I have a widescreen Acer laptop, running at 1280x800. It took quite a bit of fiddling with config files under Hoary (difficult back then as I was a total novice) to get it to work. I got there in the end, but the standard desktop resolution widget thing was no help whatsoever.
I'm wondering how this will affect public opinion of open source projects. Personally, if I wanted a domain and found someone had already parked it using an open source service, I'd be less than pleased with open source in general (assuming I wasn't already rather familiar with open source).
Of course, I might have got the wrong end of the stick here, but that's how I understand it at present.
Oooh, great, I make the sort of joke I see modded up as +5 generally, and because my nick happens to be Flamekebab, I'm taken as a troll and modded down. Ah, how I love Slashdot.
Now I'm going to get a -1 Offtopic too I guess..
Looks like a few thousand people might have to actually leave the house now to get their socialising fix, or they could just give their cash to another MMORPG supplier..
Just switch dealer! Gotta get that fix, after all.
It'd be nice to see some less used franchises, such as Jet Set Radio or one of the old Oddworld titles, I think both would be fantastic on the PSP, but maybe that's just me.
I'm just kinda fed up of all these popular, well-whored franchises. I don't *want* another Metal Gear title, or another Gran Turismo!
For some reason, I don't really see homebrew games taking off for mainstream PSP owners. Sure, they would probably be popular, but not so much with the majority of the Playstation brand's usual audience.
If you were to set them up with a basic PC of their own, or for your kids (if you have several), but not with Windows. Instead have it running Linux, with all the necessary apps available.
Not only will their friends be unlikely to be able to help them install programs (meaning you have control over what goes on and what doesn't), but you won't have to really worry about spyware or viruses.
There's some really great free apps as well, and then you could introduce them to computing, rather than Windows.
Too many kids these days seem to think that Windows and "computers" are the same thing!
Whilst I doubt anyone will even read this comment, what with it being so late, I still feel the urge to comment
I was introduced to technology at a relatively early age, although I forget when. It was when the Amiga scene was still very active amongst kids in the UK.
Anyways, I never had access to anything like that, as I lived out in the country. I did have access to a PC, however. I was allowed to play a few games and mess around with a few things, but nothing much really. No one programmed, no one did anything much really, other than office work, so I never experienced that side of things.
Back in those days, my parents would rarely get me anything, I had to save up and get things, if I wanted it, I worked for it.
These days, my family is very wealthy. I still have to work for things, and I rarely get gifts apart from birthdays and Christmas. However, relative to before, I feel rather spoilt.
I'm now 19 and get abuse hurled at me because I'm wealthy, despite the fact that my upbringing was not in a wealthy environment (although it wasn't hugely poor, just not rich, if you get my meaning). It's really my fault the choices my parents made! It's totally my fault that I don't just give all my family's money away! I don't complain that they're poor and free (a lot is expected of me, I'm not free to do whatever the hell I like with my life) to their faces!
If I'd been introduced to programming at an early age, maybe I would have developed the sort of logical and mathematical mindset one apparently requires for it. Instead I became more of an artist, with some mastery of higher level technology, but little skill at electronics and programming.
However, drawing on our own experiences alone would be foolish, as technology is far more entrenched in modern society than it was when my generation were growing up. I think we need to be on our toes, really, as who knows what will come next?
Oh and definitely ditch the TV, or severely limit it. The most successful people I know rarely watch TV, or don't even own a set. I think it's a better idea to provide a dynamic medium of technology, rather than such a static one.
With portable music players being so small in size and no longer carrying any geek stigma for most of the general public, why do mobile-related industries insist that music on your mobile is The Next Big Thing (tm)?
I used to use my n-gage (quiet at the back..) for listening to music, but my GPRS costs for downloading anything were astronomical!
I certainly don't know of anyone that seriously considers mobile phones in their current incarnation as replacements for separate portable music players.
From TFA - "instant gratification of downloading and owning their own personal collection of high-quality songs"
GPRS was definitely not instant when I still used it.
Whilst GPRS may not be used (I can't say I'm entirely sober enough to go over the article with a fine toothed enough comb to tell), if it isn't then that substantially reduces the number of handsets this will be available to. I'm guessing though that they expect us all to buy new handsets for this Amazing New Feature (!!!).
As the page is already slashdotted and CoralCache doesn't seem to be too happy either. Anyways, is this that 3D desktop thing that Sun were flaunting a while back?
If the speed of Java is anything to go by, then I'm not interested.
Furthermore, has anyone managed to make a 3D desktop/OS which is actually as good as it promises?
Perhaps we could do with different monitors for such a thing, some sort of hologram or projection, maybe?
I have a horrible feeling I'm not talking about the right tech, so I'll shut up now, although I'm sure my "Offtopic" modifiers are already in place..
Re:I'd like IMDB more if...
on
IMDb Turns 15
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· Score: 0
The registration process was originally implemented to decrease traffic on the forums. Apparently.
So says someone at my local LUG who runs some of the servers for the IMDb.
However, I'm also told that it only worked for a short while, after which the traffic shot back up again..
From a newer Linux user's POV
on
Vim 6.4 Released
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· Score: 1, Interesting
I know the geek community generally swears by vim and emacs, but to newer users they're both a closed book. Any search for understanding and explanation is met by what appears to be insanely complex reasoning..
These are text editors, right? Or what? What is their purpose? Why are they so complicated to use?
I mean, I would have thought the more advanced features would be complicated. But plain vanilla text-editing..? It seems you need to press obscure commands just to be able to scroll through a file, let alone edit it.
I think it's things like this that puts many newer Linux users off configuring things themselves, as having to deal with programs such as vim and emacs is more than a little daunting.
This is the one, main gripe I have with Linux, being a young person.
I have a Ubuntu linux laptop, but I don't use it for IM at all, as it does not support webcam conversations, which I use every day.
I dislike being forced to use at least one Windows machine to get webcams working and I am hoping that the new version of aMSN will fix this, as it is one of the main drawbacks for me.
If it had wifi then maybe I would have chosen it over a PSP, but as it stands, there's little point for me. The PSP has a massive and beautiful screen and I can easily convert my vast collection of legit (*cough*) DivX/XviD films to a viewable format for it.
I'd definitely rather have one of these than a Nintendo DS though.
They do, for definite. I was sitting in a meeting yesterday and flexed my hand, noticing one of the veins on it shifted, but didn't always return to where it had been before.
Whilst these things would be cool, wouldn't it be better to not adopt any system until at least some of the blatant flaws have been fixed?
Chances of the MPAA and RIAA taking notice?
on
Darknet: Hollywood's War
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· Score: 0, Interesting
For only about £16 or something, depending, this book sounds well worth it and I shall be buying a copy as soon as I can.
All these new technologies really do require a complete rethink of how media should be delivered as at the moment we seem to be stuck with an old model that refuses to make it easy for the consumer whilst overcharging for the inconvenience of such a service.
I don't watch TV any more because I have to then schedule my life around shows I want to see rather than just sit down and watch what I feel like, when I feel like it. Of course, to be able to do that, we seem to have to resort to bittorrent because otherwise content is simply unavailable, unless we remember to go out and buy a whole season on DVD first, which we can of course all afford to do..
MS Software training? "If it's not MS, it's evil and wrong. Kthx." I'd love to live in a country where the majority of IT teachers were trained by Bill's boys..
When I first dipped my toe in the Linux ocean I was more than a little intimidated and this was back when LiveCDs were pretty uncommon (they probably existed, but as a Linux n00b I'd never seen any, these days they're everywhere it seems).
I wanted to give it a shot still, so I acquired a copy of RedHat 7.2 and installed it as best I could, liking the graphical installer. Once the installer was done, I tried to boot into linux.. No graphical window manager. After asking around a little, I found typing "startx" should do something. No dice. It seemed my old Radeon 7500 wasn't supported. End of the road for my linux travels at that point.
Later I acquired a copy of Mandrake which worked fine and used KDE. However, I didn't know what to do, I was bombarded with choice. Honestly, *why* does anyone need four email clients, three browsers, etc? I mean, I had been recommended Mandrake as an easy distro but all the choice was hugely intimidating. I didn't use it for long either, but I did pick up a little more about how Linux worked, although not much compared to how much I've learnt recently.
A little later still, I acquired a copy of SuSE 9.2 personal. Onto my PC it went. The install seemed to take an age, especially for one CD, but I persevered. Again I had vast amounts of choice, but fewer this time so it was not quite so frightening. However I didn't know how to install software still, so I was more than a little confused.
A left this PC stand for a while due to school commitments and rarely used it due to it's odd hardware problem of turning itself off randomly under Linux. This was probably the first time I used OpenOffice and liked it (I used to hate it).
The next Christmas, about six months later, I got hold of my laptop - an Acer 1362WMLi.
A linux-savy friend lent me his copy of SuSE 9.2 Pro that he wasn't using at the time. On it went. Well, it installed fine from the DVD.. The out of the box support for my GeForce FX 5200 was a little ropey, but this time I had the NVIDIA linux drivers. On they went. Voila, 3D support at 1024*768. But.. My laptop's native res is 1280*800. So into SaX I went. My res *without* the drivers would go up to the native res, but with them, no dice and it would literally uninstall the graphics drivers when I tried to disable 3D acceleration, necessitating installing the from the command line (a daunting task for a n00b!)..
I also tried to install NDISwrapper. No luck. Ah well I thought, maybe when I'm more skilled I'll be able to.. MP3 support out of the box, *smiles*. However, the sound would stutter and sometimes end up in an endless sound-sample loop, especially when I'd close the laptop and reopened it - it'd play a little KDE noise and JAM. Restarting the sound system usually, but not always fixed it, temporarily. This became a major annoyance. Even more suprising, SuSE would eat through my battery in less time than WinXP, not good..
Giving up on SuSE, I stuck with windows for quite some time, better the devil you know, etc.
Some time later, I started hearing lots of good things about Ubuntu. One download of the Hoary preview ISO later and a quick SuSE replacement later..
Ooh, pretty gnome.. Well, the native res ran, but it looked all horrid, but no nvidia drivers were installed yet, so I gave it a chance. Sound worked perfectly, battery life was better than windows.. Then I searched for ubuntu and my laptop and found a page with exact instructions for my laptop and ubuntu.. (found virtually nothing for SuSE). I managed to get NDISWrapper working.. lovely wireless support.. Synaptic worked, easy install of everything I wanted, MP3 support installed quickly (admittedly I now only use Ogg vorbis, but still, heh). Once the nvidia drivers were installed I got both 3D acceleration *and* 1280*800.. wewt.
Ubuntu didn't have too much software by default but also I could install anything I wanted through synaptic. My only complaint about linux, which I use for virtually everything now, is that GAIM does not s
Slashdot Mirror
Blizzard servers trialling light-speed technology! Major stability issues encountered!
I have a widescreen Acer laptop, running at 1280x800. It took quite a bit of fiddling with config files under Hoary (difficult back then as I was a total novice) to get it to work. I got there in the end, but the standard desktop resolution widget thing was no help whatsoever.
I'm wondering how this will affect public opinion of open source projects. Personally, if I wanted a domain and found someone had already parked it using an open source service, I'd be less than pleased with open source in general (assuming I wasn't already rather familiar with open source).
Of course, I might have got the wrong end of the stick here, but that's how I understand it at present.
Oooh, great, I make the sort of joke I see modded up as +5 generally, and because my nick happens to be Flamekebab, I'm taken as a troll and modded down. Ah, how I love Slashdot. Now I'm going to get a -1 Offtopic too I guess..
Looks like a few thousand people might have to actually leave the house now to get their socialising fix, or they could just give their cash to another MMORPG supplier..
Just switch dealer! Gotta get that fix, after all.
And who says only weirdos play MMOs?!
Precisely why I went through the immense hassle of finding an iRiver H320, because it doesn't require any of that "transfer software" bull.
Why does it seem that one has to pay this much for an Ogg player?
For a non-proprietary codec, there's not much hardware support..
It'd be nice to see some less used franchises, such as Jet Set Radio or one of the old Oddworld titles, I think both would be fantastic on the PSP, but maybe that's just me.
I'm just kinda fed up of all these popular, well-whored franchises. I don't *want* another Metal Gear title, or another Gran Turismo!
For some reason, I don't really see homebrew games taking off for mainstream PSP owners. Sure, they would probably be popular, but not so much with the majority of the Playstation brand's usual audience.
If you were to set them up with a basic PC of their own, or for your kids (if you have several), but not with Windows. Instead have it running Linux, with all the necessary apps available.
Not only will their friends be unlikely to be able to help them install programs (meaning you have control over what goes on and what doesn't), but you won't have to really worry about spyware or viruses.
There's some really great free apps as well, and then you could introduce them to computing, rather than Windows.
Too many kids these days seem to think that Windows and "computers" are the same thing!
Whilst I doubt anyone will even read this comment, what with it being so late, I still feel the urge to comment
I was introduced to technology at a relatively early age, although I forget when. It was when the Amiga scene was still very active amongst kids in the UK.
Anyways, I never had access to anything like that, as I lived out in the country. I did have access to a PC, however. I was allowed to play a few games and mess around with a few things, but nothing much really. No one programmed, no one did anything much really, other than office work, so I never experienced that side of things.
Back in those days, my parents would rarely get me anything, I had to save up and get things, if I wanted it, I worked for it.
These days, my family is very wealthy. I still have to work for things, and I rarely get gifts apart from birthdays and Christmas. However, relative to before, I feel rather spoilt.
I'm now 19 and get abuse hurled at me because I'm wealthy, despite the fact that my upbringing was not in a wealthy environment (although it wasn't hugely poor, just not rich, if you get my meaning). It's really my fault the choices my parents made! It's totally my fault that I don't just give all my family's money away! I don't complain that they're poor and free (a lot is expected of me, I'm not free to do whatever the hell I like with my life) to their faces!
If I'd been introduced to programming at an early age, maybe I would have developed the sort of logical and mathematical mindset one apparently requires for it. Instead I became more of an artist, with some mastery of higher level technology, but little skill at electronics and programming.
However, drawing on our own experiences alone would be foolish, as technology is far more entrenched in modern society than it was when my generation were growing up. I think we need to be on our toes, really, as who knows what will come next?
Oh and definitely ditch the TV, or severely limit it. The most successful people I know rarely watch TV, or don't even own a set. I think it's a better idea to provide a dynamic medium of technology, rather than such a static one.
With portable music players being so small in size and no longer carrying any geek stigma for most of the general public, why do mobile-related industries insist that music on your mobile is The Next Big Thing (tm)?
I used to use my n-gage (quiet at the back..) for listening to music, but my GPRS costs for downloading anything were astronomical!
I certainly don't know of anyone that seriously considers mobile phones in their current incarnation as replacements for separate portable music players.
From TFA - "instant gratification of downloading and owning their own personal collection of high-quality songs"
GPRS was definitely not instant when I still used it.
Whilst GPRS may not be used (I can't say I'm entirely sober enough to go over the article with a fine toothed enough comb to tell), if it isn't then that substantially reduces the number of handsets this will be available to. I'm guessing though that they expect us all to buy new handsets for this Amazing New Feature (!!!).
As the page is already slashdotted and CoralCache doesn't seem to be too happy either. Anyways, is this that 3D desktop thing that Sun were flaunting a while back?
If the speed of Java is anything to go by, then I'm not interested.
Furthermore, has anyone managed to make a 3D desktop/OS which is actually as good as it promises?
Perhaps we could do with different monitors for such a thing, some sort of hologram or projection, maybe?
I have a horrible feeling I'm not talking about the right tech, so I'll shut up now, although I'm sure my "Offtopic" modifiers are already in place..
The registration process was originally implemented to decrease traffic on the forums. Apparently.
So says someone at my local LUG who runs some of the servers for the IMDb.
However, I'm also told that it only worked for a short while, after which the traffic shot back up again..
I know the geek community generally swears by vim and emacs, but to newer users they're both a closed book. Any search for understanding and explanation is met by what appears to be insanely complex reasoning..
These are text editors, right? Or what? What is their purpose?
Why are they so complicated to use?
I mean, I would have thought the more advanced features would be complicated. But plain vanilla text-editing..? It seems you need to press obscure commands just to be able to scroll through a file, let alone edit it.
I think it's things like this that puts many newer Linux users off configuring things themselves, as having to deal with programs such as vim and emacs is more than a little daunting.
This is the one, main gripe I have with Linux, being a young person.
I have a Ubuntu linux laptop, but I don't use it for IM at all, as it does not support webcam conversations, which I use every day.
I dislike being forced to use at least one Windows machine to get webcams working and I am hoping that the new version of aMSN will fix this, as it is one of the main drawbacks for me.
What about Loserz?! Well, I love it anyway..
If it had wifi then maybe I would have chosen it over a PSP, but as it stands, there's little point for me. The PSP has a massive and beautiful screen and I can easily convert my vast collection of legit (*cough*) DivX/XviD films to a viewable format for it.
I'd definitely rather have one of these than a Nintendo DS though.
Which linux-based PDA would be better (in terms of battery power, mainly) for running Skype on?
It'd be good to be able to use a hotspot for skype. I'd be able to call my friend in the states just by whipping out my PDA.
Any ideas?
They do, for definite. I was sitting in a meeting yesterday and flexed my hand, noticing one of the veins on it shifted, but didn't always return to where it had been before.
Whilst these things would be cool, wouldn't it be better to not adopt any system until at least some of the blatant flaws have been fixed?
All your base..?
For only about £16 or something, depending, this book sounds well worth it and I shall be buying a copy as soon as I can.
All these new technologies really do require a complete rethink of how media should be delivered as at the moment we seem to be stuck with an old model that refuses to make it easy for the consumer whilst overcharging for the inconvenience of such a service.
I don't watch TV any more because I have to then schedule my life around shows I want to see rather than just sit down and watch what I feel like, when I feel like it. Of course, to be able to do that, we seem to have to resort to bittorrent because otherwise content is simply unavailable, unless we remember to go out and buy a whole season on DVD first, which we can of course all afford to do..
MS Software training?
"If it's not MS, it's evil and wrong. Kthx."
I'd love to live in a country where the majority of IT teachers were trained by Bill's boys..
When I first dipped my toe in the Linux ocean I was more than a little intimidated and this was back when LiveCDs were pretty uncommon (they probably existed, but as a Linux n00b I'd never seen any, these days they're everywhere it seems).
I wanted to give it a shot still, so I acquired a copy of RedHat 7.2 and installed it as best I could, liking the graphical installer. Once the installer was done, I tried to boot into linux.. No graphical window manager. After asking around a little, I found typing "startx" should do something. No dice. It seemed my old Radeon 7500 wasn't supported. End of the road for my linux travels at that point.
Later I acquired a copy of Mandrake which worked fine and used KDE. However, I didn't know what to do, I was bombarded with choice. Honestly, *why* does anyone need four email clients, three browsers, etc? I mean, I had been recommended Mandrake as an easy distro but all the choice was hugely intimidating. I didn't use it for long either, but I did pick up a little more about how Linux worked, although not much compared to how much I've learnt recently.
A little later still, I acquired a copy of SuSE 9.2 personal. Onto my PC it went. The install seemed to take an age, especially for one CD, but I persevered. Again I had vast amounts of choice, but fewer this time so it was not quite so frightening. However I didn't know how to install software still, so I was more than a little confused.
A left this PC stand for a while due to school commitments and rarely used it due to it's odd hardware problem of turning itself off randomly under Linux. This was probably the first time I used OpenOffice and liked it (I used to hate it).
The next Christmas, about six months later, I got hold of my laptop - an Acer 1362WMLi.
A linux-savy friend lent me his copy of SuSE 9.2 Pro that he wasn't using at the time. On it went. Well, it installed fine from the DVD.. The out of the box support for my GeForce FX 5200 was a little ropey, but this time I had the NVIDIA linux drivers. On they went. Voila, 3D support at 1024*768. But.. My laptop's native res is 1280*800. So into SaX I went. My res *without* the drivers would go up to the native res, but with them, no dice and it would literally uninstall the graphics drivers when I tried to disable 3D acceleration, necessitating installing the from the command line (a daunting task for a n00b!)..
I also tried to install NDISwrapper. No luck. Ah well I thought, maybe when I'm more skilled I'll be able to.. MP3 support out of the box, *smiles*. However, the sound would stutter and sometimes end up in an endless sound-sample loop, especially when I'd close the laptop and reopened it - it'd play a little KDE noise and JAM. Restarting the sound system usually, but not always fixed it, temporarily. This became a major annoyance. Even more suprising, SuSE would eat through my battery in less time than WinXP, not good..
Giving up on SuSE, I stuck with windows for quite some time, better the devil you know, etc.
Some time later, I started hearing lots of good things about Ubuntu. One download of the Hoary preview ISO later and a quick SuSE replacement later..
Ooh, pretty gnome.. Well, the native res ran, but it looked all horrid, but no nvidia drivers were installed yet, so I gave it a chance. Sound worked perfectly, battery life was better than windows.. Then I searched for ubuntu and my laptop and found a page with exact instructions for my laptop and ubuntu.. (found virtually nothing for SuSE). I managed to get NDISWrapper working.. lovely wireless support.. Synaptic worked, easy install of everything I wanted, MP3 support installed quickly (admittedly I now only use Ogg vorbis, but still, heh). Once the nvidia drivers were installed I got both 3D acceleration *and* 1280*800.. wewt.
Ubuntu didn't have too much software by default but also I could install anything I wanted through synaptic. My only complaint about linux, which I use for virtually everything now, is that GAIM does not s