Do I go with a full distro that has everything and a jar of pickles or do I go with something lighter? More stuff, or less filling? Great taste or difficult installation?
My last pieces arrive today from computergate.com. I bought a case, mb, amd 2500xp and a dozen hard drive racks. Yes, a dozen. At 6.95 each (including both internal frame and actual drive housing) it was cheap and just takes the space of a cdrom. Now I have them setup on the box ready for OS testing. I have several old and some newer drives (3 x 1.6gb, a 20, a few 40s, 60, 10s, etc.) Now I just pop in a hard drive and boot up. I tested this on my 1700, and already have 98/2k dualboot, rh9, slack, bsd, gentoo, xp, and a few purely testing RH hard drives. Just shut down, swap out, and boot again. One platform to get drivers for, one monitor, one keyboard, lots of older parts. I also installed an extra ata controller, and put the cdburner as sec. master, so i have four masters and I can mount up to 2 other drives, mount and repair if I need to, using one of the 3 hd racks. Being all masters, I don't have to change jumpers.
This may seem like overkill, but actually its alot easier and faster for testing, debugging, experimenting and just having fun. Also, at $6.95 ($5.95 if you buy 4+) its also a cheap way to put those old hard drives to use. They have more expensive ones, but these were just fine and ATA133 compatible, including a built in HD fan. Even has a crappy lock/key.
Israel relies on US military hardware and goodwill in a wide range of areas.
Actually, the Isrealis have their own electronic systems that they add to US equipment that is often superior to US gear. My guess is that this is partially due to the fact that they dont have to sweat entire planes, just how to make them work better.
One more time, GPL grants rights, it doesn't restrict.
Nothing personal, but you are incorrect. The GPL grants you the right to use software IF you agree to the terms (and restrictions) therein. You can't take the kernel, make changes, and distribute binaries unless you make your source changes public (ask Linksys/Cisco). You also can't just take a program and remove all the copyright notices, claim it as your own and redistribute it. The primary restrictions on GPL software refers to distribution rather than use, but it still restricts, none the less.
The key is that the restrictions are reasonable in the case of GPL, but yes, it DOES restrict what you can do. Only Public Domain has NO restrictions, because no license is needed. You can rerelease it as proprietary, claim it as your own, etc. Every other license does have restrictions, period. As a matter of fact, the GPL has significantly MORE restrictions that a BSD style license, since it requires you make the source code available to anyone you distribute binaries to. It also does not allow you to add further restrictions, which the BSD license does. A GPL license can't be revoked, another restriction on the author.
We talk about Free Software, but the fact is, the GPL is designed to keep the software itself Free, open to all, as if the software was an intity itself. Developers must open their distributed changes, virtually free of charge. Most would say this is a fair trade off, benefiting the majority, but its still a very significant restriction. I would even go so far as to say it is what keeps many companies out of the GPL, they don't want to give their competition their software for free, which is fine as long as they don't actually distribute GPL software.
www.gnu.org has the GPL itself. Its a bit long winded but pretty clear on these points.
"Oh yeah, he said he did it, but saying he's guilty would be horrible! He'd have to go to jail or something! And he's old already, look, he has lines on his face! If he was a bad guy, wouldn't he lie and say he didn't do it? Millionaires are nice people! This other millionaire came by during a break and gave us all some bling-bling*, and said he was proud we were going to find him not guilty. Besides, the dead guy was some old fart that talked too much, so we know hoe he feels..."
If you are going to quote someone, at least make it an actual quote. As much as I didn't like seeing him go free, the jury ACTUALLY said that there was reasonable doubt as to his guilt. They said that they may have personally thought he was guilty, but the evidence presented wasn't enough to find him guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. This means two things: The prosecution didn't present a good case and the system works. Rather than just assume he was guilty, they followed their conscience and aquitted him. We might not like the outcome, but the jury did exactly what they were supposed to do, ONLY look at the evidence presented in the case.
The problem wasn't the system (which worked perfectly) it was a prosecution that did not present a valid case. Blame the DA, but not the jurists.
What would happen if someone tried to turn in a paper printed on a 9-pin DMP in college today?? heh.
We still use 9 pin dmps at both my job and a business I own. Only way to handle multipart forms. Of course now they are setup on standalone print servers, using tcp/ip. They may be the most expensive to buy, but they are the cheapest to maintain. Mainly Oki 420s, but one Epson T-1000 that I got free when I purchased my then brand new IBM PS/1 386/20:D Use it for labels.
But yea, I doubt anyone is using dot matrix for term papers, since they are not as "pretty" as laser or inkjet. I wonder if a professor would even refuse a paper produced on dmp?
And unless you hand coded those escape sequences into your word processing documents...
Hate to burst your bubble, but we used to, for form letters. Granted, not that handy at home, but very handy in an office. Im not the original author but I AM a bit nostalgic about the good old days for very good reasons. I love the new, faster gear, but loving to hardware hack, it is harder to enjoy it when you can't get good specs on hardware. This is part of the reason I am switching from MS to Linux, to get closer to the hardware.
Todays fun: I installed Heyu and BlueLava on my Linux station here at the house. Setup Apache, forwareded port 80 from the router, worked on a script to change update the DNS server at the office, installed a few x10 modules and a simple plugin serial port controller. Then I called the wife, and got her to turn the lights in the house on and off, from her web browser. 40 miles away. Very high cool factor, especially for only one days work. Hard to do this without knowing enough about the hardware to talk directly with it.
THIS is why some of us are "nostalgic" for more information. We are the same guys that would dialup another computer from the DOS shell and then actually do something, just because we could. Lots of us don't mind, and rather enjoy, getting down to the hardware level, and yes, would like hardware better documented. I do miss that.
Oh come on now, the UN has done some very good things over the past 50 years. A few, off the top of my head:
No world wars in 50+ years Has negotiated and enforced many peace treaties throughout that time. Economic and other sanctions have had positive effects on some countries. WHO has done some fantastic work in the 3rd world. Is the world's first supra-national organization and, more remarkably, has had its power seriously challenged only a few times. Has, respectively, saved the countries of Korea, Kuwait,and many others i'm forgetting by using multinational forces to defeat a common agressor enemy.
I thought you were being sarcastic until I read your last line. I would have to respectfully disagree with the success of the UN, while holding back the urge to bust into laughter. The UN HAS done a few things well, but very few, and I would hardly call them successful in preventing war, their authority is not challenged because they have none: Their authority is soley derived by the amount of respect they earn, and that isn't much. Their great successes in Korea and Kuwait? I would not call the current situation success, and I think you give the UN entirely too much credit for Kuwait. Its not personal, I am sure you really believe what you said, but I am pretty sure a large percentage of people would disagree with your view of the UN.
More likely, the UN will try to fix something that is not broke, and again, it will take the "wild west" USA to keep it from happening. Of course, the US will catch all kinds of flack for it, and be accused of trying to run the world, but in the end, it will be the US and real allies that refusal to be regulated by the UN that will keep their hands off of it.
Go ahead and flame or mod down, I got karma to burn, and I know 1/2 the people will curse, and the other half will cheer. I just see yet another opportunity to get put down for doing the right thing...
I should note I don't care about 3D performance as I'm not a gamer, so YMMV if you're going for 3D. Also, people bitch and moan about how horrid ATI's Windows drivers are, but in five years of owning nothing but ATI video cards I haven't had a minute's trouble with any of them.
Well, I game on windows, so the drivers really do matter alot. I have not used ATI in a while, used to love them, but their windows drivers (before 4 years ago) sucked ass. Very unstable while gaming. On the other hand, on Linux, I just want great 2D since there really are not many games out that use 3d on Linux yet. The $60 price range is exactly what I am looking at for this box. Like I said, i have a g2/mx400 with 64 megs, which is more than enough card, but I am wanting to get away from nvidia on linux, and hopefully windows, unless they open up their driver source.
Keep in mind, all drivers are great, if you dont push them to the limits:D I do handling 100mb-400mb files in photoshop, and playing soldier of fortune 2. Both I do at the highest possible resolution, which is 1600x1200x32bit for 2d, and 1280x1024x32bit for 3d (FPS sucks above that). This usually seperates good from bad pretty fast, when you are watching blocky redraws in photoshop, or get corruption. The task bar is usually the first to go, then the icons all disappear, and then all your windows......
Amen. My last Matrox was a G400, after having a couple of 200s. Killer for 2D work. Marginal for 3D, but that wasn't my biggest concern. Matrox's lack of support for linux has pushed me away from them, just as the new motherboard I just ordered does NOT have nforce chips. I will be using an old g2 on that box (pure developmental box) because it was in the pile, and dont have a better one, but getting away from nvidia as fast as i can, too.
Its not just matrox and nvidia tho, i just ordered 4 of the CR-53 boxes with via's 1ghz chip. great deal, good box, wont run linux for shit. Again, no decent support, even tho they say it will run Linux (yea, with a SVGA X server....) I am planning to buy a mid level ATI for this box asap, since they seem to support other OS's better. (mac, linux, etc). My only concern is the years of evidence that ATI drivers rather suck.
If Matrox would just open up and produce some decent linux drivers, I would be very happy to use their products over anyone else.
If there was a buy out of Novell, it would definately spell the end of Red Hat.
I doubt it. I don't use RedHat because they are the biggest. I use RedHat because they make a good product, they have good service, and they always HAVE, so I have invested a great deal of time and resources learning it. All Linuxs (Linuxi?) is NOT alike.
I just bought a bunch of hard drive racks from computergate.com so I can swap out drives with different OS's and compare/test/learn on a testing platform I built (amd 2500xp 512mb). I have drives with RH, Slack, FreeBSD, Lindows, Win98-2k dual, Gentoo, etc. I haven't added SuSe yet since its not free, but its due soon. I have learned that different linux distros are as different as BSD and Linux. Yes, switching distros would not be as difficult as switching from MS to RH, but its still not trivial. RH also has up2date and the RedHat Network, which is a great service.
RedHat has done well to build customer loyalty. Yes, they have also pissed me off a few times with policy changes, but all and all I am happy with them. I am NOT going to change distros unless there is a reason that more than pays for the migration. I am only a small customer, that uses RHN and not enterprise services (I roll my own) but its still money, a few hundred they get from me every year.
Money. Since Novell just paid $210m for SuSe, and SCO's market cap is below that, and sales are below that, they do not have the resources to do so. The best they could hope for is a stock swap where each would own part of the other. SCO would be the smaller of the two. A hostile take over is impossible simply because they lack the cash, even at inflated stock prices.
Novell is not likely to want to merge with SCO in a stock swap. What exactly does SCO have to offer them? They have no technology, no sales, no future. Novell purchased SuSe to insure that Novell has a future, and can integrate its legacy technology with cutting edge Linux, which is a smart move. Swapping stock with SCO, a company that is only in the litigation business, would be suicide.
so perhaps it's a bit harsh to unduly criticise Dell...
Wasn't. Was comparing them to my IBM servers. As I said, they are fine for non-critical systems, and are good for the money, but my *experience* has shown that they are not as robust as IBM. This is based on years of using both brands, not only in the server room, but on the desktop as well. In the server room, they are adequate for many tasks, but there is NO comparison to IBM in quality. Its not bashing Dell, its just real world experience.
Rented boxes are not critical systems, not by IT standards, although uptime is important. I know because I rent a rack for offsite backups. Dells are designed to be CHEAPER than IBM, not as powerful/robust/redundant. For most people, this is adequate, and even for lots of my uses it is, just not all. My primary DNS server, for instance, is an old IBM pentium pro 200 (dual) box with IBM drives that I purchased new for around $4500 (no drives, no os, 1 cpu, 32mb ram). Over 40,000 hours on it and I still consider it more reliable than a new Dell. I consider primary DNS to be a critical system, TOO critical to use inexpensive parts, regardless of brand.
You speak of Intel NIC cards, but Intel is who makes many of the parts for Dell. They all use intel chips, chipsets, etc. That is part of the problem. IBM uses some Intel chips, but uses their own for server management. Personally, I'm just buying time until IBM finally releases their Quad 2.0ghz 970 server (970 = G5) for $3500 mid 04. That will replace both of my Dell servers, and two of my IBMs as well, and I will be rid of Intel chips completely, on the server side. Intel on the client side is just fine, although AMD gives more bang for the buck. Dell doesn't offer that option anymore tho.
I have had pretty good luck with two of my dual cpu 1400sc for what I expected, but the drives DO bother me, Fujis... so far no blow up in 2 years/2.5 years
As much as I hate to admit it Dell is not bad for a x86 server...
I have a few Dell servers. All and all, I am pretty happy considering what I spent, but they still do not compare in quality and reliability to my IBM servers (pc325's from 1997, running 24/7, still running). Its the difference in 99% vs. 99.9%. It may only seem like.9%, but its all the difference in the world. My Dell's cost 1/4th the price of the IBMs, but that.9% reliability has paid for itself a few times over.
I will still use my Dells for non-critical web serving, routing, backup dns, etc. but the average Sun box would blow these lower/mid level IBMs away, and there really IS no comparison to Sun boxes. Apple is also much more reliable and robust than the average Dell. Same for HP, and others.
I like my Dells, but realistically, they are decent boxes thrown together from off the shelf desktop grade parts.
If windows doesn't have the pwd command, I'm sure you could get the source and build it yourself.
Its easier to just install Cygwin, and then make sure your..cygwin\bin directory is in your windows path statement. This lets me use pico, less, cat, grep and over 300 other unix utilities, and even start Xwindows on my XP box. The nicest thing is now I can start a bash shell from a command prompt. Cygwin even mounts your windows filesystem as../cygwin/c and other letters:D
2600 used to be a magic number in Phreaking (phone hacking). Way back when, when you put a quarter in a pay phone, it would generate a 2600hz tone to tell the system a quarter was put in. All you had to do was have a tone generator that produced a 2600hz tone and you make free phone calls. Other tones did other things as well, inclucing actually roaming around the phone companies network if you were especially good. Boxes that generated different tones were called by colors, Blue boxes, brown boxes, etc. You can still find the schematics all over the net and get the parts at Radio Shack, but you would be hard pressed to find a system that it would work on nowadays.
But phreaking used to be 133+, but if you shove a 2600hz tone done a payphone nowdays, you are more likely to get a free nights stay in jail. Go check out 2600.com for more info, but be forewarned its pretty dry reading.
I think you hit the nail on the head. I have been experiementing with Linux in a small business. All our servers except one, its perfect. On the desktop, it would be acceptable but not optimal, except that commercial apps are quite expensive for our needs. Last quote was $18000 to replace an app that only costs me $1000 on a Windows platform. So we are still using 95/98.
Linux *isn't* ready for the desktop yet, not for most people. I have been working with RH, Slack, FreeBSD and while I love them personally, they are not up to the task quiet yet. I look forward to the day when they will, in a year or two (or three). We have been looking at Apple, but its still a major migration and Apple isn't particularly cheap. So the question is: Can we live with 95/98 for 2 more years? It appears that is what we will be doing.
You don't have to have click-through on an ad banner for it to be effective marketing.
There's no reason web advertising should be judged any differently than print advertising -- if people just look at it and end up with an increased awareness of the product or service being advertised, that ad is successful. The reason banner ads were so overvalued during the dot-com boom and subsequently declared a "failure" is that advertisers had dollar signs in their eyes, expecting web marketing to result in immediate sales. People don't normally make purchasing decisions that way.
You make an excellent point. We have been running banner ads for years now, and know the actual return on them. We now budget them for brand awareness more rather than direct sales. They are marginally effective compared to other types of web advertising. The key for those of us in marketing isn't just what it sells, but at what cost: Average cost per unit sold. Most banner ad campaigns fail because people are expecting the wrong kind of results from them. It takes a lot of impressions to get someone to click, and if you are not targeting your demographics by search terms or catagories, you are wasting your money.
If Norton does make banner blocking a default setting, it will influence what I am willing to pay for banner ads, and may cause me to put the dollars in other forms of web or traditional advertising. I can't blame Norton if they do because they are just making a default out of what I already do with other programs. It *is* a service, just not to advertisers and webmasters.
I don't think 30 years is a fad. He said the same thing on his last day that he did on the first. Just because its new to you, doesn't mean its new. Some of us have been doing Atkins properly for a while now, and find it quite healthy if done correctly, not just "eat all the meat you want". The key is to educate yourself about doing it properly. You obviously have not.
You are 100% correct. In a similar situation in life, From 210-220 to 175 in six months, and steady for six months now, for a full year total. I treat sugar as toxic, and avoid wheat and aspertame as well. Never felt better in my life.
Criminals aside, if you outlaw guns, only the government will have guns. And that, after all, was the point of the second ammendment.
That is an excellent point. The whole purpose of the 2nd amendment was to make sure this didn't happen. Imagine 1776 if only the British had weapons....
People seem to think it doesn't matter that the citizens couldn't protect themselves from our own military if they decided to take over. I would beg to differ. Comparing "just feet on the ground", you have more skilled marksmen out of the military than in, by a few million, including ex military (like myself). Outside of nukes, they would not stand a chance.
But let me ask you one question: why does the U.S. have much higher murder and aggravated assault offences than any other Western (ie North American, Western European) nation?
All I can offer is an opinion, based on being an American, and a former criminal defense investigator. First, the US is no longer the murder capital of the world. Our crime rates compared to the rest of the world are not as high as myth has it, but I can accept that it is higher than many.
The vast majority of crime in the US is non violent (simple theft or burglary). The majority of these crimes are "crimes of opportunity", ie: You see an unlocked car with a package in it, so you open the door and steal the package. There is more chances to steal here than in Somalia, for instance, but similiar to Western Europe, so that would explain higher theft in the Western world in general, but not compared to Europe.
Reporting of crime and prosecution is actually high here in the US compared to many places. In all places, some crime goes unreported, but I can see the US having at least a slightly lower unreported crime rate. This is conjecture, but its based on the fact that the higher the likelyhood that reporting a crime will get your stuff back, the more likely you are to report it. Crime here is highly reported and public record, by law. You can access most data on most crimes here by simply looking and asking at the Courthouse.
Culturally, there is a difference as well. Some of the most popular TV shows here in the US would be "America's Most Wanted" and "Cops", and historically, Adam 12, Dragnet, etc. In these shows, the cops get the bad guys, and I DO believe there is a certain amount of conditioning that if you report a crime, they will get them. This ties in with the above, since it would make you more likely to report a crime, even if minor (stolen lawn mower, for instance)
There are other cultural influences that are not necessarily positive, but here not the less. Many people simply want something for nothing, and the higher availability of "stuff" can lead to more crimes of opportunity. We DO take things much more for granted than many other countries. In America, the average person that qualifies as legally "poor" will have two TVs, VCR or DVD, Playstation, at least one car, phone services, air conditioning and heat, and 3 meals a day. Yes, there are some homeless people, most of which are self inflicted by drugs or alcohol. But American's EXPECT to have stuff, as if its a RIGHT. This does lead to lots of petty theft, and was much of what I dealt with as an investigator: poor people stealing from their neighbor.
This is sure to piss off a few readers, but before they reply, keep in mind that theft is least common where everyone is in the same economic class, ie: poor. You won't have as much theft (the most common crime there is) where everyone is in the same situation, having little. If you compare England and the US, for instance, you find that similar results in crime statistics for both, which have similar cultural systems, although quite different political systems.
In a nutshell, my opinion is it is mainly cultural due to wanting something for nothing by people who still have a decent amount to begin with, and the fact that we are a more violent culture in many other ways. And higher reporting of crime, also because of cultural influences. To paraphrase Jack Nicholson: "Only in America, if you suck a tit in a movie, its rated R, but if you shoot it off with a shotgun is rated PG". Our history started with a bloody revolution and we have always had a fairly high tolorance for it.
Guns don't kill people. People with guns kill people.
I just had to comment after all the wackos did. You did an excellent job of rounding up all the libs with that comment. But they still don't get it. Some still think that if you outlaw guns, no one will have them, including bad guys. Ironically, its not that hard to make a home made weapon anyway, especially with lower power (but deadly enough) shells like.22 or.380.
People seem to forget that the % of people who die in wars or crime is lower now, than it was before guns. Anyone having a doubt about how you can kill without a gun should go rent Joan of Arc. Quite vivid. If a mugger can't point a gun (loaded or not) then he IS more likely to just slit your throat anyway.
I normally don't care about spelling errors, but my god, there had to be over 50 different ones in that article. I know the spelling nazis on/. will have a field day with this one. Amazing how educated people, be they programmers or journalists, can't spell.
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Do I go with a full distro that has everything and a jar of pickles or do I go with something lighter? More stuff, or less filling? Great taste or difficult installation?
My last pieces arrive today from computergate.com. I bought a case, mb, amd 2500xp and a dozen hard drive racks. Yes, a dozen. At 6.95 each (including both internal frame and actual drive housing) it was cheap and just takes the space of a cdrom. Now I have them setup on the box ready for OS testing. I have several old and some newer drives (3 x 1.6gb, a 20, a few 40s, 60, 10s, etc.) Now I just pop in a hard drive and boot up. I tested this on my 1700, and already have 98/2k dualboot, rh9, slack, bsd, gentoo, xp, and a few purely testing RH hard drives. Just shut down, swap out, and boot again. One platform to get drivers for, one monitor, one keyboard, lots of older parts. I also installed an extra ata controller, and put the cdburner as sec. master, so i have four masters and I can mount up to 2 other drives, mount and repair if I need to, using one of the 3 hd racks. Being all masters, I don't have to change jumpers.
This may seem like overkill, but actually its alot easier and faster for testing, debugging, experimenting and just having fun. Also, at $6.95 ($5.95 if you buy 4+) its also a cheap way to put those old hard drives to use. They have more expensive ones, but these were just fine and ATA133 compatible, including a built in HD fan. Even has a crappy lock/key.
Israel relies on US military hardware and goodwill in a wide range of areas.
Actually, the Isrealis have their own electronic systems that they add to US equipment that is often superior to US gear. My guess is that this is partially due to the fact that they dont have to sweat entire planes, just how to make them work better.
One more time, GPL grants rights, it doesn't restrict.
Nothing personal, but you are incorrect. The GPL grants you the right to use software IF you agree to the terms (and restrictions) therein. You can't take the kernel, make changes, and distribute binaries unless you make your source changes public (ask Linksys/Cisco). You also can't just take a program and remove all the copyright notices, claim it as your own and redistribute it. The primary restrictions on GPL software refers to distribution rather than use, but it still restricts, none the less.
The key is that the restrictions are reasonable in the case of GPL, but yes, it DOES restrict what you can do. Only Public Domain has NO restrictions, because no license is needed. You can rerelease it as proprietary, claim it as your own, etc. Every other license does have restrictions, period. As a matter of fact, the GPL has significantly MORE restrictions that a BSD style license, since it requires you make the source code available to anyone you distribute binaries to. It also does not allow you to add further restrictions, which the BSD license does. A GPL license can't be revoked, another restriction on the author.
We talk about Free Software, but the fact is, the GPL is designed to keep the software itself Free, open to all, as if the software was an intity itself. Developers must open their distributed changes, virtually free of charge. Most would say this is a fair trade off, benefiting the majority, but its still a very significant restriction. I would even go so far as to say it is what keeps many companies out of the GPL, they don't want to give their competition their software for free, which is fine as long as they don't actually distribute GPL software.
www.gnu.org has the GPL itself. Its a bit long winded but pretty clear on these points.
"Oh yeah, he said he did it, but saying he's guilty would be horrible! He'd have to go to jail or something! And he's old already, look, he has lines on his face! If he was a bad guy, wouldn't he lie and say he didn't do it? Millionaires are nice people! This other millionaire came by during a break and gave us all some bling-bling*, and said he was proud we were going to find him not guilty. Besides, the dead guy was some old fart that talked too much, so we know hoe he feels..."
If you are going to quote someone, at least make it an actual quote. As much as I didn't like seeing him go free, the jury ACTUALLY said that there was reasonable doubt as to his guilt. They said that they may have personally thought he was guilty, but the evidence presented wasn't enough to find him guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. This means two things: The prosecution didn't present a good case and the system works. Rather than just assume he was guilty, they followed their conscience and aquitted him. We might not like the outcome, but the jury did exactly what they were supposed to do, ONLY look at the evidence presented in the case.
The problem wasn't the system (which worked perfectly) it was a prosecution that did not present a valid case. Blame the DA, but not the jurists.
What would happen if someone tried to turn in a paper printed on a 9-pin DMP in college today?? heh.
:D Use it for labels.
We still use 9 pin dmps at both my job and a business I own. Only way to handle multipart forms. Of course now they are setup on standalone print servers, using tcp/ip. They may be the most expensive to buy, but they are the cheapest to maintain. Mainly Oki 420s, but one Epson T-1000 that I got free when I purchased my then brand new IBM PS/1 386/20
But yea, I doubt anyone is using dot matrix for term papers, since they are not as "pretty" as laser or inkjet. I wonder if a professor would even refuse a paper produced on dmp?
And unless you hand coded those escape sequences into your word processing documents ...
Hate to burst your bubble, but we used to, for form letters. Granted, not that handy at home, but very handy in an office. Im not the original author but I AM a bit nostalgic about the good old days for very good reasons. I love the new, faster gear, but loving to hardware hack, it is harder to enjoy it when you can't get good specs on hardware. This is part of the reason I am switching from MS to Linux, to get closer to the hardware.
Todays fun: I installed Heyu and BlueLava on my Linux station here at the house. Setup Apache, forwareded port 80 from the router, worked on a script to change update the DNS server at the office, installed a few x10 modules and a simple plugin serial port controller. Then I called the wife, and got her to turn the lights in the house on and off, from her web browser. 40 miles away. Very high cool factor, especially for only one days work. Hard to do this without knowing enough about the hardware to talk directly with it.
THIS is why some of us are "nostalgic" for more information. We are the same guys that would dialup another computer from the DOS shell and then actually do something, just because we could. Lots of us don't mind, and rather enjoy, getting down to the hardware level, and yes, would like hardware better documented. I do miss that.
Oh come on now, the UN has done some very good things over the past 50 years. A few, off the top of my head:
No world wars in 50+ years
Has negotiated and enforced many peace treaties throughout that time.
Economic and other sanctions have had positive effects on some countries.
WHO has done some fantastic work in the 3rd world.
Is the world's first supra-national organization and, more remarkably, has had its power seriously challenged only a few times.
Has, respectively, saved the countries of Korea, Kuwait,and many others i'm forgetting by using multinational forces to defeat a common agressor enemy.
I thought you were being sarcastic until I read your last line. I would have to respectfully disagree with the success of the UN, while holding back the urge to bust into laughter. The UN HAS done a few things well, but very few, and I would hardly call them successful in preventing war, their authority is not challenged because they have none: Their authority is soley derived by the amount of respect they earn, and that isn't much. Their great successes in Korea and Kuwait? I would not call the current situation success, and I think you give the UN entirely too much credit for Kuwait. Its not personal, I am sure you really believe what you said, but I am pretty sure a large percentage of people would disagree with your view of the UN.
More likely, the UN will try to fix something that is not broke, and again, it will take the "wild west" USA to keep it from happening. Of course, the US will catch all kinds of flack for it, and be accused of trying to run the world, but in the end, it will be the US and real allies that refusal to be regulated by the UN that will keep their hands off of it.
Go ahead and flame or mod down, I got karma to burn, and I know 1/2 the people will curse, and the other half will cheer. I just see yet another opportunity to get put down for doing the right thing...
I should note I don't care about 3D performance as I'm not a gamer, so YMMV if you're going for 3D. Also, people bitch and moan about how horrid ATI's Windows drivers are, but in five years of owning nothing but ATI video cards I haven't had a minute's trouble with any of them.
:D I do handling 100mb-400mb files in photoshop, and playing soldier of fortune 2. Both I do at the highest possible resolution, which is 1600x1200x32bit for 2d, and 1280x1024x32bit for 3d (FPS sucks above that). This usually seperates good from bad pretty fast, when you are watching blocky redraws in photoshop, or get corruption. The task bar is usually the first to go, then the icons all disappear, and then all your windows......
Well, I game on windows, so the drivers really do matter alot. I have not used ATI in a while, used to love them, but their windows drivers (before 4 years ago) sucked ass. Very unstable while gaming. On the other hand, on Linux, I just want great 2D since there really are not many games out that use 3d on Linux yet. The $60 price range is exactly what I am looking at for this box. Like I said, i have a g2/mx400 with 64 megs, which is more than enough card, but I am wanting to get away from nvidia on linux, and hopefully windows, unless they open up their driver source.
Keep in mind, all drivers are great, if you dont push them to the limits
Amen. My last Matrox was a G400, after having a couple of 200s. Killer for 2D work. Marginal for 3D, but that wasn't my biggest concern. Matrox's lack of support for linux has pushed me away from them, just as the new motherboard I just ordered does NOT have nforce chips. I will be using an old g2 on that box (pure developmental box) because it was in the pile, and dont have a better one, but getting away from nvidia as fast as i can, too.
Its not just matrox and nvidia tho, i just ordered 4 of the CR-53 boxes with via's 1ghz chip. great deal, good box, wont run linux for shit. Again, no decent support, even tho they say it will run Linux (yea, with a SVGA X server....) I am planning to buy a mid level ATI for this box asap, since they seem to support other OS's better. (mac, linux, etc). My only concern is the years of evidence that ATI drivers rather suck.
If Matrox would just open up and produce some decent linux drivers, I would be very happy to use their products over anyone else.
If there was a buy out of Novell, it would definately spell the end of Red Hat.
I doubt it. I don't use RedHat because they are the biggest. I use RedHat because they make a good product, they have good service, and they always HAVE, so I have invested a great deal of time and resources learning it. All Linuxs (Linuxi?) is NOT alike.
I just bought a bunch of hard drive racks from computergate.com so I can swap out drives with different OS's and compare/test/learn on a testing platform I built (amd 2500xp 512mb). I have drives with RH, Slack, FreeBSD, Lindows, Win98-2k dual, Gentoo, etc. I haven't added SuSe yet since its not free, but its due soon. I have learned that different linux distros are as different as BSD and Linux. Yes, switching distros would not be as difficult as switching from MS to RH, but its still not trivial. RH also has up2date and the RedHat Network, which is a great service.
RedHat has done well to build customer loyalty. Yes, they have also pissed me off a few times with policy changes, but all and all I am happy with them. I am NOT going to change distros unless there is a reason that more than pays for the migration. I am only a small customer, that uses RHN and not enterprise services (I roll my own) but its still money, a few hundred they get from me every year.
And what is to stop SCO from buying Novell/SuSE ?
Money. Since Novell just paid $210m for SuSe, and SCO's market cap is below that, and sales are below that, they do not have the resources to do so. The best they could hope for is a stock swap where each would own part of the other. SCO would be the smaller of the two. A hostile take over is impossible simply because they lack the cash, even at inflated stock prices.
Novell is not likely to want to merge with SCO in a stock swap. What exactly does SCO have to offer them? They have no technology, no sales, no future. Novell purchased SuSe to insure that Novell has a future, and can integrate its legacy technology with cutting edge Linux, which is a smart move. Swapping stock with SCO, a company that is only in the litigation business, would be suicide.
so perhaps it's a bit harsh to unduly criticise Dell...
Wasn't. Was comparing them to my IBM servers. As I said, they are fine for non-critical systems, and are good for the money, but my *experience* has shown that they are not as robust as IBM. This is based on years of using both brands, not only in the server room, but on the desktop as well. In the server room, they are adequate for many tasks, but there is NO comparison to IBM in quality. Its not bashing Dell, its just real world experience.
Rented boxes are not critical systems, not by IT standards, although uptime is important. I know because I rent a rack for offsite backups. Dells are designed to be CHEAPER than IBM, not as powerful/robust/redundant. For most people, this is adequate, and even for lots of my uses it is, just not all. My primary DNS server, for instance, is an old IBM pentium pro 200 (dual) box with IBM drives that I purchased new for around $4500 (no drives, no os, 1 cpu, 32mb ram). Over 40,000 hours on it and I still consider it more reliable than a new Dell. I consider primary DNS to be a critical system, TOO critical to use inexpensive parts, regardless of brand.
You speak of Intel NIC cards, but Intel is who makes many of the parts for Dell. They all use intel chips, chipsets, etc. That is part of the problem. IBM uses some Intel chips, but uses their own for server management. Personally, I'm just buying time until IBM finally releases their Quad 2.0ghz 970 server (970 = G5) for $3500 mid 04. That will replace both of my Dell servers, and two of my IBMs as well, and I will be rid of Intel chips completely, on the server side. Intel on the client side is just fine, although AMD gives more bang for the buck. Dell doesn't offer that option anymore tho.
I have had pretty good luck with two of my dual cpu 1400sc for what I expected, but the drives DO bother me, Fujis... so far no blow up in 2 years/2.5 years
As much as I hate to admit it Dell is not bad for a x86 server...
.9%, but its all the difference in the world. My Dell's cost 1/4th the price of the IBMs, but that .9% reliability has paid for itself a few times over.
I have a few Dell servers. All and all, I am pretty happy considering what I spent, but they still do not compare in quality and reliability to my IBM servers (pc325's from 1997, running 24/7, still running). Its the difference in 99% vs. 99.9%. It may only seem like
I will still use my Dells for non-critical web serving, routing, backup dns, etc. but the average Sun box would blow these lower/mid level IBMs away, and there really IS no comparison to Sun boxes. Apple is also much more reliable and robust than the average Dell. Same for HP, and others.
I like my Dells, but realistically, they are decent boxes thrown together from off the shelf desktop grade parts.
If windows doesn't have the pwd command, I'm sure you could get the source and build it yourself.
..cygwin\bin directory is in your windows path statement. This lets me use pico, less, cat, grep and over 300 other unix utilities, and even start Xwindows on my XP box. The nicest thing is now I can start a bash shell from a command prompt. Cygwin even mounts your windows filesystem as ../cygwin/c and other letters :D
Its easier to just install Cygwin, and then make sure your
2600 used to be a magic number in Phreaking (phone hacking). Way back when, when you put a quarter in a pay phone, it would generate a 2600hz tone to tell the system a quarter was put in. All you had to do was have a tone generator that produced a 2600hz tone and you make free phone calls. Other tones did other things as well, inclucing actually roaming around the phone companies network if you were especially good. Boxes that generated different tones were called by colors, Blue boxes, brown boxes, etc. You can still find the schematics all over the net and get the parts at Radio Shack, but you would be hard pressed to find a system that it would work on nowadays.
But phreaking used to be 133+, but if you shove a 2600hz tone done a payphone nowdays, you are more likely to get a free nights stay in jail. Go check out 2600.com for more info, but be forewarned its pretty dry reading.
you are thinking about the CDC, Cult of the Dead Cow, cultdeadcow.com
They sell T-shirts, too.
I think you hit the nail on the head. I have been experiementing with Linux in a small business. All our servers except one, its perfect. On the desktop, it would be acceptable but not optimal, except that commercial apps are quite expensive for our needs. Last quote was $18000 to replace an app that only costs me $1000 on a Windows platform. So we are still using 95/98.
Linux *isn't* ready for the desktop yet, not for most people. I have been working with RH, Slack, FreeBSD and while I love them personally, they are not up to the task quiet yet. I look forward to the day when they will, in a year or two (or three). We have been looking at Apple, but its still a major migration and Apple isn't particularly cheap. So the question is: Can we live with 95/98 for 2 more years? It appears that is what we will be doing.
You don't have to have click-through on an ad banner for it to be effective marketing.
There's no reason web advertising should be judged any differently than print advertising -- if people just look at it and end up with an increased awareness of the product or service being advertised, that ad is successful. The reason banner ads were so overvalued during the dot-com boom and subsequently declared a "failure" is that advertisers had dollar signs in their eyes, expecting web marketing to result in immediate sales. People don't normally make purchasing decisions that way.
You make an excellent point. We have been running banner ads for years now, and know the actual return on them. We now budget them for brand awareness more rather than direct sales. They are marginally effective compared to other types of web advertising. The key for those of us in marketing isn't just what it sells, but at what cost: Average cost per unit sold. Most banner ad campaigns fail because people are expecting the wrong kind of results from them. It takes a lot of impressions to get someone to click, and if you are not targeting your demographics by search terms or catagories, you are wasting your money.
If Norton does make banner blocking a default setting, it will influence what I am willing to pay for banner ads, and may cause me to put the dollars in other forms of web or traditional advertising. I can't blame Norton if they do because they are just making a default out of what I already do with other programs. It *is* a service, just not to advertisers and webmasters.
Fad diets...
I don't think 30 years is a fad. He said the same thing on his last day that he did on the first. Just because its new to you, doesn't mean its new. Some of us have been doing Atkins properly for a while now, and find it quite healthy if done correctly, not just "eat all the meat you want". The key is to educate yourself about doing it properly. You obviously have not.
You are 100% correct. In a similar situation in life, From 210-220 to 175 in six months, and steady for six months now, for a full year total. I treat sugar as toxic, and avoid wheat and aspertame as well. Never felt better in my life.
Criminals aside, if you outlaw guns, only the government will have guns. And that, after all, was the point of the second ammendment.
That is an excellent point. The whole purpose of the 2nd amendment was to make sure this didn't happen. Imagine 1776 if only the British had weapons....
People seem to think it doesn't matter that the citizens couldn't protect themselves from our own military if they decided to take over. I would beg to differ. Comparing "just feet on the ground", you have more skilled marksmen out of the military than in, by a few million, including ex military (like myself). Outside of nukes, they would not stand a chance.
But let me ask you one question: why does the U.S. have much higher murder and aggravated assault offences than any other Western (ie North American, Western European) nation?
All I can offer is an opinion, based on being an American, and a former criminal defense investigator. First, the US is no longer the murder capital of the world. Our crime rates compared to the rest of the world are not as high as myth has it, but I can accept that it is higher than many.
The vast majority of crime in the US is non violent (simple theft or burglary). The majority of these crimes are "crimes of opportunity", ie: You see an unlocked car with a package in it, so you open the door and steal the package. There is more chances to steal here than in Somalia, for instance, but similiar to Western Europe, so that would explain higher theft in the Western world in general, but not compared to Europe.
Reporting of crime and prosecution is actually high here in the US compared to many places. In all places, some crime goes unreported, but I can see the US having at least a slightly lower unreported crime rate. This is conjecture, but its based on the fact that the higher the likelyhood that reporting a crime will get your stuff back, the more likely you are to report it. Crime here is highly reported and public record, by law. You can access most data on most crimes here by simply looking and asking at the Courthouse.
Culturally, there is a difference as well. Some of the most popular TV shows here in the US would be "America's Most Wanted" and "Cops", and historically, Adam 12, Dragnet, etc. In these shows, the cops get the bad guys, and I DO believe there is a certain amount of conditioning that if you report a crime, they will get them. This ties in with the above, since it would make you more likely to report a crime, even if minor (stolen lawn mower, for instance)
There are other cultural influences that are not necessarily positive, but here not the less. Many people simply want something for nothing, and the higher availability of "stuff" can lead to more crimes of opportunity. We DO take things much more for granted than many other countries. In America, the average person that qualifies as legally "poor" will have two TVs, VCR or DVD, Playstation, at least one car, phone services, air conditioning and heat, and 3 meals a day. Yes, there are some homeless people, most of which are self inflicted by drugs or alcohol. But American's EXPECT to have stuff, as if its a RIGHT. This does lead to lots of petty theft, and was much of what I dealt with as an investigator: poor people stealing from their neighbor.
This is sure to piss off a few readers, but before they reply, keep in mind that theft is least common where everyone is in the same economic class, ie: poor. You won't have as much theft (the most common crime there is) where everyone is in the same situation, having little. If you compare England and the US, for instance, you find that similar results in crime statistics for both, which have similar cultural systems, although quite different political systems.
In a nutshell, my opinion is it is mainly cultural due to wanting something for nothing by people who still have a decent amount to begin with, and the fact that we are a more violent culture in many other ways. And higher reporting of crime, also because of cultural influences. To paraphrase Jack Nicholson: "Only in America, if you suck a tit in a movie, its rated R, but if you shoot it off with a shotgun is rated PG". Our history started with a bloody revolution and we have always had a fairly high tolorance for it.
Found an interesting linkhere.
Guns don't kill people. People with guns kill people.
.22 or .380.
I just had to comment after all the wackos did. You did an excellent job of rounding up all the libs with that comment. But they still don't get it. Some still think that if you outlaw guns, no one will have them, including bad guys. Ironically, its not that hard to make a home made weapon anyway, especially with lower power (but deadly enough) shells like
People seem to forget that the % of people who die in wars or crime is lower now, than it was before guns. Anyone having a doubt about how you can kill without a gun should go rent Joan of Arc. Quite vivid. If a mugger can't point a gun (loaded or not) then he IS more likely to just slit your throat anyway.
I normally don't care about spelling errors, but my god, there had to be over 50 different ones in that article. I know the spelling nazis on /. will have a field day with this one. Amazing how educated people, be they programmers or journalists, can't spell.
But an excellent article none the less.