It depends a lot on how you use the menus I think. Over the years, MS has done quite a bit of tweaking for the worse IMHO. Luckily we've always been able to tweak these settings back to what they taught us before. With the ribbon the latter isn't true anymore =(
Personnaly, I switch off all the eye-candy & 'usability' options => No "personal menu's" : when there is a list of 10 options, and I only use 4 frequently I still prefer to know I need the 3rd from below instead of "usually" the lowest out of 4, except for the times when I use that 'rare' function all the way below once in a while... or worse, when it's the 3rd line on my home pc, but the 5th on my work pc because I tend to work on different kind of things. => Underlined menu-letters (eg "_F_ile") should always be underlined, not only after I press Alt... maybe I am merely clicking away for now, but while doing that I'm learning what I see for next time when I don't want to move my hand away from the keyboard => Short-cuts should always be visible (eg. CTRL-P), again, as I see them on-screen I'm memorising them 'subconsciously'. => No flashy icons in the menu's where possible (not always an option in each program). I know what the word Bold means, no need to explain it with big fat B in front of the text => No menu-effects, the sub-menu should be there when I click on an item, what good is it to have it (slowly) fade in & out ?
The only 'eye candy' I've come to appreciate, although it makes the menu quite a bit slower, is the WYSIWYG way the Font-dropdown works. Full marks on that one, *AND* you can turn it off if you don't want it!
When I open up a menu or sub-menu, I can find the word I need in literally the blink of an eye, I don't really read the list of options, I simply recognize the word in that grey box. Yes, it requires me to know what word I'm looking for but after 10+ years of using Word & Excel I've got those memorised. When presented with a (new) ribbon, I have to scan the list of icons & text to find what I need, and if it's not there start guessing which "more..." 'popup' might have the function I need. There simply is too much screen-estate involved to be able to scan the ribbon in 'one go', my eyes have to scroll from left to right to take it all in, literally! This takes 'ages' in respect to the old menus and frustrates the hell out of me =(
I'm not saying that once you "get" the ribbons, it can't be good or even better than the old menus; my main gripe is that I used to be quite fluent with the old menu's and that I was flabbergasted for not at least having the option to use them in 2k7 too. I've seriously considered downgrading back to an older version of Office, but sadly some internal developments require me to to have Excel2007 (VSTO stuff) and ever since I'm in the situation where I dread using Excel and simultaneously hoping 'to catch on' with it... the latter hasn't happened yet =(
PS: I used CTRL-O, CTRL-S & CTRL-P for weeks before I realised they hid it in that 'office menu orb'.
Not sure whether you're being funny or not =), but I do have considered digging out that 'coated piece of perspex' I used to have hanging in front of my Amiga monitor... It sort of increased contrast, reduced glare and supposedly helped against flicker. Problem is, once I open up that treasure-chest I'll be wanting to get my Amiga(s) back online etc and before you know it I'll have lost days if not weeks purely on nostalgia. (**)
(** wonder if I'd get SPOT back online somehow.. Anyway, most likely the hard-disks will refuse to spin up after 11 years of just sitting there. Ohh man 120Mb full of demo and mod-tracker goodness, why oh why did you make think about that =)
The spectrum might be in there for some reason, although IMHO when reading a book, it's pretty much black text on a monochrome piece of paper that I'm looking at anyway.
Technically there indeed won't be much difference whether the photon was sent directly or indirectly into the eye, but I think the difference in perception here comes from what's going on *around* the screen. Eg. when a cloud passes by, the surrounding light-level diminishes by a factor x, your eyes adapt (slightly) to the overall changed condition by opening your retina and as a result the non-cloud-affected-screen-light seems to have gone up in light-"volume" by a factor x/n, where n is probably related to the surface of your screen vs your whole field of view. I wouldn't be surprised that when using 'reflection-based' screens, this goes much easier on the eye as the amount of photons hitting the eye-nerves is much more stable than with constant (overly-bright) back-lit screens.
PS: yes, my laptop has an 'Ambient Light Sensor', but FOR CRYING OUT LOUD it only works when I'm on battery power (**), and frankly I think it's a bit coarse in reacting to changing conditions anyway for the times I do get the chance to use it.
**: Does *anybody* know how to enable the damned thing when running on outlet power ? (= +90% of the time I'm using my computer) [Dell Latitude D830] => I'd be even extremely gratefull if someone could point me to a way to set the brightness in 'smaller steps' than is currently possible with Fn+Up/Down. For me, full brightness is too bright, but one notch below is in fact too dim already. When running on batteries, I can use a slidebar to set the maximum brightness the ALS should use, and that slidebar allows for much, much finer control !!
Although I agree with you and all posters above, from what I get from the article this is just (an expensive ?) way to/create/ energy in an extremely inefficient way.
That said, I do wonder if it wouldn't be possible to somehow harvest some "free" energy from such a system, assuming the car-park is BELOW GROUND.
=> assuming the car-park is located below ground, the car will need to drive down a ramp anyway => if we replace that ramp with a series of 'steps' that are "pushed up" by an internal spring-system, when in 'neutral', each next step is 10 cm lower than the previous one. => the car will arrive at ground level (0), drive on the fist step and the step will "sink" say 10 cm. => as a result, the step is now level with the second step, and the car simply drives on it "horizontally" => again, step 2 will sink about 10 cm due to the weight of the car, while step 1 veers back up because of the internal springs
rinse & repeat...
I guess it'd probably be 'more efficient' to have 1 giant step that goes down the full 3m or so, but it would make the process more cumbersome (drive on, wait, drive off, wait for platform to rise again etc..), while the 'steps' in fact can simultaneously function as a speed-lowering device (if you drive down to fast, the steps will not have time to be pushed in completely and you're in for a 'shocking' ride).
Off course this still 'steals' away some of the car's fuel as you now need to "drive the whole way down horizontally" instead of just coasting down, but then again at least some of the braking power would be converted to useful energy instead of heat.
Oh come on... all this scaremongering, how much of those measures have actually saved a life yet ? Sure, a gazillion nail files must have been confiscated by now, but is there any reported incident in the entire history of transportation where the pilot/conductor/driver was forced to deviate from his planned course by means of a nail file ?
No seriously, if someone wanted to take out a plane, big building, train, city even,... whatever type of 'structure' involving many people's lives, HOW HARD CAN IT BE ???
Yes, 9/11 was 'unheard' of, and yes, it was well planned and executed (*), but it wasn't rocket science. On a bored evening (**) I had this conversation with a colleague where we started thinking up ways to bring down major structures and which ones would have the largest impact socially and/or economically. It's ridiculously easy, especially if you don't care about surviving yourself. Frankly, the only show-stopper would be talking about it to too many people. In the end there would (hopefully) always be someone with a conscious ratting the bad guys out.
*: with well I don't mean 'good' in the sense that I liked it, on the contrary! **: waiting for a delayed plane and no wifi now I think about it =)
Must concur that this also happened to me EVERY SINGLE UPGRADE SINCE 5.10. So yes, I always dreaded upgrading, but since the purpose of my Ubuntu pc is merely "seeing what's this ubuntu thing is all about" + playing mp3 files (Amarok rocks), I always tried to keep up with (major) versions... if it takes me 2 weeks to get X back up & running, who cares.
However, going to 9.04 was painless and except for some messages that some.ini file was 'changed manually' according to the install process (-- when diffing all differences turned out to be comments --) it went quick & flawless!
A big thank you & congratulations to the guys that created 9.04 !
I have one too and in theory it should be able to draw power from the eSATA port. That said, I still need to find the first computer where it was actually able to do so, tried both on desktops and (modern) laptops... plug in the eSATA first, if nothing happens then plug in the USB, it will automatically come up with eSATA. If you plug in the USB side only and wait a while, the device will show up as a removable USB disk)
(I use it in combination with eBoostr (a ReadyBoost alike that also works on WinXP) and it's GREAT. Although people will likely reply that I'm quickly wearing out the flashram like this, I find it very useful for storing lots of little temporary files (VSS 6.0 databases 'fly') and MSSQL.ldf files. Too bad the tests don't include IOPS, I'm curious how the THROTTLE would do on that field in respect to the rest of the pack.)
It usually involves : * doing the upgrade (takes a while but haven't had real errors yet * after reboot try to log in again... usually this means some kind of fall back to a low-res, extremely slow GUI * going through the forums to see if anyone else has the same issue * going to nvidia webpage to notice there is no package available yet * living with 'slow' GUI for a while... (no biggie, but annoying nevertheless) * couple of weeks later re-checking nvidia site, trying install of new package again * being terribly lost as output seems to be directed to CRT and me not knowing it => you can hear the "logon-process", but the screen remains black. In retrospect I should have realized this much sooner but at the time it seemed like it was working but the back-lights were not switching on. * getting it to work by "as a last resort" attaching an external monitor * changing the settings in nvidia's Xpanel config (or whatever again it is called), et voila, all is well again * being unable to save the configuration as the applet does not run in root mode => save as... and sudo cp..
It's not that all of this is terribly advanced and one could wonder why I go through all the trouble when I have a perfectly valid XP lincence for that machine. The reason I'm keeping that portable "linuxed" is because * I have a given my mom an old laptop with Ubuntu on it because I couldn't convince myself in spending +100â on an OS that will run sluggish on it (PIII700) and won't be supported anymore sometime soon. (The thing has an Win2k license sticker, but she prefers the OS & applications to be localized) It also feels more safe as most malware seems targeted at Windows machines. All she uses is FireFox & Thunderbird, so in this case it's most certainly a win situation. * I have given my daughter an even older laptop (PII500) where she plays GCompris games and some DivX conversions of her Dora DVD's etc. Again it's a win as she's learning to use a computer (she's 3 btw) and the original dvd's can stay safely in their box... (and we don't need to "share" the TV =). Again, a win... (The Win98 that was on it originally might work too, but I've never liked win98 or WinMe...)
In order to have some working knowledge (and out of curiosity) I try keep my personal portable up-to-date on Ubuntu, so it's mostly serves as R&D, nothing critical. Along the way it's been used as an expensive MP3-player (Amarok), portable picture library and lately I've been using it as an external screen for 'my' company laptop (using ZoneScreen & VNC), bringing my screen-estate to 3 screens, which comes in handy at times.
Long story short : * I'm quite versed in Windows(XP), probably because I spend most of my time developing software on it; practically that probably works against me when I need to do something on... errr... well every other os that's not Windows * That said, I'm mightily impressed with the things Ubuntu offers and does (Apt is WAAAWWW) * I'm sightly disappointed with the way everything seems to be non-uniform and quirky, but that's ok by me * I'm (too often) frustrated by the effort needed when things go bad and you need to go "under the hood", so far that has been the case with every single upgrade. (I started out with 5.10 btw, so that's 6 times so far I think).
Again, I realize that most of my problems arise from using old hardware (getting Vista working on those laptops might turn out to be challenging too =) so I don't mind putting in some effort. But I would like to point out that 'it just works' is something that in my experience (and yes, I have plenty) is something that applies quite often to Windows and not so often to Linux...
Well, I have an oldish nvidia GeForce4Go (64Mb) in my Dell Inspiron 8200 and I can tell you that it never 'just works'. Either the resolution refuses to go upto the native 1600x1200, or the thing puts it's output to CRT instead of the LCD screen (THAT one took me a while to find!), or the performance is terrible, etc... I'm seriously wondering if I shouldn't somehow image the disk before hitting the "upgrade and run into trouble again" button so at least I have the option to go back to 8.10 when it still doesn't work after 10 grumpy hours of searching forums and installing/uninstalling/configuring/etc...
PS: in the meantime I've learned about Envy and although it didn't fully fix the situation last time, at least it got me into a workable state.
IMHO, I think it's a matter of "cultural image" that attracts this kind of remarks.
It's not that we Europeans truly think to be superior vis-a-vis any other 'group' of the rest of the world, it's more that the USA projects an image off "Our way or the high-way" that makes non-American people... errr... a bit more susceptible to outing criticism towards them.
From my personal experience with Americans I'd generalize and say that
* They have a very limited world-view... aka, the world ends at the border (country or county, you decide)
* They are not used to thinking for themselves and will do literally everything according to the book; very contradictory for the country that prides itself for all of it's liberties.
* They are loud... (but so are the Dutch, and the German, and the English... and from what I've heard the Russians... (*))
* They have this 'inbred' superiority feeling over them and they can't withhold from showing it. I remember a story on Dutch Television where a Dutch politician was visiting Florida during the 2000 elections as some kind of 'witness' and one of the officials sneered at him "You better watch carefully sonny, we'll show you how a proper election is done in a truly democratic country". Well, we all know how that ended.
* They have a hard time admitting failure...
* They are completely unable to recognize sarcasm, utterly completely unable. Makes for awkward situations.
* They have a terribly sounding accent, really, who came up with that nasal sound ?!?
* They have the weirdest standards on what can be done and what can't be. They'll consider a movie full of gore, blood and violence 'acceptable', yet when a blurred piece of skin comes in the picture they cry outrage !
* Creationism
*... hmm, I'll stop here since I'll probably will overload the./ system with foe-marks already =)
That said, every single American I know personally and have talked/worked/played with over the past 15 years I'll describe as a friendly and caring person and an honour to be friends with. (**) I also would like to point out that the above is a gigantic generalization (but based on facts and experiences !) and that for most of the above I probably can find plenty of locals here that fit the bill too, albeit it's going to be hard to find one that fits all.
(*: disclaimer : I'm neither of those... clearly =) (**: ok, there was this one guy that I'd gladly put against the wall at times, but in all honesty he had a double nationality (Greek + USA) and I think neither the Greeks nor the Americans wanted him back =)
When going through France a couple of years ago (hmm, well quite a couple of years ago) I visited http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Futuroscope . They have a couple of REALLY GREAT 3D-movies going, some aimed at effect, some actual on how movies (sh/c)ould look in the near-future : no cheap thrills, you simply are "in the middle of the scenery" of a story, all the time.
Imho, the best ones where the ones where the glasses have active LCD-shutters. It off course also helped that the movie was projected on a gigantic dome and you could in fact look around. And since the whole park is in fact a showcase of IMAX, the image quality is superb.
As for the 'best ride', from my own experience I'd recommend http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phantasialand => you sit in a 'large' open caddy (I think ca 10 rows of 8-ish people) that is raised on electromagnetic attenuators to simulate motion. The movie itself is projected on a GIGANTIC spherical screen in front of you... it's extremely immersive and only the third ride I realized that the caddy was among many (many) others, each one raised from a different 'waiting room', all being raised into the same gigantic room watching the gigantic screen in front of us. (did I mention the giganticness ?)
Hmm, the wikipedia entry is a bit sparse on information... the Deutsch version has more info and from what I get there the Space-ride theme was replaced with "Race for Atlantis" in 2005. Not sure how well that movie works, but the technology is sound!
Sorry if this sounds blunt, but why not simply put a patch on the 'bad' eye ? Or if you worry that that would attract too much attention from the people around you, fold some thick-paper or tin-foil over the relevant "lens"
(everybody looks preposterous in such movie showings anyway =)
It seems that the poster wants to have his data _stored_ in an encrypted way that is only decipherable by him, not by any of the machines/users at the storage facility. Yet, when he wants to do some search, he somehow expects the server to be able to do so... AFAIK that's not feasible.
(you could store whatever encrypted stuff remotely, but querying will require fetching, reading and decrypting the (relevant portions of) data locally...)
Being Flemmish (Northern part of Belgium, go look it up if you want =) my mother-language is Dutch and French is my second language. That said I daresay my English is way more fluent than my French simply because I use it a lot more (at work, hobbies, media, etc...).
Saying that English is closer to Dutch strikes me as odd. Sure there are similarities, but French and English are MUCH closer than Dutch is vocabulary wise.
As for your example : "ik lijk het huis" indeed sounds a lot like "I like the house", but it doesn't make sense, it translates more or less into : "I corpse the house" (!?!). It's actually funny to see how French & English people can fail so miserably at understanding each other; while written both languages share a lot of words but they simply pronounce them completely different.
As for translating your example in Dutch : "The only thing in common is the Latin alphabet, which the Finns use much better than English speakers since their language is much easier to spell." would become something along the lines of "Het enige gemeenschappelijk is het Latijns alfabet, dat de Finnen veel beter gebruiken dan de Engelstaligen aangezien hun taal veel eenvoudiger te spellen is." In French it would be (very rough, my french is *extremely* rusty) : "La seule chose en commun est l'alphabet Latin, ce que les Finlandais employent beaucoup mieux parce-que leur langue est plus facille a epeller" (someone should spell-check and fix the grammar I suppose, I had to leave out accents since this is/.)
PS: I must agree that for that sentence, Dutch is more close than English is... but still similarities can be found towards the French one too. From a practical point of view I've found myself in countless situations where I had to find a word in English by mentally going via French, or vice versa.
I've somehow lost (probably during a move) my Half-life (hl, of, bs...) cd's (and hence keys), . Same for my original C&C cd's and probably some other old games I haven't missed yet.
Luckily the first were registered on Steam so I could still download them onto my new computer. Some of the latter I replaced by buying 'The First Decade' box. Guess which one was least painful money-wise =)
It might be naive, but I somehow hope that when Steam goes down, they'll release a 'patch' that will allow all games to play 'off-line' and be copied from one computer to another using some kind of 'player key' that's associated with your steam-account.
Then again, why would steam go out of business ? I believe that if they do, we'll be facing more grave problems than not being able to install a game anymore.
But I do agree on the 'lending out' and 'reselling' comments left by some below.
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It depends a lot on how you use the menus I think. Over the years, MS has done quite a bit of tweaking for the worse IMHO. Luckily we've always been able to tweak these settings back to what they taught us before. With the ribbon the latter isn't true anymore =(
Personnaly, I switch off all the eye-candy & 'usability' options
=> No "personal menu's" : when there is a list of 10 options, and I only use 4 frequently I still prefer to know I need the 3rd from below instead of "usually" the lowest out of 4, except for the times when I use that 'rare' function all the way below once in a while... or worse, when it's the 3rd line on my home pc, but the 5th on my work pc because I tend to work on different kind of things.
=> Underlined menu-letters (eg "_F_ile") should always be underlined, not only after I press Alt... maybe I am merely clicking away for now, but while doing that I'm learning what I see for next time when I don't want to move my hand away from the keyboard
=> Short-cuts should always be visible (eg. CTRL-P), again, as I see them on-screen I'm memorising them 'subconsciously'.
=> No flashy icons in the menu's where possible (not always an option in each program). I know what the word Bold means, no need to explain it with big fat B in front of the text
=> No menu-effects, the sub-menu should be there when I click on an item, what good is it to have it (slowly) fade in & out ?
The only 'eye candy' I've come to appreciate, although it makes the menu quite a bit slower, is the WYSIWYG way the Font-dropdown works. Full marks on that one, *AND* you can turn it off if you don't want it!
Frankly, I disagree.
When I open up a menu or sub-menu, I can find the word I need in literally the blink of an eye, I don't really read the list of options, I simply recognize the word in that grey box. Yes, it requires me to know what word I'm looking for but after 10+ years of using Word & Excel I've got those memorised. When presented with a (new) ribbon, I have to scan the list of icons & text to find what I need, and if it's not there start guessing which "more..." 'popup' might have the function I need. There simply is too much screen-estate involved to be able to scan the ribbon in 'one go', my eyes have to scroll from left to right to take it all in, literally! This takes 'ages' in respect to the old menus and frustrates the hell out of me =(
I'm not saying that once you "get" the ribbons, it can't be good or even better than the old menus; my main gripe is that I used to be quite fluent with the old menu's and that I was flabbergasted for not at least having the option to use them in 2k7 too. I've seriously considered downgrading back to an older version of Office, but sadly some internal developments require me to to have Excel2007 (VSTO stuff) and ever since I'm in the situation where I dread using Excel and simultaneously hoping 'to catch on' with it... the latter hasn't happened yet =(
PS: I used CTRL-O, CTRL-S & CTRL-P for weeks before I realised they hid it in that 'office menu orb'.
Well, if it IMplodes, it most definitely will suck... maybe ever so briefly, but it will suck !
Not sure whether you're being funny or not =),
but I do have considered digging out that 'coated piece of perspex' I used to have hanging in front of my Amiga monitor... It sort of increased contrast, reduced glare and supposedly helped against flicker. Problem is, once I open up that treasure-chest I'll be wanting to get my Amiga(s) back online etc and before you know it I'll have lost days if not weeks purely on nostalgia. (**)
(** wonder if I'd get SPOT back online somehow.. Anyway, most likely the hard-disks will refuse to spin up after 11 years of just sitting there. Ohh man 120Mb full of demo and mod-tracker goodness, why oh why did you make think about that =)
The spectrum might be in there for some reason, although IMHO when reading a book, it's pretty much black text on a monochrome piece of paper that I'm looking at anyway.
Technically there indeed won't be much difference whether the photon was sent directly or indirectly into the eye, but I think the difference in perception here comes from what's going on *around* the screen.
Eg. when a cloud passes by, the surrounding light-level diminishes by a factor x, your eyes adapt (slightly) to the overall changed condition by opening your retina and as a result the non-cloud-affected-screen-light seems to have gone up in light-"volume" by a factor x/n, where n is probably related to the surface of your screen vs your whole field of view. I wouldn't be surprised that when using 'reflection-based' screens, this goes much easier on the eye as the amount of photons hitting the eye-nerves is much more stable than with constant (overly-bright) back-lit screens.
PS: yes, my laptop has an 'Ambient Light Sensor', but FOR CRYING OUT LOUD it only works when I'm on battery power (**), and frankly I think it's a bit coarse in reacting to changing conditions anyway for the times I do get the chance to use it.
**: Does *anybody* know how to enable the damned thing when running on outlet power ? (= +90% of the time I'm using my computer) [Dell Latitude D830]
=> I'd be even extremely gratefull if someone could point me to a way to set the brightness in 'smaller steps' than is currently possible with Fn+Up/Down. For me, full brightness is too bright, but one notch below is in fact too dim already. When running on batteries, I can use a slidebar to set the maximum brightness the ALS should use, and that slidebar allows for much, much finer control !!
So true, somehow hadn't thought about that... the only requirement thus being that there is a (low speed) slope involved...
Although I agree with you and all posters above, from what I get from the article this is just (an expensive ?) way to /create/ energy in an extremely inefficient way.
That said, I do wonder if it wouldn't be possible to somehow harvest some "free" energy from such a system, assuming the car-park is BELOW GROUND.
=> assuming the car-park is located below ground, the car will need to drive down a ramp anyway
=> if we replace that ramp with a series of 'steps' that are "pushed up" by an internal spring-system, when in 'neutral', each next step is 10 cm lower than the previous one.
=> the car will arrive at ground level (0), drive on the fist step and the step will "sink" say 10 cm.
=> as a result, the step is now level with the second step, and the car simply drives on it "horizontally"
=> again, step 2 will sink about 10 cm due to the weight of the car, while step 1 veers back up because of the internal springs
rinse & repeat...
I guess it'd probably be 'more efficient' to have 1 giant step that goes down the full 3m or so, but it would make the process more cumbersome (drive on, wait, drive off, wait for platform to rise again etc..), while the 'steps' in fact can simultaneously function as a speed-lowering device (if you drive down to fast, the steps will not have time to be pushed in completely and you're in for a 'shocking' ride).
Off course this still 'steals' away some of the car's fuel as you now need to "drive the whole way down horizontally" instead of just coasting down, but then again at least some of the braking power would be converted to useful energy instead of heat.
just my 2 cents...
Oh come on... all this scaremongering, how much of those measures have actually saved a life yet ? Sure, a gazillion nail files must have been confiscated by now, but is there any reported incident in the entire history of transportation where the pilot/conductor/driver was forced to deviate from his planned course by means of a nail file ?
No seriously, if someone wanted to take out a plane, big building, train, city even, ... whatever type of 'structure' involving many people's lives, HOW HARD CAN IT BE ???
Yes, 9/11 was 'unheard' of, and yes, it was well planned and executed (*), but it wasn't rocket science. On a bored evening (**) I had this conversation with a colleague where we started thinking up ways to bring down major structures and which ones would have the largest impact socially and/or economically. It's ridiculously easy, especially if you don't care about surviving yourself. Frankly, the only show-stopper would be talking about it to too many people. In the end there would (hopefully) always be someone with a conscious ratting the bad guys out.
*: with well I don't mean 'good' in the sense that I liked it, on the contrary!
**: waiting for a delayed plane and no wifi now I think about it =)
Must concur that this also happened to me EVERY SINGLE UPGRADE SINCE 5.10.
So yes, I always dreaded upgrading, but since the purpose of my Ubuntu pc is merely "seeing what's this ubuntu thing is all about" + playing mp3 files (Amarok rocks), I always tried to keep up with (major) versions... if it takes me 2 weeks to get X back up & running, who cares.
However, going to 9.04 was painless and except for some messages that some .ini file was 'changed manually' according to the install process (-- when diffing all differences turned out to be comments --) it went quick & flawless!
A big thank you & congratulations to the guys that created 9.04 !
I have one too and in theory it should be able to draw power from the eSATA port. That said, I still need to find the first computer where it was actually able to do so, tried both on desktops and (modern) laptops... plug in the eSATA first, if nothing happens then plug in the USB, it will automatically come up with eSATA. If you plug in the USB side only and wait a while, the device will show up as a removable USB disk)
(I use it in combination with eBoostr (a ReadyBoost alike that also works on WinXP) and it's GREAT. Although people will likely reply that I'm quickly wearing out the flashram like this, I find it very useful for storing lots of little temporary files (VSS 6.0 databases 'fly') and MSSQL .ldf files. Too bad the tests don't include IOPS, I'm curious how the THROTTLE would do on that field in respect to the rest of the pack.)
Maybe he meant : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defender_of_the_crown ?
(that's what I immediately thought about when I read the question... but I agree, it will likely be gigo, and if not : way to go IBM)
It usually involves : ... (no biggie, but annoying nevertheless)
* doing the upgrade (takes a while but haven't had real errors yet
* after reboot try to log in again... usually this means some kind of fall back to a low-res, extremely slow GUI
* going through the forums to see if anyone else has the same issue
* going to nvidia webpage to notice there is no package available yet
* living with 'slow' GUI for a while
* couple of weeks later re-checking nvidia site, trying install of new package again
* being terribly lost as output seems to be directed to CRT and me not knowing it => you can hear the "logon-process", but the screen remains black. In retrospect I should have realized this much sooner but at the time it seemed like it was working but the back-lights were not switching on.
* getting it to work by "as a last resort" attaching an external monitor
* changing the settings in nvidia's Xpanel config (or whatever again it is called), et voila, all is well again
* being unable to save the configuration as the applet does not run in root mode => save as... and sudo cp..
It's not that all of this is terribly advanced and one could wonder why I go through all the trouble when I have a perfectly valid XP lincence for that machine. The reason I'm keeping that portable "linuxed" is because ...)
* I have a given my mom an old laptop with Ubuntu on it because I couldn't convince myself in spending +100â on an OS that will run sluggish on it (PIII700) and won't be supported anymore sometime soon. (The thing has an Win2k license sticker, but she prefers the OS & applications to be localized) It also feels more safe as most malware seems targeted at Windows machines. All she uses is FireFox & Thunderbird, so in this case it's most certainly a win situation.
* I have given my daughter an even older laptop (PII500) where she plays GCompris games and some DivX conversions of her Dora DVD's etc. Again it's a win as she's learning to use a computer (she's 3 btw) and the original dvd's can stay safely in their box... (and we don't need to "share" the TV =). Again, a win... (The Win98 that was on it originally might work too, but I've never liked win98 or WinMe
In order to have some working knowledge (and out of curiosity) I try keep my personal portable up-to-date on Ubuntu, so it's mostly serves as R&D, nothing critical. Along the way it's been used as an expensive MP3-player (Amarok), portable picture library and lately I've been using it as an external screen for 'my' company laptop (using ZoneScreen & VNC), bringing my screen-estate to 3 screens, which comes in handy at times.
Long story short : ... errr... well every other os that's not Windows
* I'm quite versed in Windows(XP), probably because I spend most of my time developing software on it; practically that probably works against me when I need to do something on
* That said, I'm mightily impressed with the things Ubuntu offers and does (Apt is WAAAWWW)
* I'm sightly disappointed with the way everything seems to be non-uniform and quirky, but that's ok by me
* I'm (too often) frustrated by the effort needed when things go bad and you need to go "under the hood", so far that has been the case with every single upgrade. (I started out with 5.10 btw, so that's 6 times so far I think).
Again, I realize that most of my problems arise from using old hardware (getting Vista working on those laptops might turn out to be challenging too =) so I don't mind putting in some effort. But I would like to point out that 'it just works' is something that in my experience (and yes, I have plenty) is something that applies quite often to Windows and not so often to Linux...
Well, I have an oldish nvidia GeForce4Go (64Mb) in my Dell Inspiron 8200 and I can tell you that it never 'just works'. Either the resolution refuses to go upto the native 1600x1200, or the thing puts it's output to CRT instead of the LCD screen (THAT one took me a while to find!), or the performance is terrible, etc ...
I'm seriously wondering if I shouldn't somehow image the disk before hitting the "upgrade and run into trouble again" button so at least I have the option to go back to 8.10 when it still doesn't work after 10 grumpy hours of searching forums and installing/uninstalling/configuring/etc...
PS: in the meantime I've learned about Envy and although it didn't fully fix the situation last time, at least it got me into a workable state.
wouldn't that be inter-feces ?
Found the link to Amazon for that thing somewhere in this thread. Some reviews are simply hilarious =)
http://www.amazon.com/Denon-AKDL1-Dedicated-Link-Cable/product-reviews/B000I1X6PM/ref=dp_top_cm_cr_acr_txt?ie=UTF8&showViewpoints=1
Tip of the day : read the customer-reviews on that cable's Technical Details page... hilarious =)
Yeah, those are great...
sadly you have to to unplug & replug them if you want to transfer data in the other direction =( At least it reduces vibration !
http://www.usa.denon.com/AK-DL1-OM_002.pdf
(boy oh boy)
LOL, simply reading this blurb of /misformation/ has brought a smile on my face for the rest of the day, thx =)
HILARIOUS => http://www.monstercable.com/productdisplay.asp?pin=1389
IMHO, I think it's a matter of "cultural image" that attracts this kind of remarks.
It's not that we Europeans truly think to be superior vis-a-vis any other 'group' of the rest of the world, it's more that the USA projects an image off "Our way or the high-way" that makes non-American people ... errr... a bit more susceptible to outing criticism towards them.
From my personal experience with Americans I'd generalize and say that ... aka, the world ends at the border (country or county, you decide) ... (but so are the Dutch, and the German, and the English ... and from what I've heard the Russians... (*)) ... hmm, I'll stop here since I'll probably will overload the ./ system with foe-marks already =)
* They have a very limited world-view
* They are not used to thinking for themselves and will do literally everything according to the book; very contradictory for the country that prides itself for all of it's liberties.
* They are loud
* They have this 'inbred' superiority feeling over them and they can't withhold from showing it. I remember a story on Dutch Television where a Dutch politician was visiting Florida during the 2000 elections as some kind of 'witness' and one of the officials sneered at him "You better watch carefully sonny, we'll show you how a proper election is done in a truly democratic country". Well, we all know how that ended.
* They have a hard time admitting failure...
* They are completely unable to recognize sarcasm, utterly completely unable. Makes for awkward situations.
* They have a terribly sounding accent, really, who came up with that nasal sound ?!?
* They have the weirdest standards on what can be done and what can't be. They'll consider a movie full of gore, blood and violence 'acceptable', yet when a blurred piece of skin comes in the picture they cry outrage !
* Creationism
*
That said, every single American I know personally and have talked/worked/played with over the past 15 years I'll describe as a friendly and caring person and an honour to be friends with. (**)
I also would like to point out that the above is a gigantic generalization (but based on facts and experiences !) and that for most of the above I probably can find plenty of locals here that fit the bill too, albeit it's going to be hard to find one that fits all.
(*: disclaimer : I'm neither of those... clearly =)
(**: ok, there was this one guy that I'd gladly put against the wall at times, but in all honesty he had a double nationality (Greek + USA) and I think neither the Greeks nor the Americans wanted him back =)
When going through France a couple of years ago (hmm, well quite a couple of years ago) I visited http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Futuroscope .
They have a couple of REALLY GREAT 3D-movies going, some aimed at effect, some actual on how movies (sh/c)ould look in the near-future : no cheap thrills, you simply are "in the middle of the scenery" of a story, all the time.
Imho, the best ones where the ones where the glasses have active LCD-shutters. It off course also helped that the movie was projected on a gigantic dome and you could in fact look around. And since the whole park is in fact a showcase of IMAX, the image quality is superb.
As for the 'best ride', from my own experience I'd recommend http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phantasialand
=> you sit in a 'large' open caddy (I think ca 10 rows of 8-ish people) that is raised on electromagnetic attenuators to simulate motion. The movie itself is projected on a GIGANTIC spherical screen in front of you... it's extremely immersive and only the third ride I realized that the caddy was among many (many) others, each one raised from a different 'waiting room', all being raised into the same gigantic room watching the gigantic screen in front of us. (did I mention the giganticness ?)
Hmm, the wikipedia entry is a bit sparse on information... the Deutsch version has more info and from what I get there the Space-ride theme was replaced with "Race for Atlantis" in 2005. Not sure how well that movie works, but the technology is sound!
Sorry if this sounds blunt, but why not simply put a patch on the 'bad' eye ?
Or if you worry that that would attract too much attention from the people around you, fold some thick-paper or tin-foil over the relevant "lens"
(everybody looks preposterous in such movie showings anyway =)
That won't help either...
Assuming you encrypt this piece of text : "three wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do !"
You'll get some binary blob A
Encrypting the word "three" will give you another binary blob B
The chances that you'll find B inside A is practically zero due to the way modern encryption works.
(It would work in the mighty ROT13 system though !)
Yes you are =)
SSL only encrypts the transport.
It seems that the poster wants to have his data _stored_ in an encrypted way that is only decipherable by him, not by any of the machines/users at the storage facility. Yet, when he wants to do some search, he somehow expects the server to be able to do so... AFAIK that's not feasible.
(you could store whatever encrypted stuff remotely, but querying will require fetching, reading and decrypting the (relevant portions of) data locally...)
Being Flemmish (Northern part of Belgium, go look it up if you want =) my mother-language is Dutch and French is my second language. That said I daresay my English is way more fluent than my French simply because I use it a lot more (at work, hobbies, media, etc...).
Saying that English is closer to Dutch strikes me as odd. Sure there are similarities, but French and English are MUCH closer than Dutch is vocabulary wise.
As for your example : "ik lijk het huis" indeed sounds a lot like "I like the house", but it doesn't make sense, it translates more or less into : "I corpse the house" (!?!). It's actually funny to see how French & English people can fail so miserably at understanding each other; while written both languages share a lot of words but they simply pronounce them completely different.
As for translating your example in Dutch : /.)
"The only thing in common is the Latin alphabet, which the Finns use much better than English speakers since their language is much easier to spell."
would become something along the lines of
"Het enige gemeenschappelijk is het Latijns alfabet, dat de Finnen veel beter gebruiken dan de Engelstaligen aangezien hun taal veel eenvoudiger te spellen is."
In French it would be (very rough, my french is *extremely* rusty) :
"La seule chose en commun est l'alphabet Latin, ce que les Finlandais employent beaucoup mieux parce-que leur langue est plus facille a epeller"
(someone should spell-check and fix the grammar I suppose, I had to leave out accents since this is
PS: I must agree that for that sentence, Dutch is more close than English is... but still similarities can be found towards the French one too. From a practical point of view I've found myself in countless situations where I had to find a word in English by mentally going via French, or vice versa.
I have it the other way around.
I've somehow lost (probably during a move) my Half-life (hl, of, bs...) cd's (and hence keys), . Same for my original C&C cd's and probably some other old games I haven't missed yet.
Luckily the first were registered on Steam so I could still download them onto my new computer. Some of the latter I replaced by buying 'The First Decade' box. Guess which one was least painful money-wise =)
It might be naive, but I somehow hope that when Steam goes down, they'll release a 'patch' that will allow all games to play 'off-line' and be copied from one computer to another using some kind of 'player key' that's associated with your steam-account.
Then again, why would steam go out of business ? I believe that if they do, we'll be facing more grave problems than not being able to install a game anymore.
But I do agree on the 'lending out' and 'reselling' comments left by some below.