I have Linux running on a personal server and an old laptop of mine (P150 w/ 48 MB RAM). As KDE 2.0 was approaching, I was all excited about its new features and look. I had the opportunity to try it, and overall I was impressed by functionality but found it was several times slower then KDE 1.1.2.
This was a major dissapointment, as I found that KDE 2.0 just wasn't very practical on older hardware. Sure, it looked pretty, but I just had a hard time with more than a browser and terminal window open getting anything done. I'll grant you, Konqueror was impressive, especially for its short development time. However, I did watch it crash, and not display some of the graphics on SourceForge (try it, then look at it in Netscape).
I decided to give Ximian Gnome a try (because I didn't feel up to messing with a huge host of source files, and it claimed to have an easy install). Did it ever, after a small initial download I was presented with an impressive install manager, which allowed me to quickly install Gnome without any documentation, and I had no problems with libraries or breaking compatibilities (I had installed KDE 2.0 over 1.1.2 by the RPMs, it was nasty..having to do every package in specific order..I've had worse, but it definately wasn't a polished or user-friendly upgrade).
Best of all, Gnome provided most of the nice UI of KDE, but was much faster. With a faster computer and processor/RAM to spare I'd still go with KDE, but Gnome proved itself to bring a better UI for the resource buck.
Sure, maybe Nautilus isn't revolutionary, but my guess is in the end it'll end up faster than Konqueror, if the rest of Gnome is any indication.
Even with comparing currencies through updated exchange rates, the real issue to look at here is not how much one would be making directly comparing two salaries from two different countries. Instead, it is much more important to consider the cost of living. Unfortunately, hard data on things like this is hard to come by. One should consider the income and property tax rate as well as the foreign consumer price index which compares the prices of a small number of products meant to represent products as a whole.
Important things to consider if moving into a country that's not in western Europe or United States/Canada is the rate of inflation and economic stability. Perhaps the best thing to do would be to try to find a trusted friend who lives in the country you're considering and find out how his/her expenses differ from your own.
Fedex did not spend millions of dollars redesigning their logo in the
90s because they wanted it to be "prettier
I'm not a graphic designer, but I find it hard to believe that it took millions of dollars to create "FedEx" in purple and gray, with the left side of the E matching up with the right side of the d. Personally, I've seen the logo a hundred times but never even remembered what it looked like just now until I went to their web site (obviously http://www.fedex.com. This is one of the goals to creating a logo - to have people remember what it looks like (Nike did a great job). Basically if you are right about the money spent I believe it was a waste.
The easy answer is that Apple is involved in the open source community, and appears to be strongly committed to releasing their own software as open source, and contributing changes back to other projects whose software they use.
This comes as a welcomed surprise to me, as I would've expected Apple to be much more stubborn with their intellectual copyright and design issues. We'll see what Apple does actually does contribute though.
Mac OS X appears to have a bright future...I see a place for a Mac OS X box on my desk in the near future.
Coming from a very technically-oriented FreeBSD core developer, I found this also surprising. It shows how MacOS might now appeal to both the very technical, the very artistic, and the very newbie - something not normally possible. Again, we'll see what happens here (I, for one, would never wish to waste money to buy the overexpensive hardware and software compared to a decent Linux box).
These are just my opinions, and I would expect others to disagree with me. I should point out that in the past, I've recommended the use of a variety of operating systems to both individuals and companies; this includes Windows, Linux, Mac OS, Solaris, and FreeBSD. I'd be a fool to assert that any operating system is appropriate for all uses and environments.
Like many open source developers (not necessarily fanatical end users), Robert seems very willing to promote the alternatives to the OS he develops. This acknowledgement that no OS is best for everything should be commended.
It's important to keep a larger perspective here. More people are using computers every day, but those people have choices to make about what operating system they use. True, there will be people who move from Linux to Mac OS X, but there are still plenty of people who'll go take a shiny new G4 and stick the latest LinuxPPC version on it.
Important to note, however, is that Linux is being used more than ever for servers, in both number and market share. This, IMO, is where Linux excels the best. Mac OS X will run a server on an overly expensive (for what's given) system that just is a GUI overkill for your average e-mail or web server. On the other hand, Linux runs a very slim OS as an e-mail, web, database, DNS, etc. etc. server. While Samba definately isn't perfect or near NT's native implementation of it, it's definately reliable enough now for regular use.
I'll grant those anti-Linux people that Linux isn't perfect for the desktop. I used it for some 11 months, but found too many applications I needed just couldn't run under Linux, and I don't think Wine is really worth trying to run Office through (even though it, as of recently, does run it). However, I'm absolutely astounded by its hardware support, and comparing directly to MacOS X it's unbelievable (running only on the later Macs and their supported accessories is just plain crap for hardware support). I currently run Linux on my laptop (old Pentium 150 Mhz), and my server - they run absolutely beautifully. All of my laptop hardware is supported by Linux, even my old Chips and Tech video card under XFree86 4.0!
Coming back to my original point though, new people are still getting into computers, most taking a newbie OS like MacOS or Windows. But those that are using Windows now are switching to more advanced OSes like Linux, BSD (all flavors), BeOS, etc, as they become comfortable with setting up their systems. Perhaps MacOS X will take a chunk of LinuxPPC users, but I think that Linux is in good position to gain serious market share in the next 3 years.
The place I work now has four Cobalt RAQ's (2 Raq 1's, 1 Raq 2, and a Raq 4). However, before we got the Raq 4, I found the Dell PowerApp series. Personally, I was quite impressed with both the features and the price. They didn't buy it only because a promotion allowed them to buy a Raq 4 for a very nice price.
Anyway, the Dell PowerApp's come in two flavors really useful to Web hosting companies - a web hosting rack mount and a web caching rack mount. They have CD-ROM drives (unlike the Cobalts), run SCSI hard drives (unlike some Cobalts), support both RH Linux or Windows NT. It also features a web based GUI configuration system. While personally I wouldn't buy the NT version, I can easily see this as being useful to companies who want to maintain different OSes but the same hardware. They run Celeron's or Pentium III's and are priced slightly cheaper (at least when I looked at them) than their comparable Cobalts.
I really liked the floppy/CD-ROM that's built in, which makes it much easier to reinstall than the ethernet install required by the Cobalts. It also has a video, keyboard, and mouse port, so one can run X to config or their precious NT environment.
I've been noticing a lot of Cobalt-like boxes in Linux Journal, like Penguin Computing's Relion servers. Appro (never heard of them before) also offers some rack mounts. Apparantely Cobalt's popularity has really brought many competitors to the field, as they seem to be rather numerous in my Linux magazine.
By far, the worst tech job in the world has to be technical support, especially of products dumb people use. We've all heard the horror stories of people using their CD-ROM drive as a coffee holder, their mouse as a foot petal, or their floppy drive to hold business cards.
If anyone out there works in this horrid businesses, my condolences and pity.
That's interesting, thanks. The last time I checked my nearby outlet, it wasn't on the shelves, so perhaps it's not in all stores. I was merely using Best Buy as an example of a retail outlet with various distributions of Linux for sale. However, another popular example is Media Play which sells Linux
but not FreeBSD.
Do you think FreeBSD is hurting in its distribution in comparison with Linux and commercial OSes? Not only are they available from numerous online stores, one can usually find them at simple retail outlets like Best Buy. On the contrary, FreeBSD distribution seems much more limited, with less retail and shrink-wrap options.
I have noticed, however, that linuxmall.com sells FreeBSD CDs, has the FreeBSD community recieved much support from the Linux community over distribution (such as mirrored FTP from mostly Linux servers)?
A Slashdot-like site getting Slashdotted (TM). Yeah, I guess that Celeron just isn't enough to pump out the Java servlet pages quick enough. Anybody have a mirror or something? I want to see what this at least looks like (curiousity gets the best of me).
I downloaded BeOS R5, Mandrake 7.1, RedHat 6.5, RedHat 7.1
Please correct me if I'm mistaken, or if this was just a typo. Last I checked, there is no such thing as RedHat 6.5, nor 7.1. The latest release of the 6.x series is 6.2 (which I'm running on my laptop), and the latest of the 7.x series is 7.0.
To deal with what the post is really saying, I have to agree, to some extent. Many people should just be able to stick in a disk and have it all work. However, those people should not expect the world out of their OS, be that in stability, usability, customizability, etc (enough ilities I think). Windows and Mac OS may be easy to install, but IMO Windows is unstable and Mac OS is a slow interface (easy to learn, hard to get things done really really quickly - no use of scripts or command line, etc). I'm forced to use Mac OS 9, Windows (95, 98, 2000, Me, NT 4.0, the works) on various computers, as well as RH Linux (which I run by choice on my server and now my laptop), and Mac OS. I far prefer Linux in terms of the OS, but I do admit that hardware support and application support just isn't there yet.
As a final note, I think it's pretty sad that you do not wish to think about your home computer. To expect everything to work and not know what your computer does and why it does it is just ignorance, and no one should desire that.
Perhaps it's just me, but I'd prefer only a slightly shorter release cycle (maybe..1 1/2 years between major versions). This is because I believe it's more efficient to have a few large releases instead of a bunch of them - there's a slower, more complete time to handle bug fixes, and not as much release-preparation done by the developers. Then again a kernel is not as bad as your traditional shrink-wrapped product in terms of marketing, packaging, etc.. but there's still some degree of last-minute preparation that's done. Maybe someone with more experience in how the kernel is released could share their opinion.
Why should my next purchase be a PowerPC?
by rjh Intel hardware is a commodity; it's cheap, there are lots of peripherals for it, you can buy individual components and build your own box easily, and prices are very low....Given all this, where is the major win in the PowerPC? Why ought my next purchase for a PC be a PowerPC running LinuxPPC/Yellow Dog/MkLinux?
Jason:Very good question!...PPCs are smaller, faster, and cooler (literally and figuratively) than x86 chips. The PPC 7400 doesn't need a CPU cooling fan. Get a Mac (I'd name some other cheap PPC boxes, but there aren't any!) and you'll get a super-cool case and the cool-looking one-button optical mouse. Where's the real advantage, though? Again, good question.
Though I've had limited experience with it, I like the RISC architecture because of it's tendancy to run cooler and that it's just a more efficient processor. I'd hardly say that a cool case and mouse consititute a valid reason to switch processor types:-). However, I just don't see how (at this time) the benefits outweigh the costs of a PPC based system (or Alpha, or MIPS, except for servers). x86 processors are the cheapest and best supported (in terms of motherboards, etc). In addition, the peripherals of a Mac aren't nearly as abundant as those of your common PC.
I can't see myself or anyone else justifying a purchase of a ~$3000US G4 cube with 2 500 Mhz processors compared with the ultra cheap Athlons and P3's (and 4's) now available. When Athlon motherboards support multi-processors (last I heard the chipsets were in the works, out very soon), the ability to have two, say, 800 Mhz Athlon processors just blows away the processor costs of MIPS, Alpha, and PPC, because each of those 800 Mhz Athlon processors are only a little over $100!.
What would be more interesting is to find accurate answers to the first person (Math intensive server stuff by drenehtsral) as to how the PPC does raw calculations compared to x86s of similar price, and not Mhz. There might be an advantage there.
In short, it's too bad Apple killed the clones, or we'd have cheaper PPCs to play with.
I write this about an hour and a half after Linus wrote his letter. To my slight dissapointment I couldn't easily find new news stories about it to post. However, I was pleased to find out that kernel.org was updated. Not surprisingly their FTP and HTTP servers are running a bit slow, but here are direct links nonetheless - HTTP, and FTP
I'd like to congratulate everyone who worked on this kernel, by coding, testing or otherwise. I look forward to using it.
Well let's run through some geek stereotypes and see if they apply to me, for instance:
Loves games, especially FPSes: I don't play Quake, Doom, or Duke Nukem..only Starcraft when I get time.
Uses AOL but tries to look cool: Never have, never will..I have a decent cable connection, and work for an ISP.
Does not play sports: You've got me there, but I golf during summer.
Uses root kits and tries to look like more than a script kiddie to fellow geeks: Nope, not my thing..really pissed me off when my server hit by a script kiddie for the first time though.
Frequently are anti-social, does not participate much in school: I have an extremely intelligent girlfriend, many non-geek friends, and I'm co-editor-in-chief for both our yearbook and newspaper (of a 2200 student school).
That's just a few..but if you're still convinced I'm predictable, make a few stereotypes and I'll tell you honestly what I'm like.
So now that CmdrTaco's into Anime, Slashdot news stories get even more shallow? Until Star Wars is released on DvD, I really don't care. I could understand if it was released in general, but how much of the Slashdot community really cares about one anime show's DvD release? Oh well...
I hardly see this little device as being very useful, let alone worth my money. For $300 + cost of a Visor ($200 or so) I could easily afford a an ultra-small (and cool) Motorola Startac with the PDA-like expansion that connects to the computer to hold phone numbers, etc. This setup costs around $350, and thus leaves room to buy other things. As for an internet connection, I'm just not impressed with e-mail on a tiny Palm screen, I'd rather have an ultra light (2 lb) full function laptop with a decent wireless internet connection.
I'll admit that having the internet in your hand is where the future is headed, but not through slow handwriting recognition and tiny screens. Before PDA's for the internet will be truly useful, the screen needs to make up almost the entire size of it, a few mm of plastic around the edge AND bottom. (unlike the crappy M150 by Palm..with a SMALLER screen than its predecessors).
And like everyone's been saying, this phone has aweful coverage area - I'd stick with dual-mode digital and analog cell phones for a few years.
Before discussing what type of removable media should be used, one should think about if removable media is actually necessary.
I can think of the following reasons that students want to put files on removable media:
1. They want to take it to a computer off the network
2. They want to make a back up copy of it
3. They want to give it to someone else who is not on the network.
I'm going to make the assumption that students can have their own computers on the network and have full access to their files on shared servers.
I would argue that removable media is not necessary on school-owned computers. This includes floppy drives, CD-RWS, zip, etc. What is really needed is a well set up file serving system that would make up for all the needs stated above. The file server must be accessible by anyone on the network, and be as fast as possible (not overloaded and on a 100 Mbit network). If all of the student's computers are on the network, and they learned how to access their files from the network, they would not need to transfer them by another means as much. If away from the school, an FTP interface could allow students access to their data from anywhere on the internet - with cable modems becoming more mainstream for home users, even large files could be downloaded with ease (provided the university has an adequate internet connection).
The file servers should be completely backed up, which will probably be quite costly, but necessary. All students should have a disk quota so that no one is downloading gigs of whatever on to the file server. This way there would be little chance of file loss, but if a student was still concerned they could put a copy on their local hard drive of their own computer.
If a student wants to give data to someone else on campus, they could e-mail it to them provided it was not too large. If they actually did want the data on removable media, they could use their own computer and whatever media they wanted. This of course assumes they have one, but usually one of two roommates in a dorm now do, so I don't think it's much of a problem. Let the students bear the cost of the media and drives (not to mention the risk of data loss) if they want to use outdated removable media - not your problem.
Sorry this was so long-winded, but in summary all file access is quite possible from file servers and no removable media is necessary.
Thank you to the developers of Gaim. It's the nicest available AIM clone for Linux. A few months back there was a change in the AIM system that made Gaim not work, and that same day Gaim released a patch to fix it. I congratulate them for producing free software and keeping it low on bugs and still working with the ever changing AIM system.
That's all I had to say, time to download the new 0.10.0 version to see what's new.
It's I don time to see an article like this posted on/. I don't really want to start a flame war here, but here's my opinion:
If someone creates content (i.e. music), they have the right to put whatever restrictions they like, through the use of copyright and license agreements. Most commercial music is distributed copyrighted in the form of CDs. I'm sorry, but "fair use" does not mean making that copyrighted music available to everyone on the internet for download. Sure, it's ok to make mp3s out of it, make another CD (if you use it and don't give or sell it), etc. This is common sense from the artist and publisher's perspective. They need money, and how are they going to get that money if the majority of content is freely available?
I especially like the author's comparison to software. Illegal music copying (yes, using Napster to get Britney Spears is illegal) is just like software warez. They're both copyrighted, and both creators want their money.
In the author of this article's analogy, he described Linux as being the free alternative to Windows, saying that the same had to be done for music. I can't agree more. The vast majority of my mp3's are from artists on mp3.com that give away their music, and make money by tours and selling CDs with a few songs you can't download. It's excellent music, definately beats listening the radio. Though you won't find the popular names there, I've managed to find 3 artists or more that I really like, and a select song here or there. The rest of my mp3's are CDs that I own that I rip to mp3 form for convenience.
Let's face it, if you like someone's music, the least you could do in return for the enjoyment of listening to it is reimburse them. The easiest way to do that is to buy their CDs, but you can also attend concerts, visit web sites with ads, etc.
Sorry for the ramble, but here's the point that I really agree with. If you like an artist, deal with how they distribute their music or look elsewhere.
I've used SETI@Home, and it seemed to work pretty well. I'd like to hear people's opinions who've used services like Paragon (mentioned in the article) and Distributed.net. Before I spend time picking a company and installing their software, I'm interested to hear what other's experiences are.
Also, has anyone recieved a check from one of these places? Like paid-advertisements while you surf, I'm a little skeptical until I hear people who recieve real checks.
I'm no astrophysics major, but here it goes...If these things are sucking up so much matter, do they not become more massive, and thus have even more gravitational pull? Basically, are they getting stronger as time passes? Do black holes in general get stronger? I consider myself an astronomy guy, but I'm afraid my knowledge of black hole theory is limited to how we detect them (provided, of course, they are what we think they are).
Perhaps I'm stating the obvious here, but isn't it a whole lot easier to secure a storage facility on earth?
Before you give me arguments about space being a vacuum and preventing decay, think about a few things. It costs a lot to launch a satellite, and keep it in the atmosphere. We haven't tested satellites staying in the atmosphere anywhere near that long. You've got serious radiation and equipment problems. If the equipment fails, then the orbit slowly decays and like fried bacon there goes your CD's of data.
I'm sure there are plenty of time-capsule projects on earth right now (didn't some tv channel do something around Y2K?). However, those do not get nearly the publicity as the coolness factor of space. Face it, it'd be easier, cheaper, and probably more reliable to get a safe location on the earth. Bury it in the ocean, in a mountain, or something. Put it at the bottom of the big crater in Arizona (right in the middle). Make it transmit a radio signal when it's ready to be opened, or make it very public knowledge where it is, put it in history books for others to read. You can store more stuff, you've basically got unlimited space. It can be airtight, in several layers, to have similar benefits to space. It can be fireproof, or perhaps taken care of by an organization for a few hundred/thousand years, which checks up on it every decade to make sure it's still intact. I dunno, space is cool, but orbit doesn't seem perfect to keep something preserved - too many problems.
On another thought, why not launch it onto the moon and embed itself there? Then it could transmit in 50,000 years, and probably be relatively untouched. It won't go away, will only be subject to radiation and not orbit problems, and faces a much better chance of staying put. Now that'd be cool.
Slashdot Mirror
I have Linux running on a personal server and an old laptop of mine (P150 w/ 48 MB RAM). As KDE 2.0 was approaching, I was all excited about its new features and look. I had the opportunity to try it, and overall I was impressed by functionality but found it was several times slower then KDE 1.1.2.
This was a major dissapointment, as I found that KDE 2.0 just wasn't very practical on older hardware. Sure, it looked pretty, but I just had a hard time with more than a browser and terminal window open getting anything done. I'll grant you, Konqueror was impressive, especially for its short development time. However, I did watch it crash, and not display some of the graphics on SourceForge (try it, then look at it in Netscape).
I decided to give Ximian Gnome a try (because I didn't feel up to messing with a huge host of source files, and it claimed to have an easy install). Did it ever, after a small initial download I was presented with an impressive install manager, which allowed me to quickly install Gnome without any documentation, and I had no problems with libraries or breaking compatibilities (I had installed KDE 2.0 over 1.1.2 by the RPMs, it was nasty..having to do every package in specific order..I've had worse, but it definately wasn't a polished or user-friendly upgrade).
Best of all, Gnome provided most of the nice UI of KDE, but was much faster. With a faster computer and processor/RAM to spare I'd still go with KDE, but Gnome proved itself to bring a better UI for the resource buck.
Sure, maybe Nautilus isn't revolutionary, but my guess is in the end it'll end up faster than Konqueror, if the rest of Gnome is any indication.
Even with comparing currencies through updated exchange rates, the real issue to look at here is not how much one would be making directly comparing two salaries from two different countries. Instead, it is much more important to consider the cost of living. Unfortunately, hard data on things like this is hard to come by. One should consider the income and property tax rate as well as the foreign consumer price index which compares the prices of a small number of products meant to represent products as a whole.
Important things to consider if moving into a country that's not in western Europe or United States/Canada is the rate of inflation and economic stability. Perhaps the best thing to do would be to try to find a trusted friend who lives in the country you're considering and find out how his/her expenses differ from your own.
Fedex did not spend millions of dollars redesigning their logo in the 90s because they wanted it to be "prettier
I'm not a graphic designer, but I find it hard to believe that it took millions of dollars to create "FedEx" in purple and gray, with the left side of the E matching up with the right side of the d. Personally, I've seen the logo a hundred times but never even remembered what it looked like just now until I went to their web site (obviously http://www.fedex.com. This is one of the goals to creating a logo - to have people remember what it looks like (Nike did a great job). Basically if you are right about the money spent I believe it was a waste.
There has been an ongoing debate about the quality of MacOS and if it will take away users from such operating systems as LinuxPPC. I found the following comments by Robert Watson particularly interesting:
The easy answer is that Apple is involved in the open source community, and appears to be strongly committed to releasing their own software as open source, and contributing changes back to other projects whose software they use.
This comes as a welcomed surprise to me, as I would've expected Apple to be much more stubborn with their intellectual copyright and design issues. We'll see what Apple does actually does contribute though.
Mac OS X appears to have a bright future...I see a place for a Mac OS X box on my desk in the near future.
Coming from a very technically-oriented FreeBSD core developer, I found this also surprising. It shows how MacOS might now appeal to both the very technical, the very artistic, and the very newbie - something not normally possible. Again, we'll see what happens here (I, for one, would never wish to waste money to buy the overexpensive hardware and software compared to a decent Linux box).
These are just my opinions, and I would expect others to disagree with me. I should point out that in the past, I've recommended the use of a variety of operating systems to both individuals and companies; this includes Windows, Linux, Mac OS, Solaris, and FreeBSD. I'd be a fool to assert that any operating system is appropriate for all uses and environments.
Like many open source developers (not necessarily fanatical end users), Robert seems very willing to promote the alternatives to the OS he develops. This acknowledgement that no OS is best for everything should be commended.
It's important to keep a larger perspective here. More people are using computers every day, but those people have choices to make about what operating system they use. True, there will be people who move from Linux to Mac OS X, but there are still plenty of people who'll go take a shiny new G4 and stick the latest LinuxPPC version on it.
Important to note, however, is that Linux is being used more than ever for servers, in both number and market share. This, IMO, is where Linux excels the best. Mac OS X will run a server on an overly expensive (for what's given) system that just is a GUI overkill for your average e-mail or web server. On the other hand, Linux runs a very slim OS as an e-mail, web, database, DNS, etc. etc. server. While Samba definately isn't perfect or near NT's native implementation of it, it's definately reliable enough now for regular use.
I'll grant those anti-Linux people that Linux isn't perfect for the desktop. I used it for some 11 months, but found too many applications I needed just couldn't run under Linux, and I don't think Wine is really worth trying to run Office through (even though it, as of recently, does run it). However, I'm absolutely astounded by its hardware support, and comparing directly to MacOS X it's unbelievable (running only on the later Macs and their supported accessories is just plain crap for hardware support). I currently run Linux on my laptop (old Pentium 150 Mhz), and my server - they run absolutely beautifully. All of my laptop hardware is supported by Linux, even my old Chips and Tech video card under XFree86 4.0!
Coming back to my original point though, new people are still getting into computers, most taking a newbie OS like MacOS or Windows. But those that are using Windows now are switching to more advanced OSes like Linux, BSD (all flavors), BeOS, etc, as they become comfortable with setting up their systems. Perhaps MacOS X will take a chunk of LinuxPPC users, but I think that Linux is in good position to gain serious market share in the next 3 years.
The place I work now has four Cobalt RAQ's (2 Raq 1's, 1 Raq 2, and a Raq 4). However, before we got the Raq 4, I found the Dell PowerApp series. Personally, I was quite impressed with both the features and the price. They didn't buy it only because a promotion allowed them to buy a Raq 4 for a very nice price.
Anyway, the Dell PowerApp's come in two flavors really useful to Web hosting companies - a web hosting rack mount and a web caching rack mount. They have CD-ROM drives (unlike the Cobalts), run SCSI hard drives (unlike some Cobalts), support both RH Linux or Windows NT. It also features a web based GUI configuration system. While personally I wouldn't buy the NT version, I can easily see this as being useful to companies who want to maintain different OSes but the same hardware. They run Celeron's or Pentium III's and are priced slightly cheaper (at least when I looked at them) than their comparable Cobalts.
I really liked the floppy/CD-ROM that's built in, which makes it much easier to reinstall than the ethernet install required by the Cobalts. It also has a video, keyboard, and mouse port, so one can run X to config or their precious NT environment.
I've been noticing a lot of Cobalt-like boxes in Linux Journal, like Penguin Computing's Relion servers. Appro (never heard of them before) also offers some rack mounts. Apparantely Cobalt's popularity has really brought many competitors to the field, as they seem to be rather numerous in my Linux magazine.
Hope this helps.
By far, the worst tech job in the world has to be technical support, especially of products dumb people use. We've all heard the horror stories of people using their CD-ROM drive as a coffee holder, their mouse as a foot petal, or their floppy drive to hold business cards.
If anyone out there works in this horrid businesses, my condolences and pity.
That's interesting, thanks. The last time I checked my nearby outlet, it wasn't on the shelves, so perhaps it's not in all stores. I was merely using Best Buy as an example of a retail outlet with various distributions of Linux for sale. However, another popular example is Media Play which sells Linux but not FreeBSD.
Do you think FreeBSD is hurting in its distribution in comparison with Linux and commercial OSes? Not only are they available from numerous online stores, one can usually find them at simple retail outlets like Best Buy. On the contrary, FreeBSD distribution seems much more limited, with less retail and shrink-wrap options.
I have noticed, however, that linuxmall.com sells FreeBSD CDs, has the FreeBSD community recieved much support from the Linux community over distribution (such as mirrored FTP from mostly Linux servers)?
A Slashdot-like site getting Slashdotted (TM). Yeah, I guess that Celeron just isn't enough to pump out the Java servlet pages quick enough. Anybody have a mirror or something? I want to see what this at least looks like (curiousity gets the best of me).
I downloaded BeOS R5, Mandrake 7.1, RedHat 6.5, RedHat 7.1
Please correct me if I'm mistaken, or if this was just a typo. Last I checked, there is no such thing as RedHat 6.5, nor 7.1. The latest release of the 6.x series is 6.2 (which I'm running on my laptop), and the latest of the 7.x series is 7.0.
To deal with what the post is really saying, I have to agree, to some extent. Many people should just be able to stick in a disk and have it all work. However, those people should not expect the world out of their OS, be that in stability, usability, customizability, etc (enough ilities I think). Windows and Mac OS may be easy to install, but IMO Windows is unstable and Mac OS is a slow interface (easy to learn, hard to get things done really really quickly - no use of scripts or command line, etc). I'm forced to use Mac OS 9, Windows (95, 98, 2000, Me, NT 4.0, the works) on various computers, as well as RH Linux (which I run by choice on my server and now my laptop), and Mac OS. I far prefer Linux in terms of the OS, but I do admit that hardware support and application support just isn't there yet.
As a final note, I think it's pretty sad that you do not wish to think about your home computer. To expect everything to work and not know what your computer does and why it does it is just ignorance, and no one should desire that.
Perhaps it's just me, but I'd prefer only a slightly shorter release cycle (maybe..1 1/2 years between major versions). This is because I believe it's more efficient to have a few large releases instead of a bunch of them - there's a slower, more complete time to handle bug fixes, and not as much release-preparation done by the developers. Then again a kernel is not as bad as your traditional shrink-wrapped product in terms of marketing, packaging, etc.. but there's still some degree of last-minute preparation that's done. Maybe someone with more experience in how the kernel is released could share their opinion.
Why should my next purchase be a PowerPC? by rjh Intel hardware is a commodity; it's cheap, there are lots of peripherals for it, you can buy individual components and build your own box easily, and prices are very low....Given all this, where is the major win in the PowerPC? Why ought my next purchase for a PC be a PowerPC running LinuxPPC/Yellow Dog/MkLinux?
:-). However, I just don't see how (at this time) the benefits outweigh the costs of a PPC based system (or Alpha, or MIPS, except for servers). x86 processors are the cheapest and best supported (in terms of motherboards, etc). In addition, the peripherals of a Mac aren't nearly as abundant as those of your common PC.
Jason: Very good question!...PPCs are smaller, faster, and cooler (literally and figuratively) than x86 chips. The PPC 7400 doesn't need a CPU cooling fan. Get a Mac (I'd name some other cheap PPC boxes, but there aren't any!) and you'll get a super-cool case and the cool-looking one-button optical mouse. Where's the real advantage, though? Again, good question.
Though I've had limited experience with it, I like the RISC architecture because of it's tendancy to run cooler and that it's just a more efficient processor. I'd hardly say that a cool case and mouse consititute a valid reason to switch processor types
I can't see myself or anyone else justifying a purchase of a ~$3000US G4 cube with 2 500 Mhz processors compared with the ultra cheap Athlons and P3's (and 4's) now available. When Athlon motherboards support multi-processors (last I heard the chipsets were in the works, out very soon), the ability to have two, say, 800 Mhz Athlon processors just blows away the processor costs of MIPS, Alpha, and PPC, because each of those 800 Mhz Athlon processors are only a little over $100!.
What would be more interesting is to find accurate answers to the first person (Math intensive server stuff by drenehtsral) as to how the PPC does raw calculations compared to x86s of similar price, and not Mhz. There might be an advantage there.
In short, it's too bad Apple killed the clones, or we'd have cheaper PPCs to play with.
I write this about an hour and a half after Linus wrote his letter. To my slight dissapointment I couldn't easily find new news stories about it to post. However, I was pleased to find out that kernel.org was updated. Not surprisingly their FTP and HTTP servers are running a bit slow, but here are direct links nonetheless - HTTP, and FTP
I'd like to congratulate everyone who worked on this kernel, by coding, testing or otherwise. I look forward to using it.
Well let's run through some geek stereotypes and see if they apply to me, for instance:
Loves games, especially FPSes: I don't play Quake, Doom, or Duke Nukem..only Starcraft when I get time.
Uses AOL but tries to look cool: Never have, never will..I have a decent cable connection, and work for an ISP.
Does not play sports: You've got me there, but I golf during summer.
Uses root kits and tries to look like more than a script kiddie to fellow geeks: Nope, not my thing..really pissed me off when my server hit by a script kiddie for the first time though.
Frequently are anti-social, does not participate much in school: I have an extremely intelligent girlfriend, many non-geek friends, and I'm co-editor-in-chief for both our yearbook and newspaper (of a 2200 student school).
That's just a few..but if you're still convinced I'm predictable, make a few stereotypes and I'll tell you honestly what I'm like.
Being a 16 year old Linux using geek myself, I have to wonder...is there such a thing as an Ordinary Teenage Slashdot User?
So now that CmdrTaco's into Anime, Slashdot news stories get even more shallow? Until Star Wars is released on DvD, I really don't care. I could understand if it was released in general, but how much of the Slashdot community really cares about one anime show's DvD release? Oh well...
I hardly see this little device as being very useful, let alone worth my money. For $300 + cost of a Visor ($200 or so) I could easily afford a an ultra-small (and cool) Motorola Startac with the PDA-like expansion that connects to the computer to hold phone numbers, etc. This setup costs around $350, and thus leaves room to buy other things. As for an internet connection, I'm just not impressed with e-mail on a tiny Palm screen, I'd rather have an ultra light (2 lb) full function laptop with a decent wireless internet connection.
I'll admit that having the internet in your hand is where the future is headed, but not through slow handwriting recognition and tiny screens. Before PDA's for the internet will be truly useful, the screen needs to make up almost the entire size of it, a few mm of plastic around the edge AND bottom. (unlike the crappy M150 by Palm..with a SMALLER screen than its predecessors).
And like everyone's been saying, this phone has aweful coverage area - I'd stick with dual-mode digital and analog cell phones for a few years.
Before discussing what type of removable media should be used, one should think about if removable media is actually necessary.
I can think of the following reasons that students want to put files on removable media:
1. They want to take it to a computer off the network
2. They want to make a back up copy of it
3. They want to give it to someone else who is not on the network.
I'm going to make the assumption that students can have their own computers on the network and have full access to their files on shared servers.
I would argue that removable media is not necessary on school-owned computers. This includes floppy drives, CD-RWS, zip, etc. What is really needed is a well set up file serving system that would make up for all the needs stated above. The file server must be accessible by anyone on the network, and be as fast as possible (not overloaded and on a 100 Mbit network). If all of the student's computers are on the network, and they learned how to access their files from the network, they would not need to transfer them by another means as much. If away from the school, an FTP interface could allow students access to their data from anywhere on the internet - with cable modems becoming more mainstream for home users, even large files could be downloaded with ease (provided the university has an adequate internet connection).
The file servers should be completely backed up, which will probably be quite costly, but necessary. All students should have a disk quota so that no one is downloading gigs of whatever on to the file server. This way there would be little chance of file loss, but if a student was still concerned they could put a copy on their local hard drive of their own computer.
If a student wants to give data to someone else on campus, they could e-mail it to them provided it was not too large. If they actually did want the data on removable media, they could use their own computer and whatever media they wanted. This of course assumes they have one, but usually one of two roommates in a dorm now do, so I don't think it's much of a problem. Let the students bear the cost of the media and drives (not to mention the risk of data loss) if they want to use outdated removable media - not your problem.
Sorry this was so long-winded, but in summary all file access is quite possible from file servers and no removable media is necessary.
Chris Halsall is a specialist at automated information gathering and presentation systems.
...with way too much time on his hands.
Ok, but I give the guy serious credit..this is really cool, fun stuff with OpenGL is always good to see.
Thank you to the developers of Gaim. It's the nicest available AIM clone for Linux. A few months back there was a change in the AIM system that made Gaim not work, and that same day Gaim released a patch to fix it. I congratulate them for producing free software and keeping it low on bugs and still working with the ever changing AIM system.
That's all I had to say, time to download the new 0.10.0 version to see what's new.
It's I don time to see an article like this posted on /. I don't really want to start a flame war here, but here's my opinion:
If someone creates content (i.e. music), they have the right to put whatever restrictions they like, through the use of copyright and license agreements. Most commercial music is distributed copyrighted in the form of CDs. I'm sorry, but "fair use" does not mean making that copyrighted music available to everyone on the internet for download. Sure, it's ok to make mp3s out of it, make another CD (if you use it and don't give or sell it), etc. This is common sense from the artist and publisher's perspective. They need money, and how are they going to get that money if the majority of content is freely available?
I especially like the author's comparison to software. Illegal music copying (yes, using Napster to get Britney Spears is illegal) is just like software warez. They're both copyrighted, and both creators want their money.
In the author of this article's analogy, he described Linux as being the free alternative to Windows, saying that the same had to be done for music. I can't agree more. The vast majority of my mp3's are from artists on mp3.com that give away their music, and make money by tours and selling CDs with a few songs you can't download. It's excellent music, definately beats listening the radio. Though you won't find the popular names there, I've managed to find 3 artists or more that I really like, and a select song here or there. The rest of my mp3's are CDs that I own that I rip to mp3 form for convenience.
Let's face it, if you like someone's music, the least you could do in return for the enjoyment of listening to it is reimburse them. The easiest way to do that is to buy their CDs, but you can also attend concerts, visit web sites with ads, etc.
Sorry for the ramble, but here's the point that I really agree with. If you like an artist, deal with how they distribute their music or look elsewhere.
I've used SETI@Home, and it seemed to work pretty well. I'd like to hear people's opinions who've used services like Paragon (mentioned in the article) and Distributed.net. Before I spend time picking a company and installing their software, I'm interested to hear what other's experiences are.
Also, has anyone recieved a check from one of these places? Like paid-advertisements while you surf, I'm a little skeptical until I hear people who recieve real checks.
I'm no astrophysics major, but here it goes...If these things are sucking up so much matter, do they not become more massive, and thus have even more gravitational pull? Basically, are they getting stronger as time passes? Do black holes in general get stronger? I consider myself an astronomy guy, but I'm afraid my knowledge of black hole theory is limited to how we detect them (provided, of course, they are what we think they are).
Perhaps I'm stating the obvious here, but isn't it a whole lot easier to secure a storage facility on earth?
Before you give me arguments about space being a vacuum and preventing decay, think about a few things. It costs a lot to launch a satellite, and keep it in the atmosphere. We haven't tested satellites staying in the atmosphere anywhere near that long. You've got serious radiation and equipment problems. If the equipment fails, then the orbit slowly decays and like fried bacon there goes your CD's of data.
I'm sure there are plenty of time-capsule projects on earth right now (didn't some tv channel do something around Y2K?). However, those do not get nearly the publicity as the coolness factor of space. Face it, it'd be easier, cheaper, and probably more reliable to get a safe location on the earth. Bury it in the ocean, in a mountain, or something. Put it at the bottom of the big crater in Arizona (right in the middle). Make it transmit a radio signal when it's ready to be opened, or make it very public knowledge where it is, put it in history books for others to read. You can store more stuff, you've basically got unlimited space. It can be airtight, in several layers, to have similar benefits to space. It can be fireproof, or perhaps taken care of by an organization for a few hundred/thousand years, which checks up on it every decade to make sure it's still intact. I dunno, space is cool, but orbit doesn't seem perfect to keep something preserved - too many problems.
On another thought, why not launch it onto the moon and embed itself there? Then it could transmit in 50,000 years, and probably be relatively untouched. It won't go away, will only be subject to radiation and not orbit problems, and faces a much better chance of staying put. Now that'd be cool.