The P4 is very different from the Athlon and the P3. I don't know how the new P4 (socket 478?) looks like exactly, but the older one (socket423) was definitely larger than the Athlon or the P3 socket. Probably it is not cost effective to produce such a case for the P4, since the differences in design and manufacturing would have added to a significant price.
Also, I haven't seen or heard of any people o/c-ing their P4s (correct me if I'm wrong). So that market share is pretty slim to begin with. If you're not into o/c-ing, such a case is definitely an overkill. Unless you appreciate the quietness of a water cooled system.
So it does not seem very surprising that this case does not support the P4. Maybe later on, they will add the support, but right now they're catering to the AMD o/c-ers, who are far more numerous than on the Intel platform.
No, it doesn't take voodoo to get java working. On 0.9.5 I just went over to netscape's dl page, and just started the java install for netscape6 on Linux, I believe (it was right after 0.9.5 came out, so it's been a while). The mozilla installer took everything from there, with its autoinstall feature.
After the download was complete, I restarted mozilla, and voila, I had java. I guess you could call it voodoo, since I did not touch anything during the whole process.
One thing tough, when you install plugins, you have to be logged in as the user who has write access to the mozilla directory. So if you were root, run mozilla as root when installing plugins (this is my case)
I've read through most of the posts so far, and there's a trend that I've noticed. Every poster is very worried that he/she will pay more than the estimates in the article, or that there would be a better/easier way to implement such a pay-per-view scheme.
But this assumes that a) you are at your home computer and b)you live in one of the rich countries (US, Canada, Western Europe, etc)
a) What happens if you don't browse from your home computer? Will your company get charged with your online entertainment? In that case, I can only imagine that ALL internet access will be cur off by most companies, or strict surveilance will be implemented to log all employee activity. If it's a university (which is my case), will all the labs be closed for outside access? Because the CS budgets (while greater than the philosophy ones for example), are not huge, and could definitely be unable to pay for this. Again, browsing quotas?
Another example are the Internet Cafes, which in Europe are far, far more popular than here in N America. How will they charge their customers? When I was in Romania (E Europe), one hour on the net was 50cents, but how much will it be after this will be implemented?
b) This will only work in the rich coutries, where a lot of people have bank accounts, credit cards, etc. In most of the world (which by the way, is very poor), the vast majority of people do not even deal with banks. Cash is the rule. So how will you charge them? If you're going to send them the bill at home, most likely it will never be paid. Not to mention that I really want to see a US company trying to bill a Chinese ISP for web useage. Yeah, that's going to work.
They would however (as I'm sure a lot of other people will point out) consume less electricity. Therefore their power consumption will go down, which in turn will lower the heat emission.
The reason why manufacturers stopped putting trackballs on laptops are fairly simple.
On one side, they are purely mechanical, and they're far more likely to fail than a touchpad or a track point. Couple with that the fact that dirt gets into them (much like the mice) and you've got a component that is more trouble than it's worth. A track ball needs frequent cleaning. A trackpad can be just wiped off with a cloth. And how would you get a track point dirty? (If you do, wash your hands more often)
Second of all, have you seen how much more is packed into new laptops? There's hardly any room to spare, and that track ball right in the middle of the box certainly doesn't help. A touchpad is definitely smaller (at least in depth). And I can also see how a trackpoint would be smaller too.
It's the most rugged laptop I've ever heard of (forget those titanium cased G4s, or anything else). When they came out with it, the demo unit was running under a constant stream of water pouring on the keyboard and the display. And by running I mean turned on, booted into Windows and running some demo software.
It's rated to widthstand a drop of about 3 ft on a hard floor. I don't know if it's operating drop or turned off, but it's still pretty impressive. It has a magnezium case, and the nice touch is the built-in handle. Also, all the components are encased into a special gel, that allows it to be dropped from the aforementioned height.
I don't know in the US, but here in Toronto (Canada) the Police cruisers are all equipped with Toughbooks.
So those are the advantages. The drawback is that because their construction they can't really be upgraded. Then again, I'm not sure what kind of performance one needs while driving farm equipment. But I'm guessing Quake3 or RTCF are not among the requirements.
Well, I did exactly the same you did, only in my case it was a downgrade.
My first distribution was Slackware 3.0, but after having some problems with it, I moved to Redhat 4.3, and stuck with it to this day (running 7.2 atm). Somewhere along my computer upgrades, I ended up with a spare 4.3 Gb hdd, and I decided to give Slack a try again. I installed it on my box, I decided I liked it, but the school year started, before I could do anything more with it. So it stayed unused for a couple of months.
BTW, the box that I used for the install was a Dual Celeron on an Abit BP6 board, TNT2 video, SB Live sound, CDROM, 3Com nic, etc.
Then I decided to upgrade my gateway, from a P100 to something more, and I got a good deal on a P166 box, complete with ATI video (Rage II), no sound, no CDROM, no hdd, nothing else.
Since I had the 4.3Gb hdd already with Slack on it, I decided to give it a try. I also added a Dlink and a 3Com nic, and a sb16. I was amazed to find out that EVERYTHING worked out of the box, except XFree86, but that was to be expected! I did not touch anything, and everyting was configured, as if Slack had been installed on the p166, and not on a DUAL Celeron.
So with any luck your box should be useable, with only minor tweaks. You are keeping everything the same (video, sound, nics, etc), and are just changing the CPU and mb. You should run into even fewer problems than with Windows.
There isn't any mention in the article about the expeted prices of the Hammer, so I thought I'd ask here. What are the price expectations for a processor like this? I mean from the specs alone (with so much stuff integrated into the die), it's going to be a fairly big beast.
Does the fact that it is new technology, and that it's a big (or bigger) die size automatically mean it's going to be very high priced? I remember when the P2 came out, I paid CAD $1200 for the 300Mhz, about 2 weeks after it was released. Now the P4 costs about the same (although a bit less than that) for the highest speed (2Ghz?)
So my question is this: will this processor be affordable (somewhere between a top of the line Athlon and a P4), or is it going to be much more? I think it's a very safe bet to assume that it will cost more than the Athlon.
If somebody has a real answer for this, please reply. It would be interesting to hear some opinions from the more knowledgeable.
Yeah, I just want to see the RIAA hacking into MY computer! I mean, if I would live in the US. But I live in Canada, and the way things are looking right now, we're close to catching up with our neighbours in terms of idiotic tech-related laws.(DMCA and the like)
But supposing the RIAA will want to hack my box, they have to go through my OpenBSD internet gateway, that has nothing open but SSH2, then get into my Linux box, which again has nothing open except SSH2 and NFS, and finally get to my hdd in a meaningfull way so they would be able to delete something.
But unfortunately for them, even if they acomplish such an amazing feat (I'm not trying to boast, but this system is fairly tight for a home setup. No, please don't try portscanning me/ hacking into my box if you get my IP, I can't afford the bandwidth.) So even if they reach my hdd, all I have is about 500Mb-1Gb worth of new mp3s. All the rest is backed up on CDs.
So unless they figure out how to destroy a CD just by reading it in a CDROM, I think I'm safe. Now I know there are far deeper implications with this thing becoming a law, but just the fact itself is making me lmao!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I don't know why nobody posted this before (or why it didn't get modded up), but on my Nokia 8260, and on my old Samsung SCH8580 there is a built-in dictionary.
The way it works is quite simple, if you try to type the word "message" all you have to do is press 6377243, and it automatically guesses the match, in this case the word "message". If there are more than one match, all it takes is pressing a button multiple times, to scroll through the list of matches. It has English, French and I believe Spanish (my phone is my coat pocket, and I don't feel like getting it).
I've been using my Nokia for quite a while with this system, and honestly I don't need anyting else. It's almost perfect, and the only difficulty is when you want to insert names, or numbers, but that only requires a couple of extra key presses.
So my question is why bother with weird finger press combinations, finger-sensing buttons when the best solution is already out there?!? I guess this is one way somebody is trying to make extra money on royalties, but I don't know...
I keep reading that it is possible to use another AGP card with this mothergoard. What I would really like to know is wether I can hook up two displays to the box. One on the nForce output and one on a card of my choice.
I know it should be doable with an old PCI card and the nForce, or even with an old PCI card and a new AGP card (circumventing the nForce completely).
The one reason I can find (correct me if I'm wrong) is that the nForce is already an AGP card, and there can only be one such card on the mb. Is that true?
If it's possible, then I would have no problem buying a mb based on the nForce as soon as it becomes available (my dual Celery466 + TNT2 M64 is getting a bit too long in the tooth). Otherwise, for me at least, it would be a better option to go with the AMP chipset (is it the 760), which is probably cheaper. and just go with a GForce3 (which I would get anyways)
The FreeBSD 4.4 news haven't been posted for more than a few minutes, there are (were when I started writing) 6 posts, and already people are following a very annoying thread. What I mean is the stupid (IMO) advice that *BSD (or Linux or any open source project) should do this and that, be like this and that in order to be more average user friendly and to gain more market share.
PEOPLE! Do you think that the people, or the companies developing with those OSes are not aware of those problems? That they have no clue whatsoever as to what the general public wants? That they simply refuze to make their OSes user friendly, just to spite the users, and stay in a tiny share of the market?
They want more users, and they're doing everything possible to make their experience as pain-free and easy as possible. That they haven't reached perfection is not a surprise. But don't give such stupid advice on/., and most of all, don't complain so much about it. Instead, do something about it. Mail the developers this advice, or better yet, help code the OS, write the documentation, and in general, help improve it.
But even this is not very relevant, for I'm using Linux because it suits me, and I like it, no matter how small its market share. And no matter how user (un)friendly it is. I like it (and I've been running it for the past 4.5 years)
I know, I know. My complaining does not help either. But I'm not doing it every time such a story is posted (check my posts if you don't believe me). I'm just getting fed up with all this useless noise. I'd much rather hear about the technical issues with FreeBSD (I haven't tried it yet, I'm running Linux and OpenBSD), the user experience, the major apps that have been ported to it, etc. THAT would help me, and others.
It's for this exact reason that I'm yet to purchase anything from a web site, save for my now non-existant domain name. I'm not saying that nobody should buy anything on the Internet, or that it's a bad thing to begin with.
But lets face it. Even now, after the "dot bust" or whatever it is called today, there still are sites that are getting hacked, Internet companies that are going bankrupt, etc. And everytime that happenes, my personal information is in danger of becoming public, or that it falls into the wrong hands.
I know dozens of people, some of them my friends, who have had their credit card numbers stolen. My best friend lost $400 on his VISA, and if it wouldn't have been for the fraud protection, he would be in a deep hole right now (we're students, we're not rich people). Losing money is the worst thing that can happen, but what about the little things? I'm getting 10-15 spam emails a day, and this is after some pretty drastic filters. But I know people who keep getting them in the hundreds. (I went on a trip this summer for a monts, and I had about 600 new messages). And there are many more reasons...
And to top it all off, these companies are treating the information that you give them as something to sell. WHEN IT'S NOT EVEN THEIRS TO BEGIN WITH!!!!!!!!!!!! It's MY credit card number, it's MY name, MY address, MY age that I inputed into their database. And yet they sell it off!
Don't get me wrong, I love the ideea of going on-line and shopping with GrogeryGateay.com, or buying anything, ordering any services online. But I'm definitely not going to do it untill I'm certain that my info and my money are safe. And ATM, no matter what anybody will say, they're not!
I for one will never replace my 50lb *nix manual with an e-paper one. Or for that matter any of my hundreds (if not more) of real paper books that I have collected. And I'm sure that most, if not all, people will agree with me.
The reason is really simple, imo. The e-paper requires a battery, circuitry, special inks, etc. In the end, it will deccay, break down or I might simply drop it into the bath tub while reading it and zap the hell out of me. I've had many electronic devices fail on me, and in all cases all the information stored on them was lost. Completely. The same is true for e-paper. Sooner or later (most likely really soon) it will break down, no matter how well you take care of it.
The same does not apply to normal, paper books. They last. And last. My oldest book is from the early 1900s, and by no means is it old. There are parchments that are thousands of years old. Granted, it's just as easy to destroy normal paper as it might be e-paper, but given proper care, normal paper has an almost endless life.
So if given the choice, I'd rather get an old-fashioned paper book that I can keep for as long as I want rather that a cool e-paper one that will BSOD in a couple of years.
but seriously, the whole thing is going to cost far more than $50k... I've read that it costs the Russians $10mil to send a rocket into space to the International Space Station. I'm just guessing, because I don't want to dig up the data right now. But I'm going to asume that this launch by NASA is going to be roughly the same amount of money, and it's definitely not less that $1mil.
So assuming a launch cost of anywhere from $1mil to $10mil, and considering there are 4 satelites going into orbit on the same flight, the price per satelite to launch is $250k to $2.5mil. And the final price for the satelite is $300k to $2.5mil.
Definitely not the $50k they're talking about. The ideea is still very interesting, and I hope it works out. But I just had to point out something that the article was obviously avoiding.
Funny or not, it really makes you think...
on
Windows in 2020
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· Score: 4, Insightful
I wish I could come up with a joke after reading this article, but I simply cannot. It hits too close to the heart of the problem, and it's a huge one. Because aparently this is where the world is going right now, and there is no going back. The problem is that everything, not only computers, is becomming more and more the same.
I was going to write a longer post, but then I realized one thing: There is no way that this can be stopped. Maybe all computers will run M$ software, or maybe not. But then look around you! Even though in the early 1900s there were cars running on gas, steam and electricity, only the gas cars remain. Why? They were the most feasible to build. Now the technology has evolved to a point where we might see some other kind of car using maybe H2, solar or some other energy source, and all the new cars will use that new, better source.
Another example is the cell phone. In the beginning all were analogue (at least in the US). Go to Europe now, and most people don't even know what that is. Why? All cells there are digital, and most of the ones in the US are the same. And how many digital protocols are there? GPM is only one of them, but soon 3G is comming, and that will be the world standard.
The point I'm trying to make is that maybe uniformity is good. Maybe all computers will run M$ software, although I doubt it! (I would never trade Linux for Windoze). So the problem is not that every computer will run the same OS. The problem however is finding the best OS to use on all computers.
But it's 5am where I live, and I think I'll solve it tomorrow.:P
I've just returned from a trip to Europe, and I've gotten a chance to play with some of the phones there (not all, but most of the models available). And I've also used plenty of phones in Canada. And I must say one thing: the phones in Europe are so confuzing, it's unbelievable! The worse in my opinion are the Alcatels, which not only are different in setup, buttons and menus from any other manufacturer, but also among themselves. I got one to use for free (I only paid for the card and calls) there from a friend, and it took me about a week to figure out everything the damn thing could do! It was so counter-intuitive, it was unbelievable! (For those who have one, can anyone explain why is it that the smily button will exit any menu, cancel any action or abort anything, while the "NO" button won't do a thing?!?!?)
And belive me, I'm definitely not a techology impaired guy, alfter all, I'm a CS major and I've been using computers and electronic gadgets for about half of my life. The phones I did like were the Nokias (which are the same on both sides of the pond), Ericssons and Samsungs (I own a Samsung in Canada).
The point I'm trying to make, having each phone use the same OS (or 2 or 3 but not many more) is a good thing. Be they as customizable as they might be, it would still maintain a certain level of compatibility between models from the same company and from different companies. I could pick up a phone from one manufacturer and not waste an entire day trying to figure out how to send an SMS or an email. I mean those things should be useable without reading the manual which I didn't have.
Believe me, I'm all for variety, but not when it comes to something as basic as a menu or the buttons on a phone. Imagine is MS Word's menu would be 100% different from KOffice, which in turn would be 100% different from WordPerfect and so on? If the "Save" option would be under "File" in one app, but under "Edit" in another one and under "Help" in another one.
In conclusion, I'm all for RH's initiative in the mobile market.
I can say that they are one company that does not suck.
Their internet cable access rocks! Granted, I've had my share of problems in the past. I was I think the second or third customer in my area, and as more people signed up, things got slooow. But now, about 2 almost 3 years later, it's fast. They upgraded their cables since then. And their reliability wrt to the tv and internet access is really good. And it's been this way for most part. The worst experience was a 3 day down-time due to some idiot cutting the cable while digging in front of his house.
Not to mention the fact that they support static IPs. They don't bother you about IP masquarading, so I can run my four boxes off the same IP (it would be an extra CA$10/month for each additional IP) I know of other providers cough-Sympatico DSL-cough who won't let you do that. They even let you use Linux w/o a problem and I believe that they have tech support for it too.
And they're really cheap. It costs about CA$50/month for the internet (which includes the modem rental) plus CA$30/month for the TV. Which is about US$50. I know people are paying more than that for DSL alone in the US.
The point I'm trying to make, a Linux box replacing the WebTV is great news. And even if it isn't compatible with other providers, it's still ok. I couldn't care less.
A virtual war against frugs would be just as useless as the real one. I Have lived a great part of my life in Europe, and now I live in Canada, so I have had an experience with the way both continents are dealing with the "drug problem". And it would seem that the American way is fighting a loosing battle. That is not to say that the European way is much better, at least in most countries back there. I have also used drugs (a very, very small amount, that's true), so I can at least look at both sides of drug use. I'm not using any drugs atm (last ounce of weed I had, has been sitting in a drawer somewhere for the past year or so, and I haven't touched any other drugs since).
From all I've seen (on TV and even personal experience) or read in books and newspapers (William Burrough's Junky is an awsome book on the drug addiction problem), whenever the government tries to force control over drugs it fails. Miserably even. No matter how hard any police force is trying to stop trafficants from bringing drugs into a country, the harder the criminals are trying to achieve their purpose. The result is very simple, in my opinion at least: the government spends a LOT of money, people on both sides get killed (and even innocent bystanders), but the drugs still get into the hands of the consumer, the addict. The only difference is that they cost a lot more than they would if the drugs were not fought so hard. By cost I don't mean only money, but lives mostly. If you don't believe this point I'm making, just open look around on the news. For every drug bust they show, I'm 100% certain that a 1000 go uncaught.
For me, the only solution, the only realistic one that would work is to make drugs legal, while maintaining a tight control over their use. By that I mean if someone wants to try drugs, they should identify themselves, be offered counceling, rehab, etc if they want to stop using drugs, or otherwise they should be allowed to fry their brains all they want. Now I know this sounds ridiculous to a lot of people (if not most people), but just the fact that the number of drug addicts has stayed pretty much constant before and after the drug was in the US has started should tell a lot. The one place where this example has showed results is, of course, Amsterdam.
While the drug use in that city is likely highest in the world, that is primarily because it is the _only_ city that does not have strict laws against drugs. So all the addicts from everywhere crowd there. But that would not be the case if the anti-drug laws were dropped, or at least weakened, that would not be the case anymore. And over there the crime rate is not higher than in any other place on this planet. It is even lower (just compare it to the poor neighbourhoods in any US city, and you'll see what I mean).
And the whole ideea that if you let people use drugs freely everybody will become an addict, that is pure bullshit. I've had access to them, tried them, didn't like them, so I've stopped. And I'm really not likely to use them ever again.
So drop the drug laws (or weaken them at least), stop spending so much money on the drug wars, and forget about virtual ones which would achieve absolutely nothing.
Well, if you've mentioned a Vulcan as your example, then there won't be any first contact, at least not on their part.
I know that the Federation has that pesky law, called the "Prime Directive", and I believe that the Vulcans have the same (I'm not sure about it though). As you probably know, one of the clauses of the directive is that you cannot come into contact with a civilization unless they have warp technology. We don't have it. So no vulcan will visit us any time soon.
As for other species, I'm sure that any concievable kind of aliens have been depicted in movies of all sorts. Movies which also explain pretty well what would happen in such scenarions. And if the predictions in the movies would come true, I'm a lot more concerned about OUR rights rather than the aliens (see Mars Attacks, Idependence Day, etc, etc).
I guess this is why I'm using Netscape, Mozilla, lynx and a few other non-M$ browsers. Umm... No, wait... It's because M$IE won't run on Linux.
Seriously though, I really don't remember any such exploits for Netscape, or the other browsers. I mean sure, there were (and are) web pages that would crash Netscape hard, but the worst case scenario was "killall -9 netscape" (or Ctrl+Alt+Del in Winblows) and that was it. It was only when the M$ crap took over the market that such things started happening...
I'm not even going to go into that subject, since the rant that would follow would take maybe... 2-3 years? I mean between MSIE, Outlook and all the other M$ Internet software, we've had pretty much an attack a day...
While I am not a US citizen (I currently live in Canada), I must say that rep. Boucher has impressed me with his opinions regarding the internet, and the way he deals with his constituents.
I'm certain that it has been said many times before, but what the US needs, and far more, what the world needs are people like him. He has a clear grasp of the technical aspects of our society, and understands the possibilities and the limitations of the Internet and of the other aspects of our computer age. While they are not 100% complete, he is the only (or one of the very few) people who knows enough about the computer industry (the Napster fenomenon being just one example), the recording industry (with its push to control everything under the sun that can be copyrighteable) to be able to make sane decisions. And if he does not know the facts, well at least he's willing to learn more.
Far too many people get elected without having even the least bit of knowledge in those areas. And of course, they cannot make valid decisions based on their experience. The result, we all know: the DMCA and the like.
So I must say this. Congratulations, Mr. Boucher! In all sincerity, I would vote for you if you would run for the House in Canada.
Slashdot Mirror
The P4 is very different from the Athlon and the P3. I don't know how the new P4 (socket 478?) looks like exactly, but the older one (socket423) was definitely larger than the Athlon or the P3 socket. Probably it is not cost effective to produce such a case for the P4, since the differences in design and manufacturing would have added to a significant price.
Also, I haven't seen or heard of any people o/c-ing their P4s (correct me if I'm wrong). So that market share is pretty slim to begin with. If you're not into o/c-ing, such a case is definitely an overkill. Unless you appreciate the quietness of a water cooled system.
So it does not seem very surprising that this case does not support the P4. Maybe later on, they will add the support, but right now they're catering to the AMD o/c-ers, who are far more numerous than on the Intel platform.
No, it doesn't take voodoo to get java working. On 0.9.5 I just went over to netscape's dl page, and just started the java install for netscape6 on Linux, I believe (it was right after 0.9.5 came out, so it's been a while). The mozilla installer took everything from there, with its autoinstall feature.
After the download was complete, I restarted mozilla, and voila, I had java. I guess you could call it voodoo, since I did not touch anything during the whole process.
One thing tough, when you install plugins, you have to be logged in as the user who has write access to the mozilla directory. So if you were root, run mozilla as root when installing plugins (this is my case)
I've read through most of the posts so far, and there's a trend that I've noticed. Every poster is very worried that he/she will pay more than the estimates in the article, or that there would be a better/easier way to implement such a pay-per-view scheme.
But this assumes that a) you are at your home computer and b)you live in one of the rich countries (US, Canada, Western Europe, etc)
a) What happens if you don't browse from your home computer? Will your company get charged with your online entertainment? In that case, I can only imagine that ALL internet access will be cur off by most companies, or strict surveilance will be implemented to log all employee activity. If it's a university (which is my case), will all the labs be closed for outside access? Because the CS budgets (while greater than the philosophy ones for example), are not huge, and could definitely be unable to pay for this. Again, browsing quotas?
Another example are the Internet Cafes, which in Europe are far, far more popular than here in N America. How will they charge their customers? When I was in Romania (E Europe), one hour on the net was 50cents, but how much will it be after this will be implemented?
b) This will only work in the rich coutries, where a lot of people have bank accounts, credit cards, etc. In most of the world (which by the way, is very poor), the vast majority of people do not even deal with banks. Cash is the rule. So how will you charge them? If you're going to send them the bill at home, most likely it will never be paid. Not to mention that I really want to see a US company trying to bill a Chinese ISP for web useage. Yeah, that's going to work.
...as far as I know.
They would however (as I'm sure a lot of other people will point out) consume less electricity. Therefore their power consumption will go down, which in turn will lower the heat emission.
The reason why manufacturers stopped putting trackballs on laptops are fairly simple.
On one side, they are purely mechanical, and they're far more likely to fail than a touchpad or a track point. Couple with that the fact that dirt gets into them (much like the mice) and you've got a component that is more trouble than it's worth. A track ball needs frequent cleaning. A trackpad can be just wiped off with a cloth. And how would you get a track point dirty? (If you do, wash your hands more often)
Second of all, have you seen how much more is packed into new laptops? There's hardly any room to spare, and that track ball right in the middle of the box certainly doesn't help. A touchpad is definitely smaller (at least in depth). And I can also see how a trackpoint would be smaller too.
Definitely, he has to get a Panasonic Toughbook.
It's the most rugged laptop I've ever heard of (forget those titanium cased G4s, or anything else). When they came out with it, the demo unit was running under a constant stream of water pouring on the keyboard and the display. And by running I mean turned on, booted into Windows and running some demo software.
It's rated to widthstand a drop of about 3 ft on a hard floor. I don't know if it's operating drop or turned off, but it's still pretty impressive. It has a magnezium case, and the nice touch is the built-in handle. Also, all the components are encased into a special gel, that allows it to be dropped from the aforementioned height.
I don't know in the US, but here in Toronto (Canada) the Police cruisers are all equipped with Toughbooks.
So those are the advantages. The drawback is that because their construction they can't really be upgraded. Then again, I'm not sure what kind of performance one needs while driving farm equipment. But I'm guessing Quake3 or RTCF are not among the requirements.
Well, I did exactly the same you did, only in my case it was a downgrade.
My first distribution was Slackware 3.0, but after having some problems with it, I moved to Redhat 4.3, and stuck with it to this day (running 7.2 atm). Somewhere along my computer upgrades, I ended up with a spare 4.3 Gb hdd, and I decided to give Slack a try again. I installed it on my box, I decided I liked it, but the school year started, before I could do anything more with it. So it stayed unused for a couple of months.
BTW, the box that I used for the install was a Dual Celeron on an Abit BP6 board, TNT2 video, SB Live sound, CDROM, 3Com nic, etc.
Then I decided to upgrade my gateway, from a P100 to something more, and I got a good deal on a P166 box, complete with ATI video (Rage II), no sound, no CDROM, no hdd, nothing else.
Since I had the 4.3Gb hdd already with Slack on it, I decided to give it a try. I also added a Dlink and a 3Com nic, and a sb16. I was amazed to find out that EVERYTHING worked out of the box, except XFree86, but that was to be expected! I did not touch anything, and everyting was configured, as if Slack had been installed on the p166, and not on a DUAL Celeron.
So with any luck your box should be useable, with only minor tweaks. You are keeping everything the same (video, sound, nics, etc), and are just changing the CPU and mb. You should run into even fewer problems than with Windows.
There isn't any mention in the article about the expeted prices of the Hammer, so I thought I'd ask here. What are the price expectations for a processor like this? I mean from the specs alone (with so much stuff integrated into the die), it's going to be a fairly big beast.
Does the fact that it is new technology, and that it's a big (or bigger) die size automatically mean it's going to be very high priced? I remember when the P2 came out, I paid CAD $1200 for the 300Mhz, about 2 weeks after it was released. Now the P4 costs about the same (although a bit less than that) for the highest speed (2Ghz?)
So my question is this: will this processor be affordable (somewhere between a top of the line Athlon and a P4), or is it going to be much more? I think it's a very safe bet to assume that it will cost more than the Athlon.
If somebody has a real answer for this, please reply. It would be interesting to hear some opinions from the more knowledgeable.
Closed, proprietary software sucks a**!!!
Umm... Wait, you wanted opinions AGAINST Open Source? I know!
Closed, proprietary software sucks a**!!!
Yeah, I just want to see the RIAA hacking into MY computer! I mean, if I would live in the US. But I live in Canada, and the way things are looking right now, we're close to catching up with our neighbours in terms of idiotic tech-related laws.(DMCA and the like)
But supposing the RIAA will want to hack my box, they have to go through my OpenBSD internet gateway, that has nothing open but SSH2, then get into my Linux box, which again has nothing open except SSH2 and NFS, and finally get to my hdd in a meaningfull way so they would be able to delete something.
But unfortunately for them, even if they acomplish such an amazing feat (I'm not trying to boast, but this system is fairly tight for a home setup. No, please don't try portscanning me/ hacking into my box if you get my IP, I can't afford the bandwidth.) So even if they reach my hdd, all I have is about 500Mb-1Gb worth of new mp3s. All the rest is backed up on CDs.
So unless they figure out how to destroy a CD just by reading it in a CDROM, I think I'm safe. Now I know there are far deeper implications with this thing becoming a law, but just the fact itself is making me lmao!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I don't know why nobody posted this before (or why it didn't get modded up), but on my Nokia 8260, and on my old Samsung SCH8580 there is a built-in dictionary.
The way it works is quite simple, if you try to type the word "message" all you have to do is press 6377243, and it automatically guesses the match, in this case the word "message". If there are more than one match, all it takes is pressing a button multiple times, to scroll through the list of matches. It has English, French and I believe Spanish (my phone is my coat pocket, and I don't feel like getting it).
I've been using my Nokia for quite a while with this system, and honestly I don't need anyting else. It's almost perfect, and the only difficulty is when you want to insert names, or numbers, but that only requires a couple of extra key presses.
So my question is why bother with weird finger press combinations, finger-sensing buttons when the best solution is already out there?!? I guess this is one way somebody is trying to make extra money on royalties, but I don't know...
I keep reading that it is possible to use another AGP card with this mothergoard. What I would really like to know is wether I can hook up two displays to the box. One on the nForce output and one on a card of my choice.
I know it should be doable with an old PCI card and the nForce, or even with an old PCI card and a new AGP card (circumventing the nForce completely).
The one reason I can find (correct me if I'm wrong) is that the nForce is already an AGP card, and there can only be one such card on the mb. Is that true?
If it's possible, then I would have no problem buying a mb based on the nForce as soon as it becomes available (my dual Celery466 + TNT2 M64 is getting a bit too long in the tooth). Otherwise, for me at least, it would be a better option to go with the AMP chipset (is it the 760), which is probably cheaper. and just go with a GForce3 (which I would get anyways)
The FreeBSD 4.4 news haven't been posted for more than a few minutes, there are (were when I started writing) 6 posts, and already people are following a very annoying thread. What I mean is the stupid (IMO) advice that *BSD (or Linux or any open source project) should do this and that, be like this and that in order to be more average user friendly and to gain more market share.
/., and most of all, don't complain so much about it. Instead, do something about it. Mail the developers this advice, or better yet, help code the OS, write the documentation, and in general, help improve it.
PEOPLE! Do you think that the people, or the companies developing with those OSes are not aware of those problems? That they have no clue whatsoever as to what the general public wants? That they simply refuze to make their OSes user friendly, just to spite the users, and stay in a tiny share of the market?
They want more users, and they're doing everything possible to make their experience as pain-free and easy as possible. That they haven't reached perfection is not a surprise. But don't give such stupid advice on
But even this is not very relevant, for I'm using Linux because it suits me, and I like it, no matter how small its market share. And no matter how user (un)friendly it is. I like it (and I've been running it for the past 4.5 years)
I know, I know. My complaining does not help either. But I'm not doing it every time such a story is posted (check my posts if you don't believe me). I'm just getting fed up with all this useless noise. I'd much rather hear about the technical issues with FreeBSD (I haven't tried it yet, I'm running Linux and OpenBSD), the user experience, the major apps that have been ported to it, etc. THAT would help me, and others.
It's for this exact reason that I'm yet to purchase anything from a web site, save for my now non-existant domain name. I'm not saying that nobody should buy anything on the Internet, or that it's a bad thing to begin with.
But lets face it. Even now, after the "dot bust" or whatever it is called today, there still are sites that are getting hacked, Internet companies that are going bankrupt, etc. And everytime that happenes, my personal information is in danger of becoming public, or that it falls into the wrong hands.
I know dozens of people, some of them my friends, who have had their credit card numbers stolen. My best friend lost $400 on his VISA, and if it wouldn't have been for the fraud protection, he would be in a deep hole right now (we're students, we're not rich people). Losing money is the worst thing that can happen, but what about the little things? I'm getting 10-15 spam emails a day, and this is after some pretty drastic filters. But I know people who keep getting them in the hundreds. (I went on a trip this summer for a monts, and I had about 600 new messages). And there are many more reasons...
And to top it all off, these companies are treating the information that you give them as something to sell. WHEN IT'S NOT EVEN THEIRS TO BEGIN WITH!!!!!!!!!!!! It's MY credit card number, it's MY name, MY address, MY age that I inputed into their database. And yet they sell it off!
Don't get me wrong, I love the ideea of going on-line and shopping with GrogeryGateay.com, or buying anything, ordering any services online. But I'm definitely not going to do it untill I'm certain that my info and my money are safe. And ATM, no matter what anybody will say, they're not!
I for one will never replace my 50lb *nix manual with an e-paper one. Or for that matter any of my hundreds (if not more) of real paper books that I have collected. And I'm sure that most, if not all, people will agree with me.
The reason is really simple, imo. The e-paper requires a battery, circuitry, special inks, etc. In the end, it will deccay, break down or I might simply drop it into the bath tub while reading it and zap the hell out of me. I've had many electronic devices fail on me, and in all cases all the information stored on them was lost. Completely. The same is true for e-paper. Sooner or later (most likely really soon) it will break down, no matter how well you take care of it.
The same does not apply to normal, paper books. They last. And last. My oldest book is from the early 1900s, and by no means is it old. There are parchments that are thousands of years old. Granted, it's just as easy to destroy normal paper as it might be e-paper, but given proper care, normal paper has an almost endless life.
So if given the choice, I'd rather get an old-fashioned paper book that I can keep for as long as I want rather that a cool e-paper one that will BSOD in a couple of years.
but seriously, the whole thing is going to cost far more than $50k... I've read that it costs the Russians $10mil to send a rocket into space to the International Space Station. I'm just guessing, because I don't want to dig up the data right now. But I'm going to asume that this launch by NASA is going to be roughly the same amount of money, and it's definitely not less that $1mil.
So assuming a launch cost of anywhere from $1mil to $10mil, and considering there are 4 satelites going into orbit on the same flight, the price per satelite to launch is $250k to $2.5mil. And the final price for the satelite is $300k to $2.5mil.
Definitely not the $50k they're talking about. The ideea is still very interesting, and I hope it works out. But I just had to point out something that the article was obviously avoiding.
I wish I could come up with a joke after reading this article, but I simply cannot. It hits too close to the heart of the problem, and it's a huge one. Because aparently this is where the world is going right now, and there is no going back. The problem is that everything, not only computers, is becomming more and more the same.
:P
I was going to write a longer post, but then I realized one thing: There is no way that this can be stopped. Maybe all computers will run M$ software, or maybe not. But then look around you! Even though in the early 1900s there were cars running on gas, steam and electricity, only the gas cars remain. Why? They were the most feasible to build. Now the technology has evolved to a point where we might see some other kind of car using maybe H2, solar or some other energy source, and all the new cars will use that new, better source.
Another example is the cell phone. In the beginning all were analogue (at least in the US). Go to Europe now, and most people don't even know what that is. Why? All cells there are digital, and most of the ones in the US are the same. And how many digital protocols are there? GPM is only one of them, but soon 3G is comming, and that will be the world standard.
The point I'm trying to make is that maybe uniformity is good. Maybe all computers will run M$ software, although I doubt it! (I would never trade Linux for Windoze). So the problem is not that every computer will run the same OS. The problem however is finding the best OS to use on all computers.
But it's 5am where I live, and I think I'll solve it tomorrow.
I think this is interesting.
I've just returned from a trip to Europe, and I've gotten a chance to play with some of the phones there (not all, but most of the models available). And I've also used plenty of phones in Canada. And I must say one thing: the phones in Europe are so confuzing, it's unbelievable! The worse in my opinion are the Alcatels, which not only are different in setup, buttons and menus from any other manufacturer, but also among themselves. I got one to use for free (I only paid for the card and calls) there from a friend, and it took me about a week to figure out everything the damn thing could do! It was so counter-intuitive, it was unbelievable! (For those who have one, can anyone explain why is it that the smily button will exit any menu, cancel any action or abort anything, while the "NO" button won't do a thing?!?!?)
And belive me, I'm definitely not a techology impaired guy, alfter all, I'm a CS major and I've been using computers and electronic gadgets for about half of my life. The phones I did like were the Nokias (which are the same on both sides of the pond), Ericssons and Samsungs (I own a Samsung in Canada).
The point I'm trying to make, having each phone use the same OS (or 2 or 3 but not many more) is a good thing. Be they as customizable as they might be, it would still maintain a certain level of compatibility between models from the same company and from different companies. I could pick up a phone from one manufacturer and not waste an entire day trying to figure out how to send an SMS or an email. I mean those things should be useable without reading the manual which I didn't have.
Believe me, I'm all for variety, but not when it comes to something as basic as a menu or the buttons on a phone. Imagine is MS Word's menu would be 100% different from KOffice, which in turn would be 100% different from WordPerfect and so on? If the "Save" option would be under "File" in one app, but under "Edit" in another one and under "Help" in another one.
In conclusion, I'm all for RH's initiative in the mobile market.
I can say that they are one company that does not suck.
Their internet cable access rocks! Granted, I've had my share of problems in the past. I was I think the second or third customer in my area, and as more people signed up, things got slooow. But now, about 2 almost 3 years later, it's fast. They upgraded their cables since then. And their reliability wrt to the tv and internet access is really good. And it's been this way for most part. The worst experience was a 3 day down-time due to some idiot cutting the cable while digging in front of his house.
Not to mention the fact that they support static IPs. They don't bother you about IP masquarading, so I can run my four boxes off the same IP (it would be an extra CA$10/month for each additional IP) I know of other providers cough-Sympatico DSL-cough who won't let you do that. They even let you use Linux w/o a problem and I believe that they have tech support for it too.
And they're really cheap. It costs about CA$50/month for the internet (which includes the modem rental) plus CA$30/month for the TV. Which is about US$50. I know people are paying more than that for DSL alone in the US.
The point I'm trying to make, a Linux box replacing the WebTV is great news. And even if it isn't compatible with other providers, it's still ok. I couldn't care less.
about the great new data storage technologies to come in the future... The 140Gb cdrom, the 90-something solid state memory hdd, now this...
While in the meantime I don't see anything more than the announcements. And everybody is still using the same hdds, 700Mb cdroms and DVDs.
I'll believe these new technoligies when I'll be able to buy them in FutureShop (Canadian computer stores chain).
A virtual war against frugs would be just as useless as the real one. I Have lived a great part of my life in Europe, and now I live in Canada, so I have had an experience with the way both continents are dealing with the "drug problem". And it would seem that the American way is fighting a loosing battle. That is not to say that the European way is much better, at least in most countries back there. I have also used drugs (a very, very small amount, that's true), so I can at least look at both sides of drug use. I'm not using any drugs atm (last ounce of weed I had, has been sitting in a drawer somewhere for the past year or so, and I haven't touched any other drugs since).
From all I've seen (on TV and even personal experience) or read in books and newspapers (William Burrough's Junky is an awsome book on the drug addiction problem), whenever the government tries to force control over drugs it fails. Miserably even. No matter how hard any police force is trying to stop trafficants from bringing drugs into a country, the harder the criminals are trying to achieve their purpose. The result is very simple, in my opinion at least: the government spends a LOT of money, people on both sides get killed (and even innocent bystanders), but the drugs still get into the hands of the consumer, the addict. The only difference is that they cost a lot more than they would if the drugs were not fought so hard. By cost I don't mean only money, but lives mostly. If you don't believe this point I'm making, just open look around on the news. For every drug bust they show, I'm 100% certain that a 1000 go uncaught.
For me, the only solution, the only realistic one that would work is to make drugs legal, while maintaining a tight control over their use. By that I mean if someone wants to try drugs, they should identify themselves, be offered counceling, rehab, etc if they want to stop using drugs, or otherwise they should be allowed to fry their brains all they want. Now I know this sounds ridiculous to a lot of people (if not most people), but just the fact that the number of drug addicts has stayed pretty much constant before and after the drug was in the US has started should tell a lot. The one place where this example has showed results is, of course, Amsterdam.
While the drug use in that city is likely highest in the world, that is primarily because it is the _only_ city that does not have strict laws against drugs. So all the addicts from everywhere crowd there. But that would not be the case if the anti-drug laws were dropped, or at least weakened, that would not be the case anymore. And over there the crime rate is not higher than in any other place on this planet. It is even lower (just compare it to the poor neighbourhoods in any US city, and you'll see what I mean).
And the whole ideea that if you let people use drugs freely everybody will become an addict, that is pure bullshit. I've had access to them, tried them, didn't like them, so I've stopped. And I'm really not likely to use them ever again.
So drop the drug laws (or weaken them at least), stop spending so much money on the drug wars, and forget about virtual ones which would achieve absolutely nothing.
Nope, no computers here...
Well, if you've mentioned a Vulcan as your example, then there won't be any first contact, at least not on their part.
:)
I know that the Federation has that pesky law, called the "Prime Directive", and I believe that the Vulcans have the same (I'm not sure about it though). As you probably know, one of the clauses of the directive is that you cannot come into contact with a civilization unless they have warp technology. We don't have it. So no vulcan will visit us any time soon.
As for other species, I'm sure that any concievable kind of aliens have been depicted in movies of all sorts. Movies which also explain pretty well what would happen in such scenarions. And if the predictions in the movies would come true, I'm a lot more concerned about OUR rights rather than the aliens (see Mars Attacks, Idependence Day, etc, etc).
Hope this answers your question.
I guess this is why I'm using Netscape, Mozilla, lynx and a few other non-M$ browsers. Umm... No, wait... It's because M$IE won't run on Linux.
Seriously though, I really don't remember any such exploits for Netscape, or the other browsers. I mean sure, there were (and are) web pages that would crash Netscape hard, but the worst case scenario was "killall -9 netscape" (or Ctrl+Alt+Del in Winblows) and that was it. It was only when the M$ crap took over the market that such things started happening...
I'm not even going to go into that subject, since the rant that would follow would take maybe... 2-3 years? I mean between MSIE, Outlook and all the other M$ Internet software, we've had pretty much an attack a day...
So this is hardly any news.
While I am not a US citizen (I currently live in Canada), I must say that rep. Boucher has impressed me with his opinions regarding the internet, and the way he deals with his constituents.
I'm certain that it has been said many times before, but what the US needs, and far more, what the world needs are people like him. He has a clear grasp of the technical aspects of our society, and understands the possibilities and the limitations of the Internet and of the other aspects of our computer age. While they are not 100% complete, he is the only (or one of the very few) people who knows enough about the computer industry (the Napster fenomenon being just one example), the recording industry (with its push to control everything under the sun that can be copyrighteable) to be able to make sane decisions. And if he does not know the facts, well at least he's willing to learn more.
Far too many people get elected without having even the least bit of knowledge in those areas. And of course, they cannot make valid decisions based on their experience. The result, we all know: the DMCA and the like.
So I must say this. Congratulations, Mr. Boucher! In all sincerity, I would vote for you if you would run for the House in Canada.