Food management? For sure! I've thought about this before where it would be cool if there was an easy way to keep a list of what was in my fridge, and also keep a list of what I need on the next shopping trip.
Bar codes. I didn't see anything about it on that web page, but if you're going to have a computer in the kitchen get a bar code reader. Just scan in the groceries when you unload them and scan the empty packages before you throw them out. It wouldn't take much knowledge to put together a little database application to track what you have and what you need. If you're persuasive you may even be able to get your local supermarket to give you a file listing all the bar codes and what product they're for.
For stuff like produce that doesn't have bar codes, just code the app to have a menu and let you key in stuff with the numeric keypad. You probably only have a couple dozen un-bar coded things in your fridge at most.
TTL is "Time To Live" It means something different with respect to DNS entries than it does with IP packets. I'm sure you can figure out the relevent meaning in each case.
Benefits of DVD on a desktop machine?
on
DVD for Linux
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· Score: 1
I can see the benefit of DVD on a laptop, especially if you travel a lot. I can also see the benefit if you're a student living in a dorm room. Is there any other benefit? My TV is bigger than my computer monitor, my Panasonic DVD player works fine and fits better next to my TV than my computer would.
. . . then it will be very interesting to see if the open source movement can really out do Microsoft.
I downloaded Star Office for the first time yesterday and took a look at it. It is very complete, far more functionality than any open source office software I've seen. It looks like it can compete with MS Office in the "side of the box feature list" department.
On the downside, however MS Office is at least twice as fast on identical hardware. Test machine is a Compaq Deskpro with a Pentium 200 something with 64MB of RAM. MS Office 97 on NT 4.0 loads reasonable fast and is plenty responsive for general use, even loading multi-hundred page Word documents with embedded graphics. On the same machine, starting Star Office on Mandrake 6.0 allows time to go get coffee. There are noticable delays and lack of responsiveness even when working with small documents.
Fonts, to be blunt, suck. Now maybe if running ttmkfontdir didn't crash the font server I might be able to get better fonts, but based on what I went through I wouldn't advise inexperienced Linux users to install new fonts. It essentially disabled my machine.
If Sun really opens the source I'll be waiting to see how many people join in the effort to optimize performance.
The problem still remains that that requires knowing what I'm looking for. Most IDEs put most, if not all, the available features right out where you can find them. Emacs requires you to go search for them. If you haven't been using Emacs for years you probably don't even know the terms that the documentation uses to describe the things you need to know even if you know what you're searching for.
A simple example from the Visual Basic macros in MS Word. A list of valid methods and properties displays whenever you type a period after an object name. This is something everyone discovers if they spend more than 10 minutes working on a Word macro. Emacs may have a similar feature, but there's no way you'd discover it by accident. You'd have to realize that such a feature exists and then go searching the documentation for whatever that feature might be called. That's why people like IDEs, they don't have to guess what helpful features may be available and then try to figure out how to get at them. The features are just there.
I use xemacs, but I can't really claim to understand it. I know how to do the basics, but all the help seems to rely on the user knowing the right questions to ask the help system.
In a previous article I asked about the resources available to allow someone new to get a handle on the Mozilla code. In this thread I have a related question:
Are there any references that give a fairly straight line "here's everything that's useful" introduction to using xemacs (or emacs, I don't really know the difference) to productively work on a large C++ project such as Mozilla? Something that points out all the features that will make working on a large project manageable?
I've stumbled onto a few useful features, but I'm sure there are other features buried in the ridiculous cascade of menus that I'll never discover unless someone points them out.
I think part of the reason that IDEs get so much more attention than emacs is that if you don't have 5+ years of experience using emacs you probably aren't aware of enough of the features to make emacs do what an IDE does out of the box.
The advantage that an IDE has is that with its much smaller (more focused) feature set it can have a tutorial that gets you productive right away. The emacs tutorial (last time I checked) wastes your time telling you how to move your cursor even though nearly every keyboard produced in the last 5 years has had perfectly good arrow, page up&down, and home&end buttons.
Will Mozilla ever gain outside contributors?
on
Mozilla M9 Released
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· Score: 2
I finally got around to looking at the Mozilla source and as expected it's enourmous. I've also looked around the mozilla site and I have to ask: Do the resources exist to allow outsiders to contribute to Mozilla?
Yes, I know that the source is available, but this is a huge object oriented project. Source code alone just doesn't cut it. Where are the models? Here, where I work there are information models, state transition diagrams, interface event documents, how can anybody be expected to dive into 19+ MB compressed of source code?
Am I mistaken, or is there virtually no information available that would allow someone outside of the project to figure it out without brute force reading all of the code?
The Vadem Clio is a really terrific looking piece of hardware. I have no need for a Windows CE machine, but if they can get X running on it and a wireless LAN card I'll definitely buy one.
By itself the Clio's CPU is nothing to write home about, but with the full power and connectivity of a desktop machine presented over a lightly loaded wireless LAN to something with the Clio's form factor it will definitely be a great machine.
The article is wrong about them not allowing an opt out. I just opted out and it was easy. All I had to do was jot a note on my Palm Pilot saying "Never order anything from Amazon.com". There are plenty of other places to buy books and everything else they sell.
Can I be the first to say yes it will work with Linux.
It's just a RCA to RF to RCA converter. It doesn't even require a computer. It'll work with an 8-track tape player if it has an RCA output or something that can be adapted to RCA.
How is this different from the DVD anywhere unit that they've been hyping which is just a A/V wireless transmitter and RF mouse that they relabelled when DVDs and computer DVD drives became popular?
From the picture, it includes a video connection and looks like the exact same hardware for the exact same price. It's just MP3 because that's a hot word in the news lately.
I have Mandrake 6.0 which comes with xfs and a ttfonts directory. How does this compare to the xfsft mentioned above? I tried adding some *.ttf files to the ttfonts directory and running/etc/rc.d/init.d/xfs restart, but the fonts still aren't available.
Does anyone know where the documentation on using True Type fonts with Mandrake is? Or should I just uninstall xfs and follow the directions above for installing xfsft?
You are apparently not aware of the fact that people do build complete cars themselves. It's a hobby. If you had actually read the original post in your hurry to be a smart ass you would see that it said nothing about price. The poster wanted to build one for fun (presumably just because it's possible), just like people build cars for fun.
I believe there are a number of 1Mbps (yes, one) products currently being marketed for home use. These have been announced within the past year. The reason why anyone would use them when 10BaseT is so cheap is because they run over the existing phone lines in the house without interupting phone service (presumably they do all their signalling above 3kHz). This is very attractive to the non-techie who doesn't want to run Cat 5 around the house.
So yes, Apple can make a plausible claim that 11Mbps is 10 times faster than the networking that a casual home network user might have.
No-one has said that AT&T won't lease access to the cable lines it lays and upgrades for internet access. Do you have any idea how many long distance phone companies there are in the US? There are hundreds, and many of them lease transport capacity from AT&T at a discount and resell it under their own brand name.
The same thing will happen with cable. If AOL calls up AT&T and offers $1 billion for access to some reasonably large number of customers' homes AT&T is not likely to say no. AOL can then bundle cable service into their package just like Joe Shmoe's Telco bundles AT&T long distance into their package.
The "Open Access" debate is not about the ability to purchase capacity at a bulk discount and resell it. It's about getting the government set rates according to AOL's idea of what they want to pay rather than based on a negotiation between AOL and AT&T.
The key fact to recognize though, is that if laws are passed forcing to AT&T to resell cable access at AOL's prefered rate AT&T is simply not going to pour its money into upgrading the cable lines. If the opportunity for profit is not there, it just isn't worth the investment.
I really wish people would put a comment at the top of each file explaining what's in it so I can get a grip on the way they divided up the code. Other than that, well written C with descriptive function and variable names is quite readable with very few comments.
C++ on the other hand is a mess. The KDE projects I've looked at have been indecipherable. Without a decent document describing the object model (e.g. and information model, state transition model, event document, or some other non-code view of the framework) it's virtually impossible to figure out where to start reading.
If anybody has a program that can take C++ for an entire program and render a picture showing all the objects, their methods, and how they interact, please let me know where to find it. I don't know if such a thing is even possible.
It's an interesting collection, but disappointing. It seems to be just a random assortment of stuff, it's hard to tell what recommendations if any you have. I just took a look at the X10d code since X10d seems to be your preferred software. It's pretty awful code. The download is just a single C file. It's almost totally uncommented and uses lots of one and two character variable names.
I think it might actually be easier to write an X10 program from scratch than to try and salvage X10d.
I tried installing Red Hat 5.2 on a new Gateway 2000 with a Promise 66 IDE card and the installer claimed there were no hard drives in the system.
I haven't tried the suggestions in the responses, but I just wanted to point out that the Promise card wont work out of the box. If you buy one make sure you can return it.
Of course digital phones can encrypt. It's part of the IS-136, IS-95 and GSM standards. I think virtually all digital phones support it. Whether it's supported and enabled on the base station side is the question. Encryption is definitely available in Manhattan, elsewhere it may not be.
You say telnet in and do your damndest, but is that really possible? There's no console and no floppy drive, so if it isn't running a telnet daemon on the serial port when you get it you're at a dead end.
I suspect that the production models will not have a telnet daemon running. It's a catch-22. It doesn't matter if it's running Debian if you can't get to a shell prompt then it's basically a closed system (maybe in violation of the GPL).
Re:It's not just a music player...
on
Empeg Shipping
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· Score: 1
Have you seen any real evidence of this openness? I've been checking their site every couple of weeks since last year and I haven't seen anything real. Since the unit is in production you'd think they'd have released the software and specs by now.
Are they selling hardware or software? If they're selling hardware then why be so tight with the software.
The UI is supposed to be in Python, so it ought to be fairly cross platform, right? I've been debating whether to buy an empeg. One of the deciding factor is the interface and how easily I can customize it. I'll wait to see and SDK before I buy an empeg.
My serial port trackball doesn't work well with CivCTP for Linux. It works fine with all other X software I've used, but with CivCTP it jitters and shakes. It also jumps randomly when I click which makes it a little tough to play a game without an "undo". Does anyone know why/how Civ would screw up mouse tracking?
Does anybody really play network games of Civilization? I just got my copy last week and I'm still playing my first game. The year is 1905 and I've got a city in space, a city undersea, and I'm using my rail launcher to send fusion tanks to all corners of the world to wipe out my enemies' archers, cannons, knights, and cavalry. It's taken at least 10-15 hours of gameplay to reach this point on the easiest level.
If I were playing against some real competition instead of the "Cheiftan" level computer it would take at least 24-48 hours of continuous play to finish the game. How do you get people to play for that long? And how do you keep people playing once their civilization becomes a lost cause?
I'd be surprised if network games ever got past the renaissance.
Well I do want to save power, so I do shut off the system. It's really a matter of convenience thought. Right now it's a small inconvenience to wait several minutes for the system to boot up if I just want to look up something quickly on the web. If I ever get around to running ethernet down to the kitchen and moving the 486 there it will be a big inconvenience to have to go upstairs and turn on the server in order to use the 486 downstairs as an X-terminal.
The reason I want to save power is because there's way more idle time than active time. Two computers with 200 Watt power supplies running 24/7 is wasteful when you consider that they're idle 10-12 hour straight when I'm at work and 6-8 hours straight when I'm asleep.
Sleep mode of 2-4 watts each would be great. Is that achievable with an AT motherboard/power supply?
Doesn't the power supply have to be on for the motherboard to do anything?
In an "Ask Slashdot" that wasn't posted I asked about making my computers power efficient. Is ATX relevant here? Since I'm out of the house for 12 or more hours at a time it would be great to have my computer turn its power supply down to idle when I'm gone.
Is that what ATX does? I've never come across any comparison of AT vs ATX so I've just stuck with AT upgrading piecewise from my first AT case. If ATX allows variable control of the power supply its worth the switch.
Slashdot Mirror
Bar codes. I didn't see anything about it on that web page, but if you're going to have a computer in the kitchen get a bar code reader. Just scan in the groceries when you unload them and scan the empty packages before you throw them out. It wouldn't take much knowledge to put together a little database application to track what you have and what you need. If you're persuasive you may even be able to get your local supermarket to give you a file listing all the bar codes and what product they're for.
For stuff like produce that doesn't have bar codes, just code the app to have a menu and let you key in stuff with the numeric keypad. You probably only have a couple dozen un-bar coded things in your fridge at most.
TTL is "Time To Live" It means something different with respect to DNS entries than it does with IP packets. I'm sure you can figure out the relevent meaning in each case.
I can see the benefit of DVD on a laptop, especially if you travel a lot. I can also see the benefit if you're a student living in a dorm room. Is there any other benefit? My TV is bigger than my computer monitor, my Panasonic DVD player works fine and fits better next to my TV than my computer would.
. . . then it will be very interesting to see if the open source movement can really out do Microsoft.
I downloaded Star Office for the first time yesterday and took a look at it. It is very complete, far more functionality than any open source office software I've seen. It looks like it can compete with MS Office in the "side of the box feature list" department.
On the downside, however MS Office is at least twice as fast on identical hardware. Test machine is a Compaq Deskpro with a Pentium 200 something with 64MB of RAM. MS Office 97 on NT 4.0 loads reasonable fast and is plenty responsive for general use, even loading multi-hundred page Word documents with embedded graphics. On the same machine, starting Star Office on Mandrake 6.0 allows time to go get coffee. There are noticable delays and lack of responsiveness even when working with small documents.
Fonts, to be blunt, suck. Now maybe if running ttmkfontdir didn't crash the font server I might be able to get better fonts, but based on what I went through I wouldn't advise inexperienced Linux users to install new fonts. It essentially disabled my machine.
If Sun really opens the source I'll be waiting to see how many people join in the effort to optimize performance.
The problem still remains that that requires knowing what I'm looking for. Most IDEs put most, if not all, the available features right out where you can find them. Emacs requires you to go search for them. If you haven't been using Emacs for years you probably don't even know the terms that the documentation uses to describe the things you need to know even if you know what you're searching for.
A simple example from the Visual Basic macros in MS Word. A list of valid methods and properties displays whenever you type a period after an object name. This is something everyone discovers if they spend more than 10 minutes working on a Word macro. Emacs may have a similar feature, but there's no way you'd discover it by accident. You'd have to realize that such a feature exists and then go searching the documentation for whatever that feature might be called. That's why people like IDEs, they don't have to guess what helpful features may be available and then try to figure out how to get at them. The features are just there.
I use xemacs, but I can't really claim to understand it. I know how to do the basics, but all the help seems to rely on the user knowing the right questions to ask the help system.
In a previous article I asked about the resources available to allow someone new to get a handle on the Mozilla code. In this thread I have a related question:
Are there any references that give a fairly straight line "here's everything that's useful" introduction to using xemacs (or emacs, I don't really know the difference) to productively work on a large C++ project such as Mozilla? Something that points out all the features that will make working on a large project manageable?
I've stumbled onto a few useful features, but I'm sure there are other features buried in the ridiculous cascade of menus that I'll never discover unless someone points them out.
I think part of the reason that IDEs get so much more attention than emacs is that if you don't have 5+ years of experience using emacs you probably aren't aware of enough of the features to make emacs do what an IDE does out of the box.
The advantage that an IDE has is that with its much smaller (more focused) feature set it can have a tutorial that gets you productive right away. The emacs tutorial (last time I checked) wastes your time telling you how to move your cursor even though nearly every keyboard produced in the last 5 years has had perfectly good arrow, page up&down, and home&end buttons.
I finally got around to looking at the Mozilla source and as expected it's enourmous. I've also looked around the mozilla site and I have to ask: Do the resources exist to allow outsiders to contribute to Mozilla?
Yes, I know that the source is available, but this is a huge object oriented project. Source code alone just doesn't cut it. Where are the models? Here, where I work there are information models, state transition diagrams, interface event documents, how can anybody be expected to dive into 19+ MB compressed of source code?
Am I mistaken, or is there virtually no information available that would allow someone outside of the project to figure it out without brute force reading all of the code?
The Vadem Clio is a really terrific looking piece of hardware. I have no need for a Windows CE machine, but if they can get X running on it and a wireless LAN card I'll definitely buy one.
By itself the Clio's CPU is nothing to write home about, but with the full power and connectivity of a desktop machine presented over a lightly loaded wireless LAN to something with the Clio's form factor it will definitely be a great machine.
The article is wrong about them not allowing an opt out. I just opted out and it was easy. All I had to do was jot a note on my Palm Pilot saying "Never order anything from Amazon.com". There are plenty of other places to buy books and everything else they sell.
It's just a RCA to RF to RCA converter. It doesn't even require a computer. It'll work with an 8-track tape player if it has an RCA output or something that can be adapted to RCA.
How is this different from the DVD anywhere unit that they've been hyping which is just a A/V wireless transmitter and RF mouse that they relabelled when DVDs and computer DVD drives became popular?
From the picture, it includes a video connection and looks like the exact same hardware for the exact same price. It's just MP3 because that's a hot word in the news lately.
I have Mandrake 6.0 which comes with xfs and a ttfonts directory. How does this compare to the xfsft mentioned above? I tried adding some *.ttf files to the ttfonts directory and running /etc/rc.d/init.d/xfs restart, but the fonts still aren't available.
Does anyone know where the documentation on using True Type fonts with Mandrake is? Or should I just uninstall xfs and follow the directions above for installing xfsft?
You are apparently not aware of the fact that people do build complete cars themselves. It's a hobby. If you had actually read the original post in your hurry to be a smart ass you would see that it said nothing about price. The poster wanted to build one for fun (presumably just because it's possible), just like people build cars for fun.
I believe there are a number of 1Mbps (yes, one) products currently being marketed for home use. These have been announced within the past year. The reason why anyone would use them when 10BaseT is so cheap is because they run over the existing phone lines in the house without interupting phone service (presumably they do all their signalling above 3kHz). This is very attractive to the non-techie who doesn't want to run Cat 5 around the house.
So yes, Apple can make a plausible claim that 11Mbps is 10 times faster than the networking that a casual home network user might have.
(I am not speaking for AT&T)
No-one has said that AT&T won't lease access to the cable lines it lays and upgrades for internet access. Do you have any idea how many long distance phone companies there are in the US? There are hundreds, and many of them lease transport capacity from AT&T at a discount and resell it under their own brand name.
The same thing will happen with cable. If AOL calls up AT&T and offers $1 billion for access to some reasonably large number of customers' homes AT&T is not likely to say no. AOL can then bundle cable service into their package just like Joe Shmoe's Telco bundles AT&T long distance into their package.
The "Open Access" debate is not about the ability to purchase capacity at a bulk discount and resell it. It's about getting the government set rates according to AOL's idea of what they want to pay rather than based on a negotiation between AOL and AT&T.
The key fact to recognize though, is that if laws are passed forcing to AT&T to resell cable access at AOL's prefered rate AT&T is simply not going to pour its money into upgrading the cable lines. If the opportunity for profit is not there, it just isn't worth the investment.
I really wish people would put a comment at the top of each file explaining what's in it so I can get a grip on the way they divided up the code. Other than that, well written C with descriptive function and variable names is quite readable with very few comments.
C++ on the other hand is a mess. The KDE projects I've looked at have been indecipherable. Without a decent document describing the object model (e.g. and information model, state transition model, event document, or some other non-code view of the framework) it's virtually impossible to figure out where to start reading.
If anybody has a program that can take C++ for an entire program and render a picture showing all the objects, their methods, and how they interact, please let me know where to find it. I don't know if such a thing is even possible.
It's an interesting collection, but disappointing. It seems to be just a random assortment of stuff, it's hard to tell what recommendations if any you have. I just took a look at the X10d code since X10d seems to be your preferred software. It's pretty awful code. The download is just a single C file. It's almost totally uncommented and uses lots of one and two character variable names.
I think it might actually be easier to write an X10 program from scratch than to try and salvage X10d.
I tried installing Red Hat 5.2 on a new Gateway 2000 with a Promise 66 IDE card and the installer claimed there were no hard drives in the system.
I haven't tried the suggestions in the responses, but I just wanted to point out that the Promise card wont work out of the box. If you buy one make sure you can return it.
Of course digital phones can encrypt. It's part of the IS-136, IS-95 and GSM standards. I think virtually all digital phones support it. Whether it's supported and enabled on the base station side is the question. Encryption is definitely available in Manhattan, elsewhere it may not be.
You say telnet in and do your damndest, but is that really possible? There's no console and no floppy drive, so if it isn't running a telnet daemon on the serial port when you get it you're at a dead end.
I suspect that the production models will not have a telnet daemon running. It's a catch-22. It doesn't matter if it's running Debian if you can't get to a shell prompt then it's basically a closed system (maybe in violation of the GPL).
Have you seen any real evidence of this openness? I've been checking their site every couple of weeks since last year and I haven't seen anything real. Since the unit is in production you'd think they'd have released the software and specs by now.
Are they selling hardware or software? If they're selling hardware then why be so tight with the software.
The UI is supposed to be in Python, so it ought to be fairly cross platform, right? I've been debating whether to buy an empeg. One of the deciding factor is the interface and how easily I can customize it. I'll wait to see and SDK before I buy an empeg.
My serial port trackball doesn't work well with CivCTP for Linux. It works fine with all other X software I've used, but with CivCTP it jitters and shakes. It also jumps randomly when I click which makes it a little tough to play a game without an "undo". Does anyone know why/how Civ would screw up mouse tracking?
Does anybody really play network games of Civilization? I just got my copy last week and I'm still playing my first game. The year is 1905 and I've got a city in space, a city undersea, and I'm using my rail launcher to send fusion tanks to all corners of the world to wipe out my enemies' archers, cannons, knights, and cavalry. It's taken at least 10-15 hours of gameplay to reach this point on the easiest level.
If I were playing against some real competition instead of the "Cheiftan" level computer it would take at least 24-48 hours of continuous play to finish the game. How do you get people to play for that long? And how do you keep people playing once their civilization becomes a lost cause?
I'd be surprised if network games ever got past the renaissance.
Well I do want to save power, so I do shut off the system. It's really a matter of convenience thought. Right now it's a small inconvenience to wait several minutes for the system to boot up if I just want to look up something quickly on the web. If I ever get around to running ethernet down to the kitchen and moving the 486 there it will be a big inconvenience to have to go upstairs and turn on the server in order to use the 486 downstairs as an X-terminal.
The reason I want to save power is because there's way more idle time than active time. Two computers with 200 Watt power supplies running 24/7 is wasteful when you consider that they're idle 10-12 hour straight when I'm at work and 6-8 hours straight when I'm asleep.
Sleep mode of 2-4 watts each would be great. Is that achievable with an AT motherboard/power supply?
Doesn't the power supply have to be on for the motherboard to do anything?
In an "Ask Slashdot" that wasn't posted I asked about making my computers power efficient. Is ATX relevant here? Since I'm out of the house for 12 or more hours at a time it would be great to have my computer turn its power supply down to idle when I'm gone.
Is that what ATX does? I've never come across any comparison of AT vs ATX so I've just stuck with AT upgrading piecewise from my first AT case. If ATX allows variable control of the power supply its worth the switch.