No, not a troll, more of a throwaway comment, from someone who gets irritated by the unnecessary amounts of cash he has to fork out to keep the unnecessary non-optional memory and processor-hungry additions to each new edition of Windows. Generally, I will prefer to use Unices, but it's not always that simple.
Graphic design and processing is a big area, and yes, it does require that little bit more gusto in the hardware department. What I object to isn't so much that processors speed up (a good thing, a technological advance) but more that operating systems have a tendency to fill that gap up in a remarkably short space of time. I'd like to think this is due to pure technological advance - experience has shown me otherwise.
It's a bit like when a road gets widened. It's congested again within months.
I can see many good reasons why this happens, but none of it stops me from being annoyed by the fact that little will run on my 233MMX libretto (think Linux is exempt? ever tried running GNOME on one of these?)
Agreed. World Online have a very good service, IMO. I've been using them for over a year, with only two occasions of the slightest service interruption. Hooray for them!
Where was AltaVista planning on making its money from, exactly? A one-time 'administration' fee? A minute kickback from BT 0845 numbers?
Look at the ISPs that have a successful free-call service (like WorldOnline, ClaraNET). Their money comes from Calls and Access provision - where they operate (or partner with) a piggyback access provider (like Localtel or whoever) and take a decent cut of the call charges, while also being able to profit from voice calls made from the same number. The free ISP access essentially acts as a catalyst to get people to use your telecoms service.
The companies offering access for a 'one-time flat rate fee' don't especially inspire confidence in me - the disappearance of these services from the fly-by-night operations currently in place supports this.
Don't put all the blame on BT. Yes, the local loop has to be unbundled, but this is a much wider problem. The telecoms infrastructure in this country isn't marvellous, and, in some areas, still suffers from load issues. It takes time to deregulate an industry, let's make sure it's done properly.
In the meantime, check CUT for details of the unmetered access issues.
53(2) In proceedings against any person for an offence under this section, if it is shown that that person was in possession of a key to any protected information at any time before the time of the giving of the section 49 notice, that person shall be taken for the purposes of those proceedings to have continued to be in possession of that key at all subsequent times, unless it is shown that the key was not in his possession after the giving of the notice and before the time by which he was required to disclose it.
IANAL, of course, but this looks to me like presumption of guilt in some cases. If you have a key, then forget your password, this is punishable? I think it may be time to get the European Court of Human Rights involved.
Once again, Palm disappoint me... I'll happily play about with my little Nokia WAP phone, but to have mobile internet (especially GPRS) capability combined with a Palm would be... Fantastic.
I've heard it said before that US companies don't understand the European mobile market - particularly SMS services, and this helps confirm that theory. Mobile phone usage in the UK has now hit 50%, and this is behind other European countries like Italy.
If Palm don't do something soon, they're going to lose out to other manufacturers, and that's a pity, because I firmly believe theirs is the best PDA product out there. But for GSM PDAs, the new Ericsson R380's looking pretty good...
I sincerely hope the picture you paint of Daily Mail Britain isn't true, but I fear it may be. Our tendency to view with disdain those who have gained material success (even if this was gained ethically) holds us back on the international scene, and for nothing better than envy and puerile one-upmanship.
Please don't let's despair over this. Jack Straw can be proven wrong and have his authoritarian policies reviewed. Please, UK residents, make your views heard. And think. For yourself. Don't pick up that tabloid on the tube, it's full of sensationalist, inflammatory pap that'll dictate your opinions to you.
Come on, nice people at 3Com, let's see a GSM-enabled Palm... Look at the mobile coverage in Europe, look at the use of WAP that's rising, look at the number of people willing to use poxy UIs for their text messaging, look at the substandard design gone into the first generation WAP phones...
Frankly, if I could find a reasonably-priced PCN/GSM enabled PalmOS PDA, I'd buy it tomorrow. And I know I'm not the only one. It's far too footery linking it up via IR to an Ericsson SH888, uses up too much batteries... And when wireless broadband comes in this year... Wow.
My job is to implement and/or alter open source or off-the-shelf software for various new services my company provides. Choice of software and platform is always *very* difficult, and, as you could imagine, performance and reliability play a large part in that decision.
I would like to see a set of non-proprietary, transparent, applied benchmarks developed for important software packages, that would allow me to say "I will use that package, because..." without having to go on rumour, guesswork, sales literature, or, worse still, having the good projects given over to the M$ development people...
I'm not saying it would be an easy to develop well, and it still has huge capacity to be abused by those trying to credit their product (or discredit others'). If someone can get it right, and gain the trust of the commercial world, it could also stand to do the open source movement big favours in the corporate world. We *shall* have Apache on that server, we *will* use Samba, we *can* have OpenLDAP...
I reckon it's fairly undisputed that kids need to learn at least a bare minimum of computer literacy at school, that being how to use a basic GUI, word processor, spreadsheet, etc., as they'll be unable to do a job without it.
The biggest problem in my mind is that kids are being taught to be computer *users* (set aside the obvious 'it will be M$ software' here), and nothing more. We grew up with minimalist computers: ZX Spectrums, BBC Micros, and the like, and learned your basic programming from them. Which means that we have a generation of good programmers at graduate level.
But now kids are learning how to use a couple of apps, and... that's it. Schools, which are very often underfunded, are spending tens, hundreds of thousands of pounds investing in glorified typewriters. Surely that's not a good use of limited resources?
Of course, there's internet access. Pre-censored, but I could happily argue both sides of that. Lovely, useful, but if all you're learning to do is type stuff into Yahoo and click on hyperlinks, again, you're not learning massive amounts.
There'll always be a need for kids at school to learn whatever communication skills are relevant at the time. Whether that's chalk and slate or Word 97 (painful as that may be). And they need that skill for when they leave. But not exclusively. You still need to be able to write, read and count. But maybe all those handwriting classes can be chucked out the window, and word-processing can replace it. And as you get older, learn some HTML, perl, VB, what have you. And get people into the right mindset to actually build new computer stuff, not just use it.
Whichever model you take, a lot of the consequences come down to the quality of management in the place where you work. In many cases, the fixed-rate salary will be abused (as will per-day contract rates), but a good manager will seek to reward employees for extra effort, whether that be financially, hierarchically or otherwise. Hourly rates and a clock-watching culture are, in my personal opinion, only suited to short-term or low-skill assignments. It fails to encourage a 'work smarter, not harder' ethos, and often leads to employees abusing the system by claiming for more hours than worked, feeling justified in doing so through the effort they have put in relative to colleagues. If you want to regulate the situation, in the case of long-term careers, a fixed salary with overtime payments (where approved in advance), share options and regular appraisals works far better than a clock-watching system better suited to data entry clerks and shop assistants (both jobs I have done...)
Always preferred the word 'spod' when referring to techie types like our good selves. Allegedly from a Yorkshire word meaning 'workaholic', it now applies to your average spend-too-much-time-on-computer people, and manages to convey a positive side. (It's also a verb). New definition: someone who knows what the word 'spod' means. And everyone's happy with recursion.
Slashdot Mirror
The most advanced is currently Kannel, followed by Ophelia and GNUws.
Don't forget that in the UK, sites based in Scunthorpe (I won't highlight that one) have problems getting through these things too...
Graphic design and processing is a big area, and yes, it does require that little bit more gusto in the hardware department. What I object to isn't so much that processors speed up (a good thing, a technological advance) but more that operating systems have a tendency to fill that gap up in a remarkably short space of time. I'd like to think this is due to pure technological advance - experience has shown me otherwise.
It's a bit like when a road gets widened. It's congested again within months.
I can see many good reasons why this happens, but none of it stops me from being annoyed by the fact that little will run on my 233MMX libretto (think Linux is exempt? ever tried running GNOME on one of these?)
Just a vent. That's all.
How long will it take for M$ to bloat Windows so that you need one of these to run it?
Agreed. World Online have a very good service, IMO. I've been using them for over a year, with only two occasions of the slightest service interruption. Hooray for them!
And a debate on it here.
Here it is. Lots of articles, on the reasonable side of patronising.
Look at the ISPs that have a successful free-call service (like WorldOnline, ClaraNET). Their money comes from Calls and Access provision - where they operate (or partner with) a piggyback access provider (like Localtel or whoever) and take a decent cut of the call charges, while also being able to profit from voice calls made from the same number. The free ISP access essentially acts as a catalyst to get people to use your telecoms service.
The companies offering access for a 'one-time flat rate fee' don't especially inspire confidence in me - the disappearance of these services from the fly-by-night operations currently in place supports this.
Don't put all the blame on BT. Yes, the local loop has to be unbundled, but this is a much wider problem. The telecoms infrastructure in this country isn't marvellous, and, in some areas, still suffers from load issues. It takes time to deregulate an industry, let's make sure it's done properly. In the meantime, check CUT for details of the unmetered access issues.
IANAL, of course, but this looks to me like presumption of guilt in some cases. If you have a key, then forget your password, this is punishable? I think it may be time to get the European Court of Human Rights involved.
Incidentally, the full text of the bill is on the UK Government website.
I've heard it said before that US companies don't understand the European mobile market - particularly SMS services, and this helps confirm that theory. Mobile phone usage in the UK has now hit 50%, and this is behind other European countries like Italy.
If Palm don't do something soon, they're going to lose out to other manufacturers, and that's a pity, because I firmly believe theirs is the best PDA product out there. But for GSM PDAs, the new Ericsson R380's looking pretty good...
I sincerely hope the picture you paint of Daily Mail Britain isn't true, but I fear it may be. Our tendency to view with disdain those who have gained material success (even if this was gained ethically) holds us back on the international scene, and for nothing better than envy and puerile one-upmanship.
Please don't let's despair over this. Jack Straw can be proven wrong and have his authoritarian policies reviewed. Please, UK residents, make your views heard. And think. For yourself. Don't pick up that tabloid on the tube, it's full of sensationalist, inflammatory pap that'll dictate your opinions to you.
We must be better than this. Surely.
True, but I'm not sure I want to pay 10p per minute just to add an address...
Come on, nice people at 3Com, let's see a GSM-enabled Palm... Look at the mobile coverage in Europe, look at the use of WAP that's rising, look at the number of people willing to use poxy UIs for their text messaging, look at the substandard design gone into the first generation WAP phones...
Frankly, if I could find a reasonably-priced PCN/GSM enabled PalmOS PDA, I'd buy it tomorrow. And I know I'm not the only one. It's far too footery linking it up via IR to an Ericsson SH888, uses up too much batteries... And when wireless broadband comes in this year... Wow.
My job is to implement and/or alter open source or off-the-shelf software for various new services my company provides. Choice of software and platform is always *very* difficult, and, as you could imagine, performance and reliability play a large part in that decision.
I would like to see a set of non-proprietary, transparent, applied benchmarks developed for important software packages, that would allow me to say "I will use that package, because..." without having to go on rumour, guesswork, sales literature, or, worse still, having the good projects given over to the M$ development people...
I'm not saying it would be an easy to develop well, and it still has huge capacity to be abused by those trying to credit their product (or discredit others'). If someone can get it right, and gain the trust of the commercial world, it could also stand to do the open source movement big favours in the corporate world. We *shall* have Apache on that server, we *will* use Samba, we *can* have OpenLDAP...
Big ifs. I'll be quiet now.
I reckon it's fairly undisputed that kids need to learn at least a bare minimum of computer literacy at school, that being how to use a basic GUI, word processor, spreadsheet, etc., as they'll be unable to do a job without it.
The biggest problem in my mind is that kids are being taught to be computer *users* (set aside the obvious 'it will be M$ software' here), and nothing more. We grew up with minimalist computers: ZX Spectrums, BBC Micros, and the like, and learned your basic programming from them. Which means that we have a generation of good programmers at graduate level.
But now kids are learning how to use a couple of apps, and... that's it. Schools, which are very often underfunded, are spending tens, hundreds of thousands of pounds investing in glorified typewriters. Surely that's not a good use of limited resources?
Of course, there's internet access. Pre-censored, but I could happily argue both sides of that. Lovely, useful, but if all you're learning to do is type stuff into Yahoo and click on hyperlinks, again, you're not learning massive amounts.
There'll always be a need for kids at school to learn whatever communication skills are relevant at the time. Whether that's chalk and slate or Word 97 (painful as that may be). And they need that skill for when they leave. But not exclusively. You still need to be able to write, read and count. But maybe all those handwriting classes can be chucked out the window, and word-processing can replace it. And as you get older, learn some HTML, perl, VB, what have you. And get people into the right mindset to actually build new computer stuff, not just use it.
Whichever model you take, a lot of the consequences come down to the quality of management in the place where you work. In many cases, the fixed-rate salary will be abused (as will per-day contract rates), but a good manager will seek to reward employees for extra effort, whether that be financially, hierarchically or otherwise. Hourly rates and a clock-watching culture are, in my personal opinion, only suited to short-term or low-skill assignments. It fails to encourage a 'work smarter, not harder' ethos, and often leads to employees abusing the system by claiming for more hours than worked, feeling justified in doing so through the effort they have put in relative to colleagues. If you want to regulate the situation, in the case of long-term careers, a fixed salary with overtime payments (where approved in advance), share options and regular appraisals works far better than a clock-watching system better suited to data entry clerks and shop assistants (both jobs I have done...)
Always preferred the word 'spod' when referring to techie types like our good selves. Allegedly from a Yorkshire word meaning 'workaholic', it now applies to your average spend-too-much-time-on-computer people, and manages to convey a positive side. (It's also a verb). New definition: someone who knows what the word 'spod' means. And everyone's happy with recursion.