We're planning to follow this process over the coming weekend to get more info about what we're seeing. I don't think Covad is providing anything but the DSL over the local loop from PacBell, and as far as I know they don't offer direct ISP services. The other high speed provider is Comcast, so no joy there.
Our home ISP is Earthlink over Covad DSL. We are seeing all you-tube and other media downloads stop at 10 seconds at some times of the day. Large mail attachments have stopped working from gmail. I have discovered that using wget with --limit-rate will work when other methods are failing. Next step, our own bandwidth limiter on our home firewall. My feeling is, if the isp wants bandwidth limitation, then they should do it, and not stop the media from downloading part way through.
You can get the vmware image here: http://dev.laptop.org/pub/virtualbox/
I haven't tried the latest one, but had success (minus the sound) with the next most recent when I downloaded it and ran it under vmware server.
But you don't need vmware to play with etoys. Follow the instructions in the waveland tutorial (essentially install what's at the first link -- versions for windows, os/X and linux are there) and then fetch the second squeakland link to be executed by the program installed when you download the first squeakland link).
You can connect to a jabber server over ordinary wireless to "mesh" with distant computers if you don't have nearby XO's. There is quite a bit of interesting software packaged with it even in prerelease versions that you can try out on a vmware image to see what you think. The other reply about squeak is right on. Also see the tutorials about squeak etoys at this url:
http://waveplace.com/movies/
My laptop is a Thinkpad A20m (PII, 500MHz, 190MB RAM installed) running Debian sarge, KDE. It runs well, although I recently increased the memory, which made a big speed difference. The most important thing in making KDE run well on old hardware is to tweak the UI to turn off unnecessary eye-candy. E.g. change the visual effect of moving a window to only show the outline while you move it. Doesn't reduce usability but really minimizes CPU time dedicated to useless things.
Don't know your politics, and it actually doesn't matter, except don't be put off by the place the following info comes from. There is a woman who posted about her experiences in Slidell and Bogalusa here at DailyKos. She spent quite a while there, has many contacts, and has given advice to others about what's needed. I feel sure she would answer if you tried to contact her, and that her advice would be very relevant.
Well I'm a 56 year old little old lady in tennis shoes (thus lolits), and started programming as a teenager when most of the people posting here weren't born. I resent extremely that her age is considered a slur against her credibility. I'm also a frequent reader of Groklaw, and it seems that she is a believer in Open Source who enforces civility and mostly on-topic conversation about her posts, and provides original source documents for those of us interested in forming our own opinions about the SCO v. IBM matter. I think she has great credibility.
Pick up the handset of the POTS phone, wired through to a Linux system running Asterisk with, say a Dialogic D/120JCT-L 12-port analog + voice interface, and play "voice mail" to the caller. Nothing is more intuitive or indestructable than an old-style telephone.
You are absolutely correct. I told my daughters about the risks they faced on the net. I told them they should not do anything on the net that they would be ashamed to see published, because the persons at the other end could do so, and I told them I could spy on them but didn't believe in it.
One daughter, an rpg fanatic when in her early teens, organized the female players on the mud she favored to have a predatory male player ousted. I think she learned to monitor herself
I also use crossover office (wine) with ms office 2k, and it works well for me. I have also used openoffice.org, and I actually like it quite well, but it doesn't work compatibly enough on documents with lots of templating, header/footers, graphics, etc. I need to exchange such docs with clients. It isn't an option to tell my clients to use a different office suite.
You are comparing apples to oranges. I am part of a small software engineering firm in the Bay Area. Workers comp for software engineers is very low (I know because I've seen the insurance invoices). Construction workers or manufacturing workers may have these high bills, because those are the jobs that have on-the-job injuries. Workers comp expenses have little or nothing to do with off-shoring white collar jobs.
Actually, the GPL doesn't prevent you from charging for gpl'd code. And as has been pointed out above, they are still distributing the source from their ftp site, so they are still in compliance with the gpl. As I see it, they are capitalizing on their fud and trying to collect money from nervous IT managers/companies who consider the payment a form of insurance.
Slashdot Mirror
We're planning to follow this process over the coming weekend to get more info about what we're seeing. I don't think Covad is providing anything but the DSL over the local loop from PacBell, and as far as I know they don't offer direct ISP services. The other high speed provider is Comcast, so no joy there.
Our home ISP is Earthlink over Covad DSL. We are seeing all you-tube and other media downloads stop at 10 seconds at some times of the day. Large mail attachments have stopped working from gmail. I have discovered that using wget with --limit-rate will work when other methods are failing. Next step, our own bandwidth limiter on our home firewall. My feeling is, if the isp wants bandwidth limitation, then they should do it, and not stop the media from downloading part way through.
You can get the vmware image here: http://dev.laptop.org/pub/virtualbox/ I haven't tried the latest one, but had success (minus the sound) with the next most recent when I downloaded it and ran it under vmware server. But you don't need vmware to play with etoys. Follow the instructions in the waveland tutorial (essentially install what's at the first link -- versions for windows, os/X and linux are there) and then fetch the second squeakland link to be executed by the program installed when you download the first squeakland link).
You can connect to a jabber server over ordinary wireless to "mesh" with distant computers if you don't have nearby XO's. There is quite a bit of interesting software packaged with it even in prerelease versions that you can try out on a vmware image to see what you think. The other reply about squeak is right on. Also see the tutorials about squeak etoys at this url: http://waveplace.com/movies/
Try this -> http://dev.laptop.org/pub/virtualbox/
I haven't tried the very latest one, but the 625 image works for me on vmware server running on a Linux host. (Except sound).
Check out bogolight.com for a tech device that actually reduces misery in the third world (nytimes article will last for a while: here
My laptop is a Thinkpad A20m (PII, 500MHz, 190MB RAM installed) running Debian sarge, KDE. It runs well, although I recently increased the memory, which made a big speed difference. The most important thing in making KDE run well on old hardware is to tweak the UI to turn off unnecessary eye-candy. E.g. change the visual effect of moving a window to only show the outline while you move it. Doesn't reduce usability but really minimizes CPU time dedicated to useless things.
msbit.com
Don't know your politics, and it actually doesn't matter, except don't be put off by the place the following info comes from. There is a woman who posted about her experiences in Slidell and Bogalusa here at DailyKos. She spent quite a while there, has many contacts, and has given advice to others about what's needed. I feel sure she would answer if you tried to contact her, and that her advice would be very relevant.
Well I'm a 56 year old little old lady in tennis shoes (thus lolits), and started programming as a teenager when most of the people posting here weren't born. I resent extremely that her age is considered a slur against her credibility. I'm also a frequent reader of Groklaw, and it seems that she is a believer in Open Source who enforces civility and mostly on-topic conversation about her posts, and provides original source documents for those of us interested in forming our own opinions about the SCO v. IBM matter. I think she has great credibility.
Pick up the handset of the POTS phone, wired through to a Linux system running Asterisk with, say a Dialogic D/120JCT-L 12-port analog + voice interface, and play "voice mail" to the caller. Nothing is more intuitive or indestructable than an old-style telephone.
Reminds me of an assembler language program I once had to fix, in which the programmer had equated "R5" with 3.
Priceless analysis!
You are absolutely correct. I told my daughters about the risks they faced on the net. I told them they should not do anything on the net that they would be ashamed to see published, because the persons at the other end could do so, and I told them I could spy on them but didn't believe in it. One daughter, an rpg fanatic when in her early teens, organized the female players on the mud she favored to have a predatory male player ousted. I think she learned to monitor herself
I also use crossover office (wine) with ms office 2k, and it works well for me. I have also used openoffice.org, and I actually like it quite well, but it doesn't work compatibly enough on documents with lots of templating, header/footers, graphics, etc. I need to exchange such docs with clients. It isn't an option to tell my clients to use a different office suite.
You are comparing apples to oranges. I am part of a small software engineering firm in the Bay Area. Workers comp for software engineers is very low (I know because I've seen the insurance invoices). Construction workers or manufacturing workers may have these high bills, because those are the jobs that have on-the-job injuries. Workers comp expenses have little or nothing to do with off-shoring white collar jobs.
Remember, they're still distributing source...it's on their ftp site, as cited repeatedly above.
Actually, the GPL doesn't prevent you from charging for gpl'd code. And as has been pointed out above, they are still distributing the source from their ftp site, so they are still in compliance with the gpl. As I see it, they are capitalizing on their fud and trying to collect money from nervous IT managers/companies who consider the payment a form of insurance.