12 months is quite a long time for linux, ubuntu would have been on edgy then and there has been two more releases since then and hardy the next release is due in a couple of months. I am pleased to say I've been using ubuntu since dapper. It was the first linux distro that I felt comfortable with. However suse7 I couldnt get on with suse8 was better but not that much better. So I can relate to the difficulty of using a different operating system.
Ubuntu gains more polish with each release. The difficult things have become easy to deal with. Graphics card drivers largely a choice of selecting the one you want from a drop down list.
awkward command line interfaces like vi thats still around but nano is easy to use, and for simple editing or reading a text file you can't beat it. I initially prefered gedit, but nano loads faster.
The KDE, Gnome arguement isn't that important its only a choice to look and feel similar to the choice windows offers with its classic and standard desktops.
Gnome i like, but I do like some kde apps, but kde apps will run on gnome so its no big deal, there are other light weight desktops and running them will make a pc desktop more responsive at the cost of a few flashy effects
The three common methods of running ubuntu are through a live Cd, virtual box or you know, actually installing it. virtual box is an interesting way of running ubuntu, virtual hardware just works no driver issues at all, and the vast array of linux software is open for you to use or ignore. Installing ubuntu to the Hard drive gets you the fastest ubuntu for a given set of hardware.
Ubuntu is basically a tool set in the same way that windows is however installing ubuntu doesn't stop windows working, your tool chest just got bigger much bigger.
It's a strange thing all these tried linux it couldnt do xyz so i uninstalled it crew, sure xyz may not work but abc probably work and you can still do xyz in windows. for 4 gb maybe of hard drive space you get more from your pc, thats less than a dvd's worth an sd cards worth of space most laptops have 80gb minimum so 5% of a drive
So why not keep it ?
And one more thing whats with the Switch to linux thats bull, most people who use linux will have windows as well probably on the same PC. (Windows usage will vary)
Hd-Dvd might still find a niche , if the price of a hd dvd burner and disks reaches a reasonable price point many people may invest in the technology for backups.
To quote the great Samual Jackson "English Motherfucker do you speak it?" if you can not comprehend the summary, you have no use for this type of software. Maybe this will be of use http://www.marks-english-school.com/games.html
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/7225699.stm
Iranians inaugurate space project Launch of Iranian rocket covered on TV The rocket was launched from a secret desert location Iran has launched a research rocket to inaugurate a newly built space centre, state television reports.
Pictures of the launch were broadcast to cries of "God is Great" from the television announcer.
The test was for Iran's first low-orbit research satellite, which is planned for launch in March next year.
Correspondents say advances in Tehran's missile technology are likely to alarm Western powers, as Iran presses on with a controversial nuclear programme. not really one for conspiracy theorys but this might be upsetting a few heads of state.
If the true goal of a computer program for a school is to ready its students for the workplace, then is linux really the best method of doing so? Isn't the school in some way doing its students a dis-service my training them on a computing method that they will very likely never use again?...the ability to navigate microsoft windows is almost as essential as any other office skill. 1) The purpose of an eucation is not to train users to use a particular product, but to learn particular skills
These skills may include:-To use an operating system, to use a word processor, to learn programing languages, to learn how to acquire information and apply it.
To promote good values such as honesty and integrity. Some of the things you should learn in school.
2) Teaching useless skills, yes it could be a disservice , but to take myself as an example I learnt word processing in several programs wordperfect51 abiword word97, 2000 star office, open office, wordsworth, and several more.
The actual programs and versions are unimportant really I can use them all and so can everyone reading this, even the ones they never heard off. Because you do not learn Word version x you learn how to word process.
Is Linux the best way, of course it is no need to pirate the software, several alternatives to achieve a particular task some better than others, you learn to evaluate the tools available and select what meets your requirements. IT is not set in stone, software hardware changes, the most important skill is to be adaptable.
When it comes to the workplace and training on particular systems and software thats a whole different ball game because that is training to do a particular job at a particular company at a particular time.
I would really appreciate it if all my extension cords were clearly labeled for recommended maximum voltage. I mean, sure I can figure I shouldn't put on too much, but knowing that figure each time I use it would be handy. not really since most extension cords go into mains outlets and the voltage is not the critical factor (on a national basis).
Current however usually is a limiting factor, in an ideal world you wouldnt put a 13 amp fuse in a plug for an extension cable rated for 5 amps but it can happen which is why most extension cables are capable of handling more current than the fuse.
Incidentally cable reels can handle less current coiled up than when fully unwound. maybe thats due to inductance or inability of the cable to get rid of the heat generated (more expensive extensions have a thermal cut out).
W= I V and V=I R
From these basic equations you can see american hairdryers would tend to be dangerous if plugged into european mains electricity and european hairdryers wouldn't get very warm in the usa . Mainland Europe in practice has lower voltage than the UK which means european hairdryers tend to get too hot.
In theory the UK dropped its voltage to 220V from 240/250V in practice there is a deviation allowed around 10% which means UK mains voltage is in spec without changing anything. Most laptop PSU's are able to cope with 110v- 240V without issues. I am not so sure if a mobile phone mains charger would survive a trip from the US to Europe.
I once had a guitar stolen, which I then found up for sale in a 2ndhand shop.
Told the Police, who then went down to the shop. The situation at that point.
The shop owner didn't have to return it to me, however he couldn't sell it either. My options pay him for the guitar or go to county court to get a judge to order it to be returned to me, a process that can take several months before it gets heard.
I chose the latter option, however the situation was resolved when the thief returned to the shop to sell more stolen property. The owner called the police who arrested 3 people in total, all three received some jail time in two cases the burglary at my property wasn't pursued and in the third it was one of many counts and essentially counted for nothing.
Thats how it works in the uk at least, had I paid to get my guitar back, would an arrest have been made? In actual fact my guitar was returned in order for the second hand shop put a request for compensation to the court, the only chance he had to regain his lost erm investment.
A guitar is quite difficult to shift item as stolen property, checking out the secondhand stores , markets ect may help get some of your stuff back and get a prosecution. If you really want to get your stuff back you need to investigate yourself.
A Safari Library subscription provides you with online access and search capabilities across authoritative content -- including more than 5,000 books, Short Cuts short-topic content, Rough Cuts manuscripts-in-progress, videos and more.
Safari Bookshelf 10-Slot Bookshelf, Limited Access USD $22.99 per month USD $252.99 per year
European Union customers are subject to VAT and United States customers are subject to sales tax in addition to regular subscription charges.
Alternatively download a torrent find the books that appeal and order through amazon...
My idea of a service I would use.
How about $30 buys a months access to the ebook online library, however you also get $30 credit towards the purchase of a physical book / books (the credit expiring after 1 month - maybe a maximum percentage might apply) and include a DRM free ebook version too.
Why use such a service? low barrier to entry there is a huge catalogue obviously some books are better than others, you can browse and find the book that meets your requirements. Sure there are torrents but that takes time and what if the book isn't what you need. Also since the access fee can reduce the cost of the book there is a major incentive to buy.
And the best reason of all you need the information now!
There are a couple of area's where microsoft might have an advantage in future vm releases.
1 has to be better graphics drivers 2 networking improvements, it is very hard to make a vm a peer in a network especially so with wireless cards. 3 support for Pci cards within the host. 4 networked printers.
Having an existing working relationship with hardware manufacturers should ease development issues.
Negatives running a windows host.
I'd love to see apple competing here too, but virtual macs on pc hardware isn't something I could see Mr jobs backing.
bad medical analogy here if you need a spinal surgeon would you get a General Practitioner to operate? Clearly a specialist is whats needed, and who makes the bigger bucks ?
Clearly it pays to specialize in something , even windows development.
incidentally what do you make of all the developers who only work on windows projects? your argument cuts both ways.my friend.
finally insulting the GP was that really part of a winning argument? I must remember that one
I think the GP post essentially was saying if your good enough then you don't need to take on work you don't want to do. I only see that as encouragement to do better, I honestly wish I was that good.
" The Python has the ability to clear a much longer safe' lane than its predecessor. It is also faster to bring into action and far more accurate. It can clear a path up to 230m long and 7m wide through which vehicles can then safely pass.
The system works by firing a single rocket from a newly designed launcher mounted on a trailer which has been towed to the edge of the mined area.
Attached to the rocket is a coiled 230m long hose packed with one and a half tons of powerful explosive. After the hose lands on the ground it detonates and destroys or clears any mines along its entire length. It is claimed that in a cleared lane, over 90% of anti-tank mines will have been destroyed."
From the BBC article "The application will be to things like more efficient solar cells, more efficient solar panels and any application where you need to harvest light," he added.
There was an earlier article on/. with a related technology essentially printing small antennas on a plastic film which essentially create a high frequency ac voltage from heat and light energy , if the nanotubes are conductive perhaps the two technologies be combined to make some extremely efficient solar panels.
Ratatouille is available on DVD and various torrents.
you do not need blu-ray for this and kids can turn a blu-ray disk into expensive junk just as fast as they do it with dvd's
Dad may or may not buy the original DVD but he probably knows better than to let junior get his paws on it and will burn a copy for the kids to use. If Dads on slashdot he probably has movies on a network storage device. with limited access rights for his kids.
Ok maybe an uncle will set up the network storage...
I can believe some parents may buy blu-ray disks for their kids, but most parents just can not afford it. In fact thats the biggest problem with blu-ray and HD-DVD its just too expensive to buy into especially when DVD is good enough in fact its more than good enough.
Toshiba's move is good news for dvd-hd since its not that much more expensive than your average DVD player and will play the existing dvd's. It also makes hd-dvd rentals accessible for the first time.
It's the first serious option for average joe, it could be a winner.
It has to be the A1200 with a 2nd place to the A600 keyboard the A600 keyboard lost its keypad and that was important to gamers. The A1200 keyboard bankrupted commodore.
Commodore moved the keyboard controller from the keyboard to the A1200 main board and left a lousy ribbon connector in its place. This made it a lot harder than it needed to be to mod the A1200.
The A1200 had an ide connector which supported two drives (hdd and cd usually) however there was nowhere to put two drives and besides the Power ran through the main board. You could still mod it but it was messy or expensive. if the keyboard controller had been kept with the keyboard it would have made it easy to have an A1200 with hd, cd, a decent psu, accelerator board and a pcmcia slot which could have been used for networking or what ever. ok it wouldn't have been as open as an A4000, although perhaps a graphics card could have made it into the system via the trapdoor bus. A modded A1200 was a capable machine. Had commodore any vision for the future, they could have had enough revenue from this system to move away from the 680xx cpu's to the new PPC Cpu's.
Commodore wasn't just Amiga's and the C64 there were commodore PC's and surely they should have been viable.
The Amiga could have evolved it had a fanatical user base, who would have bought later generation amiga's had they been made.
Maybe an A1200+ Desktop system could have saved Commodore but that design choice to save a few cents on the keyboard controller would have meant a fully revised mainboard design and that just wasn't affordable. which is why I believe the worst keyboard design belongs to the A1200.
You must have missed the bit in the article which said the peruvian government was interested in the classmate for secondary education older children and intel tried to sell it as a replacement for the olpc which was being bought for primary school children. Can you see the distinction it's not the same target audience.
Intel got greedy (or confused), if they had not chosen to go after the primary school market with the classmate and stuck with the secondary schools they two laptops would compliment each other. Instead they were trying to backstab the OLPC project.
Intel have behaved very badly, they would have had a lot of good will and sales if they hadn't been so crass. You can only wonder if Intel did this to appease its biggest customer, Microsoft.
Since satellite doesn't really have the same internet issues, all they really have to do is add another bird and the consumer just has to tack on an extra dish or LNB, but cable would require an entirely new infrastructure to be built for you to convert all of the analog channels to HD and provide a decent internet experience. Satellites tend to be co located in little constellations. In plain English several satellites appear to be at the same point in the sky, the consumer generally needs to do nothing except possibly tune in new transponders. It also means your unlikely to lose your complete package if a transponder goes down.
TV licensing will not take your word for it if you get a B&W License, they believe that as much as you not having a TV. As it happens I think you might be ok if you just use the BBC's watch again service. You still will be accused of not having a TV license thou.
I am convinced that it would be far better just to go with a grant from central government and possibly increase income tax to compensate. in reality a small tweak to tax allowances would be easy to implement.
The current system isn't reasonable any more. It is insane the Government set the level of the license and collect it for the BBC, with private contractors being the enforcers. I believe the current level of unlicensed homes to be quite small maybe 50,000 homes I am sure only a small minority of the population would object to collection by way of income tax. one less bill to be paid.
somehow it seems just a little more civilized to abolish this system, and make TV free and legal at the point of use.
Yes you can buy b&w tv's I see them at markets for around £15 with a fairly small crt screen. big sets disappeared in the 70's
Actually not paying some kind of a tax seems to be more unusual, its the collection system which sucks in the uk.
Far better would be a proportion of tax collected by central government to be granted to the BBC and others proportionate to the number of households in the country even per head or registered voter.
The current system is punitive to households on low incomes. The current revenue collection service is unable to accept any household lives without a TV set and seems will only be satisfied when every household has a TV license.
It seems that if the TV tax is universal then it should be gathered and paid for centrally. Of course this means a saving on TV license inspectors, a saving in court time (and money) less people being given a criminal record for being poor. No need for pensioners to be making a choice between paying for a license or eating or heating their homes.
I personally like the idea of tying funding for the BBC to numbers of registered voters. It would seem an equitable system.
wonder if anyone does this for computer cables I guess you could get a similar effect with a sheet of paper and a couple of elastic bands create a paper tube poke in the wire seal it with 2 elastic bands or a couple of paper clips
Its not too bad not suitable for every street admittedly.
its look is like an anemone quite alien an almost Martian chronicles feel to it. googles bus shelter designs are not as interesting to look at.
cost to make them may be quite high, however with 10% of European electricity production going into street lighting in europe the potential reduction in carbon emissions is significant.
Retro fitting just the LED lamps to existing street lighting could be power saving in itself. The solar panels wouldn't need to provide power year round since existing lamps have a power supply they could switch too.
I'm sure more sympathetic designs could be made, its the potential of this project which makes it interesting.
The real questions are how much power is required and how much light do these tree's produce.
The essential flaw to your plan is that if useless posts can be deleted so can useful posts. So can politically awkward posts. Moderation largely works ok there are times when there is extremely partisan moderation but i think we can live with that.
The mini-city spam links are extremely annoying however if nothing gets said in a post of interest surely the link provided isn't going to be worth clicking on either. no ?
My gut instinct is a spam moderation could be a good thing, however what constitutes spam. Is it spam if a related competing product or service is posted as a link?
One mans spam is anothers working lunch. Slashdot posters have put me on to interesting things as well as quite a few which i wish i'd never clicked.
I think 'trash' and 'noise' are better moderation names with 0 movement by default. Individual users will be able to set their own rating for 'trash' and 'noise' I'd make these two mods cost less maybe half a mod point. for sure it's well past time for slashdots moderation system to be upgraded.
off topic really but if you put p4-clockmod in/etc/modules you can make browsing slashdot an energy saving experience. my celeron processor is now about 30 degrees cooler and idles at 175mhz. should help with battery life too. It might help to clean the system fan if your still running hot. mine was full of fluff. its now quiet and cool
Slashdot Mirror
12 months is quite a long time for linux, ubuntu would have been on edgy then and there has been two more releases since then and hardy the next release is due in a couple of months. I am pleased to say I've been using ubuntu since dapper. It was the first linux distro that I felt comfortable with. However suse7 I couldnt get on with suse8 was better but not that much better. So I can relate to the difficulty of using a different operating system.
Ubuntu gains more polish with each release. The difficult things have become easy to deal with. Graphics card drivers largely a choice of selecting the one you want from a drop down list.
awkward command line interfaces like vi thats still around but nano is easy to use, and for simple editing or reading a text file you can't beat it. I initially prefered gedit, but nano loads faster.
The KDE, Gnome arguement isn't that important its only a choice to look and feel similar to the choice windows offers with its classic and standard desktops.
Gnome i like, but I do like some kde apps, but kde apps will run on gnome so its no big deal, there are other light weight desktops and running them will make a pc desktop more responsive at the cost of a few flashy effects
The three common methods of running ubuntu are through a live Cd, virtual box or you know, actually installing it.
virtual box is an interesting way of running ubuntu, virtual hardware just works no driver issues at all, and the vast array of linux software is open for you to use or ignore. Installing ubuntu to the Hard drive gets you the fastest ubuntu for a given set of hardware.
Ubuntu is basically a tool set in the same way that windows is however installing ubuntu doesn't stop windows working, your tool chest just got bigger much bigger.
It's a strange thing all these tried linux it couldnt do xyz so i uninstalled it crew, sure xyz may not work but abc probably work and you can still do xyz in windows. for 4 gb maybe of hard drive space you get more from your pc, thats less than a dvd's worth an sd cards worth of space most laptops have 80gb minimum so 5% of a drive
So why not keep it ?
And one more thing whats with the Switch to linux thats bull, most people who use linux will have windows as well probably on the same PC.
(Windows usage will vary)
Hd-Dvd might still find a niche , if the price of a hd dvd burner and disks reaches a reasonable price point many people may invest in the technology for backups.
I wish it was that easy here, the only place with free wifi, that'll be mcdonalds.
I just love the ambiance...
To quote the great Samual Jackson "English Motherfucker do you speak it?"
if you can not comprehend the summary, you have no use for this type of software.
Maybe this will be of use http://www.marks-english-school.com/games.html
Launch of Iranian rocket covered on TV
The rocket was launched from a secret desert location
Iran has launched a research rocket to inaugurate a newly built space centre, state television reports.
Pictures of the launch were broadcast to cries of "God is Great" from the television announcer.
The test was for Iran's first low-orbit research satellite, which is planned for launch in March next year.
Correspondents say advances in Tehran's missile technology are likely to alarm Western powers, as Iran presses on with a controversial nuclear programme. not really one for conspiracy theorys but this might be upsetting a few heads of state.
Isn't the school in some way doing its students a dis-service my training them on a computing method that they will very likely never use again?
These skills may include
To promote good values such as honesty and integrity. Some of the things you should learn in school.
2) Teaching useless skills, yes it could be a disservice , but to take myself as an example I learnt word processing in several programs wordperfect51 abiword word97, 2000 star office, open office, wordsworth, and several more.
The actual programs and versions are unimportant really I can use them all and so can everyone reading this, even the ones they never heard off. Because you do not learn Word version x you learn how to word process.
Is Linux the best way, of course it is no need to pirate the software, several alternatives to achieve a particular task some better than others, you learn to evaluate the tools available and select what meets your requirements. IT is not set in stone, software hardware changes, the most important skill is to be adaptable.
When it comes to the workplace and training on particular systems and software thats a whole different ball game
because that is training to do a particular job at a particular company at a particular time.
Current however usually is a limiting factor, in an ideal world you wouldnt put a 13 amp fuse in a plug for an extension cable rated for 5 amps but it can happen which is why most extension cables are capable of handling more current than the fuse.
Incidentally cable reels can handle less current coiled up than when fully unwound. maybe thats due to inductance or inability of the cable to get rid of the heat generated (more expensive extensions have a thermal cut out).
W= I V and V=I R
From these basic equations you can see american hairdryers would tend to be dangerous if plugged into european mains electricity and european hairdryers wouldn't get very warm in the usa . Mainland Europe in practice has lower voltage than the UK which means european hairdryers tend to get too hot.
In theory the UK dropped its voltage to 220V from 240/250V in practice there is a deviation allowed around 10% which means UK mains voltage is in spec without changing anything. Most laptop PSU's are able to cope with 110v- 240V without issues. I am not so sure if a mobile phone mains charger would survive a trip from the US to Europe.
Hope that helps.
I once had a guitar stolen, which I then found up for sale in a 2ndhand shop.
Told the Police, who then went down to the shop.
The situation at that point.
The shop owner didn't have to return it to me, however he couldn't sell it either.
My options pay him for the guitar or go to county court to get a judge to order it to be returned to me, a process that can take several months before it gets heard.
I chose the latter option, however the situation was resolved when the thief returned to the shop to sell more stolen property. The owner called the police who arrested 3 people in total, all three received some jail time in two cases the burglary at my property wasn't pursued and in the third it was one of many counts and essentially counted for nothing.
Thats how it works in the uk at least, had I paid to get my guitar back, would an arrest have been made? In actual fact my guitar was returned in order for the second hand shop put a request for compensation to the court, the only chance he had to regain his lost erm investment.
A guitar is quite difficult to shift item as stolen property, checking out the secondhand stores , markets ect may help get some of your stuff back and get a prosecution. If you really want to get your stuff back you need to investigate yourself.
Subscription charges for Oreilly's Safari Service
USD $42.99 Per Month USD $472.89 Per Year
A Safari Library subscription provides you with online access and search capabilities across authoritative content -- including more than 5,000 books, Short Cuts short-topic content, Rough Cuts manuscripts-in-progress, videos and more.
Safari Bookshelf
10-Slot Bookshelf, Limited Access
USD $22.99 per month USD $252.99 per year
European Union customers are subject to VAT and United States customers are subject to sales tax in addition to regular subscription charges.
Alternatively download a torrent find the books that appeal and order through amazon...
My idea of a service I would use.
How about $30 buys a months access to the ebook online library, however you also get $30 credit towards the purchase of a physical book / books (the credit expiring after 1 month - maybe a maximum percentage might apply) and include a DRM free ebook version too.
Why use such a service? low barrier to entry there is a huge catalogue obviously some books are better than others, you can browse and find the book that meets your requirements. Sure there are torrents but that takes time and what if the book isn't what you need. Also since the access fee can reduce the cost of the book there is a major incentive to buy.
And the best reason of all you need the information now!
There are a couple of area's where microsoft might have an advantage in future vm releases.
1 has to be better graphics drivers
2 networking improvements, it is very hard to make a vm a peer in a network especially so with wireless cards.
3 support for Pci cards within the host.
4 networked printers.
Having an existing working relationship with hardware manufacturers should ease development issues.
Negatives
running a windows host.
I'd love to see apple competing here too, but virtual macs on pc hardware isn't something I could see Mr jobs backing.
bad medical analogy here if you need a spinal surgeon would you get a General Practitioner to operate?
Clearly a specialist is whats needed, and who makes the bigger bucks ?
Clearly it pays to specialize in something , even windows development.
incidentally what do you make of all the developers who only work on windows projects?
your argument cuts both ways.my friend.
finally insulting the GP was that really part of a winning argument? I must remember that one
I think the GP post essentially was saying if your good enough then you don't need to take on work you don't want to do. I only see that as encouragement to do better, I honestly wish I was that good.
Ok how the British army deal in short order with a mine field,
http://www.armedforces.co.uk/army/listings/l0066.html#MINE%20CLEARANCE
" The Python has the ability to clear a much longer safe' lane than its predecessor. It is also faster to bring into action and far more accurate. It can clear a path up to 230m long and 7m wide through which vehicles can then safely pass.
The system works by firing a single rocket from a newly designed launcher mounted on a trailer which has been towed to the edge of the mined area.
Attached to the rocket is a coiled 230m long hose packed with one and a half tons of powerful explosive. After the hose lands on the ground it detonates and destroys or clears any mines along its entire length. It is claimed that in a cleared lane, over 90% of anti-tank mines will have been destroyed."
From the BBC article
/. with a related technology essentially printing small antennas on a plastic film which essentially create a high frequency ac voltage from heat and light energy , if the nanotubes are conductive perhaps the two technologies be combined to make some extremely efficient solar panels.
"The application will be to things like more efficient solar cells, more efficient solar panels and any application where you need to harvest light," he added.
There was an earlier article on
Ratatouille is available on DVD and various torrents.
you do not need blu-ray for this and kids can turn a blu-ray disk into expensive junk just as fast as they do it with dvd's
Dad may or may not buy the original DVD but he probably knows better than to let junior get his paws on it and will burn a copy for the kids to use. If Dads on slashdot he probably has movies on a network storage device. with limited access rights for his kids.
Ok maybe an uncle will set up the network storage...
I can believe some parents may buy blu-ray disks for their kids, but most parents just can not afford it.
In fact thats the biggest problem with blu-ray and HD-DVD its just too expensive to buy into especially when DVD is good enough in fact its more than good enough.
Toshiba's move is good news for dvd-hd since its not that much more expensive than your average DVD player and will play the existing dvd's. It also makes hd-dvd rentals accessible for the first time.
It's the first serious option for average joe, it could be a winner.
your signature has the answer tits
pictures of tits with ford cars in the background.
Are you buying it for the cars or the tits?
It has to be the A1200 with a 2nd place to the A600 keyboard the A600 keyboard lost its keypad and that was important to gamers. The A1200 keyboard bankrupted commodore.
Commodore moved the keyboard controller from the keyboard to the A1200 main board and left a lousy ribbon connector in its place. This made it a lot harder than it needed to be to mod the A1200.
The A1200 had an ide connector which supported two drives (hdd and cd usually) however there was nowhere to put two drives and besides the Power ran through the main board. You could still mod it but it was messy or expensive. if the keyboard controller had been kept with the keyboard it would have made it easy to have an A1200 with hd, cd, a decent psu, accelerator board and a pcmcia slot which could have been used for networking or what ever. ok it wouldn't have been as open as an A4000, although perhaps a graphics card could have made it into the system via the trapdoor bus. A modded A1200 was a capable machine. Had commodore any vision for the future, they could have had enough revenue from this system to move away from the 680xx cpu's to the new PPC Cpu's.
Commodore wasn't just Amiga's and the C64 there were commodore PC's and surely they should have been viable.
The Amiga could have evolved it had a fanatical user base, who would have bought later generation amiga's had they been made.
Maybe an A1200+ Desktop system could have saved Commodore but that design choice to save a few cents on the keyboard controller would have meant a fully revised mainboard design and that just wasn't affordable.
which is why I believe the worst keyboard design belongs to the A1200.
You must have missed the bit in the article which said the peruvian government was interested in the classmate for secondary education older children and intel tried to sell it as a replacement for the olpc which was being bought for primary school children. Can you see the distinction it's not the same target audience.
Intel got greedy (or confused), if they had not chosen to go after the primary school market with the classmate and stuck with the secondary schools they two laptops would compliment each other. Instead they were trying to backstab the OLPC project.
Intel have behaved very badly, they would have had a lot of good will and sales if they hadn't been so crass.
You can only wonder if Intel did this to appease its biggest customer, Microsoft.
clunk (sound of a large penny dropping)
I suddenly realised Skype video on linux! quick google and heres the debian package which works on ubuntu
http://www.skype.com/go/getskype-linux-beta-ubuntu.
This blog page may help out with some of the details
http://www.blog.arun-prabha.com/tag/skype/
how did i miss this before
TV licensing will not take your word for it if you get a B&W License, they believe that as much as you not having a TV. As it happens I think you might be ok if you just use the BBC's watch again service. You still will be accused of not having a TV license thou.
I am convinced that it would be far better just to go with a grant from central government and possibly increase income tax to compensate. in reality a small tweak to tax allowances would be easy to implement.
The current system isn't reasonable any more. It is insane the Government set the level of the license and collect it for the BBC, with private contractors being the enforcers. I believe the current level of unlicensed homes to be quite small maybe 50,000 homes I am sure only a small minority of the population would object to collection by way of income tax. one less bill to be paid.
somehow it seems just a little more civilized to abolish this system, and make TV free and legal at the point of use.
Yes you can buy b&w tv's I see them at markets for around £15 with a fairly small crt screen. big sets disappeared in the 70's
Actually not paying some kind of a tax seems to be more unusual, its the collection system which sucks in the uk.
Far better would be a proportion of tax collected by central government to be granted to the BBC and others proportionate to the number of households in the country even per head or registered voter.
The current system is punitive to households on low incomes. The current revenue collection service is unable to accept any household lives without a TV set and seems will only be satisfied when every household has a TV license.
It seems that if the TV tax is universal then it should be gathered and paid for centrally. Of course this means a saving on TV license inspectors, a saving in court time (and money) less people being given a criminal record for being poor. No need for pensioners to be making a choice between paying for a license or eating or heating their homes.
I personally like the idea of tying funding for the BBC to numbers of registered voters.
It would seem an equitable system.
thats an interesting point,
wonder if anyone does this for computer cables I guess you could get a similar effect with a sheet of paper and a couple of elastic bands create a paper tube poke in the wire seal it with 2 elastic bands or a couple of paper clips
yes it seems to work
Its not too bad not suitable for every street admittedly.
its look is like an anemone quite alien an almost Martian chronicles feel to it. googles bus shelter designs are not as interesting to look at.
cost to make them may be quite high, however with 10% of European electricity production going into street lighting in europe the potential reduction in carbon emissions is significant.
Retro fitting just the LED lamps to existing street lighting could be power saving in itself. The solar panels wouldn't need to provide power year round since existing lamps have a power supply they could switch too.
I'm sure more sympathetic designs could be made, its the potential of this project which makes it interesting.
The real questions are how much power is required and how much light do these tree's produce.
The essential flaw to your plan is that if useless posts can be deleted so can useful posts. So can politically awkward posts. Moderation largely works ok there are times when there is extremely partisan moderation but i think we can live with that.
The mini-city spam links are extremely annoying however if nothing gets said in a post of interest surely the link provided isn't going to be worth clicking on either. no ?
My gut instinct is a spam moderation could be a good thing, however what constitutes spam. Is it spam if a related competing product or service is posted as a link?
One mans spam is anothers working lunch. Slashdot posters have put me on to interesting things as well as quite a few which i wish i'd never clicked.
I think 'trash' and 'noise' are better moderation names with 0 movement by default. Individual users will be able to set their own rating for 'trash' and 'noise' I'd make these two mods cost less maybe half a mod point. for sure it's well past time for slashdots moderation system to be upgraded.
off topic really but if you put p4-clockmod in /etc/modules you can make browsing slashdot an energy saving experience. my celeron processor is now about 30 degrees cooler and idles at 175mhz.
should help with battery life too.
It might help to clean the system fan if your still running hot. mine was full of fluff. its now quiet and cool