381063
submission
LWATCDR writes:
AMD has stepped up to the plate and now have a new middle price graphics card that can challenge the NVidia 8800GT.
Life would be so easy if the new ATI card was faster, cheaper, and used less power than the NVidia card but life isn't that simple.
The new AMD card is a little slower then the 8800GT but it looks like it may end up being a lot cheaper at around $169 and uses a little less power.
The end result is a card that gives you a little more bang for your buck than 8800GT which was already a great value.
So is it good enough? Take a look http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1697,2217044,00.asp
BTW since the 8800GT is sold out this maybe a great option.
366157
submission
LWATCDR writes:
It is as simple as this. A piece of software that's only purpose is DRM/copy protection makes Windows XP and Windows Server vulnerable to a complete system take over. The name of the product is called SafeDisc. One has to wonder if it is from the author of Quickprotect of Dillbert fame?
From Yahoo news http://news.yahoo.com/s/zd/20071105/tc_zd/218871
"The vulnerability is in the Macrovision secdrv.sys driver on supported editions of Windows Server 2003 and Windows XP. The affected product is Macrovision SafeDisc, a copy-protection application written for Windows.
FrSRT reported on Oct. 19 that the trouble is a memory corruption error in the Macrovision Security Driver when processing user-supplied data. The vulnerability can be used by local attackers to gain so-called Ring 0 privileges and take complete control of an affected system."
349755
submission
LWATCDR writes:
Under Windows there are multiple RAID solutions. Some are even built on to the Mother board. For Linux things get a bit messy.
If you want a high end raid system you have lots of good options from companies like 3ware. But when it comes to inexpensive solutions I just can not seem to find good information.
1. What if any motherboards have a RAID that is supported by Linux?
2. Do they support RAID 0.1,10, and or 5?
3. Is it a true hardware raid, does it just off load the CRC calculations, or is really just a software?
4. Can you boot from it?
5. Is the driver in the kernel or is it a binary blog?
Even phoronix doesn't seem to have a lot of interest in RAID controllers. Tom's hardware ran this a few years ago but it was very windows specific. http://www.tomshardware.com/2004/06/25/cheap_and_reliable_raid_5_storage_compared/page8.html
So besides the Linux software RAID what options do we have under Linux for a good if not inexpensive RAID solution?
271285
submission
LWATCDR writes:
Yahoo News is reporting that Advanced Micro Devices on Thursday announced an extension to the X86 instruction set, which the company calls "SSE5".
The set of instruction extensions — 47 base extensions, expanding to a total of 170 instructions — will be included first in the "Bulldozer" processor family, scheduled to be released in 2009.
The new extensions will be optimized for high-performance computing workloads. AMD designers examined existing instruction sets, such as the Apple/IBM/Freescale Altivec instruction set, then identified three software types to optimize SSE5 around: compute-intensive applications, such as financial simulation and life sciences; multimedia applications, like high-definition video encoding and image processing; and security applications, where data is encrypted across the Internet as well as an entire hard drive.
The article has one statement that I found odd, "Traditionally, Intel has issued improvements to the X86 ISA used within PCs, crafting all of the earlier SSE extensions, which AMD has eventually supported. This time, the shoe's on the other foot.". Wow how soon they forget. I guess that whole X86-64 things just slipped their mind.
226773
submission
LWATCDR writes:
I would put this under the category of "You have got to be kidding me!"
Sony's brilliant PR streak just keeps going and going like a little bunny running on Sony batteries.
Endgadet is reporting that Sony honcho Howard Stringer apparently accused Steve Jobs of being "greedy." The report claims that Mr. Stringer went on to say that the Steve-man "Wants a world where only he makes money."
Unlike Sony who embraces open formats, safety, security, and consumer rights above all else? Things that make you go "WHAT!!!!"
173529
submission
LWATCDR writes:
From Linux Devices. A U.S. government- and industry-led coalition aiming to equip every car and roadside in America with wirelessly connected computers has tapped Linux for a prototype design. The Vehicle Infrastructure Integration Consortium (VII-C) hopes to lower driver death rates, reduce traffic jams, and media-enable cars before 2017.
The plan seems to be to make each car a node in a massive mesh network. Your car know the location, speed, and direction of every car around it. This could prevent many accidents a year. The system could also provide media and navigation services to vehicles. On a trip you car could know the current price of gas at each exit and suggest when you should stop for gas. The system could also include sensors for windshield wipers and weather sensors to proved large scale real time weather data and could monitor traffic flow and route cars away from congestion. The current prototype uses a Celeron based PC104 board. I would think that a PPC or XScale would be a better fit for this type of application but since they are using Linux they are not tied to any single ISA.
Of course nothing is perfect. Such a system could track every movement every car makes as well as monitor speed and other potental traffic violations. There is also the fact that this would be a massive computer monoculture. Security better be close to perfect since it will make a very tempting target.
157651
submission
LWATCDR writes:
Miguel de Icaza is at it again. He is claiming that he can add support to for Microsoft's Silverlight to Mono. While I am not a big fan of Flash or Silverlight adding support for Linux users is usually a good thing, except this comment scares the hell out of me. "Fortunately, Microsoft released the source code of .NET's new Dynamic Language Runtime (DLR) — a critical component of Silverlight — under a highly-permissive open source license. According to de Icaza, Microsoft's DLR can be incorporated into Mono and won't have to be reimplemented." So Mono will have honest to goodness Microsoft code in it. I hope some really bright lawyers from the FSF have looked at this highly-permissive open source license from Microsoft.
155503
submission
LWATCDR writes:
It looks like more issues with Vista Vista drains notebook batteries. Using the Aero interface really eats into your notebooks battery life. Of course one of the new "features" of Vista is supposed to be better power management. Of course this provides a great opportunity for a showdown. How long until someone loads Vista on a MacBook and compares run time? It would provide a flat playing field now that Apple makes Intel powered notebooks.
For our next test how about Vista and Ubuntu on a Dell? What review site will step up to this challenge?
143837
submission
LWATCDR writes:
It seems that that Ubuntu Version 7 is having more than it's fair share of WiFi problems. When I installed the release version of Feisty Fawn I couldn't get log onto my WAP. My system is using a well supported (prism 2.5) chip set and I can find the WAP but no luck in logging on even with all security on the WAP turned off. Of course I figured that I was just doing something wrong so I hit the forums. Ubuntu WiFi Poll
It seems like a lot of people are having problems with Feisty Fawn that had no problems under the last version.
Was Feisty rushed out the door? Are other people having the same issues? And although I have seen a lot of comments about WiFi issues on the Ubuntu forum I haven't seen a lot of news on it.
105576
submission
LWATCDR writes:
http://www.hermann-uwe.de/blog/linuxbios-with-x11- server-completely-in-flash-rom Has a great write up on putting combining LinuxBios + a Linux kernel, busybox, X, a window manager, and rxvt into a two meg flash chip. So what does get you? A six second boot time for one.
All sorts of uses come to mind. Terminals to use with the Linux Terminal server. A very fast booting embedded system like a Car computer. With every one pushing for multi-core cpus, mega gigabyte drives and many gigabytes of ram it is interesting to see how small you can go.
34013
submission
LWATCDR writes:
I got a Dell Dimension E521 for a Linux development box. Why would I get a Dell? Well it seemed inexpensive, powerful, and because of this http://www.dell.com/content/topics/segtopic.aspx/e 510_nseries?c=us&cs=19&l=en&s=dhs. The problem is that it looks like Dell never bothered to test the machine with LINUX! That is correct the Dimension E521 seems to loose the mouse on a regular basis. It seems that it isn't limited to any one Linux distribution or even to Linux since even a FreeBSD user is reporting the issue.
Dell says they don't support 3rd party software. You can see more about this issue here. http://forums.us.dell.com/supportforums/board/mess age?board.id=sw_other&message.id=54328&view=by_dat e_ascending&page=1 seems to me that if Dell is going to claim this machine is great for Linux then it should work under Linux!
I can honestly say that I will probably not be buying any Dell servers because of this. We are looking at buying two or three 1Us and and two 3Us. IBM is looking very good now.
20649
submission
LWATCDR writes:
I was wondering where to find information on large high traffic websites like Slashdot and Digg or even some of the monsters like YouTube, MySpace, and Flicker. How do you go from a small shared host to one of these monster sites? What kind of hardware do they run? How do they load balance? Where do you go to look for a provider that can grow with you? Is it possible or should you expect to have go to different companies for shared hosting, dedicated, and finally collocation?
How much hardware and bandwidth do you have to throw at one of these sites?
I remember a few years ago when Slashdot moved to a new server. There was a story about the new setup and the problems that going to it caused.
Is slashdot still running on that hardware?
