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Domain: arstechnica.com
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Comments · 9,494
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Re:What the Heck?
Newer processes have always yielded faster, smaller, and cooler chips. Not anymore. 60nm didn't make chips use less power and 45nm doesn't help either.
60nm and 45nm DID yield smaller and cooler chips. (On the smaller side, take a look at the Core Duo silicon sometime. It's amazing how much smaller it is than the PIV chip!) There's just one catch with that: When you shrink the processes and make the chip smaller and cooler, you also have the option of using those gains for new features. e.g. If my power usage and silicon footprint cut in half, then I have the opportunity to add another core for the same power usage AND still get twice the yield from a silicon wafer as I got before! (Half-sized silicon chip == 1 quarter the space)
That's effectively what we've been seeing with microprocessors since they were invented. The moment that improvements in lithography shrink the die size, chip designers immediately start thinking about what they can do with all that extra space. So they start cramming in rather spacey features like FPUs, microcode engines, out of order engines, superscalar execution, SIMD cores, ever-larger L2 caches, 64bit support, so on and so forth. You'd be amazed how much chip designers cram into these processors. In some cases, the number of pins on the chip is actually becoming more of a limitation than the silicon area! (Each pin that's wired into the package significantly increases the cost to manufacture. It's bloody HARD to match a silicon wire of 45nm to a trace on the chip packaging.)
You might find these images to be of interest:
A simple "map" of the Core Duo
X-Ray of the Core 2 Duo chip
Can you spot all four cores?
Nehalm, Intel's next architecture to replace the Core Duo line (This chip is designed with 32nm processes in mind.)
An abstract look at Nehalm design
Detailed map of Via's Isiah processor
Photos that really show off the incredibly small size of these chips. -
Re:What the Heck?
Newer processes have always yielded faster, smaller, and cooler chips. Not anymore. 60nm didn't make chips use less power and 45nm doesn't help either.
60nm and 45nm DID yield smaller and cooler chips. (On the smaller side, take a look at the Core Duo silicon sometime. It's amazing how much smaller it is than the PIV chip!) There's just one catch with that: When you shrink the processes and make the chip smaller and cooler, you also have the option of using those gains for new features. e.g. If my power usage and silicon footprint cut in half, then I have the opportunity to add another core for the same power usage AND still get twice the yield from a silicon wafer as I got before! (Half-sized silicon chip == 1 quarter the space)
That's effectively what we've been seeing with microprocessors since they were invented. The moment that improvements in lithography shrink the die size, chip designers immediately start thinking about what they can do with all that extra space. So they start cramming in rather spacey features like FPUs, microcode engines, out of order engines, superscalar execution, SIMD cores, ever-larger L2 caches, 64bit support, so on and so forth. You'd be amazed how much chip designers cram into these processors. In some cases, the number of pins on the chip is actually becoming more of a limitation than the silicon area! (Each pin that's wired into the package significantly increases the cost to manufacture. It's bloody HARD to match a silicon wire of 45nm to a trace on the chip packaging.)
You might find these images to be of interest:
A simple "map" of the Core Duo
X-Ray of the Core 2 Duo chip
Can you spot all four cores?
Nehalm, Intel's next architecture to replace the Core Duo line (This chip is designed with 32nm processes in mind.)
An abstract look at Nehalm design
Detailed map of Via's Isiah processor
Photos that really show off the incredibly small size of these chips. -
Sigh..
More useless propaganda, and the idiots that fall for it.
For the last two years, Nintendo has been rated the worst. But, not because that is the truth. They are rated that way because they refuse to disclose their environmental methods. And, by disclose, I mean that Nintendo didn't have that information readily available on their website.
See this follow-up report from Ars Technica.
In other words: nothing to see here; move along. -
RTFA much?The problem these days is that it doesn't actually cost anything to have a complex instruction format. It's such a tiny, isolated piece of the chip that it doesn't count for anything Did you understand the article? Page 2 is entirely about how the decoder on Atom isn't "such a tiny, isolated piece of the chip that it doesn't count for anything". And, it turns out, you need to have a RMW style instruction anyway, even if you are RISC, if you want to have any hope of operating in a SMP environment. But if only one instruction is an atomic swap, that means it doesn't need to be on the critical path, right?
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Re:Turn off the phone?
Fool! Your cellphone is listening to your every word, even when you think it's off!
But, who really cares if Safeway knows where you are, when the real terror-lovers are tracking your every move!!! -
Re:"Ready for my mom's desktop."
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This was on Ars Technica weeks ago.
Ars Technica had this story weeks ago. EFF has filed a motion to quash (EFF site currently overloaded), and they'll probably win.
As Ars Technica points out, the effect of this lawsuit is to widely disseminate the information that this little-known literary agency is a dud.
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Re:It is a necessity to have a common GUIThink about what it would be like if the command "ls" was named something different in every linux distribution. Part of Microsoft's success is that there are GUI contracts that are very rarely broken so you almost always know how to do basic tasks with a new program. Sigh. Time to trot out the screenshot yet again. All those Microsoft applications in that screenshot all work the same right? The menu in notepad is just like the complete lack of a menu in Word and Media Player? And while IE and Windows Explorer look the same at first glance, having the spacing and arrangement ever so slightly different is all part of some master plan? The (complete lack of) consistency in how toolbars are presented in Word, Outlook, IE and Blend is carefully arranged?
In the meantime GNOME and KDE both have Human Interface Guideline documents that spell out how applications should work to be consistent, and, oddly enough, most applications for the respective desktops hew to them rather well. You can certainly expect a more consistent environment than Windows apparently is these days (even if you stick to MS software)! -
Re:Precisly the missing part of LinuxMicrosoft... mostly consistent, but there are some old windows 3.1 holdeovers (control insert to paste) and a lot of their apps don't adhere to the look and feel (Expression, for example). X is probably the worst in this regard, being a hodge podge of different toolkits, raw xlib, control-v vs alt-v vs middle click to paste, etc. Right, yes, Microsoft has a very consistent GUI. Those are the latest versions of Microsofts own appliactions. Not only is the look different from one application to the next, but how the program actually operates is different. Some have menus, some don't. The menus aren't even consistent across the set of applications that do have them. Several applications, while similar, just work slightly differently for various things like opening files, or setting preferences. Hell, they can't even decide whether the text of the titlebar is supposed to be centered to left justified!
But what about X11? Well, these days, if you're using GNOME, or KDE, or Xfce, and applications written for those environments (which is to say most modern applications for X11 desktops) then you only have two toolkits, which can be themed so they render using the theme of the other (using either GTK-Qt theme, or QtGTK Style), and has consistent cut and paste that works across (and between) them all. Yes, you can get some Xlib applications if you hunt around, but then you can get ugly Tk applications on Windows if you hunt around (or X11 applications on the Mac). The reality is that, these days, the Linux desktop really isn't that much more inconsistent that Apple or Microsoft. Actually, I would go so far as to say that it is actually more consistent than what MS is currently producing. -
Re:mod me down, but picking just one would be greaI think the best thing that could happen for Linux on the desktop is for one of the two major environments (I don't care which) to become THE standard, supported Linux X desktop standard.
I know, choice is good. So is focusing your efforts on making one usable product that people can standardize on. People keep bringing this up, but it just isn't going to happen. FOSS developers will work on whatever they want to work on, and as long as there are different philosophies involved different projects will attract the interest of different developers. And there are very different philosophies driving the different desktop environments: GNOME is pitching for something simple and elegant above all else; KDE is far more interested in being configurable and cohesive; Xfce has efficiency as one of their primary goals; and the list goes on. With such divergent focus you are not going to get people (neither developers nor users) to all agree on one philosophy.
What you can do, however, is work on standards and interoperability of protocols that underly the environments. You know, like Freedesktop do. That means common standards for inter-application communication (from cut and paste to DBUS), standards for how applications expose themselves to menus, standards for syustem trays, and so on. This effort is still ongoing, but the end result is that GNOME, KDE and Xfce can share application menus, system trays, clipboards, icon themes, and more. With other things like the GTK-Qt theme and the QtGTK Style, we're steadily heading toward the point where applications will be able to slot in seamlessly competing desktops.
So in some sense what you want is being done, but it is not going to involve one desktop to rule them all. For that you need dictatorial control from on high to simply say what is "right". You won't get that in FOSS; it's just not how it works. If you want that you need something like Apple or Microsoft, and the consequences that come with such choices (although, to be honest, I'm not sure they offer models of perfect consistency either). -
Re:Here we go again-2 options when only one is neeSometimes I think Linux would be better off with one option instead of many.
On what information did you base this desision? It's not like Mac OS or Windows provide one way. Last time I checked, the Windows platform offers you standard widgets (=notepad look), MFC, ComCtl, VLC (Borland), Windows Forms (.Net), WPF (.Net3) and each Microsoft app has it's own toolbars again.
MacOS gives you the choice between Cocoa and Carbon, and only gained a consistent look as of Mac OS 10.5.
I'd suggest keeping both Gtk and Qt because each option obviously attracts a different group of developers. With initiatives like this, Linux could offer something then far more consistent this.
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Re:Blame Russia?
Correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't those attacks eventually turn out to have nothing at all to do with Russia, being instead the work of a single person?
Here, I will do it since everyone on slashdot believes this even though in the original slashdot article that is cited when this is said says nothing of the sort. Dmitri Galushkevich was the guy who was fined. Somebody had to be hung, he was the only one to get caught. The Russian Youth leader idiot guy claims responsibility as well link let alone the probability that there were others who joined in but who knew how to keep their mouth shut. When a bank is robbed by a group but only 1 person is caught, he was the sole perpetrator all of a sudden? The original article even says:Because the attacks were botnet-driven and launched from servers all over the globe, however, it's impossible to state definitively that only a single individual was involved.
Oh and blaming Russia is a fairly safe bet here. You don't think the Russian Youth is funded through charity I hope. Also, the blockade of the Estonian Embassy in Moscow just magically had electricity and all the finer points of camping. And all the people who joined in the blockade just magically were able to quit their jobs for quite some time because it would be just unheard of if they had been paid to protest. -
WinForm
WinForms is so 2 years ago. It's MPF now. Here's a good article on the failings of
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The shock of changing the OS and the office suite
is a lot. However, if you can transition one little piece at a time, Windows is in trouble.
I don't think it's much of a shock to change the OS and the Office Suite used, it's not such a big deal. First off when most entities, whether people or businesses, get new computers more than likely the new system will have both a new OS, usually a new version of Windows, and a new version of MS Office. Secondly more entities are switch from MS Windows, to either Linux or OS X. For those who disagree with this, while the market itself is growing Macs and Linux are growing faster. After buying and using Windows since NT4 and 95 came out, about 20 months ago I switched to Linux and last summer I got the MacBook Pro I'm typing this on. For my office suite I use the native Mac port of OO.org, NeoOffice. It took me all of a week or two to adjust. Of course, just as I didn't use MS Office much, I don't use NeoOffice that much.
Falcon -
some standards are more equal than others
One doc standard, ODF, is cool; another, OOXML is somehow evil. A truly bizzare thought process.
Of course, the French ruled that free shipping offered by Amazon is somehow unfair to French booksellers (http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080115-amazons-free-shipping-costing-1000-per-day-in-france.html), so maybe this is just another Eurocrat implementing a "bash America" strategy.
Flame away, my kevlar and asbestos suit is at the ready. -
Re:How to improve the user experience on Windows?
Microsoft is full of developers, developers, developers. Why not just submit some patches that improve blender's performance on Windows?
Because maybe MS' approaching Blender is more about anti-trust than Windows itself? Is Blender used in education at all? Methinks if the recent antitrust brouhaha in Europe over interoperability gains any steam, Microsoft is going to work in advance to keep those charges from propagating to the U.S. Perhaps Blender is the first step since it can also provide a supply of XBox developers and thus cover both of Microsoft's platforms. -
Re:I don't trust The Consumerist
I'm rather more trustful of http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080513-charter-enhances-internet-service-with-targeted-ads.html/ Ars Technica's coverage...
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Re:Its official
Maybe you recall an article from not too long ago about different nations and their comparative access speeds and penetration and whatnot? In South Korea, the average connection speed was like 60-70mbp/s with something like 80+% of the population connected to the internet...
So, I think that our ISP's need to get their asses in gear and provide better service, not to keep dividing a small pie into increasingly smaller pieces.
Here: An Ars Technica article for you to read. -
Re:How about a DDR2 versus DDR3 chart?I'm still waiting for an AM2+ chipset that will support DDR3, as the Phenoms (I think) have a memory controller that supports it. That should give the AMD chips a boost when compared to the current crop of Intel chips as the on-chip memory controller should allow for better usage of the RAM, but again, I'll wait until a benchmark confirms it. From what I've read lately, Intel's Nehalem architecture, which features an on-chip memory controller and QuickPath interconnect (HyperTransport competitor), will be available around the same time AMD DDR3 platforms are available (maybe sooner). Therefore, instead of getting a boost from DDR3, AMD may get trumped by Nehalem.
- March 4, 2008: AMD demos 45nm server and desktop processors
- September 12, 2007: AMD K10 Family Chips Support DDR3 Memory - Documents.
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Re:How about a DDR2 versus DDR3 chart?I'm still waiting for an AM2+ chipset that will support DDR3, as the Phenoms (I think) have a memory controller that supports it. That should give the AMD chips a boost when compared to the current crop of Intel chips as the on-chip memory controller should allow for better usage of the RAM, but again, I'll wait until a benchmark confirms it. From what I've read lately, Intel's Nehalem architecture, which features an on-chip memory controller and QuickPath interconnect (HyperTransport competitor), will be available around the same time AMD DDR3 platforms are available (maybe sooner). Therefore, instead of getting a boost from DDR3, AMD may get trumped by Nehalem.
- March 4, 2008: AMD demos 45nm server and desktop processors
- September 12, 2007: AMD K10 Family Chips Support DDR3 Memory - Documents.
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Re:One problem machine out of many installs
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Pentagon hacker Gary McKinnon could do it...
With MS pw's and a perl script.
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20060712-7249.html -
Re:Appointed by Gov Ritter
It passed the House 410-10. There aren't 410 Democrats in the house. Give cred^H^H^H^H blame where it's due.
Since this bill is regarding the legal system directly, it was through the House Judiciary Committee, which is split - like all committees - between Democrats and Republicans. Yes, the Democrats on the committee shouldn't have passed that. But let's see about the other side, hmm?
First, we see that passing the HJC was unanimous, so both sides passed it.
We see that the ranking Republican is Lamar Smith, who has sought to expand the DCMA
The next most influential Republican is none other than Republican Representative Jim Sensenbrenner. For those of you without long-term recall, Rep. Sensenbrenner was the genius who introduced the PATRIOT ACT and authored Real ID
Another member, Tom Feeney, has been written about in Wired for his attempts at touch screen tampering
So yeah. It's the Dems behind this bill that are the bad guys. -
Re:Appointed by Gov Ritter
Apparently Governor Ritter doesn't realize how corrupt this makes him look. Anyone associated with RIAA is tainted, and now that taint just got on the governor. I hope Colorado voters know this happened.
True, Democrat Governor Bill Ritter doesn't realize how corrupt this makes him look. Anyone associated with RIAA is tainted, and now that taint just got on Democrat Governor Bill Ritter.
I hope Colorado voters know how this happened.
Meanwhile, Bush is likely to veto the PRO-IP Act endorsed by the MPAA and passed by the Democrat House of Representatives.
I hope American voters know how this happened. -
Re:May not deter crime, but...I hate to be the one to say it, but CCTV has been shown to reduce the severity of crime Oh really? The first paragraph of TFA provides a link that begs to differ: http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080507-problems-with-the-panopticon-uks-cctv-doesnt-cut-crime.html
[A]ccording to Detective Chief Inspector Mick Neville, who heads the Metropolitan Police's Met's Visual Images, Identifications and Detections Office (Viido), billions of pounds have been spent with almost no results to show. Only three percent of crimes have been solved using CCTV footage, and offenders aren't afraid of being caught on video. Det. Chief Inspector Neville [...] described the system as an "utter fiasco" and that "no thought" had gone into implementation.
Care to back up your claims? -
Re:How do they know? What about Burma?Where are the bees? The bees were being killed off by a natural fungus or a parasite, also 100% natural.
Unfortunately I'm not surprised that you are so quick to blame man. You are no different than so many creationists who think that whenever we don't know the cause of something, it must be God's work. Instead of blaming/crediting God, you attribute everything to man when no other reason is known. Sometimes, even when the answer IS known, man is STILL blamed ("Man Made" Global Warming causing tsunamis is a good example. Hell Global Warming itself is a good example!). -
Re:To rehash the same old story
Ars Technica has a good article on this debate
RISC vs. CISC - the Post-RISC Era, and Bibliography
In defence of RISC
The majority of software written for any chip is compiled by a relatively small number of compilers, and those compilers tend to use pretty much the same subset of instructions. The UNIX portable C compiler for example used less than 30% of the Motorola 68000 instruction set. -
Re:To rehash the same old story
Ars Technica has a good article on this debate
RISC vs. CISC - the Post-RISC Era, and Bibliography
In defence of RISC
The majority of software written for any chip is compiled by a relatively small number of compilers, and those compilers tend to use pretty much the same subset of instructions. The UNIX portable C compiler for example used less than 30% of the Motorola 68000 instruction set. -
Re:Parse these liesRegulations only serve to raise prices. Increasing taxes or costs of running just either Overly simplistic. Regulations are also about restricting predatory practices. This debate is not over whether prices are raised or profit made. The debate is over the power of ISPs to discriminate against certain providers of information and services. From here
"It does so by outlawing discriminatory fees for providing content, applications, or services over the 'Net. Internet providers also have to interact fully with the networks of their competitors and provide equal access to all users and any devices they wish to put on the network. Network providers would be allowed to provide favored service to specific types of data but, if they do, they have to provide that same favoritism to anybody transmitting the data, and couldn't charge for it." -
Re:Author is misleading at best....Author also totally ignores Adobe not providing any 64bit support for OS X because Apple dropped the ball on Carbon x64bit support that has been promised forever from Apple. I challenge you to give me a link with that "forever" promise.
Apple never promised that Carbon would go on forever. From day one, they said it would be a transitional API to help developers get ready for Cocoa. Although it wasn't nice that Apple dropped support so suddenly (they announced it one year before it gets dropped) it is Adobe's fault dragging its feet. Lightroom is a Cocoa application because Adobe knew that Carbon would get dropped.
Read this for more: http://arstechnica.com/staff/fatbits.ars/2008/04/02/rhapsody-and-blues -
Re:"Big Apple"
Phew, I thought New York was going to get into gaming. Had me worried for a new york minute there.
That's funny. I thought New York was trying to get out of video games!
link -
Re:How?And thus your purchase will raise the number of "customers who preferred the professional quality of Windows(TM)".
Not only that, it will probably count as a Vista sale!
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Re:Apple DRM is irrrelevent1: You can copy music on and off an iPod with great ease. There is no magic DRM preventing this *at all*. YOu're right, they would never Intentionally take measures to prevent third parties from writing software that allows for transfer to and from the ipod. 2: Apple are quite happy to let you rip their music to cd, and then to mp3. It's no different, and sounds no different from ripping a bought music cd. You're right! How gracious of apple to ALLOW you to transfer a piece of your property to another piece of your property! Its almost like we're PAYING thing for this or something. 3: The iPod only has DRM on it because Apple new they would get sued to fuck if they didn't, or if they went around allowing direct circumvention. By allowing copying to audio cd they avoid this via the fair use claim. Please cite at least 1 example of a company being sued for creating a device that allows people to play MP3s. You might want to let Justin Frankel know that he should have been "sued to fuck" (whatever that meansd) for creating winamp instead of chilling in his multi-million dollar home studio. 4: A *lot* of available iPod content is not DRM'd anyway. Right AGAIN! How GRACIOUS of apple to allow you to play the music that you purchased on anything other than their blessed device!
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Re:You are the cause of all this pal..People with your attitude (I don't like the terms of sale, so I'll just take it) are the entire reason DRM exists.
Conversely, attitudes like his develop because media companies - like many kinds of companies - are often unethical:- * They sell software that's full of bugs, and won't even be playable for several patches... or maybe they don't even admit that there are problems.
- * They sell software that won't actually run on any state-of-the-art machine without half of the highly-touted features turned off.
- * They sell software that requires some sort of crappy upgrade that you really don't want.
- * They are trying to strongarm you into moving from a model where you buy software once, to a model where you buy the same software over and over and over and over again.
Look - iTunes, right? Did Apple sell iTunes to anyone as "The Right Thing To Do?" Of course not. They just built a really damn good product and gave it a very reasonable price. It's a blockbuster hit and a cash cow! No moralizing required! And it even lets users do what they want! Wow!
- David Stein - * They sell software that's full of bugs, and won't even be playable for several patches... or maybe they don't even admit that there are problems.
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Re:Bigger Worry: A backdoor is worse than a CD.Just imagine, you spend $20.00 on a DVD. Then you have to go on the Internet to register the DVD and provide a credit card that can be billed when you watch the DVD. Then every time you pop the DVD in the player it runs a check to verify that you have registered the DVD and have a valid credit card that is charged $5.00 every time you play it.
Already cookin', chief.
"Software-as-a-service," a/k/a/ "software rental model"... translation: you never own anything - you pay and pay and pay and pay and pay, and if you stop paying, they turn off your rig. This is the holy grail for companies that don't really feel like developing new software, or in updating their software with appealing new features that you might actually buy. They'll just sell you the same thing for eternity.
Of course, two other trends will also have to occur:
1) Consumers are used to owning software, and won't voluntarily walk into a rented-software model. So they'll offer rentals as an additional option alongside purchasable software... but the MSRPs for purchasable licenses will slowly climb into the stratosphere, until cheap rentware doesn't look half-bad. Sort of disproves that whole "lipstick on a pig" thing, doesn't it?
2) Want to just run a hacked version, and do away with the messy activation stuff? Nope, sorry, won't run on your new Trusted Computing machine (which is kind of a funny name, since you can't trust it at all to do what you want, isn't it?) It only runs software (and music, and movies, etc.) that's been cryptographically signed with a limited-duration certificate. But you do want to play Halo 4, right?
Folks... I've gotta fess up. After 20 years of running MSIntel systems (dating back to MS-DOS 3.2), I am closer to jumping ship and Ubuntu-ing out than ever before. There are dark clouds on the computing horizon, gentlemen... there's a storm a-brewin', and it's gonna cloudburst probably around 2014 or so. "When did Noah build the ark? Before the rain..."
- David Stein -
Re:Long Answer?
Apple IS abandoning Carbon. There will be no 64-bit version of it http://arstechnica.com/staff/fatbits.ars/2008/04/02/rhapsody-and-blues, so no one is going to be using it before long. Compare this to the current state of
And NeXTStep is a magical, shiny, new API compared to Win32, which is the biggest mess I've ever seen. Admittedly, I'm used to simpler systems like UNIX. -
Re:Author is misleading at best....
If you want to debate Mr Bright, feel free to jump into the Ars forums any time.
With some 60,000 posts under his belt, I'm sure you won't find him reticent to discuss the perceived shortcomings of
http://episteme.arstechnica.com/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/6330927813/m/917004181931/p/1 -
The appalling GUI inconsistency
One of the nice things from this article was actually this nice screenshot of a selection of current versions of MS software running on Vista. The thing to notice is that not a single one of those applications has a GUI the same as any of the others. There are different toolkits, completely different look and feel, some have menus, some don't; it's a horrible, horrible mess. And yet despite that, we still get people complaining about GNOME vs. KDE and the clash of different toolkits and how that's what is holding Linux back. You can run GNOME and KDE apps side by side and, while they'll have differences, they'll sit together far more elegantly than the mishmash that is Windows. I think I'll have bookmark that screenshot so I can bring it up the next time a Windows fanboy starts decrying the excessive number of GUI toolkits on Linux.
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Re:Thenk you for the heads upThe material you are looking for via Ars:
Big content goes after colleges through funding bills
By John Timmer | Published: April 15, 2008 - 10:50PM CT
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080415-big-content-goes-after-college-p2p-through-funding-bills.htmlFull Text of HB4380
http://www.ilga.gov/legislation/fulltext.asp?DocName=09500HB4380ham001&GA=95&SessionId=51&DocTypeId=HB&DocNum=4380&GAID=9
Higher Education Committee
Filed: 4/1/20081 (c) Each institution to which subsection (a) of this
2 Section applies shall, by January 15 of each year, report to
3 the Board either (i) that the institution has not received 10
4 or more legally valid notices of infringement within the
5 preceding year from owners of infringed works or their
6 authorized agents or (ii) a detailed description of the
7 reasonable efforts the institution has taken to install and
8 implement a technology-based deterrent system under
9 subdivision (2) of subsection (a) of this Section. -
Re:I'm Pretty Sure He Committed PerjuryAhem. Darl is lying, since he was told way back in 2002 by Chris Sontag there was not a single line of "their" UNIX in Linux.
Cite: http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20050715-5099.html
I doubt anyone could prove he didn't know, whereas there's plenty of people now who *do* know. Shit, Chris Sontag himself testified before Darl and said he never saw evidence of UNIX in Linux that he could recall. And what does Darl say?
Linux is a copy of UNIX, there is no difference [between them].
Sorry, Darl may be an idiot, but he definitely lied here unless you can prove he somehow completely and totally forgot a big fact that would have affected his entire case. When faced with the 10-Q he obviously lied there. -
Jailtime for $CO fraudsters?
While the train-wreck that is Darl is becoming more amusing by the trial, $CO's tactics are just getting silly. In Ars Technica's write-up of this trial, not only do they mention some of Darl's more interesting statements (such as him saying that "Linux is a copy of UNIX"), but the author also points out that SCO's current strategy seems to be that, while it doesn't own the trademarks it claimed it did, all its blustering that led to Microsoft and Sun coughing-up licensing cash was erroneous and the licenses were invalid, and therefore Novell isn't entitled to any of the money $CO collected. The only recourse Microsoft and Sun would then have would be to sue $CO over their losses.
I'm inclined to hope that tactic works. Does it seem to anyone else like $CO's execs may be on the hook for committing fraud by selling things they didn't own? In the real world, most times you sell stuff that doesn't belong to you (like counterfeit or pirated software), you go to PRISON for your efforts. So why shouldn't Darl and his pals wind up behind bars for extorting money out of companies for licenses they didn't own the rights to sell?
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Re:Not sure he does "get it"Not only the specifics, but part of the issue may be blatant word-for-word duplications of portions of her works.
From the article cited in the prior Slashdot story: (http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20071114-infringus-maximus-rowling-wins-injunction-against-harry-potter-lexicon.html) Why it's a major copyright violation in this case isn't clear; the complaint sometimes suggests that it contains large passages lifted verbatim from the books, but at other times seems to be saying that simple plot summaries and collections of fictional facts are out of bounds (and it quotes a federal decision finding that detailed plot summaries of Twin Peaks episodes were copyright infringement). She needs to make it clear exactly which kind of infringement she is claiming here. -
I'm Pretty Sure He Committed PerjuryI have (via Ars Technica) some interesting comments from his testimony yesterday. He stated (under oath):
... many Linux contributors were originally UNIX developers
Also, as to his book remark, he didn't look very hard!
Mmmmmm, that's some good perjury! -
Re:Simple version.
I like the idea, I like the idea a lot, but the fact that they opted for a simple but slow topology doesn't fill me with hope. Especially as they suggest running SMP over it. Processors close to the centre of the "mesh" will be resource-starved.
These chips seem to be designed for specific applications, not as a general purpose CPU, especially in the DSP and digital video markets. I found this and this .
I don't see these chips as being that revolutionary or anything. Yes, they are similar to the transputer, and somewhere I read where they have a "revolutionary" shared L3 cache, which AMD ships today, and Intel either has them or are shipping soon as well.
These things seem pretty cool, but I see these as having a limited range of usage.
But, they run Linux! -
Ugh... waste of screen space?
I mean, look at this. Are they purposefully trying to waste as much screen real estate as possible? It looks like they deliberately put 50 pixels of even more no-quite-brushed-metal-looking empty space around each little button there.
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Interesting take on what REALLY happened
Because I like to buck the slashdot trend of not actually RTFA before commenting, I read the article and also some of the discussion of it. Found this near the end and decided to repost it here (mainly because I'm too lazy to write up my own thoughts about the subject). I AM NOT the original author of this post, "The Real Bill Anderson" is. Here is the link to the Ars discussion where I found this: http://episteme.arstechnica.com/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/174096756/m/953006491931/p/4
It seems few commenters on this thread have been involved with the process of compliance archiving and restoring. The law does not require an automated system.
Why is that important? Because often, government or not, if it isn't required you don't get funding for it. Get it and you'll see mass complaints about the government going beyond it's requirements, pork passing, etc.. Yes, we the technical crowd agree there *should* be one. But how often does what we say *should* happen get passed on because should != required?
I've witnessed many an org pass on "shoulds" to get the "have-tos". No politics involved.
It's important also to note what is missing. The congressional report linked earlier goes into some detail, though not enough IMO. But what we do see is that it isn't all Bush or even Bush related emails. It's "components". Given the description of what can at best be described as an ad hoc method of
Again, no politics need be involved for this. Perhaps sad-but-basic office politics, and maybe high level politics. But the system and processes described are far from plausible, and in my experience in this industry over the last half-decade *common*.
Yes we can agree that the system sucks, and is ridiculous and non-scalable. And we can agree that the techies in the positions should have known that. But that does not mean BBB (Big Bad Bush) had anything to do with it. Indeed one thing from the congressional report mentioned earlier is that the office of the Vice President had lots of missing stuff. That has a familiar ring to it. Yes, read the GAO linked report all of it. VP Gore's office had stuff "missing".
No, that's not a defense-by-childhood-argument. There is a reason behind it. It's similar to tracking a server issue and it happening on the shift before you. Gore's office rightly concluded that that the FRA (Federal Records Act) did not apply to the OVP (Office of the Vice President), and neither did the PRA (Presidential Records Act). Therefore they were missing because they were not required to be there.
While we are under the impression that the records acts noted above require "all records", it is not true. For example, the the VP emails their [insert family relation here]] about dinner tonight or a movie tomorrow, those are not records covered by the acts. Nor should they be. We the people have no business reading those emails. Many may be shocked to learn the Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) likewise does not require all email to be kept either. Again, this is sensible.
And it is nonsense. How does one decide what is a regulated email, and what is not? Who decides? This represents a fallacy in the notion that you can exclude certain emails from the system or rules. As a result most entities archive all of it. Which introduces other issues.
Regarding the current CIO not implementing something a prior CIO was working on
It is too easy and too simple to conclude that anything that relates or touches the "White House" is automatically controlled by the POTUS. -
KDE vs OS X
KDE
http://arstechnica.com/news.media/kde41a1themes.png
OS X:
http://laptoping.com/wp-content/mac_os_x_leopard_screenshot.jpg
Flame away about being 'shallow' and talk of 'eye candy' but how the hell can anyone expect average computer users to want to migrate to Linux when the desktop looks like a hobbyist Windows knockoff. -
No, that's not the biggest Facebook problem.
The biggest problem with Facebook Beacon isn't the opt-out (though that is indeed a problem). The problems with it are:
1. It broadcasts users' purchases to Facebook, which then broadcasts them to other users.
2. Facebook gets paid to coopt their users' identities to promote their commercial partners' products. This is really the nastiest one, if you ask me.
3. According to the lawsuit recently filed against Blockbuster and Facebook, it continues to unlawfully share information about users who have opted out.
I don't think that MySpace using information volunteered by its users to target ads to them is unlawful at all.
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The good faith effortone day, you come across a vintage graphic from the 1960s at a yard sale; it would be perfect for your next video, you know exactly how you want to use it, but it contains no copyright information. New Orphaned Works Act would limit copyright liability
I know that forty years sounds like eternity to the eternally adolescent Geek - but your treasure trove will almost certainly turn out to be an instantly recognizable icon of commercial art and illustration.
The page clipped from Life magazine, the poster that was taped to a dorm room wall.
What looks like a "good faith effort" to you may may look pathetically inadequate and self-serving to a judge. It is altogether too easy not to find what you don't want to find.
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US and Europe not far behindThe US and the European Union seem to be working hard to keep up.
The EU just passed a resolution making it illegal to publish "terrorist propaganda", even though the actual definitions are quite vague. That vagueness is incredibly broad: EU officials said the decision to punish propaganda, recruitment and training for terrorism through the internet filled an important gap in European legislation. America hasn't outlawed "terrorist propaganda" websites yet, but they are working hard to create the case that they need to -- they recently passed the "Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act of 2007" , in which our government finds that: " The Internet has aided in facilitating violent radicalization, ideologically based violence, and the homegrown terrorism process in the United States by providing access to broad and constant streams of terrorist-related propaganda to United States citizens.
While the United States must continue its vigilant efforts to combat international terrorism, it must also strengthen efforts to combat the threat posed by homegrown terrorists based and operating within the United States." The US government has been so busy pumping the notion that the Internet is recruiting terrorists at home that they have even claimed that terrorists hang out in the online game Second Life where they engage in information warfare .
