Those programs come with Dell Vista computers, usually with a 30 day trial, or one can go ahead and order the PC with a year or so of "coverage". You pay upfront, then pay Per PC for continued protection.
And yes, there is a performance hit, but in the day of dual core processors, 2 GB of RAM, one may not notice.
My Knoppix-based linux (see screenshots, below) uses the Guarddog firewall, preconfigured and enabled by default. The user does not have to start up the Guarddog interface, and switch the firewall on, it's already working by the time the desktop appears. No annual fee or cost. Not much of a problem with viruses on a livecd linux.
We have two different avenues of protection here, the "firewalls" and the "virus scanners".
Back to the Vista computers, I have this question:
"Are the owners of these boxes going to keep their Norton or McAfee subscriptions in force?"
Microsoft's answer to this problem is to make Vista more secure, even more so than XP (in comparison to older versions of Windows). If Vista is secure, then why do Vista computers need Norton or McAfee?
If the car had "won", would everyone want to adopt Linux? No. Putting your product, name or cause on a racecar is exactly why you don't see a "Windows" racecar. Every time that car had a mishap, lots of jokes would be forthcoming.
The idea behind putting your name on a racecar is that if the car wins, then that win is somehow transferred to the product. "If whoever can put a good, winning car out there must have a super product." Back in the days when tobacco companies sponsored racecars, it was supposed to make it "alright" to smoke if there was a tobacco sponsored racecar even on the track. It didn't have to win, just sit around with a nice paint job, promoting the product. Now, we have laundry soap sponsors for racecars, and every thing else. "If whoever puts a racecar out there with the name of a laundry soap on it must make a really good laundry soap". "When I go down the grocery store isle, I'm gonna pick up a box of that stuff and put it in my shopping basket, for sure!" It's all about advertising. The Goodyear Blimp is a good example. It really has to hold "air" to stay up, just like the tires that Goodyear sells. At least Goodyear's airship had a valid point there. I see no correlation between "Linux" and a winning or losing racecar. The Microsoft people might not be so dumb after all. No "Vista" racecar.
It's going to be many years before all of the wood brought down by Hurricane Katrina will be used up in backyard BBQ's.
I have a big pile of it, mostly Oak, some Hickory.
U.S. Forest Service Estimates:
# 5,000,000 acres of forest damaged or destroyed
# Enough wood to build 800,000 homes damaged or destroyed
# 25 million tons of paper damaged or destroyed
# Financial loss to timberowners and processors - five billion dollars
The timber was "destroyed" as far as turning it into lumber is concerned, but it's salvageble as firewood.
In my case, the wood just fell down out of existing trees that survived the high winds.
Been using it in my old Weber BBQ grill.
I came across this page on the subject of Running Cars on Hydrogen Made from Starch. The page's subtitle is A new way to make hydrogen from corn or potatoes could make fuel-cell vehicles more practical. They provide some links, and have a discussion area.
IMHO, although this might work, I doubt the technology could be scaled to meet any substantial need, such as we now have with Gasoline.
I can't stand to touch McDonalds, Taco Bell, or Wendy's now.
I went to the local Sonic drive-in, and ordered the No. 2 burger meal. The lady said, "What do you want on that hamburger?" I said, "Oh, just whatever comes on it." When I got the hamburger, I swear it tasted like they put Stinkbugs on it, well sort of anyway. Next time I got hungry, I decided to save myself some money, and just make a sandwich at home.
Didn't it take a long time before the internal combustion engine was applied to an automobile (of sorts) that we (they, back then) could actually buy?
The above link to wikipedia has early examples dating from 1806 or so, and the first automobile for sale by Ford was in 1903. Here is a link for that, and other info about early automobile efforts, including some pictures.
As it turns out, the automobile, and trucks, have had a greater impact on our lives than this revolutionary display may have. I notice that some billboards that we see as we travel down the road are starting to be powered by large scale displays, displaying complicated graphics in some cases. The new Sony display may offer a lower cost option, so they may be used as billboards if they can scale the display to the required size. If not, then the smaller consumer products envisioned may be what appears first.
I am amazed, really, at the idea that a major manufacturer of PC's will be shipping one with Linux. I always thought you got a PC that may have had Windows 95 or 98 on it, and then you partitioned the hard drive, and installed at least one Linux distro, maybe more. I often kept the Windows partition, and played around with it for a while before getting bored. Most of the time I swapped hard drives, still went ahead and installed Windows 98 on one partition, and then proceeded to install something like Red Hat 6.1 on the rest of the drive. Sound never worked. Soon I found out that later versions of Firefox, for instance, required additional libraries, so I got introduced to rpm hell. Tried Debian 2.2, but wound up fowling that up so bad that apt-get would not work anymore. I loved it, anyway. Then there was SuSE Linux, but that's another story. Unusual to work with. That's when I discovered Knoppix, via Damn Small Linux. Never looked back (see screenshots, below), but I still say I am living in the Past, and cannot comprehend the idea of a Dell with something besides Windows on it. I did fix up a box lately that has FC 6, upgraded it to have KDE as default window manager, and placed a handy "update" icon on the toolbar, so I can tie up the machine for a while as it updates lots of items, twice now it has updated the kernel itself, and screwed up GRUB, so it defaults to FC 6 instead of my Knoppix remaster Easily fixed, however. That's the way I like it. But a Dell with Ubuntu preinstalled? Do you suppose your Wireless card works? What is the World coming to?
Walmart sales will only be a small percentage of total Dell sales. They will "stack and sell" what Dell sends them, and there is no "added value reseller" to it. You'll pick the box up, put it on your shopping cart, go to "self checkout", and out the door with your new Dell PC. From USA Today's story just out:
Wal-Mart is expected to account for only a tiny part of Dell's business. Stephen Baker, a tech analyst with researcher NPD, expects Dell to sell between 30,000 and 50,000 PCs there initially. Dell sold nearly 9 million PCs in the first three months of the year, mainly though catalogs and the Internet.
I bought a Dell Inspiron on line, and it was delivered Tuesday, 05-22-07. Paid about $1,700 for it, Dell took $500 off the $2,200 beginning price. It has Vista on it (cringe). They are a good Company, and do look after the customers. I wonder how the Walmart setup will figure in to that. Normally, Walmart is very easy to deal with on any returns, no questions asked. Probably the purchaser will deal directly with Dell on any problems on a Walmart-purchased computer, I can't imagine Dell leaving the buyer high and dry just because they bought the PC at Walmart. Dell does have excellent online support, they have a complete driver download site that you need if you have to reinstall the OS, to get rid of all of the preloaded "crapware" on the PC. I did that recently on another Inspiron, with XP. I found that the "restoration cd" does not access all of the drivers you need on a particular PC, not even 40% of them. They have a hidden partition with the restoration, and another one for the Media Direct setup, that bypasses the main OS. This is unlike the days when Toshiba's restoration CD could put everything back like it was when the PC was new. So, you do need Dell's online support and drivers, even if you have to get some drivers downloaded on another PC, and move them to your machine with a USB flash drive. To get all of the hardware information and to see the hidden partitions, I booted the machine with my Knoppix remaster, and used KDE's system information application, and wrote everything down, then when looking for needed drivers from Dell. No, I can't imagine the average Walmart purchaser doing something like that, but it would result in a smoother running PC, without all the unnecessary Dell additional software. I don't recommend anyone trying this, but I was sucessful, with XP, anyway. You may re-partition the hard drive, as long as the restoration partition is not touched.
With your Coffee, you will need cheap donuts. And they are, after 11:00 AM, at the Donut shop on Highway 49 in Richland, MS. (Across the street from Mac's Gas)
Two for the price of one. If you get a large Cinnamon Roll, and they are big indeed, you get two, for $1.00. So big, you cannot eat all of them. I say they need to stop fooling around with our food supply, and use Atomic Power Plants to produce electricity, to power electric cars. Plug 'em in at night, run 'em during the day. Do away with Gasoline altogether. (Sorry, Mac!)
Traffic Light controllers. It seems that there are a lot of times when everyone is stopped at the stop light, from all directions, with no one wanting to use that turn lane that we are all waiting on. One car did, but the traffic light controller is set to expect lots more, but there was only one car, and it turned, and is way down the road, while the rest of us wait. Lots of gasoline being wasted. I realize that they use a logic board in the traffic light controllers that regulate the Stop and Go lights at intersections. I saw one being serviced, so they do have some reasonably up to date technology here. I'm sure they try to set them up to process the traffic as best as they can. Perhaps what might be needed, to process the traffic through the intersection better is something more advanced, using additional sensors to tell the controller what traffic is there, and on the way to the intersection. This would save gas, cars get "gas mileage" when moving. Also increase public confidence in the traffic light system. Sure, there are intersections where "everyone turns" as might happen if an interstate on-ramp is near. Perhaps they realize this, and set the controller accordingly. The volume of traffic is so high in some areas that traffic lights are used to cut the flow into groups, so cross traffic has a chance on the intersections where there is no traffic light. Used to be that traffic lights were used to speed the traffic along a boulevard, where all you had to do was travel along at 40 MPH, for instance, and the various traffic lights along the way would change to "green" as you got to the intersection. If everyone paid attention, and paced themselves, the volume of traffic would be moved along nicely, more or less. Now, all they want to do is slow the traffic, and break it up into groups. So, the system as gone into a defensive mode, protecting the roadways from the great numbers of vehicles, all wanting to use the road at the same time, seemingly 24/7. Current high price of gasoline is not having any effect.
Improved traffic control would cost more tax dollars, something a lot of communities and States are unable to provide. Most of them can barely handle education, health care and crime prevention.
Automated systems where all vehicles are controlled by a central system as to their speed, lane location and destination would be a solution, totally unlike the present day setup where everyone owns their own vehicle, and is completely in control of where it goes, how fast it goes and what lane it travels in.
As far as "gas mileage" is concerned, we have missed a lot of opportunities to design and build electric cars, powered by electricity produced by atomic power plants, which could easily meet the demand for such vast amounts of electricity.
Being given a tour my CPA's office, with a couple of ladies posting to spreadsheets, he said, "I have a 20 MB Hard Drive". This was before Windows. I was impressed, as only a few years before that, my Bank's data processing center person that took care of our computer processing on their mainframe said, "And, we are going to install a Disk Drive!" By way of further explanation, he told me that the data could be randomly accessed. I was impressed that day, too. For entertainment this evening, I am considering using a Dell 64 MB USB memory drive (/dev/sda) as a "persistent home directory" for my Knoppix Remaster, and risk burning it up from the constant read/write activity. Normally, I might use a hard drive partition of say 10 GB, on a 7200 RPM drive for that purpose. The size is overkill, but in this current day and time of cheap 160, 200, or more GB hard drives, 10 GB is nothing.
Might be a long time before the Microsoft replacement for Vista appears for end users, but I bet they will go through a long beta testing time, just like they did with Vista. Although it is true that 64 bit is "better" than 32 bit, we all worry (I do) about obsolete machines, still good, and obsolete linux operating systems. My Knoppix remaster is 32 bit, based on Knoppix 3.4. I could get ahold of the latest 64 bit knoppix, and start putting all of my stuff in there, and have it done. That won't be easy, and I cringe when I see the 64 bit AMD machines in the stores, at a good price, too. What if they took over, and ruled the World? Would I wind up staying up late at night, for eons, trying to get my stuff migrated to 64 bit? Would I wind up having two remasters, one 32 bit for all of the old 32 bit machines out there, and one for the 64 bit machines. I would hope that Microsoft is just planning some "out there, pie in the sky stuff" just to please the stockholders, by going with all 64 bit. You know that Toyota announced that in about 12-14 years, all of their cars would be equipped with hybrid power plants, at the same cost as a car with only a gasoline engine. No difference in price. The big difference is that Toyota is tops, and they know where they need to go to stay on top, whereas Microsoft always has us linux folks after them. It just works out that way, we are not "after them" as much as we are putting together OS's that do what we want, exactly, in a secure on-line environment. Using my remaster every day, I cannot image using something like Windows 98, or XP for that matter. I don't want be become part of somebody's botnet, or have my keystrokes logged when I do online banking. I have the Guarddog firewall, on by default, no user action needed. Any other livecd linux do that? If I go to Gibson Research Corporation, and run the Shields UP tests, I always get "Your system has achieved a perfect "TruStealth" rating. Not a single packet, etc." report. As a round about way of checking for botnet infection, since I use IceWM as my default WM, I have the nice little processor activity window, and the broadband activity window right down there on the toolbar where I can see them. I don't have anything like that, nearly as handy, in my Fedora Core 6 installation on this same box, dual boot. Kinda makes me nervous not to have those items there in FC 6. Any botnet setup would really show up as stolen bandwidth, and processor activity. Not that my livecd linux could be infected by a virus, but anything is possible. So, it's not like Microsoft is going to suddenly make us all have 64 bit machines, but eventually, that would be the case. Otherwise, Knoppix would not offer a 64 bit version, if they did not see the benefits. As long as there is a Microsoft, always wanting more powerful hardware for each new version, we will have to come up with Linux OS's that use those machines. I have an Inspiron 1505 being built by Dell, due here the middle of June, and I can't wait to run my remaster on it, if possible before even booting up Vista. Lets see, Dual Core, 2 GB RAM, ATI 256 MB card, lots of Microsoft-inspired power to be had.
If there were no Microsoft, would anything like the Inspiron 1505 be available at that price?
how many of these licenses were sold to Dell, Toshiba, HP, etc...
That's it, sold to the manufacturers. We don't have people walking into Office Depot and plunking down $$ for the software, but they do buy the computers with the software preinstalled. I doubt that Microsoft gets much per machine for that, is it about $40.00 or so?
Also, the desktop that the demo's in the stores have is really very nice, and to the unsuspecting potential buyer, "pretty is, is pretty does". They say, "How can something that nice looking be anything but the best?" On top of that, we have Microsoft's overall record, notwithstanding the Slashdot reality of that, with botnets, etc. infections of Windows boxes, which the public really does not understand. If they cannot see it, how can it exist? For a while, anyway, Windows Vista will serve the buyer in fine style, and it's into the repair shop when it "begins to slow down", infected with a virus, unknown to the buyer, now owner of the machine. I know of one shop that charges about $160.00 to "remove viruses". People have no choice but to pay, since they put out a lot of money for the machine to begin with. Some Dell laptops are $2,200, and they can get infected regardless of price or other social standing. "My computer has Vista on it" That's all the public needs to know, that is equal to a teenager saying, "My Dad's car has a V8" in 1950's teenspeak. Now, if the Vista boxes wound up in the shop say "within a month", and in large numbers, then perhaps the word would get out, but they don't, and it doesn't. Computer users are a solitary bunch, word does not spread very well. In the Car Culture, it's the drive-in and the long road with the street-racers that tell the tale. What will Vista owners do, go to the drive-in and talk about their boxes? I doubt it. So the Vista thing has too much momentum, installed on all boxes in the store, unstoppable good-looking desktop. It's what Chrome was to the Buick.
Ok, about the Dell computers shipped with bloatware, etc. How will that affect Ubuntu. Probably not too much, unless the bloatware software writers want to starting writing lots of non-windows software all of a sudden. I did get ahold of a Dell Inspiron 1505 with XP, and it was so loaded up with bloatware that the owner asked my to format the XP partition, and "start over". Used my Knoppix Remaster to look around in the drive, and see what partitions Dell had. Seems there were several, one for the Media Direct button setup, that bypasses the main OS. Another for the restoration, and then the main XP partition. Had to download lots of drivers from Dell to get everything set up and running. The restoration is rather generic Dell, does not exactly fit the particular Dell notebook, with all necessary drivers. First, I used another computer to obtain the missing drivers, and stored them on a flash drive, to move them to the 1505. Quite a few, actually. When done, the 1505 ran like a dream, without any of the bloatware. Now for the interesting part: I have another 1505 being built for me by Dell, but it will come preloaded with Vista. I kinda doubt I would want to try and "format" the main Vista partition, and start over like I did (successfully) with the XP 1505. Sounds like I would be on the telephone with Microsoft splaining what I was trying to do that fowled up the Vista setup. I will run my livecd linux (screenshots below), however, I am not apprehensive about connecting to the internet with that. The ultimate owner of this particular 1505 will be using Vista, so I can't just format and install something else. I would expect that Dell's linux machines will be shipped with drivers that match the hardware, something I would have to "go it alone" on, if I just "installed Ubuntu" on the 1505. Should be some value in getting a Dell with Ubuntu preinstalled, i.e. "everything works", sound card, graphics, everything, just like it is supposed to be with a Dell Vista computer. One thing, though: Will Ubuntu boot up fast enough to satisfy the average user? Vista is supposed to boot up quickly, I don't know from first hand experience, yet. My Remaster boots up fairly quickly, I boot up and down lots of times daily, no problem. In comparison, Fedora Core 6 takes a lot longer on the same machine, so much so, I don't use it much.
The Damn Small Linux people have been selling a USB drive that one can run within Windows XP: http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/usb-qemu.html The cost is $65.00 plus shipping, but I think they also offer everything for the do-it-yourselfer to make one of these on your own USB drive. Booting an OS off a USB drive requires a bios (newer computers) that can be set to look to the USB ports for a bootable OS first. Most machines still around today can easily be set to boot off a CDROM, that's the way all livecd linux OS's do it. Something like a Dell Inspiron 1505 laptop is new enough to boot from a USB drive, one OS that comes to mind is the Kanotix CPX Mini, which when the OS comes up, has an icon on the desktop to start the USB installer. I have a CD of it, but I regret to say that the website and download link is now dead. There may be others that have an installer to USB drive, Damn Small being the most reliable to work with, since they have an active support forum. I don't plan on doing anything like that with my livecd linux, because I focus on older computers, those that ran Windows 98, that now need a secure linux system to get some more useful life from them. All of my computers are in that category. 128 MB of RAM is enough. None of these have BIOS that can boot off USB.
I do have an Insprion 1505 coming, Dell takes nearly 3 weeks now to build one, and will run Rapidweather Remaster of Knoppix Linux (See screenshots, below) on it, with the "toram" cheatcode, since we will have 2GB of RAM. I'll have to use the network cable for broadband, I don't have a driver for the new Intel wireless setup in the 1505. I have run it on one other 1505, so I know it will boot up OK.
Paris Hilton is a feast for the geek's eyes, and we probably don't need to hear what she has to say.
I did look at her MySpace page, it seems that there was a petition asking Gov. Schwarzenegger to pardon her so she won't have to go to jail, and apparently Paris herself decided to thank the individual involved by posting a "thank-you" on her page. She misspelled "sign", when asking people to "sign" the petition.
It's gone now, the MySpace page is a horrible excuse for a web page, someone needs to clean up the page, perhaps by cutting off the public's right to post there, just leaving posts cleared by a kind and caring webmaster that can turn the page into something not so out-of-control.
With so many talented webmaster types here at Slashdot, I'm sure some of you would like to somehow contact Ms. Hilton, offering your help in her time of need.
I probably could work the assignment in somehow, but I'll go ahead and let some of you cut in line ahead of me, being the nice fellow that I am.
I do play with GIMP, and I have a "Wallpaper Control Center" application in my Knoppix remaster that has a section where one can, at the touch of a button, download and install a desktop wallpaper directly from my rapidweather.com/images directory. One of them is a nice picture of Paris Hilton. I do it that way so I can change the "downloadable" wallpapers, all the others are in the CD, and are fixed. Check the "screenshots" link, below for a screenshot of the "Wallpaper Control Center".
The application is basically for managing right clicked web images for wallpaper purposes, sizing them to a particular desktop, and saving them for future use, within a "livecd linux" environment. If the user downloads too many images and tries to apply one, the application will take notice and guide the user through a fix, where extra images are easily moved from the active "desktop wallpaper" area, where they can be managed. Almost impossible to fowl it up without the application asking questions, and arranging for fixes. Very easy to do, so if one comes across a batch of web images that you want for your desktop, download all you want, then start the control center by clicking on the IceWM toolbar icon. Much faster processing of these downloaded images than with KDE, for instance. Here is the url for the Paris wallpaper image:
I can't link to it here, you'll get a Forbidden error, but you may copy the link and go there directly in your browser. To see the others, enter "sample1.jpg, etc. (There are six 1024x768 images, all produced using GIMP)
It's up to the developer of the OS to "protect" the end-user from fowling up his computer.
For instance, I provide an icon for Firefox on the IceWM toolbar. The user clicks it, and Firefox boots up. Now, the end-user goes to a certain website that has harmful javascript, etc. and he can't get loose from that web page. All of Firefox's buttons are locked up tight. Now what? Turn the computer off?
Well, I use a "Security and Control Script" that Firefox runs in, lots of details here.
(Way more is done for Firefox than I talk about here.)
All that the user needs to do to get "free" of that bad web page is to close the shell that runs Firefox. Then, restart Firefox by clicking on the icon, and the control script will sweep the ~/ramdisk clean of any ~/.mozilla there, install a new default one, and then Firefox starts, asking if one wants to return to that web page, or start out at the "home page".
Although I do not provide a toolbar button to shut down a runaway Firefox, I could, but the user does see the shell start up immediately when the Firefox icon is pressed, (with -iconic, so it does have to be expanded to see the script run), and perhaps after a few times, the user might figure out that closing the shell immediately stops Firefox. These are the things we have to worry about, and it is up to me to "protect" the user within reason. I can't have icons for everything on the toolbar, but I do have some in the menu that do some similar things, such as stopping a runaway XMMS, or fixing KDE if somehow, it won't start up the next KDE application run within the IceWM or Fluxbox window managers. It's not the users fault that I put the Firefox, Opera and Flock icons on the toolbar, I expect them to use them, and all at once if they want. The "control scripts" for Firefox and Flock have to enable these two to work at the same time, without any suprises. Start either one first, and it's all worked out. I have done all the "icon clicking" ahead of time, so the "end-user" will get what they expect. I don't expect anyone to "live with a bug".
Probably the need to do something useful, that one can be proud of. Sure, I'd be bored without it, but I think a lot of developers want to work on something that they can call their own. No one is standing over them, they do it their own way, for better or worse. When it does work out, and performs like it should, then they can be proud of themselves.
Here's my blog where I talk about my work. It's important to always lay the cards on the table, and be truthful about what is going on with one's work, for better or worse. I know some people here would say Microsoft does not always do that, but I feel that I need to, then my work has some value.
I use my own OS all the time, and I like it, but don't we all like our own work.
Yes, the nanotech in computer processors won't work without the rest of the computer. The idea that a "coin" could contain useful spy-circuitry seemed far-fetched to me when this story first came out, and I did not think any of it was "true" then. Had all the hallmarks of a tall tale, one of them being that the story setting is in another country, where "you" cannot easily go and verify.
Lots of time wasted on this one, not good enough to hold up over time, compared to the "Roswell, N.M." flying saucer story.
Another ingredient is an ultimate motive, the Roswell one is "are there really aliens from other worlds", if true, everything changes, especially if they are "advanced" and can cure illnesses, etc.
The coin one just would "prove" that the Canadians are spying on us, I say so what, it's not like they are from the DPRK.
Of course I don't agree. I'm doing a long term comparison test between Fedora Core 6, and my Knoppix remaster,, both installed on the same machine, a HP Pavilion 8250, maxed out on memory, and with a dual hard drive setup, one 2 GB for MSDOS to run my loadlin menus, and for GRUB in the MBR, and the main hard drive, a 160 GB for both linux installations to use. My Knoppix remaster, Rapidweather Remaster of Knoppix Linux runs from a "tohd" partition, with a really big "persistent home" partition, and a common swap. So, even though I have a nice "logo16" splash screen with a bright yellow boot prompt, I don't get to see it on a daily basis with the "loadlin" setup, only if I decide to run off the CD for some special purpose.
I have all of the fonts that I could possibly get from the Debian package servers, and I delight in showing off how well Firefox, for instance, displays web pages, compared to Windows XP (another box, with P4 HT and 128 MB ATI). The Fedora Core 6 installation does not quite measure up to either Rapidweather Remaster or Windows XP when it comes to the "font comparison". I realized early on that I would need the fonts, no one is going to "get used to" poor fonts, once they see something better. The original Knoppix I started with, and the latest ones I have reviewed, do have what I would call "minimal" fonts, I would not be satisfied with.
I had a Dell 1705 come into my work area, the owner wanting the XP partition formatted, and started over clean. Was too slow due to all the programs that Dell preinstalls, according to the owner of the laptop. I did not touch the restoration partitions, they have the OEM Dell drivers, some of them, at least. Dell does have all of the necessary drivers online, so you can use a livecd linux to download them, and install until you get your wireless card working, and can boot into XP, and finish the setup. These laptops are very nice, only complaint is the driver for the ATI video card, it wants you to use the maximum resolution to get top performance, if you back down to 1024x768, so you can see the text better, the driver says you are not getting the most out of the card. This is XP, not Vista, and the entire put-back-together is doable with XP. When I got finished with the laptop, it was very nice indeed. On that hardware, XP beats my live cd linux, in that I don't have a wireless card driver, for one thing. Printer support is another, XP wins there also. Downside with XP is security, that OS is probably a disaster waiting to happen in the security area. Rapidweather Remaster (see screenshots, below) wins there. Glad to hear that Dell still offers XP for these fine machines, running a dual core with 2 GB of RAM is a good match for XP, and way more than enough with Rapidweather Remaster. The Remaster can do well with 256 MB of RAM. I have heard complaints about the battery life going down within a few months with XP on these laptops, surely Vista would be worse, so the Upgrade to Vista is not being done, owners getting chicken about the new OS fowling up their nice XP installation. With the re-partition of the hard drive on this particular laptop, I can accommodate a livecd linux, with a "persistent home" partition, and a "tohd", "fromhd" partition for the/KNOPPIX folder. Still has to boot into these hard drive setups with the CD, however. Since we were to keep XP, I couldn't do a loadlin batch file setup to get Linux booted up off the hard drive, without using the CD. I do that on dual hard drive machines, a small MSDOS drive (2GB)with the files, and a big drive (160GB) for Linux. You may use these batch files as a guide, just copy them to your MSDOS hard drive partition, and customize. Should work with an OEM Knoppix 3.4 CD, or with a Rapidweather Remaster CD, (see screenshots below). I am currently working from a HP Pavilion 8250 with this setup, this machine dates back to the Windows 95 days, but has a fairly decent Celeron processor that gives me good performance as I run Flock 0.7.12 today. This machine is very quiet, does not beat up the hard drive like Windows 98 would do. Right now I am able to run Amarok and Flock at the same time.
In my livecd linux, based on Knoppix 3.4 (see screenshots, below) I use control scripts for Firefox, Flock and Opera that does several things. First, if any ~/.flock ~/.mozilla or ~/.opera happens to be in/ramdisk, it deletes the entire ~/.flock, ~/.mozilla, or ~/.opera then installs a new, default one, that I have set up. The browser then displays a local copy (in the cd) of this page:
A default set of RSS feeds is on the Firefox favorites toolbar, the "My News" section of Flock and the "Feeds" section of Opera. They are not the same for each browser, for variety.
Firefox 2.0.0.3:
When the user closes Firefox, or it crashes, a dialog box appears asking "Did you want to close Firefox", with Yes or No choices. Choose Yes, and the control script deletes the ~/.mozilla, and the ~/.fullcircle from/ramdisk and the browser is gone. If the choice is "No" such as in a crash, then the user is presented with a dialog box to restart the browser with the current ~/.mozilla still in place. This can repeat two more times before the user is instructed to start Firefox using the desktop icon, starting from the beginning. Also, the Firefox preferences are set up in the normal way to delete all of the personal information, including cookies, when it's closed. All that would remain in ~/.mozilla is the RSS feed contents, and any changes to the Firefox preferences over and above my defaults during this session. Opera is set up the same way, using a similar control script. This is designed as a high-security setup, for privacy.
Flock uses a control script, but does not have the "multiple restart" feature that Firefox and Opera have. I found that Flock can keep data even if one sets the browser's preferences to clear everything out, so using the control scripts to remove the entire ~/.flock takes care of that. If anyone wants to keep cookies, they can use an alternate menu, that does not use a control script, and starts the browser(s) in the normal manner, setting all preferences as they wish. They cannot, then, use the icon to start the browser(s), or the control scripts will delete their ~/.opera, ~/.mozilla, or ~/.flock. One useful side effect of running a control script in a shell, if the browser "locks up" as can happen on some older machines, and some websites, one can just close the shell, and the browser is gone. That would leave a ~/.mozilla in place, possibly a defective one if a web site caused problems, so that's why I delete any ~/.mozilla found in/ramdisk and start Firefox with a clean slate, when the control script is used. So, the icon points to the "start_firefox.sh", rather than to the browser itself.
I put three browsers in my livecd linux, I find that Opera is a little lighter on something like a Celeron (Covington) processor, running at 267 MHZ, than the others.
Throw away your floppies? How are you going to install MS-DOS? (Or Caldera Opendos?) I use it all the time for loadlin batch files to boot linux. I have a small drive with MSDOS, to run the selection menu, KDE, IceWM Fluxbox, Various resolutions, such as 800x600 or 1024x768, also MS-DOS edit, to do just that to the batch files. I call edit, then on close of edit, I return to the selection menu. Big hard drive, say 160 GB has the linux OS, and a bunch of partitions for "persistent home", swap, one for the poor man's install/KNOPPIX folder (tohd, fromhd cheatcode), partitions for permanent storage, of song collections, for instance. Also, the tomsrtbt linux floppy, useful to partition a new drive, if I cannot get into it with my livecd linux.(See Screenshots, below). Another still relevant use for floppies, transfer small files on boxes without USB's. I use a 2.4 knoppix kernel, so my live cd linux runs well on older PC's. Yesterday, I started running it on a HP Pavilion 8250, with the RAM that comes with it. Paid $20.00 for it, was clean as a whistle, barely used before being stored for years. I got it up and running OK. That PC has USB, but many that I experiment with do not, leaving floppies the only way to get files in there, and set the box up.
With the PC World List, I am sad that Vista is being picked on, we are going to get some really powerful boxes here to work with when the owners give up on Vista, and toss the machine out. I say let Vista go a little while longer, please, before Microsoft and Vista fall by the wayside. More machines in the marketplace, more in the trash. Terrible thing, really that the stores are full of Vista machines, and it is hard to find anyone who likes it. Seems like Microsoft is wanting us to let go of XP, (won't let Dell preinstall it anymore), and go with Vista on any new store-bought machine we want. Really need to take that Knoppix CD to the store and cause a scene here. I wouldn't want to try that at Office Depot, I might want to come back tomorrow and buy a router. Also, I did use the AOL floppy to get Windows 3.1 on the internet, could then download Netscape and give the web a go. I still have one of those early AOL floppies. As far as annoying media players go, I have XMMS and AmaroK (neither are annoying) in my livecd linux, and enjoy playing MP3's with them, XMMS I use for internet radio, lots of fun. I knew someone who liked Bonzi Buddy, but from what I have read, that needs removing from any PC. Thanks for listening...
Yes, people spray pesticides on flowers, yards, to get rid of all kinds of insects, such as fleas, ticks and mosquitoes. That kills the bees, and other beneficial insects. Big thing though is the commercial spraying for crops, and west nile spraying to contain mosquitoes, done by airplanes and helecopters. Also, don't they spray for locusts in some parts of the world? That's probably a big scale spray campaign, with the idea of saving valuable crops, only to kill any bees there.
I have a Joe Pie Weed in my garden, comes up every spring, and attracts Bumblebees without fail. They are not agressive, and one can watch them up close. With the Joe Pie Weed, pinch the tops out as they grow, to make them branch out, to get 4X more flowers per pinch. Do that early on, don't wait, or the stalks will be too tall. The Bumblebees will come, and you can see for yourself if the cellphones are killing them out or not.
Bumblebees are not honeybees, the bumblebee link above does have lots of info about them, they have a Queen, in a hive somewhere, and the same problem of lost bees most likely affects them in a similar manner: From the article: The theory is that radiation from mobile phones interferes with bees' navigation systems, preventing the famously homeloving species from finding their way back to their hives. Improbable as it may seem, there is now evidence to back this up. From what I see, the bumblebees tend to hang around the Joe Pie Weed seemingly forever, I don't see them going home to the hive very much. They love those flowers. On another note, I first saw this story 04-14-07 on Drudge Report, but the link was empty, so I sent Drudge a note about that, with the html source from his page, so he could fix it. Couldn't get to the story the way he had it. He fixed it, verified 04-15-07.
Down the Interstate goes the 18-Wheeler, with it's load of live chickens going to market. To be made into "chicken", and wind up on one of Martha Stewart's TV shows, as the feature dish. Martha will have an expert chef as a guest that day, to help her fix the chicken dish, to the oohs and aahs of the audience. Then, without warning, the 18-Wheeler tips over, while trying to go around on a clover-leaf, taking the turn too fast. The trailer flips over on it's side, and most, if not all, of the cages scatter on the ground by the roadside. People call 911 on their cell phones, and soon, the Fire Department, Highway Patrol, and local City Police decend on the scene. Some of the chickens have escaped their cages, perhaps 50 or so, maybe more. A few of the birds are injured, so other authorities are called, to help in the roundup, and to do something about the hurt birds so the schoolbus full of children passing by on the shoulder of the road, guided by a Highway Patrolman, will know in their hearts that these innocent feather friends are being cared for properly. Not knowing that they would have reached the poultery processing plant soon, if it were not for the wreck, and would be turned into chicken McNuggets before dawn. Looking down from the clouds at the unfolding scene, is St. T-Rex, having been sent there for his general good works toward other T-Rexes during his lifetime, millions of years ago. Since the experiment to turn T-Rexes into an advanced race of creatures capable of doing things like "inventing automobiles", etc. did not work out, St. T-Rex has been without much to do for a long, long time, having been replaced by St. Peter, himself. "It figures", said St. T-Rex. "We should have spent more time trying to create useful operating systems to run on PC's than running around eating smaller creatures" Soon, at the scene of the wreck, all is cleaned up, and the traffic is flowing smoothly, thanks to the efforts of the law enforcement officials, and the Fire Department. The school children are in class now, and the teacher has asked them to take their crayolas and draw what they saw on the Interstate. That goes badly for some of the boys, when the teacher takes the red color away from them. What's this? In the bushes near the Interstate is one lone chicken, escaped into the wild. Making it's way back home, it stops to look up at the sign over the entrance. It says "Welcome to Jurassic Park".
Slashdot Mirror
Those programs come with Dell Vista computers, usually with a 30 day trial, or one can go ahead and order the PC with a year or so of "coverage". You pay upfront, then pay Per PC for continued protection. And yes, there is a performance hit, but in the day of dual core processors, 2 GB of RAM, one may not notice. My Knoppix-based linux (see screenshots, below) uses the Guarddog firewall, preconfigured and enabled by default. The user does not have to start up the Guarddog interface, and switch the firewall on, it's already working by the time the desktop appears. No annual fee or cost. Not much of a problem with viruses on a livecd linux. We have two different avenues of protection here, the "firewalls" and the "virus scanners". Back to the Vista computers, I have this question: "Are the owners of these boxes going to keep their Norton or McAfee subscriptions in force?" Microsoft's answer to this problem is to make Vista more secure, even more so than XP (in comparison to older versions of Windows). If Vista is secure, then why do Vista computers need Norton or McAfee?
If the car had "won", would everyone want to adopt Linux? No.
Putting your product, name or cause on a racecar is exactly why you don't see a "Windows" racecar.
Every time that car had a mishap, lots of jokes would be forthcoming.
The idea behind putting your name on a racecar is that if the car wins, then that win
is somehow transferred to the product. "If whoever can put a good, winning car out there must have a super product." Back in the days when tobacco companies sponsored racecars, it was supposed to make it "alright" to smoke if there was a tobacco sponsored racecar even on the track. It didn't have to win, just sit around with a nice paint job, promoting the product.
Now, we have laundry soap sponsors for racecars, and every thing else. "If whoever puts a racecar out there with the name of a laundry soap on it must make a really good laundry soap". "When I go down the grocery store isle, I'm gonna pick up a box of that stuff and put it in my shopping basket, for sure!"
It's all about advertising. The Goodyear Blimp is a good example. It really has to hold "air" to stay up, just like the tires that Goodyear sells. At least Goodyear's airship had a valid point there. I see no correlation between "Linux" and a winning or losing racecar.
The Microsoft people might not be so dumb after all. No "Vista" racecar.
I have a big pile of it, mostly Oak, some Hickory.
U.S. Forest Service Estimates:
# 5,000,000 acres of forest damaged or destroyed
# Enough wood to build 800,000 homes damaged or destroyed
# 25 million tons of paper damaged or destroyed
# Financial loss to timberowners and processors - five billion dollars
The timber was "destroyed" as far as turning it into lumber is concerned, but it's salvageble as firewood.
In my case, the wood just fell down out of existing trees that survived the high winds.
Been using it in my old Weber BBQ grill.
-- Rapidweather
I came across this page on the subject of Running Cars on Hydrogen Made from Starch. The page's subtitle is A new way to make hydrogen from corn or potatoes could make fuel-cell vehicles more practical. They provide some links, and have a discussion area.
IMHO, although this might work, I doubt the technology could be scaled to meet any substantial need, such as we now have with Gasoline.
I went to the local Sonic drive-in, and ordered the No. 2 burger meal.
The lady said, "What do you want on that hamburger?"
I said, "Oh, just whatever comes on it."
When I got the hamburger, I swear it tasted like they put Stinkbugs on it, well sort of anyway.
Next time I got hungry, I decided to save myself some money, and just make a sandwich at home.
Didn't it take a long time before the internal combustion engine was applied to an automobile (of sorts) that we (they, back then) could actually buy?
The above link to wikipedia has early examples dating from 1806 or so, and the first automobile for sale by Ford was in 1903. Here is a link for that, and other info about early automobile efforts, including some pictures.
As it turns out, the automobile, and trucks, have had a greater impact on our lives than this revolutionary display may have. I notice that some billboards that we see as we travel down the road are starting to be powered by large scale displays, displaying complicated graphics in some cases. The new Sony display may offer a lower cost option, so they may be used as billboards if they can scale the display to the required size. If not, then the smaller consumer products envisioned may be what appears first.
I am amazed, really, at the idea that a major manufacturer of PC's will be shipping one with Linux.
I always thought you got a PC that may have had Windows 95 or 98 on it, and then you partitioned the hard drive, and installed at least one Linux distro, maybe more. I often kept the Windows partition, and played around with it for a while before getting bored. Most of the time I swapped hard drives, still went ahead and installed Windows 98 on one partition, and then proceeded to install something like Red Hat 6.1 on the rest of the drive. Sound never worked. Soon I found out that later versions of Firefox, for instance, required additional libraries, so I got introduced to rpm hell. Tried Debian 2.2, but wound up fowling that up so bad that apt-get would not work anymore. I loved it, anyway. Then there was SuSE Linux, but that's another story. Unusual to work with. That's when I discovered Knoppix, via Damn Small Linux. Never looked back (see screenshots, below), but I still say I am living in the Past, and cannot comprehend the idea of a Dell with something besides Windows on it. I did fix up a box lately that has FC 6, upgraded it to have KDE as default window manager, and placed a handy "update" icon on the toolbar, so I can tie up the machine for a while as it updates lots of items, twice now it has updated the kernel itself, and screwed up GRUB, so it defaults to FC 6 instead of my Knoppix remaster
Easily fixed, however. That's the way I like it.
But a Dell with Ubuntu preinstalled? Do you suppose your Wireless card works?
What is the World coming to?
From USA Today's story just out:
Wal-Mart is expected to account for only a tiny part of Dell's business. Stephen Baker, a tech analyst with researcher NPD, expects Dell to sell between 30,000 and 50,000 PCs there initially. Dell sold nearly 9 million PCs in the first three months of the year, mainly though catalogs and the Internet.
I bought a Dell Inspiron on line, and it was delivered Tuesday, 05-22-07. Paid about $1,700 for it, Dell took $500 off the $2,200 beginning price. It has Vista on it (cringe).
They are a good Company, and do look after the customers. I wonder how the Walmart setup will figure in to that. Normally, Walmart is very easy to deal with on any returns, no questions asked. Probably the purchaser will deal directly with Dell on any problems on a Walmart-purchased computer, I can't imagine Dell leaving the buyer high and dry just because they bought the PC at Walmart.
Dell does have excellent online support, they have a complete driver download site that you need if you have to reinstall the OS, to get rid of all of the preloaded "crapware" on the PC. I did that recently on another Inspiron, with XP. I found that the "restoration cd" does not access all of the drivers you need on a particular PC, not even 40% of them. They have a hidden partition with the restoration, and another one for the Media Direct setup, that bypasses the main OS. This is unlike the days when Toshiba's restoration CD could put everything back like it was when the PC was new. So, you do need Dell's online support and drivers, even if you have to get some drivers downloaded on another PC, and move them to your machine with a USB flash drive.
To get all of the hardware information and to see the hidden partitions, I booted the machine with my Knoppix remaster, and used KDE's system information application, and wrote everything down, then when looking for needed drivers from Dell.
No, I can't imagine the average Walmart purchaser doing something like that, but it would result in a smoother running PC, without all the unnecessary Dell additional software. I don't recommend anyone trying this, but I was sucessful, with XP, anyway. You may re-partition the hard drive, as long as the restoration partition is not touched.
--Rapidweather
With your Coffee, you will need cheap donuts. And they are, after 11:00 AM, at the Donut shop on Highway 49 in Richland, MS. (Across the street from Mac's Gas)
Two for the price of one. If you get a large Cinnamon Roll, and they are big indeed, you get two, for $1.00. So big, you cannot eat all of them.
I say they need to stop fooling around with our food supply, and use Atomic Power Plants to produce electricity, to power electric cars. Plug 'em in at night, run 'em during the day. Do away with Gasoline altogether. (Sorry, Mac!)
It seems that there are a lot of times when everyone is stopped at the stop light, from all directions, with no one wanting to use that turn lane that we are all waiting on. One car did, but the traffic light controller is set to expect lots more, but there was only one car, and it turned, and is way down the road, while the rest of us wait. Lots of gasoline being wasted.
I realize that they use a logic board in the traffic light controllers that regulate the Stop and Go lights at intersections. I saw one being serviced, so they do have some reasonably up to date technology here. I'm sure they try to set them up to process the traffic as best as they can.
Perhaps what might be needed, to process the traffic through the intersection better is something more advanced, using additional sensors to tell the controller what traffic is there, and on the way to the intersection. This would save gas, cars get "gas mileage" when moving. Also increase public confidence in the traffic light system. Sure, there are intersections where "everyone turns" as might happen if an interstate on-ramp is near. Perhaps they realize this, and set the controller accordingly.
The volume of traffic is so high in some areas that traffic lights are used to cut the flow into groups, so cross traffic has a chance on the intersections where there is no traffic light. Used to be that traffic lights were used to speed the traffic along a boulevard, where all you had to do was travel along at 40 MPH, for instance, and the various traffic lights along the way would change to "green" as you got to the intersection. If everyone paid attention, and paced themselves, the volume of traffic would be moved along nicely, more or less. Now, all they want to do is slow the traffic, and break it up into groups. So, the system as gone into a defensive mode, protecting the roadways from the great numbers of vehicles, all wanting to use the road at the same time, seemingly 24/7. Current high price of gasoline is not having any effect.
Improved traffic control would cost more tax dollars, something a lot of communities and States are unable to provide. Most of them can barely handle education, health care and crime prevention.
Automated systems where all vehicles are controlled by a central system as to their speed, lane location and destination would be a solution, totally unlike the present day setup where everyone owns their own vehicle, and is completely in control of where it goes, how fast it goes and what lane it travels in.
As far as "gas mileage" is concerned, we have missed a lot of opportunities to design and build electric cars, powered by electricity produced by atomic power plants, which could easily meet the demand for such vast amounts of electricity.
To our credit, however, work is being done on all sorts of alternative energy sources for automobiles, progress being made every day, and needed yesterday.
Being given a tour my CPA's office, with a couple of ladies posting to spreadsheets, he said, "I have a 20 MB Hard Drive". This was before Windows. I was impressed, as only a few years before that, my Bank's data processing center person that took care of our computer processing on their mainframe said, "And, we are going to install a Disk Drive!" By way of further explanation, he told me that the data could be randomly accessed. I was impressed that day, too.
For entertainment this evening, I am considering using a Dell 64 MB USB memory drive (/dev/sda) as a "persistent home directory" for my Knoppix Remaster, and risk burning it up from the constant read/write activity. Normally, I might use a hard drive partition of say 10 GB, on a 7200 RPM drive for that purpose. The size is overkill, but in this current day and time of cheap 160, 200, or more GB hard drives, 10 GB is nothing.
Rapidweather
Although it is true that 64 bit is "better" than 32 bit, we all worry (I do) about obsolete machines, still good, and obsolete linux operating systems. My Knoppix remaster is 32 bit, based on Knoppix 3.4. I could get ahold of the latest 64 bit knoppix, and start putting all of my stuff in there, and have it done. That won't be easy, and I cringe when I see the 64 bit AMD machines in the stores, at a good price, too. What if they took over, and ruled the World? Would I wind up staying up late at night, for eons, trying to get my stuff migrated to 64 bit? Would I wind up having two remasters, one 32 bit for all of the old 32 bit machines out there, and one for the 64 bit machines.
I would hope that Microsoft is just planning some "out there, pie in the sky stuff" just to please the stockholders, by going with all 64 bit. You know that Toyota announced that in about 12-14 years, all of their cars would be equipped with hybrid power plants, at the same cost as a car with only a gasoline engine. No difference in price. The big difference is that Toyota is tops, and they know where they need to go to stay on top, whereas Microsoft always has us linux folks after them. It just works out that way, we are not "after them" as much as we are putting together OS's that do what we want, exactly, in a secure on-line environment. Using my remaster every day, I cannot image using something like Windows 98, or XP for that matter. I don't want be become part of somebody's botnet, or have my keystrokes logged when I do online banking. I have the Guarddog firewall, on by default, no user action needed. Any other livecd linux do that? If I go to Gibson Research Corporation, and run the Shields UP tests, I always get "Your system has achieved a perfect "TruStealth" rating. Not a single packet, etc." report.
As a round about way of checking for botnet infection, since I use IceWM as my default WM, I have the nice little processor activity window, and the broadband activity window right down there on the toolbar where I can see them. I don't have anything like that, nearly as handy, in my Fedora Core 6 installation on this same box, dual boot. Kinda makes me nervous not to have those items there in FC 6. Any botnet setup would really show up as stolen bandwidth, and processor activity. Not that my livecd linux could be infected by a virus, but anything is possible.
So, it's not like Microsoft is going to suddenly make us all have 64 bit machines, but eventually, that would be the case. Otherwise, Knoppix would not offer a 64 bit version, if they did not see the benefits.
As long as there is a Microsoft, always wanting more powerful hardware for each new version, we will have to come up with Linux OS's that use those machines.
I have an Inspiron 1505 being built by Dell, due here the middle of June, and I can't wait to run my remaster on it, if possible before even booting up Vista. Lets see, Dual Core, 2 GB RAM, ATI 256 MB card, lots of Microsoft-inspired power to be had.
If there were no Microsoft, would anything like the Inspiron 1505 be available at that price?
Rapidweather
That's it, sold to the manufacturers. We don't have people walking into Office Depot and plunking down $$ for the software, but they do buy the computers with the software preinstalled. I doubt that Microsoft gets much per machine for that, is it about $40.00 or so?
Also, the desktop that the demo's in the stores have is really very nice, and to the unsuspecting potential buyer, "pretty is, is pretty does".
They say, "How can something that nice looking be anything but the best?"
On top of that, we have Microsoft's overall record, notwithstanding the Slashdot reality of that, with botnets, etc. infections of Windows boxes, which the public really does not understand. If they cannot see it, how can it exist?
For a while, anyway, Windows Vista will serve the buyer in fine style, and it's into the repair shop when it "begins to slow down", infected with a virus, unknown to the buyer, now owner of the machine.
I know of one shop that charges about $160.00 to "remove viruses". People have no choice but to pay, since they put out a lot of money for the machine to begin with. Some Dell laptops are $2,200, and they can get infected regardless of price or other social standing.
"My computer has Vista on it" That's all the public needs to know, that is equal to a teenager saying, "My Dad's car has a V8" in 1950's teenspeak.
Now, if the Vista boxes wound up in the shop say "within a month", and in large numbers, then perhaps the word would get out, but they don't, and it doesn't.
Computer users are a solitary bunch, word does not spread very well. In the Car Culture, it's the drive-in and the long road with the street-racers that tell the tale. What will Vista owners do, go to the drive-in and talk about their boxes? I doubt it.
So the Vista thing has too much momentum, installed on all boxes in the store, unstoppable good-looking desktop. It's what Chrome was to the Buick.
Rapidweather
Ok, about the Dell computers shipped with bloatware, etc.
How will that affect Ubuntu. Probably not too much, unless the bloatware software writers want to starting writing lots of non-windows software all of a sudden.
I did get ahold of a Dell Inspiron 1505 with XP, and it was so loaded up with bloatware that the owner asked my to format the XP partition, and "start over". Used my Knoppix Remaster to look around in the drive, and see what partitions Dell had. Seems there were several, one for the Media Direct button setup, that bypasses the main OS. Another for the restoration, and then the main XP partition. Had to download lots of drivers from Dell to get everything set up and running. The restoration is rather generic Dell, does not exactly fit the particular Dell notebook, with all necessary drivers. First, I used another computer to obtain the missing drivers, and stored them on a flash drive, to move them to the 1505. Quite a few, actually.
When done, the 1505 ran like a dream, without any of the bloatware.
Now for the interesting part:
I have another 1505 being built for me by Dell, but it will come preloaded with Vista. I kinda doubt I would want to try and "format" the main Vista partition, and start over like I did (successfully) with the XP 1505.
Sounds like I would be on the telephone with Microsoft splaining what I was trying to do that fowled up the Vista setup.
I will run my livecd linux (screenshots below), however, I am not apprehensive about connecting to the internet with that. The ultimate owner of this particular 1505 will be using Vista, so I can't just format and install something else. I would expect that Dell's linux machines will be shipped with drivers that match the hardware, something I would have to "go it alone" on, if I just "installed Ubuntu" on the 1505. Should be some value in getting a Dell with Ubuntu preinstalled, i.e. "everything works", sound card, graphics, everything, just like it is supposed to be with a Dell Vista computer. One thing, though: Will Ubuntu boot up fast enough to satisfy the average user? Vista is supposed to boot up quickly, I don't know from first hand experience, yet. My Remaster boots up fairly quickly, I boot up and down lots of times daily, no problem. In comparison, Fedora Core 6 takes a lot longer on the same machine, so much so, I don't use it much.
http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/usb-qemu.html
The cost is $65.00 plus shipping, but I think they also offer everything for the do-it-yourselfer to
make one of these on your own USB drive.
Booting an OS off a USB drive requires a bios (newer computers) that can be set to look to the USB ports for a bootable OS first. Most machines still around today can easily be set to boot off a CDROM, that's the way all livecd linux OS's do it. Something like a Dell Inspiron 1505 laptop is new enough to boot from a USB drive, one OS that comes to mind is the Kanotix CPX Mini, which when the OS comes up, has an icon on the desktop to start the USB installer. I have a CD of it, but I regret to say that the website and download link is now dead.
There may be others that have an installer to USB drive, Damn Small being the most reliable to work with, since they have an active support forum.
I don't plan on doing anything like that with my livecd linux, because I focus on older computers, those that ran Windows 98, that now need a secure linux system to get some more useful life from them. All of my computers are in that category. 128 MB of RAM is enough. None of these have BIOS that can boot off USB.
I do have an Insprion 1505 coming, Dell takes nearly 3 weeks now to build one, and will run Rapidweather Remaster of Knoppix Linux (See screenshots, below) on it, with the "toram" cheatcode, since we will have 2GB of RAM. I'll have to use the network cable for broadband, I don't have a driver for the new Intel wireless setup in the 1505. I have run it on one other 1505, so I know it will boot up OK.
I did look at her MySpace page, it seems that there was a petition asking Gov. Schwarzenegger to pardon her so she won't have to go to jail, and apparently Paris herself decided to thank the individual involved by posting a "thank-you" on her page. She misspelled "sign", when asking people to "sign" the petition.
It's gone now, the MySpace page is a horrible excuse for a web page, someone needs to clean up the page, perhaps by cutting off the public's right to post there, just leaving posts cleared by a kind and caring webmaster that can turn the page into something not so out-of-control.
With so many talented webmaster types here at Slashdot, I'm sure some of you would like to somehow contact Ms. Hilton, offering your help in her time of need.
I probably could work the assignment in somehow, but I'll go ahead and let some of you cut in line ahead of me, being the nice fellow that I am.
I do play with GIMP, and I have a "Wallpaper Control Center" application in my Knoppix remaster that has a section where one can, at the touch of a button, download and install a desktop wallpaper directly from my rapidweather.com/images directory. One of them is a nice picture of Paris Hilton. I do it that way so I can change the "downloadable" wallpapers, all the others are in the CD, and are fixed.
Check the "screenshots" link, below for a screenshot of the "Wallpaper Control Center".
The application is basically for managing right clicked web images for wallpaper purposes, sizing them to a particular desktop, and saving them for future use, within a "livecd linux" environment. If the user downloads too many images and tries to apply one, the application will take notice and guide the user through a fix, where extra images are easily moved from the active "desktop wallpaper" area, where they can be managed. Almost impossible to fowl it up without the application asking questions, and arranging for fixes. Very easy to do, so if one comes across a batch of web images that you want for your desktop, download all you want, then start the control center by clicking on the IceWM toolbar icon. Much faster processing of these downloaded images than with KDE, for instance.
Here is the url for the Paris wallpaper image:
http://www.rapidweather.com/images/sample6.jpg
I can't link to it here, you'll get a Forbidden error, but you may copy the link and go there directly in your browser. To see the others, enter "sample1.jpg, etc. (There are six 1024x768 images, all produced using GIMP)
For instance, I provide an icon for Firefox on the IceWM toolbar. The user clicks it, and Firefox boots up.
Now, the end-user goes to a certain website that has harmful javascript, etc. and he can't get loose from that
web page. All of Firefox's buttons are locked up tight. Now what? Turn the computer off?
Well, I use a "Security and Control Script" that Firefox runs in, lots of details here.
(Way more is done for Firefox than I talk about here.)
All that the user needs to do to get "free" of that bad web page is to close the shell that runs Firefox.
Then, restart Firefox by clicking on the icon, and the control script will sweep the ~/ramdisk clean of any
~/.mozilla there, install a new default one, and then Firefox starts, asking if one wants to return to that
web page, or start out at the "home page".
Although I do not provide a toolbar button to shut down a runaway Firefox, I could, but the user does see
the shell start up immediately when the Firefox icon is pressed, (with -iconic, so it does have to be expanded to see the script run), and perhaps after a few times, the user might figure out that closing the shell immediately stops Firefox.
These are the things we have to worry about, and it is up to me to "protect" the user within reason.
I can't have icons for everything on the toolbar, but I do have some in the menu that do some similar things,
such as stopping a runaway XMMS, or fixing KDE if somehow, it won't start up the next KDE application run within the IceWM or Fluxbox window managers.
It's not the users fault that I put the Firefox, Opera and Flock icons on the toolbar, I expect them to use them, and all at once if they want. The "control scripts" for Firefox and Flock have to enable these two to work at the same time, without any suprises. Start either one first, and it's all worked out.
I have done all the "icon clicking" ahead of time, so the "end-user" will get what they expect.
I don't expect anyone to "live with a bug".
Here's my blog where I talk about my work.
It's important to always lay the cards on the table, and be truthful about what is going on with one's work, for better or worse.
I know some people here would say Microsoft does not always do that, but I feel that I need to, then my work has some value.
I use my own OS all the time, and I like it, but don't we all like our own work.
Yes, the nanotech in computer processors won't work without the rest of the computer.
The idea that a "coin" could contain useful spy-circuitry seemed far-fetched to me when this story
first came out, and I did not think any of it was "true" then. Had all the hallmarks of a tall tale,
one of them being that the story setting is in another country, where "you" cannot easily go and verify.
Lots of time wasted on this one, not good enough to hold up over time, compared to the "Roswell, N.M."
flying saucer story.
Another ingredient is an ultimate motive, the Roswell one is "are there really aliens from other worlds",
if true, everything changes, especially if they are "advanced" and can cure illnesses, etc.
The coin one just would "prove" that the Canadians are spying on us, I say so what, it's not like they are
from the DPRK.
Of course I don't agree.
I'm doing a long term comparison test between Fedora Core 6, and my Knoppix remaster,, both installed on the same machine, a HP Pavilion 8250, maxed out on memory, and with a dual hard drive setup, one 2 GB for MSDOS to run my loadlin menus, and for GRUB in the MBR, and the main hard drive, a 160 GB for both linux installations to use.
My Knoppix remaster, Rapidweather Remaster of Knoppix Linux runs from a "tohd" partition, with a really big "persistent home" partition, and a common swap. So, even though I have a nice "logo16" splash screen with a bright yellow boot prompt, I don't get to see it on a daily basis with the "loadlin" setup, only if I decide to run off the CD for some special purpose.
I have all of the fonts that I could possibly get from the Debian package servers, and I delight in showing off how well Firefox, for instance, displays web pages, compared to Windows XP (another box, with P4 HT and 128 MB ATI). The Fedora Core 6 installation does not quite measure up to either Rapidweather Remaster or Windows XP when it comes to the "font comparison".
I realized early on that I would need the fonts, no one is going to "get used to" poor fonts, once they see something better. The original Knoppix I started with, and the latest ones I have reviewed, do have what I would call "minimal" fonts, I would not be satisfied with.
Rapidweather
I had a Dell 1705 come into my work area, the owner wanting the XP partition formatted, and started over clean. /KNOPPIX folder.
Was too slow due to all the programs that Dell preinstalls, according to the owner of the laptop.
I did not touch the restoration partitions, they have the OEM Dell drivers, some of them, at least.
Dell does have all of the necessary drivers online, so you can use a livecd linux to download them, and install until you get your wireless card working, and can boot into XP, and finish the setup.
These laptops are very nice, only complaint is the driver for the ATI video card, it wants you to use the maximum resolution to get top performance, if you back down to 1024x768, so you can see the text better, the driver says you are not getting the most out of the card. This is XP, not Vista, and the entire put-back-together is doable with XP. When I got finished with the laptop, it was very nice indeed. On that hardware, XP beats my live cd linux, in that I don't have a wireless card driver, for one thing. Printer support is another, XP wins there also.
Downside with XP is security, that OS is probably a disaster waiting to happen in the security area.
Rapidweather Remaster (see screenshots, below) wins there.
Glad to hear that Dell still offers XP for these fine machines, running a dual core with 2 GB of RAM is a good match for XP, and way more than enough with Rapidweather Remaster. The Remaster can do well with 256 MB of RAM.
I have heard complaints about the battery life going down within a few months with XP on these laptops, surely Vista would be worse, so the Upgrade to Vista is not being done, owners getting chicken about the new OS fowling up their nice XP installation. With the re-partition of the hard drive on this particular laptop, I can accommodate a livecd linux, with a "persistent home" partition, and a "tohd", "fromhd" partition for the
Still has to boot into these hard drive setups with the CD, however. Since we were to keep XP, I couldn't do a loadlin batch file setup to get Linux booted up off the hard drive, without using the CD.
I do that on dual hard drive machines, a small MSDOS drive (2GB)with the files, and a big drive (160GB) for Linux.
You may use these batch files as a guide, just copy them to your MSDOS hard drive partition, and customize.
Should work with an OEM Knoppix 3.4 CD, or with a Rapidweather Remaster CD, (see screenshots below).
I am currently working from a HP Pavilion 8250 with this setup, this machine dates back to the Windows 95 days, but has a fairly decent Celeron processor that gives me good performance as I run Flock 0.7.12 today.
This machine is very quiet, does not beat up the hard drive like Windows 98 would do. Right now I am able to run Amarok and Flock at the same time.
First, if any ~/.flock ~/.mozilla or ~/.opera happens to be in
http://www.geocities.com/rapidweather/web.html
A default set of RSS feeds is on the Firefox favorites toolbar, the "My News" section of Flock and the "Feeds" section of Opera. They are not the same for each browser, for variety.
Firefox 2.0.0.3:
When the user closes Firefox, or it crashes, a dialog box appears asking "Did you want to close Firefox", with Yes or No choices. Choose Yes, and the control script deletes the ~/.mozilla, and the ~/.fullcircle from
Flock uses a control script, but does not have the "multiple restart" feature that Firefox and Opera have.
I found that Flock can keep data even if one sets the browser's preferences to clear everything out, so using the control scripts to remove the entire ~/.flock takes care of that.
If anyone wants to keep cookies, they can use an alternate menu, that does not use a control script, and starts the browser(s) in the normal manner, setting all preferences as they wish. They cannot, then, use the icon to start the browser(s), or the control scripts will delete their ~/.opera, ~/.mozilla, or ~/.flock.
One useful side effect of running a control script in a shell, if the browser "locks up" as can happen on some older machines, and some websites, one can just close the shell, and the browser is gone. That would leave a ~/.mozilla in place, possibly a defective one if a web site caused problems, so that's why I delete any ~/.mozilla found in
So, the icon points to the "start_firefox.sh", rather than to the browser itself.
I put three browsers in my livecd linux, I find that Opera is a little lighter on something like a Celeron (Covington) processor, running at 267 MHZ, than the others.
Rapidweather
I use it all the time for loadlin batch files to boot linux. I have a small drive with MSDOS, to run the selection menu, KDE, IceWM Fluxbox, Various resolutions, such as 800x600 or 1024x768, also MS-DOS edit, to do just that to the batch files. I call edit, then on close of edit, I return to the selection menu. Big hard drive, say 160 GB has the linux OS, and a bunch of partitions for "persistent home", swap, one for the poor man's install
Also, the tomsrtbt linux floppy, useful to partition a new drive, if I cannot get into it with my livecd linux.(See Screenshots, below).
Another still relevant use for floppies, transfer small files on boxes without USB's.
I use a 2.4 knoppix kernel, so my live cd linux runs well on older PC's. Yesterday, I started running it on
a HP Pavilion 8250, with the RAM that comes with it. Paid $20.00 for it, was clean as a whistle, barely used before being stored for years. I got it up and running OK. That PC has USB, but many that I experiment with do not, leaving floppies the only way to get files in there, and set the box up.
With the PC World List, I am sad that Vista is being picked on, we are going to get some really powerful boxes here to work with when the owners give up on Vista, and toss the machine out. I say let Vista go a little while longer, please, before Microsoft and Vista fall by the wayside. More machines in the marketplace, more in the trash. Terrible thing, really that the stores are full of Vista machines, and it is hard to find anyone who likes it. Seems like Microsoft is wanting us to let go of XP, (won't let Dell preinstall it anymore), and go with Vista on any new store-bought machine we want. Really need to take that Knoppix CD to the store and cause a scene here. I wouldn't want to try that at Office Depot, I might want to come back tomorrow and buy a router.
Also, I did use the AOL floppy to get Windows 3.1 on the internet, could then download Netscape and give the web a go. I still have one of those early AOL floppies.
As far as annoying media players go, I have XMMS and AmaroK (neither are annoying) in my livecd linux, and enjoy playing MP3's with them, XMMS I use for internet radio, lots of fun.
I knew someone who liked Bonzi Buddy, but from what I have read, that needs removing from any PC.
Thanks for listening...
Big thing though is the commercial spraying for crops, and west nile spraying to contain mosquitoes, done by airplanes and helecopters. Also, don't they spray for locusts in some parts of the world? That's probably a big scale spray campaign, with the idea of saving valuable crops, only to kill any bees there.
I have a Joe Pie Weed in my garden, comes up every spring, and attracts Bumblebees without fail. They are not agressive, and one can watch them up close. With the Joe Pie Weed, pinch the tops out as they grow, to make them branch out, to get 4X more flowers per pinch. Do that early on, don't wait, or the stalks will be too tall. The Bumblebees will come, and you can see for yourself if the cellphones are killing them out or not.
Bumblebees are not honeybees, the bumblebee link above does have lots of info about them, they have a Queen, in a hive somewhere, and the same problem of lost bees most likely affects them in a similar manner:
From the article:
The theory is that radiation from mobile phones interferes with bees' navigation systems, preventing the famously homeloving species from finding their way back to their hives. Improbable as it may seem, there is now evidence to back this up.
From what I see, the bumblebees tend to hang around the Joe Pie Weed seemingly forever, I don't see them going home to the hive very much. They love those flowers.
On another note, I first saw this story 04-14-07 on Drudge Report, but the link was empty, so I sent Drudge a note about that, with the html source from his page, so he could fix it. Couldn't get to the story the way he had it. He fixed it, verified 04-15-07.
Down the Interstate goes the 18-Wheeler, with it's load of live chickens going to market. To be made into "chicken", and wind up on one of Martha Stewart's TV shows, as the feature dish. Martha will have an expert chef as a guest that day, to help her fix the chicken dish, to the oohs and aahs of the audience.
Then, without warning, the 18-Wheeler tips over, while trying to go around on a clover-leaf, taking the turn too fast. The trailer flips over on it's side, and most, if not all, of the cages scatter on the ground by the roadside.
People call 911 on their cell phones, and soon, the Fire Department, Highway Patrol, and local City Police decend on the scene. Some of the chickens have escaped their cages, perhaps 50 or so, maybe more. A few of the birds are injured, so other authorities are called, to help in the roundup, and to do something about the hurt birds so the schoolbus full of children passing by on the shoulder of the road, guided by a Highway Patrolman, will know in their hearts that these innocent feather friends are being cared for properly. Not knowing that they would have reached the poultery processing plant soon, if it were not for the wreck, and would be turned into chicken McNuggets before dawn.
Looking down from the clouds at the unfolding scene, is St. T-Rex, having been sent there for his general good works toward other T-Rexes during his lifetime, millions of years ago. Since the experiment to turn T-Rexes into an advanced race of creatures capable of doing things like "inventing automobiles", etc. did not work out, St. T-Rex has been without much to do for a long, long time, having been replaced by St. Peter, himself.
"It figures", said St. T-Rex. "We should have spent more time trying to create useful operating systems to run on PC's than running around eating smaller creatures"
Soon, at the scene of the wreck, all is cleaned up, and the traffic is flowing smoothly, thanks to the efforts of the law enforcement officials, and the Fire Department.
The school children are in class now, and the teacher has asked them to take their crayolas and draw what they saw on the Interstate. That goes badly for some of the boys, when the teacher takes the red color away from them.
What's this? In the bushes near the Interstate is one lone chicken, escaped into the wild. Making it's way back home, it stops to look up at the sign over the entrance. It says "Welcome to Jurassic Park".