Considering i used to work at SIAC, with the IT departments, its pretty cool that they made it onto slashdot.
I know they were a mixed shop between OS/2 Warp Server, Novell and NT (At least on the Desktop/Application server level). I had the privilege of helping convert from Token Ring to Ethernet and OS/2 Warp Server to NT Server (Post Trade Development / PTSG if Anyone from SIAC is reading)
I can see a lot of people don't understand what OpenBSD is about here...
It's not about not leaving in.fingerd open to the world, or not allowing root telnets. It's also about the developers scrutinizing the code that is in the OS to make sure things like buffer overruns, race conditions and symlink vulnerabilities don't happen.
We can all turn off port access, run Intrusion detections, and stay up watching/var/log/messages until our eyes bleed, but if (per se) your beloved intrusion detector barfs when it has to read in more then sizeof(int) characters, you're toast. that's what OpenBSD is taking care of. Their code audits are making sure the *real* crackers aren't getting in. Not some script kiddie running the latest 'sploit against your box.
btw... I was a linux zealot until I tried OpenBSD. I still run linux, but behind my OpenBSD firewalls.
If I pay so much goddamn money for tuition, why can't I whack off to my hearts content in my own dorm room to www.[insert porn site here].com? (Not like I can afford to take a girl out for night on the town anymore)
Also... Doesn't the limiting of opposite-sex visitation count as sexual discrimination? IANAL, but IAAM (I Am A Moron).
Looks like this politician is just trying to enforce what she sees as "questionable" behaviour.
But I ask yee, Slashdot readers... What dost thou consider questionable? I guarantee that there will be hundreds of different answers...
That Sunuvabiatch kicks the living piss out of my DUAL PIIx400 in doing Rendering / Graphics work. (Admittedly, it's a little sluggish in a regular state, but that's not what i use it for).
At work I use an O2 - 256mb RAM, (not sure the clock speed). (I called it PapaSmurf on the LAN, cuz it's blue) This sucker is quite the powerhouse. Rendered a 2 minute 3D animation at 1600x1600x32bit in my lifetime. (I went to lunch and it was done. not sure how long).
Irix May not be as robust as other Unices, nor as fancy looking as linux, but it does what it does. (And I like 4dwm, if you must know... it don't look like windows)
But I can't really see why we squabble over SMP > OC'ing, or OC'ing > SMP...
In my work, OverClocking can't be done... I run production servers and i can't take the risks of having a board crap out on me because i needed an extra 50mhz... Even on workstations, where I would see a benefit in OC (3ds max and After Effects) i have gone SMP Xeon, because: 1) I didn't have to pay for it (HUGE plus) 2) It's more reliable (i've tried the OC with a test workstation and Adobe AE has GPF'd more than I can tolerate on a windows platform)
But at home, I'd love that Refigerated 1Ghz Athlon for UT/Q3a... hell, even solitaire. My home pc isn't that important to me at this point.
It all depends on your needs...
Most people knew that Intel Released lower clock chips, it's nothing new. I remember being able to overclock my 386. OOoh... 40Mhz. I remember reading that it was because they tried to make the chips run as fast as possible, but if it had too many problems at that speed, it would be lowered and tested again... (or something like that) So apparently they would work OC'd, but with more "faults."
Quality Assurance I suppose?
Oh yeah, we have 2 of the Xeon monsters, and 8 SGi O2's... which in this case the O2's are actually cheaper than a Single processor Xeon and run better... Plus they look really cool.
Yup... I found that amusing... I guess JCD's just another person who hasn't heard of linux until all the IPO's... BTW: My favorite talkback comment:
Name: Bob Carmody Location: Washington DC Occupation: Linux is in the wrong list! Doesn't linux feel like DOS except with even longer more obscure switches? And it's Unix all over again. Dvorak noted that himself in a column earlier this year. Desqview for Linux is right around the corner, I can feel it.
It's hard enough to get an OS out the door of Microsoft or Apple with a team in one town. How on earth can anything get done with the entire world working on a project?
This is just too ludicrous to comment on right now.
I know it's asking a lot, but i'd really like to see some tried and true benchmarks of both chips... Not some "how fast they serve web pages" or how fast compiling a new kernel would run. I want to see some mad scientist go in and dissect each chip and tell me that the Alpha can do X better, while the Merced (I refuse to use the I word) can do Y better...
I really don't trust a release from an obviously biased party. Of course, M$ would tout that NT outperforms Linux as a Webserver... And of course Compaq would do the same for their Alpha's.
Like it's been said previously, the Compaq corporate PR people can leave out the bad stuff if they want.
What we need is the Ted Nugent of Hardware Benchmarks...
Uhm, coming from an old binary hacker, Closed source *is* as hackable as Open Source... Once you understand the Architecture of the system you're running on, and get to know it's Assembly language, you can modify *ANY* binary to do what you like. Hence the numerous dongle cracks / reg key bypassers that are out there for many Closed source programs. (I remember ads for dongle's calling them "uncrackable") With open source, you have to look into the source code and try to determine what this particular algorithm does... then you have to know how to re-work the algorithm (or determine the ramifications of removing that part completely) to get it to do what you want.
With a closed source binary all you have to do is run a traceable debugger on the binary, and then you get down to the nitty gritty of what's happening. It can be as simple as inserting (in x86 terms) a JMP statement or a NOP...
Yup.. THX is a specification for *equipment*. Not theaters, not encoding.
IE: The equipment you manufacture has to have an excellent S/N Ratio, minimal signal loss through cable resistance, and video dissipation has to be minimal, and the acoutics of the area it is in (for full "THX Quality") needs to be matched to the speakers, etc... I for one have helped build a full THX certified Home (rather large) theatre system... took months to spec out, and It almost didn't get the little sticker because of the acoustics of the room. They used cheap sheet rock for it. Rich people kick ass... he just said "So replace the walls with the good stuff" and then we went on our way... I want something like that in my house... but then for what it cost my company to build (and wht was paid) i could buy a small island. Then I'd need a boat, not a tv...
Nah It's not my ide bus, I use U2W SCSI... The only IDE device I have is an internal zip drive, which i hardly use since i got a cd-r... Believe me, my bottleneck is bandwidth. (I'm in the multimedia content prod. area) I use a Dual PII-400 256Mb PC100 RAM... With ~23GB Ultra-Wide SCSI Drives (minus the CD-R/ROM's, but they're on a seperate SCSI controller) One client wanted me to ftp a ~700mb movie to their site. All fine and dandy for them, on their nice t3. but me, i still had a 28.8k at the time (And it was on my personal Line, lol). SO i bought a CD-R and mailed it to them. Got there MUCH faster. (USPS is good for something)
I do agree on the bus speed points you make. intel's i820 or AMD's 200Mhz is a start, if they could ever start... and SCSI is still too expensive for most people. We need to take the NASA route, "faster and cheaper."
Speaking of load times... anyone remember installing Wing Commander 2 from diskette? what was all THAT wait-time about?
I just wish they'd have competition like this in the network bandwidth arenas...
My PC's are fast enough for me to work on right now, it's just getting all the damned data I need takes forever.
When I can get OC-3 to my house without having to sell some limbs/organs on E-Bay, then i'll be happy... Who cares how fast I process the data when I can't get it to my processor fast enough?
This whole week i've been trying to change the DNS entries on my domain... They assigned my hosts some host-id's, but when I entered it, they said it was wrong. Then i did it by IP/FQDN, and it gave me PINKY.WORLDNIC.COM and THEBRAIN.WORLDNIC.COM (wtf is that about? both my hosts showed up in whois as hosts)... so I harrassed them to no end... And FINALLY i have my domains pointed to the right place. Took two weeks though.
Isn't there any other way? I know there are alternate registrars, (forgive me, i'm a slight nooby at this) but do they also do the host registration stuff?
NSI Sucks dudes/dudettes... i say we revolt! Viva la revolcuion!
I dunno... I guess I'm just curious. There is also the possibility that there could be other planets in that system that we can't readily detect, so it would be great to "go have a look see." All this is fantasizing, for now.
"if the flight just werent that damn expensive"
Good point there. Makes you wonder how the whole financial/political/scientific infra-structure of space exploration works. Meaning: If it's for the benefit of Human-Kind, Why (or more importantly, WHO) do we have to pay?
This is one of those things that I read and say "Wow..."
The one paret that I find so discouraging (at least in our current state of tech) is that what we saw happened 153 years ago. Think about that. Even at our fastest possible (theoritcally speaking) speed of light, it would take 153 years to go and poke around that system. Man, now where'd I leave the keys to the Enterprise?
So all this actually happened around 1846. Makes you see how miniscule we all really are...
I remember seeing on the History Channle a little snippet about why typewriters used the QWERTY design. It had something to do with the little hammers that strike the ink-ribbon. It turns out that if the keyboard is laid out in Alphabetical order, typing the letters would cause two hammers to activate at the same time and jam up the type writer (anyone that ever did this knows how hard it is sometimes to un-jam it). So typewriter designers changed the layout to accomodate such a problem. i can't really remember the snippet, but i'm pretty sure QWERTY wasn't chosen so you could type "typewriter" faster. In that case, shouldn't it be on the home row?
As for Dvorak, I never tried it... i'm a coder in perl/html/C/C++/Java and i don't think it would help me much.
What we really need is reliable and CORRECT speech recognition... get rid of keyboards all together, (since I talk faster than i type anyway) and just use keyboards for coding any other miscellaneous input.
Slashdot Mirror
Considering i used to work at SIAC, with the IT departments, its pretty cool that they made it onto slashdot.
I know they were a mixed shop between OS/2 Warp Server, Novell and NT (At least on the Desktop/Application server level). I had the privilege of helping convert from Token Ring to Ethernet and OS/2 Warp Server to NT Server (Post Trade Development / PTSG if Anyone from SIAC is reading)
I can see a lot of people don't understand what OpenBSD is about here...
/var/log/messages until our eyes bleed, but if (per se) your beloved intrusion detector barfs when it has to read in more then sizeof(int) characters, you're toast. that's what OpenBSD is taking care of.
It's not about not leaving in.fingerd open to the world, or not allowing root telnets.
It's also about the developers scrutinizing the code that is in the OS to make sure things like buffer overruns, race conditions and symlink vulnerabilities don't happen.
We can all turn off port access, run Intrusion detections, and stay up watching
Their code audits are making sure the *real* crackers aren't getting in. Not some script kiddie running the latest 'sploit against your box.
btw... I was a linux zealot until I tried OpenBSD. I still run linux, but behind my OpenBSD firewalls.
Am I the only one that noticed that this is a Haiku?
Very nice. Creative. 8-)
the Leisure Suit Larry Series, or those old Sierra games?
There were some cool ones...
And Commander Keen, Blake Stone... the old shareware "fit on a floppy" games...
man, LSL used to crack me up endlessly...
Server Clones...
lessee how many of us can build a napster server!
If I pay so much goddamn money for tuition, why can't I whack off to my hearts content in my own dorm room to www.[insert porn site here].com?
(Not like I can afford to take a girl out for night on the town anymore)
Also... Doesn't the limiting of opposite-sex visitation count as sexual discrimination?
IANAL, but IAAM (I Am A Moron).
Looks like this politician is just trying to enforce what she sees as "questionable" behaviour.
But I ask yee, Slashdot readers... What dost thou consider questionable?
I guarantee that there will be hundreds of different answers...
Momo.
I have an Indigo 2, 250Mhz Extreme. 128MB RAM.
That Sunuvabiatch kicks the living piss out of my DUAL PIIx400 in doing Rendering / Graphics work.
(Admittedly, it's a little sluggish in a regular state, but that's not what i use it for).
At work I use an O2 - 256mb RAM, (not sure the clock speed). (I called it PapaSmurf on the LAN, cuz it's blue)
This sucker is quite the powerhouse. Rendered a 2 minute 3D animation at 1600x1600x32bit in my lifetime. (I went to lunch and it was done. not sure how long).
Irix May not be as robust as other Unices, nor as fancy looking as linux, but it does what it does.
(And I like 4dwm, if you must know... it don't look like windows)
No go back to your cave, AC
What if it breaks and sends us hurdling to our deaths at 150+ [mk]ph?
You think Linux is hard for a newbie...
Try to get them to Install OpenBSD. Just for kicks. >8-)
I'm an experienced unix user and I did that. Reminded me of installing Irix 6.2.
Solaris is easy, at least solaris 7 is...
But I can't really see why we squabble over SMP > OC'ing, or OC'ing > SMP...
In my work, OverClocking can't be done... I run production servers and i can't take the risks of having a board crap out on me because i needed an extra 50mhz... Even on workstations, where I would see a benefit in OC (3ds max and After Effects) i have gone SMP Xeon, because:
1) I didn't have to pay for it (HUGE plus)
2) It's more reliable (i've tried the OC with a test workstation and Adobe AE has GPF'd more than I can tolerate on a windows platform)
But at home, I'd love that Refigerated 1Ghz Athlon for UT/Q3a... hell, even solitaire.
My home pc isn't that important to me at this point.
It all depends on your needs...
Most people knew that Intel Released lower clock chips, it's nothing new. I remember being able to overclock my 386. OOoh... 40Mhz.
I remember reading that it was because they tried to make the chips run as fast as possible, but if it had too many problems at that speed, it would be lowered and tested again... (or something like that)
So apparently they would work OC'd, but with more "faults."
Quality Assurance I suppose?
Oh yeah, we have 2 of the Xeon monsters, and 8 SGi O2's... which in this case the O2's are actually cheaper than a Single processor Xeon and run better... Plus they look really cool.
*Blech* biege PeeCees suk.
Yup... I found that amusing...
I guess JCD's just another person who hasn't heard of linux until all the IPO's...
BTW: My favorite talkback comment:
Name: Bob Carmody
Location: Washington DC
Occupation:
Linux is in the wrong list! Doesn't linux feel like DOS except with even longer more obscure switches? And it's Unix all over again. Dvorak noted that himself in a column earlier this year.
Desqview for Linux is right around the corner, I can feel it.
It's hard enough to get an OS out the door of Microsoft or Apple with a team in one town. How on earth can anything get done with the entire world working on a project?
This is just too ludicrous to comment on right now.
I know it's asking a lot, but i'd really like to see some tried and true benchmarks of both chips...
Not some "how fast they serve web pages" or how fast compiling a new kernel would run.
I want to see some mad scientist go in and dissect each chip and tell me that the Alpha can do X better, while the Merced (I refuse to use the I word) can do Y better...
I really don't trust a release from an obviously biased party. Of course, M$ would tout that NT outperforms Linux as a Webserver... And of course Compaq would do the same for their Alpha's.
Like it's been said previously, the Compaq corporate PR people can leave out the bad stuff if they want.
What we need is the Ted Nugent of Hardware Benchmarks...
Uhm, coming from an old binary hacker, Closed source *is* as hackable as Open Source... Once you understand the Architecture of the system you're running on, and get to know it's Assembly language, you can modify *ANY* binary to do what you like. Hence the numerous dongle cracks / reg key bypassers that are out there for many Closed source programs. (I remember ads for dongle's calling them "uncrackable")
With open source, you have to look into the source code and try to determine what this particular algorithm does... then you have to know how to re-work the algorithm (or determine the ramifications of removing that part completely) to get it to do what you want.
With a closed source binary all you have to do is run a traceable debugger on the binary, and then you get down to the nitty gritty of what's happening. It can be as simple as inserting (in x86 terms) a JMP statement or a NOP...
Yup.. THX is a specification for *equipment*. Not theaters, not encoding.
IE: The equipment you manufacture has to have an excellent S/N Ratio, minimal signal loss through cable resistance, and video dissipation has to be minimal, and the acoutics of the area it is in (for full "THX Quality") needs to be matched to the speakers, etc...
I for one have helped build a full THX certified Home (rather large) theatre system... took months to spec out, and It almost didn't get the little sticker because of the acoustics of the room. They used cheap sheet rock for it. Rich people kick ass... he just said "So replace the walls with the good stuff" and then we went on our way...
I want something like that in my house... but then for what it cost my company to build (and wht was paid) i could buy a small island. Then I'd need a boat, not a tv...
Nah It's not my ide bus, I use U2W SCSI...
The only IDE device I have is an internal zip drive, which i hardly use since i got a cd-r...
Believe me, my bottleneck is bandwidth. (I'm in the multimedia content prod. area) I use a Dual PII-400 256Mb PC100 RAM... With ~23GB Ultra-Wide SCSI Drives (minus the CD-R/ROM's, but they're on a seperate SCSI controller)
One client wanted me to ftp a ~700mb movie to their site. All fine and dandy for them, on their nice t3. but me, i still had a 28.8k at the time (And it was on my personal Line, lol). SO i bought a CD-R and mailed it to them. Got there MUCH faster. (USPS is good for something)
I do agree on the bus speed points you make. intel's i820 or AMD's 200Mhz is a start, if they could ever start... and SCSI is still too expensive for most people. We need to take the NASA route, "faster and cheaper."
Speaking of load times... anyone remember installing Wing Commander 2 from diskette? what was all THAT wait-time about?
new mobile Pentium III processor enables greater productivity on the go, at speeds of up to 500 MHz
Uhm.. that's the current max for the Mobile p3...
I just wish they'd have competition like this in the network bandwidth arenas...
My PC's are fast enough for me to work on right now, it's just getting all the damned data I need takes forever.
When I can get OC-3 to my house without having to sell some limbs/organs on E-Bay, then i'll be happy... Who cares how fast I process the data when I can't get it to my processor fast enough?
This whole week i've been trying to change the DNS entries on my domain... They assigned my hosts some host-id's, but when I entered it, they said it was wrong. Then i did it by IP/FQDN, and it gave me PINKY.WORLDNIC.COM and THEBRAIN.WORLDNIC.COM (wtf is that about? both my hosts showed up in whois as hosts)... so I harrassed them to no end... And FINALLY i have my domains pointed to the right place. Took two weeks though.
Isn't there any other way? I know there are alternate registrars, (forgive me, i'm a slight nooby at this) but do they also do the host registration stuff?
NSI Sucks dudes/dudettes... i say we revolt! Viva la revolcuion!
Try 3dfxgamers.com...
Last I checked they had voodoo drivers (I think for voodoo3, not sure about voodoo2)
They have X drivers as well as FullScreen 3D stuff.
But if someone can point me to some 13w3 KVM's
(For Sun, or SGI) i'd appreciate it.
I dunno... I guess I'm just curious. There is also the possibility that there could be other planets in that system that we can't readily detect, so it would be great to "go have a look see." All this is fantasizing, for now.
"if the flight just werent that damn expensive"
Good point there. Makes you wonder how the whole financial/political/scientific infra-structure of space exploration works. Meaning: If it's for the benefit of Human-Kind, Why (or more importantly, WHO) do we have to pay?
This is one of those things that I read and say "Wow..."
The one paret that I find so discouraging (at least in our current state of tech) is that what we saw happened 153 years ago. Think about that.
Even at our fastest possible (theoritcally speaking) speed of light, it would take 153 years to go and poke around that system. Man, now where'd I leave the keys to the Enterprise?
So all this actually happened around 1846. Makes you see how miniscule we all really are...
I read the article... the way they make it seem is that it was done so "people could watch DVD's under linux."
This leads to one potential solution for the industry: Have support for Linux, and you won't be cracked. (Not necessarily a bad thing. 8-)
I'd like to see my decoder card supported linux, but for now i'll just use my home theatre setup.
I'd also like to see my iomega buz *cough*trash*cough* supported under ANY os, but hey, such is life.
Those that think with the wrong head should drink more coffee. 8-)
I remember seeing on the History Channle a little snippet about why typewriters used the QWERTY design. It had something to do with the little hammers that strike the ink-ribbon. It turns out that if the keyboard is laid out in Alphabetical order, typing the letters would cause two hammers to activate at the same time and jam up the type writer (anyone that ever did this knows how hard it is sometimes to un-jam it). So typewriter designers changed the layout to accomodate such a problem. i can't really remember the snippet, but i'm pretty sure QWERTY wasn't chosen so you could type "typewriter" faster. In that case, shouldn't it be on the home row?
As for Dvorak, I never tried it... i'm a coder in perl/html/C/C++/Java and i don't think it would help me much.
What we really need is reliable and CORRECT speech recognition... get rid of keyboards all together, (since I talk faster than i type anyway) and just use keyboards for coding any other miscellaneous input.