Another cool thing about SCO (out of the 3 good things I can say about it) was that the colors of vitual terminals changed. When we migrated to Linux my boss hits ctrl+alt+F2 and says "Hey, they're all the same color!". Is there a way to do this in Linux? it's actually sort of usefull...
Of course you can do this. This is just a question of configuring your system properly. You need to edit your/etc/inittab and add apropriate -I parameters for your getty processes:
How come, you cannot register a trademark if you do not intend to make a profit of your software, but the same not-for-profit software can still be in violation of other trademarks?
Also, how can Microsoft claim a trademark on Internet Explorer, if they are giving it away for free?
Now that my last HP calculator is dead and I really can't justify the price of another
RPN model, I have to use the unix "dc" command to do all my math because I just can't reliably use an infix calculator anymore.
That's what X48 is for.
The CPU is only part of the equation (Was: What?)
on
Crusoe: new benchmarks
·
· Score: 2
What seems to be forgotten in this discussion, is the fact that there is more than one component in laptops, that consumes large amounts of energy. The CPU and the chipset are certainly a significant contributor to the overall balance, by they are by no means the only one.
You still have to deal with (at least) RAM, graphics card, backlit LCD display, mass storage devices, NIC/modem, etc. Of those, the display is likely the worst offender.
I remember in the late 80's that Atari demoed a laptop that supposedly ran 12h on one set of batteries. Unfortunately, it was never marketed and I can therefore not verify the claim. The interesting bit of information though is that Atari opted for using a monochrome 640x400 _reflective_ display. While nobody could sell that type of hardware some 10+ years laters, it does show where we need to make changes before extended battery live is feasible. Maybe, OLEDs will someday mature to fill this niche.
I spent some time researching different computer magazine and my conclusion is that there seems to be only _one_ good magazine left (please correct me if you find another one). It is "c't" magazine which gets published both in Germany and in the Netherlands. While half of the magazine is advertisement, they managed to ban most of it to the end of the magazine where it doesn't interfere with editorial content. The editorial content is of very high quality and test reports in c't are usually the only reliable source of reasonably objective comparitive analysis. The editors have no qualms bashing products if they prove to be of low quality, even if these products are made by one of their biggest advertising customers. In general, the editors believe that given c't unique reputation it can only be a poor decision on the hardware/software vendors part to withdraw ads from c't and it will hurt the vendor much more than the magazine. I wish, there were more magazines like this, but until then I happily spend the premium that it costs me to get my subscription mailed to the US. I very much enjoy reading the paper edition, even though about 50% of it can be read online at http://www.heise.de. By the way, if you know German, this URL provides an excellent Newsticker and many Slashdot articles have originally shown up on the c't ticker first. Heise also offers two or three other magazines, but I personally believe c't to be the most well balanced one; they have another magazine (ix) which focuses more on UNIX and every so often I buy a copy, but I let my subscription run out a few years ago.
A search on IBM's patent server did not yield any results for this patent, but it revealed another patent that GraphOn holds. While I haven't bothered examining the algorithm in great depth, it looks very much as if they have a patent on using a generalized version of BASE64 encoding to transmit graphics coordinates. The core claim seems to cover a way to dynamically determine the optimal encoding. None of this looks very innovative or unique to me (I am actually quite sure I have used similar techniques before, only not to implement graphics coordinates but some completely different type of data); it yet again shows that the USPTO lacks the experience to really evaluate patent claims. GraphOn might even be right that there is no prior art for this very specific claim, but that is not so much because the solution is new and non-obvious, but rather because nobody else has bothered tackling this particular problem before. So effectively, the USPTO has now started granting patents on the merrit of being the first one to recognize a new problem/market niche. This gives a whole new twist to the evils of allowing software patents.
The web browser is the "new universal interface" in the same way telnet still is.
Nowadays, browsers have actually become more common than telnet clients. But as long as you have a Java enabled browser, you can always use Shell in a Box to telnet out. N.B. this is still a very early release, feel free to submit bug reports.
Diskless Linux clients have been possible for a few years now. There are two projects that enable you to do this Etherboot and Netboot. Both groups have written Boot Prom images for many popular NICs and they ship additional tools that you need to set up diskless machines.
The differences between the two projects include 1) size of the images, 2) number of supported NICs, and 3) available features. Nonetheless, they aim for compatibility between each other and it is often worthwhile trying both and finding out which one works better for your particular configuration. (As a co-author of Etherboot, I am somewhat biased).
Rather than asking your questions on Slashdot you probably stand a better changes getting answers to your technical questions, if you subscribed to the combined mailing list for the two projects. There also is an archive of all the messages ever posted on this list.
Both Etherboot and Netboot allow to load the Boot Prom image from floppy disk while you are still testing your environment. Once everything works, you can decide to burn an EPROM and eliminate the need for the floppy disk. Of course, with modern NIC cards things are easier, because some of them already include a FlashPROM.
Another very promising project is NILO. It has originally been started by one of the Etherboot authors and it is currently being written from scratch under commercial sponsorship (the entire project will is GPL'd). See the home page for all the details.
Eventually NILO will probably obsolete Etherboot and Netboot for everything but very special purposes. It currently is under active development and while we would appreciate more alpha testers it isn't really very useable for real-world applications. There will be announcements on Freshmeat about the progress of this project.
Don't worry. I'm just 27, and if I have to I can get along with a slide rule. I do prefer my HP48GX for real-world applications. I learned how to use a slide rule and logarithm tables when I was 12; don't know why, though.
Slashdot Mirror
Of course you can do this. This is just a question of configuring your system properly. You need to edit your /etc/inittab and add apropriate -I parameters for your getty processes:
1:2345:respawn:/sbin/getty 38400 tty1 -I 'ESCcESC[?17;55;248cESC]RESC]P0681800'
2:23:respawn:/sbin/getty 38400 tty2 -I 'ESCcESC[?17;55;248cESC]RESC]P0686800'
3:23:respawn:/sbin/getty 38400 tty3 -I 'ESCcESC[?17;55;248cESC]RESC]P0005078'
4:23:respawn:/sbin/getty 38400 tty4 -I 'ESCcESC[?17;55;248cESC]RESC]P0681868'
5:23:respawn:/sbin/getty 38400 tty5 -I 'ESCcESC[?17;55;248cESC]RESC]P0006818'
6:23:respawn:/sbin/getty 38400 tty6 -I 'ESCcESC[?17;55;248cESC]RESC]P0006878'
Make sure that you enter a literal escape character for ESC (in vi you do this by preceding it with a CTRL-V, in emacs you must press CTRL-Q first).
After you have made these changes restart all your getty processes:
telinit q
killall -HUP getty
If you want to know what the escape sequences do, then here you go:
How come, you cannot register a trademark if you do not intend to make a profit of your software, but the same not-for-profit software can still be in violation of other trademarks?
Also, how can Microsoft claim a trademark on Internet Explorer, if they are giving it away for free?
That's what X48 is for.
What seems to be forgotten in this discussion, is the fact that there is more than one component in laptops, that consumes large amounts of energy. The CPU and the chipset are certainly a significant contributor to the overall balance, by they are by no means the only one.
You still have to deal with (at least) RAM, graphics card, backlit LCD display, mass storage devices, NIC/modem, etc. Of those, the display is likely the worst offender.
I remember in the late 80's that Atari demoed a laptop that supposedly ran 12h on one set of batteries. Unfortunately, it was never marketed and I can therefore not verify the claim. The interesting bit of information though is that Atari opted for using a monochrome 640x400 _reflective_ display. While nobody could sell that type of hardware some 10+ years laters, it does show where we need to make changes before extended battery live is feasible. Maybe, OLEDs will someday mature to fill this niche.
I spent some time researching different computer magazine and my conclusion is that there seems to be only _one_ good magazine left (please correct me if you find another one). It is "c't" magazine which gets published both in Germany and in the Netherlands.
While half of the magazine is advertisement, they managed to ban most of it to the end of the magazine where it doesn't interfere with editorial content. The editorial content is of very high quality and test reports in c't are usually the only reliable source of reasonably objective comparitive analysis. The editors have no qualms bashing products if they prove to be of low quality, even if these products are made by one of their biggest advertising customers. In general, the editors believe that given c't unique reputation it can only be a poor decision on the hardware/software vendors part to withdraw ads from c't and it will hurt the vendor much more than the magazine.
I wish, there were more magazines like this, but until then I happily spend the premium that it costs me to get my subscription mailed to the US. I very much enjoy reading the paper edition, even though about 50% of it can be read online at http://www.heise.de. By the way, if you know German, this URL provides an excellent Newsticker and many Slashdot articles have originally shown up on the c't ticker first.
Heise also offers two or three other magazines, but I personally believe c't to be the most well balanced one; they have another magazine (ix) which focuses more on UNIX and every so often I buy a copy, but I let my subscription run out a few years ago.
A search on IBM's patent server did not yield any results for this patent, but it revealed another patent that GraphOn holds. While I haven't bothered examining the algorithm in great depth, it looks very much as if they have a patent on using a generalized version of BASE64 encoding to transmit graphics coordinates. The core claim seems to cover a way to dynamically determine the optimal encoding. None of this looks very innovative or unique to me (I am actually quite sure I have used similar techniques before, only not to implement graphics coordinates but some completely different type of data); it yet again shows that the USPTO lacks the experience to really evaluate patent claims. GraphOn might even be right that there is no prior art for this very specific claim, but that is not so much because the solution is new and non-obvious, but rather because nobody else has bothered tackling this particular problem before. So effectively, the USPTO has now started granting patents on the merrit of being the first one to recognize a new problem/market niche. This gives a whole new twist to the evils of allowing software patents.
Nowadays, browsers have actually become more common than telnet clients. But as long as you have a Java enabled browser, you can always use Shell in a Box to telnet out. N.B. this is still a very early release, feel free to submit bug reports.
The differences between the two projects include 1) size of the images, 2) number of supported NICs, and 3) available features. Nonetheless, they aim for compatibility between each other and it is often worthwhile trying both and finding out which one works better for your particular configuration. (As a co-author of Etherboot, I am somewhat biased).
Rather than asking your questions on Slashdot you probably stand a better changes getting answers to your technical questions, if you subscribed to the combined mailing list for the two projects. There also is an archive of all the messages ever posted on this list.
Both Etherboot and Netboot allow to load the Boot Prom image from floppy disk while you are still testing your environment. Once everything works, you can decide to burn an EPROM and eliminate the need for the floppy disk. Of course, with modern NIC cards things are easier, because some of them already include a FlashPROM.
Another very promising project is NILO. It has originally been started by one of the Etherboot authors and it is currently being written from scratch under commercial sponsorship (the entire project will is GPL'd). See the home page for all the details.
Eventually NILO will probably obsolete Etherboot and Netboot for everything but very special purposes. It currently is under active development and while we would appreciate more alpha testers it isn't really very useable for real-world applications. There will be announcements on Freshmeat about the progress of this project.
Don't worry. I'm just 27, and if I have to I can
get along with a slide rule. I do prefer my
HP48GX for real-world applications. I learned how
to use a slide rule and logarithm tables when I
was 12; don't know why, though.