I have a Dell Inspiron 1100 laptop with the 14.1" XGA display. I also have an RIC 17" monitor capable of 1280x1024. The Display Properties control panel shows Multiple Monitors. However, I can't for the life of me figure out how to make it dual-headed. Windows recognizes both monitors. The GPU is an Intel i845GL. Although it's not listed in the supported GPUs for DualView, it IS a descendant of the i810, the one supported Intel GPU.

Win2VNC isn't an option - I only have one network cable going into this room (I do have an old Linux box in here, but no other network cables :-()

Also, if I HAVE to, I'll get one of the Tritton USB2 to VGA adaptors. FWIW, I think they will work on Linux, as long as their video chip is supported. The PCI to USB chip in this thing IS supported by the manufacturer under Linux. As I understand it, the drivers are even open source.

Update: I e-mailed the actual manufacturer of all of the USB2-VGA adaptors, Telegnosis. They replied that it was a GPU of their own creation...

Update: I played with Win2VNC on another box, and that didn't work well at all. I DID grab a MaxiVista demo, and that worked nicely. MaxiVista is supported under Wine. $50 + another 25ft. network cable (free, most likely) versus $90...

I'm looking at setting up a mock election for my school, and am wondering what I should do as for voting software. Supporting approval voting would be a plus, and so would supporting mixed voting types (read: one page of approval, one page of plurality, maybe even a page of IRV or something). Also, running on Windows would be a plus, but is not necessary. Free, especially open source, is almost a must.

Is there such a program that can do all of this, or am I better off whipping something up in Visual Basic, or even tracking down a Florida Vote-O-Matic and a reader?

I got this mouse at Big Lots (for those that don't know, it's a store that sells extra cheap crappy stuff and discontinued items, among other things) for $12.99.

The Good: It's got a retractable cord that works fairly well, and it Just Works(tm). Not much that can go wrong. Also, it has a coupon for a 6ft. USB extension cable (not necessary if you're using the mouse with a laptop) after $5 s&h (I could post the details, so that ANYONE could get the cable if they wanted, AFAICT)

The Bad: The cord isn't the GREATEST - Belkin's retractable cell phone car cords have a LOT better retracting mechanism, but this gets the job done. Also, it just doesn't fit in the palm of your hand, but that's not a feature you're looking for in a mini mouse.

The Ugly: Nothing wrong here...

http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/10/07/2358245&tid=123&tid=155&tid=102&tid=98&tid=1, the link provided for Read More..., went to "Nothing to see here, move along", not the article!

I tried to watch most of the debate, but I had other things to do.

Anyway, here's what I saw:

Kerry usually answered questions more closely to the actual question than Bush did.

Bush lied out his ass, as usual.

Kerry was trying to cover up his flipflopping, and I could detect a bit of flipflop in the debate.

Now, why are the debates so damn scripted? Can't we just get them together with a camera, and no moderator? Put a screen in to display questions from anonymous sources (they could either be first e-mail recieved that hasn't been asked, random e-mail in between questions, or last e-mail recieved before question is pulled). Put lights in to signal length of answer (I do agree that they need that - give a politician unlimited time, and he'll take it).

Anyone noticed how at the end of Joan of Arcadia and now Clubhouse that they say "This episode featured music from" and then pimp a couple artists' CDs?

CBS IS owned by Viacom, FWIW, so both the MPAA and the RIAA are controlling them...

I have a WinXP machine waiting (no, wait, it's insisting...) on Service Pack 2. The CPU doesn't have the NX bit, so I don't need to worry about that. My question is: Is it safe to install? I run OpenOffice, MS Publisher, Opera, FF (for GMail), a few games, and MS VPC (IMO, it's better than VMWare, except for the fact that VPC doesn't run on Linux).

UPDATE: I asked around in the real world, and nobody said it fscked up, so I installed it. Enjoy reading about how I jumped the gun...
UPDATE: Got a fscking bluescreen a couple days ago, but otherwise, seems to be working nicely...

Yes, I got my account, bhtooefr at, well, you know the domain...

It's pretty nice from what I've seen, but it just has one teeny tiny problem - I need to get Opera 7.60P1 (we call 'em alphas, they call 'em previews) or Proxomitron to access GMail (7.60P1 fixes the Opera end of the GMail problem, but there are a few bugs on the GMail side, as well, and Proxomitron is used to change the GMail pages so that Opera 7.5x and lower can use them). This is why Softhome is still my provider for now (which reminds me, I need to review that...) Once Opera 7.60 enters beta stage, I'll do a review of GMail.

My first software review...

The Good:
WICKED FAST. When I say wicked fast, I mean that it'll make your 233MHz Pentium MMX with 96MB RAM (my test system) feel like a 10GHz Pentium 6 with SupercalifragilisticexpialidociusThreading Hyper Extreme Special Limited Ultra Edition with 3GB RAM (4GB RAM is slower, because the 10GHz P6 HESLUE w/ST will still have the sad excuse for x86-64 known as EM64T, but that's another story). It'll make your cable connection feel like a T3. Not to mention - the ENTIRE SOURCE CODE is 400KB, and the x86 executable around 350KB. It also runs nicely on Linux PDAs (none tested here, though).

The Bad:
Well, let's start with what it DOESN'T support:

• Frames
• JavaScript
• CSS
• And more...

It's not a BAD browser, it's just not complete. The current version is 0.8.2, and I'm running 0.8.0. Slashdot doesn't render correctly, but the front page is usable. Comments are totally broken, though. Under lite mode, it works pretty much perfectly.

The Ugly:
No ugly here... Ugly would mean it crashed a lot, screwed stuff up, or was spyware or something.

The Upshot:
Promising browser. NOT the best it could be, though, but allow time to pass. While you're waiting, though, STOP waiting on your current browser, and try this one out. I'll admit, I'm an Opera fan, but this makes Opera look plain slow (then again, dealing with memory leaks in Opera, and 96MB RAM, maybe it HAS gotten slow...)

It's not bad if you're using a smaller browser *ahem*Dillo*ahem* that can't handle Slashdot's BROKEN HTML, but it just plain isn't nice in a browser that can handle it, because it's got a LOT of (unavoidable) clutter that standard mode solves.

WHY can't Slashdot change the system so that it checks UserAgent strings, and if it matches a list of UAs that can't handle /.'s HTML (or even a list of browsers that the user wishes to be used in lite mode), it'll automatically drop to lite, but when the user uses a modern full-featured browser such as Opera, Moz (FF), or (shudder) IE, it runs in full mode?

You may have heard of a little low power Socket A CPU called the Geode NX. An embedded chip running at 1GHz or 1.4GHz, you may think it's not that hot. Well, it isn't. The 1GHz model takes 1.000V, and eats 6W typical, 9W max. The 1.4GHz model takes 1.250V (1.050V at 1GHz), and eats 14W typical, 25W max.

Not very impressive? Think again. AMD's info says it's based on mobile Athlons. Remember the little Athlon XP-M overclocking frenzy a while back? Well, the Geode NX takes that to the next level (it's XP-M derived, BTW). Athlon XP-Ms within 267MHz need 1.350V, and eat 35W TYPICAL. I'm thinking that the $65 Geode NX 1500@6W could be a real XP-M killer in desktops. You could OC the SHIT out of something at those voltages.

Two problems: BIOS support (nonexistant, except on the $500 (1500@6W CPU and 512MB of flash included) DB1500 Mini-ITX board), and cache. The XP-M is a Barton core, no matter what the speed. This means 128KB L1/512KB L2. However, the Geode NX appears to be a THORTON-derived core, as it only has 128KB L1/256KB L2. No difference except the cache between Thorton and Barton, of course, but something that might hurt performance.

I've been wondering the feasability of a digital photo album that would display (approximately) 4x6 photos at 640x480. How possible is it?

I'm thinking a 7" LCD, internal flash memory, a USB interface, and a (removable) LiIon battery. A few buttons to turn on/off the device, and navigate photos (up/down/left/right/OK).

If it HAS to to be marketable, it might double as a flash-based MP3 player.

If you haven't seen the new IT color scheme, you've been living under a rock. It's FUGLY. Enter Defuglify Slashdot, a bookmarklet/favelet (call it what you want) by Andrew Embler of ElectricState.com.

Simply click the bookmarklet when on any /. subdomain (don't like the Apache mixture of YRO and Games? Click it. Don't like IT? Click it.), and it'll defuglify it by replacing the subdomain with "hireadesigner" (something they really need to do, while updating their code to something using CSS). Since it's not valid, Slashdot doesn't know what to do with it, and has been designed to ignore the subdomain. However, it shows up in the logs as a request to "hireadesigner.slashdot.org".

Bonus: ever used Google to look for a /. article, and got linked to the static page? Defuglify Slashdot 20040803 automatically goes to the dynamic page while it defuglifies.

Ready to install? Drag the link at the article into your Bookmark/Personal/Links bar at the top of your screen (I would have put the bookmarklet into this JE, but /. doesn't allow that). Then, click it when Slashdot gets fugly, and/or you're on a static page.

I'm considering rolling my own Linux live CD. I have certain needs that no live CD that I know of will meet, and I need to know where to start. I'd prefer an RPM-based Live CD, but it isn't absolutely necessary. Since there's only one model of system I need to use it on, I can go light on drivers, which is good, as I only have 128MB RAM to play with. I need OpenOffice, in case that helps with a distro choice. I'm thinking IceWM for the WM (simple, fast, KDE-like, close enough to the Win9x GUI for n00bs, etc.) I will have users that have ZERO Linux experience, and little Windows experience (tying their hands behind their backs and disconnecting all input devices until they quit using IE wouldn't work - they'd keep using it, and where the CD would be used, the boxes have almost NO patches, and are FULL to the brim with spyware).

What distribution should I use as a basis for my live CD?

I was looking at something on Opterons in the AMD price list, when I noticed that there was more than just the 2800+ (TBred-B) and 3100+ (Paris) when it came to Semprons.

It goes down to 2200+, in fact. The clock speeds are indicative of Socket A CPUs, and not Socket 754 CPUs, so nothing interesting there. However, in mobile CPUs is where it gets interesting. There is a 2600+, 2800+, and 3100+ CPU. There appears to only be Socket 754 versions (Paris), which is actually good news, as laptop chips tend to be good overclockers. However, BOTH the 2600+ and 2800+ are running at 1.6GHz. Anyone know what's going on, like if the 26 has only 128K cache or something?