I happen to have a similar configuartion: Dual 2400+ on Tyan Tiger MPX. I tried FreeBSD 5.0 and Slackware 9.0, both did not detect the SMP on installation. cat/proc/cpuinfo only shows one CPU (on Linux, I have no frigging clue how to check it on FreeBSD and "top" only showed one CPU there) I'm not scared of recompiling a kernel, but for the moment I do not have the time. So my question is: what distribution allows SMP out of the box?
For the moment my machine runs Win2000 perfectly fine (even though it was quite a bitch to install due to some crappy drivers, notably Creative Labs Soundblaster). I now have a Playstation and the main reason I have Windows is games and I don't play on that machine anymore.
Yes, I knew that Hyperthreading presents itself as two cpu's... (it's not really two CPU's and is far from Dual core). But indeed, a machine with two Hyperthreading CPU's will show up as having 4, and normal Windows licenses won't go with that.
I personally think that the future is multi-core CPU. It will have the same effect on licensing as HT CPU's but will probably be much closer to SMP machines (which is what I have, a nice litte SMP machine). I always thought that the future would be SMP, but people don't understand the advantages. Anyways: Intel is going to kill the P-IV line which was the only one featuring Hyperthreading. They are going for the Pentium M series. Does that one have Hyperthreading? Don't think so.
I'm not much of a downloader myself. Oh, I am guilty of downloading the occasional MP3, yes. Usually I think it's not worth the hassle. Too much time needed to find a song of acceptable quality and even then you might get an MP3 that doesn't work.
Also I wonder why they still sell Audio CD-R's. My sister used to buy those because she actually thought you needed them to burn music. I told her the truth about them, and explained that if she bought those she virtually "payed" her pirating. With all those copy-protected Audio-CD that you can't really burn, what's the use in actually paying a media-tax? I also wonder how much people think the same way as my sister did...
Not only that... but virtually every new CD has some kind of copy protection. Luckily it is clearly labelled, and so I can choose not to buy it. However many customers do not know this. A friend of mine got such a CD and wondered about the label. I had to explain that it was not really a CD according to the red-book standard. She was pretty amazed, that she bought a non-CD. She asked it because her PC was unable to play that specific CD.
Prices might be due to tax. I do not know. It's 16% VAT for luxury goods here, and I think that audio CD's apply as luxury goods. If sales tax is about the same in the US, then there is something fishy going on.
You make excellent points, I probably couldn't agree more.
The problem is that it is currently cheaper to download music than to buy it in a store
Yes, and that is good. After all I get less "value" when I download a music. No leaflet, no lyrics, no CD to put in my stereo. Yes, I can burn it, but it just doesn't look the same. iTunes Store is (in my opinion, I can't use it since I live in Europe) ideal for compulsive buys. I usually don't buy CD compulsively: I have my list, write down what I want and then buy a batch. I think they are complementary markets. Compulsive versus Planned. Sounds reasonable to me.
Dunno, I bought a few audio CD's yesterday (without copy-protection and with CD-Audio logo, I checked before buying). The price varied between 14.69€ and 18.49€. From my currency you can see that I cannot be a iTunes Store anyways, but I would be if the service had been available in my country. It still is very expensive, but not as it used to be. CD's often were over 20€, not even a year ago. Also note that the CD's I bought were rather old (in the sense of "not recent releases") and I didn't bother checking what a Top-40 CD would cost.
For that price I'd rather go and buy the album and rip it myself. At least then I can choose the format I want. If an Audio CD is marked with a label that it might not play on anything else than my stereo, I won't buy it either. If this means I can't buy music anymore, well, fine with me, I'll keep listening to the CD's I already have.
Just an idea: might it perhaps be the Software Update and the Network Time Service that call home? (for OS X, and XP has similar services). I'm not saying that there isn't anything that calls home with malicious intent, but those two would be a valid explanation for "calling home".
I'm lucky to own just a normal Dual machine. Win2000Pro works fine with that. I don't know what would happen if I put XP Home on that thing though. You're right, their licensing sucks (and that's why I am at SP2 + hotfixed). I have seen other posts about the "price point" they are willing to pay for a Windows license. For me it would be the price of a game. 50$ for Win2000Pro and I'll go full legal (which is still a bunch because I manage 5 Win2000 for my family) Heck, why don't they do volume licensing for families?
A lot of software relies on pirating, like you mentioned Cad programs... but think closer to home: think PhotoShop. Do you really think most people with a digicam will buy a completely legal version of Photoshop? I found the Light version bundeled with my scanner more than enough, but you know people: they always want the latest and best. So they pirate PhotoShop and that's it.
I work mainly in banking, developping custom applications. I'll be the last one that is going to do his job at home. Oh, I damn well could, I only need email my devbox and some kind of access to the backend (over VPN it must be doable). However, no bank is going to do this. At least not in my country where banks are required to have their IT infrastructure in-house. Besides, they are so paranoid about security breaches (understandable) that they probably won't give anyone outside the bank a VPN connection to their network. You might after all steal customer data or so...
Well, I do patch my Win2000 system. However I stay at SP2 because of the EULA, so I can only apply hotfixes. Works fine. No worries, I do not rely on my firewall only.
The problems with pirating an OS (at least to the consumer) is that it is part of the computer they bought. On top of that the OS has no percieved value to the consumer. At least *not* 200$. You should see the reaction you get of people when you actually try to explain to them that their OS costs nearly more than the hardware. It is just too expensive for the average consumer. Compare it a bit to music CD's: people are perpared to pay 0.99$ per song, but not 20$ for a copy-proteced Audio-CD with only fillup songs and one hit.
It is easy to say "just use Linux/BSD" (I do for the matter - I run a variety of systems), but what am I going to say to my brother: uhm, brother, give me 200$, I need to buy Windows XP for you so that you can legally play GTA Vice City on your computer (which originally came with 98SE, but it can't handle the hardware I added later on -- and yes, he bought the game, it's not pirated). You might find it strange, but I usually frown upon pirating with one exception: the OS. There are free OSes, and I can use them. My brother can't.
That depends... I don't run Windows XP (I run Windows 2000 and Mac OS X), but if I did and if it was a pirated copy, my box wouldn't get infected. Simply because I'm cautious and I have a nice firewall (different box, running OpenBSD). I know, I know, a firewall is just one level of security and doesn't guarantee a full comprimise. It still ensures that I'd be safe of worms like Sasser. A lot would be solved if all users on broadband would have a firewall (preferably a hardware one). I'm pretty sure that many pirates of Windows XP are computer-literate and know how to enable the built-in firewall of XP.
Pirate doesn't equal stupid, it just equals "too cheap to buy a version of Windows". As other posters have stated: Microsoft owes *a lot* to pirates. Imagine what would have happened if Windows 95 would have had "real" copy protection. The migration would have happened a lot slower. Heck, I only "upgraded" to Windows 95 in 97. From OS/2 that is. I loved OS/2. *sniff*
Well, I kind of agree with you, but I really rarely shell out 50Euro for a game. I only did once, and only because it was a sequel of a game that I got cheap and I absolutely wanted the sequel.
I just wait until they are in Platinum or until they are at least 20Euro cheaper. That said, I buy more games than I have time to play;-) Even though my girlfriend majorly kicked my butt in Soul Calibur II (got it for 30Euro) yesterday. Ouch... I didn't know I sucked that bad at fighting games.
Nope, same here. Well, I usally install the machines myself when I buy them. My Windows machines don't get unstable, I guess I manage them well. Of course, I have this strict policy of not installing any crap "for just trying out". I've got my list of proggies that I need, and only those end up on my machine.
Not going to make a top-10 list, but programs I always install are: PuTTY, Adobe Acrobat Reader, Mozilla, Eudora (I'm a registred user), Ad-Aware, Norton Anti-Virus (I have a 5 seat license) on my machines and AVG on machines I install for friends, OpenOffice, VLC for DVD playback, CDEx for ripping, Nero, WinAmp, GhostScript/GhostView and finally WinZip. If the station is for me I also add Eclipse and some games I own, and that's it.
This all on Windows 2000, because I'm completely lost in XP. My girlfriend runs XP (in german, irks!) and I usually have to look all over the place to find the most basic things. It *always* has at least one spyware or at least one virus hanging around. Probably her little brother surfing some special sites....
On the road I have my iBook and that one never gives problems either. Server is OpenBSD and I play around with Linux when I feel like it.
Five years ago: internet boom. I got 2250€ without taxes and social security deducted (I do not remember what I actually got in my pockets, my guess is 1700€). Later on, I heard from coworkers that I was ripped off. This was mainly due to the fact that I didn't want a company car (I had a perfectly fine Audi 80, why trade?) and they gave me the salary of a guy with a company car, but without the company car.
What is really frustrating is that my girlfriend earns more than me. She just started to work last year, and I have five year experience. Oh, and no, she's not some bigshot business girl or even a Doctor or whatever might make a lot of money. She's a kindergarden teacher.
IT is going down the drain. If you can avoid working in this sector, do so...
I have DSL. It costs me about 50€/month to have 256/128kbps. The speed for me is not that important because for me the advantage of having DSL is 24/7 connection. I'm just an addict. However, I'm very aware that I am not the majority of people online.
When on the road I use dial-up just because it is readily available everywhere. A "no-subscription" service I use on occasion is 0,015€/minute in the low hours. It's probably not even the cheapest around, but I didn't compare prices. For 50€, I can be online for 3333minutes, or about 55 hours online per month! That's over 2 hours per day! Uhm, the regular surfer, doing some email, doing his webbanking is never going to reach that amount of time.
Yes, there is the speed increase... but does it really matter for them? Granted, DSL is expensive where I live, but before you take broadband you should always count out what is better for you financially.
Uhm... That is not that hard. There are tons (hehehe) of non-ugly fat chicks. Chubby chicks need love too and usually love sex. Another advantage of heavier chicks is big tits... Just don't tell my girlfriend that I just told you that;-)
Really depends on the product. I have used their Bernouilli drives back in the day (hey, I still have it and it still works) which were 90Megabytes (yup, you read that right...megabytes). I have have a Jaz 1GB drive that still works without a hitch. I consider them reliable drives. (Both were SCSI)
My 100Meg Zip drive however died about 3 years after purchase. It was also an SCSI and when I wanted a replacement, there weren't any SCSI Zips on the market anyway. So I sit on a dozen Zip disks that have no use at all.
For the moment, of course, plugging in a new harddisk (IDE) is much cheaper than any of their products. It's not as if I really need any more "removable" devices since CD-RW came out.
He says that the internet is a big factor in the movement of geekness becoming mainstream...
Let's kick all those wanna-be nerds from the internet. Let them go back to playing sports or reading books, or whatever they did before.
I want my pre-september-that-never-ended internet back!;-)
Well, I do everytime I go to the movies. Or better said, the last ad they pass just before the main movie is sponsored by a cellphone service provider. It used the THX surround system to make different cellphone ringtones come from about anywhere in the theather. It's a cacaphony of cellphones. When it's over on the screen they display "The movie is now beginning, please turn off your cellphone (sponsored by $CELLHONE_COMPANY).".
I have never heard a real cellphone go off after that ad.
Well, I used Peanut Linux for about a year on a P120 laptop with 32Meg RAM. It was fine as a surf/email station (surfing done with Opera, email with Sylpheed, all running within WindowMaker). I fear that Peanut of today wouldn't work on that hardware anymore because that was in the 8.4 days.
There is also Vector Linux that I used sucessfully on older hardware. Just look for "minimalist" linux distros on Linux.org .
Yes, I love old hardware and alternate OSes. How did you tell?
Slashdot Mirror
For the moment my machine runs Win2000 perfectly fine (even though it was quite a bitch to install due to some crappy drivers, notably Creative Labs Soundblaster). I now have a Playstation and the main reason I have Windows is games and I don't play on that machine anymore.
I personally think that the future is multi-core CPU. It will have the same effect on licensing as HT CPU's but will probably be much closer to SMP machines (which is what I have, a nice litte SMP machine). I always thought that the future would be SMP, but people don't understand the advantages. Anyways: Intel is going to kill the P-IV line which was the only one featuring Hyperthreading. They are going for the Pentium M series. Does that one have Hyperthreading? Don't think so.
Also I wonder why they still sell Audio CD-R's. My sister used to buy those because she actually thought you needed them to burn music. I told her the truth about them, and explained that if she bought those she virtually "payed" her pirating. With all those copy-protected Audio-CD that you can't really burn, what's the use in actually paying a media-tax? I also wonder how much people think the same way as my sister did...
Prices might be due to tax. I do not know. It's 16% VAT for luxury goods here, and I think that audio CD's apply as luxury goods. If sales tax is about the same in the US, then there is something fishy going on.
The problem is that it is currently cheaper to download music than to buy it in a store
Yes, and that is good. After all I get less "value" when I download a music. No leaflet, no lyrics, no CD to put in my stereo. Yes, I can burn it, but it just doesn't look the same. iTunes Store is (in my opinion, I can't use it since I live in Europe) ideal for compulsive buys. I usually don't buy CD compulsively: I have my list, write down what I want and then buy a batch. I think they are complementary markets. Compulsive versus Planned. Sounds reasonable to me.
Dunno, I bought a few audio CD's yesterday (without copy-protection and with CD-Audio logo, I checked before buying). The price varied between 14.69€ and 18.49€. From my currency you can see that I cannot be a iTunes Store anyways, but I would be if the service had been available in my country. It still is very expensive, but not as it used to be. CD's often were over 20€, not even a year ago. Also note that the CD's I bought were rather old (in the sense of "not recent releases") and I didn't bother checking what a Top-40 CD would cost.
For that price I'd rather go and buy the album and rip it myself. At least then I can choose the format I want. If an Audio CD is marked with a label that it might not play on anything else than my stereo, I won't buy it either. If this means I can't buy music anymore, well, fine with me, I'll keep listening to the CD's I already have.
Just an idea: might it perhaps be the Software Update and the Network Time Service that call home? (for OS X, and XP has similar services). I'm not saying that there isn't anything that calls home with malicious intent, but those two would be a valid explanation for "calling home".
A lot of software relies on pirating, like you mentioned Cad programs... but think closer to home: think PhotoShop. Do you really think most people with a digicam will buy a completely legal version of Photoshop? I found the Light version bundeled with my scanner more than enough, but you know people: they always want the latest and best. So they pirate PhotoShop and that's it.
I work mainly in banking, developping custom applications. I'll be the last one that is going to do his job at home. Oh, I damn well could, I only need email my devbox and some kind of access to the backend (over VPN it must be doable). However, no bank is going to do this. At least not in my country where banks are required to have their IT infrastructure in-house. Besides, they are so paranoid about security breaches (understandable) that they probably won't give anyone outside the bank a VPN connection to their network. You might after all steal customer data or so...
The problems with pirating an OS (at least to the consumer) is that it is part of the computer they bought. On top of that the OS has no percieved value to the consumer. At least *not* 200$. You should see the reaction you get of people when you actually try to explain to them that their OS costs nearly more than the hardware. It is just too expensive for the average consumer. Compare it a bit to music CD's: people are perpared to pay 0.99$ per song, but not 20$ for a copy-proteced Audio-CD with only fillup songs and one hit.
It is easy to say "just use Linux/BSD" (I do for the matter - I run a variety of systems), but what am I going to say to my brother: uhm, brother, give me 200$, I need to buy Windows XP for you so that you can legally play GTA Vice City on your computer (which originally came with 98SE, but it can't handle the hardware I added later on -- and yes, he bought the game, it's not pirated). You might find it strange, but I usually frown upon pirating with one exception: the OS. There are free OSes, and I can use them. My brother can't.
Pirate doesn't equal stupid, it just equals "too cheap to buy a version of Windows". As other posters have stated: Microsoft owes *a lot* to pirates. Imagine what would have happened if Windows 95 would have had "real" copy protection. The migration would have happened a lot slower. Heck, I only "upgraded" to Windows 95 in 97. From OS/2 that is. I loved OS/2. *sniff*
I just wait until they are in Platinum or until they are at least 20Euro cheaper. That said, I buy more games than I have time to play ;-) Even though my girlfriend majorly kicked my butt in Soul Calibur II (got it for 30Euro) yesterday. Ouch... I didn't know I sucked that bad at fighting games.
Not going to make a top-10 list, but programs I always install are: PuTTY, Adobe Acrobat Reader, Mozilla, Eudora (I'm a registred user), Ad-Aware, Norton Anti-Virus (I have a 5 seat license) on my machines and AVG on machines I install for friends, OpenOffice, VLC for DVD playback, CDEx for ripping, Nero, WinAmp, GhostScript/GhostView and finally WinZip. If the station is for me I also add Eclipse and some games I own, and that's it.
This all on Windows 2000, because I'm completely lost in XP. My girlfriend runs XP (in german, irks!) and I usually have to look all over the place to find the most basic things. It *always* has at least one spyware or at least one virus hanging around. Probably her little brother surfing some special sites....
On the road I have my iBook and that one never gives problems either. Server is OpenBSD and I play around with Linux when I feel like it.
What is really frustrating is that my girlfriend earns more than me. She just started to work last year, and I have five year experience. Oh, and no, she's not some bigshot business girl or even a Doctor or whatever might make a lot of money. She's a kindergarden teacher.
IT is going down the drain. If you can avoid working in this sector, do so...
When on the road I use dial-up just because it is readily available everywhere. A "no-subscription" service I use on occasion is 0,015€/minute in the low hours. It's probably not even the cheapest around, but I didn't compare prices. For 50€, I can be online for 3333minutes, or about 55 hours online per month! That's over 2 hours per day! Uhm, the regular surfer, doing some email, doing his webbanking is never going to reach that amount of time.
Yes, there is the speed increase... but does it really matter for them? Granted, DSL is expensive where I live, but before you take broadband you should always count out what is better for you financially.
No, I don't think so... I don't even know what ISU stands for... Well, the U probably for University.
Uhm... That is not that hard. There are tons (hehehe) of non-ugly fat chicks. Chubby chicks need love too and usually love sex. Another advantage of heavier chicks is big tits... Just don't tell my girlfriend that I just told you that ;-)
I'll take that offer if you can tell me in which village I was found. ;-)
Ah, memories... I still don't exaclty remember how I ended up there. The cops were nice, they brought me home.
My 100Meg Zip drive however died about 3 years after purchase. It was also an SCSI and when I wanted a replacement, there weren't any SCSI Zips on the market anyway. So I sit on a dozen Zip disks that have no use at all.
For the moment, of course, plugging in a new harddisk (IDE) is much cheaper than any of their products. It's not as if I really need any more "removable" devices since CD-RW came out.
Oh damn! You blew my cover! ;-)
I want my pre-september-that-never-ended internet back! ;-)
I have never heard a real cellphone go off after that ad.
There is also Vector Linux that I used sucessfully on older hardware. Just look for "minimalist" linux distros on Linux.org .
Yes, I love old hardware and alternate OSes. How did you tell?