Text 12680, 71 rader
Skriven 2009-05-06 21:03:32 av Maurice Kinal (1:261/38)
     Kommentar till en text av Bo Simonsen
Ärende: jean and joan and who knows who
=======================================
Hey Bo!

> you should enter the number (or select the appropriate
> entry in your dialing directory), wait for the whale sound
> to disappear, etc. :)

That hasn't happened in over a decade now, and even then it definetly wasn't
with the expensive and extra slow isa 2400 baud modem.  The last one I had -
had a number of them in reserve - was an external 33.whatever kbaud sucker. 
The rest were 28.8's or something close to that.  A sudden storm effectively
wiped out all the local neighbourhood's internal pci 56k ones so I was able to
supply them with a much better immediate fix for their cause.  None of them
ever came back to me simply becuase they discovered that they had been duped
into buying the crappy pci ones in the first place.  Live and learn eh?

I don't miss any of them despite them being the best dialup modems money
couldn't buy.  By that time I had already made the switch to Linux and was
doing tcpip networking for everything between computers, even Fido at that
time.  No need to worry about others reaching the so-called BBS since nobody
and their dogs cared anymore.  They were all too distracted by the www.

> Ah... It also takes a hell of a time to build GCC :(

Not on a quad core X3220 xeon.  My entire MinimaLinux, which includes gcc, g++
and friends, takes around 47 minutes.  Installation to a partition takes under
a minute and is hard drive based.  No CD's or other silliness standing in the
way of progress.  Adding gfortran to the mix might add about 5 minutes to this
process so it isn't a problem if I decided to start using it.

Do you think I should add it?

> There are still alot of fortran fans left.. especially in the academic
> world.

Yes.

> Not even an X-girlfriend? :)

They are all X's.  :-)

I don't get out much these days and I doubt I'd be of much interest to them.  I
do know that they don't interest me all that much and when they do interest me
they seem to be less interested in me for whatever reason. All things
considered I don't seem to be too worried about it all although I sheepishly
admit there are times that it can be a tad bothersome.

> Transfering binary data over just one communication channel
> becomes hard without somekind of transfer protocol...

ftp is the winner although I've recently been using scp more and more as time
goes by.  ftp is still the fastest or at least as fast as anything else that
closely resembles it.  Mind you wget seems to be the number one client used on
the commandline here.  I must admit that is an extremely handy tool.  I think
it is a keeper.

> My EPIA is about 15-18W without the harddrive I guess...

That is excellent.  Last time I checked, UDMA/100 drives averaged around 6W so
that would be the best off-the-shelf boot/root method. Laptop drives are around
4W and the ide flash disks pull under 1W and aren't spinney or magnetic so
would be the best for a mobile situatinn. For everything else, usb flash disks
would be the way to go.  CF disks, especially the industrial grade ones would
be the utilimate considering lowpower consumption and reliablity but then bump
the cost up. However over the long haul, I would think that the startup cost
would be recovered.

Life is good,
Maurice

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