...every new version of laptops they also seek to decrease over all weight. If they wanted to, they would build ten lb laptops with very long battery life, because they could fit in much bigger batteries of newer design, etc, but then people would complain they were too heavy. Marketing catch 22, which will sell you the most laptops with the least number of complaints? People will always want more features, more powerful cpu, more wireless do dads, etc and expect it to be lighter as well. There has to be a tradeoff someplace. Personally, I'm with you on the longer battery life, I wouldn't care if the laptop was a couple lbs heavier if that couple lbs went to a whopper robust battery (or batteries), and also if they would standardize (within the industry I mean) on some generic battery design config. But most people buy new laptops by small weight and slim design as a major consumer point of interest, so there ya go.
...is coming from, but there are still millions of us out here with zero broadband. Millions, all over the planet. The broadband industry is only interested in competing in markets where they can hit thousands of people in a relatively small area, if that area has hundreds or just dozens of potential customers, nope, they aren't interested at all, there's no good tech way to do it, there's no way to make any money with any of the tech out there now, so there it sits and will continue to sit. I see their point really. I don't like it but I see it. We can't ALL live within two miles of a big phone box. If you live 3 miles away, sorry charlie no dsl for YOU! And cable! HAHAHAHAH! People waited 20 years for cable and just went to hell with you guys and got satellite tv dishes. And no, some 20 dollar "wifi" and a pringles can ain't cutting it either unless you live in some flat desert with no trees or hills in the way, so that's out too, don't even wanna hear it, that's junk science.
And no, saying that millions and millions and millions more people need to just up and move into "your" megaplex urban area where you have six competing choices of broadband is not a rational option, so I don't want to hear that either, it's *absurd*, it's the same as the lame retarded doofuses who say we can ALL ride "mass transportation" to work,it just ain't gonna happen because it ain't practical. You can technically ride your moped from new jersey to california, that don't mean it's a practical good idea to do that all the time. Same with the wifi broadband schemes, cool for starbucks, don't try to foist it off as some automagical rural area broadband solution.
So, in that sense, yes, a LOT of web pages now suck pretty bad from being coded for broadband connections only and wicked almost new fast machines with the latest video cards, etc, etc, designed so that you have to be on that big fat closed monopoly bogus "operating to heist your wallet system".
S-O-O obviously on them little do dad gadgets it has to be even worse than that. I don't own one but I can guess what most pages must look like on them dinky screens and low powered devices. I can re-late. My biggest pet peeve you see all the time is even with images off to speed things up all you see on some "fancy" web page might besome blobs of color, no alt text links. I mean, how hard is that to do? Is that now too much to ask of some so called self appointed web "masters"? That and so called "style sheets". I call them cascading sheets with no style, looks like abstract art a lot of places, not a web page. Probably looks wonderful on that webmasters home box, too bad it sucks for 50% of the folks out there. Probably a good idea, too bad it appears it's too hard to pull off adequately, maybe time to rethink that concept?? Is there some alternative way to do what you are trying to do, some way that actually works? I don't know but surfing around just tons of pages look just horrid, severe overlapping text and floating crap interspersed with other floating crap. I've had to pull source a lot of times just to read some page. Oh ya, I really want to go back there, oh ya really makes me want to buy your crap too or paypal donate to your page. Uh huh.
Ya, the article makes a point that is valid. No one is suggesting to go back to the 90s with design, but is there some reason that the earlier designs of just being able to actually read the dang content and go to the next link easily can't be incorporated into modern design? If you are such a fantastic web "master", is it too much to ask for you to do that easy low res version, give folks a freeking choice? You claim it's very easy, it's the old way to do things, why you learned it in the womb it was that easy and you are such a leet master now, so it should only take you like 5 seconds tops with your leet coding skills to do that if, well, *if* you are really a web "master" that is.
Is it really too much to ask for your advertised and indexed on google open to the public web page to just be
the problem with all these drm things, and digital content in general, is future access. If I buy a book, I will always be able to read that book. Once it gets more mechanized than that, useability starts to drop, you become dependent on a static hardware/software config with zero guarantees that you'll be able to access the content at some future date. We already have tons of older software out there that is getting harder to access as machines change.
Our media in the past you were able to upgrade, for instance, I was personally able to go from vinyl or over the air analog to reel to reel, had to skip 8 track, then to cassette. On to CD but some of them only look like Cd's. Storing on hard drives, OK, what file system and what operating system can read it in the future once your older stuff wears out, which it will.
Vids went from super 8 to VHS (never bothered with laser disk) and now just left it there, haven't bothered to digitize any old stuff I have, seems a right hassle but I know it's doable, just got annoyed with it, even though this is considered somewhat easy. The forced upgrades are a PITA for your OLDER stuff. Static pictures, same deal, have boxes of old photos,Cost some for the equipment and film and developing, etc, 'the industry" made their money from that, the mark I eyeballs still work, after that, nope, pretty much a bogus task to try and store them electronically now.
For newly produced media, it doesn't matter, it's designed for that, but once you drop coin on it, by two generations down the road it's a hassle. Now add in DRM and that's it, the design is to lock you out of your own stuff, stuff you bought from them in the first place in most instances
At least with non DRM you have a chance of upgrading your content to a format you can still use, you can probably follow along with hardware upgrades, but you don't have (much of) that option with heavily DRMed stuff,short of immediately "breaking the law". They are forcing you to rebuy the content in the new format, of which it appears the industry wants a new version of every few years now.
Sorry, just not going to purchase the same song over and over again because the industry wants me to do that. Not going to re buy a movie I bought on VHS just to view it on the new laser optical uber dvd/hd/hologram VS 7.3 of the future. Nope, sorry, this has gotten to be annoying.
If they don't care if I can re transfer my stuff to the new hardware and it's made relatively easy to do that, swell, but once you force/lock me into a hardware/software scheme with ZERO guarantee of future upgradability and use I just ain't buying it, literally or figuratively. The industry basically lost me in the 90's, I just almost completely stopped buying electronic media.
Price/format/bogus restrictions,ongoing never ending payola and industry illegalities and scandals, etc all combined to a big fat NO from me. That stuff just ain't worth it. The content itself isn't worth what they ask for it. Maybe to some hollywood or NYC doofus making a minimum of 150 grand a year on up 15-20$ for a CD or DVD is chump change, but it's not to me. And then they want me to REBUY IT AGAIN five years or three years down the road with the new shiny format?
I have so much just stopped listening to music or watching movies it ain't funny. When I was growing up I dropped serious folding money on those sniveling weasly lying congress bribing millionaires, but not any more I don't. I don't support closed-monopoly OS jerk companies, nor do I support "infoentertaintainment media" that has as it's primary goal to just keep gouging my wallet. I don't rent cars, I buy them. I don't rent my furniture I buy it. I don't rent my books I buy them. I don't rent my clothes I buy them. I can resell, modify, exchange, trade, swap any or all of that stuff. If I want to yank the chrysler motor out of the jeep and drop in a ford motor I can do that. They are MINE after I buy them and I am not going to rebuy
Here's some speculation on the subject. No idea what's being done now in the black budget arena. I would also imagine that if such and such is being done they would for sure try to obfuscate any occurrences, to shift the blame and notice as it were. "Why these droughts are all man made pollution and sun activity and whales spout and"...when maybe they are doing something else for a long term political goal? I dunnoo...just a-wondering. My deceased uncle the spook told me they were doing it pretty heavy in the 60's though, stuff like trying to intensify hurricanes to hit cuba with more force, etc. I can't prove it, just what he told me in confidence, which I held until after his passing.
I think it's safe to say, though, there's probably as much manufactured "science" as there is manufactured "news".
People have been trying for years to get full information out of government for world war two era information, for example. It's only recently that a lot of the "Operation paperclip" information is coming out, some of the more detailed stuff anyway. The USS Liberty attack was another one I remember, they kept the real information quite hidden for a long time. How about obvious coup information like the JFK assassination? A lot of that is still sealed. And what is happening now is that they can just re-classify something as secret based on a pretty loose definition of allegedly protecting privacy and/or it's necessary for "law enforcement" secrecy, which is so loose as to make the FOIA almost useless. Or just mumble the word "terrorism" and that seems to cover most anything they want. Like people on this "no fly list", what's up with that? If people on this list are actual criminals, then charge them, don't have secret "lists", that's just bogus and dangerous.
Basically the government might give with one clenched fist, and take back with a team of mules pulling. The National Security Archives are one group of folks constantly struggling with the layers of governmental coverups. It's ongoing and pretty telling. They are having mixed results, some good finds, then a lot of what they are calling "over classification and pseudo classification" still existing. And then the problem becomes getting the information out to joey and janey citizen and voter, the "news" only mostly covers current, people have just been conditioned to accept todays fairy tales as "data and fact", over and over again. Then years later the real story comes out, by then it's too late to influence elections, etc. Look at the finally revealed data on the "Tonkin Gulf attack" that was the primary "lawful" reason for the Viet Nam war. They have (relatively historically recently)finally and quietly admitted it was an invention, but years too late to make it matter for most purposes.
So, in part I agree, some of what the government does needs to be kept secret, but it appears quite a bit is still overzealously kept hidden, primarily to protect the guilty-of-corruption-and-malfeasance aspects of government.
The anthrax attack caused passage of the Patriot Act, which was stalled in the senate at the time (kinda). They rushed it through, zillion pages, none of them cretins who voted for it even read it. The stuff used was US dot mil brand biological war prepped cooties. Should be sorta obvious what's going on.
but you are correct on "spontaniety" and such like, and relative ease of assymetrical warfare. And it's fairly telling that since then there have been zero attacks despite how many dozen warnings of impending attacks and code whatever color "alerts" and protestations for years there were 'terrorist sleeper cells" hanging about. Them boys been real asleep it appears......
And they still haven't finished the lawsuits filed by some government whistleblowing agents who got warned off investigating after they started getting some real evidence, embarrasing evidence that pointed upstream to white guys in dark suits. Again, sorta obvious what's going on. And the 9-11 whitewash committee, pretty funny if it wasn't serious.
I think it's all right to say it, it's been a pretty spiffy coup d'etat. Just a little smoother than your typical third world coup, that's all, lot more media sound bites and slick advertiseoganda pieces on the newzzzzz.
....what they do is illegal as well then. Their reporters take pictures and don't bother to secure copyright licenses from whomever got photographed, or for reproduced images of the buildings in the background, etc, in many cases, same as all other news businesses. They quote people and don't secure the copyright license to that persons "speech", their "creation". What's really the big difference? This is how news is done, google puts up pages on the "news", with links and a very short intro to the story quoted, as if the news itself was a "news story". Near as I can tell it is 100% fair use. I expect the court to dismiss the claims. I think AFP is just trying to shakedown google to purchase content, like they sell to online and print guys and broadcasters. Now if Google reproduced the entire thing and called it it's own, that would be a different story, they should pay for it, but it's not, so it isn't, and they therefore don't.
....and I was talking about what I was aware of local to me, check my original reply title. These guys have and operate an 802.11b service roughly 4 miles as the crow flies from me, yet I can't get it here. Wonder why that is? It's inside this theoretical 6 mile area. Oh hills and trees, what I mentioned. I would need to slap a 300 foot tower over there to get it, or install a dozen APs on hilltops at other folks properties and figure out the power to run them. I call that impractical. All I was doing was telling the questioner what the dudes here found out about real-world limitations to using that tech, it's line of sight and there shouldn't be much in the way or it won't work. Your antenna has to see-straight line- the other antenna or be so close it doesn't matter. If there's nothing in the way and it's close enough-sure! Go for it! I was just throwing out one of the options that is a known quantity and works for doing much longer ranges and with more obstructions, if it might be applicable in his situation, which I don't know, not there to eyeball it, that six miles might be real flat or have a few large mesas in it with half the folks living on one side or the other. Maybe the low power stuff will work, if it don't, canopy is another tech to look at. Now me personally if I couldn't get even dialup-no internet at all- I would just go ahead and get satellite service, expensive as it is and limited. In the meantime I'll just wait until canopy gets here or one of the wired companies decides there's a market. I'm 1.5 miles too far for dsl, so that's out. No cable around here, so everyone bought a satellite tv system, even though there's cable in town, they didn't think there was much of a market 20 years ago or something so they never ran any but the very lucrative runs. So there ya go. Those folks in the article sound like they got it even worse, so I wouldn't want to tease them and offer some near toy very low power system that barely might work or not and the hardware might be obsolete next year anyway as they go through the alphabet with 802.11 "standards". It's good stuff for some applications but if it was really all that great the nation outside of the urban areas would be running it now, and hardly anyone is except for it's original design use-home and inter-office networking. There have been some deployments of it, but it is still way more an urban phenomenon to use it as an ISP. That's the whole reason they are developing wimax and putting up more satellites, they need something that works better.
You are agreeing with me in a way. I DID say make it easy for this *everyone* guy to have a distro. Look at distrowatch, every-freekin-day there's some new "distros" being "developed" based on Debian, because people want their "own" version of computing reality, but then they all need "community support" and "paypal" contributions. It's the same dang wheel is being reinvented constantly, and there's no absolute need for that if it was taken to the next logical step. So I am saying just admit that this is apparently what a lot of people want, and rethink how it's done, just make it wicked mucho easier simpler to "roll your own" for anyone who wants that. Joe Blow wants mostly every game in existence and runs the newest heavy video stuff, swell, mash a few choice buttons, he downloads or gets shipped 8exactly that*. suzy schmoo wants a ton of biz apps and it has to be uber secure and have all sorts of encryption and whatnot, poof, she got it. ma and Pa six pack want an educational deal for the kids and some light gaming and casual web surfing, poof, they enter the fields, make their choices and it gets spit out, exactly what they want, no more, no less. That's something no one else is doing, not any of the big guys making money at it that I mentioned. It could be the way to make this Linux OS thing really take off on the consumer desktop. And if debian don't want to do it, there's maybe some other folks who could see the potential here. I bet quite a few (million) people would be willing to pop ten or 20 bucks for an OS they KNEW 100% in advance would be exactly what they wanted, would work flawlessly right out of the box, and would be guaranteed to work on the hardware they got, without having a ton of kruft in the install they got absolutely no need or desire for. Just a biz and developer model of doing this I haven't seen really discussed yet, like I said "something different".
You have to put one on top of every single hill between you and the next signal. It's line of sight, remember? then what, cut down a million trees in the way as well? And those hills, where's the power coming from? And who owns all those hills and would you have to cut them a check for access? I run solar, I know exactly what it costs, your talking another grand minimum per access point, and you would need hundreds of them to blanket just a piece of a rural county if there's a lot of hills and trees in the way, or erect a ton of giant towers, also expensive and tedious.
Naw, 802.11x was designed for close range and like those "starbucks" you city guys (if you are, I don't know) go hang out at. Out in the rural areas it's a completely different ball game. These guys I'm talking about have *already* been running 802.11 for a few years now, commercially, just it only hits a limited clientele and the range is dismally short and they want to be the first people to offer everyone else some broadband alround here, because no one else has even attempted it. Doing it with the short range stuff is either wickedly expensive, OR leaves out thousands of people that can't get it. We already have that problem, we _can not_ get broadband. No cable, no dsl, no nuthin except satellite and even that is an expensive buggy limited PITA. If it was practical and possible to do it real cheap and have it good and available to thousands of potential customers they would have jumped on it, but it just *ain't* practical for all situations out there. It's one thing to say "stick up some x-hundreds more access points" quite another to fund that and pull it off, when you only need one or two of the designed for longer range points to hit potentially thousands of people. That's why they decided on it. Heck, they had VCs laughing at them when they even mentioned 802.11, because the money guys know what might work and turn a profit and what won't, especially since the dot bomb years.
I know what you are saying about propietary this or that, well, even 802.11 is propietary in a way, you MUST follow the dictates of the FCC, it can only be extremely low power, on freqs that suck for penetrating foliage, etc,, and that's just that, combo of engineering and laws. And it sucks for useful range in a lot of situations people face, like around here, conditions that would apply over buhzillions of square miles in the US right now. So there's not a lot of alternatives out there. If you got one, some cheaper easier and more open way to provide broadband over a huge area in hills and trees, let's see a link to this miracle tech, I'd be interested in it.
...the first serious effort to install wireless (not counting the expensive and limited cellphone guys) is being done using motorola canopy tech. Last I talked to them they were putting it up two weeks ago so I don't know the status yet. I have no other information on it other than the guys doing it decided after a lot of looking that it would work the best for the long distance and hills and trees around here. They were running 802.11 at a truckstop, but the range was extremely limited, basically the parking lot and a little more. They wanted something better and *now*, not wait for wimax or whatever other blimp in the sky scheme is coming, and 802.11xx just don't cut the mustard without quite a few access points. I have no idea what it costs or the hardware requirements, but that should be easy enough to find out at motorola's site. If it works and I can get broadband from those guys, they get my loot. There's been no offers from anyone else for any broadband around here, not even lowest common denominator xDSL. With that said, two different additional satellite providers are scheduled to start offering services soon, so there will be some competition there as well, but that's later this summer last I checked on that.
...just looking at it, to be more of a "base platform" from which people build their own customised distros. This in fact might be an actual model for a future LinuxOS,(OSes in general I mean really) if no standard GNU/LinuxOS ever evolves, just make it incredibly easy to select what sort of computing experience you want, mash a few buttons, answer a few questions about hardware, whatever and etc, and your custom distro gets created, you then download it burn it and install it. People don't really "run" an OS, they want to "run" some applications. They want to just go do stuff with their computer, not really futz with it constantly. Well, I mean the 99% of the other people on the planet. You know, "them" guys.
Anyway, if you look at it that way, it's neither way behind the times or bleeding edge, it's just a big ole pile of apps and kernels that you have access to. Maybe they should just skip the different versions, let Apt sort it out when people go to build their own, make it a remasters dream system instead of trying to be a stock classic distro "OS". Do something different than what MS and Apple and Sun are doing. Make the personalised "your computer" be the primary focus, along with the "easy" part.
Service and parts are *enough* of a profit center that the big companies have been fighting to keep specs from the independents, couple of bills in congress right now trying to change that very thing. They also fought after market parts sales but lost that one. Not sure any place else, but around here the dealers service bays are always packed, and they get 60-80 clams an hour plus parts for half a dozen to a dozen mechs full time. I'd say it's somewhat profitable for them.
Although I am fully aware that the real profit is in the paper work shuffling financing,(like GMAC, etc) although past few years that's been dropping as well due to low interest rates. I really don't care either, I always thought it was pretty usurious, I mostly have always paid cash for late model used myself. Never liked financing, thought it was a rip. Whenever you see a humongous paper work shuffling business making the cover the biz mags, and they want your money...well, usually you are getting creamed pretty hard, else those boys wouldn't be *rich as snot*. I think that's a good rule of thumb to go by, to see where your cash goes-or stays, heh!
As to fuel prices, two data points to keep in mind, part of gasoline price now is a stealth tax we pay by maintaining such a huge military presence in the middle east. The other point is to the economy as a whole, the 60's were the transition period from the united states moving from being a net oil exporter to importer, with the result of the beginnings of the trade deficits that are now so far beyond reason, combined with the declared debt, that there's no rational hope of paying them off short of defaulting or just running the presses. That 20 cents may be equivalent adjusted for just inflation, but not when you take the other points into the scenario. Figure how much more that 20 cents was worth to the economy when it stayed home, rather than being exported. And figure what the true cost is if you add in the military over expenditures needed to insure oil supply. So, throw another buck (conversationally speaking, I would have to look up the actual numbers, call it x-large) on the pump price per gal to pay for the military involved in the "disputed oil producing areas", and you might get closer to a more accurate price then, just hid inside "income" taxes and what is lost to the macro economy by exportation of dollars.
It was pretty funny being in detroit back then, intergalactic HQ of gearheads and v8 monsters, and be arguing for better mileage cars and better engineering for reliability. Tell ya, I made the maytag repairman look like a party animal, it was *lonely* out there.
Another weird point, but the cars themselves. It used to be, getting back to financing, that 12 or 18 months was common, very common. What is it now, 60 months or something? Are cars really 5 times better? I don't see it, 5 times more breakble gadgets in them mostly. A lot of tech improbvements, but quite a lot of rube goldberg crapola bolted on too, cars come pre riced now.
More dollar stuff to get back to comparing 20 cents then and whatever it is now. Home mortgages, used to be 10 years was normal, now it's 30 years or unlimited, with perpetual interest payments schemes. People actually sign them things! That tells me a lot about the economy as a whole and the status of this dollar and what it is really worth. So, I really don't think we can even compare the "dollar" any more, it's different, and the dollar I had back then was either silver backed paper or real silver, it wasn't a bank's IOU debt "note".
Different world now really. and following the econo newz, looks like a heap of foreign nations are getting ready to finally wean themselves of filtering their economic reality through those debt notes. next few years should be real interesting, heck, next few months should be too, depending on how they jump with iran and syria.
Think I'll stockpile some more of that adjusted for inflation still cheap gas, gone up a quarter around here the past two weeks.....
I make most bears look like drunken lotto winners in vegas:)
Thanks for the knowledgeable reply, appreciate it.
Side issue but I would *really* like to see is a true "open source only" good quality browser, gecko based or otherwise, and as soon as posssible, and here's why. I enjoy the works and fruits of the labor of all the devs, but I would like it much better if some fork of moz was being seriously developed soley for open source OSes and not closed source, starting with either of the advanced browsers they have, either FF or the suite browser (which I like better at this time). Anyway, I have long thought that them developing for MS was a long term strategic bad decision. I understand completely what some of the arguments are for doing that, I just don't agree with them at all. And I think you'll/we'll see soon "why", after MS releases IE7. Moz has given them some breathing space and with opera has allowed them to develop at their leisure, knowing that when they release it untold billions of people will fairly rapidly download and upgrade, and quite a few still XP running folks will then switch back to IE most likely, and the remaining 90% who haven't left IE now anyway will just go to the next version. It's been a free temporary crutch on the part of moz to a multi hundreds of billions of dollars corp that won't even kiss them in the morning, if ya follow my drift.
The old adage, lie down with the dogs, get up with the fleas sort of fits.
I'm not a dev just a browser leech and a very occassional bug submitter,and as such I feel quite awkward in offering advice... but still,I've thought about it quite a bit and I think it's something that needs to be addressed and fairly soon before they get bit. I doubt it will happen though, still too much what to me is short sighted false euphoria over "taking share away" from MS and IE.
Imagine this scenario, over just the past year. What if...there had been no moz suite or FF for people using windowes to go to when all those nasty exploits hit? Suppose the only alternative to them to get a better browser was to also get a better OS? Suppose MS had to actually stay "stuck" with what they had and even the more techhi of their users (the only ones really switching to moz or FF anyway) had to be doubly forced to look for some alternatives? With FF and suite being handy, they had little in the way of any painful decisions to make, it was a 'crutch", completely letting MS off the hook in that regard. And who paid for that, either money or time and skull sweat? Looks like MoFo paid. And who really got rewarded for all that effort? MS got rewarded, as it allowed people to stick with what they had.
Anyway, well see soon enough if I am right. IE is down to roughly 90% by most benchmarks, a rough average. We'll see if it doesn't shoot back up after the next version of IE hits. I am guessing it will, in fact I'll call it right now, back to 95% within 4-5 months of release, but am prepared for some crow pie obviously, just like to see what happens. I like the guessing game actually,a most fun hobby. Observe/collate/analyse/extrapolate.
I've heard that argument and I just don't buy it. GM never made a serious effort to sell them those cars, not for one second. A limited lease program is not developing and selling a car. Do they only lease vettes? Or can you buy them? Do they only lease x,y or z model, or can you actually buy one? See the difference?
I think because it worked so well (the Ev1 was an oustanding car actually according to all reports and owners anecdotals I have read) and they realised that solar PV and other tech was coming on strong that soon people wouldn't *need* to actually buy gasoline for a lot of purposes and driving niches. Being car guys they are also oil guys,this is just long standing tradition, hence, they came up with "hybrids", the design that will insure that people stay tied to the pump instead of plugged in to the array on the garage roof that they can actually own and get paid off 100%. And once this hybrid novelty wears off, they will be selling you their hydrogen from their hydrogen stations. This is just so obvious.
Big business really doesn't like the idea of you not stopping to "fill er up" when it comes to your ride or have to drop tons on "service" or send them a check monthly like with your "power bill", they are so used to that concept and it's so entrenched into their ideas of economics (your money needs to be their money as quickly as possible with no options for you), that anything else they will more or less *sabotage*. They made all this PR noise with the EV1,got some nice tax dodges out of it, kept "the greenies" sorta shutup for a few years, then they dumped it once those dodges were played out. And that ten year parts dodge is a scam, they could have provided parts, one of the great features of those cars turned out to be they didn't break much anyway, another negative feature from a sellers POV. And they don't seem to have any problem none whatsoever a-tall providing parts for the other hundreds of models they sell, but that one, no-o-o-, they couldn't do that, because they didn't sell it, had "too low of adoption numbers". Well shazzam, I just wonder why that is? "It's not for sale only leased in miniscule numbers in a very few places so gee whizz we didn't sell any so we have to crush the rest because we can't make the spare parts because not enough sold.err". Spot the recursive loop yet? C'mon, this was an obvious scamola.
BTW, I worked for GM too for one year many moons ago in the 60's. I was arguing to both rank and file and what management I could stop for a few that the Japanese would be over in a few/several years and take our lunch money because they were "getting it" on making more reliable and higher mileage cars. Understand this was way before any "OPEC" crisis or gas shortages or anything like that, I could just look at the few examples and see it coming from their understanding of tech and market long term. No one listened then because muscle cars were king and gas was under 20 cents. There's a ton of much smaller shops out there who have decent pure electrics, they work, just none of them have the clout or cash to go large scale production to make them even cheaper and actually offer them all over "for sale".
The first US prez to ride in ANY automobile rode in an "electric car", just something to think about.
http://www.linux-tutorial.info/modules.php?name= Tu torial&pageid=224
http://www.internet4classrooms.com/on-line2.htm
http://www.w3schools.com/html/
http://homeschooling.gomilpitas.com/explore/prog ra mming.htm
http://documentation.openoffice.org/manuals/
http://oooauthors.org/groups/authors/userguide2/ ca lc/
http://spreadsheets.about.com/
Also check out both gnome and kde documentation for running their various applications, should be enough there to get most any kids going. I would imagine that knoppix is your friend too, easy enough to burn all the spare copies you might need, no worries (not much) about borked installations to the schools hard drives. That's kde side, gnome side ubuntu will ship you free disks as well. Free and free is a dandy price. And dozens of other distros for free if you can download them on some broadband. Dialup you are sorta semi limited to the minis which don't have as many options, although fine in their own right.
Windows stuff, really no idea, on your own basically, although I imagine there are any number of tutorials for anything you might want at any level out there.
Will MoFo bless a true fork and be willing to totally give up the name Mozilla Suite? There's still a lot of interest in an integrated suite, starting with functionality (it has it) and with resource conservation (it's there). On the face of it it makes no sense to have to run two apps (browser & mail) with two engines running to get both active, when one engine will do it for both, and has been doing this job just swell all this time.
We had this at technocrat.net a little while ago so I read some on it. They *are* working on doing it with software, it's just much more difficult(according to them). It was easier and they could get a product out there sooner doing it with dedicated hardware. The inventor is a long time IBM guy who has a ton of decent inventions to his credit. He started with the necessity, then worked on it as a tangent from videocamera "steady cam" tech.
sitting right here on my desk. Has internal nicads, you can also put replaceable batteries, is a flashlight and a radio with am/fm. Has some solar cells integrated with the body, just leave it in a sunny spot in front of a window, keeps it charged. It also has a small crank on the end, has an internal dynamo so you can charge it that way as well, and to top it off, has an external 6VDC jack in. man, you got some options with the power there! One of the better gadgets I ever bought. All it lacks is the bulb is incandescent, I should see about making it LED sometime. Label on it says "Craig Marathon"
...that people hitting distrowatch are interested in trying out new stuff for fun,. or are dissatisfied with whatever they are currently running. However, people who are satisifed with what they have, would have not as much interest in going window shopping, hence, wouldn't be going over to distrowatch.
..was that they are finally really really taking memory management seriously. I am coincidently just today downloading xfce stuff because I just want something better that can run on my older machines. I've been using gnome DE and apps almost exclusively since I first started using linux, but after the last release that I have I realised that this wasn't going to be addressed,the amount of memory required along with usability and stability, then they dropped that spatial nonsense on us as well. Sigh. I'll try it again, not this one but the next release, but that's about it, either they remember millions of us are still on dialup (zero option where I live) and not running brand new machines, or they don't care.
...is this an *exact* copy down to everything, or is it similar looking and functioning? Where exactly is the dividing line with the laws? I was throwing out the cola example because it's analogous and most everyone has seen it. Does Mac have a trademark with the word shuffle? Does mac have an exclusive patent on having a music player using a flash drive in a small portable form factor? I honestly don't know exactly where they draw the line, like so far and no further before it becomes a "legal" counterfeit item. I mean, it's a real Sorny! A Panaphonik!
I don't know any of those things, but I really don't care either, not that much anyway in this exact situation here, because it's a minuscule example of a much larger problem.. I fully expect that we will continue to see clones from asia, everything from small electronic gadgets all the way to cars and planes and ships and you name it, That's one of their prime businesses is just making knock offs, and because they have been doing it for decades, and the US hasn't banned imports from there yet, or banned outsourcing, or done much of anything with IP laws other than to harass little guys in the US*,and to make quad trillions for 1% of the population while dragging the nation into a debt that just cannot be paid off and trashing the dollar, well, the obvious conclusion is that they are ignoring it on purpose more or less, and I expect it to continue.
*Yes I know there have been some token busts of clone copycatters once in awhile, I read the news too, and it also hasn't slowed them down one bit, close one clone factory, ten more go up in their place, and the tariffs and taxes keep being skewed in favor of cloned crap in, hard to export out. And shoot, where is the "real" iPod made anyway? I wouldn't even consider it a US product if you got down to it. They happen to have corporate HQ in California,/shrugs. I've grown very cynical of manufactured items and labelling and who owns what with "IP", I just don't care much anymore. I used to but it's been beat out of me with the reality stick and watching this government and our "business" leaders actions for a long long time. They aren't even close to loyal to us rank and file US workers, haven't been for an entire generation now(I'm a blue collar guy and personally felt the effects of both outsourced jobs (mine, twice) and insourced cheap illegal competition labor WAY before any of the white collar IT world had it on their radar screen),so, I feel zero loyalty to them. I'll take whatever I can get that's the cheapest and gets the job done, I can't keep up with who is stealing what "IP" from whom, not in this age of software patents and business process patents and being able to trademark common words like "windows" and whatnot. US big business asked for this situation, now they got it, sort of silly for them to cry foul over it. That's my opinion anyway. They "cloned" my labor over to asia for a nickel on the dollar, so I don't care if they get "cloned" themselves. I've bought quite a few Apple products in the past, still own most of them, but until they drop their prices down even more, I mean radically drop prices, I won't even consider buying any of their stuff, it's no longer worth it to me to pay a huge premium for about the same asian manufactured items. Ya, I'd like to have a decent new PPC based system, but I'm not going to pay their prices for it either, I'll "struggle by" with cheap commodity stuff, either computers or music players.
OK on the phones understood. The engines here I have seen for sale numerous places all seem to have around 30,000 miles on them. These are complete engines, block, head, etc. and allegedly are imported just like that, not pulls from cars imported here. That mileage claim could very well be a big fat lie, who knows, I've just seen them for sale like that, never bought one myself. Thanks for the reality on the Japnese inspection system, it certainly explains it a lot better.
Slashdot Mirror
...every new version of laptops they also seek to decrease over all weight. If they wanted to, they would build ten lb laptops with very long battery life, because they could fit in much bigger batteries of newer design, etc, but then people would complain they were too heavy. Marketing catch 22, which will sell you the most laptops with the least number of complaints? People will always want more features, more powerful cpu, more wireless do dads, etc and expect it to be lighter as well. There has to be a tradeoff someplace. Personally, I'm with you on the longer battery life, I wouldn't care if the laptop was a couple lbs heavier if that couple lbs went to a whopper robust battery (or batteries), and also if they would standardize (within the industry I mean) on some generic battery design config. But most people buy new laptops by small weight and slim design as a major consumer point of interest, so there ya go.
...is coming from, but there are still millions of us out here with zero broadband. Millions, all over the planet. The broadband industry is only interested in competing in markets where they can hit thousands of people in a relatively small area, if that area has hundreds or just dozens of potential customers, nope, they aren't interested at all, there's no good tech way to do it, there's no way to make any money with any of the tech out there now, so there it sits and will continue to sit. I see their point really. I don't like it but I see it. We can't ALL live within two miles of a big phone box. If you live 3 miles away, sorry charlie no dsl for YOU! And cable! HAHAHAHAH! People waited 20 years for cable and just went to hell with you guys and got satellite tv dishes. And no, some 20 dollar "wifi" and a pringles can ain't cutting it either unless you live in some flat desert with no trees or hills in the way, so that's out too, don't even wanna hear it, that's junk science.
And no, saying that millions and millions and millions more people need to just up and move into "your" megaplex urban area where you have six competing choices of broadband is not a rational option, so I don't want to hear that either, it's *absurd*, it's the same as the lame retarded doofuses who say we can ALL ride "mass transportation" to work,it just ain't gonna happen because it ain't practical. You can technically ride your moped from new jersey to california, that don't mean it's a practical good idea to do that all the time. Same with the wifi broadband schemes, cool for starbucks, don't try to foist it off as some automagical rural area broadband solution.
So, in that sense, yes, a LOT of web pages now suck pretty bad from being coded for broadband connections only and wicked almost new fast machines with the latest video cards, etc, etc, designed so that you have to be on that big fat closed monopoly bogus "operating to heist your wallet system".
S-O-O obviously on them little do dad gadgets it has to be even worse than that. I don't own one but I can guess what most pages must look like on them dinky screens and low powered devices. I can re-late. My biggest pet peeve you see all the time is even with images off to speed things up all you see on some "fancy" web page might besome blobs of color, no alt text links. I mean, how hard is that to do? Is that now too much to ask of some so called self appointed web "masters"? That and so called "style sheets". I call them cascading sheets with no style, looks like abstract art a lot of places, not a web page. Probably looks wonderful on that webmasters home box, too bad it sucks for 50% of the folks out there. Probably a good idea, too bad it appears it's too hard to pull off adequately, maybe time to rethink that concept?? Is there some alternative way to do what you are trying to do, some way that actually works? I don't know but surfing around just tons of pages look just horrid, severe overlapping text and floating crap interspersed with other floating crap. I've had to pull source a lot of times just to read some page. Oh ya, I really want to go back there, oh ya really makes me want to buy your crap too or paypal donate to your page. Uh huh.
Ya, the article makes a point that is valid. No one is suggesting to go back to the 90s with design, but is there some reason that the earlier designs of just being able to actually read the dang content and go to the next link easily can't be incorporated into modern design? If you are such a fantastic web "master", is it too much to ask for you to do that easy low res version, give folks a freeking choice? You claim it's very easy, it's the old way to do things, why you learned it in the womb it was that easy and you are such a leet master now, so it should only take you like 5 seconds tops with your leet coding skills to do that if, well, *if* you are really a web "master" that is.
Is it really too much to ask for your advertised and indexed on google open to the public web page to just be
the problem with all these drm things, and digital content in general, is future access. If I buy a book, I will always be able to read that book. Once it gets more mechanized than that, useability starts to drop, you become dependent on a static hardware/software config with zero guarantees that you'll be able to access the content at some future date. We already have tons of older software out there that is getting harder to access as machines change.
Our media in the past you were able to upgrade, for instance, I was personally able to go from vinyl or over the air analog to reel to reel, had to skip 8 track, then to cassette. On to CD but some of them only look like Cd's. Storing on hard drives, OK, what file system and what operating system can read it in the future once your older stuff wears out, which it will.
Vids went from super 8 to VHS (never bothered with laser disk) and now just left it there, haven't bothered to digitize any old stuff I have, seems a right hassle but I know it's doable, just got annoyed with it, even though this is considered somewhat easy. The forced upgrades are a PITA for your OLDER stuff. Static pictures, same deal, have boxes of old photos,Cost some for the equipment and film and developing, etc, 'the industry" made their money from that, the mark I eyeballs still work, after that, nope, pretty much a bogus task to try and store them electronically now.
For newly produced media, it doesn't matter, it's designed for that, but once you drop coin on it, by two generations down the road it's a hassle. Now add in DRM and that's it, the design is to lock you out of your own stuff, stuff you bought from them in the first place in most instances
At least with non DRM you have a chance of upgrading your content to a format you can still use, you can probably follow along with hardware upgrades, but you don't have (much of) that option with heavily DRMed stuff,short of immediately "breaking the law". They are forcing you to rebuy the content in the new format, of which it appears the industry wants a new version of every few years now.
Sorry, just not going to purchase the same song over and over again because the industry wants me to do that. Not going to re buy a movie I bought on VHS just to view it on the new laser optical uber dvd/hd/hologram VS 7.3 of the future. Nope, sorry, this has gotten to be annoying.
If they don't care if I can re transfer my stuff to the new hardware and it's made relatively easy to do that, swell, but once you force/lock me into a hardware/software scheme with ZERO guarantee of future upgradability and use I just ain't buying it, literally or figuratively. The industry basically lost me in the 90's, I just almost completely stopped buying electronic media.
Price/format/bogus restrictions,ongoing never ending payola and industry illegalities and scandals, etc all combined to a big fat NO from me. That stuff just ain't worth it. The content itself isn't worth what they ask for it. Maybe to some hollywood or NYC doofus making a minimum of 150 grand a year on up 15-20$ for a CD or DVD is chump change, but it's not to me. And then they want me to REBUY IT AGAIN five years or three years down the road with the new shiny format?
I have so much just stopped listening to music or watching movies it ain't funny. When I was growing up I dropped serious folding money on those sniveling weasly lying congress bribing millionaires, but not any more I don't. I don't support closed-monopoly OS jerk companies, nor do I support "infoentertaintainment media" that has as it's primary goal to just keep gouging my wallet. I don't rent cars, I buy them. I don't rent my furniture I buy it. I don't rent my books I buy them. I don't rent my clothes I buy them. I can resell, modify, exchange, trade, swap any or all of that stuff. If I want to yank the chrysler motor out of the jeep and drop in a ford motor I can do that. They are MINE after I buy them and I am not going to rebuy
I think it's safe to say, though, there's probably as much manufactured "science" as there is manufactured "news".
Basically the government might give with one clenched fist, and take back with a team of mules pulling. The National Security Archives are one group of folks constantly struggling with the layers of governmental coverups. It's ongoing and pretty telling. They are having mixed results, some good finds, then a lot of what they are calling "over classification and pseudo classification" still existing. And then the problem becomes getting the information out to joey and janey citizen and voter, the "news" only mostly covers current, people have just been conditioned to accept todays fairy tales as "data and fact", over and over again. Then years later the real story comes out, by then it's too late to influence elections, etc. Look at the finally revealed data on the "Tonkin Gulf attack" that was the primary "lawful" reason for the Viet Nam war. They have (relatively historically recently)finally and quietly admitted it was an invention, but years too late to make it matter for most purposes.
So, in part I agree, some of what the government does needs to be kept secret, but it appears quite a bit is still overzealously kept hidden, primarily to protect the guilty-of-corruption-and-malfeasance aspects of government.
The anthrax attack caused passage of the Patriot Act, which was stalled in the senate at the time (kinda). They rushed it through, zillion pages, none of them cretins who voted for it even read it. The stuff used was US dot mil brand biological war prepped cooties. Should be sorta obvious what's going on.
but you are correct on "spontaniety" and such like, and relative ease of assymetrical warfare. And it's fairly telling that since then there have been zero attacks despite how many dozen warnings of impending attacks and code whatever color "alerts" and protestations for years there were 'terrorist sleeper cells" hanging about. Them boys been real asleep it appears......
And they still haven't finished the lawsuits filed by some government whistleblowing agents who got warned off investigating after they started getting some real evidence, embarrasing evidence that pointed upstream to white guys in dark suits. Again, sorta obvious what's going on. And the 9-11 whitewash committee, pretty funny if it wasn't serious.
I think it's all right to say it, it's been a pretty spiffy coup d'etat. Just a little smoother than your typical third world coup, that's all, lot more media sound bites and slick advertiseoganda pieces on the newzzzzz.
....what they do is illegal as well then. Their reporters take pictures and don't bother to secure copyright licenses from whomever got photographed, or for reproduced images of the buildings in the background, etc, in many cases, same as all other news businesses. They quote people and don't secure the copyright license to that persons "speech", their "creation". What's really the big difference? This is how news is done, google puts up pages on the "news", with links and a very short intro to the story quoted, as if the news itself was a "news story". Near as I can tell it is 100% fair use. I expect the court to dismiss the claims. I think AFP is just trying to shakedown google to purchase content, like they sell to online and print guys and broadcasters. Now if Google reproduced the entire thing and called it it's own, that would be a different story, they should pay for it, but it's not, so it isn't, and they therefore don't.
....and I was talking about what I was aware of local to me, check my original reply title. These guys have and operate an 802.11b service roughly 4 miles as the crow flies from me, yet I can't get it here. Wonder why that is? It's inside this theoretical 6 mile area. Oh hills and trees, what I mentioned. I would need to slap a 300 foot tower over there to get it, or install a dozen APs on hilltops at other folks properties and figure out the power to run them. I call that impractical. All I was doing was telling the questioner what the dudes here found out about real-world limitations to using that tech, it's line of sight and there shouldn't be much in the way or it won't work. Your antenna has to see-straight line- the other antenna or be so close it doesn't matter. If there's nothing in the way and it's close enough-sure! Go for it! I was just throwing out one of the options that is a known quantity and works for doing much longer ranges and with more obstructions, if it might be applicable in his situation, which I don't know, not there to eyeball it, that six miles might be real flat or have a few large mesas in it with half the folks living on one side or the other. Maybe the low power stuff will work, if it don't, canopy is another tech to look at. Now me personally if I couldn't get even dialup-no internet at all- I would just go ahead and get satellite service, expensive as it is and limited. In the meantime I'll just wait until canopy gets here or one of the wired companies decides there's a market. I'm 1.5 miles too far for dsl, so that's out. No cable around here, so everyone bought a satellite tv system, even though there's cable in town, they didn't think there was much of a market 20 years ago or something so they never ran any but the very lucrative runs. So there ya go. Those folks in the article sound like they got it even worse, so I wouldn't want to tease them and offer some near toy very low power system that barely might work or not and the hardware might be obsolete next year anyway as they go through the alphabet with 802.11 "standards". It's good stuff for some applications but if it was really all that great the nation outside of the urban areas would be running it now, and hardly anyone is except for it's original design use-home and inter-office networking. There have been some deployments of it, but it is still way more an urban phenomenon to use it as an ISP. That's the whole reason they are developing wimax and putting up more satellites, they need something that works better.
You are agreeing with me in a way. I DID say make it easy for this *everyone* guy to have a distro. Look at distrowatch, every-freekin-day there's some new "distros" being "developed" based on Debian, because people want their "own" version of computing reality, but then they all need "community support" and "paypal" contributions. It's the same dang wheel is being reinvented constantly, and there's no absolute need for that if it was taken to the next logical step. So I am saying just admit that this is apparently what a lot of people want, and rethink how it's done, just make it wicked mucho easier simpler to "roll your own" for anyone who wants that. Joe Blow wants mostly every game in existence and runs the newest heavy video stuff, swell, mash a few choice buttons, he downloads or gets shipped 8exactly that*. suzy schmoo wants a ton of biz apps and it has to be uber secure and have all sorts of encryption and whatnot, poof, she got it. ma and Pa six pack want an educational deal for the kids and some light gaming and casual web surfing, poof, they enter the fields, make their choices and it gets spit out, exactly what they want, no more, no less. That's something no one else is doing, not any of the big guys making money at it that I mentioned. It could be the way to make this Linux OS thing really take off on the consumer desktop. And if debian don't want to do it, there's maybe some other folks who could see the potential here. I bet quite a few (million) people would be willing to pop ten or 20 bucks for an OS they KNEW 100% in advance would be exactly what they wanted, would work flawlessly right out of the box, and would be guaranteed to work on the hardware they got, without having a ton of kruft in the install they got absolutely no need or desire for. Just a biz and developer model of doing this I haven't seen really discussed yet, like I said "something different".
You have to put one on top of every single hill between you and the next signal. It's line of sight, remember? then what, cut down a million trees in the way as well? And those hills, where's the power coming from? And who owns all those hills and would you have to cut them a check for access? I run solar, I know exactly what it costs, your talking another grand minimum per access point, and you would need hundreds of them to blanket just a piece of a rural county if there's a lot of hills and trees in the way, or erect a ton of giant towers, also expensive and tedious.
Naw, 802.11x was designed for close range and like those "starbucks" you city guys (if you are, I don't know) go hang out at. Out in the rural areas it's a completely different ball game. These guys I'm talking about have *already* been running 802.11 for a few years now, commercially, just it only hits a limited clientele and the range is dismally short and they want to be the first people to offer everyone else some broadband alround here, because no one else has even attempted it. Doing it with the short range stuff is either wickedly expensive, OR leaves out thousands of people that can't get it. We already have that problem, we _can not_ get broadband. No cable, no dsl, no nuthin except satellite and even that is an expensive buggy limited PITA. If it was practical and possible to do it real cheap and have it good and available to thousands of potential customers they would have jumped on it, but it just *ain't* practical for all situations out there. It's one thing to say "stick up some x-hundreds more access points" quite another to fund that and pull it off, when you only need one or two of the designed for longer range points to hit potentially thousands of people. That's why they decided on it. Heck, they had VCs laughing at them when they even mentioned 802.11, because the money guys know what might work and turn a profit and what won't, especially since the dot bomb years.
I know what you are saying about propietary this or that, well, even 802.11 is propietary in a way, you MUST follow the dictates of the FCC, it can only be extremely low power, on freqs that suck for penetrating foliage, etc,, and that's just that, combo of engineering and laws. And it sucks for useful range in a lot of situations people face, like around here, conditions that would apply over buhzillions of square miles in the US right now. So there's not a lot of alternatives out there. If you got one, some cheaper easier and more open way to provide broadband over a huge area in hills and trees, let's see a link to this miracle tech, I'd be interested in it.
...the first serious effort to install wireless (not counting the expensive and limited cellphone guys) is being done using motorola canopy tech. Last I talked to them they were putting it up two weeks ago so I don't know the status yet. I have no other information on it other than the guys doing it decided after a lot of looking that it would work the best for the long distance and hills and trees around here. They were running 802.11 at a truckstop, but the range was extremely limited, basically the parking lot and a little more. They wanted something better and *now*, not wait for wimax or whatever other blimp in the sky scheme is coming, and 802.11xx just don't cut the mustard without quite a few access points. I have no idea what it costs or the hardware requirements, but that should be easy enough to find out at motorola's site. If it works and I can get broadband from those guys, they get my loot. There's been no offers from anyone else for any broadband around here, not even lowest common denominator xDSL. With that said, two different additional satellite providers are scheduled to start offering services soon, so there will be some competition there as well, but that's later this summer last I checked on that.
...just looking at it, to be more of a "base platform" from which people build their own customised distros. This in fact might be an actual model for a future LinuxOS,(OSes in general I mean really) if no standard GNU/LinuxOS ever evolves, just make it incredibly easy to select what sort of computing experience you want, mash a few buttons, answer a few questions about hardware, whatever and etc, and your custom distro gets created, you then download it burn it and install it. People don't really "run" an OS, they want to "run" some applications. They want to just go do stuff with their computer, not really futz with it constantly. Well, I mean the 99% of the other people on the planet. You know, "them" guys.
Anyway, if you look at it that way, it's neither way behind the times or bleeding edge, it's just a big ole pile of apps and kernels that you have access to. Maybe they should just skip the different versions, let Apt sort it out when people go to build their own, make it a remasters dream system instead of trying to be a stock classic distro "OS". Do something different than what MS and Apple and Sun are doing. Make the personalised "your computer" be the primary focus, along with the "easy" part.
Service and parts are *enough* of a profit center that the big companies have been fighting to keep specs from the independents, couple of bills in congress right now trying to change that very thing. They also fought after market parts sales but lost that one. Not sure any place else, but around here the dealers service bays are always packed, and they get 60-80 clams an hour plus parts for half a dozen to a dozen mechs full time. I'd say it's somewhat profitable for them.
:)
Although I am fully aware that the real profit is in the paper work shuffling financing,(like GMAC, etc) although past few years that's been dropping as well due to low interest rates. I really don't care either, I always thought it was pretty usurious, I mostly have always paid cash for late model used myself. Never liked financing, thought it was a rip. Whenever you see a humongous paper work shuffling business making the cover the biz mags, and they want your money...well, usually you are getting creamed pretty hard, else those boys wouldn't be *rich as snot*. I think that's a good rule of thumb to go by, to see where your cash goes-or stays, heh!
As to fuel prices, two data points to keep in mind, part of gasoline price now is a stealth tax we pay by maintaining such a huge military presence in the middle east. The other point is to the economy as a whole, the 60's were the transition period from the united states moving from being a net oil exporter to importer, with the result of the beginnings of the trade deficits that are now so far beyond reason, combined with the declared debt, that there's no rational hope of paying them off short of defaulting or just running the presses. That 20 cents may be equivalent adjusted for just inflation, but not when you take the other points into the scenario. Figure how much more that 20 cents was worth to the economy when it stayed home, rather than being exported. And figure what the true cost is if you add in the military over expenditures needed to insure oil supply. So, throw another buck (conversationally speaking, I would have to look up the actual numbers, call it x-large) on the pump price per gal to pay for the military involved in the "disputed oil producing areas", and you might get closer to a more accurate price then, just hid inside "income" taxes and what is lost to the macro economy by exportation of dollars.
It was pretty funny being in detroit back then, intergalactic HQ of gearheads and v8 monsters, and be arguing for better mileage cars and better engineering for reliability. Tell ya, I made the maytag repairman look like a party animal, it was *lonely* out there.
Another weird point, but the cars themselves. It used to be, getting back to financing, that 12 or 18 months was common, very common. What is it now, 60 months or something? Are cars really 5 times better? I don't see it, 5 times more breakble gadgets in them mostly. A lot of tech improbvements, but quite a lot of rube goldberg crapola bolted on too, cars come pre riced now.
More dollar stuff to get back to comparing 20 cents then and whatever it is now. Home mortgages, used to be 10 years was normal, now it's 30 years or unlimited, with perpetual interest payments schemes. People actually sign them things! That tells me a lot about the economy as a whole and the status of this dollar and what it is really worth. So, I really don't think we can even compare the "dollar" any more, it's different, and the dollar I had back then was either silver backed paper or real silver, it wasn't a bank's IOU debt "note".
Different world now really. and following the econo newz, looks like a heap of foreign nations are getting ready to finally wean themselves of filtering their economic reality through those debt notes. next few years should be real interesting, heck, next few months should be too, depending on how they jump with iran and syria.
Think I'll stockpile some more of that adjusted for inflation still cheap gas, gone up a quarter around here the past two weeks.....
I make most bears look like drunken lotto winners in vegas
Thanks for the knowledgeable reply, appreciate it.
Side issue but I would *really* like to see is a true "open source only" good quality browser, gecko based or otherwise, and as soon as posssible, and here's why. I enjoy the works and fruits of the labor of all the devs, but I would like it much better if some fork of moz was being seriously developed soley for open source OSes and not closed source, starting with either of the advanced browsers they have, either FF or the suite browser (which I like better at this time). Anyway, I have long thought that them developing for MS was a long term strategic bad decision. I understand completely what some of the arguments are for doing that, I just don't agree with them at all. And I think you'll/we'll see soon "why", after MS releases IE7. Moz has given them some breathing space and with opera has allowed them to develop at their leisure, knowing that when they release it untold billions of people will fairly rapidly download and upgrade, and quite a few still XP running folks will then switch back to IE most likely, and the remaining 90% who haven't left IE now anyway will just go to the next version. It's been a free temporary crutch on the part of moz to a multi hundreds of billions of dollars corp that won't even kiss them in the morning, if ya follow my drift.
The old adage, lie down with the dogs, get up with the fleas sort of fits.
I'm not a dev just a browser leech and a very occassional bug submitter,and as such I feel quite awkward in offering advice... but still,I've thought about it quite a bit and I think it's something that needs to be addressed and fairly soon before they get bit. I doubt it will happen though, still too much what to me is short sighted false euphoria over "taking share away" from MS and IE.
Imagine this scenario, over just the past year. What if...there had been no moz suite or FF for people using windowes to go to when all those nasty exploits hit? Suppose the only alternative to them to get a better browser was to also get a better OS? Suppose MS had to actually stay "stuck" with what they had and even the more techhi of their users (the only ones really switching to moz or FF anyway) had to be doubly forced to look for some alternatives? With FF and suite being handy, they had little in the way of any painful decisions to make, it was a 'crutch", completely letting MS off the hook in that regard. And who paid for that, either money or time and skull sweat? Looks like MoFo paid. And who really got rewarded for all that effort? MS got rewarded, as it allowed people to stick with what they had.
Anyway, well see soon enough if I am right. IE is down to roughly 90% by most benchmarks, a rough average. We'll see if it doesn't shoot back up after the next version of IE hits. I am guessing it will, in fact I'll call it right now, back to 95% within 4-5 months of release, but am prepared for some crow pie obviously, just like to see what happens. I like the guessing game actually,a most fun hobby. Observe/collate/analyse/extrapolate.
I've heard that argument and I just don't buy it. GM never made a serious effort to sell them those cars, not for one second. A limited lease program is not developing and selling a car. Do they only lease vettes? Or can you buy them? Do they only lease x,y or z model, or can you actually buy one? See the difference?
I think because it worked so well (the Ev1 was an oustanding car actually according to all reports and owners anecdotals I have read) and they realised that solar PV and other tech was coming on strong that soon people wouldn't *need* to actually buy gasoline for a lot of purposes and driving niches. Being car guys they are also oil guys,this is just long standing tradition, hence, they came up with "hybrids", the design that will insure that people stay tied to the pump instead of plugged in to the array on the garage roof that they can actually own and get paid off 100%. And once this hybrid novelty wears off, they will be selling you their hydrogen from their hydrogen stations. This is just so obvious.
Big business really doesn't like the idea of you not stopping to "fill er up" when it comes to your ride or have to drop tons on "service" or send them a check monthly like with your "power bill", they are so used to that concept and it's so entrenched into their ideas of economics (your money needs to be their money as quickly as possible with no options for you), that anything else they will more or less *sabotage*. They made all this PR noise with the EV1,got some nice tax dodges out of it, kept "the greenies" sorta shutup for a few years, then they dumped it once those dodges were played out. And that ten year parts dodge is a scam, they could have provided parts, one of the great features of those cars turned out to be they didn't break much anyway, another negative feature from a sellers POV. And they don't seem to have any problem none whatsoever a-tall providing parts for the other hundreds of models they sell, but that one, no-o-o-, they couldn't do that, because they didn't sell it, had "too low of adoption numbers". Well shazzam, I just wonder why that is? "It's not for sale only leased in miniscule numbers in a very few places so gee whizz we didn't sell any so we have to crush the rest because we can't make the spare parts because not enough sold.err". Spot the recursive loop yet? C'mon, this was an obvious scamola.
BTW, I worked for GM too for one year many moons ago in the 60's. I was arguing to both rank and file and what management I could stop for a few that the Japanese would be over in a few/several years and take our lunch money because they were "getting it" on making more reliable and higher mileage cars. Understand this was way before any "OPEC" crisis or gas shortages or anything like that, I could just look at the few examples and see it coming from their understanding of tech and market long term. No one listened then because muscle cars were king and gas was under 20 cents. There's a ton of much smaller shops out there who have decent pure electrics, they work, just none of them have the clout or cash to go large scale production to make them even cheaper and actually offer them all over "for sale".
The first US prez to ride in ANY automobile rode in an "electric car", just something to think about.
fix any spaces slashcode inserts
= Tu torial&pageid=224
g ra mming.htm
/ ca lc/
http://www.linux-tutorial.info/modules.php?name
http://www.internet4classrooms.com/on-line2.htm
http://www.w3schools.com/html/
http://homeschooling.gomilpitas.com/explore/pro
http://documentation.openoffice.org/manuals/
http://oooauthors.org/groups/authors/userguide2
http://spreadsheets.about.com/
Also check out both gnome and kde documentation for running their various applications, should be enough there to get most any kids going. I would imagine that knoppix is your friend too, easy enough to burn all the spare copies you might need, no worries (not much) about borked installations to the schools hard drives. That's kde side, gnome side ubuntu will ship you free disks as well. Free and free is a dandy price. And dozens of other distros for free if you can download them on some broadband. Dialup you are sorta semi limited to the minis which don't have as many options, although fine in their own right.
Windows stuff, really no idea, on your own basically, although I imagine there are any number of tutorials for anything you might want at any level out there.
HTH
...robotics now. Here's a recent example.
...if they had gone to the trouble to bug the ride, that the crib and the phone, etc would be bugged as well?
You might want to be looking more places than those small platters right now....
Will MoFo bless a true fork and be willing to totally give up the name Mozilla Suite? There's still a lot of interest in an integrated suite, starting with functionality (it has it) and with resource conservation (it's there). On the face of it it makes no sense to have to run two apps (browser & mail) with two engines running to get both active, when one engine will do it for both, and has been doing this job just swell all this time.
We had this at technocrat.net a little while ago so I read some on it. They *are* working on doing it with software, it's just much more difficult(according to them). It was easier and they could get a product out there sooner doing it with dedicated hardware. The inventor is a long time IBM guy who has a ton of decent inventions to his credit. He started with the necessity, then worked on it as a tangent from videocamera "steady cam" tech.
sitting right here on my desk. Has internal nicads, you can also put replaceable batteries, is a flashlight and a radio with am/fm. Has some solar cells integrated with the body, just leave it in a sunny spot in front of a window, keeps it charged. It also has a small crank on the end, has an internal dynamo so you can charge it that way as well, and to top it off, has an external 6VDC jack in. man, you got some options with the power there! One of the better gadgets I ever bought. All it lacks is the bulb is incandescent, I should see about making it LED sometime. Label on it says "Craig Marathon"
...that people hitting distrowatch are interested in trying out new stuff for fun,. or are dissatisfied with whatever they are currently running. However, people who are satisifed with what they have, would have not as much interest in going window shopping, hence, wouldn't be going over to distrowatch.
Just a SWAG.
..was that they are finally really really taking memory management seriously. I am coincidently just today downloading xfce stuff because I just want something better that can run on my older machines. I've been using gnome DE and apps almost exclusively since I first started using linux, but after the last release that I have I realised that this wasn't going to be addressed,the amount of memory required along with usability and stability, then they dropped that spatial nonsense on us as well. Sigh. I'll try it again, not this one but the next release, but that's about it, either they remember millions of us are still on dialup (zero option where I live) and not running brand new machines, or they don't care.
...is this an *exact* copy down to everything, or is it similar looking and functioning? Where exactly is the dividing line with the laws? I was throwing out the cola example because it's analogous and most everyone has seen it. Does Mac have a trademark with the word shuffle? Does mac have an exclusive patent on having a music player using a flash drive in a small portable form factor? I honestly don't know exactly where they draw the line, like so far and no further before it becomes a "legal" counterfeit item. I mean, it's a real Sorny! A Panaphonik!
/shrugs. I've grown very cynical of manufactured items and labelling and who owns what with "IP", I just don't care much anymore. I used to but it's been beat out of me with the reality stick and watching this government and our "business" leaders actions for a long long time. They aren't even close to loyal to us rank and file US workers, haven't been for an entire generation now(I'm a blue collar guy and personally felt the effects of both outsourced jobs (mine, twice) and insourced cheap illegal competition labor WAY before any of the white collar IT world had it on their radar screen),so, I feel zero loyalty to them. I'll take whatever I can get that's the cheapest and gets the job done, I can't keep up with who is stealing what "IP" from whom, not in this age of software patents and business process patents and being able to trademark common words like "windows" and whatnot. US big business asked for this situation, now they got it, sort of silly for them to cry foul over it. That's my opinion anyway. They "cloned" my labor over to asia for a nickel on the dollar, so I don't care if they get "cloned" themselves. I've bought quite a few Apple products in the past, still own most of them, but until they drop their prices down even more, I mean radically drop prices, I won't even consider buying any of their stuff, it's no longer worth it to me to pay a huge premium for about the same asian manufactured items. Ya, I'd like to have a decent new PPC based system, but I'm not going to pay their prices for it either, I'll "struggle by" with cheap commodity stuff, either computers or music players.
I don't know any of those things, but I really don't care either, not that much anyway in this exact situation here, because it's a minuscule example of a much larger problem.. I fully expect that we will continue to see clones from asia, everything from small electronic gadgets all the way to cars and planes and ships and you name it, That's one of their prime businesses is just making knock offs, and because they have been doing it for decades, and the US hasn't banned imports from there yet, or banned outsourcing, or done much of anything with IP laws other than to harass little guys in the US*,and to make quad trillions for 1% of the population while dragging the nation into a debt that just cannot be paid off and trashing the dollar, well, the obvious conclusion is that they are ignoring it on purpose more or less, and I expect it to continue.
*Yes I know there have been some token busts of clone copycatters once in awhile, I read the news too, and it also hasn't slowed them down one bit, close one clone factory, ten more go up in their place, and the tariffs and taxes keep being skewed in favor of cloned crap in, hard to export out. And shoot, where is the "real" iPod made anyway? I wouldn't even consider it a US product if you got down to it. They happen to have corporate HQ in California,
OK on the phones understood. The engines here I have seen for sale numerous places all seem to have around 30,000 miles on them. These are complete engines, block, head, etc. and allegedly are imported just like that, not pulls from cars imported here. That mileage claim could very well be a big fat lie, who knows, I've just seen them for sale like that, never bought one myself. Thanks for the reality on the Japnese inspection system, it certainly explains it a lot better.