Or (if you can read USB key after a DOS boot, most likely you can boot from it):
1. Format USB key with FAT16/FAT32 2. Copy DOS system files to USB key 3. Put bios update files on USBkey 4. Boot from USB key 5. Update bios
Bonus points if you use SYSLINUX to choose between multiple DOS floppy images - some having network support for multiple NICs, a MemTest image, and a copy of ZipSlack.
I use the Siemens SX66 PDA-phone (also known as the XDAIII, XDA IIs, MDAIII, PDA2k, Harrier, VX6600, etc). It's a Windows Mobile 2003SE device [start the flamewar here] with a blackberry-like slide out keyboard decked out with power: 400mhz XScale, 128mb RAM, 64mb ROM, SD card slot, WiFi+Bluetooth, oh and don't forget the fully functional quad-band GSM+GPRS PHONE and 640x480 camera on some models.
I liked the interface of PalmOS 3-4 better, but there's something I didn't like about PalmOS5 and the Treo 650 that I'm not remembering, so I went with this one instead.
The capabilities of this thing are amazing: one device and I have my phone, PDA, MP3 player, portable Internet browser, IR remote control, 802.11b scanner... The battery lasts longer than you'd think, and it's interchangeable so you can always have 1 in the charger and switch them out when it gets low, aside from constantly charging whenever it's in the cradle.
The only downside is that it's $500+. Every once in a while you can find one on eBay for $400 or so.
I've heard decent things about RT. Actually, I'd probably be using it right now, except we needed more of a CALL-tracking system rather than a work-ticket tracker.
what changed? maybe I'm not remembering correctly, but that looks like the same regulation that's been on the CB band for quite a while now... and is virtually ignored by a great many CB users I've come across.
AFAIK, it's a cultural difference. Most of the plural-company references I see are from the UK... I can only surmise they prefer to think of companies as composed of a great many people, while we (I assume) Americans see them as one all-emcompassing behemoth entity.
Caveats: Only NTSC air/cable, so unfortunately no, this doesn't do two DirecTV streams without two separate receivers. But that's only because DirectTV/Dish/etc aren't exactly eager to put their satellite signal reception/decryption on a PCI card one step away from being perma-descrambled and distributed to oblivion.
Maybe a weird question, but why move away from Novell?
I work in a mostly-Novell college infrastructure shop... the Netware servers handle file storage, printing and directory/access control; Linux for the web servers, DHCP, DNS, network monitoring, IDS, web filtering, even the behemoth that is the WebCT course management system; and Windows for the stuff that requires it (PeopleSoft on MS SQL Server::shudder::). We have minimal issues with the Novell machines; rock solid stable and they don't take much time to administer. Same with the Linux machines, they just sit and do their job with minimal interference.
The new Novell Open Enterprise Server, from the limited bit I've read on it so far, is supposed to combine all the good features of a Netware system (NSS storage system, eDirectory, iManager/iPrint/iFolder and company, etc) with the choice of either Netware 6.5x or SuSE Enterprise as the underlying OS.
okay, let's see here..... standard loose dialect, so this is probably close enough:
"Microsoft takes advantage of its nearly infinite resources and thus its ability to manipulate the legal system in order to gain large quantities of overly broad software patents."
The main difficulty in this sentence is that the common "pwn" has taken on many various meanings based on context and may not be properly translated. As always, IANAL (I Am Not A Linguist)
Probably the most cost-effective way to get editable video into a computer right now is through FireWire in DV video format, either from a MiniDV camera or this device called a DV bridge. A DV bridge is a converter box... analog video in one end and FireWire digital signal out the other. Usually it converts in the other direction as well, for a preview monitor and the final video export to tape. The only hardware the computer needs with one of these is a FireWire/IEEE1394 port. And preferably the largest hard drive (striped arrays are nice performance-wise , just remember you get no redundancy) CPU, memory, etc you can afford. PVR cards are okay if you're building a PVR machine, but MPEG2 isn't the best format to have your source video in.
As a data point for performance, several years ago I was doing reasonably decent quality DV editing on an Athlon 750 with 384MB of RAM and a 40gb drive running Win98SE+Premiere6 beta and a cheap $35 IEEE1394 card. Faster processors will help you in previewing and effects rendering, but a machine of that caliber can at least keep up with the datastream. Source was a Sony Digital8 cam for most concept work and a Canon XL1 for production shooting.
I wouldn't mess with the speed, as I'm sure the second somebody starts blasting 10mbit uploads down the cablenet, somebody on the UBR end will pick it up. I'd be happy with re-enabling the read-only 'public' SNMP on the local IP address of the cable modem... it was really nice pointing MRTG at 192.168.100.1 and reading the transferred-bytes numbers straight out of the modem interface, to say nothing of the signal strength and other genuinely useful info you can read with docsdiag.
I've tried several different implementations of tablets/touchscreens with various FPSes, and the problem seems to be the same on all combinations: FPS games use the mouse as a simply directional device, not an exact X-Y positioner. If you tap the screen to the left of center, you start spinning in that direction, same for the other 3 directions. It's just the way mouselook works - I guess if you could disable mouselook and use [something else] for movement and view changing, and use the mouse to move the crosshair around on the screen, it might work, but I haven't seen an FPS yet that works that way.
Tell that to my Packard Bell 486-66... Win95 on 8mb RAM with Winamp 1.something played them, no skips. Couldn't use the machine for anything else while they were playing, but it worked.
Yeah, they need a window, running on either Linux or Windows (it's Java, it runs on both, but crashes more on Windows... something having to do with the TCP stack, haven't bothered to track it down). It actually starts from a cmd.exe+batch file or Xterm+shellscript, but brings up this big old-style Java GUI console. Close the window, no more page serving. We have no source, this is all very-expensive proprietary junk. Right now I'm using RealVNC with the vnc.so module on the main servers or the Xvnc virtual-framebuffer server on the headless boxes. We *are* having a problem with Xvnc closing itself out for no apparent reason, i was going to go investigate tying vnc.so into Xvfb next.
Okay... but can you open up several apps, close the session / lose your connection and then reconnect, having your apps still running in place? This is a must-have in my situation, for adminning several evil Java server-apps that insist on only running when they have an X window open.
On Windows I just use RDP/terminal services... for X I'm kinda locked into VNC, be it via the module or the VNC X server, depending on whether the server has a video device. VNC, even over somewhat fast Internet links (partial DS3 server end, 3mbit cable client, 50ms or less ping between) feels a lot more lagged than the RDP link.
I'd have to recommend DHS. Very reliable, they've mentioned outages on their site a few times but I never notice them. And they've been around forever... way back when Monolith (remember ml.org anybody?) went under, a few of the guys who worked for/supported ML created their own, and DHS was born.
[disclaimer: I don't work for PeopleSoft, I just admin a few of the PS DB/apps/web servers for a local college]
PeopleSoft's already using a bunch of IBM products for the HR/Financials systems they provide... IBM Websphere is immediately coming to mind as an option for the backend application server, with webpages/java servlets served up by IBM-modified versions of Apache and Tomcat, IIRC. The other choice PS supports is a comglomeration of bloated BEA products (Jolt/Tuxedo, Weblogic) that I've been told are slightly easier to install and configure, but in my experience crash on an almost daily basis, whenever subjected to anywhere close to a high load situation.
Luckily for us, for Peoplesoft SA/HR 8.2 there's an option of using Apache and Jserv for the servlet-engine part. In combination with a little RedHat, that's working perfectly so far. Actually, now that I think about it, the final piece that made that setup stable was to use IBM's version of the 1.4.2 Java VM. Still using Tuxedo/Jolt on Windows for the app-server side; haven't convinced the higher-ups to switch those over to Linux yet, but i'm trying. Database is set in stone as MS SQL Server 2k, thanks to Unisys...::sigh::
Unfortunately, higher versions of PeopleTools seem to only be supported with the BEA junk at the moment... maybe this new deal will change their tune some?
Actually, Sprint's PTT is awful. We had the opportunity to test it out when the Nextel contract came up for bid; local Sprint rep sent us a few LG phones with full service plans for a couple weeks.
It's obvious they just tacked it onto the existing phone-call infrastructure; you pick a phone number and hit the PTT button. After a delay of between 15 seconds and 2 minutes as it makes the phone call, you MIGHT get a connection and be able to transmit. Even when connected, there's a variable delay of 5-30 seconds before you hear what the other person said, and garbled/truncated more often than not. And this was testing NEW phones in an open-air OUTDOOR environment with supposedly full cell signal. Forget working indoors, it just failed miserably. Amazingly, both Sprint's tech support and the aforementioned marketing rep claimed this was normal behavior.
Needless to say we extended the Nextel contract, and bought a bunch of new Motorola i530's and i810's to replace our aging i1000's.
I'd LOVE 1600x1200 on a 17" LCD. Higher, if they could do it. 1600x1200 on the 15" screens in Inspiron 8200's is just about perfect, especially with Cleartype enabled. Hell, if they made standalone DVI versions of my laptop's 1400x1050 14.1" screen I'd be happy enough.
Yeah, some laptops were designed reasonably well. Apple, Dell and Toshiba seem to be reasonably good at this. But there are others much less so... swapping the hard drive in a friend's HP-something laptop involved the following procedure (I'm not making this up):
1. Remove plastic cover between keyboard and screen. This is accomplished by inserting a small flat-blade screwdriver between the cover and keyboard and prying up in 3 places, hoping that you don't break the tabs in the process. 2. Unscrew 4 screws above keyboard - these are some extremely small and easily-strippable Torx bit, T-4 maybe. 3. Dislodge keyboard ribbon cable retaining mechanism while pressing down on front-panel connector. Remove cable and keyboard. 4. Remove CD-ROM drive retaining bracket, floppy drive retaining bracket, and for optimal working space around the hard drive, removal of the CPU heat sink/fan assembly is preferred. 5. Unscrew 4 hard drive screws. Use needle to shift IDE locking mechanism 2mm left. Pry between motherboard and laptop-IDE right angle adapter to remove drive. 6. Reverse procedure.
That was LOTS of fun to figure out, let me tell you.
Hrm, seems my writeup was rearranged a bit... I _do_ know how to write, I promise! =] Slightly corrected one below.
BRTB writes "Slackware 10.0 is out! X.org 6.7.0, kernel 2.4.26 (2.6.7 optional), KDE 3.2.3, GNOME 2.6.1, GCC 3.3.4... it's all new, and just as stable as you'd expect from Slackware, if RC2 was any indication. There's an official announcement and some ISO BitTorrent links, as well as a mirror list. Of course, the non-cheapskates among us should go buy the CD-set to support the project. Have fun, everybody..."
1. Damn. I needed a couple 20" flatpanels, too. 2. Why is it Florida's always excluded from contests like this? Extra contest-registration rules or something?
The one of him saying "Cool" is a little 160x160 or so RLE-encoded AVI that was part of the Microsoft Multimedia Pack for Win3.11... came with my old Packard Bell.
Slashdot Mirror
Or (if you can read USB key after a DOS boot, most likely you can boot from it):
1. Format USB key with FAT16/FAT32
2. Copy DOS system files to USB key
3. Put bios update files on USBkey
4. Boot from USB key
5. Update bios
Bonus points if you use SYSLINUX to choose between multiple DOS floppy images - some having network support for multiple NICs, a MemTest image, and a copy of ZipSlack.
I use the Siemens SX66 PDA-phone (also known as the XDAIII, XDA IIs, MDAIII, PDA2k, Harrier, VX6600, etc). It's a Windows Mobile 2003SE device [start the flamewar here] with a blackberry-like slide out keyboard decked out with power: 400mhz XScale, 128mb RAM, 64mb ROM, SD card slot, WiFi+Bluetooth, oh and don't forget the fully functional quad-band GSM+GPRS PHONE and 640x480 camera on some models.
I liked the interface of PalmOS 3-4 better, but there's something I didn't like about PalmOS5 and the Treo 650 that I'm not remembering, so I went with this one instead.
The capabilities of this thing are amazing: one device and I have my phone, PDA, MP3 player, portable Internet browser, IR remote control, 802.11b scanner... The battery lasts longer than you'd think, and it's interchangeable so you can always have 1 in the charger and switch them out when it gets low, aside from constantly charging whenever it's in the cradle.
The only downside is that it's $500+. Every once in a while you can find one on eBay for $400 or so.
I've heard decent things about RT. Actually, I'd probably be using it right now, except we needed more of a CALL-tracking system rather than a work-ticket tracker.
I just want to salute whoever the joker is that convinced the survey app that he had an "INTERWEBntel" processor.
what changed? maybe I'm not remembering correctly, but that looks like the same regulation that's been on the CB band for quite a while now... and is virtually ignored by a great many CB users I've come across.
[yes, off-topic, blah]
AFAIK, it's a cultural difference. Most of the plural-company references I see are from the UK... I can only surmise they prefer to think of companies as composed of a great many people, while we (I assume) Americans see them as one all-emcompassing behemoth entity.
Dual tuner MPEG2 encoder.
Caveats: Only NTSC air/cable, so unfortunately no, this doesn't do two DirecTV streams without two separate receivers. But that's only because DirectTV/Dish/etc aren't exactly eager to put their satellite signal reception/decryption on a PCI card one step away from being perma-descrambled and distributed to oblivion.
Maybe a weird question, but why move away from Novell?
::shudder::). We have minimal issues with the Novell machines; rock solid stable and they don't take much time to administer. Same with the Linux machines, they just sit and do their job with minimal interference.
I work in a mostly-Novell college infrastructure shop... the Netware servers handle file storage, printing and directory/access control; Linux for the web servers, DHCP, DNS, network monitoring, IDS, web filtering, even the behemoth that is the WebCT course management system; and Windows for the stuff that requires it (PeopleSoft on MS SQL Server
The new Novell Open Enterprise Server, from the limited bit I've read on it so far, is supposed to combine all the good features of a Netware system (NSS storage system, eDirectory, iManager/iPrint/iFolder and company, etc) with the choice of either Netware 6.5x or SuSE Enterprise as the underlying OS.
okay, let's see here..... standard loose dialect, so this is probably close enough:
"Microsoft takes advantage of its nearly infinite resources and thus its ability to manipulate the legal system in order to gain large quantities of overly broad software patents."
The main difficulty in this sentence is that the common "pwn" has taken on many various meanings based on context and may not be properly translated. As always, IANAL (I Am Not A Linguist)
>=]
Probably the most cost-effective way to get editable video into a computer right now is through FireWire in DV video format, either from a MiniDV camera or this device called a DV bridge. A DV bridge is a converter box... analog video in one end and FireWire digital signal out the other. Usually it converts in the other direction as well, for a preview monitor and the final video export to tape. The only hardware the computer needs with one of these is a FireWire/IEEE1394 port. And preferably the largest hard drive (striped arrays are nice performance-wise , just remember you get no redundancy) CPU, memory, etc you can afford. PVR cards are okay if you're building a PVR machine, but MPEG2 isn't the best format to have your source video in.
As a data point for performance, several years ago I was doing reasonably decent quality DV editing on an Athlon 750 with 384MB of RAM and a 40gb drive running Win98SE+Premiere6 beta and a cheap $35 IEEE1394 card. Faster processors will help you in previewing and effects rendering, but a machine of that caliber can at least keep up with the datastream. Source was a Sony Digital8 cam for most concept work and a Canon XL1 for production shooting.
I wouldn't mess with the speed, as I'm sure the second somebody starts blasting 10mbit uploads down the cablenet, somebody on the UBR end will pick it up. I'd be happy with re-enabling the read-only 'public' SNMP on the local IP address of the cable modem... it was really nice pointing MRTG at 192.168.100.1 and reading the transferred-bytes numbers straight out of the modem interface, to say nothing of the signal strength and other genuinely useful info you can read with docsdiag.
Offtopic, but just curious... what car is that? Hybrid something, EV...?
I've tried several different implementations of tablets/touchscreens with various FPSes, and the problem seems to be the same on all combinations: FPS games use the mouse as a simply directional device, not an exact X-Y positioner. If you tap the screen to the left of center, you start spinning in that direction, same for the other 3 directions. It's just the way mouselook works - I guess if you could disable mouselook and use [something else] for movement and view changing, and use the mouse to move the crosshair around on the screen, it might work, but I haven't seen an FPS yet that works that way.
Tell that to my Packard Bell 486-66... Win95 on 8mb RAM with Winamp 1.something played them, no skips. Couldn't use the machine for anything else while they were playing, but it worked.
Yeah, they need a window, running on either Linux or Windows (it's Java, it runs on both, but crashes more on Windows... something having to do with the TCP stack, haven't bothered to track it down). It actually starts from a cmd.exe+batch file or Xterm+shellscript, but brings up this big old-style Java GUI console. Close the window, no more page serving. We have no source, this is all very-expensive proprietary junk. Right now I'm using RealVNC with the vnc.so module on the main servers or the Xvnc virtual-framebuffer server on the headless boxes. We *are* having a problem with Xvnc closing itself out for no apparent reason, i was going to go investigate tying vnc.so into Xvfb next.
Just looking for a better/faster way, is all...
Okay... but can you open up several apps, close the session / lose your connection and then reconnect, having your apps still running in place? This is a must-have in my situation, for adminning several evil Java server-apps that insist on only running when they have an X window open.
On Windows I just use RDP/terminal services... for X I'm kinda locked into VNC, be it via the module or the VNC X server, depending on whether the server has a video device. VNC, even over somewhat fast Internet links (partial DS3 server end, 3mbit cable client, 50ms or less ping between) feels a lot more lagged than the RDP link.
I'd have to recommend DHS. Very reliable, they've mentioned outages on their site a few times but I never notice them. And they've been around forever... way back when Monolith (remember ml.org anybody?) went under, a few of the guys who worked for/supported ML created their own, and DHS was born.
[disclaimer: I don't work for PeopleSoft, I just admin a few of the PS DB/apps/web servers for a local college]
::sigh::
PeopleSoft's already using a bunch of IBM products for the HR/Financials systems they provide... IBM Websphere is immediately coming to mind as an option for the backend application server, with webpages/java servlets served up by IBM-modified versions of Apache and Tomcat, IIRC. The other choice PS supports is a comglomeration of bloated BEA products (Jolt/Tuxedo, Weblogic) that I've been told are slightly easier to install and configure, but in my experience crash on an almost daily basis, whenever subjected to anywhere close to a high load situation.
Luckily for us, for Peoplesoft SA/HR 8.2 there's an option of using Apache and Jserv for the servlet-engine part. In combination with a little RedHat, that's working perfectly so far. Actually, now that I think about it, the final piece that made that setup stable was to use IBM's version of the 1.4.2 Java VM. Still using Tuxedo/Jolt on Windows for the app-server side; haven't convinced the higher-ups to switch those over to Linux yet, but i'm trying. Database is set in stone as MS SQL Server 2k, thanks to Unisys...
Unfortunately, higher versions of PeopleTools seem to only be supported with the BEA junk at the moment... maybe this new deal will change their tune some?
Actually, Sprint's PTT is awful. We had the opportunity to test it out when the Nextel contract came up for bid; local Sprint rep sent us a few LG phones with full service plans for a couple weeks.
It's obvious they just tacked it onto the existing phone-call infrastructure; you pick a phone number and hit the PTT button. After a delay of between 15 seconds and 2 minutes as it makes the phone call, you MIGHT get a connection and be able to transmit. Even when connected, there's a variable delay of 5-30 seconds before you hear what the other person said, and garbled/truncated more often than not. And this was testing NEW phones in an open-air OUTDOOR environment with supposedly full cell signal. Forget working indoors, it just failed miserably. Amazingly, both Sprint's tech support and the aforementioned marketing rep claimed this was normal behavior.
Needless to say we extended the Nextel contract, and bought a bunch of new Motorola i530's and i810's to replace our aging i1000's.
I'd LOVE 1600x1200 on a 17" LCD. Higher, if they could do it. 1600x1200 on the 15" screens in Inspiron 8200's is just about perfect, especially with Cleartype enabled. Hell, if they made standalone DVI versions of my laptop's 1400x1050 14.1" screen I'd be happy enough.
Yeah, some laptops were designed reasonably well. Apple, Dell and Toshiba seem to be reasonably good at this. But there are others much less so... swapping the hard drive in a friend's HP-something laptop involved the following procedure (I'm not making this up):
1. Remove plastic cover between keyboard and screen. This is accomplished by inserting a small flat-blade screwdriver between the cover and keyboard and prying up in 3 places, hoping that you don't break the tabs in the process.
2. Unscrew 4 screws above keyboard - these are some extremely small and easily-strippable Torx bit, T-4 maybe.
3. Dislodge keyboard ribbon cable retaining mechanism while pressing down on front-panel connector. Remove cable and keyboard.
4. Remove CD-ROM drive retaining bracket, floppy drive retaining bracket, and for optimal working space around the hard drive, removal of the CPU heat sink/fan assembly is preferred.
5. Unscrew 4 hard drive screws. Use needle to shift IDE locking mechanism 2mm left. Pry between motherboard and laptop-IDE right angle adapter to remove drive.
6. Reverse procedure.
That was LOTS of fun to figure out, let me tell you.
Hrm, seems my writeup was rearranged a bit... I _do_ know how to write, I promise! =] Slightly corrected one below.
BRTB writes "Slackware 10.0 is out! X.org 6.7.0, kernel 2.4.26 (2.6.7 optional), KDE 3.2.3, GNOME 2.6.1, GCC 3.3.4... it's all new, and just as stable as you'd expect from Slackware, if RC2 was any indication. There's an official announcement and some ISO BitTorrent links, as well as a mirror list. Of course, the non-cheapskates among us should go buy the CD-set to support the project. Have fun, everybody..."
Umm... maybe this is a stupid question, but what do you need all those interfaces at once for? Some kinda uber-router-of-everything?
Residents of Florida not eligible.
1. Damn. I needed a couple 20" flatpanels, too.
2. Why is it Florida's always excluded from contests like this? Extra contest-registration rules or something?
The one of him saying "Cool" is a little 160x160 or so RLE-encoded AVI that was part of the Microsoft Multimedia Pack for Win3.11... came with my old Packard Bell.
And why the hell do I still remember that.....