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Ultimately it's unimportant as the commercial games are so damn average.

You may be interested in Con Kolivas' patchset. He has a lot of patches merged, like preempt, O(1), lowlat and GrSecurity, which would reduce your work to squeeze FreeSwan on top

I think perhaps it is only the US where the N-Gage has failed so completely.

Anyone have any testing or feelings of how the 2.6 vs the 2.4-CK patches patches from Con Kolivas match up?

The 2.4.x-CK patch bundle sure has made a difference, havnt used 2.6.x-TEST fulltime on a desktop yet.

Both the big two broadband providers in Australia flatly refuse to deal with anything other than Windows or Mac. Ex-housemate and I had heard stories to this effect when we ordered Optus cable to our house, so we decided to let them think we were going to use Windows internet connection sharing to pass the cable between two different machines. Within 30 minutes of the cable guys leaving we had an old Pentium running Mandrake routing the cable through every PC in the house (about 6 if memory serves me right).

When our cable modem cooked itself about 9 months later, we called them to let them know - when the tech turned up to "fit" the replacement, first of all he asked to see the settings we had on the machine we connected the modem to, then he wondered why the modem wasn't connected to a PC with a monitor, keyboard and mouse...

When we told him we were running through a Linux box, he played the old "I'm just going to pretend I didn't hear you say that" game, swapped the modems over, and departed.

I think (and anyone correct me if I'm wrong) that the basic policy of most, if not all, broadband providers in Australia is that you can plug your broadband into whatever you like at your end, just don't expect us to help you sort it out when something goes wrong.

Both the big two broadband providers in Australia flatly refuse to deal with anything other than Windows or Mac. Ex-housemate and I had heard stories to this effect when we ordered Optus cable to our house, so we decided to let them think we were going to use Windows internet connection sharing to pass the cable between two different machines. Within 30 minutes of the cable guys leaving we had an old Pentium running Mandrake routing the cable through every PC in the house (about 6 if memory serves me right).

When our cable modem cooked itself about 9 months later, we called them to let them know - when the tech turned up to "fit" the replacement, first of all he asked to see the settings we had on the machine we connected the modem to, then he wondered why the modem wasn't connected to a PC with a monitor, keyboard and mouse...

When we told him we were running through a Linux box, he played the old "I'm just going to pretend I didn't hear you say that" game, swapped the modems over, and departed.

I think (and anyone correct me if I'm wrong) that the basic policy of most, if not all, broadband providers in Australia is that you can plug your broadband into whatever you like at your end, just don't expect us to help you sort it out when something goes wrong.

"Aside from the CPU and northbridge, the chips involved are standard components, and should be familiar to anyone who knows PCs. This is an early revision, not sporting evidence of Firewire (though there are some mysterious pin-headers lurking about) or RAID, but you can see a Via 686B handling sound and legacy ports, and the usual surface-mounts backing up the Ethernet and perhaps USB 2.0. What's that big one marked 'Radeon?' :-D (Speculation says it may be a Mobility Edition, which would bode well for both power consumption and board size -- those pack their own RAM in the package.) Everything else is definitely wait-and-see; I have to wonder if they really meant 'Cardbus' instead of 'CF.'

"Obviously it's no alternative if Windows is your thing, but Linux is available -- in fact, it's the only option until AmigaOS 4 ships. Debian, SuSE, and Yellow Dog are known to run and have accepted patches for the platform (outdated product pages to the contrary; AmigaOnes have no relation to last-generation APUS hardware), and Gentoo is at least in-progress. Users who like their penguins cool *and* fast take note; benchmarks are thin on the ice right now, and RC5 numbers are by no means a good comparison, but the G3s were cranking those without an unfair boost from Altivec.

Actually the Optus 6GB plan costs $99.95/month as opposed to $69.95/month for 3GB. And those prices are only if you're on a Choices package. I'm looking to leave Optus and switch to ADSL, especially since Optus also got rid of the free phone line rental. I'd stay if I could get an extra 3GB for $10 more but really what they are offering now is nowhere near competitive.

For people still running 2.4 and having the same problems with desktop usage, consider the Con Kolivas patches, they speed things up a great deal while under high load.

Unfortunately, the ck patches cause other problems for me. The main one is an odd duplication of keystrokes, most noticeable when I use a shortcut that causes a bit of computation. For example, when I'm using tabbed browsing on Konqueror and press "Ctrl-W" to close the current tab, often two, three or more tabs will get closed, and sometimes it will blast through all of the tabs and close the window.

Rebuilding my kernel without the ck patches (but with preempt and lowlatency) makes the problem go away. I've seen it with both the 2.4.20 and 2.4.21 kernels.

I have no such problem with 2.6.0, and it feels even smoother than 2.4.x+ck.

For people still running 2.4 and having the same problems with desktop usage, consider the Con Kolivas patches, they speed things up a great deal while under high load.

Ups, also, if you want to be in the egde of X responsiveness, you should try Con Kolivas's scheduler patches.

There's also an excellent amount of information from John J. Ray, a sociologist from Australia, about Hitler's socialistic policies here:
Socialism

In a capitalist economy, both sides of the transction win (and capitalism deals with capital, and not always money). Party A wants something from Party B. Party A offers a trade for the item from Party B (either money or goods). Party B sees the goods or money as sufficient and good, so they complete the transaction. Both parties are satisfied (and both win).

Microsoft has a radical interventionist, and partially socialist model, and uses it's authoritative status to forcefully take capital (as in ideas, products, designs, etc) from other companies and uses them as it's own; and also enslaves the public into a tax-like bind (similar to socialist governments demanding almost 70+% of one's income in taxes alone).

The open source model is capitalistic, because the capital (code) is voluntarily distributed (private ownership), in a transaction format, where all parties benefit. Just like one doesn't have to use money in a free market system (they an use anything of value), the open source model doesn't have to use money, but it can if it wants to.

Also fascism, according to many sources, is about half socialistic (mostly marxist) and half interventionist; under fascism the government nationalizes industry so that the corporations are under national ownership but also can still operate own their own. Unionization occurs on the national level insted of the local level (Hitler for example founded the Nazi party on the temptations of providing a national working-class 'utopia'). Modern Sweden (possibly currently) has a fascist government, and Stalin eventually converted his goverment to a national socialistic (fascist) model.

So, while Microsoft claims it is capitalistic, and that Linux and other open source projects are "communist", people still actually believe them; even though they've been the pinnacle of deception, including this fiasco with the insane SCO.

So what kind of economic model is SCO's licensing schemes? Well, considering it's a license taxation that's (supposed to be) forced on the public against their will, and that it's portrayed to help the "collective" community, operated by a single elitist power, it's blatantly Socialistic. Read the article above for more information.

That other Michael decided to head over to Sydney and fix upOptusNET. iiNet's loss is OptusNET's gain.

• One from OZ built into a Ford chassis
  
• An F/A 18 Hornet simulator made from wood, also in OZ
  
• A Boeing 767 in London that "flies" around the world
  
• A "multi-mission simulator" by an avionics engineer in the US
• An F-15 in Washington

I think I might upgrade to 2.4.21, maybe even apply to pre-empt/low-latency patches. I'm feeling adventurous.

If your're feeling really adventurous, try and use Con Kolivas' low-latency patches. I haven't tried them yet, but lots of people on the Gentoo Forums talk about how responsive they make your system.

Only problem I see is that Con admits that his patches are focused more on responsiveness and less on stability.

Well, if it's an option in your area, you can go for Optus cable.

When you exceed your usage limits with them, you have your bandwidth constrainted to 28kbps.

It's still not cheap, but at least you don't get slammed with massive charges because you went over a little bit.

Also, when looking for a broadband provider, make sure they have a local file mirror. Popular files can be retrieved from there, at no cost to you (as the traffic is all local to the provider). Telstra, for example, finally woke up recently and started providing such a service. (Heck, this is important when choosing a dial-up provider, too!)

But our prices really are bad - it looks like there's starting to be a lot of really good ADSL plans going around though, definately some potential.

Tip: apply the desktop/interactivity patches for your kernel: http://members.optusnet.com.au/ckolivas/kernel/
Before I did this, my Linux desktop was indeed a bit slower and less responsive than Windows. After I applied the patches, it became just as fast as Windows, and in some areas even faster. Try it out, you will notice the difference.

As for applications taking longer to load, I don't know why that happens, but app loading time has got nothing to do with the windowing system.
But the main problems are in GNOME and KDE, because fvwm/twm/BlackBox/WindowMaker/Xfce are incredibly fast compared to them. GNOME and KDE are what need to be optimized further.

It's strange, I installed a RedHat 7.3 desktop for a friend and he said he can't notice any difference in speed compared to Windows 98 (even without the kernel patches).

Everybody seems to be obsessed with all this "3D-accelerated desktop" stuff but IMHO it's all overrated.

Using OpenGL will not automatically make everything faster. Heck, I wouldn't be surprised if some things become slower. OpenGL is good for 3D stuff, but sucks for 2D stuff. Ever tried blitting in OpenGL? Slooooooooow. And guess what? Most applications use 2D drawing primitives.

The biggest performance bottlenecks are, and have always been: 1) the driver 2) the kernel.
2 has already been addressed (my system flies with these patches; it's even faster than Windows!). The upcoming 2.6 kernel will be amazing.
1 remains a problem. X's architecture doesn't cause the slowness, it's all in the driver! If the driver doesn't implement all OpenGL features then you'll still be stuck with slow drawing speed (or maybe even slower, since emulating OpenGL is slow beyond imagination. ever tried running TuxRacer in plain non-accelerated Mesa?)

>Can't you just enjoy the scenery?

BAH! BORING!

Diff'rent strokes for diff'rent folks, I guess. When I was a kid my parents would take me on such trips, and I'd lie in the back of the car and wonder if it is possible to sleep for 24 hours a day without going into a coma. "But the beach looks so nice, why don't you just enjoy it?". Pffft. Sleep time.

Now, give me something to do with some excitement, like watch a building collapse or riding the gravitron (for once being fat makes the ride more fun), and I'm in the zone. ;-)

I use Gentoo and with a patch from Con Kolivas I have ALSA compiled into my kernel, works like a charm only took a few minutes in addition to the time it took to recompile the kernel.

The contest benchmark might be what you are looking for. It tests system responsiveness by running kernel compiles under different kinds of load.

Still based on kernel compiles, granted, but at least it tries to measure responsiveness. Been used heavily to benchmark recent kernels - check Kernel Trap for results.

The Linux scheduling latency page of Andrew Morton might be useful as well. Alas, kernel patches tend to work on x86 first before PPC..

wait for 2.4.21 if our using USB, otherwise 2.4.19 is good. check out the change logs to see if there are any issues.

I would suggest the CK patchset for the 2.4 series.

or maybe 2.6.3-4 (I expect any incompatabilitys in common software will have been resolved by then and any binary drivers will have been updated)

I hope that was your question?

I think the Japanese did that or something similar...4 years ago. But the American's have the market when it comes to quantum haiku

Most significant gains can be expected at the high end such as large machines, large numbers of threads, large disks, large amounts of memory etc. [...] For the uniprocessors and small servers, there will be significant gains in some corner cases. And some losses. [...] Generally, 2.6 should be "nicer to use" on the desktop. But not appreciably faster.

For people who want to understand more about what verified actually does, have a look at my home page which has a bit more detail on the philosophy and also a copy of the paper I presented on the subject.

I posted a question before I realized it was for University of Waterloo Students only. My question is online in png format if anyone wants to find out what is on my mind.

Non-Disclosure (500MB/month total bandwidth limit)

You jest?

http://members.optusnet.com.au/~azagnoev/mouse/mou se

:)

You and your husband need some of this.

A crack for dataplay. Enjoy!

Some crack will make it make sense.

Some crack will help your dreamcast experience.

You could use some crack.

Click here for a high.

I should encourage him to put that sort of old stuff up on his website. He needs a good reason to update it.

Meanwhile, my only contribution to data packs for existing games are a pair of DOS Monopoly packs based on the Star Wars Ep1 and Pokemon boards.

This is the same model us here in Australia have been offered. With my cable ISP, Telstra BigPond, you can download a maximum of 3GB a month before you are charged 11 cents per MB (there are different plans available with more or less data, but the 3GB one is the one most users are on, and is the best value).

All Telstra content is exempt from this, and does not count towards your quota. Telstra mirror the major Linux and *BSD distros, service packs, game demos, movie trailers as well as providing video streams (including full replays of every NRL and AFL game).

The other major cable ISP, Optusnet, allows users to download up to 10 times the average of all customers over a 14 day period. Currently, the average user downloads 75MB a day. They have a tool called Netstats that allows users to get this information. Optus does have a fairer system, but they haven very limited availability (only selected parts of Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane; nothing outside those cities), and you cannot run servers at all (Telstra allows this). There are also rumours that since SingTel bought Optus, they are looking at changing this system to a flat download limit.

I'm going to go against popular opinion and say that I don't mind this system at all. I download less than 3GB's a month, I get all the Linux distros for free, and can comfortably download whatever I like. It costs a hell of a lot to send data to and from the US, and I'd rather that my ISP is profitable and won't sink.

I also don't see why I should subsidise 12-year old warez kiddies; if they want their warez, they can damn well pay for it.

As I write this, an electron gun is spewing streams of electrons directly at my face. Yet I don't feel the slightest urge to duck. Nor do I hear little clicking sounds as the electrons impact on my monitor screen. I don't expect any of the things that happen when matter is about, because electrons aren't matter. They're a constituent of matter.

The anti-electrons used in PET scans are the same, only more so. Nothing remarkable about having them around, but they're extremely transient entities. So accumulating them in large quantities is a lot harder than this article, in the gee-wiz style NASA PR bozos are so fond of, suggests.

I've also got a Gameboy Webcam that I run irregularly (dial-up connection). I've got one black jumper I wear frequently that comes out white on the camera (and with a heavy blue tint on my old Kodak DC20). After reading the site a few days back I decided I'd try to pickup a "hot mirror" filter to get rid of the IR at my next opportunity, but I did only find the site three days ago (which I suspect was went it was submitted to /.).

This is a photo I took recently of one of the original sets of VR entertainment devices, the Virtuality-something.

Nolan Bushnell, founder of Atari, mentioned in an ("Back In Time") interview that he believed VR's day would come soon. And I'm not inclined to dismiss that too quickly. However, up to this date it's like the Newton phase of PDA history.

It looks like he used the original black and white version. I have one. Currently an image of the watch itself is wrapped 'round my gameboy camera webcam pic on my journal. I had some images up at CamBorg as "Krisjohn", but they're mostly expired. My cat is in the best of 2000 -- in fact, the two on the right, top row are both mine.

I wonder how much of the much hyped stuff of today will end up as a junk pile in an abandoned store.

And what's happened to the /. quickies -- they used to be good for the odd odd thing.

If anyone's interested at more information on Buran and Baikal (the other Russian orbiter), take a look at http://www.k26.com/buran/ for some good information, plus a Message forum where I've read lots of interesting information concerning Buran and it's possible ressurrection. Also, the Buran unit designed for aerodynamic test flights (and thusly equipped with 4 turbo jets + afterburners) is on tour in Australia right now. Pictures of that tour can be found at http://members.optusnet.com.au/~pmorton/.

I'm actually going to find it very interesting if Russia ressurrects it's Buran shuttles, as most likely they'll put a small crew of cosmonauts on it and then sell the remaining 3-4 seats to tourists to piss off NASA :P

--Kumba

I have a bunch of random e-mail addresses linked-to off a period on my home page. If any bot finds it, it gains 2,500 fake addresses. I update it every so often. It was generated by SpamBait. Everyone should do one. I don't have the link to the orignal program, but here's another.

I still haven't found a good way to dispose of the monitors and power supplies though...

--

The inventor has solved this problem by making it so that the right handed side of the keyboard acts like a mouse only when a contact switch is pressed. (Check out this Overview sketch.)

This aught to kill you:

One for gaming,
one for toughness,
one for boredom,
and there must be thousands for looks

Kind of cool to think the software can be just as custom. Nothings dead here.

I should have worked that out sooner, since <blatent self promotion> I run two webcams off my PC, including a Gameboy Webcam. </blatent>

Here is a picture I snapped of a mouse with a number pad on the back. The pic was taken the last time I bothered to go to a local "computer show" (read: Snake Oil Salesdrone convention)

I've recently been playing with a Logitech Cordless wheelmouse. While I do prefer having that 4th button that I have on my other mouse, the cordless stuff is really nice. Being able to pick it up and walk to the next cube and still control my PC is a bit freaky. You can see some images with some commentary here.

But this rocking and/or rolling of the mouse seems a little silly. Graphic designers are going to have a caniption fit (whatever that is) if they have to use a mouse that moves when you want to press a button. I'll bet you could do much better having a touch-pad on the top of a mouse. Right and left areas, drag movements, each corner could be a button, assorted gestures would be the mouse equivalent of hotkey-combinations.

Mind you, all I want is a cordless (pref. Bluetooth) version of the Intellimouse Explorer.