it's only free if you have the time and bandwidth to download it, though it's certainly cheaper in stores than other OSes (usually anyway.. the corel package was in the $90 range last time i was at best buy)
The beauty is: you buy it once and can legally make copies and install it on hundred of computers without having to pay multiple license fees.
and open source isn't really earth shattering either, since the only difference it makes to Average Joe User is that it's harder to get some programs running since he (Joe) has to figure out how to compile it first.
He doesn't have to compile, that's what binary RPM and DEB packages are for. And while the open source may not be directly beneficial to the average user, it is important for companies or government agencies who want real security, and for anyone developing software: if a system call behaves differently than you thought it would, you can always look at the source.
The "earth shattering" part is that it's free and open-source. These two qualities are what made Unix win agains all the other OSes in the 1970ies (even though it was almost free only for universities).
Linux is not a disruptive technology. It's an operating system, and OSes aren't a threat to anyone--and if they were, it surely wouldn't be a good thing.
Gee, so I guess that Windows never was a threat to Apple or Sun?
really interesting. If the MPAA really tries to do anything, there is a chance that the NYT will see this as a method of getting very positive publicity as valiant fighters for free speech and follow through with the issue...
I don't understand the logic of people who support Napster. It's sole purpose is to allow the free exchange of music over the internet, so it is designed to pirate music, making it illegal. There are absolutely no arguments supporting Napster, and the "online community" bull is just a transparent excuse to defend piracy.
This if, of course, also bull.
Hint: Napster is used for making music files available. There is nothing inherently illegal about music files.
Napster is illegal and therefore should be banned.
Double bull. Napster is not illegal. It can be used for something illegal, and that's probably what it's being used for most of the time, but that doesn't make the program itself illegal.
If you want music for free, then get it from some amateur group, don't steal it from someone else.
And how, genius, is Napster unable to distibute music from amateur groups?
Ebay isn't going to risk getting into trouble over a few measly auctions, be they legal or not. Scientology is very good at causing great deals of trouble without any sort of legal justification. It's as simple as that.
What exactly are the advantages in RDRAM that make this excercise worth it? I thought ram was already extremely fast with times of less than 2ns already. What am I missing?
Well, more speed is always good with RAM. RDRAM however, is a mixed blessing. The maximum transfer rates are great, but the latency is somtimes worse than with SDRAM, and it's not constant.
How could it benefit? Space exploration in the presence of stray electromagnetic fields? Nope, non-crashing computer in the presence of a cel phone. Of course, the case of the computer should already take care of that.
I think that attempting this would almost always be doomed to fail, since I don't think any reasonable motherboard would allow such a high FSB, and if it did, you'd get a shitload of trouble from stuff like the PCI bus being linked to the FSB and PCI devices not liking a higher clock...
The poster apparently has no clue whatsoever. The article is NOT about turning SDRAM into RDRAM, which is utterly impossible since the technologies are radically different.
This article merely tells you to make an SDRAM module look like and RDRAM by giving it a shield agains electromagnetic emissions. This might have some benefit in very rare cases, but realistically, it's totally pointless.
Read before you answer. The keyword was new devices.
And the give me one good reason why someone who buys a zip drive now would want the parallel version when he can have the faster, more reliable USB version.
I've seen one of those (though it was called a "T90"). A nightmare to repair, but boy, it looks real nice with that specially-designed chassis. Lots of eye candy. The heat exchanger was twice as big as the computer itself, and you could watch the flourinert run through it at the front.
What else is left to squeeze more power out of a given CPU design besides cooling?
If you want to have maximum performance, you'll always use cooling on top of whatever else you're doing. Let me illustrate this by a quote:
I don't build computers, I'm a cooling engineer.
-- Seymour Cray, founder of Cray Inc.
The real question is: why would anyone want top performance in a laptop? The damn things are supposed to be reliable and portable, not able to outperform a workstation!
Sure, the probability that a hobby astronomer will actually do something with this database that could be called research is really low, but it might be a handy tool for real astronomers to double-check their data or something.
As for the rest of us, what's wrong with looking at pretty pictures that don't even show nude women?
First, I know this is obviously a troll, or someone too stupid to waste time on, but the first part at least I have to correct.
Einstein (and others) proved that time travel is an impossibility, and we can never travel faster than light.
Wrong. The Theory of Relativity does not say anything about time travel, and about travelling faster than light it proves nothing, that's why it's called "theory". It does explain macrocosmic events better than other theories, but that doesn't mean there won't be a better one eventually. In fact, it is totally unfit to explain microcosmic stuff.
(because we would explode, or something)
Nope. According to the theory of relativity, attaining the speed of light is not possible for an object with non-zero resting mass because it would require an infinite amount of energy.
The scale comes from something known as the "Orange Book", and yes, "C2" also comes from there, and if M$ claims they got C2, they're full of shit (as if that were new...), since they have it only if NT is not networked.
The scale works like this: there are different security levels, each with stronger requirements. The actual requirements are quite numerous, here's a long article with details.
The point is: snail junkmailers pay for their junk. Spammers make others pay for their junk. And the fact that emails are so much cheaper just means that if spammers were not being fought, we'd quickly end up with 99% of all email traffic being spam, effectively destroying emails as a medium of communication.
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The beauty is: you buy it once and can legally make copies and install it on hundred of computers without having to pay multiple license fees.
and open source isn't really earth shattering either, since the only difference it makes to Average Joe User is that it's harder to get some programs running since he (Joe) has to figure out how to compile it first.
He doesn't have to compile, that's what binary RPM and DEB packages are for. And while the open source may not be directly beneficial to the average user, it is important for companies or government agencies who want real security, and for anyone developing software: if a system call behaves differently than you thought it would, you can always look at the source.
OK, so make it "free, open source and popular"...
The "earth shattering" part is that it's free and open-source. These two qualities are what made Unix win agains all the other OSes in the 1970ies (even though it was almost free only for universities).
Gee, so I guess that Windows never was a threat to Apple or Sun?
really interesting. If the MPAA really tries to do anything, there is a chance that the NYT will see this as a method of getting very positive publicity as valiant fighters for free speech and follow through with the issue...
Maybe, but then you would be forced to distribute only 32kbps files...
This if, of course, also bull.
Hint: Napster is used for making music files available. There is nothing inherently illegal about music files.
Napster is illegal and therefore should be banned.
Double bull. Napster is not illegal. It can be used for something illegal, and that's probably what it's being used for most of the time, but that doesn't make the program itself illegal.
If you want music for free, then get it from some amateur group, don't steal it from someone else.
And how, genius, is Napster unable to distibute music from amateur groups?
The difference is that Scientology makes money while otherwise doing the same things.
Ebay isn't going to risk getting into trouble over a few measly auctions, be they legal or not. Scientology is very good at causing great deals of trouble without any sort of legal justification. It's as simple as that.
Not true. I have a 250MB HD with more then 1024 cyls...
I don't think I mind pissing "you" off...
It's not the number of MHz that counts, it's what you do with them...
Well, more speed is always good with RAM. RDRAM however, is a mixed blessing. The maximum transfer rates are great, but the latency is somtimes worse than with SDRAM, and it's not constant.
How could it benefit? Space exploration in the presence of stray electromagnetic fields? Nope, non-crashing computer in the presence of a cel phone. Of course, the case of the computer should already take care of that.
I think that attempting this would almost always be doomed to fail, since I don't think any reasonable motherboard would allow such a high FSB, and if it did, you'd get a shitload of trouble from stuff like the PCI bus being linked to the FSB and PCI devices not liking a higher clock...
This article merely tells you to make an SDRAM module look like and RDRAM by giving it a shield agains electromagnetic emissions. This might have some benefit in very rare cases, but realistically, it's totally pointless.
Here is the working link...
And the give me one good reason why someone who buys a zip drive now would want the parallel version when he can have the faster, more reliable USB version.
I've seen one of those (though it was called a "T90"). A nightmare to repair, but boy, it looks real nice with that specially-designed chassis. Lots of eye candy. The heat exchanger was twice as big as the computer itself, and you could watch the flourinert run through it at the front.
If you want to have maximum performance, you'll always use cooling on top of whatever else you're doing. Let me illustrate this by a quote:
The real question is: why would anyone want top performance in a laptop? The damn things are supposed to be reliable and portable, not able to outperform a workstation!
That way, badly written code doesn't crash your browsers, but most importantly: you avoid those annoying popup windows on porn sites... :)
As for the rest of us, what's wrong with looking at pretty pictures that don't even show nude women?
Einstein (and others) proved that time travel is an impossibility, and we can never travel faster than light.
Wrong. The Theory of Relativity does not say anything about time travel, and about travelling faster than light it proves nothing, that's why it's called "theory". It does explain macrocosmic events better than other theories, but that doesn't mean there won't be a better one eventually. In fact, it is totally unfit to explain microcosmic stuff.
(because we would explode, or something)
Nope. According to the theory of relativity, attaining the speed of light is not possible for an object with non-zero resting mass because it would require an infinite amount of energy.
It's not tarps! It's hot grits, I tell you! Or maybe they're cloning Natalie Portman...
The scale works like this: there are different security levels, each with stronger requirements. The actual requirements are quite numerous, here's a long article with details.
The point is: snail junkmailers pay for their junk. Spammers make others pay for their junk. And the fact that emails are so much cheaper just means that if spammers were not being fought, we'd quickly end up with 99% of all email traffic being spam, effectively destroying emails as a medium of communication.