Wow. Seems like, regardless whether there was any truth behind the Mindcraft "vindication" (and IMNSHO it is valid, much as I personally wish it wasn't), Linux still wins in more typical situations than Mindcraft used in their tests.
Exactly. In that exact situation NT won... But as it's been argued over and over and over on/., how many companies use a single server with four processors and four 100bT network cards to serve up web pages and handle domain users? I'm willing to wager a big fat zero. So way to go Microsoft! You've won in a completely irrelavent battle! Wowwwwwwwwww-eeee! You chose poorly-supported hardware for Linux and threw our best guys at it... of course it's gonna not do as well... But I digress...
I have a kenwood cd player. It's tons better than any sony discman out and was actually cheaper and better looking. I hope they really improve Linux.
Ummm... Kenwood is using linux, not programming for it. As in they could have bought NT and used it.
ERP doesn't make products better, nor does the OS a company uses to run on make products better. Proper design and engineering make products better. Proper marketting makes you want one more than the others. The OS is irrelavent to the product in this case.
One advantage of SCSI drives -- you can low-level format them periodically to clear out the relocated sector table (a low-level format will lock the bad sectors out, clear the relocated sector table, and verify the whole disk so newly grown bad sectors are found).
Do you have any other data or references on this? I am very interested in learning more...
never go with straight IDE on a server. SCSI has the ability to lie to the OS and silently move data from sectors that have gone bad into sectors reserved for that purpose. Sure, it slows down access to that particular block of data, but it's a lot easier than the OS having to deal with failures directly
all new IDE drives (in the past 3 years I think) have this feature. They'll remap without the OS knowing until the extra sectors are full, THEN it'll start letting you know...
That's the reason I never accept a drive with even 1 bad sector. 'cause if I can see 'em, there's already too much damage.
As for controllers... I've used DPT RAID controllers... started with the old ISA 2044U I believe it was with a pair of 4G Seagate Barracudas... just recently moved to a pair of 9.1G WD U2 drives on a DPT Centry controller with 2 channels (one for the U2 drives, and the other channel for the slow SCSI-1 devices). The only trouble I have (haven't talked to DPT yet) is that the Seagate tape backup (travan 4G) seems flaky on the new controller... the CD-RW on the same channel works just great... All in all I'm very happy with DPT.
Being a programmer is one thing. Being an actual CS seems to take a bit more. Turning out code is something one with the requisite skills and temperament can do. Actually thinking deeply about the problems and classes of problems and coming up with new and better or at least state-of-the-art solutions goes a bit beyond just being a programmer.
Hmmm... Perhaps we're arguing the same point, as I would call someone who goes beyond "Just programming" as being a programmer at heart. Someone who thinks deeply, tests and constantly strives to improve algorithms and techniques.
People who go to uni for CS just so they can make the big bucks are capable of the deep thinking and all, but don't. Their heart's not in it.
Sorry, but proper use of the English language (spelling, grammar, punctuation), being able to discuss current issues and effective debating should all have been learned in high school.
I feel I'm pretty good with all of the above. No I can't spell every word in the Oxford dictionary nor can I plunk down 500 words without going over it a couple of times to make it smooth, but then again all I need to be able to do is recognize when something doesn't look right and massage it, consult a dictionary, etc. Right?
If you had to go to university to learn these concepts in North America... Well, we'll just leave that comment unspoken. If you could have gotten in to university without these capabilities... *shakes head*
You're right, you don't need uni to get these abilities. But you shouldn't need it, either.
Hold on a second, there! You are too quick to discredit the worth of a university degree like that. Does your income level warrant you to make that quick a decision outloud? Besides, 60K doesn't sound like all that much, you know. After all, you convert that to USD, it's like 40K only.
$40k, but with health and other benefits... You're Canadian (I believe)... You know there's more to it than the 64% or so exchange rate (haven't been keeping up with the rate, it's probably a little off:-)
I also live and work in a small town (less than 5000 people) so adjust your indices accordingly. I was offered a job at Xerox in their development labs in Toronto but declined because I felt the lifestyle/stress tradeoffs would be more negative.
I have a bachelor's degree. I have worked for about 3 years now and make a good six-figure income in Canada. I get about 8 weeks of vacation time annually, too, so I am not talking about a kind of job that burns you down to the root while it may pay better.
I too have similar benefits with a very relaxed work environment, which is why contemplating leaving who I work for now is a very complex decision.:-)
I honestly believe that University has its merits, some of which you have pointed out. My beef is how high schools are literally cramming it down every student's throat like it is the best thing since sliced bread. They literally brush off college. Why is this? Certainly not because employers are asking for it. Why are most of the people I know not sure why they're in university, aside from being told by parents, educators and the media that they need to be there for something?
THAT is my beef. Yes, university's a higher education. Yes you have fun and broaden your horizons there... but I can think of far cheaper and "better" ways to obtain that same end result. Why spend $50k+ to have a good time and broaden your horizons?
Maybe this is true in America, but not so much in Canada. You want a job? You have to jump through the hoops, and that means bringing up the issue of education.
?
I live and work in Canada. You don't need no steeking degree to get a job past your first, at least in my experience. My resume proudly says "Education: High School (OSSD)". Why proud? Because I'm damned proud of the fact that I am making $60k with that high school diploma. No, it's not an IT-related job, unless you consider designing embedded industrial power electronics IT. I'm damned proud of the fact that I beat the system. And I'm damned proud that I can show others that if you've truly got the smarts and the drive, you don't have to blow $50k or more and four years of your life right out of high school to prove to the world that you're for real.
Just because you can get a job without a degree after having worked in the real world doesn't mean that employers don't give a shit. It's certainly not going to hurt. If all else fails, you have the basis for a career change. The current job counselling view is that most people will make several career changes within their lifetime.
Very true. I'm working on my second. Working for myself in electronics design consulting.
NOTE NOTE NOTE NOTE I am NOT saying that a degree is worthless! I am saying that for 75% (to pick a number out of my ass) of the population, YOU DO NOT NEED A DEGREE TO SUCCEED. That's a blatant lie by the guidance councellors to push kids into more education than is necessary. Why? My little conspiracy theory is that their salaries are based on how many kids from their school go on to post-secondary education. Don't know what you want to do in life? Go to University and find out! What utter fucking bullshit! In Canada it's taboo to go to College. If you don't go to University you're considered stupid. Every day of my life I prove those fuckers wrong.
If you know what you want to do and you know you need a degree, get your ass in and pay your dues. But if you wanna be a code monkey or an electrician or a writer or a gradeschool teacher, get the fuck out of univeristy. Take a 10 month course in college where the knowledge is hands-on and for God's sake, don't waste your pime years because some twitt behind a desk told you you need it to survive.
Also, what happens if you lose you job in the future? You still have a degree behind you
Not sure where you're from, but in North America nobody gives a shit about your degree after your first job. It's always "Where did you work last?" and "What is your experience?" It's kind of ironic... you need the degree to get the first job, but after that it's useless. I'm glad I managed to get around that... All it takes is an employer with a little vision instead of someone looking for a cookie-cutter degree.
Don't take me wrong; degrees aren't completely useless... but CS? I'm terribly sorry, but if you're not a programmer by heart you're not gonna survive... you will have "learned" how to program, you will have "learned" the logic... but your heart won't be in it and you'll still churn out shit because it's not you. If you're a programmer by heart you'll do far better than anyone with their bachelors, masters or doctorate in CS who's in it for the money. If you're a programmer at heart and take CS... well then you've got all those holes in your knowledge filled and you'll kick ass. I guess it's the same in almost all fields though.:-)
Oh yes... I didn't mean to be derogatory with the "not sure where you're from" because I've heard that in Germany they care a whole lot more about your education and even after 20 years in the workforce you'll still be asked what your education is.
Probably an unpopular opinion, but I would tend to think that when we are able to equate a businessman with poor ethics to possibly one of the top three most evil men in the history of mankind we have forgotten everything we were asked not to forget.
I really feel sorry for humanity now. WWIII is just around the corner. We've become so desensitized and comfortable that we can equate genocide with businesscide, or mass murder with poor ethics.
My opinion is the best method is at least two webservers with synchronized content with a round-robin DNS entry.
Round-robin DNS I can figure out... what's the bestest way to get two boxen with identical data on them with both running? Is there a slick way to have the logs spat into one spot and sorted by time? PAM can handle logins and stuff but please, if anyone has some info on this, reply...
My friend and I have been looking for a solution for Linux for a while... tried both PPPoE drivers mentioned on freshmeat with limited success.. the userland one won't let you send large packets without barfing (seems to ignore MTU) and I believe he had bad luck with the kernel-space driver as well...
I was waiting for it before, but now that I've heard that it uses a nortel 1 meg modem with a dynamic ip and they even force you to use a proxy for web access; no thanks. I'd rather pay my 39.90 CDN a month for shaw cable. The 3-5.5mbps variable downlink and 320-768kbps variable uplink all of the sudden seem pretty good:).
Sorry to burst your bubble, but any upstream provider can force you through a proxy. I do it to all my customers to keep my bandwidth useage down and keep me competitive. It's as easy as a 1-liner route on a cisco router, linux router, or practically anything. Proxying is not a bad thing if done right; you'd never even know it was happenning.
I've heard many good and bad things about cable. The good ones are on underutilized segments. The bad ones are on normal to overutilized segments. Me? I'd rather take a guaranteed CIR and work around the dynamic IP 'cuz Murphy's Law sez that the second you need the bandwidth it won't be there.
As far as I can tell, your static IP is not guaranteed. Shaw/Rogers can at any time decide to go to a dynamic system. And Rogers (at least in Toronto/Kitchener-Waterloo areas) route MUST go all the way down to (I think) Californina before it gets to where you want to go. My traceroute between a box in Waterloo and my house in Waterloo goes through Cali... Great routing, boys!!
(an aside about Bell's HSE -- they're fighting with PPPoE... [apparently it's "better" than DHCP but they're shoehorning PPP into an interface which wasn't designed for a point-to-point connection... yuck!] Works great under Windows but the PPPoE drivers for Linux dont' work sending large packets... something about ignoring the MTU settings entirely)
not unlike modems except on a phone line there is a very limited number of sine waves that can be fit and there amplitude and frequency are quite limited...early modems were 110 bps, then 300 then faster...the max speed of the medium never changed (POTS are limited to 33,600 bps) only the encoding techniques changed...
Not quite...
Modern modems use QAM to send data, not discrete sine waves. If I'm not mistaken "raw" sine waves haven't been used since 300 baud modems... You know the ones where you had the switch to select originate or answer.:-)
POTS is limited to 2400 baud. You achieve everything faster by encoding more than one bit per "transition" or baud. Modems these days aren't. They are "just" DSPs which don't actually modulate based on a carrier, rather just output what is necessary to achive the symbol.
Picture a graph centered at the origin. x is phase and y is amplitude. You don't just have +1 and -1. you have (if I'm not mistaken) 6 or 8 levels along each axis. you can choose any of those phases with any of those amplitudes. Essentially you end up with 64 or 256 possibilities per symbol. (I'm pretty sure it's 256)...
Anyway what I'm trying to describe is a constellation pattern... They're usually illustrated like this:
Each dot represents a possible symbol. You can only spit out 2400 symbols per second over POTS but you can send multiple bits per symbol, or baud, giving you speeds faster than 2400bps.
The 56k limit on POTS has its roots in how T1s are actually set up and transmitted. T1s are actually transmitted as 193-bit-long frames, 8000 times per second. One of those bits is required to keep frame sync, leaving a payload of 192 bits per frame, giving you 1.536mbps. T1s originally carred voice, sent as 8-bit PCM data. Twelve 193-bit-long frames are logically grouped together and called a super frame. The 6th and 12th frame in the larger super frame had 1 bit used for frame sync as usual, but then instead of the remaining 192 bits being used as 24 8-bit channels, 24 7-bit channels were sent, with the LSB used for line status for each channel (busy, off-hook, etc.). This loss of the LSB every 6 frames wasn't very noticable for voice, but over data it just isn't cool. ESF is similar to SF but 24 193-bit frames were grouped instead of 12 so that 4 bits of framing could be used instead of just 2, on the 6th, 12th, 18th and 24th frame. AFAIK those extra two bits weren't ever really used, they just duplicated the info in the original 2 line status bits.
Since every 6 frames you're missing a bit and it's not possible for the modem to know which frames will be missing the bit, the modem only relies on the 7 bits being clean. So now you've got 7 bits sent 8000 times a second for 56000bps instead of the theoretical 64000bps per channel over a 'clean' T1 channel.
This concludes your lesson. If you want to know more, just email me. Hopefully this isn't too far off topic, but it *is* some history about how POTS works with digital transmission.:-)
Correct me if I'm wrong (/. is good for that:-), but I don't think you build up a complex waveform like that... you superimpose them.
i.e. take a sine wave of frequency 'x' and amplitude 'y'. now take a sine wave of 3x and 1/3y and "add" them. i.e. along the horizontal, take the amplitudes and add 'em. Excel is good for this:-)
Now keep going. 5x with amplitude 1/5y, 1/7th the 7th, 1/9th the 9th... you'll notice that the rising and falling edges start to get steeper and steeper and the tops start to flatten out... you're building a squarewave.
I'm not quite sure what you meant by "attach another sinewave along the slope of the first"...
It's karma jockeys like you that make my stomach turn. The Anonymous Coward was on to something. The reason you have such high karma is not because you know much of anything, rather it is your willingness to offer your opinion on just about anything, regardless of whether you've even remotely thought about the topic.
Sounds like sour grapes to me. From an AC, too. My karma's in the low 20s but if you take a look at my user info you'll see why... When I post it's relevant and I offer something to the discussion. I've never been moderated more than 2 IIRC, which is exactly how it should work.
If the guys' got a karma of 83, he's either got stuff to offer that's relevant, or bad moderating. Stop ripping on the guy, or get an account and see how the system works yourself. It's easy to point and bitch from the outside.
Curiously, The pro-star notebooks mentioned are just relabelled HyperData notebooks. Hyperdata I know manufactures them and labels for a dozen other manufactuers... Looks like I found another manufacturer they make for..:-)
Sorry, I hate Trinitron tubes. Yes they are super sharp but I cannot stand the 1, 2 or 3 black lines across the screen. Sony says "you'll never see them!" I say "Nuts to you, I've got an LCD now"
Urf... whoever put that technology into a monitor should be shot. I very often have a single-colour background and those lines just stare at me... grating on my nerves. For a TV? Go ahead, I doubt I'll ever see them.
Not because I think it's futuristic or fetching... Actually that never crossed my mind. I prefer them becuase it's a zillion times better than any CRT I've seen/worked on.
Perfect focus across the entire screen
No goddamn brightness and contrast adjustments
Bright, bright, bright
Very little "real world" real-estate required
Flat
This screen I'm using right now (14.1" TFT 1024x768) has 1 dead subpixel (blue is always on) in the very upper left corner (i.e. 0,0). It doesn't bother me 'cause I have a blue background:-). You cannot approach this level of focus (individual pixels visible) with a CRT. I've tried. One of the things I hated most about CRTs is that you had to futz with the brightness and contrast so that black really was black. Christ I hated working on people's computers which were glaring this grey "haze" and calling it black... UGH!
The sub-pixel smoothing thing is way cool... I'm waiting for X to incorporate it:-)
I have a 17" Philips/Magnavox monitor upstairs (can't remember the model now) but it has a.21" dot pitch display... very sharp. I run it at 1280x1024 and it's nice... but I still prefer my laptop display. It's "easier" on my eyes.
In short, my answer to your "WHY?" is "Because it's far better."
Your comment about "No, I'm just wealthy" sounds like sour grapes to me. I can't afford one either, my employer pays for this toy. Because I can't afford (or won't justify) something doesn't mean I won't ooh over it, though.:-)
(an aside -- Are they thinking of making other flatscreen technologies available on laptops? The screens are easily the most expensive parts... They're going after PDP, etc. on flatscreen TVs, I'm just wondering if anyone's heard anything about that on a laptop)
Not much different from the (cinema) projectionist who has to change reels multiple times during the performance.
If I'm understanding what you're saying (movies come on multiple reels), there is a big difference... They can sync up reels and it switches over with (next to) no disturbance of the picture on the screen... So the ambience is not lost.
you could always spread it across more than one disk, couldn't you?
Oh yeah.. You're in your favourite chair, enjoying a new release on your DTS-enhanced audio and 70" flat-panel TV... It's a really suspenceful part... the ambiance is making you think there's a killer in your house... and then...
PLEASE INESERT DISK 2/2
flashes up on your screen...
I don't copy VHS tapes because a) the quality sucks and b) I only own maybe 5 movies that I watch all the time. Why would I copy a DVD??
Re:Tesla is to Torvalds, as Edison is to Gates.
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Exactly. I think you and I are on the same side here.:-)
speaking of fences... my last gf lived beside a farm and her and her sister were in the backyard with me... I whispered to her sister, "Wanna see something cool?" Being 10, she nodded vigorously.
I grabbed Heather's leg with one arm, and the fence with the other... She was in bare feet and I never saw someone jump like that before in my life...
... I don't think she spoke to me for the rest of the day, either... I, on the other hand, had earned her sister's total and unconditional respect.:-)
Re:Tesla is to Torvalds, as Edison is to Gates.
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AC is more efficient for carrying over powerlines but it cycles at 60hertz which is perfect if you want to stop someone's heart.
*cough*bullshit*cough*
Your comment about power transmission is correct, but AC is MUCH safer than DC, the main point being that since AC alternates and gives you some (limited) ability to pull away. Grab on to a 120VAC (RMS) line, and then grab on to 120VDC. Which one can you break free from? AC.
AC also travels over the surface of a conductor (known as the skin effect), while DC utilizes the entire conductor cross-sectional area. The depth to which AC penetrates is dependent on the frequency. All this makes AC burns less harmful than DC burns, but a burn is still not a good thing to be going about and getting for yourself.:-)
To rebutt another poster's comment about being able to "feel" 5VAC more than 5VDC... If I take an instrument and apply 'x'N of force to your arm, then take the same instrument but apply the same force, alternating between 0.707xN(1) 'in' and 0.707xN 'out', which will you feel more? Right, the latter. The body senses change much better than a precise amount.
(1) - why 0.707xN? because that's the equivalent 'static' pressure, known as RMS. i.e your 120VAC power lines are actually somewhere in the area of 178VAC peak-to-peak, but the actual electric 'force' is equivalent to 120VDC. It's the same reason why speakers and amplifiers are usually measured in peak watts, because the number sounds higher and you think you're getting a more powerful product.
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Wow. Seems like, regardless whether there was any truth behind the Mindcraft "vindication" (and IMNSHO it is valid, much as I personally wish it wasn't), Linux still wins in more typical situations than Mindcraft used in their tests.
/., how many companies use a single server with four processors and four 100bT network cards to serve up web pages and handle domain users? I'm willing to wager a big fat zero. So way to go Microsoft! You've won in a completely irrelavent battle! Wowwwwwwwwww-eeee! You chose poorly-supported hardware for Linux and threw our best guys at it... of course it's gonna not do as well... But I digress...
Exactly. In that exact situation NT won... But as it's been argued over and over and over on
I have a kenwood cd player. It's tons better than any sony discman out and was actually cheaper and better looking. I hope they really improve Linux.
Ummm... Kenwood is using linux, not programming for it. As in they could have bought NT and used it.
ERP doesn't make products better, nor does the OS a company uses to run on make products better. Proper design and engineering make products better. Proper marketting makes you want one more than the others. The OS is irrelavent to the product in this case.
One advantage of SCSI drives -- you can low-level format them periodically to clear out the relocated sector table (a low-level format will lock the bad sectors out, clear the relocated sector table, and verify the whole disk so newly grown bad sectors are found).
Do you have any other data or references on this? I am very interested in learning more...
never go with straight IDE on a server. SCSI has the ability to lie to the OS and silently move data from sectors that have gone bad into sectors reserved for that purpose. Sure, it slows down access to that particular block of data, but it's a lot easier than the OS having to deal with failures directly
all new IDE drives (in the past 3 years I think) have this feature. They'll remap without the OS knowing until the extra sectors are full, THEN it'll start letting you know...
That's the reason I never accept a drive with even 1 bad sector. 'cause if I can see 'em, there's already too much damage.
As for controllers... I've used DPT RAID controllers... started with the old ISA 2044U I believe it was with a pair of 4G Seagate Barracudas... just recently moved to a pair of 9.1G WD U2 drives on a DPT Centry controller with 2 channels (one for the U2 drives, and the other channel for the slow SCSI-1 devices). The only trouble I have (haven't talked to DPT yet) is that the Seagate tape backup (travan 4G) seems flaky on the new controller... the CD-RW on the same channel works just great... All in all I'm very happy with DPT.
Being a programmer is one thing. Being an actual CS seems to take a bit more. Turning out code is something one with the requisite skills and temperament can do. Actually thinking deeply about the problems and classes of problems and coming up with new and better or at least state-of-the-art solutions goes a bit beyond just being a programmer.
Hmmm... Perhaps we're arguing the same point, as I would call someone who goes beyond "Just programming" as being a programmer at heart. Someone who thinks deeply, tests and constantly strives to improve algorithms and techniques.
People who go to uni for CS just so they can make the big bucks are capable of the deep thinking and all, but don't. Their heart's not in it.
Sorry, but proper use of the English language (spelling, grammar, punctuation), being able to discuss current issues and effective debating should all have been learned in high school.
I feel I'm pretty good with all of the above. No I can't spell every word in the Oxford dictionary nor can I plunk down 500 words without going over it a couple of times to make it smooth, but then again all I need to be able to do is recognize when something doesn't look right and massage it, consult a dictionary, etc. Right?
If you had to go to university to learn these concepts in North America... Well, we'll just leave that comment unspoken. If you could have gotten in to university without these capabilities... *shakes head*
You're right, you don't need uni to get these abilities. But you shouldn't need it, either.
Hold on a second, there! You are too quick to discredit the worth of a university degree like that. Does your income level warrant you to make that quick a decision outloud? Besides, 60K doesn't sound like all that much, you know. After all, you convert that to USD, it's like 40K only.
:-)
:-)
$40k, but with health and other benefits... You're Canadian (I believe)... You know there's more to it than the 64% or so exchange rate (haven't been keeping up with the rate, it's probably a little off
I also live and work in a small town (less than 5000 people) so adjust your indices accordingly. I was offered a job at Xerox in their development labs in Toronto but declined because I felt the lifestyle/stress tradeoffs would be more negative.
I have a bachelor's degree. I have worked for about 3 years now and make a good six-figure income in Canada. I get about 8 weeks of vacation time annually, too, so I am not talking about a kind of job that burns you down to the root while it may pay better.
I too have similar benefits with a very relaxed work environment, which is why contemplating leaving who I work for now is a very complex decision.
I honestly believe that University has its merits, some of which you have pointed out. My beef is how high schools are literally cramming it down every student's throat like it is the best thing since sliced bread. They literally brush off college. Why is this? Certainly not because employers are asking for it. Why are most of the people I know not sure why they're in university, aside from being told by parents, educators and the media that they need to be there for something?
THAT is my beef. Yes, university's a higher education. Yes you have fun and broaden your horizons there... but I can think of far cheaper and "better" ways to obtain that same end result. Why spend $50k+ to have a good time and broaden your horizons?
Come to my seminar! Only 3 easy installments of $2999.95 for a 3 hour workshop!
:-)
Sounds like Learning Tree International... Special High Intensity Training indeed!
Maybe this is true in America, but not so much in Canada. You want a job? You have to jump through the hoops, and that means bringing up the issue of education.
?
I live and work in Canada. You don't need no steeking degree to get a job past your first, at least in my experience. My resume proudly says "Education: High School (OSSD)". Why proud? Because I'm damned proud of the fact that I am making $60k with that high school diploma. No, it's not an IT-related job, unless you consider designing embedded industrial power electronics IT. I'm damned proud of the fact that I beat the system. And I'm damned proud that I can show others that if you've truly got the smarts and the drive, you don't have to blow $50k or more and four years of your life right out of high school to prove to the world that you're for real.
Just because you can get a job without a degree after having worked in the real world doesn't mean that employers don't give a shit. It's certainly not going to hurt. If all else fails, you have the basis for a career change. The current job counselling view is that most people will make several career changes within their lifetime.
Very true. I'm working on my second. Working for myself in electronics design consulting.
NOTE NOTE NOTE NOTE
I am NOT saying that a degree is worthless! I am saying that for 75% (to pick a number out of my ass) of the population, YOU DO NOT NEED A DEGREE TO SUCCEED. That's a blatant lie by the guidance councellors to push kids into more education than is necessary. Why? My little conspiracy theory is that their salaries are based on how many kids from their school go on to post-secondary education. Don't know what you want to do in life? Go to University and find out! What utter fucking bullshit! In Canada it's taboo to go to College. If you don't go to University you're considered stupid. Every day of my life I prove those fuckers wrong.
If you know what you want to do and you know you need a degree, get your ass in and pay your dues. But if you wanna be a code monkey or an electrician or a writer or a gradeschool teacher, get the fuck out of univeristy. Take a 10 month course in college where the knowledge is hands-on and for God's sake, don't waste your pime years because some twitt behind a desk told you you need it to survive.
Also, what happens if you lose you job in the future? You still have a degree behind you
:-)
Not sure where you're from, but in North America nobody gives a shit about your degree after your first job. It's always "Where did you work last?" and "What is your experience?" It's kind of ironic... you need the degree to get the first job, but after that it's useless. I'm glad I managed to get around that... All it takes is an employer with a little vision instead of someone looking for a cookie-cutter degree.
Don't take me wrong; degrees aren't completely useless... but CS? I'm terribly sorry, but if you're not a programmer by heart you're not gonna survive... you will have "learned" how to program, you will have "learned" the logic... but your heart won't be in it and you'll still churn out shit because it's not you. If you're a programmer by heart you'll do far better than anyone with their bachelors, masters or doctorate in CS who's in it for the money. If you're a programmer at heart and take CS... well then you've got all those holes in your knowledge filled and you'll kick ass. I guess it's the same in almost all fields though.
Oh yes... I didn't mean to be derogatory with the "not sure where you're from" because I've heard that in Germany they care a whole lot more about your education and even after 20 years in the workforce you'll still be asked what your education is.
Probably an unpopular opinion, but I would tend to think that when we are able to equate a businessman with poor ethics to possibly one of the top three most evil men in the history of mankind we have forgotten everything we were asked not to forget.
I really feel sorry for humanity now. WWIII is just around the corner. We've become so desensitized and comfortable that we can equate genocide with businesscide, or mass murder with poor ethics.
My opinion is the best method is at least two webservers with synchronized content with a round-robin DNS entry.
Round-robin DNS I can figure out... what's the bestest way to get two boxen with identical data on them with both running? Is there a slick way to have the logs spat into one spot and sorted by time? PAM can handle logins and stuff but please, if anyone has some info on this, reply...
GIMME MORE INFO!!
My friend and I have been looking for a solution for Linux for a while... tried both PPPoE drivers mentioned on freshmeat with limited success.. the userland one won't let you send large packets without barfing (seems to ignore MTU) and I believe he had bad luck with the kernel-space driver as well...
I was waiting for it before, but now that I've heard that it uses a nortel 1 meg modem with a dynamic ip and they even force you to use a proxy for web access; no thanks. I'd rather pay my 39.90 CDN a month for shaw cable. The 3-5.5mbps variable downlink and 320-768kbps variable uplink all of the sudden seem pretty good :).
Sorry to burst your bubble, but any upstream provider can force you through a proxy. I do it to all my customers to keep my bandwidth useage down and keep me competitive. It's as easy as a 1-liner route on a cisco router, linux router, or practically anything. Proxying is not a bad thing if done right; you'd never even know it was happenning.
I've heard many good and bad things about cable. The good ones are on underutilized segments. The bad ones are on normal to overutilized segments. Me? I'd rather take a guaranteed CIR and work around the dynamic IP 'cuz Murphy's Law sez that the second you need the bandwidth it won't be there.
As far as I can tell, your static IP is not guaranteed. Shaw/Rogers can at any time decide to go to a dynamic system. And Rogers (at least in Toronto/Kitchener-Waterloo areas) route MUST go all the way down to (I think) Californina before it gets to where you want to go. My traceroute between a box in Waterloo and my house in Waterloo goes through Cali... Great routing, boys!!
(an aside about Bell's HSE -- they're fighting with PPPoE... [apparently it's "better" than DHCP but they're shoehorning PPP into an interface which wasn't designed for a point-to-point connection... yuck!] Works great under Windows but the PPPoE drivers for Linux dont' work sending large packets... something about ignoring the MTU settings entirely)
not unlike modems except on a phone line there is a very limited number of sine waves that can be fit and there amplitude and frequency are quite limited...early modems were 110 bps, then 300 then faster...the max speed of the medium never changed (POTS are limited to 33,600 bps) only the encoding techniques changed ...
:-)
:-)
Not quite...
Modern modems use QAM to send data, not discrete sine waves. If I'm not mistaken "raw" sine waves haven't been used since 300 baud modems... You know the ones where you had the switch to select originate or answer.
POTS is limited to 2400 baud. You achieve everything faster by encoding more than one bit per "transition" or baud. Modems these days aren't. They are "just" DSPs which don't actually modulate based on a carrier, rather just output what is necessary to achive the symbol.
Picture a graph centered at the origin. x is phase and y is amplitude. You don't just have +1 and -1. you have (if I'm not mistaken) 6 or 8 levels along each axis. you can choose any of those phases with any of those amplitudes. Essentially you end up with 64 or 256 possibilities per symbol. (I'm pretty sure it's 256)...
Anyway what I'm trying to describe is a constellation pattern... They're usually illustrated like this:
. . . . | . . . .
. . . . | . . . .
. . . . | . . . .
. . . . | . . . .
--------+--------
. . . . | . . . .
. . . . | . . . .
. . . . | . . . .
. . . . | . . . .
Each dot represents a possible symbol. You can only spit out 2400 symbols per second over POTS but you can send multiple bits per symbol, or baud, giving you speeds faster than 2400bps.
The 56k limit on POTS has its roots in how T1s are actually set up and transmitted. T1s are actually transmitted as 193-bit-long frames, 8000 times per second. One of those bits is required to keep frame sync, leaving a payload of 192 bits per frame, giving you 1.536mbps. T1s originally carred voice, sent as 8-bit PCM data. Twelve 193-bit-long frames are logically grouped together and called a super frame. The 6th and 12th frame in the larger super frame had 1 bit used for frame sync as usual, but then instead of the remaining 192 bits being used as 24 8-bit channels, 24 7-bit channels were sent, with the LSB used for line status for each channel (busy, off-hook, etc.). This loss of the LSB every 6 frames wasn't very noticable for voice, but over data it just isn't cool. ESF is similar to SF but 24 193-bit frames were grouped instead of 12 so that 4 bits of framing could be used instead of just 2, on the 6th, 12th, 18th and 24th frame. AFAIK those extra two bits weren't ever really used, they just duplicated the info in the original 2 line status bits.
Since every 6 frames you're missing a bit and it's not possible for the modem to know which frames will be missing the bit, the modem only relies on the 7 bits being clean. So now you've got 7 bits sent 8000 times a second for 56000bps instead of the theoretical 64000bps per channel over a 'clean' T1 channel.
This concludes your lesson. If you want to know more, just email me. Hopefully this isn't too far off topic, but it *is* some history about how POTS works with digital transmission.
Correct me if I'm wrong (/. is good for that :-), but I don't think you build up a complex waveform like that... you superimpose them.
:-)
i.e. take a sine wave of frequency 'x' and amplitude 'y'. now take a sine wave of 3x and 1/3y and "add" them. i.e. along the horizontal, take the amplitudes and add 'em. Excel is good for this
Now keep going. 5x with amplitude 1/5y, 1/7th the 7th, 1/9th the 9th... you'll notice that the rising and falling edges start to get steeper and steeper and the tops start to flatten out... you're building a squarewave.
I'm not quite sure what you meant by "attach another sinewave along the slope of the first"...
Especially by ACs who don't understand the posting mechanism for karmas >20.
:-)
I'm really sorry for mentioning this in this thread... but that +1 is somewhere above Karma of 23...
This really is not your thread...
It's karma jockeys like you that make my stomach turn. The Anonymous Coward was on to something. The reason you have such high karma is not because you know much of anything, rather it is your willingness to offer your opinion on just about anything, regardless of whether you've even remotely thought about the topic.
Sounds like sour grapes to me. From an AC, too. My karma's in the low 20s but if you take a look at my user info you'll see why... When I post it's relevant and I offer something to the discussion. I've never been moderated more than 2 IIRC, which is exactly how it should work.
If the guys' got a karma of 83, he's either got stuff to offer that's relevant, or bad moderating. Stop ripping on the guy, or get an account and see how the system works yourself. It's easy to point and bitch from the outside.
shit... I just looked up the spec... 15.1"
:-)
Curiously, The pro-star notebooks mentioned are just relabelled HyperData notebooks. Hyperdata I know manufactures them and labels for a dozen other manufactuers... Looks like I found another manufacturer they make for..
I have a 15inch, Sony Trinitron...
Sorry, I hate Trinitron tubes. Yes they are super sharp but I cannot stand the 1, 2 or 3 black lines across the screen. Sony says "you'll never see them!" I say "Nuts to you, I've got an LCD now"
Urf... whoever put that technology into a monitor should be shot. I very often have a single-colour background and those lines just stare at me... grating on my nerves. For a TV? Go ahead, I doubt I'll ever see them.
Not because I think it's futuristic or fetching... Actually that never crossed my mind. I prefer them becuase it's a zillion times better than any CRT I've seen/worked on.
This screen I'm using right now (14.1" TFT 1024x768) has 1 dead subpixel (blue is always on) in the very upper left corner (i.e. 0,0). It doesn't bother me 'cause I have a blue background
The sub-pixel smoothing thing is way cool... I'm waiting for X to incorporate it
I have a 17" Philips/Magnavox monitor upstairs (can't remember the model now) but it has a
In short, my answer to your "WHY?" is "Because it's far better."
Your comment about "No, I'm just wealthy" sounds like sour grapes to me. I can't afford one either, my employer pays for this toy. Because I can't afford (or won't justify) something doesn't mean I won't ooh over it, though.
(an aside -- Are they thinking of making other flatscreen technologies available on laptops? The screens are easily the most expensive parts... They're going after PDP, etc. on flatscreen TVs, I'm just wondering if anyone's heard anything about that on a laptop)
Not much different from the (cinema) projectionist who has to change reels multiple times during the performance.
If I'm understanding what you're saying (movies come on multiple reels), there is a big difference... They can sync up reels and it switches over with (next to) no disturbance of the picture on the screen... So the ambience is not lost.
you could always spread it across more than one disk, couldn't you?
Oh yeah.. You're in your favourite chair, enjoying a new release on your DTS-enhanced audio and 70" flat-panel TV... It's a really suspenceful part... the ambiance is making you think there's a killer in your house... and then...
PLEASE INESERT DISK 2/2
flashes up on your screen...
I don't copy VHS tapes because a) the quality sucks and b) I only own maybe 5 movies that I watch all the time. Why would I copy a DVD??
Exactly. I think you and I are on the same side here. :-)
:-)
speaking of fences... my last gf lived beside a farm and her and her sister were in the backyard with me... I whispered to her sister, "Wanna see something cool?" Being 10, she nodded vigorously.
I grabbed Heather's leg with one arm, and the fence with the other... She was in bare feet and I never saw someone jump like that before in my life...
... I don't think she spoke to me for the rest of the day, either... I, on the other hand, had earned her sister's total and unconditional respect.
AC is more efficient for carrying over powerlines but it cycles at 60hertz which is perfect if you want to stop someone's heart.
:-)
*cough*bullshit*cough*
Your comment about power transmission is correct, but AC is MUCH safer than DC, the main point being that since AC alternates and gives you some (limited) ability to pull away. Grab on to a 120VAC (RMS) line, and then grab on to 120VDC. Which one can you break free from? AC.
AC also travels over the surface of a conductor (known as the skin effect), while DC utilizes the entire conductor cross-sectional area. The depth to which AC penetrates is dependent on the frequency. All this makes AC burns less harmful than DC burns, but a burn is still not a good thing to be going about and getting for yourself.
To rebutt another poster's comment about being able to "feel" 5VAC more than 5VDC... If I take an instrument and apply 'x'N of force to your arm, then take the same instrument but apply the same force, alternating between 0.707xN(1) 'in' and 0.707xN 'out', which will you feel more? Right, the latter. The body senses change much better than a precise amount.
(1) - why 0.707xN? because that's the equivalent 'static' pressure, known as RMS. i.e your 120VAC power lines are actually somewhere in the area of 178VAC peak-to-peak, but the actual electric 'force' is equivalent to 120VDC. It's the same reason why speakers and amplifiers are usually measured in peak watts, because the number sounds higher and you think you're getting a more powerful product.