Oh, I also wanted to say that I'm pissed at Maxis for denying me a hot lesbian love scene between my two female roommates. I got them to share a bed, and I even got "Kiss" to appear on the actions menu, but when I tried to set things in motion, both Sims scrambled back into the closet, so to speak.
I always thought it would have been cool if you could follow your Sims to work. The social interactions would be similar to those in the Sims' homes, but the Sims' territorial behavior and blatant ass-kissing would seem more natural.:-) The "accessories" would be available based on work performance as well as money. A hard SimWorker might be rewarded with a faster PC, allowing him to do more work with less frustration. After a Sim is promoted, perhaps he purchases a Palm to play with during boring meetings.
As I'm sure many of you did, when I first started playing The Sims, I tried to model a character after myself. Unfortunately, in the Sims' world, living on junk food and spending all day on the computer doesn't work out very well. (Or maybe it isn't working out well in the real world either, and I just haven't realized it yet.)
I only have one complaint about the game, and that is when a Sim is "cut off" by another Sim when trying to reach a destination in the household, he tends to stand around for a half-hour of SimTime, just fuming. That frustrates me to no end. The only thing that's worse is when they pass out cold, three feet from their nice comfy bed.
Myself, I stopped playing a couple months ago, and am going to try to stay away until this summer at least. That game is dangerously addictive! Once I start playing it tends to crowd out most other aspects of life.
One last SimNote -- I recently learned that "ChiaBot" from the last season of Comedy Central's BattleBots was built by Will Wright's teenage daughter. I wonder if she reads/..
There is no DOS prompt in W2K, the command prompt may look like DOS, but it ain't DOS.
Well, there is, actually. I've played around with the NT5 boxes at work and discovered that there are two xterm-ish programs in NT5. If you run "cmd", you get an NT5 command window. If you run "command", you get a "Microsoft Windows DOS" command window. Interesting.
And in my quest to give an old NT4 box a usable console, I discovered (via Google) a registry hack to give NT4 command-line completion.
My main use for these boxes is telnet. I've also noticed that in NT5, the telnet client is more integrated; in NT4, typing "telnet" opens a new window, which is endlessly annoying. The ability in NT5 to run telnet in a command window means that I can run telnet full-screen -- and almost pretend I'm using a real computer.:-)
Normal Windows users, you mean. I hack in C-family languages on UNIX, and case-insensitivity isn't "normal" to me at all. Maybe you're confused, and think you're reading ZDnet or something?
In fact, the only UNIX application I can think of which is purposely case-insenstive in some areas is GNU Emacs, with regards to the default incremental search and DIRED filename-completion.
The only thing more amusing than a mindless, moronic Microsoft-basher is a mindless, moronic Microsoft-basher who is unable to type the English word "you", and instead substitutes the letter "U". You, sir, can kindly FOAD.
Bullshit. XHTML is HTML 4.01 implemented in XML. While Microsoft does seem to be interested in XML, the biggest industry supporter is by far SUN, who has contributed a lot to the specs and the technology. Microsoft is probably a W3C member, but there's no way they can "own" a non-profit organization run by MIT, et al. Therefore, your post == bullshit.
Most developers and users of Linux come into contact with a UNIX shell sooner or later. This is typically in the form of the Bash shell, or sometimes the C shell, or Tcsh, or the Korn shell(the default on IBM's AIX operating system).
For the newbies, here's The_Messenger's Shells in a Nutshell:
All dominant shells are either Bourne shells or C shells. Bourne shells are descendants of the original sh, written by S.R. Bourne. The Bourne shell was a great scripting language (which resembles Modula-2), but was not well-suited for interactive use. The C Shell csh), written by Bill Joy, attempted to remedy this by providing such novel features as job control and was much nicer for the interactive user, but its C-like scripting language in the original implemenation was clumsy and buggy.
The KornShell (ksh), created by David Korn at AT&T, is the best of both worlds. It's a Bourne shell with tons of new scripting features, plus all of the C shell's interactive advantages. The KornShell is now the standard UNIX shell; you'll find it on all real (read: certified) UNIX systems, including Solaris. AIX, HP-UX, IRIX, SCO, et cetera.
Tcsh, the Tenex C shell, is a suped-up version of the Berkely C shell. I like to think of it as what the KornShell would have been if it were csh-based. This shell is not "standard" but is found on most UNIX systems regardless.
If you have to learn one shell, learn Korn. Why a Bourne shell? Because there are simply some times when you can't use a C-shell -- when editting the standard system scripts, for instance. Most of these scripts are written in the UNIX-vendor's sh implementation, which is different than Korn, but much closer to Korn than Tcsh. Why use Korn instead of just plain-old sh? Because sh is dreadful for interactive use!!
Now we come to bash. Bash is the GNU implementation of a Bourne shell, and is comparable to tcsh in its feature-set. Bash is the standard shell on GNU/Linux systems, as well as the shell which the GNU/Linux system scripts are written in, which is convenient.
However, many GNU/Linux newbies are under the impression that bash is the standard UNIX shell, which is NOT the case. There are endless differences; RTFM. The two good reasons to make your sysadmin install bash anyway are these: awesome command-line completion and the best EMACS command-line editor available!
C shells are by no means dead, however. FreeBSD, being loyal to its BSD roots, still uses a C shell as its default. (Although once again the system scripts are still in sh.;-) Until FreeBSD 4.1, the default shell was the Berkely csh; in 4.1 and later, they use tcsh.
OpenBSD's standard shell is pdksh, a freeware clone of ksh. Personally, I find this shell obselete, because the real ksh is now (finally!) freely available from AT&T, and the pdksh is not KSH93-complaint.
So there are five shells you have an excuse for knowing: sh, csh, ksh, tcsh, and bash. (Gesundheit!)
The topic of this article is the Z shell, to which I say; Bah, humbug! While learning another shell might be a good way to spend a quiet weekend, the benefits are questionable. It's one which you'll never be guaranteed to have on a UNIX, GNU/Linux, or BSD system. You should only bother to learn a new shell if you're switching UNIX/Unixes or your current shell is missing features.
Agreed; 3dfx was effectively dead and rotting way before the 5000 series was released. IMNSHO, no one has an excuse for owning any 3dfx board later than a Voodoo3 3000. The owner of a Voodoo5 board is someone who spends more time watching TV (and enjoying 3dfx's lame commercials) than reading the newspaper (to watch stock prices) or surfing the net (to read reviews). Happily, Glide is now deader than Daikatana! I sold my soul to nVidia back when the TNT2 first came out, and have not regretted it since. Now we 0wn j00 3dfx lusers, bwahahaha!
(Although I must admit that I've been digging some of ATI's stuff lately. Too bad they lost Apple... nVidia now effictively dominates the consumer, gamer, and low/mid performance graphics markets.)
The current theory is that their measurements are not accurate.
Why should we trust that theory? The bastards can't even accurately measure neutrino output!:-)
--
high-class SMP on x86? but *why?*
on
Emergence of SMT
·
· Score: 2
When comparing SMT vs. dual or multiprocessor performance data, it is important to compare apples to apples, and understand why under an OS such as Win 98 or ME, even a single Pentium III 1 GHz will handily outperform a dual-Pentium III 500 MHz setup.
With all due respect for my Intel-loving friends here on Slashdot, I feel that you'll never see much of the real advantages of SMP on x86 boxes anyway. Even if it were possible for Joe Average Computer Scientist to obtain an Intel box with more than eight CPUs, the severe bandwidth limitations of the x86 architecture become apparent with even four Pentium IIIs. Only machines with high-bandwidth architectures (most notably those from IBM's mainframe division, SUN, and SGI) are able to compensate for the exponential growth in processing overhead with more than eight CPUs, and it's no coincidence that these companies are where you turn to when you need a machine with between eight and sixty-four CPUs.
My feelings shall be vindicated when SMP Athlon machines become readibly available. Their comparatively minor bandwidth advantage will let them blow similarly-clocked Intel boxes out of the water.
Personally, I feel that the best way to scale x86 to supercomputing levels is through clustering, such as is offered by the venerable Beowulf for GNU/Linux. GNU/Linux, for better or worse, is continuing to grow in popularity, and I would like to see commercial software vendors try releasing Beowulf-enabled software for Linux. Imagine being able to buy Oracle for Beowulf! Okay, poor example; Oracle is memory-intensive rather than CPU-intensive, and a RDBMS is one application which is so dependant on a fast disk and good caching that that advantages pale in comparison to the potential problems. What would really be cool are Beowulf ports of statistical analysis and 3D-rendering software. Oooh, yeah... after all, The Matrix and Titanic have both proven the effectiveness of free x86 Unix-workalikes in render farms... I believe that those two movies respectively used FreeBSD and GNU/Linux.
SIG:
Have Bruce Perens Speak at Your Conference! HP Sponsors All Expenses!
Awesome! I just got my UPS tracking number from HP, so I can track your progress as you are shipped cross-country for the First Annual "Kick Bruce Perens' Ass" Conference!! It's gonna be hardcore and brutal!
Yeah, that really was Ghandi's problem. He really needed a mohawk, a leather jacket, a laser rifle, and some snappy catch-phrases. Like a brown Fonzie! (Ghanzie?) With a mohawk and a laser rifle. Man, that would have been cool.
He also needed a sidekick, like a talking dog. I'm sure after fasting for a few months, he may have been halluncinating and imagined a dog talking to him... "Eat me, Ghandi. I'm so plump and delicious! Eat me, Ghandi!"... but it's just not the same.
Apple will never do that. And it's not just because they're a hardware company... the real reason is that they have no experience in creating portable software. MacOS has had to support very little hardware in its lifetime, and most of it is designed and produced by Apple. MacOS developers are in the lap of luxury... especially these days, with the Mac clones gone. If you own a Mac less than three years old, there is a very narrow field of possible hardware setups. (I think that's why Apple started offering Macs in fruity colors, to help disguise the fact that buying a Mac is like buying a telephone from the old Ma Bell.)
It's a completely different story for operating systems like FreeBSD, GNU/Linux x86, and Windows NT. Your users run everything from beat-up old Cyrix 586's with full-length ISA sound cards to 1GHz Athlon Thunderbirds with GeForce2's to SMP PIII Xenon beasts with 2GB RAM and SCSI RAIDs. I think that if Apple were suddenly thrown into that jungle of legacy systems, competing CPU vendors, and the plethora of 3rd-party add-ons, they would even make Windows Me look good.
Apple's world is one of dull uniformity, and a paisley chassis can't hide that. I don't think they could cut it in the real world.
I've never understood why people think it's so awful... I only watch DVDs on a PC. Sure, the screen is small compared to a television, but your eyes are much closer, and with the drastically increased resolution, you never notice anyway. Gasaraki on a 19" monitor and Altec Lansing speakers/subwoofer is very enjoyable, actually.:-)
FYI, my "DVD player" is a Win2k box with a Sony DVD-ROM and a WinDVD software decoder. This is a pretty fast box, and WinDVD actually produces a better picture than most PCI hardware decoders I've seen, and is much cheaper. Yes, I'm a UNIX guy, and yes, I paid for Win2k, and no, I don't regret it -- I can play all the new games, watch DVDs, and only have to reboot it once a month. (And that's just to reclaim resources, not because it crashes.) The Win2k box is still mocked by my Sun boxes, but not as much as the Win98 games box was.:-) It really is quite a successful merge of NT4's [relative] stability and 98's game support.
Look, MySQL is great and everything, but I really can't imagine a professional DBA recommending it for business use. It doesn't even fully implement SQL92, for Christ's sake. Unless your business is really small or the intended usage is trivial (ie not mission-critical and no money involved), just bite the bullet and use Oracle or DB2. It's fairly easy prove that one of those is superior to MSSQL... MySQL will lose that fight.
Don't get me wrong... I use MySQL on my personal website, and I like it. But there are reasons I use Oracle at work. One is that we have skilled, experienced DBAs who wouldn't touch a freeware database that doesn't really support transactions, SQL sub-selects, et cetera, et cetera.
And hey, if this is just a half-veiled ploy to introduce GNU/Linux at the office, remember that Oracle runs on Linux too.
Yes, Oracle is expensive as hell. But when you need that kind of power, it's the only choice. If you don't need that kind of database, then maybe you can get off with using MySQL. Explain that it's used by lots of Linux websites, explain that it's free, and, since he's a Mac guy, explain that a port of MySQL to MacOS X is inevitable.;-)
If he really does have hardcore Microsoft-fever, mentioning Oracle will only make things work, so maybe start off with DB2. It's fast, a lot less expensive than Oracle, and has a comparable feature set.
First: is this true? I mean, MSNBC isn't my first stop for Apple-related news, but you'd think they'd be more credible than sites like MacOS Rumours and SteveJobsLivesInMyClosetAndTellsMeThings.com.
If it's true, then normally I'd be inclined to say that there is no such thing as "bad publicity", and minor complaints such as these might even make more average users aware of OS X.
But, because this is an Apple product, things are different. Lack of DVD support may not sound like a big deal to the few Linux users and hoards of Linux-wannabes on Slashdot, but to the Mac-crowd, it is a big fucking deal. The only thing they've ever had to be proud of is excellent multimedia, and Apple will take a lot of heat if OS X ships without DVD. This may also turn away a lot of Windows users who are thinking of trying it out... I know a Windows (and sometimes Unix) user at the office who is really psyched about getting a Titanium G4 Powerbook when OS X is released, but I'd bet money that if he hears OS X can't play DVDs, he'll put off buying it. (And why shouldn't he? The wide-screen DVD player functionality is one of the most-hyped cool things about the Titanium G4 Powerbook.) I'd also bet money that if he puts-off buying it, he'll end up losing the excitement and he'll never buy it.
Some of you also seem to think that very few Mac users are even interested in using OS X so soon. Not so. I know several Mac users, and knowing their clannish nature and love of "shiny things", they'll all want to be the first on their block to have the latest MacOS. Something missing as basic as DVD support will be a huge turn-off. They'll think, "Hey, I guess everyone was right about how archaic Unix is after all! Apple let us down and backed a shitty technology." Once the press hears that even die-hard Mac zombies are unimpressed, there will be even less Windows users interested in taking it for a spin.
If Apple is smart (and I'm not holding my breath), they will not release OS X until it's really done. DVD support can't wait for the first service pack.
Personally, I'm a Sun guy. (And my Blade 100 will be joining the LAN next week, baby!) But... OS X really had me hoping that the Holy Grail (Unix with a pretty face) had finally arrived. I'll admit it; the hardware is dead sexy, and if they had software to match, I'd order a G4 Cube tomorrow. I think it'd be a crying shame if Apple started following Microsoft's practice of releasing software that needs a year's worth of service packs to be usable.
Slashdot Mirror
I bought an extra box of Kleenex for nothing!
--
As I'm sure many of you did, when I first started playing The Sims, I tried to model a character after myself. Unfortunately, in the Sims' world, living on junk food and spending all day on the computer doesn't work out very well. (Or maybe it isn't working out well in the real world either, and I just haven't realized it yet.)
I only have one complaint about the game, and that is when a Sim is "cut off" by another Sim when trying to reach a destination in the household, he tends to stand around for a half-hour of SimTime, just fuming. That frustrates me to no end. The only thing that's worse is when they pass out cold, three feet from their nice comfy bed.
Myself, I stopped playing a couple months ago, and am going to try to stay away until this summer at least. That game is dangerously addictive! Once I start playing it tends to crowd out most other aspects of life.
One last SimNote -- I recently learned that "ChiaBot" from the last season of Comedy Central's BattleBots was built by Will Wright's teenage daughter. I wonder if she reads /..
--
And in my quest to give an old NT4 box a usable console, I discovered (via Google) a registry hack to give NT4 command-line completion.
My main use for these boxes is telnet. I've also noticed that in NT5, the telnet client is more integrated; in NT4, typing "telnet" opens a new window, which is endlessly annoying. The ability in NT5 to run telnet in a command window means that I can run telnet full-screen -- and almost pretend I'm using a real computer. :-)
--
In fact, the only UNIX application I can think of which is purposely case-insenstive in some areas is GNU Emacs, with regards to the default incremental search and DIRED filename-completion.
--
--
--
--
All dominant shells are either Bourne shells or C shells. Bourne shells are descendants of the original sh, written by S.R. Bourne. The Bourne shell was a great scripting language (which resembles Modula-2), but was not well-suited for interactive use. The C Shell csh), written by Bill Joy, attempted to remedy this by providing such novel features as job control and was much nicer for the interactive user, but its C-like scripting language in the original implemenation was clumsy and buggy.
The KornShell (ksh), created by David Korn at AT&T, is the best of both worlds. It's a Bourne shell with tons of new scripting features, plus all of the C shell's interactive advantages. The KornShell is now the standard UNIX shell; you'll find it on all real (read: certified) UNIX systems, including Solaris. AIX, HP-UX, IRIX, SCO, et cetera.
Tcsh, the Tenex C shell, is a suped-up version of the Berkely C shell. I like to think of it as what the KornShell would have been if it were csh-based. This shell is not "standard" but is found on most UNIX systems regardless.
If you have to learn one shell, learn Korn. Why a Bourne shell? Because there are simply some times when you can't use a C-shell -- when editting the standard system scripts, for instance. Most of these scripts are written in the UNIX-vendor's sh implementation, which is different than Korn, but much closer to Korn than Tcsh. Why use Korn instead of just plain-old sh? Because sh is dreadful for interactive use!!
Now we come to bash. Bash is the GNU implementation of a Bourne shell, and is comparable to tcsh in its feature-set. Bash is the standard shell on GNU/Linux systems, as well as the shell which the GNU/Linux system scripts are written in, which is convenient.
However, many GNU/Linux newbies are under the impression that bash is the standard UNIX shell, which is NOT the case. There are endless differences; RTFM. The two good reasons to make your sysadmin install bash anyway are these: awesome command-line completion and the best EMACS command-line editor available!
C shells are by no means dead, however. FreeBSD, being loyal to its BSD roots, still uses a C shell as its default. (Although once again the system scripts are still in sh. ;-) Until FreeBSD 4.1, the default shell was the Berkely csh; in 4.1 and later, they use tcsh.
OpenBSD's standard shell is pdksh, a freeware clone of ksh. Personally, I find this shell obselete, because the real ksh is now (finally!) freely available from AT&T, and the pdksh is not KSH93-complaint.
So there are five shells you have an excuse for knowing: sh, csh, ksh, tcsh, and bash. (Gesundheit!)
The topic of this article is the Z shell, to which I say; Bah, humbug! While learning another shell might be a good way to spend a quiet weekend, the benefits are questionable. It's one which you'll never be guaranteed to have on a UNIX, GNU/Linux, or BSD system. You should only bother to learn a new shell if you're switching UNIX/Unixes or your current shell is missing features.
--
(Although I must admit that I've been digging some of ATI's stuff lately. Too bad they lost Apple... nVidia now effictively dominates the consumer, gamer, and low/mid performance graphics markets.)
--
--
--
--
--
My feelings shall be vindicated when SMP Athlon machines become readibly available. Their comparatively minor bandwidth advantage will let them blow similarly-clocked Intel boxes out of the water.
Personally, I feel that the best way to scale x86 to supercomputing levels is through clustering, such as is offered by the venerable Beowulf for GNU/Linux. GNU/Linux, for better or worse, is continuing to grow in popularity, and I would like to see commercial software vendors try releasing Beowulf-enabled software for Linux. Imagine being able to buy Oracle for Beowulf! Okay, poor example; Oracle is memory-intensive rather than CPU-intensive, and a RDBMS is one application which is so dependant on a fast disk and good caching that that advantages pale in comparison to the potential problems. What would really be cool are Beowulf ports of statistical analysis and 3D-rendering software. Oooh, yeah... after all, The Matrix and Titanic have both proven the effectiveness of free x86 Unix-workalikes in render farms... I believe that those two movies respectively used FreeBSD and GNU/Linux.
--
--
He also needed a sidekick, like a talking dog. I'm sure after fasting for a few months, he may have been halluncinating and imagined a dog talking to him... "Eat me, Ghandi. I'm so plump and delicious! Eat me, Ghandi!"... but it's just not the same.
--
--
--
--
Ellison: How are you gentlemen !! All your database are belong to us
It's a completely different story for operating systems like FreeBSD, GNU/Linux x86, and Windows NT. Your users run everything from beat-up old Cyrix 586's with full-length ISA sound cards to 1GHz Athlon Thunderbirds with GeForce2's to SMP PIII Xenon beasts with 2GB RAM and SCSI RAIDs. I think that if Apple were suddenly thrown into that jungle of legacy systems, competing CPU vendors, and the plethora of 3rd-party add-ons, they would even make Windows Me look good.
Apple's world is one of dull uniformity, and a paisley chassis can't hide that. I don't think they could cut it in the real world.
PS - Thanks for the pr0n!
--
Speaking of which, does anyone have their print book yet? I'm ordering the hardcover next week...
--
(Pssst -- don't forget now SCO is still trying to sell UW7 as "SVr5" UNIX! ;-)
And of course, there's nothing as loopy as the Solaris versioning. Solaris 8 is really Solaris 2.8, running the SunOS 5.8 kernel, and so on. :-)
--
FYI, my "DVD player" is a Win2k box with a Sony DVD-ROM and a WinDVD software decoder. This is a pretty fast box, and WinDVD actually produces a better picture than most PCI hardware decoders I've seen, and is much cheaper. Yes, I'm a UNIX guy, and yes, I paid for Win2k, and no, I don't regret it -- I can play all the new games, watch DVDs, and only have to reboot it once a month. (And that's just to reclaim resources, not because it crashes.) The Win2k box is still mocked by my Sun boxes, but not as much as the Win98 games box was. :-) It really is quite a successful merge of NT4's [relative] stability and 98's game support.
--
Don't get me wrong... I use MySQL on my personal website, and I like it. But there are reasons I use Oracle at work. One is that we have skilled, experienced DBAs who wouldn't touch a freeware database that doesn't really support transactions, SQL sub-selects, et cetera, et cetera.
And hey, if this is just a half-veiled ploy to introduce GNU/Linux at the office, remember that Oracle runs on Linux too.
Yes, Oracle is expensive as hell. But when you need that kind of power, it's the only choice. If you don't need that kind of database, then maybe you can get off with using MySQL. Explain that it's used by lots of Linux websites, explain that it's free, and, since he's a Mac guy, explain that a port of MySQL to MacOS X is inevitable. ;-)
If he really does have hardcore Microsoft-fever, mentioning Oracle will only make things work, so maybe start off with DB2. It's fast, a lot less expensive than Oracle, and has a comparable feature set.
--
If it's true, then normally I'd be inclined to say that there is no such thing as "bad publicity", and minor complaints such as these might even make more average users aware of OS X.
But, because this is an Apple product, things are different. Lack of DVD support may not sound like a big deal to the few Linux users and hoards of Linux-wannabes on Slashdot, but to the Mac-crowd, it is a big fucking deal. The only thing they've ever had to be proud of is excellent multimedia, and Apple will take a lot of heat if OS X ships without DVD. This may also turn away a lot of Windows users who are thinking of trying it out... I know a Windows (and sometimes Unix) user at the office who is really psyched about getting a Titanium G4 Powerbook when OS X is released, but I'd bet money that if he hears OS X can't play DVDs, he'll put off buying it. (And why shouldn't he? The wide-screen DVD player functionality is one of the most-hyped cool things about the Titanium G4 Powerbook.) I'd also bet money that if he puts-off buying it, he'll end up losing the excitement and he'll never buy it.
Some of you also seem to think that very few Mac users are even interested in using OS X so soon. Not so. I know several Mac users, and knowing their clannish nature and love of "shiny things", they'll all want to be the first on their block to have the latest MacOS. Something missing as basic as DVD support will be a huge turn-off. They'll think, "Hey, I guess everyone was right about how archaic Unix is after all! Apple let us down and backed a shitty technology." Once the press hears that even die-hard Mac zombies are unimpressed, there will be even less Windows users interested in taking it for a spin.
If Apple is smart (and I'm not holding my breath), they will not release OS X until it's really done. DVD support can't wait for the first service pack.
Personally, I'm a Sun guy. (And my Blade 100 will be joining the LAN next week, baby!) But... OS X really had me hoping that the Holy Grail (Unix with a pretty face) had finally arrived. I'll admit it; the hardware is dead sexy, and if they had software to match, I'd order a G4 Cube tomorrow. I think it'd be a crying shame if Apple started following Microsoft's practice of releasing software that needs a year's worth of service packs to be usable.
--