"the devil is in the details. This stuff is not easy to run."
One could be forgiven for thinking that was intended to describe Active Directory.
I run a mixed network, though mostly Linux these days, for work. I frequently hear about juicy new technologies for MS (I read several of the pro Windows mags) and some sound really good. Mostly, however, as I read the article I quickly find myself thinking "that's nice if you're a company big enough to pay someone to learn this one technology, and you'll really need the myriad options it provides. But for most people who could use that functionality, this is ridiculously complex and over-engineered."
There are also times I curse Linux, often in ways that'd make your hair curl. MTA + spam filter + virus scanner(s) + IMAP/POP server + webmail is all well enough, but give me standard interfaces on each of them or I'll go insane very soon. Then I tried to set up an Exchange demo and, well, suddenly it didn't seem so bad anymore. It's still quite bad, but Exchange also failed to work sensibly by default, was hard to integrate with multiple plug-ins, and generally reassured me that in fact all mail server software is crap (though each may in isolation be quite good).
MS needs to get a handle on the complexity of its own systems before they can talk too loudly about the multiplicity of configurations under Linux and the fact that every admin almost has to be a developer. At least with Linux, I can admin my hideously complex configurations via a collection of individual config files in a consistent place that don't change for no reason, vanish, get corrupted, or get bored and go for a smoke:-P . I can also version changes, which is nice (note to distributors: PLEASE start designing for a versioned/etc.).
If Linux distros could offer a consistent config file format (Pick one. Seriously.), some form of config inheritance (eg load/etc/defaults/[someconfig], then/home/username/.config/[someconfig], then/etc/overrides/[someconfig]) and lockdown (think KDE's kiosk), that would help a lot. Yes, I understand that this is almost impossible given the nature of Linux distros as assemblies of independenly developed software, but nonetheless this would be awfully nice.
If I could get consistent open and save dialog boxes for my Linux terminal server, I think I'd be in heaven.
Overall, I must say that I see a serious case of the pot calling the kettle black here. They're both awful.
Hmm. I'd have to take issue with that. In small, independent, non-redundant systems storage might be as little as $1/GB.
If you're building a large SAN or storage farm, there won't be a "little" overhead. Rather, the chances are the actual storage cost will be a small part of the overall costs of space, power, maintainance, administration, monitoring, legal compliance and BACKUPS.
I'd be gobsmacked if it was less than $5/GB to start out with a storage farm (and unsurprised if it was ten times that), and I couldn't give you a running cost per GB but I wouldn't be surprised if it was several bucks per year.
Even our storage server at work, which only has 830GB of usable storage (1.7TB raw storage) cost a lot more than a buck a gig. Closer to $10/GB, in fact. Admittedly we didn't buy well and didn't buy at a good time, but even so that's for slow, cheap storage.
Looking at, say, raw 2TB NAS devices advertised, they seem to go for between US$6000 and US$10000 - and that's initial purchase of a standalone device, not counting any of the above costs. That's also an SATA based unit, and most won't really fit well in large, complex storage networks.
If you start talking SAN gear, well... you'd need to put the price in $/GB to stop your eyes falling out;-)
[Anders Lofgren, senior industry analyst at Forrester Research Inc] said high-end storage implementations cost on average about $50 per gigabyte, or $50,000 per TB. But he cautioned that such numbers don't reflect the redundancy most users require and other variables like the number of ports and servers in the mix. Then there's the requirement for management software, which will also increase the price, Lofgren said.
Even if we allow for the questionable wisdom of analysts, I think the quoted article is fairly belivable. It also reflects my extrapolation of my own experience of storage management.
I'm not claiming that your scenario is impossible (though I think you've totally neglected the processing costs and need for pre-downprocessing temporary storage of all that audio), just that it'd cost a LOT more than you describe.
Right now, you'd proably want to run locally. This isn't a limitation of LTSP as such, but of the X11 protocol as it now stands. Better protocol compression, or the use of something like MA S</a> will hopefully help in future.
I also wish to note that at no point did I mention "police state". I don't know enough about the US to make that call, after all - though I'm free to have my own opinions of how it looks from the outside.
As you note, it's not feeling foreign that's the problem - it's being made to feel like you're untrustworthy or potentially dangerous BECAUSE you're foreign.
Also, despite the insinuation of the parent to your post, it was in fact my father and his wife who visisted most recently. My visit to the US some time ago was quite pleasant - but it was also before the 2004-09-11 attacks, PATRIOT, and all that.
Heh. The way things are working out over here, I wouldn't be surprised if electing someone other than Howard was considered "politically inappropriate" by the US Gov't;-)
Not really, but the presure from US diplomats to keep the evil bastard in power is strong. *grumble* Democracy for the world, but only on our terms... *grumble*
I totally distrust and strongly dislike (hate is NOT accurate, thanks) the behaviour of the current US government. I'm concerned about where it's going, and what that means for the rest of the world, given the political force being put into "harmonizing" policies with the EU, etc.
I'm very unhappy about the fact that Australia now gets all the bad American laws a little while after the US does - and often drafted even worse. That, however, is our problem - the US applies a lot of pressure, but if we bend to it it's our fault. The recent "Free" trade agreement is a good example.
I'm deeply concerned that collectively, the US population is letting its government get away with this stuff, if not encouraging it.
On the other hand, it's entirely wrong to say I hate the US. I really like what the US used to be, for one thing, and what many of its people want it to be again. I like some of its ideals and its stated (as opposed to demonstrated in action) goals. I like a lot of aspects of its legal and political systems, some of which I'd love to see here. I like a lot of Americans I know.
I'd love to be able to visit again, as I really enjoyed seeing Washington DC - but right now, I wouldn't feel comfortable or safe doing so.
I just wish the country would stop forcing its self on the rest of the world, calm down a bit, and let everybody get on with life;-)
Also, it's true the VISIT program is far from a core issue here. All it is is another demonstration of the general attitude that's developing in the US, at least as it's presented to the outside world. It happens to be a particularly blatant and offensive one that's caught a lot of people's attention, but still it's by its self not that big a deal.
So... while you can choose to write off my comments and opinion (that is all it is, after all) because of some assumptions about my motivation if you like, it might be better to recognise it as a perfectly valid opinion - just one you disagree with. I happen to disagree with your assumptions about my motivation;-)
I can see what you're saying there, but the choices of action are limited.
In this case, the decision on a European nation is being made not so much because of data interchange and privacy as because delegates are unwilling to physically go to the USA. As most of the speakers and delegates are American and European, it would be impractical to hold it anywhere but one of the two regions.
I don't think anybody is pretending that the EU is all roses and flowers, but you currently have less reason to fear simply going there, and you're not likely to be treated like a criminal just because you're from another country.
When it comes to information, the previous candidate venue (and its city council) has been informed of why the plans were dropped. I don't know how, or if, they responded.
It's not just keeping tourists and individuals visiting family out either. It's pushing conferences and conventions away.
My father and his (Belgian) wife visited the US during the recent "Freedom Fries" period. My stepmother was delayed at EACH DOMESTIC AIRPORT for a full luggage and personal search. She got funny looks at cafes when she spoke. It was apparently really creepy.
It wasn't just that either, though. Even when not with my stepmother, my (Australian) father mentioned that he was often made to feel very uncomfortable and "foreign," especially when at hotels, airports, etc.
They left the country three days into their planned three week trip, cancelling attendance at a conference and several workshops. Not that long after they got back (having continued travelling around Europe), the news of the VISIT stuff came out.
Neither they, nor I (who visited in a saner time), intend to visit the USA again. My god, what if Australia does something policically unpopular while I'm there!
My father, before he left, was in the early processes of planning a conference on group psychology and outdoor education, with a tentative venue of Three Springs in the US. They are now seeking a European venue.
This isn't even computer / IT / security related stuff. They're not moving because they're afraid their delegates might be refused entry or arrested and held without charge. Nope, they're moving because they're not willing to go back - and NEITHER ARE MANY OF THE POTENTIAL SPEAKERS.
So yeah, I think this will cause serious, long term harm. I don't think it can harm good will and trust for the USA - that's all gone anyway - but it can help isolate its professional communities more, force Americans to travel overseas more to visit conferences and professional events, and harm tourism severely.
What gets me is that it doesn't even help security. It's like a statement that "we believe that our citizens will feel more secure if we treat all foreigners like criminals."
The only thing that bothers me about that is the tracking. Frankly, I'm increasingly feeling that on the roads there is a need for better enforcement of the rules. (Note: I'm a cyclist. Getting almost killed by f**ing idiots every day tends to make me a bit of a road nazi).
So long as the device is not and CAN NOT be used for tracking (either real time, at pre-placed points, or after the fact if no offense is recorded) and it does not bypass the right to contest the penalty, then yeah - I can deal with such a thing. It's VERY IMPORTANT though that it should only record enough info to perform its stated purpose, and should discard it immediately if it is not required.
<grumble> If only there was a way to add "turning without indicating," "yapping on a mobile phone in traffic," (illegal here in Western Australia, but often ignored) and "driving an SUV so big it's impossible to see around or through." (increasingle common). </grumble>
As for the revenue grab aspect - perhaps so. I'd say it's about 50/50 personally, as I do think there are valid uses for speed cameras etc. On the other hand, placing them just beside signs for speed change zones is pretty dodgy - the only real purpose to that IS money.
As far as I'm concerned, driving is a privelege. If you're a dangerous fucking idiot, then you don't deserve it - and existing methods to spot said morons aren't working. Nothing ever will properly, but I'm inclined to favour things that do - so long as they're carefully thought out to avoid abuse.
That would make a LOT more sense, yes. I happen to have a similar plight (like normal daily temperatures being above the max operating temperature of some equipment - *sigh*).
It sounds odd for your machine not to go a lot above 40 degrees in such a situation. Hell, here (Perth, Western Australia) the air temperature frequently goes above 40 in summer.
I suppose if it was an early Pentium machine that's not unreasonable - some of those didn't really need fans, and would often run OK without even a heat sink. Don't try it with a modern machine though.
Also, one of my housemates was fumbling around the back of his computer (PIII celeron, ATX) for the power switch on the back of the PSU. He managed to flip the input voltage switch from 240V to 110V instead.
The most incredible bang and flash resulted, and the breaker at the house switchboard went. Once we unplugged the box and restored power to the house, we decided to see what the damage was like, flipped the power back, and plugged his machine back in.
Dead, dead, dead.
We swapped the PSU, and impressively the machine POSTed - but without video. We swapped the video card (it's a geek house - spares abound) and it booted fine and ran for ages after that.
I had an Asus MediaBus card that I needed to fit into a small case. Now, MediaBus cards are mixed ISA/PCI cards - "slot saver" types. They're a normal PCI card with an extension for the ISA bits.
The one I had was a SCSI card with an ISA sound card onboard. I needed the SCSI card, but it wouldn't fit. Looking at the card, it became pretty clear that the ISA sound bits were mostly on the end of the card, and if they weren't there the card would fit. It wasn't going to be any use to me if it didn't fit, so out came the tin snips (!!).
After this butchery, it worked fine - despite the somewhat ragged, sheared line across the back of the card and the fact that I'd cut all the ISA-extension connectors off.
To a fair extent you can already do that. The processor bus width is independent of the address space width, and the SIMD units in modern processors are used for this sort of job.
I find the arguments of another poster here about cluster-wide shared address spaces etc much more interesting, though. I'm sure the crazy folks behind Plan 9 would have fun with the idea of a single global memory address space...
Seriously - why would you want 128 bit addressing. Modern CPUs are already "128 bits" or more wide in many of the ways that count, such as SIMD registers and instructions. I'm not sure how many applications are working with data that would benefit from 128 bit wide integers and floats, but I'm going to make a guess at "not many."
The move to 64 bit addressing is being done mostly because we've run out of room on the 32 bit address space. I'm not dumb enough to say that we'll never run out of the 64 bit address space, but I think it's safe to say it'll take a fair darn while before we do. Remember that AMD's 64 bit CPUs only use 40 bit (or is it 48 bit?) physical addressing to provide support for terabytes of memory, so they've got quite a bit of headroom within the 64 bit address space.
Perhaps ICANN are simply doing what so many other companies love to do, but cutting out the middleman?
[No, I'm not serious. The "studies" others quote are usually independent in a sense, just carefully selected in topic and configuration to be likely to be faviourable, then only published if they're faviourable.]
On another note, SiteFinder was pretty awful. As someone who rejected spam from invalid domains, I felt the pain when SiteFinder went live within minutes. Oh, the spam! It also considerably increased our mail server load for another reason - it tried to deliver bounces to invalid domains instead of freezing them or never generating them.
If VeriSign try to bring that back, I'm finding another Internet:-P
I don't blame the IT guy for not providing FTP - much the same way as I refuse to provide telnet access to one of our remote developers (an _old_ UNIX guy who just doesn't get the Internet). It's nuts from a security perspective, and there's no good reason to do it.
You'll have SSH access open anyway, right? That gives you scp and probably sftp for free. So why open other services that are less secure - it opens you to a wider range of attacks for no benefit.
Now, it's possible you also don't have SSH/SCP access. That's unfortunate, but that's a security policy decision that probably also has some justification.
I certainly don't blame them for not allowing FTP. I really wish non-anonymous FTP would just go away.
That's the only thing I actually care about from Word > 5. I used to hate it, but... nope, too darn useful.
I'll admit that while doing battle with Word 2000 and OpenOffice Writer at various points I've been very tempted to install Basislisk and fire up my old copy of Word 5.1 for the Macintosh.
So long as **= is consistent with +=, -=, *=, and all the others in that vein then frankly it's quite fine.
It's when you get large sets of operators that/don't/ fit an overlying pattern that I see trouble.
As this argument seems to satisfy many, "Python does this too." I happen to think it's the right approach, and possibly less confusing than having some operators availible in <op>= form but not others. It's also worth noting that at least in Python, if I remember correctly the 'x += y" forms are more efficient than the "x = x + y" forms.
When it comes to Perl 6, I'll be glad to see the alleged OOP support in Perl 5 torn out and thrown away. That way, if I ever have to venture back into Perl I won't find it/quite/ such a painful experience. Still, as a recovering Perl user currently revelling in the "oh, it all makes sense!" experience of Python, I hope never to have to do that at all.
It shocks me that people get off on charges of fraud because "a virus altered my spreadsheet"... but get done for kiddie porn because of spam.
Also, re web bugs - I'm well aware, though a depressing number of users aren't. Every time you delete some spam in far too many mail clients, you're screaming "Spam me more!" to the world. *sigh*.
Thankfully, MimeDefang cleans up most of them before they reach me; it's only the rare HTML-only spam that even makes it to my mail client with image links intact. I should look at tweaking it to break those links somehow, as I don't think we'll be encountering a legit use for <img> links in our business any time soon.
Slashdot Mirror
One could be forgiven for thinking that was intended to describe Active Directory.
I run a mixed network, though mostly Linux these days, for work. I frequently hear about juicy new technologies for MS (I read several of the pro Windows mags) and some sound really good. Mostly, however, as I read the article I quickly find myself thinking "that's nice if you're a company big enough to pay someone to learn this one technology, and you'll really need the myriad options it provides. But for most people who could use that functionality, this is ridiculously complex and over-engineered."
There are also times I curse Linux, often in ways that'd make your hair curl. MTA + spam filter + virus scanner(s) + IMAP/POP server + webmail is all well enough, but give me standard interfaces on each of them or I'll go insane very soon. Then I tried to set up an Exchange demo and, well, suddenly it didn't seem so bad anymore. It's still quite bad, but Exchange also failed to work sensibly by default, was hard to integrate with multiple plug-ins, and generally reassured me that in fact all mail server software is crap (though each may in isolation be quite good).
MS needs to get a handle on the complexity of its own systems before they can talk too loudly about the multiplicity of configurations under Linux and the fact that every admin almost has to be a developer. At least with Linux, I can admin my hideously complex configurations via a collection of individual config files in a consistent place that don't change for no reason, vanish, get corrupted, or get bored and go for a smoke
If Linux distros could offer a consistent config file format (Pick one. Seriously.), some form of config inheritance (eg load
If I could get consistent open and save dialog boxes for my Linux terminal server, I think I'd be in heaven.
Overall, I must say that I see a serious case of the pot calling the kettle black here. They're both awful.
Hmm. I'd have to take issue with that. In small, independent, non-redundant systems storage might be as little as $1/GB.
If you're building a large SAN or storage farm, there won't be a "little" overhead. Rather, the chances are the actual storage cost will be a small part of the overall costs of space, power, maintainance, administration, monitoring, legal compliance and BACKUPS.
I'd be gobsmacked if it was less than $5/GB to start out with a storage farm (and unsurprised if it was ten times that), and I couldn't give you a running cost per GB but I wouldn't be surprised if it was several bucks per year.
Even our storage server at work, which only has 830GB of usable storage (1.7TB raw storage) cost a lot more than a buck a gig. Closer to $10/GB, in fact. Admittedly we didn't buy well and didn't buy at a good time, but even so that's for slow, cheap storage.
Looking at, say, raw 2TB NAS devices advertised, they seem to go for between US$6000 and US$10000 - and that's initial purchase of a standalone device, not counting any of the above costs. That's also an SATA based unit, and most won't really fit well in large, complex storage networks.
If you start talking SAN gear, well ... you'd need to put the price in $/GB to stop your eyes falling out ;-)
Here's a link that might be interesting: SAN Case study:
Even if we allow for the questionable wisdom of analysts, I think the quoted article is fairly belivable. It also reflects my extrapolation of my own experience of storage management.
I'm not claiming that your scenario is impossible (though I think you've totally neglected the processing costs and need for pre-downprocessing temporary storage of all that audio), just that it'd cost a LOT more than you describe.
Right now, you'd proably want to run locally. This isn't a limitation of LTSP as such, but of the X11 protocol as it now stands. Better protocol compression, or the use of something likeA S</a> will hopefully help in future.
... to Pentium 100 clients. I wouldn't try to watch a DVD, though.
M
Low res video should be fine. We do fine here displaying even quite complex flash in browsers over 10/100
The only way to find out for sure is test it. If you have both a laptop and a desktop, enable XDMCP on the desktop then connect with the laptop (X -query $DESKTOP_HOSTNAME when X is not already running; make sure there's no firewall on either host). Log in and try playing some video to see how you go.
The easiest way to get decent performance will definitely be to run the player as a local app on the client. LTSP has good support for this sort of thing, thankfully.
You might also want to search the LTSP mailing list archives.
--
Craig Ringer
Yep, I think you clarified things nicely.
I also wish to note that at no point did I mention "police state". I don't know enough about the US to make that call, after all - though I'm free to have my own opinions of how it looks from the outside.
As you note, it's not feeling foreign that's the problem - it's being made to feel like you're untrustworthy or potentially dangerous BECAUSE you're foreign.
Also, despite the insinuation of the parent to your post, it was in fact my father and his wife who visisted most recently. My visit to the US some time ago was quite pleasant - but it was also before the 2004-09-11 attacks, PATRIOT, and all that.
Heh. The way things are working out over here, I wouldn't be surprised if electing someone other than Howard was considered "politically inappropriate" by the US Gov't ;-)
Not really, but the presure from US diplomats to keep the evil bastard in power is strong. *grumble* Democracy for the world, but only on our terms... *grumble*
That's a bit less than half true ;-)
;-)
... while you can choose to write off my comments and opinion (that is all it is, after all) because of some assumptions about my motivation if you like, it might be better to recognise it as a perfectly valid opinion - just one you disagree with. I happen to disagree with your assumptions about my motivation ;-)
I totally distrust and strongly dislike (hate is NOT accurate, thanks) the behaviour of the current US government. I'm concerned about where it's going, and what that means for the rest of the world, given the political force being put into "harmonizing" policies with the EU, etc.
I'm very unhappy about the fact that Australia now gets all the bad American laws a little while after the US does - and often drafted even worse. That, however, is our problem - the US applies a lot of pressure, but if we bend to it it's our fault. The recent "Free" trade agreement is a good example.
I'm deeply concerned that collectively, the US population is letting its government get away with this stuff, if not encouraging it.
On the other hand, it's entirely wrong to say I hate the US. I really like what the US used to be, for one thing, and what many of its people want it to be again. I like some of its ideals and its stated (as opposed to demonstrated in action) goals. I like a lot of aspects of its legal and political systems, some of which I'd love to see here. I like a lot of Americans I know.
I'd love to be able to visit again, as I really enjoyed seeing Washington DC - but right now, I wouldn't feel comfortable or safe doing so.
I just wish the country would stop forcing its self on the rest of the world, calm down a bit, and let everybody get on with life
Also, it's true the VISIT program is far from a core issue here. All it is is another demonstration of the general attitude that's developing in the US, at least as it's presented to the outside world. It happens to be a particularly blatant and offensive one that's caught a lot of people's attention, but still it's by its self not that big a deal.
So
I can see what you're saying there, but the choices of action are limited.
In this case, the decision on a European nation is being made not so much because of data interchange and privacy as because delegates are unwilling to physically go to the USA. As most of the speakers and delegates are American and European, it would be impractical to hold it anywhere but one of the two regions.
I don't think anybody is pretending that the EU is all roses and flowers, but you currently have less reason to fear simply going there, and you're not likely to be treated like a criminal just because you're from another country.
When it comes to information, the previous candidate venue (and its city council) has been informed of why the plans were dropped. I don't know how, or if, they responded.
Agreed.
It's not just keeping tourists and individuals visiting family out either. It's pushing conferences and conventions away.
My father and his (Belgian) wife visited the US during the recent "Freedom Fries" period. My stepmother was delayed at EACH DOMESTIC AIRPORT for a full luggage and personal search. She got funny looks at cafes when she spoke. It was apparently really creepy.
It wasn't just that either, though. Even when not with my stepmother, my (Australian) father mentioned that he was often made to feel very uncomfortable and "foreign," especially when at hotels, airports, etc.
They left the country three days into their planned three week trip, cancelling attendance at a conference and several workshops. Not that long after they got back (having continued travelling around Europe), the news of the VISIT stuff came out.
Neither they, nor I (who visited in a saner time), intend to visit the USA again. My god, what if Australia does something policically unpopular while I'm there!
My father, before he left, was in the early processes of planning a conference on group psychology and outdoor education, with a tentative venue of Three Springs in the US. They are now seeking a European venue.
This isn't even computer / IT / security related stuff. They're not moving because they're afraid their delegates might be refused entry or arrested and held without charge. Nope, they're moving because they're not willing to go back - and NEITHER ARE MANY OF THE POTENTIAL SPEAKERS.
So yeah, I think this will cause serious, long term harm. I don't think it can harm good will and trust for the USA - that's all gone anyway - but it can help isolate its professional communities more, force Americans to travel overseas more to visit conferences and professional events, and harm tourism severely.
What gets me is that it doesn't even help security. It's like a statement that "we believe that our citizens will feel more secure if we treat all foreigners like criminals."
The only thing that bothers me about that is the tracking. Frankly, I'm increasingly feeling that on the roads there is a need for better enforcement of the rules. (Note: I'm a cyclist. Getting almost killed by f**ing idiots every day tends to make me a bit of a road nazi).
So long as the device is not and CAN NOT be used for tracking (either real time, at pre-placed points, or after the fact if no offense is recorded) and it does not bypass the right to contest the penalty, then yeah - I can deal with such a thing. It's VERY IMPORTANT though that it should only record enough info to perform its stated purpose, and should discard it immediately if it is not required.
<grumble>
If only there was a way to add "turning without indicating," "yapping on a mobile phone in traffic," (illegal here in Western Australia, but often ignored) and "driving an SUV so big it's impossible to see around or through." (increasingle common).
</grumble>
As for the revenue grab aspect - perhaps so. I'd say it's about 50/50 personally, as I do think there are valid uses for speed cameras etc. On the other hand, placing them just beside signs for speed change zones is pretty dodgy - the only real purpose to that IS money.
As far as I'm concerned, driving is a privelege. If you're a dangerous fucking idiot, then you don't deserve it - and existing methods to spot said morons aren't working. Nothing ever will properly, but I'm inclined to favour things that do - so long as they're carefully thought out to avoid abuse.
That would make a LOT more sense, yes. I happen to have a similar plight (like normal daily temperatures being above the max operating temperature of some equipment - *sigh*).
It sounds odd for your machine not to go a lot above 40 degrees in such a situation. Hell, here (Perth, Western Australia) the air temperature frequently goes above 40 in summer.
I suppose if it was an early Pentium machine that's not unreasonable - some of those didn't really need fans, and would often run OK without even a heat sink. Don't try it with a modern machine though.
Also, one of my housemates was fumbling around the back of his computer (PIII celeron, ATX) for the power switch on the back of the PSU. He managed to flip the input voltage switch from 240V to 110V instead.
The most incredible bang and flash resulted, and the breaker at the house switchboard went. Once we unplugged the box and restored power to the house, we decided to see what the damage was like, flipped the power back, and plugged his machine back in.
Dead, dead, dead.
We swapped the PSU, and impressively the machine POSTed - but without video. We swapped the video card (it's a geek house - spares abound) and it booted fine and ran for ages after that.
I had an Asus MediaBus card that I needed to fit into a small case. Now, MediaBus cards are mixed ISA/PCI cards - "slot saver" types. They're a normal PCI card with an extension for the ISA bits.
The one I had was a SCSI card with an ISA sound card onboard. I needed the SCSI card, but it wouldn't fit. Looking at the card, it became pretty clear that the ISA sound bits were mostly on the end of the card, and if they weren't there the card would fit. It wasn't going to be any use to me if it didn't fit, so out came the tin snips (!!).
After this butchery, it worked fine - despite the somewhat ragged, sheared line across the back of the card and the fact that I'd cut all the ISA-extension connectors off.
To a fair extent you can already do that. The processor bus width is independent of the address space width, and the SIMD units in modern processors are used for this sort of job.
I find the arguments of another poster here about cluster-wide shared address spaces etc much more interesting, though. I'm sure the crazy folks behind Plan 9 would have fun with the idea of a single global memory address space...
Seriously - why would you want 128 bit addressing. Modern CPUs are already "128 bits" or more wide in many of the ways that count, such as SIMD registers and instructions. I'm not sure how many applications are working with data that would benefit from 128 bit wide integers and floats, but I'm going to make a guess at "not many."
The move to 64 bit addressing is being done mostly because we've run out of room on the 32 bit address space. I'm not dumb enough to say that we'll never run out of the 64 bit address space, but I think it's safe to say it'll take a fair darn while before we do. Remember that AMD's 64 bit CPUs only use 40 bit (or is it 48 bit?) physical addressing to provide support for terabytes of memory, so they've got quite a bit of headroom within the 64 bit address space.
... at least there's plenty of room.
Perhaps ICANN are simply doing what so many other companies love to do, but cutting out the middleman?
:-P
[No, I'm not serious. The "studies" others quote are usually independent in a sense, just carefully selected in topic and configuration to be likely to be faviourable, then only published if they're faviourable.]
On another note, SiteFinder was pretty awful. As someone who rejected spam from invalid domains, I felt the pain when SiteFinder went live within minutes. Oh, the spam! It also considerably increased our mail server load for another reason - it tried to deliver bounces to invalid domains instead of freezing them or never generating them.
If VeriSign try to bring that back, I'm finding another Internet
Thanks for the clarification. Most people say 'systems shipped' when they mean systems shipped, so that's a helpful heads-up.
Shipping SMP Workstations^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^HDesktops as standard must've helped push those CPU sales to their current peak...
/it/ count as the fastest desktop computer?
P.S: if I call my dual Opteron workstation a desktop, does
I don't blame the IT guy for not providing FTP - much the same way as I refuse to provide telnet access to one of our remote developers (an _old_ UNIX guy who just doesn't get the Internet). It's nuts from a security perspective, and there's no good reason to do it.
You'll have SSH access open anyway, right? That gives you scp and probably sftp for free. So why open other services that are less secure - it opens you to a wider range of attacks for no benefit.
Now, it's possible you also don't have SSH/SCP access. That's unfortunate, but that's a security policy decision that probably also has some justification.
I certainly don't blame them for not allowing FTP. I really wish non-anonymous FTP would just go away.
That's the only thing I actually care about from Word > 5. I used to hate it, but ... nope, too darn useful.
I'll admit that while doing battle with
Word 2000 and OpenOffice Writer at various points I've been very tempted to install Basislisk and fire up my old copy of Word 5.1 for the Macintosh.
I'm not claiming that it's not useful. I just find it horrible to work with.
So long as **= is consistent with +=, -=, *=, and all the others in that vein then frankly it's quite fine.
/don't/ fit an overlying pattern that I see trouble.
/quite/ such a painful experience. Still, as a recovering Perl user currently revelling in the "oh, it all makes sense!" experience of Python, I hope never to have to do that at all.
It's when you get large sets of operators that
As this argument seems to satisfy many, "Python does this too." I happen to think it's the right approach, and possibly less confusing than having some operators availible in <op>= form but not others. It's also worth noting that at least in Python, if I remember correctly the 'x += y" forms are more efficient than the "x = x + y" forms.
When it comes to Perl 6, I'll be glad to see the alleged OOP support in Perl 5 torn out and thrown away. That way, if I ever have to venture back into Perl I won't find it
I rather like:
:-)
dd if=/mirror/win2k_snap/2004-04-01.img of=/dev/hda1
myself
Windows misbehaving? Re-image from a recent snapshot. If, like me, you only use it for occasional gaming that's a fuss-free solution.
It shocks me that people get off on charges of fraud because "a virus altered my spreadsheet" ... but get done for kiddie porn because of spam.
Also, re web bugs - I'm well aware, though a depressing number of users aren't. Every time you delete some spam in far too many mail clients, you're screaming "Spam me more!" to the world. *sigh*.
Thankfully, MimeDefang cleans up most of them before they reach me; it's only the rare HTML-only spam that even makes it to my mail client with image links intact. I should look at tweaking it to break those links somehow, as I don't think we'll be encountering a legit use for <img> links in our business any time soon.