Considering that the average computer user uses the word memory when (s)he really means disk space , it shouldn't be surprising that a hard disk icon is confusing. Joe Schmoe probably doesn't want to know what a hard disk is or even what a file is. He wants to think in terms of papers and letters and pictures and songs, not in terms of files and bits and bytes. He only cares that there is enough space in his computer to hold them, not about how the computer stores them. He probably doesn't know what a hard disk looks like since he probably bought his computer from Best Buy and has never opened the case. And that's fine, because for him and for most people the computer is just a tool for writing papers, surfing the web, and playing music.
Not everyone needs to understand how or why their tools work. Should I hold you responsible for understanding quantum field theory since that's really why computers work?
In a multi-user system, end users (i.e. people who don't maintain the system but just use it to get work done) typically don't need to know all the details of the underlying system, and in general, I think trying to explain the hierarchy of/,/bin,/etc,/usr, etc. would just create additional confusion for most users. Furthermore, I can't imagine any reason you would want normal users to muck around with/bin or/etc on a multi-user Unix system. Most users just need to be able to run programs and manage their own documents and settings.
Thus Unix treats/home/<user> as the center of userland and retags it ~. (Okay, so ~ isn't exactly intuitive, but it is short and consistent with the Unix philosophy of brevity that brought us ls and cp) The typical Unix user experience involves logging into the system, running programs by name, and manipulating data stored in one's home directory. Power users can customize application settings via dotfiles in their home directory and/or install personal applications in their home directory (sysadmin permitting). In any case, users are protected from the naked glory of the filesystem unless they really want to see it, and sysadmins can protect themselves from user error.
Windows 2000 stores all user-specific settings and documents in C:\Documents and Settings\<user> but introduces a further hierarchy of Application Data, Desktop, My Documents, etc. Since a Windows user spends most of their time interacting with a desktop-metaphor GUI, the Windows user experience revolves around Desktop. Programs are accessed via shortcuts on the desktop, documents are stored in the My Documents folder that is accessible via a desktop shortcut, and settings are handled by applications (and stored in Application Data, but most users aren't concerned with this as long as their settings are preserved). Intrepid users can see the organization of the computer into disks and directories via the My Computer icon, but are under no obligation to do so, and again, sysadmins can protect the system from user error.
I'm not going to say that one of these philosophies is better than the other, but surely either is preferable to confused users running amok in/bin or/etc...
Here is how to make a BeOS install CD from a BeOS Personal Edition install.
Here is how to perform a bootstrap installation of BeOS Personal Edition onto a separate partition by using an intermediate BeOS Personal Edition installation on an existing FAT partition.
These tips come from the Miscellaneous BeOS tips category, which can be found here .
That might be a good idea if ads were the only reason to use popups.
Fortunately, the Mozilla team is one step ahead of you and has created a specific parameter for disabling new windows from popping up on page load or exit, which pretty much can only be used for ads or unsolicited redirects. From the Customizing Mozilla page which every Mozilla user should bookmark or know how to find (it's as easy as going to mozilla.org, clicking "Search", and searching for "Customizing Mozilla"), here is the appropriate line to add to prefs.js or user.js:
// More important, disable JS windows popping up a new window on load // (as lots of porn and spam sites do): user_pref("dom.disable_open_during_load", true);
I think you might be able to get started with a DATAQ WinDaq starter kit. Specifically, the DI-194 is only $13 + S&H for a four-channel, 8-bit DAQ that you just plug into your serial port.
I imagine that for a lot of people, the only reason they run Windows is because they need to be able to run Microsoft Office or at least be able to read Microsoft Office files. It's never a bad thing to have more choices, and it's highly unlikely that Microsoft could remove choices on the Linux platform since there are very few competing companies (Sun's the only one I can think of) for them to drive out of business.
Silver may be the most reflective material, but it is not the most reflective surface. It is possible to construct dielectric multilayers such that the reflected light constructively interfere and transmitted light destructively interferes and thus get 99.999999% reflectance. Unfortunately, such mirrors are only good for light of a specific wavelength coming from a specific direction, and if you know where the laser is coming from, you might as well recompute your trajectory to avoid it.
More of an issue is the mechanism by which metals reflect, which is for their electrons to absorb 100% of the light (distributed through a couple of skin depths of material) and re-emit the light back in the direction it came from. As a result, metal mirrors are very rarely used in high-power laser applications because they can fail catastrophically, and at relatively low powers compared to dielectric mirrors. That also means that making a really shiny metal artillery shell, missile, airplane or satellite won't protect you from a laser attack.
Probably the best defense you have against laser attack is the atmosphere, as something that's intended to damage metal will probably ionize the air it's traveling through and either deflect itself by local changing the refractive index, or block itself by making the air an opaque plasma.
True true. And now you know (to first-order) the minimum latency you could ever expect to get from Chicago to Amsterdam. That is, until we start laying fiber through the Earth's core rather than along the surface...;-)
That no matter how big the pipe is, you can't reduce ping times past a certain limit, right? You've got the whole 'speed of light' thing tripping you up. There is a certain latency that can't be defeated, no matter how many gigabits your pipe is.
Most high-performance networking applications (besides Quake or Counter-Strike:-p) are bandwidth-limited, not latency-limited. It's alright that it takes a bit 67 milliseconds to get from Chicago to Amsterdam as long as you can push a gigabyte per second down the pipe.
Check out this dmesg [ps2linux.com] on the site. Look familiar?!?. Ya I though so.
Not surprising, since he leads that excerpt with "Below is the output of dmesg from the Linux Kit running off a japanese version of the playstation 2"...:-p
Well, there is this article (hyperlink from the original posted link, where Shin'ichi Okamoto, senior vice president and chief technical officer of Sony Computer Entertainment, said that although he couldn't provide a U.S. release date for the PS2 Linux Kit yet, "we'll be able to announce it soon."
The Linux Kit is designed exclusively for the Japanese model of "PS2", SCPH-10000,SCPH-15000 and SCPH-18000. Since these models are for domestic use in Japan, the Linux Kit is only available in Japan.
At this point, there is no plan to release the Linux Kit for non-Japanese model of "PS2".
Overseas delivery is not available.
I for one hope this if for real, because for me, like for timothy, this would be the straw that breaks the camel's back and convinces me to purchase a PS2.
With all the hype surrounding the ports collection in FreeBSD, the package repository is often forgotten. In my case, it is also forgotten because my/var partition is too small to hold the temporary files for large packages like mozilla, but I have used it for some smaller packages. For example, it was a whole lot easier and faster to install the cvsup package rather than build the port (which requires building Modula-2, of all things). Just look up the URL for the package, pkg_add <package URL>, and FreeBSD does its magic.
In addition, people are missing the point of the ports collection. In Unix, it is better, at least for some applications, to build them from the sources so that you can optimize them for your system, just install the functionality you need to minimize bloat, port the application to a new platform, etc. An example, might be building Apache with support for OpenSSL and/or mod_perl and/or PHP. At the same time, the ports collection provides a clean way to remove an application instead of trying to figure out from the makefile what files were placed where.
The package management system in FreeBSD does have a pretty significant shortcoming, in my opinion, of not having a clean way to upgrade an installed application or library. Instead just installs the new version alongside the old one. In a sense, this is good thing because it ensures that you don't break existing applications, but a lot of times you end up with reduntant applications and libraries. Yes, I could pkg_delete it by hand, but I'm lazy, damnit, and want something like apt-get upgrade and/or apt-get dist-upgrade.
There's a good chance that all of its ads come from one domain (I know this was true of the popups for KaZaA; they all came from twistedhumor.com, IIRC), so you could just add that domain to your restricted sites under Internet Explorer, turn off all privileges (Java, Javascript, yada yada) for all restricted sites, and curb the epidemic of popup windows.
I can see Nvidia's next generation GPU to have embeded DRAM. This one is soo close.
Speaking of which, whatever happened to Bitboys and their Glaze3D part which was supposed to revolutionize the graphics market by introducing embedded DRAM?
...for why the experiments don't agree with the theory. In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice, there is...
Anyhow, if the results of all experiments had to agree with theory, undergraduate physics labs would have disproved all the laws of physics a long time ago...:-p
Slashdot Mirror
Considering that the average computer user uses the word memory when (s)he really means disk space , it shouldn't be surprising that a hard disk icon is confusing. Joe Schmoe probably doesn't want to know what a hard disk is or even what a file is. He wants to think in terms of papers and letters and pictures and songs, not in terms of files and bits and bytes. He only cares that there is enough space in his computer to hold them, not about how the computer stores them. He probably doesn't know what a hard disk looks like since he probably bought his computer from Best Buy and has never opened the case. And that's fine, because for him and for most people the computer is just a tool for writing papers, surfing the web, and playing music.
Not everyone needs to understand how or why their tools work. Should I hold you responsible for understanding quantum field theory since that's really why computers work?
In a multi-user system, end users (i.e. people who don't maintain the system but just use it to get work done) typically don't need to know all the details of the underlying system, and in general, I think trying to explain the hierarchy of /, /bin, /etc, /usr, etc. would just create additional confusion for most users. Furthermore, I can't imagine any reason you would want normal users to muck around with /bin or /etc on a multi-user Unix system. Most users just need to be able to run programs and manage their own documents and settings.
/home/<user> as the center of userland and retags it ~. (Okay, so ~ isn't exactly intuitive, but it is short and consistent with the Unix philosophy of brevity that brought us ls and cp) The typical Unix user experience involves logging into the system, running programs by name, and manipulating data stored in one's home directory. Power users can customize application settings via dotfiles in their home directory and/or install personal applications in their home directory (sysadmin permitting). In any case, users are protected from the naked glory of the filesystem unless they really want to see it, and sysadmins can protect themselves from user error.
/bin or /etc...
Thus Unix treats
Windows 2000 stores all user-specific settings and documents in C:\Documents and Settings\<user> but introduces a further hierarchy of Application Data, Desktop, My Documents, etc. Since a Windows user spends most of their time interacting with a desktop-metaphor GUI, the Windows user experience revolves around Desktop. Programs are accessed via shortcuts on the desktop, documents are stored in the My Documents folder that is accessible via a desktop shortcut, and settings are handled by applications (and stored in Application Data, but most users aren't concerned with this as long as their settings are preserved). Intrepid users can see the organization of the computer into disks and directories via the My Computer icon, but are under no obligation to do so, and again, sysadmins can protect the system from user error.
I'm not going to say that one of these philosophies is better than the other, but surely either is preferable to confused users running amok in
Here is how to make a BeOS install CD from a BeOS Personal Edition install.
Here is how to perform a bootstrap installation of BeOS Personal Edition onto a separate partition by using an intermediate BeOS Personal Edition installation on an existing FAT partition.
These tips come from the Miscellaneous BeOS tips category, which can be found here
.
For those like me who kept getting a 404 looking for the PDF, an HTML version of the entire article is available here.
I think it might be this one. If not, check out this page to see the other options available at Radio Shack.
I think you might be able to get started with a DATAQ WinDaq starter kit. Specifically, the DI-194 is only $13 + S&H for a four-channel, 8-bit DAQ that you just plug into your serial port.
I imagine that for a lot of people, the only reason they run Windows is because they need to be able to run Microsoft Office or at least be able to read Microsoft Office files. It's never a bad thing to have more choices, and it's highly unlikely that Microsoft could remove choices on the Linux platform since there are very few competing companies (Sun's the only one I can think of) for them to drive out of business.
Silver may be the most reflective material, but it is not the most reflective surface. It is possible to construct dielectric multilayers such that the reflected light constructively interfere and transmitted light destructively interferes and thus get 99.999999% reflectance. Unfortunately, such mirrors are only good for light of a specific wavelength coming from a specific direction, and if you know where the laser is coming from, you might as well recompute your trajectory to avoid it.
More of an issue is the mechanism by which metals reflect, which is for their electrons to absorb 100% of the light (distributed through a couple of skin depths of material) and re-emit the light back in the direction it came from. As a result, metal mirrors are very rarely used in high-power laser applications because they can fail catastrophically, and at relatively low powers compared to dielectric mirrors. That also means that making a really shiny metal artillery shell, missile, airplane or satellite won't protect you from a laser attack.
Probably the best defense you have against laser attack is the atmosphere, as something that's intended to damage metal will probably ionize the air it's traveling through and either deflect itself by local changing the refractive index, or block itself by making the air an opaque plasma.
True true. And now you know (to first-order) the minimum latency you could ever expect to get from Chicago to Amsterdam. That is, until we start laying fiber through the Earth's core rather than along the surface... ;-)
That article is dated October 24th, 2001, so the question is whether that pre- or postdates the disclaimer on the PS2 Linux Kit website stating that
I for one hope this if for real, because for me, like for timothy, this would be the straw that breaks the camel's back and convinces me to purchase a PS2.
The sight of AOL running on a PS2 makes me very, very sad... :-p
I'll bet a shiny penny on "not very long"... ;-)
Surprise surprise, we've /.ed them...
Many thanks to those who replied and nicely straightened my dumb newbie problems out. ;-)
With all the hype surrounding the ports collection in FreeBSD, the package repository is often forgotten. In my case, it is also forgotten because my /var partition is too small to hold the temporary files for large packages like mozilla, but I have used it for some smaller packages. For example, it was a whole lot easier and faster to install the cvsup package rather than build the port (which requires building Modula-2, of all things). Just look up the URL for the package, pkg_add <package URL>, and FreeBSD does its magic.
In addition, people are missing the point of the ports collection. In Unix, it is better, at least for some applications, to build them from the sources so that you can optimize them for your system, just install the functionality you need to minimize bloat, port the application to a new platform, etc. An example, might be building Apache with support for OpenSSL and/or mod_perl and/or PHP. At the same time, the ports collection provides a clean way to remove an application instead of trying to figure out from the makefile what files were placed where.
The package management system in FreeBSD does have a pretty significant shortcoming, in my opinion, of not having a clean way to upgrade an installed application or library. Instead just installs the new version alongside the old one. In a sense, this is good thing because it ensures that you don't break existing applications, but a lot of times you end up with reduntant applications and libraries. Yes, I could pkg_delete it by hand, but I'm lazy, damnit, and want something like apt-get upgrade and/or apt-get dist-upgrade.
There's a good chance that all of its ads come from one domain (I know this was true of the popups for KaZaA; they all came from twistedhumor.com, IIRC), so you could just add that domain to your restricted sites under Internet Explorer, turn off all privileges (Java, Javascript, yada yada) for all restricted sites, and curb the epidemic of popup windows.
...for why the experiments don't agree with the theory. In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice, there is...
:-p
Anyhow, if the results of all experiments had to agree with theory, undergraduate physics labs would have disproved all the laws of physics a long time ago...