my boss paid for my trip to IT2002 Asia expo in kitakyushu,jp, where I got to see one of these things "in action". infact, it was broken, and a bunch of strange-looking men were trying to fix it by pushing on tops of its legs and crawling around the unit. Thought it was pretty funny. I wouldn't buy one, the thing is huge and looks weird.
Of course, since this site is about bashing Microsoft, we cannot mention anything about good and working technology implemented by Microsoft. However, like it or not, direct link of 2 laptops with 400mbps firewire IS faster than 100mbit switched ethernet. I've copied gigabytes of movies from coworker PCs using firewire link, and if someone wanted to copy more than 2 or 3 movies while visiting our office, they would always bring a firewire cable or card, knowing how it would take much less time to transfer the data.
So don't bag something because you had a suckass experience with it on YOUR XP install.
Media Player Classic combined with FFDShow is all you need to playback any kind of MPEG1/2/4 content, and realmedia (provided realplayer 8 or 9 is installed). MPC looks just like Media player 6.4 and has useful features such as keyboard control, built-in subtitle rendering, and various video control options.
Sir, when I purchase a 2ghz computer from the store (not a homebuilt piece of trash with heatsink falling off), I expect the machine to perform at 2Ghz 100% of the time regardless of what I am doing. Putting a disclaimer on it saying that "it might perform poorly" when you are doing CPU-intensive tasks is like saying "here is this new car, its rated to go 200mph but if you actually try that, it will top out at 100mph".
And if there is a car rated for 100mph sitting right next to the 200mph one selling for $10000 less, which one would you buy?
Recently they started putting a interesting "disclaimer" on the laptops they sell (I checked specs pdfs for 1905 and 5202 series, but it seems like they all got one appended):
Central Processing Unit ("CPUE Performance Disclaimer: CPU performance in your computer product may vary from specifications under the following conditions: use of certain external peripheral products use of battery power instead of AC power without changing factory pre-set power management settings use of certain multimedia games or videos with special effects use of standard telephone lines or low speed network connections use of complex modeling software, such as high end computer aided design applications use of computer in areas with low air pressure (high altitude >1,000 meters or >3,280 feet above sea level) use of computer at temperatures outside the range of 5C to 35C (41F to 95 F) or >25C (77F) at high altitude (all temperature references are approximate). Under some conditions, your computer product may automatically shut-down. This is a normal protective feature designed to reduce the risk of lost data or damage to the product when used outside recommended conditions. To avoid risk of lost data, always make back-up copies of data by periodically storing it on an external storage medium. For optimum performance, use your computer product only under recommended conditions. Read additional restrictions under "Environmental ConditionsEin your product Resource Guide. Contact Toshiba Technical Service and Support for more information.
Wow, you mean, my new laptop will not perform as advertised, and might actually just TURN OFF while I am NORMALLY using it? Why the heck would I want to spend $2.5k for a Satellite 5205 to find out it will clock down to half speed while "being used" and then if I "use it too much" will just simply shutdown?
To the story author, be happy you didn't buy from toshiba or else you'll be retyping your report each time Toshiba engineers decide its time for your new laptop to turn off to protect itself from overheating.
to make it not spin back up after a few seconds (and if you are running 2.4.x kernels (and possibly 2.5) you can do this:
# killall -STOP kupdated
however, be warned that this will stop frequent flushes of disk cache to disk, and if your machine happens to lock up for some reason there's a chance you might lose some data. But for personal machine that you want quiet at night, this works wonders. Also consider slowing down syslog --MARK-- output (which might spin up the disk by adding -m 1440 (time in minutes) to syslog startup line.
Has all the useful security news for *nix sites have been going down the drain lately? I mean, I am sure symantec is a great windoze security company, but what do they care about securityfocus? Now that website is probably going to be filled with even more useless HTML and crap bleh!
The article title makes no sense to me. Who the fuck is John Gilmore? And how the fuck can this article have over 900 comments in it already? Usually articles with dumb titles dont collect over 300 comments.
Actually, I was quite surprised the other day. I actually used a built in modem on my laptop to dialup to check mail and download something I had to have at that moment. few megabytes download started, and I was actaully able to type over ssh link almost laglessly while the download was going at about 2.7k/second or so (this is a modem remember). And I remember on linux, if I didn't throttle the download using some download manager, things would get so laggy I had to wait like 20 seconds to see what I typed over ssh session. Surprising that the same kind of stuff doesn't work with DSL modems...
I remember scanning japanese netblocks for insecure linux boxes with , and once and a while I'd come across a abandoned turbolinux box. Japs liked turbolinux because it came with a jap manual but nobody else around the world was dumb enough to (buy|download) it.
Oh, how the heck is that "flamebait". I am sorry that truth hurts, but just look on sourceforge.net 50% of the projects are still even in "design" stage and out of the 50% left 90% are abandoned in one way or another and only the resulting 10% have some sort of activity. There is no need writing new apps. Fix the old ones first, revive the dead ones, and you'll have something to make "Linux" appeal to desktop users.
before going to design NEW linux applications, PLEASE take your time and DEBUG the current ones. The collection of half-abandoned software that has tons of bugs that nobody uses (perhaps of those bugs) is absolutely huge.
Which crap are you smoking, sir? Java applet size limit is 10k. Always has been. Read up on http://www.iasolution.net/e-is-industry-22.htm wh ich says that "sometime in spring" DoCOMo "might" offer handsets that can read up to 30k java files, "3 times larger than the current limit of 10k".
Don't worry though. It takes 10 seconds to get a 10k file in ideal conditions, nobody is going to wait 30 seconds to download this junk.
Should you be impressed after reading this article? I think not. Why? Well, let me tell you.
What you hear of Japanese companies in America is twisted, incorrect, or at best improperly translated from Japanese double-speak which is used to promote losing services.
So, you are drooling to come to Japan and start using DoCoMo's "wireless internet service" while taking a bus to your office, right? Wrong. The service (even the current 9.6kbps, max packet size 10k, never actually reaching that speed) gets really shitty during rush hour when all the office workers get on their phones to call their boss to tell them they will be late to work because of another traffic jam.
So, what's the appeal for this pathetic "service" that Japs have to pay out of their ass for? I really don't know. Maybe everyone there has too much money to waste on shit, or something like that. A latest 503i mobile phone with "java" (Don't get me started on that one, 10k.jar limit, and JAVA of all things?), will cost your average jap approx $500 for a one-year contract including the phone. You get some few minutes for free to use up each month, and then you pay for every minute of outgoing calls. Each "i-mode" call is billed by the packet, which means if you actually plan to do anything serious on it (which is impossible, the content available on i-mode is worthless to a general user), you'll be paying for it, as well.
Let's examine DoCoMo's java phones again. They are being marketed as "cool, useful, secure devices to do your online banking, play games, and access the internet". What they don't tell you that you are still stuck with pathetic 9.6kbps (ideal, usually much worse), 10k packet limit (don't try to browse slashdot on that phone), and that Java applets can't access network except for HTTP (and only to the originating server) which means you can forget about peer to peer games (or any kind of intelligent games, wtf can you fit into 10k of Java? If it was 10k of ASM, sure, but java? Hah).
Another words, don't be too excited about hearing these news. I'd say, if you really care, boycott this shit and tell the japs to go back to their country with that I-mode crap. Support ricochet or whatever other True American company is there to provide you service - at least their CEO has a normal view at the real world, and not an idealistic "I'll make it and everyone will use it because I made it" view that most Japanese company presidents have about their product.
Another not very well known fact, is that these "sales" of i-mode units that DoCoMo claims on their quarterly reports are mostly "push" sales to absolutely unsuspecting customers. Imagine, you own a 2 or 3 years old phone, which breaks because you drop it in the bathtub. Ideally, you'd want to get exact same model, because you like it and you want to keep using it. The catch is that it's 3 years old, and DoCoMo doesn't sell 3 years old phones anymore. Incidentally, they have this nice and new 503 model which has i-mode, java, and god-knows-what-the-fuck-else that you will never use or even know how to use (503 models come with a ~400+ page manual). You have no choice, and you buy the new phone. You talk on it about 10-20 times a month, and never even touch anything related to I-mode. DoCoMo salesman rubs his hands, puts another cross on the sheet posted in his office where every employee must write how many phones they sold a week, and DoCoMo gets another "i-mode" user to report on their quarterly sales reports.
Why do you think DoCoMo says they are selling so many i-mode headsets now? Duh, because that's all they sell these days.
I hate to sound too negative, but the question that first came up when I saw this article's title was "Why would you want to?" What are the advantages of a Crusoe based laptop over similarly priced Intel or AMD mobile chip-based notebook? If you are getting a slim-sized laptop to impress your friends, there are lower priced units using intel mobile p3 that have decent battery life; If you want a desktop replacement, the current 600-something Mhz max speed of Crusoe doesn't really cut it. Today, you can get 1.1Ghz "desktop replacement" notebooks for less than $1800 U.S.... Crusoe doesn't really fit anywhere in todays mobile computing, I can't imagine too many uses for it outside of oddball niche products...
it's nice to see great companies such as IBM and RedHat cooperating together to bring linux to the masses. Finally our vision of Linux on every desktop is getting closer and closer.
With latest release of 2.5 kernels, Linux is the best choice for both desktop and server.
Whoa, those patent pages are served as "TIFF" files. What browser do you use to actually view them? I was not able to see anything in Netscape6/Mozilla and I ended up having to wget the URL and view images using gimp (they are compressed, xv/gqview don't want to see them either).
Professional video cameras will never have email or web browser or other useless junk. The purpose of a pro camera is to record the highest quality audio and video, at the highest possible resolution. There is a resolution and sound quality difference between pro DV cameras and "consumer" DV cameras, and about 3x the price difference as well. One of the most important things is current consumer cameras usually only have one CCD (the device that actually turns light into digital stream that can be stored on tape, etc), where all of pro cameras have 3 CCD's for each of red green and blue colors. All pro cameras have interchangeable lens system, where in a consumer camcorder you are stuck with whatever lens comes with it. And optics are definitely a lot better.
Bottom line is, no sane reporter would ever take an equivalent of a gameboy cam (which is pretty much what this is compared to a real video camera) to afganistan.
There is a very neat utility called "dvbackup" (dvbackup.sourceforge.net if I remember correctly) which allows you to backup up to 10gb per mini-DV tape. Very neat concept, with something like 3mb/second transfer rates, however I have not been able to get this to work at all. Recently there was a fix to make it work with 'NTSC' cameras so I guess before it would only work on PAL systems anyway. Anybody there who actually successfully backed up any data with dv backup?
Haha... I looked at http://www.dynamism.com/thinkpad/index.shtml
What's so special about that machine?
IBM Thinkpad S30 (PIII-600, 20gb, 128mb, 100/10baseT, IEEE1394, WinME), $2599?
Hell, Toshiba had Home/PgUp/PgDn/End keys without fn-combination on their laptops forever.
Satellite 5005-S504 costs ONLY $2000, has ENGLISH keyboard (dont EVER buy a japanese laptop with japanese keyboard, you will NOT like it)...
P3 1,1ghz, *512*MB ram, 30gb hdd, 3 usb, 1394, 15" LCD, geforce2 video card... Who would want a overpriced IBM for almost 1.5 the price, and half the features, and with japanese keyboard? Hah...
Looking at Japanese computers almost daily I actually ordered my laptop from U.S. because you simply cant beat the price or the features of machines made in the U.S.A even if they are from "Japanese" makers such as Toshiba etc.
And, for some people, "SWEET" is a lot less important than "USABLE".
Slashdot Mirror
my boss paid for my trip to IT2002 Asia expo in kitakyushu,jp, where I got to see one of these things "in action".
infact, it was broken, and a bunch of strange-looking men were trying to fix it by pushing on tops of its legs and crawling around the unit.
Thought it was pretty funny.
I wouldn't buy one, the thing is huge and looks weird.
Of course, since this site is about bashing Microsoft, we cannot mention anything about good and working technology implemented by Microsoft.
However, like it or not, direct link of 2 laptops with 400mbps firewire IS faster than 100mbit switched ethernet. I've copied gigabytes of movies from coworker PCs using firewire link, and if someone wanted to copy more than 2 or 3 movies while visiting our office, they would always bring a firewire cable or card, knowing how it would take much less time to transfer the data.
So don't bag something because you had a suckass experience with it on YOUR XP install.
Why bother with mplayer on windows?
Media Player Classic combined with FFDShow is all you need to playback any kind of MPEG1/2/4 content, and realmedia (provided realplayer 8 or 9 is installed). MPC looks just like Media player 6.4 and has useful features such as keyboard control, built-in subtitle rendering, and various video control options.
Sir, when I purchase a 2ghz computer from the store (not a homebuilt piece of trash with heatsink falling off), I expect the machine to perform at 2Ghz 100% of the time regardless of what I am doing. Putting a disclaimer on it saying that "it might perform poorly" when you are doing CPU-intensive tasks is like saying "here is this new car, its rated to go 200mph but if you actually try that, it will top out at 100mph".
And if there is a car rated for 100mph sitting right next to the 200mph one selling for $10000 less, which one would you buy?
Recently they started putting a interesting "disclaimer" on the laptops they sell (I checked specs pdfs for 1905 and 5202 series, but it seems like they all got one appended):
Central Processing Unit ("CPUE Performance Disclaimer:
CPU performance in your computer product may vary from specifications
under the following conditions:
use of certain external peripheral products
use of battery power instead of AC power without changing factory
pre-set power management settings
use of certain multimedia games or videos with special effects
use of standard telephone lines or low speed network connections
use of complex modeling software, such as high end computer aided
design applications
use of computer in areas with low air pressure (high altitude >1,000
meters or >3,280 feet above sea level)
use of computer at temperatures outside the range of 5C to 35C
(41F to 95 F) or >25C (77F) at high altitude (all temperature
references are approximate).
Under some conditions, your computer product may automatically shut-down.
This is a normal protective feature designed to reduce the risk of lost
data or damage to the product when used outside recommended
conditions. To avoid risk of lost data, always make back-up copies of data
by periodically storing it on an external storage medium. For optimum
performance, use your computer product only under recommended
conditions. Read additional restrictions under "Environmental ConditionsEin
your product Resource Guide. Contact Toshiba Technical Service and
Support for more information.
Wow, you mean, my new laptop will not perform as advertised, and might actually just TURN OFF while I am NORMALLY using it? Why the heck would I want to spend $2.5k for a Satellite 5205 to find out it will clock down to half speed while "being used" and then if I "use it too much" will just simply shutdown?
To the story author, be happy you didn't buy from toshiba or else you'll be retyping your report each time Toshiba engineers decide its time for your new laptop to turn off to protect itself from overheating.
Left/right arrows "Strafe", and there seems to be no way to actually TURN into some direction.
Any ideas?
No, "mouse turning" isnt what I am looking for.
Oh, and don't forget to
# killall -CONT kupdated
if you want to bring the disk-caching daemon back up.
2.2 and older 2.4 did not have kupdated, the same work was done by updated or update or some other userland program, killing that has the same effect.
to make it not spin back up after a few seconds
(and if you are running 2.4.x kernels (and possibly 2.5) you can do this:
# killall -STOP kupdated
however, be warned that this will stop frequent flushes of disk cache to disk, and if your machine happens to lock up for some reason there's a chance you might lose some data.
But for personal machine that you want quiet at night, this works wonders.
Also consider slowing down syslog --MARK-- output (which might spin up the disk by adding -m 1440 (time in minutes) to syslog startup line.
Has all the useful security news for *nix sites have been going down the drain lately?
I mean, I am sure symantec is a great windoze security company, but what do they care about securityfocus?
Now that website is probably going to be filled with even more useless HTML and crap
bleh!
precompiled binaries, bleh.
forced use of tcpwrappers, bleh
too large minimum install, bleh
still distributing static libs in the packages, bleh
another words, bleh!
The article title makes no sense to me.
Who the fuck is John Gilmore?
And how the fuck can this article have over 900 comments in it already?
Usually articles with dumb titles dont collect over 300 comments.
Actually, I was quite surprised the other day. I actually used a built in modem on my laptop to dialup to check mail and download something I had to have at that moment. few megabytes download started, and I was actaully able to type over ssh link almost laglessly while the download was going at about 2.7k/second or so (this is a modem remember). And I remember on linux, if I didn't throttle the download using some download manager, things would get so laggy I had to wait like 20 seconds to see what I typed over ssh session. Surprising that the same kind of stuff doesn't work with DSL modems...
I remember scanning japanese netblocks for insecure linux boxes with , and once and a while I'd come across a abandoned turbolinux box.
Japs liked turbolinux because it came with a jap manual but nobody else around the world was dumb enough to (buy|download) it.
Oh, how the heck is that "flamebait".
I am sorry that truth hurts, but just look on sourceforge.net
50% of the projects are still even in "design" stage and out of the 50% left 90% are abandoned in one way or another and only the resulting 10% have some sort of activity.
There is no need writing new apps. Fix the old ones first, revive the dead ones, and you'll have something to make "Linux" appeal to desktop users.
before going to design NEW linux applications,
PLEASE take your time and DEBUG the current ones.
The collection of half-abandoned software that has tons of bugs that nobody uses (perhaps of those bugs) is absolutely huge.
Which crap are you smoking, sir?h ich says that "sometime in spring" DoCOMo "might" offer handsets that can read up to 30k java files, "3 times larger than the current limit of 10k".
Java applet size limit is 10k.
Always has been.
Read up on http://www.iasolution.net/e-is-industry-22.htm
w
Don't worry though. It takes 10 seconds to get a 10k file in ideal conditions, nobody is going to wait 30 seconds to download this junk.
Should you be impressed after reading this article?
.jar limit, and JAVA of all things?), will cost your average jap approx $500 for a one-year contract including the phone. You get some few minutes for free to use up each month, and then you pay for every minute of outgoing calls. Each "i-mode" call is billed by the packet, which means if you actually plan to do anything serious on it (which is impossible, the content available on i-mode is worthless to a general user), you'll be paying for it, as well.
I think not. Why? Well, let me tell you.
What you hear of Japanese companies in America is twisted, incorrect, or at best improperly translated from Japanese double-speak which is used to promote losing services.
So, you are drooling to come to Japan and start using DoCoMo's "wireless internet service" while taking a bus to your office, right? Wrong. The service (even the current 9.6kbps, max packet size 10k, never actually reaching that speed) gets really shitty during rush hour when all the office workers get on their phones to call their boss to tell them they will be late to work because of another traffic jam.
So, what's the appeal for this pathetic "service" that Japs have to pay out of their ass for? I really don't know. Maybe everyone there has too much money to waste on shit, or something like that. A latest 503i mobile phone with "java" (Don't get me started on that one, 10k
Let's examine DoCoMo's java phones again. They are being marketed as "cool, useful, secure devices to do your online banking, play games, and access the internet". What they don't tell you that you are still stuck with pathetic 9.6kbps (ideal, usually much worse), 10k packet limit (don't try to browse slashdot on that phone), and that Java applets can't access network except for HTTP (and only to the originating server) which means you can forget about peer to peer games (or any kind of intelligent games, wtf can you fit into 10k of Java? If it was 10k of ASM, sure, but java? Hah).
Another words, don't be too excited about hearing these news. I'd say, if you really care, boycott this shit and tell the japs to go back to their country with that I-mode crap. Support ricochet or whatever other True American company is there to provide you service - at least their CEO has a normal view at the real world, and not an idealistic "I'll make it and everyone will use it because I made it" view that most Japanese company presidents have about their product.
Another not very well known fact, is that these "sales" of i-mode units that DoCoMo claims on their quarterly reports are mostly "push" sales to absolutely unsuspecting customers. Imagine, you own a 2 or 3 years old phone, which breaks because you drop it in the bathtub. Ideally, you'd want to get exact same model, because you like it and you want to keep using it. The catch is that it's 3 years old, and DoCoMo doesn't sell 3 years old phones anymore. Incidentally, they have this nice and new 503 model which has i-mode, java, and god-knows-what-the-fuck-else that you will never use or even know how to use (503 models come with a ~400+ page manual). You have no choice, and you buy the new phone. You talk on it about 10-20 times a month, and never even touch anything related to I-mode. DoCoMo salesman rubs his hands, puts another cross on the sheet posted in his office where every employee must write how many phones they sold a week, and DoCoMo gets another "i-mode" user to report on their quarterly sales reports.
Why do you think DoCoMo says they are selling so many i-mode headsets now? Duh, because that's all they sell these days.
Thanks for listening,
I hate to sound too negative, but the question that first came up when I saw this article's title was "Why would you want to?" What are the advantages of a Crusoe based laptop over similarly priced Intel or AMD mobile chip-based notebook? If you are getting a slim-sized laptop to impress your friends, there are lower priced units using intel mobile p3 that have decent battery life; If you want a desktop replacement, the current 600-something Mhz max speed of Crusoe doesn't really cut it. Today, you can get 1.1Ghz "desktop replacement" notebooks for less than $1800 U.S.... Crusoe doesn't really fit anywhere in todays mobile computing, I can't imagine too many uses for it outside of oddball niche products...
it's nice to see great companies such as IBM and RedHat cooperating together to bring linux to the masses. Finally our vision of Linux on every desktop is getting closer and closer.
With latest release of 2.5 kernels, Linux is the best choice for both desktop and server.
only has 380 files in it, and I know exactly what each one of those files is for.
I don't know about mosfet's problems, but I have no problem managing my filesystems.
Whoa, those patent pages are served as "TIFF" files. What browser do you use to actually view them? I was not able to see anything in Netscape6/Mozilla and I ended up having to wget the URL and view images using gimp (they are compressed, xv/gqview don't want to see them either).
Professional video cameras will never have email or web browser or other useless junk. The purpose of a pro camera is to record the highest quality audio and video, at the highest possible resolution. There is a resolution and sound quality difference between pro DV cameras and "consumer" DV cameras, and about 3x the price difference as well. One of the most important things is current consumer cameras usually only have one CCD (the device that actually turns light into digital stream that can be stored on tape, etc), where all of pro cameras have 3 CCD's for each of red green and blue colors. All pro cameras have interchangeable lens system, where in a consumer camcorder you are stuck with whatever lens comes with it. And optics are definitely a lot better.
Bottom line is, no sane reporter would ever take an equivalent of a gameboy cam (which is pretty much what this is compared to a real video camera) to afganistan.
the subject says it all.
There is a very neat utility called "dvbackup" (dvbackup.sourceforge.net if I remember correctly) which allows you to backup up to 10gb per mini-DV tape. Very neat concept, with something like 3mb/second transfer rates, however I have not been able to get this to work at all. Recently there was a fix to make it work with 'NTSC' cameras so I guess before it would only work on PAL systems anyway. Anybody there who actually successfully backed up any data with dv backup?
Haha... I looked at http://www.dynamism.com/thinkpad/index.shtml
What's so special about that machine?
IBM Thinkpad S30 (PIII-600, 20gb, 128mb, 100/10baseT, IEEE1394, WinME), $2599?
Hell, Toshiba had Home/PgUp/PgDn/End keys without fn-combination on their laptops forever.
Satellite 5005-S504 costs ONLY $2000, has ENGLISH keyboard (dont EVER buy a japanese laptop with japanese keyboard, you will NOT like it)...
P3 1,1ghz, *512*MB ram, 30gb hdd, 3 usb, 1394, 15" LCD, geforce2 video card... Who would want a overpriced IBM for almost 1.5 the price, and half the features, and with japanese keyboard? Hah...
Looking at Japanese computers almost daily I actually ordered my laptop from U.S. because you simply cant beat the price or the features of machines made in the U.S.A even if they are from "Japanese" makers such as Toshiba etc.
And, for some people, "SWEET" is a lot less important than "USABLE".