What makes me wonder is why are 486's still in production?
Probably because they're fast enough to do the
task required for many embedded applications, and
they require significantly less power than a
Pentium class chip.
We filed a Chapter 11 reorganization. This will allows us to deal with our creditors fairly and equitably and at the same time continue to operate the company.
At least, that's the theory. In practice, however,
how many companies can you think of that have filed
for Chapter 11 and subsequently come out of it
intact? Loki were always taking a risk by getting
into the market first. They knew from the start
that the market couldn't support the company, but
were gambling that it would grow sufficiently to
support the business. Sadly, it didn't. I'm sure
that given time, it *will* grow, but they just
didn't have enough capital to sustain them until
that point was reached.
Quake [1] was a totally revolutionary game, that set a whole new standard
Yep. It ws the start of the end for FPS games.
It emphasised graphics and the technological
prowess of the engine over and above gameplay.
And the rest of the industry followed suit.
It wasn't until what, 5 or 6 years later, that
gameplay became important again. UT was an
immensely playable game, and although Q3A
surpassed it in some areas, overall, I think
most people agree that UT is the better game.
But the real winner is Serious Sam. It's the
first game I've played since Doom that really
gets your heart racing due to the sheer quantity
of bad guys all out to get you all at once. It's
just a shame it took so long to get there after
Quake came along...
Many many years ago, there used to be a shop near
my University that sold these. They had one of the
fully reclining balans chairs (which, from looking
at the web site, they don't seem to do any more).
It's the wierdest sensation to sit in a chair and
throw your weight backwards until the chair tips
onto the next rail, and keep going until you end
up nearly horizontal. You have to have blind faith
that the chair is going to take it, and you won't
end up landing on your head. But once you get
there, it's the most comfortable chair you'll
ever sit on.
Considering that to really wipe out samba, microsoft would have to destroy interoperability with previous windows versions...
And you think they'll balk at that why exactly?
Not only will they not have a problem with it,
they seem to be actively doing so as an incentive
to get people to upgrade. Witness the number of
times they've changed file formats in Word for
no apparent reason. And how they refuse to
backport useful bits to previous versions of
Windows (USB support being a good example).
I thought that all three of these offered better performance and more features than ext3.
Actually, the last benchmarks I saw showed ext3
coming out pretty much on top overall, closely
followed by XFS. Each of the four options has
their strong points (ReiserFS is particularly fast
at deleting files, for example). However, on
balance, it's looking like ext3 could well prove
to be up there with the best of them. I'm curious
to know what features you think the others provide
that ext3 doesn't.
gcc 3.0 is not used by default, just included in addition to 2.96
They didn't have an option on this. Red Hat have
always maintained binary compatibility throughout
major version numbers, so shipping with anything
other than 2.96-RH as the default compiler just
wasn't an option. Naturally, they've supplied 3.0
for those that want to use it. I can't really
fault RH about this -- they've done exactly as
they said they would. Can you imagine the uproar
if they'd broken their promises on binary compatibility?
Have you ever worked with a mixed platform network?
This is probably the most important thing you can
ask a sysadmin. We've had a real problem finding
anyone that has experience of multiple platforms
(and I'm not talking Win/Unix/VMS here -- I'm just
talking about Unix). Virtually everyone we've seen
has had plenty of experience, but only on Solaris,
or only on HP/UX or only Linux. Those people would
be completely lost on our network, which currently
consists of Solaris, Linux, AIX, Tru64 and
OpenBSD. But even if we were a completely
homogeneous shop, I'd prefer someone with cross
platform experience. It implies they *know* the
subject, rather than just being able to quote the
Sun training manual, for example. If you've been
exposed to the differences between Unices, then
you're going to have a more in depth understanding
of how and why things work than those who have
only encountered one version of Unix.
Here are the requirements for my server/firewall/NAT box
The MZ-104+
from Tri-M sounds like it would fit the bill
nicely. I haven't tried it myself, but I found
out about it when someone replied to a similar
post I made on slashdot recently:-) I'd already
built myself an OpenBSD firewall by then, but if
I hadn't, I'd definitely be looking at the MZ-104+.
Given your needs (dual ethernet, linux support), check out http://www.tri-m.com
That looks exactly the sort of thing I'm
after. Thanks. BTW, it doesn't have to have Linux
support specifically, but either that or *BSD is
essential. Either way, the MZ104+ looks to be
completely standard PC components (with the
exception of the DiskOnChip), so any of the
options will probably work just fine.
babies.... If they were $750 or less, I would have bought one just because they look cool.
If they were priced low, I'd have bought one, not
because they're cool, but because I have a need
for a small form factor Linux box. This is the
closest I've seen because unlike all the other
options, it comes with (or at least, you can get
one with) dual ethernet ports. That immediately
makes it suitable for a home firewall. It's just
that final stumbling block -- price.
Angband (and its finest variant) is continually improving, and is far in advance of any commercial game in terms of long-term playability.
Hmmm. I'm not entirely convinced. I felt Angband
peaked at around v2.5.8, and since then, has
suffered from the same problems as MS Office -- new
features for the sake of new features, not because
they're needed. Yes, some of them are quite nice,
but they're just candy, and had game development
stopped back then, I'd still be playing it today.
By that I mean, I am still playing it
today, but the
The *gameplay* hasn't got significantly better
for some time. But then, it's hard to improve
when you're that close to perfection in the first
place:-) Zangband is intriguing, in that it
does give altered gameplay (I'm still
torn on whether it's an improvement or not, but
there is definitely innovation there).
Although this sounds good as first glance, it's
actually quite low resolution. To get 20 million
pixels will be about 5000x4000 pixels. On a 10
foot screen, that's only around 40dpi. Why did they
need to make it so large? A 4 or 5 foot display
would have shown the same detail in a more palatable
display area. I don't see what having it so big buys you...
You *cannot* win with Microsoft, you are in a position of weakness and disadvantage by default. Microsoft will screw you over at the first chance, and along the way you will have helped bolster the mindshare of its questionable strategy.
Couldn't agree more. It's happened too often in the
past. Just look at Citrix or Bristol. But then
again, Ximian never really did get it. For a start,
they don't understand the small, dedicated apps
philosophy of Unix. They're trying too hard to
copy MS to gain market share, without stopping
to think about the technical issues behind what
they're doing. They're also following the MS
"screw-security-lets-do-features" route. Witness
their install instructions -- download something
from a web site, and pipe it into a shell run as
root. I think not...
Personally, I prefer the Ogg Vorbis sound at most bitrates.
Personally, I can't tell the difference on the
hardware on which I listen to lossy compressed
music. But I can guarantee that in 10 years time,
I'll still be able to to listen to my.ogg files.
I have the spec for the format, and the source
code for a sample implementation.
I can't guarantee the same for MP3Pro, WMA, or any
other proprietary format. For that reason alone,
Ogg Vorbis is my preferred format, and will remain
so for the forseeable future...
When above.net were hassling ORBS last year,
Alan Cox mentioned that it was looking suspiciously
like Vixie was planning to take MAPS commercial.
See the July 17th entry in
his diary.
Somewhat of a change from the olden days when
they refused to give out programming information
at all. Like Diamond before them, they eventually
relented. I wonder how much longer NVIDIA can hold
out?
Why do we persist in wanting to print more stuff, when we can download ebooks to inexpensive readers like the Rocket eBook
For the same reasons that have been mentioned
thousands of times in the past when this has been
suggested. When electronic books can match paper
books, feature for feature, then and only then
will they become acceptable. These features have
to include:
High contrast, readable in both low light and
bright sunlight
High resolution (IBM has 200dpi+ LCD displays,
so there's some progress here)
Doesn't run out of batteries
Convenient size to carry around, read on the
train, etc.
Lightweight
Costs about the same as a couple of hours'
work for the average man on the street
If any infrastructure of national importance is outsourced to a private entity you're fucked! The moment this happens profits are more important then the public...
This is simply not true. There is nothing wrong
with privatisation per se. The problem comes when
you don't have sufficient guards against abuse.
That essentially means a regulatory body with the
power to act in the best interests of the consumer. Here in the UK, we did the privatisation
bit, but forgot to give the regulators enough
power to do anything useful. Hence the current
mess with trains, phones and half a dozen other
utilities. The regulators need to be able to do
whatever it takes to protect the consumer, up to
and including the financial ruin of the company
running the service. Until that happens, things
are only going to get worse:-(
Change someone elses prompt to "". Drives them crazy
until they figure it out.
You can normally only do this if you have root
access, or if they're careless enough to leave
themselves logged on. If it's the latter, a
favourite trick at University used to be to create
a file called "*" in their home directory. The
number of people that just did rm * to
get rid of it is quite astonishing...
To be honest, the only thing that really surprised
me there was how small a percentage of queries were
adult related. Wasn't that get rich quick porn guy
telling us only the other day on slashdot that
adult searches dominated the rankings?
You do have a choice. I just wish more people would realize that they don't have to put up with this sort of thing, and choose to eschew Microsoft.
The sad truth is that no, you don't always have
the choice. While I've been running Linux as my
only desktop OS since 1992, it's not always an
option. We've been pushing hard to get Linux on
the desktop at work, and have had to concede that
it just isn't there yet. It's very, very close,
but not close enough to risk the business on.
Among other things, we need a decent office suite.
With 100% MS compatibility. Yes,
StarOffice, Applix and PerfectOffice all come
close, but we need to be able to read
every file that people send us. We need
a word processor and spreadsheet that handle not
just the plain documents, but the ones with
embedded VBA as well. We need a good
shared calendar solution with palm sync, and it
has to work cross platform. We have Windows, Mac,
Linux, Solaris and Tru64 desktops. And no, a web
front end isn't usually appropriate, even if it's
usually good enough in the short term. We need to
be able to handle Visio files, and MS Project
files. And some people will have to stick with
Windows because certain essential apps only run
on Windows. VNC was considered for them, but it
only supports a 1:1 mapping, and we want multiple
users logged onto a single NT server. Citrix is
an option, albeit expensive. Yes, I am sticking
with a Linux desktop, but the rest of the company
just aren't ready for it yet. Given time, perhaps,
but in the short term, we're using Mac OS X as a
means of at least getting Unix to the desktop, and
we'll take it from there...
Slashdot Mirror
Probably because they're fast enough to do the task required for many embedded applications, and they require significantly less power than a Pentium class chip.
At least, that's the theory. In practice, however, how many companies can you think of that have filed for Chapter 11 and subsequently come out of it intact? Loki were always taking a risk by getting into the market first. They knew from the start that the market couldn't support the company, but were gambling that it would grow sufficiently to support the business. Sadly, it didn't. I'm sure that given time, it *will* grow, but they just didn't have enough capital to sustain them until that point was reached.
Yep. It ws the start of the end for FPS games. It emphasised graphics and the technological prowess of the engine over and above gameplay. And the rest of the industry followed suit. It wasn't until what, 5 or 6 years later, that gameplay became important again. UT was an immensely playable game, and although Q3A surpassed it in some areas, overall, I think most people agree that UT is the better game. But the real winner is Serious Sam. It's the first game I've played since Doom that really gets your heart racing due to the sheer quantity of bad guys all out to get you all at once. It's just a shame it took so long to get there after Quake came along...
I lied, they do still sell them. Take a look at http://www.stokke-furniture.no/rot/html/h_gravity. html
Many many years ago, there used to be a shop near my University that sold these. They had one of the fully reclining balans chairs (which, from looking at the web site, they don't seem to do any more). It's the wierdest sensation to sit in a chair and throw your weight backwards until the chair tips onto the next rail, and keep going until you end up nearly horizontal. You have to have blind faith that the chair is going to take it, and you won't end up landing on your head. But once you get there, it's the most comfortable chair you'll ever sit on.
And you think they'll balk at that why exactly? Not only will they not have a problem with it, they seem to be actively doing so as an incentive to get people to upgrade. Witness the number of times they've changed file formats in Word for no apparent reason. And how they refuse to backport useful bits to previous versions of Windows (USB support being a good example).
Actually, the last benchmarks I saw showed ext3 coming out pretty much on top overall, closely followed by XFS. Each of the four options has their strong points (ReiserFS is particularly fast at deleting files, for example). However, on balance, it's looking like ext3 could well prove to be up there with the best of them. I'm curious to know what features you think the others provide that ext3 doesn't.
They didn't have an option on this. Red Hat have always maintained binary compatibility throughout major version numbers, so shipping with anything other than 2.96-RH as the default compiler just wasn't an option. Naturally, they've supplied 3.0 for those that want to use it. I can't really fault RH about this -- they've done exactly as they said they would. Can you imagine the uproar if they'd broken their promises on binary compatibility?
This is probably the most important thing you can ask a sysadmin. We've had a real problem finding anyone that has experience of multiple platforms (and I'm not talking Win/Unix/VMS here -- I'm just talking about Unix). Virtually everyone we've seen has had plenty of experience, but only on Solaris, or only on HP/UX or only Linux. Those people would be completely lost on our network, which currently consists of Solaris, Linux, AIX, Tru64 and OpenBSD. But even if we were a completely homogeneous shop, I'd prefer someone with cross platform experience. It implies they *know* the subject, rather than just being able to quote the Sun training manual, for example. If you've been exposed to the differences between Unices, then you're going to have a more in depth understanding of how and why things work than those who have only encountered one version of Unix.
Mmmmm.... powered armour. Want some. No, I haven't been playing Cyberpunk 2020 too long, honest :-)
The MZ-104+ from Tri-M sounds like it would fit the bill nicely. I haven't tried it myself, but I found out about it when someone replied to a similar post I made on slashdot recently :-) I'd already
built myself an OpenBSD firewall by then, but if
I hadn't, I'd definitely be looking at the MZ-104+.
That looks exactly the sort of thing I'm after. Thanks. BTW, it doesn't have to have Linux support specifically, but either that or *BSD is essential. Either way, the MZ104+ looks to be completely standard PC components (with the exception of the DiskOnChip), so any of the options will probably work just fine.
If they were priced low, I'd have bought one, not because they're cool, but because I have a need for a small form factor Linux box. This is the closest I've seen because unlike all the other options, it comes with (or at least, you can get one with) dual ethernet ports. That immediately makes it suitable for a home firewall. It's just that final stumbling block -- price.
Hmmm. I'm not entirely convinced. I felt Angband peaked at around v2.5.8, and since then, has suffered from the same problems as MS Office -- new features for the sake of new features, not because they're needed. Yes, some of them are quite nice, but they're just candy, and had game development stopped back then, I'd still be playing it today. By that I mean, I am still playing it today, but the The *gameplay* hasn't got significantly better for some time. But then, it's hard to improve when you're that close to perfection in the first place :-) Zangband is intriguing, in that it
does give altered gameplay (I'm still
torn on whether it's an improvement or not, but
there is definitely innovation there).
Although this sounds good as first glance, it's actually quite low resolution. To get 20 million pixels will be about 5000x4000 pixels. On a 10 foot screen, that's only around 40dpi. Why did they need to make it so large? A 4 or 5 foot display would have shown the same detail in a more palatable display area. I don't see what having it so big buys you...
Couldn't agree more. It's happened too often in the past. Just look at Citrix or Bristol. But then again, Ximian never really did get it. For a start, they don't understand the small, dedicated apps philosophy of Unix. They're trying too hard to copy MS to gain market share, without stopping to think about the technical issues behind what they're doing. They're also following the MS "screw-security-lets-do-features" route. Witness their install instructions -- download something from a web site, and pipe it into a shell run as root. I think not...
Personally, I can't tell the difference on the hardware on which I listen to lossy compressed music. But I can guarantee that in 10 years time, I'll still be able to to listen to my .ogg files.
I have the spec for the format, and the source
code for a sample implementation.
I can't guarantee the same for MP3Pro, WMA, or any
other proprietary format. For that reason alone,
Ogg Vorbis is my preferred format, and will remain
so for the forseeable future...
When above.net were hassling ORBS last year, Alan Cox mentioned that it was looking suspiciously like Vixie was planning to take MAPS commercial. See the July 17th entry in his diary.
Mostly, yes. Official Matrox drivers at that, and with complete source:
Somewhat of a change from the olden days when they refused to give out programming information at all. Like Diamond before them, they eventually relented. I wonder how much longer NVIDIA can hold out?
For the same reasons that have been mentioned thousands of times in the past when this has been suggested. When electronic books can match paper books, feature for feature, then and only then will they become acceptable. These features have to include:
This is simply not true. There is nothing wrong with privatisation per se. The problem comes when you don't have sufficient guards against abuse. That essentially means a regulatory body with the power to act in the best interests of the consumer. Here in the UK, we did the privatisation bit, but forgot to give the regulators enough power to do anything useful. Hence the current mess with trains, phones and half a dozen other utilities. The regulators need to be able to do whatever it takes to protect the consumer, up to and including the financial ruin of the company running the service. Until that happens, things are only going to get worse :-(
This only works with the rm in GNU fileutils. Traditional Unix rm mostly used
Even that didn't work on all versions of Unix. The only way to be sure was to provide a path to the file:You can normally only do this if you have root access, or if they're careless enough to leave themselves logged on. If it's the latter, a favourite trick at University used to be to create a file called "*" in their home directory. The number of people that just did rm * to get rid of it is quite astonishing...
To be honest, the only thing that really surprised me there was how small a percentage of queries were adult related. Wasn't that get rich quick porn guy telling us only the other day on slashdot that adult searches dominated the rankings?
The sad truth is that no, you don't always have the choice. While I've been running Linux as my only desktop OS since 1992, it's not always an option. We've been pushing hard to get Linux on the desktop at work, and have had to concede that it just isn't there yet. It's very, very close, but not close enough to risk the business on. Among other things, we need a decent office suite. With 100% MS compatibility. Yes, StarOffice, Applix and PerfectOffice all come close, but we need to be able to read every file that people send us. We need a word processor and spreadsheet that handle not just the plain documents, but the ones with embedded VBA as well. We need a good shared calendar solution with palm sync, and it has to work cross platform. We have Windows, Mac, Linux, Solaris and Tru64 desktops. And no, a web front end isn't usually appropriate, even if it's usually good enough in the short term. We need to be able to handle Visio files, and MS Project files. And some people will have to stick with Windows because certain essential apps only run on Windows. VNC was considered for them, but it only supports a 1:1 mapping, and we want multiple users logged onto a single NT server. Citrix is an option, albeit expensive. Yes, I am sticking with a Linux desktop, but the rest of the company just aren't ready for it yet. Given time, perhaps, but in the short term, we're using Mac OS X as a means of at least getting Unix to the desktop, and we'll take it from there...