Actually it works fine on Linux (as does anything with Cat5 ethernet) and is faster than Cable (in most cases anyway). Upload speeds can really blow away Comcast's cable modems. If they'd let me serve on port 80 like Comcast did, then I'd really have something. It is still great for SSH, FTP, Shoutcast and everything else.
"Point being, for most people, having a laptop is all about mobility..."
Boy I wish that were true. I'd like a 14" laptop with good battery life, but 14" were mostly phased out for 15" widescreen plus. Smaller are available for almost double the price, so no thanks. (What makes a smaller lcd pricier for christ sake?) No, people buy laptops as desktops these days, not for real mobility.
Maybe I'm missing the point here, but my HP laptop with the extra capacity battery can go for four hours (not gaming of course) on a charge (many of the low voltage laptops do much better than that). A fuel cell, which is disposable would get me 9. Why do I not care?
This may have been the old AMD, but didn't they just outsell Intel in quantity for two months straight (at least in the US market)? (Intel remains more profitable, of course.)
Seriously, these are not laptops! For anyone who does work on the train, plane or whatever, these machines are a fucking joke. Please people stop buying this crap. I miss reasonably priced 14" laptops!
While I hate giving this kind of argument any weight, just so you don't have any more excuses not to help those less fortunate (because you're clearly helping them by sitting on your ass) consider this charity...
I donated this year. I still doubt you would give what you could, even armed with this information. To some extent, I do feel that the poor in this country could (with a great deal of effort) turn things around for themselves for the most part. But outside of the West, I don't believe that's always the case.
I like sitting on my hands! That way it feels like someone else is solving the problem. Not a 100% solution, but a good 90% solution!;)
From someone with Verizon's FIOS Service,
on
Fiber Optic vs Copper
·
· Score: 4, Informative
here are the problems!
1. Monopoly CONTROL! Verizon isn't just trying to give you high speed Internet, they're trying completely take over your phone. Once your phone is on fibre, you can no longer switch local service providers (unless they allow that for some reason). The reason is that the fibre line is completely theirs and the old copper was financed by govt regulated monopoly. This is a return to the old Bell only days!
2. They do everything possible to cut off copper service to your house even if you tell them not to so as to make it nearly impossible to get a phone line from someone else! (Took me over a month!)
3. Why else would you want a copper phone? POWER OUTAGES! Copper phones usually have their own power and continue to work when the main power goes out. Fibre phones installations come with a battery pack that you have to maintain. They saw the phone can get 4 hours of talk time. Not so good if you run a company or home business on that line. Plus, the only thing that worked during 9/11 was the copper phone line (yes sometimes the lines were busy, but it still mostly worked as cell phones didn't). Internet was pretty slow at that point too. If having a working phone isn't important to you, you could always go with Vonage or whatever, but that's still relying on a single communications channel not to fail in a major emergency.
4. Verizon's customer service sucks. THey know they have you by the balls and once you have fibre, there is no going back!
That said, the internet service is pretty sweet. I've been running it since September and not a single burb since then. The 1.5 Mbs upstream speed is really nice too. So my advice is switch your local phone service to someone else and then get Verizon to do your Internet. That way they have to leave your copper phone lines in place. However, they just bought out MCI and the other local phone guys are pretty sucky so beware! Verizon is the next M$ watch out!
Technically not podcasts, my site beconnected.org has some MP3s worth hearing on sci/tech. Haven't worked on it in a while, but I think there is quite a bit of stuff to keep you busy.
I realize that some folks laugh at Word's grammar check, but at least it is there and it does help. (I also realzie that Slashdot doesn't care much about grammar anyway, but others in the world do.)
Honestly, I use both OO and Word for writing. I like OO's text prediction to help speed up the writing process and I use Word to get a 2nd opinion on spelling and grammar. I'd rather just use OO.
Well add grammar and fix Calc please. Startup time isn't that big of a problem to me.
Gates dropped out of his final year of Harvard. That's not something many of us can even attempt. It was also for a great opportunity. Besides I'd rather have a 4th year Harvard dropout working for me than a person who finished at Backwater Community College. Wouldn't you?
Yes I've done it and they run like crap. No offense to the great work of wine or codeweavers, but its not close to 100% compatible, which is what it would have to be for people to switch and go through the headaches.
I work at a news organization. What shocked me one day was that a guy coming out of college arrived at the building one day. He had a disk with an MS Works Word processor doc (not a Word doc). It was his resume and cover letter. For whatever reason, it wouldn't print on his computer w/ MS Word. So he came to our building looking worried. We have guards and metal detectors (this is Wash, DC) so he couldn't get in the building. I felt some pity that day, so I helped him get into the HR dept.
Frankly, I can't imagine going to a building on the deadline for a job app with only a disk on it thinking that would make a good impression. While the HR person could open and print the document for him, I asked him if he had at least tried to print it out with Openoffice (I don't know if it will open an MS Works doc myself, but it would be worth a shot). He looked at me like I was from outer space. I'm 30 and I can't believe what college grads don't know.
I wasn't required to take any CS/IT classes in college 10 years ago, but suprisingly, neither is anyone coming out of school today. China and India should be afraid... very afraid!
All I care is the upstream speed at this point. Right now I have roughly 1.5 Mbs with FiOS (which I recommend you looking at VERY carefully before calling Verizon to install it as they try to rip out your copper telephone lines). P2P rarely goes above 1 Mb up or down so what is the point of the additional bandwidth anyway. OTOH I would love more upstream bandwidth to host Shoutcast or whatever.
Slashdot Mirror
It's kind of sad that they're worse than bigcharts.com. Perhaps the flash graph is niftier than yahoo, but more useless than the old page.
As I've heard the free and clear Ogg format lowers battery life too.
Ummm, last I checked US cars were all alike too and most don't even offer a manual transmission anymore!
Actually it works fine on Linux (as does anything with Cat5 ethernet) and is faster than Cable (in most cases anyway). Upload speeds can really blow away Comcast's cable modems. If they'd let me serve on port 80 like Comcast did, then I'd really have something. It is still great for SSH, FTP, Shoutcast and everything else.
"Point being, for most people, having a laptop is all about mobility..."
Boy I wish that were true. I'd like a 14" laptop with good battery life, but 14" were mostly phased out for 15" widescreen plus. Smaller are available for almost double the price, so no thanks. (What makes a smaller lcd pricier for christ sake?) No, people buy laptops as desktops these days, not for real mobility.
Maybe I'm missing the point here, but my HP laptop with the extra capacity battery can go for four hours (not gaming of course) on a charge (many of the low voltage laptops do much better than that). A fuel cell, which is disposable would get me 9. Why do I not care?
That's cool and all, but I'll consider my life complete the day I score with Salma Hayek.
NO!! Short this stock!
This may have been the old AMD, but didn't they just outsell Intel in quantity for two months straight (at least in the US market)? (Intel remains more profitable, of course.)
Google Link
Seriously, these are not laptops! For anyone who does work on the train, plane or whatever, these machines are a fucking joke. Please people stop buying this crap. I miss reasonably priced 14" laptops!
Hmmm... it became taboo after the beginning of the Tang dynasty?
While I hate giving this kind of argument any weight, just so you don't have any more excuses not to help those less fortunate (because you're clearly helping them by sitting on your ass) consider this charity...
Heard of Heifer International?
I donated this year. I still doubt you would give what you could, even armed with this information. To some extent, I do feel that the poor in this country could (with a great deal of effort) turn things around for themselves for the most part. But outside of the West, I don't believe that's always the case.
Does this mean if I want a better Internet, I now really will have to go to AOL? NOOOOOOO!
I like sitting on my hands! That way it feels like someone else is solving the problem. Not a 100% solution, but a good 90% solution! ;)
here are the problems! 1. Monopoly CONTROL! Verizon isn't just trying to give you high speed Internet, they're trying completely take over your phone. Once your phone is on fibre, you can no longer switch local service providers (unless they allow that for some reason). The reason is that the fibre line is completely theirs and the old copper was financed by govt regulated monopoly. This is a return to the old Bell only days! 2. They do everything possible to cut off copper service to your house even if you tell them not to so as to make it nearly impossible to get a phone line from someone else! (Took me over a month!) 3. Why else would you want a copper phone? POWER OUTAGES! Copper phones usually have their own power and continue to work when the main power goes out. Fibre phones installations come with a battery pack that you have to maintain. They saw the phone can get 4 hours of talk time. Not so good if you run a company or home business on that line. Plus, the only thing that worked during 9/11 was the copper phone line (yes sometimes the lines were busy, but it still mostly worked as cell phones didn't). Internet was pretty slow at that point too. If having a working phone isn't important to you, you could always go with Vonage or whatever, but that's still relying on a single communications channel not to fail in a major emergency. 4. Verizon's customer service sucks. THey know they have you by the balls and once you have fibre, there is no going back! That said, the internet service is pretty sweet. I've been running it since September and not a single burb since then. The 1.5 Mbs upstream speed is really nice too. So my advice is switch your local phone service to someone else and then get Verizon to do your Internet. That way they have to leave your copper phone lines in place. However, they just bought out MCI and the other local phone guys are pretty sucky so beware! Verizon is the next M$ watch out!
Technically not podcasts, my site beconnected.org has some MP3s worth hearing on sci/tech. Haven't worked on it in a while, but I think there is quite a bit of stuff to keep you busy.
I realize that some folks laugh at Word's grammar check, but at least it is there and it does help. (I also realzie that Slashdot doesn't care much about grammar anyway, but others in the world do.) Honestly, I use both OO and Word for writing. I like OO's text prediction to help speed up the writing process and I use Word to get a 2nd opinion on spelling and grammar. I'd rather just use OO. Well add grammar and fix Calc please. Startup time isn't that big of a problem to me.
Yes and Apple was never going to go away from PPC either.
Gates dropped out of his final year of Harvard. That's not something many of us can even attempt. It was also for a great opportunity. Besides I'd rather have a 4th year Harvard dropout working for me than a person who finished at Backwater Community College. Wouldn't you?
Yes I've done it and they run like crap. No offense to the great work of wine or codeweavers, but its not close to 100% compatible, which is what it would have to be for people to switch and go through the headaches.
I work at a news organization. What shocked me one day was that a guy coming out of college arrived at the building one day. He had a disk with an MS Works Word processor doc (not a Word doc). It was his resume and cover letter. For whatever reason, it wouldn't print on his computer w/ MS Word. So he came to our building looking worried. We have guards and metal detectors (this is Wash, DC) so he couldn't get in the building. I felt some pity that day, so I helped him get into the HR dept.
Frankly, I can't imagine going to a building on the deadline for a job app with only a disk on it thinking that would make a good impression. While the HR person could open and print the document for him, I asked him if he had at least tried to print it out with Openoffice (I don't know if it will open an MS Works doc myself, but it would be worth a shot). He looked at me like I was from outer space. I'm 30 and I can't believe what college grads don't know.
I wasn't required to take any CS/IT classes in college 10 years ago, but suprisingly, neither is anyone coming out of school today. China and India should be afraid... very afraid!
All I care is the upstream speed at this point. Right now I have roughly 1.5 Mbs with FiOS (which I recommend you looking at VERY carefully before calling Verizon to install it as they try to rip out your copper telephone lines). P2P rarely goes above 1 Mb up or down so what is the point of the additional bandwidth anyway. OTOH I would love more upstream bandwidth to host Shoutcast or whatever.
I actually found Win ME much more reliable than 98. Then again, I gave up on 98 after the first release.
Geeze guys.
Wow I can't wait for my microwave to run 64bit code! Right now, nothing make more sense than Opteron for embedded work.