Yea, and that's half the reason I run Linux, oddly enough. All the games I want to play either run just as well under Wine as they do in Windows, or _only_ run in Wine (trying to get win 98 games running in XP or Vista is a _nightmare_)
I get most of my reading material from Freenet (0.5 of course) I guess I'm safe.
I highly recommend the 'The Second Renaissance' freesite - it'll take ya _months_ to get through that thing, and it's almost as good as dropping acid:)
It's not $150 for unlimited - it's $105. If you're going to be using that much bandwidth, don't buy the highest package - buy the lowest one. Since the overages are capped either way, you'd be better off buying the dirt cheap 5GB plan and paying $75 in overages than buying the $75 100GB plan and still paying $75 in overages.
Yea, I was all ready to suggest Thoggen before reading the summary. It's actually the only DVD ripper I've ever gotten to work on Linux. But then, maybe his problem is Ubuntu - that's the only distro I've every tried that I couldn't even get the installer to start up. Though to be fair, that was a few years ago.
The problem with your ideal solution is it's pretty much impossible to connect to areas of low population or between areas of dense population. A mesh network might work OK throughout downtown New York City (though I have doubts on that even - it seems to me there would be a huge amount of stress on the nodes towards the center), but how are you going to connect NYC to LA? Or even NYC to Boston? Hell, even my house, in a small university town near Pittsburgh, would have nearly no connectivity - my house is only about 10-20 yards away from my neighbors, but even that is too far for a decent WiFi signal...and there are _many_ houses around me that are quite a bit further apart. And even if you managed to network our neighborhood through WiMax or something, you have a three or four mile stretch in to town, mostly forest. And even if you overcame that, somehow, without putting excessive strain on the one or two links between them, then you have to find some way to link our small town to the next one, a good 30+ miles away. I suppose there are one or two highways that might have enough houses along them if you can find a wireless technology that can reach 5-10 miles, but then you're talking one or two stress points for the entire town's connection. How are you going to handle that much traffic over a wireless link? And I don't even want to think about trying to connect places in Wyoming or something. Unless you're talking ultra slow connections through HF radio, wireless just isn't going to cut it. And hell, even that probably wouldn't work out too well.
Basically, to mesh network any sizable percentage of the nation, you need wireless technologies that can reach tens or hundreds of miles and can support at least tens of thousands of connections routing through a single node. I admit I don't know that much about radio technology, but it doesn't seem very feasible to me.
FOSS? Where did he say FOSS? He never said FOSS. He said 'free'. Most likely free as in beer. What company _isn't_ looking for free software? My guess would be they just don't consider this essential and don't want to waste a shitload of money on it.
I'm only 18, grew up with rubber dome keyboards, but I _love_ my Model M. It's so much easier to type on, and it's actually well-built. It's the first and only keyboard I've used in my life that doesn't feel like it might fall apart at any second.
Here's the problem with that: It's not about steam going down from some act of nature or whatever. It's about steam shutting down willingly. How long do you think they're going to leave servers running to support that game you just bought? Three years? Five? Ten? The point is, eventually they're going to decide that that game is old, and nobody would ever want to play it ever again, and they're going to shut it down. And odds are they're going to do that long before people have actually stopped wanting to play that game.
The problem I have with software-as-a-service models is that the majority of the games I play are over 10 years old. Some of them nearing 15. They're still great games. Considering I've been playing them since I was 6 years old, and _still_ love them, I have a feeling I'll still be playing them many years from now. I don't want some company deciding that they aren't good anymore just because they have poor graphics compared to modern games. That's _why_ they're good - they focused less on graphics and more on gameplay.
Maybe if it becomes common practice to open source games once they've reached their end of life, then I'll consider accepting software as a service. Until then, I'll stick with my physical media.
So why are books explaining how to make bombs, how to hack, how to murder, etc all legal? Yes, it's obvious people will use such things for nefarious purposes. Just like it's obvious people will use isohunt to download illegally. But there are also perfectly legal uses of such resources. And there are perfectly legal uses of isohunt.
It's not too tough to convert something from any analog format to a digital format... Basically they'd have to just not publish their songs ever. Or perform them ever.
But it doesn't matter if they have free will on not, they're still going to make the same damn decision - the decision to try to prove if they have free will or not:)
Uh, I think the billions the government is handing to overpaid CEOs and the trillions it's spent killing people for no reason have more of an effect on global poverty than a few millionaires buying some tickets to space. I mean, yea, 60 million is a lot, but it's _nothing_ compared to what the American government is throwing away _every month_.
I was just gonna bring that up. Posting from it now actually:)
It doesn't really work well - I have no tabs, it crashes whenever I try to create a tab, it crashes whenever I click a link from my google homepage, it crashes...well, it crashes a lot. But I'm still debating using it over firefox - the speed boost and fact that it doesn't eat up all my system resources all the time are making it a rather pleasent experience.
Oh, it also needed 10GB of hard drive space to compile everything. And took about an hour to get all the dependancies, another hour to download the sources, and a good hour or two to compile it. Plus about 6 hours wasted due to it being too damn big to fit on my hard drive (dual booted a dirt cheap Dell...don't have much space)
Huh. My bank does things the other way around. It shows both the actual balance and the available balance (only the available balance on the phone though). So right after you make a purchase, the available balance will have that purchase accounted for even if the actual balance hasn't been charged yet. As for deposits - hell, I can _mail in_ a deposit and have my account credited _when it's mailed_. I can tell them online or on the phone that I'm mailing them $x, and have $x added to my account instantly. It's basically an interest free micro loan. Only problem is they only have one branch, it's out in the middle of nowhere and doesn't have any tellers - just an ATM, a couple computers, and one receptionist for the manager. But they refund ATM fees, so it's not much of a problem. Except when I have coins to deposit. That is my only problem with them.
Your bank must suck. Mine, I charge it, it shows up. I have quite literally bought something online and jumped to my bank's site in the other tab, hit refresh, and the charge was there. And I've done a similar thing buying things offline with my phone - run the charge, pick up the phone, hit 2 keys and enter my account number and pin, and my balance is given with the charge accounted for.
Of course, my bank is technically a credit union - PSECU - so that may be why they are so kickass. lol
Just because a hardware unit was bought and no software was bought doesn't automatically mean software was pirated. I have a DS, but no software for it. Not even pirated. It was given to me as a gift, and it's been sitting in my drawer ever since - I can't think of a single reason I'd want a friggin' DS. I woulda sold it but my girlfriend was the one that bought it for me. lol
Besides, isn't the DS designed so that you don't really need to purchase software? Like, if you play multiplayer, only one person needs a copy of the game, right? So if you're only using it to play against your friends, there's no point in buying any games for it.
I don't have an Eee, but I'm going to recommend the same distro I would recommend for any personal use: Mandriva. Runs great on both my Desktop and Laptop. Even picked up my laptop's wifi (A broadcom chip) without any configuration. Download the Mandriva One CD - it's a LiveCD I believe, so you can play with it from there, and it comes with Flash and proprietary drivers and such, unlike the Free version, so it'll take a bit less work to get configured.
Well, it is possible to manage your music not through iTunes - I have a nice player I downloaded that works much like a standard MP3 player - it reads your music straight off the filesystem. Only problem with that is then you don't get the library features, but I never leave 'artist' mode anyway, and my music is already in a directory structure similar to that, so it's not much of a problem. But I see what you mean about being forced to go through Apple's update process and everything - that is a pain in the ass. Especially once you start adding apps...But really, it seems to me that they release two or three updates nearly at once, then do nothing for a year or two, so you shouldn't have to update too much. Of course, I'm basing all this on my experience with a Touch, so maybe there are some differences on the Phone.
Are they actually working on Linux on the iPhone? I thought that was kinda useless, since the damn thing is Unix already. What would you want from having Linux on it? I can already SSH into it, sync my library wirelessly, I can connect to it through VNC, I have terminal access, I have apt, I have a Java interpreter...I mean, I'm all for putting Linux on things, but what would you gain from having it on the iPhone?
Slashdot Mirror
Yea, and that's half the reason I run Linux, oddly enough. All the games I want to play either run just as well under Wine as they do in Windows, or _only_ run in Wine (trying to get win 98 games running in XP or Vista is a _nightmare_)
I get most of my reading material from Freenet (0.5 of course) I guess I'm safe.
I highly recommend the 'The Second Renaissance' freesite - it'll take ya _months_ to get through that thing, and it's almost as good as dropping acid :)
If you don't wanna go through the trouble of getting Freenet, it's also here:
http://urza9814.googlepages.com/2ndRenaissanceText-Part1
http://urza9814.googlepages.com/2ndRenaissanceText-Part2
It's not $150 for unlimited - it's $105. If you're going to be using that much bandwidth, don't buy the highest package - buy the lowest one. Since the overages are capped either way, you'd be better off buying the dirt cheap 5GB plan and paying $75 in overages than buying the $75 100GB plan and still paying $75 in overages.
Yea, I was all ready to suggest Thoggen before reading the summary. It's actually the only DVD ripper I've ever gotten to work on Linux. But then, maybe his problem is Ubuntu - that's the only distro I've every tried that I couldn't even get the installer to start up. Though to be fair, that was a few years ago.
The problem with your ideal solution is it's pretty much impossible to connect to areas of low population or between areas of dense population. A mesh network might work OK throughout downtown New York City (though I have doubts on that even - it seems to me there would be a huge amount of stress on the nodes towards the center), but how are you going to connect NYC to LA? Or even NYC to Boston? Hell, even my house, in a small university town near Pittsburgh, would have nearly no connectivity - my house is only about 10-20 yards away from my neighbors, but even that is too far for a decent WiFi signal...and there are _many_ houses around me that are quite a bit further apart. And even if you managed to network our neighborhood through WiMax or something, you have a three or four mile stretch in to town, mostly forest. And even if you overcame that, somehow, without putting excessive strain on the one or two links between them, then you have to find some way to link our small town to the next one, a good 30+ miles away. I suppose there are one or two highways that might have enough houses along them if you can find a wireless technology that can reach 5-10 miles, but then you're talking one or two stress points for the entire town's connection. How are you going to handle that much traffic over a wireless link? And I don't even want to think about trying to connect places in Wyoming or something. Unless you're talking ultra slow connections through HF radio, wireless just isn't going to cut it. And hell, even that probably wouldn't work out too well.
Basically, to mesh network any sizable percentage of the nation, you need wireless technologies that can reach tens or hundreds of miles and can support at least tens of thousands of connections routing through a single node. I admit I don't know that much about radio technology, but it doesn't seem very feasible to me.
FOSS? Where did he say FOSS? He never said FOSS. He said 'free'. Most likely free as in beer. What company _isn't_ looking for free software? My guess would be they just don't consider this essential and don't want to waste a shitload of money on it.
Bah! True nerds use Chromium. On Linux.
April fools!!! ...right? ...RIGHT?!?
I'm only 18, grew up with rubber dome keyboards, but I _love_ my Model M. It's so much easier to type on, and it's actually well-built. It's the first and only keyboard I've used in my life that doesn't feel like it might fall apart at any second.
Here's the problem with that: It's not about steam going down from some act of nature or whatever. It's about steam shutting down willingly. How long do you think they're going to leave servers running to support that game you just bought? Three years? Five? Ten? The point is, eventually they're going to decide that that game is old, and nobody would ever want to play it ever again, and they're going to shut it down. And odds are they're going to do that long before people have actually stopped wanting to play that game.
The problem I have with software-as-a-service models is that the majority of the games I play are over 10 years old. Some of them nearing 15. They're still great games. Considering I've been playing them since I was 6 years old, and _still_ love them, I have a feeling I'll still be playing them many years from now. I don't want some company deciding that they aren't good anymore just because they have poor graphics compared to modern games. That's _why_ they're good - they focused less on graphics and more on gameplay.
Maybe if it becomes common practice to open source games once they've reached their end of life, then I'll consider accepting software as a service. Until then, I'll stick with my physical media.
So why are books explaining how to make bombs, how to hack, how to murder, etc all legal? Yes, it's obvious people will use such things for nefarious purposes. Just like it's obvious people will use isohunt to download illegally. But there are also perfectly legal uses of such resources. And there are perfectly legal uses of isohunt.
It's not too tough to convert something from any analog format to a digital format...
Basically they'd have to just not publish their songs ever. Or perform them ever.
But it doesn't matter if they have free will on not, they're still going to make the same damn decision - the decision to try to prove if they have free will or not :)
Uh, I think the billions the government is handing to overpaid CEOs and the trillions it's spent killing people for no reason have more of an effect on global poverty than a few millionaires buying some tickets to space. I mean, yea, 60 million is a lot, but it's _nothing_ compared to what the American government is throwing away _every month_.
I was just gonna bring that up. Posting from it now actually :)
It doesn't really work well - I have no tabs, it crashes whenever I try to create a tab, it crashes whenever I click a link from my google homepage, it crashes...well, it crashes a lot. But I'm still debating using it over firefox - the speed boost and fact that it doesn't eat up all my system resources all the time are making it a rather pleasent experience.
Oh, it also needed 10GB of hard drive space to compile everything. And took about an hour to get all the dependancies, another hour to download the sources, and a good hour or two to compile it. Plus about 6 hours wasted due to it being too damn big to fit on my hard drive (dual booted a dirt cheap Dell...don't have much space)
Uhh, the iPhone _will_ re-calculate the route when you've gone off the path. I've seen it do it.
As I stated in my first post, it's technically a credit union - PSECU
Huh. My bank does things the other way around. It shows both the actual balance and the available balance (only the available balance on the phone though). So right after you make a purchase, the available balance will have that purchase accounted for even if the actual balance hasn't been charged yet. As for deposits - hell, I can _mail in_ a deposit and have my account credited _when it's mailed_. I can tell them online or on the phone that I'm mailing them $x, and have $x added to my account instantly. It's basically an interest free micro loan. Only problem is they only have one branch, it's out in the middle of nowhere and doesn't have any tellers - just an ATM, a couple computers, and one receptionist for the manager. But they refund ATM fees, so it's not much of a problem. Except when I have coins to deposit. That is my only problem with them.
Your bank must suck. Mine, I charge it, it shows up. I have quite literally bought something online and jumped to my bank's site in the other tab, hit refresh, and the charge was there. And I've done a similar thing buying things offline with my phone - run the charge, pick up the phone, hit 2 keys and enter my account number and pin, and my balance is given with the charge accounted for.
Of course, my bank is technically a credit union - PSECU - so that may be why they are so kickass. lol
No, watts are joules per second, not joules per hour. A 1W panel will produce 1kWH in 16.67 minutes.
Just because a hardware unit was bought and no software was bought doesn't automatically mean software was pirated. I have a DS, but no software for it. Not even pirated. It was given to me as a gift, and it's been sitting in my drawer ever since - I can't think of a single reason I'd want a friggin' DS. I woulda sold it but my girlfriend was the one that bought it for me. lol
Besides, isn't the DS designed so that you don't really need to purchase software? Like, if you play multiplayer, only one person needs a copy of the game, right? So if you're only using it to play against your friends, there's no point in buying any games for it.
I don't have an Eee, but I'm going to recommend the same distro I would recommend for any personal use: Mandriva. Runs great on both my Desktop and Laptop. Even picked up my laptop's wifi (A broadcom chip) without any configuration. Download the Mandriva One CD - it's a LiveCD I believe, so you can play with it from there, and it comes with Flash and proprietary drivers and such, unlike the Free version, so it'll take a bit less work to get configured.
12 miles? I believe it's 200 miles...
Well, it is possible to manage your music not through iTunes - I have a nice player I downloaded that works much like a standard MP3 player - it reads your music straight off the filesystem. Only problem with that is then you don't get the library features, but I never leave 'artist' mode anyway, and my music is already in a directory structure similar to that, so it's not much of a problem. But I see what you mean about being forced to go through Apple's update process and everything - that is a pain in the ass. Especially once you start adding apps...But really, it seems to me that they release two or three updates nearly at once, then do nothing for a year or two, so you shouldn't have to update too much. Of course, I'm basing all this on my experience with a Touch, so maybe there are some differences on the Phone.
Are they actually working on Linux on the iPhone? I thought that was kinda useless, since the damn thing is Unix already. What would you want from having Linux on it? I can already SSH into it, sync my library wirelessly, I can connect to it through VNC, I have terminal access, I have apt, I have a Java interpreter...I mean, I'm all for putting Linux on things, but what would you gain from having it on the iPhone?