Ah, sounds good then. I'm afraid I don't know anything about AMD's 64 bit plans, but if it's like you're describing than I'll definately look into it more.
Ah, no, I didn't say that no apps need 64 bit integers, just that most don't. Certainly there are cases where 64 bit or higher processing would be much better, but for most tasks they're not necessary.
All I was saying is that some systems, solaris being my example, only use 64 bit applications when it's best to - otherwise the majority of the system is 32 bit. I can understand pushing 64 bit performance, but 32 bit performance is important too. Then again, I don't design chips:)
Why are you worried about running 32-bit code on a 64-bit processor?
Just as an aside, if you ever deal with ultrasparcs, you'll quickly find that the majority of the code used is 32 bit.
The reason for it is simple; most applications will run slower at 64 bit than at 32 bit. The ultrasparc chips were designed to take this into account. Hell, due to a firmware bug, solaris on my ultra 1 installs as a 32 bit kernel by defualt - and runs no slower because of it (although it can't run 64 bit apps that way). After a firmware patch, it is easy to change to running the 64 bit kernel though.
In all reality, why would most apps need 64 bit integers and whatnot? Most don't, and doing so is a waste of memory. If the processor is designed right, it can handle 32 bit code with no problems whatsoever.
AOL isn't going to be able to use redhat to kill microsoft; but, they might be able to do some damage.
And even if they do try to make an AOLinux distro out of redhat - they have the clout to make it fairly popular. Knowlegable users won't use it, of course, but with all the extra people moving to linux, hardware support should increase. Drivers go into the kernel, which isn't distro specific...
There would be more applications written, and unless AOL uses a proprietary GUI toolkit they would run any distro. They'd probably go with something established though - less work on their part, more available applications. Redhat's a big GNOME supporter, and another microsoft enemy - Sun - is also, so they'd more than likely go with that.
The way I see it, it can only be good for linux. For redhat? Well, who knows? If redhat ended up dying because of this, well, there's always other distros out there - caldera might step up to take redhat's place on the server and corporate desktop side, and mandrake would take the home users. The only thing the linux community would lose is redhat's considerable contributions, but we'd get over it.
O'Reilly is pretty well entrenched in the minds of computer workers though... I doubt people who buy books on linux would be swayed...
Besides, TimeWarner can already publish linux books. There ain't nothin' stopping them. People buy O'Reilly books because they have a very good reputation.
Naw, sun had the supersparc, and another company made generic sparc chips called hypersparcs.
Re:Yessss!!!! (What about trident?)
on
Xfree86 4.2.0 Out
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· Score: 1
BAD IBM! BAD IBM! Go sit in the corner!
:)
Re:Xfree is sufferring from poor PR
on
Xfree86 4.2.0 Out
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· Score: 2, Informative
Hmm, there's a utility that used to come with X that would allow you to change the monitor settings while X was running... unfortunately, it's been a long time since I've used it and nothing under/usr/X11R6/bin rings a bell...
Essentially, it was an athena app that you would use to make minor adjustments and then print a modeline to stdout. You'd just have to edit the modelines in the XF86Config and it would work.
Someone on one of the linux irc channels probably could tell you the name of it and give you pointers. It'll solve those problems with the screen being offset or crooked and whatnot.
mplayer - linux movie player
libjpeg - the jpeg library
netpbm - Graphics utilities
There's countless others, but I don't feel like looking for them.
I remember back when binary packages weren't released for damn near anything - after all, with gcc, everyone could have a C compiler. Wanted to run the newest afterstep or fvwm? Guess what? Download the source.
For linux, it's the distribution's job to provide binaries. For other systems like solaris and HP-UX there are places like Sun Freeware or HP-UX Software Porting Archive to get it. Some projects do so as a courtesy, but it's hardly required.
For something like XFree86, a binary distribution would almost certainly screw up your linux distribution's packaging system. Very few people would be able to utilize a binary distro of X that isn't tailored for their flavor of linux.
Besides, if you run something like linux from scratch then you don't want to download binaries anyway.
I dunno, I'm workin' my way through "Practical C Programming" right now, and so far (not all the way through it yet) it seems pretty good. Albeit I already know some perl and php (and BASIC if you count the C64 and atari 800 programming I did as a kid), but I wouldn't imagine a newbie having too much of a problem (other than the fact that C ain't the easiest thing in the world to learn compared to other languages...).
I have heard good things about the K&R book though. I might pick that up later on, after I'm done with this book...
Re:Yessss!!!! (What about trident?)
on
Xfree86 4.2.0 Out
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· Score: 1
I thought trident cards were all broken out of the factory:)
Governments shouldn't be moral. They should be ethical. There's a subtle difference.
Besides, it's not the government rubbing off on people making them immoral. If you had to read all the "core values" crap that military folk have to read, you'd think differently. The US government rubbing off on someone usually makes them more burocratic(sic) than anything:)
You've never worked with a military network have you?
I saw a guy get an article 15 for downloading an mp3... The reason? Wasted bandwidth costs money better spent on mission essential network traffic.
Sure, I've seen incompetent commanders order expensive servers for stupid stuff that could be done on a $1000 box, but that happens anywhere. In fact, the only thing that could even be considered a waste (and only by civilians who have no clue) that I can think of off the top of my head reguarding military networks is the game servers at Prince Sultan air base in saudi - and they're there for morale purposes (you get stressed working 16 hour days for 4 months straight). Like to play the online casinos on the military network? Or maybe just look at non-mission essential stuff? Prepare to lose network access. Want to download porn? Sure, hope you won't mind losing a stripe or two. Kiddie porn? Hello Leavenworth.
The pork barrel stuff you're talking about does exist, but not in the network area (at least not with the DoD). Those cool toys they're talking about are there to save the taxpayers money, as well as people's lives.
The way the AF has been throwing people into the 3C0 field (computer operators, i.e. the guys who run the servers, in addition to all the old BS jobs that still linger in the field) hardly anyone is qualified. In my old shop, only 4 of us knew what we were doing, and two of us were either UNIX (me) or Cisco (another guy) people (in an NT shop). Sure, the job got done - the military's good at making sure the job gets done - but most of the people in there were just paperweights.
You can't just take anyone and throw them into a computer field and expect them to grok it. I'm firmly of the belief that it takes a special kind of mind to do hardcore computer work, and most people don't have that mind (just like I had difficulty learning to use a washing machine, even though I could set up a server with my eyes closed).
Systems administration and/or programming takes a lot of dedication and self-training that most people currently working in the military computer fields aren't willing to commit to. They learn to use user manager and then have more knowlegable folks handle the hard stuff. Then they talk about the high paying jobs they'll get on the outside... sigh...
I dunno, I got the socialist hippie part down, and they gave me a clearance. Don't think peacenik really matters unless you're DoD, and vegetarian only means you have to preorder your meals on the planes:)
Took a long ass time, and they tried to get me kicked out of the military on BS charges, but after a couple of years it all worked out.
I'm sure it's been said above, but this solves the wrong problem.
Compiling the kernel is easy. Make menuconfig has everything laid out and easy to find with a little exploration. Compile a kernel a couple of times and it becomes second nature. Really, if you've never tried it, read one of the 200,000 pages out there on how to do it and jump right in. Don't forget to run lilo.
The real issue is that the kernel deals with concepts that "good ol' aunt tilly" doesn't comprehend. Does she know what chipset she has for her IDE controllers? What about old CDRom drivers? "That's a 12x... it's pretty old... Bluetooth? What's that? Better put it in just in case... MTRR support? Oh, I'd better put in math emulation so I can use my calculator..."
There's only two ways to solve this; One, put better help in the kernel configuration. This is being done, actually, and I'm all for it, but some things will still be very vague to the non-techie no matter how much help you put in. The other way is to "user-friendlyize" it, which is usually done by taking away options and hiding the real technical details from the user. Do that and a lot of people are going to be pissed off (like me).
A new configuration program I'm not opposed to; just don't take away our options - keep in mind who the majority of people out there who compile their own kernels are (i.e. people who know what they're doing). And for the gods' sake don't give aunt tilly the root password.
I'd go with 2.4. Get a distro with 2.4 and go with their default kernel. Some distros *cough* mandrake *cough* patch certain utilities *cough* iptables *burp, er, cough* with their kernel, so compiling your own becomes a pain in the ass if you don't know what you're doing.
Really, if you're just setting up a box to play around with, it doesn't matter. If you were setting up a server for your business, then you probably wouldn't need things like USB and whatnot and could go with 2.2.
Personally, I use slackware as my main server, and it runs 2.4.17. Haven't had any problems 'cept with some NFS issues a while back, and I can't remember if that was with 2.2 or 2.4 (was using NFS v3, so I had no excuse - it was experimental at the time). My workstation gets a bit flaky (also 2.4.17 + preempt patch) when I try to run a lot of stuff at the same time, but the only lockup problems I have is when I try to use my BTTV card in X (think it has more to do with X than the BTTV driver). My firewall is a stripped down debian stable system running 2.2, which I never really touch other than to do security updates.
2.2 did seem more stable to me, but 2.4 ain't so bad that you can't use it for home stuff. We got pretty high standards here - I'd rather use 2.4 than NT (sorry, no experience with anything newer) for important stuff, and rather use 2.2 than 2.4.
BTW, don't count slackware out yet - they're hardly dead:) But keep in mind that most people (that I know anyway) that learned on slackware have a rather large distaste for distros like mandrake and redhat:) Slackware won't make things easier on you to set up, but there's the benifit that you don't have to worry about tools like linuxconf and such fscking up your configuration.
I think you mean MS SQL Server rather than mysql:)
Really, it just depends... IIS has some features that are rather nice (integration with the NT domain was nice, but of course only works with windows) but I couldn't stand configuring the thing.
I dunno, lots of people like the little windows with their checkboxen and whatnot, but I find it a pain. Give me a flat config file or three and a man page and I'm good to go.
Besides, apache actually does integrate rather well with PHP and perl, both of which in turn integrate rather well with MySQL. Apache itself does have some database support for authentication, although I can't say much about that because I've never needed it. You can get frontpage extensions for it, and even use VBscript with it if you buy a commercial package.
The one thing I can't comment on is office integration - the only thing I can think of off the top of my head for that is the ability to use access databases with ASP apps (which is also possible with apache using ODBC). What other integration is there? I'm just curious, uncle sam might want me to work with it again sometime...
You forgot to mention the ability for the ship to instantly warp to a random location. Perhaps this functionality would be best triggered by the spacebar...
IANAP, but one would think that thermodynamics (having to do with chemical and macro-scale physical energy) doesn't really apply so much to something like this. This is the realm of quantum physics, not classical theory.
Now, as for what quantum physics says about it, I can't say... but if it were possible (and I don't really know) to convert protons to antiprotons (just a difference in quarks, isn't it?) then likely it would be possible to spend much less energy on creating antimatter than we would get out of a matter<->antimatter reaction.
The hydrogen generators have to convert water to hydrogen via a chemical means. If you're just going to burn the hydrogen, you get less energy out of it that what you put in, due to energy lost to entropy. But if you're going to take that hydrogen and use it in fusion, you get much more energy out of it than what you put in. Different reaction type, so thermodynamics doesn't apply. Depending on how they make antimatter in the future, it could be the same thing here.
I though that Potato, Woody, and Sid were just names for staging environments.
Nope (well, sid is...). Potato and Woody are names of actual releases. Unstable, Testing, and Stable are the names of the staging environments.
Once Woody is released, Potato will go the way of slink and hamm. Woody will be considered stable, and they'll have another name for testing (don't know what that will be - I haven't been paying attention).
Of course, sid always keeps the same name, so sid and unstable are the same thing. It's quite appropriate, since that's where all the toys get broken:)
3.0 will run on an 8088, and 3.1 will run on a 286. It's 3.11 that requires a 386 to run. I've run 3.0 on an 8086 with 640K, and while not fast, it's pretty comparable to anything else on the system.
However, I was working tech support for DEC when the 95 came out. The idea that 95 was better than 3.1 is debatable - but it was certainly not better quality. We rarely got calls from the users of our 3.1 machines that weren't bad hardware. Those machines were about a year old. However, a year and a half down the line, we were still getting calls from 95 users where the operating system was messed up.
I will grant 98 is a lot better than 95, and of course NT is (but it's based on the old OS/2 codebase, so it's a different animal). But other than features and functionality, I don't see any improvement from 3.1 -> 95. Maybe if their memory model had worked right...
He's a non-technical humor columnist. His target audience understands "freezing". He's not asking for help or submitting a bug report, he's writing something funny.
try int main() instead. The system expects an integer returned when the program exits. Normally you'd need a return(0) as well, but with an infinite loop like that it's probably not necessary:)
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All I was saying is that some systems, solaris being my example, only use 64 bit applications when it's best to - otherwise the majority of the system is 32 bit. I can understand pushing 64 bit performance, but 32 bit performance is important too. Then again, I don't design chips :)
Just as an aside, if you ever deal with ultrasparcs, you'll quickly find that the majority of the code used is 32 bit.
The reason for it is simple; most applications will run slower at 64 bit than at 32 bit. The ultrasparc chips were designed to take this into account. Hell, due to a firmware bug, solaris on my ultra 1 installs as a 32 bit kernel by defualt - and runs no slower because of it (although it can't run 64 bit apps that way). After a firmware patch, it is easy to change to running the 64 bit kernel though.
In all reality, why would most apps need 64 bit integers and whatnot? Most don't, and doing so is a waste of memory. If the processor is designed right, it can handle 32 bit code with no problems whatsoever.
And even if they do try to make an AOLinux distro out of redhat - they have the clout to make it fairly popular. Knowlegable users won't use it, of course, but with all the extra people moving to linux, hardware support should increase. Drivers go into the kernel, which isn't distro specific...
There would be more applications written, and unless AOL uses a proprietary GUI toolkit they would run any distro. They'd probably go with something established though - less work on their part, more available applications. Redhat's a big GNOME supporter, and another microsoft enemy - Sun - is also, so they'd more than likely go with that.
The way I see it, it can only be good for linux. For redhat? Well, who knows? If redhat ended up dying because of this, well, there's always other distros out there - caldera might step up to take redhat's place on the server and corporate desktop side, and mandrake would take the home users. The only thing the linux community would lose is redhat's considerable contributions, but we'd get over it.
Besides, TimeWarner can already publish linux books. There ain't nothin' stopping them. People buy O'Reilly books because they have a very good reputation.
Essentially, it was an athena app that you would use to make minor adjustments and then print a modeline to stdout. You'd just have to edit the modelines in the XF86Config and it would work.
Someone on one of the linux irc channels probably could tell you the name of it and give you pointers. It'll solve those problems with the screen being offset or crooked and whatnot.
libjpeg - the jpeg library
netpbm - Graphics utilities
There's countless others, but I don't feel like looking for them.
I remember back when binary packages weren't released for damn near anything - after all, with gcc, everyone could have a C compiler. Wanted to run the newest afterstep or fvwm? Guess what? Download the source.
For linux, it's the distribution's job to provide binaries. For other systems like solaris and HP-UX there are places like Sun Freeware or HP-UX Software Porting Archive to get it. Some projects do so as a courtesy, but it's hardly required.
For something like XFree86, a binary distribution would almost certainly screw up your linux distribution's packaging system. Very few people would be able to utilize a binary distro of X that isn't tailored for their flavor of linux.
Besides, if you run something like linux from scratch then you don't want to download binaries anyway.
I have heard good things about the K&R book though. I might pick that up later on, after I'm done with this book...
Besides, it's not the government rubbing off on people making them immoral. If you had to read all the "core values" crap that military folk have to read, you'd think differently. The US government rubbing off on someone usually makes them more burocratic(sic) than anything :)
I saw a guy get an article 15 for downloading an mp3... The reason? Wasted bandwidth costs money better spent on mission essential network traffic.
Sure, I've seen incompetent commanders order expensive servers for stupid stuff that could be done on a $1000 box, but that happens anywhere. In fact, the only thing that could even be considered a waste (and only by civilians who have no clue) that I can think of off the top of my head reguarding military networks is the game servers at Prince Sultan air base in saudi - and they're there for morale purposes (you get stressed working 16 hour days for 4 months straight). Like to play the online casinos on the military network? Or maybe just look at non-mission essential stuff? Prepare to lose network access. Want to download porn? Sure, hope you won't mind losing a stripe or two. Kiddie porn? Hello Leavenworth.
The pork barrel stuff you're talking about does exist, but not in the network area (at least not with the DoD). Those cool toys they're talking about are there to save the taxpayers money, as well as people's lives.
You can't just take anyone and throw them into a computer field and expect them to grok it. I'm firmly of the belief that it takes a special kind of mind to do hardcore computer work, and most people don't have that mind (just like I had difficulty learning to use a washing machine, even though I could set up a server with my eyes closed).
Systems administration and/or programming takes a lot of dedication and self-training that most people currently working in the military computer fields aren't willing to commit to. They learn to use user manager and then have more knowlegable folks handle the hard stuff. Then they talk about the high paying jobs they'll get on the outside... sigh...
Took a long ass time, and they tried to get me kicked out of the military on BS charges, but after a couple of years it all worked out.
Compiling the kernel is easy. Make menuconfig has everything laid out and easy to find with a little exploration. Compile a kernel a couple of times and it becomes second nature. Really, if you've never tried it, read one of the 200,000 pages out there on how to do it and jump right in. Don't forget to run lilo.
The real issue is that the kernel deals with concepts that "good ol' aunt tilly" doesn't comprehend. Does she know what chipset she has for her IDE controllers? What about old CDRom drivers? "That's a 12x... it's pretty old... Bluetooth? What's that? Better put it in just in case... MTRR support? Oh, I'd better put in math emulation so I can use my calculator..."
There's only two ways to solve this; One, put better help in the kernel configuration. This is being done, actually, and I'm all for it, but some things will still be very vague to the non-techie no matter how much help you put in. The other way is to "user-friendlyize" it, which is usually done by taking away options and hiding the real technical details from the user. Do that and a lot of people are going to be pissed off (like me).
A new configuration program I'm not opposed to; just don't take away our options - keep in mind who the majority of people out there who compile their own kernels are (i.e. people who know what they're doing). And for the gods' sake don't give aunt tilly the root password.
I'd go with 2.4. Get a distro with 2.4 and go with their default kernel. Some distros *cough* mandrake *cough* patch certain utilities *cough* iptables *burp, er, cough* with their kernel, so compiling your own becomes a pain in the ass if you don't know what you're doing.
Really, if you're just setting up a box to play around with, it doesn't matter. If you were setting up a server for your business, then you probably wouldn't need things like USB and whatnot and could go with 2.2.
Personally, I use slackware as my main server, and it runs 2.4.17. Haven't had any problems 'cept with some NFS issues a while back, and I can't remember if that was with 2.2 or 2.4 (was using NFS v3, so I had no excuse - it was experimental at the time). My workstation gets a bit flaky (also 2.4.17 + preempt patch) when I try to run a lot of stuff at the same time, but the only lockup problems I have is when I try to use my BTTV card in X (think it has more to do with X than the BTTV driver). My firewall is a stripped down debian stable system running 2.2, which I never really touch other than to do security updates.
2.2 did seem more stable to me, but 2.4 ain't so bad that you can't use it for home stuff. We got pretty high standards here - I'd rather use 2.4 than NT (sorry, no experience with anything newer) for important stuff, and rather use 2.2 than 2.4.
BTW, don't count slackware out yet - they're hardly dead :) But keep in mind that most people (that I know anyway) that learned on slackware have a rather large distaste for distros like mandrake and redhat :) Slackware won't make things easier on you to set up, but there's the benifit that you don't have to worry about tools like linuxconf and such fscking up your configuration.
Hmm... do your lawyers never go outside in the sun by chance? Just curious :)
Really, it just depends... IIS has some features that are rather nice (integration with the NT domain was nice, but of course only works with windows) but I couldn't stand configuring the thing.
I dunno, lots of people like the little windows with their checkboxen and whatnot, but I find it a pain. Give me a flat config file or three and a man page and I'm good to go.
Besides, apache actually does integrate rather well with PHP and perl, both of which in turn integrate rather well with MySQL. Apache itself does have some database support for authentication, although I can't say much about that because I've never needed it. You can get frontpage extensions for it, and even use VBscript with it if you buy a commercial package.
The one thing I can't comment on is office integration - the only thing I can think of off the top of my head for that is the ability to use access databases with ASP apps (which is also possible with apache using ODBC). What other integration is there? I'm just curious, uncle sam might want me to work with it again sometime...
Now, as for what quantum physics says about it, I can't say... but if it were possible (and I don't really know) to convert protons to antiprotons (just a difference in quarks, isn't it?) then likely it would be possible to spend much less energy on creating antimatter than we would get out of a matter<->antimatter reaction.
The hydrogen generators have to convert water to hydrogen via a chemical means. If you're just going to burn the hydrogen, you get less energy out of it that what you put in, due to energy lost to entropy. But if you're going to take that hydrogen and use it in fusion, you get much more energy out of it than what you put in. Different reaction type, so thermodynamics doesn't apply. Depending on how they make antimatter in the future, it could be the same thing here.
Nope (well, sid is...). Potato and Woody are names of actual releases. Unstable, Testing, and Stable are the names of the staging environments.
Once Woody is released, Potato will go the way of slink and hamm. Woody will be considered stable, and they'll have another name for testing (don't know what that will be - I haven't been paying attention).
Of course, sid always keeps the same name, so sid and unstable are the same thing. It's quite appropriate, since that's where all the toys get broken :)
However, I was working tech support for DEC when the 95 came out. The idea that 95 was better than 3.1 is debatable - but it was certainly not better quality. We rarely got calls from the users of our 3.1 machines that weren't bad hardware. Those machines were about a year old. However, a year and a half down the line, we were still getting calls from 95 users where the operating system was messed up.
I will grant 98 is a lot better than 95, and of course NT is (but it's based on the old OS/2 codebase, so it's a different animal). But other than features and functionality, I don't see any improvement from 3.1 -> 95. Maybe if their memory model had worked right...