Previously the big problem with being a linux user was that there were very few common online media formats that could be shared with and between Windows / OSX, however with the advent of a working Flash plugin on Win/OSX/Linux (what? there's other OS's?;) ) a common ground is now available.
Even if Silverlight takes over the bulk of the downward push media (ie, CNN/Disney/whoever) it doesn't matter for the people who are publishing their own media since there is a viable option already that almost everyone has installed.
"Hydrogen gas is highly energetic if it reacts with oxygen or other oxidants like sulfate, as the Hindenburg disaster demonstrated."
What's the point of adding these sorts of comments? It's it widely understood that the actual flames captured on the footage was in fact from the covering and paint of the Hindenburg, not the hydrogen which would have very rapidly dissapated in the first place?
Supporting -Linux- from a cold-start is a pain, not OpenSource.
With Solaris and FreeBSD (as examples) you know what you're in for when you get there. With linux you never quite know for sure. Sure, you can gear yourself up with most of the more common setups (Debian, RH, etc) but beyond that things fracture into thousands of variants. From starting scripts to configuration files, it's a mess.
Threads are useful, that's granted - but it would seem a lot of people are trying to convert wholesale over to this threading model just for the hell of it, running along with the apparent reasoning that threading is "lighter" than processes. Maybe threads are lighter/cheaper on Windows systems - but a Unix system with copy-on-demand paging forking/process system is _DESIGNED_ to handle processes. Right now a lot of the time threads are a hack. Unix and processes work nicely together.
As for "maximising" available resources, well don't forget there's typically another couple of dozen processes running on any give Unix setup, more so on a multi-user multi-purpose machine (let's say WWW, email and DNS setup - throw in SpamAssassin for lots of fun) there's no shortage of available processes to use up a CPU. On a monolithic system where it's running only one process, sure, threads become useful there to spread the load.
My gripe basically boils down to a lot of people going along and choosing to use threads rather than forking because they think that it's "cool" or (supposedly) "lighter" - not because they've done any real world testing/checking. Remember, Unix was built around the idea of many small processes/programs working together, so that'd tend to naturally allow usage of multiple CPUs without any exotic hacks./rant.
I give these people full credit for persuing their idea this far. However they're going to have a very difficult time with a design like this as it is inherently unstable. While it may fly fine when straight and level, perhaps doing gentle moves, it'll be very happy to snap back with some very ugly characteristics when pushed outside of its stability envelope.
A full time computer working on the stability will help a lot, however at some points no amount of computer intervention will re-establish stable flight (ie, tumbling).
Then again, similar things were said about the helicopter:D
Looking forward to seeing what they end up with... especially for the turbine motor.
I've seen a few comments above from people saying that Slackware makes poor economic sense. I say it can make economic sense in many cases.
Slackware is a distro, like any other - and just like any other distro you tend to have to be familiar with it in order to get things done efficiently. However, what Slackware does let you get away with is to update packages direct from the developers without having to worry about exploding the "package database" or maintainance system. If you want "fancy" package handling systems you can use the likes of slapt-get or similar. Slackware won't tear you apart or breakdown into a locked up mess if you install something from a "non-slackware-approved" source package.
The default relative daemon sparseness of Slackware makes it quite easy to keep an eye on, especially if you're trying to keep an eye out for malicious things. The whole start up script system is rather simple enough too (will we get a soft-linked/etc/init.d though?).
That said, there's a few things which I wish were included by default in slackware (and perhaps will be in the future) but no single distro is perfect. Nearly all distros require some degree of tweaking.
Best of all though, Slackware is quick to download, quite often you only need the first ISO and you've got yourself a fairly comprehensive system ready to go, for someone who knows what they're doing.
>>Why do you want to run VMWare? I have used both VMWare and qemu (as well as Xen, but I don't think that will work if you are interested in running Windows)
What is it with people and their desire to try and disseminate your reason for having or wanting to, God forbid, purchased a software package. Mostly I hear it from people who -
- don't use VM's for business work - don't like commercial software - don't understand that time == money - have more time on their hands than pending tasks
It's one thing to not want to purchase software, fair enough - but let's not try and stone people.
Fact is, vmware out of the "box" runs and runs very well. It's a dead simple system to use even with an unsupported distro like Slackware linux. It's $199 USD (for workstation) and the cost of the purchase is long forgotten after the ease of use has saved you many times more. There's a lot more "messing around" with other solutions. You can burn up $199 in wages in half a day.
The difference between a functional package and a usable -and- functional package often isn't a lot but it's a small difference that a lot of people are more than happy to pay for.
As with most solutions to these situations you may find yourself needing a -mix-.
Personally, I use ClamAV on the mailserver (incombination with Xamime - http://xamime.com/ works well and keeps a majority of the things out.
However, you really need an orthagonal approach too, that includes banning things that aren't meant to be coming into your network in the first place, as well has having perhaps a different branded AV agent on the client machines.
Getting rid of (if possible) the vectors used by the viruses on the workstations helps a lot too. ActiveX, Macros (okay, not many people can live without those in office I suppose).
If you'd like the advantages of LaTeX without having to remember every nuance, then LyX ( http://www.lyx.org/ ) is definately a GREAT thing.
Since converting to LyX all our documents come out with consistently high quality. Best of all, from LyX you can convert to almost any other format as you need.
My wife a few years ago wanted to get into pet items, beds, toys etc etc and so I bought her a pair of domains to start the shop ( petluxuries.com etc ), alas, 6 months later and our lives had changed a bit and the pet luxuries idea was out the door, a shame since it's a rather profitable market. So now we're left with two domains that aren't much use to us, so what better to do than to sell them.
What does iritate me though is when I'm trying to buy a domain which is held by a mass squatter and despite seeing the domain become expired you can't even aquire it (due to the 3~6 month wait period:( ) only to find 6 months later that they finally did renew it at the last minute. 4 weeks I can understand but -6 months- ?
Well, I for one have no problems with the "convict" heritage - something rather unique if nothing else.
I'd love to see a lot of the US TV shows completely axed from our stations, sure it means we'd be left with little more than ABC SBS and Neighbours, oh well, not like that's a bad thing (okay, Neighbours we can axe too).
I don't have a problem with the US per`se (sure, I have problems with their behaviours and politics etc - but every country has issues), I have a problem with Australia trying to become the next state in the US.
We're Australia, we should be proud and happy of that.
The F18's here are having to have total center barrel replacements - mostly because we've used them for roles where the US uses F16/15's. Good case of using the wrong tool for the job.
The F18's precision bombing ability has only been a recent addition in -our- fleet. Perhaps you guys got some better stuff first up.
The F18 has insufficient range, speed or strike power to make it ideally practical here in AUSTRALIA. A little different no doubt in the US.
The F18 isn't really suited for independent action across our gulf to areas such as Indonesia, even more so now with our "opponents" having purchased the Sukhoi's
The JSF, with about 2000km (vs F111's 6000km) range falls a bit short too. We're a big and SPARSELY populated country here and we don't have the budget to realistically put a nice squadron of JSF's at every bay.
Basically, Australia is trading its independence ability in and leaning more on the US to support us in the military role.
Mostly, I'd say it's more a case perhaps of politics causing poor choices, than the planes themselves being implicitly bad.
The super-hornet is quite different to the original, yes. Even still I don't know why they'd replace the F15's with them, somewhat entirely different in roles *shrug* it would seem politics dominates rather than purpose (that's supposed to seem like it's a revolutionary idea;) ).
Maybe they've watched ID4 too many times "Look, Will Smith kicked butt in the F18"
After the disasters that came with the F1-11 and the F-18, I'm astounded that Australia is -still- going back for another beating. I've got a brother-in-law who works with the F-18's and there's absolutely no end to the 'critical failures' that they're seeing. Given the technical 'superiority' of these JSF's, I'm expecting they'll barely get out of the maintainance hangers. I can't even see a tactical purpose for the JSF in this sun charred, massively open country.
To be fair, after a lot of overhauls and modifications the F1-11 actually turned out to be a good plane, the F-18 on the other hand...
Personally,I see no problem with paying for software if it helps you out, especially if you're working in a commercial environment. The fact that there is a lot of OpenSource/Free software out there is a -bonus-.
To date, despite running with OpenSource, I've purchased Win4Lin, VMware, QCAD, numerous other small ( $50) packages and recently MainActor (though MA was a bit harder to justify), it's part of business, while the upfront costs can bite, if you've thought it out and you _really_ need it, then it pays off very quickly.
It would seem that living in an OpenSource environment makes it harder for some people to remember that there was a time where paying for software was very much the 'norm'.
Anyhow, back to the whole topic - If $400 is too much to pay (or $125 as someone else pointed out for the non-commercial version) then either (a) you're doing this as a hobby, (b) you're semi-serious and need it to make the 'jump' to doing some more serious work, (c) you're a commercial entity but are expecting too much.
>>>Rather it's most likely that a bunch of fat rich people will pull up with trucks, take all the food they can carry, and then go to the nearest market and resell it all.
Over here (Australia) it seems very much to have flopped. I myself haven't even the slightest inclination of going to see it - did they stuff up the marketing here or is it just a dead movie?
Slashdot Mirror
Previously the big problem with being a linux user was that there were very few common online media formats that could be shared with and between Windows / OSX, however with the advent of a working Flash plugin on Win/OSX/Linux (what? there's other OS's? ;) ) a common ground is now available.
Even if Silverlight takes over the bulk of the downward push media (ie, CNN/Disney/whoever) it doesn't matter for the people who are publishing their own media since there is a viable option already that almost everyone has installed.
Aren't there already existing [open] developments that surpass H.264 already ?
Thanks for that link. Proved to be a very interesting read.
"Hydrogen gas is highly energetic if it reacts with oxygen or other oxidants like sulfate, as the Hindenburg disaster demonstrated."
What's the point of adding these sorts of comments? It's it widely understood that the actual flames captured on the footage was in fact from the covering and paint of the Hindenburg, not the hydrogen which would have very rapidly dissapated in the first place?
Supporting -Linux- from a cold-start is a pain, not OpenSource.
With Solaris and FreeBSD (as examples) you know what you're in for when you get there. With linux you never quite know for sure. Sure, you can gear yourself up with most of the more common setups (Debian, RH, etc) but beyond that things fracture into thousands of variants. From starting scripts to configuration files, it's a mess.
start-rant:
/rant.
Threads are useful, that's granted - but it would seem a lot of people are trying to convert wholesale over to this threading model just for the hell of it, running along with the apparent reasoning that threading is "lighter" than processes. Maybe threads are lighter/cheaper on Windows systems - but a Unix system with copy-on-demand paging forking/process system is _DESIGNED_ to handle processes. Right now a lot of the time threads are a hack. Unix and processes work nicely together.
As for "maximising" available resources, well don't forget there's typically another couple of dozen processes running on any give Unix setup, more so on a multi-user multi-purpose machine (let's say WWW, email and DNS setup - throw in SpamAssassin for lots of fun) there's no shortage of available processes to use up a CPU. On a monolithic system where it's running only one process, sure, threads become useful there to spread the load.
My gripe basically boils down to a lot of people going along and choosing to use threads rather than forking because they think that it's "cool" or (supposedly) "lighter" - not because they've done any real world testing/checking. Remember, Unix was built around the idea of many small processes/programs working together, so that'd tend to naturally allow usage of multiple CPUs without any exotic hacks.
Mm....wonder if this would work on my dual-CPU Opteron 248 (Running Slamd64).
I'm currently using MainActor 5.5 (for linux).
I give these people full credit for persuing their idea this far. However they're going to have a very difficult time with a design like this as it is inherently unstable. While it may fly fine when straight and level, perhaps doing gentle moves, it'll be very happy to snap back with some very ugly characteristics when pushed outside of its stability envelope.
:D
A full time computer working on the stability will help a lot, however at some points no amount of computer intervention will re-establish stable flight (ie, tumbling).
Then again, similar things were said about the helicopter
Looking forward to seeing what they end up with... especially for the turbine motor.
Only because I've had quite a few apps looking for it when installing. No other reason. I do actually manually create a init.d tree anyhow.
I've seen a few comments above from people saying that Slackware makes poor economic sense. I say it can make economic sense in many cases.
/etc/init.d though?).
Slackware is a distro, like any other - and just like any other distro you tend to have to be familiar with it in order to get things done efficiently. However, what Slackware does let you get away with is to update packages direct from the developers without having to worry about exploding the "package database" or maintainance system. If you want "fancy" package handling systems you can use the likes of slapt-get or similar. Slackware won't tear you apart or breakdown into a locked up mess if you install something from a "non-slackware-approved" source package.
The default relative daemon sparseness of Slackware makes it quite easy to keep an eye on, especially if you're trying to keep an eye out for malicious things. The whole start up script system is rather simple enough too (will we get a soft-linked
That said, there's a few things which I wish were included by default in slackware (and perhaps will be in the future) but no single distro is perfect. Nearly all distros require some degree of tweaking.
Best of all though, Slackware is quick to download, quite often you only need the first ISO and you've got yourself a fairly comprehensive system ready to go, for someone who knows what they're doing.
>>Why do you want to run VMWare? I have used both VMWare and qemu (as well as Xen, but I don't think that will work if you are interested in running Windows)
What is it with people and their desire to try and disseminate your reason for having or wanting to, God forbid, purchased a software package. Mostly I hear it from people who -
- don't use VM's for business work
- don't like commercial software
- don't understand that time == money
- have more time on their hands than pending tasks
It's one thing to not want to purchase software, fair enough - but let's not try and stone people.
Fact is, vmware out of the "box" runs and runs very well. It's a dead simple system to use even with an unsupported distro like Slackware linux. It's $199 USD (for workstation) and the cost of the purchase is long forgotten after the ease of use has saved you many times more. There's a lot more "messing around" with other solutions. You can burn up $199 in wages in half a day.
The difference between a functional package and a usable -and- functional package often isn't a lot but it's a small difference that a lot of people are more than happy to pay for.
As with most solutions to these situations you may find yourself needing a -mix-.
Personally, I use ClamAV on the mailserver (incombination with Xamime - http://xamime.com/ works well and keeps a majority of the things out.
However, you really need an orthagonal approach too, that includes banning things that aren't meant to be coming into your network in the first place, as well has having perhaps a different branded AV agent on the client machines.
Getting rid of (if possible) the vectors used by the viruses on the workstations helps a lot too. ActiveX, Macros (okay, not many people can live without those in office I suppose).
If you'd like the advantages of LaTeX without having to remember every nuance, then LyX ( http://www.lyx.org/ ) is definately a GREAT thing.
Since converting to LyX all our documents come out with consistently high quality. Best of all, from LyX you can convert to almost any other format as you need.
My wife a few years ago wanted to get into pet items, beds, toys etc etc and so I bought her a pair of domains to start the shop ( petluxuries.com etc ), alas, 6 months later and our lives had changed a bit and the pet luxuries idea was out the door, a shame since it's a rather profitable market. So now we're left with two domains that aren't much use to us, so what better to do than to sell them.
:( ) only to find 6 months later that they finally did renew it at the last minute. 4 weeks I can understand but -6 months- ?
What does iritate me though is when I'm trying to buy a domain which is held by a mass squatter and despite seeing the domain become expired you can't even aquire it (due to the 3~6 month wait period
Paul.
Well, I for one have no problems with the "convict" heritage - something rather unique if nothing else.
I'd love to see a lot of the US TV shows completely axed from our stations, sure it means we'd be left with little more than ABC SBS and Neighbours, oh well, not like that's a bad thing (okay, Neighbours we can axe too).
I don't have a problem with the US per`se (sure, I have problems with their behaviours and politics etc - but every country has issues), I have a problem with Australia trying to become the next state in the US.
We're Australia, we should be proud and happy of that.
The F18's here are having to have total center barrel replacements - mostly because we've used them for roles where the US uses F16/15's. Good case of using the wrong tool for the job.
The F18's precision bombing ability has only been a recent addition in -our- fleet. Perhaps you guys got some better stuff first up.
The F18 has insufficient range, speed or strike power to make it ideally practical here in AUSTRALIA. A little different no doubt in the US.
The F18 isn't really suited for independent action across our gulf to areas such as Indonesia, even more so now with our "opponents" having purchased the Sukhoi's
The JSF, with about 2000km (vs F111's 6000km) range falls a bit short too. We're a big and SPARSELY populated country here and we don't have the budget to realistically put a nice squadron of JSF's at every bay.
Basically, Australia is trading its independence ability in and leaning more on the US to support us in the military role.
Mostly, I'd say it's more a case perhaps of politics causing poor choices, than the planes themselves being implicitly bad.
Feel free to browse over - http://www.ausairpower.net/APA-FAQ-2005.html
The super-hornet is quite different to the original, yes. Even still I don't know why they'd replace the F15's with them, somewhat entirely different in roles *shrug* it would seem politics dominates rather than purpose (that's supposed to seem like it's a revolutionary idea ;) ).
Maybe they've watched ID4 too many times "Look, Will Smith kicked butt in the F18"
Mmmm... F15's, yes, I'd loved to have seen those.
I think one thing that held them back as being an option was the 'relatively' short life of the engines, other than that, a fantastic plane.
After the disasters that came with the F1-11 and the F-18, I'm astounded that Australia is -still- going back for another beating. I've got a brother-in-law who works with the F-18's and there's absolutely no end to the 'critical failures' that they're seeing. Given the technical 'superiority' of these JSF's, I'm expecting they'll barely get out of the maintainance hangers. I can't even see a tactical purpose for the JSF in this sun charred, massively open country.
To be fair, after a lot of overhauls and modifications the F1-11 actually turned out to be a good plane, the F-18 on the other hand...
Personally,I see no problem with paying for software if it helps you out, especially if you're working in a commercial environment. The fact that there is a lot of OpenSource/Free software out there is a -bonus-.
To date, despite running with OpenSource, I've purchased Win4Lin, VMware, QCAD, numerous other small ( $50) packages and recently MainActor (though MA was a bit harder to justify), it's part of business, while the upfront costs can bite, if you've thought it out and you _really_ need it, then it pays off very quickly.
It would seem that living in an OpenSource environment makes it harder for some people to remember that there was a time where paying for software was very much the 'norm'.
Anyhow, back to the whole topic - If $400 is too much to pay (or $125 as someone else pointed out for the non-commercial version) then either (a) you're doing this as a hobby, (b) you're semi-serious and need it to make the 'jump' to doing some more serious work, (c) you're a commercial entity but are expecting too much.
My eyeballs shiver and scream with horror when ever it sees either of those two start up.... they know it's going to be a long and tormented night.
>>>Rather it's most likely that a bunch of fat rich people will pull up with trucks, take all the food they can carry, and then go to the nearest market and resell it all.
Except that your food supply is unlimited.
Over here (Australia) it seems very much to have flopped. I myself haven't even the slightest inclination of going to see it - did they stuff up the marketing here or is it just a dead movie?
[Simplified!] Reminds me of the mormons adding the dead to their membership lists just to bolster numbers.
Oh Great, I just found an 'all in one' installer for Lyx
l
http://developer.berlios.de/projects/lyxwininstal