Free PC With French Broadband Connection 245
robson writes "Neuf Cegetel announced the purchase of AOL France, an ISP that counts 500,000 broadband subscribers and the arrival of 'the box,' an Internet access terminal. Code-name: Easy Gate.
It's a computer, working under the Linux OS. It's a router. It's a DSL modem. It's also a telephone. All in one.
Easy Gate will be available from November, the actual 'box' consists of: an Intel 852 GM, 6 ports USB 2.0, 512 Mb of RAM and 512 Mb of Flash memory."
Bread? (Score:5, Funny)
Dellised? (Score:3, Informative)
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Dell wishes their machines looked this good.
I Hope... (Score:5, Interesting)
It's a computer, working under the Linux OS. It's a router. It's a DSL modem. It's also a telephone. All in one. Easy Gate will be available from November, the actual 'box' consists of: an Intel 852 GM, 6 ports USB 2.0, 512 Mb of RAM and 512 Mb of Flash memory."
I hope it's secure. I don't need SPAM from 500K new sources.
A win for Linux? Maybe encourage more mainstream plugin and webapp development? It's France and EU turf so it looks like a good thing on the surface.
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It's a minor win for Linux. Despite the headline, this is not a PC, it's a "thin client". (In the original sense of the word, where the client did actual client-side work, as opposed to the graphic terminals that masquerade [sun.com] as "thin clients.) So this is just one of many systems that use Linux as an embedded OS. Nothing to sneer at, but not a major win either.
What would be a major win is if this were a "real" PC, with a word processor, spreadsheet, etc., all running under Linux. Not going to happen any tim
Re:I Hope... (Score:4, Interesting)
Nice or original features:
- the hot line apparently plan to seize control of the PC whenever one has an issue. Just like in any company indeed, just with much more logs.
- they will not accept whatever hardware : they sell or rent some. I hope they will contribute to the drivers.
Licensing & privacy issues are to be looked after.
Some more information in French:
http://www.easyneuf.fr/flash/ (the official launch date is October the 15th)
http://www.silicon.fr/articles/16846/Neuf-Cegetel
https://linuxfr.org/2006/09/22/21362.html
By the way, have you heard recently that Free.fr was to invest 1.0 Bn Euro in the next years to provide ultra-high bandwidth access in big French cities (i.e. 50 Mbit/s by optical fibers, possibly with symetric data-rates, for 30 Euros a month with triple pay)?
Maybe will I finaly lend a core to the CERN for free...
Beyond HD-TV, I wonder if very high speed Internet access, multi-core personnal PCs and virtualisation technologies (not sure for this one) will allow us to share our CPUs and our disks. What would you think?
And since this is now a many-stupid thoughts in one late post, let me put some more in it:
- this reminds me of a ThinkGeek T-Shirt claiming "will work for bandwith": all you now need is 30 € a month...
- I will be happy when Linus comes back to Europe. I do not even believe he thinks about it, but let's dream. Linus? 50 Mb/s nearly for free, both ways, with free phone to the US and half of the Free World? We've got good Belgian or Irish or German beers too, come on, come back!!!!
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Well, if you consider that having a FTP is a share of CPU and disks, I'm pretty sure that a lot of people will "share" their 50Mb upstream line with people like RAZOR1911, L0L, XOR, RELOADED... Who needs P2P when you have an IPSEC FTP ? Not that I'd do that, of course.
Really a "thinnish client" (Score:2)
Linux is pretty well suited to this model of operation. It can be stripped to a reduced configuration. Since
How do they do it?... (Score:4, Funny)
Total cost of ownership (Score:2, Interesting)
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Cool (Score:4, Insightful)
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20 years ago, Southwestern Bell had tens of thousands of people connecting little boxes with chicklet keyboards to phones lines to chat with each other -- based on the success of a previous French project to link people with similar hardware.
A few years earlier the French also proved their trendsetting knack for technology with the red ALICE [wikipedia.org] units that were 300 baud (300bps for rude Americans who cannot properly pronouce Emile Baudot's namesake)
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Compared to "millions of phone customers", "tens of thousands" of Minitel users isn't that impressive. And if it was all that popular (compared to French Minitel, which was popular), it would have been all over the tech press, and the other RBOCs would have emulated SW
My head asplode (Score:5, Funny)
Also, what kind of a name is "America OnLine France"? Shouldn't it be "France OnLine"? FOL? Hmmm....
Re:My head asplode (Score:5, Informative)
It's worth noting that this business model is not that novel in France. Before the Internet, the French had a network called Minitel [wikipedia.org]. A load of dumb terminals were handed out for free to French businesses and households, as a replacement for a printed telephone directory. This gave access to telephone directory listings and a number of commercial services. The 'phone company took a connection fee, and other, premium services could also be charged directly to the bill. This machine is a logical successor to the Minitel; it's a machine which (should) require no more maintenance than a dumb terminal, and can be used to access the network that many regard as the successor to the Minitel network. Presumably with only 512MB of local storage, the user is expected to keep most of their data (email history, etc) on the server.
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What Distro? (Score:2)
Re:What Distro? (Score:5, Informative)
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Mod parent up. Informative, if I'm not mistaken.
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"PC"? (Score:4, Insightful)
Well, so then it's not a "free PC", it's a "free internet access terminal". I doubt anyone's going to be running half-life or photoshop on that thing.
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That's right, they'll be running Gimp instead.
The specs on this thing may seem a little light by modern standards, but I'm running XP/Ubuntu dual boot on my laptop, with plenty of apps under each OS (yes, including both Photoshop and Gimp), and I've only got 256 MB memory and a ~1.5 Ghz processor. It's not lightning fast, and it's certainly no gaming rig, but it still gets the job done.
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Besides, you'd be hard pressed to get PS working acceptably under linux anyway. But I'll bet the Gimp works.
And no, it won't run counterstrike. I'm sorry, but I'm afraid not everyone's a gamer, and those who are, aren't necessarily into multiplayer.
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OK, then define "PC".
That thing they are showing is a Personal Computer, in every way... only without a hard drive (it uses solid-state storage). And, it is also X86, making it at least mostly IBM-PC compatible.
> I doubt anyone's going to be running half-life or photoshop on that thing.
Neither is available for Linux, so that is moot. However, you could probably run many smaller games, and GIMP. The main obsticle with that t
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Return of the Minitel (Score:3, Informative)
French AOL? (Score:2)
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This Thing Is Pathetic! (Score:2, Insightful)
That Intel card is a decent graphics card, good enough for web browsing, and 6 USB ports are great. 512 MB of RAM is pretty good, but only 512 MB of storage space (with the flash memory)? I'm assuming this won't have a hard drive, considering that it's free and there's no mention of one. You can't even install Ubuntu (or si
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Right. Entry-level PCs look a lot uglier and make a lot more noise!
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Firefox, Abiword, Gnumeric, MPlayer, some mail client, spam filter, Ekiga softphone, and some unspecified, custom-built MSN client.
``You couldn't even have space for documents.''
You can get all of the above in well under 512 MB, leaving plenty of space for documents. Multimedia would be a different story, of course, but you should be able to get a nice collection of songs on
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Not for you, maybe (Score:2, Insightful)
And no, these people will not blame Linux if things don't work right, because they probably won't even know that their computer is running Linux.
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I had a 500MHz dell for a long while. It was great for watching BT-downloaded TV and listening to music.
For ref, right now I have a retrofitted DVD player with a 1GHz mini-itx and all slim components doing much the same job (Running a modified geexbox) - except I wrote a script to autolocate the most recent episode of the shows I like to watch (via bittorrent), and deletes them after 7 days from the last watching.
Not exactly a DVR, but
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The New Minitel (Score:5, Informative)
If all of you Francophobes could untwist your shorts for a minute, you might realize that this is pretty much an updated version of the Minitel [wikipedia.org], which most geeks thought was pretty damn cool back in the days of expensive 300 baud dialup.
Besides, it runs Linux.
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Minitel was introduced in 1982, to replace dead-tree phone books. Pre-internet, France had already converted their population to online lookups, chat rooms, soft pron, pay-as-you-use. The walled gardens of AOL, Compuserve [wikipedia.org], Prodigy [wikipedia.org] left Minitel in the dust, and a year later there was Internet.
AOl + linux? (Score:2)
Can this be done here in the US somehow?
Bubblepack computing (Score:4, Insightful)
What will be interesting will be when the
Yummy (Score:2, Funny)
Photos + details (Score:2, Informative)
http://www.groupeneufcegetel.fr/html/Presse/Neuf_C egetel_lance_Easy_Neuf_et_invente_l_Easy_Gate_la_p remiere__box__associant_l_acces_a_l_Internet_haut_ debit_et_les_principales_fonctionnalites_d_un_ordi nateur.html [groupeneufcegetel.fr]
They say it is an all-in-one service that will include the PC, the LCD screen, mouse, keyboard and webcam. Internet service (up to 8Mbits). Applications including web browser, e-mail reader/writer, instant messaging, an
My /. submission of last week on that item (Score:5, Interesting)
Something probably as cool as the Freebox (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes this box looks like a big breakthrough for not so computer literate people looking for getting in touch with friends and relatives using today's technology.
However, this almost comes like shadow over the Free Telecom's new Freebox [broadcastbuyer.tv] which comes with router, Wifi-MIMO connection, HD TV tuner and something like 50 free channels and a total of 200, including all the international ones like CNN, BBC and many others, a VoIP phone system with free calls to landlines all over Europe [adsl.free.fr] (free calls to Australia, the US and Canada for instance!)
I keep going: Possibility to watch TV on your computer using VLC or use it as a multimedia player [adsl.free.fr] to send video and audio stream to the box that then displays it on your TV and sends the sound to your HiFi system through the Optical connection. Ah yes also video on demand with films that you can replay and fast forward for 24hours just as a DVD.
Of course it can provide very fast Internet connection (28Mb/s), obviously runs Linux and all that comes for the ridiculous price of 30 per month (they just lend the box to you!!!)
All that to say, with such as competition on the ADSL market in France, no wonder why Neuf Cegetel is trying to catch with such an offer...
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But Belgium doesn't count. Hasn't anyone ever told you that?
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Not that France counts for very much either, except as the screeching leader of the Anybody But America crowd.
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as in 'frenchize'
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Emphasis on the last five letters.
Actually, I'm pretty sure there's a name for people such as yourself, who ignorantly sling insults while failing completely to pay attention...
I'm also pretty sure that the term had been wrongfully ascribed to an entire subset of the human genome - mostly as defined by a particular set of appearance traits - causing it to be too politically charged to be used appropriately
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* In Canada, for example, Bell Nexxia owns the phone lines. It doesn't matter if you're subscribing to service from Telus, Sympatico, or a local provi
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France is heavily regulated, but as opposed to the US not all of the recent regulations are hand-tailored for corps (which sadly doesn't mean that all of the regulations are consumer-oriented).
For example on the subject of DSL, service awfully sucked in France up until about 7 years ago (~1999): the only phone provider was the state monopoly (France Telecom) who also had a virtual monopoly on DSL (which meant that you either got slow, expensive -- though reliable -- DSL, or you went for cable). Then the go
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1. An ip telephone where you just plug your phone in and it works. All calls to europe, northern america and most of asia are included in the deal. Calls to mobile phones in France and special numbers are not.
2. TV broadcast, in MPEG-4, 3Mb/s 720x576 (DVD-res). This includes maj
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No. Apparently not. Par for the course on this new fangled intarweb.
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Lemme give you a hint: everyone makes fun the the US. They rarely bitch. Why? They make fun of themselves.
Learn it.
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Sorry, is this "hint" in relation to some sort of question that I've missed?
Because a hint actually pretains to giving away a small part of the answer to a question asked, not making a statment which expresses some point of view along with a retorical question.
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They rarely bitch. Why? They make fun of themselves.
Depends on who you talk to. There are plenty of hyper-sensitive bigots (sorry, "patriots") who can't cope with even minor, reasoned criticism or jokes. Particularly if money is involved.
---
New game: Spot the lying astroturfer [wikipedia.org] on /.!
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Money, or Georges Walker "Enlightened Leader" Bush.
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until they decide to bomb it into the stone age.
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I did. That one was hilarious ^_^
Honestly, if you can't laugh about it, you're doomed to whine about it for the rest of your life. Even jewish comedians make holocaust jokes, after all.
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Even jewish comedians make holocaust jokes
If I hear a jewish comedian do this, I will laugh. There is no way I, or any non jewish person, should make a joke about it.
If a US citizen was to make a 9/11 joke, I would be very surprised. I don't think you guys have got the same depth of history as they have. It is 5 years since most of you noticed that there are some groups of nutcases that want to kill you. Jewish people have had this for many centuries.
Perhaps you do have comedians doing this. I've
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Some french "indie" artist once said "Better laugh about it than not care."
I'd much better have comedians cracking jokes about the holocaust, or the inquisition, or terrorist bombings (cracking jokes about terrorists is much more effectives than destroying sovereing nations in the guise of looking for them by the way) than people who just don't care, or try to deny facts.
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Oh and prison = GTMO (sorry for not making it clear enough) Perhaps I should have mentioned it w
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Actually, it starts with "colonisation in the 1830s", and ends with "very strong trading links, a bilateral working holiday scheme, defence cooperation in the South Pacific, a bilateral air services agreement, and multiple visits in both direction by high-level politicians each year".
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maybe so many died because they sucked
Or maybe so many died because they didn't wait until 1942 to fight, or maybe because they got actually invaded.
Btw according to the wikipedia link someone else posted in a reply to you, about twice more american soldiers died from that war than french, but they also fought in the Pacific..
Oh well, you're probably the type of american (what else could you be?) who thinks that latin americans speak latin and who thinks there are cheerleaders in french schools.
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Why yes, because it's well known that no american individual [debatecomics.org] nor any american corporation [wsws.org] collaborated with the nazis...
Oh well... how about actually learning history instead of just spouting off lies about things you don't know jack shit about?
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Addendum: this link doesn't split between european deaths against germany and deaths on then pacific front against japan.
A fair comparison would be french body count vs (american body count versus germany).
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really, get over it.
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kinda like having a foot-thick steel door, then someone breaking a side window to get in.
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Well, they did take into account it being flanked, but they didn't do anything about it. The work to make it unflankable was designed, but France lost interest after seeing the bill. The part that was built was done closer to the time when people were still motivated to defend from the Germans.
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The Germans went through too fast, however. France was very well prepared to fight WWI. Just in time to fight WWII
Why the hell is this insightful ? (Score:2)
By the way : easy Gate : "simple portail" in direct french translation. In french I would translate into "Accés simple" but this clearly would not be as nice a keyword as easy gate.
I've got some reassuring words for you (Score:2)
In other words, great news. we're not intentionally offensive to the french, we're just really intellectually lazy.
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Gee, and I just thought the engineers were having fun.
Just tax everyone (Score:2)
It makes more sense to up property taxes a hair and then provide the service to everyone in the county; much easier than trying to pick up a few dollars here and there.
I have to drive to a neighboring county and pay to get rid of crts etc because my county is so assbackwards.
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you remind of the man driving an autobahn on the wrong lane and when he hears a radio traffic warning about some guy driving in the wrong direction he mumbles: one - huh. thousands!