Engelbart's name
I think a better / other explanation of his name would be
"bard of angels" as in an singer / teller of tales, who traveled around. They were highly respected in their time.
202 publicly visible posts • joined 28 Apr 2007
I use windows xp. I was given that PC as it is. I mainly use it for skype and steam (both should work under linux)
My main system uses an out of date ubuntu and then I have a small laptop that runs mint.
Ubuntu has become too bloated in my opinion and hiding all the options in the recent releases is just annoying. For some reason even a network restart using the command line does nothing. So I am left with the windows trick of 'have you tried turning it on and off' to get a network connection. Upgrading did not work and that is why I am stuck with this unsupported release.
Mint is nice but has some annoyances and the forum has not even bothered to reply to any of my requests for help so I don't know about that. One problem I have is that the webcam works under the admin account but not under a normal user account another problem is the Japanese language support. On my Ubuntu system the switch between languages just works. On my mint system I have to go mess around in the settings panel every time I power down / boot up the laptop. Libre office on Mint crashes on an hourly basis. I never lost data, everything gets recovered but it is not something I can accept to sell to friends / customers.
On the Ubuntu forum I always had (even sometimes good) help.
I am more and more drawn back to Debian because things just work on there and that is for me the most important thing. I use my system for work so I want things to run stable.
Is there a commercially supported stable linux that does not charge an arm and a leg for private use ? The coorporate red hat prices are a bit steep I think.
For me I regard Snowden the same as celbrity actors.
I really don't care about their personal lives. I just care that they are good actors.
I really don't care about the smear campaign that will try to paint Snowden as a traitor/enemy/whatever.
I only care that he had the courage to do what he did and that is enough for me.
I have this idea for a long time where private people would share their cars. Couch surfing for cars basically.
The driver uses his navigation on his smartphone to calculate the route. Then publishes this route and gives a parameter of detour willing to take (say 500 meters).
If you need a ride you enter your destination and send this with your current coordinates and how far you are willing to walk/travel on your own (say 300 m) to the server where all the routes are published. The app checks if there is someone driving close to your position and matches you up.
The passenger pays a fee for every ride (distance based) and the driver gets 50% or another percentage.
Of course if something like this would happen I guess all taxi companies would be howling.
You will need good authentication and I don't think a lot of people would be comfortable letting strangers into their car. Some good security would be needed.
This is why I have this sharp phone.
Everything is bad about this phone but it has a slide out keyboard.
Basically the only smartphone that I found with a keyboard. The keyboard itself is also crap (buttons too small).
touch screens are OK (not great) at navigating sites / menu's but for input you really need a keyboard.
I win against all my friends in speed of inputting a mail message / text message with my feature phone against their touch screen phones.
run our insurance app.
(that logs everything) and get 30 % discount. If after an accident we can prove with the data that you were in violation of any rule you are not insured.
alcohol checks that refuse to start your car if you fail the test.
a national database that knows where your car is every second of the day (of course to build better road solutions / send you speeding tickets / fight terrorism)
a rentable car app: you login with your credentials and the database of the lease/rental company knows it is you and will bill you accordingly or install a credit card reader in the car itself.
The possibilities are limitless and scary at the same time. I hope the positive wins out and I really hope that they make it impossible to watch a movie / TV while driving (like they do in Japan)
I would love to get my hands on a decent laptop with some normal specs
play hdmi content on a television
have a screen with minimum 800 pixels height
around 11 inch
preferably mat display
works with linux
I have now a vaio vpcx11alj on loan from a friend and it would be perfect except that the screen backlight flickers under linux. Running the thing under the installed windows is perfect if you want to do some meditation while you wait for your webpage / program to open.
"No doubt some people really are nearly hopeless and actively make them unemployable, and deliberately make poor decisions. However, I suspect that such people are vanishingly few; and that really the so-called "unemployable", and those who made what seemed like a perfectly reasonable decision which turned out wrong, were actually just doing the best they could."
don't you call those people politicians ?
"Even the former 2 you get "You still working in IT? My laptops running a bit slow....", so after the wake / reception (delete as appropriate...) you take a look."
I counter that with.
I am sorry I do everything with linux now. The latest windows I used is windows 2000. But if you have a linux system I ll be happy to help you out.
No takers after that.
When linux laptops will be easily available they may impact the numbers.
I am looking to buy a new laptop but been postponing it for about 2 years now because I would like to buy a linux laptop without having to pay for the MS software. Preferable a netbook to carry with me and if possible at about the same price (or cheaper) than a MS laptop. Asus have (had ?) one model of the eee pc that was certified for Ubuntu so my guess was that it would also work with debian since I am not liking the Ubuntu upgrade system (current laptop was found unable to upgrade maybe because of some symbolic links or whatever)
My problem is that I left the "I have too much time on my hands so I ll research for a few days to find what I really want" state and that I am now am looking for something that will work. I don't think I have excessive demands.
light enough to carry around, if possible HDMI output, linux, LAMP and that is about it. I live in Japan and buying from system76 will almost double the price in shipping so that is not really an alternative.
how long before they can map your surrounding with sound?
the popcorn shooter mentioned in another reg article can pinpoint where your mouth is with the use of one word.
I am sure that some one could develop software that maps your surrounding by listening to the echo of your own voice if they can make the microphone sensitive enough. Hello batman mobile phone application.
Is there someone else waiting for Ubuntu (debian would be even better) or some other big shop to release a truly open source phone OS ?
I dream of a day that I could have one source for laptop / tablet / phone and hopefully that those three devices (and maybe a smart tv thrown in the mix too) could be synchronized.
Maybe the patent office should be made (partially) liable to the quality of patents they award ?
If an awarded patent turns out to be without merit through prior art the patent office will have to pay a certain amount of money to the applicant. But if the patent office finds prior art for something that the applicant tries to patent, the applicant has to pay a fine.
Just a thought
I don't know anything about QNX but I wonder if most of the people care.
We (the IT industry) have grown a generation of "switch it off and on again if it stops working".
Even my ubunty install sometimes freezes. To convince people to buy your phone you have to have or a much easier to use OS or something "cool". Don't know how QNX fits in there.
after the disaster that is my current android phone.
every problem and question I have about this phone is countered with "there is an app for that".
yes probably there is but wading through a dozen of applications to finally find a decent calender has left me with a sour taste of android. I use my legacy phone's calender instead. Having google access all my data is also something I do not desire.
Also every app seems to want to access everything. Why does my Japanese keyboard app need to be able to read/write all data and also be able to send everything I enter with that keyboard app to its developer ?
android no thank you very much
I really dislike apple's i phone but I guess I don't have a choice unless some linux wonder phone pops up. But fat chance of that happening.
Here in Japan google launched a big media offense with TV adverts.
I don't watch a lot of TV so I can not say how many times a day the adverts are shown but I have seen it a few times at friends places. They could not really figure out what the meaning of the adverts was (they are Japanese so they would not have a problem understanding the language). I just noticed that they showed google being used for searching stuff on the net.
"until the court has decided whether or not Motorola made its intellectual property accessible and available on reasonable terms, which Microsoft maintains it has not."
I wonder if the same could be said about the standards Microsoft puts into their software and the documentation it makes available to make sure that other programs can work with their software.
Are you referring to lasers used in clubs and on concerts ?
They generally rely on a smoke component (smoke machine or cigarette wielding customers) to display their images. Also I doubt that the lasers can project complicated object as shown in the video here. I also think that most of the lasers shows are simple shapes and not 3D (circles, squares, triangles and so on)