Those are three major ISPs around here but all of them hover at about the same price. Personally, I'm with Xtra for historic reasons but that will be changing. Oh, also, these are only ADSL links. Cable is available over here as well (like the first poster stated) but it's even more limited than ADSL rollouts here (yeah, I'm jealous it isn't available in my area yet). Moving and making a living in a South Pacific isalnd has its perks, but one of them isn't choice in the communications arena, broadband or not. I almost look back fondly at the Baby Bells and growing up in West Virginia, then the shock treatment kicks in and I'm all better.:) j/k
Have you thought about upgrading your backup strategy? Not that you should change the hardware to fit the upgraded software (really, truly, this isn't sarcasm) but Zip drives aren't the most reliable things in the world (click of death). Out of the hundreds of systems I've worked on with Zip drives, about 15% have come in with click-of-death and the others were running fine. 15% is a little too high a number for me personally to stake my important data backups on. Then again, that's personal opinion and we all know the saying.:)
Getting back to other ways to go, if you're in the US you should be able to pick up DVD +/- R/RW drives pretty cheaply (even here in NZ the price is coming down nicely) and, depending on where you get them, the mail in rebates make the things next to nothing in cost and you'll have around 4GB to play around with after formatting (on an RW). Personally, I use an older DDS-2 drive for my backups along with CD archival copies of my data which I frequently check (once a month) to make sure the CDs aren't degrading. So far, I've found one CD in about 300 that is showing signs of laser rot (moisture getting between the layers and causing the substrate to degrade, turning it a sickly yellow.. Most often happens in Laser Discs), everything else is going nicely.
So, to sum up a long rambling post, you may want to think about either sticking to the 2.4.x series or upgrade your backup medium. Personally, if you're happy with what you have and it is a server, why bother thinking about upgrading the kernel unless absolutely necessary?
Just to add that I have emailed the person with a possible set of drivers. Only time and testing will tell on the person's part. If I'm correct, the answer was here:
http://www.ujmacs.co.jp/support/nic.html
If I'm wrong, it wasn't and I wasn't on the right track. From the 5 minutes of searching I've done I found it is probably an Asante MacCon CS or similar going by the chipset name. If the party wants to run Linux or BSD on it they probably won't have too many problems doing so (as drivers seem to have been available before and after the 2.2 series was released). As for MacOS, that site should hopefully help.
I think that is an important part of the piece you have left out. I've found a TON of links for BSD and Linux drivers on Mac for the thing but if you want original Mac drivers you are probably better off asking on Usenet, a Mac forum, or IRC and see what you can find out.
CliffH
... and then, with this new slick feature, the latest virus sweeps through MS land and, upon reboot, directs said corporate environments to a site which flashes the BIOS to incorporate the latest whiz-bang spam tool which now, instead of running in your software, is now in your firmware. It's a great idea for ease of use but I think there is a reason it hasn't been (at least in the consumer market) done yet.
Personally, as a small home based computer consultant, have been asked to do assessments for companies. I think it's just my general lack of common sense or morals that play into it, but, when I've found holes I can drive a Mack truck through, the first person I have went to is the current admin, showed them what I've found, and helped them fix it. Yeah, stupid buisness decision on my part, but it kept the following intact:
1) Person kept their job
2) I consequently got more buisness in doing further checks and consulting
3) Everyone was happy and the admin was upskilled
This was a win/win in my opinion. Everyone was kept happy and safe and the admin got some more skill to put under his belt. I just don't believe in fear mongering. If there is a problem, the current admin (if there is one) should be the first to know and given the tools to help fix the problem on the spot. Now, it's a whole different ballgame if it's outsource company against outsource company where there is no true full-time admin involved but we won't go there.:)
Machine specs and concept of "not all that great"
on
Multiplayer Linux Games
·
· Score: 2, Redundant
Ok, I'm going to rant so mod me down appropriately.
The system you just spec'd isn't too far off from one of mine (P4 1.8A, 512MB RAM, GeForce2MX400) from which I play Enemy Territory from perfectly fine (from Fedora, and RH8, 9, Mandrake 9.1, Slackware 9.0, a homespun distro, the list goes on). Your system is more than capable of playing a good deal of games including but not limited to:
Quake 3
Unreal Tournament 2003
Americas Army
Duke Nukem Forever (just kidding folks):)
So, you have plenty of options out there and these games will play on lesser machines as well. Hell, some of those games can be spun up on Live CDs (Gentoo Live Game CDs come to mind) so you don't even need to install them to play. Just do a little hunting and you will find plenty of current games out there that work. Granted, most are FPS but if you're into that thing, you've got plenty to play around with....
Physically the same monitor. It has dual inputs (one of the reasons I bought it) so that I can run two systems on the same monitor. Takes up a bit of room on the desk but it does eliminate the need for two monitors.
That is going to be my next step. As soon as I can sell off this 21" I'm going to move to a 17" LCD (again, with dual inputs so I only need one display for my workbench). I'll use the DVI input for the main system and analog for the customer systems. Should work out ok.:)
Sitting on my workbench right now is an old IBM thinkpad with the hard drive password locked. If this password were to be lost, I would have two options:
1) Send the drive out to be "unlocked" by IBM (at great expense I may add)
2) Throw it away
Those would be my options. Luckily I have the password so everything is fine. This is an old feature that it seems a lot of people have either forgotten or are too new to remember.
Sorry about that.:) As it was early early in the AM over her (NZ), I was typing kinda slow and started posting that when there were three posts up. I'm pretty sure you're right too. I think we would have heard about it by now if it were the case, but, to be on the safe side, we should all check out our Konqueror installations against any sites that test for it (I'd advise caution if you have any cookies saved with sensitive passwords for sensitive sites though). Now, I think I'm going to try and get some sleep.:)
I know Safari uses KHTML as its rendering engine (ala Konqueror). How much more of the Konqueror code is used in Safari and could Konq possibly face this same issue and no one has stumbled on it? Forgive me if it's a stupid question, I've had about 2 hours sleep, my car broke down after taking my wife to work at 4am, and now I have to wait up because it's too late to get back to sleep before picking her up and waking up my son. Sounds like a lousy country song, huh.:)
I think with the number of posts now, everyone has pretty much said it all. Me, being me, might as well put my 2 cents worth in.:)
If you go to the movie with a semi-opened mind (the unopen part being the part you keep the other two movies playing through your mind), things pretty much tie together. Without giving anything away, there were some definate highlights, some definate blatant ripoffs of other films and cartoons (you'll know when you see it), and some obvious study (however superficial) of different cultures and some creatures in nature which went into the film. All in all I say it was pretty good, not as good as the first, then again, it wasn't meant to be. All three movies are three different parts to one large movie/mini-series. It's the same direction the Lord of the Rings has gone and was always meant to go. One thing I have to say about the whole thing, I hope they let sleeping dogs lie and don't try to bring a fourth movie, it will ruin the trilogy in so many ways for so many people.
2) Not as much the speed (over here in NZ I'm using ADSL 128kb up/down speed) but the fact it's the same cost overall as a second line rental
3) Convenience
Browsing faster has never really worried me (on most sites I visit) but the 24/7 connection means I can download the new ISOs I need without worry of a phonecall knocking me offline or the like. And since I need to keep up to date on the ISO images of a few distros for teaching and my buisness, it really does save me some time and effort. Granted, I'd love nothing more then to have all the speed this DSL could muster up, but, it's just not cost effective at the moment (for anyone interested in seeing how much we pay over here in NZ, goto this site and check the JetStream rates and the JetStream Starter rates).
Look,
Bad news would be a total reversal and going with a full MS solution. This is an intelligent, well thought out migration. As nice as it would be to have all Linux based apps at the changeover, it's just not going to happen. As nice as it would be for all systems to be rolled out with Linux and everyone be perfectly happy with their systems and no retraining required, it's not going to happen. This is an excellent migration strategy. Start porting your critical apps over to Linux over a period of time (months/years), keep your existing legacy apps running on Windows in a sandbox (ie. VMWare) so that the typical crashes don't bring down the whole system (just restart the virtual machine), and, best of all, keep everyone happy and content. This shows that IT was thinking of the users throughout the migration and have their best interests at heart.
To everyone blasting this as a betrayal or a PR stunt, work in the real world and do this for a living. Wholesale switches from one platform to another is not an easy thing from the IT side of things or (especially) the user side of things. This is warranted, justified, and just plain right.
These guys don't need yelling and screaming, they need a pat on the back for thinking this through thoroughly enough to see that not all apps can be migrated over yet and people still need to work, otherwise, they could have 14,000 new bright and shiny systems with only a handful of people actively doing their jobs while all of the others sit and twiddle their thumbs for most of the day (besides to send emails, type up some documents, and surf).
I love linux (as I state all of the time), but a migration of that size (or any size) has to be thought through from the perspective of not only IT and monetary considerations, but from the user standpoint as well.
Not that I've used it extensively yet (maybe someone else has) but Ghost 4 Unix (g4u) will do a bit for bit copy just like Ghost for Windows does, difference being that it is freeware and backs up to any ftp server with the appropriate credentials added. I think I'll go ahead and try it a little more this weekend actually.
I love Linux. I breathe Linux. I make a business out of migrating people from Windows to Linux. My question is though, why should we even worry about whether or not Linux will surpass OS X in desktop usage or sales. If it's for acceptance in the marketplace for newer applications being ported, great. If it's for bragging rights, bad. Remember, it's about the best tool(s) to get the job done, not market dominance. We're not looking to eliminate competition (well, maybe SCO but that's another story for later on in the day), we're trying to add choices and solutions. We shouldn't be striving for all out dominance, we should be striving for the best tools for the job and let the people who need it decide.
Ok, I'm done with my rant. Mod this as you see fit. This isn't meant to be flamebait or a troll but I can definately see how it can be taken as one...
... there was no discussion (not that I had a gaming console besides an Atari 2600 when the Nintendos were in fashion). If you were told to get off the games, or computer, or your butt, you did it. Plain and simple. If you didn't, well, let's see how many people between 25-40 are out there tonight and let them answer.:)
No need to knock Radio Shack. Over the years they have put out some damn fine equipment for cheap. I can remember at one point they had the best (as in fidelity, price, durability, and features) portable CD player on the market, bar NONE. Also, from an audiophile standpoint, you'd be surprised how good of interconnect and speaker cable you can make out of the cable on their spools.:) I just hate the fact I don't have a RadioShack here (I'm in NZ now, and no, Dick Smith's is NOT a good alternative). Ok, done with my ranting...:)
I've built plenty of rackmount systems with filters in place (cloth and wiremesh). It's a pretty common thing for servers and wonder why it hasn't caught on for workstations and home systems yet. I'm sure the cases are out there with the filtering on them, I jsut haven't had a look for any yet. If anyone is going to have them though, check out Lian Li, Procase, Saturn, Enlight, Inwin, or just do a general search. WHat you're probably looking for is something with a removable, reusable filter. DO a goole search and I'm sure you'll find what you're looking for on the cheap (ie. stay away from Lian Li for cheap). Otherwise, nice lil DIY project if you have some time, patience, and a spare case you don't mind butchering.
The newest of their betas for Exchange will let you do rules just fine. It is getting harder and harder to distinguish between the Outlook client and OWA. In fact, if you have some spare time on your hands, it's wise to check whatever betas they have on offer at the site. If for any other reason, you can see where things are going with their products and prepare accordingly.
Well,
One day I got fed up with one particular system, opened my window, and tossed it. Two story drop onto a gravel driveway. Went along with my business for the rest of the day and decided to see how badly I damaged everything. Except for a cracked face on my cdrom drive and a dead hard drive (which was dying anyways at the time), everything was still pretty much intact. Damn, when I think about it, I want that case back.:) The one time (about 7 years ago) I buy a not so cheap case, and I get pissy and toss it out a window. Damn, I'm glad I've settled down and only toss CDs now.:)
Not to pick on just them (well, yeah, to pick on just them), there's a lot of prior art in some of those patents, even stuff that was granted recently you can see prior art in. Anyways, have fun and please, mod this down because it is, quite honestly, a troll...
Slashdot Mirror
We should give everyone a decent picture of our pricing over here and let them see for themselves:
Xtra
Paradise
iHug
Those are three major ISPs around here but all of them hover at about the same price. Personally, I'm with Xtra for historic reasons but that will be changing. Oh, also, these are only ADSL links. Cable is available over here as well (like the first poster stated) but it's even more limited than ADSL rollouts here (yeah, I'm jealous it isn't available in my area yet). Moving and making a living in a South Pacific isalnd has its perks, but one of them isn't choice in the communications arena, broadband or not. I almost look back fondly at the Baby Bells and growing up in West Virginia, then the shock treatment kicks in and I'm all better. :) j/k
Have you thought about upgrading your backup strategy? Not that you should change the hardware to fit the upgraded software (really, truly, this isn't sarcasm) but Zip drives aren't the most reliable things in the world (click of death). Out of the hundreds of systems I've worked on with Zip drives, about 15% have come in with click-of-death and the others were running fine. 15% is a little too high a number for me personally to stake my important data backups on. Then again, that's personal opinion and we all know the saying. :)
Getting back to other ways to go, if you're in the US you should be able to pick up DVD +/- R/RW drives pretty cheaply (even here in NZ the price is coming down nicely) and, depending on where you get them, the mail in rebates make the things next to nothing in cost and you'll have around 4GB to play around with after formatting (on an RW). Personally, I use an older DDS-2 drive for my backups along with CD archival copies of my data which I frequently check (once a month) to make sure the CDs aren't degrading. So far, I've found one CD in about 300 that is showing signs of laser rot (moisture getting between the layers and causing the substrate to degrade, turning it a sickly yellow.. Most often happens in Laser Discs), everything else is going nicely.
So, to sum up a long rambling post, you may want to think about either sticking to the 2.4.x series or upgrade your backup medium. Personally, if you're happy with what you have and it is a server, why bother thinking about upgrading the kernel unless absolutely necessary?
Just to add that I have emailed the person with a possible set of drivers. Only time and testing will tell on the person's part. If I'm correct, the answer was here:
http://www.ujmacs.co.jp/support/nic.html
If I'm wrong, it wasn't and I wasn't on the right track. From the 5 minutes of searching I've done I found it is probably an Asante MacCon CS or similar going by the chipset name. If the party wants to run Linux or BSD on it they probably won't have too many problems doing so (as drivers seem to have been available before and after the 2.2 series was released). As for MacOS, that site should hopefully help.
CliffH
I think that is an important part of the piece you have left out. I've found a TON of links for BSD and Linux drivers on Mac for the thing but if you want original Mac drivers you are probably better off asking on Usenet, a Mac forum, or IRC and see what you can find out. CliffH
... and then, with this new slick feature, the latest virus sweeps through MS land and, upon reboot, directs said corporate environments to a site which flashes the BIOS to incorporate the latest whiz-bang spam tool which now, instead of running in your software, is now in your firmware. It's a great idea for ease of use but I think there is a reason it hasn't been (at least in the consumer market) done yet.
Personally, as a small home based computer consultant, have been asked to do assessments for companies. I think it's just my general lack of common sense or morals that play into it, but, when I've found holes I can drive a Mack truck through, the first person I have went to is the current admin, showed them what I've found, and helped them fix it. Yeah, stupid buisness decision on my part, but it kept the following intact:
1) Person kept their job
2) I consequently got more buisness in doing further checks and consulting
3) Everyone was happy and the admin was upskilled
This was a win/win in my opinion. Everyone was kept happy and safe and the admin got some more skill to put under his belt. I just don't believe in fear mongering. If there is a problem, the current admin (if there is one) should be the first to know and given the tools to help fix the problem on the spot. Now, it's a whole different ballgame if it's outsource company against outsource company where there is no true full-time admin involved but we won't go there. :)
Ok, I'm going to rant so mod me down appropriately.
The system you just spec'd isn't too far off from one of mine (P4 1.8A, 512MB RAM, GeForce2MX400) from which I play Enemy Territory from perfectly fine (from Fedora, and RH8, 9, Mandrake 9.1, Slackware 9.0, a homespun distro, the list goes on). Your system is more than capable of playing a good deal of games including but not limited to:
Quake 3
Unreal Tournament 2003
Americas Army
Duke Nukem Forever (just kidding folks) :)
So, you have plenty of options out there and these games will play on lesser machines as well. Hell, some of those games can be spun up on Live CDs (Gentoo Live Game CDs come to mind) so you don't even need to install them to play. Just do a little hunting and you will find plenty of current games out there that work. Granted, most are FPS but if you're into that thing, you've got plenty to play around with....
Physically the same monitor. It has dual inputs (one of the reasons I bought it) so that I can run two systems on the same monitor. Takes up a bit of room on the desk but it does eliminate the need for two monitors.
That is going to be my next step. As soon as I can sell off this 21" I'm going to move to a 17" LCD (again, with dual inputs so I only need one display for my workbench). I'll use the DVI input for the main system and analog for the customer systems. Should work out ok. :)
Ya know, the mods should mod you up on that one. :)
Sitting on my workbench right now is an old IBM thinkpad with the hard drive password locked. If this password were to be lost, I would have two options:
1) Send the drive out to be "unlocked" by IBM (at great expense I may add)
2) Throw it away
Those would be my options. Luckily I have the password so everything is fine. This is an old feature that it seems a lot of people have either forgotten or are too new to remember.
Cliff H
P.S. Just for future reference, it's a 760E. :)
Sorry about that. :) As it was early early in the AM over her (NZ), I was typing kinda slow and started posting that when there were three posts up. I'm pretty sure you're right too. I think we would have heard about it by now if it were the case, but, to be on the safe side, we should all check out our Konqueror installations against any sites that test for it (I'd advise caution if you have any cookies saved with sensitive passwords for sensitive sites though). Now, I think I'm going to try and get some sleep. :)
Just a quick question to throw out there.
:)
I know Safari uses KHTML as its rendering engine (ala Konqueror). How much more of the Konqueror code is used in Safari and could Konq possibly face this same issue and no one has stumbled on it? Forgive me if it's a stupid question, I've had about 2 hours sleep, my car broke down after taking my wife to work at 4am, and now I have to wait up because it's too late to get back to sleep before picking her up and waking up my son. Sounds like a lousy country song, huh.
Well,
I think with the number of posts now, everyone has pretty much said it all. Me, being me, might as well put my 2 cents worth in. :)
If you go to the movie with a semi-opened mind (the unopen part being the part you keep the other two movies playing through your mind), things pretty much tie together. Without giving anything away, there were some definate highlights, some definate blatant ripoffs of other films and cartoons (you'll know when you see it), and some obvious study (however superficial) of different cultures and some creatures in nature which went into the film. All in all I say it was pretty good, not as good as the first, then again, it wasn't meant to be. All three movies are three different parts to one large movie/mini-series. It's the same direction the Lord of the Rings has gone and was always meant to go. One thing I have to say about the whole thing, I hope they let sleeping dogs lie and don't try to bring a fourth movie, it will ruin the trilogy in so many ways for so many people.
CliffH
Simple answers for me:
1) 24/7 connectivity
2) Not as much the speed (over here in NZ I'm using ADSL 128kb up/down speed) but the fact it's the same cost overall as a second line rental
3) Convenience
Browsing faster has never really worried me (on most sites I visit) but the 24/7 connection means I can download the new ISOs I need without worry of a phonecall knocking me offline or the like. And since I need to keep up to date on the ISO images of a few distros for teaching and my buisness, it really does save me some time and effort. Granted, I'd love nothing more then to have all the speed this DSL could muster up, but, it's just not cost effective at the moment (for anyone interested in seeing how much we pay over here in NZ, goto this site and check the JetStream rates and the JetStream Starter rates).
CliffH
Look,
Bad news would be a total reversal and going with a full MS solution. This is an intelligent, well thought out migration. As nice as it would be to have all Linux based apps at the changeover, it's just not going to happen. As nice as it would be for all systems to be rolled out with Linux and everyone be perfectly happy with their systems and no retraining required, it's not going to happen. This is an excellent migration strategy. Start porting your critical apps over to Linux over a period of time (months/years), keep your existing legacy apps running on Windows in a sandbox (ie. VMWare) so that the typical crashes don't bring down the whole system (just restart the virtual machine), and, best of all, keep everyone happy and content. This shows that IT was thinking of the users throughout the migration and have their best interests at heart.
To everyone blasting this as a betrayal or a PR stunt, work in the real world and do this for a living. Wholesale switches from one platform to another is not an easy thing from the IT side of things or (especially) the user side of things. This is warranted, justified, and just plain right.
These guys don't need yelling and screaming, they need a pat on the back for thinking this through thoroughly enough to see that not all apps can be migrated over yet and people still need to work, otherwise, they could have 14,000 new bright and shiny systems with only a handful of people actively doing their jobs while all of the others sit and twiddle their thumbs for most of the day (besides to send emails, type up some documents, and surf).
I love linux (as I state all of the time), but a migration of that size (or any size) has to be thought through from the perspective of not only IT and monetary considerations, but from the user standpoint as well.
CliffH
Not that I've used it extensively yet (maybe someone else has) but Ghost 4 Unix (g4u) will do a bit for bit copy just like Ghost for Windows does, difference being that it is freeware and backs up to any ftp server with the appropriate credentials added. I think I'll go ahead and try it a little more this weekend actually.
Here is a link to g4u.
Cliff
I love Linux. I breathe Linux. I make a business out of migrating people from Windows to Linux. My question is though, why should we even worry about whether or not Linux will surpass OS X in desktop usage or sales. If it's for acceptance in the marketplace for newer applications being ported, great. If it's for bragging rights, bad. Remember, it's about the best tool(s) to get the job done, not market dominance. We're not looking to eliminate competition (well, maybe SCO but that's another story for later on in the day), we're trying to add choices and solutions. We shouldn't be striving for all out dominance, we should be striving for the best tools for the job and let the people who need it decide.
Ok, I'm done with my rant. Mod this as you see fit. This isn't meant to be flamebait or a troll but I can definately see how it can be taken as one...
CliffH
... there was no discussion (not that I had a gaming console besides an Atari 2600 when the Nintendos were in fashion). If you were told to get off the games, or computer, or your butt, you did it. Plain and simple. If you didn't, well, let's see how many people between 25-40 are out there tonight and let them answer. :)
CliffH
No need to knock Radio Shack. Over the years they have put out some damn fine equipment for cheap. I can remember at one point they had the best (as in fidelity, price, durability, and features) portable CD player on the market, bar NONE. Also, from an audiophile standpoint, you'd be surprised how good of interconnect and speaker cable you can make out of the cable on their spools. :) I just hate the fact I don't have a RadioShack here (I'm in NZ now, and no, Dick Smith's is NOT a good alternative). Ok, done with my ranting... :)
Cliff
I've built plenty of rackmount systems with filters in place (cloth and wiremesh). It's a pretty common thing for servers and wonder why it hasn't caught on for workstations and home systems yet. I'm sure the cases are out there with the filtering on them, I jsut haven't had a look for any yet. If anyone is going to have them though, check out Lian Li, Procase, Saturn, Enlight, Inwin, or just do a general search. WHat you're probably looking for is something with a removable, reusable filter. DO a goole search and I'm sure you'll find what you're looking for on the cheap (ie. stay away from Lian Li for cheap). Otherwise, nice lil DIY project if you have some time, patience, and a spare case you don't mind butchering.
Cliff
The newest of their betas for Exchange will let you do rules just fine. It is getting harder and harder to distinguish between the Outlook client and OWA. In fact, if you have some spare time on your hands, it's wise to check whatever betas they have on offer at the site. If for any other reason, you can see where things are going with their products and prepare accordingly.
CliffH
Well, :) The one time (about 7 years ago) I buy a not so cheap case, and I get pissy and toss it out a window. Damn, I'm glad I've settled down and only toss CDs now. :)
One day I got fed up with one particular system, opened my window, and tossed it. Two story drop onto a gravel driveway. Went along with my business for the rest of the day and decided to see how badly I damaged everything. Except for a cracked face on my cdrom drive and a dead hard drive (which was dying anyways at the time), everything was still pretty much intact. Damn, when I think about it, I want that case back.
CliffH
Lets make that link a little better, shall we?
Here you go
That's what I get for not previewing first
CliffH
... since this is Slashdot and all, has anyone done any searches on what some other companies (well, one in particular) has patented?
= PT O2&Sect2=HITOFF&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2Fsearch-bool.ht ml&r=0&f=S&l=50&TERM1=Microsoft&FIELD1=ASNM&co1=AN D&TERM2=&FIELD2=TTL&d=ptxt
http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1
Not to pick on just them (well, yeah, to pick on just them), there's a lot of prior art in some of those patents, even stuff that was granted recently you can see prior art in. Anyways, have fun and please, mod this down because it is, quite honestly, a troll...
CliffH