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Comment Real World Haskell & Hg Book (Score 1) 178

Please check out such books as Mercurial: The Definitive Guide and Real World Haskell. They were freely available when being written and remain such, but in the same time both books were published as usual (on paper) by O'Reilly:

http://oreilly.com/catalog/9780596800673/
http://oreilly.com/catalog/9780596514983/

The source code used to create the books is also available. So you may use the same work flow.

Comment Re:do their own then... (Score 1) 186

It's not different for Python on Google App Engine. Only a subset of its standard library is available (anything that requires disk access does not work).

So, also with Python one has to code specifically for GAE. The same applies for Java.

But GAE offers free-as-in-beer and ad-free application hosting. It's OK that it is somewhat limited and is not 100% compatible with everything else.

Comment Re:It exists, but it's rare. (Score 1) 1077

There were some Russian programming languages from the USSR's aerospace community.

Please take a look at some valid literate Haskell code which tells the common Russian fairy tale. It has nothing to do with aerospace, and it is standard modern Haskell. Copy-paste, compile and run.

Another modern example is Chinese Python. Though it is a fork from the standard python.

Comment Re:can't read ebook without batteries (Score 1) 107

Maybe it's just me, but the tech level required to read a book online is pretty high.

It's a matter of distribution of e-books being mostly illegal in the western world. When the means of distribution is not effectively suppressed, it is used by almost everybody. See, for example, http://lib.rus.ec/ (Russian e-books' site).

Add to that the power consumption.

You need some light to read a paper book too.

But given the typical price of a paper book $15, you can consume as much as 150 kWh if you don't buy it. That's a lot of energy. It's enough to keep the laptop on for 100 days. I believe much longer with an e-Ink device. And all these money now is wasted on ineffective legacy distribution network. Eventually, these $15 will be consumed as energy or resources, emitted as CO2 and contribute to toxic land-dump in third-world countries, with an effect probably multiple of what you, personally, can do with 150 kWh (see Multiplier effect)

And the paranoia of knowing the ebook I read today can be changed tomorrow to reflect a different view.

That's why you should download it and keep forever. Forget online readers and DRM schemes, that let you see a page, but don't let you have a _copy_. Hard drives are cheap.

Respectful publishers will sign their e-books.

Comment Re:Like the phonograph.... The what? (Score 1) 743

You forgot about moka pots. They are affordable ($20) and easy to use. And given a good pot, good beans, and some attention to take it off the fire timely, the drink is rich and strong. Not as strong and oily as a true espresso, but it has its own goodness.

You also forgot about turkish coffee. A good cezve ($20) is not as overpriced as complicated espresso machines. And it can serve for ages (unlike moka pots).The good turkish coffee is really good, tasty and, IMHO, it has the best and the most natural aroma. But it requires more attention and devotion to cook it right.

Comment Re:Which distro? Debian. (Score 1) 466

Happily running Debian eeePC flavour on 901 for three months. Satisfied.

What's not working out of the box:

* Intel HDA Audio plays audio well, but mic is not working right (requires newer ALSA or 2.6.28 kernel, not yet in repository)
* Bluetooth can be enabled only in the BIOS (requires reboot)
* ACPI scripts switch WiFi off correctly, but fail to switch it on correctly if the laptop was put into sleep with WiFi turned off (a workaround: always enable WiFi before putting it into sleep mode, or reboot to restore it)
* mouse driver is used instead of Elantech touchpad driver (requires kernel 2.6.28), so syndaemon cannot be used, multitouch is not working.

Most of this can be solved with a newer kernel, and everything has workarounds.

Operating Systems

Which Distro For an Eee PC? 466

An anonymous reader writes "I've got an Eee PC 1000HD, and frankly, I can't stand XP. I know it's odd, because I actually like Vista, but XP is such a giant piece of crap on here that I struggle to use it day-by-day. Anyway, my question is this: which Linux distro should I run on it? Plain Ubuntu just doesn't have driver support. I tried Ubuntu-eee, which, to put it bluntly, does not work for me at all (slow, terrible battery life, even worse interface). I've heard that Jaunty Jackalope is going to have better netbook support, but that's all the way in April! Is there a distro out now that will free me from XP's terribleness without being terrible itself?" Getting wireless working on an Eee PC (though in my experience imperfectly) with stock Ubuntu is possible; for me it took some googling, though I've been told with great enthusiasm that it actually works "out of the box." What distros are you running on your netbook, and what problems do you find?

Comment old games (Score 1) 384

games older than half a year (PC) / about 4 years (console) are usually considered obsolete and don't make any money for the publisher / developer.

I specifically look for old games sometimes, as I can be sure if they are good or bad (lots of reviews, bugs fixed, patches available, hardware requirements I can tolerate). It's a pity old titles are rarely republished and are not easily available.

I guess the publshers make too much profit with the new titles, that they can afford to forget about retro.

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