Kano: michaellarabel: dont forget 2.6.26-rc7 ;)
Kano: http://kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/v2.6/testing/ChangeLog-2.6.26-rc7
Kano: with your beloved ati drm changes
maligor: that was posted yesterday
Ivanovic: maligor: but yesterday it was not 100% sure if those make it really into rc7
Kano: well rc7 was release after that ati drm posting ;)
Kano: Ivanovic: when you can read the changelog..
Ivanovic: right
Ivanovic: and the drm post said "The Linux 2.6.26-rc7 kernel will be out any day now, but David Airlie is requesting these patches get in as most of the work has been well-tested"
Ivanovic: so at this time, it was probably not in
Kano: man, i posted the link to the changelog
Kano: Merge branch 'drm-patches' of git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/airlied/drm-2.6
Kano: thats in it
Kano: pretty much on top
Ivanovic: Kano: yes, you did, *BUT* the phoronix article did not state a time of when it was published
Kano: any further questions?
Ivanovic: so it basically can have been right before it was added in the kernel or right after
Kano: therefore a new article about rc7 should be written
Ivanovic: of course it should
Ivanovic: though i'd say that there will only be one more rc (rc8) and then the "final" .26 kernel should be out
Ivanovic: so i'd say just a short news "kernel 2.6.26-rc7 is out including radeon drm support" plus a real article about the kernel in two weeks
Kano: hopefully it will not take 2 weeks
Kano: that would be rc9 again ;)
Kano: in most cases 2.6.26 already works good enough
Kano: one user could not boot it, rest of problems i solved
redeeman: michaellarabel: both gmpbench and gmp-chudnovsky would be nice to have
redeeman: michaellarabel: it will be abit weird though, since for core2 to be fast, one needs a patch (which double speed), whereas the standard x86_64 asm supposedly is pretty damn good for athlon64
wirechief__: i need to update my phoronix-test-suite (what is the url for this ?)
vadi2: http://www.phoronix-test-suite.com/index.php?k=downloads
wirechief__: just wget that ?
vadi2: No
wirechief__: k
wirechief__: thanks vadi2 that installed ok, now i just need to read up on on to use it again hehe.
vadi2: you're welcome
wirechief__: nexuiz 22fps with ati1300 not sure where that falls with other results :)
vadi2: ow. russian side of toronto is going crazy. russia won 3:1 vs holland
cxo: is hybrid (discrete + onboard) an ati thing or nvidia?
michaellarabel: both now
Kano: its more or less useless however
Kano: best buy a better gfx card
cxo: useless? c'mon i'm sure there is a good benefit, to just have the onboard chip burning cycles
cxo: especially with ati saying x-fire will be available on linux, it might be nice to have
cxo: funny thing about ati is, a friend of mine applied for a job as driver dev for linux a few years ago
cxo: and at the interview the interviewed asked him some really stupid questions, so stupid that he got frustrated and just walked out
cxo: s/interviewed/interviewer/
michaellarabel: cxo: Like what?
Kano: that works only with lowend gfx cards, not worth to buy those crap
cxo: cant remember exactly, but the interviewer was being very arrogant
cxo: he's working for nvidia now :)
cxo: he says that the ati employees are over worked and underpaid
cxo: another colleague of mine recently left ati, to join our company, he was also a linux dev
cxo: embedded stuff for ATi's home entertainment department
cxo: they run linux on some mips chips
redeeman: lol creative's naming department are really on some heavy drugs
redeeman: "Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Titanium Fatal1ty Pro Series"
michaellarabel: cxo: What's your company do?
cxo: haha
redeeman: it shouldn't even be legal to publicly sell products of such a name
cxo: michaellarabel, embedded linux and rt-os's
redeeman: nice
cxo: hey i was just reading the article on solaris express
cxo: is the rootfs zfs yet?
cxo: i remember that was a problem they had with earlier releases
michaellarabel: during the install you can select UFS or ZFS
cxo: i dont see the advantage of zfs over lvm+somefs
cxo: you need to create zpools and zdevs anyways
cxo: analogous to lgs and pvs
redeeman: it's an enterprise thing
redeeman: sun likes to have it all "integrated"
cxo: and vgs
redeeman: it makes up a big percentage of their enterprise CEO pdf's
redeeman: and stupid CEO's do love it when the pdf's say "integrated" and "consolidate" and shit
cxo: and the mac n00bs are drooling over it too
cxo: i use lvm at home, and very happy with it
cxo: 3x 500gb + raid5 + lvm
redeeman: i just use raid without lvm
cxo: i use lvm, so i can add another set of disks to the raid, or a 2nd raid, when i can afford it
cxo: i am thinking of adding 3x750gb + raid5 to the existing lvm,
redeeman: i have currently 6x300gb in raid5
cxo: on a single controller?
redeeman: no multiple
redeeman: it's old
redeeman: on IDE
cxo: oh
redeeman: i am going to retire it this year
redeeman: and get 10x1tb in raid6
cxo: damn
redeeman: my current plan is a gigabyte P45 motherboard :D
redeeman: with 10 sata ports
cxo: i have 8 sata ports over 2 controllers on my board
redeeman: and the ICH10's 6 ports should have plenty of bandwidth
cxo: asus a8n-sli
redeeman: and the extra 2 pci express sata's should have just enough
cxo: what is your write speed to the array?
redeeman: my current raid5?
cxo: yes
redeeman: some ~40MB
cxo: heh, same
redeeman: but it's encrypted
cxo: mines not
redeeman: and a sempron 1.6ghz isn't too fast
cxo: 2.2ghz amd64 x2 here
redeeman: next ill get E8400 and overclock
cxo: i'm waiting for the 8 core, amd64s
redeeman: so i can do 100MB/s encryption
cxo: coming out 3rd or 4th quarter this year
redeeman: on the raid6
redeeman: well this will be just for fileserver
cxo: you dont need more than that sempron for the fileserver
redeeman: ofcourse i do
redeeman: it cannot do 100MB/s encryption
cxo: i suggest a phenom x4, cos they have very low power consumption
redeeman: but i only need 1 core
redeeman: and the phenom probably cannot do 100MB/s
cxo: well its going to be dedicated, it should
cxo: the 9600 is about on par with the q6600
redeeman: it's singlethreaded
cxo: what encryption are u using?
redeeman: im probably gonna go for AES
cxo: shit
cxo: what are you trying to hide?
redeeman: i run a company
cxo: might as well buy a crypto card
redeeman: i handle my clients data
cxo: or HSM
redeeman: thjey have to know their stuff is safe with me
redeeman: why not just get a core2?
redeeman: it's cheaper
cxo: well if you want the cream de la cream of security
redeeman: you think such a card is more secure?
cxo: think haha, no, i know
redeeman: and how exactly is it more secure?
cxo: ok i'll try and explain but i'm not going to do much justice to it
cxo: the cards act like a bank vault that not only stores the keys, but does the encryption, each card can be partitioned into volumes of keys, for multiple clients, the cards are usually covered in epoxy, so if someone wants to try and remove the flash, they would destroy the card....
cxo: all banks use HSMs
redeeman: but how does that make it more secure?
redeeman: theres no difference between doing it in software or hardware
cxo: there is
redeeman: software IS hardware
redeeman: just abstracted differently
cxo: if someone stole your pc they would have access to your data
redeeman: no
redeeman: only if they were able to steal it whilst keeping it powered
cxo: oh
redeeman: but if such a HARDWARE device had the keys on-card
redeeman: what is to prevent people from stealing it?
cxo: they can steal it, thats fine
cxo: but you need physical key, or a pin entry device to access it
redeeman: which is exactly the same for software
redeeman: the keys are remembered by my brain
cxo: like i said, i'm not gonna do much justice to this, but all banks use hw encryption
redeeman: they almost certainly use it because it's a big big expensive solution
cxo: no
redeeman: and they saw a shiny shiny pdf
cxo: heh dont be silly
cxo: how do you do 10,000 2mb AES keys per second?
cxo: or maybe 50,000 triple DES on ATM in the city?
cxo: you need hardware
redeeman: well.. sure, dedicated hardware can be alot faster, but not more secure
redeeman: but banks doesent really have a great need for speed which "software" cannot satisfy
cxo: banks do
redeeman: and what huge amount of data do they have, which gives them this need?
cxo: do you live in the country or something?
cxo: haha
redeeman: i just don't see what they could possibly do that takes an enormous amount of data
redeeman: please give example
cxo: ok
Brains: Just from personal experience, I'd look at the bank's logic, not just going with something because banks do it. Having done dev work on several banks (including foreign banks), they aren't always making the best decisions... Or even good ones.
redeeman: Brains: i know, i've done consultant work with a bank aswell
redeeman: from my experience (in relation to lots fo big companies), they tend to go for extremely big and expensive solutions, because it's "enterprise"
redeeman: they choose stuff which has the shinyest pdf's to show the CEO, instead of the best stuff
cxo: Deutsche Bank (DB), recently upgraded their HSMs because the previous generation could not handle the volume they needed to process, the old cards were all K5s, they can push out 10,000 4mb AES keys a second, and they 150 of them
redeeman: yes cxo but what is this great amount of data they need to encrypt?
cxo: every transaction ever done is encrypted
redeeman: but a transaction is soo small
cxo: yes, but the encryption isnt
redeeman: a single core 2 core can do 87MB/s AES
redeeman: with a non-optimized implementation
redeeman: that's enough for LOOOTTS of transactions
redeeman: but this is irellevant
redeeman: we were talking security, not speed
redeeman: i am fully aware that dedicated hardware can do several gigabytes/s AES
redeeman: but the security is the same :)
cxo: its not
cxo: the actual encryption is, true,
redeeman: there is no diference
cxo: but the entire system as a whole is more secure than a software implementation
redeeman: and what makes it more secure?
cxo: like i said, i'm not going to do much justice to it, but if everyone from Verisign, CA, Swift, every bank you can think of use HSMs its probably for a good reason
redeeman: that's like saying windows must be more secure because most people use it
redeeman: and well.. if they indeed have that high a volume of data being encrypted
Brains: cxo: A good reason for them potentially... Not necessarily a blanket good reason.
redeeman: the reason would be solely that, speed
cxo: how does your software security work?
cxo: i'm not familiar with it
redeeman: the exact same way as hardware
redeeman: it's just encryption
cxo: the filesystem is encrypted?
redeeman: yes
cxo: by what?
redeeman: all data ondisk is
redeeman: by the kernel
redeeman: you take for instance /dev/md0, then apply encryption, and get /dev/mapper/encrypted
redeeman: then you create filesystem on /dev/mapper/encrypted
redeeman: and mount it, and use
cxo: how do you authenticate to get access to the data?
redeeman: when you create the mapping you type in the key
cxo: and then?
Brains: Whether the encryption is done in hardware or software, the basic process is the same... Hardware just adds some specialized silicon to speed things up (in most cases).
redeeman: Brains: exactly :)
redeeman: cxo: then the kernel keeps the key in ram (as the hardware card will NEED to do aswell)
redeeman: and encrypts/decrypts as long as the mapping exists
cxo: so everytime you switch on the box you enter your key, is that right?
redeeman: yes
redeeman: otherwise there wouldn't be much of a point
Brains: (And not everybody who needs encryption on a large scale goes hardware... I've sat in on at least one choice to go software as they could scale easier and cheaper going software rather than dedicated hardware. Horses for courses.)
cxo: so the key is in kernel memory?
cxo: that is the security flaw
redeeman: not really
redeeman: that depends on the access levels
redeeman: what i need to protect against is physical theft
Brains: cxo: If you can pick out kernel memory, you can snoop the comms to the card. Same flaw. If you don't have physical security, you are screwed to start with.
cxo: yes i suppose with SELinux and Grsec//PAX, you are pretty safe these days
cxo: Brains, you cant snoop the card, because the key doesnt leave the card, and the pin entry device is physically attached to the card
redeeman: cxo: but that is worse
redeeman: what if someone breaks in and steals the entire thing
redeeman: then the keycard is in
cxo: so unless you have the person with the key, the card, and your sniffer altogether,then you cant get access to it
Brains: cxo: The key must be sent to the card at some point and can be snooped then. In addition, changes must be communicated to and from the card, they can be snooped as well.
redeeman: yeah
redeeman: it's really kindof the same
cxo: you cannot steal the keys, thats the point
redeeman: the only difference hardware can do is speed
redeeman: as it's the exact same thing, only more optimized
Brains: sighs, shrugs, and goes back to looking at vidcards and wondering whether to go 9800GTX or 4850 or whatnot.
redeeman: Brains: i wouldn't get either of those
redeeman: nvidias driver is abysmal for newer(lol also old..) cards, and fglrx won't work with most stuff
cxo: only some HSMs are crypto accelerators
cxo: not all HSMs are used for acceleration
redeeman: cxo: well.. for the "security" of having keys 100% separated from the software, they will ALL have to do full hardware encryption, thus being accelerator aswell
cxo: i need to find some literature for you guys
Brains: redeeman: Honestly, I only need semi-decent dual monitor support out of the card under linux ATM. My sole current Windows use is gaming and that is why I'm spending any real money on the card at all...
Brains: cxo: Given that my understanding comes from security folks in and around the financial world, I doubt the literature will be convincing.
Brains: wonders why LGP doesn't have an RSS feed...
cxo: heh
Brains: still hates even the thought of the auditors coming through. Pains in the butt...
cxo: the idea of the HSM is that nothing is ever clear text, or the keys are ever removed from the HSM
cxo: thats about it, which you cannot do with software
Brains: You can't do it with hardware either. *shrug* Shuffling boxes around on a diagram does little to actually improve security. (Putting boxes in the right place and then throwing silicon at them will sometimes improve speed though...)
cxo: Brains, wait for the 4870
cxo: you can do it with hardware
cxo: how do you authenticate to a encrypted file system redeeman ?
cxo: you use your keyboard and type in a key? or you give it a prv key?
redeeman: you can do it a number of ways, i use a keyboard
cxo: the keyboard can be easily sniffed,
Brains: cxo: How do you do work on encrypted data? You don't, you do work on clear text. How do you pass in keys? The ways are various and range from keyboard to fancy smartcards.
redeeman: if they have access to sniff my keyboard, they already have access to the data
cxo: the point is the key itself is stored securely
redeeman: since they can just take it being being encrypted
redeeman: or after decryption
redeeman: just like with hardware
redeeman: there is no difference
cxo: i'm not talking about passwords here, i'm talking about 2 or 3mb aes keys
cxo: how do you store that? you got to put that in a flash drive and swallow it, then shit it out each time you want it ?
cxo: haha
redeeman: AES specification allows for maximum keysize of 256bits you know
cxo: brb
redeeman: which i remember
redeeman: i remember my keys
cxo: 256bit encryption, yes, i'm talking about key size
cxo: need to reboot
Brains: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Encryption_Standard - Look at the part that says "Key size".
Brains: thinks he'll use the break as an opportunity to bow out. He's bored, but not that bored.
Brains: redeeman: I was actually not considering an ATI card at all until I stumbled on Phoronix talking about their improved open source & linux support.
redeeman: Brains: it's true, AMD is publishing documentation, and the free drivers are supposedly improving very much quickly
redeeman: but as for fglrx, i haven't dealt much with it lately, but what i've seen hasn't been too good
redeeman: and as far as what others are experiencing, it seems fgrlx is really bad
cxo: so installed starcraft
cxo: with wine-1.0, and after all these yrs they cant even get a simple game working properly
cxo: the damn thing locks up the system every 10/15mins
cxo: the sound begins to stutter first and then zooooop, gone
cxo: hey michaellarabel
cxo: could you do a review of wine-1.0
cxo: is there a place where we can nominate topics for review?
cxo: its the community spirit
michaellarabel: cxo: In the forums
michaellarabel: cxo: Aside from Warcraft, have you tried any other titles on WINE?
cxo: *starcraft
cxo: umm, yes i think i have, but a long time ago, 0.7.xx
cxo: i remember running quake3 on suse7.3 with wine-0.7.4 and it working well
Exopaladin: I can't say I've had Starcraft lock up wine, but then I probably last tried it at about 0.9.10 or something
cxo: locks up the pc
cxo: not wine
Exopaladin: either way :P
Exopaladin: I didn't have it lock up anything
Exopaladin: I should find my Starcraft CDs/keys and test it when I'm slightly less drunk
cxo: i dont mind installing windows for playing games
cxo: i just dont have an extra hard drive, thats all
Exopaladin: Starcraft would probably run fine in an XP VM anyway
cxo: yup
cxo: buying cedega or something is so stupid
cxo: vista home basic goes for like $50 on ebay
Exopaladin: right now cedega isn't a lot better than wine anyway, they neglected cedega for ages while they were using the subscription fees to develop their cider crap for macs
cxo: heh, makes sense
cxo: bastards
Exopaladin: december was the last real release
Exopaladin: and even that was just a minor update
cxo: vmware-fusion has hardware rendering support iirc
cxo: but its only for macs i think
Exopaladin: vmware workstation 6.5 has partial DX9 support
cxo: heh it would run on darwin though
cxo: oh, i didnt know that, why partial?
Exopaladin: dunno, but it is only partial :P
cxo: sounds suspicious
Exopaladin: I didn't think fusion even had full DX9 support yet
cxo: the whole purpose of fusion was to play games
Exopaladin: initially it was for running Windows-only apps
Exopaladin: more-or-less the whole point of bootcamp was for games :P
cxo: yeah, mac is in the same boat as us
Exopaladin: wikipedia says that fusion only has DX 8.1 support, so workstation beta would actually be ahead right now
cxo: maybe they will fuel a cross-platform game platform
cxo: SUN has had java-3d for ages, but i dont know anything that actually uses it
Exopaladin: I can see games coming on their own VM images in the future once full virtualization is possible
Exopaladin: that way you don't have to worry about hacks/platform compatibility
cxo: yes
cxo: even on consoles thats a good idea
cxo: so you can play the same game on your xbox, ps or pc
cxo: and you can run linux on all 3 of them?
cxo: haha
cxo: maybe we need a VT extension for GPUs
Exopaladin: can't run linux on the xbox 360 yet, it hasn't been broken enough to run whatever code you want iirc
Exopaladin: but yeah, VT for GPUs would be nice
cxo: i heard that people like sony dont make money on consoles, its all in the games and royalty fees
Exopaladin: yeah, Sony/MS make a loss on the consoles, although Nintendo actually make profit on all theirs
cxo: yeah i remember the ps3 and wii launch
cxo: wii had like 10 people for every person in line for a ps3
Exopaladin: I got a 360 a while after release, I haven't bothered with the wii/ps3 yet
cxo: i heard the 360 is a real bitch
cxo: noisy, heats up, faulty etc..
Exopaladin: I've not had any issues with mine, aside from it being a tad loud (which I can't hear with my headphones on anyway)
cxo: http://www.megagames.com/news/html/console/thereasonbehindxbox360exceptionalfailurerate.shtml
cxo: "Moral of the story: by going cheap and trying to save tens of millions of dollars in ASIC design costs, Microsoft ended up paying more than $1 billion for its Xbox 360 recall."
cxo: serves them right!
cxo: puts another pin into his microsoft doll
Exopaladin: yeah, trying to cut costs with hardware design normally doesn't work out that well :P
cxo: ughh waiting for this damn ati 4870x2 is killing me
cxo: the 4850s are selling like crazy
cxo: no surprise, they cost as much as an 8800gt and they perform as well as the 9800gtx
cxo: bites his nails
Exopaladin: under windows anyway, it'd be interesting to compare them under linux
cxo: cant really play games on linux, so i try not to care anymore
cxo: as long as my compiz stuff works, i'm happy
cxo: and my poor pc has been cheated by technological advancement
Exopaladin: I tend to be lazy and stick to playing games that work in wine or natively
cxo: everything expect from the pci 2.3 slot in it is obsolete
cxo: s/expect/except
cxo: you can only play quake3 so many times before it gets boring
cxo: i even went on a mod trip once
cxo: i have like 3gb of quake 3 mods
cxo: everything from pacman to a rally game
Exopaladin: the source games all work for me under wine, as does Call of Duty 4 (sort of), Oblivion, various other games
cxo: havent played a computer game since splinter cell double agent
Deanjo: See but people never get tired of tuxracer :P
cxo: that was developed at the university of waterloo in ontario, canada
cxo: i think the whole town was playing that game when it came out
cxo: its a university town, in the middle of nowhere
Exopaladin: heh
cxo: michaellarabel is working hard tonite
cxo: 2 articles in just a few hours
michaellarabel: cxo: Heh. Actually, four are being worked on at present.
Deanjo: He should consider using a article generator script like the inquirer uses :P
cxo: if only bash looked like Cube
cxo: just shoot my way around the filesystem, that would be cool
michaellarabel: One of them coming up... This may upset some users, but LGP will be introducing a copy protection scheme for all future titles...
cxo: each folder can be like a room, and a file some big object...
cxo: LGP?
michaellarabel: Linux Game Publishing
cxo: copy protection for linux games, that must be intense
Deanjo: envision a kernel module
michaellarabel: Deanjo: No, just that you need to enter keycode/password that communicates with LGP servers each time you go to play a game.
Deanjo: Ahh so the loopback authentication will work then
cxo: heh
Deanjo: (which has been done on pretty much every title that tries that)
cxo: tcpdump the bitch and inject your own responses with dping
Deanjo: *cough* just like doom 3 *cough*
cxo: where there's a will, there's a way
Deanjo: Hacking the copyprotection is a lot of times more fun then the games anyways
Exopaladin: I always get turned down from LGP betas, it's frustrating :P
cxo: i've never even heard of lgp so ....yeah
Deanjo: I just there would be native ports of C&C
Exopaladin: quite possibly because I'm using Gentoo rather than a mainstream distro
cxo: have u seen the trailers of redalert3?
cxo: way to sexy for my shirt
cxo: the detail on units and roads, buildings etc.. is just immence
cxo: s/immence/immense
Deanjo: heh, I would be satisfied with the original C&C
Deanjo: Still the best installer app of all time
Exopaladin: the original C&C probably works fine in dosbox :P
Exopaladin: indeed it does
cxo: starcraft2 another biggy
cxo: easily justifies a new video card on its own
Exopaladin: I'd hope SC2 might work in wine, given that all the rest of Blizzard's games do
cxo: yeah but this is gonna be the first dx10 game from blizzard
Exopaladin: it'll be released for OS X and XP, which means it'll have DX9 and OGL renderers
cxo: bastard mac users dont deserve it being ported for them
cxo: just *imagine* if instead of a bsd kernel, mac had a linux kernel?
cxo: only in dreams
Exopaladin: it still wouldn't work, being that OS X doesn't use XOrg :P
cxo: hmm... dont you link against libGL
cxo: ?
Exopaladin: I've no idea what libraries they use
cxo: you dont talk directly to the xserver
cxo: at least thats how i understand it
Deanjo: The linux kernel changes to radically over a period of 2 years. It would make it an absolute nightmare for the OS X crew
cxo: doesnt matter, they can learn to work harder for their supper
Deanjo: Screw that
cxo: BSD changes a lot, but not as rapidly as linux does
Deanjo: happens to be one of those that would have to work harder
cxo: you work for apple?
Deanjo: yes
cxo: heh, what do you do?
Deanjo: Oh geez, ther is a long list lol
Exopaladin: I always wonder each time the kernel guys radically change something if nvidia/ati are just gonna say "Fuck this"
Exopaladin: I'd be quite annoyed by now, they seem to break something fundamental every other version :P
cxo: 2.6.20 to about 2.6.24, its been pretty stable, the major api at least
Deanjo: Ya it seems like they are intentionally breaking shit now Exopaladin
cxo: .25 .26 a few structs have moved around
cxo: .19 to .20 a lot of changes
cxo: which office do you work for Deanjo ?
Deanjo: I work out of one of their call centers
cxo: oh your in support?
cxo: you're
Deanjo: I train their support staff mostly for enterprise and tier 2
cxo: ah i thought you were a cool kernel hacker or something
cxo: sighs
Deanjo: but also do a bit of coding / patching as well for them when I can.
cxo: i never knew mac had call centers in canada
cxo: s/mac/apple
Deanjo: Chances are if your calling support in North America your calling canada
cxo: jeez its like a synonym
cxo: oh interesting
Deanjo: Almost all of the higher level support is done in Canada
cxo: higher level?
Deanjo: Tier 2 / enterprise
Deanjo: Tier 1 is mostly done out of US/Philippines/India
cxo: apple has enterprise customers?
cxo: giggles
Deanjo: Ya a hell of a lot of them
cxo: what do you sell them?
cxo: will fall out of his chair if its OSX server
Deanjo: You don't think hollywood works on PC's did ya?
cxo: oh no, not the "...multimedia is done on macs" thing again
Deanjo: Plus there are a ton of higher education corporate customers
cxo: mac is loosing their charm for audio/video dev work
cxo: i see so many people replacing huge g4 workstations with PCs now
cxo: for audio dev (my hobby)
Deanjo: lol, not until someone can match FCP and Shake
Exopaladin: yeah, I've seen a lot of people agree that they no-longer hold the edge for a lot of multimedia work
cxo: ProTools not good enough?
cxo: i have a very modest setup at home, purely linux
cxo: linux+preempt-rt+netjack+ardour+maudio1010
Deanjo: and the xserve division does very well too
cxo: i think i have a copy, descent software
cxo: each year i flirt with the idea of buying a mac
Exopaladin: I never really consider it, the hardware tends to be stupidly overpriced for what it is
cxo: then at the last minute, just before i go to the apple store, common sense hits me
cxo: why am i paying $1,000 for an extra stick of 1gb memory, when its $40 on ebay?
Exopaladin: they don't offer a decent, standard desktop machine
Deanjo: That's the same if you buy ram from any OEM
cxo: heh not really
cxo: dell is very competitive
cxo: especially for their poweredge line
cxo: and when its on sale, it cannot be beat
Exopaladin: you've got the Mac Mini which is limited, the iMacs which have built in monitors and use laptop components, then you have the Mac Pro which is stupidly overkill for general use
Deanjo: lol, start pricing out their xeon based stuff
cxo: they dont want a ibm-compatible mac
cxo: then people would use regular parts in it
cxo: and people like Deanjo would have more support calls
cxo: which means more work
cxo: which he doesnt like
Deanjo: I don't take calls
Deanjo: Unless it's a request from executive relations
Exopaladin: even if you couldn't use regular parts, it'd be nice to just have a standard desktop-type Mac of a reasonable but not insane spec that you can hook up to the monitors you already have
cxo: yeah
cxo: its blurry stuff is in "reasonable but not insane spec"
Exopaladin: you either have 'meh' spec or Mac Pro insane spec :P
cxo: only last year did the Mac Pro, loose its nvidia 7300
cxo: which came out 3yrs ago
cxo: and was shit then
cxo: and is still shit
Exopaladin: I keep meaning to try installing OS X onto this PC, all my hardware is compatible now I think
Deanjo: Mac Pro has only been out for just over 2 years
cxo: why do you put an ultra economy video card in something that has the word "Pro" in its name?
cxo: that's the sort of stuff that stops me from buying a mac
Exopaladin: because a computer that has 8 cores clearly isn't aimed at gaming, it's aimed at high-end workstation use :P
Exopaladin: and that's my beef with the Apple lineup, there's no general desktop Mac
Deanjo: Because alot of those machines in reality don't need more oomph for what they do cxo
Deanjo: You don't need a 8800GT to run FCP, photoshop, logic, etc
cxo: i know, you dont need a $1000 alpaca carpet in your ferrari either
cxo: but its there!
Exopaladin: it's just not what the Pro is aimed at
Exopaladin: they really need to release a low spec desktop and a high spec desktop to capture more of the market
Deanjo: instead they put the money where it is needed which is the CPU for those applications
cxo: please, the same spec on a pc is 1/2 the price
cxo: we can price it up right now if you feel bored
Deanjo: People that want to run Maya usually go with the Quadro cards
Exopaladin: when the Mac Pro first came out it was actually a great deal
Deanjo: I'll take that challenge cxo, price out a dell with the same specs as a baseline mac pro
cxo: ok, you're on
Exopaladin: here the Dell would probably win, but then Apple seem to badly overcharge the UK market at times
cxo: i'll go to the .com for both
cxo: http://store.apple.com/us/browse/home/shop_mac/family/mac_pro?mco=MTE3MDQ
Deanjo: So that means your dell needs 2x 2.8 xeon harpertowns, 2 GB of ram 2600 XT 320 Gig HD
cxo: $2,799 Two 2.8GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon “Harpertown” processors
cxo: 2GB memory (800MHz DDR2 fully-buffered DIMM ECC)
cxo: ATI Radeon HD 2600 XT graphics with 256MB memory
cxo: 320GB Serial ATA 3Gb/s 7200-rpm hard drive1
cxo: 16x double-layer SuperDrive
Deanjo: yup
cxo: easy enough...., now dell's turn
cxo: do you know the model on the "harpertown"?
cxo: dell doesnt show the codenames
Exopaladin: hrm, Dell's I'm looking at only offer Quadros or FireGL cards, so I can't compare to the 2600 XT
cxo: i cant find the 2.8ghz ones, only 3ghz....woes
Exopaladin: I've got 2.83
cxo: quad xeon?
Exopaladin: yeah
Exopaladin: Dual Intel Xeon E5440 (2.83GHz,1333FSB,2x6MB,Quad Core)
cxo: difficult to match, 2x 3ghz quad xeons, 640gb hard drive, 2gb memory, onboard vid, dvdrw = $2,897
cxo: but there is like $400 difference between 3ghz and 2.8ghz per cpu, so let me find a box with 2.8ghz cpus
Deanjo: So you think you can still match specs at 1/2 price?
cxo: yeah, if i can find equivalent hardware
Deanjo: Say you knock off $400 for the procs, your still really far away from 1/2 price
cxo: the hard drive is twice the size
cxo: yeah, not much though...still looking
cxo: ok the mac pro (as above) has a 2.8ghz quad xeon, model -> E5462
Deanjo: Getting a dual xeon system for 1400 would be really hard to do
Exopaladin: the Mac wins here by a bit
Exopaladin: I had to spec them both with Quadro FX 5600s for comparison
Deanjo: As long as you stay away from upgrading the ram and hd's the macpros are usually extremely competitive for the price
Exopaladin: works out the equivalent of $8099 for the Dell, $7187 for the Mac
Exopaladin: that's with upgrading the Mac's drive to 750GB and with the rest being roughly equivalent
Deanjo: For HD's and ram you will always find better deals from a 3rd party rather then going through OEM;s
Exopaladin: yeah, I was just doing it so they were equivalent
cxo: dual 2.6 works out to $2,148
Deanjo: What video?
cxo: nv quadro xl4 or something
cxo: 1sec
cxo: 256MB PCIe x16 nVidia NVS 290
cxo: but anyways, i'll take my words back
Exopaladin: shove the Quadro FX 5600 in both, that's the only nvidia card available in the mac pro, at least over here
cxo: _if_ you can find hardware to match the Mac, its the same price
Exopaladin: $1000 difference in matching hardware over here, with Mac coming up the winner
cxo: but its an awkward segment,
Deanjo: See, it's a common misconception but when people actually start matching the specs the macpro is very competitive
Exopaladin: Dell Precision on the small and medium business site was the closet
Exopaladin: closest*
Exopaladin: the rest of the Mac lineup is a bit overpriced, but the Mac Pros are good value :P
cxo: lets up the anti and soup this mac up, to an exact spec
cxo: Dell has lots of 3ghz xeons, but no 2.80ghz harpertown
Deanjo: The 5500 series should all be harpertowns
Exopaladin: the problem with doing that is that Apple ludicrously overcharge on RAM
Deanjo: Yup
Exopaladin: comparing base specs with Quadro FX 5600s works the best, given that you can get pretty similar specs
Exopaladin: and now I'm going to bed as it's 5:15 am here :P
cxo: hats off to Deanjo
cxo: the mac pro is competitive
Deanjo: And then if you price compare the mac-mini to the Aopen mini pc's which are basically clones after you add the bluetooth, wireless and OS (assuming it's not linux) the Aopen costs more too
cxo: 2x 3ghz, 2gb, fx5600, 500gb hard drive, (dell=$6,888), (apple=6499)
cxo: but the dell comes with an intel express pci-1.0 raid card, and a 19" screen i couldnt take off,
cxo: its your lucky day Deanjo
cxo: i'm not usually wrong
cxo: i guess i havent been to the apple store lately
cxo: points Deanjo to the casino
Deanjo: lol believe me this is not the first time I've had this coversation
Deanjo: Anyhows it looks like I'll be leaving Apple in a few months anyways
cxo: why?
Deanjo: If I want to continue with them I have to relocate
cxo: california?
Deanjo: Ya or ontario
Deanjo: or texas
cxo: the weather is shit in canada
cxo: just go to cali
cxo: and live like 2pac
Deanjo: I don't mind the weather here
Deanjo: Born and raised here. a year without snow would freak me out
cxo: heh
Deanjo: How the hell would I get my ice fishing done?
cxo: it would freak me too, but not in the way you're thinking
Deanjo: lol
Deanjo: I don't like living in the rat race either
Deanjo: I like my space
cxo: you said you are in teaching, how can that ever be a race?
Deanjo: (Which in Saskatchwan there is plenty of space)
cxo: hahaha
cxo: god
cxo: the middle of nowhere
Deanjo: Yup we can see our dogs running away from home for 3 days straight
cxo: you got a family?
Deanjo: Yup
cxo: well might be a nice change you know
Deanjo: Wife, and 5 kids. 2 kids are my late sisters
cxo: 5 kids, jeez
cxo: ok thats gonna be difficult to move with
Deanjo: The wife is a nurse, plus I have my farm here as well and I'm only about 5 years from being able to retire
cxo: oh i see
cxo: then just retire early
cxo: or become a fishing guide
cxo: i heard you get paid heavily for that
cxo: like $70/hr
Deanjo: lol ya the americans tip those guys pretty good
Deanjo: Of course the tips were better when our dollar was only .63 US
Deanjo: Think I just take up Novell on their offer for the next 5 years
cxo: oh working for Novell will be nice
cxo: they dont kill as many kittens as microsoft does, but they still do
Deanjo: I f I don't relocate I'm getting a pretty good compensation package from apple
Deanjo: Meh, too many people like to spead FUD about Novell
Deanjo: spread
cxo: i know some very pro Novell people
cxo: and they're also very pro Microsoft
cxo: thats when it becomes a bit weird
Deanjo: Deals are part of "real life", businesses typically don't work with "utopian" management
Deanjo: Hell with the release of opensuse 11 joining things like a windows domain never has been so easy because of it
cxo: true
Deanjo: Bottom line is that Novell goes after corporate customers, corporate customers have to rely on products that have very clear legal status.
cxo: oh i know what Novel is and what they do, I've used they're operating systems from back to the early 90s
Deanjo: The deal was one way of assuring those customers that years down the road they are not going to be sued as individuals
Deanjo: People should be bitching at their gov't about software patents rather then bitching at the companies that are trying to play in the rules set out for them in current legislation
Deanjo: Just ask the developer of sqlite. For years it was public domain but at the request of corporations he had to put a license on it so the legalities were black and white
cxo: heh canada and the recent bill on software patents
cxo: yes, its "Who can i sue" at the end of the day
cxo: no matter how shit the product is
cxo: if you can sue someone, its fine
Deanjo: Well in the case of sqlite they didn't want it to be all of a suddenly changed to another less free license leaving them open to lawsuits
rbrett: e
Deanjo: The devel of it never intended to make his living off of it but now does because corporations gladly pay him to modify it for use in their products
Deanjo: And to this day I bet there isn't one desktop system out there that does not use the sqlite code
cxo: everyone is into the services model these days
cxo: who can be bothered to write software these days, they're enough hippies doing that these days anyways
Deanjo: I can't wait for some of the new browsers based on webdev to start making an impact
Deanjo: sorry devkit
Deanjo: webkit
Deanjo: Konq with webkit kicks ass
cxo: i havent used kde4 yet
Deanjo: I'm not a fan of FF
Deanjo: My preferred browser is still opera at the moment