USENET services have been protected by common carrier status since they started; if you start censoring newsgroups, you become responsible for their content. this has been the way it is forever, and is commonly understood and supported in case law.
It's not a universal problem; mine doesn't do it, and never has. however, after I got mine, it was so frakking cool several of my friends got one, and it was maybe 50/50 on the screen whine. one of the 12 had a power button bad out of the box. I've never had any hardware problems, at all. in 2+ years. everything has always worked exactly as advertised, and usually better than advertised. the only actual complaint I have is that they have updated, once, the presets that allow the palm to passthru to the internet via your cellphone. and that was in 2006. I'd say probably 9 out of 10, or maybe even more, can't get on the internet using their cellphones. and it's something that would probably be pretty simple to fix; I've examined the existing ones and their just isn't that much information there. aside from that, no real problems; little petty stuff, like some of the most ancient Palm apps don't work with the New & Improved flash memory, and damn it, there is no reason this shouldn't run Linux. it should have been running Gentoo a week after it was released. I also think I can't use one of the wired keyboards with it, only the bluetooth one (I haven't tried, but thats the impression I get). with Bluetooth active, my 2 year old battery only last about 2 hours, with it off, 6-8 hours easy. The browser does sort of suck, but I put Sun Java on it and Opera Mini, and about the only thing I can't do on the web is Flash and streaming video. I'll put that under the "this thing should have had Linux since the week after it came out" category. I use it for: 1) Mobile coms, the WiFi works great, the built in eMail client works great, the AIM chat client works great, it pretty much rocks. 2) eBooks. I've raided project Gutenborg austrailia and got enough classic SF and other great stuff to half-way fill up a 1gb SD card. I've read probably 2-3 books a week since last October, wherever I'm at if I'm not busy I can just pop it out and read, I've even started buying mobipocket books instead of continuing my 2 paperbacks a month dead tree habit. with it's 480x320 screen, it's easy to read. maybe not up to kindle, but then the kindle doesn't let me edit spreadsheets and download ISO's 3) that screen means it's great for watching videos; grab the freeware version of TCPMP and you can play everything but realmedia (terrible loss that). 4) you know, it works pretty good at being a PDA. 5) Typepad. whenever i want to maximize my pretentiousness, I have the tools. 6) you can get a GPS add-on card for it. and it runs tom-tom. I usually just use the google maps application. 7) you can fit a lot of MP3's on A 1gb SD card. 8) Quake, monkey island. My 17 year old son borrows it for the NES, SuperNES, GB, GBA, GBC, PS1 emulation. it has a bunch of other emulators (By the way, if anyone knows of a DOS for Palm, I would love to play Xcom or MOM on it every once in a while. My 15yo daughter is trying to be a photographer, and there are metric boot loads of applications for photography, plus she can see what her pictures look like with some detail out in the middle of nowhere. Now, you may be asking yourself, why the heck did this idiot list all this? I wanted to point out that the Palm corporation has exactly one thing, and one thing only to blame for doing badly, and that is lousy support. the T/X and the lifedrive are simply phenomenal devices, if they would have had one developer spend a couple of months doing a Linux build for it, the damn thing would be THE geek tool. and they STILL COULD. there is nothing out there that competes with the T/X; there are a variety of devices that do one, or maybe 2 things better, maybe. They have no excuse.
Actually, I think thats what I called them when I worked on aircraft in the Navy. like everyone else on my crew. Sort of a habit. Do you think asking strangers to trust your asinine opinions makes you sound cool? (actually, I just looked over your last 5-6 posts in your profile, and it appears that that is exactly what you think.)
now, don't get me wrong. this is a cool bird. but I wouldn't say it was
cooler than the SR-71.
I've found a few better articles and videos,
here,
here ,
here &
here.
It's probably designed to be the replacement for the "blackstar"
program, which doesn't exist, but is hands-down the very coolest thing out
there, the only thing cooler would be a functioning
Orion
spacecraft.
But this looks like it might have the capability of taking the place of the
blackstar "mothership",
although I bet with less performance & payload; as this isn't designed to be a
Mach 3+ cruise nuclear bomber,
that's understandable. but those cold-war birds have got to be tired by now, and
looking forward to retirement. i think one would look great in my driveway as a
static display.
I do wonder what they are going to use to replace the orbital component,
which was probably based on the X-20.
Maybe a NASP?
The X-43?
I just can't see him writing this letter; even if he was doing devil's
advocate styled writing, it just doesn't sound like it was written by someone
who had a clue how Windows works.
You know, Bill used to be a pretty good programmer; he wrote most of Altair
Basic, a Altair Emulator. and coded BASIC interpreters in Assembler. and who can
forget the magic of DONKEY.BAS?
(By the way, I could swear that I remember Bill having something to do with
Tandy Deskmate, but I can't find any reference to it)
Next, people complain about Linux usability? apt-get install mplayer
k3b, etc? It is not harder, just different. In fact,
having all of the software most people need in one place makes Linux
easier for most people in many ways, specifically ||the way that
possible-Bill rants about here.
Here's the problem from a usability standpoint: I want to install a media
player. I don't know that I need to install mplayer, xine or totem. (What is a
totem and WTF does it have to do with playing media? WTF is a xine anyhow?)
THe 'Add/Remove Programs' in Ubuntu addresses some of this, but try installing
an app that plays podcasts WITHOUT KNOWING that democracyplayer and VLC play
podcasts.
Not really a issue in Debian, or anything else that uses synaptic package
manager; most people have the sense to describe what their application does in
the description, and as long as you are lucky enough to find the right
repositories you are golden; just search "podcast" in synaptic.
Flamebait, huh? wow. the only thing written that is not an obvious and provable conclusion is that Vista is Evil; as it's allegedly only an operating system, I agree that attributing it as being "Evil" could conceivably be labeled flamebait. However, as this was not the thrust of the post but merely intended as a adjective, I don't think a "score 0, flamebait" is really warranted. Note that it would not come as a total surprise to me if, in about 10 years, it became public knowledge that microsoft had somehow managed to trap a portion of the essence of a demon in each & every copy of Vista; it would make some sense of why the DRM system works the way it does. But I'm not stating that as a truth, or even an opinion. I call for Justice!
maybe they get their information from people who have been doing administration and/or systems engineer jobs for 20+ years, ran varied-Unix midrange datacenters for bellsouth, mixed OS/2, NT4 & AS/400 for a major bank, and an extremely diversely mixed and extremely large systems with NT & win2k for the US government, whose able to give a fair assessment of a OS's merits because they've worked with damned near all of them? Vista is not as bad as ME; it's about halfway in between ME & XP home SP zero. after another patch or 2, it'll probably be about as stable & technically functional as XP media center '05, which is, technically, pretty stable. Not Win2k sp4 / Solaris stable, but that is a pretty rarefied club anyway. That won't, however, stop it from A) sucking and B) being Evil. with Vista, No system changes without microsoft permission. You never know when your open source or freeware software is going to be on Vista's hate list. Only Vista knows when it's gonna degrade the output of your Audio or Video hardware, for DRM compliance. it's bloated for no reason, giving no benefit for it's bloat, and they have had to come up with this "unused memory is wasted memory" idiocy (for a non-single-task system, anyway) to partially justify it. Seriously, how can anyone possibly justify it? I've spoken to one small subset of users who got some benefit from it, tablet notebook users, because all versions of Vista have decent tablet computing support. If you ARE somehow defending it, first tell me with a straight face that, outside of tablet computing, it does anything better than XP pro for a workstation, or Win2k3 for anything else on identical hardware. What application not bundled with Vista runs better on Vista than it does on WinXP, Win2k, Win2k3 or probably even wine? What benefit does a Vista user get from a DRM system that surveys all hardware 30 times a second to make sure that the rights of Media corporations take precedence over end-user fair use rights?
surely this would be ground for termination, if not exile; why don't you let the names involved "slip" and let the power of slashdot handle this idiot?
I guess having a hard-on for OS x would mitigate things a little bit, but the only reason Vista should be in anything except a microsoft classroom is to put it on a machine in the corner, next to the Win3.11, WinME, and maybe a WinXP home machine, to provide a obvious and clear lesson in "what can go wrong".
Here is why I think you are wrong. I've been trying to read up on this, because I'm sort of puzzled as to how, exactly, they are planning to do this. What I think they are doing is something similar to the way that.US TLD used to be run before '02; I would go into details on that, but when I went to wikipedia it was...wrong.
What I can see them doing is leaving the primary nameservers alone, and just adding a pointer to the registrar of the new TLD's; when a user surfs in, depending on how their DNS is set up, they would hit one of the big 13, which would point them to the nameserver delegated by the owner of the "vanity" TLD,.disney, which would probably handle full resolution from that point. In order to actually be able to get the vanity TLD, the person applying for it would not only have to show that they have a good reason for getting it, but that they could handle the DNS aspect of it, as well. I'm sure that godaddy & others would offer that as a service, but what I think I'm reading, and what I hope they mean, is that a DNS hosting service wouldn't be an option, the person or group getting the TLD would have to agree to run the nameserver in order to get it. That would reduce the overall number of vanity TLD's quite a bit, not add any excessive strain to the root servers, AND provide an easy mechanism to block the inevitable spammers, in addition to insulating them from legal repercussions; if someone wanted to register.goatse, for instance, the whole responsibility for what came from that TLD to the rest of the web would be with the person who registered it. Unless, of course, the guy running.goatse signed a contract with a guy named Tod Isney to forward DNS traffic to his computer at todisney.goatse... Hmm. rambling here, on a theory that probably isn't right. well, regardless, I think this ties in somehow with the recent efforts to get common carrier status removed from providers of internet services, the way Usenet is currently getting killed.
True, true. besides, I registered my first domain in 96 for 2 years through verisign; $145.00 corrected for THE FRAKKING GOVERNMENT PRINTING MONEY SO FAST THE PRESS IS WEARING OUT, that works out to more than $250 in june 2008 dollars.
I'll probably try to grab a couple of names meaningful to me if this actually happens, but I can't see it.
I figured the best thing I could say about MOO2 was that I've never even really thought about looking for mods for it; after they came out with the v1.31 patch it was damned near perfect. Curiosity has made me look around on occasion, and I was pretty surprised to see that the modder community has focused on the DOS version of the game instead of the win32 version; I would have never guessed that in advance. Apparently my solution to network play limitations on the win32 version, which was to set up a VPN, is just not something that was widely considered.
MOO3 was the only game I've ever pre-ordered. I owned a game store back in what I considered "The Golden Age", and had copies of MOM, MOO, MOO2 and XCOM (although mine was called UFO: Enemy Unknown; got them from England to beat the other U.S. Retailers. I have a unopened 3.5" retail box on my shelf, BTW). I'd reread the reviews a zillion times, and it sounded like they really had it.
Gods. I played it. once. for about 2 hours. Tried it again briefly the next day, hoping I had hallucinated it. Nope. sucked. bad bad bad.
I ran across it again after throwing it against the back wall of my storage shed sometime last year, thought I would see if it had been MODded to playability.
I have to admit, they have made a respectable effort. the game is not totally unplayable anymore. On the other hand, MOO2 runs just fine in Win2k, and is not only playable, it's incomparably good.
I still hate those assholes.
They missed a few. Nazi sound and compressed air weapons, the first "shoot around a corner" gun. The "Amerika Bomber" concept that Heinlein liked so much that he based a lot of his future history series around the concept. The american Gyrojet rocket pistol.
Not for me. I'm going to enjoy it. I saw temple of doom, hoping it would be as good, if not better, than raiders. It didn't even come close. But it didn't "suck", it wasn't heartbreaking, it just wasn't as good as Raiders. How exactly could it have been? Raiders, and Star Wars (yes, just Star Wars. that was what was on the theater marquee when I sat through it 6 times on the weekend it came out), are Masterpieces; expecting a sequel to even be a tenth as good would be silly. Taken by itself, if Raiders or Star Wars had never been made, what do you think the worlds reaction to Temple of Doom would have been? or the Phantom Menace? they surely are not in the same league as the prior 2, but they are still great movies. So, I'll watch Indy at the theater on May 22nd, my Birthday, and I really, really, really doubt it will be as good as Raiders. or even Last Crusade. if it's as good as Temple of Doom, I'll consider myself lucky.
wait a sec. Did I just read that you thought the Blender interface was good? it's infamously terrible; The only people I've seen defend it in any way are people who started out using 3D applications with it, and even they will usually admit it made it hard for them when they tried to use any other software. It's great that it's open source, and I believe people when they say it's powerful, but speaking as someone who has made money doing graphics in the past, and is hurting for money currently, if someone offered me a 100k a year job contingent on me using Blender as primary tool....well, I'd take it, but I'd start hunting for a modder kid to take my output developed in a real 3D application and convert it into Blender for 30K/year; every time I try to use it I get a headache.
I have a Jeep and a GT cruiser Turbo in my driveway. However, I seldom need to drive over terrain without roads, or do a 0-60 in 6.x seconds, let alone Travel at speeds in excess of 100mph. Is the extra capabilities of my vehicles wasted? you could conceivably say that any time I'm not playing in the mud is wasted time in the Jeep, and anytime I'm not freaking out a Mustang owner with the GT is wasted. It's true that probably 95% of the time my needs could be met by the aforementioned Hyundai. But. I bought the Jeep essentially because I'm old. I grew up driving cars that you could lean against and they wouldn't crumple; I enjoy driving something that is built to handle rough treatment, and is deliberately built uncomplicated (1995 was last year of this), so that there are less things to go wrong. I enjoy driving something that if it breaks, I can almost certainly fix it with the skills I learned decades ago working on my '70 Cuda. It also doesn't hurt that I live in an area that gets frequent Tornados; no matter how many trees are down, no matter how many roads are washed out, if it's possible for a vehicle to get somewhere, I can get there. So I do not, in any sense, consider that extra capacity wasted. Hmm. can't think of a good justification for the GT. good thing I don't care, its fun.
I've been hearing this "unused RAM is wasted RAM" nonsense for quite a while, but it mainly started coming out when Vista started getting press (you can check me on this with google, check the dates). If the main reason for something being stated is because of something involved with Vista, that shoots its credibility right there. The reasons to have as much free RAM as possible are obvious, or at least I really thought they were; In a world where the cost of RAM is cheap in comparison to the cost of upgrading a system in other ways, I don't think it ~can~ change. Without knowing more completely the individual criteria for employing the statement, I can't craft a suitably smart-assed remark, though.
Here are some rules of thumb that might apply: given identical hardware, the operating system that can perform all the presently needed hardware operations and provide a stable platform for all the presently needed, and reasonably predicted future applications, without crashing, using the LEAST AMOUNT of RAM, is the better one. The Operating System that is best at keeping out of the way of applications, merely letting them run, without hindering them in anyway, Best allowing them to make use of any hardware available and allowing them the most amount of RAM to operate in (subject to the next rule), is the better one. Sub-rule of thumb (rule of Pinky?): If an application is designed to fully integrate with an operating system to the point that it essentially is the operating system to all hardware intents and purposes, it'll run better on that Operating system that it would on one it was not specifically designed to run on. So unless you love the way that operating system does everything else you might need, and everything in the future you think you are likely to need, don't buy it if there is a choice. I can see some circumstance where the statement could be justified; if you are building a purpose-built system, and you are certain that the system in question is going to be doing the same tasks for its service life, and that the operating system and it's application are mature enough that a change in it's requirements are extremely unlikely, go ahead and just put enough ram in to accommodate the OS and applications maximum footprint; you won't need anymore. Extra RAM would indeed be wasted. I might take that a step further, though. Might not something on the line of a Embedded system be better? or even a Jacquard loom-sort of mechanical device? However, if you think your application(s) might change, or you might want to run something in the future that you don't know the requirements for, or you might run software that wasn't specifically designed for a certain application, I posit that maybe
Sorry, when I read the original post I must have missed something; What I saw was a bunch of people not having a clue about how to perform a process, because the hardware in question was so ROCK STEADY RELIABLE that the process was not something anyone had done. So there was not roomful of BMW mechanics, there was a roomful of, at best, motorcycle mechanics. If they didn't have anything but midrange experience, I'll downgrade them to Bicycle mechanics. There are reasons to upgrade a system, just like there are reasons to get a new car; if it is buggy, sure. If the task it was used for is no longer something you do, probably. If you are in a power budget crisis...maybe. Sometimes spending a little extra on power is just the way things have to be. If a consumable has to be replaced often, and the consumable is getting rare, or expensive...maybe. A kludge isn't always a bad thing. But I have to assume the system was still performing its design task; the system didn't fail, humans screwed up. I also have to assume that whoever paid out the massive funds for the thing in the first place justified it on the grounds that they had to have a system that never broke down, ever. So unless you can afford a replacement that meets the same design specs (and justify it), or the basic requirements have fundamentally changed, you keep the old hardware. Somewhere out there, there are a bunch of people who know how to cold start a Tandem system; I know for a fact that HP does, as they support legacy tandem systems. I would also feel safe in saying that if you have a Tandem, you have docs for it somewhere nearby, unless it had suffered from a geographical move or EXCEEDINGLY stupid librarians. If you can't figure out how to do something with at least a quick call to HP or at most a few hours studying moldy docs, I would say that what the Tandem owners most need is a change in its technical team. RAM in a different post.
Wow. Thats pretty impressive. I'm talking to ISP's near my ex's house (the only Basement I have access to where there is a possibility of broadband these days; she lives there rent free, so I don't think she'll complain) near Louisville about getting a commercial 512k+ line installed; If I get them talked down to a sane $ amount for what is essentially just my hobby, I'll probably drive a server up there and VNC it from here (The Sticks, TN) and take back over my e-mail from the company that has been mismanaging it for the last few years. Knowing that ASSP is kicking ass is a nice cheery thought, although I'll need to find a replacement for ORB.
In my experience you can get away with thinking like the BOFH, but not talking like him; If you want to pass a time consuming onerous task over to your users, make them think it's their idea. "Phil, I need you to sign this consent form...why? well, the anti-SPAM software we're using is really great, but there are some e-mails that get flagged for administrator review automatically if the software can't decide whether it's legitimate; usually they turn out to be legitimate private correspondence, but it still means I have to go through some of your private mail..."
I really hate that mindset. That and the "if all your RAM isn't being used, it's going to waste" crowd. Kids, if your ancient BMW breaks down and you don't know how to fix it after a cursory glance, do you toss it in the trash and go buy the cheapest possible replacement Hyundai you can find? Some would, I understand. SOME will take the time and effort to track down someone who knows how to fix the ancient BMW. or even, gasp, learn the skills needed themselves.
BOFH, is that you? Up until 2006 (I retired) I ran a in-house mail server (well, in-basement, actually) with about 250 users; when the SPAM started hitting the 200+ mark per day I figured the bandwidth savings alone would be a good reason to stop it as much as possible at the server. I used ORBS, blocked all of asia-pacific net, and ran ASSP (Anti-Spam SMTP Proxy). After around 5 days of training I had SPAM down to maybe 3-5 a day per mailbox; I never could beat that number.
Actually, about the only thing I use it for is e-books. I was pointing out the other things it does merely as a public service. When I go somewhere with my daughter (trips) she usually uses it to watch movies, I can pack quite a few on a 1gb SD card. My son uses it for the emulators; he got hooked on the original "Legend of Zelda". I just filled it up with all the e-books of interest to me from Gutenberg Australia; they have a lot of the early Robert E. Howard, for instance. And I just bought "The gatekeeper" by L.M. Crisp from booksonboard, it supports DRM'd text pretty well.
Check out a Palm T/X. It has a 480x320 screen, will display video in any common format, has built in WiFi * bluetooth, plays MP3's, uses SD cards, supports every common e-book format except.lit with freely downloadable or built-in software, surfs the web and has tons of games available. I've also heard that you can use it to take notes and stuff. And, even new at full retail ($299), it's cheaper than just about every eBook reader out there. If the thing had a cell phone expansion card it would blow the iPhone out of the water.
OK. Then my earlier skewering of Freenet 0.7 was a candidate skewering, and this will be the release skewering. This is going to be frustrating for me because I'll get at least one post with something like this in it: "It is really funny and annoying at the same time when some pseudo-informed trolls from 0.5 throw around false information constantly. These people maybe want to get some technical knowledge on networking prior to spreading bullshit."
Before I really get into this, I have to point something out; to really have some idea of the reality of the situation in regards to Freenet, you have to install it and run it at least for a day; I think it pretty much reguires you run FROST (freenets main messaging & file sharing system) as well. There are 2 main freenets, the 0.5 network and the 0.7 network.
freenet 0.7, and darknet, is insecure. With a Darknet system, your node PRIMARILY communicates with the other members (around 10) of your darknet; you are supposed to know & trust people in your darknet. So around 15 nodes. Freenet 0.5, which is opennet, communicates with all other 0.5 nodes it knows about, with no preference except for tested routing speed. This works out these days to around 35 random nodes. The basic concept is this: you request some information on Freenet with your client. your node sends out a request to neighboring nodes; if that node has the information, it sends the information to your node, you get it. If your neighboring node doesn't have it, it sends out requests to it's neighboring nodes to see if they have it. this process continues until the information is found. The principle that makes this all work for illegal information is reasonable deniability; the information in your node is lightly encrypted, but the main thing is that no one can prove you are the one that put it there; your node could have received a request from another node looking for the information, and stored a copy of it. (this is vastly simplified. I will likely get a post or two from 0.7 zealots pointing out picayune discrepancies)
With open net, this works. you communicate principly at random with other nodes. In order to prove you requested the information the Powers That Be would have to control the majority of the nodes in the open net and statistical analysis.
With Darknet, you have a limited set of nodes. Statistical analysis is easier.
I used "tibetan freedom fighters" in my last post, I'll use "secret plans to attack Iran" (SPAI) today. You post your.pdf of the SPAI on Freenet 0.5 in Frost. Other 0.5 users see the key(link) and click on it. their nodes request the random nodes they know about to give them the info. The contacted nodes then ask other nodes, who then ask other nodes, until they find it. The information then travels back to your node, caching its self on the requesting nodes on the way to your node. eventually, you get it. On the NSA run node, they see requests for the keyfile come in. they can tell which node the request came from, but they can NOT tell if your node was the original requesting node; likewise, they can't tell if your node is the original posting node.
With 0.7, it works a little simpler. When the NSA node see a request, they know with a approximate 2 in 3 probability that the information requested came from a member of the same darknet that their node is on. And they know the IP address of the darknet members. Do I really need to point out anything more on this? (By the way, if I have a substantially flawed understanding of this, PLEASE point it out).
The above point is why the 0.5 network, which, by the way, WORKS for messaging and file sharing (something the 0.7 network has a little trouble with right now), has possibly more users than the 0.7 network. I would say it with certainty, but there really is no way to tell. I know my node connects with about 350 other nodes on a regular basis.
0.7 has better methods of hiding a node from outside monitoring, but the methods do not re
Yeah, I guess if Vista runs fine on your Athlon X2 4200+ with 2Gb of DDR, they have really met the needs of the casual computer user. If you don't mind, I'll restrict myself to crying in the corner because I got modded offtopic; I could have seen troll, or overrated, but offtopic?
Slashdot Mirror
USENET services have been protected by common carrier status since they started; if you start censoring newsgroups, you become responsible for their content. this has been the way it is forever, and is commonly understood and supported in case law.
So incredibly cool that it would throw off the Axial Tilt of the earth due to the spontaneous appearance of the formerly unknown substance Coolium.
It's not a universal problem; mine doesn't do it, and never has.
however, after I got mine, it was so frakking cool several of my friends got one, and it was maybe 50/50 on the screen whine. one of the 12 had a power button bad out of the box.
I've never had any hardware problems, at all. in 2+ years. everything has always worked exactly as advertised, and usually better than advertised.
the only actual complaint I have is that they have updated, once, the presets that allow the palm to passthru to the internet via your cellphone. and that was in 2006. I'd say probably 9 out of 10, or maybe even more, can't get on the internet using their cellphones. and it's something that would probably be pretty simple to fix; I've examined the existing ones and their just isn't that much information there.
aside from that, no real problems; little petty stuff, like some of the most ancient Palm apps don't work with the New & Improved flash memory, and damn it, there is no reason this shouldn't run Linux. it should have been running Gentoo a week after it was released. I also think I can't use one of the wired keyboards with it, only the bluetooth one (I haven't tried, but thats the impression I get). with Bluetooth active, my 2 year old battery only last about 2 hours, with it off, 6-8 hours easy.
The browser does sort of suck, but I put Sun Java on it and Opera Mini, and about the only thing I can't do on the web is Flash and streaming video. I'll put that under the "this thing should have had Linux since the week after it came out" category.
I use it for: 1) Mobile coms, the WiFi works great, the built in eMail client works great, the AIM chat client works great, it pretty much rocks. 2) eBooks. I've raided project Gutenborg austrailia and got enough classic SF and other great stuff to half-way fill up a 1gb SD card. I've read probably 2-3 books a week since last October, wherever I'm at if I'm not busy I can just pop it out and read, I've even started buying mobipocket books instead of continuing my 2 paperbacks a month dead tree habit. with it's 480x320 screen, it's easy to read. maybe not up to kindle, but then the kindle doesn't let me edit spreadsheets and download ISO's 3) that screen means it's great for watching videos; grab the freeware version of TCPMP and you can play everything but realmedia (terrible loss that). 4) you know, it works pretty good at being a PDA. 5) Typepad. whenever i want to maximize my pretentiousness, I have the tools. 6) you can get a GPS add-on card for it. and it runs tom-tom. I usually just use the google maps application. 7) you can fit a lot of MP3's on A 1gb SD card. 8) Quake, monkey island.
My 17 year old son borrows it for the NES, SuperNES, GB, GBA, GBC, PS1 emulation. it has a bunch of other emulators (By the way, if anyone knows of a DOS for Palm, I would love to play Xcom or MOM on it every once in a while.
My 15yo daughter is trying to be a photographer, and there are metric boot loads of applications for photography, plus she can see what her pictures look like with some detail out in the middle of nowhere.
Now, you may be asking yourself, why the heck did this idiot list all this? I wanted to point out that the Palm corporation has exactly one thing, and one thing only to blame for doing badly, and that is lousy support. the T/X and the lifedrive are simply phenomenal devices, if they would have had one developer spend a couple of months doing a Linux build for it, the damn thing would be THE geek tool. and they STILL COULD. there is nothing out there that competes with the T/X; there are a variety of devices that do one, or maybe 2 things better, maybe. They have no excuse.
Actually, I think thats what I called them when I worked on aircraft in the Navy. like everyone else on my crew. Sort of a habit.
Do you think asking strangers to trust your asinine opinions makes you sound cool?
(actually, I just looked over your last 5-6 posts in your profile, and it appears that that is exactly what you think.)
now, don't get me wrong. this is a cool bird. but I wouldn't say it was cooler than the SR-71.
I've found a few better articles and videos, here, here , here & here.
It's probably designed to be the replacement for the "blackstar" program, which doesn't exist, but is hands-down the very coolest thing out there, the only thing cooler would be a functioning Orion spacecraft.
But this looks like it might have the capability of taking the place of the blackstar "mothership", although I bet with less performance & payload; as this isn't designed to be a Mach 3+ cruise nuclear bomber, that's understandable. but those cold-war birds have got to be tired by now, and looking forward to retirement. i think one would look great in my driveway as a static display.
I do wonder what they are going to use to replace the orbital component, which was probably based on the X-20. Maybe a NASP? The X-43?
I just can't see him writing this letter; even if he was doing devil's advocate styled writing, it just doesn't sound like it was written by someone who had a clue how Windows works.
You know, Bill used to be a pretty good programmer; he wrote most of Altair Basic, a Altair Emulator. and coded BASIC interpreters in Assembler. and who can forget the magic of DONKEY.BAS?
(By the way, I could swear that I remember Bill having something to do with Tandy Deskmate, but I can't find any reference to it)
Not really a issue in Debian, or anything else that uses synaptic package manager; most people have the sense to describe what their application does in the description, and as long as you are lucky enough to find the right repositories you are golden; just search "podcast" in synaptic.
Flamebait, huh?
wow. the only thing written that is not an obvious and provable conclusion is that Vista is Evil; as it's allegedly only an operating system, I agree that attributing it as being "Evil" could conceivably be labeled flamebait.
However, as this was not the thrust of the post but merely intended as a adjective, I don't think a "score 0, flamebait" is really warranted.
Note that it would not come as a total surprise to me if, in about 10 years, it became public knowledge that microsoft had somehow managed to trap a portion of the essence of a demon in each & every copy of Vista; it would make some sense of why the DRM system works the way it does. But I'm not stating that as a truth, or even an opinion.
I call for Justice!
maybe they get their information from people who have been doing administration and/or systems engineer jobs for 20+ years, ran varied-Unix midrange datacenters for bellsouth, mixed OS/2, NT4 & AS/400 for a major bank, and an extremely diversely mixed and extremely large systems with NT & win2k for the US government, whose able to give a fair assessment of a OS's merits because they've worked with damned near all of them?
Vista is not as bad as ME; it's about halfway in between ME & XP home SP zero. after another patch or 2, it'll probably be about as stable & technically functional as XP media center '05, which is, technically, pretty stable. Not Win2k sp4 / Solaris stable, but that is a pretty rarefied club anyway.
That won't, however, stop it from A) sucking and B) being Evil.
with Vista, No system changes without microsoft permission. You never know when your open source or freeware software is going to be on Vista's hate list. Only Vista knows when it's gonna degrade the output of your Audio or Video hardware, for DRM compliance. it's bloated for no reason, giving no benefit for it's bloat, and they have had to come up with this "unused memory is wasted memory" idiocy (for a non-single-task system, anyway) to partially justify it.
Seriously, how can anyone possibly justify it? I've spoken to one small subset of users who got some benefit from it, tablet notebook users, because all versions of Vista have decent tablet computing support.
If you ARE somehow defending it, first tell me with a straight face that, outside of tablet computing, it does anything better than XP pro for a workstation, or Win2k3 for anything else on identical hardware. What application not bundled with Vista runs better on Vista than it does on WinXP, Win2k, Win2k3 or probably even wine? What benefit does a Vista user get from a DRM system that surveys all hardware 30 times a second to make sure that the rights of Media corporations take precedence over end-user fair use rights?
surely this would be ground for termination, if not exile; why don't you let the names involved "slip" and let the power of slashdot handle this idiot? I guess having a hard-on for OS x would mitigate things a little bit, but the only reason Vista should be in anything except a microsoft classroom is to put it on a machine in the corner, next to the Win3.11, WinME, and maybe a WinXP home machine, to provide a obvious and clear lesson in "what can go wrong".
Here is why I think you are wrong. .US TLD used to be run before '02; I would go into details on that, but when I went to wikipedia it was...wrong.
I've been trying to read up on this, because I'm sort of puzzled as to how, exactly, they are planning to do this.
What I think they are doing is something similar to the way that
What I can see them doing is leaving the primary nameservers alone, and just adding a pointer to the registrar of the new TLD's; when a user surfs in, depending on how their DNS is set up, they would hit one of the big 13, which would point them to the nameserver delegated by the owner of the "vanity" TLD, .disney, which would probably handle full resolution from that point. In order to actually be able to get the vanity TLD, the person applying for it would not only have to show that they have a good reason for getting it, but that they could handle the DNS aspect of it, as well. I'm sure that godaddy & others would offer that as a service, but what I think I'm reading, and what I hope they mean, is that a DNS hosting service wouldn't be an option, the person or group getting the TLD would have to agree to run the nameserver in order to get it. .goatse, for instance, the whole responsibility for what came from that TLD to the rest of the web would be with the person who registered it. Unless, of course, the guy running .goatse signed a contract with a guy named Tod Isney to forward DNS traffic to his computer at todisney.goatse...
That would reduce the overall number of vanity TLD's quite a bit, not add any excessive strain to the root servers, AND provide an easy mechanism to block the inevitable spammers, in addition to insulating them from legal repercussions; if someone wanted to register
Hmm. rambling here, on a theory that probably isn't right.
well, regardless, I think this ties in somehow with the recent efforts to get common carrier status removed from providers of internet services, the way Usenet is currently getting killed.
True, true. besides, I registered my first domain in 96 for 2 years through verisign; $145.00 corrected for THE FRAKKING GOVERNMENT PRINTING MONEY SO FAST THE PRESS IS WEARING OUT, that works out to more than $250 in june 2008 dollars. I'll probably try to grab a couple of names meaningful to me if this actually happens, but I can't see it.
I figured the best thing I could say about MOO2 was that I've never even really thought about looking for mods for it; after they came out with the v1.31 patch it was damned near perfect. Curiosity has made me look around on occasion, and I was pretty surprised to see that the modder community has focused on the DOS version of the game instead of the win32 version; I would have never guessed that in advance. Apparently my solution to network play limitations on the win32 version, which was to set up a VPN, is just not something that was widely considered.
MOO3 was the only game I've ever pre-ordered. I owned a game store back in what I considered "The Golden Age", and had copies of MOM, MOO, MOO2 and XCOM (although mine was called UFO: Enemy Unknown; got them from England to beat the other U.S. Retailers. I have a unopened 3.5" retail box on my shelf, BTW). I'd reread the reviews a zillion times, and it sounded like they really had it. Gods. I played it. once. for about 2 hours. Tried it again briefly the next day, hoping I had hallucinated it. Nope. sucked. bad bad bad. I ran across it again after throwing it against the back wall of my storage shed sometime last year, thought I would see if it had been MODded to playability. I have to admit, they have made a respectable effort. the game is not totally unplayable anymore. On the other hand, MOO2 runs just fine in Win2k, and is not only playable, it's incomparably good. I still hate those assholes.
They missed a few. Nazi sound and compressed air weapons, the first "shoot around a corner" gun. The "Amerika Bomber" concept that Heinlein liked so much that he based a lot of his future history series around the concept.
The american Gyrojet rocket pistol.
Not for me. I'm going to enjoy it.
I saw temple of doom, hoping it would be as good, if not better, than raiders. It didn't even come close. But it didn't "suck", it wasn't heartbreaking, it just wasn't as good as Raiders. How exactly could it have been? Raiders, and Star Wars (yes, just Star Wars. that was what was on the theater marquee when I sat through it 6 times on the weekend it came out), are Masterpieces; expecting a sequel to even be a tenth as good would be silly.
Taken by itself, if Raiders or Star Wars had never been made, what do you think the worlds reaction to Temple of Doom would have been? or the Phantom Menace? they surely are not in the same league as the prior 2, but they are still great movies.
So, I'll watch Indy at the theater on May 22nd, my Birthday, and I really, really, really doubt it will be as good as Raiders. or even Last Crusade. if it's as good as Temple of Doom, I'll consider myself lucky.
wait a sec. Did I just read that you thought the Blender interface was good? it's infamously terrible; The only people I've seen defend it in any way are people who started out using 3D applications with it, and even they will usually admit it made it hard for them when they tried to use any other software.
It's great that it's open source, and I believe people when they say it's powerful, but speaking as someone who has made money doing graphics in the past, and is hurting for money currently, if someone offered me a 100k a year job contingent on me using Blender as primary tool....well, I'd take it, but I'd start hunting for a modder kid to take my output developed in a real 3D application and convert it into Blender for 30K/year; every time I try to use it I get a headache.
I have a Jeep and a GT cruiser Turbo in my driveway. However, I seldom need to drive over terrain without roads, or do a 0-60 in 6.x seconds, let alone Travel at speeds in excess of 100mph.
Is the extra capabilities of my vehicles wasted? you could conceivably say that any time I'm not playing in the mud is wasted time in the Jeep, and anytime I'm not freaking out a Mustang owner with the GT is wasted. It's true that probably 95% of the time my needs could be met by the aforementioned Hyundai.
But.
I bought the Jeep essentially because I'm old. I grew up driving cars that you could lean against and they wouldn't crumple; I enjoy driving something that is built to handle rough treatment, and is deliberately built uncomplicated (1995 was last year of this), so that there are less things to go wrong. I enjoy driving something that if it breaks, I can almost certainly fix it with the skills I learned decades ago working on my '70 Cuda. It also doesn't hurt that I live in an area that gets frequent Tornados; no matter how many trees are down, no matter how many roads are washed out, if it's possible for a vehicle to get somewhere, I can get there. So I do not, in any sense, consider that extra capacity wasted.
Hmm. can't think of a good justification for the GT. good thing I don't care, its fun.
I've been hearing this "unused RAM is wasted RAM" nonsense for quite a while, but it mainly started coming out when Vista started getting press (you can check me on this with google, check the dates). If the main reason for something being stated is because of something involved with Vista, that shoots its credibility right there.
The reasons to have as much free RAM as possible are obvious, or at least I really thought they were; In a world where the cost of RAM is cheap in comparison to the cost of upgrading a system in other ways, I don't think it ~can~ change.
Without knowing more completely the individual criteria for employing the statement, I can't craft a suitably smart-assed remark, though.
Here are some rules of thumb that might apply: given identical hardware, the operating system that can perform all the presently needed hardware operations and provide a stable platform for all the presently needed, and reasonably predicted future applications, without crashing, using the LEAST AMOUNT of RAM, is the better one.
The Operating System that is best at keeping out of the way of applications, merely letting them run, without hindering them in anyway, Best allowing them to make use of any hardware available and allowing them the most amount of RAM to operate in (subject to the next rule), is the better one.
Sub-rule of thumb (rule of Pinky?): If an application is designed to fully integrate with an operating system to the point that it essentially is the operating system to all hardware intents and purposes, it'll run better on that Operating system that it would on one it was not specifically designed to run on. So unless you love the way that operating system does everything else you might need, and everything in the future you think you are likely to need, don't buy it if there is a choice.
I can see some circumstance where the statement could be justified; if you are building a purpose-built system, and you are certain that the system in question is going to be doing the same tasks for its service life, and that the operating system and it's application are mature enough that a change in it's requirements are extremely unlikely, go ahead and just put enough ram in to accommodate the OS and applications maximum footprint; you won't need anymore. Extra RAM would indeed be wasted.
I might take that a step further, though. Might not something on the line of a Embedded system be better? or even a Jacquard loom-sort of mechanical device?
However, if you think your application(s) might change, or you might want to run something in the future that you don't know the requirements for, or you might run software that wasn't specifically designed for a certain application, I posit that maybe
Sorry, when I read the original post I must have missed something; What I saw was a bunch of people not having a clue about how to perform a process, because the hardware in question was so ROCK STEADY RELIABLE that the process was not something anyone had done. So there was not roomful of BMW mechanics, there was a roomful of, at best, motorcycle mechanics. If they didn't have anything but midrange experience, I'll downgrade them to Bicycle mechanics.
There are reasons to upgrade a system, just like there are reasons to get a new car; if it is buggy, sure. If the task it was used for is no longer something you do, probably. If you are in a power budget crisis...maybe. Sometimes spending a little extra on power is just the way things have to be.
If a consumable has to be replaced often, and the consumable is getting rare, or expensive...maybe. A kludge isn't always a bad thing.
But I have to assume the system was still performing its design task; the system didn't fail, humans screwed up. I also have to assume that whoever paid out the massive funds for the thing in the first place justified it on the grounds that they had to have a system that never broke down, ever. So unless you can afford a replacement that meets the same design specs (and justify it), or the basic requirements have fundamentally changed, you keep the old hardware.
Somewhere out there, there are a bunch of people who know how to cold start a Tandem system; I know for a fact that HP does, as they support legacy tandem systems. I would also feel safe in saying that if you have a Tandem, you have docs for it somewhere nearby, unless it had suffered from a geographical move or EXCEEDINGLY stupid librarians. If you can't figure out how to do something with at least a quick call to HP or at most a few hours studying moldy docs, I would say that what the Tandem owners most need is a change in its technical team.
RAM in a different post.
Wow. Thats pretty impressive.
I'm talking to ISP's near my ex's house (the only Basement I have access to where there is a possibility of broadband these days; she lives there rent free, so I don't think she'll complain) near Louisville about getting a commercial 512k+ line installed; If I get them talked down to a sane $ amount for what is essentially just my hobby, I'll probably drive a server up there and VNC it from here (The Sticks, TN) and take back over my e-mail from the company that has been mismanaging it for the last few years. Knowing that ASSP is kicking ass is a nice cheery thought, although I'll need to find a replacement for ORB.
In my experience you can get away with thinking like the BOFH, but not talking like him; If you want to pass a time consuming onerous task over to your users, make them think it's their idea.
"Phil, I need you to sign this consent form...why? well, the anti-SPAM software we're using is really great, but there are some e-mails that get flagged for administrator review automatically if the software can't decide whether it's legitimate; usually they turn out to be legitimate private correspondence, but it still means I have to go through some of your private mail..."
I really hate that mindset. That and the "if all your RAM isn't being used, it's going to waste" crowd.
Kids, if your ancient BMW breaks down and you don't know how to fix it after a cursory glance, do you toss it in the trash and go buy the cheapest possible replacement Hyundai you can find?
Some would, I understand.
SOME will take the time and effort to track down someone who knows how to fix the ancient BMW. or even, gasp, learn the skills needed themselves.
BOFH, is that you?
Up until 2006 (I retired) I ran a in-house mail server (well, in-basement, actually) with about 250 users; when the SPAM started hitting the 200+ mark per day I figured the bandwidth savings alone would be a good reason to stop it as much as possible at the server.
I used ORBS, blocked all of asia-pacific net, and ran ASSP (Anti-Spam SMTP Proxy). After around 5 days of training I had SPAM down to maybe 3-5 a day per mailbox; I never could beat that number.
Actually, about the only thing I use it for is e-books. I was pointing out the other things it does merely as a public service.
When I go somewhere with my daughter (trips) she usually uses it to watch movies, I can pack quite a few on a 1gb SD card.
My son uses it for the emulators; he got hooked on the original "Legend of Zelda".
I just filled it up with all the e-books of interest to me from Gutenberg Australia; they have a lot of the early Robert E. Howard, for instance. And I just bought "The gatekeeper" by L.M. Crisp from booksonboard, it supports DRM'd text pretty well.
Check out a Palm T/X. It has a 480x320 screen, will display video in any common format, has built in WiFi * bluetooth, plays MP3's, uses SD cards, supports every common e-book format except .lit with freely downloadable or built-in software, surfs the web and has tons of games available.
I've also heard that you can use it to take notes and stuff.
And, even new at full retail ($299), it's cheaper than just about every eBook reader out there.
If the thing had a cell phone expansion card it would blow the iPhone out of the water.
OK. Then my earlier skewering of Freenet 0.7 was a candidate skewering, and this will be the release skewering.
.pdf of the SPAI on Freenet 0.5 in Frost. Other 0.5 users see the key(link) and click on it. their nodes request the random nodes they know about to give them the info. The contacted nodes then ask other nodes, who then ask other nodes, until they find it. The information then travels back to your node, caching its self on the requesting nodes on the way to your node. eventually, you get it.
This is going to be frustrating for me because I'll get at least one post with something like this in it: "It is really funny and annoying at the same time when some pseudo-informed trolls from 0.5 throw around false information constantly. These people maybe want to get some technical knowledge on networking prior to spreading bullshit."
Before I really get into this, I have to point something out; to really have some idea of the reality of the situation in regards to Freenet, you have to install it and run it at least for a day; I think it pretty much reguires you run FROST (freenets main messaging & file sharing system) as well. There are 2 main freenets, the 0.5 network and the 0.7 network.
freenet 0.7, and darknet, is insecure. With a Darknet system, your node PRIMARILY communicates with the other members (around 10) of your darknet; you are supposed to know & trust people in your darknet. So around 15 nodes.
Freenet 0.5, which is opennet, communicates with all other 0.5 nodes it knows about, with no preference except for tested routing speed. This works out these days to around 35 random nodes.
The basic concept is this: you request some information on Freenet with your client. your node sends out a request to neighboring nodes; if that node has the information, it sends the information to your node, you get it. If your neighboring node doesn't have it, it sends out requests to it's neighboring nodes to see if they have it. this process continues until the information is found.
The principle that makes this all work for illegal information is reasonable deniability; the information in your node is lightly encrypted, but the main thing is that no one can prove you are the one that put it there; your node could have received a request from another node looking for the information, and stored a copy of it.
(this is vastly simplified. I will likely get a post or two from 0.7 zealots pointing out picayune discrepancies)
With open net, this works. you communicate principly at random with other nodes. In order to prove you requested the information the Powers That Be would have to control the majority of the nodes in the open net and statistical analysis.
With Darknet, you have a limited set of nodes. Statistical analysis is easier.
I used "tibetan freedom fighters" in my last post, I'll use "secret plans to attack Iran" (SPAI) today.
You post your
On the NSA run node, they see requests for the keyfile come in. they can tell which node the request came from, but they can NOT tell if your node was the original requesting node; likewise, they can't tell if your node is the original posting node.
With 0.7, it works a little simpler. When the NSA node see a request, they know with a approximate 2 in 3 probability that the information requested came from a member of the same darknet that their node is on. And they know the IP address of the darknet members. Do I really need to point out anything more on this?
(By the way, if I have a substantially flawed understanding of this, PLEASE point it out).
The above point is why the 0.5 network, which, by the way, WORKS for messaging and file sharing (something the 0.7 network has a little trouble with right now), has possibly more users than the 0.7 network. I would say it with certainty, but there really is no way to tell. I know my node connects with about 350 other nodes on a regular basis.
0.7 has better methods of hiding a node from outside monitoring, but the methods do not re
Yeah, I guess if Vista runs fine on your Athlon X2 4200+ with 2Gb of DDR, they have really met the needs of the casual computer user.
If you don't mind, I'll restrict myself to crying in the corner because I got modded offtopic; I could have seen troll, or overrated, but offtopic?