I second that idea. None of the andoriod/ipad tablets with a capacitive screen and stripped down note taking apps can beat a Windows tablet PC with a Wacom pen and digitizer running OneNote. Infinite paper, the option to add space in the middle of stuff you've already written, searchable handrwiting, the ability to sync in audio recordings with what you're writing, and so much more cool stuff.
I can't speak to where that particualr song is coming from, but we used another one of her songs as a reference for a musicianship class. The song "Crazy" is a fine example of the use of parallel major. I'm not farmiliar with the actual song, but this is what I remember our theory teacher telling us. In the line "I'm crazy, but it's okay" the shift to the parallel major paints the mood of each word. The chords under crazy, are V-i in the minor. Under okay, you get VII-III in the minor, which is really just V-I in the parallel major. So, "crazy" is minor and scary, while "okay" is major and happy. It's common technique amoung classical song writers like Schubert, where the music literally portrays some aspect of the text.
I'm the same way - jack of all trades, master of none. I'm interested in pretty much everything. I've suprised myself with how many new things I've taken an interest in after finishing school. I've gotten better at recognizing before I start that I won't ever finish something, so I've cut down on the things I start.
I was above average in most things with not much effort. So, I just kinda coasted through everything. But I was always envoius of the kids who were really good at something, and it took me a long time to understand why they were really good and I was only sorta good. Music did happen to catch me, and now I'm trying to build a life on it. It has taken me way more work than I ever imagined, but it has all been worth it. I still lack the focus to be winning international competitions, and I have yet to win a big position with a larger group, but I think I've found a good balance for me. So many of the top musicians lose themselves to the instrument, and I don't want that. Playing viola is what I do, not who I am.
As for starting new things and seeing them through, my advice is that you need a schedule and someone to be accountable to. I always thought I should start running. It was always just a nice thought until a friend talked me into joining a group that was training for a marathon. (I'm only training for the relay). I now have a schedule of runs with a larger goal in mind. Along the way, I built some rewards into the schedule. I figured if I stuck with it for a month I could get myself a shiny little mp3 player to keep me occupied as the runs got longer. Then I went out to a real running store and got fitted for a nice pair of shoes with the whole running on the treadmil and analyzing my individual stride thingy. I told everyone I knew I was doing it, so now whenever I ses someone, one of their first questions is "how's the running going?" The group gets together every Saturday for the long run of the week.
Joining a group is one of the most powerful ways to maintain focus. Come to think of it, I guess that's part of why I really stuck it out with music. I love playing in the ensemble.
The other thing - and I know this will sound cheesy - is that you have to learn the difference between the initial thrill of having something new spark your interest, and the quiet enjoyment of doing something that you've really taken the time to get into. It's like the difference between falling in love and staying in love, or between happiness and deeper joy.
I agree with you, but I feel the need to play Devil's Advocate for just a moment....
Could Microsoft really get away with bundling as much software with Windows as the average Linux distrobution comes with? In the EU, they aren't even allowed to include their media player with their OS. There was all that fuss about including a web browser a while back. (I know, they have underhanded ways of including their own stuff to the detriment of their competition and the market and all. There's also their monopoly problems, but I'm just playing devil's advocate here.) Could they really get away with including the GIMP on the install CD?
I know it wouldn't happen because Microsoft likes to write its own software for inclusion in its OS. What if they beefed up Paint the point where it competed with Photoshop? Would you complain that it was unfair competion against Photoshop? I'm afraid that because of Microsoft's past troubles they will never really be able to bundle as much software with the OS install as Ubuntu, even though they both only live on one CD.
Of course the other thing stopping them is the fact that they would rather charge you extra for things like your Office applications.
What if Microsoft offered a Windows XP Complete Solutions that came with all of the categories of applications the average Linux flavor comes with and a separate Windows XP Bare Bones OS that came with nothing but the basics (notepad, paint, solitare, things like that)? Would the market allow them to do something like that? Which would your new pc come with? Which would you install on the machine you pieced together to give your grandma?
Take the frets off and get back to me. My five year old violin students can play with their eyes closed too, but they're certainly not playing that kind of stuff. Anyone can play Twinkle without looking.
I think the bad response is mostly from amature musicians who would like to think they're really good, so they want to claim to be able to do the same stuff he's doing. Did you even read the kid's bio? CIM is not a hack-job school to get into. I work with several CIM trained musicians in the Erie Phil, and they are certainly not hacks. He has several awards from international competitions under his belt. He is an accomlished player. Whether or not these pieces show off that accomplishment is another matter. Are accomplished musicians not allowed to play for fun? Must they play show pieces all their lives so people can see how truly technically amazing they are?
Anyway, as a conservatory trained musician myself (6 years, BM and MM) I can say I've never spent more than 6 hours in a day practicing, and I don't know anyone who even comes close to 10+, including CIM kids. I'd be interested to know what university you're refering to, and how long it is before those 10+ hours a day kids burn out, or injure themselves.
One of my friends in my undergrad played similar stuff on violin. He happened to be one of the best violinists at the school. He just learned all the nintendo stuff because his dad would make him go to his room and practice and he would play games on the nintendo, then play nintendo on the violin. Didn't make him any less of a violinist.
So, to sumarize, give the kid a break. I would prefer to resent the fact that Sara Chang claims to be younger than I am. She is so not younger than me.
You're right that it's a bit fast. I don't think he's trying to throw in rubato though. I think it's an attempt to make sure the triplets are even. The majority of the main theme is lot of syncopations on various sixteenth divisions, but there are places (the ascending arpeggios) that are triplets. I think what happened was that he got excited and squished the sixteenths too close together and overexagerated the triplets.
I only know all of this detail becuase I've recently arranged the theme for my middle school violin group. I split them into two parts to play the top lines, since those have the same rhythm throughout. I'll eventually play the bottom line on viola, once I feel they can handle the theme without me helping them through it. I have to teach them the rhythms mostly by ear though as they're not the best rhythm readers, so asking them to just count through the Super Mario theme was out of the question.
I was in that position a few years ago. I wanted to try something other than windows, but only had one computer to work with, and didn't want to screw it up. I tried the SuSE-live eval, but it didn't get along with my laptop very well. I had seen RedHat back in the day (around version 5.something). I don't remember why I decided against it, but I did.
I wound up with Madrake. It was the only one (at the time) that promised to non-destructively resize my ntfs partition during install, which it did quite nicely. I liked it well enough and then got used to it. Becuase it was the first linux I really used a lot, it just feels like "the way things should be". I think it's an easy transition for someone used to windows because there is a graphical control panel to take care of most of the system stuff, just like the control panel in windows.
Of course someone else will come along and tell us how much better some other disto is, but Mandrake worked for me, and I think it's a good choice for a competent windows user.
"if you have an interface that needs two mouse buttons to do most tasks, there is something wrong with your interface"
Remove the word mouse, and change buttons to pedals, and then explain to me how you operate your car. Do you press Ctrl-pedal to brake?
Sometimes having seperate buttons for seperate jobs is a good thing. I wonder if some of these complaints of people who can't comprehend the difference comes from knowledgeable users who simply don't understand how to describe things in terms an adult novice can understand. Teaching an adult is very different from teaching a young child. (I teach violin to each of those categories, and they are both quite capable, but in different ways.)
My mom has no problem with two buttons, and the last time she used computers (before last year) was when you controlled them with punch cards.
It's a nice idea and all, but I just don't think it would really happen. We don't learn our language from the internet, it just influences slang amoung the young-uns. Language is learned in infancy by listening to adults, so the only real way to get a global language is to change the way all of the adults talk to their babies and then wait for the babies to grow up.
Even if we could get that to happen, it wouldn't be long before dialects cropped up and veered away from one another. I'll never forget the time I was in Italy (as a scared little American trying to live there for a month as part of a festival) and I needed some help figuring out the bus system in Piza. Imagine my non-Italian-speaking relief when I heard a goup chatting away in English. I was going to ask them for help, when suddenly, it all turned into unitelligible babbel. I did an aural double-take. I listened carefully to see if my ears had been playing tricks on me, and I started picking farmiliar words out of a VERY British accent. It took a lot of thought to understand what they were saying, and we were supposedly speaking the same language. All it takes is an ocean and a few generations, and all that same-language-speaking-goodness goes out the window.
Better yet, I could get that hampster mod for my pc case and use their droppings to power the machine!
Seriously though, I'm suprised that I had to read this far down the page to find someone who thought of this. I'm also upset that I didn't think of it myself. I would love to put some of my trash in a little machine and have it power some of my life. If this technology is small enough for tiny aircraft, then surely it's small enough for a pcmcia card, or a cell phone, or maybe just a small box you can carry around and plug stuff into. You could give half of your candy bar to your laptop on the plane to keep it going through another movie.
I think you're dead on with the idea of turning our garbage into electricity for our homes.
As far as I understand it AC is bad but DC is okay. Direct current occurs in nature (lightning) so it is okay to use anything based on DC. However, alternating current is artificial, and is therefore bad somehow (I forget the specific reasoning behind this). That basically means that anything running off of batteries is allowed.
The Amish use power tools to build all that awsome furniture, but they are all battery powered. I know that some Amish will send their power tools away to be recharged since they don't have the wall outlets to plug them into. So cell phones and PDAs are okay, they are battey powered. I guess some communities will also use generators to charge all of their battery powered goodies.
And don't give me that "then plug in a 3 button mouse" crap either, having to plug in an extra chunk of plastic defeats the all-in-oneness of the laptop, and they aren't the default "integrated experience" anyway.
And that gets me to the OS. Why in the world would anyone choose, willingly, to use an OS that refused to maximize a window when told to? Or that insisted on being "cute" at every opportunity, even when being so is distracting, unnecessary and reeks of an out of control case of eyecandyitis? Christ, at least when I tell a window under pretty much ANY other OS to maximize, it DOES. And let's not even get started on the stubborn, Bush-like insistence on staying with the failed policy of single-button mice.
Now, I can hear some of you saying "well, uh...but we have a commandline! And it's *nix!" Well, yes sonny, you DO have a commandline. But I'd rather have my Linux commandline anyday, unencumbered by OS X's ridiculously overblown, unintuitive, overwrought GUI.
Which is exactly why I'm not ashamed to run linux on my iBook. I got it used, really cheap. I've never particularly cared for macs, but it was small and cheap and has good battery life. I don't mind OSX. I can use it and all, and sometimes I have to, but I'd prefer to be booted into whichever linux I have running at the time. There's a reason my boyfriend (the mac zealot) calls me (the linux hobbyist) to ask about how to do things on the command line.
OK let's back away from this 'Linux vs. OSX' thread before it's too late. Whoops, too late.
It's always too late. It's inevitable in a story about linux on PPC the first comment will always be "why would anyone want to run linux when OSX is just soooo amazing."
Well, here it is, get ready.....some of use just prefer linux. That's it. Just prefer it. No subjective better than/worse than arguments will change personal preferences. Not even objective but I can't put my iBook to sleep arguments will deter some.
I have all kinds of machines around. I have a monster laptop that's mostly been banished to my desktop for size/weight/lack of battery concerns, so I haul around a beat up old little 12" G3 500 iBook that I happened to come by super cheap when a friend was selling an old one. I like having a consistent working environment. I like using OOo calc to keep track of my students and it just looks like crap and runs about the same in OSX. I like playing Kpat to kill time. I was running Ubuntu for a while, but switched back to Mandrake when the 10.1 for PPC hit RC2. I'm also running Mandrake on my desktop, cause I just like it. I actually like KDE (let the next set of flames commence) which is part of why I left Ubuntu.
I really wish we could leave these my-os-is-better-than-yours arguments out of the discussions and just talk about the distro from the article on it's own without having to compare it to everything else first.
I found Ubuntu to be really nice distro. The wake-from-sleep issue seems to be particular to certain iBooks, and I tend to blame it on the kernel becuase I'm having the same problem with Mandrake 10.1 RC2, but never had the problem with 9.1 or YellowDog 3. I found the packages that are included in Ubuntu to be a nice balance between not including too much stuff and having everything I like to use installed by default. I'm a big fan of only having to download one CD for the whole installation. I'm also finally understanding what all those debian fanboys are talking about with the vastness of the deb repositories. There are about a bagillion packages out there that can be installed, even if they're not officially suppossed to work with Ubuntu. The defualt brown theme was intereting for a while, but I much relieved to get back the Mandrake blue. I know themes can be changed, but I'm talking first impressions with the default theme.
Keep in mind that Hobbits "come of age" at 33, which Frodo had just passed when things started. The other hobbits were all younger than he was. This is the equivilent of an 18 year-old leading some mid-teens across the country with the fate of the world in their hands. For them, it really is a "coming of age" story.
YES!!! I need to second this idea. The users aren't really that hard to educate, they just need some one on one attention and proper analogies that bring computer use into the realm of things they already understand.
It took me 5 hours to clean off a friend's computer. I switched him to Firefox with a short explaination of the difference between the browser and the internet. It took a few tries for Ad-Aware to get everything (over 2000 problems, after going through window's unistall list), then I showed him all the problems it found and how to quarentine and remove the problems. Installed the latest patches and rebooted. Ran Ad-Aware again, then Spybot, and made him watch. Once everything was cleaned up, I simply put Zone-Alarm on and told him to block anything he didn't specifically open. I asked him two weeks later how the computer is doing and he says it's running WAY faster and that Zone-Alarm stopped bugging him after just a day of telling it what to do. I guess the real test will be the next time Ad-Aware is run.
The problem is, we don't have 5 hours to give to every clueless luser out there. I'm still a starving enough recent grad and will fix a computer for dinner, but I know not everyone is willing to do that anymore. I think it's time that new pcs started coming with a real firewall and Ad-Aware or some other anti-spyware program. Most new computers for the past few years have been coming with anti-virus software configured to run weekly. I think it's time new windows machines start coming with Ad-Aware and a good firewall. Perhaps they should even come with a nice little booklet explaining internet safety and the programs that are installed to help. It wouldn't fix the idiot problem, but it would help the well-intentioned who simply don't know how nasty these programs have gotten.
Re:Without reading the article...
on
NYT On Flying Cars
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· Score: 2, Informative
Of course I ran it with turbo off....the centipede moved too fast and I couldn't catch the bouncing babies with the turbo on....ah, those were the days.
My typing certainly improved when I visited a relative in Belguim. Stupid French AZERTY keyboard. The only way to type with any speed was to remap the keyboard to an American layout, at which point, looking at the keys was useless. Once I got back to my happy little QWERTY, I found I no longer needed to look.
Most of these mysterious surcharges are only for landlines.
Hmmmm.....mysterious charges on my cell phone bill include:
Federal Tax
Monroe County Sales Tax - Services & Usage
New York State Sales Tax - Services & Usage
New York State Wireless 911 Surcharge
New York State Gross Receipts Tax
New York State Excise Tax
Federal Universal Service Fund
Federal E911
Federal Wireless Number Pooling And Portability
I doubt you have more than that on your landline. Stupid New York.
And to those of you who are from other countries and wonder why we distrust cell phone companies in the US, this is why, although I guess this is mostly the government's doing. My $34.99 service plan winds up costing me $42.99. Funny thing is, when the bill was going to an adress in Ohio, it was $5 less. Once again, stupid New York.
I have to wonder why no one has made a PDA with a 20 or 30 gig hardrive yet? It could even play Video files as well as music.
I've been waiting for that device ever since the first iPod came out. Let's make one and sell it and make lots of money. Let's add Wifi and Bluetooth and cell phone capabilities so you can use your Bluetooth headset to make VoIP calls and cell phone calls and check your email or stream you music from anywhere.
Slashdot Mirror
I second that idea. None of the andoriod/ipad tablets with a capacitive screen and stripped down note taking apps can beat a Windows tablet PC with a Wacom pen and digitizer running OneNote. Infinite paper, the option to add space in the middle of stuff you've already written, searchable handrwiting, the ability to sync in audio recordings with what you're writing, and so much more cool stuff.
I can't speak to where that particualr song is coming from, but we used another one of her songs as a reference for a musicianship class. The song "Crazy" is a fine example of the use of parallel major. I'm not farmiliar with the actual song, but this is what I remember our theory teacher telling us. In the line "I'm crazy, but it's okay" the shift to the parallel major paints the mood of each word. The chords under crazy, are V-i in the minor. Under okay, you get VII-III in the minor, which is really just V-I in the parallel major. So, "crazy" is minor and scary, while "okay" is major and happy. It's common technique amoung classical song writers like Schubert, where the music literally portrays some aspect of the text.
I'm the same way - jack of all trades, master of none. I'm interested in pretty much everything. I've suprised myself with how many new things I've taken an interest in after finishing school. I've gotten better at recognizing before I start that I won't ever finish something, so I've cut down on the things I start.
I was above average in most things with not much effort. So, I just kinda coasted through everything. But I was always envoius of the kids who were really good at something, and it took me a long time to understand why they were really good and I was only sorta good. Music did happen to catch me, and now I'm trying to build a life on it. It has taken me way more work than I ever imagined, but it has all been worth it. I still lack the focus to be winning international competitions, and I have yet to win a big position with a larger group, but I think I've found a good balance for me. So many of the top musicians lose themselves to the instrument, and I don't want that. Playing viola is what I do, not who I am.
As for starting new things and seeing them through, my advice is that you need a schedule and someone to be accountable to. I always thought I should start running. It was always just a nice thought until a friend talked me into joining a group that was training for a marathon. (I'm only training for the relay). I now have a schedule of runs with a larger goal in mind. Along the way, I built some rewards into the schedule. I figured if I stuck with it for a month I could get myself a shiny little mp3 player to keep me occupied as the runs got longer. Then I went out to a real running store and got fitted for a nice pair of shoes with the whole running on the treadmil and analyzing my individual stride thingy. I told everyone I knew I was doing it, so now whenever I ses someone, one of their first questions is "how's the running going?" The group gets together every Saturday for the long run of the week.
Joining a group is one of the most powerful ways to maintain focus. Come to think of it, I guess that's part of why I really stuck it out with music. I love playing in the ensemble.
The other thing - and I know this will sound cheesy - is that you have to learn the difference between the initial thrill of having something new spark your interest, and the quiet enjoyment of doing something that you've really taken the time to get into. It's like the difference between falling in love and staying in love, or between happiness and deeper joy.
I hope some of this makes sense.
I agree with you, but I feel the need to play Devil's Advocate for just a moment....
Could Microsoft really get away with bundling as much software with Windows as the average Linux distrobution comes with? In the EU, they aren't even allowed to include their media player with their OS. There was all that fuss about including a web browser a while back. (I know, they have underhanded ways of including their own stuff to the detriment of their competition and the market and all. There's also their monopoly problems, but I'm just playing devil's advocate here.) Could they really get away with including the GIMP on the install CD?
I know it wouldn't happen because Microsoft likes to write its own software for inclusion in its OS. What if they beefed up Paint the point where it competed with Photoshop? Would you complain that it was unfair competion against Photoshop? I'm afraid that because of Microsoft's past troubles they will never really be able to bundle as much software with the OS install as Ubuntu, even though they both only live on one CD.
Of course the other thing stopping them is the fact that they would rather charge you extra for things like your Office applications.
What if Microsoft offered a Windows XP Complete Solutions that came with all of the categories of applications the average Linux flavor comes with and a separate Windows XP Bare Bones OS that came with nothing but the basics (notepad, paint, solitare, things like that)? Would the market allow them to do something like that? Which would your new pc come with? Which would you install on the machine you pieced together to give your grandma?
Take the frets off and get back to me. My five year old violin students can play with their eyes closed too, but they're certainly not playing that kind of stuff. Anyone can play Twinkle without looking.
I think the bad response is mostly from amature musicians who would like to think they're really good, so they want to claim to be able to do the same stuff he's doing. Did you even read the kid's bio? CIM is not a hack-job school to get into. I work with several CIM trained musicians in the Erie Phil, and they are certainly not hacks. He has several awards from international competitions under his belt. He is an accomlished player. Whether or not these pieces show off that accomplishment is another matter. Are accomplished musicians not allowed to play for fun? Must they play show pieces all their lives so people can see how truly technically amazing they are?
Anyway, as a conservatory trained musician myself (6 years, BM and MM) I can say I've never spent more than 6 hours in a day practicing, and I don't know anyone who even comes close to 10+, including CIM kids. I'd be interested to know what university you're refering to, and how long it is before those 10+ hours a day kids burn out, or injure themselves.
One of my friends in my undergrad played similar stuff on violin. He happened to be one of the best violinists at the school. He just learned all the nintendo stuff because his dad would make him go to his room and practice and he would play games on the nintendo, then play nintendo on the violin. Didn't make him any less of a violinist.
So, to sumarize, give the kid a break. I would prefer to resent the fact that Sara Chang claims to be younger than I am. She is so not younger than me.
You're right that it's a bit fast. I don't think he's trying to throw in rubato though. I think it's an attempt to make sure the triplets are even. The majority of the main theme is lot of syncopations on various sixteenth divisions, but there are places (the ascending arpeggios) that are triplets. I think what happened was that he got excited and squished the sixteenths too close together and overexagerated the triplets.
I only know all of this detail becuase I've recently arranged the theme for my middle school violin group. I split them into two parts to play the top lines, since those have the same rhythm throughout. I'll eventually play the bottom line on viola, once I feel they can handle the theme without me helping them through it. I have to teach them the rhythms mostly by ear though as they're not the best rhythm readers, so asking them to just count through the Super Mario theme was out of the question.
I was in that position a few years ago. I wanted to try something other than windows, but only had one computer to work with, and didn't want to screw it up. I tried the SuSE-live eval, but it didn't get along with my laptop very well. I had seen RedHat back in the day (around version 5.something). I don't remember why I decided against it, but I did.
I wound up with Madrake. It was the only one (at the time) that promised to non-destructively resize my ntfs partition during install, which it did quite nicely. I liked it well enough and then got used to it. Becuase it was the first linux I really used a lot, it just feels like "the way things should be". I think it's an easy transition for someone used to windows because there is a graphical control panel to take care of most of the system stuff, just like the control panel in windows.
Of course someone else will come along and tell us how much better some other disto is, but Mandrake worked for me, and I think it's a good choice for a competent windows user.
"if you have an interface that needs two mouse buttons to do most tasks, there is something wrong with your interface"
Remove the word mouse, and change buttons to pedals, and then explain to me how you operate your car. Do you press Ctrl-pedal to brake?
Sometimes having seperate buttons for seperate jobs is a good thing. I wonder if some of these complaints of people who can't comprehend the difference comes from knowledgeable users who simply don't understand how to describe things in terms an adult novice can understand. Teaching an adult is very different from teaching a young child. (I teach violin to each of those categories, and they are both quite capable, but in different ways.)
My mom has no problem with two buttons, and the last time she used computers (before last year) was when you controlled them with punch cards.
It's a nice idea and all, but I just don't think it would really happen. We don't learn our language from the internet, it just influences slang amoung the young-uns. Language is learned in infancy by listening to adults, so the only real way to get a global language is to change the way all of the adults talk to their babies and then wait for the babies to grow up.
Even if we could get that to happen, it wouldn't be long before dialects cropped up and veered away from one another. I'll never forget the time I was in Italy (as a scared little American trying to live there for a month as part of a festival) and I needed some help figuring out the bus system in Piza. Imagine my non-Italian-speaking relief when I heard a goup chatting away in English. I was going to ask them for help, when suddenly, it all turned into unitelligible babbel. I did an aural double-take. I listened carefully to see if my ears had been playing tricks on me, and I started picking farmiliar words out of a VERY British accent. It took a lot of thought to understand what they were saying, and we were supposedly speaking the same language. All it takes is an ocean and a few generations, and all that same-language-speaking-goodness goes out the window.
Better yet, I could get that hampster mod for my pc case and use their droppings to power the machine!
Seriously though, I'm suprised that I had to read this far down the page to find someone who thought of this. I'm also upset that I didn't think of it myself. I would love to put some of my trash in a little machine and have it power some of my life. If this technology is small enough for tiny aircraft, then surely it's small enough for a pcmcia card, or a cell phone, or maybe just a small box you can carry around and plug stuff into. You could give half of your candy bar to your laptop on the plane to keep it going through another movie.
I think you're dead on with the idea of turning our garbage into electricity for our homes.
As far as I understand it AC is bad but DC is okay. Direct current occurs in nature (lightning) so it is okay to use anything based on DC. However, alternating current is artificial, and is therefore bad somehow (I forget the specific reasoning behind this). That basically means that anything running off of batteries is allowed.
The Amish use power tools to build all that awsome furniture, but they are all battery powered. I know that some Amish will send their power tools away to be recharged since they don't have the wall outlets to plug them into. So cell phones and PDAs are okay, they are battey powered. I guess some communities will also use generators to charge all of their battery powered goodies.
And don't give me that "then plug in a 3 button mouse" crap either, having to plug in an extra chunk of plastic defeats the all-in-oneness of the laptop, and they aren't the default "integrated experience" anyway.
It's always too late. It's inevitable in a story about linux on PPC the first comment will always be "why would anyone want to run linux when OSX is just soooo amazing." Well, here it is, get ready.....some of use just prefer linux. That's it. Just prefer it. No subjective better than/worse than arguments will change personal preferences. Not even objective but I can't put my iBook to sleep arguments will deter some.
I have all kinds of machines around. I have a monster laptop that's mostly been banished to my desktop for size/weight/lack of battery concerns, so I haul around a beat up old little 12" G3 500 iBook that I happened to come by super cheap when a friend was selling an old one. I like having a consistent working environment. I like using OOo calc to keep track of my students and it just looks like crap and runs about the same in OSX. I like playing Kpat to kill time. I was running Ubuntu for a while, but switched back to Mandrake when the 10.1 for PPC hit RC2. I'm also running Mandrake on my desktop, cause I just like it. I actually like KDE (let the next set of flames commence) which is part of why I left Ubuntu.
I really wish we could leave these my-os-is-better-than-yours arguments out of the discussions and just talk about the distro from the article on it's own without having to compare it to everything else first.
I found Ubuntu to be really nice distro. The wake-from-sleep issue seems to be particular to certain iBooks, and I tend to blame it on the kernel becuase I'm having the same problem with Mandrake 10.1 RC2, but never had the problem with 9.1 or YellowDog 3. I found the packages that are included in Ubuntu to be a nice balance between not including too much stuff and having everything I like to use installed by default. I'm a big fan of only having to download one CD for the whole installation. I'm also finally understanding what all those debian fanboys are talking about with the vastness of the deb repositories. There are about a bagillion packages out there that can be installed, even if they're not officially suppossed to work with Ubuntu. The defualt brown theme was intereting for a while, but I much relieved to get back the Mandrake blue. I know themes can be changed, but I'm talking first impressions with the default theme.
OOOOO.....ok....but be gentle, this is my first....
In Soviet Russia.....YOU train the CAT!
No, that's no good, it needs to end with "you"....um....the cat..umm...is allergic to YOU!
Oh, I give up....just imagine a Beowolf cluster of hyperallergenic cats, okay?
Keep in mind that Hobbits "come of age" at 33, which Frodo had just passed when things started. The other hobbits were all younger than he was. This is the equivilent of an 18 year-old leading some mid-teens across the country with the fate of the world in their hands. For them, it really is a "coming of age" story.
YES!!! I need to second this idea. The users aren't really that hard to educate, they just need some one on one attention and proper analogies that bring computer use into the realm of things they already understand.
It took me 5 hours to clean off a friend's computer. I switched him to Firefox with a short explaination of the difference between the browser and the internet. It took a few tries for Ad-Aware to get everything (over 2000 problems, after going through window's unistall list), then I showed him all the problems it found and how to quarentine and remove the problems. Installed the latest patches and rebooted. Ran Ad-Aware again, then Spybot, and made him watch. Once everything was cleaned up, I simply put Zone-Alarm on and told him to block anything he didn't specifically open. I asked him two weeks later how the computer is doing and he says it's running WAY faster and that Zone-Alarm stopped bugging him after just a day of telling it what to do. I guess the real test will be the next time Ad-Aware is run.
The problem is, we don't have 5 hours to give to every clueless luser out there. I'm still a starving enough recent grad and will fix a computer for dinner, but I know not everyone is willing to do that anymore. I think it's time that new pcs started coming with a real firewall and Ad-Aware or some other anti-spyware program. Most new computers for the past few years have been coming with anti-virus software configured to run weekly. I think it's time new windows machines start coming with Ad-Aware and a good firewall. Perhaps they should even come with a nice little booklet explaining internet safety and the programs that are installed to help. It wouldn't fix the idiot problem, but it would help the well-intentioned who simply don't know how nasty these programs have gotten.
http://www.cap.gov/
I had a chance to do this early in high school and with all the long distance driving I do now, I really wish I had.
Of course I ran it with turbo off....the centipede moved too fast and I couldn't catch the bouncing babies with the turbo on....ah, those were the days.
Oh yeah, and it needs at least 60G. For free, preferably.
Thanks
My typing certainly improved when I visited a relative in Belguim. Stupid French AZERTY keyboard. The only way to type with any speed was to remap the keyboard to an American layout, at which point, looking at the keys was useless. Once I got back to my happy little QWERTY, I found I no longer needed to look.
Hmmmm.....mysterious charges on my cell phone bill include:
Federal Tax
Monroe County Sales Tax - Services & Usage
New York State Sales Tax - Services & Usage
New York State Wireless 911 Surcharge
New York State Gross Receipts Tax
New York State Excise Tax
Federal Universal Service Fund
Federal E911
Federal Wireless Number Pooling And Portability
I doubt you have more than that on your landline. Stupid New York.
And to those of you who are from other countries and wonder why we distrust cell phone companies in the US, this is why, although I guess this is mostly the government's doing. My $34.99 service plan winds up costing me $42.99. Funny thing is, when the bill was going to an adress in Ohio, it was $5 less. Once again, stupid New York.
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1759,1627184,00.as p
I've been waiting for that device ever since the first iPod came out. Let's make one and sell it and make lots of money. Let's add Wifi and Bluetooth and cell phone capabilities so you can use your Bluetooth headset to make VoIP calls and cell phone calls and check your email or stream you music from anywhere.
I'd buy it.