The reason why (and I can't believe I'm typing this) was that the mouse pad that Dell provided was too shiny and reflective to be used with their own, branded, optical mouse.
My current work PC - purchased 18 months ago - arrived with the same issue. The USB optical scroll mouse Dell ships across the board with Dimensions, Optiplexes, and Precision Workstations is an OEM'd Logitech USB optical mouse. This is an old design (probably 4-5 years) and it is truly very picky about the surface it is used on. Plus, the scroll wheel on this mouse is very noisy (squeaky). Talk about cutting corners - this is a really cheap mouse, and you get what you pay for.
So, why didn't HardOCP purchase the system with a Logitech G5 or similar gaming mouse? I'm sure Dell sells some decent mice, but you'd have to purchase one separately. Dell severely limits the choice of mice specified with their systems, and this is one _major_ problem I have with them.
debian can be updated on the fly with minimal service interruptions
Sure, as long as you don't update the kernel. However, what we're talking about here is the "Live Upgrade" feature of Solaris. It's only available for Sun's higher-end hardware (it depends on features of said hardware) but it allows *entire OS upgrades* with no service interruptions, in fact *no reboot*. This is vastly different from the fact that Debian (or any other Linux distribution or *BSD) lets you upgrade userland server daemons without needing a reboot.
A Mac mini is perfect... but this card is pitiful. I don't want to give him something that can't be easily upgraded that starts out this poor.
I purchased a Mac Mini and have been using it since March - it was my first Mac since the Mac 128K I got for Christmas 1984. I run it at 1600x1200 on a Hitachi invar shadow mask monitor, and I have no image/video problems whatsoever. So, if you see the video chipset/32MB video RAM as a problem, it's really not a problem unless your father plans on using this "appliance" machine for gaming or serious 3D work.
The _major_ shortfall in the Mini is the laptop disk - it can be excruciatingly slow - not so much in sustained transfer, but occasionally it (like various laptops I've used as well) seems to stall on read or write operations, and you end up constantly waiting for the disk to come out of a stupor. I don't have any experience with Apple laptops, but I've seen the exact same effect (and "clunking" noise) in PC laptops.
I had an extra 80GB Seagate 8MB cache 3.5" hard drive around and bought a $30 Firewire enclosure, onto which I installed OS X and now use as my boot disk. Now the system is never waiting for the disk to get with the program and overall the system feels less like a slow laptop and more like a decent desktop machine. I have a relatively high-end PC workstation at work for mechanical design, and the Mini never feels slow in comparison. BTW, the PC machine has an Nvidia Quadro FX1000 128MB workstation card, but for 2D at 1600x1200 they're equals.
Re:Mach is the "guts" of Mac OS X.
on
Why FreeBSD
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· Score: 1
>> FreeBSD is the the guts of Apple's Mac OS X.
> Mach, not FreeBSD, is the "guts" of Mac OS X. The code borrowed from FreeBSD is mostly userspace code.
I'd say Mach is more the "brain" of OS X, seeing as it's the kernel, while the FreeBSD (and the other BSD stuff mixed in there) userland really is more like the "guts" of OS X.
I simply cannot imagine that getting that much radiation every day would be unharmful for your body.
I've wondered that myself - there's a cell tower just outside the back of my employer's building. I've been here for almost 5 years, and so far haven't noticed any adverse health effects, butI have noticed something else - FM radio reception here is terrible - anyone know if this could be related to the nearby cell tower? I can't compare reception before and after, as the tower's been here all along.
Re:Shame on you, editors
on
Cubicle Privacy
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· Score: 2, Informative
No fans
Yes fans - there is a variable speed fan that slowly spins up under heavy processor utilization and slowly spins down when processor utilization goes down. However, even at full speed the fan isn't too intrusive.
Speaking of Safari nuances, anyone know if there's a way to pull down a list of recently typed URLs in the Safari address bar? Most other browsers allow this, but in my limited use of Safari, if this is possible I haven't found it. That's one of my 2 gripes with Safari; the other one is lack of back/forward/etc. by right-clicking in a page. Again, most if not all other browsers have this convenient capability.
So this would be the computer equivalent of putting Formula One racing slicks on a Yugo?
Actually, that wouldn't be as outlandish as you seem to be implying. Formula 1 banned slicks several years ago, mandating grooved tires. As a result, any Formula 1 slicks you might acquire for your Yugo would be used tires and, frankly, putting used tires on a Yugo is pretty much SOP;-)
He had to keep WindowsNT running on some big iron (I really wish my memory was good enough to tell you what kind.)
Windows NT was never ported to anything that could be called "big iron." Windows NT only ever ran on i386, Alpha, and MIPS. Now, if your "friend" is one of those PC weenies who considers a highly-speced PC a mainframe, then he should buy a clue with all the money he saved by not buying a real mainframe.
He claimed that WinNT was the last version that would support mainframes.
Again, he was wrong - (fortunately) no version of Windows was ever ported to run on mainframe hardware, i.e. "big iron."
Re:Openvms is downloadable too. Most reliable OS.
on
Solaris 10 Released
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· Score: 1
What the fsck are you talking about - OpenVMS is *not* downloadable. There is a VMS hobbyist program, where signing up and obtaining a license is free, but the actual OS (for VAX or Alpha) is only available on physical media for a mere $30. Still an incredible deal for a legendary operating system, and if I had any VAX or Alpha hardware I would plunk down my $30 without blinking.
I'd not mind if this allowed us to escape the "non-supported" part of Solaris by allowing 32bit SPARC machines and the peripherals they run
I would hope it might be possible to have UltraSPARC I processors supported as well. Ultra 1s and Ultra 2s are bulletproof and, these days, dirt cheap.
It's also one of the most useless OS's in the world with an unmodified install! Not really... have you ever run NetBSD? NetBSD doesn't even configure your network interfaces by default - so it's actually more secure by default than OpenBSD, because it has no network connectivity. Seriously, the "all services off by default" is why OpenBSD can make the claim you made. Actually, a default install of OpenBSD does have a few daemons running through inetd - but they are so thoroughly audited that they no longer pose an ominous threat. Besides all that, OpenBSD is really one of the easisest OSs to turn into a full (and secure) web/mail/file server - just change a few lines in/etc/rc.conf and you're there.
Why do so many people insist on referring to the Mac Mini as headless? A headless computer is one that has no graphical console or graphical capabilities (has no head.) My Sun servers are headless in they do not have framebuffers, and therefore no graphical console. The Mac Mini, however, has an integrated ATI graphics chipset; the fact that it does not have an integrated monitor does not make it a headless machine, just as the Power Mac G5, with no attached monitor, is not referred to as headless.
This doesn't make sense; they don't allow servers, but they don't seem to mind BitTorrent
Last I checked (I ditched cable because I didn't want to violate their TOS) they didn't explicitly disallow "web and mail" servers, but rather anything that *functions* as a server. Bittorrent certainly could be considered a server, so technically it probably would violate the TOS. I don't think they enforce the TOS unless you're causing them problems, but it sucks to have it hanging over your head.
I work for an Electrical and Computer Engineering department. Now one would think that the Computer Engineers at least would be competent. Well, not so much actually. Most of them are... how to put this... MORONS when it comes to computers
The thing I've never understood is why Electrical Engineering and Computer Science are so often lumped together. In reality (take a few classes and you'll see) they have very little to do with each other, except the math. Usually it's the association of EE with CS, that Electrical Engineering people are highly knowledgeable with computing, but in practice EEs tend to be no more or less knowledgeable than Mechanical or other Engineering folks.
I'd like to get a more up-to-date version of Irix on it, but going from the 6.5.0 disks that I have to the most current releases is a pain. A big pain. A pain that makes the most b0rk3d RPM install look like a hot bath with a supermodel.
Upgrading IRIX (installing overlays) is really extremely easy. If you sign up for a free Supportfolio account at support.sgi.com you can download overlays that are 2 levels behind the current release - 6.5.25 is current, so you can download 6.5.23 for free. Once you've obtained the overlays, the upgrade can be done through the software manager by pointing it to the untarred overlay files. I recently did this very task myself recently, and it really was easy. My only problem was disk space - my Octane's 4GB disk didn't have enough free space for all of the overlays, but it was easy enough to copy them to a Linux machine with Apache and serve up the directory to the IRIX machine.
Hell, I got flat ignored at a Honda dealer when I was trying to buy a car
This is leading way OT, but I've seen the same thing in Honda dealerships - last time I went to one without an appointment, I almost had to shout "fire" to get anyone's attention:) I've found the only way to get really good service is to call ahead and schedule a time with a specific salesperson.
Are you sure? When I installed Tru64 on my AlphaServer a couple of months ago, I rebuilt the kernel to include a few different options. Wonder how it was doing that without using a compiler?;-P
Yes, maybe it was using gcc (the server isn't running at the moment - it puts out too much heat, so I can't check right now), but even so, it comes with a compiler, which is the least you could expect of a Unix system.
Hmmm... maybe you should just ship the AlphaServer to me so I can verify the compiler functionality:) I've yet to own and Alpha system or do much of anything on Tru64, so I shouldn't have dismissed Tru64 as not including a compiler. I'd guess it's probably like HP-UX's cc - just enough functionality to rebuild the kernel.
Slashdot Mirror
We lost a lot of good [iMacs] out there :( </Wedding Crashers>
"I's possible to upgrade a soldered chip...just takes a soldering iron, a little skill, and a lot of paitence." - TripMaster Monkey
"Everywhere is walking distance if you have the time." - Stephen Wright
The reason why (and I can't believe I'm typing this) was that the mouse pad that Dell provided was too shiny and reflective to be used with their own, branded, optical mouse.
My current work PC - purchased 18 months ago - arrived with the same issue. The USB optical scroll mouse Dell ships across the board with Dimensions, Optiplexes, and Precision Workstations is an OEM'd Logitech USB optical mouse. This is an old design (probably 4-5 years) and it is truly very picky about the surface it is used on. Plus, the scroll wheel on this mouse is very noisy (squeaky). Talk about cutting corners - this is a really cheap mouse, and you get what you pay for.
So, why didn't HardOCP purchase the system with a Logitech G5 or similar gaming mouse? I'm sure Dell sells some decent mice, but you'd have to purchase one separately. Dell severely limits the choice of mice specified with their systems, and this is one _major_ problem I have with them.
But can you use apt-get on Solaris?
Not that I know of, but with Blastwave:
apt-get update --> pkg-get -U
apt-get upgrade --> pkg-get -u
apt-get install foo --> pkg-get -i foo
debian can be updated on the fly with minimal service interruptions
Sure, as long as you don't update the kernel. However, what we're talking about here is the "Live Upgrade" feature of Solaris. It's only available for Sun's higher-end hardware (it depends on features of said hardware) but it allows *entire OS upgrades* with no service interruptions, in fact *no reboot*. This is vastly different from the fact that Debian (or any other Linux distribution or *BSD) lets you upgrade userland server daemons without needing a reboot.
I'm talking about books I can find in a shop
I've seen Absolute OpenBSD in a brick-and-mortar Barnes & Noble.
Ah, Slackware. Frustrating. Beautiful. Just like a woman, but without the breasts.
;-)
Did you check in the man pages?
A Mac mini is perfect... but this card is pitiful. I don't want to give him something that can't be easily upgraded that starts out this poor.
I purchased a Mac Mini and have been using it since March - it was my first Mac since the Mac 128K I got for Christmas 1984. I run it at 1600x1200 on a Hitachi invar shadow mask monitor, and I have no image/video problems whatsoever. So, if you see the video chipset/32MB video RAM as a problem, it's really not a problem unless your father plans on using this "appliance" machine for gaming or serious 3D work.
The _major_ shortfall in the Mini is the laptop disk - it can be excruciatingly slow - not so much in sustained transfer, but occasionally it (like various laptops I've used as well) seems to stall on read or write operations, and you end up constantly waiting for the disk to come out of a stupor. I don't have any experience with Apple laptops, but I've seen the exact same effect (and "clunking" noise) in PC laptops.
I had an extra 80GB Seagate 8MB cache 3.5" hard drive around and bought a $30 Firewire enclosure, onto which I installed OS X and now use as my boot disk. Now the system is never waiting for the disk to get with the program and overall the system feels less like a slow laptop and more like a decent desktop machine. I have a relatively high-end PC workstation at work for mechanical design, and the Mini never feels slow in comparison. BTW, the PC machine has an Nvidia Quadro FX1000 128MB workstation card, but for 2D at 1600x1200 they're equals.
... I could care less :-)
>> FreeBSD is the the guts of Apple's Mac OS X.
> Mach, not FreeBSD, is the "guts" of Mac OS X. The code borrowed from FreeBSD is mostly userspace code.
I'd say Mach is more the "brain" of OS X, seeing as it's the kernel, while the FreeBSD (and the other BSD stuff mixed in there) userland really is more like the "guts" of OS X.
I simply cannot imagine that getting that much radiation every day would be unharmful for your body.
I've wondered that myself - there's a cell tower just outside the back of my employer's building. I've been here for almost 5 years, and so far haven't noticed any adverse health effects, butI have noticed something else - FM radio reception here is terrible - anyone know if this could be related to the nearby cell tower? I can't compare reception before and after, as the tower's been here all along.
No fans
Yes fans - there is a variable speed fan that slowly spins up under heavy processor utilization and slowly spins down when processor utilization goes down. However, even at full speed the fan isn't too intrusive.
Speaking of Safari nuances, anyone know if there's a way to pull down a list of recently typed URLs in the Safari address bar? Most other browsers allow this, but in my limited use of Safari, if this is possible I haven't found it. That's one of my 2 gripes with Safari; the other one is lack of back/forward/etc. by right-clicking in a page. Again, most if not all other browsers have this convenient capability.
So this would be the computer equivalent of putting Formula One racing slicks on a Yugo?
;-)
Actually, that wouldn't be as outlandish as you seem to be implying. Formula 1 banned slicks several years ago, mandating grooved tires. As a result, any Formula 1 slicks you might acquire for your Yugo would be used tires and, frankly, putting used tires on a Yugo is pretty much SOP
He had to keep WindowsNT running on some big iron (I really wish my memory was good enough to tell you what kind.)
Windows NT was never ported to anything that could be called "big iron." Windows NT only ever ran on i386, Alpha, and MIPS. Now, if your "friend" is one of those PC weenies who considers a highly-speced PC a mainframe, then he should buy a clue with all the money he saved by not buying a real mainframe.
He claimed that WinNT was the last version that would support mainframes.
Again, he was wrong - (fortunately) no version of Windows was ever ported to run on mainframe hardware, i.e. "big iron."
What the fsck are you talking about - OpenVMS is *not* downloadable. There is a VMS hobbyist program, where signing up and obtaining a license is free, but the actual OS (for VAX or Alpha) is only available on physical media for a mere $30. Still an incredible deal for a legendary operating system, and if I had any VAX or Alpha hardware I would plunk down my $30 without blinking.
I'd not mind if this allowed us to escape the "non-supported" part of Solaris by allowing 32bit SPARC machines and the peripherals they run
I would hope it might be possible to have UltraSPARC I processors supported as well. Ultra 1s and Ultra 2s are bulletproof and, these days, dirt cheap.
It's also one of the most useless OS's in the world with an unmodified install! /etc/rc.conf and you're there.
Not really... have you ever run NetBSD? NetBSD doesn't even configure your network interfaces by default - so it's actually more secure by default than OpenBSD, because it has no network connectivity.
Seriously, the "all services off by default" is why OpenBSD can make the claim you made.
Actually, a default install of OpenBSD does have a few daemons running through inetd - but they are so thoroughly audited that they no longer pose an ominous threat. Besides all that, OpenBSD is really one of the easisest OSs to turn into a full (and secure) web/mail/file server - just change a few lines in
Why do so many people insist on referring to the Mac Mini as headless? A headless computer is one that has no graphical console or graphical capabilities (has no head.) My Sun servers are headless in they do not have framebuffers, and therefore no graphical console. The Mac Mini, however, has an integrated ATI graphics chipset; the fact that it does not have an integrated monitor does not make it a headless machine, just as the Power Mac G5, with no attached monitor, is not referred to as headless.
This doesn't make sense; they don't allow servers, but they don't seem to mind BitTorrent
Last I checked (I ditched cable because I didn't want to violate their TOS) they didn't explicitly disallow "web and mail" servers, but rather anything that *functions* as a server. Bittorrent certainly could be considered a server, so technically it probably would violate the TOS. I don't think they enforce the TOS unless you're causing them problems, but it sucks to have it hanging over your head.
I work for an Electrical and Computer Engineering department. Now one would think that the Computer Engineers at least would be competent. Well, not so much actually. Most of them are... how to put this... MORONS when it comes to computers
The thing I've never understood is why Electrical Engineering and Computer Science are so often lumped together. In reality (take a few classes and you'll see) they have very little to do with each other, except the math. Usually it's the association of EE with CS, that Electrical Engineering people are highly knowledgeable with computing, but in practice EEs tend to be no more or less knowledgeable than Mechanical or other Engineering folks.
Since when does NetBSD run on the Octane? I'm not aware of any OS other than IRIX that runs on the Octane...
I'd like to get a more up-to-date version of Irix on it, but going from the 6.5.0 disks that I have to the most current releases is a pain. A big pain. A pain that makes the most b0rk3d RPM install look like a hot bath with a supermodel.
Upgrading IRIX (installing overlays) is really extremely easy. If you sign up for a free Supportfolio account at support.sgi.com you can download overlays that are 2 levels behind the current release - 6.5.25 is current, so you can download 6.5.23 for free. Once you've obtained the overlays, the upgrade can be done through the software manager by pointing it to the untarred overlay files. I recently did this very task myself recently, and it really was easy. My only problem was disk space - my Octane's 4GB disk didn't have enough free space for all of the overlays, but it was easy enough to copy them to a Linux machine with Apache and serve up the directory to the IRIX machine.
Hell, I got flat ignored at a Honda dealer when I was trying to buy a car
:) I've found the only way to get really good service is to call ahead and schedule a time with a specific salesperson.
This is leading way OT, but I've seen the same thing in Honda dealerships - last time I went to one without an appointment, I almost had to shout "fire" to get anyone's attention
Are you sure? When I installed Tru64 on my AlphaServer a couple of months ago, I rebuilt the kernel to include a few different options. Wonder how it was doing that without using a compiler? ;-P
:) I've yet to own and Alpha system or do much of anything on Tru64, so I shouldn't have dismissed Tru64 as not including a compiler. I'd guess it's probably like HP-UX's cc - just enough functionality to rebuild the kernel.
Yes, maybe it was using gcc (the server isn't running at the moment - it puts out too much heat, so I can't check right now), but even so, it comes with a compiler, which is the least you could expect of a Unix system.
Hmmm... maybe you should just ship the AlphaServer to me so I can verify the compiler functionality