Re:There is no "desktop" market for 64 bit CPUs
on
AMD's 64-bit Plot
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· Score: 1
Sure they have the clout but do they have the money anymore to make that kind of move? Also they have some big companies heavily invested in Itanic -now-. If Intel nix'd Itanic and went with x86-64 or Alpha would you still buy from Intel being after being their test mule?
In the eyes of the desktop and midrange market it would just fade away but for the big boys who spend countless millions on these installation would throw a fit. They could lose those big customers forever, Why stick with a company that can't deliver? Assuming hammer is delivered and is a success, AMD's track record would be much better off than Intels. If you where to pick a company on "can you get the job done", AMD would win.
If Intel goes with x86-64, Mark my words; It's the beginning of the end for Intel.
We're going to trade one chipzilla for another.
Peter
Re:And 640k is all the memory we'll ever need!
on
AMD's 64-bit Plot
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· Score: 1
Sir,
If you think making this move is as easy as adding more ram to your system.
You'll find out how wrong you are real soon in the most painfull of ways. When the sourcecode for project X you just compiled doesnt work or even gets that far! You obviously didn't understand my post. I was talking about the big picture, not don't buy AMD.
But hey just like kids who don't listen to their parents, you'll find out the hard way:).
Peter
Re:There is no "desktop" market for 64 bit CPUs
on
AMD's 64-bit Plot
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· Score: 1
I understand and agree with that. Remember back when AMD first release their own competing instruction set to MVI? You could have 3dnow etc etc but if the application didn't use it, it didnt matter. In the meanwhile, that chip runs windows just fine. It's the same idea but this time it's 64 bits. Though this time it's not as simple as optimizing program X to use 3dnow, You're porting the whole code base to 64 bits.
So yeah you have some dudes going out and buying this cuz "wow it's 64 bits". Then they'll find that nothing they use takes advantage of it. You're not gonna toss your chip are the window? Hell no. The chip is still fast as hell standing on it's own and it's not like you have an option to buy a 32 bit AMD cpu anymore so you're basicly getting it for 'free'. It'll be up to OS and application vendors to decide when the market has enough saturation and they can make some more money, will they then port their application to 64 bits.
The point of my post was to make the readers here aware that moving to 64 bits
is not a trivial matter. You guys won't see major application ports for years though in the meantime you have a blazingly fast CPU that does what you need it to do -now-. That offers those who need that capibility to use it for their own applications.
Never did I say AMD will lose, I was looking at the big picture. AMD will probably snatch up the low and midrange markets immediatly. When OEMs/VARs start the to see the $$$ of moving to AMD completly. The only thing that will bind them is the cost of supporting existing Intel PCs. Think spare parts & warrenty replacement for somebody like HP or IBM.
Like I said, The desktop is an afterthought. It just so happens that the price falls into that range.
Peter
There is no "desktop" market for 64 bit CPUs
on
AMD's 64-bit Plot
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· Score: 4, Interesting
I don't have to read the article. I've been working with Alphas all my life. There is nothing for 99.9% of the applications you use everyday that could benefit from running itself in a 64 bit address space. Unless you get a signifigant performace boost from the move (like Alpha in it's heyday) it isn't worth the effort.
If you find you need that sort of mega addressing the chances are the
app you need already runs on 64 bit Solaris. After that point it's up to the
vendor (Think Avanti Corp/Apollo) Wheither it's worth their while.
Remember, You need their application. Unless your app is home
grown or you have some signifigant pull with a vendor the port isn't
going to happen.
The desktop is an afterthought. This chip was designed to be sold in
quanties of 8 and higher in single large servers. Once they cut into
that market the economies of scale just happen to make it cheap enough
for the desktop market to pick it up. They have a much better chance
at getting it down with their builtin backwards compatibility and keeping costs down. Alpha never hit that "sweet spot" for the volume to really bring down the price..
Now, Don't think Intel is going to sit on its hands while AMD eats their lunch.
They're more likely to drop an Itanium instruction decoder into an Alpha EV7
core and push that than follow with an x86-64 processor line. Itanium is just to big and costs too much to at this stage of development to make inroads fast enough stop AMD in gaining marketshare but more importantly, mindshare. Intel would never take up x86-64, Doing so admits defeat to the industry i.e. You're not the leader anymore.
So to sum it up, Intel will either:
release Itanium and we all find out it isn't as slow as everyone claims
it is or as expensive
See Alpha/Itanium hybrid core above
They bring back Alpha (maybe not by name) and put it under a modern
process. Expect atleast x1.5 current clock speeds and Alpha's can milk rambus for all it's worth
2 and 3 are much more likely than one, You know which one I'd rather see happen:).
Either way it'll be a boon for the OS community and certainly make our (The Alpha community) lives easier. The way I see it, even if hammer is moderatly
successfull. You guys will 'clean' most of the popular soucecode out there to
be 64 bit clean, reducing our matainence work by like 80%. The only thing we'll
have to worry about is firmware, toolchain, libc, Xwindows, and kernel. So please buy a *hammer and learn the joys of porting to 64 bits. If it proves too painfull, please see the ld manpage for the "-taso" flag:).
It just sucked on so many levels I don't know where to start.
Oh, wait. The audience was supposed to immediatly get all the
tounge and cheek humor etc etc right off the back. I mean
after years of watching Buffy it shouldn't be a problem.
Though that was exactly it! It was Buffy in space! Same
style of humor, different setting. Why the hell should I waste my time
watching this??? I'd rather watch re-runs of the 5th Wheel.
I could write more about this piece of trash but instead
I'll write another letter to SCIFI begging them to keep
farscape. I'll be sure to mention to them that what's was
firefly posing as their competition has decided to take a
uh... vacation.
My 11 year old niece would play video games in Linux and browse the
web with no problems whatsoever. I only had to show her what to press once. She also likes the Linux games much better than the ones that come with windows.
Like that snake game (I forget what it's called). It's funny. I would be
on my computer using windows (what the KVM is switched to) and she'd jump on
my lap and take the mouse from me. Bum around for a few minutes and then find out the games she wanted wern't there. Then she would ask me to switch to Linux so she could play the snake game, too cute:).
unless your kids a spoiled brat there's no good reason they can't pick up using Linux. As long as it's preconfigured it's just another toy for them to figure
out. KDE was used BTW.
I'm currently sub-contracting as support for a small company. The guy that does his website and alot of the folks in the area picked up and left for some emergancy. No contact, nothing. Now all of these business talk to each other and are wondering what the hell are they going to do since they need their sites updated. Now I've been doing some website work in the meantime for this company I'm sub'ing for simply because they're running out of things for me to do but want to keep me onboard and productive.
My boss mentions this to the the mass mailing that's been going around and that I would be interested in helping out anyone who needed it. That's how it started and now it's growing. Soon I'll be able to ditch the sub job all together or renegotiate my rates:). I look at the work the last guy did and it's like a canned job with graphics for links made in Macromedia Fireworks.
I can do stuff like that by hand, The tools will save me time though and I'll make an investment in them later. The only thing I'm deficient at is free hand art and if comes to that, I'll contract it out. Stuff like custom buttons etc etc aren't that hard to make and I have the entire internet for inspiration.
So I basicly stumbled into it. There are plenty of ways to break into markets. One of them is joining your local chamber of commerce group and advertise some pro-bono work. I plan to keep doing both the sub work and the website stuff.
Give you an example. These customers are used to service like waiting up to 5 days to get a response by email for simple questions nevermind a page posted. This one customer who publishes an editorial about the local book culture could wait up to five days to have a simple 1 page article published. They where just fed up with this guys lazy service.
If you wish to pursue this I would encourage you to do so. If it's only extra money it's still signifigant. I'm charging like $60 an hour (for now) and they're happy to pay. Publishing an article or to or updating a few pages is like two hours work, It adds up fast.
Piece of advice, If they ask you to train them say no. Tell them it isn't cost effective for either of you to develop a training course etc etc. These are small business I'm dealing with BTW, all local.
This arrangment keeps my stress way down and leaves me plenty of time to work on Linux as I please. I was miserable after I was laid off and lost nearly everything though now you may catch me smiling once in a while. Good luck.
Like others have said. Companies aren't loyal to their employees so their employees return the favor. There's no such thing as "taking one for the team" . There is no team though you will end up "taking it". The conclusion is no one is going to look out for number one except you. So take your financial destiny out of these guys hands and strike out on your own. Do any kind of work you're able. Take myself for example. I have a background in embedded systems development, QA, and support. Know what I'm doing most of the time these days? Designing & building websites for
well below the competion but plenty enough for me:).
Turns out there are alot of self important/proclaimed "artists" for web design firms around my area and their customers are sick of the poor turnaround time
and lacking professionalism, long story short I'm eating their lunch. Yeah it's mind numbing work, effortless, and boring though it's helped me come to a realization. Work to live, not live to work.
So in my free time I work on my Alphas and write firmware. That comes -after- I spend time with my friends and 'live'. Guys, You're life outside of work must be more engaging than work itself otherwise you'll always have this split loyalty.
Fuck what you do for a living. Make money any way you can and live your life.
If the economy swings the other way and I can get a job doing what I used to do.
I'll have to seriously reconsider leaving what I'm doing now for that instead.
After all, It's just work.
I'm sorry, maybe I was ambiguous in my post. Please read it again. They only tag what they think is spam. You then filter for that tag on -your- end and decide what is spam and what isn't. No host side filtering. If that where the case, I would totally agree with you:).
There's an ISP here called Crocker Communications (www.crocker.com) that filters your email through a SPAM filtering service they contract. They then append the word "::SPAM::" to the subject and allow you to pop it along with your regular mail. So all you have to do is set up one rule to filter out most any spam you receive. I'm not sure if they offer an avenue to blacklist confirmed spammers though it's probably not far behind.
I don't necessaily mean Linux embedded systems though dont exclude it. Anything from a thermostat for the furnace in your home to the air bag trigger system in your car is an embedded system, The market is HUGE. Your "nuts & bolts" experience fits very well in the embedded market along with your diversified skills, Which implies you're not oppossed to learning something new. Also you wont have to learn addtional languages since you already know C and ASM, thats really all you need. You'll learn your OS's on the job. If not pick up Linux in the meantime and if you can get your hands on it, vxworks. You don't have to reinvent yourself, just refocus what you already can do well. There will ALWAYS be a market for embedded systems. Oh, The salary and contracts a fscking ridiculous:)
One more thing. Since you mentioned robotics. Do you know CAN and/or CANOpen??? That's an emerging market here in the U.S. It's also 'the' standard for motion control and industrial automation.
Business casual is the biggest pain in the ass. Having to match up stuff that makes an outfit look 'good'. Too much work and too much time in the morning. With a suit I just throw on a shirt and tie and I'm ready to go, Looks sharp too. I know it isnt cheap but it's certainly a worthwhile investment and boy does it make an impression on your employer. As for casual dress? Look, If you're in a business dress or atleast business casual environment, dress the part. Work is not a place to show off your individualality i.e. I only wear blue jeans and evil dead t-shirts. That's what off time is for. I go so far as to bring a change of clothes with me so I end up looking like the ensemble mentioned above:). Finally, if you're in IT; most of you should be able to afford a decent wardrobe.
I must admit I have dropped out of the clustering business. It just doesnt concern me anymore. I have been working on alternate firmware for Alpha but that has been slow going since time is scarce. I'am well aware of your DS10 cluster:-), BTW I still have those flash tools if you need them. Yeah, DBLX would have been nice. Would have;-). I apologize for the generalization regarding the flash size. The site was that was refered to in this post was unavailable for some unknown reason (slashdot maybe?) so I really didnt have a context.
Most applications wouldnt need the huge flash. Cluster applications would need swap eventualy and that means disk. Hey if you guys are making money and staying in business. You're better off than we where;-)
Company went under, API Networks. We had Linux booting out of 2MB of flash in less than 10 secs. The firmware that controlled the deal was less than 400K and allowed for complete disaster recovery, ramdisks, booting successive Linux kernels, and other firmware. Alas it wasnt finished in time... Alternatives still exist to this day besides LinuxBIOS. Any openfirmware vendor like codegen offers the capability of booting Linux from flash. So does Redhat's redboot bootstrap loader which is part of their eCos microkernel.
Last time I checked, the LB project was hacking off flash chips to bootstrap these things when they've failed. Basically no recovery procedures. I would ask anyone considering this option that they would consider the question "Am I better off using BOOTP?" . 8MB of flash is unreasonable and it speaks volumes about the product. Scyld could do it less than 2MB, what does that tell you??? Before anyone asks "why don't you finish it", Unfortunately Linux is no longer my job; Just a hobby.
It sucked. BAD! Cliche and it reminded my of Brisco County Jr., Which is a better show and will probably out last this. WTF!? Sawed off shotguns and six shooters IN SPACE!! I think I'll write another letter to SCIFI telling them "look, this is the crap they're putting out in farscape's place since you guys have raised the bar so high everything else pales in comparison". This show wont last 12 episodes. The story and the setting aside, the acting was pretty good. Maybe thoses guys will find better jobs elsewhere:-)
Reliabilty problems??? I've not seen a single one and the system is stressed regularly. Also this conversion package comes prepackaged and tested from powerleap, All I had to do was plug it in. In my case CPU speed 'was' the factor that was holding me back. I have plenty of RAM, disk, and even a GF3 ti200 . Before the upgrade, Playing games was OK but I had to turn most of the effects off. Now I can play Q3:Urban terror and NWN with ease and they look much better!! Borland C++ builder runs ALOT better. Considering I havent spent a single dime on this box since I built it almost 4 years ago (minus the video card) and considering what I originaly paid for it (not much) it makes for a worthwhile investment.
Simply, In my case the price/performance ratio paid off. I agree with the original story mostly however the root of the problem is most computer users dont know what they need so they have no idea how to be conservative when going about their purchasing decisions. Their oughta be a single rating for CPUS that is synonimous as to what horsepower means to cars. That would be ideal. If you disagree with a single rating, then a combination of simple ratings ontop of "horsepower" equiv.
You can upgrade that Dell with a CPU from powerleap.com. I recently upgraded my old PII 400 to a Celeron 1.3Ghz and WOW what a difference. Cost me around $150, I probably could have gotten it cheaper but I didnt shop around. The upgrade game just isnt worth the cost (and yes I do play games). I'd have to spend $400+ upgrading all the major components including the power supply for maybe another 30% of performance ontop of what the celeron is giving me now. Simply wasnt cost effective.
But you have to get it done. Believe me, Even if you've run your own business or are a consultant. If you interview (as an employee not a contractor) gets to the point where they ask about your education and they found you havent completed 'any' higher education it will make all you experience appear less signifigant (they'll think you're lying and exaggerating). I'm finishing a BS in computer engineering, taking 3 classes during the day and working 20-25 hours a week as a programmer (pays well and low stress). There are no night schools for this curriculum in this part of the state so I'm stuck going to school with kiddies 6 years younger than me (annoying!).
First and foremost you must be disciplined. No fucking off and playing quake for an hour when you come home from work or even watching your favorite TV shows (tape em). School 'is' work, treat it as such and consider your HW and studying as an investment that will make you $$$. If you're running your own business then you should be bright enough to learn on your own. Take a few hours on the weekend to get ahead in the textbooks. If you can learn the books way of doing things and figure out what the author implies you may not even need to go to class. I did Calc 3 and Diff Eq this way. I was cool with the professors so he let me sign up for the courses, take the tests, and I got an A:-). I never attended class but the professors where available to answer questions.
#2) You shouldn't be working more than 20 hours in a during a school week. If you can't make enough money to support yourself and go to school, move back home to your parents (if possible) or move into the dorms. If you're worried aboutr having to roomate with someone jsut tell em (if you're over 21) that you plan to have beer in your room and because of that, no minors can live with you:-). Sure it's a comprimise but the consequences of not getting a degree while you're still young (and still have the motivation to learn) are worse.
#3) Get some SLEEP, Atleast 7 hours. Also learn to eat well and if you lack the time to prepare food that has proper nutrition then use a supplement (like ensure).
#4) Know your professors. They respect working students, especially working adults. The better they know you the more willing they may be to make a comprimise for you or even a favor.
#5) free time and women (or signfigant other). Both are comprimised and secondary to everything mentioned above. Don't have time for a GF?, then learn how to "hook up". College is a meat market for casual sex, It's the only plus I have being an older man but not too old:-). Friends, We'll they probably work too though try and get out of the house atleast once or twice a month.
Finally, I've seen some posts pointing out that you mentioned a "lack of interest" and went on to say because of that you you dont need a degree etc etc. Let me tell you something. I nor any manager who knows what he's doing will not hire someone "who doesnt finish what he started". You can always find people to start a project. Finding someone that can stick with it and finish is a whole lot more valuable. That's what it means to have a 4 year degree.
Should speed things up abit though last time I checked the linux kernel didnt support it, even on Alphas. It's been part of the AGP spec from the beginning. Someone please correct me if I'm wrong.
So I guess you havnet heard about the accounting errors that professional baseball made to look poor so they had an excuse not to pay their players sooo much?
Agreed. Even across the same version of windows on different architectures. Alpha/NT suffered from the same problem. The emulator/translator worked well enough that it took the pressure off the software vendors to provide native ports. Actually we'll probably see this same behavior with Itanium on windows since 2K/XP includes "wow!32" which is an offshoot of the Alpha binary translator/emulator.
WINE is nice and it serves a purpose though in the long run I think it will hurt linux. Instead I think we would be better served by lobbying software vendors to switch their development environment to Borland C++ Builder 6/Kylix 3.0 so they can target both platforms with minimal porting effort. QT is nice but it's IDE is nowhere near as well designed and convenient as borland's.
As I continue this rant I'm disappointed at the lack of free apps written using kylix, A search on FM shows a lowly 15 projects... I know that cross arch portability is important though I'm an "Alpha guy" I accept that 99% of the commercial software available for Linux is x86 centric. Developers shouldn't be holding themselves back because of a minority like ours.
Hmmm. $200 extra to watch 300 channels of nothing in 'digital'. That'll make watching friends just that much better!!!! You think this is expensive? Consider that the TV in your living room is a mercury filled bio hazard. You cant just through it away, it must be disposed of properly. Handling that scenerio is going to cost someone (probably tax payers) money. I don't think most americans are going to throw away their existing sets to experience digital television. After all guys, it's just TV. Like how much flasher do you want FOXNEWS to get:-)? Even the conversion boxes are going to cost something like $700. Why bother? There's not much compelling content on television (like the internet) to justify the cost. Call me practical:-).
Honestly. I want the media companies to go through and legislate the living hell out of their product. Media these days is garbage. The average people in this society who are not paying attention to this take media for granted. The consumer knows it's crap it's just he/she is to lazy to do something else. Put a price tag on it that is too high or make its use contradict common sense (DVIX) and watch it die a humiliating death in the market. Truth is guys that cable television and broadband internet price/value ratio is already seriously comprimised. Raising the prices of said media and/or putting stupid restrictions on their use will kill it.
How many average internet users do you think could accept just having "always on" internet access which you could do whatever you want with that was no faster than 128K but cost less than $20/month. Is there anything on the net besides downloading movies and music illegally that requires the use of signifigantly more bandwidth for the average user (not Linux users downloading isos)?
If you think that the future of on demand broadcast media is going to make your subscription to cable/SAT TV any cheaper you are seriously mistaken. You are going to pay more to watch even flashier advertisments and even worse content. Just like it is now when you go to see a movie in the theaters.
Let them do their thing. Sure it will destroy the internet as we know it however it will also take alot of those meglamaniac companies with them or atleast stigmatize them to the point where they withdraw from said market. You see these companies need to be hurt so bad by the consumer that they learn to not take them for granted. Let them come, It wont be just the geeks telling them to fuck off but the rest of the working class of America as well.
Slashdot Mirror
In the eyes of the desktop and midrange market it would just fade away but for the big boys who spend countless millions on these installation would throw a fit. They could lose those big customers forever, Why stick with a company that can't deliver? Assuming hammer is delivered and is a success, AMD's track record would be much better off than Intels. If you where to pick a company on "can you get the job done", AMD would win.
If Intel goes with x86-64, Mark my words; It's the beginning of the end for Intel. We're going to trade one chipzilla for another.
Peter
If you think making this move is as easy as adding more ram to your system. You'll find out how wrong you are real soon in the most painfull of ways. When the sourcecode for project X you just compiled doesnt work or even gets that far! You obviously didn't understand my post. I was talking about the big picture, not don't buy AMD. But hey just like kids who don't listen to their parents, you'll find out the hard way :).
Peter
So yeah you have some dudes going out and buying this cuz "wow it's 64 bits". Then they'll find that nothing they use takes advantage of it. You're not gonna toss your chip are the window? Hell no. The chip is still fast as hell standing on it's own and it's not like you have an option to buy a 32 bit AMD cpu anymore so you're basicly getting it for 'free'. It'll be up to OS and application vendors to decide when the market has enough saturation and they can make some more money, will they then port their application to 64 bits.
The point of my post was to make the readers here aware that moving to 64 bits is not a trivial matter. You guys won't see major application ports for years though in the meantime you have a blazingly fast CPU that does what you need it to do -now-. That offers those who need that capibility to use it for their own applications.
Never did I say AMD will lose, I was looking at the big picture. AMD will probably snatch up the low and midrange markets immediatly. When OEMs/VARs start the to see the $$$ of moving to AMD completly. The only thing that will bind them is the cost of supporting existing Intel PCs. Think spare parts & warrenty replacement for somebody like HP or IBM.
Like I said, The desktop is an afterthought. It just so happens that the price falls into that range.
Peter
If you find you need that sort of mega addressing the chances are the app you need already runs on 64 bit Solaris. After that point it's up to the vendor (Think Avanti Corp /Apollo) Wheither it's worth their while.
Remember, You need their application. Unless your app is home
grown or you have some signifigant pull with a vendor the port isn't
going to happen.
The desktop is an afterthought. This chip was designed to be sold in quanties of 8 and higher in single large servers. Once they cut into that market the economies of scale just happen to make it cheap enough for the desktop market to pick it up. They have a much better chance at getting it down with their builtin backwards compatibility and keeping costs down. Alpha never hit that "sweet spot" for the volume to really bring down the price..
Now, Don't think Intel is going to sit on its hands while AMD eats their lunch. They're more likely to drop an Itanium instruction decoder into an Alpha EV7 core and push that than follow with an x86-64 processor line. Itanium is just to big and costs too much to at this stage of development to make inroads fast enough stop AMD in gaining marketshare but more importantly, mindshare. Intel would never take up x86-64, Doing so admits defeat to the industry i.e. You're not the leader anymore.
So to sum it up, Intel will either:
2 and 3 are much more likely than one, You know which one I'd rather see happen :).
Either way it'll be a boon for the OS community and certainly make our (The Alpha community) lives easier. The way I see it, even if hammer is moderatly successfull. You guys will 'clean' most of the popular soucecode out there to be 64 bit clean, reducing our matainence work by like 80%. The only thing we'll have to worry about is firmware, toolchain, libc, Xwindows, and kernel. So please buy a *hammer and learn the joys of porting to 64 bits. If it proves too painfull, please see the ld manpage for the "-taso" flag :).
Peter
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=40356&cid=4301 310
My prediction came true too. :)
It just sucked on so many levels I don't know where to start. Oh, wait. The audience was supposed to immediatly get all the tounge and cheek humor etc etc right off the back. I mean after years of watching Buffy it shouldn't be a problem.
Though that was exactly it! It was Buffy in space! Same style of humor, different setting. Why the hell should I waste my time watching this??? I'd rather watch re-runs of the 5th Wheel.
I could write more about this piece of trash but instead I'll write another letter to SCIFI begging them to keep farscape. I'll be sure to mention to them that what's was firefly posing as their competition has decided to take a uh... vacation.
www.savefarscape.com
Peter
unless your kids a spoiled brat there's no good reason they can't pick up using Linux. As long as it's preconfigured it's just another toy for them to figure out. KDE was used BTW.
Peter
You've only a failed when you blame someone else.
That's my philosiphy.
Peter
My boss mentions this to the the mass mailing that's been going around and that I would be interested in helping out anyone who needed it. That's how it started and now it's growing. Soon I'll be able to ditch the sub job all together or renegotiate my rates :). I look at the work the last guy did and it's like a canned job with graphics for links made in Macromedia Fireworks.
I can do stuff like that by hand, The tools will save me time though and I'll make an investment in them later. The only thing I'm deficient at is free hand art and if comes to that, I'll contract it out. Stuff like custom buttons etc etc aren't that hard to make and I have the entire internet for inspiration.
So I basicly stumbled into it. There are plenty of ways to break into markets. One of them is joining your local chamber of commerce group and advertise some pro-bono work. I plan to keep doing both the sub work and the website stuff. Give you an example. These customers are used to service like waiting up to 5 days to get a response by email for simple questions nevermind a page posted. This one customer who publishes an editorial about the local book culture could wait up to five days to have a simple 1 page article published. They where just fed up with this guys lazy service.
If you wish to pursue this I would encourage you to do so. If it's only extra money it's still signifigant. I'm charging like $60 an hour (for now) and they're happy to pay. Publishing an article or to or updating a few pages is like two hours work, It adds up fast.
Piece of advice, If they ask you to train them say no. Tell them it isn't cost effective for either of you to develop a training course etc etc. These are small business I'm dealing with BTW, all local.
This arrangment keeps my stress way down and leaves me plenty of time to work on Linux as I please. I was miserable after I was laid off and lost nearly everything though now you may catch me smiling once in a while. Good luck.
Peter
Turns out there are alot of self important/proclaimed "artists" for web design firms around my area and their customers are sick of the poor turnaround time and lacking professionalism, long story short I'm eating their lunch. Yeah it's mind numbing work, effortless, and boring though it's helped me come to a realization. Work to live, not live to work.
So in my free time I work on my Alphas and write firmware. That comes -after- I spend time with my friends and 'live'. Guys, You're life outside of work must be more engaging than work itself otherwise you'll always have this split loyalty. Fuck what you do for a living. Make money any way you can and live your life.
If the economy swings the other way and I can get a job doing what I used to do. I'll have to seriously reconsider leaving what I'm doing now for that instead. After all, It's just work.
Peter
I'm sorry, maybe I was ambiguous in my post. Please read it again. They only tag what they think is spam. You then filter for that tag on -your- end and decide what is spam and what isn't. No host side filtering. If that where the case, I would totally agree with you :).
Peter
There's an ISP here called Crocker Communications (www.crocker.com) that filters your email through a SPAM filtering service they contract. They then append the word "::SPAM::" to the subject and allow you to pop it along with your regular mail. So all you have to do is set up one rule to filter out most any spam you receive. I'm not sure if they offer an avenue to blacklist confirmed spammers though it's probably not far behind.
Peter
I don't necessaily mean Linux embedded systems though dont exclude it. Anything from a thermostat for the furnace in your home to the air bag trigger system in your car is an embedded system, The market is HUGE. Your "nuts & bolts" experience fits very well in the embedded market along with your diversified skills, Which implies you're not oppossed to learning something new. Also you wont have to learn addtional languages since you already know C and ASM, thats really all you need. You'll learn your OS's on the job. If not pick up Linux in the meantime and if you can get your hands on it, vxworks. You don't have to reinvent yourself, just refocus what you already can do well. There will ALWAYS be a market for embedded systems. Oh, The salary and contracts a fscking ridiculous :)
One more thing. Since you mentioned robotics. Do you know CAN and/or CANOpen???
That's an emerging market here in the U.S. It's also 'the' standard for motion control and industrial automation.
Peter
Business casual is the biggest pain in the ass. Having to match up stuff that makes an outfit look 'good'. Too much work and too much time in the morning. With a suit I just throw on a shirt and tie and I'm ready to go, Looks sharp too. I know it isnt cheap but it's certainly a worthwhile investment and boy does it make an impression on your employer. As for casual dress? Look, If you're in a business dress or atleast business casual environment, dress the part. Work is not a place to show off your individualality i.e. I only wear blue jeans and evil dead t-shirts. That's what off time is for. I go so far as to bring a change of clothes with me so I end up looking like the ensemble mentioned above :). Finally, if you're in IT; most of you should be able to afford a decent wardrobe.
Peter
As soon as they finish making Evil Dead 4 :-) .
:-)
That's right, shop smart. Shop s-mart. YOU GOT THAT!
Raimi and Co. are hinting about it in the directors cut to AoD. Turn on the
commentary and you'll see what I mean. I can only hope
Peter
I must admit I have dropped out of the clustering business. It just doesnt concern me anymore. I have been working on alternate firmware for Alpha but that has been slow going since time is scarce. I'am well aware of your DS10 cluster :-), BTW I still have those flash tools if you need them. Yeah, DBLX would have been nice. Would have ;-). I apologize for the generalization regarding the flash size. The site was that was refered to in this post was unavailable for some unknown reason (slashdot maybe?) so I really didnt have a context.
;-)
Most applications wouldnt need the huge flash. Cluster applications would need swap eventualy and that means disk. Hey if you guys are making money and staying in business. You're better off than we where
Regards,
Peter
Company went under, API Networks. We had Linux booting out of 2MB of flash in less than 10 secs. The firmware that controlled the deal was less than 400K and allowed for complete disaster recovery, ramdisks, booting successive Linux kernels, and other firmware. Alas it wasnt finished in time... Alternatives still exist to this day besides LinuxBIOS. Any openfirmware vendor like codegen offers the capability of booting Linux from flash. So does Redhat's redboot bootstrap loader which is part of their eCos microkernel.
Last time I checked, the LB project was hacking off flash chips to bootstrap these things when they've failed. Basically no recovery procedures. I would ask anyone considering this option that they would consider the question "Am I better off using BOOTP?" . 8MB of flash is unreasonable and it speaks volumes about the product. Scyld could do it less than 2MB, what does that tell you??? Before anyone asks "why don't you finish it", Unfortunately Linux is no longer my job; Just a hobby.
Peter
It sucked. BAD! Cliche and it reminded my of Brisco County Jr., Which is a better show and will probably out last this. WTF!? Sawed off shotguns and six shooters IN SPACE!! I think I'll write another letter to SCIFI telling them "look, this is the crap they're putting out in farscape's place since you guys have raised the bar so high everything else pales in comparison". This show wont last 12 episodes. The story and the setting aside, the acting was pretty good. Maybe thoses guys will find better jobs elsewhere :-)
Peter
Reliabilty problems??? I've not seen a single one and the system is stressed regularly. Also this conversion package comes prepackaged and tested from powerleap, All I had to do was plug it in. In my case CPU speed 'was' the factor that was holding me back. I have plenty of RAM, disk, and even a GF3 ti200 . Before the upgrade, Playing games was OK but I had to turn most of the effects off. Now I can play Q3:Urban terror and NWN with ease and they look much better!! Borland C++ builder runs ALOT better. Considering I havent spent a single dime on this box since I built it almost 4 years ago (minus the video card) and considering what I originaly paid for it (not much) it makes for a worthwhile investment.
Simply, In my case the price/performance ratio paid off. I agree with the original story mostly however the root of the problem is most computer users dont know what they need so they have no idea how to be conservative when going about their purchasing decisions. Their oughta be a single rating for CPUS that is synonimous as to what horsepower means to cars. That would be ideal. If you disagree with a single rating, then a combination of simple ratings ontop of "horsepower" equiv.
Peter
You can upgrade that Dell with a CPU from powerleap.com. I recently upgraded my old PII 400 to a Celeron 1.3Ghz and WOW what a difference. Cost me around $150, I probably could have gotten it cheaper but I didnt shop around. The upgrade game just isnt worth the cost (and yes I do play games). I'd have to spend $400+ upgrading all the major components including the power supply for maybe another 30% of performance ontop of what the celeron is giving me now. Simply wasnt cost effective.
Peter
But you have to get it done. Believe me, Even if you've run your own business or are a consultant. If you interview (as an employee not a contractor) gets to the point where they ask about your education and they found you havent completed 'any' higher education it will make all you experience appear less signifigant (they'll think you're lying and exaggerating). I'm finishing a BS in computer engineering, taking 3 classes during the day and working 20-25 hours a week as a programmer (pays well and low stress). There are no night schools for this curriculum in this part of the state so I'm stuck going to school with kiddies 6 years younger than me (annoying!).
:-). I never attended class but the professors where available to answer questions.
:-). Sure it's a comprimise but the consequences of not getting a degree while you're still young (and still have the motivation to learn) are worse.
:-). Friends, We'll they probably work too though try and get out of the house atleast once or twice a month.
First and foremost you must be disciplined. No fucking off and playing quake for an hour when you come home from work or even watching your favorite TV shows (tape em). School 'is' work, treat it as such and consider your HW and studying as an investment that will make you $$$. If you're running your own business then you should be bright enough to learn on your own. Take a few hours on the weekend to get ahead in the textbooks. If you can learn the books way of doing things and figure out what the author implies you may not even need to go to class. I did Calc 3 and Diff Eq this way. I was cool with the professors so he let me sign up for the courses, take the tests, and I got an A
#2) You shouldn't be working more than 20 hours in a during a school week. If you can't make enough money to support yourself and go to school, move back home to your parents (if possible) or move into the dorms. If you're worried aboutr having to roomate with someone jsut tell em (if you're over 21) that you plan to have beer in your room and because of that, no minors can live with you
#3) Get some SLEEP, Atleast 7 hours. Also learn to eat well and if you lack the time to prepare food that has proper nutrition then use a supplement (like ensure).
#4) Know your professors. They respect working students, especially working adults. The better they know you the more willing they may be to make a comprimise for you or even a favor.
#5) free time and women (or signfigant other). Both are comprimised and secondary to everything mentioned above. Don't have time for a GF?, then learn how to "hook up". College is a meat market for casual sex, It's the only plus I have being an older man but not too old
Finally, I've seen some posts pointing out that you mentioned a "lack of interest" and went on to say because of that you you dont need a degree etc etc. Let me tell you something. I nor any manager who knows what he's doing will not hire someone "who doesnt finish what he started". You can always find people to start a project. Finding someone that can stick with it and finish is a whole lot more valuable. That's what it means to have a 4 year degree.
Peter
Should speed things up abit though last time I checked the linux kernel didnt support it, even on Alphas. It's been part of the AGP spec from the beginning.
Someone please correct me if I'm wrong.
Peter
So I guess you havnet heard about the accounting errors that professional baseball made to look poor so they had an excuse not to pay their players sooo much?
Peter
Agreed. Even across the same version of windows on different architectures.
Alpha/NT suffered from the same problem. The emulator/translator worked well enough that it took the pressure off the software vendors to provide native ports. Actually we'll probably see this same behavior with Itanium on windows since 2K/XP includes "wow!32" which is an offshoot of the Alpha binary translator/emulator.
WINE is nice and it serves a purpose though in the long run I think it will hurt linux. Instead I think we would be better served by lobbying software vendors to switch their development environment to Borland C++ Builder 6/Kylix 3.0 so they can target both platforms with minimal porting effort. QT is nice but it's IDE is nowhere near as well designed and convenient as borland's.
As I continue this rant I'm disappointed at the lack of free apps written using kylix, A search on FM shows a lowly 15 projects... I know that cross arch portability is important though I'm an "Alpha guy" I accept that 99% of the commercial software available for Linux is x86 centric. Developers shouldn't be holding themselves back because of a minority like ours.
Peter
Hmmm. $200 extra to watch 300 channels of nothing in 'digital'. That'll make watching friends just that much better!!!! You think this is expensive? Consider that the TV in your living room is a mercury filled bio hazard. You cant just through it away, it must be disposed of properly. Handling that scenerio is going to cost someone (probably tax payers) money. I don't think most americans are going to throw away their existing sets to experience digital television. After all guys, it's just TV. Like how much flasher do you want FOXNEWS to get :-)? Even the conversion boxes are going to cost something like $700. Why bother? There's not much compelling content on television (like the internet) to justify the cost. Call me practical :-).
Peter
How many average internet users do you think could accept just having "always on" internet access which you could do whatever you want with that was no faster than 128K but cost less than $20/month. Is there anything on the net besides downloading movies and music illegally that requires the use of signifigantly more bandwidth for the average user (not Linux users downloading isos)?
If you think that the future of on demand broadcast media is going to make your subscription to cable/SAT TV any cheaper you are seriously mistaken. You are going to pay more to watch even flashier advertisments and even worse content. Just like it is now when you go to see a movie in the theaters.
Let them do their thing. Sure it will destroy the internet as we know it however it will also take alot of those meglamaniac companies with them or atleast stigmatize them to the point where they withdraw from said market. You see these companies need to be hurt so bad by the consumer that they learn to not take them for granted. Let them come, It wont be just the geeks telling them to fuck off but the rest of the working class of America as well.
Peter