Kuro5hin is only loosely associated with OSDN. Yeah, we run their ads and get revenue that way, and we are listed in some of their material (but not all, and not often). We're not owned (even in part) by VA, and I don't know of any plans to 'buy' us (which makes sense, since they don't have to cover any costs).
I do all system administration -- DNS, mail, etc., whereas the VA owned sites all share the same pool of cool admins (like Yaz, Alliecat, etc).
Rusty and I are happy with our current colocation service (vhosting). We've never, ever had problems of connectivity (only of perl/admin error:)). --
No, it doesn't. Opera does not support the CSS2 first-child attribute. If you examine the float menu in my tests, you'll see that it has a horizontal line at the top which the reference image does not (because that is the first-child of the menu, which I told it to not display via CSS).
If you're wondering about security devices which allow for secure transfers of data, you might want to check out Airgap. It's been developed for absolutely secure data transfer. There is a physical separation between the two networks.
To all you who are off writing you panicky responses about evil cookies coming to get you, why don't you use a sane cookie filtering system like Junkbuster?
Don't like having DENY ALL/ALLOW EXPLICIT control? Or R/O cookies for certain sites? Than keep to your naked browsers with Javascirpt and other things turned on, and don't complain!
"my biggest gripe is the fact that we have been forced to use 16 IRQ's for way too damned long, they should have expanded it when they intorduced the PCI bus, now we have to wait forever to have a couple of free IRQ's on a new motherboard..."
This says two things 1) you don't understand what IRQ sharing/reentrant drivers are all about (which are NOT possible on the ISA bus, but are on the PCI bus/AGP port), and 2) that you seem to think you need to spend time configuring a PnP system. Don't try to configure a PCI system to force certain IRQs to certain devices, it won't work -- they do not need human intervention. You are obviously still scarred by the 1996 PnP implementations of ISA and OSes which are not samrt about resource allocation.
I have yet to see a modern system require more IRQs than it has because every modern PCI device can share them. I have yet to see a modern system require manual IRQ assignment to devices.
DSL and cablemodems in Canada are included in the price of the service. I'm actually quite shocked by how the IsPs down there would charge people for the devices. In 1997, when ADSL was still new (it was introduced in 1996 here), you had to sign a one year contract. Nowadays you don't have a contract to sign for a minimum term of service, but there are setup fees (100-150$) which are usually waved (the never ending special sign up offers that Shaw@Hame and Sasktel use to get customers).
The basic service is ~45$ Cdn a month before taxes. It includes traditional ISP stuff (some web space, email, etc), and the useful part (the bit pipe). If you pay more, you get more. I pay 150$ Cdn a month (again, before tax) for 3Mbit/640Kbit transfer rates. I get two static IPs as well, and ignore the ISP services (running my own).
Setup takes at most 2 weeks (because of the demand and scarcity of techs). No one in thes city of 270,000 I know of who has inet access has dialup still. Maybe 1/40 inet connected households does, as a rough guess. Any independant ISPs which don't support broadband died out over the past few years, leaving the continual service battle between Shaw@Home and Sasktel.
So the RIAA makes 1/4th what the artist makes per CD. However, they make it an ALL artists they have signed. So if you have 4,000 artists total wha make 100,000 a head, that's 400,000,000 they make. The RIAA makes "only" 1/4th of it, about 100 hundred million dollars.
It's a smaller pice of a bigger pie. So it very much balances out, especially when you add the tax on all blank media. --
"But why the rush? Again, it's ever-helpful Dell that tells us that although work on the project had started last June, "the original vendor withdrew from the project four months later." Coyness does set in now, but The Register is able to tell you that the original vendor was Compaq. The precise kit, reason for 'withdrawal' and projected OS we don't know, but somebody'll tell us, and the timing does seem to match the banning of Linux and the onset of the Redmond love affair. "
A recent turnaround for no real reason, and the vendor is hurrying to get away with the money before maintenance costs sink in.
Geocrawler was originally meant for one mailing list. That it's still around is incredible. I talked with a guy responsible for Geocrawler about it in Boston earlier in the month, and he assured me it's going away in favour of something they've been developing to replace it.
Which is a good thing, since it's down for 8 hours every day doing magic things;) --
"At the release of 7.1, not only does Slackware include XFree86 4.0, but also KDE 2.0 (beta), Kernel 2.4 (test), and Perl 5.6. While none of the other options will cause much of a problem (as they are in the unstable tree), Perl 5.6 causes some big problems. Still, this is just one problem, and unless you actually run Perl, this won't affect you."
Which is false. Slack 7.1 uses 2.2.17, XF 3.3.6, KDE 1.1.2. Anly the Perl part is close to accurate. But Perl 5.6 works creat at running Kuro5hin, so you have to wender. If at least two distro parts were way off base, who's to say they're all not wrong in same way (which I naturally would not know since I'm reading the article to familiarize myself with them!).
(Note: yeah, some of the stuff he mentioned is in contrib, but they are not reallf useable packages -- LinuxMafia has better packages.)
As Steve Maguire said in "Writing Solid Code," programmers need to be aware of the interfaces they are working with. getc returns an int, not a char! It is a poorly designed function interface that you should be aware of.
For the record, the definition is int getc(FILE *stream);
You're using a bad Windows manager. Lots of Linux users who run it only for 2 hours a week love their E or Sawfish, but as someone who works in Linux 24/7, I've found nothing compares to IceWM.
Why is it good? "Centre dialogs on owner window" setting. Alt+tab moves between windows. crtl+esc brings up launcher menu. Totally Gnome WM compliant. Multiple destops. Stability. Speed and low foot print. But the best feature? A default configuration fully usable without tweaking!! --
These people cleary have no idea how to report on business. How can you say "Palm, a company that launched a very successful initial public offering just 14 months ago." with one breathe, then say "generating $1 billion a year in sales and was still enjoying 100 percent year-over-year growth.
" in the next?
But let's focus on the company itself. Why they are in trouble, and what can bo done to fix it.
Palm, Inc has had some focus problems since USR (and later, 3com) bought them out. The initial device had great ideas, but they've only incrementally improved them since then. Bluetooth to control other devices (such as Cell, which cry out for a proper Palm interface), internal NiMH rechargeables (Palm V has this -- they all should), and a better software bundle (including a learning IrRemote) would add much to the value of the device.
The new models won't sell. There are no new features which require upgrades. Even my Palm IIIe (limited to 2mb ram) is enough. The new m100 series are ugly, expensive, and don't offer an advantage to Palm II and Palm V users. Since the software is good, and the current harhdware is perfect, they need to add new features (again, cell phone control, tv/vcr/dvd control, etc, would be great). You may not pay 500$ for a toy organizer, but you'd pay for it if you could control your entertoinment centre, X.10 devices, cell phone, and more from one device which also happened to be a great organizer.
Like 3Dfx, they want to do it all -- make the OS, maxe the device, provide CDPD access for Palm VII users, etc. And like 3Dfx, they are finding that their competitors (who can focus on the device, or the OS, etc) are eating their lunch. If they spun off the portal, ISP, and device making, they could become the MS of handhelds (but it's probably too late for that). If they focus on what they are good at (good software which should have little development costs, good hardware which can be mass produced), they will become profitable!
They are too greedy. 500$ USD for what, exactly? An electronic organizer? The Palm IIIe sells for ~200$ Cdn. At that price, practically everyone can afford one (like VCRs or TVs). If Palm could lower prices and raise awareness, they could bring a lot more customers into the fold. And they could also add features to the higher ond models which some customers would love!
Palm computing has all the right stuff for success. It's still fairly young for a business on its own (and everynew business is guaranteed 5 years of hardship when they start, before the kinks are worked out). If they focus on their target consumers (think executives and college students), then add features that power users and professionals want (on the higher end), they can have a comprehensive product line. And if they ditch the overhead of the rest of their company (portals, ISP service), they can make a killing.
A renamed Palm III in an uglier case with changeable faceplates is not a reason to spend a few hundred $$s. --
This is kinda useless. Yes, they tell us that they are running 15 servers total all on 1Ghz PCs, but they do not tell you what kinda hits they take on it.
K5, for example, has been able to take several direct Slashdottings on 1 VA Fullon box. 1 box which does MySQL, Apache w/ Mod_perl, and plain image serving Apache. (DNS is handled by other boxen). We handle about 65,000 to 70,000 hits a day (on average, mod_perl only.. no images traffic) with that one dual processor box. Vs the two dedicated dual proc DB servers, 11 web servers, two load balancers, etc of Anandtech. And we're at 8 months uptime with our single server. Sounds a bit better than requiring a load balancer which has to remove downed NT servers from the pool..
I could theorize on how well their Cold Fusion/NT solution stacks up against my Slackware/Apache/mod_perl/MySQL solution IF they were so kind as to give info on hits. Without that, this is just another point-and-drool at some RAQmount stuff which performs a job somewhere, somehow. --
In 3.3 milliseconds, an Athlon 550 can go ahead and read/write ram a few hundred times, do a few hundred thousand instructions, etc. When you consider that it has 1 click tick every 1/550,000th of a second, 0.0033 seconds (or 1,815 clock ticks) don't seem like that short a period of time at all.
Think of popular and succesful games: Half-Life had neat AI for the Marines. If it had just been the odd aliens and Sci-fi plot, I probably would've have played the game through twice in a row. That game performed well on a 300Mhz machine! --
Slashdot Mirror
Better get your aluminium hat on, conspiracy boy.
--
You think that's bad?
I started reading Advogato..
--
Kuro5hin is only loosely associated with OSDN. Yeah, we run their ads and get revenue that way, and we are listed in some of their material (but not all, and not often). We're not owned (even in part) by VA, and I don't know of any plans to 'buy' us (which makes sense, since they don't have to cover any costs).
:)).
I do all system administration -- DNS, mail, etc., whereas the VA owned sites all share the same pool of cool admins (like Yaz, Alliecat, etc).
Rusty and I are happy with our current colocation service (vhosting). We've never, ever had problems of connectivity (only of perl/admin error
--
My welcome?
What welcome?
--
No, it doesn't. Opera does not support the CSS2 first-child attribute. If you examine the float menu in my tests, you'll see that it has a horizontal line at the top which the reference image does not (because that is the first-child of the menu, which I told it to not display via CSS).
;)
Maybe you need your glasses checked
--
If you're wondering about security devices which allow for secure transfers of data, you might want to check out Airgap. It's been developed for absolutely secure data transfer. There is a physical separation between the two networks.
Full details are on the site.
--
To all you who are off writing you panicky responses about evil cookies coming to get you, why don't you use a sane cookie filtering system like Junkbuster?
Don't like having DENY ALL/ALLOW EXPLICIT control? Or R/O cookies for certain sites? Than keep to your naked browsers with Javascirpt and other things turned on, and don't complain!
Plus you get the added benefit of no ads.
--
"my biggest gripe is the fact that we have been forced to use 16 IRQ's for way too damned long, they should have expanded it when they intorduced the PCI bus, now we have to wait forever to have a couple of free IRQ's on a new motherboard..."
This says two things 1) you don't understand what IRQ sharing/reentrant drivers are all about (which are NOT possible on the ISA bus, but are on the PCI bus/AGP port), and 2) that you seem to think you need to spend time configuring a PnP system. Don't try to configure a PCI system to force certain IRQs to certain devices, it won't work -- they do not need human intervention. You are obviously still scarred by the 1996 PnP implementations of ISA and OSes which are not samrt about resource allocation.
I have yet to see a modern system require more IRQs than it has because every modern PCI device can share them. I have yet to see a modern system require manual IRQ assignment to devices.
--
It's not like that everywhere.
DSL and cablemodems in Canada are included in the price of the service. I'm actually quite shocked by how the IsPs down there would charge people for the devices. In 1997, when ADSL was still new (it was introduced in 1996 here), you had to sign a one year contract. Nowadays you don't have a contract to sign for a minimum term of service, but there are setup fees (100-150$) which are usually waved (the never ending special sign up offers that Shaw@Hame and Sasktel use to get customers).
The basic service is ~45$ Cdn a month before taxes. It includes traditional ISP stuff (some web space, email, etc), and the useful part (the bit pipe). If you pay more, you get more. I pay 150$ Cdn a month (again, before tax) for 3Mbit/640Kbit transfer rates. I get two static IPs as well, and ignore the ISP services (running my own).
Setup takes at most 2 weeks (because of the demand and scarcity of techs). No one in thes city of 270,000 I know of who has inet access has dialup still. Maybe 1/40 inet connected households does, as a rough guess. Any independant ISPs which don't support broadband died out over the past few years, leaving the continual service battle between Shaw@Home and Sasktel.
--
So the RIAA makes 1/4th what the artist makes per CD. However, they make it an ALL artists they have signed. So if you have 4,000 artists total wha make 100,000 a head, that's 400,000,000 they make. The RIAA makes "only" 1/4th of it, about 100 hundred million dollars.
It's a smaller pice of a bigger pie. So it very much balances out, especially when you add the tax on all blank media.
--
"I've seen a C64 browse the web with full HTML 1.0"
No way! FULL HTML 1.0 support? Way to bring the C64 into the early 1990s! Where's my copy of Netscape Mosaic 0.9.2?
--
"But why the rush? Again, it's ever-helpful Dell that tells us that although work on the project had started last June, "the original vendor withdrew from the project four months later." Coyness does set in now, but The Register is able to tell you that the original vendor was Compaq. The precise kit, reason for 'withdrawal' and projected OS we don't know, but somebody'll tell us, and the timing does seem to match the banning of Linux and the onset of the Redmond love affair. "
A recent turnaround for no real reason, and the vendor is hurrying to get away with the money before maintenance costs sink in.
--
Geocrawler was originally meant for one mailing list. That it's still around is incredible. I talked with a guy responsible for Geocrawler about it in Boston earlier in the month, and he assured me it's going away in favour of something they've been developing to replace it.
;)
Which is a good thing, since it's down for 8 hours every day doing magic things
--
Look what he says about Slackware 7.1:
"At the release of 7.1, not only does Slackware include XFree86 4.0, but also KDE 2.0 (beta), Kernel 2.4 (test), and Perl 5.6. While none of the other options will cause much of a problem (as they are in the unstable tree), Perl 5.6 causes some big problems. Still, this is just one problem, and unless you actually run Perl, this won't affect you."
Which is false. Slack 7.1 uses 2.2.17, XF 3.3.6, KDE 1.1.2. Anly the Perl part is close to accurate. But Perl 5.6 works creat at running Kuro5hin, so you have to wender. If at least two distro parts were way off base, who's to say they're all not wrong in same way (which I naturally would not know since I'm reading the article to familiarize myself with them!).
(Note: yeah, some of the stuff he mentioned is in contrib, but they are not reallf useable packages -- LinuxMafia has better packages.)
--
As Steve Maguire said in "Writing Solid Code," programmers need to be aware of the interfaces they are working with. getc returns an int, not a char! It is a poorly designed function interface that you should be aware of.
:)
For the record, the definition is int getc(FILE *stream);
Maybe the booyah was a bit premature.
--
You're using a bad Windows manager. Lots of Linux users who run it only for 2 hours a week love their E or Sawfish, but as someone who works in Linux 24/7, I've found nothing compares to IceWM.
Why is it good? "Centre dialogs on owner window" setting. Alt+tab moves between windows. crtl+esc brings up launcher menu. Totally Gnome WM compliant. Multiple destops. Stability. Speed and low foot print. But the best feature? A default configuration fully usable without tweaking!!
--
These people cleary have no idea how to report on business. How can you say "Palm, a company that launched a very successful initial public offering just 14 months ago." with one breathe, then say "generating $1 billion a year in sales and was still enjoying 100 percent year-over-year growth.
" in the next?
But let's focus on the company itself. Why they are in trouble, and what can bo done to fix it.
Palm, Inc has had some focus problems since USR (and later, 3com) bought them out. The initial device had great ideas, but they've only incrementally improved them since then. Bluetooth to control other devices (such as Cell, which cry out for a proper Palm interface), internal NiMH rechargeables (Palm V has this -- they all should), and a better software bundle (including a learning IrRemote) would add much to the value of the device.
The new models won't sell. There are no new features which require upgrades. Even my Palm IIIe (limited to 2mb ram) is enough. The new m100 series are ugly, expensive, and don't offer an advantage to Palm II and Palm V users. Since the software is good, and the current harhdware is perfect, they need to add new features (again, cell phone control, tv/vcr/dvd control, etc, would be great). You may not pay 500$ for a toy organizer, but you'd pay for it if you could control your entertoinment centre, X.10 devices, cell phone, and more from one device which also happened to be a great organizer.
Like 3Dfx, they want to do it all -- make the OS, maxe the device, provide CDPD access for Palm VII users, etc. And like 3Dfx, they are finding that their competitors (who can focus on the device, or the OS, etc) are eating their lunch. If they spun off the portal, ISP, and device making, they could become the MS of handhelds (but it's probably too late for that). If they focus on what they are good at (good software which should have little development costs, good hardware which can be mass produced), they will become profitable!
They are too greedy. 500$ USD for what, exactly? An electronic organizer? The Palm IIIe sells for ~200$ Cdn. At that price, practically everyone can afford one (like VCRs or TVs). If Palm could lower prices and raise awareness, they could bring a lot more customers into the fold. And they could also add features to the higher ond models which some customers would love!
Palm computing has all the right stuff for success. It's still fairly young for a business on its own (and everynew business is guaranteed 5 years of hardship when they start, before the kinks are worked out). If they focus on their target consumers (think executives and college students), then add features that power users and professionals want (on the higher end), they can have a comprehensive product line. And if they ditch the overhead of the rest of their company (portals, ISP service), they can make a killing.
A renamed Palm III in an uglier case with changeable faceplates is not a reason to spend a few hundred $$s.
--
Right. suck said it best. Practices that commonly happen (all comps come preloaded with MS OS) are not questioned, and are impossible to get around in most places.
There are only two or there places where I can get a laptop not bundled with the MS tax.
--
I got your redesign right here!
--
Don't forget Abuse-SDL, which lets you relive the fun in Linux. It has links to free levels, other Abuse projects, etc, as well.
:/
My only problem with it is that SDL uses a buggy mode of the emu10k1 (which doesn't work properly on 1Ghz machines). Only XMMS works at all
--
To the snopes links, check out http://www.csmonitor.com/durable/1997/09/09/news/, which has YetAnotherMutation of the legend.
Grep for 'deposit'
--
Heh, yeah.. Rusty actually said "do you remember what happened last time?" to me. Although I was able to (barely) use the site when it happened.
We're working on adding some more hardware over the next two months.
--
This is kinda useless. Yes, they tell us that they are running 15 servers total all on 1Ghz PCs, but they do not tell you what kinda hits they take on it.
K5, for example, has been able to take several direct Slashdottings on 1 VA Fullon box. 1 box which does MySQL, Apache w/ Mod_perl, and plain image serving Apache. (DNS is handled by other boxen). We handle about 65,000 to 70,000 hits a day (on average, mod_perl only.. no images traffic) with that one dual processor box. Vs the two dedicated dual proc DB servers, 11 web servers, two load balancers, etc of Anandtech. And we're at 8 months uptime with our single server. Sounds a bit better than requiring a load balancer which has to remove downed NT servers from the pool..
I could theorize on how well their Cold Fusion/NT solution stacks up against my Slackware/Apache/mod_perl/MySQL solution IF they were so kind as to give info on hits. Without that, this is just another point-and-drool at some RAQmount stuff which performs a job somewhere, somehow.
--
Hey, cool! I remember you, Julian :) You used to call my BBS ;) Drop me a line sometime, or join the mailing list.
--
In 3.3 milliseconds, an Athlon 550 can go ahead and read/write ram a few hundred times, do a few hundred thousand instructions, etc. When you consider that it has 1 click tick every 1/550,000th of a second, 0.0033 seconds (or 1,815 clock ticks) don't seem like that short a period of time at all.
Think of popular and succesful games: Half-Life had neat AI for the Marines. If it had just been the odd aliens and Sci-fi plot, I probably would've have played the game through twice in a row. That game performed well on a 300Mhz machine!
--