I've got a sort-of Gigabit eth setup at home. Only the fileserver and my workstation have gigabit, the rest if a hybrid of 100 and 10 ethernet.
The gigbit NIC's are a no-name 64bit NIC based on the Natsemi 83820 chipset, and the second is a broadcom intergrated into my mobo.
The switch was another dirt cheap no-name thing, which I liked for the fact that it had 2 gigabit ports and 8 100 ports, which could serve the rest of the house.
The file server (Debian) has one of the gigbit cards, and has 3 IDE RAID1 arrays (thanks, 3ware!) totally about 700GB serving music, movies etc to the rest of the house. Giganit ensures that they can all use as much bandwidth over their 100's as they like and never experience stuttering, except when I max out the connection (transferring any new DVD renders I've done) with my workstations gigabit adapter, but this only happens at night via an automated rsync-based backup script. The rest of my boxes also use the same script to backup their important files as well (two mythtv boxes for instance).
In short, gigabitting the house out cost not-very-much (about 120 for the 64bit card and the switch together) and has meant that even when the server is under heavy load there's never a problem with network congestion.
Granted, but remember the Win98 installer? You could select which components you did and didn't want. That all went out of the Window (hah!) with Win2k and XP which just give you the whole hog, no questions asked.
All I really want is a more customisable installable version of windows, and if I can get away with paying less for a version without needless features (in my case, WMP, messenger, a host of other stuff) I know I wouldn't be the only person to be salivating.
If you weren't at +5 already, I'd be shouting "MOD PARENT UP!" from the rooftops.
As others have pointed out, most video playback is fairly open, with the exception of stuff like WMV, Real and QT/Sorenson, all of which can be circumvented in one way or another.
But like the parent points out, the EU is asking MS to open up some of their protocols, which obvisouly has massive implications for projects like Samba - would MS be forced to show people how their Active Directory, GPO, etc etc works? That would *kill* Windows in the office server environment.
Unbundling an app that I don't use doesn't hurt MS. Opening up SMB/CIFS and all the rest of 'em will knock them off their proprietary horse.
One thin I did wonder about: if the EU succeeds in getting protocols opened up in the EU, will the knowledge be exportable? It's not much use that it gets released under an NDA...
I'm a typical geek who builds custom computers for people preinstalled and preconfigured with their choice of software, and most of my clients opt for Media Player Classic rather than WMP as their default video playback thing, as far as video goes. I'm not an OEM by any means (I've only built about a dozen computers), but I'd love if customisable installs would filter down to the end users.
For those of you who don't know, Media Player Classic is an open source clone of Media Player 6.4 (the default media player shipped with Win2k), and (with the right codec libs installed) will play DVD's, avi's, wmv's, ogm's, Real and QT streams. Very nice clean and easy to use interface, and hooks into standard DirectShow codecs, none of the irritations of WMP/Real/QT, and completely free (thanks Gabest!), although donations are always welcom I imagine.
Being able to completely replace WMP with MPC would be a dream come true for me, and my clients. The only thing that worried me is that MS would take their ball home, and if made to remove Media Player they would probably cripple DirectShow to such an extent that I'd have to install WMP in order to get my codec libraries to work.
I'm probably not the only person to point this out, but when you buy a distro you're paying for the cost associated with burning and distributing the discs, not for the software.
Of course, if you buy one of the boxed set, you're paying extra or things like support, non-free applications (e.g. StarOffice, nvidia drivers) and that kind of things.
"I mean, DDR-II has a significant price-premium over current DDR, but if it doesn't...."
God knows why... I thought half the point of DDR2 was lower cost per die, making it cheaper than regular DDR, since you halve the clock speed to get the same memory bandwidth (although there are some additional latencies which usually means DDR2 needs to be clocked at about 60% of DDR to acheive the same bandwidth).
Since there is no uniform package manager for linux, and a lot of stuff is just distributed as source (ie: NO package manager support, you're back to the plane old file drop method in win3.11), it can be kind of frustrating.
Hmm. What about a cross-platform installer which:
1) could read and uncompress all known package formats (deb, rpm, tarball, etc) 2) compile/reorganise the files into that particular distros format (e.g. turns a tar.gz into an RPM, or converts an RPM into a deb) 3) and then pass the installer to the package manager, resulting in a standard stylee installation for that distro?
This might be the gist of the article, but/.'d so couldn't RTFA...
Just have done. Fired them off a mail thanking them, signed up, bought three albums I downloaded off P2P whilst I was a student and haven't get bought on CD.
Fired them off another mail praising the technical excellence of their site (works fine in Opera and Firebird 0.7 on both Windows and Linux) and adding another "please suppply Ogg as an option!" to the pile.
Warp have been my favourite record label ever since I heard Didgeridoo by Aphex Twin in 1995. They've continued to be the paragon of innovative electronic music throughout the years, and now this.
Warp, you are the best label on the planet, period. You are good to your acts, you are good to your customers.
Yes, the book does have a lot of feminist stigma attached to it, but am I the only person who thinks this has been blown out of all proportion...?
The book is quite clearly more about the religious fanatics more than anything else. The whole of the US was whacked out by the Caste Wars, with the different religious factions warring on ad infinitum, spurred on by characters like Serena Joy - a woman! who now has to live in a prison of her own making.
Personally, I think too many people just saw that this book was full of women being used as sperm receptacles, and jumped on the "Oh no, not another feminist book" bandwagon, a stigma which seemed to be backported to everyone I know whom I've lent The Edible Woman to (still my favourite Atwood book).
I've been looking for ages for a decent roundup of how the Opteron series compares to the more mundane Athlon MP's and Xeon's (as well as Athlon XP's and P4's compared to the single processor Athlon 64's). I'm looking to build a new PC in the next 6 months or so (I do lots of video rendering, both in W2K and Linux) but haven't managed to find a comparison of, say, 2*244's vs. 2 Athlon 2800 MP's. I don't want to go splashing out on the very cute but expensive 64 bit chips if two dirt cheap Athlon MP's will do the job almost as well, particularly under a distro like 64 bit Gentoo. Preliminary resuts say that the Opterons and their ilk are blindingly fast but you can't blame me for being a stingy geek:^)
Any takers? I'm assuming there must be a few render-fanatics out there richer than I who've been able to do a comparison like this...?
These links below got me started, but IMO there's still an awful lot of ground that hasn't been covered - why oh why must EVERYONE use Windows in their benchmarks?!?!
http://www.3dchips.net/content/review.php?id=67& pa ge=1
Surely if you're going to be flogging MythTV boxes, you're going to have uniform hardware, right?
So once you've got the ideal setup, just image using your fave imaging software (I got several copies of Ghost 2003 that a client didn't want when they ordered some external HDD's - I'm sure there are Linux native imagers out there but never had any experience with them) and cos I'd stuck with ext3 (which Ghost supports natively) I was able to image them over the LAN. I don't flog Myth boxes, but when I last fubarred the kernel, all the box needed was a boot floppy and a network cable, and back it was in working order, hence avoiding the pain of another Gentoo install, especially since getting the PVR-250 to work was an absolute bitch.
Slashdot Mirror
My version of BrainMark2004 says differently :^P
I've got a sort-of Gigabit eth setup at home. Only the fileserver and my workstation have gigabit, the rest if a hybrid of 100 and 10 ethernet.
The gigbit NIC's are a no-name 64bit NIC based on the Natsemi 83820 chipset, and the second is a broadcom intergrated into my mobo.
The switch was another dirt cheap no-name thing, which I liked for the fact that it had 2 gigabit ports and 8 100 ports, which could serve the rest of the house.
The file server (Debian) has one of the gigbit cards, and has 3 IDE RAID1 arrays (thanks, 3ware!) totally about 700GB serving music, movies etc to the rest of the house. Giganit ensures that they can all use as much bandwidth over their 100's as they like and never experience stuttering, except when I max out the connection (transferring any new DVD renders I've done) with my workstations gigabit adapter, but this only happens at night via an automated rsync-based backup script. The rest of my boxes also use the same script to backup their important files as well (two mythtv boxes for instance).
In short, gigabitting the house out cost not-very-much (about 120 for the 64bit card and the switch together) and has meant that even when the server is under heavy load there's never a problem with network congestion.
Wouldn't the out of date mirrors be able to update from the BT streams of the people downloading from the up to date mirrors?
Kinda like a BitTorrent powered version of Rsync... *that* would be cool.
Granted, but remember the Win98 installer? You could select which components you did and didn't want. That all went out of the Window (hah!) with Win2k and XP which just give you the whole hog, no questions asked.
All I really want is a more customisable installable version of windows, and if I can get away with paying less for a version without needless features (in my case, WMP, messenger, a host of other stuff) I know I wouldn't be the only person to be salivating.
I take offence at that - I've seen some good apps written in C++.
Kazaa was written in base666 code hewn from the bones of the stillborn.
If you weren't at +5 already, I'd be shouting "MOD PARENT UP!" from the rooftops.
As others have pointed out, most video playback is fairly open, with the exception of stuff like WMV, Real and QT/Sorenson, all of which can be circumvented in one way or another.
But like the parent points out, the EU is asking MS to open up some of their protocols, which obvisouly has massive implications for projects like Samba - would MS be forced to show people how their Active Directory, GPO, etc etc works? That would *kill* Windows in the office server environment.
Unbundling an app that I don't use doesn't hurt MS. Opening up SMB/CIFS and all the rest of 'em will knock them off their proprietary horse.
One thin I did wonder about: if the EU succeeds in getting protocols opened up in the EU, will the knowledge be exportable? It's not much use that it gets released under an NDA...
I'm a typical geek who builds custom computers for people preinstalled and preconfigured with their choice of software, and most of my clients opt for Media Player Classic rather than WMP as their default video playback thing, as far as video goes. I'm not an OEM by any means (I've only built about a dozen computers), but I'd love if customisable installs would filter down to the end users.
For those of you who don't know, Media Player Classic is an open source clone of Media Player 6.4 (the default media player shipped with Win2k), and (with the right codec libs installed) will play DVD's, avi's, wmv's, ogm's, Real and QT streams. Very nice clean and easy to use interface, and hooks into standard DirectShow codecs, none of the irritations of WMP/Real/QT, and completely free (thanks Gabest!), although donations are always welcom I imagine.
Being able to completely replace WMP with MPC would be a dream come true for me, and my clients. The only thing that worried me is that MS would take their ball home, and if made to remove Media Player they would probably cripple DirectShow to such an extent that I'd have to install WMP in order to get my codec libraries to work.
Beats paying for supposedly free software
I'm probably not the only person to point this out, but when you buy a distro you're paying for the cost associated with burning and distributing the discs, not for the software.
Of course, if you buy one of the boxed set, you're paying extra or things like support, non-free applications (e.g. StarOffice, nvidia drivers) and that kind of things.
Now all we ned to do is to get the BSD trolls to convert to Gentoo...
Netcraft confirms... Gentoo is dying...
They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety
They that can give up essential battery life to obtain a little temporary music deserve neither battery life nor music
;^)
...just glue a slice of spam to your nose and be done with it.
"I mean, DDR-II has a significant price-premium over current DDR, but if it doesn't...."
9 5571
God knows why... I thought half the point of DDR2 was lower cost per die, making it cheaper than regular DDR, since you halve the clock speed to get the same memory bandwidth (although there are some additional latencies which usually means DDR2 needs to be clocked at about 60% of DDR to acheive the same bandwidth).
Brief description here: http://hardware.earthweb.com/chips/article.php/32
Since there is no uniform package manager for linux, and a lot of stuff is just distributed as source (ie: NO package manager support, you're back to the plane old file drop method in win3.11), it can be kind of frustrating.
Hmm. What about a cross-platform installer which:
1) could read and uncompress all known package formats (deb, rpm, tarball, etc)
2) compile/reorganise the files into that particular distros format (e.g. turns a tar.gz into an RPM, or converts an RPM into a deb)
3) and then pass the installer to the package manager, resulting in a standard stylee installation for that distro?
This might be the gist of the article, but /.'d so couldn't RTFA...
Perhaps the fact that they're using taxpayer money to do it?
Just FYI, it's not taxpayer money, it's license payer money. I pay taxes, but don't watch TV, so none of my money goes to the BBC.
"Why don't they just write a law that says "if you are bad, we'll take everything you own and you'll be our biatch for the rest of your life"?"
;^)
Dude, Microsoft patented that law years ago...
...but I, for one, welcome our new Zeppelin bandwidth overlords. /me ducks
Just have done. Fired them off a mail thanking them, signed up, bought three albums I downloaded off P2P whilst I was a student and haven't get bought on CD.
Fired them off another mail praising the technical excellence of their site (works fine in Opera and Firebird 0.7 on both Windows and Linux) and adding another "please suppply Ogg as an option!" to the pile.
Warp have been my favourite record label ever since I heard Didgeridoo by Aphex Twin in 1995. They've continued to be the paragon of innovative electronic music throughout the years, and now this.
Warp, you are the best label on the planet, period. You are good to your acts, you are good to your customers.
I salute you.
AMD has adopted a different performance schema for it's new (K8) chips. I'm not entirely sure how it works, but (on Opteron at least):
The first digit represents how many CPU's the system can have installed
The second two digits have some relative performance figures.
So an Opteron 140 is slower than a 148.
An Opteron 240 is the same speed as an Opteron 140, but is SMP capable.
AMD saw that the "we are seen as a comparison to Intel x.x GHz" approach could be misleading, so they changed it.
Excellent!
/me starts saving for an Opteron
I'd looked at Ace's but I didn't check their servers section, only the review.
At last, some relatively sane benchmarks! And no UT2003 in sight!
Thanks!
Re: The Handmaids Tale...
:^)
Yes, the book does have a lot of feminist stigma attached to it, but am I the only person who thinks this has been blown out of all proportion...?
The book is quite clearly more about the religious fanatics more than anything else. The whole of the US was whacked out by the Caste Wars, with the different religious factions warring on ad infinitum, spurred on by characters like Serena Joy - a woman! who now has to live in a prison of her own making.
Personally, I think too many people just saw that this book was full of women being used as sperm receptacles, and jumped on the "Oh no, not another feminist book" bandwagon, a stigma which seemed to be backported to everyone I know whom I've lent The Edible Woman to (still my favourite Atwood book).
Back OT, I loved Oryx and Crake
Maybe OT, but here goes...
:^)
& pa ge=1
& p= 1
I've been looking for ages for a decent roundup of how the Opteron series compares to the more mundane Athlon MP's and Xeon's (as well as Athlon XP's and P4's compared to the single processor Athlon 64's). I'm looking to build a new PC in the next 6 months or so (I do lots of video rendering, both in W2K and Linux) but haven't managed to find a comparison of, say, 2*244's vs. 2 Athlon 2800 MP's. I don't want to go splashing out on the very cute but expensive 64 bit chips if two dirt cheap Athlon MP's will do the job almost as well, particularly under a distro like 64 bit Gentoo. Preliminary resuts say that the Opterons and their ilk are blindingly fast but you can't blame me for being a stingy geek
Any takers? I'm assuming there must be a few render-fanatics out there richer than I who've been able to do a comparison like this...?
These links below got me started, but IMO there's still an awful lot of ground that hasn't been covered - why oh why must EVERYONE use Windows in their benchmarks?!?!
http://www.3dchips.net/content/review.php?id=67
http://www.anandtech.com/IT/showdoc.html?i=1935
If anyone has any info or opinions, I'd be much obliged!
If you did watch The Ring on DVD, how would you copy it to escape with your life?
If you don't copy it, you get killed by a scary psycho-child-demon.
If you do copy it, you get fucked over by the MPAA.
I don't know which one is worse.
Surely if you're going to be flogging MythTV boxes, you're going to have uniform hardware, right?
So once you've got the ideal setup, just image using your fave imaging software (I got several copies of Ghost 2003 that a client didn't want when they ordered some external HDD's - I'm sure there are Linux native imagers out there but never had any experience with them) and cos I'd stuck with ext3 (which Ghost supports natively) I was able to image them over the LAN. I don't flog Myth boxes, but when I last fubarred the kernel, all the box needed was a boot floppy and a network cable, and back it was in working order, hence avoiding the pain of another Gentoo install, especially since getting the PVR-250 to work was an absolute bitch.
...renaming DRM-hardware PC's?
PC = Personal Computer
Since you won't be in control of your computer any more, there's some mileage in calling them CC's (Corporate Computer) instead. Bleh.
Quick! Quick! Someone make a TV plugin for Mozilla!