Hmm, I take back the asterisk note. Someone mentioned a few posts down that starting with 2.4.19, the kernel does in fact extract into a directory with the version number.
I was stuck with 28.8 dialup internet access for the longest time, so I know how badly it sucks to *deserve* broadband (or even a decent 56k) but still feel like I'm stuck in the early '90s technology-wise.
Now that I have broadband, I will admit that I've been pretty much spoiled. In a few weeks however, I'm going to have to switch back to 28.8 due to a location, career, and (positive) marital status change. I'm hoping that reverting to a much slower means of internet connection won't be too much of a shock since I spent all those years at 28.8 prior.
See, with a slow net connection, one truly realizes the value of kernel patches. Larger patches can still take awhile to download, but not the nearly 24 hours that the entire linux kernel source would normally take.
But with broadband, where downloading an entire kernel can take less than 30 seconds, it's not even worth your time to download 3 to 4 (or more) version patches and then sit there trying to remember the exact command to patch the sources while hoping you didn't just screw yourself by patching the wrong tree* and/or applying the patches out of order, etc etc.
* Am I the only one who believes that making the kernel source extract into./linux rather than./linux-$major.$minor.$pl is just a stupid idea? So far I've not seen one good bit of evidence for why this is superior other than "it's always been done that way."
It's different with cars, because cars have a high potential to do physical injury to people and are thus expected to be built to a higher standard.
Actually, I would think it's different because Ford doesn't give their product away for free (as in beer) for the sheer love of manufacturing automobiles.
I have no particular reason that I should trust free software on my system not to start writing gigs of really bad slashdot haiku to/dev/hda, for example. That kind of thing is clearly listed in the disclaimer of most software whether free or not. I do, however, expect the '92 Mercury Topaz that I purchased from a Ford dealer not to go up in flames if I accidently tune to a christian rock station on the radio. Not so much because it's a safety issue, but because I didn't pay good money for the thing only to have the car fail in some unpredictable way.
When you buy something, one should always have the right to expect to get what he or she pays for. When something is given away for free, ditto.
The laws of several states in the United States require that the disclaimer of warranty and the limitation of liability be "prominent". Contract authors upcase those parts of a contract because they know that a judge will consider an all-uppercase paragraph "prominent".
I think I agree with the original post.
I personally use bold text to indicate prominence and readability.
BUT READING TWO OR THREE PARAGRAPHS OF NOTHING BUT BLINDING CAPITAL LETTERS MAKES ME WANT TO BURN MY RETINAS OUT WITH A SOLDERING IRON.
I was under the impression that CF cards are pretty much non-destructable so long as they aren't abused... they're 100% solid state, right? Even most hard disks, the top failing component of any PC has a 3 year warranty. (Though it is unfortunate that most fail just after that...)
I've been using my generic 32MB CF card to back up my TRGpro PDA and transfer files between home and work and it's worked flawlessly. Probably the thing I like most is that every OS in the world sees it as a regular IDE hard disk. Standards are great.
Yeah, I reckon someone should come up with dedicated boxes you can buy and link up to your tv.
As a matter of fact, I've been doing just this for the last few months. AND it'll run Linux, though the user won't even know it unless they plan to hack it. Right, now I'm planning on having the following features available:
* Play DVDs as well as any kind of movie that MPlayer supports from a CD, network, or local hard disk.
* Play audio CDs and MP3s from CD, network, or local hard disk.
* Play console games via emulation. Planned systems to emulate are any that are relatively bug-free, will do fullscreen in X and can be launched from the command line.
* Rip CDs, encode MP3s, and copy audio CDs on the fly.
Right now I'm in the midst of writing up the interface in Tcl/Tk (but without the traditional ugliess that's associated with Tk widgets). I'm also investigating hardware, which is by far the toughest part. For example, TV-out support for video cards in Linux is spotty at the very best. I'm leaning towards trying to find a cheap ATI Radeon card and hoping the GATOS software does what I need it to.
Right now, I'm planning on only doing just one for my enjoyment only. I *was* planning on selling these boxes as a kind of side-business until I heard that Microsoft is going to be making their own. I can't compete with Microsoft!:P I suspect most people who'd choose a Linux-based media box over the M$ one would rather build their own than buy one. One thing about mine is that it would have been relatively low-cost (in the area of $500-$700) in contrast to the MS box, which will be starting at $1200.
If anyone thinks they would probably purchase one of these at some point (at the cost of the hardware), or if you have any ideas or comments, drop me an email at [dincht at securenym dot net].
Junkbusters has an excellent anti-telemarketing script that I'm going to put into employ when I move back to my home state in a few weeks.
It's got some pretty cool stuff. Like, if they don't answer certain questions correctly (or at all), you can tell them that they are now open to a lawsuit. And be right.
(Seriously, I can think of about a dozen other things or companies that need boycotting more than "Movies on TV" and "Shell because they won't let you use the bathroom.")
What made me think of starting this thread was the fact that I had a marathon coding session yesterday. Much to my chagrin, I'm actually a fairly mediocre programmer. For instance, the session yesterday consisted of writing some fairly useless garbage for about 2/3 of the session. The final 1/3 was wonderful, though. Somewhere along the line, I became enlightened, rewrote the whole thing, and even managed to come out with exactly what I set out to do. It even seemed relatively clean. Maybe I'm just still in training.:)
Anyway, to get back on topic...
Everyone lies on questionaires, especially when it involves what they consider their professional abilities.
I myself had a good laugh when I read that their entire test was based on each participant answering a questionaire.
You just end up with a guy who says that sports figured and video game players get in the 'groove' and we already knew that.
That sounds quite right. I guess that's par for the course when you have the media conducting their own "objective experiments"...
programming zone?
on
Gaming Zone?
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· Score: 4, Interesting
Does anyone here ever *think* they achieve this Flow State while coding? I can definitely see the common ground between sports and video games... both require strong mental agility, the constant evaluation of possible strategies and split-second decisions and whatnot.
And, in light of that, I guess I answered my own question. Programming is more about careful thinking than quick thinking. But then if the key element to being in "The Zone" is concentration, the perhaps coding would apply. Definitely something for me to ponder sometime.
Oh yeah, and while I do agree with their thesis, that article (not to mention their hideous "cutting edge" methods) sounded just a bit hokey, don't you think?
Re:IT is but one of my many jobs.....
on
Sysadmin Day. Yay.
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· Score: 2
Hmm. Sounds like you have it pretty tough. I think the real problem is that your boss just plain doesn't know what your job is.
If I were in your place, I'll tell him, "Look. If you don't think I'm doing my job, I invite you to have someone else run the office for a day and you can tag along with me for a day to see everything that I have to put up with. Then you can decide if complaints about my work are valid."
Wouldn't even hurt too badly to simply keep a log of everything you do on a particular random day and show that to him when he contests your work habits.
Then again, it's entirely possible that everyone you work with is a complete idiot. I can appreciate that feeling, but probably not to the degree you do.
Exactly. I meant to imply that parts of technology developed as part of the Mozilla project are probably going to be integrated into AOL, but Mozilla, as the browser suite we know it, will not. Netscape 6.x is a far more likely candidate.
I understand that IE has a history of supporting shite HTML, but IE's support of W3C standards is rather good.
Um, don't forget that HTML is a W3C standard!:P
However, though my own tests, I've found that IE's standards compliance is lacking at best. The most particularly harmful oversight is the somewhat narrow subset of CSS2 that IE supports. I wish I could remember an example or two off the top of my head, but some of the neat things that CSS2 do to make web pages easy to maintain or look good don't seem to be supported in IE.
The second "misfeature" of IE, in my opinion, is lack of PNG alpha support. One can do some pretty ingenious stuff with HTML 4.0, CSS 2, and transparent/translucent PNG images.
I've said it before and I'll say it again, AOL will never bundle nor integrate Mozilla with their client.
However, there's a fairly good chance they might bundle or integrate Netscape 6.x, which is based on Mozilla but is not (as many here will attest to) Mozilla itself.
I'm not too surprised that the Gameboy Color was released almost on time... it wasn't even a new system, just a regular GameBoy with a color graphics chip tacked on.:P
Along with you, I'm probably one of the few who remember the SNES CD-ROM. Also I recall the SNES satellite service which was reportedly poised to "take over" the Sega Channel.:P But again that ended up being a Japan-only release and from what I hear it failed miserably even there. The only notable thing to ever come out of it were a couple of Squaresoft minigames, if I recall correctly.
Re:Hopefully, R3mix.net will pick this up
on
Ogg Vorbis 1.0
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· Score: 2
What is the recommendation for OGG to produce CD-Quality sound - regardless of bitrate?
My suggestion (and I'm sure I'll get flamed for it) is to simply not use lossy compression at all. Lossy compression can approach (for certain types of audio) but never attain CD-quality audio.
This is the conclusion I came up with a few months back when I did my own investigation into audio compression. I had some songs in WAV format that had been saved from a software analog synthesizer called ReBirth. These songs have an enormous amount of detail, in all parts of the spectrum, that got completely destroyed when using any lossy audio compression codec. The resulting files sounded dirty and just generally a lot less exciting than the original WAVs no matter what bitrate, frequency, or command-line flags I had set.
I also tried a few of the lossless compression programs out there. While they sounded fine (true to their design), the resulting file was typically only about 10% smaller than if I were to simply bzip2 the WAV. Far too large for archival purposes.
True, MP3 and OGG may be "good enough" for swapping pop tracks and streaming internet radio, but if you're looking for CD quality audio (and literally mean CD quality audio), your best bet is still a CD.
Wow, finally. Someone who shares my thoughts on this subject.:)
I forgot to mention it in my original post, but the following is my usual response whenever I get asked if I believe that "life" exists outside our own planet. (I might have originally heard it on a TV show or something a long time ago, but until then I'm claiming it as my own.:P )
No, I don't believe that humans will ever find life as we define it. There are probably much more interesting things out there than that.
Good points about Venus and Mars which orbit at the edges of the "life zone".
Why does there have to be a "life zone" (defined only as a certain range of distances from the sun... our sun) to begin with? I'm down right amazed how many "experts," "scientists," and just people in general always assume that if there is "life" out there elsewhere in the universe, then it must obviously:
be based on a cellular structure
consume oxygen or carbone dioxide or any other gas plentiful on Earth
have some type of technology similar to ours (or at least similar enough to receive and interpret the various "greeting signals" that have been sent out over the years)
originate from a planet; one that's not too hot nor not too cold
need an atmosphere
orbit a sun
This is the main reason I get ticked off when people (no matter how smart they claim to be or actually are) discuss the possibility of life elsewhere in the universe. There is still a great deal of debate over what exactly life is, which characteristcs or traits should be included in the definition, and which should be excluded.
And that's just life on this planet. An incredibly tiny sample of what the universe has to offer. Trying to deduce if life exists elsewhere in the universe by using our planet and its creatures as the baseline definition of "life" is like trying to deduce the overall structure of New York City by studying a single New Yorkian atom.
Not only is it egotistical, but it's just plain stupid to assume that if "life" is found by us humans, that it will definitely have to be within the same limits as the biology on our planet. It may be true that life on Earth could not survive on Pluto or Mars or Venus. But if life on this planet evolved into existance under some fairly unlikely circumstances, why couldn't it have happened on those other ones listed above as well? The idea of a "life zone" that you mention above is absurd only unless you're talking about the chance of Earth-based organisms surviving within it.
The tradition of original soundtracks has survived in the Final Fantasy Dynasty because players have come to expect each new FF to raise the bar for the rest of the industry's music.
Well, either that or Miyamoto cringed at the thought of an N'Sync Chocobo remix.
Slashdot Mirror
Hmm, I take back the asterisk note. Someone mentioned a few posts down that starting with 2.4.19, the kernel does in fact extract into a directory with the version number.
I was stuck with 28.8 dialup internet access for the longest time, so I know how badly it sucks to *deserve* broadband (or even a decent 56k) but still feel like I'm stuck in the early '90s technology-wise.
Now that I have broadband, I will admit that I've been pretty much spoiled. In a few weeks however, I'm going to have to switch back to 28.8 due to a location, career, and (positive) marital status change. I'm hoping that reverting to a much slower means of internet connection won't be too much of a shock since I spent all those years at 28.8 prior.
See, with a slow net connection, one truly realizes the value of kernel patches. Larger patches can still take awhile to download, but not the nearly 24 hours that the entire linux kernel source would normally take.
But with broadband, where downloading an entire kernel can take less than 30 seconds, it's not even worth your time to download 3 to 4 (or more) version patches and then sit there trying to remember the exact command to patch the sources while hoping you didn't just screw yourself by patching the wrong tree* and/or applying the patches out of order, etc etc.
* Am I the only one who believes that making the kernel source extract into
It's different with cars, because cars have a high potential to do physical injury to people and are thus expected to be built to a higher standard.
/dev/hda, for example. That kind of thing is clearly listed in the disclaimer of most software whether free or not. I do, however, expect the '92 Mercury Topaz that I purchased from a Ford dealer not to go up in flames if I accidently tune to a christian rock station on the radio. Not so much because it's a safety issue, but because I didn't pay good money for the thing only to have the car fail in some unpredictable way.
Actually, I would think it's different because Ford doesn't give their product away for free (as in beer) for the sheer love of manufacturing automobiles.
I have no particular reason that I should trust free software on my system not to start writing gigs of really bad slashdot haiku to
When you buy something, one should always have the right to expect to get what he or she pays
for. When something is given away for free, ditto.
The laws of several states in the United States require that the disclaimer of warranty and the limitation of liability be "prominent". Contract authors upcase those parts of a contract because they know that a judge will consider an all-uppercase paragraph "prominent".
I think I agree with the original post.
I personally use bold text to indicate prominence and readability.
BUT READING TWO OR THREE PARAGRAPHS OF NOTHING BUT BLINDING CAPITAL LETTERS MAKES ME WANT TO BURN MY RETINAS OUT WITH A SOLDERING IRON.
I was under the impression that CF cards are pretty much non-destructable so long as they aren't abused... they're 100% solid state, right? Even most hard disks, the top failing component of any PC has a 3 year warranty. (Though it is unfortunate that most fail just after that...)
I've been using my generic 32MB CF card to back up my TRGpro PDA and transfer files between home and work and it's worked flawlessly. Probably the thing I like most is that every OS in the world sees it as a regular IDE hard disk. Standards are great.
Forgot to mention that it'll have an LCD display occupying the 3 1/2" floppy bay powered by LCDProc.
Yeah, I reckon someone should come up with dedicated boxes you can buy and link up to your tv.
As a matter of fact, I've been doing just this for the last few months. AND it'll run Linux, though the user won't even know it unless they plan to hack it. Right, now I'm planning on having the following features available:
* Play DVDs as well as any kind of movie that MPlayer supports from a CD, network, or local hard disk.
* Play audio CDs and MP3s from CD, network, or local hard disk.
* Play console games via emulation. Planned systems to emulate are any that are relatively bug-free, will do fullscreen in X and can be launched from the command line.
* Rip CDs, encode MP3s, and copy audio CDs on the fly.
Right now I'm in the midst of writing up the interface in Tcl/Tk (but without the traditional ugliess that's associated with Tk widgets). I'm also investigating hardware, which is by far the toughest part. For example, TV-out support for video cards in Linux is spotty at the very best. I'm leaning towards trying to find a cheap ATI Radeon card and hoping the GATOS software does what I need it to.
Right now, I'm planning on only doing just one for my enjoyment only. I *was* planning on selling these boxes as a kind of side-business until I heard that Microsoft is going to be making their own. I can't compete with Microsoft!
If anyone thinks they would probably purchase one of these at some point (at the cost of the hardware), or if you have any ideas or comments, drop me an email at [dincht at securenym dot net]
Junkbusters has an excellent anti-telemarketing script that I'm going to put into employ when I move back to my home state in a few weeks.
It's got some pretty cool stuff. Like, if they don't answer certain questions correctly (or at all), you can tell them that they are now open to a lawsuit. And be right.
What else do people boycot?
Ridiculous boycott lists.
(Seriously, I can think of about a dozen other things or companies that need boycotting more than "Movies on TV" and "Shell because they won't let you use the bathroom.")
What made me think of starting this thread was the fact that I had a marathon coding session yesterday. Much to my chagrin, I'm actually a fairly mediocre programmer. For instance, the session yesterday consisted of writing some fairly useless garbage for about 2/3 of the session. The final 1/3 was wonderful, though. Somewhere along the line, I became enlightened, rewrote the whole thing, and even managed to come out with exactly what I set out to do. It even seemed relatively clean. Maybe I'm just still in training.
Anyway, to get back on topic...
Everyone lies on questionaires, especially when it involves what they consider their professional abilities.
I myself had a good laugh when I read that their entire test was based on each participant answering a questionaire.
You just end up with a guy who says that sports figured and video game players get in the 'groove' and we already knew that.
That sounds quite right. I guess that's par for the course when you have the media conducting their own "objective experiments"...
Does anyone here ever *think* they achieve this Flow State while coding? I can definitely see the common ground between sports and video games... both require strong mental agility, the constant evaluation of possible strategies and split-second decisions and whatnot.
And, in light of that, I guess I answered my own question. Programming is more about careful thinking than quick thinking. But then if the key element to being in "The Zone" is concentration, the perhaps coding would apply. Definitely something for me to ponder sometime.
Oh yeah, and while I do agree with their thesis, that article (not to mention their hideous "cutting edge" methods) sounded just a bit hokey, don't you think?
Hmm. Sounds like you have it pretty tough. I think the real problem is that your boss just plain doesn't know what your job is.
If I were in your place, I'll tell him, "Look. If you don't think I'm doing my job, I invite you to have someone else run the office for a day and you can tag along with me for a day to see everything that I have to put up with. Then you can decide if complaints about my work are valid."
Wouldn't even hurt too badly to simply keep a log of everything you do on a particular random day and show that to him when he contests your work habits.
Then again, it's entirely possible that everyone you work with is a complete idiot. I can appreciate that feeling, but probably not to the degree you do.
Do you have Mozilla set to not loop animated GIFs?
As a side note, I submitted a bug report to M$ about the lack of CSS support (amid their advertising that IE 6.0 has "100% standards-compliant CSS").
I highly suspect that even CSS1 is not fully implemented, but I could be wrong. But CSS2 sure ain't.
Exactly. I meant to imply that parts of technology developed as part of the Mozilla project are probably going to be integrated into AOL, but Mozilla, as the browser suite we know it, will not. Netscape 6.x is a far more likely candidate.
I understand that IE has a history of supporting shite HTML, but IE's support of W3C standards is rather good.
Um, don't forget that HTML is a W3C standard!
However, though my own tests, I've found that IE's standards compliance is lacking at best. The most particularly harmful oversight is the somewhat narrow subset of CSS2 that IE supports. I wish I could remember an example or two off the top of my head, but some of the neat things that CSS2 do to make web pages easy to maintain or look good don't seem to be supported in IE.
The second "misfeature" of IE, in my opinion, is lack of PNG alpha support. One can do some pretty ingenious stuff with HTML 4.0, CSS 2, and transparent/translucent PNG images.
Just not in IE.
I've said it before and I'll say it again, AOL will never bundle nor integrate Mozilla with their client.
However, there's a fairly good chance they might bundle or integrate Netscape 6.x, which is based on Mozilla but is not (as many here will attest to) Mozilla itself.
Disclaimer: I work for Microsoft but this post contains my opinions and does not represent some official company statement
Hmm, I see this getting modded down relatively quick...
Oh, but he plugged cygwin so it's okay.
I'm not too surprised that the Gameboy Color was released almost on time... it wasn't even a new system, just a regular GameBoy with a color graphics chip tacked on.
Along with you, I'm probably one of the few who remember the SNES CD-ROM. Also I recall the SNES satellite service which was reportedly poised to "take over" the Sega Channel.
What is the recommendation for OGG to produce CD-Quality sound - regardless of bitrate?
My suggestion (and I'm sure I'll get flamed for it) is to simply not use lossy compression at all. Lossy compression can approach (for certain types of audio) but never attain CD-quality audio.
This is the conclusion I came up with a few months back when I did my own investigation into audio compression. I had some songs in WAV format that had been saved from a software analog synthesizer called ReBirth. These songs have an enormous amount of detail, in all parts of the spectrum, that got completely destroyed when using any lossy audio compression codec. The resulting files sounded dirty and just generally a lot less exciting than the original WAVs no matter what bitrate, frequency, or command-line flags I had set.
I also tried a few of the lossless compression programs out there. While they sounded fine (true to their design), the resulting file was typically only about 10% smaller than if I were to simply bzip2 the WAV. Far too large for archival purposes.
True, MP3 and OGG may be "good enough" for swapping pop tracks and streaming internet radio, but if you're looking for CD quality audio (and literally mean CD quality audio), your best bet is still a CD.
And if Debian isn't stable, what is?
Slackware. (Sorry, but you did ask...)
Wow, finally. Someone who shares my thoughts on this subject.
I forgot to mention it in my original post, but the following is my usual response whenever I get asked if I believe that "life" exists outside our own planet. (I might have originally heard it on a TV show or something a long time ago, but until then I'm claiming it as my own.
No, I don't believe that humans will ever find life as we define it. There are probably much more interesting things out there than that.
Good points about Venus and Mars which orbit at the edges of the "life zone".
Why does there have to be a "life zone" (defined only as a certain range of distances from the sun... our sun) to begin with? I'm down right amazed how many "experts," "scientists," and just people in general always assume that if there is "life" out there elsewhere in the universe, then it must obviously:
- be based on a cellular structure
- consume oxygen or carbone dioxide or any other gas plentiful on Earth
- have some type of technology similar to ours (or at least similar enough to receive and interpret the various "greeting signals" that have been sent out over the years)
- originate from a planet; one that's not too hot nor not too cold
- need an atmosphere
- orbit a sun
This is the main reason I get ticked off when people (no matter how smart they claim to be or actually are) discuss the possibility of life elsewhere in the universe. There is still a great deal of debate over what exactly life is, which characteristcs or traits should be included in the definition, and which should be excluded.And that's just life on this planet. An incredibly tiny sample of what the universe has to offer. Trying to deduce if life exists elsewhere in the universe by using our planet and its creatures as the baseline definition of "life" is like trying to deduce the overall structure of New York City by studying a single New Yorkian atom.
Not only is it egotistical, but it's just plain stupid to assume that if "life" is found by us humans, that it will definitely have to be within the same limits as the biology on our planet. It may be true that life on Earth could not survive on Pluto or Mars or Venus. But if life on this planet evolved into existance under some fairly unlikely circumstances, why couldn't it have happened on those other ones listed above as well? The idea of a "life zone" that you mention above is absurd only unless you're talking about the chance of Earth-based organisms surviving within it.
The tradition of original soundtracks has survived in the Final Fantasy Dynasty because players have come to expect each new FF to raise the bar for the rest of the industry's music.
Well, either that or Miyamoto cringed at the thought of an N'Sync Chocobo remix.
"Sorry, this game works properly only in ms Internet Explorer!"
Well, hmmf.