Follow the link the top of the page, and install Knoppix on her hard drive (20 minutes or so) and then download and add Flash and RealPlayer to the system.
Download and install some other linux Distro on her box.
I would think that option 2 above would be the quickest and easiest, plus while you are making some room for Knoppix, you can make a swap partition.
I have to say, the real rub for me with Knoppix is the lack of flash and Realplayer. I am almost tempted to drop the KDE Office apps (a quick way to make room) and install Galeon, Flash and RealPlayer. May even burn my gpg keyring on there to and have my ultimate portable system.
I was once hired by a company to take several of there manuals that they did in Word 5 on Macintosh and update them to Word97 on windows.
Let me tell you, it was a hoot. Each writer had there own "look". Trying to get everything down to one format with a consistant style was fun.
Of course, let's not forget that if you have an embed eps graphic on the Mac, when you bring the word document over to windows, the whole 300k of eps is still there, but the only thing that will display on screen or print, is the thumbnail image.
Once we had converted the original eps into a decent wmf file, life still was not good. When you try to build a master document, built up of 15 subdocuments, needing a decent Table of Contents and an Index. Then toss in 30 or 40 half page size graphics. All the files corrupt.
My work cycle became.
Backup All documents that are part of the manual (keeping older backups around).
Do a little editing, or work on the styles.
Save Document
Reoload documents and check for corruption
Continue working till you realized you missed something that had corrupted earlier.
Roll back to a previous backup where the problem did not exist.
Try making same chagges again
Back to step one.
Even in the Windows/DOS world, WordPerfect would have been better. It does not eat up it's subdocuments like word does. However, I could not convince management that it would be cheeper to purchase 3 or 4 copies of WordPerfect and retrain their chemists and tech writers to use that, than to constantly be rebuilding the document from the point where word last meltdown.
That is why, when I get my new box. I will slap an old 4 gig drive in it, put it on my network, and start a gentoo install/compile.
I will keep using my old system, and once gentoo is running on my new box, I will just copy the partition from my 4 gig drive over to the 60 gig drive I normally use.
As much as I want gentoo, I can't afford to be without a system for 3 or 4 days waiting for it to compile everything, and yes I want KDE and GNOME.
You should try running the windows network brower for the xfce desktop. xfsama
It comes up, finds the master browser on your network and gives you a list windows/smb machines on your local network. All without performing any configuration.
It works so well, I nstalled xfce on my RH 7.3 system so I can run it.
Could you please email me an email address for someone in this group that is refurbishing computers and sending them overseas. I would like to talk to them about costs and what hoops they have to jump through to do this.
I would be even more radical, and suggest that unless you are planning on making a living at programming in FORTH, skip the post 1990 ANSI standard Forth and lean with a Forth 83 system such as F-PC for DOS (or better yet F83, which is simpler), or LMI Winforth for Windows. For Linux users you will have to use something like gForth, which is an ANS Forth.
It is even a boon to windows programmers. I can create a program, and while it is running in one window, have a forth console window open where I can test the value of variables, send messages, and even change how a program responds to messages on the fly. I can't think of a better way to learn winodws.
The beauty of learning Forth, is being able to apply factoring when you program in other languages. The best way to really learn to factor, is to use BLOCKFILES for editing your source.
A blockfile presents your soruce code as blocks/screens each being 1K in size. That is 16 lines of text which each line being 64 characters in size. If you are writing one function, and find that this is not enough room, there is a 99% chance that you do not understand the problem well enough factor the problem down into small usefull functions (words in Forth).
It is a pain in the butt to learn and use this way, but it is worth it. I write apps for MS Windows using Forth, and you would be hard pressed to find any word definitions that would be over 10 lines of code. Even though I use regular source files instead of blockfiles. The constraints they put on a new Forth programmer helps them learn the right way to do things.
When writing under the hood stuff, my defintions are only 3 or 4 lines of text. When writing code that interacts with the windows API, I allow up to 10 lines or so for code, because you can't do much about the verbosity of hungarian notation and passing 5 and 6 arguments to API calls.
I digress, back to the subject at hand. By learning Forth83, you will be able to take advantage of all the good books written about Forth in the 1980's. Even if you have to do an interlibrary loan, Leo Brodie's "Thinking Forth" is a must read. You will learn how to:
How to ignore the superficiality of flow control
Information chunking how to design software without it becomming to complex to understand
How to design a program by components
How to design a program that will easily survive change
Move the work from runtime, to compile time. From Compile time to being done by the programmer (yes, sometimes this does make a program better)
ICE Interpret, Compile, Edit - how to use it to your advantage.
There is a certain design philosophy on how to write quick to prototype, easy to maintain software that is elegant. However, that philosophy is embodied in the language FORTH. By learning, understanding and following this philosophy when programming in Forth, will allow you to be a better programmer in other languages.
Anyways, most of the above can be found in "Thinking Forth", well worth the effort to get the book.
Why do we need "a $0.30 chip in China that will get $100 here" blackmarket item?
90% of the world will still have non DRM enabled computers, and non-DRM encoded DVD's. I am sure someone in Russia or China, or Finland or someplace will rip the bits and post them somewhere on the net or p2p networks or heaven forbid IRC.
DMR will be a pain in the butt for the American Consumer, but will not even stop the newbie using google for the first time to find away around it.
Sure MicroSoft has lots of developers. However, many of these developers work for companies who are trying to make a profit. There are nondisclosure agreements and such.
They can't post any really usefull code, they can't post code for peer review. They can't spend too much time answering questions and playing with pseudocode instead of producing results for their employer.
We also have the advantage that we can choose to work on one or several projects. When we get burned out on one, we can work on a different project that is holding our interest.
So how are they going to produce superior software due to MSDN support? The way I see it, MicroSoft has been working on Windows since the mid 80's, had dumped a lot of money into it, has hired the best money can buy. Yet in less than a decade Linux has almost caught up to it.
I wish Microsoft good luck at leverging there community. They are going to need it....
First copy protection, through the current SPA actions, lawsuits, nasty shrinkwrap contracts, invasive searching for unlicensed software.
Do you want that to exist in the future for the music industry? Do you want your kid or your granduncle thrown in jail or fined thousands of dollars for copying copyrighted music?
If you have noticed, the software industry has gone after business, not indivudual consumers. It is easy to fine a business thousands of dollars becasue they have a cd of windows 98, the serial number for it, but can not produce the invocie. Most consumers don't keep a receipt of sale very long. Half the country would be in jail if Mirosoft went door to door demanding proof of compliance.
The music industry is no different. Their problem is most of their customer base is individuals, not business. If they put a EULA on every CD, and agressively prosecuted violaters, they would put themselves out of business. Most consumers could not "prove" they have the legal right to play an original CD they purchased 5 years ago. They would have to lock us all up. Who would they sell to then? Who would be willing to buy?
Also look at how well it has worked for the software industry. Copy protection ticked people off, EULA's are ignored by indivudals, when they are enforced and people realize what they let themselvs in for when they clicked "OK" they start migrating to linux. Do you believe that the sofware industry will have better luck with these tatics?
Slashdot Mirror
- Rebuild the Knoppix CD with flash and RealPlayer
- Follow the link the top of the page, and install Knoppix on her hard drive (20 minutes or so) and then download and add Flash and RealPlayer to the system.
- Download and install some other linux Distro on her box.
I would think that option 2 above would be the quickest and easiest, plus while you are making some room for Knoppix, you can make a swap partition.I have to say, the real rub for me with Knoppix is the lack of flash and Realplayer. I am almost tempted to drop the KDE Office apps (a quick way to make room) and install Galeon, Flash and RealPlayer. May even burn my gpg keyring on there to and have my ultimate portable system.
Bart Bucks are not legal Tender
I was once hired by a company to take several of there manuals that they did in Word 5 on Macintosh and update them to Word97 on windows.
Let me tell you, it was a hoot. Each writer had there own "look". Trying to get everything down to one format with a consistant style was fun.
Of course, let's not forget that if you have an embed eps graphic on the Mac, when you bring the word document over to windows, the whole 300k of eps is still there, but the only thing that will display on screen or print, is the thumbnail image.
Once we had converted the original eps into a decent wmf file, life still was not good. When you try to build a master document, built up of 15 subdocuments, needing a decent Table of Contents and an Index. Then toss in 30 or 40 half page size graphics. All the files corrupt.
My work cycle became.
Bart Bucks are not legal tender
I will keep using my old system, and once gentoo is running on my new box, I will just copy the partition from my 4 gig drive over to the 60 gig drive I normally use.
As much as I want gentoo, I can't afford to be without a system for 3 or 4 days waiting for it to compile everything, and yes I want KDE and GNOME.
It comes up, finds the master browser on your network and gives you a list windows/smb machines on your local network. All without performing any configuration.
It works so well, I nstalled xfce on my RH 7.3 system so I can run it.
Could you please email me an email address for someone in this group that is refurbishing computers and sending them overseas. I would like to talk to them about costs and what hoops they have to jump through to do this.
Thanks
It is even a boon to windows programmers. I can create a program, and while it is running in one window, have a forth console window open where I can test the value of variables, send messages, and even change how a program responds to messages on the fly. I can't think of a better way to learn winodws.
The beauty of learning Forth, is being able to apply factoring when you program in other languages. The best way to really learn to factor, is to use BLOCKFILES for editing your source.
A blockfile presents your soruce code as blocks/screens each being 1K in size. That is 16 lines of text which each line being 64 characters in size. If you are writing one function, and find that this is not enough room, there is a 99% chance that you do not understand the problem well enough factor the problem down into small usefull functions (words in Forth).
It is a pain in the butt to learn and use this way, but it is worth it. I write apps for MS Windows using Forth, and you would be hard pressed to find any word definitions that would be over 10 lines of code. Even though I use regular source files instead of blockfiles. The constraints they put on a new Forth programmer helps them learn the right way to do things.
When writing under the hood stuff, my defintions are only 3 or 4 lines of text. When writing code that interacts with the windows API, I allow up to 10 lines or so for code, because you can't do much about the verbosity of hungarian notation and passing 5 and 6 arguments to API calls.
I digress, back to the subject at hand. By learning Forth83, you will be able to take advantage of all the good books written about Forth in the 1980's. Even if you have to do an interlibrary loan, Leo Brodie's "Thinking Forth" is a must read. You will learn how to:
There is a certain design philosophy on how to write quick to prototype, easy to maintain software that is elegant. However, that philosophy is embodied in the language FORTH. By learning, understanding and following this philosophy when programming in Forth, will allow you to be a better programmer in other languages.
Anyways, most of the above can be found in "Thinking Forth", well worth the effort to get the book.
Bart Bucks are not legal tender
I do not believe that there is any insecurity that could be discovered in a *nix system that could not be patched or replaced with something else.
On the other hand, I belive that there are holes in winodws systems that are just not patachable.
Then there are the things are patachable, and it seems like there are updates every few days for those with windows.
Let's not even talk about current security holes MicroSoft knows about, and is setting on. Not telling their user base, and not correcting.
90% of the world will still have non DRM enabled computers, and non-DRM encoded DVD's. I am sure someone in Russia or China, or Finland or someplace will rip the bits and post them somewhere on the net or p2p networks or heaven forbid IRC.
DMR will be a pain in the butt for the American Consumer, but will not even stop the newbie using google for the first time to find away around it.
Sure MicroSoft has lots of developers. However, many of these developers work for companies who are trying to make a profit. There are nondisclosure agreements and such. They can't post any really usefull code, they can't post code for peer review. They can't spend too much time answering questions and playing with pseudocode instead of producing results for their employer. We also have the advantage that we can choose to work on one or several projects. When we get burned out on one, we can work on a different project that is holding our interest. So how are they going to produce superior software due to MSDN support? The way I see it, MicroSoft has been working on Windows since the mid 80's, had dumped a lot of money into it, has hired the best money can buy. Yet in less than a decade Linux has almost caught up to it. I wish Microsoft good luck at leverging there community. They are going to need it....
Do you want that to exist in the future for the music industry? Do you want your kid or your granduncle thrown in jail or fined thousands of dollars for copying copyrighted music?
If you have noticed, the software industry has gone after business, not indivudual consumers. It is easy to fine a business thousands of dollars becasue they have a cd of windows 98, the serial number for it, but can not produce the invocie. Most consumers don't keep a receipt of sale very long. Half the country would be in jail if Mirosoft went door to door demanding proof of compliance.
The music industry is no different. Their problem is most of their customer base is individuals, not business. If they put a EULA on every CD, and agressively prosecuted violaters, they would put themselves out of business. Most consumers could not "prove" they have the legal right to play an original CD they purchased 5 years ago. They would have to lock us all up. Who would they sell to then? Who would be willing to buy?
Also look at how well it has worked for the software industry. Copy protection ticked people off, EULA's are ignored by indivudals, when they are enforced and people realize what they let themselvs in for when they clicked "OK" they start migrating to linux. Do you believe that the sofware industry will have better luck with these tatics?