Yep. I'm running an Opteron 140 on a Tyan Tiger K8WS motherboard. It's rock-solid, and it uses the AMD8000 server chipset instead of the crappy VIA one.
I don't suppose having three pc's and two laptops in a constant on state in the house along with my WAP would have anything to do with it, would it??
Umm... Guess what, that's exactly your problem. Turn off the PCs and see if it gets better. The damn things produce ridiculous amounts of interference.
If you want a bleeding-edge, unsupported version of gnome, you can add a Cooker source and then you pretty much just do "urpmi gnome" to install the latest version of it.
How about you explain what results it is likely to yield? Space exploration is just not commercially viable right now, and I don't see how it can become viable. If it was profitable, then NASA wouldn't be suffering from money shortages, would it?
The problem is that it takes a lot more than a couple of billion dollars to accomplish anything space-related. Hell, even a simple communications satellite costs more than that to put into orbit. No sane investor will put money into something that's extremely unlikely to pay off in the short-to-medium term. I don't see how a commercial company can justify the enormous investment serious space exploration would require.
I don't consider duplicating something NASA achieved decades ago to be space exploration. I'm sure there is quite a market for launching Earth satellites and possibly space tourism, but as far as traveling to different planets and actually exploring space -- that's a money pit, and no commercial company likes to get into money pits.
I wouldn't say that. You do not want to use digital coding for critical communications, simply because it is not very robust. A human with a sensitive receiver can make out very faint signals, because there is a lot of redundancy in an analog signal. This is important for emergency communications, and that's what a lot of the spectrum is reserved for.
The same applies to broadcast radio. You do not want some fancy compressed digital coding scheme. You want something that people can pick up with an ordinary receiver, and with reasonably high quality (much higher than cellphone quality).
Anyway, the current allocations are actually fairly efficient, despite what some interest groups want you to think.
Acrobat sucks ass for bitmap images. It doesn't display them very well, they don't print out well, and the files are huge. DjVu is a new image format that compresses extremely well (a few kilobytes a page -- actually comparable to ASCII text). It's somewhat proprietary, but it's probably the best solution here. There are free web-based services that can compress your images. You can try some of them and see for yourself.
If you set up a "pirate" station at low-to-medium power on an unused frequency the FCC can shut you down.
That's because it probably interferes with another licensed station (not necessarily in the FM band -- ever hear about harmonics?). Otherwise, that frequency would be allocated to somebody else.
It's a crude and inefficient regulatory system designed to work with receivers using 1930's technology.
Most receivers still use something pretty close to 1930s technology. Your basic radio receiver hasn't changed THAT much.
Your cellphone doesn't interfere with mine even if we're next to each other.
Sure, but that only works as long as there are more available channels than cellphones wanting to use one. Ever hear of Shannon's law?
We could even be on the same frequency
Only if you use TDM and there is more channel bandwidth than you can use.
The article tries to make the point that we have technology like cellphones today and can start regulating on the basis of "follow the rules of the road" rather than letting 1935 receiver technology force us into "only one car on the road at a time".
Use more analogies, see where that gets you. Unfortunately, that isn't how the physical world operates. The radio spectrum is a limited resource, and there isn't enough room for everyone and their dog.
Don't reform the FCC. Auction off frequencies, with permanent ownership rights, to the public!
In case you haven't noticed, that's close to what the FCC does already. Guess what: if you did that, one large company will own all the frequencies and nobody would be able to do anything.
I very much doubt that they even hold a candle to Nvidia's GLX implementation, which is still the best in the industry. ATI's OpenGL support always sucked and continues to do so. Just look at the release notes -- no mention of 3D, and some of the issues fixed are "doesn't work on Athlon systems". Do these sound like stable, optimized drivers? Not to me they don't.
By "drivers", I mean 3D-accelerated drivers that support all features of the card, not 2D-only drivers that work poorly. ATI does not provide any driver programming information for their newer 3D cards, so there isn't an open-source driver that supports the 3D features. Nvidia provides stable, fully-featured, supported Linux drivers.
Spend 30 seconds on sourceforge and you'll find dozens regardless of what you search for.
I generally found that programs which Mandrake contributors do not package are not worth using.
Apt does everything urpmi does and then some.
Too bad it's not the redhat standard.
If you do a apt-get install perl-video-dvdrip it can and will install all dozen programs you need for 100% functionality for that as well (pity Mandrake urpmi doesn't).
As the other poster rightfully pointed out, you are talking out your ass.
I have never had trouble with nVidia videocards. Yes, they have binary drivers -- which is 10 times better than ATI, which have NO official drivers (except for really old videocards).
Whatever. Mandrake has about 10x more packaged software for it than redhat. Download all 4 CDs + add contribs + add PLF, and you will have a hard time finding a program that isn't packaged. Plus, you won't have to hunt down RPMs -- just do "urpmi " and it will download and install it automagically. That includes things like MPlayer and DeCSS.
Basic stamps are basically toys. They are waaaay overpriced and programming in basic is pretty much like programming in assembly with less-scary names for instructions. Not to mention you can't use any of the advanced features like interrupts, timers, and so on.
The 8051 platform is also very nice, since it is very commonly encountered. For instance, the Cypress USB microcontrollers have 8051 cores. This platform also has a few free C compilers.
I haven't tried the AVRs yet, but I heard they are nice too. I would choose them if you want to program in C.
The gas cars have deleterious impact on the environment and are consequently taxed as such. Hydro cars don't, so they shouldn't be taxed.
This is the most idiotic argument I have ever heard. You are essentially saying that the sales tax is there to discourage people from buying stuff, and income taxes are there to encourage unemployment. I don't think so. I am sure hydrogen will be taxed, just like gasoline is (though perhaps at a lowered rate at first).
You don't need a computer to use Vonage. You only need an internet connection, such as cable or DSL. Furthermore, one way to ensure that everyone can have access to a phone is the Universal Service Fund, which is essentially a tax. I don't see why Vonage should be exempt from it.
Because the purpose those rules serve does not apply to VOIP.
Vonage is not just VOIP, it's a PHONE SERVICE. As in, it connects to the PSTN. You still haven't explained why they should not be counted as a phone company.
Vonage doesn't sarcastically tell me to switch to another local provider (which does not exist in many places) when I call with a complaint. Verizon can and does.
Contact your public utility commission, and Verizon will get their act together pretty fast. That is kind of the idea behind regulation.
Again, how is Vonage not a phone company when they call themselves "The Broadband Phone Company"? If they are a phone company, they need to play by the rules. Regardless of what means they use to deliver their service.
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Yep. I'm running an Opteron 140 on a Tyan Tiger K8WS motherboard. It's rock-solid, and it uses the AMD8000 server chipset instead of the crappy VIA one.
I don't suppose having three pc's and two laptops in a constant on state in the house along with my WAP would have anything to do with it, would it??
Umm... Guess what, that's exactly your problem. Turn off the PCs and see if it gets better. The damn things produce ridiculous amounts of interference.
If you want a bleeding-edge, unsupported version of gnome, you can add a Cooker source and then you pretty much just do "urpmi gnome" to install the latest version of it.
How about you explain what results it is likely to yield? Space exploration is just not commercially viable right now, and I don't see how it can become viable. If it was profitable, then NASA wouldn't be suffering from money shortages, would it?
The problem is that it takes a lot more than a couple of billion dollars to accomplish anything space-related. Hell, even a simple communications satellite costs more than that to put into orbit. No sane investor will put money into something that's extremely unlikely to pay off in the short-to-medium term. I don't see how a commercial company can justify the enormous investment serious space exploration would require.
I don't consider duplicating something NASA achieved decades ago to be space exploration. I'm sure there is quite a market for launching Earth satellites and possibly space tourism, but as far as traveling to different planets and actually exploring space -- that's a money pit, and no commercial company likes to get into money pits.
You're kidding, right? Commercial space exploration? Who do you think will invest money in something that's expensive and unlikely to yield results?
That doesn't work with handwritten notes.
I wouldn't say that. You do not want to use digital coding for critical communications, simply because it is not very robust. A human with a sensitive receiver can make out very faint signals, because there is a lot of redundancy in an analog signal. This is important for emergency communications, and that's what a lot of the spectrum is reserved for.
The same applies to broadcast radio. You do not want some fancy compressed digital coding scheme. You want something that people can pick up with an ordinary receiver, and with reasonably high quality (much higher than cellphone quality).
Anyway, the current allocations are actually fairly efficient, despite what some interest groups want you to think.
Acrobat sucks ass for bitmap images. It doesn't display them very well, they don't print out well, and the files are huge. DjVu is a new image format that compresses extremely well (a few kilobytes a page -- actually comparable to ASCII text). It's somewhat proprietary, but it's probably the best solution here. There are free web-based services that can compress your images. You can try some of them and see for yourself.
If you set up a "pirate" station at low-to-medium power on an unused frequency the FCC can shut you down.
That's because it probably interferes with another licensed station (not necessarily in the FM band -- ever hear about harmonics?). Otherwise, that frequency would be allocated to somebody else.
It's a crude and inefficient regulatory system designed to work with receivers using 1930's technology.
Most receivers still use something pretty close to 1930s technology. Your basic radio receiver hasn't changed THAT much.
Your cellphone doesn't interfere with mine even if we're next to each other.
Sure, but that only works as long as there are more available channels than cellphones wanting to use one. Ever hear of Shannon's law?
We could even be on the same frequency
Only if you use TDM and there is more channel bandwidth than you can use.
The article tries to make the point that we have technology like cellphones today and can start regulating on the basis of "follow the rules of the road" rather than letting 1935 receiver technology force us into "only one car on the road at a time".
Use more analogies, see where that gets you. Unfortunately, that isn't how the physical world operates. The radio spectrum is a limited resource, and there isn't enough room for everyone and their dog.
Don't reform the FCC. Auction off frequencies, with permanent ownership rights, to the public!
In case you haven't noticed, that's close to what the FCC does already. Guess what: if you did that, one large company will own all the frequencies and nobody would be able to do anything.
I very much doubt that they even hold a candle to Nvidia's GLX implementation, which is still the best in the industry. ATI's OpenGL support always sucked and continues to do so. Just look at the release notes -- no mention of 3D, and some of the issues fixed are "doesn't work on Athlon systems". Do these sound like stable, optimized drivers? Not to me they don't.
By "drivers", I mean 3D-accelerated drivers that support all features of the card, not 2D-only drivers that work poorly. ATI does not provide any driver programming information for their newer 3D cards, so there isn't an open-source driver that supports the 3D features. Nvidia provides stable, fully-featured, supported Linux drivers.
That means "one AGP slot", fucktard. Of course it's 8x, they don't make them any slower anymore.
Spend 30 seconds on sourceforge and you'll find dozens regardless of what you search for.
I generally found that programs which Mandrake contributors do not package are not worth using.
Apt does everything urpmi does and then some.
Too bad it's not the redhat standard.
If you do a apt-get install perl-video-dvdrip it can and will install all dozen programs you need for 100% functionality for that as well (pity Mandrake urpmi doesn't).
As the other poster rightfully pointed out, you are talking out your ass.
Opterons run very cool. Mine runs considerably cooler than the P3-800 it replaced.
I have never had trouble with nVidia videocards. Yes, they have binary drivers -- which is 10 times better than ATI, which have NO official drivers (except for really old videocards).
Whatever. Mandrake has about 10x more packaged software for it than redhat. Download all 4 CDs + add contribs + add PLF, and you will have a hard time finding a program that isn't packaged. Plus, you won't have to hunt down RPMs -- just do "urpmi " and it will download and install it automagically. That includes things like MPlayer and DeCSS.
Basic stamps are basically toys. They are waaaay overpriced and programming in basic is pretty much like programming in assembly with less-scary names for instructions. Not to mention you can't use any of the advanced features like interrupts, timers, and so on.
I suggest you start with a PIC, MPLAB (yeah, yeah, it's for windows -- so what?), and a JDM programmer with ICProg. It's a nice, easy-to-use solution.
The 8051 platform is also very nice, since it is very commonly encountered. For instance, the Cypress USB microcontrollers have 8051 cores. This platform also has a few free C compilers.
I haven't tried the AVRs yet, but I heard they are nice too. I would choose them if you want to program in C.
Unless you have an illegal RF amplifier, CB only works for about a mile, so you can't use it as a phone.
The gas cars have deleterious impact on the environment and are consequently taxed as such. Hydro cars don't, so they shouldn't be taxed.
This is the most idiotic argument I have ever heard. You are essentially saying that the sales tax is there to discourage people from buying stuff, and income taxes are there to encourage unemployment. I don't think so. I am sure hydrogen will be taxed, just like gasoline is (though perhaps at a lowered rate at first).
If you somehow manage to offer your cans and string solution as a commercial telephone service, then yes, it will be regulated.
If so, why do you need a ham radio license rather than a phone bill?
Need I remind you that the FCC has rules that specifically prohibit the use of the amateur radio service as a phone? This is exactly why.
Because not everyone even has a computer yet.
You don't need a computer to use Vonage. You only need an internet connection, such as cable or DSL. Furthermore, one way to ensure that everyone can have access to a phone is the Universal Service Fund, which is essentially a tax. I don't see why Vonage should be exempt from it.
Because the purpose those rules serve does not apply to VOIP.
Vonage is not just VOIP, it's a PHONE SERVICE. As in, it connects to the PSTN. You still haven't explained why they should not be counted as a phone company.
Vonage doesn't sarcastically tell me to switch to another local provider (which does not exist in many places) when I call with a complaint. Verizon can and does.
Contact your public utility commission, and Verizon will get their act together pretty fast. That is kind of the idea behind regulation.
Again, how is Vonage not a phone company when they call themselves "The Broadband Phone Company"? If they are a phone company, they need to play by the rules. Regardless of what means they use to deliver their service.