Yeah, it's funny how you often hire people with a totally different skillset than you'd imagine would be suitable for a post. A few years ago I was working at a dot com and we needed a Solaris admin for the network. Funnily enough the guy we eventually hired turned out to be a professional sarcastic, useless, shitbag. Imagine the surprise! It wasn't even on the guy's resume...
Well, judging by the current standard of onboard graphic chipsets, the graphic card makers needn't worry for a while yet. I just inherited a new P4 2.6ghz machine at work with an Intel 830 (I think) chipset, and it absolutely sucks for 3D (running Linux). It works, just, but try turning any options up in any of the GL screensavers and it really starts stuttering. I have an old Athlon 1.4 with a GF2MX that's used as a headless server that can easily double or tripple the fps that the Intel chipset can.
Then there's SiS. Possibly the most crap graphic chipsets on Earth. Absolute shite. In fact, SiS themselves are so ashamed of their products they refuse to release the specs so that anyone could attempt to use their 3D "features". Yes, Nvidia are guilty of this too, but at least they write drivers for Linux, and make damned good cards;-)
No, the only time I buy a machine with onboard graphics is when it's going to spend its life running headless in some server room...
I viewed the videos up there of Looking Glass, and have to say that although it looks very nice I really can't see how it would aid productivity. So you can twist windows around the Y axis so they take up less space; so what?! If I need more space I use another desktop or iconize a few windows. Much faster to get back to them than trying to manipulate a 3D window using a 2D pointing device (mouse).
I'm all for people researching alternatives to the Windows+Icons+Desktop paradigm, but I don't think Sun's idea will ever make it out onto the business desktop...
You know, you'd think SCO would want to keep this quiet. You know, the fact they consider linux 0.0.1 "code" technically advanced, equal to their current products (presuming they still market any?) and ready for large scale deployment. And that was over 10 years ago!!
This is one of my pet peevs with the Linux desktops; the start-up times of apps are almost inexcusable. I 've used bothe KDE and Gnome on various distros, and often have to apologise to collegues for making them wait 10 seconds for MozillaFirebird to crank into life, or 15 seconds for OpenOffice to show a small spreadsheet. Even using KDE, launching the Konqueror browser takes 5 or 6 seconds. Considering it's almost as tightly integrated as IE is to Windows it really should be there as soon as your finger lifts off of the mouse button! I don't think it's acceptable for a 2.6ghz machine with 512MB RAM and a fast HD to start apps slower than my old P2 400 with Win'98 from 5 years ago!
I administer a fair number of Linux servers, which I wouldn't swap for any flavour of Windows (or any other UNIX variant), and I'll carry on using Linux on my desktop at work, but I just wish this issue was addressed. I don't need more toys, tickers and "Aqua like" themes; I want a bit of responsiveness!
For example my broadcom 411 integrated ethernet card still is not reconigned under Linux or FreeBSD but its fully supported under Solaris. Also my soundblaster live, geforce 4, Sony Dvd writter, and both broadcom and netgear nics are fully reconogigned.
Well first off the Geforce is only recognised as a dumb 2d framebuffer, so it's hardly making the most of that hardware (this is also what I'm using). You were lucky with your Netgear; I had to search around to find a driver that would work (ok no big deal since I'm familiar with Linux so not starting from square one). My SB chipset absolutely will not work with it. Ditto the RAID controller. I'm not sure if it's using both CPUs yet. No scroll wheel support (a little thing, but very much missed). The default install ended up creating a bizarre partitioning scheme - around 6GB for the system and 34GB for/home!? After the OS and a few tools are installed, there's barely space to build anything!
I am going to persevere with it, as it's often useful to have recent experience with the OS on a CV, but I very much doubt I'll ever swtich to it for personal use. I see Solaris as a functional tool, and that's all; I see Linux as much more...
Well, I think they might bring up the small matters of ethnic cleansing, murder, violence, extortion, biological weapons.... oh and that gold bathroom, I believe Jean Paul Gaultier and co want word with him about taste;-)
Well, this is the first time I've tried Solaris on an x86 machine. I pull out one of my old crap boxes that I don't use for anything; K6 550, 128MB and SiS530 gfx. The installer hung while trying to test the Xserver (set up as a generic VGA, 256 colours @ 1024x768). The whole thing locked up solid...
Think I'll stick with Linux;-) 6 more coasters for the trashcan...
We need to know who these people are! I for one wouldn't want to be living next to some weird freak who spends his time downloading fucking Celine Dion and Brian Adams tracks!!
Well, you would be mistaken. Win32 architecture bears no resemblence to Apple's OS, but you would actually have to understand how they work to know that. Most people, like yourself, thing "Hmm, one has a GUI, and so does the other... they much be the same!" You are essentially saying that Ferrari ripped off Ford because they both have red cars with four tires and a steering wheel.
I see you're using a variation of Gate's "defence" when Apple took MS to court for stealing their OS (Gates actually used an analogy of a car's steering wheel). Interesting, since you claim it didn't happen, despite the overwhelming evidence, including MS having to buy stock in Apple, and supply web browser and office tools as part of the settlement. You're either extremely stupid, or ignorant of very recent history. BTW, I've used both Apple and MS OS's for many years, and I'm aware of the differences and similarities between them. That analogy is equal parts stupid, paranoid, and incorrect. But, since you obviously dont really know Windows, I dont see why anybody should be expected to take your 'expert' opinion on the matter.
Well if that's the case, show me where I can download the source to XP so I can fix a few bugs;-) No? Didn't think so. Bye bye troll;-)
Look up the computer history; MS became dominant on the desktop because everyone else didnt care about the desktop, and were trying to make mega cash on servers/networking.
And here I always thought they did it by reverse-engineering Apple's Macintosh OS, selling the (incredibly buggy) results as pre-installed software on cheap Asian-sourced hardware, and undercutting everyone else just enough that people would buy it. A couple of decades of arm-twisting and other illegal practices later, and we have the current MS...
And in those cases when Microsoft is either unwilling or unable to fix something, I can always hire a programmer to fix it for me.
I cant for the life of me figure out how this would apply to any real-world scenarios... Its basically like me saying its Ford's fault that my fan belt broke, and they should be responsible for fixing it. Heaven forbid you bring the car in to a mechanic...
I think the analogy would be close to your car stalling in the middle of a highway, all the warning lights frozen on and the ignition key jammed solid.
In any event, have YOU ever taken a car into a mechanic that has its bonnet welded shut, and legal threats plastered all over it warning the garage about the consequences if they have the temerity to take a look at how it works, and what the problem is?
Maybe some company could create a cradle that you could fit into a CDROM/Floppy drive bay that you could just slide a 3.5in HD into (I'm guessing there would need to be an adaptor for different drives as the IO and power connector placements would differ slightly).
The cradle would include a system that checked for the existance of a drive at power-up, and if the device wasn't present, the power connector would be disabled until the next power cycle. This way the IDE disk could be inserted at any time safely. A solenoid or something could prevent removal while the power was on.... or just make a cheap kit to turn an IDE into a USB drive (cheapo plastic case, minimal electronics);-)
Although this is undoubtably a good idea, the article doesn't mention whether the phone will translate "TXT talk", as used by just about everyone today, into actual speech. IE "HI M8, R U GONNA GO 2 the pub l8r?" etc. Hopefully the phone doesn't just spell out the text in this format...
Very true. In fact, I fail to see how "companies" who send pornography to my 11 year old niece cannot be charged as peodophiles? Actually a lot of the content appears to be peodophilic in nature, which would almost certainly strengthen the cases against them.
Maybe some of the "professional victims" who make a living from suing city councils after slipping on a banana peel, or getting fat by eating too much etc, could address this new market?
Yep, that was my immediate thought when I read this. I routinely add the domains spreading malware to my companies name servers, as well as my friends, family and my own. Claria will be going in tomorrow! Nice to get the heads up;-)
Well I don't know about anyone else, but I'll be in the queue. I've been sending mail to Macromedia for YEARS asking about Linux versions of their apps (and yes, I'd gladly pay to convert). Once Fireworks and PS are there, I'll be ditching my last Windows machine here.
Sure, it won't apply to everyone, but web developers, writing apps to run on Linux servers must see the obvious benefits here!
Oooo! Listen to mr "Fancy Pants" with his abacus. We weren't all millionaires you know! I had to crunch numbers by using a system of mudballs and sticks in the swamps where us "commoners" had to live while you lot lived it up!!
I'll agree with that pretty much. I've a router machine/firewall/occasional FTP (P90 32MB, 500MB HD) running RH7.3, which works fine, but then it's hardly being pushed. It certainly wouldn't run X at any useful speed on its 1MB graphic card!
However, I still find X sluggish compared to Windows even on a reasonable machine. I use Gentoo at work, on a P4 2.4ghz with (admittedly crap) SiS graphic card, and 256MB of RAM (32MB shared to gfx). Since I mostly use terminals, this is all fine and dandy, but if I start up, for example, Mozilla then the waiting starts.
Moz takes a good 15-20 seconds to appear, OpenOffice over half a minute to come up with a small spreadsheet. I attribute some of this to the fact I'm running KDE, but even under Gnome it's really little faster. Evolution is "ok", but even something as simple(?) as filtering the inbox into separate folders takes a long time (I do clear out mail so there's never more than a coupld of hundred messages in any box).
In short, Linux is a great server (I run quite a few with RH/Gentoo), but it's not as snappy as Windows on the desktop; I'll still stay with it though;-)
I was wondering about this just today (Yahoo's Image verification system). Now I'd hate to see anything holding back technology that foils spammers, but isn't it a little discriminating against the partially sighted or blind visitors? How would they post if they can't see the image (especially if the browser doesn't display them)? Maybe I'm missing something here?
Samba is a great tool for promoting Linux, I've found. When I began working at my current job they had a rack of (remarkably unstable) NT4 machines, with a couple of Linux servers doing nothing particularly worthwhile. I mentioned maybe installing some apps to make them more useful to everyone, and was given free reign (though I'm actually employed as a software developer rather than an admin).
Anyway, it's fair to say the NT admins, and other IT staff were pretty impressed once I'd integrated the Linux boxes into the domains, migrated a lot of Access reports (spreadsheets)across to perl+MySQL - making them execute in some cases hundreds of times faster, plus various other utilities. We have a nice development intranet, web tools for monitoring and handling problems with the Windows/HPUX servers and more all running on Linux now. We have DHCP+Dynamic DNS updates on Linux instead of the manual-settings they were using on clients before, traffic shaping via iptables etc etc...
Our latest subnet's first server was linux, and I can't see an NT box getting into that rack any time soon;-)
It took some of my spare time, and patience to get the company to give Linux a real chance to prove itself, and I think without Samba it wouldn't have happened anywhere near as fast! I'm currently pushing to move our commercial system from HPUX to Linux (yes, a version of our in-house system exists for Linux), since a replacement HP box will cost over 50,000 with no more power or disk capacity than an x86 box with a couple of P3 1ghz in it (we were astonished when we asked about a pair of 750MHZ CPUS to upgrade the 400MHZ parts in the current HP box, and told they'd cost 7,500... EACH!)
So, well done to the Samba team!! Pity you're still allowing the scumbags at SCO to profit from your work though...
Well maybe I was a little harsh, I do have to administer linux boxes that are tightly integrated into Windows networks though.
As an example, I just installed another machine into new a building to handle our company's latest subnet. This entails setting up Samba as a domain member, with the associated domain group/user security, CUPS printing ("point and print" driver downloads using the print$ share etc). It's also needed to handle the wins relaying to the main subnet. Things I don't believe are possible with Webmin. Actually I seem to remember that Webmin's printer interface clobbered the CUPS config, rendering it unusable at one point.
Also, since we require (or, rather, I decided some time ago that things would be easier to administer with) dhcp to handle the windows clients on our networks, with said clients needing to be resolvable via DNS I tend to use dynamic dns updates to named. If you've never done this, it's hardly rocket science, but still a little unusual at the moment. (works extremely well, BTW and I highly recommend it! So now when users have a problem, they can just quote their machine name from a label stuck on the box and we can VNC straight in to that hostname to sort it out;-)
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Yeah, it's funny how you often hire people with a totally different skillset than you'd imagine would be suitable for a post. A few years ago I was working at a dot com and we needed a Solaris admin for the network. Funnily enough the guy we eventually hired turned out to be a professional sarcastic, useless, shitbag. Imagine the surprise! It wasn't even on the guy's resume...
Well, judging by the current standard of onboard graphic chipsets, the graphic card makers needn't worry for a while yet. I just inherited a new P4 2.6ghz machine at work with an Intel 830 (I think) chipset, and it absolutely sucks for 3D (running Linux). It works, just, but try turning any options up in any of the GL screensavers and it really starts stuttering. I have an old Athlon 1.4 with a GF2MX that's used as a headless server that can easily double or tripple the fps that the Intel chipset can.
;-)
Then there's SiS. Possibly the most crap graphic chipsets on Earth. Absolute shite. In fact, SiS themselves are so ashamed of their products they refuse to release the specs so that anyone could attempt to use their 3D "features". Yes, Nvidia are guilty of this too, but at least they write drivers for Linux, and make damned good cards
No, the only time I buy a machine with onboard graphics is when it's going to spend its life running headless in some server room...
I viewed the videos up there of Looking Glass, and have to say that although it looks very nice I really can't see how it would aid productivity. So you can twist windows around the Y axis so they take up less space; so what?! If I need more space I use another desktop or iconize a few windows. Much faster to get back to them than trying to manipulate a 3D window using a 2D pointing device (mouse).
I'm all for people researching alternatives to the Windows+Icons+Desktop paradigm, but I don't think Sun's idea will ever make it out onto the business desktop...
You know, you'd think SCO would want to keep this quiet. You know, the fact they consider linux 0.0.1 "code" technically advanced, equal to their current products (presuming they still market any?) and ready for large scale deployment. And that was over 10 years ago!!
... I can take money out of Kevin's bank account any time I like ;-)
This is one of my pet peevs with the Linux desktops; the start-up times of apps are almost inexcusable. I 've used bothe KDE and Gnome on various distros, and often have to apologise to collegues for making them wait 10 seconds for MozillaFirebird to crank into life, or 15 seconds for OpenOffice to show a small spreadsheet. Even using KDE, launching the Konqueror browser takes 5 or 6 seconds. Considering it's almost as tightly integrated as IE is to Windows it really should be there as soon as your finger lifts off of the mouse button! I don't think it's acceptable for a 2.6ghz machine with 512MB RAM and a fast HD to start apps slower than my old P2 400 with Win'98 from 5 years ago!
I administer a fair number of Linux servers, which I wouldn't swap for any flavour of Windows (or any other UNIX variant), and I'll carry on using Linux on my desktop at work, but I just wish this issue was addressed. I don't need more toys, tickers and "Aqua like" themes; I want a bit of responsiveness!
For example my broadcom 411 integrated ethernet card still is not reconigned under Linux or FreeBSD but its fully supported under Solaris. Also my soundblaster live, geforce 4, Sony Dvd writter, and both broadcom and netgear nics are fully reconogigned.
Well first off the Geforce is only recognised as a dumb 2d framebuffer, so it's hardly making the most of that hardware (this is also what I'm using). You were lucky with your Netgear; I had to search around to find a driver that would work (ok no big deal since I'm familiar with Linux so not starting from square one). My SB chipset absolutely will not work with it. Ditto the RAID controller. I'm not sure if it's using both CPUs yet. No scroll wheel support (a little thing, but very much missed). The default install ended up creating a bizarre partitioning scheme - around 6GB for the system and 34GB for
I am going to persevere with it, as it's often useful to have recent experience with the OS on a CV, but I very much doubt I'll ever swtich to it for personal use. I see Solaris as a functional tool, and that's all; I see Linux as much more...
Well, I think they might bring up the small matters of ethnic cleansing, murder, violence, extortion, biological weapons.... oh and that gold bathroom, I believe Jean Paul Gaultier and co want word with him about taste ;-)
Well, this is the first time I've tried Solaris on an x86 machine. I pull out one of my old crap boxes that I don't use for anything; K6 550, 128MB and SiS530 gfx. The installer hung while trying to test the Xserver (set up as a generic VGA, 256 colours @ 1024x768). The whole thing locked up solid...
;-) 6 more coasters for the trashcan...
Think I'll stick with Linux
So? It works even though NVidia didn't compile it for you. That was your original gripe.
;-) Maybe you don't understand the difference between source code and binary code?
I smell a troll... Well, either that or someone who is deeply stupid
We need to know who these people are! I for one wouldn't want to be living next to some weird freak who spends his time downloading fucking Celine Dion and Brian Adams tracks!!
Well, you would be mistaken. Win32 architecture bears no resemblence to Apple's OS, but you would actually have to understand how they work to know that. Most people, like yourself, thing "Hmm, one has a GUI, and so does the other... they much be the same!" You are essentially saying that Ferrari ripped off Ford because they both have red cars with four tires and a steering wheel.
;-) No? Didn't think so. Bye bye troll ;-)
I see you're using a variation of Gate's "defence" when Apple took MS to court for stealing their OS (Gates actually used an analogy of a car's steering wheel). Interesting, since you claim it didn't happen, despite the overwhelming evidence, including MS having to buy stock in Apple, and supply web browser and office tools as part of the settlement. You're either extremely stupid, or ignorant of very recent history. BTW, I've used both Apple and MS OS's for many years, and I'm aware of the differences and similarities between them.
That analogy is equal parts stupid, paranoid, and incorrect. But, since you obviously dont really know Windows, I dont see why anybody should be expected to take your 'expert' opinion on the matter.
Well if that's the case, show me where I can download the source to XP so I can fix a few bugs
And here I always thought they did it by reverse-engineering Apple's Macintosh OS, selling the (incredibly buggy) results as pre-installed software on cheap Asian-sourced hardware, and undercutting everyone else just enough that people would buy it. A couple of decades of arm-twisting and other illegal practices later, and we have the current MS...
I think the analogy would be close to your car stalling in the middle of a highway, all the warning lights frozen on and the ignition key jammed solid.
In any event, have YOU ever taken a car into a mechanic that has its bonnet welded shut, and legal threats plastered all over it warning the garage about the consequences if they have the temerity to take a look at how it works, and what the problem is?
Maybe some company could create a cradle that you could fit into a CDROM/Floppy drive bay that you could just slide a 3.5in HD into (I'm guessing there would need to be an adaptor for different drives as the IO and power connector placements would differ slightly).
... or just make a cheap kit to turn an IDE into a USB drive (cheapo plastic case, minimal electronics) ;-)
The cradle would include a system that checked for the existance of a drive at power-up, and if the device wasn't present, the power connector would be disabled until the next power cycle. This way the IDE disk could be inserted at any time safely. A solenoid or something could prevent removal while the power was on.
Although this is undoubtably a good idea, the article doesn't mention whether the phone will translate "TXT talk", as used by just about everyone today, into actual speech. IE "HI M8, R U GONNA GO 2 the pub l8r?" etc. Hopefully the phone doesn't just spell out the text in this format...
Very true. In fact, I fail to see how "companies" who send pornography to my 11 year old niece cannot be charged as peodophiles? Actually a lot of the content appears to be peodophilic in nature, which would almost certainly strengthen the cases against them.
Maybe some of the "professional victims" who make a living from suing city councils after slipping on a banana peel, or getting fat by eating too much etc, could address this new market?
"Me too!" - Agent Smith
Yep, that was my immediate thought when I read this. I routinely add the domains spreading malware to my companies name servers, as well as my friends, family and my own. Claria will be going in tomorrow! Nice to get the heads up ;-)
See the hoardes of people lining up.
Well I don't know about anyone else, but I'll be in the queue. I've been sending mail to Macromedia for YEARS asking about Linux versions of their apps (and yes, I'd gladly pay to convert). Once Fireworks and PS are there, I'll be ditching my last Windows machine here.
Sure, it won't apply to everyone, but web developers, writing apps to run on Linux servers must see the obvious benefits here!
Oooo! Listen to mr "Fancy Pants" with his abacus. We weren't all millionaires you know! I had to crunch numbers by using a system of mudballs and sticks in the swamps where us "commoners" had to live while you lot lived it up!!
Grrr!!
I'll agree with that pretty much. I've a router machine/firewall/occasional FTP (P90 32MB, 500MB HD) running RH7.3, which works fine, but then it's hardly being pushed. It certainly wouldn't run X at any useful speed on its 1MB graphic card!
;-)
However, I still find X sluggish compared to Windows even on a reasonable machine. I use Gentoo at work, on a P4 2.4ghz with (admittedly crap) SiS graphic card, and 256MB of RAM (32MB shared to gfx). Since I mostly use terminals, this is all fine and dandy, but if I start up, for example, Mozilla then the waiting starts.
Moz takes a good 15-20 seconds to appear, OpenOffice over half a minute to come up with a small spreadsheet. I attribute some of this to the fact I'm running KDE, but even under Gnome it's really little faster. Evolution is "ok", but even something as simple(?) as filtering the inbox into separate folders takes a long time (I do clear out mail so there's never more than a coupld of hundred messages in any box).
In short, Linux is a great server (I run quite a few with RH/Gentoo), but it's not as snappy as Windows on the desktop; I'll still stay with it though
I was wondering about this just today (Yahoo's Image verification system). Now I'd hate to see anything holding back technology that foils spammers, but isn't it a little discriminating against the partially sighted or blind visitors? How would they post if they can't see the image (especially if the browser doesn't display them)? Maybe I'm missing something here?
How you know this?
Samba is a great tool for promoting Linux, I've found. When I began working at my current job they had a rack of (remarkably unstable) NT4 machines, with a couple of Linux servers doing nothing particularly worthwhile. I mentioned maybe installing some apps to make them more useful to everyone, and was given free reign (though I'm actually employed as a software developer rather than an admin).
;-)
Anyway, it's fair to say the NT admins, and other IT staff were pretty impressed once I'd integrated the Linux boxes into the domains, migrated a lot of Access reports (spreadsheets)across to perl+MySQL - making them execute in some cases hundreds of times faster, plus various other utilities. We have a nice development intranet, web tools for monitoring and handling problems with the Windows/HPUX servers and more all running on Linux now. We have DHCP+Dynamic DNS updates on Linux instead of the manual-settings they were using on clients before, traffic shaping via iptables etc etc...
Our latest subnet's first server was linux, and I can't see an NT box getting into that rack any time soon
It took some of my spare time, and patience to get the company to give Linux a real chance to prove itself, and I think without Samba it wouldn't have happened anywhere near as fast! I'm currently pushing to move our commercial system from HPUX to Linux (yes, a version of our in-house system exists for Linux), since a replacement HP box will cost over 50,000 with no more power or disk capacity than an x86 box with a couple of P3 1ghz in it (we were astonished when we asked about a pair of 750MHZ CPUS to upgrade the 400MHZ parts in the current HP box, and told they'd cost 7,500... EACH!)
So, well done to the Samba team!! Pity you're still allowing the scumbags at SCO to profit from your work though...
Well maybe I was a little harsh, I do have to administer linux boxes that are tightly integrated into Windows networks though.
;-)
As an example, I just installed another machine into new a building to handle our company's latest subnet. This entails setting up Samba as a domain member, with the associated domain group/user security, CUPS printing ("point and print" driver downloads using the print$ share etc). It's also needed to handle the wins relaying to the main subnet. Things I don't believe are possible with Webmin. Actually I seem to remember that Webmin's printer interface clobbered the CUPS config, rendering it unusable at one point.
Also, since we require (or, rather, I decided some time ago that things would be easier to administer with) dhcp to handle the windows clients on our networks, with said clients needing to be resolvable via DNS I tend to use dynamic dns updates to named. If you've never done this, it's hardly rocket science, but still a little unusual at the moment. (works extremely well, BTW and I highly recommend it! So now when users have a problem, they can just quote their machine name from a label stuck on the box and we can VNC straight in to that hostname to sort it out