The dumbest thing I've ever done when upgrading my system is to use the wrong stick of RAM in my system. It was about 1mm (1/16 inch) too long for the memory socket it was supposed to fit in. So figuring it was just a tolerance issue where my sockets were just a bit too small and the memory was just a little bit too big I pulled out a knife and shaved off the PCB until the memory stick fit into the socket. It worked. For about a week then I turned on my computer one day and heard a loud !pop!. It turns out the memory was ECC (or something like that:) and my motherboard memory sockets were not. I was lucky, the only thing that happened was that that memory slot was blown completely (I tried multiple correctly sized memory modules after the fact). This was about 1998, I hope I've learned a bit more since then.
Oh yeah, my first motherboard I ruined (again while installing memory) by not knowing how to insert the memory. You're supposed to put it in at a 45 degree angle and then rotate it to the vertical position where it will lock in place. I tried to insert it straight down vertically and when it wouldn't go in applied force. The force ruined the memory slot and that motherboard didn't work at all after.
Well, I hope I've learned a few more things nowadays but I really don't build that many systems anymore - the market is so competitive nowadays that it's almost worth it to buy a prebuilt system because you get a warranty for it while being practically the same price as doing it yourself from parts.
It would be nice from a computer repair point of view to have a setup like this - a boot floppy and the rest of the OS running from a memory stick. You could use this when you go to a site for computer repair, just add your own diagnostic tools to the memory stick. The advantage this has over burning your own custom cd with Knoppix as a base is that you can write files to the memory stick if all you can do is salvage files before a reformat.
Food for thought, what diagnostic/essential programs would you use with a setup such as this?
What would happen? I would hope that people could reverse engineer as the DMCA allows for interoperability the technologies in the TV's. It would be nice to have Windows Media 9 playback capability under Linux.
Or not.:)
...IBM chose to build its computer from off the shelf components, and to open up its design for cloning by other manufacturers...
No they didn't. Compaq had to clean room reverse engineer the IBM BIOS to make the first clones. IBM then brought out the PS/2 with microchannel architecture trying to lock people into their hardware and that didn't work either. Eventually IBM was dragged kicking and screaming into modern times where we all love them for being open.:)
I keep coming back to Konqueror simply because the font rendering is simple the best looking. I really hope Firefox's font rendering get's addressed before 1.0.
(tinfoil)I'm sure the risks of someone "embracing and extending" are considerably lessened now that Microsoft is out of the picture.(/tinfoil)
But seriously, all Sun has to do is respond correctly to the market over time to maintain their leadership role with an open-source Java. If they can be like Linus then their code will be the reference everyone accepts otherwise some other player will eventually fill their role as the de-facto implementation.
My SuSE box plays concurrent sounds just fine using Advanced Linux Sound Architecture. I can have XMMS and AlsaPlayer both running and playing their music mixed no problem. I have a Compaq Presario 1700XL laptop and SuSE 9 had all the drivers for my complete hardware configuration (video, sound, touchpad, etc.), the only thing I had to specify was which ethernet driver to use for the network install (tulip). To get to the point, it seems that Linux has become better since the last time you checked it out...
Whatever. What about being able to hotswap racks of CPU's while the simulation is running? I'm actually running on Windows 2000 right now, I've never even seen an Apple computer in real life so I wouldn't describe myself as a 'fanboy'.
Are you full yet you troll?
...1) Fanboys. I first remember it gaining real popularity among the Apple fanboys when Apple went PPC. They claimed that the PPC showed a positive second derivitave (growth of growth) in Mhz where Intel showed a negative second deravitive and how PPC could scale to huge speeds that CISC just couldn't handle. That of course, neve came to pass....
I think what the Apple fanboys were excited about is scalability of the number of processors. An example of this is the Big Mac. x86 architecture has difficulty scaling beyond 8 processors while the G5 architecture scales beautifully.
make the world safe for capitalism.
When will the US gov't realize that open source is capitalistic - it reduces your costs allowing you to make greater profits.
As a newbie, the most difficult thing I find about Linux is knowing about the programs you need. Case in point, I've been trying for about 2 weeks to get DVD's to play in Xine with no success. Then by chance I happened to come across Ogle and about 30 minutes later (plus turning on DMA on my DVD-ROM) I was up and running. No problems whatsoever with the install unlike trying to get Xine to do it.
My point is that there's lot's of software for Linux to do whatever you want but the difficult part is knowing what the software is called and where to get it.
See The Emporer's New Mind by Roger Penrose.
In it he argues that the reason we haven't created a thinking machine by now is because we can't simulate quantum effects in a neural network simulation.
I don't happen to agree with him but this book was #1 on the New York Times booklist for a long time.
Wouldn't an open-source voting system software be a great OSS contribution to nations? If it was flexible enough it could be used say both in Great Britain and the USA with only loading a different locale file...
Anyone know about anything like this already being developed open source?
He's absolutely right, now is no time to sit on your laurels.
When Longhorn comes out Linux should be able to not only match it's abilities but hopefully keep surpassing them in some areas.
As a new-to-linux user I kind of wish there was a unified GUI-based system-configuration tool that was a standard across distributions. Then I'd only have to edit text files rarely.
Remember when SCO was whining that the open source model didn't provide adequate 'protections' to SCO's business model? This was where they quoted Linus to the effect 'don't check to see if the code is patented' within the context of if you did, found the algorithm to be patented, and still used it then you would be liable for triple damages. And this - in SCO's view - allowed IBM to insert SCO "derived" code into Linux unfairly.
Well what about the story that ran earlier today - Silicon Valley where in the linked NYTimes article on the second page it contains the following paragraph: In April 2001, after discussions with Microsoft fell apart, InterTrust filed a patent infringement suit contending that the company illegally used InterTrust's technology in its Windows Media Player and other products. The suit is pending.
This just goes to show that there aren't any protections in the commercial area as well.
If it get's to the point that VMware knows it's dead in the market, maybe people could buy out the software and turn it into open source like they did with Blender.
I wonder how much support for this would exist within the OSS community?
So, the group of have's get to bypass the security checkpoints while the have-not's must endure hours of security checks. If the have's population is very small and limited to 'influential' people, and the have-not's represent a large percentage of the total population then I would be forced to call it class warfare.
I'm not saying the proposal has a malicious agenda, instead I'm trying to imagine what an ID card type system such as this one could evolve into given time.
Emulation is good for creating a market; when the market is big enough, native ports and drivers will arrive as well.
Commodore Business Machines tried this with the Commodore 128. It was completely backward compatible with the Commodore 64, You would hold down a key on boot and it would boot into C64 mode. This actually kept the C128 from catching on - every C128 sold was just another C64 in the market so network effects simply strengthened the C64 software base and little C128 software was written because the C128 owners could just use the C64 version.
Of course at the time 64/128 compatibility was all-or-nothing, you couldn't have C64 software running in the C128 environment. Nowadays with multitasking systems the norm and translation layers the lesson from CBM may not hold.
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The dumbest thing I've ever done when upgrading my system is to use the wrong stick of RAM in my system. It was about 1mm (1/16 inch) too long for the memory socket it was supposed to fit in. So figuring it was just a tolerance issue where my sockets were just a bit too small and the memory was just a little bit too big I pulled out a knife and shaved off the PCB until the memory stick fit into the socket. It worked. For about a week then I turned on my computer one day and heard a loud !pop!. It turns out the memory was ECC (or something like that :) and my motherboard memory sockets were not. I was lucky, the only thing that happened was that that memory slot was blown completely (I tried multiple correctly sized memory modules after the fact). This was about 1998, I hope I've learned a bit more since then.
Oh yeah, my first motherboard I ruined (again while installing memory) by not knowing how to insert the memory. You're supposed to put it in at a 45 degree angle and then rotate it to the vertical position where it will lock in place. I tried to insert it straight down vertically and when it wouldn't go in applied force. The force ruined the memory slot and that motherboard didn't work at all after.
Well, I hope I've learned a few more things nowadays but I really don't build that many systems anymore - the market is so competitive nowadays that it's almost worth it to buy a prebuilt system because you get a warranty for it while being practically the same price as doing it yourself from parts.
It would be nice from a computer repair point of view to have a setup like this - a boot floppy and the rest of the OS running from a memory stick. You could use this when you go to a site for computer repair, just add your own diagnostic tools to the memory stick. The advantage this has over burning your own custom cd with Knoppix as a base is that you can write files to the memory stick if all you can do is salvage files before a reformat.
Food for thought, what diagnostic/essential programs would you use with a setup such as this?
Doh. Make that playback under your Linux based TV.
What would happen? I would hope that people could reverse engineer as the DMCA allows for interoperability the technologies in the TV's. It would be nice to have Windows Media 9 playback capability under Linux. :)
Or not.
Doh. :)
Man, I'm impressed that your nick wasn't taken until the 713,286th registration. What made you choose it? Ideological or just because-you-could?
...IBM chose to build its computer from off the shelf components, and to open up its design for cloning by other manufacturers... :)
No they didn't. Compaq had to clean room reverse engineer the IBM BIOS to make the first clones. IBM then brought out the PS/2 with microchannel architecture trying to lock people into their hardware and that didn't work either. Eventually IBM was dragged kicking and screaming into modern times where we all love them for being open.
I keep coming back to Konqueror simply because the font rendering is simple the best looking. I really hope Firefox's font rendering get's addressed before 1.0.
(tinfoil)I'm sure the risks of someone "embracing and extending" are considerably lessened now that Microsoft is out of the picture.(/tinfoil)
But seriously, all Sun has to do is respond correctly to the market over time to maintain their leadership role with an open-source Java. If they can be like Linus then their code will be the reference everyone accepts otherwise some other player will eventually fill their role as the de-facto implementation.
They would simply have you unlock the data for them by entering your "password", no matter the method used for entry.
In YaST search for kernel-source and the package appears that you can install.
My SuSE box plays concurrent sounds just fine using Advanced Linux Sound Architecture. I can have XMMS and AlsaPlayer both running and playing their music mixed no problem. I have a Compaq Presario 1700XL laptop and SuSE 9 had all the drivers for my complete hardware configuration (video, sound, touchpad, etc.), the only thing I had to specify was which ethernet driver to use for the network install (tulip). To get to the point, it seems that Linux has become better since the last time you checked it out...
Whatever. What about being able to hotswap racks of CPU's while the simulation is running? I'm actually running on Windows 2000 right now, I've never even seen an Apple computer in real life so I wouldn't describe myself as a 'fanboy'.
Are you full yet you troll?
...1) Fanboys. I first remember it gaining real popularity among the Apple fanboys when Apple went PPC. They claimed that the PPC showed a positive second derivitave (growth of growth) in Mhz where Intel showed a negative second deravitive and how PPC could scale to huge speeds that CISC just couldn't handle. That of course, neve came to pass. ...
I think what the Apple fanboys were excited about is scalability of the number of processors. An example of this is the Big Mac. x86 architecture has difficulty scaling beyond 8 processors while the G5 architecture scales beautifully.
make the world safe for capitalism.
When will the US gov't realize that open source is capitalistic - it reduces your costs allowing you to make greater profits.
As a newbie, the most difficult thing I find about Linux is knowing about the programs you need. Case in point, I've been trying for about 2 weeks to get DVD's to play in Xine with no success. Then by chance I happened to come across Ogle and about 30 minutes later (plus turning on DMA on my DVD-ROM) I was up and running. No problems whatsoever with the install unlike trying to get Xine to do it.
My point is that there's lot's of software for Linux to do whatever you want but the difficult part is knowing what the software is called and where to get it.
See The Emporer's New Mind by Roger Penrose.
In it he argues that the reason we haven't created a thinking machine by now is because we can't simulate quantum effects in a neural network simulation.
I don't happen to agree with him but this book was #1 on the New York Times booklist for a long time.
With information growning exponentialy, one must wonder if we're on the edge of the Singularity as anticipated by Vernor Vinge.
Wouldn't an open-source voting system software be a great OSS contribution to nations? If it was flexible enough it could be used say both in Great Britain and the USA with only loading a different locale file...
Anyone know about anything like this already being developed open source?
He's absolutely right, now is no time to sit on your laurels.
When Longhorn comes out Linux should be able to not only match it's abilities but hopefully keep surpassing them in some areas.
As a new-to-linux user I kind of wish there was a unified GUI-based system-configuration tool that was a standard across distributions. Then I'd only have to edit text files rarely.
Remember when SCO was whining that the open source model didn't provide adequate 'protections' to SCO's business model? This was where they quoted Linus to the effect 'don't check to see if the code is patented' within the context of if you did, found the algorithm to be patented, and still used it then you would be liable for triple damages. And this - in SCO's view - allowed IBM to insert SCO "derived" code into Linux unfairly.
Well what about the story that ran earlier today - Silicon Valley where in the linked NYTimes article on the second page it contains the following paragraph:
In April 2001, after discussions with Microsoft fell apart, InterTrust filed a patent infringement suit contending that the company illegally used InterTrust's technology in its Windows Media Player and other products. The suit is pending.
This just goes to show that there aren't any protections in the commercial area as well.
If it get's to the point that VMware knows it's dead in the market, maybe people could buy out the software and turn it into open source like they did with Blender.
I wonder how much support for this would exist within the OSS community?
So, the group of have's get to bypass the security checkpoints while the have-not's must endure hours of security checks. If the have's population is very small and limited to 'influential' people, and the have-not's represent a large percentage of the total population then I would be forced to call it class warfare.
I'm not saying the proposal has a malicious agenda, instead I'm trying to imagine what an ID card type system such as this one could evolve into given time.
...Things are classified for a reason...
Yeah, an embarrasing reason.
Emulation is good for creating a market; when the market is big enough, native ports and drivers will arrive as well.
Commodore Business Machines tried this with the Commodore 128. It was completely backward compatible with the Commodore 64, You would hold down a key on boot and it would boot into C64 mode. This actually kept the C128 from catching on - every C128 sold was just another C64 in the market so network effects simply strengthened the C64 software base and little C128 software was written because the C128 owners could just use the C64 version.
Of course at the time 64/128 compatibility was all-or-nothing, you couldn't have C64 software running in the C128 environment. Nowadays with multitasking systems the norm and translation layers the lesson from CBM may not hold.