It seems to me that 'Linux should be Linux'. Rather, we're seeing articles about one linux distro killing another. We never see "Windows Professional is killing Windows Home". IMHO, Ubuntu's success should be a boon for all Linux distros.
Unfortunately, package management seems to be the great divide. What are you doing to bring One Package Manager to all Linux?
8) What About the Slashdot Story Submission Queue? by nullspace
I think it would be interesting to be able to view the story submission queue. That is, what type of stories are being submitted, which stories are being rejected and why, and other interesting trivia. Would you allow users to be able to view this queue, and if not, why?
Hemos:
One comment: Having us write rejections is probably impossible. I've tried to do the math, but considering the sheer amount of submissions we get, the people-power to write the rejection reasons won't work. Perhaps as a drop-down box, but still - we're dealing with hundreds per day.
CmdrTaco:
This is in the FAQ dammit! I don't wanna answer it again! Thats what the FAQ is FOR! AAAAGGHHH!
Seriously, there are a lot of reasons that it would make sense to do this. Unfortunately there are a lot of reasons not to do this too. The reason is abuse. If you saw some of the crap that gets submitted, you'd understand. Besides that, I don't want the submissions bin to be littered with noise like "First Post" and "Meept". We're already really busy sifting through 300 odd submissions each day, and we don't need it to be a game.
As a side note, I would just like to thank all of the geeks here on/. for their English Nazism. It may seem like unnecessary ranting to some, but I've learned to break quite a few bad habits just from daily reading. Some people actually go so far as to put grammar tips into their sigs.
Along these lines, I find it fascinating that topics like Haiku and Iambic Pentameter can often get a ton of posts.
MRAM is *not* a hard drive alternative because it needs to be fabricated with traditional chip lithography. Also, MRAM cells are very large, even compared with flash memory.
It would be extremely expensive to create an "MRAM hard drive". This is just more pump and dump for Freescale daytraders.
Not to mention that WiFi isn't exactly the greatest medium for voice. I mean, you can only scale it back to 6Mbps. This is like using a sledgehammer to do dental work.
I often wonder if the industry is specifically thwarting efforts to develop a wireless voice transmission medium for the public masses to protect cellular interests. I'd really love to see a low latency, high distance, high concentration 128kbps wireless link. This would allow employers, residences and municpalities to replace cell phones, for the large part.
Can you imagine 20 users at a coffee shop trying to use WiFi voice at the same time?
With multiple PCs per household, it makes sense to get rid of the hard drives at the PC level and put them in a RAID enclose that is secured into a wall.
This, however, is a threat to Microsoft because you'll be able to PXE-boot any image of your choice (just think that perhaps your employer or bank supplies their own secure image in order to connect to their resources). Someone needs to get Windows to PXE boot at the hardware level (emulate IDE or something).
This will be huge but we've got to squeeze Microsoft into it, first. Then, everyone will be free to try linux and see what we've all been jabbering about.
Try to uninstall the "free trial" of McAfee on any new Dell PC.
You can't - it conveniently gives you an error message. I've confirmed this on a variety of Dell PCs.
This isn't an accident. Sure, you can reboot in safe mode and uninstall it but they know that the average user isn't a geek (trust me, it takes an average user weeks/months to follow simple step-by-step instructions to uninstall Dell's McAfee and install Avast). So they prey on them.
It is about time that someone sued the pants off of them. Where are the ambulance chasers of the tech world?
I was listening to (I believe) NPR the other day and an advocate of the telecoms explained the situation to make it sound like the new multimedia applications (YouTube, Google Video, etc) were the bad guys. But, behind his explanation was this:
"We've traditionally used bandwidth as a marketing stat. The average Joe never uses the full extent of their available bandwidth. But now, new applications are popping up and changing this at our expense. We also believe that the providers (google, youtube, etc) are serving these applications at no cost so, instead of charging more for bandwidth, we'd like to do something entirely more profitable."
The straw man here is that the providers *do* pay for their side of the bandwidth. It just boils down to the fact that the telecoms would rather implement greed instead of pragmatism as a solution.
From what I can gather, any cell company would want the sole control of some UHF bandwidth in exchange for offering "free" entry-level wireless internet access *in exchange for* the right to offer premium pay-for / high-performance service.
Its a trick. Get an axe!
No sir. If anything, just open the entire UHF spectrum for municipal wireless internet access. We don't need to assign control to a single entity (e.g. - two or three companies would be able to compete for both free and pay-for service). Yes, you'd still have to regulate it a bit since the spectrum is too valuable to be clouded up by the general public but single-source is just too dangerous. We've already learned that most anyone will take a few dollars in exchange for their corruption (e.g. - the "free" service has high-latency that prevents VoIP and other value added services).
Core 2 Duo? Talk about redundant and confusing naming...
Whatever do you mean? It should be blindingly apparent that the Core 2 Duo has 4 cores (i.e. - 2xCore Duo = 4 cores), no?
This is getting as bad as the automakers releasing model year vehicles well earlier than the actual calendar year begins. For example, you've been able to buy the new 2007 GM Denali/Yukon since January of 2006. Not to get off topic, but there should be a law against such lies (e.g. - if you sell a vehicle that was built in CY2006, then you must assign it to the same model year).
Intel is hurting BAD (have you seen the premium that AMD is getting over comparable processors?) so they're reaction appears to be simple confusion tactics. Either that, or this is the direct result of hyperthreaded synergies in the marketing department.
I think that we are close to seeing why Apple *really* switched to Intel. Put on your tin foil hat because I'm about to take you for a conspiracy theory ride:
1) Intel have been working with Ovonyx since 2000 on a technology called phase change memory (or PRAM, for short). Basically, PRAM uses chalcogenide - the same material used in rewriteable optical media - in a solid state RAM, only it is manipulated electrically, instead of optically. This gives the RAM nonvolatility and random accessibility. It is several orders of magnatude faster than flash (nearly as fast as DRAM) and has a write cycle endurance of 10^12 demonstrated as of about 4 years ago.
2) Intel patent applications have led me to believe that they have made great strides in the technology, while remaining very tight lipped. Here's some insight. Note that they are discussing the displacement of SRAM, DRAM and flash with this technology. Noteworthy, is the following:
[0058] Turning to FIG. 5, a portion of a system 500 in accordance with an embodiment of the present invention is described. System 500 may be used in wireless devices such as, for example, a cellular telephone, personal digital assistant (PDA), a laptop or portable computer with wireless capability, a web tablet, a wireless telephone, a pager, an instant messaging device, a digital music player, a digital camera, or other devices that may be adapted to transmit and/or receive information wirelessly. System 500 may be used in any of the following systems: a wireless local area network (WLAN) system, a wireless personal area network (WPAN) system, or a cellular network, although the scope of the present invention is not limited in this respect.
Now, here's where it all begins:
Envision, if you will, a high-speed, nonvolatile memory with very low power consumption. This enables the following:
1) Intel Robson Technology. This would answer the question of durability. Why would Intel demo such a technology if flash memory would wear out in short order? With PRAM, you've got CMOS compatibility so you can throw the whole deal right into the processor.
2) Ultra-low power wireless devices. Add Intel's Wireless USB and you've got the perfect medium to talk to your iPod. In addition, your gonna end up using it for more than just an iPod. Store your entire "desktop" on the damn thing, add some authentication mechanisms and you can use any wireless USB equipped PC to log into your "wireless personal server".
Slashdot Mirror
It seems to me that 'Linux should be Linux'. Rather, we're seeing articles about one linux distro killing another. We never see "Windows Professional is killing Windows Home". IMHO, Ubuntu's success should be a boon for all Linux distros.
Unfortunately, package management seems to be the great divide. What are you doing to bring One Package Manager to all Linux?
Here is Taco's mistake from way back in 2000:
8) What About the Slashdot Story Submission Queue?
by nullspace
I think it would be interesting to be able to view the story submission queue. That is, what type of stories are being submitted, which stories are being rejected and why, and other interesting trivia. Would you allow users to be able to view this queue, and if not, why?
Hemos:
One comment: Having us write rejections is probably impossible. I've tried to do the math, but considering the sheer amount of submissions we get, the people-power to write the rejection reasons won't work. Perhaps as a drop-down box, but still - we're dealing with hundreds per day.
CmdrTaco:
This is in the FAQ dammit! I don't wanna answer it again! Thats what the FAQ is FOR! AAAAGGHHH!
Seriously, there are a lot of reasons that it would make sense to do this. Unfortunately there are a lot of reasons not to do this too. The reason is abuse. If you saw some of the crap that gets submitted, you'd understand. Besides that, I don't want the submissions bin to be littered with noise like "First Post" and "Meept". We're already really busy sifting through 300 odd submissions each day, and we don't need it to be a game.
Several others wanted this as well.
Ahh.. what could have been.
That was the first thing that I noticed.
/. for their English Nazism. It may seem like unnecessary ranting to some, but I've learned to break quite a few bad habits just from daily reading. Some people actually go so far as to put grammar tips into their sigs.
As a side note, I would just like to thank all of the geeks here on
Along these lines, I find it fascinating that topics like Haiku and Iambic Pentameter can often get a ton of posts.
A curious bunch, we are.
Timber!
They're blaming a "global economic slowdown" but it looks to me like Apple are eating Dell's lunch.
Think of the implications:
A given distro can now come with a handy Windows InstallShield Wizard and INSTALL UNDER WINDOWS and BOOT/SHARE the same partition.
This is huge. Who wants to be the first to make a Linux ActiveX malware distro?
It will eventually be found that this energy was the egg in the proverbial chicken and the egg dilemma.
MRAM is *not* a hard drive alternative because it needs to be fabricated with traditional chip lithography. Also, MRAM cells are very large, even compared with flash memory.
It would be extremely expensive to create an "MRAM hard drive". This is just more pump and dump for Freescale daytraders.
Not to mention that WiFi isn't exactly the greatest medium for voice. I mean, you can only scale it back to 6Mbps. This is like using a sledgehammer to do dental work.
I often wonder if the industry is specifically thwarting efforts to develop a wireless voice transmission medium for the public masses to protect cellular interests. I'd really love to see a low latency, high distance, high concentration 128kbps wireless link. This would allow employers, residences and municpalities to replace cell phones, for the large part.
Can you imagine 20 users at a coffee shop trying to use WiFi voice at the same time?
I think we'll actually see the opposite:
With multiple PCs per household, it makes sense to get rid of the hard drives at the PC level and put them in a RAID enclose that is secured into a wall.
This, however, is a threat to Microsoft because you'll be able to PXE-boot any image of your choice (just think that perhaps your employer or bank supplies their own secure image in order to connect to their resources). Someone needs to get Windows to PXE boot at the hardware level (emulate IDE or something).
This will be huge but we've got to squeeze Microsoft into it, first. Then, everyone will be free to try linux and see what we've all been jabbering about.
Try to uninstall the "free trial" of McAfee on any new Dell PC.
You can't - it conveniently gives you an error message. I've confirmed this on a variety of Dell PCs.
This isn't an accident. Sure, you can reboot in safe mode and uninstall it but they know that the average user isn't a geek (trust me, it takes an average user weeks/months to follow simple step-by-step instructions to uninstall Dell's McAfee and install Avast). So they prey on them.
It is about time that someone sued the pants off of them. Where are the ambulance chasers of the tech world?
Just when XP is nice and patched and secure, they'll release Vista and start the process all over again.
Yummy.
I was listening to (I believe) NPR the other day and an advocate of the telecoms explained the situation to make it sound like the new multimedia applications (YouTube, Google Video, etc) were the bad guys. But, behind his explanation was this:
"We've traditionally used bandwidth as a marketing stat. The average Joe never uses the full extent of their available bandwidth. But now, new applications are popping up and changing this at our expense. We also believe that the providers (google, youtube, etc) are serving these applications at no cost so, instead of charging more for bandwidth, we'd like to do something entirely more profitable."
The straw man here is that the providers *do* pay for their side of the bandwidth. It just boils down to the fact that the telecoms would rather implement greed instead of pragmatism as a solution.
Hmm, the obvious alternative would seem to be prepaid cards, sold over the counter.
At which point they'd be hacked like the satellite cards. The phone-home capability does two things:
1) Allows security "updates" when the thing gets hacked.
2) Makes snooping traffic a lot more difficult.
No - it is right there in the MovieBeam setup instructions - a POTS phone line. It boggles my mind to see something so bass-ackward:
A box that would likely be adopted by technically-oriented people with a requirement (POTS) from which most of these same people are moving away.
I wish that I were so ignorant. Life would be bliss.
I think Ubuntu will be on the forefront of competitive alternative OS's to Windows, especially if Vista keeps slipping!
From this day forth, all non-Ubuntu operating systems should be referred to as "Non-Canonical OSes".
NICTA... necktie...
Definitely an n-word.
From what I can gather, any cell company would want the sole control of some UHF bandwidth in exchange for offering "free" entry-level wireless internet access *in exchange for* the right to offer premium pay-for / high-performance service.
Its a trick. Get an axe!
No sir. If anything, just open the entire UHF spectrum for municipal wireless internet access. We don't need to assign control to a single entity (e.g. - two or three companies would be able to compete for both free and pay-for service). Yes, you'd still have to regulate it a bit since the spectrum is too valuable to be clouded up by the general public but single-source is just too dangerous. We've already learned that most anyone will take a few dollars in exchange for their corruption (e.g. - the "free" service has high-latency that prevents VoIP and other value added services).
'bout time.
Funny, those weren't the words when I suggested it.
I use Gentoo at home, but I like to play around with other distros. Any notable reasons to try FreeBSD?
I'll get to that as soon as KDE finishes compiling.
Core 2 Duo? Talk about redundant and confusing naming...
Whatever do you mean? It should be blindingly apparent that the Core 2 Duo has 4 cores (i.e. - 2xCore Duo = 4 cores), no?
This is getting as bad as the automakers releasing model year vehicles well earlier than the actual calendar year begins. For example, you've been able to buy the new 2007 GM Denali/Yukon since January of 2006. Not to get off topic, but there should be a law against such lies (e.g. - if you sell a vehicle that was built in CY2006, then you must assign it to the same model year).
Intel is hurting BAD (have you seen the premium that AMD is getting over comparable processors?) so they're reaction appears to be simple confusion tactics. Either that, or this is the direct result of hyperthreaded synergies in the marketing department.
I'm holding out for the Deuling Core 2 Dual Duo!
With dual SLI, of course!
because that is what enterprise customers have requested
So, if Microsoft listens to their customers, they make slashdotters angry but if they block bittorrent, they make slashdotters angry.
I think that I'm starting to get this...
Personally I dont want to transfer music at 802.11g speeds. firewire is insanely faster.
If you re-read my original post, you can see that I suggested wireless USB (480mbps). I think that you'll find the bottleneck elsewhere in this case.
I think that we are close to seeing why Apple *really* switched to Intel. Put on your tin foil hat because I'm about to take you for a conspiracy theory ride:
1) Intel have been working with Ovonyx since 2000 on a technology called phase change memory (or PRAM, for short). Basically, PRAM uses chalcogenide - the same material used in rewriteable optical media - in a solid state RAM, only it is manipulated electrically, instead of optically. This gives the RAM nonvolatility and random accessibility. It is several orders of magnatude faster than flash (nearly as fast as DRAM) and has a write cycle endurance of 10^12 demonstrated as of about 4 years ago.
2) Intel patent applications have led me to believe that they have made great strides in the technology, while remaining very tight lipped. Here's some insight. Note that they are discussing the displacement of SRAM, DRAM and flash with this technology. Noteworthy, is the following:
[0058] Turning to FIG. 5, a portion of a system 500 in accordance with an embodiment of the present invention is described. System 500 may be used in wireless devices such as, for example, a cellular telephone, personal digital assistant (PDA), a laptop or portable computer with wireless capability, a web tablet, a wireless telephone, a pager, an instant messaging device, a digital music player, a digital camera, or other devices that may be adapted to transmit and/or receive information wirelessly. System 500 may be used in any of the following systems: a wireless local area network (WLAN) system, a wireless personal area network (WPAN) system, or a cellular network, although the scope of the present invention is not limited in this respect.
Now, here's where it all begins:
Envision, if you will, a high-speed, nonvolatile memory with very low power consumption. This enables the following:
1) Intel Robson Technology. This would answer the question of durability. Why would Intel demo such a technology if flash memory would wear out in short order? With PRAM, you've got CMOS compatibility so you can throw the whole deal right into the processor.
2) Ultra-low power wireless devices. Add Intel's Wireless USB and you've got the perfect medium to talk to your iPod. In addition, your gonna end up using it for more than just an iPod. Store your entire "desktop" on the damn thing, add some authentication mechanisms and you can use any wireless USB equipped PC to log into your "wireless personal server".
There's more, but this should be good for now.