Are you sure you're running gigabit ethernet on real computers? Or are you running it on a 32 bit, 33 MHz PCI bus that only supports 133MB/s?
Why does everyone quote stuff in megabits, anyways? I get so tired dividing every damn number I see by eight. Yeah, I've got six gigabits of RAM, four terabits of hard drive space, and an Ultra 1280 SCSI hard drive. Oh yeah, and a 570mm monitor.
They should do a comparison between ATA/33 and ATA/133. They might possibly find a difference there, but I sort of doubt it, unless they're using high end drives.
Cats don't have such great vision, really. In general, they have trouble focusing on something unless it's moving. Stationary frogs would present something of a problem, though certainly not a showstopper. My girlfriend's cats will go to any length in order to get some Pounce.
And the girl in The Crying Game is a guy, "rosebud" is the sled, and Bruce Willis is actually a ghost in "Sixth Sense!" Anyone else?
Deckard was a replicant, Rocky wins the last fight, Kevin Spacey is the bad guy in The Usual Suspects, Brad Pitt's character's wife dies at the end of Seven, Tyler Durden (Brad Pitt's character in Fight Club) is just a figment of Edward Norton's mind, Star Trek: The Motion Picture never gets any better than the first hour. Oh yeah, and the alien ship is actually Voyager.
There's a very interesting sub-genre of cyberpunk called steampunk. Clockwork automatons, clockwork airships, eccentric gadgeteers and scientists, all mixed in with a Victorian backdrop.
Steampunk comic books, computer games, and role-playing games exist, but you might have to search a little harder than usual to find them.
I also wish someone would do some research on this. I have several multi-processor computers sitting around doing nothing (or very little), because I can't think of a good use for them. You can't play Quake 3 on a dual Pentium Pro, but it would make for an awesome node in a cluster.
The problem is that I'm not sure I'd get any benefit from all that work (learning Mosix or Beowulf, implementing it, etc).
Well, since nobody else seems to be doing it, I guess I'll have to break down and do it one of these days...
Extra hundreds? Where are you buying your computer parts? I just bought a brand new, shrink wrapped Ultra Wide SCSI adapter for $25. It supports 15 SCSI devices, any number of which can be internal or external. And it only uses one IRQ.
I wish motherboard manufacturers would stop integrating all this useless stuff. I don't want integrated sound, IDE RAID, or any of that other junk. I don't even particularly care for integrated IDE.
Think of how much more stable the motherboards would be if there were less chips present and less IRQs being shared. Oh yeah, in theory PCI is supposed to share IRQs with no problem, but that doesn't mean it actually works out that way in practice.
There wouldn't be much cost savings associated with getting rid of these functions, but spending $5 or $10 less on a product is always nice.
And, no, sometimes you can't just turn these features off in the BIOS. Even worse, sometimes there's no way to reclaim the IRQs that are lost due to integrated functions! Check out some of the really bad implementations out there. It's a nightmare trying to make those poorly designed boards work. Abit is not known for their stability or great design, so I don't have much faith in this motherboard. Even if Asus made a board like this, I would have some trouble trusting it.
Getting rid of the PS/2 ports is just asinine. They are an industry standard. USB sucks. PS/2 works.
Re:FUD through "positive assertions"
on
Unix Isn't Dead
·
· Score: 2
I guess you could count the IBM PS/2 server systems as 386/486 servers, but even they had some problems handling anything more than what you mentioned.
In college, we had some old SPARCs (16MB and 32MB SS5s) that were amazingly powerful, given their meager resources. The 16MB SS5s were a little sluggish when multiple users were logged on, but they still could handle a small load without slowing down. It got worse when they were "upgraded" to Solaris, of course.
Consider my poor 486, which was current at the time (early 90s). The hardware was flakey, the operating systems were flakey (MS DOS, OS/2 2.x, Linux 1.0), and most of the software was flakey, too. Linux and OS/2 were nice, but they still had very little in the way of features (beyond 32 bit protected mode) or drivers. NT 3.1 was mostly a joke, as was Win 3.1 WfW and (later) Win95.
Even those old SS5s could flatten any PC, especially a clone, like mine. I have a hard time imagining anyone using a clone (even a PS/2) for anything other than word processing and DTP. Most of the companies I was familiar with were using them as personal computers, not servers. That was the job of a wickedly expensive (but reliable) UNIX system.
Re:Will the US suffer from geek emigration?
on
GeekPAC
·
· Score: 1
My dad's side of the family is Dutch, and I hear that I have some relatives in The Netherlands, but they're too distant (physically and in a family sense) for anyone in America to know them well.
I would love to visit all the Scandinavian countries some day. I might not be able to leave, if what I've heard about them is true.:) They all sound like great places to live.
Re:Will the US suffer from geek emigration?
on
GeekPAC
·
· Score: 1
Good quote. I loved Fight Club. It's sad how true that statement really is.
Re:FUD through "positive assertions"
on
Unix Isn't Dead
·
· Score: 2
I think your timeline is way messed up.
You couldn't do shit on a PC until the Pentium Pro showed up, and that was relatively recently. I suppose you could argue for the 486 or Pentium, but neither of those platforms could challenge much of anything but IBM's most pathetic solutions. IBM was an 800 lb gorilla until the late 80s. He went on a diet after that.
Re:Will the US suffer from geek emigration?
on
GeekPAC
·
· Score: 2
Lots of people say they will leave the U.S. if a certain law is passed, a certain politician is elected, etc. It's rare for them to actually do it.
I myself have given a lot of thought about whether I'd like to stay in a less free America or move.
Canada has some nice attractions, including cold weather (I love snow), family (my uncle lives there), and the same basic culture as America. Since I speak French and am educated, it wouldn't be too difficult for me to get in. On the other hand, Canada has most of the same bone-headed laws as America.
The EU would be pretty cool, but we're talking some major changes here. How long would I have to wait for American movies to open in the EU, for example? Probably weeks, if not months. Could I find any of my favorite foods? What about high speed access to the net? And while we're talking about the net, imagine all the net lag connecting to American web sites. There's a lot of potential drawbacks for someone used to taking everything about his life for granted. I'd even have to throw out all of my NTSC equipment and buy new PAL equipment. Ugh. Not to mention all my Region 1 DVDs...
This is definitely true. I wonder if there's a generic troubleshooting guide on the internet anywhere. It would be very cool to write one. I could easily make one that's better than the Windows hardware troubleshooter.
I'd recommend doing the following, if you're having trouble with system stability: replace your memory, power supply, video card, sound card, and motherboard, in that order. If you do it in that order, it will minimize the cost, while maximizing your chances of success.
Also, don't underestimate the problem-solving ability of moving PCI cards to different slots. It really does work sometimes.
Hauppage cards aren't all that great. I bought one (the PCI mono TV card)for my ex-girlfriend, but she hasn't been able to get it to work perfectly under XP since I bought it (several weeks). The worst problem is that there's no sound. She's using a Turtle Beach Santa Cruz sound card on a VIA KT133A system. I've never heard of Turtle Beach sound cards having trouble with VIA chipsets.
My advice is to just watch television on your television (imagine that). There are no good television cards for the PC.
If you're really hell-bent on doing video work on your PC, then spend the big bucks for real hardware and software... or buy a Mac.
Re:Performance - doesn't anyone care?
on
Serial ATA Coming
·
· Score: 2
If we used what we had instead of reinventing the wheel, then all those engineers and marketing types would be out of a job.
If anyone is curious about getting into the world of SCSI, here's what I suggest:
Get a cheap Ultra Wide SCSI host adapter or motherboard with integrated Ultra Wide
Buy a refurbished Plextor SCSI CDROM
Buy a refurbished Plextor CD-RW
Get a cheap Ultra Wide, Ultra2 Wide, or Ultra 160 hard drive (preferably not refurbished)
You can get refurbished Plextor optical drives at many online stores. I use www.hypermicro.com the most. They have great products and service. I've bought almost all of my SCSI peripherals from them.
I bought an Asus P2L97-DS motherboard (dual processor, slot 1, PII 266-333 and Celeron 266 to 533, 0 - 512MB PC66 to PC133 RAM, 4 DIMM slots, integrated Ultra Wide SCSI, 4PCI/3ISA, 2x AGP) on ebay for about $50. This is a great intro board to both SMP and SCSI. All you need is two cheap Celeron processors and you're all set.
If you want to use refurbished hard drives, I suggest searching ebay for someone who's got lots of positive feedback and a non-DOA warranty. You can get 9GB and 18GB Ultra 160 hard drives incredibly cheap, due to the cut-throat competition.
Tekram makes inexpensive, powerful SCSI host adapters. They use the LSI Logic chipset, which is extremely well supported under Linux. Adaptec SCSI host adapters are lot more expensive, but you can find them much easier at retail stores.
If you wanted to, you could get a dual processor Asus motherboard, Plexter SCSI CDROM, Plextor SCSI CDRW, and a 4.55GB Ultra Wide SCSI hard drive for something like $250. Then, grab two Celeron or Pentium II processors off ebay (about $25-$50 each), an Enlight 7237 case ($50-$75, depending on the power supply), and a Matrox G200 or other cheap, well supported AGP card. In the end, I doubt it would even come close to $500. And now you have your very own SMP SCSI workstation.
Mandrake is leaning more and more towards proprietary software. Just look at their "donation" situation. When you go to download the latest Mandrake, the two choices are
I have already donated I promise to donate
There is no "No thanks, I choose not to donate" link. In effect, you are making a promise to Mandrake that you will donate.
I myself was a little annoyed by this.
When was the last time Mandrake donated money to me for writing software, finding bugs, or solving technical problems for their users? Never. But I'm supposed to donate to them, because a for-profit company is faultering? I think not.
The whole nature of a company is to make profit. If they can not do that, then perhaps they need to think twice about starting business ventures.
I'd rather donate to a Linux programmer like Linus Torvalds or Alan Cox than to a for-profit corporation.
Have you tried NetHack? It's a little bit retro, but you might still like it. It's based on Dungeons & Dragons, and you play an adventurer in search of fame and treasure the time-honored dungeon hack.
Recent versions of NetHack also include tiles, psuedo-3D graphics, QT widgets, etc. I don't like them as much as the classic interface, which is displayed on your screen as an 80x24 maze in ASCII graphics. Once you become used to the ASCII interface, it really does give you more information than any other interface.
Diablo and Diablo II are real-time, graphical rip-offs of NetHack. Don't get me wrong - I loved both Diablo games - but there is no way for Blizzard to deny that they ripped off NetHack for 90% of their ideas.
I know what you're going to say to that: the users could easily save local copies of the message to their hard drive. If the company standardizes on an in-house e-mail client (or a mail client that comes with source code), then they can remove any features that they don't like, such as saving local copies.
It doesn't stop someone from printing out an e-mail, using cut 'n' paste, etc. However, it's a lot better than using POP.
Slashdot Mirror
Are you sure you're running gigabit ethernet on real computers? Or are you running it on a 32 bit, 33 MHz PCI bus that only supports 133MB/s?
Why does everyone quote stuff in megabits, anyways? I get so tired dividing every damn number I see by eight. Yeah, I've got six gigabits of RAM, four terabits of hard drive space, and an Ultra 1280 SCSI hard drive. Oh yeah, and a 570mm monitor.
When you say "the media", I think you mean "Slashdot".
Ask your parents what they've heard lately about "war driving" and they'll tell you horror stories about the L.A. highways.
How come this didn't get modded up? It was too concise and didn't have any flamebait?
They should do a comparison between ATA/33 and ATA/133. They might possibly find a difference there, but I sort of doubt it, unless they're using high end drives.
This is why servers use SCSI hardware, not EIDE.
Cats don't have such great vision, really. In general, they have trouble focusing on something unless it's moving. Stationary frogs would present something of a problem, though certainly not a showstopper. My girlfriend's cats will go to any length in order to get some Pounce.
Deckard was a replicant, Rocky wins the last fight, Kevin Spacey is the bad guy in The Usual Suspects, Brad Pitt's character's wife dies at the end of Seven, Tyler Durden (Brad Pitt's character in Fight Club) is just a figment of Edward Norton's mind, Star Trek: The Motion Picture never gets any better than the first hour. Oh yeah, and the alien ship is actually Voyager.
There's a very interesting sub-genre of cyberpunk called steampunk. Clockwork automatons, clockwork airships, eccentric gadgeteers and scientists, all mixed in with a Victorian backdrop.
Steampunk comic books, computer games, and role-playing games exist, but you might have to search a little harder than usual to find them.
If you think the Urban Terror crew deserves some money for their hard work, why not send them a check for $10? Or use something like paypal.
It's not like they'd refuse it or anything.
I also wish someone would do some research on this. I have several multi-processor computers sitting around doing nothing (or very little), because I can't think of a good use for them. You can't play Quake 3 on a dual Pentium Pro, but it would make for an awesome node in a cluster.
The problem is that I'm not sure I'd get any benefit from all that work (learning Mosix or Beowulf, implementing it, etc).
Well, since nobody else seems to be doing it, I guess I'll have to break down and do it one of these days...
Anyone want to donate a gigabit switch?
This is not informative; it's copyright infringement.
If someone were to alert the NY Times that people are moderating up copyright infringement, I wonder what would happen to Slashdot?
WebWasher
We don't need a new law for this. You already can't publish a picture of someone without their permission.
If someone really wants to draft a new law simply for the X10 cameras, go for it. But it seems a little wasteful to me.
Extra hundreds? Where are you buying your computer parts? I just bought a brand new, shrink wrapped Ultra Wide SCSI adapter for $25. It supports 15 SCSI devices, any number of which can be internal or external. And it only uses one IRQ.
I wish motherboard manufacturers would stop integrating all this useless stuff. I don't want integrated sound, IDE RAID, or any of that other junk. I don't even particularly care for integrated IDE.
Think of how much more stable the motherboards would be if there were less chips present and less IRQs being shared. Oh yeah, in theory PCI is supposed to share IRQs with no problem, but that doesn't mean it actually works out that way in practice.
There wouldn't be much cost savings associated with getting rid of these functions, but spending $5 or $10 less on a product is always nice.
And, no, sometimes you can't just turn these features off in the BIOS. Even worse, sometimes there's no way to reclaim the IRQs that are lost due to integrated functions! Check out some of the really bad implementations out there. It's a nightmare trying to make those poorly designed boards work. Abit is not known for their stability or great design, so I don't have much faith in this motherboard. Even if Asus made a board like this, I would have some trouble trusting it.
Getting rid of the PS/2 ports is just asinine. They are an industry standard. USB sucks. PS/2 works.
I guess you could count the IBM PS/2 server systems as 386/486 servers, but even they had some problems handling anything more than what you mentioned.
In college, we had some old SPARCs (16MB and 32MB SS5s) that were amazingly powerful, given their meager resources. The 16MB SS5s were a little sluggish when multiple users were logged on, but they still could handle a small load without slowing down. It got worse when they were "upgraded" to Solaris, of course.
Consider my poor 486, which was current at the time (early 90s). The hardware was flakey, the operating systems were flakey (MS DOS, OS/2 2.x, Linux 1.0), and most of the software was flakey, too. Linux and OS/2 were nice, but they still had very little in the way of features (beyond 32 bit protected mode) or drivers. NT 3.1 was mostly a joke, as was Win 3.1 WfW and (later) Win95.
Even those old SS5s could flatten any PC, especially a clone, like mine. I have a hard time imagining anyone using a clone (even a PS/2) for anything other than word processing and DTP. Most of the companies I was familiar with were using them as personal computers, not servers. That was the job of a wickedly expensive (but reliable) UNIX system.
My dad's side of the family is Dutch, and I hear that I have some relatives in The Netherlands, but they're too distant (physically and in a family sense) for anyone in America to know them well.
:) They all sound like great places to live.
I would love to visit all the Scandinavian countries some day. I might not be able to leave, if what I've heard about them is true.
Good quote. I loved Fight Club. It's sad how true that statement really is.
I think your timeline is way messed up.
You couldn't do shit on a PC until the Pentium Pro showed up, and that was relatively recently. I suppose you could argue for the 486 or Pentium, but neither of those platforms could challenge much of anything but IBM's most pathetic solutions. IBM was an 800 lb gorilla until the late 80s. He went on a diet after that.
Lots of people say they will leave the U.S. if a certain law is passed, a certain politician is elected, etc. It's rare for them to actually do it.
I myself have given a lot of thought about whether I'd like to stay in a less free America or move.
Canada has some nice attractions, including cold weather (I love snow), family (my uncle lives there), and the same basic culture as America. Since I speak French and am educated, it wouldn't be too difficult for me to get in. On the other hand, Canada has most of the same bone-headed laws as America.
The EU would be pretty cool, but we're talking some major changes here. How long would I have to wait for American movies to open in the EU, for example? Probably weeks, if not months. Could I find any of my favorite foods? What about high speed access to the net? And while we're talking about the net, imagine all the net lag connecting to American web sites. There's a lot of potential drawbacks for someone used to taking everything about his life for granted. I'd even have to throw out all of my NTSC equipment and buy new PAL equipment. Ugh. Not to mention all my Region 1 DVDs...
It's not so easy to be a global citizen.
This is definitely true. I wonder if there's a generic troubleshooting guide on the internet anywhere. It would be very cool to write one. I could easily make one that's better than the Windows hardware troubleshooter.
I'd recommend doing the following, if you're having trouble with system stability: replace your memory, power supply, video card, sound card, and motherboard, in that order. If you do it in that order, it will minimize the cost, while maximizing your chances of success.
Also, don't underestimate the problem-solving ability of moving PCI cards to different slots. It really does work sometimes.
Hauppage cards aren't all that great. I bought one (the PCI mono TV card)for my ex-girlfriend, but she hasn't been able to get it to work perfectly under XP since I bought it (several weeks). The worst problem is that there's no sound. She's using a Turtle Beach Santa Cruz sound card on a VIA KT133A system. I've never heard of Turtle Beach sound cards having trouble with VIA chipsets.
My advice is to just watch television on your television (imagine that). There are no good television cards for the PC.
If you're really hell-bent on doing video work on your PC, then spend the big bucks for real hardware and software... or buy a Mac.
If anyone is curious about getting into the world of SCSI, here's what I suggest:
You can get refurbished Plextor optical drives at many online stores. I use www.hypermicro.com the most. They have great products and service. I've bought almost all of my SCSI peripherals from them.
I bought an Asus P2L97-DS motherboard (dual processor, slot 1, PII 266-333 and Celeron 266 to 533, 0 - 512MB PC66 to PC133 RAM, 4 DIMM slots, integrated Ultra Wide SCSI, 4PCI/3ISA, 2x AGP) on ebay for about $50. This is a great intro board to both SMP and SCSI. All you need is two cheap Celeron processors and you're all set.
If you want to use refurbished hard drives, I suggest searching ebay for someone who's got lots of positive feedback and a non-DOA warranty. You can get 9GB and 18GB Ultra 160 hard drives incredibly cheap, due to the cut-throat competition.
Tekram makes inexpensive, powerful SCSI host adapters. They use the LSI Logic chipset, which is extremely well supported under Linux. Adaptec SCSI host adapters are lot more expensive, but you can find them much easier at retail stores.
If you wanted to, you could get a dual processor Asus motherboard, Plexter SCSI CDROM, Plextor SCSI CDRW, and a 4.55GB Ultra Wide SCSI hard drive for something like $250. Then, grab two Celeron or Pentium II processors off ebay (about $25-$50 each), an Enlight 7237 case ($50-$75, depending on the power supply), and a Matrox G200 or other cheap, well supported AGP card. In the end, I doubt it would even come close to $500. And now you have your very own SMP SCSI workstation.
Mandrake is leaning more and more towards proprietary software. Just look at their "donation" situation. When you go to download the latest Mandrake, the two choices are
I have already donated
I promise to donate
There is no "No thanks, I choose not to donate" link. In effect, you are making a promise to Mandrake that you will donate.
I myself was a little annoyed by this.
When was the last time Mandrake donated money to me for writing software, finding bugs, or solving technical problems for their users? Never. But I'm supposed to donate to them, because a for-profit company is faultering? I think not.
The whole nature of a company is to make profit. If they can not do that, then perhaps they need to think twice about starting business ventures.
I'd rather donate to a Linux programmer like Linus Torvalds or Alan Cox than to a for-profit corporation.
Have you tried NetHack? It's a little bit retro, but you might still like it. It's based on Dungeons & Dragons, and you play an adventurer in search of fame and treasure the time-honored dungeon hack.
Recent versions of NetHack also include tiles, psuedo-3D graphics, QT widgets, etc. I don't like them as much as the classic interface, which is displayed on your screen as an 80x24 maze in ASCII graphics. Once you become used to the ASCII interface, it really does give you more information than any other interface.
Diablo and Diablo II are real-time, graphical rip-offs of NetHack. Don't get me wrong - I loved both Diablo games - but there is no way for Blizzard to deny that they ripped off NetHack for 90% of their ideas.
What about using IMAP?
I know what you're going to say to that: the users could easily save local copies of the message to their hard drive. If the company standardizes on an in-house e-mail client (or a mail client that comes with source code), then they can remove any features that they don't like, such as saving local copies.
It doesn't stop someone from printing out an e-mail, using cut 'n' paste, etc. However, it's a lot better than using POP.