Satellite networking has extreme bandwidth caps (worse than cell phone 5 gig plans if memory serves). Because everything has to go up to the bird and back, latency is real high. You also have to have a clear view of the satellite, which can be problematical in some areas, such as if a neighbour's trees block your view.
I live on a pond with 6 houses on the side of the pond I live on. Because there were so few houses, it was never economical to improve service. We never had cable. When I was a work at home programmer, we originally went with ISDN, and later T-1. Being a regulated service, the phone company has to provide it to anywhere they string wires, but it is not cheap. I recall it was an $1,800 installation cost just to prep the wires. After I parted company with Red Hat, we paid for it on our own ($400/month), but when the T-1 provider jumped the price to $700/month, we finally bailed.
Fortunately, when we dropped the T-1, the lake had gotten a cell phone tower (that in fact helps pay for some of the lake improvements), and we were able to switch to cell phone networking for casual use. I did have to watch the bandwidth carefully, and not update my photo album from home in order to stay under the 5g limit Sprint charged.
About 6 months after we switched to cell phone networking, one of the two towns that the lake straddles was getting Verizon FIOS, and fortunately that town government required the phone company to make FIOS to every house in town, even the houses on the ponds where access was more difficult. So all of us got FIOS. It would be nice the other town (the one I live in) would sign the paperwork so that I can get TV over FIOS to allow me to turn off my DISH TV satellite service.
I have perl scripts that date to 1988 or so (perl 1-2 era or 5 jobs ago). By and large most of these have worked over time, but in the mid-90's I did need to edit a few scripts to put a backslash in front of the @ inside of strings. Yes, in many of my.pl libraries, I haven't bothered to change creating variables on the fly and using *pointers instead of using refs and other modern mechanisms.
On one of the camera groups, I mentioned I had perl scripts to manage my images, from download to album creation to updating remote systems. I saw that in the 9+ years I've been doing digital photography, the support infrastructure has grown to 26,000 lines of perl, along with 20,000 lines of my support library.
Similarly, I automate building the GCC compiler, running spec, doing all sorts of tables of comparisons in perl. Most of these have been moved from job to job over the years. It was simple to transform the scripts I had for analyzing x86 compiler output code to powerpc as I moved from AMD to IBM.
I keep everything on my external web server, which supports CVS and ssh, and can update and edit files from any machine, both at work and at home.
Some time ago (probably 8-10 years ago), I noticed that getty lost the ability to automatically do stty -iuclc -olcuc if you logged in with a username all in caps, like the original UNIX getty used to do, and bash lost mapping ^ into |, both of which are needed to use an ASR-33 on a UNIX type system.
I did use UNIX V6 on an ASR-33 for a bit in the 1970's.
In terms of MIPS (meaningless indicator of processor speed), the Vax 780 was the gold standard for benchmarks. As such, it became the measurement all of the super-minis measured themselves against, and the general concensus was it a 1MIP machine. Of course later VAXes came in at different speed/price points.
Nah, you should program using cards (9-edge down of course) or UNIX's first character terminal (the teletype 37) to get a true retro feeling.
Programming in cards where you submitted the deck to the attendents for processing, and sometime later picked your output, tended to make you check the program by hand before submitting, particularly if you didn't get the output back until the next day. I remember in my first high school having the 029 or 027 card punch in the next room to the computer, made it so convenient for doing those last minute changes (though in a pinch, tape and a portable hole punch would do), while my second high school had the 24-hour turn around.
In the 1.xx days it was a classic cathedral project until the EGCS/GCC split.
In the real old days (1988-ish) you logged on to the central server and edited the files there, using emacs version mode, with the number of versions set rather high. You had to register the IP address that you would be ftp'ing the sources from, and the threat was if you were passing along pre-release versions of the source outside the clique then you would have your access denied. It was a different time....
Intel had a period where they were focused elsewhere (IA-64), and AMD had come out with guns blazing. However, eventually Intel did wake up, and AMD was slow in getting out the Barcelona chips to compete against the core5 chips.
Ummm, the SSE5 instruction was AMD's extension not Intel's. After SSE4, the next Intel instruction set is AES, CLMUL, FMA3, and AVX. After AVX came out, the SSE5 instructions were changed to XOP (integer vector), FMA4 (fused multiply/add using the SSE5 format instead of the Intel FMA3 format), and CVT16 instructions (conversion to/from 16-bit floating point).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SSE5http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Vector_Extensions
The problems with dye-subs is the print will last maybe 10 years (according to Wilhelm). That's great for a picture that you will hang on your refrigerator for a while and then be replaced, but not as good for something that will last longer. Another problem is because the ink and paper come as a kit, you don't have much choice as to the paper, and likely there will be no clone versions of the ink/paper combinations, and when the manufacturer stops making it, you need to replace the printer. Dye-subs are great for things like photo setups at festivals, where you want something that can do print after print for fixed costs all day long, and the photo is immediately protected against the elements.
Though in terms of migraines, in the past I have been sensitive to the 50/60Hz flickering that fluorescents gave off (at least a few years ago), and I found halogen or incandescents to be better. I suspect the modern CFL's have better ballasts than previous models, but I still dread the 2012 cutoff when incandescents are supposed to be removed.
When I glanced at the site, the differences between the two Ubunto distros look like they are mostly in cpu intensive code, and not things like OS drivers, etc (some of the differences between Snow Leopard are OS/filesystem issues). Given a change from GCC 4.3 to GCC 4.4 was made between the two distributions, it is likely due to the compiler. It may be something simple like not using -mcpu=native on the compilation (not specifying the cpu means GCC has to choose the generic cpu model, which is a compromise between various AMD and Intel chipsets). It could also be one of the places that was made slower, because incorrect code was generated, but you didn't always see the effect of the bad code in the sample dataset.
Good for you. As the other posters have mentioned, this isn't available to everybody. For example, I had a T-1 connection to my house when I was a work at home programmer, and the rate was $400/month. It was the only high speed connection available to me at the time (no cable, and we are too far from the central office for DSL, but because T-1 is regulated, the phone company has to provide it wherever it provides a landline). Well, the T-1 bill would have jumped to $700/month starting next month, and we decided that enough was enough, and cancelled the service.
Right now, my only options are 3G networking (Sprint and Verizon) or satellite (hughes/wildblue), both of which have bandwidth caps. Both Sprint and Verizon offer service with 5 gigabytes/month service, and seem to be a much better deal than satellite. I went with Sprint, because my neighbors have been using it for a bit. It is fast enough that I can get a VPN connection to work, though the upload speeds and ping latencies are a little slower than I had with the T-1.
In theory, Verizon Fios will be here within the year, and I hoping to get business class service from them.
I just switched to a Nokia 6133 using t-mobile, and I've set things up so the laptop connects to the phone via bluetooth, and I set up a normal PPP connection using GPRS/EDGE. I also have the cable, but it is more convenient to use bluetooth (however, I discovered when my house lost power for 5 days and I needed to check email, that the bluetooth drains the battery much faster). I do have to subscribe to the unlimited data service on t-mobile, and speed depends on whether I can get GPRS or EDGE. Here is one such site that documents how to set things up.
http://koti.kapsi.fi/mcfrisk/linux_gprs.html
My fedora 8 box has been running for 17 days (it had been running for a couple of months before we lost power for a week). So it isn't Fedora 8 per se. FWIW, my Fedora 10 box has been running for the same time (I need to think about upgrading the Fedora 8 box sometime).
I should mention that Linux upgrades can be painful too. It took me about 4 days to move 2 of my machines to Fedora 10 from Fedora 8 by doing complete re-installs and debugging my scripts, etc. to get it running. On my laptop, I decided to do the update route, and I'm in a twisty little maze of passages all different, where some of my KDE files won't upgrade (I use gnome, but I habitually install KDE on the system as well).
Some of the issues I had:
xterm is no longer on the install DVD
I'm still missing some fonts I used for emacs
My firewall script had to be tweaked for NetworkManager
For my servers, I needed to undo NetworkManager all together and go back to network
Linux changed the boot order of disks and I needed to move an EIDE disk off to USB so I could have the boot partition in the first two disks
Running yum update from within a chroot partition at one point blew away my glibc
By default the 32-bit glibc ld-loader was not installed, which meant programs I had compiled 6-10 years ago no longer worked until I installed it or recompiled the programs.
People stick with XP because then they don't have to change their existing software
Wrong, people stick with XP because they are familiar with it. Otherwise, why would 70% of eeePC sales be XP models? I assume no one buys an eeePC to run Photoshop or AutoCAD.
I think the eeePC is a good argument to show that Microsoft sales are largely driven by consumer inertia. This is a small computer that, at least in the 9" screen and 20GB SSD model, is well balanced, very practical, and an excellent example of a product where Linux makes perfect sense. The Linux eeePC is a complete system, with all the applications a large majority of consumers want.
Yet 70% of consumers opt for XP. After getting it with XP, they still need to install the applications they want to use, and need to configure those applications to the hardware. In the end, they had to work more to get a system that's less functional
and less practical.
It's not logical reasons that keep people from shifting to Linux now, it's just the fear of the unknown.
I dunno, over in one of the photo groups I go to (dpreview.com), there are threads of people picking up the 9-10" lcd netbooks to do basic photo processing on when travelling. Sure, there are things you can't do because of lack of screen size or memory installed, but for things like sorting out your clunkers from the keepers, it works well.
When I go travelling, I almost always take a laptop with me, and I do basic photo editing on the road. I think I only have 768M in my current laptop. I've been thinking about getting one myself to replace my 8 pound HP monster laptop I picked up a few years ago, but I likely would buy the Windows version instead of the Linux version. This is because I want the systems with a longer lasting battery on it. The SSD disks that are only sold in the Linux versions are completely useless to me because of their size, but the packagers only release the Linux versions in the smaller disk sizes with the small battery. However, I doubt I would run Windows on it, except maybe to upgrade my camera's firmware (which requires Windows).
In terms of why XP, most of the netbooks are limited to 1 core, 2GB of memory, and a simple graphic chip. XP runs fine in that situation, but Vista will only run crippled.
I suspect a lot of companies are starting to tighten their belts and reduce or freeze hiring, etc. If the economy gets much worse, it might be you will lucky to have a single offer, instead of having multiple offers and being able to pick and choose. So before you start trying to negotiate a higher salary, better perks, more interesting job, etc. figure out if you have a good bargaining position.
I pay about $400/month for a full T-1 line. I thought T-1 was a regulated service in that the phone company had to offer it to anybody that would get a POTS (plain old telephone service), i.e. a copper line. My phone line comes in a wire that is strung over the lake for the 6 houses that are on our side of the lake. I've gone from dual channel ISDN to fractional T-1 to full T-1 line. I would love to switch to business class service over FIOS/cable/etc. but at present it just isn't possible.
I do recall that there was a huge upfront cost ($2k?) that my employer at the time paid to get the necessary repeaters in. The way I did this was to go to the network company (net1plus in my case in Massachusetts) that provides the T-1 service, and let them talk to the telephone company, rather than talking to the telephone company directly.
Maybe you need to start talking to the board that regulates telephone service in NV.
While it doesn't help the OP, that's one of the advantages of working on open source projects, your code is always available.
Maybe its different positions, but so far in my current interviews, I have not had to provide samples of existing code, though I have had to code up a problem on my laptop and for others do whiteboard coding. I do have one interview coming up that wants me to to do a 45 minute powerpoint presentation.
I believe anywhere the phone company strings wires, they are required to offer T-1 service (1.5Mbs). It isn't cheap however. I used to be a work at home programmer, and it cost my company something like $2k installation charges to get the necessary repeaters, etc. installed. Times change, and I now work out of an office again, but because we are somewhat isolated, we have taken over paying for the T-1. I think the monthly bill is $400 or $500, so it depends on how much you really want/need the service. Because I have a direct connection to the internet and fixed IP addresses, I can log on to my home machine via ssh (assuming I can get through the company firewalls).
I also have a cell phone card for when I travel from T-mobile (cg-89 that also works with Linux), but the bandwidth isn't that great, and you have to worry about latency.
When I looked into it, the sat. providers would cap your bandwidth, and if you went over a gig or so a month, it would reduce your bandwidth to modem speed.
There is a lot of talk about terrorists, but if memory serves, it was passengers using cell phones and in-seat phones on United flight #93 that clued in the passengers that 3 other planes had been hijacked and crashed, presumably giving them the will to fight back agaisnt the terrorists.
Maybe it is the first university in Indiana to require laptops, but my daughter is applying to colleges right now, and one of her choices (Fitchburg State University in Fitchburg, MA) requires all fresh-people to have laptops. I had just gotten her a nice AMD64 desktop for Christmas for college, and got the desktop instead of a laptop explicitly because I was worried about thefts. Oh well, whats another $500 or so.....
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Satellite networking has extreme bandwidth caps (worse than cell phone 5 gig plans if memory serves). Because everything has to go up to the bird and back, latency is real high. You also have to have a clear view of the satellite, which can be problematical in some areas, such as if a neighbour's trees block your view.
I live on a pond with 6 houses on the side of the pond I live on. Because there were so few houses, it was never economical to improve service. We never had cable. When I was a work at home programmer, we originally went with ISDN, and later T-1. Being a regulated service, the phone company has to provide it to anywhere they string wires, but it is not cheap. I recall it was an $1,800 installation cost just to prep the wires. After I parted company with Red Hat, we paid for it on our own ($400/month), but when the T-1 provider jumped the price to $700/month, we finally bailed. Fortunately, when we dropped the T-1, the lake had gotten a cell phone tower (that in fact helps pay for some of the lake improvements), and we were able to switch to cell phone networking for casual use. I did have to watch the bandwidth carefully, and not update my photo album from home in order to stay under the 5g limit Sprint charged. About 6 months after we switched to cell phone networking, one of the two towns that the lake straddles was getting Verizon FIOS, and fortunately that town government required the phone company to make FIOS to every house in town, even the houses on the ponds where access was more difficult. So all of us got FIOS. It would be nice the other town (the one I live in) would sign the paperwork so that I can get TV over FIOS to allow me to turn off my DISH TV satellite service.
I have perl scripts that date to 1988 or so (perl 1-2 era or 5 jobs ago). By and large most of these have worked over time, but in the mid-90's I did need to edit a few scripts to put a backslash in front of the @ inside of strings. Yes, in many of my .pl libraries, I haven't bothered to change creating variables on the fly and using *pointers instead of using refs and other modern mechanisms.
On one of the camera groups, I mentioned I had perl scripts to manage my images, from download to album creation to updating remote systems. I saw that in the 9+ years I've been doing digital photography, the support infrastructure has grown to 26,000 lines of perl, along with 20,000 lines of my support library.
Similarly, I automate building the GCC compiler, running spec, doing all sorts of tables of comparisons in perl. Most of these have been moved from job to job over the years. It was simple to transform the scripts I had for analyzing x86 compiler output code to powerpc as I moved from AMD to IBM.
I keep everything on my external web server, which supports CVS and ssh, and can update and edit files from any machine, both at work and at home.
Some time ago (probably 8-10 years ago), I noticed that getty lost the ability to automatically do stty -iuclc -olcuc if you logged in with a username all in caps, like the original UNIX getty used to do, and bash lost mapping ^ into |, both of which are needed to use an ASR-33 on a UNIX type system. I did use UNIX V6 on an ASR-33 for a bit in the 1970's.
In terms of MIPS (meaningless indicator of processor speed), the Vax 780 was the gold standard for benchmarks. As such, it became the measurement all of the super-minis measured themselves against, and the general concensus was it a 1MIP machine. Of course later VAXes came in at different speed/price points.
Nah, you should program using cards (9-edge down of course) or UNIX's first character terminal (the teletype 37) to get a true retro feeling. Programming in cards where you submitted the deck to the attendents for processing, and sometime later picked your output, tended to make you check the program by hand before submitting, particularly if you didn't get the output back until the next day. I remember in my first high school having the 029 or 027 card punch in the next room to the computer, made it so convenient for doing those last minute changes (though in a pinch, tape and a portable hole punch would do), while my second high school had the 24-hour turn around.
In the 1.xx days it was a classic cathedral project until the EGCS/GCC split. In the real old days (1988-ish) you logged on to the central server and edited the files there, using emacs version mode, with the number of versions set rather high. You had to register the IP address that you would be ftp'ing the sources from, and the threat was if you were passing along pre-release versions of the source outside the clique then you would have your access denied. It was a different time....
Intel had a period where they were focused elsewhere (IA-64), and AMD had come out with guns blazing. However, eventually Intel did wake up, and AMD was slow in getting out the Barcelona chips to compete against the core5 chips.
Ummm, the SSE5 instruction was AMD's extension not Intel's. After SSE4, the next Intel instruction set is AES, CLMUL, FMA3, and AVX. After AVX came out, the SSE5 instructions were changed to XOP (integer vector), FMA4 (fused multiply/add using the SSE5 format instead of the Intel FMA3 format), and CVT16 instructions (conversion to/from 16-bit floating point). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SSE5 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Vector_Extensions
The problems with dye-subs is the print will last maybe 10 years (according to Wilhelm). That's great for a picture that you will hang on your refrigerator for a while and then be replaced, but not as good for something that will last longer. Another problem is because the ink and paper come as a kit, you don't have much choice as to the paper, and likely there will be no clone versions of the ink/paper combinations, and when the manufacturer stops making it, you need to replace the printer. Dye-subs are great for things like photo setups at festivals, where you want something that can do print after print for fixed costs all day long, and the photo is immediately protected against the elements.
Though in terms of migraines, in the past I have been sensitive to the 50/60Hz flickering that fluorescents gave off (at least a few years ago), and I found halogen or incandescents to be better. I suspect the modern CFL's have better ballasts than previous models, but I still dread the 2012 cutoff when incandescents are supposed to be removed.
Compilers are a lot more complex. Just because the compiler compiles itself, doesn't mean that particular slowdowns and speedups won't be made.
When I glanced at the site, the differences between the two Ubunto distros look like they are mostly in cpu intensive code, and not things like OS drivers, etc (some of the differences between Snow Leopard are OS/filesystem issues). Given a change from GCC 4.3 to GCC 4.4 was made between the two distributions, it is likely due to the compiler. It may be something simple like not using -mcpu=native on the compilation (not specifying the cpu means GCC has to choose the generic cpu model, which is a compromise between various AMD and Intel chipsets). It could also be one of the places that was made slower, because incorrect code was generated, but you didn't always see the effect of the bad code in the sample dataset.
Good for you. As the other posters have mentioned, this isn't available to everybody. For example, I had a T-1 connection to my house when I was a work at home programmer, and the rate was $400/month. It was the only high speed connection available to me at the time (no cable, and we are too far from the central office for DSL, but because T-1 is regulated, the phone company has to provide it wherever it provides a landline). Well, the T-1 bill would have jumped to $700/month starting next month, and we decided that enough was enough, and cancelled the service. Right now, my only options are 3G networking (Sprint and Verizon) or satellite (hughes/wildblue), both of which have bandwidth caps. Both Sprint and Verizon offer service with 5 gigabytes/month service, and seem to be a much better deal than satellite. I went with Sprint, because my neighbors have been using it for a bit. It is fast enough that I can get a VPN connection to work, though the upload speeds and ping latencies are a little slower than I had with the T-1. In theory, Verizon Fios will be here within the year, and I hoping to get business class service from them.
I just switched to a Nokia 6133 using t-mobile, and I've set things up so the laptop connects to the phone via bluetooth, and I set up a normal PPP connection using GPRS/EDGE. I also have the cable, but it is more convenient to use bluetooth (however, I discovered when my house lost power for 5 days and I needed to check email, that the bluetooth drains the battery much faster). I do have to subscribe to the unlimited data service on t-mobile, and speed depends on whether I can get GPRS or EDGE. Here is one such site that documents how to set things up. http://koti.kapsi.fi/mcfrisk/linux_gprs.html
My fedora 8 box has been running for 17 days (it had been running for a couple of months before we lost power for a week). So it isn't Fedora 8 per se. FWIW, my Fedora 10 box has been running for the same time (I need to think about upgrading the Fedora 8 box sometime).
Wrong, people stick with XP because they are familiar with it. Otherwise, why would 70% of eeePC sales be XP models? I assume no one buys an eeePC to run Photoshop or AutoCAD.
I think the eeePC is a good argument to show that Microsoft sales are largely driven by consumer inertia. This is a small computer that, at least in the 9" screen and 20GB SSD model, is well balanced, very practical, and an excellent example of a product where Linux makes perfect sense. The Linux eeePC is a complete system, with all the applications a large majority of consumers want.
Yet 70% of consumers opt for XP. After getting it with XP, they still need to install the applications they want to use, and need to configure those applications to the hardware. In the end, they had to work more to get a system that's less functional and less practical.
It's not logical reasons that keep people from shifting to Linux now, it's just the fear of the unknown.
I dunno, over in one of the photo groups I go to (dpreview.com), there are threads of people picking up the 9-10" lcd netbooks to do basic photo processing on when travelling. Sure, there are things you can't do because of lack of screen size or memory installed, but for things like sorting out your clunkers from the keepers, it works well.
When I go travelling, I almost always take a laptop with me, and I do basic photo editing on the road. I think I only have 768M in my current laptop. I've been thinking about getting one myself to replace my 8 pound HP monster laptop I picked up a few years ago, but I likely would buy the Windows version instead of the Linux version. This is because I want the systems with a longer lasting battery on it. The SSD disks that are only sold in the Linux versions are completely useless to me because of their size, but the packagers only release the Linux versions in the smaller disk sizes with the small battery. However, I doubt I would run Windows on it, except maybe to upgrade my camera's firmware (which requires Windows).
In terms of why XP, most of the netbooks are limited to 1 core, 2GB of memory, and a simple graphic chip. XP runs fine in that situation, but Vista will only run crippled.
Of course since we get the word robot from Karel Capek's 1921 play where the robots were the serf labors, it isn't that far of a stretch for the new production: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R.U.R._(Rossum's_Universal_Robots)
I suspect a lot of companies are starting to tighten their belts and reduce or freeze hiring, etc. If the economy gets much worse, it might be you will lucky to have a single offer, instead of having multiple offers and being able to pick and choose. So before you start trying to negotiate a higher salary, better perks, more interesting job, etc. figure out if you have a good bargaining position.
I pay about $400/month for a full T-1 line. I thought T-1 was a regulated service in that the phone company had to offer it to anybody that would get a POTS (plain old telephone service), i.e. a copper line. My phone line comes in a wire that is strung over the lake for the 6 houses that are on our side of the lake. I've gone from dual channel ISDN to fractional T-1 to full T-1 line. I would love to switch to business class service over FIOS/cable/etc. but at present it just isn't possible. I do recall that there was a huge upfront cost ($2k?) that my employer at the time paid to get the necessary repeaters in. The way I did this was to go to the network company (net1plus in my case in Massachusetts) that provides the T-1 service, and let them talk to the telephone company, rather than talking to the telephone company directly. Maybe you need to start talking to the board that regulates telephone service in NV.
Maybe its different positions, but so far in my current interviews, I have not had to provide samples of existing code, though I have had to code up a problem on my laptop and for others do whiteboard coding. I do have one interview coming up that wants me to to do a 45 minute powerpoint presentation.
I believe anywhere the phone company strings wires, they are required to offer T-1 service (1.5Mbs). It isn't cheap however. I used to be a work at home programmer, and it cost my company something like $2k installation charges to get the necessary repeaters, etc. installed. Times change, and I now work out of an office again, but because we are somewhat isolated, we have taken over paying for the T-1. I think the monthly bill is $400 or $500, so it depends on how much you really want/need the service. Because I have a direct connection to the internet and fixed IP addresses, I can log on to my home machine via ssh (assuming I can get through the company firewalls).
I also have a cell phone card for when I travel from T-mobile (cg-89 that also works with Linux), but the bandwidth isn't that great, and you have to worry about latency.
When I looked into it, the sat. providers would cap your bandwidth, and if you went over a gig or so a month, it would reduce your bandwidth to modem speed.
There is a lot of talk about terrorists, but if memory serves, it was passengers using cell phones and in-seat phones on United flight #93 that clued in the passengers that 3 other planes had been hijacked and crashed, presumably giving them the will to fight back agaisnt the terrorists.
Maybe it is the first university in Indiana to require laptops, but my daughter is applying to colleges right now, and one of her choices (Fitchburg State University in Fitchburg, MA) requires all fresh-people to have laptops. I had just gotten her a nice AMD64 desktop for Christmas for college, and got the desktop instead of a laptop explicitly because I was worried about thefts. Oh well, whats another $500 or so.....