Comment Re:Ghostwriters? (Score 1) 121
Are you sure you are not confusing King with Patterson?
Are you sure you are not confusing King with Patterson?
Even if you are just kidding
Preferences -> sharing -> sharing over net -> start server.
I was using Calibre the same way as you - for conversions (and to communicate with my Sony PRS-500 reader), exactly because of that unusual interface.
Nowadays I simply reconfigure the interface, using Preferences -> interface - > Toolbar.
I remove all icons from the toolbar and put the functions I want on the menubar.
Do not saw off the branch you are sitting on and first define the menubar, with a prefferences menu and only then remove the toolbar.
Calibre is extremely configurable and *very* powerfull. It has great support for regular expressions and other advanced things.
OK. I could save one watt by running IE instead of [insert your favorite browser here]. But then I would have to run it on Windows, and install anti-mallware, anti-virus and other anti-CPU measures.
I think I am much better off running a less efficient browser on Linux, even with a memory hog called KDE 4 running the whole show.
I know you do not need ISA for RS232. I wrote about ISA to show that you can buy even more exotic stuff than a PC with an RS232 port. Sometimes you have special hardware that does require ISA.
A few posts ago I wrote about Industrial PCs.
If you need just a serial port, and not complete PC running old software that needs to access serial port directly, there are boxes from Moxa that let you connect dozens of serial ports to one PC.
At work we use Industrial PCs for work with PLCs. You can still buy PC with an ISA slot, and most of industrial PCs have good old serial port. Just contact any competent supplied of industrial automation equipment.
One of manufacturers is Advantech. Have a look at their UNO line of "brick" computers. Plenty of industrial RS232 and RS485 ports even in the most basic models. Computers are fanless and built to last. Unfortunatelly, those machines are bloody expensive.
If you look really hard, you can even find new 486 machines. Those are even more expensive than Advantech bricks I wrote about, but there are still people that need those computers, so there are companies able to provide them at a cost.
I block ads because some sites are *so* horribly infested with annoying, blinking, screaming, memory-hogging, loud crap that there is no choice but to install something.
I am willing to whitelist a site that asks nicely AND takes care that the advertisments do not make their site un-viewable. No popups, no animated crap that makes reading text impossible, no flash that bogs down entire computer, no loud sound, no articles divided to 20 parts so they can cram 20 times more ads down our collective throats, no double-underlined words that display a caption add when I move mouse over them. It can be done. Have a look at google site.
Please understand: the vast majority of users out there are too lazy and ignorant to mess with switching on the add blocking. They are even willing to use browsers horribly infested with unbelievable amount of crap. In order to make such user to go and ask someone knowledgeable to install an adblock for them they had to be extremely annoyed.
So, if you want to blame somebody, blame stupid webmasters and super-greedy advertisers that created sites that drove us to block ads.
Well, my very first thought after I started using Windows 8 was that that thing was in many aspects very similar to Emacs.
To use Windows 8 you very quickly learn many useful keyboard shortcuts, like Win-x if you want to start some program that isn't jet on that Start screen. Compare that with Meta-x used in Emacs to run commands. There are many other similarities.
That said, I personally prefer Vim
well, before jumping to conclusions you should have looked up previous names:
1.0 - Ada
2.0 - Barbara
2.1 - Bea
2.2 - Bianca
3.0 - Cassandra
3.1 - Celena
4.0 - Daryna
5 LTS - Elyssa
6 - Felicia
7 - Gloria
8 - Helena
9 LTS - Isadora
10 - Julia
11 - Katya
12 - Lisa
13 LTS - Maya
14 - Nadia
This way it makes much more sense, doesn't it?
"Conversion, fastidious Goddess, loves blood better than brick, and feasts most subtly on the human will." -- Virginia Woolf, "Mrs. Dalloway"