As usual, slashdot editors fail to see the larger picture.
The problem here is not about patents - it's about Europe's refusal to import genetically modified food. Europe is Zimbabwe's primary export market. If Zimbabwe's crops were tainted, they could lose their primary source of revenue.
Furthermore, Zimbabwe is willing to accept the corn if the US will agree to mill it before shipping. The additional cost of milling is minimal, but is not covered by the aid package. Classic snafu.
No, you don't. Really. You may not know that you don't, but you don't.
Yes, really, I do.:)
The best example is resource.h on MSVC projects. Yes it's a bit of a pain that only one person can change the UI at a time - but it's not that bad, especially if they are less than 15 in number and all on the same hallway.
On the other hand, I don't trust CVS to merge changes in resource.h from different developers - god only knows if it will guess right, especially if changes are made to same dialog box.
Lastly, I don't trust my developers to supervise merges like the above - they're fine programmers but they don't need any more uncertainty in their lives. It's the same way that I don't trust myself to login as 'root' for daily use.
BTW - Shame on MS for creating the whole resource.h roadblock in the first place.
Lastly, the only programmers I know who like CVS are open source fanatics and super intelligent UNIX gurus - most guys really have a hard time with it. And they're not stupid, they just see source control as a peripheral concern and don't want to spend any more time dealing with it than nessecary. They just want to get their work done and go home.
I just want to be able to lock a file when I'm working on it - and the CVS maintainers object for what appears to be purely ideological reasons - like sendmail not being able to keep copies of all outgoing email (maybe they fixed that...).
Yes, it is quieter, but not silent. I just did what you are doing, and have a few complaints. I still love the Mac platform, but it's got some rough edges. I actually preferred OS 9 as a user because it's much crisper on the same hardware.
MHZ is most important The Mac GUI is inefficient, and everything happens with a fade or zoom. So it's slow by design as well as slow because it's a pig. A dual G4 1GHz makes for an acceptable GUI. My dual G4 500 is too slow - even typing is sluggish. I'm not kidding, it's really a problem.
The keyboard is odd Pet peeve: Home, End, Page Up and Page Down don't do what you expect - they are nearly useless. Page Up and Page Down always move the scrollbar, not the cursor. And Home and End move to the beginning and end of the document, respectively. This is inexcusable in my opinion. Every time I hit end I lose my place!
The terminal window is broken so you'll want to find a new xterm right away - GLTerm is $10 shareware and seems to work pretty well
The ports tree is missing! I never realized how convenient it was until it was gone.
Apple gouges for Memory and everything else. When I bought mine, Crucial memory was HALF the price of Apple memory. Extra hard drives are also best purchased elsewhere. But stuff that requires drivers, like video cards and scsi cards is best bought from apple, or from a company that makes an apple specific version. Odd hardware on the PCI buss will make it impossible to put the Mac to sleep. (or worse, impossible to wake up.)
If you are thinking about running Virtual PC for any reason, the Dual G4 1GHz is a must - and you should probably wait a month or two for the speed bump.
SMP is flawless of couse single threaded programs will only take advantage of 1 CPU
SCSI is worth it although you might want to consider the $400 adaptec 160 SCSI card (specifically for macintosh) and a $250 36G Ultra 160 hard drive, as a way to both save a few hundred bucks and to get that nice quiet drive you really want.
Think different This is not a PC. You want to spend more than you normally would because it's not upgradeable and because you will keep it longer than you have ever kept a PC. Get something that works for you now and you will still be using it in 3 years.
I've been using a Mylex Acceleraid 150 for just about a year now with zero problems. The box
had about 235 days of uptime until I shut it down to add memory.
I know I shouldn't feed the trolls - but they're so damn cute sometimes.:) So hear goes:
It is cold in space.
Unfortunately, vacuum is an excellent insulator. It's very difficult to dissipate heat in space.
Ever see pictures of the shuttle in orbit with it's doors closed? No - the reason is that the insides of the doors contain giant radiators just to dissipate the heat generated by the people and equipment. They MUST keep them open at all times to dump waste heat.
It sounds like a great idea - But the phone company will eventually catch on. What happens to your business (and all your capitol costs) when the phone company calls you up and says you can't use those pairs anymore?
Excite@home: PLEASE raise your prices if you
are not making a profit. My cable modem is essential to my business. I'd happily pay 50%
more for the service than I am now.
There are several non-standard things to be aware of when rack mounting computer equipment.
First off is where the holes are drilled in
the equipment. You may think that you can buy
a 12U rack and stick 3 4U computers in it. But if you try it with different models of case or computer, you will likely find that the computers don't line up with each other correctly, meaning you may need more than 12U.
I've rack mounted a LOT of computers, audio and video equipment and run into this constantly. The A/V equipment always fits right, but the computers are all over the place!
Second thing is the depth. Many computer cases
are deep enough that they need to be supported in the back. You'll find that there are multiple standards for how far back the back rail is supposed to be. To circumvent this, I usually
forget about installing back rails (unless I have a perfectly homogenous installation), and just install side supports, either wood or metal, and
bolt the computers to those.
I highly recommend that you use
slide rails. Try to get ball bearing rails rather
than friction rails, becuase the friction rails
frequently do not work well.
Also if you are building your own rack out of wood, consider using the fancy ball bearing drawer slides from the kitchen dept. at Home Depot. You
won't need expensive rack rails, and they can slide
all the way out to let you remove the entire machine for service. The only drawback is
that you'll probably have to drill your own holes
to match up with the holes in the computer's chassis.
When drilling those holes, watch out and don't
get any metal shavings in the ball track!
The real question is not "which package system is better?", but "which distribution does the best job of managing their releases and updates?"
I don't care what system they use - my priorities (aside from correctness issues) are:
Do they keep dependencies at a minimum? I don't want to install 30 packages just to get PHP working. And why does every single Red Hat app seem to require Apache (RPM) and PHP (RPM)?
Do they keep library versions well syncronized with available apps? And avoid requiring ancient versions of, say, zlib, that won't play well with newer apps.
Is the auto update tool easy to use? That is, does it present dependencies clearly and show you release notes and advisories. I'd like to know *why* Apache has been updated, so I know if it really affects me.
Can I depend on the vendor to quickly release security critical updates If I have to resort to source in an emergency, it defeats the whole point of packaging.
By the way, I'm a huge fan of source installs for apps, becuase I find them much easy to configure and upgrade than packages. But I'd love to use RPMS if it were practical.
Under such a setup, if user A wants to read user B's files, user A just has to write a CGI program
to read (or copy) user B's files for him. When user A runs the CGI by accessing with HTTP, it
will have the permissions it needs to grab user B's files.
Actually, building non shared code as DLLs is
very useful for testing. It's also a good workaround for the 'lot's of developers need to work on the same files' problem that VC++ tends to have.
Also, building as DLLs contributes to code reusability within an organization.
Lastly, OCX's, VBX's (are they still around?)
and ActiveX controls are great ways for closed source companies to distribute modules, since they avoid the link-time incompatibilities that plague Windows compilers. All of the above are of course just gussied up DLL's.
I won't argue that many Windows developers are downright clueless though.
What are all you guys complaining about? The Lone Gunmen is a great show! The characters are fantastic, breaking stereotypes and being multi dimensional as well.
It's the best TV show since Babylon 5. And the storylines are original and interesting
As for the tech not being perfect, who cares? TV isn't about tech, it's about character and story. Haven't you ever heard of artistic license?
You geeks need to get a life. Not every story has to read like a Cisco technical manual.
In my limited experience, MySQL is faster at
doing simple things than any other database
out there.
When you're programming a web-based app, where
response times are critical, MySQL may actually
be a better choice than Oracle, even if you do
a hybrid solution, with MySQL used for quick lookups and Oracle doing the back end
transactional heavy lifting.
Notice that the Oracle $1,000,000 speed guarantee only applies to DB2, WebLogic and
MS SQL Server, NOT Mysql or Postgres.
I've been thinking alot lately how open source
hardware could work for general social benefit
and profit making.
Imagine that you developed a neat circuit like
the one described above, and posted schematics
circuit board layouts to the web, GPL'd of course.
Now you could make a small profit by selling boards, kits or fully assembled items
Of course, magazines have been doing this for 30 years, but the projects always seem to be simplistic and ill thought out. Imagine what would happen if you could get multiple engineers from various disciplines to contribute!
I get almost all of my new business from
referrals. Being honest with my clients
pays off directly in the form of new business
Besides, happy clients will utilize my services
over and over.
That said, I have faced the temptation to do
things not in the clients best interest - usually
they'll ask for something they read about in a magazine and I'll have to explain why it isn't right for them. Of course, I now get called to help evaluate new technologies, so even this
leads to new business
Treat your clients right and you'll never want
for business again. Screw them and you'll always be struggling.
What makes a good government website for me is lot's of practical advice on dealing with the agency. Many agencies just post scanned regulations and leave it at that. That's fine for the lawyers, but most of us need good english translations, with as many examples as possible.
The front page should always contain:
A full text search box, ideally with a link to a full featured search page.
The top level heirarchical listing of categories
A link to a (frequently updated) FAQ, with links to other agencies where relevant. Example: Going to the Dept. of Commerce, I could reasonably expect to find encryption export regulations, but that responsibility was recently transferred to the Bureau of Export Administration.
A short summary of recent news happenings/hot topics at the agency
A short, clear statement of the agencies' areas of responsibility
In short, give people multiple ways to find the info they want, and try to anticipate their questions in the FAQ
Also, actively solicit feedback, becuase you'll be surprised at the types of things your users want to do that you never anticipated
Ack, gotta run, please forgive the lack of proofreading
The thing about users only using 10% of an app is probably true. The problems with using this 'fact' to promote less featureful programs are as follows:
Buying decisions are always made on the basis of highest capability.
They all use a different 10% of the features
Why do you think manufacturers put bullet points all over the box? Features are the only easily quantifiable selling points.
Also, manufacturers are motivated to reach the widest possible audience, to get the highest return on their development cost. Additional features are perceived to cost very little, and thus it seems attractive to add features to reach more market segments.
The only solution to bloatware is to successfully communicate the actual cost of adding features, in terms of exponentially increasing debugging time and, inevitably, more bugs at release.
Slashdot Mirror
As usual, slashdot editors fail to see the larger picture.
The problem here is not about patents - it's about
Europe's refusal to import genetically modified food. Europe is Zimbabwe's primary export market.
If Zimbabwe's crops were tainted, they could lose their primary source of revenue.
Furthermore, Zimbabwe is willing to accept the corn if the US will agree to mill it before shipping. The additional cost of milling is minimal, but is not covered by the aid package. Classic snafu.
No, you don't. Really. You may not know that you don't, but you don't.
Yes, really, I do. :)
The best example is resource.h on MSVC projects. Yes it's a bit of a pain that only one person can change the UI at a time - but it's not that bad, especially if they are less than 15 in number and all on the same hallway.
On the other hand, I don't trust CVS to merge changes in resource.h from different developers - god only knows if it will guess right, especially if changes are made to same dialog box.
Lastly, I don't trust my developers to supervise merges like the above - they're fine programmers but they don't need any more uncertainty in their lives. It's the same way that I don't trust myself to login as 'root' for daily use.
BTW - Shame on MS for creating the whole resource.h roadblock in the first place.
Lastly, the only programmers I know who like CVS are open source fanatics and super intelligent
UNIX gurus - most guys really have a hard time with it. And they're not stupid, they just see source control as a peripheral concern and don't want to spend any more time dealing with it than nessecary. They just want to get their work done and go home.
I just want to be able to lock a file when I'm working on it - and the CVS maintainers object for
what appears to be purely ideological reasons - like sendmail not being able to keep copies of all outgoing email (maybe they fixed that...).
Umm, I meant, not Processor Upgradeable - of course you can add memory or disks.
Yes, it is quieter, but not silent. I just did what you are doing, and have a few complaints. I still love the Mac platform, but it's got some rough edges. I actually preferred OS 9 as a user because it's much crisper on the same hardware.
MHZ is most important The Mac GUI is inefficient, and everything happens with a fade or zoom. So it's slow by design as well as slow because it's a pig. A dual G4 1GHz makes for an acceptable GUI. My dual G4 500 is too slow - even typing is sluggish. I'm not kidding, it's really a problem.
The keyboard is odd Pet peeve: Home, End, Page Up and Page Down don't do what you expect - they are nearly useless.
Page Up and Page Down always move the scrollbar, not the cursor. And Home and End move to the beginning and end of the document, respectively. This is inexcusable in my opinion. Every time I hit end I lose my place!
The terminal window is broken so you'll want to find a new xterm right away - GLTerm is $10 shareware and seems to work pretty well
The ports tree is missing! I never realized how convenient it was until it was gone.
Apple gouges for Memory and everything else. When I bought mine, Crucial memory was HALF the price of Apple memory. Extra hard drives are also best purchased elsewhere. But stuff that requires drivers, like video cards and scsi cards is best bought from apple, or from a company that makes an apple specific version. Odd hardware on the PCI buss will make it impossible to put the Mac to sleep. (or worse, impossible to wake up.)
If you are thinking about running Virtual PC for any reason, the Dual G4 1GHz is a must - and you should probably wait a month or two for the speed bump.
SMP is flawless of couse single threaded programs will only take advantage of 1 CPU
SCSI is worth it although you might want to consider the $400 adaptec 160 SCSI card (specifically for macintosh) and a $250 36G Ultra 160 hard drive, as a way to both save a few hundred bucks and to get that nice quiet drive you really want.
Think different This is not a PC. You want to spend more than you normally would because it's not upgradeable and because you will keep it longer than you have ever kept a PC. Get something that works for you now and you will still be using it in 3 years.
Just like Taco to piss all over somebody else's review.
Jeez, let people do their jobs already.
Which parts or subsystems did you make, or have made, yourself, that you wish could have been purchased off the shelf for a reasonable price?
Which parts or subsystems do you think are candidates for standardization in the coming personal rocket industry?
ILEC - Incumbent Local Exchange Carrier
Think Verizon.
CLEC - Competitive Local Exchange Carrier
Like Qwest
I've been using a Mylex Acceleraid 150 for just about a year now with zero problems. The box
had about 235 days of uptime until I shut it down to add memory.
What precisely was your problem with Mylex?
I know I shouldn't feed the trolls - but they're so damn cute sometimes. :) So hear goes:
It is cold in space.
Unfortunately, vacuum is an excellent insulator. It's very difficult to dissipate heat in space.
Ever see pictures of the shuttle in orbit with it's doors closed? No - the reason is that the insides of the doors contain giant radiators just to dissipate the heat generated by the people and equipment. They MUST keep them open at all times to dump waste heat.
If you really want to make a difference, don't use a card at all. Using a bogus name to get a card just encourages them.
The stores won't ditch the card program until they see that N percent of the consumers are refusing to use it.
Sure, you'll pay higher prices for groceries. Now is a good time to evaluate how much your privacy is actually worth to you.
It sounds like a great idea - But the phone company will eventually catch on. What happens to your business (and all your capitol costs) when the phone company calls you up and says you can't use those pairs anymore?
Excite@home: PLEASE raise your prices if you are not making a profit. My cable modem is essential to my business. I'd happily pay 50% more for the service than I am now.
-Loopy
There are several non-standard things to be aware of when rack mounting computer equipment.
First off is where the holes are drilled in the equipment. You may think that you can buy a 12U rack and stick 3 4U computers in it. But if you try it with different models of case or computer, you will likely find that the computers don't line up with each other correctly, meaning you may need more than 12U.
I've rack mounted a LOT of computers, audio and video equipment and run into this constantly. The A/V equipment always fits right, but the computers are all over the place!
Second thing is the depth. Many computer cases are deep enough that they need to be supported in the back. You'll find that there are multiple standards for how far back the back rail is supposed to be. To circumvent this, I usually forget about installing back rails (unless I have a perfectly homogenous installation), and just install side supports, either wood or metal, and bolt the computers to those.
I highly recommend that you use slide rails. Try to get ball bearing rails rather than friction rails, becuase the friction rails frequently do not work well.
Also if you are building your own rack out of wood, consider using the fancy ball bearing drawer slides from the kitchen dept. at Home Depot. You won't need expensive rack rails, and they can slide all the way out to let you remove the entire machine for service. The only drawback is that you'll probably have to drill your own holes to match up with the holes in the computer's chassis.
When drilling those holes, watch out and don't get any metal shavings in the ball track!
Good luck
-Loopy
The real question is not "which package system is better?", but "which distribution does the best job of managing their releases and updates?"
I don't care what system they use - my priorities (aside from correctness issues) are:
I don't want to install 30 packages just to get PHP working. And why does every single Red Hat app seem to require Apache (RPM) and PHP (RPM)?
And avoid requiring ancient versions of, say, zlib, that won't play well with newer apps.
That is, does it present dependencies clearly and show you release notes and advisories. I'd like to know *why* Apache has been updated, so I know if it really affects me.
If I have to resort to source in an emergency, it defeats the whole point of packaging.
By the way, I'm a huge fan of source installs for apps, becuase I find them much easy to configure and upgrade than packages. But I'd love to use RPMS if it were practical.
-Loopy
Under such a setup, if user A wants to read user B's files, user A just has to write a CGI program to read (or copy) user B's files for him. When user A runs the CGI by accessing with HTTP, it will have the permissions it needs to grab user B's files.
-Loopy
Actually, building non shared code as DLLs is very useful for testing. It's also a good workaround for the 'lot's of developers need to work on the same files' problem that VC++ tends to have.
Also, building as DLLs contributes to code reusability within an organization.
Lastly, OCX's, VBX's (are they still around?) and ActiveX controls are great ways for closed source companies to distribute modules, since they avoid the link-time incompatibilities that plague Windows compilers. All of the above are of course just gussied up DLL's.
I won't argue that many Windows developers are downright clueless though.
-Loopy
What are all you guys complaining about? The Lone Gunmen is a great show! The characters are fantastic, breaking stereotypes and being multi dimensional as well.
It's the best TV show since Babylon 5. And the storylines are original and interesting
As for the tech not being perfect, who cares? TV isn't about tech, it's about character and story. Haven't you ever heard of artistic license?
You geeks need to get a life. Not every story has to read like a Cisco technical manual.
-Loopy
In my limited experience, MySQL is faster at doing simple things than any other database out there.
When you're programming a web-based app, where response times are critical, MySQL may actually be a better choice than Oracle, even if you do a hybrid solution, with MySQL used for quick lookups and Oracle doing the back end transactional heavy lifting.
Notice that the Oracle $1,000,000 speed guarantee only applies to DB2, WebLogic and MS SQL Server, NOT Mysql or Postgres.
I've been thinking alot lately how open source hardware could work for general social benefit and profit making.
Imagine that you developed a neat circuit like the one described above, and posted schematics circuit board layouts to the web, GPL'd of course.
Now you could make a small profit by selling boards, kits or fully assembled items
Of course, magazines have been doing this for 30 years, but the projects always seem to be simplistic and ill thought out. Imagine what would happen if you could get multiple engineers from various disciplines to contribute!
-Loopy
I get almost all of my new business from referrals. Being honest with my clients pays off directly in the form of new business
Besides, happy clients will utilize my services over and over.
That said, I have faced the temptation to do things not in the clients best interest - usually they'll ask for something they read about in a magazine and I'll have to explain why it isn't right for them. Of course, I now get called to help evaluate new technologies, so even this leads to new business
Treat your clients right and you'll never want for business again. Screw them and you'll always be struggling.
-Loopy
Good Government Websites:
What makes a good government website for me is lot's of practical advice on dealing with the agency. Many agencies just post scanned regulations and leave it at that. That's fine for the lawyers, but most of us need good english translations, with as many examples as possible.
The front page should always contain:
In short, give people multiple ways to find the info they want, and try to anticipate their questions in the FAQ
Also, actively solicit feedback, becuase you'll be surprised at the types of things your users want to do that you never anticipated
Ack, gotta run, please forgive the lack of proofreading
The thing about users only using 10% of an app is probably true. The problems with using this 'fact' to promote less featureful programs are as follows:
Why do you think manufacturers put bullet points all over the box? Features are the only easily quantifiable selling points.
Also, manufacturers are motivated to reach the widest possible audience, to get the highest return on their development cost. Additional features are perceived to cost very little, and thus it seems attractive to add features to reach more market segments.
The only solution to bloatware is to successfully communicate the actual cost of adding features, in terms of exponentially increasing debugging time and, inevitably, more bugs at release.
I was wondering if you have multiple internet backbone connections. I read something about a microwave link to the mainland, but no details.
Do you have multiple microwave links?
Do you have connections to multiple countries, so the UK can't just shut down your connection?
What is your primary source of electrical power, and how long can you operate with backup power when that fails?
Best Regards,
Local Loop
Things I'd like to know that the article didn't talk about:
How the magnetic bearings work (esp. in the presence of the magnetic field produced by the motor/generator).
How they measure rotor position for feedback to the magnetic bearings.
If it's a motor/generator, there must be a rotating magnet. Is it intregated with the flywheel, or attached to the side, or what?
Anyone care to comment?
Thanks,
Loopy