Comment Debian, naturally. (Score 1) 627
Although the issues with Wheezy have made me stay with Squeeze on most of my systems.
Comment Users will put up with just about anything (Score 5, Interesting) 675
Many moons ago we got a new intern in the office. He was young, naive and hopelessly clueless about the corporate world. We took a liking to him immediately.
Of course, this meant that we had to play pranks on him. Because that's what you do to people you like, right?
Our best prank was what we did to his computer. We wrote a small program that ran in the background and drew a dot in the center of the screen on top of whatever was running. This dot grew bigger over time; at first it was just one pixel wide, but after a week it was over twenty.
One morning, just over a week after we'd secretly installed it onto the intern's computer, he called me into his cubicle and asked me if I had ever heard of "dead pixels on a CRT". I said no, holding back the laughter, and politely suggested that he try reinstalling his graphics card drivers. He declined, and said that was too much effort and he would just live with it.
The intern was fully prepared to live with this large, expanding, black dot in the center of his monitor. It was nothing but sheer annoyance, but he was willing to ignore it.
At this point we caved and uninstalled the software.
That experience taught me that users will put up with just about anything. As long as it doesn't outright prevent them from doing their job (eg, the network card has died), they will find some way to soldier on.
Comment Not going to happen (Score 1) 627
Here's the problem: Windows XP, for the majority of normal use cases, works. There is no business case for spending the kind of money necessary to upgrade everything, just so that your CEO can have "that big task bar".
Comment Mostly empty (Score 1) 109
There doesn't appear to be much data indexed yet, just data that has been publicly available for years.
Patent data? Check
Storm data? Check
Yawn. Call me when the FBI starts uploading data.
Comment Excellent! (Score 1) 71
Lets use it to make toilet paper.
Comment Email! (Score 5, Interesting) 231
Email addresses, of course. I'd pay for a @linux.com email address...1gb storage, SSH access to mutt/pine/emacs, IMAP/POP, decent webmail package... yeah, I would definitely pay for that. Premium for good service.
Comment Searching Google... (Score 1) 564
Searching Google I find that, apparently, I was a porn star in the late 70's. I hope this doesn't hurt my chances of getting hired somewhere.
Submission + - Inventor of the TV remote dies
QuietLagoon writes: Zenith Electronics Corporation said today that Engineer Robert Adler, who co-invented the TV remote control with fellow Engineer Eugene Polley, has passed on to the big sofa in the sky. In his six-decade career with Zenith, Adler was a prolific inventor, earning more than 180 U.S. patents. He was best known for his 1956 Zenith Space Command remote control, which helped make TV a truly sedentary pastime. The National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences awarded Adler and co-inventor Polley, another Zenith engineer, an Emmy in 1997 for the landmark invention.
Submission + - DD-WRT now running on X86
JimBowen writes: "The popular linux-based router firmware project, DD-WRT, based on the free OpenWRT, has recently been made to run on an ordinary PC. This allows a significant increase in performance by the use of much faster hardware, with more memory, enabling advanced SPI firewalls even in the presence of high load P2P software. Various community extensions provide support for extra features like NAS. With the combination of large, desktop-sized storage, this makes for an extremely powerful, yet manageable and easily deployable home server.
There is a tutorial on how to set it up over at graynetwork.org."
Submission + - General Aviation System in Jeopardy
robwmc writes: I'm not sure how many here on /. are pilots but the Bush administration evidently want to make that number decline. The new budget calls for charging user fees for access to airspace, raising the aviation fuel tax to $0.70 per gallon and raising fees for everything related to being a GA pilot. Take a look at one of the various articles on the AOPA website.
The AOPA has worked very hard for keeping the system "fair" for the average Joe to keep the cost of flying affordable for the general public.
The AOPA has worked very hard for keeping the system "fair" for the average Joe to keep the cost of flying affordable for the general public.
Bionic Eye Could Restore Vision 167
MattSparkes writes "A new bionic eye could restore vision to the profoundly blind. A prototype was tested on six patients and 'within a few weeks all could detect light, identify objects and even perceive motion again. For one patient, this was the first time he had seen anything in half a century.' The user wears a pair of glasses that contain a miniature camera and that wirelessly transmits video to a cellphone-sized computer in the wearer's pocket. This computer processes the image information and wirelessly transmits it to a tiny electronic receiver implanted in the wearer's head."
