and only slightly off-topic: It never fails to astound me that you guys have to pay by the minute to receive calls, whether you want them or not. As a matter of interest, I wonder how many countries in the world (apart from the US) where this is the practice?
Why you guys in the US use the same types of telephone numbers for cell and land-line phones. In every country I've lived in, a mobile number is distinctly different (usually more digits), and the prefixes are usually recognisable. Thus, in the UK or here in Australia for instance the telemarketer has to be aware that a mobile number is being called (and be prepared to wear the cost).
I agree that mdk can be fairly groovy (and God knows, it is certainly easy to install). However, it does get seriously bogged down with the dependency hell associated with RPM, especially in 8.2. I didn't have many problems with 8.1, but three weeks of trying to get 8.2 working properly was enough to send me back to Slackware.
Your mentioning cordless phones brings to mind a question: Would a high number of corrugated iron roofs in the area disrupt this kind of signal? I ask because manufacturers of cordless phones usually mention "tin" roofs as a caveat in their docs here in Australia where that type of construction is very common.
A 2-mile raduis wouldn't get us very far in Perth (Western Australia) with the kind of (low) population density we have. Bummer, the price we have to pay for the best lifestyle in the world...:-)
I used to get (until I changed my primary email address) an awful lot of spam directed through Sprint. I found that when I complained to Sprint about their delinquent users or open relays, my only response was more spam.
Since I am in Australia, and no-one I know uses Sprint, I now have a permanent filter to blackhole any mail originating from a Sprint domain.
Here in Australia, it is almost always more expensive (for Joe Six-Pack, anyway) to buy direct from the airlines than to operate through just about any agency.
is the pirated kind. I've got one which was left with me a while ago. I've never used it (my computer is 100% Slackware) but friends of mine have used it dozens of times.
Big noises at odds over the sound of silence
By David Lister Media and Culture Editor
21 June 2002
'The Sound of Silence' may have prompted engaging harmonies from Simon and Garfunkel - but a more literal appreciation of the absence of noise has prompted one of the more curious copyright disputes of modern times.
Mike Batt, the man behind the Wombles and Vanessa Mae, has put a silent 60-second track on the album of his latest classical chart-topping protégés, the Planets. This has enraged representatives of the avant-garde, experimentalist composer John Cage, who died in 1992. The silence on his group's album clearly sounds uncannily like 4'33", the silence composed by Cage in his prime.
Batt said last night: "I've received a letter on behalf of John Cage's music publishers. I was in hysterics when I read their letter.
"As my mother said when I told her, 'which part of the silence are they claiming you nicked?'. They say they are claiming copyright on a piece of mine called 'One Minute's Silence' on the Planets' album, which I credit Batt/Cage just for a laugh. But my silence is original silence, not a quotation from his silence."
or Japanese for that matter. Most of this crap is available in Europe and Australasia etc. But let's face it, most of these gimmicks are just crap. Who needs a screensaver for a phone display? The screens last longer than the actual phones anyway. Who needs to receive lo-res images of their kids on the phone when it's so much easier to sit down at a computer? As for email, if I absolutely had to use it while commuting (I've got better things to do, personally), I would use a PDA or a laptop. Typing messages on a phone keyboard is a recipe for frustration.
Maybe it's trendy to bag Spielberg at the moment, but now that I've finally got round to seeing Lucas' Star Wars Episode 2 (last night), I'd say Spielberg is preferable...
There are several marketroids I can name who sincerely believe their own bullshit. It's why I've put marketing pretty close to the top of my personal list of 10 most contemptible occupations (I'll give you a hint: it ranks just below politics)...
consider how much of the time he needs to be in contact. If I wanted to be 100% sure of getting an "important" call, I wouldn't rely on my mobile phone anyway, I would probably have to stay at home.
Is it true that there are no virtual desktops in Gnome 2? (Anybody?) I ask because that is quite an important feature to me (and I'm lazy:-P), and if true, I'm going to think again about upgrading.
I agree. Some time ago, I did some fairly basic benchmarking of both Gnome 1.4 and KDE 2.2, looking at memory footprint, features, stability, ease-of-use and general coolness.
Both used about the same resources (which is to say, lots). Gnome allows you to use multiple window managers (though I can't imagine ever wanting to do so), and both have lots of nifty features.
Where Gnome does it for me, though, is that it's so much nicer to look at on the screen. I know you can tweak icons, etc, but KDE always seemed a bit cluttered to me. And having every utility and app with a name beginning with K just drove me to Kistraction, for some reason much more so than the ubiquitous G in Gnome.
I just symlink my cookies file to/dev/null, so all cookies are non-persistent. You can do something similar with Netscape or Mozilla on WinBoxen by just creating an empty directory called cookies.txt or whatever in the appropriate place (though I don't think this works for IE last time I looked).
It is a good thing(tm) but for my part, I still prefer to drive a car that, with a smallish but well-chosen set of tools I can fix myself if it breaks down in the forests outside cellphone range.
Slashdot Mirror
and only slightly off-topic: It never fails to astound me that you guys have to pay by the minute to receive calls, whether you want them or not. As a matter of interest, I wonder how many countries in the world (apart from the US) where this is the practice?
Why you guys in the US use the same types of telephone numbers for cell and land-line phones. In every country I've lived in, a mobile number is distinctly different (usually more digits), and the prefixes are usually recognisable. Thus, in the UK or here in Australia for instance the telemarketer has to be aware that a mobile number is being called (and be prepared to wear the cost).
A proper UNIX program will not spread itself all over your filesystem. However, an RPM of a proper UNIX program will.
Yes, but Woody shows no sign of being released in my lifetime...
I agree that mdk can be fairly groovy (and God knows, it is certainly easy to install). However, it does get seriously bogged down with the dependency hell associated with RPM, especially in 8.2. I didn't have many problems with 8.1, but three weeks of trying to get 8.2 working properly was enough to send me back to Slackware.
Your mentioning cordless phones brings to mind a question: Would a high number of corrugated iron roofs in the area disrupt this kind of signal? I ask because manufacturers of cordless phones usually mention "tin" roofs as a caveat in their docs here in Australia where that type of construction is very common.
A 2-mile raduis wouldn't get us very far in Perth (Western Australia) with the kind of (low) population density we have. Bummer, the price we have to pay for the best lifestyle in the world... :-)
The "this is not spam" line is quite useful for filtering. If "they" need to say it's not spam, then it is. Simple as that.
Since I am in Australia, and no-one I know uses Sprint, I now have a permanent filter to blackhole any mail originating from a Sprint domain.
Here in Australia, it is almost always more expensive (for Joe Six-Pack, anyway) to buy direct from the airlines than to operate through just about any agency.
is the pirated kind. I've got one which was left with me a while ago. I've never used it (my computer is 100% Slackware) but friends of mine have used it dozens of times.
Great! I love that analogy :-)
Big noises at odds over the sound of silence By David Lister Media and Culture Editor 21 June 2002
'The Sound of Silence' may have prompted engaging harmonies from Simon and Garfunkel - but a more literal appreciation of the absence of noise has prompted one of the more curious copyright disputes of modern times.
Mike Batt, the man behind the Wombles and Vanessa Mae, has put a silent 60-second track on the album of his latest classical chart-topping protégés, the Planets. This has enraged representatives of the avant-garde, experimentalist composer John Cage, who died in 1992. The silence on his group's album clearly sounds uncannily like 4'33", the silence composed by Cage in his prime.
Batt said last night: "I've received a letter on behalf of John Cage's music publishers. I was in hysterics when I read their letter.
"As my mother said when I told her, 'which part of the silence are they claiming you nicked?'. They say they are claiming copyright on a piece of mine called 'One Minute's Silence' on the Planets' album, which I credit Batt/Cage just for a laugh. But my silence is original silence, not a quotation from his silence."
or Japanese for that matter. Most of this crap is available in Europe and Australasia etc. But let's face it, most of these gimmicks are just crap. Who needs a screensaver for a phone display? The screens last longer than the actual phones anyway. Who needs to receive lo-res images of their kids on the phone when it's so much easier to sit down at a computer? As for email, if I absolutely had to use it while commuting (I've got better things to do, personally), I would use a PDA or a laptop. Typing messages on a phone keyboard is a recipe for frustration.
Maybe it's trendy to bag Spielberg at the moment, but now that I've finally got round to seeing Lucas' Star Wars Episode 2 (last night), I'd say Spielberg is preferable...
There are several marketroids I can name who sincerely believe their own bullshit. It's why I've put marketing pretty close to the top of my personal list of 10 most contemptible occupations (I'll give you a hint: it ranks just below politics)...
Maybe we'd have to be certified to take him seriously :-P
er, pots should be posts just so we don't need to wake up the grammar nazi...
What does this and preceding pots have to do with the topic of the story? Gnome 2.0, anyone? God, I get tired of this off-topic wrangling... :-
consider how much of the time he needs to be in contact. If I wanted to be 100% sure of getting an "important" call, I wouldn't rely on my mobile phone anyway, I would probably have to stay at home.
Is it true that there are no virtual desktops in Gnome 2? (Anybody?) I ask because that is quite an important feature to me (and I'm lazy :-P), and if true, I'm going to think again about upgrading.
Both used about the same resources (which is to say, lots). Gnome allows you to use multiple window managers (though I can't imagine ever wanting to do so), and both have lots of nifty features.
Where Gnome does it for me, though, is that it's so much nicer to look at on the screen. I know you can tweak icons, etc, but KDE always seemed a bit cluttered to me. And having every utility and app with a name beginning with K just drove me to Kistraction, for some reason much more so than the ubiquitous G in Gnome.
Hotbot's powersearch is still pretty damn good. I will probably use Teoma as well. I won't refuse to take advantage of the strengths of all of them.
I just symlink my cookies file to /dev/null, so all cookies are non-persistent. You can do something similar with Netscape or Mozilla on WinBoxen by just creating an empty directory called cookies.txt or whatever in the appropriate place (though I don't think this works for IE last time I looked).
It is a good thing(tm) but for my part, I still prefer to drive a car that, with a smallish but well-chosen set of tools I can fix myself if it breaks down in the forests outside cellphone range.