If your going to do it, unless it's for a as yet seen hardware product, you may as well do it now. No harm in having a few extra eyes on the code and someone testing it for you ifthey can't code.
Ask mainframe people why bother with VM? FOR TESTING MAN! This way you DON'T have to have a entire computer to test kernels and other operating systems and the like. You can develop a new OS using Linux. When developing cross platform programs, you can test all of the x86 stuff without rebooting! This stuff is great! On our mainframe, back in May of 1999 we started up a test configuration so we could do testing for Y2K. The Y2K vm session had a different date the the rest of the machine! While I am sure you could not have done that on Plex86 or vmWare, it's still useful to test stuff out in a sandbox so it doesn't hurt the rest of your work.
Linux is a server AND a Desktop. I can do most things on my Linux machine that I can do in Windows. Games are getting there, but are not as important as the big 3-7 things i do, which are e-mail, pim stuff, word processing, occasional spreadsheet, web page development, web browsing and graphics. Interfaces will nopt change tremendously because WIMP is what's out there and alot of people already know it. In fact, I CHALLENGE you programmer to come up with somehting better. I have seen some shell replacement type stuff on Windows that is kind of neat, but not what I like (I think it's called Talisman or something like that). This stuff will let you have say a image, and you can click on things in that image to do things like launch programs, go to web pages and the like. While nice, it makes it difficult to multi task and see more than one window at once. WIMP makes this a whole lot easier, although most users I know started the same way I did by maximising every app you were using. I rarely do this now (works real well at work where I have a 21 in monitor.. at home with the 17 in it doesn't work as well, but is not bad) that I have TRUELY come to appreciate the elegance of the WIMP. Personally, I liked the Outlook app interface, but hated almost everything else about it. Evolution has a similar and comfortable look about it, but it dispense's with the Outlook Today page (One feature I did like). It also is MUCH prettier then outlook, IMHO!
Well, I think Slashdot should HOLD OFF posting release announcements until it's posted on the companies or project web site. I know I know it's been said before, but both today's KDE Beta 3 and Red Hat's beta of 7.0 have been posted BEFORE it's officially linked from the top page of the site(Red Hat never links this stuff to the top, but KDE always does). It's putting loads on the servers before the stuff is there sometimes! Mirrors can take a while to get their updates. This is not fair to the people who are trying to get something else off of the server beside the release. Since the mirrors don't all have the files yet, the main site get's/.'d. I think Slashdot should chill on the release announcement until the announcement appears, or until the mirror's are all updated. All of the people who really want it, get it anyway whether it's on/. or not.
Thanks for pointint this out. Caldera has done TONS for Linux. Graphical installers came about because Caldera had it (Text is fine by me, but mom want's pretty pictures and progress bars). If more people use Linux because of it, that's great because the more people who use it, the better device support we'll get (hello ALPS can you make something available so we can make your printers work in Linux??). Caldear picking up SCO is a good move, as long as it doesn't sink Caldera.
It costs about 260 US $ for a handheld (A HANDHELD!) amatuer radio transmitter capable of 5 watts! I can also throttle the rig down to half a watt and via repeaters, get 30 miles radius. Of course you have to be licensed, and you can't broadcast (2 way only, at least that's the way it' s supposed to be) and you can't play music. This is a DOABLE thing with a cheap transmitter and proper frequencies and possible licenses. Licenses would be necessary jusr to PREVENT the interference problem with the bigger stations. It's MORE likely that a nearby big radio station would interfere with the low powered station.
I noticed in the Yahoo article that it mentioned Bonobo and gtk and also Miguel de Icaza of Helixcode fame mentioned too....does this mean that Gnome Office suite (Abiword, Gnumeric, Dia....etc etc) will be dead, or will they incorporate themselves into Star Office? (Perhaps Dia being added to Star Office...).
Um....No, it doesn't. It includes NO ALPS printers whatsoever. YES I have tried to mess with the code for Ghostscript and add the code listed on the Printer howto. That code is documented in Japanese, I am enlgish. I have tried to get it translated to no avail. Joel McLaughlin
Sigh. I think about stuff like this everyday at work, although not with hardware drivers (as much anyway). We have a NT box that sends print streams from our enterprise server (read mainframe)to two, printers as postscript files. These printers are pretty open since the run Solaris. The downside's are many....the software uses a hardware anti-priacy key. In order to use all software installed, you have to by licenses for each piece EVEN THO you have to have the ENTIRE package installed, you can only use certain parts of it depending on how you have the license setup (A MAJOR PAIN). Second, the format for the Xerox printer streams we send this box is proprietary, but the company that made the software is in bed with Xerox, so they have the ability to write the program necessary to convert the Xerox stream to a postscript file. I do not. The thing is, the only people who would buy this software are people that need it! The only people who want driver software are the people who BUY the card. You CAN write software that does not reveal too much about the internals of the hardware. Besides, the guys looking at this code probably would not have the ability to manufacture a competing board. Nor would other sound card or whatever vendors care about your code (The have NIH or not invented here virus...). Closed source binary drivers FORCE you to be a little insecure in that you usually ARE stuck with a certain kernel (Lucent LTwinmodem people know what I mean!:) ). Opening a driver code will not usually affect you guys (hardware vendor) if you concentrate on making your hardware better then the competition's then spending your resources on keeping a closed source driver.
There are certain time I carry my phone, but I turn it off at times. Vacation is one time I do turn it off, especially if I have a number I can be gotten at when on vacation out of town. If I am in town and on vacation, it's off. If I am in church, it's off. If I am at a family event it's off, usually. If your a tech worker and your getting pages to fix things, then you should set your server up so you don't have to fix em unless you get a equipment failure or power failure. If something fails time after time again....SOMETHING'S WRONG! FIX IT so it doesn't happen again and your calls magically go away. DOCUMENT IT and your calls go away except for extreme brainfarts or extremely complex problems. It's when you just band-aid things that you get call after call. It's when you fix it for good that the problem is fixed, not just if it works now. Then when it's a REAL emergency, either your people will be able to handle it, or it's a real serious problem.
Your interrupted free time won't get interrupted as much if you do your job right!
Nope not dead....just change of focus.....
on
Is Ham Radio Dead??
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· Score: 2
I think one reason you do here alot of older hams on the low bands (10m-160m) is that they have houses that you can put up an antenna on, and they have somehting the younger guys do not have.....time. I can't sit in the same room as my shack and listen to the static waiting for an opening. I have a son and a wife that deserve my time more.
I do work VHF/UHF. It's easier, the equipment is portable and has significant benefits. Most repeaters have a phone patch now so now I can call my wife (no commercial use, the law is too grey on that) anytime, anywhere in the range of the repeater. There's also a linked repeater that has a phone patch linking to a neighboring area code (close, but far enough to be LD on land line).
Also Hams have been working with TCP/IP since before the web and doing this with a wireless connection! There's also the APRS (automatic position reporting system) network that not only you can do with a computer, but you can do position reports w/o a computer AND view the APRS map from any web browser using javAPRS (on the web page in the area of interest to you). APRS uses GPS technology and is on almost every platform (XASTIR(GPL) and XAPRS for Linux/UNIX and DOS APRS (the original developer started here), WinAPRS, MacAPRS, and palmAPRS for the Palm Pilot!...nothing on BeOS yet that I know of.
For the HF stuff, you can do a station cheaply if you do QRP! QRP is working the HF bands with 5 w or less! When the band is open, it works and you just can't believe you are using only 5 w. Point is, something is only dead if you let it be dead, to you. Someone is always using something, even those old Atari 800XL's. You just have to find the web page or people to talk to.
Man I am being a dork today! MONDAYS SUCK! I MEAN the maintainer's of the GPL'd code could change the code significantly enough to break the commercial product!:)
Sheesh. I don't even think this will go to court unless the software house (whoever it might be) has done some real kick butt stuff with the GPL'd code and doesn't want to share it. All the company would need to do is provide the source with the product! Of course they could keep it out of court and change the way the GPL'd code worked so that it would break the evil software companies code ala Microsoft!;)
Let me ask you this....who would trust the security of an operating system when you can't look at it's source code?? NOT ME MAN! I trust Microsoft about as far as I can throw em.
Linux hard to use??? HORSE HOCKEY! Neither is Windows. The kind of people companies are hiring are also the kind of people who have no idea how to change the friggin oil in their cars or even if they have oil in their cars.
I have one guy that every time I go into his office I can explain to him (sometimes for the 3rd or 4th time) how to do something in plain english when our support and trainer can't teach the guy. OH BTW, he usually gets it eventually. I know, he drives me up a wall, but this is the kind of thing we need to do, more often. Then we get the general idea of what needs fixin. Only thing I can't figure out how to do is to explain to him why the CAPS LOCK keed should be normally off. EVERY E-MAIL I GET FROM HIM LOOKS LIKE THIS!
But we must learn patience. Personally, from personal experience, I have been in #linuxhelp on IRC and see someone asking well how do I do this, how do I do that in Linux. I usually HELP! I am not the guy who says just search Google or just got to and find it. I tell him EXACTLY where to find it. If that means I open up another browser and do the search for him, well, that's what I do. THEN if he asks you where you found it, that's when to reveal your source. When he find it, maybe he can look new questions up himself if they have time. I think users SHOULD know what a defrag is and a scandisk in windows. They should know these things even if computers are not their job but using one is because it's one of the things on how to take care of your tool. People wouldn't dream of not refilling a stapler and stuff liek that. I think automagic are great because it does simplify that job of using a computer, even for someone who knows what they are doing.
I have downloaded it. Pounded on it. And determined it's pretty good! Replacing Enlightenment with Sawfish was a good thing. Enlightenment is trying to be everything including it's own libraries and everything. Not a good fit with gnome, although it's good you can use it with gnome still. Stability even with the version of gnome with Red Hat 6.1 was never too bad, in my opinion. Even when the panel does crash it snaps back (on both the pre-october and 1.2). The thing I find crashing a bit is some of the panel applets. Usually happens on my system when I go to remove it from the panel. But when the panel snaps back, I can usually remove it no problem. Must be a memory leak in there or something. I'd rather have panel crashes then BSOD's anyday!
I HATE window shading. While the effect is cool and you can read all of the window's title, it takes up too much fraggin screen space! Not all of us have multiple monitors or HUGE 21 inch screens. Iconification is better.
I have seen one and I use it everyday. We don't have Linux on it yet, but our director is looking at Linux on her PC!:) Our thing is that we have to have something we can cheaply distribute to students ( community college ). Linux fits the bill there!
Yup! Got to LOVE intergrated DASD! And with Telnet and TCP/IP, who needs controllers for direct connects?:) Although you may want to clear a little space out for a channel printer (Xerox 4890 or a solimar box and Xerox DP65 running Solaris would be my choice) and a big tape backup (no, you don't need a silo, but you can get a tape backup the size of a small fridge that would do it).
Anyone notice mainframes getting smaller and PC schtuff getting bigger? Weird huh?
Um, if your running Linux on S/390 what's the whole POINT of running CICS?? You don't need it. Just run a web server and do everything in a browser, or use it for running X programs! CICS is a mainframe and specifically MVS and DOS/VSE only thing. As far as COBOL on Linux, it's possible. I bet there's a compiler out ther for Linux, you just can't find it. COBOL is just another language and not needed just because you are running a mainframe. Although most shops do use COBOL, they don't have to.
Nope no print command on S/390 assembler. The assembler most OS/390 and DOS/VSE shops use is a macro assmbler where MOST of the program can be done in pure assembler, and there are macros written to take care of alot of the real complex shtuff. This might be what you are thinking of. I should know. I had to take the class before I could take ANY other programming classes at our school which is also where I work!;)
Actually, IBM ALREADY had Linux running Natively on a mainframe. You see, VM virtual machines need MF OS's to run. So, it can run on the raw iron. I don't know why anyone would not want to run VM tho. You can have 2 servers up on the same machine and have one be a test or mirror of the other. The testing is the cool thing. They could test everything in a limited sense and then when they got it working, they could just change the IP and servername of the test server to that of the old server and vice versa and the move is DONE! I here that the 3/390 is also excellent running x clients too. Graphics on a mainframe? Well, no, but the calculations for your program would occur on the mainframe!
Mainframes are back baby and they are MAD and running Linux!
Ok, this is K-12 right? Why do Linux at all? Let me say this at the beginning....I LOVE LINUX! That being said, Linux still has a place, and I don't think it would do that well in a K-12 setting unless it would be only for Internet. Remember the K-12, especially the K-6 group probably want to run things like Reader Rabbit, National Geographic and Encarta type CD's which are WINDOWS ONLY! That being said, unless Wine works will all packages FLAWLESSLY, I would not even ATTEMPT to do Linux in this space. 9-12 maybe, and 7-8 is a bit iffy, but for the whole thing, K-12, probably not. Like I said I LOVE LINUX, it's just that it can;t run the Windows things these sappy instructors need to run.
That being said if I were to do a similar project, I'd run a old P-75 for the terminal as they are excellent machines anyway under Linux(I still used one most of last year at work. Running 95 it was dog slow, when I partitioned it and ran Caldera Openlinux on it, it ran like a champ!). Look for a IT outlet place in your area as I doubt I'd want to pay to ship something like this! If you know someone who has a connection to a companies IT dept, you can ask them what they do with their old machines, then if the liquidate, ask who their liquidator is. This way you can get a bunch of machines with the same vid chipset and very similar configs.
The computers on the shuttle are equivelent to a 370 IBM mainframe. They use a tape library to load the software into magnetic core memory this way they can load the software for emergency landings once on orbit, shut the computer down, and the program remains in memory. All it takes to bring up the emergency landing software is to power the computer backup.
They have a total of 5 of these computers, 3 of which are functioning during flight, with the others are in a standby mode, ready to be powered up at a moments notice. The 3 computers vote on all things they measure. Of one disagrees a set number of times, it is thrown out of the pool and a backup brought online in it's place. This is, I am sure, a vastly simplified explanation. All flight software is written in assembler and ADA.
Why did they not update these? I believe the newest CPU they use in space now is a special version of the 486 qualified for spaceflight (one replaced an old 286 on hubble I believe). Everything NASA sends in space has to be miltary quality or above (more above then anything). It MUST not fail or people will die! So, NASA has to go with proven technologies. Putting a Pentium !!! Xeon for the shuttles computer is just asking for trouble. The other reason they went mainframe with those is IO! The shuttle is fly by wire and every flight surface and reaction jet has multiple redundant sensors monitoring their function. They can't wait on a hd or memory to respond. MUST HAVE NO BOTTLENECKS! Lives are at stake. This is why computers in spacecraft are not as complex as you might think.
Slashdot Mirror
Um....No, it doesn't. It includes NO ALPS printers whatsoever. YES I have tried to mess with the code for Ghostscript and add the code listed on the Printer howto. That code is documented in Japanese, I am enlgish. I have tried to get it translated to no avail. Joel McLaughlin
Your interrupted free time won't get interrupted as much if you do your job right!
I do work VHF/UHF. It's easier, the equipment is portable and has significant benefits. Most repeaters have a phone patch now so now I can call my wife (no commercial use, the law is too grey on that) anytime, anywhere in the range of the repeater. There's also a linked repeater that has a phone patch linking to a neighboring area code (close, but far enough to be LD on land line).
Also Hams have been working with TCP/IP since before the web and doing this with a wireless connection! There's also the APRS (automatic position reporting system) network that not only you can do with a computer, but you can do position reports w/o a computer AND view the APRS map from any web browser using javAPRS (on the web page in the area of interest to you). APRS uses GPS technology and is on almost every platform (XASTIR(GPL) and XAPRS for Linux/UNIX and DOS APRS (the original developer started here), WinAPRS, MacAPRS, and palmAPRS for the Palm Pilot!...nothing on BeOS yet that I know of.
For the HF stuff, you can do a station cheaply if you do QRP! QRP is working the HF bands with 5 w or less! When the band is open, it works and you just can't believe you are using only 5 w. Point is, something is only dead if you let it be dead, to you. Someone is always using something, even those old Atari 800XL's. You just have to find the web page or people to talk to.
Joel McLaughlin N8VQJ
I have one guy that every time I go into his office I can explain to him (sometimes for the 3rd or 4th time) how to do something in plain english when our support and trainer can't teach the guy. OH BTW, he usually gets it eventually. I know, he drives me up a wall, but this is the kind of thing we need to do, more often. Then we get the general idea of what needs fixin. Only thing I can't figure out how to do is to explain to him why the CAPS LOCK keed should be normally off. EVERY E-MAIL I GET FROM HIM LOOKS LIKE THIS!
But we must learn patience. Personally, from personal experience, I have been in #linuxhelp on IRC and see someone asking well how do I do this, how do I do that in Linux. I usually HELP! I am not the guy who says just search Google or just got to and find it. I tell him EXACTLY where to find it. If that means I open up another browser and do the search for him, well, that's what I do. THEN if he asks you where you found it, that's when to reveal your source. When he find it, maybe he can look new questions up himself if they have time. I think users SHOULD know what a defrag is and a scandisk in windows. They should know these things even if computers are not their job but using one is because it's one of the things on how to take care of your tool. People wouldn't dream of not refilling a stapler and stuff liek that. I think automagic are great because it does simplify that job of using a computer, even for someone who knows what they are doing.
Anyone notice mainframes getting smaller and PC schtuff getting bigger? Weird huh?
Mainframes are back baby and they are MAD and running Linux!
That being said if I were to do a similar project, I'd run a old P-75 for the terminal as they are excellent machines anyway under Linux(I still used one most of last year at work. Running 95 it was dog slow, when I partitioned it and ran Caldera Openlinux on it, it ran like a champ!). Look for a IT outlet place in your area as I doubt I'd want to pay to ship something like this! If you know someone who has a connection to a companies IT dept, you can ask them what they do with their old machines, then if the liquidate, ask who their liquidator is. This way you can get a bunch of machines with the same vid chipset and very similar configs.
They have a total of 5 of these computers, 3 of which are functioning during flight, with the others are in a standby mode, ready to be powered up at a moments notice. The 3 computers vote on all things they measure. Of one disagrees a set number of times, it is thrown out of the pool and a backup brought online in it's place. This is, I am sure, a vastly simplified explanation. All flight software is written in assembler and ADA.
Why did they not update these? I believe the newest CPU they use in space now is a special version of the 486 qualified for spaceflight (one replaced an old 286 on hubble I believe). Everything NASA sends in space has to be miltary quality or above (more above then anything). It MUST not fail or people will die! So, NASA has to go with proven technologies. Putting a Pentium !!! Xeon for the shuttles computer is just asking for trouble. The other reason they went mainframe with those is IO! The shuttle is fly by wire and every flight surface and reaction jet has multiple redundant sensors monitoring their function. They can't wait on a hd or memory to respond. MUST HAVE NO BOTTLENECKS! Lives are at stake. This is why computers in spacecraft are not as complex as you might think.
Go to NASA
Go to NASA's website to check out the FAQ on the shuttle.