M-Systems DiskOnKey seems to offer the exact same features. They're great geek gifts since they cost around $40-$50 for a 16MB version and, like this product, don't need drivers (except for win98). Works fine with MacOS9 and X and Linux.
Importantly, you could have been buying them for the last year instead of having to wait until the 20th of this month. I love mine, beats using a floppy anyday (although you'll want to get a couple USB extender cables unless you're lucky enough to have frontside USB ports).
http://www.diskonkey.com/
Re:Stay away from Creative Products: full of bugs
on
Testing the Audigy
·
· Score: 2
How ironic... for years (before DirectX) I religiously avoided Creative Labs because I didn't like the company. I bought Gravis, Guillemot, Pro Audio Spectrum, and Turtle Beach cards... These were mostly cheaper and as good or better than the Creative Products available.
Eventually, I got sick and tired of the incredible maze of problems with the various cards and games and programs so I switched entirely to Creative Labs (AWE32/64/Live) and haven't really had a problem since. I've had more nightmares with nVidia drivers (it took them 3 *years* to get a decent set of drivers) than Creative.
As a person who fits this description to a T (how ironic), I'm wondering why you're so panicked? Your daughter's situation notwithstanding, you seem to have done fine so far in life so why the "Oh my God! I'm a broken person!" feelings? The 'symptoms' also appear to encompass most of the intelligent introverted personality types (INTJ, INTP, etc.). I'm rather amused that I might have Aspergers.
Excuse me, but as a user and commercial and open source developer I do NOT consider it acceptable that *any* _release_ would break at step 1.
I can accept this for a CVS snapshot or a beta test build but certainly not anything that is labelled a "release". I would be horrified at the thought that thousands of people were downloading one of my releases only to find it didn't work at all.
My definition of 1.0 is something I wouldn't mind paying for. Anything before is bound to be buggy on some level but to crash on startup? And to consider that (long-term) acceptable? Unreal.
Note that they may be talking about flat screen CRTs and not LCDs. The article doesn't seem to make that discitnction one way or another. Can anyone clarify?
You jest, but sadly that's pretty much the modus operadi of a large number of registered Sourceforge projects.
Here's a tip: run away from any project that says "will do xyz" or "aims to be", or "wants to create", or "eventually...". It means they're dreams are far beyond their capabilities.
Of course they were serious for the week it took to get things registered. Then reality and inexperience hit and they quietly slunk away.
http://www.firstmonday.dk/issues/issue4_10/bezro uk ov/
Second, as an open source author myself of a program that has received about as many downloads as the first questioner, I know my project would probably die if I left. It's a good project and I provide lots and lots of documentation and it's useful (in business) to thousands of people. Still, if I don't do work no one else does.
Not that there hasn't been a lot of interest but people usually lose interst or make it do what they want and after a couple patches go about their business. I don't have any serious complaints about it but it can be somewhat frustrating seeing all new faces all the time.
The only projects that will survive the project leader's departure are those with strong core groups or a strong hierarchy of leaders and co-leaders.
I consider my project fairly successful and it's the work of basically just me. No team. That's just one counter-example but there are countless others like it in the open source community. Maybe if my project was sexier I would have more developers, who knows.
Luckily for me and my users I still have enough fire and drive (for now) to 'finish' my project.
My advice to people wanting to step down (with no clear successor) would be to put out feelers, grab about 3 people, give them full access, and wish for magic to happen.
Just a note but MRAM is probably going to be most used (and most useful) in embedded aplications like portable electonics and automobile parts. You'll note that Motorola got out of the general RAM business some time ago but has constant need for low power parts. RAM that doesn't require refreshing and continuous power draw is perfect for things like automobiles or PDAs or small embedded controllers. Obviously, it'll also likely be too expensive in the near term for general PC type usage until the technology is better refined.
I ordered some posters once. They came, shipped UPS ground, in a *very* sturdy 4 ft long tube. UPS had managed to bend the tube and had a nice gash in the tubing.
I later received a re-shipment from the shop (covered by insurance) with the tube in good condition. Since then I've jumped on the tube to try to damage it. No can do.
As you might imagine: I detest UPS. Everything Amazon ships me via USPS comes days earlier than UPS and has nothing I've ever shipped USPS has ever been received broken.
http://www.firstmonday.dk/issues/issue4_10/bezro uk ov/
(section: "Cult of Personality, burnout of the leader")
As a maintainer of my own growing project on sourceforge I often emphathize with the items listed in this paper. Some people have a tendency to put an enormous amount of pressure on themselves. When this happens you naturally become very defensive and intolerant. This is probably lessened when you have a strong core group.
.. would be the size of a credit card so I could stuff it in my wallet, which, besides a wristwach, is the one item I am sure to carry when I am travelling. It should also be durable and have an unbreakable display.
I'd also want to be able to store voice notes on it so it would have to record and playback audio. And it would have some sort of wireless transfer medium (bluetooth, rf, wireless ethernet, etc.)
It would have a couple solar panels and require as much power as a calculator.
Sooooo, basically I want a super shrunk Palm. I know much of the Slashdot crowd seems to want to have a desktop machine crammed into their handhelds but I don't need that. I want utility and longevity out of my device. When it can becomes just another accessory (like a wristwatch) then I will be happy with it... and so too will non-geeks.
Now, I think most of these requirements aren't here today, but if we're dreaming, I want to dream a while into the future.
One: Unless you plan on putting nutty amounts of drives and video cards into a machine 400W is WAY overkill. I've got a 1.2Ghz Athlon with a CDrom drive and using a ATI Radeon and the MicroATX power supply drives everything just fine. Wattage? 120W. More wattage usually requires more fan to cool. More fan = more noise.
On the subject of quiet CDR drives. Plextor has a kickass utility (windows) that allows you to speed limit the drives X rating. SO you can cap at 4x, 8x, 10-24x 14-32x, etc. At around 10x it's pretty much silent.
The community will have no problem. Whether as a rag-tag bunch of freelance programmers, teenage elitists, or as (ex)businessmen, it doesn't need money to survive. It will survive because it is no one singular community. It's diversity is it's strength (and often a weakness). Talk of doom is premature. You'll have to pass some serious world reaching legislation before that sort of talk becomes reality.
And my Desktop comment is in relation to games as a viable market. I think you'd have to agree. Does you using Linux as a Desktop make what I said false? No.
I don't see why you attached your OpenGL comment to my post. I hardly tried to say OpenGL was dead. I just said it didn't make sense for game developement in most cases.
To reiterate: *all of my comments are in relation to games on Linux* I hoped to Jebus that I wouldn't have to type out every exception and write a 2,000 word essay on my background and beliefs to jsutify my comments.
Wake me up in 2 to 5 years when Linux/X is actually ready for the Desktop. Until then I'll run it for the two things it's really good for: serving and unix development.
And the argument isn't about OpenGL for $$$ CAD apps. It's about using it for $50 a pop consumer games that are obsolete and out of mind 6 months after they come out.
I see you glossed over the fine points so let me restate it simply:
Linux is not worth it. Not 5 years ago, not today, not tomorrow, not a year from now. I have a game developer friend, he was enthused with Linux before he had to port his companies game; now he detests it and much of the (Linux gaming) 'community'.
OpenGL develops slowly and requires proprietary extensions for the newest video cards. Hardcore gamers are the last people on Earth who like to wait until their new-fangled video card and sound drivers are supported. Video card companies will support Quake because of it's mindshare. They don't support other companies near as well.
The development and support costs FAR outstrip the benefits of having a native Linux port. The bottom line in a truly cutthroat industry is how much ROI can you get. Last I heard, Q3's linux version didn't do well enough to justify further Linux targeted box sales (late release, blah blah blah, excuses), and the Quake series is probably the biggest, most popular commercial game among the/. crowds.
Obviously there are gross simplifications in the article but assuming that parents are going to buy BSD/Linux based PCs is ludicrous. Not to mention places like Dell have dropped installing Linux.
That means you would usually buy a complete PC with Windows then have to slick the drive and install Linux. And somehow I just don't see parents going with Linux. The *only* way this happens is if the school forces you to buy a prebuilt package(s) from them.
Sorry. That assumption is way too far gone to be overlooked.
Re:Mozilla is the BEST browser!
on
Mozilla 0.9.5
·
· Score: 1
Speed? Power? Stability? Plenty of browsers compete. The only one I'd leave out in the cold is Netscape 4.x. IE 5.x is plenty fast enough on broadband. Likewise for Opera. Mozilla is nice too (I use it) but I'll wait for the final releases before making it my everyday browser; it still feels fat and clunky.
Mozilla is written for many people but the average user is not yet one of them. Netscape is the package that takes Mozilla and adds all the 'features' that AOL *thinks* the average user wants (Shopping Button anyone?). ICQ and Mozilla probably don't share too much of the same codebase and with shared dynamic libraries you wouldn't be wasting that much memory. Personally I think there's already too much bloat in both programs. Combining programs rarely lessens bloat and you incenience other users. Don't make the mistake of emacs. Many modules is usually better than one big one.
Your suggestion of precaching entire websites is awful. That's a tremendous waste of resources on both your provider and the website's provider. You forget that the vast amount of websites are either charged by the amount of bandwidth they consume or have a fixed limit per month. Mozilla would be quite *hated* if they implemented this and you would see many websites banning Mozilla from accessing them. This is something for corporations and ISPs to do on a local level with already existing proxy cache programs like squid.
Well, when you can't answer positively to any of the questions you don't mention them at all. After reading the release notes, it's pretty obvious this fixes minor bugs and adds more/better device support.
The FreeBSD people may say some things about wanting more public use but it's still extremely targetted at technical people who already use unix. It's definitely not for general public consumption. It's a much more word of mouth operation even among techies.
* It's low cost.
* It allows for closed source distribution.* It's solid, stable code with heavy ties to ISPs (who would use such devices)
* FreeBSD is open source and future improvements or bug fixes can be rolled in without licensing fees/issues.
There is, of course, the SPEC benchmarks (spec.org). They require more knowledge to interpret properly than most consumers would care to learn, however. Also, unlikely that the industry would ever standardize on them (or any common reference standard). They have nothing to gain from cooperation.
No disagreement on the last point. Just keep in mind that while Carmack deserves respect he's by no means the final word on all topics he speaks on. In the 'real world' many companies have dedicated Mac teams apart from their x86 teams. Others develop for the Mac first before x86.
Slashdot Mirror
M-Systems DiskOnKey seems to offer the exact same features. They're great geek gifts since they cost around $40-$50 for a 16MB version and, like this product, don't need drivers (except for win98). Works fine with MacOS9 and X and Linux.
Importantly, you could have been buying them for the last year instead of having to wait until the 20th of this month. I love mine, beats using a floppy anyday (although you'll want to get a couple USB extender cables unless you're lucky enough to have frontside USB ports).
http://www.diskonkey.com/
How ironic... for years (before DirectX) I religiously avoided Creative Labs because I didn't like the company. I bought Gravis, Guillemot, Pro Audio Spectrum, and Turtle Beach cards... These were mostly cheaper and as good or better than the Creative Products available.
Eventually, I got sick and tired of the incredible maze of problems with the various cards and games and programs so I switched entirely to Creative Labs (AWE32/64/Live) and haven't really had a problem since. I've had more nightmares with nVidia drivers (it took them 3 *years* to get a decent set of drivers) than Creative.
I hope I don't come across as a clod but ...
As a person who fits this description to a T (how ironic), I'm wondering why you're so panicked? Your daughter's situation notwithstanding, you seem to have done fine so far in life so why the "Oh my God! I'm a broken person!" feelings? The 'symptoms' also appear to encompass most of the intelligent introverted personality types (INTJ, INTP, etc.). I'm rather amused that I might have Aspergers.
Excuse me, but as a user and commercial and open source developer I do NOT consider it acceptable that *any* _release_ would break at step 1.
I can accept this for a CVS snapshot or a beta test build but certainly not anything that is labelled a "release". I would be horrified at the thought that thousands of people were downloading one of my releases only to find it didn't work at all.
My definition of 1.0 is something I wouldn't mind paying for. Anything before is bound to be buggy on some level but to crash on startup? And to consider that (long-term) acceptable? Unreal.
Aha, so shoot me. I just did a google search and flat-panels seem to refer to LCDs.
Note that they may be talking about flat screen CRTs and not LCDs. The article doesn't seem to make that discitnction one way or another. Can anyone clarify?
You jest, but sadly that's pretty much the modus operadi of a large number of registered Sourceforge projects.
...". It means they're dreams are far beyond their capabilities.
Here's a tip: run away from any project that says "will do xyz" or "aims to be", or "wants to create", or "eventually
Of course they were serious for the week it took to get things registered. Then reality and inexperience hit and they quietly slunk away.
First read some of this:
o uk ov/
http://www.firstmonday.dk/issues/issue4_10/bezr
Second, as an open source author myself of a program that has received about as many downloads as the first questioner, I know my project would probably die if I left. It's a good project and I provide lots and lots of documentation and it's useful (in business) to thousands of people. Still, if I don't do work no one else does.
Not that there hasn't been a lot of interest but people usually lose interst or make it do what they want and after a couple patches go about their business. I don't have any serious complaints about it but it can be somewhat frustrating seeing all new faces all the time.
The only projects that will survive the project leader's departure are those with strong core groups or a strong hierarchy of leaders and co-leaders.
I consider my project fairly successful and it's the work of basically just me. No team. That's just one counter-example but there are countless others like it in the open source community. Maybe if my project was sexier I would have more developers, who knows.
Luckily for me and my users I still have enough fire and drive (for now) to 'finish' my project.
My advice to people wanting to step down (with no clear successor) would be to put out feelers, grab about 3 people, give them full access, and wish for magic to happen.
Just a note but MRAM is probably going to be most used (and most useful) in embedded aplications like portable electonics and automobile parts. You'll note that Motorola got out of the general RAM business some time ago but has constant need for low power parts. RAM that doesn't require refreshing and continuous power draw is perfect for things like automobiles or PDAs or small embedded controllers. Obviously, it'll also likely be too expensive in the near term for general PC type usage until the technology is better refined.
I ordered some posters once. They came, shipped UPS ground, in a *very* sturdy 4 ft long tube. UPS had managed to bend the tube and had a nice gash in the tubing.
I later received a re-shipment from the shop (covered by insurance) with the tube in good condition. Since then I've jumped on the tube to try to damage it. No can do.
As you might imagine: I detest UPS. Everything Amazon ships me via USPS comes days earlier than UPS and has nothing I've ever shipped USPS has ever been received broken.
Sounds like something I read recently:
o uk ov/
http://www.firstmonday.dk/issues/issue4_10/bezr
(section: "Cult of Personality, burnout of the leader")
As a maintainer of my own growing project on sourceforge I often emphathize with the items listed in this paper. Some people have a tendency to put an enormous amount of pressure on themselves. When this happens you naturally become very defensive and intolerant. This is probably lessened when you have a strong core group.
Time to take a vacation.
.. would be the size of a credit card so I could stuff it in my wallet, which, besides a wristwach, is the one item I am sure to carry when I am travelling. It should also be durable and have an unbreakable display.
I'd also want to be able to store voice notes on it so it would have to record and playback audio. And it would have some sort of wireless transfer medium (bluetooth, rf, wireless ethernet, etc.)
It would have a couple solar panels and require as much power as a calculator.
Sooooo, basically I want a super shrunk Palm. I know much of the Slashdot crowd seems to want to have a desktop machine crammed into their handhelds but I don't need that. I want utility and longevity out of my device. When it can becomes just another accessory (like a wristwatch) then I will be happy with it... and so too will non-geeks.
Now, I think most of these requirements aren't here today, but if we're dreaming, I want to dream a while into the future.
That's cool to know. I stand corrected. I'm still surprised that I can get away with 150W. I'll have to look into it if the heat becomes an issue.
One: Unless you plan on putting nutty amounts of drives and video cards into a machine 400W is WAY overkill. I've got a 1.2Ghz Athlon with a CDrom drive and using a ATI Radeon and the MicroATX power supply drives everything just fine. Wattage? 120W. More wattage usually requires more fan to cool. More fan = more noise.
On the subject of quiet CDR drives. Plextor has a kickass utility (windows) that allows you to speed limit the drives X rating. SO you can cap at 4x, 8x, 10-24x 14-32x, etc. At around 10x it's pretty much silent.
The community will have no problem. Whether as a rag-tag bunch of freelance programmers, teenage elitists, or as (ex)businessmen, it doesn't need money to survive. It will survive because it is no one singular community. It's diversity is it's strength (and often a weakness). Talk of doom is premature. You'll have to pass some serious world reaching legislation before that sort of talk becomes reality.
And my Desktop comment is in relation to games as a viable market. I think you'd have to agree. Does you using Linux as a Desktop make what I said false? No.
I don't see why you attached your OpenGL comment to my post. I hardly tried to say OpenGL was dead. I just said it didn't make sense for game developement in most cases.
To reiterate: *all of my comments are in relation to games on Linux* I hoped to Jebus that I wouldn't have to type out every exception and write a 2,000 word essay on my background and beliefs to jsutify my comments.
Wake me up in 2 to 5 years when Linux/X is actually ready for the Desktop. Until then I'll run it for the two things it's really good for: serving and unix development.
And the argument isn't about OpenGL for $$$ CAD apps. It's about using it for $50 a pop consumer games that are obsolete and out of mind 6 months after they come out.
I see you glossed over the fine points so let me restate it simply:
/. crowds.
Linux is not worth it. Not 5 years ago, not today, not tomorrow, not a year from now. I have a game developer friend, he was enthused with Linux before he had to port his companies game; now he detests it and much of the (Linux gaming) 'community'.
OpenGL develops slowly and requires proprietary extensions for the newest video cards. Hardcore gamers are the last people on Earth who like to wait until their new-fangled video card and sound drivers are supported. Video card companies will support Quake because of it's mindshare. They don't support other companies near as well.
The development and support costs FAR outstrip the benefits of having a native Linux port. The bottom line in a truly cutthroat industry is how much ROI can you get. Last I heard, Q3's linux version didn't do well enough to justify further Linux targeted box sales (late release, blah blah blah, excuses), and the Quake series is probably the biggest, most popular commercial game among the
Obviously there are gross simplifications in the article but assuming that parents are going to buy BSD/Linux based PCs is ludicrous. Not to mention places like Dell have dropped installing Linux.
That means you would usually buy a complete PC with Windows then have to slick the drive and install Linux. And somehow I just don't see parents going with Linux. The *only* way this happens is if the school forces you to buy a prebuilt package(s) from them.
Sorry. That assumption is way too far gone to be overlooked.
Speed? Power? Stability? Plenty of browsers compete. The only one I'd leave out in the cold is Netscape 4.x. IE 5.x is plenty fast enough on broadband. Likewise for Opera. Mozilla is nice too (I use it) but I'll wait for the final releases before making it my everyday browser; it still feels fat and clunky.
Mozilla is written for many people but the average user is not yet one of them. Netscape is the package that takes Mozilla and adds all the 'features' that AOL *thinks* the average user wants (Shopping Button anyone?). ICQ and Mozilla probably don't share too much of the same codebase and with shared dynamic libraries you wouldn't be wasting that much memory. Personally I think there's already too much bloat in both programs. Combining programs rarely lessens bloat and you incenience other users. Don't make the mistake of emacs. Many modules is usually better than one big one.
Your suggestion of precaching entire websites is awful. That's a tremendous waste of resources on both your provider and the website's provider. You forget that the vast amount of websites are either charged by the amount of bandwidth they consume or have a fixed limit per month. Mozilla would be quite *hated* if they implemented this and you would see many websites banning Mozilla from accessing them. This is something for corporations and ISPs to do on a local level with already existing proxy cache programs like squid.
Well, when you can't answer positively to any of the questions you don't mention them at all. After reading the release notes, it's pretty obvious this fixes minor bugs and adds more/better device support.
The FreeBSD people may say some things about wanting more public use but it's still extremely targetted at technical people who already use unix. It's definitely not for general public consumption. It's a much more word of mouth operation even among techies.
Since all you want are some ideas:
* It's low cost.
* It allows for closed source distribution.* It's solid, stable code with heavy ties to ISPs (who would use such devices)
* FreeBSD is open source and future improvements or bug fixes can be rolled in without licensing fees/issues.
There is, of course, the SPEC benchmarks (spec.org). They require more knowledge to interpret properly than most consumers would care to learn, however. Also, unlikely that the industry would ever standardize on them (or any common reference standard). They have nothing to gain from cooperation.
I would also like to add my voice to this posting. When the times were worst, Slashdot and its team managed to do the right thing and do it well.
No disagreement on the last point. Just keep in mind that while Carmack deserves respect he's by no means the final word on all topics he speaks on. In the 'real world' many companies have dedicated Mac teams apart from their x86 teams. Others develop for the Mac first before x86.