Just click here. Motorola Computing Group (MCG) has an entire Linux discussion base. Just register (it's free) and hop right on in. -RISCy Business | Rabid System Administrator and BOFH
*gaspcoff* Okay.. I think I'm done laughing now. Wait. *coffhackwheeze*
Somebody tell that two bit hack of a writer to get the hell out of the business, please. Or at least get their facts straight. I lost a LOT of respect for LinuxWorld's editors for letting this one through. The technical inaccuracies of this article are blatant and rampant.
"Although a hardware modem can cost up to five times more than a software modem, they are still relatively cheap, with a current price tag at $100 for a high-quality model, he said."
Stupid error number one. Please go visit CompUSA before making such claims, you incredible morons.
Okay, hrm. $80*5 is $400. Gee. The hardware modem isn't five times as much. It's not even twice as much. And that's an EXTERNAL too! *NEXT!*
SupraExpress 56PCI, $80. SupraExpress 56i, $70.
Waitasecond. The SupraExpress 56i is a HARDWARE ISA PnP MODEM. (Trust me; I recommend them frequently. I know 'em.) And it's *LESS* than the PCI! Will you PLEASE *PLEASE* get your facts straight, folks?
"PC-TEL engineers don't disagree with Ockman's assessment that hardware modems aren't likely to disappear anytime soon. "I think that [in the future], a hardware modem will be a high-end, luxury item," said William Hsu, software manager for PC-TEL."
They already are if you're buying from an OEM. There are no OEMs remaining save for smalltime ones that offer hardware modems, as far as I know. Next.
"In fact, they've earned the nickname "WinModems," because many are "optimized" to work with the Microsoft Windows operating system, and refuse to cooperate with any other OS."
Get me my cluebat, or hold me back.
They're called WINMODEMS BECAUSE THAT'S WHAT USR CALLED THEM FROM DAY ONE, YOU INCOMPETENT FOOLS! They *REQUIRE* Windows because the drivers use some funky API, DirectX I believe, to simulate a DSP in the processor. GODS!
"Even on a powerful 400-MHz processor, a software modem can demand as much as 10 to 15 percent of the CPU's total throughput."
CPU performance isn't measured in throughput you idiots. Gods. And that percentage is totally wrong. The average WinModem (Lucent LT chipset) requires between 15 and 30 percent of your processor time at realtime priority to achieve ~4.8k/s. I've seen it in person.
I can't believe the ignorance and blatant lies that jouranlists are allowed to send to print these days. Falsehoods, libel, slander, hatemongering speech, and worse. Either way, somebody needs to write these people at LinuxWorld a serious reality check.
-RISCy Business | Rabid System Administrator and BOFH
Where I formerly attended high school, Berea City School District, we were forced to use Bess.
You see, almost *EVERY* northeastern Ohio school goes through a placed called 'LNOCA,' which assists schools in getting net connectivity.
LNOCA is required by either the state of Ohio, or it's own rules, nobody can get an answer on which, to filter *ALL* traffic through Bess. And they don't do it on site. No. You go to the LNOCA POP, which then goes over to a proxy in their main offices, which then goes to check the Bess database in BFE, which then answers back, and then lets you continue.
So, what does Bess censor?
Geocities, Angelfire, the bible, the government, the WWF, Playboy, Linux, etc.
What doesn't Bess censor?
Fetishwear websites, Microsoft, porn banners, many porn sites, etc.
And they want this babysitting kids? Somebody needs to forcefeed these morons a clue. Just like the TV, the web is NOT A FREAKING BABYSITTER. If you can't watch your kids, then you shouldn't have had kids. I'm damn sick and tired of all these parents whining and complaining about all the porn out on the net. I'm sorry, but you don't find porn if you don't look for it, and if you can't make sure your kids aren't looking for it, then what kind of parent are you?
Quite frankly, I don't care if I offended you. Hell, if this offends you, GOOD. It SHOULD. I have no respect or tolerance for parents who cannot accept responsibility for their children. The computer is not your babysitter. If you're so scared about your kids seeing 'naughty' or 'dirty' websites, then don't let them use the computer, or better still; DON'T BUY A COMPUTER. Gods.
-RISCy Business | Rabid System Administrator and BOFH
How much did M$ pay ESR? ESR has proven time and time again he's a total sellout, as is the vast majority of OSI. One of the reasons Bruce Perens left them, IIRC.
So how much does it cost to get ESR to slap that oh-so-important Open Source label on my software? I have this script,/bin/true, that I want to sell.
-RISCy Business | Rabid System Administrator and BOFH
What, Compaq patented BIOS passwording with a pretty logo?
It's a petty lawsuit. Welcome to the PC OEM world. Undercut the competition, and should the competition be several hundred times larger than you, yet you're gaining on their market, you get sued.
Well, eMachines ain't gonna get outta this one alive. Not that they don't make *CRAP* systems. (CYRIX PROCESSORS?! STILL!? Gods.) But they're going to take one HELL of a PR beating.
Rest In Peace, eMachines.
-RISCy Business | Rabid System Administrator and BOFH
C'mon. Give me a freaking break. This is a good thing how?
NSI can now sell domain records to anyone they damn well please. Or sets. Or the entire thing.
I know a lot of spammers that would love a list of just domains so they can spam every user within those domains. There are ways to find 'em, more than likely.
So, who's to stop the spammers? Nobody. The gov't isn't clued enough to do so correctly. NSI won't; that'll lose them possible customers. And now they have an excuse to charge ICANN and others for the database. The government has basically said 'okay, that's it. You have to open it. But go right ahead and charge whatever you want for it.'
How much you want to bet NSI will have a licensing fee or something, of some million dollars for ICANN and the competition? NSI will stop at nothing, I tell you.
And you people thought AT&T was bad. Bah. You ain't seen *NOTHING* yet. The trouble has just begun.
-RISCy Business | Rabid System Administrator and BOFH
I'm using it on a daily basis on a rather, base system. K6/2-380, 128M, 4.3G IDE disk, 128M swap, Matrox MilleniumII. And StarOffice is rather speedy on my system. I use it to manage rather large CSV (comma seperated value) worksheets for DNS and routing, ranging in size from a few hundred kilobytes to over 7 megabytes. MS Office can't handle that. It chokes every time on a Celeron 400A with 128M running NT4 on a 6.4G IDE disk. BUT the Windows version, on the same system, has similar problems to Office. It just can't handle those big files, and it's incredibly slow.
I don't mind the browser functionality; I just don't use it. Does make it easier to hop around my many directories tho. But, hey, to each his own. As for me; I'm sticking by StarOffice, so long as Sun doesn't screw it up like they do most everything else.
-RISCy Business | Rabid System Administrator and BOFH
Where I work, calendaring is a requirement. Which I think is BS; a/REAL/ sysadmin has an unreliable calendar and schedule, but oh well. Anyways...
We're using Exchange (*retch*) and Outlook98 (*heave*). Now, granted, it's a very good tool for scheduling meetings (and thankfully it emails me when a meeting is put on my calendar) and cancelling them as well, it's also only available through Outlook. I hate Outlook. Matter of personal preference.
Netscape has "enterprise calendaring" in Communicator Professional, but it appears to rely on a proprietary Netscape server, probably Netscape Enterprise Server, to do it. I haven't seen it in action.
Yet another option is LDAP. Local Directory Access Protocol. LDAP can be extended to have calendaring as well, without too much difficulty I suspect. In my opinion, this is the best way possible to do it. LDAP is a widely supported protocol. Exchange, Netscape, and many other programs fully support LDAP for email address books, so why not calendaring? Netscape may even already support this; I'm not sure, though.
Anyways, just tossing out some options for ya. Hope it helps.:)
-RISCy Business | Rabid System Administrator and BOFH
NSI has a habit of double-billing, 'losing' registrations, 'losing' payments, 'not recieving' the faxes of the canceled checks and so on.
Think it's a load of bull? Guess again; I used to deal with that on a daily basis. Was working at an ISP that handled some 200+ domains for customers. And on a near weekly basis, one of those domains would be put "On Hold" pending "payment." Even though the whois database showed that it had been paid for and registered less than 9 months ago.
Then there's NSI's policy on domain name conflicts. They'll give whoever pays them more the domain. Typical practice. But wait, there's MORE!
For those of you who didn't take note of it, NSI has challenged ICANN's authority over them, saying that they are above ICANN and can basically refuse to allow ICANN access to anything whatsoever. They're paying lawyers ungodly amounts of money to do this. And congress is *REVIEWING* it last I heard. What does that mean? Means another 10 years of NSI if they get their way. At the least.
NSI was a nothing company before they got the government contract. I don't even know how they got it. They were in the hole, they had very few employees, and now they're a multimillion dollar corporation with I'd guesstimate well over 250 employees, raking in millions of dollars of profit every quarter.
Let there be absolutely *NO* question that NSI has done MORE than abuse their monopoly; they have exploited it to lengths which have NEVER been seen before. They're worse than AT&T was. Worse than Microsoft. They have a 100% monopoly, they have absolute and total control over every domain they sell, and the government holds them above the law as they blatantly violate anti-trust law after anti-trust law.
Hell, NSI has even supposedly gone as far as to attack the one existing competitor, AlterNIC, in the past. As if that wasn't enough, to this day, they have refused to allow AlterNIC near the precious root servers.
And now, they're forcing ICANN to spend what little funding it has on lawyers, so that they can attempt to do what they were *CREATED* to do. The EXPRESS PURPOSE of their existence. And they have to fight with NSI about it. Wasting thousands every day.
The only question that remains now is how much longer will NSI get to abuse their power? The way things look, it may be for the rest of our lives. This is what happens when you give one little company a government sanctioned monopoly. You get one big clusterfuck that costs the people who have to deal with it millions upon millions every single year.
And you thought Microsoft was bad. At least they don't tell you that you have to pay for Windows 98 again, right after you bought it.
-RISCy Business | Rabid System Administrator and BOFH
It isn't a good investment. Just like RedHat itself.
They have given nothing to the community because they can't afford to. They've never posted any profit; only losses. Most recently, over $100,000USD of loss. And they have the balls to get a $60mil IPO? EXCUSE ME?
Yes, that's right, $60mil. 6 million times $10 is $60mil USD.
REDHAT IS *NOT* WORTH $60 MILLION DOLLARS!
You know what this IPO is? RedHat's way of getting out of the red.
It's their ticket to easy street. Like many companies. Start up hot Internet company, post large losses, make IPO of over 20 times what you're worth, watch everyone at company get rich on stock options, watch execs retire quickly while cashing in stock options, and watch quality of the product go straight to shit.
Watch the stockholders maneuver the company in the direction they want it to go. Watch the good employees cashing in their stock options because they don't like the new direction the company is going. Watch everything fall apart.
Watch as another Microsoft is formed.
-RISCy Business | Rabid System Administrator and BOFH
You know, I liked this article. It echoed what I've been saying for ages.
Linux isn't for mission critical large-scale. NT *DEFINITELY* isn't. If you want that, you'd better call your IBM RS/6000 VAR today, because sales are going to jump now.
Linux is not the be all and end all of unix. Period. It never ever will be, as it will more than likely collapse upon itself before we see ext3.
I use Linux. I've used Linux for about 4 or 5 years. I think Linux is great.
But it's not an enterprise OS. Period. Flat out. Never. It's good for small to midrange stuff, sure. Hell, our primary DNS server is Linux, as is our webserver currently. (It *will* be moved to an RS/6000 H70 as traffic increases.) Our secondary DNS server will be Linux. But our network monitoring system will be an RS/6000 43P-140 (aka Model 140) workstation running AIX. Why? Because if hardware starts failing in Linux, I'm screwed. AIX will scream bloody murder before it gets anywhere *near* the point of no return.
Linux has no place in the enterprise as an ERP server. It has no place as your 1,000,000 hit/hour webserver interfacing with SQL and doing dynamic pages. Period. Those of you who find this offensive, kindly contact a proctologist so that you may have your head removed from where it is. That's the way it is. Don't like that? Go work towards changing it. Change is good. But till things change, what I say will hold true.
-RISCy Business | Rabid System Administrator and BOFH
Group reply to everyone who said 'so go get a new job.'
>I was wrong. Oh well. All I can do at this point is quietly hunt for new work.
Which is what I'm doing. I am hunting for work, but due to age discrimination, I'm having a *very* hard time finding any. Just thought I'd clear that up for all of you.
-RISCy Business | Rabid System Administrator and BOFH
And they're releasing bugridden nowhere *near* ready distributions, charing $80 for the same stuff they were charging $40 for last version, and marketing their asses off as they prepare to pass off a substantial amount of control via their IPO.
Their boxed set has not even *half* the packages of Debian, much less the stability. RPM is widely reguarded as a joke; the worst excuse for 'package management' on earth. Even RedCr^H^HHat supporters I know hate Glint.
But I don't give a damn about that idiocy. That's their problem. What I care about is the fact that all they're trying to do is make Linux a plugin 95 replacement that's as close to 95 as possible. What have they REALLY done for the community?
Absolutely nothing that I can see. I have no need, nor desire, for Win95-like garbage windowmanagers, idiotic package management, and bleeding edge libraries that don't work right half the time due to bugs or core incompatibilities. What have they REALLY given to the community, compared to say, VAResearch.
Let's see.. I have never seen any donations from RedHat; just hiring of people like Havoc Pennington, Rasterman, etcetera for their own gain. VAResearch donates machines on a semi-regular basis. RedHat's got their website. VAResearch runs the now defacto Linux site, linux.com, and provides connections and equipment for a GNU / Linux / GPL friendly IRC network. Which RedHat uses.
Quit spouting the marketing bullshit; let's see some real contributions for a change.
-RISCy Business | Rabid System Administrator and BOFH
In my case, the boat ran me over. I got keelhauled. I'm a system administrator for an internet startup run by complete and total morons. In my job description *LITERALLY* is 'maintainer of the entire internet.' And I make less than a McDonald's manager.
I'm working 70 hours a week. And I'm salaried. No benefits. No 401k. And I was the 4th person within the company. Part of it is age discrimination; it always is. But that's not the point I'm here to make.
You people whine about your 50 and 60 hour weeks. Quit whining. Now. And listen good.
System Administrators typically work more hours than you could possibly hope to comprehend. Hell, I'm pulling 70 to 80 hours at the office, and another 20 hours working from home at least. That's roughly 90 to 100 hours working a week. I consider myself lucky if I get more than 4 hours of sleep.
Now, that's not typical system administrator, no. But let's take into account being on call. You may as well not bother going to bed if you work for a startup. Things will break constantly as you work out the bugs. And they have a tendency to break at 2am.
Example. The other week, the power went out. I get a page from our CEO at freaking 2:11a. Now, were this something big, I'd have no problems. But NO. I call him up, and he's all panicking because servers are down. Because they're freaking ATX PCs without the vital BIOS option 'restore to last known state' *OR* a UPS. And they're mission critical. So I ended up freaking driving an hour out to the office, turning on two freaking machines, and just crashing at my desk because I was too tired to drive home. My boss wakes me up at 9 when he gets in and starts bitching me out because his PC's UPS didn't last through the power outage, and I installed it.
You don't want to know how many programmers I've heard whine about pressure and stress and long hours. And then they whine that they're only making $18/hr. Now, excuse me, but I'm not even making *HALF* that, and I'm pulling not only more hours, but putting up with constant abuse from everyone because they won't let me purchase necessary equipment.
I don't get overtime. I'm salaried, like I said before. They act as though I should be grateful with what I'm getting, even though I turned down MANY offers that would gleefully pay me *DOUBLE* what I'm getting there, because I thought it would be a good job, with nice people.
I was wrong. Oh well. All I can do at this point is quietly hunt for new work.
Many of us, we're afraid to demand, much less ASK for overtime. It's the environment. You should take what you get and be happy with it. Nevermind the fact that you have bills the same as everyone else. Nevermind the fact that you spend more hours slaving over their silly little projects to find out how many people have clicked the 'partners' link on your webpage than they spend doing their own work.
When I die, at this rate, it's going to be very soon and very unhappily.
-RISCy Business | Rabid System Administrator and BOFH
FYI, I guesstimated and specced out eBay's required configuration with IBM equipment. They're currently running on multiple UltraSPARC Enterprise 10,000's. (Yes, 64 processors, many gigs of memory, etc.)
It would require replacing their precious Suns with a single 24 node IBM RS/6000 SP2 system, using 18 Silver Wide nodes, and 6 Silver Thick nodes. Load it up with ATM and QFE connections, and make sure that the webservers can fill those up, and problems solved.
But everyone wants Sun, because Sun is owned by AOL and claims to have been around longer. Nevermind the fact that IBM is the recognized world leader in ERP applications, has the fastest memory bus on earth. (>6GB/s on the S70 Advanced Server @ 262MHz. That's faster than a 21264.) Nevermind the fact that they do more ERP with the RS/6000, AS/400, and S/390 than Sun, Digital/Compaq, and Hitachi combined. Nevermind the fact that the RS/6000 SP and SP2 are all over the Top 500 Supercomputer list in *RETAIL* versions. Sun's more popular; let's use Sun! They're the Dot in Dot Com.
Sorry. IBM's the original Dot in Dot Com. The dot that goes right before the decimal places in any financial statement whatsoever. And money is necessary for that Com operation, Com being COMMERCE.
Somebody tell me when the world gets a clue. Till then, I think I'll stick to what works and not what's popular.
-RISCy Business | Rabid System Administrator and BOFH
What advance? It's going backwards!
on
RS/6000 Linux Box
·
· Score: 2
You know what?
Even though one of my goals in life is to get Linux running on every RS/6000 there is, you won't catch me touching this Model 150 reissue running Linux.
IBM's jumping the gun. They're quick to point out it can transfer 6.4GB/s. (one of the slower RS/6000's. The S80 is rumoured to be breaking 16GB/s, and I've had my S70's at work moving nearly 7GB/s via multiple 100bFL and QFE.) but it's pointless.
Linux is nowhere near ready for the RS/6000. The TCP/IP stack and various NIC drivers are so poorly written and/or implemented, that you actually can't go anywhere NEAR that. Linux just can't do that.
Let's get down to specs. The 'Pizzaz' is basically a reissue of the 43P Model 150 (7043). What's the 7043 got in it?
PowerPC 604e @ 375MHz, 128M to 1G of ECC, 5 PCI slots, 4.5G to 54.6G of disk via an onboard SCSI-UW controller, onboard sound, keyboard, mouse, tablet, ethernet, serial, and parallel.
That's in the TOWER configuration. Put it into a 2U rack, and here's what you HAVE to lose in that single box; 54.6G won't fit in a single 2U case. Nor will 5 PCI slots, unless they go with a PC-style ATX 2U case. To meet NEBS compliance, I suspect they'll have to scrap other things as well, but only on internal expansion. Either way, you end up with somewhat less of a machine.
Now, what're the possible gains? Well, 604e's will do 400MHz without any complaints; I'm running dual 604e/400MHz processors on a development machine. It's NOT an RS/6000. It's a Motorola MTX+-based system. But it runs AIX, so it's a similar enough test bed. The onboard ethernet can be replaced with non-proprietary single, and quad fast ethernet cards, like the Digital DE21x40 based ones that are everywhere. But then you lose some PCI slots. IBM will probably put some sort of video onboard, to save space. But that takes the system further away from single-point-of-failure. The LED operator panel gives you a single point to determine most failures, but the numbers are not always exact. (888 - boot medium not found. Why, it doesn't say.)
The Model 150 is a workstation. Not a server. IBM's basically trying to turn one of my favourite workhorses (I had two on my desk at one point) into something it just can't be; a server. The Model 150 is a workstation designed for heavy duty graphics (ie; CAD/CAM) and programming work. It's not a server. If you want a server, look at the F40 (and try to ignore the disaster that is Linux SMP on PowerPC) or F50.
Sure, maybe it's something for the ISPs, but for what it's going to cost, you may as well get a Motorola MTX+. For about $4k, you get dual Digital DE21240's onboard, dual 604e/400MHz, onboard SCSI-UW, and 7 PCI slots, all in a configuration you can put in a PC ATX case and mix-and-match standard PC parts with.
-RISCy Business | Rabid System Administrator and BOFH
I have a #9 RevolutionIV 32M AGP 2x. Granted, I did NOT buy the Flatpanel solution bundle, but either way, the card is supported. The issue is the modelines. They're a somewhat guarded thing at SGI, I guess. The XF86 3.3.3.1 drivers for the Ticket To Ride IV chipset are quite functional, and pretty fast, even without accelleration. Whether or not #9 provided any information, I don't know, but either way, they were happy to share the Revolution3D's specs, and now these. More power to 'em. Now if only we could get S3 to come out of their hidey hole and share Savage4 specs.
-RISCy Business | Rabid System Administrator and BOFH
I knew this was coming. Oh well. Everyone can flame me and tell me I'm wrong all they want; I don't care.
RedHat never cared about users. They never will. They want money. So they make an IPO.
They've given control of the company to whatever freakshow of stock buyers they get. Those stockholders will decide the future of RedHat. They control RedHat with their votes.
RedHat no longer has control of the company. And since every idiot on the face of the planet knows about RedCrap, since they got in bed with Ziff Davis and spend more money on hype than on fixing bugs or anything of real import, the people buying stock will more likely be the ignorant type, who just want technology stocks in their portfolio.
RedHat has voluntarily given control of their company to any idiot investor with the cash and time to get in on their IPO, now. And from there, who knows what will happen. Those stockholders could vote to switch to KDE. Or vote to have RedCrap build a whole new windowmanager that looks just like Win95. (As if fvwm95 wasn't close enough.) They could raise or lower the price of RedCrap. (Like HELL I'm paying $70 for the same crap that I used to be able to get for $40, as is.)
Screw RedCrap. They're not getting in MY company, and I hope their IPO flops horribly.
-RISCy Business | System Administrator, Nexbell Communications
How long have I been saying RedCrap doesn't give a damn about anyone but themselves? HOW LONG?
Yeah, they're *really* giving back to the community. They're giving us back Rasterman, which is a good thing, but if they could stop him from leaving, I don't doubt for a second they would. He makes them money in the long run. That's all they care about.
All they want is money. Money money money. How much money can we make off of other people's work? How much money can we make off the ignorance of the public?
That's all RedCrap cares about, and that's all they've ever cared about. Notice how RedCrap 6.0, which is buggier than ever, now costs $20 more?
They really don't give a damn about users, as Raster said. They only care about channels, partners, and other fun OEM things. They want to replace Windows with Windows, and make themselves the next Microsoft. A draconian empire which can control the development of an entire operating system that they don't pay a single cent for.
And all this time, people have been telling me that I'm wrong, they really do care.
Excuse me whilst I, and I suspect the majority of RedCrap-haters, laugh as RedCrap's PR goes to hell.
-RISCy Business | System Administrator, Nexbell Communications
You know, it's really starting to bug the hell out of me.
VA Research buys linux.com. Sits on it for a couple of months, with big fat VAR ads all over it, now says it's opening today (Tuesday), and at 9:17a Eastern, it's still nothing but a giant VAR ad.
It's not enough that VAR only offers RedHat, a distribution which I explicitly *refuse* to run. If they force this kind of policy on LHS (who was more than happy to sell me a laptop with absolutely no OS, but explained that they had to install something for burnin.) then I'm going to lose a lot more faith in the 'commercial supporters.' As if I had much faith and/or trust in them as is.
Damnit, I don't want your Windows. I don't want your goddamned HP-SUX. I don't want your goddamned DG-UX. I don't want your goddamned OpenVMS. I don't want your bullshit media-baby distributions, either. I want a real system. With a distribution of my choice. And no bullshit.
VAR has no right to call themselves a Linux vendor, IMNSHO. They sell ONE distribution. That's not Linux. That's RedHat. Where's Slackware? Where's Debian? Where's Stampede? Nowhere to be found.
The people at LHS were very kind and corteous, and even though it took them a full day to return my call, at least they did. I never got a callback from VAR. There is no option at VAR for 'no operating system.' You get commercial RedHat, no other option.
You can specify to REMOVE 'Linux Office Suite 99.' Who the hell assumed I wanted that shite on a *SERVER*!? I don't want some trashy setup; I want a real system that has only components I choose. If I can't get that at least to a certain extent, you won't get my business.
VAResearch has proven to me that they are incapable of offering me what I demand, much less *trying* to. One distribution. Who knows what kind of hardware in some cases. Forget that bullshit. I'm going to keep right on building my own systems, and buy a laptop from LHS.
Down with the false supporters; long live choice. Long live customer service.
-RISCy Business | System Administrator, Nexbell Communications
3Dfx is playing marketing/PR games. It's damned obvious.
Nowhere is it told what exactly you would be developing. It is purposely vague, obscure, and uncertain.
Why? Because 3Dfx knows Linux is getting big. So they need to answer it somehow. So they answer it the easiest way possible. Make it look like they're doing something for it.
What will you be doing at 3Dfx? Well, most likely, developing another binary-only GLide for Quake III Arena. (Which is amazing, BTW.) Maybe some cheezy demos that measure your general FPS so you can brag about it. Perhaps a binary-only XFree86 that works better with the Voodoo (Rush,Banshee,etc) chipset.
But if you're looking to actually *contribute* something, I hear anybody can be a kernel developer. 3Dfx? They're just out for more marketshare, probably. I'll upgrade from my dual Monster3D 4Mers to dual Monster3D II 12Mers when 3Dfx stops being overzealous pricks, and actually contributes something to the software end for real. (Demos do not count. I used to be a demoscene whore. I am not impressed by a rotating cube with multiple textures and light sourcing.)
Thank you, drive through.
-RISCy Business | System Administrator, Nexbell Communications
You know what's really really scary about this whole thing?
In the past week now, a LOT of bomb threats have been made at schools, offices, and other. This morning, the Medical Mutual Building in downtown Cleveland was evacuated because of a bomb threat.
The Spring Mosh '99 concert was cancelled in Streetsboro because of a bomb threat called in at the middle school.
Schools have been closed or evacuated, and people are scared. And this is just within a 50 mile radius of my home, if that. Every day, since the shooting, I have heard of at least one or two bomb threats at various schools or offices.
And it's only getting worse, as evidenced by the evactuation of the Medical Mutual building this morning. What kind of sick little bastards would do this? I mean, GIVE ME A FUCKING BREAK.
I'm near legally disabled. Not from some horrible car accident, not from a drunk driver (not to downplay people who have gone through it), but from what I do. Day in and day out. 17+ hours a day, I am on a computer or doing computer-related work.
I work in the telecom sector. I crimp lots of cables, for my patch panels, for 10/100bT hookups, for FDDI hookups. I'm on what my coworkers jokingly call the 'DL' (disabled list) for the next three weeks, after my visit to the doctor on Friday.
If I keep up what I've been doing the past three weeks, I stand to lose more than 50% of what little motor control I have left in my right hand. It's become increasingly hard for me to type over the years, and it only gets worse.
Ergonomic keyboards help, but they aren't a solution. You *will* get Repetitive Motion Syndrome. You'll get it on a BAT. You'll get it on a chorder. You'll get it on a standard keyboard. Typing is just plain bad. Very VERY bad. Period.
You hit the same keys, with the same fingers, over and over again. Which will lead to repetitive motion syndrome. It's not as bad as carpal tunnel syndrome, but it's just as disabling in the long run.
Simply placing my hands on any keyboard produces horrible pain at this point. I'm having a hard time typing this, even. And I'm on a Keytronics FlexPro, (they're available from Javanco at http://www.javanco.com/ for $25 currently. VERY few left in stock.) which is considered to be a true-ergonomic keyboard.
It didn't help. I have carpal tunnel from the time before. I have repetitive motion syndrome from all the time. I can barely hold a cigarette now. The answer isn't better keyboards. The answer isn't concentrating on helping the people who are already disabled. They're in their situation for whatever reason, and there is nothing we can do at this point to cure or prevent it. My heart really does go out to them; I have friends who are legally disabled for various reasons. But there is nothing we can do to prevent them at this point.
It's been said that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. I'm a strong believer in this at this point. If I had known that I would be in this situation long ago, I would have abandoned computers.
We need to concentrate on PREVENTING disabilities. Microsoft doesn't do that. They try to help those who are already disabled, but do nothing to help those who may become disabled down the line. (I'm sorry, but the M$ Natual Keyboard does NOT count. It hurts me just to put my hands on it.) Who's best known for voice recognition software? Dragon Systems, then IBM. Microsoft doesn't have any voice recognition product I'm aware of.
I'm not trying to downplay those who are unfortunate enough to be disabled. I'm going to be in the same situation myself before too long, at this rate. But I made my choice, and I knew the risks after the second year, when I was diagnosed with chronic tendonitis as a direct result from constant typing. I made my choice long ago. Some people aren't aware of the risks of typing. Others, with other disabilities, weren't given a chance or choice. But now...
We need to concentrate on prevention. Not just Linux people, not just Solaris people, not just Windows people. Everyone. Anyone and everyone who uses a computer is at risk of my situation. I'm not saying that carpal tunnel syndrome, or repetitive motion syndrome are more important than blindness or paralysis. However, what's important is that they can be PREVENTED. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure!
IMHO, I think what needs to be concentrated on is INTELLIGENT alternatives to a keyboard and mouse. Anything involving repetitive motion is just plain bad. It's more the repeated motion than the positioning that does the damage.
I honestly can't say I have any bright ideas, beyond voice recognition. But either way, I think it's a lot better to try and educate as well as prevent disabilities when possible, rather than to ignore them till it's too late.
Look out for the overzealous enforcers of the violation of their 'intellectual property.'
You can bet that there will be noise from CDDB Inc. on this. If lucky, they won't sue. If not, better find some damned good lawyers quick. And pray the RIAA doesn't jump into the fray. -RISCy Business | Unix Guru, Unicent Telecom
Slashdot Mirror
Just click here. Motorola Computing Group (MCG) has an entire Linux discussion base. Just register (it's free) and hop right on in.
-RISCy Business | Rabid System Administrator and BOFH
HARDWARE MODEMS!? A *LUXURY*?!
*gaspcoff* Okay.. I think I'm done laughing now. Wait. *coffhackwheeze*
Somebody tell that two bit hack of a writer to get the hell out of the business, please. Or at least get their facts straight. I lost a LOT of respect for LinuxWorld's editors for letting this one through. The technical inaccuracies of this article are blatant and rampant.
"Although a hardware modem can cost up to five times more than a software modem, they are still relatively cheap, with a current price tag at $100 for a high-quality model, he said."
Stupid error number one. Please go visit CompUSA before making such claims, you incredible morons.
Diamond SupraExpress 56PCI, $80.
Diamond SupraExpress 56e, $120.
Okay, hrm. $80*5 is $400. Gee. The hardware modem isn't five times as much. It's not even twice as much. And that's an EXTERNAL too! *NEXT!*
SupraExpress 56PCI, $80.
SupraExpress 56i, $70.
Waitasecond. The SupraExpress 56i is a HARDWARE ISA PnP MODEM. (Trust me; I recommend them frequently. I know 'em.) And it's *LESS* than the PCI! Will you PLEASE *PLEASE* get your facts straight, folks?
"PC-TEL engineers don't disagree with Ockman's assessment that hardware modems aren't likely to disappear anytime soon. "I think that [in the future], a hardware modem will be a high-end, luxury item," said William Hsu, software manager for PC-TEL."
They already are if you're buying from an OEM. There are no OEMs remaining save for smalltime ones that offer hardware modems, as far as I know. Next.
"In fact, they've earned the nickname "WinModems," because many are "optimized" to work with the Microsoft Windows operating system, and refuse to cooperate with any other OS."
Get me my cluebat, or hold me back.
They're called WINMODEMS BECAUSE THAT'S WHAT USR CALLED THEM FROM DAY ONE, YOU INCOMPETENT FOOLS! They *REQUIRE* Windows because the drivers use some funky API, DirectX I believe, to simulate a DSP in the processor. GODS!
"Even on a powerful 400-MHz processor, a software modem can demand as much as 10 to 15 percent of the CPU's total throughput."
CPU performance isn't measured in throughput you idiots. Gods. And that percentage is totally wrong. The average WinModem (Lucent LT chipset) requires between 15 and 30 percent of your processor time at realtime priority to achieve ~4.8k/s. I've seen it in person.
I can't believe the ignorance and blatant lies that jouranlists are allowed to send to print these days. Falsehoods, libel, slander, hatemongering speech, and worse. Either way, somebody needs to write these people at LinuxWorld a serious reality check.
-RISCy Business | Rabid System Administrator and BOFH
Where I formerly attended high school, Berea City School District, we were forced to use Bess.
You see, almost *EVERY* northeastern Ohio school goes through a placed called 'LNOCA,' which assists schools in getting net connectivity.
LNOCA is required by either the state of Ohio, or it's own rules, nobody can get an answer on which, to filter *ALL* traffic through Bess. And they don't do it on site. No. You go to the LNOCA POP, which then goes over to a proxy in their main offices, which then goes to check the Bess database in BFE, which then answers back, and then lets you continue.
So, what does Bess censor?
Geocities, Angelfire, the bible, the government, the WWF, Playboy, Linux, etc.
What doesn't Bess censor?
Fetishwear websites, Microsoft, porn banners, many porn sites, etc.
And they want this babysitting kids? Somebody needs to forcefeed these morons a clue. Just like the TV, the web is NOT A FREAKING BABYSITTER. If you can't watch your kids, then you shouldn't have had kids. I'm damn sick and tired of all these parents whining and complaining about all the porn out on the net. I'm sorry, but you don't find porn if you don't look for it, and if you can't make sure your kids aren't looking for it, then what kind of parent are you?
Quite frankly, I don't care if I offended you. Hell, if this offends you, GOOD. It SHOULD. I have no respect or tolerance for parents who cannot accept responsibility for their children. The computer is not your babysitter. If you're so scared about your kids seeing 'naughty' or 'dirty' websites, then don't let them use the computer, or better still; DON'T BUY A COMPUTER. Gods.
-RISCy Business | Rabid System Administrator and BOFH
All I'm gonna ask is this.
/bin/true, that I want to sell.
How much did M$ pay ESR? ESR has proven time and time again he's a total sellout, as is the vast majority of OSI. One of the reasons Bruce Perens left them, IIRC.
So how much does it cost to get ESR to slap that oh-so-important Open Source label on my software? I have this script,
-RISCy Business | Rabid System Administrator and BOFH
What the HELL!?
What, Compaq patented BIOS passwording with a pretty logo?
It's a petty lawsuit. Welcome to the PC OEM world. Undercut the competition, and should the competition be several hundred times larger than you, yet you're gaining on their market, you get sued.
Well, eMachines ain't gonna get outta this one alive. Not that they don't make *CRAP* systems. (CYRIX PROCESSORS?! STILL!? Gods.) But they're going to take one HELL of a PR beating.
Rest In Peace, eMachines.
-RISCy Business | Rabid System Administrator and BOFH
C'mon. Give me a freaking break. This is a good thing how?
NSI can now sell domain records to anyone they damn well please. Or sets. Or the entire thing.
I know a lot of spammers that would love a list of just domains so they can spam every user within those domains. There are ways to find 'em, more than likely.
So, who's to stop the spammers? Nobody. The gov't isn't clued enough to do so correctly. NSI won't; that'll lose them possible customers. And now they have an excuse to charge ICANN and others for the database. The government has basically said 'okay, that's it. You have to open it. But go right ahead and charge whatever you want for it.'
How much you want to bet NSI will have a licensing fee or something, of some million dollars for ICANN and the competition? NSI will stop at nothing, I tell you.
And you people thought AT&T was bad. Bah. You ain't seen *NOTHING* yet. The trouble has just begun.
-RISCy Business | Rabid System Administrator and BOFH
Conversely;
I'm using it on a daily basis on a rather, base system. K6/2-380, 128M, 4.3G IDE disk, 128M swap, Matrox MilleniumII. And StarOffice is rather speedy on my system. I use it to manage rather large CSV (comma seperated value) worksheets for DNS and routing, ranging in size from a few hundred kilobytes to over 7 megabytes. MS Office can't handle that. It chokes every time on a Celeron 400A with 128M running NT4 on a 6.4G IDE disk. BUT the Windows version, on the same system, has similar problems to Office. It just can't handle those big files, and it's incredibly slow.
I don't mind the browser functionality; I just don't use it. Does make it easier to hop around my many directories tho. But, hey, to each his own. As for me; I'm sticking by StarOffice, so long as Sun doesn't screw it up like they do most everything else.
-RISCy Business | Rabid System Administrator and BOFH
Where I work, calendaring is a requirement. Which I think is BS; a /REAL/ sysadmin has an unreliable calendar and schedule, but oh well. Anyways...
:)
We're using Exchange (*retch*) and Outlook98 (*heave*). Now, granted, it's a very good tool for scheduling meetings (and thankfully it emails me when a meeting is put on my calendar) and cancelling them as well, it's also only available through Outlook. I hate Outlook. Matter of personal preference.
Netscape has "enterprise calendaring" in Communicator Professional, but it appears to rely on a proprietary Netscape server, probably Netscape Enterprise Server, to do it. I haven't seen it in action.
Yet another option is LDAP. Local Directory Access Protocol. LDAP can be extended to have calendaring as well, without too much difficulty I suspect. In my opinion, this is the best way possible to do it. LDAP is a widely supported protocol. Exchange, Netscape, and many other programs fully support LDAP for email address books, so why not calendaring? Netscape may even already support this; I'm not sure, though.
Anyways, just tossing out some options for ya. Hope it helps.
-RISCy Business | Rabid System Administrator and BOFH
...when you look at NSI's practices.
NSI has a habit of double-billing, 'losing' registrations, 'losing' payments, 'not recieving' the faxes of the canceled checks and so on.
Think it's a load of bull? Guess again; I used to deal with that on a daily basis. Was working at an ISP that handled some 200+ domains for customers. And on a near weekly basis, one of those domains would be put "On Hold" pending "payment." Even though the whois database showed that it had been paid for and registered less than 9 months ago.
Then there's NSI's policy on domain name conflicts. They'll give whoever pays them more the domain. Typical practice. But wait, there's MORE!
For those of you who didn't take note of it, NSI has challenged ICANN's authority over them, saying that they are above ICANN and can basically refuse to allow ICANN access to anything whatsoever. They're paying lawyers ungodly amounts of money to do this. And congress is *REVIEWING* it last I heard. What does that mean? Means another 10 years of NSI if they get their way. At the least.
NSI was a nothing company before they got the government contract. I don't even know how they got it. They were in the hole, they had very few employees, and now they're a multimillion dollar corporation with I'd guesstimate well over 250 employees, raking in millions of dollars of profit every quarter.
Let there be absolutely *NO* question that NSI has done MORE than abuse their monopoly; they have exploited it to lengths which have NEVER been seen before. They're worse than AT&T was. Worse than Microsoft. They have a 100% monopoly, they have absolute and total control over every domain they sell, and the government holds them above the law as they blatantly violate anti-trust law after anti-trust law.
Hell, NSI has even supposedly gone as far as to attack the one existing competitor, AlterNIC, in the past. As if that wasn't enough, to this day, they have refused to allow AlterNIC near the precious root servers.
And now, they're forcing ICANN to spend what little funding it has on lawyers, so that they can attempt to do what they were *CREATED* to do. The EXPRESS PURPOSE of their existence. And they have to fight with NSI about it. Wasting thousands every day.
The only question that remains now is how much longer will NSI get to abuse their power? The way things look, it may be for the rest of our lives. This is what happens when you give one little company a government sanctioned monopoly. You get one big clusterfuck that costs the people who have to deal with it millions upon millions every single year.
And you thought Microsoft was bad. At least they don't tell you that you have to pay for Windows 98 again, right after you bought it.
-RISCy Business | Rabid System Administrator and BOFH
It isn't a good investment. Just like RedHat itself.
They have given nothing to the community because they can't afford to. They've never posted any profit; only losses. Most recently, over $100,000USD of loss. And they have the balls to get a $60mil IPO? EXCUSE ME?
Yes, that's right, $60mil. 6 million times $10 is $60mil USD.
REDHAT IS *NOT* WORTH $60 MILLION DOLLARS!
You know what this IPO is? RedHat's way of getting out of the red.
It's their ticket to easy street. Like many companies. Start up hot Internet company, post large losses, make IPO of over 20 times what you're worth, watch everyone at company get rich on stock options, watch execs retire quickly while cashing in stock options, and watch quality of the product go straight to shit.
Watch the stockholders maneuver the company in the direction they want it to go. Watch the good employees cashing in their stock options because they don't like the new direction the company is going. Watch everything fall apart.
Watch as another Microsoft is formed.
-RISCy Business | Rabid System Administrator and BOFH
You know, I liked this article. It echoed what I've been saying for ages.
Linux isn't for mission critical large-scale. NT *DEFINITELY* isn't. If you want that, you'd better call your IBM RS/6000 VAR today, because sales are going to jump now.
Linux is not the be all and end all of unix. Period. It never ever will be, as it will more than likely collapse upon itself before we see ext3.
I use Linux. I've used Linux for about 4 or 5 years. I think Linux is great.
But it's not an enterprise OS. Period. Flat out. Never. It's good for small to midrange stuff, sure. Hell, our primary DNS server is Linux, as is our webserver currently. (It *will* be moved to an RS/6000 H70 as traffic increases.) Our secondary DNS server will be Linux. But our network monitoring system will be an RS/6000 43P-140 (aka Model 140) workstation running AIX. Why? Because if hardware starts failing in Linux, I'm screwed. AIX will scream bloody murder before it gets anywhere *near* the point of no return.
Linux has no place in the enterprise as an ERP server. It has no place as your 1,000,000 hit/hour webserver interfacing with SQL and doing dynamic pages. Period. Those of you who find this offensive, kindly contact a proctologist so that you may have your head removed from where it is. That's the way it is. Don't like that? Go work towards changing it. Change is good. But till things change, what I say will hold true.
-RISCy Business | Rabid System Administrator and BOFH
Group reply to everyone who said 'so go get a new job.'
>I was wrong. Oh well. All I can do at this point is quietly hunt for new work.
Which is what I'm doing. I am hunting for work, but due to age discrimination, I'm having a *very* hard time finding any. Just thought I'd clear that up for all of you.
-RISCy Business | Rabid System Administrator and BOFH
And they're releasing bugridden nowhere *near* ready distributions, charing $80 for the same stuff they were charging $40 for last version, and marketing their asses off as they prepare to pass off a substantial amount of control via their IPO.
Their boxed set has not even *half* the packages of Debian, much less the stability. RPM is widely reguarded as a joke; the worst excuse for 'package management' on earth. Even RedCr^H^HHat supporters I know hate Glint.
But I don't give a damn about that idiocy. That's their problem. What I care about is the fact that all they're trying to do is make Linux a plugin 95 replacement that's as close to 95 as possible. What have they REALLY done for the community?
Absolutely nothing that I can see. I have no need, nor desire, for Win95-like garbage windowmanagers, idiotic package management, and bleeding edge libraries that don't work right half the time due to bugs or core incompatibilities. What have they REALLY given to the community, compared to say, VAResearch.
Let's see.. I have never seen any donations from RedHat; just hiring of people like Havoc Pennington, Rasterman, etcetera for their own gain. VAResearch donates machines on a semi-regular basis. RedHat's got their website. VAResearch runs the now defacto Linux site, linux.com, and provides connections and equipment for a GNU / Linux / GPL friendly IRC network. Which RedHat uses.
Quit spouting the marketing bullshit; let's see some real contributions for a change.
-RISCy Business | Rabid System Administrator and BOFH
Maybe some people have missed the boat.
In my case, the boat ran me over. I got keelhauled. I'm a system administrator for an internet startup run by complete and total morons. In my job description *LITERALLY* is 'maintainer of the entire internet.' And I make less than a McDonald's manager.
I'm working 70 hours a week. And I'm salaried. No benefits. No 401k. And I was the 4th person within the company. Part of it is age discrimination; it always is. But that's not the point I'm here to make.
You people whine about your 50 and 60 hour weeks. Quit whining. Now. And listen good.
System Administrators typically work more hours than you could possibly hope to comprehend. Hell, I'm pulling 70 to 80 hours at the office, and another 20 hours working from home at least. That's roughly 90 to 100 hours working a week. I consider myself lucky if I get more than 4 hours of sleep.
Now, that's not typical system administrator, no. But let's take into account being on call. You may as well not bother going to bed if you work for a startup. Things will break constantly as you work out the bugs. And they have a tendency to break at 2am.
Example. The other week, the power went out. I get a page from our CEO at freaking 2:11a. Now, were this something big, I'd have no problems. But NO. I call him up, and he's all panicking because servers are down. Because they're freaking ATX PCs without the vital BIOS option 'restore to last known state' *OR* a UPS. And they're mission critical. So I ended up freaking driving an hour out to the office, turning on two freaking machines, and just crashing at my desk because I was too tired to drive home. My boss wakes me up at 9 when he gets in and starts bitching me out because his PC's UPS didn't last through the power outage, and I installed it.
You don't want to know how many programmers I've heard whine about pressure and stress and long hours. And then they whine that they're only making $18/hr. Now, excuse me, but I'm not even making *HALF* that, and I'm pulling not only more hours, but putting up with constant abuse from everyone because they won't let me purchase necessary equipment.
I don't get overtime. I'm salaried, like I said before. They act as though I should be grateful with what I'm getting, even though I turned down MANY offers that would gleefully pay me *DOUBLE* what I'm getting there, because I thought it would be a good job, with nice people.
I was wrong. Oh well. All I can do at this point is quietly hunt for new work.
Many of us, we're afraid to demand, much less ASK for overtime. It's the environment. You should take what you get and be happy with it. Nevermind the fact that you have bills the same as everyone else. Nevermind the fact that you spend more hours slaving over their silly little projects to find out how many people have clicked the 'partners' link on your webpage than they spend doing their own work.
When I die, at this rate, it's going to be very soon and very unhappily.
-RISCy Business | Rabid System Administrator and BOFH
FYI, I guesstimated and specced out eBay's required configuration with IBM equipment. They're currently running on multiple UltraSPARC Enterprise 10,000's. (Yes, 64 processors, many gigs of memory, etc.)
It would require replacing their precious Suns with a single 24 node IBM RS/6000 SP2 system, using 18 Silver Wide nodes, and 6 Silver Thick nodes. Load it up with ATM and QFE connections, and make sure that the webservers can fill those up, and problems solved.
But everyone wants Sun, because Sun is owned by AOL and claims to have been around longer. Nevermind the fact that IBM is the recognized world leader in ERP applications, has the fastest memory bus on earth. (>6GB/s on the S70 Advanced Server @ 262MHz. That's faster than a 21264.) Nevermind the fact that they do more ERP with the RS/6000, AS/400, and S/390 than Sun, Digital/Compaq, and Hitachi combined. Nevermind the fact that the RS/6000 SP and SP2 are all over the Top 500 Supercomputer list in *RETAIL* versions. Sun's more popular; let's use Sun! They're the Dot in Dot Com.
Sorry. IBM's the original Dot in Dot Com. The dot that goes right before the decimal places in any financial statement whatsoever. And money is necessary for that Com operation, Com being COMMERCE.
Somebody tell me when the world gets a clue. Till then, I think I'll stick to what works and not what's popular.
-RISCy Business | Rabid System Administrator and BOFH
You know what?
Even though one of my goals in life is to get Linux running on every RS/6000 there is, you won't catch me touching this Model 150 reissue running Linux.
IBM's jumping the gun. They're quick to point out it can transfer 6.4GB/s. (one of the slower RS/6000's. The S80 is rumoured to be breaking 16GB/s, and I've had my S70's at work moving nearly 7GB/s via multiple 100bFL and QFE.) but it's pointless.
Linux is nowhere near ready for the RS/6000. The TCP/IP stack and various NIC drivers are so poorly written and/or implemented, that you actually can't go anywhere NEAR that. Linux just can't do that.
Let's get down to specs. The 'Pizzaz' is basically a reissue of the 43P Model 150 (7043). What's the 7043 got in it?
PowerPC 604e @ 375MHz, 128M to 1G of ECC, 5 PCI slots, 4.5G to 54.6G of disk via an onboard SCSI-UW controller, onboard sound, keyboard, mouse, tablet, ethernet, serial, and parallel.
That's in the TOWER configuration. Put it into a 2U rack, and here's what you HAVE to lose in that single box; 54.6G won't fit in a single 2U case. Nor will 5 PCI slots, unless they go with a PC-style ATX 2U case. To meet NEBS compliance, I suspect they'll have to scrap other things as well, but only on internal expansion. Either way, you end up with somewhat less of a machine.
Now, what're the possible gains? Well, 604e's will do 400MHz without any complaints; I'm running dual 604e/400MHz processors on a development machine. It's NOT an RS/6000. It's a Motorola MTX+-based system. But it runs AIX, so it's a similar enough test bed. The onboard ethernet can be replaced with non-proprietary single, and quad fast ethernet cards, like the Digital DE21x40 based ones that are everywhere. But then you lose some PCI slots. IBM will probably put some sort of video onboard, to save space. But that takes the system further away from single-point-of-failure. The LED operator panel gives you a single point to determine most failures, but the numbers are not always exact. (888 - boot medium not found. Why, it doesn't say.)
The Model 150 is a workstation. Not a server. IBM's basically trying to turn one of my favourite workhorses (I had two on my desk at one point) into something it just can't be; a server. The Model 150 is a workstation designed for heavy duty graphics (ie; CAD/CAM) and programming work. It's not a server. If you want a server, look at the F40 (and try to ignore the disaster that is Linux SMP on PowerPC) or F50.
Sure, maybe it's something for the ISPs, but for what it's going to cost, you may as well get a Motorola MTX+. For about $4k, you get dual Digital DE21240's onboard, dual 604e/400MHz, onboard SCSI-UW, and 7 PCI slots, all in a configuration you can put in a PC ATX case and mix-and-match standard PC parts with.
-RISCy Business | Rabid System Administrator and BOFH
I have a #9 RevolutionIV 32M AGP 2x. Granted, I did NOT buy the Flatpanel solution bundle, but either way, the card is supported. The issue is the modelines. They're a somewhat guarded thing at SGI, I guess. The XF86 3.3.3.1 drivers for the Ticket To Ride IV chipset are quite functional, and pretty fast, even without accelleration. Whether or not #9 provided any information, I don't know, but either way, they were happy to share the Revolution3D's specs, and now these. More power to 'em. Now if only we could get S3 to come out of their hidey hole and share Savage4 specs.
-RISCy Business | Rabid System Administrator and BOFH
I knew this was coming. Oh well. Everyone can flame me and tell me I'm wrong all they want; I don't care.
RedHat never cared about users. They never will. They want money. So they make an IPO.
They've given control of the company to whatever freakshow of stock buyers they get. Those stockholders will decide the future of RedHat. They control RedHat with their votes.
RedHat no longer has control of the company. And since every idiot on the face of the planet knows about RedCrap, since they got in bed with Ziff Davis and spend more money on hype than on fixing bugs or anything of real import, the people buying stock will more likely be the ignorant type, who just want technology stocks in their portfolio.
RedHat has voluntarily given control of their company to any idiot investor with the cash and time to get in on their IPO, now. And from there, who knows what will happen. Those stockholders could vote to switch to KDE. Or vote to have RedCrap build a whole new windowmanager that looks just like Win95. (As if fvwm95 wasn't close enough.) They could raise or lower the price of RedCrap. (Like HELL I'm paying $70 for the same crap that I used to be able to get for $40, as is.)
Screw RedCrap. They're not getting in MY company, and I hope their IPO flops horribly.
-RISCy Business | System Administrator, Nexbell Communications
How long have I been saying RedCrap doesn't give a damn about anyone but themselves? HOW LONG?
Yeah, they're *really* giving back to the community. They're giving us back Rasterman, which is a good thing, but if they could stop him from leaving, I don't doubt for a second they would. He makes them money in the long run. That's all they care about.
All they want is money. Money money money. How much money can we make off of other people's work? How much money can we make off the ignorance of the public?
That's all RedCrap cares about, and that's all they've ever cared about. Notice how RedCrap 6.0, which is buggier than ever, now costs $20 more?
They really don't give a damn about users, as Raster said. They only care about channels, partners, and other fun OEM things. They want to replace Windows with Windows, and make themselves the next Microsoft. A draconian empire which can control the development of an entire operating system that they don't pay a single cent for.
And all this time, people have been telling me that I'm wrong, they really do care.
Excuse me whilst I, and I suspect the majority of RedCrap-haters, laugh as RedCrap's PR goes to hell.
-RISCy Business | System Administrator, Nexbell Communications
You know, it's really starting to bug the hell out of me.
VA Research buys linux.com. Sits on it for a couple of months, with big fat VAR ads all over it, now says it's opening today (Tuesday), and at 9:17a Eastern, it's still nothing but a giant VAR ad.
It's not enough that VAR only offers RedHat, a distribution which I explicitly *refuse* to run. If they force this kind of policy on LHS (who was more than happy to sell me a laptop with absolutely no OS, but explained that they had to install something for burnin.) then I'm going to lose a lot more faith in the 'commercial supporters.' As if I had much faith and/or trust in them as is.
Damnit, I don't want your Windows. I don't want your goddamned HP-SUX. I don't want your goddamned DG-UX. I don't want your goddamned OpenVMS. I don't want your bullshit media-baby distributions, either. I want a real system. With a distribution of my choice. And no bullshit.
VAR has no right to call themselves a Linux vendor, IMNSHO. They sell ONE distribution. That's not Linux. That's RedHat. Where's Slackware? Where's Debian? Where's Stampede? Nowhere to be found.
The people at LHS were very kind and corteous, and even though it took them a full day to return my call, at least they did. I never got a callback from VAR. There is no option at VAR for 'no operating system.' You get commercial RedHat, no other option.
You can specify to REMOVE 'Linux Office Suite 99.' Who the hell assumed I wanted that shite on a *SERVER*!? I don't want some trashy setup; I want a real system that has only components I choose. If I can't get that at least to a certain extent, you won't get my business.
VAResearch has proven to me that they are incapable of offering me what I demand, much less *trying* to. One distribution. Who knows what kind of hardware in some cases. Forget that bullshit. I'm going to keep right on building my own systems, and buy a laptop from LHS.
Down with the false supporters; long live choice. Long live customer service.
-RISCy Business | System Administrator, Nexbell Communications
3Dfx is playing marketing/PR games. It's damned obvious.
Nowhere is it told what exactly you would be developing. It is purposely vague, obscure, and uncertain.
Why? Because 3Dfx knows Linux is getting big. So they need to answer it somehow. So they answer it the easiest way possible. Make it look like they're doing something for it.
What will you be doing at 3Dfx? Well, most likely, developing another binary-only GLide for Quake III Arena. (Which is amazing, BTW.) Maybe some cheezy demos that measure your general FPS so you can brag about it. Perhaps a binary-only XFree86 that works better with the Voodoo (Rush,Banshee,etc) chipset.
But if you're looking to actually *contribute* something, I hear anybody can be a kernel developer. 3Dfx? They're just out for more marketshare, probably. I'll upgrade from my dual Monster3D 4Mers to dual Monster3D II 12Mers when 3Dfx stops being overzealous pricks, and actually contributes something to the software end for real. (Demos do not count. I used to be a demoscene whore. I am not impressed by a rotating cube with multiple textures and light sourcing.)
Thank you, drive through.
-RISCy Business | System Administrator, Nexbell Communications
You know what's really really scary about this whole thing?
In the past week now, a LOT of bomb threats have been made at schools, offices, and other. This morning, the Medical Mutual Building in downtown Cleveland was evacuated because of a bomb threat.
The Spring Mosh '99 concert was cancelled in Streetsboro because of a bomb threat called in at the middle school.
Schools have been closed or evacuated, and people are scared. And this is just within a 50 mile radius of my home, if that. Every day, since the shooting, I have heard of at least one or two bomb threats at various schools or offices.
And it's only getting worse, as evidenced by the evactuation of the Medical Mutual building this morning. What kind of sick little bastards would do this? I mean, GIVE ME A FUCKING BREAK.
Is our society really THIS fucked up?
-RISCy Business | Head Unix Guru, Unicent Telecom
I'm near legally disabled. Not from some horrible car accident, not from a drunk driver (not to downplay people who have gone through it), but from what I do. Day in and day out. 17+ hours a day, I am on a computer or doing computer-related work.
I work in the telecom sector. I crimp lots of cables, for my patch panels, for 10/100bT hookups, for FDDI hookups. I'm on what my coworkers jokingly call the 'DL' (disabled list) for the next three weeks, after my visit to the doctor on Friday.
If I keep up what I've been doing the past three weeks, I stand to lose more than 50% of what little motor control I have left in my right hand. It's become increasingly hard for me to type over the years, and it only gets worse.
Ergonomic keyboards help, but they aren't a solution. You *will* get Repetitive Motion Syndrome. You'll get it on a BAT. You'll get it on a chorder. You'll get it on a standard keyboard. Typing is just plain bad. Very VERY bad. Period.
You hit the same keys, with the same fingers, over and over again. Which will lead to repetitive motion syndrome. It's not as bad as carpal tunnel syndrome, but it's just as disabling in the long run.
Simply placing my hands on any keyboard produces horrible pain at this point. I'm having a hard time typing this, even. And I'm on a Keytronics FlexPro, (they're available from Javanco at http://www.javanco.com/ for $25 currently. VERY few left in stock.) which is considered to be a true-ergonomic keyboard.
It didn't help. I have carpal tunnel from the time before. I have repetitive motion syndrome from all the time. I can barely hold a cigarette now. The answer isn't better keyboards. The answer isn't concentrating on helping the people who are already disabled. They're in their situation for whatever reason, and there is nothing we can do at this point to cure or prevent it. My heart really does go out to them; I have friends who are legally disabled for various reasons. But there is nothing we can do to prevent them at this point.
It's been said that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. I'm a strong believer in this at this point. If I had known that I would be in this situation long ago, I would have abandoned computers.
We need to concentrate on PREVENTING disabilities. Microsoft doesn't do that. They try to help those who are already disabled, but do nothing to help those who may become disabled down the line. (I'm sorry, but the M$ Natual Keyboard does NOT count. It hurts me just to put my hands on it.) Who's best known for voice recognition software? Dragon Systems, then IBM. Microsoft doesn't have any voice recognition product I'm aware of.
I'm not trying to downplay those who are unfortunate enough to be disabled. I'm going to be in the same situation myself before too long, at this rate. But I made my choice, and I knew the risks after the second year, when I was diagnosed with chronic tendonitis as a direct result from constant typing. I made my choice long ago. Some people aren't aware of the risks of typing. Others, with other disabilities, weren't given a chance or choice. But now...
We need to concentrate on prevention. Not just Linux people, not just Solaris people, not just Windows people. Everyone. Anyone and everyone who uses a computer is at risk of my situation. I'm not saying that carpal tunnel syndrome, or repetitive motion syndrome are more important than blindness or paralysis. However, what's important is that they can be PREVENTED. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure!
IMHO, I think what needs to be concentrated on is INTELLIGENT alternatives to a keyboard and mouse. Anything involving repetitive motion is just plain bad. It's more the repeated motion than the positioning that does the damage.
I honestly can't say I have any bright ideas, beyond voice recognition. But either way, I think it's a lot better to try and educate as well as prevent disabilities when possible, rather than to ignore them till it's too late.
Just my $0.02USD.
-RISCy Business | Head Unix Guru, Unicent Telecom
I have to side with Malda on this one.. Raul's got it going on. :)
I'm gonna miss ol'Captain Blue Eyes. BTW, that reminds me; does ANYONE know if a *LICENSE* was ever agreed upon?
-RISCy Business | Unix Guru, Unicent Telecom
All I can say is...
Look out for the overzealous enforcers of the
violation of their 'intellectual property.'
You can bet that there will be noise from CDDB Inc.
on this. If lucky, they won't sue. If not, better
find some damned good lawyers quick. And pray the
RIAA doesn't jump into the fray.
-RISCy Business | Unix Guru, Unicent Telecom