Umm... WTF are you talking about? I've worked with a T43 here at work, and have a T61, and they feel nearly identical. The keyboard is the same (literally, I'm pretty sure it's the exact same hardware), the mouse buttons are the same, the chassis feels just as solid (it's a bit thicker, and the plastic around the ePCI slots feel a little flimsy, but...), and the 14.1" widescreen looks quite nice, IMHO (some people complain about brightness, but it looks fine to me). Did you even double-check that Knoppix was using the native screen res?
I have a T61 with the nVidia chipset. After installing Gutsy, the latest nVidia drivers, the latest driver snapshot from intellinuxwireless, and the latest ALSA snapshot, my wireless works perfectly, as does sound, suspend works most of the time (it used to occasionally not go to sleep, presumably because something wasn't shutting down, but I *think* the latest 4965 driver snapshot fixed this issue), and it's never failed to resume. Yeah, the SATA controller needs to be run in compatibility mode, but I don't see why that's a big deal. I haven't bothered with hibernation, so I can't speak to that.
Of the things that don't work, or don't work as expected, the first is the brightness controls. If I switch to console, then adjust the brightness, it works fine. But it doesn't work in X, for whatever reason. The second is the battery monitor. I picked up an ultrabay battery, which operates as a second battery which is detected just fine by the Gnome tray application. However, when the second battery runs low (it has the lower capacity), the system gets confused, thinking that my laptop's battery is about to run out (when, in reality, the other battery has ~100% charge left). I had to disable auto-shutdown because the damn thing would put my laptop to sleep!
As for the function keys, the screen brightness buttons *try* to work (ie, the brightness control comes up), but something is broken elsewhere. Other buttons that work fine are the volume controls, screen lock, and sleep. Others I don't think I've tried (or just don't recall:).
So, overall, a good experience. But it did take some fiddling, so it's not for the faint of heart, just yet.
A T61 (latest T-series model) with the Intel 3965 wireless works out of the box and does not require ndiswrapper.
It's actually the 4965, and that's not *quite* true. You need to grab the latest driver snapshot from intellinuxwireless, but with that, my 4965 is working perfectly w/o ndiswrapper.
Umm... what? Due specifically to errors in scale, your analogy made incorrect assumptions about the density of our two galaxies. The densities *absolutely* matter, as that dictates the chance of a collision. The fact is that galaxies are, on average, surprisingly sparse (go back and re-read my analogy, then think about it for a second), and as such, the odds of a collision between any two objects is exceedingly remote.
Oh, and by balance I mean, our orbit in the solar system. We are kept in place by the single gravity field of our sun.
I suspect you'd need a fairly large amount of mass passing near the solar system in order for this to be a danger. Yeah, it's probably possible, but again, given the density of the objects involved, it seems unlikely.
Local bubble
The Local Bubble, an area of the galaxy that our solar system currently occupies, where the local ISM is particularly thin. We'll be exiting the local bubble in about 10,000 years (though I've seen some estimates put it at more like 20-50,000).
Think of it this way; Tennis balls, thousands...all over a field. Roll thousands more into them from the sidelines, what are the chances that a few of the newcomers will collide with numerous others
It's a neat metaphor, except you've got your sense of scale *way* too small. First, take our solar system. If you were to shrink down the entire solar system such that the sun was a mere 1 inch in diameter, pluto would be *100 yards away*. How far away would Alpha Centauri, the closest star to our sun, be? *396 MILES*.
So, take a bunch of balls 1 inch in diameter. Scatter them over the continental US. Now roll a bunch more in random places. Tell me, what are the odds of a few colliding, now?
how will the new fields affect our undeniably delicate balance?
"Undeniably"? Really? According to whom? What is this "balance" of which you speak?
AFAIK, the primary danger to us from gravitational perturbance is, 1) the chance we end up near a new stellar nursery, or 2) the solar system's trajectory is altered such that we end up in an area of the galaxy that's less hospitable to life. The first is certainly possible, though who knows what the odds are. As for the second, well, that's already a problem for our solar system, since we're destined to eventually collide with the wall of the local bubble.
So, let me get this straight. You're a software engineer (and supposedly a "good" one), and either 1) you use the term "object" in a way that's at odds with the rest of the software development community, or 2) you've never heard of ways to organize data that don't involve using objects. I'm not sure how you can believe you're a "good" software "engineer", given either of those options.
And to answer your question, one could easily write such an application using straight C and structures which contain the relevant data for each of the entities in the application, along with a library of functions to operate on these entities.
Yeah, except, for the most part, galactic "collisions" are nothing of the sort. The spaces between the stars are so vast, there is very little likelihood of stars colliding. The only real danger is from sudden new star formation triggered by gravitational tidal forces, resulting in a flux of radiation in those areas.
Oh please, that's just ridiculous PC bullshit. The very definition of "culture" is "the customary beliefs, social forms, and material traits of a racial, religious, or social group" (Merriam-Webster definition 5b). Are you telling me that discussing culture is, by definition, racism, because it attributes values, beliefs, and behaviours to large groups of people?
As for procedural programming... I'm not sure how it would be possible to write an interactive multi-player procedural program without using the concept of an object
While the article is pure nonsense, judging from the above comment, you don't seem to be much more educated on the topic. Unless you expand the term "object" to include C structs and basically any other form of data structure, the above statement is clearly flat out false. As an example, the Linux kernel doesn't use objects, in the traditional sense (constructs which combine state and actions, while allowing features such as encapsulation and polymorphism), and I don't think anyone would claim it's any less complex than "an interactive multi-player procedural program".
Have the cable company provision for 25Mb/10Mb service,
There is no way a cable company will provision 10Mb (or 25Mb) upstream. Frequency space is just too tight. Hell, many companies are deploying switched digital, which is nothing more than a hack IMHO, specifically because channels are so scarce, and it only gets worse in the face of HD.
In short, what you're asking simply isn't doable given current network infrastructure. Things may get a little easier following the digital switchover, as that will free up frequency space previously used up by analog channels, but given the plethora of specialty channels, not to mention services like VOD, cable (and DSL) operators simply aren't in the position to offer the kind of service you want.
What the actual frequency spectrum does has little bearing on what the modem caps are,
That's just naive. Frequency spectrum dictates the top-most bandwidth one can offer. IOW, if you want to offer 10Mb upstream, you must provision channels to support it. Period. And there's no way a cable operator will do that given the spectrum crunch they're in, now.
My cable company is already selling several different levels of service without any pain
That's completely different. Doing packet shaping at layer 3 in order to create different service tiers by capping bandwidth is completely different from allocating channels on a customer-by-customer basis, which is, as I've said, impossible. As such, it isn't possible, in cable land, anyway, to provide different customers with different upload/download speed ratios (10/1 for one, 1/10 for another). The best they can do is cap below the hard limits set by their channel allocations, but that doesn't fit what the OP requested.
Of course Jesus existed. There is plenty of historical evidence which indicates that Jesus, the man, existed (only a small minority of historians dispute this). The rest, however, is just myth built up around the man.
Nothing stops the cable company from re-allocating the channels.
Sure. But they can't do that on a customer-by-customer basis, as you originally suggested. Those allocations are plant-wide. So they have to allocate their channels in a way that a) matches their own infrastructure needs, and b) matches what they think the customer wants. And let's face it, *most* customers want a big fat downstream pipe, and couldn't care less if upstream is limited, as long is it doesn't result in downstream throttling due to ACKs not getting through.
I'm sorry, I didn't realize I needed to provide citations when passing on information I've gleaned from elsewhere. At what point did Slashdot become Wikipedia?
To me, "Second World" means "communist or former communist."
Interestingly, Wikipedia agrees with you (for whatever that's worth). This I did not know. Apparently this is why "developed" and "developing" are preferred terms, these days.
Actually, it's also incredibly annoying. I work in a Canadian office, in concert with an office in Princeton, New Jersey. You know, famous University town, fairly close to New York City. And their broadband connection is *pitiful*. Makes any kind of remote work on their gear painful, to say the least, and it only gets worse when we need to transfer large amounts of data (such as ISOs) between the two offices.
Oh, and I believe upstream is also limited because of the transmit collision backoff algorithm they use (modified ALOHA or somesuch, I believe, though I could be mistaken).
Why are you assuming that upstream and downstream bandwidth are a) related, and b) a tradeoff between one another? AFAIK, in a cable plant, downstream bandwidth is relatively plentiful, while upstream bandwidth is a rather precious resource, because of the way the channels are allocated.
And somehow a single government controlled monopoly will be better than numerous independent monopolies?
Yes. Because the mandate for a governmental body is to, above all else, benefit *the people*, as opposed to the pockets of the shareholders.
We have watched as the monopolies have leveraged their power, money and influence over plenty of other government entities (financially mostly) and what makes you think that they won't do the same thing here?
Uhh, that's what rules and the legal system exist to solve. If the wire-leasing entity is required, by law, to be neutral, and there's evidence of impropriety, then the victims sue. Problem = solved.
Of course, this is all based on the assumption that you have a fair, functioning democracy that would create such an entity and set up it's mandate appropriately. Unfortunately, institutionalized bribary (aka, lobbying) in the US system makes this all but impossible (see the US Copyright Board for an example).
Yup. The same is true of Siddhartha Gautama. Though, interestingly, there's far more historical evidence supporting his existence than there is of Jesus Christ.
Precisely. Which is why it makes *far* more sense to believe the obvious: Mary got pregnant out of wedlock, then came up with a clever little tale so she wouldn't be ostracized.
Honestly, why people turn to magic when simple human behaviour can explain such things, I'll never know.
I always found the mnemonics to be just as hard to remember as the original thing.
Me too (I had to reverse-engineer sohcahtoa in order to post my original response), but for many, it's a vital component of their learning process. And my understanding is this book attempts to use multiple teaching methods, mnemonics being one, in order to make the book as useful and accessible as possible. That's nothing but a good thing, if you ask me.
I can tell you that the whole concept of girling* up a math book to get girls interested in math just seems so insulting and rediculous.
Too bad they didn't have a book to get you interested in spelling.;)
In all seriousness, though, girls and boys, thanks to socialization and genetics (you decide how much of each contributes) have different interests. Using those interests to encourage exploration of other areas, such as mathematics, is, IMHO, a perfectly valid method of teaching.
More ridiculous, to me, is assuming that there are absolutely no differences between boys and girls (heck, individuals), despite obvious scientific evidence to the contrary, and attempting to teach everyone using the exact same methods. That's just PC idealism taken too far.
It just sounds like a continuation of the problem in our society where girls just aren't thought of as smart, where boys are.
Yeah, because there's nothing out there that appeals to boys' baser instincts (can we say WWE? NASCAR? Sports in general?).
Honestly, I think you're just being far too sensitive, here. Would you object if a math book was created that made use of traditional "boy" interests?
It's called a mnemonic, most of them are seemingly retarded, but they are useful tools nonetheless. Or are you telling me sohcahtoa or roygbiv don't sound silly?
I was only stating that we are held more responsible than the terrorists are. The terrorists killed how many people on 9-11?
That's complete and utter BS. Immediately following 9/11, the entire world was behind the US. When operations began in Afghanistan, a place well known to harbour terrorists, the world was behind the US (pity the US couldn't return the favour, instead shifting focus and leaving countries like Canada to clean up their mess). It was only in the sudden, unfounded shift of focus to Iraq that the US lost all credibility and support of other nations, as they proceeded to browbeat the UN (and their own people) with false and inaccurate information in order to justify an invasion that was, at best, tangential to the original goal of fighting terrorism in the Middle East.
Besides, don't you think the US *should* be held to a higher standard? Or do you really believe the US shouldn't be expected to behave better than the terrorists they're purporting to fight?
Slashdot Mirror
Umm... WTF are you talking about? I've worked with a T43 here at work, and have a T61, and they feel nearly identical. The keyboard is the same (literally, I'm pretty sure it's the exact same hardware), the mouse buttons are the same, the chassis feels just as solid (it's a bit thicker, and the plastic around the ePCI slots feel a little flimsy, but...), and the 14.1" widescreen looks quite nice, IMHO (some people complain about brightness, but it looks fine to me). Did you even double-check that Knoppix was using the native screen res?
I have a T61 with the nVidia chipset. After installing Gutsy, the latest nVidia drivers, the latest driver snapshot from intellinuxwireless, and the latest ALSA snapshot, my wireless works perfectly, as does sound, suspend works most of the time (it used to occasionally not go to sleep, presumably because something wasn't shutting down, but I *think* the latest 4965 driver snapshot fixed this issue), and it's never failed to resume. Yeah, the SATA controller needs to be run in compatibility mode, but I don't see why that's a big deal. I haven't bothered with hibernation, so I can't speak to that.
:).
Of the things that don't work, or don't work as expected, the first is the brightness controls. If I switch to console, then adjust the brightness, it works fine. But it doesn't work in X, for whatever reason. The second is the battery monitor. I picked up an ultrabay battery, which operates as a second battery which is detected just fine by the Gnome tray application. However, when the second battery runs low (it has the lower capacity), the system gets confused, thinking that my laptop's battery is about to run out (when, in reality, the other battery has ~100% charge left). I had to disable auto-shutdown because the damn thing would put my laptop to sleep!
As for the function keys, the screen brightness buttons *try* to work (ie, the brightness control comes up), but something is broken elsewhere. Other buttons that work fine are the volume controls, screen lock, and sleep. Others I don't think I've tried (or just don't recall
So, overall, a good experience. But it did take some fiddling, so it's not for the faint of heart, just yet.
A T61 (latest T-series model) with the Intel 3965 wireless works out of the box and does not require ndiswrapper.
It's actually the 4965, and that's not *quite* true. You need to grab the latest driver snapshot from intellinuxwireless, but with that, my 4965 is working perfectly w/o ndiswrapper.
Nooo, the scale of the analogy does not matter
Umm... what? Due specifically to errors in scale, your analogy made incorrect assumptions about the density of our two galaxies. The densities *absolutely* matter, as that dictates the chance of a collision. The fact is that galaxies are, on average, surprisingly sparse (go back and re-read my analogy, then think about it for a second), and as such, the odds of a collision between any two objects is exceedingly remote.
Oh, and by balance I mean, our orbit in the solar system. We are kept in place by the single gravity field of our sun.
I suspect you'd need a fairly large amount of mass passing near the solar system in order for this to be a danger. Yeah, it's probably possible, but again, given the density of the objects involved, it seems unlikely.
Local bubble
The Local Bubble, an area of the galaxy that our solar system currently occupies, where the local ISM is particularly thin. We'll be exiting the local bubble in about 10,000 years (though I've seen some estimates put it at more like 20-50,000).
Think of it this way; Tennis balls, thousands...all over a field. Roll thousands more into them from the sidelines, what are the chances that a few of the newcomers will collide with numerous others
It's a neat metaphor, except you've got your sense of scale *way* too small. First, take our solar system. If you were to shrink down the entire solar system such that the sun was a mere 1 inch in diameter, pluto would be *100 yards away*. How far away would Alpha Centauri, the closest star to our sun, be? *396 MILES*.
So, take a bunch of balls 1 inch in diameter. Scatter them over the continental US. Now roll a bunch more in random places. Tell me, what are the odds of a few colliding, now?
how will the new fields affect our undeniably delicate balance?
"Undeniably"? Really? According to whom? What is this "balance" of which you speak?
AFAIK, the primary danger to us from gravitational perturbance is, 1) the chance we end up near a new stellar nursery, or 2) the solar system's trajectory is altered such that we end up in an area of the galaxy that's less hospitable to life. The first is certainly possible, though who knows what the odds are. As for the second, well, that's already a problem for our solar system, since we're destined to eventually collide with the wall of the local bubble.
So, let me get this straight. You're a software engineer (and supposedly a "good" one), and either 1) you use the term "object" in a way that's at odds with the rest of the software development community, or 2) you've never heard of ways to organize data that don't involve using objects. I'm not sure how you can believe you're a "good" software "engineer", given either of those options.
And to answer your question, one could easily write such an application using straight C and structures which contain the relevant data for each of the entities in the application, along with a library of functions to operate on these entities.
Yeah, except, for the most part, galactic "collisions" are nothing of the sort. The spaces between the stars are so vast, there is very little likelihood of stars colliding. The only real danger is from sudden new star formation triggered by gravitational tidal forces, resulting in a flux of radiation in those areas.
Oh please, that's just ridiculous PC bullshit. The very definition of "culture" is "the customary beliefs, social forms, and material traits of a racial, religious, or social group" (Merriam-Webster definition 5b). Are you telling me that discussing culture is, by definition, racism, because it attributes values, beliefs, and behaviours to large groups of people?
As for procedural programming... I'm not sure how it would be possible to write an interactive multi-player procedural program without using the concept of an object
While the article is pure nonsense, judging from the above comment, you don't seem to be much more educated on the topic. Unless you expand the term "object" to include C structs and basically any other form of data structure, the above statement is clearly flat out false. As an example, the Linux kernel doesn't use objects, in the traditional sense (constructs which combine state and actions, while allowing features such as encapsulation and polymorphism), and I don't think anyone would claim it's any less complex than "an interactive multi-player procedural program".
Have the cable company provision for 25Mb/10Mb service,
There is no way a cable company will provision 10Mb (or 25Mb) upstream. Frequency space is just too tight. Hell, many companies are deploying switched digital, which is nothing more than a hack IMHO, specifically because channels are so scarce, and it only gets worse in the face of HD.
In short, what you're asking simply isn't doable given current network infrastructure. Things may get a little easier following the digital switchover, as that will free up frequency space previously used up by analog channels, but given the plethora of specialty channels, not to mention services like VOD, cable (and DSL) operators simply aren't in the position to offer the kind of service you want.
What the actual frequency spectrum does has little bearing on what the modem caps are,
That's just naive. Frequency spectrum dictates the top-most bandwidth one can offer. IOW, if you want to offer 10Mb upstream, you must provision channels to support it. Period. And there's no way a cable operator will do that given the spectrum crunch they're in, now.
My cable company is already selling several different levels of service without any pain
That's completely different. Doing packet shaping at layer 3 in order to create different service tiers by capping bandwidth is completely different from allocating channels on a customer-by-customer basis, which is, as I've said, impossible. As such, it isn't possible, in cable land, anyway, to provide different customers with different upload/download speed ratios (10/1 for one, 1/10 for another). The best they can do is cap below the hard limits set by their channel allocations, but that doesn't fit what the OP requested.
So, I repeat, what the OP wants *can't be done*.
Of course Jesus existed. There is plenty of historical evidence which indicates that Jesus, the man, existed (only a small minority of historians dispute this). The rest, however, is just myth built up around the man.
Nothing stops the cable company from re-allocating the channels.
Sure. But they can't do that on a customer-by-customer basis, as you originally suggested. Those allocations are plant-wide. So they have to allocate their channels in a way that a) matches their own infrastructure needs, and b) matches what they think the customer wants. And let's face it, *most* customers want a big fat downstream pipe, and couldn't care less if upstream is limited, as long is it doesn't result in downstream throttling due to ACKs not getting through.
I read Mary was mistranslated from a "young lady" to a "virgin", and that is the source of that entire silliness.
I wouldn't be at all surprised. Either way, calling on parthogenesis as possible explanation, given the odds involved, is pretty ridiculous.
I'm sorry, I didn't realize I needed to provide citations when passing on information I've gleaned from elsewhere. At what point did Slashdot become Wikipedia?
To me, "Second World" means "communist or former communist."
Interestingly, Wikipedia agrees with you (for whatever that's worth). This I did not know. Apparently this is why "developed" and "developing" are preferred terms, these days.
Canadians laugh at our internet.
We do. We really really do.
Actually, it's also incredibly annoying. I work in a Canadian office, in concert with an office in Princeton, New Jersey. You know, famous University town, fairly close to New York City. And their broadband connection is *pitiful*. Makes any kind of remote work on their gear painful, to say the least, and it only gets worse when we need to transfer large amounts of data (such as ISOs) between the two offices.
Oh, and I believe upstream is also limited because of the transmit collision backoff algorithm they use (modified ALOHA or somesuch, I believe, though I could be mistaken).
Why are you assuming that upstream and downstream bandwidth are a) related, and b) a tradeoff between one another? AFAIK, in a cable plant, downstream bandwidth is relatively plentiful, while upstream bandwidth is a rather precious resource, because of the way the channels are allocated.
And somehow a single government controlled monopoly will be better than numerous independent monopolies?
:)
Yes. Because the mandate for a governmental body is to, above all else, benefit *the people*, as opposed to the pockets of the shareholders.
We have watched as the monopolies have leveraged their power, money and influence over plenty of other government entities (financially mostly) and what makes you think that they won't do the same thing here?
Uhh, that's what rules and the legal system exist to solve. If the wire-leasing entity is required, by law, to be neutral, and there's evidence of impropriety, then the victims sue. Problem = solved.
Of course, this is all based on the assumption that you have a fair, functioning democracy that would create such an entity and set up it's mandate appropriately. Unfortunately, institutionalized bribary (aka, lobbying) in the US system makes this all but impossible (see the US Copyright Board for an example).
Yes, I just contradicted myself in my own post.
Yup. The same is true of Siddhartha Gautama. Though, interestingly, there's far more historical evidence supporting his existence than there is of Jesus Christ.
some of these events have pretty freaky odds
Precisely. Which is why it makes *far* more sense to believe the obvious: Mary got pregnant out of wedlock, then came up with a clever little tale so she wouldn't be ostracized.
Honestly, why people turn to magic when simple human behaviour can explain such things, I'll never know.
I always found the mnemonics to be just as hard to remember as the original thing.
;)
Me too (I had to reverse-engineer sohcahtoa in order to post my original response), but for many, it's a vital component of their learning process. And my understanding is this book attempts to use multiple teaching methods, mnemonics being one, in order to make the book as useful and accessible as possible. That's nothing but a good thing, if you ask me.
I can tell you that the whole concept of girling* up a math book to get girls interested in math just seems so insulting and rediculous.
Too bad they didn't have a book to get you interested in spelling.
In all seriousness, though, girls and boys, thanks to socialization and genetics (you decide how much of each contributes) have different interests. Using those interests to encourage exploration of other areas, such as mathematics, is, IMHO, a perfectly valid method of teaching.
More ridiculous, to me, is assuming that there are absolutely no differences between boys and girls (heck, individuals), despite obvious scientific evidence to the contrary, and attempting to teach everyone using the exact same methods. That's just PC idealism taken too far.
It just sounds like a continuation of the problem in our society where girls just aren't thought of as smart, where boys are.
Yeah, because there's nothing out there that appeals to boys' baser instincts (can we say WWE? NASCAR? Sports in general?).
Honestly, I think you're just being far too sensitive, here. Would you object if a math book was created that made use of traditional "boy" interests?
It's called a mnemonic, most of them are seemingly retarded, but they are useful tools nonetheless. Or are you telling me sohcahtoa or roygbiv don't sound silly?
I was only stating that we are held more responsible than the terrorists are. The terrorists killed how many people on 9-11?
That's complete and utter BS. Immediately following 9/11, the entire world was behind the US. When operations began in Afghanistan, a place well known to harbour terrorists, the world was behind the US (pity the US couldn't return the favour, instead shifting focus and leaving countries like Canada to clean up their mess). It was only in the sudden, unfounded shift of focus to Iraq that the US lost all credibility and support of other nations, as they proceeded to browbeat the UN (and their own people) with false and inaccurate information in order to justify an invasion that was, at best, tangential to the original goal of fighting terrorism in the Middle East.
Besides, don't you think the US *should* be held to a higher standard? Or do you really believe the US shouldn't be expected to behave better than the terrorists they're purporting to fight?