Difficult one.. my uneducated guess would be that as the signal is generated by satellites that have an encrypted version for the military (accurate to within 1m) and an 'open' one for civilian use that is only accurate to within 100m then any equipment that is based on the civilian signal will just start seeing more accurate data and will automatically be 'upgraded' as the military and civilian signals become the same. Not instantly from when we read this it seems but by 2006... 10 years after it was proposed that degrading the signal was not a useful idea.
Anyone else that knows more about it have another opinion?
--
Re:Possible but not worth it.
on
Rack An iMac
·
· Score: 1
Ah, I see... yes, that IS expensive.. I didn't realise how much:)..
Actually since writing that post of mine I started to search around the net for stuff relating to powerpc mainboards etc, not just apple offerings. I came across this:
Motorola PowerPC ATX board which looks really great, especially the part about dual 604e's at 400Mhz... might be quite a nice system.
I can't seem to find a place to buy them online (or even get prices so I could price a system up) but I might try and get some info from that website themselves.
--
Finding iMac main boards
on
Rack An iMac
·
· Score: 1
I wonder if you can find the main board + cpu + rom on its own to buy as 'spares' for an imac you don't own so you need not buy a whole imac and just throw bits away. Which is nice from a cost point of view as well as a I-don't-want-gaudily-coloured-plastic-crap-all-ove r-the-place point of view too..
That way you could just rack mount what you want.. or, what I'd like to do, get a powerpc mainboard and plop it in a standard ATX and run linux on it without having to pay the 'Apple-tax'.
I glanced at Apple's site but it didn't say anything about a spares list. If someone knows a source, I'd be interested to know the basic costs.
I absolutely agree with your last statement. Being from the UK and now living and working the USA, I know how awkward the whole sales tax thing seemed to be. It'd makemuch more sense to have the tax incorporated into prices like it is in the UK (called VAT - Value Added Tax.. value added?? whatever..). Over there it's 17.5%, which sucks and everything in the UK is too damn expensive anyway. But at least the tax is incorporated within the actual price on the shelf, so you don't get that little 'surprise' at the checkout. I found that confusing and a bit annoying when I was first visiting the USA.
A flat rate for all taxable products sold would be the best and would make e-commerce providers (which is where I work) lives FAR simpler. At least the system has been seen to work for other countries. Yes, the UK is smaller but if everyone agrees on it (there's the kicker) there shouldn't be a problem.
If there was a flat rate (for net tax and sales tax in ALL states, no exceptions), couldn't the states collect it in the same way as they do now too?
I don't know if that's too simplistic a view.. but hey, simplistic is sometimes just what's needed!
As I just recently (last week) installed Mandrake 7, hated it on sight and then re-installed with RedHat 6.1, I have to answer to this..
My biggest bug-bear with Mandrake 7 is that it does not hardly run any system services when it loads!!.. I mean, I had to manually add symlinks in/etc/rc.d/rc*.d for really basic stuff like inetd, httpd and sendmail.. Jeez.. that's so crap, and they say it's for novice users??.. I've used Linux for 4 years now (Slackware 3.6 then moved to RedHat 5.1, 5.2, 6.0) The 'defaults' of the system seem to make the thing so damn unusable it's just stupid. Plus locking down outside access via telnet with an/etc/hosts.deny ALL meant it was pretty worthless and slow getting it to work as a small server (which was my plan). It problaby works great as a desktop but I thought the pentium enhancements might be quite useful.
The actual Mandrake installer is AWFUL too.. The package selection consists solely of a tree diagram on which to get info about a package, you have to click on it. This has the side-effect of de-selecting previously selected packages or selecting those which were not, meaning an extra click is required to re-enable the install of said package. This and the fact that only a highlighted bar indicates a package is to be installed is a very poor interface IMHO.
So then I tried RedHat 6.1 and what a JOY it was to behold. The installer asks some basic questions like Mandrake, but I found the grey gtk-looking installer to be much easier on the eyes than the horrid dark green of Mandrake.. PLUS there is the opportunity in RedHat to go BACK to a previous step.. which is very welcome if you click something wrong or just plain change your mind. The package installation which was so tedious in Mandrake is much simpler in redhat as although there is a tree diagram for the sections, the individual packages are listed in a separate pane, rather like glint. On these packages is a nice big red tick to indicate if the package is to be installed or not and a button to click to toggle this. Clicking a package once shows the information in the lower pane just as you would want. Summary, a much nicer install and a more pleasant experience.
The resultant RedHat system WORKED, i mean actually ran some damn services so you could use the thing. Coupled with the linuxconf program over the web made configuration of my little linux machine very quick (mandrake also has linuxconf, but that was disabled by the/etc/hosts.deny preventing access to it, also by not running inetd too.)
To stop bitching now... I guess to each their own and if you're happy with one distro then that's great.. I know I was aggravated by the obstacles placed in my path by the mandrake setup and it seemed to not recognise the fact that with everyone wanting desktop installs there still are people that want a nice 'server' installation (I like the fact that that button is there on RedHat, even though I chose 'Custom'). I use my machine at work and talk to it over the network, so by not enabling networked use of the machine off the bat it was difficult to say the least. I can guess it's a security feature to chop off all the features but that's counter-productive if you have to UNDO all this to get it to work instead of just securing the machine after it's all working.
Okay, I started bitching again.. sorry..
Anyway, this is just my personal experience. Those used to playing with Mandrake probably will give me funny looks for my problems but I know I'm a RedHatter and that works for me fine.
Speaking as a recently emigrated brit (to the USA now) I think what he (and the previous guy that said 'soap in the toilet') mean by 'in the loo' is what americans would say as 'in the restroom/bathroom'. Loo and toilet in british english/slang are euphamisms for the whole room, not just the round porcelain thing.;)
I figured with all this open-sourceness and late-night-labor-of-love coding that there would be plenty great docs overlapping every possible known linux configuration.
Ah no no no no:)... a good programmer does not a good tech writer make. If you know any programmers ask them how much we like writing documentation.. we don't !:D... I'd say programmers make the worst documentors of things. I know I do, simply because we're so close to the code and the workings of whatever it is we're writing that it's difficult to explain things objectively without making the assumptions that leave 'newbies' out in the cold.
Still, glad you got your system working:).. well done:) --
These people need a mirror bad... or a better server. After ages of hitting 'submit' (which I'm sure lots of people are doing) I got in as #2222.. so that's about the count so far I guess.
Btw.. anyone think it's a bit weird that the title of the page you get after successfully submitting a 'signature' to the petition is 'Order confirmation'.. what?.. I didn't order anything?!.. hmmm...
Where can you find these things for sale cheaply? Old alphas, sparcs, ultrasparcs etc.. anyone got any links and/or recommendations?.. I'm in the USA btw. --
... It's not that long ago - as I recall, the 630 came out in '94 or thereabouts.
Hmmm.. 5 years IS a bloody long time in computing circles. 5 years ago 486's were about the mainstream thing weren't they?.. and of course a lot of 386's in use too I'd have thought. It's amazing how fast everything changes.. --
Win98 *itself* does not handle the video cards well either.. the DRIVER writers make the drivers that enable Win98 to use the hardware, it's not down to how good win98 is it's down to how good the driver manufacturers are. Drivers for Linux are fewer right now as many companies do not support it to the same level at the moment, this will change.
On comparable issues (e.g. running TCP/IP services as were raised before) Linux kicks ass over Microsoft products. --
If you RTFA (Read The Fine (!?) Article):) at www.3dfx.com/products/voodoo/newvoodoo.html
It mentions (in the interview I think) that the Voodoo5 6000 needs a brick because 3dfx feels it'd stress the normal PC PSU too much, lame I know but that's what they're saying. The V5 5000 and 5500 will have internal PC PSU connectors apparently.
-1 Flamebait??.. jeez.. looks like NRA Guy is a moderator and can't take criticism against the USA.. --
Re:What else do you do with an insane market cap ?
on
Red Hat Buying Cygnus?
·
· Score: 1
Of course for RedHat to 'earn' money they can just go on selling air (read free software for the sarcasm impaired) like normal and make uber bucks.. Not that I really mind, I use RH at home.. good for them if they get away with it. Not like they'll be a monopoly is it..... is it?
Rated as flamebait?.. ah well, we'll get even in meta-moderation.;)
This was a post in the same vein as the previous one I thought. Of course distro differences get people excited but that's hardly flamebait to object to something. 'Flamebait'ing should be reserved for all the 'war3Z d00dz' IMHO..
This will get marked down as offtopic I guess, but who cares, it's just a discussion group people.
Yea.. all that nostalgia kinda brings a tear to the eye:~)..
I got an A500, about 10 years ago (exactly 10 years in a couple of weeks time, as I think about it) and it was great. As was the A1200 I got in 1993 (eventually a 50MHz '030/882 with 16MB RAM).
Since then though in 1995/6 I moved onto Linux on the PC, and of course games under Windows95.
I felt then that the Amiga hardware was left for dead (It was Red Alert that made me feel that the most), even though AmigaOS was as fast as Linux/X on my 486/133 at the time.
I don't know, maybe it might be interesting to get it working again, not least to have an Amiga in a window or something cute like that, but I doubt it's got much to offer now, considering how much further on technology has marched since the latest incarnation of AmigaOS (1992 wasn't it? when the A1200 came out?)
Nice to think about it again though. I still have my Amiga, although being a Brit and living in the USA now I've left my Amiga1200 at home in England, as the PSU I have doesn't work over here.
Slashdot Mirror
Difficult one.. my uneducated guess would be that as the signal is generated by satellites that have an encrypted version for the military (accurate to within 1m) and an 'open' one for civilian use that is only accurate to within 100m then any equipment that is based on the civilian signal will just start seeing more accurate data and will automatically be 'upgraded' as the military and civilian signals become the same. Not instantly from when we read this it seems but by 2006 ... 10 years after it was proposed that degrading the signal was not a useful idea.
Anyone else that knows more about it have another opinion?
--
Ah, I see... yes, that IS expensive .. I didn't realise how much :) ..
... might be quite a nice system.
Actually since writing that post of mine I started to search around the net for stuff relating to powerpc mainboards etc, not just apple offerings. I came across this:
Motorola PowerPC ATX board which looks really great, especially the part about dual 604e's at 400Mhz
I can't seem to find a place to buy them online (or even get prices so I could price a system up) but I might try and get some info from that website themselves.
--
I wonder if you can find the main board + cpu + rom on its own to buy as 'spares' for an imac you don't own so you need not buy a whole imac and just throw bits away. Which is nice from a cost point of view as well as a I-don't-want-gaudily-coloured-plastic-crap-all-ove r-the-place point of view too..
That way you could just rack mount what you want.. or, what I'd like to do, get a powerpc mainboard and plop it in a standard ATX and run linux on it without having to pay the 'Apple-tax'.
I glanced at Apple's site but it didn't say anything about a spares list. If someone knows a source, I'd be interested to know the basic costs.
--
fuck! .. that's all I can say to that screenshot. Nearly made me lose my lunch.
... no way I'm coming into work to face that.. bad enough to have to use wincrash nt anyway..
People SHOULD ignore it.. please!!!!
1 BSOD already today and it's middday.. prolly will have another one in the afternoon if it stays 'on quota'
--
I absolutely agree with your last statement. Being from the UK and now living and working the USA, I know how awkward the whole sales tax thing seemed to be. It'd makemuch more sense to have the tax incorporated into prices like it is in the UK (called VAT - Value Added Tax .. value added?? whatever..). Over there it's 17.5%, which sucks and everything in the UK is too damn expensive anyway. But at least the tax is incorporated within the actual price on the shelf, so you don't get that little 'surprise' at the checkout. I found that confusing and a bit annoying when I was first visiting the USA.
.. but hey, simplistic is sometimes just what's needed!
A flat rate for all taxable products sold would be the best and would make e-commerce providers (which is where I work) lives FAR simpler. At least the system has been seen to work for other countries. Yes, the UK is smaller but if everyone agrees on it (there's the kicker) there shouldn't be a problem.
If there was a flat rate (for net tax and sales tax in ALL states, no exceptions), couldn't the states collect it in the same way as they do now too?
I don't know if that's too simplistic a view
--
Highly unlikely, it'll just be mired in the swamp of backward compatibility.. :>
--
As I just recently (last week) installed Mandrake 7, hated it on sight and then re-installed with RedHat 6.1, I have to answer to this..
.. I mean, I had to manually add symlinks in /etc/rc.d/rc*.d for really basic stuff like inetd, httpd and sendmail .. Jeez.. that's so crap, and they say it's for novice users?? .. I've used Linux for 4 years now (Slackware 3.6 then moved to RedHat 5.1, 5.2, 6.0) The 'defaults' of the system seem to make the thing so damn unusable it's just stupid. Plus locking down outside access via telnet with an /etc/hosts.deny ALL meant it was pretty worthless and slow getting it to work as a small server (which was my plan). It problaby works great as a desktop but I thought the pentium enhancements might be quite useful.
.. The package selection consists solely of a tree diagram on which to get info about a package, you have to click on it. This has the side-effect of de-selecting previously selected packages or selecting those which were not, meaning an extra click is required to re-enable the install of said package. This and the fact that only a highlighted bar indicates a package is to be installed is a very poor interface IMHO.
.. PLUS there is the opportunity in RedHat to go BACK to a previous step .. which is very welcome if you click something wrong or just plain change your mind.
/etc/hosts.deny preventing access to it, also by not running inetd too.)
...
.. sorry..
My biggest bug-bear with Mandrake 7 is that it does not hardly run any system services when it loads!!
The actual Mandrake installer is AWFUL too
So then I tried RedHat 6.1 and what a JOY it was to behold. The installer asks some basic questions like Mandrake, but I found the grey gtk-looking installer to be much easier on the eyes than the horrid dark green of Mandrake
The package installation which was so tedious in Mandrake is much simpler in redhat as although there is a tree diagram for the sections, the individual packages are listed in a separate pane, rather like glint. On these packages is a nice big red tick to indicate if the package is to be installed or not and a button to click to toggle this. Clicking a package once shows the information in the lower pane just as you would want. Summary, a much nicer install and a more pleasant experience.
The resultant RedHat system WORKED, i mean actually ran some damn services so you could use the thing. Coupled with the linuxconf program over the web made configuration of my little linux machine very quick (mandrake also has linuxconf, but that was disabled by the
To stop bitching now
I guess to each their own and if you're happy with one distro then that's great.. I know I was aggravated by the obstacles placed in my path by the mandrake setup and it seemed to not recognise the fact that with everyone wanting desktop installs there still are people that want a nice 'server' installation (I like the fact that that button is there on RedHat, even though I chose 'Custom'). I use my machine at work and talk to it over the network, so by not enabling networked use of the machine off the bat it was difficult to say the least. I can guess it's a security feature to chop off all the features but that's counter-productive if you have to UNDO all this to get it to work instead of just securing the machine after it's all working.
Okay, I started bitching again
Anyway, this is just my personal experience. Those used to playing with Mandrake probably will give me funny looks for my problems but I know I'm a RedHatter and that works for me fine.
--
Speaking as a recently emigrated brit (to the USA now) I think what he (and the previous guy that said 'soap in the toilet') mean by 'in the loo' is what americans would say as 'in the restroom/bathroom'. Loo and toilet in british english/slang are euphamisms for the whole room, not just the round porcelain thing. ;)
--
I figured with all this open-sourceness and late-night-labor-of-love coding that there would be plenty great docs overlapping every possible known linux configuration.
:) ... a good programmer does not a good tech writer make. If you know any programmers ask them how much we like writing documentation .. we don't ! :D ... I'd say programmers make the worst documentors of things. I know I do, simply because we're so close to the code and the workings of whatever it is we're writing that it's difficult to explain things objectively without making the assumptions that leave 'newbies' out in the cold.
:) .. well done :)
Ah no no no no
Still, glad you got your system working
--
These people need a mirror bad ... or a better server. After ages of hitting 'submit' (which I'm sure lots of people are doing) I got in as #2222 .. so that's about the count so far I guess.
.. what? .. I didn't order anything?! .. hmmm...
Btw.. anyone think it's a bit weird that the title of the page you get after successfully submitting a 'signature' to the petition is 'Order confirmation'
--
Where can you find these things for sale cheaply? Old alphas, sparcs, ultrasparcs etc .. anyone got any links and/or recommendations? .. I'm in the USA btw.
--
Movie was called 'Runaway' and was about rogue robots etc, including a person tracking smart micro-missile.
--
... It's not that long ago - as I recall, the 630 came out in '94 or thereabouts.
.. and of course a lot of 386's in use too I'd have thought. It's amazing how fast everything changes..
Hmmm.. 5 years IS a bloody long time in computing circles. 5 years ago 486's were about the mainstream thing weren't they?
--
Win98 *itself* does not handle the video cards well either.. the DRIVER writers make the drivers that enable Win98 to use the hardware, it's not down to how good win98 is it's down to how good the driver manufacturers are. Drivers for Linux are fewer right now as many companies do not support it to the same level at the moment, this will change.
On comparable issues (e.g. running TCP/IP services as were raised before) Linux kicks ass over Microsoft products.
--
arse.. I should check my own URLs
here is the correct link
--
If you RTFA (Read The Fine (!?) Article) :) at www.3dfx.com/products/voodoo/newvoodoo.html
It mentions (in the interview I think) that the Voodoo5 6000 needs a brick because 3dfx feels it'd stress the normal PC PSU too much, lame I know but that's what they're saying. The V5 5000 and 5500 will have internal PC PSU connectors apparently.
Hope that clears it up.
--
Get a headset telephone ;)
--
Linux Napster
;)
http://www.gis.net/~nite/
'nuff said, windoze boy
--
Heheheh... this gave me the best laugh of this thread.. :D .. moderate it up so others can laugh too :)
Unless someone thought it was serious?... heh.. deficient sarcasm gene obviously..
--
Well, change the OS I guess and Wheeeee!!!! a much more useful product :D
--
-1 Flamebait?? .. jeez.. looks like NRA Guy is a moderator and can't take criticism against the USA..
--
Of course for RedHat to 'earn' money they can just go on selling air (read free software for the sarcasm impaired) like normal and make uber bucks.. Not that I really mind, I use RH at home.. good for them if they get away with it. Not like they'll be a monopoly is it..... is it?
--
Rated as flamebait? .. ah well, we'll get even in meta-moderation. ;)
..
This was a post in the same vein as the previous one I thought. Of course distro differences get people excited but that's hardly flamebait to object to something. 'Flamebait'ing should be reserved for all the 'war3Z d00dz' IMHO
This will get marked down as offtopic I guess, but who cares, it's just a discussion group people.
--
Actually RFC1178 has actual information/guidelines, RFC2100 is merely an amusing poem.
:)
Maybe YOU need to read both before you start spouting off
Both are good to read.
--
Yea.. all that nostalgia kinda brings a tear to the eye :~) ..
:)
I got an A500, about 10 years ago (exactly 10 years in a couple of weeks time, as I think about it) and it was great. As was the A1200 I got in 1993 (eventually a 50MHz '030/882 with 16MB RAM).
Since then though in 1995/6 I moved onto Linux on the PC, and of course games under Windows95.
I felt then that the Amiga hardware was left for dead (It was Red Alert that made me feel that the most), even though AmigaOS was as fast as Linux/X on my 486/133 at the time.
I don't know, maybe it might be interesting to get it working again, not least to have an Amiga in a window or something cute like that, but I doubt it's got much to offer now, considering how much further on technology has marched since the latest incarnation of AmigaOS (1992 wasn't it? when the A1200 came out?)
Nice to think about it again though. I still have my Amiga, although being a Brit and living in the USA now I've left my Amiga1200 at home in England, as the PSU I have doesn't work over here.
Ah, nostaglia indeed