One reason you might want to support multiple versions of a library is that when a major upgrade to a library occurs, say going from libc2.3 to libc3, backwards compatibility is not assured. If one of the applications you are using can not use libc3, you as the user get to have the joy of re-compiling it to see if it will work with the new libc. If it doesn't, having a copy of the old libc2.3 lying around to run that application against would be handy. No?
Granted as the last application requiring the old library is upgraded to being able to use the new library, the old library should be eliminated, but when a major upgrade breaking backwards compatibility happens, most people do not want to wait days or months for the application they have been using to be upgraded. They usually want to be able to continue to do the work that they need to do.
Then again, I could be wrong. Perhaps most other people are happy to sit around on their thumbs.
Yes, Mac OS X does this. Actually the idea is even more like the method I first encountered in NeXT. Yep, another development of Steve.
This is not to say it is a bad idea, in fact I happen to like the idea a lot. It would pracically eliminate concerns over what version of clib you needed. The installer would effectively do a "locate" for the presumed filename for the library, poll each copy found to determine what version is installed, if it finds a usable version it does a hardlink of that file into it's own directory. If no useable versions are installed, it downloads a usable version into it's own directory, and moves along.
The "path" for the program would look something like:
Hardlinking to the file should mean that if the original is upgraded, the install application would "delete" it from it's original location, which means that only that folder would loose a link to the file, all the other applications would remain hardlinked to the file.
Really, what's so bad about having a video camera on you as you work? We believe you are honest, and doing the right thing, so you should have nothing to worry about, unless you are not being honest and are perhaps not doing the right thing. The only reason you could have to complain about this is if you are not honest and trustworthy, so if you complain, it will certianly encourage us to implement this project earlier.
And of course we do need you to provide a blood sample to buy a house, or rent an appartment in this neighborhood. It really is for everyone's protection, and if you decide that you should not be required, well, then we will have to take the mug shots and finger prints you provided at the airport when you last traveled, and post that information so that people in the neighborhood know to watch out for you, as it is highly suspicious.
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Banks these days have the option of requiring a fingerprint on checks you cash with them. I have never seen any banker actually do so, but take a look at the paraphenalea behind the counter next time you talk with a teller, and you will probably spot the fingerprint pad quickly enough. My own bank has gone to two forms of identification, for cash back on checks I am depositing.
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The news of the day beyond the decision to finger print and mug shot the travelers of friendly countries, has been the anouncement that some means of travel in the US is expected to be hit by a terrorist attack. No solid word on whether that will be air travel, train travel, boating, bussing, bridges, or random drunk drivers finding their way behind the stearing wheel.
The surprise event of the week is that President Bush is "disapointed" with the OPEC decision to decreas production going forward. As if that isn't excelent news to all of his friends and family in the US Oil business.
I have bad news for his friends and family, if the asertions that there are threats to travel in the US this summer are perceived to be serious, and people visiting the US to visit Disnyworld, DisneyLand, Las Vegas, Mall of America, Grand Canyon, Mt. Rushmore, any of the sights in New England famous for the Revolutionary War, start telling their frineds and family when they get back that the US appears to have forgotten that "Freedom" is what made it a great place to live and visit, the demand for oil is going to be way down over previous years.
Then again, thos are just some of my thoughts and opinions. I'll probably be misquoted, or accused of flaming you.
-Rusty
p.s. If your company starts talking about setting out camera's to monitor the people working on the "floor", ask where you can see the images from the camera's monitoring the upper management, and board of directors. After all, you know that they are honorable and responsible people working for the company's good, so they should have no problem with the cameras.
Because it is not a decency selection process. It's a "popularity" contest, where popularity seems to be directly related to how much money you can throw at the process of getting your name into the populations mind as the only reasonable choice.
If enough people wanted to, we could turn this into a "luck" contest. Everyone puts down a number they wish to use to identify themselves, and at the end of the run, the person who's number rolls out of the lottery machine, gets to run things for a week. If they match 3 balls, they get to run thier neighborhood. If they get 4 balls, they are the mayor, 3 balls and a power ball they get to be a state representative. 5 matches and they get to be the govorner, 4 matches and the power ball they can sit at any state judge station. 5 balls and the powerball, they get to be president till the next winner comes up.
So there will be some turnover. On top of that it would probably open things up like crazy for lobbiests. "Want a better chance of keeping your job, or improving your position? Work with us, and we will get you an additional x thousand lottery tickets." x varying by the importance of the lobbiest's position in the eyes of the company or group he is working for.
We could. We don't. For some reason we chose to use a popularity contest model for representative government. Popularity has little to do with "Decency" in any of its versions.
Well, if you don't mind it being Aluminium Oxide, which is a ceramic, it's been around at least two years, Article, though I seem to recall seeing a varient of this before 2000 in a Popular Science magazine.
We have been reading stories of cities, businesses, and occasionally even entire govornments converting to Linux at a variety of levels, including the desktop. Some of those entities very well may have been using WP extensively in the past. I know that there have been a lot of Law offices that standardized on WP for internal documents, and some of those same Law offices are possibly looking at converting to Linux.
Corel is very possibly thinking that there is a large enough population of people who have used their products in the past, who would be interested in continuing to use their products, that they may have a viable market.
I don't know, but I think their idea of putting a product out to see if there is a viable market is a lot better than writing it off as not worth the effort, which seems to be a more common attitude.
also a couple of the transitional movies from video games.
One of the bad parts of dogfight scenes in space is the fact that you have to decide if you are going to make it a first person view from the perspective of one (or iteratively several) of the fighters, a seprate observer's view, or some combination of those. The more combinations you choose, the more video that needs to be generated, an awful lot of which won't make the final cut.
There have not been a lot of really high budget operations that can throw together a good set of battle scenes that can be included.
The other side of this is that it makes a great adreneline boost towards a climax, but really should not be the end all of the show.
Sorry, just re-read your posting. All that I have described is available in the 5600 as well, for something like a $150 to $250 discount compared to the 6000. The 5500 has all of the above except the 400 mhz xscale processor, and can be had "new in original packaging" for less than $200 if you keep your eyes open on e-bay.
I would say that the only reason I might consider $700 for this was if it included both Bluetooth and WiFi built in, without loosing the cf and sd sockets. I might consider it worth it as an upgrade to the 5600 if it only included built in WiFi, but I don't know that it would meet anyone else's needs then.
Well, let's see, 400 mhz, xscale processor. Not sure off hand how that measures in bogomips, but I am reasonably sure someone will chime in with it's rating, and someone else will chime in with how useless it is as a measure of a processor.
Touch screen. Not absolutely sure, but don't recall any laptops with that, much less at a $700 price. Tablets seem to still be running in the $1600 range, so I suppose you could pay double this for a larger screen, etc.
Instant on, no waiting for the hard drive to power up, spin up, then transfer a memory image to memory, calculate adjustments to date and time, etc.
Fits in your pocket, pretty much any text mode program is a re-compile away, if it was compiled to begin with. You may need to install a python library or two, but you would probably have to do that for your laptop as well.
Acceptable battery life. The only thing that comes close laptop wise to either of my 5500s is my iBook, and even that I generally leave plugged in. Your milage may vary.
Works well as simply a PDA. I like mine as an alternate MP3 player (256Meg of a 512Meg cf card filled with music is a reasonable amount of music.) And it still fits in your pocket.
I happen to think IQNotes is one of the better quick jot applications for keeping track of things. Sketch, write, grab an e-mail address, whatever. Great for those shopping lists that you want to re-use, or those lists of books to consider picking up next time you are at the library. So far as I know it's only available on the Zauraus so far. (pretty sure it will be ported, or copied to other platforms in time.)
But then I'm probably biased. I can't claim it is worth all of $699, in that I only own earlier models, and haven't played with this one.
Have her tune into TechTV for the Call for Help show.
Get her the "professor" CD self study guides.
Have her use what knowledge she has about writing documents in Word (write, notepad, whatever) to generate a list of the things she has questions about, that you then turn around into a Wiki to explain those concepts. Show her how to edit and add more questions to the Wiki, and see where things go from there.
Check with the community education people in your area to see if they have courses that would interest her.
If you have gone through all of that, and still have nothing that works, spend some time, sitting with her and asking her what she is doing. Also ask her if there is something she would like to do, but doesn't know how to do that.
Different people learn in different ways, at different speeds, and with different intentions. If she is already getting as much out of the computer as she is interested in, be comfortable with that, and let her do her thing.
Of course they spend less per capita. They didn't sign away the ability to negotiate the price of the care given, or the medications prescribed.
It would not surprise me if the pharmacutical companies started petitioning the federal govornment to start extending the lifetime of pattents as well. Taking a page almost right out of the RIAA and MPAA. They have already gotten buy in from our govornment to prevent other countries from setting up their own drug manuracturing facilities to manufacture drugs for their own populations.
Galeon opens in 9 workspaces, with seven tabs per workspace. (give or take a tab in a couple of them.) News workpsace has MyYahoo, Slashdot, Linux Today, Google News, Cnn.com, CnetNews, and a local newspaper. Four workspaces are for some "social" site or another. One workspace has a whole bunch of blank tabs that I can google directly into as needed, a couple of "My Portal" tabs built by Galeon, mostly for those once or twice a week or month sites.
That's just at home. Since it's linux, I don't need to reboot it often, so I don't worry too much about "launch" time.
At work, where I do worry a bit more about launch time, I have a custom page of work and personal relavent links that I update from time to time.
... doesn't fit on a bumper sticker, so no one is really concerned about it.
Seriously.
Physics is about finding the one inch formula. One of which is e=mc^2
Accounting is about making sure that the accounts ballance. Profit is the difference between cost and revenue. Cost plus Profit equals Revenue. Accountants recognize that they are part of both the "Cost" and "Profit". Good business management recognizes that eliminating the Cost will also eliminate the Revenue, which will also eliminate the Profit.
Programing is not currently about finding the least expensive way to solve a problem. It is about finding a usable way to help people accomplish their desires.
Computer Science, such that it is, in most cases is a euphamism for Software Engineering. The goals of Software Engineering when I was going to school was to write "provable" software. "Provable" software is software that you can "prove" every line of it does exactly what the "engineer" who wrote it intended, nothing more, nothing less. If the developer writes to variable "n" in function "A", and the scope of the design is that variable "n" is only applicable to function "A" then when function "B" changes variable "n", it should not affect what function "A" expects it to be.
That is a very simplified version of what Software Engineering is all about. Software development is supposed to be about using the tools that software engineers have used to build useful software. All too often it is about using tools other software developers have created instead, because other software developers have gone ahead and created something to work with, because they got tired of waiting on Software Engineers to get over being elietist, and actually putting together provable designs.
A suspension bridge is a beautiful piece of engineering. It is also very often a very beautiful piece of hardware. The Tacomma Narrows disaster happens when a piece of engineering comes across a situation that the engineer was not expecting, and didn't design for.
Likewise software developers are using unproven tools to acomplish various tasks. Then they are being asked to work arround the problems that come up when their tools encounter situations that the developers of those tools had no idea would ever be asked of those tools.
As a result, we currently get buffer overflows, memory overruns, as well as hundreds of other problems that can best be described as anoyances, and at worst be described as security flaws.
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Alternatives to the WIMP design, as well as the Unix understructure.
While Lanier bemones the fact that we have not "surpassed" the Unix and Windowing mode of computer archetecture and interface, at best he can be said to have waved his hands at a new direction, (VR). The only "improvement" I have observed is the time based document stream view that has come out of MIT, and even that can be considered a WMP view (minus the icons at the moment.) For some people this very well may be an improvement, though I think it is only useful to those people who look at time centric management of information. In other words, I think it's a great way to manipulate stuff like e-mail, but probably wouldn't be of particular use in managing a book store inventory.
"Mind Mapping" seems to me to be a "better" way of managing information, but I don't know that it is a great idea as an interface for a computer. Perhaps that's based upon my own limitation as my input to a computer is a small set of serial interfaces, rarely used concurrently, and the output is a couple of serial interfaces, and a "screen" or "window" of data that I process as information.
As long as that is what my interface to a computer is, I will probably run into limitations as to what I can expect from a computer. Those limitations are going to affect how I interact with the computer, as well as how I, and others, develop software for the computer.
Rather than bemoning the current state of the art as being of the same
Nah, I'll have the company pick that up for me, then it's upon them to deal with delays in delivery. I get paid for the telecomuting work I could be doing if I had that really fast computer...
To be honest, you can probably pick up a Vonage account, and plug in a good quality cordless phone at home for significantly less than the VoIP 802.11b phones that are out there. Granted you are not going to have the coolest cordless phone at the coffee shop, but it would work for your home.
For the Coffee shop, a PDA running netmeeting, or zmeeting would provide a functional ip-ip phone for many people.
You will still need to wire an internal distribution network for power within your house.
So far the only solutions that I have seen to provide power to a device, without running wires to it are induction platforms that require that the device being powered be placed "on" the induction platform. This may be OK if you want to use it as a place to drop and charge your Cell phone, MP3 player, PDA, Laptop, whatever else has batteries that need to be charged, but probably isn't going to help with the TV, Refrigerator, or Microwave Oven.
I see three auctions on e-bay for Toshiba Libretto's at the moment, one of them for 8 50CT's that the seller is selling at $385US (each), plus $20 s/h.
Add a standard WiFi card, and it sounds like she would be set.
As an option, that I am not sure I would recomend, but you could "try", I happen to like my Sharp Zaurus SL-5500. I picked up a second one for $185 plus shipping (refurb) on e-bay around Christmas, I see that there are several buy it now's for between 199, and 265 available. It has a thumb keyboard, integrated e-mail, takes a standard cf type wifi adapter, upgrade the linux os and it will take the socket low power wifi adapter, and will take up even less space than the libretto. If she would rather have a fuller keyboard, you might want to search for a zaurus sl-c750, 760, or 860 (there's an 860 for $649 at the moment.)
These (and the Libretto) also have landscape mode displays, rather than the usual portriat of most pdas.
My primary concerns with the 5500 are the display (portrait quarter vga) and the keyboard. The display can be rotated, but not all apps like the rotated mode, web browsing should be fine though.
e-mail clients are built into the Zaurus. I won't claim it's the best out there, but it is workable.
Nope. When Microsoft releases a patch, it's not always good or bad. I think that most people would catagorize what is updated into one of three catagories,
Good thing: patches that prevent remote exploits of upnp, remote takeover via corrupted mp3 files, or valid mp3 files with embeded URL's to locations that allow script kiddies to make use of your computer, and the like.
Bad thing: patches that update the EULA to allow Microsoft to keep track of what music, videos, etc. you like to pay attention to. Patches that break your firewall, knocking you off the Internet completely.
WTF?: stuff that gets tossed in, updating files that do not seem to have anything to do with the documented issues that the patch supposedly addresses.
Then again, how many of us know exactly what each file in the Windows package is responsible for what actions? Not a lot of us. So if you do a md5sum catalog of the files on your system, install the patch, then compare the md5sums and discover a bunch of files that you can't explain have been changed, who would you go to?
As far as comparing it to patches for Linux, again, there really are not all that many people who know exactly what every line affected by a patch does, but you can at least look for yourself, and if you have questions, there there are an abundance of people who _can_ read the affected files, with understanding, who can explain what the patch does affect.
Then again what do I know, I only use Win2kP, and a couple different distributions of Linux. I'm probably some crazy Linux advocate who would threaten your very existance if you said anything realy bad about Linux.
Ok, an attempt at making this "simple" probably isn't really going to work, but here goes anyway.
In most cases, what a HDTV receiver receives is a digital signal in the form of something like am Mpeg2 stream, however handling the 1040i, or 740p signal as a bit stream. This bit stream is not a bit/byte(64bitword)per pixle representation, it is a compressed, and in some cases encrypted bit stream.
An HDTV receiver will first decode the bitstream (if necessary), then check to see if the "block" bit is set. If it is, it will turn off any 1394 interfaces, to prevent you from capturing the raw HDTV stream to a PVR, or any other device capable of recording the HDTV stream.
After that happens, the stream will be sent to the Mpeg decoder, (either software or hardware, most often hardware) which will send the decompressed output to the component video splitter, which breaks out the component video to the three leads going to your HDTV display. That signal is an analog signal, not a digital signal.
At the moment I am not aware of any devices that will take that analog signal at 1080i, or 740p, as well as the 5.1, or 7.1 audio, and re-converting it into a mpeg2 stream that can be used to feed another hdtv receiver. Note that I am not saying it is impossible, or even difficult. I am saying _I_ am not aware of any consumer equipment capable of doing that.
People are welcome to followup with better information, should they have it, or flames if they don't feel they are up to the challenge.
Actually, there is no "brief", it's a press release, which was pretty fairly summarized by the summary. (odd that, can't say it's been noted as happening fairly often.)
"Fair Use" is one of the things that has been identified as being adversly affected by the FCC decision.
Slashdot Mirror
One reason you might want to support multiple versions of a library is that when a major upgrade to a library occurs, say going from libc2.3 to libc3, backwards compatibility is not assured. If one of the applications you are using can not use libc3, you as the user get to have the joy of re-compiling it to see if it will work with the new libc. If it doesn't, having a copy of the old libc2.3 lying around to run that application against would be handy. No?
Granted as the last application requiring the old library is upgraded to being able to use the new library, the old library should be eliminated, but when a major upgrade breaking backwards compatibility happens, most people do not want to wait days or months for the application they have been using to be upgraded. They usually want to be able to continue to do the work that they need to do.
Then again, I could be wrong. Perhaps most other people are happy to sit around on their thumbs.
-Rusty
Yes, Mac OS X does this. Actually the idea is even more like the method I first encountered in NeXT. Yep, another development of Steve.
: /u sr/bin:/usr/lib
This is not to say it is a bad idea, in fact I happen to like the idea a lot. It would pracically eliminate concerns over what version of clib you needed. The installer would effectively do a "locate" for the presumed filename for the library, poll each copy found to determine what version is installed, if it finds a usable version it does a hardlink of that file into it's own directory. If no useable versions are installed, it downloads a usable version into it's own directory, and moves along.
The "path" for the program would look something like:
${APPLICATION}/bin:${APPLICATION}/lib:/bin:/lib
and so forth.
Hardlinking to the file should mean that if the original is upgraded, the install application would "delete" it from it's original location, which means that only that folder would loose a link to the file, all the other applications would remain hardlinked to the file.
Then again, I could be wrong.
-Rusty
Really, what's so bad about having a video camera on you as you work? We believe you are honest, and doing the right thing, so you should have nothing to worry about, unless you are not being honest and are perhaps not doing the right thing. The only reason you could have to complain about this is if you are not honest and trustworthy, so if you complain, it will certianly encourage us to implement this project earlier.
And of course we do need you to provide a blood sample to buy a house, or rent an appartment in this neighborhood. It really is for everyone's protection, and if you decide that you should not be required, well, then we will have to take the mug shots and finger prints you provided at the airport when you last traveled, and post that information so that people in the neighborhood know to watch out for you, as it is highly suspicious.
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Banks these days have the option of requiring a fingerprint on checks you cash with them. I have never seen any banker actually do so, but take a look at the paraphenalea behind the counter next time you talk with a teller, and you will probably spot the fingerprint pad quickly enough. My own bank has gone to two forms of identification, for cash back on checks I am depositing.
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The news of the day beyond the decision to finger print and mug shot the travelers of friendly countries, has been the anouncement that some means of travel in the US is expected to be hit by a terrorist attack. No solid word on whether that will be air travel, train travel, boating, bussing, bridges, or random drunk drivers finding their way behind the stearing wheel.
The surprise event of the week is that President Bush is "disapointed" with the OPEC decision to decreas production going forward. As if that isn't excelent news to all of his friends and family in the US Oil business.
I have bad news for his friends and family, if the asertions that there are threats to travel in the US this summer are perceived to be serious, and people visiting the US to visit Disnyworld, DisneyLand, Las Vegas, Mall of America, Grand Canyon, Mt. Rushmore, any of the sights in New England famous for the Revolutionary War, start telling their frineds and family when they get back that the US appears to have forgotten that "Freedom" is what made it a great place to live and visit, the demand for oil is going to be way down over previous years.
Then again, thos are just some of my thoughts and opinions. I'll probably be misquoted, or accused of flaming you.
-Rusty
p.s. If your company starts talking about setting out camera's to monitor the people working on the "floor", ask where you can see the images from the camera's monitoring the upper management, and board of directors. After all, you know that they are honorable and responsible people working for the company's good, so they should have no problem with the cameras.
Because it is not a decency selection process. It's a "popularity" contest, where popularity seems to be directly related to how much money you can throw at the process of getting your name into the populations mind as the only reasonable choice.
If enough people wanted to, we could turn this into a "luck" contest. Everyone puts down a number they wish to use to identify themselves, and at the end of the run, the person who's number rolls out of the lottery machine, gets to run things for a week. If they match 3 balls, they get to run thier neighborhood. If they get 4 balls, they are the mayor, 3 balls and a power ball they get to be a state representative. 5 matches and they get to be the govorner, 4 matches and the power ball they can sit at any state judge station. 5 balls and the powerball, they get to be president till the next winner comes up.
So there will be some turnover. On top of that it would probably open things up like crazy for lobbiests. "Want a better chance of keeping your job, or improving your position? Work with us, and we will get you an additional x thousand lottery tickets." x varying by the importance of the lobbiest's position in the eyes of the company or group he is working for.
We could. We don't. For some reason we chose to use a popularity contest model for representative government. Popularity has little to do with "Decency" in any of its versions.
-Rusty
Well, if you don't mind it being Aluminium Oxide, which is a ceramic, it's been around at least two years, Article, though I seem to recall seeing a varient of this before 2000 in a Popular Science magazine.
The "Point" is to see if there is a market.
We have been reading stories of cities, businesses, and occasionally even entire govornments converting to Linux at a variety of levels, including the desktop. Some of those entities very well may have been using WP extensively in the past. I know that there have been a lot of Law offices that standardized on WP for internal documents, and some of those same Law offices are possibly looking at converting to Linux.
Corel is very possibly thinking that there is a large enough population of people who have used their products in the past, who would be interested in continuing to use their products, that they may have a viable market.
I don't know, but I think their idea of putting a product out to see if there is a viable market is a lot better than writing it off as not worth the effort, which seems to be a more common attitude.
-Rusty
You call it at the command prompt as either:
$ man woman
man: insufficent privleges
or
# man woman
Oooh, I love a man with power, who knows how to use it.
Nah, doesn't work for me either.....
The Last Star Fighter.
also a couple of the transitional movies from video games.
One of the bad parts of dogfight scenes in space is the fact that you have to decide if you are going to make it a first person view from the perspective of one (or iteratively several) of the fighters, a seprate observer's view, or some combination of those. The more combinations you choose, the more video that needs to be generated, an awful lot of which won't make the final cut.
There have not been a lot of really high budget operations that can throw together a good set of battle scenes that can be included.
The other side of this is that it makes a great adreneline boost towards a climax, but really should not be the end all of the show.
Then again, that's my opinion....
-Rusty
Sorry, just re-read your posting. All that I have described is available in the 5600 as well, for something like a $150 to $250 discount compared to the 6000. The 5500 has all of the above except the 400 mhz xscale processor, and can be had "new in original packaging" for less than $200 if you keep your eyes open on e-bay.
I would say that the only reason I might consider $700 for this was if it included both Bluetooth and WiFi built in, without loosing the cf and sd sockets. I might consider it worth it as an upgrade to the 5600 if it only included built in WiFi, but I don't know that it would meet anyone else's needs then.
-Rusty
Well, let's see, 400 mhz, xscale processor. Not sure off hand how that measures in bogomips, but I am reasonably sure someone will chime in with it's rating, and someone else will chime in with how useless it is as a measure of a processor.
Touch screen. Not absolutely sure, but don't recall any laptops with that, much less at a $700 price. Tablets seem to still be running in the $1600 range, so I suppose you could pay double this for a larger screen, etc.
Instant on, no waiting for the hard drive to power up, spin up, then transfer a memory image to memory, calculate adjustments to date and time, etc.
Fits in your pocket, pretty much any text mode program is a re-compile away, if it was compiled to begin with. You may need to install a python library or two, but you would probably have to do that for your laptop as well.
Acceptable battery life. The only thing that comes close laptop wise to either of my 5500s is my iBook, and even that I generally leave plugged in. Your milage may vary.
Works well as simply a PDA. I like mine as an alternate MP3 player (256Meg of a 512Meg cf card filled with music is a reasonable amount of music.) And it still fits in your pocket.
I happen to think IQNotes is one of the better quick jot applications for keeping track of things. Sketch, write, grab an e-mail address, whatever. Great for those shopping lists that you want to re-use, or those lists of books to consider picking up next time you are at the library. So far as I know it's only available on the Zauraus so far. (pretty sure it will be ported, or copied to other platforms in time.)
But then I'm probably biased. I can't claim it is worth all of $699, in that I only own earlier models, and haven't played with this one.
-Rusty
There is the idiot's and dummies guides.
Have her tune into TechTV for the Call for Help show.
Get her the "professor" CD self study guides.
Have her use what knowledge she has about writing documents in Word (write, notepad, whatever) to generate a list of the things she has questions about, that you then turn around into a Wiki to explain those concepts. Show her how to edit and add more questions to the Wiki, and see where things go from there.
Check with the community education people in your area to see if they have courses that would interest her.
If you have gone through all of that, and still have nothing that works, spend some time, sitting with her and asking her what she is doing. Also ask her if there is something she would like to do, but doesn't know how to do that.
Different people learn in different ways, at different speeds, and with different intentions. If she is already getting as much out of the computer as she is interested in, be comfortable with that, and let her do her thing.
-Rusty
Of course they spend less per capita. They didn't sign away the ability to negotiate the price of the care given, or the medications prescribed.
It would not surprise me if the pharmacutical companies started petitioning the federal govornment to start extending the lifetime of pattents as well. Taking a page almost right out of the RIAA and MPAA. They have already gotten buy in from our govornment to prevent other countries from setting up their own drug manuracturing facilities to manufacture drugs for their own populations.
-Rusty
It sounds like you would be a better candidate for Star Office than OpenOffice.org.
That's just an opinion, and others are liable to come up with other opinions.
-Rusty
Nope, 2 kids. I wouldn't be paying child support if I were a virgin.
Galeon opens in 9 workspaces, with seven tabs per workspace. (give or take a tab in a couple of them.)
News workpsace has MyYahoo, Slashdot, Linux Today, Google News, Cnn.com, CnetNews, and a local newspaper.
Four workspaces are for some "social" site or another. One workspace has a whole bunch of blank tabs that I can google directly into as needed, a couple of "My Portal" tabs built by Galeon, mostly for those once or twice a week or month sites.
That's just at home. Since it's linux, I don't need to reboot it often, so I don't worry too much about "launch" time.
At work, where I do worry a bit more about launch time, I have a custom page of work and personal relavent links that I update from time to time.
-Rusty
... doesn't fit on a bumper sticker, so no one is really concerned about it.
Seriously.
Physics is about finding the one inch formula. One of which is e=mc^2
Accounting is about making sure that the accounts ballance. Profit is the difference between cost and revenue. Cost plus Profit equals Revenue. Accountants recognize that they are part of both the "Cost" and "Profit". Good business management recognizes that eliminating the Cost will also eliminate the Revenue, which will also eliminate the Profit.
Programing is not currently about finding the least expensive way to solve a problem. It is about finding a usable way to help people accomplish their desires.
Computer Science, such that it is, in most cases is a euphamism for Software Engineering. The goals of Software Engineering when I was going to school was to write "provable" software. "Provable" software is software that you can "prove" every line of it does exactly what the "engineer" who wrote it intended, nothing more, nothing less. If the developer writes to variable "n" in function "A", and the scope of the design is that variable "n" is only applicable to function "A" then when function "B" changes variable "n", it should not affect what function "A" expects it to be.
That is a very simplified version of what Software Engineering is all about. Software development is supposed to be about using the tools that software engineers have used to build useful software. All too often it is about using tools other software developers have created instead, because other software developers have gone ahead and created something to work with, because they got tired of waiting on Software Engineers to get over being elietist, and actually putting together provable designs.
A suspension bridge is a beautiful piece of engineering. It is also very often a very beautiful piece of hardware. The Tacomma Narrows disaster happens when a piece of engineering comes across a situation that the engineer was not expecting, and didn't design for.
Likewise software developers are using unproven tools to acomplish various tasks. Then they are being asked to work arround the problems that come up when their tools encounter situations that the developers of those tools had no idea would ever be asked of those tools.
As a result, we currently get buffer overflows, memory overruns, as well as hundreds of other problems that can best be described as anoyances, and at worst be described as security flaws.
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Alternatives to the WIMP design, as well as the Unix understructure.
While Lanier bemones the fact that we have not "surpassed" the Unix and Windowing mode of computer archetecture and interface, at best he can be said to have waved his hands at a new direction, (VR). The only "improvement" I have observed is the time based document stream view that has come out of MIT, and even that can be considered a WMP view (minus the icons at the moment.) For some people this very well may be an improvement, though I think it is only useful to those people who look at time centric management of information. In other words, I think it's a great way to manipulate stuff like e-mail, but probably wouldn't be of particular use in managing a book store inventory.
"Mind Mapping" seems to me to be a "better" way of managing information, but I don't know that it is a great idea as an interface for a computer. Perhaps that's based upon my own limitation as my input to a computer is a small set of serial interfaces, rarely used concurrently, and the output is a couple of serial interfaces, and a "screen" or "window" of data that I process as information.
As long as that is what my interface to a computer is, I will probably run into limitations as to what I can expect from a computer. Those limitations are going to affect how I interact with the computer, as well as how I, and others, develop software for the computer.
Rather than bemoning the current state of the art as being of the same
Nah, I'll have the company pick that up for me, then it's upon them to deal with delays in delivery. I get paid for the telecomuting work I could be doing if I had that really fast computer...
To be honest, you can probably pick up a Vonage account, and plug in a good quality cordless phone at home for significantly less than the VoIP 802.11b phones that are out there. Granted you are not going to have the coolest cordless phone at the coffee shop, but it would work for your home.
For the Coffee shop, a PDA running netmeeting, or zmeeting would provide a functional ip-ip phone for many people.
-Rusty
You will still need to wire an internal distribution network for power within your house.
So far the only solutions that I have seen to provide power to a device, without running wires to it are induction platforms that require that the device being powered be placed "on" the induction platform. This may be OK if you want to use it as a place to drop and charge your Cell phone, MP3 player, PDA, Laptop, whatever else has batteries that need to be charged, but probably isn't going to help with the TV, Refrigerator, or Microwave Oven.
-Rusty
I see three auctions on e-bay for Toshiba Libretto's at the moment, one of them for 8 50CT's that the seller is selling at $385US (each), plus $20 s/h.
Add a standard WiFi card, and it sounds like she would be set.
As an option, that I am not sure I would recomend, but you could "try", I happen to like my Sharp Zaurus SL-5500. I picked up a second one for $185 plus shipping (refurb) on e-bay around Christmas, I see that there are several buy it now's for between 199, and 265 available. It has a thumb keyboard, integrated e-mail, takes a standard cf type wifi adapter, upgrade the linux os and it will take the socket low power wifi adapter, and will take up even less space than the libretto. If she would rather have a fuller keyboard, you might want to search for a zaurus sl-c750, 760, or 860 (there's an 860 for $649 at the moment.)
These (and the Libretto) also have landscape mode displays, rather than the usual portriat of most pdas.
My primary concerns with the 5500 are the display (portrait quarter vga) and the keyboard. The display can be rotated, but not all apps like the rotated mode, web browsing should be fine though.
e-mail clients are built into the Zaurus. I won't claim it's the best out there, but it is workable.
-Rusty
It also requires a phone line, which she is dropping, because she is happy with a cell phone.
It is possible that with a modem adapter for the cell phone, she could use the MailStation over the cell phone.
As opposed to releasing a patch that breaks a previous patch? As was the primary problem with the SQL issue that SQL slammer exploited?
Nope. When Microsoft releases a patch, it's not always good or bad. I think that most people would catagorize what is updated into one of three catagories,
Good thing: patches that prevent remote exploits of upnp, remote takeover via corrupted mp3 files, or valid mp3 files with embeded URL's to locations that allow script kiddies to make use of your computer, and the like.
Bad thing: patches that update the EULA to allow Microsoft to keep track of what music, videos, etc. you like to pay attention to. Patches that break your firewall, knocking you off the Internet completely.
WTF?: stuff that gets tossed in, updating files that do not seem to have anything to do with the documented issues that the patch supposedly addresses.
Then again, how many of us know exactly what each file in the Windows package is responsible for what actions? Not a lot of us. So if you do a md5sum catalog of the files on your system, install the patch, then compare the md5sums and discover a bunch of files that you can't explain have been changed, who would you go to?
As far as comparing it to patches for Linux, again, there really are not all that many people who know exactly what every line affected by a patch does, but you can at least look for yourself, and if you have questions, there there are an abundance of people who _can_ read the affected files, with understanding, who can explain what the patch does affect.
Then again what do I know, I only use Win2kP, and a couple different distributions of Linux. I'm probably some crazy Linux advocate who would threaten your very existance if you said anything realy bad about Linux.
-Rusty
Ok, an attempt at making this "simple" probably isn't really going to work, but here goes anyway.
In most cases, what a HDTV receiver receives is a digital signal in the form of something like am Mpeg2 stream, however handling the 1040i, or 740p signal as a bit stream. This bit stream is not a bit/byte(64bitword)per pixle representation, it is a compressed, and in some cases encrypted bit stream.
An HDTV receiver will first decode the bitstream (if necessary), then check to see if the "block" bit is set. If it is, it will turn off any 1394 interfaces, to prevent you from capturing the raw HDTV stream to a PVR, or any other device capable of recording the HDTV stream.
After that happens, the stream will be sent to the Mpeg decoder, (either software or hardware, most often hardware) which will send the decompressed output to the component video splitter, which breaks out the component video to the three leads going to your HDTV display. That signal is an analog signal, not a digital signal.
At the moment I am not aware of any devices that will take that analog signal at 1080i, or 740p, as well as the 5.1, or 7.1 audio, and re-converting it into a mpeg2 stream that can be used to feed another hdtv receiver. Note that I am not saying it is impossible, or even difficult. I am saying _I_ am not aware of any consumer equipment capable of doing that.
People are welcome to followup with better information, should they have it, or flames if they don't feel they are up to the challenge.
-Rusty
Actually, there is no "brief", it's a press release, which was pretty fairly summarized by the summary. (odd that, can't say it's been noted as happening fairly often.)
"Fair Use" is one of the things that has been identified as being adversly affected by the FCC decision.