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  1. Re:Oblig. on Group Wants To Recover 36-Year-Old Historic Spacecraft From Deep Space · · Score: 1

    I did the same thing, lurked for years before creating an account, but I think my high (IMO) but still respectably low UID says enough by itself...

    As for these "interesting discussions" you mention, they are very rare and only found at night, in near darkness illuminated only by the glow of monitors, network switches, and that annoying security light that no one can quite figure out how to turn off, fueled by way too much caffeine, and best read while intoxicated or some set base of intoxication approaching superman status. This, plus ... profit!

  2. Re:Oblig. on Group Wants To Recover 36-Year-Old Historic Spacecraft From Deep Space · · Score: 4, Funny

    You must be new here!

  3. Re:Oblig. on Group Wants To Recover 36-Year-Old Historic Spacecraft From Deep Space · · Score: 1

    Best on-topic post ever!

  4. Hasn't this already been done? on Driverless Cars Begin 8,000-Mile Trek · · Score: 1

    I seem to recall an article in Linux Journal about a researcher (possibly in Italy?) that had created an autonomous car. I can't find the article at the moment but I believe it was in the late '90s or early 2000s.

    This sounds more like re-inventing the wheel than anything else.

  5. Re:Wolf ET!!! on Freeware FPS Alien Arena 2007 Reviewed · · Score: 1

    Yes, Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory is one in a long list of games that use the Quake 3 Engine.

  6. Earbuds? on Does Going Digital Mean Missing Music? · · Score: 1

    ...the iPod and its cheap earbuds... I agree that the one Apple puts in the box are not that great, but how many actually still have the original earbuds? I am careful with mine and still end up with a new pair every 1 - 1.5 years. My sister, who is quite careless with hers, goes through a set about every 3 - 4 months. I think the fact that the original earsbuds are so crappy is one of the reasons they break/wear out so quickly.
  7. Reminds me of... on Analyst Says Blu-ray DRM Safe For 10 Years · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    Dark Helmet: "I am your father's brother's nephew's cousin's former roommate." (Spaceballs 1987).

  8. Starband... on Experiences with DirecWay Satellite Internet · · Score: 1

    I'm in a similar situation where dialup is the only land-based possibility and WIFI is impossible because of all the damn trees (northwestern most portion of Washington state). I ended up going with Starband. The 480 Pro is very expensive ($139/month for me) and the hardware is waaaaay too much (I paid a little over $800), but it works extremely well (most of the time) and happily works with my D-Link DI-614+ router. I recently started writing a review (it's mostly done, but not 100%) on my personal site that pretty much covers most of the pros and cons as I see them.

    Good luck.

  9. Re:running on other architectures on Is Linux Losing Its SPARC? · · Score: 1

    Yeah, in theory. In practice, Linux runs on x86 very well, Alpha not so well, PPC support is so-so, and anything else is pretty-much non-existant. [emphasis added]

    Bull. Linux runs just fine on Alpha. I run it on three of mine and have several friends who also run it on multiple machines. Debian also support about 6 platforms (last I checked) that run Linux.

  10. Re:Well... on Compatibility Issues Across Linux Distributions? · · Score: 1

    Redhat was one of the first Linux distros to come out, and alot of other Distros are based on it, or are atleast using RPMs.

    So was Debian. "Debian Linux" (as it was called then) was first publically released in January 1994. By your comment, every distro should be just like slackware as it predates most distros. So that comment is not valid.

    Debian has always been the "for the community by the community" distro. Red Hat has always been a little more of the "newbie" or "easy to install" distro.

    RPM is nice, but it doesn't come close to DPKG. The .rpm packages are nice, but again don't come close to .deb packages. There are many reasons for this, but I won't go into that or some moron will vote this as a "troll" (which it is not!) Anyway I believe the reason why most distros are based on RPM is because of Red Hat Linux and it's ease of install. There isn't anything wrong with that, RPM is ok. However it would be really nice if some of the distros would spent some time on agreeing where files should be located. Debian has policies saying where files are to be located. If a package fails to meet these policies, it gets fixed or it won't be part of the stable release. I for one really like this. I don't enjoy searching all over my disks looking for some config file when they should all be in /etc and /usr/local should never be touched by a package!

    Enough ranting...

  11. Debian GNU/Linux on Upgrading A Headless Server? · · Score: 1

    I'd go with (and do) Debian GNU/Linux. Besides the fact I'm addicted to it, it is the most stable and can be easily upgraded (minus kernel) without rebooting.

    Here is what you will want to do once you've got Debian GNU/Linux installed:
    edit /etc/apt/sources.list with your favorite editor to make it point to whichever release you want.
    apt-get clean (to purge already downloaded and probably outdated files)
    apt-get update (to update the packages list)
    apt-get -f upgrade (to upgrade most packages, skipping things like major libs - the -f tells apt it should try to fix dependancies)
    apt-get -f dist-upgrade (to do a full system-wide upgrade of all packages)
    logout, login. done! (unless you upgraded the kernel, then you'll have to reboot).

    Enjoy!

  12. For the last time... on Yahoo releases their Messenger for Linux/FreeBSD · · Score: 1

    Linux && FreeBSD != i386. Linux runs on many platforms and FreeBSD also now runs on Alpha. As a non-intel person I'd like to see other platforms supported as well. Personally I would like to see it available for both Linux and FreeBSD on Alpha.

    For now gtkyahoo is available, works well, and will be pretty cool with the soon-to-be-released version 0.17.

  13. hmm... on MacOSX and X11 · · Score: 1

    "www.sarcasta.net is running Apache/1.3.4 (Unix) mod_perl/1.17 on Linux"

    bummer! I was looking forward to /.'n a Mac... Ohh well... :(

    I guess I should be happy they are running Apache on a free UNIX! (even if it is an old Apache) :)

    What would a /.'ed Mac be called anyway? Macinslash? Macindotted? Macinsquash?

  14. iPAQ? on Linux On iPAQ 3600 Handheld · · Score: 2

    Huh!? I thought i was dead? Letter i Found Dead ;-)

  15. Interesting... on Alpha 21264 And Athlon 850 Review · · Score: 1

    Interesting... They compare the lowest end 21264 to the highest end K7. Looks real fair to me! NOT! ;-)

  16. WTF? on Linux Kernel Partition and FS Physical Limits? · · Score: 2

    WTF? Doesn't anyone RTFM anymore? Ohh, and you never said which filesystem! I'll assume (there's that evil word again!) you mean EXT2...


    How about The Filesystems-HOWTO? A quote from section 6.2:

    ``Standard'' Ext2fs features

    The Ext2fs supports standard Unix file types: regular files, directories, device special files and symbolic links.

    Ext2fs is able to manage filesystems created on really big partitions. While the original kernel code restricted the maximal filesystem size to 2 GB, recent work in the VFS layer have raised this limit to 4 TB. Thus, it is now possible to use big disks without the need of creating many partitions.

    Ext2fs provides long file names. It uses variable length directory entries. The maximal file name size is 255 characters. This limit could be extended to 1012 if needed.

    Ext2fs reserves some blocks for the super user (root). Normally, 5% of the blocks are reserved. This allows the administrator to recover easily from situations where user processes fill up filesystems.



    Quote from section 6.3:

    Ext3 support the same features as Ext2, but includes also Journaling.


    Maybe you should RTFM and be a little more specific next time! ;-)

  17. Re:Interesting... on New LILO Breaks 1024-Cyl Limit · · Score: 1

    err yeah.. I meant just "files" and not filesystems.. and no, it's an EXT2 limit. Everytime I've tried to create files > 2GB it fails. Using a filesystem other then EXT2 solves it. Therefor I do not believe it is platform related. This is one of the features that EXT3 is supposed to have at least that's what was announced (check /. archives).

  18. Interesting... on New LILO Breaks 1024-Cyl Limit · · Score: 1

    This is Interesting. The x86 world is still playing catch up to us Alpha Linux users.

    On Alphas we have no such limitations on disks/boot loaders.

    Also on Alpha Linux we can now use up to 2TB of RAM!

    Now what we all need is EXT3 so we can have > 2GB filesystems and files!

  19. exactly... on New Star Trek Series Rumours · · Score: 1

    I agree with Ensign Taco (he got demoted ;-) on this. Why beat a dead horse? The Sulu idea sounds much better. After that I'd like to see them stay completely away from Federation based stories, it's getting quite old. They could still do a Klingon based one, that would be kinda neat. The one that sounds the coolest to me is the special fources one. That would be alright but it'd still be Federation...

  20. *grr* on MPAA Files Another Injunction Against 2600 · · Score: 1

    As someone who was mirroring DeCSS until the MPAA's lawyers said no, then the system admins said no... all I can say is DOWN WITH THE MPAA!!! Sorry, guess I am still a little pissed! *grr*

  21. Only one thing to say... on 1.4-1.6 GHz Alphas · · Score: 1

    WAHOO!!! I've been waiting a long time for someone to pick up the pace with Alpha! Took a while, but hopefully this is it!! Excellent news for us Alpha Linux users!!!

    LONG LIVE ALPHA LINUX and FreeBSD too!

  22. great! on Latest Toy: One-Man Helicopter · · Score: 1

    Great! Now all those idiots that can't drive a car will be wanting one of those. Plus all the idiots who can't drive AND talk on the phone! Imagine that! "could you hold on a sec, I need to get out of this spin" or "bla bla bla CRASH!" I fear what will happen with those who tailgate in a car! That will be very scary! So now you'll have the impact of the inital crash, plus the spinning blades, AND the fall to the ground...

    Sounds great! Were do I signup? ;-)

  23. wait! on Is "coke.ch" A Violation of Coca-Cola's (tm)? · · Score: 1

    If I am not mistaken, Coca-Cola used to actually contain cocaine!! Therefor IMO coke predates Coca-Cola's use of the term!!!

    Again, all IMO. The above may be completely inacurate or acurate...

  24. 2.4... on Glimmers From The 2.4 Horizon · · Score: 1

    OHH YEAH! I've been waiting for 2.4 for a while now!! I can't wait to see full USB support!!! :)

    rbf aka pulsar

  25. hmm... on White House E-Mail Hidden From Justice Dept. · · Score: 1

    They should hire me to do the work, I'll put Debian GNU/Linux and FreeBSD on everything! :)

    rbf aka pulsar