I know...my point was not that it is not possible, my point is that it's the graphics card manufacturers that provide the driver support. If only USB card makers had come out with NT4 drivers, I'd still be running NT4 on my lowly PPro 200, instead of Windows 2000.
Yes...I'm not sure how it is called in English, but the stuff you use to make tiles waterproof at the sides, looks like a gel and becomes hard plastic. Smells like vinegar. Put that in your USB slots and they are unusable forever.
You are completely right on that point. Many companies still use Windows NT4. Actually where I work right now it's still NT4. But then how many Dell (or your favourite big computer manufacturer) still makes PC's without an AGP graphics card? Actually in the enterprise USB is a good thing to avoid: keeps employees from attaching (for example) Zip disks and copying data to take away with them. Of course, putting some silicone in the USB slots works perfectly well too;-)
now that win 2K is stable enough that most people don't need to upgrade ever again
Yes, that is what I said about Windows NT4. I liked it (once I understood it), and thought this is all I need. However hardware evolved and in came Plug And Play devices and later on USB (and AGP, but that was supported by the graphics card manufacturers). Both were never added to Windows NT4. Why is completely beyond me, but it all makes sense. To have those feature you need Windows 2000. Don't underestimate the evolution in hardware: if your OS doesn't support it you will need to upgrade. That is exactly what will happen in the next iteration of Microsoft operating systems. It's just a matter of time.
You imply that people who make the buying decisions actually know there is something else than Microsoft, that it is better and cheaper? Forget it....Mostly it's managers that make decisions, and not the technicians. The logic is, "Excell is great, so must be their other products".
Try to read the novel, it's much better than the movie. Trust me on that one. Also I liked "Terror from the Deep" by the same author (John Wyndham). Of course I also liked the X-Com II game, but that's nothing to do with it.
Their CPU's run cooler (and on less power) than either AMD or Intel chips, which allows them to run full-speed and fanless for hours on a single battery.
The CPU certainly runs much cooler, I haven't been able to locate it on my iBook. However there is one component that runs pretty hot and that's the harddisk. Okay, it doesn't get much hot in the sense "it burns!", but a nice "hmmm, warm". While it is true that the Apple laptops are very very energy efficient, it is mainly due to the fact that the energy management is very good, not because of the CPU. I run Seti@Home on my iBook all the time, and you'd better turn it off while on battery power because I'm pretty sure it won't last 2 hours. (I should time it, I think) Turn Seti@Home off however and it can be used for ages. Of course, I don't want to know how long a Intel/AMD laptop lives on battery power running Seti@Home.:-)
The second and third mouse button are largly overrated. Look, up until last december I was a fervent x86 user and never had any mouse with less than 2 buttons. I laughed at Mac because I found it very limited. Last december however I bought an iBook (impulse buy...mainly due to OS X), and after about one week you are completely used to it. Your second hand just rests near the "Option" key. I've become that used to it that now when I'm on a PC, I tend to push "Control"-click accidentally. Needless to say that doesn't work;-) Honestly, don't diss the iBook just because it only has one button. Oh, and the touchpad is the best I ever used. On PC laptops I never found any touchpad that was as accurate and responsive... never... *sigh* Actually with PC's I give up the touchpad after 2 hours and connect a mouse because I'm sick of it.
One thing that is great about the Mac is the pr0n surfing with Internet Explorer. Press Alt-Mousclick on a thumbnail and the link will be saved using the download manager. This is the only reason I still use IE for Mac, because mozilla does not have this function.
I probably sound like a "Apple convert", but really the second mouse button is not needed. And on intel machines I never use the third mousebutton unless running Linux where it's copy paste.
First let me assure you that I'm not the AC that insulted you. I log in to do that;-) The whole art of keeping up traditions is to do it in small doses. Honestly I liked how you derided my rant about slashdot traditions: that's exactly how it should be. As in "you flame me, I flame you". Excellent, I foresee a great future for you as a slashdot poster. A bit less whining and a bit more spice and you'll make one heck of a flamewarrior. I never said you had to agree about the tradition part, but I hope you sure do see my point. Oh, and don't link to goatse.cx, it's already bad enough mentioning it.
GeForce cards are out of the picture 'cause the reviewers point out that this chipset is too data-transfer-intensive to work well over a PCI bus.
I know that there were PCI GeForce2 MX versions. I have seen some in shops, unfortunately they are virtually unfindable nowadays. I'd really like to have one to put it in one of my workstations that has no AGP slot. Besides: good luck finding *any* PCI graphics card these days.
"Wheany"...what a nice nick for a whiner. So you don't like beowulf cluster jokes and oppose to them. I'll tell you why beowulf cluster jokes need to stay: simply because of tradition. They are indeed not particulary funny, but I remember as a novice Slashdot reader (second account, hence the high user ID number) I was puzzled by a great many of those jokes. "What is a beowulf cluster?" will ask the novice slashdot reader, because he doesn't get the joke. Perhaps he'll do some research then and find out.
Same thing with "Petrified Nathalie Portman". I did not even know who "Nathalie Portman" was. (No Star Wars fan, sorry) I still don't get the Hot Grits stuff and why what exactly GoatSex has to to with www.goatse.cx (except for sounding the same). There are great many traditions here on slashdot, and traditions should be perpetuated, so that the future generations of Slashdot readers will have the trill to accidentally click on a goatse.cx link (especially at work...which happened to me.)
It's all part of the fun...so get your whining somewhere else, okay?
Oh, to stay on topic: anyone ever installed Linux after drinking 2 liters of beer? Very funny, especially the hangover the next day because you lost all your partitions;-)
being messed with by (mostly) second rate software
Second rate software? Have you used the same AOL Instant Messenger as I did? I call *that* second rate software. Poorly thought especially on username thing (ICQ was much better, with unique numbers). There is no way in hell I'll find a nice nickname nowadays on AOL. It nearly has no features and then there are the advertisements. Perhaps the newer versions are better, but I highly doubt it.
Note: I feel the same about Yahoo Messenger and MSN Messenger (now *that* is a ugly piece of software). The only chatclient I really liked was ICQ version 98b and 99b. But of course, that one refuses to work. *sigh* Since AOL took over ICQ, the software has gone downhill too. Well, for their defense: the Mac OS X ICQ client is neat and has no ads.
Well, if Doris and Nancy are cute little secretaries that won't mind hugging a 'admin boy', I'll be willing to do all that work.... Hey, I'd even think of taking a shower and shaving for a change;-)
I've had a cell for over 7 years. I saw the use, especially in my situation, being a student constantly on the move and no possibility to get a phone on his student room. I used it a lot back then (calling parents and stuff like that).
I still have a cellphone now. I work, I'm back home and I don't move much. Actually, I could just throw it away and nobody would notice it because I don't call on it and I don't get called on it. The only thing I use it for, from time to time is to check my email when on the road. My point is: a cellphone is useful in some circumstances, but in others it is utterly useless.
Fridges that call servicing, or order food by themselves are a big no-no in my eyes. A nice little paper on the fridge door does very well as grocery list. You take the last egg, write "eggs" on the list. Takes 3 seconds. The servicing doesn't sound well to me either: imagine the compressor runs a bit hot but it would last another 5 years. It calls service anyway, the guy repairs it and you get a nice little bill of 500Euro...which you could have avoided easily. Bah, technology is nice....but you don't have to overtechnologize everything.
I find it weird that a lot of people use the VCR blinking clock as an example for bad interfacing. Think a bit further...could it be that users don't care? Look at the windows desktops: 95% of them use the default ugly blue colour scheme. It's a similar problem: one might it find easier to set it to a more soothing green, but the user doesn't care.
I'm sorry, I'm an IT guy...I know how to change the clock on my VCR. It blinks on 0:00 anyway and you know why? I don't care, I just use it for playback anyway and each time there is a power outage (we recently got quite a few) I'd have to set it back to the right time again. Not to mention summer and winter time. No thanks, let it blink... (Same for the clock on my HiFi btw...never understood why they can't put a rechargable battery in those things)
Back in my young days I couldn't understand the blinking 0:00 phenomenon, now I do...
Thanks man! Really the information that I needed. It's now installing the xfree packages on my (other) system. I used the command line (apt-cache is really damn usefull), and after some trials it actually did what I wanted. My whole idea is to have a sleek system: only the base Linux, and a small desktop environment (preferably only WindowMaker as windowmanager) I think you just brought me closer to that idea.
With you additional information about the scripts, the thing starts to make sense. Yes, I am indeed used to the monolithic startup scripts of *BSD or Slack. I assumed it would be the same. I'm just a bit annoyed that I just used up all my mod-points on my regular account (as you see from my nick I used to be a Troll on this account. I stopped though, it's no fun). You truly deserved a +1,Informative in my eyes!
Just downloaded gentoo, because everyone praises it here. I'll give that one a shot as soon as I buy a second harddisk. I'm running out of diskspace with all the different OSes on my system;-)
Interesting to hear that. Up until now I used a slackware derivate (or at least I think it is: Peanut Linux), and I felt very comfy with it. Startup scripts in/etc/rc.d. Okay, so I grew out of Peanut Linux, and wanted to use a big distribution. My choices came down to Slackware and Debian because I want full controll of what I install and what not.
My point is, in the beginning of this week I downloaded the minimal CD install from Debian. I installed it, and, ehm... I don't know how to get on: I literally have 1000packets to choose from and I need all to read them, understand what they do and then say if I want it or not. Urks... On top of that, the config files aren't the same at all: no/etc/rc.d I just don't find the stuff (I forgot to config my network card and wanted to do it the way I was used to).
Strangely enough I don't have any problem finding the right config files in my OpenBSD machine. Perhaps I'm more a candidate for *BSD?
So is slackware perhaps the thing I need? (No LFS suggestions please, I really do not have the time to do that)
Voila... free email, free webspace for the initial cost of 30$ and a yearly fee of 12Euro for the domain. Actually if you're cheap, you just use the free DynDns services and skip the registration at Gandi. Of course, you're email address won't look as cool;-)
You had the DSL line anyway, so I don't think you ought to count the cost that.
Works really damn fine for me...
I have an old toshiba laptop with a 1.3Gig Harddisk which I made usable again by installing Linux. Back then I was on ISDN which means that downloading an ISO really shouldn't be 650Meg, so I looked for small distributions. I personally happen to like Peanut Linux . It takes about about 600Meg and comes with KED. Give it a try.
Slashdot Mirror
I know...my point was not that it is not possible, my point is that it's the graphics card manufacturers that provide the driver support. If only USB card makers had come out with NT4 drivers, I'd still be running NT4 on my lowly PPro 200, instead of Windows 2000.
Yes...I'm not sure how it is called in English, but the stuff you use to make tiles waterproof at the sides, looks like a gel and becomes hard plastic. Smells like vinegar. Put that in your USB slots and they are unusable forever.
You are completely right on that point. Many companies still use Windows NT4. Actually where I work right now it's still NT4. But then how many Dell (or your favourite big computer manufacturer) still makes PC's without an AGP graphics card? Actually in the enterprise USB is a good thing to avoid: keeps employees from attaching (for example) Zip disks and copying data to take away with them. Of course, putting some silicone in the USB slots works perfectly well too ;-)
Yes, that is what I said about Windows NT4. I liked it (once I understood it), and thought this is all I need. However hardware evolved and in came Plug And Play devices and later on USB (and AGP, but that was supported by the graphics card manufacturers). Both were never added to Windows NT4. Why is completely beyond me, but it all makes sense. To have those feature you need Windows 2000. Don't underestimate the evolution in hardware: if your OS doesn't support it you will need to upgrade. That is exactly what will happen in the next iteration of Microsoft operating systems. It's just a matter of time.
You imply that people who make the buying decisions actually know there is something else than Microsoft, that it is better and cheaper?
Forget it....Mostly it's managers that make decisions, and not the technicians. The logic is, "Excell is great, so must be their other products".
Try to read the novel, it's much better than the movie. Trust me on that one. Also I liked "Terror from the Deep" by the same author (John Wyndham). Of course I also liked the X-Com II game, but that's nothing to do with it.
One word for you: WindowMaker.
But I think you're right, I love my iBook...
The CPU certainly runs much cooler, I haven't been able to locate it on my iBook. However there is one component that runs pretty hot and that's the harddisk. Okay, it doesn't get much hot in the sense "it burns!", but a nice "hmmm, warm". :-)
While it is true that the Apple laptops are very very energy efficient, it is mainly due to the fact that the energy management is very good, not because of the CPU. I run Seti@Home on my iBook all the time, and you'd better turn it off while on battery power because I'm pretty sure it won't last 2 hours. (I should time it, I think) Turn Seti@Home off however and it can be used for ages.
Of course, I don't want to know how long a Intel/AMD laptop lives on battery power running Seti@Home.
Last december however I bought an iBook (impulse buy...mainly due to OS X), and after about one week you are completely used to it. Your second hand just rests near the "Option" key. I've become that used to it that now when I'm on a PC, I tend to push "Control"-click accidentally. Needless to say that doesn't work
One thing that is great about the Mac is the pr0n surfing with Internet Explorer. Press Alt-Mousclick on a thumbnail and the link will be saved using the download manager. This is the only reason I still use IE for Mac, because mozilla does not have this function.
I probably sound like a "Apple convert", but really the second mouse button is not needed. And on intel machines I never use the third mousebutton unless running Linux where it's copy paste.
Actually just combine your two passions, and download Hentai instead. That's what I do...
Sans racune...
First let me assure you that I'm not the AC that insulted you. I log in to do that ;-)
The whole art of keeping up traditions is to do it in small doses. Honestly I liked how you derided my rant about slashdot traditions: that's exactly how it should be. As in "you flame me, I flame you". Excellent, I foresee a great future for you as a slashdot poster. A bit less whining and a bit more spice and you'll make one heck of a flamewarrior.
I never said you had to agree about the tradition part, but I hope you sure do see my point. Oh, and don't link to goatse.cx, it's already bad enough mentioning it.
I know that there were PCI GeForce2 MX versions. I have seen some in shops, unfortunately they are virtually unfindable nowadays. I'd really like to have one to put it in one of my workstations that has no AGP slot.
Besides: good luck finding *any* PCI graphics card these days.
Same thing with "Petrified Nathalie Portman". I did not even know who "Nathalie Portman" was. (No Star Wars fan, sorry) I still don't get the Hot Grits stuff and why what exactly GoatSex has to to with www.goatse.cx (except for sounding the same). There are great many traditions here on slashdot, and traditions should be perpetuated, so that the future generations of Slashdot readers will have the trill to accidentally click on a goatse.cx link (especially at work...which happened to me.)
It's all part of the fun...so get your whining somewhere else, okay?
Oh, to stay on topic: anyone ever installed Linux after drinking 2 liters of beer? Very funny, especially the hangover the next day because you lost all your partitions ;-)
Second rate software? Have you used the same AOL Instant Messenger as I did? I call *that* second rate software. Poorly thought especially on username thing (ICQ was much better, with unique numbers). There is no way in hell I'll find a nice nickname nowadays on AOL. It nearly has no features and then there are the advertisements. Perhaps the newer versions are better, but I highly doubt it.
Note: I feel the same about Yahoo Messenger and MSN Messenger (now *that* is a ugly piece of software). The only chatclient I really liked was ICQ version 98b and 99b. But of course, that one refuses to work. *sigh* Since AOL took over ICQ, the software has gone downhill too. Well, for their defense: the Mac OS X ICQ client is neat and has no ads.
Sorry, couldn't resist...
I'm sure Dick Cheney is more than four years old.
Mentally? I'm not so sure ;-)
Well, if Doris and Nancy are cute little secretaries that won't mind hugging a 'admin boy', I'll be willing to do all that work.... Hey, I'd even think of taking a shower and shaving for a change ;-)
I still have a cellphone now. I work, I'm back home and I don't move much. Actually, I could just throw it away and nobody would notice it because I don't call on it and I don't get called on it. The only thing I use it for, from time to time is to check my email when on the road.
My point is: a cellphone is useful in some circumstances, but in others it is utterly useless.
Fridges that call servicing, or order food by themselves are a big no-no in my eyes. A nice little paper on the fridge door does very well as grocery list. You take the last egg, write "eggs" on the list. Takes 3 seconds.
The servicing doesn't sound well to me either: imagine the compressor runs a bit hot but it would last another 5 years. It calls service anyway, the guy repairs it and you get a nice little bill of 500Euro...which you could have avoided easily.
Bah, technology is nice....but you don't have to overtechnologize everything.
I'm sorry, I'm an IT guy...I know how to change the clock on my VCR. It blinks on 0:00 anyway and you know why? I don't care, I just use it for playback anyway and each time there is a power outage (we recently got quite a few) I'd have to set it back to the right time again. Not to mention summer and winter time. No thanks, let it blink... (Same for the clock on my HiFi btw...never understood why they can't put a rechargable battery in those things)
Back in my young days I couldn't understand the blinking 0:00 phenomenon, now I do...
My whole idea is to have a sleek system: only the base Linux, and a small desktop environment (preferably only WindowMaker as windowmanager) I think you just brought me closer to that idea.
With you additional information about the scripts, the thing starts to make sense. Yes, I am indeed used to the monolithic startup scripts of *BSD or Slack. I assumed it would be the same.
I'm just a bit annoyed that I just used up all my mod-points on my regular account (as you see from my nick I used to be a Troll on this account. I stopped though, it's no fun). You truly deserved a +1,Informative in my eyes!
Just downloaded gentoo, because everyone praises it here. I'll give that one a shot as soon as I buy a second harddisk. I'm running out of diskspace with all the different OSes on my system ;-)
I'd honestly be scared to call the competing 1-900-GOATSE
*Shudders in disgust*
My point is, in the beginning of this week I downloaded the minimal CD install from Debian. I installed it, and, ehm... I don't know how to get on: I literally have 1000packets to choose from and I need all to read them, understand what they do and then say if I want it or not. Urks... On top of that, the config files aren't the same at all: no /etc/rc.d I just don't find the stuff (I forgot to config my network card and wanted to do it the way I was used to).
Strangely enough I don't have any problem finding the right config files in my OpenBSD machine. Perhaps I'm more a candidate for *BSD?
So is slackware perhaps the thing I need? (No LFS suggestions please, I really do not have the time to do that)
- Find an old useless computer (486 or P-I class).
- Install OpenBSD (buy the CD for support. I did)
- Configure NAT/FP, sendmail and apache
- Register a cheap domain name at Gandi.net
- Create an account at DynDns and donate 30 bucks
- Pick one of the many dyndns updaters
- Put machine in closet and let it run 24/24, 7/7.
Voila... free email, free webspace for the initial cost of 30$ and a yearly fee of 12Euro for the domain. Actually if you're cheap, you just use the free DynDns services and skip the registration at Gandi. Of course, you're email address won't look as coolYou had the DSL line anyway, so I don't think you ought to count the cost that.
Works really damn fine for me...
I have an old toshiba laptop with a 1.3Gig Harddisk which I made usable again by installing Linux. Back then I was on ISDN which means that downloading an ISO really shouldn't be 650Meg, so I looked for small distributions. I personally happen to like Peanut Linux . It takes about about 600Meg and comes with KED. Give it a try.