Actually, someone claimed the other day in a conversation that 2K and XP still boot a "DOS kernel" before the 32-bit kernel. If any knowledgeable person can avoid being tagged as a troll, I'd appreciate any light shed on the subject.
I haven't read any of the Potter books, nor did I see the first movie. Yesterday I downloaded the trailer at my wife's request (obligatory
direct link to the 17Mb Quicktime) and watched it with her. She has read all the books and seen the first movie. Now she shrugged this off, surprisingly enough, so I want your reaction to my statement made immediately after watching it:
"I defy anyone to tell me with a straight face that Harry Potter has not been Hollywoodicized, when you see a fricking HONG KONG SPIN IN THE TRAILER."
Yes? No? Maybe? Am I just a curmudgeon, or is there a proper time and place for everything -- and are we sick to fricking death of seeing Hollywood turn the classic Hong Kong Spin into an overused whoring technique that turns everything into everything else and the Matrix?
My wife thinks it'll be during the "Duelling" bit.
"Why talk about older technology that many people currently own and are still buying? I have support for what I want." Hint: Some of us like the idea of being able to take advantage of a broad range of hardware.
Not everything that's newer is better just because it's new. And not everything that's older is better just because it's old. To me, one of free software's greatest strengths is its ability to take advantage of almost any niche, from the bleeding edge to the dusty distant past. Not that I personally know anyone who's recently compiled in support for those XT hard drive controllers, but I'll support to the death the developers' right to #include it.
My thoughts precisely, and thanks for your clarification and gracious apology. My first thought on hearing mention of gcc3.2 was, "How many distros use it as default?" I know Gentoo's working on it for their next version, but they're already notorious for being bleeding-edge. As you see, for both my personal use and in various work settings I prefer a mix of current, recent and older software; but of course there are tons of institutions out there who move far slower, and rely far more heavily on things staying the same. (Witness the infinite COBOL, mainframe and assorted other discussions that always come up when someone assumes that history started with the PC...) As you say, the right tool for the right job.
More to the point, now that I know about -march for Athlons, I'll search it out and give it a try on a test machine. Thanks for the information.
...the Slashbot consensus now is, not only do cool people use only Linux, but cool people only use PC-compatibles. Sort of like the riceboys who get a big kick out of their souped-up piece of crap that a real engineered vehicle leaves in the dust. (Note: By piece of crap, I am referring to PC hardware, not Linux. If you don't see this as a contradiction, you may have two brain cells to rub together.)
Obviously, I wasn't aware of that, or I wouldn't have said what I said. I stand corrected. However, I use Debian, and a whole lot of other Linuxes, and BSD, and Windows, and other OS's where appropriate, so your attempt at being witty comes across as dismissive, juvenile and rude. Big fat surprise, eh?
I'll just invoke Godwin's Law now and note that if Hitler used Linux, the Slashbots would have helped write software to send Jews to the gas chambers...
gcc for Linux has those -i486, 586 and 686 flags, but no -amd flag, so it would seem that your spiffy Duron or Athlon doesn't take advantage of any of the chip's special features, essentially running it like a dumb fast legacy chip. That ain't my idea of efficiency. How many years did it take for the Pentium optimizations to make their way from an IBM lab into egcs and finally the mainstream gcc? By that time, AMD's were selling like hotcakes, especially among the build-your-own crowd. And this was when the dot com bubble was still growing, so it's a real shame AMD didn't stick a few developers on the necessary gcc work for that platform -- now that they're currently releasing the XP's and working on Hammer while phasing out Durons, the timing would have been perfect to release what they had for the older chips and work with the community on integrating it.
But as the roommate said, if you bothered trying to optimize your software for PC hardware it'll take you at least a year or two, by which time the hardware will be 'hopelessly outdated'. In the meantime, we get laptops that are nothing more than gigahertz crotch-warmers and desktops that are 2 gigahertz room-warmers, effectively dropping jet engines into lawnmowers and seeing a lot of energy diappear into a black hole called FALSE PROGRESS.
I still use my last burned copy of Progeny to do initial installs when I want a Debian system, then follow the
conversion instructions to upgrade to the latest Debian, restoring from my own apt-cache archives when possible to avoid unnecessary use of bandwidth. The Progeny installer has just given me less hassles on a broad range of hardware, from old to new, although this may change with the next Debian 3.x update. Never did give Libranet a try, but it looks like that'll have to change.
Linux users should appreciate some of the nice changes in the
BSD section. Some are just the sort of window dressing we've come to expect like making bash the default shell, but others such as PAM, and replacing inetd with xinetd, show that Apple is trying to focus just as much on offering a solid, competitive Unix as they are trying to give it a friendly face. (Note: By 'competitive', I mean competing with the current 'best of breed' Linux distributions)
Guess the first
and even the second weren't enough for him.
Used? Maybe. New? Not hardly.
on
Low-end Laptops?
·
· Score: 3, Informative
New laptops and notebooks are, almost without exception, composed strictly of gigahertz crotch warmers that barely have enough battery life to watch a complete movie with their built-in DVD drives. As far as I can tell, there is no such thing anymore as a small, efficient and portable computer which is also general purpose -- the only ones you will find that do so have their hardware, software or both severely limited in order to cut down on complexity and increase ease of use/reliability (like Tivo, and yeah, I'm aware Tivo isn't considered portable). There may be some specialized hardware available that does the trick and that just isn't marketed well enough that the world knows about it, but I think enough people want something like what you describe that it would be selling like mad if it actually existed.
Your best bet at this point may be a handheld of some kind that can easily synchronize with whatever host OS's you'll be running without getting in your way or pissing you off; unfortunately, far too few user interfaces these days meet these criteria, but you may get lucky if you shop around. (I've heard great things about the Newton even allowing for the occasionally blinded enthusiasm of Apple owners, but I'd imagine that like the original Beboxes, very few people are willing to part with them.) My recommendation at this time would be to find something cheap that works, and use it as a stopgap while the marketplace continues to evolve. Monoculture has been the default for too long, and we're way overdue for an explosion of novelty.
"We went to Ann Arbor, Ann Arbor was closed. We went to Chicago, Chicago was broken." (And in old Chitown, we also got a flat tire on the Loop during rush hour when we hit a pothole hard enough to jar everyone's back teeth.) Having spent a week and a half in the downtownish area of Detroit, I can safely say that apart from the beautiful old churches nothing could draw me back there. Paranoia? Hardly -- just common sense.
Rob Limo suggests Microsoft may finally "take their ball and go home" by pulling Windows off the market? More power to them! I've said for years that Ballmer, Gates and the rest of the kids ought to grow a pair and actually pull a Galt's Gulch. Unfortunately for them, the world, rather than realizing how necessary they are, will instead quickly wonder how anything ever got done with Microsoft around.
"If everyone thought like you, we'd have anarchy and chaos!" Poppycock. There isn't but one person in a thousand -- if that -- who even wants to be free, let alone knows how. Let the slaves continue to be slaves -- they'll never know the difference.
How about "ethical" in the sense that nobody should put a disclaimer on ANYTHING? Lawyers tell us to. That's a good reason not to. I say get rid of all disclaimers, warning labels and the like, and the world (except for the lawyers) will be a much happier place.
A young man by the name of Tsu Miu did a bang-up job on his own fighting and
stunts in Jet Li's
My Father Is a Hero, and it
doesn't seem like that great a leap (ahem) to actual wire work. (As always,
see it subtitled rather than dubbed if possible; Jet's done better stuff,
but this one's still quite a bit of fun.)
Jackie Chan was right when he said that with the passing of the Chinese opera
schools, you won't see his like again. The hardships he and the other children
endured, the unforgiving training, the harsh discipline -- combined with the
force of their own will, and the grace of their bodies -- is what enabled them
to do these fantastic things that stretch the limits of human possibility. Few
children these days would have the patience and fortitude for such training,
even if they had the opportunity to pursue it. Which they don't, because we've
made it illegal for kids to do anything other than gobble Ritalin and twiddle
their thumbs (hell, we hate it when grownups make money, when a child shows
any initiative and tries to do something productive people scream like the
kid's being raped in front of their eyes).
Slashdot Mirror
Those who make the law will always declare themselves to be above it.
Actually, someone claimed the other day in a conversation that 2K and XP still boot a "DOS kernel" before the 32-bit kernel. If any knowledgeable person can avoid being tagged as a troll, I'd appreciate any light shed on the subject.
My first thought is usually, "Maybe they don't know how to read." After all, illiteracy is a growing problem...
My wife thinks it'll be during the "Duelling" bit.
Not everything that's newer is better just because it's new. And not everything that's older is better just because it's old. To me, one of free software's greatest strengths is its ability to take advantage of almost any niche, from the bleeding edge to the dusty distant past. Not that I personally know anyone who's recently compiled in support for those XT hard drive controllers, but I'll support to the death the developers' right to #include it.
More to the point, now that I know about -march for Athlons, I'll search it out and give it a try on a test machine. Thanks for the information.
...the Slashbot consensus now is, not only do cool people use only Linux, but cool people only use PC-compatibles. Sort of like the riceboys who get a big kick out of their souped-up piece of crap that a real engineered vehicle leaves in the dust. (Note: By piece of crap, I am referring to PC hardware, not Linux. If you don't see this as a contradiction, you may have two brain cells to rub together.)
Obviously, I wasn't aware of that, or I wouldn't have said what I said. I stand corrected. However, I use Debian, and a whole lot of other Linuxes, and BSD, and Windows, and other OS's where appropriate, so your attempt at being witty comes across as dismissive, juvenile and rude. Big fat surprise, eh? I'll just invoke Godwin's Law now and note that if Hitler used Linux, the Slashbots would have helped write software to send Jews to the gas chambers...
But as the roommate said, if you bothered trying to optimize your software for PC hardware it'll take you at least a year or two, by which time the hardware will be 'hopelessly outdated'. In the meantime, we get laptops that are nothing more than gigahertz crotch-warmers and desktops that are 2 gigahertz room-warmers, effectively dropping jet engines into lawnmowers and seeing a lot of energy diappear into a black hole called FALSE PROGRESS.
I still use my last burned copy of Progeny to do initial installs when I want a Debian system, then follow the conversion instructions to upgrade to the latest Debian, restoring from my own apt-cache archives when possible to avoid unnecessary use of bandwidth. The Progeny installer has just given me less hassles on a broad range of hardware, from old to new, although this may change with the next Debian 3.x update. Never did give Libranet a try, but it looks like that'll have to change.
Linux users should appreciate some of the nice changes in the BSD section. Some are just the sort of window dressing we've come to expect like making bash the default shell, but others such as PAM, and replacing inetd with xinetd, show that Apple is trying to focus just as much on offering a solid, competitive Unix as they are trying to give it a friendly face. (Note: By 'competitive', I mean competing with the current 'best of breed' Linux distributions)
How about BitTorrent? The more people offering content with it, the greater utility it will have. (And perhaps an answer to the /. effect?)
Is this an independent development, or an offshoot based on WIME or other, similar existing work?
Guess the first and even the second weren't enough for him.
Your best bet at this point may be a handheld of some kind that can easily synchronize with whatever host OS's you'll be running without getting in your way or pissing you off; unfortunately, far too few user interfaces these days meet these criteria, but you may get lucky if you shop around. (I've heard great things about the Newton even allowing for the occasionally blinded enthusiasm of Apple owners, but I'd imagine that like the original Beboxes, very few people are willing to part with them.) My recommendation at this time would be to find something cheap that works, and use it as a stopgap while the marketplace continues to evolve. Monoculture has been the default for too long, and we're way overdue for an explosion of novelty.
"We went to Ann Arbor, Ann Arbor was closed. We went to Chicago, Chicago was broken." (And in old Chitown, we also got a flat tire on the Loop during rush hour when we hit a pothole hard enough to jar everyone's back teeth.) Having spent a week and a half in the downtownish area of Detroit, I can safely say that apart from the beautiful old churches nothing could draw me back there. Paranoia? Hardly -- just common sense.
In other words, pretend to be ignorant like the rest of the world?
How about "ethical" in the sense that nobody should put a disclaimer on ANYTHING? Lawyers tell us to. That's a good reason not to. I say get rid of all disclaimers, warning labels and the like, and the world (except for the lawyers) will be a much happier place.
Kindly fuck off now, there's a good lad.
Jackie Chan was right when he said that with the passing of the Chinese opera schools, you won't see his like again. The hardships he and the other children endured, the unforgiving training, the harsh discipline -- combined with the force of their own will, and the grace of their bodies -- is what enabled them to do these fantastic things that stretch the limits of human possibility. Few children these days would have the patience and fortitude for such training, even if they had the opportunity to pursue it. Which they don't, because we've made it illegal for kids to do anything other than gobble Ritalin and twiddle their thumbs (hell, we hate it when grownups make money, when a child shows any initiative and tries to do something productive people scream like the kid's being raped in front of their eyes).
fuckedtech.com is taken, and whoever registered isn't even using the public webpage.
GG Allin's magnum opus, "Kill Thy Father, Rape Thy Mother"?
Or anything at all by Anal Cunt?
"Everyone should know of all information that others have deemed unfit for public knowledge."
Storage is cheap. Bandwidth ain't.