First, I don't know what compelled Joshua to choose Mandrake, whose "bleeding-edgeness" usually keeps them a bit unstable and unpolished.
Second, I've no idea why he backed his customer down to red hat 6.2, maybe he didn't know that red hat 7.0 still has a 2.2 kernel and is way more modern than 6.2. Was he really *that* frightened?
Finally, I don't know what qualifies as "production use", but I have at least 3 servers with Red Hat 7.2, kernel 2.4.7, in "production" (meaning serving a lot of database-driven web pages, serving up files and working as X servers) and I've yet to have a kernel-related crash. Actually, my only downtime has been due to power outages.
1- The paper was written by someone at Napster. That's like someone at Ford writing a paper on how Chevrolet passenger transports can't scale.
2- The math has been reviewed by people (at least here) and found to be flawed.
So, it's probably a nonexistent problem, and the fact that gnutella keeps working and the whole internet hasn't slowed to a crawl because of it, is proof that maybe there's no solution needed.
How come Microsoft didn't sue IBM for "OS/2 for Windows"? even other versions of OS/2 starting with OS/2 2.0 had "WinOS/2" and microsoft didn't lift a finger. Scared to go head-to-head with the Big Blue?
ok, so just because it pisses you off when your software is pirated, that entitles your representatives to go scaring and threatening me, even if I don't have a pirated copy of your software? how about I've never heard from you or your software, don't use it, and still, I have to waste my time and resources proving i'm not delinquent?
The big issue here is not with pirates, who probably deserve what they get. It's with those of us who have no pirated software (mainly free software here) and have to go through the burden of proving our innocence because we're being considered guilty to boot.
It's that attitude from the BSA that makes us say "bring them on, I'll sue their asses when they come and tear the place apart and find nothing but Linux and OpenBSD here". A bullyish attitude will always find at least one hostile response.
I agree that LaTeX is awesome, the learning curve is a bit steep but once past that, you'll be churning out documents so fast, you'll run rings around the poor souls dragging a mouse in word and friends.
The folks at PC Power and Cooling have this monster which, altough comprised of 2 separate hot-swappable 420W PSU's, is supposed to be able to deliver 840W peak.
i send an avg of 50 email messages daily. Not spam, they're strictly personal or business related and only in reply to mail I get. So are you saying I'd have to pay 10 bucks a month (assuming 20 workdays per month and no mail on weekends), ON TOP of what I already pay for internet connectivity, as a measure to stop people engaging in an illegal activity and highly likely to find yet another means of passing the cost on to somebody else?
No way.
keep in mind that at least one of the servers involved in the transaction belongs to me. Should I, then, collect fees from people who send mail destined for my server?
Yeah, but as this slashdot discussion made it clear, open source projects don't count as valid experience. Then again, nothing short of working for an actual PHB does. Bleh.
Hey! how many releases has Windows had? yet people continue to use it. This should give a clue that a) it's going to take a LOT of times before people realize, b) sadly, humans are notorious for making the same mistake twice, 3 times, and as many times as it takes. Guess if our mistakes killed us more often, those left would be smarter.
Someone else mentioned a calculator, and it's a good idea, there are tons of games for HP calculators and some of those are really time-consuming. I had a platform game where the main character was an ant, i was playing that in vectorial calculus when a classmate commented the ant looked like a lump of shit. I started laughing so hard, that the teacher noticed, and i nearly got kicked out of the class. That, of course, would have been more entertaining than remaining in class, but would have hampered my graduation aspirations.
No, seriously, perhaps you should try and focus on the class instead of publicizing your need to kill time? plus it's going to be pretty embarrassing when you get asked a question and can't reply because you've been busy playing a game. Yes, i can picture that: "hold on a second, professor, i'm trying to pass level 8 here.."
This company organized a huge media-related event, and they wanted to have an on-line registration system. Initially they called in a team which developed the system on Windows NT servers, with ASP and SQL Server. They took 3 months and when they finally delivered the system, it simply crashed under the heavy load.
That's when they called us in. This was 2 days prior to the registration day, so we were in a big rush. We, of course, advocated open/free technologies; we suggested Linux, MySQL, apache and perl. They said OK, so we started working. At the same time, the NT team worked on their server, tweaking it to see if they could withstand the load.
30 hours later, and on a server that was about 1/2 the capacity of the NT team's server, our system went on-line. It turns out it, too, crashed under the load. Heh. But while the NT team was busy rebooting their server just once, we installed Linux on 4 additional computers (desk-grade IBM Aptivas) and ended up with a round-robin configuration, with 4 web servers and a backend database server. Our system handled the load so well, that this time the company' firewall crashed and they had to update it.
I still like to use it as an example of how free technologies and tools enabled us to re-engineer 3 months worth of work from the NT team, in about 36 hours.
I live in Mexico, which is part of the american continent (i.e. I DO live in America), and let me tell you, insecurity here is a real problem, so needs like those are not far-fetched.
Plenty of countries in our continent (America) are in a similar situation. Off the top of my head, Colombia has severe insecurity problems, and i'm sure others will tell more stories like this.
I used to carry a BBC (bootable business card) in my wallet, made from an image I got off linuxcare. It saved me several times, however, being in a wallet is pretty rough treatment for a CD, the disc developed small holes in the reflective surface and stopped working. So keep this in mind. I now have a more standard 3.5 inch disc, in its jewelbox, and carry that on my laptop's briefcase.
Go take a look at psion teklogix, they have a large line of industrial handheld computers, some are rugged and impact-resistant, they even have a "freezer" model and ruggedized netpads (which were even featured in slashdot not long ago).
I had several issues while trying viavoice and dragon naturally speaking.
You definitely should give it a try before committing.
When you're typing, the kind of mistakes you make are of the kind known as "typos", where you mistype one letter for another. Those are hard to spot but in the end they don't matter that much.
With voice recognition, you have BIG mistakes; like, the engine mistaking one word for another totally different, or complete sentences. That is big, and actually requires you to go through the entire document and fix the errors.
Also, most voice recognizers i've seen aren't too adept at handling changes of mind; when you're speaking, you tend to make mistakes, because you changed your mind, or you meant something else, or whatnot. Recognizers aren't too forgiving of these situations. You'll end up with more crap on your document that you'll have to fix. In order to provide a coherent flow of speech for the recognizer, you basically have to be reading it from somewhere else. Which pretty much beats the purpose of the recognizer. If it's already printed, why not OCR it instead? it's bound to be much more accurate and faster. Also, if you have to write your stuff by hand before dictating it into the computer, you defeat the purpose of the voice recognition software. Because I guess you can type faster than you can handwrite:)
Well, salaries are amazing in the US, compared to what we see in other countries. I was once offered a job paying 55,000 dollars a year (about 4800 a month) and I didn't even have a degree back then. That's considering that the best job offer i've had here in Mexico didn't top 1500 bucks a month.
here in Mexico, a 2000-dollar computer is considered top of the line, and a budget model goes for about 600-800 dollars. And yes, it would be outrageous for someone to spend 2000 bucks on a gaming machine.
however, also keep in mind that the computer is going to be good for something other than gaming. Now, if someone spends 2000 bucks on a PS2 or Xbox, that's outrageous, but 2000 for a computer which is used primarily for gaming, but also has other uses, is not that far-fetched.
Chances are PC Power and Cooling has solutions to all the problems mentioned here- good-quality, high-power, quiet and non-quiet power supplies.
They're generally recognized to use high-quality components, such as ball-bearing fans (in my experience, the fan is the first thing to die in a power supply - and, in the process leading to its death, it turns from quiet to an annoying failing-engine-like sound). They have a line of ultra-quiet supplies, as well as high-performance ATX power supplies providing up to 600 watts.
and with all that's going on, we still have the stupid surge protector poll on slashdot? cmon people, show some sense of opportunity! give us an interesting poll!
Altough the Tm5600-based system outlasted the PIII-based one by about 28% in battery life tests, it's interesting to notice that the PIII has a 5400 mAH battery, while the TM5600's batteries add up to 4300 mAH. That is, the Transmeta processor lasted 28% more on about 20% less battery capacity. Some quick numbers indicate that the Transmeta processor would be able to run for over 6 hours on a 5400 mAH battery, which is a full 50% longer than the 4 hours the PIII system lasted, given that the batteries had the same capacity.
Maybe you're one of those who'd like to see Mozilla "suppressed". I guess you haven't used it lately, it might be late, but I'll take a late project over one rushed out the door too soon any day.
If you don't like the way it looks, then use a different theme; if you think it's buggy, help find and squash bugs. There's just no excuse to complain with a project of this nature, other than you actually being one of those people who engage in "personal attacks devoid of content". Which doesn't seem to be the case!
As for MozillaQuest's journalistic integrity, what they initially strike me as, is one of those sites whose reporting style is aggressive and inflamatory, which is good, because it leads to heated and interesting discussion and generates more traffic for them (hate to see another.com bite the dust). I don't have a problem with that, and neither should anyone else, as long as they keep their reports accurate. Those people who prefer a more "serious" reporting style should stick to other sites like mozillazine.
Slashdot Mirror
First, I don't know what compelled Joshua to choose Mandrake, whose "bleeding-edgeness" usually keeps them a bit unstable and unpolished.
Second, I've no idea why he backed his customer down to red hat 6.2, maybe he didn't know that red hat 7.0 still has a 2.2 kernel and is way more modern than 6.2. Was he really *that* frightened?
Finally, I don't know what qualifies as "production use", but I have at least 3 servers with Red Hat 7.2, kernel 2.4.7, in "production" (meaning serving a lot of database-driven web pages, serving up files and working as X servers) and I've yet to have a kernel-related crash. Actually, my only downtime has been due to power outages.
two reasons:
1- The paper was written by someone at Napster. That's like someone at Ford writing a paper on how Chevrolet passenger transports can't scale.
2- The math has been reviewed by people (at least here) and found to be flawed.
So, it's probably a nonexistent problem, and the fact that gnutella keeps working and the whole internet hasn't slowed to a crawl because of it, is proof that maybe there's no solution needed.
How come Microsoft didn't sue IBM for "OS/2 for Windows"? even other versions of OS/2 starting with OS/2 2.0 had "WinOS/2" and microsoft didn't lift a finger. Scared to go head-to-head with the Big Blue?
ok, so just because it pisses you off when your software is pirated, that entitles your representatives to go scaring and threatening me, even if I don't have a pirated copy of your software? how about I've never heard from you or your software, don't use it, and still, I have to waste my time and resources proving i'm not delinquent?
The big issue here is not with pirates, who probably deserve what they get. It's with those of us who have no pirated software (mainly free software here) and have to go through the burden of proving our innocence because we're being considered guilty to boot.
It's that attitude from the BSA that makes us say "bring them on, I'll sue their asses when they come and tear the place apart and find nothing but Linux and OpenBSD here". A bullyish attitude will always find at least one hostile response.
Maybe he should have said "LaTeX" ?
I agree that LaTeX is awesome, the learning curve is a bit steep but once past that, you'll be churning out documents so fast, you'll run rings around the poor souls dragging a mouse in word and friends.
The folks at PC Power and Cooling have this monster which, altough comprised of 2 separate hot-swappable 420W PSU's, is supposed to be able to deliver 840W peak.
i send an avg of 50 email messages daily. Not spam, they're strictly personal or business related and only in reply to mail I get. So are you saying I'd have to pay 10 bucks a month (assuming 20 workdays per month and no mail on weekends), ON TOP of what I already pay for internet connectivity, as a measure to stop people engaging in an illegal activity and highly likely to find yet another means of passing the cost on to somebody else?
No way.
keep in mind that at least one of the servers involved in the transaction belongs to me. Should I, then, collect fees from people who send mail destined for my server?
No way.
I dont think it's a good idea.
there's a difference, and i sure as hell wouldn't want to waive my dick. heh.
Yeah, but as this slashdot discussion made it clear, open source projects don't count as valid experience. Then again, nothing short of working for an actual PHB does. Bleh.
well, um, so does Linux. Plenty of one-floppy distros with lots of functionality.
Hey! how many releases has Windows had? yet people continue to use it. This should give a clue that a) it's going to take a LOT of times before people realize, b) sadly, humans are notorious for making the same mistake twice, 3 times, and as many times as it takes. Guess if our mistakes killed us more often, those left would be smarter.
um, according to IMDB, it's not. Manos is the 3rd lowest score, BE is about 120 positions up.
Someone else mentioned a calculator, and it's a good idea, there are tons of games for HP calculators and some of those are really time-consuming. I had a platform game where the main character was an ant, i was playing that in vectorial calculus when a classmate commented the ant looked like a lump of shit. I started laughing so hard, that the teacher noticed, and i nearly got kicked out of the class. That, of course, would have been more entertaining than remaining in class, but would have hampered my graduation aspirations.
No, seriously, perhaps you should try and focus on the class instead of publicizing your need to kill time? plus it's going to be pretty embarrassing when you get asked a question and can't reply because you've been busy playing a game. Yes, i can picture that: "hold on a second, professor, i'm trying to pass level 8 here.."
This company organized a huge media-related event, and they wanted to have an on-line registration system. Initially they called in a team which developed the system on Windows NT servers, with ASP and SQL Server. They took 3 months and when they finally delivered the system, it simply crashed under the heavy load.
That's when they called us in. This was 2 days prior to the registration day, so we were in a big rush. We, of course, advocated open/free technologies; we suggested Linux, MySQL, apache and perl. They said OK, so we started working. At the same time, the NT team worked on their server, tweaking it to see if they could withstand the load.
30 hours later, and on a server that was about 1/2 the capacity of the NT team's server, our system went on-line. It turns out it, too, crashed under the load. Heh. But while the NT team was busy rebooting their server just once, we installed Linux on 4 additional computers (desk-grade IBM Aptivas) and ended up with a round-robin configuration, with 4 web servers and a backend database server. Our system handled the load so well, that this time the company' firewall crashed and they had to update it.
I still like to use it as an example of how free technologies and tools enabled us to re-engineer 3 months worth of work from the NT team, in about 36 hours.
I live in Mexico, which is part of the american continent (i.e. I DO live in America), and let me tell you, insecurity here is a real problem, so needs like those are not far-fetched.
Plenty of countries in our continent (America) are in a similar situation. Off the top of my head, Colombia has severe insecurity problems, and i'm sure others will tell more stories like this.
I used to carry a BBC (bootable business card) in my wallet, made from an image I got off linuxcare. It saved me several times, however, being in a wallet is pretty rough treatment for a CD, the disc developed small holes in the reflective surface and stopped working. So keep this in mind. I now have a more standard 3.5 inch disc, in its jewelbox, and carry that on my laptop's briefcase.
Go take a look at psion teklogix, they have a large line of industrial handheld computers, some are rugged and impact-resistant, they even have a "freezer" model and ruggedized netpads (which were even featured in slashdot not long ago).
I had several issues while trying viavoice and dragon naturally speaking.
:)
You definitely should give it a try before committing.
When you're typing, the kind of mistakes you make are of the kind known as "typos", where you mistype one letter for another. Those are hard to spot but in the end they don't matter that much.
With voice recognition, you have BIG mistakes; like, the engine mistaking one word for another totally different, or complete sentences. That is big, and actually requires you to go through the entire document and fix the errors.
Also, most voice recognizers i've seen aren't too adept at handling changes of mind; when you're speaking, you tend to make mistakes, because you changed your mind, or you meant something else, or whatnot. Recognizers aren't too forgiving of these situations. You'll end up with more crap on your document that you'll have to fix. In order to provide a coherent flow of speech for the recognizer, you basically have to be reading it from somewhere else. Which pretty much beats the purpose of the recognizer. If it's already printed, why not OCR it instead? it's bound to be much more accurate and faster. Also, if you have to write your stuff by hand before dictating it into the computer, you defeat the purpose of the voice recognition software. Because I guess you can type faster than you can handwrite
0.9 mm equals 1/32 of an inch.. man, those are pretty small bullets. Needle guns, anyone?
Seriously, even I have seen Linux die.. it would have been interesting if it kept happening, but it clearly states it was a one-time event.
here in Mexico, a 2000-dollar computer is considered top of the line, and a budget model goes for about 600-800 dollars. And yes, it would be outrageous for someone to spend 2000 bucks on a gaming machine.
however, also keep in mind that the computer is going to be good for something other than gaming. Now, if someone spends 2000 bucks on a PS2 or Xbox, that's outrageous, but 2000 for a computer which is used primarily for gaming, but also has other uses, is not that far-fetched.
They're generally recognized to use high-quality components, such as ball-bearing fans (in my experience, the fan is the first thing to die in a power supply - and, in the process leading to its death, it turns from quiet to an annoying failing-engine-like sound). They have a line of ultra-quiet supplies, as well as high-performance ATX power supplies providing up to 600 watts.
Hope this helps
and with all that's going on, we still have the stupid surge protector poll on slashdot? cmon people, show some sense of opportunity! give us an interesting poll!
Altough the Tm5600-based system outlasted the PIII-based one by about 28% in battery life tests, it's interesting to notice that the PIII has a 5400 mAH battery, while the TM5600's batteries add up to 4300 mAH. That is, the Transmeta processor lasted 28% more on about 20% less battery capacity. Some quick numbers indicate that the Transmeta processor would be able to run for over 6 hours on a 5400 mAH battery, which is a full 50% longer than the 4 hours the PIII system lasted, given that the batteries had the same capacity.
If you don't like the way it looks, then use a different theme; if you think it's buggy, help find and squash bugs. There's just no excuse to complain with a project of this nature, other than you actually being one of those people who engage in "personal attacks devoid of content". Which doesn't seem to be the case!
As for MozillaQuest's journalistic integrity, what they initially strike me as, is one of those sites whose reporting style is aggressive and inflamatory, which is good, because it leads to heated and interesting discussion and generates more traffic for them (hate to see another