My company has used Verio (formerly Digital Nation) for over two years. Service as been top notch and they have more bandwidth than we'd ever need. At out peak, we were pumping out a continous 62 megabits/second and our ping times never grew a millisecond. Their prices are lower than most of their competition and they're fast acting (every departman that is aside from billing -- billing will try to screw you by continuing to bill you for some service you changed or deleted months ago... so watch your statements).
Mandrake 8.1 is by far the best linux distro, ever. This is what a linux distro outta be... complete and up to date. I'm still downloading the ISO right now, but hope to have it burnt and installing on my machines early this evening. If you haven't done so already, do yourself a favor and download this. Even the Red Hat purists will agree that Mandrake 8.1 is about as sweet as linux gets. This is the OS that both your workstation and server will want to run.
Mandrake, you've done a hellofa job. Thank you for what can only be described as on schweet package of software.
Keep in mind that aside from the (NT/W2K only) 320 and 540, all of SGI's x86 PCs are based on OEM components. There is no need for SGI-specific software. SGI has offered ProPacks in the past, mostly a combination of kernel patches and other tweaks. The ProPacks are opensource, but keep in mind that the most recent update is only for Red Hat 6.2. You're best off with your favorite distro and the latest components.
(begin rant)
Why did you buy a linux system from SGI in the first place? At the time, VA and Penguin offered better deals and better support. My office owns several SGI systems, but we stick to what they know best - MIPS/IRIX. Our Origin 2000 fileserver, Origin 3000 compute/simulation machine, and the two Octane2 V12+DM2+FibreChannel workstatons (running Piranha HD for high def video editing) come from a long lineage of MIPS/IRIX systems SGI has offered over the years --- not some new wiz-bang technology they thought they'd try to capitalize on, then dump.
(end rant)
What I'm looking forward to with the nForce is only one set of drivers to worry about. In my job, I simply need to use at least one Windows machine and this chipset and its drivers will make that one burden significantly smaller. Looking forward to the commerical boards and long-term stability reports with Windows 2000 and Windows XP. As for Linux, I'll keep rolling my own systems with a plethora of components.
I see a version for Windows and a version for Linux/x86, but no version for MAC or LinuxPPC. Curious.
cool,though my servers need to run this weekend :(
on
Linux Kernel 2.4.10
·
· Score: 1
Quite cool to see this latest upgrade. Kudos on the quick announcement. I'll start upgrading my workstations in a about an hour, but we have a pretty big project going on this weekend, so I won't be able to upgrade any of our servers until mid-week at the earliest.:(
Here's to progress! (Maybe time to finally upgrade to to KDE 2.1.1, too).
Anyone know how soon the nForce chipset will be supported?
How will this affect the Nintendo GameCube?
on
XBox Delayed
·
· Score: 2
Any thoughts on how this will affect the Nintendo Game Cube? Can we expect imense competition, maybe even (gasp) an extra free controller or two? I loved the launch of the NES... it was expensive, but at least it came with two controllers, a lightgun, and two games. Fun and variety right out of the box! Some bundles even came with the R.O.B. robot and even more games.
Personally, I'd like to see the hackable X-Box make more of a splash. I love to work on various SW/HW hacks. The very closed GameCube, to me anyway, is a symbol of a vanilla money-hungry console of the past.
2 x 2.2 = 4.4? How about...
on
2.2 GHz Xeon
·
· Score: 2
Of course now the machine has been partitoned, so it's not quite that large, but at least there is still a "256 GHz" partition.
Keep in mind that Origin is not a cluster, but a huge mother of a single-image machine. No backplane, but instead a mesh of CrayLink/NUMAlink cables interconnecting the CPU, I/O, and Router modules. My favorite part, though, is that with the addition of a "Graphics Brick" it becomes an Onyx. Add up to 16 G-Bricks!
I'm only using version 1.3.18 right now, so this will be quite a huge upgrade for me! Quite cool, I'll be downloading and compiling the new version tonight!
Mozilla 0.9.4 still feels sluggish on my machine, a 1.1 GHz T-Bird w/ 512 MB of PC133. It feels sluggish under both Linux and Windows. Yet the GIMP and Photoshop (not to menton my games) never felt so fast. If I can shuffle AutoCAD projects with 5+ million elements with ease, I should at least be able to have a complete, yet zippy, web browser.
Granted, newer software is generally larger and more capable, and thus often requires more cpu cycles to do its job. Yet Mosaic and early (pre 2.0) versions of Netscape ran fine on my Sun SPARCstation 10 so many years ago. With advances in coding and cache techniques, not to mention the abilities of modern compilers and the speculative processes doen in the modern cpu -- why must a modern web browser run so slow??
My SPARCstation 10 had a single 50 MHz SPARC processor and 32 MB of rather slow ram. Has Mozilla gotten so far out of hand that even the latest 1+ GHz wizbang PC can't even handle it? Is Mozilla actually more demanding than my Maya rendering daemon??
I say finish up Mozilla. Release 1.0 'when it's done'. Then go back to the drawing board and start over. Bring in some of the old school coders, the folks that didn't have 4+ GFLOPS CPUs. Bring in the old browser folks... Marc Andressen, JWZ, etc.
Sure, Mozilla will be fine by next year when it hits 1.0 and when we all have 2.0 GHz PCs. Browsing will be great at that point. But I pitty the next advance in browsing, because Mozilla 2.0 will certainly bring back the slowness. It is time to start over and do it right.
I use a 1U rackmount Cisco 2611. It has two ethernet ports plus several expansion slots. It runs Cisco IOS, the same router OS that powers all of Cisco's routers, and thus can be configured every which way. The 2611 has two 10BaseT ports. The 2621 has two 100BaseTX ports. Both cost a fair amount, but are worth every penny.
Most laptops allow those upgrades. I was able to do much the same on even an Apple PowerBook. Since I bought it earlier this year, I have installed 512 MB (total) ram and a 30 GB 2.5" laptop hard drive. I've even replaced the stock "UFO" power adapter with a much smaller model. And as soon as they make a model for my PBG4, I will order one of those nifty keyBORG replacement keyboards from Digitalhipps.
What I would like to see would be (easy) CPU and LCD upgrades that span generations. i.e., buy a ThinkPad today with a 1.1 GHz CPU and a 1280x1024 15" LCD. Replace the CPU in two years with a 2.2 GHz model and upgrade the LCD to a 2048x1576 15" LCD. Maybe even upgrade the video card. There's nothing sepcial about upgrading ram/drives/OS.... that's easy and should be expected, even on an Apple.
For example, I bought my laptop (a Toshiba Satellite 1650) when a 450 MHz Pentium was all the rage. Today the thing is almost worthless, even with the ram upgraded. Yet the keys and screen are still in good condition. I really wish there was a way to upgrade this thing's motherboard, video card, and cpu. As it stands, I'll be giving it to my cousin and begin shopping for something that can handle modern OSes and software.
They'll certainly need all the help they can get. It's literally a warzone, not to mention the dangers of working in a mostly-collapsed building. There are most likely trapped survivors in the wreckage, yet it's still too dangerous to enter most areas.
On a positive note, it's great to see how many people are giving blood.... even here in North Dakota.
Judging by the sheer numbers of Microsoft mice & keyboards I've seen in offices and homes, it looks to me like Microsoft is in the hardware business as well. I suppose MSFT reps would say they make keys&mice as a "service" to help the computing world, but it looks to me as if Logitech, Kensington, and others make plenty to keep the computing world stocked.
Xerox had a Palo Alto research center, commonly known as Xerox PARC. Many cool things came out of there, including various forms of modern LAN networking, the laser printer, primitive forms of Graphical User Interfaces, and much more.
IBM, HP, DEC (Digital Equipment Corp), Sperry-Rand/Remmington-Rand/Unysis, Bell Labs, and many others had similar research long ago as well. Heck.... where do you think UNIX came from?!?!
In the late 1990s the college of engineering at my university would have reps and engineers from Apple's ATG (Advanced Technology Group) visit to judge projects, talk about the industry, and share stories over a BBQ. From what I understand, the ATG was a research group that had free reign to experiment with software and hardware projects, some of which were eventually wrapped into shipping Apple products. In about 1994 I remember a demo/presentation that included some neat webserver CGIs for "intelligent" searching and document organzation (cool for that time period). We were also shown a cool speech recognition + text-to-speech utility that utilized facial recognition as well as displaying a spooky relaistic animated talking face. I also recall a semi-working mockup of a 3D version of the Macintosh Finder (Apple's Macintosh desktop / file manager). One of the coolest things I remember was that not all of their projects were on Apple Macintosh hardware. Most were, but a few were on IBM RS/6000 (AIX) and SGI Indigo (IRIX) workstations.
I have three different "levels" of ancient hardware storage in my home office. As I upgrade and replace my hardware, the obsolete stuff slowly makes its way out of my rig, off my desk, and out the door...
Beside the desk:
This is where the old-but-still-usable gear ends up. Looking down beside my desk right now I see several 20, 30, and 40 GB drives, a few CD-ROM drives, and my old mobo and 833 MHz CPU.
In the closet:
My closet holds all of my obsolete-but-not-quite-garbage stuff. Ancient 4X CDRW burners, PII-450 gear, 18 GB drives, etc. Plus a few Win98 retail boxes, heh.
Eventually my old stuff makes it out to the garage in a big scrab box. Every now and then I pour its contents into the garbage. Last dump had some P233 procs and mobos, 72 pin simms (heh), etc. Next load will probably be PII-266 era stuff. PC66 dimms, etc.
Have you seen a photograph of a Concorde cockpit? It looks like something straight out of a 707, it's ancient. There's not an LCD, CRT, or even an LED to be seen. The typical "flight computer" is usually the pilot's own handheld PDA, ditto for GPS. If I were going to pay $big for private use of a Concorde, it by gosh better have some real avionics.
Even the B-52H has a nice modernized cockpit with screens galore. If that old clunker can be up to date, there's no reason why a Concorde can't.
What sort of new hardware will Slashdot (and, thus Slashcode Banjo) be running on? I would be quite intersted in the types and configurations of the servers, switches, and routers involved. It may be old-hat to sysadmins, but to me it's kinda neat!
Re:Consider Texas A&M University
on
Dorm Storm?
·
· Score: 2
All dorm rooms have two ethernet
ports. When a student plugs in, they are taken to a registration page (regardless of their destination) where
they can register their machine and assign a DNS hostname. They are then free to use the network.
How did you pull that off? What DHCP/router trickery did you do to make the web browser automatically go to the registration page upon browser launch on the new network? It sounds quite cool and useful, but I can't for the life of me figure out how you did it.
Slashdot Mirror
My company has used Verio (formerly Digital Nation) for over two years. Service as been top notch and they have more bandwidth than we'd ever need. At out peak, we were pumping out a continous 62 megabits/second and our ping times never grew a millisecond. Their prices are lower than most of their competition and they're fast acting (every departman that is aside from billing -- billing will try to screw you by continuing to bill you for some service you changed or deleted months ago... so watch your statements).
Verio rocks.
Mandrake 8.1 is by far the best linux distro, ever. This is what a linux distro outta be... complete and up to date. I'm still downloading the ISO right now, but hope to have it burnt and installing on my machines early this evening. If you haven't done so already, do yourself a favor and download this. Even the Red Hat purists will agree that Mandrake 8.1 is about as sweet as linux gets. This is the OS that both your workstation and server will want to run.
Mandrake, you've done a hellofa job. Thank you for what can only be described as on schweet package of software.
First of all,there was no "300L". SGI made a "1400L" server and a "230" workstation, among other models, but no "300L".
Have you checked out SGI's website? There are many good linux docs, faqs, and links:
http://support.sgi.com/linux
http://techpubs.sgi.com
http://oss.sgi.com
Keep in mind that aside from the (NT/W2K only) 320 and 540, all of SGI's x86 PCs are based on OEM components. There is no need for SGI-specific software. SGI has offered ProPacks in the past, mostly a combination of kernel patches and other tweaks. The ProPacks are opensource, but keep in mind that the most recent update is only for Red Hat 6.2. You're best off with your favorite distro and the latest components.
(begin rant)
Why did you buy a linux system from SGI in the first place? At the time, VA and Penguin offered better deals and better support. My office owns several SGI systems, but we stick to what they know best - MIPS/IRIX. Our Origin 2000 fileserver, Origin 3000 compute/simulation machine, and the two Octane2 V12+DM2+FibreChannel workstatons (running Piranha HD for high def video editing) come from a long lineage of MIPS/IRIX systems SGI has offered over the years --- not some new wiz-bang technology they thought they'd try to capitalize on, then dump.
(end rant)
What I'm looking forward to with the nForce is only one set of drivers to worry about. In my job, I simply need to use at least one Windows machine and this chipset and its drivers will make that one burden significantly smaller. Looking forward to the commerical boards and long-term stability reports with Windows 2000 and Windows XP. As for Linux, I'll keep rolling my own systems with a plethora of components.
I see a version for Windows and a version for Linux/x86, but no version for MAC or LinuxPPC. Curious.
Quite cool to see this latest upgrade. Kudos on the quick announcement. I'll start upgrading my workstations in a about an hour, but we have a pretty big project going on this weekend, so I won't be able to upgrade any of our servers until mid-week at the earliest. :(
Here's to progress! (Maybe time to finally upgrade to to KDE 2.1.1, too).
Anyone know how soon the nForce chipset will be supported?
Any thoughts on how this will affect the Nintendo Game Cube? Can we expect imense competition, maybe even (gasp) an extra free controller or two? I loved the launch of the NES... it was expensive, but at least it came with two controllers, a lightgun, and two games. Fun and variety right out of the box! Some bundles even came with the R.O.B. robot and even more games.
Personally, I'd like to see the hackable X-Box make more of a splash. I love to work on various SW/HW hacks. The very closed GameCube, to me anyway, is a symbol of a vanilla money-hungry console of the past.
the machine my university has been working with. 1024 x 500 MHz = 512 GHz ?
Of course now the machine has been partitoned, so it's not quite that large, but at least there is still a "256 GHz" partition.
Keep in mind that Origin is not a cluster, but a huge mother of a single-image machine. No backplane, but instead a mesh of CrayLink/NUMAlink cables interconnecting the CPU, I/O, and Router modules. My favorite part, though, is that with the addition of a "Graphics Brick" it becomes an Onyx. Add up to 16 G-Bricks!
I'm only using version 1.3.18 right now, so this will be quite a huge upgrade for me! Quite cool, I'll be downloading and compiling the new version tonight!
Mozilla 0.9.4 still feels sluggish on my machine, a 1.1 GHz T-Bird w/ 512 MB of PC133. It feels sluggish under both Linux and Windows. Yet the GIMP and Photoshop (not to menton my games) never felt so fast. If I can shuffle AutoCAD projects with 5+ million elements with ease, I should at least be able to have a complete, yet zippy, web browser.
Granted, newer software is generally larger and more capable, and thus often requires more cpu cycles to do its job. Yet Mosaic and early (pre 2.0) versions of Netscape ran fine on my Sun SPARCstation 10 so many years ago. With advances in coding and cache techniques, not to mention the abilities of modern compilers and the speculative processes doen in the modern cpu -- why must a modern web browser run so slow??
My SPARCstation 10 had a single 50 MHz SPARC processor and 32 MB of rather slow ram. Has Mozilla gotten so far out of hand that even the latest 1+ GHz wizbang PC can't even handle it? Is Mozilla actually more demanding than my Maya rendering daemon??
I say finish up Mozilla. Release 1.0 'when it's done'. Then go back to the drawing board and start over. Bring in some of the old school coders, the folks that didn't have 4+ GFLOPS CPUs. Bring in the old browser folks... Marc Andressen, JWZ, etc.
Sure, Mozilla will be fine by next year when it hits 1.0 and when we all have 2.0 GHz PCs. Browsing will be great at that point. But I pitty the next advance in browsing, because Mozilla 2.0 will certainly bring back the slowness. It is time to start over and do it right.
Cisco 2600 Series
e ase122.shtml
http://www.cisco.com/warp/public/cc/pd/rt/2600/
I'm using IOS 12.2.X
http://www.cisco.com/warp/public/732/releases/rel
I use a 1U rackmount Cisco 2611. It has two ethernet ports plus several expansion slots. It runs Cisco IOS, the same router OS that powers all of Cisco's routers, and thus can be configured every which way. The 2611 has two 10BaseT ports. The 2621 has two 100BaseTX ports. Both cost a fair amount, but are worth every penny.
Is there any discussion of possible industrial applications should this in fact become both possible and controllable?
Most laptops allow those upgrades. I was able to do much the same on even an Apple PowerBook. Since I bought it earlier this year, I have installed 512 MB (total) ram and a 30 GB 2.5" laptop hard drive. I've even replaced the stock "UFO" power adapter with a much smaller model. And as soon as they make a model for my PBG4, I will order one of those nifty keyBORG replacement keyboards from Digitalhipps.
What I would like to see would be (easy) CPU and LCD upgrades that span generations. i.e., buy a ThinkPad today with a 1.1 GHz CPU and a 1280x1024 15" LCD. Replace the CPU in two years with a 2.2 GHz model and upgrade the LCD to a 2048x1576 15" LCD. Maybe even upgrade the video card. There's nothing sepcial about upgrading ram/drives/OS.... that's easy and should be expected, even on an Apple.
For example, I bought my laptop (a Toshiba Satellite 1650) when a 450 MHz Pentium was all the rage. Today the thing is almost worthless, even with the ram upgraded. Yet the keys and screen are still in good condition. I really wish there was a way to upgrade this thing's motherboard, video card, and cpu. As it stands, I'll be giving it to my cousin and begin shopping for something that can handle modern OSes and software.
They'll certainly need all the help they can get. It's literally a warzone, not to mention the dangers of working in a mostly-collapsed building. There are most likely trapped survivors in the wreckage, yet it's still too dangerous to enter most areas.
On a positive note, it's great to see how many people are giving blood.... even here in North Dakota.
Keep it up! Our prayers are with you all.
entropy# rm /bin/laden
...buying a copy of Microsoft Office!
To each, his own.
Judging by the sheer numbers of Microsoft mice & keyboards I've seen in offices and homes, it looks to me like Microsoft is in the hardware business as well. I suppose MSFT reps would say they make keys&mice as a "service" to help the computing world, but it looks to me as if Logitech, Kensington, and others make plenty to keep the computing world stocked.
XBox also seems to be hardware in nature.
Xerox had a Palo Alto research center, commonly known as Xerox PARC. Many cool things came out of there, including various forms of modern LAN networking, the laser printer, primitive forms of Graphical User Interfaces, and much more.
IBM, HP, DEC (Digital Equipment Corp), Sperry-Rand/Remmington-Rand/Unysis, Bell Labs, and many others had similar research long ago as well. Heck.... where do you think UNIX came from?!?!
In the late 1990s the college of engineering at my university would have reps and engineers from Apple's ATG (Advanced Technology Group) visit to judge projects, talk about the industry, and share stories over a BBQ. From what I understand, the ATG was a research group that had free reign to experiment with software and hardware projects, some of which were eventually wrapped into shipping Apple products. In about 1994 I remember a demo/presentation that included some neat webserver CGIs for "intelligent" searching and document organzation (cool for that time period). We were also shown a cool speech recognition + text-to-speech utility that utilized facial recognition as well as displaying a spooky relaistic animated talking face. I also recall a semi-working mockup of a 3D version of the Macintosh Finder (Apple's Macintosh desktop / file manager). One of the coolest things I remember was that not all of their projects were on Apple Macintosh hardware. Most were, but a few were on IBM RS/6000 (AIX) and SGI Indigo (IRIX) workstations.
Cool stuff.
I have three different "levels" of ancient hardware storage in my home office. As I upgrade and replace my hardware, the obsolete stuff slowly makes its way out of my rig, off my desk, and out the door...
Beside the desk:
This is where the old-but-still-usable gear ends up. Looking down beside my desk right now I see several 20, 30, and 40 GB drives, a few CD-ROM drives, and my old mobo and 833 MHz CPU.
In the closet:
My closet holds all of my obsolete-but-not-quite-garbage stuff. Ancient 4X CDRW burners, PII-450 gear, 18 GB drives, etc. Plus a few Win98 retail boxes, heh.
Eventually my old stuff makes it out to the garage in a big scrab box. Every now and then I pour its contents into the garbage. Last dump had some P233 procs and mobos, 72 pin simms (heh), etc. Next load will probably be PII-266 era stuff. PC66 dimms, etc.
Have you seen a photograph of a Concorde cockpit? It looks like something straight out of a 707, it's ancient. There's not an LCD, CRT, or even an LED to be seen. The typical "flight computer" is usually the pilot's own handheld PDA, ditto for GPS. If I were going to pay $big for private use of a Concorde, it by gosh better have some real avionics.
Even the B-52H has a nice modernized cockpit with screens galore. If that old clunker can be up to date, there's no reason why a Concorde can't.
What sort of new hardware will Slashdot (and, thus Slashcode Banjo) be running on? I would be quite intersted in the types and configurations of the servers, switches, and routers involved. It may be old-hat to sysadmins, but to me it's kinda neat!
All dorm rooms have two ethernet ports. When a student plugs in, they are taken to a registration page (regardless of their destination) where they can register their machine and assign a DNS hostname. They are then free to use the network.
How did you pull that off? What DHCP/router trickery did you do to make the web browser automatically go to the registration page upon browser launch on the new network? It sounds quite cool and useful, but I can't for the life of me figure out how you did it.