While I will agree with some of the infighting bullcrap,I disagree with your bullets.
Sure GCC may not be the best compiler on the face of god's green earth, but to me, if I was running a project with tight money constraints, and I had to choose between a $499 and a $0 dollar compiler and the only reason was the expensive one was faster, unless I absolutly had a better reason for paying the $499, I would have to choose gcc. For one, gcc is well known, in common use, and everything works pretty well on it. I am not saying it doesn't have it's caveats, but to me, compile speed means diddly. Personally, I would rather take the slow one because it gives me more time to drink my coffee while waiting on a compile!:) Well, no, I would rather have the fast one, but I am a poor married man with a kid and have no money to wast on a compiler when I can get one for free.
Yeah Linux crashes....so does Windows, Solaris, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, z/OS, DOS/VSE, BeOS, Windows CE, PocketPC, Palmos..........get what I am getting at? And so far as covering these crashes up, I JUST don't see this happen, at least from the Linux realm. Oh and anyone trying to contradict what I am saying about other OS's crashing needs to be smacked in the head with a massive Clue stick. There has almsot never and probably never will be a uncrashable os. There has almost never been a completely bug free piece of code. Sure, some others in the list are better and crash MUCH less then windows (Linux fer sure as well as about 90 percent of the list), but to say that people are tying to cover Linux crashes up is BS!
Mozilla not delivering? Where the heck have you been? Mozilla, as of late, is TON's better then it was. And with the earlier post that Mozilla will also support anti-aliased text, well, besides Konqueror, I see noone else that competes and surely not that bug ridden, crash pron piece of filth called Netscape 6 (or 4.78 for that matter....). I know it's been updated since 6.0 came out, but heck it was based on a sub point 1 release of Mozilla and even Mozilla was better then Netscape 6 when 6 came out! Plus there's that AOL/Time Warner FILLED bookmark list that installs with it and...well, people should just download Mozilla and fergeddabout Netscape. I am not saying this because I am a Open Source Zealot (because I ain't). Mozilla is doing good and who gives a rat's rearend if it was late. I personally don't care if crap is late....I care if it works. Case in point, one could say the rewrite of Enlightenment is late, but I just think that raster and mandrake (if he even works on e anymore) are trying to make E the best GUI they can by not only making it a GUI but a shell as well.
Loki is dead. Long live Linux. Listen, most people are not like us. They use their computers as tools and not gaming machines. Joe sixpack will ask if it's being made for PS/2 not for the PC. Now that's not to sayt gaming on Linux isn't important. It is, but just because Loki has died doesn't mean their won't ever be games on Linux, commerical or free. There are lots of great free games for Linux. Armegatron, GLTron, Tux Racer, Rocks and Diamonds, Maelstrom and the list goes on. Sure, they might not be a 3d shooter, but then there's Quake for that. Also, the time is ripe for a new gaming shift. MMPORPG and 3d Shooter cookie cutter games can only last so long before something, anything comes to take it's place. Right now is the time for a truly innovative game to come out and steal the show. Oh and Wolfenstien and Doom 4 won't be it...they'll just be another 3d shooter.
Slashdot is censoring.....well, I doubt it. They aren't censoring. I can post anything I want under each new topic. If your talking about story submittals, well, when you are on the other end getting all of the submissions and a vast number are either duplicate, trolls or worse, well, then you start to develop a finely tuned BS detector that sometimes can be faulty. You can usually filter out most BS but sometimes some falls through and get's posted. Rob, Jeff, Chris and Neal are human you know.
I am playing the pragmatic approach with this whole thing. Windows IS in need of a rewriting some parts of it. One example is e-mail (Outlook and Outlook Express) as mentioned in the article. One thing that is mentioned in some posts here is they need to drop the compatablity stuff. I don't really think this is the cause of their problems. If that was true, then Linux and other UNICE's should have a problem as well and we know they don't have a problem running old stuff either. They DO need to drop the DOS kernel which is unsecure in the first place (everything runs as root.....EVERYTHING!). The also need to start dropping support, slowly, for 95 (already done so)/98/98se and ME. Remember these suckers above have no security essentially. The auto download thing never worked right anyway. If they want to notify folkd of these, the should have a automatic check for updates thing ala AOL/Winamp and several other apps and not automatically download stuff and install it. Nothing should be installed unless a admin is at the console. That is a good suggestion. Granted, Debian users can automatically setup a cron job to apt-get update; apt-get upgrade;, but do they do this? No! EVERYONE who uses Sid (or previously the unstable Woody, now in testing) knows what it's like to have working Xfree86 one day and then apt-getting a new version and it friggin breaking things! That's not only a security risk running these automagically update things, but it also can break things causing a server to need a reboot or whatever to fix it. That's why these things MUST be attended when running.
Microsoft also needs to STOP THE INSANITY with reboots. On Linux, the only four times I had to reboot after updating something or just using a linux system was once when it was a kernel, and again after making a change from HW_cursor to a SW_cursor on Permedia 2v graphics card because if you didn't X would go all wonky, and even then the only reason it needed a reboot was to get rid of the dead mouse pointer (rebooting resetted some clocks or something that made the hardware one go away), if something locked up (beta/alpha code can do this!:) ) or to reboot to play games/use something in Windows. If I had VMware, only reason for this kind of a reboot would be for games (until someone figures out a way to run DirectX games under Linux or VMware....). Reboots are bad. Not necessarily for security, but for general uptime. Figure out a way to install and update software without needing this step. Both the changes in security and the reboot thing need ot be handled to increase reliability of these systems.
I saw one or two comments saying you should retain stuff for 7 years. Thay's what the IRS suggest's (and has a right going back that far too). Also, back when registers used to have a paper journal tape instead of a magnetic means of storing a journal, the company my mom worked for had to keep them for seven years (had a box for every year....it was a small store, so no big deal). Where I work, we seem to need new file rooms once every 2 years. The idiots running the department in question or the feds make them do it even though we have everything back to almost day one on the mainframe. What is a electronic record no good?
Here, in our department (IT at my place of work), we archive everything, but not for reasons you'd think. Almost all reports are archived just in case someone looses their report. You heard it right....LOOSING a report! Sometimes it's even important stuff that get's lost, thrown away or shredded. We had to beg to get a shredder just so we can make sure we shred the jams that have readable data on it. It's important to archive but it's also just as important to make sure that when a report needs shredded, or disposed of, that it's done in a fairly secure manner (burning is best....shreds can be taped if desparate enough....).
I agree with you. For that matter, AIX (which is a UNIX for all intents and purposes....) does something similar with it's implementation of UNIX. All AIX config is done in SMITTY or SMIT (both GUI and a ASCII terminal driven) and all config is stored in the ODM Database. Sure, you can make changes and changes that work to the standard/etc text files, but those changes are lost when you reboot/IPL. I believe IBM still calls a reboot an IPL even under AIX....amazing how many mainframish like things are throughout AIX....program fixes are called PTF's in both AIX, OS/390 (or whatever MVS is now called) and DOS/VSE. In any case, who gives a crap where thigns are stored/configged? I mean even the Linux guys can't all decide on where to store what. Desktops do they go in/usr or/opt? GRUB stores it's config in/boot/grub/menu.lst.....LILO stores it's info in/etc/lilo.conf. Grub you can make a change and reboot. Lilo you must run lilo after updating a kernel or get lilililiii. The things that makes a machine UNIX like, to me, is how you interface with it and not how close to a "standard" which doesn't really seem to exist between even true UNIX machines. Can you SSH into a OSX based machine and run tcsh/bash/ksh or whatever and then run a text based FTP client and download source, compile it, then do whetever and as another poster already said, run it. You can. You can download just abut any Linux source code and get it to compile (well, that's what I have heard anyway.....). Sure, a Carbonized or Cocoa app looks great and may not be a true "UNIX" type of app, but what about a GNOME or KDE app? Are they more UNIXy? I think not.
The other day I left my Dual Boot system (with a Nvidia GeForce 2 MX 400 and NVIDIA drivers) booted into Mandrake Linux for most of the day and it was fine. Of course I was at the system for most of the time. I decided to go to the store and when I came back the system was locked tighter then a drum. No big deal since I run ext3 for the file system. Rebooted and it was fine. How would one add this option to a GRUB bootloader?? I bet if I add it, the screensaver won't lock (Open GL screensaver.....). I don't play a whole lot of games so the texture flakiness would not bother me.
By the time I add shipping to some of the supposed cheaper price on some websites, I find it's almost as much as going down the street to Walmart or other local store. Ebay is a rip off, unless you are the seller. Pricewatch, while a nice tool, is not a good place to find someone I'd trust with my credit card number if you know what I mean. I could probably find a way to get listed on pricewatch. Also, if something goes wrong with what I buy, I can jump in the car and take it down and have a new one with in an hour. Try that on a web site (EXCEPT brick and mortar's that allow you to exchange web purchases in the store). Online being truely cheaper is a crock.
HP also makes electronic measurement equipment like Oscilloscopes and the like. We had a logic analyzer from them at my school and that thing was great! It even had a printer! Sure as heck saved BUNCHES of time when measuring hundreds of waveforms at different voltages and the like. No clue if they have anything like that now, or if they do, but I haven't heard of any division except calculators and mebbe HP-UX being toyed with (so far as Carly killing them...).
This is just cool. One can think of all kinds of applications for this. Even dumb ones. I do agree it could have uses in military technology as well.
Could they use this to build motors in the top of chips and come up with some sort of package that allows the nano (and hopefully silent) fans to cool a CPU? Just a thought.
We still have several control units on the mainframe that read their microcode off of a 5.25" disk that's held in each unit. I remember not too long ago we ran around the campus like mad trying to find a PC with a drive in it because we thought we had a bad microcode disk. Turns out, we didn't but we even resorted to "trying" to boot a old IBM PC (NO stinking AT in back of it....this was an original 8086 based PC). Needless to say, that OLD machine would not even power up. What are we still doing with that OLD machine? It's in our Network/PC Services Manager's office in his museum consisting of that PC, a old IBM proprinter and I even think the ex director of the Data Center gave him a piece of original magnetic core memory from our first IBM 360 mainframe! Pretty amazing eh?
To anwer your question, I think it would be best to setup a direct cable connect with an older machine to do this. Do newer ATX boards even support 5.25" floppy drives?? This way you can setup a script or something to read all of the disks (2 or more if you have that many drives) onto the hard drive then send em over to the newer machine with the CDR. I have a similar issue in that I got some disks I used when I built my 8085A trainer. It has all of the ROM code on them as well as my Senior Project code (although that code would be useless since I don't even have the hardware for the project anymore...I still have the 8085A). These disks were written on a HP 9000 system and I don't even think a PC could read them. Oh well. I don't intend on blitzing the code in the rom and I think if I ask, I could get access to their new rom burning stuff they have now (I bet it's on normal PC's now....). It would be nice to build a little rom burner for my PC and use the ole 8085A to control a Christmas Light display.
I mean really! It looks like a different shaped cube. I take it the guts are in the hump that the stalk attaching the LCD panel to. You know, this isn't that big of deal. It's ugly compared to what was thought to come out. One thing is for sure.....this does like like a Job's one more thing device.
I know isn't that frickin annoying? I went to get a hair cut at a Great Clips the other day and they asked me for my phone number. I declined to give the information and they cut my hair anyway.
Actually I checked out the cards today. It appears that Meijer changed their cards and they have to be rung and a code typed into the register to be activated. Must of had the problem I described above. So, you would have to have a card reprogrammer in order to steal off of the card. I think the article did describe how it could happen. It could still happen. It's just not very likely. I think the article raises some concerns, but nothing the average customer should worry about.
Around here, the gift cards are just sitting by the register back by the candy (Meijer's and Walmart both did this). They were easy to get, even easier to swipe because they were just glued to the back of a bigger card. To swipe one, one would just have to drop a bunch of cards, and then while bent over, peel the card off the bigger card. Also, I don't know about Walmart, but Meijer's were all precharged. The UPC's on the bigger card were even all the same (probably something like 41250 *****, I used to work at Meijer and all Meijer Branded stuff including the gift cards start with the same 5 numbers.). Thing is most stores don't have the storage or available UPC's to give each card a separate UPC code (only way they could keep the cards as they have them and keep them deactivated until they are scanned). The only way I think they could make these things more safe is if you had to do what you used to do and go to Guest Services and buy the card and have the guest services folks charge a denomination on them by swiping the card. Most of the cards I have seen as of late all had how much money each card held printed right on the card! This was at every place I have been this season including even some of the nicer stores! Meijer did not even have cashier's type in a code or anything to activate them. They just swiped it and the appropriate figure was added to the total along with your groceries. This may have changed, but I agree with the article that it is easy. I doubt many would even have to have the card programmers to steal lots of cash.
One more place where you would WANT this is a hospital. They have to work through tornados, hurricanes, Earthquakes and everything. Sometimes a server being up or down can save someone's life! ALOT of hospitals in Florida have this kind of a Data Center. NO single points of failure...EVER. Be it air conditioning, power, internet, computers, water supply and even food. Yes even FOOD. Remember admins and operations folks need food especially in a danger type situation (you'd have you folks come in before if you know a hurricane is going to hit....besides the center is safer then your house anyway).
Sigh. The best thing about Linux is CHOICES! I agree having a standard window manager may be seen as something that's needed, but I don't really think it is. I have yet to see a window manager that doesn't act similarly to another window manager. GNOME is similar to KDE(Ok I know they aren't window managers but to newbies they seem like it....so think sawfish to kwin) in the way it works and Window Maker is similar to Afterstep and so on and so on. Nothing is so different from one window manager to another that makes them totaly unusable. The only exception to this may be twm (who want's to use THAT ugly thing?). So, since they are all pretty similar one can deduce that a standard is not needed. So what if it takes a user 3 weeks to learn how to change the background? As long as they can use it to do real work, I have yet to see a window manager that would totally baffle a windows user to the point that they can't do work.
Well, she had better have a decent sized TV! I have a 35 and 800x600 running on the S-video output of my Nvidia 2MX400 is still hard to read even for my 30 year old eyes. Imagine what it would be like for Grandma! Hooking these things up to the TV will only make it worse!
I think the best I have seen for e-mail only has been those Cidco Mailstations. I have no idea of teh requirements for the ISP except that I think they have their own. These things do E-mail ONLY and they even dial out on their own every once in a while to check the box. Messages can be typed in and sent now, or later as well (I think!:))!
Look, I donate to my favorite distro every once in a while by BUYING the full package. I do not believe in buying every point release though because sometimes a point release doesn't get ya much.
I also am not complaining about paying for it. If Ximian was as good as it was a while back (like when the first came out), then I probably would have paid. But now KDE has supplanted Ximian Gnome as my desktop of choice. Why did I change my mind? Well, Red Carpet did it for me. I had better luck with their old updater. There have been too many times that a Red Carpet update (ONLY the stable ones that is....I don't play with beta stuff that runs my desktop) has completely broken things and I had to delete all of my settings to fix it. Granted, I haven't used it in a while and these problems may be fixed, but I did install Ximian the other night and was using the 1.0 version of Evolution and I had a hard lock. Also, esd seemed to be creating burps of static on my creative card. I never had a problem on it in Windows, but KDE's aRts sound server is great! The only time I have had problem's with aRts is when I was using my crappy semi supported Aureal based sound card. KDE seems to be more professional then the "professionals" at Ximian. Oh and I can get it for free. KDE folks have no pretense of making money off of their stuff. Not that their is anything wrong with making money writing software, it's just that they realize they can't make anything off of it once they chose the license they chose.
Things that ARE worth 9.95 per month
Tivo
the VERY basic cable
Those are the two off of my head. There are many others, but my sugar muddled mind can't think just yet (damn office parties and cookies). Both of the above had advantages over what is available for free. Yes you can get the TV listings for free, but try plugging those into your Tivo. You can also get 90 percent of the very basic cable package off of a set of rabbit ears, but there are plenty of things that the cable folks put on there that make it worthwhile (better signal, weather radar and community access TV). What is their extra on Ximian? A slightly faster then slow server? This is better? This will make money?
It's not hard to write a script to grab this stuff overnight. Granted, grabbing the updates isn't as good because Red Carpet does do some dependency checking into other packages you'd need to run x package where as your script may not. Personally, it's not hard as long as you follow the instructions and starting a equivalent server that's free isn't hard either. My point is it is just as easy to write a script to grab this stuff over night and then install it later. Red Carpet just makes it easier and helps you handle the dependencies. To me, it ain't worth it. To a great many folks it won't be worth it. To some it might. I personally jsut don't think this is the direction they need to go.
It's not the money I am complaining about. It's just that these kinds of things aren't making bundles of cash. If Ximian is going to depend on this, well, they are going to go the way of Eazel. They need to do more things like the non GPL stuff they are doing with the Evolution plugin for outlook. Maybe they could even sell a Exchange replacement someday. They could make money if the leverage the free software. IBM is doing this with Linux. They are using free software to cut expenses in devlopment for other OS's and to sell lots of hardware. This is a smart move on IBM because the better the free stuff is, the better their servers work and the more they can sell. If they cut the cost of a AIX license off of the price they charge for a server, then it also saves their cusomer's money. Thta's good in both of their pocket books.
They have GOT to be kidding! This is NOT going to make them money. It's not going to do ANYTHING for them. Before long, someone will write their own updater to grab the stuff off of the mirrors. Heck there may even be extra mirrors setup already. Personally, they need to kick some butt on the Evolution stuff (ability to automagically order or prompt you to order gifts for B-days through them, reminders to buy ink and stuff through them and other things like this). Also, things like the Outlook plugin would be things I could see companies buying. They should also work on a Novell Groupwise plugin (we'd buy it!!! We are Novell shop still). But to start a updating service for 9.95 a month is just dumb. Unless they can GUARANTEE fast servers and things such as this, it would NOT be worth it. Ask Red Hat how much money they make off of up2date subscriptions...:)
I am planning on using the TV out on my Geforce 2 MX400 to watch DVD's on my couch. The "Computer DVD does not have a remote" thing is so much of an excuse. I bought a TV card that came with a remote for 30 bucks (as soon as I get my rebate back...:) Pinnacle Studio TV Pro, dbx Stereo TV and FM radio, $49.99 at CompUSA and a $20 dollar rebate.....no brainer there!:)). The remote that comes with this card is nice and it will work, for the meantime. It works off of the serial port which means you should be able ot hack something together for Linux or any other OS to make it work (execute keyboard macro when it recieves a certain code on the serial port). I do want to get a wireless (RF ONLY) keyboard for surfing the net on TV from the recliner built into my couch. I plan on using TV out for visualizations too(xtace on Linux, Winamp on Windows). If you use the Nvidia drivers for Linux, you can get the TV out to work pretty easily, although I have yet to get the cable I need for it. That said, any self respecting geek questioning the inclusion of a thing like TV out on a video card has GOT to be on drugs. It's just cool!
One other thing: Your DAMN STRAIGHT this crap should work. It ain't hard! At least TV has a standard! Unlike some things on computers like MUSIC! MP3, OGG, MP3Pro, Real Audio, WMA which one is THE standard? I know default is MP3, but it's not a standard, to me, until it's the only thing used or even talked about, then we'll have a new standard for digital music. MP3 is close but we still hack and work on OGG right? Computers now have so many so called standards that, to me, nothing is standard anymore. This is, to me, the main reason some people never buy computers because there's so many frickin choices that they have no idea if this one will play the game they want or do what they want at an acceptable speed. This is why MACS are good for newbies cuz there's fewer choices (decent Apple built-in audio, Geforce 2 MX currently the default) and other things Apple does right. I don't own an Apple and I am not saying they are better then PC's. Sometimes they are not. But at least you can buy a Mac and count on it being able to run about any game you buy for the Mac. PC's it's a friggin crapshoot.
Yep. That's MS support. If MS does what a lot of companies do, then they farm their support out to companies such as Calltech (who also runs the 1800buckeye travel lines here in Ohio) complete with scripts and tests to use to figure out how to qualify people for the support lines. Now, the following wasn't with MS but was with Bellsouth ISP division. My MOTHER-IN-LAW qulaified to work at Bellsouth's tech support line. How in the world did she do it? She took a test proving she knew how to use a browser and a word processor and possible click a few buttons on WINIPCFG or how to create a dial up network connectoid. Anything that was complex was scripted (delete your network config and recreate no matter whether it was THEIR problem or not.....). With Linux, if anyone searches hard enough, you can find the answer. When you pay for support with Linux you don't get someone's mother-in-law who just learned how to setup her own computer. You get someone who has some experience with the OS. Maybe this is a result of the market share Windows has? I don't know.
One example of supporting Linux I had was just recently when I added a new video card and a TV card (BT878). I noticed when installing Mandrake 8.1 it installed the BTTV stuff and xawtv. I fired up xawtv and the scan failed (could not read from/dev/vbi). I did a search on google groups and BINGO run the MAKEDEVS script in this directory as root. I did this and then fired up xawtv and we scanned for TV channels! 1 minute later I was ready to enter all of the Channel id's and watch some TV! That was cool. If this happened on NT or something I would have had to wait for a patch or a new version of a application. With Linux I had it up and going within MINUTES of rebooting after installing the OS. Ask folks how much of a bitch it is to set one of these up on NT or 2000. Yeah, I thought so!
I wish people would stop trying to reinvent the wheel so much when your dealing with computers. There are no specific folks that are at fault as they all seek to create the latest, greatest, most intuitive interface that yet looks the same as everything else. That is all about marketing. The main reasons GUI's suck sometimes is, to me, they were never meant to be a be all end all kind of thing. GUI's are great at some things (graphics editing, web surfing, even typing a letter ) and bad at other things (copying files, backing up files). I think the hardest thing for people to realize about GUI's is that they are dynamic. They can put that Window anywhere they want on the desktop. There's no standard place for it to come up unless you set them up that way or they are programmed that way. GUI's mean icons (even standard window widgets) can change and make documentation difficult. With CLI's, you can give a simple list of instructions that work everytime. With GUI's, it's difficult.
It's also more difficult to do some things with a GUI. Take copying files. In Linux the CLI command is:
cp (target path and file name) (destination path and filename)
That's it. The only reason it won't work is if you don't have permissions on either the target file or the destination directory. To copy a file on a KDE desktop.
1. Open konquerer file manager.
2. Navigate to directory in left pane.
3. Drag file to destination.
See! You have at LEAST 2 more steps depending on what your condition is when you start. When a CLI is loaded, it's loaded and it's prompt is always ready for input being the input opening a file or copying it. No opening a file manager....I thought the file manager was you and not the program, but I guess I was wrong!:)
Linux, to me is the best fusion of both. You can not only use the bash commands but you can launch GUI apps from a BASH prompt, but then, you know this. Linux needs learning that Windows doesn't. I have a neighbor who would not know a dos command if it hit him in the face. I feel it helps to know at least one CLI before going completely GUI because it does help you see what the Filemanger REALLY does. People need to stop trying to abstract the computer and just accept it and learn it. Did you know how to use a hammer at first? No. The only intuitive interface on the planet is the nipple because hey it just begs to be sucked on!:)
My wife has a VPN for her work. While I do not expect to get "support" from the cable company fo r it, I do have enough knowledge to set the dang thing up. Also, my wife using what is essentially a terminal emulation program, uses almost ZERO, to very little bandwith when working. If I did pay for business in my area, while the service would not be better I would get some benefits such as a static IP and I would be allowed to run a server. I do believe that this is a bad policy. I bet that even their own workers probably break policy when the login to work from home to fix things (I bet that they get free service, but I would also bet that they don't get business class service for free). Too many people PAY for their own service so that they CAN dial up to work at home and at a decent speed too. I get free dial up at work, but because it's too frickin slow I pay alot more so I don't have to use the dial up (which was free for me you know). I would rather pay for my own rather then tying up my landline. Cable companies should put their enforcement efforts towards badwidth abusers and not folks just trying to read their work e-mail from home using a VPN.
If they do want to charge a bit extra to allow use of VPN's and work uses other then running a server at home I would not mind that in the least but I don't need to run a server at home. I don't NEED(or want) a static IP. I am actually happy with service as it is. I would pay say 5-10 extra just for the ability to do this, but not twice as much! Personally, I don't think they have to worry about folks using VPN's much cuz it just doesn't cause others to slowdown.
In fact, if you think about it, people telecommuting usually do it when you are at work also. Isn't during the day slower for them then say the hours between 7pm and 11pm??? They are using the network when it's NOT busy! They are not the cause of the slowdowns in prime time!
Aren't most of these devices (the ones that you hook into your computer) just standard RS-232/Parallel Port or Keyboard port devices ala Cue Cat? The device handles decoding the stripe and feeds the number down to the computer. I'd say MOST of these would be supported. It would just be a matter of writing the program to pass it to a credit verification program.
Should work with Linux or anything you use I'd imagine.
I have Road Runner thru Time Warner and I am NOT required to use AOL and AFAIK, new subscribers are not either. Talk to the cable company. If you get someone telling you you HAVE to use AOL, then escalate it up cuz they are lying. TWC in Columbus, OH is just configured as a DHCP if you get the ethernet version. Works great under both Windows and Linux.
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While I will agree with some of the infighting bullcrap,I disagree with your bullets.
:) Well, no, I would rather have the fast one, but I am a poor married man with a kid and have no money to wast on a compiler when I can get one for free.
...well, people should just download Mozilla and fergeddabout Netscape. I am not saying this because I am a Open Source Zealot (because I ain't). Mozilla is doing good and who gives a rat's rearend if it was late. I personally don't care if crap is late....I care if it works. Case in point, one could say the rewrite of Enlightenment is late, but I just think that raster and mandrake (if he even works on e anymore) are trying to make E the best GUI they can by not only making it a GUI but a shell as well.
Sure GCC may not be the best compiler on the face of god's green earth, but to me, if I was running a project with tight money constraints, and I had to choose between a $499 and a $0 dollar compiler and the only reason was the expensive one was faster, unless I absolutly had a better reason for paying the $499, I would have to choose gcc. For one, gcc is well known, in common use, and everything works pretty well on it. I am not saying it doesn't have it's caveats, but to me, compile speed means diddly. Personally, I would rather take the slow one because it gives me more time to drink my coffee while waiting on a compile!
Yeah Linux crashes....so does Windows, Solaris, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, z/OS, DOS/VSE, BeOS, Windows CE, PocketPC, Palmos..........get what I am getting at? And so far as covering these crashes up, I JUST don't see this happen, at least from the Linux realm. Oh and anyone trying to contradict what I am saying about other OS's crashing needs to be smacked in the head with a massive Clue stick. There has almsot never and probably never will be a uncrashable os. There has almost never been a completely bug free piece of code. Sure, some others in the list are better and crash MUCH less then windows (Linux fer sure as well as about 90 percent of the list), but to say that people are tying to cover Linux crashes up is BS!
Mozilla not delivering? Where the heck have you been? Mozilla, as of late, is TON's better then it was. And with the earlier post that Mozilla will also support anti-aliased text, well, besides Konqueror, I see noone else that competes and surely not that bug ridden, crash pron piece of filth called Netscape 6 (or 4.78 for that matter....). I know it's been updated since 6.0 came out, but heck it was based on a sub point 1 release of Mozilla and even Mozilla was better then Netscape 6 when 6 came out! Plus there's that AOL/Time Warner FILLED bookmark list that installs with it and
Loki is dead. Long live Linux. Listen, most people are not like us. They use their computers as tools and not gaming machines. Joe sixpack will ask if it's being made for PS/2 not for the PC. Now that's not to sayt gaming on Linux isn't important. It is, but just because Loki has died doesn't mean their won't ever be games on Linux, commerical or free. There are lots of great free games for Linux. Armegatron, GLTron, Tux Racer, Rocks and Diamonds, Maelstrom and the list goes on. Sure, they might not be a 3d shooter, but then there's Quake for that. Also, the time is ripe for a new gaming shift. MMPORPG and 3d Shooter cookie cutter games can only last so long before something, anything comes to take it's place. Right now is the time for a truly innovative game to come out and steal the show. Oh and Wolfenstien and Doom 4 won't be it...they'll just be another 3d shooter.
Slashdot is censoring.....well, I doubt it. They aren't censoring. I can post anything I want under each new topic. If your talking about story submittals, well, when you are on the other end getting all of the submissions and a vast number are either duplicate, trolls or worse, well, then you start to develop a finely tuned BS detector that sometimes can be faulty. You can usually filter out most BS but sometimes some falls through and get's posted. Rob, Jeff, Chris and Neal are human you know.
I am playing the pragmatic approach with this whole thing. Windows IS in need of a rewriting some parts of it. One example is e-mail (Outlook and Outlook Express) as mentioned in the article. One thing that is mentioned in some posts here is they need to drop the compatablity stuff. I don't really think this is the cause of their problems. If that was true, then Linux and other UNICE's should have a problem as well and we know they don't have a problem running old stuff either. They DO need to drop the DOS kernel which is unsecure in the first place (everything runs as root.....EVERYTHING!). The also need to start dropping support, slowly, for 95 (already done so)/98/98se and ME. Remember these suckers above have no security essentially. The auto download thing never worked right anyway. If they want to notify folkd of these, the should have a automatic check for updates thing ala AOL/Winamp and several other apps and not automatically download stuff and install it. Nothing should be installed unless a admin is at the console. That is a good suggestion. Granted, Debian users can automatically setup a cron job to apt-get update; apt-get upgrade;, but do they do this? No! EVERYONE who uses Sid (or previously the unstable Woody, now in testing) knows what it's like to have working Xfree86 one day and then apt-getting a new version and it friggin breaking things! That's not only a security risk running these automagically update things, but it also can break things causing a server to need a reboot or whatever to fix it. That's why these things MUST be attended when running.
:) ) or to reboot to play games/use something in Windows. If I had VMware, only reason for this kind of a reboot would be for games (until someone figures out a way to run DirectX games under Linux or VMware....). Reboots are bad. Not necessarily for security, but for general uptime. Figure out a way to install and update software without needing this step. Both the changes in security and the reboot thing need ot be handled to increase reliability of these systems.
Microsoft also needs to STOP THE INSANITY with reboots. On Linux, the only four times I had to reboot after updating something or just using a linux system was once when it was a kernel, and again after making a change from HW_cursor to a SW_cursor on Permedia 2v graphics card because if you didn't X would go all wonky, and even then the only reason it needed a reboot was to get rid of the dead mouse pointer (rebooting resetted some clocks or something that made the hardware one go away), if something locked up (beta/alpha code can do this!
I saw one or two comments saying you should retain stuff for 7 years. Thay's what the IRS suggest's (and has a right going back that far too). Also, back when registers used to have a paper journal tape instead of a magnetic means of storing a journal, the company my mom worked for had to keep them for seven years (had a box for every year....it was a small store, so no big deal). Where I work, we seem to need new file rooms once every 2 years. The idiots running the department in question or the feds make them do it even though we have everything back to almost day one on the mainframe. What is a electronic record no good?
Here, in our department (IT at my place of work), we archive everything, but not for reasons you'd think. Almost all reports are archived just in case someone looses their report. You heard it right....LOOSING a report! Sometimes it's even important stuff that get's lost, thrown away or shredded. We had to beg to get a shredder just so we can make sure we shred the jams that have readable data on it. It's important to archive but it's also just as important to make sure that when a report needs shredded, or disposed of, that it's done in a fairly secure manner (burning is best....shreds can be taped if desparate enough....).
I agree with you. For that matter, AIX (which is a UNIX for all intents and purposes....) does something similar with it's implementation of UNIX. All AIX config is done in SMITTY or SMIT (both GUI and a ASCII terminal driven) and all config is stored in the ODM Database. Sure, you can make changes and changes that work to the standard /etc text files, but those changes are lost when you reboot/IPL. I believe IBM still calls a reboot an IPL even under AIX....amazing how many mainframish like things are throughout AIX....program fixes are called PTF's in both AIX, OS/390 (or whatever MVS is now called) and DOS/VSE. In any case, who gives a crap where thigns are stored/configged? I mean even the Linux guys can't all decide on where to store what. Desktops do they go in /usr or /opt? GRUB stores it's config in /boot/grub/menu.lst .....LILO stores it's info in /etc/lilo.conf. Grub you can make a change and reboot. Lilo you must run lilo after updating a kernel or get lilililiii. The things that makes a machine UNIX like, to me, is how you interface with it and not how close to a "standard" which doesn't really seem to exist between even true UNIX machines. Can you SSH into a OSX based machine and run tcsh/bash/ksh or whatever and then run a text based FTP client and download source, compile it, then do whetever and as another poster already said, run it. You can. You can download just abut any Linux source code and get it to compile (well, that's what I have heard anyway.....). Sure, a Carbonized or Cocoa app looks great and may not be a true "UNIX" type of app, but what about a GNOME or KDE app? Are they more UNIXy? I think not.
The other day I left my Dual Boot system (with a Nvidia GeForce 2 MX 400 and NVIDIA drivers) booted into Mandrake Linux for most of the day and it was fine. Of course I was at the system for most of the time. I decided to go to the store and when I came back the system was locked tighter then a drum. No big deal since I run ext3 for the file system. Rebooted and it was fine. How would one add this option to a GRUB bootloader?? I bet if I add it, the screensaver won't lock (Open GL screensaver.....). I don't play a whole lot of games so the texture flakiness would not bother me.
By the time I add shipping to some of the supposed cheaper price on some websites, I find it's almost as much as going down the street to Walmart or other local store. Ebay is a rip off, unless you are the seller. Pricewatch, while a nice tool, is not a good place to find someone I'd trust with my credit card number if you know what I mean. I could probably find a way to get listed on pricewatch. Also, if something goes wrong with what I buy, I can jump in the car and take it down and have a new one with in an hour. Try that on a web site (EXCEPT brick and mortar's that allow you to exchange web purchases in the store). Online being truely cheaper is a crock.
HP also makes electronic measurement equipment like Oscilloscopes and the like. We had a logic analyzer from them at my school and that thing was great! It even had a printer! Sure as heck saved BUNCHES of time when measuring hundreds of waveforms at different voltages and the like. No clue if they have anything like that now, or if they do, but I haven't heard of any division except calculators and mebbe HP-UX being toyed with (so far as Carly killing them...).
This is just cool. One can think of all kinds of applications for this. Even dumb ones. I do agree it could have uses in military technology as well.
Could they use this to build motors in the top of chips and come up with some sort of package that allows the nano (and hopefully silent) fans to cool a CPU? Just a thought.
We still have several control units on the mainframe that read their microcode off of a 5.25" disk that's held in each unit. I remember not too long ago we ran around the campus like mad trying to find a PC with a drive in it because we thought we had a bad microcode disk. Turns out, we didn't but we even resorted to "trying" to boot a old IBM PC (NO stinking AT in back of it....this was an original 8086 based PC). Needless to say, that OLD machine would not even power up. What are we still doing with that OLD machine? It's in our Network/PC Services Manager's office in his museum consisting of that PC, a old IBM proprinter and I even think the ex director of the Data Center gave him a piece of original magnetic core memory from our first IBM 360 mainframe! Pretty amazing eh?
To anwer your question, I think it would be best to setup a direct cable connect with an older machine to do this. Do newer ATX boards even support 5.25" floppy drives?? This way you can setup a script or something to read all of the disks (2 or more if you have that many drives) onto the hard drive then send em over to the newer machine with the CDR. I have a similar issue in that I got some disks I used when I built my 8085A trainer. It has all of the ROM code on them as well as my Senior Project code (although that code would be useless since I don't even have the hardware for the project anymore...I still have the 8085A). These disks were written on a HP 9000 system and I don't even think a PC could read them. Oh well. I don't intend on blitzing the code in the rom and I think if I ask, I could get access to their new rom burning stuff they have now (I bet it's on normal PC's now....). It would be nice to build a little rom burner for my PC and use the ole 8085A to control a Christmas Light display.
I mean really! It looks like a different shaped cube. I take it the guts are in the hump that the stalk attaching the LCD panel to. You know, this isn't that big of deal. It's ugly compared to what was thought to come out. One thing is for sure.....this does like like a Job's one more thing device.
I know isn't that frickin annoying? I went to get a hair cut at a Great Clips the other day and they asked me for my phone number. I declined to give the information and they cut my hair anyway.
Actually I checked out the cards today. It appears that Meijer changed their cards and they have to be rung and a code typed into the register to be activated. Must of had the problem I described above. So, you would have to have a card reprogrammer in order to steal off of the card. I think the article did describe how it could happen. It could still happen. It's just not very likely. I think the article raises some concerns, but nothing the average customer should worry about.
Around here, the gift cards are just sitting by the register back by the candy (Meijer's and Walmart both did this). They were easy to get, even easier to swipe because they were just glued to the back of a bigger card. To swipe one, one would just have to drop a bunch of cards, and then while bent over, peel the card off the bigger card. Also, I don't know about Walmart, but Meijer's were all precharged. The UPC's on the bigger card were even all the same (probably something like 41250 *****, I used to work at Meijer and all Meijer Branded stuff including the gift cards start with the same 5 numbers.). Thing is most stores don't have the storage or available UPC's to give each card a separate UPC code (only way they could keep the cards as they have them and keep them deactivated until they are scanned). The only way I think they could make these things more safe is if you had to do what you used to do and go to Guest Services and buy the card and have the guest services folks charge a denomination on them by swiping the card. Most of the cards I have seen as of late all had how much money each card held printed right on the card! This was at every place I have been this season including even some of the nicer stores! Meijer did not even have cashier's type in a code or anything to activate them. They just swiped it and the appropriate figure was added to the total along with your groceries. This may have changed, but I agree with the article that it is easy. I doubt many would even have to have the card programmers to steal lots of cash.
Where in HECK did I say anything about USENET in my post?? Why don't you try reading the post before replying.
One more place where you would WANT this is a hospital. They have to work through tornados, hurricanes, Earthquakes and everything. Sometimes a server being up or down can save someone's life! ALOT of hospitals in Florida have this kind of a Data Center. NO single points of failure...EVER. Be it air conditioning, power, internet, computers, water supply and even food. Yes even FOOD. Remember admins and operations folks need food especially in a danger type situation (you'd have you folks come in before if you know a hurricane is going to hit....besides the center is safer then your house anyway).
Sigh. The best thing about Linux is CHOICES! I agree having a standard window manager may be seen as something that's needed, but I don't really think it is. I have yet to see a window manager that doesn't act similarly to another window manager. GNOME is similar to KDE(Ok I know they aren't window managers but to newbies they seem like it....so think sawfish to kwin) in the way it works and Window Maker is similar to Afterstep and so on and so on. Nothing is so different from one window manager to another that makes them totaly unusable. The only exception to this may be twm (who want's to use THAT ugly thing?). So, since they are all pretty similar one can deduce that a standard is not needed. So what if it takes a user 3 weeks to learn how to change the background? As long as they can use it to do real work, I have yet to see a window manager that would totally baffle a windows user to the point that they can't do work.
Well, she had better have a decent sized TV! I have a 35 and 800x600 running on the S-video output of my Nvidia 2MX400 is still hard to read even for my 30 year old eyes. Imagine what it would be like for Grandma! Hooking these things up to the TV will only make it worse!
I think the best I have seen for e-mail only has been those Cidco Mailstations. I have no idea of teh requirements for the ISP except that I think they have their own. These things do E-mail ONLY and they even dial out on their own every once in a while to check the box. Messages can be typed in and sent now, or later as well (I think!:))!
Look, I donate to my favorite distro every once in a while by BUYING the full package. I do not believe in buying every point release though because sometimes a point release doesn't get ya much.
I also am not complaining about paying for it. If Ximian was as good as it was a while back (like when the first came out), then I probably would have paid. But now KDE has supplanted Ximian Gnome as my desktop of choice. Why did I change my mind? Well, Red Carpet did it for me. I had better luck with their old updater. There have been too many times that a Red Carpet update (ONLY the stable ones that is....I don't play with beta stuff that runs my desktop) has completely broken things and I had to delete all of my settings to fix it. Granted, I haven't used it in a while and these problems may be fixed, but I did install Ximian the other night and was using the 1.0 version of Evolution and I had a hard lock. Also, esd seemed to be creating burps of static on my creative card. I never had a problem on it in Windows, but KDE's aRts sound server is great! The only time I have had problem's with aRts is when I was using my crappy semi supported Aureal based sound card. KDE seems to be more professional then the "professionals" at Ximian. Oh and I can get it for free. KDE folks have no pretense of making money off of their stuff. Not that their is anything wrong with making money writing software, it's just that they realize they can't make anything off of it once they chose the license they chose.
Things that ARE worth 9.95 per month
Tivo
the VERY basic cable
Those are the two off of my head. There are many others, but my sugar muddled mind can't think just yet (damn office parties and cookies). Both of the above had advantages over what is available for free. Yes you can get the TV listings for free, but try plugging those into your Tivo. You can also get 90 percent of the very basic cable package off of a set of rabbit ears, but there are plenty of things that the cable folks put on there that make it worthwhile (better signal, weather radar and community access TV). What is their extra on Ximian? A slightly faster then slow server? This is better? This will make money?
It's not hard to write a script to grab this stuff overnight. Granted, grabbing the updates isn't as good because Red Carpet does do some dependency checking into other packages you'd need to run x package where as your script may not. Personally, it's not hard as long as you follow the instructions and starting a equivalent server that's free isn't hard either. My point is it is just as easy to write a script to grab this stuff over night and then install it later. Red Carpet just makes it easier and helps you handle the dependencies. To me, it ain't worth it. To a great many folks it won't be worth it. To some it might. I personally jsut don't think this is the direction they need to go.
It's not the money I am complaining about. It's just that these kinds of things aren't making bundles of cash. If Ximian is going to depend on this, well, they are going to go the way of Eazel. They need to do more things like the non GPL stuff they are doing with the Evolution plugin for outlook. Maybe they could even sell a Exchange replacement someday. They could make money if the leverage the free software. IBM is doing this with Linux. They are using free software to cut expenses in devlopment for other OS's and to sell lots of hardware. This is a smart move on IBM because the better the free stuff is, the better their servers work and the more they can sell. If they cut the cost of a AIX license off of the price they charge for a server, then it also saves their cusomer's money. Thta's good in both of their pocket books.
They have GOT to be kidding! This is NOT going to make them money. It's not going to do ANYTHING for them. Before long, someone will write their own updater to grab the stuff off of the mirrors. Heck there may even be extra mirrors setup already. Personally, they need to kick some butt on the Evolution stuff (ability to automagically order or prompt you to order gifts for B-days through them, reminders to buy ink and stuff through them and other things like this). Also, things like the Outlook plugin would be things I could see companies buying. They should also work on a Novell Groupwise plugin (we'd buy it!!! We are Novell shop still). But to start a updating service for 9.95 a month is just dumb. Unless they can GUARANTEE fast servers and things such as this, it would NOT be worth it. Ask Red Hat how much money they make off of up2date subscriptions...:)
I am planning on using the TV out on my Geforce 2 MX400 to watch DVD's on my couch. The "Computer DVD does not have a remote" thing is so much of an excuse. I bought a TV card that came with a remote for 30 bucks (as soon as I get my rebate back...:) Pinnacle Studio TV Pro, dbx Stereo TV and FM radio, $49.99 at CompUSA and a $20 dollar rebate.....no brainer there! :)). The remote that comes with this card is nice and it will work, for the meantime. It works off of the serial port which means you should be able ot hack something together for Linux or any other OS to make it work (execute keyboard macro when it recieves a certain code on the serial port). I do want to get a wireless (RF ONLY) keyboard for surfing the net on TV from the recliner built into my couch. I plan on using TV out for visualizations too(xtace on Linux, Winamp on Windows). If you use the Nvidia drivers for Linux, you can get the TV out to work pretty easily, although I have yet to get the cable I need for it. That said, any self respecting geek questioning the inclusion of a thing like TV out on a video card has GOT to be on drugs. It's just cool!
One other thing: Your DAMN STRAIGHT this crap should work. It ain't hard! At least TV has a standard! Unlike some things on computers like MUSIC! MP3, OGG, MP3Pro, Real Audio, WMA which one is THE standard? I know default is MP3, but it's not a standard, to me, until it's the only thing used or even talked about, then we'll have a new standard for digital music. MP3 is close but we still hack and work on OGG right? Computers now have so many so called standards that, to me, nothing is standard anymore. This is, to me, the main reason some people never buy computers because there's so many frickin choices that they have no idea if this one will play the game they want or do what they want at an acceptable speed. This is why MACS are good for newbies cuz there's fewer choices (decent Apple built-in audio, Geforce 2 MX currently the default) and other things Apple does right. I don't own an Apple and I am not saying they are better then PC's. Sometimes they are not. But at least you can buy a Mac and count on it being able to run about any game you buy for the Mac. PC's it's a friggin crapshoot.
Yep. That's MS support. If MS does what a lot of companies do, then they farm their support out to companies such as Calltech (who also runs the 1800buckeye travel lines here in Ohio) complete with scripts and tests to use to figure out how to qualify people for the support lines. Now, the following wasn't with MS but was with Bellsouth ISP division. My MOTHER-IN-LAW qulaified to work at Bellsouth's tech support line. How in the world did she do it? She took a test proving she knew how to use a browser and a word processor and possible click a few buttons on WINIPCFG or how to create a dial up network connectoid. Anything that was complex was scripted (delete your network config and recreate no matter whether it was THEIR problem or not.....). With Linux, if anyone searches hard enough, you can find the answer. When you pay for support with Linux you don't get someone's mother-in-law who just learned how to setup her own computer. You get someone who has some experience with the OS. Maybe this is a result of the market share Windows has? I don't know.
/dev/vbi). I did a search on google groups and BINGO run the MAKEDEVS script in this directory as root. I did this and then fired up xawtv and we scanned for TV channels! 1 minute later I was ready to enter all of the Channel id's and watch some TV! That was cool. If this happened on NT or something I would have had to wait for a patch or a new version of a application. With Linux I had it up and going within MINUTES of rebooting after installing the OS. Ask folks how much of a bitch it is to set one of these up on NT or 2000. Yeah, I thought so!
One example of supporting Linux I had was just recently when I added a new video card and a TV card (BT878). I noticed when installing Mandrake 8.1 it installed the BTTV stuff and xawtv. I fired up xawtv and the scan failed (could not read from
I wish people would stop trying to reinvent the wheel so much when your dealing with computers. There are no specific folks that are at fault as they all seek to create the latest, greatest, most intuitive interface that yet looks the same as everything else. That is all about marketing. The main reasons GUI's suck sometimes is, to me, they were never meant to be a be all end all kind of thing. GUI's are great at some things (graphics editing, web surfing, even typing a letter ) and bad at other things (copying files, backing up files). I think the hardest thing for people to realize about GUI's is that they are dynamic. They can put that Window anywhere they want on the desktop. There's no standard place for it to come up unless you set them up that way or they are programmed that way. GUI's mean icons (even standard window widgets) can change and make documentation difficult. With CLI's, you can give a simple list of instructions that work everytime. With GUI's, it's difficult.
:)
:)
It's also more difficult to do some things with a GUI. Take copying files. In Linux the CLI command is:
cp (target path and file name) (destination path and filename)
That's it. The only reason it won't work is if you don't have permissions on either the target file or the destination directory. To copy a file on a KDE desktop.
1. Open konquerer file manager.
2. Navigate to directory in left pane.
3. Drag file to destination.
See! You have at LEAST 2 more steps depending on what your condition is when you start. When a CLI is loaded, it's loaded and it's prompt is always ready for input being the input opening a file or copying it. No opening a file manager....I thought the file manager was you and not the program, but I guess I was wrong!
Linux, to me is the best fusion of both. You can not only use the bash commands but you can launch GUI apps from a BASH prompt, but then, you know this. Linux needs learning that Windows doesn't. I have a neighbor who would not know a dos command if it hit him in the face. I feel it helps to know at least one CLI before going completely GUI because it does help you see what the Filemanger REALLY does. People need to stop trying to abstract the computer and just accept it and learn it. Did you know how to use a hammer at first? No. The only intuitive interface on the planet is the nipple because hey it just begs to be sucked on!
My wife has a VPN for her work. While I do not expect to get "support" from the cable company fo r it, I do have enough knowledge to set the dang thing up. Also, my wife using what is essentially a terminal emulation program, uses almost ZERO, to very little bandwith when working. If I did pay for business in my area, while the service would not be better I would get some benefits such as a static IP and I would be allowed to run a server. I do believe that this is a bad policy. I bet that even their own workers probably break policy when the login to work from home to fix things (I bet that they get free service, but I would also bet that they don't get business class service for free). Too many people PAY for their own service so that they CAN dial up to work at home and at a decent speed too. I get free dial up at work, but because it's too frickin slow I pay alot more so I don't have to use the dial up (which was free for me you know). I would rather pay for my own rather then tying up my landline. Cable companies should put their enforcement efforts towards badwidth abusers and not folks just trying to read their work e-mail from home using a VPN.
If they do want to charge a bit extra to allow use of VPN's and work uses other then running a server at home I would not mind that in the least but I don't need to run a server at home. I don't NEED(or want) a static IP. I am actually happy with service as it is. I would pay say 5-10 extra just for the ability to do this, but not twice as much! Personally, I don't think they have to worry about folks using VPN's much cuz it just doesn't cause others to slowdown.
In fact, if you think about it, people telecommuting usually do it when you are at work also. Isn't during the day slower for them then say the hours between 7pm and 11pm??? They are using the network when it's NOT busy! They are not the cause of the slowdowns in prime time!
Aren't most of these devices (the ones that you hook into your computer) just standard RS-232/Parallel Port or Keyboard port devices ala Cue Cat? The device handles decoding the stripe and feeds the number down to the computer. I'd say MOST of these would be supported. It would just be a matter of writing the program to pass it to a credit verification program.
Should work with Linux or anything you use I'd imagine.
I have Road Runner thru Time Warner and I am NOT required to use AOL and AFAIK, new subscribers are not either. Talk to the cable company. If you get someone telling you you HAVE to use AOL, then escalate it up cuz they are lying. TWC in Columbus, OH is just configured as a DHCP if you get the ethernet version. Works great under both Windows and Linux.