It's cool to see another distribution for the SPARC, but I personally wouldn't run anything other than Solaris on one of these boxes. Yes, its a bit slower than Linux (I ran RedHat on an E3000 4/336 2GB machine for a little while), but currently the support for Solaris on these CPUs far surpasses any paltry Linux offerings I have run across.
With all of these protocols mentioned for distributing DeCSS, FTP, HTTP, TCP/IP, CORBA, NetBEUI, etc., it's strange that they forgot one of the oldest and time tested methods: SneakerNET.
That's great and all, but I'd like to make it tax deductable in the U.S... The machine might only be worth its weight in Bat Guano, but you'd be surprised how much you could claim it for on your tax return.
If you're familiar with Sun C++ Compiler 5.0 (or Forte 6), you know whats its like to have a compiler that produces incompatbile binaries. On top of all this, Sun doesn't support the older "C++ v1.0" compilers anymore (v4.2 and earlier), and now with Stroustrup's reworking of C++, EVERYTHING needs to be recompiled and possibly rewritten.
C++ today is not really the same thing as it was a few years ago, and the new compilers are making that painfully clear.
Just a comment on what we're going to have to go through when GCC 3.0 comes out. No bitching allowed, since it's the natural progression forward.
I'd like to see Opera get released for Solaris, since it is my primary web browsing platform. I've got Netscape and IE5, but IE5 is a piece of crippled garbage, and Netscape.. well, I'll leave that to your imagination.
Did you ever realize that Microsoft Word does most (if not all) of this already? Word supports version control and I think that application MIGHT have something to do with publishing.
In addition, my firm uses a nice little web based product called LiveLink that allows authors to collaborate on documents. More interesting, it supports MS Office documents quite well (it understands the file formats) and can even translate a Word doc file into HTML for web based viewing.
Again, this is just another redundant post that says "What a stupid fscking patent on something that is already out there". I need to patent Slash before someone else does.
A new US III 900MHz
workstation is getting over twice the FP performance of a roughly equivalent Intel
chip.
Not surprising.. one of the big benefits of running on SPARC hardware is that they always have had much better FP performance than x86. I code financial analytics software, and the difference between the WinNT and Solaris build performance is night and day.
Isn't it nice when administrators actually get it?
Actually, I think it is more of the "trying to be Politically Correct" and anti-facist guise that universities have to conform to, less they get endless protests and lower admissions from students who honestly feel that their attending of University is to expand their mind and make decisions on their own (in, of course, a nicely padded environment courtesey of their parents).
Of course, you're always subject to being disciplined by the university, but that's part of the learning process.
Speaking of freedom-of-whatever at college, I remember that at one time people used to go into the computer labs and download pornography onto their 3.5" floppy disks (this is around 1995). Nobody cared, but it made me just think: remember when you actually had to REALLY search for that stuff on the internet? Damn, now you can't read your email without being exposed to it.
First, back up a bit and consider mags that send non-cover disks, like AOL CDs. This has
been going on for years, but is this a problem? As we've discussed here before, it's the gift
principle: you now own that CD (but not necessarily the software on it) do to with as you
please.
Yes, but remember that AOL CDs (or any bundled CD for that matter) typically contain SOMETHING free.. free hours (brightly painted on the disc), or shareware programs (either unrestricted or limited time use). Heck, MSN is in the clear since they give away a free month or two with the disc. And if they didn't the software on the disc is still relatively useless unless you subscribe to their service, so you can do exactly what the Postal code says: use it however you see fit (coasters, frisbees, dog food, whatever..)
I'm sure the firewall situation will change, but I'm sure there might be legal issues with your employer (why you probably have a firewall) regarding this software.
At my company, I know that I wouldn't be able to get away with this kind of software (read: Napster would be a major no-no), but I have no problem with using Seti@home.
I do have to admit that since I have access to some pretty cool hardware at work, I like to try things out there. You just need to be careful that you're not going to piss of the legal department.
What if the Amiga had been bought by someone other than Commodore? Now THERE'S an opportunity lost
OOOhhh that hurts.. I'm sure every Amiga fanatic (and you still are even if you haven't used one in 5 years) got a little misty eyed reading that sentence.
Hmm.. wonder if these little Sims having their own "planetary connection" could evolve into an uprising of computer intelligence against the human race.
However, the resolution is to simply put all the men together in the same house and eventually watch the tombstones appear on the front lawn since the men in The Sims don't know how to take care of themselves.
Whatever. I shouldn't post before I have my morning coffee..
One of the cool useless features of keyboards is that you can tell, after a period of years, which keys are most used and which are the least used. Ok, it requires that you never clean your keyboard and looks rather gross after a while, but hey! I can say that I never hit the 'Help' key on my Amiga, and '7' is the least used number.
I was talking with an important person at my firm a few months ago, and he was mentioning how the ideal setup for the technology people would be that everyone has laptops (with network drops at unassigned desks) and nobody would have land-line telephones, but rather, everyone would have cell phones. I cringed in fear of this and then proceeded to tell about the experiement with the lab mice, the powdered milk water and the platform in the middle of the pool.
Unfortunately, the scenario he described is probably something that makes a lot of sense to many business managers. Granted the idea he was proposing wasn't something that (to my knowledge) was being considered, but with the wireless office and many technology people being able to work from home, isn't this just a little disturbing? I don't want to get dain bramage just because my employer thinks cell phones are the way to go.
Imagine the pissed-off customer having to sign this. Hope the customers now have
concrete plans to move over VA Linux or other such Linux servers.
Please. As much as I think Linux is a great operating system, x86 hardware and Linux still can't touch the performance and scalability of Solaris on Sun SPARC hardware. I maintain an application which runs on dual Sun E6500s each with 10GB of memory and 30 UltraSPARC II processors. A Linux box couldn't touch this right now. The backplane is MUCH faster than any multi-CPU x86 machine and the fact that it can juggle 30 processors is something that Linux on x86 simply does not have going for it right now. Maybe someday, but certainly not now.
Temperature? I find that hard to believe with the hardware they're referring to. Sun's Enterprise class servers are quite capable of running at fairly warm temperatures. Heck, I've got an E3000 running in the corner of a room (read: not a climate controlled data center) and it runs just fine even with CPU boards averaging about 50 degrees celcius. Yes, it's not a good idea to let this go for very long, but the hardware is quite capable of dealing with the situation without resorting to reboots. For the record, one of these CPU boards in a proper data center would average about 25 degrees celcius.
Now, not knowing whether or not to class you as that kind of audiophile, or the kind I am
You sound like my kind of audiophile. I know the value of a good gague wire, but know what is too much / not enough for a job. Although I'll get a little testy when you start knocking vinyl;-)
I will defend the MP3 this way: they do sound pretty damned good when they get above
160kbps. In fact, I can't consistantly tell them apart, above 160kbps.
I will agree with you here. What I was disturbed by is the 128Kbps sampling rate.
As a semi-interesting side note, I own a Diamond Rio PMP300 (the original model, 32MB) and typically load MP3s on it sampled at 80Kbps for space considerations. Yes, it sounds like the device is gurgling under water, but I anticipated that since I was in control when I ripped my CDs. I would be rather annoyed, however, if someone else is making the decision for me on a media such as television or radio broadcast. This is my real beef.
I'm an audiophile. I am quite picky about sound quality and, to some extent, video quality. Basically, I get the heebie-jeebies when I see or hear digital distortion as a result of the technology. For example, DVD and Digital Cable TV, while techincally superior in its delivery capabilities and compactness, sucks in my opinion - digital artifacts are quite visible in "shading" amongst other things. Now, with MP3s so out in the open, people are embracing 128Kbps MP3s as "CD quality". Personally, I think this is a statement made by someone who is no where near the category of Audiophile.
With this technology, boasting that they could deliver 100 128Kbps MP3 channels probably means that they are probably planning on doing such a thing, maybe even squeezing the compression a little more to get a few more channels out of it.
While this is all great from a technological standpoint (and probably a business one at that), I see a trend of lower quality broadcasting coming about. While I understand that radio transmission is typically less than perfect (static, power wires, etc), digital artifacts of compression come through even on the clearest of signals. And on a side note, with digital cable, sometimes it almost looks like I'm watching a video screen with an 8-bit color depth.
I guess my rant is that the people on the delivery side of television and radio are letting their quality standards decrease. They can pack more content into the wires/airwaves by using compression, and this leads to lower quality decoded signals. For the average person, this is not an issue (and you're probably smirking right now). For the audiophile, this is quite a disturbing trend.
I think it was when Dragon's Lair (1983) came out that the 50 credit started to appear. With Dragon's Lair, it was obvious that this was no ordinary arcade game: Laser discs (bleeding edge back then) and true animation. It was not very difficult to justify, in the gamer's mind at least, that this was a more expensive machine. Heck, I remember that many arcades used to even have additional monitors on top of the machine so that all the observers could get a good view of what was going on.
Somewhere in the late 80s the trend started to spread out a bit. If it wasn't the fact that the video games were designed to eat your quarters faster than the change machine could produce them (read: Heavy Gear or something similar), then it was the brand new pinball machines that were demanding 50 for one play or 75 for two games.
Nowadays all the games are 50 and most of them suck. The only ones I like playing are the driving games, but at $1.00 a pop it makes no sense.
That wasn't the focus of the message. I was more-or-less referring to the fact that you load Mozilla (or Netscape 6-PR2) and find that 50MB instantly is used; and its all because of debugging information and the non-optimized build.
If someone knows anything about Mozilla, they must know about Gecko, so I can agree that my statement there was a little unnecessary.
You want a browser that doesn't take up more memory
then Homer does food at the all you can eat buffet? Then don't use Mozilla. Not now,
not ever.
Maybe you're not a developer, but Mozilla is currently built with A LOT of debugging information. Basically, this information makes it possible to figure out what went wrong, but it also (at least) quadruples file size, memory usage, etc.
So use it "not ever"? Hey, I'm a little disappointed with how much memory it is using, but I know that once they go into Beta at least, I'm sure most of the debugging information will be removed. Production release versions won't have any.
On top of all this, remember that the HTML rendering engine (Gecko), the heart of Mozilla, is really small and fast. The rest of the code might be lumbering around it, but when it comes down to rendering your HTML page, it sure is nice and tight.
Please.. One thing I never understood was why they ditched the Java version of AIM a long time ago.
If you have no idea what I'm talking about, set the way-back machine to 1997 and go to the AIM download page at AOL. They used to have Windows, Macintosh and:gasp: Java versions available for download. I used to run it all the time on my Sun box. One day it just disappeared.
I will say that AIM now has a lot of cool features and GAIM just isn't keeping up.
Slashdot Mirror
Of course, it could just be a matter of time...
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With all of these protocols mentioned for distributing DeCSS, FTP, HTTP, TCP/IP, CORBA, NetBEUI, etc., it's strange that they forgot one of the oldest and time tested methods: SneakerNET.
--
(geek humor. laugh now.)
--
That's great and all, but I'd like to make it tax deductable in the U.S... The machine might only be worth its weight in Bat Guano, but you'd be surprised how much you could claim it for on your tax return.
--
C++ today is not really the same thing as it was a few years ago, and the new compilers are making that painfully clear.
Just a comment on what we're going to have to go through when GCC 3.0 comes out. No bitching allowed, since it's the natural progression forward.
--
I'd like to see Opera get released for Solaris, since it is my primary web browsing platform. I've got Netscape and IE5, but IE5 is a piece of crippled garbage, and Netscape.. well, I'll leave that to your imagination.
--
In addition, my firm uses a nice little web based product called LiveLink that allows authors to collaborate on documents. More interesting, it supports MS Office documents quite well (it understands the file formats) and can even translate a Word doc file into HTML for web based viewing.
Again, this is just another redundant post that says "What a stupid fscking patent on something that is already out there". I need to patent Slash before someone else does.
--
Not surprising.. one of the big benefits of running on SPARC hardware is that they always have had much better FP performance than x86. I code financial analytics software, and the difference between the WinNT and Solaris build performance is night and day.
--
Actually, I think it is more of the "trying to be Politically Correct" and anti-facist guise that universities have to conform to, less they get endless protests and lower admissions from students who honestly feel that their attending of University is to expand their mind and make decisions on their own (in, of course, a nicely padded environment courtesey of their parents).
Of course, you're always subject to being disciplined by the university, but that's part of the learning process.
Speaking of freedom-of-whatever at college, I remember that at one time people used to go into the computer labs and download pornography onto their 3.5" floppy disks (this is around 1995). Nobody cared, but it made me just think: remember when you actually had to REALLY search for that stuff on the internet? Damn, now you can't read your email without being exposed to it.
--
Yes, but remember that AOL CDs (or any bundled CD for that matter) typically contain SOMETHING free.. free hours (brightly painted on the disc), or shareware programs (either unrestricted or limited time use). Heck, MSN is in the clear since they give away a free month or two with the disc. And if they didn't the software on the disc is still relatively useless unless you subscribe to their service, so you can do exactly what the Postal code says: use it however you see fit (coasters, frisbees, dog food, whatever..)
--
I do have to admit that since I have access to some pretty cool hardware at work, I like to try things out there. You just need to be careful that you're not going to piss of the legal department.
--
OOOhhh that hurts.. I'm sure every Amiga fanatic (and you still are even if you haven't used one in 5 years) got a little misty eyed reading that sentence.
--
However, the resolution is to simply put all the men together in the same house and eventually watch the tombstones appear on the front lawn since the men in The Sims don't know how to take care of themselves.
Whatever. I shouldn't post before I have my morning coffee..
--
Ok, whatever..
--
Either that, or its some kid energized with several giant pixie sticks..
--
Unfortunately, the scenario he described is probably something that makes a lot of sense to many business managers. Granted the idea he was proposing wasn't something that (to my knowledge) was being considered, but with the wireless office and many technology people being able to work from home, isn't this just a little disturbing? I don't want to get dain bramage just because my employer thinks cell phones are the way to go.
--
It's fscking close to water
--
Please. As much as I think Linux is a great operating system, x86 hardware and Linux still can't touch the performance and scalability of Solaris on Sun SPARC hardware. I maintain an application which runs on dual Sun E6500s each with 10GB of memory and 30 UltraSPARC II processors. A Linux box couldn't touch this right now. The backplane is MUCH faster than any multi-CPU x86 machine and the fact that it can juggle 30 processors is something that Linux on x86 simply does not have going for it right now. Maybe someday, but certainly not now.
--
Temperature? I find that hard to believe with the hardware they're referring to. Sun's Enterprise class servers are quite capable of running at fairly warm temperatures. Heck, I've got an E3000 running in the corner of a room (read: not a climate controlled data center) and it runs just fine even with CPU boards averaging about 50 degrees celcius. Yes, it's not a good idea to let this go for very long, but the hardware is quite capable of dealing with the situation without resorting to reboots. For the record, one of these CPU boards in a proper data center would average about 25 degrees celcius.
--
You sound like my kind of audiophile. I know the value of a good gague wire, but know what is too much / not enough for a job. Although I'll get a little testy when you start knocking vinyl ;-)
I will defend the MP3 this way: they do sound pretty damned good when they get above 160kbps. In fact, I can't consistantly tell them apart, above 160kbps.
I will agree with you here. What I was disturbed by is the 128Kbps sampling rate.
As a semi-interesting side note, I own a Diamond Rio PMP300 (the original model, 32MB) and typically load MP3s on it sampled at 80Kbps for space considerations. Yes, it sounds like the device is gurgling under water, but I anticipated that since I was in control when I ripped my CDs. I would be rather annoyed, however, if someone else is making the decision for me on a media such as television or radio broadcast. This is my real beef.
--
With this technology, boasting that they could deliver 100 128Kbps MP3 channels probably means that they are probably planning on doing such a thing, maybe even squeezing the compression a little more to get a few more channels out of it.
While this is all great from a technological standpoint (and probably a business one at that), I see a trend of lower quality broadcasting coming about. While I understand that radio transmission is typically less than perfect (static, power wires, etc), digital artifacts of compression come through even on the clearest of signals. And on a side note, with digital cable, sometimes it almost looks like I'm watching a video screen with an 8-bit color depth.
I guess my rant is that the people on the delivery side of television and radio are letting their quality standards decrease. They can pack more content into the wires/airwaves by using compression, and this leads to lower quality decoded signals. For the average person, this is not an issue (and you're probably smirking right now). For the audiophile, this is quite a disturbing trend.
My two cents; no refunds.
--
Somewhere in the late 80s the trend started to spread out a bit. If it wasn't the fact that the video games were designed to eat your quarters faster than the change machine could produce them (read: Heavy Gear or something similar), then it was the brand new pinball machines that were demanding 50 for one play or 75 for two games.
Nowadays all the games are 50 and most of them suck. The only ones I like playing are the driving games, but at $1.00 a pop it makes no sense.
Anyhoots..
--
If someone knows anything about Mozilla, they must know about Gecko, so I can agree that my statement there was a little unnecessary.
--
Maybe you're not a developer, but Mozilla is currently built with A LOT of debugging information. Basically, this information makes it possible to figure out what went wrong, but it also (at least) quadruples file size, memory usage, etc.
So use it "not ever"? Hey, I'm a little disappointed with how much memory it is using, but I know that once they go into Beta at least, I'm sure most of the debugging information will be removed. Production release versions won't have any.
On top of all this, remember that the HTML rendering engine (Gecko), the heart of Mozilla, is really small and fast. The rest of the code might be lumbering around it, but when it comes down to rendering your HTML page, it sure is nice and tight.
--
If you have no idea what I'm talking about, set the way-back machine to 1997 and go to the AIM download page at AOL. They used to have Windows, Macintosh and :gasp: Java versions available for download. I used to run it all the time on my Sun box. One day it just disappeared.
I will say that AIM now has a lot of cool features and GAIM just isn't keeping up.
--