At least not an Eee PC which has problems connecting to a secure (wpa or wep) wireless router (something along the lines of not receiving the DHCP crap).
I spent half a day looking at the formus and other internet resources trying to make an Eee PC talk with a Belkin router with no avail.
In my opinion if the Microsoft Tax becomes a discount (as compared to the other similar alternatives) and the machine devices just work, then just grab such bargain!
That's even easier. Pretty much just a bash one liner. Well, maybe three or four liner if you want it to be readable...)
haha... you should see my R-commandscript-sed-awk-paste-echo-forloop- bash one liners I did to process some R data analysis and make it latex-table-ready and their respective graphics =oD
Yay for Linux... that was teh k1ll3r app that made me not run windows at work
If someone talks to a "technical support" help line, they should just shut up and do what support say, if they know it all then the why the heck did they call in the first place?
The other time my cable connection stopped working for no reason. I did several troubleshooting to make shure it was not my cable modem, wireless router or computer. After that I was certain it was something with the cable company service.
I called the help line and was guided to perform several things which I have done. I do not get angry for doing that. After all, the help desk girl* has to fill a specific check list before escalating the issue to another matter. While we checked togheter that everything was ok from my side, she made an enquiry to the cable system. At the end, the problem was indeed that they were making some work in my area.
It may be that my girlfriend used to work in a call service center (for insurance policies at Unisys), but I am never rude to the guys in the call lines. After all, if you are rude, you will only make the guy/girl have a bad day and your problem will not be more or less solved.
* with the middle-east english accent, which I usually find more pleasant to talk with as a non-native english speaker because native british help desk people get annoyed when/if I do not understand them, whereas non-native speakers are more patient and cordial.
I have never understood why do people think XML is bad. I have use it to store configuration files for several projects and I found it quite good at storing hierarchical data as well as data sets, when you do not need (as parent said) to store big amounts of data (to use sql).
Another convenience is that you can directly open whatever XML file you have into Excel or modify the XML file via XSLT and present it in any way you want.
Personally, I find grand parent poster quite readable and easy to understand as a hierarchy when it is properly indented. Of course, even visual basic program would be difficult to read if you had it all in one line and without spaces...
Why should the GPL hackers share with you if you aren't willing to share with them?
You don't like their license. That's fine, they don't like your license either.
All that is well and good, but do not go saying that the GPL is a "Freedom" license. GPL code is not free as in Libre, it is free as in "play by my rules or I take my ball and go out whining". Similarly to whatever close license.
IMHO a real Free license is BSD and MIT and similar licenses. Those really allow you to freely use the code in any way you want, for any projects you want.
The only reason I installed andLinux-KDE was to use Kile Latex editor (as I do not like any of the Windows editor such as WinEDT or Tecnixcenter, etc). I tried to use sshfs/fuse too but unfortunately I believe the ssh modules or fuse modlues have not been ported yet.
I agree that people doing this kind of linux to windows ports should focus on applications that are *not* available in Windows (both user applications like Kile or low end stuff like fuse functionality). Instead of Firefox, OpenOffice, GIMP and all that stuff that you can easily install and run in windows natively.
Isn't it a crime to publicly offer Marijuana? even if nobody buys it?
Wouldn't offering (making available) something similar? and when X "undercovered" person tries to buy it from you to see that you are indeed selling, could they then prosecute you for that?
I know there is this civil vs criminal case... I would really appreciate if someone with more insight in USA law could comment on this (including Mr. Beckerman)
True criminals simply have huge botnets and hidden servers behind the huge pr0n/spam nets and they DO NOT carry incriminating evidence with them and EVEN IF THEY DID, how in hell is a custom's agent going to find them?
Uuuh, wasn't a simple "my kodak pictures" folder search what helped custom officers find a paedophile some time ago?
Sure, clever criminals might use sophisticated methods to hide their criminal activities, but as several of us know there is a large majority of criminals that are not clever at all
I agree. Sheesh, even in Mexico custom officers get all rude and whatnot just to "show off". The best thing to do is to completely agree with them and try to make everything go smooth. Do not give them any reason to be pissed off.
It is like that guy going out of the WalMart with a ladder and then the guard asked to see his receipt. Instead of just getting the receipt from his trousers' bag and showing it, the guy had to do a complete show. It does not take you more than 10 seconds and on the other side it can prevent you a lot of trouble.
Shit, it can even save your life, imagine if the guard guy was just about to go postal and decides that you are the straw that broke the camel's back and decides to fill you with pieces of lead.
Sounds like a small price to pay in order to protect my right to liberty. Just because the government demands access does not mean I have to comply.
Except that you do not have such liberty while going through customs. And that is not a special thing of the USA customs. Almost every country usually has this rule where some of your basic privacy rights get removed while you are entering a country.
Remember, it was *your* choice to enter such country (either by booking a flight directly or a flight with a stop in such a country). Therefore, you must fully comply with its legislation.
That is one of the reasons I refuse to fly through the USA (even if the flight prices are around $600 usd instead of $1100... I choose not to get my ass probed in order to obtain a USA visa (even a transit visa)
Of course as I said before, such behaviour is not exclusive of the USA, therefore I think it is really smart to do what the article suggests.
I prefer a different approach however. I usually put all my data in a secure server connected to the internet and just travel with my "barebones" laptop (with only Windows or Linux installed and whatever software I must use).
When I am at my destination, I connect to the server and retrieve my files. As the author of the article says. Customs can not read what is not there.
So, it is just another Open Source bug which the developers did not care to fix because it was not the itch to scratch. Similar to plenty of other bugs which are notified in bugzilla kind of systems and the developers just ignore for months and even years.
And not only that, there have been 6 year old *known* bugs which people just refuse to fix (like the Firefox large tooltip bugs).
I completely agree with the you on the thousand monkeys. And it might be even worse. It may turn out to be something like "El Farol" problem. As, it is common knowledge that other people will look at the bugs, then nobody will care to look at the bugs because, at the end, other people surely have looked at the bugs.
Or, be honest, how many of you have really looked at Firefox (and done a complete verification, validation and accreditation testing after reading the test and then compiling it) before using it?
I know didn't, after all, the code is there, and a surely lots of people have already seen it
Go for a walk through any third-world ghetto, dressed as you are now, and you'll find exactly how much a human life is worth. The best damn teacher I ever knew got killed in Mexico over his shoes and his wife's purse.
Sad but true. A life is worth about $200 pesos ($20 USD) in the southeast of Mexico, border with Belize and Guatemala. It is what you can pay someone to kill some guy.
You [people] should not need to give any reason for that requirement. Microsoft did not ask you why did you need more than 65k rows.
The truth is that it is just a synthetic limit which seems to still be present due to the typical behaviour seen in several open source projects of "if I think it is not useful I won't to it" (see Pidgin text resize debate, or Firefox long text tooltips bug). Even though a hell of a lot of people is asking for the feature *and* all the other similar programs can achieve the same functionality.
This is when it seems that such Open Source programs are being developed by 12 year olds.
I think the problem is not the Java issue, but that when you run OpenOffice it loads a lot of crap that you do not use (that is why Word is separated from PowerPoint and from Excel).
Word open faster than OpenOffice even using Wine. That is quite ridiculous.
The problem (AFAIK) is that OpenOffice code is a horrible deformed beast.
OO has the cool cachet of the GPL, while Word is just another boring corporate moneymaker.
It is simpler than that.
If I send someone an ODF file and they tell me "I can not read this file, what program do I need?" I just need to send them a link to openoffice.org and they can download and install the software in any platform.
Whereas, if I send someone a document in.docx adn they tell me the same, I have to tell them to buy a US$100.00 software (unless they only need to read it).
I consider myself of standard intelligence, and moreover English is not my first language.
Having said that, just after reading this story I downloaded the firmware and copied it to my camera (just extract to files from the zip file using withzip or whatever is easier for you) and turn of the camera in "play" mode.
Then just choose the "upgrade firmware" menu and you are set to go.
I just took several pictures in RAW, I enabled and played a bit with the zoom-while-playing-video and with the HDR with stacking scripts. It is just a matter of putting the script in the folder that is created by the firmware.
Really, it is not difficult. And you do not void your camera warranty. Some weeks ago when I first read about CHDK, I read that someone even sent an email to Canon, and one of Canon's tech guy replied stating that, given that CHDK does not, in any way modify your camera firmware (the program stays in your SD card), the warranty doesn't get void.
I really encourage anyone with a compatible camera to give it a go...
It is really cool. I just read this and installed it on my PowerShot A530. I ran some tests with a DOFStacker + CombineZM and shoot some RAW pics.
IMHO it has some really nice features so that we casual photographers can get more from the cameras.
Of course I won't be taking all my pictures in RAW but it is nice to have some of those features. Oh! and the optical-zoom while in video is a really useful and simple feature.
There are tons of other functions that *really* make CHDK shine...
All of them knew going in that Yahoo had to voluntarily cooperate. So they know that Balmer[sic] is not to blame. So they are not going to dismiss him. They are going to go to plan B: the hostile takeover.
None of Microsoft stockholders would blame Ballmer for anything, what he did (publicly retracting the offer) was just another part of the plan to acquire Yahoo. Have you seen the stock price of Yahoo! after the announcement? gone from $28 to $23.
After Yahoo! stock holders (some of them quite famous) grill and dispose of Jerry Yang, they will put another CEO who is willing to cooperate with Microsoft. Of course this time, the price per stock will be lower than he initial offering.
This kind of stories is what makes slashdot so funny for me.
You got all these anti-Microsoft zealots so eager to bash and say things about Ballmer and anything at Microsoft even when they do not have any idea of what they are talking about.
Meanwhile, Steve Ballmer played a very good hand, knowing that Jerry was bluffing. It is funny to read those comments showing the "proofs" of how Microsoft is doing so bad, how its stock is going down and how they are at the edge of a disastrous crisis.
If we talk about "reality distortion fields", a lot of guys (the majority?) of people frequently commenting on slashdot are really affected by the anti-Microsoft zealotry. They really should get out of their basements... they would be surprised.
As the article you point says, Ballmer played a really clever hand. At the end, Microsoft did know that the stockholders would very gladly accept their offer.
As it can be seen in the article pointed by parent post and other business related articles, Yahoo! major stockholders are not basement-nerds or bearded-Free software-zealots. They are the one of the most successful asset management firms who do not care about the religious wars but only about how much is the stock. And the reality is that the offer made by Microsoft was a good one.
Now, after Ballmer drop the offer, the reaction was a lowering of Yahoo!'s stock price. And, as it is said, ultimately it will result in a better bang for the buck for Microsoft.
If there is any CEO who may be thrown out, it is not Steve, but Jerry.
Slashdot Mirror
Just note that GP said "The Atom CPU in this thing (even the single core variant) will run Vista fine".
Now, running any application over Vista... now *that* would be overkill.
Also, how much space does vista require?
At least not an Eee PC which has problems connecting to a secure (wpa or wep) wireless router (something along the lines of not receiving the DHCP crap).
I spent half a day looking at the formus and other internet resources trying to make an Eee PC talk with a Belkin router with no avail.
In my opinion if the Microsoft Tax becomes a discount (as compared to the other similar alternatives) and the machine devices just work, then just grab such bargain!
That's even easier. Pretty much just a bash one liner. Well, maybe three or four liner if you want it to be readable...)
haha... you should see my R-commandscript-sed-awk-paste-echo-forloop- bash one liners I did to process some R data analysis and make it latex-table-ready and their respective graphics =oD
Yay for Linux... that was teh k1ll3r app that made me not run windows at work
If someone talks to a "technical support" help line, they should just shut up and do what support say, if they know it all then the why the heck did they call in the first place?
The other time my cable connection stopped working for no reason. I did several troubleshooting to make shure it was not my cable modem, wireless router or computer. After that I was certain it was something with the cable company service.
I called the help line and was guided to perform several things which I have done. I do not get angry for doing that. After all, the help desk girl* has to fill a specific check list before escalating the issue to another matter. While we checked togheter that everything was ok from my side, she made an enquiry to the cable system. At the end, the problem was indeed that they were making some work in my area.
It may be that my girlfriend used to work in a call service center (for insurance policies at Unisys), but I am never rude to the guys in the call lines. After all, if you are rude, you will only make the guy/girl have a bad day and your problem will not be more or less solved.
* with the middle-east english accent, which I usually find more pleasant to talk with as a non-native english speaker because native british help desk people get annoyed when/if I do not understand them, whereas non-native speakers are more patient and cordial.
I have never understood why do people think XML is bad. I have use it to store configuration files for several projects and I found it quite good at storing hierarchical data as well as data sets, when you do not need (as parent said) to store big amounts of data (to use sql).
Another convenience is that you can directly open whatever XML file you have into Excel or modify the XML file via XSLT and present it in any way you want.
Personally, I find grand parent poster quite readable and easy to understand as a hierarchy when it is properly indented. Of course, even visual basic program would be difficult to read if you had it all in one line and without spaces...
meet, "The Script":
#!/bin/bash
echo $1 >> my_file
Why should the GPL hackers share with you if you aren't willing to share with them?
You don't like their license. That's fine, they don't like your license either.
All that is well and good, but do not go saying that the GPL is a "Freedom" license. GPL code is not free as in Libre, it is free as in "play by my rules or I take my ball and go out whining". Similarly to whatever close license.
IMHO a real Free license is BSD and MIT and similar licenses. Those really allow you to freely use the code in any way you want, for any projects you want.
The only reason I installed andLinux-KDE was to use Kile Latex editor (as I do not like any of the Windows editor such as WinEDT or Tecnixcenter, etc). I tried to use sshfs/fuse too but unfortunately I believe the ssh modules or fuse modlues have not been ported yet.
I agree that people doing this kind of linux to windows ports should focus on applications that are *not* available in Windows (both user applications like Kile or low end stuff like fuse functionality). Instead of Firefox, OpenOffice, GIMP and all that stuff that you can easily install and run in windows natively.
Just some thought that came to me on this,
Isn't it a crime to publicly offer Marijuana? even if nobody buys it?
Wouldn't offering (making available) something similar? and when X "undercovered" person tries to buy it from you to see that you are indeed selling, could they then prosecute you for that?
I know there is this civil vs criminal case... I would really appreciate if someone with more insight in USA law could comment on this (including Mr. Beckerman)
True criminals simply have huge botnets and hidden servers behind the huge pr0n/spam nets and they DO NOT carry incriminating evidence with them and EVEN IF THEY DID, how in hell is a custom's agent going to find them?
Uuuh, wasn't a simple "my kodak pictures" folder search what helped custom officers find a paedophile some time ago?
Sure, clever criminals might use sophisticated methods to hide their criminal activities, but as several of us know there is a large majority of criminals that are not clever at all
I agree. Sheesh, even in Mexico custom officers get all rude and whatnot just to "show off". The best thing to do is to completely agree with them and try to make everything go smooth. Do not give them any reason to be pissed off.
It is like that guy going out of the WalMart with a ladder and then the guard asked to see his receipt. Instead of just getting the receipt from his trousers' bag and showing it, the guy had to do a complete show. It does not take you more than 10 seconds and on the other side it can prevent you a lot of trouble.
Shit, it can even save your life, imagine if the guard guy was just about to go postal and decides that you are the straw that broke the camel's back and decides to fill you with pieces of lead.
Sounds like a small price to pay in order to protect my right to liberty. Just because the government demands access does not mean I have to comply.
Except that you do not have such liberty while going through customs. And that is not a special thing of the USA customs. Almost every country usually has this rule where some of your basic privacy rights get removed while you are entering a country.
Remember, it was *your* choice to enter such country (either by booking a flight directly or a flight with a stop in such a country). Therefore, you must fully comply with its legislation.
That is one of the reasons I refuse to fly through the USA (even if the flight prices are around $600 usd instead of $1100... I choose not to get my ass probed in order to obtain a USA visa (even a transit visa)
Of course as I said before, such behaviour is not exclusive of the USA, therefore I think it is really smart to do what the article suggests.
I prefer a different approach however. I usually put all my data in a secure server connected to the internet and just travel with my "barebones" laptop (with only Windows or Linux installed and whatever software I must use).
When I am at my destination, I connect to the server and retrieve my files. As the author of the article says. Customs can not read what is not there.
So YOU are the bastard that interrupted me while I was banging my girlfriend last Saturday in the morning?
oh my... I will send you some Scientologists in revenge.
So, it is just another Open Source bug which the developers did not care to fix because it was not the itch to scratch. Similar to plenty of other bugs which are notified in bugzilla kind of systems and the developers just ignore for months and even years.
And not only that, there have been 6 year old *known* bugs which people just refuse to fix (like the Firefox large tooltip bugs).
I completely agree with the you on the thousand monkeys. And it might be even worse. It may turn out to be something like "El Farol" problem. As, it is common knowledge that other people will look at the bugs, then nobody will care to look at the bugs because, at the end, other people surely have looked at the bugs.
Or, be honest, how many of you have really looked at Firefox (and done a complete verification, validation and accreditation testing after reading the test and then compiling it) before using it?
I know didn't, after all, the code is there, and a surely lots of people have already seen it
Go for a walk through any third-world ghetto, dressed as you are now, and you'll find exactly how much a human life is worth. The best damn teacher I ever knew got killed in Mexico over his shoes and his wife's purse.
Sad but true. A life is worth about $200 pesos ($20 USD) in the southeast of Mexico, border with Belize and Guatemala. It is what you can pay someone to kill some guy.
You [people] should not need to give any reason for that requirement. Microsoft did not ask you why did you need more than 65k rows.
The truth is that it is just a synthetic limit which seems to still be present due to the typical behaviour seen in several open source projects of "if I think it is not useful I won't to it" (see Pidgin text resize debate, or Firefox long text tooltips bug). Even though a hell of a lot of people is asking for the feature *and* all the other similar programs can achieve the same functionality.
This is when it seems that such Open Source programs are being developed by 12 year olds.
I think the problem is not the Java issue, but that when you run OpenOffice it loads a lot of crap that you do not use (that is why Word is separated from PowerPoint and from Excel).
Word open faster than OpenOffice even using Wine. That is quite ridiculous.
The problem (AFAIK) is that OpenOffice code is a horrible deformed beast.
OO has the cool cachet of the GPL, while Word is just another boring corporate moneymaker.
.docx adn they tell me the same, I have to tell them to buy a US$100.00 software (unless they only need to read it).
It is simpler than that.
If I send someone an ODF file and they tell me "I can not read this file, what program do I need?" I just need to send them a link to openoffice.org and they can download and install the software in any platform.
Whereas, if I send someone a document in
I consider myself of standard intelligence, and moreover English is not my first language.
Having said that, just after reading this story I downloaded the firmware and copied it to my camera (just extract to files from the zip file using withzip or whatever is easier for you) and turn of the camera in "play" mode.
Then just choose the "upgrade firmware" menu and you are set to go.
I just took several pictures in RAW, I enabled and played a bit with the zoom-while-playing-video and with the HDR with stacking scripts. It is just a matter of putting the script in the folder that is created by the firmware.
Really, it is not difficult. And you do not void your camera warranty. Some weeks ago when I first read about CHDK, I read that someone even sent an email to Canon, and one of Canon's tech guy replied stating that, given that CHDK does not, in any way modify your camera firmware (the program stays in your SD card), the warranty doesn't get void.
I really encourage anyone with a compatible camera to give it a go...
It is really cool. I just read this and installed it on my PowerShot A530. I ran some tests with a DOFStacker + CombineZM and shoot some RAW pics.
IMHO it has some really nice features so that we casual photographers can get more from the cameras.
Of course I won't be taking all my pictures in RAW but it is nice to have some of those features. Oh! and the optical-zoom while in video is a really useful and simple feature.
There are tons of other functions that *really* make CHDK shine...
... does it runs Linux?
digisonline.com
If you like turn based strategy games, this little chess-inspired motherfucker will absorb your time like nothing else.
All of them knew going in that Yahoo had to voluntarily cooperate. So they know that Balmer[sic] is not to blame. So they are not going to dismiss him. They are going to go to plan B: the hostile takeover.
None of Microsoft stockholders would blame Ballmer for anything, what he did (publicly retracting the offer) was just another part of the plan to acquire Yahoo. Have you seen the stock price of Yahoo! after the announcement? gone from $28 to $23.
After Yahoo! stock holders (some of them quite famous) grill and dispose of Jerry Yang, they will put another CEO who is willing to cooperate with Microsoft. Of course this time, the price per stock will be lower than he initial offering.
This kind of stories is what makes slashdot so funny for me.
You got all these anti-Microsoft zealots so eager to bash and say things about Ballmer and anything at Microsoft even when they do not have any idea of what they are talking about.
Meanwhile, Steve Ballmer played a very good hand, knowing that Jerry was bluffing. It is funny to read those comments showing the "proofs" of how Microsoft is doing so bad, how its stock is going down and how they are at the edge of a disastrous crisis.
If we talk about "reality distortion fields", a lot of guys (the majority?) of people frequently commenting on slashdot are really affected by the anti-Microsoft zealotry. They really should get out of their basements... they would be surprised.
As the article you point says, Ballmer played a really clever hand. At the end, Microsoft did know that the stockholders would very gladly accept their offer.
As it can be seen in the article pointed by parent post and other business related articles, Yahoo! major stockholders are not basement-nerds or bearded-Free software-zealots. They are the one of the most successful asset management firms who do not care about the religious wars but only about how much is the stock. And the reality is that the offer made by Microsoft was a good one.
Now, after Ballmer drop the offer, the reaction was a lowering of Yahoo!'s stock price. And, as it is said, ultimately it will result in a better bang for the buck for Microsoft.
If there is any CEO who may be thrown out, it is not Steve, but Jerry.