What always got me about Blockbuster rentals was the 2 or 5 day rental period. With my schedule, it wasn't always easy to watch in the time period.
This is why I often buy DVDs. Considering a Blockbuster rental is $4 and they sell used DVDs for $9 or so it often makes more sense to buy.
Also many stores such as Target and Fred Meyer will have racks of $10 or less DVDs with older films. I picked up copies of the Clint Eastwood spaghetti westerns and Casablanca this way.
Well this tactic seems to be working for North Korea
Well there was a reason I said it makes about as much sense as Somalia trying nuclear blackmail. Last time I checked Somalia doesn't have nuclear weapons. Same goes for SCO they don't have anything to back up their allegations against IBM. IBM will turn the skies over Utah black with lawyers.
You're likely right. I thought there was some V7 code in the VAX port which lead to BSD as we know it.
BTW for those of you who don't know BSD was the first UNIX with a modern virtual memory implementation, mostly due to the VAX having some nifty hardware for supporting it.
Sprint PCS, for example, has an customer service voice recognition system
This is one of the reasons I've stuck with AT&T wireless dispite some major coverage issues and CDMA being a better technology. I shouldn't have to jump through hoops in order to speak with a human. Not that I have to do it much anymore for things like my phone, bank, or ISP but it is nice to have the option when you need it.
Not to mention things like SMP, NUMA, journaled filesystems, and logical volume management showed up in these operating systems long before they did in any UNIX version. Sequent (now owened by IBM) did a bunch of work on bringing large-scale SMP and NUMA to UNIX as well.
Naw, IBM don't know nothing about operating systems.
This only works if you are say IBM or Microsoft, it doesn't work if you are SCO.
It makes about as much sense as Somalia trying nuclear blackmail against the US. There will be "shock and awe" in this lawsuit but it won't be coming from SCO.
What if some substantial (either quantity or quality) amount of their proprietary code has made its way into the Linux source? If IBM put it there, should they not be punished for doing so? If RedHat et.al are making/made money from it, shouldn't they pay royalties? I know that SCO is the popular bad guy right now, but what if they have a point, does this still make them bad?
First of all the "features" SCO alleges were copied by IBM aren't even present in the System V codebase. Secondly most if not all of these features such as SMP, NUMA, jornalling filesystems, etc first appeared 20-30 years ago in IBM mainframe operating systems. One of the pioneers in bringing SMP and NUMA to UNIX for large numbers of procesors was Sequent who IBM bought a couple of years ago. To claim IBM somehow copied these features from System V is absurd considering IBM probably invented the features in question.
I hope IBM throws its patent portfolio at SCO and crushes them like a bug.
And all these years I thought that AT&T owned the OS
Not exactly.
BSD was based on version 7. Over the years the AT&T and BSD codebases diverged quite a bit. Many UNIX vendors including AT&T copied bits of the BSD codebase back into their implementations of the AT&T codebase. The BSD TCP/IP stack is probably the best known of these.
Flash forward to the early 90's, BSD 4.4 is released, AT&T sues BSDI and the University of California for copying it's source code. After much lawyering the case is eventually settled and the handful of files that still contain AT&T source are removed leading to the 4.4-lite release.
In the interim AT&T has sold the UNIX source code and trademarks to Novell. A couple of years later Novell sells the UNIX code to SCO and donates the UNIX trademarks to X/Open. A few years later SCO sells its UNIX OS businesses to Caldera and Caldera changes its name to SCO.
So the current batch of idiots isn't really SCO but Caldera who has managed to get it's grubby hands on the old AT&T codebase.
System V is the basis for all operating systems outside of Redmond
Huh? What rock has this guy been living under?
OS/360, VM/CMS, MVS, Z/OS, OS/400, OS/2, and several others are all operating systems developed in-house by IBM. Mythical Man Month was written about the OS/360 project IBM had during the 60's. None of these owe any heritage to Redmond or System V. Many of the concepts used in modern operating systems first appeared on "big iron" like IBM mainframes: symetric multiprocessing, NUMA, clusters, failover, fault tolerance, transaction processing, pre-emptive multitasking, virtual memory, journaling, etc.
There are others such as VMS or Mac OS9 that have no connection to System V or Redmond as well. I do think it is safe to say that much of the technology used in modern enterprise operating systems was invented at IBM and first appeared in an IBM mainframe OS.
Can I assume that by "image quality", you mean color-trueness within images?
Yes color matching is the big issue.
Enlighten me. What's the issue there?
At the very high-end CRTs are still cheaper and still have better performance. Some places all of the engineers doing CAD work have something like the Sony W900 on their desk. A 24" Sony GDM-FW900 is $1,800 and does 2304x1440, a 23" Sony SDM-P232W/B is $2,600 and does 1920x1200. Also it is only fairly recently that large (19 inches and up) LCD displays have come anywhere near CRTs in cost or resolution. This is also a factor with graphic design as well.
Apparently, some of the new LCDs with faster refresh are winning over some gamers.
Still most FPS gamers buy CRTs and most that have a decent display won't be replacing it any time soon.
Although I agree with you, I'm not sure WHY this is true. At risk of giving the pointy-haired boss new ideas, I'd like to observe that by replacing monitors with LCDs, you can cut down on the total space per employee and squeeze in a few extra cubes. That may offset the cost enough to make it worth it -- especially if the alternative is to rent more space.
Don't forget reduced HVAC costs, CRTs pump out a lot of heat compared to LCDs.
In most organizations the IT people are responible for ordering computers, while facilities handles things like space allocation, squeezing in more cubes, and paying the HVAC bills. They don't necessarily talk to each other. Given the layoffs and downturns most companies I know of have a surplus of space right now so there really isn't a good reason to spend a bunch of money upgrading everyone to an LCD.
Most businesses buy the absolute cheapest monitors they can get away with for a majority of their users. Large monitors or LCDs are considered a status symbol much as laptops are. Unless you can give a valid business reason why you need something other than the standard you aren't going to get it unless you are high enough on the pecking order.
Some places may be buying LCDs for new systems but LCDs still cost slightly more and there is the status symbol problem as well.
Although a couple of the women I know who have exceptional lanuage ability are linguistics majors. And yes they have all heard the "cunning linguist" joke before, one is even likely to make the remark herself but she has a very odd sense of humor.
have you ever happened to figure out why women are not flying commercial flights.
Really? There are a number of female airline captians who would be supprised to hear this. Heck it's not uncommon to have both the Captain and First Officer be female.
If you made the spacial test using "stacking a dishwasher" as a kind of 3D puzzle, I bet women would score higher than men most of the time
I have to disagree with you there. Most women I know suck at loading dishwashers. Same goes for stacking packages in the back of a car.
Now mind you I have WAY above average 3D spatial ability so I'm able to perform these tasks better than most men. However in general I find men are better at this than men.
On the other hand in general women tend to be much better with things like languages. I find that women are much more likely to be mutilingual than men. All of the people I know with truely exceptional language ability are women.
but don't you think the few women who DO use PCs are in the almost-like-a-man range of spatial abilities?
Few women who do use PCs? What rock have you been hiding under the last few years?
From what I've seen computer use is pretty much evenly split between genders. True the tasks a computer is used for and the amount of time spent in those tasks does vary a bit between genders. For example men are more likely to be obsessive gamers and women are more likely to be obsessive IM and chat users.
we're real close to replacing the CRT in most uses with LCD
Most high end users who are concerned about image quality are still buying CRTs. If you have to do color matching, CAD/CAM, or are gaming you probably still want a CRT.
The price differential between CRT and LCD monitors is still enough that most larger businesses are still only buying CRTs for most of their users. Sure the executives and receptionists are getting LCDs but everyone else gets cheap 17" CRT monitors.
There went your "But they took out US civilians!" argument.
I never made that argument. I was talking about Iraqi civilians.
Not only that, but considering the military and the arms industry lied tremendously (a fifty percent(!) lie) ten years ago, don't you think they're doing the same thing now? Especially if knowing that it's the guy who could do it cheapest is the one who built those things?
First of all if you think the administration is lying about Iraqi civillian casualties please check the figures from various international humanitarian agencies. The estimates I've seen are very close to the figures released by the US government.
The fact is the civilian casualties are very low considering the tonnage of ordinance dropped on Iraq.
Even if you think the military is lying about the accuracy of the weapons used in Iraq don't you think technology has improved somewhat since then? Would that not increase the accuracy of weapons that incorporate newer technology? Please go do some reasearch on the accuracy improvements in the last 10 years before you go spouting off.
Also over 90% of the ordinance dropped on Iraq recently was precision guided munitions, it was less than 50% during the 1991 Gulf war (sorry I don't know the exact numbers offhand).
Re:Physics
on
Nuke-Lobbing
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· Score: 5, Interesting
The figures you cite are what was state of the art in 1991. The weapons have come a long way since then. The JDAM is far more accurate than laser guided bombs. If nothing else look at the Iraqi civillian casualty figures 5,000 or so civillian casualties is VERY low considering the amount of ordinace we dropped on Iraq during the recent campaign. If we had been using "dumb" bombs the casualties would be in the hundreds of thousands or millions.
Re:offtopic
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Nuke-Lobbing
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· Score: 2, Interesting
The best rationale I can find is in papers and articles from "The Project for the New American Century" a conservative defence policy think-tank.
Rumsfield, Cheney, Wolfawitz, Perle, and several others in the administration were members or wrote articles for them.
In a nutshell Iraq is meerly phase 1 in a larger plan.
Slashdot Mirror
What always got me about Blockbuster rentals was the 2 or 5 day rental period. With my schedule, it wasn't always easy to watch in the time period.
This is why I often buy DVDs. Considering a Blockbuster rental is $4 and they sell used DVDs for $9 or so it often makes more sense to buy.
Also many stores such as Target and Fred Meyer will have racks of $10 or less DVDs with older films. I picked up copies of the Clint Eastwood spaghetti westerns and Casablanca this way.
So where does X/Open fit into all this? I've looked at a couple of magazine ads, and all the Unix(TM) stuff is attributed to X/Open
I believe Novell donated the UNIX trademarks to X/Open.
Well this tactic seems to be working for North Korea
Well there was a reason I said it makes about as much sense as Somalia trying nuclear blackmail. Last time I checked Somalia doesn't have nuclear weapons. Same goes for SCO they don't have anything to back up their allegations against IBM. IBM will turn the skies over Utah black with lawyers.
Really, I want to know. I really haven't heard of netfix before today. I'm wondering how I missed something that seems this popular?
BSD is not based on Version 7 but on Version 6
You're likely right. I thought there was some V7 code in the VAX port which lead to BSD as we know it.
BTW for those of you who don't know BSD was the first UNIX with a modern virtual memory implementation, mostly due to the VAX having some nifty hardware for supporting it.
Based on the number of replies it would seem they are quite popular. For whatever reason I've never heard of them before.
Pretty much everyone I know buys DVDs or rents them from a local video store.
Considering I can often get new DVDs of classics or used DVDs of new releases for less than $10 it makes more sense to buy than renting for $4.
Sprint PCS, for example, has an customer service voice recognition system
This is one of the reasons I've stuck with AT&T wireless dispite some major coverage issues and CDMA being a better technology. I shouldn't have to jump through hoops in order to speak with a human. Not that I have to do it much anymore for things like my phone, bank, or ISP but it is nice to have the option when you need it.
Not to mention things like SMP, NUMA, journaled filesystems, and logical volume management showed up in these operating systems long before they did in any UNIX version. Sequent (now owened by IBM) did a bunch of work on bringing large-scale SMP and NUMA to UNIX as well.
Naw, IBM don't know nothing about operating systems.
This only works if you are say IBM or Microsoft, it doesn't work if you are SCO.
It makes about as much sense as Somalia trying nuclear blackmail against the US. There will be "shock and awe" in this lawsuit but it won't be coming from SCO.
For a moment I there I thought the SCO PR guy WAS the Iraqi Information Minister.
"God will roast their Linux Penguin stomachs in hell!"
What if some substantial (either quantity or quality) amount of their proprietary code has made its way into the Linux source? If IBM put it there, should they not be punished for doing so? If RedHat et.al are making/made money from it, shouldn't they pay royalties? I know that SCO is the popular bad guy right now, but what if they have a point, does this still make them bad?
First of all the "features" SCO alleges were copied by IBM aren't even present in the System V codebase. Secondly most if not all of these features such as SMP, NUMA, jornalling filesystems, etc first appeared 20-30 years ago in IBM mainframe operating systems. One of the pioneers in bringing SMP and NUMA to UNIX for large numbers of procesors was Sequent who IBM bought a couple of years ago. To claim IBM somehow copied these features from System V is absurd considering IBM probably invented the features in question.
I hope IBM throws its patent portfolio at SCO and crushes them like a bug.
And all these years I thought that AT&T owned the OS
Not exactly.
BSD was based on version 7. Over the years the AT&T and BSD codebases diverged quite a bit. Many UNIX vendors including AT&T copied bits of the BSD codebase back into their implementations of the AT&T codebase. The BSD TCP/IP stack is probably the best known of these.
Flash forward to the early 90's, BSD 4.4 is released, AT&T sues BSDI and the University of California for copying it's source code. After much lawyering the case is eventually settled and the handful of files that still contain AT&T source are removed leading to the 4.4-lite release.
In the interim AT&T has sold the UNIX source code and trademarks to Novell. A couple of years later Novell sells the UNIX code to SCO and donates the UNIX trademarks to X/Open. A few years later SCO sells its UNIX OS businesses to Caldera and Caldera changes its name to SCO.
So the current batch of idiots isn't really SCO but Caldera who has managed to get it's grubby hands on the old AT&T codebase.
System V is the basis for all operating systems outside of Redmond
Huh? What rock has this guy been living under?
OS/360, VM/CMS, MVS, Z/OS, OS/400, OS/2, and several others are all operating systems developed in-house by IBM. Mythical Man Month was written about the OS/360 project IBM had during the 60's. None of these owe any heritage to Redmond or System V. Many of the concepts used in modern operating systems first appeared on "big iron" like IBM mainframes: symetric multiprocessing, NUMA, clusters, failover, fault tolerance, transaction processing, pre-emptive multitasking, virtual memory, journaling, etc.
There are others such as VMS or Mac OS9 that have no connection to System V or Redmond as well. I do think it is safe to say that much of the technology used in modern enterprise operating systems was invented at IBM and first appeared in an IBM mainframe OS.
As an obsessive chat using female dating an obsessive gamer male, I resent that comment
I dunno, sounds like a perfect match to me.
You're right. The LGB's are much better than they were.
In any case +/- 40 feet is pretty damn good accuracy wise. Of course +/- 10 feet is any better.
Can I assume that by "image quality", you mean color-trueness within images?
Yes color matching is the big issue.
Enlighten me. What's the issue there?
At the very high-end CRTs are still cheaper and still have better performance. Some places all of the engineers doing CAD work have something like the Sony W900 on their desk. A 24" Sony GDM-FW900 is $1,800 and does 2304x1440, a 23" Sony SDM-P232W/B is $2,600 and does 1920x1200. Also it is only fairly recently that large (19 inches and up) LCD displays have come anywhere near CRTs in cost or resolution. This is also a factor with graphic design as well.
Apparently, some of the new LCDs with faster refresh are winning over some gamers.
Still most FPS gamers buy CRTs and most that have a decent display won't be replacing it any time soon.
Although I agree with you, I'm not sure WHY this is true. At risk of giving the pointy-haired boss new ideas, I'd like to observe that by replacing monitors with LCDs, you can cut down on the total space per employee and squeeze in a few extra cubes. That may offset the cost enough to make it worth it -- especially if the alternative is to rent more space.
Don't forget reduced HVAC costs, CRTs pump out a lot of heat compared to LCDs.
In most organizations the IT people are responible for ordering computers, while facilities handles things like space allocation, squeezing in more cubes, and paying the HVAC bills. They don't necessarily talk to each other. Given the layoffs and downturns most companies I know of have a surplus of space right now so there really isn't a good reason to spend a bunch of money upgrading everyone to an LCD.
Most businesses buy the absolute cheapest monitors they can get away with for a majority of their users. Large monitors or LCDs are considered a status symbol much as laptops are. Unless you can give a valid business reason why you need something other than the standard you aren't going to get it unless you are high enough on the pecking order.
Some places may be buying LCDs for new systems but LCDs still cost slightly more and there is the status symbol problem as well.
I was trying to avoid the "cunning linguist" pun.
Although a couple of the women I know who have exceptional lanuage ability are linguistics majors. And yes they have all heard the "cunning linguist" joke before, one is even likely to make the remark herself but she has a very odd sense of humor.
have you ever happened to figure out why women are not flying commercial flights.
Really? There are a number of female airline captians who would be supprised to hear this. Heck it's not uncommon to have both the Captain and First Officer be female.
If you made the spacial test using "stacking a dishwasher" as a kind of 3D puzzle, I bet women would score higher than men most of the time
I have to disagree with you there. Most women I know suck at loading dishwashers. Same goes for stacking packages in the back of a car.
Now mind you I have WAY above average 3D spatial ability so I'm able to perform these tasks better than most men. However in general I find men are better at this than men.
On the other hand in general women tend to be much better with things like languages. I find that women are much more likely to be mutilingual than men. All of the people I know with truely exceptional language ability are women.
but don't you think the few women who DO use PCs are in the almost-like-a-man range of spatial abilities?
Few women who do use PCs? What rock have you been hiding under the last few years?
From what I've seen computer use is pretty much evenly split between genders. True the tasks a computer is used for and the amount of time spent in those tasks does vary a bit between genders. For example men are more likely to be obsessive gamers and women are more likely to be obsessive IM and chat users.
OS/2 is dead?
Quick, someone tell the thousands of ATMs and voicemail systems out there that are still running it.
OS/2 never died. It just dropped out of the consumer OS market.
we're real close to replacing the CRT in most uses with LCD
Most high end users who are concerned about image quality are still buying CRTs. If you have to do color matching, CAD/CAM, or are gaming you probably still want a CRT.
The price differential between CRT and LCD monitors is still enough that most larger businesses are still only buying CRTs for most of their users. Sure the executives and receptionists are getting LCDs but everyone else gets cheap 17" CRT monitors.
There went your "But they took out US civilians!" argument.
I never made that argument. I was talking about Iraqi civilians.
Not only that, but considering the military and the arms industry lied tremendously (a fifty percent(!) lie) ten years ago, don't you think they're doing the same thing now?
Especially if knowing that it's the guy who could do it cheapest is the one who built those things?
First of all if you think the administration is lying about Iraqi civillian casualties please check the figures from various international humanitarian agencies. The estimates I've seen are very close to the figures released by the US government.
The fact is the civilian casualties are very low considering the tonnage of ordinance dropped on Iraq.
Even if you think the military is lying about the accuracy of the weapons used in Iraq don't you think technology has improved somewhat since then? Would that not increase the accuracy of weapons that incorporate newer technology? Please go do some reasearch on the accuracy improvements in the last 10 years before you go spouting off.
Also over 90% of the ordinance dropped on Iraq recently was precision guided munitions, it was less than 50% during the 1991 Gulf war (sorry I don't know the exact numbers offhand).
The figures you cite are what was state of the art in 1991. The weapons have come a long way since then. The JDAM is far more accurate than laser guided bombs. If nothing else look at the Iraqi civillian casualty figures 5,000 or so civillian casualties is VERY low considering the amount of ordinace we dropped on Iraq during the recent campaign. If we had been using "dumb" bombs the casualties would be in the hundreds of thousands or millions.
The best rationale I can find is in papers and articles from "The Project for the New American Century" a conservative defence policy think-tank.
Rumsfield, Cheney, Wolfawitz, Perle, and several others in the administration were members or wrote articles for them.
In a nutshell Iraq is meerly phase 1 in a larger plan.