SoulSe

They dropped the hand crank some time ago. It is still available as an accessory, however... which means you have to pay for it separately.

Very of few of the computer-reliant Skype phones are Linux-compatible. But there is a phone from Netgear that doesn't need to be connected to a computer - it connects to your wireless network and has its on Skype client running on the phone. Nice thing is you can take it anywhere with you, like a mobile. They also have a Skype base phone that is both a normal cordless telephone and Skype phone and also doesn't require a computer. I'd go with one of those. EDIT: This is the phone I'm talking about.

I didn't say the OLPC has no place in the world. I said it was miss-directed from an African perspective. No doubt it has a positive role to play in your country.

Sorry - my bad, I was wrong. They have pulled out of OLPC, but are still doing the XO. The guy who told me the story got it all wrong. In Africa, underprivileged children often live in squalor without running water or electricity. I can promise you they'd rather be able to eat than have an email address. If you gave them any kind of laptop they would try and sell it to buy food for their families. They are also frequently the victims of crime. Anything they have with them will be stolen by older children or other thugs. If they have a few cent in their pocket it will be stolen - now OLPC wants to give them a neon-coloured laptop that can be seen from a mile away?!? I'm not saying technology does not have a role to play for kids in a developing country - the digital divide is a huge problem. But there are more serious concerns. Kids should have access to technology, but it should be in a controlled environment where they can learn and explore without having to worry about their situation at home and the crime around them. Once again, the children of Africa are the victims of western capitalism. Their governments will be convinced by sweet-talking businessman to spend millions on yet another piece of crap they don't need and can't use. They are already at the mercy of tyrants put in charge of their countries by western powers securing resource rights and now they're being attacked from another angle too. OLPC seems to have good intentions, but I seriously doubt that Intel has the best interests of the children on their minds...

Intel have also halted their plans for a rival product, opening up the market for the OLPC... which is doomed to fail because of its creator's complete lack of understanding of developing countries... but that is a discussion for another time / thread :P

It looks like a really cool service. I'll be signing up as soon as I have a little time.

You mean 4.03 ;)

I'm signing the petition - but it's not going to help. Blizzard have said many times that they have no plan to support Linux. Instead, they contribute to making their games work well with Cedega and they always release Mac clients... in fact, they do the best job of Mac games out there imho. World of Warcraft works really well with Cedega and this has reaffirmed Blizzard's position on Linux. So it really doesn't matter how many people sign the petition - you won't see a native version of the game... unless there's a Blizzard in hell :P But you can bet it will work very well with Cedega.

Netscape was the first browser I ever used and I stuck with it until around '97. When you use Firefox or a derivative Mozilla browser, spare a thought for the browser that provided the base code.

Another vote for AVG. Not that you need it. Or any other AV, if you're using a Unix-based OS. But I guess you could use it if you were running a mail server that served Windows clients.

I remember seeing an option like that in the Cedega config file, but I don't have Cedega installed at the moment... maybe try going through the config file, using man or Google ;)

'Shaming' anyone is an infantile undertaking. Keep your own nose clean and professional, while pointing out the facts.

Is Mandriva a good platform for Zimbra? I am speaking to more and more businesses in both the SMB and enterprise space that are displaying an interest in Zimbra. The nice thing with Zimbra is that it does not attempt to be a drop-in replacement for Exchange, but rather offers a whole new approach with some very powerful tools. It also scales nicely to the size of the organisation.

Growth at the moment is very much centered on the mid-market and more and more vendors are switching focus to that market segment. Enterprise is very much a maintenance and services business at the moment. I'm not sure if that is Mandriva's take on the market, but it makes sense. Red Hat and Novell kind of have the enterprise space tied down with their offerings, I would advise other distros to look the small to medium sized business space.

afaik everything is bundled - you just buy the game and install it. The Trasngaming technology is supposed to be transparent, so that to the end user it seems like the game is running natively.

It's important to note that gOS has nothing to do with Google. It is produced by a third party and bundles a lot of Google apps together, but is not affiliated / associated with Google. From the site: It looks like a neat little OS though, I'd like to try it out. I also think that SaaS is the future of applications, so its natural that operating systems in the future will be like gOS - merely a front-end to a browser that locks into hosted applications.

I still have one lying around, but haven't used it for about five years :P Use the parallel cable - it works perfectly. I'm not sure how you'd get it working over USB.

Linux vendors are often accused of being unprofessional and badly organised. Francois' letter was childish, poorly worded and while I know that English is not his first language and I honestly sympathise with him, just makes Mandriva look unprofessional. http://www.internetnews.com/bus-news/article.php/3708961 http://tech.blorge.com/Structure:%20/2007/...-computer-deal/ Microsoft's reactions, by contrast, are cool and calm - which is what you would expect from professional business people. They don't say anything bad about Mandriva, but defend their relationship with the customer. PR 101 - it's not that hard. Please don't get me wrong, I can understand that Francois is angry and I often overreact to things on the spur of the moment myself. But writing a badly-worded open letter that attacks Steve Ballmer (who probably didn't even know the deal was happening himself, obviously) makes Mandriva look like a bunch of kids. Compare this: To this: My advice to Mandriva: hire a professional PR person and don't let any communiqué slip past without their approval. Because any businessman reading those two paragraphs is going to side with Microsoft.

A CEO's job is too make as much money as he / she possibly can for his / her shareholders, within the limits of the law. Stop blaming major corporations for trying to make money and start blaming the governments that do not have policies in place to prevent dirty business! I don't like Ballmer, not even one little bit - and I've told the powers that be at Microsoft as much (I went out for drinks last week with Iain MacDonald - the crazy Aussie who heads up Microsoft's Server BU and was project lead on XP and told him the same). But at the end of the day, and as annoying as he is, Ballmer is just doing his job - same as me, same as you, same as Francois at Mandriva. If spray painting walls was legal, would you blame kids for doing it, or would you get government to make it illegal? Stop wasting time complaining to / about Microsoft, your complaints are falling on deaf ears. Instead, get involved in policy reform and make dirty business impossible within the framework of the law. Take the SA government for example - it has a firm policy in place for the adoption of open source. The policy prevents government departments from using any solution that is not open source, unless they can prove that a particular proprietary solution has no known OSS alternative that offers better value. The policy isn't perfect, but it comes from the top and makes things happen - and MS has no leg to stand on. Of course, that's not to say I agree with said policy - and, of course, Microsoft are increasingly becomming vendors of open source, but that is another story (www.microsoft.com/opensource) I have just finished an article on the topic, which I will post to the board once it is out of embargo.

Hmmm... while I feel for Mandriva in this situation, methinks more blame needs to be laid on the Nigerian party involved. Microsoft are not blameless though, to be sure. Sounds like malicious business.

I personally think Ubuntu would be a better choice.... /duck Seriously.

Mandriva brings up firewall services by default. It might be stopping your eggdrops there. You can quickly drop the wall in the MCC and then try bring them up. That'd be my first guess...

I met Sam Ramji last week - he heads up Microsoft's open source labs (http://www.microsoft.com/opensource). Did you know that Microsoft voted yes for ODF at the OSI and contributes to Zend and even Mozilla with Firefox for Vista, from their open source labs? I was surprised to learn it. The company, imho, has turned a new leaf, but is going to have to deal with the legacy of what it used to be.

Might be something in the Mandriva kernel. I might get lambasted for this - but why not use another distro? Any particular reason why you must use Mandriva? Th other option is to roll your own kernel for Mandriva using, for example, vanilla sources.

Actually it works excellently under OS X :P And that's why it is usable in Linux too. Just a little perseverance :) Try using wvdial too - I've found that it has better luck with stubborn modems than other diallers.