What a tragic state you have come to, in the United States, if you think proper litterate discourse is "putting on airs." Or this just another EyeDeeTenTee error?
I'm glad this AC is allowed to express his opinion, and I'm glad he has some education of the litterary sort. If you don't want to see him, get an account and increase your browse level. ---
I'm just trying to beat my 2.2.9 record. I don't upgrade kernels without good reason, and 2.2.14 has some good reasons. However, I also don't run kernels without devfs, so 2.2.14 must wait for Richard Gooch. ---
1 44 days, 04:36:04 | Linux 2.2.9 Sat Aug 21 18:58:10 1999 -> 2 39 days, 20:21:28 | Linux 2.2.13 Thu Nov 25 19:50:22 1999
So, you see, I am a mere 5 days from beating my 2.2.9 record (at which point I rebooted to use a upgraded kernel), when they go and release 2.2.14. Those bastards.
Ah well, since devfs for 2.2.14 isn't out yet (AFAIK), it'll be a while before I go and upgrade:-) (Linus PLEASE put Devfs in 2.4) ---
It seems like the quality of discussion on/. is going downhill very fast.
Browse at +1, you'll see the comments. Browse at +2 (or better), you'll see a greater ratio of quality/comments. Just because there are more lame posts, doesn't mean there's less quality. Increase your browse level, and lower the signal/noise ratio.
The ACs are working very hard to disrupt threads with NATALIE/NAKED/COMMIE/GRITS posts.
Some do, some don't. I browse at +1, and see none of them (just those who reply to them, and are +1 -- but they're at the end of the comments). Rob has provided, in all his Wisdom, a way to avoid ACs -- but he will not silence them. It's his decision to allow, and your decision on what to read.
What plans do you have (if any) for bringing more adults into the slashdot fold and to try and make for a more inteligent discussion.
Now that you guys are going to be making money from your Perl scripts, would you say that is why you've been stalling producing the code? I mean, in the 1.2 years it has been since you last released the Slash code, it would've been trivial for you to change the licence to a non-GPL one, and thus keep your revinue stream strong for the near future.
If you've just been delaying because you're busy, it's understandable, but why don't you tar up the code & post, as a show of good faith to the community. I, for one, would certainly like to see the v0.4 code soon. ---
Second, User Friendly is often funny, not because of they making fun of the clueless people calling technical support, but because of the superiority of the people answering the calls.
I thought the funny part of UF was it showed when people would go to the techs "What do you mean, I'm wrong? I'm right put using magnets to stick my disks to the filling cabinet!".. These people who call tech support for help, then go on to ignore the advice because they think they know better.
In a similar vein, I enjoy mocking clueless tech support when I can. Example: I was experiencing slow downs with my service. I traced the problem to a bad router. Since I didn't know the provider who owned the bad router, I thought I'd ring my ISP and tell them to "pass it on." The ISP refered me to a page (which was on an MS site, and used IE specific JS) to "test" my connection speed. Needless to say I flamed them, and gave up on calling them (Shaw@Home sucks).
UF also has many wonderful things about Linux, Windows Refund Day, etc. Heck, even ye olde secretary who doesn't know powerpoint (despite its easy UI) can get the joke about Solitaite:-) ---
If x86 is fine, why is it that Motorola and IBM can pretty much keep par with Intel and AMD despite vastly smaller R&D budgets?
IIRC, some people were talking about why the G4 is 450Mhz (stable), whereas you can buy 1Ghz (stable, kryotech) K7s. This is more than 2x the Mhz rating. You can also buy 700Mhz K7s without Kryotech stuff, which is 1.5x the Mhz rating.. On par? No....
The designs of the G4 and the K7 chip are completely different. The K7 is like the Saturn V, whereas the G4 is like the concorde. They use different fuels and different speeds, but are both fast enough to get me from point A to point B faster than I can appreciate. So the comment that "Rather than a 700MHz x86 processor, you'd probably have a 1GHz or higher RISC processor that would make the current K7 and G4 look like snails." makes no sense, as to me the G4 (at its paltry 450Mhz) looks really damned fast. I can't even concieve of how fast 1Ghz would be. (Besides, how do you know that removing the x86 translator unit would speed anything up? Where's your EE Phd?)
Here are my points: 1) x86 works fine. I have plently of working knowledge of how to program in asm for this instruction set, and have plenty of proven working software for it (think Linux). The "flaws" you talk about are the same ones the RISC community rolled out when Intel had 200Mhz PPros out for more than 6 months before releasing a new CPU design. ISA zealotry annoys me, and doesn't help your possibly legitimate case at all.
2) The x86 is currently really lots faster, even if it's still too fast for me to notice (except in RC5 rate). So why strive to go even faster, faster, faster, when things are already faster, faster and getting faster (Moore's law).
3) An all new RISC design (like the implementation in the K7, K6-*, PPro, PII, PIII, Celeron cores) would not have any software support comming out the doors. The reason they have these micro implementations is to allow them to add a layer of complexity to the chips, and make them perform. They change the internals every generation, using different micro RISC cores. Once they sat down and used one for their flagship chip, they'd be stuck with it and lose the flexibility that the cores give in the first place. x86 is a nice general instruction set with instructions for whatever you need, which allows them to emulate it in any way they want (think Transmeta).
4) Have you noticed how the Sparc32, Sparc64, m68k, and a few other branches of the Linux kernel are not really well supported? It would take time even for Linux to come to bear on this new architecture. I'd rather have 1Ghz Linux now, rather than a "possible" 1Ghz Linux on some new architecture.
5) AMD, Intel, et all, have an investment of years in the x86 chip business. It's what makes them their tons and tons of money. Why would they throw away the backwards compatibility that gives them oodles of dollars, just to become another bit player in the RISC business (which isn't worth nearly as much)?
Anyways, I'm ranting a bit because you are acting just a bit like a Zealot. I praise you for being able to look ahead, but you seem to have a bit of a problem looking to now. AMD wants x86 dollars, and they are getting them. ---
What would *really* be a nice boost is if it were possible to access the RISC component of the Athlon (ie. bypass the x86 decoder). Basically, that would allow one to run legacy apps by allowing the Athlon to operate as a smokin' fast x86... and run new apps by allowing the Athlon to operate as a smokin' RISC machine.
Why does evryone assume that x86 is somehow bad? Has the Apple "RISC is god" propoganda gotten to you? This issue has been discussed on Slashdot before. x86 is fine. Don't fix what isn't broken.
Besides, the Athlon goes 700 Mhz. If that's not fast enough, I suggest buying a Cray:-) ---
Sound is not the experience of air particles bombarding your ear drums. It the experience of your eardrums vibrating in response to an applied force. If the force can be conducted to your eardrums without the intervening air, you will still hear a noise.
Yeah, but "listening" to those huge asteroids in last year's evil batch of "We're going to die!" movies really, really sucked!
Every time I "hear" things I should not (not thumps through the hull or shockwaves, as those are fine, but the engines and lasers [light makes no sound, stupid]), I always make comments along the lines of "Gee, space sure got noisy from when NASA last was up." ---
as well as cutting the fight between Ender and Stilson.
I hope this doesn't mean that changed the death of that boy. It's tragic when they neuter strong writing (think Lord Of the Flies). ---
Re:Apocalypse Fixed, but the knowledge gap remains
on
Apocalypse Not
·
· Score: 3
To quote from the Bastard Operator From Hell: THE PHONE RINGS AGAIN! "The screen on my PC is really dim" The woman at the other end says "Should I wind the brightness knob up?" "NO!" I scream "Don't touch that knob! Have you any idea of the radiation that comes out of that thing when the knob gets wound up?!!!!" "Well I..." she says, all uncertain "TAKE MY ADVICE!" I say "There's only ONE way to fix a dim display, and that's by power surging the drivers" The words "power surging" and "drivers" have got her. People hear words like that and go into Dummy Mode and do ANYTHING you say. I could tell her to run naked across campus with a powercord rammed up her backside and she'd probably do it... Hmmm... "Have you got a spare power cord?" "No.." "Oh well, never mind, we'll have to do the power surge idea... "
I'd like to nominate the Icecast project. After the huge hype of Shoutcast, which allowed anyone with WinAmp to repeat their MP3 audio to a server (thusly to many listeners), these people sat down and said "We can do better -- and we can do under the GPL." The rest is history.
With the latest stable release being v1.3, they have allowed many to setup their own MP3 streaming music servers. It's very handy for setting up (via a program like Yell or Shout, which send the MP3s to the server without reencoding) a small 486 box in the corner that can be a jukebox for an entire LAN. They have also pioneered some important updates to the defacto Shoutcast standard.
An interview with Jack Moffitt, the team leader, is available from LinuxToday
Note: Their parent sponsor, Greenwitch has been down since the 1st of January, with DNS service non existant. As I write this message, their DNS is still not working. The DNS fixes are propagating, and the Icecast people are available on norton.openprojects.net #icecast. ---
Speaking of nasty oddness. Check out this chunk from the AllAdvantage people: Privacy Counts. Unlike the rest of the Internet, your information will never be sold, rented, or shared with any third party.
Their beef is with Layer-3 and variants because it allows for the easy piracy of music.
Yes, sir, a wavelet based compression scheme... AFAIK. This is about wavelets.
VQF is related to MP3, and both are related to Jpeg2k (wavelet compression):-) (the relation to plain Jpeg is just because of the lossy nature of the compression)
Further along my train of thought: VQF allows 18:1 over MP3's 12:1. Who says it'll stop there? I wouldn't mind some of the thinking that went into Jpeg2k to go into MPEG layer 4 audio:-) ---
Am I the only one who thought: "What a great way to piss of the RIAA, make the DVD consortium superflous, and archive my multiple gigs of porn on one CD in one fell swoop."
Even 50 years ago, with enough money, you could buy every single thing you wanted with just the phone. Augh.
Yeah, but they're using that thar Internet thing! The guy even calls himself "DotComGuy!" 50 years ago, people might've suspected he was (gasp) communist -- but today we know that everthing must be dot com. Why? Because dot com is an Internet Address! And everyone loves the Internet. That guy on CNN told me so.
Legendes is an interesting thing I recently stumbled on. The author says, "Legendes is a complicated story, which can be summarized as follows: stagnation, restart from scratch, one month's development, repeat ad lib. Currently, Legendes is in the ``stagnation'' phase. Duration of this phase is unknown."
It looks like an older version of Ultima. The first version is written in Pascal, but the sequel is written in C. The ftp directory does show some signs of life. They also have something that looks like a client. After trying Ultima Online (and being annoyed by its amazing slowness on 128mb/266Mhz/Cable Modem setup, as well as the Win32 requirements), I think it'd be interesting if we had an OpenSource RPG that worked similar to Ultima, but wthout all the slowness:-) ---
Slashdot Mirror
akin to spraypainting "clinton sucks"
I thought we all agreed it was Lewinski doing the sucking. At least, that's what I got from the findings of fact..
---
Behave...
---
I'm not sure what the AC has in mind, but I've always liked Phorum.
---
"As bad as.." ?
What a tragic state you have come to, in the United States, if you think proper litterate discourse is "putting on airs." Or this just another EyeDeeTenTee error?
I'm glad this AC is allowed to express his opinion, and I'm glad he has some education of the litterary sort. If you don't want to see him, get an account and increase your browse level.
---
I submitted this on December 7th, 1999... Methinks that was a large amount of seconds from the January 4th, 2000 ..
:-)
Well, someday I'll get a story submission posted
---
1999-12-07 13:36:22 Opensource article in playboy (articles,humor) (rejected)
Sigh. I wish people would let me know why they reject things.
---
I'm just trying to beat my 2.2.9 record. I don't upgrade kernels without good reason, and 2.2.14 has some good reasons. However, I also don't run kernels without devfs, so 2.2.14 must wait for Richard Gooch.
---
1 44 days, 04:36:04 | Linux 2.2.9 Sat Aug 21 18:58:10 1999
:-)
-> 2 39 days, 20:21:28 | Linux 2.2.13 Thu Nov 25 19:50:22 1999
So, you see, I am a mere 5 days from beating my 2.2.9 record (at which point I rebooted to use a upgraded kernel), when they go and release 2.2.14. Those bastards.
Ah well, since devfs for 2.2.14 isn't out yet (AFAIK), it'll be a while before I go and upgrade
(Linus PLEASE put Devfs in 2.4)
---
2.2.13 had odd IDE corruption issues. I like having to not worry about my IDE drive corruptioning itself...
:-)
On another note, they also made the memory buffer hash table more efficient. I also like speed
---
It seems like the quality of discussion on /. is going downhill very fast.
;)
Browse at +1, you'll see the comments. Browse at +2 (or better), you'll see a greater ratio of quality/comments. Just because there are more lame posts, doesn't mean there's less quality. Increase your browse level, and lower the signal/noise ratio.
The ACs are working very hard to disrupt threads with NATALIE/NAKED/COMMIE/GRITS posts.
Some do, some don't. I browse at +1, and see none of them (just those who reply to them, and are +1 -- but they're at the end of the comments). Rob has provided, in all his Wisdom, a way to avoid ACs -- but he will not silence them. It's his decision to allow, and your decision on what to read.
What plans do you have (if any) for bringing more adults into the slashdot fold and to try and make for a more inteligent discussion.
... No comment
---
Now that you guys are going to be making money from your Perl scripts, would you say that is why you've been stalling producing the code? I mean, in the 1.2 years it has been since you last released the Slash code, it would've been trivial for you to change the licence to a non-GPL one, and thus keep your revinue stream strong for the near future.
If you've just been delaying because you're busy, it's understandable, but why don't you tar up the code & post, as a show of good faith to the community. I, for one, would certainly like to see the v0.4 code soon.
---
IIRC, Bill Cosby had a show where they mocked what children said to their faces... Ahem.
---
Second, User Friendly is often funny, not because of they making fun of the clueless people calling technical support, but because of the superiority of the people answering the calls.
.. These people who call tech support for help, then go on to ignore the advice because they think they know better.
:-)
I thought the funny part of UF was it showed when people would go to the techs "What do you mean, I'm wrong? I'm right put using magnets to stick my disks to the filling cabinet!"
In a similar vein, I enjoy mocking clueless tech support when I can. Example: I was experiencing slow downs with my service. I traced the problem to a bad router. Since I didn't know the provider who owned the bad router, I thought I'd ring my ISP and tell them to "pass it on." The ISP refered me to a page (which was on an MS site, and used IE specific JS) to "test" my connection speed. Needless to say I flamed them, and gave up on calling them (Shaw@Home sucks).
UF also has many wonderful things about Linux, Windows Refund Day, etc. Heck, even ye olde secretary who doesn't know powerpoint (despite its easy UI) can get the joke about Solitaite
---
If x86 is fine, why is it that Motorola and IBM can pretty much keep par with Intel and AMD despite vastly smaller R&D budgets?
IIRC, some people were talking about why the G4 is 450Mhz (stable), whereas you can buy 1Ghz (stable, kryotech) K7s. This is more than 2x the Mhz rating. You can also buy 700Mhz K7s without Kryotech stuff, which is 1.5x the Mhz rating..
On par? No....
The designs of the G4 and the K7 chip are completely different. The K7 is like the Saturn V, whereas the G4 is like the concorde. They use different fuels and different speeds, but are both fast enough to get me from point A to point B faster than I can appreciate. So the comment that "Rather than a 700MHz x86 processor, you'd probably have a 1GHz or higher RISC processor that would make the current K7 and G4 look like snails." makes no sense, as to me the G4 (at its paltry 450Mhz) looks really damned fast. I can't even concieve of how fast 1Ghz would be. (Besides, how do you know that removing the x86 translator unit would speed anything up? Where's your EE Phd?)
Here are my points:
1) x86 works fine. I have plently of working knowledge of how to program in asm for this instruction set, and have plenty of proven working software for it (think Linux). The "flaws" you talk about are the same ones the RISC community rolled out when Intel had 200Mhz PPros out for more than 6 months before releasing a new CPU design. ISA zealotry annoys me, and doesn't help your possibly legitimate case at all.
2) The x86 is currently really lots faster, even if it's still too fast for me to notice (except in RC5 rate). So why strive to go even faster, faster, faster, when things are already faster, faster and getting faster (Moore's law).
3) An all new RISC design (like the implementation in the K7, K6-*, PPro, PII, PIII, Celeron cores) would not have any software support comming out the doors. The reason they have these micro implementations is to allow them to add a layer of complexity to the chips, and make them perform. They change the internals every generation, using different micro RISC cores. Once they sat down and used one for their flagship chip, they'd be stuck with it and lose the flexibility that the cores give in the first place. x86 is a nice general instruction set with instructions for whatever you need, which allows them to emulate it in any way they want (think Transmeta).
4) Have you noticed how the Sparc32, Sparc64, m68k, and a few other branches of the Linux kernel are not really well supported? It would take time even for Linux to come to bear on this new architecture. I'd rather have 1Ghz Linux now, rather than a "possible" 1Ghz Linux on some new architecture.
5) AMD, Intel, et all, have an investment of years in the x86 chip business. It's what makes them their tons and tons of money. Why would they throw away the backwards compatibility that gives them oodles of dollars, just to become another bit player in the RISC business (which isn't worth nearly as much)?
Anyways, I'm ranting a bit because you are acting just a bit like a Zealot. I praise you for being able to look ahead, but you seem to have a bit of a problem looking to now. AMD wants x86 dollars, and they are getting them.
---
I, at least, meant what I wrote. See the other references.
Ok, I looked in Websters. Pedophile is a word, "pedicator" is not. So, I still don't know what you mean.
---
What would *really* be a nice boost is if it were possible to access the RISC component of the Athlon (ie. bypass the x86 decoder).
:-)
Basically, that would allow one to run legacy apps by allowing the Athlon to operate as a smokin' fast x86... and run new apps by allowing the Athlon to operate as a smokin' RISC machine.
Why does evryone assume that x86 is somehow bad? Has the Apple "RISC is god" propoganda gotten to you? This issue has been discussed on Slashdot before. x86 is fine. Don't fix what isn't broken.
Besides, the Athlon goes 700 Mhz. If that's not fast enough, I suggest buying a Cray
---
Sound is not the experience of air particles bombarding your ear drums. It the experience of your eardrums vibrating in response to an applied force. If the force can be conducted to your eardrums without the intervening air, you will still hear a noise.
Yeah, but "listening" to those huge asteroids in last year's evil batch of "We're going to die!" movies really, really sucked!
Every time I "hear" things I should not (not thumps through the hull or shockwaves, as those are fine, but the engines and lasers [light makes no sound, stupid]), I always make comments along the lines of "Gee, space sure got noisy from when NASA last was up."
---
Bugger means sodomy in many contexts.
And I think you meant pedophile.
as well as cutting the fight between Ender and Stilson.
I hope this doesn't mean that changed the death of that boy. It's tragic when they neuter strong writing (think Lord Of the Flies).
---
To quote from the Bastard Operator From Hell:
:-)
THE PHONE RINGS AGAIN!
"The screen on my PC is really dim" The woman at the other end says "Should I wind the brightness knob up?"
"NO!" I scream "Don't touch that knob! Have you any idea of the radiation that comes out of that thing when the knob gets wound up?!!!!"
"Well I..." she says, all uncertain
"TAKE MY ADVICE!" I say "There's only ONE way to fix a dim display, and that's by power surging the drivers"
The words "power surging" and "drivers" have got her. People hear words like that and go into Dummy Mode and do ANYTHING you say. I could tell her to run naked across campus with a powercord rammed up her backside and she'd probably do it... Hmmm...
"Have you got a spare power cord?"
"No.."
"Oh well, never mind, we'll have to do the power surge idea... "
Emphasis mine
---
I'd like to nominate the Icecast project. After the huge hype of Shoutcast, which allowed anyone with WinAmp to repeat their MP3 audio to a server (thusly to many listeners), these people sat down and said "We can do better -- and we can do under the GPL." The rest is history.
With the latest stable release being v1.3, they have allowed many to setup their own MP3 streaming music servers. It's very handy for setting up (via a program like Yell or Shout, which send the MP3s to the server without reencoding) a small 486 box in the corner that can be a jukebox for an entire LAN. They have also pioneered some important updates to the defacto Shoutcast standard.
An interview with Jack Moffitt, the team leader, is available from LinuxToday
Note: Their parent sponsor, Greenwitch has been down since the 1st of January, with DNS service non existant. As I write this message, their DNS is still not working. The DNS fixes are propagating, and the Icecast people are available on norton.openprojects.net #icecast.
---
Speaking of nasty oddness. Check out this chunk from the AllAdvantage people:
Privacy Counts. Unlike the rest of the Internet, your information will never be sold, rented, or shared with any third party.
Isn't that bordering on slander?
---
Their beef is with Layer-3 and variants because it allows for the easy piracy of music.
:-) (the relation to plain Jpeg is just because of the lossy nature of the compression)
:-)
Yes, sir, a wavelet based compression scheme... AFAIK. This is about wavelets.
VQF is related to MP3, and both are related to Jpeg2k (wavelet compression)
Further along my train of thought: VQF allows 18:1 over MP3's 12:1. Who says it'll stop there? I wouldn't mind some of the thinking that went into Jpeg2k to go into MPEG layer 4 audio
---
Am I the only one who thought:
"What a great way to piss of the RIAA, make the DVD consortium superflous, and archive my multiple gigs of porn on one CD in one fell swoop."
:-)
---
Even 50 years ago, with enough money, you could buy every single thing you wanted with just the phone. Augh.
Yeah, but they're using that thar Internet thing! The guy even calls himself "DotComGuy!" 50 years ago, people might've suspected he was (gasp) communist -- but today we know that everthing must be dot com. Why? Because dot com is an Internet Address! And everyone loves the Internet. That guy on CNN told me so.
---
Legendes is an interesting thing I recently stumbled on. The author says, "Legendes is a complicated story, which can be summarized as follows: stagnation, restart from scratch, one month's development, repeat ad lib. Currently, Legendes is in the ``stagnation'' phase. Duration of this phase is unknown."
:-)
It looks like an older version of Ultima. The first version is written in Pascal, but the sequel is written in C. The ftp directory does show some signs of life. They also have something that looks like a client. After trying Ultima Online (and being annoyed by its amazing slowness on 128mb/266Mhz/Cable Modem setup, as well as the Win32 requirements), I think it'd be interesting if we had an OpenSource RPG that worked similar to Ultima, but wthout all the slowness
---