I've used Skype on a (nominally) 56K dialup line and been able to hold a perfectly intelligible (voice-only) conversation. The worst experience I've had was attempting to use it via a satellite internet connection in rural Western Australia a few years ago, where the downstream side was fine, but the upstream latency was so poor that conversations became very disjointed.
In the not-too-distant future, I will be moving to a much more out-of-the-way spot in Tasmania, and my best internet access options will probably include satellite. I'm hoping that there are options available to improve that upstream lag.
Just to keep things in perspective, it's not gone yet. And let's face it, Microsoft could pretty nearly freeze development for Skype on all platforms and still (for a while at least) maintain Skype's established userbase.
...but its as free as skype was, and not "borged".
It's a different borg, but the principle remains the same, and we're probably stuck with it for the time being.
If I had the resources (time and money) to start an open-source equivalent to Skype, I would probably make a number of people very happy, since Skype has hit a really good balance with its integrated voice/video/IM chat (especially the latter in my case).
Sure, there are VOIP carriers who sell SIP calls to POTS phones a little cheaper, but the overall experience with Skype is exactly what I want. Plain old voice calls, while useful (and incidentally, I personally am not keen on video calls), are only part of the story these days.
Nonsense. There is a thriving trade in second-hand MacBooks and iBooks, both of which are well suited to the penurious student, especially if they have any reason to want/need access to standard command-line tools underlying any *nix system.
Since my original computing background was in big-iron mainframes, I used to be dismissive of any machine that could fit on or under a desk, but that prejudice no longer holds true. Furthermore, one could argue that the users who are STUPID [sic] are those who unquestioningly follow the rest of the sheep and pay good money for products that are so inherently leaky that they can't even be trusted to be connected to the internet without compromising your security.
I'm not really sure how Apple can lock down their systems without actually crippling them. Sure, the App Store will be there in Lion (it's already there in 10.6), but that doesn't mean you have to use it. Unless, of course, Apple plans on canning access to their development tools, which would be stupid.
Given that their current strategy is to include most of the facilities one would expect to find on a typical *nix box (of any stripe), that would be a big step to take. Since my use and support for Macs is based on the fact that I happily use a second-hand MacBook (inherited from my wife) that offers nearly all of the functionality of my Linux machines without having to diddle with it, that would be a marketing mistake. I quite like the compactness and reliability of the hardware, but not so much that I will accept being told how I may or may not use it.
I find it incredible to see how many mission-critical applications are still entrusted to Windows. For instance, I'm sure I'm not alone in having seen BSODs on every screen at an airport or on an ATM. That doesn't (necessarily) mean it's actually insecure, but it does mean the software is still not stable enough to run anything important.
However, to briefly digress to the actual topic of the thread: If a bunch of guys are unprincipled enough to infect people's machines with malware, why (oh why) are some people so damn fucking naive as to pay out a ransom to them for some dubious "fix"?
Heh. In my first programming job, I was expected to write my Fortran or assembly code with a pencil on 80-column paper coding sheets. These would then be passed on to the keypunch ops for coding to mag tapes or punch cards, depending on the size of the job. If my code worked, I would get a printout telling me so. If it didn't, I would get a much bigger printout of the core dump in hex on glorious 132-column green-and-white fanfold. Them were the days...;-)
I absolutely hate scrolling horizontally, but don't mind scrolling vertically so much. However, I mostly prefer to operate each application in its own workspace so they can all get the full screen if I want/need it.
I used to use a dual-screen (Xinerama) arrangement on my main desktop box back when I had CRTs, but now I have a single, comparatively large 30" flatscreen monitor that takes up less space and chews a lot less power. Sometimes I think the former setup might have made me more productive, but I can't quantify that. Intelligent use of workspaces with a single screen works fine for where I'm at now.
I fail to see why (or how) Bitcoin is any more reprehensible than any other kind of barter system. Our current taxation systems are primarily geared towards funding government wastage (at best) or blatant pork-barrelling (at worst).
An exchange system that directly benefits the individual parties concerned gets my stamp of approval. Our governments get to piss enough of our money against the wall as it is, and anything we can do to bypass that is just fine by me. The world is ready for anarchy.
I too rarely used finger, largely because it didn't take very long for sysadmins (or BOFHs) to disable the capability on their servers, so it was a waste of time.
But I always have to resist the urge to chuckle when some youngster mentions playing around with Xmodem or kermit as evidence that they were there at the cutting edge "back in the day". My first experience with computers was being thrown in at the deep end on a 1970s Burroughs B3700 system similar to this except that the master console was a teletype machine, and our machine room looked a lot grungier than the ad shows.
Back in those days, hacking directly on binaries was common, macroassemblers were for wimps, and all data communications were carried out on mag tapes carried via sneakernet, which was usually faster than our suitcase-sized 300-baud modem.
Of course I do, but it is a poor example of its type, limited to doing not much more than pinging hosts. It would probably not be unfair to say that the command line UI that came by default with DOS 3.2 is more powerful than the shell that comes with (say) XP.
I recognise that there are other shells available (provided that you are permitted to install them), but that wasn't my point. (Incidentally, Macs include bash, csh, ksh, sh, tcsh and - my favourite - zsh by default with any install.)
Yes, I do think that, because I've used ChromeOS, and it had a fully functional terminal.
I guess I've started a bit of a digression here, but nevertheless, this raises a point which you might be able to clarify for someone who hasn't used ChromeOS: I have noticed that the terminal "apps" available to android users tend to reveal a somewhat surprising lack of many of the *nix commands common to most normal Linux distributions. Suites such as Busybox put some of them back, and I guess there's always the option to compile others to run on that platform.
I once had to do a reinstall on an even older MacBook than what I'm using now. But my desktop machines haven't had a reinstall since I started using Arch Linux a few years ago. The rolling-release thing makes it very easy to keep up to date painlessly. Having said that, I used Slackware for well over a decade, and upgrading that is also trivial if you have separate partitions for/home and/usr/local.
I find that just using Windows (where I don't have any say in the management of it) is, well, not precisely torture, but it does make me cranky and irritable. Fortunately, Arch Linux (and previously Slackware) give me pretty much exactly what I want for my desktop machines, while this second-hand MacBook I'm using right now also allows me to do what I want done from a zsh shell in a terminal window.
Some things are just quicker and easier when done from the command line - provided that you happen to know the commands, of course.
This is obviously true, but (car analogies aside) "the argument that Fukushima was just an isolated incident in the 'modern' nuclear power age" is meaningless. Each and every incident is isolated. Whether or not they can be collectively assumed to make some sort of judgement on the safety of nuclear power depends more on your point of view, which will usually remain unchanged.
Basically, once skype is carefully accidentally closed to all but win7...
...everyone else will most likely find that Skype is suddenly irredeemably broken, and will stop using it. I know Skype has its detractors (and Dog knows, it is hardly perfect), but it is still a useful product to many of us, and it would be a real shame if MS took it over.
No matter what, new features need memory to work...
Stop being reasonable. Immediately. If Firefox didn't have so many damn features, it wouldn't take up so much memory. Then the parent could whine that FF doesn't have enough features.
By even mentioning vi you're inviting a(nother) flamewar, but ultimately I guess there shouldn't be anything to prevent such context-specific functionality.
However, what I would like to know, since the video in TFA shows a single finger painfully punching in text in hunt-and-peck mode, is whether the responsiveness of this gadget is sufficient to cope with multiple fingers punching input.
Slashdot Mirror
I've used Skype on a (nominally) 56K dialup line and been able to hold a perfectly intelligible (voice-only) conversation. The worst experience I've had was attempting to use it via a satellite internet connection in rural Western Australia a few years ago, where the downstream side was fine, but the upstream latency was so poor that conversations became very disjointed.
In the not-too-distant future, I will be moving to a much more out-of-the-way spot in Tasmania, and my best internet access options will probably include satellite. I'm hoping that there are options available to improve that upstream lag.
I'm going to miss it. Ah well.
Just to keep things in perspective, it's not gone yet. And let's face it, Microsoft could pretty nearly freeze development for Skype on all platforms and still (for a while at least) maintain Skype's established userbase.
...but its as free as skype was, and not "borged".
It's a different borg, but the principle remains the same, and we're probably stuck with it for the time being.
If I had the resources (time and money) to start an open-source equivalent to Skype, I would probably make a number of people very happy, since Skype has hit a really good balance with its integrated voice/video/IM chat (especially the latter in my case).
Sure, there are VOIP carriers who sell SIP calls to POTS phones a little cheaper, but the overall experience with Skype is exactly what I want. Plain old voice calls, while useful (and incidentally, I personally am not keen on video calls), are only part of the story these days.
Since the native alphabet is all squiggles to (most of) us, your argument shows a lack of education.
Nonsense. There is a thriving trade in second-hand MacBooks and iBooks, both of which are well suited to the penurious student, especially if they have any reason to want/need access to standard command-line tools underlying any *nix system.
Since my original computing background was in big-iron mainframes, I used to be dismissive of any machine that could fit on or under a desk, but that prejudice no longer holds true. Furthermore, one could argue that the users who are STUPID [sic] are those who unquestioningly follow the rest of the sheep and pay good money for products that are so inherently leaky that they can't even be trusted to be connected to the internet without compromising your security.
Then why did you waste your time (and ours) with your asinine post?
I'm not really sure how Apple can lock down their systems without actually crippling them. Sure, the App Store will be there in Lion (it's already there in 10.6), but that doesn't mean you have to use it. Unless, of course, Apple plans on canning access to their development tools, which would be stupid.
Given that their current strategy is to include most of the facilities one would expect to find on a typical *nix box (of any stripe), that would be a big step to take. Since my use and support for Macs is based on the fact that I happily use a second-hand MacBook (inherited from my wife) that offers nearly all of the functionality of my Linux machines without having to diddle with it, that would be a marketing mistake. I quite like the compactness and reliability of the hardware, but not so much that I will accept being told how I may or may not use it.
I find it incredible to see how many mission-critical applications are still entrusted to Windows. For instance, I'm sure I'm not alone in having seen BSODs on every screen at an airport or on an ATM. That doesn't (necessarily) mean it's actually insecure, but it does mean the software is still not stable enough to run anything important.
However, to briefly digress to the actual topic of the thread: If a bunch of guys are unprincipled enough to infect people's machines with malware, why (oh why) are some people so damn fucking naive as to pay out a ransom to them for some dubious "fix"?
Heh. In my first programming job, I was expected to write my Fortran or assembly code with a pencil on 80-column paper coding sheets. These would then be passed on to the keypunch ops for coding to mag tapes or punch cards, depending on the size of the job. If my code worked, I would get a printout telling me so. If it didn't, I would get a much bigger printout of the core dump in hex on glorious 132-column green-and-white fanfold. Them were the days... ;-)
I absolutely hate scrolling horizontally, but don't mind scrolling vertically so much. However, I mostly prefer to operate each application in its own workspace so they can all get the full screen if I want/need it.
I used to use a dual-screen (Xinerama) arrangement on my main desktop box back when I had CRTs, but now I have a single, comparatively large 30" flatscreen monitor that takes up less space and chews a lot less power. Sometimes I think the former setup might have made me more productive, but I can't quantify that. Intelligent use of workspaces with a single screen works fine for where I'm at now.
To return (sigh) to the case in point:
I fail to see why (or how) Bitcoin is any more reprehensible than any other kind of barter system. Our current taxation systems are primarily geared towards funding government wastage (at best) or blatant pork-barrelling (at worst).
An exchange system that directly benefits the individual parties concerned gets my stamp of approval. Our governments get to piss enough of our money against the wall as it is, and anything we can do to bypass that is just fine by me. The world is ready for anarchy.
Slashdot resembles that remark. The best journalism is always taken from The Sun.
I too rarely used finger, largely because it didn't take very long for sysadmins (or BOFHs) to disable the capability on their servers, so it was a waste of time.
But I always have to resist the urge to chuckle when some youngster mentions playing around with Xmodem or kermit as evidence that they were there at the cutting edge "back in the day". My first experience with computers was being thrown in at the deep end on a 1970s Burroughs B3700 system similar to this except that the master console was a teletype machine, and our machine room looked a lot grungier than the ad shows.
Back in those days, hacking directly on binaries was common, macroassemblers were for wimps, and all data communications were carried out on mag tapes carried via sneakernet, which was usually faster than our suitcase-sized 300-baud modem.
You know that Windows has a command line, too?
Of course I do, but it is a poor example of its type, limited to doing not much more than pinging hosts. It would probably not be unfair to say that the command line UI that came by default with DOS 3.2 is more powerful than the shell that comes with (say) XP.
I recognise that there are other shells available (provided that you are permitted to install them), but that wasn't my point. (Incidentally, Macs include bash, csh, ksh, sh, tcsh and - my favourite - zsh by default with any install.)
Yes, I do think that, because I've used ChromeOS, and it had a fully functional terminal.
I guess I've started a bit of a digression here, but nevertheless, this raises a point which you might be able to clarify for someone who hasn't used ChromeOS: I have noticed that the terminal "apps" available to android users tend to reveal a somewhat surprising lack of many of the *nix commands common to most normal Linux distributions. Suites such as Busybox put some of them back, and I guess there's always the option to compile others to run on that platform.
Does ChromeOS suffer from this limitation too?
That includes Slackware 96...
That has to the most numerically advanced version of Slack that I've ever heard of. I think the loo chain in your Tardis might need untwisting...
I once had to do a reinstall on an even older MacBook than what I'm using now. But my desktop machines haven't had a reinstall since I started using Arch Linux a few years ago. The rolling-release thing makes it very easy to keep up to date painlessly. Having said that, I used Slackware for well over a decade, and upgrading that is also trivial if you have separate partitions for /home and /usr/local.
I find that just using Windows (where I don't have any say in the management of it) is, well, not precisely torture, but it does make me cranky and irritable. Fortunately, Arch Linux (and previously Slackware) give me pretty much exactly what I want for my desktop machines, while this second-hand MacBook I'm using right now also allows me to do what I want done from a zsh shell in a terminal window.
Some things are just quicker and easier when done from the command line - provided that you happen to know the commands, of course.
All nuclear plants are not created equal.
This is obviously true, but (car analogies aside) "the argument that Fukushima was just an isolated incident in the 'modern' nuclear power age" is meaningless. Each and every incident is isolated. Whether or not they can be collectively assumed to make some sort of judgement on the safety of nuclear power depends more on your point of view, which will usually remain unchanged.
Basically, once skype is carefully accidentally closed to all but win7...
...everyone else will most likely find that Skype is suddenly irredeemably broken, and will stop using it. I know Skype has its detractors (and Dog knows, it is hardly perfect), but it is still a useful product to many of us, and it would be a real shame if MS took it over.
Whoosh.
I think the op meant can the firewall monitor the kernel for access to the internet/phone network...
It's just a Linux kernel (on my phone it's 2.6.29), so yes, of course it can.
OS X and Linux computers are most vulnerable from Trojans
ALL computers are vulnerable to trojans, without exception. This is because the weakest link in any computer's security is (or can be) the user.
No matter what, new features need memory to work...
Stop being reasonable. Immediately. If Firefox didn't have so many damn features, it wouldn't take up so much memory. Then the parent could whine that FF doesn't have enough features.
By even mentioning vi you're inviting a(nother) flamewar, but ultimately I guess there shouldn't be anything to prevent such context-specific functionality.
However, what I would like to know, since the video in TFA shows a single finger painfully punching in text in hunt-and-peck mode, is whether the responsiveness of this gadget is sufficient to cope with multiple fingers punching input.