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Slashback: Courseware, Towers, Drives 236

Posted by timothy from the driven-to-distraction dept.
Slashback with more on ridiculously equipped PCs, Telstra's ambivalent stance on equipping its thousands of desktops, California's state-sponsored Oracle oversell, and more -- read on for the details.

Your school or mine? Francis Esmonde-White writes "Dr. Joe Schwarcz (aka 'Dr. Joe' on the discovery channel & Montreal radio station CJAD), Dr. Ariel Fenster, and Dr. David Harpp at McGill have been running the OCS (Office for Chemistry and Society) for some time now. Their view is that it is academia's responsibility to communicate science to the public. One such facet of this has been to put up a series of lectures available freely through the internet.

I thought this may be interesting in light of MIT's OpenCourseWare, and that there are other major online university education projects around... even if they aren't on the same scale. In any case, here is your chance to learn about all the neat stuff you were interested in, but never learned in your introductory chem class. My first class (world of chemistry) with 'Dr. Joe' included topics like medications, plastics, explosives and pollution, so it isn't the boring chemistry you may have been tortured with in high school!"

Put this in your drive and smoke it. Linuxfr.org says (translated from French):

'
GNU Generation, a student association at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology of Lausanne, proudly announces the release of GNUWin-II, a collection of free and open source software for Windows, which luckily contains most of the software that was proposed some days ago on slashdot.'
It comes on a CD with more than 50 applications, articles, and a four-language (yes it's Swiss) html based interface to help newcomers discover Free Software. The complete GNUWin-II can be browsed online. The ISO image of the CD can be downloaded here or better on Swiss SunSITE mirror ftp or http.

But who can fit the most soundcards in one machine? An anonymous reader writes "As a follow up to the 37 operating systems, 1 PC you should check out this site http://fileserver.coleskingdom.com 24 hard drives in one PC. And he managed it under Windows 95."

Maybe it was the Zip factor. generic-man writes "Dataplay, a company built around creating a new miniature optical disc format, has announced that all employees have been put on leave as the company tries to come up with the $50 million it needs to stay afloat. The future of Dataplay is still up in the air."

Recursive trailers. A lot of readers were disappointed in the viewing options for the Two Towers trailer posted yesterday anakin876 writes "The TTT Hi-Res trailer is out, but still semi-hidden. The Apple Quicktime Page doesn't have the trailer listed (yet) but it does exist."

Harm, foul. Boone^ writes "You'll remember when California signed a huge deal with state consultant and Oracle reseller Logicon Inc. only to have it blow up in their face [1,2,3]. Gov. Gray Davis finally signed legislation ending the exemption for the state's information technology purchases from California's conflict-of-interest laws. Similar bills have come across the Governor's desk, but Pete Wilson and Davis both vetoed them in the past. Apparently the policy of 'no harm, no foul' reigns out west, since it takes a fiasco to produce change."

That many licenses must be worth some jetlag. In August, we mentioned the possibility (floated by Telstra itself) that the Australian phone company was considering rolling out Linux on as many as 45,000 desktops; an anonymous reader notes that Microsoft is not sitting by for that, and has dispatched Steve Ballmer to convince Telstra otherwise.
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Slashback: Courseware, Towers, Drives More

Slashback: Courseware, Towers, Drives

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  • dispatched Steve Ballmer... (Score:5, Funny)

    by homer_ca ( 144738 ) on Tuesday October 01, 2002 @08:04PM (#4370726)
    shouting and doing the monkey dance with Kylie Minogue

    GIVE IT UP FOR ME!!!

  • Windows? (Score:5, Funny)

    by joyoflinux ( 522023 ) <thejoyoflinux AT yahoo DOT com> on Tuesday October 01, 2002 @08:05PM (#4370729)
    Well, I guess this Windows box is complete from "A-Z"!

    • Re:Windows? (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Forge ( 2456 )
      Corect. This realy is none news.

      It is trivial to put 26 SCSI drives on a single phisical controler card (2 SCSI 3 chanels. 14 devices each, including the controler itself. 26 SCSI drives total).

      Or as this guy has done. IDE controlers. Some of which alow up to 4 chanels (I.e. 8 drives). I actualy built a test server with over a terabyte of storage space.

      6 X Promise IDE controlers.
      24 X 60 GB Hard Drives.
      1 40 GB Drive
      1 CDRW Drive
      1 DVD Drive
      1 IDE Zip Drive
      2 10/100 NICs.

      1.480 TB Raw Storage.
      1.08 TB RAID 5 protected Storage.
      40 GB On the primary tape backup protected drive (Only 1.3 GB used).

      • If you really wanted to, you could probably do it with just one hard drive if you partitioned it enough. (I dunno, is there a limit to the number of logical partitions Windows will recognize?)
      • Better yet use 12 channel 3Ware controllers and do it with 2 =) I believe 3 is supported and 4 possible. Of course it would be best to give each controller its own pci bus as each could saturate anything up to PCI-X.
    • Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • Re:Windows? (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Catiline ( 186878 )
      No, he's lacking one letter; from what I can tell, a second floppy drive would B: all that holds him back though.

  • Boy I wonder... (Score:4, Funny)

    by Anonvmous Coward ( 589068 ) on Tuesday October 01, 2002 @08:05PM (#4370730)
    "n August, we mentioned the possibility (floated by Telstra itself) that the Australian phone company was considering rolling out Linux on as many as 45,000 desktops... "

    Assuming they're running RedHat, where are they going to keep their 135,000 system discs?

  • Ballmer vs. the jetlag (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 01, 2002 @08:07PM (#4370735)
    "Microsoft is not sitting by for that, and has dispatched Steve Ballmer to convince Telstra otherwise. "

    I think I see a pattern here -- announce move to linux on day 1, on day 2 sign a deeeeeply discounted deal with Microsoft.

    Hmmm...
    • As a side effect (apart from showing the business practices of corporations) shows just how much scared m$ is running after (potential lost) customers.

      I'd like this question answered...(i know it isn't possible to answer):
      What is the ratio of copied/original windows pcs out there? (all kinds of m$ windows, x86 architecture only). "Original" here means from each original m$ installation discs, the "legally" allowed installations on HDs. Anyway, you get the idea. That's the question.
    • Day 326...you receive 'invitation' (aka subpoena) to Congressional hearing on suspect business practices as a result of day 2. Your wait in the lobby rewards you with Martha Stewart's autograph, and a knee to the groin from an angry investor.

    • Re:Ballmer vs. the jetlag (Score:5, Insightful)

      by pyman ( 610707 ) on Tuesday October 01, 2002 @09:08PM (#4370946) Homepage
      I think I see a pattern here -- announce move to linux on day 1, on day 2 sign a deeeeeply discounted deal with Microsoft.

      Or more likely: day 2 MS threatens to audit, sending telstra scrambling for 45000 WinNT4 licenses... day 3: telstra signs standard subscription deal for next X years to avoid lawsuit.

      • Telstra doesn't intimidate easily (Score:5, Informative)

        by Goonie ( 8651 ) <robert.merkel@be ... g ['ra.' in gap]> on Tuesday October 01, 2002 @11:45PM (#4371555) Homepage
        To sue Telstra, it would have to take on Telstra on its home turf (ie Australia), and Telstra is Australia's second-biggest company, very profitable, dominates the local telecommunications industry, and 51% of it is owned by the government (which the government is looking to sell so it would not be pleased by any developments that reduce the potential value of the selloff).

        So, let's see, Microsoft sues Telstra. Not only does Telstra decide to go non-MS in the future, it starts promoting non-MS alternatives through its extensive ISP business (for instance designing its pages to work best with Mozilla/NS rather than IE, having their installation install NS by default, start streaming content in non-MS formats and thus preventing the usual Linux lockout, and so on), the publicity that such a trial would produce would surely encourage other businesses to look for alternatives to a company that sues its best customers.

        That's not to mention what a hostile federal government could do to MS's business here if it so chose.

        • Microsoft can buy Telestra! Then there would be no choice, AND M$ could truly step into the ISP market (amongst other things) and provide the same, crappy service akin to their other products, or Qwest here in the states! How wonderful!!

          (Kill me now before MS thinks to take this course of action!)

          • No they couldn't (Score:4, Informative)

            by Goonie ( 8651 ) <robert.merkel@be ... g ['ra.' in gap]> on Wednesday October 02, 2002 @02:26AM (#4372044) Homepage
            At the moment, the government owns 51% of Telstra and needs parliamentary approval to sell the rest. It's going to struggle to get it with the present composition of the Senate.

            But let's assume the rest of Telstra is sold. To obtain a controlling stake in a public company, Microsoft, as a foriegn-owned company, would have to obtain permission from a government body called the Foriegn Investment Review Board. 99.9% of the time such approval is given, but every so often the government knocks back some politically contentious ones (for instance, they knocked back Shell's attempt to buy the rest of a major gas project because it was widely argued that Shell may choose to promote other projects in Indonesia and elsewhere over the Australian one).

            Given one of the major arguments advanced by the government for not splitting Telstra up into seperate companies has been that it is one of a very few Australian companies big enough to be a major player in a global market, the idea of approving a foriegn takeover of it seems unlikely.

    • Either way, it's a good thing (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Goonie ( 8651 ) <robert.merkel@be ... g ['ra.' in gap]> on Tuesday October 01, 2002 @09:15PM (#4370978) Homepage
      Whilst I'd love for Telstra to start using Linux across all their desktops, it's a pretty good second best for us Aussies even if they're only using it as a negotiating tool to beat down Microsoft's pricing.

      Why? Because it's going to be millions of dollars that gets distributed back to the Australian economy either in the form of lower pricing of Telstra's products or as profits to shareholders (and as the government is still a 51% shareholder that means all of us).

      The next point is that once a few more CEOs see that you can screw Microsoft in this manner, they're going to try it for themselves. At least some (and more as time goes on and Linux apps continue to improve) are going to decide that the Linux option is viable regardless of what deals MS offers, and the others will save a packet. Net result? Less money floating across the Pacific to the money vault in Redmond and more in local customers and shareholders' pockets, and a growing Linux user community who will spend money and use their buying power to get the features they want.

      Now, if only Telstra could be levered out of their monopoly or quasi-monopoly positions, then we'd *really* be in good shape :)

    • Re:Ballmer vs. the jetlag (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 01, 2002 @09:34PM (#4371067)
      I think I see a pattern here -- announce move to linux on day 1, on day 2 sign a deeeeeply discounted deal with Microsoft.

      My company uses thousands and thousands of servers in rackmounts, and up until XP, we had a site license for all M$ products. When XP came around, they said, "Nope, no more... you have to individually track every computer." Now, since 80% of the systems are totally indentical hardware-wise, the product activation might be fooled, but there there was the issue of lawsuits should they find out, and as big as we are, M$ is far bigger. This was insane, there was no way in hell we could track all these systems without hiring a team just for that purpose.

      So we partnered with Sun, made a deal with HP, burned a few Red Hat disks and if you HAVE to have an M$ machine, you get and old Windows 2000 box. M$ said they didn't care. We found Linux ran faster and cheaper, with more options on older hardware. We could now literally run a system until its hardware failed; before we were throwing out systems because M$ kept upgrading the hardware requirements. Now we can use a 486 for a LAN manager, a router, or just a smart terminal.

      That was last year. A few weeks ago, while talking about drive image backups, one of the managers told us that M$ had given us "special" XP disks that require no PA... now, these disks are supposedly "un-reburnable" but I bet someone could figure out how to do this, and if WE have a copy, I bet someone in Hong Kong has a stack of them in his house, selling them through eBay or something.

      M$ knows their product. It's a drug. That's why we're called "users." For many years, they gave the drug "for free," it was insanely easy to copy an M$ OS. It's what made them #1, just like they did with Windows Media player and MSIE. They waited until we got "hooked," and then they charge an arm and a leg. $200 for XP pro? One machine only? Yep, time to pay the dealer for your OSmack, it ain't free no more, kid, I gotta make a living somehow. Dealers don't care about their users, they only care about their money, and will do what it takes to get that money any way they can.

      But then came Linux. Linux is a slippery beast because they don't need a profit margin. It's a superior OS that never crashes, is free, a lot more secure, and a thousand times more versitile than Windows ever was. It was a system built by people sick of bad systems. It is not designed to make money, so M$ tactics to drive it out of "business" can't work.

      My guess is that M$ will back off the PA and cut prices eventually. I think in 5-10 years, they will be the AOL of OS's, for granny and Mr. Need-it-for-pr0n-browsing, but students and business people will be on Linux.

      Go Aussies!

      • Actually it is easy to get the no activation required version of XP. While I don't run Windows, I did build a machine for someone. They gave me a CD that said Windows XP on it, but it was obviously a copy. I asked if they had a serial number, and they said it wasn't needed. Turns out it was an student version. One of the local colleges makes copies and sells them for $15 to students, and it is totally legal and sanctioned by MS.

      • Nah. Linux doesn't support DRM. It can't, since the source is available and anyone could remove or disable the DRM portions. So all MS will have to do is go along with Hollywood and the record industry and demand that all operating systems be required by law to support DRM. Linux will become The Choice of Thieves and Terrorists(TM). Easy as pie (and a few hundred million in bribe^N^N^N^N^Ncampaign contributions.

      • You don't know what you're talking about. Microsoft does not hide the fact that you can purchase versions of their software which do not require activation. They're called Volume License Product Keys [microsoft.com] and these days they require different media than the retail versions. If your company had thousands of Windows machines, they would be stupid to not already be in one of Micosofts licensing programs.

        The rest of your message is mix of misinformation and delusional Linux zealotry.

      • But then came Linux. Linux is a slippery beast because they don't need a profit margin. It's a superior OS that never crashes, is free, a lot more secure, and a thousand times more versitile than Windows ever was.

        Ummm... hate to disagree, but Linux certainly crashes. I've never had a Linux system that didn't coredump occasionally. I've had maybe 5 or 6 different linux boxen at one time or another, distros slackware 3.4, slackware 8, redhat 6, SuSe 7.1 and SuSe 8.

        I have a Linux server at home built by me out of top quality parts with excellent cooling that freezes up. Even when my Windows box crashes, at least Ctrl-Alt-Del still works. This Linux server crashes so bad that I have to hit the power button. And it does it usually within 36 hours of power-on.

        All that said I do believe that Linux is more stable than Windows. But please, don't say that it never crashes.
    • Maybe in the future companies that are planning to switch to Linux on such a large scale will tell their PR department to STFU until the deal is done.

      • Actually, if the point is to put pressure on Microsoft then the smartest thing to do would be to advertise that you are getting ready to switch 45 kajillion desktops to Linux. Microsoft can't afford to let even one large company switch to Linux, because if they did then lots of other smaller companies would start to have second thoughts about Windows licensing. One successful Linux desktop implementation on the scale Telstra is talking about and Microsoft would no longer be a given on the corporate desktop.

        So Telstra threatens to switch to Linux and the next thing you know Balmer is sweating and dancing his way down under with a big fat discount on Windows licenses.

        Personally I think that it makes more sense to simply push for a switch to OpenOffice on Windows with Linux servers. That way you don't have to worry about migrating your entire desktop, but you still save a substantial amount of dinero.

    • If thats the case....then my small company (me + uh....me) is interested in switching to Linux.
    • I think I see a pattern here

      I also see a business model (hurries off to US patent office).

  • Only 24? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by CaptainCarrot ( 84625 ) on Tuesday October 01, 2002 @08:07PM (#4370736)
    Presumably the two missing letters here are for his floppy and CD-ROM. He should try it with some OS that doesn't insist on using single letters of the alphabet to designate partitions. Like VMS, better known as the Operating System of the Gods, where you can find such euphonious device names as DKA0: Real VMS gurus know without being told that any device so bold as to be called DVA0: had damned well better be a floppy drive!

    Which one's my CD-ROM? Ummmm....

    • You've overlooked the fact that putting a lot of drives under an OS that can trivially handle a lot of drives is uninteresting. Finding hardware that plays nice with Win95 and has the bus(es) to support lots of drives, and getting the whole thing to work is the opposite of uninteresting. And no more pointless than your beloved VMS device names.

    • Which one's my CD-ROM? Ummmmm....

      $ show logical *cdrom*

      (LNM$PROCESS_TABLE)

      (LNM$JOB_87B9EA00)

      (LNM$GROUP_000260)

      (LNM$SYSTEM_TABLE)

      "$CDROM1" = "_ULYDV$DKA400:"
      "$CDROM2" = "_ULYDV$DKA500:"

      (DECW$LOGICAL_NAMES)
      $

      Works for me.

      • Boy, you have a nice sysadmin...

        I was being silly. Of course I know which one the CDROM is; it's DKA600. (Now isn't that obvious?) Those logicals you have pointing to them ain't necessarily there though. I don't have them anyway, and there's nothing in the OS that makes you put them there. If your sysadmin expects the users to have more 1337 than average (as ours do, sometimes without justification) they won't bother.

    • Presumably the two missing letters here are for his floppy and CD-ROM.

      Close. The two missing letters will be A and B ... which are BOTH reserved for floppy drives.

      Then again, with the DOS "subst" command (which Windows 9x respects), it might be possible to find a sneaky way of adding two more drives to his system (and assigning them as A: and B:).
    • My bet is he couldn't use A and B, and used all the rest.
    • If you check this screenshot [coleskingdom.com] you can see that the "A" drive is a floppy drive and there is no "B" drive. There is also no CD-ROM drive present. I'm curious what would happend under Win9X if he were to add another drive; it would be as simple as mapping a network drive. Is Win9X smart enough to support this and use something like double letters for the drive, like the "AA" drive?

      • Re:Only 24? (Score:5, Informative)

        by doublem ( 118724 ) on Tuesday October 01, 2002 @09:04PM (#4370921) Homepage Journal
        Sorry, no Dice. The drive will go unused and unmounted, unless it takes the place of another drive.

        There is no AA: in Windows

        Two floppies and 24 other mounted partitions is the max.

        Now, more than one physical drive can be used as a single drive letter via RAID, but that's another story.
      • Just checked in Win2k...The highest drive letter is Z:

      • Re:Only 24? (Score:3, Interesting)

        by ErikTheRed ( 162431 )
        In some older versions of DOS, you could overflow the drive letter counter and get [:

        Ahhhhh... the good old days...
    • I thought they'd all been made extinct by the Tar Pits. :)
    • 'Like VMS, better known as the Operating System of the Gods'

      Dude. Have you USED VMS? [shudder.]

      The 'set' command had, like _400_ different behaviors.

  • Hmmmm (Score:3, Interesting)

    by dnoyeb ( 547705 ) on Tuesday October 01, 2002 @08:09PM (#4370748) Homepage Journal
    Seems like Linux has a viable strategy in the works. Wonder how M$ will respond?

    Port GNU applications to windows and let people get comfortable at home before they make the Linux Journey.

    Free. Nasty. M$ style warfare.

  • In other news... (Score:3, Funny)

    by Cubeman ( 530448 ) on Tuesday October 01, 2002 @08:10PM (#4370750)
    ...he will be upgrading to 320 GB hard drives now that his Apache logs have filled up drives C-Z!

    • Not Apachne (Score:2, Informative)

      by setzman ( 541053 )
      If you look closely at his desktop, you will see that he is running the Xitami webserver, not Apache.
      • If you look closely at his desktop, you will see that he is running the Xitami webserver, not Apache.

        Xitami has a web server?! (Ha-ha...just kidding.)

        [pause; grin fades to puzzled look]

        By the way, who's Xitami?

  • DOWNLOADS! *kick ass* (Score:5, Interesting)

    by autopr0n ( 534291 ) on Tuesday October 01, 2002 @08:10PM (#4370752) Homepage Journal
    ah, it's so much nicer to be able to actualy *download* something, rather then trying to 'stream' it, and then not being able to watch it again. Quicktime files can usualy be dug out of the cache, but still.

    The weird part is that it's as a .zip file. I still find it very strange that quicktime files can be further compressed with pkzip, but whatever. (Or maybe they just did it so it wouldn't automaticaly be played in the browsers of the not-so-smart...)

  • Hardware List for the Slashdot Possibility (Score:3, Informative)

    by EraseEraseMe ( 167638 ) on Tuesday October 01, 2002 @08:12PM (#4370757)
    Specfications:
    P-120
    80 Meg Ram
    10 base T Ethernet
    1.44 floppy drive
    Soundblaster 16
    Serial Mouse
    Creative Graphics Blaster SVGA
    24 hard drives by various manufactures
    14 IDE
    10 SCSI
    Soundblaster 16 IDE controller on the sound card
    2 Promise ATA 66 crontrollers( Running at 33)
    1 Adaptec AHA-1510 SCSI controller.
    1 Adaptec AVA-1515 SCSI controller.
    Windows 95 OSR1

    Shame there isn't more information on how he did it and any problems he encountered. I've had a hell of a time in the past getting SCSI and IDE drives to co-operate under Windows :/ Although, 30Gb of space on this is pretty damn impressive..and if it's only a fileserver why do you need any faster a processor?

    I'd just hate to be the person to have to move it :/

  • so I'm reading about how we're trying to save and advance Linux.

    and I see the article from Telestra..

    and I reload (cause of a link I followed) and I have a Microsoft ad at the top of the page.

    Is it just me, or does Microsoft have NO idea who their target market is and isn't...LOL

    RB
    • Actually I believe there must be some connection between any mention of the word Microsoft in an article, and the running of a Microsoft add on that articles post.

      It makes sense. MS is trying to provide the negatice news it always seems to be receiving on slashdot with its standard PR machine diversion/balance.

      Wonder if it is actually working on some slashdotters.

  • California Gov. & law (Score:5, Funny)

    by CodeMunch ( 95290 ) on Tuesday October 01, 2002 @08:14PM (#4370769) Homepage
    for more info, visit EGray [egray.org]

  • My View On Dataplay (Score:5, Insightful)

    by MBCook ( 132727 ) <foobarsoft@foobarsoft.com> on Tuesday October 01, 2002 @08:20PM (#4370784) Homepage
    Here is my view of Dataplay. First off the technology is very good. And it's perfect for MP3s. The cost per meg (if you only count the disks) is very cheap (compared to other removable media that size). I recently saw the play and disks in person at a Best Buy and I've gotta say it looks really cool. The problem is that it's out too late. If it came out back when MP3 players were pretty new (origional Nomad and whatnot) it would have been amazing. But these days, if I'm going to plop down $400 for a MP3 player, I'm going with a 20gig iPod (those rock), not a little 500meg thing.

    Maybe if I could use it to do other things like buy music for it like I can on CDs. They even say you can! But wait! Can you find any? I doubt it. Can't find a player either (unless the MP3 player does it too). You wanna use it as a tiny CD-RW? Cool! So would I, it's small (and rules compared to Click! drives (or Zip Pocket as they're known now)) and holds alot. But wait! You can't get a drive. You could use the MP3 player as one but, should I have to buy a $400 MP3 player if all I want is something to backup a few files to? How 'bout a PCMCIA type 3 card that could read them and such? Nope. Despite all the drives that they have promised, nothing is really going on. The only thing that's new is it's no longer vaporware, it's just unwanted.

    Once again, we see a good technology that could have done great just a few years ago, but they just took too long. This is what hapened to 3Dfx (my opnion, let's not get off topic), BitBoys (the ultimate in vapor), and many other things. Excessive delays can seriously hurt you in the market. How many of you are enjoying you're Segway HTs right now? That's what I though. They should be careful too.

    FINE PRINT: This is all my opinion, blah blah blah.

    • USD400 gets you a 10-gig iPod, not a 20-gig.

      Just picking nits, I think you make a good point.

  • Insider perspective (Score:5, Informative)

    by pyman ( 610707 ) on Tuesday October 01, 2002 @08:21PM (#4370785) Homepage
    My brother manages construction projects for Telstra in Western Australia. Over the last few weeks I have been helping him create a damage expense reporting system.

    He said that telstra's annual IT expenses account for a third of the total expenses; and because of this the new CIO/CTO is cutting back radically on IT expenses... that means no new software development... therefore he is developing the expense system himself!

  • It's about time Australia got its own Bermuda triangle!

    Or the people from redhat.au should go pig-hunting with him (At least they should have given him a copy of the movie Dirty Deeds before he came down [review [news.com.au], trailer [movie-list.com])

  • cool.mcgill.ca (Score:2, Interesting)

    by BSDevil ( 301159 )
    I'm in one of Dr. Ariel Fenster's classes (Chem 110 - not the one mentioned) and I'ma big fan of the cool.mcgill.ca [mcgill.ca] project. Allows me to watch all my lectures from my bed when I'm hungover on Fridays (class ends at 1pm, wake up and watch around 3pm). On another note, he's an amazing teacher - he makes reasonably dry stuff (introductory Chem) come alive and keeps it going and lively in a class of six hundred people.

    Big it up Dr. F!

  • Does she [gnuwin.epfl.ch] come with the CD as well? How about a little divx clip in there ?
  • Dr. Joe Schwarcz is a favourite lecturer of mine. I've attended several of his lectures and purchased both of his books, and fully intend to buy his upcomming book "The way the cookie crumbles". I hated chemistry class... But he just makes it so damned interesting! Anybody who can get their hands on a copy of either of his books should buy it no question! Or watch his show at the very least.

    Regards, Guspaz.
  • Of course, Win95 is limited to 1.99 gbs per partition...

    This guy pushes it to the limit - you can't really fit much more onto a Win95 box. Reminds me of the time a dell technician insatlled a new hard drive in my friend's pc. Dell gave him a 12g drive rather than the standard 2gb drive - needless to say, the PC had 6 partitions, and my friend didn't have a clue what to do with them.

    Besides, having 24 hard drives has to be good for something.... the server seemed to survive the slashdotting.... for now *evil laughter*
    • Of course, Win95 is limited to 1.99 gbs per partition...

      Only the first release of Win95 was limited as such. OSR2 had fat32, which allows up to > partitions. I ran a single partition 40gb drive under 95 for a long while.

  • many many drives.. (Score:4, Funny)

    by morcheeba ( 260908 ) on Tuesday October 01, 2002 @09:23PM (#4371005) Journal
    I had a friend that got a deal on some small-capacity scsi drives and bought 6 with the intent of installing them on one computer. I suggested that he should mount every other one upside down - otherwise when he turned the computer, the momentum of all the drives simultanously spinning would would cause and equal/opposite reaction, causing his computer to spin in the opposite direction on his desk.

    I guess that kind of geeky humor is unavoidable when you get a whole mess of satellite attitude control system geeks.

    • Re:many many drives.. (Score:5, Informative)

      by Neon Spiral Injector ( 21234 ) on Wednesday October 02, 2002 @12:22AM (#4371691)
      When you start to have that many drives you should stagger the spin ups (most SCSI drives have a jumper to delay spin up for a number of seconds multiplied by their SCSI ID). Not for the reason you suggest, but because the most current is drawn during spin up. Spinning all the drives up at once can actually put a lot of strain on a power supply. Even if it can provide enough power once the drives are spinning the extra load at start may be enough to cause a sag in the power going to the mother board. It isn't just over voltage conditions that are bad for computers, low voltages can also be harmful.

  • Telstra, six weeks from now (Score:3, Funny)

    by Vinson Massif ( 88315 ) on Tuesday October 01, 2002 @09:25PM (#4371016) Homepage
    In ~six weeks, after Ballmer leaves, I hope to see another story telling how Telstra plans to continue with its Linux plans.

    A price break from MS is nothing more than the pusher handing out a freebie. They'll get more than it's worth later by keeping them hooked now.

  • that is funny. and my friend who is an ADR for Universal was trying so hard to tell me all about how great Dataplay was. Even when I talked about the reasons it will fail she kept spouting out the standard shit her company was feeding to her. Oh well. Looks like I won an argument... for once.

  • Dataplay? Good riddance! (Score:5, Informative)

    by Comrade Pikachu ( 467844 ) on Tuesday October 01, 2002 @09:38PM (#4371091) Homepage
    Wasn't this the medium that the RIAA was hoping would replace the CD because it supports "Digital Rights Management"? From their website:

    August 6, 2001 - SANTA CLARA, Ca., and BOULDER, Colo. - InterTrust Technologies Corporation (NASDAQ: ITRU), provider of the leading trusted Digital Rights Management (DRM) technology, and DataPlay, Inc., developer of the universal media format for all things digital, today announced a strategic relationship to create a portable media distribution platform for protected content such as music. Universal Music Group, EMI Recorded Music and BMG Entertainment are all planning to release pre-recorded music on DataPlay digital media for use in multiple consumer electronic devices.

    Keep information free, forget about Dataplay.
  • There's plenty of Linux talent native to
    Australia. At least, I've met several Aussies
    with abundant unix clue, without even trying.

  • No obligatory definition? (Score:3, Funny)

    by moertle ( 140345 ) on Tuesday October 01, 2002 @10:05PM (#4371214) Homepage


    For instance, Telstra has said it will consider using the free open-source software Linux, which is gaining popularity.

    Where is the line about how Linux is a operating system developed by Linus Torvalds with a loosely based community of hackers located throughout the world?
  • From the headline I was hoping we'd finally gotten software in Romansch!

    KFG

  • dictionary.com sez (Score:5, Funny)

    by cosyne ( 324176 ) on Tuesday October 01, 2002 @10:27PM (#4371288) Homepage
    dispatch
    tr.v. dispatched, dispatching, dispatches
    1. To relegate to a specific destination or send on specific business. See Synonyms at send1.
    2.
    1. To complete, transact, or dispose of promptly.
    2. To eat up (food); finish off (a dish or meal).
    3. To put to death summarily.

    insert clever punchline here, such as "stop teasing."
  • Shouldn't that be GNU/Win? Or, more precisely, VMS/Win/GNU?

    This name reminds me of the weird name feud [sprynet.com] between two towns in rural Alabama.
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • Not a dispatch of Ballmer (Score:4, Informative)

    by m00nun1t ( 588082 ) on Tuesday October 01, 2002 @11:38PM (#4371531) Homepage
    More /. half truths...

    The Ballmer visit has been planned for quite a few months, and coincides with an event in Asia. Whenever a senior exec like Steve Ballmer or Bill Gates travel, they always meet with a few top customers. It's just a convenient coincidence that one of their top customers happens to need some extra attention at the time Steve is here, so it all worked out nicely.
    • Yeah... So MS isn't terrified of losing a customer that big and setting a precedent like that. Sure.

      They'd box monkey box up and send him off even if he wasn't already heading that way. The fact that he was is simply going to affect the timing a little.

      This is good, companies can see that if you want to yank MS's chain, and to have them dance for you (as wacky a monkey-dance as it might be) you just need to discuss Linux solutions. We'll either cut into MS's cash flowor we'll take desktops away. Either will hurt them and what hurts them makes it harder for them to force DRM on everyone.

  • Linux Victoriesks (Score:3, Interesting)

    by mcrbids ( 148650 ) on Wednesday October 02, 2002 @02:55AM (#4372109) Journal
    I find it surprising that many here would consider it a loss if Microsoft were to cut a reduced price deal for Telstra.

    Hey, the software was released to the public, to be used for whatever purpose benefited them. That's what the GPL is for.

    And, using it as a leverage to negotiate better prices with M$ is as legitimate a use as any other I can think of!

    Don't assume the narrow-minded view that Linux only "wins" when it's the only thing in use. Free software was provided for free with the assumption that it might do you some good, and that it's up to you to determine what good it'd be.

    If this Aussie company uses the software to negotiate better terms with MS, more power to 'em!

    Either way, Linux continues to grow and improve, and "Billie boy" continues to require changes of underwear.

    -Ben
    • "Either way, Linux continues to grow and improve, and "Billie boy" continues to require changes of underwear."

      You're insane if you think Bill Gates truly cares about Linux. He's made his millions (billions?) already. Yes, he'd like the company he built maintain its monopoly, but he could retire tomorrow and live in luxury for the rest of his life. I get the feeling he's in it for pure interest and entertainment now.

      The ones who are worried are the other MS execs. Oh, they're rich, but not as rich as they'd like to be. So something threatning their income is more of a concern.

      Maran
  • This is an e-mail I've sent to the person with the 24-drive file server.

    --

    Hi,

    I'm sure you're getting a lot of mail from Slashdot readers. I'm sure a large majority of it is Linux evangelism.

    Please bear with me. I'd like to share some facts about running a file server like yours on Linux that you may find interesting.

    First, I'll start with a few big reasons you may be interested:

    • LVM-the Logical Volume Manager. With LVM, you could combine all of these individual, small hard disks into what appears to be--and acts like--one large continuous file system. You can add more hard disks later to increase the size of the file system.
    • No drive letters.

      That means you can have more than 24 hard disks. Linux drives are usually mapped onto the global filesystem (unless you use LVM to combine several hard disks).

      For example, if you didn't use LVM to combine your drives, you could choose one disk for /home (personal settings and documents), one disk for /usr (most software), one disk for /var (miscellaneous program data files), a bunch of disks--one per directory (like "drive01", "drive02")--under a network file-serving directory, and one more disk for everything else not covered (the root directory).

    • Whether or not you use LVM, you can have much more than 24 hard disks. If you want to get really sophisticated, you can also spread your disks over a few computers, and combine them from one central Linux server. This is called Network Block Devices.

    The rest of this comment is available at this link [ely.ath.cx]. Appearantly my comment wasn't good enough for the lameness filter. "Reason: Please use fewer 'junk' characters." View the original comment as it was entered in the form here [ely.ath.cx] and tell me if there seems to be too many junk characters. (I tried changing '--' to '&emdash;', hoping that would help get past the lameness filter. '&emdash;' doesn't work anyway, apparently.)

    • I know the guy with the 24 HD computer. He might be a bit too busy to get back to you.

      He runs linux on several servers. He's not a zealot either way. He just wanted to see if he could do it using old parts and a windows box.
  • Curious that a P120 should withstand /. so well.
    Anyone ever heard of this web server before?

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