He's still obscure to the general public, and that's my point. The average Joe is not going to want to spend $12.50 CAD at his local Famous Players SilverCity to see some comic book character that he's never heard of, and who has never even had his own Saturday monrning cartoon show.
Yes they have totally run out of ideas. Have you seen the preview for that new movie Dare Devil? I mean can you think of a more obscure comic character to make a movie out of? Sure it has Ben Afleck, but it is going to bomb. So to answer your question, YES, they are totally running out of ideas. The ratio of the number of good movies to the number of bad movies has been steadily declining, ever since I started watching lots of movies, when I was young, around 1985 let's say. Although the good movies are getting more and more spectacular. But still if you go by sheer numbers, the ratio I defined above is still doing down. If the pace of movie releases was slowed down a bit, perhaps some of these BAD ideas (like a Tintin movie) could be filtered out before they go into production.
Shit, am I on crack? They never claimed to have the cheapest Beowulf cluster... I'm sorry, I really must have been on crack. I read the website then came back to./, started to write, got distracted with something else, and then must have forgotten the exact details. Ignore post, and mod down, please.
I don't know how they can claim to be the cheapest Beowulf cluster at $1k/unit. That is $1k UDS per unit I assume, which is $1500 CAD (actually more than that due to bad exchange). Okay, let's say $1550 CAD. Well with that I could buy a pretty sweet computer, actually a REALLY sweet computer, considering it doesn't need a monitor, or a fancy video card. I mean, we're just talking mobo, CPU, fan, RAM, network card, case. I could easily make a small cluster. In fact I was using small cluster at work in the summer. It has about 3 or 4 to begin with, and I bet the cost about $1500 CAD, but I'm pretty confident they were less. They were just 1.2 GHz Athlons. We ended up dismantling it (reducing it to only 2 units!) but still, it is cheap. I just don't see how they make that claim.
Really? Thanks for the info. I went on a primarily Western Europe tour back in 1999-2000. Didn't see much of Germany, just some of the west, including Munich. I was told the Berlin was the place to be, and that I was missing out. Apparently it was a "happening place". But I guess that isn't true anymore. I have heard Prague is pretty sweet these days (at least according to fellow Canadian back-packers) so maybe I'll skip Berlin and head to Prague.
Do these work well? Please post here if you have experience with these packages. I'd just like to hear a few comments about them before I try them out. I'm not a hard core user, but I'd wouldn't mind giving this Fresco thing a try, just for fun. After I install these debs, will I have a new selection on my X session manager? I highly doubt it since Fresco is not X! So how to I kill KDM and X, and start up Fresco?
I'm wondering why they changed their name from Berlin to Fresco. Why was it called Berlin in the first place, and what made them decide to change it? Kitchener, Canada used to be called Berlin prior to around 1910 or so. Why is everyone dissing Berlin?
No way! I'm going to use Lynx and Pine as long as I can. By the way, all joking aside, Tight VNC is actually quite nice if you have a good connection on both ends...compared to X that is.
* The schematics, pdf and ORCAD(.dsn) files for the complete schematics of the Simputer
* Bill of materials in.xls and.pdf formats
* The layout and pcb details in PADS2000 format
I think this is the best thing about this product. They released these under the Simputer General Public License (SGPL). This means that any small companies, or better yet, universities can create their own version of the Simputer and perhaps improve upon it, even at the PCB level. Perhaps even downsize the PCB even more. Because they've provided schematics in OrCAD format, it makes it very easy to edit the design from the ground up, and spin your own new design. Having the bill-of-materials is great too, because you can see exactly which parts they used. This is TOTALLY NEW in the hardware business as far as I know. I have heard of OpenCores but that is different. I think this is a step in the right direction. When I was doing hardware on the job I used to always find myself and other at the company repeating old designs and designing PCBs for stupid things that could easily have been open-sourced by someone along the way. Like RS-232 to RS-485 converters. We found it cheaper to just spin our own PCBs than to buy these all packaged up, but it took a month just to do the schematics, PCBs, and then get the damn thing working.
My question is though, what is the motivation from the company's perspective to release their hardware designs as open source?
First off, I dual-boot Debian 3.0 (actually Sarge/Testing) Linux with Windows XP Pro. About one-third of the posts I make are from a public computer at school (running Windows 2k), one-third are from home on my Windows XP Pro partition, and one-third from home on my Linux partition. So although I use Linux about half the time (sometimes more sometimes less) the stats on the Slashdot server may not show. I think a lot of people like me, may do some Slashdotting from a public computer, or from a work computer (or wherever they can!) where Linux may not be an option.
Reasons I need Windows:
1) Mathematica for school purposes, and at my previous job, for work purposes. Matlab and Maple are both available for Linux, and Octave is available for free on Linux and Windows. But nothing compares to Mathematica for some things (NonlinearRegress anyone?)
2) Running IntelliJ IDEA JAVA compiler. It is JAVA, so it should run on Linux. In fact it used to for me, but now that I have Debian testing on my system the libc6 binaries are too "new" for the IntelliJ IDEA program, and so it crashes on start. So this is a dependancy problem which just doesn't exist in Windows.
3) Burning CDs. Linux can do audio CDs okay. I haven't quite mastered how to back up my data though and have the CD turn out properly AND work in both Windows and Linux. Something to do with the Rockridge/Joliet/ISO standard, blah, blah... The filenames get screwed up and stuff.... So I store all my data on a FAT32 drive and access it from both Linux and Windows. Then I back up that drive on CD using Roxio CD Burning Software.
4) I wasn't going to put Microsoft Office on this list, because I primarily use OpenOffice. BUT, there is one exception. I need Excel sometimes to quickly do a fit to some data and I need to do a trendline, etc.. Sure Octave for Linux can do this, but it is a pain. With Excel I just grab some delimited data, highlight the data, graph it, right-click, add trendline, options->show equation, done!
5) Playing Diablo II Expansion Pack over Battle.net. I haven't looked into how I could do this with Wine. But every time I've tried Wine in the past, it hasn't worked.
6) I'm still using Microsoft Money 2000 to track all my investments. GNU Cash sucks for investments, and all the other investment software projects for Linux are not complete, and some haven't been maintanted in some time, I consider them unusable. I think KMyMoney2 may become my program of choice, but I'll wait until it is a bit more mature, and hopefully they'll add some more investment funcctionality. I tried running my MS Money 2000 over Wine but it didn't work.
What are you talking about? Antibiotics are good for people! I've been taking erythromycin and it is great for getting rid of my zits. Without it, I couldn't get any dates. Thanks erythromycin!
Okay, sorry, I answered my own question. It wasn't that hard to find on Google. For all you Debian users. Add the following lines to your sources.list file:
deb http://marillat.free.fr/ stable main
deb http://marillat.free.fr/ testing main
deb http://marillat.free.fr/ unstable main
deb-src http://marillat.free.fr/ unstable main
Great, now thanks to Slashdot every boss knows of Ghostzilla's existence. Although what boss would have the nerve to suspect an employee of using Ghostzilla, and ask him or her to press CTRL-ALT-DEL in Windows to prove it. Is there also a "KILL" mouse gesture? I mean a way to kill Ghostzilla from memory so that there is no evidence? Thanks.
Sorry, I should have been more specific, I thought they looked attractive. But I guess I meant was that it wouldn't be very effective at attracting what I thought would be the average male (at least my roommate wouldn't find them attractive). But you're right, I guess they are going after a different audience.
I wish they had formatted their webpage a little cleaner though...
LOL, that rachelmills site is hilarious! Where did come up with that idea. Posing as women from the 40s and 50s sure is a great way to turn off the men from buying any calendars.
No, he meant Corel would not be where it is today, as in, Corel would NOT be as successful as it is today. So he meant that if it weren't for software piracy they would be in a worse position or worser yet, bankrupt. The quote was said in brighter times you see, when Draw was still fairly popular and Wordperfect was doing decent.
Slashdot Mirror
He's still obscure to the general public, and that's my point. The average Joe is not going to want to spend $12.50 CAD at his local Famous Players SilverCity to see some comic book character that he's never heard of, and who has never even had his own Saturday monrning cartoon show.
Yes they have totally run out of ideas. Have you seen the preview for that new movie Dare Devil? I mean can you think of a more obscure comic character to make a movie out of? Sure it has Ben Afleck, but it is going to bomb. So to answer your question, YES, they are totally running out of ideas. The ratio of the number of good movies to the number of bad movies has been steadily declining, ever since I started watching lots of movies, when I was young, around 1985 let's say. Although the good movies are getting more and more spectacular. But still if you go by sheer numbers, the ratio I defined above is still doing down. If the pace of movie releases was slowed down a bit, perhaps some of these BAD ideas (like a Tintin movie) could be filtered out before they go into production.
Shit, am I on crack? They never claimed to have the cheapest Beowulf cluster... I'm sorry, I really must have been on crack. I read the website then came back to ./, started to write, got distracted with something else, and then must have forgotten the exact details. Ignore post, and mod down, please.
I don't know how they can claim to be the cheapest Beowulf cluster at $1k/unit. That is $1k UDS per unit I assume, which is $1500 CAD (actually more than that due to bad exchange). Okay, let's say $1550 CAD. Well with that I could buy a pretty sweet computer, actually a REALLY sweet computer, considering it doesn't need a monitor, or a fancy video card. I mean, we're just talking mobo, CPU, fan, RAM, network card, case. I could easily make a small cluster. In fact I was using small cluster at work in the summer. It has about 3 or 4 to begin with, and I bet the cost about $1500 CAD, but I'm pretty confident they were less. They were just 1.2 GHz Athlons. We ended up dismantling it (reducing it to only 2 units!) but still, it is cheap. I just don't see how they make that claim.
Really? Thanks for the info. I went on a primarily Western Europe tour back in 1999-2000. Didn't see much of Germany, just some of the west, including Munich. I was told the Berlin was the place to be, and that I was missing out. Apparently it was a "happening place". But I guess that isn't true anymore. I have heard Prague is pretty sweet these days (at least according to fellow Canadian back-packers) so maybe I'll skip Berlin and head to Prague.
Ooops, I didn't see the link at the end of the Slashdot post.
Do these work well? Please post here if you have experience with these packages. I'd just like to hear a few comments about them before I try them out. I'm not a hard core user, but I'd wouldn't mind giving this Fresco thing a try, just for fun. After I install these debs, will I have a new selection on my X session manager? I highly doubt it since Fresco is not X! So how to I kill KDM and X, and start up Fresco?
I'm wondering why they changed their name from Berlin to Fresco. Why was it called Berlin in the first place, and what made them decide to change it? Kitchener, Canada used to be called Berlin prior to around 1910 or so. Why is everyone dissing Berlin?
No way! I'm going to use Lynx and Pine as long as I can. By the way, all joking aside, Tight VNC is actually quite nice if you have a good connection on both ends...compared to X that is.
* The schematics, pdf and ORCAD(.dsn) files for the complete schematics of the Simputer
* Bill of materials in .xls and .pdf formats
* The layout and pcb details in PADS2000 format
I think this is the best thing about this product. They released these under the Simputer General Public License (SGPL). This means that any small companies, or better yet, universities can create their own version of the Simputer and perhaps improve upon it, even at the PCB level. Perhaps even downsize the PCB even more. Because they've provided schematics in OrCAD format, it makes it very easy to edit the design from the ground up, and spin your own new design. Having the bill-of-materials is great too, because you can see exactly which parts they used. This is TOTALLY NEW in the hardware business as far as I know. I have heard of OpenCores but that is different. I think this is a step in the right direction. When I was doing hardware on the job I used to always find myself and other at the company repeating old designs and designing PCBs for stupid things that could easily have been open-sourced by someone along the way. Like RS-232 to RS-485 converters. We found it cheaper to just spin our own PCBs than to buy these all packaged up, but it took a month just to do the schematics, PCBs, and then get the damn thing working.
My question is though, what is the motivation from the company's perspective to release their hardware designs as open source?
Reasons I need Windows:
1) Mathematica for school purposes, and at my previous job, for work purposes. Matlab and Maple are both available for Linux, and Octave is available for free on Linux and Windows. But nothing compares to Mathematica for some things (NonlinearRegress anyone?)
2) Running IntelliJ IDEA JAVA compiler. It is JAVA, so it should run on Linux. In fact it used to for me, but now that I have Debian testing on my system the libc6 binaries are too "new" for the IntelliJ IDEA program, and so it crashes on start. So this is a dependancy problem which just doesn't exist in Windows.
3) Burning CDs. Linux can do audio CDs okay. I haven't quite mastered how to back up my data though and have the CD turn out properly AND work in both Windows and Linux. Something to do with the Rockridge/Joliet/ISO standard, blah, blah... The filenames get screwed up and stuff.... So I store all my data on a FAT32 drive and access it from both Linux and Windows. Then I back up that drive on CD using Roxio CD Burning Software.
4) I wasn't going to put Microsoft Office on this list, because I primarily use OpenOffice. BUT, there is one exception. I need Excel sometimes to quickly do a fit to some data and I need to do a trendline, etc.. Sure Octave for Linux can do this, but it is a pain. With Excel I just grab some delimited data, highlight the data, graph it, right-click, add trendline, options->show equation, done!
5) Playing Diablo II Expansion Pack over Battle.net. I haven't looked into how I could do this with Wine. But every time I've tried Wine in the past, it hasn't worked.
6) I'm still using Microsoft Money 2000 to track all my investments. GNU Cash sucks for investments, and all the other investment software projects for Linux are not complete, and some haven't been maintanted in some time, I consider them unusable. I think KMyMoney2 may become my program of choice, but I'll wait until it is a bit more mature, and hopefully they'll add some more investment funcctionality. I tried running my MS Money 2000 over Wine but it didn't work.
What are you talking about? Antibiotics are good for people! I've been taking erythromycin and it is great for getting rid of my zits. Without it, I couldn't get any dates. Thanks erythromycin!
I sure PkWare never goes out of business. I don't know what I'd do without my WinZip and my GNU zip/unzip.
And isn't it surprising that a redundant post could generate so many replies... The meta-moderators will get you. mwa, ha, ha
Redundant my ass. That's bull-shit. 10 minutes after original posting.
It requires Wine. Blech! And to think I thought they had actually cracked the codec.
deb http://marillat.free.fr/ stable main deb http://marillat.free.fr/ testing main deb http://marillat.free.fr/ unstable main deb-src http://marillat.free.fr/ unstable main
oops, that should read "mplayer" not "player"
Great, now thanks to Slashdot every boss knows of Ghostzilla's existence. Although what boss would have the nerve to suspect an employee of using Ghostzilla, and ask him or her to press CTRL-ALT-DEL in Windows to prove it. Is there also a "KILL" mouse gesture? I mean a way to kill Ghostzilla from memory so that there is no evidence? Thanks.
I wish they had formatted their webpage a little cleaner though...
How is this on-topic by the way?
No, he meant Corel would not be where it is today, as in, Corel would NOT be as successful as it is today. So he meant that if it weren't for software piracy they would be in a worse position or worser yet, bankrupt. The quote was said in brighter times you see, when Draw was still fairly popular and Wordperfect was doing decent.