Actually no, it isn't at all simple. For example, if some pedophile masturbates to pictures of me in a bath as a baby, he's clearly finding them sexually exciting, and thus pornographic, yet I was not harmed in the least by either them being taken or by his activities about them later. And as this case shows, since the law defines everything under 18 as "child pornography", and since teenagers under this are already sexually aware and often active, we get to the situation where laws that were presumably intended to protect kids from predators are used against people interacting with their peers, or even photographing themselves.
That's the biggest problem, someone might find them sexually exciting. But that does not mean anyone gets hurt. If he wants to yank it to an innocent picture of a 3 year old in the tub then what is he doing wrong? He is not hurting anyone and if he never harms a anyone then he has committed no crime.
The "child porn=abuse, abuse=harm, harm=jail" is very legitimate. The only problem I could see is nude photos of minors being leaked. That child's life could be ruined but its up to parents to educate their kids on what is appropriate and what is not. Teaching them the risks of taking and distributing nude photos is the best defense against such actions.
No script is necessary, just a single command. Using a live Linux cd like Knoppix you just type the following in a console:
This writes random bytes to each and every block/sector of the entire disk:
sudo dd if=/dev/randon of=/dev/hda bs=4096k
This does the same as the above but uses all zeros instead:
sudo dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/hda bs=4096k
Your disk might not be/dev/hda, for example if you use an Ubuntu live cd you will need to use/dev/sda or sdx (x being the disk number). This is not just wiping partition data but the entire disk! All partitions, boot sector and data will be over written and wiped clean. And FYI dd is just a copy utility like cp or the DOS copy, it has the ability to understand block devices like disks.
As far as I know no such command exists under windows.
I find that I prefer a challenge sometimes. And not using a desktop environment has really challenged me to figure out how to do things without fancy GUI config utilities. I also built up my Ubuntu 8.04 system from a bare bones base install and have had allot of fun (and headaches) learning how a Linux system is put together. With a DE I am presented with a whole system and not much knowledge on how it is actually put together. Like I said I dont dislike DE's I just prefer a simple desktop that does what I need and also forces me to learn the inner workings.
On a side note, I have been fooling with Ubuntu 8.10 and it is very impressive especially with Compiz.
I wanted to like KDE 4 as I have always had a soft sport for KDE. It was a bloody nightmare when I last tired it. Hopefully things are looking better, and will continue to do so. MAybe I will one day give it a try again.
But one thing KDE 4 taught me was my fathers favorite saying: K.I.S.S. or Keep It Simple, Stupid! I tried and fell in love with Fluxbox and how simple yet flexible and powerful it is. Since first using FB I haven't looked back. Its has a dock for KDE "system tray" icons and all of my KDE and Gnome apps of course run just fine. Some things I do miss are easy to use desktop icons and disk icons but FB has forced (or rater persuaded) me to use the terminal. And I really learned more about Linux that way then using what I now like to call a mickey mouse desktop.
No I am not knocking desktop environments like KDE or Gnome. They tend to hide the complexity like windows or OSX does, which makes fixing problems harder because the GUI hides allot of important information. For example: My friend was playing with a fresh install of Ubuntu 7.10 and could not get any audio from Audacious. He called me and complained how Audacious would open and nothing played. I told him to start Audacious from the terminal and see what it writes to the terminal. Well lo and behold Audacious was trying to use its (I forget) default audio plugin which wasn't working. I told him to switch it to OSS or ALSA and it worked just fine. Point is you learn much more from a more simple environment than one that tries to hide the underpinnings. Hell before Fluxbox I never knew it was possible to change the screen resolution from the command line.
Nothing wrong with desktop environments. I just think simplicity nurtures knowledge when it comes to Linux. I can now comfortably manage a headless server from an ssh session without breaking a sweat or web browser open (well not too often:).
Excellent point. I knew someone who joined the police. He was a short kid who was picked on and bullied a bit. His reason for joining? "I have a gun and badge, payback time." Seriously those were his words. Another tidbit that led to me not talking to him any more was "If I have a bad day and I pull someone over they are going to have a worse day." Not making this stuff up, he was being serious. I tried to reason with him a bit but it was futile. Little by little I stopped talking to him.
Now I have another friend who is considering joining but its for different reasons. The good benefits: Full medical, for him and family. Good pay, after 5 years 90k and well over 100k with over time. Job security, You always need cops and you don't get fired or laid off unless you really fuck up. After 5 years he gets 30 days vacation Retirement leaves him with a rock solid pension.
Yea he isn't thrilled about dealing with everyone's problems. But for him its a good option. Sometimes you just want a job and get paid, and being a cop has its perks. And I doubt he will ever be a prick or bust balls for petty shit.
I also knew another cop that was unfortunately fired after being busted for drunk driving one too many times. He took advantage of that part and it got him canned but he was cool as hell and never broke balls. If he saw some kids with a joint he would tell them to put it out and move on, hell if he could he would take a few pulls with them. He also never bothered anyone for drinking in public (unless they were causing trouble) and he worked the East Village in Manhattan. Not all cops are power hungry dicks, just regular guys looking for a decent job.
Too many people forget that if its not Microsoft its not DirectX/Direct3D.
OpenGL runs on the following platforms: Apple - OSX Sole 3D API of the PS3 Same for the Nintendo Wii Google Android Linux and other *NIX OS
Its also very competitive with D3D and is just as feature rich. Many people have the misconception that its more difficult to work with when in fact it is not. My brother has a degree in game development which pretty much means a CD degree in game development. He is writing his own turn based strategy engine for an RPG idea he has. And guess what 3D API its getting written in? Thats right OpenGL. I asked him why not D3D and his answer was pretty simple: "Its not any easier and it locks me into Xbox/Windows only. I could port it to my Android phone if I wanted."
But its not just API's that we have to worry about. Too many games today are shipping with DRM like starforce and securom. Both of which have been defeated with simple patched EXE's. Also Both have caused countless headaches with consumers. So hopefully publishers will see they are pointless wastes of money and embrace Linux as a potential platform without worrying that it cant be infested with DRM.
With the kludgy mess Vista appears to be Linux can really shine in places closed platforms cannot. Look at the debacle SLI is. I have been fighting for 2 weeks now to get two 8800GT's to run Crysis. I don't think windows is solely to blame as I place more of the blame on Nvidia and then on to Crytek. But Microsoft is responsible its API's and driver architecture play nice together. It doesn't appear to be doing that.
With ATI open sourcing chip specs and Intel to do the same with larabee, linux can develop a tight integration of all the hardware and expose the GPU to the developer like never before. Better management/scheduling of GPU's so multiple GPU applications can run at once. Physics engines written using OpenCL can balance the load between the GPU(s) and the CPU(s) seamlessly. OpenGL threading will allow multiple OGL windows. An example would be a full screen game on one monitor and another monitor with a Compiz desktop running on the same GPU with no performance hit to the Compiz desktop. Hopefully with things like OpenCL, OpenGL, OpenAL etc. Linux can give developers a real stable and flexible development environment.
Oh and one last thing! We need an IDE to compete with Visual Studio. Thats one thing my brother hates about Linux and why he isn't working with it yet. I am showing him Eclipse and he is fooling around on it with the Android dev kit but not too impressed with it. Give it time and hopefully it can compete.
Home depot or equivalent sells what he is looking for.
Depending on what he needs to keep running he can purchase an individual circuit transfer box or a whole house transfer switch. The individual transfer box has a bunch of circuit breaker A-B switches and a pre furnished flexible conduit with all the wires ready to hook to your panel. It has something like 6 circuits and for each circuit you will have 2 wires going to the panel. For each circuit you disconnect one of the two wires goes the the breaker while the other ties to the circuit. So when the power goes out you just flip the switches from grid to generator power. No need to worry about unplugging anything, extension cords or making sure the grid power is disconnected, just flip switches. They even have a handy load meter to help make sure you dont trip the generator breakers. This method is great for small setups where you only want to power a few vital circuits.
If you want to light your house up like nothing happened then you need a large transfer switch that switches your load center from grid to backup power. When the power goes out you either manually throw the switch to generator or if you have the money get an automatic transfer system. The automatic system works in tandem with an outdoor pad mounted (bolted down) generator with electric start. Once the power goes out the system automatically starts the generator and throws the transfer switch.
Connecting the generator can be done two ways. First is hard wired which means the generator is usually in a metal sound proof enclosure bolted to a concrete slab. Second is a large 30+ amp sockt on the side of your home that uses a heavy cord to connect the generator to your home. You better store the generator indoors and when in use make sure you chain it down otherwise it can walk.
Sizing a generator isn't that hard, just add the loads up and from there size up the generator. a 5000W generator is usually wired as a 240V split phase system so you have 240V @ 20A or 2x 120V @ 20A (I have one and that's what you get). For powering your whole house nothing under 10000 watts is going to cut it unless you are very frugal with power. and remember if you have toilets with up flush systems (sewage pumps) you better make sure it has at least its own 15A circuit. Otherwise when the toilet is flushed you could trip a breaker. That or avoid flushing that toilet all together. Also see what kind of heat you have. Is it steam or hydronic? LP/NG (gas) or oil fired? An oil fired hydronic system will draw allot more current since it has to run the blower/oil pump and the water circulating pumps. A gas fired steam boiler only needs a few watts to power the little solenoid gas valve.
When the great blackout of 2003 hit I used one of our 5000 watt generators to power an air conditioner, refrigerator, lamp, TV and gamecube. Its all we needed to cope.
Argh! Commercial vehicles pay the IFTA tax which is a fuel and highway use tax. Its a road usage tax that is split up among the states to make things fair. Why? Some rigs can hold well over 100 gallons of diesel and can run from NY to California on one or two fill ups (depends on the number and size of fuel tanks). What about all the states they didnt buy fuel in but pounded the roads? Thats what the IFTA is for. Back in the days before the IFTA program you had to have individual plates/stickers for each state you ran in. So if you only worked around Cali, Oregon and Nevada, you only got those three tax stickers.
Look at any large truck and there will be a colored square sticker with the shape of the state and IFTA printed diagonally on it. Not sure of the application details but if you run out of state you better have that sticker on your truck.
Also in addition to the IFTA sticker you might also need Apportioned plates which also share registration and tax revenue with other states. So in conclusion yes trucks do fairly pay road taxes.
I am looking forward to see what this means for Linux, OpenCL and other GP-GPU goodies. With OpenCL working along side OpenGL, a tightly integrated kernel ATI driver that handles the GP-GPU/OpenCL stuff we will really see some interesting stuff come our way. To my understanding OpenCL allows someone who is writing an algorithm to implement it in OpenCL and let OpenCL take care of diving up the work load between GPU's and CPU cores. Damn I am really excited to see the OSS community tie all this stuff together and release the computing power of the GPU to more general yet compute intense applications.
A system with a quad core CPU and four ATI cards would be a force to be reckoned with! Fast trans-coding/cracking of Blu-ray, rapid key sniffing for air crack, even networked applications could be sped up like IPsec and SSH. We could have fast rendering in blender and ray tracing can be done with high precision as well as speed (maybe even real time!). Gimp plug-ins can be given a boost in speed and video editing a breeze. Even a laptop with a slower dual core could benefit from its on board GPU's number crunching power. Useful for cracking WEP/WPA keys.
And AMD/ATI arent the only ones getting on board the OpenCL bandwagon, Apple developed it, and Intel along with Nvidia are also going to support it. So OpenCL will allow us to run our apps on the hardware of our choice.
Caterpillar offers such a system: http://www.cat.com/cda/layout?m=37516&x=7. Their flywheel UPS keeps the electronics up and running allowing the diesel/gas turbine generators to start. The idea is you don't need a big battery bank that holds minutes or hours of power. You just need enough power to allow the generators to kick in and transfer switch to resume power. It is much more efficient, cost effective and low maintenance than batteries.
Another idea for high density power storage is the molten salt battery. They are being used by GE for their hybrid diesel electric locomotives to store regenerative braking energy. The other interesting part is they can be built with relatively inexpensive and non toxic materials. The electrolyte must be heated but another interesting fact is when they cool down and solidify they can hold a charge for an extremely long time (50+ years!).
Turtle neck was referring to Jobs image and how he represents Apple. I also do live in New York City and I am exposed to allot of hipsters as well as Mac Snobs (my friend is one!). So please forgive my bias. I don't dislike OSX, I have used it and enjoyed it. It unfortunately doesn't fit my needs. I use Vista Ultimate on my Gaming rig and Linux/BSD on everything else.
"This "Apple==hip" thing is getting ridiculous."
Yea it really got ridiculous when they aired all those "im a Mac" commercials. They blatantly market their products as "hip" to belittle PC users. Then toss in all the iPod commercials and iPod product placement in pop music videos. How many TV shows do you see with Mac's/iMac/MAcBook on peoples desks? I have seen them on Dexter and CSI to name a few. Maybe they are there because they happen to be popular with video editing. Or maybe Apple contributes to those who give free publicity? Who knows all I know is they truly do have an excellent marketing department.
"iPods might be hip, but iMacs, Apple TV, OS X, iLife, iWork, Airport Extreme, Time Capsule, etc?"
All of those other products are for people who already own Apple hardware. They don't count unless your a Mac user. Otherwise you would not be interested in those products.
I dont want to start a flame war or anything. I just want to point out Apple has an image to protect. Letting others intstall OSX on more generic hardware makes them just another PC maker.
Follow the money? It just might lead to Redmond, Palo Alto or Round Rock.
Apple will never let anyone run OSX on non Apple hardware. As long as they want to keep their hip turtle neck wearing image they must keep complete control. Imagine Dell selling dull gray OSX computers for half the price Apple does? Or OSX Latitudes. The once hip OSX now runs on un cool nerdy looser PC guys computer. Not cool.
No I am not bashing Apple or its users. This is what their marketing department must think. Remember Apple is kept alive by what I believe is a damn good marketing machine. It keeps Apple looking hip no matter what. Take away the cool hip design and marketing and your looking at another boring PC (technically an Apple is a PC). How else can you explain people high fiving each other when they bought their shiny new iPhones?
Why is everyone so convinced that giving students laptops will act as an educational magic bullet? Locking them down will only cause the students to try and work around the restrictions. Whats to prevent them from using a live Linux CD to browse the web as they please?
Laptops wont do shit to improve learning by any means. Teachers along with parents are the most important part in a child's education. And students today from what I have observed really don't value education. And that started at home. Too many students in one class who don't value education causes the teacher to literally give up. I grew up in a house where both my parents hold masters degrees. My mother and father always took me and my brother on educational family outings. Queens hall of science, Libery science center, Edison meuseam, Zoos, other museums etc. I was never a good student but my mother helped me through allot of my problems and made sure I got through school. My father ran the family business which was a machine shop, wood shop and also did entertainment. He would take me to machinery trade shows and all kinds of interesting places. He also let me play at his shop and imposed no real restrictions. He let me be as creative as possible even teaching me how to use some real dangerous machines like band saws, lathes, milling machines, bench grinders and table saws.
Bottom line is my parents created an environment that encouraged education and learning. They knew its value and made sure both me and my brother will be successful in life (This is a big part of Jewish culture, and no I am not Jewish). No computer will ever provide that. If you want to give them computers make them available for students to use in school computer labs or library's. They can do all the research they need and you wont have to worry about laptops being stolen, destroyed or hacked. Giving kids laptops will only distract them more. There is no magic bullet, if the parents don't give a shit then neither will the kids. And it seems to be a growing epidemic.
I know this article is old but I want to thank everyone for their help. The few who suggested I run ethtool were right on the money. I ran it and lo and behold it was running at only 100mbps! I traced the problem to a bad ethernet cable. I am red-green color blind and the link lights on the switch change color (red or green) according to the link speed. And wouldn't you know it I was seeing the wrong color! My brother said "dude that light is as red as blood". I thought it was green, DOH!
Thank you all again! I now get over 40 megabytes a second to windows XP and Vista!
A NAS is pretty much a server that is dedicated to storage.
If he wants to roll his own I would suggest either a light install of Ubuntu server or FreeNAS: http://www.freenas.org/. FreeNAS is based on the stripped down Free BSD core that m0n0wall uses. It is very small and is managed using a simple and easy to use web interface. I don't know about gigabit performance as I only set it up once for a friend using 100mbit. He had the Linksys NAS box and it was dog slow. On 100Mb it couldn't push more then 3-4 MB sec. I could get 8-9Mb sec using FreeNAS on an Athlon 1.3Ghz with 128MB ram and two SATA 500GB drives in RAID 1 (mirroring). He also added a USB 2.0 card to hook up another 500GB drive. It pretty much saturates his 100Mbit connection.
And here is my related question to others here: I have fought with SAMBA on Ubuntu 8.04 server and I cant get it going faster than 10-11MB/sec when copying to/from Windows XP. Even with the tcp_nodelay setting and a few others it just barely breaks 11MB/sec. I can get 25-30MB sec when copying from one Windows PC to another. And the server hardware isn't puny: dual P4 2.4GHz Xeons, 4GB RAM, dual PCIX Intel gigabit and a PCIX SATA controller. Any one have any suggestions? NFS also runs at the same speed and when downloading from the Apache server I get 5-6MB sec. Something is wrong somewhere but I cant tell. I have changed kernels played with conf files but nothing works. Someone once told me SAMBA will always be slow but I don't believe that to be true.
Ahh thanks for the correction. For some reason I had time lapse in my head. I used to do a bit of coiling and had a Kodak digital camera that was capable of taking longish exposures. They were blurry though.
Yea its cool but first its only a time lapse photo. Those sparks aren't arcing at 360 degrees. Every cool Tesla coil photo is time lapsed. Otherwise your just stuck with a single and sometimes dim arc.
What then hell is going on here? Like others have said is idle being merged with "regular" Slashdot? I turned off idle because of lame and non news items like this. Christ its like Slashdot cant be bothered to look for actual news for nerds or stuff that matters.
And whats with all the flame bait articles? Its like they enjoy whipping us into a frenzy and then sit back and watch the fire works. Slashdot is rapidly deteriorating into a faux news site that's more (lame) entertainment then actual news.
Aw god dammit. There were supposed to be a double arrow in between the two. I had a mental lapse and used the > brackets that are used for HTML code and Slashdot thought they were HTML tags and did not display them.
It was supposed to read as "Linux to Windows" or "Windows to Linux". Same goes for "Vista64 XP64".
Slashdot Mirror
Actually no, it isn't at all simple. For example, if some pedophile masturbates to pictures of me in a bath as a baby, he's clearly finding them sexually exciting, and thus pornographic, yet I was not harmed in the least by either them being taken or by his activities about them later. And as this case shows, since the law defines everything under 18 as "child pornography", and since teenagers under this are already sexually aware and often active, we get to the situation where laws that were presumably intended to protect kids from predators are used against people interacting with their peers, or even photographing themselves.
That's the biggest problem, someone might find them sexually exciting. But that does not mean anyone gets hurt. If he wants to yank it to an innocent picture of a 3 year old in the tub then what is he doing wrong? He is not hurting anyone and if he never harms a anyone then he has committed no crime.
The "child porn=abuse, abuse=harm, harm=jail" is very legitimate. The only problem I could see is nude photos of minors being leaked. That child's life could be ruined but its up to parents to educate their kids on what is appropriate and what is not. Teaching them the risks of taking and distributing nude photos is the best defense against such actions.
Ah! These are the opposite of the stupid pills Mr. Potato head spoke of. Interesting.
No script is necessary, just a single command. Using a live Linux cd like Knoppix you just type the following in a console:
This writes random bytes to each and every block/sector of the entire disk:
This does the same as the above but uses all zeros instead:
Your disk might not be /dev/hda, for example if you use an Ubuntu live cd you will need to use /dev/sda or sdx (x being the disk number). This is not just wiping partition data but the entire disk! All partitions, boot sector and data will be over written and wiped clean. And FYI dd is just a copy utility like cp or the DOS copy, it has the ability to understand block devices like disks.
As far as I know no such command exists under windows.
As long as it comes with a cassette drive I am set.
I find that I prefer a challenge sometimes. And not using a desktop environment has really challenged me to figure out how to do things without fancy GUI config utilities. I also built up my Ubuntu 8.04 system from a bare bones base install and have had allot of fun (and headaches) learning how a Linux system is put together. With a DE I am presented with a whole system and not much knowledge on how it is actually put together. Like I said I dont dislike DE's I just prefer a simple desktop that does what I need and also forces me to learn the inner workings.
On a side note, I have been fooling with Ubuntu 8.10 and it is very impressive especially with Compiz.
I wanted to like KDE 4 as I have always had a soft sport for KDE. It was a bloody nightmare when I last tired it. Hopefully things are looking better, and will continue to do so. MAybe I will one day give it a try again.
But one thing KDE 4 taught me was my fathers favorite saying: K.I.S.S. or Keep It Simple, Stupid! I tried and fell in love with Fluxbox and how simple yet flexible and powerful it is. Since first using FB I haven't looked back. Its has a dock for KDE "system tray" icons and all of my KDE and Gnome apps of course run just fine. Some things I do miss are easy to use desktop icons and disk icons but FB has forced (or rater persuaded) me to use the terminal. And I really learned more about Linux that way then using what I now like to call a mickey mouse desktop.
No I am not knocking desktop environments like KDE or Gnome. They tend to hide the complexity like windows or OSX does, which makes fixing problems harder because the GUI hides allot of important information. For example: My friend was playing with a fresh install of Ubuntu 7.10 and could not get any audio from Audacious. He called me and complained how Audacious would open and nothing played. I told him to start Audacious from the terminal and see what it writes to the terminal. Well lo and behold Audacious was trying to use its (I forget) default audio plugin which wasn't working. I told him to switch it to OSS or ALSA and it worked just fine. Point is you learn much more from a more simple environment than one that tries to hide the underpinnings. Hell before Fluxbox I never knew it was possible to change the screen resolution from the command line.
Nothing wrong with desktop environments. I just think simplicity nurtures knowledge when it comes to Linux. I can now comfortably manage a headless server from an ssh session without breaking a sweat or web browser open (well not too often :).
Excellent point. I knew someone who joined the police. He was a short kid who was picked on and bullied a bit. His reason for joining? "I have a gun and badge, payback time." Seriously those were his words. Another tidbit that led to me not talking to him any more was "If I have a bad day and I pull someone over they are going to have a worse day." Not making this stuff up, he was being serious. I tried to reason with him a bit but it was futile. Little by little I stopped talking to him.
Now I have another friend who is considering joining but its for different reasons. The good benefits:
Full medical, for him and family.
Good pay, after 5 years 90k and well over 100k with over time.
Job security, You always need cops and you don't get fired or laid off unless you really fuck up.
After 5 years he gets 30 days vacation
Retirement leaves him with a rock solid pension.
Yea he isn't thrilled about dealing with everyone's problems. But for him its a good option. Sometimes you just want a job and get paid, and being a cop has its perks. And I doubt he will ever be a prick or bust balls for petty shit.
I also knew another cop that was unfortunately fired after being busted for drunk driving one too many times. He took advantage of that part and it got him canned but he was cool as hell and never broke balls. If he saw some kids with a joint he would tell them to put it out and move on, hell if he could he would take a few pulls with them. He also never bothered anyone for drinking in public (unless they were causing trouble) and he worked the East Village in Manhattan. Not all cops are power hungry dicks, just regular guys looking for a decent job.
Too many people forget that if its not Microsoft its not DirectX/Direct3D.
OpenGL runs on the following platforms:
Apple - OSX
Sole 3D API of the PS3
Same for the Nintendo Wii
Google Android
Linux and other *NIX OS
Its also very competitive with D3D and is just as feature rich. Many people have the misconception that its more difficult to work with when in fact it is not. My brother has a degree in game development which pretty much means a CD degree in game development. He is writing his own turn based strategy engine for an RPG idea he has. And guess what 3D API its getting written in? Thats right OpenGL. I asked him why not D3D and his answer was pretty simple: "Its not any easier and it locks me into Xbox/Windows only. I could port it to my Android phone if I wanted."
But its not just API's that we have to worry about. Too many games today are shipping with DRM like starforce and securom. Both of which have been defeated with simple patched EXE's. Also Both have caused countless headaches with consumers. So hopefully publishers will see they are pointless wastes of money and embrace Linux as a potential platform without worrying that it cant be infested with DRM.
With the kludgy mess Vista appears to be Linux can really shine in places closed platforms cannot. Look at the debacle SLI is. I have been fighting for 2 weeks now to get two 8800GT's to run Crysis. I don't think windows is solely to blame as I place more of the blame on Nvidia and then on to Crytek. But Microsoft is responsible its API's and driver architecture play nice together. It doesn't appear to be doing that.
With ATI open sourcing chip specs and Intel to do the same with larabee, linux can develop a tight integration of all the hardware and expose the GPU to the developer like never before. Better management/scheduling of GPU's so multiple GPU applications can run at once. Physics engines written using OpenCL can balance the load between the GPU(s) and the CPU(s) seamlessly. OpenGL threading will allow multiple OGL windows. An example would be a full screen game on one monitor and another monitor with a Compiz desktop running on the same GPU with no performance hit to the Compiz desktop. Hopefully with things like OpenCL, OpenGL, OpenAL etc. Linux can give developers a real stable and flexible development environment.
Oh and one last thing! We need an IDE to compete with Visual Studio. Thats one thing my brother hates about Linux and why he isn't working with it yet. I am showing him Eclipse and he is fooling around on it with the Android dev kit but not too impressed with it. Give it time and hopefully it can compete.
Home depot or equivalent sells what he is looking for.
Depending on what he needs to keep running he can purchase an individual circuit transfer box or a whole house transfer switch. The individual transfer box has a bunch of circuit breaker A-B switches and a pre furnished flexible conduit with all the wires ready to hook to your panel. It has something like 6 circuits and for each circuit you will have 2 wires going to the panel. For each circuit you disconnect one of the two wires goes the the breaker while the other ties to the circuit. So when the power goes out you just flip the switches from grid to generator power. No need to worry about unplugging anything, extension cords or making sure the grid power is disconnected, just flip switches. They even have a handy load meter to help make sure you dont trip the generator breakers. This method is great for small setups where you only want to power a few vital circuits.
If you want to light your house up like nothing happened then you need a large transfer switch that switches your load center from grid to backup power. When the power goes out you either manually throw the switch to generator or if you have the money get an automatic transfer system. The automatic system works in tandem with an outdoor pad mounted (bolted down) generator with electric start. Once the power goes out the system automatically starts the generator and throws the transfer switch.
Connecting the generator can be done two ways. First is hard wired which means the generator is usually in a metal sound proof enclosure bolted to a concrete slab. Second is a large 30+ amp sockt on the side of your home that uses a heavy cord to connect the generator to your home. You better store the generator indoors and when in use make sure you chain it down otherwise it can walk.
Sizing a generator isn't that hard, just add the loads up and from there size up the generator. a 5000W generator is usually wired as a 240V split phase system so you have 240V @ 20A or 2x 120V @ 20A (I have one and that's what you get). For powering your whole house nothing under 10000 watts is going to cut it unless you are very frugal with power. and remember if you have toilets with up flush systems (sewage pumps) you better make sure it has at least its own 15A circuit. Otherwise when the toilet is flushed you could trip a breaker. That or avoid flushing that toilet all together. Also see what kind of heat you have. Is it steam or hydronic? LP/NG (gas) or oil fired? An oil fired hydronic system will draw allot more current since it has to run the blower/oil pump and the water circulating pumps. A gas fired steam boiler only needs a few watts to power the little solenoid gas valve.
When the great blackout of 2003 hit I used one of our 5000 watt generators to power an air conditioner, refrigerator, lamp, TV and gamecube. Its all we needed to cope.
Argh! Commercial vehicles pay the IFTA tax which is a fuel and highway use tax. Its a road usage tax that is split up among the states to make things fair. Why? Some rigs can hold well over 100 gallons of diesel and can run from NY to California on one or two fill ups (depends on the number and size of fuel tanks). What about all the states they didnt buy fuel in but pounded the roads? Thats what the IFTA is for. Back in the days before the IFTA program you had to have individual plates/stickers for each state you ran in. So if you only worked around Cali, Oregon and Nevada, you only got those three tax stickers.
Look at any large truck and there will be a colored square sticker with the shape of the state and IFTA printed diagonally on it. Not sure of the application details but if you run out of state you better have that sticker on your truck.
Also in addition to the IFTA sticker you might also need Apportioned plates which also share registration and tax revenue with other states. So in conclusion yes trucks do fairly pay road taxes.
I am looking forward to see what this means for Linux, OpenCL and other GP-GPU goodies. With OpenCL working along side OpenGL, a tightly integrated kernel ATI driver that handles the GP-GPU/OpenCL stuff we will really see some interesting stuff come our way. To my understanding OpenCL allows someone who is writing an algorithm to implement it in OpenCL and let OpenCL take care of diving up the work load between GPU's and CPU cores. Damn I am really excited to see the OSS community tie all this stuff together and release the computing power of the GPU to more general yet compute intense applications.
A system with a quad core CPU and four ATI cards would be a force to be reckoned with! Fast trans-coding/cracking of Blu-ray, rapid key sniffing for air crack, even networked applications could be sped up like IPsec and SSH. We could have fast rendering in blender and ray tracing can be done with high precision as well as speed (maybe even real time!). Gimp plug-ins can be given a boost in speed and video editing a breeze. Even a laptop with a slower dual core could benefit from its on board GPU's number crunching power. Useful for cracking WEP/WPA keys.
And AMD/ATI arent the only ones getting on board the OpenCL bandwagon, Apple developed it, and Intel along with Nvidia are also going to support it. So OpenCL will allow us to run our apps on the hardware of our choice.
Same exact problem my Linux box has.
Caterpillar offers such a system: http://www.cat.com/cda/layout?m=37516&x=7. Their flywheel UPS keeps the electronics up and running allowing the diesel/gas turbine generators to start. The idea is you don't need a big battery bank that holds minutes or hours of power. You just need enough power to allow the generators to kick in and transfer switch to resume power. It is much more efficient, cost effective and low maintenance than batteries.
Another idea for high density power storage is the molten salt battery. They are being used by GE for their hybrid diesel electric locomotives to store regenerative braking energy. The other interesting part is they can be built with relatively inexpensive and non toxic materials. The electrolyte must be heated but another interesting fact is when they cool down and solidify they can hold a charge for an extremely long time (50+ years!).
Turtle neck was referring to Jobs image and how he represents Apple. I also do live in New York City and I am exposed to allot of hipsters as well as Mac Snobs (my friend is one!). So please forgive my bias. I don't dislike OSX, I have used it and enjoyed it. It unfortunately doesn't fit my needs. I use Vista Ultimate on my Gaming rig and Linux/BSD on everything else.
"This "Apple==hip" thing is getting ridiculous."
Yea it really got ridiculous when they aired all those "im a Mac" commercials. They blatantly market their products as "hip" to belittle PC users. Then toss in all the iPod commercials and iPod product placement in pop music videos. How many TV shows do you see with Mac's/iMac/MAcBook on peoples desks? I have seen them on Dexter and CSI to name a few. Maybe they are there because they happen to be popular with video editing. Or maybe Apple contributes to those who give free publicity? Who knows all I know is they truly do have an excellent marketing department.
"iPods might be hip, but iMacs, Apple TV, OS X, iLife, iWork, Airport Extreme, Time Capsule, etc?"
All of those other products are for people who already own Apple hardware. They don't count unless your a Mac user. Otherwise you would not be interested in those products.
I dont want to start a flame war or anything. I just want to point out Apple has an image to protect. Letting others intstall OSX on more generic hardware makes them just another PC maker.
Follow the money? It just might lead to Redmond, Palo Alto or Round Rock.
Apple will never let anyone run OSX on non Apple hardware. As long as they want to keep their hip turtle neck wearing image they must keep complete control. Imagine Dell selling dull gray OSX computers for half the price Apple does? Or OSX Latitudes. The once hip OSX now runs on un cool nerdy looser PC guys computer. Not cool.
No I am not bashing Apple or its users. This is what their marketing department must think. Remember Apple is kept alive by what I believe is a damn good marketing machine. It keeps Apple looking hip no matter what. Take away the cool hip design and marketing and your looking at another boring PC (technically an Apple is a PC). How else can you explain people high fiving each other when they bought their shiny new iPhones?
At this rate I know programmers who would work for actual dog food.
Poser. Real tough typists just give the keyboard a menacing look and it types for them.
None. They don't work because someone stole all the copper wire.
Seriously, this happens all the time in the parks.
Why is everyone so convinced that giving students laptops will act as an educational magic bullet? Locking them down will only cause the students to try and work around the restrictions. Whats to prevent them from using a live Linux CD to browse the web as they please?
Laptops wont do shit to improve learning by any means. Teachers along with parents are the most important part in a child's education. And students today from what I have observed really don't value education. And that started at home. Too many students in one class who don't value education causes the teacher to literally give up. I grew up in a house where both my parents hold masters degrees. My mother and father always took me and my brother on educational family outings. Queens hall of science, Libery science center, Edison meuseam, Zoos, other museums etc. I was never a good student but my mother helped me through allot of my problems and made sure I got through school. My father ran the family business which was a machine shop, wood shop and also did entertainment. He would take me to machinery trade shows and all kinds of interesting places. He also let me play at his shop and imposed no real restrictions. He let me be as creative as possible even teaching me how to use some real dangerous machines like band saws, lathes, milling machines, bench grinders and table saws.
Bottom line is my parents created an environment that encouraged education and learning. They knew its value and made sure both me and my brother will be successful in life (This is a big part of Jewish culture, and no I am not Jewish). No computer will ever provide that. If you want to give them computers make them available for students to use in school computer labs or library's. They can do all the research they need and you wont have to worry about laptops being stolen, destroyed or hacked. Giving kids laptops will only distract them more. There is no magic bullet, if the parents don't give a shit then neither will the kids. And it seems to be a growing epidemic.
I know this article is old but I want to thank everyone for their help. The few who suggested I run ethtool were right on the money. I ran it and lo and behold it was running at only 100mbps! I traced the problem to a bad ethernet cable. I am red-green color blind and the link lights on the switch change color (red or green) according to the link speed. And wouldn't you know it I was seeing the wrong color! My brother said "dude that light is as red as blood". I thought it was green, DOH!
Thank you all again! I now get over 40 megabytes a second to windows XP and Vista!
A NAS is pretty much a server that is dedicated to storage.
If he wants to roll his own I would suggest either a light install of Ubuntu server or FreeNAS: http://www.freenas.org/. FreeNAS is based on the stripped down Free BSD core that m0n0wall uses. It is very small and is managed using a simple and easy to use web interface. I don't know about gigabit performance as I only set it up once for a friend using 100mbit. He had the Linksys NAS box and it was dog slow. On 100Mb it couldn't push more then 3-4 MB sec. I could get 8-9Mb sec using FreeNAS on an Athlon 1.3Ghz with 128MB ram and two SATA 500GB drives in RAID 1 (mirroring). He also added a USB 2.0 card to hook up another 500GB drive. It pretty much saturates his 100Mbit connection.
And here is my related question to others here:
I have fought with SAMBA on Ubuntu 8.04 server and I cant get it going faster than 10-11MB/sec when copying to/from Windows XP. Even with the tcp_nodelay setting and a few others it just barely breaks 11MB/sec. I can get 25-30MB sec when copying from one Windows PC to another. And the server hardware isn't puny: dual P4 2.4GHz Xeons, 4GB RAM, dual PCIX Intel gigabit and a PCIX SATA controller. Any one have any suggestions? NFS also runs at the same speed and when downloading from the Apache server I get 5-6MB sec. Something is wrong somewhere but I cant tell. I have changed kernels played with conf files but nothing works. Someone once told me SAMBA will always be slow but I don't believe that to be true.
Ahh thanks for the correction. For some reason I had time lapse in my head. I used to do a bit of coiling and had a Kodak digital camera that was capable of taking longish exposures. They were blurry though.
Yea its cool but first its only a time lapse photo. Those sparks aren't arcing at 360 degrees. Every cool Tesla coil photo is time lapsed. Otherwise your just stuck with a single and sometimes dim arc.
What then hell is going on here? Like others have said is idle being merged with "regular" Slashdot? I turned off idle because of lame and non news items like this. Christ its like Slashdot cant be bothered to look for actual news for nerds or stuff that matters.
And whats with all the flame bait articles? Its like they enjoy whipping us into a frenzy and then sit back and watch the fire works. Slashdot is rapidly deteriorating into a faux news site that's more (lame) entertainment then actual news.
Yea I can picture it now!
"BDY has recalled all 10,000 electric cars after a motorist was burned to death when his car battery exploded"
Aw god dammit. There were supposed to be a double arrow in between the two. I had a mental lapse and used the > brackets that are used for HTML code and Slashdot thought they were HTML tags and did not display them.
It was supposed to read as "Linux to Windows" or "Windows to Linux". Same goes for "Vista64 XP64".