OpenOffice 2.1 is useless to me on a Mac iBook G4 running 10.3.9. I cannot save twice. I start writing something. After a while I save it. I then write more. When I save the second time, OO.o freezes up. I have to kill it. The resulting document has lost all the changes I made in between saves. Aggravating as hell. I'll have to save, close and reopen the document each time in order to use it. Why bother.
You must live in the Pittsburgh area or similar. Many years ago I was looking for a job in the P'burgh area. If I didn't have those dumb certs nobody wanted to talk to me. So I ended up getting a job in Northern VA, working for a network equipment manufacturer (very heavy into ATM for LAN's before it faded) as a tech support engineer in the engineering group...the last troubleshooting before editing code. I still have no certs and have a better job than I could ever get in P'burgh with the certs.
Which is too bad because I'd love to live there.
Go to college. If you want certs, get them too. But do the certs as icing on the cake. Get the cake from college. The best lessons you will learn in college will most likely be outside of your classes, but a few things from classes will be useful years later also. You will not be able to say that about the certs.
Some time after Thanksgiving (4th Thursday in November for us Yanks) I discovered that several of my transfers from my TiVO to my TiVOToGo PC fails after 1-5 Megabytes downloaded. Nothing works. The problem is in the TiVO software, not TiVOToGo. Therefore, the problem exists in the Macintosh version also. If you try using the TiVO web interface, the problem exists. The problem has lasted for over 6 weeks now, and TiVO seems to pretend that the problem is trivial or doesn't exist.
So if you Mac folks download this, be warned that you may have transfer problems, and that it is not necessarily a bug in the new Mac software.
I agree that this is mostly user error, but if there are enough recalls, or even worse, lawsuits about "design flaws" in the Wii, Nintendo will yank this off the market VERY quickly. I REALLY don't want to see that happen. This is a truly new way of playing games, one in which kids, parents and grandparents can play together without any of them feeling dumb not knowing which strange combination of buttons to push to get an obscure move. Nintendo has really done something good here, so protecting it from the idiots is necessary.
Gloves don't have to be ambidextrous...sell them in pairs, like the nunchucks(sp) now.
As for the straps being enough...how many here play raquetball? The raquets have straps that everyone knows to use, but I have still thrown an occasional raquet when the STRAP slipped off my wrist. Perhaps the best thing they can do is, as suggested by others, make a rubberized grip (like a raquet), and make the strap longer (yes, longer) and tell people to "spin" the wiimote to twist the strap to a loose/tight fit, like a racquet.
Nintendo needs to rethink the Wiimote. While I think that it's just stupid for people to not use the straps (you wouldn't be able to throw the wiimote if you strapped it down), it seems that people are truly becoming immersed in the games, even the ones with inferior graphics, so much so that they start treating their moves like the real thing.
I see a solution is to create Wiimote gloves to keep the controller on the body. And another idea is to create Wiimote ankle controllers. This way games can be created that monitor feet movement (dance, dance revolution kinda thing). Then a new genre can start using game consoles...exercise videos! Imagine it...Jane Fonda's workout video game that could monitor your movements, tell you what you're doing right and wrong, monitor your heart rate (sensor in the glove), estimate calorie burning, save the game and keep a history, and draw charts of the history.
There are issues with the glove (how to remap all the buttons and the trigger), and it may take away from the tactile feel of holding something in your hand, but the safety issue would be solved. Well, except for people smashing into furniture.
I read the list about things code doesn't do in real life. The one about text not making noise when it is typed on the keyboard struck me that the one making the list is just a kid. Anyone who has used a real VT100 terminal, or a clone of such (remember Wyse terminals???) had a keyboard with a very quiet touch...so quiet that people were uneasy about typing on it, so they added an artificial key click on the keyboard, with a volume control. Every key pressed made a very short beep, at the same time it appeared on the screen.
And the part about the Gibson in Hackers being a 3D city and having a problem with it just means this guy has no imagination. Anyone remember the movie Disclosure? There was a "cutting edge" operating system being rumored to be developed in real life that was a 3D world that people walked around in and interacted with files, etc in a virtual reality. That metaphor was used in several movies. How else can non-geeks understand anything about what we geeks do without clear visuals? It's called artistic license.
What bothered be about movies is when they substitute one thing for another. For example, in Tron, when Flynn gets "lasered" back into the real world, the printer starts printing. The printer was a daisy-wheel printer, and it made sounds like a dot matrix printer.
This student put up a device (banner) that emitted electromagnetic radiation (reflected sunlight) onto school property. The School Board stole the electromagnetic radiation (read the banner). Arrest them and charge them for a federal crime.
The only way this analogy fails is that the student isn't "renting" someone else's bandwidth, and reading the banner doesn't deprive the student of any bandwidth.
Oh yeah. I saw a friend write a space invaders game in the built-in BASIC, so I proceeded to learn how and wrote one myself. That was a neat trick since the TRS-80 was too slow to do real-time games without assembly code, but it worked well. That was pretty cool at the time.
With a friend I built and wrote an IM client that worked between two TRS-80 model I computers. We "networked" them together by connecting the tape drives between each other (needed an amplifier), and cross connected the "send" and "receive". Then we wrote software that accepted input, sent it across the tape drive, then listened for a message from the tape drive.
It worked well, but of course was very slow.
Then there's the joystick-controlled typewriter...but that wasn't as cool.
Just try to buy a PC without Windows installed on it. If you are even able to do it, you won't pay any less for the PC than if Windows were installed on it. That's the Windows Tax. Calling it the Linux tax is just being redundant.
What do you bet there will be an uproar and Sony will be forced to acquiesce and replace them for anyone who asks.
Right now, if you call in and say you have a problem, Sony will say "prove it". So if you don't convince them yours is broken, you don't get a replacement.
...are doomed to repeat it. This seems to be Microsoft's slogan. Microsoft has a very long memory which is built into their business plan. They count on everyone else forgetting, and those that don't get tied up in litigation so long they no longer exist, give up, or dilute their case so much that it doesn't matter.
I have *NO* sympathy for McAfee or Symantec. I can't stand either product. But I want control over the software I use. I don't want ANYONE to dictate what I use. Browser: FireFox. Firewall: ZoneAlarm. Antivirus: Avast or AVG. Antispyware: AdAware and Spybot S&D. None of those are Microsoft products. Once MS forces the world to switch to Vista (by refusing to sell anything else to vendors and *STILL* no game developers making their games available for Linux...and forget about Cedega) there will be no choice. If Vista refuses to allow Avast or AVG or ZoneAlarm or perhaps AdAware or Spybot S&D to install, that's when I am forced to dual boot XP and Linux, and hope that drivers exist.
As for Microsoft being up to their old tricks, here's a list for those short of memory: Netscape, Stacker, Norton Disc Doctor, Norton Defragmenter, Quicken, WordPerfect, Lotus 123, Ami Pro, Harvard Graphics, DesqView. For the last few, Microsoft isn't the only reason it failed. Quicken still exists because a judge didn't allow Microsoft to purchase Intuit back when MS couldn't complete. I'm sure I'm forgetting some others.
So yes, McAfee and Symantec *DO* have a reason to worry, but the only reason I care is because other smaller vendors and their software will stop working once Vista is released.
I have a Dell e1705. It is a great machine, but I use it as a desktop replacement, not a laptop. It is very nice to be sitting in my living room chair with a "hospital swingarm desk" (bought at OfficeMax) using this machine. I could not do that with a 17" widescreen 1900x1200, keyboard and touchpad attached to a PC on the floor...the monitor would always try to fall off the desk. I can use this machine in a much smaller space than a normal desktop machine. But I would not try to use it on an airplane or subway (or underground if I were in Britain).
It is very nice to be able to pick the machine up, move it to the kitchen, use it there, and move it back later. I could *NEVER* do that with a desktop machine without dismantling it. For one thing, there are too many pieces to move...the e1705 only has two pieces to move, and with the battery, I can unplug the power and move it too without powering down. The best thing about it is being able to conveniently take a fully-powered machine to a friend's house (think LAN party, but I don't use it like that).
The Dell 2010 is really a "briefcase PC" (I like that term...thanks). It folds up and closes with a handle just like a briefcase. It probably couldn't be used on my swingarm desk, but it still could be used in less space than a desktop, can move all in one piece, and unplug for short periods of time, and can move to others' houses. Trying to use this on the Underground is just silly. This machine is "this generation's" luggable.
This is a question my wife and I have been bantering about for a few weeks now...
Exactly when does an "addiction" become just a new way of life?
Televisions used to be the whizbang new tech that everyone wanted to have. Eventually enough people had one that the word "addiction" started being used. Today, every home has three, and nobody calls the TV addictive anymore...certainly not comparing watching TV to alcoholism. It has just become a way of life for normal people.
The same can be said for telephones, cars, etc. The Internet is *NO DIFFERENT*. How would any of us react today if we didn't have a car to get back an forth to work or to go visit friends/relatives (those of us who have one that is!)? We would get anxious, angry, uncertain, look for other ways, etc. I'd bet the symptoms would be similar to the dead battery in a Blackberry, yet nobody calls driving a car to be as addictive as alcoholism. In fact, quite the opposite.
So use PartImage. It is available on RIPLinuX, SystemRescueCD, Knoppix Live CD and many others. Use dd to save the MBR, sfdisk to save the partition, and partimage on all the partitions. This is pretty much what g4u does. I haven't figured out how to get LVM's to work with this, but it will work with Windows and Linux partitions. Like Ghost, the image is intended to be restored to the original hardware, but can be moved to other hardware if you're willing to put up with the headaches of reinstalling some stuff afterward (device drivers, etc) after reboot.
I use this on all my PC's at home, and it works great. I use a bootable CD, but if you set up PXE booting, you can schedule your PC to backup at specific times. Individual file restoration is not possible nor are incremental backups, however.
Yup, my first was also a TRS-80 model 1 level 1 in May 1979. It had about 3.5K of usable RAM. In two weeks I outgrew it and upgraded to a Level 2 machine with 16K usable RAM. The level 1 had a cassette interface running at 250 baud, the level 2 had 500 baud. My machine had an "unlocked" cassette port which meant that it could open and close (1 and 0) faster than 500 baud, making it great for bringing SOUND to the machine. What a concept.
It WAS a Z-80 CPU running at 1.78MHZ (I think). The screen resolution was 128x48, monochrome, and was memory mapped from address 15360 to 16383. The graphics were mapped to the upper 128 ASCII codes, or you could use the SET and RESET BASIC commands (0 to 127, 0 to 47). My favorite games on it were Duelin' Droids, Asylum II, and Galaxy Invasion.
However, in early 1981 there was buzz in all the magazines about how IBM was going to change the world, and while my friends and I hated to admit it (there was HUGE brand loyalty back then), we knew it would happen. And it did, but it took the IBM XT (add a hard drive), and the AT (80286, 8MHZ) to really make it happen. Then compaq built the first legal clone (the courts IBM used to sue them said so), and soon there was no other PC out there until that woman threw the hammer through the screen at the Super Bowl, and the navy commander built a sprite-based very cheap PC that many people bought.
I can't believe I still remember those memory addresses.
Telecom companies have been using DC distribution systems for DECADES because they don't have to lose energy converting back and forth between AC and DC. It's about time the computer industry is catching on.
There are job titles for the jack-of-all-trades type...Professional Services, Consultant, System Integrator, and informal titles such as guru, subject matter expert, generalist, visionary. These people tend to know much about many things, and know how to research what they don't know. They aren't afraid to say they don't know something, and to roll up their sleeves and get dirty reconfiguring the guts of machinery.
It's been my experience that there is a need for someone like that, and they get paid enough...not the highest, but definitely not the lowest either. Now, if one of these guru's gets an MBA too, AND they learn how to integrate the two fields, then they REALLY have something.
This thing happens every few years. There are a few years of growth in the PC industry, then doom and gloom for a year or two. Why? 'cause lots of people buy PC's and don't need another for a few years. Then we hear news reports about high tech is dying....again. Next year there will be news reports saying that analysts are forecasting a boom for the PC market in 2008 (maybe Christmas 2007).
Slashdot Mirror
OpenOffice 2.1 is useless to me on a Mac iBook G4 running 10.3.9. I cannot save twice. I start writing something. After a while I save it. I then write more. When I save the second time, OO.o freezes up. I have to kill it. The resulting document has lost all the changes I made in between saves. Aggravating as hell. I'll have to save, close and reopen the document each time in order to use it. Why bother.
You must live in the Pittsburgh area or similar. Many years ago I was looking for a job in the P'burgh area. If I didn't have those dumb certs nobody wanted to talk to me. So I ended up getting a job in Northern VA, working for a network equipment manufacturer (very heavy into ATM for LAN's before it faded) as a tech support engineer in the engineering group...the last troubleshooting before editing code. I still have no certs and have a better job than I could ever get in P'burgh with the certs.
Which is too bad because I'd love to live there.
Go to college. If you want certs, get them too. But do the certs as icing on the cake. Get the cake from college. The best lessons you will learn in college will most likely be outside of your classes, but a few things from classes will be useful years later also. You will not be able to say that about the certs.
Actually, I'd say it sounds exactly like peoples' cynicism to Wikipedia.
Some time after Thanksgiving (4th Thursday in November for us Yanks) I discovered that several of my transfers from my TiVO to my TiVOToGo PC fails after 1-5 Megabytes downloaded. Nothing works. The problem is in the TiVO software, not TiVOToGo. Therefore, the problem exists in the Macintosh version also. If you try using the TiVO web interface, the problem exists. The problem has lasted for over 6 weeks now, and TiVO seems to pretend that the problem is trivial or doesn't exist.
So if you Mac folks download this, be warned that you may have transfer problems, and that it is not necessarily a bug in the new Mac software.
Didn't even take a week!
2 72268
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=212152&cid=17
I agree that this is mostly user error, but if there are enough recalls, or even worse, lawsuits about "design flaws" in the Wii, Nintendo will yank this off the market VERY quickly. I REALLY don't want to see that happen. This is a truly new way of playing games, one in which kids, parents and grandparents can play together without any of them feeling dumb not knowing which strange combination of buttons to push to get an obscure move. Nintendo has really done something good here, so protecting it from the idiots is necessary.
Gloves don't have to be ambidextrous...sell them in pairs, like the nunchucks(sp) now.
As for the straps being enough...how many here play raquetball? The raquets have straps that everyone knows to use, but I have still thrown an occasional raquet when the STRAP slipped off my wrist. Perhaps the best thing they can do is, as suggested by others, make a rubberized grip (like a raquet), and make the strap longer (yes, longer) and tell people to "spin" the wiimote to twist the strap to a loose/tight fit, like a racquet.
...until they nuke their TV from orbit.
Nintendo needs to rethink the Wiimote. While I think that it's just stupid for people to not use the straps (you wouldn't be able to throw the wiimote if you strapped it down), it seems that people are truly becoming immersed in the games, even the ones with inferior graphics, so much so that they start treating their moves like the real thing.
I see a solution is to create Wiimote gloves to keep the controller on the body. And another idea is to create Wiimote ankle controllers. This way games can be created that monitor feet movement (dance, dance revolution kinda thing). Then a new genre can start using game consoles...exercise videos! Imagine it...Jane Fonda's workout video game that could monitor your movements, tell you what you're doing right and wrong, monitor your heart rate (sensor in the glove), estimate calorie burning, save the game and keep a history, and draw charts of the history.
There are issues with the glove (how to remap all the buttons and the trigger), and it may take away from the tactile feel of holding something in your hand, but the safety issue would be solved. Well, except for people smashing into furniture.
I read the list about things code doesn't do in real life. The one about text not making noise when it is typed on the keyboard struck me that the one making the list is just a kid. Anyone who has used a real VT100 terminal, or a clone of such (remember Wyse terminals???) had a keyboard with a very quiet touch...so quiet that people were uneasy about typing on it, so they added an artificial key click on the keyboard, with a volume control. Every key pressed made a very short beep, at the same time it appeared on the screen.
And the part about the Gibson in Hackers being a 3D city and having a problem with it just means this guy has no imagination. Anyone remember the movie Disclosure? There was a "cutting edge" operating system being rumored to be developed in real life that was a 3D world that people walked around in and interacted with files, etc in a virtual reality. That metaphor was used in several movies. How else can non-geeks understand anything about what we geeks do without clear visuals? It's called artistic license.
What bothered be about movies is when they substitute one thing for another. For example, in Tron, when Flynn gets "lasered" back into the real world, the printer starts printing. The printer was a daisy-wheel printer, and it made sounds like a dot matrix printer.
Oh well. Lighten up!
CV? Don't know that. I graduated in '84. Wrote the code in about '83, maybe '82.
This student put up a device (banner) that emitted electromagnetic radiation (reflected sunlight) onto school property. The School Board stole the electromagnetic radiation (read the banner). Arrest them and charge them for a federal crime.
The only way this analogy fails is that the student isn't "renting" someone else's bandwidth, and reading the banner doesn't deprive the student of any bandwidth.
Hey, gotta find geeky relevance somehow.
Oh yeah. I saw a friend write a space invaders game in the built-in BASIC, so I proceeded to learn how and wrote one myself. That was a neat trick since the TRS-80 was too slow to do real-time games without assembly code, but it worked well. That was pretty cool at the time.
With a friend I built and wrote an IM client that worked between two TRS-80 model I computers. We "networked" them together by connecting the tape drives between each other (needed an amplifier), and cross connected the "send" and "receive". Then we wrote software that accepted input, sent it across the tape drive, then listened for a message from the tape drive.
It worked well, but of course was very slow.
Then there's the joystick-controlled typewriter...but that wasn't as cool.
These are very good examples of what I meant when I asked before...
When does an "addiction" become just a new way of life?
But, but, but...there ALREADY is a Windows Tax.
Just try to buy a PC without Windows installed on it. If you are even able to do it, you won't pay any less for the PC than if Windows were installed on it. That's the Windows Tax. Calling it the Linux tax is just being redundant.
*shakes head* They are pulling an Intel.
What do you bet there will be an uproar and Sony will be forced to acquiesce and replace them for anyone who asks.
Right now, if you call in and say you have a problem, Sony will say "prove it". So if you don't convince them yours is broken, you don't get a replacement.
I'm glad I don't have one.
Here is where one artist stands on this issue.
a ndprofile.songLyrics&friendid=90827837&songid=2315 4269/
o d/
http://collect.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=b
It's interesting that the Internet and all it entails is responsible for the success of the latest album (the first one of 12 to debut in the top 10).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straight_Outta_Lynwo
...are doomed to repeat it. This seems to be Microsoft's slogan. Microsoft has a very long memory which is built into their business plan. They count on everyone else forgetting, and those that don't get tied up in litigation so long they no longer exist, give up, or dilute their case so much that it doesn't matter.
I have *NO* sympathy for McAfee or Symantec. I can't stand either product. But I want control over the software I use. I don't want ANYONE to dictate what I use. Browser: FireFox. Firewall: ZoneAlarm. Antivirus: Avast or AVG. Antispyware: AdAware and Spybot S&D. None of those are Microsoft products. Once MS forces the world to switch to Vista (by refusing to sell anything else to vendors and *STILL* no game developers making their games available for Linux...and forget about Cedega) there will be no choice. If Vista refuses to allow Avast or AVG or ZoneAlarm or perhaps AdAware or Spybot S&D to install, that's when I am forced to dual boot XP and Linux, and hope that drivers exist.
As for Microsoft being up to their old tricks, here's a list for those short of memory: Netscape, Stacker, Norton Disc Doctor, Norton Defragmenter, Quicken, WordPerfect, Lotus 123, Ami Pro, Harvard Graphics, DesqView. For the last few, Microsoft isn't the only reason it failed. Quicken still exists because a judge didn't allow Microsoft to purchase Intuit back when MS couldn't complete. I'm sure I'm forgetting some others.
So yes, McAfee and Symantec *DO* have a reason to worry, but the only reason I care is because other smaller vendors and their software will stop working once Vista is released.
I have a Dell e1705. It is a great machine, but I use it as a desktop replacement, not a laptop. It is very nice to be sitting in my living room chair with a "hospital swingarm desk" (bought at OfficeMax) using this machine. I could not do that with a 17" widescreen 1900x1200, keyboard and touchpad attached to a PC on the floor...the monitor would always try to fall off the desk. I can use this machine in a much smaller space than a normal desktop machine. But I would not try to use it on an airplane or subway (or underground if I were in Britain).
It is very nice to be able to pick the machine up, move it to the kitchen, use it there, and move it back later. I could *NEVER* do that with a desktop machine without dismantling it. For one thing, there are too many pieces to move...the e1705 only has two pieces to move, and with the battery, I can unplug the power and move it too without powering down. The best thing about it is being able to conveniently take a fully-powered machine to a friend's house (think LAN party, but I don't use it like that).
The Dell 2010 is really a "briefcase PC" (I like that term...thanks). It folds up and closes with a handle just like a briefcase. It probably couldn't be used on my swingarm desk, but it still could be used in less space than a desktop, can move all in one piece, and unplug for short periods of time, and can move to others' houses. Trying to use this on the Underground is just silly. This machine is "this generation's" luggable.
This is a question my wife and I have been bantering about for a few weeks now...
Exactly when does an "addiction" become just a new way of life?
Televisions used to be the whizbang new tech that everyone wanted to have. Eventually enough people had one that the word "addiction" started being used. Today, every home has three, and nobody calls the TV addictive anymore...certainly not comparing watching TV to alcoholism. It has just become a way of life for normal people.
The same can be said for telephones, cars, etc. The Internet is *NO DIFFERENT*. How would any of us react today if we didn't have a car to get back an forth to work or to go visit friends/relatives (those of us who have one that is!)? We would get anxious, angry, uncertain, look for other ways, etc. I'd bet the symptoms would be similar to the dead battery in a Blackberry, yet nobody calls driving a car to be as addictive as alcoholism. In fact, quite the opposite.
So use PartImage. It is available on RIPLinuX, SystemRescueCD, Knoppix Live CD and many others. Use dd to save the MBR, sfdisk to save the partition, and partimage on all the partitions. This is pretty much what g4u does. I haven't figured out how to get LVM's to work with this, but it will work with Windows and Linux partitions. Like Ghost, the image is intended to be restored to the original hardware, but can be moved to other hardware if you're willing to put up with the headaches of reinstalling some stuff afterward (device drivers, etc) after reboot.
I use this on all my PC's at home, and it works great. I use a bootable CD, but if you set up PXE booting, you can schedule your PC to backup at specific times. Individual file restoration is not possible nor are incremental backups, however.
Yup, my first was also a TRS-80 model 1 level 1 in May 1979. It had about 3.5K of usable RAM. In two weeks I outgrew it and upgraded to a Level 2 machine with 16K usable RAM. The level 1 had a cassette interface running at 250 baud, the level 2 had 500 baud. My machine had an "unlocked" cassette port which meant that it could open and close (1 and 0) faster than 500 baud, making it great for bringing SOUND to the machine. What a concept.
It WAS a Z-80 CPU running at 1.78MHZ (I think). The screen resolution was 128x48, monochrome, and was memory mapped from address 15360 to 16383. The graphics were mapped to the upper 128 ASCII codes, or you could use the SET and RESET BASIC commands (0 to 127, 0 to 47). My favorite games on it were Duelin' Droids, Asylum II, and Galaxy Invasion.
However, in early 1981 there was buzz in all the magazines about how IBM was going to change the world, and while my friends and I hated to admit it (there was HUGE brand loyalty back then), we knew it would happen. And it did, but it took the IBM XT (add a hard drive), and the AT (80286, 8MHZ) to really make it happen. Then compaq built the first legal clone (the courts IBM used to sue them said so), and soon there was no other PC out there until that woman threw the hammer through the screen at the Super Bowl, and the navy commander built a sprite-based very cheap PC that many people bought.
I can't believe I still remember those memory addresses.
Telecom companies have been using DC distribution systems for DECADES because they don't have to lose energy converting back and forth between AC and DC. It's about time the computer industry is catching on.
There are job titles for the jack-of-all-trades type...Professional Services, Consultant, System Integrator, and informal titles such as guru, subject matter expert, generalist, visionary. These people tend to know much about many things, and know how to research what they don't know. They aren't afraid to say they don't know something, and to roll up their sleeves and get dirty reconfiguring the guts of machinery.
It's been my experience that there is a need for someone like that, and they get paid enough...not the highest, but definitely not the lowest either. Now, if one of these guru's gets an MBA too, AND they learn how to integrate the two fields, then they REALLY have something.
This thing happens every few years. There are a few years of growth in the PC industry, then doom and gloom for a year or two. Why? 'cause lots of people buy PC's and don't need another for a few years. Then we hear news reports about high tech is dying....again. Next year there will be news reports saying that analysts are forecasting a boom for the PC market in 2008 (maybe Christmas 2007).