Would these be 'under the hood' updates, or are we going to have EVEN MORE UNDOCUMENTED COMPILE-TIME OPTIONS? I ordered OpenBSD to try it out because of the 6-month release cycle to escape the./configure, download this,./configure, etc. loop I keep getting stuck in.
ARG...
I can download them, but I can't filter them to look right in 8 colors...
Monochrome/ greyscale isn't bad. The problem is they all run on virtual memory coming from my cassette drive, and every time the power drops out for a millisecond I have to rewind the tape...
I know Bob Cringely said that he wanted you to do it. Do you want to do it, or are you being railroaded? What do you think your powers will encompass? Why do you think that your presence on this committee will have more than a "spitting in the ocean" effect?
Amen, brutha. If I could screw around updating the kernel and run any APIs and had free choice of the desktop environment under Windows, I never would have dumped it. What's worse is that you can't run standard networking apps under Windows... And MS's Knowledge Base isn't as good as linuxdoc, just because MS has to support SO MANY BUG WORKAROUNDS without advertising them (oh yeah, I guess that is another Windows bug that swallows third-party software whole, oops, but hey we admitted it after all, it only took you 2 days to dig it out.) It's like a lawyer requesting a copy of a document and getting the Library of Congress. I'm one of those guys that used DOS for 17 years, and absolutely LOATHED Windows, but I liked the power. I only used Windows for three years before discovering Linux, and I'm a convert. The no-bullshit power of command-line (first there was progman, then explorer with Admin plug-ins, what stupid screens and menus will I have to learn on.NET Server?), yeah, command-line multitasking, with the power of a clean-and-simple desktop environment (of your choice!) and a clean yet powerful kernel that can crank out job after job without choking. Being an old DOS guy, you know what my biggest bitch about Windows was? When you wrote a floppy, your $2000 computer was a doorstop, sitting there waiting for the floppy access to finish. Infuriating! It got mildly better under Windows 2000, but with Linux you tell it to do it's floppy job, and then go do 5 other things while it does it. Heavenly...
I agree, it was insane expansion that bred mismanagement which is killing broadband. I tried to get dsl out here in the sticks of Ohio, and it turned out (after two weeks of calling everyone I could possibly call at Verizon) that I finally got ahold of the CO which told me I was on partial fiber and no way would DSL work. The ISP was completely unresponsive the whole time, and when I called to send the DSL Modem (free with sign-up!) back, the 9 year old tech support kid said he would have to have someone call me back. This went on for a week, and eventually I just shipped it via USPS (insured) and gave a follow-up call 3 or 4 days later to make sure they got it. The 9 year old said they would have to call back, and they didn't. I'm sure most people would've kept the modem and sold it on ebay...
I don't know that broadband as we know it is going to stick around, I think it's going to be an all-in-one connection like cable but running voice, music, video (tv), and internet all in one new technology (if it was wireless that would be great...)
In Lancaster, Ohio the Electronics Boutique has Xboxes BY THE DOOR stacked to the ceiling with home-made signs stuck on them saying "X box in stock" and "We have the X box". BTW the mall is not busy at all when I've been there in the last few weeks... I think the GC and the Xbox are going to bomb... and where are all the Christmas shoppers damnit? I thought the economy was climbing...
I have a customer in lowly smalltown Ohio that bought a custom-spec $6000 server to provide access to marketers ON-LINE to every US citizen's info, and it will even do queries and sort by income, property value, education etc. The data is imported once a month from tapes purchased from the government, and after the batch job is run, (they just bought a server to do the batch job - went from 2 weeks to 1 day) which involves pulling in 50gb of data and running through the whole thing TWICE (the programmer says that's how it has to work), all the data is properly stored and sorted and ready for querying. A query takes 3 seconds (down from over a minute on their old server) and, voila, marketing materials are coming soon to a mailbox near you...
How long will it be till HBO has commercials, along with the same concept that puts ads all over AOL's PAY internet connection software? Makes you want to pirate all of it...
Pissing in the ocean. That's what this "unnamed organization", otherwise known as the "Security KGB", will accomplish. I'm amazed at how many businesses aren't making enough money from the internet, and thus are trying to legislate out free speech. I'm having a blast, personal economic downturn and layoff aside, watching these companies that have never actually had a product to sell, crying because the big bad internet is out of control, and that they can't compete against free products that do EXACTLY THE SAME TASKS as their pay-products. Waaaa...
Welcome to the open market and the information age, crybabies exit at the rear...
You are a hard-working s.o.b -- with a job that I envy:(
Can you do something about the IBM Linux Server web content? The commercials are good but the web site had dead links last week when I was looking at it...
Call marketing and tell them some guy from slashdot said to fix the site... and make it better... Sigh.
I have a story, but right now it is that I started out in receiving, moved up the line into Branch Manager status, and ended up sitting here posting on slashdot and waiting for the unemployment check... Not too good...
Now, now...
Rather than get my hackles up, I'll just explain that as soon as the Tbirds hit the national vendors, we got a batch. The first two went boom. This was AMD's problem. The Coolermasters on the Asus boards were supposed to be fine. Rather than take a chance, we bit the bullet and overnighted some Thermaltakes at $8 more PER FAN (do you know what margins are like in the PC business?). They ran ok after that. Later when the 1.2s came out, we tried the Coolermasters on the 1gigs, and they ran cool with no problems. Again, this was a manufacturing problem.
The problem is, when these products first come out, someone has to work with them and figure out what works and what goes boom, and we are some of those someones. The Tbirds are worlds better than the SlotA's... We were using Asus boards at much higher cost than the other brands, and we still had a lot of problems for the first two months getting the new AMD machines running stable. The problem there was the boards, everything from the bios to the slot itself...
My point is that there is almost no information available for using brand new products until you get them into the shop and start building them. I'm a huge AMD fan, the PC world needs more options and competition to drive the market. And they have simply awesome performance.
Once again, we got kicked in the jimmy with the new DDR stuff. No stability for about 3 months, constant grief, techs working and working, reordering components and rebuilding machines, and they were total crap. The new board revisions came out and voila - screaming fast and very stable DDR Tbird machines.
You're such an expert, why don't you come work in my shop? The catch is, you have to make this stuff work, all day, every day.
Lincoln
Hee hee! That kills me... I'll bet the board's power plane heat sinks were even HOTTER... I have trouble believing you about the uptime if it's SLOTA and not Socket... What board is it on?
Lincoln
When the Tbird 1ghz came out, my best tech fried two of them. Turns out that if you don't use the AMD recommended make and model cooler, and preferably scrape off the thermal pad and put a drop of professional thermal compound on them, then make sure they are sitting nice and flat on the cpu so one side doesn't get hotter than the other, in less than 1 second they go boom. That was a 1gig, so am I to believe that the 1.4 won't go boom? I don't know. I know that the 1.4 runs a little cooler than those first 1gigs did...
No, a ratings system is not censorship, or a free speech issue. While it is true that ratings tend to bend the subject matter toward certain standards, that is not censorship, that is appealing to target audiences, or "selling out" for popularity or the ALMIGHTY $...
Some of us are yearning for the days, back when we had a tough, bloody job. Remember how tough it was when the customer would complain for 10 minutes about they're crap computer system? And how you had to nicely, in a roundabout way, choking down the bile, explain that they're nuts, and that if they click on that menu option, the one that they swear isn't there, doesn't exist, the computer will work fine? And remember when it worked they would still scold you before hanging up? And then call 10 minutes later and start the process over again? I wish I was doing that... It beats pounding the pavement hoping something will work out before the severance runs out and you have to cash out the 401k... Yes, the point is, stop whining and stay put...
I actually have a client who does just that. Bloom Carroll Schools in central Ohio. They spent their new computer money on 6 servers (pcs running 2k server) so when a t1 goes down everyone can log in... Most of their workstations were built from spare parts with new parts thrown in where necessary. Anything Pentium or better gets put to good use in a lab, classroom, teacher's desk, admin desk, etc. The drafting class is full of pcs running old Autocad, the typing class is full of P133's, everything is networked so the machines are locked down with policies... I wish my school would have done that!
FYI,
rutledge_almostaranch@yahoo.com
This "Boycott MS" stuff is just baiting. And I bit...
Pirating MS doesn't help MS. Come on. Not using an alternate OS and contributing/belonging to it's community in some way doesn't hurt MS either.
Too many double negatives...
I'm part of MS OEM System Builder program. I have XP and it's the best Home OS they've made. For networking? Win2000 is a great professional OS and XP is 2000 dressed up like Mac OS. They work fine. Do I trust MS for Security? Hell no.
(Your favorite alternative OS here) and MS will have to coexist, boycotting is pissing in the wind.
The only way to grow alternative OS is to participate in its community, and, yes, not buy MS software or hardware.
MS is big enough to sell $300 desktop operating systems and stomp the crap out of free OS that are more secure and hardy. How is a boycott website going to touch that kind of power? Shoo fly, don't bother me...
I don't hate MS, but their lack of concern to fight off viruses from their email software and lock down their networks is harmful to everyone, and the prices on their software keep going up. And they are selling them fast. If someone is dumb enough to get screwed six ways from Sunday and say "Thank you, may I have another?", then they get what they get. But MS irresponsibility is basically putting their users in harms way from friendly fire.
Ouch.
rutledge_almostaranch@yahoo.com
Slackware on $200 laptop - what can't it do?
Everybody's weighing in, so what the hell... I've only been using Linux for about six months, and I've tried 2 distros. I say go for Slackware, it's got all the editors and the HOWTO's... If you have too much trouble configuring, try VEC (Vector Linux). It includes SaX to configure video, monitor, mouse, etc. Very helpful. It helped me figure out how to get connected with a modem and get video acceleration with 256 colors:)
I've since moved back to Slackware to setup DNS Caching, IP Masquerading, etc, and it's a much more thorough distro.
Do yourself a favor and read some stuff at www.linuxdoc.org... It's got the newest HOWTO's or links to them...
Happy Linuxing,
My two cents,
rutledge_almostaranch@yahoo.com
This may not be the way, and bandwidth may be wasted/mostly unused/cheap, but there has to be a more efficient way to move content than what we're doing... If broadband hadn't taken off so quickly (it is slowing down considerably now - Hear about Covad today?) making a more efficient way to move data/content would be a much bigger issue... i.e. most of us would still be using dialup (like me...) and praying for a faster, more effective way to use POTS lines... Instead the web pages are getting bigger, flashier, and more and more crowded all the time. I like a good looking site, but Mercy! The content is still the key...
Slashdot Mirror
Does anybody else remember when you spent lots of money for more ROM? :)
ALA Mac and Commodore and Atari...
LR
Would these be 'under the hood' updates, or are we going to have EVEN MORE UNDOCUMENTED COMPILE-TIME OPTIONS? I ordered OpenBSD to try it out because of the 6-month release cycle to escape the ./configure, download this, ./configure, etc. loop I keep getting stuck in.
ARG...
I can download them, but I can't filter them to look right in 8 colors...
Monochrome/ greyscale isn't bad. The problem is they all run on virtual memory coming from my cassette drive, and every time the power drops out for a millisecond I have to rewind the tape...
LR
Dear Committee Candidate,
8 22 5&mode=thread
I would like you to answer some questions for me. Please follow this link and post your answers.
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/12/13/043
LR
I know Bob Cringely said that he wanted you to do it. Do you want to do it, or are you being railroaded? What do you think your powers will encompass? Why do you think that your presence on this committee will have more than a "spitting in the ocean" effect?
Amen, brutha. If I could screw around updating the kernel and run any APIs and had free choice of the desktop environment under Windows, I never would have dumped it. What's worse is that you can't run standard networking apps under Windows... And MS's Knowledge Base isn't as good as linuxdoc, just because MS has to support SO MANY BUG WORKAROUNDS without advertising them (oh yeah, I guess that is another Windows bug that swallows third-party software whole, oops, but hey we admitted it after all, it only took you 2 days to dig it out.) It's like a lawyer requesting a copy of a document and getting the Library of Congress. I'm one of those guys that used DOS for 17 years, and absolutely LOATHED Windows, but I liked the power. I only used Windows for three years before discovering Linux, and I'm a convert. The no-bullshit power of command-line (first there was progman, then explorer with Admin plug-ins, what stupid screens and menus will I have to learn on .NET Server?), yeah, command-line multitasking, with the power of a clean-and-simple desktop environment (of your choice!) and a clean yet powerful kernel that can crank out job after job without choking. Being an old DOS guy, you know what my biggest bitch about Windows was? When you wrote a floppy, your $2000 computer was a doorstop, sitting there waiting for the floppy access to finish. Infuriating! It got mildly better under Windows 2000, but with Linux you tell it to do it's floppy job, and then go do 5 other things while it does it. Heavenly...
LR
I agree, it was insane expansion that bred mismanagement which is killing broadband. I tried to get dsl out here in the sticks of Ohio, and it turned out (after two weeks of calling everyone I could possibly call at Verizon) that I finally got ahold of the CO which told me I was on partial fiber and no way would DSL work. The ISP was completely unresponsive the whole time, and when I called to send the DSL Modem (free with sign-up!) back, the 9 year old tech support kid said he would have to have someone call me back. This went on for a week, and eventually I just shipped it via USPS (insured) and gave a follow-up call 3 or 4 days later to make sure they got it. The 9 year old said they would have to call back, and they didn't. I'm sure most people would've kept the modem and sold it on ebay...
I don't know that broadband as we know it is going to stick around, I think it's going to be an all-in-one connection like cable but running voice, music, video (tv), and internet all in one new technology (if it was wireless that would be great...)
In Lancaster, Ohio the Electronics Boutique has Xboxes BY THE DOOR stacked to the ceiling with home-made signs stuck on them saying "X box in stock" and "We have the X box". BTW the mall is not busy at all when I've been there in the last few weeks... I think the GC and the Xbox are going to bomb... and where are all the Christmas shoppers damnit? I thought the economy was climbing...
I have a customer in lowly smalltown Ohio that bought a custom-spec $6000 server to provide access to marketers ON-LINE to every US citizen's info, and it will even do queries and sort by income, property value, education etc. The data is imported once a month from tapes purchased from the government, and after the batch job is run, (they just bought a server to do the batch job - went from 2 weeks to 1 day) which involves pulling in 50gb of data and running through the whole thing TWICE (the programmer says that's how it has to work), all the data is properly stored and sorted and ready for querying. A query takes 3 seconds (down from over a minute on their old server) and, voila, marketing materials are coming soon to a mailbox near you...
LR
How long will it be till HBO has commercials, along with the same concept that puts ads all over AOL's PAY internet connection software? Makes you want to pirate all of it...
Pissing in the ocean. That's what this "unnamed organization", otherwise known as the "Security KGB", will accomplish. I'm amazed at how many businesses aren't making enough money from the internet, and thus are trying to legislate out free speech. I'm having a blast, personal economic downturn and layoff aside, watching these companies that have never actually had a product to sell, crying because the big bad internet is out of control, and that they can't compete against free products that do EXACTLY THE SAME TASKS as their pay-products. Waaaa...
Welcome to the open market and the information age, crybabies exit at the rear...
You are a hard-working s.o.b -- with a job that I envy :(
:)
Can you do something about the IBM Linux Server web content? The commercials are good but the web site had dead links last week when I was looking at it...
Call marketing and tell them some guy from slashdot said to fix the site... and make it better... Sigh.
I have a story, but right now it is that I started out in receiving, moved up the line into Branch Manager status, and ended up sitting here posting on slashdot and waiting for the unemployment check... Not too good...
Just goes to show you what hard work can do...
That is the most awesome heat story I've heard...
There was the P233 that started oozing goo onto the mainboard, but that can't touch yours... Hee hee
Now, now...
Rather than get my hackles up, I'll just explain that as soon as the Tbirds hit the national vendors, we got a batch. The first two went boom. This was AMD's problem. The Coolermasters on the Asus boards were supposed to be fine. Rather than take a chance, we bit the bullet and overnighted some Thermaltakes at $8 more PER FAN (do you know what margins are like in the PC business?). They ran ok after that. Later when the 1.2s came out, we tried the Coolermasters on the 1gigs, and they ran cool with no problems. Again, this was a manufacturing problem.
The problem is, when these products first come out, someone has to work with them and figure out what works and what goes boom, and we are some of those someones. The Tbirds are worlds better than the SlotA's... We were using Asus boards at much higher cost than the other brands, and we still had a lot of problems for the first two months getting the new AMD machines running stable. The problem there was the boards, everything from the bios to the slot itself...
My point is that there is almost no information available for using brand new products until you get them into the shop and start building them. I'm a huge AMD fan, the PC world needs more options and competition to drive the market. And they have simply awesome performance.
Once again, we got kicked in the jimmy with the new DDR stuff. No stability for about 3 months, constant grief, techs working and working, reordering components and rebuilding machines, and they were total crap. The new board revisions came out and voila - screaming fast and very stable DDR Tbird machines.
You're such an expert, why don't you come work in my shop? The catch is, you have to make this stuff work, all day, every day.
Lincoln
Hee hee! That kills me... I'll bet the board's power plane heat sinks were even HOTTER... I have trouble believing you about the uptime if it's SLOTA and not Socket... What board is it on?
Lincoln
When the Tbird 1ghz came out, my best tech fried two of them. Turns out that if you don't use the AMD recommended make and model cooler, and preferably scrape off the thermal pad and put a drop of professional thermal compound on them, then make sure they are sitting nice and flat on the cpu so one side doesn't get hotter than the other, in less than 1 second they go boom. That was a 1gig, so am I to believe that the 1.4 won't go boom? I don't know. I know that the 1.4 runs a little cooler than those first 1gigs did...
Ok, please relinquish ownership of sex.com ...
heh
Muckraking. I'll host it on my box if need be :) We'll have a bunch of mirrors. Noone will take away my /.
No, a ratings system is not censorship, or a free speech issue. While it is true that ratings tend to bend the subject matter toward certain standards, that is not censorship, that is appealing to target audiences, or "selling out" for popularity or the ALMIGHTY $...
Some of us are yearning for the days, back when we had a tough, bloody job. Remember how tough it was when the customer would complain for 10 minutes about they're crap computer system? And how you had to nicely, in a roundabout way, choking down the bile, explain that they're nuts, and that if they click on that menu option, the one that they swear isn't there, doesn't exist, the computer will work fine? And remember when it worked they would still scold you before hanging up? And then call 10 minutes later and start the process over again? I wish I was doing that... It beats pounding the pavement hoping something will work out before the severance runs out and you have to cash out the 401k... Yes, the point is, stop whining and stay put...
I actually have a client who does just that. Bloom Carroll Schools in central Ohio. They spent their new computer money on 6 servers (pcs running 2k server) so when a t1 goes down everyone can log in... Most of their workstations were built from spare parts with new parts thrown in where necessary. Anything Pentium or better gets put to good use in a lab, classroom, teacher's desk, admin desk, etc. The drafting class is full of pcs running old Autocad, the typing class is full of P133's, everything is networked so the machines are locked down with policies... I wish my school would have done that!
FYI,
rutledge_almostaranch@yahoo.com
This "Boycott MS" stuff is just baiting. And I bit... /belonging to it's community in some way doesn't hurt MS either.
Pirating MS doesn't help MS. Come on. Not using an alternate OS and contributing
Too many double negatives...
I'm part of MS OEM System Builder program. I have XP and it's the best Home OS they've made. For networking? Win2000 is a great professional OS and XP is 2000 dressed up like Mac OS. They work fine. Do I trust MS for Security? Hell no.
(Your favorite alternative OS here) and MS will have to coexist, boycotting is pissing in the wind.
The only way to grow alternative OS is to participate in its community, and, yes, not buy MS software or hardware.
MS is big enough to sell $300 desktop operating systems and stomp the crap out of free OS that are more secure and hardy. How is a boycott website going to touch that kind of power? Shoo fly, don't bother me...
I don't hate MS, but their lack of concern to fight off viruses from their email software and lock down their networks is harmful to everyone, and the prices on their software keep going up. And they are selling them fast. If someone is dumb enough to get screwed six ways from Sunday and say "Thank you, may I have another?", then they get what they get. But MS irresponsibility is basically putting their users in harms way from friendly fire.
Ouch.
rutledge_almostaranch@yahoo.com
Slackware on $200 laptop - what can't it do?
Well, if a tree falls in the forest... I agree enough already...
Everybody's weighing in, so what the hell... I've only been using Linux for about six months, and I've tried 2 distros. I say go for Slackware, it's got all the editors and the HOWTO's... If you have too much trouble configuring, try VEC (Vector Linux). It includes SaX to configure video, monitor, mouse, etc. Very helpful. It helped me figure out how to get connected with a modem and get video acceleration with 256 colors :)
I've since moved back to Slackware to setup DNS Caching, IP Masquerading, etc, and it's a much more thorough distro.
Do yourself a favor and read some stuff at www.linuxdoc.org ... It's got the newest HOWTO's or links to them...
Happy Linuxing,
My two cents,
rutledge_almostaranch@yahoo.com
This may not be the way, and bandwidth may be wasted/mostly unused/cheap, but there has to be a more efficient way to move content than what we're doing... If broadband hadn't taken off so quickly (it is slowing down considerably now - Hear about Covad today?) making a more efficient way to move data/content would be a much bigger issue... i.e. most of us would still be using dialup (like me...) and praying for a faster, more effective way to use POTS lines... Instead the web pages are getting bigger, flashier, and more and more crowded all the time. I like a good looking site, but Mercy! The content is still the key...