Left out of the article was Xfce (and LXDE). Both are very similar to Gnome 2 in the way they work. I tried Xfce and I could live with it. It's missing some of the applets to be found in Gnome 2 and lacks system sounds, but it's a very familiar look and feel.
The real problem for me is that in all of the latest distro's I've tried (Kubuntu, Mint 12, Mint Xfce) the latest version of CUPS is broken. I was unable to set up any working USB printers as my Epson R300 was never detected and my HP LJ1320 while detected was configured with a wrong driver (or something) and would not print. The interface to configure network printers was broken as well (might have been the lack of a setup root password) as the configuration app couldn't get permission to access the localhost:631 interface.
Then ban car pools because the people in the car will conversing and the driver will be distracted. Then ban radios in cars because they will distract the drivers. (but then people will fall asleep at the wheel from boredom) Then ban drive through lanes in McDonalds because drivers will be distracted while EATING in cars (or die from food poising at the wheel). Then ban drive though lanes at banks because drivers will be distracted while counting money while driving!
I am quite comfortable with driving with one hand on the wheel. You only need two hands when you actually have to make a sharp turn (IE: in city driving to make a 90 degree or greater turn). The reason I say this is that as a private pilot I am used to controlling the yoke/ stick with one hand (usually the left) and using the right hand to operate the throttle, radios, etc. I realize that an automobile is different, but as long as you are going straight ahead on a highway it will behave in a manor that allows this.
I don't think that texting on a cellphone,or talking your eyes off the road to dial a phone number is good idea. But if you can answer the phone by touch alone while keeping your eyes on the road you should be safe to answer the phone long enough to tell the person on the other end where you are and that you can't talk now. (as a parent you sometimes CAN'T be out of touch while your kids are at school).
The reason building on a 64 bit machine works is because the 64 bit OS can run a 32 bit application while giving it 4gb of space to work in. But they are at 3GB now, how long before even THAT isn't enough? Note that the finished exe needs FAR less space to run in (thank god!).
Texting, dialing the phone, anything that takes your eyes off the road is what is dangerous. Most people can talk and listen while driving and keeping their attention on the road. Diverting your visual attention elsewhere is what is dangerous. Cell phones that can take voice direction (like Ford's "sync") are one answer. With a bluetooth headset and voice activated controls a phone requires no visual attention from the driver. As a private pilot I know how to operate the controls of a vehicle while talking over a radio (something you HAVE to be able to do while landing an aircraft in an airport control zone, you MUST be in contact with the tower). It isn't rocket science.
I was in my local CompUSA store over the weekend. Microsoft is offering a $20 rebate on Windows Home if you buy it from Tiger Direct or CompUSA by 12/15/2011. Since I'm in the middle of putting together a new computer I went to pick up a copy. You have to buy some hunk of PC hardware at the same time as the OS if you want the rebate, so I looked at their hard drive selection expecting to not see much because of the 'shortage'. Well they had a TON of Seagate and WD drives in 250GB, 320GB, 500GB, 1TB and 2TB sizes. Prices were a bit higher than a year ago, but a 1TB was still $149.95 and I walked out with a 320GB for $99 (might have paid a bit more than half that last year). Maybe buying in bulk would be a problem, but if you need a replacement for an existing computer, or are building a new one there is no shortage as far as I can see. Just a ploy to jack up prices maybe (I know the flooding is for real, but there must have been a lot of product in the pipeline).
Voyagers transmitter uses a pencil type vacuum tube in the final amplifier. At the time they were designed there were no transistors that could operate at the required frequency and power level and also withstand the expected cosmic radiation in space. Tubes were the ONLY devices RAD hard enough to do the job. Since then RCA has quit making tubes (and a lot of other stuff as well).
One of those pictures was a home made cannon that was on the show before. The 'real' cannon might have been one named 'Moses' that has also been on the show before, this one is owned by a local collector. They also once made a cannon out of ducktape and another one out of a tree.
The Sheriff department doesn't have a bomb range just because of the Mythbusters. The fact that they have such a large facility a reasonable distance for most neighborhoods raises the question of what kind of shit they DO have to deal with that requires a bomb range. I bet a lot of THAT goes un reported in the news (and is a LOT more scary than what the Mythbusters do!).
I suspect that most PC's will only get replaced when they get broken. Wait long enough and the capacitors on your mother board will dry up resulting in a DOA computer that can't be repaired (it will be old enough that a suitable replacement motherboard won't be found). Sure you could maybe replace almost ALL the internal parts but only the case would recycle, so just buy a new PC. If the hardware doesn't die the old OS will have collected enough malware infections to require upgrading (from XP to 7 perhaps, unless you are STILL running '98 !??), and the new OS won't run on the outdated hardware. So PC's can't last forever, but anything that was good enough for XP in it's last years and can double its memory will run 7. My wife's current machine is probably in the OS upgrade situation. It will probably be upgradable to 7, but with prices on DDR1 ram going up I'd probably ditch it for a newer machine that uses DDR2 or DDR3.
iPad and Pad computers in general are really turnkey devices that run simple apps de jour. Really ereaders on steroids, or overgrown iPods. They have a use for sure, but I won't write a book using one, or even balance my checkbook (maybe on the go, but NOT to create the records that go to my accountant at years end for the tax filing).
The most troubling is the Mac app store. Future Mac's might loose the optical drive forcing network software upgrade as the only path. The Macbook air already has gone that way (though you CAN plug in a USB optical drive if not too lazy to do that).
Anybody that has ever looked at the schematic for a VLSI chip at the schematic level will have problems figuring out what the transistors are for because so many of them are actually being used as resistors, diodes, or capacitors. Many are bias regulators or interstage coupling voltage level translators. Transistors are the simplest things to put on an IC so there tends to be lots of them. The transistor count rarely translates into a true level of complexity for the device over all. Having said that the last time a transistor count on a microprocessor meant anything was with Motorola's first two major processors. The MC6800 actually had about 6,800 transistors. The MC68000 had about... wait for it.... 68,000 of them!
That would probably have been an exploded electrolytic capacitor. The small ones inside low power devices usually just blow their tops which are scored to act as a safety valve. The larger type capacitors can literally blow up like an M80 firecracker. I've seen photos of TV sets that had a hole blown in the side of the cabinet by a capacitor going "bomb".
As an "old timer" I really think that stinks. I would hope that such behavior is in the minority. While I personally feel that CW (code) isn't useless in today's world (in an emergency it may be the ONLY way to get a message though) use of code shouldn't be forced upon those coming into the hobby. I would say let them discover it for themselves. Between 1/3 and 1/2 of the available HF spectrum is reserved for CW (actually low bandwidth communication that includes many digital modes) so the FCC still considers CW worth something. (NOT "MORSE" code, MORSE refers to the old land line telegraph code which is QUITE different!) You can build a CW transmitter with a single tube (or solid state device) and a rock (crystal). There is no other mode of communication on radio that can be McGyvier'ed together in a few minutes. The signal from such a transmitter would be weak, but it would get through.
OTOH, my favorite mode used to be SSTV. This was back in the day of surplus radar CRTs and analog demodulation, today it's all digital.
BTW, I got my Extra when the code requirement was dropped to 5 WPM as I already had my Advanced class (13 wpm credit). No shame here, the written test is college level!
You have to hunt for the 12RC download, but it's there. Go to http://www.linuxmint.com/mirrors.php , pick a mirror, open the "testing" folder and pick an ISO image.
Some printer makers just don't get it. Epson, Brother, HP all use 'standard' protocols that are well supported under Linux. ANY printer using "standard" postscript is well supported. Lexmark, Kodak, and a few others use proprietary protocols and refuse to document them. Just don't buy a printer made by those assholes. You can look at the database at linuxprinting.org to see which models are well supported. As for the GIMP....well it IS a hodgepodge of various graphical editing tools put together in a single package with the same kind of mentality that created Emacs. It IS learnable and there are decent books about it... or you can run photoshop under Wine.
In general I'm against the government adding senseless regulations, but in THIS case the regulation IS necessary. It's actually a requirement that all traffic be treated equal. How would you like it if the post office told you that from now on unless you put two extra stamps on each of your letters they would add a week to the delivery time of your first class mail?
Consider what it costs to print your digital pictures at home with your computer. The price of archival quality photo ink (usually six colors PLUS black and maybe gray), archival quality photo paper (choose glossy, matte, semi-gloss, etc), and a good printer plus routine maintenance on the printer (need to clean out the heads which wastes ink). NOW consider the ZINK system which combines the paper and ink. Looking at the paper cost (40 sheets for $15) I get about $0.38 a print. I'm sure I pay more per print with my Epson printer which eats up $60 to replace all the ink.
I suppose if you have to ask you can't afford it applies to the car itself. But what will the recharge cost be (how is it metered, cost per hwh maybe?) Also if it becomes popular there might be a line at the "pump" er socket.
Guess what. The patent system and the copyright system require that holders of such must protect and defend their own material. The patent and copyright laws give them the legal means to do so (but they must provide the lawyers). If they demand that the ISP's do their dirty work, they should be required to pay the ISP's for the service. They have to pay their lawyers.
Prom is the root term for any programable read only memory device. It usually means TTL or TTL compatible family (cmos, etc). These devices may require HV programming voltages (where HV simply means voltage above the normal power supply level used for reading, probably something between 9-30 volts). EPROMS are erasable devices, and with the single "E" we usually mean by UV light (the devices have a quartz window) though there ARE NON-ERASABLE EPROMS (something of an oxymoron perhaps but the name defines the technology used to program the thing). EEPROMS are electrically erasable much like normal rams, except that they retain their data when power is removed. Most EPROMS and EEPROMS are N,P,or C MOS based. Most EPROMS and some EEPROMS require HV power supplies to program, newer EPROMS and most Flash memories make do with just the 5v (or 3.3v) supply. While there ARE serial devices out there, we are talking about PARALLEL interfaced parts here since the serial type can be programmed in circuit by the processor they (must be) connected to.
There have been many project circuits published over the years for building EPROM programmers, including at least two in Byte by Steve Ciarcia. His design used an LM317/117 adjustable voltage regulator with a negative bias supply to regulate and switch the programming voltage. It should be possible to adapt his design to work as a shield on an Arduino Mega, the only issue being a limit of about 6k of code could be downloaded at a time due to the available sram on the ATmega2560 processor (I don't think the Arduino Mega can be set up to use the external memory mode of the AVR).
I was thinking of re-designing the Circuit Cellar serial programmer MKII around an ATmega128 to make use of the external memory mode of the processor. I could then provide enough buffer space to program many of the larger sized EPROMS (I have a collection of 28 and 32 pin 8 bit devices as well as 40 pin 16 bit wide devices). Maybe some day I might like to build something with them along with old Z80H and 80186 cpus also in the junk box. In any case it should be easy to design a programmer this way and the firmware for the ATmega128 can be built with Winavr and written in C. You could also adopt the Arduino IDE to prototype the design (but would have to extend it to support external sram).
Slashdot Mirror
Left out of the article was Xfce (and LXDE). Both are very similar to Gnome 2 in the way they work. I tried Xfce and I could live with it. It's missing some of the applets to be found in Gnome 2 and lacks system sounds, but it's a very familiar look and feel.
The real problem for me is that in all of the latest distro's I've tried (Kubuntu, Mint 12, Mint Xfce) the latest version of CUPS is broken. I was unable to set up any working USB printers as my Epson R300 was never detected and my HP LJ1320 while detected was configured with a wrong driver (or something) and would not print. The interface to configure network printers was broken as well (might have been the lack of a setup root password) as the configuration app couldn't get permission to access the localhost:631 interface.
Then ban car pools because the people in the car will conversing and the driver will be distracted.
Then ban radios in cars because they will distract the drivers. (but then people will fall asleep at the wheel from boredom)
Then ban drive through lanes in McDonalds because drivers will be distracted while EATING in cars (or die from food poising at the wheel).
Then ban drive though lanes at banks because drivers will be distracted while counting money while driving!
I am quite comfortable with driving with one hand on the wheel. You only need two hands when you actually have to make a sharp turn (IE: in city driving to make a 90 degree or greater turn). The reason I say this is that as a private pilot I am used to controlling the yoke/ stick with one hand (usually the left) and using the right hand to operate the throttle, radios, etc. I realize that an automobile is different, but as long as you are going straight ahead on a highway it will behave in a manor that allows this.
I don't think that texting on a cellphone,or talking your eyes off the road to dial a phone number is good idea. But if you can answer the phone by touch alone while keeping your eyes on the road you should be safe to answer the phone long enough to tell the person on the other end where you are and that you can't talk now. (as a parent you sometimes CAN'T be out of touch while your kids are at school).
until the shit overflowed the container?
The reason building on a 64 bit machine works is because the 64 bit OS can run a 32 bit application while giving it 4gb of space to work in. But they are at 3GB now, how long before even THAT isn't enough? Note that the finished exe needs FAR less space to run in (thank god!).
Texting, dialing the phone, anything that takes your eyes off the road is what is dangerous. Most people can talk and listen while driving and keeping their attention on the road. Diverting your visual attention elsewhere is what is dangerous. Cell phones that can take voice direction (like Ford's "sync") are one answer. With a bluetooth headset and voice activated controls a phone requires no visual attention from the driver. As a private pilot I know how to operate the controls of a vehicle while talking over a radio (something you HAVE to be able to do while landing an aircraft in an airport control zone, you MUST be in contact with the tower). It isn't rocket science.
I was in my local CompUSA store over the weekend. Microsoft is offering a $20 rebate on Windows Home if you buy it from Tiger Direct or CompUSA by 12/15/2011. Since I'm in the middle of putting together a new computer I went to pick up a copy. You have to buy some hunk of PC hardware at the same time as the OS if you want the rebate, so I looked at their hard drive selection expecting to not see much because of the 'shortage'. Well they had a TON of Seagate and WD drives in 250GB, 320GB, 500GB, 1TB and 2TB sizes. Prices were a bit higher than a year ago, but a 1TB was still $149.95 and I walked out with a 320GB for $99 (might have paid a bit more than half that last year). Maybe buying in bulk would be a problem, but if you need a replacement for an existing computer, or are building a new one there is no shortage as far as I can see. Just a ploy to jack up prices maybe (I know the flooding is for real, but there must have been a lot of product in the pipeline).
Voyagers transmitter uses a pencil type vacuum tube in the final amplifier. At the time they were designed there were no transistors that could operate at the required frequency and power level and also withstand the expected cosmic radiation in space. Tubes were the ONLY devices RAD hard enough to do the job.
Since then RCA has quit making tubes (and a lot of other stuff as well).
One of those pictures was a home made cannon that was on the show before. The 'real' cannon might have been one named 'Moses' that has also been on the show before, this one is owned by a local collector. They also once made a cannon out of ducktape and another one out of a tree.
The Sheriff department doesn't have a bomb range just because of the Mythbusters. The fact that they have such a large facility a reasonable distance for most neighborhoods raises the question of what kind of shit they DO have to deal with that requires a bomb range. I bet a lot of THAT goes un reported in the news (and is a LOT more scary than what the Mythbusters do!).
Actually it was a tank of welding gas though they might have used compressed air (non-flammable) for safety.
Maybe the Russians will clone a Yeti next, I know they have been looking for them.
I suspect that most PC's will only get replaced when they get broken. Wait long enough and the capacitors on your mother board will dry up resulting in a DOA computer that can't be repaired (it will be old enough that a suitable replacement motherboard won't be found). Sure you could maybe replace almost ALL the internal parts but only the case would recycle, so just buy a new PC. If the hardware doesn't die the old OS will have collected enough malware infections to require upgrading (from XP to 7 perhaps, unless you are STILL running '98 !??), and the new OS won't run on the outdated hardware. So PC's can't last forever, but anything that was good enough for XP in it's last years and can double its memory will run 7. My wife's current machine is probably in the OS upgrade situation. It will probably be upgradable to 7, but with prices on DDR1 ram going up I'd probably ditch it for a newer machine that uses DDR2 or DDR3.
iPad and Pad computers in general are really turnkey devices that run simple apps de jour. Really ereaders on steroids, or overgrown iPods. They have a use for sure, but I won't write a book using one, or even balance my checkbook (maybe on the go, but NOT to create the records that go to my accountant at years end for the tax filing).
The most troubling is the Mac app store. Future Mac's might loose the optical drive forcing network software upgrade as the only path. The Macbook air already has gone that way (though you CAN plug in a USB optical drive if not too lazy to do that).
Anybody that has ever looked at the schematic for a VLSI chip at the schematic level will have problems figuring out what the transistors are for because so many of them are actually being used as resistors, diodes, or capacitors. Many are bias regulators or interstage coupling voltage level translators. Transistors are the simplest things to put on an IC so there tends to be lots of them. The transistor count rarely translates into a true level of complexity for the device over all. Having said that the last time a transistor count on a microprocessor meant anything was with Motorola's first two major processors. The MC6800 actually had about 6,800 transistors. The MC68000 had about ... wait for it .... 68,000 of them!
That would probably have been an exploded electrolytic capacitor. The small ones inside low power devices usually just blow their tops which are scored to act as a safety valve. The larger type capacitors can literally blow up like an M80 firecracker. I've seen photos of TV sets that had a hole blown in the side of the cabinet by a capacitor going "bomb".
Just turn your head sideways.
As an "old timer" I really think that stinks. I would hope that such behavior is in the minority. While I personally feel that CW (code) isn't useless in today's world (in an emergency it may be the ONLY way to get a message though) use of code shouldn't be forced upon those coming into the hobby. I would say let them discover it for themselves. Between 1/3 and 1/2 of the available HF spectrum is reserved for CW (actually low bandwidth communication that includes many digital modes) so the FCC still considers CW worth something. (NOT "MORSE" code, MORSE refers to the old land line telegraph code which is QUITE different!) You can build a CW transmitter with a single tube (or solid state device) and a rock (crystal). There is no other mode of communication on radio that can be McGyvier'ed together in a few minutes. The signal from such a transmitter would be weak, but it would get through.
OTOH, my favorite mode used to be SSTV. This was back in the day of surplus radar CRTs and analog demodulation, today it's all digital.
BTW, I got my Extra when the code requirement was dropped to 5 WPM as I already had my Advanced class (13 wpm credit). No shame here, the written test is college level!
You have to hunt for the 12RC download, but it's there.
Go to http://www.linuxmint.com/mirrors.php , pick a mirror, open the "testing" folder and pick an ISO image.
It's actually blown Ubuntu away for the last 6 months!
Some printer makers just don't get it. Epson, Brother, HP all use 'standard' protocols that are well supported under Linux. ANY printer using "standard" postscript is well supported. Lexmark, Kodak, and a few others use proprietary protocols and refuse to document them. Just don't buy a printer made by those assholes. You can look at the database at linuxprinting.org to see which models are well supported. As for the GIMP....well it IS a hodgepodge of various graphical editing tools put together in a single package with the same kind of mentality that created Emacs. It IS learnable and there are decent books about it ... or you can run photoshop under Wine.
In general I'm against the government adding senseless regulations, but in THIS case the regulation IS necessary. It's actually a requirement that all traffic be treated equal. How would you like it if the post office told you that from now on unless you put two extra stamps on each of your letters they would add a week to the delivery time of your first class mail?
Consider what it costs to print your digital pictures at home with your computer. The price of archival quality photo ink (usually six colors PLUS black and maybe gray), archival quality photo paper (choose glossy, matte, semi-gloss, etc), and a good printer plus routine maintenance on the printer (need to clean out the heads which wastes ink). NOW consider the ZINK system which combines the paper and ink. Looking at the paper cost (40 sheets for $15) I get about $0.38 a print. I'm sure I pay more per print with my Epson printer which eats up $60 to replace all the ink.
I suppose if you have to ask you can't afford it applies to the car itself. But what will the recharge cost be (how is it metered, cost per hwh maybe?)
Also if it becomes popular there might be a line at the "pump" er socket.
Guess what. The patent system and the copyright system require that holders of such must protect and defend their own material. The patent and copyright laws give them the legal means to do so (but they must provide the lawyers). If they demand that the ISP's do their dirty work, they should be required to pay the ISP's for the service. They have to pay their lawyers.
Prom is the root term for any programable read only memory device. It usually means TTL or TTL compatible family (cmos, etc). These devices may require HV programming voltages (where HV simply means voltage above the normal power supply level used for reading, probably something between 9-30 volts). EPROMS are erasable devices, and with the single "E" we usually mean by UV light (the devices have a quartz window) though there ARE NON-ERASABLE EPROMS (something of an oxymoron perhaps but the name defines the technology used to program the thing). EEPROMS are electrically erasable much like normal rams, except that they retain their data when power is removed. Most EPROMS and EEPROMS are N,P,or C MOS based. Most EPROMS and some EEPROMS require HV power supplies to program, newer EPROMS and most Flash memories make do with just the 5v (or 3.3v) supply. While there ARE serial devices out there, we are talking about PARALLEL interfaced parts here since the serial type can be programmed in circuit by the processor they (must be) connected to.
There have been many project circuits published over the years for building EPROM programmers, including at least two in Byte by Steve Ciarcia. His design used an LM317/117 adjustable voltage regulator with a negative bias supply to regulate and switch the programming voltage. It should be possible to adapt his design to work as a shield on an Arduino Mega, the only issue being a limit of about 6k of code could be downloaded at a time due to the available sram on the ATmega2560 processor (I don't think the Arduino Mega can be set up to use the external memory mode of the AVR).
I was thinking of re-designing the Circuit Cellar serial programmer MKII around an ATmega128 to make use of the external memory mode of the processor. I could then provide enough buffer space to program many of the larger sized EPROMS (I have a collection of 28 and 32 pin 8 bit devices as well as 40 pin 16 bit wide devices). Maybe some day I might like to build something with them along with old Z80H and 80186 cpus also in the junk box. In any case it should be easy to design a programmer this way and the firmware for the ATmega128 can be built with Winavr and written in C. You could also adopt the Arduino IDE to prototype the design (but would have to extend it to support external sram).
Well if congress can't agree on budget cuts this will probably happen by itself.