Comments on: Internet Defense League

By: Bryan

Bryan — Fri, 08 Jun 2012 21:33:06 +0000

I’m running Win 7 Professional 64-bit on an AMD c-50 dual core processor in this box, and only 3.6 of the 4.0 G of RAM is available, according to Windows, which is what Toshiba said would be the case when I checked prior to upgrading, as I was considering going to 8 GB [the motherboard limit is either 16 or 32GB, but I wasn’t interested.]

I upgraded the OS from 64-bit Home premium to use the virtual XP, and upgraded the RAM at the same time.

There is probably a setting somewhere that needs to be changed, but I’m not interested in looking for it, and this will be a non-critical box when I finally put the new box for Linux together.

Ah, yes, the wonderful days of yesteryear, populating motherboards with RAM chips to build them out to 640 MB. I finally found a decent tool for doing that. It had a die that put the leads in proper alignment so they would just push in without any drama or bent pins.

By: Badtux

Badtux — Fri, 08 Jun 2012 16:00:33 +0000

Bryan, install the 64-bit Windows 7 on your laptop. It will access all four gigs of memory, just as it accesses all 12 gigs of memory on my desktop. It will also run 32-bit Windows programs just fine other than the ones that run up against UAC, which can be subverted by enabling the Administrator account and running them there (but not recommended because UAC makes Windows 7 *much* more secure than earlier versions of Windows). Microsoft did a pretty good job of making Windows 7 work reasonably well given the fact that it’s basically lipstick on a pig — i.e., the underlying API’s are so full of legacy crap duplicated in triplicate (i.e. if you need to do something, likely there’s three generations of API’s that you could use to do it) that it’s a wonder the OS isn’t the size of a sperm whale (instead, it’s merely the size of an elephant).

Steve, I would no more run critical infrastructure on Windows than I’d run it on a Commodore 64 (hmm, now *that* dates me!). My infrastructure that I put together at work is all Linux other than the two ESXi servers that run multiple instances of Linux and the one Windows instance which is the Windows build server. I find that 512mb of memory is plenty for a GUI-less Linux server unless you’re running a Java web application (Java is the Windows of web serving) in which case you need 1G. I don’t think you could even boot Windows Server 2008R2 in 512mb of memory, nevermind do anything useful with it, my 2008R2 instance has 2GB of memory. None of my Linux virtual machines have more than 1G of memory — even the build server that is also a login server where people log in and run remote “X” to their Mac or Windows desktop to edit files with emacs or gvim only has 1G of memory, and it’s never been maxed out despite usually having a half dozen people logged in.

By: Steve Bates

Steve Bates — Fri, 08 Jun 2012 14:52:17 +0000

This old box has only ½ gig. You could say it’s my punishment for sticking old computers out in the garage rather than throwing them out. I need to hire a friend’s son to max out the RAM; I no longer have the manual dexterity to manipulate chips to be inserted. (Peripheral neuropathy is a pain.) I notice the RAM limitation only when I open more than 3 browser windows (2, if one of them is from a “fancy” site) or try to run Thunderbird and anything else. I run it once a week to allow it to sync all the IMAP accounts.

As to Linux, that OS is the only thing to which I am a religious convert. 🙂 Older computers are practical to use with Linux for years longer than with Windows; I reboot far less frequently when faced with dead apps (themselves less frequent); almost all the s/w (including some of the best) is free; developer environments are respectable (not that I do that stuff anymore), etc. etc. My only lament is the lack of adequate user documentation… “man” pages are often simply not enough. But that’s a small complaint compared to all the things that are done right. I use an older Ubuntu… version selected by the Peter Principle, the latest version that runs decently on this old machine (plus one)… but a lot of Linuxes (Linuces?) look pretty good to me.

By: Bryan

Bryan — Fri, 08 Jun 2012 03:05:54 +0000

It would be nice to find out about these things in the early stages, rather than the last minute, and I expect the media-con to be even sneakier the next round. They are attempting to lease, rather than sell, their products, and people shouldn’t put up with it. Technology is making their business model less and less relevant.

I have four gigs in this Win-7 laptop, and Windows can’t use it all. What kind of crap OS it that? They stuff all of their crap into RAM, and then limit the amount of RAM they can address.

I really need to get serious about my Linux box, but things keep coming up.

By: Steve Bates

Steve Bates — Fri, 08 Jun 2012 01:48:02 +0000

What to use for an abbreviation? I hear “IDL” is already taken… maybe IntDL?

Spam filter successfully tweaked. everyone.net’s web mail client is all the client I ever need. Good thing, because Thunderbird now overwhelms this ancient box. Need. More. RAM!

By: Steve Bates

Steve Bates — Fri, 08 Jun 2012 01:35:13 +0000

FBOW, I joined. My spam filter trashed the confirmation email (sigh…)

I hope this is well-executed. The perils are real enough, and we need an org through which to work.

By: Bryan

Bryan — Tue, 05 Jun 2012 02:20:25 +0000

In reply to Badtux. I need to do that because the media cons and Congresscritters don't advertise when they are working to screw things up, and the names of the bills are rarely helpful or meaningful. Depending on the news media to mention it is not viable because they belong to the media cons and won't annoy their masters.

By: Badtux

Badtux — Tue, 05 Jun 2012 02:11:03 +0000

Interesting notion. I gave’em my web site and email address to be spammed when they go live…