What is the charge to call a cell phone in a calling-party-pays country? The equivalent of $0.15/minute?
I pay 0.069EUR/minute whether I'm calling a landline or a mobile, the price is the same for text messages (per message, naturally). And the calls within this cell operator are free, so calls to my SO / some friends are free. These are for outgoing traffic only, incoming doesn't cost me a dime. With the current exchange rates, that's ~$0.11 - however, the price has been the same for a few years, so from your perspective it was much cheaper before. The monthly fee on top of that is 3.90EUR, and since I like unlimited 3G data (~300kbps in real life, and I can tether my laptop to my phone unlike some trendy smartphone wannabees) that's 9.99EUR more monthly. But since I'm not a heavy caller, my average monthly bill is below 20EUR. I do make long calls on occasion though as I have some friends who suffer from severe verbal diarrhea - but they pay the bill, not me. So my bill is usually about ~$30. How much are you paying for your plan? Does it include unlimited, tethering-enabled data?
As for GIMP, the last time I used it, it still didn't have any easy way to draw Ovals/Circles and Rectangles/Squares, something that even the most basic of image editors (MS Paint) has. Making an oval/rectangular selection and stroking it (hmm, that sounds rather perverse...) isn't that hard. But I think people should stop recommending Gimp to novices, while it is powerful the interface can be confusing at first. Krita is a wonderful alternative for simple painting / editing of digital photos.
inability of humans to distinguish between a sine wave and a saw wave at almost all frequencies Huh? Triangle waves and sine waves certainly sound similar, although in my opinion they can be distinguished - but if you seriously can't hear the difference between a sine wave and a saw wave your hearing is completely impaired.
Not quite - it is a MIDI sequencer, yes, but it lacks multitrack recording. I know one should be able to use it along with Ardour, but that doesn't quite fit the bill. While many OSS programs are very functional and in some cases excel commercial offerings, VST virtual instruments sound so much better that their free counterparts, ditto for VST effects vs. LADSPA. Despite my liking for OSS it really can't compete with the likes of Waves or Native Instruments. At least not currently, hopefully this will change sometime.
I think you would be very, very surprised at the state of Linux pro audio (esp. Ardour.)
I really really wish this were true. While ALSA supports quite a large selection of pro hardware nowadays, I still find Ardour lacking. I know it's very capable as a multitrack recorder, and can be hacked to support at least some VST effects, it's still missing sequencing and VST instruments. I like OSS and use Linux almost exclusively, but until I can get Kontakt, Battery etc. working properly under Linux I'll have to continue booting into XP when I want to do some music.
(but please do correct me if I'm mistaken, I'd love to get rid of my Windows partition for good)
No, it supports Flash 9, just as regular desktop Linux (32-bit, that is). That doesn't mean that some flash sites wouldn't be too heavy for it, but that's hardly surprising - some flash sites seem to completely hog the processor on my desktop computer as well.
I know, which I why I said Apple could have submitted a JSR for multi-touch. That is, they could have implemented it themselves, and submitted a request that it be implemented later on in the J2ME spec. If multi-touch devices become very popular, it's very likely that future MIDP x.0 spec will include support for them.
The iPhone isn't the success that it is because it has features just like any other J2ME phone, it's because it's built around unique features. They don't want J2ME apps - they want "Cocoa Touch" apps.
The "success" part is debatable, at least here on the other side of the pond. The point I was trying to make earlier was that J2ME or "Cocoa Touch" apps could be identical, with the only difference being the programming language. If Apple supported J2ME, one could use iPhone only J2ME apps with multitouch AND existing J2ME apps that would look identical to native applications. For example, an SSH client most likely wouldn't benefit from multi-touch - if Apple had supported J2ME from the start, installing one to the iPhone would have been dead simple, without needing to jailbreak it. The cynic in me is inclined to believe that they simply want to control the phone and the applications, which is very hard (if not impossible) to do with J2ME.
I take it you haven't programmed with J2ME (only one 'E' in there, i.e. 'Micro Edition')? It certainly has its limitations, and "write once, run anywhere" doesn't apply at least for games - screen sizes vary, as do available buttons and so on, which is why it's not uncommon to see different versions being offered for different phones. Games usually utilize Canvas, which allows the programmer full control over what's drawn on the screen; while it is handy, it can cause issues with portability.
The (in my opinion) ingenious part is that when using the "high-level" LCDUI classes, the programmer has absolutely no control over how elements are displayed, just what kind of elements are displayed and how they function. Thus it is possible to write applications that look native everywhere. This is obviously unsuitable for games, but for general "business-like" applications it works very well.
I'm not saying J2ME is superb, but it is supported by virtually every phone nowadays, even the non-smartphone ones. Apple could easily have chosen to support it, and J2ME apps using those "high-level" classes could look like native applications. Touch screens are already supported by J2ME, Apple could have submitted a JSR for multi-touch. But they didn't - as to why is left as an exercise to the reader.
(it isn't security - J2ME apps are heavily sandboxed)
all that said mythTV is only good for people that care about looks, id much rather have one of the older solutions that can record multiple channels on a multiplex. I assume you're talking about DVB - it already is possible. You'll have to get it from SVN at the moment, but the branch has apparently been merged into trunk so the feature should appear in the next official version. I can record three channels simultaneously from a single multiplex just fine with a single PCI DVB-C tuner - the configuration would allow for more though, I just haven't had the need to have more. The only major bug at the moment is the fact that when recording a channel, live TV defaults to the first available tuner, which often is a "virtual tuner", meaning that one can change channels only within the same multiplex that is being recorded, even though there are unused physical tuners as well. Although it is possible to change the active tuner from the on-screen menu, it is somewhat inconvenient, so I hope that issue gets fixed before it's officially released. Other than that, it seems to work very well at the moment.
Back during the days of Breezy Badger, I made the same decision. I stuck with it through Edgy Eft, but then I found KDE to be increasingly unusable. (K)Ubuntu has been known to give KDE a bad name. I suggest you try another distribution - if KDE is what you're after, and you want a desktop-oriented distribution, PCLinuxOS might be a good choice. OTOH, if you like a _fast_ desktop and KDE with only the components you need, Arch and KDEmod is a combination that is hard to beat.
It's called "Rope", and there are more cuts than just one, but they are done in such a delicate fashion that they're hard to spot. According to our beloved resource, the length of a film reel was about ten minutes back then.
Re:Before we get into a GNOME vs KDE flamewar...
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KDE 4.0 RC 1 Released
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· Score: 1
Firefox isn't a Gnome app, it just happens to use GTK+. Whether Gimp is a Gnome app is debatable... However, if you run KDE and dislike the Gnome file dialog (who wouldn't?), check out kgtk.
The OP is probably from Europe, where unlimited data plans did not exist until the iPhone was rolled out in the UK. Bullshit. I had unlimited GPRS data in Finland in 2002, it was about 20e/month. Expensive by todays standards, granted. Now you can get unlimited 3G data for 10e/month (max. ~380 kbps), or if you have HSDPA, 20e/month (~1 Mbps) or 30e/month (~2 Mbps).
(for some reason Slashdot seems to reject euro symbols?)
Series 60, in various editions and feature packs, is an UI that's used on top of Symbian. It's mainly used in Nokia phones, but some other manufacturers have licensed it as well. Yes, the new communicator uses Series 60 3rd edition (+ some feature pack if I recall right), which runs on top of Symbian 9.1. I.e. your code has to be signed.
One does not boil a frog by dropping him in boiling water (he will jump out). Rather one places him in cool water and brings up the temperature every slowly. ...and eventually, the frog will jump out.
The new start bar with search is especially cool... you no longer have to go searching for your apps. Never seen anything like it in a Linux distro. Well there is Kickoff, but although it is available in the KDE version of my choice, I don't use it because it uses Beagle, which IMHO blows. Katapult is a nice alternative.
Re:products did not end with a whimper
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All Things iPhone
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· Score: 1
Select it, copy it, paste it Which one can't, ironically, do with the iPhone.
Yeah. Sure. Log into docs.google.com with Safari and you'll get "Safari support for Google Docs is coming soon!". Apart from that, have you tried to use for example the spreadsheet? On my main desktop (2600+ Athlon XP w/ 1GB of memory - certainly not new but works fine for me) the spreadsheet makes Firefox completely unusable. I dread to think what it would be like on a handheld. Hell, my N80, which has the new Nokia browser in it (which, ironically enough, is based on Safari) barely is able to run Google Maps via WLAN or 3G - with EDGE it won't certainly be nicer. Whether one needs a full office suite on a mobile phone is another matter (I'm quite happy just to have an SSH client, VNC viewer and ScummVM), but Google Docs is not the answer.
Or when using Amarok, use a proper database like PostgreSQL or MySQL. SQlite is fine for small databases but the big boys are better when you have hundreds of GBs to index.
Beryl isn't ready for everyday usage and it's not Aero - however, care to explain this:
You can't play two separate streams at the same time from different applicaitons and blend them.
What kind of streams are you talking about? If they're audio streams, ALSA has been included by default in every kernel in the 2.6-series and can mix multiple sources just fine. If you're talking about video streams - well, I just can't see why I'd want to blend video streams. Should there be a valid reason please do educate me.
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You don't have to wait, go ahead and play.
What is the charge to call a cell phone in a calling-party-pays country? The equivalent of $0.15/minute?
I pay 0.069EUR/minute whether I'm calling a landline or a mobile, the price is the same for text messages (per message, naturally). And the calls within this cell operator are free, so calls to my SO / some friends are free. These are for outgoing traffic only, incoming doesn't cost me a dime. With the current exchange rates, that's ~$0.11 - however, the price has been the same for a few years, so from your perspective it was much cheaper before. The monthly fee on top of that is 3.90EUR, and since I like unlimited 3G data (~300kbps in real life, and I can tether my laptop to my phone unlike some trendy smartphone wannabees) that's 9.99EUR more monthly. But since I'm not a heavy caller, my average monthly bill is below 20EUR. I do make long calls on occasion though as I have some friends who suffer from severe verbal diarrhea - but they pay the bill, not me. So my bill is usually about ~$30. How much are you paying for your plan? Does it include unlimited, tethering-enabled data?
Not quite - it is a MIDI sequencer, yes, but it lacks multitrack recording. I know one should be able to use it along with Ardour, but that doesn't quite fit the bill. While many OSS programs are very functional and in some cases excel commercial offerings, VST virtual instruments sound so much better that their free counterparts, ditto for VST effects vs. LADSPA. Despite my liking for OSS it really can't compete with the likes of Waves or Native Instruments. At least not currently, hopefully this will change sometime.
I really really wish this were true. While ALSA supports quite a large selection of pro hardware nowadays, I still find Ardour lacking. I know it's very capable as a multitrack recorder, and can be hacked to support at least some VST effects, it's still missing sequencing and VST instruments. I like OSS and use Linux almost exclusively, but until I can get Kontakt, Battery etc. working properly under Linux I'll have to continue booting into XP when I want to do some music.
(but please do correct me if I'm mistaken, I'd love to get rid of my Windows partition for good)
No, it supports Flash 9, just as regular desktop Linux (32-bit, that is). That doesn't mean that some flash sites wouldn't be too heavy for it, but that's hardly surprising - some flash sites seem to completely hog the processor on my desktop computer as well.
I know, which I why I said Apple could have submitted a JSR for multi-touch. That is, they could have implemented it themselves, and submitted a request that it be implemented later on in the J2ME spec. If multi-touch devices become very popular, it's very likely that future MIDP x.0 spec will include support for them.
The iPhone isn't the success that it is because it has features just like any other J2ME phone, it's because it's built around unique features. They don't want J2ME apps - they want "Cocoa Touch" apps.The "success" part is debatable, at least here on the other side of the pond. The point I was trying to make earlier was that J2ME or "Cocoa Touch" apps could be identical, with the only difference being the programming language. If Apple supported J2ME, one could use iPhone only J2ME apps with multitouch AND existing J2ME apps that would look identical to native applications. For example, an SSH client most likely wouldn't benefit from multi-touch - if Apple had supported J2ME from the start, installing one to the iPhone would have been dead simple, without needing to jailbreak it. The cynic in me is inclined to believe that they simply want to control the phone and the applications, which is very hard (if not impossible) to do with J2ME.
I take it you haven't programmed with J2ME (only one 'E' in there, i.e. 'Micro Edition')? It certainly has its limitations, and "write once, run anywhere" doesn't apply at least for games - screen sizes vary, as do available buttons and so on, which is why it's not uncommon to see different versions being offered for different phones. Games usually utilize Canvas, which allows the programmer full control over what's drawn on the screen; while it is handy, it can cause issues with portability.
The (in my opinion) ingenious part is that when using the "high-level" LCDUI classes, the programmer has absolutely no control over how elements are displayed, just what kind of elements are displayed and how they function. Thus it is possible to write applications that look native everywhere. This is obviously unsuitable for games, but for general "business-like" applications it works very well.
I'm not saying J2ME is superb, but it is supported by virtually every phone nowadays, even the non-smartphone ones. Apple could easily have chosen to support it, and J2ME apps using those "high-level" classes could look like native applications. Touch screens are already supported by J2ME, Apple could have submitted a JSR for multi-touch. But they didn't - as to why is left as an exercise to the reader.
(it isn't security - J2ME apps are heavily sandboxed)
It's called "Rope", and there are more cuts than just one, but they are done in such a delicate fashion that they're hard to spot. According to our beloved resource, the length of a film reel was about ten minutes back then.
Firefox isn't a Gnome app, it just happens to use GTK+. Whether Gimp is a Gnome app is debatable... However, if you run KDE and dislike the Gnome file dialog (who wouldn't?), check out kgtk.
(for some reason Slashdot seems to reject euro symbols?)
Series 60, in various editions and feature packs, is an UI that's used on top of Symbian. It's mainly used in Nokia phones, but some other manufacturers have licensed it as well. Yes, the new communicator uses Series 60 3rd edition (+ some feature pack if I recall right), which runs on top of Symbian 9.1. I.e. your code has to be signed.
The whole idea was throughoutly debunked. So no more liquids on you although the threat doesn't exist.
Yeah. Sure. Log into docs.google.com with Safari and you'll get "Safari support for Google Docs is coming soon!". Apart from that, have you tried to use for example the spreadsheet? On my main desktop (2600+ Athlon XP w/ 1GB of memory - certainly not new but works fine for me) the spreadsheet makes Firefox completely unusable. I dread to think what it would be like on a handheld. Hell, my N80, which has the new Nokia browser in it (which, ironically enough, is based on Safari) barely is able to run Google Maps via WLAN or 3G - with EDGE it won't certainly be nicer. Whether one needs a full office suite on a mobile phone is another matter (I'm quite happy just to have an SSH client, VNC viewer and ScummVM), but Google Docs is not the answer.
Or when using Amarok, use a proper database like PostgreSQL or MySQL. SQlite is fine for small databases but the big boys are better when you have hundreds of GBs to index.
Beryl isn't ready for everyday usage and it's not Aero - however, care to explain this:
You can't play two separate streams at the same time from different applicaitons and blend them.What kind of streams are you talking about? If they're audio streams, ALSA has been included by default in every kernel in the 2.6-series and can mix multiple sources just fine. If you're talking about video streams - well, I just can't see why I'd want to blend video streams. Should there be a valid reason please do educate me.
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