Slashdot Mirror
Slashback: Hardware, Lexis, Free
More RAM than I can afford. RyanT5000 writes "The article referenced in "Getting Rid of the Disks" incorrectly states that the maximum RAM for a 32-bit Intel compatible system is 4 GB. This was true up to and including the original Pentium processor, and it makes a lot of sense (after all, 2^32 = 4 294 967 296). However, with the Pentium Pro, Intel added 4 pins to the address bus, expanding the maximum physical address space to 64 GB (using paging, since it still uses 32 bit addressing). I would assume AMD has a similar feature. If you're on Windows, you'll need a server version to get above 4 GB, but most major Linux/BSD/etc. OSes support it. This would probably be cheaper (and definitely faster) than SCSI SSDs. If you need more than 64 GB of solid state storage, you probably shouldn't be running on an Intel."
"Free" always makes people suspicious. imevil writes "A while ago slashdotters asked some questions to the GNUWin II team. Well, here are the answers. In the meantime, more people joined the team, and more languages were added (this one looks pretty cool)." There's also a short article about GNUWin running at NewsForge.
On a related note, cos(0) writes "According to this(1), this(2), and other stories, many people are interested in running open source, high-quality software on MS Windows. The author of this site provides an up-to-date CD image of the latest versions of numerous high-quality OSS applications (complete list on the site), updated monthly, downloadable via BitTorrent. (The same site also offers a web-based Code Beautifier.)"
Cool distribution method! (And if you're on dialup, $5 seems like a great bargain -- Are you listening, Cheapbytes?)
Toys are so tempting to the wallet ... OrenWolf writes "Ars Technica Has a review up of BroadQ's QCast Tuner software. Unlike the earlier /. review, this article goes into great detail about the technical capabilities of the software. A must read for PS2 owners looking for a PC-PVR-esque solution."
Yeah, but does this review include any original software? ;) And david_adams writes "Slashdot linked to an article I wrote last month about my experience with a CDMA2000 1x wireless network from SprintPCS. It sparked quite a bit of controversy, but not for the reasons I expected. Because I called Sprint's service 3G in the title, but admitted it was 2.5G in the first paragraph, I heard from people on both sides, chiding me on the one hand for calling it 3G, and on the other for calling it 2.5G. I decided to research and write a new article to get to the bottom of it. What is truly 3G? Where is the line between 2.5G and 3G?"
The time to wait is now! ThunderDawg writes "Intel resumed Canterwood Pentium 4 3 GHz 800FSB shipments yesterday. TAFKAEFKAF (The Anomaly Formerly Known as Errata Formerly Known as Flaw) was corrected with a software patch.
Intel is again shipping its new 3GHz Pentium 4 processor, a week after it halted shipments due to the discovery of an "anomaly," an Intel spokesman said Monday. PC makers that use the chip in their systems have been supplied with a software update to fix the issue, George Alfs, an Intel spokesman said. Vendors including Hewlett-Packard, Dell Computer, and Gateway introduced desktop systems based on the chip when it was released on Monday last week. The issue with the 3GHz Pentium 4 with support for an 800MHz system bus occurs only in rare circumstances and users are unlikely to be affected, according to Alfs."
I'd take google and a strong AI any day. hondo77 writes "A bit of a followup to this article from back in February, LexisNexis has been named the publisher of official reports by the California Supreme Court, according to this press release. "The public will have free access to the official text of the opinions at a Web site hosted by LexisNexis linked to the court's Web site." IANAL but it doesn't sound ominous to me."
While theoretically you can put up to 64 gigs into a recent IA32 machine, my understanding is that in Linux at least the practical limit is 16 gigabytes. After that the page tables won't fit in kernel space.
I'd expect that most other OSes have limits like that due to architectures designed when nobody was close to using a full 4 gigs.
What if we missed it the first 3 times?!
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
There's also Cygwin, which is a sort of mini-distro for Windows complete with XFree and a few basic window managers (fwm and OpenBox among them). Great package manager, lots of mirrors and great quality overall. It sometimes beats booting into Debian =)
Note that you'll want to run it in NT4 or better (IMO), but it's a very nice introduction to UNIX-like environments, especially the X server support (since bash is not very flashy). It's actually quite neat to have a full screen X session running on top of the Windows desktop.
It also ships with the GNU toolchain so you can even write your own little aps (console, GTK or plain X).
..."The issue with the 3GHz Pentium 4 with support for an 800MHz system bus occurs only in rare circumstances and users are unlikely to be affected, according to Alfs."
:)
Wasn't that what they said about the floating point bug, too? Well, both of them?
Sounds like they are fixing it with a microcode patch, much as they fixed the PII FIST/FISTP bug, but the article was rather short on details.
"'Tis great confidence in a friend to tell him your faults, greater to tell him his." --Poor Richard's Almanac
I think it's interesting that California chose Lexis, but perhaps not as ominous as it would seem. As part of their obligation to provide true public access to the law, many (or maybe most) courts have law libraries.
Yes, it's on paper, yes, it's not searchable from the comfort of your home... but I think that's what you pay for when you get the access through Lexis or Westlaw's online service.
Many law libraries even have searchable case law on archived CDs, or cheap/free alternatives (like Loislaw and Lexis One.
Remember, lots of legal treatises (and perhaps some other states' "official publications") are published by LexisNexis, as are any books that used to be published under the Matthew Bender name...
That's my purse! I don't know you! -- Bobby Hill
I was just looking into motherboards this afternoon, and most of the newest P4 motherboards only support 4 gig -- and the older ones only support 3 or 2 gig.
Go check out Tom's Hardware if you don't believe me.
So maybe the chip does support 64GB (I don't have a link for that)... the limit could be the chipset, the motherboard makers, or perhaps its just the max size of RAM available?
Design for Use, not Construction!
I'd always thought that the boasts about 3G's speed seemed overblown. I bought a Toshiba 2032 3G cellphone/pda last December and it just never seemed to be all that fast at fetching my email or pulling up a map in Yahoo. I never knew that Sprint's (Qualcomm's?) implementation only barely meets 3G speed requirements. I feel sort of ripped off, but as the author of the article points out, $10 a month for unlimited data service is really hard to complain about, even if it is only around 128 kbps. I think I should try to stop buying into this "wonderful" cutting edge technology so early and start assuming that claims are exaggerated.
Interesting that the fix is a software fix. While this sounds like some sort of BIOS patch or the like, apparently the P4 has downloadable microcode so perhaps it's actually reprogramming the chips themselves. Dvorak, of PC Magazine fame, had a conspiratorial article once about the threat that this presents in that information on how to reset the microcode in the hands of a virus writer could be devastating (and achieve the holy pinnacle of computer vandals of actually damaging hardware, and least perceptably).
On a whole other topic, isn't it about time that Intel dumped the "Pentium" name? Pentium of course was named to be a variation of pent*, meaning 5, which was natural given that it followed the 486. Here we are how many years later still using the term "Pentium" despite a processor core that shares virtually nothing with its predecessors. Will we have a "Pential Pentium"? Should the HT P4 be a Pentium Pentium? And of course naming the newly designed mobile chip "Pentium M" was an absolutely moronic branding maneuver. Maybe they should call their consumer 64-bit processor the "Triber SX"?
I digress but just wanted to complain about Intel naming conventions as of late.
I agree with you about I, though. The f00fing V'Ger was decidedly a floating point error.
--
Evan
"$30 for the One True Ring. $10 each additional ring!" -- JRR "Bob" Tolkien
already publishes a lot of official reporters. I believe Lexis publishes some as well. It's really not a big deal. There are no copyrights in court opinions (or they can't be exploited anyway; there's some case out there saying that). They're free to the public as far as I know. Lexis-Nexis and WestLaw both make their money adding additional content to opinions (e.g. headnotes, their own pagination). But they also do business publishing reporters.
Dvorak, of PC Magazine fame, had a conspiratorial article once about the threat that this presents in that information on how to reset the microcode in the hands of a virus writer could be devastating (and achieve the holy pinnacle of computer vandals of actually damaging hardware, and least perceptably).
Perhaps I shouldn't say this.... because perhaps I am unleashing some evil from my mind on the world that should never be unleashed...
Ah, what the hell, let's open pandora's box!!!
What if you wrote a virus that simply overclocked some part on the computer? If the processor was software overclockable (I don't overclock much so I don't know...) you could perhaps have a virus that would simply change the clock multiplier from say... 6x to perhaps 10x. That would fry the chip? I don't know much about CPU overclocking, but I know that video overclocking is easily done.
Alot of people use either Nvidia or ATI cards, and i know the Nvidia cards share the detonator driver set (on windows), not sure about ATI. What if you had something that just forced the card to it's Max??? And if you have a program that controls fans... turn them off? Just have the virus try for ATI cards, Nvidia cards, and susecptable CPUs, and mobo's with controlable fans- then send them through the roof. Sure your computer would run faster for a few seconds... but i remember a Tom's Hardware where they took the fan off an Athalon, and it burst into flames...
I hope I never see this virus in my inbox...
Tibbon
tibbon.com
The problem with the 4GB limit (and under more realistic assumptions, 2GB) has little to do with the maximum memory a system can use.
The problem comes from how much memory a single user-space process can use, which on IA32, as I said above, comes out to only 2GB, reliably.
As a simple example of why this matters, let's say you have a system that needs tons of memory, like for rendering complex scenes or serving a huge database. Each process will want as much RAM as possible, but on IA32 (well, on any architecture, but the current problem only really applies to cheap-and-popular IA32), can only use up to the addressable limit.
So you might think that you could use a machine with 64GB for a number of slightly smaller (but still memory-hungry) tasks. The flaw with that idea? Get real. If you need that much memory for one task, you need to dedicate the machine to doing that task. If you need to do rendering on your huge DB server, you need to upgrade BADLY
Now, in this case, LN has gotten the contract to be the official publisher of the Cal. case reports; West had previously had the contract. This isn't really a big deal for the public as such; after all, somebody has to publish them, at least as far as the dead tree version is concerned. The actual text of the opinions will remain in the public domain, of course, and lawyers (and the public) will still be able to get them from LN, Westlaw, the local law library, web sites, or any of a number of other sources.
It's interesting to note that often, publishers lose money on the things they publish as the "official" publisher. Several states, for example, set insanely low prices for their codes, particularly when you consider that they are heavy-duty, hardbound volumes. Publishers do it, of course, because they expect to sell other things to attorneys in those states, and figure there's money to be made on those items. Whether this is the case with the Cal. reports, I don't know.
Disclaimer: I do work for LN, but the above are entirely my own opinions.
Of course if the power goes out, you could still lose things that were not yet sync'ed up. Better to have a UPS on your system in that case.
As for why they don't come up with a new trademarkable name, I'm really not sure. I suppose they figure that "Sexium" would just get too many giggles and not be taken seriously, so any new name would have to be just pulled out of their ass. After all the time spent getting people who know nothing about computers to learn the term "Pentium," I don't think they want to have to start all over again. For the most part, they'd rather keep the marketing advantage of numbers (so that people know "4 is better than 3") while prefixing it with a trademarked term, so that other people can't copy their naming scheme.
"The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than that of whether a submarine can swim" -EWD
Who the hell thought that a guy running a site on his ADSL modem could withstand the slashdot crowd?? Was this some cruel joke - his address is myip.org! Anyway, here's the text of the first page, couldn't get anything else (27% of the .torrent file *sigh*)
.iso image is not offered, because in light of the alternative (BT) and my weak Internet connection, that is a selfish way to download it.
.torrent on the first day of each month and begin the transfer. :)
http://pmw.myip.org/oss/
Open Source Software CD
Update: 2003-04-20 23:19
Size: 523M
1. What is it?
It is a burnable image for a CD that contains high-quality, Free, open-source software for Microsoft Windows 95 and higher. See the contents. The latest versions of all software is included. Because there is space left over, some non-OSS but free and useful software has been placed on the CD. See section 4 for more info.
2. Where and how can I get it?
You have two choices.
The first and best choice is to use BitTorrent, revolutionary P2P software that allows multiple simultaneous downloads to share bandwidth for an ultimately faster download. Download with BitTorrent.. Please be courteous afterward and leave the client running so that it would serve others. Although BitTorrent ensures download integrity, you may verify the MD5 checksum after having downloaded the image.
The second choice is to purchase a physical CD from me, the maintainer. The cost is $5, which covers the AirShield envelope, shipping/handling, the CD blank, and the service. This is likely the only way you can get this CD if you are on a dial-up or do not have a CD burner. You may either mail a money order, having requested the street address via e-mail, or transfer funds via PayPal to pwhite at mailhaven dot com.
A link to the real
3. How often is it updated?
The goal is to offer an updated version of the CD image once a month, if enough programs have been updated to warrant it. I could update and remaster it more often (even once a week), but then BitTorrent and other mirrors would get outdated too often and I can't afford to offer a new image solely from my ADSL connection very often -- I would much rather release more rarely but facilitate faster transfers for everyone.
Tentatively, the next update will be April 30, to set the regular update to the last day of each month. If there haven't been enough updates to warrant an update and repopulation of mirrors, the release date will be set to a month ahead.
4. Can I suggest another program for bundling?
Yes, provided that it's under an OSI-approved license. Please e-mail www@pwhite.mailhaven.com to make your suggestion. New programs will replace currently-bundled non-OSS software. If your program is larger than space (700 MB) permits and there is no more non-OSS software to squeeze out, then your suggested software must be either high enough in quality or sufficiently useful to replace another piece of software. This decision will be left solely to me and my hand-picked "committee" of real-life friends, although you're welcome to include persuasive arguments in your e-mail -- they will be definitely considered.
5. This is incredibly slow. Can I mirror your image to alleviate your bandwidth requirements?
Definitely -- feel free to mirror it or redistribute it any way you wish. The best way to help is to leave your BitTorrent client running after you download the file. The latter does not require much on your part but contributes to the bandwdith pool and greatly helps EVERYONE else who downloads it. The absolute height of my expectations is for you to set up a script that would automatically download the
Last update to this webpage: 2003-04-22 21:25. Hit counter: 1512
Never never never smoke crack before geometry class!
CONTENTS OF THIS COMPACT DISC
Package Version(s) License(s) Web site
Mozilla 1.0.2 / 1.3 / 1.4a MPL/LGPL/GPL http://www.mozilla.org
A web browser suite designed for standards compliance, performance and
portability.
OpenOffice.org 1.0.3 LGPL/SISSL http://www.openoffice.org
The leading international office suite that will run on all major
platforms and provide access to all functionality and data through
open-component based APIs and an XML-based file format.
Phoenix 0.5 MPL/LGPL/GPL http://www.mozilla.org/projects/phoenix
A branch of Mozilla that aims for a small file and memory footprint
while retaining Mozilla's functionality, standards compliance, and portability.
Phoenix has been renamed to Firebird, but that name has not yet been used.
Thunderbird 2003-04-16 MPL/LGPL/GPL http://www.mozilla.org/mailnews/minotaur
A cross platform stand-alone mail application.
PuTTY & PSFTP 0.53b MIT http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty
Telnet, secure Telnet (SSH) and secure FTP (SFTP) clients, giving you
the ability to manage remote hosts and transfer files.
FileZilla 2.1.6 GPL http://filezilla.sf.net
A graphical FTP/SFTP client with multi-language support, drag & drop
support, upload/download queues, ability to resume transfers and much more.
7-Zip 2.30 beta 30 LGPL http://www.7-zip.com
A file archiver with support for 10 formats, 38 languages, Windows
Explorer integration and a powerful command-line version.
Gaim 0.61 GPL http://gaim.sourceforge.net
A versatile instant messaging program, capable of supporting nine
different IM protocols.
The GIMP 1.2.4 (prerelease) GPL http://www.gimp.org
A very powerful image editor, comparable to Adobe Photoshop.
(Included prerequisite: GTK+ 1.3.0)
TightVNC 1.2.8 GPL http://www.tightvnc.org
A great client/server software package allowing remote network access to
graphical desktops. With VNC, you can access your machine from everywhere
provided that your machine is connected to the Internet.
(VNC is an abbreviation for Virtual Network Computing)
CDex 1.50 beta 10 GPL http://cdexos.sourceforge.net
A utility for extraction (ripping) of audio files from an audio CD.
Psi 0.8.7 GPL http://psi.sourceforge.net
One of the best GUI clients for the Jabber instant messaging protocol.
Freenet webinstall GPL http://freenet.sourceforge.net
Freenet is a large-scale peer-to-peer network, which pools the power of member
computers around the world to create a massive virtual information store, much
like a global hard drive. The main aim of Freenet is to help preserve freedom
of speech on the Internet.
Tux Racer 0.61a GPL http://tuxracer.sourceforge.net
Tux Racer lets you take on the role of Tux the Linux Penguin as he races down
steep, snow-covered mountains. Enter cups and compete to win the title! Tux
Racer includes a variety of options for gameplay, including the ability to race
courses in fog, at night, and under high winds.
Celestia 1.3.0 GPL http://www.shatters.net/celestia
A real-time space simulation that lets you experience our universe in three
dimensions. Unlike most planetarium software, Celestia doesn't confine you to
the surface of the Earth. You can travel throughout the solar system, to any
of over 100,000 stars, or even beyond the galaxy.
Emacs 21.2
Never never never smoke crack before geometry class!
FWIW, every Intel chip since the Pentium Pro has had downloadable microcode. AFAIK, the instructions that are handled by the microcode are notably slower, so not all of them are handled there. I don't have much information about that, though...
The microcode (at least with the p3 and before, probably still so with the p4) isn't stored on the CPU permanently--it needs to be uploaded on every system boot. For this reason, at least some motherboard manufacturers store the microcode in the BIOS and upload it on boot. I also believe that Win2k and above automatically upload the microcode as well, but I'm not sure on that.
I don't know whether AMD's processors support upgradable microcode (and, quite honestly, am too lazy to look right now), but I wouldn't be surprised if they do.
AFAIK microcode updates are signed or at least protected by a MAC, so it isn't that trivial to update...
Additionally, the CPU might only allow one update (remember, the update is volatile) after the CPU is reset which is always done by the BIOS in current systems. So, a malicious program would have to inject the (correctly signed) new microcode before the BIOS performs its upload.
But this opens interesting possibilities like running some time-intensive OPS until the CPU core shuts down due to overheating *eg*
http://www.theopencd.org/
It's not the same ISO, but it also seems to include a lot of good open source windows applications.
* OpenOffice.org 1.0.1
* DictInstall 0.9.3.2
* AbiWord 1.0.1
* Beonex Communicator 0.8.1
* FileZilla 2.1.1
* Putty 0.52
* WinVNC 3.3.3r9
* XChat 1.8.10a
* Audacity 1.0
* CDex 1.40
* 7-Zip 2.24
* NetTime 2.0b6
* Win Privacy Tray 0.5.5
* Sokoban YASC 1.53
* Celestia 1.2.4