I can't see much reason to clone myself, unless I want to take over the world with an army of clones, genetically engineered to say witty phrases like, "Ah'll be bach." or "Hasta la vista, baay-bee."
Really, if I'm dead, what do I care if there's some clone of my original body walking around? It's not me, though it *might* look like me. Think about twins. They don't have 100% the same personalities, and they're basically clones when they're in the womb.
I can't believe most of you are using UNIX/Linux. At least, I always thought Slashdot was a UNIX site. Maybe most of you are using Windows. Anyways, how to avoid spam on Usenet:
Procmail - Aren't most of you using it right now? Read the damn man page. It will filter all the spam out of your incoming e-mail.
Sendmail - You can't tell me you're not running Sendmail. Sendmail has mountains of anti-spam measures. Take a few hours to figure out the Sendmail config file. You'll be glad you did. Spammers can't even connect to your system now!
RBL - The real-time blackhole list. It's opt-in. If you don't like spam, then let them take care of it for you. No mess, no fuss, no RTFM. It's a harsh punishment, but spammers have a 0% chance of getting through.
Kill files - Look at the man page for your news reader. It has kill file support, unless you're using something stupid like a web browser or Windows program. Use them, love them, see no more spam. See the signal-to-noise ratio reverse itself!
DON'T mangle your e-mail address. It's against every fucking RFC on the internet!
I'm sorry, but I'm tired of clueless newbies saying that there's no way to get past the spam, breaking RFCs, and saying Usenet is dead. If I get moderated down as flamebait, I hope someone will re-post this in nicer words.
I agree with the above post. After all the fame and fortune is gone, Linux will still be the same as it was before the fame and fortune. There really isn't anything to lose here, except lots of converts. While having an influx of new users is nice, we're not a commercial operation that survives by how popular it is. As long as the source code is out there, someone will be hacking it.
I sure like having Creative Labs write drivers for their high end sound cards, but I could live without it. I lived without for many years. Back when I first ran Linux, it didn't support anything but a handful of IDE, SCSI, and Ethernet adapters. Now, I can't find a single adapter that isn't supported unless I try very hard (ie, esoteric USB hardware and off-brand UDMA/66 chipsets).
Whatever happens to us, we can learn from and become better as a result of it.
That is the silliest thing I've heard in a long time. While not everyone *needs* a computer, most people use their computer extensively in jobs that can only be done via a computer. I could list a thousand things that are commonly done on computers by the average person that would range from difficult to impossible without a home computer. It would be boring and take a lot of time, though. Let's just try to come up with a couple very common uses for multimedia over the internet.
Streaming audio and video - See the new years celebration in Paris. Keep in touch with your grandparents or grandchildren. See the latest music video from acts not popular enough to be on MTV. Meet people in Australia and Russia.
Interactive gaming - Play immersive games with people all over the globe. Buy a more versatile $1K computer instead of a $5K coin-op arcade machine that plays only one game.
Telecommuting - Don't just work from home, work from another state or country altogether. There's no need to relocate your family when the corporation moves. Participate in meetings, meet new clients, even do customer support all from home...
Information - There's a lot of knowledge out there. It's never been easier to take advantage of it. Searching the library was never as easy as AltaVista or Google. And the library never had much in the way of high tech books...
This is all just multimedia internet stuff... never mind burning audio CDs, creating MP3s, household automation, hobbyist programming, single-player gaming, etc. There's a whole world of uses for computers out there. It sounds like you are extremely elitist and seek to keep other people away from your hobby...
BIOS sucks. We need a real command line firmware that knows what things like SCSI disks and ethernet cards are!
On any Sun, SGI, Apple Mac, you can bring up a command line in firmware at boot time and truly control the boot process.
On my Sun, I can boot off of any partition on any disk. I can also *really* boot from CD-ROMs (not cheesy El Torito CD's that work by emulating a piece of crap floppy disk).
Well, not that anyone's going to read this, since it's posted so late, but I can boot from any SCSI device in my system, even a SCSI CD-ROM changer with multiple LUNs. I can boot from an external magneto-optical (MO) drive. I can even boot from the slave hard drive on the secondary EIDE port of my motherboard or from my ethernet card. If I really wanted to, I could hook up a modem to one of my comm ports and force my PC into a remote reboot by just dialing the modem's phone number.
All I have to do is type "boot cdrom" to boot from CD, "boot net" to boot off of a network boot/install server. I can even create aliases so that I can say "boot linux" to boot off of a Linux partition - even if it's on my sixth SCSI disk in the chain.
I don't have to type anything.
I don't need to waste time/money installing stupid tools like System Commander to get the same functionality
Isn't that Windows software or something? I've never used anything like that. All I have installed on my computer is LILO, plus the operating systems that I wish LILO to boot (it varies, depending on my mood).
This is just the tip of the iceberg. Sun's OpenBoot/OpenFirmware provides many mini-miracles.
The PC BIOS is rather useless. But then again, I don't really use the PC BIOS for anything but the POST (power on self test) and PCI/PNP init. After that, the PC BIOS pretty much disappears. I use a decent PCI U2W SCSI card with its own firmware. I don't need a PC BIOS to boot my computer, unless I want to boot from an EIDE disk.
I can't do miracles with a small SCSI firmware, but it does what it's supposed to do - boot my computer.
Having a PC firmware that has access to my Ethernet card and a TCP/IP stack would be a novelty, and potentially very useful in an emergency, but of no use to the average consumer, who can't even figure out how to enter his PC BIOS setup program, much less use a SPARCstation firmware.
Would it be better to have SPARCstation firmware in our PC workstations? Yes. Would it give incredible amounts of new features? No. Just some bells and whistles. PCs aren't really known for their security, scalability, or flexability. Transmeta isn't marketing a server chip here. It's just for low-power PCs.
Why not write your own open source BIOS if your so unhappy with the current situation? (isn't that what you're supposed to say to people who run linux?)
I suppose I might as well get this out of the way: I'm not really a fan of Heinlen. I don't really like Pournelle as much as lots of other people. And I think people who go around making distinctions between "SF" "scifi" and "science fiction" have *waaaaaay* too much time on their hands.
With that out of the way, I'd like to recommend a few authors that I haven't seen mentioned yet (though, I do read at a high threshold). This is just in addition to others mentioned previously; I fully endorse reading as much Jules Verne and other classics as possible.
H.P. Lovecraft - He's mostly known for his contributions to the horror genre, but many of his stories defy such easy classification. Unfortunately, Lovecraft does have a style that harkens back to the 19th century - very, very slow progression of the plot. Not recommended for people who want instant gratification or tidy answers to every question raised.
Alan Dean Foster - Perhaps something of a hack, but still a very enjoyable hack. His later books have been more literate and interesting, but earlier ones shouldn't disappoint, either. Typically somewhat "safe", as in "rated PG-13".
P. K. Dick - This man was an honest-to-God genius. You owe it to yourself to read every single story he ever wrote. His stories inspired several popular Hollywood movies. He had an incredible imagination, but his true genius was the ability to translate his imagination to the written word. I actually did see him recommended once or twice earlier, but just in passing, like he was a footnote in the history of fiction. Ugh.
Stephen King - Another well-known horror author who should also be known for his scifi. I would recommend The Stand and The Gunslinger series. Many of his other books are not scifi, though they do often have some scifi elements to them.
Here's some directors to look for:
James Cameron - He steals ideas left and right. I can't think of a worse plagiarist. Still.... I love his movies. Terminator 2 is my favorite, even if it is a rehash of several classic scifi novels. "Come vif me if you vant to live." - Arnie
John Carpenter - Might be more known as a horror director, but almost all of his films have a strong science fiction element in them. The Thing is probably most representative of this.
Terry Gilliam - Was one of the Monty Python guys. He's gone on to make some of the best scifi movies I've ever seen. If you like James Cameron-style action-scifi, try 13 Monkeys. His other stuff is often less action-oriented.
I can't think of any more directors, so how about some movies?
The Angry Red Planet - I love the title. It's about an expedition to Mars. Recommended for fans of cheesy 50s movies.
Forbidden Planet - Another great title! Stars Leslie Neilson in a very serious role. Great 50s scifi movie. A real classic. You should see it.
The Outer Limits - It was a TV series. You can probably rent episodes at your local video rental store. Very, very good. The first episode, Demon With A Glass Hand, was written by Harlan Ellison. Better, IMHO, than The Twilight Zone.
...skipping lots of obvious ones, like 2001 and such, that were already mentioned...
Alien - Sigourney Weaver. An alien life-form that wants to kill her. A small ship in the middle of space...
Wizards - A great animated movie by Ralph Bakshi. Two brothers battle it out, using technology, Nazis, and magic.
The Mad Max trilogy - Awesome. Just plain awesome. The third movie isn't nearly as good as the previous two, but it's lightyears better than any post-apocalyptic, anti-hero movie clone of the originals. Some great visuals and action sequences, too. See Mel Gibson in Australian movies from the 70s and 80s!
The Phantasm series - Four movies that span over 20 years, often with the same actors reprising their roles. Depending on which movie you watch, you might get a surreal 70s horror movie, an 80s scifi/horror movie, or a 90s scifi/horror comedy/parody like Scream and The Evil Dead. The fourth movie is really just for fans of the series, though it does return to the surreal quality of the first movie, plus use the scifi elements of the later ones.
Trancers - Tim Thomerson. Time travel. Zombies trying to take over the world. Mad scientists. How can you resist? The sequels are of varying quality. Great action-scifi from the early 80s.
Circuitry Man (and Circuitry Man II) - I love these movies to death. Androids, cyborgs, illegal microchips, environmentalist villains... it's got it all! Truly two of the best unknown movies from the 80s.
Lifeforce - A great scifi/horror movie from Tobe Hooper. Basically, London is invaded by space vampires. One of the few vampire movies to ever ask, "Is there life after death?" Not too gory, but there is lots of nudity. The scifi elements could have been developed more. Still recommended, though.
Hardware - It's got a rather infamous graphic sex scene in the middle of it that seems to last forever. Besides that, it's a really cool scifi/horror movie in the vein of Alien. Maybe even a bit of a clone of Alien, but still pretty good, IMHO.
Nemesis - Most people hate it, a few people like it, and I love it. A cyborg has to choose whether to side with the humans or the androids in a battle for survival. There are sequels. Don't watch them. They suck.
And, finally:
The Event Horizon - For people with strong stomachs only. It wasn't as good as it could have been (it had lots of promise but wasted most of it with a SFX gore-a-thon), but it was still very enjoyable to the non-demanding scifi/horror fan. If you are picky or demanding, then you probably won't like this movie as much as your easily amused friends.
Game demos have always been large. Back when 2400 bps modems were fast, the game demos tended to be around a megabyte (or more). It was somewhat uncommon to have more than 120MB of hard disk space back then, but games could easily take up 20-30MB if they had lots of graphics and sound (like later Origin games).
If you want to keep up with cutting edge technology (ie, games), then you need to spend money upgrading your computer every so often. Right now, a Pentium III/450 with 256MB of RAM and 18 gigabytes of EIDE/SCSI at 7200 RPM is a pretty good gaming machine, and it won't put you into too much debt. Plus, it'll last for a little while longer, especially if the motherboard is dual processor or upgradable to the 750 MHz Coppermine.
Celerons, 5400 RPM 8.4 gig EIDE hard drives, and 64MB PC66 memory are all quite cheap these days, but you can't expect to run cutting edge software (ie, games) on something that cost a total of $250 to put together.
Hopefully, you'll get cable modem access soon. Keep bugging your cable provider. Call them every day and demand it.
Yes, a newbie can definitely play this game. It has an excellent tutorial that explains everything in detail. Really, the rules are quite easy to understand. Getting a good strategy might take a little longer, though. The manual has many hints and tips on gameplay.
You'll definitely want to bump up the difficulty level once you start winning scenarios. It defaults to "easy mode", despite what they call it ("normal" or something).
I've won scenarios at "impossible" difficulty, and it surely is not impossible (though the first week or two is very, very difficult).
This is probably my favorite game in recent memory. It ranks up there with the best of the mid 80s Commodore 64 games: Archon, M.U.L.E. (anybody remember that one?), Pool of Radiance, Temple of Apshai, and Ultima IV. PC games suck, except for id, Origin, and New World Computing.
Heroes of Might & Magic is one of the best series of games I've ever seen. And I've been playing computer games longer than some Slashdotters have been alive.:)
On a scale of 1 to 10, where Ultima 8 is a 1 and NetHack is a 10, I would give HOMM3 an 8.5 (9 with the additional scenarios).
Perhaps what they should do is have a filter on the college's T3 line, then install a fractional T1 that has no filter.
I hate it when people waste my bandwidth by downloading porn and warez. I couldn't care less what they do in their dorm room, as long as it's legal (human sacrifice is right out).
I heard rumors that Aureal was going to develop Linux drivers for their Vortex2 cards, and I saw a Diamond MX300 for near half the price of the SoundBlaster Live! Value I bought, but I was tired of hearing rumors and seeing disclaimers like "no guarantee of non-Win95 support" on manufacturers' web sites. So I went out and got that SB Live!. Now I don't have to worry about binary-only drivers, non-official support, etc. It's nice having hardware that's entirely supported in the kernel (or, at least, after the distribution patches the kernel).
I couldn't care less about laptops or handhelds. Low power, high performance chips are always good, though, especially if they're cheap and have a gimmick (like, say, emulating other architectures).
So, when can I buy an SMP motherboard with six or eight of these Transmeta processors on it? Intel is the only game in town for low-cost SMP, and it's not very low-cost at all, IMHO. Have you priced the Alpha lately? There are Alpha CPUs being discontinued that cost more than my whole SMP P3 U2W SCSI workstation! Funk dat!
I bet I could build a quad Xeon system with Ultra160 RAID and 21" monitor for the price of a barebones 21264. Factor in a second CPU and SMP Alpha board, and I could have a beowulf cluster of quad Xeons plus 21" monitors, RAID, and gigabit ethernet. Bah.
The thing I worry about with a home-built machine is hardware manufacturer's blaming each other for problems.
Well, if you've gotten that response from hardware manufacturers, then you're buying from the wrong people. OTOH, sometimes there is a legitimate clash between two products. In this case, you're not really immune from the problem, though a good burn-in period will often detect such things in the testing labs. Not every OEM will take the time and effort to guarantee your video card won't flake out with your sound card installed. My dad got a high end HP Pavilion from work not so long ago. It uses off-the-shelf parts, has a nicely-designed case, and performs well under Windows 98. The down parts: I'm not sure the case is standard ATX, the video card is an ATI (not known for their performance or openness), the modem is useless (win modem), you don't even get a copy of any operating system on CD (just an "emergency restore CD"), the BIOS sucks big time (it's truly pathetic, even for a pre-built machine), the APM is totally unreliable and uncontrollable (sometimes it turns itself off in the middle of his typing a word), and he has absolutely no idea what brand motherboard, DIMMs, or other low-level hardware is in his computer. That makes it incredibly difficult to diagnose problems, incompatibilities, or buy off-the-shelf components compatible with his current setup (ie, buying the same brand of memory as the current setup, for maximum reliability).
My computer is an Asus P2B-D SMP pentium III motherboard, dual Pentium III 450 MHz processors, 256 MB of guaranteed PC100 compliant DIMMs with lifetime warranties, Matrox G400 AGP video card, Creative Labs SoundBlaster Live! Value, dual DEC Tulip-based 10/100 Mbit NICs, Tekram U2W SCSI adapter, Quantum Atlas 10K RPM U2W SCSI hard drive, a very nice 19" monitor (ugh... cost me over $500 back over a year ago), a very nice Enlight case, and a couple impulse buys: a USB webcam, a Maxtor EIDE hard drive, some cheap speakers, some cheap OEM copy of Windows NT 4.0 I found at a computer show, a real cheap EIDE CDRW, and a free SCSI CDROM.
With the exception of the impulse buys, everything else in and around my computer was heavily researched before purchase. I decided early on that I was going to settle for nothing less than total satisfaction. First, I determined what sort of setup would get me the most bang for my buck: uniprocessor or SMP. The obvious answer was SMP, because I was going to use Linux and Intel was charging monstrous amounts of money for the P3 500 and P3 550. It was cheaper to buy two P3 450s than to buy a single P3 550! How's that for gouging? Oh well. I also removed the K6-III and upcoming Athlon from the running, because neither had good chipsets (no support for SMP or other necessary features). The sound card obviously had to be supported under Linux. That removed quite a few value-oriented models on the market, as well as any Aureal A3D product. My original solution was a $30 Ensoniq AudioPCI, but I've since upgraded to the Live!. The SCSI peripherals were a must. You can't get that from a pre-built system, unless you pay for a high-end server that costs over $5000. My system cost under $3000, though it would probably be a lot cheaper if you built it today (SCSI is cheaper, and the Pentium III 550 is looking attractive). Also, good chipsets for the Athlon will be out soon. You might have to wait until 2001 before a good, high-end SMP Athlon motherboard is available, though. I don't like buying revision 1.0 motherboards with no reputation, especially if they're not Asus.
My computer never locks up (unless I run a Microsoft OS, and it's still pretty damn stable even then), XF86 is pretty much optimized to hell for my setup, and I still have room to upgrade to even better performance, when 600 MHz Pentium IIIs become cheap. Plus, there's the expandability of SCSI: I can have up to 15 devices hooked up to my controller. Thanks to buying a full tower case, I can actually fit most of them in internal bays! Plus, by buying OEM hardware over the net, I saved quite a lot of money over buying some retail, boxed PC. I can't imagine paying an additional $50 per component, just to get lousy, bundled software that doesn't even run under Linux. Blech.
The drawbacks about doing it my way? Well, you need to spend lots of time determining what the optimum choice is. I spent a long time going through hardware review web sites, like Tom's Hardware and AnandTech. Also, you need to understand what the hardware review sites are talking about. If you don't know the difference between the BX chipset and the LX chipset, or even what a chipset is, then you're going to be totally lost. Building stuff yourself is terribly frustrating. I hate it, because you never get absolutely everything wired correctly the first time you power on the system. I'd rather be booting Linux than swearing at my computer, looking up what beep-beep-pause-beep means. The worst thing is that sometimes you end up with crap hardware, a 30 day warranty, and no returns after 10 days. Not to mention the 20% restocking fee. That's enough to scare off lots of people right there. They want a nice, long 5 year warranty with lots of middle men to whom you may talk. Personally, I hate middle men with a passion. I've never met one who could answer a simple question like, "What chipset does that video card use?" ("It's AGP!" "Okay, nevermind.")
In the end, I'd recommend that everyone but newbies build their own PC. For newbies, they should have someone else build their PC, like me. I'll do it for free. Just give me some pizza and Coca Cola while I'm working on it.
I had to totally rebuild my girlfriend's PC from scratch, because she had absolute crap (SiS video card, ALS300 sound card, overclocked Pentium CPU, PC Chips motherboard, etc). She had built most of the system herself, with the help of a friend. Unfortunately, neither of them was particularly knowledgable about computer hardware, so it ended up being quite unstable and slow. Overclocked, low-end hardware... ugghh... quite a recipe for disaster.
That, and the world needs a kick-ass laptop with a SrongARM processor or some other RISC chip with high performance and low power/heat requirements, with good Linux support for all the hardware.
Maybe that's the route the Amiga folks should take; instead of reinventing the wheel, make a kick-ass Linux system and add the necessary multimedia stuff to Linux. They'll have all the help they can eat.
An inexpensive RISC laptop would be cool, especially if it used something Linux, BeOS, or BSD ran on. I suppose you could even use something like an early DEC Alpha (21064A @ 266 MHz). A true 64 bit laptop would rule, and it would live up to the cutting-edge Amiga name.
Now, what I'd do, if I owned the Amiga name, is
Make "strategic relationships" with small-but-upcoming OS vendors like Red Hat and Be. That way, I'd be able to ride the wave that they're on, while adding my own hype to theirs.
Do something interesting. Who cares about yet another P6 architecture CPU with a few new MMX ops, a proprietary socket or slot interface, and a 33 MHz, 32 bit PCI bus. Blech. Been there, done that. Let's see a consumer DEC Alpha system. 64 bit PCI bus, no legacy holdovers from the IBM PC AT, and a well thought-out platform (intelligent peripherals, like the original C64 and Amiga, for instance).
There's no reason there can't be two Amiga platforms, or even three! The entry level system, the Amiga 500 Mark 2, could be an Athlon. The power user/professional user version, the Amiga 1000Mk2, could be an Alpha. Binary compatibility might be a small problem, but that'd be easily solved (look at the NeXT boxes). Make the 500 upgradable to a 1000 via a simple chip switch or CPU daughter card. The Athlon and Alpha both use the EV6 bus. It's feasible they could both use the same motherboard.
Compatability with x86: Some people will say it's necessary, others will say it's not. With the AMD Athlon, one gets both a well-designed, next-generation CPU and x86. When the user is ready for the next level, he can simply upgrade. What happens to his old software? Well, if he's using a real operating system, he can still run it. If he's running NT, I suppose there's NT4/Alpha. But I really don't know about the future of Alphas and NT2K. I haven't followed it much, besides Compaq shutting it down. For all I know, Microsoft will take up the slack themselves. Maybe Be will port BeOS to the Alpha.
Servers: A consumer Alpha will still be expensive as hell, compared to an Athlon PC. This will then necessarily have to be aimed at power users and the server market. We could end up with the Dream Linux/FreeBSD Workstation here, given the right peripherals (all U2W SCSI drives, no IDE, no ISA slots, 64 bit PCI, cutting edge 3D graphics from Nvidia, Matrox, or 3DFX).
So, basically, what you're saying is that you like the status quo because you're lazy.
Personally, I'd rather see Slashdot stick to interviews with cracking groups, links to sites that are overloaded, and whiny stories about how hard life is for high school kids. That way, I know I won't miss anything interesting, but there'll still be something there to read when I get bored.
> Having bailed out of pittsburgh after living > there for 25 of my 26 years I know a bit or > two about the whole tri-state area.
Well, I'm not from Pittsburgh, but I wanted to make a few comments on your post. As background, I lived around New York City for most of my 27 years. The past four years, I've been in Louisville, Kentucky.
> Pittsburgh's problems are: > > 1.) the weather just plain sucks. Try parking > 1/2 mile from the office and then having to > walk through snow and slush ten inches deep.
Okay, I'm weird, but I really, *really* miss the snowfall from the coastal Northeast. You think ten inches is deep? That was barely even snowfall back in NY... we used to get over five feet of snow in a single day, back in the blizzards of my youth. Unfortunately, there hasn't been a real blizzard back home in a few years. I blame it on global warming and pollution (trapping the heat).
> 2.) The universities, while world class, do > little in the way of public relations. Town > and gown are two vastly different worlds.
I can't really comment on the Pittsburgh universities, since I've never gone to one. But the NY universities can certainly suck quite badly when they want. We didn't have anything better than a 56K (frame relay? partial T1? I can't remember specifics) connection to the internet for *the entire campus*, with a handful of 2400 and 9600 bps modems. Luckily, we did have SPARCstation labs and lots of dumb terminals. 'Course this was a few years ago, but it still sucked even back then. And lots of the state universities just plain suck cuz of their liberal arts emphasis (which I discovered too late to save myself). The private schools are pretty good. But expensive.
> 3.) Pittsburgh virtually shuts down at 5:00 PM > on friday. 24 hour anything is unheard of.
I'm not so sure I'd want to live in a city like that. You'd like NYC. There's always something to do.
> 4.) The taxes are insanely high. There is a > 2.8% flat state income tax. A 7% sales tax > in allegheny county. My hometown had a 1.45% > local income tax. Property taxes are among the > highest in the country.
I'll try to keep from laughing. You think that's high? Have you ever lived in New York? Of course, New Yorkers get *lots* of services for their money. Upstate people tend not to think so, but I think it's money well spent.
> 5.) old people control everything. Someone else > mentioned that allegheny county is #2 in old > people as a percentage of population. Not only > does this make meeting people bad, it also > infuses old people with political power. Between > the old people and the luddite unions it's > hopeless.
Most of the country is like that, in general, except for places designated as "sin cities", like Las Vegas. Still, I think you'll find that it's not the 30-somethings that control the city; it's the rich, powerful 50- and 60-somethings who pull all the strings. You don't rise to the position of CEO, chairman of the board, or mayor when you're young and inexperienced. It's kind of annoying there's such agism in this country, when the 20- and 30-somethings are the ones who perhaps know the technology best (though, my dad is quite a guru at 50).
> 6.) This is not an entrepreneurial place. > Business is big here. Alcoa, us steel, mellon > bank, etc. are all 100000 years old and hold > court here. There are a few post-cmu startups > floating around now (transarc, FORE) but they > are rare.
That's definitely a bad situation. Both New York and Louisville are good cities, IMHO, for a new business. Well, the taxes might be a little higher, but you don't have entrenched businesses (except for IBM in the mid-hudson).
> 7.) It's just a blue-collar kind of town.
Definitely a bad scene for a geek.
> anyhow, for what it's worth I moved to Las > Vegas. It's not a perfect geek city (not enough > of us here) but it's got some pluses
I probably wouldn't have thought of Vegas, myself. I plan on returning to the Northeast some day, or perhaps staying in the Indiana/Kentucky/Ohio area if the tech developes a little more. Right now, it's good, but I miss cold winters, blizzards, and big cities. The people here think that Indianapolis is a big city.
> - It's warm. 65 degrees on christmas day
I couldn't deal with that.
> - It's 24x7. Wanna go eat at 5am? no problem.
Very cool. I miss that. Louisville is a quieter, more conservative city. Still, there's stuff to do if you're willing to go downtown. Dayton and Cincinnati aren't so bad, either. Indiana is just plain boring as hell.
> - The women are everywhere. It's vegas fer > chrissakes. the truly desperate can pay legally.
I've already got a girlfriend...
> - It's about the lowest tax state ever. No city > state income taxes. minimum other stuff. Gotta > love gambling
Sounds good, but gambling isn't my style. I'd rather play the latest games in an arcade or watch horror movies at midnight.
> - bars open 24x7! no weird pittsburgh alcohol > laws!
I prefer Coca Cola.
> I could go on and on and on but I won't.
My stupid post is probably going to get a +1 just because it's so long. I should stop before someone thinks I'm actually going to say something interesting or insightful.
My advice is to go to one of the coasts, either East Coast (NY, NJ, MA, MD) or California. Just watch out for the Eastern suburbs. The telephone and electrical lines are of *horrible* quality, in both reliability and cost. I used to lose power or get spikes multiple times per day when the weather was bad...
Northeastern suburbia just doesn't suit a geek very well, unless he has a UPS.
If you're looking for good Linux support, all you need to do is buy non-entry-level hardware (ie, modems that have an onboard DSP). The problem with Linux driver support is mainly video and sound cards, which often do not support much more than basic features or acceleration. The solution is to use the cards that the developers use: Creative Labs, Ensoniq, Matrox, Nvidia, 3DFX, etc.
Using a cheap, non-Postscript printer or a low-end, integrated SiS/VIA chipset might save you a couple bucks at the time of purchase, but you'll be paying for it later. It's better to use good hardware from the start.
OTOH, I have a cheap, non-Postscript printer; however, I don't make a big deal out of it not being supported well. I don't really care. I only paid $60 or $70 for it, so all I expect out of it is to print directions from Yahoo! maps.
There's no reason why everyone needs to run Linux. If someone is happy enough with his Win 98 or iMac system, then let him compute in peace. If he doesn't know that there are alternatives, though, then we haven't done our job. He should know that there's Linux, BeOS, DoomOS, or whatever. Actually, that's my philosophy on religion, but it also applies well here.
I think more important things need to be done than worrying over what Linux needs to become the OS of choice for secretaries and grandpas.
For one, USB support. I'd rather use an ugly ncurses interface to my USB webcam than have a mature version of GNOME or KDE that couldn't access my webcam. At least, that's why I'm not joining the GNOME, KDE, or KOffice projects any time soon... I want to get my hardware working.
OTOH, everyone knows a good operating system has lots of games. We need more games. That's why NT sucks.
I've used many monitors under X, some of them with brand names that sounded like they were being manufactured by a fly-by-night operation in some East Asian country I never heard of. I never had a single problem getting X up and running, except for the requisite problems setting up *any* program under Linux when the kernel is at (or less than) 1.0 and you've never used any UNIX but SunOS (and only as a user).
Here's how you find the specs on your monitor:
Read the monitor book.
Don't have a book? Book in Korean or Japanese? Search altavista and google for the monitor model # (it's on the back).
Monitor model # scratched off or illegible? Use conservative VESA standard defaults.
Don't know what VESA is? I'm not so sure you should be using Linux...
Here's how you configure X with the info you gathered:
Run xf86config and plug in the horizontal and vertical frequencies.
Don't have xf86config? Get a real Linux distribution, one that includes all the required programs in a package...
Your display looks weird? Run xvidtune or run at a lower refresh rate (like 70Hz or 60Hz) or resolution (800x600 is usually safe).
Remember, if you're working with obsolete junk, like $25 monitors you bought at a computer show, BE CONSERVATIVE. Don't try it push it and run at 1024x768@72Hz, even though you think that's the base minimum any monitor should support. Not every monitor is created equally, and some used monitors are over ten years old! Stick with standard VGA and VESA standard modes until you *know for a fact* that your hardware can do better. Call up Compaq, Digital, Sony, etc, and ask them what model monitor you've got. Measure the monitor's height, width, depth, diagonal viewable screen size, and weight. Maybe they might even spare a tech if you're polite.
You're pretty lucky to even have a computer. I have friends that can't afford a computer at all, much less get free stuff second-hand. You make it sound like you're living day by day, never knowing where the next meal is going to come from.
Come on. You're sitting around on the internet, wasting time on a web site! You've obviously got a house, a computer, and phone service. Do you think that everyone in the country has all that? Do you think that *maybe* you take what you have for granted?
I know what it's like to eat Spaghettios every day for lunch and dinner for a month, but, really, do you think that you and me have ever had it as bad as someone who lives on the street? I hardly think so.
What the hell does Richard Stallman's ideals do for the people who are shivering and freezing to death in their tiny apartments, because they can't afford to pay their heating bill?
Let's get a little perspective here, folks, before we start going off on the "I'm soooo poor... oh woe is me... I can't afford to buy VMWare..."
Yes, having a free counterpart is a *good* thing, and I commend the programmers if they are able to finish such a massive project, but let's view it like it is: an act of charity, not someone saving the world!
I like free stuff as much as the next person, but when I can't afford something, my first thought isn't, "My rights are being trampled upon!" Rather, it's more like, "How can I go about getting this product or functionality while staying under budget?" Sometimes you're lucky and there's a free version. Sometimes you have suck up and deal. Or do it yourself. That's life.
I'm lucky enough to be upper middle class now and not have to worry much about necessities, but I also know what a necessity actually is. VMWare is hardly a necessity. It's a very cool program that makes life easier. Beyond that... well, you'll live without it.
I appreciate your situation and understand that you depend on free software, but talking about "survival", like you *need* some computer program to live, is ridiculous.
Slashdot Mirror
I can't see much reason to clone myself, unless I want to take over the world with an army of clones, genetically engineered to say witty phrases like, "Ah'll be bach." or "Hasta la vista, baay-bee."
Really, if I'm dead, what do I care if there's some clone of my original body walking around? It's not me, though it *might* look like me. Think about twins. They don't have 100% the same personalities, and they're basically clones when they're in the womb.
I can't believe most of you are using UNIX/Linux. At least, I always thought Slashdot was a UNIX site. Maybe most of you are using Windows. Anyways, how to avoid spam on Usenet:
DON'T mangle your e-mail address. It's against every fucking RFC on the internet!
I'm sorry, but I'm tired of clueless newbies saying that there's no way to get past the spam, breaking RFCs, and saying Usenet is dead. If I get moderated down as flamebait, I hope someone will re-post this in nicer words.
I agree with the above post. After all the fame and fortune is gone, Linux will still be the same as it was before the fame and fortune. There really isn't anything to lose here, except lots of converts. While having an influx of new users is nice, we're not a commercial operation that survives by how popular it is. As long as the source code is out there, someone will be hacking it.
I sure like having Creative Labs write drivers for their high end sound cards, but I could live without it. I lived without for many years. Back when I first ran Linux, it didn't support anything but a handful of IDE, SCSI, and Ethernet adapters. Now, I can't find a single adapter that isn't supported unless I try very hard (ie, esoteric USB hardware and off-brand UDMA/66 chipsets).
Whatever happens to us, we can learn from and become better as a result of it.
This is all just multimedia internet stuff... never mind burning audio CDs, creating MP3s, household automation, hobbyist programming, single-player gaming, etc. There's a whole world of uses for computers out there. It sounds like you are extremely elitist and seek to keep other people away from your hobby...
BIOS sucks. We need a real command line firmware that knows what things like SCSI disks and ethernet cards are!
On any Sun, SGI, Apple Mac, you can bring up a command line in firmware at boot time and truly control the boot process.
On my Sun, I can boot off of any partition on any disk. I can also *really* boot from CD-ROMs (not cheesy El Torito CD's that work by emulating a piece of crap floppy disk).
Well, not that anyone's going to read this, since it's posted so late, but I can boot from any SCSI device in my system, even a SCSI CD-ROM changer with multiple LUNs. I can boot from an external magneto-optical (MO) drive. I can even boot from the slave hard drive on the secondary EIDE port of my motherboard or from my ethernet card. If I really wanted to, I could hook up a modem to one of my comm ports and force my PC into a remote reboot by just dialing the modem's phone number.
All I have to do is type "boot cdrom" to boot from CD, "boot net" to boot off of a network boot/install server. I can even create aliases so that I can say "boot linux" to boot off of a Linux partition - even if it's on my sixth SCSI disk in the chain.
I don't have to type anything.
I don't need to waste time/money installing stupid tools like System Commander to get the same functionality
Isn't that Windows software or something? I've never used anything like that. All I have installed on my computer is LILO, plus the operating systems that I wish LILO to boot (it varies, depending on my mood).
This is just the tip of the iceberg. Sun's OpenBoot/OpenFirmware provides many mini-miracles.
The PC BIOS is rather useless. But then again, I don't really use the PC BIOS for anything but the POST (power on self test) and PCI/PNP init. After that, the PC BIOS pretty much disappears. I use a decent PCI U2W SCSI card with its own firmware. I don't need a PC BIOS to boot my computer, unless I want to boot from an EIDE disk.
I can't do miracles with a small SCSI firmware, but it does what it's supposed to do - boot my computer.
Having a PC firmware that has access to my Ethernet card and a TCP/IP stack would be a novelty, and potentially very useful in an emergency, but of no use to the average consumer, who can't even figure out how to enter his PC BIOS setup program, much less use a SPARCstation firmware.
Would it be better to have SPARCstation firmware in our PC workstations? Yes. Would it give incredible amounts of new features? No. Just some bells and whistles. PCs aren't really known for their security, scalability, or flexability. Transmeta isn't marketing a server chip here. It's just for low-power PCs.
Why not write your own open source BIOS if your so unhappy with the current situation? (isn't that what you're supposed to say to people who run linux?)
H.P. Lovecraft warned us about searching for funny rocks in Antartica. Get ready for crazy shit to wake up and destroy humanity...
Yeah, but it's News for Nerds, and it Matters.
I suppose I might as well get this out of the way: I'm not really a fan of Heinlen. I don't really like Pournelle as much as lots of other people. And I think people who go around making distinctions between "SF" "scifi" and "science fiction" have *waaaaaay* too much time on their hands.
With that out of the way, I'd like to recommend a few authors that I haven't seen mentioned yet (though, I do read at a high threshold). This is just in addition to others mentioned previously; I fully endorse reading as much Jules Verne and other classics as possible.
H.P. Lovecraft - He's mostly known for his contributions to the horror genre, but many of his stories defy such easy classification. Unfortunately, Lovecraft does have a style that harkens back to the 19th century - very, very slow progression of the plot. Not recommended for people who want instant gratification or tidy answers to every question raised.
Alan Dean Foster - Perhaps something of a hack, but still a very enjoyable hack. His later books have been more literate and interesting, but earlier ones shouldn't disappoint, either. Typically somewhat "safe", as in "rated PG-13".
P. K. Dick - This man was an honest-to-God genius. You owe it to yourself to read every single story he ever wrote. His stories inspired several popular Hollywood movies. He had an incredible imagination, but his true genius was the ability to translate his imagination to the written word. I actually did see him recommended once or twice earlier, but just in passing, like he was a footnote in the history of fiction. Ugh.
Stephen King - Another well-known horror author who should also be known for his scifi. I would recommend The Stand and The Gunslinger series. Many of his other books are not scifi, though they do often have some scifi elements to them.
Here's some directors to look for:
James Cameron - He steals ideas left and right. I can't think of a worse plagiarist. Still.... I love his movies. Terminator 2 is my favorite, even if it is a rehash of several classic scifi novels. "Come vif me if you vant to live." - Arnie
John Carpenter - Might be more known as a horror director, but almost all of his films have a strong science fiction element in them. The Thing is probably most representative of this.
Terry Gilliam - Was one of the Monty Python guys. He's gone on to make some of the best scifi movies I've ever seen. If you like James Cameron-style action-scifi, try 13 Monkeys. His other stuff is often less action-oriented.
I can't think of any more directors, so how about some movies?
The Angry Red Planet - I love the title. It's about an expedition to Mars. Recommended for fans of cheesy 50s movies.
Forbidden Planet - Another great title! Stars Leslie Neilson in a very serious role. Great 50s scifi movie. A real classic. You should see it.
The Outer Limits - It was a TV series. You can probably rent episodes at your local video rental store. Very, very good. The first episode, Demon With A Glass Hand, was written by Harlan Ellison. Better, IMHO, than The Twilight Zone.
...skipping lots of obvious ones, like 2001 and such, that were already mentioned...
Alien - Sigourney Weaver. An alien life-form that wants to kill her. A small ship in the middle of space...
Wizards - A great animated movie by Ralph Bakshi. Two brothers battle it out, using technology, Nazis, and magic.
The Mad Max trilogy - Awesome. Just plain awesome. The third movie isn't nearly as good as the previous two, but it's lightyears better than any post-apocalyptic, anti-hero movie clone of the originals. Some great visuals and action sequences, too. See Mel Gibson in Australian movies from the 70s and 80s!
The Phantasm series - Four movies that span over 20 years, often with the same actors reprising their roles. Depending on which movie you watch, you might get a surreal 70s horror movie, an 80s scifi/horror movie, or a 90s scifi/horror comedy/parody like Scream and The Evil Dead. The fourth movie is really just for fans of the series, though it does return to the surreal quality of the first movie, plus use the scifi elements of the later ones.
Trancers - Tim Thomerson. Time travel. Zombies trying to take over the world. Mad scientists. How can you resist? The sequels are of varying quality. Great action-scifi from the early 80s.
Circuitry Man (and Circuitry Man II) - I love these movies to death. Androids, cyborgs, illegal microchips, environmentalist villains... it's got it all! Truly two of the best unknown movies from the 80s.
Lifeforce - A great scifi/horror movie from Tobe Hooper. Basically, London is invaded by space vampires. One of the few vampire movies to ever ask, "Is there life after death?" Not too gory, but there is lots of nudity. The scifi elements could have been developed more. Still recommended, though.
Hardware - It's got a rather infamous graphic sex scene in the middle of it that seems to last forever. Besides that, it's a really cool scifi/horror movie in the vein of Alien. Maybe even a bit of a clone of Alien, but still pretty good, IMHO.
Nemesis - Most people hate it, a few people like it, and I love it. A cyborg has to choose whether to side with the humans or the androids in a battle for survival. There are sequels. Don't watch them. They suck.
And, finally:
The Event Horizon - For people with strong stomachs only. It wasn't as good as it could have been (it had lots of promise but wasted most of it with a SFX gore-a-thon), but it was still very enjoyable to the non-demanding scifi/horror fan. If you are picky or demanding, then you probably won't like this movie as much as your easily amused friends.
That's about all I can think of for now.
Game demos have always been large. Back when 2400 bps modems were fast, the game demos tended to be around a megabyte (or more). It was somewhat uncommon to have more than 120MB of hard disk space back then, but games could easily take up 20-30MB if they had lots of graphics and sound (like later Origin games).
If you want to keep up with cutting edge technology (ie, games), then you need to spend money upgrading your computer every so often. Right now, a Pentium III/450 with 256MB of RAM and 18 gigabytes of EIDE/SCSI at 7200 RPM is a pretty good gaming machine, and it won't put you into too much debt. Plus, it'll last for a little while longer, especially if the motherboard is dual processor or upgradable to the 750 MHz Coppermine.
Celerons, 5400 RPM 8.4 gig EIDE hard drives, and 64MB PC66 memory are all quite cheap these days, but you can't expect to run cutting edge software (ie, games) on something that cost a total of $250 to put together.
Hopefully, you'll get cable modem access soon. Keep bugging your cable provider. Call them every day and demand it.
Yes, a newbie can definitely play this game. It has an excellent tutorial that explains everything in detail. Really, the rules are quite easy to understand. Getting a good strategy might take a little longer, though. The manual has many hints and tips on gameplay.
You'll definitely want to bump up the difficulty level once you start winning scenarios. It defaults to "easy mode", despite what they call it ("normal" or something).
I've won scenarios at "impossible" difficulty, and it surely is not impossible (though the first week or two is very, very difficult).
This is probably my favorite game in recent memory. It ranks up there with the best of the mid 80s Commodore 64 games: Archon, M.U.L.E. (anybody remember that one?), Pool of Radiance, Temple of Apshai, and Ultima IV. PC games suck, except for id, Origin, and New World Computing.
:)
Heroes of Might & Magic is one of the best series of games I've ever seen. And I've been playing computer games longer than some Slashdotters have been alive.
On a scale of 1 to 10, where Ultima 8 is a 1 and NetHack is a 10, I would give HOMM3 an 8.5 (9 with the additional scenarios).
Do people regularly go around introducing themselves as "CmdrTaco" and "Mandrake"?
I'd die before I posted something about myself, calling myself "Elbereth" or something stupid like that.
"Here are pics of Elbereth, naked and wet! Gross!" Nonono. I'm "Matt", not "Elbereth". Call me Elbereth in real life and you die.
Why do geeks have this obsession with "cool" handles? How come nobody is ever "Mr. Pink"? Oh well.
Why did I pick Elbereth? Because I was too bored to be creative and Melkor was already taken.
Perhaps what they should do is have a filter on the college's T3 line, then install a fractional T1 that has no filter.
I hate it when people waste my bandwidth by downloading porn and warez. I couldn't care less what they do in their dorm room, as long as it's legal (human sacrifice is right out).
I heard rumors that Aureal was going to develop Linux drivers for their Vortex2 cards, and I saw a Diamond MX300 for near half the price of the SoundBlaster Live! Value I bought, but I was tired of hearing rumors and seeing disclaimers like "no guarantee of non-Win95 support" on manufacturers' web sites. So I went out and got that SB Live!. Now I don't have to worry about binary-only drivers, non-official support, etc. It's nice having hardware that's entirely supported in the kernel (or, at least, after the distribution patches the kernel).
Well, it's more like a beowulf cluster of low-speed K6-2s, but they use AI and Linux, which is pretty cool.
Right now, I don't think you can buy anything cheaper than a K6-2, except perhaps an i486 (which is an order of magnitude slower...).
I wonder if you could build a supercomputer of 6510s. That would be cool. Send all your old Commodore 64s and 128s to me, please.
I couldn't care less about laptops or handhelds. Low power, high performance chips are always good, though, especially if they're cheap and have a gimmick (like, say, emulating other architectures).
So, when can I buy an SMP motherboard with six or eight of these Transmeta processors on it? Intel is the only game in town for low-cost SMP, and it's not very low-cost at all, IMHO. Have you priced the Alpha lately? There are Alpha CPUs being discontinued that cost more than my whole SMP P3 U2W SCSI workstation! Funk dat!
I bet I could build a quad Xeon system with Ultra160 RAID and 21" monitor for the price of a barebones 21264. Factor in a second CPU and SMP Alpha board, and I could have a beowulf cluster of quad Xeons plus 21" monitors, RAID, and gigabit ethernet. Bah.
The thing I worry about with a home-built machine is hardware manufacturer's blaming each other for problems.
Well, if you've gotten that response from hardware manufacturers, then you're buying from the wrong people. OTOH, sometimes there is a legitimate clash between two products. In this case, you're not really immune from the problem, though a good burn-in period will often detect such things in the testing labs. Not every OEM will take the time and effort to guarantee your video card won't flake out with your sound card installed. My dad got a high end HP Pavilion from work not so long ago. It uses off-the-shelf parts, has a nicely-designed case, and performs well under Windows 98. The down parts: I'm not sure the case is standard ATX, the video card is an ATI (not known for their performance or openness), the modem is useless (win modem), you don't even get a copy of any operating system on CD (just an "emergency restore CD"), the BIOS sucks big time (it's truly pathetic, even for a pre-built machine), the APM is totally unreliable and uncontrollable (sometimes it turns itself off in the middle of his typing a word), and he has absolutely no idea what brand motherboard, DIMMs, or other low-level hardware is in his computer. That makes it incredibly difficult to diagnose problems, incompatibilities, or buy off-the-shelf components compatible with his current setup (ie, buying the same brand of memory as the current setup, for maximum reliability).
My computer is an Asus P2B-D SMP pentium III motherboard, dual Pentium III 450 MHz processors, 256 MB of guaranteed PC100 compliant DIMMs with lifetime warranties, Matrox G400 AGP video card, Creative Labs SoundBlaster Live! Value, dual DEC Tulip-based 10/100 Mbit NICs, Tekram U2W SCSI adapter, Quantum Atlas 10K RPM U2W SCSI hard drive, a very nice 19" monitor (ugh... cost me over $500 back over a year ago), a very nice Enlight case, and a couple impulse buys: a USB webcam, a Maxtor EIDE hard drive, some cheap speakers, some cheap OEM copy of Windows NT 4.0 I found at a computer show, a real cheap EIDE CDRW, and a free SCSI CDROM.
With the exception of the impulse buys, everything else in and around my computer was heavily researched before purchase. I decided early on that I was going to settle for nothing less than total satisfaction. First, I determined what sort of setup would get me the most bang for my buck: uniprocessor or SMP. The obvious answer was SMP, because I was going to use Linux and Intel was charging monstrous amounts of money for the P3 500 and P3 550. It was cheaper to buy two P3 450s than to buy a single P3 550! How's that for gouging? Oh well. I also removed the K6-III and upcoming Athlon from the running, because neither had good chipsets (no support for SMP or other necessary features). The sound card obviously had to be supported under Linux. That removed quite a few value-oriented models on the market, as well as any Aureal A3D product. My original solution was a $30 Ensoniq AudioPCI, but I've since upgraded to the Live!. The SCSI peripherals were a must. You can't get that from a pre-built system, unless you pay for a high-end server that costs over $5000. My system cost under $3000, though it would probably be a lot cheaper if you built it today (SCSI is cheaper, and the Pentium III 550 is looking attractive). Also, good chipsets for the Athlon will be out soon. You might have to wait until 2001 before a good, high-end SMP Athlon motherboard is available, though. I don't like buying revision 1.0 motherboards with no reputation, especially if they're not Asus.
My computer never locks up (unless I run a Microsoft OS, and it's still pretty damn stable even then), XF86 is pretty much optimized to hell for my setup, and I still have room to upgrade to even better performance, when 600 MHz Pentium IIIs become cheap. Plus, there's the expandability of SCSI: I can have up to 15 devices hooked up to my controller. Thanks to buying a full tower case, I can actually fit most of them in internal bays! Plus, by buying OEM hardware over the net, I saved quite a lot of money over buying some retail, boxed PC. I can't imagine paying an additional $50 per component, just to get lousy, bundled software that doesn't even run under Linux. Blech.
The drawbacks about doing it my way? Well, you need to spend lots of time determining what the optimum choice is. I spent a long time going through hardware review web sites, like Tom's Hardware and AnandTech. Also, you need to understand what the hardware review sites are talking about. If you don't know the difference between the BX chipset and the LX chipset, or even what a chipset is, then you're going to be totally lost. Building stuff yourself is terribly frustrating. I hate it, because you never get absolutely everything wired correctly the first time you power on the system. I'd rather be booting Linux than swearing at my computer, looking up what beep-beep-pause-beep means. The worst thing is that sometimes you end up with crap hardware, a 30 day warranty, and no returns after 10 days. Not to mention the 20% restocking fee. That's enough to scare off lots of people right there. They want a nice, long 5 year warranty with lots of middle men to whom you may talk. Personally, I hate middle men with a passion. I've never met one who could answer a simple question like, "What chipset does that video card use?" ("It's AGP!" "Okay, nevermind.")
In the end, I'd recommend that everyone but newbies build their own PC. For newbies, they should have someone else build their PC, like me. I'll do it for free. Just give me some pizza and Coca Cola while I'm working on it.
I had to totally rebuild my girlfriend's PC from scratch, because she had absolute crap (SiS video card, ALS300 sound card, overclocked Pentium CPU, PC Chips motherboard, etc). She had built most of the system herself, with the help of a friend. Unfortunately, neither of them was particularly knowledgable about computer hardware, so it ended up being quite unstable and slow. Overclocked, low-end hardware... ugghh... quite a recipe for disaster.
That, and the world needs a kick-ass laptop with a SrongARM processor or some other RISC chip with high performance and low power/heat requirements, with good Linux support for all the hardware.
Maybe that's the route the Amiga folks should take; instead of reinventing the wheel, make a kick-ass Linux system and add the necessary multimedia stuff to Linux. They'll have all the help they can eat.
An inexpensive RISC laptop would be cool, especially if it used something Linux, BeOS, or BSD ran on. I suppose you could even use something like an early DEC Alpha (21064A @ 266 MHz). A true 64 bit laptop would rule, and it would live up to the cutting-edge Amiga name.
Now, what I'd do, if I owned the Amiga name, is
When the user is ready for the next level, he can simply upgrade. What happens to his old software? Well, if he's using a real operating system, he can still run it. If he's running NT, I suppose there's NT4/Alpha. But I really don't know about the future of Alphas and NT2K. I haven't followed it much, besides Compaq shutting it down. For all I know, Microsoft will take up the slack themselves. Maybe Be will port BeOS to the Alpha.
WEll, that's just me.
So, basically, what you're saying is that you
like the status quo because you're lazy.
Personally, I'd rather see Slashdot stick to
interviews with cracking groups, links to sites
that are overloaded, and whiny stories about how
hard life is for high school kids. That way, I
know I won't miss anything interesting, but there'll
still be something there to read when I get bored.
> Having bailed out of pittsburgh after living
> there for 25 of my 26 years I know a bit or
> two about the whole tri-state area.
Well, I'm not from Pittsburgh, but I wanted to make a few comments on your post. As background, I lived around New York City for most of my 27 years. The past four years, I've been in Louisville, Kentucky.
> Pittsburgh's problems are:
>
> 1.) the weather just plain sucks. Try parking
> 1/2 mile from the office and then having to
> walk through snow and slush ten inches deep.
Okay, I'm weird, but I really, *really* miss the snowfall from the coastal Northeast. You think ten inches is deep? That was barely even snowfall back in NY... we used to get over five feet of snow in a single day, back in the blizzards of my youth. Unfortunately, there hasn't been a real blizzard back home in a few years. I blame it on global warming and pollution (trapping the heat).
> 2.) The universities, while world class, do
> little in the way of public relations. Town
> and gown are two vastly different worlds.
I can't really comment on the Pittsburgh universities, since I've never gone to one. But the NY universities can certainly suck quite badly when they want. We didn't have anything better than a 56K (frame relay? partial T1? I can't remember specifics) connection to the internet for *the entire campus*, with a handful of 2400 and 9600 bps modems. Luckily, we did have SPARCstation labs and lots of dumb terminals. 'Course this was a few years ago, but it still sucked even back then. And lots of the state universities just plain suck cuz of their liberal arts emphasis (which I discovered too late to save myself). The private schools are pretty good. But expensive.
> 3.) Pittsburgh virtually shuts down at 5:00 PM
> on friday. 24 hour anything is unheard of.
I'm not so sure I'd want to live in a city like that. You'd like NYC. There's always something to do.
> 4.) The taxes are insanely high. There is a
> 2.8% flat state income tax. A 7% sales tax
> in allegheny county. My hometown had a 1.45%
> local income tax. Property taxes are among the
> highest in the country.
I'll try to keep from laughing. You think that's high? Have you ever lived in New York? Of course, New Yorkers get *lots* of services for their money. Upstate people tend not to think so, but I think it's money well spent.
> 5.) old people control everything. Someone else
> mentioned that allegheny county is #2 in old
> people as a percentage of population. Not only
> does this make meeting people bad, it also
> infuses old people with political power. Between
> the old people and the luddite unions it's
> hopeless.
Most of the country is like that, in general, except for places designated as "sin cities", like Las Vegas. Still, I think you'll find that it's not the 30-somethings that control the city; it's the rich, powerful 50- and 60-somethings who pull all the strings. You don't rise to the position of CEO, chairman of the board, or mayor when you're young and inexperienced. It's kind of annoying there's such agism in this country, when the 20- and 30-somethings are the ones who perhaps know the technology best (though, my dad is quite a guru at 50).
> 6.) This is not an entrepreneurial place.
> Business is big here. Alcoa, us steel, mellon
> bank, etc. are all 100000 years old and hold
> court here. There are a few post-cmu startups
> floating around now (transarc, FORE) but they
> are rare.
That's definitely a bad situation. Both New York and Louisville are good cities, IMHO, for a new business. Well, the taxes might be a little higher, but you don't have entrenched businesses (except for IBM in the mid-hudson).
> 7.) It's just a blue-collar kind of town.
Definitely a bad scene for a geek.
> anyhow, for what it's worth I moved to Las
> Vegas. It's not a perfect geek city (not enough
> of us here) but it's got some pluses
I probably wouldn't have thought of Vegas, myself.
I plan on returning to the Northeast some day, or perhaps staying in the Indiana/Kentucky/Ohio area if the tech developes a little more. Right now, it's good, but I miss cold winters, blizzards, and big cities. The people here think that Indianapolis is a big city.
> - It's warm. 65 degrees on christmas day
I couldn't deal with that.
> - It's 24x7. Wanna go eat at 5am? no problem.
Very cool. I miss that. Louisville is a quieter, more conservative city. Still, there's stuff to do if you're willing to go downtown. Dayton and Cincinnati aren't so bad, either. Indiana is just plain boring as hell.
> - The women are everywhere. It's vegas fer
> chrissakes. the truly desperate can pay legally.
I've already got a girlfriend...
> - It's about the lowest tax state ever. No city
> state income taxes. minimum other stuff. Gotta
> love gambling
Sounds good, but gambling isn't my style. I'd
rather play the latest games in an arcade or
watch horror movies at midnight.
> - bars open 24x7! no weird pittsburgh alcohol
> laws!
I prefer Coca Cola.
> I could go on and on and on but I won't.
My stupid post is probably going to get a +1 just because it's so long. I should stop before someone thinks I'm actually going to say something interesting or insightful.
My advice is to go to one of the coasts, either East Coast (NY, NJ, MA, MD) or California. Just watch out for the Eastern suburbs. The telephone and electrical lines are of *horrible* quality, in both reliability and cost. I used to lose power or get spikes multiple times per day when the weather was bad...
Northeastern suburbia just doesn't suit a geek very well, unless he has a UPS.
SJS has a very good point.
If you're looking for good Linux support, all you need to do is buy non-entry-level hardware (ie, modems that have an onboard DSP). The problem with Linux driver support is mainly video and sound cards, which often do not support much more than basic features or acceleration. The solution is to use the cards that the developers use: Creative Labs, Ensoniq, Matrox, Nvidia, 3DFX, etc.
Using a cheap, non-Postscript printer or a low-end, integrated SiS/VIA chipset might save you a couple bucks at the time of purchase, but you'll be paying for it later. It's better to use good hardware from the start.
OTOH, I have a cheap, non-Postscript printer; however, I don't make a big deal out of it not being supported well. I don't really care. I only paid $60 or $70 for it, so all I expect out of it is to print directions from Yahoo! maps.
There's no reason why everyone needs to run Linux. If someone is happy enough with his Win 98 or iMac system, then let him compute in peace. If he doesn't know that there are alternatives, though, then we haven't done our job. He should know that there's Linux, BeOS, DoomOS, or whatever. Actually, that's my philosophy on religion, but it also applies well here.
I think more important things need to be done than worrying over what Linux needs to become the OS of choice for secretaries and grandpas.
For one, USB support. I'd rather use an ugly ncurses interface to my USB webcam than have a mature version of GNOME or KDE that couldn't access my webcam. At least, that's why I'm not joining the GNOME, KDE, or KOffice projects any time soon... I want to get my hardware working.
OTOH, everyone knows a good operating system has lots of games. We need more games. That's why NT sucks.
I've used many monitors under X, some of them with brand names that sounded like they were being manufactured by a fly-by-night operation in some East Asian country I never heard of. I never had a single problem getting X up and running, except for the requisite problems setting up *any* program under Linux when the kernel is at (or less than) 1.0 and you've never used any UNIX but SunOS (and only as a user).
Here's how you find the specs on your monitor:
Here's how you configure X with the info you gathered:
Remember, if you're working with obsolete junk, like $25 monitors you bought at a computer show, BE CONSERVATIVE. Don't try it push it and run at 1024x768@72Hz, even though you think that's the base minimum any monitor should support. Not every monitor is created equally, and some used monitors are over ten years old! Stick with standard VGA and VESA standard modes until you *know for a fact* that your hardware can do better. Call up Compaq, Digital, Sony, etc, and ask them what model monitor you've got. Measure the monitor's height, width, depth, diagonal viewable screen size, and weight. Maybe they might even spare a tech if you're polite.
You're pretty lucky to even have a computer. I have friends that can't afford a computer at all, much less get free stuff second-hand. You make it sound like you're living day by day, never knowing where the next meal is going to come from.
Come on. You're sitting around on the internet, wasting time on a web site! You've obviously got a house, a computer, and phone service. Do you think that everyone in the country has all that? Do you think that *maybe* you take what you have for granted?
I know what it's like to eat Spaghettios every day for lunch and dinner for a month, but, really, do you think that you and me have ever had it as bad as someone who lives on the street? I hardly think so.
What the hell does Richard Stallman's ideals do for the people who are shivering and freezing to death in their tiny apartments, because they can't afford to pay their heating bill?
Let's get a little perspective here, folks, before we start going off on the "I'm soooo poor... oh woe is me... I can't afford to buy VMWare..."
Yes, having a free counterpart is a *good* thing, and I commend the programmers if they are able to finish such a massive project, but let's view it like it is: an act of charity, not someone saving the world!
I like free stuff as much as the next person, but when I can't afford something, my first thought isn't, "My rights are being trampled upon!" Rather, it's more like, "How can I go about getting this product or functionality while staying under budget?" Sometimes you're lucky and there's a free version. Sometimes you have suck up and deal. Or do it yourself. That's life.
I'm lucky enough to be upper middle class now and not have to worry much about necessities, but I also know what a necessity actually is. VMWare is hardly a necessity. It's a very cool program that makes life easier. Beyond that... well, you'll live without it.
I appreciate your situation and understand that you depend on free software, but talking about "survival", like you *need* some computer program to live, is ridiculous.