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Laptop for sale
by Joe Brouhard 22 Jul '07

22 Jul '07

I now have my Dell Inspirion 5150 available for sale. Going price is $350 or best offer. Specs are: 15.4" LCD 1024x768 maximum resolution Pentium 4 3.0Ghz 512MB DDR RAM 40GB Hard Drive DVD-ROM Internal Wireless (broadcom 43xx chipset) nVidia GeForce Go 5500 Video Card Runs Kubuntu very very beautifully. If anyone wants it, i'm willing to install kubutu and make sure wireless and DVD works Price is $350 or best offer. Comes complete with a Kubuntu CD, and power cord. -- Joe Brouhard jbrouhard(a)gmail.com

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Free Cellphone Service- New York Times
by Jonathan Hutchins 18 Jul '07

18 Jul '07

July 5, 2007 STATE OF THE ART IPhone-Free Cellphone News By DAVID POGUE Man, oh man. How'd you like to have been a PR person making a cellphone announcement last week, just as the iPhone storm struck? You'd have had all the impact of a gnat in a hurricane. But hard to believe though it may be, T-Mobile did make an announcement last week. And even harder to believe, its new product may be as game-changing as Apple's. It's called T-Mobile HotSpot @Home, and it's absolutely ingenious. It could save you hundreds or thousands of dollars a year, and yet enrich T-Mobile at the same time. In the cellphone world, win-win plays like that are extremely rare. Here's the basic idea. If you're willing to pay $10 a month on top of a regular T-Mobile voice plan, you get a special cellphone. When you're out and about, it works like any other phone; calls eat up your monthly minutes as usual. But when it's in a Wi-Fi wireless Internet hot spot, this phone offers a huge bargain: all your calls are free. You use it and dial it the same as always - you still get call hold, caller ID, three-way calling and all the other features - but now your voice is carried by the Internet rather than the cellular airwaves. These phones hand off your calls from Wi-Fi network to cell network seamlessly and automatically, without a single crackle or pop to punctuate the switch. As you walk out of a hot spot, fewer and fewer Wi-Fi signal bars appear on the screen, until - blink! - the T-Mobile network bars replace them. (The handoff as you move in the opposite direction, from the cell network into a hot spot, is also seamless, but takes slightly longer, about a minute.) O.K., but how often are you in a Wi-Fi hot spot? With this plan, about 14 hours a day. T-Mobile gives you a wireless router (transmitter) for your house - also free, after a $50 rebate. Connect it to your high-speed Internet modem, and in about a minute, you've got a wireless home network. Your computer can use it to surf the Web wirelessly - and now all of your home phone calls are free. You know how people never seem to have good phone reception in their homes? How they have to huddle next to a window to make calls? That's all over now. The free router is like a little T-Mobile cell tower right in your house. Truth is, the HotSpot @Home phones work with any Wi-Fi (802.11b/g) router, including one you may already have. But T-Mobile's routers, manufactured by D-Link and Linksys, have three advantages. First, you turn on the router's encryption - to keep neighbors off your network - by pressing one button, rather than having to fool with passwords. Second, these routers give priority to calls, so that computer downloads won't degrade your call quality. Third, T-Mobile's routers greatly extend the phone's battery life. The routers say, in gadgetese, "I'm here for you, any time," just once, rather than requiring the phone to issue little Wi-Fi "Are you there?" pings every couple of minutes. T-Mobile was already a price leader in the cellphone game. But the HotSpot @Home program can be extremely economical, in four ways. SAVING NO. 1 It's not just your calls at home that are free; you may also get free calls at your office, friends' houses, library, coffee shops and so on - wherever Wi-Fi is available. You can access both unprotected and password-protected Wi-Fi networks (you just enter the password on the phone's keypad). The phone has a built-in Search for Networks feature. Once you select a wireless network, the phone memorizes it. The next time you're in that hot spot, you're connected silently and automatically. There's one big limitation to all this freeness: these phones can't get onto any hot spot that require you to log in on a Web page (to enter a credit card number, for example). Unfortunately, this restriction rules out most airports and many hotel rooms. There's one exception - or, rather, 8,500 of them: T-Mobile's archipelago of hot spots at Starbucks, Borders and other public places. In these places you encounter neither the fee nor the Web-page sign-in that you would encounter if you were using a laptop; the words "T-Mobile Hot Spot" simply appear at the top of your screen, and you can start making free calls. The cool part is that, depending on how many calls you can make in hot spots, the Wi-Fi feature might permit you to choose a much less expensive calling plan. If you're a heavy talker, you might switch, for example, from T-Mobile's $100 plan (2,500 minutes) to its $40 plan (1,000 minutes). Even factoring in the $10 HotSpot @Home fee, you'd still save $600 a year. SAVING NO. 2 T-Mobile's billing system isn't smart enough to notice handoffs between Wi-Fi and cellular networks. So each call is billed according to where it begins. You can start a call at home, get in your car, drive away and talk for free until the battery's dead. The opposite is also true, however; if you begin a call on T-Mobile's cell network and later enter a Wi-Fi hot spot, the call continues to eat up minutes. If HotSpot @Home catches on, therefore, the airwaves will reverberate with people coming home and saying, "Hey, can I call you right back?" SAVING NO. 3 When you're in a hot spot, T-Mobile has no idea where you are in the world. You could be in Des Moines, Denmark or Djibouti. So this is a big one for travelers: When you're in a hot spot overseas, all calls to United States numbers are free. SAVING NO. 4 T-Mobile's hope is that you'll cancel your home phone line altogether. You'll be all cellphone, all the time. And why not, since you'll now get great cell reception at home and have only one phone number and voicemail? Ka-ching: there's an additional $500 a year saved. Have T-Mobile's accountants gone quietly mad? Why would they give away the farm like this? Because T-Mobile benefits, too. Let's face it: T-Mobile's cellular network is not on par with, say, Verizon's. But improving its network means spending millions of dollars on new cell towers. It's far less expensive just to hand out free home routers. Furthermore, every call you make via Wi-Fi is one less call clogging T-Mobile's cellular network, further reducing the company's need to spend on network upgrades. In principle, then, HotSpot @Home is a revolutionary, rule-changing, everybody-wins concept. But before you go canceling lines and changing calling plans, consider a few small flaws. At the moment, you have a choice of only two phones: the Nokia 6086 and Samsung t409. Both of these are small basic flip phones (both $50 after rebate and with two-year commitment). They sound terrific; over Wi-Fi, in fact, they produce the best-sounding cellphone calls you've ever made. But the screens are small and coarse, and the features limited. Fortunately, T-Mobile intends to bring the HotSpot @Home feature to many other phones in the coming months. The Wi-Fi sucks power, too; these phones get 6.5 hours of talk time on the cell network, but only 4 hours over Wi-Fi. Finally, T-Mobile eventually intends to price the service at $20 a month, or $30 for family plans. Only people who sign up during the introductory period (now through an unspecified end date) will be offered the $10 price, or $20 for families. Even at the higher price, you could still come out ahead. With HotSpot @Home, T-Mobile has taken a tremendous step into the future. Most phone companies cower in fear when you mention voice calls over the Internet (Skype, Vonage and so on). After all, if the Internet makes the price approach zero, who will pay for phone service? But T-Mobile has found a way to embrace and exploit this technology to everyone's benefit. The result is a smartly implemented, technologically polished, incredibly inexpensive way to make over your phone lifestyle. E-mail: Pogue(a)nytimes.com <mailto:Pogue@nytimes.com> Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company <URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/05/technology/circuits/05pogue.html?ei=50 90 <http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/05/technology/circuits/05pogue.html?ei=5 090&en=39e3cc8226651f90&ex=1341288000&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss&pagewa nted=print> &en=39e3cc8226651f90&ex=1341288000&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss&pagewante d=print> Went past one of their kiosks today, they actually had two different routers on display.

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Ubuntu: How do you change default runlevels without inittab?
by Leo Mauler 18 Jul '07

18 Jul '07

I've just installed Xubuntu on an older computer. I want the option of running the GUI some of the time (such as for the Synaptic Package Manager), but I want to boot into text mode all of the time and run startx when needed. So I go to edit /etc/inittab and change the default runlevel so that the GUI doesn't start on boot, except there is no inittab. Instead, there's this entirely new thing called "Upstart". I've been on the Upstart pages and on the Ubuntu forums. Everyone is fawning over the new Upstart and how great it is going to be, but no one is saying how you can get rid of the GUI login in Upstart. All I want to do is change "id:5:initdefault:" to "id:3:initdefault:", but I can't find anything on the Upstart pages to let me know how to do that in Upstart. Before you ask, I have read everything in /etc/event.d, and I still don't understand any of the scripts. People have said that Upstart will yield to a /etc/inittab you create yourself, but I can't find any information on copying the information out of Upstart and changing it to make a homemade /etc/inittab. I'm a little worried about an /etc/inittab with a single line, if Upstart is going to rely entirely on the /etc/inittab. ____________________________________________________________________________________ Got a little couch potato? Check out fun summer activities for kids. http://search.yahoo.com/search?fr=oni_on_mail&p=summer+activities+for+kids&…

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Re: Stress Testing Hard Drives
by Jack 16 Jul '07

16 Jul '07

Haven't read back through the whole thread, but I'm going to comment anyway. SMART isn't very smart. If you plan on relying on this metric alone to keep your data safe, then you are going to be losing data all too frequently. It's a well known fact in the industry that SMART doesn't really work a *large* percentage of the time. If anyone wants to challenge me on that, I'll google it and dig up some statistics and white papers and hard evidence. Unfortunately, the best hard evidence is hidden behind the closed doors of the makers. I've had drives last for decades and others 1 day. Fast/low, cheap/expensive all the same. Also don't think that going out and buying an expensive SCSI will shield you from this. It's been proven that SCSI/IDE/SATA are all pretty much equivalent, and that buying an expensive one isn't going to boost your longevity either. Want reliable harddrives, then your best bet is to buy a disk array from one of the top packagers. But really the best bet is to buy a pair or three, do frequent backups, don't run 24/7, occasionally mirror to a spare. As far as stress testing HDs, I think that's foolhardy. It's a good way to destroy HDs. I used to do this for a living for a company that made blood analsying equipment. Burn the drives in and stress them over a period of weeks, discard the ones that failed, and installed the ones that didn't. This weeded out the ones from bad lots, but I can't help but wonder if we didn't reduce the life of those "good" drives by doing this. Drives were different back then too, not as dense and a whole lot more expensive (oh yeah and less storage). --- Oren Beck <orenbeck(a)gmail.com> wrote: > In regard to the concept of drive degradation being > "hidden" by controllers. > It seems to be a needful evil for the current > applied art and science of > rotating magnetic media at these price points. Yes, > I suspect we "could" > make media, heads, positioning methods et all that > would be "true" non > contact under most practical conditions. > > The game is a paraphrasing of an older tech rubric- > Cheap- Fast- Stable=pick > any 2. > > So the SMART ancestral concept was actually > devised as an end run around > those rules. P.S. SMART was really just a marketing tool.

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Re: sound some places not others
by Jonathan Hutchins 16 Jul '07

16 Jul '07

On Saturday 14 July 2007 10:41:40 am Lowell <lowell(a)kc.rr.com> wrote: >> Why such an old release? > I'm using the old distro 'cause I had a cd of it; also, I've noticed > that old hardware and old linux (or Windows, for that matter) seem to > get along better than a mismatch in that regard. This can be true, but if you have at least 256M of RAM and 5G of HD, I'd go with the newer release. As far as I know, all the hardware that 10.x covered is covered in the current release, and much more old hardware is covered better. > Flash 9 plugin is installed and in Netscape's dir. However, the > installer didn't seem to put flashplayer.xtp in components (where it > belongs) and /sbin/locate can't find it either. I suspect that's the > problem. Remember that you have to run updatedb before locate will find a new file. rpm -ql will list files installed and where they are. One of the problems with older distros that Mandriva has since fixed is the various locations that plugins can be, they are now symlinked.

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OT: Toshiba A200
by Tim reid 16 Jul '07

16 Jul '07

does anyone know anything about the Toshiba A200? I'm googling now for reviews, but if anyone has opinions/review that they would like to share, please do. TIA Tim

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sound some places not others
by Lowell 14 Jul '07

14 Jul '07

Folks: I've just installed Mandrakelinux 10.2 3.4.3-3mdk on my IBM Thinkpad t30, and put the following lines in /etc/modules.conf: alias sound opl3sa2 options sound dmabuf=1 alias synth0 opl3 options opl3 io=0x388 options opl3sa2 mss_io=0x530 irq=5 dma=0 dma2=1 mpu_io=0x300 io=0x120 Now Totem Media Player will play some sounds nice and loud but won't make a peep while playing a QuickTime movie (.mov) for example. Wonder why? Also in Netscape 7.1 (I wanted the suite with the mail client, this is the latest one that has it) Youtube shows the pictures nicely, but no sounds... I installed this file: npcxplugin.npwmsdrm.so* in /usr/local/netscape/plugins to no avail... Anybody have any suggestions apart from "Get a real (pick one:) a.) distro b.) browser c.) computer d.) life."

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Linspire/Freespire
by Earle Beason 11 Jul '07

11 Jul '07

Oren, I think you have a valid point there with the "karma" and programmers. I don't see linspire in the same manner as a liberating software, but rather some businessmen cashing in on others works. Reminds me of a hateful article I read, " http://www.vanwensveen.nl/index.html " I especially love the part about "digging great programs out of the trash" bit. However I really don't expect Linspire to be around in five years, Microsoft has a habit of buying and killing it competition.What they don't buy, they do the wal-mart stomp and run it out of business. I would toss another path in to your thought, free software on the items the majority of consumers have come to expect from their computer, Office software, Internet browser, email program, mp3/dvd player, small "waste 15 minutes" type of games, spyware blocker etc Beyond that scope a small price for specialized applications. Like autocad, graphic art programs for movie making, the phone-switch interfaces, payroll, time sheets I guess what I getting at, the stuff normally used at home for the basics; free. The stuff that requires more attention and more hands on, go on the ala carte for the end user

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RE: Stress Testing Hard Drives
by Jack 11 Jul '07

11 Jul '07

Well, then I must be everybody's buddy! I'm O+. Which means everyone can use my bloodtype, but I can only use O+. It's kinda spooky everytime I donate, though. They take one look at my donor card, and see the O+, and then they start salivating, like they're just going to suck all my blood out. Maybe, I should start putting an O+ after my name? ;') > --- "Kelsay, Brian - Kansas City, MO" <brian.kelsay(a)kcc.usda.gov> wrote: > Hey, mine too. We can be blood buddies!! If we > ever need a > transfusion, we can call each other. My blood is > clean, had it changed > at 30,000 miles and everything. > > _____ > > From: Monty J. Harder > Sent: Friday, July 06, 2007 5:55 PM > > My blood type is A+... Does that count for anything? >

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Speaking of phones...
by Matthew Copple 10 Jul '07

10 Jul '07

I'm about to get a new one. Not an iPhone -- I have better things to do with $600. I am, however, looking to replace my Audiovox XV-6600 and its Windows Mobile with something Linux compatible. I almost went with the Treo two years ago, when I bought this one, but kept hearing of problems with hearing the caller on the other end. Having used a phone for the last two years that requires near-complete silence to be able to use effectively, I am fully paranoid about the matter now. Are there any suggestions for PDAPhones which are compatible with Linux (for syncing contacts, appointments, etc.) and at the very least, provide minimally acceptable call quality (that is, at least comparable to one of the low-end "free" phones)? My wife has one of those freebies, and it rocks compared to the tinny crap I try to listen to when I use my phone. -- Matthew Copple mcopple(a)gmail.com "Above all, we must realize that no arsenal, or no weapon in the arsenals of the world, is so formidable as the will and moral courage of free men and women. It is a weapon our adversaries in today's world do not have." -- President Ronald Reagan

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