Actually, if we don't speak up and it becomes law....this is how it's SUPPOSED to happen. Checks and Balances. If Congress and the Pres both loose their heads, the Supreme Court is supposed to overturn these laws. This is what the Supreme Court is about!
This is crap. This reminds me of the Netpliance iOpener debacle. They sold something that could be easily hacked and made to do something that it wasn't necessarily designed to do(Run regular PC operating systems like Linux and Windows). They realized they screwed up. They also charged way under what they should have for the hardware. Oh sure, they tried to prevent users from modding them, they tried to bill you for the whole thing if you used a charge card and did not login, they tried almost every sneaky thing to try to make it work. In the end, the choice of hardware and the price they chose to charge was their undoing. Now they are out of business. Don't piss of the ones who would have been willing to pay the higher price (the geeks). They will instantly undo any thing you have done.
Oh, question.....do your really need a mod chip to run Linux on a Xbox? Seems to me I saw a post here celebrating not needing one any more.
Name it...I end up doing it. Whether it's writing a shell script or fixing someone's mac running Windowx XP in Virtual PC just so they can access the system I administer. My Title has System Administrator in it, but I do so much more (including Mainframe Operations...). The weird thing is most of our network runs on Novell (ick) and our Novell admins have no ambition to move beyond it. We have Novell Admins and System Admins. All of the stuff that existed before the start of our move to UNIX for production was done on the mainframe with exception of DNS, File and Print Sharing, and infrastructure (Fiber, Cat 5 and switches....). The funny thing is we have to go to the Novell admins to get an IP. In any case, Titles ae trite things that try to describe the undescribeable. If you have a SA that all they do is SA, well, get rid of him!;)
That is what I don't get. If they want to get rid of Kiddie Porn, why are they just trying to block it? It seems to me that you should prosecute the dispicable freaks that put up this kind of crap. That would get more done than this will. I know that would be difficult too, but that ain't my problem. The law enforcement types all need to get a little more knowledge of how this technology works and then when some senator (state or federal) proposes a silly law, the law enforcement folks who know can tell them it's stupid and won't accomplish anything. I mean a lot law enforcement officers I have met have all been barely capable of punching the pin number into a credit card machine at the local Dunkin Donuts.
You know sometimes things suprise me on Slashdot. The group as a whole will complain that their rights are being taken away because of searches at airports, the Total Awareness stuff, and having to flash your ID at everystep sometimes, yet the SAME thing that could protect you from this kind of stuff your against? I am talking about firearms. Right now, if your in a militia, you are considered a vigilante. Back when the country started when all anyone had were guns including the government, it was considered a honor to serve in a militia. The only advantage that the government had was artillery (canons), and one could make one of those if they wanted to. The constitution itself says we should established a well armed militia. Yet because the government fears national security, we don't get a F-16 or other weaponry to use for our own protection from our government or outside influences. By my calculations, if we are to have a "well armed militia" we are woefully underarmed. I ain't aying we should be concerned about just this, the privacy issue is a HUGE one. Alot of folks don't realize I can go down to the courthouse with a NAME and get your address and any other info thanks to FOIA. And if I can't go there and you work for a public institution such as a state run college, or the BWC, I can ask them for a list of employees and they have to gie it to me thanks to FOIA. FOIA really needs to be reworked to protect our privacy but it probbaly won't because it will put a kink in the "anti" terrorism plan. I like the President and I think what's been done in Afghanistan and what is being done in Iraq is the right thing to do, but I disagree with some of the things that make no sense or things that are percieved as better for our own good. One example I can think of off hand is removing laptops from their cases. Wait, you have a Xray machine and other equipment for detecting bombs and you need me to take it out of the case??? What do you think we are going to slip and say no I got a bomb in that laptop in place of the battery?? Stupid.
IIS never had a chance. IIS came late. Everyone wanted a web site so they learned/ran Apache. IIS was never and has never been dominant. I do agree that Open source will take over for alot of things and Microsoft will be relegated to either another Linux distro or a application and hardware only company.
Sure they could. I ain't talking about the hungry going out and shooting a deer...I am talking about a hunter using one on a deer and then, because he does not need the meat, donating it to a needy family. Happens all of the time in certain places. Not very likely to happen though.
Depending on the specifics, this thing could also be used to help feed the hungry. A slightly scaled down version could be made for hunting deer or other animals that can be fed to the hungry. Vension is tastey! I also would eat any meat if I was hungry.
Technology advances for the military don't always include killing people. One such example.....velcro. Also, your sending your message on one now....the Internet. It would not be here if it was not for the military needing a fast, efficient way to send data to computers on a world wide basis.
Well, VNC is better. To get a true X server for Windows Desktops, one that will work with minimum fuss on Windows, it will cost some bucks. Xfree's setup on windows isn't as easy as say installing Exceed. VNC just works. Installs in a blink and is useful for multiple platforms.
By the way....have you heard....that bomb that went off in a civilian section of Bagdad was not ours! Also, the Iraqi militia is firing on the same civilians they are supposed to defend. The Iraqi's are the only people that I see targetting their own people! Collateral Damage is going to happen. Not might happen....GOING to happen. It's unfortunate that is does happen. This whole thing could have been solved before a single bomb was dropped if Saddam and his regime would have left the country.
Ok, you are just WRONG about the Iraqi people. I guess you have not seen the pictures I have seen of people cheering when they seee our guys. Our guys shaking hands and sharing meals with friendly Iraqis. These people appear that they like to live like this because they are afraid if they don't that Saddam will cut their throats. The Shiite Muslims have NO love for Saddam. The Sunni Baath who are in control of Iraq are in the MINORITY! Most of the country has Kurds and Shiite Muslims. I ain't saying either of the people in those two groups are really Allied friendly, but they will take up arms against Saddam if they are supported by us. For this war, that makes them friends. The civilian uprising in Basra is proof that these folks don't really care for Saddam all that much. They also have no ability to get rid of him through the election process. The ruling Baath party are the real thugs here. Not the US. Also, this isn't really about oil either. If it was, don't you think we'd already be filling tankers at Umm Qasr? This is about getting rid of Saddam and his Regime. Plain and simple.
And I will tell you why. Floor space. Data Center Floor space is very expensive. Mainframes are much smaller then they used to be. You can even get a mainframe on a card and run it on a server that fits under your desk. In any case, even with blades, the need for more servers usually gorws faster then floor space and runs ahead of miniturization. With a mainframe, you can run VM (and not the pretend stuff that VMware sells) and MANY Linux sessions ontop of that. Interserver If you don't like the idea of doign this, run DB/2 as the DB on the mainframe, and then use pSeries or some Linux boxen to do your heavy calculations. Mainframes EXCELL at pumping data. Risc machines are math wizards while CISC machines (Windows or Linux) are very good at being client machines. Why don't you run a mixed environment? It is possible to have job scheduling centralized across multiple platforms including mainframes, UNIX, AS/400 and even Windows 2000/2003 servers. And if your a college, BINGO! That is what you should be doing. This way you can present the sudents with a working example of everything they are being taught. Now I am a sysadmin, but I also do mainframe operations. Mainframes can automate a great many things, but silos only do you so good until they fail and need an operator anyway. Robots can't fix it when a tape decides to break. Of our operators I work with, I have one that is my age (32) and one under 30 (aroudn 26 I think) and one middle age. My boss is in his 50's. We have a good mix. In any case, mainframes are good at what they do. NIX boxes are good at what they do. So are PC's. It just depends. If you actually use the best tool for the best job, you will have a mix of systems.
Yep. Also, WAAS and a few other things are being implemented to increase accuracy. Granted, it's a great reference and nothing more. If I just followed the map, I'd be in trouble if my map told me that the road works and construction has now closed the road!:)
And then planes will start hitting the tarmac late or early or hitting other things.....they JUST can't do this unplanned. Also, did you think that they terrorists needed a GPS to find the WTC? No they did not. Also, what makes you think that they can't figure out the code or obtain US military hardware?
Or if you know the name and want the properties, ls -al . Or, if you want to look at multiples (say if the beginning of the file was report) ls -al report* or you can cet real fancy when you pipe the out put of ls to grep. I can get more done from a shell then I can from the GUI, but that does not discount it either. I use the graphical file manager on any system when I am moving files around and not quite sure what files I need to move. When you emss up and move the wrong file, you can always do a undo. Of course you can always use command line recall and redit the command as a undo (just swap the positions of the arguments and the file is back where you want it....), but pressing the undo button is a nice option to have. You also can take my command line when I am cold and dead. If it wasn't for ksh and other shell scripts, I would have to manually do things instead of just having cron do it for me.
Yes. It's called futility. Listen...I think it's extremely bad manners to ask your relatives to constantly fix things instead of just spending time with them. If I offer to help, fine. I will always help my father fix things but my ultimate goal is to teach him how to fix it himself so I don't have to. When we fix something at my house, he makes me do most of the work so I learn how to do it. Case in point....when I had to put a new nipple on to setup my gas grill on the houses supply, I bought all of the supplies and we went and we did it....together. With computer problems, most family could care less about learning and just want you to fix it. So they plop down a beer/or coke in front of you and then they leave you alone. They don't want to learn and THAT'S the problem. They don't realize it won't "break" if they actually learn how to use it. They treat everything on the computer like it's one thing related to it instead of each individual situation. One example...they saw you click ok or yes once and they think wow the box goes away if you click that. Hence they install bonzi buddy and other BS on the machine. This is kind of like if I kept trying to use a hammer to pound a screw in instead of a screwdriver. READ THE BOX BEFORE YA CLICK! If you don't know, click cancel or no! It's as simple as that!
In short, if the goal is to avoid learning while staying productive this is useful
Hence the problem! Your not going to learn anything if everything works identically to a Windows machine. It takes me a few seconds to fire up a browser (either on this machine or in a windows machine or some other machine), type in a web search and find the answer. It's that simple. Once I LEARN it I know it and have been productive. Having things presented like your always used to is something that only folks who abhore change. Like those who still cling to lilo for reasons I don't know when grub is superior. For those who cling to a old machine because they are afraid of the pain of upgrade. Face it. Your MOM is never going to use Linux unless she's a geek too.
Yes but your uncle would not give you more pipe if you messed up. Your uncle would not let you hunt on his 40 acres if you chopped down a stand of trees for fire wood. Just the same, I will fix it once. I may even fix it twice. I MAY even do it a third time. After that BITE ME! If you don't listen to what I say then screw you! I ain't there to rebuild a whole machine every time I visit. I am there to VISIT! I am there to get AWAY from work. I am there to spend time with you, not your computer as much as I love to work on computers why is it so hard for you to think that hey he's here to enjoy himself not to have a heart attack when he's removing the same virus or fixing th3 same error for the 40th time.
If they are under used, I got something for ya....HOW ABOUT REDUCING THE FRICKIN PRICE! Sorry for yellin. But seriously...you'd have to desparately need it or be real nutty to pay 40 EXTRA on top of your Cell bill for only a measly 10 MB per month! I pay around that for my Cable modem and I download WAY MORE then 10 MB a NIGHT and that would be just browsing. Does not count when I download a distro. I would pay like 10 extra to get the minimum and maybe 40 for unlimited. Then it WOULD get used by me everyday between home and work on the bus. It would be so nice to grab avantgo pages, check my mail and even hit the server at work before I even get there to see how lousy of a day I am going to have. Or even listen to a shoutcast stream or something. The cell companies need to face the music...WAP is a flop and noone wants to use it beyond checking theater times and possibly the weather.
I tried to get in on this a while back (on the beta). The way it was setup is if you got selected (totally at random), they'd send you the device and it was yours and you had to tell them what was wrong with it. After the beta period, you'd fill a form out and tell them what you thought. As payment, you'd get to keep the beta device (I think). I think that this is a excellent idea. I bought a Toshiba e740 and I am still semi putting up with little problems. Every once in a while, you'd fire up the WiFi and it would immediately shutoff. Then, you'd have to do a soft reset to get it to work. Sometimes, it will do a hard reset when you just bump it lightly (although that problem seemed to have disappeared on my unit). Every once in a while, the fonts in the start menu will turn white. Then go back to normal (real bitch if you have a light colored background and you usually do since the text is normally black!). I feel that the e740 was very much a beta for the new e755 (I may even try to talk Compusa for letting me use my TAP to get it due to the problems I have been having). The e755 has a new version of the Xscale, a faster system bus plus 64 MB ram and 32 MB of non volitile ram to use for storage (similar to safe store on iPaq). It also has the wifi built in and a transreflective screen. In any case, I think that this thing is needed. If more hardware was beta tested in this manner, then maybe the bugs will be fixed before it's widely available. I would gladly fill out surveys and lend my opinion on new devices. I would even send them back if they wanted them, although I feel it's fair to let the beta testers keep it as payment. I think that they might actually sell more if they were less bug ridden.
Now on to the streamium! It sounds very cool. Would have loved to test it for them!:) I would like to have this so I can use it to play my music when I am washing the car. That way the hard disk is nice and safe inside!:) For now, I'll just be happy using my Zen Nomad plugged in to the car stereo...
Then using a theme for Gnome or KDE? If you say it's the taskbar stupid....welll, one could write a task bar or come pretty close with a theme or skin. Personally, with Style XP on XP I can get almost as much customizeability as Linux desktops. I say almost. There are always somethings that the KDE or Gnome bars can do that Windows can't. I even found one moking that drawing theme that was out a while back on the mac. I just wish there'd be more ports of Linux themes for StyleXP.
Yeah. I remember back when my company machine was a 75 MHz Pentium, the cashier's office got brand new Pentium II 450's to run 3270 emulation. If they had been using a terminal, we'd have had the ability to attatch a printer directly to the terminal for CICS prints instead of the kludge we have now of a PC running SNA over IP mapping to 5 network printers, all to the row of cashiers. The printers they bought did not even have a parallel port on it, plus the needed the ability to do some processing on the CICS data to make it look right on the paper. KLUDGE KLUDGE KLUDGE! PLUS those machines are running TN3270 sessions instead of using a direct connect 3270 card. Means the network dies, so do they. Used to be a real PITA!
Slashdot Mirror
Gee I am getting 242 KB/Sec....wassup with you?
Actually, if we don't speak up and it becomes law....this is how it's SUPPOSED to happen. Checks and Balances. If Congress and the Pres both loose their heads, the Supreme Court is supposed to overturn these laws. This is what the Supreme Court is about!
This is crap. This reminds me of the Netpliance iOpener debacle. They sold something that could be easily hacked and made to do something that it wasn't necessarily designed to do(Run regular PC operating systems like Linux and Windows). They realized they screwed up. They also charged way under what they should have for the hardware. Oh sure, they tried to prevent users from modding them, they tried to bill you for the whole thing if you used a charge card and did not login, they tried almost every sneaky thing to try to make it work. In the end, the choice of hardware and the price they chose to charge was their undoing. Now they are out of business. Don't piss of the ones who would have been willing to pay the higher price (the geeks). They will instantly undo any thing you have done.
Oh, question.....do your really need a mod chip to run Linux on a Xbox? Seems to me I saw a post here celebrating not needing one any more.
Peggy: Now Milton, dont be greedy, lets pass it along and make sure everyone gets a piece.
Milton Waddams: yea but last time i didnt recieve a piece.
Peggy: Just pass.
[the cake passes and everybody but Milton gets a piece]
Milton Waddams: [whispering] I could set the building on fire.
Name it...I end up doing it. Whether it's writing a shell script or fixing someone's mac running Windowx XP in Virtual PC just so they can access the system I administer. My Title has System Administrator in it, but I do so much more (including Mainframe Operations...). The weird thing is most of our network runs on Novell (ick) and our Novell admins have no ambition to move beyond it. We have Novell Admins and System Admins. All of the stuff that existed before the start of our move to UNIX for production was done on the mainframe with exception of DNS, File and Print Sharing, and infrastructure (Fiber, Cat 5 and switches....). The funny thing is we have to go to the Novell admins to get an IP. In any case, Titles ae trite things that try to describe the undescribeable. If you have a SA that all they do is SA, well, get rid of him! ;)
That is what I don't get. If they want to get rid of Kiddie Porn, why are they just trying to block it? It seems to me that you should prosecute the dispicable freaks that put up this kind of crap. That would get more done than this will. I know that would be difficult too, but that ain't my problem. The law enforcement types all need to get a little more knowledge of how this technology works and then when some senator (state or federal) proposes a silly law, the law enforcement folks who know can tell them it's stupid and won't accomplish anything. I mean a lot law enforcement officers I have met have all been barely capable of punching the pin number into a credit card machine at the local Dunkin Donuts.
You know sometimes things suprise me on Slashdot. The group as a whole will complain that their rights are being taken away because of searches at airports, the Total Awareness stuff, and having to flash your ID at everystep sometimes, yet the SAME thing that could protect you from this kind of stuff your against? I am talking about firearms. Right now, if your in a militia, you are considered a vigilante. Back when the country started when all anyone had were guns including the government, it was considered a honor to serve in a militia. The only advantage that the government had was artillery (canons), and one could make one of those if they wanted to. The constitution itself says we should established a well armed militia. Yet because the government fears national security, we don't get a F-16 or other weaponry to use for our own protection from our government or outside influences. By my calculations, if we are to have a "well armed militia" we are woefully underarmed. I ain't aying we should be concerned about just this, the privacy issue is a HUGE one. Alot of folks don't realize I can go down to the courthouse with a NAME and get your address and any other info thanks to FOIA. And if I can't go there and you work for a public institution such as a state run college, or the BWC, I can ask them for a list of employees and they have to gie it to me thanks to FOIA. FOIA really needs to be reworked to protect our privacy but it probbaly won't because it will put a kink in the "anti" terrorism plan. I like the President and I think what's been done in Afghanistan and what is being done in Iraq is the right thing to do, but I disagree with some of the things that make no sense or things that are percieved as better for our own good. One example I can think of off hand is removing laptops from their cases. Wait, you have a Xray machine and other equipment for detecting bombs and you need me to take it out of the case??? What do you think we are going to slip and say no I got a bomb in that laptop in place of the battery?? Stupid.
IIS never had a chance. IIS came late. Everyone wanted a web site so they learned/ran Apache. IIS was never and has never been dominant. I do agree that Open source will take over for alot of things and Microsoft will be relegated to either another Linux distro or a application and hardware only company.
Sure they could. I ain't talking about the hungry going out and shooting a deer...I am talking about a hunter using one on a deer and then, because he does not need the meat, donating it to a needy family. Happens all of the time in certain places. Not very likely to happen though.
Depending on the specifics, this thing could also be used to help feed the hungry. A slightly scaled down version could be made for hunting deer or other animals that can be fed to the hungry. Vension is tastey! I also would eat any meat if I was hungry.
Technology advances for the military don't always include killing people. One such example.....velcro. Also, your sending your message on one now....the Internet. It would not be here if it was not for the military needing a fast, efficient way to send data to computers on a world wide basis.
Well, VNC is better. To get a true X server for Windows Desktops, one that will work with minimum fuss on Windows, it will cost some bucks. Xfree's setup on windows isn't as easy as say installing Exceed. VNC just works. Installs in a blink and is useful for multiple platforms.
By the way....have you heard....that bomb that went off in a civilian section of Bagdad was not ours! Also, the Iraqi militia is firing on the same civilians they are supposed to defend. The Iraqi's are the only people that I see targetting their own people! Collateral Damage is going to happen. Not might happen....GOING to happen. It's unfortunate that is does happen. This whole thing could have been solved before a single bomb was dropped if Saddam and his regime would have left the country.
Ok, you are just WRONG about the Iraqi people. I guess you have not seen the pictures I have seen of people cheering when they seee our guys. Our guys shaking hands and sharing meals with friendly Iraqis. These people appear that they like to live like this because they are afraid if they don't that Saddam will cut their throats. The Shiite Muslims have NO love for Saddam. The Sunni Baath who are in control of Iraq are in the MINORITY! Most of the country has Kurds and Shiite Muslims. I ain't saying either of the people in those two groups are really Allied friendly, but they will take up arms against Saddam if they are supported by us. For this war, that makes them friends. The civilian uprising in Basra is proof that these folks don't really care for Saddam all that much. They also have no ability to get rid of him through the election process. The ruling Baath party are the real thugs here. Not the US. Also, this isn't really about oil either. If it was, don't you think we'd already be filling tankers at Umm Qasr? This is about getting rid of Saddam and his Regime. Plain and simple.
And I will tell you why. Floor space. Data Center Floor space is very expensive. Mainframes are much smaller then they used to be. You can even get a mainframe on a card and run it on a server that fits under your desk. In any case, even with blades, the need for more servers usually gorws faster then floor space and runs ahead of miniturization. With a mainframe, you can run VM (and not the pretend stuff that VMware sells) and MANY Linux sessions ontop of that. Interserver If you don't like the idea of doign this, run DB/2 as the DB on the mainframe, and then use pSeries or some Linux boxen to do your heavy calculations. Mainframes EXCELL at pumping data. Risc machines are math wizards while CISC machines (Windows or Linux) are very good at being client machines. Why don't you run a mixed environment? It is possible to have job scheduling centralized across multiple platforms including mainframes, UNIX, AS/400 and even Windows 2000/2003 servers. And if your a college, BINGO! That is what you should be doing. This way you can present the sudents with a working example of everything they are being taught. Now I am a sysadmin, but I also do mainframe operations. Mainframes can automate a great many things, but silos only do you so good until they fail and need an operator anyway. Robots can't fix it when a tape decides to break. Of our operators I work with, I have one that is my age (32) and one under 30 (aroudn 26 I think) and one middle age. My boss is in his 50's. We have a good mix. In any case, mainframes are good at what they do. NIX boxes are good at what they do. So are PC's. It just depends. If you actually use the best tool for the best job, you will have a mix of systems.
Yeah but it is funny.
Yep. Also, WAAS and a few other things are being implemented to increase accuracy. Granted, it's a great reference and nothing more. If I just followed the map, I'd be in trouble if my map told me that the road works and construction has now closed the road! :)
And then planes will start hitting the tarmac late or early or hitting other things.....they JUST can't do this unplanned. Also, did you think that they terrorists needed a GPS to find the WTC? No they did not. Also, what makes you think that they can't figure out the code or obtain US military hardware?
Or if you know the name and want the properties, ls -al . Or, if you want to look at multiples (say if the beginning of the file was report) ls -al report* or you can cet real fancy when you pipe the out put of ls to grep. I can get more done from a shell then I can from the GUI, but that does not discount it either. I use the graphical file manager on any system when I am moving files around and not quite sure what files I need to move. When you emss up and move the wrong file, you can always do a undo. Of course you can always use command line recall and redit the command as a undo (just swap the positions of the arguments and the file is back where you want it....), but pressing the undo button is a nice option to have. You also can take my command line when I am cold and dead. If it wasn't for ksh and other shell scripts, I would have to manually do things instead of just having cron do it for me.
Yes. It's called futility. Listen...I think it's extremely bad manners to ask your relatives to constantly fix things instead of just spending time with them. If I offer to help, fine. I will always help my father fix things but my ultimate goal is to teach him how to fix it himself so I don't have to. When we fix something at my house, he makes me do most of the work so I learn how to do it. Case in point....when I had to put a new nipple on to setup my gas grill on the houses supply, I bought all of the supplies and we went and we did it....together. With computer problems, most family could care less about learning and just want you to fix it. So they plop down a beer/or coke in front of you and then they leave you alone. They don't want to learn and THAT'S the problem. They don't realize it won't "break" if they actually learn how to use it. They treat everything on the computer like it's one thing related to it instead of each individual situation. One example...they saw you click ok or yes once and they think wow the box goes away if you click that. Hence they install bonzi buddy and other BS on the machine. This is kind of like if I kept trying to use a hammer to pound a screw in instead of a screwdriver. READ THE BOX BEFORE YA CLICK! If you don't know, click cancel or no! It's as simple as that!
In short, if the goal is to avoid
learning while staying productive this is useful
Hence the problem! Your not going to learn anything if everything works identically to a Windows machine. It takes me a few seconds to fire up a browser (either on this machine or in a windows machine or some other machine), type in a web search and find the answer. It's that simple. Once I LEARN it I know it and have been productive. Having things presented like your always used to is something that only folks who abhore change. Like those who still cling to lilo for reasons I don't know when grub is superior. For those who cling to a old machine because they are afraid of the pain of upgrade. Face it. Your MOM is never going to use Linux unless she's a geek too.
Yes but your uncle would not give you more pipe if you messed up. Your uncle would not let you hunt on his 40 acres if you chopped down a stand of trees for fire wood. Just the same, I will fix it once. I may even fix it twice. I MAY even do it a third time. After that BITE ME! If you don't listen to what I say then screw you! I ain't there to rebuild a whole machine every time I visit. I am there to VISIT! I am there to get AWAY from work. I am there to spend time with you, not your computer as much as I love to work on computers why is it so hard for you to think that hey he's here to enjoy himself not to have a heart attack when he's removing the same virus or fixing th3 same error for the 40th time.
If they are under used, I got something for ya....HOW ABOUT REDUCING THE FRICKIN PRICE! Sorry for yellin. But seriously...you'd have to desparately need it or be real nutty to pay 40 EXTRA on top of your Cell bill for only a measly 10 MB per month! I pay around that for my Cable modem and I download WAY MORE then 10 MB a NIGHT and that would be just browsing. Does not count when I download a distro. I would pay like 10 extra to get the minimum and maybe 40 for unlimited. Then it WOULD get used by me everyday between home and work on the bus. It would be so nice to grab avantgo pages, check my mail and even hit the server at work before I even get there to see how lousy of a day I am going to have. Or even listen to a shoutcast stream or something. The cell companies need to face the music...WAP is a flop and noone wants to use it beyond checking theater times and possibly the weather.
I tried to get in on this a while back (on the beta). The way it was setup is if you got selected (totally at random), they'd send you the device and it was yours and you had to tell them what was wrong with it. After the beta period, you'd fill a form out and tell them what you thought. As payment, you'd get to keep the beta device (I think). I think that this is a excellent idea. I bought a Toshiba e740 and I am still semi putting up with little problems. Every once in a while, you'd fire up the WiFi and it would immediately shutoff. Then, you'd have to do a soft reset to get it to work. Sometimes, it will do a hard reset when you just bump it lightly (although that problem seemed to have disappeared on my unit). Every once in a while, the fonts in the start menu will turn white. Then go back to normal (real bitch if you have a light colored background and you usually do since the text is normally black!). I feel that the e740 was very much a beta for the new e755 (I may even try to talk Compusa for letting me use my TAP to get it due to the problems I have been having). The e755 has a new version of the Xscale, a faster system bus plus 64 MB ram and 32 MB of non volitile ram to use for storage (similar to safe store on iPaq). It also has the wifi built in and a transreflective screen. In any case, I think that this thing is needed. If more hardware was beta tested in this manner, then maybe the bugs will be fixed before it's widely available. I would gladly fill out surveys and lend my opinion on new devices. I would even send them back if they wanted them, although I feel it's fair to let the beta testers keep it as payment. I think that they might actually sell more if they were less bug ridden.
:) I would like to have this so I can use it to play my music when I am washing the car. That way the hard disk is nice and safe inside! :) For now, I'll just be happy using my Zen Nomad plugged in to the car stereo...
Now on to the streamium! It sounds very cool. Would have loved to test it for them!
Then using a theme for Gnome or KDE? If you say it's the taskbar stupid....welll, one could write a task bar or come pretty close with a theme or skin. Personally, with Style XP on XP I can get almost as much customizeability as Linux desktops. I say almost. There are always somethings that the KDE or Gnome bars can do that Windows can't. I even found one moking that drawing theme that was out a while back on the mac. I just wish there'd be more ports of Linux themes for StyleXP.
Yeah. I remember back when my company machine was a 75 MHz Pentium, the cashier's office got brand new Pentium II 450's to run 3270 emulation. If they had been using a terminal, we'd have had the ability to attatch a printer directly to the terminal for CICS prints instead of the kludge we have now of a PC running SNA over IP mapping to 5 network printers, all to the row of cashiers. The printers they bought did not even have a parallel port on it, plus the needed the ability to do some processing on the CICS data to make it look right on the paper. KLUDGE KLUDGE KLUDGE! PLUS those machines are running TN3270 sessions instead of using a direct connect 3270 card. Means the network dies, so do they. Used to be a real PITA!