You bring up a good point, albeit indirectly, about the fools' bargain that is WYSIWYG word processing. I can't even begin to count the hours wasted fiddling around with the appearance of a document when I should be paying more attention to the actual content.
After years of wondering why I felt so much less productive with Word than I used to be with WP 5.2 I came across LyX and rediscovered the joy of creating documents instead of processing words. As an added bonus, you get the TeX/LaTeX professional typesetting system to do the heavy lifting and make your content look beautiful. For those of you not familiar with LyX, LaTeX and the venerable TeX, take a look at the Introduction to LyX and explore the rest of the LyX site.
Whenever I'm in Manhattan near the Empire State Building my keyless entry is absolutely useless. I'm fairly confident that my poor little electronic key fob gets drowned out by the sheer volume of RF signals in the area. Probably the same sort of thing in Vegas only in a short burst.
The closest thing to a workable scheme is Gelerntner's Lifestream stuff
I looks like they've gone beyond the research paper phase since 1996. Freeman and Gelernter have commercialized the concept and have dubbed it Scopeware Vision. I have no idea if it actually lives up to the hype but there's a free trial version so it may be worth trying out.
Phil Greenspun has a similar idea and is looking for help on how to accomplish this on a personal level with existing the Windows XP filesystem. Check out his blog post for details. There's already an intersting discussion taking place in the comments for that post.
I must know, why XP? I find no compelling reason to use it over Win2K.
I felt the same way for a while but I found out that the support for laptop power management in general and especially support for ACPI states like S3 (Suspend to RAM) and S4 (Suspend to Disk) is significantly improved in XP. That alone was enough to compel me to drop Windows 2000 and move to XP. If I was only using a desktop computer then I probably wouldn't have made the switch.
There are other niceties that have been added to XP like ClearType and Wireless NIC management. They are useful and appreciated but they aren't enough of a reason to make me switch.
Any tips on getting contracts like that or is it just as simple as calling them up and asking? This sounds like something that people should be doing in every community.
What about ACPI support in Xandros? Power management appears to be an area where Windows is truly better than Linux right now. I'd run Linux on my notebook in a heartbeat and I have tried several distros on it in the past but none of them even come close to providing the quality power management that Windows XP has. I'll still use Linux on desktop and server machines where appropriate but I can't live without good ACPI support on my notebook and so XP stays, for now. . .
It will be a beautiful day when the argument isn't whether or not to install Windows or Linux, but rather, which version of Linux.
I would disagree with you for practical and philosophical reasons.
From a practical standpoint, Linux doesn't support ACPI very well, especially on laptops. Windows XP has elevated power management to a very useful place and will remain on my laptop, however grudgingly, until ACPI is truly supported under Linux.
From a philosophical standpoint, I don't want Windows to go away for the same reason that I don't want Linux or Apple to go away. Competition is good. Choice is good. Once the Windows hegemony is broken there's no real harm to Microsoft staying around competing in the marketplace based on merit not might. In fact, I believe that would be the healthiest situation we could hope for. Imagine the richest company in the world dedicating their R&D budget to actually creating the best OS possible in order to compete with Linux, Apple or any other OS out there.
Vaporware? You think the next version of Windows is vaporware? Somehow I don't think Microsoft is going to hype a new Windows version and then never come out with one. "Sorry! That project got killed! You'll have to stick with XP!"
There was a great article in the NY Times magazine called "The (Agri)Cultural Contradictions Of Obesity" (Oct. 12 or 13, I think, but too old to link for free)
Do you think it would have been worth a 20 year temporary monopoly on a particular method of violin making to find out exactly how Antonio Stradivari made his fiddles sound so sweet?
That's not entirely true. Some universities don't take federal money to avoid some of the stipulations that come with those funds. Mostly it's religious schools that want some freedom to do things their own way.
A friend of mine called me about 3 hours ago saying that her brand new Windows XP notebook kept rebooting with some strange message about RPC. I had her download the free version of ZoneAlarm and that blocked the worm and let her stay online long enough to download the patch. If you know somebody that's getting hammered, have them give ZoneAlarm a shot.
I found that I needed more spam for SpamBayes to train on so I just started using my actual e-mail address on Usenet and here. It worked like a charm. Now I have over 5000 spam examples and SpamBayes runs like a champ.
Re:Advice for switching wife's computer to Gentoo
on
Gentoo Reviewed
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· Score: 1
Hard to avoid communicating with your own wife, unless you took up bowling...
I find golf to be pretty effective for that with the added benefit of coming home 4 hours later tired and angry.
Advice for switching wife's computer to Gentoo
on
Gentoo Reviewed
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· Score: 2, Interesting
This is a very timely article for me. My wife's computer died (one of the infamous IBM 75GXP drives) a few weeks ago. I didn't have any time to work on it before now so I set her up with Knoppix 3.2 in the interim so she could e-mail and surf. As a side note, Knoppix is a life saver. I'm very impressed with it and I'll always have a copy of the latest release burned and ready to go in an emergency.
Getting back to the story, this morning I asked her what she thought about the "Linux" software she's been using since the crash and she said it's been fine. Of course, she's only been using Evolution and Mozilla AFAIK so that's to be expected. I suggested installing Linux on her machine for good and she said "sure, why not".
I've used Gentoo for a little bit and I'm pretty sure that's the route I want to go. I just finished burning the 1.4RC4 CD and I'm gearing up to install Gentoo this evening and I'm wondering what others do when less computer literate family members start using Linux. Any tips or experiences would be appreciated.
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You bring up a good point, albeit indirectly, about the fools' bargain that is WYSIWYG word processing. I can't even begin to count the hours wasted fiddling around with the appearance of a document when I should be paying more attention to the actual content.
After years of wondering why I felt so much less productive with Word than I used to be with WP 5.2 I came across LyX and rediscovered the joy of creating documents instead of processing words. As an added bonus, you get the TeX/LaTeX professional typesetting system to do the heavy lifting and make your content look beautiful. For those of you not familiar with LyX, LaTeX and the venerable TeX, take a look at the Introduction to LyX and explore the rest of the LyX site.
It ran a little debian if you didn't have decent hardware
Did you just use Debian as an adjective?
I suppose it's a good thing it never ran a little gentoo or we'd still be waiting for it to compile.
just remember one simple fact: Hitler was elected.
That is categorically untrue. Read Steve Kangas' discussion of this common misconception at http://www.huppi.com/kangaroo/L-hitlerdemo.htm
Whenever I'm in Manhattan near the Empire State Building my keyless entry is absolutely useless. I'm fairly confident that my poor little electronic key fob gets drowned out by the sheer volume of RF signals in the area. Probably the same sort of thing in Vegas only in a short burst.
Curse the FCC and part 15 of their rules.
The closest thing to a workable scheme is Gelerntner's Lifestream stuff
I looks like they've gone beyond the research paper phase since 1996. Freeman and Gelernter have commercialized the concept and have dubbed it Scopeware Vision. I have no idea if it actually lives up to the hype but there's a free trial version so it may be worth trying out.
Phil Greenspun has a similar idea and is looking for help on how to accomplish this on a personal level with existing the Windows XP filesystem. Check out his blog post for details. There's already an intersting discussion taking place in the comments for that post.
I must know, why XP? I find no compelling reason to use it over Win2K.
I felt the same way for a while but I found out that the support for laptop power management in general and especially support for ACPI states like S3 (Suspend to RAM) and S4 (Suspend to Disk) is significantly improved in XP. That alone was enough to compel me to drop Windows 2000 and move to XP. If I was only using a desktop computer then I probably wouldn't have made the switch.
There are other niceties that have been added to XP like ClearType and Wireless NIC management. They are useful and appreciated but they aren't enough of a reason to make me switch.Any tips on getting contracts like that or is it just as simple as calling them up and asking? This sounds like something that people should be doing in every community.
What about ACPI support in Xandros? Power management appears to be an area where Windows is truly better than Linux right now. I'd run Linux on my notebook in a heartbeat and I have tried several distros on it in the past but none of them even come close to providing the quality power management that Windows XP has. I'll still use Linux on desktop and server machines where appropriate but I can't live without good ACPI support on my notebook and so XP stays, for now. . .
It will be a beautiful day when the argument isn't whether or not to install Windows or Linux, but rather, which version of Linux.
I would disagree with you for practical and philosophical reasons.
From a practical standpoint, Linux doesn't support ACPI very well, especially on laptops. Windows XP has elevated power management to a very useful place and will remain on my laptop, however grudgingly, until ACPI is truly supported under Linux.
From a philosophical standpoint, I don't want Windows to go away for the same reason that I don't want Linux or Apple to go away. Competition is good. Choice is good. Once the Windows hegemony is broken there's no real harm to Microsoft staying around competing in the marketplace based on merit not might. In fact, I believe that would be the healthiest situation we could hope for. Imagine the richest company in the world dedicating their R&D budget to actually creating the best OS possible in order to compete with Linux, Apple or any other OS out there.
If your battery doesn't work, don't expect to be able to carry it on.
That might not be a bad idea. It beats trying to find a recycling center for old notebook batteries.
You will notice that many pros use selective focus - photos where the subject is in sharp focus and everything else is blurred.
Are you really going do describe bokeh without actually using the word?
Vaporware? You think the next version of Windows is vaporware? Somehow I don't think Microsoft is going to hype a new Windows version and then never come out with one. "Sorry! That project got killed! You'll have to stick with XP!"
The name Cairo springs to mind.
There was a great article in the NY Times magazine called "The (Agri)Cultural Contradictions Of Obesity" (Oct. 12 or 13, I think, but too old to link for free)
http://www.newscoast.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID =/20031011/ZNYT04/310110724/1025/FEATURES07 in case somebody wants to read the article.
Do you think it would have been worth a 20 year temporary monopoly on a particular method of violin making to find out exactly how Antonio Stradivari made his fiddles sound so sweet?
That's not entirely true. Some universities don't take federal money to avoid some of the stipulations that come with those funds. Mostly it's religious schools that want some freedom to do things their own way.
Didn't the GAIM team get the fix from Cerulean? At least that's what they seem to say here.
Suddenly the possibilities for humorless retort are limitless.
I'll have to agree with you there.
So how do you go about gruntling somebody?
This finally explains why us carnivores are so much smarter than those leaf-eaters.
XP also has a built in disk defragmenter. Guess what, I bought PerfectDisk for all my NTFS defragging needs.
In other words, when it comes to implementing a software firewall correctly, I trust Zone Labs more than Microsoft.
A friend of mine called me about 3 hours ago saying that her brand new Windows XP notebook kept rebooting with some strange message about RPC. I had her download the free version of ZoneAlarm and that blocked the worm and let her stay online long enough to download the patch. If you know somebody that's getting hammered, have them give ZoneAlarm a shot.
I found that I needed more spam for SpamBayes to train on so I just started using my actual e-mail address on Usenet and here. It worked like a charm. Now I have over 5000 spam examples and SpamBayes runs like a champ.
Hard to avoid communicating with your own wife, unless you took up bowling...
I find golf to be pretty effective for that with the added benefit of coming home 4 hours later tired and angry.
This is a very timely article for me. My wife's computer died (one of the infamous IBM 75GXP drives) a few weeks ago. I didn't have any time to work on it before now so I set her up with Knoppix 3.2 in the interim so she could e-mail and surf. As a side note, Knoppix is a life saver. I'm very impressed with it and I'll always have a copy of the latest release burned and ready to go in an emergency.
Getting back to the story, this morning I asked her what she thought about the "Linux" software she's been using since the crash and she said it's been fine. Of course, she's only been using Evolution and Mozilla AFAIK so that's to be expected. I suggested installing Linux on her machine for good and she said "sure, why not".
I've used Gentoo for a little bit and I'm pretty sure that's the route I want to go. I just finished burning the 1.4RC4 CD and I'm gearing up to install Gentoo this evening and I'm wondering what others do when less computer literate family members start using Linux. Any tips or experiences would be appreciated.