Thanks for the tip.
Mind you, I am getting damn tired of Linux experts claiming that the command line is the solution to everything! (Ok, it is to us, but you have to think of the ordinary users)
Try living with an ordinary user and you'll see what I mean.
If you roll out 500 desktops with linux on them to a company - or no.... scratch that.... build and create linux boxes for home users.... HOW THE HECK is tech support going to cope when 500 support calls come in asking how to get their (insert USB device here) working under the operating system? Just use the command line?
Why the heck can't linux just do this automtically (or at least have the kernal option) and detect my 3.5" bay memory flash card reader automatically too?
Built in OpenMosix in the kernel would sound nice, at least it would keep Oracle happy with its push for Grid Computing.
Better desktop support would also be great... they can start by making it easy for Linux to autodetect a USB joystick controller!
I have some real fond memories of typing in games for the Commodore64 all those years ago, and even earlier for the ZX81 (which never loaded correctly from tape either!). Strangely, that experience taught me BASIC and gave me a head start when it came to learning C.
Why aren't there any type-in books these days?
For starters, Windows doesn't include any programming languages or compilers, so already most people with computers out there are restricted to just using applications.
Also, magazines always seem to include CDs these days. Back in the day, getting a cassette or floppy disk just pushed the magazine price up.
Linux is great... almost like a return to the good-old-days of computer programming. The system is open and comes with it's own compiler. There are not many games for Linux at this point, so this is where I see type-ins being the best. A lot of people want to learn to program in it, and a young kid has to start somewhere in learning to program in C.
Personally, I wouldn't mind seeing a C programming book with little games in C (such as your tic-tac-toe and whatever) to be run from Linux. Maybe starting out simple and leading to projects where graphics and even containing small Open GL games in it... explaining what's going on in the listing as you go through it.
The irony of having a *security* droid run Windows was the only thing entertaining I could find in the list.
The Maron-1 consists of a drive mechanism, a camera that can rotate left, right, up, and down. With the robot you can take pictures and relay them to the phone's screen, so that the owner can check conditions at home. It includes an infrared remote control capability that can be used to operate appliances such as air conditioners, televisions and VCRs.
....will it also be able to download pr0n from the internet, relay them to the phone, and get viruses as well? I think a more likely situation is that it's so small that somebody will step on it, or its the first thing to get stolen in case of a robbery!
Is the time controlling hardware on a PC board or PDA as accurate as an actual hard crafted caesium clock? Cause I reckon NASA would want something DAMN accurate.
I use a 2.5" 20GB USB hard drive when I move between branch offices for work as it carries all my data and stuff with me. I also use my HD as a kind of FTP directory when I want to install client software across a server network.
Come to think of it, there's nothing to stop somebody with one of these Hard drives from importing and exporting several CDs worth of data on it, and importing all kinds of strange software or even CD-copying software into the workplace to make nice CD ISO images or even whole drive dumps of code that should not be freely distributed.
The USB hard disk is probably way more risky than a flash drive, because 512MB while it can still hold a lot of info, is still expensive and is limited by its size.
I was going to build a PC for my girlfriend.... but all the cases at the parts shop were either silver, black, or beige.
So she found a company that built computers in pink cases, because pink looked "cute". Actually they took about 2 weeks to build it, and it was damn cheap.....but all it took was a pink case (hard to find) which sealed the deal.
My girlfriend's laptop PC's hard disk took a dive, and since it was so old, I couldn't get a suitable replacement notebook Hard disk. So she used Knoppix for a while until her new PC got delivered. (She uses XP now, cause she can't get Gaim to do voice chatting.)
I love the way Knoppix recognises USB devices. It even recognized by portable HD drive (that uses two USB ports).
If only RedHat could do that...
What would people's reaction be if the Aryan Nation came out with a PS2 game that depicted racially motivated violence? What if that game inspired someone to go out and shoot minorities?
Someone's already gone and done that... but thankfully nobody will find "Ethnic Cleansing" on store shelves. You'll have to order it direct from the Resistance.
Heh heh heh....
If somebody wants to know how Mandrake makes money.... think "buyout".
They're not selling Linux, they're SELLING THE WHOLE DAMN COMPANY to anyone interested in buying.
That's not the point.
The point is that MS has ignored patching this vulnerability for far too long. It put its promise of "no patches for December" above the real and critical need to update the most common browser running on the worlds computers from hack
attacks.
Whether you install it or not is your business, and further more, if the patch was truly buggy everyone would be screaming about it by now.
I don't have any idea why MS decided to wait until next year before fixing something which is otherwise a severe security issue. I guess everyone is just lead to believe that MS simply doesn't care if your PC gets hacked, because then they can go around and pass the buck to spammers and charge people for an upgrade or support.
I think this patch release makes more of a political statement, regardless of the issues surrounding whether an OSS company should be putting out patches for proprietary products.
I think the no respawn rule is good though.... it encourages you not to get killed (and end up having to wait)... unlike other FPSes where you can just kamikaze yourself half the time.
.... the prominance of public libraries, freely distributing out copies of books , and providing copier services for FREE to the public has been blamed for sending multitutes of publishers bankrupt and unemploying millions of writers.
"What's worse," says one author, "is that the government is actually SANCTIONING this kind of flagrant abuse of our intellectual property. They OWN the public library for goodness sakes. What gets me upset is that I even pay my taxes so that they can keep it running!"
In an attempt to fight back against the public's apprent disregard for intellectual property, the writers union has been trying to apply a copy protection on their books. On newly DRMed books, a dye canister, similar to those found in clothing stores, has been attached to the book.
"The dye canister won't explode and damage the book with icky blue paint ONLY if it hasn't been opened more than 5 times.", said one publishing executive. "This is to prevent the owner from lending the book out multiple times, such as what is happening in the public lending libraries the world over."
"Once the book has been opened 5 times and read, the canister will explode, ruining the book. The owner will then have to buy another book if they wish to read it 5 more times."
The publishing industry calculates that the free distribution of theor works costs the industry billions of dollars every year... to the point where publishers have been going bankrupt, and writers can't even afford to pay their mortgage or send their children through school.
"With all these book shops closing down, and with the lack of new books coming out these days" said another writer. "If people want to read they're actually going to be stuck reading old books from now on! That will teach them! Once they've run out of new material, they'll have to go back and read some really old crusty books.... like Charles Dickens, and the Bible, and a few other classics without the DRM."
"Gee, I wonder how Shakespeare and RL Stevenson still managed to sell books long after their deaths without all the DRM protection we have these days?"
I'm just waiting for BOCHS to get good enough to run Win98SE flawlessly, and WINE to get good enough that it will handle any Windows app thrown at it. Then I would like some cool hardware with enough speed to emulate two machines at one. No more dual booting.
Computing has a future, and Microsoft's not really in it.
I think in order to be fair, they simply couldn't completely shut the door on proprietary solutions. People here are looking at the overall system and what it can do... and if Microsoft is still required to run a particular system because only it can... then MS will stay put.
OTOH, if the government want to create jobs and boost the local IT industry.... those MS licences will slowly die out when an OSS alternative replacement comes along.
For most people, a Linux system does the job. OpenOffice is great (still has a few quirks here and there, but is generally "good enough" considering you don't pay a cent for it). All the other tools just add value to an already free offering.
And let's not forget FreeBSD in the server room.
Having said all that, forcing OSS solutions and avoiding vendor lock-in is going to be tricky when you basically need a vendor to offer you support somewhere. This basically means that if the Enterprise is running Linux on the desktop, according to the Aussie government's proposition, the whole install MUST have no proprietary pieces in there which would inhibit a change in service/support vendors.....That's the most interesting thing that I see coming up. Now, who other than Microsoft can support their own OS at a source code level? Microsoft may have to take the initiative on this one....
So far I can only see Linux desktop being ready for enterprise use. It is nowhere near good enough or easy to use when it comes to home users.
Sun would have better luck making a name for themselves in the enterprise first, and then spinning that success off into home markets if it really wants to.
So far, Linux as a desktop can do office, mail, internet, and IMing good enough to replace microsoft. But printer support (for those people who want to do digital photo printing) is pretty lacking, or at least the tool useful for that is pretty obfuscated in some distros that I don't even know if Linux can do this yet. If it can will it be point and click, or will I have to go around tweaking some settings in Open Office or something?
Speaking of Open Office.... it's a good free office suite, but I tried editing a MS Word file in it the other day that had charts, and OOo completely screwed it up. I had to install MS Word to be able to edit it properly.
Linux and OO has some way to go yet. It will get there eventually... but it has a lot of playing catch up to do yet.
While other companies are either focussing on the enterprise server, or trying to hack away at getting a home user version of Linux good to go, maybe you're right... Sun is attacking the enterprise desktop, and with the weight of Linux and Star Office behind them, Redmond is going to be very ticked off.
You are in a comfortable tunnel like hall. to the east there is the round green door. you see:
the wooden chest.
Gandalf. Gandalf is carrying
a curious map.
Thorin. Gandalf gives the curious map to you. Thorin says " Hurry up "
> HIT THORIN
You attack Thorin. But the effort is wasted. His defense is too strong. Thorin attacks you. With one well place blow Thorin cleaves your skull. You are dead. You have mastered 0.0% of this adventure.
The reason why the C64 is important is because it's difficult to emulate. Exact timing is required, plus most of the good games used hardware hacks to push the machine - so even the hacks need to be emulated.
Not only is the C64 the best selling model of microcomputer ever, but it is also the most well understood machine (i.e. the most hacked), and probably has the most games for any one platform. Just check out Gamebase64 and you'll notice that there's well over 15,000 titles that were made for the machine.
In the meantime, I'm checking out SPLAM which the author better hurry up and release for GBA!
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Thanks for the tip. Mind you, I am getting damn tired of Linux experts claiming that the command line is the solution to everything! (Ok, it is to us, but you have to think of the ordinary users) Try living with an ordinary user and you'll see what I mean. If you roll out 500 desktops with linux on them to a company - or no.... scratch that.... build and create linux boxes for home users.... HOW THE HECK is tech support going to cope when 500 support calls come in asking how to get their (insert USB device here) working under the operating system? Just use the command line? Why the heck can't linux just do this automtically (or at least have the kernal option) and detect my 3.5" bay memory flash card reader automatically too?
Built in OpenMosix in the kernel would sound nice, at least it would keep Oracle happy with its push for Grid Computing. Better desktop support would also be great... they can start by making it easy for Linux to autodetect a USB joystick controller!
I have some real fond memories of typing in games for the Commodore64 all those years ago, and even earlier for the ZX81 (which never loaded correctly from tape either!). Strangely, that experience taught me BASIC and gave me a head start when it came to learning C.
Why aren't there any type-in books these days?
For starters, Windows doesn't include any programming languages or compilers, so already most people with computers out there are restricted to just using applications.
Also, magazines always seem to include CDs these days. Back in the day, getting a cassette or floppy disk just pushed the magazine price up.
Linux is great... almost like a return to the good-old-days of computer programming. The system is open and comes with it's own compiler.
There are not many games for Linux at this point, so this is where I see type-ins being the best. A lot of people want to learn to program in it, and a young kid has to start somewhere in learning to program in C.
Personally, I wouldn't mind seeing a C programming book with little games in C (such as your tic-tac-toe and whatever) to be run from Linux. Maybe starting out simple and leading to projects where graphics and even containing small Open GL games in it... explaining what's going on in the listing as you go through it.
THAT would be interesting these days.
The Maron-1 consists of a drive mechanism, a camera that can rotate left, right, up, and down. With the robot you can take pictures and relay them to the phone's screen, so that the owner can check conditions at home. It includes an infrared remote control capability that can be used to operate appliances such as air conditioners, televisions and VCRs.
I think a more likely situation is that it's so small that somebody will step on it, or its the first thing to get stolen in case of a robbery!
Is the time controlling hardware on a PC board or PDA as accurate as an actual hard crafted caesium clock? Cause I reckon NASA would want something DAMN accurate.
LOL!
Yeah, they should give it an unpronouncable symbol, a bit like "the artist formerly known as Prince"
Couldn't they have picked a better name?
APE extreme? Makes me think of gorillas.
I use a 2.5" 20GB USB hard drive when I move between branch offices for work as it carries all my data and stuff with me. I also use my HD as a kind of FTP directory when I want to install client software across a server network.
Come to think of it, there's nothing to stop somebody with one of these Hard drives from importing and exporting several CDs worth of data on it, and importing all kinds of strange software or even CD-copying software into the workplace to make nice CD ISO images or even whole drive dumps of code that should not be freely distributed.
The USB hard disk is probably way more risky than a flash drive, because 512MB while it can still hold a lot of info, is still expensive and is limited by its size.
I was going to build a PC for my girlfriend.... but all the cases at the parts shop were either silver, black, or beige.
....but all it took was a pink case (hard to find) which sealed the deal.
So she found a company that built computers in pink cases, because pink looked "cute".
Actually they took about 2 weeks to build it, and it was damn cheap.
My girlfriend's laptop PC's hard disk took a dive, and since it was so old, I couldn't get a suitable replacement notebook Hard disk. So she used Knoppix for a while until her new PC got delivered. (She uses XP now, cause she can't get Gaim to do voice chatting.) I love the way Knoppix recognises USB devices. It even recognized by portable HD drive (that uses two USB ports). If only RedHat could do that...
What would people's reaction be if the Aryan Nation came out with a PS2 game that depicted racially motivated violence? What if that game inspired someone to go out and shoot minorities? Someone's already gone and done that... but thankfully nobody will find "Ethnic Cleansing" on store shelves. You'll have to order it direct from the Resistance.
Heh heh heh.... If somebody wants to know how Mandrake makes money.... think "buyout". They're not selling Linux, they're SELLING THE WHOLE DAMN COMPANY to anyone interested in buying.
That's not the point. The point is that MS has ignored patching this vulnerability for far too long. It put its promise of "no patches for December" above the real and critical need to update the most common browser running on the worlds computers from hack attacks. Whether you install it or not is your business, and further more, if the patch was truly buggy everyone would be screaming about it by now.
I don't have any idea why MS decided to wait until next year before fixing something which is otherwise a severe security issue. I guess everyone is just lead to believe that MS simply doesn't care if your PC gets hacked, because then they can go around and pass the buck to spammers and charge people for an upgrade or support.
I think this patch release makes more of a political statement, regardless of the issues surrounding whether an OSS company should be putting out patches for proprietary products.
I think the no respawn rule is good though.... it encourages you not to get killed (and end up having to wait)... unlike other FPSes where you can just kamikaze yourself half the time.
With Linux being free and America's Army being free.... all you need is the PC hardware and a broadband connection. "Frag out" indeed.
.... the prominance of public libraries, freely distributing out copies of books , and providing copier services for FREE to the public has been blamed for sending multitutes of publishers bankrupt and unemploying millions of writers.
"What's worse," says one author, "is that the government is actually SANCTIONING this kind of flagrant abuse of our intellectual property. They OWN the public library for goodness sakes. What gets me upset is that I even pay my taxes so that they can keep it running!"
In an attempt to fight back against the public's apprent disregard for intellectual property, the writers union has been trying to apply a copy protection on their books. On newly DRMed books, a dye canister, similar to those found in clothing stores, has been attached to the book.
"The dye canister won't explode and damage the book with icky blue paint ONLY if it hasn't been opened more than 5 times.", said one publishing executive. "This is to prevent the owner from lending the book out multiple times, such as what is happening in the public lending libraries the world over."
"Once the book has been opened 5 times and read, the canister will explode, ruining the book. The owner will then have to buy another book if they wish to read it 5 more times."
The publishing industry calculates that the free distribution of theor works costs the industry billions of dollars every year... to the point where publishers have been going bankrupt, and writers can't even afford to pay their mortgage or send their children through school.
"With all these book shops closing down, and with the lack of new books coming out these days" said another writer. "If people want to read they're actually going to be stuck reading old books from now on! That will teach them! Once they've run out of new material, they'll have to go back and read some really old crusty books.... like Charles Dickens, and the Bible, and a few other classics without the DRM."
"Gee, I wonder how Shakespeare and RL Stevenson still managed to sell books long after their deaths without all the DRM protection we have these days?"
I'm just waiting for BOCHS to get good enough to run Win98SE flawlessly, and WINE to get good enough that it will handle any Windows app thrown at it.
Then I would like some cool hardware with enough speed to emulate two machines at one.
No more dual booting.
Computing has a future, and Microsoft's not really in it.
Good Point.
....That's the most interesting thing that I see coming up.
I think in order to be fair, they simply couldn't completely shut the door on proprietary solutions. People here are looking at the overall system and what it can do... and if Microsoft is still required to run a particular system because only it can... then MS will stay put.
OTOH, if the government want to create jobs and boost the local IT industry.... those MS licences will slowly die out when an OSS alternative replacement comes along.
For most people, a Linux system does the job. OpenOffice is great (still has a few quirks here and there, but is generally "good enough" considering you don't pay a cent for it). All the other tools just add value to an already free offering.
And let's not forget FreeBSD in the server room.
Having said all that, forcing OSS solutions and avoiding vendor lock-in is going to be tricky when you basically need a vendor to offer you support somewhere. This basically means that if the Enterprise is running Linux on the desktop, according to the Aussie government's proposition, the whole install MUST have no proprietary pieces in there which would inhibit a change in service/support vendors.
Now, who other than Microsoft can support their own OS at a source code level? Microsoft may have to take the initiative on this one....
So far I can only see Linux desktop being ready for enterprise use. It is nowhere near good enough or easy to use when it comes to home users. Sun would have better luck making a name for themselves in the enterprise first, and then spinning that success off into home markets if it really wants to. So far, Linux as a desktop can do office, mail, internet, and IMing good enough to replace microsoft. But printer support (for those people who want to do digital photo printing) is pretty lacking, or at least the tool useful for that is pretty obfuscated in some distros that I don't even know if Linux can do this yet. If it can will it be point and click, or will I have to go around tweaking some settings in Open Office or something? Speaking of Open Office.... it's a good free office suite, but I tried editing a MS Word file in it the other day that had charts, and OOo completely screwed it up. I had to install MS Word to be able to edit it properly. Linux and OO has some way to go yet. It will get there eventually... but it has a lot of playing catch up to do yet.
While other companies are either focussing on the enterprise server, or trying to hack away at getting a home user version of Linux good to go, maybe you're right... Sun is attacking the enterprise desktop, and with the weight of Linux and Star Office behind them, Redmond is going to be very ticked off.
That, and it's pretty easy to program a tiny script to do most of the dirty work. This is something Linux comes with built in.
:
All you need is a file full of email addresses, a file for the spam message, and then a small script looking something like this
#!/bin/bash
for address in $(cat spamlist)
do
cat spam | mail -s address
done
You are in a comfortable tunnel like hall.
to the east there is the round green door.
you see:
the wooden chest.
Gandalf. Gandalf is carrying
a curious map.
Thorin.
Gandalf gives the curious map to you.
Thorin says " Hurry up "
> HIT THORIN
You attack Thorin.
But the effort is wasted. His defense is too strong.
Thorin attacks you.
With one well place blow Thorin cleaves your skull.
You are dead.
You have mastered 0.0% of this adventure.
Not only is the C64 the best selling model of microcomputer ever, but it is also the most well understood machine (i.e. the most hacked), and probably has the most games for any one platform. Just check out Gamebase64 and you'll notice that there's well over 15,000 titles that were made for the machine.
In the meantime, I'm checking out SPLAM which the author better hurry up and release for GBA!