...now that the NSA has decided it can ignore Congress. I mean, they've been the ones working in the background, classifying crypto as weaponry and basically wishing the Cold War would never end -- and now, they're (hopefully) going to get a kick in the ass for it.
It's probably a stretch to say this, but IMO this combined with the lifting of restrictions in Germany and France gives our restrictions maybe another year to live, if not a few months.
There is also a transition guide (or at least a small blub) for those used to BSD instead of SysV (of which Linux is a decendent of the later).
Linux isn't a direct descendant of SysV at all; in fact, that's part of the point behind it. Also, while Linux may have SVr4-ish modules and init(8), the userland is BSDish/GNU all the way -- go to (say) Solaris from Linux or *BSD and the SysV-ness of it will bite you if you aren't ready for it, especially with commands like ps and the printing subsystem.
If you don't have a Voodoo/Voodoo2, just install glide anyway, and the hacked Mesa library included with q3test will happily use software rendering. It'll be SLOW, though; expect speeds in the seconds-per-frame range unless you have a fast Pentium II or Celeron A.
-lee...it CRAWLS on my K6-2 300. I hope the g200 drivers become usable soon...
I've got a plan for the next computer I build. It will have a Matrox G200, because a) it's probably the best 2D card out there, and b) Matrox released all the specs for the G200.
I got a G200 based on this same idea -- XFree86 supports it beautifully in 2D, and there's already beta GLX driver source for it around (though it's a pain to get working, and I haven't taken the time to do all the necessary compiling). Quite an improvement from the 2MB ATI Rage I had in here before (I can do 24-bit sparse color at 1152x864x67Hz now, yay!).
-lee...I really wanna see q3test at a speed faster than 5 seconds-2 minutes per frame without having to buy or borrow a Voodoo...
Personally, I think it's great that many businesses are moving away from the management "Magic Piece of Paper" mentality. I just came from a company stuck in that mindset. I was doing the SAME work as my coworkers, but did not recieve ANY benifits (vacation, dental, ect) and didn't get paid HALF of what they where! All that they would tell me was "get that degree, THEN we'll take care of you." >:^p
This was very much like what my old job was like. It was given to me originally as a "stepping stone" job by a family member, working in his small business. I did get benefits, eventually, but I left because (among other things) I kept getting the line about "oh, we're only paying you $8.50/hr on salary because you don't have a degree or MCSE or some other Magic Piece of Paper that says you're worth it", with the implication that I stay at that place for the next 4 years while I toil away at school. This when I know people that aren't even out of school yet (and at least two that never even went to college) that make at least double that as Unix sysadmins and DBAs. I've put my name in the online job databases, and I've had people from as far away as Dallas asking about me (not that I'd go there; I have no intention of moving away from DC for now).
As for my degree, well, I did try to get my degree at one time, but I keep re-thinking it, and wondering what it is I want...do I want to drop everything for four years and "sacrifice myself" (and incur $1000s in debt, in addition to what I already have from the first try!) for a piece of paper, or do I want to go on the skills I have (I've run FreeBSD at home for over 3 years now, and I can also admin Solaris, Linux, and even NT *bleh*) and get a good job with them? In my case, I've already paid my dues. And I want to learn more; I already know C and some C++, and I want to get the Llama Book and learn Perl. I also want to get a SPARCstation in here and have a Solaris box to play with, I'll do that once I find another job.
As you can imagine, I was greatly pleased with this new, no paper needed attitude adopted by so many companies. They understand that EXPIERENCE and actual know-how is what is important.. not some certificate saying you wasted a LOT of money.. and not to mention time. Yes.... all those Art and History classes HAVE helped me do my job better!! (note the sarcasm.)
Agreed. College would be more attractive if, well, I could skip some of the core courses and learn about what I really wanted to know, stuff that reading through source code in FreeBSD and reading messages on the lists has taught me a little about, and some of those mysterious classes I saw in the curriculum list in 1995...things like "applied combinatorics and game theory" and "theory of computation" (Turing machines).
-lee...math and coding are fun. writing papers is not.
I remember seeing Doug's name on several PC Magazine utilities, and PC Mag's utilities have been more-or-less OpenSource since at least 1986 (I remember when they actually published full source right in the magazine every two weeks). Either the good spin doctors managed to brainwash him into writing this (hint: money talks), or they wrote it and had him put his name on it.
-lee...in fact, HIS OWN EXPERIENCES refute the anti-Red Hat bits of this article, since he himself was paid to write code that'd be given away. At least, I think ZD paid him.
Whoever wrote the headline (hemos?) didn't read the article carefully.
I've noticed a lot of that recently -- people will submit articles (sometimes not having read them all the way through themselves), then they get posted, and other people get all up in arms over a headline and blurb that have been sensationalised.
-lee...not suggesting anything more that that people actually read through and understand articles before they submit. it'd save everyone a lot of trouble in the long run.
Exactly; in the early 1970s, when word got out and people started getting interested in Unix, AT&T couldn't actually sell it to them, because of consent decrees handed down years earlier that said "you can't get into the computer business". So they distributed it for the cost of the media and with no warranty. This environment spawned, among other things, the BSD project at Berkeley, which started in 1977 and produced its last release (4.4BSD Lite 2) in 1995. Later, AT&T started tightening up on the licensing (around the time of V7), and after the breakup of the Bell System, they were able to start charging.
It's a configuration, not performance issue
on
IBM and Mp3
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· Score: 1
PCI is nice for these things, but a _lot_ of the newer PCI modems and sound cards (the modems especially) aren't supported decently in anything but Windows. Also, it seems USB is better for these slower devices, at least on paper; in all honesty, a device that can't go any faster than about 200 kbytes/s doesn't need dedicated space on a 132MB/s bus.
USB is 12 Mbit/s -- plenty fast to handle even an ISDN modem (20 kbytes/s there, with compression) and a sound box playing audio at CD quality (173 kbyte/s) simultaneously. Now if you were talking about a Ethernet card, which (in 100 MHz mode) can move upwards of 10 MB/s, then PCI would be your best bet. But a 56k dialup modem (maybe 8k/s tops there) or an ISDN link doesn't need that sort of bandwidth -- I'm leaving out cable and xDSL because they usually connect through Ethernet.
Marrying a supermodel? Ummmm, no.
on
Wired on Kipling
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· Score: 1
The problem with supermodels is that, for the most part, they're bimbos. People marry them just so they can sex them up. It's much nicer, IMO, to marry someone that may not be a drop-dead beauty, but is still cute, and loves you for who you are, not because of something material or sex-related.
I agree here...ever since they switched to the "ergonomic" design from the Windows 3.0-era straight design, they've had a funky feel to them. All the computers I use on a regular basis have Logitech mice on them; I got the First Mouse+ I have at home in 1997 or so (may have been last year), and never looked back.
The record companies don't create. They're middlemen with lots of cash and more-or-less divine power over the industry. They don't give a damn about creativity unles they think it's something they can sell, but most artists go along with this because, well, until now it's been the ONLY way you could make it.
When you get your big break, you lose all your rights. That's right -- almost all "big break" contracts have language in them that signs over all rights in the recordings to the label, leaving artist with a percentage of that (if anything above and beyond the initial advance for cutting a pro-quality album) for their trouble. Allright, I guess I can give you this one, since it is the label cutting the check, but still, you do lose the rights to that album. This is why so many groups go on tours -- they couldn't make it on the peanuts the labels throw at them, and they can't redistribute the songs themselves without handing over all the money, so they go gigging and get the money from the ticket prices and merchandise sales. Oh, and lest I forget, the labels also stick their fingers into the sheet music -- the majority of the music publishers out there are affiliated with labels (MCA, EMI, Sony, BMG, Warners and PolyGram -- the same Gang of Six responsible for the RIAA).
This is the real problem. The piracy issue is just an attempt to distort the issue, and thwart what is going to become a revolution in music distribution: digital music, distributed over the Internet by the artists themselves, with them setting the rules as to the prices and distribution (they could even give away some songs if they wanted). The record companies are harping about it because their decades of total control over the industry are (hopefully) almost over, and they want to scare people into thinking their way of doing things ($11-16 CDs, and maybe $2 or less per going back to the artist) is still the Right Way.
The cartoon Freakazoid! featured a character who got his powers from the Internet -- but he was also a total goofball, which makes it sorta apropos somehow... It was a Warner Bros. production from 1995-1997 (yes, the same staff that brought us Animaniacs and Pinky and the Brain).
Slashdot Mirror
...now that the NSA has decided it can ignore Congress. I mean, they've been the ones working in the background, classifying crypto as weaponry and basically wishing the Cold War would never end -- and now, they're (hopefully) going to get a kick in the ass for it.
It's probably a stretch to say this, but IMO this combined with the lifting of restrictions in Germany and France gives our restrictions maybe another year to live, if not a few months.
-lee
There is also a transition guide (or at least a small blub) for those used to BSD instead of SysV (of which Linux is a decendent of the later).
Linux isn't a direct descendant of SysV at all; in fact, that's part of the point behind it. Also, while Linux may have SVr4-ish modules and init(8), the userland is BSDish/GNU all the way -- go to (say) Solaris from Linux or *BSD and the SysV-ness of it will bite you if you aren't ready for it, especially with commands like ps and the printing subsystem.
-lee
If you don't have a Voodoo/Voodoo2, just install glide anyway, and the hacked Mesa library included with q3test will happily use software rendering.
It'll be SLOW, though; expect speeds in the seconds-per-frame range unless you have a fast Pentium II or Celeron A.
-lee...it CRAWLS on my K6-2 300. I hope the g200 drivers become usable soon...
I've got a plan for the next computer I build. It will have a Matrox G200, because a) it's probably the best 2D card out there, and b) Matrox released all the specs for the G200.
I got a G200 based on this same idea -- XFree86 supports it beautifully in 2D, and there's already beta GLX driver source for it around (though it's a pain to get working, and I haven't taken the time to do all the necessary compiling). Quite an improvement from the 2MB ATI Rage I had in here before (I can do 24-bit sparse color at 1152x864x67Hz now, yay!).
-lee...I really wanna see q3test at a speed faster than 5 seconds-2 minutes per frame without having to buy or borrow a Voodoo...
Personally, I think it's great that many businesses are moving away from the management "Magic Piece of Paper" mentality. I just
came from a company stuck in that mindset. I was doing the SAME work as my coworkers, but did not recieve ANY benifits (vacation, dental, ect) and didn't get paid HALF of what they where! All that they would tell me was "get that degree, THEN we'll take care of you." >:^p
This was very much like what my old job was like. It was given to me originally as a "stepping stone" job by a family member, working in his small business. I did get benefits, eventually, but I left because (among other things) I kept getting the line about "oh, we're only paying you $8.50/hr on salary because you don't have a degree or MCSE or some other Magic Piece of Paper that says you're worth it", with the implication that I stay at that place for the next 4 years while I toil away at school. This when I know people that aren't even out of school yet (and at least two that never even went to college) that make at least double that as Unix sysadmins and DBAs. I've put my name in the online job databases, and I've had people from as far away as Dallas asking about me (not that I'd go there; I have no intention of moving away from DC for now).
As for my degree, well, I did try to get my degree at one time, but I keep re-thinking it, and wondering what it is I want...do I want to drop everything for four years and "sacrifice myself" (and incur $1000s in debt, in addition to what I already have from the first try!) for a piece of paper, or do I want to go on the skills I have (I've run FreeBSD at home for over 3 years now, and I can also admin Solaris, Linux, and even NT *bleh*) and get a good job with them? In my case, I've already paid my dues. And I want to learn more; I already know C and some C++, and I want to get the Llama Book and learn Perl. I also want to get a SPARCstation in here and have a Solaris box to play with, I'll do that once I find another job.
As you can imagine, I was greatly pleased with this new, no paper needed attitude adopted by so many companies. They understand that EXPIERENCE and actual know-how is what is important.. not some certificate saying you wasted a LOT of money.. and not to mention time. Yes.... all those Art and History classes HAVE helped me do my job better!! (note the sarcasm.)
Agreed. College would be more attractive if, well, I could skip some of the core courses and learn about what I really wanted to know, stuff that reading through source code in FreeBSD and reading messages on the lists has taught me a little about, and some of those mysterious classes I saw in the curriculum list in 1995...things like "applied combinatorics and game theory" and "theory of computation" (Turing machines).
-lee...math and coding are fun. writing papers is not.
It was sold to X/Open (the Open Group) back in like 1992 or 1993 by USL, long before SCO owned them.
I remember seeing Doug's name on several PC Magazine utilities, and PC Mag's utilities have been more-or-less OpenSource since at least 1986 (I remember when they actually published full source right in the magazine every two weeks). Either the good spin doctors managed to brainwash him into writing this (hint: money talks), or they wrote it and had him put his name on it.
-lee...in fact, HIS OWN EXPERIENCES refute the anti-Red Hat bits of this article, since he himself was paid to write code that'd be given away. At least, I think ZD paid him.
[going off-topic here, but...]
Whoever wrote the headline (hemos?) didn't read the article carefully.
I've noticed a lot of that recently -- people will submit articles (sometimes not having read them all the way through themselves), then they get posted, and other people get all up in arms over a headline and blurb that have been sensationalised.
-lee...not suggesting anything more that that people actually read through and understand articles before they submit. it'd save everyone a lot of trouble in the long run.
I'm 21, and I've been using FreeBSD for 3 and a half years now (I first heard about it at Virginia Tech in 1995).
-lee
Exactly; in the early 1970s, when word got out and people started getting interested in Unix, AT&T couldn't actually sell it to them, because of consent decrees handed down years earlier that said "you can't get into the computer business". So they distributed it for the cost of the media and with no warranty. This environment spawned, among other things, the BSD project at Berkeley, which started in 1977 and produced its last release (4.4BSD Lite 2) in 1995. Later, AT&T started tightening up on the licensing (around the time of V7), and after the breakup of the Bell System, they were able to start charging.
PCI is nice for these things, but a _lot_ of the newer PCI modems and sound cards (the modems especially) aren't supported decently in anything but Windows. Also, it seems USB is better for these slower devices, at least on paper; in all honesty, a device that can't go any faster than about 200 kbytes/s doesn't need dedicated space on a 132MB/s bus.
USB is 12 Mbit/s -- plenty fast to handle even an ISDN modem (20 kbytes/s there, with compression) and a sound box playing audio at CD quality (173 kbyte/s) simultaneously. Now if you were talking about a Ethernet card, which (in 100 MHz mode) can move upwards of 10 MB/s, then PCI would be your best bet. But a 56k dialup modem (maybe 8k/s tops there) or an ISDN link doesn't need that sort of bandwidth -- I'm leaving out cable and xDSL because they usually connect through Ethernet.
The problem with supermodels is that, for the most part, they're bimbos. People marry them just so they can sex them up. It's much nicer, IMO, to marry someone that may not be a drop-dead beauty, but is still cute, and loves you for who you are, not because of something material or sex-related.
-lee...I was dreamin' when I wrote this...
I agree here...ever since they switched to the "ergonomic" design from the Windows 3.0-era straight design, they've had a funky feel to them.
All the computers I use on a regular basis have Logitech mice on them; I got the First Mouse+ I have at home in 1997 or so (may have been last year), and never looked back.
- The record companies don't create. They're middlemen with lots of cash and more-or-less divine power over the industry. They don't give a damn about creativity unles they think it's something they can sell, but most artists go along with this because, well, until now it's been the ONLY way you could make it.
- When you get your big break, you lose all your rights. That's right -- almost all "big break" contracts have language in them that signs over all rights in the recordings to the label, leaving artist with a percentage of that (if anything above and beyond the initial advance for cutting a pro-quality album) for their trouble. Allright, I guess I can give you this one, since it is the label cutting the check, but still, you do lose the rights to that album. This is why so many groups go on tours -- they couldn't make it on the peanuts the labels throw at them, and they can't redistribute the songs themselves without handing over all the money, so they go gigging and get the money from the ticket prices and merchandise sales. Oh, and lest I forget, the labels also stick their fingers into the sheet music -- the majority of the music publishers out there are affiliated with labels (MCA, EMI, Sony, BMG, Warners and PolyGram -- the same Gang of Six responsible for the RIAA).
This is the real problem. The piracy issue is just an attempt to distort the issue, and thwart what is going to become a revolution in music distribution: digital music, distributed over the Internet by the artists themselves, with them setting the rules as to the prices and distribution (they could even give away some songs if they wanted). The record companies are harping about it because their decades of total control over the industry are (hopefully) almost over, and they want to scare people into thinking their way of doing things ($11-16 CDs, and maybe $2 or less per going back to the artist) is still the Right Way.Oh jeeez. Come back when you've stopped smoking shredded copies of Atlas Shrugged. Or better yet, don't.
-lee, typing this on his FreeBSD-only box
The cartoon Freakazoid! featured a character who got his powers from the Internet -- but he was also a total goofball, which makes it sorta apropos somehow... It was a Warner Bros. production from 1995-1997 (yes, the same staff that brought us Animaniacs and Pinky and the Brain).