> I love that gag. It is so easy to imagine that it actually happened.
i think in a part of salmon of doubt there is an interview that explains that did actually happen to him. he ate somebody else's biscuits as described in hitch hikers. and the other person probably never realised why he did it. there was no apology or explanation.
aha! i'd heard of this but had no idea what the terminology was called my knowledge on networks is quite weak. i thought it was bridging. confused the buggery out of me. will search for an ap that can do client mode. more expense but worth it if i can get win2000 of my pc permanently.
scenario. i have one pc at home. it's connected to a wifi network belonging to my landlord on a weak signal. i have no control over the ap so i can't change any settings or its location or improve the signal or run a network cable to it.
so i look around to find a usb wifi adapter that will work with ubuntu. had tried a pci card but that will not get a good enough signal so it has to be a usb adapter which can be at the end of a 2 metre usb cable.
don't want to risk my windows partition so i buy a new disk. then try ubuntu install only for a bunch of errors caused by the dvd rewriter 'hdc: ide_intr: huh? expected null handler on exit' 'buffer i/o error on device hdc, logical block'
curses. get my mitts on a dvd rom drive and over christmas i try that. it works! ubuntu installs! excellent! love the interface. boots much quicker than windows. try to access the wifi network and... no joy!
now i've gotten the following device onto the network * nokia 770 internet tablet (signal so weak that it will only work when the metal sheath is off) * nintendo ds web browser (the ap is considered unsupported and online gaming won't work but the browser can be coaxed into working with it) * nokia e61 web browser (took the longest but now that it works i can access gmail and web pages anywhere, joy!) * windows 2000 which the pc normally runs. about once a week the usb adapter has to be moved to pick up a better signal.
so i don't consider myself a wifi newbie. i tried everything i can think off. couldn't find any software builtin to ubuntu to search for wifi networks, using ubuntu 6.10. i eventually got the thing transmitting packets but not a one came back. then there are 2 adapters listed wlan0 and wmaster0. which to use? other people have reported this and gotten no answers.
i will keep trying as windows is getting more annoying with wga and assorted viruses and crap but until i can get it working i cannot recommend it to family which is really what i want to start doing. might pop out and buy a linux mag with a few distros on it and give them a shot instead.
sorry for the saga, just venting annoyance, moylan
>I would imagine that it is because they know that they are alienating a large part of their user base (or potential user base).
no the user base doesn't know what an os is for the most part. the herd will go with windows as that is what the rest of the herd uses.
what they are losing is the free tech support given by nerds and techs who used to use windows but are now using mac or linux. when my family ring me and ask for tech support in windows and i tell them sorry i don't use windows anymore and that it could take me hours to learn how to remove (insert virus of the week) if it is possible and that it would be faster to go to the person they bought the system from and get them to fix it.
that was my first thought till i remembered that back in '96 the israeli's killed 'Yehiya Ayyash' known as 'the engineer'. i believe the bomb was a modified battery which would be very easy to drop in as a replacement if a targets phone model was known.
it might even be possible to do it so that it wouldn't even need to be turned off in case the reset would give it away that something had been done to the phone. of course if the target were using a windows mobile 'smart phone' that wouldn't be an issue as those things restart all the time.:-)
when i have to type in a 36 digit number on the phone after a 10 digit phone number and then type another 36 digit number into the pc and this takes 3-5 minutes then it wastes my time. when i have to do this a few times a week for customers systems that have come back infected and its taken them a few hours to find their original disks and licence code then it wastes their time.
when the os is responsible for the infection in the first place and this same comapny are wasting mine and the customers time double checking that we are stealing their crappy software then yes i object and resent been treated like a criminal. the black bubble is unobtrusive and i can ignore it. i don't have to interact with it.
thankfully more and more of our customers are using firefox. open office is on an increasing number of systems. some are asking questions about mac and 1-2 of the braver ones are asking about linux. so microsoft will shoot themselves in the foot even more with this.
from the jargon file: http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/G/gorilla-arm.html gorilla arm: The side-effect that destroyed touch-screens as a mainstream input technology despite a promising start in the early 1980s. It seems the designers of all those spiffy touch-menu systems failed to notice that humans aren't designed to hold their arms in front of their faces making small motions. After more than a very few selections, the arm begins to feel sore, cramped, and oversized -- the operator looks like a gorilla while using the touch screen and feels like one afterwards. This is now considered a classic cautionary tale to human-factors designers; "Remember the gorilla arm!" is shorthand for "How is this going to fly in real use?".
at my place of work we develop a pos (point of sales) system that uses touch screens and in some places were they have one person using the touchscreen they take a serious whack when people are using them for a long period of time. it wasn't too bad with heavy crt touchscreens but the lighter lcd touchscreens seem more fragile.
the psion 5 had one of the most usable keyboards on a portable device. the only keyboard that i would rate higher than it was the keyboard on the psion 3a. the 5's keyboard was larger and could be used faster when put on a desk but the slightly smaller keyboard of the psion 3a could be used standing and still get 20+ words per minute.
as for the os. if psion had of released a fullsize keyboard and monitor attachment i would still be using my psion 5 as my main system.
i currently use a nokia n70 with symbian on it. good phone but it's smart capabilities aren't a patch on what the psion 5 could do. that one of the main nokia symbian guys still uses a psion 5 says it all.
had a spectrum +2 as well. very good little computer. me and a mate at work keep thinking we should get a working speccy of ebay to play the old adventure games on the original hardware.
and i'm irish so i'm supposed to hate all things english...:-)
>I'm also a bit partial to Doctor/Botanist Stephen Maturin, played by Paul Bettany in "Master and Commander", who almost beat Darwin to the punch by some 20 or 30 years.
Read the books. The doctor in these is much much more interesting. He's an intelligence agent who works for the british in all matters that are anti napolean. very good reading!
>Imagine having a phone-sized device that could understand the spoken word.
Imagine sitting on the bus next to the guy using one. Its bad enough with mobile phones, ipods and you think the homicide rate will stay the same with a huge irritant like this thrown into the mix?
IBM demonstrated a voice powered palm clone a number of years ago. i thank any gods in the vicinity that it never made it to market!
>I can't really comment on wireless play, as I haven't tried it on battery power, just plugged in.
kind of defeats the point doesn't it:-)
seriously, the psp is very pretty but its trying to do to much. the ds which i have does games very very well. i would be keen though to get my hands on the opera browser when they release it.
walk into a super market. all the staples that you will search for to buy are at the back. except bread. thats usually near the front as the smell brings people in. people will search for milk, beans, cereals. to get there they have to walk past things they might buy if they see it.
i've been playing games since the 80s and recently bought a nintendo ds. my second nintendo device. the first was the original gameboy. cool games machine. add opera when its released and i'll use it at work to talk to a wiki.
every game store i walk into has nintendo ds at the back. xbox 360 is almost out the front door. windows are stuffed full of offers for xbox. tells me all that i need to know. i stongly suspect the nintendo revolution will be at the back as well. i know its going to sell very well!:-)
i've been able to use my phone as a modem for years now. my old nokia 3650 did this quite well at 19000 baud and i used it on a number of occasions with a palm organiser with a larger screen than the phone. however the price of data is a big issue and now my n70 with its superduper 3g connection has the exact same problem. i've seen references to data plans in the states that are unrestricted but here in ireland theres no such thing. data is visciously expensive so this great feature will never take off as long as phone companies try to milk the market.
Slashdot Mirror
> I love that gag. It is so easy to imagine that it actually happened.
i think in a part of salmon of doubt there is an interview that explains that did actually happen to him. he ate somebody else's biscuits as described in hitch hikers. and the other person probably never realised why he did it. there was no apology or explanation.
"keep a diary, one day it will keep you"
mae west i think
take your pick
$50 worth of damage
$100 worth of improvements
aha! i'd heard of this but had no idea what the terminology was called my knowledge on networks is quite weak. i thought it was bridging. confused the buggery out of me. will search for an ap that can do client mode. more expense but worth it if i can get win2000 of my pc permanently.
thanks much, you're a star!
moylan
scenario.
i have one pc at home.
it's connected to a wifi network belonging to my landlord on a weak signal.
i have no control over the ap so i can't change any settings or its location
or improve the signal
or run a network cable to it.
so i look around to find a usb wifi adapter that will work with ubuntu. had tried a pci card but that will not get a good enough signal so it has to be a usb adapter which can be at the end of a 2 metre usb cable.
don't want to risk my windows partition so i buy a new disk.
then try ubuntu install only for a bunch of errors caused by the dvd rewriter
'hdc: ide_intr: huh? expected null handler on exit'
'buffer i/o error on device hdc, logical block'
curses. get my mitts on a dvd rom drive and over christmas i try that. it works! ubuntu installs! excellent! love the interface. boots much quicker than windows. try to access the wifi network and... no joy!
now i've gotten the following device onto the network
* nokia 770 internet tablet (signal so weak that it will only work when the metal sheath is off)
* nintendo ds web browser (the ap is considered unsupported and online gaming won't work but the browser can be coaxed into working with it)
* nokia e61 web browser (took the longest but now that it works i can access gmail and web pages anywhere, joy!)
* windows 2000 which the pc normally runs. about once a week the usb adapter has to be moved to pick up a better signal.
so i don't consider myself a wifi newbie. i tried everything i can think off. couldn't find any software builtin to ubuntu to search for wifi networks, using ubuntu 6.10. i eventually got the thing transmitting packets but not a one came back. then there are 2 adapters listed wlan0 and wmaster0. which to use? other people have reported this and gotten no answers.
i will keep trying as windows is getting more annoying with wga and assorted viruses and crap but until i can get it working i cannot recommend it to family which is really what i want to start doing. might pop out and buy a linux mag with a few distros on it and give them a shot instead.
sorry for the saga, just venting annoyance,
moylan
>I would imagine that it is because they know that they are alienating a large part of their user base (or potential user base).
no the user base doesn't know what an os is for the most part. the herd will go with windows as that is what the rest of the herd uses.
what they are losing is the free tech support given by nerds and techs who used to use windows but are now using mac or linux. when my family ring me and ask for tech support in windows and i tell them sorry i don't use windows anymore and that it could take me hours to learn how to remove (insert virus of the week) if it is possible and that it would be faster to go to the person they bought the system from and get them to fix it.
that was my first thought till i remembered that back in '96 the israeli's killed 'Yehiya Ayyash' known as 'the engineer'. i believe the bomb was a modified battery which would be very easy to drop in as a replacement if a targets phone model was known.
:-)
it might even be possible to do it so that it wouldn't even need to be turned off in case the reset would give it away that something had been done to the phone. of course if the target were using a windows mobile 'smart phone' that wouldn't be an issue as those things restart all the time.
worked for the russians in wwii against a technologically superior enemy
worked for the chinese in the korean war
to quote stalin (maybe)
Quantity has a quality all its own
when i have to type in a 36 digit number on the phone after a 10 digit phone number and then type another 36 digit number into the pc and this takes 3-5 minutes then it wastes my time. when i have to do this a few times a week for customers systems that have come back infected and its taken them a few hours to find their original disks and licence code then it wastes their time.
when the os is responsible for the infection in the first place and this same comapny are wasting mine and the customers time double checking that we are stealing their crappy software then yes i object and resent been treated like a criminal. the black bubble is unobtrusive and i can ignore it. i don't have to interact with it.
thankfully more and more of our customers are using firefox. open office is on an increasing number of systems. some are asking questions about mac and 1-2 of the braver ones are asking about linux. so microsoft will shoot themselves in the foot even more with this.
wine, women, song. squandered the rest!
maybe they use rot13 twice for extra security! :-)
from the jargon file:l
http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/G/gorilla-arm.htm
gorilla arm:
The side-effect that destroyed touch-screens as a mainstream input technology despite a promising start in the early 1980s. It seems the designers of all those spiffy touch-menu systems failed to notice that humans aren't designed to hold their arms in front of their faces making small motions. After more than a very few selections, the arm begins to feel sore, cramped, and oversized -- the operator looks like a gorilla while using the touch screen and feels like one afterwards. This is now considered a classic cautionary tale to human-factors designers; "Remember the gorilla arm!" is shorthand for "How is this going to fly in real use?".
at my place of work we develop a pos (point of sales) system that uses touch screens and in some places were they have one person using the touchscreen they take a serious whack when people are using them for a long period of time. it wasn't too bad with heavy crt touchscreens but the lighter lcd touchscreens seem more fragile.
we could bundle all our ms cds, manuals and other crap into a big pile and drop it from orbit on redmond.
:-)
it's the only way to be sure!
the psion 5 had one of the most usable keyboards on a portable device. the only keyboard that i would rate higher than it was the keyboard on the psion 3a. the 5's keyboard was larger and could be used faster when put on a desk but the slightly smaller keyboard of the psion 3a could be used standing and still get 20+ words per minute.
e _david_wood/
:-)
as for the os. if psion had of released a fullsize keyboard and monitor attachment i would still be using my psion 5 as my main system.
i currently use a nokia n70 with symbian on it. good phone but it's smart capabilities aren't a patch on what the psion 5 could do. that one of the main nokia symbian guys still uses a psion 5 says it all.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/07/27/smartphon
had a spectrum +2 as well. very good little computer. me and a mate at work keep thinking we should get a working speccy of ebay to play the old adventure games on the original hardware.
and i'm irish so i'm supposed to hate all things english...
i'm more worried that they'll stop fisto! :-)
f isto.shtml
http://www.he-man.org/cartoon/cmotu-pop/universe/
that's pretty secure compared to this site
http://www.rncca.com/
why they have a password is beyond me when they list the password on the site?
obligitary red dwarf line
no way are these my underwear! these bend! -lister
no need for e or w stickers? are they going to stay the same just to confuse us more? :-)
>I'm also a bit partial to Doctor/Botanist Stephen Maturin, played by Paul Bettany in "Master and Commander", who almost beat Darwin to the punch by some 20 or 30 years.
Read the books. The doctor in these is much much more interesting. He's an intelligence agent who works for the british in all matters that are anti napolean. very good reading!
if-they-throw-enough-money-at-me-i-will-think-abou t-using-their-search.
:-)
maybe
uhm..
maybe not.
the quote was 'But Baker finally has a hot seller with the Xbox 360'
considering the overheating problems the 360 can have it may have been a subtle dig.
>Imagine having a phone-sized device that could understand the spoken word.
Imagine sitting on the bus next to the guy using one. Its bad enough with mobile phones, ipods and you think the homicide rate will stay the same with a huge irritant like this thrown into the mix?
IBM demonstrated a voice powered palm clone a number of years ago. i thank any gods in the vicinity that it never made it to market!
i apologise in advance,
:-)
>I can't really comment on wireless play, as I haven't tried it on battery power, just plugged in.
kind of defeats the point doesn't it
seriously, the psp is very pretty but its trying to do to much. the ds which i have does games very very well. i would be keen though to get my hands on the opera browser when they release it.
walk into a super market. all the staples that you will search for to buy are at the back. except bread. thats usually near the front as the smell brings people in. people will search for milk, beans, cereals. to get there they have to walk past things they might buy if they see it.
:-)
i've been playing games since the 80s and recently bought a nintendo ds. my second nintendo device. the first was the original gameboy. cool games machine. add opera when its released and i'll use it at work to talk to a wiki.
every game store i walk into has nintendo ds at the back. xbox 360 is almost out the front door. windows are stuffed full of offers for xbox. tells me all that i need to know. i stongly suspect the nintendo revolution will be at the back as well. i know its going to sell very well!
i've been able to use my phone as a modem for years now. my old nokia 3650 did this quite well at 19000 baud and i used it on a number of occasions with a palm organiser with a larger screen than the phone. however the price of data is a big issue and now my n70 with its superduper 3g connection has the exact same problem. i've seen references to data plans in the states that are unrestricted but here in ireland theres no such thing. data is visciously expensive so this great feature will never take off as long as phone companies try to milk the market.