|
What can I say? Computing just rules.
There is so much to the world of computers... from
raytracing to
cryptography, there is just so much cool stuff you can do with computers.
I have so much to say about computers, I'm going to break it up into
categories....
- Cool things in Computing
- Computing Links
- Erich's Computing Stuff
![[Image: Linux Penguin]](comp/penguin.gif)
Linux.
Linux, along with the rest of the free software community, is probably the
greatest thing going on in computing today. The Linux Kernel, developed by
a team of programmers led by Linus Torvalds, was designed to run on Intel-type
PC machines. It has since grown to run on most computing platforms, from
SGI's to old Macintoshes to Ataris to embedded systems. Using the
GNU utilities already in existance, an
excellent operating system has been created -- all for free, all from scratch
-- in a very short amount of time. Today a modern, normal Linux distribution
contains things that make it very easy to use, including configuration scripts
and GUI stuff. I run Linux on all my computers, save
the NeXT.
Computer graphics kick some butt. I really like
raytracing. Especially with Povray, where
you can get your picture from a scene you define (with C'ish syntax.)
The Gimp is a GPL'ed (free, including
source code) graphics utility. It grows quickly, has a nifty scripting
language, and even has its own windowing
toolkit that is really nice.
Now, lets get something straight... I don't like GUI's all that much,
especially for things that don't belong in a GUI. For instance, most
system administration things should be text-only. Email should be
text-only. Programs that don't involve graphics or WYSIWIG page layout
should be text-only... for all you GUI proponents, how can you write
a script to run your graphical music player? How can you use your graphical
date thing to calculate times? Also, I'm usually typing. Why should I
have to grab my mouse to do stuff?
Mozilla, Netscape's newly-GPL'ed
web browser, rules. Well, it rules for two reasons:
- Netscape Navigator is the best graphical web browser on the market.
- Mozilla, by releasing the source, allows anyone to aid its
development, allows for more diversified features, and ...
it's free to use as well.
 At the Linux Expo they had an "Editor
War," in which vi people fought Emacs people to see which editor reigns
supreme. vi was the resounding winner, and so they teach the Emacs people
that web browsers, database programs, games, spreadsheets, etc. do NOT need
to be included in a text editor. And besides, who wants to load a 20 meg
binary when a 20 k one does just as well? (Ok, so maybe I'm a little off
there...)
- Slashdot.org is the best
computing news site around. Updated several times a day,
it contains all the best stuff. It's my starting page in
Netscape.
- Freshmeat.net is a great
site that contains the newest important software releases.
So you won't find much windows software there.
- LinuxHQ is a good starting
point for linux stuff. So is
linux.org.
- Stars.com is an easy to
remember URL and has lots of neat stuff for web developers.
- O'Riley and Associates make
nifty computer books. I own 8 or 9.
- Go here. Probably,
your computer's processor is being wasted by useless
inactivity. Run a distributed client to help prove that
small-key security is insufficient! And money goes to you
if you win, and to charities, too!
- SunSITE has lots of neat
stuff, including a great
linux
software archive.
- GNU's not unix, but it is most
of what makes Linux Linux. GNU is a program to make software
that is not only free to use, but free to change. It is
high-quality stuff, too.
- Spam really bugs me. So, I have set up
this page that contains
many major abuse email addresses. That way, the spammers
will spam the addresses for the people who will get them in
trouble. Theoretically.
So, what do I have in the way of computing?
Wait! Before you think I have way too much money, you should hear my
ever-so-humourous stories about how I obtained them!
Kermit is the server. Kermit serves up all sorts of stuff, including
news, web, and ftp. It also acts as the router between the other computers
and Georgia Tech (and thus the rest of the internet). If you would like
to, you can see my Topology Map, the idea
for the style of which was stolen from
Logan.
Kermit consists of a P100 on a new socket 7 motherboard, which allows its
two Western Digital hard drives
to travel at UDMA speeds, and has them set up in a RAID-1 configuration,
so if one disk goes down, my computer doesn't. Kermit has 6.4 Gigs of
hard disk space available, 64 megs
of RAM, and a 4 Gig tape backup. Kermit has two ethernet cards
and a sound card, that is
used to signify incoming mail. Boioioing! It has a 2 meg S3 ViRGE
video card
to appease the bios and in case problems happen.
Fozzi is my workstation. It runs applications like
Netsacpe Navigator,
The GIMP,
but most of the time it is just a terminal to kermit or another computer.
Fozzi has a Celeron 300a CPU running at 450mhz.
It also has 256 megs of ram, a 3.2 gig
hard
disk drive, some sort of ATAPI cdrom drive,
and a floppy drive.
It also has a sound card, video capture card, Matrox G200 video card,
and an ethernet card.
Sweetums is my Mass Storage Server. It has four IBM 16.8G drives in it,
and has them set up using RAID-5. This allows one of the drives to die
without loss of data. Sweetums also has a K6-166, 32M of ram, ViRGE video
card, sound card, and a NE2k NIC.
It takes a *long* time to fsck and resync the raid.
Drteeth is the music server. It is plugged into my stereo and is used to
play many music files. It was used over the summer (when I had a car)
as a voice-recognition-controlled linux-based mp3 player. It also has
a DVD drive and Dxr3 DVD decoder card.
DrTeeth has a Celeron 300a, 64 megs of ram, one 4.3 Gig Western Digital
hard drive,
ethernet card, and builtin sound and video.
Gonzo is a NeXT Station. It has a
Motorola 68040 25mhz processor and 100
megs of hard disk space. It has 20 megs of ram. It runs NEXTSTEP, which
has been bought out by Apple Computer.
It has built-in ethernet and a nice 17-inch monitor. It is used as a public
terminal at WCF.
I also have a Palm V, but it doesn't have a name. Can you think of a good
one for it? I don't want to use Rizzo, but it should be a small muppet.
|
