FYI: "Dolby Surround" (a.k.a. Dolby 2.0) is *not* PCM, it's just decoded that way. It is a compressed track, usually at 2ch/192KBps.
I only own one DVD with real PCM, Massive Attack's "Eleven Promos". Most of the other music DVDs I own (Underworld's "Everything Everything", Talking Heads "Stop Making Sense" etc.) have Dolby 2.0 tracks for their stereo audio. They're usually quite acceptable, too.
Actually, FAT's more likely to lose your data; it's not the best filesystem in the world. And that, of course, is why NTFS (a fully journaled filesystem since Win2K) is there, and also why
While I'm using FreeBSD, there's an NTFS mount under Linux too (if you compiled your kernel right); like FreeBSD's, it's just fine for data recovery. Reads my Win2K and XP NTFS partitions just fine. Of course, I've never had to recover off any of my NTFS partitions... my Win98 FAT partition is another matter.
It's 48:56 (a single-CD remastered stereo edition bought for £3.99 from HMV), so no. The double-CD set also includes the Reed/Cale songs from Nico's "Chelsea Girl" (CD1, stereo) and demos (CD2, mono).
Do you want your Northbridge to have a GeForce4MX core integrated, or would you prefer one without the integrated graphics so that you can choose your own card?
Actually, if nFORCE-2 is anything like nFORCE-1 you won't have this trouble; quite a few nF-1 boards (eg the Asus A7N266 or the MSI K7N420 Pro) have an AGP slot onboard, which overrides the onboard graphics if a card is inserted. With this, NVIDIA gives you a choice: you can buy integrated graphics now, but upgrade later when you need it. And that's why the nFORCE solutions are so unique in their market.
It's like how a complete build of OpenOffice requires 6GB of disk space - temporary object files required to link the stuff together. And there will be a *lot* of object files in something like Win2K.
The difference being that with Anandtech you can just hit the "Print Article" link and you get the complete article onscreen... a handy tip that one.
Re:Linux for desktop, *BSD for servers? - Nope
on
FreeBSD 4.6
·
· Score: 1
You obviously haven't actually used FreeBSD then... USB is supported in the generic kernel, along with 802.11b, Gigabit Ethernet and SCSI RAID. There's no need for a journaling filesystem due to softupdates, you don't need end user books when you have the Handbook and helpful user support, and...
all seem to be in there last time I cvsupped, and many times before that. It's mostly all current versions too. Oh, and KDE 3.0.1 and GNOME2 beta both sit happily in the ports tree. Admittedly 1394 isn't in there, but by current standards it will be soon. I'm running 4.6.
Techtronics' problems mostly come from their after-sales customer service, as far as I can see - never dealt with them myself, but seen far too many horror stories on umd. YMMV.
Or Alpha Centauri, which has a "Simultaneous Moves" mode - still turn-based, but everyone moves at the same time rather than waiting for the other players. Works over IPX, TCP or even good old serial cables. And there's a lot of strategy you have to use in that game too - it is, after all, Civ in space. Not as good as Civ3, of course, but as you say it's not MP yet...
[inq@aragorn/bin]> ls -l ls
-r-xr-xr-x 1 root wheel 299032 May 22 20:15 ls
[inq@aragorn/bin]> file ls
ls: ELF 32-bit LSB executable, Intel 80386, version 1 (FreeBSD), statically linked, stripped
[inq@aragorn/bin]> uname -rs
FreeBSD 4.6-RC
Everything in/bin is statically linked./sbin too. By doing this, you get a definite unmessed system if, say, someting Bad Happens - well apart from the fixme disk images on the CD-ROM set. One of many reasons FreeBSD is my favourite *nix variant, well apart from the comms/ltmdm port (bringing this message to you now) and the ports system in general.
As for the XPSP1 news: I look forward to trying the thing out. But it won't really do anything: Internet Explorer doesn't really exist as a separate product anymore, it's just a shell to the MSHTML engine with favourites features and media bars. This is similar to Mozilla's position: it's a pretty XUL-based shell to the Gecko engine. Windows Explorer uses MSHTML for folder display (very customisable), and there's a whole other raft of non-Microsoft products which do likewise: Microsoft won't want to disable them. So all this will do is not install IEXPLORE.EXE. Big deal.
WMP and the other products, however, aren't based on core operating system features and probably will be fully deleted. They might leave in the codecs that WMP uses, but that's about it for that one: their deletion will be more permanent. Let's face it, however, this isn't "impossible" by a long shot; getting rid of MSHTML entirely probably would be.
Regardless of which browser anyone chooses to use, I'd hope they're more dilligent about updgrading and/or patching than the people in this article were. All browsers have weaknesses and vulnerabilities, both known and unknown.
A good point, especially as NS6/Mozilla had a very similar security hole themselves, which is why it was FORBIDDEN on the FreeBSD ports tree until they put in an unofficial patch (they're very good at that - icecast, for example, is currently in the same situation and pine has a series of warnings when you try to compile). If you read bugtraq, like I do, you'd also have seen a buffer overflow in the IRC component.
It's very hard to be totally secure, and it's not really fair to denigrate Microsoft when a patch has available for months (viz CodeRed/Nimda), or RedHat when people are still using 5.2.
Then why doesn't the Windows XP installer recognise my FreeBSD and Linux partitions and allow me to select them from its boot manager, or allow me to resize or create any non-Windows file system?
It's because the MSFT bootloader isn't written to boot FreeBSD or Linux (afaik, it's a close relative of IBM's OS/2 boot manager.) However, it certainly can do so: there's a very easy to use procedure in the FreeBSD FAQ which tells you how to add it to your boot.ini, and there's a mini-howto which tells you much the same thing (although on Linux, you have to use dd and all that stuff). Or you could use an alternate boot manager, such as xosl, LILO/GRUB or the FreeBSD boot manager: all of these fit in before the NT boot loader and will boot it fine.
The point is that when an app or your windowing system crashes, it doesn't take the whole OS down with it. Ctrl+Alt+BkSpace, then startx again. Voila!
Win2K and XP, the best versions of Windows to compare with a *nix, have the CTRL-ALT-DEL task manager. Simply take the app out, or explorer.exe. They hardly ever crash on a properly configured system anyway.
I have to use Windows here at work, and I hate every minute of it. IE sucks, period. It is slow, buggy, and unstable. IE6 has some cool functionality, but is even more buggy.
Strange; my experience with IE is the exact opposite of yours, although I use Mozilla now (two words: tabbed browsing). Are you sure it's not, say, bad video (or other) drivers? NVIDIA drivers on Windows are a bit of a problem - most reliable version on Win9x imho is probably 7.52WHQL and on Win2K/XP 22.50 or 28.32 (the current reference set). Not as bad as ATI, though, whose Windows drivers are atrocious whatever version you go for.
Ever try burning a CD on an IDE CD-R under Windows? It brings my 1GHz P3 to a crawl.
Are you sure you have DMA enabled on that? Linux will do that stuff automatically, but W9x won't. (W2K and WXP will usually, but not always.) I have a 1GHz Athlon and burning CDs under Windows (at least 2K/XP) is absolutely no trouble whatsoever, even when running Mozilla, Eudora, Winamp etc at the same time.
Note that there's a lot of things I dislike about Microsoft and Windows (insistance of MSN Messenger, reticence on security issues, Passport and so on) but many of the same things can also be pinned on their competitors (eg. Scott "you have no privacy, get over it" McNealy). A lot of msft criticism really depends on which software version you've used.
As for the topic: I haven't used OS X for myself, but I have seen it in action (on the 550MHz TiBook) and it's an extraordinarily good operating system. Sure, it's not exactly a speed demon, but it's very usable and as fast as it needs to be - and seeing the speed difference from 10.0.3 to 10.1.3, things can only get better. I'm planning on buying a TiBook myself soon, entirely because of OS X.
A quick note: the original developers of TPF and WinRoute have now retrieved their software, upgraded it and released it as Kerio Personal Firewall, which is a major improvement in many ways over Tiny. This is the best personal firewall-type product for Win* currently available, bar none. And it's free!
(disclaimer: no, I don't work for them, I just use the software.)
It is and isn't. What Windows calls "Internet Explorer" is really a blank shell with favourites, media bars etc., and the real browsing facilities are called directly from mshtml.dll, part of the o/s. It's been that way since 4.0. You can hack off mshtml.dll, but then you have to put in the explorer.exe from Windows 95/NT 4.0, amongst other things.
This compartmentalised nature makes for Lookout Express's email and news functions, the AOL browser and so on. The reason AOL didn't switch from IE immediately after buying NSCP wasn't just because of the money, but because they could just call mshtml.dll themselves and do the job that way, whereas you couldn't do that with Communicator.
Most of the Mozilla/Netscape 6 project has been entirely to create the compartmentalised browser that AOL needed, and now has.
Yeah, that's because the "Search" panel in IE is a direct connection to MSN's search engine (unless you code it otherwise, there are registry keys for it, must check the IEAK). AFAIK, no personally identifying info is provided to them.
One is that Microsoft sucks for doing this... I think most people can agree to that.
I'm not so sure about that one: look at the text again...
'You acknowledge and agree that Microsoft may automatically check the version of the Product and/or its components that you are utilizing and may provide upgrades or fixes to the Product that will be automatically downloaded to your Workstation Computer.'
As far as I read into it, the "Product" is Windows XP/IE6 and the "upgrades and fixes" are patches to same; not non-MSFT software on your system. This is just covering Microsoft legally because the automatic update feature is turned on by default; Microsoft's law division is larger than his father's firm.
As this is just an automatic interface to Windows Update, it's not really worth referring to; and if you really want to turn it off, go to the 'Automatic Updates' tab in the System control panel. Or you can tell it to ask you.
And if you do turn it off, remember that Code Red was patched a month before the worm came out; ditto Nimda. So remember to check manually...
Having actually used an XP machine, the support account is disabled (meaning you have to enable it), it doesn't phone home in normal use (what you see to "time.windows.com" in ZA/BID/whatever is just plain NTP, which you can turn off) and Microsoft has every right to do activation; it may or may not be a good idea, but if it stops someone CD-Ring a copy of XP-HE for "a friend" that's a good thing for them. Whether it's a good thing for *you* is out of the question at this point. You pay for the software, you agree to their terms.
Oh, and they can't deactivate remotely. The software will request reactivation if it spots a major hardware change (and I do mean major) and during the "first" activation process it can and will reject if the remote end tells it to; but apart from that, that's it. No sudden kills.
XP *does* have a feature like this, actually - if you're using Pro, you can use "Remote Desktop", which is basically a cut down version of Terminal Services. Of course, hardly anyone is using Pro except the warez kiddies (who just pirate corporate versions, which don't activate), the MSDNers and the former beta testers, so that's practically no use...
The disc, like most BBC DVDs, will probably be dual region 2 and 4; so the Australians will be able to see it.
Different companies have different rights areas; the BBC will want to release a R1 version for NTSCers out there, but it's not such a high priority for a company which is resoundingly Region 2. Also, BBC discs are released by Fox in the States, who won't want their area treaded upon. Complain to them.
Maybe also the rights to HHGTTG are owned by someone else; "Monty Python's Flying Circus" and "The Avengers" are owned by A&E, for example.
Now you get all the problems we have every time something cool is released in the States that we can't get; e.g. "Almost Famous" bootleg cut, Monty Python series box sets, Criterion "Life of Brian" and so on. That's why a lot of British people (including me, and most of uk.media.dvd) have their players modded. You should too, even if it's just a DVD-ROM drive and DVD player software (or a H+ hardware card.) Enjoy a whole new world!
I was meaning Apache on Windows. Please don't read into my comments something I wasn't intending.
On UNIX, of course, an IIS-type interface is unnecessary because most UNIX admins worth anything all use the text config files anyway; an IIS-style system on most *NIX systems would be a complete non-starter. Not on Windows.
Which is why I suggested vim (which is very good under Win*). Or any text editor you please. Your comment was that one doesn't exist; it does. Whether it's any good over TELNET is a different matter altogether.
Win2K on my system matches this too. Both Professional version, which means they'll be on server too. Admittedly edlin is rubbish, but the MS-DOS edit.com is OK; and you can always get vim from here, or even emacs.
Not that you'd actually want to, as Windows servers aren't aimed at UNIX people; they're aimed at people who want an easy-to-use graphical interface rather than going into the inner depths of the system. That's why Apache 2.0 needs an IIS-style interface if it is to get popular, rather than linuxconf/webmin (both of which have had holes as serious as IIS; linuxconf is one of the primary causes of the current glut of open relays.) Otherwise, Apache-2.0 on Windows will be just as much a minority view as 1.3 is today, which would be such a shame.
Slashdot Mirror
FYI: "Dolby Surround" (a.k.a. Dolby 2.0) is *not* PCM, it's just decoded that way. It is a compressed track, usually at 2ch/192KBps.
I only own one DVD with real PCM, Massive Attack's "Eleven Promos". Most of the other music DVDs I own (Underworld's "Everything Everything", Talking Heads "Stop Making Sense" etc.) have Dolby 2.0 tracks for their stereo audio. They're usually quite acceptable, too.
Actually, FAT's more likely to lose your data; it's not the best filesystem in the world. And that, of course, is why NTFS (a fully journaled filesystem since Win2K) is there, and also why
/sbin/mount_ntfs /usr/share/man/man8/mount_ntfs.8.gz /usr/src/sbin/mount_ntfs
[inq@aragorn ~]> whereis mount_ntfs
mount_ntfs:
While I'm using FreeBSD, there's an NTFS mount under Linux too (if you compiled your kernel right); like FreeBSD's, it's just fine for data recovery. Reads my Win2K and XP NTFS partitions just fine. Of course, I've never had to recover off any of my NTFS partitions... my Win98 FAT partition is another matter.
It's 48:56 (a single-CD remastered stereo edition bought for £3.99 from HMV), so no. The double-CD set also includes the Reed/Cale songs from Nico's "Chelsea Girl" (CD1, stereo) and demos (CD2, mono).
Actually, if nFORCE-2 is anything like nFORCE-1 you won't have this trouble; quite a few nF-1 boards (eg the Asus A7N266 or the MSI K7N420 Pro) have an AGP slot onboard, which overrides the onboard graphics if a card is inserted. With this, NVIDIA gives you a choice: you can buy integrated graphics now, but upgrade later when you need it. And that's why the nFORCE solutions are so unique in their market.
It's like how a complete build of OpenOffice requires 6GB of disk space - temporary object files required to link the stuff together. And there will be a *lot* of object files in something like Win2K.
The difference being that with Anandtech you can just hit the "Print Article" link and you get the complete article onscreen... a handy tip that one.
You obviously haven't actually used FreeBSD then... USB is supported in the generic kernel, along with 802.11b, Gigabit Ethernet and SCSI RAID. There's no need for a journaling filesystem due to softupdates, you don't need end user books when you have the Handbook and helpful user support, and...
/usr/ports/graphics/sane-backends
/usr/ports/graphics/sane-frontends
/usr/ports/emulators/wine
/usr/ports/java/*
all seem to be in there last time I cvsupped, and many times before that. It's mostly all current versions too. Oh, and KDE 3.0.1 and GNOME2 beta both sit happily in the ports tree. Admittedly 1394 isn't in there, but by current standards it will be soon. I'm running 4.6.
OK, here are a few: Home Cinema Heaven/Upgrade Heaven, Link Online, AV Land, all of which have much better reps on uk.media.dvd than Techtronics.
Techtronics' problems mostly come from their after-sales customer service, as far as I can see - never dealt with them myself, but seen far too many horror stories on umd. YMMV.
Techtronics have a pretty awful reputation, unfortunately. Amazed they're still around, actually...
There's lots of other companies in the UK (and elsewhere) that will mod for you if you look.
Or Alpha Centauri, which has a "Simultaneous Moves" mode - still turn-based, but everyone moves at the same time rather than waiting for the other players. Works over IPX, TCP or even good old serial cables. And there's a lot of strategy you have to use in that game too - it is, after all, Civ in space. Not as good as Civ3, of course, but as you say it's not MP yet...
Hewlett-Packard, for one.
Everything in
As for the XPSP1 news: I look forward to trying the thing out. But it won't really do anything: Internet Explorer doesn't really exist as a separate product anymore, it's just a shell to the MSHTML engine with favourites features and media bars. This is similar to Mozilla's position: it's a pretty XUL-based shell to the Gecko engine. Windows Explorer uses MSHTML for folder display (very customisable), and there's a whole other raft of non-Microsoft products which do likewise: Microsoft won't want to disable them. So all this will do is not install IEXPLORE.EXE. Big deal.
WMP and the other products, however, aren't based on core operating system features and probably will be fully deleted. They might leave in the codecs that WMP uses, but that's about it for that one: their deletion will be more permanent. Let's face it, however, this isn't "impossible" by a long shot; getting rid of MSHTML entirely probably would be.
It's very hard to be totally secure, and it's not really fair to denigrate Microsoft when a patch has available for months (viz CodeRed/Nimda), or RedHat when people are still using 5.2.
It's because the MSFT bootloader isn't written to boot FreeBSD or Linux (afaik, it's a close relative of IBM's OS/2 boot manager.) However, it certainly can do so: there's a very easy to use procedure in the FreeBSD FAQ which tells you how to add it to your boot.ini, and there's a mini-howto which tells you much the same thing (although on Linux, you have to use dd and all that stuff). Or you could use an alternate boot manager, such as xosl, LILO/GRUB or the FreeBSD boot manager: all of these fit in before the NT boot loader and will boot it fine.
Note that there's a lot of things I dislike about Microsoft and Windows (insistance of MSN Messenger, reticence on security issues, Passport and so on) but many of the same things can also be pinned on their competitors (eg. Scott "you have no privacy, get over it" McNealy). A lot of msft criticism really depends on which software version you've used.
As for the topic: I haven't used OS X for myself, but I have seen it in action (on the 550MHz TiBook) and it's an extraordinarily good operating system. Sure, it's not exactly a speed demon, but it's very usable and as fast as it needs to be - and seeing the speed difference from 10.0.3 to 10.1.3, things can only get better. I'm planning on buying a TiBook myself soon, entirely because of OS X.
A quick note: the original developers of TPF and WinRoute have now retrieved their software, upgraded it and released it as Kerio Personal Firewall, which is a major improvement in many ways over Tiny. This is the best personal firewall-type product for Win* currently available, bar none. And it's free!
(disclaimer: no, I don't work for them, I just use the software.)
They died before that, when All the President's Men, Taxi Driver, Network and Bound for Glory all lost to...
Rocky.
Now that's a bad decision.
It is and isn't. What Windows calls "Internet Explorer" is really a blank shell with favourites, media bars etc., and the real browsing facilities are called directly from mshtml.dll, part of the o/s. It's been that way since 4.0. You can hack off mshtml.dll, but then you have to put in the explorer.exe from Windows 95/NT 4.0, amongst other things.
This compartmentalised nature makes for Lookout Express's email and news functions, the AOL browser and so on. The reason AOL didn't switch from IE immediately after buying NSCP wasn't just because of the money, but because they could just call mshtml.dll themselves and do the job that way, whereas you couldn't do that with Communicator.
Most of the Mozilla/Netscape 6 project has been entirely to create the compartmentalised browser that AOL needed, and now has.
Yeah, that's because the "Search" panel in IE is a direct connection to MSN's search engine (unless you code it otherwise, there are registry keys for it, must check the IEAK). AFAIK, no personally identifying info is provided to them.
As this is just an automatic interface to Windows Update, it's not really worth referring to; and if you really want to turn it off, go to the 'Automatic Updates' tab in the System control panel. Or you can tell it to ask you.
And if you do turn it off, remember that Code Red was patched a month before the worm came out; ditto Nimda. So remember to check manually...
Having actually used an XP machine, the support account is disabled (meaning you have to enable it), it doesn't phone home in normal use (what you see to "time.windows.com" in ZA/BID/whatever is just plain NTP, which you can turn off) and Microsoft has every right to do activation; it may or may not be a good idea, but if it stops someone CD-Ring a copy of XP-HE for "a friend" that's a good thing for them. Whether it's a good thing for *you* is out of the question at this point. You pay for the software, you agree to their terms.
Oh, and they can't deactivate remotely. The software will request reactivation if it spots a major hardware change (and I do mean major) and during the "first" activation process it can and will reject if the remote end tells it to; but apart from that, that's it. No sudden kills.
XP *does* have a feature like this, actually - if you're using Pro, you can use "Remote Desktop", which is basically a cut down version of Terminal Services. Of course, hardly anyone is using Pro except the warez kiddies (who just pirate corporate versions, which don't activate), the MSDNers and the former beta testers, so that's practically no use...
The disc, like most BBC DVDs, will probably be dual region 2 and 4; so the Australians will be able to see it.
Different companies have different rights areas; the BBC will want to release a R1 version for NTSCers out there, but it's not such a high priority for a company which is resoundingly Region 2. Also, BBC discs are released by Fox in the States, who won't want their area treaded upon. Complain to them.
Maybe also the rights to HHGTTG are owned by someone else; "Monty Python's Flying Circus" and "The Avengers" are owned by A&E, for example.
Now you get all the problems we have every time something cool is released in the States that we can't get; e.g. "Almost Famous" bootleg cut, Monty Python series box sets, Criterion "Life of Brian" and so on. That's why a lot of British people (including me, and most of uk.media.dvd) have their players modded. You should too, even if it's just a DVD-ROM drive and DVD player software (or a H+ hardware card.) Enjoy a whole new world!
I was meaning Apache on Windows. Please don't read into my comments something I wasn't intending.
On UNIX, of course, an IIS-type interface is unnecessary because most UNIX admins worth anything all use the text config files anyway; an IIS-style system on most *NIX systems would be a complete non-starter. Not on Windows.
Which is why I suggested vim (which is very good under Win*). Or any text editor you please. Your comment was that one doesn't exist; it does. Whether it's any good over TELNET is a different matter altogether.
Although I shudder at the idea of administering Win2K through telnet, there are text editors:
G:\WINDOWS\system32>ver
Microsoft Windows XP [Version 5.1.2600]
G:\WINDOWS\system32>dir ed*.*
Volume in drive G has no label.
Volume Serial Number is 588C-29C1
Directory of G:\WINDOWS\system32
23/08/2001 12:00 69,886 edit.com
23/08/2001 12:00 10,790 edit.hlp
23/08/2001 12:00 12,642 edlin.exe
3 File(s) 93,318 bytes
0 Dir(s) 1,061,761,024 bytes free
Win2K on my system matches this too. Both Professional version, which means they'll be on server too. Admittedly edlin is rubbish, but the MS-DOS edit.com is OK; and you can always get vim from here, or even emacs.
Not that you'd actually want to, as Windows servers aren't aimed at UNIX people; they're aimed at people who want an easy-to-use graphical interface rather than going into the inner depths of the system. That's why Apache 2.0 needs an IIS-style interface if it is to get popular, rather than linuxconf/webmin (both of which have had holes as serious as IIS; linuxconf is one of the primary causes of the current glut of open relays.) Otherwise, Apache-2.0 on Windows will be just as much a minority view as 1.3 is today, which would be such a shame.