It's not personal privacy we're really concerned with, it's protection *from* the government. If the government goes bad (I mean, more than just conspiracies and such) how can we stop them? We could conspire all we want, but unless we use hand-written messages written in jello, there's no way we can successfully overthrow them. Sure, the government isn't too bad right now, but what if they're planning something big? What if something like the Y2K bug is a plot to make us turn to the government to help, and then they seize total control? It's more than just privacy, my friend.
Yes, I'm one of those paranoid conspiracy theorist freaks. It sure helps melt away daily boredom.
Sounds like something I've seen before.
on
3D Window Manager
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· Score: 2
Sounds too much like the movie "Hackers". So, when we're bored, we can pull up a file manager, and spend 15 minutes trying to find X configuration files? Sounds... interesting.
Well, I suppose it would be fun to have. As long as I can make my X session look like something else. Like an old castle, with each room being an icon. Yeah yeah.
Re:Bandwidth isn't the issue
on
VDSL Demoed
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· Score: 2
I'd say a big part of that is that some sites are hooked up with something like a T1, which is around 1.3 Mbits/s. So, if you're the only visitor, you get a nice 1.3 Mbits/s. But, if there are 100 visitors all downloading something, all you get is a measly 13kbits. Not quite so impressive. Sure there's probably a lot of problems with the backbone too.
I think it's not really worth it, because here at work on our fractional T1 I usually get anywhere from 3-10KBytes/s. Oh well.
Someone told me recently of an incident that really leaves me to believe that patents aren't worth the paper they are printed on. I can't remember the exact details, but here's the basics.
Weed Eater originally came up with the idea for nylon string trimmers. They patented the idea, and were happy. Until Toro started making nylon string trimmers as well. They tried to sue Toro, and the lawsuit lasted for years. In the mean time, Toro continued to sell the trimmers. In the end, the judge decided that the patent really wasn't worth much, and that restricting Toro would mean they couldn't do business in trimmers, so Weed Eater lost, and since they put all of their money into the suit, they eventually went out of business. Case closed.
So, I think that these rediculous patents will never hold up in court, and anyone who tries to use them against corporations (especially big corporations) will fail.
If AOL's involved, maybe it will be the old GEOS/Geoworks Ensemble OS from back in the day. That's what AOL was originally developed on (After they stopped being Q-Link, that is.) That OS was written after the popularity of it on such machines at the Commodore 64, 128, etc. AOL liked it, and used it right away. Then Win 3.1 came out, and GEOS died. (Even though GEOS was by far superior. It was a full multi-tasking OS on even XT's... though it was slow on them:) But it screamed on a 286, even, and Windows could never claim that. It had a nice application package with it as well. The only reason they didn't become popular, is they were totally concerned about bug zapping. (The beta test lasted forever) My dad was a beta test, and they even started paying him $50 for every bug they found. Now you can only find them on palm type computers.. oh well. Maybe that's what will show up, because that would be a perfect choice for an Internet PC.. they could revive the original AOL for GEOS, and go from there. It all waits to be seen.
It's always good to see the underdog getting ahead. Athlon seems to be the superior game performer, except for quake 3. But still, it really looks like AMD is becoming the best choice for gamers, not only because it's faster, but because it's cheaper.
Maybe they should both seek seperate markets, AMD should go for gaming/low cost 3D workstations, and Intel should stick to servers and the like. That may even out the market, and get rid of some of this "do everything we can to keep the competitors down" attitude. I mean really, when you have that much of the market, can they really be that much of a threat?
Start working towards real technological advances, rather than mediocre enhancements to beat the competition.
This shows that the only reason Sun is opening up their source for any reason is so that they can get developers to fix their code, without really having to pay them. They want to be able to make more money. That's the only reason I could see why any big corporation would release existing software as "Open Source."
Sure, there are programmers who program for the money, but there are also those who code because they love to code. Open source in the traditional sense is sort of like Marx's communism. Everyone lives together, and works not for material reward, but more of a spiritual reward.
That's really the big difference. Those who work on GPLed software are usually not business people, and usually don't really care at all how much money anyone is going to be able to make off this product, or how. They just do it, because they want good software.
I don't mean to sound flamey, but I don't think that's what he really meant. Sure, it's inconvenient for upgrades, repair, etc. but I think he meant more architecture wise. Say Mac vs. PC. With a PC you have hundreds of choices for motherboards, video cards, hard drives, etc. But with a Mac, you get what they give you. Sure, you can swap some things occasionally. Video cards and such. But you might accidently void your warranty by doing that. Even some PC manufacturers, such as HP and Packard Bell make proprietary parts, so that if you spill mountain dew on your keyboard, you can't just run to the store and buy a cheap one, you have to shell out $60 to the manufacturer, so that you can get a keyboard that is compatable with their motherboard. Many people don't like that sort of thing, so they would avoid it if they can.
What could there be at a tech show that's innappropriate for a 17 year old? Are they going to be showing pornography or selling tobacco products to everyone who walks in? Even though it's true in the US 18 is that magical age, there are just some things that don't make sense. I went to trade shows at 16 and 17, and there's nothing there that could be wrong for a youngster to see. What are they afraid of?
Well, I can't vouch for accuracy, it being babelfish and all, but here are what it said for two of my favorite languages. (Of course, it doesn't do Russian, but I probably couldn't display that anyway:)
German:
Schrägstrichpunkt - Which indeedly translates back to "Point of diagonal stroke"
Italian:
Puntino di taglio - Translates back to "Dot of cut"
Well, based on responses to somewhat recent stories about brain restoration, brain growth, cybernetics, wearable computers, etc. I expect about 28.21% of Slashdot readers will be intelligent, impotent--and maybe even immortal--cyborgs that never forget anything.:) Gosh that would be fun.:)
That's funny, since in my experience, it's the other way around. Linux has much less in the way of bugs than NT, and it's much easier to use. I have 2 NT boxes here at work, and 4 Linux boxes, and the Linux boxes never have a problem. NT works alright as long as you never do anything on the console... and it has this annoying problem with loading several copies of the accounting software server when only two people use it. (About 7-9 copies pop up) Installing was a nightmare. RH6 is a fire and forget. We had to install NT4 Server about 6 times before it actually worked. Now how is that for easy?...and don't tell me you need an MCSE to do it, because that is bills**t. You shouldn't need certification to *install* a freaking OS!:)
IMHO, it would be great to get rid of hereditary diseases, as mentioned in the article, and other such things. Someone posted earlier that we are defined by our 'defects.' However, would someone with one such 'defect' be any less of a person if they did not have the problem? I don't think that would be the case. More likely that person had potential that they had extreme difficulty realizing because of a problem that hindered them.
I don't think creating superior children is a good thing, though. We might end up creating monsters that want to do away with all of those who aren't genetically superior. (At least it happens in that way in the sci-fi books:) But I mean, seriously. If you are Joe Average, and your kid is Jean Intelligent, can you really relate to him? You want to be playing games with your kid at 5 years, but he/she wants to be studying physics. I mean, if you know physics, you can join in, but speaking as a father, I know I'd want to be playing with my kids.
In fact, he says, it will be so beneficial that governments may require children to be engineered genetically to prevent development of new socioeconomic gaps.
I think this would be very wrong. if this happens here, I'm moving to another planet.
By the time these "smart" babies are born, they could be taught via direct transmission of electrical impulses into chips implanted in their brains. "You might download French into the 3-year-old's brain directly," Caplan says.
Now, I'm wondering, did this really fit into the article at all? They were talking about genetic engineering, not implanted chips. They've gone from genetic engineering to cyborgs. (Personally, I'd want to be a cyborg, so it wouldn't be fair:) Plus, it's *upload* not download. Download is a transmission to you, upload is a transmission from you. Sigh. Net commercialization has corrupted the terms brought about by the old BBSes. Anyway, I'm finished rambling.
"Sir, we've got incoming!" "Lieutenant, keep that firewall up, damnit!" "Ach! ICMP everywhere! I canna take it anymore!" "Get me a line to the Pentagon." "PTPP link established. Using 1024-bit encryption. Go ahead, sir." [Typed: Colonel Johnson requesting permission to use the secret weapon.] ... "Crap! They're e-mailing us porn!" "Damnit! Shut down the routers!" "Sir, we've got Back Orifice, trying to get in through that last NT server." "Ahh! Why didn't that get switched to BSD?!?" "Too much red tape, sir." "Unplug it. We won't need to worry about rebooting anyway." "Aye, sir." "Status on the Linux boxes?" "They're under a lot of stress, but they are taking it well." "Good." "Sir, you know that inefficent router we have? Well, I just found out it's M$ based. We can't shut it off. We're going to have to wait for the porn to finish." "Damn. I hope HQ gets back to us soon." ...[Incoming message from the Pentagon: Permission granted. Give 'em hell, Colonel.] "Yes! We have permission! Get ready to launch the secret weapon." "SMTP online, preparing to send." "Set it up for HTML plus plain text. I want both mime and UUEncoding. Let's get ready. Images will be 32 bit RGBA. Text is to be as follows: 'Buy! Buy! Buy! *LOW* prices on your favorite collectable items!...'" ... [Bad Text to Speech Synthesis] "S.P.A.M. launcher ready. Please enter authorization code." ... "FIRE!" ... "150 billion spam messages sent. They're falling back! They have offered to surrender!"
Yeah, okay. So, it's kind of long, but I was in the mood to write a dumb story about 'cyberwarfare'.:)
Once upon a time, Netscape was good. Back in the days of 2.0 and 3.0. It was fast, and it worked. I think 4.0x did too many bad things to netscape, which made it much slower than anything else. However, IE was useless in the beginning. (1.x was non-functional, 2.0 was barely functional. 3.0 was somewhat usable. [On the side: What's up with M$ not making a usable thing until v3.x? I.e. in both the case of Win3.1 and NT 3.5]) But I've never liked IE's setup, and I really *hate* the idea of a browser being integrated into the OS. Sure, it pops up almost instantaneously in Win98, but that means it's lurking around eating up memory or swap space. Plus, how do I know it's not doing something evil in the background?
Netscape has always annoyed me with the lack of advanced settings, since they considered it "advanced" to change the cache size. I want to be able to tweak it and say what I want it to and not want it to use(More than just picking to block javascript and such)..
Something I would like to see, I haven't checked out mozilla source, or any other browser, but wouldn't it be nice to just compile the options you really want? So that you can shring memory requirements and loading time? That would certianly make me happy...
I can just see it now. Kids smuggling in their parents' brightly colored ThinkPads into school.
"What's that?" the teacher asks. "It's my new lunchbox." "Okay, put it away for now." ... Later, he's typing, getting answers for his math pop-quiz. "What are you doing?" asks the irritated teacher. "Just getting a snack." "You're not supposed to eat in class. Put it away... why does it sound like you are typing?" "Uh, that's the wrapper on my twinkie."
Now M$ is going to have to dominate that market as well. They'll make a modified version of WinCE, call it WinCP(Cell Phone, of course), and not only will you be able to use a little mouse sort of thing to dial, but the buttons with lock up, and it will take 2 minutes to reboot.
I'm sure that when cars, planes, ships, steam powered machines, or anything else similar, someone must have said that it will destroy us somehow. Have we been destroyed yet? Tell me if I'm wrong, but I don't think the human race has ceased to exist. IMO, existing technologies, such as automobiles, are more likely to kill us. People die in car crashes. They don't in computer crashes. I think no matter how technologically advanced we get, we will still have the ability to produce food. Maybe if we were almost totally dependant on automated devices, and they all stopped working, at least some of us would survive, and rebuild the race. Maybe that would be better. Give us a chance to start over. Maybe not. But I don't think it's very likely at all that it could even happen.
I so much agree. Linux is not just some elitist operating system. Linux is *a* light at the end of the tunnel. It's not the only good alternative to M$, but it's definately one of them. Now maybe some "newbies" can't really handle it as it is now, but each one of them who we convert, is one less M$ customer, one less M$ follower.
One of the big problems in doing that is the fact that most distributions are geared towards servers, and maybe workstations. What we need is a distro that is geared towards a newbie. Something with an easy to use installer (You just click on "Typical - Recommended for most users" and off you go. If you have an M$ product already installed, it tells you of possible dangers of losing data and such, etc.. And course, the graphical UI, (which it would automatically boot into) would need to be relatively simple. It wouldn't need to look like Win95, because these people should know they're using something different, but it would need to be easy. Have a choice of browsers and e-mail clients, and an office suite or two, and then you've got a good usable package for most general non-technical users. It may take a little learning, but they had to learn Windows in the first place, no? You could charge a reasonable price, $40-$60 or so, with a month or two of free tech support. (If you make it easy enough to use, they won't need tech support, but they'll have it available just in case.) After that it could be like $0.99/min or something for tech supp.
Another biggie is drivers. It seems that most device support is done at the kernel level, which I think is a bad idea. Not the fact that they are at the kernel level, but there's not a really easy way for the hardware manufacturers to write the drivers. (Maybe there is and I just haven't heard about it, I don't know.) But if it were, maybe some companies would be more willing, because then they could throw a "Works with Linux" sticker on there, and show their support.
Anyway, I'm wanting to try to throw together some easy-to-use Linux distro, and if anyone's interested in helping, leading a project, etc., email me at blazer@selectpath.com.
I can't even use xDSL or cable modems because there isn't anyone who offers it down here in New Mexico. U.S. West says they plan to put in DSL someday, but there's no date or anything. It is possible to use a cable modem, but you have to live within 3 miles of NM TechNet (*and* they charge an arm and a leg for it). ISDN is available, but it's $70/mo, and I really don't feel like paying $70/mo for ISDN. (Plus $140 installation.) So, I'm stuck using 56k. Bleh. I would be happy for anything better. (Of course, there's plenty of bandwidth at work.:)
But it could be argued that you don't "have" the mail until you login to AOL and read it. In this case, maybe it's best to use "You got mail." As in, "New mail has just arrived at in the inbox on your computer, by virtue of you logging in."
Sounds like Schrödinger's Cat. Makes you wonder, does AOL not exist until you log on?
From the review I've read of Rambus/i820 chipset on Tom's Hardware Page, it has the highest latency of all the currently available memory types for PC. The review said it has enormous bandwidth capability, but the latency is so high that you really don't get any speed/performance increase. The fact that it's only available in 8bit and 16bit don't really help either. Here's a good guide on Tom's Hardware about latency vs. bandwidth. It's worth a read.
Slashdot Mirror
I know it may not happen for a long time, but imagine this:
You walk into your local PC parts store.
"I want 96 petabytes of memory, please."
"That's it? That will be $6.28."
It's not personal privacy we're really concerned with, it's protection *from* the government. If the government goes bad (I mean, more than just conspiracies and such) how can we stop them? We could conspire all we want, but unless we use hand-written messages written in jello, there's no way we can successfully overthrow them. Sure, the government isn't too bad right now, but what if they're planning something big? What if something like the Y2K bug is a plot to make us turn to the government to help, and then they seize total control? It's more than just privacy, my friend.
Yes, I'm one of those paranoid conspiracy theorist freaks. It sure helps melt away daily boredom.
Sounds too much like the movie "Hackers". So, when we're bored, we can pull up a file manager, and spend 15 minutes trying to find X configuration files? Sounds... interesting.
Well, I suppose it would be fun to have. As long as I can make my X session look like something else. Like an old castle, with each room being an icon. Yeah yeah.
I'd say a big part of that is that some sites are hooked up with something like a T1, which is around 1.3 Mbits/s. So, if you're the only visitor, you get a nice 1.3 Mbits/s. But, if there are 100 visitors all downloading something, all you get is a measly 13kbits. Not quite so impressive. Sure there's probably a lot of problems with the backbone too.
I think it's not really worth it, because here at work on our fractional T1 I usually get anywhere from 3-10KBytes/s. Oh well.
Someone told me recently of an incident that really leaves me to believe that patents aren't worth the paper they are printed on. I can't remember the exact details, but here's the basics.
Weed Eater originally came up with the idea for nylon string trimmers. They patented the idea, and were happy. Until Toro started making nylon string trimmers as well. They tried to sue Toro, and the lawsuit lasted for years. In the mean time, Toro continued to sell the trimmers. In the end, the judge decided that the patent really wasn't worth much, and that restricting Toro would mean they couldn't do business in trimmers, so Weed Eater lost, and since they put all of their money into the suit, they eventually went out of business. Case closed.
So, I think that these rediculous patents will never hold up in court, and anyone who tries to use them against corporations (especially big corporations) will fail.
If AOL's involved, maybe it will be the old GEOS/Geoworks Ensemble OS from back in the day. That's what AOL was originally developed on (After they stopped being Q-Link, that is.) That OS was written after the popularity of it on such machines at the Commodore 64, 128, etc. AOL liked it, and used it right away. Then Win 3.1 came out, and GEOS died. (Even though GEOS was by far superior. It was a full multi-tasking OS on even XT's... though it was slow on them:) But it screamed on a 286, even, and Windows could never claim that. It had a nice application package with it as well. The only reason they didn't become popular, is they were totally concerned about bug zapping. (The beta test lasted forever) My dad was a beta test, and they even started paying him $50 for every bug they found. Now you can only find them on palm type computers.. oh well. Maybe that's what will show up, because that would be a perfect choice for an Internet PC.. they could revive the original AOL for GEOS, and go from there. It all waits to be seen.
It's always good to see the underdog getting ahead. Athlon seems to be the superior game performer, except for quake 3. But still, it really looks like AMD is becoming the best choice for gamers, not only because it's faster, but because it's cheaper.
Maybe they should both seek seperate markets, AMD should go for gaming/low cost 3D workstations, and Intel should stick to servers and the like. That may even out the market, and get rid of some of this "do everything we can to keep the competitors down" attitude. I mean really, when you have that much of the market, can they really be that much of a threat?
Start working towards real technological advances, rather than mediocre enhancements to beat the competition.
This shows that the only reason Sun is opening up their source for any reason is so that they can get developers to fix their code, without really having to pay them. They want to be able to make more money. That's the only reason I could see why any big corporation would release existing software as "Open Source."
Sure, there are programmers who program for the money, but there are also those who code because they love to code. Open source in the traditional sense is sort of like Marx's communism. Everyone lives together, and works not for material reward, but more of a spiritual reward.
That's really the big difference. Those who work on GPLed software are usually not business people, and usually don't really care at all how much money anyone is going to be able to make off this product, or how. They just do it, because they want good software.
I don't mean to sound flamey, but I don't think that's what he really meant. Sure, it's inconvenient for upgrades, repair, etc. but I think he meant more architecture wise. Say Mac vs. PC. With a PC you have hundreds of choices for motherboards, video cards, hard drives, etc. But with a Mac, you get what they give you. Sure, you can swap some things occasionally. Video cards and such. But you might accidently void your warranty by doing that. Even some PC manufacturers, such as HP and Packard Bell make proprietary parts, so that if you spill mountain dew on your keyboard, you can't just run to the store and buy a cheap one, you have to shell out $60 to the manufacturer, so that you can get a keyboard that is compatable with their motherboard. Many people don't like that sort of thing, so they would avoid it if they can.
What could there be at a tech show that's innappropriate for a 17 year old? Are they going to be showing pornography or selling tobacco products to everyone who walks in? Even though it's true in the US 18 is that magical age, there are just some things that don't make sense. I went to trade shows at 16 and 17, and there's nothing there that could be wrong for a youngster to see. What are they afraid of?
Well, I can't vouch for accuracy, it being babelfish and all, but here are what it said for two of my favorite languages. (Of course, it doesn't do Russian, but I probably couldn't display that anyway :)
German:
Schrägstrichpunkt - Which indeedly translates back to "Point of diagonal stroke"
Italian:
Puntino di taglio - Translates back to "Dot of cut"
Cobalt, Amiga - GW seems to be all over the place.
:)
I'm just waiting for Gateway to start selling Atari 800's, Commodore 64's and 128's, TRS-80's, and PCjr's as "Sub $40 PC's".
Cobalt, Amiga - GW seems to be all over the place.
I'm just waiting for Gateway to start selling Atari 800's, Commodore 64's and 128's, TRS-80's, and PCjr's as "Sub $40 PC's".
Well, based on responses to somewhat recent stories about brain restoration, brain growth, cybernetics, wearable computers, etc. I expect about 28.21% of Slashdot readers will be intelligent, impotent--and maybe even immortal--cyborgs that never forget anything. :) Gosh that would be fun. :)
That's funny, since in my experience, it's the other way around. Linux has much less in the way of bugs than NT, and it's much easier to use. I have 2 NT boxes here at work, and 4 Linux boxes, and the Linux boxes never have a problem. NT works alright as long as you never do anything on the console... and it has this annoying problem with loading several copies of the accounting software server when only two people use it. (About 7-9 copies pop up) Installing was a nightmare. RH6 is a fire and forget. We had to install NT4 Server about 6 times before it actually worked. Now how is that for easy? ...and don't tell me you need an MCSE to do it, because that is bills**t. You shouldn't need certification to *install* a freaking OS! :)
IMHO, it would be great to get rid of hereditary diseases, as mentioned in the article, and other such things. Someone posted earlier that we are defined by our 'defects.' However, would someone with one such 'defect' be any less of a person if they did not have the problem? I don't think that would be the case. More likely that person had potential that they had extreme difficulty realizing because of a problem that hindered them.
:) But I mean, seriously. If you are Joe Average, and your kid is Jean Intelligent, can you really relate to him? You want to be playing games with your kid at 5 years, but he/she wants to be studying physics. I mean, if you know physics, you can join in, but speaking as a father, I know I'd want to be playing with my kids.
I don't think creating superior children is a good thing, though. We might end up creating monsters that want to do away with all of those who aren't genetically superior. (At least it happens in that way in the sci-fi books
In fact, he says, it will be so beneficial that governments may require children to be engineered genetically to prevent development of new socioeconomic gaps.
I think this would be very wrong. if this happens here, I'm moving to another planet.
By the time these "smart" babies are born, they could be taught via direct transmission of electrical impulses into chips implanted in their brains.
"You might download French into the 3-year-old's brain directly," Caplan says.
Now, I'm wondering, did this really fit into the article at all? They were talking about genetic engineering, not implanted chips. They've gone from genetic engineering to cyborgs. (Personally, I'd want to be a cyborg, so it wouldn't be fair:) Plus, it's *upload* not download. Download is a transmission to you, upload is a transmission from you. Sigh. Net commercialization has corrupted the terms brought about by the old BBSes. Anyway, I'm finished rambling.
Hey, you took three cents!
...[Scenes from the front, WWIII news coverag]
...'"
:)
"Sir, we've got incoming!"
"Lieutenant, keep that firewall up, damnit!"
"Ach! ICMP everywhere! I canna take it anymore!"
"Get me a line to the Pentagon."
"PTPP link established. Using 1024-bit encryption. Go ahead, sir."
[Typed: Colonel Johnson requesting permission to use the secret weapon.]
...
"Crap! They're e-mailing us porn!"
"Damnit! Shut down the routers!"
"Sir, we've got Back Orifice, trying to get in through that last NT server."
"Ahh! Why didn't that get switched to BSD?!?"
"Too much red tape, sir."
"Unplug it. We won't need to worry about rebooting anyway."
"Aye, sir."
"Status on the Linux boxes?"
"They're under a lot of stress, but they are taking it well."
"Good."
"Sir, you know that inefficent router we have? Well, I just found out it's M$ based. We can't shut it off. We're going to have to wait for the porn to finish."
"Damn. I hope HQ gets back to us soon."
...[Incoming message from the Pentagon: Permission granted. Give 'em hell, Colonel.]
"Yes! We have permission! Get ready to launch the secret weapon."
"SMTP online, preparing to send."
"Set it up for HTML plus plain text. I want both mime and UUEncoding. Let's get ready. Images will be 32 bit RGBA. Text is to be as follows: 'Buy! Buy! Buy! *LOW* prices on your favorite collectable items!
...
[Bad Text to Speech Synthesis] "S.P.A.M. launcher ready. Please enter authorization code."
...
"FIRE!"
...
"150 billion spam messages sent. They're falling back! They have offered to surrender!"
Yeah, okay. So, it's kind of long, but I was in the mood to write a dumb story about 'cyberwarfare'.
Once upon a time, Netscape was good. Back in the days of 2.0 and 3.0. It was fast, and it worked. I think 4.0x did too many bad things to netscape, which made it much slower than anything else. However, IE was useless in the beginning. (1.x was non-functional, 2.0 was barely functional. 3.0 was somewhat usable. [On the side: What's up with M$ not making a usable thing until v3.x? I.e. in both the case of Win3.1 and NT 3.5]) But I've never liked IE's setup, and I really *hate* the idea of a browser being integrated into the OS. Sure, it pops up almost instantaneously in Win98, but that means it's lurking around eating up memory or swap space. Plus, how do I know it's not doing something evil in the background?
Netscape has always annoyed me with the lack of advanced settings, since they considered it "advanced" to change the cache size. I want to be able to tweak it and say what I want it to and not want it to use(More than just picking to block javascript and such)..
Something I would like to see, I haven't checked out mozilla source, or any other browser, but wouldn't it be nice to just compile the options you really want? So that you can shring memory requirements and loading time? That would certianly make me happy...
This message is priced at $0.02. Thank you.
I can just see it now. Kids smuggling in their parents' brightly colored ThinkPads into school.
"What's that?" the teacher asks.
"It's my new lunchbox."
"Okay, put it away for now."
...
Later, he's typing, getting answers for his math pop-quiz.
"What are you doing?" asks the irritated teacher.
"Just getting a snack."
"You're not supposed to eat in class. Put it away... why does it sound like you are typing?"
"Uh, that's the wrapper on my twinkie."
Or something like that.
Now M$ is going to have to dominate that market as well. They'll make a modified version of WinCE, call it WinCP(Cell Phone, of course), and not only will you be able to use a little mouse sort of thing to dial, but the buttons with lock up, and it will take 2 minutes to reboot.
I'm sure that when cars, planes, ships, steam powered machines, or anything else similar, someone must have said that it will destroy us somehow. Have we been destroyed yet? Tell me if I'm wrong, but I don't think the human race has ceased to exist. IMO, existing technologies, such as automobiles, are more likely to kill us. People die in car crashes. They don't in computer crashes. I think no matter how technologically advanced we get, we will still have the ability to produce food. Maybe if we were almost totally dependant on automated devices, and they all stopped working, at least some of us would survive, and rebuild the race. Maybe that would be better. Give us a chance to start over. Maybe not. But I don't think it's very likely at all that it could even happen.
I so much agree. Linux is not just some elitist operating system. Linux is *a* light at the end of the tunnel. It's not the only good alternative to M$, but it's definately one of them. Now maybe some "newbies" can't really handle it as it is now, but each one of them who we convert, is one less M$ customer, one less M$ follower.
One of the big problems in doing that is the fact that most distributions are geared towards servers, and maybe workstations. What we need is a distro that is geared towards a newbie. Something with an easy to use installer (You just click on "Typical - Recommended for most users" and off you go. If you have an M$ product already installed, it tells you of possible dangers of losing data and such, etc.. And course, the graphical UI, (which it would automatically boot into) would need to be relatively simple. It wouldn't need to look like Win95, because these people should know they're using something different, but it would need to be easy. Have a choice of browsers and e-mail clients, and an office suite or two, and then you've got a good usable package for most general non-technical users. It may take a little learning, but they had to learn Windows in the first place, no? You could charge a reasonable price, $40-$60 or so, with a month or two of free tech support. (If you make it easy enough to use, they won't need tech support, but they'll have it available just in case.) After that it could be like $0.99/min or something for tech supp.
Another biggie is drivers. It seems that most device support is done at the kernel level, which I think is a bad idea. Not the fact that they are at the kernel level, but there's not a really easy way for the hardware manufacturers to write the drivers. (Maybe there is and I just haven't heard about it, I don't know.) But if it were, maybe some companies would be more willing, because then they could throw a "Works with Linux" sticker on there, and show their support.
Anyway, I'm wanting to try to throw together some easy-to-use Linux distro, and if anyone's interested in helping, leading a project, etc., email me at blazer@selectpath.com.
I can't even use xDSL or cable modems because there isn't anyone who offers it down here in New Mexico. U.S. West says they plan to put in DSL someday, but there's no date or anything. It is possible to use a cable modem, but you have to live within 3 miles of NM TechNet (*and* they charge an arm and a leg for it). ISDN is available, but it's $70/mo, and I really don't feel like paying $70/mo for ISDN. (Plus $140 installation.) So, I'm stuck using 56k. Bleh. I would be happy for anything better. (Of course, there's plenty of bandwidth at work. :)
But it could be argued that you don't "have" the mail until you login to AOL and read it. In this case, maybe it's best to use "You got mail." As in, "New mail has just arrived at in the inbox on your computer, by virtue of you logging in."
Sounds like Schrödinger's Cat. Makes you wonder, does AOL not exist until you log on?
From the review I've read of Rambus/i820 chipset on Tom's Hardware Page, it has the highest latency of all the currently available memory types for PC. The review said it has enormous bandwidth capability, but the latency is so high that you really don't get any speed/performance increase. The fact that it's only available in 8bit and 16bit don't really help either. Here's a good guide on Tom's Hardware about latency vs. bandwidth. It's worth a read.