What this also means is that the engine could, under the right conditions, accelerate your car straight up.
Yeah, actually, I'm aware of that, and it frightens the piss out of me. Hugh and I have been doing a little bit of planning for the angle at which the engine will have to be mounted in order to ensure that the exhaust will produce downward thrust enough (but not too much!) to maintain control. I think a little low-speed, high-thrust bursts trial-and-error will be the order of the day here. But I'm not really close to that point yet...
Obviously it will be very difficult to achieve those conditions- most likely your engine is rated for 2200 lbf thrust at 500 miles per hour at 10,000 feet. You'll probably get a lot less than that at sea level, at chevette-speed.
Being a helicopter-designed engine, the altitude ratings are significantly lower than that. They're trimmable, first off, so that they will produce maximum thrust in a lower altitude range... around 750-1500 feet. I'm already that high above sea level where I live. They also have huge (for the engine's overall size) compressor fans, owing to the hovering that helicopters tend to do. So yeah, they're both issues, but not really overly so - this engine is as well suited to automotive use as any aviation engine I've ever seen.
That must have been a hell of a ride in your friend's VW... too bad it didn't work out as well as was hoped.:)
Man, collecting TVs? What a dumbass hobby! Get a girlfriend or a pet or something.
Well, we could all aspire to a hobby as clearly interesting as yours: Anonymous Coward postings...
Actually, the technology behind TV sets and radios once moved almost as fast as the computer industry did. A radio from 1920 and a radio from 1940 are as radically different from each other as a Commodore PET is from my Pentium III.
And, of course, a TV set is just a radio with a few more tubes. And, like one is wont to say about a computer from twenty years ago compared to one now, man oh man, were they built to last. One of my favorites is a bakelite Admiral from 1959-1960. The chassis is entirely box-section copper, polished to a high gloss at the factory. They were artistic both inside and out.
Another old TV set that I have is a 1955 RCA color TV set. One of the *very* first color TV sets ever made, the picture tube is steel with a round glass face bonded to it. Very neat. Very bad picture, but that was the technology of the day.
There's nothing like watching I Love Lucy or The Honeymooners on a period TV set. Collecting antique radios is more popular, but I'm a more visual person, and so I like the old TV sets.
I'm not the only one, either: here in Toronto, Moses Znaimer who owns CityTV, MuchMusic, Bravo, etc... also has the MZTV museum - the Moses Znaimer TV collection. He's got some very beautiful old sets in the collection, many of which I've seen. The curator is Ian Baird, a descendant of John Logie Baird, the inventor of television. He happily took me around the museum's private areas to show me the collection's rarer pieces.
Definitely. Even scarier is there is a laptop case that can mount to the steering wheel and put the laptop in a useable position. *shudder* Sorry, don't remember who makes it.
Oh my God, you're *not* serious? I haven't ever heard of or seen those.
We should track down the inventor and crush his testicles in a garlic press, and then use genocide as a means of punishment against all those caught with such a device in their possession.
You mean I have to watch stupid people with 16 phones to their heads as they're driving down the highway?
No. But the same idiots who think they can safely drive while dialing a telephone in freeway traffic will be the same idiots who will be trying to type while they drive. Now, that's a scary thought, but entirely within the realm of realistic thinking.
I commute 3 hours every day, and I get to watch people doing crossword puzzles in the newspaper as they drive! (No kidding. I've seen that once.)
More commonly, I see people reading the paper or a magazine, or putting on lipstick (guys too!), or shaving, or combing their hair or... Not to mention the thousands of cars I see every day where the driver is on the phone. Every day, I see someone trying to write down a telephone number or something with one hand as they drive.
And ya know what? I drive a 1976 Dodge Ram. It's big, it's heavy, and it's entirely made of steel.
The 4,500lb mass of my vehicle wins over stupidity of the driver in the opposing vehicle. Every time.
Take that, ya silly little RAV-4. You, idiot in the CRX, I'm coming for you next...
I collect early TV sets, mostly from the 1950s. Every year, I host Academy Awards and Emmies parties at my house. A bunch of my friends come over, and we watch the show on a collection of about 12 1950s-1960s vintage TV sets.
Oh yeah, and in the middle of all of that is my Sony Trinitron.
Lemme tell you, twelve early TV sets, some with as many as 44 tubes, makes a hell of a lot of heat and uses a shitload of power. Extension cords, coaxial cable, RF distribution amplifiers and splitters, crank the air conditioner...
Sadly, I don't yet have a Philco Predicta, so it's not all it's cracked up to be. If ya got one, working or not, as long as it wasn't stored underwater or something, I'll buy it off ya.
Nah, forget the rocket-powered motorcycle. You're better off using a jet engine.
On the workbench in my garage at the moment is an old General Electric J-85 jet engine. It's about 19" long, 12" in diameter and weighs about 150 lbs. It's a very compact jet engine, used as a thruster on helicopters. I work for a *big* Pentagon contractor - you'd know who if I dropped the name - and I happened to be in the right place at the right time when it was declared to be no longer airworthy. (Though, while I haven't run it yet, I've seen it run, and I know it still works.)
Sitting beside it is my old 1980 Chevrolet Chevette, which is powered by a Buick 3.8L V6 that I stuffed in during an otherwise boring weekend.
Now, the Chevette is plenty fast enough with the Buick 3.8L V6; drag strip tests have showed the car turning a quarter mile in 12.8 seconds. In fact, the car now has serious structural problems owing to too much horsepower for the car's body to deal with. I'm addressing these with a full tubular frame.
Even so, the Chevette will only weigh 1,600 lbs. The GE J-85 is rated for a thrust of about 2,200 lbs.
Since the engine's thrust is greater than the weight of the car, it's likely that, under full power, the J-85 could accelerate the car with a force greater than 1G. (This is what a mechanical engineer friend of mine came up with when he did the numbers for me.) And that's *without* adding in the thrust of the 3.8L V6.
The beauty of a jet engine as opposed to a rocket is that you can turn it off or scale back the power. Once you've lit the rocket, it's going. And then you're dealing with another JATO-Impala Darwin Award...
When I've mounted this engine, you can rest assured that I will try it out very carefully. 10% power (~220lbs) is more than enough thrust to know that the jet engine is working. I have no need to try to see how fast I can make a Chevette travel; it's all about acceleration.
The goal is to turn my faithful old Chevette into the world's first street-driveable jet-powered car. With the Buick V6 running, the car will be a fast street-driveable car. And when I've driven the car up to the drag strip and there are no tinfoil Hondas with plastic bumpers behind me, I'll pull off the covers and fire up the jet engine.
I'm all for speed, excitement, and building novel things just for the sake of doing it, but I think a little care should be exercised in any such exploit.
'Cause, reading the article, the guy looks like he might actually get off the ground. (FAA may or may not be the only sticky point.)
I'll bet money that this will end badly for both him and his neighbors.
In fact, I'd go so far as to suggest that:
He gets off the ground.
Reading into the article, he's got very little, if any, navigation controls. He goes where he goes.
On launch, he's going to point away from the Pacific, so that he doesn't land in the middle of the ocean. (Without support choppers and stuff like Apollo and other early space travel had, that's certain death.)
At the calculated speeds, wind shear and other things on launch and descent will be more and more critical variables, and far less predictable.
He could end up coming down at a high rate of speed into a Kansas dooryard...
Therefore, I'd advise the use of cellars and tornado shelters on launch day.
And yeah, may as well pre-engrave his name into the Darwin Award trophy. It's a safe bet that the engraving won't be going to waste.
Well, after the Survivor protests, I think it's our duty to grill a few rats on the barbeque.
If they're pet store rats, I'll try one. I'm game. Who will join me in protest of PETA's idiocy and PETA vs peta.org?
I once ate at a *very* traditional Chinese restaurant with some Chinese friends of mine. We had soup. It was really weird, it tasted like chicken soup, but a little "wild". There were chewy things in it that looked like leavy veggies, but they were chewy and flavorful (unlike leafy veggies). Turned out it was garter snake, a delicacy in some parts of China. When I found out what it was, my friends were expecting me to be grossed out: instead, I had another bowl.
We could put out a press statement, mentioning that it was PETA's crushing blow against Free Speech that inspired us to gather annually, kill a lot of animals, and eat them.
I'm there! If we do it during deer-hunting season, I'll bring down a pickup truck full of fresh venison and a few two-fours of "Maudite" or "La Fin Du Monde" beer.
(Sidenote: Check out Unibroue's website, in French or English, to find out about *real* Canadian beers, not the Molson and Labatt crap.)
I swear I heard on Howard Stern's show whilst I was driving to work, that they had ?sued? CBS for the fact that someone on Survivor ate a rat.
The soundbite from these idiots was "Rats have rights, too!" being chanted somewhere. God forbid I should happen to deny rats their rights as I send my cat after them. Maybe they'll sue me or my cat for killing a rat?
Good, red-blooded carnivorous computer geeks have to make a stand!
What, in the name of creation, do we have sharp teeth if not to eat anything that moves? Top o' the food chain, bay-bee!
[Mmmmm... BigBlockMopar imagines seeing Peta members roasting on a spit...]
I don't know if the rest of you guys want to do this, but I am *so* seriously there.
To be fair to the Intel engineers, when the 80286 was being designed, real-mode was supposed to be a bootstrap into protected mode. The idea was that once you were in protected mode, you would stay there. The problem was that these decisions were being made years before the 80286 went into production, before there was a huge base of real-mode software (8086 assembler) that couldn't be easily modified to run in protected mode.
Which only helps to serve my side of the discussion: it's an old architecture. Its continuing development is forced to take constant detours to ensure that people can still use WordPerfect 5.1 and Professional File.
I would like to point out that all of the current automotive engineering strategies were designed within the first 20 (or so) years of production (with the exception of the wankel, emission controls, computers and abs all the rest is but refinement of obviously antique technology)
Yah, no, that wasn't the way I meant it. I was thinking of an old worn-out 1977 Celica chugging down the road as a metaphor for an aging platform, with a particular view to the ALU and other parts of the processor and underlying microengine infrastructure that are forced to maintain compatibility with not just legacy apps, but *way* legacy apps.
I would like to point out that all of the current automotive engineering strategies were designed within the first 20 (or so) years of production (with the exception of the wankel, emission controls, computers and abs all the rest is but refinement of obviously antique technology)
Oh yeah, absolutely. After Daimler and Benz were able to figure out the first two-wheel steering system (and cars ceased to be three-wheeled), the progress was staggering, but many of these refinements were limited for the first few decades of the automobile by limited machining ability (cost), metals quality, etc.
When I look at an old Bugatti and see an overhead cam, supercharged, mechanical fuel injection engine that was built in the 1920s, I can't help but be impressed. On the other hand, these really weren't workable for more affordable cars until fairly recently. Much the same way hard disk drives didn't hit personal computers until the mid-1980s, though they were a 1950s invention.
As a symbol of the antiquity of the rest of the vehicle, despite the OHC/FI/supercharged engine, the technology hadn't progressed to the point where a modern, workable, x-shaped universal joint was possible. The universal joint underneath this Bugatti is what is referred to as a "rag joint" - a sheet of rubber-impregnated cotton is bolted to two plates. One spins on the transmission's output shaft, the other one carries the force to the wheels. As the differential/back axle rides up and down in the suspension's range of travel, the rag joint deflects just like a modern roller-bearing U-joint. But the size, weight, inefficiency and failure-prone nature of the rag joint is just astounding in comparison.
To use your interpretation of my automotive analogy: much the same way as putting a new Mopar Performance 528CID crate Hemi into a 1920s Bugatti would be a bad idea (without getting into destroying the originality of the car, you'd simply tear every last piece of the drivetrain apart the second you took your foot off the clutch and the leather-faced friction surfaces hit the flywheel), my thesis continues that it's probably an equally counter-productive thing to try to constantly add things to an aging architecture. Protected mode (286/fixed by 386), coprocessors, dual instruction pipelines (Pentium 60 and up), MMX (Pentium 166MMX and up with desktops), etc.
If you want a Hemi-powered Bugatti, by the time you've got enough experience and money to have your hands on either a Hemi or a Bugatti, you'll probably know that it would be a better idea to build a new car from scratch that simply *looks* like a Bugatti, without actually trying to put a Hemi into a Bugatti.
I like the Transmeta, for example, because it "looks" to an operating system or application like it's an x86 processor. But, of course, it's not. And, while I don't know how many hardware sacrifices were made to make it look as much like an x86 as possible, given the software translation scheme, I'm sure they've got a lot less sacrifices to the history of the x86 line than a PIII or Athlon.
Getting away from cumbersome, seldom-used and antiquated overhead will simply improve performance and provide a good platform from which to develop further.
Yup, that's right. A microwave oven is, depending on manufacturing tolerances, usually designed to be a big (500W+) radio transmitter running at 2.450GHz.
Now, all the energy coming from the magnetron's antenna *should* be staying in the cavity, but especially near the door seals and the diffraction gratings (ie. the "grille" on the window), you're probably going to be getting some noise radiated.
Since a microwave oven uses RF power to produce heat, it doesn't need to modulate a carrier. Nor does it need to be too precise, and, frankly, they aren't.
Now, your home networking equipment, cordless phones and stuff run in a band that is *unlicensed* for a reason: a 500 watt microwave oven, releasing anywhere under 5mW per cm^2 (the accepted safe limit) of energy, can still be releasing 5-10 watts of RF power over the total area of the cavity.
This will drown out other radio signals in the band, and is therefore the reason *why* this band is left as a "general purpose", unlicensed band. You can't force someone to get a radio transmitter license for the microwave oven they bought in 1978.
Your wireless ethernet setup probably puts out somewhere in the range of 50-100mW of transmitter power per node. That will be drowned out by the RF hash coming off a microwave about as effectively as a flutist in the audience of an AC/DC concert.
The good thing is, though, signals in this frequency range are very directional, and in many ways behave like light. They pass through things that light won't pass through, but, on the other hand, they travel in straight lines and are easily reflected. And if you're in a concrete or steel building - like any apartment or something like that - the RF from either the microwave ovens or the wireless LAN - will not propagate very well.
Microwave frequencies are basically unsuitable for anything but cooking appliances and line-of-sight applications (microwave TV and data relays, radar, satellite up/down links, etc.). It's only because the spectrum is so nearly saturated that you'd want to use them. But there will always be drawbacks as we enter the higher frequencies. Don't expect much, it's not possible.
and a bunch of other technology that keeps the 20+ year old architecture alive and kicking
Yeah. This is akin to a beaten-up, smoke-belching old piece of crap whizzing down the freeway at a stunning 40MPH.
But, you know, if you add fuzzy dice, UFO lights and a big stereo, the owner will think that you won't notice that the thing is a worn-out piece of crap.
The introduction of protected mode, while a vast improvement over the previous situation, basically underscores the tacked-on cludged-up nature of everything since. The 286 was the first protected mode Intel processor. And it could switch into protected mode, but required a reset for switching back to real mode. This is like having a really nice new Alpine CD player where you have to coax the CD back out with a bread knife.
The x86 architecture hearkens back to 1971, when Intel unleished the 4004, which was a 4 bit hand calculator processor. The 4004 begat the 8008, which begat the 8080, and from whence sprang the 8088, 8086, and then finally the 80186 and up. This processor family shares many things in common, including a similar basic architecture that makes the chip better suited for ASCII (text) data than it is for binary data.
That makes the x86 family *almost* 30 years old. Now, if we compare the advances in computers in the past thirty years to the time it took to make a similar paradigm shift in architecture, you'd see that we've got the World Trade Center and Sears Tower now, but just 30 years ago we were living in straw huts.
In maintaining the same basic architectural features of the 4004 all this time, it's basically akin to trying to build the Empire State Building with sticks and mud. Welcome to the computer industry, 2000.
Sure, a lot of great stuff has been done in and around this processor. But we're really stuck with it only because in 1981 when IBM brought out the PC, they wanted to be anything but radical. From an engineering standpoint, especially with a vision to the future, we would now have machines literally twice as fast per CPU cycle if they'd chosen the then-new Motorola 68000. Every PC/XT would have had the power of cooperative multitasking and a processor that was designed as an industrial controller and so relished the real-time multimedia apps we love today. The development process would have taken us through the 68010, '020-'040, and finally up into the PowerPC variants. Not to embrace Macintosh too much - I love their Motorola CPUs, but I don't use one too often - Windows 95 = Macintosh 84. That's a processor issue too, not just an eccentric genius designing the software.
Who'd have thought, 20 years later, that the lowly and conservative platform they released would be the foundation for today's computers?
Ya know, I don't know what it is, but humans have such a revulsion to these things, and yet they're really rather neat.
There are three things in this world that will survive a nuclear war: McDonald's uniforms, Dodge Darts, and cockroaches. Which means the first post-apocalyptic morning commute is going to be really ugly.
Aside from destroying the electronics in countless microwave ovens, roaches are really not all that bad. I don't have them in my house, but I certainly prefer cockroaches to mosquitos, black flies, deer flies, horse flies, wasps and centipedes. Actually, the one creepy-crawly I have in my house is spiders. Lots of them. And they have a great time when I leave the windows open and the lights on at night.
Between them and my small collection of carnivorous plants on the windowsill, I do my part for the environment by keeping down the insect population.
<paranoid_wink>The insects are out to get us, you know.</paranoid_wink>
Around here, there's a great place if you're into revenge for any reason. A friend of mine was keeping some South American roaches as pets in a large terrarium. These things were in the 2" long range. Needless to say, I asked him where he got them.
Turns out there's a small company downtown that sells specialty insects for the film and television business. They've got these roaches, and they're just beautiful.
Not only are they massive, but they fly and they spit. Their size alone is enough to cause shrieks of disgust. That turns into fear when the cockroach lifts off the ground (sounds like a hummingbird). Generally, an individual confronted with such a roach is well involved in the second part of the basic fight-or-flight response before the roach gets a chance to spray the individual with foamy goo.
Just stick a broomhandle through someone's dryer vent to dislodge the hose, and on a nice, cool morning, ya put the roaches near the vent and SHOOM! They're gone, in there, ready to enforce vigilante justice and wreak havoc for you.
I can't imagine the sound of trying to crush a 2" long exoskeleton under your shoe. It's probably quite disturbing.
I remember my lecturer in GUI-design saying that because of this Eudora was a prime example of software with a "disturbing GUI". Moron.
Well, a not-for-the-beginner GUI, anyway.:) He was a moron. I'd have cited Microsoft Office 97 as prime contender in that category. Clippit makes me angry, and reminds a British co-worker of London in the late 1960s. Paper the Cat and Sniffs the Wonder Dog just make me want to go postal. Not to mention all the "auto-type" and "auto-complete" features...
My personal favourite were the "..that damn tcp/ip driver is acting up again" and the "you might as well stop typing as no-one is listening at the moment":-)
I don't think I've ever seen those. I can't say that I've used a large number of Eudora versions; mostly I installed it, and have left it there since. Of course, on my many subsequent hard disk reformats since (damn Windows - yeah, I'm a Linux newbie, still using a Windows box while I get familiar), I've always installed Eudora from the same installer program. Never really felt a need to upgrade it.
Of course, there was another really nasty error message that Eudora gave me once. I can't even remember what the fault was, but I do remember that it basically called me an idiot. I was so floored by it (and overtired at the time) that it went right in and right back out...:) In retrospect, I think I'd have saved a screen shot of it.
How about the "Blah Blah Blah" button that lets you view message headers? Or the little tow truck for dragging a maximized message into a different folder? The Kerberos dog(s) in the setup menu? Pretty intuitive and easy, in my opinion. Especially if you remember your Greek mythology.
Agreed. This isn't an easter egg either, it just happens in the software.
Eudora 4.x for Winblows is full of snotty remarks in various places. There are several messages, but my favorite - the one that happens when your ISP drops carrier as you're transferring your mail - is as follows:
Eudora is tired of waiting for the system to respond.
I love software with personality.
Pinball machines are definately digital.
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Yes, it's a breakdown-prone analogue device.
I'd argue that it's a digital device. I have several of them in my house, and I've had to fix stuck relays a few times. (Breakdown-prone, I'll readily agree to, but probably not as bad as most/.'ers would think.)
Relays are either on or off. Pinball machines are primarily big piles of relays. (Old or new, don't care; solid state logic is just a more modern equivalent.) The flapper is either on or off. The ball is either hitting the bumper (magic mushroom), or it isn't. And the bumper is either on or off.
The cool part is that I've got a 1971 Williams "Fantastic" machine - note that this isn't a "Captain Fantastic" machine. The really fun part of this machine is that it has a CPU clock (a motor spinning a cam to create a pulse train at, like, 10Hz) and has a big pile of relays which together make a shift register (simple form of memory). It's a really cool 4-player game that remembers the state of the playfield for all contestants, and resets it to that point when the player's turn is next up.
BTW, it's for sale, needs some work, best offer, FOB Toronto, but will deliver free-of-charge (on my schedule) to anywhere from Windsor to Ottawa. If you can't decipher my e-mail address to reply, you're not smart enough to own it.
Want to buy a 1971 Williams "Fantastic" machine?
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Nope, it's not "Captain Fantastic", it's just "Fantastic". Backglass peeling a bit but still presentable. Play surface will need a re-paint.
Electronics complete and in good condition, but there's a relay sticking somewhere that causes it to blow its internal fuses.
Easily repairable, nice restoration project, circa 1971. Playfield, backglass, lights and sound effects were obviously inspired by the myriad of psychedelic compounds the designers were consuming, making this a very neat machine.
Piss off your father by bringing home the pinball machine that kicked his ass back in college.
At the very least, it's loud enough to be the second best way (after a red bandanna, some Zippo fluid, a Stratocaster and a Marshall stack) to deal the neighbor who plays rap "music" all night. Yo. yo. yo-yo. Walk the dog?
Best offer - FOB Toronto, Canada. Have truck, can deliver from Windsor to Ottawa.
Good points although the major Linux distributions (Corel, Caldera & Redhat) have become nobrainers to install for semi-intelligent novices.
I picked up my Red Hat 6.0 distribution enclosed with a magazine. It was current in November or so. Now, I realize, we're up to 6.2 or 6.3 (can't remember which, and it's late, I had a long day, and I have to pull the motor out of a Volvo tomorrow, so forgive me for not double-checking Red Hat's website).
My skepticism remains. My install should have been a no-brainer. And, if I had known Linux very well, I'm sure it would have been quite easy. But I don't know it well enough to know how to partition the drive for a good install. And, even more irritatingly, no one can give clear and concise answers over how to properly do it. Asking someone on usenet will start a great flame-war. Not working to resolve this simple question of partitioning for a very basic install is a symptom of a lack of agreement and consistency over what makes a stable and secure system for a new user to learn about. And this serves as a roadblock to the usurpment of Windows.
I didn't (at the time) know about the LILO problem with some BIOSes and larger hard drives. The installation of PCMCIA support after I specifically told it not to during the installation process was thoroughly frustrating, since it meant that I could only start the system up in single user mode. Which I could only do after booting from the rescue disk because of the LILO problem.
Then, the distro didn't include the dhcpcd demon I needed to get a very basic networking feature running. (Yes, my Windows 95 firewall/gateway is also my home LAN's DHCP server.) That's another roadblock to someone who's installing on their main system and can now no longer access the Internet to download the client. I'd be digging out my Windows registration number again at that point. And it poses questions as to how well Linux is equipped to be the out-of-the-box networking solution that it claims to be.
As I indicated, no intelligent prospective user of a new operating system is going to install first on his current system if he's got a replacement around. Stevie Wonder could see that. I'm not advocating that Linux should pander to the lowest common denominator, but I can't believe that I would be the first or only prospective new user to attempt a workstation install of RH6.0 on a 486DX2-66.
I did notice something, however. It takes Gnome over half an hour to boot up on that system. So much for the commonly-broadcast myth that Linux/X is less resource-intensive than Windows 9x.
I'm still working to learn Linux, because I like a challenge and because I believe in it. I'm still running Red Hat 6.0, but I have experimented with the UMSDOS ZipSlack distribution, and found it to be far easier to get it happily running. In fairness to Red Hat, it's significantly less sophisticated.
But I rest my case: either start compiling, or stop bemoaning the compromised Internet security that millions of Windows boxes collectively represent. Be assured, after I'm familiar with my newly adopted OS, I'll be pulling my weight.
As a security consultant for small and medium sized business, I'd like to personally thank you for putting food in my family's mouth and gas in the mercedes.
Okay. In reply to this and the earlier posting threatening to come after me with a hockey stick (re. NetBIOS comes back on with no provocation), I certainly agree with you all that Windows is a security problem, which is a big part of why I'm working my ass off to become familiar with Linux.
I don't expect Linux to be easy to learn; but I do have enough cross-platform experience to feel that at least installing it should be easier than it is.
There's no shortage of people who hate Microsoft and distrust their products. But there is a shortage of useable alternatives.
It doesn't matter that the world's greatest webserver is available for Linux if an average user can't get through the installation. Shit, an average user is very unlikely to even try to install Apache.
And let's face facts: high speed internet access appeals to us because we like computers, we play with them for fun, we administer networks at the office, we're in it because we like it. But most people just see it as a means to an end: they want the computer to hit ebay, to check out their e*trade portfolio.
These users want applications with which they're familiar, running on an operating system that is stable and easy to install.
Well, Windows isn't stable; just about anything beats it. Certainly the OS stability achieved through open-source development is incredibly impressive.
That's the difficult part, and it's done. So, why not be a part of the solution and work instead at improving the installation sequence and building more apps to ensure a bigger user base?
I hate to think this: I chose Red Hat 6.0 because it is, in my understanding, the best distribution for a new user. I researched it before I picked it up. It's got the best support, the best documentation, the best installer. And, while I lack the Linux/Unix skills that a lot of fellow Slashdotters have, I am a veteran assembly language programmer. That alone should be a testament to my comfort level with computers.
Installation should have been a breeze for me. For anyone who expects things to work out of the box, it would simply have been impossible.
If I only owned one machine, I would have formatted the drive, attempted to install Linux, then sworn off it with the hell I went through. While I like playing with computers, I also need them as tools, and if I didn't have the luxury of a spare (old) system, I would have been screwed. Sure, I could have repartitioned the drive and kept Windows up, but the LILO partition size bug would have still stopped me in my tracks. Expecting that new Linux users are going to try it out on old computers before migrating their main systems over, the support for older systems should be phenomenal. But it isn't.
The problem is that, because it's open source and written on a voluntary basis and peer-reviewed, it's easy for those programming to forget how difficult installation can be. One doesn't code for a sophisticated operating system without having a detailed knowledge of that operating system, and the focus is therefore distracted from what should be of prime interest to all involved: getting this thing to be more of an accepted replacement for Windows.
For all the bad things you can say about Microsoft, at least they actually get users (not programmers) to test the installation processes that their customers will have to endure after they stick that CD in the drive. Stick a Red Hat CD into an average user's hands, and watch what he goes through installing it. Take notes. Then start looking for solutions. Because you're not going to get alternatives to Windows out there unless they're installable.
So, instead of bitching about it, fix it. Take proactive steps to reduce the numbers of high-speed Internet users who are, out of necessity, continuing to run an operating system that puts the entire Internet at risk.
Or, sit back, do nothing, but don't blame me when it takes six months of diverting time away from my busy schedule to play with Linux before I can actually get the system to do something useful for me. And, be grateful that I'm trying to be a part of the solution.
Running windows on any machine connected to the internet is equally stupid.
I agree.
And yet, oddly enough, my Linux box is on my home LAN, working as a client. My Proxy and Firewall, ironically, is running probably the second most insecure operating system on the planet: Windows 95.
Now, I'm no dummy. File and print sharing was turned off. There's nothing of value on the hard drives of this server, either. All the latest service patches and things are installed. Going to http://grc.com doesn't show up any big holes on my system.
But I want to run Linux as a proxy/firewall. Why? Well, because I like the security, I like the power, and I want the experience. And I'm working towards it.
Why am I not running it?
Well, I got a copy of Red Hat 6.0, and installed it onto that server. It's a 486DX2-66 with 24 megs of RAM, 600 megs hard disk space, an NEC Multisync 3 monochrome VGA monitor and a Vesa bus.
First, the installer started up, and tried to detect the mono monitor for me. All my text became the same color as the background, and I couldn't read a damned thing. So I had to upset my main system and drag my color monitor off it. Installation was able to continue.
I was asked how I wanted to set up my hard disk. I attempted to just click "okay" and be able to install default settings, but it didn't like it. Clicking on the help button told me how to install partitions, but didn't tell me the syntax for making a root partition, or how big they should be, or anything. Finally, just by playing around, I was able to get Disk Druid happy with my partitions.
Then, I was asked if I wanted to install PCMCIA services. Well, this thing has Vesa architecture, therefore it's a desktop, therefore it probably doesn't have PCMCIA slots. I chose not to install PCMCIA services.
So, it copied for a while, and got everything installed. I rebooted the computer at the end.
"LI". Stall. LILO had died. I stuck my rescue disk into the drive, restarted the computer, and was able to get running again. I later found out that LILO had died because any boot partition bigger than 1024 cylinders, with some system BIOS, makes LILO unhappy. Even if the bug wasn't fixed, it would have been nice if Disk Druid (the "easy"-to-use alternative to fdisk) had warned of this possibility.
So, I booted the system on floppy. The root filesystem was mounted onto my hard disk, and everything continued from there.
Oops. What's this? We're stalling on starting PCMCIA. But I told it not to install PCMCIA support.
In frustration at an install process even more buggy, inconsistant and difficult to use than even the worst Microsoft product, I shelved the Linux machine for a while. I'm back at it now, but even as an advanced user with some UNIX experience, and lots of Unix-like AmigaDOS experience, I really have not enjoyed my Linux experience yet. I keep plugging away because I want to like it, and I will like it, and I will become good at it.
But, before you bash Windows users for the irresponsible act of hooking a Windows machine up to the Internet, consider that the Linux alternative is only there for the most advanced and dedicated users.
About 70% of the time, a new computer user could install Windows 95 successfully, just following through the defaults and reading the prompts. The other 30% of the time some hardware would be detected wrong and the system wouldn't work.
I consider myself to be an advanced user. I've been on the Internet since 1988. I got my first computer when I was nine years old, so I've accumulated 17 years of computer experience now, on a large variety of platforms and operating systems. I can think inside and outside the box. And I'll maintain that Red Hat 6.0 was the single most difficult piece of software I've ever installed on any computer system.
I don't like Windows any more than you do. I'm pulling myself away from it more by the day. And I'm lucky, because it's within my skillset to get Linux running.
So, perhaps this is the issue that needs to be addressed, not just another rant about how evil Windows users are. Instead, can you not sit down and help re-write the installation routines?
You can bet money that as soon as I'm familiar enough with Linux, my first order of business will be to try to make the installer a little bit more useful.
I saw a neat firewall made by ZoneLabs that does application control (pops up a dialog when a program attempts to connect to the Internet), but that is much more user intrusive.
Yeah. Okay. Don't flame me, I'm still a Linux newbie, but I'm working hard to learn it.
While I'm learning, my proxy server and firewall to the Internet - for all my home LAN, including my Linux box - is a Windows 95 machine. And I'm running ZoneLabs ZoneAlarm for protection.
I'm not sure what I think of it. I like the idea of allowing or disallowing communications by application, not by service or port. And it's really not that intrusive, since once you've told it that Eudora can use the Internet, it can save that information and always allow Eudora unrestricted access.
It's nice, too: WinVN is my text-based newsreader, and AS-A1 is my binary newsrover. Since they both connect thru port 119, most firewalls wouldn't know the difference. But ZoneAlarm knows them apart.
But, because you can't configure the ports allowed by certain apps, it's impossible to know for sure what ports your applications are using; a dishonest application or a hacked one could easily ooze information past the firewall.
So, I guess it's a pretty easy drop-in better-than-nothing security solution for cable/DSL home users. But I want to actually be able to set it up on a port level.
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Yeah, actually, I'm aware of that, and it frightens the piss out of me. Hugh and I have been doing a little bit of planning for the angle at which the engine will have to be mounted in order to ensure that the exhaust will produce downward thrust enough (but not too much!) to maintain control. I think a little low-speed, high-thrust bursts trial-and-error will be the order of the day here. But I'm not really close to that point yet...
Obviously it will be very difficult to achieve those conditions- most likely your engine is rated for 2200 lbf thrust at 500 miles per hour at 10,000 feet. You'll probably get a lot less than that at sea level, at chevette-speed.Being a helicopter-designed engine, the altitude ratings are significantly lower than that. They're trimmable, first off, so that they will produce maximum thrust in a lower altitude range... around 750-1500 feet. I'm already that high above sea level where I live. They also have huge (for the engine's overall size) compressor fans, owing to the hovering that helicopters tend to do. So yeah, they're both issues, but not really overly so - this engine is as well suited to automotive use as any aviation engine I've ever seen.
That must have been a hell of a ride in your friend's VW... too bad it didn't work out as well as was hoped. :)
Well, we could all aspire to a hobby as clearly interesting as yours: Anonymous Coward postings...
Actually, the technology behind TV sets and radios once moved almost as fast as the computer industry did. A radio from 1920 and a radio from 1940 are as radically different from each other as a Commodore PET is from my Pentium III.
And, of course, a TV set is just a radio with a few more tubes. And, like one is wont to say about a computer from twenty years ago compared to one now, man oh man, were they built to last. One of my favorites is a bakelite Admiral from 1959-1960. The chassis is entirely box-section copper, polished to a high gloss at the factory. They were artistic both inside and out.
Another old TV set that I have is a 1955 RCA color TV set. One of the *very* first color TV sets ever made, the picture tube is steel with a round glass face bonded to it. Very neat. Very bad picture, but that was the technology of the day.
There's nothing like watching I Love Lucy or The Honeymooners on a period TV set. Collecting antique radios is more popular, but I'm a more visual person, and so I like the old TV sets.
I'm not the only one, either: here in Toronto, Moses Znaimer who owns CityTV, MuchMusic, Bravo, etc... also has the MZTV museum - the Moses Znaimer TV collection. He's got some very beautiful old sets in the collection, many of which I've seen. The curator is Ian Baird, a descendant of John Logie Baird, the inventor of television. He happily took me around the museum's private areas to show me the collection's rarer pieces.
Check out MZTV's website for more info!
Sorry, don't remember who makes it.
Oh my God, you're *not* serious? I haven't ever heard of or seen those.
We should track down the inventor and crush his testicles in a garlic press, and then use genocide as a means of punishment against all those caught with such a device in their possession.
No. But the same idiots who think they can safely drive while dialing a telephone in freeway traffic will be the same idiots who will be trying to type while they drive. Now, that's a scary thought, but entirely within the realm of realistic thinking.
I commute 3 hours every day, and I get to watch people doing crossword puzzles in the newspaper as they drive! (No kidding. I've seen that once.)
More commonly, I see people reading the paper or a magazine, or putting on lipstick (guys too!), or shaving, or combing their hair or... Not to mention the thousands of cars I see every day where the driver is on the phone. Every day, I see someone trying to write down a telephone number or something with one hand as they drive.
And ya know what? I drive a 1976 Dodge Ram. It's big, it's heavy, and it's entirely made of steel.
The 4,500lb mass of my vehicle wins over stupidity of the driver in the opposing vehicle. Every time.
Take that, ya silly little RAV-4. You, idiot in the CRX, I'm coming for you next...
What'll be next, a Beowulf cluster of TVs?
Too late. I've already done it.
I collect early TV sets, mostly from the 1950s. Every year, I host Academy Awards and Emmies parties at my house. A bunch of my friends come over, and we watch the show on a collection of about 12 1950s-1960s vintage TV sets.
Oh yeah, and in the middle of all of that is my Sony Trinitron.
Lemme tell you, twelve early TV sets, some with as many as 44 tubes, makes a hell of a lot of heat and uses a shitload of power. Extension cords, coaxial cable, RF distribution amplifiers and splitters, crank the air conditioner...
Sadly, I don't yet have a Philco Predicta, so it's not all it's cracked up to be. If ya got one, working or not, as long as it wasn't stored underwater or something, I'll buy it off ya.
Nah, forget the rocket-powered motorcycle. You're better off using a jet engine.
On the workbench in my garage at the moment is an old General Electric J-85 jet engine. It's about 19" long, 12" in diameter and weighs about 150 lbs. It's a very compact jet engine, used as a thruster on helicopters. I work for a *big* Pentagon contractor - you'd know who if I dropped the name - and I happened to be in the right place at the right time when it was declared to be no longer airworthy. (Though, while I haven't run it yet, I've seen it run, and I know it still works.)
Sitting beside it is my old 1980 Chevrolet Chevette, which is powered by a Buick 3.8L V6 that I stuffed in during an otherwise boring weekend.
Now, the Chevette is plenty fast enough with the Buick 3.8L V6; drag strip tests have showed the car turning a quarter mile in 12.8 seconds. In fact, the car now has serious structural problems owing to too much horsepower for the car's body to deal with. I'm addressing these with a full tubular frame.
Even so, the Chevette will only weigh 1,600 lbs. The GE J-85 is rated for a thrust of about 2,200 lbs.
Since the engine's thrust is greater than the weight of the car, it's likely that, under full power, the J-85 could accelerate the car with a force greater than 1G. (This is what a mechanical engineer friend of mine came up with when he did the numbers for me.) And that's *without* adding in the thrust of the 3.8L V6.
The beauty of a jet engine as opposed to a rocket is that you can turn it off or scale back the power. Once you've lit the rocket, it's going. And then you're dealing with another JATO-Impala Darwin Award...
When I've mounted this engine, you can rest assured that I will try it out very carefully. 10% power (~220lbs) is more than enough thrust to know that the jet engine is working. I have no need to try to see how fast I can make a Chevette travel; it's all about acceleration.
The goal is to turn my faithful old Chevette into the world's first street-driveable jet-powered car. With the Buick V6 running, the car will be a fast street-driveable car. And when I've driven the car up to the drag strip and there are no tinfoil Hondas with plastic bumpers behind me, I'll pull off the covers and fire up the jet engine.
I'm all for speed, excitement, and building novel things just for the sake of doing it, but I think a little care should be exercised in any such exploit.
Subj: Tornado Shelter on Launch Day
'Cause, reading the article, the guy looks like he might actually get off the ground. (FAA may or may not be the only sticky point.)
I'll bet money that this will end badly for both him and his neighbors.
In fact, I'd go so far as to suggest that:
He gets off the ground.
Reading into the article, he's got very little, if any, navigation controls. He goes where he goes.
On launch, he's going to point away from the Pacific, so that he doesn't land in the middle of the ocean. (Without support choppers and stuff like Apollo and other early space travel had, that's certain death.)
At the calculated speeds, wind shear and other things on launch and descent will be more and more critical variables, and far less predictable.
He could end up coming down at a high rate of speed into a Kansas dooryard...
Therefore, I'd advise the use of cellars and tornado shelters on launch day.
And yeah, may as well pre-engrave his name into the Darwin Award trophy. It's a safe bet that the engraving won't be going to waste.
Ed McMahon: "OPEC and the RIAA."
Johnny Carson: (dressed as Carnac the Impossible, holding envelope to forehead) "OPEC and the RIAA."
Ed: "OPEC and the RIAA."
Johnny: (conjuring motions with one hand, frantically rubbing envelope on forehead with other) "OPEC and the RIAA."
Ed: (pensive) "Hmmm..."
Johnny: (sudden understanding) "What are two things that need to be nuked into oblivion?"
Ed: (jubilant) "YES!"
Careful, now. I've never kicked a kiloton of combined mucus and lard, but I'm sure that it would be a good way to get your shoe stuck.
Well, after the Survivor protests, I think it's our duty to grill a few rats on the barbeque.
If they're pet store rats, I'll try one. I'm game. Who will join me in protest of PETA's idiocy and PETA vs peta.org?
I once ate at a *very* traditional Chinese restaurant with some Chinese friends of mine. We had soup. It was really weird, it tasted like chicken soup, but a little "wild". There were chewy things in it that looked like leavy veggies, but they were chewy and flavorful (unlike leafy veggies). Turned out it was garter snake, a delicacy in some parts of China. When I found out what it was, my friends were expecting me to be grossed out: instead, I had another bowl.
I'm not into eating insects, though.
I'm in Toronto, Canada, but I'm willing to help out in any way possible.
I'm good at pitching stories to TV news producers, so once it's arranged, I can certainly help out by creating press releases and stuff for the media.
My e-mail address is above; if there's a mailing list, please add me to it.
I'm there! If we do it during deer-hunting season, I'll bring down a pickup truck full of fresh venison and a few two-fours of "Maudite" or "La Fin Du Monde" beer.
(Sidenote: Check out Unibroue's website, in French or English, to find out about *real* Canadian beers, not the Molson and Labatt crap.)
I swear I heard on Howard Stern's show whilst I was driving to work, that they had ?sued? CBS for the fact that someone on Survivor ate a rat.
The soundbite from these idiots was "Rats have rights, too!" being chanted somewhere. God forbid I should happen to deny rats their rights as I send my cat after them. Maybe they'll sue me or my cat for killing a rat?
Good, red-blooded carnivorous computer geeks have to make a stand!
What, in the name of creation, do we have sharp teeth if not to eat anything that moves? Top o' the food chain, bay-bee!
[Mmmmm... BigBlockMopar imagines seeing Peta members roasting on a spit...]
I don't know if the rest of you guys want to do this, but I am *so* seriously there.
Which only helps to serve my side of the discussion: it's an old architecture. Its continuing development is forced to take constant detours to ensure that people can still use WordPerfect 5.1 and Professional File.
Yah, no, that wasn't the way I meant it. I was thinking of an old worn-out 1977 Celica chugging down the road as a metaphor for an aging platform, with a particular view to the ALU and other parts of the processor and underlying microengine infrastructure that are forced to maintain compatibility with not just legacy apps, but *way* legacy apps.
I would like to point out that all of the current automotive engineering strategies were designed within the first 20 (or so) years of production (with the exception of the wankel, emission controls, computers and abs all the rest is but refinement of obviously antique technology)Oh yeah, absolutely. After Daimler and Benz were able to figure out the first two-wheel steering system (and cars ceased to be three-wheeled), the progress was staggering, but many of these refinements were limited for the first few decades of the automobile by limited machining ability (cost), metals quality, etc.
When I look at an old Bugatti and see an overhead cam, supercharged, mechanical fuel injection engine that was built in the 1920s, I can't help but be impressed. On the other hand, these really weren't workable for more affordable cars until fairly recently. Much the same way hard disk drives didn't hit personal computers until the mid-1980s, though they were a 1950s invention.
As a symbol of the antiquity of the rest of the vehicle, despite the OHC/FI/supercharged engine, the technology hadn't progressed to the point where a modern, workable, x-shaped universal joint was possible. The universal joint underneath this Bugatti is what is referred to as a "rag joint" - a sheet of rubber-impregnated cotton is bolted to two plates. One spins on the transmission's output shaft, the other one carries the force to the wheels. As the differential/back axle rides up and down in the suspension's range of travel, the rag joint deflects just like a modern roller-bearing U-joint. But the size, weight, inefficiency and failure-prone nature of the rag joint is just astounding in comparison.
To use your interpretation of my automotive analogy: much the same way as putting a new Mopar Performance 528CID crate Hemi into a 1920s Bugatti would be a bad idea (without getting into destroying the originality of the car, you'd simply tear every last piece of the drivetrain apart the second you took your foot off the clutch and the leather-faced friction surfaces hit the flywheel), my thesis continues that it's probably an equally counter-productive thing to try to constantly add things to an aging architecture. Protected mode (286/fixed by 386), coprocessors, dual instruction pipelines (Pentium 60 and up), MMX (Pentium 166MMX and up with desktops), etc.
If you want a Hemi-powered Bugatti, by the time you've got enough experience and money to have your hands on either a Hemi or a Bugatti, you'll probably know that it would be a better idea to build a new car from scratch that simply *looks* like a Bugatti, without actually trying to put a Hemi into a Bugatti.
I like the Transmeta, for example, because it "looks" to an operating system or application like it's an x86 processor. But, of course, it's not. And, while I don't know how many hardware sacrifices were made to make it look as much like an x86 as possible, given the software translation scheme, I'm sure they've got a lot less sacrifices to the history of the x86 line than a PIII or Athlon.
Getting away from cumbersome, seldom-used and antiquated overhead will simply improve performance and provide a good platform from which to develop further.
Yup, that's right. A microwave oven is, depending on manufacturing tolerances, usually designed to be a big (500W+) radio transmitter running at 2.450GHz.
Now, all the energy coming from the magnetron's antenna *should* be staying in the cavity, but especially near the door seals and the diffraction gratings (ie. the "grille" on the window), you're probably going to be getting some noise radiated.
Since a microwave oven uses RF power to produce heat, it doesn't need to modulate a carrier. Nor does it need to be too precise, and, frankly, they aren't.
Now, your home networking equipment, cordless phones and stuff run in a band that is *unlicensed* for a reason: a 500 watt microwave oven, releasing anywhere under 5mW per cm^2 (the accepted safe limit) of energy, can still be releasing 5-10 watts of RF power over the total area of the cavity.
This will drown out other radio signals in the band, and is therefore the reason *why* this band is left as a "general purpose", unlicensed band. You can't force someone to get a radio transmitter license for the microwave oven they bought in 1978.
Your wireless ethernet setup probably puts out somewhere in the range of 50-100mW of transmitter power per node. That will be drowned out by the RF hash coming off a microwave about as effectively as a flutist in the audience of an AC/DC concert.
The good thing is, though, signals in this frequency range are very directional, and in many ways behave like light. They pass through things that light won't pass through, but, on the other hand, they travel in straight lines and are easily reflected. And if you're in a concrete or steel building - like any apartment or something like that - the RF from either the microwave ovens or the wireless LAN - will not propagate very well.
Microwave frequencies are basically unsuitable for anything but cooking appliances and line-of-sight applications (microwave TV and data relays, radar, satellite up/down links, etc.). It's only because the spectrum is so nearly saturated that you'd want to use them. But there will always be drawbacks as we enter the higher frequencies. Don't expect much, it's not possible.
Yeah. This is akin to a beaten-up, smoke-belching old piece of crap whizzing down the freeway at a stunning 40MPH.
But, you know, if you add fuzzy dice, UFO lights and a big stereo, the owner will think that you won't notice that the thing is a worn-out piece of crap.
The introduction of protected mode, while a vast improvement over the previous situation, basically underscores the tacked-on cludged-up nature of everything since. The 286 was the first protected mode Intel processor. And it could switch into protected mode, but required a reset for switching back to real mode. This is like having a really nice new Alpine CD player where you have to coax the CD back out with a bread knife.
The x86 architecture hearkens back to 1971, when Intel unleished the 4004, which was a 4 bit hand calculator processor. The 4004 begat the 8008, which begat the 8080, and from whence sprang the 8088, 8086, and then finally the 80186 and up. This processor family shares many things in common, including a similar basic architecture that makes the chip better suited for ASCII (text) data than it is for binary data.
That makes the x86 family *almost* 30 years old. Now, if we compare the advances in computers in the past thirty years to the time it took to make a similar paradigm shift in architecture, you'd see that we've got the World Trade Center and Sears Tower now, but just 30 years ago we were living in straw huts.
In maintaining the same basic architectural features of the 4004 all this time, it's basically akin to trying to build the Empire State Building with sticks and mud. Welcome to the computer industry, 2000.
Sure, a lot of great stuff has been done in and around this processor. But we're really stuck with it only because in 1981 when IBM brought out the PC, they wanted to be anything but radical. From an engineering standpoint, especially with a vision to the future, we would now have machines literally twice as fast per CPU cycle if they'd chosen the then-new Motorola 68000. Every PC/XT would have had the power of cooperative multitasking and a processor that was designed as an industrial controller and so relished the real-time multimedia apps we love today. The development process would have taken us through the 68010, '020-'040, and finally up into the PowerPC variants. Not to embrace Macintosh too much - I love their Motorola CPUs, but I don't use one too often - Windows 95 = Macintosh 84. That's a processor issue too, not just an eccentric genius designing the software.
Who'd have thought, 20 years later, that the lowly and conservative platform they released would be the foundation for today's computers?
Is it out of innovation, or inertia?
I suspect the latter.
Ya know, I don't know what it is, but humans have such a revulsion to these things, and yet they're really rather neat.
There are three things in this world that will survive a nuclear war: McDonald's uniforms, Dodge Darts, and cockroaches. Which means the first post-apocalyptic morning commute is going to be really ugly.
Aside from destroying the electronics in countless microwave ovens, roaches are really not all that bad. I don't have them in my house, but I certainly prefer cockroaches to mosquitos, black flies, deer flies, horse flies, wasps and centipedes. Actually, the one creepy-crawly I have in my house is spiders. Lots of them. And they have a great time when I leave the windows open and the lights on at night.
Between them and my small collection of carnivorous plants on the windowsill, I do my part for the environment by keeping down the insect population.
<paranoid_wink>The insects are out to get us, you know.</paranoid_wink>
Around here, there's a great place if you're into revenge for any reason. A friend of mine was keeping some South American roaches as pets in a large terrarium. These things were in the 2" long range. Needless to say, I asked him where he got them.
Turns out there's a small company downtown that sells specialty insects for the film and television business. They've got these roaches, and they're just beautiful.
Not only are they massive, but they fly and they spit. Their size alone is enough to cause shrieks of disgust. That turns into fear when the cockroach lifts off the ground (sounds like a hummingbird). Generally, an individual confronted with such a roach is well involved in the second part of the basic fight-or-flight response before the roach gets a chance to spray the individual with foamy goo.
Just stick a broomhandle through someone's dryer vent to dislodge the hose, and on a nice, cool morning, ya put the roaches near the vent and SHOOM! They're gone, in there, ready to enforce vigilante justice and wreak havoc for you.
I can't imagine the sound of trying to crush a 2" long exoskeleton under your shoe. It's probably quite disturbing.
Well, a not-for-the-beginner GUI, anyway. :) He was a moron. I'd have cited Microsoft Office 97 as prime contender in that category. Clippit makes me angry, and reminds a British co-worker of London in the late 1960s. Paper the Cat and Sniffs the Wonder Dog just make me want to go postal. Not to mention all the "auto-type" and "auto-complete" features...
My personal favourite were the "..that damn tcp/ip driver is acting up again" and the "you might as well stop typing as no-one is listening at the moment"I don't think I've ever seen those. I can't say that I've used a large number of Eudora versions; mostly I installed it, and have left it there since. Of course, on my many subsequent hard disk reformats since (damn Windows - yeah, I'm a Linux newbie, still using a Windows box while I get familiar), I've always installed Eudora from the same installer program. Never really felt a need to upgrade it.
Of course, there was another really nasty error message that Eudora gave me once. I can't even remember what the fault was, but I do remember that it basically called me an idiot. I was so floored by it (and overtired at the time) that it went right in and right back out... :) In retrospect, I think I'd have saved a screen shot of it.
How about the "Blah Blah Blah" button that lets you view message headers? Or the little tow truck for dragging a maximized message into a different folder? The Kerberos dog(s) in the setup menu? Pretty intuitive and easy, in my opinion. Especially if you remember your Greek mythology.
Kudos to Qualcomm for making software fun again.
Agreed. This isn't an easter egg either, it just happens in the software.
Eudora 4.x for Winblows is full of snotty remarks in various places. There are several messages, but my favorite - the one that happens when your ISP drops carrier as you're transferring your mail - is as follows:
Eudora is tired of waiting for the system to respond.I love software with personality.
I'd argue that it's a digital device. I have several of them in my house, and I've had to fix stuck relays a few times. (Breakdown-prone, I'll readily agree to, but probably not as bad as most /.'ers would think.)
Relays are either on or off. Pinball machines are primarily big piles of relays. (Old or new, don't care; solid state logic is just a more modern equivalent.) The flapper is either on or off. The ball is either hitting the bumper (magic mushroom), or it isn't. And the bumper is either on or off.
The cool part is that I've got a 1971 Williams "Fantastic" machine - note that this isn't a "Captain Fantastic" machine. The really fun part of this machine is that it has a CPU clock (a motor spinning a cam to create a pulse train at, like, 10Hz) and has a big pile of relays which together make a shift register (simple form of memory). It's a really cool 4-player game that remembers the state of the playfield for all contestants, and resets it to that point when the player's turn is next up.
BTW, it's for sale, needs some work, best offer, FOB Toronto, but will deliver free-of-charge (on my schedule) to anywhere from Windsor to Ottawa. If you can't decipher my e-mail address to reply, you're not smart enough to own it.
Nope, it's not "Captain Fantastic", it's just "Fantastic". Backglass peeling a bit but still presentable. Play surface will need a re-paint.
Electronics complete and in good condition, but there's a relay sticking somewhere that causes it to blow its internal fuses.
Easily repairable, nice restoration project, circa 1971. Playfield, backglass, lights and sound effects were obviously inspired by the myriad of psychedelic compounds the designers were consuming, making this a very neat machine.
Piss off your father by bringing home the pinball machine that kicked his ass back in college.
At the very least, it's loud enough to be the second best way (after a red bandanna, some Zippo fluid, a Stratocaster and a Marshall stack) to deal the neighbor who plays rap "music" all night. Yo. yo. yo-yo. Walk the dog?
Best offer - FOB Toronto, Canada. Have truck, can deliver from Windsor to Ottawa.
I picked up my Red Hat 6.0 distribution enclosed with a magazine. It was current in November or so. Now, I realize, we're up to 6.2 or 6.3 (can't remember which, and it's late, I had a long day, and I have to pull the motor out of a Volvo tomorrow, so forgive me for not double-checking Red Hat's website).
My skepticism remains. My install should have been a no-brainer. And, if I had known Linux very well, I'm sure it would have been quite easy. But I don't know it well enough to know how to partition the drive for a good install. And, even more irritatingly, no one can give clear and concise answers over how to properly do it. Asking someone on usenet will start a great flame-war. Not working to resolve this simple question of partitioning for a very basic install is a symptom of a lack of agreement and consistency over what makes a stable and secure system for a new user to learn about. And this serves as a roadblock to the usurpment of Windows.
I didn't (at the time) know about the LILO problem with some BIOSes and larger hard drives. The installation of PCMCIA support after I specifically told it not to during the installation process was thoroughly frustrating, since it meant that I could only start the system up in single user mode. Which I could only do after booting from the rescue disk because of the LILO problem.
Then, the distro didn't include the dhcpcd demon I needed to get a very basic networking feature running. (Yes, my Windows 95 firewall/gateway is also my home LAN's DHCP server.) That's another roadblock to someone who's installing on their main system and can now no longer access the Internet to download the client. I'd be digging out my Windows registration number again at that point. And it poses questions as to how well Linux is equipped to be the out-of-the-box networking solution that it claims to be.
As I indicated, no intelligent prospective user of a new operating system is going to install first on his current system if he's got a replacement around. Stevie Wonder could see that. I'm not advocating that Linux should pander to the lowest common denominator, but I can't believe that I would be the first or only prospective new user to attempt a workstation install of RH6.0 on a 486DX2-66.
I did notice something, however. It takes Gnome over half an hour to boot up on that system. So much for the commonly-broadcast myth that Linux/X is less resource-intensive than Windows 9x.
I'm still working to learn Linux, because I like a challenge and because I believe in it. I'm still running Red Hat 6.0, but I have experimented with the UMSDOS ZipSlack distribution, and found it to be far easier to get it happily running. In fairness to Red Hat, it's significantly less sophisticated.
But I rest my case: either start compiling, or stop bemoaning the compromised Internet security that millions of Windows boxes collectively represent. Be assured, after I'm familiar with my newly adopted OS, I'll be pulling my weight.
Okay. In reply to this and the earlier posting threatening to come after me with a hockey stick (re. NetBIOS comes back on with no provocation), I certainly agree with you all that Windows is a security problem, which is a big part of why I'm working my ass off to become familiar with Linux.
I don't expect Linux to be easy to learn; but I do have enough cross-platform experience to feel that at least installing it should be easier than it is.
There's no shortage of people who hate Microsoft and distrust their products. But there is a shortage of useable alternatives.
It doesn't matter that the world's greatest webserver is available for Linux if an average user can't get through the installation. Shit, an average user is very unlikely to even try to install Apache.
And let's face facts: high speed internet access appeals to us because we like computers, we play with them for fun, we administer networks at the office, we're in it because we like it. But most people just see it as a means to an end: they want the computer to hit ebay, to check out their e*trade portfolio.
These users want applications with which they're familiar, running on an operating system that is stable and easy to install.
Well, Windows isn't stable; just about anything beats it. Certainly the OS stability achieved through open-source development is incredibly impressive.
That's the difficult part, and it's done. So, why not be a part of the solution and work instead at improving the installation sequence and building more apps to ensure a bigger user base?
I hate to think this: I chose Red Hat 6.0 because it is, in my understanding, the best distribution for a new user. I researched it before I picked it up. It's got the best support, the best documentation, the best installer. And, while I lack the Linux/Unix skills that a lot of fellow Slashdotters have, I am a veteran assembly language programmer. That alone should be a testament to my comfort level with computers.
Installation should have been a breeze for me. For anyone who expects things to work out of the box, it would simply have been impossible.
If I only owned one machine, I would have formatted the drive, attempted to install Linux, then sworn off it with the hell I went through. While I like playing with computers, I also need them as tools, and if I didn't have the luxury of a spare (old) system, I would have been screwed. Sure, I could have repartitioned the drive and kept Windows up, but the LILO partition size bug would have still stopped me in my tracks. Expecting that new Linux users are going to try it out on old computers before migrating their main systems over, the support for older systems should be phenomenal. But it isn't.
The problem is that, because it's open source and written on a voluntary basis and peer-reviewed, it's easy for those programming to forget how difficult installation can be. One doesn't code for a sophisticated operating system without having a detailed knowledge of that operating system, and the focus is therefore distracted from what should be of prime interest to all involved: getting this thing to be more of an accepted replacement for Windows.
For all the bad things you can say about Microsoft, at least they actually get users (not programmers) to test the installation processes that their customers will have to endure after they stick that CD in the drive. Stick a Red Hat CD into an average user's hands, and watch what he goes through installing it. Take notes. Then start looking for solutions. Because you're not going to get alternatives to Windows out there unless they're installable.
So, instead of bitching about it, fix it. Take proactive steps to reduce the numbers of high-speed Internet users who are, out of necessity, continuing to run an operating system that puts the entire Internet at risk.
Or, sit back, do nothing, but don't blame me when it takes six months of diverting time away from my busy schedule to play with Linux before I can actually get the system to do something useful for me. And, be grateful that I'm trying to be a part of the solution.
I agree.
And yet, oddly enough, my Linux box is on my home LAN, working as a client. My Proxy and Firewall, ironically, is running probably the second most insecure operating system on the planet: Windows 95.
Now, I'm no dummy. File and print sharing was turned off. There's nothing of value on the hard drives of this server, either. All the latest service patches and things are installed. Going to http://grc.com doesn't show up any big holes on my system.
But I want to run Linux as a proxy/firewall. Why? Well, because I like the security, I like the power, and I want the experience. And I'm working towards it.
Why am I not running it?
Well, I got a copy of Red Hat 6.0, and installed it onto that server. It's a 486DX2-66 with 24 megs of RAM, 600 megs hard disk space, an NEC Multisync 3 monochrome VGA monitor and a Vesa bus.
First, the installer started up, and tried to detect the mono monitor for me. All my text became the same color as the background, and I couldn't read a damned thing. So I had to upset my main system and drag my color monitor off it. Installation was able to continue.
I was asked how I wanted to set up my hard disk. I attempted to just click "okay" and be able to install default settings, but it didn't like it. Clicking on the help button told me how to install partitions, but didn't tell me the syntax for making a root partition, or how big they should be, or anything. Finally, just by playing around, I was able to get Disk Druid happy with my partitions.
Then, I was asked if I wanted to install PCMCIA services. Well, this thing has Vesa architecture, therefore it's a desktop, therefore it probably doesn't have PCMCIA slots. I chose not to install PCMCIA services.
So, it copied for a while, and got everything installed. I rebooted the computer at the end.
"LI". Stall. LILO had died. I stuck my rescue disk into the drive, restarted the computer, and was able to get running again. I later found out that LILO had died because any boot partition bigger than 1024 cylinders, with some system BIOS, makes LILO unhappy. Even if the bug wasn't fixed, it would have been nice if Disk Druid (the "easy"-to-use alternative to fdisk) had warned of this possibility.
So, I booted the system on floppy. The root filesystem was mounted onto my hard disk, and everything continued from there.
Oops. What's this? We're stalling on starting PCMCIA. But I told it not to install PCMCIA support.
In frustration at an install process even more buggy, inconsistant and difficult to use than even the worst Microsoft product, I shelved the Linux machine for a while. I'm back at it now, but even as an advanced user with some UNIX experience, and lots of Unix-like AmigaDOS experience, I really have not enjoyed my Linux experience yet. I keep plugging away because I want to like it, and I will like it, and I will become good at it.
But, before you bash Windows users for the irresponsible act of hooking a Windows machine up to the Internet, consider that the Linux alternative is only there for the most advanced and dedicated users.
About 70% of the time, a new computer user could install Windows 95 successfully, just following through the defaults and reading the prompts. The other 30% of the time some hardware would be detected wrong and the system wouldn't work.
I consider myself to be an advanced user. I've been on the Internet since 1988. I got my first computer when I was nine years old, so I've accumulated 17 years of computer experience now, on a large variety of platforms and operating systems. I can think inside and outside the box. And I'll maintain that Red Hat 6.0 was the single most difficult piece of software I've ever installed on any computer system.
I don't like Windows any more than you do. I'm pulling myself away from it more by the day. And I'm lucky, because it's within my skillset to get Linux running.
So, perhaps this is the issue that needs to be addressed, not just another rant about how evil Windows users are. Instead, can you not sit down and help re-write the installation routines?
You can bet money that as soon as I'm familiar enough with Linux, my first order of business will be to try to make the installer a little bit more useful.
Yeah. Okay. Don't flame me, I'm still a Linux newbie, but I'm working hard to learn it.
While I'm learning, my proxy server and firewall to the Internet - for all my home LAN, including my Linux box - is a Windows 95 machine. And I'm running ZoneLabs ZoneAlarm for protection.
I'm not sure what I think of it. I like the idea of allowing or disallowing communications by application, not by service or port. And it's really not that intrusive, since once you've told it that Eudora can use the Internet, it can save that information and always allow Eudora unrestricted access.
It's nice, too: WinVN is my text-based newsreader, and AS-A1 is my binary newsrover. Since they both connect thru port 119, most firewalls wouldn't know the difference. But ZoneAlarm knows them apart.
But, because you can't configure the ports allowed by certain apps, it's impossible to know for sure what ports your applications are using; a dishonest application or a hacked one could easily ooze information past the firewall.
So, I guess it's a pretty easy drop-in better-than-nothing security solution for cable/DSL home users. But I want to actually be able to set it up on a port level.