You didn't create pure hydrogen. 100% hydrogen burns with a colorless flame like methanol does. You may want to check for impurities, because hydrogen fires are impossible to see in many circumstances.
While things like hydrogen power, fuell cells, battery power and now nitrogen power is potentially great for automobiles, people are forgetting that gasoline and diesel engines are far cleaner today then they were 30 years ago when emission controls first became common.
On the engine side, the rapid development more precise fuel metering, better combustion chamber design, catalytic converters and sophisticated computer controls have cut emission levels on gasoline and diesel engines over 93% compared to 1970 levels.
And today's gasoline and diesel burn quite a bit cleaner than the old fuels, too. Eliminating tetraethyl lead has reduced a major pollutant source, for one thing.
Already, the technology is now in place to reduce engine emissions to almost 98% lower than 1970 levels. The combination of direct injection of fuel into combustion chambers, closely-coupled catalytic converters or particulate traps (for diesel engines) and the advent of low-sulfur content fuels (sulfur content under 80 parts per billion) in the next few years will result in gasoline and diesel engines where the exhaust may end up being -cleaner- than the air going into the engine!
Besides, there is still a surprisingly amount of petroleum reserves we've not even come close to tapping. Much of China's oil fields have yet to be tapped, there are many oil fields in Siberia that have been barely exploited, and the oil sands in western Canada have potentially more oil than all of Saudi Arabia!
Right now, scientists are studying the use of plant products to produce a synthetic diesel fuel equivalent called SynFuel. This could mean that agricultural waste could end up being converted to SynFuel, and we essentially have a renewable source of a diesel fuel equivalent.
In short, technology has advanced to the point that gasoline and diesel engines will still be viable 20 years from now, but they will burn extremely cleanly and a large fraction of the fuel source may come from the byproducts of agriculture.
I think what may be happening is that the deal between Transmeta and AMD means that Transmeta is looking for the possibility of using AMD's Fab 30 in Dresden, Germany to produce the Crusoe CPU.
AMD in turn will get the Crusoe technology to produce next-generation Athlon/"Hammer" CPU's that will use a very small fraction of the power of today's AMD CPU's, which makes them very viable for notebook computers.
Personally, I think AMD ought to get a deal with IBM Microelectronics to have IBM fabs manufacture the Athlon/"Hammer" CPU. People often forget that IBM Microelectronics have wafer fabs that are just as advanced as anything Intel has; it will give AMD the necessary production capacity to take on Intel easily.
GNOME has the very promising Nautilus project from Eazel that Andy Hertzfeld is working on, and from what I've seen of screenshots so far, it appears to be the easy-to-use and consistent interface for Linux everyone is waiting for. It also doesn't hurt that Hertzfeld is one of the acknowledged experts on interface design; he did much of the design work on the original Macintosh interface back in the early 1980's.
Because we -will- have a standardized interface (and very likely standardized API's) for GNOME that will be supported by all the important players, it'll save a -huge- amount of time in IT departments, since troubleshooting and system configuration will be much easier.
The nice thing about GNOME nowadays is the fact that Andy Hertzfeld is working on the Nautilus project, a way to give GNOME a truly consistent and easy-to-use interface. I applaud this effort because Hertzfeld is one of the few people out there that -does- have a clue about GUI interface design; after all, he helped develop much of the "look" of the original Macintosh interface back in the early 1980's. From what I've seen so far, Nautilus looks potentially like a major leap forward for GUI environments on Linux.
I think people should be asking this question: is the Internet going to affect how you vote because of faster dissemination of information?
What is happening with the Internet now is that not only are smaller political groups getting far more publicity than before (because you no longer have to actually print out newsletters to send to readers--they can the information online), but the Internet has become increasingly a "balance" to the mainstream media itself. The success of the Drudge Report already shows how this has drastically affected news operations around the world; the rise of news/commentary sites from almost every political persuasion in the last five years on the Web has also done much to shape public opinion.
While it's fashionable to dump on America Online, this idea of having any web browser be able to display AOL-formatted content may be a major Godsend for many users.
The advantages are extremely obvious: instead of using AOL's custom-written interface and communications front end, we can use standard TCP/IP client setups for dial-up analog modems, LAN, or broadband modems to connect to AOL. It also means AOL may change their email and newsgroup access so you can use any standard TCP/IP-based email or newsgroup reader.
People forget that AOL has POP's all over the USA and also much of Europe and Asia (far more than any ISP on this planet); the elimination of the need for a proprietary interface and communications setup could mean AOL access to anyone who can do TCP/IP connections.
I think people are forgetting that one thing that is contributing the fall of services like RemarQ is excellent online discussion board software such as Infopop's Ultimate Bulletin Board (UBB), which can be accessed from almost any Web browser that can run graphical mode.
Many major web sites with discussion boards use UBB for their discussion board inteface. UBB is pretty good because it does allow pretty tight moderation control over posters, and UBB allows for quotebacks and graphical smiley emoticons, which are more easily understandable than the ASCII-based "smileys."
Actually, Powerpuff Girls is way more than just a "mahou shoujo" anime parody.;-)
This show takes a lot of potshots at superheroes in general, and even more so, there has also been several parodies of -other- Japanese anime and Japanese monster movies, especially giant robots (I'm so glad Cartoon Network ran that seven-hour marathon of the best work).
Well, the other thing that killed RDRAM is the high price: US$500 or more per 128 MB RIMM module! (glyph of "Benjamins" sprouting wings and flying away at high speed)
Remember, today's PC-133 SDRAM modules cost about US$140 for 128 MB in most places; a DDR-SDRAM 128 MB module will probably cost around US$175-US$185. No wonder why people aren't so interested in RDRAM.
I think you all need to read a good textbook on microeconomics.
The reason why the states are suing the RIAA and the rapid rise in the popularity of Napster is simple: the RIAA and its member companies are engaging in cartel-like price fixing.
I mean, right now go to your local Tower Records, Sam Goody, or Virgin Megastore and look up the average price of a non-discounted album-length audio Compact Disc. Is it averaging US$17 to US$18? Now go look up an online CD retailer like CDNow, Borders and Buy.com; their average price is about US$14.
Both of these prices are bordering on exorbitant, and if you know how cartels work there is now massive incentive to get around this cartel. This is why Napster have become so popular, because people are tired of shelling out such high amounts of money for album-length CD's.
This is why I think the RIAA member companies should not charge more than US$9.00 per album-length CD. By lowering the price of the average CD to this price point the incentive to do piracy drops to very low levels, since more people can afford to buy the CD in the first place.
After reading the comments about the horrid install of Netscape 6.0 PR2, it appears that Internet Explorer will become the web browser of choice on both Windows and Macintosh platforms not because of Microsoft's market share, but because of Netscape's incompetence since the AOL takeover.:-(
You can gripe about IE all want, but it loads very fast on Windows and the Mac and also renders pages quite quickly, too. And Microsoft designed IE so it can be quickly updated to add new features, fix bugs, etc.
With all the complaints about the NS 6 install and startup times, if Netscape doesn't address these issues soon they will be finished, which is too bad because the "basic" Mozilla code itself is actually quite good.
I think this whole issue is a tempest in a teapot.
The reason is simple: there is this program called Partition Magic that allows you to run FAT16, FAT32, VFAT, NTFS, Linux EXT2, etc. on the same hard drive. I'm sure the publisher of Partition Magic will update the program so Windows ME users can also load a second operating system on the same drive on a different partition such as commercial Linux distributions. I won't be surprised that Caldera will release an update to OpenLinux e-Desktop 2.4 that does this.
I think people also forget that the new DoCoMo cellphones now coming out in Japan may look great, but their functionality is going to be nowhere near as flexible as the CDMA2000 specification phones that Verizon, Cellular One, and Sprint are working on (these three companies pretty much cover the whole USA).
Given that CDMA2000 can do 384 kilobits data transfer rate bidirectional, it now makes it possible to do surprisingly good quality real-time video over cellular in addition to very fast Internet access.
Unfortunately, another problem that plagues the K6 series of CPU is that most versions of the CPU has the L2 cache on the motherboard, which means sluggish memory access performance depending on application.
Because the L2 cache on the Celeron runs at full CPU speed and is on the CPU die itself, the result is much improved memory performance. Now you know why AMD built the Duron with its on-die 64 KB L2 memory cache in addition to the 128 KB L1 memory cache.
I think the issue right now is that the K6 series of CPU's is already obselete even compared against the Celeron.
The reason is simple: weak FPU performance. I wouldn't recommend the K6 series if you're doing any programs that requires lots of CPU and FPU processing power, programs such as CAD/CAM and image-processing software.
Besides, with the price of Celeron CPU's being so cheap and the arrival of the AMD Duron (which has none of the slow FPU problems that plague the K6 series), you'd be better off with today's CPU's anyway.
I read Tom Pabst's article and frankly, I have this feeling he may have gotten some bad parts.
The reason I say this is because Anandtech got the 1,130 MHz Pentium IIIEB working using a Slot 1 motherboard that uses the VIA Apollo Pro 133A chipset with good stability--and the performance was quite good, only limited by the somewhat slow memory management chipset.
It'll be interesting to see when will Intel ship the 1,130 MHz PIIIEB on FC-PGA format, though.
I think the people who are behind the SDMI initiative well know that the 40-bit encryption used on CSS is easily broken with any Pentium III/Athlon 600 MHz or faster CPU.
However, if the "watermark" code is 128-bit encrypted, then you can essentially make it almost unbreakable. After all, in order to break 128-bit encryption, you either need a very powerful supercomputer or a 400-plus node Beowulf cluster running in massively parallel fashion on a high-speed LAN, and even then it would take five to six hours just to break the encryption. This is of course way beyond the means of almost every hacker and cracker on this planet.
This is why I expect by 2010 most commercial digital media to have at least 256-bit encryption.
I think this whole arguement boils down to the fact it is a classic case of how to control the means to delivery of music -without violating Federal copyright laws-.
I mean, some people say that FM radio is delivering music for "free," but people conveniently forget a music radio station pays many, many thousands of dollars per year in copyright clearance fees to the American Society of Composers And Producers (ASCAP) and Broadcast Music Incorporated (BMI) so they could broadcast music over radio. In order for the radio station to continue existing in light of these hefty fees, they have to sell advertising time in order to cover the costs. For cable TV station like MTV, VH-1, CMT, GAC and BET, that could amount to -millions- of dollars per year in these fees to ASCAP and BMI. Besides, the music you hear on the air are often not perfect copies, since the radio station may use fader effects to overlap between songs and the radio announcers may be speaking at the beginning or end of song.
While Napster in theory is a great idea, the problem is that there is too much of a sizeable fraction of users that have effectively said "Why should pay for a CD when I can get the songs for free over Napster?" This group is most likely in the minority, but that still is a -big- minority of Napster users considering how popular Napster is.
By the way, I'm sure some people here would mention about the tape swapping of live recordings from Grateful Dead concerts. I have news for you: the people who engage in these activities have an unwritten rule that the tape swapping has to be done for at most the cost of shipment -and no additional costs-. This crowd knows very well to go beyond that is an instant violation of current copyright laws.
Anyway, what everyone is waiting for is a means to deliver music in CD-quality digital form over the Internet to a customer without violating copyright laws. That day may be coming soon: there are newer and better audio compression techniques now available, and the technology is just about in place to insert various forms of anti-piracy coding into the digital music file so only a very small number of "authorized" players can play back the file.
What I envision seeing is that by 2003-2004 the ability of people to buy individual songs from music company websites at a cost of five to six US cents per 30 second of music, which means a full album can be bought for the cost of US$6.00 to US$7.20 per hour. This pricing is more than enough to cover the cost of producing the song in the first place, since we skip on the often considerable expense in pressing an actual CD and the packaging for the CD, not to mention the shipping costs from CD manufacturing site to record store!
Now, before you flame me (and moderate me down to troll status:-) ), think of what this might do to older recordings. The cost of converting old master tapes in the record company vaults to digital format is quite low, and it quickly opens up a new avenue for people to buy out of print music at extremely low cost. Take for example popular Hawaiian music of the 1930's to 1940's, a niche market if there ever was one. Instead of having to scrounge through used record bins like crazy or wait for the record company to release the music on CD, the record company can have these old Hawaiian music stored on computer servers and you can buy them at the rate I mentioned above.
In short, we are now in a period of transition in the means of selling music to the public. I think 15 years from now buying new music is no longer going to be just going to the record store to buy it, it'll be more like going to an online music site, select the music you want to buy, and with a few menu commands you'll buy the songs and have it automatically downloaded to your local computer in a secure fashion.
I think people forget we -do- have laws on the books and international protocols on copyrights to follow when it comes to intellectual property.
Think about it: we in the USA have the Copyright Act of 1976 and the Digital Millenium Copyright Act to prohibit the distribution of copyrighted/trademarked material without proper conpensation, and we are also signatories to the Berne Convention protocols on copyrights, which does the same thing more or less internationally.
The problem with Napster is that people can pass around copyrighted music files without conpensating the artists who may have spent many hours of hard work creating the music, which is a real problem especially for less-popular artists.
Besides, all of you folks are conveniently forgetting that advances in technology in the last five years (e.g., better audio compression techniques and anti-piracy protection coding on the music file) has made it technically feasible to sell individual songs in digital form. Already, several RIAA member music companies are developing means to sell individual songs in digital form over the Internet at very low cost, since there is no need to produce an actual CD and add in the cost of packaging. The possibility exists we could buy songs at a rate of ten to twelve US cents per minute.
For example, take Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody." That song--just under 8 minutes long--could be purchased and downloaded at a cost of 80 to 96 US cents for this song, which is going to be far cheaper than buying a whole CD at US$13 to US$17 for the disc of even doing a CD single at US$3 to US$4 per disc.
It appears you folks are not going to make much headway in terms of "intellectual property" in terms of copyrights and registered trademarks.
You do forget that people work long hours to create these "intellectual properties," and they do want to be rewarded for their hard work. I mean, think about it: musicians often work six to seven days a week working more than 12 hours a day for several months to complete an album, and movies can often take 2-3 years to complete from start of production to making the final print for theaters.
Besides, the world is governed by the Berne Convention on Copyrights, and most of the "First World" countries (e.g., USA, Canada, the European countries, and Japan) have strict copyright laws internally.
Unless you can overturn these national laws and the Berne Convention protocols, you can essentially forget about doing anything that can circumvent copyright laws. That's why Napster is being shut down, and it's likely that the folks who wrote DeCSS may end up in legal hot water in the courts (even if they win their current case because you know the MPAA will appeal to the higher courts).
Anyway, here in the USA the dominant political parties are strongly in favor of copyright laws, so the chances are not good that either George W. Bush or Albert Gore, Jr. will favor any laws that overturns our current copyright protections.
Actually, most people do use Red Hat Linux because it has become an "IT manager approved" item due to the fact that you can get it preinstalled on machines from the likes of Dell and IBM.
Because RH Linux is so widely used, it means that when people think "Linux" the first company they want to get a commercial distribution -is- Red Hat.
Anyway, because of RH Linux's open design, you can run whatever GUI you want on top of it, just as long as it's reasonably standards-compliant. I'm waiting for Eazel "Nautilus" extension to GNOME that Andy Hertzfeld (one of the few people who really has a clue about proper interface design) is working on.
Besides, if you have a Red Hat Certified Engineer (RHCE) certification chances are pretty good that any company that does a lot of work on the Internet will hire you almost on the spot.;-)
the bulletin specifically states that if you do a default installation of Internet Explorer 5.01 Service Pack 1 or Internet Explorer 5.5, this will automatically install and/or upgrade to Outlook Express 5.5. Microsoft has specifically stated that OE 5.5 is -not- vulnerable to the issue that USSR Labs discovered. It should be noted that if you are running Windows 2000, you may have to apply the patch (which is now available) or do a manual upgrade to OE 5.5.
You unfortunate experience with X programming is proof why Miguel is not happy with the state of Linux as it stands.
You can bash Microsoft all you want, but the fact that there -is- standardization for API's and writing drivers makes life much easier for people developing programs.
Besides, if you want to make money, you do want to write for essentially 85% of the world's desktop computer users anyway.
Care to explain why Red Hat Linux has become the de facto standard for Linux? The reason is very simple: IT managers want -standardization-, which drastically reduces support and programming costs.
Because the likes of Dell Computer and IBM are big supporters of Red Hat, the fact that Dell and IBM will provide technical assistance in supporting Red Hat Linux means instant credibility for Red Hat in the corporate world, and it's probably the big reason why Red Hat Linux is the current de facto standard.
Slashdot Mirror
Ryan,
You didn't create pure hydrogen. 100% hydrogen burns with a colorless flame like methanol does. You may want to check for impurities, because hydrogen fires are impossible to see in many circumstances.
Folks,
While things like hydrogen power, fuell cells, battery power and now nitrogen power is potentially great for automobiles, people are forgetting that gasoline and diesel engines are far cleaner today then they were 30 years ago when emission controls first became common.
On the engine side, the rapid development more precise fuel metering, better combustion chamber design, catalytic converters and sophisticated computer controls have cut emission levels on gasoline and diesel engines over 93% compared to 1970 levels.
And today's gasoline and diesel burn quite a bit cleaner than the old fuels, too. Eliminating tetraethyl lead has reduced a major pollutant source, for one thing.
Already, the technology is now in place to reduce engine emissions to almost 98% lower than 1970 levels. The combination of direct injection of fuel into combustion chambers, closely-coupled catalytic converters or particulate traps (for diesel engines) and the advent of low-sulfur content fuels (sulfur content under 80 parts per billion) in the next few years will result in gasoline and diesel engines where the exhaust may end up being -cleaner- than the air going into the engine!
Besides, there is still a surprisingly amount of petroleum reserves we've not even come close to tapping. Much of China's oil fields have yet to be tapped, there are many oil fields in Siberia that have been barely exploited, and the oil sands in western Canada have potentially more oil than all of Saudi Arabia!
Right now, scientists are studying the use of plant products to produce a synthetic diesel fuel equivalent called SynFuel. This could mean that agricultural waste could end up being converted to SynFuel, and we essentially have a renewable source of a diesel fuel equivalent.
In short, technology has advanced to the point that gasoline and diesel engines will still be viable 20 years from now, but they will burn extremely cleanly and a large fraction of the fuel source may come from the byproducts of agriculture.
I think what may be happening is that the deal between Transmeta and AMD means that Transmeta is looking for the possibility of using AMD's Fab 30 in Dresden, Germany to produce the Crusoe CPU.
AMD in turn will get the Crusoe technology to produce next-generation Athlon/"Hammer" CPU's that will use a very small fraction of the power of today's AMD CPU's, which makes them very viable for notebook computers.
Personally, I think AMD ought to get a deal with IBM Microelectronics to have IBM fabs manufacture the Athlon/"Hammer" CPU. People often forget that IBM Microelectronics have wafer fabs that are just as advanced as anything Intel has; it will give AMD the necessary production capacity to take on Intel easily.
Not to worry.
GNOME has the very promising Nautilus project from Eazel that Andy Hertzfeld is working on, and from what I've seen of screenshots so far, it appears to be the easy-to-use and consistent interface for Linux everyone is waiting for. It also doesn't hurt that Hertzfeld is one of the acknowledged experts on interface design; he did much of the design work on the original Macintosh interface back in the early 1980's.
Because we -will- have a standardized interface (and very likely standardized API's) for GNOME that will be supported by all the important players, it'll save a -huge- amount of time in IT departments, since troubleshooting and system configuration will be much easier.
The nice thing about GNOME nowadays is the fact that Andy Hertzfeld is working on the Nautilus project, a way to give GNOME a truly consistent and easy-to-use interface. I applaud this effort because Hertzfeld is one of the few people out there that -does- have a clue about GUI interface design; after all, he helped develop much of the "look" of the original Macintosh interface back in the early 1980's. From what I've seen so far, Nautilus looks potentially like a major leap forward for GUI environments on Linux.
Folks,
I think people should be asking this question: is the Internet going to affect how you vote because of faster dissemination of information?
What is happening with the Internet now is that not only are smaller political groups getting far more publicity than before (because you no longer have to actually print out newsletters to send to readers--they can the information online), but the Internet has become increasingly a "balance" to the mainstream media itself. The success of the Drudge Report already shows how this has drastically affected news operations around the world; the rise of news/commentary sites from almost every political persuasion in the last five years on the Web has also done much to shape public opinion.
Folks,
While it's fashionable to dump on America Online, this idea of having any web browser be able to display AOL-formatted content may be a major Godsend for many users.
The advantages are extremely obvious: instead of using AOL's custom-written interface and communications front end, we can use standard TCP/IP client setups for dial-up analog modems, LAN, or broadband modems to connect to AOL. It also means AOL may change their email and newsgroup access so you can use any standard TCP/IP-based email or newsgroup reader.
People forget that AOL has POP's all over the USA and also much of Europe and Asia (far more than any ISP on this planet); the elimination of the need for a proprietary interface and communications setup could mean AOL access to anyone who can do TCP/IP connections.
I think people are forgetting that one thing that is contributing the fall of services like RemarQ is excellent online discussion board software such as Infopop's Ultimate Bulletin Board (UBB), which can be accessed from almost any Web browser that can run graphical mode.
Many major web sites with discussion boards use UBB for their discussion board inteface. UBB is pretty good because it does allow pretty tight moderation control over posters, and UBB allows for quotebacks and graphical smiley emoticons, which are more easily understandable than the ASCII-based "smileys."
Actually, Powerpuff Girls is way more than just a "mahou shoujo" anime parody. ;-)
This show takes a lot of potshots at superheroes in general, and even more so, there has also been several parodies of -other- Japanese anime and Japanese monster movies, especially giant robots (I'm so glad Cartoon Network ran that seven-hour marathon of the best work).
Well, the other thing that killed RDRAM is the high price: US$500 or more per 128 MB RIMM module! (glyph of "Benjamins" sprouting wings and flying away at high speed)
Remember, today's PC-133 SDRAM modules cost about US$140 for 128 MB in most places; a DDR-SDRAM 128 MB module will probably cost around US$175-US$185. No wonder why people aren't so interested in RDRAM.
Folks,
I think you all need to read a good textbook on microeconomics.
The reason why the states are suing the RIAA and the rapid rise in the popularity of Napster is simple: the RIAA and its member companies are engaging in cartel-like price fixing.
I mean, right now go to your local Tower Records, Sam Goody, or Virgin Megastore and look up the average price of a non-discounted album-length audio Compact Disc. Is it averaging US$17 to US$18? Now go look up an online CD retailer like CDNow, Borders and Buy.com; their average price is about US$14.
Both of these prices are bordering on exorbitant, and if you know how cartels work there is now massive incentive to get around this cartel. This is why Napster have become so popular, because people are tired of shelling out such high amounts of money for album-length CD's.
This is why I think the RIAA member companies should not charge more than US$9.00 per album-length CD. By lowering the price of the average CD to this price point the incentive to do piracy drops to very low levels, since more people can afford to buy the CD in the first place.
After reading the comments about the horrid install of Netscape 6.0 PR2, it appears that Internet Explorer will become the web browser of choice on both Windows and Macintosh platforms not because of Microsoft's market share, but because of Netscape's incompetence since the AOL takeover. :-(
You can gripe about IE all want, but it loads very fast on Windows and the Mac and also renders pages quite quickly, too. And Microsoft designed IE so it can be quickly updated to add new features, fix bugs, etc.
With all the complaints about the NS 6 install and startup times, if Netscape doesn't address these issues soon they will be finished, which is too bad because the "basic" Mozilla code itself is actually quite good.
Folks,
I think this whole issue is a tempest in a teapot.
The reason is simple: there is this program called Partition Magic that allows you to run FAT16, FAT32, VFAT, NTFS, Linux EXT2, etc. on the same hard drive. I'm sure the publisher of Partition Magic will update the program so Windows ME users can also load a second operating system on the same drive on a different partition such as commercial Linux distributions. I won't be surprised that Caldera will release an update to OpenLinux e-Desktop 2.4 that does this.
I think people also forget that the new DoCoMo cellphones now coming out in Japan may look great, but their functionality is going to be nowhere near as flexible as the CDMA2000 specification phones that Verizon, Cellular One, and Sprint are working on (these three companies pretty much cover the whole USA).
Given that CDMA2000 can do 384 kilobits data transfer rate bidirectional, it now makes it possible to do surprisingly good quality real-time video over cellular in addition to very fast Internet access.
Unfortunately, another problem that plagues the K6 series of CPU is that most versions of the CPU has the L2 cache on the motherboard, which means sluggish memory access performance depending on application.
Because the L2 cache on the Celeron runs at full CPU speed and is on the CPU die itself, the result is much improved memory performance. Now you know why AMD built the Duron with its on-die 64 KB L2 memory cache in addition to the 128 KB L1 memory cache.
I think the issue right now is that the K6 series of CPU's is already obselete even compared against the Celeron.
The reason is simple: weak FPU performance. I wouldn't recommend the K6 series if you're doing any programs that requires lots of CPU and FPU processing power, programs such as CAD/CAM and image-processing software.
Besides, with the price of Celeron CPU's being so cheap and the arrival of the AMD Duron (which has none of the slow FPU problems that plague the K6 series), you'd be better off with today's CPU's anyway.
I read Tom Pabst's article and frankly, I have this feeling he may have gotten some bad parts.
The reason I say this is because Anandtech got the 1,130 MHz Pentium IIIEB working using a Slot 1 motherboard that uses the VIA Apollo Pro 133A chipset with good stability--and the performance was quite good, only limited by the somewhat slow memory management chipset.
It'll be interesting to see when will Intel ship the 1,130 MHz PIIIEB on FC-PGA format, though.
I think the people who are behind the SDMI initiative well know that the 40-bit encryption used on CSS is easily broken with any Pentium III/Athlon 600 MHz or faster CPU.
However, if the "watermark" code is 128-bit encrypted, then you can essentially make it almost unbreakable. After all, in order to break 128-bit encryption, you either need a very powerful supercomputer or a 400-plus node Beowulf cluster running in massively parallel fashion on a high-speed LAN, and even then it would take five to six hours just to break the encryption. This is of course way beyond the means of almost every hacker and cracker on this planet.
This is why I expect by 2010 most commercial digital media to have at least 256-bit encryption.
Folks,
:-) ), think of what this might do to older recordings. The cost of converting old master tapes in the record company vaults to digital format is quite low, and it quickly opens up a new avenue for people to buy out of print music at extremely low cost. Take for example popular Hawaiian music of the 1930's to 1940's, a niche market if there ever was one. Instead of having to scrounge through used record bins like crazy or wait for the record company to release the music on CD, the record company can have these old Hawaiian music stored on computer servers and you can buy them at the rate I mentioned above.
I think this whole arguement boils down to the fact it is a classic case of how to control the means to delivery of music -without violating Federal copyright laws-.
I mean, some people say that FM radio is delivering music for "free," but people conveniently forget a music radio station pays many, many thousands of dollars per year in copyright clearance fees to the American Society of Composers And Producers (ASCAP) and Broadcast Music Incorporated (BMI) so they could broadcast music over radio. In order for the radio station to continue existing in light of these hefty fees, they have to sell advertising time in order to cover the costs. For cable TV station like MTV, VH-1, CMT, GAC and BET, that could amount to -millions- of dollars per year in these fees to ASCAP and BMI. Besides, the music you hear on the air are often not perfect copies, since the radio station may use fader effects to overlap between songs and the radio announcers may be speaking at the beginning or end of song.
While Napster in theory is a great idea, the problem is that there is too much of a sizeable fraction of users that have effectively said "Why should pay for a CD when I can get the songs for free over Napster?" This group is most likely in the minority, but that still is a -big- minority of Napster users considering how popular Napster is.
By the way, I'm sure some people here would mention about the tape swapping of live recordings from Grateful Dead concerts. I have news for you: the people who engage in these activities have an unwritten rule that the tape swapping has to be done for at most the cost of shipment -and no additional costs-. This crowd knows very well to go beyond that is an instant violation of current copyright laws.
Anyway, what everyone is waiting for is a means to deliver music in CD-quality digital form over the Internet to a customer without violating copyright laws. That day may be coming soon: there are newer and better audio compression techniques now available, and the technology is just about in place to insert various forms of anti-piracy coding into the digital music file so only a very small number of "authorized" players can play back the file.
What I envision seeing is that by 2003-2004 the ability of people to buy individual songs from music company websites at a cost of five to six US cents per 30 second of music, which means a full album can be bought for the cost of US$6.00 to US$7.20 per hour. This pricing is more than enough to cover the cost of producing the song in the first place, since we skip on the often considerable expense in pressing an actual CD and the packaging for the CD, not to mention the shipping costs from CD manufacturing site to record store!
Now, before you flame me (and moderate me down to troll status
In short, we are now in a period of transition in the means of selling music to the public. I think 15 years from now buying new music is no longer going to be just going to the record store to buy it, it'll be more like going to an online music site, select the music you want to buy, and with a few menu commands you'll buy the songs and have it automatically downloaded to your local computer in a secure fashion.
Folks,
I think people forget we -do- have laws on the books and international protocols on copyrights to follow when it comes to intellectual property.
Think about it: we in the USA have the Copyright Act of 1976 and the Digital Millenium Copyright Act to prohibit the distribution of copyrighted/trademarked material without proper conpensation, and we are also signatories to the Berne Convention protocols on copyrights, which does the same thing more or less internationally.
The problem with Napster is that people can pass around copyrighted music files without conpensating the artists who may have spent many hours of hard work creating the music, which is a real problem especially for less-popular artists.
Besides, all of you folks are conveniently forgetting that advances in technology in the last five years (e.g., better audio compression techniques and anti-piracy protection coding on the music file) has made it technically feasible to sell individual songs in digital form. Already, several RIAA member music companies are developing means to sell individual songs in digital form over the Internet at very low cost, since there is no need to produce an actual CD and add in the cost of packaging. The possibility exists we could buy songs at a rate of ten to twelve US cents per minute.
For example, take Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody." That song--just under 8 minutes long--could be purchased and downloaded at a cost of 80 to 96 US cents for this song, which is going to be far cheaper than buying a whole CD at US$13 to US$17 for the disc of even doing a CD single at US$3 to US$4 per disc.
Folks,
It appears you folks are not going to make much headway in terms of "intellectual property" in terms of copyrights and registered trademarks.
You do forget that people work long hours to create these "intellectual properties," and they do want to be rewarded for their hard work. I mean, think about it: musicians often work six to seven days a week working more than 12 hours a day for several months to complete an album, and movies can often take 2-3 years to complete from start of production to making the final print for theaters.
Besides, the world is governed by the Berne Convention on Copyrights, and most of the "First World" countries (e.g., USA, Canada, the European countries, and Japan) have strict copyright laws internally.
Unless you can overturn these national laws and the Berne Convention protocols, you can essentially forget about doing anything that can circumvent copyright laws. That's why Napster is being shut down, and it's likely that the folks who wrote DeCSS may end up in legal hot water in the courts (even if they win their current case because you know the MPAA will appeal to the higher courts).
Anyway, here in the USA the dominant political parties are strongly in favor of copyright laws, so the chances are not good that either George W. Bush or Albert Gore, Jr. will favor any laws that overturns our current copyright protections.
Actually, most people do use Red Hat Linux because it has become an "IT manager approved" item due to the fact that you can get it preinstalled on machines from the likes of Dell and IBM.
;-)
Because RH Linux is so widely used, it means that when people think "Linux" the first company they want to get a commercial distribution -is- Red Hat.
Anyway, because of RH Linux's open design, you can run whatever GUI you want on top of it, just as long as it's reasonably standards-compliant. I'm waiting for Eazel "Nautilus" extension to GNOME that Andy Hertzfeld (one of the few people who really has a clue about proper interface design) is working on.
Besides, if you have a Red Hat Certified Engineer (RHCE) certification chances are pretty good that any company that does a lot of work on the Internet will hire you almost on the spot.
I think you -better- read that bulletin again.
t in/MS00-043.asp
According this web page:
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/bulle
the bulletin specifically states that if you do a default installation of Internet Explorer 5.01 Service Pack 1 or Internet Explorer 5.5, this will automatically install and/or upgrade to Outlook Express 5.5. Microsoft has specifically stated that OE 5.5 is -not- vulnerable to the issue that USSR Labs discovered. It should be noted that if you are running Windows 2000, you may have to apply the patch (which is now available) or do a manual upgrade to OE 5.5.
Stripes,
You unfortunate experience with X programming is proof why Miguel is not happy with the state of Linux as it stands.
You can bash Microsoft all you want, but the fact that there -is- standardization for API's and writing drivers makes life much easier for people developing programs.
Besides, if you want to make money, you do want to write for essentially 85% of the world's desktop computer users anyway.
I have news for you.
Care to explain why Red Hat Linux has become the de facto standard for Linux? The reason is very simple: IT managers want -standardization-, which drastically reduces support and programming costs.
Because the likes of Dell Computer and IBM are big supporters of Red Hat, the fact that Dell and IBM will provide technical assistance in supporting Red Hat Linux means instant credibility for Red Hat in the corporate world, and it's probably the big reason why Red Hat Linux is the current de facto standard.