Never mind dependancy hell, what about disappearing repository directories?
I am constantly having to re-visit the easy urpmi site because the various sources keep disappearing. I just wish they would sit still and stop fidgeting!
What would be neat is an app or script that found another repository (maybe from easy urpmi) whenever one broke and maybe tested it's speed before replacing it. I'm sure I could write it myself when I get the time...
Rule of thumb: any gift that requires less effort to give than to receive isn't much of a gift at all.
The first computer I had was a joint Christmas-birthday-&-money-earned-on-paper-rou nd gift. It was an Acorn Atom built from a kit. It didn't work first time and I had to send it back to Acorn for them to bail me out of my bad soldering.
I think my Dad had a much easier time presenting me with this gift than I had getting the thing to work. And it was several months late arriving!
Yes, of course you can interface with a Win CE box if you write all your own software but if MS make it easy for equipment developers by providing "medical solution" dev kits you can more or less gaurantee that the layers/above/ the file system and network protocol will be closed.
That said, I fail to see how choosing Linux doesn't result into 'lock in'.
A Linux system would be based on open file formats. Also, Microsoft are after the embedded market so they would make sure that your life support machine running (some of the time) on Windows CE works very well, and very exclusively, with the desktop/server environment of the hospital.
Except they seem to be talking about each station running 1W. That is enough to reach at least a few miles line-of-sight. They also have an example of a case being filed against an unlicensed 10W station on their website, though the link is broke so I don't know more than that.
Somehow I get the impression there is some element of risk involved in this venture...
Yes it is perfectly reasonable to have a rule about installing unauthorised software. However the reason I think this is on Slashdot is because the punishment and the relish with which it was delivered was way over the top considering how trivial the mistake was.
In the States I think it is possible to fire anyone at any time for no reason at all. I could be mistaken, someone correct me if I'm wrong on this.
In the UK (and probably Europe as a whole) I know it is really risky to fire someone after they have worked more than one year at a place. They can then claim "unfair dismissal" to an employmnent tribunal. This probably is because losing an employee to a company is a lot less devastating than having your whole life turned upside down by suddenly losing your source of income. Hence, laws and systems to keep employer/employee relationship in some kind of balance.
From the comments that were made it is entirely possible that there is a strong personal element to this. If there is a prodedure then is the same punishment for breaking it applied consistantly to all employees? Is any account taken of how serious the breach actually is? What problem did sacking the employee solve that couldn't have been solved though concilling or warngins? Did the employee break the rule on more than one occation in spite of warnings?
If these sorts of questions can't adequately be answered by the employer then, in the UK at least, there is a strong case to claim unfair dismissal.
I'm a little concerned that the BBC are spending so little resources on this codec. I would really like to see it succeed. Unfortunately I'm not a competent codec hacker:-(
Given the amount of cash it must take to make TV and radio programs, the expensive equipment, exotic locations, high-paid celebrities etc, surely they can properly fund this project with the change?
Employing enough hackers to do the whole job themselves can't possibly cost much compared to the other stuff they do. Obviously I am happy that it _is_ an open source project and it would be better if they could build a community around it, but it seems to be an under-the-desk project for one or two really keen engineers right now.
Give me a break, grandma is not going to get all excited about GCC and kernel patching.
Why bring grandma into this (bless her)? Grandma is not the future of computing. Windows tries to make computing easy for folks who would otherwise find computing a shock. It may be the case for most (but not all!) folks who were already adults by 1990 but in the future people are going to be much more computer literate.
Linux can be made easy for non-technical users too, my Dad uses it, for example, however I don't see dumbing everything down for grandma to be something we need to do long term.
Someone correct me if I'm wrong. But isn't the reason RPMs are so particular about dependancies because whoever does the packaging doesn't research whether their app will actually work with an _older_ version of a distribution. Then, if it did work, they could define a broader set of other packages it would work with in the spec file.
Other than the RPMs needlessly not installing in older environments, applications like urpmi, yum, yast and redcarpet take care of other dependancies painlessly.
Anyone thought of this? Often animated gifs are used to animate photos. This is probably not the best way to do it and APNG won't help unless it supports some kind of lossy compression.
Is it possible to implement little motion-JPEGs in a browser without it adding too much code?
Yes I could Google for it but I have to rush off to work in a minute.
The BBC streams don't work for me. I am in the UK but I don't think my ISP (E7even) has an agreement with the BBC yet.
Are there any other multicast streams out there that I could tune into using Real Player 10 (like the BBC ones) for me to see if multicast works where I am?
What stops multicast working? Is it the ISPs just not bothering to implement it? Would my wiresless ADSL router block multicast?
If so I hope the BBC really make a service out of this because this will hopefully it will go some way to convincing ISPs, router manufactures etc to start making there services multicast-ready (assuming they're not, and I don't know this yet).
Also this helps stop those boxes being sold with Linux pre-installed. They just make the OEM price low enough so that installing Linux just to escape the MS tax and the law just seems like too much hassle for the OEM. They just slap this really cheap version of Windows on it.
Apparently a percentage of Linux sold boxes doesn't get reformatted with pirate Windows. This new tactic squelches this percentage by ensuring that percentage of ordinary folk never even see Linux.
Maybe for intranets it could be used,
Actually, that is quite significant if the intranet is coporation-wide.
What sys-admin really wants IE on a corporate desktop anyway as it attracts so much adware and other unauthorised crud to end up on the machines. How much support time does that take up?
Well, apparently Microsoft think they can do operating systems for medical applications. Personally, I can think of more suitable operating systems for the task...
I just got a Belkin 54g ADSL router and have been dismayed by it's annoying habbit of not syncing for hours at a time then deciding to work again. Another ADSL modem works all the time.
I discovered that the admin interface called up a file with a.exe suffix. Oh oh. That means that the box itself is running some kind of MS software. This probably explains why it behaves in such a flakey manner generally.
I wonder how long it will be before these so-called firewall boxes are turned into zombies.
Now Windows is worming its way into more and more embedded appliances people are just having to get used to a lower and lower standard of reliability from devices that never used to crash or get viruses, such as ATM machines, firewall/routers, mobile phones etc.
I hope consumers and embedded developers become aware of this and stop the rot.
Because when you're working on a corporate project that costs money, it's very difficult to put a business case forward for something which will only be of benefit to a very small number of visitors.
Err... How much does it cost to use PNG files???
In a word, video. The less bandwidth the audio takes up on a video stream, the more space you have to increase the frame rate and the resolution of the picture.
Also, I know quite few people at work who won't get broadband because it is still more expensive than a dial up and they don't think they would use broadband enough to justify the expense. Then there are countries where broadband is some way off into the future and when it does arrive only the wealthy elite will be able to afford it.
1) If France & Germany's governments become more patriotic & supportive toward Mandrake & SuSE respectively then perhaps they will be less inclined to pass silly laws to make open source difficult such as broad software patents etc. And, if it's already too late then maybe they will push the EU to dilute the silly laws over time so they don't affect open source.
2) If Mandrake are taken seriously by more businesses then they will have to increase their end of life from 2 years to at least 5 years or even 10 years (to compete with MS) for their enterprise releases. The short EOL is the one reason I can't use Mandrake on a mail server I am setting up, otherwise it would have been perfect.
3) We don't have a really major distro here in the UK so I can feel patriotic about France in the meantime.
Slashdot Mirror
Sound like Ford decided to be nice to him that day. They didn't have to be.
If Ford had just stolen his idea then what could he have done? How much would it have cost him to take any action?
Never mind dependancy hell, what about disappearing repository directories?
I am constantly having to re-visit the easy urpmi site because the various sources keep disappearing. I just wish they would sit still and stop fidgeting!
What would be neat is an app or script that found another repository (maybe from easy urpmi) whenever one broke and maybe tested it's speed before replacing it. I'm sure I could write it myself when I get the time...
Rule of thumb: any gift that requires less effort to give than to receive isn't much of a gift at all.
The first computer I had was a joint Christmas-birthday-&-money-earned-on-paper-rou nd gift. It was an Acorn Atom built from a kit. It didn't work first time and I had to send it back to Acorn for them to bail me out of my bad soldering.
I think my Dad had a much easier time presenting me with this gift than I had getting the thing to work. And it was several months late arriving!
Yes, of course you can interface with a Win CE box if you write all your own software but if MS make it easy for equipment developers by providing "medical solution" dev kits you can more or less gaurantee that the layers /above/ the file system and network protocol will be closed.
That said, I fail to see how choosing Linux doesn't result into 'lock in'.
A Linux system would be based on open file formats. Also, Microsoft are after the embedded market so they would make sure that your life support machine running (some of the time) on Windows CE works very well, and very exclusively, with the desktop/server environment of the hospital.
It's just sooooo sllllloooowwwww.
:)
Any page with doubleclick ads on it seems to get held up waiting for doubleclick's servers to do anything.
The words "Waiting for... blah.blah.doubleclick.blah" or similar used to be old friends, until I discovered the hosts file
I know just how you feel. Just check out my conribution to this wonderful 1W radio networking project.
Except they seem to be talking about each station running 1W. That is enough to reach at least a few miles line-of-sight. They also have an example of a case being filed against an unlicensed 10W station on their website, though the link is broke so I don't know more than that.
Somehow I get the impression there is some element of risk involved in this venture...
Yes it is perfectly reasonable to have a rule about installing unauthorised software. However the reason I think this is on Slashdot is because the punishment and the relish with which it was delivered was way over the top considering how trivial the mistake was.
In the States I think it is possible to fire anyone at any time for no reason at all. I could be mistaken, someone correct me if I'm wrong on this.
In the UK (and probably Europe as a whole) I know it is really risky to fire someone after they have worked more than one year at a place. They can then claim "unfair dismissal" to an employmnent tribunal. This probably is because losing an employee to a company is a lot less devastating than having your whole life turned upside down by suddenly losing your source of income. Hence, laws and systems to keep employer/employee relationship in some kind of balance.
From the comments that were made it is entirely possible that there is a strong personal element to this. If there is a prodedure then is the same punishment for breaking it applied consistantly to all employees? Is any account taken of how serious the breach actually is? What problem did sacking the employee solve that couldn't have been solved though concilling or warngins? Did the employee break the rule on more than one occation in spite of warnings?
If these sorts of questions can't adequately be answered by the employer then, in the UK at least, there is a strong case to claim unfair dismissal.
I'm a little concerned that the BBC are spending so little resources on this codec. I would really like to see it succeed. Unfortunately I'm not a competent codec hacker :-(
Given the amount of cash it must take to make TV and radio programs, the expensive equipment, exotic locations, high-paid celebrities etc, surely they can properly fund this project with the change?
Employing enough hackers to do the whole job themselves can't possibly cost much compared to the other stuff they do. Obviously I am happy that it _is_ an open source project and it would be better if they could build a community around it, but it seems to be an under-the-desk project for one or two really keen engineers right now.
Give me a break, grandma is not going to get all excited about GCC and kernel patching. Why bring grandma into this (bless her)? Grandma is not the future of computing. Windows tries to make computing easy for folks who would otherwise find computing a shock. It may be the case for most (but not all!) folks who were already adults by 1990 but in the future people are going to be much more computer literate. Linux can be made easy for non-technical users too, my Dad uses it, for example, however I don't see dumbing everything down for grandma to be something we need to do long term.
Firefox has a similar link-up with Google. Just type "buggy inscure browser" in the URL bar and it takes you to this page.
It seems fromt the reviews that the punters are very impressed with the product.
Someone correct me if I'm wrong. But isn't the reason RPMs are so particular about dependancies because whoever does the packaging doesn't research whether their app will actually work with an _older_ version of a distribution. Then, if it did work, they could define a broader set of other packages it would work with in the spec file.
Other than the RPMs needlessly not installing in older environments, applications like urpmi, yum, yast and redcarpet take care of other dependancies painlessly.
Anyone thought of this? Often animated gifs are used to animate photos. This is probably not the best way to do it and APNG won't help unless it supports some kind of lossy compression.
Is it possible to implement little motion-JPEGs in a browser without it adding too much code?
Just asking.
Well you can get ext2 drivers for Windows NT/2000XP. I'm sure the same principle could be used for other file systems.
What does BBC stand for.
British ---- Broadcasting ----- Corpor..... uh oh!
Yes I could Google for it but I have to rush off to work in a minute.
The BBC streams don't work for me. I am in the UK but I don't think my ISP (E7even) has an agreement with the BBC yet.
Are there any other multicast streams out there that I could tune into using Real Player 10 (like the BBC ones) for me to see if multicast works where I am?
What stops multicast working? Is it the ISPs just not bothering to implement it? Would my wiresless ADSL router block multicast?
If so I hope the BBC really make a service out of this because this will hopefully it will go some way to convincing ISPs, router manufactures etc to start making there services multicast-ready (assuming they're not, and I don't know this yet).
Also this helps stop those boxes being sold with Linux pre-installed. They just make the OEM price low enough so that installing Linux just to escape the MS tax and the law just seems like too much hassle for the OEM. They just slap this really cheap version of Windows on it.
Apparently a percentage of Linux sold boxes doesn't get reformatted with pirate Windows. This new tactic squelches this percentage by ensuring that percentage of ordinary folk never even see Linux.
I guess that's the idea anyway.
Maybe for intranets it could be used,
Actually, that is quite significant if the intranet is coporation-wide.
What sys-admin really wants IE on a corporate desktop anyway as it attracts so much adware and other unauthorised crud to end up on the machines. How much support time does that take up?
Well, apparently Microsoft think they can do operating systems for medical applications. Personally, I can think of more suitable operating systems for the task...
I just got a Belkin 54g ADSL router and have been dismayed by it's annoying habbit of not syncing for hours at a time then deciding to work again. Another ADSL modem works all the time.
.exe suffix. Oh oh. That means that the box itself is running some kind of MS software. This probably explains why it behaves in such a flakey manner generally.
I discovered that the admin interface called up a file with a
I wonder how long it will be before these so-called firewall boxes are turned into zombies.
Now Windows is worming its way into more and more embedded appliances people are just having to get used to a lower and lower standard of reliability from devices that never used to crash or get viruses, such as ATM machines, firewall/routers, mobile phones etc.
I hope consumers and embedded developers become aware of this and stop the rot.
Or maybe you could be tempted by a 1MW solid state AM transmitter...
I think it may even be possible to get up to 2MW by combining these beasties.
Apparently, they are made by combining stacks of 1KW power-slices. Each power slice uses power MOSFETs.
Because when you're working on a corporate project that costs money, it's very difficult to put a business case forward for something which will only be of benefit to a very small number of visitors. Err... How much does it cost to use PNG files???
In a word, video.
The less bandwidth the audio takes up on a video stream, the more space you have to increase the frame rate and the resolution of the picture.
Also, I know quite few people at work who won't get broadband because it is still more expensive than a dial up and they don't think they would use broadband enough to justify the expense. Then there are countries where broadband is some way off into the future and when it does arrive only the wealthy elite will be able to afford it.
I, for one, am happy to see this happen because,
1) If France & Germany's governments become more patriotic & supportive toward Mandrake & SuSE respectively then perhaps they will be less inclined to pass silly laws to make open source difficult such as broad software patents etc. And, if it's already too late then maybe they will push the EU to dilute the silly laws over time so they don't affect open source.
2) If Mandrake are taken seriously by more businesses then they will have to increase their end of life from 2 years to at least 5 years or even 10 years (to compete with MS) for their enterprise releases. The short EOL is the one reason I can't use Mandrake on a mail server I am setting up, otherwise it would have been perfect.
3) We don't have a really major distro here in the UK so I can feel patriotic about France in the meantime.