Here's my model of the only possible internet. You pay for services, including downloading all content. That means paying the 10 euro/mo or whatever for rapidshare if you want to download free projects (unless they can get donated bandwidth from a university). Commercial projects can support their own bandwidth needs. If you want quality tech news, subscribe to Ars Technica - they're not going to just work for free.
If thats the only possible Internet then whats this Internet we are using? By your reasoning it cant possibly work but it does. You see there used to be a model very similar to what you propose. AOL and Compuserve had this thing called premium content which you paid extra for and they bombed.
It's actually fairly cheap to host content and the return on investment can be huge, even with very very low responses. Slashdot is an interesting example the best things to read on here are free although the man hours in creating the content is huge.
If sites are not making enough they are doing it wrong.
The problem the news sites are having is the same one the RIAA and MPIA are having, they have a mental block, they think everyone must pay but really its simpler - enough people must pay.
By your logic if someone lives alone and is away for most of the week then they are not using enough electricity and should be made to pay more. Cyclists should be made to pay petrol companies for not using the petrol stations they ride past.
Theres already exists standing charge which is a fee for being connected and where that has been abolished either a number of units charged at a higher rate or the other option which is to charge at a higher rate continually.
Often electricity companies offer cheaper electricity at night (usually with additional charges and higher daytime rates because daytime is when demand is highest and more costly generation methods are being brought online.
I don't give a monkeys how fair it is to the electricity company to be forced to buy back at retail rates. They don't play fair when they raise rates by 50% when the cost of fuel goes up and then when the price falls back to previous levels act like they are being generous when they drop prices by 5 or 10 percent. When in reality they make out like bandits with the 40% extra your still paying.
Electricity companies get to screw their customers in so many different ways, I guess we shouldn't argue when they want to try a new position.
If someone buys stolen property in good faith, never believing that it was stolen then the police inform them, they have absolutely no right to keep it and in all likelihood will not get their money back.
In the UK it's a little different, my house was burgled and amoung several items taken was an electric guitar, a couple of days later I walked in to a secondhand shop and saw my guitar on display on the wall.
I left the shop went to the Police and told them I had located what I believed to be my guitar and described some unique features of that particular guitar e.g on the rear of the guitar was a cover 5 screws were flat head and one was rounded.
A Policeman went with me to the shop and verified it was my guitar, nobody disagreed with that not even the store owner, however while the guitar could not be sold since it was stolen property it wasn't automatically returned to me since the shop had bought the guitar in good faith.
The Shop owner offered to sell it back to me for what he paid for it eventually going so far as to split the difference (half of what he paid for it). The alternative was to raise a small civil case and get a judge to order him to return my guitar. It wouldn't cost anything for me to do so but it would take months.
In the end one of the two people who had brought my guitar into the shop returned with something else to sell with a third individual, and the shop keeper made a quick call and all three were arrested and convicted for a string of burglaries. The ShopKeeper also returned my guitar to me in the hope the judge would award him some compensation. Obviously extorting money from me wouldn't make him quite the hero of the hour.
The Shop keeper had no right to sell my guitar once he knew it was stolen but he didn't have to hand it back until a judge ordered him too.
Incidentally while all three received prison sentences for the string of burglaries, mine contributed nothing to the overall sentences.
Skype as a brand is amazingly popular and the infrastructure is in place for terminating calls and local access numbers.
The problem faced here by skype is taking users from the current protocols over to replacement protocols without losing the user base along the way.
It shouldn't be too difficult to bolt on sip compatible protocols to the existing skype code base and release hybrid clients in order to facilitate the transition.
At some point there would be a need for gateways to allow current clients to be gently retired while maintaining compatibility with the sip compatible clients.
Really the how of the skype protocol on the internet doesn't matter, even if the skype code base had to be gpl'd in order to integrate sip it wouldn't matter because the pay part of skype has no real dependence on the protocols used by skype to cross the internet.
Skype would eventually be just another sip provider but it would be the biggest sip provider and finally integrate with other sip based systems.
Satellite TV is all about quantity not quality, there is no shortage of bandwidth available and even if there was the compression would just be increased a little more.
BskyB will almost certainly include 3D TV in their base HD Satellite package for "free" at least as an introductory offer. The content providers will probably getting very little for content initially, broadcasters are not exactly falling over themselves to broadcast 3D and what content there is will probably be repeated several times a day.
Most of Bskyb's content is SD and probably most subscribers only receive SD content. It's pure marketing at work, HD really doesn't offer much over SD the content is generally available in SD and the vast majority of TV sets are still SD. 3D TV is something to impress your mates with- for about 5 minutes.
BskyB want more HD subscribers, the 3d fluff might well be a successful marketing ploy, if not the service will end. Having got you to invest in a HDTV and tied you into a 12 month contract, you are likely to continue with the HD service.
I'm in the rather dubious position of having just survived a heart attack, thats got a lot to do with my past diet and the rubbish I've been eating and this is going to be a bit of a rant.
I walk into a supermarket now with a different perspective, now its not so much what do I like and what can I afford and more what is going to be good for me, and thats a remarkably low percentage of whats on sale.
However most of whats in the organic produce section, surprise, are healthier options. Organic potato's for example are not better for you because they are organic but because they are not frozen chips, or other processed gunk. Organic carrots haven't been through a chlorine bath and sealed in plastic bags like those little carrot sticks you can buy.
If you choose basic ingredients your getting a healthier option, and you have a far better idea of what your eating.
Processed food tends to full of things that are bad for you, and things you wouldn't consider eating if you knew what they were.
Honestly I doubt anyone would see a noticeable benefit from organic produce over the non organic equivalent However thats not the same as avoiding the 90% of junk thats in the rest of the supermarket. . After my own personal experience, i think spending a little time on preparing food and a bit more on the ingredients will improve your quality and length of life.
You'd almost think that most of us were being fed junk in order to minimise costs, and maximise the productive parts of our lives and ensure short retirements. The richer you are the more likely you will eat steak rather than burgers and lean chicken breast instead of chicken nuggets.
Organic really is shorthand for we haven't messed with it, the rest of the produce doesn't have that assurance. Is it healthy to eat beef which has been injected with growth hormones and even if it is there are still issues with the quality of life of farm animals.
Intensive farming practices for pigs have perhaps contributed to the development of swine flu, the density of animals at the very least ensures the virus has no problem infecting other hosts.
I must admit to feeling a little paranoid when most of the goods on the shelves are designed to kill me or make money out of stuff most people wouldn't touch if it was sold as a single ingredient but blended in with better ingredients
Organic may be extreme but its consistent, your buying the same product each week not what the supermarkets can make the best margins on.
Flavored fat might taste good, but it raises cholesterol, gunks up your arteries and increases the chances of dying younger than normal, heart disease isn't a disease its people with gunked up heart arteries and its the biggest killer in the western world.
heart attacks happen when some of that gunk breaks off and causes a clot to form and the narrowed artery gets plugged by the clot which causes heart muscle to die, which in turn causes an inability to pump blood which kills you.
30% of the people who have a heart attack die, 21% of the ones that survive will die within a year, within 6-8 years half of the original survivors will be dead. That's why you must stop eating crap and eat what your body needs.
Amazon has revealed by their actions that they have back doored the kindle, they are able to do what they wish with it and you can't do a thing about it.
They have violated their customers privacy and made a mockery of the first principle of buying anything if you paid for it its yours not theirs.
If it was a service that you bought then perhaps it would be almost acceptable , you would generally be able to terminate the contract if you didn't wish to continue.
At the very least Amazon customers should be able to return the kindle and get a full refund on the kindle and the books they bought. Thats all kindle owners because the sale was a fraud and a complete breach of trust. Who knows just what has and can be transmitted from your kindle back to Amazon.
Sincere apologies don't cut it, Amazon deserve to be sued in court and punitive damages awarded. The only reasonable action would have been for amazon to ask for users to delete the copies, like with any other product recall it is up to the customer to comply or not. Instead Amazon has tipped its hand by demonstrating the control they have over the kindles which are no longer the property of Amazon.
I don't see how anyone can fail to see how outrageous Amazons actions are.
The only issue is just what charges apply in a case like this because this is absolutely unheard of.
What I can't believe is there is not one negative post to Jeff Bezos's apology you would almost think that someone was filtering any incoming posts.
What rubbish. A good chuck of amateur astronomers are very "professional" in both training and practice. The professionals, ie the ones that get paid to do it full time, also work with the amateurs (often university graduate level education, its just not their day job) and do not feel minimized in any way.
Astronomy as a day job, really doesn't work out so well.
speaking as some one in a coronary care unit, I had a heart attack on saturday, the monitor I'm hooked up to automatically takes my blood pressure every hour can be more or less. Obviously this saves the nurses time and reduces costs.
Surprisingly I'm feeling quite well having a tube called a stent put in my artery has made me feel better than in months. Thats another great procedure developed in 1977 a sheath was inserted in my femoral artery and some dye pumped in to show my damaged heart. It only took a few minutes to slide the stent (its kind of like the braiding on a coaxal cable up into place and then expanded with a small balloon, just a local anesthetic in my groin and less than 45 minutes to do the procedure.
I'm pretty lucky really since I called an ambulance fairly quickly after I started to get symptoms. Best description I can give is it felt like after some of the races i ran as a kid chest burning couldnt get breath despite breathing ok I wasn't getting the oxygen in. I was given an injection which unblocked the artery and saved much of my heart muscle from dying (that starts 20 minutes after the blood flow stops).
I really want to thank the Dr's and Nurses who saved my life this weekend (Mercy hospital Cork).
I know many of us here are overweight and not in the best health and probably don't realise it. If I had delayed I'd most likely be dead now, heart attacks can be fairly slow, i'd probably have waited thinking it'd wear off , that would have caused even more damage. Thankfully irelands health service is pretty terrific.
Hopefully if anyone finds similar symptoms they will remember this and not delay. I'm really glad to be alive , and its pretty cool to have a netbook and a 3g modem with me running ubuntu of course:)
esentially an Arm based netbook tablet with the guts behind the screen and a plug in keyboard which sort of turns it back into a netbook again. It looks like the keyboard is weighted down with a battery to make a stable netbook.
Pricing appears to be $300 for the tablet or $400 for the tablet + keyboard battery combo. I think they have used something like a wireless keyboard to get a unit which can work detached from the screen.
2) Pretty much by owning a kindle your in the united states or your credit card is.
3)now that Amazon have displayed just how much control they have over the kindle and ebooks that you buy, who's going to want to buy into that platform.
Chances are the product we want hasn't been released yet, the EEE tablet story a few days ago had quite a few links to an Arm processor tablet where the screen is removable giving a tablet or netbook experience.
This seems ripe for further development, maybe with a drop in epaper screen or perhaps a screen module with epaper one side and lcd panel on the other, if it was double sided i'd like to have a clear removable cover to protect the outer screen from scratching and damage.
Might as well go one step further and include a hspda modem which supports voice calls. Paired up with a bluetooth headset or in car bluetooth audio system.
why not be really extreme and include gps and of course it would run Linux:)
The E-paper Screen would probably be sufficiently responsive to handle browsing sites like/. and relatively slow input such as typing.
Battery life could be quite impressive when it needs to be.
It really depends on the way the test is run. The problem actually relates to the TcpWindowSize as it should be increased to at least 128Kb for HSPA based networks and for CDMA as well.
is this something that can be done from the user end , and how would you do it on Linux ideally ?
I was a little intrigued by your Cannon problem, having hardware that isn't Linux compatible is a problem especially printers. Obviously you would choose a Linux/ OSX compatible for your next printer but you don't want to throw out your incompatible problem.
One way would be to run windows in a VM and then print in the VM, usb devices can be passed to the guest OS even if the host has no driver.
However I have an alternative (which might even work with a windows guest in a VM).
The simple answer is to print to file as pdf or postscript and then give the printfile to a windows PC to print the document, however that still requires someone to get on the windows PC and print the PDF.
Whats needed really is something running on windows which will automatically print the printfile, theres a number of pay options which would cost more than a Linux compatible printer but then I found this http://www.lerup.com/printfile/descr.html
A free utility to automatically print files,
So print in Linux to file (probably printing to a file on a windows share) then then Printfile takes over on the windows side and prints the file out.
Networking printers isn't new but this is a useful twist. hope you find it useful.
While I sympathize with your position, mine is nowhere near the united states and the DMCA means nothing outside of North America.
Maybe some of us should setup proxy servers so the oppressed Americans can download safely without fear of persecution by their government or corporate masters.
Actually that could get interesting if safe proxies were established for free or for hire, allowing secure encrypted connections for oppressed citizens round the world. It could be possible that a big fat connection could download at a far greater rate than most users can manage.
I've got a Dlink VTR unbundled from vonage (I never had a vonage contract) plugs into my router and can be used to provide 2 lines,used it with a Pabx 16 extensions (free landline calls) (replace a landline and use adsl or cable), even works (just) with mobile broadband).
theres a few similar boxes around that don't even need hacking to work. still not ideal people have the mobile number and call him, voip requires a 2nd number or him paying to get his calls forwarded to his voip number.
now getting the call from the mobile and forwarding using sip could be ideal. How about using an old mobile phone no contract sat at his house routed via his server to his location anywhere in the world. That vtr box of mine doesn't care where its connected on the net, with an access number which is local (free) for my friends and family to use via regular pots.
Ok Cell phone coverage is limited to certain parts of the house , maybe i want to put the thing on charge my wifi coverage is pretty good. better than the cell phone coverage.
so it could be pretty cool to leave the handset somewhere with a good signal and use it remotely via my lan. It really shouldn't be that hard to achieve, plenty of bluetooth in car solutions around.
The daft thing is i can use bluetooth to put my netbook online even use skype via the cell network. Why not use it for voice calls or forwarding sms to my netbook.
As it happens i'm watching satellite tv on my netbook , sat box has a web page which lets me download a m3u file i can open with vlc. If I can easily watch a film live over my lan then a phone call should be easy.
In practice probably not, but its an interesting problem, who cares you can carry the mobile around:)
Funny choice of name that reminds me of migrationwatch.org which claims to be "MigrationwatchUK is an independent and non-political body established in October 2001. Our purposes are to; monitor migration flows to and from the UK,"
In reality its a right Wing organization pushing its nasty agenda where ever it can.
interestingly you can read here how its irish version got shut down.
At least they are honest enough not to pretend to be impartial.
There's a few of these "watch" type organisations wikipedia-watch.org is another example.
seems that like in the case of x-sucks sites, the purpose is stick the boot in where ever possible.
I wouldn't expect a sucks site to be unbiased but at least they are not pretending to be impartial.
Now perhaps linuxwatch wasn't intended to be anything other than an impartial site but if it was it was a poor choice of name given the connotations such watch sites already have.
I've never seen a "watch" site which wasn't hypercritical of whatever it watches.
The problem with mono is making it a dependency for the Desktop, Ubuntu (I can't speak for debian) has 2 default applications written using mono, fspot photo editor and one other that has been ported (i forget its name but the replacement binary is 4 meg). The default install of mono requires about 50 meg of disk space.
Now there is no reason for me to waste over 50 meg of hdd space for 2 mono applications I don't use, is there?
I'm not a hairshirt fundamentalist, I accept that there could be a Mono App I'd like to use. So apt-get install your.app will get me your app and the dependencies it needs which would be mono.
If I don't want your app, then I don't need mono. If the worst came to the worst and Microsoft did invoke its mono related patents then I lose a few apps, if its a dependency for the desktop to install then it gets a bit more complicated, much more if there is some fundamental part of the desktop without a monoless alternative.
As long as mono isn't a dependency its relatively safe to use it. In fact as a developer writing mono apps your in a worse position if MS throws its weight around and your users are forced to chose between your app and getting sued.
Like I say use mono but keep it from being a system dependency. Adobe Flash for example is probably on most installations but it isn't a system dependency and installed by default. Heck maybe install mono by default just keep it removable, fair enough, should keep most of us happy.
Is there some fundamental difference between american and european families?
If europeans can get the shopping in a smallish car then why can't american families?
Nobodys going to force America on a crash diet, just a sensible eating plan.
perhaps America will be able to export some energy efficient products to europe, instead of having them blocked by green legislation.
In some ways its a pity its so easy, take your iron maiden example, every iron maiden song thats a lot of bad songs a few good ones admittedly but your getting a lot of crappy music. It's murder on the ears no matter what artist, after the first few albums back to back, some sooner than that, it isn't called filler for nothing.
Still even the best tracks can get tiresome after a while, especially if you have a DJ with an inability to pick anything other than the track from an artist.
Probably the best reform to copyright would be attitude on all sides really, do you really want to rip of the artists you really like? Probably not you can justify paying for some of it at least.
But the copyright holders need to get real also, relax and stop going after the fans, let them develop the market for the music your selling. Theres a huge back catalog which should be explored, don't worry about the mix tape the people downloading random music, some will become fans and that will lead to sales.
maybe put the squeeze on the new st
Slashdot Mirror
Here's my model of the only possible internet. You pay for services, including downloading all content. That means paying the 10 euro/mo or whatever for rapidshare if you want to download free projects (unless they can get donated bandwidth from a university). Commercial projects can support their own bandwidth needs. If you want quality tech news, subscribe to Ars Technica - they're not going to just work for free.
If thats the only possible Internet then whats this Internet we are using? By your reasoning it cant possibly work but it does.
You see there used to be a model very similar to what you propose. AOL and Compuserve had this thing called premium content which you paid extra for and they bombed.
It's actually fairly cheap to host content and the return on investment can be huge, even with very very low responses. Slashdot is an interesting example the best things to read on here are free although the man hours in creating the content is huge.
If sites are not making enough they are doing it wrong.
The problem the news sites are having is the same one the RIAA and MPIA are having, they have a mental block, they think everyone must pay but really its simpler - enough people must pay.
By your logic if someone lives alone and is away for most of the week then they are not using enough electricity and should be made to pay more.
Cyclists should be made to pay petrol companies for not using the petrol stations they ride past.
Theres already exists standing charge which is a fee for being connected and where that has been abolished either a number of units charged at a higher rate or the other option which is to charge at a higher rate continually.
Often electricity companies offer cheaper electricity at night (usually with additional charges and higher daytime rates because daytime is when demand is highest and more costly generation methods are being brought online.
I don't give a monkeys how fair it is to the electricity company to be forced to buy back at retail rates. They don't play fair when they raise rates by 50% when the cost of fuel goes up and then when the price falls back to previous levels act like they are being generous when they drop prices by 5 or 10 percent. When in reality they make out like bandits with the 40% extra your still paying.
Electricity companies get to screw their customers in so many different ways, I guess we shouldn't argue when they want to try a new position.
If someone buys stolen property in good faith, never believing that it was stolen then the police inform them, they have absolutely no right to keep it and in all likelihood will not get their money back.
In the UK it's a little different, my house was burgled and amoung several items taken was an electric guitar, a couple of days later I walked in to a secondhand shop and saw my guitar on display on the wall.
I left the shop went to the Police and told them I had located what I believed to be my guitar and described some unique features of that particular guitar e.g on the rear of the guitar was a cover 5 screws were flat head and one was rounded.
A Policeman went with me to the shop and verified it was my guitar, nobody disagreed with that not even the store owner, however while the guitar could not be sold since it was stolen property it wasn't automatically returned to me since the shop had bought the guitar in good faith.
The Shop owner offered to sell it back to me for what he paid for it eventually going so far as to split the difference (half of what he paid for it). The alternative was to raise a small civil case and get a judge to order him to return my guitar. It wouldn't cost anything for me to do so but it would take months.
In the end one of the two people who had brought my guitar into the shop returned with something else to sell with a third individual, and the shop keeper made a quick call and all three were arrested and convicted for a string of burglaries. The ShopKeeper also returned my guitar to me in the hope the judge would award him some compensation. Obviously extorting money from me wouldn't make him quite the hero of the hour.
The Shop keeper had no right to sell my guitar once he knew it was stolen but he didn't have to hand it back until a judge ordered him too.
Incidentally while all three received prison sentences for the string of burglaries, mine contributed nothing to the overall sentences.
Skype as a brand is amazingly popular and the infrastructure is in place for terminating calls and local access numbers.
The problem faced here by skype is taking users from the current protocols over to replacement protocols without losing the user base along the way.
It shouldn't be too difficult to bolt on sip compatible protocols to the existing skype code base and release hybrid clients in order to facilitate the transition.
At some point there would be a need for gateways to allow current clients to be gently retired while maintaining compatibility with the sip compatible clients.
Really the how of the skype protocol on the internet doesn't matter, even if the skype code base had to be gpl'd in order to integrate sip it wouldn't matter because the pay part of skype has no real dependence on the protocols used by skype to cross the internet.
Skype would eventually be just another sip provider but it would be the biggest sip provider and finally integrate with other sip based systems.
Satellite TV is all about quantity not quality, there is no shortage of bandwidth available and even if there was the compression would just be increased a little more.
BskyB will almost certainly include 3D TV in their base HD Satellite package for "free" at least as an introductory offer. The content providers will probably getting very little for content initially, broadcasters are not exactly falling over themselves to broadcast 3D and what content there is will probably be repeated several times a day.
Most of Bskyb's content is SD and probably most subscribers only receive SD content.
It's pure marketing at work, HD really doesn't offer much over SD the content is generally available in SD and the vast majority of TV sets are still SD. 3D TV is something to impress your mates with- for about 5 minutes.
BskyB want more HD subscribers, the 3d fluff might well be a successful marketing ploy, if not the service will end. Having got you to invest in a HDTV and tied you into a 12 month contract, you are likely to continue with the HD service.
I'm in the rather dubious position of having just survived a heart attack, thats got a lot to do with my past diet and the rubbish I've been eating and this is going to be a bit of a rant.
I walk into a supermarket now with a different perspective, now its not so much what do I like and what can I afford and more what is going to be good for me, and thats a remarkably low percentage of whats on sale.
However most of whats in the organic produce section, surprise, are healthier options. Organic potato's for example are not better for you because they are organic but because they are not frozen chips, or other processed gunk. Organic carrots haven't been through a chlorine bath and sealed in plastic bags like those little carrot sticks you can buy.
If you choose basic ingredients your getting a healthier option, and you have a far better idea of what your eating.
Processed food tends to full of things that are bad for you, and things you wouldn't consider eating if you knew what they were.
Honestly I doubt anyone would see a noticeable benefit from organic produce over the non organic equivalent
However thats not the same as avoiding the 90% of junk thats in the rest of the supermarket.
.
After my own personal experience, i think spending a little time on preparing food and a bit more on the ingredients will improve your quality and length of life.
You'd almost think that most of us were being fed junk in order to minimise costs, and maximise the productive parts of our lives and ensure short retirements. The richer you are the more likely you will eat steak rather than burgers and lean chicken breast instead of chicken nuggets.
Organic really is shorthand for we haven't messed with it, the rest of the produce doesn't have that assurance.
Is it healthy to eat beef which has been injected with growth hormones and even if it is there are still issues
with the quality of life of farm animals.
Intensive farming practices for pigs have perhaps contributed to the development of swine flu, the density of animals at the very least ensures the virus has no problem infecting other hosts.
I must admit to feeling a little paranoid when most of the goods on the shelves are designed to kill me or make money out of stuff most people wouldn't touch if it was sold as a single ingredient but blended in with better ingredients
Organic may be extreme but its consistent, your buying the same product each week not what the supermarkets can make the best margins on.
Flavored fat might taste good, but it raises cholesterol, gunks up your arteries and increases the chances of dying younger than normal, heart disease isn't a disease its people with gunked up heart arteries and its the biggest killer in the western world.
heart attacks happen when some of that gunk breaks off and causes a clot to form and the narrowed artery gets plugged by the clot which causes heart muscle to die, which in turn causes an inability to pump blood which kills you.
30% of the people who have a heart attack die, 21% of the ones that survive will die within a year, within 6-8 years half of the original survivors will be dead. That's why you must stop eating crap and eat what your body needs.
Your being too nice about it.
Amazon has revealed by their actions that they have back doored the kindle, they are able to do what they wish with it and you can't do a thing about it.
They have violated their customers privacy and made a mockery of the first principle of buying anything if you paid for it its yours not theirs.
If it was a service that you bought then perhaps it would be almost acceptable , you would generally be able to terminate the contract if you didn't wish to continue.
At the very least Amazon customers should be able to return the kindle and get a full refund on the kindle and the books they bought. Thats all kindle owners because the sale was a fraud and a complete breach of trust.
Who knows just what has and can be transmitted from your kindle back to Amazon.
Sincere apologies don't cut it, Amazon deserve to be sued in court and punitive damages awarded. The only reasonable action would have been for amazon to ask for users to delete the copies, like with any other product recall it is up to the customer to comply or not. Instead Amazon has tipped its hand by demonstrating the control they have over the kindles which are no longer the property of Amazon.
I don't see how anyone can fail to see how outrageous Amazons actions are.
The only issue is just what charges apply in a case like this because this is absolutely unheard of.
What I can't believe is there is not one negative post to Jeff Bezos's apology you would almost think that someone was filtering any incoming posts.
What rubbish. A good chuck of amateur astronomers are very "professional" in both training and practice. The professionals, ie the ones that get paid to do it full time, also work with the amateurs (often university graduate level education, its just not their day job) and do not feel minimized in any way.
Astronomy as a day job, really doesn't work out so well.
speaking as some one in a coronary care unit, I had a heart attack on saturday, the monitor I'm hooked up to automatically takes my blood pressure every hour can be more or less. Obviously this saves the nurses time and reduces costs.
Surprisingly I'm feeling quite well having a tube called a stent put in my artery has made me feel better than in months. Thats another great procedure developed in 1977 a sheath was inserted in my femoral artery
and some dye pumped in to show my damaged heart. It only took a few minutes to slide the stent (its kind of like the braiding on a coaxal cable up into place and then expanded with a small balloon, just a local anesthetic in my groin and less than 45 minutes to do the procedure.
I'm pretty lucky really since I called an ambulance fairly quickly after I started to get symptoms. Best description I can give is it felt like after some of the races i ran as a kid chest burning couldnt get breath despite breathing ok I wasn't getting the oxygen in. I was given an injection which unblocked the artery and saved much of my heart muscle from dying (that starts 20 minutes after the blood flow stops).
I really want to thank the Dr's and Nurses who saved my life this weekend (Mercy hospital Cork).
I know many of us here are overweight and not in the best health and probably don't realise it. If I had delayed I'd most likely be dead now, heart attacks can be fairly slow, i'd probably have waited thinking it'd wear off , that would have caused even more damage. Thankfully irelands health service is pretty terrific.
Hopefully if anyone finds similar symptoms they will remember this and not delay. :)
I'm really glad to be alive , and its pretty cool to have a netbook and a 3g modem with me running ubuntu of course
Ok Drm free downloads of music, but is the drm going on all the cd's with music on them as well?
or how about the DTS audio discs DRM free?
I've a feeling that it wasn't a statement of DRM is dead more that there are some DRM free formats commercially available.
I was too lazy to add links but these guys do this
http://www.alwaysinnovating.com/touchbook/
esentially an Arm based netbook tablet with the guts behind the screen and a plug in keyboard which sort of turns it back into a netbook again.
It looks like the keyboard is weighted down with a battery to make a stable netbook.
Pricing appears to be $300 for the tablet or $400 for the tablet + keyboard battery combo. I think they have used something like a wireless keyboard to get a unit which can work detached from the screen.
I'd like to introduce them to these guys
http://pixelqi.com/
who make these screens
http://jkkmobile.blogspot.com/2009/06/hands-on-with-pixel-qis-new-epaper.html
Essentially its an LCD Screen which can turn off the backlight and run in a black and white mode at quite a low power.
PixelQI used one of the first screens to mod an aspire one.
speaking of mods heres a nice diy version of an aspire one tablet.
http://www.liliputing.com/2008/10/acer-aspire-one-retooled-as-a-tablet-style-umpc.html
2) Pretty much by owning a kindle your in the united states or your credit card is.
3)now that Amazon have displayed just how much control they have over the kindle and ebooks that you buy, who's going to want to buy into that platform.
Chances are the product we want hasn't been released yet, the EEE tablet story a few days ago had quite a few links to an Arm processor tablet where the screen is removable giving a tablet or netbook experience.
This seems ripe for further development, maybe with a drop in epaper screen or perhaps a screen module with epaper one side and lcd panel on the other, if it was double sided i'd like to have a clear removable cover to protect the outer screen from scratching and damage.
Might as well go one step further and include a hspda modem which supports voice calls. Paired up with a bluetooth headset or in car bluetooth audio system.
why not be really extreme and include gps and of course it would run Linux :)
The E-paper Screen would probably be sufficiently responsive to handle browsing sites like /. and relatively slow input such as typing.
Battery life could be quite impressive when it needs to be.
It really depends on the way the test is run. The problem actually relates to the TcpWindowSize as it should be increased to at least 128Kb for HSPA based networks and for CDMA as well.
is this something that can be done from the user end , and how would you do it on Linux ideally ?
no heavy duty prison time you mean?
I was a little intrigued by your Cannon problem, having hardware that isn't Linux compatible is a problem especially printers. Obviously you would choose a Linux/ OSX compatible for your next printer but you don't want to throw out your incompatible problem.
One way would be to run windows in a VM and then print in the VM, usb devices can be passed to the guest OS even if the host has no driver.
However I have an alternative (which might even work with a windows guest in a VM).
The simple answer is to print to file as pdf or postscript and then give the printfile to a windows PC to print the document, however that still requires someone to get on the windows PC and print the PDF.
Whats needed really is something running on windows which will automatically print the printfile, theres a number of pay options which would cost more than a Linux compatible printer but then I found this
http://www.lerup.com/printfile/descr.html
A free utility to automatically print files,
So print in Linux to file (probably printing to a file on a windows share) then then Printfile takes over on the windows side and prints the file out.
Networking printers isn't new but this is a useful twist.
hope you find it useful.
While I sympathize with your position, mine is nowhere near the united states and the DMCA means nothing outside of North America. Maybe some of us should setup proxy servers so the oppressed Americans can download safely without fear of persecution by their government or corporate masters. Actually that could get interesting if safe proxies were established for free or for hire, allowing secure encrypted connections for oppressed citizens round the world. It could be possible that a big fat connection could download at a far greater rate than most users can manage.
Aspire one netbook running ubuntu jaunty belkin micro usb bluetooth adapter and an old motorolla v3
sudo apt-get install subversion g++ autoconf libtool libspeexdsp-dev libasound2-dev libbluetooth-dev libaudiofile-dev libdbus-1-dev
svn co https://nohands.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/nohands/trunk ./autogen.sh ./configure
cd trunk/
make
sudo make install
sudo hciconfig hci0 scomtu 64:8
hfconsole
pair the phone and the laptop
dial out using the netbook
It works not sure of the audio device settings yet thou just took a few minutes to download build and install
you can use checkinstall to build a deb package
sudo apt-get install checkinstall
and instead of make install use
sudo checkinstall
easy :)
I've got a Dlink VTR unbundled from vonage (I never had a vonage contract) plugs into my router and can be used to provide 2 lines ,used it with a Pabx 16 extensions (free landline calls) (replace a landline and use adsl or cable), even works (just) with mobile broadband).
theres a few similar boxes around that don't even need hacking to work.
still not ideal people have the mobile number and call him, voip requires a 2nd number or him paying to get his calls forwarded to his voip number.
now getting the call from the mobile and forwarding using sip could be ideal.
How about using an old mobile phone no contract sat at his house routed via his server to his location anywhere in the world. That vtr box of mine doesn't care where its connected on the net, with an access number which is local (free) for my friends and family to use via regular pots.
http://john.mcclumpha.org/linux/Build_your_own_SMS_gateway_with_Ubuntu_Linux_and_Gammu/
no voice calls but that might be interesting an ubuntu sms gateway.
http://www.inspectmygadget.com/2007/04/30/use-your-computer-to-receive-your-mobile-phone-calls-via-the-hands-freeheadset-profile-using-bluetooth-wm5/
Ok theres a windows solution for windows mobile phones (it looks like it should work for other mobiles).
now who can find a linux solution.
Ok Cell phone coverage is limited to certain parts of the house , maybe i want to put the thing on charge my wifi coverage is pretty good. better than the cell phone coverage.
so it could be pretty cool to leave the handset somewhere with a good signal and use it remotely via my lan. It really shouldn't be that hard to achieve, plenty of bluetooth in car solutions around.
The daft thing is i can use bluetooth to put my netbook online even use skype via the cell network. Why not use it for voice calls or forwarding sms to my netbook.
As it happens i'm watching satellite tv on my netbook , sat box has a web page which lets me download a m3u file i can open with vlc. If I can easily watch a film live over my lan then a phone call should be easy.
In practice probably not, but its an interesting problem, who cares you can carry the mobile around :)
hmm Linuxwatch
Funny choice of name that reminds me of migrationwatch.org which claims to be "MigrationwatchUK is an independent and non-political body established in October 2001. Our purposes are to; monitor migration flows to and from the UK,"
In reality its a right Wing organization pushing its nasty agenda where ever it can.
interestingly you can read here how its irish version got shut down.
http://www.leinsterleader.ie/news/Migration-Watch-website-shuts-down.4872135.jp
this upset a few people
http://irish-nationalism.net/forum/showthread.php?t=10249
At least they are honest enough not to pretend to be impartial.
There's a few of these "watch" type organisations wikipedia-watch.org is another example.
seems that like in the case of x-sucks sites, the purpose is stick the boot in where ever possible.
I wouldn't expect a sucks site to be unbiased but at least they are not pretending to be impartial.
Now perhaps linuxwatch wasn't intended to be anything other than an impartial site but if it was it was a poor choice of name given the connotations such watch sites already have.
I've never seen a "watch" site which wasn't hypercritical of whatever it watches.
Linuxwatch critical of Linux - say it isn't so
The problem with mono is making it a dependency for the Desktop, Ubuntu (I can't speak for debian) has 2 default applications written using mono, fspot photo editor and one other that has been ported (i forget its name but the replacement binary is 4 meg). The default install of mono requires about 50 meg of disk space.
Now there is no reason for me to waste over 50 meg of hdd space for 2 mono applications I don't use, is there?
I'm not a hairshirt fundamentalist, I accept that there could be a Mono App I'd like to use.
So apt-get install your.app will get me your app and the dependencies it needs which would be mono.
If I don't want your app, then I don't need mono. If the worst came to the worst and Microsoft did invoke its mono related patents then I lose a few apps, if its a dependency for the desktop to install then it gets a bit more complicated, much more if there is some fundamental part of the desktop without a monoless alternative.
As long as mono isn't a dependency its relatively safe to use it. In fact as a developer writing mono apps your in a worse position if MS throws its weight around and your users are forced to chose between your app and getting sued.
Like I say use mono but keep it from being a system dependency. Adobe Flash for example is probably on most installations but it isn't a system dependency and installed by default. Heck maybe install mono by default just keep it removable, fair enough, should keep most of us happy.
Is there some fundamental difference between american and european families? If europeans can get the shopping in a smallish car then why can't american families? Nobodys going to force America on a crash diet, just a sensible eating plan. perhaps America will be able to export some energy efficient products to europe, instead of having them blocked by green legislation.
In some ways its a pity its so easy, take your iron maiden example, every iron maiden song thats a lot of bad songs a few good ones admittedly but your getting a lot of crappy music. It's murder on the ears no matter what artist, after the first few albums back to back, some sooner than that, it isn't called filler for nothing. Still even the best tracks can get tiresome after a while, especially if you have a DJ with an inability to pick anything other than the track from an artist. Probably the best reform to copyright would be attitude on all sides really, do you really want to rip of the artists you really like? Probably not you can justify paying for some of it at least. But the copyright holders need to get real also, relax and stop going after the fans, let them develop the market for the music your selling. Theres a huge back catalog which should be explored, don't worry about the mix tape the people downloading random music, some will become fans and that will lead to sales. maybe put the squeeze on the new st