He was WAY off on the Slackware stuff. I noticed that right off.
That's just plain bad reporting. It appeared to be a decent article, but with so many mistakes (and very obvious mistakes), I don't think I can trust any of the info about distros I don't already know about.
The only thing that guy has going for him is the catchy domain name and handle.
Naw, you just didn't have a clue when you typed up your original post in complete error.
From the sound of the two posts you've made in reply to those who pointed out you don't have a clue, you obviously still have no idea what the story is about.
Shut up. Read the story first. Think about it for a bit.
It's people like you who degrade the quality of SlashDot.
The SPARC port of Slackware is under active development. For more information and discussion about the SPARC port of Slackware, check out this link:
http://www.slackware.com/forum/list.php?f=6
I personally have used a development version of Slackware on a Sun Ultra 1/170E system running framebuffer video on a Creator 3D card, and it ran great. Fairly easy install too.
Arcades may go the way of the dodo in our lifetime, but that doesn't necessarily spell the end of social gaming. We've still got LAN parties!
I play LAN games with friends and family all the time... At least once a week. Definately a blast, and much more fun to scream at your opponent in the next room and hurl empty soda cans in frustration than it is to type in stuff on chat in the games. hehehhee!
There's also a BattleTech setup in Circle Centre Mall in Indianapolis, IN. Unfortunately, every time I've been there at least two of the pods are down for whatever reason. I guess the good thing about the Indy setup is on Tuesdays it costs next to nothing to play BattleTech. I haven't been to that arcade in almost a year, so things might have changed by now.
I used to be a huge fan of arcades. Went to the one in Forest Fair Mall near Cincinnati, OH every Friday when I was in high school. Loaded up the car with my friends, and proceeded to blow about $40 on air hockey, the big screen Street Fighter games (which I sucked at horribly), some of the flight sims, and then we'd go see a dollar movie (in the mall right next to the arcade). Ahhh... The good ol' days!;-)
W2K's power saving features don't seem to work reliably on any of the machines I've used. My Dell Inspiron 7500 worked the best, and even it would freeze shutting off the LCD panel every once in a while. Yes, I did have the latest BIOS for the laptop, and all the proper patches applied to W2K.
That's not my only reason for not using W2K, but one that applies to this topic.
Besides, heavily used, publicly accessable servers (web servers, email servers, etc) tend to be used all the time, so the power saving features would rarely get to activate. I have a tiny ISP of my own, and tried doing power saving on my servers... All I'd hear were drives spinning up and down all day.
I was in 4th grade at the time of the Challenger accident. If there was a shuttle launch during our normal recess, the teachers usually gave us the option of either watching the launch, or going outside to play. I always stayed in to watch the launches...
I remember watching TV, and seeing the shuttle explode. I knew what had happened, obviously, but I just couldn't believe what I had seen with my own eyes.
It's a shame that so many good men and women give their lives to remind us how vulnerable we are. That accident was totally preventable, but as someone else mentioned, the launches were getting too routine. People in charge of the launches were not paying as much attention as they should have.
A moment of silence for ALL the brave souls who have put their lives on the line for their causes, and paid the ultimate price.
You don't need knowledge to pass MSCE exams... Just the right amount of stupidity.;-P
In all seriousness, though, it sounds like this could be useful for small upstarts who need serious processing power, but don't have the budget to have a dedicated person to build and maintain a cluster.
It's also gotta be helpful for those of us who are interested in clusters, but don't have the spare time to devote to figuring it all out. It's not a "do all" solution, but it will help.
What a laugh! I will soon be quitting my Solaris/NT/Linux/AIX/Irix admin job, and be moving to Colorado where I'll be working in a Linux only environment at my new job. Not only that, but I'm going to double my salary!
Your "real world" and my "real world" must be on two different planets.
As a long time user and supporter of Slackware, I have to say that Patrick V. and all the other developers who are working on Slackware need to be commended for their excellent work on an excellent Linux distro.
I hope to be able to afford a nice Alpha machine in the near future so I can play with the latest port of Slackware.:-)
>Hey pinhead, the italics in a story are the
>words of the author (not a/. person). Thus,
>they are the author's opinion, not a statement
>or indication (necessarily) of fact.
I think he's complaining about the fact that none of the people who are in charge of sticking the submitted stories on the Slashdot site actually verify any of the stories. It IS annoying, and it IS the responsibility of Slashdot to make sure that what they choose to post is accurate.
I laughed pretty hard when I saw the headline claiming the Slackware 7.2 was released after I took 20 seconds to check Slackware.com and their FTP site to see if it was true. Not a lot of effort to check these things, people...
Interesting... Where do you get your figures from? Sun has had some pretty good sales this year, and they don't seem to be hurting at all.
Sparc hardware is great hardware. I know, I've used it, and serviced it. Very stable, very dependable.
IA64 is not going to give Sparc much of a fight. Just look at Intel scrambling to get SOMETHING out the door in time! AMD beat Intel to the gigahertz mark, and they're on track to having their 64-bit processor in production before Intel as well.
Sun does have a clone market, don't forget. You can get cheap Sun machines... You can even get a dual-proc Sun motherboard that is ATX form factor, and stick it in a PC case. Sun parts are becoming more and more affordable, and one can now purchase an entry level system for under $3000.
Like I stated before, Sun has had some really good sales this year, and it looks like they'll continue on this route for some time. They've got good hardware, good support, and Solaris 8 is a pretty nice OS.
My personal opinion about RedHat dropping Sparc support is I could care less. RedHat is a terrible distro, IMHO. The only Linux distro I would ever care to run on Sparc is Slackware, but there's no port to Sparc, yet.
I'll second your opinion... I've used Linux on a wide array of Sun hardware (IPC, IPX, LX, Sparc 5, Ultra 1, Ultra 1 Creator series) with as little as 12 Megs of RAM up to 128Megs of RAM. For non-Ultra hardware, Linux on Sun is the only way to go for performance. However, the Ultra series machines seem to do just as well running Solaris 8 as Linux, and I've had a couple Ultras not behave properly running Linux.
At any rate, Linux is nice to have as an option for those of us who don't like to use/admin Solaris.
What fluids would I have to routinely check on an all electric car? The motor would probably have lifetime bearings, and the transaxle MIGHT need to be checked every 50,000 miles or so.
Brakes? Most electric cars have regen braking, so whatever brakes are on the car won't be subjected to the full inertia of the car... The car will be absorbing some of the inertia through the regen braking. Pads and rotors will probably last a lot longer on these cars, if not the life of the car.
Seriously... EVs will be easier to maintain. Might cost more in some cases (battery replacement every xx,xxx miles), but the routine maintenance will definately be easy.
Most electric vehicles to date have no transmission. Electric motors have the most torque at stall, and torque diminished exponentially with rotation speed. Though it does not diminish enough to require it to pull another gear. An operating range of 0 - 80 mph is good for a city car. (and it will hit the speed limit in rural areas.)
All electric cars will have to have some form of transmission, unless there is an electric motor located at each drive wheel. A single speed transaxle will still contain some form of differential system for maximum traction. The GM Impact has a 2-speed transaxle, and other electric vehicles might start using multispeed transaxles as well. The multi-speed transaxles help EVs with acceleration, as well as raise the vehicles top speed (no longer electric motor limited, now gear limited).
What about lights, radio, and HVAC? Turning off everything while in rush hour is not very conveinient for most people. That's why I'd like a [serial] hybrid car better. I don't (usually) worry about running out of gas when I sit at a long light or in traffic, I don't want to worry about taking 30 miles off my trip because I want to keep the lights on.
Everything you mentioned above still applies to cars of today. If you're low on gas, you'd better start looking for a gas station... If you're batteries are getting low, well... Go find an outlet!;-)
People who are going to push the limits on the range of electric cars are no different from the people who run out of gas on the highways. If there's a major backup on the expressway, hang out at the office for a little while, wait for things to clear up. Either that, or take an alternate route home.
It would be nice if it was that simple. But just because you will not need oil changes and tune ups, does not mean all that much less work. Batteries don't last long, the lithium-ion battery in my laptop lasted less than two years, and I took care of it. NiCads are no better.
But it will have to be that simple in order for automakers to sell these cars. I don't think it will be that hard to build an electric car that is virtually maintenance free. The GM Impact (the one EV that I've done a lot of reading on) is already at that point... There's really nothing to check except the air in the tires and the battery status on the dash.
Again, the EV I'm most familiar with is the GM Impact, and its batteries are covered under a 3 year/36,000 mile warantee. That's not too bad.
Yes, battery technology needs to be improved. However, I feel that today's technology is sufficient for short ranged EVs.
In short pure electric is not a good idea. Electric traction is great. But what I would like to see is electric energy provided on board the car.. bateries charged by the sun, gas engine, or other more efficient source.
Electric cars ARE a good idea for those people who can use them to their full potential. I am one of those people. I have a very short commute to work, and rarely leave a 10 mile radius of home during normal days. I run a lot of errands for work and for my home business, otherwise I'd take the bus every where.
Yes, there are a lot of people who wouldn't be able to use an electric car because of the distances they drive, or other factors. That doesn't mean they aren't great solutions for those of us who can use them.
Hybrid cars (gas/diesel powered cars with electric assist) should fill the gap between fully electric and regular gas powered cars of today. 70MPG-90MPG is definately a big improvement over today's cars! I'll probably own a hybrid powered car, as soon as they're for sale in my state and reasonably affordable.
Eh? Mini-vans aren't SUVs... Ford Explorers, Dodge Durangos, Chevy Blazers, Jeeps and other vehicles like those are SUVs. Mini-vans are jacked up station wagons that get worse mileage than most station wagons, handle worse than station wagons, and in my opinion looks much worse than station wagons. Also, there are wagon style cars out there that are much less than a mini-van in cost. They're just not as "cool" for soccer mom's to drive.
I do own a '95 Chevy Blazer 4x4 LT, and it doesn't do too bad on mileage for what it is. I've gotten over 26MPG on the highway before, loaded up with luggage and three people. While it doesn't do bad on the highway, it really guzzles gas in town/city driving.
This is my wife's main vehicle... We bought it out of necessity (needed a new vehicle, also needed something for winter driving, and I needed some form of truck badly to haul computer equipment/car parts in all kinds of weather), and nothing else fit our budget that she wouldn't mind driving every day. It does go off road every once in a while for camping trips and other trail excursions, so no, we're not those idiots who bought a 4x4 that will never leave pavement!
Electric vehicles will have much simpler transmissions (if they even have one at all other than a one-speed transaxle), no belts, no fluids to check, etc. All you'll have to worry about is taking it in once or twice a year to have the batteries checked out. If anything does break, yes, one would probably have to take it to the dealer because the tools will be expensive to do your own work on these cars.
Electric vehicles WILL be easier to maintain, and will handle daily city communtes much better than the cars/trucks of today. Stop and go traffic will be less of a waste energy (no idling gas engine), and you don't have to worry about your electric car heating up the transmission/engine while stuck in rush hour.
Basically, all you have to do is keep air in the tires, and the batteries charged, and you'll be good to go in an electric car.
Slashdot Mirror
He was WAY off on the Slackware stuff. I noticed that right off.
That's just plain bad reporting. It appeared to be a decent article, but with so many mistakes (and very obvious mistakes), I don't think I can trust any of the info about distros I don't already know about.
The only thing that guy has going for him is the catchy domain name and handle.
Naw, you just didn't have a clue when you typed up your original post in complete error.
From the sound of the two posts you've made in reply to those who pointed out you don't have a clue, you obviously still have no idea what the story is about.
Shut up. Read the story first. Think about it for a bit.
It's people like you who degrade the quality of SlashDot.
The SPARC port of Slackware is under active development. For more information and discussion about the SPARC port of Slackware, check out this link:
http://www.slackware.com/forum/list.php?f=6
I personally have used a development version of Slackware on a Sun Ultra 1/170E system running framebuffer video on a Creator 3D card, and it ran great. Fairly easy install too.
Doh... That should be: "Ahhh... The pitter-patter of little penguin feet down the halls of our K-12 schools. *sniff*"
Ugh. Need caffeine.
...SECURITY!
Not a bad idea, though. Good luck to the gang who came up with this, I hope it gets accepted into many schools who are tight on cash.
Ahhh... The pitter-patter of little penguin feet down our K-12 schools. *sniff*
Just make sure that you put all of your superiors' email addresses in your list to spam. That'll probably cure them of wanting to send out SPAM!
If not, it would be a great way to quit your job.
Arcades may go the way of the dodo in our lifetime, but that doesn't necessarily spell the end of social gaming. We've still got LAN parties!
I play LAN games with friends and family all the time... At least once a week. Definately a blast, and much more fun to scream at your opponent in the next room and hurl empty soda cans in frustration than it is to type in stuff on chat in the games. hehehhee!
There's also a BattleTech setup in Circle Centre Mall in Indianapolis, IN. Unfortunately, every time I've been there at least two of the pods are down for whatever reason. I guess the good thing about the Indy setup is on Tuesdays it costs next to nothing to play BattleTech. I haven't been to that arcade in almost a year, so things might have changed by now.
;-)
I used to be a huge fan of arcades. Went to the one in Forest Fair Mall near Cincinnati, OH every Friday when I was in high school. Loaded up the car with my friends, and proceeded to blow about $40 on air hockey, the big screen Street Fighter games (which I sucked at horribly), some of the flight sims, and then we'd go see a dollar movie (in the mall right next to the arcade). Ahhh... The good ol' days!
No ISA, and NO 32-bit PCI, it looks like... Those are 64-bit PCI slots, if I'm not mistaken. That dark one up top might be an AGP slot, though.
W2K's power saving features don't seem to work reliably on any of the machines I've used. My Dell Inspiron 7500 worked the best, and even it would freeze shutting off the LCD panel every once in a while. Yes, I did have the latest BIOS for the laptop, and all the proper patches applied to W2K.
That's not my only reason for not using W2K, but one that applies to this topic.
Besides, heavily used, publicly accessable servers (web servers, email servers, etc) tend to be used all the time, so the power saving features would rarely get to activate. I have a tiny ISP of my own, and tried doing power saving on my servers... All I'd hear were drives spinning up and down all day.
I was in 4th grade at the time of the Challenger accident. If there was a shuttle launch during our normal recess, the teachers usually gave us the option of either watching the launch, or going outside to play. I always stayed in to watch the launches...
I remember watching TV, and seeing the shuttle explode. I knew what had happened, obviously, but I just couldn't believe what I had seen with my own eyes.
It's a shame that so many good men and women give their lives to remind us how vulnerable we are. That accident was totally preventable, but as someone else mentioned, the launches were getting too routine. People in charge of the launches were not paying as much attention as they should have.
A moment of silence for ALL the brave souls who have put their lives on the line for their causes, and paid the ultimate price.
You don't need knowledge to pass MSCE exams... Just the right amount of stupidity. ;-P
In all seriousness, though, it sounds like this could be useful for small upstarts who need serious processing power, but don't have the budget to have a dedicated person to build and maintain a cluster.
It's also gotta be helpful for those of us who are interested in clusters, but don't have the spare time to devote to figuring it all out. It's not a "do all" solution, but it will help.
What a laugh! I will soon be quitting my Solaris/NT/Linux/AIX/Irix admin job, and be moving to Colorado where I'll be working in a Linux only environment at my new job. Not only that, but I'm going to double my salary!
Your "real world" and my "real world" must be on two different planets.
As a long time user and supporter of Slackware, I have to say that Patrick V. and all the other developers who are working on Slackware need to be commended for their excellent work on an excellent Linux distro.
:-)
I hope to be able to afford a nice Alpha machine in the near future so I can play with the latest port of Slackware.
>Hey pinhead, the italics in a story are the >words of the author (not a /. person). Thus,
>they are the author's opinion, not a statement
>or indication (necessarily) of fact.
I think he's complaining about the fact that none of the people who are in charge of sticking the submitted stories on the Slashdot site actually verify any of the stories. It IS annoying, and it IS the responsibility of Slashdot to make sure that what they choose to post is accurate.
I laughed pretty hard when I saw the headline claiming the Slackware 7.2 was released after I took 20 seconds to check Slackware.com and their FTP site to see if it was true. Not a lot of effort to check these things, people...
I would highly recommend this changer for anyone concerned about playback of CD-Rs and CD-RWs.
Marantz also makes this beauty:
http://www.marantz.com/db/?MIval=h_product_full&pr od_id=496
No, I don't work for Marantz, but I have owned some of their products for quite a while. Great stuff!
HTTP only, and it should move pretty quick for everyone. Enjoy.
Interesting... Where do you get your figures from? Sun has had some pretty good sales this year, and they don't seem to be hurting at all.
Sparc hardware is great hardware. I know, I've used it, and serviced it. Very stable, very dependable.
IA64 is not going to give Sparc much of a fight. Just look at Intel scrambling to get SOMETHING out the door in time! AMD beat Intel to the gigahertz mark, and they're on track to having their 64-bit processor in production before Intel as well.
Sun does have a clone market, don't forget. You can get cheap Sun machines... You can even get a dual-proc Sun motherboard that is ATX form factor, and stick it in a PC case. Sun parts are becoming more and more affordable, and one can now purchase an entry level system for under $3000.
Like I stated before, Sun has had some really good sales this year, and it looks like they'll continue on this route for some time. They've got good hardware, good support, and Solaris 8 is a pretty nice OS.
My personal opinion about RedHat dropping Sparc support is I could care less. RedHat is a terrible distro, IMHO. The only Linux distro I would ever care to run on Sparc is Slackware, but there's no port to Sparc, yet.
Someone didn't read the web site... It can sustain 7 kilowatts continuous usage. It peaks at higher kilowatt ratings for short periods of time.
I'll second your opinion... I've used Linux on a wide array of Sun hardware (IPC, IPX, LX, Sparc 5, Ultra 1, Ultra 1 Creator series) with as little as 12 Megs of RAM up to 128Megs of RAM. For non-Ultra hardware, Linux on Sun is the only way to go for performance. However, the Ultra series machines seem to do just as well running Solaris 8 as Linux, and I've had a couple Ultras not behave properly running Linux.
At any rate, Linux is nice to have as an option for those of us who don't like to use/admin Solaris.
What fluids would I have to routinely check on an all electric car? The motor would probably have lifetime bearings, and the transaxle MIGHT need to be checked every 50,000 miles or so.
Brakes? Most electric cars have regen braking, so whatever brakes are on the car won't be subjected to the full inertia of the car... The car will be absorbing some of the inertia through the regen braking. Pads and rotors will probably last a lot longer on these cars, if not the life of the car.
Seriously... EVs will be easier to maintain. Might cost more in some cases (battery replacement every xx,xxx miles), but the routine maintenance will definately be easy.
If I could afford it, yes.
Most electric vehicles to date have no transmission. Electric motors have the most torque at stall, and torque diminished exponentially with rotation speed. Though it does not diminish enough to require it to pull another gear. An operating range of 0 - 80 mph is good for a city car. (and it will hit the speed limit in rural areas.)
;-)
All electric cars will have to have some form of transmission, unless there is an electric motor located at each drive wheel. A single speed transaxle will still contain some form of differential system for maximum traction. The GM Impact has a 2-speed transaxle, and other electric vehicles might start using multispeed transaxles as well. The multi-speed transaxles help EVs with acceleration, as well as raise the vehicles top speed (no longer electric motor limited, now gear limited).
What about lights, radio, and HVAC? Turning off everything while in rush hour is not very conveinient for most people. That's why I'd like a [serial] hybrid car better. I don't (usually) worry about running out of gas when I sit at a long light or in traffic, I don't want to worry about taking 30 miles off my trip because I want to keep the lights on.
Everything you mentioned above still applies to cars of today. If you're low on gas, you'd better start looking for a gas station... If you're batteries are getting low, well... Go find an outlet!
People who are going to push the limits on the range of electric cars are no different from the people who run out of gas on the highways. If there's a major backup on the expressway, hang out at the office for a little while, wait for things to clear up. Either that, or take an alternate route home.
It would be nice if it was that simple. But just because you will not need oil changes and tune ups, does not mean all that much less work. Batteries don't last long, the lithium-ion battery in my laptop lasted less than two years, and I took care of it. NiCads are no better.
But it will have to be that simple in order for automakers to sell these cars. I don't think it will be that hard to build an electric car that is virtually maintenance free. The GM Impact (the one EV that I've done a lot of reading on) is already at that point... There's really nothing to check except the air in the tires and the battery status on the dash.
Again, the EV I'm most familiar with is the GM Impact, and its batteries are covered under a 3 year/36,000 mile warantee. That's not too bad.
Yes, battery technology needs to be improved. However, I feel that today's technology is sufficient for short ranged EVs.
In short pure electric is not a good idea. Electric traction is great. But what I would like to see is electric energy provided on board the car.. bateries charged by the sun, gas engine, or other more efficient source.
Electric cars ARE a good idea for those people who can use them to their full potential. I am one of those people. I have a very short commute to work, and rarely leave a 10 mile radius of home during normal days. I run a lot of errands for work and for my home business, otherwise I'd take the bus every where.
Yes, there are a lot of people who wouldn't be able to use an electric car because of the distances they drive, or other factors. That doesn't mean they aren't great solutions for those of us who can use them.
Hybrid cars (gas/diesel powered cars with electric assist) should fill the gap between fully electric and regular gas powered cars of today. 70MPG-90MPG is definately a big improvement over today's cars! I'll probably own a hybrid powered car, as soon as they're for sale in my state and reasonably affordable.
For more info on the GM Impact EV, take a look at http://www.gmev.com/
Eh? Mini-vans aren't SUVs... Ford Explorers, Dodge Durangos, Chevy Blazers, Jeeps and other vehicles like those are SUVs. Mini-vans are jacked up station wagons that get worse mileage than most station wagons, handle worse than station wagons, and in my opinion looks much worse than station wagons. Also, there are wagon style cars out there that are much less than a mini-van in cost. They're just not as "cool" for soccer mom's to drive.
I do own a '95 Chevy Blazer 4x4 LT, and it doesn't do too bad on mileage for what it is. I've gotten over 26MPG on the highway before, loaded up with luggage and three people. While it doesn't do bad on the highway, it really guzzles gas in town/city driving.
This is my wife's main vehicle... We bought it out of necessity (needed a new vehicle, also needed something for winter driving, and I needed some form of truck badly to haul computer equipment/car parts in all kinds of weather), and nothing else fit our budget that she wouldn't mind driving every day. It does go off road every once in a while for camping trips and other trail excursions, so no, we're not those idiots who bought a 4x4 that will never leave pavement!
I said ALMOST maintenance free...
Electric vehicles will have much simpler transmissions (if they even have one at all other than a one-speed transaxle), no belts, no fluids to check, etc. All you'll have to worry about is taking it in once or twice a year to have the batteries checked out. If anything does break, yes, one would probably have to take it to the dealer because the tools will be expensive to do your own work on these cars.
Electric vehicles WILL be easier to maintain, and will handle daily city communtes much better than the cars/trucks of today. Stop and go traffic will be less of a waste energy (no idling gas engine), and you don't have to worry about your electric car heating up the transmission/engine while stuck in rush hour.
Basically, all you have to do is keep air in the tires, and the batteries charged, and you'll be good to go in an electric car.