OK. In words of less than one syllable it is:
1. I do have experience with Transmeta CPUs.
2. Cooling is a more and more difficult problem for CPUs that consume a lot of power.
3. The P4 consumes a lot of power, generates a lot of heat and therefore needs a big noisy fan and heatsink to stop it from melting.
4. The Transmeta CPUs do not have this problem, as they consume less than 5w max, and usually less than 2.
5. Large fans make a lot of noise.
6. Having a noisy fan in the same room as your audio system is bad as all the quiet passages are wiped out with white noise from the fan. Just do a search on slashdot for all the debates on audio codecs and ask yourself "Does it matter, if I have a loud fan trashing the audio quality anyway?"
7. Putting your finger directly on a P3 chip may well result in third degree burns. DO NOT DO THIS.
8. In my experience, performance of the TM CPUs is adequate for the tasks they have been designed to tackle. These are not Xeons, they are designed for notebooks and internet appliances.
Hope that helps to clarify what was a rambling statement with no HTML formatting to make it legible.:-)
I have played with numerous Transmeta systems. I even have one by my desk now. It's real simple. Power consumption does matter. I read that the Intel P4 will consume up to 66W, compared to the TM5600 2-3W.
This is INSANE. I don't want a 66W CPU anywhere near my hifi amp. Why do people bother arguing about audio codec quality when they have two or more fans with roughly the sound of a hovercraft in their room.
Simple test for which chip is "cooler". When decoding a DVD in software, put your finger directly on the chip packaging. Not the heatsink, the packaging. HINT: Don't try this at home. You WILL get burnt on one of them.
As for performance. I'm happy. Just remember, not everyone needs 1.4GHz P4s, lots of Celerons get sold, even today.
I'll try the rpm methods of upgrading the redhat distro. But, for the longer term, I'll take a look at debian (I know I left that test partition on one of these drives...). Then maybe I'll post a HOWTO.
I'll give this a try. Strangely enough, I'm completely happy with remote kernel tweaking. It's the distro upgrade that makes my brain hurt.
And no, I don't have a stock RH kernel. Ever.:-)
Answer to your question: I now find myself trying to maintain several remote servers as well (different countries even) and some of them need newer versions of RedHat (think 810 chipset nightmares). Plus some of the new admin features in RH6.2 are desirable.
One of the most compelling arguments I have seen in favour of Linux pits it's open source nature against the.NET philosophy that Microsoft would like everyone to move towards. It goes thus: All future versions of closed-source package xxx will need to be enabled via an internet connection nack to our main servers, where we will, using high levels of encryption, enable the product, upgrade the product, and disable it if you don't pay your bill.
Your acceptance of the license agreement says you MUST keep a network connection available through your firewall, that we will send encrypted data through. If you are a government (or working on defense projects), you should immediately be concerned about developments where binary software will be transmitting enrypted data through your firewall, especially as the company it is transmitting to is a company based in a foreign country. It doesn't matter if the country is "friendly" or not. It becomes a matter of National Security. Just put this question to the US DoD (or your network administrator!) and see what they say. This does not in any way imply that Microsoft (or any other closed-source company) would transmit confidential data, just that it would be impossible to tell if they did.
The benefit open-source software has in this case is that you can see what it does. As more and more confidential work gets moved onto internet-connected computers this issue is going to become more and more important.
The French government is currently discussing this, as are the Chinese. I wonder if someone ought to post this to the US DoD?
If you thought the discussion about Echelon was hot, wait until people start really thinking about the implications of.NET systems...
Why not use one of the speech recognition engines, coupled with a text-to-speech generator, to make a voice-controlled, talking email client. There is enough POP3 code out there and the SDK that comes with ViaVoice on Linux is easy enought to use. This would be a project that the kids would like, and would be fun! (While teaching them non-visual UI skills, Network Programming etc).
NOW WAIT JUST A MINUTE. DeCSS (Reverse Engineering of CSS) is LEGAL in Norway. Just because the US had a lousy law passed (DMCA, bought and paid for) does NOT mean that it applies globally. If you US voters have a problem with your law, complain to your government. DO NOT, however, assume that US law is global law.
I have been working/playing with a bunch of wireless LAN cards recently. The way I did it was to use the Linux server/gateway as a router between the wired and wireless LANs. I personally use the Aviator Webgear cards (2Mb/s) because they are available for $149 at Frys for two PCMCIA cards and two ISA PCMCIA adapter cards. All works under Linux and can be interoperable with Windows. Be carefull of you are looking for inter-brand interoperability though. The avaitors are frequency hoppers and most others are direct sequence. I have had up to 4 aviators happily talking in ad-hoc mode (like a wired ethernet) and 5 lucent wavelan cards, even at the same time, in the same house. You do not need an access point for in-home use. BTW, for those in Europe (like me) the Proxim doesn't go through concrete floors very well, the aviators do. If you do this follow the ipmasq HOWTO but remember you need two sets of rules, one for the wired network and one for the wireless. As long as each device points at the IP address (wired or wireless respectively) of the Linux server/gateway everything should be fine. And to stop any trolls, you can do a search and replace for Linux with *BSD above if you wish. If you want to do this using a Windows server/gateway, you're in the hands of Microsoft. Good Luck.
Slashdot Mirror
OK. In words of less than one syllable it is: :-)
1. I do have experience with Transmeta CPUs.
2. Cooling is a more and more difficult problem for CPUs that consume a lot of power.
3. The P4 consumes a lot of power, generates a lot of heat and therefore needs a big noisy fan and heatsink to stop it from melting.
4. The Transmeta CPUs do not have this problem, as they consume less than 5w max, and usually less than 2.
5. Large fans make a lot of noise.
6. Having a noisy fan in the same room as your audio system is bad as all the quiet passages are wiped out with white noise from the fan. Just do a search on slashdot for all the debates on audio codecs and ask yourself "Does it matter, if I have a loud fan trashing the audio quality anyway?"
7. Putting your finger directly on a P3 chip may well result in third degree burns. DO NOT DO THIS.
8. In my experience, performance of the TM CPUs is adequate for the tasks they have been designed to tackle. These are not Xeons, they are designed for notebooks and internet appliances.
Hope that helps to clarify what was a rambling statement with no HTML formatting to make it legible.
I have played with numerous Transmeta systems. I even have one by my desk now. It's real simple. Power consumption does matter. I read that the Intel P4 will consume up to 66W, compared to the TM5600 2-3W. This is INSANE. I don't want a 66W CPU anywhere near my hifi amp. Why do people bother arguing about audio codec quality when they have two or more fans with roughly the sound of a hovercraft in their room. Simple test for which chip is "cooler". When decoding a DVD in software, put your finger directly on the chip packaging. Not the heatsink, the packaging. HINT: Don't try this at home. You WILL get burnt on one of them. As for performance. I'm happy. Just remember, not everyone needs 1.4GHz P4s, lots of Celerons get sold, even today.
I'll try the rpm methods of upgrading the redhat distro. But, for the longer term, I'll take a look at debian (I know I left that test partition on one of these drives...). Then maybe I'll post a HOWTO.
I'll give this a try. Strangely enough, I'm completely happy with remote kernel tweaking. It's the distro upgrade that makes my brain hurt. And no, I don't have a stock RH kernel. Ever. :-)
Answer to your question: I now find myself trying to maintain several remote servers as well (different countries even) and some of them need newer versions of RedHat (think 810 chipset nightmares). Plus some of the new admin features in RH6.2 are desirable.
I'll give this a try. Thanks.
iSilo brings it down to 0.99MB, which fits handily on an 8M palm :-)
One of the most compelling arguments I have seen in favour of Linux pits it's open source nature against the .NET philosophy that Microsoft would like everyone to move towards. It goes thus: All future versions of closed-source package xxx will need to be enabled via an internet connection nack to our main servers, where we will, using high levels of encryption, enable the product, upgrade the product, and disable it if you don't pay your bill.
.NET systems...
Your acceptance of the license agreement says you MUST keep a network connection available through your firewall, that we will send encrypted data through. If you are a government (or working on defense projects), you should immediately be concerned about developments where binary software will be transmitting enrypted data through your firewall, especially as the company it is transmitting to is a company based in a foreign country. It doesn't matter if the country is "friendly" or not. It becomes a matter of National Security. Just put this question to the US DoD (or your network administrator!) and see what they say. This does not in any way imply that Microsoft (or any other closed-source company) would transmit confidential data, just that it would be impossible to tell if they did.
The benefit open-source software has in this case is that you can see what it does. As more and more confidential work gets moved onto internet-connected computers this issue is going to become more and more important.
The French government is currently discussing this, as are the Chinese. I wonder if someone ought to post this to the US DoD?
If you thought the discussion about Echelon was hot, wait until people start really thinking about the implications of
Why not use one of the speech recognition engines, coupled with a text-to-speech generator, to make a voice-controlled, talking email client. There is enough POP3 code out there and the SDK that comes with ViaVoice on Linux is easy enought to use. This would be a project that the kids would like, and would be fun! (While teaching them non-visual UI skills, Network Programming etc).
NOW WAIT JUST A MINUTE. DeCSS (Reverse Engineering of CSS) is LEGAL in Norway. Just because the US had a lousy law passed (DMCA, bought and paid for) does NOT mean that it applies globally. If you US voters have a problem with your law, complain to your government. DO NOT, however, assume that US law is global law.
I have been working/playing with a bunch of wireless LAN cards recently. The way I did it was to use the Linux server/gateway as a router between the wired and wireless LANs. I personally use the Aviator Webgear cards (2Mb/s) because they are available for $149 at Frys for two PCMCIA cards and two ISA PCMCIA adapter cards. All works under Linux and can be interoperable with Windows. Be carefull of you are looking for inter-brand interoperability though. The avaitors are frequency hoppers and most others are direct sequence. I have had up to 4 aviators happily talking in ad-hoc mode (like a wired ethernet) and 5 lucent wavelan cards, even at the same time, in the same house. You do not need an access point for in-home use. BTW, for those in Europe (like me) the Proxim doesn't go through concrete floors very well, the aviators do. If you do this follow the ipmasq HOWTO but remember you need two sets of rules, one for the wired network and one for the wireless. As long as each device points at the IP address (wired or wireless respectively) of the Linux server/gateway everything should be fine. And to stop any trolls, you can do a search and replace for Linux with *BSD above if you wish. If you want to do this using a Windows server/gateway, you're in the hands of Microsoft. Good Luck.