Second, after downloading it and playing around a little bit it has some intriguing features. I'm going to play more. I'm reccomending to other people to try playing with it too.
So I was trying to download that Groove thing and even find out what it is about, site is slow and getting slower. Then I come here and find out why...
I had at least made it to the minimum requirements section. PII, 50MB for applications, 150MB for data? I thought ICQ 99 and ICQ2000b were fat bloated blimps...
But then it is supposed to be more/different than ICQ/AIM or the P2P flavor of the month. Somewhere I saw it described at NetMeeting on steroids. The Next Generation of Groupware. I'm not exactly sure what it is supposed to be, the few pages of the site that I could get to download weren't exactly descriptive.
Still, I wanna check it out, even if it just becomes more trash clogging up my Windoze Registry. Mainly cause I've got assorted projects spread across the world with mainly Windows Users (must... resist... temptation... to insert L there) to deal with. Anything to make it easier.
So, UH, anyone played with it yet? Or should I listen to that little (BSD) devil on my shoulder saying "200MB? you should know it will suck regardless of who designed it. STICK TO EMAIL"
... csoft.net. Found them off a Slashdot banner ad. Figured that anyone advertising at Slashdot might be slightly cooler than normal.
Lets see, $15 a month gets you 300MB, extra domains and all that jazz. They say unlimited bandwidth within reason, maybe you can talk to them about how reasonable they'll be. They run Linux / BSD and offer tons of tools and goodies on the servers. The performance is pretty good, when I tested from various locations using tracert.com they seemed to have great connectivity.
The only downside is support. Email and IRC only, unless you want to get brave and hunt up a number via WHOIS on their domain and try calling it. Plus, they died on me for about 6 hours once that I noticed. On the other hand, they freely admitted the problem.
Compare that to Hurricane Electric who have ridiculously low disk space limits and reasonable bandwidth limits but have great performance and great connectivity and decent pricing. I had to call them one evening because MySQL was dead and they not only had a live person who knew what was going on but he called me back at home within an hour to let me know it was fixed. The few other times I've called with dumb questions they've been quite helpful. And aside from that MySQL problem, I've never seen them have any problems.
CompUSA has Grokking the GIMP for $14.99...
on
Grokking The Gimp
·
· Score: 2
...in their bargin books section. Here in Las Vegas anyway. I don't know how much the author gets of that, but its worth it to have handy instead of trying to read the HTML.
The link provided is a little misleading as it goes one by one through the release candidates, take a look at What's New in Python 2.0 for a better list and an explanation for the quick release of Python 1.6 followed by 2.0 in just a few months. Also explained is the newer development process.
The changes seem to be an incremental evolution of the language, not a groundbreaking new language. But if you are a language / tools junkie like me, you owe it to yourself to take a look, even if you're turned off by the rumors of mandated indenting.
There are a few to start, someone else was moaning about the average 640x480 or so resolution, I say combine a few in The Gimp and give it some extra coloration and you've got a decent desktop. Now too bad I don't have time to make a magnetic-field-line theme, wouldn't it be cool to have those fuzzy lines for your window borders?
a significant amount of the power just goes to heating up the battery.
This is somewhat misleading, batteries generate heat as part of the chemical reaction that charges them. The battery should not get too hot (if that is the case the charger or the battery is bad) but they will heat up as an unavoidable consequence of being charged.
Some chargers are very effecient, using the same switching technology that your computer power supply uses. Even if the charger itself generates heat, it should be separate from the battery to avoid heating the battery. Some chargers rely on the battery rise in temperature to determine when to shut off.
If you're using a well engineered product, you should trust the charger, especially if it is designed to charge the battery in four hours or less or is using Lithium Ion technology. These are significantly different and better than the old NiCad technology that we are all familiar with and you have to be willing to throw out the old rules you learned when you had that radio controlled car back in the day.
The websites suggested have some great info so this is a little redundant but I thought I'd post what I know to eliminate a few rechargeable battery myths.
discharge the battery completely each time before recharging it (not convenient) or it will develop memory effect problems.
That is an old myth reserved for NiCad batteries. While a true 'memory effect' is possible, the memory effect most people observed came from overcharging NiCad batteries. By attempting to give a half charged battery a full charge, you overcharge the battery. This makes it act as if it had less capacity than it should have and shortens its life. 'Smart' chargers that monitor the charge current and battery voltage or the battery temperature eliminate this by shutting off the charge current at the proper time. Using these, you don't have to worry about overcharging or producing a memory effect.
*never* discharge the battery completely, or it will have trouble ever holding a full charge again
Again, this held true for the NiCad cells. When people started thinking they had to be dead before they charged them the would discharge the cells into a resistive load until they were completely dead (0V per cell) before recharging them. They quickly discovered that this didn't do good things to the battery life. Many early rechargeable devices did nothing to prevent complete discharge either. Once a NiCad cell goes below 1V, it has a very quick discharge curve (it dies really fast). So in a several volt stack, one cell might die before the rest and effectively receive a reverse current as the rest of the cells discharge. This destroys the delicate balance of the chemical reaction that makes up the battery.
Modern devices shut off well before the cells reach a complete discharge point so this is another non-concern.
"modern batteries just don't care." (In that case, why is it so important to charge it for 12 hours before use in the first place, or is that the idea of a sadistic manual writer?)
The chemicals that make up the battery are shipped in a 'non active' state to extend the shelf life of the battery. That first charge cycle (of first few charge cycles) take longer because the checmicals have to 'form', they have to completely react against the charge current before they can discharge anywhere near full capacity. Often this takes a few charge-discharge cycles and takes longer than the working charge time.
Nickel Metal Hydride and Lithium Ion batteries are not subject to these kinds of overcharging or 'memory effect' problems. They are usually accompanied by a smart charging system due to their own peculiar charging requirements. For example, I've heard from various people that Lithium Ion batteries will Explode if overcharged. So they have to have a 'smart' charger, nowdays often built into the battery. I've also heard, but haven't confirmed from a reliable source, that these battery technologies do better maintaining a charge at most times - You should charge them whenever you get a chance instead of waiting until they are dead.
One last thing. Batteries like the same temperatures that you do. If you have to store them, do so inside. You'll also get the best capacity by using them at room temperatures. And charge them every month or so, they will have a much longer shelf life charged than if left to sit.
Imagine the karma whoring that would erupt if there was a top ten list! Thousands of trollish creatures posting poetry, inane commentary and links in the hopes of the fleeting glory of their nick in a slashbox.
Disclaimer: I haven't delved into the deepness that is Linux GUI programming so feel free to clarify my assumptions below.
Legality aside, don't forget your end users; not only are win32 wrappers considered to be "cheating" by the Linux community, no one wants to run a native Linux application that looks like a native Windows application. After
all, if we wanted to use Windows programs, we'd just run Windows in the first place and save all this hassle. Your users demand more from you. Do not cheat them out of it.
Doesn't that seem a little dismissive? I assume they are talking about WINE? If that made porting a map editor, a character editor or any other game utility a little quicker isn't it worth the sacrifice of having something look a little like Windows GUI? Cmon here, we're not talking about the showcase open souce apps like the Gimp here, we're talking about the difference between having it for Linux or not having it.
Secondly, we can blame Visual C++'s extensions to the language.
I almost don't want to bring this up, because it can be like throwing a match in the Los Alamos National Forest, but can't the same charges be leveled against the Qt library. I know the article is talking about GTK and this is probably lots of people's beef with Qt and we're at Linux.com after all, but there, I said it anyway.
And the suggestions to try the WxWindows libraries are great. Problem is, to be most effective, the original programmers would have to use them. But as Linux becomes mainstream, somewhere a PHB might just lose some pointiness and insist that the game utilities be easy to port to various OS, Linux included.
Dumpster diving is already recognized as a cheap hack method, one of these days we'll have insurance companies intercepting our sewers to perform dietary and DNA analysis, we'll have the government checking for drugs and who knows what else.
We'll need a properly implemented SJohn to keep our excretia from prying analysis!
If you get a chance, read Jason's wife's daily account of his recovery at http://www.linuxppc.com/news/jhaas. (Note: Link currently isn't working for me, my ISP might be having DNS problems).
I never realized the seriousness of a brain injury until reading it, that guy seems lucky to be alive and still able to comprehend Linux.
Was this the time that everyone suspected a buffer overflow in SSH, cause that was the only way into the box? And Slashdot was down for half a day or so? Or was that another time? Hmm, I guess I could look in the archives but I'm lazy and I've got too much to do at work...
The server logs don't tell you who is coming to the site. Sure, you know that 201.189.67.109 (completely made up) stopped here and you can even do a reverse DNS on it, but the advertisers that pay for banner ads and the corporate marketing types want to know how much disposable income is behind that IP and what they might spend it on. That is why DoubleClick and all want to track you and even correlate you with a name and address, that info lets them classify you and sell your eyeballs to the advertisers. Have you seen the higher prices that they get for targetted ads? Nearly double their normal rate last time I looked.
They want to limit what you can connect to and view with your 'web enababled' phone
However, BTCellnet's Short said there are some practical reasons for taking this "walled garden" approach. That approach makes it easier to ensure security, control spam e-mail, carry out billing, and account for use of the content provided, Short said.
Security is achieved through the right measures in the first place, not by limiting what the client can access. Spam control has nothing to do with limiting the phone to a few selcet information portals. Billing should be easy at the outrageous charges that exist, even if they switch to a bandwidth based instead of time based billing system. Billing for content use is a revenue model that has already proved unacceptable for general internet users, what makes them think it is going to work here.
At least they gained a clue regarding WAP vs XHTML.
I guess I'll buy one when it works right, not how they want it to work.
I didn't see a huge performance differece between the DDR and the PC133 Ram and using the DDR didn't put a 1 GHZ Athlon too far ahead of a PIII using PC133. But the surprise was how badly a 820 based board using RDRAM fared, even on Intel's benchmarks.
Also of interest was the reports of decent stability with the pre-production motherboard.
P.
Mmm, gotta love GHZ
...at least until they stopped including Google results in their combined listings. Still, they have a good idea and if they could fine tune it they could probably do even better. Too bad they are so dependant on ad revenue and subject to the other search engines incestuous relationships to each other.
Slashdot Mirror
First, read the O'Reilly interview with them. Some decent ideas there.
Second, after downloading it and playing around a little bit it has some intriguing features. I'm going to play more. I'm reccomending to other people to try playing with it too.
I had at least made it to the minimum requirements section. PII, 50MB for applications, 150MB for data? I thought ICQ 99 and ICQ2000b were fat bloated blimps...
But then it is supposed to be more/different than ICQ/AIM or the P2P flavor of the month. Somewhere I saw it described at NetMeeting on steroids. The Next Generation of Groupware. I'm not exactly sure what it is supposed to be, the few pages of the site that I could get to download weren't exactly descriptive.
Still, I wanna check it out, even if it just becomes more trash clogging up my Windoze Registry. Mainly cause I've got assorted projects spread across the world with mainly Windows Users (must... resist... temptation... to insert L there) to deal with. Anything to make it easier. So, UH, anyone played with it yet? Or should I listen to that little (BSD) devil on my shoulder saying "200MB? you should know it will suck regardless of who designed it. STICK TO EMAIL"
I didn't mean it that way - I meant that the default score of 2 was enough, it didn't need to go higher.
At least someone seemed to figure it out...
+2 is high enough, thank you.
I'm awake cause I can't sleep. This sux, tomorrow is going to be a long day.
OK, since that was -1 redundant I'll provide a link to a copy of dubious legality.
Under Windows, you can use something called Streambox VCR to save .rm video streams.
Lets see, $15 a month gets you 300MB, extra domains and all that jazz. They say unlimited bandwidth within reason, maybe you can talk to them about how reasonable they'll be. They run Linux / BSD and offer tons of tools and goodies on the servers. The performance is pretty good, when I tested from various locations using tracert.com they seemed to have great connectivity.
The only downside is support. Email and IRC only, unless you want to get brave and hunt up a number via WHOIS on their domain and try calling it. Plus, they died on me for about 6 hours once that I noticed. On the other hand, they freely admitted the problem.
Compare that to Hurricane Electric who have ridiculously low disk space limits and reasonable bandwidth limits but have great performance and great connectivity and decent pricing. I had to call them one evening because MySQL was dead and they not only had a live person who knew what was going on but he called me back at home within an hour to let me know it was fixed. The few other times I've called with dumb questions they've been quite helpful. And aside from that MySQL problem, I've never seen them have any problems.
...in their bargin books section. Here in Las Vegas anyway. I don't know how much the author gets of that, but its worth it to have handy instead of trying to read the HTML.
The changes seem to be an incremental evolution of the language, not a groundbreaking new language. But if you are a language / tools junkie like me, you owe it to yourself to take a look, even if you're turned off by the rumors of mandated indenting.
Anyway, here are some of my favorites:
http://vestige. lms al.com/TRACE/POD/images/T195_000715_111152.gifg .lm sal.com/TRACE/POD/images/T1216_000527_144307.gif
http://vestige. lms al.com/TRACE/POD/images/T171_000930_000227.jpg
http://vestige. lms al.com/TRACE/POD/images/T171_000412_033151.gif
http://vestig e.l msal.com/TRACE/POD/images/TRACEtruecolormosaic.jp
http://vestige.lmsa l.c om/TRACE/POD/images/T171_0602_14UT.gif
http://vestige
There are a few to start, someone else was moaning about the average 640x480 or so resolution, I say combine a few in The Gimp and give it some extra coloration and you've got a decent desktop. Now too bad I don't have time to make a magnetic-field-line theme, wouldn't it be cool to have those fuzzy lines for your window borders?
This is somewhat misleading, batteries generate heat as part of the chemical reaction that charges them. The battery should not get too hot (if that is the case the charger or the battery is bad) but they will heat up as an unavoidable consequence of being charged.
Some chargers are very effecient, using the same switching technology that your computer power supply uses. Even if the charger itself generates heat, it should be separate from the battery to avoid heating the battery. Some chargers rely on the battery rise in temperature to determine when to shut off.
If you're using a well engineered product, you should trust the charger, especially if it is designed to charge the battery in four hours or less or is using Lithium Ion technology. These are significantly different and better than the old NiCad technology that we are all familiar with and you have to be willing to throw out the old rules you learned when you had that radio controlled car back in the day.
discharge the battery completely each time before recharging it (not convenient) or it will develop memory effect problems.
That is an old myth reserved for NiCad batteries. While a true 'memory effect' is possible, the memory effect most people observed came from overcharging NiCad batteries. By attempting to give a half charged battery a full charge, you overcharge the battery. This makes it act as if it had less capacity than it should have and shortens its life. 'Smart' chargers that monitor the charge current and battery voltage or the battery temperature eliminate this by shutting off the charge current at the proper time. Using these, you don't have to worry about overcharging or producing a memory effect.
*never* discharge the battery completely, or it will have trouble ever holding a full charge again
Again, this held true for the NiCad cells. When people started thinking they had to be dead before they charged them the would discharge the cells into a resistive load until they were completely dead (0V per cell) before recharging them. They quickly discovered that this didn't do good things to the battery life. Many early rechargeable devices did nothing to prevent complete discharge either. Once a NiCad cell goes below 1V, it has a very quick discharge curve (it dies really fast). So in a several volt stack, one cell might die before the rest and effectively receive a reverse current as the rest of the cells discharge. This destroys the delicate balance of the chemical reaction that makes up the battery.
Modern devices shut off well before the cells reach a complete discharge point so this is another non-concern.
"modern batteries just don't care." (In that case, why is it so important to charge it for 12 hours before use in the first place, or is that the idea of a sadistic manual writer?)
The chemicals that make up the battery are shipped in a 'non active' state to extend the shelf life of the battery. That first charge cycle (of first few charge cycles) take longer because the checmicals have to 'form', they have to completely react against the charge current before they can discharge anywhere near full capacity. Often this takes a few charge-discharge cycles and takes longer than the working charge time.
Nickel Metal Hydride and Lithium Ion batteries are not subject to these kinds of overcharging or 'memory effect' problems. They are usually accompanied by a smart charging system due to their own peculiar charging requirements. For example, I've heard from various people that Lithium Ion batteries will Explode if overcharged. So they have to have a 'smart' charger, nowdays often built into the battery. I've also heard, but haven't confirmed from a reliable source, that these battery technologies do better maintaining a charge at most times - You should charge them whenever you get a chance instead of waiting until they are dead.
One last thing. Batteries like the same temperatures that you do. If you have to store them, do so inside. You'll also get the best capacity by using them at room temperatures. And charge them every month or so, they will have a much longer shelf life charged than if left to sit.
Imagine the karma whoring that would erupt if there was a top ten list! Thousands of trollish creatures posting poetry, inane commentary and links in the hopes of the fleeting glory of their nick in a slashbox.
And the suggestions to try the WxWindows libraries are great. Problem is, to be most effective, the original programmers would have to use them. But as Linux becomes mainstream, somewhere a PHB might just lose some pointiness and insist that the game utilities be easy to port to various OS, Linux included.
We'll need a properly implemented SJohn to keep our excretia from prying analysis!
But you're right, Sun is one of the "big boys" and the other big boys are comfortable across several operating systems, why not Sun?
I never realized the seriousness of a brain injury until reading it, that guy seems lucky to be alive and still able to comprehend Linux.
Was this the time that everyone suspected a buffer overflow in SSH, cause that was the only way into the box? And Slashdot was down for half a day or so? Or was that another time? Hmm, I guess I could look in the archives but I'm lazy and I've got too much to do at work...
Abode, duplicate stories, I'd be careful in traffic dude!
And Abodadobe to you all?
The server logs don't tell you who is coming to the site. Sure, you know that 201.189.67.109 (completely made up) stopped here and you can even do a reverse DNS on it, but the advertisers that pay for banner ads and the corporate marketing types want to know how much disposable income is behind that IP and what they might spend it on. That is why DoubleClick and all want to track you and even correlate you with a name and address, that info lets them classify you and sell your eyeballs to the advertisers. Have you seen the higher prices that they get for targetted ads? Nearly double their normal rate last time I looked.
I haven't read it though, not enough time to play with ALL the fun stuff.
However, BTCellnet's Short said there are some practical reasons for taking this "walled garden" approach. That approach makes it easier to ensure security, control spam e-mail, carry out billing, and account for use of the content provided, Short said.
Security is achieved through the right measures in the first place, not by limiting what the client can access. Spam control has nothing to do with limiting the phone to a few selcet information portals. Billing should be easy at the outrageous charges that exist, even if they switch to a bandwidth based instead of time based billing system. Billing for content use is a revenue model that has already proved unacceptable for general internet users, what makes them think it is going to work here.
At least they gained a clue regarding WAP vs XHTML.
I guess I'll buy one when it works right, not how they want it to work.
Also of interest was the reports of decent stability with the pre-production motherboard. P. Mmm, gotta love GHZ
Take a look for yourself.