This is a good step, but support from nVidia in the past has been poor. I bought an nVidia 5700 two years ago and the driver hangs. This is known popularly as the "nv4_disp infinite loop bug". Searched on Google and many others have had the same problem. But you can't get anything done about it, and it affects the 6xxx and 7xxx series cards too.
nVidia tell you to technical support requests must go to the OEM card maker. But all the OEM card maker does is slap chips on a board. They don't know about the inner workings of drivers and nVidia know that. If you ask on the nVidia forum, they always say "download and install the latest driver". I and many others have been doing that for the last two years and it makes no difference. The funny thing is nVidia don't have any presence on their own forums. As they say their 'User Forums' are "with your fellow NVIDIA users". *NOT* nVidia!!!! They offer e-mail support.. for products purchased but *ONLY OFF* the nVidia website. But nVidia sell their cards through OEMs!!! In other words, you can't get any support from them. http://forums.nvidia.com/index.php?showtopic=4432& st=100http://www.nvidia.com/page/support.html
So, nVidia, you've been slowly trashing your own name for years. Glad you're taking this issue seriously, but your lack of support on all your past cards is chasing us into the arms of ATI. I hope they can do better. In the tech industry you can't sell a box without support and expect to keep a good name.
That's not the 'Potentially embarassing' part Cringely refers to, which is Steve Job's "Good Artists Copy, but Great Artists Steal" quote. Mildly inconvenient if you're in a Patent Law suit. But there is a funny story behind the part you cite. Jobs *did* feel embarrassed about that (for different reasons), and called up Gates to apologize. It went like this:
Jobs: "Bill I'm calling to apologize. I saw the documentary and I said that you had no taste. Well I shouldn't have said that publicly. It's true, but I shouldn't have said it publicly." Gates: "I'm glad you called to apologize, Steve, because I thought that was really an inappropriate thing to say." Jobs: (smirking uncontrollably) "You know it's true, it's true you have no taste."
Now all the fan boys need do is tell us why it took 20 years to build the Deathstar and why Luke found Leia such a "Turn-me-on Hot Chicky Mamma ooooh yeah", and their work will be complete.
How about "Buy Vista, and we'll throw in XP for free! XP! The operating system that works:
* High Productivity. None of those annoying UAC messages! * Device Driver Compatibility. Hardware will work out of the box! * Applications just work: Even Firefox! Even Visual Studio 2003! * No DRM. Watch your movies and listen to your music when you want how you want. * More efficient code, so works on today's hardware! Not only tomorrows! * XP is cheaper and doesn't have a dozen different versions: 'Oh sir you'll need the Vista Sub Pro Business Home Basic Version!' * Doesn't make you call Microsoft everytime you want permission to pee
Vista is to XP what New Coke(R) was to Classic Coke(R).
> Last I looked, civil justice systems couldn't hang anyone.
But *they* wouldn't know that! It's what Judge Harry Stone would have done.
> And stare decisis is actually binding in criminal cases.
Oh my wordy! He's quoting Latin at me... I'm clearly outgunned here! Wait! What's that a voice? I heard a voice. Jimmy? Is that you? "Use the Wikipedia, Billy" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stare_decisis
Well this case sounds pretty unique to me, otherwise we wouldn't have been talking about it. Here's a precedent for you: "If you don't exceed your authority at least twice a year, you're not doing your job"
If I decide to take a short holiday I can strap on my backpack and go for a 30-country tour, stopping in each and filing a motion against my victim. Even big companies would find it time-consuming and expensive to respond to each complaint. Medium, small companies and individuals have no chance of handling them all. One gets through, and by not appearing, the Judge rules that I am the winner and demands my victim makes payment.
In theory unenforcable, but if my victim steps foot in said company, opens a local office, enters a partnership, buys a holiday house or mail order, well, their assets are mine! (laughs manically)
It's all very well for this judge make findings like this against Limey corporations, but it can work the other way. Libel laws in Australia are draconian. When Australian Businessman Joe Gutnick was named in an article by Dow Jones that he had an association with a money launderer. Gutnick sued Dow Jones, but instad of suing Dow Jones in America, the place of duplication, Gutnick found amenable Australian Courts that said he could sue in Australia because that's where Gutnick read the article. What a can of worms that opened.
Fact is judges should not make rulings about cases that have no jurisdiction. If the judge made the ruling because he was annoyed, then he's an ass and not fit for the job. If he made it because it's the law, the law's an ass.
I'll make a prediction: When multi-million dollar judgements start getting made in other countries against big American companies, you'll see the law quickly changed by Congress and pushed through to other countries using the "sign this treaty or life will get very hard" approach used with the DMCA. Why this hasn't happened already I'm not sure. Dow Jones is big enough.
I thought the fun thing about Common Law is judges are allowed to make it up as they go? The Judge could have, in absentia, still found for Spamhaus and sentenced the Spammers to death by hanging. It would have been worth it to see the look on their faces.:-)
It would have of course been overturned on appeal. Maybe.
Once all the bugs have been worked out, we'll produce a version of Ubuntu with a name that'll be easier to sell to the Corporate Sector: "Pudgy Pinstriper"
Hmm... Did their sales take a dive? (The company is www.advfilms.com)
I stopped halfway through the Evangelion Platinum Collection when I realized this. Being willingly screwed is for $180 is one thing. Being unwillingly screwed for $210 is another. And they wonder why people use Bit Torrent?
I've seen Anime series (Slayers) compress nicely into 3-4 DVDs. They can do it when they want to! But even going back down to 6 disks, they may find once they drive customers to Bit Torrent they don't come back. Bad, ADV! Bad! How many swimming pools does ADV's Mr. Greenberg need? It's not like he makes the series. He just buys the rights, puts an english audio track on that nobody listens to, then sits back and reaps the profits. Well he did anyway...:-)
> the riaa is just trying to protect its intellectual property.
The problem is that IP laws have been so twisted by lobbyists and big business. They seek to profit by taking away our rights. We are supposed to have rights to fair use, fair pricing, and things entering the public domain in a reasonable period, and the artists receiving a fair deal.
But when Mickey Mouse was supposed to enter the public domain, Disney went to the politicans so firmly in their pocket and got them to change the way. Same for the public domain period which congress just keeps setting back and back and back. And the DMCA which was a rights grab and now I can't even watch a DVD I purchased in another country without breaking the law. Some anime series are overpriced: the maker puts 5 episodes on the first DVD, whittling it down to 2 episodes (on a $30 DVD) on the last. Yet this is legal. And while the MPAA and the RIAA hiss and spit about how they're only protecting the authors' rights, they use Hollywood Accounting to rob those very same artists blind. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollywood_accounting And look a the tactics the RIAA shareholders have used to steal royalties off music artists. Recently when someone submitting a movie to the MPAA for ratings, the MPAA made and distributed copies against their wishes, and the court found the MPAA could do what it wants. Their hypocrisy is staggering. We have the absurdity of Adobe, who engineered an incompetant encryption scheme, using the DMCA to throw the guy who exposed them into jail. The DMCA means Macrovision is now by law built into every video device, with the result that my old color TV can't watch new videos. In Australia Channel 9 was fiddling with their digital feed to stop people from copying shows, with the results digital TV sets across the country kept locking up. http://www.smh.com.au/news/home-theatre/case-of-th e-csi-lg-tv-freeze-cracked/2007/03/21/117415312601 5.html The pendulum has clearly swung too far.
Orson Scott Card (Author of "Ender's Game") wrote an excellent essay on this:
With today's Internet in place, the RIAA and MPAA and their moneyed up masters would have never come into existence. They're a cartel living off an old business model, with duplicitous congressmen with bulging pockets changing the law at their beckoned call. If you want to know which congressmen have supported it and which ones have fought it, start here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DMCA
I was originally going to vote MPAA the worst corporation ahead of the RIAA, but then I thought about the charming Jack Valenti and all the pornography he brings us. That couldn't help but make smile.
We use the local photo shop for prints, and my Canon LBP5200 for anything big where quality isn't an issue. I *do* still own an Inket though but *only* for printing CDs. Otherwise ink has gotten itself a real bad name.
Moderators: BTW my original post was modded a troll but it wasn't. (1) Everyone I've talked to about a printer has said they're sick of the expense of ink and were going to a laser, (2) LaserJet really was a dumb name. I've looked at them a few times in price lists and always wondered what the heck the were.
Agreed. The question is "will this be free?" If the answer is "no" then everyone leaves and Dr. Stephan finishes giving his speech to the guy picking up the rubbish.
Despite what the USPTO* clerks tell you, programming ideas are a dime a dozen. He's got as much chance of getting you to pay for this as I have of convincing all you C++ programmers to switch to my new proprietary (*D)++++(R)(TM) language. Only $1,250 a seat! What are you waiting for boys?
* = At least the guy who picks up garbage knows trash when he sees it.
The Inkjet is well and truly dead. Overpriced Ink did it. The public have gone over to cheap color laser printers and they're not coming back. G A M E O V E R.
My trusty Canon LBP5200 Color Laser Printer is just fine and dandy thank you. I would have looked at the HP, but I couldn't work out if their Laserjets were Laser printers or Ink jets. That has to be the dumbest product name HP ever came up with.
Slashdot Mirror
This is a good step, but support from nVidia in the past has been poor. I bought an nVidia 5700 two years ago and the driver hangs. This is known popularly as the "nv4_disp infinite loop bug". Searched on Google and many others have had the same problem. But you can't get anything done about it, and it affects the 6xxx and 7xxx series cards too.
& st=100 http://www.nvidia.com/page/support.html
nVidia tell you to technical support requests must go to the OEM card maker. But all the OEM card maker does is slap chips on a board. They don't know about the inner workings of drivers and nVidia know that. If you ask on the nVidia forum, they always say "download and install the latest driver". I and many others have been doing that for the last two years and it makes no difference. The funny thing is nVidia don't have any presence on their own forums. As they say their 'User Forums' are "with your fellow NVIDIA users". *NOT* nVidia!!!! They offer e-mail support.. for products purchased but *ONLY OFF* the nVidia website. But nVidia sell their cards through OEMs!!! In other words, you can't get any support from them. http://forums.nvidia.com/index.php?showtopic=4432
So, nVidia, you've been slowly trashing your own name for years. Glad you're taking this issue seriously, but your lack of support on all your past cards is chasing us into the arms of ATI. I hope they can do better. In the tech industry you can't sell a box without support and expect to keep a good name.
That's not the 'Potentially embarassing' part Cringely refers to, which is Steve Job's "Good Artists Copy, but Great Artists Steal" quote. Mildly inconvenient if you're in a Patent Law suit. But there is a funny story behind the part you cite. Jobs *did* feel embarrassed about that (for different reasons), and called up Gates to apologize. It went like this:
1 .html
Jobs: "Bill I'm calling to apologize. I saw the documentary and I said that you had no taste. Well I shouldn't have said that publicly. It's true, but I shouldn't have said it publicly."
Gates: "I'm glad you called to apologize, Steve, because I thought that was really an inappropriate thing to say."
Jobs: (smirking uncontrollably) "You know it's true, it's true you have no taste."
Andy Hertzfeld (Original Mac Programmer) was there when the call was made: http://www.pbs.org/cringely/nerdtv/transcripts/00
ROFL!
> Tatooine's Double-Sunset a Common Sight
Now all the fan boys need do is tell us why it took 20 years to build the Deathstar and why Luke found Leia such a "Turn-me-on Hot Chicky Mamma ooooh yeah", and their work will be complete.
http://www.chefelf.com/starwars/
He should have called up GoDaddy and got them to take down MySpace.com, 52 second warning and all.
> Here is Davidson's account of the "immaculate hack".
:-)
That is an immaculate hack. However an even more immaculate hack is the fact we've just Slashdotted him!
Aussies can use YouTube to protest against the lack of decent broadband. Very... slowly...
l ies
http://whirlpool.net.au/article.cfm/1715?show=rep
How about "Buy Vista, and we'll throw in XP for free! XP! The operating system that works:
* High Productivity. None of those annoying UAC messages!
* Device Driver Compatibility. Hardware will work out of the box!
* Applications just work: Even Firefox! Even Visual Studio 2003!
* No DRM. Watch your movies and listen to your music when you want how you want.
* More efficient code, so works on today's hardware! Not only tomorrows!
* XP is cheaper and doesn't have a dozen different versions: 'Oh sir you'll need the Vista Sub Pro Business Home Basic Version!'
* Doesn't make you call Microsoft everytime you want permission to pee
Vista is to XP what New Coke(R) was to Classic Coke(R).
> Last I looked, civil justice systems couldn't hang anyone.
But *they* wouldn't know that! It's what Judge Harry Stone would have done.
> And stare decisis is actually binding in criminal cases.
Oh my wordy! He's quoting Latin at me... I'm clearly outgunned here! Wait! What's that a voice? I heard a voice. Jimmy? Is that you? "Use the Wikipedia, Billy" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stare_decisis
Well this case sounds pretty unique to me, otherwise we wouldn't have been talking about it. Here's a precedent for you: "If you don't exceed your authority at least twice a year, you're not doing your job"
If I decide to take a short holiday I can strap on my backpack and go for a 30-country tour, stopping in each and filing a motion against my victim. Even big companies would find it time-consuming and expensive to respond to each complaint. Medium, small companies and individuals have no chance of handling them all. One gets through, and by not appearing, the Judge rules that I am the winner and demands my victim makes payment.
In theory unenforcable, but if my victim steps foot in said company, opens a local office, enters a partnership, buys a holiday house or mail order, well, their assets are mine! (laughs manically)
It's all very well for this judge make findings like this against Limey corporations, but it can work the other way. Libel laws in Australia are draconian. When Australian Businessman Joe Gutnick was named in an article by Dow Jones that he had an association with a money launderer. Gutnick sued Dow Jones, but instad of suing Dow Jones in America, the place of duplication, Gutnick found amenable Australian Courts that said he could sue in Australia because that's where Gutnick read the article. What a can of worms that opened.
http://www.vho.org/News/GB/News1_03.html "Internet: Can Everybody Sue Everybody everywhere?"
http://www.findlaw.com.au/article/2104.htm
Fact is judges should not make rulings about cases that have no jurisdiction. If the judge made the ruling because he was annoyed, then he's an ass and not fit for the job. If he made it because it's the law, the law's an ass.
I'll make a prediction: When multi-million dollar judgements start getting made in other countries against big American companies, you'll see the law quickly changed by Congress and pushed through to other countries using the "sign this treaty or life will get very hard" approach used with the DMCA. Why this hasn't happened already I'm not sure. Dow Jones is big enough.
I thought the fun thing about Common Law is judges are allowed to make it up as they go? The Judge could have, in absentia, still found for Spamhaus and sentenced the Spammers to death by hanging. It would have been worth it to see the look on their faces. :-)
It would have of course been overturned on appeal. Maybe.
> In a default ruling made by an Illinois court in September 2006,
> Spamhaus was ordered to pay $11.7m in compensation to e360 Insight
Let's all forward our spam to the judge responsible.
Linux for Humans.
Which Humans?
Geeks, Damnit!
Once all the bugs have been worked out, we'll produce a version of Ubuntu with a name that'll be easier to sell to the Corporate Sector: "Pudgy Pinstriper"
"At the same ceremony Harvard honored Steve Balmer's Contributions by giving him a Chair."
Hey my own manservant grammar checker. Cool!
g tongue_archive.html :-)
http://bitingtongue.blogspot.com/2004_06_01_bitin
Google Hits:
"Beck and Call" = 716,000
"Beckoned Call" = 73,400
"Beckonned Call" = 32
'Beckoned Call' = 1
Hmm... Did their sales take a dive? (The company is www.advfilms.com)
:-)
I stopped halfway through the Evangelion Platinum Collection when I realized this. Being willingly screwed is for $180 is one thing. Being unwillingly screwed for $210 is another. And they wonder why people use Bit Torrent?
I've seen Anime series (Slayers) compress nicely into 3-4 DVDs. They can do it when they want to! But even going back down to 6 disks, they may find once they drive customers to Bit Torrent they don't come back. Bad, ADV! Bad! How many swimming pools does ADV's Mr. Greenberg need? It's not like he makes the series. He just buys the rights, puts an english audio track on that nobody listens to, then sits back and reaps the profits. Well he did anyway...
> created a simulation of a white dwarf exploding into a type 1a supernova. Using 700 processors and 58,000 hours,
They probably got Federal Funding for this by explaining it was "like sticking a giant firecracker up a giant frog"
Check the other posts on this. They're incorporated. They have share holders.
> the riaa is just trying to protect its intellectual property.
h e-csi-lg-tv-freeze-cracked/2007/03/21/117415312601 5.html
1 .html1 .html
The problem is that IP laws have been so twisted by lobbyists and big business. They seek to profit by taking away our rights. We are supposed to have rights to fair use, fair pricing, and things entering the public domain in a reasonable period, and the artists receiving a fair deal.
But when Mickey Mouse was supposed to enter the public domain, Disney went to the politicans so firmly in their pocket and got them to change the way. Same for the public domain period which congress just keeps setting back and back and back. And the DMCA which was a rights grab and now I can't even watch a DVD I purchased in another country without breaking the law. Some anime series are overpriced: the maker puts 5 episodes on the first DVD, whittling it down to 2 episodes (on a $30 DVD) on the last. Yet this is legal. And while the MPAA and the RIAA hiss and spit about how they're only protecting the authors' rights, they use Hollywood Accounting to rob those very same artists blind. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollywood_accounting And look a the tactics the RIAA shareholders have used to steal royalties off music artists. Recently when someone submitting a movie to the MPAA for ratings, the MPAA made and distributed copies against their wishes, and the court found the MPAA could do what it wants. Their hypocrisy is staggering. We have the absurdity of Adobe, who engineered an incompetant encryption scheme, using the DMCA to throw the guy who exposed them into jail. The DMCA means Macrovision is now by law built into every video device, with the result that my old color TV can't watch new videos. In Australia Channel 9 was fiddling with their digital feed to stop people from copying shows, with the results digital TV sets across the country kept locking up. http://www.smh.com.au/news/home-theatre/case-of-t
The pendulum has clearly swung too far.
Orson Scott Card (Author of "Ender's Game") wrote an excellent essay on this:
http://www.ornery.org/essays/warwatch/2003-09-07-
http://www.ornery.org/essays/warwatch/2003-09-14-
With today's Internet in place, the RIAA and MPAA and their moneyed up masters would have never come into existence. They're a cartel living off an old business model, with duplicitous congressmen with bulging pockets changing the law at their beckoned call. If you want to know which congressmen have supported it and which ones have fought it, start here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DMCA
I was originally going to vote MPAA the worst corporation ahead of the RIAA, but then I thought about the charming Jack Valenti and all the pornography he brings us. That couldn't help but make smile.
Thanks for the tip, Bender. I'll check it out.
You hit the nail on the head there, Ivan!
We use the local photo shop for prints, and my Canon LBP5200 for anything big where quality isn't an issue. I *do* still own an Inket though but *only* for printing CDs. Otherwise ink has gotten itself a real bad name.
Moderators: BTW my original post was modded a troll but it wasn't. (1) Everyone I've talked to about a printer has said they're sick of the expense of ink and were going to a laser, (2) LaserJet really was a dumb name. I've looked at them a few times in price lists and always wondered what the heck the were.
Agreed. The question is "will this be free?" If the answer is "no" then everyone leaves and Dr. Stephan finishes giving his speech to the guy picking up the rubbish.
Despite what the USPTO* clerks tell you, programming ideas are a dime a dozen. He's got as much chance of getting you to pay for this as I have of convincing all you C++ programmers to switch to my new proprietary (*D)++++(R)(TM) language. Only $1,250 a seat! What are you waiting for boys?
* = At least the guy who picks up garbage knows trash when he sees it.
The Inkjet is well and truly dead. Overpriced Ink did it. The public have gone over to cheap color laser printers and they're not coming back. G A M E O V E R.
My trusty Canon LBP5200 Color Laser Printer is just fine and dandy thank you. I would have looked at the HP, but I couldn't work out if their Laserjets were Laser printers or Ink jets. That has to be the dumbest product name HP ever came up with.