I subscribe as well. I can't wait for those 10.1 disks to show up in my mailbox!
For anyone curious, you sign up and it charges you $25 each time a new release comes out...about twice a year.
Thats a pretty damn good deal, and since I run Slackware on...4 machines, 5 if you count Splack, its a very very good deal. Thats like $5 a box;)
And of course, people buying Slackware who can afford to is what keeps it around for free download for everyone else. If it stops being financially viable, Slack might have to give it up, and I'd really hate that to happen!
vendors like EmperorLinux already do this.
Of course its really just Sony, HP, IBM, Dell or whatever laptops. But what they do is pre-install whatever flavor of linux you prefer, make sure that all of the laptops hardware is working in linux, and provide support afterwards if need be.
Its a little extra(not TOO much), and its pretty much the same as buying a windows laptop from an OEM...everything works out of the box.
actually, they do have their own network.
A lot of gov't facilities give workers two different computers on their desk: one for the public internet, one for their private one.
I guess it would be more difficult to build their own cell network.
it may not cost them very much to route that message, but it cost them to put up those towers. Cell phone co's are in an unenviable constant upgrade cycle. From CDMA to GSM, to whatever the next big thing is...they are always putting new stuff up. This is expensive, but if they don't they risk losing customers to the other guy that did.
Of course they still overcharge many things IMHO. Just explaining why the perceived cost of a service may not be the actual one.
again, I don't know of any carriers in my area(NE Ohio) that charge to RECEIVE SMS. Charges at all the carriers are only to send.
So your statement that "most" charge to receive is false, as I don't know a single one that does.
Sending them can rack up your bill pretty quick though.
i agree with you 100%. i just bought an old archos off a co-worker without a HD for $30. Pop in a 40GB laptop drive i had, and I've got one nice little mp3 player!
The Archos really had the right idea in a lot of ways: It's just one big FAT partition, and to change the firmware, all you have to do is put it in a folder in the top level directory with the right name. It shows up like any other USB drive in windows and linux...formatting and moving files to it in linux was as easy as mounting it. I've even considered making a 10GB or so Reiser partition strictly for data storage;)
Even better, because the thing is so hackable, there are several great pieces of 3rd party software out there. My favorite so far has been Rockboxhttp://www.rockbox.org/, which as a lot of tweaks, like extra battery life, resume, larger play list and battery support, etc.
And of course, it is incredibly easy to swap the drive out of this thing...newer players it seems like they really go out of their way to prevent anyone from upgrading...which stops me from even buying them!
we pay siilar fees here in America on any media sold, such as cassette tapes, CD-R's etc. and have for years and years. The difference is that the media cartels here have managed to negotiate deals with the gov't such that they get these fees AND can go after american citizens and companies legally to prevent them from using this media in any way they disaprove of.
having their cake and eating it too so to speak.
In a somewhat related note...
I am still waiting for a response from this company http://www.wildseed.com/ to respnd to my e-mail about their possible GPL violation. Its a Linux-based phone running a 2.4 kernel if i remember right. Lots of neat technology in it, I am actually intending to buy one when my plan is up next month. However, after a _lot_ of digging through their website, and a lot of googling, I have yet to come up with one mention of where to obtain the source for the parts of their code the GPL would pertain to. An e-mail sent several weeks ago has gone unanswered.
Perhaps you have the clout to get an answer from them? At the very least you seem to know the right way to deal with situations such as this.
Google buying Rio could only be a good thing for everyone else. Rio has always had some of the _worst_ software i've ever seen, not to mentioned horrendous support for it.
To be honest, the only way I've found my Rio player usable is using open source software:)
personally i think Slackware is a bit better for really learning. It doesn't have any of the fancy package management tools that other distros have, and while you do a lot of compiling in Gentoo, its ultimately not much harder than using RPM based tools in something like RH.
I don't feel like i learned much about Linux until i made the switch from RH to Slackware. It forced me to learn a LOT.
I actually worked at Best Buy once, and can verify that they are dishonest, deceitful, and encourage this behavior in its employees.
However, the service plan CAN work for you. I bought my first computer while working there, and bought the service plan because as an employyed I recieved a significant discount(I would never have bought it otherwise). Within a year my PC started randomly rebooting. So i took it into the store to be serviced.
Here is where I explain a few things: the plan doesn't say they immediately replace ANYTHING. the typical PC service says they will try to fix it, and if the item CANNOT BE FIXED, or requires fixing THREE TIMES, they will replace the item. If they still carry it, you get a new one. If they don't(this is often) you get store credit for the amount that you paid.
The in-store techs are not allowed to fix a single thing, even if they know how. They look to see that its really broke, and if it is they send it off to the "real" technicians center somewhere. In my case this left me without a computer for a month(very frustrating) before they finally decided it was unfixable. As far as i could tell it was just a corrupted hard drive(i believe that was their official report as well), so who knows why they couldn't fix it. I suggest their "real" techs are fairly low-paid and incompetant as well.
So I eventually got store credit for the full value of the system, because they no longer carried it. On top of that, I had a CD burner, video card, and ethernet card installed when i bought the thing(again i would never pay for the install if i didn't work there) and this meant they were covered under the service plan as well. So i recieved store credit for each one of those items to apply to a new pc! This was nice, because the technicians for some reason sent all three of those items back to me at home, they were all still in working order and are still in use to this day(4 years later!).
I went from a 700Mghz celeron to an AMD Ath-XP 1.5. Every other aspect of the system was considerably better than the old one. My monitor also went bad within that first year, and i went from 17" to 19", and with a flatter screen and better dot-pitch.
So in a nutshell, BB plans are really overpriced for what you normally get. But I personally got a very good deal out of it. I'll never buy one again though:)
Also, the are obligated(or at least where when i was there 4 years ago) to honor your PC service plan regardless of the manufacturers warranty. This was in fact a big selling point at the time, because other stores(Circuit City i believe) didn't start their plan until after the 1-year manufacturers one was over. BB drilled it into my head that our plans started the second you bought it. And i must say, in my case it did. Wheather or not knowing the people there made any difference, I can't say.
They also sell "product service plans" and "product replacement plans." The former costs more, but covers a LOT more, and involves service. The latter is just what it sounds like, but they only replace in the right circumstances. No product has both, one or the other is offered. PRP are typically offered on inexpensive items(cd burners, videocards, etc.) as well as their consumer electronics(dishwashers, etc.). The PSP is offered on PC's and Monitors, and a few other things.
I live in Ohio, so I am feeling very proud of my state right now for standing up to them.
once you go slack, you never go back.
i pay for it for the same reason(and because i like pretty boxed software), although i have a subscription so i am roughly giving him $50 a year in two $25 chunks. I alwyas have the new versions downloaded before i get the boxed one, but i like having it, and i like giving him $$$.
I believe they do have something setup with paypal where you can donate.
Also, don't think that Pat is making a killing. He devotes a LOT of time to this, and rememebr that a lot of peopledo NOT buy, because they don't...which is exactly why i do. People like us are keeping him going. Remember that hes got all sorts of costs incurred, that $40,00-400,000 is not just raw profit. Theres cds, pressing, labels, postage, and a billion other costs associated with running a business...and hes not the only one working there. So kudos to Pat for keeping at it all these years, and to all the people out there hosting Slackware mirrors as well!
call me naive, but i honestly didn't realize people pirated Linux software! Cedega is only like $5/month 3-month min if i recall...thats peanuts! If i was a gamer, I would pay that in a heartbeat. I gladly pay for my copies of Slackware, and have a short list of other Linux software I would like to buy. I feel dirty buying windows software. I feel warm and fuzzy paying for linux/OSS.
I guess this does mean that Linux is rapidly approacing MS in the marketplace...
thats EXACTLY how things are done at a university. there is no good reason everyone else shouldn't be treated the same way....college costs me a lot more than my internet at home does.
Generally, the only people really qualified to make good computer interfaces are software developers. The problem is, they're just too lazy to do it because UIs are boring. so, people do stupid things like put graphic artists in charge, when what they should be doing is offering free beer and unnecessary nudity as an incentive for quality coding.
Ironically, proving your point, here is a letter I received from my university yesterday:
"We regret to inform you that CSIS 3731 User Interface Design for the fall semester 2004 has been cancelled due to low enrollment."
Apparently there aren't any other students that realize someday they will probably be resposible for user interfaces of all sorts and sizes. But hey, thats just the icing, an afterthought, hardly important...not like its the only part of the program 99% of people will ever see....
All you need is to enable True Type Fonts. I know in Slackware this was an option on install. The majority of foundries out there make True Type fonts...not only am I able to use the thousands of TTF that I accumulated over the years on my graphics production machine(windows), there were a couple of helpful perl scripts on kde-look.org which enabled me to grab several thousand more.
The hard part for me has not been finding fonts that work in linux and getting them to work...its been deciding ones I actually want to use! Seriously, takes a while to parse a few thousand fonts!
I'm not sure how the font management in flux box is because i've never tried tweaking it much. However in KDE its fantastic...in fact, its better then Windows. It was something similar to Adobe Type Manager light built-in, whereas in Windows once just has to find the fonts directory and paste everything in by hand.
Gentoo has hands-down the least intuitive install process I've ever seen.
Anything that doesn't autoboot into an install process of one sort or another, and instead gives you cryptic messages of how exactly one might conceivably achieve an installation. I actually finished downloading Slackware CD's in the time it took me to figure out the Gentoo install.
As a newbie I found Slackware to be far easier to install than Gentoo...and for that matter, so -called "user-friendly" distros like SuSE and Red Hat.
agreed. I use Slackware for all of my workstations because I find it is most suited to that role for me. I'm a CS student, so I'm trying to learn all that I can...and I have learned a great deal more sicne switching from Red Hat to Slackware. I never really understood what was going on in the background before, because i latched onto the same GUI tools that I was used to using in Windows. That said, I found no shortage of throughough how-to's on how to configure things in Slackware, and once I learned how things were setup, I have consistently found Slackware EASIER to maintain then many other systems.
A full Slackware install still only takes 2-3GB, much more compact then other distros which are forced to distrute themselves on sets of DVD's. Again, I'm a student, so most of the hardware i've got is hand-me-downs...Slackware runs very well on my old p1's, p2's and p3's, without leaving out any of the features that I want. Heck I even use KDE as my window manager!:)
Slashdot Mirror
I subscribe as well. I can't wait for those 10.1 disks to show up in my mailbox! For anyone curious, you sign up and it charges you $25 each time a new release comes out...about twice a year. Thats a pretty damn good deal, and since I run Slackware on...4 machines, 5 if you count Splack, its a very very good deal. Thats like $5 a box ;)
And of course, people buying Slackware who can afford to is what keeps it around for free download for everyone else. If it stops being financially viable, Slack might have to give it up, and I'd really hate that to happen!
vendors like EmperorLinux already do this. Of course its really just Sony, HP, IBM, Dell or whatever laptops. But what they do is pre-install whatever flavor of linux you prefer, make sure that all of the laptops hardware is working in linux, and provide support afterwards if need be. Its a little extra(not TOO much), and its pretty much the same as buying a windows laptop from an OEM...everything works out of the box.
next gen palms _will_ be linux based...palmos6.
hows that working out for you? site says its very beta, no X11, etc. no 5500/5600 support either apparently.
this probably has something to do with the fact that palmos6 will be linux-based
actually, they do have their own network. A lot of gov't facilities give workers two different computers on their desk: one for the public internet, one for their private one. I guess it would be more difficult to build their own cell network.
it may not cost them very much to route that message, but it cost them to put up those towers. Cell phone co's are in an unenviable constant upgrade cycle. From CDMA to GSM, to whatever the next big thing is...they are always putting new stuff up. This is expensive, but if they don't they risk losing customers to the other guy that did. Of course they still overcharge many things IMHO. Just explaining why the perceived cost of a service may not be the actual one.
again, I don't know of any carriers in my area(NE Ohio) that charge to RECEIVE SMS. Charges at all the carriers are only to send. So your statement that "most" charge to receive is false, as I don't know a single one that does. Sending them can rack up your bill pretty quick though.
The Archos really had the right idea in a lot of ways: It's just one big FAT partition, and to change the firmware, all you have to do is put it in a folder in the top level directory with the right name. It shows up like any other USB drive in windows and linux...formatting and moving files to it in linux was as easy as mounting it. I've even considered making a 10GB or so Reiser partition strictly for data storage ;)
Even better, because the thing is so hackable, there are several great pieces of 3rd party software out there. My favorite so far has been Rockboxhttp://www.rockbox.org/, which as a lot of tweaks, like extra battery life, resume, larger play list and battery support, etc.
And of course, it is incredibly easy to swap the drive out of this thing...newer players it seems like they really go out of their way to prevent anyone from upgrading...which stops me from even buying them!
we pay siilar fees here in America on any media sold, such as cassette tapes, CD-R's etc. and have for years and years. The difference is that the media cartels here have managed to negotiate deals with the gov't such that they get these fees AND can go after american citizens and companies legally to prevent them from using this media in any way they disaprove of. having their cake and eating it too so to speak.
In a somewhat related note... I am still waiting for a response from this company http://www.wildseed.com/ to respnd to my e-mail about their possible GPL violation. Its a Linux-based phone running a 2.4 kernel if i remember right. Lots of neat technology in it, I am actually intending to buy one when my plan is up next month. However, after a _lot_ of digging through their website, and a lot of googling, I have yet to come up with one mention of where to obtain the source for the parts of their code the GPL would pertain to. An e-mail sent several weeks ago has gone unanswered. Perhaps you have the clout to get an answer from them? At the very least you seem to know the right way to deal with situations such as this.
Google buying Rio could only be a good thing for everyone else. Rio has always had some of the _worst_ software i've ever seen, not to mentioned horrendous support for it. To be honest, the only way I've found my Rio player usable is using open source software :)
you realize only the interface for XMMS is cloned from WinAmp, right? My understanding is that the underlying code is very, very different.
as does firefox .93/slackware10
personally i think Slackware is a bit better for really learning. It doesn't have any of the fancy package management tools that other distros have, and while you do a lot of compiling in Gentoo, its ultimately not much harder than using RPM based tools in something like RH.
I don't feel like i learned much about Linux until i made the switch from RH to Slackware. It forced me to learn a LOT.
I actually worked at Best Buy once, and can verify that they are dishonest, deceitful, and encourage this behavior in its employees. However, the service plan CAN work for you. I bought my first computer while working there, and bought the service plan because as an employyed I recieved a significant discount(I would never have bought it otherwise). Within a year my PC started randomly rebooting. So i took it into the store to be serviced. Here is where I explain a few things: the plan doesn't say they immediately replace ANYTHING. the typical PC service says they will try to fix it, and if the item CANNOT BE FIXED, or requires fixing THREE TIMES, they will replace the item. If they still carry it, you get a new one. If they don't(this is often) you get store credit for the amount that you paid. The in-store techs are not allowed to fix a single thing, even if they know how. They look to see that its really broke, and if it is they send it off to the "real" technicians center somewhere. In my case this left me without a computer for a month(very frustrating) before they finally decided it was unfixable. As far as i could tell it was just a corrupted hard drive(i believe that was their official report as well), so who knows why they couldn't fix it. I suggest their "real" techs are fairly low-paid and incompetant as well. So I eventually got store credit for the full value of the system, because they no longer carried it. On top of that, I had a CD burner, video card, and ethernet card installed when i bought the thing(again i would never pay for the install if i didn't work there) and this meant they were covered under the service plan as well. So i recieved store credit for each one of those items to apply to a new pc! This was nice, because the technicians for some reason sent all three of those items back to me at home, they were all still in working order and are still in use to this day(4 years later!). I went from a 700Mghz celeron to an AMD Ath-XP 1.5. Every other aspect of the system was considerably better than the old one. My monitor also went bad within that first year, and i went from 17" to 19", and with a flatter screen and better dot-pitch. So in a nutshell, BB plans are really overpriced for what you normally get. But I personally got a very good deal out of it. I'll never buy one again though :)
Also, the are obligated(or at least where when i was there 4 years ago) to honor your PC service plan regardless of the manufacturers warranty. This was in fact a big selling point at the time, because other stores(Circuit City i believe) didn't start their plan until after the 1-year manufacturers one was over. BB drilled it into my head that our plans started the second you bought it. And i must say, in my case it did. Wheather or not knowing the people there made any difference, I can't say.
They also sell "product service plans" and "product replacement plans." The former costs more, but covers a LOT more, and involves service. The latter is just what it sounds like, but they only replace in the right circumstances. No product has both, one or the other is offered. PRP are typically offered on inexpensive items(cd burners, videocards, etc.) as well as their consumer electronics(dishwashers, etc.). The PSP is offered on PC's and Monitors, and a few other things.
I live in Ohio, so I am feeling very proud of my state right now for standing up to them.
once you go slack, you never go back. i pay for it for the same reason(and because i like pretty boxed software), although i have a subscription so i am roughly giving him $50 a year in two $25 chunks. I alwyas have the new versions downloaded before i get the boxed one, but i like having it, and i like giving him $$$. I believe they do have something setup with paypal where you can donate. Also, don't think that Pat is making a killing. He devotes a LOT of time to this, and rememebr that a lot of peopledo NOT buy, because they don't...which is exactly why i do. People like us are keeping him going. Remember that hes got all sorts of costs incurred, that $40,00-400,000 is not just raw profit. Theres cds, pressing, labels, postage, and a billion other costs associated with running a business...and hes not the only one working there. So kudos to Pat for keeping at it all these years, and to all the people out there hosting Slackware mirrors as well!
call me naive, but i honestly didn't realize people pirated Linux software! Cedega is only like $5/month 3-month min if i recall...thats peanuts! If i was a gamer, I would pay that in a heartbeat. I gladly pay for my copies of Slackware, and have a short list of other Linux software I would like to buy. I feel dirty buying windows software. I feel warm and fuzzy paying for linux/OSS. I guess this does mean that Linux is rapidly approacing MS in the marketplace...
i use this on all my windows boxes as well. nice stuff.
thats EXACTLY how things are done at a university. there is no good reason everyone else shouldn't be treated the same way....college costs me a lot more than my internet at home does.
For that matter, KDE has got a lot of options as far as backgrounds if you like eyecandy.
Ironically, proving your point, here is a letter I received from my university yesterday:
"We regret to inform you that CSIS 3731 User Interface Design for the fall semester 2004 has been cancelled due to low enrollment."
Apparently there aren't any other students that realize someday they will probably be resposible for user interfaces of all sorts and sizes. But hey, thats just the icing, an afterthought, hardly important...not like its the only part of the program 99% of people will ever see....
All you need is to enable True Type Fonts. I know in Slackware this was an option on install. The majority of foundries out there make True Type fonts...not only am I able to use the thousands of TTF that I accumulated over the years on my graphics production machine(windows), there were a couple of helpful perl scripts on kde-look.org which enabled me to grab several thousand more.
The hard part for me has not been finding fonts that work in linux and getting them to work...its been deciding ones I actually want to use! Seriously, takes a while to parse a few thousand fonts!
I'm not sure how the font management in flux box is because i've never tried tweaking it much. However in KDE its fantastic...in fact, its better then Windows. It was something similar to Adobe Type Manager light built-in, whereas in Windows once just has to find the fonts directory and paste everything in by hand.
Anything that doesn't autoboot into an install process of one sort or another, and instead gives you cryptic messages of how exactly one might conceivably achieve an installation. I actually finished downloading Slackware CD's in the time it took me to figure out the Gentoo install.
As a newbie I found Slackware to be far easier to install than Gentoo...and for that matter, so -called "user-friendly" distros like SuSE and Red Hat.
A full Slackware install still only takes 2-3GB, much more compact then other distros which are forced to distrute themselves on sets of DVD's. Again, I'm a student, so most of the hardware i've got is hand-me-downs...Slackware runs very well on my old p1's, p2's and p3's, without leaving out any of the features that I want. Heck I even use KDE as my window manager! :)