But NumLock needs to be off for the arrow keys
on
Changing the Keyboard
·
· Score: 2
That still doesn't explain what the guy's comments. He said the NumLock key is used for Quake, but in your answer, it's actually used for spreadsheets since you need to turn NumLock ON in order to use the number pad. With Quake, you just leave it off.
In fact, I expect that it doesn't matter if you leave it on or off with Quake - you can always reassign the keys. Timur Tabi Remove "nospam_" from email address
"NumLock is pretty valuable to players of many first-person games like Quake," said Dan Horn, a University of Michigan graduate student who has done research on keyboard designs, "because the number pad allows users to move diagonally more easily than the dedicated arrow buttons where two key presses are necessary."
I don't play Quake, but I do play games like it. I've never had to turn NumLock on to play these games with the number pad. So what is this guy talking about? Timur Tabi Remove "nospam_" from email address
It redefines the cursor keys to scroll the window
on
Changing the Keyboard
·
· Score: 2
The idea is that, with Scroll Lock on, when you use the cursor movement keys (up, down, etc) instead of moving the cursor, you scroll the window. Timur Tabi Remove "nospam_" from email address
According to a friend of mine at AMD, Dell is the only major OEM who has no AMD-based systems whatsoever. And it's kinda pathetic, actually, because Dell and AMD are both in Austin, TX. Timur Tabi Remove "nospam_" from email address
I agree completely with Jon Winters - I am tired of movie theaters. In my neighborhood, there are FOUR mulitplex theaters, and they all show the same movies (more or less). I spoke with one of the representatives, and he said that they will all charge the same for movies, but they'll distinguish themselves by service. Well, that appears to be a load of BS. The service is no better in one place than another. In one particular theater, there is a row of bright lights in the aisle along the bottom of the screen - it's so damn bright I can read a book! I complained THREE TIMES to the manager, and they haven't done anything.
The sound systems in theaters is also overrated. Anyone who has seen True Lies on a 60" screen with a Dolby Digital (aka AC-3) sound system at home knows what I'm talking about. It's a whole new experience when you can hear every single bullet as the jet fighter sprays the building floor.
I can't wait until I get enough money and space to buy a home theater like some of my friends have. Once that happens, I will NEVER go to a movie theater again. Timur Tabi Remove "nospam_" from email address
It's not an open source solution, but you might be interested in Inet.Mail or Inet.Mail Pro from Hethmon Brothers ( http://www.hethmon.com/ ). It runs on OS/2 Warp. The Pro version supports multiple virtual domains, so you probably don't need that. The cost for unlimited users is $200.
It's heavily multithreaded, so the performance is excellent. I couldn't say whether it's ever been used with 25,000 users, though. Timur Tabi Remove "nospam_" from email address
Sorry, but it'll never happen. Geeks, just don't have what it takes to be involved in any kind of social scene. Oh sure, geeks can get together and talk amongst themselves, but that communication is typically limited to cursing at the Quake server.
A bunch of overweight, pimple-faced, poorly dressed Linux users in one room do not constitute a gathering of the future social elite. Timur Tabi Remove "nospam_" from email address
The truth is that Slashdot is run by a couple of guys who don't care what you think if you don't think like they do. Not that there's anything wrong with that per se, but anyone who thinks that the Slashdot editors are true representatives of the geek community is naive. Unfortunately, that includes the mainstream computer press. Timur Tabi Remove "nospam_" from email address
... especially compared to the other offerings. Hopefully, if Sun does buy it, they won't kill the OS/2 version. Timur Tabi Remove "nospam_" from email address
I used to be a Windows driver programmer, but I couldn't take it any more. That damn WDM API was the bane of my existance. It was incomplete and buggy, and there was no need for it. In fact, our drivers were happier under the old VXD model. With WDM, we couldn't use half of our hardware! So we spent months rewriting our drivers for nothing. Is this Microsoft's way of saying that they love their developers. I felt that MS hated us.
It even got so bad that at one point I heard a Microsoft developer say, "the source code is the documentation." What kind of bullshit is that?
Now I work on BIOS's, which are OS independent, for the most part. And at home I work on OS/2, which has an API that hasn't changed in 10 years (and still works great!) Timur Tabi Remove "nospam_" from email address
All you need is a video capture card ($40 from eBay), a composite video camera, a cable modem or DSL connection, a web server, a device driver, and a few lines of code. Program the driver to take a snapshot every second, and dump the image to a JPG on the web server. Write an HTML page that does an auto-refresh on the JPG, and Presto! instant remote monitoring of your home. Then, if you have the time, you can write an image processing app that compares two successive frames. If there's enough of a difference, it saves the frame to disk. So if someone actually does break into your house, it will record it. Timur Tabi Remove "nospam_" from email address
Apple didn't get Yellow Dog any specs that Be doesn't already have. The people at Yellow Dog examined the hardware, probably reverse engineered some of it, and then wrote the code. Be's engineers are unwilling to do that. And they don't even have to! All they have to do is look at the source code to Yellow Dog Linux and port it to BeOS/PPC. But they won't.
On the surface, the Be engineers appear like the good guys, being victimized by Microsoft and Apple. The truth, however, is that they're a bunch of pompous asses with quite an attitude. Witness their FAQ about installing on a logical partition: http://www-classic.be.c om/support/qandas/faqs/faq-0462.html. In it, they say that because only Linux and OS/2 support installation on an extended partition, that they don't need to support it because the only successful OS (Windows) doesn't support it. What they don't want to admit is that if they expect people to use BeOS along side other OS's, then you damn better support logical parititions otherwise some people might not be able to add BeOS. Timur Tabi Remove "nospam_" from email address
I agree with you 100%, but the only solution is to filter out articles on Games. It's really a shame, because I'd like to read more about games as well. Unfortunately, every game article on Slashdot is about Linux games. Timur Tabi Remove "nospam_" from email address
I'm confused - I thought HTTP 1.1 was old news. Don't a bunch of servers and web browsers already support this? I know IE 4.0 does - under the advanced options, you can select whether it uses HTTP 1.1. Timur Tabi Remove "nospam_" from email address
I like BeOS, I even have it installed on my computer, but I never boot it. Why? Because I can do everything I want and more in OS/2. OS/2 Warp 4 is light years ahead of BeOS in terms of application and software support. For starters, OS/2 has two major office suites: Smart Suite and Star Office. OS/2 also has Netscape Communicator. OS/2 runs a lot of Unix apps, including Gimp, thanks mostly to its excellent Unix emulation (XFree86 and emx). OS/2 also runs DOS apps better than any other OS, and it runs Windows 3.1 apps and a small number of Win32 apps. OS/2 also has top-notch Java support, ranked #1 in performance time and again.
OS/2 also has 10 years of hardware support. Lots of IHV's still write OS/2 drivers (Crystal Semi, Matrox, 3COM, Adaptec, etc) but don't even care about BeOS.
A Be engineer said earlier this year that he think s there are 25,000 BeOS users out there. 25K!?!?!? That's tiny!!! OS/2 has easily two orders of magnitude more users than that (granted, a lot of them are in banks, but it still counts).
Many of you might think that OS/2 is dead. Well, if you just compare the numbers, then it means that BeOS is stillborn. Timur Tabi Remove "nospam_" from email address
Do you really think software developers add features just for fun, like some cackling tormentor?
Yes, that's exactly what programmers do! This is especially true for people working on projects like MS Office - the more features the program has, the easier it is to sell as an upgrade. I fully expect many programmers on the Office team to sit around talking about what more junk they can throw into their suite. In fact, it would not surprise me in the least if there was some kind of monetary reward program for people who come up with the most ideas. Certainly anything that can be patented is rewarded. Timur Tabi Remove "nospam_" from email address
The Prime Meridian is a global standard - its position affects everyone on the planet. That's completely different than the Americans using the English measurement system: no one outside the US is affected if the speed limits in the US are in miles/hour instead of km/hour. Timur Tabi Remove "nospam_" from email address
The real reason that an OpenBIOS can't work IS because all of the proprietary features that are kept top secret.
Unfortunately, that's not enough. There are literally thousands of combinations. In addition, many motherboards ship with revisions of particular chips that have bugs in them, and there's often no way to tell through software alone whether a particular chip has a particular bug. But since the OEM's BIOS is hard-coded to a particular motherboard, it's not a problem for the OEM, since a simple #ifdef can enable to disable the software work-around.
Trust me on this - even with all the specs open, a generic BIOS is just never going to happen.
Ok, it looks like I need to chime in here. For the record, I am a BIOS developer for Dell Computer. Here's how things work in the BIOS land:
A BIOS is specific to a particular motherboard. It's not possible to create a generic BIOS, because the job of the BIOS is primarily to initialize the motherboard hardware. Many of the chips on a modern motherboard are very compex, such as Rambus memory controllers and SuperIO IC's. These devices take thousands of lines of assembly code to initialize.
The OpenBIOS FAQ has some errors in it:
1. The FAQ says that the primary job is to boot the OS - this is false. Booting the OS is the last thing the BIOS does at startup, and this feature hasn't really changed in 15 years, with the exception the modern BIOS's can now boot CD-ROM drives and Zip drives. Only 1% of the BIOS code is allocated to this function.
2. The FAQ says that "proprietary BIOSes have usually been written with one operating system formost in mind." This is also false. For instance, when you shut down the computer, Windows will send a call to the BIOS to power down the machine. Windows itself can't do this, because each machine is different, but the BIOS provides an API which Windows can call. AFAIK, all of these specs are 100% open, so that any OS can call them. However, Windows is usually the first OS to use these API's as they come out, mostly because Microsoft cares a lot about this issue. I can tell you in at least one instance, an "enhancement" to the BIOS that Microsoft recommended was immediately dismissed because it would be incompatible with Linux.
In my opinion, OpenBIOS is doomed to failure. The rate at which new systems are created is way too rapid for any one team to keep up. There are only a handful of people with the skills necessary to write a BIOS, and none of them can afford (as individuals) the hardware necessary to debug their code - the ICE sitting next to me costs over $10K and it's the low-end model. Not only that, but most of the information needed is not publically available and would be impossible for me to get if I didn't work for a major OEM already. Look at the hardware that OpenBIOS currently supports: a 386 and a 486 system!! Talk about outdated!
Because the BIOS is specific to a motherboard, any OEM which makes its own motherboards (like Dell does for some of our systems) must have a customized BIOS. I can't speak for all Dell systems (I only work on the high-end desktop machines), but in our case we do our own customizations. The alternative is to ask the BIOS vendor (e.g. Phoeniz or AMI) to make the customizations. Your guess is as good as mine as to how often this happens.
If you're looking for OS/2 software to run X-10 based devices, then check out http://home.att.net/~ASchw/, home of the House/2 and House/290 applications. Based on other comments, I gather that the FireCracker Link Module is not compatible with this software.
And speaking of the CM11A and discounts, it appears that they are offering their ActiveHome kit for $50 (normally $130).
LinuxPPC runs on the iMac already. As for the price, an iMac costs 1/3 to 1/2 as much, depending on the model. You can get an older iMac for under $900.
Anyone who thinks this competes with an iMac is a moron. It costs twice as much!!! Would you compare a $20,000 Honda Accord with a $40,000 Porche?!?!? No, of course not! Would you blame someone for choosing the Accord over the Porche?!?! No, of course not!
When will you people realize that the iMac is a great computer, it just wasn't intended for the typical Slashdot reader! And there's absolutely nothing wrong with that! I bet that for 90% of the people who read Slashdot, the iMac is a great computer for their significant others.
On the iMac, the two USB ports are connected. I would assume the same is true on this computer. It wouldn't surprise me in the least if Windows 98 didn't support multiple USB adapters.
In other words, all your doing is sharing the bandwith among four ports instead of two. It still helps in reducing the need for a hub, but that's it.
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In fact, I expect that it doesn't matter if you leave it on or off with Quake - you can always reassign the keys.
Timur Tabi
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I don't play Quake, but I do play games like it. I've never had to turn NumLock on to play these games with the number pad. So what is this guy talking about?
Timur Tabi
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The idea is that, with Scroll Lock on, when you use the cursor movement keys (up, down, etc) instead of moving the cursor, you scroll the window.
Timur Tabi
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Gimp/2 requires XFree86 for OS/2.
Timur Tabi
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According to a friend of mine at AMD, Dell is the only major OEM who has no AMD-based systems whatsoever. And it's kinda pathetic, actually, because Dell and AMD are both in Austin, TX.
Timur Tabi
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The sound systems in theaters is also overrated. Anyone who has seen True Lies on a 60" screen with a Dolby Digital (aka AC-3) sound system at home knows what I'm talking about. It's a whole new experience when you can hear every single bullet as the jet fighter sprays the building floor.
I can't wait until I get enough money and space to buy a home theater like some of my friends have. Once that happens, I will NEVER go to a movie theater again.
Timur Tabi
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It's heavily multithreaded, so the performance is excellent. I couldn't say whether it's ever been used with 25,000 users, though.
Timur Tabi
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A bunch of overweight, pimple-faced, poorly dressed Linux users in one room do not constitute a gathering of the future social elite.
Timur Tabi
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The truth is that Slashdot is run by a couple of guys who don't care what you think if you don't think like they do. Not that there's anything wrong with that per se, but anyone who thinks that the Slashdot editors are true representatives of the geek community is naive. Unfortunately, that includes the mainstream computer press.
Timur Tabi
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... especially compared to the other offerings. Hopefully, if Sun does buy it, they won't kill the OS/2 version.
Timur Tabi
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It even got so bad that at one point I heard a Microsoft developer say, "the source code is the documentation." What kind of bullshit is that?
Now I work on BIOS's, which are OS independent, for the most part. And at home I work on OS/2, which has an API that hasn't changed in 10 years (and still works great!)
Timur Tabi
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All you need is a video capture card ($40 from eBay), a composite video camera, a cable modem or DSL connection, a web server, a device driver, and a few lines of code. Program the driver to take a snapshot every second, and dump the image to a JPG on the web server. Write an HTML page that does an auto-refresh on the JPG, and Presto! instant remote monitoring of your home. Then, if you have the time, you can write an image processing app that compares two successive frames. If there's enough of a difference, it saves the frame to disk. So if someone actually does break into your house, it will record it.
Timur Tabi
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On the surface, the Be engineers appear like the good guys, being victimized by Microsoft and Apple. The truth, however, is that they're a bunch of pompous asses with quite an attitude. Witness their FAQ about installing on a logical partition: http://www-classic.be.c om/support/qandas/faqs/faq-0462.html. In it, they say that because only Linux and OS/2 support installation on an extended partition, that they don't need to support it because the only successful OS (Windows) doesn't support it. What they don't want to admit is that if they expect people to use BeOS along side other OS's, then you damn better support logical parititions otherwise some people might not be able to add BeOS.
Timur Tabi
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... all you Linux users can now get a date!
Timur Tabi
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I agree with you 100%, but the only solution is to filter out articles on Games. It's really a shame, because I'd like to read more about games as well. Unfortunately, every game article on Slashdot is about Linux games.
Timur Tabi
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I'm confused - I thought HTTP 1.1 was old news. Don't a bunch of servers and web browsers already support this? I know IE 4.0 does - under the advanced options, you can select whether it uses HTTP 1.1.
Timur Tabi
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OS/2 also has 10 years of hardware support. Lots of IHV's still write OS/2 drivers (Crystal Semi, Matrox, 3COM, Adaptec, etc) but don't even care about BeOS.
A Be engineer said earlier this year that he think s there are 25,000 BeOS users out there. 25K!?!?!? That's tiny!!! OS/2 has easily two orders of magnitude more users than that (granted, a lot of them are in banks, but it still counts).
Many of you might think that OS/2 is dead. Well, if you just compare the numbers, then it means that BeOS is stillborn.
Timur Tabi
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Yes, that's exactly what programmers do! This is especially true for people working on projects like MS Office - the more features the program has, the easier it is to sell as an upgrade. I fully expect many programmers on the Office team to sit around talking about what more junk they can throw into their suite. In fact, it would not surprise me in the least if there was some kind of monetary reward program for people who come up with the most ideas. Certainly anything that can be patented is rewarded.
Timur Tabi
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The Prime Meridian is a global standard - its position affects everyone on the planet. That's completely different than the Americans using the English measurement system: no one outside the US is affected if the speed limits in the US are in miles/hour instead of km/hour.
Timur Tabi
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Unfortunately, that's not enough. There are literally thousands of combinations. In addition, many motherboards ship with revisions of particular chips that have bugs in them, and there's often no way to tell through software alone whether a particular chip has a particular bug. But since the OEM's BIOS is hard-coded to a particular motherboard, it's not a problem for the OEM, since a simple #ifdef can enable to disable the software work-around.
Trust me on this - even with all the specs open, a generic BIOS is just never going to happen.
--
Timur Tabi
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A BIOS is specific to a particular motherboard. It's not possible to create a generic BIOS, because the job of the BIOS is primarily to initialize the motherboard hardware. Many of the chips on a modern motherboard are very compex, such as Rambus memory controllers and SuperIO IC's. These devices take thousands of lines of assembly code to initialize.
The OpenBIOS FAQ has some errors in it:
1. The FAQ says that the primary job is to boot the OS - this is false. Booting the OS is the last thing the BIOS does at startup, and this feature hasn't really changed in 15 years, with the exception the modern BIOS's can now boot CD-ROM drives and Zip drives. Only 1% of the BIOS code is allocated to this function.
2. The FAQ says that "proprietary BIOSes have usually been written with one operating system formost in mind." This is also false. For instance, when you shut down the computer, Windows will send a call to the BIOS to power down the machine. Windows itself can't do this, because each machine is different, but the BIOS provides an API which Windows can call. AFAIK, all of these specs are 100% open, so that any OS can call them. However, Windows is usually the first OS to use these API's as they come out, mostly because Microsoft cares a lot about this issue. I can tell you in at least one instance, an "enhancement" to the BIOS that Microsoft recommended was immediately dismissed because it would be incompatible with Linux.
In my opinion, OpenBIOS is doomed to failure. The rate at which new systems are created is way too rapid for any one team to keep up. There are only a handful of people with the skills necessary to write a BIOS, and none of them can afford (as individuals) the hardware necessary to debug their code - the ICE sitting next to me costs over $10K and it's the low-end model. Not only that, but most of the information needed is not publically available and would be impossible for me to get if I didn't work for a major OEM already. Look at the hardware that OpenBIOS currently supports: a 386 and a 486 system!! Talk about outdated!
Because the BIOS is specific to a motherboard, any OEM which makes its own motherboards (like Dell does for some of our systems) must have a customized BIOS. I can't speak for all Dell systems (I only work on the high-end desktop machines), but in our case we do our own customizations. The alternative is to ask the BIOS vendor (e.g. Phoeniz or AMI) to make the customizations. Your guess is as good as mine as to how often this happens.
--
Timur Tabi
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And speaking of the CM11A and discounts, it appears that they are offering their ActiveHome kit for $50 (normally $130).
--
Timur Tabi
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Anyone who thinks this competes with an iMac is a moron. It costs twice as much!!! Would you compare a $20,000 Honda Accord with a $40,000 Porche?!?!? No, of course not! Would you blame someone for choosing the Accord over the Porche?!?! No, of course not!
When will you people realize that the iMac is a great computer, it just wasn't intended for the typical Slashdot reader! And there's absolutely nothing wrong with that! I bet that for 90% of the people who read Slashdot, the iMac is a great computer for their significant others.
--
Timur Tabi
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In other words, all your doing is sharing the bandwith among four ports instead of two. It still helps in reducing the need for a hub, but that's it.
--
Timur Tabi
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I don't know of any other channel that shows British comedies.
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Timur Tabi
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