XP installation is not that bad.... it is still shows signs of its ancient NT 3.51 history though.
Also, the second stage, where you enter your details and devices get configured, sucks, mostly due to poor feedback and how painfully slow it is. Give me a Windows 95 install process anytime over XP install. And then, once you get it going, you still have to configure > 90% of your important hardware because the OS doesn't have adequate drivers for them.
Whereas the slackware install, I can tell it what partitions to use for swap and install. Then tell it what packages (in detail) I want installed, and once it has installed the packages get it to install LILO. And thats about it. Its much faster then an XP install, and lets me choose all what to install.
Once the system reboots, I can actually go about configuring the hardware and network, without a slow or buggy interface in the way.
Yep, the more I have used to slackware install, the more appreciative of it I am. It doesn't go to great lengths to guide disk partitioning, swap making ect, extensive configuration. Instead it just gets to the job of installing files onto the hard drive you want, and does it without wasting time I could be properly configuring the box.:-)
It may be imtimidating to first time users, but if you are going to be installing linux more then a few times, you don't need the time wasted by complex installers. (like windows XP's installer) You already know how you are going to set everything up, and the slackware setup lets you express this very consicely.
The interrupt controllers, DNS controllers and other internal ideosyncracies of the PC are all contained in the PCI-E/AGP/PCI chipset.
If they want to get rid of these PC compatible items, they will need to re-design and implement their own north and south bridge components to use an incompatible scheme. Then windows would probably not run on the chipset
They will probably just make their own minor changes to the BIOS that cannot easily be done on normal PC motherboards. They will also likely use a custom DRM chip, and use it to decrypt vital parts of the OS, which, using memory protection, will prevent applications from copying.
I am not a regressive maniac either, though I do only use ascii text e-mail... I just like firefox because it worked better at browsing then mozilla at the time I choose it.
Maybe it isn't an improvement in terms of program maintainability, functionality and configuration. I certainly won't argue for either massive monolithic programs or smaller individual components.
But, the point I should have made was that the mozilla interface performed terribe, and it was terrible to use. This is what originally prevented me from using it. No amount of nice under the hood stuff matters if the user becomes frustrated at the interface.
Maybe if gecko and its inteface widgetry was properly optimised, and proper windows UI skins were produced before it was forced out the door, there may not have been a split to firefox.
I started using firefox because it had the nice, fast, standard compliant layout engine mozilla ran on, yet had a usable, close to the rest of windows interface on it.
Maybe mozilla runs a lot smoother then it used to now, but I am happy with firefox and have not seen any evidence that mozilla is better at browsing.
Only problem with mozilla was that it was a resource monster and sluggish in use. Why do you actually think firefox succeeded where mozilla hasn't been able to?
I don't really care anymore, this whole HDTV, Bluray, HD-DVD thing is about 90% hot air. Plenty of specifications, plenty of hype, yet few actual products and even fewer reasons to change.
I do like my digital HDTV computer tuner, but that is simply because converting a TV signal from analog to digital on analog tuner cards looked awful. Thats about as far into HDTV I will probably ever go, and I don't know anyone who is actually prepared to go as far as I have.
For 99% of people, blu-ray and HD-DVD may as well not exist. DVD is as good as they need, they will be happy using DVD till time ends. Facing this sort of apathetic customer response, both Blu-ray and HD-DVD seem intent on making it as hard as possible to use. They both may as well close their efforts down and start again, as there is no way in hell that either will be more popular as a video storage media as even betamax was.
You comment on the limits of phone line technology, but do not say what causes those limits.
The reason why 56kps is about as high as we can expect on the POTS system is because at your local exchange, voice calls are transfered into a 64kbit digital signal. This digital signal is then routed using ATM/frame relay channels to the destination exchange and decoded back into an analog signal. The digital channel that analog signals are converted to at your local exchange is why 56kps is the limit.
It used to be that 33.6k was the limit when ISPs used banks of normal analog modems, and both ADC/DAC functions were performed on the signal. This was improved to 56kbit downstream because ISPs started connecting their modems digitally to the exchange. (via T1s/T3s and other digital data connections) The removal of one of ADC (analog to digital) conversions allows the ISP modems to send a clearer signal with exacting resolution so the modem on the other end can pick up as much of the 64kbit channel as possible.
Its not a huge technical acheivement, but an important one in spreading broadband across sparely populated suburbs and towns.
The important thing with this is that carriers can install them basicly anywhere, on a pit, on a pole, anywhere conventional DSLAMs simply cannot be put. Another important thing is that it uses standard copper for the uplink, so rollout is inexpensive.
This is manually controlled because once the landing gear is lowered, it cannot be retracted while in flight.
If there was some fault in the computer system that prematurely lowered the landing gear, during liftoff or while in orbit, the shuttle would be unable to re-enter the atmosphere.
I got a Nokia 1100 because I wanted a basic, but well built phone with a long battery life. It has proven to be a nice phone, surviving repeated drops onto concrete, battery lasts up to 8 days between charges, easy interface and handy LED flashlight.
Only problem with this theory is that the mindset in japan would not have really changed. We might be lucky and get a leadership change before they decided to have another war, but its not something you count on for lasting peace.
Maybe in the time they would also have developed their own atomic weapons. Then we would have a full nuclear conflict, and without the hindsight of any previous attacks to look at, there could have been dozens of these weapons used before anyone noticed how truely horrible they are.
WWII and nuclear weapon usage is BAD, but it could have been a lot worse.
> That's why so many people get hurt or ruin things doing DIY
How true.... (nurses the sore sholder that had an air conditioner land on it after he helped a friend pull it out of the wall and not realise it weighted at least 80kg)
My lesson was.... if you want to move anything built in the 70's (or earlier)... use a crane.
Re:For the Nth time, can someone explain the jargo
on
Zeta Goes Gold
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· Score: 1
I don't have problems seeking in divx files. It is probably an issue with the file you downloaded. IN any case, seeking will always be clumsy with MPEG type files anyway, since most frames depend on 1 or more frames before (or after) it.
So the basic seek goes:
1) Notice the user wants to seek somewhere. 2) Find the keyframe before, but closest to the point the user asked for. This is because the only frames that are not dependant on others are keyframes. They are larger in size then other frames, so most agressive video compression formats only spread them sparoticly throughout the composition, often when there is a lot of scene change. 3) Load that keyframe into memory. 4) Process the movie forward, resolving the dependancies of the frame the user asked for. (this could involve the rendering of dozens of frames) 5) Display the frame the user was after.
On a video without a decent number of keyframes, the above process could take a while. Some divx have been encoded with only one keyframe, so seeking in the composition would require rendering of the entire passage from the beginning of the movie. This is an extreme example, but highlights the fact that seeking performance in a divx/xvid composition is dependant on the file itself.
Silcon circuts don't need graceful degradation, as they do not degrade in any meaningful manner once they have left the factory.
The only situation that results in greatly accelerated degradation is that of where you overvolt a chip beyond the specifications. Since it only happens when run out of spec, there is no need in the manufacturers eyes to create a gracefully degrading system.
Hard drives, as well, have little use for their internal defect management then to look pretty to the user, as the magnetic material used does not degrade very quickly. There are very few actual grown defects, so once you have identified the bad areas on a platter, and tell the drive that they are bad, you have a perfect looking disk that will probably stay that way for years. The only time there is significant damage to the platters is when the heads hit them, which deals enough damage most of the time to very quickly kill the drive.
The website simply needs to return the same message regardless of whether a username/email is registered or not. Its not highly user friendly, but its a reasonable tradeoff to prevent giving information to people who are not authorised to receive that information. The website can simply say that "if the account name@email.com exists, a password reset email has been sent". It could then explain that it is unable to reveal if an email address is valid to protect the identity of its members. People reading that would ussually be happy with such an explaination, as it fits into much of the privacy requirements.
Your standard ftp server or unix console/ssh login works in exactly the same matter, it doesn't matter if you get the password or the username wrong, you simply get told that the login is incorrect and to try again.
"The concept of you actually hosting a chunk of content isnt really relevant, you dont know what it is.. the whole thing is transparent."
I think it is relevent. Just the knowledge that your computer is probably being used to smuggle child porn is enough to land you into some really bad legal situations.
Re:Is Freenet doomed to failure by design?
on
Revamping Freenet
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· Score: 1
But....
With PGP and and other encryption, I get to control what data is encrypted and transferred over my part of the network and my computers.
With freenet, I would lose that control, which means that I am providing hardware and services for people to do these thing anonymously.
It is less of a case of what a particular thing can do (because, lets face it, most things can be used for ill purposes, few things are so inately benign that it cannot be used for bad purposes), it is more of a case of what you allow your possessions to be used for.
By participating in freenet, I would be allowing other people to use my possessions and resources to improve their anonymousity, by providing an additional node to cache their data on and lengthen their data route. Since I don't want my possessions and resources to be used to distribute child pornography, then I cannot participate in Freenet.
> Yes, that's right. The PC, PC XT and PC AT > keyboard ports and cassette port were on the > mainboard, along with the "beep speaker". The > cassette port might not have been present on all > XT and AT machines. I'm not sure about the > original PC, but the XT and AT both had floppy > support on the mainboard too.
Hmmm, all full size XT class machines I have worked with had separate floppy drive controller cards. PC XT keyboard port was on the motherboard, along with the onboard speaker. The onboard speaker is driven by the system timer, so having that as an expansion card is not really possible (as it is needed to start the system)
> The PC AT introduced something really weird: they > had a strange, stripped-down hard disk controller > on the main board itself, that required drives > with embedded control circuitry to function, much > like SASI, SCSI or ESDI, and quite unlike the > ST-506 or 412 setup that was more common.
Not at first. I have seen many ST-506 hard drive controller cards on the AT format. (with 16bit ISA connectors) The beauty of these controllers was that they were quite fast compared to the XT level controllers, able to sustain an interleave of 2 (rather then 4 or so for XT controllers) on MFM hard drives.
It was later that the IDE controller came into existance, which originally had the entire controller on the hard drive, with only simple glue circutry between the drive and the ISA bus.
> In PS/2 land, the keyboard and mouse ports were > always built in. Some models had integrated AT > disk, some used ESDI controllers off the > Microchannel bus, some used SCSI. I don't know if > there was a MCA to IDE bus adapter.
I'll take your work for this, as I have not had any experience with IBMs PS/2 range (haven't even seen one, not all that common around here)
Yes it is. Intel has a staggering 40% of the video market, simply because it intergrates it shitty video on to all its chipsets and sells massive numbers of them to businesses and inexpensive desktops.
The intergrated market is a big and important one. And one that other makers are very happy to supply if nvidia doesn't offer a solution.
Slashdot Mirror
You know far too much ...
XP installation is not that bad .... it is still shows signs of its ancient NT 3.51 history though.
Also, the second stage, where you enter your details and devices get configured, sucks, mostly due to poor feedback and how painfully slow it is. Give me a Windows 95 install process anytime over XP install. And then, once you get it going, you still have to configure > 90% of your important hardware because the OS doesn't have adequate drivers for them.
Whereas the slackware install, I can tell it what partitions to use for swap and install. Then tell it what packages (in detail) I want installed, and once it has installed the packages get it to install LILO. And thats about it. Its much faster then an XP install, and lets me choose all what to install.
Once the system reboots, I can actually go about configuring the hardware and network, without a slow or buggy interface in the way.
Yep, the more I have used to slackware install, the more appreciative of it I am. It doesn't go to great lengths to guide disk partitioning, swap making ect, extensive configuration. Instead it just gets to the job of installing files onto the hard drive you want, and does it without wasting time I could be properly configuring the box. :-)
It may be imtimidating to first time users, but if you are going to be installing linux more then a few times, you don't need the time wasted by complex installers. (like windows XP's installer)
You already know how you are going to set everything up, and the slackware setup lets you express this very consicely.
The interrupt controllers, DNS controllers and other internal ideosyncracies of the PC are all contained in the PCI-E/AGP/PCI chipset.
If they want to get rid of these PC compatible items, they will need to re-design and implement their own north and south bridge components to use an incompatible scheme. Then windows would probably not run on the chipset
They will probably just make their own minor changes to the BIOS that cannot easily be done on normal PC motherboards. They will also likely use a custom DRM chip, and use it to decrypt vital parts of the OS, which, using memory protection, will prevent applications from copying.
I am not a regressive maniac either, though I do only use ascii text e-mail ... I just like firefox because it worked better at browsing then mozilla at the time I choose it.
Maybe it isn't an improvement in terms of program maintainability, functionality and configuration. I certainly won't argue for either massive monolithic programs or smaller individual components.
But, the point I should have made was that the mozilla interface performed terribe, and it was terrible to use. This is what originally prevented me from using it. No amount of nice under the hood stuff matters if the user becomes frustrated at the interface.
Maybe if gecko and its inteface widgetry was properly optimised, and proper windows UI skins were produced before it was forced out the door, there may not have been a split to firefox.
I started using firefox because it had the nice, fast, standard compliant layout engine mozilla ran on, yet had a usable, close to the rest of windows interface on it.
Maybe mozilla runs a lot smoother then it used to now, but I am happy with firefox and have not seen any evidence that mozilla is better at browsing.
Only problem with mozilla was that it was a resource monster and sluggish in use. Why do you actually think firefox succeeded where mozilla hasn't been able to?
I don't really care anymore, this whole HDTV, Bluray, HD-DVD thing is about 90% hot air. Plenty of specifications, plenty of hype, yet few actual products and even fewer reasons to change.
I do like my digital HDTV computer tuner, but that is simply because converting a TV signal from analog to digital on analog tuner cards looked awful. Thats about as far into HDTV I will probably ever go, and I don't know anyone who is actually prepared to go as far as I have.
For 99% of people, blu-ray and HD-DVD may as well not exist. DVD is as good as they need, they will be happy using DVD till time ends. Facing this sort of apathetic customer response, both Blu-ray and HD-DVD seem intent on making it as hard as possible to use. They both may as well close their efforts down and start again, as there is no way in hell that either will be more popular as a video storage media as even betamax was.
Have you ever seen an airtight CRT, or even an airtight LCD ..... I thought not.
In that case,
The "down-market" Windows product will be pirated just like the full versions were.
You comment on the limits of phone line technology, but do not say what causes those limits.
The reason why 56kps is about as high as we can expect on the POTS system is because at your local exchange, voice calls are transfered into a 64kbit digital signal. This digital signal is then routed using ATM/frame relay channels to the destination exchange and decoded back into an analog signal. The digital channel that analog signals are converted to at your local exchange is why 56kps is the limit.
It used to be that 33.6k was the limit when ISPs used banks of normal analog modems, and both ADC/DAC functions were performed on the signal. This was improved to 56kbit downstream because ISPs started connecting their modems digitally to the exchange. (via T1s/T3s and other digital data connections) The removal of one of ADC (analog to digital) conversions allows the ISP modems to send a clearer signal with exacting resolution so the modem on the other end can pick up as much of the 64kbit channel as possible.
Its not a huge technical acheivement, but an important one in spreading broadband across sparely populated suburbs and towns.
The important thing with this is that carriers can install them basicly anywhere, on a pit, on a pole, anywhere conventional DSLAMs simply cannot be put. Another important thing is that it uses standard copper for the uplink, so rollout is inexpensive.
> 2. lowers the landing gear
This is manually controlled because once the landing gear is lowered, it cannot be retracted while in flight.
If there was some fault in the computer system that prematurely lowered the landing gear, during liftoff or while in orbit, the shuttle would be unable to re-enter the atmosphere.
I agree.
I got a Nokia 1100 because I wanted a basic, but well built phone with a long battery life. It has proven to be a nice phone, surviving repeated drops onto concrete, battery lasts up to 8 days between charges, easy interface and handy LED flashlight.
Only problem with this theory is that the mindset in japan would not have really changed. We might be lucky and get a leadership change before they decided to have another war, but its not something you count on for lasting peace.
Maybe in the time they would also have developed their own atomic weapons. Then we would have a full nuclear conflict, and without the hindsight of any previous attacks to look at, there could have been dozens of these weapons used before anyone noticed how truely horrible they are.
WWII and nuclear weapon usage is BAD, but it could have been a lot worse.
There is something satisfying about bringing about the destruction of a hated machine using your own hands .... :-)
Sad thing is .... these guys probably take more home then most programmers .....
Considering how sane the configuration of postfix is, I'd probably pay a reasonable fee to use it.
It has saved me a lot of time in the past.
> That's why so many people get hurt or ruin things doing DIY
.... (nurses the sore sholder that had an air conditioner land on it after he helped a friend pull it out of the wall and not realise it weighted at least 80kg)
.... if you want to move anything built in the 70's (or earlier) ... use a crane.
How true
My lesson was
I don't have problems seeking in divx files. It is probably an issue with the file you downloaded. IN any case, seeking will always be clumsy with MPEG type files anyway, since most frames depend on 1 or more frames before (or after) it.
So the basic seek goes:
1) Notice the user wants to seek somewhere.
2) Find the keyframe before, but closest to the point the user asked for. This is because the only frames that are not dependant on others are keyframes. They are larger in size then other frames, so most agressive video compression formats only spread them sparoticly throughout the composition, often when there is a lot of scene change.
3) Load that keyframe into memory.
4) Process the movie forward, resolving the dependancies of the frame the user asked for. (this could involve the rendering of dozens of frames)
5) Display the frame the user was after.
On a video without a decent number of keyframes, the above process could take a while. Some divx have been encoded with only one keyframe, so seeking in the composition would require rendering of the entire passage from the beginning of the movie. This is an extreme example, but highlights the fact that seeking performance in a divx/xvid composition is dependant on the file itself.
Silcon circuts don't need graceful degradation, as they do not degrade in any meaningful manner once they have left the factory.
The only situation that results in greatly accelerated degradation is that of where you overvolt a chip beyond the specifications. Since it only happens when run out of spec, there is no need in the manufacturers eyes to create a gracefully degrading system.
Hard drives, as well, have little use for their internal defect management then to look pretty to the user, as the magnetic material used does not degrade very quickly. There are very few actual grown defects, so once you have identified the bad areas on a platter, and tell the drive that they are bad, you have a perfect looking disk that will probably stay that way for years. The only time there is significant damage to the platters is when the heads hit them, which deals enough damage most of the time to very quickly kill the drive.
This is very easy for site operators to fix.
The website simply needs to return the same message regardless of whether a username/email is registered or not. Its not highly user friendly, but its a reasonable tradeoff to prevent giving information to people who are not authorised to receive that information. The website can simply say that "if the account name@email.com exists, a password reset email has been sent". It could then explain that it is unable to reveal if an email address is valid to protect the identity of its members. People reading that would ussually be happy with such an explaination, as it fits into much of the privacy requirements.
Your standard ftp server or unix console/ssh login works in exactly the same matter, it doesn't matter if you get the password or the username wrong, you simply get told that the login is incorrect and to try again.
"The concept of you actually hosting a chunk of content isnt really relevant, you dont know what it is.. the whole thing is transparent."
I think it is relevent. Just the knowledge that your computer is probably being used to smuggle child porn is enough to land you into some really bad legal situations.
But ....
With PGP and and other encryption, I get to control what data is encrypted and transferred over my part of the network and my computers.
With freenet, I would lose that control, which means that I am providing hardware and services for people to do these thing anonymously.
It is less of a case of what a particular thing can do (because, lets face it, most things can be used for ill purposes, few things are so inately benign that it cannot be used for bad purposes), it is more of a case of what you allow your possessions to be used for.
By participating in freenet, I would be allowing other people to use my possessions and resources to improve their anonymousity, by providing an additional node to cache their data on and lengthen their data route. Since I don't want my possessions and resources to be used to distribute child pornography, then I cannot participate in Freenet.
> Yes, that's right. The PC, PC XT and PC AT
> keyboard ports and cassette port were on the
> mainboard, along with the "beep speaker". The
> cassette port might not have been present on all
> XT and AT machines. I'm not sure about the
> original PC, but the XT and AT both had floppy
> support on the mainboard too.
Hmmm, all full size XT class machines I have worked with had separate floppy drive controller cards. PC XT keyboard port was on the motherboard, along with the onboard speaker. The onboard speaker is driven by the system timer, so having that as an expansion card is not really possible (as it is needed to start the system)
> The PC AT introduced something really weird: they
> had a strange, stripped-down hard disk controller
> on the main board itself, that required drives
> with embedded control circuitry to function, much
> like SASI, SCSI or ESDI, and quite unlike the
> ST-506 or 412 setup that was more common.
Not at first. I have seen many ST-506 hard drive controller cards on the AT format. (with 16bit ISA connectors) The beauty of these controllers was that they were quite fast compared to the XT level controllers, able to sustain an interleave of 2 (rather then 4 or so for XT controllers) on MFM hard drives.
It was later that the IDE controller came into existance, which originally had the entire controller on the hard drive, with only simple glue circutry between the drive and the ISA bus.
> In PS/2 land, the keyboard and mouse ports were
> always built in. Some models had integrated AT
> disk, some used ESDI controllers off the
> Microchannel bus, some used SCSI. I don't know if
> there was a MCA to IDE bus adapter.
I'll take your work for this, as I have not had any experience with IBMs PS/2 range (haven't even seen one, not all that common around here)
Yes it is. Intel has a staggering 40% of the video market, simply because it intergrates it shitty video on to all its chipsets and sells massive numbers of them to businesses and inexpensive desktops.
The intergrated market is a big and important one. And one that other makers are very happy to supply if nvidia doesn't offer a solution.