What is it with geeks choosing really horrible, horrible names for software products?
Maybe because it was "just a hobby, won’t be big and professional like gnu". I think being a geek is all about having fun in your own way, and that means not succumbing to boring corporate ideals. "Freax" was short for "free freak unix" or something like that -- perhaps not the most creative name for an OS, but nevertheless reflects the verbally playful side that many geeks seem to have.
It was twenty years ago today Col. Torvalds gave the source away. We've been going in and out of drives but we guarantee to raise uptimes. So may I introduce to you the hack you've known for all these years Col. Torvalds' Linux slash GNU Band!
We're Col. Torvalds' Linux slash GNU Band, we hope you will enjoy the code. Col. Torvalds' Linux slash GNU Band, just hack and let the evening go!
Col. Torvalds' Linux Col. Torvalds' Linux Col. Torvalds' Linux slash GNU Band!
It's wonderful to post here, it's certainly no troll. You're such a loyal userbase, we'd like to merge your code with ours, we'd love to grep your/home.
I don't really want to freeze the code, but I thought you might like to know this release is going to fix the root and we want you all to patch for good. So let me introduce to you the one and only Billy's fear Col. Torvalds' Linux slash GNU Band!
I for one think it's nice to be able to have the screen focused on a single purpose without a distracting background or icons and windows you might accidentally click.
My thoughts exactly. This is why I use Linux with a simple window manager, with one virtual screen per each task. No icons, panels, taskbars etc. to distract me.
You see, I've turned the moon into what I like to call a "death star", using something called "la-ser", funded by "bit-coin". I hereby hold the world ransomed for... wait for it... one MILLION "bit-coins"!
Thanks to hibernation, it is possible to separate these two. I rarely shut a machine down, because I either need to reboot for some kernel updates, or I need to hibernate it for transport etc. By hibernation, I mean suspending to disk, meaning complete power off. Pretty convenient for hooking up a kill-a-watt to a HTPC, for example.
You, the person reading this right now, are a form of naturally occurring self-replicating carbon based machinery. And you've had a few billenia of evolution to optimize the "self-replicating" part.
Sorry, I read Slashdot, I must be an evolutionary dead end.
the carriers will fix this by rolling out... 5G!!!
That will probably just be a research project, and the real action will be with 6G. Then, 20 years after the invention of 6G, we will still be suffering from 4G's address space limit.
Most serial ports these days will accept a 5V signal, so if it's actually TTL then it works.
IIRC most logic level serial is inverted compared to RS-232 (because most RS-232 level shifters are inverting) sometimes you can reconfigure the logic polarity but if your device doesn't allow that then you would need to add an inverter (at which point you may as well add a level shift chip and do it properly IMO).
True. I've done a fair amout of hacking on these, and the original article seemed rather ignorant. Of course, the way we speak of "voltage levels" is rather misleading, as there is a lot more to it.
To be precise, a mere logical inverter won't work, because RS232 uses both negative and positive levels. Logical high is negative, low is positive, and zero is undefined. This is for the data lines, the control lines (CTS/RTS) are the other way around.
The only surprising thing here is that they allow access to that circuitry via the normal device ports.
This is not debugging circuitry.
A lot of devices have TTL level serial ports hidden somewhere, so I would presume they are there for debugging purposes. Most computers haven't had serial ports in years, but new devices keep popping up with these TTL ports, so I guess the idea is to reserve it for professional uses. One nice thing about this discrepancy is, when all of your serial ports are TTL level, you don't need level converters.
IMHO, 6000 K daylight is nicer, especially when you need to feel awake. One nice thing about fluorescents and LEDs is that it is possible to emulate a daylight spectrum, in case you prefer it to the urine tone of tungsten filaments.
OTOH, a continuous blackbody spectrum is generally nicer than the piecewise approximation in fluorescents and LEDs. Some LEDs are particularly annoying with their stark combination of yellow and blue, but at least they keep you awake. There seems to be something about the blue end and wakefulness, as I've found that even blue indicator LEDs on appliances make for a bad night's sleep.
By not having the same shortcuts readily available - you don't have the screen icons, you don't have the task bar, and a lot of us got used to having them very near. I don't like the super-crowded menus - for that KDE4's menu is 10 times better. My favorite blend is KDE3.5 + the KDE4 menu, but, as we know, it doesn't exist in reality.
Well, I guess it was obvious from the start that this is all about personal preferences and what you're used to, so no point arguing this any further;)
Fluxbox really gets in the way of doing things since it doesn't help you. The idea of a DE is to help you, not to put a clock on the screen.
Could you give a practical example? I'm curious, as I actually feel that Fluxbox does not get in my way, and that it helps me get things done better/faster/easier than Gnome or KDE.
It's like you're telling me you don't like a 5 stars hotel room because the 1 star hotel is more efficient:).
That's actually a nice analogy. I wouldn't mind a 5 star room, if I didn't have to pay much extra in the form of money, CPU/GPU/RAM, or screen real estate. In fact, when it comes to real-life hotel rooms, I feel that the cheaper one has much more bang per buck (if you know what I mean, nudge nudge). A hotel room is a means to spend time at some remote event, such as a seminar or a party, and that's what counts to me, not spending time in the room itself.
Does somebody have an idea why a hardcore Linux guy would ever like to use a Windows/OSX lookalike? I think a plain window manager like Fluxbox makes much more sense. No panels to take up space and attention, just the application windows. Programs themselves can be launched from the command line, which I think is more convenient than managing a graphical menu, and I only have menu items for terminals and browsers.
To me, the great thing about computers is that they can handle much more data than what can be visible at a time. The problem with Windows/OSX style is trying to cram everything into one screen, while I prefer one virtual screen per task for better concentration.
I've been using Fluxbox for about 9 years, after first using Gnome and then Enlightenment for a while, so I've probably been after more minimalism all the time. Of course, there are still more minimal window managers, but none of them has really caught my attention. For example, tiling WMs are probably great for large screens, but I generally use a laptop and other smaller screens (again, one task per virtual screen for better concentration).
Framefree is an interesting concept, but it could probably be achieved with some current codecs without any heavy interpolation. Codecs that use 3D wavelets or Fourier transform (time being the 3rd dimension) have to compute slices in time anyway, so the frame rate is just another parameter.
A similar idea has already been used with some MP3 decoders, I think it was libmad. The music is stored as its Fourier components, or waves with a given frequency and amplitude, which could be recovered at an arbitrary resolution -- in this case using 24 bits instead of 16.
Of course, neither technique can actually improve the resolution of the original, but in the case of movies and their 24 fps flicker, I can imagine how it would be nicer to view.
Being at the top of the areal density pile will make your nice, long, continuous reads or writes run like a bat out of hell; but it isn't nearly as useful if you are dealing with highly scattered reads and/or writes.
I thought density mattered in the radial direction too, and the less you have to move the head, the better it is for seek latency.
If the area you need has passed the head, you just need to wait until it comes around again.
Agreed. But the way I understand it, this is an argument for high RPM. High density is somewhat orthogonal and improves performance in other ways. So why don't they make 2.5'' drives at 15k RPM? Wait, I think they do, they just package them in 3.5'' cases.
In my understanding, making computer hardware faster has always been about higher densities and smaller sizes. I don't see why storage would be fundamentally any different.
To me, these cheap 5.1 systems look like the direct descendants of 90s "computer speakers". Back then, most people had a perfectly good sound system, but the computer was a different world. Especially the multimedia computer, which apparently needed its own plastic boxes for playing sound samples from CD-ROM encyclopedias. What kind of quality can you expect, if you have this appliance mentality of every sound source needing its own speakers?
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What is it with geeks choosing really horrible, horrible names for software products?
Maybe because it was "just a hobby, won’t be big and professional like gnu". I think being a geek is all about having fun in your own way, and that means not succumbing to boring corporate ideals. "Freax" was short for "free freak unix" or something like that -- perhaps not the most creative name for an OS, but nevertheless reflects the verbally playful side that many geeks seem to have.
Hey, at least it is the birthday of Linux :)
http://xkcd.com/55/
I for one think it's nice to be able to have the screen focused on a single purpose without a distracting background or icons and windows you might accidentally click.
My thoughts exactly. This is why I use Linux with a simple window manager, with one virtual screen per each task. No icons, panels, taskbars etc. to distract me.
We don't need no stinkin' badges!
All I did was Google things I wanted to learn. Apparently, that's something no one else in the office could figure out.
I think the key point here is "wanted to learn". People use Google all the time for shopping and fucking.
You see, I've turned the moon into what I like to call a "death star", using something called "la-ser", funded by "bit-coin". I hereby hold the world ransomed for... wait for it... one MILLION "bit-coins"!
--Dr. Evil, 1FsaZ4yM1zSD9jyA2XD1gKftZzNe58JJBG
Thanks to hibernation, it is possible to separate these two. I rarely shut a machine down, because I either need to reboot for some kernel updates, or I need to hibernate it for transport etc. By hibernation, I mean suspending to disk, meaning complete power off. Pretty convenient for hooking up a kill-a-watt to a HTPC, for example.
But this is not BSG, this is fracking boring.
You, the person reading this right now, are a form of naturally occurring self-replicating carbon based machinery. And you've had a few billenia of evolution to optimize the "self-replicating" part.
Sorry, I read Slashdot, I must be an evolutionary dead end.
the carriers will fix this by rolling out... 5G!!!
That will probably just be a research project, and the real action will be with 6G. Then, 20 years after the invention of 6G, we will still be suffering from 4G's address space limit.
"I don't drink water; fish fuck in it" -- W.C. Fields
This guy should just admit it, and come out of the water closet.
Most serial ports these days will accept a 5V signal, so if it's actually TTL then it works.
IIRC most logic level serial is inverted compared to RS-232 (because most RS-232 level shifters are inverting) sometimes you can reconfigure the logic polarity but if your device doesn't allow that then you would need to add an inverter (at which point you may as well add a level shift chip and do it properly IMO).
True. I've done a fair amout of hacking on these, and the original article seemed rather ignorant. Of course, the way we speak of "voltage levels" is rather misleading, as there is a lot more to it.
To be precise, a mere logical inverter won't work, because RS232 uses both negative and positive levels. Logical high is negative, low is positive, and zero is undefined. This is for the data lines, the control lines (CTS/RTS) are the other way around.
The only surprising thing here is that they allow access to that circuitry via the normal device ports.
This is not debugging circuitry.
A lot of devices have TTL level serial ports hidden somewhere, so I would presume they are there for debugging purposes. Most computers haven't had serial ports in years, but new devices keep popping up with these TTL ports, so I guess the idea is to reserve it for professional uses. One nice thing about this discrepancy is, when all of your serial ports are TTL level, you don't need level converters.
I was thinking more along the lines of http://xkcd.com/426/ as there are GPS coordinates involved.
They really have a nice warm color
IMHO, 6000 K daylight is nicer, especially when you need to feel awake. One nice thing about fluorescents and LEDs is that it is possible to emulate a daylight spectrum, in case you prefer it to the urine tone of tungsten filaments.
OTOH, a continuous blackbody spectrum is generally nicer than the piecewise approximation in fluorescents and LEDs. Some LEDs are particularly annoying with their stark combination of yellow and blue, but at least they keep you awake. There seems to be something about the blue end and wakefulness, as I've found that even blue indicator LEDs on appliances make for a bad night's sleep.
By not having the same shortcuts readily available - you don't have the screen icons, you don't have the task bar, and a lot of us got used to having them very near. I don't like the super-crowded menus - for that KDE4's menu is 10 times better. My favorite blend is KDE3.5 + the KDE4 menu, but, as we know, it doesn't exist in reality.
Well, I guess it was obvious from the start that this is all about personal preferences and what you're used to, so no point arguing this any further ;)
We've all lost things on a night out
$ mv virginity /mnt/usb/
Fluxbox really gets in the way of doing things since it doesn't help you. The idea of a DE is to help you, not to put a clock on the screen.
Could you give a practical example? I'm curious, as I actually feel that Fluxbox does not get in my way, and that it helps me get things done better/faster/easier than Gnome or KDE.
It's like you're telling me you don't like a 5 stars hotel room because the 1 star hotel is more efficient :).
That's actually a nice analogy. I wouldn't mind a 5 star room, if I didn't have to pay much extra in the form of money, CPU/GPU/RAM, or screen real estate. In fact, when it comes to real-life hotel rooms, I feel that the cheaper one has much more bang per buck (if you know what I mean, nudge nudge). A hotel room is a means to spend time at some remote event, such as a seminar or a party, and that's what counts to me, not spending time in the room itself.
Does somebody have an idea why a hardcore Linux guy would ever like to use a Windows/OSX lookalike? I think a plain window manager like Fluxbox makes much more sense. No panels to take up space and attention, just the application windows. Programs themselves can be launched from the command line, which I think is more convenient than managing a graphical menu, and I only have menu items for terminals and browsers.
To me, the great thing about computers is that they can handle much more data than what can be visible at a time. The problem with Windows/OSX style is trying to cram everything into one screen, while I prefer one virtual screen per task for better concentration.
I've been using Fluxbox for about 9 years, after first using Gnome and then Enlightenment for a while, so I've probably been after more minimalism all the time. Of course, there are still more minimal window managers, but none of them has really caught my attention. For example, tiling WMs are probably great for large screens, but I generally use a laptop and other smaller screens (again, one task per virtual screen for better concentration).
Framefree is an interesting concept, but it could probably be achieved with some current codecs without any heavy interpolation. Codecs that use 3D wavelets or Fourier transform (time being the 3rd dimension) have to compute slices in time anyway, so the frame rate is just another parameter.
A similar idea has already been used with some MP3 decoders, I think it was libmad. The music is stored as its Fourier components, or waves with a given frequency and amplitude, which could be recovered at an arbitrary resolution -- in this case using 24 bits instead of 16.
Of course, neither technique can actually improve the resolution of the original, but in the case of movies and their 24 fps flicker, I can imagine how it would be nicer to view.
Being at the top of the areal density pile will make your nice, long, continuous reads or writes run like a bat out of hell; but it isn't nearly as useful if you are dealing with highly scattered reads and/or writes.
I thought density mattered in the radial direction too, and the less you have to move the head, the better it is for seek latency.
If the area you need has passed the head, you just need to wait until it comes around again.
Agreed. But the way I understand it, this is an argument for high RPM. High density is somewhat orthogonal and improves performance in other ways. So why don't they make 2.5'' drives at 15k RPM? Wait, I think they do, they just package them in 3.5'' cases.
In my understanding, making computer hardware faster has always been about higher densities and smaller sizes. I don't see why storage would be fundamentally any different.
Luckily, REAL Europeans learned to simplify their units, so it's something around 1e-7 m^2 for a typical car.
To me, these cheap 5.1 systems look like the direct descendants of 90s "computer speakers". Back then, most people had a perfectly good sound system, but the computer was a different world. Especially the multimedia computer, which apparently needed its own plastic boxes for playing sound samples from CD-ROM encyclopedias. What kind of quality can you expect, if you have this appliance mentality of every sound source needing its own speakers?