Glad I am not the only one who hates how QT looks. I use Linux/Gnome, OS X and WinXP and think all 3 of them look or can look nice and functional. I have always hated the blocky look of QT. This office suite looks butt ugly to me.
I understand your point and agree with you. However, am I the only one seeing what is happening? MS just started to get involved. Now all of a sudden, a "cost justification" thingy comes out. Next we will see how switching OLPC to MS Windows will save money.
The people who will be using these laptops have no clue what Linux is or what MS Windows is. Training will be the same for both OSes. I don't want to sound like some conspiracy freak, though I am willing to bet that we will soon see MS trying to justify using MS Windows over Linux on these laptops....
Watch the tech news for the next few weeks. I am sure we will see some MS-Fud about these laptops and how MS Windows would be better on them than Linux.
These laptops were about getting technology in the hands of those who would _never_ have said technology otherwise. It was never about "cost justification" or TCO or any other business buzz-word. If all phases of the rollout were not 100% as planed, it still would be a success because the technology would be in the hands of very poor kids who would not have access to the technology otherwise.
Training?... Uhh, we are talking about poor people here that would _never_ have a computer let alone training. This is not some stupid business expense that we can write off or do some MS-Magic(tm) and make it look like an MS-Solution(tm) would cost less. We are talking about humans that will get a pretty cheap laptop and will... you know... put in the time to learn what they have been given. We are not talking about "rich" Americans or Europeans where having a computer is expected. These laptops are going to people that would never have a laptop... ever.
It is pretty sick to me that some business idiot would try to justify costs going by typical business expenses.
I know what is coming next. Some MS-Study(tm) will show how the OLPC will be more "cost effective" if Microsoft were paid their fees instead of using Linux.
OLPC is pretty cool. I hope they succeed and do well. I hope the corporate greed of MS doesn't get in the way. However, with the recent activity of MS with regards to the OLPC, MS has their sites set on getting a piece of the pie. That can only mean corporate greed will take over the project and poor kids around the world will suffer because of it.:-(
Not even close. While Google has the number one spot for search engines, they don't come close to being a monopoly. MS has 95%+ of the desktop market share. Try buying a computer from one of the big vendors or at most stores here in the states without paying the MS tax. If I want a computer without MS windows, I have to buy the parts myself and build it.
Leveraging your position in the market for one product to increase your competitive advantage in the market for another product is nothing new. The problem comes when you are so dominant in Market A that leveraging that dominance in Market B would cause others to be unable to effectively compete in Market B.
Well said. And since Google does not come close to having the monopoly power MS does on the desktop, there is nothing to worry about for now. However if Google get 85%+ of the search market, then what they are currently doing would need to be stopped. As it is now, there are plenty of ways to advertise a competing product against Google that can be just as, if not more, effective.
This sounds more like an exec trying to get a nice fat Christmas bonus for himeself by putting 15%+ of the workers out of work for the holiday season. I have worked for 3 fortune 500's and this is how they all do it. They layoff a nice chunk of workers and then give themselves a big fat bonus for doing it. Pretty sickening if you ask me.
Yup, I don't see anything new here. Yahoo! has always invested broadly and shallowly. This dude won't change anything. He just wants to get a fat Christmas bonus so he figured the only way to do that was to put a bunch of people out of work. Don't worry, he and his family will have a nice holiday season. As for the 15% - 20% that he fires? Well, that is where we come in by giving money to the Salvation Army to help out families like that.
Long live uncontrolled capitalism! Hey, it is only to "maximize profits" or to "increase share holder value" right? Those few hundred or thousand families, well, they don't count.
I will eat my shorts if this bum doesn't get some type of bonus for successfully executing this round of layoffs.
...And then re-encode a cheesy 128 kbit AAC to some non-DRMed format. You end up with a crappy 96 kbit audio file at best... No thanks.
The whole "Apple's DRM is not bad" crap is just that, crap. Buying a music track as such low quality and then having to re-encode at a low bit rate to remove the crappy DRM is just not acceptable to me.
<soapbox type="technical">
I am lucky that I own an MS windows desktop, a very nice Ubuntu Linux desktop, a late 2006 Core 2 Duo iMac and a Core duo Intel Macbook. I am able to play the DRMed crap my wife bought on MS Windows and both Macs. However, I now block the iTunes store so my wife cannot buy any DRMed crap. Why? Because we ran into problems trying to play the tv episodes that we PAID for from Apple. My wife spent probably $30 on music and $40 on tv episodes. They were all encrusted with DRM and gave us problems with where we could play them and "authorization". I thought I was "authorized" to watch the crap when I PAID for it. From now on I just download the tv episodes we miss with the Usenet account I pay for. You can't beat Usenet. No RIAA/MPAA crap to worry about like you have with torrents.
</soapbox>
I agree with you that Apple doesn't have a monopoly on "music". However, they do have an effective monopoly on digital on-line music sales. IMO, that is nothing to cry about. As you pointed out, anyone can get off their bums and go to a mall. Though I would counter that with, you don't even need to go to a mall. Go on www.amazon.com and buy all the music CD's that you want. Sadly though, more and more music CD's are getting DRM to try to stop you from copying them so that you can play them on your portable music player. One music CD I bought tried to install some DRM crap and then had a data section on the CD that had the crappy DRM-encrusted WMV rips of the songs. Gee, just what I want. Crappy WMV, DRM-ecrusted digital versions of songs. No thanks. I put the disk in my Linux box, and encoded nice non-DRMed AAC files. For non-technical MS Windows users, they get an ugly DRM app installed when they put the CD in. Mac and Linux users have a lot less to worry about the DRM on music CD's.
However, GPG/PGP is meant to secure *PRIVATE* data/content that is never meant for *PUBLIC* distribution. If the media companies want to secure all of their non-public content with GPG/PGP/ETC, so be it, that is their right. The media companies are restricting a *PRODUCT* that I am buying and preventing me from exercising all of the rights that I am given with that purchase. Comparing private security techniques with public rights restrictions is just stupid.
Your argument makes no sense. How in the world would software that takes years to write be done by *one* person in another language in a short time frame to be able to compete?
There are already enough laws to protect large software companies. The first is copyright. I could not take the source code of Oracle or MS and sell it. If I did, I would owe all my profits to Oracle, MS or whatever company I took the copyrighted code from. As for your other suggestion of just *one* guy recreating the code in parallel, well that is just not reality. First, I am am a programmer with a decade of experience. Any good sized project requires more than one person. No one single programmer understands the whole code base enough to do what you suggest. Second, I have never worked for a company where I didn't sign an NDA. So if I did do what you suggested, I would be in court and lose a very fast court case and all the profits I made would be owed to the company I took the code base from.
Point being... there are already plenty of laws and contracts in place to protect just about any legitament situation that could arise with regards to the "IP" of source code.
The *only* things software patents allow are: patent trolls (people/companies that do not actually create, they just patent a stinking idea with no real work and either prevent or charge others to have the same idea) and companies with enough cash to buy up literally thousands of bogus patents to lock up the software development industry from any competition.
I agree 100%. This "review" board... well it seems bogus. Would any of the bogus MS patents get through this "review" process?
The idea of this peer-reviewed format is great. However, for it to work, no big patent holding companies can be a part of it. Otherwise we get all the bogus patents denied for all companies except MS, IBM, etc. MS, IBM and other big patent holders have tons of bogus patents. Is MS going to give up their current bogus patents? Or do they get to keep those?
I'm sick of people bashing DRM - the concept makes sense and I don't really have an issue with it
And I am sick of people trying to push digital restriction management. DRM make NO sense to me.
let's try to support a DRM scheme that works
Are you on crack? I will never support any restrictions on a work that I buy. I will go out of my way to support people like "DVD John".
Your entire post is just silly. You have a corrupted sense of what copyright was designed to do. Copyright was never designed to give a perpetual dictatorship over a work. Copyright has become corrupted by scum in the media industries. Copyright has effectively become perpetual for an author. Life plus 70 years is just insane. There is no author that can benefit from their work(s) for 70 years after they die.
You really need to read copyright law and not be a sheep of the misinformation pushed around by the media companies. I have more rights than what you state in your post. I have a right to resell (first-sale doctrine) the work that I bought. I have the right to convert (format-shift) to different formats. Digital restriction management PREVENTS me from exercising those rights and others. Your perverted and greedy views on copyright laws are out of touch with the reality of what copyright was made for.
Once a work/idea is released to the public, that work/idea becomes a part of other peoples minds/knowledge. No one should have the right to years of control over peoples knowledge.
do you honestly think any company (Intel, Microsoft, Samsung) would back this technology if it was limited to R/W cycles in thousands?
Huh? Do you think the companies you listed only back "good" technology? I have bought plenty of junk from MS. I remember buying Windows ME that MS claimed was "state of the art" and "more secure and stable". Heck, MS says XP is "more secure". More secure than what? I just had to clean my wife's laptop that is SP2 and fully patched with MS Windows Defender, MS Windows firewall and AVG anti virus and the thing has spyware crap on it that was bringing it to its knees. All the others computers on my network are Mac OS X and Linux based and had no problems. I only noticed because I used the laptop and noticed how slow the network was from only the laptop.
As for Intel, they don't exactly back only "good" technology. I have an early P4 with an Intel 845G chipset that is total junk.
So to answer your question of "do you honestly think any company (Intel, Microsoft, Samsung) would back this technology if it was limited to R/W cycles in thousands?". Yes, I do think any one of those companies would back any technology if that technology would make them a profit. MS and Intel are not in the customer-making business, they are in the money-making business. They will do what they can to make money, customers are only an after thought.
This is basically what I thought until I read the reviews on the site from places like CNet, PC mag, Chicago Tribune and others. I am using it now and it really helps keep your lap cool. It comes with two rubber bumpers to stick on the lap pad to lift up the back of your laptop. The bumpers help keep air circulating and also put the laptop at a nice angle for typing. I am using the lapinator and the fanControl app and my macbook has been cooler and I can use it now in my Lazy-Boy:-)
Amen to that! I just got my first Mac (macbook) and really love it. However I have really hated how hot it gets. I just purchased a Lapinator and hope that will help when it arrives.
I am glad that this code is under the GPL. Instead of having to have a GUI app always running to make sure the fans stay at a certain RPM, maybe I or another can rip out the guts and make it a cron job that runs every 5 mins or so?
OT:
P.S. Does anyone know of a good Mac usenet/email group for learning all I can about the Mac? Professionally, I have been programming Windows and Linux for 10 years so I do not want my hand held or told "you don't need to know that". A lot of the tips/solutions/etc I have been finding for Mac releated questions have been more for the "I want it to just work and don't care how" crowd. I am more of the "I love Linux and want to get dirty with my new Mac" crowd.
The GP said he wants his music _player_ to playback and _record_. The iPod does not record. The main reason I didn't get an iPod is because it does not record from line-in.
Furthermore, iTunes' restriction that it won't copy mp3s off of an iPod and onto a computer is merely proforma to mollify the recording industry. There is nothing built into the iPod to prevent you from copying mp3s off of it and onto your computer. In fact, there are a number of free programs out there that let you do precisely this.
Stop being an Apple apologist. I *love* my Mac, however that doesn't mean I put blinders on and think Apple is flawless. I think Apple made the wrong choice to try to stop you from just being able to copy your DRM-Free songs. Apple clearly pick corporate interests over their customers which is a shame. This is another reason why I didn't go with an iPod. A customer shouldn't need to use an unsupported program to try to copy their own DRM-Free songs.
That said, why should Debian be bending over backwards and sacrificing how it does things so a single package
Exaggerating a little? How is Debian bending over backwards to work with one of the top OSS projects to date? What exactly would "Debian" be sacrificing? As an end user I certainly have the ability to change the default trademarked FF icon if I wanted to.
Trying to imply that there's a massive open source organisation, though, and that everyone has the unified goal of having OSS take over servers and desktops and whatever else it takes to get noticed, is ridiculous.
There is. If it wasn't for IBM, Red Hat, Novell, HP, SUN and others, the OSS landscape would be much more barren. In the "Real World" it takes more than a philosophy to make something like OSS work. The other alternative is to have an extremely fragmented landscape of half done OSS projects out there where 1 in 10,000 efforts equate to anything useful. I personally would rather see all that talent organized. The Linux kernel is successful because it is organized. Many people can contribute, but there is a Benevolent Dictator at the top. Comities usually don't work well in OSS.
1) Is that official? I haven't seen the same stink about it in the Ubuntu mailing lists.
2) Debian-based doesn't make it Debian. Would you consider Linspire Debian? I wouldn't.
3) Huh? My Ubuntu desktop is using more current _stable_ software than when I went with Debian.
4) Your idea of "slow" and mine must be different. Debian stable is just too outdated. I prefer to use the most current _stable_ software out there. Debian's idea of "stable" seems to be 5 years old and outdated. I don't want Apache 1.3, mysql 3, php 4, etc. I will stick with a distro that is more in touch with reality, thanks.
And FF is free. Debian can ship with the standard FF logo. For my wife's laptop, I use the standard FF logo because that is what she looks for. Me, I replace the FF logo with one I like. The FSF is about _user_ freedom which I just showed I still have. The FSF was not setup for a bunch of people to sit around and complain about a stupid logo that won't harm Debian at all.
The Debian people making a stink over this should get back to work instead of wasting time over such a small "issue". For the Debian developers that don't care about this issue, jump ship and head over to Ubuntu.
Umm, no. Ubuntu is _not_ Debian, it is _based_ on Debian. A big difference. Would you consider Linspire/Lindows to be Debian? I wouldn't. Ubuntu has its own development community, etc. Ubuntu is Debian done right IMO.
The Firefox logo/trademark is important. Firefox has 10%+ of browser share now. That wasn't very easy to get. More and more non-techies are now familiar with Mozilla and/or Firefox and the logo. My father-in-law and wife are not technical, however both prefer Firefox now. One calls it Mozilla the other calls is "the fox", however both know what icon to click if I place it on their desktop.
The people of Debian are being stupid. The Firefox logo is an important logo and should be kept. Debian protects their trademark(s), why shouldn't Mozilla? I use Ubuntu over Debian, I just hope Ubuntu doesn't follow this stupid example of Debian. Mark S. seems to have his head on straight and since he is a business man I would think he understands the importance of a trademark.
It is not like Mozilla is trying to lock up the code and make everything proprietary. They just put a lot of effort into getting their name _and_ logo known and want to keep it that way.
Yup. The Debian people are becoming idiots. Just switch to Ubuntu and say goodbye to Debian. Debian moves too slow to be useful anymore. I hope all the sane Debian people move over to Ubuntu.
I would like something like this too. However I looked at the requirements and it said the software is MS Windows XP _only_. I would only consider this device if I could use Linux and possibly Mac to transfer my NON-DRM PDF files to it.
I hope this device just mounts as a USB mass-storage device. However, knowing Sony, they probably with mess this up with way too much proprietary crap.
Wow. My government spends 53 billion on edge-u-ma-cation and 399 billion on military. As a former US Marine, I find that disgusting. I guess we have a lot of dumb, yet dangerous Americans running around, eh?
Well, the guy is right IMO. What bank do you work for? I want to make sure they never have any of my money.
I work for a fortune 500. Our financial analysts use Excel to do things and they can do their little VBA stuff if they know it. However, if the excel spreadsheet starts to become complicated, a project is usually opened to let a real programmer like me, create a real program. All the important financial data stays in a real database and then depending on how complicated the interface/calculations are, I would create either a web-based app or a fat gui app. This approach scales the best and is the most flexible allowing the interface to be PHP, ASP.Net, C# Windows.Forms, Java, etc. The admins don't have to worry about VBA macro-viruses, lost spreadsheets, corrupted spreadsheets, etc. Access controls can be applied to the data/application to be sox compliant. For example, all of our financial apps have the username/passowrd authenticated via Netegrity and then a DB lookup to see what rights, if any, the authenticated user has with the data/application.
There is no real way to secure an excel spreadsheet that is admin friendly. You could password protected it, but if that password is forgotten, oops, bye-bye data. If the someone takes home an excel spreadsheet with sensitive financial data and they get cracked, opps! Maybe they take home that spreadsheet make important changes and then lose the spreadsheet or have a hard drive crash, opps!
Real companies hire real programmers to create real applications that are administered, protected and backed up by real sys admins. Allowing a non-IT financial business person to have that much control over financial data at any company, especially an INVESTMENT BANK, is just crazy. And people wonder how customers data gets exposed all the time.
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Glad I am not the only one who hates how QT looks. I use Linux/Gnome, OS X and WinXP and think all 3 of them look or can look nice and functional. I have always hated the blocky look of QT. This office suite looks butt ugly to me.
The people who will be using these laptops have no clue what Linux is or what MS Windows is. Training will be the same for both OSes. I don't want to sound like some conspiracy freak, though I am willing to bet that we will soon see MS trying to justify using MS Windows over Linux on these laptops....
Watch the tech news for the next few weeks. I am sure we will see some MS-Fud about these laptops and how MS Windows would be better on them than Linux.
These laptops were about getting technology in the hands of those who would _never_ have said technology otherwise. It was never about "cost justification" or TCO or any other business buzz-word. If all phases of the rollout were not 100% as planed, it still would be a success because the technology would be in the hands of very poor kids who would not have access to the technology otherwise.
The "fine" article says
Training?... Uhh, we are talking about poor people here that would _never_ have a computer let alone training. This is not some stupid business expense that we can write off or do some MS-Magic(tm) and make it look like an MS-Solution(tm) would cost less. We are talking about humans that will get a pretty cheap laptop and will... you know... put in the time to learn what they have been given. We are not talking about "rich" Americans or Europeans where having a computer is expected. These laptops are going to people that would never have a laptop... ever.
It is pretty sick to me that some business idiot would try to justify costs going by typical business expenses.
I know what is coming next. Some MS-Study(tm) will show how the OLPC will be more "cost effective" if Microsoft were paid their fees instead of using Linux.
OLPC is pretty cool. I hope they succeed and do well. I hope the corporate greed of MS doesn't get in the way. However, with the recent activity of MS with regards to the OLPC, MS has their sites set on getting a piece of the pie. That can only mean corporate greed will take over the project and poor kids around the world will suffer because of it.
Not even close. While Google has the number one spot for search engines, they don't come close to being a monopoly. MS has 95%+ of the desktop market share. Try buying a computer from one of the big vendors or at most stores here in the states without paying the MS tax. If I want a computer without MS windows, I have to buy the parts myself and build it.
Well said. And since Google does not come close to having the monopoly power MS does on the desktop, there is nothing to worry about for now. However if Google get 85%+ of the search market, then what they are currently doing would need to be stopped. As it is now, there are plenty of ways to advertise a competing product against Google that can be just as, if not more, effective.
Or Christmas bonus?
This sounds more like an exec trying to get a nice fat Christmas bonus for himeself by putting 15%+ of the workers out of work for the holiday season. I have worked for 3 fortune 500's and this is how they all do it. They layoff a nice chunk of workers and then give themselves a big fat bonus for doing it. Pretty sickening if you ask me.
Yup, I don't see anything new here. Yahoo! has always invested broadly and shallowly. This dude won't change anything. He just wants to get a fat Christmas bonus so he figured the only way to do that was to put a bunch of people out of work. Don't worry, he and his family will have a nice holiday season. As for the 15% - 20% that he fires? Well, that is where we come in by giving money to the Salvation Army to help out families like that.
Long live uncontrolled capitalism! Hey, it is only to "maximize profits" or to "increase share holder value" right? Those few hundred or thousand families, well, they don't count.
I will eat my shorts if this bum doesn't get some type of bonus for successfully executing this round of layoffs.
The whole "Apple's DRM is not bad" crap is just that, crap. Buying a music track as such low quality and then having to re-encode at a low bit rate to remove the crappy DRM is just not acceptable to me.
<soapbox type="technical">
I am lucky that I own an MS windows desktop, a very nice Ubuntu Linux desktop, a late 2006 Core 2 Duo iMac and a Core duo Intel Macbook. I am able to play the DRMed crap my wife bought on MS Windows and both Macs. However, I now block the iTunes store so my wife cannot buy any DRMed crap. Why? Because we ran into problems trying to play the tv episodes that we PAID for from Apple. My wife spent probably $30 on music and $40 on tv episodes. They were all encrusted with DRM and gave us problems with where we could play them and "authorization". I thought I was "authorized" to watch the crap when I PAID for it. From now on I just download the tv episodes we miss with the Usenet account I pay for. You can't beat Usenet. No RIAA/MPAA crap to worry about like you have with torrents.
</soapbox>
I agree with you that Apple doesn't have a monopoly on "music". However, they do have an effective monopoly on digital on-line music sales. IMO, that is nothing to cry about. As you pointed out, anyone can get off their bums and go to a mall. Though I would counter that with, you don't even need to go to a mall. Go on www.amazon.com and buy all the music CD's that you want. Sadly though, more and more music CD's are getting DRM to try to stop you from copying them so that you can play them on your portable music player. One music CD I bought tried to install some DRM crap and then had a data section on the CD that had the crappy DRM-encrusted WMV rips of the songs. Gee, just what I want. Crappy WMV, DRM-ecrusted digital versions of songs. No thanks. I put the disk in my Linux box, and encoded nice non-DRMed AAC files. For non-technical MS Windows users, they get an ugly DRM app installed when they put the CD in. Mac and Linux users have a lot less to worry about the DRM on music CD's.
However, GPG/PGP is meant to secure *PRIVATE* data/content that is never meant for *PUBLIC* distribution. If the media companies want to secure all of their non-public content with GPG/PGP/ETC, so be it, that is their right. The media companies are restricting a *PRODUCT* that I am buying and preventing me from exercising all of the rights that I am given with that purchase. Comparing private security techniques with public rights restrictions is just stupid.
There are already enough laws to protect large software companies. The first is copyright. I could not take the source code of Oracle or MS and sell it. If I did, I would owe all my profits to Oracle, MS or whatever company I took the copyrighted code from. As for your other suggestion of just *one* guy recreating the code in parallel, well that is just not reality. First, I am am a programmer with a decade of experience. Any good sized project requires more than one person. No one single programmer understands the whole code base enough to do what you suggest. Second, I have never worked for a company where I didn't sign an NDA. So if I did do what you suggested, I would be in court and lose a very fast court case and all the profits I made would be owed to the company I took the code base from.
Point being... there are already plenty of laws and contracts in place to protect just about any legitament situation that could arise with regards to the "IP" of source code.
The *only* things software patents allow are: patent trolls (people/companies that do not actually create, they just patent a stinking idea with no real work and either prevent or charge others to have the same idea) and companies with enough cash to buy up literally thousands of bogus patents to lock up the software development industry from any competition.
The idea of this peer-reviewed format is great. However, for it to work, no big patent holding companies can be a part of it. Otherwise we get all the bogus patents denied for all companies except MS, IBM, etc. MS, IBM and other big patent holders have tons of bogus patents. Is MS going to give up their current bogus patents? Or do they get to keep those?
Are you on crack? I will never support any restrictions on a work that I buy. I will go out of my way to support people like "DVD John".
Your entire post is just silly. You have a corrupted sense of what copyright was designed to do. Copyright was never designed to give a perpetual dictatorship over a work. Copyright has become corrupted by scum in the media industries. Copyright has effectively become perpetual for an author. Life plus 70 years is just insane. There is no author that can benefit from their work(s) for 70 years after they die.
You really need to read copyright law and not be a sheep of the misinformation pushed around by the media companies. I have more rights than what you state in your post. I have a right to resell (first-sale doctrine) the work that I bought. I have the right to convert (format-shift) to different formats. Digital restriction management PREVENTS me from exercising those rights and others. Your perverted and greedy views on copyright laws are out of touch with the reality of what copyright was made for.
Once a work/idea is released to the public, that work/idea becomes a part of other peoples minds/knowledge. No one should have the right to years of control over peoples knowledge.
Huh? Do you think the companies you listed only back "good" technology? I have bought plenty of junk from MS. I remember buying Windows ME that MS claimed was "state of the art" and "more secure and stable". Heck, MS says XP is "more secure". More secure than what? I just had to clean my wife's laptop that is SP2 and fully patched with MS Windows Defender, MS Windows firewall and AVG anti virus and the thing has spyware crap on it that was bringing it to its knees. All the others computers on my network are Mac OS X and Linux based and had no problems. I only noticed because I used the laptop and noticed how slow the network was from only the laptop.
As for Intel, they don't exactly back only "good" technology. I have an early P4 with an Intel 845G chipset that is total junk.
So to answer your question of "do you honestly think any company (Intel, Microsoft, Samsung) would back this technology if it was limited to R/W cycles in thousands?". Yes, I do think any one of those companies would back any technology if that technology would make them a profit. MS and Intel are not in the customer-making business, they are in the money-making business. They will do what they can to make money, customers are only an after thought.
My macbook is up to date. However do I have to do anything special to get the SMC firmware update?
This is basically what I thought until I read the reviews on the site from places like CNet, PC mag, Chicago Tribune and others. I am using it now and it really helps keep your lap cool. It comes with two rubber bumpers to stick on the lap pad to lift up the back of your laptop. The bumpers help keep air circulating and also put the laptop at a nice angle for typing. I am using the lapinator and the fanControl app and my macbook has been cooler and I can use it now in my Lazy-Boy :-)
Amen to that! I just got my first Mac (macbook) and really love it. However I have really hated how hot it gets. I just purchased a Lapinator and hope that will help when it arrives.
I am glad that this code is under the GPL. Instead of having to have a GUI app always running to make sure the fans stay at a certain RPM, maybe I or another can rip out the guts and make it a cron job that runs every 5 mins or so?
OT:
P.S. Does anyone know of a good Mac usenet/email group for learning all I can about the Mac? Professionally, I have been programming Windows and Linux for 10 years so I do not want my hand held or told "you don't need to know that". A lot of the tips/solutions/etc I have been finding for Mac releated questions have been more for the "I want it to just work and don't care how" crowd. I am more of the "I love Linux and want to get dirty with my new Mac" crowd.
Stop being an Apple apologist. I *love* my Mac, however that doesn't mean I put blinders on and think Apple is flawless. I think Apple made the wrong choice to try to stop you from just being able to copy your DRM-Free songs. Apple clearly pick corporate interests over their customers which is a shame. This is another reason why I didn't go with an iPod. A customer shouldn't need to use an unsupported program to try to copy their own DRM-Free songs.
There is. If it wasn't for IBM, Red Hat, Novell, HP, SUN and others, the OSS landscape would be much more barren. In the "Real World" it takes more than a philosophy to make something like OSS work. The other alternative is to have an extremely fragmented landscape of half done OSS projects out there where 1 in 10,000 efforts equate to anything useful. I personally would rather see all that talent organized. The Linux kernel is successful because it is organized. Many people can contribute, but there is a Benevolent Dictator at the top. Comities usually don't work well in OSS.
1) Is that official? I haven't seen the same stink about it in the Ubuntu mailing lists. 2) Debian-based doesn't make it Debian. Would you consider Linspire Debian? I wouldn't. 3) Huh? My Ubuntu desktop is using more current _stable_ software than when I went with Debian. 4) Your idea of "slow" and mine must be different. Debian stable is just too outdated. I prefer to use the most current _stable_ software out there. Debian's idea of "stable" seems to be 5 years old and outdated. I don't want Apache 1.3, mysql 3, php 4, etc. I will stick with a distro that is more in touch with reality, thanks.
And FF is free. Debian can ship with the standard FF logo. For my wife's laptop, I use the standard FF logo because that is what she looks for. Me, I replace the FF logo with one I like. The FSF is about _user_ freedom which I just showed I still have. The FSF was not setup for a bunch of people to sit around and complain about a stupid logo that won't harm Debian at all.
The Debian people making a stink over this should get back to work instead of wasting time over such a small "issue". For the Debian developers that don't care about this issue, jump ship and head over to Ubuntu.
Umm, no. Ubuntu is _not_ Debian, it is _based_ on Debian. A big difference. Would you consider Linspire/Lindows to be Debian? I wouldn't. Ubuntu has its own development community, etc. Ubuntu is Debian done right IMO.
The Firefox logo/trademark is important. Firefox has 10%+ of browser share now. That wasn't very easy to get. More and more non-techies are now familiar with Mozilla and/or Firefox and the logo. My father-in-law and wife are not technical, however both prefer Firefox now. One calls it Mozilla the other calls is "the fox", however both know what icon to click if I place it on their desktop.
The people of Debian are being stupid. The Firefox logo is an important logo and should be kept. Debian protects their trademark(s), why shouldn't Mozilla? I use Ubuntu over Debian, I just hope Ubuntu doesn't follow this stupid example of Debian. Mark S. seems to have his head on straight and since he is a business man I would think he understands the importance of a trademark.
It is not like Mozilla is trying to lock up the code and make everything proprietary. They just put a lot of effort into getting their name _and_ logo known and want to keep it that way.
Yup. The Debian people are becoming idiots. Just switch to Ubuntu and say goodbye to Debian. Debian moves too slow to be useful anymore. I hope all the sane Debian people move over to Ubuntu.
I would like something like this too. However I looked at the requirements and it said the software is MS Windows XP _only_. I would only consider this device if I could use Linux and possibly Mac to transfer my NON-DRM PDF files to it. I hope this device just mounts as a USB mass-storage device. However, knowing Sony, they probably with mess this up with way too much proprietary crap.
Wow. My government spends 53 billion on edge-u-ma-cation and 399 billion on military. As a former US Marine, I find that disgusting. I guess we have a lot of dumb, yet dangerous Americans running around, eh?
Well, the guy is right IMO. What bank do you work for? I want to make sure they never have any of my money.
I work for a fortune 500. Our financial analysts use Excel to do things and they can do their little VBA stuff if they know it. However, if the excel spreadsheet starts to become complicated, a project is usually opened to let a real programmer like me, create a real program. All the important financial data stays in a real database and then depending on how complicated the interface/calculations are, I would create either a web-based app or a fat gui app. This approach scales the best and is the most flexible allowing the interface to be PHP, ASP.Net, C# Windows.Forms, Java, etc. The admins don't have to worry about VBA macro-viruses, lost spreadsheets, corrupted spreadsheets, etc. Access controls can be applied to the data/application to be sox compliant. For example, all of our financial apps have the username/passowrd authenticated via Netegrity and then a DB lookup to see what rights, if any, the authenticated user has with the data/application.
There is no real way to secure an excel spreadsheet that is admin friendly. You could password protected it, but if that password is forgotten, oops, bye-bye data. If the someone takes home an excel spreadsheet with sensitive financial data and they get cracked, opps! Maybe they take home that spreadsheet make important changes and then lose the spreadsheet or have a hard drive crash, opps!
Real companies hire real programmers to create real applications that are administered, protected and backed up by real sys admins. Allowing a non-IT financial business person to have that much control over financial data at any company, especially an INVESTMENT BANK, is just crazy. And people wonder how customers data gets exposed all the time.