Say what you want about IE, but IMHO, it's a wonderful software product. IE has been running on my Win2k box without a crash (that goes for Win2k, as well) for several months now. Netscape, on the other hand, crashes on my FreeBSD box hourly. Sometimes, it even takes my X11 server with it. When Netscape renders pages 1/2 as fast as IE, I'll switch to it.
Not defragmenting an NTFS partition is a sure-fire cause of performance problems on a Win2k box. It's very unfortunate, though, because without the "real" version of Diskeeper, there is no way for the _average_ user to automate this. See my post further down the page for info on how to get around this. It's not toooo hard but not exactly nice and clean either.
I defragment my Win2k box every night. When you first start defragmenting an NTFS partition that has never been defragmented, you are going to have to run the defrag util multiple times to get it up-to-snuff. Keep running it until it the defragmenter finishes its work a few seconds after you start it.
If you want to remove the defragmenting utility, it's not very hard. Start -> Search -> "dfrg" will show you the files.
The NTFS defragmenter, written by Executive Software, is somewhat interesting. Back in the days of NT 4.0, if you wanted NTFS defragmentation, you had to get Executive Software's Diskeeper program. AFAIK, there was no alternative, not even from Microsoft. Evidently, Microsoft decided not to re-invent the wheel and licensed a stripped-down version of Diskeeper for Win2k. This version does not include "Set it and Forget it" backup scheduling or paging file defragmentation like the real Diskeeper program does. The fact that you can't schedule defragmentations is cheesy but easy to get around with a Windows cron daemon and a scripting utility. If you search for dfrg, you'll find the dfrg.mmc (IIRC), which you can drag onto your desktop for quick-and-easy access to this utility.
Contrary to what the previous poster said, I have certainly noticed performance issues on machines with fragmented NTFS partitions. In fact, they're so bad that I defragment my drives nightly. If you let them go for months, it's going to take hours and many, many re-runs of the defragmenter to get your drive back in order.
I like my Hermann Miller Aeron chair ok, but it's not the perfect chair for me. I like to sit cross-legged (aka "Indian Style"). An ergonomic specialist would probably find it horrible but I think it's comfy. I wear sandles to work and fold my toes up behind my knees to keep them warm. The perfect chair for me would be a big leather executive number, with no armrests and a flat seat. Cupped seat areas just make it hard to cross my legs on top of them.
Not a good idea if you are using a cable modem, DSL, dialup, or other unreliable connection. If your DNS is up but your mail exchanger is down, the remote (sending) host will queue your mail but if you nameserver is down, it will most likely be bounced immediately.
Your best bet is to run your own mail server. Register a domain and get some friends to run nameservice for you. Get a static IP and point a MX record for your domain at your machine. Run a decent MTA like Exim, Qmail, or Sendmail, and you're set. The price is right, too.
I love reading about these new handhelds but it seems that they're still a ways off from making the perfect handheld, which for me has:
A color LCD (16bit+, truecolor would be ideal)
Decently fast
Built-in wireless networking
Regular handwriting recognition, kinda like Newton
Decent amount of storage (at least 64M)
Of all those features, the one I want most is wireless networking. I know that there are services like Metricom's Riccochet but most are only available in the largest of metro areas (SFO,NYC,LA,etc).
I'm just looking forward to the day that I can sit down with the above-described handheld, in a cafe, and ssh into my machines.
Back in, oh, 1994 or so, a couple friends and I would hang around my studio apartment behind my mom's house. We'd smoke large amounts of cheap, low-grade pot and sit around and play on our Linux boxes. UNIX was new to us back then and was still quite fascinating to me. I recall getting especially high one night and "understanding" _how_ and _why_ the OS worked as it did. I had some really killer 3-d visualizations of kernels and filesystems and processes and what not. Unfortunately, when I came down the next morning, I could not recall what I had found so intriguing about my computer. In fact, I was right back where I was the day before--just a wanna be sys-admin learning to build kernels on his Linux box. All that I had to show for my night of stoned hacking was a pretty cool/etc/motd.
I read a Bill Bryson book the other day that reminded me of this whole incident. Mr. Bryson writes of a man who had discovered the secrets of life while high on laughing gas. Unfortunately, as soon as the gas wore off, he would forget everything that he'd discovered. Frustrated by this, he decided to have a pen and paper at his side during the next laughing gas adventure, so that he might record what it is that he discovered. Well, when he came down from his "flight", his peice of paper had but six words on it:
C'mon folks, this thing isn't really a laptop. It's more like a beefed up PDA with a nice LCD screen. I've played around with one (Intel CPU, I believe) at Fry's and, while neat, I would never buy one. They are just too friggin' small. The keys could almost be called "chiclet" keys because they aren't much bigger than those on PDAs (those which have QWERTY keyboards). You probably wouldn't want to have to type for more than 30 minutes on this thing.
I really don't see the big deal about battery life. My laptop will make it all the way across the country when I bring a spare battery. And it's not even all that good.
There was a guy sitting across from me on a flight the other day who had an Apple PowerBook. First off, the thing was about 1/2" thick and had a huge screen. He pops in a DVD movie and proceeds to watch the entire thing (~2 hours 20min) in full-screen video. The quality was amazing. He did all of this with battery life to spare. It was still chugging along when he finally had to put it away because the plane was landing.
This is just a guess but I'm thinking that the Crusoe processor will not have enough juevos to decode full screen DVD movies.
I don't think it would take anywhere near the amount of money that you are talking about. First off, let's talk about the servers. These guys are serving 4000 customers. That's pretty much _nothing_ compared to most regional ISPs. You could spent $5000 on a FreeBSD-based server for mail which would be more than sufficient. Add another for things like RADIUS and DHCP and you have about $10,000 in server costs, which I'm sure was included in their $10,000,000 deployment costs.
You wouldn't need a T1 for news. Outsourcing, with a small customer base of 4,000 Iowa farmers, is the way to go. Maybe a hundred or two hundred a month for the outsourcing and $2,500 for the T1s. maybe $30,000-$35,000.
$15,000 for office space a year? This is Iowa, dude. You could run this out of a $7,000-a-year office space and be in high cotton^H^H^H^H^Hcorn, as they say.
$50,000 a year where I live (San Antonio, TX) is pay for senior-level IT people. You can happily live on $35,000 a year here. In Iowa, I'm sure its even easier. You don't need that many tech people, either. My local ISP has at least 7-10x as many customers and does it with three tech guys. You could run this thing on $200,000 a year in salaries, including tech support.
I think they'll probably make it. The chances of a baby Bell bringing DSL to the thousands of tiny towns in Iowa are probably near nil.
..and I don't think it will be because of these chips. I think Transmeta will go down as one of the biggest flops that the Valley has ever seen. They'll probably do an IPO and their employees and founders will cash out and make millions. Once that is complete, they'll string it out for a few more months, drawing their fat paychecks, before the whole mess comes tumbling down. I'm guessing that they will release a product but it will be nowhere near as exciting as we've been anticipating. Performance will be mediocre and their competition will eat Transmeta for breakfast.
Maybe I'm wrong, maybe we'll all be using Crusoe-based laptops in two years. Somehow, though, I doubt it.
Fool, read the damned article. CmdrTaco was using IBM's logo without permission and apparently, in an improper way. It wasn't a story submission, dork.
You forgot to mention that Slashdot has ripped off other people's images for use on this site in the past. Remember this story. CMDRTACO, YOU ARE A HYPOCRITE.
Basically, the Slashdot rules are:
1) Don't mess with Linux
2) Intellectual Property is bad unless it's owned by VA Linux or one of/.'s other "favored" companies
3) Ripping other people's work off is fine, again, unless it's a Linux company
You're trying to get this guy's resnet connection shut down because he ripped of SOME GRAPHICS? For Christ's sake, CmdrTaco has ripped off graphics for use on Slashdot. Remember the IBM logo fiasco?
I'd bet money that you have some copyrighted mp3s on your hard drive, or at least had some at one time. I'd bet that you've even used napster/gnapster/whatever at least once, too.
At any rate, that's not the point. My point is that this guy's copyright violations were incredibly minor. There are probably 1,000,000+ other sites out there that have stolen more graphics than this guy. But you're a Slashdot drone like most everyone else here and you fired off your letter anyway. Now he's pretty much screwed. I'm guessing that he won't have a resnet connection at A&M ever again.
God forbid anyone ever rip off VA Linux or talk bad about Slashdot and get mentioned here.
*nix support for this box is pointless. See my post further down this page for more info. Using this box as a print server for your *nix box only adds more complexity to your network and does not buy you a damned thing.
Actually, you are wrong. While it may have taken a few minutes for HP to disable printing from *nix clients, it would have taken them several days to write the technical documentation and several more days to train support staff on supporting *nix users.
Read my post farther down the page about why it is pointless for this device to support *nix. It actually creates more potential problems and than it fixes.
Well, I agree with you to some extent. It's really pointless to put a print server like this between a *nix box and a printer, since the *nix box already has everything it needs to talk to the printer and the configuration of LPR to print to an HP printer is trivial. You don't gain a thing by routing LPR through a little box like this. It's no easier to set up that setting up a direct LPR -> JetDirect connection. In HP's case, enabling *nix support on this device would just mean another few days of pay to a technical writer to get documentation written and a bunch of training to train the support staff how to support *nix users with this device.
There is a good reason that this device doesn't support UNIX users: they don't need it. This device is intended to act as an interface between Windows clients and a JetDirect card in an HP printer. If you are running *nix, you can just print to your printer directly through LPR.
Ok, fine, then why do Windows users need this thing? Well, direct client-->printer printing *is* possible using HP's Network Printer Install wizard, which creates a print path directly to port 9100 on the printer. This program is (not suprisingly) too difficult for the average brain-dead Windows user. The average user wants to find a print server in his/her Network Neighborhood and connect to one of its printers.
Ok, then why not use a Windows machine to act as a print server? Well, the answer is simple. Windows NT Workstation and Windows 2000 Professional have a limit of 15 simultaneous connections to its printer/drive shares. If you want more than that (chances are, you will), you'll need to buy NT Server or Windows 2000 Server which will run you at least a grand or two, not to mention the cost of maintaining it.
This great little device effectively allows a typical lamer Windows admin to deploy print services to his/her entire Windows network for a few hundred bucks. Not a bad deal, if you ask me.
I'm nearly certain that there is a PAM module to authenticate against an NT/Win2k domain controller. You could configure PAM to use this for authentication when users log onto their workstations.
I'm guessing that the reason why invisik couldn't get his/her NIC to run at a higher resolution is because the XF86Config file has 800x600 only and since its on a read-only CD, it can't be changed. I'm sure if you burned your own CD with an improved XF86Config, that this would not be a problem. What kind of graphics board only supports 800x600x16? A 1Mb card? I'll bet it has something better.
Since the NIC has an ethernet adapter and runs Linux, NFS should be no problem at all. The only question is: did they include NFS support in the kernel and did they include the NFS-related utilities?
I'm wondering if there would be any problems running FreeBSD on this thing. I'm guessing not.
What I'd like to do is to make a custom FreeBSD boot CD that mounted / and a swap partition via NFS. The only difficulty I see would be making a custom boot CD that mounted its NFS mounts after booting the kernel. The stock Linux-based CD appears to use the CD as/.
I'm guessing, since the NIC uses a software modem, that FreeBSD users would be limited to ethernet, since USB modem support under FreeBSD is not ready for mainstream use at this time. This probably wouldn't be a big deal, though.
Add a USB NIC (like the LinkSys EtherFast 10/100 that I have on this laptop) and you'd have a cheap little firewall/router.
Perhaps in future versions, they will add boot-over-network support to the BIOS so that one can forgoe the CD-ROM completely. This would be wonderful for college computer labs, where you needed to deploy hundreds of cheap machines quickly.
I noticed that Nautilus' zooming interface sure sounds a lot like a now-extinct zooming interface project called pad++ that was originally developed at the University of New Mexico. I'm wondering if some of the old pad++ developers are working on Nautilus or if they licensed this technology or did they just rip it off?
Slashdot Mirror
Say what you want about IE, but IMHO, it's a wonderful software product. IE has been running on my Win2k box without a crash (that goes for Win2k, as well) for several months now. Netscape, on the other hand, crashes on my FreeBSD box hourly. Sometimes, it even takes my X11 server with it. When Netscape renders pages 1/2 as fast as IE, I'll switch to it.
Not defragmenting an NTFS partition is a sure-fire cause of performance problems on a Win2k box. It's very unfortunate, though, because without the "real" version of Diskeeper, there is no way for the _average_ user to automate this. See my post further down the page for info on how to get around this. It's not toooo hard but not exactly nice and clean either.
I defragment my Win2k box every night. When you first start defragmenting an NTFS partition that has never been defragmented, you are going to have to run the defrag util multiple times to get it up-to-snuff. Keep running it until it the defragmenter finishes its work a few seconds after you start it.
If you want to remove the defragmenting utility, it's not very hard. Start -> Search -> "dfrg" will show you the files.
The NTFS defragmenter, written by Executive Software, is somewhat interesting. Back in the days of NT 4.0, if you wanted NTFS defragmentation, you had to get Executive Software's Diskeeper program. AFAIK, there was no alternative, not even from Microsoft. Evidently, Microsoft decided not to re-invent the wheel and licensed a stripped-down version of Diskeeper for Win2k. This version does not include "Set it and Forget it" backup scheduling or paging file defragmentation like the real Diskeeper program does. The fact that you can't schedule defragmentations is cheesy but easy to get around with a Windows cron daemon and a scripting utility. If you search for dfrg, you'll find the dfrg.mmc (IIRC), which you can drag onto your desktop for quick-and-easy access to this utility.
Contrary to what the previous poster said, I have certainly noticed performance issues on machines with fragmented NTFS partitions. In fact, they're so bad that I defragment my drives nightly. If you let them go for months, it's going to take hours and many, many re-runs of the defragmenter to get your drive back in order.
I like my Hermann Miller Aeron chair ok, but it's not the perfect chair for me. I like to sit cross-legged (aka "Indian Style"). An ergonomic specialist would probably find it horrible but I think it's comfy. I wear sandles to work and fold my toes up behind my knees to keep them warm. The perfect chair for me would be a big leather executive number, with no armrests and a flat seat. Cupped seat areas just make it hard to cross my legs on top of them.
Not a good idea if you are using a cable modem, DSL, dialup, or other unreliable connection. If your DNS is up but your mail exchanger is down, the remote (sending) host will queue your mail but if you nameserver is down, it will most likely be bounced immediately.
Your best bet is to run your own mail server. Register a domain and get some friends to run nameservice for you. Get a static IP and point a MX record for your domain at your machine. Run a decent MTA like Exim, Qmail, or Sendmail, and you're set. The price is right, too.
Chris
I love reading about these new handhelds but it seems that they're still a ways off from making the perfect handheld, which for me has:
A color LCD (16bit+, truecolor would be ideal)
Decently fast
Built-in wireless networking
Regular handwriting recognition, kinda like Newton
Decent amount of storage (at least 64M)
Of all those features, the one I want most is wireless networking. I know that there are services like Metricom's Riccochet but most are only available in the largest of metro areas (SFO,NYC,LA,etc).
I'm just looking forward to the day that I can sit down with the above-described handheld, in a cafe, and ssh into my machines.
Chris
Back in, oh, 1994 or so, a couple friends and I would hang around my studio apartment behind my mom's house. We'd smoke large amounts of cheap, low-grade pot and sit around and play on our Linux boxes. UNIX was new to us back then and was still quite fascinating to me. I recall getting especially high one night and "understanding" _how_ and _why_ the OS worked as it did. I had some really killer 3-d visualizations of kernels and filesystems and processes and what not. Unfortunately, when I came down the next morning, I could not recall what I had found so intriguing about my computer. In fact, I was right back where I was the day before--just a wanna be sys-admin learning to build kernels on his Linux box. All that I had to show for my night of stoned hacking was a pretty cool /etc/motd.
I read a Bill Bryson book the other day that reminded me of this whole incident. Mr. Bryson writes of a man who had discovered the secrets of life while high on laughing gas. Unfortunately, as soon as the gas wore off, he would forget everything that he'd discovered. Frustrated by this, he decided to have a pen and paper at his side during the next laughing gas adventure, so that he might record what it is that he discovered. Well, when he came down from his "flight", his peice of paper had but six words on it:
A SMELL OF ETHER PERVADES THROUGHOUT.
If you need (Perl) templating, have a look at Mason, http://www.masonhq.com. It's very fast (runs under mod_perl) and unbelievably flexible.
Chris
C'mon folks, this thing isn't really a laptop. It's more like a beefed up PDA with a nice LCD screen. I've played around with one (Intel CPU, I believe) at Fry's and, while neat, I would never buy one. They are just too friggin' small. The keys could almost be called "chiclet" keys because they aren't much bigger than those on PDAs (those which have QWERTY keyboards). You probably wouldn't want to have to type for more than 30 minutes on this thing.
I really don't see the big deal about battery life. My laptop will make it all the way across the country when I bring a spare battery. And it's not even all that good.
There was a guy sitting across from me on a flight the other day who had an Apple PowerBook. First off, the thing was about 1/2" thick and had a huge screen. He pops in a DVD movie and proceeds to watch the entire thing (~2 hours 20min) in full-screen video. The quality was amazing. He did all of this with battery life to spare. It was still chugging along when he finally had to put it away because the plane was landing.
This is just a guess but I'm thinking that the Crusoe processor will not have enough juevos to decode full screen DVD movies.
I don't think it would take anywhere near the amount of money that you are talking about. First off, let's talk about the servers. These guys are serving 4000 customers. That's pretty much _nothing_ compared to most regional ISPs. You could spent $5000 on a FreeBSD-based server for mail which would be more than sufficient. Add another for things like RADIUS and DHCP and you have about $10,000 in server costs, which I'm sure was included in their $10,000,000 deployment costs.
You wouldn't need a T1 for news. Outsourcing, with a small customer base of 4,000 Iowa farmers, is the way to go. Maybe a hundred or two hundred a month for the outsourcing and $2,500 for the T1s. maybe $30,000-$35,000.
$15,000 for office space a year? This is Iowa, dude. You could run this out of a $7,000-a-year office space and be in high cotton^H^H^H^H^Hcorn, as they say.
$50,000 a year where I live (San Antonio, TX) is pay for senior-level IT people. You can happily live on $35,000 a year here. In Iowa, I'm sure its even easier. You don't need that many tech people, either. My local ISP has at least 7-10x as many customers and does it with three tech guys. You could run this thing on $200,000 a year in salaries, including tech support.
I think they'll probably make it. The chances of a baby Bell bringing DSL to the thousands of tiny towns in Iowa are probably near nil.
I think Transmeta will make history.
..and I don't think it will be because of these chips. I think Transmeta will go down as one of the biggest flops that the Valley has ever seen. They'll probably do an IPO and their employees and founders will cash out and make millions. Once that is complete, they'll string it out for a few more months, drawing their fat paychecks, before the whole mess comes tumbling down. I'm guessing that they will release a product but it will be nowhere near as exciting as we've been anticipating. Performance will be mediocre and their competition will eat Transmeta for breakfast.
Maybe I'm wrong, maybe we'll all be using Crusoe-based laptops in two years. Somehow, though, I doubt it.
Fool, read the damned article. CmdrTaco was using IBM's logo without permission and apparently, in an improper way. It wasn't a story submission, dork.
You forgot to mention that Slashdot has ripped off other people's images for use on this site in the past. Remember this story. CMDRTACO, YOU ARE A HYPOCRITE.
/.'s other "favored" companies
Basically, the Slashdot rules are:
1) Don't mess with Linux
2) Intellectual Property is bad unless it's owned by VA Linux or one of
3) Ripping other people's work off is fine, again, unless it's a Linux company
You're trying to get this guy's resnet connection shut down because he ripped of SOME GRAPHICS? For Christ's sake, CmdrTaco has ripped off graphics for use on Slashdot. Remember the IBM logo fiasco?
I'd bet money that you have some copyrighted mp3s on your hard drive, or at least had some at one time. I'd bet that you've even used napster/gnapster/whatever at least once, too.
At any rate, that's not the point. My point is that this guy's copyright violations were incredibly minor. There are probably 1,000,000+ other sites out there that have stolen more graphics than this guy. But you're a Slashdot drone like most everyone else here and you fired off your letter anyway. Now he's pretty much screwed. I'm guessing that he won't have a resnet connection at A&M ever again.
God forbid anyone ever rip off VA Linux or talk bad about Slashdot and get mentioned here.
*nix support for this box is pointless. See my post further down this page for more info. Using this box as a print server for your *nix box only adds more complexity to your network and does not buy you a damned thing.
Chris
Actually, you are wrong. While it may have taken a few minutes for HP to disable printing from *nix clients, it would have taken them several days to write the technical documentation and several more days to train support staff on supporting *nix users.
Read my post farther down the page about why it is pointless for this device to support *nix. It actually creates more potential problems and than it fixes.
Well, I agree with you to some extent. It's really pointless to put a print server like this between a *nix box and a printer, since the *nix box already has everything it needs to talk to the printer and the configuration of LPR to print to an HP printer is trivial. You don't gain a thing by routing LPR through a little box like this. It's no easier to set up that setting up a direct LPR -> JetDirect connection. In HP's case, enabling *nix support on this device would just mean another few days of pay to a technical writer to get documentation written and a bunch of training to train the support staff how to support *nix users with this device.
There is a good reason that this device doesn't support UNIX users: they don't need it. This device is intended to act as an interface between Windows clients and a JetDirect card in an HP printer. If you are running *nix, you can just print to your printer directly through LPR.
Ok, fine, then why do Windows users need this thing? Well, direct client-->printer printing *is* possible using HP's Network Printer Install wizard, which creates a print path directly to port 9100 on the printer. This program is (not suprisingly) too difficult for the average brain-dead Windows user. The average user wants to find a print server in his/her Network Neighborhood and connect to one of its printers.
Ok, then why not use a Windows machine to act as a print server? Well, the answer is simple. Windows NT Workstation and Windows 2000 Professional have a limit of 15 simultaneous connections to its printer/drive shares. If you want more than that (chances are, you will), you'll need to buy NT Server or Windows 2000 Server which will run you at least a grand or two, not to mention the cost of maintaining it.
This great little device effectively allows a typical lamer Windows admin to deploy print services to his/her entire Windows network for a few hundred bucks. Not a bad deal, if you ask me.
Chris
I'm nearly certain that there is a PAM module to authenticate against an NT/Win2k domain controller. You could configure PAM to use this for authentication when users log onto their workstations.
Can't you do any better?
I'm guessing that the reason why invisik couldn't get his/her NIC to run at a higher resolution is because the XF86Config file has 800x600 only and since its on a read-only CD, it can't be changed. I'm sure if you burned your own CD with an improved XF86Config, that this would not be a problem. What kind of graphics board only supports 800x600x16? A 1Mb card? I'll bet it has something better.
Since the NIC has an ethernet adapter and runs Linux, NFS should be no problem at all. The only question is: did they include NFS support in the kernel and did they include the NFS-related utilities?
I'm wondering if there would be any problems running FreeBSD on this thing. I'm guessing not.
/.
What I'd like to do is to make a custom FreeBSD boot CD that mounted / and a swap partition via NFS. The only difficulty I see would be making a custom boot CD that mounted its NFS mounts after booting the kernel. The stock Linux-based CD appears to use the CD as
I'm guessing, since the NIC uses a software modem, that FreeBSD users would be limited to ethernet, since USB modem support under FreeBSD is not ready for mainstream use at this time. This probably wouldn't be a big deal, though.
Add a USB NIC (like the LinkSys EtherFast 10/100 that I have on this laptop) and you'd have a cheap little firewall/router.
Perhaps in future versions, they will add boot-over-network support to the BIOS so that one can forgoe the CD-ROM completely. This would be wonderful for college computer labs, where you needed to deploy hundreds of cheap machines quickly.
I noticed that Nautilus' zooming interface sure sounds a lot like a now-extinct zooming interface project called pad++ that was originally developed at the University of New Mexico. I'm wondering if some of the old pad++ developers are working on Nautilus or if they licensed this technology or did they just rip it off?
Read more about pad++ here.