If you're working with Linux/*BSD, the hardware configurations don't have to be close. I use one Linux image for vastly different boxen. You have to go through a fair bit of trouble generating the initial image, if you wish it to work 100% of the time with no mods, however. I happen to keep seperate copies of the kernel and of XF86Config which are installed on demand, that simplifies the image tweaking I have to do. Also, you need to keep a seperate base image for each arch (Ultra, x86, Alpha, etc).
For installing the images, I use a simple floppy that mounts a known export on a known IP, and executes a script on the export to do it's work. You can change the contents of the script far easier than you can re-work the boot floppy. A slightly hacked cfdisk does the initial partitioning, and then the contents of the image are usually just copied/dd'd over, along with a kernel and a Xf86 config.
Six million, seven hundred fifty-eight thousand, four hundred BogoMips. (clock of 375, PPC fudge factor of 2.2, 8192 processors.
What I'd like to know is how much green-bar the sucker eats up spitting out boot-time kernel messages. 512 CPU host adapters to initialize and 8,192 CPU's to calibrate delay loops for could get pretty space consuming..
But the important difference is if Microsoft were to revoke your license to the current generation of applications, you would still have use of the software. Worst case scenario, you would continue having use of the software until the day Legal comes down and says "We're not going to win in the suit, start transitioning to WordPerfect".
In the future, you just wake up and suddenly your computer doesn't work anymore, because Microsoft doesn't like you. There is no transition of semi-legal use, you're just stuck with all your data in a DMCA/UCITA protected datafile you can't access. Of course, Microsoft isn't responsible for consequential damages, even if the revocation of your license was in error, so even the best case scenario is 'screwed'.
There's more information to be found on a computer disk than what you can get by dumping the contents
Yes, that is true. On the same note, there is more information in a wall splattered with blood than the pictures and measurements. Does the FBI come to the house and cut down the wall for 'evidence', using regular field agents to handle cutting down the wall with sledgehammers and sawzalls? Nope. They use specialized blood spatter technicians, who do the tests on the wall, photograph, sample, measure, and leave in a timely fashion. If their tests reveal that there may be more information on/in the wall, they come back and do the test. If you've washed your wall in bleach to remove the stains (and destroyed the evidence they might have liked) too fucking bad.
Why should they make an exception in the case of digital data on electronic storage?
I guess you'd like to make sure that all FBI agents are also fully trained as sysadmins for every OS/Harware combo known to man
Yes, I would. I'd settle for agents who know enough to use the standard forensic tool 'dd' and carry their own export media. If you wish the evidence, take the friggin evidence. The hardware is a different matter..
One, I know I've played with that update model. Two, didn't we discuss the peer-to-peer update on a old Ask Slashdot? Or mabye it was an article on DDOS..
I hope they have patented it, cuz some lawyer is going to have fun talking to me!
Is it really better to be second best in several areas than to be number one in a few areas?
Yes. Think of it like the OS Olympics, where Linux grabs a silver in fifteen events, while Windows, Solaris and BeOS each get five gold medals. I'd rather go home knowing I was the best all-around athlete than knowing I could only throw a discus farther than anyone else.
Why not Sun? I hate seeing Scotty gloat, and he'd be all over this one.
Why not Apple? Apple already has enough trouble. They don't need a research division bleeding them back into the red.
Why not MS? Even though the breakup is a bit off, they'd be seeing integration problems. Also, Microsoft already has a slightly (okay, moderatly) cool research division.
I'd go IBM, because they already do this sort of high-end conceptual stuff. Or perhaps HP, who is in much the same market (digital imaging/printing) but hasn't really turned out anything exciting and cutting edge since the 8000.. Both have the money.
Unfortunatly, I think your Option 3 will be correct. They'll roll some VC's for a quick buck, and try to have a go of PARC making a buck off their patent portfolio, or perhaps actually roll out some of their commercially 'viable' ideas..
I am the head of the Slashdot chapter of 'Punctuators Anonymous'. We can help you with your irresponsible use of such characters as ''', '`', '.', '?', and '!'.
Drop us a line at too_much_punct@hotNOSPAMmail.com.
I also may be able to put you in touch with my counterpart at 'SpellAnon'. She'll probably be able to help you fully grasp the concept of capitalization, or at least get you to install a spellchecker.
and BTW the only reason human drugs are more expensive then pet drugs is that they must pass much more stringent tests involving many years of trials
Nope.. They're usually the same drugs, made by the same company on the same equipment in the same factory. There is no difference between the Prozac prescribed by your doctor and the Prozac prescribed for your dog, except that the drug company charges 10 times as much for it, because you have no choice but to pay them.
If indeed they are paying such a large slice of the pie than I say great!
The top 10% make more money than the bottom 90% combined! Just think, the assets of the US's two richest people match the combined assets of the bottom 25%!!!
Most of the filtering software is either too permissive or not permissive enough for the Christian Coalition/AFA. The most permissive censorware doesn't block the references to homosexuality, communism, athiesm, sex, etc, that they want. The more restrictive software labels the Christian Coalition and the AFA a 'hate group' and censors them.
There doesn't seem to be a happy medium; As soon as the software spectrum shifts so that evil things like 'homosexuality' are blocked, so are they.
If you don't live in the US why do you have the US topic enabled?
Simple. The US is a pretty big dog, and has a track record of using underhanded pressure to get their way globally. If we do something totally whacked, (or rather, our leaders do) you better bet they're going to lean on everyone else to follow suit.
A hundred-thousand enscripted German soldiers aren't going to stand a chance against 12 million determined Poles with hunting rifles, I don't care what you say.
Got Panzers coming for you? Blow up the bridges in their way. What good is a tank if you're stuck behind a river. Bombers? Puhleese! Bombers are only effective against infrastructure. Defense plants, power, etc.
games are so good at training individuals to use real weapons that the Army now uses the same technology toward the same goal.
And yet the DoD, the Army, and the Marines say otherwise. The only individual saying they use any video game in this way is a highly paid 'consultant' who makes his money testifying in 'Oh my! Little Johnny has been corrupted by Doom!' cases.
This said, the Army does make use of battle simulators, but the emphasis is on teamwork and battlefield tactics and not on 'Gee, lets get these guys softened up to killing'.
If Microsoft comes out with a good product for Linux I WILL BE THE FIRST ONE IN THE FRIGGIN LINE TO BUY IT.
So far, open source has given us a world-class development environment, the world's best text-editor, the most popular, flexible and stable webservers, and two (or four) of the world's most stable and robust operating systems. That's why I run Linux and *BSD. Open source hasn't quite gotten to the muckity-muck of the worlds best office suite yet, so why wouldn't we buy Microsoft?
Let me elaborate a bit. Ponzi claimed he was buying up International Postal Reply coupons, and then having a confederate 'fence' them abroad. Their value was set by treaty, so a coupon worth 50 cents here could be exchanged for 70 cents of postage in France.
Nobody could figure out how he was exchanging the coupons in Europe, but since he was paying his investors they couldn't really nab him. Well, until some Mr Smarty Pants realized that Ponzi was paying out more money (to an order of magnitude) than the entire crop of coupons issued in the previous year that is. He tried claiming that the postal coupon story was merely a cover to keep his real idea secret, but they already had his ass for fraud among other things..
The RS/6000 does indeed run PowerPC chips, and recent AS/400 have as well. They used to use in-house IBM CISC processors. Most of the 6000's will run Linux, (I've used Yellowdog to test a couple B50's), but the PPC AS/400 is pretty damn well unsupported at this point. I've heard hearsay stories of IBM demo'ing a few running Linux on the bare hardware, but have not seen it. The CISC machines are not running Linux at all, but talk of a port to their HAL of the MMU-less Linux variant found on the Dragonball processors was running around the mailing lists for a while.
I see a LOT of comments asking how the AA battery powered CPU stacks up against a Transmeta. While I have no stats on the dinky x86, I have an equivalent that you'll find interesting.
I bought a Micro-ATX Cyrix MediaGX mobo a while back, $59/+shipping, to use as a part of a custom router setup. Well, lo and behold, I'm reading the manual, and it states that it will do full-frame rate MPEG1 (VCD) and DVD playback. Now, don't get me wrong, but this is a 166 chip. What do I do? I pop in a DVD drive, ghost Windows 98SE to it and install the software player (OEM version of PowerDVD, with support for the funny accelerated video chipset.) And it plays 'The Road Warrior' just fine!
It doesn't take much to do VCD/DVD playback. The 166 Cyrix is about equivalent to a Pentium 120. The Transmeta Crusoe is equivalent to a Pentium III-500, for a max of seven times faster.
The absolute best example of how to handle model years is how Daimler-Benz did it back in the sixties. They only made incremental changes to the cars, usually unannounced, and did it over the course of production. A 1968 model-year 280 SEL/8 made in July was exactly the same car as the 1969 model-year made in Febuary. Perhaps in March they'd introduce four-wheel Kelsey-Hayes disc brakes, or a better five-speed manual, and that's what their Marketing people would hype. They might make a small stylistic change, like different chrome on the front directional signals, but you'd never actually hear the dealer hyping it..
Didn't hurt that Mercedes was the unquestionable top of the heap tho..
Slashdot Mirror
If you're working with Linux/*BSD, the hardware configurations don't have to be close. I use one Linux image for vastly different boxen. You have to go through a fair bit of trouble generating the initial image, if you wish it to work 100% of the time with no mods, however. I happen to keep seperate copies of the kernel and of XF86Config which are installed on demand, that simplifies the image tweaking I have to do. Also, you need to keep a seperate base image for each arch (Ultra, x86, Alpha, etc).
For installing the images, I use a simple floppy that mounts a known export on a known IP, and executes a script on the export to do it's work. You can change the contents of the script far easier than you can re-work the boot floppy. A slightly hacked cfdisk does the initial partitioning, and then the contents of the image are usually just copied/dd'd over, along with a kernel and a Xf86 config.
Six million, seven hundred fifty-eight thousand, four hundred BogoMips. (clock of 375, PPC fudge factor of 2.2, 8192 processors.
What I'd like to know is how much green-bar the sucker eats up spitting out boot-time kernel messages. 512 CPU host adapters to initialize and 8,192 CPU's to calibrate delay loops for could get pretty space consuming..
Project Furby 2
CIA Requisition Order 2000-01275543
Referencing Department Purchase Order 19781A
Quantity Description Cost
1 GMC 1500 panel van $22,900
1 2x4 18 element Yagi $375
1 Plastic roof storage unit $225
1 2200W linear amplifier $2,400
1 RadioShack rotator $23
Total: $25,923.00
Goal:
To assess the concentration and usefulness of
RF-excited microtransmitters in gathering
domestic intelligence.
But the important difference is if Microsoft were to revoke your license to the current generation of applications, you would still have use of the software. Worst case scenario, you would continue having use of the software until the day Legal comes down and says "We're not going to win in the suit, start transitioning to WordPerfect".
In the future, you just wake up and suddenly your computer doesn't work anymore, because Microsoft doesn't like you. There is no transition of semi-legal use, you're just stuck with all your data in a DMCA/UCITA protected datafile you can't access. Of course, Microsoft isn't responsible for consequential damages, even if the revocation of your license was in error, so even the best case scenario is 'screwed'.
There's more information to be found on a computer disk than what you can get by dumping the contents
Yes, that is true. On the same note, there is more information in a wall splattered with blood than the pictures and measurements. Does the FBI come to the house and cut down the wall for 'evidence', using regular field agents to handle cutting down the wall with sledgehammers and sawzalls? Nope. They use specialized blood spatter technicians, who do the tests on the wall, photograph, sample, measure, and leave in a timely fashion. If their tests reveal that there may be more information on/in the wall, they come back and do the test. If you've washed your wall in bleach to remove the stains (and destroyed the evidence they might have liked) too fucking bad.
Why should they make an exception in the case of digital data on electronic storage?
I guess you'd like to make sure that all FBI agents are also fully trained as sysadmins for every OS/Harware combo known to man
Yes, I would. I'd settle for agents who know enough to use the standard forensic tool 'dd' and carry their own export media. If you wish the evidence, take the friggin evidence. The hardware is a different matter..
Oh, http://slashdot.org/articles/0 0/0 5/23/2022208.shtml.. It's been archived, so you'll have to peruse down..
/. than /. itself?
Why is it Google works so much better searching
One, I know I've played with that update model. Two, didn't we discuss the peer-to-peer update on a old Ask Slashdot? Or mabye it was an article on DDOS..
I hope they have patented it, cuz some lawyer is going to have fun talking to me!
Is it really better to be second best in several areas than to be number one in a few areas?
Yes. Think of it like the OS Olympics, where Linux grabs a silver in fifteen events, while Windows, Solaris and BeOS each get five gold medals. I'd rather go home knowing I was the best all-around athlete than knowing I could only throw a discus farther than anyone else.
Why not Sun? I hate seeing Scotty gloat, and he'd be all over this one.
Why not Apple? Apple already has enough trouble. They don't need a research division bleeding them back into the red.
Why not MS? Even though the breakup is a bit off, they'd be seeing integration problems. Also, Microsoft already has a slightly (okay, moderatly) cool research division.
I'd go IBM, because they already do this sort of high-end conceptual stuff. Or perhaps HP, who is in much the same market (digital imaging/printing) but hasn't really turned out anything exciting and cutting edge since the 8000.. Both have the money.
Unfortunatly, I think your Option 3 will be correct. They'll roll some VC's for a quick buck, and try to have a go of PARC making a buck off their patent portfolio, or perhaps actually roll out some of their commercially 'viable' ideas..
Hello, Mr. xtermz.
I am the head of the Slashdot chapter of 'Punctuators Anonymous'. We can help you with your irresponsible use of such characters as ''', '`', '.', '?', and '!'.
Drop us a line at too_much_punct@hotNOSPAMmail.com.
I also may be able to put you in touch with my counterpart at 'SpellAnon'. She'll probably be able to help you fully grasp the concept of capitalization, or at least get you to install a spellchecker.
and BTW the only reason human drugs are more expensive then pet drugs is that they must pass much more stringent tests involving many years of trials
Nope.. They're usually the same drugs, made by the same company on the same equipment in the same factory. There is no difference between the Prozac prescribed by your doctor and the Prozac prescribed for your dog, except that the drug company charges 10 times as much for it, because you have no choice but to pay them.
If indeed they are paying such a large slice of the pie than I say great!
The top 10% make more money than the bottom 90% combined! Just think, the assets of the US's two richest people match the combined assets of the bottom 25%!!!
Or better yet, the short lived (+6, Offtopic).
Bingo..
Most of the filtering software is either too permissive or not permissive enough for the Christian Coalition/AFA. The most permissive censorware doesn't block the references to homosexuality, communism, athiesm, sex, etc, that they want. The more restrictive software labels the Christian Coalition and the AFA a 'hate group' and censors them.
There doesn't seem to be a happy medium; As soon as the software spectrum shifts so that evil things like 'homosexuality' are blocked, so are they.
If you don't live in the US why do you have the US topic enabled?
Simple. The US is a pretty big dog, and has a track record of using underhanded pressure to get their way globally. If we do something totally whacked, (or rather, our leaders do) you better bet they're going to lean on everyone else to follow suit.
A hundred-thousand enscripted German soldiers aren't going to stand a chance against 12 million determined Poles with hunting rifles, I don't care what you say.
Got Panzers coming for you? Blow up the bridges in their way. What good is a tank if you're stuck behind a river. Bombers? Puhleese! Bombers are only effective against infrastructure. Defense plants, power, etc.
games are so good at training individuals to use real weapons that the Army now uses the same technology toward the same goal.
And yet the DoD, the Army, and the Marines say otherwise. The only individual saying they use any video game in this way is a highly paid 'consultant' who makes his money testifying in 'Oh my! Little Johnny has been corrupted by Doom!' cases.
This said, the Army does make use of battle simulators, but the emphasis is on teamwork and battlefield tactics and not on 'Gee, lets get these guys softened up to killing'.
If Microsoft comes out with a good product for Linux I WILL BE THE FIRST ONE IN THE FRIGGIN LINE TO BUY IT.
So far, open source has given us a world-class development environment, the world's best text-editor, the most popular, flexible and stable webservers, and two (or four) of the world's most stable and robust operating systems. That's why I run Linux and *BSD. Open source hasn't quite gotten to the muckity-muck of the worlds best office suite yet, so why wouldn't we buy Microsoft?
Let me elaborate a bit. Ponzi claimed he was buying up International Postal Reply coupons, and then having a confederate 'fence' them abroad. Their value was set by treaty, so a coupon worth 50 cents here could be exchanged for 70 cents of postage in France.
Nobody could figure out how he was exchanging the coupons in Europe, but since he was paying his investors they couldn't really nab him. Well, until some Mr Smarty Pants realized that Ponzi was paying out more money (to an order of magnitude) than the entire crop of coupons issued in the previous year that is. He tried claiming that the postal coupon story was merely a cover to keep his real idea secret, but they already had his ass for fraud among other things..
The RS/6000 does indeed run PowerPC chips, and recent AS/400 have as well. They used to use in-house IBM CISC processors. Most of the 6000's will run Linux, (I've used Yellowdog to test a couple B50's), but the PPC AS/400 is pretty damn well unsupported at this point. I've heard hearsay stories of IBM demo'ing a few running Linux on the bare hardware, but have not seen it. The CISC machines are not running Linux at all, but talk of a port to their HAL of the MMU-less Linux variant found on the Dragonball processors was running around the mailing lists for a while.
Hard to find HW info on? Whaddya wanna know?
I see a LOT of comments asking how the AA battery powered CPU stacks up against a Transmeta. While I have no stats on the dinky x86, I have an equivalent that you'll find interesting.
I bought a Micro-ATX Cyrix MediaGX mobo a while back, $59/+shipping, to use as a part of a custom router setup. Well, lo and behold, I'm reading the manual, and it states that it will do full-frame rate MPEG1 (VCD) and DVD playback. Now, don't get me wrong, but this is a 166 chip. What do I do? I pop in a DVD drive, ghost Windows 98SE to it and install the software player (OEM version of PowerDVD, with support for the funny accelerated video chipset.) And it plays 'The Road Warrior' just fine!
It doesn't take much to do VCD/DVD playback. The 166 Cyrix is about equivalent to a Pentium 120. The Transmeta Crusoe is equivalent to a Pentium III-500, for a max of seven times faster.
The absolute best example of how to handle model years is how Daimler-Benz did it back in the sixties. They only made incremental changes to the cars, usually unannounced, and did it over the course of production. A 1968 model-year 280 SEL/8 made in July was exactly the same car as the 1969 model-year made in Febuary. Perhaps in March they'd introduce four-wheel Kelsey-Hayes disc brakes, or a better five-speed manual, and that's what their Marketing people would hype. They might make a small stylistic change, like different chrome on the front directional signals, but you'd never actually hear the dealer hyping it..
Didn't hurt that Mercedes was the unquestionable top of the heap tho..
Only if you play the '+/- six months' game. The 486 was delayed that long by to a problem with their fab yield.
The 80286 was on time.
1. x86 - for any x>3
should read
1. x86 - for any x
There are Linux ports that run on the 8086/8088/80286/V20, and 80386 is still the default CPU.
Also add to the list:
17. Z80