Comdex Mid-Week Quickies 84
We're rolling around the middle of the week for Comdex, and thought maybe people would like to hear some of the news. Linus was awarded person of the year by PC Magazine. Here at the Andover.net booth we've been doing Install Races - 4 PM everyday. The winner for the week gets a Herman Miller Aeron Chair. Rob and I went to the Spencer Katt party on Monday night (Thanks Tim!) and had a good time - but the Post had a funny write-up about it. We had a good time there, unlike the Caldera party that we were locked out of and had to come back later after walking three miles. Grrr - we get that as well as listening to their audience scream "E-Business" to try to get t-shirts. Which is giving everyone migraines in a two hundred mile radius. Starlady has done some general Comdex write-ups, as well as Linux Biz Expo specific stuff. Apparently, Global Media won best Linux product of show for their "streaming product". One of the funniest parts of the show was the kid who mooned Bill Gates - Gates is just out of the picture. Oh, and on another note, CowboyNeal loves his Cyberlegs.
Comdex Parties (Score:1)
Re:Comdex Parties (Score:1)
Full moon... (Score:2)
Global Media?? (Score:2)
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Wish I was there (Score:1)
A new Slashdot record? (Score:3)
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18? (Score:1)
CTO of Trellix? (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
naughty (Score:1)
Re:A new Slashdot record? (Score:1)
Insert scatalogical humor below.
Cyberlegs... (Score:1)
-Adam
The beatings will continue until moral improves.
Re:18? (Score:1)
Ass Mirror (Score:3)
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Some thoughts (Score:4)
Any brilliant-minded, emotionally-stable, obsessive with a streak of genius a parsec wide could do as well.
Seriously, though, Comdex is proving a landmard convention. There is a shift in attitude away from the corporate and towards the open, as demonstrated by the difference in reaction between Bill Gates' speech and Linus Torvalds'.
Once the dust has settled, and the history books are written in the mid to late 21st century, that may well be one of the most significant moments in the closing decade of the 20th century. It's a change from attitudes that have prevailed since the dawn of civilisation, that might (be it in the form of brute strength, or hard cash) makes right.
Of course, you could accuse me (probably correctly) for over-exagerating and being moronically pretentious. Go right ahead! I'm content to believe that this Comdex is as big a turning point as the British Peasent's Revolt, or the spreading of literacy from the priesthood to the commoner.
Re:Show of hands... (Score:1)
Re:Global Media?? (Score:1)
It's effectively a custom distribution that they built based on Debian. It has a hacked WAN driver plus some severely modified startup scripts to make frame relay fire up and phone 'home' automatically to recieve further instructions.
It lets a radio station (for example), be shipped a box, which they can plug in, turn on, and start streaming G2 audio automatically.
Keep an eye on Linux World, as they'll be the ones with more information on GLMC soon.
Cyberlegs: Comfortable and healthy? (Score:1)
This text appears on the cyberlegs site below the image of a woman who certainly does not look like she sits comfortable and that laptop surely does not seem to be in a healthy height and angle. This looks almost as strange as those ever-happy infomercials where people get excited about the smallest strange product...
On the other hand, working with a computer while standing is indeed a good idea. I do that from time to time at an office where I work as a freelancer and now I consider buying a taller table for my home office, too.
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Somebody has to say it. (Score:1)
A note to future streakers (Score:1)
A double whammy.
moon mirror (Score:1)
Corel vs Caldera: who is more annoying? (Score:1)
ok... no more ranting from me...
Re:Somebody has to say it. (Score:2)
I used to recommend Macs to people with vision imparement in the mid 80's because of their ability to enlarge fonts and do local screen magnification, something that was tough to do under MS-DOS.
Accessability feature are an area that Linux is very weak at.
GlobalMedia just repackaged RealPlayer (Score:2)
Re:Some thoughts (Score:1)
Well, to start with, all kinds of religions through all ages were pretty much insistent that might does not make right. But in any case, pray tell me, where do you see this change? And don't point me towards the Microsoft trial, since that is a simple case of a guy with a bigger stick (government) landing a lucky blow on the head of the guy with a smaller stick (MS).
Comdex a turning point in history? [boggle]. Hey, can I have some of that stuff you are smoking?
Kaa
Re:Ass Mirror (Score:1)
Re:Global Media?? (Score:2)
another Ass Mirror (Score:1)
Perhaps if/when other things need mirroring I'll just slap 'em up on the angelfire site. Or I might remove the page altogether. I dunno.
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum viditur.
Re:18? (Score:2)
Yes. 21, actually. They can make exceptions on a case-by-case basis, but it is still their policy.
Re:Somebody has to say it. (Score:1)
Linux is a bit weak but not impossibly bad. With fvwm I could create a monster virtual desktop and then configure the thing so that I could scoll around and it actually worked very similarly to how the old Mac extension. The only problem is that you have to set your monitor resolution rediculously low to get good magnification and it's just not easy enough to switch back and forth if you want to turn magnification on and off.
I can't speak for anybody but myself here. My eye problems are not as bad as some. Just bad enough that I've tried the software. I invariably get fed up with the limitation imposed or the hassle of stuff scrolling off the screen and go back to emacs or some other text based app with a nice big font.
Re:No Joy in Linuxland (Score:2)
I liken the invention of BSD to the invention of writing - cumbersome & filled with proprietary symbols (did you know that anyone who read an AT&T licence became privy to AT&T secrets, and therefore anything they wrote belonged to AT&T?)
The Jolitz' did a very good job of porting BSD to the PC, but: (a) their development was too closed and slow, and (b) because of (a), it collapsed after the release of 0.2. It was too dependent on too few people. Later versions of BSD made use of their work, but with much larger core teams. The problem has always remained, though - they ARE core teams.
One poster on Usenet, around the time Jolitz' 386BSD 0.1 came out commented that Linux was growing faster, and that it would supercede 386BSD in every way, before BSD could reach a usable point. (This was before X11R4 would even RUN on 386BSD! You needed a whole bunch of extra patches to even coax life out of it.)
This isn't to say that BSD wasn't important, it was. Very! Without BSD, there would be no Linux. However, I agree with that Usenet poster of so long ago. Linux -is- growing faster, both in usability and popularity, and it's reaching critical mass.
-That- is the key to a revolution - who reaches critical mass first, and Linux (I believe) has done so. Yes, it's stood on the shoulders of giants, but so did Einstein. It makes neither him nor Linux any less revolutionary to have done so. Indeed, few historical revolutions could have succeeded, if the key figures hadn't been able to build on prior achievements.
Re:Somebody has to say it. (Score:2)
Accessability features?
Magnification:Set the console text mode to something huge. Utilize the CtrlAlt- combo in X.
Braille terminals: There is a getty that likes them!
text->speech: Festival, with a good voice, is great!
Note: I am not physically-challenged, so I really have no clue how well these would work for the average, say, blind guy.
Re:Tux? (Score:1)
Re:Full moon is eclipsed (Score:2)
Re:Ass Mirror (Score:1)
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Which OS's? (Score:1)
Be = The: Eight way SMP, 64 bit fully journaling file system enabled, 18 Exxabyte volume support, OpenGL, USB, Firewire Enahanced, real time video/audio editing, Bryce rendering, Apache hosting, Quake2 playing, OS for the next millenium. Oh, they did all of that in five years of development with closed source and release whole nuumber $25 upgrades every 6-9 months and free incremental updates periodically. What has Linux done for you lately?
what's blacked out? (Score:1)
Full Moon (Score:1)
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Re:A new Slashdot record? (Score:1)
From the pic, I'd have to say 'backward'.
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It's October 6th. Where's W2K? Over the horizon again, eh?
Re:what's blacked out? (Score:1)
BTW, the emoticon for it is (!)
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It's October 6th. Where's W2K? Over the horizon again, eh?
an unsensored photo? (Score:1)
or
http://bell-2216.cheg.uark.edu/~jmh3/pix/moon.jpg
Killer Monkeys (Score:1)
Re:Which OS's? (Score:1)
Re:Ass Mirror (Score:1)
Re:Comdex Parties (Score:1)
It's called "Service" (Score:2)
Think for a moment.
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1.You are a computer idiot.
2.You want to do neat things with a computer.
3.You are a computer idiot with money.
4.Somebody tells you they will set up your computer to do all the neat things you keep hearing about, for a fee.
5.You do neat things with computers.
People talk about the value of service in the Open Source paradigm. What many don't realize is that isn't only tech support and newbie questions, it also includes the setup and configuration of machines. A plug-and-play Real (or MP3, video, dynamic web) server is worth at least twice what the hardware alone is worth. The same could probably be said (although the ratio probably drops to 1.2-1.5) for home PCs, especially if they are loaded with functional software on an OS that doesn't crash. Service and simplicity, that's where the moneys gonna be.
That giant LCD display in the /. booth (Score:1)
Re:That giant LCD display in the /. booth (Score:1)
You are %100 correct (Score:1)
Yeah, right. I use my Linux box as a Samba Server and run Matlab from my computer over a network to my girlfriends computer and run a full webserver at the same time that I run an NFS server at the same time that I am playing Quake II at the same time I am crunching SETI@HOME on -nice 2 at the same time I am running a full data center complete with IBM's DB2 and I am AT THE SAME TIME, believe it or not, serving as a file and print server for 1000 different people fom all over the world.
The truth is, that I along with a whole ton of people have discovered how powerful, elegant, and simply stable and user-friendly BeOS really is. This OS was not meant to be a server OS, and Linux was never meant to be a consumer OS. Even Linus Torvalds himself admits that the focus of Linux is to be a successful server. Be has announced that BeOS is for consumers and prefessional media types who can properly enjoy it's power and complete multi-threading capabilities. I am a hell of a lot happier running BeOS than I was running Linux, by all accounts.
And to the guy who installed Linux in under 12 minutes, I doubt anybody counts the "Bare Bones" command prompt only install as legal in this argument. BeOS actually installs the entire OS in under 15 minutes.
And, as one last point, do you know how hard it is to install video capture hardware in Linux. Let's see...kernel recompile, download bttv.tar.gz file for my Brooktree generic card, download xawtv.tar.gz, try to compile both statically since I do not personally own Motif, then cry as after all of this the full screen mode locks up my computer. Okay, well at least I can have real-time audio processing on Linux. Oh, that's right, it's not supported in the kernel yet, and Linus announced that he doesn't want it in there either.
Okay, so I install BeOS. 35 seconds after I install in, I open the TV app which comes preinstalled by default and I am watching TV. Then I open up the cool 3D mixer app and decide that I want to mix some music together. Works perfectly the first time. Hmmmm.....Not hard to convince me. Goodbye Linux. Good luck to the OSS movement, but Linux needs a lot of work.
Re:Somebody has to say it. (Score:2)
I had something like this on my C64, of course, I was about 8 at the time so these are all the details I remember....
AHA! (Score:2)
Anyway, Linux Today Radio shoutcast from comdex at www.linuxtoday.com:8000 or slashnet.org:8000. Join the fun on SlashNET IRC [slashnet.org], irc.slashnet.org.
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Re:what's blacked out? (Score:2)
Linux meets Ms. Las Vegas (Score:2)
I'm not so sure that some of the vendors like TurboLinux, Caldera and Corel are putting out a positive image of Linux by being so over the top. Personally I'd be so thrilled to be there (I've never had the chance) that I'd suspect I'd be on my best behavior. Perhaps I'd party away from the floor, though.
Why is Linux in it's own pavilion? It's because we don't play well with others? Linus spoke in his keynote about "we do it because it's fun and challanging" but I don't think we would ever catch him mooning Bill G. though.
Slashdot AC T-shirts??? (Score:1)
So is somebody giving them away or selling them? I couldn't tell from the line in Starlady's report.
JMC wishing I was there
Re:You are %100 correct (Score:1)
Re:Ass Mirror (Score:1)
what about the T-shirt? (Score:1)
Re:Linux meets Ms. Las Vegas (Score:1)
The trinkets are fun, and a standard marketing ploy. Skydiving is not. Shouting matches are not.
Slashdot is what you make it. Just like Open Source. For some reason, XBill and Tex seem to come to mind as examples...
All one needs is a little MODERATION.
Re:Linux Has Brought Me Freedom (Score:1)
I'm not even going to get into how Be is offering BeOS for free if OEMs will preload it and give it equal time, while many versions of Linux are now selling for nearly $90 (i.e., BeOS is "cheaper" than Linux in some instances), because the issue is FREEDOM. LIBERTY. Not price. See http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling.ht ml [gnu.org] (and read a bunch more on the GNU website, while you're at it.)