When I was car shopping in June, it came down to a Golf or Jetta TDI versus the Toyota Prius. I ultimately opted for the Prius because it's a better match for the kind of driving that I do - stop-and-go in-city. On long highway hauls, you will be hard pressed to beat a diesel for fuel economy, but HEV's really shine in stop-and-go where you can rely more heavily on the electric drive and regenerative braking. Food for thought when picking the technology that's right for you and your driving patterns!:)
I bought a 2002 Prius in June, and I've been delighted with it. It has quite reasonable pickup, mileage as advertised, and is quiet, comfortable, and ergonomic. It really represents a terrific mix of econonomic and ecological responsibility IMO and I hope that Toyota (and Honda) HEV offerings continue to make inroads in the US and elsewhere. It's also quite mod-able.:) I've added a cool MP3 hack, an aftermarket GPS system that's integrated into the A/V system, and datalink interface that will allow me to log performance data and display it on a mobile PC also hooked to the integrated monitor. While the big 3 would have us wait for fuel cells "to be ready" isn't it a good idea to be trying to do something to lessen our impact on oil reserves and the environment now?
btw - For those looking to get into a 2001-2003 Prius cheaply, the time may be now. Quite a few people are selling their older models in anticipation of the completely revamped 2004 model.
While I had no trouble getting my GeForce FX 5200 to work post-install after running the Nvidia binary and tweaking my config, I was unpleasantly surprised to find that the installer itself did not work and play well with the video card. I ended up doing a text install of RH 9 - very kludgy. Also disappointing were my SBLive and Kingston NIC cards not being configured properly. They worked fine after I manually modprobed the emu10k1 and tulip modules, and thereafter when I stuffed them in/etc/modules.conf, but why not automatically?
While I don't do so much with it any more, in my university days I found Maple to be an extremely complementary tool to MATLAB. MATLAB is a powerful UI for numerical analysis, while Maple (Macsyma, Mathematica, etc.) are suited for symbolic manipulation of expressions. It's not uncommon for folks to (for example) derive differential equations of motion using a symbolic math package, then export the results to a numerical analysis package for simulation. I had very good success using Maple for this purpose with both MATLAB and EASY-5 for simulations of very complex systems.
As an aside, The Mathworks has attempted to create an integrated wrapper around Maple for MATLAB, but the versions I used always felt clunky and bolted on.
Yes, there's a Redhat 8 channel in Red Carpet, which is fine for upgrading rpm's in the base distro. What you won't find is a Ximian Desktop channel with packages suitable for 8. That was originally due for release by the end of 2002, but it's now pushed back to (hopefully) Q1 in 2003. This is probably the longest delay that Ximian has ever had in making the desktop available for a new distro release, but given the magnitude of the changes, I'm happy for them to do the job right and release it when it's ready. Like I said, 7.3 has been really solid for me (my main desktop machine has run crash-free for nearly 4 months) so I'm in no great rush to move forward.
That's true. If you're trying to upgrade a Redhat install that's had Ximian overlayed, you need to IMMEDIATELY do a Ximian upgrade afterwards or the system will be unstable. I've been through 3 Redhat upgrades with Ximian, and have been just fine as long as I've followed that procedure. I'm stalled at Redhat 7.3 (which is no bad thing IMO) until Ximian gets this new desktop release ready for use.
There are Linux users who still care too! I'm sitting on Redhat 8 discs that I will not use until Ximian makes a new desktop release that supports it. There is NOTHING worse than upgrading a Redhat install that's had Ximian added on. A one-way ticket to instability unless you immediately overlay Ximian packages on top of Redhat.
I've still got one box purring away with 5.2, another running 7.0 and the rest of my boxen at 7.3. All happy clams running what they're capable of with no issues. I can still build packages from source or snag available RPMs for any critical security or bug fixes. It's not like Red Hat's preventing me from doing that. They're just trying to manage their customer support model and remain profitable. Good for them!
Others have corrected the original poster with respect to the comment that "Sega is gone." They exited the hardware market to develop software for other platforms. That said, it's been rumored that Microsoft has also been eyeing Sega for acquisition.
I share the poster's concern though. It certainly seems like they're prepared to buy their way out of their situation, and it might well work in the long run. Technical specs ultimately don't mean that much - it's the software that sells a system. If they can lock down enough exclusives, they may eventually be able to take a bite out of Sony's position and drive Nintendo under in the bargain. I'm hopeful that Sony is a big enough gorilla to survive such an attack.
I'm really glad this was posted on/. I'd considered picking one of these up. I'm glad I didn't now, as I'd planned to primarily use it as an MP3 client on my LAN, which is all Linux-based. I would have been really upset to find out about the OS-requirements after bought one. Oh well, my old, headless, K5-90 PC is doing pretty well as an MP3 client hooked up to the stereo in my workshop anyway.:)
I don't get the novelty of this. It's the classic "Rabbits and Foxes" problem that any mathematics or engineering student should have been exposed to in a differential equations course. Tuning the free parameters in the equations was probably "Sunnydale" specific, but otherwise, what's the big deal?
A good friend of mine recently moved his entire family from Windows to Linux. He'd been dabbling with it for sometime, and finally decided to begin moving his family over after growing tired of frequent crashes and misbehaviors. His wife moved first. She took to Mozilla and OpenOffice without any trouble. His youngest followed, and is doing just fine with those apps. She's really enjoyed customizing her GNOME desktop and the standard complement of games in the distro. His eldest daughter was the last in the queue. She is a freshman in college this year, and had her PC hacked the first week of classes. (I assume he sent her off w/ a patched and closed system, but obviously he missed something.) He first thought about a hardware firewall, but then decided to just move her as well. She's running Linux, and has had no security incidents so far. Open Office is working just fine for her as well. The entire family is running RH8 including his main machine which acts as a print and fileserver in their home.
In fact Miguel de ICaza was disappointed that his ideas did not impress anyone at KDE, so he left and started GNome, which he left to get some scraps of the.net craze after Ximian's "distribution" did not convince anyone to give him money for it.
I guess I'm a moron then, because I've paid Ximian on a couple occasions for their desktop distro, and I've encouraged my friends who use it to do the same. I appreciate the value they add to my desktop in terms of look and feel through artwork and metathemes, but also through very tangible contributions to the community such as ease of maintenance via Red Carpet and applications like Evolution. I believe it's worth paying for - despite what Steve Ballmer claims about us misguided Linux zealots...;)
I'm intensely curious what all this Bluecurve noise means for the next Ximian release. I love my Ximian desktop, and I've never done a Red Hat upgrade until Ximian's ready for it. I'm certainly willing to give Bluecurve a try, but I suspect I'll end up right back with my current Ximian settings.
Don't the PS1 and PS2 LCD screens clamshell shut on top of the console? I would think those would be pretty sturdy. The PS1/LCD combo that's selling now has a nice form factor that should travel pretty well...
This story makes it sound like this hasn't already happened. A number of my friends that used to be in the model making, physical effects, and animation business are out of work because of the increased use of CG in film. A few of them are rolling with the punches, and are developing CG tool proficiency, but that takes time and money. The traditional Hollywood model keeps most effects contributors living from hand-to-mouth, so that will be a difficult road for most to travel. I suspect that most folks who have been involved in physical effects in the past will be displaced to other fields - outside of Hollywood. And my mother wonders why I never went into professional model making for Hollywood...
The database idea is just what Atria/Rational did with Clearcase. The CM package sits on top of an Oracle database (VOB) and integrates it with the filesystem.
One of the features that I really like about Clearcase is their integration into the filesystem. I can set a view and go crawling through a directory structure or set up symbolic links into said directory structure. If I use a different config spec, then I get a different outcome - completely transparent to any applications that are looking at the directory structure from within the view. Other CM tools want to take snapshots, extracting them into a filesystem.
Are there any less expensive alternatives to Clearcase that can do this? I've looked into Perforce, Bitkeeper, plus a few others, and if they have the ability, I must have missed it.
I don't see why the NWN install would be much different than the one Tuxgames came up with for RTCW. You run a Linux installer to extract the Linux binaries and libraries, run the Windows setup with Wine, then copy the game data files from/home/bongo/wine/fake_windows/whatever to/usr/local/games/nwn. That's not so difficult IMO...
A lot of responses to this thread refer to tools for vehicle dynamic simulation, like ADAMS. Many of the folks working in engine and emissions controls are using the Mathworks toolchain - MATLAB/Simulink/Stateflow and perhaps related autocode tools for prototyping. The cost of the toolchain represents a substantial barrier to entry, limiting really substantial modifications to engine manufacturers and well bank-rolled design houses. (e.g. racing teams) Most of the aftermarket fuel system tweaks have been boxes which live on the datalink between the ECU and fuel system control module if they're not integrated in one box. These typically fudge the fueling and timing commands a bit to boost the torque curve - design limits/warranty and tailpipe emissions be damned.
Serious engine and emission control is pretty neat stuff. In fact, it's what I do for a living, but I'm not sure it's something for the casual tinkerer. It simply requires too much in the way of analysis, design, and test resources to do it properly.
Interesting. I wonder if the third link you provided is in any way related to Linux PS2 tech support request number 50. (That one's worth a read if you're still noodling about picking up a Linux kit and you have a recent-make PS2.)
Back on topic though, sounds like the early days of the PSO launch. Hopefully they'll work out the kinks before it gets rolled across the pond.
Keyboard support on the PS2 is no big deal. It works just fine with the Linux kit, and as I recall, Half Life for the PS2 supported USB keyboard and mouse. There are probably other PS2 titles that support it as well...
Any good reports anywhere on how the initial rollout on the PS2 in Japan has gone? I'm intensely curious about things like: uptime, hacking/cheating, lag, etc. There were a slew of reports about the initial release, and then - nothing. I know the initial software release was fairly small, and a second batch is trickling out now, but surely there's SOMETHING to report...
The company I used to work at made a substantial investment in Solaris boxen to run Pro-E. Comparably powered PC's can be had at a fraction of the price so I'm wondering if this bodes ill for Sun?
PSO was one of my wife's favorite recreational activities until rampant cheating (namely item hacking and cloning) sucked all of the fun out of the game. She still enjoyed the social aspect of the game, but the gameplay mechanics quickly lost their lustre. She's seemed relatively indifferent to FFXI when I've mentioned getting it for her. Very odd considering what a Final Fantasy nut she is. I think the PSO experience has put her off on-line gaming for a while...
Game manufacturers had best pay close attention to installing cheat countermeasures or they'll find this to be a common pattern.
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When I was car shopping in June, it came down to a Golf or Jetta TDI versus the Toyota Prius. I ultimately opted for the Prius because it's a better match for the kind of driving that I do - stop-and-go in-city. On long highway hauls, you will be hard pressed to beat a diesel for fuel economy, but HEV's really shine in stop-and-go where you can rely more heavily on the electric drive and regenerative braking. Food for thought when picking the technology that's right for you and your driving patterns! :)
I bought a 2002 Prius in June, and I've been delighted with it. It has quite reasonable pickup, mileage as advertised, and is quiet, comfortable, and ergonomic. It really represents a terrific mix of econonomic and ecological responsibility IMO and I hope that Toyota (and Honda) HEV offerings continue to make inroads in the US and elsewhere. It's also quite mod-able. :) I've added a cool MP3 hack, an aftermarket GPS system that's integrated into the A/V system, and datalink interface that will allow me to log performance data and display it on a mobile PC also hooked to the integrated monitor. While the big 3 would have us wait for fuel cells "to be ready" isn't it a good idea to be trying to do something to lessen our impact on oil reserves and the environment now?
btw - For those looking to get into a 2001-2003 Prius cheaply, the time may be now. Quite a few people are selling their older models in anticipation of the completely revamped 2004 model.
While I had no trouble getting my GeForce FX 5200 to work post-install after running the Nvidia binary and tweaking my config, I was unpleasantly surprised to find that the installer itself did not work and play well with the video card. I ended up doing a text install of RH 9 - very kludgy. Also disappointing were my SBLive and Kingston NIC cards not being configured properly. They worked fine after I manually modprobed the emu10k1 and tulip modules, and thereafter when I stuffed them in /etc/modules.conf, but why not automatically?
While I don't do so much with it any more, in my university days I found Maple to be an extremely complementary tool to MATLAB. MATLAB is a powerful UI for numerical analysis, while Maple (Macsyma, Mathematica, etc.) are suited for symbolic manipulation of expressions. It's not uncommon for folks to (for example) derive differential equations of motion using a symbolic math package, then export the results to a numerical analysis package for simulation. I had very good success using Maple for this purpose with both MATLAB and EASY-5 for simulations of very complex systems.
As an aside, The Mathworks has attempted to create an integrated wrapper around Maple for MATLAB, but the versions I used always felt clunky and bolted on.
Yes, there's a Redhat 8 channel in Red Carpet, which is fine for upgrading rpm's in the base distro. What you won't find is a Ximian Desktop channel with packages suitable for 8. That was originally due for release by the end of 2002, but it's now pushed back to (hopefully) Q1 in 2003. This is probably the longest delay that Ximian has ever had in making the desktop available for a new distro release, but given the magnitude of the changes, I'm happy for them to do the job right and release it when it's ready. Like I said, 7.3 has been really solid for me (my main desktop machine has run crash-free for nearly 4 months) so I'm in no great rush to move forward.
That's true. If you're trying to upgrade a Redhat install that's had Ximian overlayed, you need to IMMEDIATELY do a Ximian upgrade afterwards or the system will be unstable. I've been through 3 Redhat upgrades with Ximian, and have been just fine as long as I've followed that procedure. I'm stalled at Redhat 7.3 (which is no bad thing IMO) until Ximian gets this new desktop release ready for use.
There are Linux users who still care too! I'm sitting on Redhat 8 discs that I will not use until Ximian makes a new desktop release that supports it. There is NOTHING worse than upgrading a Redhat install that's had Ximian added on. A one-way ticket to instability unless you immediately overlay Ximian packages on top of Redhat.
I've still got one box purring away with 5.2, another running 7.0 and the rest of my boxen at 7.3. All happy clams running what they're capable of with no issues. I can still build packages from source or snag available RPMs for any critical security or bug fixes. It's not like Red Hat's preventing me from doing that. They're just trying to manage their customer support model and remain profitable. Good for them!
Others have corrected the original poster with respect to the comment that "Sega is gone." They exited the hardware market to develop software for other platforms. That said, it's been rumored that Microsoft has also been eyeing Sega for acquisition.
I share the poster's concern though. It certainly seems like they're prepared to buy their way out of their situation, and it might well work in the long run. Technical specs ultimately don't mean that much - it's the software that sells a system. If they can lock down enough exclusives, they may eventually be able to take a bite out of Sony's position and drive Nintendo under in the bargain. I'm hopeful that Sony is a big enough gorilla to survive such an attack.
I'm really glad this was posted on /. I'd considered picking one of these up. I'm glad I didn't now, as I'd planned to primarily use it as an MP3 client on my LAN, which is all Linux-based. I would have been really upset to find out about the OS-requirements after bought one. Oh well, my old, headless, K5-90 PC is doing pretty well as an MP3 client hooked up to the stereo in my workshop anyway. :)
I don't get the novelty of this. It's the classic "Rabbits and Foxes" problem that any mathematics or engineering student should have been exposed to in a differential equations course. Tuning the free parameters in the equations was probably "Sunnydale" specific, but otherwise, what's the big deal?
A good friend of mine recently moved his entire family from Windows to Linux. He'd been dabbling with it for sometime, and finally decided to begin moving his family over after growing tired of frequent crashes and misbehaviors. His wife moved first. She took to Mozilla and OpenOffice without any trouble. His youngest followed, and is doing just fine with those apps. She's really enjoyed customizing her GNOME desktop and the standard complement of games in the distro. His eldest daughter was the last in the queue. She is a freshman in college this year, and had her PC hacked the first week of classes. (I assume he sent her off w/ a patched and closed system, but obviously he missed something.) He first thought about a hardware firewall, but then decided to just move her as well. She's running Linux, and has had no security incidents so far. Open Office is working just fine for her as well. The entire family is running RH8 including his main machine which acts as a print and fileserver in their home.
I guess I'm a moron then, because I've paid Ximian on a couple occasions for their desktop distro, and I've encouraged my friends who use it to do the same. I appreciate the value they add to my desktop in terms of look and feel through artwork and metathemes, but also through very tangible contributions to the community such as ease of maintenance via Red Carpet and applications like Evolution. I believe it's worth paying for - despite what Steve Ballmer claims about us misguided Linux zealots...
I'm intensely curious what all this Bluecurve noise means for the next Ximian release. I love my Ximian desktop, and I've never done a Red Hat upgrade until Ximian's ready for it. I'm certainly willing to give Bluecurve a try, but I suspect I'll end up right back with my current Ximian settings.
Don't the PS1 and PS2 LCD screens clamshell shut on top of the console? I would think those would be pretty sturdy. The PS1/LCD combo that's selling now has a nice form factor that should travel pretty well...
This story makes it sound like this hasn't already happened. A number of my friends that used to be in the model making, physical effects, and animation business are out of work because of the increased use of CG in film. A few of them are rolling with the punches, and are developing CG tool proficiency, but that takes time and money. The traditional Hollywood model keeps most effects contributors living from hand-to-mouth, so that will be a difficult road for most to travel. I suspect that most folks who have been involved in physical effects in the past will be displaced to other fields - outside of Hollywood. And my mother wonders why I never went into professional model making for Hollywood...
The database idea is just what Atria/Rational did with Clearcase. The CM package sits on top of an Oracle database (VOB) and integrates it with the filesystem.
One of the features that I really like about Clearcase is their integration into the filesystem. I can set a view and go crawling through a directory structure or set up symbolic links into said directory structure. If I use a different config spec, then I get a different outcome - completely transparent to any applications that are looking at the directory structure from within the view. Other CM tools want to take snapshots, extracting them into a filesystem.
Are there any less expensive alternatives to Clearcase that can do this? I've looked into Perforce, Bitkeeper, plus a few others, and if they have the ability, I must have missed it.
I don't see why the NWN install would be much different than the one Tuxgames came up with for RTCW. You run a Linux installer to extract the Linux binaries and libraries, run the Windows setup with Wine, then copy the game data files from /home/bongo/wine/fake_windows/whatever to /usr/local/games/nwn. That's not so difficult IMO...
A lot of responses to this thread refer to tools for vehicle dynamic simulation, like ADAMS. Many of the folks working in engine and emissions controls are using the Mathworks toolchain - MATLAB/Simulink/Stateflow and perhaps related autocode tools for prototyping. The cost of the toolchain represents a substantial barrier to entry, limiting really substantial modifications to engine manufacturers and well bank-rolled design houses. (e.g. racing teams) Most of the aftermarket fuel system tweaks have been boxes which live on the datalink between the ECU and fuel system control module if they're not integrated in one box. These typically fudge the fueling and timing commands a bit to boost the torque curve - design limits/warranty and tailpipe emissions be damned.
Serious engine and emission control is pretty neat stuff. In fact, it's what I do for a living, but I'm not sure it's something for the casual tinkerer. It simply requires too much in the way of analysis, design, and test resources to do it properly.
Interesting. I wonder if the third link you provided is in any way related to Linux PS2 tech support request number 50. (That one's worth a read if you're still noodling about picking up a Linux kit and you have a recent-make PS2.)
Back on topic though, sounds like the early days of the PSO launch. Hopefully they'll work out the kinks before it gets rolled across the pond.
Keyboard support on the PS2 is no big deal. It works just fine with the Linux kit, and as I recall, Half Life for the PS2 supported USB keyboard and mouse. There are probably other PS2 titles that support it as well...
Any good reports anywhere on how the initial rollout on the PS2 in Japan has gone? I'm intensely curious about things like: uptime, hacking/cheating, lag, etc. There were a slew of reports about the initial release, and then - nothing. I know the initial software release was fairly small, and a second batch is trickling out now, but surely there's SOMETHING to report...
The company I used to work at made a substantial investment in Solaris boxen to run Pro-E. Comparably powered PC's can be had at a fraction of the price so I'm wondering if this bodes ill for Sun?
You hit that nail on the head.
PSO was one of my wife's favorite recreational activities until rampant cheating (namely item hacking and cloning) sucked all of the fun out of the game. She still enjoyed the social aspect of the game, but the gameplay mechanics quickly lost their lustre. She's seemed relatively indifferent to FFXI when I've mentioned getting it for her. Very odd considering what a Final Fantasy nut she is. I think the PSO experience has put her off on-line gaming for a while...
Game manufacturers had best pay close attention to installing cheat countermeasures or they'll find this to be a common pattern.