Meeting Notes: Jan 5th 2009

about 10 people showed up for this meeting.

Questions:
What are some the advantages/ disadvantages of using 64Bit Linux ?

Answers:
Advantages: You can use more than 4GB of RAM without doing the 64GB Hack.
Advantages: Code should in theory run faster.
Previous disadvantages: Not all software ran on 64bit. Flash was one such example.

Question: What can I used to format my flash drive ? I can’t mount it.

Answer: mkfs.vfs will reformat if you know where it is.

Question: What are some programs I can use to find files ?
Answer: Midnight Commander is a nice one that lets you browse files in the old DOS like way.

Question: What are some utilities that I can use to change postscript files into different formats ?

Answer: ps utilities. There home page is here.

Question: Does anyone know any good local electronics stores ?
Answer: Bainsville in Towson.

Question: How do people share share files with Linux ?
Answer: ssh, NFS, samba, usb key whatever your preference.
For network sharing most use samba (to share with Windows and Mac) or NFS (unix only).

Question: What is a good blue ray player ?

Answer: A number of people said the Playstation 3 is one of the best blue-ray players since it is the easiest to update.
Moreover, a lot of new Blue Ray formats do not work on all the players. But, all the different variations will play on the playstation3 running the latest firmware.

John brought some people that did a demo of an ACN video phone. The ACN video phone costs about $100 per unit and the plan is $29.99/month. The company website for them can be found here. The phone has Ethernet ports on it, and an additional port to connect up all the existing household phones. It is a Internet based phone.

John mentioned that cyberguys sells patch and cross-over cables for really cheap. They have a lot of neat tech things on their site.

Category: Info