Lowly Pittsburgh is actually one of two finalist (with D.C.) to get a maglev commuter train built. It would run for 45 miles between the cities of Greensburg, Monroeville, Downtown Pittsburgh and the Pittsburgh Airport. I could get to work from where I live near Monroeville in about twenty minutes instead of the hour the bus takes right now. And most of that twenty minutes would be the time to get to the station I think the train would only be 7 minutes, to go 15 miles.
But since it took almost thirty years to get a pedestrian bridge built across the Allegheny from the point to 3-Rivers Stadium (just in time for it to be demolished) I don't have much faith that this will ever happen. But anything that would cut down on car/truck traffic waiting to go through the the Squirrel Hill and Fort Pitt tunnels would be great for the Air Quality here. Every single work day cars back up for at least six miles, stopped, waiting to go through the Sq. Hill tunnel, with most cars occupied by only one person.
There's a FAQ about the project here: http://post-gazette.com/regionstate/20010119qa3.as p
From Merriam-Websters Collegiate:
Main Entry: nerd
Pronunciation: 'n&rd
Function: noun
Etymology: perhaps from nerd, a creature in the children's book If I Ran the Zoo (1950) by Dr. Seuss (Theodor Geisel)
Date: 1951
: an unstylish, unattractive, or socially inept person; especially : one slavishly devoted to intellectual or academic pursuits
- nerdish/'n&r-dish/ adjective
- nerdy/-dE/ adjective
Damn, movies play in Buffalo before they make it to Pittsburgh, I really live in a cultural wasteland. We have about six or seven brand new huge stadium seating mega-plexs now but they all run the same ten big movies. If an art or foreign movies plays at all its at a tiny little theater run by the cultural trust and it runs for one week and is gone. The theatres are usually pretty empty too, I've been to many movies on weekend nights here when there where only half a dozen seats filled. Oh well...
I work for IBM also and while I have no idea what management and/or marketing are planning for Linux, I do know that there is a lot of internal enthusiasm for Linux and Open Source/Free Software in general. I would say that most of the developers I work with use Linux either at work or at home and are very familiar with it. Also even when we are working with other OS's, we regularly use tools such as emacs, apache, samba, gnumake, gcc, bash, perl, gdb, etc. Even when I have to develop for WinNt I write the code in Xemacs on RedHat and compile it using gnumake! You seem to see quite a few penguin or/. tee shirts or people lately too!
I'm not sure how this is news, DB2 for linux has been out for years and Websphere for linux has been out since at least July when release 3.5 went out. Here is the link to the Websphere for Linux page- http://www-4.ibm.com/software/webservers/appserv/l inux_ae_v302.html
Full disclosure: I work for IBM testing Websphere.
IBM bought Transarc in 1994 and ran it as a somewhat independent subsidiary until last year. In '99 Transarc was disolved into IBM and exists in name only as the IBM/Transarc Lab. Our jobs are pretty much the same but our checks say IBM now. Its a pretty cool place to work and we get paid pretty well for living in Pittsbugh.
S. Lem is one my favorite authors, his stuff seems so grown-up compared to most American Sci-Fi. I need to go back and re-read Solaris, it's been about 20 years since I read it last. Does anyone know if he is still alive?
Boy, I'm old enough to have programmed on teletypes that had actual bells that Ctrl-G would ring. The little beeps of PC's just don't compete with a real clanging bell. I guess that I shouldn't mention that we were using HP-Basic on an HP2000 mainframe. Nothing like using a paper based terminal to make you a carefull typist!
Cool, I live about three miles from the Pittsburgh Super Computing Center. If I win the bid I can just drive over and tie it to the roof of my Tracker! I looked in my lease and the landlord doesn't say I can't have a super-computer in the apartment.
Hey, I'm impressed that you can get PR2 to run at all. When I try to run it on Win98 all I get is the splash screen and then it just hangs forever until I kill it. I know that this is just a preview but I can't get it to do anything at all. I'm downloading M17 right now so maybe that will work better. BTW, I have to use Windows at home since I'm telecomuting and my company's VPN client and mail client only run on Win32.
The installer crashes on Mandrake 7.0 also. On the other hand Mozilla seems to run just fine out of my home directory. It crashed while I was messing with the bookmarks but other than that I'm pretty darn impressed. Hopefully the non-debug builds will be a little faster and not use 55Meg of RAM to run. Every milestone seems to be an improvement on the previous one, but this is the first one that I'd consider using for day to day browsing.
Are there any IBM PPC clone motherboards out yet?
on
SuSE For PPC
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· Score: 1
Have any companies started producing Motherboards bases on IBM's open PPC design. IBM's website doesn't give any specifics and I havn't found much info otherwhere. Has anyone heard anything? I'd love to build a PPC based Linux machine but but I'm not very interested in buying an overpriced Apple system with all their propritary hardware.
Has anyone noticed that the premise of M2M is ripped off of the old sixties British movie called Five Millon Years to Earth? Workers excavating a subway tunnel find a martian space ship that crashed there 5 meg years ago. The film plays like an old horror movie more than a sci-fi but the central idea of earth species comming from mars is the same as M2M. They spent $100 million on this movie, don't you think they could have spend a million or so on the rights to a decent science fiction novel? Oh well.
Um, can you name a single company that didn't contribute to the war effort during WWII? There was almost no civilian manufactuing during those years. Every company had to contribute or have their operations taken over by the government. And that was sixty years ago, how is this even remotely relevent? Disclaimer: I work for Big Blue, although not on Linux, alas.
But where's the Lotus Notes Client on Linux?
on
IBM banks on Linux
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· Score: 5
I work in development for Big Blue and lots of us here love Unix in general and Linux in particular but no one can use it on the Desktop until Lotus comes up with "Notes for Linux". Now mind you no one actually likes Notes here, but if you want to get mail you don't have any other choice. I've gotten it to work using WINE but then its even more unstable than usual. Sigh.
I have used the first edition almost every day at work and its been way more useful than Steven's Advanced Programming. Not to put down Steven's tome, but its not a beginner's book by any means. Ironically, I've used the Beginning Linux Programming mostly to work with Solaris and not with Linux, there's really not too much strickly Linux about the book most of it is generic *nix stuff.
Since there is no 'su' utility in NT everyone ends up adding themselves to the admin group sooner or later if they can. I know once you have done this NT is as secure as 95/98 (ie not at all) but the alternative is to have to shutdown everything, logout, and then login as administrator just so you can reset the clock! I really don't know what they were thinking when they designed this OS, there are just so many really stupid things about it that it amazes me.
Did anyone know that the cover of Who's Next was designed as jab a Kubrick? It shows the band relieving themselves on a big rectangular monolith that looks like the one(s) in 2001. Supposidly they were mad a Kubrick because he was rude to them when they asked him to direct the film version of Tommy.
I've intstalled IE 5.0 on my NT4 desktop at work twice now and can't get it to do anything but crash. After the first install I uninstalled it, and tried to install it again with the same results. My company's Y2K rules say that IE5 is the only complient version of IE so I have the choice of totally uninstalling IE or trying to get version 5 to do work. I work as a software tester and often have to test installations and upgrades to our products and I'm amazed at the shoddiness of IE in particular and Microsoft in general. I wouldn't care too much about having IE working since I use Netscape for most things but I do need to look up things at Microsoft.com sometimes and Netcape never seems to render pages right there. I'm sure that i'll have to start working with Windows 2000 in the next six months, so I'll find out for myself how stable it really.
IBM has a plugin for TeX/LaTeX for IE and Netscape(WIN, IRIX, Solaris, Linux, AIX) that seems to work pretty well. http://www.software.ibm.com/network/techexplorer /
programming in configurability is not trivial
on
The KDE Future
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· Score: 1
I know that from my experience, you try to get a program working first with a fixed set of parameters and then add more flexibility in later revisions. I use KDE and while I would change quite a few things if possible, I'm still very impressed with what they've accomplished so far. It's fast, clean, stable, and pretty darn useful. That said I hope that with 2.0 that they let me change a few annoying things ( such as the way it saves all the applications that are open when I log out and reopens them when I log back in, very annoying). As it stands now its still way more flexible than Windows95/98/NT, just try setting windows in Win98 to maximise only vertically and not horizontally for example.
I just finished at Pitt which is a state school here in Pennsylvania and while I'm not sure about the yearly cost(I just went part-time) the per credit rate is about $200US. So figuring that Full time is about 32 credits per year I guess full time tuition was about $6400. That's just for the classes, room and board and especially books are extra. Books are the real rip-off at US colleges, text books cost around $75 dollars each and you can only buy them from the school itself. And if you want to sell them back at the end of the semester they'll give you about 10 buck for each! This is just at a state school, I'm sure that Private schools are way more, like $100,000 for a four year degree. You pretty much have to have rich parents or be in debt until you're forty to go to a private college.
Yes, I thought the Language Instinct was one of the best popular science books I'd ever read. He's very good at distilling complex concepts down to the readers level with losing content. The main idea of that book was that the basic structure of language is inborn and all human languages are really just variations within that structure. I've been consiously listening to the way people speak ever since I read it. I may have to go out and get this new book.
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Lowly Pittsburgh is actually one of two finalist (with D.C.) to get a maglev commuter train built. It would run for 45 miles between the cities of Greensburg, Monroeville, Downtown Pittsburgh and the Pittsburgh Airport. I could get to work from where I live near Monroeville in about twenty minutes instead of the hour the bus takes right now. And most of that twenty minutes would be the time to get to the station I think the train would only be 7 minutes, to go 15 miles.s p
But since it took almost thirty years to get a pedestrian bridge built across the Allegheny from the point to 3-Rivers Stadium (just in time for it to be demolished) I don't have much faith that this will ever happen. But anything that would cut down on car/truck traffic waiting to go through the the Squirrel Hill and Fort Pitt tunnels would be great for the Air Quality here. Every single work day cars back up for at least six miles, stopped, waiting to go through the Sq. Hill tunnel, with most cars occupied by only one person.
There's a FAQ about the project here: http://post-gazette.com/regionstate/20010119qa3.a
From Merriam-Websters Collegiate: /'n&r-dish/ adjective
/-dE/ adjective
Main Entry: nerd
Pronunciation: 'n&rd
Function: noun
Etymology: perhaps from nerd, a creature in the children's book If I Ran the Zoo (1950) by Dr. Seuss (Theodor Geisel)
Date: 1951
: an unstylish, unattractive, or socially inept person; especially : one slavishly devoted to intellectual or academic pursuits
- nerdish
- nerdy
Damn, movies play in Buffalo before they make it to Pittsburgh, I really live in a cultural wasteland. We have about six or seven brand new huge stadium seating mega-plexs now but they all run the same ten big movies. If an art or foreign movies plays at all its at a tiny little theater run by the cultural trust and it runs for one week and is gone. The theatres are usually pretty empty too, I've been to many movies on weekend nights here when there where only half a dozen seats filled. Oh well...
I work for IBM also and while I have no idea what management and/or marketing are planning for Linux, I do know that there is a lot of internal enthusiasm for Linux and Open Source/Free Software in general. I would say that most of the developers I work with use Linux either at work or at home and are very familiar with it. Also even when we are working with other OS's, we regularly use tools such as emacs, apache, samba, gnumake, gcc, bash, perl, gdb, etc. Even when I have to develop for WinNt I write the code in Xemacs on RedHat and compile it using gnumake! You seem to see quite a few penguin or /. tee shirts or people lately too!
I'm not sure how this is news, DB2 for linux has been out for years and Websphere for linux has been out since at least July when release 3.5 went out. Here is the link to the Websphere for Linux page- http://www-4.ibm.com/software/webservers/appserv/l inux_ae_v302.html
Full disclosure: I work for IBM testing Websphere.
>1) Does IBM own Transarc? What's the deal here?
IBM bought Transarc in 1994 and ran it as a somewhat independent subsidiary until last year. In '99 Transarc was disolved into IBM and exists in name only as the IBM/Transarc Lab. Our jobs are pretty much the same but our checks say IBM now. Its a pretty cool place to work and we get paid pretty well for living in Pittsbugh.
S. Lem is one my favorite authors, his stuff seems so grown-up compared to most American Sci-Fi. I need to go back and re-read Solaris, it's been about 20 years since I read it last. Does anyone know if he is still alive?
Boy, I'm old enough to have programmed on teletypes that had actual bells that Ctrl-G would ring. The little beeps of PC's just don't compete with a real clanging bell. I guess that I shouldn't mention that we were using HP-Basic on an HP2000 mainframe. Nothing like using a paper based terminal to make you a carefull typist!
Cool, I live about three miles from the Pittsburgh Super Computing Center. If I win the bid I can just drive over and tie it to the roof of my Tracker! I looked in my lease and the landlord doesn't say I can't have a super-computer in the apartment.
Hey, I'm impressed that you can get PR2 to run at all. When I try to run it on Win98 all I get is the splash screen and then it just hangs forever until I kill it. I know that this is just a preview but I can't get it to do anything at all. I'm downloading M17 right now so maybe that will work better. BTW, I have to use Windows at home since I'm telecomuting and my company's VPN client and mail client only run on Win32.
The installer crashes on Mandrake 7.0 also. On the other hand Mozilla seems to run just fine out of my home directory. It crashed while I was messing with the bookmarks but other than that I'm pretty darn impressed. Hopefully the non-debug builds will be a little faster and not use 55Meg of RAM to run. Every milestone seems to be an improvement on the previous one, but this is the first one that I'd consider using for day to day browsing.
Have any companies started producing Motherboards bases on IBM's open PPC design. IBM's website doesn't give any specifics and I havn't found much info otherwhere. Has anyone heard anything? I'd love to build a PPC based Linux machine but but I'm not very interested in buying an overpriced Apple system with all their propritary hardware.
Has anyone noticed that the premise of M2M is ripped off of the old sixties British movie called Five Millon Years to Earth? Workers excavating a subway tunnel find a martian space ship that crashed there 5 meg years ago. The film plays like an old horror movie more than a sci-fi but the central idea of earth species comming from mars is the same as M2M.
They spent $100 million on this movie, don't you think they could have spend a million or so on the rights to a decent science fiction novel? Oh well.
Um, can you name a single company that didn't contribute to the war effort during WWII? There was almost no civilian manufactuing during those years. Every company had to contribute or have their operations taken over by the government. And that was sixty years ago, how is this even remotely relevent?
Disclaimer: I work for Big Blue, although not on Linux, alas.
I work in development for Big Blue and lots of us here love Unix in general and Linux in particular but no one can use it on the Desktop until Lotus comes up with "Notes for Linux". Now mind you no one actually likes Notes here, but if you want to get mail you don't have any other choice. I've gotten it to work using WINE but then its even more unstable than usual. Sigh.
I have used the first edition almost every day at work and its been way more useful than Steven's Advanced Programming. Not to put down Steven's tome, but its not a beginner's book by any means. Ironically, I've used the Beginning Linux Programming mostly to work with Solaris and not with Linux, there's really not too much strickly Linux about the book most of it is generic *nix stuff.
Since there is no 'su' utility in NT everyone ends up adding themselves to the admin group sooner or later if they can. I know once you have done this NT is as secure as 95/98 (ie not at all) but the alternative is to have to shutdown everything, logout, and then login as administrator just so you can reset the clock! I really don't know what they were thinking when they designed this OS, there are just so many really stupid things about it that it amazes me.
Did anyone know that the cover of Who's Next was designed as jab a Kubrick? It shows the band relieving themselves on a big rectangular monolith that looks like the one(s) in 2001. Supposidly they were mad a Kubrick because he was rude to them when they asked him to direct the film version of Tommy.
IE 5.0 has been rock solid!? What a joke.
I've intstalled IE 5.0 on my NT4 desktop at work twice now and can't get it to do anything but crash. After the first install I uninstalled it, and tried to install it again with the same results. My company's Y2K rules say that IE5 is the only complient version of IE so I have the choice of totally uninstalling IE or trying to get version 5 to do work.
I work as a software tester and often have to test installations and upgrades to our products and I'm amazed at the shoddiness of IE in particular and Microsoft in general. I wouldn't care too much about having IE working since I use Netscape for most things but I do need to look up things at Microsoft.com sometimes and Netcape never seems to render pages right there.
I'm sure that i'll have to start working with Windows 2000 in the next six months, so I'll find out for myself how stable it really.
IBM has a plugin for TeX/LaTeX for IE and Netscape(WIN, IRIX, Solaris, Linux, AIX) that seems to work pretty well.r /
http://www.software.ibm.com/network/techexplore
I know that from my experience, you try to get a program working first with a fixed set of parameters and then add more flexibility in later revisions. I use KDE and while I would change quite a few things if possible, I'm still very impressed with what they've accomplished so far. It's fast, clean, stable, and pretty darn useful. That said I hope that with 2.0 that they let me change a few annoying things ( such as the way it saves all the applications that are open when I log out and reopens them when I log back in, very annoying). As it stands now its still way more flexible than Windows95/98/NT, just try setting windows in Win98 to maximise only vertically and not horizontally for example.
I just finished at Pitt which is a state school here in Pennsylvania and while I'm not sure about the yearly cost(I just went part-time) the per credit rate is about $200US. So figuring that Full time is about 32 credits per year I guess full time tuition was about $6400. That's just for the classes, room and board and especially books are extra. Books are the real rip-off at US colleges, text books cost around $75 dollars each and you can only buy them from the school itself. And if you want to sell them back at the end of the semester they'll give you about 10 buck for each!
This is just at a state school, I'm sure that Private schools are way more, like $100,000 for a four year degree. You pretty much have to have rich parents or be in debt until you're forty to go to a private college.
Yes, I thought the Language Instinct was one of the best popular science books I'd ever read. He's very good at distilling complex concepts down to the readers level with losing content. The main idea of that book was that the basic structure of language is inborn and all human languages are really just variations within that structure. I've been consiously listening to the way people speak ever since I read it.
I may have to go out and get this new book.