8 Oops, what if I want to create mail while I'm not connected and then have it sent automatically? Can sendmail queue outgoing mail? I don't know, better read some more manuals and maybe even get another program.
OK, so maybe I exagerated a little, but it's certainly a lot more work and more programs than the Windows method. End user email configuration should be "POP Server, SMTP Server, username, password, Full Name, polling frequency" five or six text boxes and maybe a couple of check boxes. It should not require require reading manual for three or more programs. I'm an end user dammit, not a sysadmin.
The post above may be a troll, but there's a grain of truth in it. Much as I like Linux I haven't found any email program that can meet my needs as well as MS Outlook. If you've been using a Unix mail client for years it won't bother you, but going from Outlook to a Unix text mode client feels like having my hands tied behind my back.
Things that are trivially easy in Outlook require reading lots of documentation in Unix. I have over 400MB of email in Outlook. It's organized in a multi-level tree of mail folders that are displayed on screen. I have icons in the Outlook bar that take me to frequently used folders with a single click. Clicking on a column heading in the message list sorts by that column. When I open a message it opens in a new window which I can leave open while I read other email. I do this all the time when I'm not ready to deal with a message right away.
Outlooks filters are certainly easier to use that procmail's, but neither are any use if there isn't some kind of text matching that can identify mail. I work on many projects simultaneously and have at least 50 mail folders and growing. I work with the same people on different projects so I can filter on sender and the project isn't necessarily in the subject line. With Outlook I can cntrl-click on many different messages and drag them to a folder.
This is just a short list of the things that are easy and obvious in Outlook. Certainly I could spend my time reading documentation for Mutt and Fetchmail and Procmail and Sendmail and figure out work arounds for most of the things Outlook does "out of the box", but I just don't have the time.
I have the Creative Ensoniq AudioPCI card, i.e. the a card made after Creative bought Ensoniq. This card works great in Windows, but the Linux drivers suck. When people talk about how great and low noise the Ensoniq is they are referring to the ES1371 that was used before Creative bought it. Congratulations if you already have one, but if you don't, don't buy one.
I haven't tried the ALSA drivers, but the OSS drivers cause static in the sound output.
I don't remember the model number of my Panasonic, but I think it's the A120. I got my copy of The Matrix yesterday and watched tracks 1&2 this morning. There didn't seem to be any problems. I didn't see any problems with the menus either.
Are there any organizations that lobby the US government for the kind of freedoms that many Slashdot readers support? I would be willing to contribute money to support an organization that was fighting the US privacy, encryption, censorship, and other policies if I could find an organization with a good track record on these topics.
Be careful if you install True Type fonts for Mandrake (and probably Red Hat 6.0 too). I found detailed step-by-step instructions for font installation that basically disabled my computer. There are programs ttmkfdir and makefontdir (or something similar) which you need to run to add fonts. When I added new fonts and ran them according to the instructions they gave no error messages and seemed to work correctly. When I restarted X the font server crashed. Since Mandrake is configured to get all fonts from the font server this caused the X server to go into a continuous crashing loop. If this happens to you you will need to boot into runlevel 3 or telnet in from another machine and put the old fontdir file back.
It certainly hasn't reached the drag-n-drop simplicity of Windows just yet.
Sure you can get a cheap sound card for $20 by scraping the bottom of the barrel. Do you really think that's a good idea if you're building the system specifically to play music?
I tried that once. I took the recommendation of some Slashdot poster on what sound card to buy for playing MP3s. Guess what, the music is filled with quiet static in the background even when playing wav's instead of MP3s.
If you're going to build your own MP3 player plan on spending $100+ on a high end sound card or else plan on buying several different cheap sound cards until you get lucky and find one that's decent.
... I just got the new Crutchfield catalog yesterday and on the cover was an in car DVD player. I'm not sure who the target audience is. The picture looked like an ordinary PC CD or DVD drive, there was no screen. If DVD-RAM prices drop maybe someone will built a DVD based MP3 player.
So is there anything wrong with GNUStep?
on
GNUstep 0.6.0
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· Score: 1
I've never heard anything but praise for NextStep. I've never used it, but everyone who has seems to have only good things to say about it. I use WindowMaker on my machine, and although I use some GTK+ apps I haven't found any compelling reason to use either Gnome or KDE.
Are there any disadvantages to GNUStep compared to Gnome or KDE? Does anyone have any problems with NextStep that can't be overcome without switching to a completly different system?
Can someone clarify the speed issue? I was thinking that the AirPort's 11Mbps isn't as great as it sounds. Sure most people don't have 100Mbps ethernet, but if the 10Mbps ethernet they do have is switched then it's really 10Mbps per machine rather than the 10Mbps shared. The AirPort's 11Mbps must be shared, not point to point.
Are people still using unswitched 10Mbps ethernet extensively?
Hardware is definitely more of a factor than MP3 for me. I ripped a couple of CDs (using Grip, CD Paranoia, and lame) and heard faint static in the background. I increased the bitrate, but it didn't help. Finally, instead of producing MP3s I ripped a track to a wav file and played that. Sure enough, the wav file which should have been a perfect digital copy of the track on the CD had faint static and clicks in the background.
This is on an Ensoniq AudioPCI 1371 that I bought specifically because several people on Slashdot had recommended it in a previous MP3 discussion.
The biggest problem for MP3s or any other compressed audio format is the lack of good hardware and the lack of reliable recommendations. If a sound card specifically recommended by Slashdot MP3 fanatics as a very low noise card can't even play uncompressed audio acceptably, how is the average consumer, who buys a computer without even knowing what kind of sound card it has, going to be able to get decent quality compressed audio playback?
Slashdot Mirror
How did you manage to get this far in the discussion without reading the Ask Slashdot question that's being discussed? Are you one of those people who can only post complaints and insults because you have no actual skills?
The original question is about unified messaging clients, i.e. programs that let you communicate with ICQ, AIM, and all other IMs using a single client. Kind of makes your message pointless, doesn't it?
The price of this unit is ridiculous. You could get the empeg for less money and have it fit in a car dashboard as well as being removable for anywhere use.
The problem with all these mp3 players and with building your own is quality. Not the quality of the mp3, but the quality of the sound hardware. There are lots of sites on the web that tell how to build your own mp3 player, but if you're using off the shelf components you have no way of knowing what the sound quality is going to be. I replaced my old Soundblaster 16 so I could listen to mp3s, but the new card wasn't any better than the old one.
If someone would put together a list of tested and proven hardware that sounds good it might only be a couple of hundred dollars. Without a list you could waste a bunch of money on components that just don't give decent quality. You never know if a certain motherboard or hard drive or ethernet card or video card is going to interfere and degrade your sound quality.
I think failure means that the software will need to be restarted, not necessarily reinstalled. In the machine tool industry I would guess that failure means the tool would need to be replace, or at least substantially overhauled. For a beta I would expect that there would be few enough bugs that the software could run for days or weeks if the user specifically avoided the bugs. For an alpha that is probably too high an expectation.
I think you neglected to read the article. The main sim that was mentioned was an F15 fighter jet simulator. If the simulation is sufficiently accurate then it is much closer to reality than shooting demons and monsters while absorbing ridiculous amounts of damage without getting killed. You seem to be thinking of some kind of battle campaign sim, which was not the primary focus of the article.
I haven't read the ISO standard, but couldn't YYYY-MM-DD be confused with YYYY-DD-MM? I prefer to use DD-MMM-YYYY, e.g. 19-Nov-1999 There is absolutely no way to confuse any part with any other, the units are in increasing order from smallest to largest, and the alphabetic bit in the middle clearly separates the numeric bits. You can even write it DDMMMYYYY if you're lazy, since 19Nov1999 is more readable than 19991119 or 11191999.
Of course if you're writing a program it's slightly easier to deal with all numeric dates, but is there anybody here who thinks mapping twelve three character strings to numbers and back is the least bit difficult?
Unfortunately this method isn't very useful with older hardware. If you only have 1-2 MB or video RAM you need to reduce the color depth in order to switch to higher resolutions. XFree86, unlike Windows, can't switch color depth while running, so the hot keys mentioned above only work if you run in 8 bit color all the time.
What kind of configuration is needed to run Mozilla well? I've tried the last couple of milestones, including M11, but they are so slow on my Pentium 266. M11 is slower than Netscape 4.61 and much slower than IE4 on the same hardware. There's a 3-5 second delay on displaying menus and it seems like everything I do generates a delayed response. Are there any optimizations/configurations that can be tweaked? (Actually tweaked is probably an inadequate word, about a factor of ten speed increase is needed)
I use bash on my Linux box because the NCR and Solaris machines at work all use ksh. The struggle of constantly switching back and forth between ksh and tcsh was too much for me. Switching between bash and ksh just means fewer features rather than different commands (e.g. setenv vs. export).
The only problem is that tab completion in both bash and ksh is brain dead; tcsh is the only shell I've used that does it properly.
In bash you have two completion settings. 1) Complete only if there is a unique match. If there is ambiguous match, be stubborn and force the user to type more characters.
2) Cycle through all possible matches on multiple tab presses. This is done right in tcsh, but in bash if there is a unique match this style of completion won't complete it. You have to type it manually.
Netwinders were cool when they first came out, but overpriced. They're still overpriced, but now the coolness factor has worn off.
The fact that they only have 2MB of video RAM and can't use an add-on video card makes them unattractive as a desktop machine. The high price makes them unattractive as home server. I don't manage any rack mounted computers, so I can't comment on whether the small size is a big enough deal to overcome the CPU and RAM limitations.
Disclaimer: I work for AT&T, but I am not speaking for them.
I agree with you in principle, but you overlooked on point even though it was in your post. ISPs currently pay for their use of the POTS or ISDN infrastructure. The issue here is that AOL and others want free (as in beer) access to the new, faster infrastructure.
AT&T's primary goal is to be a carrier, not a content provider that's why AT&T sold DirectTV a while back. AT&T acquired TCI to get infrastructure (in the form of wires as well as trucks, vans, equipment, and employees). Since TCI owned content as well that came along for the ride, although much of the content production trades separately on the stock market as Liberty Media.
AT&T has repeatedly stated that it is willing to sell capacity on the cable infrastructure to content providers (i.e. ISPs) that want it. The only issue is that TCI had signed a contract with @Home giving them exclusive rights to provide ISP service over TCI's cable. As part of the acquisition of TCI, AT&T became bound by this contract. Since this contract has been found to be legal and binding, AT&T would be open to a lawsuit from @Home if they allow other ISPs to use their cable lines within the period of the contract (a couple more years I think)
If there were a legal way out of this contract AT&T would gladly let other ISPs deliver service over their cable lines since more content leads to more demand. AT&T markets phone service in partnership with a variety of other companies and organizations and would be glad to have dozens or even hundreds of special interest ISPs doing targeted marketing and paying AT&T for the infrastructure.
What AT&T is not willing to do is grant "open" (as in free) to anyone who petitions the government. Much of TCI's cable was crap and is being upgraded by AT&T. This costs money. If AOL or anyone else wants to send their traffic over the lines that AT&T is paying to upgrade they should be willing to pay a fair share. The whole "open access" debate is simply a ploy to get the government give away the infrastructure that AT&T is paying for.
Here's the last /. article on this http://slashdot.org/articles/99 /09/07/0951244.shtml The web site looks exactly as devoid of information as I remember it. I don't think they've done anything new.
Thanks, that works pretty well, although I haven't been able to get it to draw my system in the center with all the other systems surrounding it. I guess the next question is how to translate the output.
I guess I need to dig through the Ghostscript documentation to figure out how to get Postscript into a web viewable format.
The 1371 isn't necessarily good. I have one, the Creative Ensoniq AudioPCI. It works flawlessly under Windows 98, but I can't get rid of the static under Linux. I've tried muting all unused channels and turning down the volume on all unused channels but there's still an annoying level of static. It's probably a driver problem with some unlabeled revision of the 1371, since it sounds great using Win98 dual booted on the same machine.
You seem to be under the impression that these ASP are subject to the kind of strict regulations that apply to banks and other financial institutions. I didn't see any evidence to support that belief.
Banks are generally not "fly-by-night" operations because there are fairly severe penalties for people who run their financial business in a casual anything goes manner. Since ASPs are so new, I doubt that there are any regulations. The individual ASPs will probably be making up their policies as they go along and doing whatever they can get away with.
How? I use Wine to run Agent (a combination mail and news reader for Windows) on my home machine. It's not as powerful as MS Outlook which I use at work, but at least it's possible to get up and running with a trivial amount of effort. The hardest part was setting up the winerc file.
To read mail with Agent:
Step 1 Set up Wine
Step 2 Run Agent
Step 3 Go to the option menu and enter POP server, userID, password, SMTP server.
Step 4 Click the "Get Mail" button
To read mail with Mutt
Step 1 Read fetchmail manual
Step 2 Write a fetchmailrc file
Step 3 Read sendmail manual (Go ahead and claim sendmail is easy to configure, I dare you)
Step 4 Configure sendmail to fix the error about the wrong host
Step 5 Wonder if you're going to get hacked now that you have sendmail running (After all, what do I know about sendmail security? At least when it was turned off I felt fairly safe)
Step 6 Read the Mutt manual (With no menus and no point and click don't count on figuring it out just from guessing unless you have years of experience with Unix mail clients)
Step 7 Oops, I forgot I only ran fetchmail once. Better read some more documentation to figure out which file to add it to so it runs automatically. rc.local? ifup-ppp? ifup-post? crontab?
Step 8 Oops, what if I want to create mail while I'm not connected and then have it sent automatically? Can sendmail queue outgoing mail? I don't know, better read some more manuals and maybe even get another program.
OK, so maybe I exagerated a little, but it's certainly a lot more work and more programs than the Windows method. End user email configuration should be "POP Server, SMTP Server, username, password, Full Name, polling frequency" five or six text boxes and maybe a couple of check boxes. It should not require require reading manual for three or more programs. I'm an end user dammit, not a sysadmin.
The post above may be a troll, but there's a grain of truth in it. Much as I like Linux I haven't found any email program that can meet my needs as well as MS Outlook. If you've been using a Unix mail client for years it won't bother you, but going from Outlook to a Unix text mode client feels like having my hands tied behind my back.
Things that are trivially easy in Outlook require reading lots of documentation in Unix. I have over 400MB of email in Outlook. It's organized in a multi-level tree of mail folders that are displayed on screen. I have icons in the Outlook bar that take me to frequently used folders with a single click. Clicking on a column heading in the message list sorts by that column. When I open a message it opens in a new window which I can leave open while I read other email. I do this all the time when I'm not ready to deal with a message right away.
Outlooks filters are certainly easier to use that procmail's, but neither are any use if there isn't some kind of text matching that can identify mail. I work on many projects simultaneously and have at least 50 mail folders and growing. I work with the same people on different projects so I can filter on sender and the project isn't necessarily in the subject line. With Outlook I can cntrl-click on many different messages and drag them to a folder.
This is just a short list of the things that are easy and obvious in Outlook. Certainly I could spend my time reading documentation for Mutt and Fetchmail and Procmail and Sendmail and figure out work arounds for most of the things Outlook does "out of the box", but I just don't have the time.
I have the Creative Ensoniq AudioPCI card, i.e. the a card made after Creative bought Ensoniq. This card works great in Windows, but the Linux drivers suck. When people talk about how great and low noise the Ensoniq is they are referring to the ES1371 that was used before Creative bought it. Congratulations if you already have one, but if you don't, don't buy one.
I haven't tried the ALSA drivers, but the OSS drivers cause static in the sound output.
I don't remember the model number of my Panasonic, but I think it's the A120. I got my copy of The Matrix yesterday and watched tracks 1&2 this morning. There didn't seem to be any problems. I didn't see any problems with the menus either.
Are there any organizations that lobby the US government for the kind of freedoms that many Slashdot readers support? I would be willing to contribute money to support an organization that was fighting the US privacy, encryption, censorship, and other policies if I could find an organization with a good track record on these topics.
Be careful if you install True Type fonts for Mandrake (and probably Red Hat 6.0 too). I found detailed step-by-step instructions for font installation that basically disabled my computer. There are programs ttmkfdir and makefontdir (or something similar) which you need to run to add fonts. When I added new fonts and ran them according to the instructions they gave no error messages and seemed to work correctly. When I restarted X the font server crashed. Since Mandrake is configured to get all fonts from the font server this caused the X server to go into a continuous crashing loop. If this happens to you you will need to boot into runlevel 3 or telnet in from another machine and put the old fontdir file back.
It certainly hasn't reached the drag-n-drop simplicity of Windows just yet.
Sure you can get a cheap sound card for $20 by scraping the bottom of the barrel. Do you really think that's a good idea if you're building the system specifically to play music?
I tried that once. I took the recommendation of some Slashdot poster on what sound card to buy for playing MP3s. Guess what, the music is filled with quiet static in the background even when playing wav's instead of MP3s.
If you're going to build your own MP3 player plan on spending $100+ on a high end sound card or else plan on buying several different cheap sound cards until you get lucky and find one that's decent.
... I just got the new Crutchfield catalog yesterday and on the cover was an in car DVD player. I'm not sure who the target audience is. The picture looked like an ordinary PC CD or DVD drive, there was no screen. If DVD-RAM prices drop maybe someone will built a DVD based MP3 player.
I've never heard anything but praise for NextStep. I've never used it, but everyone who has seems to have only good things to say about it. I use WindowMaker on my machine, and although I use some GTK+ apps I haven't found any compelling reason to use either Gnome or KDE.
Are there any disadvantages to GNUStep compared to Gnome or KDE? Does anyone have any problems with NextStep that can't be overcome without switching to a completly different system?
Can someone clarify the speed issue? I was thinking that the AirPort's 11Mbps isn't as great as it sounds. Sure most people don't have 100Mbps ethernet, but if the 10Mbps ethernet they do have is switched then it's really 10Mbps per machine rather than the 10Mbps shared. The AirPort's 11Mbps must be shared, not point to point.
Are people still using unswitched 10Mbps ethernet extensively?
Hardware is definitely more of a factor than MP3 for me. I ripped a couple of CDs (using Grip, CD Paranoia, and lame) and heard faint static in the background. I increased the bitrate, but it didn't help. Finally, instead of producing MP3s I ripped a track to a wav file and played that. Sure enough, the wav file which should have been a perfect digital copy of the track on the CD had faint static and clicks in the background.
This is on an Ensoniq AudioPCI 1371 that I bought specifically because several people on Slashdot had recommended it in a previous MP3 discussion.
The biggest problem for MP3s or any other compressed audio format is the lack of good hardware and the lack of reliable recommendations. If a sound card specifically recommended by Slashdot MP3 fanatics as a very low noise card can't even play uncompressed audio acceptably, how is the average consumer, who buys a computer without even knowing what kind of sound card it has, going to be able to get decent quality compressed audio playback?