ATI tried to give me a birthday present yesterday by releasing a new edition of their proprietary binary video drivers for Linux. Unfortunately, still no hardware 3D acceleration support for the 9100IGP. I’m expecting the next release to implement this.
Stupid shared mainboard/video RAM. Kristin got me Unreal Tournament 2004, and I want to run it on my Linux box. If ATI keeps up their recently-developed habit of releasing a new driver twice a month, we might get there soon.
Bush came out slow, but I think he’s pulling ahead (8:35). Kerry made his first factual error, as far as I can tell, with the omission of Poland from his coalition-related rebuttal. Kerry was certainly stronger at first.
Am I the only one to find Green Day’s “American Idiot” a bit contradictory? They’re decrying media influence on America: “One nation controlled by the media,” I believe the lyric is.
Ummm…Aren’t they a component of the media? Like…uhh…they’re being BROADCAST on BROADCAST MEDIA and being MASS DISTRIBUTED via stores?
These are the anti-establishment, homo-curious guys of my junior high days here, using the Viacom publicity engine of MTV among others (I’m sure they’ll show up on the Daily Show soon, as well) to institutionalize a corporate image of anti-corporate anti-institutionalization. Great, guys. Great job.
If you want to use your listening time more effectively, go pick up a Five for Fighting album. Mostly-self-produced singer-songwriter experimental stuff. I’m certainly not going to waste money on this corporate anti-corporate crap. Hootie beats this. My $10 Sting Greatest Hits album beats this. Caedmon’s Call (sans the girl-sung songs) beats the heck out of this. Maybe we can get Green Day out of the way and knock out Nickelback, Good Charlotte, Sum 41, New Found Glory, and that “look for the girl with the broken smile” group that I can’t remember the name of now. Yeah, it is a good line. I don’t care. I’m on principle here.
Kill that Switchfoot song, too. What the heck? Like more than a year old? It’s a little much now. “We were meant to live for so much more”. Yeah, I know. I remember when I was laughing at the stuff I’m now going back to buy for $18/CD 5 years late. I’m about to go buy a Silverchair album, if they haven’t all been melted into Blink 182 CD’s. Hootie, anyone? Goldfinger. I wonder if they made good stuff.
I need a Crosby, Stills, [&] Nash, [& Young] album. That’s about the last 70s group I like (well, other than Steve Miller Band) that hasn’t sold a CD to me yet.
The downward quality curve of Dave Matthews Band has a lot to do with this, I believe. I didn’t even jump at the offering of the last live album. Didn’t even think about buying it. We’ll see what comes out of the studio in the next decade or so.
I’m wondering why A Perfect Circle didn’t put that crazy minimalistic mix of their new single on the CD. I go nuts whenever I hear it on the radio.
Oh, and happy birthday to me (yesterday, now). White Russians are good.
The dirtbag finally wrote me back. My paper is da shiznit. The test won’t be a problem. I can buy alcohol on Wednesday. My girlfriend is happy with me. My friends all seem OK. I have a pimping stereo system. My car is mostly clean. I’m running three open-source OSes on a single machine. I’m running a functional Windows OS on another. In the same room. Yeah.
Third Day and Caedmon’s Call let you listen to Christian music without making you feel like a dufus. I’m not sleepy but I can sleep in. My classmates come to me instead of the professor for engineering help. I might get a job over the summer. In Houston. Yeah.
Command those who are rich in this present world not to be arrogant nor to put their hope in wealth, which is so uncertain, but to put their hope in God, who richly provides us with everything for our enjoyment. Command them to do good, to be rich in good deeds, and to be generous and willing to share. In this way they will lay up treasure for themselves as a firm foundation for the coming age, so that they may take hold of the life that is truly life.
1 Timothy 6:17-19
Amen. That’s my prayer.
FGLRX ATI VIDEO DRIVER WORKS!
Holy freaking crap. I love it. Full 2D acceleration. This is MY NIGHT BABY!
I have absolutely no clue how the last two posts got out of sync, but I don’t really care. I’m officially declaring the Slackware project successful and complete. Even though I don’t have 3D acceleration, 2D finishes the box.
The box was spec’d out with the intent of someday becoming a probably-Linux-based DVD/Jukebox/entertainment-center-augmenting appliance, and it has achieved all of those goals. With some more tweaking of the TV-out capability, it will have accomplished all I want it to do with entirely free software.
Pretty cool. Time to start fighting other distros! The project lives on!
So…On a total impulse I just completely reformatted the Linux box and brought it up from scratch. All configuration was done in less than 2 hours or so, and the total project time expanded to a mere handful of hours basically as a result of having to download some security/stability patches from a slow FTP server.
This is an impressive amount of setup time for Slackware, even considering that I am experienced with both the OS and the hardware. Slackware can’t be that hard if you can get config time to under 6 hours.
The big reason for the update was clutter and nonsense generated from learning how to compile stuff by practice and repetition. Firefox 1.0 Pre-Release is one of the most beautiful things I have ever seen in my life. Built-in RSS syndication reader (integrated with the Bookmarks menu/toolbar), cleaned up interface, no more “Load Profile” bug for multiple browsers, improved Bookmarks stability, faster app and page load times…everything is perfection. I can’t wait until 1.0, which I will heartily recommend to all of my Windows friends as an IE replacement, at least on a testing basis.
Another reason for the update was to get my /home directory into a separate ext2 filesystem (basically universally-understood) partition so all my videos and music survive upgrades. I also carved out 3 circa 5 gig partitions for test systems. I’m planning Gentoo, Debian, SuSe (gotta keep up with the up-and-coming big performer), and some homebrew Linux playing.
Okay, gotta bug out. ATI released a driver that supports my video card. More news later.
I have studied the issue extensively, and against all odds I must award the Most Fanatical Hurricane Coverage distinction to CNN. I would expect FNC, who has a particular fondness for the exaggerated (see Geraldo), or MSNBC, who just seems like a big farce altogether, to get the award. However, this CNN coverage is just retarded.
http://people.redhat.com/~hp/stateless/StatelessLinux.pdf
I don’t know if I should declare victory, defeat, or nothing. This is pretty much a whitepaper describing my vision for a mounted-CD operating system in some ways, but a bit more versatile than Knoppix or Gnoppix live Linux CDs.
Cool? Yes. But a little too BCIS Fascist for my tastes. Here’s what I see: we have on one end the thin client (or terminal, in oldspeak). On the other end is the Winbloat model for functionality and permissions: RPC vulnerabilities, root priveleges on the Linux side.
This Fedora idea is a bit too close to the Knoppix/thin client solution. I need to have enough leeway to make changes. This does not mean kludges that make “common root tasks” trivial. The reason you have root logins is to supercede one’s normal expectations of operational demands. Root loses importance to the user with this Stateless idea. Instead, we see a layer of abstraction between the user and the system. This means the death of Linux as anything but a bargain. The closeness of the user to system functionality is what makes Linux anything different from Windows technologically.
Mounting the root filesystem as readonly is assinine. Just try to word process on an iPod. We’re talking embedded-level Linux here, and I don’t think anybody wants that for their PC. PC hardware is just too damn smart to lock it down. On the corporate IT side, it might make some sense in theory. In truth, I want to be able to change my system. I simply disagree with the guiding principles of this project.
On the other hand, the kernel should not be read-write. GUI binaries? Readonly. Base functionality DLL’s? Readonly. DirectX/Avalon? Readonly.
Config files? Read-write. Data? Read-write. Not network storage…for now. Maybe at widespread gigabit ethernet and approaching 100% network uptime WITH ENCRYPTION.
Here’s my optimal liveCD-but-permanent-PC op system root filesystem:
/ -> /dev/hda1 (read-write by root)
/bin -> /dev/cdrom
/boot -> /dev/cdrom
/dev -> (virtual, driven by the emerging udev system and hotplug)
/etc -> /dev/hda1 (with a backup default config image on the CD with a restore utility)
/home -> /dev/hda2 (different partition for user data. why not?)
/lib -> /dev/cdrom (this is the biggie)
/var -> /dev/hda1 (needs to be writable for logging)
/usr, /bin, and /sbin -> /dev/cdrom (very important, most apps are distributed on CD)
/opt -> /dev/hda1 (all other installed software goes here, “firewalled” from app data)
/root -> /dev/hda1 (this should be treated as “protected system space” with the other config/admin stuff)
Everything else is virtual.
Alright. I’m done.
Well, it’s pro football time, and after having watched about one third of a quarter less than a quarter of the only pro football game I’ve seen yet this year, I have decided upon the team I will be cheering for for at least a week, and hopefully the whole season. Drum roll please: The Washington Redskins. These guys are playing awesome. However, my support of them comes with much introspection; what exactly is the criteria that I use in my deity-grade divination of the supportable team? I’ve compiled a short list of criteria:
The team…
Must have at least a half-probable bid for winning the Big One: You can support other teams, but you have to at least have one winner in your back pocket.
Must not have an asshole for a star player: Do you want to have to ignore that crap every week on the post-game interviews?
Must not have an asshole for a coach: Do you want to have to ignore that crap every week on the post-game interviews?
Must have a good, well-rounded quarterback: No, Michael Vick is not well-rounded. I’m talking the kind of quarterback for which a “Hail Mary” does not need a literal component for a chance at a completion. But a good QB-keeper playbook is a plus.
Must have a good running back: If I see somebody passing on 4th and 1 somebody’s going to get their ass kicked.
Should have at least one player whose name can be chanted by the crowd to sound like a “Boo”: “Moose” was the only reason I held onto supporting the Cowboys for so long. Now OU has “Rufus”, and the crowd has taken to howling when Wolf gets a carry. That’s just good football.
Better to be an NFC team: AFC just sucks.
I’m sure there are more, but that’s enough. This is a pretty dumb post, but at least it’s about football instead of Linux binary libraries or something.