To clarify, if you care about data integrity rather than just disk array uptime, RAID levels 3, 4, 5 and now 6 aren't the answer. Examine RAID 1+0 much more closely.
The short and sweet of it is that on event of a rebuild, if a single drive serves up a corrupted block, the rebuilt data will be corrupt and with no way of affirming that. Google for ACNC's website, as well as BAARF. The original BAARF site seems to be down.
I'm wondering who we tell off first. The journalists hyping a report, or the game players who have knee jerk responses.
Games don't make people commit violent acts. That much is obvious. Games however, and this has been successfully demonstrated with desensitivity training in the military, and results of introducing television into remote communities, do desensitise the players to the consequences of their actions, and as such increase the range of immediately emotionally painless responses to any given situation.
Previously, people with inadequate ability to deal with their environments bottled it up, or released their frustrations into other areas as they actually felt revulsion as the concept of causing pain to another human. A correct upbringing with the social code implanted accordingly, meant that people would actively avoid the emotional pain that goes with causing physical harm to another person.
Most people still have their social circuitry wired correctly. Most of us won't commit a violent act when presented with a stressful situation. But I'll use dblh3l1x's comment as an example.
These articles make me want to hurt someone.
Why does he want to hurt someone? Is that a valid and correct response to something he takes as a slight against? Even better yet, where did he learn that this was a valid response, even just in verbal expression?
Surely dblh3l1x's Mother wouldn't have taught him that, and most probably his Father wouldn't have either.
Where else was that behaviour learnt as acceptable?
Audio reproduction is like artwork. It's all about interpretation and having your own understanding. You may accept having a speaker pump out sound.
An audiophile wants to be able to close their eyes and convince themselves that the artist is right there infront of them. Any resonable audiophile will also admit that there are points of diminishing return. Just like a computer, a car, or other performance device.
And seeing as you only seem to a very minimal understanding of the bit you quoted, I'll try to explain it in baby terms for you.
Dynamics: Dynamic response is the ability to go from loud to quiet, and back again, with clarity and accuracy. Not like your Britney-pop which is compressed, and therefore has a very low dynamic range. Try the Ravel's Bolero maybe, or if that's a bit too far out, try Stairway to Heaven. Please do try and listen to the entire piece.
Imaging: Imaging is the placing of the sound. If the singer was slightly off centre while singing, the reproduction should have the singer slightly off centre. You should be able to hear the side of the set that the drummers cymbals were on. That EAX or A3D logo you have on your soundcard is a way of imaging the sound while you play Half Life. Yes, really, the fact you thought the sound was behind you was because of imaging.
Frequency Extremes: Well, I think I shouldn't have to explain this one, I can imagine you can figure it all by yourself. I'm hoping anyway. As you like hard stats, this one can be proven quite successfully with a frequency generator, and an analyser. Oh, you don't understand, well, here I go. Frequency extremes are at both the high frequency range (you know, around 20,000 Hz) and at the low range (around 20 Hz). Yeah, the fully siiik bass that your three 15" subs put out in your fully phat Civic. To keep the high frequency, and low frequency stuff at the same levels as the mid range, it's actually not an easy thing to do. He's saying the iPod does it well.
Now, moron, if you're going to karma whore, next time at least attempt to understand the article and the terminology the author uses. It might not make you look like such an idiot.
Oh god not again... The lengths some people will goto to try and damage Theo's pride.
What a stupid comment. Totally and utterly stupid.
OpenSSH is considered by many to be a core service, right up there with the kernel. If there is an exploitable bug in OpenSSH, there is a bug in OpenSSH. Plain and simple. It becomes important that we know about the potential bugs.
It's not an attempt to discredit Theo, or is it nitpicking at the OpenSSH service. I'd prefer these were found and fixed, rather than them being left unknown in order to keep Theo's ego inflated.
I've had the oppurtunity many times to go for rides in real simulators, with the simulator staff present to provide all that interaction. I've also sat in the jump seat many times as my Father is a pilot.
I'm an X-Plane fanatic myself, but I'll agree that the real thing and X-Plane are still worlds apart when it comes to the actual reality of flying.
But I do feel most of the difference lies not in the fact it's on a computer, but that you don't have enough sensory input. Professional motion platforms and other sensory input systems of 10 years ago were still enough to make you think you were really there.
As has often been said, it's not about presenting realism, but the illusion of believability. The flight model in X-Plane is very believable. Add a motion platform, and other events and inputs, it'd be a much real experience.
Having said that, it's still fairly common to meet armchair pilots that want to fly with all the distractions. More often than not, it's for the sheer joy of "flying".
Only as a backup system. Pilots still have to be able to navigate (like they have for the last 90 years) by visual references and dead reckoning, or instrumentation.
Larger aircraft use intertial navigation systems in preference to GPS based. INS is dependant on the aeroplane being in a known location before flight, and usually can place itself to a few metres after flying half way around the globe. It's also not prone to the obscure jumps and hops that can happen with GPS.
Basically it's the Red Hat network stuff that's not open sourced. What you're paying for with RHAS/RHEE is support, not the actual OS.
Contact your local Red Hat office, they're quite willing to send you a copy of their licensing information. If you don't like the terms, feel free to tell Red Hat how much they suck.
You're quite allowed to post modified ISO images sans all the RHN stuff. You can actually take a RH 7.3 CD image, put the RHAS you built onto it, change the catalogue and off you go.
A little while ago, I downloaded all of the RHAS SRPMs, built them up and installed a RHAS box for myself. Easy enough to do with a day of drinking coffee waiting for a compiler.
I really should release my build instructions, or an ISO. Last I looked, I couldn't find anyone else that'd done it.
Another classic example of people opening their mouths as authorities on a topic before they have actually found out for themselves.
Yes, it is illegal to provide false information on the census form.
It's also unconstitutional for any department or official of the Australian Government to ask you to validate your faith. If questioned as to the accuracy of your claim, so long as you reply with something to the effect of "I believed in what I call the Jedi religion at the time of the census", you're all clear.
If you're stupid enough to reply "Haha! Great joke huh?", expect a fine coming your way.
I would cite the relevant sections of the constitution and codes, but I don't have the references handy, and it took me 10 minutes with Google and www.fed.gov.au to find them the first time.
If that's your attitude to securing your systems, go back to Microsoft.
I've been aruging this point with Theo's Fan Boys for the last few days, and none of them seem to get it. Let's review what my actions would have been in each of the above scenarios.
I may have been rooted. I'd get agro at Theo because he didn't inform us when he knew. If he knew, blackhats knew too.
Disable sshd on my systems. I use RedHat because I know they put a fair bit of QA onto their releases. I know people use Debian or many other OSes for the same reason. Wait for a QA tested, and fixed version to come out. Avoid using the known buggy version as a temporary fix.
Disable sshd on my systems. Assess the risk to me, and as to if the bad code has any relevence to me, and if it can be disabled by a feature switch. Make a choice based on the information given to me, and continue on my way.
It's not Theo's job to ensure my systems are secure. It's mine. This is the premise behind full disclosure, letting me make the judgement call on the information given to me. If I choose to ignore Theo, and get hacked, it's my fault, and my fault alone for ingoring the information given to me.
The security world isn't a fair one. The good guys only have access to what the other good guys share. The bad guys have access to both worlds. Like I said before, if Theo knows, chances are there's at least one bad guy out there that knows.
Yes, maybe an mp3 encoded at 256kbps is good enough, but it's hardly correct. I own a small recording studio, and have two sets of monitors for use. I keep a lot of purchased music in mp3 format for inspiration and just general listening for when I'm doing things, and am always finding sounds in mp3 compressed music that sounds as if I'd just run a frozen chicken through a bandsaw using a blunt blade.
I'm using both a $800AUD Kenwood XD-750 system, with its stock speakers, and a $5000 Marantz SR-18 receiver with Jamo LCR 2 left and rights, with a Jamo sub. On both, I can hear problems in the mp3 encoding process.
It's not about voice, it's not about your stock stand synth sounds your favourite boy band pumps out. It's about attacks and clarity of things like bass guitars over long periods, with plenty of other things happening in that time.
Prime example that I came across recently. Eve's track featuring Gwen Stefani, "Let Me Blow Your Mind". There is an instrument in that track that most mp3 encoders just can't cope with properly. The only solution in the end was to use 320kbps on that section, and accept what it did. The attack was simply too sharp at the frequency at which it was playing.
Some people won't accept this in their music, and all the more power to them.
And your concept of snobbism from "self-declared audiophiles" is utter tripe. I'm getting pretty sick and tired of reading endless uninformed crap from lamers who know nothing of sound or audio production. Stereo gear is like everything else out there, there is a point of diminishing returns, and it's entirely upto the purchaser if they want it.
And I do want to see a basis for your 99% and 1% statistics.
I can only speak from personal experience, but moving images and audio while you sleep can do weird things.
I routinely used to fall asleep in a beanbag infront of my television on a Saturday morning, after my hour long 6am ice skating training session. In Australia at 7am or so on a Saturday morning, most free to air channels have music videos for a few hours.
The effect was better than any drug I've ever heard of. I'd have the most weird, and most entertaining dreams. It actually had such a feel good effect that I ended up doing it on a regular basis.
Of course, should I leave the television tuned to the ABC, come 11:30am, Heartbreak High would come on, and I'd become catatonic. Infact, my landlord would have to hit me repeatedly with a broom handle while playing Britney Spears at volume on my stereo to induce a fight or flee response. Useless it was flee, followed by 30 minutes of cowering in my shower under running cold water.
The key issue, though, is knowingly providing false or misleading information. You don't have to answer the religion question if you don't want to. However, if you do ansewr it, you must answer truthfully. Jedi would be a legitimate answer if you can demonstrate a clear belief structure or if you can show that you try to live your life according to those precepts.
Ah, but there's the rub. Section 116 of the Australian Constitution says it's unconstitutional for the Commonwealth to:
question someones claim to a faith
ask that person to demonstrate their faith as proof
legislate against a particular faith
The Commonwealth being the government and its appointed bodies.
Unless you've gone around and publicly said "I'm going to lie and say I'm a Jedi on the census", or you've gone around telling other people to write Jedi as their religion, and provided that you stick to your story as written on the census, they can't touch you with a 50 foot barge pole.
Having said that, yes, it's stupid thing to put down on the census.
In my second year of university, we had an introductory C course (we'd been doing Smalltalk and Ada). The task assigned to us was to write a version of grep that could recurse through directories and search files below our current directory for a single word (no regexp).
Easy enough, and being the geeks we were, one classmate rewrote his working code so that when it was printed on a line printer, it read GREP vertically down the page.
For kicks he stuck it up on a pinboard in one of the labs before the assignment was due, thinking nobody would be inclinded to take it.
No more than 3 hours after he stuck it up, he had some student email him asking why the code didn't work, as this student had just typed it in off the page, with all the/* */ padding and other useless crap that he'd padded it out with.
As an experiment we tried typing in the code of the print out again, and found it took longer to type it in, than write the actual program from scratch.
Another incident was one year a data structures lecturer posted assignment marks (assignment on hashing) in a hash table based on student number. The instructions on how to find your mark was given at the top of the list.
Most of the students had to go visit the lecturer to find out their mark because they didn't actually understand hashing, yet they had apparently passed the assignment.
I've never completely understood why people say broadband cable access in Australia is expensive, for geeks anyway.
Let's do a little math.
Telstra land line == $15/month
Two calls a day to local ISP = $0.50/day = $15.50/month
Subscription to unlimited download account, 150 hours/month == $38/month
We're already at $68.50 a month for 56k dialup. Most people don't have two phone lines, and if it's a share house, chances are you'll be dropped out because of someone ringing you.
Telstra Bigpond cable, 256k/64k is $67.00/month, and 512k/128k is $72.55/month. Optus@Home is $63.95/month, and you don't have rate limiting active there.The installation fee is roughly the same as a decent modem.
Given that (iirc) 75% of Australia's population live within cable serviced areas, that's done pretty darn cheap.
The only complaints I've seen are when a user averages over a gigabyte a day, everyday for a month. If you manage to download that much, you really need to get out of the house and do something else.
Damn, this has been one of the most uppity attitudes I've seen on Slashdot for some time.
People and their actions are distinct. Yes, people carry out the action. But just because somebody does something once, and gets caught, does not make them a habitual offender, or does it make them a bad person.
They made a wrong call.
Yes, they could have killed someone, but do you know for a fact that the way you pulled out of an intersection this morning, may not have startled someone or something, causing an accident and thereby killing someone?
As for the people who moderated this moron up, pull your head out of your self righteous arrogant, better-than-thou backside, and actually think about what tbo said.
I bet you'd be pretty peeved if you yourself got turned down for something because you once got caught for something you shouldn't have done.
The comment was far from insightful, it was inflammatory.
Re:Still closed drivers
on
Nvidia's NV20
·
· Score: 1
Their drivers are among the most unstable drivers around for linux.
[davidj@matisse davidj]$ ps aux | grep X
root 1425 0.6 15.9 302312 40980 ? R Oct09 437:53/usr/bin/X11/X +bs -auth/var/gdm/:0.Xauth:0
The only reason why the machine has a low uptime is because of a recent power outage, and my workstation isn't on a UPS.
Back to how they're unstable. The unstable argument holds absolutely no water. And I run a fair few OpenGL apps, gimp on a semi regular basis (I have it open now) and quite a few other graphically intensive apps that have made weaker X drivers die a painful death.
Having said that, I do have an objection to the driver source not being free beer.
I didn't object at all to Sharky explaining in his article that it was aimed at a different end of the market to who would be an audiophile.
But as an audiophile myself, I do have an objection to being called a snob or elitest scum.
A skiier who has the ability to ski down Everest, buys a pair of $5000 skis. Does this make them a ski snob?
A hobby chef spends $150 on a nice carving knife, does this make them a cooking snob?
I think not. They merely have an appreciation for the finer elements of their hobbies.
I'm blessed with nearly perfect hearing. I'm blessed with the ability to find things in music that most people miss. I listen to music as an escape from the world, as an alternative to drugs or whatever your vice maybe.
I merely enjoy the finer elements of a good sound system.
And seeing friends leap up from their chairs as Trinity hits the glass window in the Matrix never gets boring:)
We had this problem a while ago at my place of work, people thinking that we lived in a cupboard and could be pulled out at their beck and call.
The solution to this we found was to start laying down some very strict ground rules, after having discussed these matters with the CEO and GM.
Step 1, was identify the different sections of the network, as to their importance to the business.
Step 2, was decide on what Service Level Agreements we'd provide on what equipment. You have to be fair, you're there to provide a service. For example, we promise 5 minute reponse times on all equipment directly related to providing part of our web service, but only a business hours response to LAN PC problems.
Step 3, write a document on this. I hate writing documentation for the mases, but it's the best thing I've ever done. Get the high ups to sign off on it. Make sure EVERYBODY gets a copy. That way if you're ever questioned, you can point to it, and say "Your boss agrees - talk to him".
It's amazing how much something like that cuts down the nuisance calls. Of course there is still the ability for a LAN user to request help urgently outside hours, but to do so, they have to go through the General Manager.
I know Matt Ownby didn't say this in his comment, but I'm sick and tired of hearing people saying we're running out of ipv4 address space.
We're so far away from actually using the entire address space it isn't funny.
The real issues are things like routing, block hording and manageability.
Routing is a fairly obvious one, restrict the amount of CIDR blocks we have to advertise, both on private networks and out to the rest of the world and we've sped up routing decisions.
Obviously having a slightly bigger address space allows for geographical routing, and hopefully less rules at each router.
I know in Australia while ago, block hording was a fairly common practice. Joe Blow would have a/23 to route over a modem, and he'd have 2 machines on it.
And less address space to track, less chance of mistakes and other problems at the registries end.
Having applied for many blocks from APNIC, to say they are retentive is an understatement. Unless I was lying outright, I'd have no chance of having bucket loads of address space to abuse and horde.
These sort of video subsystems do exist already, and they have existed for as long as I can remember. Quite common in flight simulators and other pricey toys.
The basic gist of them really is just to have a bucketload of fast ram, a custom controller of some description, and bunch of slave GPU's.
Just upload your models and textures, and in some cases environmental effects, and set them up in a tree.
For example. Here is an aeroplane. Here is an elevator. The elevator is (normally;) attached here. Then it's just upto the main processing engine to tell the graphics engine where each bit is in a 3d world. It's left to the graphics engine to work it out.
The advantages are fairly obvious, just passing a display list of some object id's, leaving your main processor and memory busses free for real work.
Slashdot Mirror
The short and sweet of it is that on event of a rebuild, if a single drive serves up a corrupted block, the rebuilt data will be corrupt and with no way of affirming that. Google for ACNC's website, as well as BAARF. The original BAARF site seems to be down.
Disk is cheap, as are controllers.
Please see the BAARF pages, or even read Advanced Computer & Network Corporation Raid.edu pages.
Games don't make people commit violent acts. That much is obvious. Games however, and this has been successfully demonstrated with desensitivity training in the military, and results of introducing television into remote communities, do desensitise the players to the consequences of their actions, and as such increase the range of immediately emotionally painless responses to any given situation.
Previously, people with inadequate ability to deal with their environments bottled it up, or released their frustrations into other areas as they actually felt revulsion as the concept of causing pain to another human. A correct upbringing with the social code implanted accordingly, meant that people would actively avoid the emotional pain that goes with causing physical harm to another person.
Most people still have their social circuitry wired correctly. Most of us won't commit a violent act when presented with a stressful situation. But I'll use dblh3l1x's comment as an example.
These articles make me want to hurt someone.
Why does he want to hurt someone? Is that a valid and correct response to something he takes as a slight against? Even better yet, where did he learn that this was a valid response, even just in verbal expression?
Surely dblh3l1x's Mother wouldn't have taught him that, and most probably his Father wouldn't have either.
Where else was that behaviour learnt as acceptable?
Audio reproduction is like artwork. It's all about interpretation and having your own understanding. You may accept having a speaker pump out sound.
An audiophile wants to be able to close their eyes and convince themselves that the artist is right there infront of them. Any resonable audiophile will also admit that there are points of diminishing return. Just like a computer, a car, or other performance device.
And seeing as you only seem to a very minimal understanding of the bit you quoted, I'll try to explain it in baby terms for you.
Dynamics: Dynamic response is the ability to go from loud to quiet, and back again, with clarity and accuracy. Not like your Britney-pop which is compressed, and therefore has a very low dynamic range. Try the Ravel's Bolero maybe, or if that's a bit too far out, try Stairway to Heaven. Please do try and listen to the entire piece.
Imaging: Imaging is the placing of the sound. If the singer was slightly off centre while singing, the reproduction should have the singer slightly off centre. You should be able to hear the side of the set that the drummers cymbals were on. That EAX or A3D logo you have on your soundcard is a way of imaging the sound while you play Half Life. Yes, really, the fact you thought the sound was behind you was because of imaging.
Frequency Extremes: Well, I think I shouldn't have to explain this one, I can imagine you can figure it all by yourself. I'm hoping anyway. As you like hard stats, this one can be proven quite successfully with a frequency generator, and an analyser. Oh, you don't understand, well, here I go. Frequency extremes are at both the high frequency range (you know, around 20,000 Hz) and at the low range (around 20 Hz). Yeah, the fully siiik bass that your three 15" subs put out in your fully phat Civic. To keep the high frequency, and low frequency stuff at the same levels as the mid range, it's actually not an easy thing to do. He's saying the iPod does it well.
Now, moron, if you're going to karma whore, next time at least attempt to understand the article and the terminology the author uses. It might not make you look like such an idiot.
What a stupid comment. Totally and utterly stupid.
OpenSSH is considered by many to be a core service, right up there with the kernel. If there is an exploitable bug in OpenSSH, there is a bug in OpenSSH. Plain and simple. It becomes important that we know about the potential bugs.
It's not an attempt to discredit Theo, or is it nitpicking at the OpenSSH service. I'd prefer these were found and fixed, rather than them being left unknown in order to keep Theo's ego inflated.
I'm an X-Plane fanatic myself, but I'll agree that the real thing and X-Plane are still worlds apart when it comes to the actual reality of flying.
But I do feel most of the difference lies not in the fact it's on a computer, but that you don't have enough sensory input. Professional motion platforms and other sensory input systems of 10 years ago were still enough to make you think you were really there.
As has often been said, it's not about presenting realism, but the illusion of believability. The flight model in X-Plane is very believable. Add a motion platform, and other events and inputs, it'd be a much real experience.
Having said that, it's still fairly common to meet armchair pilots that want to fly with all the distractions. More often than not, it's for the sheer joy of "flying".
Larger aircraft use intertial navigation systems in preference to GPS based. INS is dependant on the aeroplane being in a known location before flight, and usually can place itself to a few metres after flying half way around the globe. It's also not prone to the obscure jumps and hops that can happen with GPS.
Contact your local Red Hat office, they're quite willing to send you a copy of their licensing information. If you don't like the terms, feel free to tell Red Hat how much they suck.
You're quite allowed to post modified ISO images sans all the RHN stuff. You can actually take a RH 7.3 CD image, put the RHAS you built onto it, change the catalogue and off you go.
A little while ago, I downloaded all of the RHAS SRPMs, built them up and installed a RHAS box for myself. Easy enough to do with a day of drinking coffee waiting for a compiler.
I really should release my build instructions, or an ISO. Last I looked, I couldn't find anyone else that'd done it.
Yes, it is illegal to provide false information on the census form.
It's also unconstitutional for any department or official of the Australian Government to ask you to validate your faith. If questioned as to the accuracy of your claim, so long as you reply with something to the effect of "I believed in what I call the Jedi religion at the time of the census", you're all clear.
If you're stupid enough to reply "Haha! Great joke huh?", expect a fine coming your way.
I would cite the relevant sections of the constitution and codes, but I don't have the references handy, and it took me 10 minutes with Google and www.fed.gov.au to find them the first time.
I've been aruging this point with Theo's Fan Boys for the last few days, and none of them seem to get it. Let's review what my actions would have been in each of the above scenarios.
It's not Theo's job to ensure my systems are secure. It's mine. This is the premise behind full disclosure, letting me make the judgement call on the information given to me. If I choose to ignore Theo, and get hacked, it's my fault, and my fault alone for ingoring the information given to me.
The security world isn't a fair one. The good guys only have access to what the other good guys share. The bad guys have access to both worlds. Like I said before, if Theo knows, chances are there's at least one bad guy out there that knows.
Yes, maybe an mp3 encoded at 256kbps is good enough, but it's hardly correct. I own a small recording studio, and have two sets of monitors for use. I keep a lot of purchased music in mp3 format for inspiration and just general listening for when I'm doing things, and am always finding sounds in mp3 compressed music that sounds as if I'd just run a frozen chicken through a bandsaw using a blunt blade.
I'm using both a $800AUD Kenwood XD-750 system, with its stock speakers, and a $5000 Marantz SR-18 receiver with Jamo LCR 2 left and rights, with a Jamo sub. On both, I can hear problems in the mp3 encoding process.
It's not about voice, it's not about your stock stand synth sounds your favourite boy band pumps out. It's about attacks and clarity of things like bass guitars over long periods, with plenty of other things happening in that time.
Prime example that I came across recently. Eve's track featuring Gwen Stefani, "Let Me Blow Your Mind". There is an instrument in that track that most mp3 encoders just can't cope with properly. The only solution in the end was to use 320kbps on that section, and accept what it did. The attack was simply too sharp at the frequency at which it was playing.
Some people won't accept this in their music, and all the more power to them.
And your concept of snobbism from "self-declared audiophiles" is utter tripe. I'm getting pretty sick and tired of reading endless uninformed crap from lamers who know nothing of sound or audio production. Stereo gear is like everything else out there, there is a point of diminishing returns, and it's entirely upto the purchaser if they want it.
And I do want to see a basis for your 99% and 1% statistics.
I routinely used to fall asleep in a beanbag infront of my television on a Saturday morning, after my hour long 6am ice skating training session. In Australia at 7am or so on a Saturday morning, most free to air channels have music videos for a few hours.
The effect was better than any drug I've ever heard of. I'd have the most weird, and most entertaining dreams. It actually had such a feel good effect that I ended up doing it on a regular basis.
Of course, should I leave the television tuned to the ABC, come 11:30am, Heartbreak High would come on, and I'd become catatonic. Infact, my landlord would have to hit me repeatedly with a broom handle while playing Britney Spears at volume on my stereo to induce a fight or flee response. Useless it was flee, followed by 30 minutes of cowering in my shower under running cold water.
Ah, but there's the rub. Section 116 of the Australian Constitution says it's unconstitutional for the Commonwealth to:
The Commonwealth being the government and its appointed bodies.
Unless you've gone around and publicly said "I'm going to lie and say I'm a Jedi on the census", or you've gone around telling other people to write Jedi as their religion, and provided that you stick to your story as written on the census, they can't touch you with a 50 foot barge pole.
Having said that, yes, it's stupid thing to put down on the census.
Easy enough, and being the geeks we were, one classmate rewrote his working code so that when it was printed on a line printer, it read GREP vertically down the page.
For kicks he stuck it up on a pinboard in one of the labs before the assignment was due, thinking nobody would be inclinded to take it.
No more than 3 hours after he stuck it up, he had some student email him asking why the code didn't work, as this student had just typed it in off the page, with all the /* */ padding and other useless crap that he'd padded it out with.
As an experiment we tried typing in the code of the print out again, and found it took longer to type it in, than write the actual program from scratch.
Another incident was one year a data structures lecturer posted assignment marks (assignment on hashing) in a hash table based on student number. The instructions on how to find your mark was given at the top of the list.
Most of the students had to go visit the lecturer to find out their mark because they didn't actually understand hashing, yet they had apparently passed the assignment.
I've never completely understood why people say broadband cable access in Australia is expensive, for geeks anyway.
Let's do a little math.
Telstra land line == $15/month
Two calls a day to local ISP = $0.50/day = $15.50/month
Subscription to unlimited download account, 150 hours/month == $38/month
We're already at $68.50 a month for 56k dialup. Most people don't have two phone lines, and if it's a share house, chances are you'll be dropped out because of someone ringing you.
Telstra Bigpond cable, 256k/64k is $67.00/month, and 512k/128k is $72.55/month. Optus@Home is $63.95/month, and you don't have rate limiting active there.The installation fee is roughly the same as a decent modem.
Given that (iirc) 75% of Australia's population live within cable serviced areas, that's done pretty darn cheap.
The only complaints I've seen are when a user averages over a gigabyte a day, everyday for a month. If you manage to download that much, you really need to get out of the house and do something else.
What sort of arrogant comment is that?
Damn, this has been one of the most uppity attitudes I've seen on Slashdot for some time.
People and their actions are distinct. Yes, people carry out the action. But just because somebody does something once, and gets caught, does not make them a habitual offender, or does it make them a bad person.
They made a wrong call.
Yes, they could have killed someone, but do you know for a fact that the way you pulled out of an intersection this morning, may not have startled someone or something, causing an accident and thereby killing someone?
As for the people who moderated this moron up, pull your head out of your self righteous arrogant, better-than-thou backside, and actually think about what tbo said.
I bet you'd be pretty peeved if you yourself got turned down for something because you once got caught for something you shouldn't have done.
The comment was far from insightful, it was inflammatory.
Their drivers are among the most unstable drivers around for linux.
/usr/bin/X11/X +bs -auth /var/gdm/:0.Xauth :0
Uh huh, yeah, right.
[davidj@matisse davidj]$ uptime
9:48am up 48 days, 22:37, 5 users, load average: 1.25, 1.15, 1.21
[davidj@matisse davidj]$ ps aux | grep X
root 1425 0.6 15.9 302312 40980 ? R Oct09 437:53
The only reason why the machine has a low uptime is because of a recent power outage, and my workstation isn't on a UPS.
Back to how they're unstable. The unstable argument holds absolutely no water. And I run a fair few OpenGL apps, gimp on a semi regular basis (I have it open now) and quite a few other graphically intensive apps that have made weaker X drivers die a painful death.
Having said that, I do have an objection to the driver source not being free beer.
I didn't object at all to Sharky explaining in his article that it was aimed at a different end of the market to who would be an audiophile. But as an audiophile myself, I do have an objection to being called a snob or elitest scum. A skiier who has the ability to ski down Everest, buys a pair of $5000 skis. Does this make them a ski snob? A hobby chef spends $150 on a nice carving knife, does this make them a cooking snob? I think not. They merely have an appreciation for the finer elements of their hobbies. I'm blessed with nearly perfect hearing. I'm blessed with the ability to find things in music that most people miss. I listen to music as an escape from the world, as an alternative to drugs or whatever your vice maybe. I merely enjoy the finer elements of a good sound system. And seeing friends leap up from their chairs as Trinity hits the glass window in the Matrix never gets boring :)
We had this problem a while ago at my place of work, people thinking that we lived in a cupboard and could be pulled out at their beck and call. The solution to this we found was to start laying down some very strict ground rules, after having discussed these matters with the CEO and GM. Step 1, was identify the different sections of the network, as to their importance to the business. Step 2, was decide on what Service Level Agreements we'd provide on what equipment. You have to be fair, you're there to provide a service. For example, we promise 5 minute reponse times on all equipment directly related to providing part of our web service, but only a business hours response to LAN PC problems. Step 3, write a document on this. I hate writing documentation for the mases, but it's the best thing I've ever done. Get the high ups to sign off on it. Make sure EVERYBODY gets a copy. That way if you're ever questioned, you can point to it, and say "Your boss agrees - talk to him". It's amazing how much something like that cuts down the nuisance calls. Of course there is still the ability for a LAN user to request help urgently outside hours, but to do so, they have to go through the General Manager.
I know Matt Ownby didn't say this in his comment, but I'm sick and tired of hearing people saying we're running out of ipv4 address space. We're so far away from actually using the entire address space it isn't funny. The real issues are things like routing, block hording and manageability. Routing is a fairly obvious one, restrict the amount of CIDR blocks we have to advertise, both on private networks and out to the rest of the world and we've sped up routing decisions. Obviously having a slightly bigger address space allows for geographical routing, and hopefully less rules at each router. I know in Australia while ago, block hording was a fairly common practice. Joe Blow would have a /23 to route over a modem, and he'd have 2 machines on it.
And less address space to track, less chance of mistakes and other problems at the registries end.
Having applied for many blocks from APNIC, to say they are retentive is an understatement. Unless I was lying outright, I'd have no chance of having bucket loads of address space to abuse and horde.
These sort of video subsystems do exist already, and they have existed for as long as I can remember. Quite common in flight simulators and other pricey toys. The basic gist of them really is just to have a bucketload of fast ram, a custom controller of some description, and bunch of slave GPU's. Just upload your models and textures, and in some cases environmental effects, and set them up in a tree. For example. Here is an aeroplane. Here is an elevator. The elevator is (normally ;) attached here. Then it's just upto the main processing engine to tell the graphics engine where each bit is in a 3d world. It's left to the graphics engine to work it out.
The advantages are fairly obvious, just passing a display list of some object id's, leaving your main processor and memory busses free for real work.