strace/truss/ktrace for Linux, Solaris and BSD/MacOS respectively. If a program fails to start, or terminates abnormally, this will usually give me the heads up on why (it's usually a missing file, or bad permissions) without having to break out gdb.
lsof. Useful in so many ways; for debugging situations similar to the above, as well as hardening systems and building chroot environments for specific programs.
tcpdump/snoop/tethereal/ethereal. If you can see what's really on the wire between two network applications, you can probably figure out what's going wrong. Ethereal is particularly nice.
hexdump/khexedit. If you can see what's really in the file used by an application, you can probably figure out what's going wrong.:-) khexedit also has a bonus feature of being able to perform statistical logical operations across the file; useful if you have a file which you suspect has been encrypted with some lame substitution cipher.
After those, the usual - sed, awk, grep, find. It's rare that I can't turn any problem into an awk-shaped nail.:-)
If the PC is a relic, where are documents going to be created? Not on a pda or cell phone.
If the PC is a relic, where are games going to be played? Sure you've got the xbox #, ps#, nintendo systems but certain games lend themselves better to pcs.
General computers, i.e. systems that can do everything, are not going anywhere for a long time.
I've seen these arguments before. As far as I can see, they boil down to PDAs/Phones/Smartphones/Consoles having limited Human/Computer Interaction peripherals.
Imagine a smartphone that could be plugged into a cradle that connects a full-size keyboard and monitor. Essentially, that would be an ultra-portable laptop. Someone will produce something like that eventually, and I see it becoming the most common form of machine for most people.
As for the gaming side of things, imagine a console that came with a full-size keyboard, HDTV outputs and USB ports for novel controllers (much of that spec is already here) and mass-storage devices such as memory sticks. I don't see anything that would make PCs inherently more suitable than such a console for certain games.
Eventually, (desktop) PCs as we know them will only be used by geeks like us. Even that destination is not certain, due to the various DRM technologies coming this way.
As of 8 September (over a month after his arrest), some of David's possessions had not been returned. I don't know whether they have yet - he doesn't say.
The investigation was thorough, quick, and ultimately vindicating.
Maybe you have built up tolerance of bureaucracy, but I don't call 9.5hrs from arrest to release "quick", especially seeing as he didn't get to call his worried girlfriend until 3hrs later, and get a drink of water until 4hrs later. Further, he hasn't yet received a letter officially stating that he's off the hook.
It's because I am about a billion times more likely to be negatively affected by bad or rights-limiting policy than I am to be killed by a terrorist.
I'd rather take a 1:1,000,000,000 chance on not getting hit by a suicide bomber while living a nice life than take a 1:2 chance that I'll suffer at the hands of the government so that they can ensure (and really, they can't even do that) that I won't get hit by a terrorist.
Well said. Further, I'm far more worried about getting killed whilst crossing the road than being killed by a terrorist. And I say that as someone who stood eating pizza and watching a suspect package being destroyed outside Paddington a couple of years ago.
Why would you need access to the cockpit from the cabin, or vice versa, during the flight anyway?
To provide the pilots access to lavatory and galley facilities.
I believe El Al planes include such facilities for the cockpit crew.
To minimize the engineering complexity of the aircraft (easier to build a plane with one cabin and one external door than a plane with two unconnected cabins).
To maximize profit capacity on the craft (building in separate facilities for the cockpit means getting rid of 2-3 rows of sets, not even including the engineering costs).
As I understand it, all Israeli El Al planes have a separate external entrance for the pilots, and the cockpit is not accessible from the cabin. Why would you need access to the cockpit from the cabin, or vice versa, during the flight anyway?
Of course the killer app is being able to beam your music to the guy across the room/cafe/street, and vice versa. It'll happen, it's just a question of when and who does it.
My money's on iRiver; their H3xx models in non-US markets can already do this, albeit using a USB cable. It's only USB 1.1, though, which rather limits mass leeching.
What I'm paying for at the resteraunt is to have an expert make my food, someone serve me, a nice atmosphere, etc. The materials cost is well less than half, and I'm fine with that.
FYI, the rule of thumb for restaurants is that you should charge the customer at least three times the cost of the ingredients for their food.
Drinks tend to have an even higher profit margin than food, so it's not inconceivable that some restaurants will play around with this model in an attempt to get you to drink more.
Interestingly, music became much nicer to play
after the ear fatigue was mitigated by earplugs.
Yes, I found this too. Not only from the fatigue point-of-view, but also because I could more easily distinguish between which drums the drummer was playing, rather than just (bass or floor tom)|(snare)|(cymbal)|(something else).
i've gone to so many live shows (blisteringly loud metal) that i can't even listen to music loud anymore - it's my own fault, but now i wear earplugs for shows simply because it actually hurts to listen to loud music.
The turning point for me was seeing At the Gates and a couple of other bands at a small pub in 1997 (and, I admit it, seeing a photo of Alx Hellid of Entombed wearing plugs on-stage). Before then, the longest periods of tinnitus I'd experienced were 2.5 days after seeing bands (e.g. Anthrax) in larger venues in the late 80s. After this gig, though, I experienced tinnitus for 4 days. By the end, I was promising myself that if it went, I'd wear plugs at gigs in future. The tinnitus did pass, and I've kept that promise (with the exception of "treating myself" for favourite songs or short sets!)
Similarly, once I started jamming in a band earlier this year, I got fed up with the tinnitus and general fatigue induced by the drummer's brass, and quickly picked up a pair of Elacin ER-20 plugs. I can thoroughly recommend these for use by musicians and concert-goers as the attenuation (-20dB, or 75% of the energy) is fairly flat across the audio spectrum. If you've previously tried foam plugs, or cotton wool, and didn't get on with either, try these and a reckon you'll be pleasantly surprised.
One note though; I saw Cradle of Filth and Mendeed recently, and despite wearing my ER-20s throughout both sets, I still had some minor post-gig tinnitus afterwards that was gone by morning!
No, none are being made with commercial, full games, from the original developers and not some new guys.
Now you qualify your statement!;-)
You'll note that the gentoo boot cd games haven't been updated in over a year.
Do they need to be, if the game included still works on current hardware?
No activision, EA, or even Linux Game Publishing titles come out on boot cds. Computers aren't consoles, and nobody gives a damn about booting into Linux just for one game.
It's not a selling point for the users, but I would have thought that some developers would have seen the opportunity in developing, testing and shipping their game on a known platform, with known driver versions etc. as a means of reducing their support costs. OTOH, given the awful "support" I've had from Windows game vendors in trying to get their drek working properly, I guess they don't really spend much on support anyway...
Also, the CVC isn't supposed to be stored in databases. Of course, that hasn't stopped some vendors from doing so... shortly before their database was stolen!
Why do people keep building villages next to volcanos,
Because land near volcanoes is generally pretty fertile and good for arable farming.
museums with important artifacts in large cities,
Large cities are generally older cities, and so have more local history and related artifacts.
data centers in flood plains
At a guess, because the margins are low, and lots of space is required. Land in flood plains is presumably pretty cheap.
major network hubs in cities.
At a guess, again, because you need some fairly specialized skills, and you're more likely to find them in a city of 1mill+ than a village of 1000. Also, cities have more requirements for telecommunications, making peering relatively cheap and easy; the last time I looked, it was cheaper to get a leased line installed in Central London, than elsewhere in the UK.
GRUB has all sorts of problems. It wasn't ready for "primetime" when SuSE switched to it about 3 years ago, and as far as I can tell, the problems it had then have yet to be fixed.
I suspect the problems you've encountered with GRUB are SuSE-specific. I've been using it with RH for ages (probably RH6.2 or so - whenever they started making it the default boot loader) and have never had a problem (though my laptop did need a BIOS upgrade before my PS/2->USB mouse/keyboard adaptor was sane). OTOH, I've come across a couple of instances of SuSE's GRUB being completely borked. I didn't perform the initial install, so it could have been a user error, but I'm not so sure...
Sometimes I get the sense from the Slashdot crowd that something isn't worth doing because perfection is impossible, perfect security being a prime example.
Some slashdotters may rail against anything other than perfect security, but I think a fair amount of Slashdot vitriol is directed at security measures that are disproportionate in impact or cost compared with the risks they are nominally intended to mitigate.
Not quite; if you want a card that works using the Free XFree86/Xorg drivers and offers stability, future usability and 3D, then you want a Radeon upto the 9250.
If you don't care about 3D, you can buy pretty much anything you like, including on-board.
What I'm waiting for is real convergence. A pocket sized PC compatible computer with a HDD, USB etc built into a mobile phone. I don't mind if it's a bit of a brick: that's what I want. The bastard offspring of an IPod & a phone PDA if they build a camera in - all the better...
The Palm Treos are fairly close to this specification.
Slashdot Mirror
Perfectly. I use a H340, myself.
Troll? WTF?!
strace/truss/ktrace for Linux, Solaris and BSD/MacOS respectively. If a program fails to start, or terminates abnormally, this will usually give me the heads up on why (it's usually a missing file, or bad permissions) without having to break out gdb.
lsof. Useful in so many ways; for debugging situations similar to the above, as well as hardening systems and building chroot environments for specific programs.
tcpdump/snoop/tethereal/ethereal. If you can see what's really on the wire between two network applications, you can probably figure out what's going wrong. Ethereal is particularly nice.
hexdump/khexedit. If you can see what's really in the file used by an application, you can probably figure out what's going wrong. :-) khexedit also has a bonus feature of being able to perform statistical logical operations across the file; useful if you have a file which you suspect has been encrypted with some lame substitution cipher.
After those, the usual - sed, awk, grep, find. It's rare that I can't turn any problem into an awk-shaped nail. :-)
Mod parent up.
If the PC is a relic, where are games going to be played? Sure you've got the xbox #, ps#, nintendo systems but certain games lend themselves better to pcs.
General computers, i.e. systems that can do everything, are not going anywhere for a long time.
I've seen these arguments before. As far as I can see, they boil down to PDAs/Phones/Smartphones/Consoles having limited Human/Computer Interaction peripherals.
Imagine a smartphone that could be plugged into a cradle that connects a full-size keyboard and monitor. Essentially, that would be an ultra-portable laptop. Someone will produce something like that eventually, and I see it becoming the most common form of machine for most people.
As for the gaming side of things, imagine a console that came with a full-size keyboard, HDTV outputs and USB ports for novel controllers (much of that spec is already here) and mass-storage devices such as memory sticks. I don't see anything that would make PCs inherently more suitable than such a console for certain games.
Eventually, (desktop) PCs as we know them will only be used by geeks like us. Even that destination is not certain, due to the various DRM technologies coming this way.
As of 8 September (over a month after his arrest), some of David's possessions had not been returned. I don't know whether they have yet - he doesn't say.
The investigation was thorough, quick, and ultimately vindicating.
Maybe you have built up tolerance of bureaucracy, but I don't call 9.5hrs from arrest to release "quick", especially seeing as he didn't get to call his worried girlfriend until 3hrs later, and get a drink of water until 4hrs later. Further, he hasn't yet received a letter officially stating that he's off the hook.
I'd rather take a 1:1,000,000,000 chance on not getting hit by a suicide bomber while living a nice life than take a 1:2 chance that I'll suffer at the hands of the government so that they can ensure (and really, they can't even do that) that I won't get hit by a terrorist.
Well said. Further, I'm far more worried about getting killed whilst crossing the road than being killed by a terrorist. And I say that as someone who stood eating pizza and watching a suspect package being destroyed outside Paddington a couple of years ago.
To provide the pilots access to lavatory and galley facilities.
I believe El Al planes include such facilities for the cockpit crew.
To minimize the engineering complexity of the aircraft (easier to build a plane with one cabin and one external door than a plane with two unconnected cabins).
To maximize profit capacity on the craft (building in separate facilities for the cockpit means getting rid of 2-3 rows of sets, not even including the engineering costs).
As I understand it, all Israeli El Al planes have a separate external entrance for the pilots, and the cockpit is not accessible from the cabin. Why would you need access to the cockpit from the cabin, or vice versa, during the flight anyway?
My money's on iRiver; their H3xx models in non-US markets can already do this, albeit using a USB cable. It's only USB 1.1, though, which rather limits mass leeching.
FYI, the rule of thumb for restaurants is that you should charge the customer at least three times the cost of the ingredients for their food.
Drinks tend to have an even higher profit margin than food, so it's not inconceivable that some restaurants will play around with this model in an attempt to get you to drink more.
Yes, I found this too. Not only from the fatigue point-of-view, but also because I could more easily distinguish between which drums the drummer was playing, rather than just (bass or floor tom)|(snare)|(cymbal)|(something else).
If I got to the point where we were gigging AND the venue could support in-ear monitors, yeah, I'd probably buy a pair, these days.
But I'm not really at that level, yet.
"I've been performing music since the 60s and there's nothing wrong with my hearing. I can still hear dogs." - attributed to Ian Gillan.
The turning point for me was seeing At the Gates and a couple of other bands at a small pub in 1997 (and, I admit it, seeing a photo of Alx Hellid of Entombed wearing plugs on-stage). Before then, the longest periods of tinnitus I'd experienced were 2.5 days after seeing bands (e.g. Anthrax) in larger venues in the late 80s. After this gig, though, I experienced tinnitus for 4 days. By the end, I was promising myself that if it went, I'd wear plugs at gigs in future. The tinnitus did pass, and I've kept that promise (with the exception of "treating myself" for favourite songs or short sets!)
Similarly, once I started jamming in a band earlier this year, I got fed up with the tinnitus and general fatigue induced by the drummer's brass, and quickly picked up a pair of Elacin ER-20 plugs. I can thoroughly recommend these for use by musicians and concert-goers as the attenuation (-20dB, or 75% of the energy) is fairly flat across the audio spectrum. If you've previously tried foam plugs, or cotton wool, and didn't get on with either, try these and a reckon you'll be pleasantly surprised.
One note though; I saw Cradle of Filth and Mendeed recently, and despite wearing my ER-20s throughout both sets, I still had some minor post-gig tinnitus afterwards that was gone by morning!
Now you qualify your statement! ;-)
You'll note that the gentoo boot cd games haven't been updated in over a year.
Do they need to be, if the game included still works on current hardware?
No activision, EA, or even Linux Game Publishing titles come out on boot cds. Computers aren't consoles, and nobody gives a damn about booting into Linux just for one game.
It's not a selling point for the users, but I would have thought that some developers would have seen the opportunity in developing, testing and shipping their game on a known platform, with known driver versions etc. as a means of reducing their support costs. OTOH, given the awful "support" I've had from Windows game vendors in trying to get their drek working properly, I guess they don't really spend much on support anyway...
But they are Linux ports! As to there being none, you didn't look very hard.
I don't care. It's not my problem. I can refute a bogus signature, but it's potentially impossible to refute a correct PIN entered by a thief.
Also, the CVC isn't supposed to be stored in databases. Of course, that hasn't stopped some vendors from doing so... shortly before their database was stolen!
Because land near volcanoes is generally pretty fertile and good for arable farming.
museums with important artifacts in large cities,
Large cities are generally older cities, and so have more local history and related artifacts.
data centers in flood plains
At a guess, because the margins are low, and lots of space is required. Land in flood plains is presumably pretty cheap.
major network hubs in cities.
At a guess, again, because you need some fairly specialized skills, and you're more likely to find them in a city of 1mill+ than a village of 1000. Also, cities have more requirements for telecommunications, making peering relatively cheap and easy; the last time I looked, it was cheaper to get a leased line installed in Central London, than elsewhere in the UK.
Ah, so you were the one writing games that wouldn't run on my A500 with 68020 accelerator and non-AutoConfig 32-bit memory?! ;-)
I suspect the problems you've encountered with GRUB are SuSE-specific. I've been using it with RH for ages (probably RH6.2 or so - whenever they started making it the default boot loader) and have never had a problem (though my laptop did need a BIOS upgrade before my PS/2->USB mouse/keyboard adaptor was sane). OTOH, I've come across a couple of instances of SuSE's GRUB being completely borked. I didn't perform the initial install, so it could have been a user error, but I'm not so sure...
Some slashdotters may rail against anything other than perfect security, but I think a fair amount of Slashdot vitriol is directed at security measures that are disproportionate in impact or cost compared with the risks they are nominally intended to mitigate.
Not quite; if you want a card that works using the Free XFree86/Xorg drivers and offers stability, future usability and 3D, then you want a Radeon upto the 9250.
If you don't care about 3D, you can buy pretty much anything you like, including on-board.
The Palm Treos are fairly close to this specification.