I am tryign to build a completely silent x86 based PC for running linux which will be a network server / adsl nat box / mp3 store with sound output. It must be silent to sit in my bedroom next to my stereo
The via eden is perfect for this 600Mhz passive cooled version, however I am having trouble finding a fanless powersupply, fanless cube style case, and a suppler for these in the UK that accepts credit cards.
Anyone know of a supplier? I can only find one that wants checks or noChex before delivery and I don't want this, I wan't to use my creditcard with it's on-line fraud protection and warantie gaurenties etc.
PS For all you spelling zelots out there, I know I can't spell and I don't care - get over it
It really does.. I play a LOT of fps games. I am a great fan of the delta force series of games, although their on-line play sucks. I really like operation flashpoint etc. but the realism goes a little bit too far and makes them frequently un-playable / too frustrating... Counterstrike is great but if you make a mistake and get killed in the first 30 seconds of a round it can get a bit tedious.
Battlefield 1942 is incredible, you have the die and re-spawn of quake et al. with some believeable real world physics (if you blow up a jeep while it's moving you can watch the arc of the jeep as it flies through the air and bounces), not acurate but fun and not stupidly un-realistic.
The range of vehicles and the way they respawn is great being able to pilot an aircraft carrier, then jump into a bomber, do a few bombing runs before bailing out, getting into a tank charging forward with another player operating the machine gun on top, then jump out crawl up a hill and snipe people, then use an AA gun to shoot down planes - fantastic fun! Add to this is ability to ride on a tank by jumping onto it.. or even ride an airplane wing and do some wing-walking, it is one very imersive and fun game.
To become an expert requires practice and good control, but anyone can pick up and play very quickly. I will definately be buying battlefield when it comes out. I've never really got on the with Unreal games, though I must admit they look pretty.
The mad people at totl.net have already done something along the same lines which was reported on slashdot a while ago (can't be bothered to find the reference). The idea is to make deleteing the whole website so easy that nobody will bother because it isn't a challenge;)
This Mail Scanner is very good and maintanied very regularly (just see the dates on the link listed). To quote the website: "Protecting over 1 billion e-mails every week, for over 40 million users". It is NOT a virus scanner itself, only a way of scanning mail using a virus scanner such as the one provided by Sophos.
I used to use the network that this mail scanner was attached to and it was very effective at providing pre-emptive detection as it looks for things such as extention masking etc.
I believe it has detected a few virus before the actual virus patterens were released:)
It also has quite an impressive list of sites using the software: here
People don't need over 100 Mbps.. Nice idea... in theory. However, don't forget that 100Mbps means each cable can run MAX 100 Mbps, ethernet however saturates at 60% so you can only get real transfer of about 60 Mbps
Now you say people don't need to run more than one video at a time.. maybe but 45 Mbps only leaves you 15 Mbps on that wire.. now if the video is comming from the central server and someone else say... plays a CD from the server in a different room in the house, tries to copy a file between two machines (which also have to traverse the same core cable) while watching the film... You've rapidly run out of bandwidth.
I say roll on Gigabit, for my needs I won't run out of that any time soon... however currently I often curse my slow 100 Mbps network because I can't transfer data around quick enough when watching video on my PC:(
We mean no ill harm to LucasArts, and it is well known that many people
(at least 50 to my knowledge, although I am sure there are many more) have
brought classic LEC games simply to play them using our software.
which clearly mentions that people purchase the original software to play using ScummVM. And...
ScummVM is a
valid clone of the SPU engine, designed to facitiate the playing of
LucasArts adventures on modern machines and operating systems.
Which I think also clearly states that ScummVM is a clone of SPU, and not the original engine, or any original game content.
Also their FAQ clearly states in section 2:
1. Do I need original CD or Floppy disks?
Most definitely. ScummVM won't work without them. If you would like to buy these games, we suggest you browse Ebay. Do not ask the ScummVM team where you can download the full versions of Lucas Arts games. These requests will be ignored.
What else should they have done? A little "research" into the site would quickly have shown that this is not an abandonware site.
Text books have lots of advantages
on
Linux Textbooks?
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· Score: 2
Why textbooks?
There are lots of reasons for wanting to have a pre-purchased textbook... here are a few that I can think of:
Because they are a tried and tested method of teaching and learning which does not require and computer skills to pickup and use.
A text book can be picked up and read without the need for any computer equipment (eg. on the bus)
Having a text book that the course is based on allows the faster students to read around the topic if they get bored
I don't know what length of course we are talking about but can you imagine the effort needed to write all the information for a year long course up front?
Text books are published and usually read by large numbers of people, this allows mistakes to be collected and corrected. This is very difficult to do on your own.
FAQ's are crap - I don't mean to flame but they are, they are only of use to people with a reasonable understanding of the subject area
Specifically in reply to your OpenOffice statement - what if you've never used a word processor? or a computer? In those circumstances a book can be very useful.
Having said all that you are correct in assuming that the instructor should design assignments and labs etc. but there are always core text books to refer back to and to look stuff up. A good textbook can become a core reference that can be relied apon to give the correct information, and is always there on your shelf. Unlike the web and howto's and FAQ's which can give the wrong answer, or just have disappeared over night.
Yes you should teach people to find out information on the web, and learn to read FAQ's but this is the wrong entry point for most beginners. Remember that people taking these kind of beginers courses could easily be the kind of people who cannot set the time on the VCR! You need to start with easy to use tools that people are used to, most people will have been taught from text books in the past and so will find it less intimidating if you provide them with a familiar method of learning.
I LOVE this game, I came across it a month or two ago while looking for 3d games that me and my house mates could play, even on low spec / linux machines. I wasn't convinced when I first loaded it up and had a tank which could jump and very simple graphics, but then we started playing.... I have to say this thing rocks, multi platform, network play, LOTs of players on line a once, serious good fun.
I do have one gripe though, some of the flags are REALLY anoying if playing with only a few people, homming missle being one of them. All the person needs to do is get on top of a high platform, and thats it, everyone is dead and stay that way until he decides to drop the flag.
Having said that a lot of the flags are great fun, narrow and wide still make me laugh:). I would like to see the ability to choose which flags are included in the game.. a nice options menu where you can change what's allowed - like the one worms had to allow you to customise the numbers of each type of weapon.
I was refreshed to find this came.. it has one major thing going for it - good gameplay, it just goes to show that you can still have fun without needed in GeForce 4 graphics card:)
I work in one of these "shared team areas", and I think they are great. Mine has a window and four of us work in one partitioned space in an open plan office. I really like it.
The area is big enough that each of us have rightangle desks with enough space to house probably 6 desktop boxes with 17 inch monitors (I have 3 and a laptop). We all sit with our backs to the center so there is no over looking yet you can easily just spin round on your chair to chat to someone. There are a couple of extra chairs so when people come round to discuss something they can have a seat.
The partions are high enough that you cannot see over them to the other areas when sitting in a chair, this is a good thing, you feel separated but still accessible to just stand up and grab the attention of someone in the next area along. The only problem is people with loud voices and speaker phones, but in general people don't use them too often.
One of the things I really like is the fact that there are offices that you can use if you need a private chat, they are small and can be used by anyone. Each one has enough room for maybe 4 people at a push sitting around a small table, they also have power and network sockets for your laptop, and a speaker phone. I think this is what saves the whole concept, if you need some privacy for whatever reason, or a conference call then you can have one without disturbing everyone. That coupled with nice coffee bars that you can escape to with sofa's can comfy chairs, and grounds you can go for a walk in means you don't feel trapped in some cube nightmare.
Managers have offices, but then you might go to them to discuss your personal problems / problems with co-workers so I think it is fair enough. Difficult to have those sort of discussions in open plan;)
I have worked in shared offices, and even had my own office, but to be honest I prefer my current open plan arrangement it suites my work very well, it's easy to chat with my friends, I have space around me rather than being shoved in a tiny office and I don't have to put up with the person I shared the office with's music taste;)
Now, I don't want people to take this too literaly, but to all intents and purposes, they are. I used to work as a university sysadmin for an electronics and computer science department. We had rules and reg's just like everyone else, and the usual catch-all's at the bottom.
As someone else pointed out - be nice! We don't get paid much, but in exchange for the poor salary we get extra priveldges, like two 30 mintues coffee breaks a day + 1.5 hour lunch break, flexi-time (read 11:00 starts), and not having too much stress.
If someone comes in and starts mouthing off and being nasty about stuff, of course we help.. we have to, but only so much, most of the things we do can happen MUCH slower if you got on our nerves! and some things won't happen at all. It is frankly one of the perks of the job, we can choose to be helpful or not. If you do something stuid but appologise you might get away with it, you do something stupid and mouth off about how you should be allowed to do it... well you might just find chunks of your account own'd by root, with a boyband picture on your background that you can't change!
The reason people do this job is for the love of technology trying to help people and the perks, we can and will hit back if pushed, and we look after the backups... you would be surprised how many days it can take to get a backup restored if you pissed of the sysadmins last week:)
IIRC hdparm is usually not needed for 2.4 serial kernels as dma detection etc. is built into the ide drivers.
I know that the last view redhat 7.2 installs I have done on relatively modern hardware, and an old PII as well, have picked up the correct dma and 32bit IO modes automagically
This might be useful:
hercules it is an open-source project to produce a 390 simulator for linux and other operating systems.. Seems to be up and working... now you can have your own virtual mainframe on your desktop:)
I for one would like the ability to do this. The "cheap" HP colour laser I used to have access to was several thousand pounds, and did indeed have 4 separate toner cartridges... however the colour laser still had several drawbacks:
Worse b&w print quality
"shiny" paper effect, presumable due to a higher fuser temperature
Slower than the dedicated b&w printer that was available - HP 8150 (even in b&w only mode)
Much smaller cartridges so they run out very quickly if doing lots of b&w prints
More expensive black toner than for the 8150
From my point of view an auto-splitter would have been great, print the bulk of a 100+ page report to the nice high quality HP 8150, and at the same time have the colour pages sent to the slow colour printer. This would have 2 advantages, nicer quality black print, and faster printout as the b&w part of the document doesn't have to "wait" for the colour pages to be processed.
Why not Survey the Readership about subs?
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Slashdot IRC Forum
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· Score: 4, Interesting
I've just been reading the IRC log, and I noticed a type of phrase which I have been taught to avoid uttering myself... "I think what users will want more personalized stuff. E.g. gold star based on what people ahve said me"
Some people out there might think.. what is wrong with that? Well, the answer is that this isn't reader research, or really asking the slashdot population in general what they really think. It's the same as someone without and UI design training saying.. "I know what users want, I don't need to get a UI expert in"...
I really think that slashdot ought to put together a proper web survey, not just a silly little poll and some stories where people post comments, a properly survey. Present the options, ask for peoples opinions, find out their views on ad's.. store and analyse the results. Then let make those results public so you have some facts to back up your arguments.
I like slashdot, and given the right subscription package I probably would subscribe, but please survey the readers, find out what would work the best, and present some real figures and reasons rather than the handwaving we've all had so far
If I'm going to pay to become part of a user forum, I want some say / influence over the way I pay / what I can pay for. A properly constructed survey will give you the information you need to make a decent informed choice about subscriptions, I think assuming you know what the readership want / like is a dangerous assumption to make, and if you get it wrong a large number of users will either not subscribe, or just walk away.
Definately, I use this both at work and at home, very good product.
The firewall allows you to configure rules based on applications, ports, local address, remote address, or any combination of the above. When you use a new product that tries to access the 'net you get a popup warning box which allows you to one-off block/allow or to configure a rule. Nortons "Live Update" allows you to stay easily up to date, and the firewall software automatically contains blocks for the most common trojan ports.
The firewall also allows you to have "privacy" controls to prevent your browser accepting / returning cookies and off-site information, along with add blocking, very nice.
The Anti-Virus seems pretty effective as well with the usualy quaranteen, dis-infect, delete options, and a nice auto-update facility.
Just get something plain and simple.. If your going to carry something palm like around with you why duplicate function on your watch?
I would suggest one thing though.. if you're in the UK get a wrist watch that syncs to the rugby time signal (I couldn't find a link), that way you know that your watch is right all the time - which to me is the most important thing, after all thats what a watch is for.
For the US it would appear that Junghans do something which sets the time automatically, and their watches look pretty nice too:) (although expensive)
I used to use VIC at work for simple "are you in" multicast office monitoring using webcams, we just turned the bandwidth and frame rate controls down low and put the cameras somewhere so you could see people where in but not what they were doing:)
It worked great for us, you can have several streams in view at once, then click on one for a larger picture. It is only a video tool, so needs to be used in conjunction with something else for audio needs.
The whole thing worked great with creative USB web cams and ran on windows and linux machines just fine. I expect a MacOS X port wouldn't be to hard, plus it uses the standard communication protocols so I should hook up with other packages just fine.
My brother is the real expert (eg. actually qualified in these things) but here's my best shot:
Sound card with audio in, soundblasters are ok - if you get a good one I know about 10 people with an SB live, some are great, some are noisy as hell. If you get a noisy one I suggest you take it back and get a swap - $40
Small mixer, something like a Sprit notepad is just fine for small applications, it has a few mic channels and a stereo in.. Ideal for small time recording - $200
A good general purpose microphone, I agree with a shure, probably a SM58 is a good starting point - $90
A mic cable, most of these will be pretty standard - $12
A mic stand, essential - $30
Audio samplign software, cool edit pro is very good, and you can try it shareware first - $400
Misc connection cables - $50
Total: $822
This should give you a good start.. however you will also need some decent speakers - monitor speakers not just your hi-fi ones - and an appropriate amp for them. You could start with your hi-fi stuff but you need to something better pretty soon. I don't know if you were looking for something more than this for $1000 but this would be a good starting point. All I can say is that this is an expensive game, but very fun;)
You could certainly do this with a Matrox G450 dual-head. I did this acidently while trying to setup and dual head linux box to use xinerama:). IIRC the only thing needed was to not specifiy xinerama.
The upshot was I got a machine which proceeded to load up two separate desktops with their own task bars - which you could not drag applications / windows between.
The problem with this was that xdm only ran on one display and on login you got both desktops at once. However, both monitors were acting as an independant display so this kind of thing must possible, maybe just some xdm config tweaking to get this right.
Get a pansonic toughbook, these things rock! If you want a laptop that can reliably survive being dropped, kicked, and generally bashed around then these things are hard to beat;)
The "demonstration" model was brought in and the salesman just gets it out of the bag and throws in onto the desk as you might a normal book, then he picks it up by the narrow end and hits the desk with it. The laptop still powered up and worked fine with no damage or screen problems.
I wish I could afford one - they are expensive, but if you are prone to droping things, it might save you money in the long run.
" I think we need a law that forces companies to have a large checkbox in their sign-up forms saying "I don't mind having my personal information sold to other companies". This should be un-checked by default. I'm sure some countries probably have this already. "
As you are from the UK, you might be interested in the things covered by the Data Protection Act (DPA). The DPA can be used in the UK to protect yourself from people misusing your personal information. A quick guide can be found here
Companies can be quized as to how they use the information and what information they hold on you. For as little as £10
In addition you have the right to sue the company for any loss resulting from faulty information they use, and you can have data removed / corrected as approriate (see here for details)
As passport is based in the US I'm doubt you have any rights covered by this act (although you might as they are providing the service in this country). However I think this is a step in the right direction, in the UK this covers most companies and data including credit ratings. This is a brilliant set forward and offers hope to all those people who are screwed because of faulty information, or just pissed off with companies sending them letters;)
For certain types "sensitive" of information a company will have to get your explicit permission before using your information eg. race, religion etc.
I am intending to write to the Information Commisioner to ask about Microsofts information gathering activities in this country and if they can be stopped / modified to ensure that they conform to the DPA. Maybe if enough people do this we can get a result for the UK.
I believe this is to do with UDMA spec's as to cable length an connectors etc. etc. I reciently had a lot of trouble with a UDMA100 Maxtor drive. They got back to me and informed me that UDMA wouldn't be gaurenteed to even run at UDMA100 (mode 5??) and even if the drive did detect at UDMA100 the performance would be much worse..
Having finally got my drive detecting as UDMA100 I can totally agree with the performance issues under Windows 2000 at any rate. My slave drive gets on average 30Mb/sec when runnning a transfer rate test on top of NTFS. My master drive gets on average 60Mb/sec on the same test.
If you read the installation instructions for all UDMA100 drivers (well all the ones I've seen;) ) they say to make sure the drive is attached to the black connector on the cable for best performance. I looks like UDMA100 just isn't designed to run both drives on the controller at high speed.
" They made a good try at it, and if they ever activate this eden project it would be nice to see if their's works."
I don't think you entirely understand, the eden project is a tourist attraction which is open now, people are visiting it and it is very popular. It is not designed to be a biosphere other than it is re-creating different environments from it's surroundings.
The idea is to introduce people to tropical and exotic plants which they might never see.. and to do so in the environmental conditions you would experience if you went to see them in the wild.
This isn't a closed system which is attempting to provide a demonstation of a viable enclosed habitat for the moon or other "hostile" environment. It really is a large green house in which each section is tailored to a different environment, with different soil, moisture, temperature etc.
It has been suggested the the construction techniques could be used to construct a biosphere type enclosure in space because of it's light weight construction techniques, which would make the materials easier to transport, but that was not it's primary intention.
The benefits come from shifting your information management away from the flat desk paradigm towards one we are used to using every day - a 3D world.
Most people know how to navigate a simulated 3D environment because of games such as quake etc. And because a 3D environment maps directly onto our day to day experience I think that it will be much easier to organise data. Just think of it was a virtual office, you have a room which contains printers, your desk with e-mail and word processing, the coffee bar where you go to chat with your friends etc. etc.
This would provide a use for the emerging 3D technologies such as 3D glasses, headsets etc. Eventually I am sure that someone will come up with a 3D "holographic" style display, at which point a simulated 3D on 2D environment could easily be converted and people would already be used to the interface.
I for one would find this wonderful. I love the idea of the ability to arrange my work in the same way I organise things in the real world. Roll on 3D, along with decent 3D display's:)
Slashdot Mirror
I am tryign to build a completely silent x86 based PC for running linux which will be a network server / adsl nat box / mp3 store with sound output. It must be silent to sit in my bedroom next to my stereo
The via eden is perfect for this 600Mhz passive cooled version, however I am having trouble finding a fanless powersupply, fanless cube style case, and a suppler for these in the UK that accepts credit cards.
Anyone know of a supplier? I can only find one that wants checks or noChex before delivery and I don't want this, I wan't to use my creditcard with it's on-line fraud protection and warantie gaurenties etc.
PS For all you spelling zelots out there, I know I can't spell and I don't care - get over it
It really does.. I play a LOT of fps games. I am a great fan of the delta force series of games, although their on-line play sucks. I really like operation flashpoint etc. but the realism goes a little bit too far and makes them frequently un-playable / too frustrating... Counterstrike is great but if you make a mistake and get killed in the first 30 seconds of a round it can get a bit tedious.
Battlefield 1942 is incredible, you have the die and re-spawn of quake et al. with some believeable real world physics (if you blow up a jeep while it's moving you can watch the arc of the jeep as it flies through the air and bounces), not acurate but fun and not stupidly un-realistic.
The range of vehicles and the way they respawn is great being able to pilot an aircraft carrier, then jump into a bomber, do a few bombing runs before bailing out, getting into a tank charging forward with another player operating the machine gun on top, then jump out crawl up a hill and snipe people, then use an AA gun to shoot down planes - fantastic fun! Add to this is ability to ride on a tank by jumping onto it.. or even ride an airplane wing and do some wing-walking, it is one very imersive and fun game.
To become an expert requires practice and good control, but anyone can pick up and play very quickly. I will definately be buying battlefield when it comes out. I've never really got on the with Unreal games, though I must admit they look pretty.
The mad people at totl.net have already done something along the same lines which was reported on slashdot a while ago (can't be bothered to find the reference). The idea is to make deleteing the whole website so easy that nobody will bother because it isn't a challenge ;)
You can find the whole thing here:
http://totl.net/HonourSystem/
This Mail Scanner is very good and maintanied very regularly (just see the dates on the link listed). To quote the website: "Protecting over 1 billion e-mails every week, for over 40 million users". It is NOT a virus scanner itself, only a way of scanning mail using a virus scanner such as the one provided by Sophos.
I used to use the network that this mail scanner was attached to and it was very effective at providing pre-emptive detection as it looks for things such as extention masking etc.
I believe it has detected a few virus before the actual virus patterens were released :)
It also has quite an impressive list of sites using the software: here
People don't need over 100 Mbps.. Nice idea... in theory. However, don't forget that 100Mbps means each cable can run MAX 100 Mbps, ethernet however saturates at 60% so you can only get real transfer of about 60 Mbps
Now you say people don't need to run more than one video at a time.. maybe but 45 Mbps only leaves you 15 Mbps on that wire.. now if the video is comming from the central server and someone else say... plays a CD from the server in a different room in the house, tries to copy a file between two machines (which also have to traverse the same core cable) while watching the film... You've rapidly run out of bandwidth.
I say roll on Gigabit, for my needs I won't run out of that any time soon... however currently I often curse my slow 100 Mbps network because I can't transfer data around quick enough when watching video on my PC :(
The reply to lucas arts states:
We mean no ill harm to LucasArts, and it is well known that many people (at least 50 to my knowledge, although I am sure there are many more) have brought classic LEC games simply to play them using our software.
which clearly mentions that people purchase the original software to play using ScummVM. And...
ScummVM is a valid clone of the SPU engine, designed to facitiate the playing of LucasArts adventures on modern machines and operating systems.
Which I think also clearly states that ScummVM is a clone of SPU, and not the original engine, or any original game content.
Also their FAQ clearly states in section 2:
1. Do I need original CD or Floppy disks?Most definitely. ScummVM won't work without them. If you would like to buy these games, we suggest you browse Ebay. Do not ask the ScummVM team where you can download the full versions of Lucas Arts games. These requests will be ignored.
What else should they have done? A little "research" into the site would quickly have shown that this is not an abandonware site.
Why textbooks?
There are lots of reasons for wanting to have a pre-purchased textbook... here are a few that I can think of:
Having said all that you are correct in assuming that the instructor should design assignments and labs etc. but there are always core text books to refer back to and to look stuff up. A good textbook can become a core reference that can be relied apon to give the correct information, and is always there on your shelf. Unlike the web and howto's and FAQ's which can give the wrong answer, or just have disappeared over night.
Yes you should teach people to find out information on the web, and learn to read FAQ's but this is the wrong entry point for most beginners. Remember that people taking these kind of beginers courses could easily be the kind of people who cannot set the time on the VCR! You need to start with easy to use tools that people are used to, most people will have been taught from text books in the past and so will find it less intimidating if you provide them with a familiar method of learning.
I LOVE this game, I came across it a month or two ago while looking for 3d games that me and my house mates could play, even on low spec / linux machines. I wasn't convinced when I first loaded it up and had a tank which could jump and very simple graphics, but then we started playing.... I have to say this thing rocks, multi platform, network play, LOTs of players on line a once, serious good fun.
I do have one gripe though, some of the flags are REALLY anoying if playing with only a few people, homming missle being one of them. All the person needs to do is get on top of a high platform, and thats it, everyone is dead and stay that way until he decides to drop the flag.
Having said that a lot of the flags are great fun, narrow and wide still make me laugh :). I would like to see the ability to choose which flags are included in the game.. a nice options menu where you can change what's allowed - like the one worms had to allow you to customise the numbers of each type of weapon.
I was refreshed to find this came.. it has one major thing going for it - good gameplay, it just goes to show that you can still have fun without needed in GeForce 4 graphics card :)
I work in one of these "shared team areas", and I think they are great. Mine has a window and four of us work in one partitioned space in an open plan office. I really like it.
The area is big enough that each of us have rightangle desks with enough space to house probably 6 desktop boxes with 17 inch monitors (I have 3 and a laptop). We all sit with our backs to the center so there is no over looking yet you can easily just spin round on your chair to chat to someone. There are a couple of extra chairs so when people come round to discuss something they can have a seat.
The partions are high enough that you cannot see over them to the other areas when sitting in a chair, this is a good thing, you feel separated but still accessible to just stand up and grab the attention of someone in the next area along. The only problem is people with loud voices and speaker phones, but in general people don't use them too often.
One of the things I really like is the fact that there are offices that you can use if you need a private chat, they are small and can be used by anyone. Each one has enough room for maybe 4 people at a push sitting around a small table, they also have power and network sockets for your laptop, and a speaker phone. I think this is what saves the whole concept, if you need some privacy for whatever reason, or a conference call then you can have one without disturbing everyone. That coupled with nice coffee bars that you can escape to with sofa's can comfy chairs, and grounds you can go for a walk in means you don't feel trapped in some cube nightmare.
Managers have offices, but then you might go to them to discuss your personal problems / problems with co-workers so I think it is fair enough. Difficult to have those sort of discussions in open plan ;)
I have worked in shared offices, and even had my own office, but to be honest I prefer my current open plan arrangement it suites my work very well, it's easy to chat with my friends, I have space around me rather than being shoved in a tiny office and I don't have to put up with the person I shared the office with's music taste ;)
Now, I don't want people to take this too literaly, but to all intents and purposes, they are. I used to work as a university sysadmin for an electronics and computer science department. We had rules and reg's just like everyone else, and the usual catch-all's at the bottom.
As someone else pointed out - be nice! We don't get paid much, but in exchange for the poor salary we get extra priveldges, like two 30 mintues coffee breaks a day + 1.5 hour lunch break, flexi-time (read 11:00 starts), and not having too much stress.
If someone comes in and starts mouthing off and being nasty about stuff, of course we help.. we have to, but only so much, most of the things we do can happen MUCH slower if you got on our nerves! and some things won't happen at all. It is frankly one of the perks of the job, we can choose to be helpful or not. If you do something stuid but appologise you might get away with it, you do something stupid and mouth off about how you should be allowed to do it... well you might just find chunks of your account own'd by root, with a boyband picture on your background that you can't change!
The reason people do this job is for the love of technology trying to help people and the perks, we can and will hit back if pushed, and we look after the backups... you would be surprised how many days it can take to get a backup restored if you pissed of the sysadmins last week :)
IIRC hdparm is usually not needed for 2.4 serial kernels as dma detection etc. is built into the ide drivers.
I know that the last view redhat 7.2 installs I have done on relatively modern hardware, and an old PII as well, have picked up the correct dma and 32bit IO modes automagically
This might be useful: hercules it is an open-source project to produce a 390 simulator for linux and other operating systems.. Seems to be up and working... now you can have your own virtual mainframe on your desktop :)
I for one would like the ability to do this. The "cheap" HP colour laser I used to have access to was several thousand pounds, and did indeed have 4 separate toner cartridges... however the colour laser still had several drawbacks:
From my point of view an auto-splitter would have been great, print the bulk of a 100+ page report to the nice high quality HP 8150, and at the same time have the colour pages sent to the slow colour printer. This would have 2 advantages, nicer quality black print, and faster printout as the b&w part of the document doesn't have to "wait" for the colour pages to be processed.
I've just been reading the IRC log, and I noticed a type of phrase which I have been taught to avoid uttering myself... "I think what users will want more personalized stuff. E.g. gold star based on what people ahve said me"
Some people out there might think.. what is wrong with that? Well, the answer is that this isn't reader research, or really asking the slashdot population in general what they really think. It's the same as someone without and UI design training saying.. "I know what users want, I don't need to get a UI expert in"...
I really think that slashdot ought to put together a proper web survey, not just a silly little poll and some stories where people post comments, a properly survey. Present the options, ask for peoples opinions, find out their views on ad's.. store and analyse the results. Then let make those results public so you have some facts to back up your arguments.
I like slashdot, and given the right subscription package I probably would subscribe, but please survey the readers, find out what would work the best, and present some real figures and reasons rather than the handwaving we've all had so far
If I'm going to pay to become part of a user forum, I want some say / influence over the way I pay / what I can pay for. A properly constructed survey will give you the information you need to make a decent informed choice about subscriptions, I think assuming you know what the readership want / like is a dangerous assumption to make, and if you get it wrong a large number of users will either not subscribe, or just walk away.
Definately, I use this both at work and at home, very good product.
The firewall allows you to configure rules based on applications, ports, local address, remote address, or any combination of the above. When you use a new product that tries to access the 'net you get a popup warning box which allows you to one-off block/allow or to configure a rule. Nortons "Live Update" allows you to stay easily up to date, and the firewall software automatically contains blocks for the most common trojan ports.
The firewall also allows you to have "privacy" controls to prevent your browser accepting / returning cookies and off-site information, along with add blocking, very nice.
The Anti-Virus seems pretty effective as well with the usualy quaranteen, dis-infect, delete options, and a nice auto-update facility.
You can find nortons page here
Just get something plain and simple.. If your going to carry something palm like around with you why duplicate function on your watch?
I would suggest one thing though.. if you're in the UK get a wrist watch that syncs to the rugby time signal (I couldn't find a link), that way you know that your watch is right all the time - which to me is the most important thing, after all thats what a watch is for.
For the US it would appear that Junghans do something which sets the time automatically, and their watches look pretty nice too :) (although expensive)
I used to use VIC at work for simple "are you in" multicast office monitoring using webcams, we just turned the bandwidth and frame rate controls down low and put the cameras somewhere so you could see people where in but not what they were doing :)
It worked great for us, you can have several streams in view at once, then click on one for a larger picture. It is only a video tool, so needs to be used in conjunction with something else for audio needs.
The whole thing worked great with creative USB web cams and ran on windows and linux machines just fine. I expect a MacOS X port wouldn't be to hard, plus it uses the standard communication protocols so I should hook up with other packages just fine.
I had a 40Mb hard disk that I ran with it's lid off for about 3 days before it crashed beyond use...
Then that became my door stop - just jam it in the hinge end of the door... ahh student days ;)
My brother is the real expert (eg. actually qualified in these things) but here's my best shot:
Total: $822
This should give you a good start.. however you will also need some decent speakers - monitor speakers not just your hi-fi ones - and an appropriate amp for them. You could start with your hi-fi stuff but you need to something better pretty soon. I don't know if you were looking for something more than this for $1000 but this would be a good starting point. All I can say is that this is an expensive game, but very fun ;)
You could certainly do this with a Matrox G450 dual-head. I did this acidently while trying to setup and dual head linux box to use xinerama :). IIRC the only thing needed was to not specifiy xinerama.
The upshot was I got a machine which proceeded to load up two separate desktops with their own task bars - which you could not drag applications / windows between.
The problem with this was that xdm only ran on one display and on login you got both desktops at once. However, both monitors were acting as an independant display so this kind of thing must possible, maybe just some xdm config tweaking to get this right.
Get a pansonic toughbook, these things rock! If you want a laptop that can reliably survive being dropped, kicked, and generally bashed around then these things are hard to beat ;)
The "demonstration" model was brought in and the salesman just gets it out of the bag and throws in onto the desk as you might a normal book, then he picks it up by the narrow end and hits the desk with it. The laptop still powered up and worked fine with no damage or screen problems.
I wish I could afford one - they are expensive, but if you are prone to droping things, it might save you money in the long run.
" I think we need a law that forces companies to have a large checkbox in their sign-up forms saying "I don't mind having my personal information sold to other companies". This should be un-checked by default. I'm sure some countries probably have this already. "
As you are from the UK, you might be interested in the things covered by the Data Protection Act (DPA). The DPA can be used in the UK to protect yourself from people misusing your personal information. A quick guide can be found here Companies can be quized as to how they use the information and what information they hold on you. For as little as £10
In addition you have the right to sue the company for any loss resulting from faulty information they use, and you can have data removed / corrected as approriate (see here for details)
As passport is based in the US I'm doubt you have any rights covered by this act (although you might as they are providing the service in this country). However I think this is a step in the right direction, in the UK this covers most companies and data including credit ratings. This is a brilliant set forward and offers hope to all those people who are screwed because of faulty information, or just pissed off with companies sending them letters ;)
For certain types "sensitive" of information a company will have to get your explicit permission before using your information eg. race, religion etc.
I am intending to write to the Information Commisioner to ask about Microsofts information gathering activities in this country and if they can be stopped / modified to ensure that they conform to the DPA. Maybe if enough people do this we can get a result for the UK.
I believe this is to do with UDMA spec's as to cable length an connectors etc. etc. I reciently had a lot of trouble with a UDMA100 Maxtor drive. They got back to me and informed me that UDMA wouldn't be gaurenteed to even run at UDMA100 (mode 5??) and even if the drive did detect at UDMA100 the performance would be much worse..
Having finally got my drive detecting as UDMA100 I can totally agree with the performance issues under Windows 2000 at any rate. My slave drive gets on average 30Mb/sec when runnning a transfer rate test on top of NTFS. My master drive gets on average 60Mb/sec on the same test.
If you read the installation instructions for all UDMA100 drivers (well all the ones I've seen ;) ) they say to make sure the drive is attached to the black connector on the cable for best performance. I looks like UDMA100 just isn't designed to run both drives on the controller at high speed.
" They made a good try at it, and if they ever activate this eden project it would be nice to see if their's works."
I don't think you entirely understand, the eden project is a tourist attraction which is open now, people are visiting it and it is very popular. It is not designed to be a biosphere other than it is re-creating different environments from it's surroundings.
The idea is to introduce people to tropical and exotic plants which they might never see.. and to do so in the environmental conditions you would experience if you went to see them in the wild.
This isn't a closed system which is attempting to provide a demonstation of a viable enclosed habitat for the moon or other "hostile" environment. It really is a large green house in which each section is tailored to a different environment, with different soil, moisture, temperature etc.
It has been suggested the the construction techniques could be used to construct a biosphere type enclosure in space because of it's light weight construction techniques, which would make the materials easier to transport, but that was not it's primary intention.
The benefits come from shifting your information management away from the flat desk paradigm towards one we are used to using every day - a 3D world.
Most people know how to navigate a simulated 3D environment because of games such as quake etc. And because a 3D environment maps directly onto our day to day experience I think that it will be much easier to organise data. Just think of it was a virtual office, you have a room which contains printers, your desk with e-mail and word processing, the coffee bar where you go to chat with your friends etc. etc.
This would provide a use for the emerging 3D technologies such as 3D glasses, headsets etc. Eventually I am sure that someone will come up with a 3D "holographic" style display, at which point a simulated 3D on 2D environment could easily be converted and people would already be used to the interface.
I for one would find this wonderful. I love the idea of the ability to arrange my work in the same way I organise things in the real world. Roll on 3D, along with decent 3D display's :)