Re:No ISOs, no testing, no install.
on
Review of SuSE 8.2
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· Score: 2, Interesting
ISO's are a stupid waste of bandwidth. FTP installs are far more elegant.
Not for those of us with only one computer. FTP is fine if you have another machine to mirror the tree to, but otherwise your only machine is tied up for god knows how long in an installer. Hmm maybe one of the distros should put in a web browser like you get in a Solaris install...then at least you can stay entertained.
The benefit to ISOs for people like me (living off a laptop at the moment) is that you just need to download one file and then it's on a CD and you can just keep it around. No hassle.
Besides, show me an ftp install that lets you use download accelerator (or prozilla or whatever). Without that I usually get around 100k/sec on my cable. Use it and I max it out at 400.
I'd be interested in this as well - I (well my roommate) has a fujitsu plasma (full resolution, not the ghetto 852xWhatever). And while our xbox gives 480p output on games (we still don't have any games that'll do 720p or 1080i) movies won't do anything but 480i.
heh, yup. I'll take my dad's advice and save 10% of every paycheck as well as put as much as they'll let me into 401(k). I won't be running out and buying a car for at least another year (my 98 escort I got for like $4500 still works fine for a vehicle that doesn't even have a rear defroster:)
The programming here isn't their main product though. They make USB controller chips and the firmware programming's more for eval boards and whatnot. More microcontroller to PCI and to USB code than UI work.
And they SEEM to be managed well, but....well, one day USB 2.0 will become obsolete and hopefully they'll have a plan for what to do when that day comes. But I'm definitely gonna put a big chunk of $$$ aside for if they don't.
I'm graduating (also with a Computer Engineering degree, mine from UC Santa Barbara) this June and after searching for the last 6 months I just landed one a couple weeks ago, starting in July. Pays SIGNIFIGANTLY more than 30-40k. Very small company (in contrast to my internships since 1998 for Northrop Grumman), but they survived the dot-com crash and seem to be managed well and are making lots of money even in the cut-throat chip design world.
Firmware/embedded systems programming are where it's at.
On the other hand, I've probably applied to several hundered positions over the last few months. Had about 6 interviews, got one offer.
Jobs are out there. Luckily I still had school to keep me occupied, although I was starting to stress over what I was gonna do when I got out. But you just need to find an employer who's really looking and have SOMETHING marketable about yourself. For entry-level, internships help. But (laugh if you will) I'm sure that the UCSB curriculum got me this job. My friends going to more respected schools always gave me shit about UCSB (party school, blah blah blah) but I've done more practical design work here than any of my other engineering friends.
Maybe I'm just lucky. But as long as my paychecks don't bounce I guess I don't care:)
Of course you've only had the XP on there for a few weeks - give it a few months before you suddenly realize that it's taking 3 min to boot and progs take twice as long to open. And no amount of defragging or registry clearing seems to fix it...:(
Linux may be slower initially, but at least it doesn't do that windows thing where your box gets slower by the day. I'll take consistancy, thank you very much.
Until they suddenly stop working...My stupid NAT box suddenly started dropping packets like made and made my internet slow as hell. And it wouldn't respond to internal pings until it was power cycled (had to do this probably 4-5 times a day). Replaced it with a netgear - suddenly I'm running at full speed.
Re:Does anyone find it odd...
on
Strike on Iraq
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· Score: 1
Well, I imagine the cameras are mounted on the tops of buildings for the most part (you probably don't want to be a cameraman standing outside as a war starts around you - it's common sense). But in any case, MSNBC anyway addressed this - everyone was expecting the first attack to be within downtown Baghdad. But these were on the outskirts. The anchors said that the cameras had been positioned to provide a good vantage point for where they thought the action would be...unfortunately for them, they guessed wrong.
Re:It's not GNU/Linux Godamit!!! It is minix/LINIX
on
RMS Turns 50
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· Score: 1
I thought that was the point - there's more to to a Linux box than Linux and there's more to it than GNU utilities.
I figure that there's really no way to please everyone here. So I call it "Linux" just because GNU/Linux is harder to say...
Frankly the whole situation reminds me of when Austin Powers came out an Mike Meyers kept emphasizing that it was Austin Powers: INTERNATIONAL MAN OF MYSTERY and NOT just Austin Powers. The producers/authors/whatever can whine all they want, but whatever the random guy on the street calls it is what it's probably going to stay.
And frankly, people would be WAY more likely to refer to it as GNU/Linux if "GNU" didn't sound so silly. I mean, really. It's a recursive acronym and the first letter is meaningless. WHY on earth did he make it a "G" of all things? He could have at least used a vowel so it'd roll off the tongue a little better.
Of course, by the time KDE 3.1 is compiled and installed on a gentoo system, 3.2 will have been released...
If you only have one computer (like I do at the moment), Gentoo's just not workable. I tried it, but switched to Debian just so I could actually get work done.
Maybe once I get another computer I'll throw it on there and let it compile for a couple days and see if it lives up to its claims...
Well (as a CompE), I turned off the theme service all together. Not particularly because I hated the themes (the silver one I could tolerate), but because it made screen refreshes even on my Geforce2 Go in my laptop slow as hell. Massive curtain effects moving windows around. Maybe it was the drivers, maybe it's windows. I dunno. But disabling it makes it soooooo much better.
Besides, the less services the better. My computer started taking over 2 mins to boot and windows was using over 200MB RAM at startup. Just a few services disabled and I'm down to 45sec boots and 160MB RAM used after IE, AIM and Outlook Express are all opened. Stupid bloat...
I loved how no matter what the repair, they always reinstalled windows. I could have sent it in asking that they just send it straight back, and I'd have gotten a new install of windows.
Wow, I've had my dell in a few times stemming from an unfortunate incident involving a foot, the power cord, and a 2 or 3 foot drop (broke one tab that held the keyboard in and I had to send it in twice after that for new keyboards...)
In any case, every time I had it sent in, the phone support told me to absolutely take the hard drive out (and they usually told me to take out the RAM, modem, and any minipci in it as well). I think they just didn't want the liability issues of accidently wiping out someone's files...
At the risk of getting flamed, isn't this similar to what goes on in non-IP related cases similar to thins one.
I mean, don't
the police, in theory, launch attacks on those who are breaking laws? Could this be considered akin to a drug raid etc?
It's one thing if the police bust you, I've got no problem with that. But this is about letting the the RI/MPAA come after you.
This is more akin to your neighborhood watch group kicking in the drug dealer's door. Maybe that's not a bad thing, but let's leave it to the cops.
And do not, no matter what the tempation, strip the connected wire with your teeth.
Never did it myself, but I'm told it's a sure-fire way to get the phone to ring.
Heh, reminds me of the time my cat was playing and suddenly bit a 9V power supply line. Never knew he could jump so high. Worst part is, the next day he tried to do it again till I grabbed the wire away from him...
I can't comment on USB devs, but I've never understood the problems people have with bootable CDs. Every machine I've had since my P200 in 1996 or 1997 has been able to boot off a CD with no trouble at all (and of course the Macs I used before I had that have booted off CDs for as long as they had CD-ROM drives...)
lol, I always liked how on the long-jump you could run, then just step off and wait behind the mat till you hopped back on to stick the insane landing...
Yeah, it's better to pay per channel than to force me to pay for the Spanish, Russian, Arabic, Chinese, and Korean channels that I just block on the TV anyway.
Or maybe local goverments could just open it up to competition between cable companies rather than using my tax dollars to promote a monopoly which, in my opinion, is far more annoying than Microsoft any day of the week.
Also, if there's one thing that's been drilled into my head in the VLSI classes I've taken, it's that the parasitics associated with the interconnect are what really limit the speed, to a much greater extent than transistor numbers/characteristics.
So even if we didn't care about power, and heat could magically dissipate itself, the circuit could still only go as fast as the metal inside it would allow.
Again, your teacher certainly could be at fault -- I just want to point out that there *are* those that think they should be Orson Scott Card's protagonist because they catch a few errors.
I've had my share of these people as classmates over the last four years (gettin' my computer engineering degree in June, yay!). And the one thing I noticed is that all of the people who acted this way seem to have disappeared from the engineering classes within the first two years...
No shit. I'm a dependent (dad's retired AF). Bastards make me drive over 1.5 hours to go to a CLINIC at Vandenberg AFB even though I can think of 3 or 4 full-service hospitals and countless (better) clinics witin 10-15 miles from me (in Santa Barbara, CA). I should call them again, maybe this time they'll actually let me have a local doctor.
Give me my mom's kaiser any day. They might make me drive the same distance but at least it'll be to a real hospital with doctors that know what they're doing....
Oh well. Guess I won't have to deal with them again come June when I get my degree...good riddance.
But if Tricare's security is anything like the rest of their organization I can only say I'm surprised that it took this long for this to happen...
So I guess I'm a criminal for hanging up on telemarketers then. A pop-up opening up on my screen trying to sell me something is no different than my phone ringing and finding someone trying to sell me vinyl siding (for my apartment, no less) on the other end of the line.
Don't talk to the 611 reps. I was getting screwed by Cingular royally. That is, less than half my calls went thru - the rest just blinked "System Busy" on my screen. I called them a couple times and they just said "oh, we're building new towers right now - service should get better in a couple weeks." Of course, they told me this every couple weeks.
Eventually I got totally fed up and wanted to break my contract and told them so - the guy on the phone wanted the $150 charge or whatever it was. I told them that since my phone wasn't working they were essentially in breach of contract. She said, "well, that's just something you have to accept with wireless technology." I resisted the temptation to scream at her and got her name and employee number and hung up.
Then I looked up the Cingular Executive Offices. I started to tell the receptionist my problem and she cut me off and forwarded me to 611. That REALLY pissed me off. Time for plan B.
I looked up the SBC Executive Office phone number and got to a real person. I told them that the Cingular exec office refused to listen to me and told them the story, naming names. I was told that an officer would look into it. The next day I got a call from an assistant to the president of SBC who cancelled me and waived the charges.
The key: whenever someone on the phone tells you you can't do something "because of a policy", don't be fooled - their policies do NOT apply to you, only to them. The key is to find someone to talk to who sees a bigger picture than a customer service manager who just wants to get you off the phone asap. Executives know that when a customer is pissed he'll tell all his friends and vice versa. Get to someone who can waive policies. God knows these companies treat us like shit. I have no moral problem with doing the same. Name names. Escalate. Bitch and moan.
My brother did the same thing after my mom was struggling to get DSL from PacBell for about six months. After calling SBC corporate, we had a liason calling us every day telling us the exact reason service wasn't working yet. In less than a week we had internet.
The moral: It pays to bitch. But only to people who have power to do something.
Here's the only relevant part I could find in the EULA:
Qualified Educational User shall cease loading, permitting access to or otherwise distributing the Product to any Faculty, Staff or Student who ceases its association with Qualified Educational User. In the event Microsoft notifies Qualified Educational User or Qualified Educational User learns that any Faculty, Staff or Student is in violation of the terms and conditions of the EULA and/or this Amendment, Qualified Educational User shall cease permitting access to the Product by such individuals and Qualified Educational User shall further use its best efforts to demand immediate return of or confirm destruction of any Product in the possession or under the control of such Student, staff or Faculty.
To me that just says that if you're no longer a student you don't get any more free stuff. It says nothing about having to erase it unless you violate the other terms.
Combined with the blatent FAQ on Microsoft's own website, I think Yale either didn't read the EULA themselves or are trying to pull a fast one on their students.
But maybe I'm wrong. In any case, you might want to consider working on your anger management there. I just pointed out a discrepency for Christ's sake. Relax; you'll live longer.
Slashdot Mirror
Not for those of us with only one computer. FTP is fine if you have another machine to mirror the tree to, but otherwise your only machine is tied up for god knows how long in an installer. Hmm maybe one of the distros should put in a web browser like you get in a Solaris install...then at least you can stay entertained.
The benefit to ISOs for people like me (living off a laptop at the moment) is that you just need to download one file and then it's on a CD and you can just keep it around. No hassle.
Besides, show me an ftp install that lets you use download accelerator (or prozilla or whatever). Without that I usually get around 100k/sec on my cable. Use it and I max it out at 400.
I'd be interested in this as well - I (well my roommate) has a fujitsu plasma (full resolution, not the ghetto 852xWhatever). And while our xbox gives 480p output on games (we still don't have any games that'll do 720p or 1080i) movies won't do anything but 480i.
heh, yup. I'll take my dad's advice and save 10% of every paycheck as well as put as much as they'll let me into 401(k). I won't be running out and buying a car for at least another year (my 98 escort I got for like $4500 still works fine for a vehicle that doesn't even have a rear defroster :)
The programming here isn't their main product though. They make USB controller chips and the firmware programming's more for eval boards and whatnot. More microcontroller to PCI and to USB code than UI work.
And they SEEM to be managed well, but....well, one day USB 2.0 will become obsolete and hopefully they'll have a plan for what to do when that day comes. But I'm definitely gonna put a big chunk of $$$ aside for if they don't.
I'm graduating (also with a Computer Engineering degree, mine from UC Santa Barbara) this June and after searching for the last 6 months I just landed one a couple weeks ago, starting in July. Pays SIGNIFIGANTLY more than 30-40k. Very small company (in contrast to my internships since 1998 for Northrop Grumman), but they survived the dot-com crash and seem to be managed well and are making lots of money even in the cut-throat chip design world.
:)
Firmware/embedded systems programming are where it's at.
On the other hand, I've probably applied to several hundered positions over the last few months. Had about 6 interviews, got one offer.
Jobs are out there. Luckily I still had school to keep me occupied, although I was starting to stress over what I was gonna do when I got out. But you just need to find an employer who's really looking and have SOMETHING marketable about yourself. For entry-level, internships help. But (laugh if you will) I'm sure that the UCSB curriculum got me this job. My friends going to more respected schools always gave me shit about UCSB (party school, blah blah blah) but I've done more practical design work here than any of my other engineering friends.
Maybe I'm just lucky. But as long as my paychecks don't bounce I guess I don't care
Of course you've only had the XP on there for a few weeks - give it a few months before you suddenly realize that it's taking 3 min to boot and progs take twice as long to open. And no amount of defragging or registry clearing seems to fix it... :(
Linux may be slower initially, but at least it doesn't do that windows thing where your box gets slower by the day. I'll take consistancy, thank you very much.
Until they suddenly stop working...My stupid NAT box suddenly started dropping packets like made and made my internet slow as hell. And it wouldn't respond to internal pings until it was power cycled (had to do this probably 4-5 times a day). Replaced it with a netgear - suddenly I'm running at full speed.
Well, I imagine the cameras are mounted on the tops of buildings for the most part (you probably don't want to be a cameraman standing outside as a war starts around you - it's common sense). But in any case, MSNBC anyway addressed this - everyone was expecting the first attack to be within downtown Baghdad. But these were on the outskirts. The anchors said that the cameras had been positioned to provide a good vantage point for where they thought the action would be...unfortunately for them, they guessed wrong.
I thought that was the point - there's more to to a Linux box than Linux and there's more to it than GNU utilities.
I figure that there's really no way to please everyone here. So I call it "Linux" just because GNU/Linux is harder to say...
Frankly the whole situation reminds me of when Austin Powers came out an Mike Meyers kept emphasizing that it was Austin Powers: INTERNATIONAL MAN OF MYSTERY and NOT just Austin Powers. The producers/authors/whatever can whine all they want, but whatever the random guy on the street calls it is what it's probably going to stay.
And frankly, people would be WAY more likely to refer to it as GNU/Linux if "GNU" didn't sound so silly. I mean, really. It's a recursive acronym and the first letter is meaningless. WHY on earth did he make it a "G" of all things? He could have at least used a vowel so it'd roll off the tongue a little better.
Of course, by the time KDE 3.1 is compiled and installed on a gentoo system, 3.2 will have been released...
If you only have one computer (like I do at the moment), Gentoo's just not workable. I tried it, but switched to Debian just so I could actually get work done.
Maybe once I get another computer I'll throw it on there and let it compile for a couple days and see if it lives up to its claims...
Well (as a CompE), I turned off the theme service all together. Not particularly because I hated the themes (the silver one I could tolerate), but because it made screen refreshes even on my Geforce2 Go in my laptop slow as hell. Massive curtain effects moving windows around. Maybe it was the drivers, maybe it's windows. I dunno. But disabling it makes it soooooo much better.
Besides, the less services the better. My computer started taking over 2 mins to boot and windows was using over 200MB RAM at startup. Just a few services disabled and I'm down to 45sec boots and 160MB RAM used after IE, AIM and Outlook Express are all opened. Stupid bloat...
Wow, I've had my dell in a few times stemming from an unfortunate incident involving a foot, the power cord, and a 2 or 3 foot drop (broke one tab that held the keyboard in and I had to send it in twice after that for new keyboards...)
In any case, every time I had it sent in, the phone support told me to absolutely take the hard drive out (and they usually told me to take out the RAM, modem, and any minipci in it as well). I think they just didn't want the liability issues of accidently wiping out someone's files...
It's one thing if the police bust you, I've got no problem with that. But this is about letting the the RI/MPAA come after you.
This is more akin to your neighborhood watch group kicking in the drug dealer's door. Maybe that's not a bad thing, but let's leave it to the cops.
And do not, no matter what the tempation, strip the connected wire with your teeth.
Never did it myself, but I'm told it's a sure-fire way to get the phone to ring.
Heh, reminds me of the time my cat was playing and suddenly bit a 9V power supply line. Never knew he could jump so high. Worst part is, the next day he tried to do it again till I grabbed the wire away from him...
I dunno, my mom works at a library and always has stories about the weirdos who wander in and head straight for the porn...
I can't comment on USB devs, but I've never understood the problems people have with bootable CDs. Every machine I've had since my P200 in 1996 or 1997 has been able to boot off a CD with no trouble at all (and of course the Macs I used before I had that have booted off CDs for as long as they had CD-ROM drives...)
Or maybe I'm just lucky....
lol, I always liked how on the long-jump you could run, then just step off and wait behind the mat till you hopped back on to stick the insane landing...
Yeah, it's better to pay per channel than to force me to pay for the Spanish, Russian, Arabic, Chinese, and Korean channels that I just block on the TV anyway.
Or maybe local goverments could just open it up to competition between cable companies rather than using my tax dollars to promote a monopoly which, in my opinion, is far more annoying than Microsoft any day of the week.
Oh well...in my dreams...
Also, if there's one thing that's been drilled into my head in the VLSI classes I've taken, it's that the parasitics associated with the interconnect are what really limit the speed, to a much greater extent than transistor numbers/characteristics.
So even if we didn't care about power, and heat could magically dissipate itself, the circuit could still only go as fast as the metal inside it would allow.
I've had my share of these people as classmates over the last four years (gettin' my computer engineering degree in June, yay!). And the one thing I noticed is that all of the people who acted this way seem to have disappeared from the engineering classes within the first two years...
No shit. I'm a dependent (dad's retired AF). Bastards make me drive over 1.5 hours to go to a CLINIC at Vandenberg AFB even though I can think of 3 or 4 full-service hospitals and countless (better) clinics witin 10-15 miles from me (in Santa Barbara, CA). I should call them again, maybe this time they'll actually let me have a local doctor.
Give me my mom's kaiser any day. They might make me drive the same distance but at least it'll be to a real hospital with doctors that know what they're doing....
Oh well. Guess I won't have to deal with them again come June when I get my degree...good riddance.
But if Tricare's security is anything like the rest of their organization I can only say I'm surprised that it took this long for this to happen...
Actually there seems to be some discrepancy as to whether the end will come on 12/21 or 12/23. See http://www.jaguar-sun.com/endcount.html.
Personally I'm hoping for 12/23 as that's my birthday. Could make things interesting :)
So I guess I'm a criminal for hanging up on telemarketers then. A pop-up opening up on my screen trying to sell me something is no different than my phone ringing and finding someone trying to sell me vinyl siding (for my apartment, no less) on the other end of the line.
According to the Oxford English Dictionary:
hacker, n.
3. a. A person with an enthusiasm for programming or using computers as an end in itself. colloq. (orig. U.S.).
b. A person who uses his skill with computers to try to gain unauthorized access to computer files or networks. colloq.
Apparantly hacker is a valid term for this...
Don't talk to the 611 reps. I was getting screwed by Cingular royally. That is, less than half my calls went thru - the rest just blinked "System Busy" on my screen. I called them a couple times and they just said "oh, we're building new towers right now - service should get better in a couple weeks." Of course, they told me this every couple weeks.
Eventually I got totally fed up and wanted to break my contract and told them so - the guy on the phone wanted the $150 charge or whatever it was. I told them that since my phone wasn't working they were essentially in breach of contract. She said, "well, that's just something you have to accept with wireless technology." I resisted the temptation to scream at her and got her name and employee number and hung up.
Then I looked up the Cingular Executive Offices. I started to tell the receptionist my problem and she cut me off and forwarded me to 611. That REALLY pissed me off. Time for plan B.
I looked up the SBC Executive Office phone number and got to a real person. I told them that the Cingular exec office refused to listen to me and told them the story, naming names. I was told that an officer would look into it. The next day I got a call from an assistant to the president of SBC who cancelled me and waived the charges.
The key: whenever someone on the phone tells you you can't do something "because of a policy", don't be fooled - their policies do NOT apply to you, only to them. The key is to find someone to talk to who sees a bigger picture than a customer service manager who just wants to get you off the phone asap. Executives know that when a customer is pissed he'll tell all his friends and vice versa. Get to someone who can waive policies. God knows these companies treat us like shit. I have no moral problem with doing the same. Name names. Escalate. Bitch and moan.
My brother did the same thing after my mom was struggling to get DSL from PacBell for about six months. After calling SBC corporate, we had a liason calling us every day telling us the exact reason service wasn't working yet. In less than a week we had internet.
The moral: It pays to bitch. But only to people who have power to do something.
To me that just says that if you're no longer a student you don't get any more free stuff. It says nothing about having to erase it unless you violate the other terms.
Combined with the blatent FAQ on Microsoft's own website, I think Yale either didn't read the EULA themselves or are trying to pull a fast one on their students.
But maybe I'm wrong. In any case, you might want to consider working on your anger management there. I just pointed out a discrepency for Christ's sake. Relax; you'll live longer.