I've got it setup right now so that Firefox/Thunderbird both dump all downloads straight to Desktop, and all of a users documents are supposed to be in Documents (~/Documents, avaliable via Desktop link).
Currently, they use Find File from the KDE menu, but I'm looking to setup either Beagle (god its buggy, at least on SuSE 9.3), or the kio-locate slave, which is kinda sweet (you can do locate: as a URL, and it'll pop up really fast. You can even setup a Panel dialog box for it, so all you have to say is type in whatever you are looking for down here, and it'll magically appear).
As it is, the KDE find file dialog isn't too bad, but it is really slow if you are searching outside the home directory.
When/If Beagle becomes stable and easy to work with, it'll totally own current XP search. Beagle is as good as spotlight, in terms of speed/functionality. It'll search inside files, etc, instantly. And its got an easy to use dialog box, and I imagine it be very simple to setup a Superkaramba desktop dialog for it, as well.
I find that my users can be ignorant of the directory structure, for the most part. Documents go in the Documents icon on the Desktop. They can make folders in the Home icon on the Desktop. They can get at their CDs, Network Shares, USB Key drivers, random-automounted-storage-unit-on-a-stick in their My Computer icon.
Yeah, getting them to use a Terminal is hopeless. But every task I've determined to be necessary is pretty easy.
If you distribute PCs, you are not permitted to sell Linux, or any alternate operating system, without forfeiting your MS discounts.
Those discounts are substantial. They are the difference between $50-70 per OEM copy and retail price.
Given that a majority of your customers will be purchasing Windows systems, it makes sense to drop Linux and all alternatives. This hurts the PC sellers; the Linux preinstall would either cheapen their systems (in house install of free-Linux), or generate more profit (in house free, or revenue from sales of linux, which is pretty cheap as an OEM).
I'm sure most people reading your reply missed the sarcasm and humor buried in the words. I certainly didn't, great laugh!
All kidding aside, if Microsoft stopped allowing the update of pirated copies of Windows updates, the malicious people would need to do is break your machine forcing you to reinstall. Oops! You lost your serial number? No problem, just go out on the web and get one, and now you can get your machine back up again.
Oops, you can't patch your machine with Windows Update, and now that hole that the malicious folks used to hack your machine the first time is wide open again.
Huh?..I don't understand. Having a security hole on your machine means that a pirate can open a security hole on your machine. If someone can exploit your machine *ONCE*, then they can break it six ways till sunday. In fact, if you've been exploited once, your best bet is to reinstall.
In your scenario, you weren't protected in the first place. Why would patching the second time protect you?
And loosing your serial number? Don't do that. Your serial number=your permission to use Windows. You *will* end up having to reinstall Windows. I've never met a Windows user who didn't. Loose your serial number, and your SOL.
Making your system *look* like a pirated system won't make the slightest bit of difference. They've already gotten administrator access; they can do whatever they want, including mess up future security patches.
Once your system has been rooted (administrator level exploit), all bets are off. We've been lucky so far that trojans and the like haven't been that destructive. Anyone with root access could easily break Windows update, making it impossible to upgrade your machine. It's probably even possible to lock out the local user from applying patches from a local repository.
You should *never* develop a security doctrine that involves cleaning up a root-level exploit. It just doesn't work. Welcome to the Zombie Network of machines being misappropriated to send illegal child pr0n, spam, trade copyrighted works, propagate malware and dozens of other things.
Stopping the ability to patch operating systems, including those from pirated copies of Microsoft Windows, will just cause a sharp rise in the number of machines being taken over, broken into, repurposed as spam/malware/p2p distribution nodes.
And this is a problem why? Spam-bots? ISPs should be blocking them automatically. SBC and Comcast do; you get redirected to a single page 'your PC is spewing spam'. Malware-bots & Distribution nodes? I wouldn't know about that. My Mac and Linux boxes are immune. Also, the ISPs should be blocking these zombies. Keep in mind, you began your post with the malicious people would need to do is break your machine forcing you to reinstall.
Just keep telling yourself, "If they can break into my machine, they can turn it into a spam/malware/p2p zombie."
Are the ones they sell you at a discount resellable?
1. Find huge source of pirated XP copies. 2. Buy 8 million, or claim that you did. 3. Fill in a pirate report. Claim your 8 million free copies of XP. 4. Sell 8 million free copies of XP on ebay for $5 a copy. 5. Profit? (While getting hunted down by MS's death-monkey-squads).
It's *their* software. They can do whatever they want with it.
They want to run intrusive anti-piracy scans?
Shift to another vendor.
Home users can do it. Corporate users can do it. Yes, you'll be an early adopter, thats not always bad.
If you're a corporation, this shouldn't bother you much, its not *that* intrusive that it'll shut down work for you, and no one has a reasonable expectation of privacy in the office anyways (you signed that away in your EULA).
If you're at home, tough shit. Pay up, pay often.
Don't like it? Switch to Mac or Linux. You have no 'right' to a Microsoft Operating System, unless it came with your system, and if thats the case, they'll give you a free licensed copy.
Sure, I support this initiative for my own ends. But even so, there is absolutely nothing wrong with what MS is doing.
A) It's legal. B) It's not immoral. It's not that intrusive. It's well short of similar measures that gaming companies or expensive app companies have been using for years. C) There are alternatives for Windows.
Pay up, or switch. There is no room for pirates anymore, and I'm *fine* with that.
Advocate the GPL? Then you *better* support generic notions of copyright, because that's what the GPL is about.
Read through this topic. Half the posts are "This is terrible! I'll no longer install pirated versions of Windows!" Well, big deal. You aren't a customer now, why should they give two shits what you do.
The other half of posts are, "No Sweat, this is easy to work around!" To this group, all I have to say is, "Grow up." Hopefully, they'll get around to sabotaging your Windows installation soon.
This has already been tested (while it was optional). I'm not sure if anything has changed, but the ActiveX control looked for a Registry key that Wine did not create by default.
I believe there was talk of adding the registry key; also, you can do it manually .
If you bought a PC with a pirated copy of XP, and have proof of purchase, than you get a *free* copy if you submit all the details regarding your pirated copy.
If you just are running a pirated copy, then you are given the option of purchasing a copy of XP at a reduced price under their Amnesty agreement.
I don't care about the difference in power usage between a Pentium M (laptop) and a Athlon 64 (desktop) cpus. It's an irrelevant number.
I'd be very curious to see the difference in power usage (and benchmarks) between a Pentium M (plugged into a 478-socket system) and a low-voltage Athlon 64 (laptop version) plugged into a similar desktop board.
Not the difference in power usage by the processor, mind you, but the difference in power usage by the entire *system*, and at the various stages of idling.
A pentium M northbridge will use significantly more power than an Athlon 64 northbridge. And Athlon 64s do an amazing job of throttling down to low powerlevels (enough that they can be cooled via passive cooling, and I believe they survive the heatsink-fell-off test.
I'm not sure about the grandparent, but, I like having both.
My AMD64 3000+ throttles down using Cool 'n quiet. My harddrives stop spinning. I don't have any optical drives, which burn power. My graphics card power usage cycles up and down depending upon whether the 3D is in use.
In fact, it will respond to SSH requests even when it is in the standby to ram mode, which reduces the overrall power usage to around 20-30 watts. Overall, my PC burns far less power when it is idling than older systems with no power management. An older pentium-pentium III system, always on, with no processor throttling, and poorer APM/ACPI capabilities is far more power hungry.
Keep in mind, standby to ram mode *does* turn off your GPU, Sound Card, and USB devices (just about everything except for network cards and input devices, which are pretty energy efficent. If you have smart fans controlled by BIOS they'll be turned off by powersaving.
Sure, peak power usage is higher; but I'm fine with that. I'm willing to trade peak usage (which is occassional) for overrall lower usage.
One impressive thing is that it works just fine with passive cooling; considering that my processor fan automatically cycles up and down depending upon heat, and I've reduced the number of fans in my system to 1 (passive heat pipe cooling on my video card, aluminum case which pulls heat from the HD), I'd say smarter design is more important that low performance/power design.
I went from Windows user, to Linux user, to Mac user (bought a Powerbook and and 2x Mac Minis), and I'm starting to yearn back for Linux.
I've gotten really, really happy with my Linux desktop at home (SuSE 9.3).
It does more than my Macs do, and configuration is really easy. Reasons I'm leaning back to Linux: 1. Codeweaver's Crossover Office. Yes, this might become avaliable for Mac, sometime in the future. Depends on me finding an intel Mac, depends on Codeweaver finishing the port. There are some Windows apps I really like to have. 2. VMware is significantly faster than Virtual PC. Intel macs might change this, as well. 3. Cedega. No Half-Life 2 on Mac. No Guild Wars on Mac. Intel macs may change this as well, but there will be additional problems compared to the above 2 ports. 4. OpenOffice.org 2.0. NeoOffice/J is klunky. OpenOffice.org 2 in XDarwin is klunkier. OpenOffice.org 2.0 on my SuSE 9.3 system is smooth as silk. 5. I *like* KDE. I've spent the past 3 days trying to get KDE to work properly on my powerbook in a full screen X. Each time I try to install it I get a compile error in FinkCommander. I thought this stuff was supposed to be automatic? Either way, SuSE handles it for me; Yes, the hardware is easier to configure with a Mac (because it comes configured). But my software (That I like to use) is actually easier on Linux, because SuSE configured *everything* for me, Out-Of-Box. 6. Finder. Finder sucks. When Finder looses some network shares, it freezes. Sometimes, you cannot even force quit it or force restart it. This drives me bonkers. Also, you cannot use finder to upload to an FTP; FTP shares are read only. Konqueror beats the pants of finder. 7. Much more GUI customization. With the advent of Kompmgr and Superkaramba, I feel that KDE has a similar level of eye candy as the Mac. With whats on the horizon for Xorg I expect KDE to superceede OS X soon. 8. Easier to mess with software. I had to wait for Tiger to get Java 1.5 on my Mac OS X. That was like 8 months behind my Linux box, which made a *huge* difference, because Ameritrade's Java streamer app is not stable in older versions of Java (would regularly crash Safari). 9. Far, far cheaper hardware. My Athlon 64 3200+ with a Geforce 6800 GT beats the crap out of anything Apple manufacturers right now, at any price. I paid significantly less than an iMac for this setup.
Gotta go, but these are a few of the reasons. There are many more. Don't get me wrong, I recommend Mac OS X to everyone else; I won't deal with their Windows problems anymore, and I see OS X as the way out. But for me, I feel limited in OS X compared to Linux.
That's about what.... 50 hours of downtime a year? (Yes, I know they are talking about call completion, not uptime, but bear with me)
Well, this year, in Oak Creek, WI, we lost all SBC phone service for 5 days. That's significantly worse.
And that's not the only outage we've experienced; trees get blown over, the local phone company building experiences an outage, and other such stupid mishaps.
Nothing is 100% reliable. I feel that 99.4% reliable with a viable backup (cell phones) is more than good enough.
Not that I there aren't situations where both will fail; a major disaster will most likely take out wireline phone service, wireless phone service, and internet service. But if I get two providers with 99.4% uptime, I'll be A-okay.
Especially considering that cellular 911 calls have priority over standard calls *and* will use any signal (well, similar to your carriers (GPRS v. CDMA) to get ahold of the closest 911 center.
Manages source packages for you. GUI, lets you click on and off all the possible configure/make options you could want (well, maybe not *all*, but more than I have ever used).
Then, there is Krpmbuilder, which is a wizard interface for building RPMS from source without spec files. Check http://krpmbuilder.sourceforge.net/
Seems pretty nice, you can put descriptions and the like, which might be useful if you are administering a bunch of computers and would like to add a package from source to your pile of systems. Presumably if you are a running a debian system, you could install RPM on debian, build RPM's with Krpmbuilder, convert back to deb using alien, and then manage that however you manage your computer labs or whatever.
None of these are ideal solutions, but they point in the right direction, and certainly anything that lets you get control over the various source packages scattered all over your system is a *good* thing.
Still not integrated with RPM, which is too bad. Be nice to get sourceinstall integrated with pseduo RPM packages somehow, so you can manage.tar.gz without spec files inside RPM
Anyways: I agree, this can be troubling. What *would* be nice was if could create a perl script that would build an RPM (or a deb, or whatever) from a.tar.gz without a spec file (alien requires spec files).
This would have to be a very sophisticated script. It would have to track the locations of where everything was put by 'make install', as well as be able to fail gracefully, with the ability to clean up after itself.
It would also have to provide meaningful error messages when either./configure, make, or make install failed.
The advantage of this would not be redistributable packages, but, would be the ability to remove stuff easily using
Combine this with alien, and you'd be able to integrate.tar.gz source packages with any tgz, deb, or rpm binary package management system.
1. Article says 100 Mbps is 50 times faster than what they have now. Thus, they have 2 Mbps cable.
2. I have 6 Mbps cable. I know people within 20-30 miles of me with 8 or 10 Mbps cable. SBC delivers 3 Mbps dsl, and delivered 6 Mbps to a select few quick enough to jump on the deal.
Does anyone else find it hard to believe that they will leapfrog technologies like that? Or, that even once those companies start selling the equipment (the article, after all, quotes an equipment manufacturer, *not* an ISP) that deployment will be instant?
VDSL, VDSL2, and a whole bunch of alphabet soup DSL types exist *right* now, but we don't see them all over the U.S.
Similarly, many American cable companies have switched much of their equipment to DOCSIS 2.0 stuff, but haven't ramped up the speeds yet (not enough backhaul).
Avaliability of equipment != deployment. Rather than idolizing some vaporware Finish deployment, we should be looking at places like S. Korea and Japan, where they've managed 2 and 3 digit broadband speeds (in Mbps) *now*, not some-time-in-the-oh-so-near-future.
I can pull up 100s of articles from SBC's Project Lightspeed, or Verizon's FIOS. Some of them talk about deploying this stuff nationwide in 2003-2004.
But do I have 100 Mbps internet yet? No.
This is a non-article. A fluff piece by an equipment manufacturer. I want to hear more about actual deployments (and they do exist), not about some companies wishful thinking.
You shouldn't have to be a criminal to play content that you've already purchased!
I think, however, that the MS/I solution is mostly smoke and mirrors.
Literally *ALL* of the European cable companies had signed on to Microsoft's set-top box initiative. These companies then figured out that MS had more features than competitors, but that 1/2 of them were buggy, and 1/2 of them were delayed to a future revision.
The *only* European company still pursuing a MS solution is the one that has *still* not deployed their next gen solution. They are hoping to have it out by 2006.
Given that people like you and I switch to an alternate platform, I believe that content providers will continue to cater to us. When other consumers see how well we are doing with our non-crappy non-MS hardware, they'll switch too.
Even Joe Blow has a preference for non-encumbered hardware. He'll buy the more expensive brand with *less* features if he thinks it will let him copy movies, or burn CDs.
But he's got to have a choice; if MS/Intel take over the market completely he'll buy their crap.
That's what happened in the Desktop market; Apple folded, and everyone lined up to deliver MS products. This has *not* happened in other markets, consoles, or set-tops, for example.
I'm guessing it was modded insightful because I made a valid point;-)
Seriously, if you think about it, what I said does not conflict with what you said.
I do not believe that Intel/MS will be capable of taking over the Home Television/Cable/Satellite/IPTV market. I do not believe that anyone will be able to keep Linux users out of this market.
That does not, however, mean that DRM is not coming. Note that I said that even if Intel releases DRM drivers for Linux, they'll be closed-source black box drivers.
DRM *is* coming. I skeptical that we can do much to stop it, given the industry and governmental support behind it (incidentially, as a libertarian, I cannot understand why the government is such a bring proponent of DRM (yes, yes, I know about lobbying)). Just because it is coming, however, does not mean that advocates such as myself should give up on all our causes.
"DRM *is* coming! All is Lost! The End Is Nigh! Abandon All Ye Linux!"
All I really said is that MS/Intel won't shut-out other competitors; indeed, given Microsoft's current Television track record I'd be surprised if they made more than a toehold into the market.
None of what I've said now, nor what I said in my post, discusses the oncoming onslaught of DRM (with the possible exception of the statement indicating that DRM will be cracked for use on Linux, and I do *not* believe that's a good answer).
We need to be fighting on many fronts; we will not defeat DRM is Microsoft monopolizes the set-top box market; we would then see the DRM home theater PC.
This battle, however, is a small, but significant portion of the war against DRM. I do not see DRM winning smoothly, however; consumers did not buy into Circuit City's DiVX pay as you go DVD.
But an *essential* point to winning the DRM battle is ensuring that Microsoft does not win a monopoly in the television/cable/content distribution market. If the possibility remains for consumers to pick an non-encumbered technology, even with a significant price *deficit*, I believe non-encumbered technologies will win out.
But they need to have a choice; if Verizon is offering non-DRM IPTV, and Comcast is offering MS DRM cable, Verizon will win, until Comcast is forced to compete. But there need to be two sides in order for there to be competition, and if everyone is using the MS platform, consumers will have *no* effective choice.
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Actually, IIRC, the ActiveX control recognized Wine as a "Genuine Copy of Windows XP"
Hehe
Hmm....
I've got it setup right now so that Firefox/Thunderbird both dump all downloads straight to Desktop, and all of a users documents are supposed to be in Documents (~/Documents, avaliable via Desktop link).
Currently, they use Find File from the KDE menu, but I'm looking to setup either Beagle (god its buggy, at least on SuSE 9.3), or the kio-locate slave, which is kinda sweet (you can do locate: as a URL, and it'll pop up really fast. You can even setup a Panel dialog box for it, so all you have to say is type in whatever you are looking for down here, and it'll magically appear).
As it is, the KDE find file dialog isn't too bad, but it is really slow if you are searching outside the home directory.
When/If Beagle becomes stable and easy to work with, it'll totally own current XP search. Beagle is as good as spotlight, in terms of speed/functionality. It'll search inside files, etc, instantly. And its got an easy to use dialog box, and I imagine it be very simple to setup a Superkaramba desktop dialog for it, as well.
I find that my users can be ignorant of the directory structure, for the most part. Documents go in the Documents icon on the Desktop. They can make folders in the Home icon on the Desktop. They can get at their CDs, Network Shares, USB Key drivers, random-automounted-storage-unit-on-a-stick in their My Computer icon.
Yeah, getting them to use a Terminal is hopeless. But every task I've determined to be necessary is pretty easy.
Really; its not as much as you think.
Put all the icons they would need on their desktop, and they get it.
4 months before you switch em to Linux, put Firefox, Thunderbird, and other applications they use on their desktop, in the top right corner.
Do the same thing when you setup Linux for them. 95% of your hassels will be eliminated right then.
Not user lock-out, distributor lock-out.
If you distribute PCs, you are not permitted to sell Linux, or any alternate operating system, without forfeiting your MS discounts.
Those discounts are substantial. They are the difference between $50-70 per OEM copy and retail price.
Given that a majority of your customers will be purchasing Windows systems, it makes sense to drop Linux and all alternatives. This hurts the PC sellers; the Linux preinstall would either cheapen their systems (in house install of free-Linux), or generate more profit (in house free, or revenue from sales of linux, which is pretty cheap as an OEM).
Sorry, we'll have to disagree.....
..I don't understand. Having a security hole on your machine means that a pirate can open a security hole on your machine. If someone can exploit your machine *ONCE*, then they can break it six ways till sunday. In fact, if you've been exploited once, your best bet is to reinstall.
I'm sure most people reading your reply missed the sarcasm and humor buried in the words. I certainly didn't, great laugh!
All kidding aside, if Microsoft stopped allowing the update of pirated copies of Windows updates, the malicious people would need to do is break your machine forcing you to reinstall. Oops! You lost your serial number? No problem, just go out on the web and get one, and now you can get your machine back up again.
Oops, you can't patch your machine with Windows Update, and now that hole that the malicious folks used to hack your machine the first time is wide open again.
Huh?
In your scenario, you weren't protected in the first place. Why would patching the second time protect you?
And loosing your serial number? Don't do that. Your serial number=your permission to use Windows. You *will* end up having to reinstall Windows. I've never met a Windows user who didn't. Loose your serial number, and your SOL.
Making your system *look* like a pirated system won't make the slightest bit of difference. They've already gotten administrator access; they can do whatever they want, including mess up future security patches.
Once your system has been rooted (administrator level exploit), all bets are off. We've been lucky so far that trojans and the like haven't been that destructive. Anyone with root access could easily break Windows update, making it impossible to upgrade your machine. It's probably even possible to lock out the local user from applying patches from a local repository.
You should *never* develop a security doctrine that involves cleaning up a root-level exploit. It just doesn't work.
Welcome to the Zombie Network of machines being misappropriated to send illegal child pr0n, spam, trade copyrighted works, propagate malware and dozens of other things.
Stopping the ability to patch operating systems, including those from pirated copies of Microsoft Windows, will just cause a sharp rise in the number of machines being taken over, broken into, repurposed as spam/malware/p2p distribution nodes.
And this is a problem why?
Spam-bots? ISPs should be blocking them automatically. SBC and Comcast do; you get redirected to a single page 'your PC is spewing spam'.
Malware-bots & Distribution nodes? I wouldn't know about that. My Mac and Linux boxes are immune. Also, the ISPs should be blocking these zombies.
Keep in mind, you began your post with the malicious people would need to do is break your machine forcing you to reinstall.
Just keep telling yourself, "If they can break into my machine, they can turn it into a spam/malware/p2p zombie."
Hmmmm.....
Are the ones they sell you at a discount resellable?
1. Find huge source of pirated XP copies.
2. Buy 8 million, or claim that you did.
3. Fill in a pirate report. Claim your 8 million free copies of XP.
4. Sell 8 million free copies of XP on ebay for $5 a copy.
5. Profit? (While getting hunted down by MS's death-monkey-squads).
Seriously!
It's *their* software. They can do whatever they want with it.
They want to run intrusive anti-piracy scans?
Shift to another vendor.
Home users can do it. Corporate users can do it. Yes, you'll be an early adopter, thats not always bad.
If you're a corporation, this shouldn't bother you much, its not *that* intrusive that it'll shut down work for you, and no one has a reasonable expectation of privacy in the office anyways (you signed that away in your EULA).
If you're at home, tough shit. Pay up, pay often.
Don't like it? Switch to Mac or Linux. You have no 'right' to a Microsoft Operating System, unless it came with your system, and if thats the case, they'll give you a free licensed copy.
Sure, I support this initiative for my own ends. But even so, there is absolutely nothing wrong with what MS is doing.
A) It's legal.
B) It's not immoral. It's not that intrusive. It's well short of similar measures that gaming companies or expensive app companies have been using for years.
C) There are alternatives for Windows.
Pay up, or switch. There is no room for pirates anymore, and I'm *fine* with that.
Advocate the GPL? Then you *better* support generic notions of copyright, because that's what the GPL is about.
Read through this topic. Half the posts are "This is terrible! I'll no longer install pirated versions of Windows!" Well, big deal. You aren't a customer now, why should they give two shits what you do.
The other half of posts are, "No Sweat, this is easy to work around!" To this group, all I have to say is, "Grow up." Hopefully, they'll get around to sabotaging your Windows installation soon.
This has already been tested (while it was optional). I'm not sure if anything has changed, but the ActiveX control looked for a Registry key that Wine did not create by default.
I believe there was talk of adding the registry key; also, you can do it manually .
No, actually, your mistaken.
If you bought a PC with a pirated copy of XP, and have proof of purchase, than you get a *free* copy if you submit all the details regarding your pirated copy.
If you just are running a pirated copy, then you are given the option of purchasing a copy of XP at a reduced price under their Amnesty agreement.
That's what the grandparent post is quoting.
This would be great!
mod parent up
In fact, I think MS should prevent pirates from getting security updates.
Anything to make piracy of MS products as difficult as possible!
MS always blathers on and on about TCO, but nobody ever mentions the marketshare that MS has gained through piracy.
Home users will be more willing to consider alternatives if the actual cost of Windows is figured into their calculation.
I don't care about the difference in power usage between a Pentium M (laptop) and a Athlon 64 (desktop) cpus. It's an irrelevant number.
I'd be very curious to see the difference in power usage (and benchmarks) between a Pentium M (plugged into a 478-socket system) and a low-voltage Athlon 64 (laptop version) plugged into a similar desktop board.
Not the difference in power usage by the processor, mind you, but the difference in power usage by the entire *system*, and at the various stages of idling.
A pentium M northbridge will use significantly more power than an Athlon 64 northbridge. And Athlon 64s do an amazing job of throttling down to low powerlevels (enough that they can be cooled via passive cooling, and I believe they survive the heatsink-fell-off test.
I'm not sure about the grandparent, but, I like having both.
w ww.silentpcreview.com/Sections%2Bindex-req-printpa ge-artid-222.html+AMD64+Cool+'n+quiet+energy+savin gs&hl=en&client=safari
My AMD64 3000+ throttles down using Cool 'n quiet. My harddrives stop spinning. I don't have any optical drives, which burn power. My graphics card power usage cycles up and down depending upon whether the 3D is in use.
In fact, it will respond to SSH requests even when it is in the standby to ram mode, which reduces the overrall power usage to around 20-30 watts. Overall, my PC burns far less power when it is idling than older systems with no power management. An older pentium-pentium III system, always on, with no processor throttling, and poorer APM/ACPI capabilities is far more power hungry.
Keep in mind, standby to ram mode *does* turn off your GPU, Sound Card, and USB devices (just about everything except for network cards and input devices, which are pretty energy efficent. If you have smart fans controlled by BIOS they'll be turned off by powersaving.
Sure, peak power usage is higher; but I'm fine with that. I'm willing to trade peak usage (which is occassional) for overrall lower usage.
There's a chart here that shows tested power usage for an AMD64 system running at base Coon 'N Quiet Frequency (800 MHZ)
http://72.14.207.104/search?q=cache:bKaElUvKlBYJ:
One impressive thing is that it works just fine with passive cooling; considering that my processor fan automatically cycles up and down depending upon heat, and I've reduced the number of fans in my system to 1 (passive heat pipe cooling on my video card, aluminum case which pulls heat from the HD), I'd say smarter design is more important that low performance/power design.
I went from Windows user, to Linux user, to Mac user (bought a Powerbook and and 2x Mac Minis), and I'm starting to yearn back for Linux.
I've gotten really, really happy with my Linux desktop at home (SuSE 9.3).
It does more than my Macs do, and configuration is really easy.
Reasons I'm leaning back to Linux:
1. Codeweaver's Crossover Office. Yes, this might become avaliable for Mac, sometime in the future. Depends on me finding an intel Mac, depends on Codeweaver finishing the port. There are some Windows apps I really like to have.
2. VMware is significantly faster than Virtual PC. Intel macs might change this, as well.
3. Cedega. No Half-Life 2 on Mac. No Guild Wars on Mac. Intel macs may change this as well, but there will be additional problems compared to the above 2 ports.
4. OpenOffice.org 2.0. NeoOffice/J is klunky. OpenOffice.org 2 in XDarwin is klunkier. OpenOffice.org 2.0 on my SuSE 9.3 system is smooth as silk.
5. I *like* KDE. I've spent the past 3 days trying to get KDE to work properly on my powerbook in a full screen X. Each time I try to install it I get a compile error in FinkCommander. I thought this stuff was supposed to be automatic? Either way, SuSE handles it for me; Yes, the hardware is easier to configure with a Mac (because it comes configured). But my software (That I like to use) is actually easier on Linux, because SuSE configured *everything* for me, Out-Of-Box.
6. Finder. Finder sucks. When Finder looses some network shares, it freezes. Sometimes, you cannot even force quit it or force restart it. This drives me bonkers. Also, you cannot use finder to upload to an FTP; FTP shares are read only. Konqueror beats the pants of finder.
7. Much more GUI customization. With the advent of Kompmgr and Superkaramba, I feel that KDE has a similar level of eye candy as the Mac. With whats on the horizon for Xorg I expect KDE to superceede OS X soon.
8. Easier to mess with software. I had to wait for Tiger to get Java 1.5 on my Mac OS X. That was like 8 months behind my Linux box, which made a *huge* difference, because Ameritrade's Java streamer app is not stable in older versions of Java (would regularly crash Safari).
9. Far, far cheaper hardware. My Athlon 64 3200+ with a Geforce 6800 GT beats the crap out of anything Apple manufacturers right now, at any price. I paid significantly less than an iMac for this setup.
Gotta go, but these are a few of the reasons. There are many more. Don't get me wrong, I recommend Mac OS X to everyone else; I won't deal with their Windows problems anymore, and I see OS X as the way out. But for me, I feel limited in OS X compared to Linux.
Why not the best, or the average?
99.4% uppercentage for Vonage.
That's about what.... 50 hours of downtime a year? (Yes, I know they are talking about call completion, not uptime, but bear with me)
Well, this year, in Oak Creek, WI, we lost all SBC phone service for 5 days. That's significantly worse.
And that's not the only outage we've experienced; trees get blown over, the local phone company building experiences an outage, and other such stupid mishaps.
Nothing is 100% reliable. I feel that 99.4% reliable with a viable backup (cell phones) is more than good enough.
Not that I there aren't situations where both will fail; a major disaster will most likely take out wireline phone service, wireless phone service, and internet service. But if I get two providers with 99.4% uptime, I'll be A-okay.
Especially considering that cellular 911 calls have priority over standard calls *and* will use any signal (well, similar to your carriers (GPRS v. CDMA) to get ahold of the closest 911 center.
Ok, Ok, you're right, I looked it up.
Between 90F-100F, then.
Two partial solutions, one for RPM distributions (I suppose you could manage them with alien, but it gets kludgier and kludgier......).
n stall.html
http://www.gnu.org/software/sourceinstall/sourcei
Manages source packages for you. GUI, lets you click on and off all the possible configure/make options you could want (well, maybe not *all*, but more than I have ever used).
Then, there is Krpmbuilder, which is a wizard interface for building RPMS from source without spec files. Check http://krpmbuilder.sourceforge.net/
Seems pretty nice, you can put descriptions and the like, which might be useful if you are administering a bunch of computers and would like to add a package from source to your pile of systems. Presumably if you are a running a debian system, you could install RPM on debian, build RPM's with Krpmbuilder, convert back to deb using alien, and then manage that however you manage your computer labs or whatever.
None of these are ideal solutions, but they point in the right direction, and certainly anything that lets you get control over the various source packages scattered all over your system is a *good* thing.
Doesn't work without a .spec file.
n stall.html which helps somewhat, however.
.tar.gz without spec files inside RPM
I'm looking at http://www.gnu.org/software/sourceinstall/sourcei
Still not integrated with RPM, which is too bad. Be nice to get sourceinstall integrated with pseduo RPM packages somehow, so you can manage
G-d... What's that mean?
.tar.gz without a spec file (alien requires spec files).
./configure, make, or make install failed.
.tar.gz source packages with any tgz, deb, or rpm binary package management system.
Anyways: I agree, this can be troubling. What *would* be nice was if could create a perl script that would build an RPM (or a deb, or whatever) from a
This would have to be a very sophisticated script. It would have to track the locations of where everything was put by 'make install', as well as be able to fail gracefully, with the ability to clean up after itself.
It would also have to provide meaningful error messages when either
The advantage of this would not be redistributable packages, but, would be the ability to remove stuff easily using
Combine this with alien, and you'd be able to integrate
A/C sucks in cars now?
The A/C in my Lexus, my dad's Benz, and my sister's escalade all rock.
Instant on, instant cold, instant-blast-of-frigid air. Then, they get colder.
This is in the midwest, chicagoland area. So its *friggin* hot. Like 100F, or higher.
1. Article says 100 Mbps is 50 times faster than what they have now. Thus, they have 2 Mbps cable.
2. I have 6 Mbps cable. I know people within 20-30 miles of me with 8 or 10 Mbps cable. SBC delivers 3 Mbps dsl, and delivered 6 Mbps to a select few quick enough to jump on the deal.
Does anyone else find it hard to believe that they will leapfrog technologies like that? Or, that even once those companies start selling the equipment (the article, after all, quotes an equipment manufacturer, *not* an ISP) that deployment will be instant?
VDSL, VDSL2, and a whole bunch of alphabet soup DSL types exist *right* now, but we don't see them all over the U.S.
Similarly, many American cable companies have switched much of their equipment to DOCSIS 2.0 stuff, but haven't ramped up the speeds yet (not enough backhaul).
Avaliability of equipment != deployment. Rather than idolizing some vaporware Finish deployment, we should be looking at places like S. Korea and Japan, where they've managed 2 and 3 digit broadband speeds (in Mbps) *now*, not some-time-in-the-oh-so-near-future.
I can pull up 100s of articles from SBC's Project Lightspeed, or Verizon's FIOS. Some of them talk about deploying this stuff nationwide in 2003-2004.
But do I have 100 Mbps internet yet? No.
This is a non-article. A fluff piece by an equipment manufacturer. I want to hear more about actual deployments (and they do exist), not about some companies wishful thinking.
Bush is as far from Libertarian as most Democrats.
Bush= fake respect from economic liberalism.
Democrats= fake respect for personal rights and freedom.
Both argue *for* the limitation of what the other is preaching about, and neither actually implement their *own* agenda!
Absolutely;
You shouldn't have to be a criminal to play content that you've already purchased!
I think, however, that the MS/I solution is mostly smoke and mirrors.
Literally *ALL* of the European cable companies had signed on to Microsoft's set-top box initiative. These companies then figured out that MS had more features than competitors, but that 1/2 of them were buggy, and 1/2 of them were delayed to a future revision.
The *only* European company still pursuing a MS solution is the one that has *still* not deployed their next gen solution. They are hoping to have it out by 2006.
Given that people like you and I switch to an alternate platform, I believe that content providers will continue to cater to us. When other consumers see how well we are doing with our non-crappy non-MS hardware, they'll switch too.
Even Joe Blow has a preference for non-encumbered hardware. He'll buy the more expensive brand with *less* features if he thinks it will let him copy movies, or burn CDs.
But he's got to have a choice; if MS/Intel take over the market completely he'll buy their crap.
That's what happened in the Desktop market; Apple folded, and everyone lined up to deliver MS products. This has *not* happened in other markets, consoles, or set-tops, for example.
That's my question---
Will I be able to use it with Linux? Will there be enough information to write an opensource driver for it?
Or will I be stuck with a Windows-only closed source driver?
I'm guessing it was modded insightful because I made a valid point ;-)
Seriously, if you think about it, what I said does not conflict with what you said.
I do not believe that Intel/MS will be capable of taking over the Home Television/Cable/Satellite/IPTV market. I do not believe that anyone will be able to keep Linux users out of this market.
That does not, however, mean that DRM is not coming. Note that I said that even if Intel releases DRM drivers for Linux, they'll be closed-source black box drivers.
DRM *is* coming. I skeptical that we can do much to stop it, given the industry and governmental support behind it (incidentially, as a libertarian, I cannot understand why the government is such a bring proponent of DRM (yes, yes, I know about lobbying)). Just because it is coming, however, does not mean that advocates such as myself should give up on all our causes.
"DRM *is* coming! All is Lost! The End Is Nigh! Abandon All Ye Linux!"
All I really said is that MS/Intel won't shut-out other competitors; indeed, given Microsoft's current Television track record I'd be surprised if they made more than a toehold into the market.
None of what I've said now, nor what I said in my post, discusses the oncoming onslaught of DRM (with the possible exception of the statement indicating that DRM will be cracked for use on Linux, and I do *not* believe that's a good answer).
We need to be fighting on many fronts; we will not defeat DRM is Microsoft monopolizes the set-top box market; we would then see the DRM home theater PC.
This battle, however, is a small, but significant portion of the war against DRM. I do not see DRM winning smoothly, however; consumers did not buy into Circuit City's DiVX pay as you go DVD.
But an *essential* point to winning the DRM battle is ensuring that Microsoft does not win a monopoly in the television/cable/content distribution market. If the possibility remains for consumers to pick an non-encumbered technology, even with a significant price *deficit*, I believe non-encumbered technologies will win out.
But they need to have a choice; if Verizon is offering non-DRM IPTV, and Comcast is offering MS DRM cable, Verizon will win, until Comcast is forced to compete. But there need to be two sides in order for there to be competition, and if everyone is using the MS platform, consumers will have *no* effective choice.