Unbeatable is a big word. OK, I use google as much as anyone else, but it wasn't that long ago, say, between 1997 and 1999 when the best was (IMHO) Hotbot. The latter still offers great advanced searches, but the quality of the hits has declined. I wouldn't put any money on Google being #1 in 5 years' time.
Thing about floppies, though... There will always be someone who likes to keep them in plain sight with a fridge magnet:-). Just about as bad as the very organised trainee programmer I once knew, who tried keeping some frequently-used punch-cards in an A4 ring-binder (with nice neat holes for the rings...) It's true, I kid you not.
She did have the grace to blush when I showed her the offending cards and asked her how a card-reader worked:-).
I also suppose that this makes the CD more vulnerable to chemicals and degradation
Physical attrition is one thing, but they are surprisingly resistant to chemicals. If you use the proper marker pens to write on the non-shiny side, you can actually wash it off with acetone. Lots of plastics just make a messy smear with that kind of treatment.
I wouldn't. I spent some time working as an operator on mainframe sites years ago, and ran into lots of situations where data had to be salvaged from bum backup tapes. They can be a real pain in the ass.
Indeed; I have CD-Rs over 5 years old, and I have several sets of CD-RWs which have been routinely overwritten on a grandfather/father/son basis for 4 years, and not a single coaster among them.
The machine is usually a Sony CD-RW CRX145E, recording at 10X and re-writing at 4X. I have faster burners on other machines, but those are newer, so I can't yet vouch for their quality.
I agree; I went back to Slackware after a 3-year dalliance with RedHat and Mandrake. Keeping either of those distros current can be a royal pain in the ass.
That has to be one of the most ridiculously inflammatory and ill-informed statements I have read on Slashdot in recent months. It's not that long ago since certain hawks were trying to convince us that Saddam Hussein was personally responsible for the 9/11 attacks.
Try thinking for yourself. I'm quite sure that not every American can be as cretinous as George W. Bush.
I would have thought "corporate democracy" would self-evidently have to be a contradiction in terms. I'll give you the "corporate"; that much is manifestly true, but don't confuse that with democracy. That's just woolly thinking.
This bickering has been going on for years now, and it seems to most of us that even if the recording companies do finally get bitch-slapped in the highest courts, they will find a way of keeping prices up.
Given that the Australian Federal government has a long record of rolling over to corporate interests, I can't see them upholding the rights of the man in the street, somehow.
Pretty well summed up by that nice quote from Maynard Keynes to the effect that "capitalism is the absurd belief that the worst of men, for the worst of reasons, will somehow work for the benefit of us all".
OK, I guess I deserve to get my nose rubbed in it for being too lazy to post the links:-). I hadn't come across the MP3 CD Burning link before, though, and since it became useful to me just yesterday, I tender my thanks.
All right, since this is turning into a competition:-) I've still got a working XT which is so slow I think its clock speed is measured in Hz. OK, I'm not using it as a server (in fact, I'm not using it at all) but it does work, and probably will for another 23 years...
Here's hoping IBM finds them a tasty morsel in court.
Pity the courts take so damn long to get moving. I'm getting impatient to see SCO get bitch-slapped as they rightly should. Then I can stop posting asinine anti-SCO remarks on Slashdot:-).
Never mind, I just remembered I posted it in this
forum a few months ago, so there you go. Free, gratis and for nothing. Look about 1/2 way down the page.
Has anybody tried building cdrecord, tar and zsh/bash/sh for Windows? If so, it is pretty easy to write a good backup script (or I'll post mine if anybody's interested).
The whole point of GPRS is that you pay for the traffic you use (rather than connect time), so if you want to keep costs down, you simply have to keep traffic down. As for the best service, it will depend on what performs well in your area. Here in Western Australia, Vodafone is pretty good, but it your mileage may (will) vary. It shouldn't make any difference what hardware you use: that's just a matter of preference.
The way I see it there are two obvious solutions...
As always, there is always the "extra" solution:
Do nothing at all
Shock therapy has helped in several cases I've known where windows users have been caught with their pants down. In some (ok, only 25%, but that's better than nothing) of these cases, the miscreants in question actually were receptive enough to let me install Linux on their spare disk space with/boot mounted read-only, and having tried it for a while (with all the eye-candy turned on) are now quite happy to do without Windows, and particularly without the continual threat of malicious code being executed without their knowledge.
Let's face it, the line that "Linux isn't ready for the desktop" just doesn't apply any more to folks who just want to browse the Internet and do word processing.
OK, I'm letting myself in for posts saying "BSD can do it too!":-). It can, of course, but it takes more effort...
I thought they were claiming 80 lines not so long ago. Seems some people just can't make up their minds...
Anyway, be that as it may, 10^6 lines of code to prove in court is a tall order (pushing the monkey/typewriter/Shakespeare theory just a bit); assuming, of course, that they actually have the gall to say that in court.
That should put paid to their bluster. Bring 'em on, I say.
The problem of inter-network call costs isn't going to go away, but I fail to understand why the US telcos are fighting so hard about this. Here in Australia, all of the services offer number portability (no questions asked, in fact it's assumed that you want it) without the need for time-consuming credit checks and so on. When I changed from my last provider to Vodafone, the SIM they gave me was active within 30 minutes of walking out of the shop. That's how long it took Vodafone to clear details with the earlier service and get everything working.
And I don't have to sign up for plans that commit me to spending $[some_large_number] per month; just a flat rate per 30 seconds.
I thought they had been using lawyers for laboratory experiments for some time. They're more plentiful than mice or rats. The only trouble they've had is reproducing the results in humans.
Slashdot Mirror
Unbeatable is a big word. OK, I use google as much as anyone else, but it wasn't that long ago, say, between 1997 and 1999 when the best was (IMHO) Hotbot. The latter still offers great advanced searches, but the quality of the hits has declined. I wouldn't put any money on Google being #1 in 5 years' time.
She did have the grace to blush when I showed her the offending cards and asked her how a card-reader worked :-).
Physical attrition is one thing, but they are surprisingly resistant to chemicals. If you use the proper marker pens to write on the non-shiny side, you can actually wash it off with acetone. Lots of plastics just make a messy smear with that kind of treatment.
I wouldn't. I spent some time working as an operator on mainframe sites years ago, and ran into lots of situations where data had to be salvaged from bum backup tapes. They can be a real pain in the ass.
The machine is usually a Sony CD-RW CRX145E, recording at 10X and re-writing at 4X. I have faster burners on other machines, but those are newer, so I can't yet vouch for their quality.
I agree; I went back to Slackware after a 3-year dalliance with RedHat and Mandrake. Keeping either of those distros current can be a royal pain in the ass.
Google is useful, but only if used intelligently.
That has to be one of the most ridiculously inflammatory and ill-informed statements I have read on Slashdot in recent months. It's not that long ago since certain hawks were trying to convince us that Saddam Hussein was personally responsible for the 9/11 attacks.
Try thinking for yourself. I'm quite sure that not every American can be as cretinous as George W. Bush.
I would have thought "corporate democracy" would self-evidently have to be a contradiction in terms. I'll give you the "corporate"; that much is manifestly true, but don't confuse that with democracy. That's just woolly thinking.
Given that the Australian Federal government has a long record of rolling over to corporate interests, I can't see them upholding the rights of the man in the street, somehow.
Pretty well summed up by that nice quote from Maynard Keynes to the effect that "capitalism is the absurd belief that the worst of men, for the worst of reasons, will somehow work for the benefit of us all".
You're welcome :-)
OK, I guess I deserve to get my nose rubbed in it for being too lazy to post the links :-). I hadn't come across the MP3 CD Burning link before, though, and since it became useful to me just yesterday, I tender my thanks.
All right, since this is turning into a competition :-) I've still got a working XT which is so slow I think its clock speed is measured in Hz. OK, I'm not using it as a server (in fact, I'm not using it at all) but it does work, and probably will for another 23 years...
As for documentation, check out the CD-Burner Howto at the LDP or (dare I say) Read The Fine Manual :-).
a very very small Willie :-)
SCO is as dead as... death.In the immortal words of Leonard Cohen: Deader than heaven on a Saturday night...
Pity the courts take so damn long to get moving. I'm getting impatient to see SCO get bitch-slapped as they rightly should. Then I can stop posting asinine anti-SCO remarks on Slashdot :-).
Yeah, but why an MBA? I would have thought a Master of Bugger-All would have been the last kind of qualification Alan Cox would need.
Never mind, I just remembered I posted it in this forum a few months ago, so there you go. Free, gratis and for nothing. Look about 1/2 way down the page.
Has anybody tried building cdrecord, tar and zsh/bash/sh for Windows? If so, it is pretty easy to write a good backup script (or I'll post mine if anybody's interested).
The whole point of GPRS is that you pay for the traffic you use (rather than connect time), so if you want to keep costs down, you simply have to keep traffic down. As for the best service, it will depend on what performs well in your area. Here in Western Australia, Vodafone is pretty good, but it your mileage may (will) vary. It shouldn't make any difference what hardware you use: that's just a matter of preference.
As always, there is always the "extra" solution:
Do nothing at all
Shock therapy has helped in several cases I've known where windows users have been caught with their pants down. In some (ok, only 25%, but that's better than nothing) of these cases, the miscreants in question actually were receptive enough to let me install Linux on their spare disk space with /boot mounted read-only, and having tried it for a while (with all the eye-candy turned on) are now quite happy to do without Windows, and particularly without the continual threat of malicious code being executed without their knowledge.
Let's face it, the line that "Linux isn't ready for the desktop" just doesn't apply any more to folks who just want to browse the Internet and do word processing.
OK, I'm letting myself in for posts saying "BSD can do it too!" :-). It can, of course, but it takes more effort...
Anyway, be that as it may, 10^6 lines of code to prove in court is a tall order (pushing the monkey/typewriter/Shakespeare theory just a bit); assuming, of course, that they actually have the gall to say that in court.
That should put paid to their bluster. Bring 'em on, I say.
And I don't have to sign up for plans that commit me to spending $[some_large_number] per month; just a flat rate per 30 seconds.
I thought they had been using lawyers for laboratory experiments for some time. They're more plentiful than mice or rats. The only trouble they've had is reproducing the results in humans.