I, too, was wondering about the specifics of this "international distress signal". Getting lucky (google) with "121.5 Mhz" gives the following link which specifies a relatively simple AM signal with less than 100 mW radiated power! That's not much these days, and I'm rather shocked (har har) that it's taken this long for a device to accidentally trigger such a search. Anyway...here's the URL...
As a student of The University of Akron I can definately say our campus has done a very nice job with the wireless setup (ranked #7). We have school laptops that you can borrow at key locations (library, student center...), and the entire campus - in my opinion - has VERY good wireless access. Heck - even our stadium that is 4 miles from the main campus - has wireless connectivity.
Apparently someone trusts their ISP a great deal if they're going to let them govern your internet connection!
Personally I find the concept quite troublesome - as someone above pointed out, where are they going to stop? Turn off all ports below 1024 becuase they're "not needed"? Just give me a connection, and let me do with it what I please! Even if this means being a spam-bot, I don't care - it's not the ISP's place to say how I used my bandwidth.
I would highly suggest Windows 2K/XP, auto updates and all the goodies you suggest, and a good remote desktop package such as TightVNC. Then make sure to keep the administrator password under lock and key, and give them restricted user accounts.
This way they have the ability to use the machine and the installed software, but are not allowed (or rather - simply can't) install any additional software. I thought about doing this with my parent's PC, but realized my sisters would flip out when they realized they wouldn't be able to download the latest file sharing programs. So - if there is any way you can get them to live with such a PC, I would highly suggest it.
Oh - and don't forget to teach them how to keep important data safe (maybe even set up one of those nifty new external backup hard drive devices with backup software), so that if things do go south you can just come over and reload things without any worries of lost data. Just some ideas...
Windows XP for $50.00 wouldn't surprise me. Here at The University of Akron, the students and faculty can buy a University copy of Windows and/or Office XP for $20.00. That's actually expensive, seeing as just over a year ago I purchased Windows 2k for $10.00. Obviously when Microsoft wants to push its product in a certain market it is willing to kill its profit margins.
And I agree with many of you - I don't like it. Reminds me of Apple and the way they pushed themselves into the education market. That combined with a techno-stupid administration meant I had to grow up in a school district saturated with useless computers that weren't compatible with what I had at home.
Also - as stated above, I can see where people who purchase Lindows machines would want "what everyone else has". My family, for instance, would not be able to handle the differences and technical issues. Well - they would - it would just mean I'd be spending all my free time playing "volunteer technical support guy"...screw that!
And really I'm included in that group. I still run Windows on my main box. It's just easy. I don't have to worry about dependencies and software issues - I just click and go. It's easy, convenient, and to many people it is worth the $50.00. Is it ugly business practice - hell yeah! - but who's going to stop them?
This is just silliness. One situation that comes to mind - inmates on death row using this software. Then the software company would be fighting the state on behalf of the human rights of the end user for his fundamental human right to life?
Just seems like this is a step down for the free/open source software world, and reminds me of the silly things you find is the M$ EULAs. You want to fight for human rights - WONDERFUL! But be realistic, how many people are going to be helped by the addition of those goals in your software license? Silliness...just silliness...
"There is no point in going on after the other states have settled."
You make it sound like it's time to give up.
I can tell you one thing for sure, if Microsoft saw no opposition to its buisness practices why should they give a damn about reforming them? In this regard, even one voice is better than none.
Oh well - I will admit the days of hope (however false it was) during the early days of the whole States vs. Microsoft thing has long since faded, but at least one state is willing to prolong the fight.
More power to them! I only wish my state (OH) had some ballz.
This would be wonderful in the buisness world - you would never have to remember everyone's names again! By shaking their hand you could get their name, phone numbers, e-mail, picture of them, details of their company - everything humans normally don't remember.
In the replies so far I see a lot mentioned about Gnome. That's fine, and I understand a lot of people love Gnome. However, I am tradionally a KDE user, and have recently switched to blackbox. My idea is that it should be built in to the OS in some way, so that if you type "./linuxrocks.mp3" at the console it would notice you're in console mode, and start an instance of mpg123 or whatever mp3 decoder you want to use and start playing it. I can't believe it would be that hard to implement, and it would greatly increase the useability of the OS in general.
I currently use Windows for ease of use. With it, you can specify what programs you want to handle certain types of files, and the operating system remembers your choices. This greatly aides with the multi-media functions of my home computer. The last time I tried linux on my desktop, that was the one thing that annoyed me the most about the OS in general. There seems to be no standard way for users to specify what programs they want to use for certain file types, which would in my opinion greatly increase user productivity and decrease user frustration when using Linux on the dekstop.
For those Windows users out there (I know, I know) who don't have access to a time server on their private network, I'd suggest http://www.worldtimeserver.com to set your clocks with. I don't believe their app. takes network latency into consideration, but its still close enough.
Personally, I have quite a problem with time (at The University of Akron clocks can differ by up to 15 minutes between rooms) and I usually set every time keeping piece off my computer so that I'm always within 1 second or so of true time. I only wish large institutions, such as universities, would work harder to synchronize their clocks.
Slashdot Mirror
Well played, well played indeed...
Correct formatting...sorry!
1
11
21
1211
111221
312211
What is the next line in the following sequence? 1 11 21 1211 111221 312211
I, too, was wondering about the specifics of this "international distress signal". Getting lucky (google) with "121.5 Mhz" gives the following link which specifies a relatively simple AM signal with less than 100 mW radiated power! That's not much these days, and I'm rather shocked (har har) that it's taken this long for a device to accidentally trigger such a search. Anyway...here's the URL...
http://www.cospas-sarsat.org/Beacons/121Bcns.htm
[ex girlfriend] I'm having problems with my PC, I keep getting popups and it freezes all the time.
[me] That stinks...
[ex girlfriend] Would you come over and fix it for me?
[me] I'm kinda busy lately...
[ex girlfriend] I'll make it worth the trip
[me] Leaving now!!!
...and it was really gwood, too!
As a student of The University of Akron I can definately say our campus has done a very nice job with the wireless setup (ranked #7). We have school laptops that you can borrow at key locations (library, student center...), and the entire campus - in my opinion - has VERY good wireless access. Heck - even our stadium that is 4 miles from the main campus - has wireless connectivity.
Apparently someone trusts their ISP a great deal if they're going to let them govern your internet connection!
Personally I find the concept quite troublesome - as someone above pointed out, where are they going to stop? Turn off all ports below 1024 becuase they're "not needed"? Just give me a connection, and let me do with it what I please! Even if this means being a spam-bot, I don't care - it's not the ISP's place to say how I used my bandwidth.
I would highly suggest Windows 2K/XP, auto updates and all the goodies you suggest, and a good remote desktop package such as TightVNC. Then make sure to keep the administrator password under lock and key, and give them restricted user accounts.
This way they have the ability to use the machine and the installed software, but are not allowed (or rather - simply can't) install any additional software. I thought about doing this with my parent's PC, but realized my sisters would flip out when they realized they wouldn't be able to download the latest file sharing programs. So - if there is any way you can get them to live with such a PC, I would highly suggest it.
Oh - and don't forget to teach them how to keep important data safe (maybe even set up one of those nifty new external backup hard drive devices with backup software), so that if things do go south you can just come over and reload things without any worries of lost data. Just some ideas...
Crap - someone beat me to it! How DO I get this!? No - honestly!!! Is there a port for Linux yet?
ROFL
Windows XP for $50.00 wouldn't surprise me. Here at The University of Akron, the students and faculty can buy a University copy of Windows and/or Office XP for $20.00. That's actually expensive, seeing as just over a year ago I purchased Windows 2k for $10.00. Obviously when Microsoft wants to push its product in a certain market it is willing to kill its profit margins. And I agree with many of you - I don't like it. Reminds me of Apple and the way they pushed themselves into the education market. That combined with a techno-stupid administration meant I had to grow up in a school district saturated with useless computers that weren't compatible with what I had at home. Also - as stated above, I can see where people who purchase Lindows machines would want "what everyone else has". My family, for instance, would not be able to handle the differences and technical issues. Well - they would - it would just mean I'd be spending all my free time playing "volunteer technical support guy"...screw that! And really I'm included in that group. I still run Windows on my main box. It's just easy. I don't have to worry about dependencies and software issues - I just click and go. It's easy, convenient, and to many people it is worth the $50.00. Is it ugly business practice - hell yeah! - but who's going to stop them?
"promote fundamental human rights of end-users"
This is just silliness. One situation that comes to mind - inmates on death row using this software. Then the software company would be fighting the state on behalf of the human rights of the end user for his fundamental human right to life?
Just seems like this is a step down for the free/open source software world, and reminds me of the silly things you find is the M$ EULAs. You want to fight for human rights - WONDERFUL! But be realistic, how many people are going to be helped by the addition of those goals in your software license? Silliness...just silliness...
"There is no point in going on after the other states have settled."
You make it sound like it's time to give up.
I can tell you one thing for sure, if Microsoft saw no opposition to its buisness practices why should they give a damn about reforming them? In this regard, even one voice is better than none.
Oh well - I will admit the days of hope (however false it was) during the early days of the whole States vs. Microsoft thing has long since faded, but at least one state is willing to prolong the fight.
More power to them! I only wish my state (OH) had some ballz.
This would be wonderful in the buisness world - you would never have to remember everyone's names again! By shaking their hand you could get their name, phone numbers, e-mail, picture of them, details of their company - everything humans normally don't remember.
In the replies so far I see a lot mentioned about Gnome. That's fine, and I understand a lot of people love Gnome. However, I am tradionally a KDE user, and have recently switched to blackbox. My idea is that it should be built in to the OS in some way, so that if you type "./linuxrocks.mp3" at the console it would notice you're in console mode, and start an instance of mpg123 or whatever mp3 decoder you want to use and start playing it. I can't believe it would be that hard to implement, and it would greatly increase the useability of the OS in general.
I currently use Windows for ease of use. With it, you can specify what programs you want to handle certain types of files, and the operating system remembers your choices. This greatly aides with the multi-media functions of my home computer. The last time I tried linux on my desktop, that was the one thing that annoyed me the most about the OS in general. There seems to be no standard way for users to specify what programs they want to use for certain file types, which would in my opinion greatly increase user productivity and decrease user frustration when using Linux on the dekstop.
For those Windows users out there (I know, I know) who don't have access to a time server on their private network, I'd suggest http://www.worldtimeserver.com to set your clocks with. I don't believe their app. takes network latency into consideration, but its still close enough. Personally, I have quite a problem with time (at The University of Akron clocks can differ by up to 15 minutes between rooms) and I usually set every time keeping piece off my computer so that I'm always within 1 second or so of true time. I only wish large institutions, such as universities, would work harder to synchronize their clocks.