New ways to communicate. New ways to be creative!
on
TCP/IP Enabled Lego Brick
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· Score: 5, Insightful
As a fellow Mindstorms owner, this is incredibly interesting. I'm not that great of a builder myself - not compared with some of the folks I've seen on the 'net - but I'm looking into ways right now to get multiple bricks (RCX's) to communicate with each other.
Now with the ability to pass TCP/IP traffic back and forth, that opens up even greater avenues of possibility for device communication. Not only can you create software that will allow you (or someone over the web) to interact with the devices directly, it's now easier to get the RCX's to interact with other devices. One great example would be to have a brick as a part of a security system. How about intergrating it with an X10 system? Turn your robot on with the flick of a wall switch.
This just isn't a case of "let's port Apache to a Lego RCX brick!" The fact that these things are the brains of such a flexible system, with a wide variety of sensors, really opens up a great deal of possibility. More importantly, it allows for even more creativity and learning. After all, that's what these devices were made for, right?
No, it's really a bit deeper than that, from what I've read.
He feels that if people *really* want to read what he writes, then they'll modify their environment properly so that they'd be able to read it. He's stating that he doesn't care much one way or the other whether they want to read it or not - it's up to them.
Likewise, you could assume that if he wanted to read what people sent him enough that he would modify his environment in order to read it.
He's just picking and choosing how his communications go out, and how he receives them. How is that wrong? If people don't like it, then they don't have to communicate with him. It's that simple. Who the hell are *we* to say that he has to change so that we can receive his e-mails? Of course, you could say that if he *really* wanted to communicate with everyone then he *would* change. And ya know what? That's exactly what *he* is saying - he doesn't want to communicate with everyone, just with the folks that care enough to hear him.
Doesn't seem that complicated - or malicious - to me at all, really. I honestly don't see what the problem is.
I look at this as being somewhat similar (though not nearly as bad) as what several radio stations have been doing lately. Several stations in my area currently use a song's intro to continue talking or, increasingly, air additional advertisements or continue airing a lengthy one. To make matters worse, you can still hear the song's intro in the background.
I understand the importance of commercials in both television and radio - it's how they get their revenue, of course. But for awhile now radio stations (and, increasingly, television stations) have begun forgetting that the reason they have advertisers is because they have listeners/viewers. It's not the other way around.
There are actually several issues to consider when dealing with "document retention".
First off, one of the poster's arguments is a bit flawed. The poster states that the purpose of a document retention policy isn't to ensure that the document is kept, but to ensure that it's destroyed before it could be used in court, etc. This is incorrect. A good document retention policy covers both of those scenarios, as well as several others.
There are several good reasons why a document must be retained for a certain (or indefinate) amount of time - including legal reasons. Many businesses - even entire industries such as banking, telecom, finance, insurance, etc - must keep some records indefinately. In some cases, documents may need to be kept for a certain minimum amount of time - say three years or seven years - before being destroyed. In cases such as these, it's to satisfy certain legal or industry requirements, after which the prime reason for destruction is usually the cost of retention.
And yes, retention does cost money. You have to factor in the cost of paper (acid free, for those docs that aren't stored electronically), storage (environmentally controlled), disaster recovery (in cases the storage site burns down), media (for those docs that are stored electronically) and hardware to read the media.
Like you said, however, there are also valid reasons to ensure that some documents are not retained. In particular, e-mails. My company, for example, has a document retention policy stating that e-mail servers are not backed up. E-mail older than 45 days is automatically deleted. You're not allowed to auto-copy incoming e-mail to an alternate location or mailbox, to ensure that copies are kept elsewhere.
At a past client, e-mail servers were torn down monthly, had replacement hard drives installed, and had the server software reinstalled from scratch - importing in e-mail that is less than 30 days old. The old hard drives were shipped off to a destruction facility (managed by the client). All old servers had all media removed and shipped to the same facility. Any server or PC that was repurposed also had media replaced - again, the old media shipped off for destruction.
The most important thing about any document retention policy, however, is due dilligence. In every scenario - whether ensuring the destruction of past e-mails, the retention of legally sensitive documents, or the security of those documents - a good policy should cover everything.
Sorry, bud, but first NWN is NOT an AD&D game. The AD&D game is a completely separate line from the D&D (3e) game, and electronic rights for D&D were negotiated separately.
Also, Infogrames owns the rights to all computer-based tools and games. Interplay may have a license to publish D&D games, but then again, so does SSI (remember Pools of Radiance: Ruins of Myth Drannor? Released just a month or so ago...), and probably one or two other publishers. Owning the rights to something altogether and owning a license to something are two completely different things.
There is an "X" to close individual tabs. It's not on the tab itself, however. Instead, it's the "X" in the upper-right corner of the browser window, just above the scroll bar and below the logo. This "X" will close the currently active tab.
I agree that the "X" may be better placed on the tab itself, that way you don't have to switch to another tab to make it active, then close the tab. But, this way works well and it makes the tab feature that much cooler.:)
Actually, I prefer CDE over most of the other environments available. Most of you would consider this blasphemy, but I prefer CDE-like interfaces on my Linux boxen.
Sure, CDE has its issues:
1. It's quite ugly.
2. There's a clunky feel to it.
3. It's tends to be slow.
4. One word: Motif.
But it has one primary advantage: that first word in the acronym. Common. You see, the Common Desktop Environment is a very complete environment. It's very customizable, it's actually extremely stable, and you're guaranteed a consistent interface on any platform that implements it.
Sure, some vendors add their own extensions, but the base environment is the same. Config files and scripts will work across platforms. For someone who regularly works on several different UNIX boxes (and a few non-UNIX boxes as well), this is an incredible benift. Ya see, I don't care about having cool window decorations. I don't care about running Linux apps. I care about having a standard way to access servers - whether in CLI mode or GUI mode. It's a huge boost to productivty.
And when you're managing hundreds of heterogenous servers, productivity is an important consideration.
I still remember what things were like when I'd go from a HP-UX server (with VUE) to a Sun server (OpenWindows), to VMS, Digital UNIX. Each of them had different graphical environments (and trust me, OpenWindows, however much I liked it, was different). This was a bad thing.
Now, all of these operating systems use CDE - and there are more out there that either do by default or can (with installation). This is a good thing.:)
Very sloppy, Slashdot. You should know better. There's a reason why I don't go to a Linux news site for news on Solaris. The claim that Gnome 2.0 doesn't appear in the Solaris 9 downloadable beta, and then extending that claim to encompass the final version of Solaris 9 is completely ridiculous. Of course, they temper that claim with by saying that Sun labels the beta as "feature complete", which is true. However, I think I'd be hard-pressed to find a final copy of Gnome. The last I saw was a news snippet on Gnome.org, dated October 11, claiming that Gnome 2.0 was "coming up fast".
Finally, for those of you who have closely followed Sun's plans for Gnome, Sun has never once claimed that Gnome 2.0 would be a part of Solaris 9. Sun's Gnome site provides Gnome 1.4 as a "reference implementation", and says that Gnome will be the foundation of its future desktop. According to the site, "The next major release, GNOME 2.x, is expected in mid-2002".
This is a great little technical toy - offers peace of mind to management and such - but that's really about it. There are several things that aren't mentioned, and one thing (for a biometric system of this sort) that is glaringly absent.
First, how easily can the device be damaged? Scratched? Can you register more than one finger (in case you get a cut or scratch on the one registered)?
Finally, there are plenty of companies who would find a laptop like this useful. But there are several organizations that would not only find this neat, but would demand that this level of security be mandatory. For this crowd, the device is next to useless without an included heat sensor. And don't forget one of the most important things: for decent security, it should be a combination of what you have (a finger) and what you know (password/phrase/etc). Unless you use them in combination, having just one isn't much better that just having the other.
The "Where in the * is Carmen San Diego" series is one of the best. Another common one that I've seen used in several schools was "Oregon Trail". If literacy levels are a concern, you may want to try some of the several text adventures out there. There are several good ones that are made for younger people - and having to read and type may be a great help to boost those literacy levels.
The various "Sim" games are, of course, excellent. I'd recommend Sim Earth, as it was intended to be purely educational. Sim City is, of course, a good one. Finally, though it can be considered slightly violent, depending on how you look at it, Civilization II would be an excellent choice for a strategy game.
Coming from a 23 year old who has been in the industry as a consultant for several years, I feel that I can safely say that neither age nor experience are the only factors. In the long run, age really matters little, and experience is often thought of as taking center stage. But it's more than that, really - it's how you carry yourself and how you interact with others that is of the utmost importance.
In my consulting career, I've been at many companies and have held many (and varied) responsibilities. That latter part, the responsibility, is a key. Most of the young(ish) folks I've worked with, whatever their age or experience, often don't have an adequate sense of responsibility - and they carry themselves in such a way that others know it. Immediately.
In a business setting, you've also got to take professionalism in mind. How do you respond when a project is rejected - whatever the technical or business merits? How well do you interact with your peers? Your subordinates? Your boss? And what about your boss' boss?
What about keeping in mind the business needs above all else? One example I can think of is a web programmer who kept insisting that one of my clients go with a combination of PHP on their company's intranet with a Java/Servlet back end. Technically, the ideas were excellent. But did it take the business needs into account? Not when all of the programmers were COBOL and Fortan coders. Not when the majority of the admins were primarily from the MVS and VMS side of the fence, just getting around to learning Digital UNIX and AIX.
In my experience, these are the real factors that people are judged by. For (what I feel are) obvious reasons, they tend to apply to younger people moreso than older people. Pay more attention to the so-called "soft skills" - how you interact with others and how you allow others to view you (and yes, you *DO* have a choice in how others view you) and you'll likely find a lot of these "age-related" issues disappearing.
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Widespread Palm Use in the Medical Industry
on
Digital Doctoring
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· Score: 1
I've been working lately at several clients that are in the medical field - everything from an HMO to a clinical software developer - and Palm use is becoming more widespread in this industry every day.
Many doctors and nurses are beginning to use Palms and specialized software to handle patient information, take notes, and do quick research on different medicines (there is a pharmaceutical references Visor module). What's more, I've seen a lot of use of the wireless Palms as well.
For the most part, this is great. However, my biggest concern is the base infrastructure - these PDA's tend to interface with grossly outdated software.
I apologize for the open-endedness of this question, but I have to ask it anyways.:)
If this copy protection were to become mandatory, I can definately imagine the effects that it would cause. But what effects - both long and short term - do you feel this would cause?
Sure, the new MacOSX is based on BSD and everything, and it's already been proven that it's possible to port to it, but does that mean that it's time to dump Linux for it?
Why?
There are two main reasons to use Linux, depending on your personal beliefs. Either you feel that the Open Source way of doing things is better and should be supported or you feel that Linux has a better kernel.
This question is rather equivalent to asking if you should dump Linux just because Cygwin is available for Windows. Sure, you *could* dump Linux for MacOSX, but people aren't using Linux PPC just because they want a UNIX-like OS on their G4 - the reasons usually go deeper than that.
Well, AD, you're definately not the only one. Back when I frequented Epinions, I did a review on the E450 - a rather good one, if you don't mind my not-so-humble opinion. After reading your comments, I decided to take a look at Mr. Chabot's E450 review.
Guess what? Well, to paraphrase some rather famous person (I think), copyright infringement is the sincerest form of flattery - it appears that whole paragraphs from my review have magically appeared in Mr. Chabot's review. I'm extremely pissed off about this, to put it mildly. I sent Epinions an e-mail about this, and hopefully they'll do something suitably nasty, but in the meantime I've sent my own rather scathing e-mail to the folks at Reviewboard.
Now, for something a bit on the brighter side - I've contacted my lawyer regarding this, and it turns out that we may be eligable for damages! That's right - you see, Reviewboard uses banner advertisements. They actually receive money for each person that sees this review. There's probably little that can be done for the majority of the time that these reviews have been up - after all, they're not obligated to review each review for potential copyright infringement - but once they've been notified of the infringement they're obligated to take care of the situation, either by ensuring that no infringement exists or by removing the infringing material. Apparently (and if anyone else knows a lawyer - or is one - who has a differing view, please let me know. I'm always interested in second opinions), once they've been notified, we're eligible to receive damages from them starting from the time that they were notified.
If you hear anything from Reviewboard or from Epinions about this, please let me know - I'd like to keep abreast of the situation. I wasn't sure if the address you have on Slashdot is true (somehow, comments@netscape.net strikes me as a mighty nice SPAM director):)
If all of what my lawyer says is true, then now we get to the cool part. These reviews were on Slashdot. You know what that means?
An organization wanting to standardize on Outlook and Exchange is not only common, but perfectly understandable. Currently, Outlook is the defacto standard for PIMs in most organizations.
The difficulty comes when installing Exchange, as well, because of many reasons: the perceived instability, the huge amount of computing resources needed compared with sendmail, and the various security concerns.
One thing you may wish to check out is HP's OpenMail. OpenMail runs on Solaris, HP, Linux, and (I believe) AIX. It supports all the Internet standards (POP, IMAP, X.500, etc). But, most importantly, it offers MAPI support as well - allowing full integration with Outlook. This includes calendar sharing and public folders. To top it all off, it's also designed to work in an HA environment.
I've noticed the same things, and have been scouring that board regularly for new information on hacking into it. It doesn't seem like there's been any *real* activity for awhile now.
I've tried the same things as you have, but I also can't get past the BIOS password. Right now, I'm looking into the possibility of purchasing a new BIOS chip and seeing where that may lead. So far, from the information I've found out about that particular BIOS, it *does* give you a choice on whether it uses the Disk on Chip or the HDD header.
Finally, as for returning the player: no, it's not necessary. The e-mail I received specifically said that we're released from the terms of the membership agreement. In fact, if you follow the link provided in the e-mail, it leads to a FAQ that asks your same question. The answer is that, since we're released from the terms of the agreement, we will *not* be charged if we wish to keep the WebPlayer. Instead, they're trying to coax us into returning it by repeatedly saying that it won't work with any other service providers. (I'm sorry, but I don't have the link to the FAQ handy right now...)
I'll start posting on the board if I find anything else useful about purchasing a new BIOS outright.
In cases such as this, the retailers (and other groups) aren't the ones watching out for your child. They're actually making it *easier* for you to watch out for your child. If you want your child to be able to go out and by any game that he/she wants, then that's fine - that's your perogative as a parent. You have every right as a consumer to boycott stores that are enforcing those rules.
I do agree that reaching a certain "magic birthday" shouldn't be considered a mark of adulthood. Many children I've known show a remarkable amount of "adultness", especially when compared to other adults. However, these children are definately in the minority. These ratings, and most other forms of age restrictions, are not meant to keep kids from doing stuff. They're meant to keep them from doing stuff *without the parents permission*. They also don't "assume that you restrict your child to certain material for 17 years of their life" - that's never been the intention. They assume that you should have a choice in what they watch, read, or hear.
That's all this is about - making it easier for parents to be parents, and allowing them to make a choice in what the kid watches. Not making that choice for them.
I've had the same experience. For the most part, I personally think that it's interface is fantastic. In a lot of ways it beats Borland hands-down (nice code browser, professional interface, wonderful plugin API). However, this is the only app that makes my box (256 megs of RAM) seem like a 486. And after having used JBuilder, I find it VERY difficult to work with any GUI builder that has those *DO NOT DELETE!* sections. I like to be able to WORK with my code, not stare at it.
Slashdot Mirror
As a fellow Mindstorms owner, this is incredibly interesting. I'm not that great of a builder myself - not compared with some of the folks I've seen on the 'net - but I'm looking into ways right now to get multiple bricks (RCX's) to communicate with each other.
Now with the ability to pass TCP/IP traffic back and forth, that opens up even greater avenues of possibility for device communication. Not only can you create software that will allow you (or someone over the web) to interact with the devices directly, it's now easier to get the RCX's to interact with other devices. One great example would be to have a brick as a part of a security system. How about intergrating it with an X10 system? Turn your robot on with the flick of a wall switch.
This just isn't a case of "let's port Apache to a Lego RCX brick!" The fact that these things are the brains of such a flexible system, with a wide variety of sensors, really opens up a great deal of possibility. More importantly, it allows for even more creativity and learning. After all, that's what these devices were made for, right?
No, it's really a bit deeper than that, from what I've read.
He feels that if people *really* want to read what he writes, then they'll modify their environment properly so that they'd be able to read it. He's stating that he doesn't care much one way or the other whether they want to read it or not - it's up to them.
Likewise, you could assume that if he wanted to read what people sent him enough that he would modify his environment in order to read it.
He's just picking and choosing how his communications go out, and how he receives them. How is that wrong? If people don't like it, then they don't have to communicate with him. It's that simple. Who the hell are *we* to say that he has to change so that we can receive his e-mails? Of course, you could say that if he *really* wanted to communicate with everyone then he *would* change. And ya know what? That's exactly what *he* is saying - he doesn't want to communicate with everyone, just with the folks that care enough to hear him.
Doesn't seem that complicated - or malicious - to me at all, really. I honestly don't see what the problem is.
I look at this as being somewhat similar (though not nearly as bad) as what several radio stations have been doing lately. Several stations in my area currently use a song's intro to continue talking or, increasingly, air additional advertisements or continue airing a lengthy one. To make matters worse, you can still hear the song's intro in the background.
I understand the importance of commercials in both television and radio - it's how they get their revenue, of course. But for awhile now radio stations (and, increasingly, television stations) have begun forgetting that the reason they have advertisers is because they have listeners/viewers. It's not the other way around.
The client was a government defense contractor. :)
First off, one of the poster's arguments is a bit flawed. The poster states that the purpose of a document retention policy isn't to ensure that the document is kept, but to ensure that it's destroyed before it could be used in court, etc. This is incorrect. A good document retention policy covers both of those scenarios, as well as several others.
There are several good reasons why a document must be retained for a certain (or indefinate) amount of time - including legal reasons. Many businesses - even entire industries such as banking, telecom, finance, insurance, etc - must keep some records indefinately. In some cases, documents may need to be kept for a certain minimum amount of time - say three years or seven years - before being destroyed. In cases such as these, it's to satisfy certain legal or industry requirements, after which the prime reason for destruction is usually the cost of retention.
And yes, retention does cost money. You have to factor in the cost of paper (acid free, for those docs that aren't stored electronically), storage (environmentally controlled), disaster recovery (in cases the storage site burns down), media (for those docs that are stored electronically) and hardware to read the media.
Like you said, however, there are also valid reasons to ensure that some documents are not retained. In particular, e-mails. My company, for example, has a document retention policy stating that e-mail servers are not backed up. E-mail older than 45 days is automatically deleted. You're not allowed to auto-copy incoming e-mail to an alternate location or mailbox, to ensure that copies are kept elsewhere.
At a past client, e-mail servers were torn down monthly, had replacement hard drives installed, and had the server software reinstalled from scratch - importing in e-mail that is less than 30 days old. The old hard drives were shipped off to a destruction facility (managed by the client). All old servers had all media removed and shipped to the same facility. Any server or PC that was repurposed also had media replaced - again, the old media shipped off for destruction.
The most important thing about any document retention policy, however, is due dilligence. In every scenario - whether ensuring the destruction of past e-mails, the retention of legally sensitive documents, or the security of those documents - a good policy should cover everything.
Sorry, bud, but first NWN is NOT an AD&D game. The AD&D game is a completely separate line from the D&D (3e) game, and electronic rights for D&D were negotiated separately.
Also, Infogrames owns the rights to all computer-based tools and games. Interplay may have a license to publish D&D games, but then again, so does SSI (remember Pools of Radiance: Ruins of Myth Drannor? Released just a month or so ago...), and probably one or two other publishers. Owning the rights to something altogether and owning a license to something are two completely different things.
There is an "X" to close individual tabs. It's not on the tab itself, however. Instead, it's the "X" in the upper-right corner of the browser window, just above the scroll bar and below the logo. This "X" will close the currently active tab.
:)
I agree that the "X" may be better placed on the tab itself, that way you don't have to switch to another tab to make it active, then close the tab. But, this way works well and it makes the tab feature that much cooler.
Would this help explain the lack of stories since 9:44a? :)
Actually, I prefer CDE over most of the other environments available. Most of you would consider this blasphemy, but I prefer CDE-like interfaces on my Linux boxen.
:)
Sure, CDE has its issues:
1. It's quite ugly.
2. There's a clunky feel to it.
3. It's tends to be slow.
4. One word: Motif.
But it has one primary advantage: that first word in the acronym. Common. You see, the Common Desktop Environment is a very complete environment. It's very customizable, it's actually extremely stable, and you're guaranteed a consistent interface on any platform that implements it.
Sure, some vendors add their own extensions, but the base environment is the same. Config files and scripts will work across platforms. For someone who regularly works on several different UNIX boxes (and a few non-UNIX boxes as well), this is an incredible benift. Ya see, I don't care about having cool window decorations. I don't care about running Linux apps. I care about having a standard way to access servers - whether in CLI mode or GUI mode. It's a huge boost to productivty.
And when you're managing hundreds of heterogenous servers, productivity is an important consideration.
I still remember what things were like when I'd go from a HP-UX server (with VUE) to a Sun server (OpenWindows), to VMS, Digital UNIX. Each of them had different graphical environments (and trust me, OpenWindows, however much I liked it, was different). This was a bad thing.
Now, all of these operating systems use CDE - and there are more out there that either do by default or can (with installation). This is a good thing.
Very sloppy, Slashdot. You should know better. There's a reason why I don't go to a Linux news site for news on Solaris. The claim that Gnome 2.0 doesn't appear in the Solaris 9 downloadable beta, and then extending that claim to encompass the final version of Solaris 9 is completely ridiculous. Of course, they temper that claim with by saying that Sun labels the beta as "feature complete", which is true. However, I think I'd be hard-pressed to find a final copy of Gnome. The last I saw was a news snippet on Gnome.org, dated October 11, claiming that Gnome 2.0 was "coming up fast".
Finally, for those of you who have closely followed Sun's plans for Gnome, Sun has never once claimed that Gnome 2.0 would be a part of Solaris 9. Sun's Gnome site provides Gnome 1.4 as a "reference implementation", and says that Gnome will be the foundation of its future desktop. According to the site, "The next major release, GNOME 2.x, is expected in mid-2002".
This is a great little technical toy - offers peace of mind to management and such - but that's really about it. There are several things that aren't mentioned, and one thing (for a biometric system of this sort) that is glaringly absent.
First, how easily can the device be damaged? Scratched? Can you register more than one finger (in case you get a cut or scratch on the one registered)?
Finally, there are plenty of companies who would find a laptop like this useful. But there are several organizations that would not only find this neat, but would demand that this level of security be mandatory. For this crowd, the device is next to useless without an included heat sensor. And don't forget one of the most important things: for decent security, it should be a combination of what you have (a finger) and what you know (password/phrase/etc). Unless you use them in combination, having just one isn't much better that just having the other.
The "Where in the * is Carmen San Diego" series is one of the best. Another common one that I've seen used in several schools was "Oregon Trail". If literacy levels are a concern, you may want to try some of the several text adventures out there. There are several good ones that are made for younger people - and having to read and type may be a great help to boost those literacy levels.
The various "Sim" games are, of course, excellent. I'd recommend Sim Earth, as it was intended to be purely educational. Sim City is, of course, a good one. Finally, though it can be considered slightly violent, depending on how you look at it, Civilization II would be an excellent choice for a strategy game.
In my consulting career, I've been at many companies and have held many (and varied) responsibilities. That latter part, the responsibility, is a key. Most of the young(ish) folks I've worked with, whatever their age or experience, often don't have an adequate sense of responsibility - and they carry themselves in such a way that others know it. Immediately.
In a business setting, you've also got to take professionalism in mind. How do you respond when a project is rejected - whatever the technical or business merits? How well do you interact with your peers? Your subordinates? Your boss? And what about your boss' boss?
What about keeping in mind the business needs above all else? One example I can think of is a web programmer who kept insisting that one of my clients go with a combination of PHP on their company's intranet with a Java/Servlet back end. Technically, the ideas were excellent. But did it take the business needs into account? Not when all of the programmers were COBOL and Fortan coders. Not when the majority of the admins were primarily from the MVS and VMS side of the fence, just getting around to learning Digital UNIX and AIX.
In my experience, these are the real factors that people are judged by. For (what I feel are) obvious reasons, they tend to apply to younger people moreso than older people. Pay more attention to the so-called "soft skills" - how you interact with others and how you allow others to view you (and yes, you *DO* have a choice in how others view you) and you'll likely find a lot of these "age-related" issues disappearing.
--
Many doctors and nurses are beginning to use Palms and specialized software to handle patient information, take notes, and do quick research on different medicines (there is a pharmaceutical references Visor module). What's more, I've seen a lot of use of the wireless Palms as well.
For the most part, this is great. However, my biggest concern is the base infrastructure - these PDA's tend to interface with grossly outdated software.
--
If this copy protection were to become mandatory, I can definately imagine the effects that it would cause. But what effects - both long and short term - do you feel this would cause?
--
Sure, the new MacOSX is based on BSD and everything, and it's already been proven that it's possible to port to it, but does that mean that it's time to dump Linux for it?
Why?
There are two main reasons to use Linux, depending on your personal beliefs. Either you feel that the Open Source way of doing things is better and should be supported or you feel that Linux has a better kernel.
This question is rather equivalent to asking if you should dump Linux just because Cygwin is available for Windows. Sure, you *could* dump Linux for MacOSX, but people aren't using Linux PPC just because they want a UNIX-like OS on their G4 - the reasons usually go deeper than that.
Nathan Ladd
--
Guess what? Well, to paraphrase some rather famous person (I think), copyright infringement is the sincerest form of flattery - it appears that whole paragraphs from my review have magically appeared in Mr. Chabot's review. I'm extremely pissed off about this, to put it mildly. I sent Epinions an e-mail about this, and hopefully they'll do something suitably nasty, but in the meantime I've sent my own rather scathing e-mail to the folks at Reviewboard.
Now, for something a bit on the brighter side - I've contacted my lawyer regarding this, and it turns out that we may be eligable for damages! That's right - you see, Reviewboard uses banner advertisements. They actually receive money for each person that sees this review. There's probably little that can be done for the majority of the time that these reviews have been up - after all, they're not obligated to review each review for potential copyright infringement - but once they've been notified of the infringement they're obligated to take care of the situation, either by ensuring that no infringement exists or by removing the infringing material. Apparently (and if anyone else knows a lawyer - or is one - who has a differing view, please let me know. I'm always interested in second opinions), once they've been notified, we're eligible to receive damages from them starting from the time that they were notified.
If you hear anything from Reviewboard or from Epinions about this, please let me know - I'd like to keep abreast of the situation. I wasn't sure if the address you have on Slashdot is true (somehow, comments@netscape.net strikes me as a mighty nice SPAM director) :)
If all of what my lawyer says is true, then now we get to the cool part. These reviews were on Slashdot. You know what that means?
So do I. :)
CNLadd
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The difficulty comes when installing Exchange, as well, because of many reasons: the perceived instability, the huge amount of computing resources needed compared with sendmail, and the various security concerns.
One thing you may wish to check out is HP's OpenMail. OpenMail runs on Solaris, HP, Linux, and (I believe) AIX. It supports all the Internet standards (POP, IMAP, X.500, etc). But, most importantly, it offers MAPI support as well - allowing full integration with Outlook. This includes calendar sharing and public folders. To top it all off, it's also designed to work in an HA environment.
I've tried the same things as you have, but I also can't get past the BIOS password. Right now, I'm looking into the possibility of purchasing a new BIOS chip and seeing where that may lead. So far, from the information I've found out about that particular BIOS, it *does* give you a choice on whether it uses the Disk on Chip or the HDD header.
Finally, as for returning the player: no, it's not necessary. The e-mail I received specifically said that we're released from the terms of the membership agreement. In fact, if you follow the link provided in the e-mail, it leads to a FAQ that asks your same question. The answer is that, since we're released from the terms of the agreement, we will *not* be charged if we wish to keep the WebPlayer. Instead, they're trying to coax us into returning it by repeatedly saying that it won't work with any other service providers. (I'm sorry, but I don't have the link to the FAQ handy right now...)
I'll start posting on the board if I find anything else useful about purchasing a new BIOS outright.
I disagree.
In cases such as this, the retailers (and other groups) aren't the ones watching out for your child. They're actually making it *easier* for you to watch out for your child. If you want your child to be able to go out and by any game that he/she wants, then that's fine - that's your perogative as a parent. You have every right as a consumer to boycott stores that are enforcing those rules.
I do agree that reaching a certain "magic birthday" shouldn't be considered a mark of adulthood. Many children I've known show a remarkable amount of "adultness", especially when compared to other adults. However, these children are definately in the minority. These ratings, and most other forms of age restrictions, are not meant to keep kids from doing stuff. They're meant to keep them from doing stuff *without the parents permission*. They also don't "assume that you restrict your child to certain material for 17 years of their life" - that's never been the intention. They assume that you should have a choice in what they watch, read, or hear.
That's all this is about - making it easier for parents to be parents, and allowing them to make a choice in what the kid watches. Not making that choice for them.
I've had the same experience. For the most part, I personally think that it's interface is fantastic. In a lot of ways it beats Borland hands-down (nice code browser, professional interface, wonderful plugin API). However, this is the only app that makes my box (256 megs of RAM) seem like a 486. And after having used JBuilder, I find it VERY difficult to work with any GUI builder that has those *DO NOT DELETE!* sections. I like to be able to WORK with my code, not stare at it.