I wonder if anyone has ever tried this with Apple.. Wipe out OSX and request a refund for it because you plan to use Linux.. I bet it would be even more difficult than getting a Windows refund.
yea, its true that raid is not backup. but what am i supposed to do in order to backup 4 terabytes of data? and these 4 teras are rapidly filling up, i will soon expand to 6+. i can store the most critical stuff on a separate machine that's usually powered off, but how can i back up my multi-tera RAID-6 properly without buying twice as many spinning disks? is there an economical tape solution for home use?
Btw, not only are unlocked phones nicer to have in case of travelling/switching providers, you also aren't stuck with the customized provider firmware that they slap onto the phone. From past experiences I've found that the branded firmware often limits advanced functionality.
You aren't stuck with it. Just re-flash the phone to the OEM firmware. At least with HTC phones, its very simple to do. Can't imagine it's that much harder to do to a Nokia. Good story though. Didn't know ATT would help you use an unlocked phone on their network like that. It's refreshing compared to the crap that Verizon pulls. However, I think your story hinges on the fact that you already were an ATT customer with a $15/month data plan. If you didn't already have that, you would have been reamed like everyone else.
One caveat, Verizon doesn't seem to cripple the newer blackberries, although they are dog slow about approving OS updates.
Just curious, do blackberry phones have a similar dev/hacker following that HTC phones do? I'm thinking you can just flash whatever ROM you want to the phone and hack it all up if you want. Install the latest and greatest. I do this on my ATT Tilt and the haxors have managed to get the best parts of the newest TouchFlo phones to work on this older handset. I flashed away from the stock ATT rom and am never going back, so I could care less if ATT ever updates their crappy software.
If blackberry is anything at all like this then I may give it another look when I buy my next handset. I had this preconceived notion that blackberries were locked-down and apps had to be signed, and I will not buy any phone that lacks an active hacker community. Palm Pre may be an option, nokia is blech, iphone lacks keyboard and multitasking, android looks promising, and blackberry may be cool but I know little about it.
I am fortunate to live close enough to work that a bike is not out of the question. But I don't perform manual labor in a warehouse all day, nor do I have access to a shower at work. It's just not reasonable for me to show up to work stinking and sweating in an office-type job, which would be the case even with a 10-minute bike ride let alone a 30-minute bike ride. I live in Texas. Public transportation does not exist here, so I can't bring a bike and ride it home like you did. It's a nice idea for exercise, but it would suck overall.
detail view is the easiest for me to navigate. I have never understood why people with 20/20 vision would use Icon view for anything other than images, or even consider using list view. when i am looking for the file I want, I either know its Name, its Size, its Type, or its Date Modified. I click one of those buttons at the top to sort by that criterion and the file I want emerges before my eyes. There is one way to scan the files -- vertically.
With icon view, you have the useless icons taking up space and obscuring the file name, and you have to scan the files both horizontally and vertically to find a file. Unless I am looking at image thumbnails, I can't ever stand using icon view for longer than 5 seconds. I can only assume that icon view is useful to people with crappy vision and as the common denominator for people who didn't know you could change the view in to begin with.
The first thing I do on every Windows system I use is to enable file extensions, view all hidden and system files, and force detail view for all folders.
[vista rant] Since Vista came out, MS has added an incomprehensible folder categorization feature, so anytime you open a folder it is completely random what view you will get and what properties will be displayed. I think the intent was to "guess" that you want thumbnail view and look at metadata like "tags" or "artist" because a folder contained some images, for example. It never works and is f***ing retarded. You can set a default view for all folders "of this type", whatever that means, but not for truly "all folders". For that you need to edit the registry. So long story short, my standard Windows UI modifications now include a registry edit to get my plain detail view back. I wonder if this is still necessary in Win7. [/vista rant]
The COWON devices rock. I bought my SO a Cowon D2 for her birthday because it was tiny and had an SDHC slot, unlike any of its competitors that I can remember. She mostly uses it to watch dual-audio subtitled anime tracks in OGM format. Guess what, it also plays Theora. And FLAC. And Vorbis. Etc etc. Sweet little gadget, I need to get myself one now.
AT&T is metering Beaumont now? OMFG! Why do I have to live in the one place in the entire motherfucking country that has metered 'bandwidth' on every ISP available? And why has no one else on Slashdot pointed out that there is a city in the United States where TWO major corporate ISPs are capping their internet services? Why isn't Beaumont the internet's net neutrality battleground instead of these other cities?
It was bad enough when Time Warner started doing it, but now AT&T has done it, and quietly for sure. I simply had no idea, and it was not announced in any way. I thought AT&T's trial was in Reno only. This is a fucking outrage, and I think I will spend my day off tomorrow contacting my representatives in federal, state, and local government. Seriously, this is BAD. I was shopping for DSL as recently as LAST WEEK to try to get away from paying Time Warner anything, even though I am (quite luckily) still grandfathered in to their unmetered plan. I thought I had no options because DSL isn't even available where I live, but now I quite literally have NO FUCKING OPTIONS, they have all been stripped away. It's only a matter of time before they start billing me the metered rate, so I have to act quickly. Does anyone else here live in Beaumont? We need to protest!
Here's another article I found on the Beaumont caps.
US wireless carriers charge on both ends -- both the receiver AND the sender will pay the 15 cents per message, assuming neither one of them has an unlimited plan. I think this charge used to be 10 cents, but was raised to 15 cents last year. Or maybe it was 15 cents and was raised to 20 cents. I have no idea, but either way it is terrible. I think plans are typically $5/month for 200 'texts' or $15/month for unlimited.
And don't even get me started on MMS messages. I received my first MMS spam the other day. My first thought was "ooh, nice tits", but my second thought was "$#%&, I probably just got charged $3.00 for this spam!"
How about Twitter just stops arbitrarily limiting characters. Go by word count, perhaps?
I know some avid twitter users, and the majority of them apparently use the idiotic SMS message system to 'tweet' each other all throughout the day on their phones. Twitter can't abandon the 140-character limit for this reason.
For the record, I am against anything that keeps the SMS system relevant in this day and age. It should have been abandoned long ago in favor of standard data packets on the internet, rather than control packets on a proprietary wireless system. There's no good reason to keep this system alive when it either forces you to pay $X per month for it, or pay $.15 per 140 characters when one of your idiot friends 'texts' you. There's no way (that I know of) to force incoming SMS to route through GPRS, so you are hit with SMS fees even when you already pay for unlimited data. It also invites spam that you actually DO pay for, quite literally, and from which the wireless carrier profits as well. It should be illegal for the carrier to charge you for incoming SMS messages. Anyone who agrees with me should call their congressperson to protest this policy and call their wireless carrier to block all SMS messages.
what about specialized software only available on department PCs? many classes focus on learning this exact software. Most students arent going to purchase aspen engineering suite or matlab even with a student discount (even if there is one available). Department computer labs are here to stay.
The drain holes on my M (42H1292) failed massively. Dr. pepper went in the top and came out the bottom alright, but not before it shorted out and caused cross-wiring of the keys and other nasty problems. Cleaning didn't help, as I believe the chip is fried. Guess I did not unplug it fast enough. I also wonder why IBM/Lenovo chose not to use regular damned philips-head screws. Long-socket 5.5mm nut driver is not exactly easy to find at 2am when you are trying to repair your favorite keyboard. I still have all the pieces but its either gummed up with corn syrup in all its nether regions or it is well and truly fscked. I ended up buying another one on ebay.
This sort of functionality is best with a key reserved for the operating system (or at least the window manager) to use for its own purposes. Since Ctrl, Alt, and Shift mostly belong to applications, a fourth meta key is desirable.
Yep, it's a necessity. I simply could not use a windows computer effectively without the winkey. I rarely use capslock so I remapped it to super using a scancode map in the registry. It's not ideal, but it's a lot cleaner than using hotkey software. Autohotkey goes a long way, but I never got a script working that would map all of the shortcuts I use (specifically win+pause and win+L).
Also, unicomp sells replacement super keys with either an apple or a lunix logo. What I'd really like to see is an advanced keyboard with buckling springs. A usb hub, volume/media controls, and LED backlights would be nice. Deck makes a nice-looking keyboard, but I've heard its cherry switches aren't as good as buckling springs and it doesnt have the rest of the features I am looking for anyway. Does Unicomp license the technology to anyone else?
I love mine, and I'm not ever going back to shitty plastic-dome keyboards. I bought it on ebay 6 months ago for about $30. It's actually my third. First one got stolen during shipment (fsck USPS and their lazy mail carriers!!). Second one was the Lenovo kind with the drain holes, and it actually died (!) after spilling a bunch of dr. pepper on it and shorting it out. Didn't think it was possible after reading all the accounts of its indestructibility, but the chip appears to be fried and each keypress either sticks or presses multiple keys. Thorough cleaning did not help.
I liked the second one so much that I bought a third one (original IBM #1397661, 07-24-1992) and I am going to take much better care of it. At the very least I will try not to spill large quantities of corn syrup into it. It's rock-solid and feels great. I even like the clicking sound. Then again, I really don't give a shit about noise in my environment. My desktop PC sounds like a hair dryer. You sound like you're on the other end of the spectrum (really, really anal about noise).
My next keyboard will be a Unicomp, for sure. If only they made a G15 with buckling springs...
I could not get this working when I boot my laptop into Windows XP but that only happens once in a blue moon anyway.
If you could not figure this out in Windows then how in the hell did you figure out how to do it on linux? It actually requires some knowledge to do it in linux but it is intuitively obvious in Windows... 1). install activesync on PC. 2). run ICS app on the phone. 3). plug in usb cable and press "connect". 4). browse pr0n on the intarwebs... with a couple extra steps you can even do this over bluetooth instead of USB, and on vista you don't even need to do step 1...
I also bought my current phone [TYTN II] for cash [when it first came out]
Seriously, you paid $1000 for your phone? Let me ask you this, did you actually change your provider one or more times within 2 years to make this worthwhile? Did you do this knowing that if you bought a subsidized ATT Tilt for anywhere from $400 to FreeAfterRebate, you could SIM-unlock & CID-unlock the phone for free using publicly available software and then simply pay the ETF if you really wanted to switch providers? I dunno, maybe you just liked the front-facing VGA camera *that much*...? Just curious...
Even if they just let me enable it and did not brick my phone for doing so I would be content.
I still don't understand this mentality.. Apple doesn't brick your modded iphone, YOU brick your modded iphone. Simply DONT INSTALL OFFICIAL UPDATES and you will be fine. Wait for the modded updates to come out if you must have them.
For the Windows Mobile data contracts, AT&T charges $5.00 more a month for tethering. Somehow they "Know" you're doing it, it won't work unless you pay!
That's not true. ANY Windows Mobile phone with a data connection can tether, right out of the box, ATT or not (at least all of them I have used). Remember, it's pretty much a small Windows PC. It has an Internet Connection Sharing (ICS) service built-in. ATT may not provide a shortcut to the executable in their customized firmware without a monthly fee, but the executable is still there. You can execute it and then tether over bluetooth or USB. I've heard stories that if you use _way too much_ then they will notice, but otherwise they don't really see the difference in usage.
Oh, and you are WAY WAY off on the monthly fee. It's something like another $40 per month for unlimited tethering. They might have a tier below that, I'm not sure. But it's definitely more than $5. So $40 for unlimited phone data + $40 unlimited tethering = rape without lube. Just say "NO" to paying extra for tethering. If your data connection is already "unlimited" then why should you have to pay for it twice?
99.9% of recent name-brand components will work flawlessly.
Counter example: HP Multifunction devices.. XP software and drivers for these devices provide functionality that does NOT work in vista and is NOT duplicated in the Vista drivers/software. Even if you bought a top-o-the-line HP Multifunction within ±1 year of Vista coming out, you are _STILL_ S.O.L. if you want your "scan" button to work properly to scan documents. You also cannot scan documents directly to PDF (without multiple conversion steps) like you could in XP and you are stuck using the craptastic built-in scanning functionality in Vista (that scans multi-page documents at a snail's pace).
I like Vista and all, but that's pretty shitty. Ask my Mom if she's willing to buy a new printer/scanner/copier because HP doesn't properly support Vista.
I know most people didn't like it in Vista, but I'm curious what they did with the sidebar in Windows 7... I know they renamed it to "desktop gadget gallery" and the gadgets appear on your desktop now without a dedicated "bar". I've read that the gadgets will only be visible on the desktop or floating over other windows. The floating thing definitely seems like it would be annoying, as I don't want crap floating over the part of the window I'm trying to read. The way I have my sidebar configured, it reserves the edge of the screen so when you maximize a window it only fills up to the sidebar and leaves it visible at all times. That way I have nice things like a big clock, network/cpu/ram gauge, current ip address, etc always at hand, like in this example. I really hope they didn't remove the ability to do this.
Guess I'll just have to install the beta and try the Win7 beta out for myself. I keep hearing good things about it and I already like Vista, so Windows 7 must be pretty nifty.
Some people have taken Windows 2008 Server and using it as a workstation because it runs better than Vista. No joke!
Actually I tried this, and it is, indeed, a very big joke. Just like other win2008 workstation believers, I ignored the fact that it uses the same kernel as Vista. Except it was never meant to be a desktop OS. It was nothing but trouble, and making things work properly (as they would have on Vista) was an ongoing chore. For example:
-Vista x64 drivers, which should work, are often "not intended for this platform" and require extra hackery to force them to install. Certain "desktop" features such as bluetooth have no existing drivers for Server 08 and Vista drivers can be kinda hacked, but never really completely work. You may be able to copy over the driver files from an existing Vista box if you can find them all, but often you have to download the sketchy hacked DLLs and INFs from "tweaker" sites.
-Software is often "not intended for this platform" and requires extra hackery to force installation to achieve a not-fully-functional state. Just because it's a server OS, software companies will try to force you to buy the "server" version that costs 3x as much. There is no decent free antivirus software available (on x64 at least). Clamwin was the only thing that would run, and it sucked. Avira Free > all.
-No discernible difference in performance (unless you enable Hyper-V to slow everything down). In fact I think Vista utilizes my hardware better. And games run reliably well on Vista, in contrast with Server 08.
Simply go here and read the list of "tweaks". Oh, look, you can enable wireless networking! Wow, what an achievement! And gaming controllers, another amazing tweak! Turning on Aero (A.K.A. desktop composition A.K.A. graphical hardware acceleration A.K.A. it speeds up your PC if you have a graphics card so why the hell would you not want this?). All the shit that is enabled by default in Vista and that most people would want in a desktop or "workstation" OS requires extra effort to manually enable in win2008. But you might not want some of those features, you say... Then just freaking use Vista and turn them off using the reverse steps of the aforementioned tweak guides.
And there is a COMPATIBILITY LIST for various games. Meaning you usually have to dick around with each individual game to even get it to attempt to run. Fallout3 froze up everytime for me in the first scene of the game and was not playable at all, even for 2 minutes. This is actually what made me go back to Vista once and for all.
There is NO REASON to run Server 2008 on a desktop unless you also want to use IIS or some kind of activedirectory gobbledygook. I'd recommend just using Linux in a VM for your server needs. Hyper-V, you say? Hyper-V sucks and you do not want it. It will not acceptably run any decent Linux distro, as it's only "accelerated" for Microsoft guest machines (i.e. no Hyper-V tools for anyone else! except maybe Novell...). VMWare workstation is considerably faster than Hyper-V even with all its fancy hypervisory crap. Turning Hyper-V on slows the whole machine down because even the host must run underneath the stupid hypervisor. That's the definition of a hypervisor, I guess, but in that situation should there even really BE a host OS? With Hyper-V, Server 2008 acts as a "host" that has full access to the hardware and the "guest" OS'es can't even access a freaking USB port or create sound. Like VMWare workstation, but much more limited. Shouldn't all the VMs have equally shared access to resources, or have certain resources delegated to certain VMs through user configuration? Why else should there be a hypervisor between the hardware and the OS? Shouldn't the guests run *faster* i
Back in July I finally decided to complete my home workstation and purchase my storage array.. So I ended up buying six of the 1TB drives and putting them in raid6.. Then a couple of months later these 1.5TB drives came out at the same price that I paid for the 1TB drives. I was really mad at the time, but apparently they were released too soon and without proper QA. I get amazing performance out of my 1TB drives in RAID, and although I would have liked a 50% bigger array, I would have been really disappointed to take that big of a hit in performance. Didn't think you could go wrong with Seagate, but apparently you can. Guess I'll buy WD next time.
A store might work for CE devices, but those are so varied and Microsoft allows carriers to lock out various features so the apps wouldn't be "WinMo" apps they'd have to be "AT&T WinMo" and "Verison WinMo" and "TMobile..."
I have a Windows Mobile phone and I have not seen or experienced this (although I have never used a Verizon WinMo phone). ATT did put a customized, branded ROM on their phone, but it did not seem crippled in any way. It was a little bloated with trial software and they removed the *icon* for the internet sharing (tethering) app, but the capability was still there. Tethering worked perfectly after creating a shortcut to InstShrUI.exe. As far as I can tell, all of the features of the phone worked the same as they would have on the OEM ROM and any Windows Mobile apps I tried to install worked as intended. I did not find it to be crippled in any way. I even loaded the OEM ROM on the phone after a while just to try it out. I hear T-Mobile works the same way.
I get the feeling that a WinMo phone is a WinMo phone, and you can install whatever you want. If you buy an app online, you just copy the.cab over and install it on the phone. This makes me think an app store really would be a great idea because it is a unified platform that doesn't suffer from carrier restrictions that other phones have. But maybe some phones are restricted and I haven't seen them...I've always known that Verizon is the worst offender when it comes to crippled phones, so I'd like to know what they do to their Windows Mobile smartphones and pocketpcs. My gut feeling is that you could still install any.cab files you want, but the only thing that could get in the way is some stupid licensing agreement against certain apps the carrier doesn't like (i.e. WMWifiRouter). If that were the case, couldn't it be circumvented by making the app store PC-based and carrier-agnostic instead of phone-based? You could simply load the CABs on the phone yourself, just as you would if you bought the app directly from the publisher. Even if it couldn't be done directly on the phone, it would be really nice to have a unified "storefront" for all Windows Mobile apps, rather than having to scour Google for obscure apps.
I think that's an example of something they did better.. They ripped Google off and put better, more detailed satellite photos in the "birds-eye view" on their mapping site. It's a little chunky to use but the photos are amazing. Now when I shop for a house I go to live maps and instantly get a view of it from all sides from about ~50ft away. It puts Google Earth to shame, and although street view is even closer and more detailed, it covers a lot more area than street view.
Sure, MS copies ideas, but it only really HELPS the consumer in the long run. Even if it's not always "better" than the competition, it gives us more choices. I, for one, am looking forward to the new app store on my HTC Kaiser.
Slashdot Mirror
I wonder if anyone has ever tried this with Apple.. Wipe out OSX and request a refund for it because you plan to use Linux.. I bet it would be even more difficult than getting a Windows refund.
yea, its true that raid is not backup. but what am i supposed to do in order to backup 4 terabytes of data? and these 4 teras are rapidly filling up, i will soon expand to 6+. i can store the most critical stuff on a separate machine that's usually powered off, but how can i back up my multi-tera RAID-6 properly without buying twice as many spinning disks? is there an economical tape solution for home use?
Btw, not only are unlocked phones nicer to have in case of travelling/switching providers, you also aren't stuck with the customized provider firmware that they slap onto the phone. From past experiences I've found that the branded firmware often limits advanced functionality.
You aren't stuck with it. Just re-flash the phone to the OEM firmware. At least with HTC phones, its very simple to do. Can't imagine it's that much harder to do to a Nokia. Good story though. Didn't know ATT would help you use an unlocked phone on their network like that. It's refreshing compared to the crap that Verizon pulls. However, I think your story hinges on the fact that you already were an ATT customer with a $15/month data plan. If you didn't already have that, you would have been reamed like everyone else.
One caveat, Verizon doesn't seem to cripple the newer blackberries, although they are dog slow about approving OS updates.
Just curious, do blackberry phones have a similar dev/hacker following that HTC phones do? I'm thinking you can just flash whatever ROM you want to the phone and hack it all up if you want. Install the latest and greatest. I do this on my ATT Tilt and the haxors have managed to get the best parts of the newest TouchFlo phones to work on this older handset. I flashed away from the stock ATT rom and am never going back, so I could care less if ATT ever updates their crappy software.
If blackberry is anything at all like this then I may give it another look when I buy my next handset. I had this preconceived notion that blackberries were locked-down and apps had to be signed, and I will not buy any phone that lacks an active hacker community. Palm Pre may be an option, nokia is blech, iphone lacks keyboard and multitasking, android looks promising, and blackberry may be cool but I know little about it.
I am fortunate to live close enough to work that a bike is not out of the question. But I don't perform manual labor in a warehouse all day, nor do I have access to a shower at work. It's just not reasonable for me to show up to work stinking and sweating in an office-type job, which would be the case even with a 10-minute bike ride let alone a 30-minute bike ride. I live in Texas. Public transportation does not exist here, so I can't bring a bike and ride it home like you did. It's a nice idea for exercise, but it would suck overall.
detail view is the easiest for me to navigate. I have never understood why people with 20/20 vision would use Icon view for anything other than images, or even consider using list view. when i am looking for the file I want, I either know its Name, its Size, its Type, or its Date Modified. I click one of those buttons at the top to sort by that criterion and the file I want emerges before my eyes. There is one way to scan the files -- vertically.
With icon view, you have the useless icons taking up space and obscuring the file name, and you have to scan the files both horizontally and vertically to find a file. Unless I am looking at image thumbnails, I can't ever stand using icon view for longer than 5 seconds. I can only assume that icon view is useful to people with crappy vision and as the common denominator for people who didn't know you could change the view in to begin with.
The first thing I do on every Windows system I use is to enable file extensions, view all hidden and system files, and force detail view for all folders.
[vista rant]
Since Vista came out, MS has added an incomprehensible folder categorization feature, so anytime you open a folder it is completely random what view you will get and what properties will be displayed. I think the intent was to "guess" that you want thumbnail view and look at metadata like "tags" or "artist" because a folder contained some images, for example. It never works and is f***ing retarded. You can set a default view for all folders "of this type", whatever that means, but not for truly "all folders". For that you need to edit the registry. So long story short, my standard Windows UI modifications now include a registry edit to get my plain detail view back. I wonder if this is still necessary in Win7.
[/vista rant]
It plays Theora as well.
The moar you know.....
FLAC fine. But have you anything to play Theora video that isn't a PC?
straight from the theora website
The COWON devices rock. I bought my SO a Cowon D2 for her birthday because it was tiny and had an SDHC slot, unlike any of its competitors that I can remember. She mostly uses it to watch dual-audio subtitled anime tracks in OGM format. Guess what, it also plays Theora. And FLAC. And Vorbis. Etc etc. Sweet little gadget, I need to get myself one now.
AT&T is metering Beaumont now? OMFG! Why do I have to live in the one place in the entire motherfucking country that has metered 'bandwidth' on every ISP available? And why has no one else on Slashdot pointed out that there is a city in the United States where TWO major corporate ISPs are capping their internet services? Why isn't Beaumont the internet's net neutrality battleground instead of these other cities?
It was bad enough when Time Warner started doing it, but now AT&T has done it, and quietly for sure. I simply had no idea, and it was not announced in any way. I thought AT&T's trial was in Reno only. This is a fucking outrage, and I think I will spend my day off tomorrow contacting my representatives in federal, state, and local government. Seriously, this is BAD. I was shopping for DSL as recently as LAST WEEK to try to get away from paying Time Warner anything, even though I am (quite luckily) still grandfathered in to their unmetered plan. I thought I had no options because DSL isn't even available where I live, but now I quite literally have NO FUCKING OPTIONS, they have all been stripped away. It's only a matter of time before they start billing me the metered rate, so I have to act quickly. Does anyone else here live in Beaumont? We need to protest!
Here's another article I found on the Beaumont caps.
US wireless carriers charge on both ends -- both the receiver AND the sender will pay the 15 cents per message, assuming neither one of them has an unlimited plan. I think this charge used to be 10 cents, but was raised to 15 cents last year. Or maybe it was 15 cents and was raised to 20 cents. I have no idea, but either way it is terrible. I think plans are typically $5/month for 200 'texts' or $15/month for unlimited.
And don't even get me started on MMS messages. I received my first MMS spam the other day. My first thought was "ooh, nice tits", but my second thought was "$#%&, I probably just got charged $3.00 for this spam!"
How about Twitter just stops arbitrarily limiting characters. Go by word count, perhaps?
I know some avid twitter users, and the majority of them apparently use the idiotic SMS message system to 'tweet' each other all throughout the day on their phones. Twitter can't abandon the 140-character limit for this reason.
For the record, I am against anything that keeps the SMS system relevant in this day and age. It should have been abandoned long ago in favor of standard data packets on the internet, rather than control packets on a proprietary wireless system. There's no good reason to keep this system alive when it either forces you to pay $X per month for it, or pay $.15 per 140 characters when one of your idiot friends 'texts' you. There's no way (that I know of) to force incoming SMS to route through GPRS, so you are hit with SMS fees even when you already pay for unlimited data. It also invites spam that you actually DO pay for, quite literally, and from which the wireless carrier profits as well. It should be illegal for the carrier to charge you for incoming SMS messages. Anyone who agrees with me should call their congressperson to protest this policy and call their wireless carrier to block all SMS messages.
what about specialized software only available on department PCs? many classes focus on learning this exact software. Most students arent going to purchase aspen engineering suite or matlab even with a student discount (even if there is one available). Department computer labs are here to stay.
The drain holes on my M (42H1292) failed massively. Dr. pepper went in the top and came out the bottom alright, but not before it shorted out and caused cross-wiring of the keys and other nasty problems. Cleaning didn't help, as I believe the chip is fried. Guess I did not unplug it fast enough. I also wonder why IBM/Lenovo chose not to use regular damned philips-head screws. Long-socket 5.5mm nut driver is not exactly easy to find at 2am when you are trying to repair your favorite keyboard. I still have all the pieces but its either gummed up with corn syrup in all its nether regions or it is well and truly fscked. I ended up buying another one on ebay.
This sort of functionality is best with a key reserved for the operating system (or at least the window manager) to use for its own purposes. Since Ctrl, Alt, and Shift mostly belong to applications, a fourth meta key is desirable.
Yep, it's a necessity. I simply could not use a windows computer effectively without the winkey. I rarely use capslock so I remapped it to super using a scancode map in the registry. It's not ideal, but it's a lot cleaner than using hotkey software. Autohotkey goes a long way, but I never got a script working that would map all of the shortcuts I use (specifically win+pause and win+L).
Also, unicomp sells replacement super keys with either an apple or a lunix logo. What I'd really like to see is an advanced keyboard with buckling springs. A usb hub, volume/media controls, and LED backlights would be nice. Deck makes a nice-looking keyboard, but I've heard its cherry switches aren't as good as buckling springs and it doesnt have the rest of the features I am looking for anyway. Does Unicomp license the technology to anyone else?
I never had a problem a cheap generic ps2->usb adapter on my 1992 model M. It's the 2-in-1 mouse/keyboard kind from monoprice.
I love mine, and I'm not ever going back to shitty plastic-dome keyboards. I bought it on ebay 6 months ago for about $30. It's actually my third. First one got stolen during shipment (fsck USPS and their lazy mail carriers!!). Second one was the Lenovo kind with the drain holes, and it actually died (!) after spilling a bunch of dr. pepper on it and shorting it out. Didn't think it was possible after reading all the accounts of its indestructibility, but the chip appears to be fried and each keypress either sticks or presses multiple keys. Thorough cleaning did not help.
I liked the second one so much that I bought a third one (original IBM #1397661, 07-24-1992) and I am going to take much better care of it. At the very least I will try not to spill large quantities of corn syrup into it. It's rock-solid and feels great. I even like the clicking sound. Then again, I really don't give a shit about noise in my environment. My desktop PC sounds like a hair dryer. You sound like you're on the other end of the spectrum (really, really anal about noise).
My next keyboard will be a Unicomp, for sure. If only they made a G15 with buckling springs...
I could not get this working when I boot my laptop into Windows XP but that only happens once in a blue moon anyway.
If you could not figure this out in Windows then how in the hell did you figure out how to do it on linux? It actually requires some knowledge to do it in linux but it is intuitively obvious in Windows... 1). install activesync on PC. 2). run ICS app on the phone. 3). plug in usb cable and press "connect". 4). browse pr0n on the intarwebs... with a couple extra steps you can even do this over bluetooth instead of USB, and on vista you don't even need to do step 1...
I also bought my current phone [TYTN II] for cash [when it first came out]
Seriously, you paid $1000 for your phone? Let me ask you this, did you actually change your provider one or more times within 2 years to make this worthwhile? Did you do this knowing that if you bought a subsidized ATT Tilt for anywhere from $400 to FreeAfterRebate, you could SIM-unlock & CID-unlock the phone for free using publicly available software and then simply pay the ETF if you really wanted to switch providers? I dunno, maybe you just liked the front-facing VGA camera *that much*...? Just curious...
Even if they just let me enable it and did not brick my phone for doing so I would be content.
I still don't understand this mentality.. Apple doesn't brick your modded iphone, YOU brick your modded iphone. Simply DONT INSTALL OFFICIAL UPDATES and you will be fine. Wait for the modded updates to come out if you must have them.
For the Windows Mobile data contracts, AT&T charges $5.00 more a month for tethering. Somehow they "Know" you're doing it, it won't work unless you pay!
That's not true. ANY Windows Mobile phone with a data connection can tether, right out of the box, ATT or not (at least all of them I have used). Remember, it's pretty much a small Windows PC. It has an Internet Connection Sharing (ICS) service built-in. ATT may not provide a shortcut to the executable in their customized firmware without a monthly fee, but the executable is still there. You can execute it and then tether over bluetooth or USB. I've heard stories that if you use _way too much_ then they will notice, but otherwise they don't really see the difference in usage.
Oh, and you are WAY WAY off on the monthly fee. It's something like another $40 per month for unlimited tethering. They might have a tier below that, I'm not sure. But it's definitely more than $5. So $40 for unlimited phone data + $40 unlimited tethering = rape without lube. Just say "NO" to paying extra for tethering. If your data connection is already "unlimited" then why should you have to pay for it twice?
99.9% of recent name-brand components will work flawlessly.
Counter example: HP Multifunction devices.. XP software and drivers for these devices provide functionality that does NOT work in vista and is NOT duplicated in the Vista drivers/software. Even if you bought a top-o-the-line HP Multifunction within ±1 year of Vista coming out, you are _STILL_ S.O.L. if you want your "scan" button to work properly to scan documents. You also cannot scan documents directly to PDF (without multiple conversion steps) like you could in XP and you are stuck using the craptastic built-in scanning functionality in Vista (that scans multi-page documents at a snail's pace).
I like Vista and all, but that's pretty shitty. Ask my Mom if she's willing to buy a new printer/scanner/copier because HP doesn't properly support Vista.
I know most people didn't like it in Vista, but I'm curious what they did with the sidebar in Windows 7... I know they renamed it to "desktop gadget gallery" and the gadgets appear on your desktop now without a dedicated "bar". I've read that the gadgets will only be visible on the desktop or floating over other windows. The floating thing definitely seems like it would be annoying, as I don't want crap floating over the part of the window I'm trying to read. The way I have my sidebar configured, it reserves the edge of the screen so when you maximize a window it only fills up to the sidebar and leaves it visible at all times. That way I have nice things like a big clock, network/cpu/ram gauge, current ip address, etc always at hand, like in this example. I really hope they didn't remove the ability to do this.
Guess I'll just have to install the beta and try the Win7 beta out for myself. I keep hearing good things about it and I already like Vista, so Windows 7 must be pretty nifty.
You forgot c) They got it for free from the MS JourneyEd program because they are a student.
Some people have taken Windows 2008 Server and using it as a workstation because it runs better than Vista. No joke!
Actually I tried this, and it is, indeed, a very big joke. Just like other win2008 workstation believers, I ignored the fact that it uses the same kernel as Vista. Except it was never meant to be a desktop OS. It was nothing but trouble, and making things work properly (as they would have on Vista) was an ongoing chore. For example:
-Vista x64 drivers, which should work, are often "not intended for this platform" and require extra hackery to force them to install. Certain "desktop" features such as bluetooth have no existing drivers for Server 08 and Vista drivers can be kinda hacked, but never really completely work. You may be able to copy over the driver files from an existing Vista box if you can find them all, but often you have to download the sketchy hacked DLLs and INFs from "tweaker" sites.
-Software is often "not intended for this platform" and requires extra hackery to force installation to achieve a not-fully-functional state. Just because it's a server OS, software companies will try to force you to buy the "server" version that costs 3x as much. There is no decent free antivirus software available (on x64 at least). Clamwin was the only thing that would run, and it sucked. Avira Free > all.
-No discernible difference in performance (unless you enable Hyper-V to slow everything down). In fact I think Vista utilizes my hardware better. And games run reliably well on Vista, in contrast with Server 08.
Simply go here and read the list of "tweaks". Oh, look, you can enable wireless networking! Wow, what an achievement! And gaming controllers, another amazing tweak! Turning on Aero (A.K.A. desktop composition A.K.A. graphical hardware acceleration A.K.A. it speeds up your PC if you have a graphics card so why the hell would you not want this?). All the shit that is enabled by default in Vista and that most people would want in a desktop or "workstation" OS requires extra effort to manually enable in win2008. But you might not want some of those features, you say... Then just freaking use Vista and turn them off using the reverse steps of the aforementioned tweak guides.
And there is a COMPATIBILITY LIST for various games. Meaning you usually have to dick around with each individual game to even get it to attempt to run. Fallout3 froze up everytime for me in the first scene of the game and was not playable at all, even for 2 minutes. This is actually what made me go back to Vista once and for all.
There is NO REASON to run Server 2008 on a desktop unless you also want to use IIS or some kind of activedirectory gobbledygook. I'd recommend just using Linux in a VM for your server needs. Hyper-V, you say? Hyper-V sucks and you do not want it. It will not acceptably run any decent Linux distro, as it's only "accelerated" for Microsoft guest machines (i.e. no Hyper-V tools for anyone else! except maybe Novell...). VMWare workstation is considerably faster than Hyper-V even with all its fancy hypervisory crap. Turning Hyper-V on slows the whole machine down because even the host must run underneath the stupid hypervisor. That's the definition of a hypervisor, I guess, but in that situation should there even really BE a host OS? With Hyper-V, Server 2008 acts as a "host" that has full access to the hardware and the "guest" OS'es can't even access a freaking USB port or create sound. Like VMWare workstation, but much more limited. Shouldn't all the VMs have equally shared access to resources, or have certain resources delegated to certain VMs through user configuration? Why else should there be a hypervisor between the hardware and the OS? Shouldn't the guests run *faster* i
Back in July I finally decided to complete my home workstation and purchase my storage array.. So I ended up buying six of the 1TB drives and putting them in raid6.. Then a couple of months later these 1.5TB drives came out at the same price that I paid for the 1TB drives. I was really mad at the time, but apparently they were released too soon and without proper QA. I get amazing performance out of my 1TB drives in RAID, and although I would have liked a 50% bigger array, I would have been really disappointed to take that big of a hit in performance. Didn't think you could go wrong with Seagate, but apparently you can. Guess I'll buy WD next time.
A store might work for CE devices, but those are so varied and Microsoft allows carriers to lock out various features so the apps wouldn't be "WinMo" apps they'd have to be "AT&T WinMo" and "Verison WinMo" and "TMobile..."
I have a Windows Mobile phone and I have not seen or experienced this (although I have never used a Verizon WinMo phone). ATT did put a customized, branded ROM on their phone, but it did not seem crippled in any way. It was a little bloated with trial software and they removed the *icon* for the internet sharing (tethering) app, but the capability was still there. Tethering worked perfectly after creating a shortcut to InstShrUI.exe. As far as I can tell, all of the features of the phone worked the same as they would have on the OEM ROM and any Windows Mobile apps I tried to install worked as intended. I did not find it to be crippled in any way. I even loaded the OEM ROM on the phone after a while just to try it out. I hear T-Mobile works the same way.
I get the feeling that a WinMo phone is a WinMo phone, and you can install whatever you want. If you buy an app online, you just copy the .cab over and install it on the phone. This makes me think an app store really would be a great idea because it is a unified platform that doesn't suffer from carrier restrictions that other phones have. But maybe some phones are restricted and I haven't seen them...I've always known that Verizon is the worst offender when it comes to crippled phones, so I'd like to know what they do to their Windows Mobile smartphones and pocketpcs. My gut feeling is that you could still install any .cab files you want, but the only thing that could get in the way is some stupid licensing agreement against certain apps the carrier doesn't like (i.e. WMWifiRouter). If that were the case, couldn't it be circumvented by making the app store PC-based and carrier-agnostic instead of phone-based? You could simply load the CABs on the phone yourself, just as you would if you bought the app directly from the publisher. Even if it couldn't be done directly on the phone, it would be really nice to have a unified "storefront" for all Windows Mobile apps, rather than having to scour Google for obscure apps.
I think that's an example of something they did better.. They ripped Google off and put better, more detailed satellite photos in the "birds-eye view" on their mapping site. It's a little chunky to use but the photos are amazing. Now when I shop for a house I go to live maps and instantly get a view of it from all sides from about ~50ft away. It puts Google Earth to shame, and although street view is even closer and more detailed, it covers a lot more area than street view.
Sure, MS copies ideas, but it only really HELPS the consumer in the long run. Even if it's not always "better" than the competition, it gives us more choices. I, for one, am looking forward to the new app store on my HTC Kaiser.