About twenty minutes ago, after reading about the gopher hole and following links to find out that my version of Mozilla was vulnerable to a bug allowing access to the hard drive, I downloaded rc3. I did the rpm -Uvh and saw that I needed a couple other support packages. Odd. The server seems a lot slower now. And what's this about v1.0 doing here? Dangit, why won't ncftp connect?
Here are a few things that I've used to eliminate MS products on my networks:
For word processing I like AbiWord. The 1.0.1 version has just been released and it works quite well. It doesn't have *every* feature of word, no sane program would, but it does have all the features needed for general word processing.
I don't have much use for spreadsheets, but Gnumeric and kspread have worked fine for me. People have also mentioned that OpenOffice/StarOffice has a good spreadsheet.
For reading email there's Evolution, Netscape or Mozilla Messenger, and various others.
For database, use MySQL or PostgreSQL as the backend instead of access. Use HTML as a frontend so you can access it from any system, even Windows.
For webmail, take a look at squirrelmail. There are many other imap/pop/mtas that you can choose from to create your mail server. Of course, you'll replace IIS with Apache:)
For viruses you'll need to use the Unix honor system. su to root, choose a file at random then delete it, then email everyone in your address book with similar instructions. To mimic the crashes you can try turning off the power when you're in the middle of something very important.
The average passcode is 4-5 digits long. Most people press the buttons with the index finger, making it trivial to shoulder-surf to figure out the passcode. I can do it while pretending to count my money. Unfortunately, the fingerprint system has sometimes been marketed as having close to zero false positives, but perhaps many false negatives. Maybe some company won't implement layered security and trust everything to the fingerprint. They'll be screwed. Or, they'll trust the fingerprint and passcode and be equally screwed. Unlike a credit card, it seems to be comparitively easy to create a false fingerprint. Plus, if your credit card is stolen you will generally find out. If someone goes the Photoshop route and creates a set of fingerprints from your grubby prints last night's Heineken then you may not find out for days.
The wave/particle and "acceleration indepency on mass" experiments are great, but I have a great respect for pendulum experiments. With them you can determine the mass of the earth, local gravity, determine that the earth does indeed rotate, mirror the findings of dropping differing masses, etc.. Not to mention that their ability to time events was important for a lot of other experiments.
There's an article in either this or last month's Computer Shopper about how to build your own DVR for about $250. With an Athlon 950 and MB running for around $100 (including NIC, sound, no video), you could probably put together a non-subscription DVR for under $500. About a month ago CompUSA had the cheap (in both senses) ATI TV-Wonder for about $20 after rebate. It can record decent quality with a fast drive and processor. The included Windows software includes some limited programmability, guide, and a multimedia center, so it's an inexpensive way to get your feet wet. Unfortunately, the Linux drivers aren't quite there yet. I'm using Mandrake 8.2 with the xawtv package but am limited to watching TV and AVI/WAV capture.
Oh, I get it. There's no need to cut down fossil fuel emissions or take active measures using existing technologies because this method of CO2 reduction will cure everything. We can continue living our lifestyles unaffected. Woohoo!
I remember when the media latched onto the AIDS epidemic. People abstained because there was no cure. As soon as word got around that some researcher somewhere thought of an idea that could "cure" AIDS, the risky behaviour started again.
That's exactly it. There's no predicting the individual, just as there's no predicting a particular stock. But many models *can* predict with great accuracy the buying habits of particular demographics. But I'm not talking about models, as the article does, but of statistics that merely describe a particular attribute of a data set. They are completely different things. I.e., one is trying to mimic and one describes. If the model is accurate it parallel real events for a short while. A statistic is *always* correct (bad math or reporting notwithstanding); how you interpret them is an entirely different matter.
One thing that I've found interesting is how closely *any* group can be predicted -- this from the three or four required sociology courses in college. Many of use here pride ourselves on having different values than the mainstream population. However, the behaviour of the niche groups can be eerily predicted by statistical models to the point that it's now a business tool and not just cool science. So we may not be able to predict that an individual is a devoted Bob Dylan fan, but they can probably see upswings in folk music and tie dyes whenever a war is brewing in the (insert region here).
I own the core rules - it was an interesting game, that I still hope to run sometime, after I find someone else who actually enjoyed the Amber books.
Wow, I haven't played an RPG since somewhere around 1992. I seem to recall playing a Call of Cthulhu module on one of the local BBS's at the time, but none since then. What's involved in setting up something across the 'Net?
I don't think the Second Chronicles were as bad as you think they were. IMHO, the worst of Zelazny's writings were better than the best writings of many more widely read authors.
I'd agree with this. There was a feeling that the last books were rushed, or possibly ghostwritten ( someone mentioned this may be the case). And I'm sure that the quality of the first books had raised my expectations for the second series. There were just so many little things that could have been developed better. In particular, the Logrus/Pattern matchup and its Faustian undertones seemed too obvious. When Ghostwheel was introduced I wondered if Zelazny had had a copy of Penrose's "Emperors New Mind" next to his typewriter (Wordstar?). In the end, Ghost seemed just another stereotypical AI, a HAL Jr. but with better weapons.
There was once an Infocom-like game based on the Chronicles of Amber; does anyone recall it?
I've been a Roger Zelazny fan for a long time, somewhere around 1985 when another student gave me "Lord of Light" to read. About that time, after reading the Chronicles, I adopted "Dworkin" as a BBS handle (and that has since morphed into my present moniker).
Though the first Amber novels are good reads, I think his true talent was in the short story. Pick up "Unicorn Variations" if you'd like a fairly representative anthology. And of course, read "Lord of Light", one of the seminal (heh heh, he said seminal) novels of Science Fiction.
And if you are a Chronicles fan, stay far away from the Second Chronicles -- they're horrible. There were some really interesting ideas in it such as the Ghostwheel -- a hyper computer that was designed with the assumption that different laws of physics applied, but they were written near to his end, and I think it shows.
Ideally you'd have some sort of application that a user could launch to show ip address, run a traceroute, ping, and run a system configuration reporter. This should be a program that they can run from the disk without an install procedure.
"OK, Click on Start then Run. Now type win i - p - c - f as in Frank - g." "Is that all one word." "Yes. Are you done?" "Yes." "OK, what does it say." "Um, Command not found. Is this why Norton AV is beeping?"
Once you know their getting an IPaddr half the battle's over. Remote control would be useful to help fix someone's email settings, but a good FAQ would be better. Some of the ISP setup FAQs are hideous or just plain wrong. If they'd spend a few hours cleaning them up it would probably cut down considerably on their tech support calls.
I wouldn't recommend any remote control software though, since it would be way too easy for the session passwords to leak out. A Linux user session is more like: "Dude, http to g33kp0rn.net is timing out." "What you say? Check ECN. RTFW for God's sake." "ECN? Shit. Sorry."
"It's been said that "Every Breath You Take" is the perfect Pop Song.."
I'd always heard it as a song about obsession, an insight into the mind of a stalker. "Oh can't you see, you *belong* to me."
Then I thought that maybe the directors intended Resident Evil as a cinematic Andy Warhol piece. I.e., satirize the violence and gratuitous sex by merely bowing down to it and splashing it on the screen for all to see, without the pretense of sensibility or storytelling. We (in the collective sense) want to see tits, after all. Then Douglas Adams reached from the grave and smacked me, and showed me that it just so much Vogon poetry. I.e., devoid of any artistic merit whatsoever and any claims to the contrary was mere mental ejaculation.
Years ago, when phonograph players were common, companies would often ship flexible records inside magazines. You'd remove the record from the perforated plastic sheet and play it on your stereo.
This sucks. I've been in the process of creating a tutorial on blender here. Blender was featured because it was a relatively powerful package and did many things that much higher priced packages did. Many people complained about the interface, but once you learned the shortcuts it was probably one of the easiest to use. Someone had even created a python based blender to POVray script that allowed you to model in blender and render in POV, so shortcomings in the Blender rendering engine were quickly made moot. It is not the only package available for rendering, but it was one of the best for animations. Funny that this occurred a day after I saw the QuickTime preview on the Apple site.
Anyone remember when SUV's really started taking off? All the auto companies started ripping apart pickup trucks and bolting on a new chassis. The end result was a Frankensteined monstrosity that was easy to tip over, handled poorly, and had the worst traits of cars and trucks. I just took a loot at the new Gateway, and it looks like they took a laptop apart and attached it to a metal fan base. It too has the worst features of a laptop and a desktop PC (difficult/impossible to upgrade, relatively immobile, bad ergonomics, and comparatively high price tag). Where's the design? Half the people who buy these things are looking for something that goes well with the Art Deco interior of their social convergence area.
This is where I really see Linux taking off, is with distributions specifically made for different niches.
This is a good point; the appeal of Linux is ultimately the ease by which it can be tailored to different audiences. This is not to say that the audience should do the tailoring, but that an interested party *could* do it. For example, I'm still looking for a distribution tailored to the needs of a student. I.e., one containing a bunch of necessary mathematics and beginning programming applications, good mp3 and DVD support, ability to talk with Macs and Windows with equal ease, good word processing tools with automatic formatting of documents for English 101, etc.. All these packages already exist, but no one actually puts them together as an integrated solution. As a result you have students trying out Linux, but having to boot back into Winders to do their research paper in a pirated copy of Word.
Remember M$ "artificial turf" campaigns of a few months ago? MS had thousands of supposedly unbiased folks writing in to persuade lawmakers. They continue this same tactic to the point that letters in favor of the judgment far outnumber those against.
The time is now. Just do it. Carpe diem. Bite the bullet. Get it over with.
I put together a kernel rebuild guide a few years ago ( Kernel Rebuild Guide ). I'd guess that for perhaps 95% of Linux users, there's absolutely no need to rebuild a kernel. For those that do, it's usually to enable a feature or to tweak just an iota more performance from the system.
Sure, anything that makes the system easier to use is good. It would be wonderful if guides such as mine were obviated. At the same time, should we really be wasting time on what's essentially a band-aid? By this I don't mean that Aunt Tillie shouldn't re-compile her kernel, only that if Aunt Tillie (a regular user) requires the feature then the distribution should already support it through other tools.
The main problem I see is that no matter the frontend, a kernel recompile will invariably ask a lot of questions that Aunt Tillie may be unprepared to answer. And if she can answer them I strongly believe that she would have absolutely no problem with the current configuration tools such as xconfig/menuconfig.
...will be a terminator device. Hook this library up to stepper controlled aiming device and your burglar alarm can now be lethal. Imagine the possibilities -- your nosey relatives walk into your workshop and four.30 cal machine gun replicas suddenly swing into position, targeting said relative... As they walk, they're tracked. Perhaps mount a camera and superimpose terminator-like vision crosshairs on them...
I've had both good and horrible experiences with MS tech support:
The accounting department was creating some huge Excel spreadsheets, on the order of 50M files with pivot tables, cross references, innumerable worksheet links, etc.. It would crash about half the time when working with it. After spending some time chatting with a friendly rep (who mentioned that he was buying a ranch in the Caribbean when he retired), we sent a sanitized version of the file to them and had it fixed within a couple hours. It was due to a coding problem in the spreadsheet itself. This was not an Excel bug, but one the company had created. We did go through the upgrade and reinstall routine first, but that was OK, considering that it was needed anyway. They pointed out the coding errors, offered suggestions, and fixed the code.
The other problem didn't have such a rosy outcome. Every two weeks our Oracle/NT4 server would crash. After speaking to Oracle and MS for about a month, both of them pointing fingers at the other, the "solution" provided was that the server must be rebooted every two weeks to prevent the problem. So we tried using the other supported configuration, namely a SQL Server backend. That was a mistake. Resource needs ballooned and response time was doubled. From numerous chats with their tech support, it appears that the only supported configuration was the state just right after the install. They were not responsible if other applications were loaded. Imagine that! I suppose that's why they've decided to bundle everything -- too many people were pissed off that third-party applications were not supported. I.e., the OS could not be held responsible if anything else but it was installed.
Of course, we had an enterprise support contract so had dedicate MS resources. Forget trying to get the same treatment with your home Windows machine. I've tried. I have a Toshiba laptop and was bounced back and forth between their support desks when the modem wouldn't work. Each desk blamed the other. The funny thing is, even though this is a Lucent WinModem (i.e., needs special drivers to work), I was able to get it running under Linux before Windows.
As for Linux, support is usually pretty good. I frequent the comp.os.linux.misc groups and see that most questions are quickly answered, including the daily "how do I telnet as root" stuff that's answered in every FAQ. There are even answers for the bizarre usages of Linux in bizarre situations. The *main* problem is that sometimes legitimate questions are not answered because no one knows how to answer them. With *paid* enterprise support (i.e., redhat, caldera) even the questions that don't interest the tech/help desk staff will ultimately get answered as the ticket gets elevated. There's no such mechanism on the newsgroups though.
My conclusions? Linux and Microsoft home/desktop users can expect about the same level of response, except that Linux support is free. For the enterprise customer, Microsoft can be great or can be poor, but you pay a lot of money regardless. My one RedHat problem (a Compaq Prosignia related issue with RAID) was answered pretty quickly.
One thing to do first is to separate the data from the OS. I.e., create a backup set with all your reinstallation files. For my systems this is a copy of the Linux installation iso and a directory of all the patches to it. Backup your system files (depends on if you're running Winders or something else). This takes a couple CDs, but is a lifesaver if you need to recreate the system or even upgrade it.
Bringing up the system is less of a problem with newer OSes, since you can usually, at minimum, get to your data. Configuring the database, webserver, and firewalling depends on how good you are with the OS. However, when I worked at a former company there was no real plan to get a working system back in place. We were using Novell with Arcserve -- unfortunately, you couldn't get to the data without a working system.
Next I usually try to segregate rapidly changing stuff versus things that are pretty much static. E.g, my mp3 collection is relatively static. I occasionally buy a fresh CD and rip it, but I'm pretty much satisfied with my collection as it is. I put these on CDROM. It takes a while to create them, but it's cheap and safe. If you want to keep everything up to date, you can run a script to save only files not included on the CDROM.
Finally, I back up my constantly changing stuff such as CVS, MySQL database, etc. to 4MM tape. It's cheap (hardware and tape) and most drives are pretty well supported.
I do a lot on POVRay rendering and though I won't be getting a dual Athlon anytime soon, my next box will be an Athlon mainly because the price is almost $250 cheaper than an equivalent P4 machine. I don't agree with your sentiment though:
Do you remember the scene in "Crossroads" where the kid is trying to buy a guitar? He chooses a beat-up old model instead of a newer, fancier model because he feels that it somehow legitimizes the music. I see the same thing happening today -- a few of my acquaintances insist on using old, near-obsolete equipment because they feel that the art is somehow "better" if done on a shoestring budget...
As you said, POVRay can run on a 386. For anything but thumbnails, however, be prepared to wait hours or days for a render. Forget about doing any animation. On a 1.2GhZ Athlon, some of my simplest animations can take a day to complete. Sure, I have a stable of older machines, and I do occasionally "distribute" the processing over several machines, but it's much more efficient to have a fast single machine than mess with clustering.
My "distributed" clustering is actually editing the pov.ini file so that each machine does a portion of the render. I've gotten their relative speeds accurate enough that when my script pushes them out to each box, they all finish at about the same time.
I just checked out your site hoping that you'd have a few pictures of the covers, maybe some scans from interesting pages. No such luck:(. I'm very interested in how the notation has changed from Newton/Leibniz onwards.
Here'e the stuff I want. If you'd like to send me any of these things, please contact me ASAP!
Vintage D&D set (Player's Handbook, DM Guide), plus a set of crystal dice and lead figurines.
Anywhere from $1 to $200.
Wireless ethernet setup (base - $200, card $100)
Books ( old calculus texts from 1920's-1950's, science fiction pulp novels from 1950's, reproduction of daVinci's notebooks)
Anywhere from $1 to $1000.
Firearms (Remington 700VS Sendera in.223 or 22-250).About $450 (used) to $1500.
Slashdot Mirror
About twenty minutes ago, after reading about the gopher hole and following links to find out that my version of Mozilla was vulnerable to a bug allowing access to the hard drive, I downloaded rc3. I did the rpm -Uvh and saw that I needed a couple other support packages. Odd. The server seems a lot slower now. And what's this about v1.0 doing here? Dangit, why won't ncftp connect?
Here are a few things that I've used to eliminate MS products on my networks:
:)
For word processing I like AbiWord. The 1.0.1 version has just been released and it works quite well. It doesn't have *every* feature of word, no sane program would, but it does have all the features needed for general word processing.
I don't have much use for spreadsheets, but Gnumeric and kspread have worked fine for me. People have also mentioned that OpenOffice/StarOffice has a good spreadsheet.
For reading email there's Evolution, Netscape or Mozilla Messenger, and various others.
For database, use MySQL or PostgreSQL as the backend instead of access. Use HTML as a frontend so you can access it from any system, even Windows.
For webmail, take a look at squirrelmail. There are many other imap/pop/mtas that you can choose from to create your mail server. Of course, you'll replace IIS with Apache
For viruses you'll need to use the Unix honor system. su to root, choose a file at random then delete it, then email everyone in your address book with similar instructions. To mimic the crashes you can try turning off the power when you're in the middle of something very important.
The average passcode is 4-5 digits long. Most people press the buttons with the index finger, making it trivial to shoulder-surf to figure out the passcode. I can do it while pretending to count my money.
Unfortunately, the fingerprint system has sometimes been marketed as having close to zero false positives, but perhaps many false negatives. Maybe some company won't implement layered security and trust everything to the fingerprint. They'll be screwed. Or, they'll trust the fingerprint and passcode and be equally screwed.
Unlike a credit card, it seems to be comparitively easy to create a false fingerprint. Plus, if your credit card is stolen you will generally find out. If someone goes the Photoshop route and creates a set of fingerprints from your grubby prints last night's Heineken then you may not find out for days.
The wave/particle and "acceleration indepency on mass" experiments are great, but I have a great respect for pendulum experiments. With them you can determine the mass of the earth, local gravity, determine that the earth does indeed rotate, mirror the findings of dropping differing masses, etc.. Not to mention that their ability to time events was important for a lot of other experiments.
There's an article in either this or last month's Computer Shopper about how to build your own DVR for about $250. With an Athlon 950 and MB running for around $100 (including NIC, sound, no video), you could probably put together a non-subscription DVR for under $500.
About a month ago CompUSA had the cheap (in both senses) ATI TV-Wonder for about $20 after rebate. It can record decent quality with a fast drive and processor. The included Windows software includes some limited programmability, guide, and a multimedia center, so it's an inexpensive way to get your feet wet.
Unfortunately, the Linux drivers aren't quite there yet. I'm using Mandrake 8.2 with the xawtv package but am limited to watching TV and AVI/WAV capture.
Oh, I get it. There's no need to cut down fossil fuel emissions or take active measures using existing technologies because this method of CO2 reduction will cure everything. We can continue living our lifestyles unaffected. Woohoo!
I remember when the media latched onto the AIDS epidemic. People abstained because there was no cure. As soon as word got around that some researcher somewhere thought of an idea that could "cure" AIDS, the risky behaviour started again.
That's exactly it. There's no predicting the individual, just as there's no predicting a particular stock. But many models *can* predict with great accuracy the buying habits of particular demographics. But I'm not talking about models, as the article does, but of statistics that merely describe a particular attribute of a data set. They are completely different things. I.e., one is trying to mimic and one describes. If the model is accurate it parallel real events for a short while. A statistic is *always* correct (bad math or reporting notwithstanding); how you interpret them is an entirely different matter.
One thing that I've found interesting is how closely *any* group can be predicted -- this from the three or four required sociology courses in college. Many of use here pride ourselves on having different values than the mainstream population. However, the behaviour of the niche groups can be eerily predicted by statistical models to the point that it's now a business tool and not just cool science. So we may not be able to predict that an individual is a devoted Bob Dylan fan, but they can probably see upswings in folk music and tie dyes whenever a war is brewing in the (insert region here).
--
Everybody must get stoned.
I own the core rules - it was an interesting game, that I still hope to run sometime, after I find someone else who actually enjoyed the Amber books.
Wow, I haven't played an RPG since somewhere around 1992. I seem to recall playing a Call of Cthulhu module on one of the local BBS's at the time, but none since then. What's involved in setting up something across the 'Net?
I don't think the Second Chronicles were as bad as you think they were. IMHO, the worst of Zelazny's writings were better than the best writings of many more widely read authors.
I'd agree with this. There was a feeling that the last books were rushed, or possibly ghostwritten ( someone mentioned this may be the case). And I'm sure that the quality of the first books had raised my expectations for the second series. There were just so many little things that could have been developed better. In particular, the Logrus/Pattern matchup and its Faustian undertones seemed too obvious. When Ghostwheel was introduced I wondered if Zelazny had had a copy of Penrose's "Emperors New Mind" next to his typewriter (Wordstar?). In the end, Ghost seemed just another stereotypical AI, a HAL Jr. but with better weapons.
I will give them another chance though.
There was once an Infocom-like game based on the Chronicles of Amber; does anyone recall it?
I've been a Roger Zelazny fan for a long time, somewhere around 1985 when another student gave me "Lord of Light" to read. About that time, after reading the Chronicles, I adopted "Dworkin" as a BBS handle (and that has since morphed into my present moniker).
Though the first Amber novels are good reads, I think his true talent was in the short story. Pick up "Unicorn Variations" if you'd like a fairly representative anthology. And of course, read "Lord of Light", one of the seminal (heh heh, he said seminal) novels of Science Fiction.
And if you are a Chronicles fan, stay far away from the Second Chronicles -- they're horrible. There were some really interesting ideas in it such as the Ghostwheel -- a hyper computer that was designed with the assumption that different laws of physics applied, but they were written near to his end, and I think it shows.
Ideally you'd have some sort of application that a user could launch to show ip address, run a traceroute, ping, and run a system configuration reporter. This should be a program that they can run from the disk without an install procedure.
"OK, Click on Start then Run. Now type win i - p - c - f as in Frank - g."
"Is that all one word."
"Yes. Are you done?"
"Yes."
"OK, what does it say."
"Um, Command not found. Is this why Norton AV is beeping?"
Once you know their getting an IPaddr half the battle's over. Remote control would be useful to help fix someone's email settings, but a good FAQ would be better. Some of the ISP setup FAQs are hideous or just plain wrong. If they'd spend a few hours cleaning them up it would probably cut down considerably on their tech support calls.
I wouldn't recommend any remote control software though, since it would be way too easy for the session passwords to leak out.
A Linux user session is more like:
"Dude, http to g33kp0rn.net is timing out."
"What you say? Check ECN. RTFW for God's sake."
"ECN? Shit. Sorry."
"It's been said that "Every Breath You Take" is the perfect Pop Song.."
I'd always heard it as a song about obsession, an insight into the mind of a stalker. "Oh can't you see, you *belong* to me."
Then I thought that maybe the directors intended Resident Evil as a cinematic Andy Warhol piece. I.e., satirize the violence and gratuitous sex by merely bowing down to it and splashing it on the screen for all to see, without the pretense of sensibility or storytelling. We (in the collective sense) want to see tits, after all. Then Douglas Adams reached from the grave and smacked me, and showed me that it just so much Vogon poetry. I.e., devoid of any artistic merit whatsoever and any claims to the contrary was mere mental ejaculation.
Years ago, when phonograph players were common, companies would often ship flexible records inside magazines. You'd remove the record from the perforated plastic sheet and play it on your stereo.
(get it? What goes around...)
Sorry..
This sucks. I've been in the process of creating a tutorial on blender here. Blender was featured because it was a relatively powerful package and did many things that much higher priced packages did.
Many people complained about the interface, but once you learned the shortcuts it was probably one of the easiest to use. Someone had even created a python based blender to POVray script that allowed you to model in blender and render in POV, so shortcomings in the Blender rendering engine were quickly made moot.
It is not the only package available for rendering, but it was one of the best for animations. Funny that this occurred a day after I saw the QuickTime preview on the Apple site.
Anyone remember when SUV's really started taking off? All the auto companies started ripping apart pickup trucks and bolting on a new chassis. The end result was a Frankensteined monstrosity that was easy to tip over, handled poorly, and had the worst traits of cars and trucks. I just took a loot at the new Gateway, and it looks like they took a laptop apart and attached it to a metal fan base. It too has the worst features of a laptop and a desktop PC (difficult/impossible to upgrade, relatively immobile, bad ergonomics, and comparatively high price tag).
Where's the design? Half the people who buy these things are looking for something that goes well with the Art Deco interior of their social convergence area.
This is a good point; the appeal of Linux is ultimately the ease by which it can be tailored to different audiences. This is not to say that the audience should do the tailoring, but that an interested party *could* do it. For example, I'm still looking for a distribution tailored to the needs of a student. I.e., one containing a bunch of necessary mathematics and beginning programming applications, good mp3 and DVD support, ability to talk with Macs and Windows with equal ease, good word processing tools with automatic formatting of documents for English 101, etc.. All these packages already exist, but no one actually puts them together as an integrated solution. As a result you have students trying out Linux, but having to boot back into Winders to do their research paper in a pirated copy of Word.
Remember M$ "artificial turf" campaigns of a few months ago? MS had thousands of supposedly unbiased folks writing in to persuade lawmakers. They continue this same tactic to the point that letters in favor of the judgment far outnumber those against.
The time is now. Just do it. Carpe diem. Bite the bullet. Get it over with.
This thread's funny.
I put together a kernel rebuild guide a few years ago ( Kernel Rebuild Guide ). I'd guess that for perhaps 95% of Linux users, there's absolutely no need to rebuild a kernel. For those that do, it's usually to enable a feature or to tweak just an iota more performance from the system.
Sure, anything that makes the system easier to use is good. It would be wonderful if guides such as mine were obviated. At the same time, should we really be wasting time on what's essentially a band-aid? By this I don't mean that Aunt Tillie shouldn't re-compile her kernel, only that if Aunt Tillie (a regular user) requires the feature then the distribution should already support it through other tools.
The main problem I see is that no matter the frontend, a kernel recompile will invariably ask a lot of questions that Aunt Tillie may be unprepared to answer. And if she can answer them I strongly believe that she would have absolutely no problem with the current configuration tools such as xconfig/menuconfig.
...will be a terminator device. Hook this library up to stepper controlled aiming device and your burglar alarm can now be lethal. Imagine the possibilities -- your nosey relatives walk into your workshop and four .30 cal machine gun replicas suddenly swing into position, targeting said relative... As they walk, they're tracked. Perhaps mount a camera and superimpose terminator-like vision crosshairs on them...
The accounting department was creating some huge Excel spreadsheets, on the order of 50M files with pivot tables, cross references, innumerable worksheet links, etc.. It would crash about half the time when working with it. After spending some time chatting with a friendly rep (who mentioned that he was buying a ranch in the Caribbean when he retired), we sent a sanitized version of the file to them and had it fixed within a couple hours. It was due to a coding problem in the spreadsheet itself. This was not an Excel bug, but one the company had created. We did go through the upgrade and reinstall routine first, but that was OK, considering that it was needed anyway. They pointed out the coding errors, offered suggestions, and fixed the code.
The other problem didn't have such a rosy outcome. Every two weeks our Oracle/NT4 server would crash. After speaking to Oracle and MS for about a month, both of them pointing fingers at the other, the "solution" provided was that the server must be rebooted every two weeks to prevent the problem. So we tried using the other supported configuration, namely a SQL Server backend. That was a mistake. Resource needs ballooned and response time was doubled. From numerous chats with their tech support, it appears that the only supported configuration was the state just right after the install. They were not responsible if other applications were loaded. Imagine that! I suppose that's why they've decided to bundle everything -- too many people were pissed off that third-party applications were not supported. I.e., the OS could not be held responsible if anything else but it was installed.
Of course, we had an enterprise support contract so had dedicate MS resources. Forget trying to get the same treatment with your home Windows machine. I've tried. I have a Toshiba laptop and was bounced back and forth between their support desks when the modem wouldn't work. Each desk blamed the other. The funny thing is, even though this is a Lucent WinModem (i.e., needs special drivers to work), I was able to get it running under Linux before Windows.
As for Linux, support is usually pretty good. I frequent the comp.os.linux.misc groups and see that most questions are quickly answered, including the daily "how do I telnet as root" stuff that's answered in every FAQ. There are even answers for the bizarre usages of Linux in bizarre situations. The *main* problem is that sometimes legitimate questions are not answered because no one knows how to answer them. With *paid* enterprise support (i.e., redhat, caldera) even the questions that don't interest the tech/help desk staff will ultimately get answered as the ticket gets elevated. There's no such mechanism on the newsgroups though.
My conclusions? Linux and Microsoft home/desktop users can expect about the same level of response, except that Linux support is free. For the enterprise customer, Microsoft can be great or can be poor, but you pay a lot of money regardless. My one RedHat problem (a Compaq Prosignia related issue with RAID) was answered pretty quickly.
Bringing up the system is less of a problem with newer OSes, since you can usually, at minimum, get to your data. Configuring the database, webserver, and firewalling depends on how good you are with the OS. However, when I worked at a former company there was no real plan to get a working system back in place. We were using Novell with Arcserve -- unfortunately, you couldn't get to the data without a working system.
Next I usually try to segregate rapidly changing stuff versus things that are pretty much static. E.g, my mp3 collection is relatively static. I occasionally buy a fresh CD and rip it, but I'm pretty much satisfied with my collection as it is. I put these on CDROM. It takes a while to create them, but it's cheap and safe. If you want to keep everything up to date, you can run a script to save only files not included on the CDROM.
Finally, I back up my constantly changing stuff such as CVS, MySQL database, etc. to 4MM tape. It's cheap (hardware and tape) and most drives are pretty well supported.
Do you remember the scene in "Crossroads" where the kid is trying to buy a guitar? He chooses a beat-up old model instead of a newer, fancier model because he feels that it somehow legitimizes the music. I see the same thing happening today -- a few of my acquaintances insist on using old, near-obsolete equipment because they feel that the art is somehow "better" if done on a shoestring budget...
As you said, POVRay can run on a 386. For anything but thumbnails, however, be prepared to wait hours or days for a render. Forget about doing any animation. On a 1.2GhZ Athlon, some of my simplest animations can take a day to complete. Sure, I have a stable of older machines, and I do occasionally "distribute" the processing over several machines, but it's much more efficient to have a fast single machine than mess with clustering.
Some notes I put together are
here .
My "distributed" clustering is actually editing the pov
I just checked out your site hoping that you'd have a few pictures of the covers, maybe some scans from interesting pages. No such luck :(. I'm very interested in how the notation has changed from Newton/Leibniz onwards.
Vintage D&D set (Player's Handbook, DM Guide), plus a set of crystal dice and lead figurines.
Anywhere from $1 to $200.
Wireless ethernet setup (base - $200, card $100)
Books ( old calculus texts from 1920's-1950's, science fiction pulp novels from 1950's, reproduction of daVinci's notebooks)
Anywhere from $1 to $1000.
Firearms (Remington 700VS Sendera in
Tickets to a movie (LOTR, Potter, no SW).$20.
Micro-fine pens, 10 pack. Zebra ballpoints. Micro-fine pencil set.
$5-$35.
Dremel kit ($45)
Radio Shack science kit ($25-$200)
Back Massage ($50-$100)
Telescope ($300)
Grin on my face on Christmas morning? Priceless.