I'll buy you whatever you want for christmas if you can get ubuntu to work on my home system. I'll even pay for the plane ticket to fly you to the Bahamas.
ROFL! Sure thing bud, I'm not busy next week. I'll set it up, tweak it, teach you how to use it, and provide lifetime support to boot. Shoot me an email at b.d.hilton@NOSPAMverizon.net (remove the NOSPAM)
Just provide me with some rum, cigars, and a place to pitch my tent while I'm visiting, lol.
I have messed around with Linux since the old days. We're talking since like '92 or so here. My first install was 15 floppies that I downloaded from the Penn State mainframe on dialup using Kermit for my FTP client, lol. I think it was Debian 0.9 or somesuch. Over the years I have partitioned, re-partitioned, etc. It works but the amount of fiddle-farting around involved is extreme, and the chance that something can go wrong is also non-trivial.
My suggestion to anybody that wants to install Linux these days is to forget about partitioning your drive if it already has Windows installed. Instead just go to Ebay and snag up a cheap HDD! Set that puppy to master, set the windows drive to slave, and install away. A 20-40 GB hard disk is plenty of room for a modest Linux install, especially for somebody that just wants to try it out or install it for the first time.
Then install GRUB and just boot your 2nd windows hdd using the drive remap function to make windows think its on the 1st drive. Its a piece of cake. You could pre-install linux on the 1st drive, and make your GRUB menu.list something like this:
Title (Ubuntu) Linux - kernel (2.6.x) root (hd0,0) kernel (hd0,0)/boot/vmlinuz param1 param2 etc
Title Windows XP map (hd1) (hd0) map (hd0) (hd1) rootnoverify (hd1,0) chainloader (hd1,0)+1
You already know they only have one HDD to begin with, so you know that Windows will be on partition 1 of the 2nd drive after you install the new linux boot master HDD. So you can get a can of compressed air, open their case and blow out the dust bunnies, slap in the new drive, reboot, and bingo! No installation required, everything just works, no risk of messing up their windows stuff, and the cost will be pretty minimal given the current price of a 20GB IDE drive.
If you just want to give out CDs then give them a LiveCD type deal.
On my latest and greatest system that I just put together, I installed GRUB onto a USB Key drive before I got to work. That was an interesting challenge, but pretty neat after I got it sorted out. Now I can re-do the MBR anytime just by booting with the USB Key plugged in.
On the topic here, why not just let Vista do whatever it wants, then stick in some old hard drive for drive 1 with your bootable OS's and GRUB installed. To boot Vista just "map (hd1) (hd0); map (hd0) (hd1); rootnoverify (hd1,0); chainloader (hd1,0)+1; boot"
I boot my Windows partition now from the 2nd hard drive just like this.
Where are you getting that AM2 has low acceptance? Enthusiasts aren't happy with it as it's not faster than 939 and Conroe outperforms it. Dell and the other OEMs don't seem to care as it's still fast enough and cheap. AMD still has pretty firm control over the value segment as the K8s are preferrable over the netburst junk Intel is still trying to sell off.
I went with the AM2 when I recently built up a cheapie X2 3800 box for home. Maybe its not right there at the bleeding edge of technology and performance, but it is a nice upgrade over my former XP-2400+ system which I passed over to the wife.
For the (roughly) $500 that it took to assemble it, I got a Athlon64 X2 3800+, 1G DDR2-800, 320G SATA-2 drive, GF 7600GT PCIE, DVD burner, Socket AM-2 motherboard, power supply, and case. That is hard to beat for the price IMO, and it should be upgradeable to one of the Barcelona quad cores when they become available.
You're right! Actually I am moving (obviously). However I'm pursuing a mechanical engineering job rather than a programmer job at the moment. I never said I was a programmer, just that I had that kind of stuff on my resume for the last 5 years on a statewide job board and nobody ever seemed to notice it or ever called me about a potential job.
I have some excellent prospects lined up in the near future, so not to worry about my grumping. I have run everything into the ground by plan to get my wife through college without having to make her transfer schools. I gotta tell ya though, working in a call center, wow... talk about overworked, unappreciated, and underpaid!
My resume lacks keywords mostly by design I suppose. I used to have a list of languages and acronyms on it, but over the years I have distilled it down to where they can ask me about the particulars. Really I can use any programming language available to get the job done, so I try not to list anything in particular.
Nitpicking about whether CVS is a release system or a revision control system is pretty silly. If an employer is using CVS to develop, then thats what they want. I should eliminate CVS, Subversion, Java, and Python from that section actually and then I would be buzzword-free . . . Thanks for the insight!
It's nice that you are 100% buzzword compliant, however we are looking for individuals that a) care enough to apply for jobs rather than making us seek out their resume on obscure websites, and b) list actual skills and accomplishments rather than vague statements like "I can write functional code with development tools" and "I can lock down systems down".
Signed,
Anonymous Coward IT Manager
PS: Hint - you have to stand out, but not look absured doing so
ROFL! If I listed actual skills and accomplishments, that snippet would be like 10 pages long and full of so many computer acronyms it would be completely unreadable!
. . . because then I would know where to post my resume, lol. Here's a snippet from my resume that has been on PA Careerlink for about 5 years, with never a single job offer.
I can deploy advanced office software suites on Linux systems and can then lock down the systems down to make highly secure and robust workstations. I have experience working on shared projects using CVS and Subversion release systems. I can write functional code using most of the standard Linux and Unix development tools. I can also write cross platform applications which work equally well on Linux, MacOS, and Windows systems using runtime engines like Java and Python.
So I'm currently working for minimum wage at a call center selling discount cigarettes on the internet, on food stamps, my house is in foreclosure, and I have about $100k in student loan debt. I'm about ready to skip the country and change my name.
Having to boot into Linux just to play some Duke3D has gotten really old. I gotta say though that its worth it. There's a lot of seriously neat and fun gameplay packed into that game.
The amount of Linux play I get out of the Duke3D Platinum Pack that I picked up for $10 is phenomenal. For a "DOOMish" type game, it is just superb.The http://www.icculus.org/duke3d Linux engine is really good.
L4/Hurd has been experiencing massive development for more than a year now. Developers have been integrating CoyotOS and ErOS features into L4/Hurd quite prolificaly. The mailing list for L4/Hurd typically has 20 new messages each day now, and sometimes more.
I'm an old skool type programmer, I can handle normal C programs, but microkernel level hacking is way beyond my skills. I have made minor contributions to old Debian Hurd inasmuch as sending patches upstream to get things to compile, but I am quite limited right now in my ability to contribute.
Lest you think I'm some kind of weird hairy Hurd hippie, I assure you that I have a magnificantly optimized Gentoo Linux install, and I'm a degreed mechanical engineer. I follow L4/Hurd development because: its cool, I think it may be graspable, and it may have industrial applications (real time, etc.).
If you want to throw you hat into the microkernel ring, look into L4/Hurd. It is the latest and greatest microkernel OS in active development and has excellent potential to become a new contender in the OS wars.
Linux is neat, but you can possibly make a difference if you help hack on L4/Hurd, assuming you are a decent programmer.
Back in the days of XFree86 3.x yore, S3 cards were among the best understood and therefore best supported cards to be had. From what I could gather, when the X programmers asked S3 for info, the company actually helped them and gave them useful information.
Their card does seem to lag behind a Nvidia and ATI's similar offerings, but not by much. Linux (and the BSDs) are primarily concerned with OpenGL support anyways, and the card does have reasonably good support for OpenGL according to the review.
I wouldn't be surprised if they work with the X.org people to make a s3 loadable module for X4 that just uses the existing X OpenGL framework. That seems to be how they have worked in the past.
This is just my layman's opinion, but I think that Sun should harken back to that which brought them their initial success. From what I understand, Sun started out making high performance workstations at a very reasonable price, which ran a commodity OS suitable for scientific and engineering applications, namely Unix.
Thus, I would go so far as to suggest that if they could produce a similar machine geared towards today's technology level, at an attractive price, they would likely do well. Their machines have always been notable for their processor scalability also, so they would do well to attempt to retain this reputation.
A SMP Opteron system with a hybrid Solaris/Linux kernel using a Debian style userland with some special Sun goodies would probably fit the bill as a modern commodity operating system suitable for scientific and engineering applications. Slap in a hot OpenGL card, compile the base libs for multithreaded operation and optimize for the hardware Gentoo-style, and it would probably run pretty snappy. Then with Sun's corporate influence, they'd need to get a couple big apps like Pro/E and AutoCAD built for their OS, and the boxes could be aimed squarely at engineering departments. Throw in some kind of proprietary hardware Java accelerator and they'd have a real contender in certain business sectors.
Sun is one of the few companies with enough clout to punch through into the IT departments of computer-phobic businesses. Modern business windows setups, although ideal for technically challenged executive types, are incredibly ill-suited for engineering departments. Trying to soup up windows enough to make it into an engineer's OS is a money pit and licensing nightmare. Sun could neatly step in and grab a chunk of this market with a bit of carefull strategic planning.
If you are the best PHP developer in the world but bite the head off the business people every time they request a change then you are no good for the job.
Very true. A large part of being successful in business is not only working with people who may or may not like you, but also doing it in a friendly and professional manner.
Corporations invaribly suffer from "Space Madness" which causes ordinarily reasonable people to take the slightest thing as some huge wrong to them. Techies tend to be honest and rather blunt, and this is something to be extremely carefull about.
Personality is very important, but in the end, its just you. You have to be who you are, because if you aren't you, then who are you? The most important things are to be honest yet diplomatic, friendly yet not condescending, good natured yet not naive, and above all else, be as professional as you can while you are on-the-job.
I called a few days later, and found I didn't get the job, as I had indicated that, No. I have never stolen from any employer.
The guy let me know that 'Everyone steals, and the ones that say they don't are lying.'
Thinking back on it, I don't think I've ever stolen anything from any employer ever either. Guess I'm un-hireable.
One of my past employers had a problem with employees making off with cases of toiled paper. Eventually, my supervisor was tasked with finding out why we were using so much toiled paper. Because he never bothered to speak with the "workers" he apparently didn't know that so-and-so was robbing the place blind.
So he proceeded to interview everybody in the company and ask them how many times they wiped when they used the facilities. I was viewed with unusual suspicion when I told him that I had adjusted my body's cycle so that I didn't "have to go" during work hours, as if such a feat was superhuman or something.
This really doesn't have much at all to do with this thread, except to show that my supervisor a.) had the personality of Beavis and Butthead and, b.) was so hated that people would rather wipe their asses with brown paper towels than rat out some guy who wasn't well liked either but wasn't management.
I am of the opinion that using tests like these indicate that the company in question has no idea how to evaluate an applicant on their technical merits and likewise is incapable of determining the character of an applicant through an interview.
To me, it means that the HR and hiring staff is most likely incompetent, and the company is already packed with deceitful and ineffective employees. Such a company is already in decline and working there will most likely not be the exciting career that you desire.
Still, always take whatever tests they throw at you, and interview to the best of your ability. If you get hired on and the job looks like a loser, keep on looking.
... and keep your glasses handy. A big no-no is rubbing your eyes. Usually if your eye is bothering you, and you rub it while wearing contacts, you will typically aggravate the situation. In this case the best thing to do is pitch out the contacts and wear your glasses for a couple of days afterwards.
That being said, I can usually get about two weeks continuous wear out of a pair of disposables (even sleeping with them in). Then I trash them and switch to my glasses for a week or so to let my eyes rest again.
Generally though, I've found contacts better for vacation or outdoor activities like hiking. I like a nice clean pair of unscratched glasses with a recent prescription for optimal comfort working in front of a computer for long hours. This lets me rub my eyes freely when they start feeling weary.
I love super spicy food, and I regularly put a couple blobs of Dave's Insanity Sauce on my food.
Try adding a small blob on the end of a hot dog sometime. If you aren't used to hot stuff you will be rolling on the floor. For me it barely fazes me now, although if I don't eat the stuff pretty regularly then my tolerence goes back down.
Fallout 1 and 2 stay installed on my drive permanently. So does Jagged Alliance 2. Every so often I'll get bored with whatever games I've been playing and go for some retro Fallout or JA2 fun.
Try Fallout as a melee character, get the super sledge and smack the living crap out of stuff. Totally fun!
I can't believe that LinuxCAD was even listed, that program is ten years out of date, and never was any good to begin with. I wasted my $99 on it around 1998 and AFAIK they haven't ever updated it since. They distribute a RPM built for RedHat 5 or something. It was maybe ok ten years ago, but it was never updated and I doubt it even works on modern Linux systems without a slew of compatibility libs.
QCad is my preferred 2D CAD program for Linux right now, and it wasn't even listed. Its nothing super fancy, but it gets the job done, and its a free install.
Microstation or VariCAD are relative unknowns to me, so I can't comment on them personally. I'd like to get Pro/E going, but its a bit beyond my home budget unless they have some kind of non-commercial offering available.
AutoCAD is pretty much a standard in the industry, but I use TurboCAD at home. Its mostly compatible, lots cheaper, and actually a pretty sweet drafting package for the budget-minded home drafter. I guess TurboCAD has a Mac version out, 2D only, but the 3D is really what shines in TurboCAD.
And to think I nearly forked over the cash to buy one of the machines.
I've often window-shopped for SGI machines on Ebay. I just think its cool being able to purchase computers that used to cost tens of thousands of dollars for a couple hundred bucks. I've always balked though, because the big SGI machines use tons of electricity, have pretty skechy Linux support, and their keyboards, monitors, and peripherals are somewhat proprietary and thus rather pricey.
So I have my poor-man's SGI: and Athlon-XP with a GeForce card and Gentoo. When its all said and done, its a lot better for my purposes anyways, unfortunately.
I have to agree though, the SGI hardware is really cool looking. I'd like to have one just for the *WOW* factor, but I know it would just sit there and collect dust most of the time.
And the IEEE standard for rounding is Banker's Rounding
That's what I have always used for programs that calculate a cost from some other factors; for instance labor costs are sometimes calculated by multiplying minutes by some factor. The result is often a decimal value that needs to be rounded to dollars and cents. If you use banker's rounding, and you should, then the bean counter upstairs will probably get the same result as your program does. This is a good thing.
Thanks. And part of the problem is also in that DDC is somehow mishandled in a minority of cases. The distros know this, and so many of us end up with configs forced to a "SVGA 1600x1200 @ 85Hz" with modelines explicitly listed, making the config file even more nightmarish.
ROFL! Remember XFree86 3.3.3? You'd run this xf86config, or XF86Setup. After answering some questions about your chipset, RAMDAC, monitor refresh rates, which you typically didn't know and couldn't find anywhere (so you chose the defaults), and other stuff, it would spew out a bunch of "standard modelines" that never worked. From then on it was a matter of black magic to bring up a working screen. Then you fooled around with XVidtune and tried to dial in some better modes.
I think laptops are the worst. Their video chipsets are often extremely weird, and you are provided with little or no information about the screen hardware. Once you get a working modeline for a laptop, write it down on paper and don't lose that sucker.
It's working fine for me. Only a slight stench of evil.
No doubt. I think I'm on my 5th nVidia card now, and they have all worked in Linux, beyond my expectations, and with essentially no problems. Furthermore, the drivers are pretty painless to install compared to the wild old days of compiling Mesa or attempting to use X's DRI implementation.
I fail to see what the big deal is anyways. What purpose would be gained from looking at the driver source code? If you are a student, then just check out the DRI code for a TNT card in the kernel tree, and if you can make sense of that, perhaps you should apply for a job at nVidia. I have always suspected that most of these whiners about "closed source nVidia drivers" are actually competitors.
Yes, for posterity, the source code would be nice to have. But for now, I'd rather have the affordable yet awesome performing hardware that just works. Probably some day they will release the code, but certainly not while its still making them heaps of cash. They provide their own optimized OpenGL libs, a kernel module, and a pretty nice installer which has worked on about any Linux system I've ever tried it with. Obviously nVidia has some extremely talented Linux developers on the payroll.
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I'll buy you whatever you want for christmas if you can get ubuntu to work on my home system. I'll even pay for the plane ticket to fly you to the Bahamas.
ROFL! Sure thing bud, I'm not busy next week. I'll set it up, tweak it, teach you how to use it, and provide lifetime support to boot. Shoot me an email at b.d.hilton@NOSPAMverizon.net (remove the NOSPAM)
Just provide me with some rum, cigars, and a place to pitch my tent while I'm visiting, lol.
I have messed around with Linux since the old days. We're talking since like '92 or so here. My first install was 15 floppies that I downloaded from the Penn State mainframe on dialup using Kermit for my FTP client, lol. I think it was Debian 0.9 or somesuch. Over the years I have partitioned, re-partitioned, etc. It works but the amount of fiddle-farting around involved is extreme, and the chance that something can go wrong is also non-trivial.
My suggestion to anybody that wants to install Linux these days is to forget about partitioning your drive if it already has Windows installed. Instead just go to Ebay and snag up a cheap HDD! Set that puppy to master, set the windows drive to slave, and install away. A 20-40 GB hard disk is plenty of room for a modest Linux install, especially for somebody that just wants to try it out or install it for the first time.
Then install GRUB and just boot your 2nd windows hdd using the drive remap function to make windows think its on the 1st drive. Its a piece of cake. You could pre-install linux on the 1st drive, and make your GRUB menu.list something like this:
You already know they only have one HDD to begin with, so you know that Windows will be on partition 1 of the 2nd drive after you install the new linux boot master HDD. So you can get a can of compressed air, open their case and blow out the dust bunnies, slap in the new drive, reboot, and bingo! No installation required, everything just works, no risk of messing up their windows stuff, and the cost will be pretty minimal given the current price of a 20GB IDE drive.
If you just want to give out CDs then give them a LiveCD type deal.
On my latest and greatest system that I just put together, I installed GRUB onto a USB Key drive before I got to work. That was an interesting challenge, but pretty neat after I got it sorted out. Now I can re-do the MBR anytime just by booting with the USB Key plugged in.
On the topic here, why not just let Vista do whatever it wants, then stick in some old hard drive for drive 1 with your bootable OS's and GRUB installed. To boot Vista just "map (hd1) (hd0); map (hd0) (hd1); rootnoverify (hd1,0); chainloader (hd1,0)+1; boot"
I boot my Windows partition now from the 2nd hard drive just like this.
Where are you getting that AM2 has low acceptance? Enthusiasts aren't happy with it as it's not faster than 939 and Conroe outperforms it. Dell and the other OEMs don't seem to care as it's still fast enough and cheap. AMD still has pretty firm control over the value segment as the K8s are preferrable over the netburst junk Intel is still trying to sell off.
I went with the AM2 when I recently built up a cheapie X2 3800 box for home. Maybe its not right there at the bleeding edge of technology and performance, but it is a nice upgrade over my former XP-2400+ system which I passed over to the wife.
For the (roughly) $500 that it took to assemble it, I got a Athlon64 X2 3800+, 1G DDR2-800, 320G SATA-2 drive, GF 7600GT PCIE, DVD burner, Socket AM-2 motherboard, power supply, and case. That is hard to beat for the price IMO, and it should be upgradeable to one of the Barcelona quad cores when they become available.
Whatever, it seems to be running well at least :-)
I decided to pass my Athlon-XP 2400+ over to my wife and make myself a new system, so I put together an Athlon64-X2 3800+ box with an AM2 motherboard.
I'm still waiting on the DDR2, but I have high hopes for the new AM2 system.
You're right! Actually I am moving (obviously). However I'm pursuing a mechanical engineering job rather than a programmer job at the moment. I never said I was a programmer, just that I had that kind of stuff on my resume for the last 5 years on a statewide job board and nobody ever seemed to notice it or ever called me about a potential job.
I have some excellent prospects lined up in the near future, so not to worry about my grumping. I have run everything into the ground by plan to get my wife through college without having to make her transfer schools. I gotta tell ya though, working in a call center, wow ... talk about overworked, unappreciated, and underpaid!
My resume lacks keywords mostly by design I suppose. I used to have a list of languages and acronyms on it, but over the years I have distilled it down to where they can ask me about the particulars. Really I can use any programming language available to get the job done, so I try not to list anything in particular.
Nitpicking about whether CVS is a release system or a revision control system is pretty silly. If an employer is using CVS to develop, then thats what they want. I should eliminate CVS, Subversion, Java, and Python from that section actually and then I would be buzzword-free . . . Thanks for the insight!
It's nice that you are 100% buzzword compliant, however we are looking for individuals that a) care enough to apply for jobs rather than making us seek out their resume on obscure websites, and b) list actual skills and accomplishments rather than vague statements like "I can write functional code with development tools" and "I can lock down systems down".
Signed,
Anonymous Coward IT Manager
PS: Hint - you have to stand out, but not look absured doing so
ROFL! If I listed actual skills and accomplishments, that snippet would be like 10 pages long and full of so many computer acronyms it would be completely unreadable!
Having to boot into Linux just to play some Duke3D has gotten really old. I gotta say though that its worth it. There's a lot of seriously neat and fun gameplay packed into that game.
The amount of Linux play I get out of the Duke3D Platinum Pack that I picked up for $10 is phenomenal. For a "DOOMish" type game, it is just superb.The http://www.icculus.org/duke3d Linux engine is really good.
Hail to the King baby!
I'm an old skool type programmer, I can handle normal C programs, but microkernel level hacking is way beyond my skills. I have made minor contributions to old Debian Hurd inasmuch as sending patches upstream to get things to compile, but I am quite limited right now in my ability to contribute.
Lest you think I'm some kind of weird hairy Hurd hippie, I assure you that I have a magnificantly optimized Gentoo Linux install, and I'm a degreed mechanical engineer. I follow L4/Hurd development because: its cool, I think it may be graspable, and it may have industrial applications (real time, etc.).
If you want to throw you hat into the microkernel ring, look into L4/Hurd. It is the latest and greatest microkernel OS in active development and has excellent potential to become a new contender in the OS wars.
Linux is neat, but you can possibly make a difference if you help hack on L4/Hurd, assuming you are a decent programmer.
Their card does seem to lag behind a Nvidia and ATI's similar offerings, but not by much. Linux (and the BSDs) are primarily concerned with OpenGL support anyways, and the card does have reasonably good support for OpenGL according to the review.
I wouldn't be surprised if they work with the X.org people to make a s3 loadable module for X4 that just uses the existing X OpenGL framework. That seems to be how they have worked in the past.
Thus, I would go so far as to suggest that if they could produce a similar machine geared towards today's technology level, at an attractive price, they would likely do well. Their machines have always been notable for their processor scalability also, so they would do well to attempt to retain this reputation.
A SMP Opteron system with a hybrid Solaris/Linux kernel using a Debian style userland with some special Sun goodies would probably fit the bill as a modern commodity operating system suitable for scientific and engineering applications. Slap in a hot OpenGL card, compile the base libs for multithreaded operation and optimize for the hardware Gentoo-style, and it would probably run pretty snappy. Then with Sun's corporate influence, they'd need to get a couple big apps like Pro/E and AutoCAD built for their OS, and the boxes could be aimed squarely at engineering departments. Throw in some kind of proprietary hardware Java accelerator and they'd have a real contender in certain business sectors.
Sun is one of the few companies with enough clout to punch through into the IT departments of computer-phobic businesses. Modern business windows setups, although ideal for technically challenged executive types, are incredibly ill-suited for engineering departments. Trying to soup up windows enough to make it into an engineer's OS is a money pit and licensing nightmare. Sun could neatly step in and grab a chunk of this market with a bit of carefull strategic planning.
Second choice would be orange, of course.
Very true. A large part of being successful in business is not only working with people who may or may not like you, but also doing it in a friendly and professional manner.
Corporations invaribly suffer from "Space Madness" which causes ordinarily reasonable people to take the slightest thing as some huge wrong to them. Techies tend to be honest and rather blunt, and this is something to be extremely carefull about.
Personality is very important, but in the end, its just you. You have to be who you are, because if you aren't you, then who are you? The most important things are to be honest yet diplomatic, friendly yet not condescending, good natured yet not naive, and above all else, be as professional as you can while you are on-the-job.
Thinking back on it, I don't think I've ever stolen anything from any employer ever either. Guess I'm un-hireable.
So he proceeded to interview everybody in the company and ask them how many times they wiped when they used the facilities. I was viewed with unusual suspicion when I told him that I had adjusted my body's cycle so that I didn't "have to go" during work hours, as if such a feat was superhuman or something.
This really doesn't have much at all to do with this thread, except to show that my supervisor a.) had the personality of Beavis and Butthead and, b.) was so hated that people would rather wipe their asses with brown paper towels than rat out some guy who wasn't well liked either but wasn't management.
To me, it means that the HR and hiring staff is most likely incompetent, and the company is already packed with deceitful and ineffective employees. Such a company is already in decline and working there will most likely not be the exciting career that you desire.
Still, always take whatever tests they throw at you, and interview to the best of your ability. If you get hired on and the job looks like a loser, keep on looking.
That being said, I can usually get about two weeks continuous wear out of a pair of disposables (even sleeping with them in). Then I trash them and switch to my glasses for a week or so to let my eyes rest again.
Generally though, I've found contacts better for vacation or outdoor activities like hiking. I like a nice clean pair of unscratched glasses with a recent prescription for optimal comfort working in front of a computer for long hours. This lets me rub my eyes freely when they start feeling weary.
Try adding a small blob on the end of a hot dog sometime. If you aren't used to hot stuff you will be rolling on the floor. For me it barely fazes me now, although if I don't eat the stuff pretty regularly then my tolerence goes back down.
It's also great for practical jokes };-)>
Try Fallout as a melee character, get the super sledge and smack the living crap out of stuff. Totally fun!
I can't believe that LinuxCAD was even listed, that program is ten years out of date, and never was any good to begin with. I wasted my $99 on it around 1998 and AFAIK they haven't ever updated it since. They distribute a RPM built for RedHat 5 or something. It was maybe ok ten years ago, but it was never updated and I doubt it even works on modern Linux systems without a slew of compatibility libs.
QCad is my preferred 2D CAD program for Linux right now, and it wasn't even listed. Its nothing super fancy, but it gets the job done, and its a free install.
Microstation or VariCAD are relative unknowns to me, so I can't comment on them personally. I'd like to get Pro/E going, but its a bit beyond my home budget unless they have some kind of non-commercial offering available.
AutoCAD is pretty much a standard in the industry, but I use TurboCAD at home. Its mostly compatible, lots cheaper, and actually a pretty sweet drafting package for the budget-minded home drafter. I guess TurboCAD has a Mac version out, 2D only, but the 3D is really what shines in TurboCAD.
I've often window-shopped for SGI machines on Ebay. I just think its cool being able to purchase computers that used to cost tens of thousands of dollars for a couple hundred bucks. I've always balked though, because the big SGI machines use tons of electricity, have pretty skechy Linux support, and their keyboards, monitors, and peripherals are somewhat proprietary and thus rather pricey.
So I have my poor-man's SGI: and Athlon-XP with a GeForce card and Gentoo. When its all said and done, its a lot better for my purposes anyways, unfortunately.
I have to agree though, the SGI hardware is really cool looking. I'd like to have one just for the *WOW* factor, but I know it would just sit there and collect dust most of the time.
That's what I have always used for programs that calculate a cost from some other factors; for instance labor costs are sometimes calculated by multiplying minutes by some factor. The result is often a decimal value that needs to be rounded to dollars and cents. If you use banker's rounding, and you should, then the bean counter upstairs will probably get the same result as your program does. This is a good thing.
ROFL! Remember XFree86 3.3.3? You'd run this xf86config, or XF86Setup. After answering some questions about your chipset, RAMDAC, monitor refresh rates, which you typically didn't know and couldn't find anywhere (so you chose the defaults), and other stuff, it would spew out a bunch of "standard modelines" that never worked. From then on it was a matter of black magic to bring up a working screen. Then you fooled around with XVidtune and tried to dial in some better modes.
I think laptops are the worst. Their video chipsets are often extremely weird, and you are provided with little or no information about the screen hardware. Once you get a working modeline for a laptop, write it down on paper and don't lose that sucker.
No doubt. I think I'm on my 5th nVidia card now, and they have all worked in Linux, beyond my expectations, and with essentially no problems. Furthermore, the drivers are pretty painless to install compared to the wild old days of compiling Mesa or attempting to use X's DRI implementation.
I fail to see what the big deal is anyways. What purpose would be gained from looking at the driver source code? If you are a student, then just check out the DRI code for a TNT card in the kernel tree, and if you can make sense of that, perhaps you should apply for a job at nVidia. I have always suspected that most of these whiners about "closed source nVidia drivers" are actually competitors.
Yes, for posterity, the source code would be nice to have. But for now, I'd rather have the affordable yet awesome performing hardware that just works. Probably some day they will release the code, but certainly not while its still making them heaps of cash. They provide their own optimized OpenGL libs, a kernel module, and a pretty nice installer which has worked on about any Linux system I've ever tried it with. Obviously nVidia has some extremely talented Linux developers on the payroll.