The article didn't say where the code was available. Does anybody know? All I could find was this: http://www.isi.edu/licensed-sw/rewrite-decoder/ind ex.html It might be the software to which the article refers, but the Knight fellows name isn't on it.
VMware runs well on anything that runs Windows fast enough for you. If machine X runs windows well, then its fast enough to run VMware and windows, with one caveat: you must have enough RAM for the host as well as the guest OS. My 3.2 ghz HP notebook with 1 gig of RAM is much faster than I actually need. VMware runs the guest OS at approximately full speed. I gig lets the machine comfortably run KDE 3.2 and my Windows dev "box" and all the apps that I usually run in KDE and Winders. I gig is about all the memory I have ever _needed_ with VMware. Of course I'm only running one virtual machine. VMware currently costs 189 bucks at www.vmware.com
There is also a VMware Version 5 beta that is available (free with registration).
The hardware that the hosted OS sees is generic virtualized hardware. I've used the vm containing my Windows dev environment on 4 machines over the two years I've been using it. I haven't had to reconfigure W2K once. As long as the DVD (or other hardware) is seen by linux, then vmware will virtualize it and present it to the hosted OS as a generic dvd (or whatever is appropriate). For example, the dvd on my current notebook is a hitachi. It is presented to Windows as an NEC/Vmware CD.
VMware is a very good way to neuter Windows and minimize some of its bad behavior. I've been beating the crap out of my windows development environment for two years straight with no re-installs of windows. My windows environment is hosted by SuSE Linux. I have reverted to a snapshot a couple of times, at a cost of a couple of minutes of downtime. Saving the original install off to somewhere safe is easy (just copy the virtual machine's directory somewhere else).
yeah, that might be fun to try. but even 10 msec of delay is audible (and even annoying) on some material. but it would be easy to try - or even easier see just how close multiple instances of mpg123 could be synced from the command line using konsoles "send input to all sessions" feature. I trying this right now...
Ahem, from abrinton's question: "I'd like to have the same music everywhere, or better still, options to play different things in different rooms." gnump3d/icecast/xmms etc anwers the "play different things in different rooms" part of his question, the darwin streaming server (which I haven't setuup - yet) might be the solution for the "same music everywhere". abrinton didn't say whether he wanted audiophile quality OR multichannel stereo. He did say what sort of gear he had though, and using what he has... gnump3d's web interface and ssh'ing into a box to control it is an easy way to use the gear he has.
If you have a network, and a stack 'o PIII's then you have what you need. It doesn't really matter what kind of network, as long as everything connects via TCP and has enough bandwidth for your needs. Setup a linux server, with enough disk space for your media collection and whatever else you want to store there. Install gnumpd3 from here: http://www.gnu.org/software/gnump3d/ Install a desktop linux distro on the machines in each room. Aim a web browser from any machine at the URL of the gnump3d server and viola! you have music from your collection on demand in any room! Streaming radio style music is easy as well. Install icecast from here:http://www.icecast.org/ and aim the xmms player from here: http://www.xmms.org/ and you have streaming media! woohoo! If you want to control a distribution system that plays the same songs things get more complicated, you'll need Apple computer's RTSP server and some client software to get everything sync'd throughout the house. I use secure shell from my zaurus wireless pda and mpg123 and aumix to operate this from a pocket sized device. For everything else I just browse the music library with gnump3d's web interface. FWIW, I use SuSE linux. It came with all the above except for the Darwin Stream Server (or whatever it is that Apple calls it these days). I had to download and compile the icecast source, but what the heck, it wasn't to hard to do either.
The problem with asking this sort of question on Slashdot is that you'll get all the hobbyist answers: Debian, Gentoo etc. SuSE is always my first choice for business. Why? SuSE has the best integration of KDE and GNOME, is solid, and more thoroughly QA'ed than the hobbyist distros. SuSE isn't for folks who just have to have the latest and greatest, (hobbyists) rather its for production use! Its very easy to deploy security updates with SuSE, and as a server or Business Desktop, its hard to beat for ease of deployment, maintenance and compatibility. If your goal is to save yourself time and effort, and save your organization some money, check out SuSE.
If kmeleon is geekier than firefox, maybe geekier still is to run it on linux. Works pretty well with Crossover Office on SuSE 9.1. Everything seems to work except for the "explore bookmarks" menu item whick presumably can't find some explorer? component or other it needs. kmeleon is _very_ fast, much faster than Firefox running natively on Linux (at least on my system). I'll try it next on Win2K running on vmware hosted on SuSE 9.1. Has anybody tried running it with Wine?
I think the claimed shortage of H1Bs is total BS. Its just another ploy of big business to get a service cheaper, even if they bankrupt the middle class in the process. There is no shortage of American labor. Programmers (like myself) are taking lower rates, AND still ending up in the lonely midwest. I'm currently on an assignment in Iowa, after spending 6 months in a little cow town in Kansas. There is no shortage of programmers willing to fill these assignments either. I hae calls from friends in the industry all the time asking me if I've heard of any contracting work out here in the midwest. I tried for 2 years to find work as a developer in Houston TX... people I know there are still out of work or have changed careers entirely. One fellow I know, an Oracle admin with many years experience, is doing refrigeration and AC repair because of the competition for IT related jobs in Houston. I have resigned myself to a life on the road, there just doesn't seem to be much call for full-time developers (as employees) anymore. Will things change? I sure hope so! I miss my home and girlfriend!
These guys make nifty rolling gear cases. The large one holds my 17 inch HP and my Averatec 3250. Sturdy enough not to worry when you have to gate check it getting on a "puddle jumper" aircraft. Downside - expensive. Upside: rolls and will last forever!
Ok, its not open source, but a globe-spanning company I used to work for did all of its office work with a unix office suite (CHUI interface!) called Cliq. Don't know if its still available, used to be about 30 bucks US a seat. Had a nice spreadsheet program (which was probably the best part of the suite). Maybe they have an X version now, I haven't look at Cliq in about 3 years. URL for Cliq: http://www.dr-quad.com/products.htm HTH
Our development box - running IBM's AIX, has been beaten on by a bunch of developers (more than 20) and several dozen other users for _over_a_year_ without a reboot. Try that on a winders box!
An ozone generator like those from Alpine Air will remove odors and not damage the components. By curious coincidence, I too am working (as a contractor) for one of the nations largest meat packing companies... and the rendering plants are just amazingly stinky!
Not sure about this, but can't you order online from walmart and have them ship to UK? Most of these really low-priced and OS-less PC's are only available from Walmart's web site.
I've been looking into VSAT for an application in rural Mississippi. While doing this I learned (maybe) somethings about VSAT and VPN. I looked at the current crop of small business offering from Starband (Gilat reseller in the USA) as well as several resellers of DirecWay (Hughes). What I found out about VPN and VSAT is that it can work, but unless the ISP hosts the VPN, all forms of IPSEC will be very slow. SSH will be slow. The problem according to a fellow at Skycasters www.skycasters.com is that encrypted packets can't be "batched up" for sending.
The currently deployed technology seems to be oriented more toward streaming media, like TV. To make the best use of bandwidth on the sat, they allow packets to build up in a bucket or queue while the satellite spoofs the "acks" from the other end of the TCP communication. When the bucket is full, the packets are streamed to earth (or to the satellite). This spoofing/batching thing is also why there is so much latency in sat communication.
Technically VPN can work in this scenario, but the sat must turn off its packet spoofing procedure and each packet essentially makes at individual round trip. With no batching, VSAT uploads get really slow, at about 24 - 38 kbits/sec or less (usually much less). Downloads are affected as well but as you have more downstream bandwidth (on most service plans) you notice it less.
HTH
The alternative, is to buy sat time from someone who can host the VPN earth-side. I think Skycasters does this in the USA. They are Hughes resellers.
In other news: ViaSat http://www.viasat.com/ is supplying VSAT to the coalition in Iraq: http://www.spacedaily.com/news/vsat-04l.htm l
> Oh, and its dual-processor support is pretty > pathetic. The load balancing seems incredibly > naive. (And, this may not be an OS problem, but I > find that I have problems scrolling text in > VS.NET in a timely fashion.
I too have seen this on my (older) dual-proc Intel box. There seems to be a sharper "knee" in XP's loading curve than on W2K. I hope that Longhorn doesn't suck even more than XP on SMP boxes. I write Windows-based client-server business software. After a while I just had to accept that I was _way_ more productive with a Linux desktop and Crossover Office. Now I run my Windows IDE with Crossover on SuSE Linux.
Linux has better SMP support, than XP and _way_ better support for my dual monitor setup. KDE and Xinerama kick ass when combined with kpager. And because I this is swerving seriously OT, I won't mention about how Linux has seriously better developer tools than Windows.
Microsoft would REALLY have to show me something cool about Longhorn before I would ever think of switching back to developing _for_ Windows whilst actually _on_ Windows. There is however the QA bit that has to be actually performed on Windows but thats another story.
I'm living in a friends house in an extra couple of bedrooms. I haven't room for even all my clothes, but I would never compromise on the computers. My current workstation is an (old) dual pIII with a pair of 19" monitors. Until I had to give one to my son, there were three monitors on it (gotta love Matrox!). So, no I wouldn't ever buy one of these silly 'lifestyle' pcs. Seems like its more a decorative appliance for front office secretaries or sitting (probably unused) on some dumbass executives desk. I could build two or three useful machines for what one of these goofy sony boxes cost!
I was updating my CV the other day and realized that I now have 20 years in IT. yikes! Many of my customers over the years have held opinions similar to that of Mr. O'Connor. It is a widely held belief in many older corporate IT departments that software is worth what you pay for it. Free=worthless. This just shows how isolated many (most?) workaday programmers are from the experiences of the FOSS folks. IMNSHO, the future of most business IT is going to be in the service industry of installing, maintaining, and modifying freely-distributed and OSS (FOSS). Programmers sometimes fear OSS because FOSS = (some degree of) peer review. The worry that peers will see how really _shitty_ their code is. In practice though, lack of peer-review = poor coding skills. Managers fear OSS as well. To this group FOSS = loss of control. This kind of thinking won't change unless more service oriented companies come forward and sell servies for FOSS. Services for FOSS = installing, modifying, and maintaining FOSS. Interestingly perhaps, many small and medium sized service companies (consultancies etc) make about the same amount of money whether they sell the software of just install it. They just buy (or arrange for sale of) from a bona-fide distributor of the software in question, then pass that cost (occasionally with markup) to the customer. The majority of the profit is in the placement of the programmers, analysts, and admins, permanently or for the duration of the project.
It all depends on how much it has to do and how much it has to cost. I really don't know why the EPIA platform "failed" as you say, I don't think the EPIA platform is meant to be a straight-up appliance. if it was the m1000 boards wouldn't have VGA, they would have NTSC (or PAL) outputs only. It seems the way to implement x86 appliances would be to use low power procs like the VIA and outboard processors to take the load off the little CPU. A VIA M1000 board with the built in MPEG decoder comes close. With the addition of a WiFI card you have the capabilities mentioned in the above Intel link. While the EPIA is quiet and powerful enough (in the right configuration) they don't have a very good NTSC out (IMHO). An EPIA box with a Hauppauge PVR-350 card in it with MythTV or something like it can be a fine little appliance. I have one of the Hauppauge cards an old 950 Mhz Athlon box here in my office right now to play music and watch (and record) TV. Very quiet too, once I added a low-noise power supply. (SuSE 9.0, old Athlon, WinTV PVR-250, Matrox G200 video (for the NTSC out) If I could afford another PVR-250 or 350, it would easily handle multiple video streams!
Slashdot Mirror
The article didn't say where the code was available. Does anybody know? All I could find was this:d ex.html
http://www.isi.edu/licensed-sw/rewrite-decoder/in
It might be the software to which the article refers, but the Knight fellows name isn't on it.
VMware runs well on anything that runs Windows fast enough for you. If machine X runs windows well, then its fast enough to run VMware and windows, with one caveat: you must have enough RAM for the host as well as the guest OS.
My 3.2 ghz HP notebook with 1 gig of RAM is much faster than I actually need. VMware runs the guest OS at approximately full speed. I gig lets the machine comfortably run KDE 3.2 and my Windows dev "box" and all the apps that I usually run in KDE and Winders. I gig is about all the memory I have ever _needed_ with VMware. Of course I'm only running one virtual machine.
VMware currently costs 189 bucks at www.vmware.com
There is also a VMware Version 5 beta that is available (free with registration).
The hardware that the hosted OS sees is generic virtualized hardware. I've used the vm containing my Windows dev environment on 4 machines over the two years I've been using it. I haven't had to reconfigure W2K once. As long as the DVD (or other hardware) is seen by linux, then vmware will virtualize it and present it to the hosted OS as a generic dvd (or whatever is appropriate). For example, the dvd on my current notebook is a hitachi. It is presented to Windows as an NEC/Vmware CD.
VMware is a very good way to neuter Windows and minimize some of its bad behavior. I've been beating the crap out of my windows development environment for two years straight with no re-installs of windows. My windows environment is hosted by SuSE Linux. I have reverted to a snapshot a couple of times, at a cost of a couple of minutes of downtime. Saving the original install off to somewhere safe is easy (just copy the virtual machine's directory somewhere else).
Master of Magic kicks ass! MOM is one of my all-time favorite games! Wish there was a version for Linux.
yeah, that might be fun to try. but even 10 msec of delay is audible (and even annoying) on some material. but it would be easy to try - or even easier see just how close multiple instances of mpg123 could be synced from the command line using konsoles "send input to all sessions" feature.
I trying this right now...
Ahem,
from abrinton's question: "I'd like to have the same music everywhere, or better still, options to play different things in different rooms." gnump3d/icecast/xmms etc anwers the "play different things in different rooms" part of his question, the darwin streaming server (which I haven't setuup - yet) might be the solution for the "same music everywhere". abrinton didn't say whether he wanted audiophile quality OR multichannel stereo. He did say what sort of gear he had though, and using what he has... gnump3d's web interface and ssh'ing into a box to control it is an easy way to use the gear he has.
If you have a network, and a stack 'o PIII's then you have what you need. It doesn't really matter what kind of network, as long as everything connects via TCP and has enough bandwidth for your needs.
Setup a linux server, with enough disk space for your media collection and whatever else you want to store there. Install gnumpd3 from
here: http://www.gnu.org/software/gnump3d/
Install a desktop linux distro on the machines in each room. Aim a web browser from any machine at the URL of the gnump3d server and viola! you have music from your collection on demand in any room!
Streaming radio style music is easy as well. Install icecast from here:http://www.icecast.org/
and aim the xmms player from here: http://www.xmms.org/ and you have streaming media! woohoo!
If you want to control a distribution system that plays the same songs things get more complicated, you'll need Apple computer's RTSP server and some client software to get everything sync'd throughout the house.
I use secure shell from my zaurus wireless pda and mpg123 and aumix to operate this from a pocket sized device. For everything else I just browse the music library with gnump3d's web interface. FWIW, I use SuSE linux. It came with all the above except for the Darwin Stream Server (or whatever it is that Apple calls it these days). I had to download and compile the icecast source, but what the heck, it wasn't to hard to do either.
HTH
The problem with asking this sort of question on Slashdot is that you'll get all the hobbyist answers: Debian, Gentoo etc. SuSE is always my first choice for business. Why? SuSE has the best integration of KDE and GNOME, is solid, and more thoroughly QA'ed than the hobbyist distros. SuSE isn't for folks who just have to have the latest and greatest, (hobbyists) rather its for production use! Its very easy to deploy security updates with SuSE, and as a server or Business Desktop, its hard to beat for ease of deployment, maintenance and compatibility. If your goal is to save yourself time and effort, and save your organization some money, check out SuSE.
If kmeleon is geekier than firefox, maybe geekier still is to run it on linux. Works pretty well with Crossover Office on SuSE 9.1. Everything seems to work except for the "explore bookmarks" menu item whick presumably can't find some explorer? component or other it needs. kmeleon is _very_ fast, much faster than Firefox running natively on Linux (at least on my system). I'll try it next on Win2K running on vmware hosted on SuSE 9.1. Has anybody tried running it with Wine?
posted using kmeleon on linux!
I think the claimed shortage of H1Bs is total BS. Its just another ploy of big business to get a service cheaper, even if they bankrupt the middle class in the process. There is no shortage of American labor. Programmers (like myself) are taking lower rates, AND still ending up in the lonely midwest. I'm currently on an assignment in Iowa, after spending 6 months in a little cow town in Kansas. There is no shortage of programmers willing to fill these assignments either. I hae calls from friends in the industry all the time asking me if I've heard of any contracting work out here in the midwest. I tried for 2 years to find work as a developer in Houston TX... people I know there are still out of work or have changed careers entirely. One fellow I know, an Oracle admin with many years experience, is doing refrigeration and AC repair because of the competition for IT related jobs in Houston.
I have resigned myself to a life on the road, there just doesn't seem to be much call for full-time developers (as employees) anymore. Will things change? I sure hope so! I miss my home and girlfriend!
cypherz in Sioux City
http://www.portercase.com/
These guys make nifty rolling gear cases. The large one holds my 17 inch HP and my Averatec 3250. Sturdy enough not to worry when you have to gate check it getting on a "puddle jumper" aircraft. Downside - expensive. Upside: rolls and will last forever!
cypherz
Ok, its not open source, but a globe-spanning company I used to work for did all of its office work with a unix office suite (CHUI interface!) called Cliq.
Don't know if its still available, used to be about 30 bucks US a seat. Had a nice spreadsheet program (which was probably the best part of the suite). Maybe they have an X version now, I haven't look at Cliq in about 3 years. URL for Cliq:
http://www.dr-quad.com/products.htm
HTH
Our development box - running IBM's AIX, has been beaten on by a bunch of developers (more than 20) and several dozen other users for _over_a_year_ without a reboot. Try that on a winders box!
"Why Slashdot obesses over patent issuance I'll never understand."
The problem for open source developers is defending their work against bogus patents like this. Getting the patent invalidated costs real money.
An ozone generator like those from Alpine Air will remove odors and not damage the components.
By curious coincidence, I too am working (as a contractor) for one of the nations largest meat packing companies... and the rendering plants are just amazingly stinky!
hope this helps
Not sure about this, but can't you order online from walmart and have them ship to UK? Most of these really low-priced and OS-less PC's are only available from Walmart's web site.
http://www.privoxy.org/
If you're using windoze, this program http://www.brainsystems.com/capsunlock/ is free and seems to work nicely. Puts itself into system tray etc.
I've been looking into VSAT for an application in rural Mississippi. While doing this I learned (maybe) somethings about VSAT and VPN. I looked at the current crop of small business offering from Starband (Gilat reseller in the USA) as well as several resellers of DirecWay (Hughes). What I found out about VPN and VSAT is that it can work, but unless the ISP hosts the VPN, all forms of IPSEC will be very slow. SSH will be slow. The problem according to a fellow at Skycasters www.skycasters.com is that encrypted packets can't be "batched up" for sending.
m l
The currently deployed technology seems to be oriented more toward streaming media, like TV. To make the best use of bandwidth on the sat, they allow packets to build up in a bucket or queue while the satellite spoofs the "acks" from the other end of the TCP communication. When the bucket is full, the packets are streamed to earth (or to the satellite). This spoofing/batching thing is also why there is so much latency in sat communication.
Technically VPN can work in this scenario, but the sat must turn off its packet spoofing procedure and each packet essentially makes at individual round trip. With no batching, VSAT uploads get really slow, at about 24 - 38 kbits/sec or less (usually much less). Downloads are affected as well but as you have more downstream bandwidth (on most service plans) you notice it less.
HTH
The alternative, is to buy sat time from someone who can host the VPN earth-side. I think Skycasters does this in the USA. They are Hughes resellers.
In other news:
ViaSat http://www.viasat.com/ is supplying VSAT to the coalition in Iraq:
http://www.spacedaily.com/news/vsat-04l.ht
> OS X is using 892.8 megs
"Free RAM is bad RAM ". My current workstation has 1 GB, after getting to KDE and loading Mozilla, and newsticker etc, top shows almost half in use.
Cpu(s): 26.8% user, 4.2% system, 0.0% nice, 69.0% idle
Mem: 1032264k total, 483440k used, 548824k free, 51840k buffer
Swap: 1052216k total, 0k used, 1052216k free, 184236k cached
I wonder at what point will Longhorn start to seriously swap. Windows has always had a very aggressive swapping strategy.
> Oh, and its dual-processor support is pretty
> pathetic. The load balancing seems incredibly
> naive. (And, this may not be an OS problem, but I
> find that I have problems scrolling text in
> VS.NET in a timely fashion.
I too have seen this on my (older) dual-proc Intel box. There seems to be a sharper "knee" in XP's loading curve than on W2K. I hope that Longhorn doesn't suck even more than XP on SMP boxes.
I write Windows-based client-server business software. After a while I just had to accept that I was _way_ more productive with a Linux desktop and Crossover Office. Now I run my Windows IDE with Crossover on SuSE Linux.
Linux has better SMP support, than XP and _way_ better support for my dual monitor setup. KDE and Xinerama kick ass when combined with kpager. And because I this is swerving seriously OT, I won't mention about how Linux has seriously better developer tools than Windows.
Microsoft would REALLY have to show me something cool about Longhorn before I would ever think of switching back to developing _for_ Windows whilst actually _on_ Windows. There is however the QA bit that has to be actually performed on Windows but thats another story.
I'm living in a friends house in an extra couple of bedrooms. I haven't room for even all my clothes, but I would never compromise on the computers. My current workstation is an (old) dual pIII with a pair of 19" monitors. Until I had to give one to my son, there were three monitors on it (gotta love Matrox!). So, no I wouldn't ever buy one of these silly 'lifestyle' pcs. Seems like its more a decorative appliance for front office secretaries or sitting (probably unused) on some dumbass executives desk. I could build two or three useful machines for what one of these goofy sony boxes cost!
I was updating my CV the other day and realized that I now have 20 years in IT. yikes! Many of my customers over the years have held opinions similar to that of Mr. O'Connor. It is a widely held belief in many older corporate IT departments that software is worth what you pay for it. Free=worthless. This just shows how isolated many (most?) workaday programmers are from the experiences of the FOSS folks.
IMNSHO, the future of most business IT is going to be in the service industry of installing, maintaining, and modifying freely-distributed and OSS (FOSS). Programmers sometimes fear OSS because FOSS = (some degree of) peer review. The worry that peers will see how really _shitty_ their code is. In practice though, lack of peer-review = poor coding skills. Managers fear OSS as well. To this group FOSS = loss of control.
This kind of thinking won't change unless more service oriented companies come forward and sell servies for FOSS. Services for FOSS = installing, modifying, and maintaining FOSS. Interestingly perhaps, many small and medium sized service companies (consultancies etc) make about the same amount of money whether they sell the software of just install it. They just buy (or arrange for sale of) from a bona-fide distributor of the software in question, then pass that cost (occasionally with markup) to the customer. The majority of the profit is in the placement of the programmers, analysts, and admins, permanently or for the duration of the project.
It all depends on how much it has to do and how much it has to cost. I really don't know why the EPIA platform "failed" as you say, I don't think the EPIA platform is meant to be a straight-up appliance. if it was the m1000 boards wouldn't have VGA, they would have NTSC (or PAL) outputs only.
It seems the way to implement x86 appliances would be to use low power procs like the VIA and outboard processors to take the load off the little CPU. A VIA M1000 board with the built in MPEG decoder comes close. With the addition of a WiFI card you have the capabilities mentioned in the above Intel link.
While the EPIA is quiet and powerful enough (in the right configuration) they don't have a very good NTSC out (IMHO). An EPIA box with a Hauppauge PVR-350 card in it with MythTV or something like it can be a fine little appliance.
I have one of the Hauppauge cards an old 950 Mhz Athlon box here in my office right now to play music and watch (and record) TV. Very quiet too, once I added a low-noise power supply. (SuSE 9.0, old Athlon, WinTV PVR-250, Matrox G200 video (for the NTSC out) If I could afford another PVR-250 or 350, it would easily handle multiple video streams!