I've never been a big fan of David Bowie's music, but I've always been impressed by him. Labyrinth was a neat movie, (and the music there was very cool, too, IMO) he's managed to change with the times, he's rich, and he's got a pretty cool record label. (I've always liked Virgin, as big companies go. Virgin Radio is neat too, they broadcast on RealAudio...)
So, let's compare. Most rock stars, whether or not you like their music, end up broke, fading into the past, and often screwed by their record labels. So Bowie's got something going for him. --- pb Reply rather than vaguely moderate me.
They've ported apps to MacOS, often a year late. They've released IE4 and IE5 for Solaris and HP/UX, and they both suck. They've released only crap for Linux. They haven't ported Office to anything but MacOS, despite the demand. And they know that MacOS users aren't likely to switch from MacOS to Windows, it's a different hardware platform too. It's much easier to switch from Windows to Linux.
Microsoft and Sun hate each other, and Microsoft has extended that to all of Unix. They used to maintain XENIX, but they lost that market. I've only seen Microsoft release crappy products for Unix, probably as a statement to say "If you want a real OS, use Windows". IE 3.0 under Wine in Linux runs better than any IE for Unix from Microsoft.
Fault Microsoft for not porting its applications to other operating systems. If they released decent versions of IE for the major platforms Netscape supports, and released Office similarly, they might have won the browser war by now, or at least be doing better, and many people and businesses would have switched from Windows, or not kept it around, or would not be switching to NT.
The only reason why my university is starting to use NT is so they can use Office. Microsoft apparently makes more money with people using both than with people only using one or the other. That's a conflict of interest between Applications and OS.
In this case, it's a sound business decision *and* an anti-competitive attack. But only because there is no real division between Applications, OS, and Greed..... --- pb Reply rather than vaguely moderate me.
I've never had a serious relationship with anyone who I've met online. However, I've always had a serious online relationship with those I've met in real life. It can be essential to helping maintain a long distance relationship, too.
E-mail is always cheaper than a phone call, and a talk session (or any modern chat protocol-thing, ICQ, AIM, IRC, whatever) is more interactive, and sometimes more clear. (However, has anyone tried that internet phone stuff? I've been meaning to use Speak Freely with someone, but haven't done it yet...)
However you can manage to find people people that intrest you, please do, and remember that computer networks are excellent ways to keep in touch and coordinate events. --- pb Reply rather than vaguely moderate me.
Anyone with mod points, bump this up, if it hasn't been mentioned already.
I just converted the.pdf file to text, but the HTML document is much more accessible, as it is on what is commonly called a "web page", found on the "Internet". (did this give anyone else Dr. Evil flashbacks? 'Using a "laser", I will punch a hole in the "ozone layer"'...:) --- pb Reply rather than vaguely moderate me.
I'm getting really sick of all this platform-specific babbling I hear. What's the article? Amazon switches from a commercial web server to a free one, perhaps for performance reasons. Good. What about the platform? Who cares?
To further confuse the issue: NT runs on Alphas. Apache runs on NT. On an x86, you can run NT under Linux, or Linux under NT. Therefore, you could try running IIS under a Linux box (emulating NT) if you wanted to. Other platforms can do x86 emulation, especially the Alphas. So.
Were we discussing the OS? What about the hardware platform? Nope. We were discussing the web server, and Free Software.
Athlon-optimized OpenGL drivers for Linux... How could life possibly get any better? Can you say "Quake III"?
Oh well, I hope I get a video card that's half as nice as this in a year or so...
Maybe one day this sort of card will inspire a Tom's Hardware comparison that includes using NT as compared to Linux.:)
--- pb Reply rather than vaguely moderate me.
Re:Don't call me an old fuddy-duddy, but...
on
Quickie Fu
·
· Score: 1
Heh. heh.
I've seen worse linkage from slashdot, just be glad they didn't post my mention of Asia Carrera's new computer.;0
To be fair, the last time they posted some pornstar-related linkage, other people got in a huff about 'content warnings' and whatnot. Obviously they had clicked on the link faster than they could read the description. --- pb Reply rather than vaguely moderate me.
I got an offer to beta test Heroes of Might and Magic III, and I'm really looking forward to seeing what else Loki does for Linux.
Even if it takes a God of Mischief to start things off right, I'll enjoy the anarchy of more Linux games and more open games. --- pb Reply rather than vaguely moderate me.
I wouldn't mind seeing some more readable corporate sites. I remember when Netscape 1.1 came out, and I started seeing pages that weren't readable by *sighted* people (lousy backgrounds and textcolors) let alone the blind. More ALT tags would be good, and maybe a little bit more explanation in places. I like to know what I'm clicking sometimes.
However, this shouldn't be legislated, no one should get sued over bad web design. How hard is it to be courteous and make a text-only version, or to design your page correctly from the start?
No, what happens now is, people avoid badly designed or ugly sites. That's good enough for me. I've gotten complements on my ALT tags from people who browse the site I maintain. All of the graphics don't translate well, but I've made an effort to see that the site isn't incomprehensible or mindlessly repetitive without them. It isn't that hard to do, if you design it with that in mind from the start. --- pb Reply rather than vaguely moderate me.
This isn't anything new. I think you just neatly outlined the reasons that Caldera first made a Linux distribution. (Although I hear they've gotten somewhat nicer about it now)
Sure, maybe it'll start this way for Corel, but they have much to learn. However, donating help to the Wine project is way cool.
Mostly, the licensing will tell. I'm sure they'll have to release some of their enhancements. KDE is GPL'ed, any kernel patches which aren't modules will have to be released, and technically any GPL'ed modified and distributed packages will have to as well. (either they're exactly the same as Debian's, which is fine, or they need to show us the source.)
A lot of people would be thrilled for a decent, native Office port to Linux. Or, for that matter, IE5. However, I'll stick to WordPerfect 8 or StarOffice for now, and I personally prefer Netscape, and like Mozilla.:) I hope no one would turn away from Linux just because Microsoft ports products to it. That's stupid. You don't have to buy them... (besides, what's the likelihood that they could do a decent Unix port? IE5 for Unix blows chunks!)
Sure, Linux is cool and all, but if a company really wanted to release an expensive Unix OS and not worry about all this crap, they'd base it on *BSD. (just like MacOS X, where Macintosh releases whatever bits of code they want to, and holds onto the good stuff) Since Corel is basing it on Linux, they are showing some commitment to releasing source code, and we'll just have to make sure they understand the distinction. --- pb Reply rather than vaguely moderate me.
We've got almost 40 years until the end of time as we know it. (or until 64-bit Unix, whichever comes first.)
However... kudos to BSD for developing Unix to what we have today, and the same to the Linux community, for continuing to develop it, and spread the gospel.:)
I think I'm continually impressed with how Unix takes a more open and general approach to everything, and makes life easier in the end.
Like how directories and even hardware devices are files, networking transparency is inherent in X (even if it took me a while to figure that out:), having different widget sets and window managers available, or having a free compiler and a useful toolset...
Truly, if I hadn't found Unix, I would have been doomed to reinvent it. Probably starting with DOS. Ewww.... --- pb Reply rather than vaguely moderate me.
Your point about "for products other than windows, [bugs] tend to get fixed" is well-taken. However, you didn't take it far enough.
Consider the model:
Original Non-corporate Linux Model: release code when it works. Release messed-up buggy code so people can help you, but mark it as such.
Original Corporate Windows Model: If there's competition, release code. Ignore buggy code. Say we have fixes for really buggy code. Eventually release fixes.
Starting to see the bashing now? I'd never use Windows '95 on my personal machine. But if I had to, I'd use OSR2, FAT32, and be veeery careful about any other applications and conflicts, especially Office and anything Microsoft-ish. I'd consider '98 or its second release if I'd studied it more, so far I consider Win95OSR2 the most stable of the bunch, and that's not saying much.
Why not NT4? Because it's too bloated, has less hardware compatibility and much less DOS compatibility, and doesn't support some of the mainstream Windows 'innovations'. (FAT32, newer games, etc.)
Why Linux? It isn't bloated. It works fine with my hardware (only okay with my cheapo TV and video cards together), has similar DOS comatibility than NT, a better filesystem than FAT32, and if all else fails and I need to run something Windows-ish, hello, VMWare! (I guess I could do the same on NT, but man that's sick, having to run one Windows on top of another for compatibility. Nothing NT doesn't try to do internally, though.:) )
Heh. What makes you think the masses know how to upgrade service packs? We'll always have clueless users, but hopefully Linux will educate some of them and convince some of them that they (rightfully) shouldn't own a computer. You'll always get calls where people turn off the *monitor* when they're supposed to "Shut Down", etc. --- pb Reply rather than vaguely moderate me.
There's no reason for this to have to be GPL-only.
Yes, freshmeat is a bunch of links to a bunch of software.
Also:
Maybe 'component' wasn't the best choice of words here. How about 'reusable code', or 'useful functionality'? Is that a better buzz-phrase, guys?
There are already central archives. They are called public, anonymous ftp sites. Like metalab.unc.edu or ftp.cdrom.com.
Feel free to use one of those, but all you really need to make is a database with info about what is available where, under which license. And Freshmeat already does an okay job of that, at least.
So go make your own Freshmeat with an archived repository, license info, and links.
Comments? --- pb Reply rather than vaguely moderate me.
Yep, there's no reason Freshmeat couldn't be used for this.
It has a section for "License", I guess if you could search by that, or search for what you want and check the "License" field, it'd work perfectly fine.
Or, for the really lazy, write something that searches Freshmeat and parses the output if you don't want to do it the old-fashioned way. (i.e. reading it yourself.:) --- pb Reply rather than vaguely moderate me.
Oh. What a sad loss. This is almost as bad as loosing Tandy.:)
(at least Radio Shack had a history, let's hear it for the TRaSh-80, yeah!)
But seriously, I've seen many Packard Bell computers, and I've never wanted one. My first computers were from Commodore, Tandy and Emerson, and the other three have been generic, put together by local computer places.
Dell and Compaq can make good machines, but of course they're overpriced. Micron was pretty cool before they got more publicity. But by and large, figure out what you want, get the parts, and assemble it or have someone else do it for you. It's cheaper, and generally works out better that way. --- pb Reply rather than vaguely moderate me.
(a) Yes, if you have a special-purpose task, especially if you can fit it in the cache on the CPU, sure you'll benefit.
(b) If you have a special-purpose task, why are you using general-purpose hardware?
It seems to me that for something like this, some extreme 3D and floating-point power is needed. Like maybe a new, updated coprocessor that either retires multiple FP and "Multimedia" instructions, or implements a new architecture geared towards this kind of software. Real-time rendering on generic hardware would be awesome!
(c) Oh yeah, and of course this has hack value. If anyone "doesn't get it": you probably need to reread The Jargon File and FOLDOC, and if you still don't get it, ask yourself how you ended up on slashdot. --- pb Reply rather than vaguely moderate me.
But remember, guys, when slashdot announces the next super-duper must-have kernel update early, and the ftp site is swamped, relax, take a deep breath, and...
Check the mirrors!
Download the patches!
...because more bandwidth never means sufficient bandwidth. --- pb Reply rather than vaguely moderate me.
I just found this comic last night, and read through them all. And here it is on Slashdot. Don't bother searching the web, Slashdot will find all the good stuff...
I thought that cartoon was so good, I sent it to my Operating Systems teacher (he always has cartoons before class, usually he alters Dilbert cartoons to make them more lame).
I think my favorites were some of the ones with the dots. ("Hey, baby...") --- pb Reply rather than vaguely moderate me.
I noticed that too, and it was made with Photoshop. However, another image that didn't look faked was also, so either there are some really bad fakes out there, or someone else resizes them in Photoshop before they get to the web page...
A better option would be to have a 'Submit' button where it automatically saves that picture for review, instead of relying on people to send the pictures in. That would take out one layer of allowing people to fake entries. --- pb Reply rather than vaguely moderate me.
Where did karma go? I don't see the +1 bonus (or -1, which some people have!) being applied. I don't mind, but sometimes that will mean more work for the moderators. --- pb Reply rather than vaguely moderate me.
I've seen a picture of a ghost before, so I find this fascinating.
At least one of these pictures (blurry near the camera) really looks pretty good. I can see the arms holding a paper on the desk. Enlarge it in The Gimp if you have to, and compare it to any other picture. I did.
Of course, it could be faked. It looks like there's nothing to stop that. But I checked it against another file, the JPEG headers look the same (creator info and stuff) and the file size jives, too. So maybe it's real. Or maybe everyone uses Photoshop to fake their ghost pictures.:)
Of course this is a pipe dream, the story is complete rumor-fodder. It's like posting news about a possible movie that should be out in 2001. I mean, we all know the world is going to end in a couple of months anyhow, right?:)
ASCI Red - about 10,000 PPro 200's. Okay. #1.
Linux works on more than 'two' processors on x86 and Alpha, and I'm sure a lot of redesigning (that you're not going to hear about until IA/64 comes out) is going on right now under NDA. I hope SGI is currently working with them on that, but either way that should be resolved. Of course, we can only hope that by 2001, IA/64 is the greatest invention since sliced bread, otherwise we'll be looking to x86, Alpha, PPC, and anyone else who thinks they have a "good idea for a chip".:)
However, it's the nature of clustering that I don't think they'll have thousands of processors all in the same box. And Linux is a proven clustering solution, as evinced by it's entries in the TOP500. It's just a little newer and a lot cheaper than IBM.
Also, Linux clustering solutions generally use Commodity Off-The-Shelf Hardware. That's the point: it's cheaper that way. So don't brag about how IBM uses a standard, proven design. So does everybody else. (I admit, though, IBM is somewhat high up in the rankings, just like SGI.:)
#2 on the list, ASCI Blue *Mountain* looks like it's held by SGI.
Ooo, #20 has 200 MHz processors. So does #1! The MHz don't matter! The fact that #20 has 768 processors total might be a *little* bit more important.
And this is an other reason why this makes sense. Anything that outperforms ASCI Red would need more than 1000 processors, since it's 10,000 PPro 200's. Just on processor power and MHz alone, you'd want, say, 2,000 1GHz processors. However, if IA/64 offers the sort of speedup expected by a completely new architecture including weird optimizing compilers, and processor speeds continue to increase as usual, maybe they can do it with 1,000 1.4GHz processors or something.
Also, from the article, it didn't sound like they needed to beat ASCI Red right off, just eventually. They admitted that the technology needs time to mature. And that isn't just Linux. It's IA/64 development, and SGI's x86 porting efforts too.
I'm willing to wait two years to see what happens. Everything you claim happening in two years would be somewhat unlikely. However, I don't think the article required that, and I wouldn't blame it all on Linux. Besides, the OS on the nodes will probably be pretty customized and stripped-down anyhow. They're just supposed to be computational workhorses. --- pb Reply rather than vaguely moderate me.
Well, of all of those, double-clicking is the only one I've really been unhappy with on MacOS. Programs will often associate themselves with files that I don't want to open with them, and other files won't have the associations I want. I understand that this point is largely moot nowadays, but it used to be you had to have ResEdit or Norton Utilities for the Mac or something to be able to get any real work done.
Well, if Apple manages to keep those features around for OS X, then any UN*X should be able to implement them given enough time. But I'll be impressed if they do. --- pb Reply rather than vaguely moderate me.
Slashdot Mirror
I've never been a big fan of David Bowie's music, but I've always been impressed by him. Labyrinth was a neat movie, (and the music there was very cool, too, IMO) he's managed to change with the times, he's rich, and he's got a pretty cool record label. (I've always liked Virgin, as big companies go. Virgin Radio is neat too, they broadcast on RealAudio...)
So, let's compare. Most rock stars, whether or not you like their music, end up broke, fading into the past, and often screwed by their record labels. So Bowie's got something going for him.
---
pb Reply rather than vaguely moderate me.
They've ported apps to MacOS, often a year late. They've released IE4 and IE5 for Solaris and HP/UX, and they both suck. They've released only crap for Linux. They haven't ported Office to anything but MacOS, despite the demand. And they know that MacOS users aren't likely to switch from MacOS to Windows, it's a different hardware platform too. It's much easier to switch from Windows to Linux.
Microsoft and Sun hate each other, and Microsoft has extended that to all of Unix. They used to maintain XENIX, but they lost that market. I've only seen Microsoft release crappy products for Unix, probably as a statement to say "If you want a real OS, use Windows". IE 3.0 under Wine in Linux runs better than any IE for Unix from Microsoft.
Fault Microsoft for not porting its applications to other operating systems. If they released decent versions of IE for the major platforms Netscape supports, and released Office similarly, they might have won the browser war by now, or at least be doing better, and many people and businesses would have switched from Windows, or not kept it around, or would not be switching to NT.
The only reason why my university is starting to use NT is so they can use Office. Microsoft apparently makes more money with people using both than with people only using one or the other. That's a conflict of interest between Applications and OS.
In this case, it's a sound business decision *and* an anti-competitive attack. But only because there is no real division between Applications, OS, and Greed.....
---
pb Reply rather than vaguely moderate me.
I've never had a serious relationship with anyone who I've met online. However, I've always had a serious online relationship with those I've met in real life. It can be essential to helping maintain a long distance relationship, too.
E-mail is always cheaper than a phone call, and a talk session (or any modern chat protocol-thing, ICQ, AIM, IRC, whatever) is more interactive, and sometimes more clear. (However, has anyone tried that internet phone stuff? I've been meaning to use Speak Freely with someone, but haven't done it yet...)
However you can manage to find people people that intrest you, please do, and remember that computer networks are excellent ways to keep in touch and coordinate events.
---
pb Reply rather than vaguely moderate me.
Hey, thanks, that *is* easier to read!
.pdf file to text, but the HTML document is much more accessible, as it is on what is commonly called a "web page", found on the "Internet". (did this give anyone else Dr. Evil flashbacks? 'Using a "laser", I will punch a hole in the "ozone layer"'... :)
Anyone with mod points, bump this up, if it hasn't been mentioned already.
I just converted the
---
pb Reply rather than vaguely moderate me.
I'm getting really sick of all this platform-specific babbling I hear.
What's the article? Amazon switches from a commercial web server to a
free one, perhaps for performance reasons. Good. What about the
platform? Who cares?
To further confuse the issue: NT runs on Alphas. Apache runs on NT. On
an x86, you can run NT under Linux, or Linux under NT. Therefore, you
could try running IIS under a Linux box (emulating NT) if you wanted to.
Other platforms can do x86 emulation, especially the Alphas. So.
Were we discussing the OS? What about the hardware platform? Nope. We
were discussing the web server, and Free Software.
---
pb Reply rather than vaguely moderate me.
Athlon-optimized OpenGL drivers for Linux... How could life possibly get any better? Can you say "Quake III"?
Oh well, I hope I get a video card that's half as nice as this in a year or so...
Maybe one day this sort of card will inspire a Tom's Hardware comparison that includes using NT as compared to Linux.
---
pb Reply rather than vaguely moderate me.
Heh. heh.
;0
I've seen worse linkage from slashdot, just be glad they didn't post my mention of Asia Carrera's new computer.
To be fair, the last time they posted some pornstar-related linkage, other people got in a huff about 'content warnings' and whatnot. Obviously they had clicked on the link faster than they could read the description.
---
pb Reply rather than vaguely moderate me.
I'm liking these guys more and more.
I got an offer to beta test Heroes of Might and Magic III, and I'm really looking forward to seeing what else Loki does for Linux.
Even if it takes a God of Mischief to start things off right, I'll enjoy the anarchy of more Linux games and more open games.
---
pb Reply rather than vaguely moderate me.
I wouldn't mind seeing some more readable corporate sites. I remember when Netscape 1.1 came out, and I started seeing pages that weren't readable by *sighted* people (lousy backgrounds and textcolors) let alone the blind. More ALT tags would be good, and maybe a little bit more explanation in places. I like to know what I'm clicking sometimes.
However, this shouldn't be legislated, no one should get sued over bad web design. How hard is it to be courteous and make a text-only version, or to design your page correctly from the start?
No, what happens now is, people avoid badly designed or ugly sites. That's good enough for me. I've gotten complements on my ALT tags from people who browse the site I maintain. All of the graphics don't translate well, but I've made an effort to see that the site isn't incomprehensible or mindlessly repetitive without them. It isn't that hard to do, if you design it with that in mind from the start.
---
pb Reply rather than vaguely moderate me.
Sure, maybe it'll start this way for Corel, but they have much to learn. However, donating help to the Wine project is way cool.
Mostly, the licensing will tell. I'm sure they'll have to release some of their enhancements. KDE is GPL'ed, any kernel patches which aren't modules will have to be released, and technically any GPL'ed modified and distributed packages will have to as well. (either they're exactly the same as Debian's, which is fine, or they need to show us the source.)
A lot of people would be thrilled for a decent, native Office port to Linux. Or, for that matter, IE5. However, I'll stick to WordPerfect 8 or StarOffice for now, and I personally prefer Netscape, and like Mozilla. :) I hope no one would turn away from Linux just because Microsoft ports products to it. That's stupid. You don't have to buy them... (besides, what's the likelihood that they could do a decent Unix port? IE5 for Unix blows chunks!)
Sure, Linux is cool and all, but if a company really wanted to release an expensive Unix OS and not worry about all this crap, they'd base it on *BSD. (just like MacOS X, where Macintosh releases whatever bits of code they want to, and holds onto the good stuff) Since Corel is basing it on Linux, they are showing some commitment to releasing source code, and we'll just have to make sure they understand the distinction.
---
pb Reply rather than vaguely moderate me.
I'll have to get a 3D card on my next computer... :|
:)
On second thought, I'll have to get cool games for my next computer!
Now if only we could get Origin to port Ultima IX to Linux... Now *that* would be worthy.
Until then, hello MAME, Snes9x, Wine, VMWare and DOSEmu...
---
pb Reply rather than vaguely moderate me.
Go here.
---
pb Reply rather than vaguely moderate me.
We've got almost 40 years until the end of time as we know it. (or until 64-bit Unix, whichever comes first.)
:)
:), having different widget sets and window managers available, or having a free compiler and a useful toolset...
However... kudos to BSD for developing Unix to what we have today, and the same to the Linux community, for continuing to develop it, and spread the gospel.
I think I'm continually impressed with how Unix takes a more open and general approach to everything, and makes life easier in the end.
Like how directories and even hardware devices are files, networking transparency is inherent in X (even if it took me a while to figure that out
Truly, if I hadn't found Unix, I would have been doomed to reinvent it. Probably starting with DOS. Ewww....
---
pb Reply rather than vaguely moderate me.
Your point about "for products other than windows, [bugs] tend to get fixed" is well-taken. However, you didn't take it far enough.
:) )
Consider the model:
Original Non-corporate Linux Model: release code when it works. Release messed-up buggy code so people can help you, but mark it as such.
Original Corporate Windows Model: If there's competition, release code. Ignore buggy code. Say we have fixes for really buggy code. Eventually release fixes.
Starting to see the bashing now? I'd never use Windows '95 on my personal machine. But if I had to, I'd use OSR2, FAT32, and be veeery careful about any other applications and conflicts, especially Office and anything Microsoft-ish. I'd consider '98 or its second release if I'd studied it more, so far I consider Win95OSR2 the most stable of the bunch, and that's not saying much.
Why not NT4? Because it's too bloated, has less hardware compatibility and much less DOS compatibility, and doesn't support some of the mainstream Windows 'innovations'. (FAT32, newer games, etc.)
Why Linux? It isn't bloated. It works fine with my hardware (only okay with my cheapo TV and video cards together), has similar DOS comatibility than NT, a better filesystem than FAT32, and if all else fails and I need to run something Windows-ish, hello, VMWare! (I guess I could do the same on NT, but man that's sick, having to run one Windows on top of another for compatibility. Nothing NT doesn't try to do internally, though.
Heh. What makes you think the masses know how to upgrade service packs? We'll always have clueless users, but hopefully Linux will educate some of them and convince some of them that they (rightfully) shouldn't own a computer. You'll always get calls where people turn off the *monitor* when they're supposed to "Shut Down", etc.
---
pb Reply rather than vaguely moderate me.
As has been mentioned before:
There's no reason for this to have to be GPL-only.
Yes, freshmeat is a bunch of links to a bunch of software.
Also:
Maybe 'component' wasn't the best choice of words here. How about 'reusable code', or 'useful functionality'? Is that a better buzz-phrase, guys?
There are already central archives. They are called public, anonymous ftp sites. Like metalab.unc.edu or ftp.cdrom.com.
Feel free to use one of those, but all you really need to make is a database with info about what is available where, under which license. And Freshmeat already does an okay job of that, at least.
So go make your own Freshmeat with an archived repository, license info, and links.
Comments?
---
pb Reply rather than vaguely moderate me.
Yep, there's no reason Freshmeat couldn't be used for this.
:)
It has a section for "License", I guess if you could search by that, or search for what you want and check the "License" field, it'd work perfectly fine.
Or, for the really lazy, write something that searches Freshmeat and parses the output if you don't want to do it the old-fashioned way. (i.e. reading it yourself.
---
pb Reply rather than vaguely moderate me.
Oh. What a sad loss. This is almost as bad as loosing Tandy. :)
(at least Radio Shack had a history, let's hear it for the TRaSh-80, yeah!)
But seriously, I've seen many Packard Bell computers, and I've never wanted one. My first computers were from Commodore, Tandy and Emerson, and the other three have been generic, put together by local computer places.
Dell and Compaq can make good machines, but of course they're overpriced. Micron was pretty cool before they got more publicity. But by and large, figure out what you want, get the parts, and assemble it or have someone else do it for you. It's cheaper, and generally works out better that way.
---
pb Reply rather than vaguely moderate me.
(a) Yes, if you have a special-purpose task, especially if you can fit it in the cache on the CPU, sure you'll benefit.
(b) If you have a special-purpose task, why are you using general-purpose hardware?
It seems to me that for something like this, some extreme 3D and floating-point power is needed. Like maybe a new, updated coprocessor that either retires multiple FP and "Multimedia" instructions, or implements a new architecture geared towards this kind of software. Real-time rendering on generic hardware would be awesome!
(c) Oh yeah, and of course this has hack value. If anyone "doesn't get it": you probably need to reread The Jargon File and FOLDOC, and if you still don't get it, ask yourself how you ended up on slashdot.
---
pb Reply rather than vaguely moderate me.
Check the mirrors!
Download the patches!
---
pb Reply rather than vaguely moderate me.
I just found this comic last night, and read through them all. And here it is on Slashdot. Don't bother searching the web, Slashdot will find all the good stuff...
I thought that cartoon was so good, I sent it to my Operating Systems teacher (he always has cartoons before class, usually he alters Dilbert cartoons to make them more lame).
I think my favorites were some of the ones with the dots. ("Hey, baby...")
---
pb Reply rather than vaguely moderate me.
I noticed that too, and it was made with Photoshop. However, another image that didn't look faked was also, so either there are some really bad fakes out there, or someone else resizes them in Photoshop before they get to the web page...
A better option would be to have a 'Submit' button where it automatically saves that picture for review, instead of relying on people to send the pictures in. That would take out one layer of allowing people to fake entries.
---
pb Reply rather than vaguely moderate me.
Where did karma go? I don't see the +1 bonus (or -1, which some people have!) being applied. I don't mind, but sometimes that will mean more work for the moderators.
---
pb Reply rather than vaguely moderate me.
At least one of these pictures (blurry near the camera) really looks pretty good. I can see the arms holding a paper on the desk. Enlarge it in The Gimp if you have to, and compare it to any other picture. I did.
Of course, it could be faked. It looks like there's nothing to stop that. But I checked it against another file, the JPEG headers look the same (creator info and stuff) and the file size jives, too. So maybe it's real. Or maybe everyone uses Photoshop to fake their ghost pictures. :)
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pb Reply rather than vaguely moderate me.
Of course this is a pipe dream, the story is complete rumor-fodder. It's like posting news about a possible movie that should be out in 2001. I mean, we all know the world is going to end in a couple of months anyhow, right? :)
:)
:)
ASCI Red - about 10,000 PPro 200's. Okay. #1.
Linux works on more than 'two' processors on x86 and Alpha, and I'm sure a lot of redesigning (that you're not going to hear about until IA/64 comes out) is going on right now under NDA. I hope SGI is currently working with them on that, but either way that should be resolved. Of course, we can only hope that by 2001, IA/64 is the greatest invention since sliced bread, otherwise we'll be looking to x86, Alpha, PPC, and anyone else who thinks they have a "good idea for a chip".
However, it's the nature of clustering that I don't think they'll have thousands of processors all in the same box. And Linux is a proven clustering solution, as evinced by it's entries in the TOP500. It's just a little newer and a lot cheaper than IBM.
Also, Linux clustering solutions generally use Commodity Off-The-Shelf Hardware. That's the point: it's cheaper that way. So don't brag about how IBM uses a standard, proven design. So does everybody else. (I admit, though, IBM is somewhat high up in the rankings, just like SGI.
#2 on the list, ASCI Blue *Mountain* looks like it's held by SGI.
Ooo, #20 has 200 MHz processors. So does #1! The MHz don't matter! The fact that #20 has 768 processors total might be a *little* bit more important.
And this is an other reason why this makes sense. Anything that outperforms ASCI Red would need more than 1000 processors, since it's 10,000 PPro 200's. Just on processor power and MHz alone, you'd want, say, 2,000 1GHz processors. However, if IA/64 offers the sort of speedup expected by a completely new architecture including weird optimizing compilers, and processor speeds continue to increase as usual, maybe they can do it with 1,000 1.4GHz processors or something.
Also, from the article, it didn't sound like they needed to beat ASCI Red right off, just eventually. They admitted that the technology needs time to mature. And that isn't just Linux. It's IA/64 development, and SGI's x86 porting efforts too.
I'm willing to wait two years to see what happens. Everything you claim happening in two years would be somewhat unlikely. However, I don't think the article required that, and I wouldn't blame it all on Linux. Besides, the OS on the nodes will probably be pretty customized and stripped-down anyhow. They're just supposed to be computational workhorses.
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pb Reply rather than vaguely moderate me.
Well, of all of those, double-clicking is the only one I've really been unhappy with on MacOS. Programs will often associate themselves with files that I don't want to open with them, and other files won't have the associations I want. I understand that this point is largely moot nowadays, but it used to be you had to have ResEdit or Norton Utilities for the Mac or something to be able to get any real work done.
Well, if Apple manages to keep those features around for OS X, then any UN*X should be able to implement them given enough time. But I'll be impressed if they do.
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pb Reply rather than vaguely moderate me.