There's a giant elephant in the room that no one wants to mention.
As companies increase their market share, they reduce competition, and increase the damage to the economy if they fail. The nation-wide, interstate banks in the US are a creature of deregulation unleashing unmitigated greed on the banking sector. If one of these banks fails, we're in deep excrement.
A handful of companies control effectively ALL the DRAM manufacturing in the world. further it seems that this handful of companies behaves as a monolithic block. They collectively banked on Vista being a huge driver for more memory. Too bad, so sad.
If these outfits want government help, here's how I propose we give it to them (It's actually about the US auto industry, but can be applied to just about any heavily consolidated industry with a few tweaks).
Operating under the assumption that Karen X is a real teacher in Austin, and the events described in TFA are true, I'd like to share my own thoughts on the matter.
What I find incredible is that a teacher who "tried Linux in college" could be so terribly misinformed.
True, in an existential sense, no software is free... neither is love, compassion, or lunch... but.. come on.
This is little more than DMCA-induced anti-piracy terror topped with a generous portion of Post-9/11 paranoia. She's a FUD Zombie running amok.
While I think it's fairly important to maintain car insurance and keep your car in reasonable condition, this is such an egregious over-stepping of bounds, and an invitation to such a vast array of civil liberties violations that I don't even know where to begin. Here's an old post of mine that sort of scratches the surface.
Privacy is essential to liberty. Part of privacy is anonymity. Another part of privacy is securing that which is identifying. It's bad enough all cars (should) have an identifying plaque that ties the car to its owner (ideally), but it's horrifying to have a computer collecting those identies (and, no doubt, time and location information), doing who knows what with the information when it's done.
Part of what's horrifying to me about this is that it is an implied blanket assumption of guilt cast over anyone with a car. A large class of people, no doubt. I wonder if all neighborhoods will be patrolled evenly. My guess would be no. As a result, I'd imigine that the bulk of arrests and prosecutions arising from this new "tool" will be in areas that already have higher-than-average "crime rates", "making life safer for the business criminals" [..apologies to the late George Carlin --ed.] In this country we used to joke about how in Eastern Europe and/or the USSR, everyone was asked if they had their "papers". It's much more convenient now that that don't have to stop you to check your "papers".
Can/do they retain records for all plates scanned? If so, how are they secured? Are these records, if retained, available for subsequent mining for time and place information, like what video stores you frequent, where you meet your extramarital lover, or whether or not you visit the local "cabaret"... will these records be available to potential employers? What about potential landlords? Are there any laws in place to protect individuals from discrimination or persecution based on their driving habits or the places they visit frequently? Funny, I don't recall hearing anything about that.
Ben Franklin is reported to have said, "They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety." I guess history curricula in this country just kinda skip over that little gem... just like those who profess the rectitude and inerrancy of The Bible skip over the parts that say genocide, slavery and stoning children to death are OK.
I guess we're supposed to just trust that the police and the government have our best interests at heart all the time. Have fun at Gitmo!
Seriously, it's already been demonstrated that our government... YOUR government... is perfectly willing to disappear people to off-shore military bases or foreign countries known to be not-so-sqeamish about beating people with fire-hoses and pulling out fingernails to extract "information". We know that YOUR government is perfectly willing to dispense with Habeas Corpus and the Fourth Amendment to detain "terrorists". What IS a "terrorist", anyway?! Anybody got a logically defensible definition of "terrorist" that includes, say, Osama bin Laden, but excludes,say, George W. Bush?
*crickets*
OK, I will.
My website is http://www.ursuspacificus.net/blog/
I could find no search results pointing to my website on Cuil. Nor could I find any results indicating any websites out there in the series of tubes link to my site. Tried with quotes and without... Tried lopping off the path. Tried lopping off the protocol spec. Tried lopping off the "www" and the TLD. Nothing. All I got was a bunch of links to dating sites which have apparently scraped my profile from sites I'm actually on. WTF?
Long lost friends have found me by googling me.
I know my website has some visibility by googling myself.
Having cuiled myself, I'm left wondering whether my website is even up at all!...wait... there it is.
And how does one *pronounce* "cuil", anyway?!
I tend to think it's homonymous with "soil"
Depending on Shuttle's implementation, they may have a real winner on their hands. The ASUS eeePC is positively fantabulous. I love it so much I bought 2, and plan to get a couple more. The tabbed desktop is very well done, the performance is quite good (never mind that it's a Celeron 900MHz), battery life is good, the keyboard is entirely serviceable, build quality is excellent, and at $350, it's about a sixth the price of a similarly portable machine from one of the "major brands".
It's also very geek friendly. I haven't re-OS'ed my eeePCs because they already do 99% of what I would want them to do. They're cheap enough, tho, to get one just to dissect. It has an easy to access terminal, Kate (KDE's advanced text editor), great wireless ethernet tools, USB 2.0, an SD/MMC slot and a VGA port.
I'm a Linux systems administrator, and the eeePC is just what I was looking for. I considered the iPod Touch and the Nokia N800 as "very potable, quick and dirty internet access tools" to ssh into the machines I work on, but when I considered the need to get and carry a bluetooth keyboard, and the tininess of the screens and the fact that I'd have to risk bricking them to do what I need, the eeePC became a complete no-brainer.
Don't underestimate the usability of a sub-gigahertz CPU. Don't overestimate the value of an optical drive. Finally, don't figure the average consumer to be so averse to dogma and resistant to change, not that you have to buy the dogma or completely re-learn how to use a computer to run Linux.
As a second (or Nth) computer for quick checking of email, or watching movies or web surfing, this Shuttle unit could be wonderful... finally fulfilling the promise of the "Internet Appliance" vaporware revolution a decade ago, without the vendor and ISP lock-in.
I have a Treo 700W for work and it's a piece of junk. The ONE thing I wanted it for was to be able to put PuTTY (or something similar) on it and be able to do basic sysadmin functions from basically anywhere. All the SSH clients I ve been able to find for Windows Mobile are (apparently) written for PDAs with larger screens than the Treo has.. and the keyboard falls woefully short when it comes to important functionality, like being able to transmit CTRL+C through the SSH client. WTF?! What good is an SSH client if you can't transmit a CTRL+C?!
So... If I can get a decent ssh client on this thing... and I can easily hop on the internet (either via WiFi or through Bluetooth connection sharing) and I can operate for a while (a few hours) without plugging in... groovy.
I don't really care if it plays movies or music.
In fact, I really don't care if it's got a color screen. I'd be content with simple Linux machine with monochrome VGA, a good and complete keyboard, a few basic ports that don't require dongles (eth, ttyS, usb), wifi, ssh, vi, and bluetooth. The rest of it is candy.
Nevertheless, he said he thought what was good for GM was good for the country... OK... I admit I got it a little wrong... I used a paraphrase rather than a direct quote. I fail to see a difference in the spirit of the two statements. General Motors had operated from a position not unlike the position Microsoft is in now... Dominant, arrogant, greedy, and deluded. I, for one, prefer to let them make their own gravy and stew in their own juices.
My Palm IIIxe was FAR more responsive w/8MB and a crummy little CPU than this stupid thing is w/32MB (or whatever it has).
Look! In my hand! It's a PDA! It's a phone! It's a hot, loose, steaming dog turd.
The only time the ringer is loud enough to hear is when I should have put it on "silent" mode but forgot.
The only time I seem to get calls is when I put it in "silent" mode and forgot to switch it back.
It has no "reminder" tones... like the phone rang while you were in the can, and your phone was at your desk... no one else was around (or like you enough to tell you your phone rang)... unless you think to check your phone, you'll never know you missed a call.
If the phone DOES ring, and I can sense that it's ringing (usually through telepathy), and try to answer it.. I hit the "Send" button... and... uh... did it take?... hit it ag..oh, shit... I just hung up the call and dialed my mother. End end end end... well... whadaya know... I just turned off the modem.
Bluetooth? Oh, yes. It has bluetooth.. uh... you want it to remember all your bluetooth setting after the battery dies?... yeah... not so much...
I really think the "Camera Phone" idea is essentially foolish. If you want a picture of something, you want a picture of something that is not permanently obscured by pocket lint and finger grease... momentarily disregarding that.... Something is happening. I want to take a picture. I press the "End" button to turn it on (?!), wait a second then the middle-cursor button to disengage the key-lock... then a second later, I can press the "windows" key... and it takes a second to render the stupid Start menu... down down down down down... pictures. That takes a solid 45 seconds to come up and respond. Push the soft button marked "Camera". Wait another 25 seconds for the damned "viewfinder" image to come up... press the center cursor button again. About 2 seconds later, the Treo figures out that I wanted to take a picture, and captures the CCD. Now if you're hoping to catch baby's first steps, this is not the way to go. George Lucas could write, finance, cast, storyboard, shoot, edit, post-produce, score, merchandise, advertise, distribute and make a half-trillion dollars off an epic trilogy of films about your baby's "learning to crawl before learning to walk" adventure, working in cute, plucky comic-relief characters, mind-puree-ing space-battle sequences, inane dialog, ancient mysticism and strict adherence to Campbell Monomyth before the Treo will be ready to take a damned picture.
The one thing I actually WANTED the Treo for was so I could get PuTTY or something similar on there and do emergency Linux SysAdminny things from out there in the world, if I had to... problem is that the keyboard on the Treo lacks an easy way to input characters like \,|, and so on... oh, and there's no CTRL key... and no ALT key... So, uh... OH, and... nevermind...
Bottom Line: The Palm Treo is a lousy phone, an awful PDA, a dismal handheld computer, and a positively shitty camera.
Y'know what it's really good at, though? Sinking in salt water. .
If you have any particular desires with regard to your automobile purchase, considering a GM product is probably the last thing you should do... Remember: At Senate hearings in 1955, Charlie Wilson, the chairman of General Motors, summed up G.M.'s philosophy: "What's good for General Motors is good for the rest of America."
I really don't know enough about the specific case under scrutiny to comment directly on this instance, but hear me out:
A couple months ago, we had a member of the US Congress describing the Internet as a series of tubes. Is this the sort of person you want CREATING the laws the govern the Internet?
Given that the laws which govern the Internet are being written and signed into law by people with a similar grasp, how good can the laws be?
To then say that a judge (in GB, granted, although I'm sure the situation's not much better there) who does not understand the concept of a Web Site (but understands Law) presiding over whether or not an ill-conceived law has been violated is OK is ludicrous.
To expect lawyers (or, for that matter nerds) to be able to sufficiently explain the Internet, Web Sites, fora and so on to an individual so uninformed as this that he can rule with sufficient sensitivity to larger issues is also absurd.
I think the judge SHOULD recuse himself, because he sits not only in judgment of the case, but also in judgment of the law itself.
That's all well and good... but if you AGREE to the END USER LICENSE AGREEMENT, then that's a BINDING CONTRACT which grants Microsoft certain rights, while taking certain rights away from you.
If you don't want Microsoft to be allowed to do these things, there is a simple solution: DON'T RUN THEIR SOFTWARE.
There are plenty of alternatives out there. Yes, you will have to cope with a paradigm shift, not unlike switching from XP to Vista, or MS Office 2003 to MS Office 2007.
If you give your ascent to a contract without reading it, then get fscked by the provisions of that contract, then you deserve everything you get (and more).
Do you sign loan paperwork without reading it? Do you sign up for the military without reading every last word? Why on Earth would you entrust your digital life to a company without reading the EULA?!...and if you DID read MS's EULA, why on Earth would you AGREE to it?!
I'm not entirely sure what hardware you're running on... you have DVD Monitors?
I administer around a hundred Linux boxen (desktops, servers and VMs) professionally and have ten at home. Install-and-go is not a problem in at least as healthy a percentage as Microsoft's desktop market share.
Compiling drivers... well, yes... these are the occasional lengths we have to go to because hardware vendors can often be prickish, at least you CAN do that.
For instance, I have a stubborn machine with a RocketRaid 2220 card. The vendor does provide kernel-module sources, which compile, but seeing the disks is proving challenging. I mention this only to demonstrate that I'm not so giddy about Linux as to say there are NO PROBLEMS. In my experience, tho, "Install-and-Go" is not nearly as far from reality as the image you paint.
The Linux community (and vendors) could do a better job of issuing Hardware Compatibility Lists (HCLs), granted, but for the majority of hardware out there (at least at the general consumer level) is covered (at least in a "basic functionality" way) by native Linux drivers.
As far as Hardware Manufacturer support goes, I have an Intel ipw3945 WLAN card in my work laptop (Dell Latitude D620, running Debian Etch). I downloaded the driver source from Intel, ran module-assistant, and I was WLANning happily in minutes. Pretty much the same story for the nVidia graphics adapter... now running 1440x900 gleefully. Install was a piece of cake. Far easier (and faster) than MSWXP on bare hardware.
Hardware Makers (both components and finished goods) COULD (and SHOULD) be more friendly to the F/OSS community, to be sure, but the current situation is nowhere near as bad as you paint it. My policy is to check out hardware for compatibility BEFORE I buy it. I think that's a healthy thing to do irrespective of what OS you run. If it don't run with Linux, I don't need it.
It'll tell you something Vista can't do out of the box: ssh.. in or out. It's 2007, people. There's a network out there with computers connected to it.
I don't run MS Windows (any flavor) on my home net... don't allow others to either. If you like it, well, good for you. Keep it. I'll take the freedom , flexibility and power afforded me by Free and Open-Source Software, as well as the occasional inconveniences that come with it.
Bear in mind that the Microsoft "tax" is almost a net subsidy. I really don't care about whether MS gets the money or the OEM pockets it. I just don't want the SALE going to Microsoft. Since 1998, I've been installing Linux on machines originally sold with various flavors of MS Operating Systems on them. Servers, Desktops and Laptops. If I can buy a machine that has an "Microsoft-shaped absence of Microsoft"from the factory, that's good enough for me... I just want the sales figures to reflect that I have no use for MS software, and, as such, I didn't buy it.
Mind you, I wouldn't complain if I could get a Dell laptop with Ubuntu preinstalled and everything worked out of the box and continued to work with ordinary Ubuntu updates. That would be spiffy. I'd pay an extra $50 (over the MS-subsidized price) for that. Sure.
Salesforce.com operates in what could be termed a "mixed-source" environment. According to Illuminata analyst Gordon Haff, the line between open source and proprietary can get pretty blurry. "Many open-source licenses don't require you to fully release your own source code," he said. "How far do you have to go to be considered truly open source?"
The answer isn't clear. Is embracing standards and delivering a solid set of APIs enough, or must you release core source code? It's a debate most end users don't care that much about, but those in the developer community can get downright religious about it. According to market-research firm Ovum, SugarCRM makes about two-thirds of its source code available to the open-source community.
Uh... The answer isn't clear?! I dunno... I've read the Open Source Definition [opensource.org], and it seems pretty clear to me.
Gordon Haff is ignorant and Jeff Vance (TFA's Author) is a parrot, not an investigative journalist.
1) Pandering to "non-techies" is a bad idea. There should be a barrier to entry... the whole Ian Malcom, standing on the shoulders of giants thing... People should be required to earn a little knowledge for themselves before they get to use a computer... or a gun, or a car
2) In a perfect StarTrek world, where everyone is trustworthy, I suppose being able to just call up your Desktop on a PADD is fine... It's bad enough the NSA can sniff my Internet connection... with a "WebOS" they can sniff your whole desktop session. No thanks. And before you prattle on about encryption, remember, the Enigma Machine was an unbreakable code, until is was broken.
3) What you're talking about is a "Thin Client". Rather than using some crappy hack-upon-a-hack-upon-a-hack, why not use something optimized for running a desktop across a slow network, like, oh, tightVNC. Start a vncserver session on one of your machines at home, then connect from any and all other machines everywhere in the world.
I wouldn't know anything about whether MS Windows MCE sucked any more or less than MS Windows [anythingelse]. I run Linux.
I CAN tell you, though, that you're WAY over-specing this MC box.
Getting a large-format, HD-capable display is not cheap... granted. You'd get that anyway. Spending an extra $50 to make sure it has DVI and VGA inputs? No biggie. So, as far as your display and sound reproduction go, you're in pretty much the same boat whether you go HTPC/MC or HD-capable DVD player and tuner.
As far as PC specs needed to do "home theatre" stuff goes... Until the electrolytic VRM caps decided to fail, I was running Celeron 533 with 384MB RAM as my HTPC and didn't have any trouble. Software decoding of DVDs? Piece of cake. Granted, I didn't have a tuner card, but could have added a WinTV card and built it into a PVR as well.
My current HTPC is an old AthlonXP w/1GB RAM and a lo-cash video card. It drives my 1280x768 26" LCD TV just fine.
If you're starting from scratch, for about $1000 you can get a pretty sweet box from http://hushtechnologies.net/ that'll read and write DVDs, play movies, serve music and whatever else you have in mind... and it's fanless, so it's dead-quiet.
As far as keyboards and mice go, for HTPCs, the only good choice is Gyration (http://www.gyration.com)
I've been using PCs as the heart of my entertainment system for about 3 years now and have no complaints... of course, I'm not running MS Windows. That might have something to do with it.
So... the great thing about Asterisk is you don't have to use it only for VOIP connectivity to the outside world. You can connect out using Full T1 Data, 24-channel T1, Virtually any number of individual POTS lines or VoIP (by way of SIP, MGCP, IAX or other protocols)... That way you can grow your system, migrate to different connectivity technologies, be free from vendor lock-in for phone hardware and get on with your life.
I'm in the process of doing a migration off of Broadvox and onto an Asterisk-based system. We have about 30 users in 2 offices. I love the flexibility that Asterisk offers. I'm putting 1 Asterisk PBX in each office with a block of 100 DIDs. Because Asterisk is hardware agnostic, it works with just about any "standards based" VoIP phone. That covers the local traffic. Connectivity to the outside is being done through an outfit called Junction Networks over Asterisk's IAX2 protocol. It's a killer deal. If we choose to dump our connectivity provider and revert to POTS, we can still use all of the gear we already have... just plug a card or 2 into the Asterisk PBX, tweak the dialplan and off we go.
Joe A. Consumer has clearly been lulled into a nice, foggy trance. We need to mobilize. Lawsuits are fine and everything, but if you really want to put the pinch on them, STOP GIVING THEM MONEY. They can fend off lawsuits till the cows come home. What they can't make you do is purchase something against your will. The "Holiday Shopping Season" is upon us. Let's show them what we're made of.
Step 1) Boycott Sony. All things Sony. Sony Pictures, Columbia/Tristar, Sony/BMG Music, Sony Electronics, AIWA Electonics, Sony Ericsson cell phones. Give 'em a month to cool their heels and think about this.
Step 1a) Boycott RIAA. All things RIAA. Buy no CDs or Concert Videos. Don't listen to music on the radio. Listen to the stuff you already own legally. Give them a month to cool their heels and think about this.
Step 2) Listen for the change in attitude.
Step 3) Repeat as necessary.
There's no need to engage in piracy, litigation, rioting or any other behavior with collateral expense. Simply don't buy anything from them..... or... shut up and take it in the baloon knot with a, "Thank you, may I have another."
I don't think the so-called "elitist attitudes" in the Linux/FOSS community are as frightening to noobs as you think.... or as prevalent. Certainly there are some squeaky wheels and noisy springs, but you get that everywhere.
VB is bad. There are several reasons for this:
It promotes "bad habbits"
It teaches "non-portable" techniques and concepts
It is designed to "empower" lay office people to create software monstrosities which get away from them and eventually have to be maintained by real, educated IT people who see VB for what it is: A toy. This also applies to MS Access.
It does not scale
It seems to combine all the braindamaged and wonky shortcomings of all the languages throughout history into one convenient place
This is not to say that people who are not now programmers should or can never BE programmers. It is my considered opinion that, while an accomplished musician can play Mozart on a toy piano, it is by no stretch of the imagination the right tool for the job. VB is a toy piano. It has no business in "The Enterprise" and anyone who says differently has lost my respect.
Yes, VB offers an easy-to-use way to build simple applications, but it does not compel its users to write the canonical "Good Code". It lets them write whatever the heck they want, almost like a real programming language but without the discipline, understanding and background that real programmers have. The result, more often than not, is poop.
Consider, for a moment, Jazz Great Charlie Parker. Here's a guy who practiced and practiced his sax until his face nearly fell off. For years....and years. He could play sloppy when it was apropriate... he could slur and bend his notes as he saw fit. But he was in control. He could work the instrument. He could sqeeze every last bit of emotion out of it. Even toward the end of his life, when he was strung out on smack, he was still a great player.
Now, consider a 12-year-old who gets a $40 Casio keyboard for christmas and has never played an instrument in his or her life. Sure, this kid can play the demo... and use the "auto accompaniment"... maybe even playing a melody over it... but it will take years of commitment, practice and struggle to become the caliber of player that Charlie Parker was. Most people just aren't that interested. That's why we have VB.
"Server 2003 has very few issued critical udpates compared to past MS products, and even compared to some distributinos of linux."
bmajik:
Is a "distributino" a particle of Linux matter, or a quantum of Linux energy?;)
I wonder if you used MS's spell checking before sending this in?
"People on the inside ask "why would i use VS instead of Eclipse?" and its up to us to make sure there's a good answer."
If people inside Microsoft are asking why they would want to use a Microsoft product, I think that speaks volumes. I don't use MS products and get by just fine. Here's an idea: If there's a better product out there, use it. This is symptomatic of the fact that Microsoft is fighting a losing battle. F/OSS developers are putting out better products with shorter release cycles and making them available for free. I really don't know how MS can honestly and fairly compete with that... Oh, wait... I improperly qualified that...
I have nothing against the hard-working people pulling oars below decks in the bowels of MS, but from the standpoint of the corporation's business practices, I have no sympathy whatsoever for MS. I am hopeful that the company will one day get its comeuppance. I just hope the good people below decks don't take on the, "This ship is much nicer since all the rats have left" attitude.
Best wishes.
"The very fact that the Unix world is so full of self-righteous cultural superiority, "advocacy," and slashdot-karma-whoring sectarianism while the Windows world is more practical ("yeah, whatever, I just need to make a living here") stems from a culture that feels itself under siege, unable to break out of the server closet and hobbyist market and onto the mainstream desktop."
I think there is Idealism and Pragmatism in both cultures.
MS Windows people are economic idealists ("How do I maximize my wealth?") and computing pragmatists ("I'm not out to change the world, I just want to code for a living.")
*nix people are economic pragmatists ("Can I afford something marginally more satisfying and nutritious than Ramen to eat?") and computing idealists ("How can I maximize efficiency, stability and flexibility in my code?")
It's a question of what you're interested in forcing down the throats of others.
The MS Windows people are, fundamentally, interested in forcing a rigid "thru-line" mentality on their users to minimize the cost of development and maximize profit. This is, to my mind, best represented by the "Wizard".
The *nix people are, fundamentally, interested in foisting upon the world a huge box of tiny puzzle pieces (and the facilities to make your own, should the provided pieces not suit you) which all fit together to make just about any picture you might want to make, but requires that you learn how the pices fit together. This is becomes clear when a user types `ls/usr/bin` at a *nix command prompt.
In either case, you have to become familiar with the local paradigm.
Joel derides the choice available in *nix. Fine. Enjoy your narrow, shallow MS Windows experience, Joel.
I used to love programming back in the "8-bit Home Computer" days... Then it became impractical to keep on using my tired old Atari 800XL... 5.25" Floppies became harder to find... I wanted to do things that took more than 64K of RAM... So I started with PCs... MS-DOS for starters, then MS-Windows... My interest in doing New Things faded quickly, because my options were so narrow, shallow, oapque and expensive. I trudged through MS Windows for years... doing things and being productive, but bever really loving it. Since stumbling across *nix (GNU/Linux, specifically), my love of computing has returned. My interest in problem-solving has flourished.
What's the difference between UNIX and Windows? Windows people are chained to a bench in the hold of a galleon, pulling their oars to the beat of a burly and unforgiving drummer. UNIX people are SCUBA divers.
Skip the concept of 7-day weeks and months and timezones and DST and all that other foolishness.
Everybody runs on Zulu/UTC/GMT. We all know when the sun's at Zenith. Use Julian dates instead of day/month/year notation. Days ending in 0, 1 or 5 are like current "weekends". You get 3 days off our of every 10 for a normal "white collar" work schedule. Only a few more days off than current weekends, but New Year's Day, Christmas and New Year's Eve are freebees.
The divide by 30 calculation (except for December and the unpredictable "Newton") is pointless. The divide by 7 calculation is a pain. Pitch them all. Wasn't the "Metric System" supposed to make all our lives easier? Here you go. Switch to a 10 day week. You get 36 (and change) of them.... adn while we're at it, why not switch to a 20 hour clock in stead of 24? 10 hours of daylight and 10 hours of night (at the equator on the Equinoxes)... and 50 minutes to an hour... and 50 seconds to a minute.
Golly-gosh... imagine the ease of calendrical computation! Why you wouldn't even need a PC or PDA anymore! It would all be so easy that...
hey... HEY!!! WHO THE HELL ARE YOU?... MFF! FUFFMURRFUNNUNUH! MMMMM!
. . . . . . yes. the calendar proposed by mister henry is ideal. i love it. it is fantastic. it is even better than "cats".
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I detest MS and their Windows OS... but setting that aside for a moment, who was the jackass who set up this deal?!
If the RN pays like the US Navy, for 22k Pounds, they could have an extra guy on board to administer Linux or BSD boxen.
Yeesh!
There's a giant elephant in the room that no one wants to mention.
As companies increase their market share, they reduce competition, and increase the damage to the economy if they fail. The nation-wide, interstate banks in the US are a creature of deregulation unleashing unmitigated greed on the banking sector. If one of these banks fails, we're in deep excrement. A handful of companies control effectively ALL the DRAM manufacturing in the world. further it seems that this handful of companies behaves as a monolithic block. They collectively banked on Vista being a huge driver for more memory. Too bad, so sad.
If these outfits want government help, here's how I propose we give it to them (It's actually about the US auto industry, but can be applied to just about any heavily consolidated industry with a few tweaks).
Operating under the assumption that Karen X is a real teacher in Austin, and the events described in TFA are true, I'd like to share my own thoughts on the matter.
...but then... it is Texas.
What I find incredible is that a teacher who "tried Linux in college" could be so terribly misinformed.
True, in an existential sense, no software is free... neither is love, compassion, or lunch... but.. come on.
This is little more than DMCA-induced anti-piracy terror topped with a generous portion of Post-9/11 paranoia. She's a FUD Zombie running amok.
Eek.
,say, George W. Bush?
While I think it's fairly important to maintain car insurance and keep your car in reasonable condition, this is such an egregious over-stepping of bounds, and an invitation to such a vast array of civil liberties violations that I don't even know where to begin. Here's an old post of mine that sort of scratches the surface.
Privacy is essential to liberty. Part of privacy is anonymity. Another part of privacy is securing that which is identifying. It's bad enough all cars (should) have an identifying plaque that ties the car to its owner (ideally), but it's horrifying to have a computer collecting those identies (and, no doubt, time and location information), doing who knows what with the information when it's done.
Part of what's horrifying to me about this is that it is an implied blanket assumption of guilt cast over anyone with a car. A large class of people, no doubt. I wonder if all neighborhoods will be patrolled evenly. My guess would be no. As a result, I'd imigine that the bulk of arrests and prosecutions arising from this new "tool" will be in areas that already have higher-than-average "crime rates", "making life safer for the business criminals" [..apologies to the late George Carlin --ed.] In this country we used to joke about how in Eastern Europe and/or the USSR, everyone was asked if they had their "papers". It's much more convenient now that that don't have to stop you to check your "papers".
Can/do they retain records for all plates scanned? If so, how are they secured? Are these records, if retained, available for subsequent mining for time and place information, like what video stores you frequent, where you meet your extramarital lover, or whether or not you visit the local "cabaret"... will these records be available to potential employers? What about potential landlords? Are there any laws in place to protect individuals from discrimination or persecution based on their driving habits or the places they visit frequently? Funny, I don't recall hearing anything about that.
Ben Franklin is reported to have said, "They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety." I guess history curricula in this country just kinda skip over that little gem... just like those who profess the rectitude and inerrancy of The Bible skip over the parts that say genocide, slavery and stoning children to death are OK.
I guess we're supposed to just trust that the police and the government have our best interests at heart all the time. Have fun at Gitmo!
Seriously, it's already been demonstrated that our government... YOUR government... is perfectly willing to disappear people to off-shore military bases or foreign countries known to be not-so-sqeamish about beating people with fire-hoses and pulling out fingernails to extract "information". We know that YOUR government is perfectly willing to dispense with Habeas Corpus and the Fourth Amendment to detain "terrorists". What IS a "terrorist", anyway?! Anybody got a logically defensible definition of "terrorist" that includes, say, Osama bin Laden, but excludes
*crickets* OK, I will. My website is http://www.ursuspacificus.net/blog/ I could find no search results pointing to my website on Cuil. Nor could I find any results indicating any websites out there in the series of tubes link to my site. Tried with quotes and without... Tried lopping off the path. Tried lopping off the protocol spec. Tried lopping off the "www" and the TLD. Nothing. All I got was a bunch of links to dating sites which have apparently scraped my profile from sites I'm actually on. WTF? Long lost friends have found me by googling me. I know my website has some visibility by googling myself. Having cuiled myself, I'm left wondering whether my website is even up at all! ...wait... there it is.
And how does one *pronounce* "cuil", anyway?!
I tend to think it's homonymous with "soil"
Depending on Shuttle's implementation, they may have a real winner on their hands. The ASUS eeePC is positively fantabulous. I love it so much I bought 2, and plan to get a couple more. The tabbed desktop is very well done, the performance is quite good (never mind that it's a Celeron 900MHz), battery life is good, the keyboard is entirely serviceable, build quality is excellent, and at $350, it's about a sixth the price of a similarly portable machine from one of the "major brands".
It's also very geek friendly. I haven't re-OS'ed my eeePCs because they already do 99% of what I would want them to do. They're cheap enough, tho, to get one just to dissect. It has an easy to access terminal, Kate (KDE's advanced text editor), great wireless ethernet tools, USB 2.0, an SD/MMC slot and a VGA port.
I'm a Linux systems administrator, and the eeePC is just what I was looking for. I considered the iPod Touch and the Nokia N800 as "very potable, quick and dirty internet access tools" to ssh into the machines I work on, but when I considered the need to get and carry a bluetooth keyboard, and the tininess of the screens and the fact that I'd have to risk bricking them to do what I need, the eeePC became a complete no-brainer.
Don't underestimate the usability of a sub-gigahertz CPU. Don't overestimate the value of an optical drive. Finally, don't figure the average consumer to be so averse to dogma and resistant to change, not that you have to buy the dogma or completely re-learn how to use a computer to run Linux.
As a second (or Nth) computer for quick checking of email, or watching movies or web surfing, this Shuttle unit could be wonderful... finally fulfilling the promise of the "Internet Appliance" vaporware revolution a decade ago, without the vendor and ISP lock-in.
Go, Shuttle, GO!!!
I have a Treo 700W for work and it's a piece of junk. The ONE thing I wanted it for was to be able to put PuTTY (or something similar) on it and be able to do basic sysadmin functions from basically anywhere. All the SSH clients I ve been able to find for Windows Mobile are (apparently) written for PDAs with larger screens than the Treo has.. and the keyboard falls woefully short when it comes to important functionality, like being able to transmit CTRL+C through the SSH client. WTF?! What good is an SSH client if you can't transmit a CTRL+C?!
So... If I can get a decent ssh client on this thing... and I can easily hop on the internet (either via WiFi or through Bluetooth connection sharing) and I can operate for a while (a few hours) without plugging in... groovy.
I don't really care if it plays movies or music.
In fact, I really don't care if it's got a color screen. I'd be content with simple Linux machine with monochrome VGA, a good and complete keyboard, a few basic ports that don't require dongles (eth, ttyS, usb), wifi, ssh, vi, and bluetooth. The rest of it is candy.
Nevertheless, he said he thought what was good for GM was good for the country... OK... I admit I got it a little wrong... I used a paraphrase rather than a direct quote. I fail to see a difference in the spirit of the two statements. General Motors had operated from a position not unlike the position Microsoft is in now... Dominant, arrogant, greedy, and deluded. I, for one, prefer to let them make their own gravy and stew in their own juices.
Piece. Of. Shit.
... uh... did it take?... hit it ag..oh, shit... I just hung up the call and dialed my mother. End end end end... well... whadaya know... I just turned off the modem.
Dung.
Feces.
Excrement.
My Palm IIIxe was FAR more responsive w/8MB and a crummy little CPU than this stupid thing is w/32MB (or whatever it has).
Look! In my hand! It's a PDA! It's a phone! It's a hot, loose, steaming dog turd.
The only time the ringer is loud enough to hear is when I should have put it on "silent" mode but forgot.
The only time I seem to get calls is when I put it in "silent" mode and forgot to switch it back.
It has no "reminder" tones... like the phone rang while you were in the can, and your phone was at your desk... no one else was around (or like you enough to tell you your phone rang)... unless you think to check your phone, you'll never know you missed a call.
If the phone DOES ring, and I can sense that it's ringing (usually through telepathy), and try to answer it.. I hit the "Send" button... and
Bluetooth? Oh, yes. It has bluetooth.. uh... you want it to remember all your bluetooth setting after the battery dies?... yeah... not so much...
I really think the "Camera Phone" idea is essentially foolish. If you want a picture of something, you want a picture of something that is not permanently obscured by pocket lint and finger grease... momentarily disregarding that.... Something is happening. I want to take a picture. I press the "End" button to turn it on (?!), wait a second then the middle-cursor button to disengage the key-lock... then a second later, I can press the "windows" key... and it takes a second to render the stupid Start menu... down down down down down... pictures. That takes a solid 45 seconds to come up and respond. Push the soft button marked "Camera". Wait another 25 seconds for the damned "viewfinder" image to come up... press the center cursor button again. About 2 seconds later, the Treo figures out that I wanted to take a picture, and captures the CCD. Now if you're hoping to catch baby's first steps, this is not the way to go. George Lucas could write, finance, cast, storyboard, shoot, edit, post-produce, score, merchandise, advertise, distribute and make a half-trillion dollars off an epic trilogy of films about your baby's "learning to crawl before learning to walk" adventure, working in cute, plucky comic-relief characters, mind-puree-ing space-battle sequences, inane dialog, ancient mysticism and strict adherence to Campbell Monomyth before the Treo will be ready to take a damned picture.
The one thing I actually WANTED the Treo for was so I could get PuTTY or something similar on there and do emergency Linux SysAdminny things from out there in the world, if I had to... problem is that the keyboard on the Treo lacks an easy way to input characters like \,|, and so on... oh, and there's no CTRL key... and no ALT key... So, uh... OH, and... nevermind...
Bottom Line: The Palm Treo is a lousy phone, an awful PDA, a dismal handheld computer, and a positively shitty camera.
Y'know what it's really good at, though? Sinking in salt water.
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If you have any particular desires with regard to your automobile purchase, considering a GM product is probably the last thing you should do... Remember: At Senate hearings in 1955, Charlie Wilson, the chairman of General Motors, summed up G.M.'s philosophy: "What's good for General Motors is good for the rest of America."
I really don't know enough about the specific case under scrutiny to comment directly on this instance, but hear me out:
A couple months ago, we had a member of the US Congress describing the Internet as a series of tubes. Is this the sort of person you want CREATING the laws the govern the Internet?
Given that the laws which govern the Internet are being written and signed into law by people with a similar grasp, how good can the laws be?
To then say that a judge (in GB, granted, although I'm sure the situation's not much better there) who does not understand the concept of a Web Site (but understands Law) presiding over whether or not an ill-conceived law has been violated is OK is ludicrous.
To expect lawyers (or, for that matter nerds) to be able to sufficiently explain the Internet, Web Sites, fora and so on to an individual so uninformed as this that he can rule with sufficient sensitivity to larger issues is also absurd.
I think the judge SHOULD recuse himself, because he sits not only in judgment of the case, but also in judgment of the law itself.
I have decided to refrain from commenting on this article, as I do not wish to be tarred with the epithet "me-too-er".
Having said that, "Me, Too!"
That's all well and good... but if you AGREE to the END USER LICENSE AGREEMENT, then that's a BINDING CONTRACT which grants Microsoft certain rights, while taking certain rights away from you.
...and if you DID read MS's EULA, why on Earth would you AGREE to it?!
If you don't want Microsoft to be allowed to do these things, there is a simple solution: DON'T RUN THEIR SOFTWARE.
There are plenty of alternatives out there. Yes, you will have to cope with a paradigm shift, not unlike switching from XP to Vista, or MS Office 2003 to MS Office 2007.
If you give your ascent to a contract without reading it, then get fscked by the provisions of that contract, then you deserve everything you get (and more).
Do you sign loan paperwork without reading it? Do you sign up for the military without reading every last word? Why on Earth would you entrust your digital life to a company without reading the EULA?!
I'm not entirely sure what hardware you're running on... you have DVD Monitors?
I administer around a hundred Linux boxen (desktops, servers and VMs) professionally and have ten at home. Install-and-go is not a problem in at least as healthy a percentage as Microsoft's desktop market share.
Compiling drivers... well, yes... these are the occasional lengths we have to go to because hardware vendors can often be prickish, at least you CAN do that.
For instance, I have a stubborn machine with a RocketRaid 2220 card. The vendor does provide kernel-module sources, which compile, but seeing the disks is proving challenging. I mention this only to demonstrate that I'm not so giddy about Linux as to say there are NO PROBLEMS. In my experience, tho, "Install-and-Go" is not nearly as far from reality as the image you paint.
The Linux community (and vendors) could do a better job of issuing Hardware Compatibility Lists (HCLs), granted, but for the majority of hardware out there (at least at the general consumer level) is covered (at least in a "basic functionality" way) by native Linux drivers.
As far as Hardware Manufacturer support goes, I have an Intel ipw3945 WLAN card in my work laptop (Dell Latitude D620, running Debian Etch). I downloaded the driver source from Intel, ran module-assistant, and I was WLANning happily in minutes. Pretty much the same story for the nVidia graphics adapter... now running 1440x900 gleefully. Install was a piece of cake. Far easier (and faster) than MSWXP on bare hardware.
Hardware Makers (both components and finished goods) COULD (and SHOULD) be more friendly to the F/OSS community, to be sure, but the current situation is nowhere near as bad as you paint it. My policy is to check out hardware for compatibility BEFORE I buy it. I think that's a healthy thing to do irrespective of what OS you run. If it don't run with Linux, I don't need it.
It'll tell you something Vista can't do out of the box: ssh.. in or out. It's 2007, people. There's a network out there with computers connected to it.
I don't run MS Windows (any flavor) on my home net... don't allow others to either. If you like it, well, good for you. Keep it. I'll take the freedom , flexibility and power afforded me by Free and Open-Source Software, as well as the occasional inconveniences that come with it.
Peace.
Bear in mind that the Microsoft "tax" is almost a net subsidy. I really don't care about whether MS gets the money or the OEM pockets it. I just don't want the SALE going to Microsoft. Since 1998, I've been installing Linux on machines originally sold with various flavors of MS Operating Systems on them. Servers, Desktops and Laptops. If I can buy a machine that has an "Microsoft-shaped absence of Microsoft" from the factory, that's good enough for me... I just want the sales figures to reflect that I have no use for MS software, and, as such, I didn't buy it.
Mind you, I wouldn't complain if I could get a Dell laptop with Ubuntu preinstalled and everything worked out of the box and continued to work with ordinary Ubuntu updates. That would be spiffy. I'd pay an extra $50 (over the MS-subsidized price) for that. Sure.
Gordon Haff is ignorant and Jeff Vance (TFA's Author) is a parrot, not an investigative journalist.
OMFLOG!!!
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Dude!
1) Pandering to "non-techies" is a bad idea. There should be a barrier to entry... the whole Ian Malcom, standing on the shoulders of giants thing... People should be required to earn a little knowledge for themselves before they get to use a computer... or a gun, or a car
2) In a perfect StarTrek world, where everyone is trustworthy, I suppose being able to just call up your Desktop on a PADD is fine... It's bad enough the NSA can sniff my Internet connection... with a "WebOS" they can sniff your whole desktop session. No thanks. And before you prattle on about encryption, remember, the Enigma Machine was an unbreakable code, until is was broken.
3) What you're talking about is a "Thin Client". Rather than using some crappy hack-upon-a-hack-upon-a-hack, why not use something optimized for running a desktop across a slow network, like, oh, tightVNC. Start a vncserver session on one of your machines at home, then connect from any and all other machines everywhere in the world.
4) Oh, and "fully integrated smart home"? BestBuy's got 'em for $15K. http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/12/25/18282
I wouldn't know anything about whether MS Windows MCE sucked any more or less than MS Windows [anythingelse]. I run Linux.
I CAN tell you, though, that you're WAY over-specing this MC box.
Getting a large-format, HD-capable display is not cheap... granted. You'd get that anyway. Spending an extra $50 to make sure it has DVI and VGA inputs? No biggie. So, as far as your display and sound reproduction go, you're in pretty much the same boat whether you go HTPC/MC or HD-capable DVD player and tuner.
As far as PC specs needed to do "home theatre" stuff goes... Until the electrolytic VRM caps decided to fail, I was running Celeron 533 with 384MB RAM as my HTPC and didn't have any trouble. Software decoding of DVDs? Piece of cake. Granted, I didn't have a tuner card, but could have added a WinTV card and built it into a PVR as well.
My current HTPC is an old AthlonXP w/1GB RAM and a lo-cash video card. It drives my 1280x768 26" LCD TV just fine.
If you're starting from scratch, for about $1000 you can get a pretty sweet box from http://hushtechnologies.net/ that'll read and write DVDs, play movies, serve music and whatever else you have in mind... and it's fanless, so it's dead-quiet.
As far as keyboards and mice go, for HTPCs, the only good choice is Gyration (http://www.gyration.com)
I've been using PCs as the heart of my entertainment system for about 3 years now and have no complaints... of course, I'm not running MS Windows. That might have something to do with it.
So... the great thing about Asterisk is you don't have to use it only for VOIP connectivity to the outside world. You can connect out using Full T1 Data, 24-channel T1, Virtually any number of individual POTS lines or VoIP (by way of SIP, MGCP, IAX or other protocols)... That way you can grow your system, migrate to different connectivity technologies, be free from vendor lock-in for phone hardware and get on with your life.
I'm in the process of doing a migration off of Broadvox and onto an Asterisk-based system. We have about 30 users in 2 offices. I love the flexibility that Asterisk offers. I'm putting 1 Asterisk PBX in each office with a block of 100 DIDs. Because Asterisk is hardware agnostic, it works with just about any "standards based" VoIP phone. That covers the local traffic. Connectivity to the outside is being done through an outfit called Junction Networks over Asterisk's IAX2 protocol. It's a killer deal. If we choose to dump our connectivity provider and revert to POTS, we can still use all of the gear we already have... just plug a card or 2 into the Asterisk PBX, tweak the dialplan and off we go.
BTW, I use Asterisk at home, too....
I am totally sold!
Joe A. Consumer has clearly been lulled into a nice, foggy trance. We need to mobilize. Lawsuits are fine and everything, but if you really want to put the pinch on them, STOP GIVING THEM MONEY. They can fend off lawsuits till the cows come home. What they can't make you do is purchase something against your will. The "Holiday Shopping Season" is upon us. Let's show them what we're made of.
.... or... shut up and take it in the baloon knot with a, "Thank you, may I have another."
Step 1) Boycott Sony. All things Sony. Sony Pictures, Columbia/Tristar, Sony/BMG Music, Sony Electronics, AIWA Electonics, Sony Ericsson cell phones. Give 'em a month to cool their heels and think about this.
Step 1a) Boycott RIAA. All things RIAA. Buy no CDs or Concert Videos. Don't listen to music on the radio. Listen to the stuff you already own legally. Give them a month to cool their heels and think about this.
Step 2) Listen for the change in attitude.
Step 3) Repeat as necessary.
There's no need to engage in piracy, litigation, rioting or any other behavior with collateral expense. Simply don't buy anything from them.
VB is bad. There are several reasons for this:
This is not to say that people who are not now programmers should or can never BE programmers. It is my considered opinion that, while an accomplished musician can play Mozart on a toy piano, it is by no stretch of the imagination the right tool for the job. VB is a toy piano. It has no business in "The Enterprise" and anyone who says differently has lost my respect.
Yes, VB offers an easy-to-use way to build simple applications, but it does not compel its users to write the canonical "Good Code". It lets them write whatever the heck they want, almost like a real programming language but without the discipline, understanding and background that real programmers have. The result, more often than not, is poop.
Consider, for a moment, Jazz Great Charlie Parker. Here's a guy who practiced and practiced his sax until his face nearly fell off. For years.
Now, consider a 12-year-old who gets a $40 Casio keyboard for christmas and has never played an instrument in his or her life. Sure, this kid can play the demo... and use the "auto accompaniment"... maybe even playing a melody over it... but it will take years of commitment, practice and struggle to become the caliber of player that Charlie Parker was. Most people just aren't that interested. That's why we have VB.
Stupid Gentoo!!! ;)
/. more often so I remember these things.
No, really.... Pilot error. I didn't change the Format drop-down. D'OH!
I need to comment on
"Server 2003 has very few issued critical udpates compared to past MS products, and even compared to some distributinos of linux." bmajik: Is a "distributino" a particle of Linux matter, or a quantum of Linux energy? ;)
I wonder if you used MS's spell checking before sending this in?
"People on the inside ask "why would i use VS instead of Eclipse?" and its up to us to make sure there's a good answer."
If people inside Microsoft are asking why they would want to use a Microsoft product, I think that speaks volumes. I don't use MS products and get by just fine. Here's an idea: If there's a better product out there, use it. This is symptomatic of the fact that Microsoft is fighting a losing battle. F/OSS developers are putting out better products with shorter release cycles and making them available for free. I really don't know how MS can honestly and fairly compete with that... Oh, wait... I improperly qualified that...
I have nothing against the hard-working people pulling oars below decks in the bowels of MS, but from the standpoint of the corporation's business practices, I have no sympathy whatsoever for MS. I am hopeful that the company will one day get its comeuppance. I just hope the good people below decks don't take on the, "This ship is much nicer since all the rats have left" attitude.
Best wishes.
Joel writes in his review:
/usr/bin` at a *nix command prompt.
"The very fact that the Unix world is so full of self-righteous cultural superiority, "advocacy," and slashdot-karma-whoring sectarianism while the Windows world is more practical ("yeah, whatever, I just need to make a living here") stems from a culture that feels itself under siege, unable to break out of the server closet and hobbyist market and onto the mainstream desktop."
I think there is Idealism and Pragmatism in both cultures.
MS Windows people are economic idealists ("How do I maximize my wealth?") and computing pragmatists ("I'm not out to change the world, I just want to code for a living.")
*nix people are economic pragmatists ("Can I afford something marginally more satisfying and nutritious than Ramen to eat?") and computing idealists ("How can I maximize efficiency, stability and flexibility in my code?")
It's a question of what you're interested in forcing down the throats of others.
The MS Windows people are, fundamentally, interested in forcing a rigid "thru-line" mentality on their users to minimize the cost of development and maximize profit. This is, to my mind, best represented by the "Wizard".
The *nix people are, fundamentally, interested in foisting upon the world a huge box of tiny puzzle pieces (and the facilities to make your own, should the provided pieces not suit you) which all fit together to make just about any picture you might want to make, but requires that you learn how the pices fit together. This is becomes clear when a user types `ls
In either case, you have to become familiar with the local paradigm.
Joel derides the choice available in *nix. Fine. Enjoy your narrow, shallow MS Windows experience, Joel.
I used to love programming back in the "8-bit Home Computer" days... Then it became impractical to keep on using my tired old Atari 800XL... 5.25" Floppies became harder to find... I wanted to do things that took more than 64K of RAM... So I started with PCs... MS-DOS for starters, then MS-Windows... My interest in doing New Things faded quickly, because my options were so narrow, shallow, oapque and expensive. I trudged through MS Windows for years... doing things and being productive, but bever really loving it. Since stumbling across *nix (GNU/Linux, specifically), my love of computing has returned. My interest in problem-solving has flourished.
What's the difference between UNIX and Windows? Windows people are chained to a bench in the hold of a galleon, pulling their oars to the beat of a burly and unforgiving drummer.
UNIX people are SCUBA divers.
Skip the concept of 7-day weeks and months and timezones and DST and all that other foolishness.
... adn while we're at it, why not switch to a 20 hour clock in stead of 24? 10 hours of daylight and 10 hours of night (at the equator on the Equinoxes) ... and 50 minutes to an hour... and 50 seconds to a minute.
Everybody runs on Zulu/UTC/GMT. We all know when the sun's at Zenith.
Use Julian dates instead of day/month/year notation. Days ending in 0, 1 or 5 are like current "weekends". You get 3 days off our of every 10 for a normal "white collar" work schedule. Only a few more days off than current weekends, but New Year's Day, Christmas and New Year's Eve are freebees.
The divide by 30 calculation (except for December and the unpredictable "Newton") is pointless. The divide by 7 calculation is a pain. Pitch them all. Wasn't the "Metric System" supposed to make all our lives easier? Here you go. Switch to a 10 day week. You get 36 (and change) of them.
Golly-gosh... imagine the ease of calendrical computation! Why you wouldn't even need a PC or PDA anymore! It would all be so easy that...
hey... HEY!!! WHO THE HELL ARE YOU?... MFF! FUFFMURRFUNNUNUH! MMMMM!
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yes. the calendar proposed by mister henry is ideal. i love it. it is fantastic. it is even better than "cats".