Unless you feel you need the full, raw power of LaTeX, I would recommend using Lyx. It is a 'what-you-see-is-what-you-mean' graphic editor for LaTeX. I used it all through college for writing electrical engineering lab reports, and it was many time easier to use than Word. The result was so beautiful it even blew away my professors. And that was a few years ago, so it is probably even better now.
As close as I can tell, there is only one season between the last (new) epsiode broadcast on Fox (which was the season finale for season four) and the epsiode being broadcasted tonight on SciFi (the preimer for season six). Season Five was only on ShowTime, though there are rumors that SciFi is going to run all of the old Stargate SG-1 episodes in the afternoon like they do with Babylon 5 in the future.
I only saw the first 12 or so episodes of season five on ShowTime before I moved (and lost access to pay channels). The linked slashdot article basically sums up the fifth season. I hope they turn it around now that ShowTime is no longer in control.
The batteries are only an issue if you do not follow the initial charging instructions. The first time you charge the batteries, you must completely charge them for something like 12 hours. Don't stop when the guage says full, keep charging them for the specified time. This calibrates the battery meter, otherwise you end up with what everyone else reports as bad batteries. If you did not do this the first time, do a hard reset and then follow the instruction, it should restore your Revo to working order.
As for an inexpensive organizer they are the best! Got my from $144 from Sparco.com, and it is the PDA I have been looking for ever since I got my PalmPilot (yes, the original 1/2MB version). My handwriting is horrible, so the keyboard is perfect!:)
Good luck finding one. I just hit pricewatch.com and eBay with no luck. It appears that both the USR and the SMC products are already out of production.
Maybe the people who developed this cornered the
market on these WAPs first, then released their
software knowing every Linux geek would want one.
And they say you can't make money off of open source.:)
As one who has a VXA drive at home and work, I highly recommend them! They work great with Linux, no problems encountered was so ever. As for transfer speed, I typically see 1 MB/sec to 2.5 MB/sec transfer rates from Ultra (Wide) disks to a narrow drive (VXA drives are available as LVD wide and SE narrow). One oddness of the drive is that write speed is actually faster than read speed, usually about 0.5 to 0.75 MB/sec. Nothing major, but just interesting.
As for price, they do come in about $1k, but they have been having a promo deal going for the last couple of months (always extended by one more month lately!). With the deal, you can get the drive at almost 50% off (one drive only of course). Sign up for their email newsletter for more details on the promo deal. Though, tapes are moderately expensive, three sizes, ranging from $30 to $80 each, last I checked.
Overall, they are very good drives and I would recommend them as the next step up after Onstream and Travan style drives, and one step below DLT style drives. They provide many of the benefits of the Exabyte Mammoth drives, but at a much lower cost. -------------------------------
There are two tools that I know of that might
be of help. They are:
tut: "Tell Unix To..." by Jim Barbour. A command that will run a non-interactive shell command on a user-defined class of machines. (No URL handy, sorry).
cfengine: A generalized, powerful,
shell like language for dealing with large numbers of machines. (http://www.iu.hioslo.no/cfengine/)
I have never used either, but have read some documentation on cfengine. cfengine looks like it would be more of an automative tool than tut, while tut might be handy for quick and dirty updates. Anyway, my two cents. ------------------------------------------ ----------------------------------
There is a full port of the GNU toolchain, gcc, gas, ld, newlib, etc... to 68HC11/12 available. It is not included in the distribution sources of the toolchain yet, but instead comes as a set of easily applied patches. The patches are available at http://home.worldnet.fr/~stcarr ez/m68hc11_port.html. There is also some support for a gdb port and 68HC11 emulator, but no 68HC12 emulator yet.
I recently used this toolchain in a EE senior design project (at school) and it saved me a lot of time and headache. Write your code in C, compile and link it for the 68HC12, and download it. Could not be easier. There is also a mailing list to post questions/problems to about this port as well.
The 68HC12 is a great microcontroller, and with these tools, Linux becomes an excellent development host. Good luck! ------------------------------------------- ---------------------------------
Some one has way too much time and old hardware on their hands? I wonder if version 2.0 will include support for scanners? One of the older HP Scanjets already has an easter egg that will play "Ode to Joy" with the scanner head.
Wonder what other computer components could be used to make music? Hard disk spinning up/down or acessing, removable media drives, cd-rom trays going in/out, tape drives running, etc...:) ---------------------------------------------- ------------------------------
My TP360 has the ability to suspend to RAM, essentially just stops spinning the hard disk and puts the processor in a low power mode. Yea, this means it still draws power, but hardly any at all. It can last several days (never really tested how long) on a single battery with no problem. Suspend time is only 10-15 seconds and resume is the same amount of time. Some laptops consider this standby mode, but I think in my case it is a bit closer to suspend. And it works from Linux!:)
My two cents. ------------------------------------------ ----------------------------------
As one who has (and does) use this, I can tell you it works, and works well. I have my scanner (SCSI Mustek) connected to my headless P100 (mp3 player), running Linux and saned (via inetd). Then I open GIMP on a Linux workstation, and use the SANE plugin for GIMP to scan with. Just point it across the network (see docs for detail) and it works! Even on a 10mbit network (though switched) it is plenty fast (think my scanner is the bottle neck on this one).
I have never used a client for any other platform than Linux. I didn't even knew there were other clients. Could be useful... ------------------------------------------------ ----------------------------
What you are looking for is ipalias, it is an option in the Linux kernel. It allows you to create virtual network devices on top of physical ones. If you have eth0 as a physical NIC and an IP address, you can then create eth0:n with ipalias, such that for each value of 'n', it is a different virtual network card with a different ip address. So eth0 can be 192.168.4.1 on the 192.168.4.0/24 network, and eth0:1 can be 192.168.5.1 on the 192.168.5.0/24 network, but both are the same physical card connected to the same physical medium. Look at network howtos and kernels docs for more information.
Now, you can simple setup two networks (one for each end of the room) and have the middle computer route between the two subnets. Or you can use brigding if you want only a single subnet, but the linux bridging code is still experimental. Hope this helps. ------------------------------------------ ----------------------------------
This is a great idea, and the way it should be done. But it assumes an ideal world, which the real world, including universities, do not fit.
At my school, we can not use QoS because our router is too slow and old. On top of that, we can not afford a new router (private school). So, we are pretty much left with blocking Napster, et. al. based on ports (I think that is the way they did it, might have block the Napster servers as well).
Until school's have the technology and knowledgable administrators required to implement QoS, these issues are going to be a problem. Just my two cents. ------------------------------------------ ----------------------------------
I use an Eagle Creek bag, don't exactly know what the model name was though (had it 2.5 years). It doesn't have a whole lot in the way of padding, but I just took a keyboard wrist rest I had and cut it to fit in the bottom to act as a cushion for the laptop.
The bag has three compartments, one large one for the laptop and papers, and two smaller ones for all the extras, cables, digital cameras, calculators, extra battery, etc... The really nice thing about this bag is that you can carry it like a brief case, attach a strap and carry it over one shoulder like a "satchel", or pull out back-pack straps from a small compartment and it becomes a backpack. Three in one, for what every you need.
It is built very well, and actually has already outlasted one laptop (a lemon of one:( ).
When I picked out this bag, I threw everything I wanted to fit into it, including the laptop, into a more standard backpack I already had, went down to the store, and sat there, seeing which bag everything fit in the best. Made a few sales people nervous, but made sure I got a bag that worked with a minimum of hassle. Anyway, my two cents. ------------------------------------------ ----------------------------------
Yea, those Win98 Dummies books are excellent for soldering on. They are thick enough that I never burn through and damage the table I am working on. And yet are worthless enough that I don't feel bad that I have ruined anything valueable.:) ---------------------------------------------- ------------------------------
Re:Covad has been a nightmare.
on
VDSL Demoed
·
· Score: 1
I can second that story in Broomfield, CO. USWest told us sorry, we can't get you DSL, but we would be glad to get you a frame relay, i.e. T1. Loop charges weren't too bad ($300/month) but ISP fees about knocked me out of my chair ($700/month).
Then about a month later a salesman from Covad came along and sold my boss on SDSL (this is for a company), and he signed up right away (our ISDN stinks).
Well nothing happend for two months and then all of a sudden we get a message from Covad saying that they can not get us DSL service, we are too far from the CO. ARRG!!! US West told us that three months ago!
Wish they had just checked with the local loop carrier before even wasting our time getting our hopes up! That, and this business is in a decently large business park, and the fact that we can't get anything faster than 128k ISDN (which is on a good day with the wind at its back) is pretty sad!
Now Covad said they might be able to get us a 144kbps Telebit service thing... We are looking into it, but not with very high hopes. That 384kpbs with option to double DSL was very sweet looking. Too bad it turned out to be another pipedream. Oh well, back to work! ------------------------------------------- ---------------------------------
Ok, since it has become pretty clear from the discussion so far that paper is here to stay, how about changing the way printed page is generated by a computer?
Currently we place blank sheets of paper bought from elsewhere into a printer, printo them, and when done with the printed sheets either take them to a recycling center or a land fill. Instead, what if there was a printer that could take printed sheets, process them somehow, and the result would be freshly printed sheets? The technology to do this is not real clear or feasible at the moment, but since when has that stopped mankind before?:)
This reminds me a bit of Babylon 5 where they had small plastic sheets they used as paper (which appeared to be clear and difficult to read against anything but a solid, contrasting background). Something like that would be easy to recycle directly for re-use.
Anyway, just an idea. ------------------------------------------- ---------------------------------
A company, a large and well known one at that, gets a clue, and releases "true" open source software using GPL. This is unlike Sun, or even Netscape, which comes up with thier own license that we debate back and forth if it really is open source / free software or not. But 3Com saves us that trouble, and uses what is well known as valid open source / free software license. And what do people do? They still attack them for not doing things such that BSD and other non-GPL OS can play!
No wonder some companies are hesitant to get involved with open source, or worse come up with thier own license. No matter how hard they try, they still get attacked!
These drivers are for Linux and only Linux. Not to menition they are derivates off of Donald Becker's drivers anyway, which are GPL to begin with. So, in other words, 3Com did a "good thing", so layoff! ----------------------------------------- -----------------------------------
I agree that Sun's recent attempts at open source software (Java and thier SCSL thing) have been lack luster at best, confusing at worst.
But I do have to take issue with your attempted guilt trip upon Sparc/Linux developers. Just because a company is questionable in thier attitude towards Linux, does that mean us GPL/Linux developers should not support thier harware? If this was true, then a lot of platforms, and hardware in general would not be supported by Linux.
The issue of the companies politics towards open source should have no bearing on Linux/GPL development efforst aimed towards thier hardware, espeically if there is little or no support from the company for that development effort. If Linux for Sparc did not exist, then I would be stuck running Solaris on my Sparc IPX web server, something I have done in the past, and it is very painful!
So, lay off the Linux/Sparc/GPL developers, and don't get us involved with open source politics (at least this one). And maybe, through a true open source operating system and software for Sun's hardware, maybe they will see the light and change thier mind. At the very least we provide a more "pure" view of Open Source on Sun/Sparc hardware!
Proud to be running Linux (Debian & RedHat) on Sun SparcStations!
Someone (or ones) seriously need a visit to a good shrink. If you are going to pay $500+ just to advance in a computer game, you would be better off spending it on a good shrink to help you get back your life. Or better yet, just plain go out and buy one!
Check out www.dcginc.com and www.harddata.com, they have the best prices (and most highly recommended) companies to buy an end-user, workstation variety Alpha from. Don't buy one from Dig^H^H^HCompaq, you will pay way, way too much.
Probably a 500MHz 21164 would be more than ample for your friend. That is more powerful by a bit than PII-400/450 on integer, and a lot more powerful on floating point. And the price for those machines stripped this summer was $1.5k, and should have dropped by now even further with the release of 21264. You should be able to build a nice system for under $2k.
The biggest advantage of Alphas over Intels is you break free of Intel's strangle hold on the PC market, you get a neat sounding machine, and it is still compatible with most PCI (and some ISA) cards. Not to mention, a PII-xxx sounds like just another old PC, but a Alpha Workstation inspires awe in your friends, especially Linux people who know what Alphas are. Basically they make cool, powerful (esp FP), Linux boxes!:)
PS. The XPS1000 and the dual 21264 machines look nice, but a bit underpowered. I think I will wait for the quad 21264 before I lay any money down.:)
The network port on the back of that machine is known as a AUI port, originally used for thick net. What you need to connect it to 10baseT is a transciever, which can be picked up most places for $20-$30. It is a rectangular box (about the size of a medium box of matches) with the AUI port on one end and a TP port on the other. Plug it in, and you have network!:)
Slashdot Mirror
Unless you feel you need the full, raw power of LaTeX, I would recommend using Lyx. It is a 'what-you-see-is-what-you-mean' graphic editor for LaTeX. I used it all through college for writing electrical engineering lab reports, and it was many time easier to use than Word. The result was so beautiful it even blew away my professors. And that was a few years ago, so it is probably even better now.
As close as I can tell, there is only one season between the last (new) epsiode broadcast on Fox (which was the season finale for season four) and the epsiode being broadcasted tonight on SciFi (the preimer for season six). Season Five was only on ShowTime, though there are rumors that SciFi is going to run all of the old Stargate SG-1 episodes in the afternoon like they do with Babylon 5 in the future.
I only saw the first 12 or so episodes of season five on ShowTime before I moved (and lost access to pay channels). The linked slashdot article basically sums up the fifth season. I hope they turn it around now that ShowTime is no longer in control.
As for an inexpensive organizer they are the best! Got my from $144 from Sparco.com, and it is the PDA I have been looking for ever since I got my PalmPilot (yes, the original 1/2MB version). My handwriting is horrible, so the keyboard is perfect! :)
Maybe the people who developed this cornered the market on these WAPs first, then released their software knowing every Linux geek would want one. And they say you can't make money off of open source. :)
As for price, they do come in about $1k, but they have been having a promo deal going for the last couple of months (always extended by one more month lately!). With the deal, you can get the drive at almost 50% off (one drive only of course). Sign up for their email newsletter for more details on the promo deal. Though, tapes are moderately expensive, three sizes, ranging from $30 to $80 each, last I checked.
Overall, they are very good drives and I would recommend them as the next step up after Onstream and Travan style drives, and one step below DLT style drives. They provide many of the benefits of the Exabyte Mammoth drives, but at a much lower cost.
-------------------------------
- tut: "Tell Unix To..." by Jim Barbour. A command that will run a non-interactive shell command on a user-defined class of machines. (No URL handy, sorry).
- cfengine: A generalized, powerful,
shell like language for dealing with large numbers of machines. (http://www.iu.hioslo.no/cfengine/)
I have never used either, but have read some documentation on cfengine. cfengine looks like it would be more of an automative tool than tut, while tut might be handy for quick and dirty updates. Anyway, my two cents.-----------------------------------------
I recently used this toolchain in a EE senior design project (at school) and it saved me a lot of time and headache. Write your code in C, compile and link it for the 68HC12, and download it. Could not be easier. There is also a mailing list to post questions/problems to about this port as well.
The 68HC12 is a great microcontroller, and with these tools, Linux becomes an excellent development host. Good luck!- ---------------------------------
------------------------------------------
Wonder what other computer components could be used to make music? Hard disk spinning up/down or acessing, removable media drives, cd-rom trays going in/out, tape drives running, etc... :)- ------------------------------
---------------------------------------------
My two cents.- ----------------------------------
-----------------------------------------
I have never used a client for any other platform than Linux. I didn't even knew there were other clients. Could be useful...- ----------------------------
-----------------------------------------------
Now, you can simple setup two networks (one for each end of the room) and have the middle computer route between the two subnets. Or you can use brigding if you want only a single subnet, but the linux bridging code is still experimental. Hope this helps.- ----------------------------------
-----------------------------------------
At my school, we can not use QoS because our router is too slow and old. On top of that, we can not afford a new router (private school). So, we are pretty much left with blocking Napster, et. al. based on ports (I think that is the way they did it, might have block the Napster servers as well).
Until school's have the technology and knowledgable administrators required to implement QoS, these issues are going to be a problem. Just my two cents.- ----------------------------------
-----------------------------------------
The bag has three compartments, one large one for the laptop and papers, and two smaller ones for all the extras, cables, digital cameras, calculators, extra battery, etc... The really nice thing about this bag is that you can carry it like a brief case, attach a strap and carry it over one shoulder like a "satchel", or pull out back-pack straps from a small compartment and it becomes a backpack. Three in one, for what every you need.
It is built very well, and actually has already outlasted one laptop (a lemon of one :( ).
When I picked out this bag, I threw everything I wanted to fit into it, including the laptop, into a more standard backpack I already had, went down to the store, and sat there, seeing which bag everything fit in the best. Made a few sales people nervous, but made sure I got a bag that worked with a minimum of hassle. Anyway, my two cents.- ----------------------------------
-----------------------------------------
Yea, those Win98 Dummies books are excellent for soldering on. They are thick enough that I never burn through and damage the table I am working on. And yet are worthless enough that I don't feel bad that I have ruined anything valueable. :)- ------------------------------
---------------------------------------------
Then about a month later a salesman from Covad came along and sold my boss on SDSL (this is for a company), and he signed up right away (our ISDN stinks).
Well nothing happend for two months and then all of a sudden we get a message from Covad saying that they can not get us DSL service, we are too far from the CO. ARRG!!! US West told us that three months ago!
Wish they had just checked with the local loop carrier before even wasting our time getting our hopes up! That, and this business is in a decently large business park, and the fact that we can't get anything faster than 128k ISDN (which is on a good day with the wind at its back) is pretty sad!
Now Covad said they might be able to get us a 144kbps Telebit service thing... We are looking into it, but not with very high hopes. That 384kpbs with option to double DSL was very sweet looking. Too bad it turned out to be another pipedream. Oh well, back to work!- ---------------------------------
------------------------------------------
Currently we place blank sheets of paper bought from elsewhere into a printer, printo them, and when done with the printed sheets either take them to a recycling center or a land fill. Instead, what if there was a printer that could take printed sheets, process them somehow, and the result would be freshly printed sheets? The technology to do this is not real clear or feasible at the moment, but since when has that stopped mankind before? :)
This reminds me a bit of Babylon 5 where they had small plastic sheets they used as paper (which appeared to be clear and difficult to read against anything but a solid, contrasting background). Something like that would be easy to recycle directly for re-use.
Anyway, just an idea.- ---------------------------------
------------------------------------------
-----------------------------------------------
A company, a large and well known one at that, gets a clue, and releases "true" open source software using GPL. This is unlike Sun, or even Netscape, which comes up with thier own license that we debate back and forth if it really is open source / free software or not. But 3Com saves us that trouble, and uses what is well known as valid open source / free software license. And what do people do? They still attack them for not doing things such that BSD and other non-GPL OS can play!
No wonder some companies are hesitant to get involved with open source, or worse come up with thier own license. No matter how hard they try, they still get attacked!
These drivers are for Linux and only Linux. Not to menition they are derivates off of Donald Becker's drivers anyway, which are GPL to begin with. So, in other words, 3Com did a "good thing", so layoff!- -----------------------------------
----------------------------------------
But I do have to take issue with your attempted guilt trip upon Sparc/Linux developers. Just because a company is questionable in thier attitude towards Linux, does that mean us GPL/Linux developers should not support thier harware? If this was true, then a lot of platforms, and hardware in general would not be supported by Linux.
The issue of the companies politics towards open source should have no bearing on Linux/GPL development efforst aimed towards thier hardware, espeically if there is little or no support from the company for that development effort. If Linux for Sparc did not exist, then I would be stuck running Solaris on my Sparc IPX web server, something I have done in the past, and it is very painful!
So, lay off the Linux/Sparc/GPL developers, and don't get us involved with open source politics (at least this one). And maybe, through a true open source operating system and software for Sun's hardware, maybe they will see the light and change thier mind. At the very least we provide a more "pure" view of Open Source on Sun/Sparc hardware!
Proud to be running Linux (Debian & RedHat) on Sun SparcStations!
-----------------------------------------------
Someone (or ones) seriously need a visit to a good shrink. If you are going to pay $500+ just to advance in a computer game, you would be better off spending it on a good shrink to help you get back your life. Or better yet, just plain go out and buy one!
Check out www.dcginc.com and www.harddata.com, they have the best prices (and most highly recommended) companies to buy an end-user, workstation variety Alpha from. Don't buy one from Dig^H^H^HCompaq, you will pay way, way too much.
:)
:)
Probably a 500MHz 21164 would be more than ample for your friend. That is more powerful by a bit than PII-400/450 on integer, and a lot more powerful on floating point. And the price for those machines stripped this summer was $1.5k, and should have dropped by now even further with the release of 21264. You should be able to build a nice system for under $2k.
The biggest advantage of Alphas over Intels is you break free of Intel's strangle hold on the PC market, you get a neat sounding machine, and it is still compatible with most PCI (and some ISA) cards. Not to mention, a PII-xxx sounds like just another old PC, but a Alpha Workstation inspires awe in your friends, especially Linux people who know what Alphas are. Basically they make cool, powerful (esp FP), Linux boxes!
PS. The XPS1000 and the dual 21264 machines look nice, but a bit underpowered. I think I will wait for the quad 21264 before I lay any money down.
The network port on the back of that machine is known as a AUI port, originally used for thick net. What you need to connect it to 10baseT is a transciever, which can be picked up most places for $20-$30. It is a rectangular box (about the size of a medium box of matches) with the AUI port on one end and a TP port on the other. Plug it in, and you have network! :)