We use to do this with goldfish...
on
Reanimated Lobsters?
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
If you froze goldfish in liquid O2, we had a surprising amount of success reviving them. I believe the mitochondria were shattered due to ice crystals, so they only lasted for a bit. The tricky bit is keeping them alive. Did a fair amount of b-cell cloning - separate out the white blood cells, add enormous quantities of EBV, toss in nuked whites as feeders, and isolate the interesting ones. You could freeze down a single blood cell if you were careful (and used a bit of dimethyl sulfoxide to help with the crystallization problem)
I hear we missed out on the real fun however. Guess lighting charcoal was where the real action was. Picking up shattered goldfish bits got old fast....
These licensing problems and forks will turn out to be the downfall of Linux.
I'd call forking natural selection... and while it can be painful, I would say it makes things stronger. Projects that head out into the weeds loose mind share (developers, users, 'buzz' if you will..) and disappear. The beauty of Linux is you get to scratch your itch. Often others share the same problem, and may share a solution. Someone running the project goes off into a wild tangent, good for them. Might be a little pain as you switch to something that is more aligned to what you were after, but odds are you can.
A personal example? I let myself get lulled into the RPM package management and really felt like I got the shaft when RH dropped the 'non-enterprise' user who did not have mad cash for per machine/per year subscriptions. All the packaged distros seemed to share the same Achilles heel (in my mind). Hunkered down and went Gentoo rather than putting energy into Fedora. If ebuilds fade away, I'll look at the app-get thing...
I had a full load of upper level biochem/microbiology coursework and thought the 'intro to c' course would be cake. It nearly killed me. The problem was not the coding, but rather the editors and environments. I was routed into the labs to do my assignments, logged into a sun workstation for my first time ever, and given a keyboard cheat sheet to emacs as an editor... Thanks for all the help guys...
Rather then learn Unix shells and figure out vi/emacs - I did all my homework on using a DOS based C compiler that I used for, learned the zen of mounting a floppy and eject the bloody thing, and a command/script to strip the bloody ^M's off. It would not surprise me to see they sent you off to a Unix lab. It is Java - you don't even have to recompile your source code if you build your classes on a machine/editor you are comfortable with.
Of course, if the coding is really the source of your problems - you are boned. Either the prof is nasty or you should have done more prep work before taking the class.
One of the things that amazed me was cywin has a full xserver! It does not come as a 'default' install, but if you expand out the install options, you can type startx and away you go. This has saved my but many a time.... There is far more than just grep, tar, and tail in there if you poke about in the install options.
My bride asked for a new kitchen sink... The 20 some year old cheapo that came with the house was leaking, so when I was trying to subtly ask for ideas she came right out and stated the desire of her heart. Five hours, many trips to the hardware store, and not knowing if we are going to ever be able to turn the water mains back on... I succeeded.
Did not make that mistake again... asking, that is...
Imagine if you could build a Linux CD to scan Windows HD's for Spyware and Viruses!
They can and do. I hung on to a SuSE live eval CD for just this purpose. Safest way of looking at a box that was owned and you needed to connect it to the network to save something big.
Some of the services folks would get flushed, think they were clever, and not bother to give a password. SuSE would let me mount the file system and ftp the files to another system - reading NTFS just fine. Might not be able to save the windows partition, but you could usually recover most of the important source files / docs / misc...
I ditched the cable tv when I added DirectTV, so the cable only gives broadband. Did a bit more digging and it looks like the pvr unit I have does its software updates over the phone line. Bought the house because it was within DSL range, only to find they did not run enough copper and were multiplexing (?) - so ten days after I moved in I found out I would not have a static IP address. Barnacles! Getting cable modem was a godsend, as I would get a shaky 4k connection on my external US Robotics 56k modem.
I may be able to borrow someone else's phone line to do the software updates. Sounds like they pushed out an update a couple weeks ago. I have not been home to know one way or the other....
Get a 256M or larger USB thumbdrive. Since this is a laptop, odds are you will be mobile. (go figure) I find I use a 512M thumbdrive all the time for moving files between machines, or sharing stuff. I keep a pack of handy programs on there as well - putty, cygwin, jdk's, javadocs, and a few others if I end up calling a desktop machine home for a while.
With my bride picking up a mobile phone as well, our house is getting ready to drop the landline. The only device in the house that uses it is my DirectTV PVR, so I've started the process by giving DirectTV a call last month.
The service rep said the PVR had to have a phone connection. I tried qualifying my situation - noting that I don't order any PPV and the guide and updates come through the dish. No matter, they were insistent I needed one. Yah, right - been four months since I plugged the phone cord in... Not sure I believe them.
On the off chance they really do need a phone connection, I'm looking for a plan B as well. I have a cable modem, so I figured the next step is VoIP. There are some packages out there, but it looks like most will set me back $15/month minimum- not a huge cost savings over the $23 or so(?) I play now. They did not seem to have issue with me changing numbers, however, so this is an option. Like to find a pay-by-use VoIP service, if anyone has seen such a beastie.
With all the live CD distros starting to crop up, I suspect it is just a matter of time before a bootable CD/DVD that uses a USB thumbdrive and/or LAN connection for persisting information comes around. I was not interested in the HDD based Linux kit Sony was distributing or doing a mod chip, but a live CD that could use the bundled Ethernet port would be fantastic.
This is good news - even if it is only a baby step.
Think of it as a wireless file server. Too bad about the drive size, but an interesting combo. Looks like the 'mini' computer intel(?) was pushing a while back. I suspect these are being made by the same folks who bought the polaroid name.
I dunno about anyone else who uses Solaris out there, but I've _never_ seen a Sun machine lock up hard, such that a Reset Button would have been the solution...
/me hanging head in shame over some really krufty C++ code last week.
Lets look into this "volunteer" thing: we are looking for a person ready to give up their whole life, move to an almost 100% barren place where he/she will soon die utterly alone!
You are right. Sending Darl is a much better idea.
What the hell is with all these people bitching? You can upgrade to Fedora for free.
No, we can't. I purchased some expensive kit (~18k), which required me to buy a specific thinkpad, a copy of RedHat 8, and they do the install and ship it with a dongle. Perhaps I can keep the system patched, perhaps not. This is where reliance on rpm's and updates really stinks. I talked with these guys today about any option to switch the host OS to SuSE or RH Enterprise, but no dice.
I'll give you some bitching... I bought it less than a year ago. Nice bloody comercial support contract from Red Hat. I'm trapped.
Maybe I just get stuck with ugly projects, but my take is requirements change. Assumptions that were true when things started usually are not the case a few years later. Maintaining that code usually means that you end up with legacy kruft that you would not add if you were rewriting today. For me, when the legacy baggage is too painful its time to rewrite.
Sometimes old means stable, sometimes not... The trick is to know when it is time for a clean bowl and not get entangled by the 'not created here' syndrome when making that decision.
In the 1960's, it took us under 9 years from Kennedy's pledge to land on the moon. Now we can do it in 11!
It is actually a misquoting Bush's comments about the C.E.V. The actual coversation went something like this...
You see, most ruskies will be running at 10. You're on 10, all the way up, all the way up...Where can you go from there? Nowhere. What we do, is if we need that extra push past the moon...Eleven. One louder.
I'd rather see more focus on a core linux that is fast and capable, with reliable drivers... something capable of running a java vm and the upcoming Java Desktop reliably.... It's going to take a single entity, like Sun or IBM, to create a "Java Desktop" that runs on top of the VM.
As much as I wish for Java desktop applications to take off, Sun's "Java Desktop" has nothing much to do with a Java VM or Swing applications. It is nothing more than a SuSE Linux distro with Gnome, and user licenses to LDAP, Sun's portal and app server, and a few other goodies...
As for myself, one of the things that got me messing with Linux from Scratch and the Gentoo distribution was looking to build a distro that was only for Tomcat, Jboss, SSH, and IPChains. As fate would have it, the distro that got me going down this path was core linux which
Core is a minimal distribution of the GNU/Linux operating system designed to be the basis for a complete system constructed by the end user. A fresh installation of Core will boot into a console and provide the user with the tools needed to download, compile and install other applications. Core contains nothing beyond what is required to perform these tasks
There's this service provided by airlines called "baggage handling". What you do is, you put your comfy show-room-floor shoes (that may or may not contain metal) in your baggage, and... check them in!
If at all possible, it is really nice not to have to check luggage. My suit fits into a funky tri-fold bag that meets the airline's carry-on requirements. I can show up at the very last moment, route around delayed flights, not have someone misplace it, and usually be among the first hitting the taxi after a 777 unloads. Baggage space is a bit of a premium when traveling like that. Shoes don't pack nearly as nice as shirts, socks, and shorts. Many of us techies are road warriors - I know I had to ask when I was the only one in the group to still be running my shoes through the scanner. Traveling carry-on only is so much easier if you are doing it a lot.
To answer the poster's question, I've got a pair of Ecco dress shoes. Goes through clean even on 'orange' alert, and are pretty comfy. Worth every penny (and it will take many). Don't have a model number for you, so best of luck.
2. Does it have, out-of-the-box, screen fonts that don't suck, i.e., that are as good as Windows fonts circa 1995?
Microsoft was kind enough to make the core of their fonts available to the Linux community though they probably won't ever release something licensed like that again once they found out how we were using it.
http://sourceforge.net/projects/corefonts/
Arial, Times, Courier, Comic etc. A dozen of the ones you expect to be there.
Most Linux distros will work just fine with any TTF library - like the ones you would normally find in you C:\WINNT\Fonts directory. If you purchased a font, you should be able to use it on Linux as well as whatever else you have permission to use it on.
I'm so done with anything else on my current house. When I build - within the next 18 months - I will install proper conduit. Already did some ugly wiring here... (grin)
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If you froze goldfish in liquid O2, we had a surprising amount of success reviving them. I believe the mitochondria were shattered due to ice crystals, so they only lasted for a bit. The tricky bit is keeping them alive. Did a fair amount of b-cell cloning - separate out the white blood cells, add enormous quantities of EBV, toss in nuked whites as feeders, and isolate the interesting ones. You could freeze down a single blood cell if you were careful (and used a bit of dimethyl sulfoxide to help with the crystallization problem)
I hear we missed out on the real fun however. Guess lighting charcoal was where the real action was. Picking up shattered goldfish bits got old fast....
These licensing problems and forks will turn out to be the downfall of Linux.
I'd call forking natural selection... and while it can be painful, I would say it makes things stronger. Projects that head out into the weeds loose mind share (developers, users, 'buzz' if you will..) and disappear. The beauty of Linux is you get to scratch your itch. Often others share the same problem, and may share a solution. Someone running the project goes off into a wild tangent, good for them. Might be a little pain as you switch to something that is more aligned to what you were after, but odds are you can.
A personal example? I let myself get lulled into the RPM package management and really felt like I got the shaft when RH dropped the 'non-enterprise' user who did not have mad cash for per machine/per year subscriptions. All the packaged distros seemed to share the same Achilles heel (in my mind). Hunkered down and went Gentoo rather than putting energy into Fedora. If ebuilds fade away, I'll look at the app-get thing...
Forking thins the hurd (-1, terrible joke)
I had a full load of upper level biochem/microbiology coursework and thought the 'intro to c' course would be cake. It nearly killed me. The problem was not the coding, but rather the editors and environments. I was routed into the labs to do my assignments, logged into a sun workstation for my first time ever, and given a keyboard cheat sheet to emacs as an editor... Thanks for all the help guys...
Rather then learn Unix shells and figure out vi/emacs - I did all my homework on using a DOS based C compiler that I used for, learned the zen of mounting a floppy and eject the bloody thing, and a command/script to strip the bloody ^M's off. It would not surprise me to see they sent you off to a Unix lab. It is Java - you don't even have to recompile your source code if you build your classes on a machine/editor you are comfortable with.
Of course, if the coding is really the source of your problems - you are boned. Either the prof is nasty or you should have done more prep work before taking the class.
One of the things that amazed me was cywin has a full xserver! It does not come as a 'default' install, but if you expand out the install options, you can type startx and away you go. This has saved my but many a time.... There is far more than just grep, tar, and tail in there if you poke about in the install options.
Duct tape does not just "come off".
Sounds like you never tried to fix a plumbing leak with it...
My bride asked for a new kitchen sink... The 20 some year old cheapo that came with the house was leaking, so when I was trying to subtly ask for ideas she came right out and stated the desire of her heart. Five hours, many trips to the hardware store, and not knowing if we are going to ever be able to turn the water mains back on... I succeeded.
Did not make that mistake again... asking, that is...
Imagine if you could build a Linux CD to scan Windows HD's for Spyware and Viruses!
They can and do. I hung on to a SuSE live eval CD for just this purpose. Safest way of looking at a box that was owned and you needed to connect it to the network to save something big.
Some of the services folks would get flushed, think they were clever, and not bother to give a password. SuSE would let me mount the file system and ftp the files to another system - reading NTFS just fine. Might not be able to save the windows partition, but you could usually recover most of the important source files / docs / misc...
I ditched the cable tv when I added DirectTV, so the cable only gives broadband. Did a bit more digging and it looks like the pvr unit I have does its software updates over the phone line. Bought the house because it was within DSL range, only to find they did not run enough copper and were multiplexing (?) - so ten days after I moved in I found out I would not have a static IP address. Barnacles! Getting cable modem was a godsend, as I would get a shaky 4k connection on my external US Robotics 56k modem.
I may be able to borrow someone else's phone line to do the software updates. Sounds like they pushed out an update a couple weeks ago. I have not been home to know one way or the other....
Get a 256M or larger USB thumbdrive. Since this is a laptop, odds are you will be mobile. (go figure) I find I use a 512M thumbdrive all the time for moving files between machines, or sharing stuff. I keep a pack of handy programs on there as well - putty, cygwin, jdk's, javadocs, and a few others if I end up calling a desktop machine home for a while.
With my bride picking up a mobile phone as well, our house is getting ready to drop the landline. The only device in the house that uses it is my DirectTV PVR, so I've started the process by giving DirectTV a call last month.
The service rep said the PVR had to have a phone connection. I tried qualifying my situation - noting that I don't order any PPV and the guide and updates come through the dish. No matter, they were insistent I needed one. Yah, right - been four months since I plugged the phone cord in... Not sure I believe them.
On the off chance they really do need a phone connection, I'm looking for a plan B as well. I have a cable modem, so I figured the next step is VoIP. There are some packages out there, but it looks like most will set me back $15/month minimum- not a huge cost savings over the $23 or so(?) I play now. They did not seem to have issue with me changing numbers, however, so this is an option. Like to find a pay-by-use VoIP service, if anyone has seen such a beastie.
For some reason, it contains two of every binary.
Only the tainted ones - it packs seven copies of the kernel modules that are clean.
With all the live CD distros starting to crop up, I suspect it is just a matter of time before a bootable CD/DVD that uses a USB thumbdrive and/or LAN connection for persisting information comes around. I was not interested in the HDD based Linux kit Sony was distributing or doing a mod chip, but a live CD that could use the bundled Ethernet port would be fantastic.
This is good news - even if it is only a baby step.
If Jetblue jumped off a bridge, would you?
Do I still get 500 FF miles?
Think of it as a wireless file server. Too bad about the drive size, but an interesting combo. Looks like the 'mini' computer intel(?) was pushing a while back. I suspect these are being made by the same folks who bought the polaroid name.
/me hanging head in shame over some really krufty C++ code last week.
That is plan b. I'm hoping the vender will update what they support or allow us to do the install ourselves.
Lets look into this "volunteer" thing: we are looking for a person ready to give up their whole life, move to an almost 100% barren place where he/she will soon die utterly alone!
You are right. Sending Darl is a much better idea.
What the hell is with all these people bitching? You can upgrade to Fedora for free.
No, we can't. I purchased some expensive kit (~18k), which required me to buy a specific thinkpad, a copy of RedHat 8, and they do the install and ship it with a dongle. Perhaps I can keep the system patched, perhaps not. This is where reliance on rpm's and updates really stinks. I talked with these guys today about any option to switch the host OS to SuSE or RH Enterprise, but no dice.
I'll give you some bitching... I bought it less than a year ago. Nice bloody comercial support contract from Red Hat. I'm trapped.
Maybe I just get stuck with ugly projects, but my take is requirements change. Assumptions that were true when things started usually are not the case a few years later. Maintaining that code usually means that you end up with legacy kruft that you would not add if you were rewriting today. For me, when the legacy baggage is too painful its time to rewrite.
Sometimes old means stable, sometimes not... The trick is to know when it is time for a clean bowl and not get entangled by the 'not created here' syndrome when making that decision.
It is actually a misquoting Bush's comments about the C.E.V. The actual coversation went something like this...
Tried it...I always suspected that was not the way to go about it. Thanks for the encouragement, however...
It's going to take a single entity, like Sun or IBM, to create a "Java Desktop" that runs on top of the VM.
As much as I wish for Java desktop applications to take off, Sun's "Java Desktop" has nothing much to do with a Java VM or Swing applications. It is nothing more than a SuSE Linux distro with Gnome, and user licenses to LDAP, Sun's portal and app server, and a few other goodies...
As for myself, one of the things that got me messing with Linux from Scratch and the Gentoo distribution was looking to build a distro that was only for Tomcat, Jboss, SSH, and IPChains. As fate would have it, the distro that got me going down this path was core linux which
sounds pretty close.
There's this service provided by airlines called "baggage handling". What you do is, you put your comfy show-room-floor shoes (that may or may not contain metal) in your baggage, and... check them in!
If at all possible, it is really nice not to have to check luggage. My suit fits into a funky tri-fold bag that meets the airline's carry-on requirements. I can show up at the very last moment, route around delayed flights, not have someone misplace it, and usually be among the first hitting the taxi after a 777 unloads. Baggage space is a bit of a premium when traveling like that. Shoes don't pack nearly as nice as shirts, socks, and shorts. Many of us techies are road warriors - I know I had to ask when I was the only one in the group to still be running my shoes through the scanner. Traveling carry-on only is so much easier if you are doing it a lot.
To answer the poster's question, I've got a pair of Ecco dress shoes. Goes through clean even on 'orange' alert, and are pretty comfy. Worth every penny (and it will take many). Don't have a model number for you, so best of luck.
2. Does it have, out-of-the-box, screen fonts that don't suck, i.e., that are as good as Windows fonts circa 1995?
Microsoft was kind enough to make the core of their fonts available to the Linux community though they probably won't ever release something licensed like that again once they found out how we were using it.
http://sourceforge.net/projects/corefonts/
Arial, Times, Courier, Comic etc. A dozen of the ones you expect to be there.
Most Linux distros will work just fine with any TTF library - like the ones you would normally find in you C:\WINNT\Fonts directory. If you purchased a font, you should be able to use it on Linux as well as whatever else you have permission to use it on.
I'm so done with anything else on my current house. When I build - within the next 18 months - I will install proper conduit. Already did some ugly wiring here... (grin)