I believe there are factors other than the pointer size. For instance, a 64-bit CPU should be able to perform operations on two 32-bit values at once by simply placing operands side-by-side in one 64-bit register...assuming overflow conditions are accounted for.
Also, 64-bit registers should allow high-precision floating point operations to be handled natively, rather than tying up multiple registers for one value.
[ Disclaimer: I took only one digital logic and design course in college, so I may be missing something, as well. ]
If I'm not mistaken, the PM is quite the regular bedfellow of Bill Gates. I think this perpetuates (however implicitly) top-down pressure to go with proprietary software. As you say, though, it would be great to see the local governments produce a force in the other direction.
Your best bet is probably to get personally involved with your local government. Politicians know politics, not IT. They would really benefit from knowledgeble, eloquently expressed opinions regarding such things.
Quite right, and possibly a Good Thing
on
CD Copy Stopper
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
Yes, the mfr. tech page only mentions "CD-ROM/DVD-ROM media". And, if this is the case, I have no problem with it. IMO, companies/people who produce software for pay have the right to collect money for its use. With that said, I do not support (with my pocketbook) commercial software, with the rare exception of a game I really want.
I think something like OpSecure could prove to have a positive effect on Free software. Consider that, as publishers find more effective ways to prevent license violation and unfettered copying/distribution of their wares, many PC users will be forced to make a decision that they have not in the past: 1) Pay for a legitimate copy of a given title, or 2) Use a Free (or free) alternative. Consider how many people today buy one copy of MS Office and install it on several machines or share it with friends and family. If the license enforcement becomes difficult to circumvent, a three-machine Office purchase will suddenly skyrocket from a few hundred to over a thousand dollars--more than the cost of a new PC! This opens the door for low-cost (StarOffice) and no-cost (OpenOffice, KOffice, Gnome Office) alternatives to establish a foothold in the market.
The end result? I guess that depends on the big guys' response. MS, for instance, might dramtically reduce prices for its Office suite, which also has short-term benefits for the public. This may not be sustainable, though. The funny part is this: unlike Wal-Mart, which moves into town and sells (concrete) goods at cut-rate prices until the competition disappears, there is no way to run the competitors out of business when they give their (intangible) goods away for free. How long can MS' Office division remain profitable in this scenario?
To sum up my rambling, improved software license enforcement could, in a delicious display of irony, promote Free software adoption.
The managers and employees know next to nothing about the Internet access except for the fact that it exists...
Heh, one could substitue "coffee" for "the Internet access" without affecting the validity of the statement.:-) Lest you think my claim unfounded...
SB coffee is generally over-roasted, which destroys the flavor, leaving mostly bitterness. (This is admittedly subjective.)
The beans are roasted in WA and routed to the many SB locations across the country. By the time it reaches the East coast, the beans are a good week or so old. Barring remarkable sales volume, the beans most likely sit for at least two to three weeks before being used.
I once saw a "fresh" pot of coffee being made at the local SB. The kid reached under the counter and grabbed a pre-measured, pre-ground heap of coffee that had probably been sitting in its paper filter since the previous day. Mmm. Stale coffee for only $1.50/cup. Perhaps this is not standard practice for SB, but I can only call the shots as I see them.
(I'm a little late jumping into the fray. Oh, well...)
I understand everything you say above and can understand the appeal (even necessity) of a low-cost source of household items for many people. However, I have some serious problems with shopping at Wal-Mart/Sam's Club:
Most of the merchandise is second-rate. (I am fortunate enough to be able to afford better.)
I believe Wal-Mart's business practices to be unethical and predatory.
By predatory, I mean that the SOP seems to be move into town, sell goods at cost (or a loss) until the competitors close shop, and raise prices to a profit-making level.
My wife and I shop at Target and Kohl's for almost all household needs (with the occasional jaunt to the local K-Mart, which is still open, btw). The prices are still good, though perhaps a smidge higher than WMT. The quality (especially in clothing) is far superior.
Now, however, WMT has really thrown me for a loop. My grudge against Microsoft is stronger, so I'd love to see people snap these PCs up. It just feels weird to cheer WMT on after all these years.:-) Perhaps I'll ask if I can post flyers for the local LUG inside the doors.
Turning the lights off certainly helps. Also, make sure the television's brightness setting is not too high. The "black bars" should be very nearly black.
I'm a bit late into the fray here, but this is one of my favorites. A coworker of mine used to work at a car dealership here in St. Louis (I'd have no problem mentioning the name, if I could only remember it). He did some kind of office or clerical work, but his desk was within earshot of a salesperson's. On with the story...
One day, a young couple came in, test drove a V-8 Camaro (or some F-body), and decided they really wanted one. Unfortunately, the dealer didn't have a V-8 in their preferred color. They did, however, have a V-6. Realizing that this was an impulse purchase and not wanting to lose the naive customers, he said something like, "Here's what we'll do: I'll sell you this V-6 here today at the V-8 price. We'll schedule a time next week for you to drop it off at the shop, and I'll have our mechanics install the other two cylinders."
Are there any good vendors these days when one wants support without hassles?
I build my own, but my cousin has a Dell, whose HDD flaked out after only ~6 months. She called them up, and they had a local tech come to her dorm and replace the drive for free. I think that's pretty damn good support. Sure, she had to burn all her "important" files (read "*.mp3") to CD-R and reinstall some software, but the hassle was pretty minimal given the circumstances.
Dells are also very nice to work on. Whoever makes their cases does a really nice job, IMO. The only problem I have with most prebuilt systems is that you generally get a pretty cheap mobo with an unknown chipset, onboard audio, etc.
Heh, that brings up an interesting bit (no pun intended) I heard about C64 development. If my source is correct, programmers use to detect whether a drive was connected and use its memory (8k?) for applications.
At the time, I was just a little turd poking registers for screen color and typing programs in from _Family_Computing_. I started a cheesy text adventure game at one point but dropped it because it wasn't that interesting. But hey, how 'bout that 3-voice SID?
We were also lucky enough to have a VIC-20 with tape drive before that. I suppose that's because my dad is an EE and a little geeky in his own right. He never reached full geekhood, unfortunately. If he'd been born even 10 years later, I bet it would have been quite different.
Frankly I'm so sick and tired of being ordered to do things in the stupidest possible way on a daily basis I've decided to find a new career. IT has become a haven for morons where having a clue means you are perceived as a threat to everyone elses job.
I understand this sentiment completely. In less than two weeks, I roll off a contract with one of the (collectively) stupidest organizations I've ever seen. It's a big company, with many incentives for backbiting and posturing. If you disagree with someone's stillbirth of a brainchild, you get invited to meetings where five goons sharing a brain attempt to convince you to forget what experience has taught and join the stupidity. It's amateur hour all day, every day.
The market sucks right now, but I can hardly wait to get out of here. The fear of unemployment is nothing compared to the fear of staying here one more day than absolutely necessary.
OTOH, there are still good companies to work for. Most of these are smaller organizations where a talented person can actually get some respect from management, and people aren't afraid of calling BS when some shmuck starts blowing hot air. Hopefully, I'll get lucky with the next assignment.
AOL users do not make up the majority on the internet. Why would anyone develop a website with AOL-specific extensions that most web users couldn't even see? I agree that AOL encourages its customers to consider its service as equivalent to the interenet, but I doubt it's executives are dumb enough to believe that.
I consider this a defensive move on AOL's part. AOL-TW is facing off against MSN, and both sides know it. (I heard from a reliable source that MS has posters in its buildings publicizing this conflict.) Anyway, it wouldn't be very smart for AOL to piss off MS and continue using IE as their browser. That certainly detracts from any credibility they may have had.
I think any e-commerce site would be remiss if it didn't support whatever AOL is using as its browser. The threat of lost revenues should be enought to prod the lazy bastards into (W3C) compliance.:-) There are a lot of vendors out there with similar prices, so competition is fierce. Losing a customer is easy; winning them back is next to impossible.
BTW, most of the cross-browser problems I've seen involve some pretty fugly javascript. You know the trick--use a pretty button image with an "onclick" that, after three or four function calls, submits the form. The DOM disparities don't help, of course.
While all the points he makes are true, and the economic beneifits of free software are obvious, that is not the primary moral justification for software being free. Repeat after me, "When software is free, the world is a better place."
Perens' argument is intended for IT managers, directors, VP's, etc. These people do not care to hear moral justifications, nor will they respond favorably to assertions that Free software makes the world a better place. To them, this sounds like "hippie talk," something a group of CS undergrads would come up with while smoking up in their dorm room.
Please understand, this isn't to say I don't agree with your assertion. However, to effectively promote Free software to managers, you must provide their reasons for adopting it, not yours. BTW, this is a point brought up by the "radical" ESR.
Heh, actually it's been around for a while. From the jargon file:
--------
automagically/aw-toh-maj'i-klee/ adv.
Automatically, but in a way that, for some reason (typically because it is too complicated, or too ugly, or perhaps even too trivial), the speaker doesn't feel like explaining to you. See magic. "The C-INTERCAL compiler generates C, then automagically invokes cc(1) to produce an executable."
This term is quite old, going back at least to the mid-70s in jargon and probably much earlier. The word `automagic' occurred in advertising (for a shirt-ironing gadget) as far back as the late 1940s.
--------
AOL is the perfect provider of said service because, assuming you are an AOL customer, they already have your credit card info. A friendly AOL agent can browse to sites you like, purchase items you will enjoy, and have them shipped to your home...all automagically! It could even scan your drives for audio and video files and forward license fees to the copyright holders, since these are obviously pirated. Now how much would you pay?
Not only will the unsuspecting "common" users not notice this, but they are also the only ones roped in by pop-under windows, gimmicky banner ads, spam, etc. AOL likely doesn't care upsetting the geeks because 1) We're in the minority, 2) We are mostly immune to the obnoxious advertising tactics described above*, and 3) The few friends we have don't listen to our rants anymore, anyway.:-) The scary part about this whole mess is that AOL has the ability to personally identify a user (even on a dynamic IP address) if a cookie is present, the user is logged into AIM, an AOL dialup account is being used, etc. Of course, we can't prove they do this, but can you think of any other reason to capture IP address along with the search terms?
If they even cared to give the illusion of privacy, they would apply a hash function to the address. This would still allow the search terms from one "session" of searching to be associated with each other--the only valid use of the IP address I can conjure up. Of course, all they would have to do is apply the same hash to the IP address when you log in to any AOL-TW service, and they can match them, so it really is nothing more than an illusion, and we'd be back where we started.
The lesson here, I think, is "Don't support companies that even attempt to compromise your privacy without explicit disclosure." It signifies dubious intent and even more dubious ethics.
* My favorite Moz feature (other than tabbed browsing) has to be the option to disallow unrequested popup windows.
First, I modded up your first comment as I felt the "flamebait" moderation clearly meant "I don't agree with you." In a fair trial (assuming there is such a thing), I believe the argument that, if the company cannot modify the code in the obfuscated form, this must not be the "preferred" form would stand. In practice, I suppose anything is possible, especially with an adequately slick defense team and insufficient representation for the FSF (or whomever).
Second, I've adopted your line above as my sig. I hope you don't mind.:-)
[T]he company showed a videotape to make the argument that Windows would be damaged if a user attempted to remove the Internet Explorer (IE) Web browser. Microsoft later admitted the demonstration computer was rigged.
"Do you have any expectation as to whether or not you will be putting together a similar demonstration for this part of the case?" state lawyers asked.
You know, that is a really cool extension of what the commodotization of computer equipment and internet access has done for the little guy. The tools you use on these films would likely have cost several thousand dollars just ten years ago, certainly placing out of reach for the casual amateur.
BTW, do you have any of these hosted online? I'd like to check them out sometime. (Feel free to email if you fear a slashdotting.:-) )
If there is a local LUG or UUG, I strongly urge you to rally the troops and distribute Linux/BSD ISOs before the entrance to the MSFest. If there isn't a users' group, get a couple friends or do it yourself. It would be best to have a few PCs running Linux doing cool stuff like fractal generation, running webservers, distributed processing, etc. Also, a tuxracer machine would help.:-)
The key here is to inform the students that there are other options. This is especially important for the younger students who might be easily roped in by the glitz and glamour of an MS marketing party.
BTW, how about something like this for a big poster?
* 700 copies of your latest proprietary software: $5,000
* Airfare and accomodations for pretty marketeers: $4000
* Donation (bribe) for CS department: $10,000
* Having your event crashed by students distributing free alternatives: Priceless.
RazzleFrog is right on the money. That argument is simply ridiculous. The notion of a copyright was never intended to provide financial support for a writer/artist's survivors. You can bet Disney, et al, don't give a damn about those people; they have other obvious motives for purchasing copyright extensions.
Slashdot Mirror
I believe there are factors other than the pointer size. For instance, a 64-bit CPU should be able to perform operations on two 32-bit values at once by simply placing operands side-by-side in one 64-bit register...assuming overflow conditions are accounted for.
Also, 64-bit registers should allow high-precision floating point operations to be handled natively, rather than tying up multiple registers for one value.
[ Disclaimer: I took only one digital logic and design course in college, so I may be missing something, as well. ]
If I'm not mistaken, the PM is quite the regular bedfellow of Bill Gates. I think this perpetuates (however implicitly) top-down pressure to go with proprietary software. As you say, though, it would be great to see the local governments produce a force in the other direction.
Your best bet is probably to get personally involved with your local government. Politicians know politics, not IT. They would really benefit from knowledgeble, eloquently expressed opinions regarding such things.
I think something like OpSecure could prove to have a positive effect on Free software. Consider that, as publishers find more effective ways to prevent license violation and unfettered copying/distribution of their wares, many PC users will be forced to make a decision that they have not in the past: 1) Pay for a legitimate copy of a given title, or 2) Use a Free (or free) alternative. Consider how many people today buy one copy of MS Office and install it on several machines or share it with friends and family. If the license enforcement becomes difficult to circumvent, a three-machine Office purchase will suddenly skyrocket from a few hundred to over a thousand dollars--more than the cost of a new PC! This opens the door for low-cost (StarOffice) and no-cost (OpenOffice, KOffice, Gnome Office) alternatives to establish a foothold in the market.
The end result? I guess that depends on the big guys' response. MS, for instance, might dramtically reduce prices for its Office suite, which also has short-term benefits for the public. This may not be sustainable, though. The funny part is this: unlike Wal-Mart, which moves into town and sells (concrete) goods at cut-rate prices until the competition disappears, there is no way to run the competitors out of business when they give their (intangible) goods away for free. How long can MS' Office division remain profitable in this scenario?
To sum up my rambling, improved software license enforcement could, in a delicious display of irony, promote Free software adoption.
I understand everything you say above and can understand the appeal (even necessity) of a low-cost source of household items for many people. However, I have some serious problems with shopping at Wal-Mart/Sam's Club:
- Most of the merchandise is second-rate. (I am fortunate enough to be able to afford better.)
- I believe Wal-Mart's business practices to be unethical and predatory.
By predatory, I mean that the SOP seems to be move into town, sell goods at cost (or a loss) until the competitors close shop, and raise prices to a profit-making level.My wife and I shop at Target and Kohl's for almost all household needs (with the occasional jaunt to the local K-Mart, which is still open, btw). The prices are still good, though perhaps a smidge higher than WMT. The quality (especially in clothing) is far superior.
Now, however, WMT has really thrown me for a loop. My grudge against Microsoft is stronger, so I'd love to see people snap these PCs up. It just feels weird to cheer WMT on after all these years.
"The sun's not yellow. It's chicken."
Turning the lights off certainly helps. Also, make sure the television's brightness setting is not too high. The "black bars" should be very nearly black.
I'm a bit late into the fray here, but this is one of my favorites. A coworker of mine used to work at a car dealership here in St. Louis (I'd have no problem mentioning the name, if I could only remember it). He did some kind of office or clerical work, but his desk was within earshot of a salesperson's. On with the story...
One day, a young couple came in, test drove a V-8 Camaro (or some F-body), and decided they really wanted one. Unfortunately, the dealer didn't have a V-8 in their preferred color. They did, however, have a V-6. Realizing that this was an impulse purchase and not wanting to lose the naive customers, he said something like, "Here's what we'll do: I'll sell you this V-6 here today at the V-8 price. We'll schedule a time next week for you to drop it off at the shop, and I'll have our mechanics install the other two cylinders."
They bought it.
Are there any good vendors these days when one wants support without hassles?
I build my own, but my cousin has a Dell, whose HDD flaked out after only ~6 months. She called them up, and they had a local tech come to her dorm and replace the drive for free. I think that's pretty damn good support. Sure, she had to burn all her "important" files (read "*.mp3") to CD-R and reinstall some software, but the hassle was pretty minimal given the circumstances.
Dells are also very nice to work on. Whoever makes their cases does a really nice job, IMO. The only problem I have with most prebuilt systems is that you generally get a pretty cheap mobo with an unknown chipset, onboard audio, etc.
The drives had their own 6502 and memory
Heh, that brings up an interesting bit (no pun intended) I heard about C64 development. If my source is correct, programmers use to detect whether a drive was connected and use its memory (8k?) for applications.
At the time, I was just a little turd poking registers for screen color and typing programs in from _Family_Computing_. I started a cheesy text adventure game at one point but dropped it because it wasn't that interesting. But hey, how 'bout that 3-voice SID?
We were also lucky enough to have a VIC-20 with tape drive before that. I suppose that's because my dad is an EE and a little geeky in his own right. He never reached full geekhood, unfortunately. If he'd been born even 10 years later, I bet it would have been quite different.
Frankly I'm so sick and tired of being ordered to do things in the stupidest possible way on a daily basis I've decided to find a new career. IT has become a haven for morons where having a clue means you are perceived as a threat to everyone elses job.
I understand this sentiment completely. In less than two weeks, I roll off a contract with one of the (collectively) stupidest organizations I've ever seen. It's a big company, with many incentives for backbiting and posturing. If you disagree with someone's stillbirth of a brainchild, you get invited to meetings where five goons sharing a brain attempt to convince you to forget what experience has taught and join the stupidity. It's amateur hour all day, every day.
The market sucks right now, but I can hardly wait to get out of here. The fear of unemployment is nothing compared to the fear of staying here one more day than absolutely necessary.
OTOH, there are still good companies to work for. Most of these are smaller organizations where a talented person can actually get some respect from management, and people aren't afraid of calling BS when some shmuck starts blowing hot air. Hopefully, I'll get lucky with the next assignment.
AOL users do not make up the majority on the internet. Why would anyone develop a website with AOL-specific extensions that most web users couldn't even see? I agree that AOL encourages its customers to consider its service as equivalent to the interenet, but I doubt it's executives are dumb enough to believe that.
I consider this a defensive move on AOL's part. AOL-TW is facing off against MSN, and both sides know it. (I heard from a reliable source that MS has posters in its buildings publicizing this conflict.) Anyway, it wouldn't be very smart for AOL to piss off MS and continue using IE as their browser. That certainly detracts from any credibility they may have had.
I think any e-commerce site would be remiss if it didn't support whatever AOL is using as its browser. The threat of lost revenues should be enought to prod the lazy bastards into (W3C) compliance. :-) There are a lot of vendors out there with similar prices, so competition is fierce. Losing a customer is easy; winning them back is next to impossible.
BTW, most of the cross-browser problems I've seen involve some pretty fugly javascript. You know the trick--use a pretty button image with an "onclick" that, after three or four function calls, submits the form. The DOM disparities don't help, of course.
While all the points he makes are true, and the economic beneifits of free software are obvious, that is not the primary moral justification for software being free. Repeat after me, "When software is free, the world is a better place."
Perens' argument is intended for IT managers, directors, VP's, etc. These people do not care to hear moral justifications, nor will they respond favorably to assertions that Free software makes the world a better place. To them, this sounds like "hippie talk," something a group of CS undergrads would come up with while smoking up in their dorm room.
Please understand, this isn't to say I don't agree with your assertion. However, to effectively promote Free software to managers, you must provide their reasons for adopting it, not yours. BTW, this is a point brought up by the "radical" ESR.
Heh, actually it's been around for a while. From the jargon file:
/aw-toh-maj'i-klee/ adv.
--------
automagically
Automatically, but in a way that, for some reason (typically because it is too complicated, or too ugly, or perhaps even too trivial), the speaker doesn't feel like explaining to you. See magic. "The C-INTERCAL compiler generates C, then automagically invokes cc(1) to produce an executable."
This term is quite old, going back at least to the mid-70s in jargon and probably much earlier. The word `automagic' occurred in advertising (for a shirt-ironing gadget) as far back as the late 1940s.
--------
AOL is the perfect provider of said service because, assuming you are an AOL customer, they already have your credit card info. A friendly AOL agent can browse to sites you like, purchase items you will enjoy, and have them shipped to your home...all automagically! It could even scan your drives for audio and video files and forward license fees to the copyright holders, since these are obviously pirated. Now how much would you pay?
Not only will the unsuspecting "common" users not notice this, but they are also the only ones roped in by pop-under windows, gimmicky banner ads, spam, etc. AOL likely doesn't care upsetting the geeks because 1) We're in the minority, 2) We are mostly immune to the obnoxious advertising tactics described above*, and 3) The few friends we have don't listen to our rants anymore, anyway. :-) The scary part about this whole mess is that AOL has the ability to personally identify a user (even on a dynamic IP address) if a cookie is present, the user is logged into AIM, an AOL dialup account is being used, etc. Of course, we can't prove they do this, but can you think of any other reason to capture IP address along with the search terms?
If they even cared to give the illusion of privacy, they would apply a hash function to the address. This would still allow the search terms from one "session" of searching to be associated with each other--the only valid use of the IP address I can conjure up. Of course, all they would have to do is apply the same hash to the IP address when you log in to any AOL-TW service, and they can match them, so it really is nothing more than an illusion, and we'd be back where we started.
The lesson here, I think, is "Don't support companies that even attempt to compromise your privacy without explicit disclosure." It signifies dubious intent and even more dubious ethics.
* My favorite Moz feature (other than tabbed browsing) has to be the option to disallow unrequested popup windows.
Oops. I meant to post as AC and give my username. There went the moderation points. ;-)
First, I modded up your first comment as I felt the "flamebait" moderation clearly meant "I don't agree with you." In a fair trial (assuming there is such a thing), I believe the argument that, if the company cannot modify the code in the obfuscated form, this must not be the "preferred" form would stand. In practice, I suppose anything is possible, especially with an adequately slick defense team and insufficient representation for the FSF (or whomever).
:-)
Second, I've adopted your line above as my sig. I hope you don't mind.
[T]he company showed a videotape to make the argument that Windows would be damaged if a user attempted to remove the Internet Explorer (IE) Web browser. Microsoft later admitted the demonstration computer was rigged.
:-)
"Do you have any expectation as to whether or not you will be putting together a similar demonstration for this part of the case?" state lawyers asked.
"Not exactly like that one," Allchin said.
I should hope not!
You know, that is a really cool extension of what the commodotization of computer equipment and internet access has done for the little guy. The tools you use on these films would likely have cost several thousand dollars just ten years ago, certainly placing out of reach for the casual amateur.
:-) )
BTW, do you have any of these hosted online? I'd like to check them out sometime. (Feel free to email if you fear a slashdotting.
If there is a local LUG or UUG, I strongly urge you to rally the troops and distribute Linux/BSD ISOs before the entrance to the MSFest. If there isn't a users' group, get a couple friends or do it yourself. It would be best to have a few PCs running Linux doing cool stuff like fractal generation, running webservers, distributed processing, etc. Also, a tuxracer machine would help. :-)
The key here is to inform the students that there are other options. This is especially important for the younger students who might be easily roped in by the glitz and glamour of an MS marketing party.
BTW, how about something like this for a big poster?
* 700 copies of your latest proprietary software: $5,000
* Airfare and accomodations for pretty marketeers: $4000
* Donation (bribe) for CS department: $10,000
* Having your event crashed by students distributing free alternatives: Priceless.
Posted 1/14 on anandtech:
http://www.anandtech.com/cpu/showdoc.html?i=1576
Certainly, I have no problem with fixed-term copyrights. I agree with you wholeheartedly on that. It looks to be a simple misunderstanding.
RazzleFrog is right on the money. That argument is simply ridiculous. The notion of a copyright was never intended to provide financial support for a writer/artist's survivors. You can bet Disney, et al, don't give a damn about those people; they have other obvious motives for purchasing copyright extensions.