Heh, a friend of mine said he was tired of Windows because his kids used their computer at home and were constantly getting it infected with malware and viruses. He knew I ran Fedora on my PC at work and asked me for the CD's. I knew that (IMHO) Fedora is not ready to be a drop-in replacement for windows in a "my grandmother" sort of way (my friend is pretty tech-savy, but I knew his wife and kids weren't).
I suggested Xandros and handed him an install CD. He took it home and installed it on his home PC. The next time I saw him he was raving about it. He said it did everything he needed it to do out of the box (they use a PS2 for gaming) and that he never had to download and compile a single program to get it working. He is now seriously trying to get it implemented on as many systems as he can where he works.
Xandros is truly the first Linux distro I've seen that I'd honestly feel comfortable handing a CD to my mom and having her install and run it (and I wouldn't even do that with a windows CD). Everything I've seen on it "just works" and installing new software is a simple as "select software from the list of categorized choices" -> enter admin password -> (wait, there is no step 3).
Now, I can apt-get/yum with the best of them and I frequently download source and compile myself. That's fine and dandy for me, but not for my mom. But even Microsoft doesn't come with a pretty comprehensive list of software that you can install with a click.
I haven't switched my Fedora desktop at work to Xandros yet (mostly due to lack of time and years worth of customization on it), but I'm seriously leaning in that direction.
The people that steer the metaphorical ship don't have any real idea of what goes on at the lower levels of their organization. Nor would they want to. If we run with this metaphor, they don't really want to know how the engine produces power or the detailed physics behind why a rudder turned 15 degrees one way turns the ship at a certain rate.
"Do you expect me to believe that a captain doesn't know every bolt, every weld aboard his ship?" General Serus, Galaxy Quest
Sorry, couldn't help myself.... Uhmm... carry on...
It sucks to introduce people to Firefox, have them all impressed and then get a call that they can't get through to their Wells Fargo account (if any IT people from Well Fargo are reading this, get a clue.
I am a Wells Fargo client and I do all my banking from my Mac at home (Safari and FireFox) or my Linux Box at work (FireFox). I have no problem with their site that changing the UserAgent doesn't fix. That being said, it does piss me off when sites require certaing 3rd-party technology to work (and yes, I consider ActiveX to be 3rd-party).
I think Firefox should have a plugin that allows Active X to run
I have to disagree here. The whole point is to get enough leverage by having people run non- "MS-tied-crap" to force companies and web-designers to use "universal" methods for accomplishing their goals. That being said, it would be nice if we could actually GET "universal" methods to work "universally". Just the other day, my web designer complained that the only truly cross-browser javascript he trusted to work in all browsers was warn() and maybe onclick(). Even then he wasn't 100% sure.
I don't mind using 3rd-party technology to "enhance" your site, but I'd better be able to navigate and perform all the basic functions on your site without flash, shockwave, javascript, and ActveX enabled. You want to add cool effects with flash? Great!, but don't do your menus in flash without having a fall-back method for basic navigation! The same goes for any such technology.
What needs to happen, is for the browser market to get so diverse that ALL browsers must be conscientious about accurately following standards and by the same token all web-sites/designers would be forced to actually USE those standards.
I have that problem all the time when I try to tell people that I listen to my iPod with decent Sony headphones instead of the little uncomfortable earbuds. They ask me which headphone, and I can never remember because they are named MDR-7506. WFT. I usually wind up saying "the ones Spielberg uses on set" which I'm not even sure is true anymore.
I've been running OS X since the early beta versions and I'm still stumbling across little things I never knew it could do.
Imagine my embarrassment when a PC-using friend of mine said the thing he liked about OS X that he wished he had for free on Windows was the "spell-check anywhere" option. I said "huh? What spell-check anywhere option?". He said, just right-click anywhere you can type and select the option to spell-check as you type".
I'll be damned. As someone who's first language is spelled completely phonetically, I have always been terrible with spelling in english. Now I have instant spell-checking in web-mail (and slashdot) and never have to pop a word into google (my old spell-checker) so that it could say "did you mean...".
It's little details like that that keep me interested. BTW, I was at WWDC and have a copy of Tiger. It's going to be as big a move as going from 10.0 to 10.3 as far as productivity is concerned (for those who say it's just an incremental upgrade). I'd pay $129.00 for spotlight all by itself.
And natural gas is too damn' valuable as a chemical process feedstock to waste it in a fricking fire!
I live near a refinery and more often than not they have a 50 foot pillar of flame coming off one or another of their towers. If it's so valuable, why are they just burning it?:-) I don't know how often I've thought, "Man, if they'd just pipe that stuff to my furnace, I'd never be cold again!".
Seriously, though, if they can make "micro"-generators that are going to be efficient and cheap enough to replace batteries, couldn't they also make a "small" one that could power my house too? I already get fuel oil delivered for my boiler, I'd love to get off the grid and produce my own electricity on-site too.
And on another, completely off-topic note: If I live right next to a refinery, why do I pay MORE for gas than they do in the far away cities that require expensive shipping to get it there?
We use Win2K3 Terminal Servers for all our clients at some locations (thin-clients booting linux). Where's SP2 for Win2K3? Where's the IE patch for us?
I've been unsuccessful at installing Firefox on the Terminal servers for "All users". Individual users have installed it for themselves and some appear to be using it, but I can't yet figure out how to get it to install properly and be the default browser.
(OT: I'm also disappointed that OpenOffice.org doesn't work on a terminal server)
It's sad, but it looks like we citizens need to formally organize a lobby to out-bribe and legally out-maneuver the RIAA/MPAA and other corporate low-lifes in congress.
Is there a Citizens Lobby Group? Or is the EFF all we have?
Don't worry. It's BETA. I'm sure Google will add support for Mac OS X, Linux, BSD, Minix, RISC OS, Amiga, and OS/2 by the time they're done.
What's with the snide remarks? As an exclusive BSD/Linux and OS X user I was very disappointed that it's not available for my platforms. I would have been happy with just a note on the page that said "Linux and Mac OS X version coming soon...".
I resent my modern and capable OS's being lumped in with a list of obvious non-starters for a modern program like this. I also resent the apparent implication that I should "just use Windows" if I want to do anything new or cool. I know that's not precisely what you said, and I would have even agreed with your statement, if you weren't so obviously making fun of those of us who don't have our lips grafted to Bill's ass like you do.
Good for you! But your comment came off sounding a bit self-righteous. I'd love to walk (or ride a bike) every day if I could but I live 20 miles from work and it gets to -70F here at times. I agree with your sentiment, there is far too much waste these days and recycling would be great - if it didn't take more energy to do it than it is worth. After moving to Alaska, I found myself still separating out the glass and plastics - only to find there was no place to bring them but the local land-fill. Then again, how much would it cost in energy and $$ to package it up and ship it to somewhere that could process it - and then you still have to process it after that.
I'm all for computers, gadgets, and a variety of power tools, but aren't we just being plain stupid and wasteful?
I'm glad you can feel all warm and fuzzy and superior and everything, but I find nothing wrong with having creature comforts as well as the necessary tools to get things done quickly and efficiently. I like having a warm house in the winter, just as you probably like having a cool house in the summer. I have 12" walls to help reduce my energy consumption. Do you have 12" walls to help yours? Why not? You'd probably use a lot less energy for your AC if you did. I also like my power-tools. It may be "cooler" and "greener" to use a hand saw to cut that sheet of plywood, but I'll stick to my table saw thank you. I could use and axe to get my fire-wood, but I'll use my chain saw if it's all the same to you.
Up here in Alaska we get a lot of "environmentalists" who think that because they live in Kalifornia and think happy thoughts they somehow have the moral imperative to come up here and teach us the error of our ways. I laughed my ass off the other day when I saw an all-electric car in Fairbanks. Yup, the lady looked pretty smug driving it. She even had some veggie bumper sticker on it. She's obviously brand new to town. I'd love to see what her battery performance will be when it drops to -40 or -50. I'd also like to see her get around in the snow with those tiny little wheels. To top it all off, the body looks like it's 100% plastic. The first time someone looks at it wrong when it's cold it'll shatter. Now, as a summer car for short commutes, I'd say that would be a pretty good idea - but c'mon it's November!
I'm all for being environmentally "conscious", but I'm really sick of others feeling superior and trying to dictate how others should live based on their own, special set of circumstances. Yeah, if I lived in LA or London, I probably wouldn't have a car either. But not everybody lives in the "big city" - I think this fact was revealed quite clearly in the last election results. When you look at how America voted - especially when viewed at the county-level, you saw a sea of red surrounding a few small islands of blue where the big cities were. The news anchors were commenting on how the democrats seemed to have "lost touch" with the heartland; the hard working, church-going, middle-american. I think they are right. Most of America isn't "inner-city". Most of America doesn't have everything within walking distance. Most of America is sick of the yuppie city-folk dictating how everyone else should live their lives based on their own limited view of the skyline and "warped" social/moral landscape.
I also don't understand the "environmentalists" continual aversion to nuclear energy. Most people don't know it, but in Alaska, we have quite a bit of nuclear energy. That's right. The military has many remote sites for monitoring and what-not that are powered by their own nuclear generator - just like many satellites are. It makes sense. The locations are very remote - often only accessible by helicopter. The nuclear generator is about the size of a 55-gallon drum and last almost 20 years and need little-to-no maintenance. When word leaked out ab
I was right, the notice is about the status bar, not the address bar. When I hover my mouse over the actual Microsoft link it shows Microsoft.com in the status bar, but when I click the link I go to google.
BUT, when I hover to the right of the link, the mouse pointer is still displaying that it is over a link, even though there is no text there. If I click at that spot it takes me to Microsoft's, site.
I'm using the exact same version as you. When I hover over the link I see the Microsoft URL in the status bar, but it loads google when clicked. Am I missing something? I thought the problem was that the hover/status info didn't match the page that loads - I'll go back and re-read the notice.
I want to use it in our schools. We have a lot of older macs that either can't run OS X efficiently or would be very expensive to upgrade. We also have a lot of older and donated PCs that I want to load Linux on. With Ubuntu I can make use of our fairly extensive deployment of both Windows and Linux Terminal Service farms with rdesktop and X making those older computers effectively scream.
Unfortunately, many people wouldn't understand having that picture show up on their desktop or splash-screens. This would also mean that I'd have to manually ferret out all versions of the pictures and hope I didn't miss any.
I understand the whole hippie, love everyone, sentiment (well, love thin, young, beautiful people with blemish-free skin at least), but in many corporate, public and K-12 school settings, that kind of art is still a little controversial.
To be honest, I'd much rather use Ubuntu than Fedora/RedHat and YellowDog (if only so that I wouldn't need to support many different distros). This is really the only sticking point with me. I may still wind up using it, but it's just that much more work on my part for every install, and just the fact that word might get out that the images came on the distro in the first place can taint it's acceptance if it were ever discovered by any of the more vocal, anti-linux contingent in "management". It seems they'll latch on to any arguement that hinders our "going Microsoft" in any way.
And, of course, it's okay with you if she finds some handsome hunk to keep her warm at the hotel...
My kids can't keep a secret worth beans, it'd never work;-)
Seriously though, we've been married 18 years and are still very much in love. She's currently deployed for 6 months right now, which puts a crimp on our love-lives, but I trust her implicitly and she trusts me. The policy is look, but don't touch. As she says: "You can get your appetite anywhere as long as you come home to eat."
Heh, OK, I just can't let this opportunity pass (mostly because I have enough anti-freeze in my blood right now to not know when to STFU:-)
I live in North Pole, Alaska (yeah, really) and I've seen it get to -70F (-57C) here a few times. I've actually saved myself from freezing to death by crawling under the hood of my truck to lay on the [rapidly cooling] engine when my belts snapped with the cold. I now make it a rule that I call in sick if it drops below -55F.
In my experience, it takes a long time for pipes to freeze to the point where they burst. The power goes out a lot here (I have 3 APC 1100 UPS's under my desk to keep my computers and peripherals up during the black/brown-outs). Granted my house has 12" walls, but I've seen the power go out in the dead of winter here and, 12 hours later, the house might be down to around 40F. I do not run glycol in in my heating system, but I DO let the faucets drip (slowly) whenever it looks like it's going to be a long outage.
Now, I have considered getting a generator (a lot of people have them around here), and it would probably be a good idea. But in leu of that, [we] have a rather impressive set of winter gear that we can rely on - my parka has build-in, replaceable 8-hour chemical heaters under each arm and my "bunny-boots" could probably have kept the astronauts toasty on the moon.
That being said, I'd have to echo the parent post about finding the chicks. It's usually best to have the wife and kids spend a nice warm night in a hotel though, before you invite said chicks over to help you survive.
I have been [very] idly following Ubuntu since it was mentioned on slashdot a while ago. I need an easy, stable distro to deploy on several hundred PCs in my school district. So, this time, since I have time on my hands, I throught I'd actually check out the screenshots of the parent post.
(BTW, this was the actual order I selected the screen-shots in.)
Screen 1 (of 142): pretty mundane boot prompt.
Screen 2: Text-based install screen - no problem, the students won't see the install process anyway, let's skip ahead and see the distro...
Screen 21: Heh, still text-based installer - this is a pretty detailed set of screen shots! let's skip ahead a bit...
Screen 33: Text box: "Setup complete: Thankyou (blah, blah, blah, etc.)". Good, finally to the good stuff!
Screen 35: Holy Crap! There are naked people on the log-in process! This will go over great with my 7th-graders! Let's skip way ahead!
Screen 118: Ahem! There is a naked white guy holding a naked black chick as the (default?) desktop wallpaper? I will definitely get buy-in from the students, but I might have some 'splainin' to do to my boss!
I wonder how many other places these "gems" will pop up in the distro...? After a little more poking around at the screenshots it appear obvious that the "theme" is "diverse people getting along" (or something), but I don't think my Mom would be comfortable with this and I'm pretty sure the superintendent wouldn't. Which means, now I have to download and install the distro someplace just to get that desktop picture to put on my Fedora box!
I just spent $1,400.00 on a 1.6 GHz G5 iMac with 512Mb RAM and bluetooth keyboard and mouse running a robust BSD-based Unix operating system for my son when I could have spent $1700 on a 1.5 GHz WinTel Box?!?
Think of all the "Life Lessons" my son will miss out on with his Mac. He won't be exposed to all those viruses, and spy-ware programs - how will he ever learn to properly secure his computer system in the "real World"?
He won't have the experience of paying annual subscription fees to Virus vendors to keep his virus software up to date. He won't be hit with pornographic pop-ups left and right, so how will he be prepared when he sits down at a friends computer or a computer at work and surfs on their Windows Box?
He won't have the experience of re-installing his OS every time he needs to really clean the spy-ware and mal-ware off his box.
He won't know how to search for and install drivers for all his peripherals. Not to mention knowing how to go through the troubleshooting process of determining which software package just overwrote that all-important.dll or how to edit a registry.
He'll might learn the bash shell and vi and ssh and scp and how to tweak apache config file to do what he wants instead of learning DOS commands and how to use TweakUI.
His computer will never be able to be used on a "Windows" network or on the internet because "Macs aren't networkable" (according to the "geek" at our local computer store)
If only I'd have known about this Hip-e sooner. Well, maybe one of his friends will have pity on him and let him use theirs when he visits - anyone want a G5 iMac cheap?
Heh, did I mention that I went down on a commercial airliner (MD-80) back in my college days flying from Florida to Tennessee and another time I had to hike off a jungle mountainside in southern Mexico as a kid when the Cessna 185 my family was in went down. I joke to my friends that I'm the SAFEST person to fly with, after all, what are the chances it will happen again?
Seriously though, I live in Alaska now and to get to most places you have to fly in small planes. We also do a lot of hunting and fishing which you pretty much need to fly out to do effectively. There's nothing better than tossing the fly rod up into the wing of my ultra-light and landing somewhere on a gravel bar for some quiet fishing.
I've seen pictures of a from end collision between a Samrt and a Mercedes E-class, the Merc was a write-off, while the Smart drove away.
They want $1,200.00 EACH for the headlights on my mercedes, another $1,200.00 for the 6 CD changer in the trunk, etc. It doesn't take very many pieces to need replacing in an accident before "total write-off" is much cheaper:-)
All the same, in an accident where I need to walk away, I'll take my Mercedes or my old Volvo before I'd take some of the cheap, tinfoil crap I see on the road every day (not saying the the Smart is one). On top of that, at the price I paid for my car, I'm much more careful with my driving and keeping the car in top mechanical condition. Small, cheap, disposable cars tend to be more dangerous simply from the standpoint that their owners may not have the same "investment" in keeping it in one piece.
Also, having a rigid frame around the driver is a great idea IF there is something sacrificial around it to absorb the impact energy in an accident. I can build a car that's strong enough to withstand an impact and drive away, but you'd have to scrape the occupants out with a paper towel. I have some experience in this. I built an ultra-light aircraft for my wife and decided to make is extra strong. When she crashed it (pilot error), it took almost nothing to put the ultra-light back in the air. My wife, on the other hand, was almost killed and spent 2 years with countless surgeries recovering. The investigation concluded that had the aircraft structure been weaker and able to absorb the impact, she might have been able to walk away. Needless to say, I don't fly that one any more.
On the other side of the equation, I was filming from the back seat of an ultra-light for an instructional video when we augured in (yep, camera rolling - great footage!). There was nothing left of the plane. It practically disintegrated around us, but we both walked away. The pilot broke a bone in his hand and the restraint system left some really impressive bruises on me, but we were able to spend the night out and wait for rescue just fine. The aircraft I fly now is designed to absorb the impact of a crash (I've also added a ballistic parachute to it).
Last week I was early on the scene of an accident where I thought for sure someone would be dead. One of the cars looked like no-one could have survived. However, upon closer inspection the driver's compartment was entirely intact, with several airbags deployed. The driver was standing a short distance away, talking to one of the other people one the scene. He looked shaken, but [apparently] unhurt. The other car look like it was in better condition, but the driver was still sitting in it (and was being attended to - so I didn't get any closer).
It sucks big-time to have your car looking like a grotesque piece of $50,000 modern art, but seeing your kid getting safely out: priceless!
I listened to (and downloaded) a couple of tracks from your "Florida Songs" album and just purchased CD. Good stuff!
I think it's great that independent artists have the means to produce their own art and distribute it without having to deal with the Music Mafia.
I wonder if iTMS would allow an independent artists to stipulate that they wanted to release their music in non-DRM AAC format or even Loss-less format through iTMS. It would be great if they offered a whole section devoted to "open/indy artists" who were offering their content in this way.
I know that I for one would frequent that section often, if only because I believe in supporting "the good guys".
Are you definitely going to be on iTMS? Once you are on it, is getting your second album on it easier?
What if they don't necessarily want to dump all their old PC hardware? What if they are also looking at the option of just "not upgrading to the next Windows release". Dumping SuSe or RedHat on their existing hardware would be a huge cost savings over shelling out $1,200 per seat for a new iMac (says the dad who just ordered his son a G5 iMac;-). Throw in OpenOffice and a few Windows Terminal Servers and using rdesktop would make the transition from windows even easier.
As someone who's typing this on an old Dual G4 500, I'd love to see AT&T go with new Macs. As a SysAdmin, I'd say that booting all my existing PCs with linux and Adding a Terminal Server farm to the network would make the transition much easier for the end users and much cheaper (we can still use our same software everyone is used to for the most part) for the company.
Granted, you can remote desktop to the Terminal Servers with OS X too, but you are still springing for new hardware. Either way, I have a feeling most of this is going to actually result in them getting a great "deal" from MS and them Microsoft will use this to publicly announce "See! AT&T took a serious look at Linux and Macs and decided Microsoft is the best deal".
And hey, if AT&T decided that, who am I to disagree when my lowly institution is faced with the same choice?
Heh, my brother called last week to ask for some advice about connecting a bunch of OS X boxes to a Novell File Server at his (very large) church. He said the church IT guy refused to allow macs on the network because he's "so busy keeping the PCs running, he doesn't have time to reconfigure everything for the macs to work".
I laughed and told my brother that, yes, Novell can do AFP filesharing, but that reconfiguring wasn't necessary. I said just connect to the fileserver using smb, just like the windows boxes are doing. The IT guy doesn't have to do anything and won't even know they're on the system as long as they have user accounts.
Worked like a charm.
For the record, we have a 20,000 user Active Directory domain at work spread accross more than 30 locations. Some locations have Dell servers with OS X clients connected, others have Xserves with PC's connected to them. They all fully participate in our kerberos domain with single-signon enterprise-wide. No customization was required on either platform to make this happen (well except editing the smb.conf file manually to add "use spnego: yes" on the Xserves).
We've been fighting the "It's a mac" syndrome with upper management for years now. Lately we've taken to just refering to new mac installations as "Unix" installations when presenting proposals and updates. For some reason, they have no problem with that.
Macs have a long way to go before they overcome the "stigma" they developed during their classic days. Problem is, we still have a lot of "classic" macs and the users don't want to give them up. They're still productive with them - so we still have to turn AFP on on all our servers and fight the "resource-fork" hell that occurs when those files move from one OS to another or get emailed around.
I'd love to be able to mandate an upgrade, but If I did, management would say we need to "upgrade" them to Windows. I can hear the wailing and gnashing of teeth already.
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I suggested Xandros and handed him an install CD. He took it home and installed it on his home PC. The next time I saw him he was raving about it. He said it did everything he needed it to do out of the box (they use a PS2 for gaming) and that he never had to download and compile a single program to get it working. He is now seriously trying to get it implemented on as many systems as he can where he works.
Xandros is truly the first Linux distro I've seen that I'd honestly feel comfortable handing a CD to my mom and having her install and run it (and I wouldn't even do that with a windows CD). Everything I've seen on it "just works" and installing new software is a simple as "select software from the list of categorized choices" -> enter admin password -> (wait, there is no step 3).
Now, I can apt-get/yum with the best of them and I frequently download source and compile myself. That's fine and dandy for me, but not for my mom. But even Microsoft doesn't come with a pretty comprehensive list of software that you can install with a click.
I haven't switched my Fedora desktop at work to Xandros yet (mostly due to lack of time and years worth of customization on it), but I'm seriously leaning in that direction.
Sorry, couldn't help myself. ... Uhmm... carry on...
I don't mind using 3rd-party technology to "enhance" your site, but I'd better be able to navigate and perform all the basic functions on your site without flash, shockwave, javascript, and ActveX enabled. You want to add cool effects with flash? Great!, but don't do your menus in flash without having a fall-back method for basic navigation! The same goes for any such technology.
What needs to happen, is for the browser market to get so diverse that ALL browsers must be conscientious about accurately following standards and by the same token all web-sites/designers would be forced to actually USE those standards.
I have that problem all the time when I try to tell people that I listen to my iPod with decent Sony headphones instead of the little uncomfortable earbuds. They ask me which headphone, and I can never remember because they are named MDR-7506. WFT. I usually wind up saying "the ones Spielberg uses on set" which I'm not even sure is true anymore.
Imagine my embarrassment when a PC-using friend of mine said the thing he liked about OS X that he wished he had for free on Windows was the "spell-check anywhere" option. I said "huh? What spell-check anywhere option?". He said, just right-click anywhere you can type and select the option to spell-check as you type".
I'll be damned. As someone who's first language is spelled completely phonetically, I have always been terrible with spelling in english. Now I have instant spell-checking in web-mail (and slashdot) and never have to pop a word into google (my old spell-checker) so that it could say "did you mean...".
It's little details like that that keep me interested. BTW, I was at WWDC and have a copy of Tiger. It's going to be as big a move as going from 10.0 to 10.3 as far as productivity is concerned (for those who say it's just an incremental upgrade). I'd pay $129.00 for spotlight all by itself.
Seriously, though, if they can make "micro"-generators that are going to be efficient and cheap enough to replace batteries, couldn't they also make a "small" one that could power my house too? I already get fuel oil delivered for my boiler, I'd love to get off the grid and produce my own electricity on-site too.
And on another, completely off-topic note: If I live right next to a refinery, why do I pay MORE for gas than they do in the far away cities that require expensive shipping to get it there?
I've been unsuccessful at installing Firefox on the Terminal servers for "All users". Individual users have installed it for themselves and some appear to be using it, but I can't yet figure out how to get it to install properly and be the default browser.
(OT: I'm also disappointed that OpenOffice.org doesn't work on a terminal server)
Is there a Citizens Lobby Group? Or is the EFF all we have?
I resent my modern and capable OS's being lumped in with a list of obvious non-starters for a modern program like this. I also resent the apparent implication that I should "just use Windows" if I want to do anything new or cool. I know that's not precisely what you said, and I would have even agreed with your statement, if you weren't so obviously making fun of those of us who don't have our lips grafted to Bill's ass like you do.
Good for you! But your comment came off sounding a bit self-righteous. I'd love to walk (or ride a bike) every day if I could but I live 20 miles from work and it gets to -70F here at times. I agree with your sentiment, there is far too much waste these days and recycling would be great - if it didn't take more energy to do it than it is worth. After moving to Alaska, I found myself still separating out the glass and plastics - only to find there was no place to bring them but the local land-fill. Then again, how much would it cost in energy and $$ to package it up and ship it to somewhere that could process it - and then you still have to process it after that.
I'm glad you can feel all warm and fuzzy and superior and everything, but I find nothing wrong with having creature comforts as well as the necessary tools to get things done quickly and efficiently. I like having a warm house in the winter, just as you probably like having a cool house in the summer. I have 12" walls to help reduce my energy consumption. Do you have 12" walls to help yours? Why not? You'd probably use a lot less energy for your AC if you did. I also like my power-tools. It may be "cooler" and "greener" to use a hand saw to cut that sheet of plywood, but I'll stick to my table saw thank you. I could use and axe to get my fire-wood, but I'll use my chain saw if it's all the same to you.
Up here in Alaska we get a lot of "environmentalists" who think that because they live in Kalifornia and think happy thoughts they somehow have the moral imperative to come up here and teach us the error of our ways. I laughed my ass off the other day when I saw an all-electric car in Fairbanks. Yup, the lady looked pretty smug driving it. She even had some veggie bumper sticker on it. She's obviously brand new to town. I'd love to see what her battery performance will be when it drops to -40 or -50. I'd also like to see her get around in the snow with those tiny little wheels. To top it all off, the body looks like it's 100% plastic. The first time someone looks at it wrong when it's cold it'll shatter. Now, as a summer car for short commutes, I'd say that would be a pretty good idea - but c'mon it's November!
I'm all for being environmentally "conscious", but I'm really sick of others feeling superior and trying to dictate how others should live based on their own, special set of circumstances. Yeah, if I lived in LA or London, I probably wouldn't have a car either. But not everybody lives in the "big city" - I think this fact was revealed quite clearly in the last election results. When you look at how America voted - especially when viewed at the county-level, you saw a sea of red surrounding a few small islands of blue where the big cities were. The news anchors were commenting on how the democrats seemed to have "lost touch" with the heartland; the hard working, church-going, middle-american. I think they are right. Most of America isn't "inner-city". Most of America doesn't have everything within walking distance. Most of America is sick of the yuppie city-folk dictating how everyone else should live their lives based on their own limited view of the skyline and "warped" social/moral landscape.
I also don't understand the "environmentalists" continual aversion to nuclear energy. Most people don't know it, but in Alaska, we have quite a bit of nuclear energy. That's right. The military has many remote sites for monitoring and what-not that are powered by their own nuclear generator - just like many satellites are. It makes sense. The locations are very remote - often only accessible by helicopter. The nuclear generator is about the size of a 55-gallon drum and last almost 20 years and need little-to-no maintenance. When word leaked out ab
BUT, when I hover to the right of the link, the mouse pointer is still displaying that it is over a link, even though there is no text there. If I click at that spot it takes me to Microsoft's, site.
This is definitely a bug.
I'm using the exact same version as you. When I hover over the link I see the Microsoft URL in the status bar, but it loads google when clicked. Am I missing something? I thought the problem was that the hover/status info didn't match the page that loads - I'll go back and re-read the notice.
I just tried it. Here I thought I was going to be all smug. Guess it's time to put FireFox on my Mac too.
I can't find anyone mentioning it anywhere. What's the best procedure to report this?
Unfortunately, many people wouldn't understand having that picture show up on their desktop or splash-screens. This would also mean that I'd have to manually ferret out all versions of the pictures and hope I didn't miss any.
I understand the whole hippie, love everyone, sentiment (well, love thin, young, beautiful people with blemish-free skin at least), but in many corporate, public and K-12 school settings, that kind of art is still a little controversial.
To be honest, I'd much rather use Ubuntu than Fedora/RedHat and YellowDog (if only so that I wouldn't need to support many different distros). This is really the only sticking point with me. I may still wind up using it, but it's just that much more work on my part for every install, and just the fact that word might get out that the images came on the distro in the first place can taint it's acceptance if it were ever discovered by any of the more vocal, anti-linux contingent in "management". It seems they'll latch on to any arguement that hinders our "going Microsoft" in any way.
Seriously though, we've been married 18 years and are still very much in love. She's currently deployed for 6 months right now, which puts a crimp on our love-lives, but I trust her implicitly and she trusts me. The policy is look, but don't touch. As she says: "You can get your appetite anywhere as long as you come home to eat."
I live in North Pole, Alaska (yeah, really) and I've seen it get to -70F (-57C) here a few times. I've actually saved myself from freezing to death by crawling under the hood of my truck to lay on the [rapidly cooling] engine when my belts snapped with the cold. I now make it a rule that I call in sick if it drops below -55F.
In my experience, it takes a long time for pipes to freeze to the point where they burst. The power goes out a lot here (I have 3 APC 1100 UPS's under my desk to keep my computers and peripherals up during the black/brown-outs). Granted my house has 12" walls, but I've seen the power go out in the dead of winter here and, 12 hours later, the house might be down to around 40F. I do not run glycol in in my heating system, but I DO let the faucets drip (slowly) whenever it looks like it's going to be a long outage.
Now, I have considered getting a generator (a lot of people have them around here), and it would probably be a good idea. But in leu of that, [we] have a rather impressive set of winter gear that we can rely on - my parka has build-in, replaceable 8-hour chemical heaters under each arm and my "bunny-boots" could probably have kept the astronauts toasty on the moon.
That being said, I'd have to echo the parent post about finding the chicks. It's usually best to have the wife and kids spend a nice warm night in a hotel though, before you invite said chicks over to help you survive.
I have been [very] idly following Ubuntu since it was mentioned on slashdot a while ago. I need an easy, stable distro to deploy on several hundred PCs in my school district. So, this time, since I have time on my hands, I throught I'd actually check out the screenshots of the parent post.
(BTW, this was the actual order I selected the screen-shots in.)
- Screen 1 (of 142): pretty mundane boot prompt.
- Screen 2: Text-based install screen - no problem, the students won't see the install process anyway, let's skip ahead and see the distro...
- Screen 21: Heh, still text-based installer - this is a pretty detailed set of screen shots! let's skip ahead a bit...
- Screen 33: Text box: "Setup complete: Thankyou (blah, blah, blah, etc.)". Good, finally to the good stuff!
- Screen 35: Holy Crap! There are naked people on the log-in process! This will go over great with my 7th-graders! Let's skip way ahead!
- Screen 118: Ahem! There is a naked white guy holding a naked black chick as the (default?) desktop wallpaper? I will definitely get buy-in from the students, but I might have some 'splainin' to do to my boss!
I wonder how many other places these "gems" will pop up in the distro...? After a little more poking around at the screenshots it appear obvious that the "theme" is "diverse people getting along" (or something), but I don't think my Mom would be comfortable with this and I'm pretty sure the superintendent wouldn't. Which means, now I have to download and install the distro someplace just to get that desktop picture to put on my Fedora box!I just spent $1,400.00 on a 1.6 GHz G5 iMac with 512Mb RAM and bluetooth keyboard and mouse running a robust BSD-based Unix operating system for my son when I could have spent $1700 on a 1.5 GHz WinTel Box?!?
Think of all the "Life Lessons" my son will miss out on with his Mac. He won't be exposed to all those viruses, and spy-ware programs - how will he ever learn to properly secure his computer system in the "real World"?
He won't have the experience of paying annual subscription fees to Virus vendors to keep his virus software up to date. He won't be hit with pornographic pop-ups left and right, so how will he be prepared when he sits down at a friends computer or a computer at work and surfs on their Windows Box?
He won't have the experience of re-installing his OS every time he needs to really clean the spy-ware and mal-ware off his box.
He won't know how to search for and install drivers for all his peripherals. Not to mention knowing how to go through the troubleshooting process of determining which software package just overwrote that all-important .dll or how to edit a registry.
He'll might learn the bash shell and vi and ssh and scp and how to tweak apache config file to do what he wants instead of learning DOS commands and how to use TweakUI.
His computer will never be able to be used on a "Windows" network or on the internet because "Macs aren't networkable" (according to the "geek" at our local computer store)
If only I'd have known about this Hip-e sooner. Well, maybe one of his friends will have pity on him and let him use theirs when he visits - anyone want a G5 iMac cheap?
Seriously though, I live in Alaska now and to get to most places you have to fly in small planes. We also do a lot of hunting and fishing which you pretty much need to fly out to do effectively. There's nothing better than tossing the fly rod up into the wing of my ultra-light and landing somewhere on a gravel bar for some quiet fishing.
All the same, in an accident where I need to walk away, I'll take my Mercedes or my old Volvo before I'd take some of the cheap, tinfoil crap I see on the road every day (not saying the the Smart is one). On top of that, at the price I paid for my car, I'm much more careful with my driving and keeping the car in top mechanical condition. Small, cheap, disposable cars tend to be more dangerous simply from the standpoint that their owners may not have the same "investment" in keeping it in one piece.
Also, having a rigid frame around the driver is a great idea IF there is something sacrificial around it to absorb the impact energy in an accident. I can build a car that's strong enough to withstand an impact and drive away, but you'd have to scrape the occupants out with a paper towel. I have some experience in this. I built an ultra-light aircraft for my wife and decided to make is extra strong. When she crashed it (pilot error), it took almost nothing to put the ultra-light back in the air. My wife, on the other hand, was almost killed and spent 2 years with countless surgeries recovering. The investigation concluded that had the aircraft structure been weaker and able to absorb the impact, she might have been able to walk away. Needless to say, I don't fly that one any more.
On the other side of the equation, I was filming from the back seat of an ultra-light for an instructional video when we augured in (yep, camera rolling - great footage!). There was nothing left of the plane. It practically disintegrated around us, but we both walked away. The pilot broke a bone in his hand and the restraint system left some really impressive bruises on me, but we were able to spend the night out and wait for rescue just fine. The aircraft I fly now is designed to absorb the impact of a crash (I've also added a ballistic parachute to it).
Last week I was early on the scene of an accident where I thought for sure someone would be dead. One of the cars looked like no-one could have survived. However, upon closer inspection the driver's compartment was entirely intact, with several airbags deployed. The driver was standing a short distance away, talking to one of the other people one the scene. He looked shaken, but [apparently] unhurt. The other car look like it was in better condition, but the driver was still sitting in it (and was being attended to - so I didn't get any closer).
It sucks big-time to have your car looking like a grotesque piece of $50,000 modern art, but seeing your kid getting safely out: priceless!
:-)
I think it's great that independent artists have the means to produce their own art and distribute it without having to deal with the Music Mafia.
I wonder if iTMS would allow an independent artists to stipulate that they wanted to release their music in non-DRM AAC format or even Loss-less format through iTMS. It would be great if they offered a whole section devoted to "open/indy artists" who were offering their content in this way.
I know that I for one would frequent that section often, if only because I believe in supporting "the good guys".
Are you definitely going to be on iTMS? Once you are on it, is getting your second album on it easier?
Keep up the good work!
As someone who's typing this on an old Dual G4 500, I'd love to see AT&T go with new Macs. As a SysAdmin, I'd say that booting all my existing PCs with linux and Adding a Terminal Server farm to the network would make the transition much easier for the end users and much cheaper (we can still use our same software everyone is used to for the most part) for the company.
Granted, you can remote desktop to the Terminal Servers with OS X too, but you are still springing for new hardware. Either way, I have a feeling most of this is going to actually result in them getting a great "deal" from MS and them Microsoft will use this to publicly announce "See! AT&T took a serious look at Linux and Macs and decided Microsoft is the best deal".
And hey, if AT&T decided that, who am I to disagree when my lowly institution is faced with the same choice?
I laughed and told my brother that, yes, Novell can do AFP filesharing, but that reconfiguring wasn't necessary. I said just connect to the fileserver using smb, just like the windows boxes are doing. The IT guy doesn't have to do anything and won't even know they're on the system as long as they have user accounts.
Worked like a charm.
For the record, we have a 20,000 user Active Directory domain at work spread accross more than 30 locations. Some locations have Dell servers with OS X clients connected, others have Xserves with PC's connected to them. They all fully participate in our kerberos domain with single-signon enterprise-wide. No customization was required on either platform to make this happen (well except editing the smb.conf file manually to add "use spnego: yes" on the Xserves).
We've been fighting the "It's a mac" syndrome with upper management for years now. Lately we've taken to just refering to new mac installations as "Unix" installations when presenting proposals and updates. For some reason, they have no problem with that.
Macs have a long way to go before they overcome the "stigma" they developed during their classic days. Problem is, we still have a lot of "classic" macs and the users don't want to give them up. They're still productive with them - so we still have to turn AFP on on all our servers and fight the "resource-fork" hell that occurs when those files move from one OS to another or get emailed around.
I'd love to be able to mandate an upgrade, but If I did, management would say we need to "upgrade" them to Windows. I can hear the wailing and gnashing of teeth already.