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User: kavachameleon

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  1. It's a good first distro on Why Slackware Still Matters · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Slackware was my very first distro. After Slack, I tried suse and mandrake, but found that when I had problems with using the GUI or configuration tools, that the experience I had gained in Slack was my most useful tool in solving the problems. No, I'm no Linux guru. I use XP on my box for various reasons: particular software availability being the primary reason, and ease-of-use quite honestly being the second. I just don't have time to learn a new OS as well as I know Windows. I use the tool that works best for my situation. Frequently, this means OSS. Sometimes, it means Microsoft. Oh well. But anyway, just gauging from my own experience, Slackware definitely has a place, even for new Linux users.

  2. Re:Does that mean.. on New Material Harder Than Diamond · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Supply and demand has nothing to do with the diamond market. As I understand it, the prices are kept artificially high by the diamond cartels and their storehouses of stones.

  3. Diamonds =/= Diamonds? on New Material Harder Than Diamond · · Score: 1, Insightful

    Forgive my ignorance after Reading TFA... but this "harder than diamond" material is... made of diamonds! Seems like false advertising, though I get what they did.

  4. Ducting on Cooling Down Hot Processors · · Score: 4, Interesting

    When I first got my Prescott chip, it ran *way* too hot. Realized that the stock thermal pad was just acting as insulation, so I scraped it off and replaced it with Ceramique. It still ran warm, so I superglued a piece of 3" PVC pipe to my case fan. Now air blows right onto the processor area, and the CPU temps are great. I highly recommend the ducting. Cheap, easy, and oh-so-geeky.

  5. Re:I work in a thin client environment on Thin Client Solutions For Libraries? · · Score: 1

    I found the clients we use: Wyse 1200le

  6. I work in a thin client environment on Thin Client Solutions For Libraries? · · Score: 1

    I work in a lab using several thin clients (I believe they're WYSE brand). They work very well, except for when floppies are needed. Since the clients don't have them, there's a media machine connected to the network with its floppy drive mounted as a network drive. A lot of users don't understand this. Also, I've got to say... we tried using SuSE on it, and a lot of users flat out refused to use it. We're at a college, so we've got to provide something people will use, and so we went back to Windows 2000 and provided some thick clients running SuSE for those few that liked it. We're pretty happy, overall. It at least makes administration/security easier. The biggest godsend is the amount of noise in the lab is incredibly lessened compared to thick clients.

  7. Re:PDP 11/40 at 180 degrees F on Abused, But Working Hardware Stories? · · Score: 1

    Speaking of Wycliff... I believe that Larry Wall was going to work for them, but he developed food allergies in grad school. IIRC, they said Perl is a much bigger help than he would have been if he'd translated the Bible into another language.

  8. Re:Nothing on Abused, But Working Hardware Stories? · · Score: 1

    I dropped my cellphone into a snow bank whilst getting into my car. I proceeded to run over the phone both coming and going. Once I discovered this, I nearly cried. The screen didn't work, and the phone died as soon as I opened it. I took it up to my bedroom and wrapped it in blankets next to my heater. Two hours later, it worked just fine. Turns out the LCD just froze.

  9. Ham in Search and Rescue on Field Day 2004 · · Score: 2, Interesting

    The SAR (Search and Rescue) team my college runs uses Ham for most of our communications needs. It's actually a pretty sweet setup, and a joy of a thing to see. We set up a mobile communication station with very little notice that runs off marine batteries in the middle of nowhere and talks to half the state. We're thinking of connecting the search teams' GPS units to a small packet radio transmitter, which would broadcast back to the Strike Team Leader's laptop, instantly plotting their locations. The STL laptop would rebroadcast the packets back to the Operations Center at the campus.

    At least in New Mexico, Ham radio has saved countless lives.

    73 de KD5ZPL

  10. Re:ESR is just a zealot on ESR's Halloween XI -- Get the FUD · · Score: 1

    I've tried switching to Linux a couple of times. I'm dual-booted right now with SuSe and XP. However, every time I've switched, I've ended up going back to XP, mainly because I need Vegas for video editing, and it won't WINE. So yes, I'm a Windows user. But I'm also an Open Source user. I don't use Office or Internet Explorer. Thunderbird gets my mail. Cron manages my scheduling. I think that we should be focusing at least as much on users like this, users that are forced to use Windows (and the OS honestly isn't that bad if you're patched and firewalled. I've never had a blue screen and only a couple of kernel crashes *ever*).

  11. Re:sailing? on Wi-Fi Warsailing In The Netherlands · · Score: 4, Informative

    A sailboat (barring a motor) can't go straight upwind. A modern racing rig can get within a point or two, but most can't even get near that. Figure on 45 degrees off of the wind as maximum upwind performance. But anything else and she's good. Although it's interesting to notice that a straight downwind is not a sailboat's fastest point of sail.

  12. The entire archive is "coming soon" on TechTV.com RIP · · Score: 5, Informative
    If the poster had bothered to read the new site, they would have seen under the "what the tech?" box the following: "The past three months are available now. The entire archive is coming soon!".

    This seems fairly self-explanatory to me...

  13. Re:location location location on First-Ever Private Spaceport Nears Final Approval · · Score: 1

    How is this flamebait? It IS out in the middle of nowhere! It's between Bakersfield and Barstow...

  14. Re:location location location on First-Ever Private Spaceport Nears Final Approval · · Score: 1, Informative
    Yes.

    You've obviously never been there. It's way the hell out in the middle of no place.

  15. Really Cool Place on First-Ever Private Spaceport Nears Final Approval · · Score: 5, Informative

    The Mojave Airport is a really cool place... you drive by it and there's nothing but random planes, everything from jetliners to fighter jets. They're mostly an aircraft storage yard. Picture of their storage yard Link to their main site

  16. Re:Seeing as they like history...... on Linus Not The Father Of Linux, According to Report · · Score: 1

    Under the 1975 entry, it's clearly mentioned as BASIC. But under the sidebar, it clearly says "first".

  17. Re:Eudaemonia means on U of Chicago Scavenger Hunt List - 2004 · · Score: 1

    That's exactly what it means.

  18. Re:Eudaemonia means on U of Chicago Scavenger Hunt List - 2004 · · Score: 2, Funny

    Here's an example from the Greek: (Plato's Gorgias) Sôkratês: ou gar tout' ên eudaimonia, hôs eoike, kakou apallagê, alla tên archên mêde ktêsis. "Yes, for what we regarded as happiness, it seems, was not this relief from evil, but its non-acquisition at any time." So it seems then, that even Socrates knows that it's better to have never installed Windows at all then to have it and switch.

  19. Re:Eudaemonia means on U of Chicago Scavenger Hunt List - 2004 · · Score: 1

    Yeah, that definitely counts as eudaimon.

  20. Re:Eudaemonia means on U of Chicago Scavenger Hunt List - 2004 · · Score: 5, Informative

    Really, it means "Well-demoned". It can be lucky, happy, prosperous, or a couple of other things.

  21. Phone number on 1981 Personal Computer Catalog · · Score: 5, Informative

    The phone number given is now the phone number for Upperspace. They make CAD software.

  22. Re:It's the early Pentium 4 all over again. on Intel Prescott Released · · Score: 1

    I have one of those chips, you insensitive CLOD! Actually, it suits me just fine, and I don't have money for an upgrade. I also am running with RDRAM....

  23. A Step In The Right Direction on Internationalized Domain Names Coming Soon · · Score: 1

    Seriously, while a good portion of the Internet is English speaking, there's a need for this. Accents are notoriously hard to get into computer programs, and even some languages. For instance, ancient Greek. While this may elicit scorn and laughter, I do in fact need to type Ancient Greek into my browser and my word processor on a daily basis, and the Symbol font just won't cut it. Why? Because I need accents, both stress accents and pitch accents. Even Unicode can't really help me out. I'm glad someone's finally making a little bit of a step in the right direction, even though this probably won't help me at all.

  24. Re:OpenOffice.org Imitating MS? on Israeli Ministry of Commerce Picks OO.org Over MS · · Score: 2, Informative

    I meant in terms of plain features, but just so you know, I did your .DOC test with MS Word, and a 30 KB image saved into a 45 KB document. Mind you, that's still a little big, but nowhere near the MB you mention.

  25. OpenOffice.org Imitating MS? on Israeli Ministry of Commerce Picks OO.org Over MS · · Score: 1

    I have to say, my experience with OpenOffice.org has not been stellar. While I use it on occasion, it's always struck me as so horribly slow. It seems to me that we *dont* want to be imitating all the feature bloat and general crap that seems to hang on to MS Office like cheap wallpaper. Honestly, who really needs all the features in Word anyway? Reminds me of a caller on The Screensavers I saw once. He told Leo and Pat that he needed Word, and they (insightfully) asked: Do you need Word, or do you need a word processor? I think that's a question more people need to ask themselves.