Slashdot Mirror

According to someone on a compaq/linux list to which I subscribe:

"Since there have been at least 16 incidences of batteries catching fire, HP
will replace batteries with serial numbers beginning with GC, IA, L0 or L1.
These include many batteries shipped with the HP/Compaq R3000, zv5000 and
nx9105 models (my nx9105 had an 8 cell battery with a serial number starting
with GC).

http://www.hp.com/support/BatteryReplacement

This again confirms that the batteries truly suck, at least the 8 cell ones.
At least I'll get a new one."

Gah. If you use C (or better, C++), and you like it, and you like garbage collection, why not just use a garbage collection in C? I haven't written anything particularly huge lately, but the Boehm-Demers-Weiser one seems pretty solid. It's the best of all worlds -- you let the garbage collector handle most of your memory recollection. Remember the 90-10 rule ("90% of execution time is spent in 10% of the code"), so if there's a chunk that really needs manual allocation you can do that too. And the performance? Wonderful! Bump-pointer allocation means new objects get there fast.

There's no such thing as a wart-free language, but in C++, lack of garbage collection isn't one anymore.

"As in all business models trying to sort out the final 10% of a probelm is always dispraportinatly expensive."

The British Library is a (largely) publicly funded national resource, not a commercial entertainment and media company.

"Afterall they did not have to do anything other then show the books once every 20 years under glass in the British Library."

Yes - if the governing board decided that such a policy would count as fulfilling the purpose of the Library and its legal obligations under the British Library Act: http://www.bl.uk/about/blact.html - but I doubt most interested parties would agree and I doubt Parliament would put up with it for very long.

That they use proprietary and/or less than optimally accessible formats unnecessarily liberally may seem a trivial complaint to you, but I disagree and it is certainly not unreasonable or close-minded to suggest that they haven't done quite as well for the public as they might have done this time:

http://www.pixelwit.com/flip/PageFlip.html
http://welcome.hp.com/country/us/en/msg/corp/flash dreamworks.html

Are you sure about that? http://www.hp.com/products1/unix/java/faq/index.ht ml#prod7 :

Q: Are Java development tools released by HP at the same time they are released by Sun Microsystems?

A: We are a licensee of Java from Sun, and as such, must wait for them to provide code to us for our porting and tuning.

I found some more references to a JVM for embedded spaces called "Chai" or "ChaiVM", and searching HPs website see this: http://devresource.hp.com/forums/thread.jspa?messa geID=4069

Paul,

The folks who work with the ChaiVM have informed me that it is being obsoleted and is no longer available. Sorry!

Cindy for the OV Interconnect team

I'm curious if there are *any* certified-Java(tm) implementations that don't rely on Sun code for java.* and javax.*. Let me be more specific: certified-Java(tm) J2SE runtime environments at 1.2+ level. There are plenty of JVMs and individual libraries, and GNU Classpath has like 80% coverage, good enough to run OOo on a free software stack, but I haven't heard of any competing implementations actually certified by Sun.

Are you sure about that? http://www.hp.com/products1/unix/java/faq/index.ht ml#prod7 :

Q: Are Java development tools released by HP at the same time they are released by Sun Microsystems?

A: We are a licensee of Java from Sun, and as such, must wait for them to provide code to us for our porting and tuning.

I found some more references to a JVM for embedded spaces called "Chai" or "ChaiVM", and searching HPs website see this: http://devresource.hp.com/forums/thread.jspa?messa geID=4069

Paul,

The folks who work with the ChaiVM have informed me that it is being obsoleted and is no longer available. Sorry!

Cindy for the OV Interconnect team

I'm curious if there are *any* certified-Java(tm) implementations that don't rely on Sun code for java.* and javax.*. Let me be more specific: certified-Java(tm) J2SE runtime environments at 1.2+ level. There are plenty of JVMs and individual libraries, and GNU Classpath has like 80% coverage, good enough to run OOo on a free software stack, but I haven't heard of any competing implementations actually certified by Sun.

Battery-backed cache protects cached data in the event of a power outage, server failure or controller failure, and redundant batteries take that protection even further.

Unfortunately, HP does not allow you to actually buy such a notebook.

Unfortunately, HP does not allow you to actually buy such a notebook.

No, this memory is built in to the RAID controller, you access it over the system bus. All the kernel sees is a device on /dev/cciss/c0d0p1 which looks just like a disk, the controller handles its own disks and cacheing. In our case, there's just a couple of 10K RPM disks in RAID 1, being used as a mail server (postfix, spamassassin, squirrelmail, dovecot IMAP) which does lots of small writes. The system spec is here, and you can try out the same controller card at hp. A few years back this kind of storage steup was considered exotic, now it's standard on most servers, and has mainline kernel support.

No, this memory is built in to the RAID controller, you access it over the system bus. All the kernel sees is a device on /dev/cciss/c0d0p1 which looks just like a disk, the controller handles its own disks and cacheing. In our case, there's just a couple of 10K RPM disks in RAID 1, being used as a mail server (postfix, spamassassin, squirrelmail, dovecot IMAP) which does lots of small writes. The system spec is here, and you can try out the same controller card at hp. A few years back this kind of storage steup was considered exotic, now it's standard on most servers, and has mainline kernel support.

OpenVMS has supported geographically separated cluster nodes and shadowed storage for years.

http://h71000.www7.hp.com/doc/82FINAL/6318/6318pro _016.html

HP Desktop PCs & HP Workstations

-FL

Some guy on an HP forum asks how to get Java code to run in his Web browser on Linux Itanium. Shock and awe follows as he's told you can't run an applet on his multi-thousand dollar 64-bit workstation.

Link

I like the idea of a removeable keyboard for a tablet. It just adds weight that you don't use very often.

Incidentally, the discontinued Compaq TC1000 used a Transmeta Crusoe processor as well. Wonder why they switched..

I like the idea of a removeable keyboard for a tablet. It just adds weight that you don't use very often.

Incidentally, the discontinued Compaq TC1000 used a Transmeta Crusoe processor as well. Wonder why they switched..

Speed to market: "Blu-ray is very robust, but it's also not here," said Richard Doherty, research director for the Envisioneering Group. "The PC industry has clearly backed the system that is weeks away from commercialization."

Hmm. I know that HP has most definitely backed Blu-Ray. http://www.hp.com/hpinfo/newsroom/press/2004/04111 5c.html. So have Dell (http://news.com.com/HP%2C+Dell+back+Blu-ray+techn ology/2100-1041_3-5139694.html) I guess that they aren't part of the PC industry any more - just the two largest manufacturers of err... PCs.

And "Envisioneering?". Dear God...

--Ng

1) It's hard to tell when fundamental research will have big payoffs, and whether those payoffs will be solely academic or also economic. Before we accept your question, you have to show that the research "doesn't actually matter".

2) Because the government needs to do things that "provide for the common defense," "promote the general welfare" and whatnot, and therefore the government needs to "forcibly confiscate" from somewhere.

3) Given #2, it's hard to feel sorry for somebody when they'll still have $11M/year to live on.

4) You're working under the simplistic idea that there is a perfect link between a person's economic value and their economic compensation. In the era of Carly-style CEOs, the evidence for the premise that wealth is earned isn't as strong as it might be.

What are you babbling about? You are seriously suggesting HP make an OS that doesn't suck, with a text installer? What are you, like 200 years old? And HP makes hardware, not operating systems, so suggesting they make such a mythical thing as "an OS that doesn't suck" would be like telling McDonalds to sell groceries. Read a book on market anaysis jackass.

What are you babbling about? You are seriously suggesting HP make an OS that doesn't suck, with a text installer? What are you, like 200 years old? And HP makes hardware, not operating systems, so suggesting they make such a mythical thing as "an OS that doesn't suck" would be like telling McDonalds to sell groceries. Read a book on market anaysis jackass.

What are you babbling about? You are seriously suggesting HP make an OS that doesn't suck, with a text installer? What are you, like 200 years old? And HP makes hardware, not operating systems, so suggesting they make such a mythical thing as "an OS that doesn't suck" would be like telling McDonalds to sell groceries. Read a book on market anaysis jackass.

What are you babbling about? You are seriously suggesting HP make an OS that doesn't suck, with a text installer? What are you, like 200 years old? And HP makes hardware, not operating systems, so suggesting they make such a mythical thing as "an OS that doesn't suck" would be like telling McDonalds to sell groceries. Read a book on market anaysis jackass.

Funny thing is they do make em like this..

HP's Blade servers run on a 48v bus. The PSU's are in a seperatly racked case. You can power an entire rack full with 2 PSU cages.
You can get up to 6 enclosures in a 42u rack for a total of up to 96 blades.

Each PSU cage holds 6 PSU's and has 2-220v feeds so you can power a full rack with 4 220v circuts. The PSU's just deliver 48 volts so you could drop them entirly and use whatever 48v PS you have (telco anyone??) When were evaluating them we gave some serous thought to powering them through the Telco power supply.

So IBM's AIX and HP-UX don't count? I make that four (not sure if SCO are even in business).

...Or the ability to download Linux drivers for HP's printers, and other equipment from HP's website. I know there is http://linuxprinting.org/ for printers but I would like it from the horse's mouth - i.e. from http://www.hp.com/

Is that too much to ask from a major computer vendor that claims to support Linux? I do not think so.

HP Had a product called Capshare that was a handheld scanner that you could run over a page and then it would put everything together on your PC. It was a great little product, but I don't think they marketed it well. It was perfect for anyone who was doing researcher. http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/prodCategory?dl c=en&lc=en&cc=us&product=304005

1. To make charitable investment (donations), to optimize, improve and bugfix
   http://go-mono.com/sources/mono-1.1/mono-1.1.9.tar .gz and their partners tools (xsp, mod, gdi+, gtk#, ikvm, eclipse JDT compiler, openoffice#, ...) until reaching the latest powerful release.
2. To improve and clean
   http://www.hpl.hp.com/personal/Hans_Boehm/gc/gc_so urce/experimental/gc7.0alpha4.tar.gz and
   http://www.hpl.hp.com/personal/Hans_Boehm/gc/gc_so urce/gc6.6.tar.gz
   for merging the latest Mono's release.
3. To repeat 1. until Mocrisoft is eliminated.

The anti-marketing tip is

"Don't furious Mono-users." and "Do furious .NET-users for no-buying the awful M$'s potatoes.".

1. To make charitable investment (donations), to optimize, improve and bugfix
   http://go-mono.com/sources/mono-1.1/mono-1.1.9.tar .gz and their partners tools (xsp, mod, gdi+, gtk#, ikvm, eclipse JDT compiler, openoffice#, ...) until reaching the latest powerful release.
2. To improve and clean
   http://www.hpl.hp.com/personal/Hans_Boehm/gc/gc_so urce/experimental/gc7.0alpha4.tar.gz and
   http://www.hpl.hp.com/personal/Hans_Boehm/gc/gc_so urce/gc6.6.tar.gz
   for merging the latest Mono's release.
3. To repeat 1. until Mocrisoft is eliminated.

The anti-marketing tip is

"Don't furious Mono-users." and "Do furious .NET-users for no-buying the awful M$'s potatoes.".

Exactly, even Ada has a Goto statement.

BTW, I write all C applications using this memory manager http://www.hpl.hp.com/personal/Hans_Boehm/gc/

Using that, eliminates a whole slew of potential problems.

Every single one of the server companies is out of that business with the exception of Sun, which is trading at the same price it was back in 1996.

Papyrus to paperback is closer.

Or even from parchment to paper. But still, fair enough.

From
http://www.hp.com/sbso/product/supplies/paper/imag es/acid_lignin.pdf

In the paper industry, acid-free paper is often tied to longevity. For example, according to
International Paper's Pocket Pal, creating an acid-free paper is defined as a "process that gives paper over four times the life (200 years) of acid-sized paper (40-50 years).

In short, our paper records are gone after 200 years. Our digital records are likely not to survive somthing as cataclysmic as a war.

Our society produces more text about itself in a day than the Romans probably did in their whole history. Even if a small fraction survives

True, but most of it is in formats which won't be easily accessible in the future. Anyone can look at a photo. But every time I change my reel tapes to VHS to DVD etc. it gets a little bit fuzzier. Compression and recompression. Replica to fading.

We create a lot of information, but none of it in a form that will last for over 200 years. Paper, film, digital photos. They fade or are lost or become obsolete.

From an archeologist's perspective nothing that is digitally recorded will exist. Paper lasts 200 years. We're unlikely to find paper in a garbage dump that's legible the way the Nag Hamadi(sp?) scrolls were.

Windows has the same 32-bit cruft.

With 32-bit apps, you need a 32-bit userland. That's the WoW64 bit; it's the 32-bit Windows on Windows cruft.

The main difference is that the linux stuff is organized differently. lib is your 32-bit libraries, while lib64 is your 64-bit stuff.

On Windows, the 'normal' location is where you would find the 64-bit libraries, and the WoW64 stuff is loaded from a separate directory.

Implementation details: http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url= /library/en-us/win64/win64/wow64_implementation_de tails.asp

Select Quote:
The WOW64 emulator runs in user mode, provides an interface between the 32-bit version of Ntdll.dll and the kernel of the processor, and it intercepts kernel calls. The emulator consists of the following DLLs:
Wow64.dll provides the core emulation infrastructure and the thunks for the Ntoskrnl.exe entry-point functions.
Wow64Win.dll provides thunks for the Win32k.sys entry-point functions.
Wow64Cpu.dll provides x86 instruction emulation on Itanium processors. It executes mode-switch instructions on the processor. This DLL is not necessary for x64 processors because they execute x86-32 instructions at full clock speed.
Along with the 64-bit version of Ntdll.dll, these are the only 64-bit binaries that can be loaded into a 32-bit process.
At startup, Wow64.dll loads the x86 version of Ntdll.dll and runs its initialization code, which loads all necessary 32-bit DLLs. Almost all 32-bit DLLs are unmodified copies of 32-bit Windows binaries. However, some of these DLLs are written to behave differently on WOW64 than they do on 32-bit Windows, usually because they share memory with 64-bit system components. All user mode address space above the 32-bit limits (2 GB for most applications, 4 GB for applications marked with the IMAGE_FILE_LARGE_ADDRESS_AWARE flag in the image header) is reserved by the system.

It's a different methodolgy, but most likely one that works as well. I appreciate the Linux one better-- the "normal" 32-bit stuff lives in the "normal" places-- that way, you don't *need* an emulation layer for the 64-bit unaware apps. Rather, 64-bit aware apps know to look in the correct location for the libraries (well, they are told by the OS, anyways). The Linux Way (TM) is slightly more backward compatible, me thinks. You'll *never* experience a problem with a 32-bit app on a 64-bit linux system, while there are some bugs in WoW64 which will probably never be fixed, rather, they'll be 'phased out', in the usual MS fashion (ignored until irrelevant).

Information on the Linux approach is here: http://www.hp.com/workstations/pws/linux/faq.html
Mainly, when recompiling your apps to be native 64-bit, you need to observe the following:
Simple. Just rebuild from scratch and the compiler will build 64-bit by default. This is true for most apps. However, some apps must be made 64-bit clean which means that the developers must review the code to get rid of any assumptions about 32-bitness, such pointer arithmetic issues. Some makefiles that explicitly declare paths such as /lib, /usr/lib and /usr/X11R6/lib might need to be changed to append "64".

HP DL 760

HP DL 760

2.5in looks like the future of hard drives, laptop or server, at least if you listen to HP. So far you can only get 72GB in Serial Attached SCSI 2.5in. Wonder how long they'll keep up 3.5in drives, or wether they'll keep those around for bigger servers.

I think that pretty much all of the PSC range uses the same chipset and so are supported by the same SANE driver, even the latest stuff.

Lots of USB and SCSI (those still round?) scanners work with Linux using SANE(7). Networked scanners are harder to find, but a much better choice (scan from multiple computers, locate anywhere, no buggy USB drivers, etc.). Network printers are more rule than exception now, so why are most scanners still USB-only? To add insult to injury, most of the networkable scanners available use propriatary protocol not supported on linux.

I think HP's OfficeJet line might be the best bet. (Stay away from Brother at any cost!) I've been happily using a Officejet 7120 with linux. At $299 it's cheaper than most dedicated network scanners, and comes with a document feeder for the scanner which also works great with SANE. The built-in inkjet is supported too, but haven't used it much. I don't think the fax functions work from linux, but a windows instance running inside VMware can use it for conveniently sending faxes if you must.

Scanning on windows seems to always be a huge PITA, with buggy drivers and dialogs popping up all over the place with the wrong default settings for every document you try to scan. Using sane from the command line on linux is a huge improvement. Just hack together a script with the right parameters for the common stuff you scan, and then drop the documents in the feeder and run the "scan_bank_statement" (or whatever.) Try that on windows!

scanimage -d "hpoj:hpjd:192.168.1.55" --resolution 300 --source Auto --format=tiff >my_document.tiff

I was very disappointed to find out that it supported OSX 10.2 ONLY not 10.3 which had been available for some time. Furthermore, HP promised that 10.3 would be supported by January, but it wasn't until summer that it actually was. Not to mention the driver was serveral HUNDRED megs and they would not mail out a newer CD. Since we only had dialup, this was a nasty situation to be in. Once I finally did get it installed, it turns out their scanning software is complete shit and very prone to crashing the system.

For $500, and with a product name with "Professional" in it, you would think HP would do a better job. The worst part is HP will not support the SANE project and will apperantly not release technical documentation on this scanner. If they had, I would have no beef since SANE works on OSX.

Mission Critical is basically saying "always on or we are screwed". Corporations pay big money for highly tuned and tested machines that are designed for this type of work. They do not just trust a run of the mill server with any operating system, be it Linux, Windows, or any UNIX variant.

See HP or IBM

The Mozilla codebase already has a reference counting mechanism that handles GC as well as any C++ GC can.

Nope, here is one worth reading about.
Regards,
Steve

For the storage system consider the HP RISS (HP StorageWorks Reference Information Storage System). It scales well and handles Exchange, and other mail servers. Provides transparent access to your archived email. Allows users to have GB's of email but not have to worry about saving .pst files, etc. Basically an "unlimited" inbox.

To scale the system you add additional "smart cells" which are the storage components of the system (2U servers, 900GB RAID, mirrored onto a second smart cell). To scale throughput, you add additional portal servers which handle the requests.

http://h18006.www1.hp.com/products/storageworks/ri ss/index.html

yea, I know, I was partly trying to be funny by linking the guy-burned-his-privates-on-a-laptop story, and although ( to my surprise ) the machine he was using was an Intel® Mobile Pentium® III with 443BX/PIIX4m, if you believe the Inquirer story I linked to. I had just assumed it was one of those nutty Pentium IV laptops of the non-M variety. I don't really understand why you'd make a laptop with a Pentium IV 3.6GHz non-M chip, myself. I guess they just have to prove that battery life and heat issues don't matter to some laptop users. So you can play Doom3 on the coffee table, I guess.

I'm not saying that Apple laptops, especially the smaller-form-factor G4-variety laptops ( which I guess they're all G4s now, aren't they ? ) don't get hot- they do - but compared to these Pentium IV non-M machines, they've got to be downright cool... as cool as the fact that I was going for "funny" and got "interesting" ;-)

... although HP has changed it slightly now, to get the advanced certification labeled 'Certified Systems Engineer', I took a two-day, hands-on lab building clusters and troubleshooting proctor induced issues, with no feedback until the end of the two days.
If you passed that test, my employer (and their clients) knew you were competent.
Now, HP has split it into a regular type test and a simulation lab. That pisses me off, as that seems easier to pass... making my certification mean less...

http://www.hp.com/Click Here!

R.

"All your savings and all your bank debts only exist on mainframes."

That turns out to not be the case. Until a few years ago, the most popular credit union software ran exlusively on MPE/iX on HP3000s. HP has EOL'ed that OS, and you haven't been able to buy an HP3000 since Halloween of last year, I believe. I had to laugh at the date. I've heard systems guys who were obviously on a customer support call talking Unix as they left my bank.

That credit uniion software has been ported to HP-UX, a Unix variant. And in fact, the HP3k (MPE) systems could be changed to HP9k (Unix) systems with the replacement of one chip.

Unix variants can run some huge systems, after all. To stay within the HP realm alone, look at
at Superdomes http://www.hp.com/products1/servers/scalableserver s/superdome/.

Personally, I rather think that the days of the proprietary Unices are numbered as well. HP certainly doesn't seem to putting much energy into HP-UX itself these days, and hasn't since the early days of 11i. But they are adding lots of Linux compatability software to the OS, from bash to complete Open Source applications.

My personal prediction is that given the steady capability growth of Linux, and the addition of more and more enterprise software (advanced filesystems, backup software and the like), Linux will eventually subsume both of these markets.

The limiting factors are very probably:
a) Stability. In these realms customers want stability above all else. That applies to the hardware, the operating system, the application, and the roadmaps.
b) Cost. The time and expense of porting applications is probably the most important here. The expense of rare admin talent will be a contributing factor, to be sure. But a comparatively small factor.

This is an ordered list. Cost is definitely the lesser issue, for the vast majority of these business users.

Of course, this Enermax PSU won't fit into any of these devices. I can't even imagine how you could build a desktop system that would ever need much more than 1/2 that PSU's possible output. Quad CPU boards are a little difficult to come by, and they won't run off completely standard PSUs anyway (although the label on the PSU says it's EPS 12V, so it might have the 24 pin power + 8 pin processor power connectors). However, this isn't really the market for whitebox manufacturers, and what meager money you might save would most likely be outweighed by the next-day shipping of replacement parts that name brand vendors can offer you.

Besides, I don't even want to contemplate needing a dedicated 15A breaker just for my system. My little 350W PSU is working just fine for me.

Have a look at SeVMS. Whilst its B1 evaluated, moving to B2 is possible (The lock manager seems to me to be the most worrying communication channel but thats fixable) A little info here and here (PDF)

Have a look at SeVMS. Whilst its B1 evaluated, moving to B2 is possible (The lock manager seems to me to be the most worrying communication channel but thats fixable) A little info here and here (PDF)

hp 33s scientific calculator with RPN, bitches.