It's probably more effective than preaching to the converted, i.e. the average home user who isn't even aware of the concept of an Operating System, or even that Windows is not 'part of the computer'.
There are plenty of sysadmins reading slashdot, and probably quite a number of them maintain Windows networks, or are caught up in between. The idea is to make them think "Oh, if the next version of Windows is out in 2 years, it's not really worth attempting to convert to Linux." It doesn't actually matter whether Longhorn is released in 2006 or not, as long as it's "real soon now".
I can't remember seeing directory mount points in WinNT 4.0, but I might have missed it. Win2K certainly does have it, although you still need at least one drive letter, and it's not quite as slick as under *nix.
RAID 5 is definitely not in any of Microsoft's Workstation offerings (WinNT 4 Workstation, Win2K Pro, probably also not WinXP Pro), although I do believe they have it in the Server line. The article is about Desktop systems, and a Server license would be somewhat over the top for that market.
It's a hardware issue, as the AGP bus is actually a tagged-on second PCI bus. Graphics Card->Northbridge runs at PCI speeds, Northbridge->Graphics Card runs at whatever AGP revision you have. (1x, 2x, 4x, 8x)
Nope, you're mistaken, the >1GB/s transfer is only from Northbridge/System RAM to Graphics card, the other direction is as slow as a normal 33MHz, 32bit PCI slot. This is one of the reasons why PCIe is catching on so fast.
In addition to this, until we start seeing widespread use of PCIe, the downstream AGP bus is still a serious bottleneck as well. Uploading data to the GPU is really fast, downloading maxes out at ~133MB/s.
I haven't had the chance to play with a Pixel Shader 3.0 card yet, so I don't know how useful for generic computation they are. It usually helps if you're trying to process many sets of the same kind of data, rather than evolving one calculation through a long or iterative algorithm.
You know, dual channel mode, or DDR memory don't increase the amount of data you can keep in memory, it just increases the speed of accessing what is there. That advantage is useless as soon as you have to start working with swapping to disk because you've run out of memory. So in DooM 3, having 512MB of SDRAM will be faster than dual-channel DDR, 400MHz memory, as you'll be limited by your hard disk speed of all things.
Don't place the furniture so that the person in the room will be facing away from the door. That is not only inconvenient, but extremely uncomfortable on a psychological level. I've had to live with facing away from the door for most of my life but I recently re-arranged my study so that I can see the door from behind my monitors. SO much more comfortable!
Yes, I'm currently running fglrx 3.9.0 on my machines with Radeon 9800XT, Radeon 8500 and Radeon 9000 Mobility. Previously I've had various other versions (I think back to 3.2.8 or so) working as well.
In gentoo you can do an "emerge ati-drivers". If you're running a recent SuSE kernel you can find special rpms at ftp://ftp.mirror.ac.uk/sites/ftp.suse.com/pub/ suse/i386/supplementary/X/XFree86/ATI/ but if you're using a vanilla kernel (such as I am) you'll have to use the ATI drivers. I think the ATI drivers come pre-compiled for various Mandrake and Red Hat kernels as well.
I've always compiled my own though.
There's a lot of info on the web about the fglrx drivers, google is in fact your friend. (at least on this matter)
Well, I've got a Radeon 9800 XT on an nForce2, which works fine. The trick is to compile agpgart and nvidia_agp as modules, and disable using fglrx's internal AGP drivers in XFree86Config-4 or xorg.conf.
It's been working fine for me that way since 2.6.3 or something.
Of course zero-day patches are somewhat dangerous, but as far as I can tell, SuSE and such mostly backport the official patches anyway, so that danger is quite a bit less severe.
Enter a patching service, run by say a Linux distributor. SuSE's Yast Online Update (YOU) does this very well. Patches are often zero-day, and are guaranteed by SuSE not to cause trouble with other installed software, or that dependent software is also patched. I'm sure other commercial distributors have similar services, and debian's stable branch has worked well for me as well.
Yes, it involves a certain amount of trust, but if you didn't trust anyone, you'd have to write everything yourself. Also, the company's business model depends on the reliability of said patching service, so they do their best to run it well.
Of course, license changes are evil, but they're unlikely to happen with FOSS. Yet another reason to move away from Microsoft.
Some people prefer FireFox, some prefer Opera. It's really a matter of opinion. I'm tempted to say that for your average end-user, FireFox is the better choice, and for many power users, installing lots of plugins is the way to go.
Personally, I agree with you, I've been a happy Opera user for years. That doesn't mean that FireFox should be more like Opera, it's just a different approach.
With all the censorship issues attached to such a campaign, how about making the filter optional to the end-user? That way, if there's an (obvious) false positive, you can still get to the site. I can't see many people complaining about that sort of thing, but I can see many opting into such a filter as long as they can get back out.
I'm thinking of a (transparent?) HTTP proxy server that blocks the addresses, but the DNS entries are still there on the DNS server, or a similar filtering construction.
Such a solution would completely eliminate the censorship worries, and yet give end-users the protection of such a scheme. I doubt the scheme is meant to actually prevent paedophiles from getting to the content. Surely, they'd just change ISP or use some kind of anonymous proxy, which they're probably using already to avoid being caught.
They do, especially with the Professional Edition. Personal Edition is a bit dumbed-down (not even kernel source packages, useless if you need proprietary video drivers!) but still has some books, which are more entry-level aimed. Pair Personal Edition with the FTP version though and you're all set.
Even before Yast2 got GPLed, they supplied the binaries with the FTP version. You can, and always have been able to, install the FTP version fine. In fact, I've been doing so with every version since SuSE 8.1. (I bought some earlier versions)
The only difference to the commercial version is that the FTP version doesn't include proprietary software that they can't redistribute via FTP for free for licensing reasons. They do have licenses for some proprietary software, such as Acrobat Reader, Opera, etc.
Windows Media Player uses WMA, as far as I know. The iPod supports what, AAC (or whatever Apple's proprietary format is called) and MP3. I'm not sure I'm following you here. People still need to *buy* an MP3 encoder. That's right, MP3s are patented and require license fees.
Oggs, apart from using a superior compression algorithm, are completely open, and encoders are available for free, for all OSes.
Yes, MP3s are more popular, but that's nothing to do with Windows, it's mostly that MP3s have been around longer, and were around at a critical time.
I didn't read his entire "response", just about 10 or 20 paragraphs from various parts, but it is SO blatantly obvious that the guy has no idea about what he is talking.
(a) he obviously doesn't understand the extent of the UNIX/POSIX specifications.
(b) he clearly doesn't know anything about software engineering, getting source code, architecture, framework, interfaces, etc. all mixed up
(c) he hasn't even understood what his critics are saying. They are saying that Linus wrote the code but based it on the specs and architecture of previous Unices. The conclusion he jumps to is that he stole code.
It's really sad that this publication is going to be believed 100% by politicians, probably mostly because of the whole American Patriotism thing he's got going on in there. If you want the US government to believe you, you apparently only have to say that anything else is un-American. Bah.
Although it might seem crazy at first, why not JavaScript? Sure, you'll have to teach her HTML first, but that'll get her started on getting used to sticking to a syntax, and it's something she'll be able to relate to - she knows the web, so she'll find out how web pages work.
This may have been said, and it may be obvious, but use a non-branded backpack or bag. Many larger generic bags can fit a laptop, and if you're worried about protection, make a padded casing that fits your laptop, and then put that in said inconspicuous bag. You will then look like you're carrying lots of notes, books, or whatever.
If by a gazillion, you mean three (quarks), then no.:-) Quarks do make the hordes of different particles easier to understand, it just happens that protons and neutrons seem to be the most common ones.
How about using the built-in keyboard, or hooking up a USB keyboard? I know someone who has a 5500, and the keyboard actually works quite well apparently.
I wonder, does the problem disappear if you disable antialiased fonts? I know they're a pain to implement pretty much anywhere, and if they really bother you and you have a reasonable screen resolution, you may be better off with aliased fonts.
Slashdot Mirror
It's probably more effective than preaching to the converted, i.e. the average home user who isn't even aware of the concept of an Operating System, or even that Windows is not 'part of the computer'.
There are plenty of sysadmins reading slashdot, and probably quite a number of them maintain Windows networks, or are caught up in between. The idea is to make them think "Oh, if the next version of Windows is out in 2 years, it's not really worth attempting to convert to Linux." It doesn't actually matter whether Longhorn is released in 2006 or not, as long as it's "real soon now".
~phil
I can't remember seeing directory mount points in WinNT 4.0, but I might have missed it. Win2K certainly does have it, although you still need at least one drive letter, and it's not quite as slick as under *nix.
RAID 5 is definitely not in any of Microsoft's Workstation offerings (WinNT 4 Workstation, Win2K Pro, probably also not WinXP Pro), although I do believe they have it in the Server line. The article is about Desktop systems, and a Server license would be somewhat over the top for that market.
~phil
It's a hardware issue, as the AGP bus is actually a tagged-on second PCI bus. Graphics Card->Northbridge runs at PCI speeds, Northbridge->Graphics Card runs at whatever AGP revision you have. (1x, 2x, 4x, 8x)
~phil
Nope, you're mistaken, the >1GB/s transfer is only from Northbridge/System RAM to Graphics card, the other direction is as slow as a normal 33MHz, 32bit PCI slot. This is one of the reasons why PCIe is catching on so fast.
~phil
In addition to this, until we start seeing widespread use of PCIe, the downstream AGP bus is still a serious bottleneck as well. Uploading data to the GPU is really fast, downloading maxes out at ~133MB/s.
I haven't had the chance to play with a Pixel Shader 3.0 card yet, so I don't know how useful for generic computation they are. It usually helps if you're trying to process many sets of the same kind of data, rather than evolving one calculation through a long or iterative algorithm.
~phil
You know, dual channel mode, or DDR memory don't increase the amount of data you can keep in memory, it just increases the speed of accessing what is there. That advantage is useless as soon as you have to start working with swapping to disk because you've run out of memory. So in DooM 3, having 512MB of SDRAM will be faster than dual-channel DDR, 400MHz memory, as you'll be limited by your hard disk speed of all things.
~phil
Might I add to #3:
Don't place the furniture so that the person in the room will be facing away from the door. That is not only inconvenient, but extremely uncomfortable on a psychological level. I've had to live with facing away from the door for most of my life but I recently re-arranged my study so that I can see the door from behind my monitors. SO much more comfortable!
If you're lucky, you can. Trouble is, Valve keep changing Steam, as far as I know, so sometimes it breaks, and you need a new version of WineX.
As far as I know, WineX is completely independent of any Wine installed, so you should be fine.
Yes, I'm currently running fglrx 3.9.0 on my machines with Radeon 9800XT, Radeon 8500 and Radeon 9000 Mobility. Previously I've had various other versions (I think back to 3.2.8 or so) working as well.
/ suse /i386/supplementary/X/XFree86/ATI/
In gentoo you can do an "emerge ati-drivers".
If you're running a recent SuSE kernel you can find special rpms at
ftp://ftp.mirror.ac.uk/sites/ftp.suse.com/pub
but if you're using a vanilla kernel (such as I am) you'll have to use the ATI drivers.
I think the ATI drivers come pre-compiled for various Mandrake and Red Hat kernels as well.
I've always compiled my own though.
There's a lot of info on the web about the fglrx drivers, google is in fact your friend. (at least on this matter)
Well, I've got a Radeon 9800 XT on an nForce2, which works fine. The trick is to compile agpgart and nvidia_agp as modules, and disable using fglrx's internal AGP drivers in XFree86Config-4 or xorg.conf.
It's been working fine for me that way since 2.6.3 or something.
Of course zero-day patches are somewhat dangerous, but as far as I can tell, SuSE and such mostly backport the official patches anyway, so that danger is quite a bit less severe.
Enter a patching service, run by say a Linux distributor. SuSE's Yast Online Update (YOU) does this very well. Patches are often zero-day, and are guaranteed by SuSE not to cause trouble with other installed software, or that dependent software is also patched. I'm sure other commercial distributors have similar services, and debian's stable branch has worked well for me as well.
Yes, it involves a certain amount of trust, but if you didn't trust anyone, you'd have to write everything yourself. Also, the company's business model depends on the reliability of said patching service, so they do their best to run it well.
Of course, license changes are evil, but they're unlikely to happen with FOSS. Yet another reason to move away from Microsoft.
Some people prefer FireFox, some prefer Opera. It's really a matter of opinion. I'm tempted to say that for your average end-user, FireFox is the better choice, and for many power users, installing lots of plugins is the way to go.
Personally, I agree with you, I've been a happy Opera user for years. That doesn't mean that FireFox should be more like Opera, it's just a different approach.
With all the censorship issues attached to such a campaign, how about making the filter optional to the end-user? That way, if there's an (obvious) false positive, you can still get to the site. I can't see many people complaining about that sort of thing, but I can see many opting into such a filter as long as they can get back out.
I'm thinking of a (transparent?) HTTP proxy server that blocks the addresses, but the DNS entries are still there on the DNS server, or a similar filtering construction.
Such a solution would completely eliminate the censorship worries, and yet give end-users the protection of such a scheme. I doubt the scheme is meant to actually prevent paedophiles from getting to the content. Surely, they'd just change ISP or use some kind of anonymous proxy, which they're probably using already to avoid being caught.
They do, especially with the Professional Edition.
Personal Edition is a bit dumbed-down (not even kernel source packages, useless if you need proprietary video drivers!) but still has some books, which are more entry-level aimed. Pair Personal Edition with the FTP version though and you're all set.
Even before Yast2 got GPLed, they supplied the binaries with the FTP version. You can, and always have been able to, install the FTP version fine. In fact, I've been doing so with every version since SuSE 8.1. (I bought some earlier versions)
The only difference to the commercial version is that the FTP version doesn't include proprietary software that they can't redistribute via FTP for free for licensing reasons. They do have licenses for some proprietary software, such as Acrobat Reader, Opera, etc.
Know the facts before you criticise/troll.
Windows Media Player uses WMA, as far as I know. The iPod supports what, AAC (or whatever Apple's proprietary format is called) and MP3. I'm not sure I'm following you here. People still need to *buy* an MP3 encoder. That's right, MP3s are patented and require license fees.
Oggs, apart from using a superior compression algorithm, are completely open, and encoders are available for free, for all OSes.
Yes, MP3s are more popular, but that's nothing to do with Windows, it's mostly that MP3s have been around longer, and were around at a critical time.
I didn't read his entire "response", just about 10 or 20 paragraphs from various parts, but it is SO blatantly obvious that the guy has no idea about what he is talking.
(a) he obviously doesn't understand the extent of the UNIX/POSIX specifications.
(b) he clearly doesn't know anything about software engineering, getting source code, architecture, framework, interfaces, etc. all mixed up
(c) he hasn't even understood what his critics are saying. They are saying that Linus wrote the code but based it on the specs and architecture of previous Unices. The conclusion he jumps to is that he stole code.
It's really sad that this publication is going to be believed 100% by politicians, probably mostly because of the whole American Patriotism thing he's got going on in there. If you want the US government to believe you, you apparently only have to say that anything else is un-American. Bah.
Although it might seem crazy at first, why not JavaScript? Sure, you'll have to teach her HTML first, but that'll get her started on getting used to sticking to a syntax, and it's something she'll be able to relate to - she knows the web, so she'll find out how web pages work.
This may have been said, and it may be obvious, but use a non-branded backpack or bag. Many larger generic bags can fit a laptop, and if you're worried about protection, make a padded casing that fits your laptop, and then put that in said inconspicuous bag. You will then look like you're carrying lots of notes, books, or whatever.
If by a gazillion, you mean three (quarks), then no. :-) Quarks do make the hordes of different particles easier to understand, it just happens that protons and neutrons seem to be the most common ones.
How about using the built-in keyboard, or hooking up a USB keyboard? I know someone who has a 5500, and the keyboard actually works quite well apparently.
This is silly. Surely you can't lose weight by installing Double Data Rate memory. That's crazy!
;)
I wonder, does the problem disappear if you disable antialiased fonts? I know they're a pain to implement pretty much anywhere, and if they really bother you and you have a reasonable screen resolution, you may be better off with aliased fonts.