The collected works of oreissig - Page 1

oreissig
Who joined June 2, 2011, 2:13 p.m.
and authored 86 notes
Wrote on the subject of Couple of New User Questions at Oct. 31, 2011, 10:44 p.m...
What do you mean by OEM? There were quite some branded SGI workstations sold, e.g. from control data, but as far as I know, they all ran standard IRIX.
The set of installation CDs for IRIX 6.5 is splitted into two parts, one is version specific (overlays, (complementary) applications) and one is not (foundations, dev. libs). In theory, developer foundations are also not version specific, but as it turns out, there exist two revisions of dev. foundations and later IRIXes want the later one (part-nr. ending with -03 instead of -02).

btw, you can get IRIX 6.5.22 overlays from SGI for free after registering in supportfolio
oreissig
Who joined June 2, 2011, 2:13 p.m.
and authored 86 notes
Wrote on the subject of Learning a new progamming language... at Nov. 18, 2011, 5:30 p.m...
I originally started with a little bit of QuickBasic, and later some Pascal/Delphi, but really got fluent in programming with Java during university (Java is the lingua franca in education today), which is also what I'm using at work. I also grasped some knowledge in C++, but it really feels like shifting down a gear in my mind :D

Anyway, if I had to pick a new language to learn, it would definately be dependent upon what I would do with it...there is little sense learning Modula-3 if you were to do serverside-webprogramming. There is little sense in learning LISP if you were to do performance-critical programming. There is little sense in learning an interpreted (incl. JITed) language if you were to do low-level programming.
oreissig
From Germany
Who joined June 2, 2011, 3:13 p.m.
Wrote on the subject of GUI development for cross platform at Nov. 20, 2011, 2:16 a.m...
of course you can use Java oder toolkits like GTK+, but it will never be the same. depending on your needs, you may really want to have a native GUI (especially for mobile devices)
oreissig
Who joined June 2, 2011, 2:13 p.m.
and authored 86 notes
Wrote on the subject of Downloading IBM fixes will require a support contract! at Dec. 8, 2011, 4:11 p.m...
SAQ wrote:
Maybe they thought better of it.

it seems they only postponed it
http://www-933.ibm.com/support/fixcentral/ wrote:
Starting January 31, 2012 , each IBM client accessing Fix Central (whether through their employees or other authorized representatives) will be required to have an individual IBM ID to download fixes (some exemptions may apply). The registration is quick and simple and will provide users with a customized experience to better serve their needs. Fix Central downloads are available only for IBM clients with hardware or software under warranty, maintenance contracts, or subscription and support. Software code, samples, updates and fixes being accessed on this website (collectively, the Code) are subject to the terms of the license agreements which govern the use of the associated Code.
oreissig
Who joined June 2, 2011, 2:13 p.m.
and authored 86 notes
Wrote on the subject of Downloading IBM fixes will require a support contract! at Dec. 9, 2011, 7:13 a.m...
it really doesn't matter for IBM ;)
oreissig
Who joined June 2, 2011, 2:13 p.m.
and authored 86 notes
Wrote on the subject of Downloading IBM fixes will require a support contract! at Dec. 9, 2011, 5:42 p.m...
I actually don't see, how any of this might have any impact on IBMs customership, because IBM isn't interested in the small fishes, that's not where the big money is coming from (which is why IBM dropped its thinkpads). Larger customers simply have a support contract, which is why it doesn't matter to their customer base.

so it is not the case, that IBM will charge an additional cost for accessing their patches, it only locks out the small fishes, that don't bring any money to them anyway (which is sad for us hobbyists, but totally understandable from a business point of view)
oreissig
Who joined June 2, 2011, 2:13 p.m.
and authored 86 notes
Wrote on the subject of Downloading IBM fixes will require a support contract! at Dec. 9, 2011, 5:58 p.m...
that's one nice and long paragraph, that you have written, which boils down to "IBM lost the PC-business, because of clones"...yes, that's how the PC-business works, it's made that way, that's not the case for mainframes or i or AIX (yes it is a unix, but it's probably the most different unix in current existence, so porting should be everything but trivial). there simply will be no easy alternative

and to repeat the essence of my previous posting: none of the customers relevant to IBM will notice any difference, they don't have to pay more, because they already have a support contract
oreissig
From Germany
Who joined June 2, 2011, 3:13 p.m.
Wrote on the subject of Installing IRIX 5.3 / Indy / Exception & Panic at Dec. 12, 2011, 12:17 p.m...
jan-jaap wrote:
supervinx wrote: 5.3 is too old ?

There's at least half a dozen different releases of IRIX 5.3: http://www.sgistuff.net/software/irixhi ... x.html#5.3

You probably have the wrong disc. You need the "IRIX 5.3 for Indy R4400 175MHz" from 02/95 or one of the later releases. The original IRIX 5.3 disc (812-0119-006) does *not* work on this Indy.

although that doesn't always mean a thing, I also installed stock IRIX 5.3 on my Indigo² 200MHz R4400 1MB, although it only supports 100 MHz R4000SC or 150 MHz R4400SC (according to sgistuff )
and the 250MHz 2MB CPU is not supported by IRIX 5.3, but good old 4.0.5H runs fine on it :D
oreissig
Who joined June 2, 2011, 2:13 p.m.
and authored 86 notes
Wrote on the subject of Learning a new progamming language... at Dec. 17, 2011, 9:38 a.m...
bluecode wrote:
I dispute those languages are the currrent lingua franca of programming unless you are talking about *NIX based computing.
that's right, but when you consider the prevalence of unix-based systems in the whole world of computing, that's basically a logical conclusion to make. Of course there are still isolated niches like IBM Mainframes and they do important business and they do a whole lot of business transactions, by far the largest part of serious computation takes place on somehow unix-like systems
oreissig
Who joined June 2, 2011, 2:13 p.m.
and authored 86 notes
Wrote on the subject of Learning a new progamming language... at Dec. 17, 2011, 1:45 p.m...
if you count cheap featurephones with JavaME, then almost all phones ship with java. when you consider how many of these featurephones actually run some form of application, JavaME is alive and kicking just like TurboPascal...
iOS and WP7 don't involve Java, but Android and the old Blackberry-OS are thoroughly based on it, so it's a mixed bag...important yes, 95% no
oreissig
From Germany
Who joined June 2, 2011, 3:13 p.m.
Wrote on the subject of How to measure time? at Jan. 27, 2012, 2:08 p.m...
NTP :)

I used to have cheap Casio watches for years and finally got sick of broken watchstraps every 1-2 years, so I got myself a titanium watch ( it's this one ). It wasn't really expensive (afair ~80€), but I like the look and basically wear it all the time
oreissig
From Germany
Who joined June 2, 2011, 3:13 p.m.
Wrote on the subject of Indigo 2 Extreme graphics option, for cost of shipping at March 1, 2012, 4:32 p.m...
how much is shipping to germany? :)
oreissig
From Germany
Who joined June 2, 2011, 3:13 p.m.
Wrote on the subject of Indigo 2 Extreme graphics option, for cost of shipping at March 2, 2012, 4:26 a.m...
quite steep indeed :(
oreissig
From Germany
Who joined June 2, 2011, 3:13 p.m.
Wrote on the subject of The new iPad at March 17, 2012, 12:21 p.m...
I'm not overly impressed. So yes, the display is really nice, but there's nothing more to it than that. The CPU does not make things faster than on the iPad 2, the extra GPU-power is more than needed to drive that much pixels and being fabricated in an old process, the chip takes a lot of power, which makes the iPad 3 heavier and a little thicker although delivering shorter runtimes compared to the iPad 2.

EDIT: oh and there's LTE, which is completely useless outside the US (although I don't think, that 21mbit HSPA+ is something to worry about)
oreissig
From Germany
Who joined June 2, 2011, 3:13 p.m.
Wrote on the subject of Firefox 10 Porting Progress at April 4, 2012, 1:53 a.m...
As you mention Firefox 2.0, it's a pretty accurate breakover. From all my memories (started using firefox in 0.7), 2.0 was the slowest version of firefox ever. Until 2.0 Firefox kept growing and got slower and slower, and starting at 3, they began pushing "new technologies" and the browser got faster again. And Firefox keeps getting faster in every version ever since.

I have nothing to complain about. Sure, it's pity for legacy platforms, but actually I can fully understand dropping legacy stuff for the good of a large majority of users.

PS: what's wrong with all those people arguing about version numbers? it's just naming. of course there are fewer changes between versions, but previously you had to wait >1y to get a feature, that was already developed.
oreissig
From Germany
Who joined June 2, 2011, 3:13 p.m.
Wrote on the subject of Firefox 10 Porting Progress at April 12, 2012, 11:40 a.m...
zizban wrote: They are? Damn.

it has already been obsoleted in 4.7 , so it's the normal way to go for gcc to remove obsoleted stuff in the next version
oreissig
From Germany
Who joined June 2, 2011, 3:13 p.m.
Wrote on the subject of Firefox 10 Porting Progress at April 13, 2012, 2:11 a.m...
zizban wrote: I guess this will make porting software a tad harder?

In the very long term, yes probably. But it will take quite some time before GCC 4.7 is too old for software to build with it. I don't think this is a serious issue for at least the next 5 years. This thread here shows, that even now GCC is not the main issue when trying to build software on IRIX.
oreissig
Who joined June 2, 2011, 2:13 p.m.
and authored 86 notes
Wrote on the subject of PC/370 Board for PC AT... at May 25, 2012, 8:52 a.m...
probably the best bet to get mainframe in real hardware (although still being really rare) is an MP3000
oreissig
Who joined June 2, 2011, 2:13 p.m.
and authored 86 notes
Wrote on the subject of Emacs dropped support for Irix from version 23.1 at Sept. 6, 2012, 10:55 a.m...
it's obsoleting IRIX before version 6, so what? angry about not being able to run bleeding edge software on your old Indigo R3k? ;)
oreissig
Who joined June 2, 2011, 2:13 p.m.
and authored 86 notes
Wrote on the subject of Is it called iPhone 5 or iPhone G5…? at Sept. 23, 2012, 4:22 a.m...
why would it be called G5? it doesn't have to do anything with the then popular PowerPC CPU
oreissig
Who joined June 2, 2011, 2:13 p.m.
and authored 86 notes
Wrote on the subject of Remember MIPS laptop [Longsoon] ? - it just became available at Sept. 24, 2012, 10:02 a.m...
geo wrote:
so hmm i remember i read somewhere that irix binaries on netbsd?

this was nowhere near complete to be able to run commercial applications, and it got dropped in 6.0 anyway
oreissig
Who joined June 2, 2011, 2:13 p.m.
and authored 86 notes
Wrote on the subject of Objective-C at Sept. 24, 2012, 1:47 p.m...
I once had to deal a little with Smalltalk and found it strange at first, but very refreshing after getting used to "really everything is an object" (or rather a message call), even loops and if-constructs
oreissig
Who joined June 2, 2011, 2:13 p.m.
and authored 86 notes
Wrote on the subject of Remember MIPS laptop [Longsoon] ? - it just became available at Oct. 9, 2012, 11:37 a.m...
bgalakazam wrote:
I just wish all the RISC based workstations didn't die out 4 years ago. So what if Intel makes fast and powerful CPU's? With all the heavy OS's now it takes gigs just to boot up. Not to mention how sluggish your system becomes. I am using top-of-the-line CPU from 2006 and it's sluggish as hell.
That sounds like it used to be different, but considering the performance leaps during the 90s, you can now work a lot better on a 6y old system than when you did the same comparison 15 years ago.
The push towards mobile devices is our friend here, because it slows down the rising of system requirements in general.

bgalakazam wrote:
I am tired of the Intel monopoly on the market. And given there is little to no alternative if you want current processors it's very discouraging.

If you are talking about desktops, that is true. In the mobile sector, there's a lot more movement and actually Intel plays a minor role there at best.
But actually, in the age of platform independence, what's the matter about a processor architecture? as long as the cpu fulfills your needs, there's nothing wrong with it, and considering power/watt, Intel is the leader in the upper half of the market, ARM leads the lower half.
oreissig
From Germany
Who joined June 2, 2011, 3:13 p.m.
Wrote on the subject of Speed of NextStep on PA-RISC at Oct. 15, 2012, 2:33 p.m...
antagonizt wrote: I've got NS3.3 on an HP 712/60 with 128mb and it is definitely peppy, when compared to my TC slab. I'm not sure if it runs better than my SS20 at 75mhz and SX graphics.

and consider that the /60 is the slowest of all 712s, because it is not only clocked the least, but also has a smaller cache than the /80 and /100. The /100 has the two additional memory slots, but I'm not sure 192mb will make that much of a difference on NeXTSTEP.

I didn't run NeXTSTEP on my 712 yet (because I run it headless and NeXTSTEP cannot be installed via serial console), but from what I've heard the 712/100 is one of the fastest non-intel NeXTSTEP machines (after the 715/100XC)
oreissig
From Germany
Who joined June 2, 2011, 3:13 p.m.
Wrote on the subject of IBM RS/6000 Thinkpad Laptop "Model 860" at Oct. 23, 2012, 9:41 a.m...
I don't think you can actually expect a working battery for any laptop that old.
oreissig
Who joined June 2, 2011, 2:13 p.m.
and authored 86 notes
Wrote on the subject of about 285 and AIX 7.1 at Oct. 25, 2012, 11:56 p.m...
hamei wrote:
And the absence of Flash ! is the very definition of a workstation ....
so the iPhone is a workstation? ;)
oreissig
From Germany
Who joined June 2, 2011, 3:13 p.m.
Wrote on the subject of A modern GCC on IRIX 4 at Nov. 8, 2012, 9:47 a.m...
I suppose you mean a R4k Indigo, or are you actually building 3.x gccs on an R3k? :)
hbent wrote: And I thought gcc builds on my Octane2 were slow!

I'm currently bootstrapping some 3.x gccs on a SPARCclassic :roll:

But nice project. I once build 3.4.6 for 5.3 (didn't go further because I was too lazy building gcc's dependencies), but didn't go down to 4 with gcc on my Indigo², yet.
oreissig
Who joined June 2, 2011, 2:13 p.m.
and authored 86 notes
Wrote on the subject of Remember MIPS laptop [Longsoon] ? - it just became available at Nov. 23, 2012, 8:53 a.m...
bluecode wrote:
You're running a top of the line CPU from 2006 with what, Windows? What do you expect then? WinTel is about forcing you to upgrade to have tolerable performance. Dump the WinTel crap and run what you like. Who's holding a gun to your head?
usually it's the applications, that turn your computer slow, but that's independent from the OS. try running a current webbrowser (firefox 2.0 is not current) on some OpenBSD on an old RISC box and visit a usual website with some javascript etc and you'll notice, that the "weight" of the OS is the smallest of all problems when running on legacy systems.
oreissig
Who joined June 2, 2011, 2:13 p.m.
and authored 86 notes
Wrote on the subject of Remember MIPS laptop [Longsoon] ? - it just became available at Nov. 24, 2012, 3:01 a.m...
hamei wrote:
oreissig wrote:
... visit a usual website with some javascript etc and you'll notice, that the "weight" of the OS is the smallest of all problems when running on legacy systems.
Blocking Javascript has been a big help here with Fireflop crashes. It's just like the good ol' dayes of the browser wars ...
you cannot surf today's web with javascript completely disabled. there are so many sites, that fundamentally rely on dynamically loading content, that will not work without it.

you'll probably state that you are not interested at all in this new stuff and think it's good riddance not being able to visit those sites. it's your own opinion and you are fully entitled to have one, but fact is that you simply cannot use the whole web on legacy machines, and there are a lot of people who may be interested in old systems, but don't want to do without youtube, facebook, twitter, ...
oreissig
Who joined June 2, 2011, 2:13 p.m.
and authored 86 notes
Wrote on the subject of Remember MIPS laptop [Longsoon] ? - it just became available at Nov. 24, 2012, 5:12 a.m...
hamei wrote:
oreissig wrote:
... there are a lot of people who may be interested in old systems, but don't want to do without youtube, facebook, twitter, ...

I was listening until you used facebook, tweeter and youtube for examples :roll:
That's why I put those examples to the end of my posting ;) I'm not using facebook myself, but don't see what's wrong about web video. Okay maybe you don't like Google being the owner of youtube, but even "better" services like Vimeo need either flash or HTML5 video, both of which are not possible with Firefix 2.0 on IRIX.
My point is simply that turning off javascript or any other way of not using modern technology is not a valid solution for everyone.
oreissig
Who joined June 2, 2011, 2:13 p.m.
and authored 86 notes
Wrote on the subject of Remember MIPS laptop [Longsoon] ? - it just became available at Nov. 26, 2012, 12:27 a.m...
hamei wrote:
And they are junk [...] they are crap. Generic crap. [...] junk [...] it's crap [...] And they are shit. Pure shit [...] Bullshit [...] Ha. Ha. Ha. [...] thank the drooling idiot and walk away with crap [...] Chinese people make crap [...] Bull. Fucking. Shit. [...] It's all crap. [...] Thanks for regurgitating the propaganda the financiers spew. [...] shittier and shittier [...] Simple fact.
dude your swearing don't make your arguments more clear, quite the contrary
it simply is not a simple fact :)
oreissig
Who joined June 2, 2011, 2:13 p.m.
and authored 86 notes
Wrote on the subject of Places to see before you die at Nov. 30, 2012, 10:35 a.m...
not actually one place to see, but I want to ride the complete transsib from moscow to wladivostok some time in my life
oreissig
Who joined June 2, 2011, 2:13 p.m.
and authored 86 notes
Wrote on the subject of Linus about SGI and Linux at Dec. 3, 2012, 12:48 a.m...
hamei wrote:
It's wrong because it's based on a lie. The whole point to Linux was "the evil corporations won't let us have Unix at a decent price so we'll make our own. This is for the commmmuuuunity ." 90% of the work was done by others for free, based on these claims. I seriously doubt that any of those people would have lifted a finger if the point of the exercise was to create another cash cow for IBM and Linus Torvalds.
what's wrong with companies being involved, if they play along the rules (which are defined by the GPL license, which is actually used to sue companies really high fines if they don't comply)? The promise was never that it has to stay hobbyist only, the promise was that everyone could join in, that doesn't exclude companies.
oreissig
Who joined June 2, 2011, 2:13 p.m.
and authored 86 notes
Wrote on the subject of Linus about SGI and Linux at Dec. 3, 2012, 5:47 a.m...
hamei wrote:
I personally don't have a moral objection to companies being involved, but the people who actually created Linux do. [...]
Those people did not work on Linux so that SGI could get a free operating system.
By the time linux started, it wasn't mature enough to be serious competition for major unix vendors anyway.

hamei wrote:
If you look at history, corporations are shit. They rob, cheat, and steal.
because they have been allowed to. But how would a company "steal" Linux?

hamei wrote:
In the beginning they may play by the rules but after some time has gone by and profits are not increasing quarter-over-quarter, they buy new rules. Then they play by the rules they bought.
you mean they buy the FSF so that they alter the GPL?
You don't need to tell me that copyright legislation is broken, I'm not talking about copyright laws. I'm talking about the Linux kernel and the GPL.
oreissig
Who joined June 2, 2011, 2:13 p.m.
and authored 86 notes
Wrote on the subject of moronic HP "leadership" ... at Jan. 16, 2013, 12:47 a.m...
hamei wrote:
The US is a democracy. People put those assbreaths in power.
But the voting system in the US with its "winner takes it all"-approach yields the current two-party systems, and if there are only two parties, there's no real need for parties to differentiate substantially. Winner takes it all practially eliminates the chance of a third party getting involved, which might cause them to build coalitions to have legislative power. Not that coalitions cannot do silly stuff either, but it's far better than the single-party rulings in the US.

My point is: Yes those people do elect, but the system makes it impossible for a fresh movement to ever get into power, so basically they have no choice but the established parties.
oreissig
Who joined June 2, 2011, 2:13 p.m.
and authored 86 notes
Wrote on the subject of twenty year old trick :-) at Jan. 16, 2013, 12:59 a.m...
IRIX 6.5 » Books » End-User » Impressario User's Guide
Quote:
The Impressario tool vstiff lets you view Stream TIFF (STIFF) files. Stream TIFF is a subset of TIFF (Tagged Information File Format) and is based on version 6.0 of the TIFF specification.
oreissig
Who joined June 2, 2011, 2:13 p.m.
and authored 86 notes
Wrote on the subject of moronic HP "leadership" ... at Jan. 22, 2013, 12:48 a.m...
fu wrote:
since you are in europe, what do you think of the current european mess?

I don't have a deep understanding about the whole financial mess, but actually I don't think the people making decisions have it either.
The only thing that I know for sure is that forcing states to spend less money will not help them to reignite their economy, actually it's quite the contrary. Although it may be trivial to assume from a microeconomical standpoint that spending less money = more money left, it's not so hard to realize the failure when thinking in macroeconomic terms.
I guess we'll need some mechanism to permanently transfer money between participating countries with different economic strengths (just like it's already happening in federal states, e.g. germany, where there are states with higher productivity than others), but that will most likely be a hard fight to implement.
oreissig
Who joined June 2, 2011, 2:13 p.m.
and authored 86 notes
Wrote on the subject of Solaris 10 or 11 for Sunfire V245? at Feb. 3, 2013, 4:06 p.m...
There's newer versions of OpenSolaris Illumos for UltraSPARC hardware, like OpenSXCE , but that's probably not on the same level of maturity than official Solaris 10.
oreissig
Who joined June 2, 2011, 2:13 p.m.
and authored 86 notes
Wrote on the subject of HP B2600 vs C3700 at Feb. 4, 2013, 3:33 p.m...
These figures are worthless, both are completely overpriced. I bought my c8000 (which is WAY better than a C3700) some time ago for something like 25€ + shipping. Everything above 50-100€ is just utopian, except there's something very special about this particular machine. You'll always find idiots on ebay (mostly commercial sellers), who radically overestimate the value of their merchandise.
oreissig
Who joined June 2, 2011, 2:13 p.m.
and authored 86 notes
Wrote on the subject of HP B2600 vs C3700 at Feb. 5, 2013, 12:25 a.m...
Actually I only look for auctions on ebay and ignore the "buy it now" offers, because they are all completely overpriced (they are okay for small accessories, but I never saw a whole machine at a reasonable price). You probably have to wait some time to find the machine you are looking for*, but in the end, you'll pay the actual market price.

* simply because auctions find a buyer pretty much all the time, even if it's for 1,50$, in contrast to utopian buy now offers, that get posted again and again for a year or so