fdiv> the floating-point divide <
Malus Sylvestris Migration, Part 1

Mac OS X Install Disc 2Anybody who’s anybody has used an Apple computer before. Whether at home, abroad, at school, work, or at that one weird guy’s house, chances are you’ve dabbled with a Macintosh.

And there’s a pretty steep curve attached to switching Operating Systems. This is especially the case when you’ve used a very dynamic, customizable operating system like Linux the majority of the time. In this article I’d like to address some of the issues noted, less than 12 hours after I’ve opened the box, to perhaps help others get reoriented.

For much of my computer-using life, I’ve been an Intel-based computer user. This means that I grew up on (more…)

Opteron Meltdown?

At Yon Reptile Campaign, we’ve set up this dual-core AMD Opteron server. Normally it runs all happy-like and does what it needs to. We take care of its basic needs, and it takes care of the rest.

Opteron after meltdown

However, Tyan — the motherboard manufacturer — saw fit to include only 1 of the typical 3 heat sink mounting tabs. Somehow, this 1 tab managed to suddenly break on Sunday, March 18, at about 4:45pm.

And now the processor has Opteron Cancer.

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Red Collar

Good day to you sirs
this is Otto von Bismarck
otherwise known as The Kitten With The Red Collar
Portrait of Otto von Bismarck
but unlike MacGyver
I prefer violence as a means of conflict-resolution
whenever possible
such as when (more…)

Download of the Internet: $42.39

Robert and I have been doing some consulting for an out-of-state mid-sized business recently. For the purposes of this discussion, we’ll call the business Yon Reptile Campaign.

We were analyzing Yon Reptile Campaign’s IT budget, and discovered this expenditure:

DOWNLOAD OF THE INTERNET . . . $42.39

This was probably a pretty big job, even compared to the task of getting this business’s IT situation under control…

retroactively prophetic spam 2: bastille day

From: French Impossible <tsvytkoxaj @projectdelivery.com>
Subject: ar Etail Invades Real
(more…)

there’s no place like 10.1.1.200

Dear, sweet, patient, virtuous reader.

In your innocence, you may not know how much Fedora Core 6, theoretically only days from the final release version, could possibly suck.

Your tender mind may not be able to imagine the bizarre fatal errors that crashed anaconda (Fedora’s installer) in graphical mode every freaking time we tried to set up the network preferences.

And your unspoiled eyes may never have seen the likes of the errors we got attempting to use the yum repository even after the ostensibly successful installation of Fedora Core 6 in text mode.

But you must try, little children, to wrap your minds around the sheer nameless horror we experienced when we decided, after nearly 10 straight hours of attempting to set up Fedora Core 6, that a total reinstall with Fedora Core 5 was the only way out of the bottomless abyss of night into which we had fallen.
(more…)