I'm a user dealing with this right now. Here's what I wish they'd implement at my place.
Give _everyone_ root access. These machines are behind a firewall, right? These are used by developers working to design/forward your company's projects right? If there's the slightest chance that they'll need root, give it to them.
Now, how do you deal with the chaos that results?
Simple. Write a script that reimages the drives on a regular basis. Daily, weekly, monthly, or even by command. In that way, you know the machines will always be kept up to date.
Use your existing admins to maintain and develope the image that you push down to the client machines. Every user should know that the machines will be reimaged often and that they can't plan on the machine always being in the same state. If they have an application or library that they want to persist, then have a procedure for having one of your admins add it to the master image.
User files should be kept on a file server elsewhere. Home directories may or may not be mounted to the machines as you like.
Everyone deserves root. Even those people that are going to screw the system up. (Once or twice, and they won't do it again.)
Does anyone know of a good graphics card for two LCDs? I really want to stick with the DVI outputs because the 2001FPs from Dell look so much better on their DVI inputs.
Sounds like they are wasting power by having unnecesary steps here...
Actually, using a battery as storage converts the electrical energy to a chemical form. Using the battery converts the chemical back into electrical potential. (This is identical to what storage as hyrdrogen is doing.)
About the only technique to avoid convertion, would be to keep the electrical energy on a superconducting ring... Not terribly practical just yet, but maybe someday.
A fuel cell is analogous to an electrical cell. (A battery is composed of multiple electrical cells.) The only differences between a fuel cell and a wet-phase electrical cell is that the fuel cell (generally) uses a catalyzer to aid in the chemical process and that the fuel cell can be refueled. Both of those could be done with batteries... but they aren't usually.
Do any of the players on the market support 802.11b/g? I'd really like to be able to record certain radio programs then push them down to a portable all via scripts and in the background.
The fossil record shows that the Earth goes through periods of time where there is an incredible amount of speciazation - new critters pop into being very quickly. I've read other stuff that suggests that this is simply due to the die-offs: since there's a niche available, something moves to fill that niche.
Could this be a contributing factor or even a causative agent? The normally low error rate in genetic reproduction takes a big spike due to more particles getting through the Van Allen belts?
There's a light that does this on Pine Street in Boulder, Colorado (near the Pearl Street mall). It has a sign before it that says "Speed Sensitive Light."
After many commutes past this light I figured out the trick. There's a sweet spot about 50 feet from the light where you come into range of its detector. If you're doing the speed limit at that point, the light will be fine. You can speed back up about 20 feet from the light - it'll change, but you'll get through on the yellow.
I'd like to see what this thing could do for distance travel. I know that it's really only designed to go up and down in a very narrow parabola, but being at 300K feet means there is very little atmosphere. You should be able to really book with relatively little fuel cost.
How long until the first business jet/rocket appears?
I could just see Paul Allen going to shareholder meetings in one of these (or the business jet equivalent).
The shuttle is the most complex system ever engineered by people... by orders of magnitude.
It's not suprising that there are flaws in the system - disasters lying dormant until the moment when they cause the destruction of the entire system.
This is one of the biggest arguements for a Vertical Takoff / Vertical Landing vehicle - it simplifies the system because it eliminates specialized components for landing.
Here's the mantra: fault tolerant systems. Things will fail. Can your space shuttle deal with those failures gracefully?
Why they didn't bring the co-op portion of the Xbox code to the PC version I have no idea.
Actually it's the other way around. The PC version is being ported to the X-Box.
I was talking with one of the developers of the X-Box version while playing Natural Selection. He said that they had a later release date and could polish the code better. So, it's pretty much a scheduling restraint...
I'm pretty bummed about it - I love cooperative FPS. Team sports are great.
Too bad their site doesn't display the body text in Safari. If they're a Mac site, they just *might* want to fix that one.
Maybe that will be their third programming challenge.:)
This is a great idea. Contests to build up the amount of open source out there are cool. What's needed is a general purpose ladder and scoring system so you can actually rank coders. Very cool.:) Well, geeky, anyway.
Hmm... I'm close but not there: Dell 2001FP 20.something inches viewable, 1600x1200 and about $750 from Dell.
BTW, refresh rate isn't really that important on a TFT LCD : the pixels stay on continuously, so no real flicker. Now grey-to-grey time, on the otherhand....
Great posts. I had been thinking about the Parahelia just for flight sim, now that's pretty well nixed.
So if you swapped out to ATI, what are you doing to drive your third screen?
Have you set-up the multiple-computer flight sim set-up? How painful is that?
I really want a three monitor setup - it's just so much more interesting to flightsim when you can see stuff to the left and right of the plane.
I'm not terribly excited by flight simming, but it's cheaper to practice instrument approaches in the sim than in the plane. In some respects, I think it's better too. The controls/feedback sucks (Even with a FF joystick) which makes overcontrolling almost unavoidable. But the overcontrolling just forces you to have a really good instrument scan - so it ends up being better for your practice.
But my interest level falls off rapidly due to the tiny field-of-view. I've had a chance to try two views (excellent Dell 20001FP LCDs) and it was great. Now if only I could add that third display....
Why not start with Newton's theory of gravity and start adding terms to it. Add a separate term for each bit of experimental evidence you have that doesn't fit Newtonian gravity. Plug them all into Matlab (or your favorite symbolic package) and tell it to simplify. Out comes a formula that describes gravity without dark matter.
Start this whole process off with simpler relativistic effects in the local solar system (Star shine around eclipses, satellites in orbit, that sort of thing). And see if it comes up with Einstein's theory of gravity. That'll prove out the basics of your system.
Finally, if the system can't be simplified because there are just too many terms, then perhaps you have a lot of different sources of gravity: dark matter.
Sigh... this posting has so many replies already, this one probably won't ever get read...:-) Rudy
I'd like to add Canon to this list. I'd really really like to be able to increase the functionality of my 300D Rebel.
Most of the cameras all use the same internal processing system that they've been touting so highly. It seems like in one fell swoop you could cover lots of the different hardware models.
Hmm.. one problem with using a single camera on a lander is that that would be at least one more moving part and one more avenue for dust to become a problem.
BTW, I do single camera stereo pairs all the time. Lots of fun. Sometimes I do three picture sets in the hopes that someday there will be some cheap and easy software for recreating a scene based on a few pictures.... Anyone know of anything that does that yet?
The closest I've found so far is Bijou... (can't find a link, sorry).
This isn't about facts though. This is about heroes.
Look, Orville and Wilbur didn't do much out on those sand dunes. All they did was make a crappy little airplane not capable of flying in anything but a near direct headwind. It's a piece of crap as far as airplanes go and any kid today can make a better one with some balsa wood and a rubberband.
But the point is that they did it before anyone else thought they could. Chuck Yeager did his trick when people thought the sound barrier was a brick wall in the sky that would kill everyone that tried to get close to it. These names are attached to people that did something or discovered something that everyone else thought couldn't be done. You don't remember the name for the sake of the name, you remember the name as something to attach the courage to.
We stand on the shoulders of giants. That's the average person for you. But occasionally, someone sees one of those giants and says, "I can do that too." You see those heroes and you realize that you don't have to be trapped by the preconceptions that hold the rest of the world back.
Knowing the names Chuck Yeager, Orville and Wilbur Wright, Niel Armstrong, Einstein, Curie, Oppenheimer, Franklin, DaVinci, and so on gives you a sense of perspective. These things are done by people with a dream. And determination. A whole lot of determination.
I'd like to play around with this. I'm an electrical engineer, so I know my anode from my cathode, but I don't know much about RF design beyond the basics.
So, say I want to find someone's LO frequencies. It seems like you need an antennae tuned to about the LO that you expect to find. What kind of general purpose solution is there that will cover most of the bases? A spectrum analyzer plus an antennae, but is that really the best solution? And what kind of antennae will give me the best cross spectrum support?
Okay, now how about the targeted solution. I now know the particular LO that I'm looking for, what's the best design to be able to pick up the signal? Finally, what if I want to determine where the signal is coming from... where do I find DF designs?
Thanks!
Another problem with radiation...
on
Sub-Zero Squirrels
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
Your system has a bunch of different ways of handling cells that have DNA errors. There are some systems for actually repairing your DNA and there are systems for recognizing (and destroying) cells with lots of problems (this is a large part of what a sunburn is).
All the techniques depend on your cells operating normally. If you hibernate for six months, presumably metabolism is slowed and those processes will slow. That means that your normal radiation repair functions will be inhibited and you'll be more likely to wake up with the precursors to cancer.
Not good...
I suppose, if you're out cold (literally) then you could be out cold in a tiny little chamber with some walls with a lot of mass. But those won't block everything. You have to wonder how an awake person in your average double-hulled, water-filled-gap space ship (which doesn't exist yet) will fare against the side of beef in the thickwalled freezer over the long run.
Have any of the boxes really done well with commercial zapping? I really want a system that recognizes commercials and then just doesn't record them. I'd settle for a system that recognizes commercials and skips past them automatically.
Is there anything that does this? And does it well?
BTW, I know the whole philosophical problem of who pays for content if you're skipping the commercials and, tell you what, save it for Eisner.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm a user dealing with this right now. Here's what I wish they'd implement at my place.
Give _everyone_ root access. These machines are behind a firewall, right? These are used by developers working to design/forward your company's projects right? If there's the slightest chance that they'll need root, give it to them.
Now, how do you deal with the chaos that results?
Simple. Write a script that reimages the drives on a regular basis. Daily, weekly, monthly, or even by command. In that way, you know the machines will always be kept up to date.
Use your existing admins to maintain and develope the image that you push down to the client machines. Every user should know that the machines will be reimaged often and that they can't plan on the machine always being in the same state. If they have an application or library that they want to persist, then have a procedure for having one of your admins add it to the master image.
User files should be kept on a file server elsewhere. Home directories may or may not be mounted to the machines as you like.
Everyone deserves root. Even those people that are going to screw the system up. (Once or twice, and they won't do it again.)
Does anyone know of a good graphics card for two LCDs? I really want to stick with the DVI outputs because the 2001FPs from Dell look so much better on their DVI inputs.
Thanks!
nice doll house. :-)
Sounds like they are wasting power by having unnecesary steps here...
Actually, using a battery as storage converts the electrical energy to a chemical form. Using the battery converts the chemical back into electrical potential. (This is identical to what storage as hyrdrogen is doing.)
About the only technique to avoid convertion, would be to keep the electrical energy on a superconducting ring... Not terribly practical just yet, but maybe someday.
A fuel cell is analogous to an electrical cell. (A battery is composed of multiple electrical cells.) The only differences between a fuel cell and a wet-phase electrical cell is that the fuel cell (generally) uses a catalyzer to aid in the chemical process and that the fuel cell can be refueled. Both of those could be done with batteries... but they aren't usually.
Do any of the players on the market support 802.11b/g? I'd really like to be able to record certain radio programs then push them down to a portable all via scripts and in the background.
Wow. I wish I had gotten slashdotted with those google ads on my page.
:-)
I wonder if you could start a business model around posting stuff on a site and submitting the articles to slashdot...
The fossil record shows that the Earth goes through periods of time where there is an incredible amount of speciazation - new critters pop into being very quickly. I've read other stuff that suggests that this is simply due to the die-offs: since there's a niche available, something moves to fill that niche.
Could this be a contributing factor or even a causative agent? The normally low error rate in genetic reproduction takes a big spike due to more particles getting through the Van Allen belts?
There's a light that does this on Pine Street in Boulder, Colorado (near the Pearl Street mall). It has a sign before it that says "Speed Sensitive Light."
:-)
After many commutes past this light I figured out the trick. There's a sweet spot about 50 feet from the light where you come into range of its detector. If you're doing the speed limit at that point, the light will be fine. You can speed back up about 20 feet from the light - it'll change, but you'll get through on the yellow.
I used it once to get rid of a tail gater.
I'd like to see what this thing could do for distance travel. I know that it's really only designed to go up and down in a very narrow parabola, but being at 300K feet means there is very little atmosphere. You should be able to really book with relatively little fuel cost.
How long until the first business jet/rocket appears?
I could just see Paul Allen going to shareholder meetings in one of these (or the business jet equivalent).
The shuttle is the most complex system ever engineered by people... by orders of magnitude.
It's not suprising that there are flaws in the system - disasters lying dormant until the moment when they cause the destruction of the entire system.
This is one of the biggest arguements for a Vertical Takoff / Vertical Landing vehicle - it simplifies the system because it eliminates specialized components for landing.
Here's the mantra: fault tolerant systems. Things will fail. Can your space shuttle deal with those failures gracefully?
Why they didn't bring the co-op portion of the Xbox code to the PC version I have no idea.
Actually it's the other way around. The PC version is being ported to the X-Box.
I was talking with one of the developers of the X-Box version while playing Natural Selection. He said that they had a later release date and could polish the code better. So, it's pretty much a scheduling restraint...
I'm pretty bummed about it - I love cooperative FPS. Team sports are great.
No one ever has it "coming."
What part of "Thou shall not kill" or the million variants of it is hard to understand?
We can learn. We can.
Too bad their site doesn't display the body text in Safari. If they're a Mac site, they just *might* want to fix that one.
:)
:) Well, geeky, anyway.
Maybe that will be their third programming challenge.
This is a great idea. Contests to build up the amount of open source out there are cool. What's needed is a general purpose ladder and scoring system so you can actually rank coders. Very cool.
While we're at it, more questions:
1. How hard is it to port an application to Y? (Is Mozilla going to come any time soon?)
2. How fast is it on older machines/PDAs? Is it mostly designed for new, beefy systems? (I noticed the 3D accel stuff, but is it required?)
Hmm... I'm close but not there: Dell 2001FP 20.something inches viewable, 1600x1200 and about $750 from Dell.
BTW, refresh rate isn't really that important on a TFT LCD : the pixels stay on continuously, so no real flicker. Now grey-to-grey time, on the otherhand....
Great posts. I had been thinking about the Parahelia just for flight sim, now that's pretty well nixed.
So if you swapped out to ATI, what are you doing to drive your third screen?
Have you set-up the multiple-computer flight sim set-up? How painful is that?
I really want a three monitor setup - it's just so much more interesting to flightsim when you can see stuff to the left and right of the plane.
I'm not terribly excited by flight simming, but it's cheaper to practice instrument approaches in the sim than in the plane. In some respects, I think it's better too. The controls/feedback sucks (Even with a FF joystick) which makes overcontrolling almost unavoidable. But the overcontrolling just forces you to have a really good instrument scan - so it ends up being better for your practice.
But my interest level falls off rapidly due to the tiny field-of-view. I've had a chance to try two views (excellent Dell 20001FP LCDs) and it was great. Now if only I could add that third display....
Why not start with Newton's theory of gravity and start adding terms to it. Add a separate term for each bit of experimental evidence you have that doesn't fit Newtonian gravity. Plug them all into Matlab (or your favorite symbolic package) and tell it to simplify. Out comes a formula that describes gravity without dark matter.
Start this whole process off with simpler relativistic effects in the local solar system (Star shine around eclipses, satellites in orbit, that sort of thing). And see if it comes up with Einstein's theory of gravity. That'll prove out the basics of your system.
Finally, if the system can't be simplified because there are just too many terms, then perhaps you have a lot of different sources of gravity: dark matter.
Sigh... this posting has so many replies already, this one probably won't ever get read...
Rudy
(subject used without Thoreau's permission)
I'd like to add Canon to this list. I'd really really like to be able to increase the functionality of my 300D Rebel.
Most of the cameras all use the same internal processing system that they've been touting so highly. It seems like in one fell swoop you could cover lots of the different hardware models.
Mozilla and Firebird are incredibly slow on these processors. Dillo doesn't even do Frames, much less SSL and such, plus it's not very pen friendly.
What browsers can be used with these tiny, slow, pen based systems that won't make you want to gouge your eyeballs out?
Why are the seams so bad in these images? I'm very surprised at how badly stitched together the images are. Anyone understand why?
Rudy
Hmm.. one problem with using a single camera on a lander is that that would be at least one more moving part and one more avenue for dust to become a problem.
BTW, I do single camera stereo pairs all the time. Lots of fun. Sometimes I do three picture sets in the hopes that someday there will be some cheap and easy software for recreating a scene based on a few pictures.... Anyone know of anything that does that yet?
The closest I've found so far is Bijou... (can't find a link, sorry).
Rudy
This isn't about facts though. This is about heroes.
Look, Orville and Wilbur didn't do much out on those sand dunes. All they did was make a crappy little airplane not capable of flying in anything but a near direct headwind. It's a piece of crap as far as airplanes go and any kid today can make a better one with some balsa wood and a rubberband.
But the point is that they did it before anyone else thought they could. Chuck Yeager did his trick when people thought the sound barrier was a brick wall in the sky that would kill everyone that tried to get close to it. These names are attached to people that did something or discovered something that everyone else thought couldn't be done. You don't remember the name for the sake of the name, you remember the name as something to attach the courage to.
We stand on the shoulders of giants. That's the average person for you. But occasionally, someone sees one of those giants and says, "I can do that too." You see those heroes and you realize that you don't have to be trapped by the preconceptions that hold the rest of the world back.
Knowing the names Chuck Yeager, Orville and Wilbur Wright, Niel Armstrong, Einstein, Curie, Oppenheimer, Franklin, DaVinci, and so on gives you a sense of perspective. These things are done by people with a dream. And determination. A whole lot of determination.
Hey,
I'd like to play around with this. I'm an electrical engineer, so I know my anode from my cathode, but I don't know much about RF design beyond the basics.
So, say I want to find someone's LO frequencies. It seems like you need an antennae tuned to about the LO that you expect to find. What kind of general purpose solution is there that will cover most of the bases? A spectrum analyzer plus an antennae, but is that really the best solution? And what kind of antennae will give me the best cross spectrum support?
Okay, now how about the targeted solution. I now know the particular LO that I'm looking for, what's the best design to be able to pick up the signal? Finally, what if I want to determine where the signal is coming from... where do I find DF designs?
Thanks!
Your system has a bunch of different ways of handling cells that have DNA errors. There are some systems for actually repairing your DNA and there are systems for recognizing (and destroying) cells with lots of problems (this is a large part of what a sunburn is).
All the techniques depend on your cells operating normally. If you hibernate for six months, presumably metabolism is slowed and those processes will slow. That means that your normal radiation repair functions will be inhibited and you'll be more likely to wake up with the precursors to cancer.
Not good...
I suppose, if you're out cold (literally) then you could be out cold in a tiny little chamber with some walls with a lot of mass. But those won't block everything. You have to wonder how an awake person in your average double-hulled, water-filled-gap space ship (which doesn't exist yet) will fare against the side of beef in the thickwalled freezer over the long run.
Have any of the boxes really done well with commercial zapping? I really want a system that recognizes commercials and then just doesn't record them. I'd settle for a system that recognizes commercials and skips past them automatically.
Is there anything that does this? And does it well?
BTW, I know the whole philosophical problem of who pays for content if you're skipping the commercials and, tell you what, save it for Eisner.