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I remember this from 1999, but I don't know if it is still valid. INTERNET'S BUSIEST SOFTWARE ARCHIVE REACHES NEW DOWNLOAD MILESTONE San Francisco, CA., May 26, 1999 Walnut Creek CDROM, Inc. announced today that their popular software archive at ftp://ftp.cdrom.com has surpassed the one trillion bytes (one terabyte) milestone of files downloaded per day from a single server machine. The current record set on Sunday of 1.39TB of file downloads was made possible while testing a new gigabit ethernet connection with the company's Internet service provider, CRL Network Services. "We're very pleased with how the gigabit ethernet performed during these tests", said Robert Bruce, Walnut Creek's President and founder. "This new bandwidth capability coupled with the incredible performance of the FreeBSD Operating System software has allowed us to raise the bar of Internet server performance to an entirely new level." The server machine, also known as "wcarchive", was recently upgraded to a single processor NetFRAME 9201 system from Micron Electronics, Inc. and is capable of handling more than 10,000 simultaneous downloads.

For anyone who's interested, I found a link for it here, although it doesn't seem to be working, at least not from my job.

If anyone does find a working link, share with us please?

Almost.

Your link gets you a TCP/IP stack, but you still need to get a packet driver to talk to your network hardware.

In case you didn't get one with your device (like if you got a cheap NE2000 clone with no disks from the bargain bin or if you want to use a modem), take a look here:

ftp://ftp.cdrom.com/pub/simtelnet/msdos/pktdrvr

"whale oil beef hooked" - Audrey

As an aside, didn't AT&T purchase this technology from Lernout & Hauspie many many years ago, back in the dot-com days? The quality of this speech seems to be a bit poorer than others I've heard, but of course it depends on the quality of the phoneme recording by the voice actors. A good, consistent recording will allow the parts of speech to be strung together without variances in intonation... some of the voices are choppy probably due to these inconsistencies in recording.

I think Dell uses this voice for their technical support. :)

Why bother outsourcing to India when you can just build a box, install AT&T's Natural Voice's new Indian accent, Anjali http://wcarchive.cdrom.com/pub/bws/bws_44/Anjali.m p3), some run of the mill voice recognition software (maybe an old copy of ViaVoice) and send it to a perl script for processing? Hell, the thing would be damn near perfect- it still wouldn't be able to understand you when you call in for tech support, and would cost HALF! Perfect Emulation!

Is it safe to assume that the command line version for other platforms will take similar URLs? The presumed OSX version at ftp://alien.ssl.berkeley.edu/pub/setiathome-3.08.p owerpc-apple-darwin1.2.tar, and the presumed WinNT version at http://wcarchive.cdrom.com/pub/setiathome/setiatho me-3.03.i386-winnt-cmdline.exe, both don't work yet. (I got these urls by hand editing the links on the Unix download page to replace 3.03 with 3.08, so I'm assuming that the new versions will be consistent with what was already there.) Maybe these links will work by the time you read this, but as of now (2:30 pm EST) they haven't been updated yet.

WWJD:

Answer #1: Not waste $5 on a cheesey plastic bracelet that says WWJD and check it every few minutes to figure out what he would do.

Answer #2: Get angry and through things around that are sin/evil/wrong in a rather violent manner (example: in the Temple)

And finally if you have your WWJD bracelet and you come up to a body of water without a bridge-- WWJD? He would walk on the water--go ahead give it a try then.

Back on topic--great interview

Show me. There's a copy here for your reading pleasure.

has been upheld by the US Supreme Court, as well as lower Courts, in numerous cases.

I agree. That's what makes it a current working philosophy.

you won't tell my neighbors what church to attend by wrapping yourself in a flag of official sanction. I'll petition, file suits, but then in extremity, I'll shoot you in the head to stop you.

And if you try to stop one of my Christian, Islamic or Athestic fellow citizens from being *able* to proselytize, I'll shoot back. As I said, there is a prohibition against the state mandating a specific religion at the federal level, but nothing says that citizens cannot discuss their beliefs in public places, be that on a street corner, post office or a bible study group meeting at a school.

Or are you saying that not *all* free speech should be protected, just the kind you like, and not *all* philosophies should be allowed, just the ones you approve of? I was taught religion as a matter of course in both high school and college at three secular schools, and to ignore something that has shaped the history and development of cultures around the world (including ours) is more than asinine, it's willful ignorance.

--
Evan

Huh? Non-paying? You mean like Project Gutenberg? I doubt they're paying, but they still seem to be there (and I'm certainly not paying either).

The problem with your link is not the slashcode: it is that you don't put your target between "" after the a href=...

Like this!

Anyway thank you for this link...

Baal

Go kill this one, too. I have my copy :-)

ftp://ftp.cdrom.com/pub/idgames/idstuff/wolf/l
inux/wolfmptest-0.7.16-1.x86.run

GET IT HERE

The link might work if slashcode doesn't kill the html by breaking the line *sigh*

It seems the Elcomsoft page has been /., if it's in Russia it does not help...
Thanks to google, here's a mirror of the http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&q= cache:http%3A%2F%2Fwww%2Eelcomsoft%2Ecom%2Fapdfpr% 2Ehtml page, you can download the Advanced PDF Password Recovery here and here
--

cygwin is better than command.com but even better is the bunch of utilities that have been ported with the DJGPP compiler. As far as I know they run without any emulation layer and the speed difference is very visible ('ls' takes forever in cygwin).

So the Web was invented on a NeXT machine. That was new to me. What I missed in the article was another very significant NeXT user: id software. Doom was developed on NeXTs, and before Quake 2, all level design was apparently done on NeXTs: just have a look at the huge pile of Objective C that is QuakeEd. Carmack switched over to NT for Quake 2 development because you can't plug an OpenGL accelerator into a NeXT station. And IIRC, he wasn't too happy about it.

Webmasters and Web Sites may not link to files in this archive
(FTP.CDROM.COM) without prior written permission by Digital River, Inc.
If you are interested in linking to files in this archive, please send
an e-mail to cdrom@digitalriver.com for details. Digital River, Inc.
reserves the right to seek compensation for unauthorized use.

This sounds especially bad since they are the primary archive for FreeBSD!

SpeedStep runs at the lower speed WHENEVER you are on battery. (at least according to Dell) It is not dependent on the processes going on. It only runs at the higher speed when plugged in. imo, this is idiotic. But I can see how it would reduce OS problems.

SpeedStep is configurable. From what I understand of SpeedStep, software has to initate the change. With Windows, a control panel applet watches the power source with APM, and when it changes, it has the option of changing the speed. With the Windows applet, it allows you to configure SpeedStep to run at full speed all the time, only when on AC power, or never. Likewise, it lets you configure the lower speed all the time, only on battery, or never.

The system will also switch on-the-fly. While configured to run slow on battery and fast on AC, use a program to measure CPU speed on both and it will change as the power source changes.

Transmeta's processor does a much swifter thing; it changes dynamically based roughly on usage... so when you aren't using it, it just slows down.

This is better than SpeedStep, but the Intel CPUs do have a nice feature called the HLT instruction, which actually halts the CPU until an external interrupt occurs. If Windows 9x would actually use it, laptop batteries would last ALOT longer.

This is better, but I'm not sure how much, than those programs which simply send the least-power-using instruction for a cycle to reduce heat load. [snip] I suspect that actually slowing down the number of operations is much more efficient than the lowest op, because I bet there's a bunch of overhead even on the lowest-power operation. So Transmeta's is definitely better.

This is better when used unaided with Windows 9x/Me. But...

Like I mentioned above, the HLT instruction will actually stop ALL instruction processing within the CPU until an external interrupt occurs, ie. the timer interrupt fires so the OS can schedule the next process. So, once the HLT instruction is issued, the CPU remains halted for the remainder of the processes timeslice. HLT is used within the idle process of Linux, the BSDs, and Win NT/2000, so they all benefit. For Win9x, there are programs like Rain, that will consume all of the idle CPU time and issue HLT instructions as if it was the idle process.

If Transmeta's chip can halt itself when it detects an idle loop, then cool. It should work quite a bit better with Win9x than other x86 CPUs.

If you read Slashdot or other news sources, you might have noticed that BSDI and Walnut Creek (a major supporter of FreeBSD) are merging. What this means is that BSDI and FreeBSD themselves are going to eventually merge as the BSD/OS (BSDI's product) is gradually Open-Sourced. While this "daemon mating" is another example of commercial/open source merging, I don't see it happening to any large degree.

(Having said this, there will probably be a "HP/UX - OpenBSD merger" story posted next :)

-- Floyd

Sorry, my foul-mouthed chum, but Drug Wars really is an important hit^H^H^Hbit of software to be discussing. Now go put on some Bob Marley, smoke a joint, and relax.

While it's great to see a book on BSD in a nutshell - I can't really see what the requirement for it is. Unix in a Nutshell is an excellent resource, and as a FreeBSD user, The FreeBSD Handbook (available from Walnut Creek never strays far from my desk.

:) FreeBSD is the system of choice for high performance network applications. FreeBSD will outperform other systems when running on equivalent hardware. The largest and busiest public server on the Internet, at ftp.cdrom.com, uses FreeBSD to serve more than 800GB/day of downloads. FreeBSD is used by Yahoo, USWest, Xoom.com and many others as their main server OS because of its ability to handle heavy network traffic with high performance and rock stable reliability.

:| Linux performs well for most applications, however the performance is not optimal under heavy network load. The network performance of Linux is 20-30% below the capacity of FreeBSD running on the same hardware as Linux. As long as you are not trying to squeeze the last ounce of performance out of your hardware, or performing mission critical transactions, Linux is a very good choice for a server OS.

:( Windows NT is adequate for routine desktop apps, but it is unable to handle heavy network loads. A few organizations try to make it work as an Internet server. For instance, barnesandnoble.com uses Windows-NT, as can be verifyed by the error messages that their webserver produces, such as this recent example: Error Message: [Microsoft][ODBC SQL Server Driver][SQL Server]Can't allocate space for object 'queryHistory' in database 'web' because the 'default' segment is full. For their own "Hotmail" Internet servers, Microsoft uses FreeBSD.

You could tear the ass off some RC5 cracking with this beast and the PPC client.

Also, SETI@Home offers a PPC client that would benefit from this.

I may have to get me a couple of these.

--

ftp://ftp.cdrom.com/p ub/3dfiles/games/terminusdemowinfull.exe

There's a more recent, less in-depth review comparision of FreeBSD vs. Linux vs. Windows NT here. Why Yahoo! Uses FreeBSD is also interesting.

It's been set several times and I just threw out the paper copy of the press release. Let me look for a minute...ahh, here it is. Unfortunetly, I do not recall the exact circumstances and they are not listed here. But, I think it was a new release of Red Hat, or a new release of Slackware, or a new release of FreeBSD. Possibly a combination of them. I wish I could be more help. Emailing one of the FreeBSD lists should get a response.

Walnut Creek sells something called the "Complete FreeBSD Manual" (with or without CDs), 3rd edition. I notice that the Handbook refers to this book in the Bibliography.

What is the relation between them?

Is there any way for me to unzip this file?

The third most portable program in the C world (after Hello World and one implementation of the Kermit protocol) is the Info-ZIP software. You don't need PKWARE or Nico Mak to unzip anymore.

DREADling download @ FTP.CDROM.COM

btw, for some reason a direct link to the file would not work...so this is a link to the directory where I stored it. Just thought I would tell people ahead of time before they decide to flame me.

Are PNGs used much more than GIFs on most websites these days?

I'll tell you why not: Name one browser that supports MNG.

...

OK. So you can't think of any. Now name one other open-standard format (GIF is an open standard; it just isn't freebeer to implement) that supports animation and is supported by the major Web browsers (NS 4/6, IE5, Opera).

...

Now you see why sites use GIF. It's the only animation format that browsers support. Granted, there is JavaScript rotation of PNG, but what if a fella has *Script turned off to stop email viruses?

When you buy games, they come on huge CDs that have a whole bunch

Same here in the States. Get them from BSDi, the makers of the Walnut Creek CDROM collection. But do they have Hampsterdeath, Vitamins, or freepuzzlearena? I know for a fact that freepuzzlearena started in Russia (as TETRIS®).

Use libungif: it does not use LZW compression, so there are no patent issues.
for that matter, I thought any GIFs produced with a licenced editor were themselves licenced - unless the goalposts were moved again. in any case, here is a good time to push for better PNG support in browsers....
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FYI, Winzip actually does not use PK's code for compression or decompression. Instead, it uses the open source Info-Zip implementation of the inflat and deflat algorithm. As a matter, most of the freeware/shareware/commercial Zipper or Unzipper (other than the real PKZIP) uses or bases on the Info-Zip codes. I think it is remarkable that Phillip W. Katz was that he had never tried to enforce his patent(s) on the compression algorithm behide zip file formats.

ftp.cdrom.com is much faster than the ZDNet FTP server.
I'm getting 25K/sec instead of the 2K/sec from ZDNet.

ftp.cdrom.com/pub/3dfiles/games/dk demo.exe

PNG already supports alpha transparency, which is better than that 1-bit mask $#!+ that GIF uses. Animations are part of the MNG specification, a superset of PNG, or you can hack them in with a JavaScript(TM) image-switching script.

Some postings here said that folks are glad PNG doesn't have animation support, but I'm afraid one has to see it from the other side -- as long as there is no MNG support (which is a format for animation and has some things in common, see http://www.cdrom.com/pub/mng/) everywhere, GIF will stay. Web site creators want animations, and they want their stuff to display on most people's browsers, so they will take GIF. They don't give a damn about Unisys' behaviour, they paid for their software (probably ;-)) and they want to get things done.

The only way to really let GIF die (IMHO) is to create a free MNG library that can be easily included everywhere (like libpng) and put it into all free or semi-free browsers like Netscape, kfm, whatever. Once web site creators start using it, users will ask for MNG support (Ma, the animation doesn't display!) and IE will have it as well. Best thing would be a free GIMP-like animation editor...

Nope. You're thinking of the wrong thing. PNG doesn't multi-images. Take a look at the PNG web site's intro page. It says:

One GIF feature that PNG does not try to reproduce is multiple-image support, especially animations; PNG was and is intended to be a single-image format only. (A very PNG-like extension format called MNG is currently under development, but MNGs and PNGs will have different file extensions and different purposes.)

You want animations, you want MNG. Of course, animations should go away completely and totally for all time, but that's just my opinion...

-B

Under US patent law, I don't know that a free-software patent-pool would do anything significant except waste money--a better solution is to, when you come up with an idea for something new, create a reference implementation. This stops anyone else from gaining a pat for it, in the future, as you can easily demonstrate prior art.

Also, being able to say that something is unpatented helps assure everyone that no one--not even you--are going to abuse a patent. Witness PNG.

I wish it would be different...

Wait no longer. The Official Press Release has been released. Check it out.

I searched the Slackware Linux site without success for the "Get Slack" banners/icons that their old site used to make available. The best I could find (beyond grabbing the "Slackware Linux" logo from their webpage) was a product photo of a Slackware mouse mat (at Walnut Creek) that had the Smoking Penguin Slackware mascot on it.

Anyway, I Got Slack, so I'm happy. ;-)

In addition, the link you posted for Info-ZIP is incorrect. Right now, most of http://www.freesoftware.com/ either redirects to http://www.cdrom.com/ or mirrors it; either way, the Info-ZIP tree on the latter is a 10-month-old broken mirror, and therefore so is anything that mirrors or redirects to it. The correct URLs for Info-ZIP and zlib are:

ftp://ftp.freesoftware.com/pub /infozip/Info-ZIP.html
ftp://ftp.freesoftware.com/pu b/infozip/zlib/zlib.html

There is no local HTTP access to this tree currently. There are, however, mirrors overseas that provide HTTP service. Check the respective home pages, and if they don't mention "freesoftware.com" somewhere on them, they are not up to date!
--

Look at the walnut creek web site, dull, boring, stale. Look at the FreeBSD site, the home page hasn't been touched in well over a year. Look at the BSDi site and you would think they were out of business. You can't even find a comprehensive feature list for BSD/OS. I think it is telling that none of the sites listed above have an announcement of the merger!

So is FreeBSD repositioning itself to focus on the server segment of the market, leaving the workstation segment to Linux?

>ftp.cdrom.com is running off of a dual Xeon running FreeBSD.

ftp.cdrom.com is a uni-processor Xeon running FreeBSD - see ftp://ftp.cdrom.com/archive-info/wca rchive.txt

TVs have a slightly different gamma than monitors, so video images tend to look duller on computer monitors unless this is compensated for;

Are you sure? When we researched gamma issues for the PNG Gamma Tutorial, we learned that almost all CRTs have the same gamma characteristic. Perhaps the dullness you see is caused by computer monitors being less bright than TVs.

AMC

Just look at the newsgroups, like comp.text, comp.text.sgml, comp.text.tex, comp.text.xml and the rest of it and you too might get the impression that SGML is a good idea that the steam went out of.

Having said that the old DTD used by LDP does the job reasonably well, though some improvements would do nicely.

The issue of graphics is a tricky one. GIF has legal problems, JPEG is suited to photos rather then diagrams, and PNG is not common enough. Worse, many of the users do not have capabilit for fancy graphics. This has come up in the past on the mailing lists.

In the mean time we can use ascii graphics... Later I hope that Scalable Vector Graphics, and CGMOpen will provide a better platform for diagrams.

we need to have a Linux version first.

No, we need freely-available source code so games can be ported to any system, Linux or otherwise. But that'll never happen, right?

At the risk of the bandwidth of my box, here's my true type font tarball. It contains the MS readme.txt and EULA.txt as per their licence agreement. I've lower-cased all the names of fonts. It's free to distribute, AFAIK:

True Type Fonts

If you're going to download it, and you run a website or FTP site, please mirror it and help others get good looking usage from their browsers under Linux :-)

Note: you have to change Netscape 4.x's prefs in Appearance -> Fonts so that Variable font is Times New Roman [ttf] and Fixed width is Courier New [ttf].

M13 seems to not need any modification out of the box :)

xfstt works by listening on a Unix domain socket (or TCP socket), just add it to your font path as per the instructions in the tarball from ftp.cdrom.com/pub/linux/slackw are-7.0/contrib (also get the xfstt.txt file).
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However, I too would agree that FreeBSD off the shelf is scarce, even in Malaysia where I am. Perhaps a proper marketing push should be done here. We definitely need more commercially focussed effort here, not in a move to make money but in order to reach the masses who somehow think that anything not on the shelves isnt any good.

No beef on the Linux folk, but FreeBSD is opensource as well. It ain't fair that Linux gets all the press inches.

FreeBSD is sold at compusa as the FreeBSD powerpack, which includes the 4CD FreeBSD set, the 6 CD toolkit, and the Complete freebsd book by greg lehey. You can of course buy all this at Walnut Creek CDROM.

I can think of no single person more deserving of this award than Jordan K. Hubbard of Walnut Creek/The FreeBSD Project. He is the ongoing force behind FreeBSD advocacy and deserves any recognition he gets.

Jordan is always more than willing to mail out free promotional materials whenever you need them, for whatever circumstances you may have. His willingness to help anyone out with FreeBSD is at the very least commendable, and his loyalty to the Project sets him apart from others.

Jordan is my vote for Unsung Hero.


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why not use and animated gif or better a png instead of a crappy script ?

They do use an animated gif (Opera shows it fine with scripting disabled). Now, PNGs wouldn't allow the animation they wanted, and would likely force some sort of weird javascript solution ;-)

Of course, to have PNG animation, we'll have to wait for browser support of MNG.
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