Perhaps TamMan2000 didn't use the best example. However, I agree with him. In the Sims game, people get naked. However, the sensitive parts are blurred by code. There is a patch you can download to remove the blurring. Why does this game still carry an 'E' rating?
I originally followed your link because I was confused. I wasn't sure if you were saying the PM was better because of battery life, performance, or both. It was an interesting link. It also shows that the 2.13GHz PM outperformed the 3.6GHz Pentium 4 660.
However, it didn't even come close in the non-gaming benchmarks. I wonder why?
Most of the western United States (with notable exceptions: Denver, LA, Vegas, and a few other high-profile places) are exactly like I described. However, you truly brought a smile to my face when you described Salt Lake City as "very backwater" because you are correct. The requirement of a subway was interesting. Does Light-rail count? As for Wal-Mart, they close at midnight; though the new Super Wal-Marts are open 24 hours.
If you think for one second that the governments, and people, of the world will let society entirely collapse due to a lack of Oil you are NUTS.
You are, of course, correct. However, what scares me is the length that the US government is willing to go to compensate for the lack of oil. In West Virginia, coal companies are now happily decimating mountain tops. In Wyoming, oil companies are polluting the water table. Environmentalists have tried to protest this. However, it falls on deaf ears. The President surrounds himself with people that are paid to ignore the problems. I guess that stands to reason when he is also willing to invade countries, and let American soldiers die, so his interests can control the oil industry. I don't doubt that there are plenty of fossil-fuel reserves left. I just wonder what the cost of extracting them will be.
I see there are already replies that cover "How will I know the position of the sun in some other part of the world, I won't know if they are sleeping, eating, etc." So I won't reply to that part. However:
When everything is open 24 hours anyway,
I live in a medium sized city (approximately one million population). However, almost nothing is open 24 hours. The grocery stores generally keep one register open from 10PM to 7AM. "Greasy-spoon" restaurants (Dees, Village Inn, and one other I can't remember) stay open 24 hours. Everything else is closed. Think you're going to catch that late movie and get some food afterward? It's not going to happen. Everywhere is closed by the time the movie is over.
I've also lived in small towns (pop: 15000). The only thing that stays open is the truck stop. A 24-hour world would be nice. However, it's a pipe dream.
We live & work in a "webbed" world where it would be very simple for the game or application to contact a server at the time of registration, make a note of my legitimacy and then tell the executable that it's ok for this person to run the game, he's legit !
This works along as the company stays in business. I've had software that used this method end up in the garbage because the company went out of business or decided to drop support and I needed to reinstall. I now stay far away from software that requires a connection to the Internet to install. It's too easy for the software to simply stop working.
Actually, I've always found that middle-click paste is one of UNIX's best features. It's such a pain to use cut and paste in Windows. You have to select that text, right-click, select copy, left-click where you want it, right-click, select paste. That's way too much clicking! I can see why people prefer the keyboard shortcuts in Windows. I much prefer simply highlighting the text and middle-clicking where I want it. Fewer clicks mean more production for me. Linux is a big winner in this area.
I run a refurb shop for computers. It seems to me that 85% (I don't have stats, but it sounds right) of desktop computers are sold without a monitor. Provided Linux comes up with a way to properly play the content, I'll be able to take a Linux box to a customer and say "Just look at what you could be doing if you didn't insist on low-quality Microsoft Windows. Just look at the poor video quality Windows provides."
Even if Linux doesn't come up with a way to play the content, most people are still going to be playing video back on their old monitors. Many will see the higher quality offered by CE devices and stop using Windows for multimedia. Others will buy the PR crap that their monitors just aren't good enough. However, monitors are pricy. Most people wait as long as possible to upgrade their monitor. You'd be surprised at the number of systems I've serviced that have a top-of-the-line video card and an 800x600 max resolution monitor. They will still turn to alternatives and blame Windows.
Just a thought... Why not have the UN setup a root name server that handles county names. For example:.us for the US,.uk for the UK, etc. Then each country could run their own name severs and have any extension they want. For example.com.us or.xxx.fr
As for taxation, enforcement, or any other government action, forget it. I might consider it if I were allowed to vote (directly or through representation) on any regulations involved.
Passing a child who is not capable is bad for society. Also, there needs to be more focus on sports in school.
Your points are good. However, sports-in-school is also a cause of problems. My sister-in-law was in volleyball and cheerleading. Her volleyball coach also taught math. When she dropped out of volleyball to make more time for academics, her math grades dropped from straight 'A' to 'C' and 'D'. She wasn't bad at math. In fact, she was quite brilliant. However, her volleyball coach / math teacher was angry that he had lost his best player and thus wanted to punish her. The next year she changed schools and her grades went right back to straight 'A'.
School is where you get an education, not job training. The dereanged idea that it has to have meaning, relevance, etc., or it is worthless is ruining schools. I get kids ask all the time "when are we gonna use this...".
So, just to confirm, you think history is worthless? Personally, I find history very relevant to everyday life. It's too bad more people don't. Perhaps Bush wouldn't be President if they did.
Demand high performance and if they don't meet it, than they need to work harder. Period.
You have a right to demand that your schools don't cave to the latest trends, fads, and edu-babble. Authentic assessment, alternative learning styles, etc., are ruining basic instruction.
So, learn my way or drop out of school?
as for technology, you're right. get computers out of schools completely. They don't help kids learn and in fact they hinder the writing process. Plus teachers see lab days or weeks as a vacation.
And why should a teacher see lab days as a vacation? Use the computers as they were intended, as tools. Doing research on a computer should be no different then doing research in a book. Same goes for writing. Of course, I've had teachers who thought teaching was taking a nap after telling the class to read the textbook.
Public schools have a lot of problems. Personally, I'd like schools to stop trying to teach morels and leave that to churches and parents. Stop telling my child that I'm abusive because I have a beer once a month (the schools in my area teach that ANY alcohol consumption by a parent is abuse).
Looking back at my own education, most of junior and senior high school was a waste. Self-education worked better for me until college. Why? Because most of my teachers didn't have a clue what they were talking about. Not a surprise considering a General Education Diploma (what you get when you DON'T graduate high school, but can prove you know the basics) is all that's required to teach in my area. Sure, it the rules say you have to have a teaching certificate to be a full time teacher. However, most teachers in the area aren't full time teachers. They are subs and temps that work as full time teachers.
It's too bad that junior/senior high school can't be formatted more like college. That's where I received my real education. That's where I learned that junior/senior high school teachers change things like history and sociology to suit the local school boards revisionist ideals. College was also the first time I didn't have to deal with age limits on my education. "We don't care that you can demonstrate a good understanding of physics and electronics. Those classes are only available to 12th graders."
I could go on with my rant. However, there are numerous problems with public education in the US. Some people think it best to scrap the entire system, others think it best to limit what is taught, and still others think it best to expand it more. A national system would help in some areas and hurt in others. I don't have the answers. I don't even have all of the questions. However, it's nice to see someone is looking.
Considering it's cheaper to buy a new HP printer with ink, rather then buy a complete set of HP replacement cartridges, this new development won't change a thing. I got tired of paying more for replacement cartridges then a new printer with ink. That's one of the reasons I switched to Epson.
It still takes someone in the home with some Linux ability to do the initial set up of the boxes.
It also takes someone in the home with some Windows ability to set up a Windows box. That's why Windows comes preinstalled.
Once every three months I get a call from my brother complaining about how slow his computer is running. Sure enough, his kids have infected or corrupted it. I tried to sell him on Linux, but his kids use it as a gaming system and he doesn't want to mess with Linux. So I reinstall his system and all is good for a while.
A couple of years back I put together a SuSE system for my 70-year-old mother. I haven't done anything with it since and she's very happy with it. Go figure...:)
I don't have any experience with Ubuntu. However, I have years of experience with SuSE and switched to Gentoo a couple of years back.
RPM hell: RPM (generally) only has problems if you try to install an RPM compiled by someone other than your distro. maintainer. This happens for various reasons. However, with SuSE, it was mainly because the package name includes the version number (rather then using RPM's built-in version handling) and most of the libraries are heavily patched. I switched to Gentoo because I kept finding myself compiling from source to get things working. I figured if I'm compiling from source anyway...
Video card resolution: I've never had a problem getting maximum resolution from a video card. I have one ATI system, the rest are nVidia. I do have problems with color depth though. I can't get 32-bit color to work. 24-bit works fine.
Capture programs: I believe he's talking about Video Capture, not image capture. I don't have any experience with the All-in-Wonder. However, I do have an nVidia GeForce 2 with built-in tuner (can't remember the name of it). I can get it to work with Linux. However, the quality is very poor. I bought a pchdtv card that works like a charm. As a side note, having your tv tuner on your graphics card sucks when you want to play the latest game and it requires an upgrade.
Music/Video skipping: Hmm, check your DMA settings. Maybe your not using your drives at full speed?
My printer (Brother all in one fax/copier/printer) did not work: I also have a Brother all in one. It doesn't work with Linux, even with Cups. I dumped the piece of garbage for an Epson R300. Works like a charm. I'd also recommend HP. The PSC 2400 makes a nice replacement for your Brother.
Couldn't log into my router: Many cheap routers have buggy web interfaces. Does your router support telnet, or better yet ssh?
Linux has it's problems, but then, so does Windows. I have a few webcams that work great under Linux, but don't under XP. The pchdtv also doesn't work under Windows. That said, use what works for you.
As for the/usr/local standard, it was the preferred location under BSD and EARLY SysV, but the intention was that it be used for non-standard apps on the LOCAL machine. The common practice of placing SHARED non-distro apps in an nfs-mounted/usr/local filesystem has led to the original practice being deprecated in favor of/opt in later versions of the Single Unix Standard.
It seems like everyone knows a little piece of history concerning the file layout. However, I have yet to meet anyone who knows the whole picture (myself included). I know the history of/opt. Sun created it as an alternative to dumping everything under/usr. Its structure was originally designed to resemble Window's "\Program Files". (Just to be clear, I know it was the other way around). I didn't know the history of/usr/local and the name always confused me. In my mind, local means not networked. Most Linux distributions seem to define it as not maintained by us.
It seems to me that file layout needs some serious attention in the entire *NIX world. I'm not sure what the requirements are for other *NIX variants. However, Linux seems to require a level for the core system (/), a level for software maintained by the distribution that is not needed for the system (/usr,/opt), and a level for user maintained software (/usr/local).
Now I always figured that/bin,/sbin,/etc, and/lib were for the system./usr is for user programs. That's why there is still a/usr/games. When/usr started to look like a mess, Sun created/opt (which should have been under/usr as it contained user programs). However,/opt was a kludge that made a mess of the $PATH variable.
Half dozen, one or another... The whole thing is a mess these days. Some have tied to redefine traditional meanings of file locations, others have held tight to the original meanings. Several people I've talked to have just given up and used their own meanings.
With Linux this will always be a problem. Don't like the layout? Start your own distribution. I can see where a more controlled environment might make sticking to your definition of a standard easier. However, if the standard is so open to interpretation, perhaps the standard needs a better definition.
I remember reading an article in Omni magazine years (couple of decades) ago talking about terra-forming Mars by moving all of our heavy pollution industry there. The idea was to create an atmosphere of carbon dioxide that plants like and that traps heat, then grow plants for oxygen.
I wish I could find a copy of it. It sounded plausible at the time, though it's probably been disproven since.
This is a perfect setup for families. Unfortunately, it's also illegal in the United States thanks to the DMCA. You see, every time your child scratches a disc or a new media format comes out, the MPAA wants you to repurchase the movie. The Little Mermaid is an excellent example of this as Disney only produces limited runs to drive up sales every few years.
It seems to me that the idea of recording with DVD turns most people off do to the copyright protections and laws involved. While newer VHS tapes do have some measure of protection built-in, it's easy to bypass and you don't hear about it in the news. Want to kill off VHS and make recordable DVD acceptable? Kill the DMCA and tell the MPAA to quit shooting their mouths off.
Mine. I run a computer refurbishing center. We still take in computers as old as the Pentium II. It's a good business. I can resell a Pentium II laptop for $200.00. Not bad when I buy them for $50 or less.
Hmm, I have to sit and think about this for a minute. For a measurement to be useful, it has to measure something meaningful. Now a kilobyte equals 1000 bytes. This was set up in 1998 to avoid confusion between standard metric and the pseudo-metric used by computer science. Of course, everything being truly metric now, there are ten bits to a byte and each bit represents one of ten states of a switch. Those being: on, off, and ?
Now in the real world, a bit represents one of two states: on and off. A byte is a collection of eight bits and a word is a collection of two bytes. There is a reason that they didn't try to make bits, bytes, and words fit the metric model; they can't. Binary is base 2 and metric is base 10.
Binary can lead to some rather large numbers. Engineers needed units to represent numbers beyond words. Granted, it would have been nice if the current units had existed at the time. However, they didn't and so they used units that came close to what they needed. In 1998, units were created that were similar, but different from the metric units. Unfortunately, the misleading pseudo-metric units were in wide use by this time.
In your statement, you say that the problem was solved in 1998. It wasn't. Instead, people started to freely mix true metric units, which have no meaning below kilobyte, with pseudo-metric units that had been in use for the previous 30+ years. A true solution would have involved completely removing the pseudo-metric units rather then replacing them with true metric units. This would have prevented the confusion over 1000 vs 1024 while maintaining units that had meaning all the way down to the bit. There wouldn't be any hard drives measured in gigabytes. Look around though, can you currently find any gigibyte hard drives for sale? I'd say that hard drive manufacturers did lie to customers in 1998 and continue to do so today.
Linux on the desktop ain't gonna happen until... Any old user can access the CD-ROM drive, and a masters degree in comp-sci isn't required to get a fucking printer to work. My wife is taking her shiny new Linux computer into the shop tomorrow to have Win-XP installed on it instead so she can actually print some stuff. Oh well. Subtract one Linux desktop user from that total.
For me, Linux was ready for the desktop when I installed it on my desktop. However, I'm a geek who likes to play with all sorts of software, settings, etc. So maybe Linux was ready for the desktop when my non-geek wife insisted I install Linux on her desktop for multi-user capabilities and security. However, her husband is a geek:). So maybe it was ready for the desktop when my kids (5 and 8 years old) insisted on having Linux on their desktop because it has better games.
What exactly are your requirements for Linux on the desktop? Anyone accessing the CD-ROM? That's a security question. There are times I prefer to mount the CD-ROM and not share its contents with everyone. Remember, Linux is a multi-user system. Just change your security settings (Hint: look in fstab). Installing a printer? That can be as simple or complex as you want it to be. I've found clicking on the Add Printer button in KDE's Print Manager is as easy as XP's Print Manager. Now if you are talking about hardware compatibility. Linux was designed by people who use quality components. There is support lacking sometimes on the really low-end "run out of ink and replace the printer" type of hardware. However, XP doesn't work with all of my hardware either.
Now what I'd really like to know, when is Windows going to be ready for the desktop? When is Windows going to make software updates as easy as it is in Linux? In Linux, a simple command updates all of the installed software. In Windows, it only updates software from Microsoft. For that matter, when is Windows going to make installing any software as easy as Linux? With Windows I have to hunt all over the Web to find all the little utilities, applications, games, and drivers I like to use. Every flavor of Linux I've used offers an online database of software from countless vendors that are easy to install. As for hardware compatibility, Microsoft dropped support for my parallel-port scanner and USB webcam. Both worked under 98, but not XP. My Apple webcam works great under Linux, but has never worked under Windows. I have a HD3000 TV tuner that works fine under Linux. When is Microsoft going to produce a driver for Windows?
I'm glad that your area pays a decent wage. In my area I have a friend who has taught English for the last 20 years. She makes $26,000 a year. That's about on par with what someone might make at McDonalds flipping burgers. You might also be surprised on how much of that three month vacation is used in seminars, training sessions, and other job-related functions.
The trick is to make sure Joe Sixpack is aware that his or her congress critter is trying to break their VCR. Congress critters seem to have an amazing ability to put a positive spin on most anything.
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Perhaps TamMan2000 didn't use the best example. However, I agree with him. In the Sims game, people get naked. However, the sensitive parts are blurred by code. There is a patch you can download to remove the blurring. Why does this game still carry an 'E' rating?
I originally followed your link because I was confused. I wasn't sure if you were saying the PM was better because of battery life, performance, or both. It was an interesting link. It also shows that the 2.13GHz PM outperformed the 3.6GHz Pentium 4 660.
However, it didn't even come close in the non-gaming benchmarks. I wonder why?
Most of the western United States (with notable exceptions: Denver, LA, Vegas, and a few other high-profile places) are exactly like I described. However, you truly brought a smile to my face when you described Salt Lake City as "very backwater" because you are correct. The requirement of a subway was interesting. Does Light-rail count? As for Wal-Mart, they close at midnight; though the new Super Wal-Marts are open 24 hours.
If you think for one second that the governments, and people, of the world will let society entirely collapse due to a lack of Oil you are NUTS.
You are, of course, correct. However, what scares me is the length that the US government is willing to go to compensate for the lack of oil. In West Virginia, coal companies are now happily decimating mountain tops. In Wyoming, oil companies are polluting the water table. Environmentalists have tried to protest this. However, it falls on deaf ears. The President surrounds himself with people that are paid to ignore the problems. I guess that stands to reason when he is also willing to invade countries, and let American soldiers die, so his interests can control the oil industry. I don't doubt that there are plenty of fossil-fuel reserves left. I just wonder what the cost of extracting them will be.
I see there are already replies that cover "How will I know the position of the sun in some other part of the world, I won't know if they are sleeping, eating, etc." So I won't reply to that part. However:
When everything is open 24 hours anyway,
I live in a medium sized city (approximately one million population). However, almost nothing is open 24 hours. The grocery stores generally keep one register open from 10PM to 7AM. "Greasy-spoon" restaurants (Dees, Village Inn, and one other I can't remember) stay open 24 hours. Everything else is closed. Think you're going to catch that late movie and get some food afterward? It's not going to happen. Everywhere is closed by the time the movie is over.
I've also lived in small towns (pop: 15000). The only thing that stays open is the truck stop. A 24-hour world would be nice. However, it's a pipe dream.
We live & work in a "webbed" world where it would be very simple for the game or application to contact a server at the time of registration, make a note of my legitimacy and then tell the executable that it's ok for this person to run the game, he's legit !
This works along as the company stays in business. I've had software that used this method end up in the garbage because the company went out of business or decided to drop support and I needed to reinstall. I now stay far away from software that requires a connection to the Internet to install. It's too easy for the software to simply stop working.
Actually, I've always found that middle-click paste is one of UNIX's best features. It's such a pain to use cut and paste in Windows. You have to select that text, right-click, select copy, left-click where you want it, right-click, select paste. That's way too much clicking! I can see why people prefer the keyboard shortcuts in Windows. I much prefer simply highlighting the text and middle-clicking where I want it. Fewer clicks mean more production for me. Linux is a big winner in this area.
I run a refurb shop for computers. It seems to me that 85% (I don't have stats, but it sounds right) of desktop computers are sold without a monitor. Provided Linux comes up with a way to properly play the content, I'll be able to take a Linux box to a customer and say "Just look at what you could be doing if you didn't insist on low-quality Microsoft Windows. Just look at the poor video quality Windows provides."
Even if Linux doesn't come up with a way to play the content, most people are still going to be playing video back on their old monitors. Many will see the higher quality offered by CE devices and stop using Windows for multimedia. Others will buy the PR crap that their monitors just aren't good enough. However, monitors are pricy. Most people wait as long as possible to upgrade their monitor. You'd be surprised at the number of systems I've serviced that have a top-of-the-line video card and an 800x600 max resolution monitor. They will still turn to alternatives and blame Windows.
Just a thought... Why not have the UN setup a root name server that handles county names. For example: .us for the US, .uk for the UK, etc. Then each country could run their own name severs and have any extension they want. For example .com.us or .xxx.fr
As for taxation, enforcement, or any other government action, forget it. I might consider it if I were allowed to vote (directly or through representation) on any regulations involved.
Passing a child who is not capable is bad for society. Also, there needs to be more focus on sports in school.
Your points are good. However, sports-in-school is also a cause of problems. My sister-in-law was in volleyball and cheerleading. Her volleyball coach also taught math. When she dropped out of volleyball to make more time for academics, her math grades dropped from straight 'A' to 'C' and 'D'. She wasn't bad at math. In fact, she was quite brilliant. However, her volleyball coach / math teacher was angry that he had lost his best player and thus wanted to punish her. The next year she changed schools and her grades went right back to straight 'A'.
I have a few thoughts after reading your message.
School is where you get an education, not job training. The dereanged idea that it has to have meaning, relevance, etc., or it is worthless is ruining schools. I get kids ask all the time "when are we gonna use this...".
So, just to confirm, you think history is worthless? Personally, I find history very relevant to everyday life. It's too bad more people don't. Perhaps Bush wouldn't be President if they did.
Demand high performance and if they don't meet it, than they need to work harder. Period.
You have a right to demand that your schools don't cave to the latest trends, fads, and edu-babble. Authentic assessment, alternative learning styles, etc., are ruining basic instruction.
So, learn my way or drop out of school?
as for technology, you're right. get computers out of schools completely. They don't help kids learn and in fact they hinder the writing process. Plus teachers see lab days or weeks as a vacation.
And why should a teacher see lab days as a vacation? Use the computers as they were intended, as tools. Doing research on a computer should be no different then doing research in a book. Same goes for writing. Of course, I've had teachers who thought teaching was taking a nap after telling the class to read the textbook.
Public schools have a lot of problems. Personally, I'd like schools to stop trying to teach morels and leave that to churches and parents. Stop telling my child that I'm abusive because I have a beer once a month (the schools in my area teach that ANY alcohol consumption by a parent is abuse).
Looking back at my own education, most of junior and senior high school was a waste. Self-education worked better for me until college. Why? Because most of my teachers didn't have a clue what they were talking about. Not a surprise considering a General Education Diploma (what you get when you DON'T graduate high school, but can prove you know the basics) is all that's required to teach in my area. Sure, it the rules say you have to have a teaching certificate to be a full time teacher. However, most teachers in the area aren't full time teachers. They are subs and temps that work as full time teachers.
It's too bad that junior/senior high school can't be formatted more like college. That's where I received my real education. That's where I learned that junior/senior high school teachers change things like history and sociology to suit the local school boards revisionist ideals. College was also the first time I didn't have to deal with age limits on my education. "We don't care that you can demonstrate a good understanding of physics and electronics. Those classes are only available to 12th graders."
I could go on with my rant. However, there are numerous problems with public education in the US. Some people think it best to scrap the entire system, others think it best to limit what is taught, and still others think it best to expand it more. A national system would help in some areas and hurt in others. I don't have the answers. I don't even have all of the questions. However, it's nice to see someone is looking.
Considering it's cheaper to buy a new HP printer with ink, rather then buy a complete set of HP replacement cartridges, this new development won't change a thing. I got tired of paying more for replacement cartridges then a new printer with ink. That's one of the reasons I switched to Epson.
Stephanie is nothing more than a FUDBOT: The same message was posted yesterday.
It still takes someone in the home with some Linux ability to do the initial set up of the boxes.
:)
It also takes someone in the home with some Windows ability to set up a Windows box. That's why Windows comes preinstalled.
Once every three months I get a call from my brother complaining about how slow his computer is running. Sure enough, his kids have infected or corrupted it. I tried to sell him on Linux, but his kids use it as a gaming system and he doesn't want to mess with Linux. So I reinstall his system and all is good for a while.
A couple of years back I put together a SuSE system for my 70-year-old mother. I haven't done anything with it since and she's very happy with it. Go figure...
I don't have any experience with Ubuntu. However, I have years of experience with SuSE and switched to Gentoo a couple of years back.
RPM hell: RPM (generally) only has problems if you try to install an RPM compiled by someone other than your distro. maintainer. This happens for various reasons. However, with SuSE, it was mainly because the package name includes the version number (rather then using RPM's built-in version handling) and most of the libraries are heavily patched. I switched to Gentoo because I kept finding myself compiling from source to get things working. I figured if I'm compiling from source anyway...
Video card resolution: I've never had a problem getting maximum resolution from a video card. I have one ATI system, the rest are nVidia. I do have problems with color depth though. I can't get 32-bit color to work. 24-bit works fine.
Capture programs: I believe he's talking about Video Capture, not image capture. I don't have any experience with the All-in-Wonder. However, I do have an nVidia GeForce 2 with built-in tuner (can't remember the name of it). I can get it to work with Linux. However, the quality is very poor. I bought a pchdtv card that works like a charm. As a side note, having your tv tuner on your graphics card sucks when you want to play the latest game and it requires an upgrade.
Music/Video skipping: Hmm, check your DMA settings. Maybe your not using your drives at full speed?
My printer (Brother all in one fax/copier/printer) did not work: I also have a Brother all in one. It doesn't work with Linux, even with Cups. I dumped the piece of garbage for an Epson R300. Works like a charm. I'd also recommend HP. The PSC 2400 makes a nice replacement for your Brother.
Couldn't log into my router: Many cheap routers have buggy web interfaces. Does your router support telnet, or better yet ssh?
Linux has it's problems, but then, so does Windows. I have a few webcams that work great under Linux, but don't under XP. The pchdtv also doesn't work under Windows. That said, use what works for you.
AOL has always been late. They were one of the first to offer a GUI to thier network. However, they were the last to offer Internet access...
As for the /usr/local standard, it was the preferred location under BSD and EARLY SysV, but the intention was that it be used for non-standard apps on the LOCAL machine. The common practice of placing SHARED non-distro apps in an nfs-mounted /usr/local filesystem has led to the original practice being deprecated in favor of /opt in later versions of the Single Unix Standard.
/opt. Sun created it as an alternative to dumping everything under /usr. Its structure was originally designed to resemble Window's "\Program Files". (Just to be clear, I know it was the other way around). I didn't know the history of /usr/local and the name always confused me. In my mind, local means not networked. Most Linux distributions seem to define it as not maintained by us.
/opt), and a level for user maintained software (/usr/local).
/bin, /sbin, /etc, and /lib were for the system. /usr is for user programs. That's why there is still a /usr/games. When /usr started to look like a mess, Sun created /opt (which should have been under /usr as it contained user programs). However, /opt was a kludge that made a mess of the $PATH variable.
It seems like everyone knows a little piece of history concerning the file layout. However, I have yet to meet anyone who knows the whole picture (myself included). I know the history of
It seems to me that file layout needs some serious attention in the entire *NIX world. I'm not sure what the requirements are for other *NIX variants. However, Linux seems to require a level for the core system (/), a level for software maintained by the distribution that is not needed for the system (/usr,
Now I always figured that
Half dozen, one or another... The whole thing is a mess these days. Some have tied to redefine traditional meanings of file locations, others have held tight to the original meanings. Several people I've talked to have just given up and used their own meanings.
With Linux this will always be a problem. Don't like the layout? Start your own distribution. I can see where a more controlled environment might make sticking to your definition of a standard easier. However, if the standard is so open to interpretation, perhaps the standard needs a better definition.
I remember reading an article in Omni magazine years (couple of decades) ago talking about terra-forming Mars by moving all of our heavy pollution industry there. The idea was to create an atmosphere of carbon dioxide that plants like and that traps heat, then grow plants for oxygen.
I wish I could find a copy of it. It sounded plausible at the time, though it's probably been disproven since.
This is a perfect setup for families. Unfortunately, it's also illegal in the United States thanks to the DMCA. You see, every time your child scratches a disc or a new media format comes out, the MPAA wants you to repurchase the movie. The Little Mermaid is an excellent example of this as Disney only produces limited runs to drive up sales every few years.
It seems to me that the idea of recording with DVD turns most people off do to the copyright protections and laws involved. While newer VHS tapes do have some measure of protection built-in, it's easy to bypass and you don't hear about it in the news. Want to kill off VHS and make recordable DVD acceptable? Kill the DMCA and tell the MPAA to quit shooting their mouths off.
Hmm, I can see it now, political posters saturated in oxytocin. "Really, I can run the country. Trust me!"
Whose Burden is it to Recycle Computers?
Mine. I run a computer refurbishing center. We still take in computers as old as the Pentium II. It's a good business. I can resell a Pentium II laptop for $200.00. Not bad when I buy them for $50 or less.
Hmm, I have to sit and think about this for a minute. For a measurement to be useful, it has to measure something meaningful. Now a kilobyte equals 1000 bytes. This was set up in 1998 to avoid confusion between standard metric and the pseudo-metric used by computer science. Of course, everything being truly metric now, there are ten bits to a byte and each bit represents one of ten states of a switch. Those being: on, off, and ?
Now in the real world, a bit represents one of two states: on and off. A byte is a collection of eight bits and a word is a collection of two bytes. There is a reason that they didn't try to make bits, bytes, and words fit the metric model; they can't. Binary is base 2 and metric is base 10.
Binary can lead to some rather large numbers. Engineers needed units to represent numbers beyond words. Granted, it would have been nice if the current units had existed at the time. However, they didn't and so they used units that came close to what they needed. In 1998, units were created that were similar, but different from the metric units. Unfortunately, the misleading pseudo-metric units were in wide use by this time.
In your statement, you say that the problem was solved in 1998. It wasn't. Instead, people started to freely mix true metric units, which have no meaning below kilobyte, with pseudo-metric units that had been in use for the previous 30+ years. A true solution would have involved completely removing the pseudo-metric units rather then replacing them with true metric units. This would have prevented the confusion over 1000 vs 1024 while maintaining units that had meaning all the way down to the bit. There wouldn't be any hard drives measured in gigabytes. Look around though, can you currently find any gigibyte hard drives for sale? I'd say that hard drive manufacturers did lie to customers in 1998 and continue to do so today.
Linux on the desktop ain't gonna happen until... Any old user can access the CD-ROM drive, and a masters degree in comp-sci isn't required to get a fucking printer to work. My wife is taking her shiny new Linux computer into the shop tomorrow to have Win-XP installed on it instead so she can actually print some stuff. Oh well. Subtract one Linux desktop user from that total.
:). So maybe it was ready for the desktop when my kids (5 and 8 years old) insisted on having Linux on their desktop because it has better games.
For me, Linux was ready for the desktop when I installed it on my desktop. However, I'm a geek who likes to play with all sorts of software, settings, etc. So maybe Linux was ready for the desktop when my non-geek wife insisted I install Linux on her desktop for multi-user capabilities and security. However, her husband is a geek
What exactly are your requirements for Linux on the desktop? Anyone accessing the CD-ROM? That's a security question. There are times I prefer to mount the CD-ROM and not share its contents with everyone. Remember, Linux is a multi-user system. Just change your security settings (Hint: look in fstab). Installing a printer? That can be as simple or complex as you want it to be. I've found clicking on the Add Printer button in KDE's Print Manager is as easy as XP's Print Manager. Now if you are talking about hardware compatibility. Linux was designed by people who use quality components. There is support lacking sometimes on the really low-end "run out of ink and replace the printer" type of hardware. However, XP doesn't work with all of my hardware either.
Now what I'd really like to know, when is Windows going to be ready for the desktop? When is Windows going to make software updates as easy as it is in Linux? In Linux, a simple command updates all of the installed software. In Windows, it only updates software from Microsoft. For that matter, when is Windows going to make installing any software as easy as Linux? With Windows I have to hunt all over the Web to find all the little utilities, applications, games, and drivers I like to use. Every flavor of Linux I've used offers an online database of software from countless vendors that are easy to install. As for hardware compatibility, Microsoft dropped support for my parallel-port scanner and USB webcam. Both worked under 98, but not XP. My Apple webcam works great under Linux, but has never worked under Windows. I have a HD3000 TV tuner that works fine under Linux. When is Microsoft going to produce a driver for Windows?
I'm glad that your area pays a decent wage. In my area I have a friend who has taught English for the last 20 years. She makes $26,000 a year. That's about on par with what someone might make at McDonalds flipping burgers. You might also be surprised on how much of that three month vacation is used in seminars, training sessions, and other job-related functions.
The trick is to make sure Joe Sixpack is aware that his or her congress critter is trying to break their VCR. Congress critters seem to have an amazing ability to put a positive spin on most anything.