But the built in DOM and scripting choices are pretty bad. The server can do wonderful things but I never want to have to develop for Lotus Notes/Domino again (ever!).
But surely if your music is a professional thing the cost of a mac over a pc is practically nothing! I'm a pc guy myself but I'm starting to feel bad about condemning macs all those years ago... Must resist the temptation...
Of course it isn't too hard though when you are a hardware geek too. PC hardware is just too much fun to give up.
The PCI cards are always PCI to PCMCIA adapters. You can just pick up a nicely supported linux one off eBay that uses ISA and features two PCMCIA slots in an 3.5" drive slot for $24 + $8 shipping (or you could wait and bid on the other auctions but this guy is selling a couple hundred of them at that price buy it now so...). I'm waiting for mine to get here after failing to get the DWL-650 PCI to PCMCIA card to work (almost there, not quite). Here is the eBay link for more details:
I have nothinhg to do with that auction besides having brought two of them. I'm not 100% positive they have linux support but I'm pretty sure they do... I'll be finding out later this week when they arrive.
Downsides: ISA slot
Upsides: ISA slot, two PCMCIA slots in an easy to access form of a 3.5" drive face (think pcmciacompact flash adapter for digital cameras - cheap at $10), should work just fine with linux.
If anyone has any tips on the DWL-650 card please do share them! The/proc/pci information for the card is:
"CardBus bridge: Ricoh Co Ltd RL5c475 (rev 128)."
When I insert the Dell/Orinoco wireless adapter it shows up but the drivers don't seem to detect it in the PCI card..
Are you 100% positive they are 100% dead? A lot of people with the 75 GXP problem found they could get their data off by powering back up the drive. Some ran the IBM utility... Usually it went like this - 1) crash/lots of loud noises, 2) copy data off asap, 3) curse IBM.
Good point on the motherboard requiring registered memory. If I had to make this choice right now I'd keep my present systems (couple of Celeron 850 Mhz's and a 550 Mhz) and keep them loaded up with cheap SDRAM (as they are). Then in 3-6 months when there is a clear high speed ram winner I can upgrade without a paying a bundle... Of course if you happen to need a new system now this advice doesn't help very much.
The ServerWorks HE chipset is damn nice though... But for a desktop it does have a few bugs. If you're considering it for a desktop system it would be a good idea to do a little research on it (groups.google.com, etc).
I'm wondering which would be faster at Linux uses - the Tyan Thunder K7 listed with 2 Athlon 1200s, or a Tyan Thunder HLse-t S2688 with 2 Tulatin PentiumIII/1.26Ghz (512K cache)?
The double-banked SDRAM has a lower latency and otherwise the same speed as DDR. Plus, the S2688 would take twice as much RAM - 6GB instead of 3GB.
Plus, the SDRAM is a lot cheaper...
I'll assume the motherboards cost the same - here is a price comparision on the Athlons with DDR versus the P3 Tulatins with SDRAM:
512mb memory prices are from NewEgg.com as the pricewatch price for these will be low on the SDRAM side due to high density memory (that isn't supported in Intel chipset-based motherboards, don't know if they are in the motherboard you metion above). Of course if you just want the maximum amount of memory you could put SDRAM in the Athlon system but that would be sad... Unless you really need a couple GB of memory doing such a thing would be stupid.
Athlons:
2 x $82 for 1.2GHz 266 FSB (pricewatch)
? x $88 for 512mb PC2100 DDR Kingston (newegg)
P3 Talutin:
2 x $280 for 1.2GHz Talutin (pricewatch)
? x $50 for 512mb PC133 Kingston (newegg)
? x $142 for 1GB PC133 Kingston (pricewatch)
I think the choice is clear... The only downside to the AMD solution is that there aren't any hot deals on 512mb or 1 GB DDR RAM sticks. But even with the higher cost for the 512mb DDR RAM sticks the AMD solution is a clear winner. Plus you can even afford to upgrade the 1.2 GHz cpus to something better like the XP 1600's.
I read that Intel is pricing the Talutins high in order to keep them out of desktops - they want consumers to use the P4...
You'd do much better to buy either a P4 with RDRAM or an Athlon with DDR RAM. A P4 with SDRAM is truely an epic horrible waste. Just take a look at the articles on the Intel chipset that makes this possible and just how much the P4 is castrated by the low bandwidth of SDRAM.
Plus of course the executables are compressed so loading them off the disk to begin with is much faster. You probably already knew this but didn't think to say it as it is so obvious.
The two things that make MIT a good place to get an education are 1) the student culture and 2) the opportunity to do cutting edge research in an MIT research lab as and undergrad.
You missed 3) Using the connections you make to network jobs and/or funding for the rest of your life. And no I'm not an MIT student/alumni, just a slightly jealous onlooker. But I'm getting over it!
Check out the Preemptible Kernel patches...
on
Kernel 2.4.11 Released
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
The Preemptible Kernel patches can result in a desktop that reacts/feels faster... I'm running it here with 2.4.10 on an Inspiron 4000 laptop and I'd have to say I'm impressed - everything feels a bit zippier. The only problem I've had is that there seems to be some loop that it has optimized that blasts bits around the memory bus at high speeds with a rthymic pattern - in short if I'm in a really quiet room the high pitched busses are a bit noisy... Maybe my hearing is too good!
Anyway - doesn't look like much changed since pre-6 so the pre-6 patches should work but if you want to be sure you can wait until rml releases the 2.4.11 final patch. I'd recommend checking it out if you have the time...
A 10mbps connection at our end is great, but there is always the bottleneck at the other side.
See the lower part of the page where it says:
We have a really lovely ISP in our city Umeå. They are called Norrnod and they have an excellent concept - they have a large DMZ (click on it to see a schematic of the entire DMZ with speeds between parts of it and all!) to which lots of companies connect and all traffic within the DMZ is absolutely for free and of extremely high speed - 100 Mbps to 10 Gbps!
So this system sounds like it has quite a few benefits in the local area. With the cost it doesn't seem silly at all compared to wimping out and having everyone order dsl/cable:). $10/month for cable + inet with a $2000+ startup cost isn't too bad! Hopefully their network connection out of the DMZ to the net isn't still priced as high as it is in the article... Bet they exceed their daily 1G bandwidth agreement today!
Please don't use the word "dumbed down" again. To put it in a phrase you might understand: Blaming users for software bugs is l4m3
I think it is pretty obvious in my post that I used dumbed down simply to illustrate the point. In my example the dumbed down software is a delight to use and I would myself like to use it. I don't consider myself dumb. Where did I talk about bugs?
First of all, apt kicks windows update any day of the week.
Well doesn't that just depend on what your criteria is? I too believe apt is obviously superior technically but in terms of ease of use for someone not wanting to spend more than a couple mouse clicks to update it isn't there yet... It could be done very simply but it hasn't been. And if you want to advocate that these users can simply use debian stable I'm sorry - that just illustrates my point. The desktop just isn't ready yet... Maybe one day we'll have debian-stable, debian-desktop, debian-testing, and debian-unstable.
If your software has user interface bugs that inexperienced or less determined users are not willing to put up with, that's not something to be proud of.
An what the hell does this have to do with anything I posted?
Secondly, "dumbed down" is a word only l337 kids use. They think that because something is easy it is less powerful. This is simply untrue. Good software is both powerful and a delight to use.
I really doubt "dumbed down" is only a term "l337" kids use. It's a common term that means simplified. In some people's minds it has negative connotatations - not in mine. In short from m-w.com "dumbed down":
to lower the level of difficulty and the intellectual content of (as a textbook)
And isn't that exactly what we are talking about? The way I used the term obviously has nothing to do with intellect - only difficulty. If you can't see that I can't help you:).
...who repairs jukeboxes. Do you live in the Washington, D.C. area?
You might be kidding around but if not - the Archos Jukebox 6000 is one of those MP3 jukeboxes - not the old record kind. It is quite a bit different from a real jukebox! Althought that might not be a problem for your friend.
In regards to the desktop... well, I'm not sure exactly what you are asking. Both Linux and FreeBSD are in the same boat there... the only way to drive desktop acceptance is to ship machines pre-installed with the OS (whatever OS) and preconfigured with a desktop so when you turn the thing on, you are ready to rock. The only way to do that is for the PC vendors to pre-install Linux (or FreeBSD, or whatever).
I think this is bunk. As he pointed out earlier open source software is a poor candidate for commericial support. I think it is a poor candidate for pre-installation too. No self respecting sysadmin would want Dell to preload Linux or FreeBSD for their companies desktops (or servers). It is a far easier to support systems that are configured in the same manner and style and each sysadmin has their own preferences which become company policy. If we are talking about pre-installed systems for the home market than ok - it would be a selling point. But I think the market for such a system would be so low as to make it not worth the cost to a large company like Dell.
None of the open source operating systems are ready for the average home users desktop. The desktop environments need to be stable and established. The system update procedures as simple as Windows Update (apt is very close but not enough). There are too many rough edges right now for the average user. Compare the rate of change in the Windows desktop to that of KDE or Gnome. KDE and Gnome have to change because we demand and expect the same ease of use that the Windows desktop environment provides but in the same vain they won't be useful for the average user until they stabilize.
Can you imagine dumbed down debian with a graphical installer and a graphical web-based update like windows update? Instead of seeing all the package details we would only see the meta packages that hold all the updates for a particular component like KDE or X11 or the base system. A simple click and the download and upgrade begins... I'm sure some of us would be horrified by the idea of dumbing it all down so much but I think it will be neccessary - and I wouldn't mind running such a system as my stable desktop while running something a bit hairier on my development system.
33% seems a lot for such a relatively small change... they must be purely reliant on CPU.
Well they are overclocking it by changing the front side bus. So the data bus speed is improved quite a bit. I have numerous Celerons (couple of 366 Mhz @ 550 Mhz, two 566 Mhz @ 850 Mhz) that have a 66 Mhz front side bus overlocked to run at 100 Mhz front side bus. The performance is very close to the equivalent P3 - maybe a 100 - 150 Mhz less power. Just raising the front side bus has a huge affect on everything... Of course these days I'd just buy a Duron or Athlon - much better bang per $.
I only play FPS games with a GeForce 2 GTS... upgrading my motherboard to 266 FSB and 266 DDR ram did more tham my upgrade from an 700 Athlon to 1.4 GHz Athlon.
Doh! Then you already know what I'm talking about above. DDR ram is a huge improvement alone...
But then I'm a bit out of touch with the latest in Apple tech.
Me too... I'd love to have an inexpensive G3/G4 desktop that could run OS X. Perhaps I'll have to settle by finding someone else who has one so I can just drool over it a bit:).
Mostly the big bottleneck on iBooks would be bus, memory and HD throughput, since it's primary use is still MM playback. And most games rely more and more on the GFX card's processing power.
Did you read the article? Frame rates when up 33% in some games! Sounds like a nice hack for those not planning on upgrading any time soon. The best would be soldering on a little module that let you flip a switch or two to go from 350 Mhz to 600 Mhz (and between).
So can I easily patch in a home button on the main toolbar as god truely wishes it to be? The removal of the home button from the main toolbar was a horrible thing...
They just loose hope, fire up Windows and load PowerPoint to start a job presentation, and then get a deadly macro virus that kills their hard disk with the dreaded click of death hex code patch...
Seriously - whenever there is a problem just look to Microsoft for the cause.
[note: for the human impaired this is a joke, of course it may or may not be funny]
I heard someone on NPR make the good poitn that that probably won't really last that long. Come on, this is the US we're talking about. They'll use Uzbekistan for whatever they damn well please.
To me it is obvious that Uzbekistan would make it clear that they agreed to only allowing humanitarian uses of the base but when push comes to shove the US might need to use it for other purposes. Then Uzbekistan can say they didn't authorize or agree with the non-humanitarian missions and the US will get all the blame. Perfect! Everybody is happy. Isn't it obvious that is how it works? Uzbekistan just doesn't want to get into hot water by looking too US friendly.
Yeah, they probably are still junk! As I haven't had the chance to use a Lucent (LT) WinModem under linux for long term I'd be sure to check other peoples experiences. But it sounds like you have it taken care of with the USR/3Com modem. Personally I too would lean towards getting a hardware based modem just because it makes me more comfortable. I just wanted to point out that some winmodems do work under linux now. But I got a little too over enthusiastic it would appear:). Regards.
I second that. I submitted a request against the package wnpp a while back but still haven't heard anything. Why can't it be released as part of Debian?
Apparently OpenOffice relies on jdk > 1.1 (or whatever can be freely redistributed in binary form) for some functionality. See an old thread here. I hope we get something soon...
So you recommend a drive known to have high failure rates to your friends? Some friend you are! I too have a 75GXP (45gb) without problems but come to some sense! No reason to tempt fate.
I recommend Quantum to my enemies!
Well I'd rather be your friend than your enemy. Quantum drives are pretty damn good these days (least the IDE ones are, no experience with the SCSI). Do you have some proof otherwise besides the failing tiny drives of yore?
I've had real good luck with Maxtor, too, but the last "Maxtor" I bought turned out to be a Quantum!
This is starting to get off topic but a quick note - the Maxtor boxes that have Quantum drives in them are smaller than the boxes that have real Maxtor drives in them. Unfortunately most places probably won't have some of each but it's worth a look...
The CPU usage is interesting - it would be nice to have a SCSI RAID board to do a comparision... I definately agree that SCSI has some advantages.
Hopefully I can grab a four port board and use RAID 5 or something else that is a bit more sexy than just plain mirroring. In the meantime though StorageReview.com has some good tests on numerous RAID products (and a drive comparision database).
Slashdot Mirror
But the built in DOM and scripting choices are pretty bad. The server can do wonderful things but I never want to have to develop for Lotus Notes/Domino again (ever!).
But surely if your music is a professional thing the cost of a mac over a pc is practically nothing! I'm a pc guy myself but I'm starting to feel bad about condemning macs all those years ago... Must resist the temptation...
Of course it isn't too hard though when you are a hardware geek too. PC hardware is just too much fun to give up.
The PCI cards are always PCI to PCMCIA adapters. You can just pick up a nicely supported linux one off eBay that uses ISA and features two PCMCIA slots in an 3.5" drive slot for $24 + $8 shipping (or you could wait and bid on the other auctions but this guy is selling a couple hundred of them at that price buy it now so...). I'm waiting for mine to get here after failing to get the DWL-650 PCI to PCMCIA card to work (almost there, not quite). Here is the eBay link for more details:
/proc/pci information for the card is:
here
I have nothinhg to do with that auction besides having brought two of them. I'm not 100% positive they have linux support but I'm pretty sure they do... I'll be finding out later this week when they arrive.
Downsides: ISA slot
Upsides: ISA slot, two PCMCIA slots in an easy to access form of a 3.5" drive face (think pcmciacompact flash adapter for digital cameras - cheap at $10), should work just fine with linux.
If anyone has any tips on the DWL-650 card please do share them! The
"CardBus bridge: Ricoh Co Ltd RL5c475 (rev 128)."
When I insert the Dell/Orinoco wireless adapter it shows up but the drivers don't seem to detect it in the PCI card..
Are you 100% positive they are 100% dead? A lot of people with the 75 GXP problem found they could get their data off by powering back up the drive. Some ran the IBM utility... Usually it went like this - 1) crash/lots of loud noises, 2) copy data off asap, 3) curse IBM.
Good point on the motherboard requiring registered memory. If I had to make this choice right now I'd keep my present systems (couple of Celeron 850 Mhz's and a 550 Mhz) and keep them loaded up with cheap SDRAM (as they are). Then in 3-6 months when there is a clear high speed ram winner I can upgrade without a paying a bundle... Of course if you happen to need a new system now this advice doesn't help very much.
The ServerWorks HE chipset is damn nice though... But for a desktop it does have a few bugs. If you're considering it for a desktop system it would be a good idea to do a little research on it (groups.google.com, etc).
I'm wondering which would be faster at Linux uses - the Tyan Thunder K7 listed with 2 Athlon 1200s, or a Tyan Thunder HLse-t S2688 with 2 Tulatin PentiumIII/1.26Ghz (512K cache)?
The double-banked SDRAM has a lower latency and otherwise the same speed as DDR. Plus, the S2688 would take twice as much RAM - 6GB instead of 3GB.
Plus, the SDRAM is a lot cheaper...
I'll assume the motherboards cost the same - here is a price comparision on the Athlons with DDR versus the P3 Tulatins with SDRAM:
512mb memory prices are from NewEgg.com as the pricewatch price for these will be low on the SDRAM side due to high density memory (that isn't supported in Intel chipset-based motherboards, don't know if they are in the motherboard you metion above). Of course if you just want the maximum amount of memory you could put SDRAM in the Athlon system but that would be sad... Unless you really need a couple GB of memory doing such a thing would be stupid.
Athlons:
2 x $82 for 1.2GHz 266 FSB (pricewatch)
? x $88 for 512mb PC2100 DDR Kingston (newegg)
P3 Talutin:
2 x $280 for 1.2GHz Talutin (pricewatch)
? x $50 for 512mb PC133 Kingston (newegg)
? x $142 for 1GB PC133 Kingston (pricewatch)
I think the choice is clear... The only downside to the AMD solution is that there aren't any hot deals on 512mb or 1 GB DDR RAM sticks. But even with the higher cost for the 512mb DDR RAM sticks the AMD solution is a clear winner. Plus you can even afford to upgrade the 1.2 GHz cpus to something better like the XP 1600's.
I read that Intel is pricing the Talutins high in order to keep them out of desktops - they want consumers to use the P4...
You'd do much better to buy either a P4 with RDRAM or an Athlon with DDR RAM. A P4 with SDRAM is truely an epic horrible waste. Just take a look at the articles on the Intel chipset that makes this possible and just how much the P4 is castrated by the low bandwidth of SDRAM.
Plus of course the executables are compressed so loading them off the disk to begin with is much faster. You probably already knew this but didn't think to say it as it is so obvious.
The two things that make MIT a good place to get an education are 1) the student culture and 2) the opportunity to do cutting edge research in an MIT research lab as and undergrad.
You missed 3) Using the connections you make to network jobs and/or funding for the rest of your life. And no I'm not an MIT student/alumni, just a slightly jealous onlooker. But I'm getting over it!
The Preemptible Kernel patches can result in a desktop that reacts/feels faster... I'm running it here with 2.4.10 on an Inspiron 4000 laptop and I'd have to say I'm impressed - everything feels a bit zippier. The only problem I've had is that there seems to be some loop that it has optimized that blasts bits around the memory bus at high speeds with a rthymic pattern - in short if I'm in a really quiet room the high pitched busses are a bit noisy... Maybe my hearing is too good!
Anyway - doesn't look like much changed since pre-6 so the pre-6 patches should work but if you want to be sure you can wait until rml releases the 2.4.11 final patch. I'd recommend checking it out if you have the time...
A 10mbps connection at our end is great, but there is always the bottleneck at the other side.
:). $10/month for cable + inet with a $2000+ startup cost isn't too bad! Hopefully their network connection out of the DMZ to the net isn't still priced as high as it is in the article... Bet they exceed their daily 1G bandwidth agreement today!
See the lower part of the page where it says:
We have a really lovely ISP in our city Umeå. They are called Norrnod and they have an excellent concept - they have a large DMZ (click on it to see a schematic of the entire DMZ with speeds between parts of it and all!) to which lots of companies connect and all traffic within the DMZ is absolutely for free and of extremely high speed - 100 Mbps to 10 Gbps!
So this system sounds like it has quite a few benefits in the local area. With the cost it doesn't seem silly at all compared to wimping out and having everyone order dsl/cable
Please don't use the word "dumbed down" again. To put it in a phrase you might understand: Blaming users for software bugs is l4m3
:).
I think it is pretty obvious in my post that I used dumbed down simply to illustrate the point. In my example the dumbed down software is a delight to use and I would myself like to use it. I don't consider myself dumb. Where did I talk about bugs?
First of all, apt kicks windows update any day of the week.
Well doesn't that just depend on what your criteria is? I too believe apt is obviously superior technically but in terms of ease of use for someone not wanting to spend more than a couple mouse clicks to update it isn't there yet... It could be done very simply but it hasn't been. And if you want to advocate that these users can simply use debian stable I'm sorry - that just illustrates my point. The desktop just isn't ready yet... Maybe one day we'll have debian-stable, debian-desktop, debian-testing, and debian-unstable.
If your software has user interface bugs that inexperienced or less determined users are not willing to put up with, that's not something to be proud of.
An what the hell does this have to do with anything I posted?
Secondly, "dumbed down" is a word only l337 kids use. They think that because something is easy it is less powerful. This is simply untrue. Good software is both powerful and a delight to use.
I really doubt "dumbed down" is only a term "l337" kids use. It's a common term that means simplified. In some people's minds it has negative connotatations - not in mine. In short from m-w.com "dumbed down":
to lower the level of difficulty and the intellectual content of (as a textbook)
And isn't that exactly what we are talking about? The way I used the term obviously has nothing to do with intellect - only difficulty. If you can't see that I can't help you
...who repairs jukeboxes. Do you live in the Washington, D.C. area?
You might be kidding around but if not - the Archos Jukebox 6000 is one of those MP3 jukeboxes - not the old record kind. It is quite a bit different from a real jukebox! Althought that might not be a problem for your friend.
In regards to the desktop... well, I'm not sure exactly what you are asking. Both Linux and FreeBSD are in the same boat there... the only way to drive desktop acceptance is to ship machines pre-installed with the OS (whatever OS) and preconfigured with a desktop so when you turn the thing on, you are ready to rock. The only way to do that is for the PC vendors to pre-install Linux (or FreeBSD, or whatever).
I think this is bunk. As he pointed out earlier open source software is a poor candidate for commericial support. I think it is a poor candidate for pre-installation too. No self respecting sysadmin would want Dell to preload Linux or FreeBSD for their companies desktops (or servers). It is a far easier to support systems that are configured in the same manner and style and each sysadmin has their own preferences which become company policy. If we are talking about pre-installed systems for the home market than ok - it would be a selling point. But I think the market for such a system would be so low as to make it not worth the cost to a large company like Dell.
None of the open source operating systems are ready for the average home users desktop. The desktop environments need to be stable and established. The system update procedures as simple as Windows Update (apt is very close but not enough). There are too many rough edges right now for the average user. Compare the rate of change in the Windows desktop to that of KDE or Gnome. KDE and Gnome have to change because we demand and expect the same ease of use that the Windows desktop environment provides but in the same vain they won't be useful for the average user until they stabilize.
Can you imagine dumbed down debian with a graphical installer and a graphical web-based update like windows update? Instead of seeing all the package details we would only see the meta packages that hold all the updates for a particular component like KDE or X11 or the base system. A simple click and the download and upgrade begins... I'm sure some of us would be horrified by the idea of dumbing it all down so much but I think it will be neccessary - and I wouldn't mind running such a system as my stable desktop while running something a bit hairier on my development system.
33% seems a lot for such a relatively small change... they must be purely reliant on CPU.
:).
Well they are overclocking it by changing the front side bus. So the data bus speed is improved quite a bit. I have numerous Celerons (couple of 366 Mhz @ 550 Mhz, two 566 Mhz @ 850 Mhz) that have a 66 Mhz front side bus overlocked to run at 100 Mhz front side bus. The performance is very close to the equivalent P3 - maybe a 100 - 150 Mhz less power. Just raising the front side bus has a huge affect on everything... Of course these days I'd just buy a Duron or Athlon - much better bang per $.
I only play FPS games with a GeForce 2 GTS... upgrading my motherboard to 266 FSB and 266 DDR ram did more tham my upgrade from an 700 Athlon to 1.4 GHz Athlon.
Doh! Then you already know what I'm talking about above. DDR ram is a huge improvement alone...
But then I'm a bit out of touch with the latest in Apple tech.
Me too... I'd love to have an inexpensive G3/G4 desktop that could run OS X. Perhaps I'll have to settle by finding someone else who has one so I can just drool over it a bit
Mostly the big bottleneck on iBooks would be bus, memory and HD throughput, since it's primary use is still MM playback. And most games rely more and more on the GFX card's processing power.
Did you read the article? Frame rates when up 33% in some games! Sounds like a nice hack for those not planning on upgrading any time soon. The best would be soldering on a little module that let you flip a switch or two to go from 350 Mhz to 600 Mhz (and between).
So can I easily patch in a home button on the main toolbar as god truely wishes it to be? The removal of the home button from the main toolbar was a horrible thing...
They just loose hope, fire up Windows and load PowerPoint to start a job presentation, and then get a deadly macro virus that kills their hard disk with the dreaded click of death hex code patch...
Seriously - whenever there is a problem just look to Microsoft for the cause.
[note: for the human impaired this is a joke, of course it may or may not be funny]
It isn't only the Taliban that Uzbekistan would be concerned with...
I heard someone on NPR make the good poitn that that probably won't really last that long. Come on, this is the US we're talking about. They'll use Uzbekistan for whatever they damn well please.
To me it is obvious that Uzbekistan would make it clear that they agreed to only allowing humanitarian uses of the base but when push comes to shove the US might need to use it for other purposes. Then Uzbekistan can say they didn't authorize or agree with the non-humanitarian missions and the US will get all the blame. Perfect! Everybody is happy. Isn't it obvious that is how it works? Uzbekistan just doesn't want to get into hot water by looking too US friendly.
Yeah, they probably are still junk! As I haven't had the chance to use a Lucent (LT) WinModem under linux for long term I'd be sure to check other peoples experiences. But it sounds like you have it taken care of with the USR/3Com modem. Personally I too would lean towards getting a hardware based modem just because it makes me more comfortable. I just wanted to point out that some winmodems do work under linux now. But I got a little too over enthusiastic it would appear :). Regards.
I second that. I submitted a request against the package wnpp a while back but still haven't heard anything. Why can't it be released as part of Debian?
Apparently OpenOffice relies on jdk > 1.1 (or whatever can be freely redistributed in binary form) for some functionality. See an old thread here. I hope we get something soon...
So you recommend a drive known to have high failure rates to your friends? Some friend you are! I too have a 75GXP (45gb) without problems but come to some sense! No reason to tempt fate.
I recommend Quantum to my enemies!
Well I'd rather be your friend than your enemy. Quantum drives are pretty damn good these days (least the IDE ones are, no experience with the SCSI). Do you have some proof otherwise besides the failing tiny drives of yore?
I've had real good luck with Maxtor, too, but the last "Maxtor" I bought turned out to be a Quantum!
This is starting to get off topic but a quick note - the Maxtor boxes that have Quantum drives in them are smaller than the boxes that have real Maxtor drives in them. Unfortunately most places probably won't have some of each but it's worth a look...
Unfortunately I don't have any good benchmarks but I do have some for a 3ware IDE RAID 1 (mirror) from a year or so ago here:
3ware ide raid
The CPU usage is interesting - it would be nice to have a SCSI RAID board to do a comparision... I definately agree that SCSI has some advantages.
Hopefully I can grab a four port board and use RAID 5 or something else that is a bit more sexy than just plain mirroring. In the meantime though StorageReview.com has some good tests on numerous RAID products (and a drive comparision database).