You can flame Microsoft all you want, but the fact that Windows has a singular WIN32 API drastically simplifies program development and software driver development. Because of that standardization, that's why most of the world's commercial software for desktop machines -are- being written for Windows.
The problem with Linux above the kernel level is that you can run into a situation of multiple competing API's for most everything, which can become a bit of a programming nightmare. That's why people are gravitating towards supporting Red Hat, Caldera, S.u.S.E. and TurboLinux commercial distributions, because at least you'll know what API's to program for with each commercial distribution of Linux. Is it small wonder why Red Hat has become the "de facto" standard for Linux almost everywhere?
I think what people don't know about Nausicaa.net is that it is by far one of the best sites I've seen to explain Japanese anime period, in this the works of Studio Ghibli.
This site is so well-done that I've heard that even Hayao Miyazaki is most impressed by the depth and scope of how Nausicaa.net explains each Studio Ghibli movie release to non-Japanese audiences.
Because the people who run Nausicaa.net are given a nod of approval by Miyazaki himself, that's why when Nausicaa.net had that petition going it definitely had the credibility to persuade Buena Vista Video to delay the DVD version of Princess Mononoke until they can release an English/Japanese DVD with extensive background notes and details on the making of the movie.
If you are running Internet Explorer 4.x, 5.0 and 5.01, the fastest solution to avoid this exploit is to immediately upgrade to at least Internet Explorer 5.01 Service Pack 1.
IE 5.01 SP1 (which avoids the hassles that has plagued some IE 5.5 users) not only has a upgraded browser (which corrects a problem where certain.OCX controls specific to IE can cause memory leak problems) but also incorporates Outlook Express 5.5, which is not vulnerable to the exploit described by USSR Labs.
I believe there will be a fix available on the Windows Update web site that will correct this issue by upgradeing a number of.DLL files--but this is only for IE 4.x and IE 5.0/5.01 users.
I think while the movie has some obvious flaws in terms of character development, I think the best part is the fact we concentrate on Magneto and Professor Xavier.
The reason is simple: it gives two sides on an issue that is still important right now: how do we deal with people who are "too gifted" or just "too different"?
I mean, Jon Katz has it right in a way when we have automatic prejudices against people who "march to the beat of a different drummer." I mean, we celebrate people with great athletic prowness (that's always an "in" thing to do), yet we sneer at people with great skills at science/math and music as "geeks," "freaks" and other derogatory names.
Unfortunately, this issue has been with us all the way from ancient times. Remember the herbalists/folk healers of the Middle Ages? And how the Catholic Church branded them with practicing witchcraft and went on a series of progroms that led to unknown thousands of people being killed for all the wrong reasons?
In many ways, the X-Men saga is a modern interpretation of that old struggle. Here we have humans with enhanced abilities called "mutants" being called "freaks" and a menace to society by many people, and it is this environment that we see how Xavier and Magneto operate.
By the way, for all you fans of Joanne K. Rowling's HARRY POTTER books, you see this theme strongly resonate in the four books. Consider what Petunia Dursley said about Harry in front of Hagrid:
"Knew!" shrieked Aunt Petunia suddenly. "_Knew_! Of course we knew. How could you not be, my dratted sister being what she was? Oh, she got a letter just like that and disappeared off to that--that _school_--and came home every vacation with her pockets full of frog spawn, turning teacups into rats. I was the only one who she her for what she was--a freak! But for my mother and father, oh no, it was Lily this and Lily that, they were proud of having a witch in the family!"
"Then she met that Potter at school and they left and got married and had you, and of course I knew you'd be just the same, just as strange, just as--as--_abnormal_--and then, if you please, she went and got herself blown up and we got landed with you!"
From J.K. Rowling, HARRY POTTER AND THE SORCERER'S STONE, page 53, Scholastic 1998.
I think that passage from the first HARRY POTTER novel does just as well summing up how normal people feel about people with out-of-the-ordinary non-athletic skills. Sadly, it appears that the theme from the X-MEN comic books is still with us today--essentially the human penchant for xenophobia and its destructive effects.
I'm surprised it took THIS long for Sun to finally make StarOffice licensed under the GNU General Public License.
After all, by definition the GPL should include the source code; given that we're seeing StarOffice included as part of a number of commercial Linux distributions they should have done this months ago.
It's going to be very interesting to see how well StarOffice does against WordPerfect Office in the Linux market.
One reason why we don't see more diesel-powered cars for sale in the USA is the fact that US-market diesel fuel has a high level of sulfur compounds in the fuel (usually 1200 to 1500 parts per billion), which can damage the advanced diesel fuel systems in and fuel injectors we are starting to see in Europe.
But with the EPA mandating strict limits on sulfur compounds in diesel fuel (e.g. under 100 parts per billion), then we can see things like common-rail injection systems and direct-injection systems more often. Curing the other big bugaboos of diesel fuel (e.g., NOx emissions and particulate emissions) is already easily done nowadays.
I've read articles on the amazing BMW 330d, a 3.0-liter L-6 turbodiesel with great performance and nearly 40 mpg fuel mileage in daily driving. I won't be surprised once the new EPA limits are in place that we see this model in the US market.
By the way, you might want to hear some great news: Alfa Romeo is returning to the US market! They are planning to import the current GTV/Spider model in about a years' time, and they also plan to import the replacement for the 156 model (that should be called the 157). And it's likely one of the "157" models will have a 2.7-liter V-6 turbodiesel belting out around 205 bhp and getting 35 mpg!
Actually, the day of widespread use of diesel engines in the USA is not as far away as you think it is.
Because of new EPA requirements for diesel fuel to have sulfur content under 80 parts per billion (most diesel fuel in the US usually has around 1200 parts per billion), this makes it very viable for the Europeans to bring over their diesel-powered cars in a few years.
Once the new low-sulfur diesel fuel is widely available, Volkswagen/Audi, BMW and Mercedes-Benz plan to offer a large number of diesel-powered vehicles for US sale with advanced technologies such as common-rail high-pressure direct fuel injection and other new diesel engine technologies (they've also managed to lick the problem of particulate emissions and close-coupled catalytic converters dramatically reduce NOx emissions).
And don't think they slow, either. I suggest people drive the European-market BMW 330d; people were amazed by its very fast performance and also gas mileage approaching 40 mpg!
I also do agree that dieself fuel is more easily refined than gasoline; in fact, you can make diesel fuel equivalents from biomass, coal, oil tar, etc. very easily also. In fact, there are a number of oil companies now working on a motor fuel called SynFuel that has the combustion characteristics of diesel fuel, but burns extremely cleanly. Unlike regular diesel fuel, SynFuel can be made easily from biomass sources easily.
Speaking of alternate energy sources, back in the 1980's there was a homeowner in Cameron Park, CA (this is 22 miles east of Sacramento, CA) who had a house with solar-powered EVERYTHING (water heater, electric generation, and so on) and saw his Pacific Gas & Electric bill go from US$12.80 to US$28.00! He was definitely -not- a happy camper considering he was just about completely off the electric grid! It's situations like this that give the utility company a big black eye.
In my opinion, 25 years from now the average automobile may be fuelled either by something called Synfuel (it burns like diesel fuel but has vastly cleaner burning characteristics) or by fuel cells that use hydrogen.
The gasoline-powered automobile is still a viable means of transportation, because thanks to massive improvements in engine and emission-control technology since the 1970's, today's average automobile emit under 5% of the pollutants of a car circa 1970.
The development of catalytic converters, fuel injection systems, electronic engine controls and improved combustion chamber design has allowed automobiles to have excellent performance yet have extremely low emissions.
Remember, the entire world is going towards this end, too. The California Super Ultra-Low Emission Vehicle (SULEV), Japan's upcoming Stage III standard for 2004, and the European "Euro 2005" standards are almost identical in regards to emissions, and already companies like Honda, Toyota and Nissan have already manufactured cars that can meet these tough restrictions, with companies like Volkswagen/Audi, BMW and DaimlerChrysler closely following behind. These standards are so strict that it is more than likely the air going INTO the engine will be dirtier than the air coming OUT of the engine!
By drastically reducing the amount of sulphur compounds per billion in both gasoline and diesel fuel (something already required in California), it now makes it possible to introduce direct-injection systems that has the fuel injector directly injecting the fuel into the combustion chamber. This allows extremely precise metering of fuel necessary to do proper combustion, and that in turn increases fuel economy and reduces exhaust emissions at the same time.
In short, the gasoline engine is still a long way from dead. The technology is now in place to reduce pollutants to almost one percent (!!) of what a 1970 model year car emits and still get 15 to 20 percent better fuel mileage.
It appears that people are kind of missing the point of what the increasingly easy access to rapid content distribution is doing to our society.
I think everyone here ought to reread Alvin Toffler's famous book THE THIRD WAVE, released in 1980. He said that the rapid improvements in communications technology will break the cycle of people depending on a few sources of information from large, centralized media companies--the "demassification" of mass media.
The fact we have rapid growth of specialized magazines, newspapers, 70-plus channel cable TV systems, 200-plus channel personal satellite TV receivers, and the explosive growth of the commercial Internet and its ability to cater information to almost any need (look at the rise of everything the Drudge Report to even Slashdot) means that most people have the ability to get information from a variety of sources that would not have been imaginable even ten years ago.
And the Internet allows us to trade information and goods at a pace that is also unimaginable ten years ago. The rise of Napster has heavily upset the whole idea of "massified" distribution of music through our record companies, and the success of eBay has allowed anyone with a computer to trade any physical good without using a middleman.
In short, the rise of the commercial Internet has given what the Institutional school of economics calls increased choice, because we are no longer dependent on a few choices in terms of buying and selling goods. And our society can barely keep up with the change.
Now that several Japanese companies will work with TurboLinux to create a standardized embedded Linux for small electronic devices, one good thing is that we will end up with a "de facto" standard for embedded Linux so programming for such devices will be quite a bit easier.
I'm not surprised that TurboLinux is involved in this project given that TurboLinux was developed originally so it could support Asian character sets such as Big 5 and Shift-JIS. This way, the Japanese programmers can work much of the time in their own native language.
Given that you the average 128 Kbps stream.MP3 file is about a megabyte per minute of audio, adding any extra audio for an advertisement--even for 30 seconds--will increase the size of the file pretty quick. That's why I'm not too thrilled at the idea.
The problem with adding advertisements to.MP3 files is that they're going to dramatically increase the size of the.MP3 file anyways. That's something that is a big no-no even if you have a "fat pipe" broadband ADSL or cable modem connection.
What's interesting in all these comments is the fact that while everyone is arguing the merits of.MP3 files and Napster, the commercial record companies are already pushing ahead with a newer and better digital music file technology called AAC (Advanced Audio Coding).
Unlike.MP3 files, AAC files can be as much as 25% smaller in size for the same sound quality (and in fact, AAC files have better sound quality because they encode at the same 44.1 KHz sampling rate as commercial CD's) thanks to the use of better encoding techniques than the technology used on.MP3 files.
Also, AAC files are designed to work closely with current copyright protection technologies, so it is a format that is supported by the Secure Digital Music Initiative (SDMI). I think it's possible to encode AAC files so while you can download it for free, the file will become unusable after so many plays.
In fact, already a number of electronic manufacturers will soon sell portable players that can play AAC files. And we should see a proliferation of AAC player programs for Windows and Macintosh very soon.
Look, I said originally that more or less that overclocking can be dangerous -if you don't know what you are doing-.
Overclocking is more than just cranking up the speed of the CPU. Because higher speeds can heat up the CPU quite a bit, cause bus speeds to be beyond the safe limits of many peripheral cards, and in many cases cause a bigger draw on the power supply, knowledgeable people will do things like get a high-quality CPU heatsink/fan, extra cooling fans, a beefier power supply and check around to get peripheral cards that works at high-than-normal bus speeds.
In short, if you want to overclock your CPU, you better do your homework or you'll be wondering why the CPU literally melted down and you're getting strange OS crashes.
Given that most motherboards that can accept the Pentium III already have at least ATA-33 IDE hard drive support, the best thing to do is get a 7200 rpm or faster hard drive. That makes a big difference if you're reading big files.
And with the price of CD-ROM drives so darned cheap nowadays, you should also consider getting a 48X to 52X drive for US$50-US$60, too.;-)
When your system has enough system RAM, it will run quite fast because the OS doesn't have to use the hard drive as virtual memory, which speeds things up quite a bit.
The majority of computer users out there have reservations about overclocking your CPU because trying it can be a very dangerous thing to do.
Between running the risk of melting down the CPU, causing some peripheral cards to not work properly because you had to increase the FSB speed in your overclocking attempt, and causing general system failures because your power supply can't keep up, it's not really worth the effort unless you're willing to spend the time and effort to get top-notch system cases, extra cooling fans, extra big CPU heatsink/fans, and top-quality 300 watt or larger power supplies.
Besides, nowadays the real bottleneck isn't the CPU. You get much more immediate benefits by getting as much system RAM as you can afford and buying a 7200 rpm or faster hard drive.
I think if you look back even to ancient times, any large human habitation was going to have a major effect on the weather locally.
The reason is simple: the need to burn combustible materials as fuel for various purposes. After all, when you have to burn lots of wood, coal, peat, dried dung, etc. for cooking, metalsmithing, providing heat in winter, etc., that will create climatic changes caused by the residue of such activities--namely various forms of air pollution.
I think if the Transmeta folks think they can compete against Intel in the sub-notebook market (note I didn't say small, handheld units where input are done by stylus pointer), they may have trouble convincing people to do so.
Remember, the latest Celeron 500 MHz mobile CPU already uses less than 2 watts of power during normal operation, and this is the Celeron that uses the 0.18-micron process. Given the fact that Intel will start switching to the 0.13-micron process for many of their CPU lines in early 2001, we can extrapolate that Intel will produce a version of the Celeron mobile CPU using the 0.13-micron process, and that could mean that the Celeron mobile CPU could use less than 1 watt of power during normal operation, which might negate all the supposed advantages of the Crusoe CPU.
Besides, given that most laptop users use their machines mostly for business applications and Internet access, there is no pressing need for the ultimate in CPU performance. The current Celeron CPU is more than sufficient to run business applications and surf the web at reasonably fast speeds.
I think one issue Transmeta may face is the fact that Intel's latest Celeron mobile CPU's are already using far less power consumption than their predecessors.
Once Intel goes to the 0.13 micron process to make the Celeron mobile CPU, the chances are good this future Celeron variant will have the same power consumption as the Transmeta CPU.
Remember, for business applications and Web browsing, the Celeron CPU with its on-die 128 KB L2 cache is more than sufficient for most users, even in corporate environments. It's only in environments where CPU power is at a premium (high-end games, illustration programs, image-processing programs and CAD/CAM programs) where the Pentium III and Athlon CPU's really become userful.
The big downside about considering a Duron CPU is the fact the motherboards that support Socket A tend to be really finicky when it comes to a decent power supply (you want at LEAST a 250 watt ATX 2.03-compliant unit).
I think I'll stay with a Socket 370-based motherboard until the motherboard manufacturers find a way to reduce the power consumption of Socket A-based motherboards.
"But I personally would want to know if the case brought against Microsoft was done so illegaly. If industry money promoted the trial, that has a large impact on me personally. I just began work in this industry and the future of Microsoft and the industy as a whole will personally affect my life for as long as I get paid to write code."
BINGO.
What Oracle may have done is essentially using a known-corrupt Clinton Administration to destroy Microsoft to protect its own turf. This makes Larry Ellison just as devious as John D. Rockefeller during the height of power of the Standard Oil Trust when the company used all kinds of blatant "dirty tricks" to destroy competitors.
By the way, you might want to know that the private detective agency Oracle hired is IGI, a company hired by the Clintons to dig up dirt on anyone opposing them. Is it possible that despite Ellison's claim he has reservations about the Clintons Mr. Ellison was persuaded in some way by the Clinton cronies and their friends in the Department of Justice to use IGI to dig up dirt on Microsoft?
In short, this whole bizzare scenario is right out of Ayn Rand's novel ATLAS SHRUGGED.
But they're very close to the line. Remember, Disney, Viacom/CBS and soon AOL Time Warner not only has the major means of content creation, but also major control of content distribution, too.
I mean, look at AOL Time Warner. The majority of their divisions are THE dominant player in their respective fields (they are perhaps THE most influential company in the cable/satellite TV market when you combine CNN, CNN Headline News, CNNfn, CNN/SI, CNN International, TBS Superstation, TNT, Turner Classic Movies, HBO, HBO Multichannel, HBO Family, HBO en Espanol, Cinemax, Cinemax Multichannel, and TVKO PPV). AOL Time Warner is essentially the fictional Elliot Carver's multimedia empire from the James Bond movie TOMORROW NEVER DIES becoming reality. AOL Time Warner's conglomeration of media power has literally no precedent in the history of the entertainment and newsgathering companies.
Yes, Bill Gates did try to please that monster called the Clinton Administration, but I think Ellison and McNealy may have given a LOT more money to the Democratic National Committee to stay in the Clintons' good graces. If that is true then a grand jury investigation may be warranted to look at what kind of relationship Oracle and Sun has with Clinton Administration officials and the Department of Justice. If this means Oracle and Sun are paying what amounts to "protection money" to the DNC they could be in BIG trouble for violating RICO statutes.
If you feel that way, then care to openly why every poll has Al Gore averaging about 10 percentage points down to George W. Bush?
Is it because Americans are tiring of the fact that the Clinton Administration is more than willing to destroy anyone that doesn't toe the Clinton line? Care to wonder why the DoJ has been ominously silent about the Disney-ABC, Viacom-CBS and soon AOL-Time Warner mergers? Mergers that will have much more serious effects than what Microsoft now wields?
You can laugh all you want, but unfortunately for you the majority of Americans aren't buying your views.
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You just hit it right on the nose.
You can flame Microsoft all you want, but the fact that Windows has a singular WIN32 API drastically simplifies program development and software driver development. Because of that standardization, that's why most of the world's commercial software for desktop machines -are- being written for Windows.
The problem with Linux above the kernel level is that you can run into a situation of multiple competing API's for most everything, which can become a bit of a programming nightmare. That's why people are gravitating towards supporting Red Hat, Caldera, S.u.S.E. and TurboLinux commercial distributions, because at least you'll know what API's to program for with each commercial distribution of Linux. Is it small wonder why Red Hat has become the "de facto" standard for Linux almost everywhere?
I think what people don't know about Nausicaa.net is that it is by far one of the best sites I've seen to explain Japanese anime period, in this the works of Studio Ghibli.
This site is so well-done that I've heard that even Hayao Miyazaki is most impressed by the depth and scope of how Nausicaa.net explains each Studio Ghibli movie release to non-Japanese audiences.
Because the people who run Nausicaa.net are given a nod of approval by Miyazaki himself, that's why when Nausicaa.net had that petition going it definitely had the credibility to persuade Buena Vista Video to delay the DVD version of Princess Mononoke until they can release an English/Japanese DVD with extensive background notes and details on the making of the movie.
If you are running Internet Explorer 4.x, 5.0 and 5.01, the fastest solution to avoid this exploit is to immediately upgrade to at least Internet Explorer 5.01 Service Pack 1.
.OCX controls specific to IE can cause memory leak problems) but also incorporates Outlook Express 5.5, which is not vulnerable to the exploit described by USSR Labs.
.DLL files--but this is only for IE 4.x and IE 5.0/5.01 users.
IE 5.01 SP1 (which avoids the hassles that has plagued some IE 5.5 users) not only has a upgraded browser (which corrects a problem where certain
I believe there will be a fix available on the Windows Update web site that will correct this issue by upgradeing a number of
I think while the movie has some obvious flaws in terms of character development, I think the best part is the fact we concentrate on Magneto and Professor Xavier.
The reason is simple: it gives two sides on an issue that is still important right now: how do we deal with people who are "too gifted" or just "too different"?
I mean, Jon Katz has it right in a way when we have automatic prejudices against people who "march to the beat of a different drummer." I mean, we celebrate people with great athletic prowness (that's always an "in" thing to do), yet we sneer at people with great skills at science/math and music as "geeks," "freaks" and other derogatory names.
Unfortunately, this issue has been with us all the way from ancient times. Remember the herbalists/folk healers of the Middle Ages? And how the Catholic Church branded them with practicing witchcraft and went on a series of progroms that led to unknown thousands of people being killed for all the wrong reasons?
In many ways, the X-Men saga is a modern interpretation of that old struggle. Here we have humans with enhanced abilities called "mutants" being called "freaks" and a menace to society by many people, and it is this environment that we see how Xavier and Magneto operate.
By the way, for all you fans of Joanne K. Rowling's HARRY POTTER books, you see this theme strongly resonate in the four books. Consider what Petunia Dursley said about Harry in front of Hagrid:
"Knew!" shrieked Aunt Petunia suddenly. "_Knew_! Of course we knew. How could you not be, my dratted sister being what she was? Oh, she got a letter just like that and disappeared off to that--that _school_--and came home every vacation with her pockets full of frog spawn, turning teacups into rats. I was the only one who she her for what she was--a freak! But for my mother and father, oh no, it was Lily this and Lily that, they were proud of having a witch in the family!"
"Then she met that Potter at school and they left and got married and had you, and of course I knew you'd be just the same, just as strange, just as--as--_abnormal_--and then, if you please, she went and got herself blown up and we got landed with you!"
From J.K. Rowling, HARRY POTTER AND THE SORCERER'S STONE, page 53, Scholastic 1998.
I think that passage from the first HARRY POTTER novel does just as well summing up how normal people feel about people with out-of-the-ordinary non-athletic skills. Sadly, it appears that the theme from the X-MEN comic books is still with us today--essentially the human penchant for xenophobia and its destructive effects.
I'm surprised it took THIS long for Sun to finally make StarOffice licensed under the GNU General Public License.
After all, by definition the GPL should include the source code; given that we're seeing StarOffice included as part of a number of commercial Linux distributions they should have done this months ago.
It's going to be very interesting to see how well StarOffice does against WordPerfect Office in the Linux market.
One reason why we don't see more diesel-powered cars for sale in the USA is the fact that US-market diesel fuel has a high level of sulfur compounds in the fuel (usually 1200 to 1500 parts per billion), which can damage the advanced diesel fuel systems in and fuel injectors we are starting to see in Europe.
But with the EPA mandating strict limits on sulfur compounds in diesel fuel (e.g. under 100 parts per billion), then we can see things like common-rail injection systems and direct-injection systems more often. Curing the other big bugaboos of diesel fuel (e.g., NOx emissions and particulate emissions) is already easily done nowadays.
I've read articles on the amazing BMW 330d, a 3.0-liter L-6 turbodiesel with great performance and nearly 40 mpg fuel mileage in daily driving. I won't be surprised once the new EPA limits are in place that we see this model in the US market.
By the way, you might want to hear some great news: Alfa Romeo is returning to the US market! They are planning to import the current GTV/Spider model in about a years' time, and they also plan to import the replacement for the 156 model (that should be called the 157). And it's likely one of the "157" models will have a 2.7-liter V-6 turbodiesel belting out around 205 bhp and getting 35 mpg!
Actually, the day of widespread use of diesel engines in the USA is not as far away as you think it is.
Because of new EPA requirements for diesel fuel to have sulfur content under 80 parts per billion (most diesel fuel in the US usually has around 1200 parts per billion), this makes it very viable for the Europeans to bring over their diesel-powered cars in a few years.
Once the new low-sulfur diesel fuel is widely available, Volkswagen/Audi, BMW and Mercedes-Benz plan to offer a large number of diesel-powered vehicles for US sale with advanced technologies such as common-rail high-pressure direct fuel injection and other new diesel engine technologies (they've also managed to lick the problem of particulate emissions and close-coupled catalytic converters dramatically reduce NOx emissions).
And don't think they slow, either. I suggest people drive the European-market BMW 330d; people were amazed by its very fast performance and also gas mileage approaching 40 mpg!
I also do agree that dieself fuel is more easily refined than gasoline; in fact, you can make diesel fuel equivalents from biomass, coal, oil tar, etc. very easily also. In fact, there are a number of oil companies now working on a motor fuel called SynFuel that has the combustion characteristics of diesel fuel, but burns extremely cleanly. Unlike regular diesel fuel, SynFuel can be made easily from biomass sources easily.
Speaking of alternate energy sources, back in the 1980's there was a homeowner in Cameron Park, CA (this is 22 miles east of Sacramento, CA) who had a house with solar-powered EVERYTHING (water heater, electric generation, and so on) and saw his Pacific Gas & Electric bill go from US$12.80 to US$28.00! He was definitely -not- a happy camper considering he was just about completely off the electric grid! It's situations like this that give the utility company a big black eye.
In my opinion, 25 years from now the average automobile may be fuelled either by something called Synfuel (it burns like diesel fuel but has vastly cleaner burning characteristics) or by fuel cells that use hydrogen.
I have to say this to all you folks out there.
The gasoline-powered automobile is still a viable means of transportation, because thanks to massive improvements in engine and emission-control technology since the 1970's, today's average automobile emit under 5% of the pollutants of a car circa 1970.
The development of catalytic converters, fuel injection systems, electronic engine controls and improved combustion chamber design has allowed automobiles to have excellent performance yet have extremely low emissions.
Remember, the entire world is going towards this end, too. The California Super Ultra-Low Emission Vehicle (SULEV), Japan's upcoming Stage III standard for 2004, and the European "Euro 2005" standards are almost identical in regards to emissions, and already companies like Honda, Toyota and Nissan have already manufactured cars that can meet these tough restrictions, with companies like Volkswagen/Audi, BMW and DaimlerChrysler closely following behind. These standards are so strict that it is more than likely the air going INTO the engine will be dirtier than the air coming OUT of the engine!
By drastically reducing the amount of sulphur compounds per billion in both gasoline and diesel fuel (something already required in California), it now makes it possible to introduce direct-injection systems that has the fuel injector directly injecting the fuel into the combustion chamber. This allows extremely precise metering of fuel necessary to do proper combustion, and that in turn increases fuel economy and reduces exhaust emissions at the same time.
In short, the gasoline engine is still a long way from dead. The technology is now in place to reduce pollutants to almost one percent (!!) of what a 1970 model year car emits and still get 15 to 20 percent better fuel mileage.
It appears that people are kind of missing the point of what the increasingly easy access to rapid content distribution is doing to our society.
I think everyone here ought to reread Alvin Toffler's famous book THE THIRD WAVE, released in 1980. He said that the rapid improvements in communications technology will break the cycle of people depending on a few sources of information from large, centralized media companies--the "demassification" of mass media.
The fact we have rapid growth of specialized magazines, newspapers, 70-plus channel cable TV systems, 200-plus channel personal satellite TV receivers, and the explosive growth of the commercial Internet and its ability to cater information to almost any need (look at the rise of everything the Drudge Report to even Slashdot) means that most people have the ability to get information from a variety of sources that would not have been imaginable even ten years ago.
And the Internet allows us to trade information and goods at a pace that is also unimaginable ten years ago. The rise of Napster has heavily upset the whole idea of "massified" distribution of music through our record companies, and the success of eBay has allowed anyone with a computer to trade any physical good without using a middleman.
In short, the rise of the commercial Internet has given what the Institutional school of economics calls increased choice, because we are no longer dependent on a few choices in terms of buying and selling goods. And our society can barely keep up with the change.
Now that several Japanese companies will work with TurboLinux to create a standardized embedded Linux for small electronic devices, one good thing is that we will end up with a "de facto" standard for embedded Linux so programming for such devices will be quite a bit easier.
I'm not surprised that TurboLinux is involved in this project given that TurboLinux was developed originally so it could support Asian character sets such as Big 5 and Shift-JIS. This way, the Japanese programmers can work much of the time in their own native language.
Given that you the average 128 Kbps stream .MP3 file is about a megabyte per minute of audio, adding any extra audio for an advertisement--even for 30 seconds--will increase the size of the file pretty quick. That's why I'm not too thrilled at the idea.
The problem with adding advertisements to .MP3 files is that they're going to dramatically increase the size of the .MP3 file anyways. That's something that is a big no-no even if you have a "fat pipe" broadband ADSL or cable modem connection.
What's interesting in all these comments is the fact that while everyone is arguing the merits of .MP3 files and Napster, the commercial record companies are already pushing ahead with a newer and better digital music file technology called AAC (Advanced Audio Coding).
.MP3 files, AAC files can be as much as 25% smaller in size for the same sound quality (and in fact, AAC files have better sound quality because they encode at the same 44.1 KHz sampling rate as commercial CD's) thanks to the use of better encoding techniques than the technology used on .MP3 files.
Unlike
Also, AAC files are designed to work closely with current copyright protection technologies, so it is a format that is supported by the Secure Digital Music Initiative (SDMI). I think it's possible to encode AAC files so while you can download it for free, the file will become unusable after so many plays.
In fact, already a number of electronic manufacturers will soon sell portable players that can play AAC files. And we should see a proliferation of AAC player programs for Windows and Macintosh very soon.
Look, I said originally that more or less that overclocking can be dangerous -if you don't know what you are doing-.
Overclocking is more than just cranking up the speed of the CPU. Because higher speeds can heat up the CPU quite a bit, cause bus speeds to be beyond the safe limits of many peripheral cards, and in many cases cause a bigger draw on the power supply, knowledgeable people will do things like get a high-quality CPU heatsink/fan, extra cooling fans, a beefier power supply and check around to get peripheral cards that works at high-than-normal bus speeds.
In short, if you want to overclock your CPU, you better do your homework or you'll be wondering why the CPU literally melted down and you're getting strange OS crashes.
Given that most motherboards that can accept the Pentium III already have at least ATA-33 IDE hard drive support, the best thing to do is get a 7200 rpm or faster hard drive. That makes a big difference if you're reading big files.
;-)
And with the price of CD-ROM drives so darned cheap nowadays, you should also consider getting a 48X to 52X drive for US$50-US$60, too.
When your system has enough system RAM, it will run quite fast because the OS doesn't have to use the hard drive as virtual memory, which speeds things up quite a bit.
Let's face it.
The majority of computer users out there have reservations about overclocking your CPU because trying it can be a very dangerous thing to do.
Between running the risk of melting down the CPU, causing some peripheral cards to not work properly because you had to increase the FSB speed in your overclocking attempt, and causing general system failures because your power supply can't keep up, it's not really worth the effort unless you're willing to spend the time and effort to get top-notch system cases, extra cooling fans, extra big CPU heatsink/fans, and top-quality 300 watt or larger power supplies.
Besides, nowadays the real bottleneck isn't the CPU. You get much more immediate benefits by getting as much system RAM as you can afford and buying a 7200 rpm or faster hard drive.
I think if you look back even to ancient times, any large human habitation was going to have a major effect on the weather locally.
The reason is simple: the need to burn combustible materials as fuel for various purposes. After all, when you have to burn lots of wood, coal, peat, dried dung, etc. for cooking, metalsmithing, providing heat in winter, etc., that will create climatic changes caused by the residue of such activities--namely various forms of air pollution.
I think if the Transmeta folks think they can compete against Intel in the sub-notebook market (note I didn't say small, handheld units where input are done by stylus pointer), they may have trouble convincing people to do so.
Remember, the latest Celeron 500 MHz mobile CPU already uses less than 2 watts of power during normal operation, and this is the Celeron that uses the 0.18-micron process. Given the fact that Intel will start switching to the 0.13-micron process for many of their CPU lines in early 2001, we can extrapolate that Intel will produce a version of the Celeron mobile CPU using the 0.13-micron process, and that could mean that the Celeron mobile CPU could use less than 1 watt of power during normal operation, which might negate all the supposed advantages of the Crusoe CPU.
Besides, given that most laptop users use their machines mostly for business applications and Internet access, there is no pressing need for the ultimate in CPU performance. The current Celeron CPU is more than sufficient to run business applications and surf the web at reasonably fast speeds.
That is correct!
I think one issue Transmeta may face is the fact that Intel's latest Celeron mobile CPU's are already using far less power consumption than their predecessors.
Once Intel goes to the 0.13 micron process to make the Celeron mobile CPU, the chances are good this future Celeron variant will have the same power consumption as the Transmeta CPU.
Remember, for business applications and Web browsing, the Celeron CPU with its on-die 128 KB L2 cache is more than sufficient for most users, even in corporate environments. It's only in environments where CPU power is at a premium (high-end games, illustration programs, image-processing programs and CAD/CAM programs) where the Pentium III and Athlon CPU's really become userful.
The big downside about considering a Duron CPU is the fact the motherboards that support Socket A tend to be really finicky when it comes to a decent power supply (you want at LEAST a 250 watt ATX 2.03-compliant unit).
I think I'll stay with a Socket 370-based motherboard until the motherboard manufacturers find a way to reduce the power consumption of Socket A-based motherboards.
miket wrote:
"But I personally would want to know if the case brought against Microsoft was done so illegaly. If industry money promoted the trial, that has a large impact on me personally. I just began work in this industry and the future of Microsoft and the industy as a whole will personally affect my life for as long as I get paid to write code."
BINGO.
What Oracle may have done is essentially using a known-corrupt Clinton Administration to destroy Microsoft to protect its own turf. This makes Larry Ellison just as devious as John D. Rockefeller during the height of power of the Standard Oil Trust when the company used all kinds of blatant "dirty tricks" to destroy competitors.
By the way, you might want to know that the private detective agency Oracle hired is IGI, a company hired by the Clintons to dig up dirt on anyone opposing them. Is it possible that despite Ellison's claim he has reservations about the Clintons Mr. Ellison was persuaded in some way by the Clinton cronies and their friends in the Department of Justice to use IGI to dig up dirt on Microsoft?
In short, this whole bizzare scenario is right out of Ayn Rand's novel ATLAS SHRUGGED.
But they're very close to the line. Remember, Disney, Viacom/CBS and soon AOL Time Warner not only has the major means of content creation, but also major control of content distribution, too.
I mean, look at AOL Time Warner. The majority of their divisions are THE dominant player in their respective fields (they are perhaps THE most influential company in the cable/satellite TV market when you combine CNN, CNN Headline News, CNNfn, CNN/SI, CNN International, TBS Superstation, TNT, Turner Classic Movies, HBO, HBO Multichannel, HBO Family, HBO en Espanol, Cinemax, Cinemax Multichannel, and TVKO PPV). AOL Time Warner is essentially the fictional Elliot Carver's multimedia empire from the James Bond movie TOMORROW NEVER DIES becoming reality. AOL Time Warner's conglomeration of media power has literally no precedent in the history of the entertainment and newsgathering companies.
Yes, Bill Gates did try to please that monster called the Clinton Administration, but I think Ellison and McNealy may have given a LOT more money to the Democratic National Committee to stay in the Clintons' good graces. If that is true then a grand jury investigation may be warranted to look at what kind of relationship Oracle and Sun has with Clinton Administration officials and the Department of Justice. If this means Oracle and Sun are paying what amounts to "protection money" to the DNC they could be in BIG trouble for violating RICO statutes.
If you feel that way, then care to openly why every poll has Al Gore averaging about 10 percentage points down to George W. Bush?
Is it because Americans are tiring of the fact that the Clinton Administration is more than willing to destroy anyone that doesn't toe the Clinton line? Care to wonder why the DoJ has been ominously silent about the Disney-ABC, Viacom-CBS and soon AOL-Time Warner mergers? Mergers that will have much more serious effects than what Microsoft now wields?
You can laugh all you want, but unfortunately for you the majority of Americans aren't buying your views.