From what I've seen of 64-bit Linux distros thus far, they need time to mature. It's always some weirdness with the kernel or gcc or whatever that has lots of people complaining of lockups and crashing. That kind of rumor mill makes going 64-bit a tough sell. Perhaps later this year or early next year I'll start to hear good things about 64bit stuff.
Funny you should mention the point about IT managers. A friend of mine is an IT manager at a small company here and used to be a huge fan of Intel. Once he saw the performance vs. price of an Athlon system, he was intrigued. 10 workstations and 3 servers later it's an AMD shop. It's all he'll build now. Laptops are still Intel-based Dells, but every new machine built is an AMD.
We'll see what he does when he builds a serious Asterisk server. We're running Linux Mandrake on it now on an Athlon XP3000 with a gig of pc3200 and it's fast, but under load we may need more horsepower. Dual AMDs are hard to find, we may go with dual Xeons.
Not necessarily. With a KDE live menu type of setup, you could hit icons in the taskbar that'd remap your kde menu. It's a crappy hack from a usability standpoint but I think it'd work for noobs.
Then again, OneChoice Linux needs to be born. One program for every single task, and that's all you get. Firefox for browsing, Thunderbird or Evolution for email, gaim for chatting, etc. etc. There'd be a big load of whining from experienced users like 'why did you use this instead of that? that is so superior it's not even funny'. You could have experienced users vote on a forum and the votes would determine the upgrade path for the distro. This way when people go to whining, they have nobody to blame but themselves. Why do we get emacs instead of vi? Because we voted it in. Aw shucks.
Ultimately you wouldn't try to create a community of people with a distro like this, you'd try to create a microsoft-ish lack of choice distro that is the way it is to make things easy on the end users. The community may spring up on it's own and you could recognize that but your primary concerns should be limiting choice and ensuring stability.
"Being L33t with Gentoo is considerably more useful to society than being a gang member despite the similarity of speech and behaviour of the two groups."
Gang members: beat the shit out of the new guy to have him join the gang. Afterwards there are hugs and lemonade.
Gentoo users: beat the shit out of their dad's Packard Bell trying to get Gentoo installed. Afterwards there is a 72 hour wait before they can do anything useful with their pc.
Gang members: enjoy carrying various forms of weaponry such as knives and fully automatic assault rifles.
Gentoo users: enjoy carrying Gentoo Unreal Tournament live cds.
Gang members: rate each other on the amount of money they have, the number of rival members they've killed, and how many bitches they've got up in the guts with.
Gentoo users: rate each other on breadth and depth of Linux knowledge, ebuild scripting, and how many machines Gentoo is currently running on.
Yeah I can really see the correlation there. NEXT!
...some fake jobs to do. A computer panel full of buttons that have to be pushed in sequence daily or the whole ship explodes. Add to that some actual physical exertion (like removing axle rods from somewhere that are rusty) at random intervals as well. Keep it quiet so only the scientists and some engineers know what's up.
Yeah, give the astronauts lots of fake jobs which will then lead to fake drama as someone forgets to pull rod 14 on schedule and the core threatens meltdown. Tie it in to emergency evac announcements and lots of flashing lights. I could see this being profitable from a television standpoint as well. That in turn will help fund the mission or a future mission like it.
Think about it this way: if you're always threatened by disaster but always avert it just in the nick of time, you never know if it's true or not. The astronauts will never wise up.:)
I think that would work out on some of the simpler, newbie-targetted distros like Linspire. You could have login 'sets', where a user would initially be given a choice of 4 options: internet/email, multimedia, gaming, or office. Once a choice is made, a desktop (probably KDE) will pop up with category-related desktop icons and menu items.
Ultimately it'd be cool to see KDE with live menu generation. Click the office button on the taskbar and the icons and menus magically change instantly to reflect the environment needed.
His point was that if it's an unsupported language, it shouldn't be readily available in the installer. Why install in Japanese if you later can't type it in? It's a bug or an oversight.
I totally agree. The internet is currently full of morons, spammers, and 14 year old kids with a big chip on their virtual shoulders. That forces those of us with something to say to invite-only IRC channels, strictly registered forums, etc. This hurts search engines because the true meat of info that we're sharing can't be catalogued.
I hope that things go back to the BBS days. Back when people ran BBS's, you had to login, give the admin very personal information (including a working telephone number), and eventually the admin would call you. You'd TALK to the owner LIVE and he'd decide if you got on or not. If there was a problem, you might have spoken to him again, live.
If I ever start a forum anywhere, I'm definitely doing things this way. It's more personal than shooting off emails.
Because we all know company demonstrations from CEOs are done in realtime using the current alpha software.
Uh, they are, usually. Didn't you see the keynote from Bill Gates where he's talking up Win98's ability to handle hardware, and he gets a nice fat BSOD. There was much laughter and clapping, as if the audience was saying, yeah now you know how we feel every day. Link here
I think you're on the right track. Although the majority of Chinese people I know still talk about the Chinese government in hushed, conspiratorial tones (which frustrates me, they're hard to understand to begin with), the Chinese authorities realize the importance of commerce.
Not too long ago, China didn't want or need to do business with anyone. Once they discovered international production and business, they reluctantly joined the game. Next thing you know, everything has a MADE IN CHINA sticker on the bottom of it. China has a glut of super cheap labor, and most of it is skilled. They also have a wealth of natural resources. An EE friend of mine was accustomed to fixing problems at the circuit level because labor is cheaper than parts in China. Here, his boss asked what was taking so long and told him to order a new control panel rather than replacing parts on it. It's a completely different paradigm over there.
The individual's responsibility begins where the corporation's ends. Now, I may not be the brightest bulb in the room, but I know that hot coffee probably shouldn't be in my lap. While I'm driving. And I know I shouldn't fuck with the lid on the cup full of hot coffee..in my lap...while I'm driving. This lady was stupid and it was partially her fault.
I'm not saying McDonalds was in the right, any coffee hot enough to cause 2nd or 3rd degree burns is just too hot to begin with. But people, please, use some common sense once in awhile. I don't want to live in a world where every damn product I buy comes with a book full of disclaimers and warnings. I mean, I already do, but let's not encourage the average fool and their succubus lawyers to sue more companies for things they could've prevented by using their singular brain cell before they took an action.
My results: 2148 frames in 50.3 seconds = 42.7fps. Now the second time I demo'ed it, I switched from KDE to IceWM. Results: 2148 frames in 48.6 seconds = 44.2fps. I ran it two more concurrent times which improved. 45.7 seconds @ 47fps and 45.8 seconds @ 46.9fps.
This is on Mandrake 10.1 with kernel 2.6.8.1-10mdk, Athlon 2800+, 768mb pc 2700, GeforceFX 5900 XT 128mb ram, lame ECS Nforce2 chipset.
For once, developers of somewhat commercial software are being honest. The abbreviation doesn't mean what everyone thinks though. PR isn't preview release. PR is Public Relations.;)
But in the long run, your ROI may well be much lower on the baby. The ROI for the kitten is as immeasurable in concrete terms as the video card's is. Both can bring you some form of happiness or have entertainment value, but only one can cause you to sneeze uncontrollably, put up with atrocious odors, destroy furniture, and type uncontrollably.
Yeah, I'll take the video card. Give me some time on the baby thing, I don't see a whole lot of value there.;)
Genius? That's a dubious title for Bill Gates. He's a sharp businessman, nothing more, nothing less. He saw opportunities to steal IP before IP was a big deal, and he took them.
Look at it this way. If it wasn't him, it would be someone else in his spot. The market wanted personal computers, with an operating system that was readily available and ran on commodity hardware. He provided half of that equation. Meanwhile, niche computing and heavyweight stuff was reserved for Unix, Irix, Sun and other players. His real genius was releasing bug ridden software that ran just well enough to let you get some work done, but not well enough to convince you that you didn't need the latest upgrade release.
Ask any Windows 95 user why they would want 98. Is there a long list of features that are new? Not really. Instead, it promised what every other Microsoft upgrade promised and continue to promise: greater stability, speed, performance, and compatibility. For those of you that refuse to get on the upgrade conveyor belt, you'll be left ass-out in the cold when MS declares end-of-life for your OS and stops releasing patches for it. Upgrade or get owned.
There are those of us that prefer choice and we generally use MacOS or Linux. So what if we don't have 1000 crap games and 3 good ones. So what if we can't download heaps of junk freeware. So what if we don't need virus protection software and commercial firewalls. We get along just fine without MS.
Actually I can't throw too many stones, because every call I get from an end user that has 215 pieces of spyware and adware clogging up their pc is money in the bank for me. The sad thing is, they think what they use is all that can be used without taking out a second mortgage to buy a G5 tower. One customer actually asked me about Linux, especially after he saw how beautiful it was running on my Dell laptop. Converted.
Well, originally they started with smaller dogs, like Dachshunds, but they couldn't get them to quit humping the trainer's legs or humping the victims they found in the rubble.
You're talking about a standard 'wet' limited slip differential, or LSD. Wet LSD's have a viscous solution inside that, as the spider gears generate friction by spinning opposite directions, solidifies to unify power delivery from the driveshaft. An open differential allows wheels to spin at differing speeds, usually giving more power to the wheel that's spinning more freely. This is bad in racing. It's also bad for 4wd cars like the Subaru WRX or the Mitsubishi Evolution VIII. Both cars have LSD standard.
The other type of LSD is a clutch-plate type. These can be adjusted for resistance to slippage by arranging the type and order of clutch plates in the LSD. A viscous LSD on the other hand is governed by the properties of the fluid, and is subject to failure under high loads (i.e. the liquid can only take so much friction before it breaks down and loses it's valuable properties). In general practice, for performance and cost, viscous LSD's are used, but for high performance, resilience, adjustability and durability, the clutch type LSD is preferable, but has a significantly higher cost.
Only if they're trying to repo a stereo or television from the rental place by breaking in your front door.
Trespassing is defined by entering into the domicile in question by forceable means or without prior consent of the owner or occupant. Even if you leave all of your doors unlocked, if someone steps through that door and you weren't expecting them, you have the right to shoot. This was all made possible by what's also known as the "Make My Day" law, a nod to Dirty Harry. Many southern states with dense cities and high transient populations enacted this law awhile back.
Personally I see nothing wrong with it. If someone breaks down my front door at any time, and doesn't shout POLICE WE'RE COMING IN, then they're catching a slug somewhere in their person. Anyone who is willing to commit such an entry surely knows the risks they face, particularly in states like Texas where gun ownership is high.
Is killing another person for breaking into your home extreme? Well, that depends on how much you value your own and your family's life. I'm no gun nut, and don't like guns persay, but I feel that the law gives me the right to defend myself and my wife, and if a criminal will most likely be armed, I have no choice but to arm myself in kind. Not arming myself would be a failure of duty, a total lack of self preserving responsibility. I couldn't bear to think of myself or my wife getting shot in our home without having a chance to fight back or win.
Stinking of cheap cologne, hairspray and marijuana smoke probably goes a long way towards keeping people off of you as well. Add to that your primered 1984 Iroc Camaro with non-matching wheels leaking oil in the driveway, and you have a perfect front. Nothing to steal here, keep moving. As a matter of fact, if anyone breaks in, they'll probably get robbed instead, or at the very least get a contact high.
Actually in commercial boxed distros like Mandrake 10, the Nvidia and ATI drivers come with the distro. You will promptly upgrade these most of the time, but you are not forced to download them.
What do you expect from a 3 year old OS like XP anyway? You still have to patch the hell out of it if you ever reinstall it and during the patching time you're praying to the internet gods that your box doesn't get owned.
Slashdot Mirror
I can't believe this is possible but..
o rg /
http://shutyourfuckingfaceunclefucker.slashdot.
From what I've seen of 64-bit Linux distros thus far, they need time to mature. It's always some weirdness with the kernel or gcc or whatever that has lots of people complaining of lockups and crashing. That kind of rumor mill makes going 64-bit a tough sell. Perhaps later this year or early next year I'll start to hear good things about 64bit stuff.
Funny you should mention the point about IT managers. A friend of mine is an IT manager at a small company here and used to be a huge fan of Intel. Once he saw the performance vs. price of an Athlon system, he was intrigued. 10 workstations and 3 servers later it's an AMD shop. It's all he'll build now. Laptops are still Intel-based Dells, but every new machine built is an AMD.
We'll see what he does when he builds a serious Asterisk server. We're running Linux Mandrake on it now on an Athlon XP3000 with a gig of pc3200 and it's fast, but under load we may need more horsepower. Dual AMDs are hard to find, we may go with dual Xeons.
Not necessarily. With a KDE live menu type of setup, you could hit icons in the taskbar that'd remap your kde menu. It's a crappy hack from a usability standpoint but I think it'd work for noobs.
Then again, OneChoice Linux needs to be born. One program for every single task, and that's all you get. Firefox for browsing, Thunderbird or Evolution for email, gaim for chatting, etc. etc. There'd be a big load of whining from experienced users like 'why did you use this instead of that? that is so superior it's not even funny'. You could have experienced users vote on a forum and the votes would determine the upgrade path for the distro. This way when people go to whining, they have nobody to blame but themselves. Why do we get emacs instead of vi? Because we voted it in. Aw shucks.
Ultimately you wouldn't try to create a community of people with a distro like this, you'd try to create a microsoft-ish lack of choice distro that is the way it is to make things easy on the end users. The community may spring up on it's own and you could recognize that but your primary concerns should be limiting choice and ensuring stability.
"Being L33t with Gentoo is considerably more useful to society than being a gang member despite the similarity of speech and behaviour of the two groups."
Gang members: beat the shit out of the new guy to have him join the gang. Afterwards there are hugs and lemonade.
Gentoo users: beat the shit out of their dad's Packard Bell trying to get Gentoo installed. Afterwards there is a 72 hour wait before they can do anything useful with their pc.
Gang members: enjoy carrying various forms of weaponry such as knives and fully automatic assault rifles.
Gentoo users: enjoy carrying Gentoo Unreal Tournament live cds.
Gang members: rate each other on the amount of money they have, the number of rival members they've killed, and how many bitches they've got up in the guts with.
Gentoo users: rate each other on breadth and depth of Linux knowledge, ebuild scripting, and how many machines Gentoo is currently running on.
Yeah I can really see the correlation there. NEXT!
...some fake jobs to do. A computer panel full of buttons that have to be pushed in sequence daily or the whole ship explodes. Add to that some actual physical exertion (like removing axle rods from somewhere that are rusty) at random intervals as well. Keep it quiet so only the scientists and some engineers know what's up.
:)
Yeah, give the astronauts lots of fake jobs which will then lead to fake drama as someone forgets to pull rod 14 on schedule and the core threatens meltdown. Tie it in to emergency evac announcements and lots of flashing lights. I could see this being profitable from a television standpoint as well. That in turn will help fund the mission or a future mission like it.
Think about it this way: if you're always threatened by disaster but always avert it just in the nick of time, you never know if it's true or not. The astronauts will never wise up.
I think that would work out on some of the simpler, newbie-targetted distros like Linspire. You could have login 'sets', where a user would initially be given a choice of 4 options: internet/email, multimedia, gaming, or office. Once a choice is made, a desktop (probably KDE) will pop up with category-related desktop icons and menu items.
Ultimately it'd be cool to see KDE with live menu generation. Click the office button on the taskbar and the icons and menus magically change instantly to reflect the environment needed.
His point was that if it's an unsupported language, it shouldn't be readily available in the installer. Why install in Japanese if you later can't type it in? It's a bug or an oversight.
Hey, maybe he was Clinton's dope man. Irie irie wit' de presidential ganja mon!
I totally agree. The internet is currently full of morons, spammers, and 14 year old kids with a big chip on their virtual shoulders. That forces those of us with something to say to invite-only IRC channels, strictly registered forums, etc. This hurts search engines because the true meat of info that we're sharing can't be catalogued.
I hope that things go back to the BBS days. Back when people ran BBS's, you had to login, give the admin very personal information (including a working telephone number), and eventually the admin would call you. You'd TALK to the owner LIVE and he'd decide if you got on or not. If there was a problem, you might have spoken to him again, live.
If I ever start a forum anywhere, I'm definitely doing things this way. It's more personal than shooting off emails.
I think it's a global typo. After one look at this thing, I'd call it "Ugl-e" or "Nast-e" or "Wimp-e" or...well you get the picture.
Because we all know company demonstrations from CEOs are done in realtime using the current alpha software.
Uh, they are, usually. Didn't you see the keynote from Bill Gates where he's talking up Win98's ability to handle hardware, and he gets a nice fat BSOD. There was much laughter and clapping, as if the audience was saying, yeah now you know how we feel every day. Link here
Here's your google-ized dialog for the same window:
Would you like some After-Crash mints?
[Yes][No][More Results (11-20)] [Ok][Cancel] [I'm Feeling Lucky]
I think you're on the right track. Although the majority of Chinese people I know still talk about the Chinese government in hushed, conspiratorial tones (which frustrates me, they're hard to understand to begin with), the Chinese authorities realize the importance of commerce.
Not too long ago, China didn't want or need to do business with anyone. Once they discovered international production and business, they reluctantly joined the game. Next thing you know, everything has a MADE IN CHINA sticker on the bottom of it. China has a glut of super cheap labor, and most of it is skilled. They also have a wealth of natural resources. An EE friend of mine was accustomed to fixing problems at the circuit level because labor is cheaper than parts in China. Here, his boss asked what was taking so long and told him to order a new control panel rather than replacing parts on it. It's a completely different paradigm over there.
The individual's responsibility begins where the corporation's ends. Now, I may not be the brightest bulb in the room, but I know that hot coffee probably shouldn't be in my lap. While I'm driving. And I know I shouldn't fuck with the lid on the cup full of hot coffee..in my lap...while I'm driving. This lady was stupid and it was partially her fault.
I'm not saying McDonalds was in the right, any coffee hot enough to cause 2nd or 3rd degree burns is just too hot to begin with. But people, please, use some common sense once in awhile. I don't want to live in a world where every damn product I buy comes with a book full of disclaimers and warnings. I mean, I already do, but let's not encourage the average fool and their succubus lawyers to sue more companies for things they could've prevented by using their singular brain cell before they took an action.
My results: 2148 frames in 50.3 seconds = 42.7fps. Now the second time I demo'ed it, I switched from KDE to IceWM. Results: 2148 frames in 48.6 seconds = 44.2fps. I ran it two more concurrent times which improved. 45.7 seconds @ 47fps and 45.8 seconds @ 46.9fps.
This is on Mandrake 10.1 with kernel 2.6.8.1-10mdk, Athlon 2800+, 768mb pc 2700, GeforceFX 5900 XT 128mb ram, lame ECS Nforce2 chipset.
For once, developers of somewhat commercial software are being honest. The abbreviation doesn't mean what everyone thinks though. PR isn't preview release. PR is Public Relations. ;)
Gorgeous? I think he meant delicious.
Mmmm...fresh cat.
But in the long run, your ROI may well be much lower on the baby. The ROI for the kitten is as immeasurable in concrete terms as the video card's is. Both can bring you some form of happiness or have entertainment value, but only one can cause you to sneeze uncontrollably, put up with atrocious odors, destroy furniture, and type uncontrollably.
;)
Yeah, I'll take the video card. Give me some time on the baby thing, I don't see a whole lot of value there.
Genius? That's a dubious title for Bill Gates. He's a sharp businessman, nothing more, nothing less. He saw opportunities to steal IP before IP was a big deal, and he took them.
Look at it this way. If it wasn't him, it would be someone else in his spot. The market wanted personal computers, with an operating system that was readily available and ran on commodity hardware. He provided half of that equation. Meanwhile, niche computing and heavyweight stuff was reserved for Unix, Irix, Sun and other players. His real genius was releasing bug ridden software that ran just well enough to let you get some work done, but not well enough to convince you that you didn't need the latest upgrade release.
Ask any Windows 95 user why they would want 98. Is there a long list of features that are new? Not really. Instead, it promised what every other Microsoft upgrade promised and continue to promise: greater stability, speed, performance, and compatibility. For those of you that refuse to get on the upgrade conveyor belt, you'll be left ass-out in the cold when MS declares end-of-life for your OS and stops releasing patches for it. Upgrade or get owned.
There are those of us that prefer choice and we generally use MacOS or Linux. So what if we don't have 1000 crap games and 3 good ones. So what if we can't download heaps of junk freeware. So what if we don't need virus protection software and commercial firewalls. We get along just fine without MS.
Actually I can't throw too many stones, because every call I get from an end user that has 215 pieces of spyware and adware clogging up their pc is money in the bank for me. The sad thing is, they think what they use is all that can be used without taking out a second mortgage to buy a G5 tower. One customer actually asked me about Linux, especially after he saw how beautiful it was running on my Dell laptop. Converted.
Well, originally they started with smaller dogs, like Dachshunds, but they couldn't get them to quit humping the trainer's legs or humping the victims they found in the rubble.
Horny little bastards, that lot is.
You're talking about a standard 'wet' limited slip differential, or LSD. Wet LSD's have a viscous solution inside that, as the spider gears generate friction by spinning opposite directions, solidifies to unify power delivery from the driveshaft. An open differential allows wheels to spin at differing speeds, usually giving more power to the wheel that's spinning more freely. This is bad in racing. It's also bad for 4wd cars like the Subaru WRX or the Mitsubishi Evolution VIII. Both cars have LSD standard.
The other type of LSD is a clutch-plate type. These can be adjusted for resistance to slippage by arranging the type and order of clutch plates in the LSD. A viscous LSD on the other hand is governed by the properties of the fluid, and is subject to failure under high loads (i.e. the liquid can only take so much friction before it breaks down and loses it's valuable properties). In general practice, for performance and cost, viscous LSD's are used, but for high performance, resilience, adjustability and durability, the clutch type LSD is preferable, but has a significantly higher cost.
That's about all I know about LSD's.
Only if they're trying to repo a stereo or television from the rental place by breaking in your front door.
Trespassing is defined by entering into the domicile in question by forceable means or without prior consent of the owner or occupant. Even if you leave all of your doors unlocked, if someone steps through that door and you weren't expecting them, you have the right to shoot. This was all made possible by what's also known as the "Make My Day" law, a nod to Dirty Harry. Many southern states with dense cities and high transient populations enacted this law awhile back.
Personally I see nothing wrong with it. If someone breaks down my front door at any time, and doesn't shout POLICE WE'RE COMING IN, then they're catching a slug somewhere in their person. Anyone who is willing to commit such an entry surely knows the risks they face, particularly in states like Texas where gun ownership is high.
Is killing another person for breaking into your home extreme? Well, that depends on how much you value your own and your family's life. I'm no gun nut, and don't like guns persay, but I feel that the law gives me the right to defend myself and my wife, and if a criminal will most likely be armed, I have no choice but to arm myself in kind. Not arming myself would be a failure of duty, a total lack of self preserving responsibility. I couldn't bear to think of myself or my wife getting shot in our home without having a chance to fight back or win.
Stinking of cheap cologne, hairspray and marijuana smoke probably goes a long way towards keeping people off of you as well. Add to that your primered 1984 Iroc Camaro with non-matching wheels leaking oil in the driveway, and you have a perfect front. Nothing to steal here, keep moving. As a matter of fact, if anyone breaks in, they'll probably get robbed instead, or at the very least get a contact high.
Old school stoners are still the scariest kind.
Actually in commercial boxed distros like Mandrake 10, the Nvidia and ATI drivers come with the distro. You will promptly upgrade these most of the time, but you are not forced to download them.
What do you expect from a 3 year old OS like XP anyway? You still have to patch the hell out of it if you ever reinstall it and during the patching time you're praying to the internet gods that your box doesn't get owned.