Right you are, but I would say it's the TV that's at fault rather than the XBox. TV's aren't designed with flexible refresh rates in mind, whereas I would be pretty shocked if NVidia locked the XBox to NTSC's 60Hz.
I was actually referring to the cable loop from the central nodes out through the neighborhoods.
So was I. My brother-in-law was an installer for ATT Broadband. Cable Modems require a fiber local loop (that's what I meant by backbone), with the only copper being between the pole and your hookup.
I live in a fairly rural area, and only a few gated communities have loops run recently enough to be fiber. The main town is still all copper, and it wasn't economical for them to roll out cable modems in my area, since they could only offer the service to those on the fiber loops.
That doesn't rule out a faulty connection, though. I've heard stories about fiber that was cut because somebody thought it was coax and rather than admit their mistake and get it fixed properly they kludged it. In a strange way you have to have some respect for a guy who can tape together a cut fiber and have it work even intermitently...
The junctions, of coarse, aren't purely optical. Optical links are difficult to switch at high speeds, so they are converted to electronic for switching inside the junction box.
Reliability was less than pristine, but at least some fraction of that was in the ancient cables run through the city.
I doubt that it was the ancient cables; cable modems require a fiber backbone (that's why it isn't available in my area). More likely it's simply unreliable equipment, either on their end or your end.
I thought my DSL was unreliable until I got my Netgear RT314 and proved that it was the crappy connection software they had me using. The Netgear doesn't have all the features of the other ones, like the Linksys' nice admin interface, but it's got all of them beat on stability. Who cares about a pretty interface if you never have to use it?
I totally agree with the rest of your post, though.
It's SuSE 7.3, kernel 2.4.13, as spec'd in the Test Setup page.
It's good to see the kernel compilation back in the benchmarks. Tom's Hardware started that last year and then it kind of disappeared for a while. It's a shame that whoever did that graphic is such an idiot, though...
I just upgraded to SuSE 7.3 from 7.1 and it is sweet. I was amazed at the improvements from an incremental release, especially the hardware management capabilities in YAST2. KDE2.2 is much smoother and more responsive as well. I would be totally comfortable handing the CDs to my mom and letting her install it herself (she'd be scared shitless, but she could do it). It's certainly a distro I'd wave in the face of the Linux naysayers that whine about how Linux is to difficult to install and configure.
That's essentially what this is, and last time I checked, phone taps still required a warrant, and warrants still require probable cause. As long as this ability is governed by the same laws that phone taps are, I will recognize it as a legitimate law enforcement tool. They bear the burden of proof in our system, and they need to be able to gather evidence.
Sure they could "require" me to give them my password or subpeona the information. I could also accidentally low-level format my harddrive or "forget" my password. Yes, that would open me up to prosecution for other crimes, but maybe those are less severe than the ones I'm being investigated for.
In the end, the FBI's actions are still governed by the Bill of Rights. For any evidence to be admissable in court, it still has to pass the 4th Amendment.
Show me real alternatives for SolidWorks (an excellent 3-D CAD package, unfortunately tied to Windows and Excel) and Microsoft Project and I'll push the switch at my company until the day I die. Oh yeah, and the alternatives have to be able to read files produced by those programs.
I'm serious. This isn't meant to be flamebait or a troll. I post this same question regularly in various forums and have yet to get an answer.
My dad actually has every issue going back to 1918, with a few miscellaneous ones from before then. The pre-50's ones are pretty hokey, basically travel magazines with a lot of pictures of people looking down big holes in the ground (no pictures of what it is they're looking at, of course). During the 50's and 60's they got a lot better, and they reached their current quality by the 70's.
I pay $39 + $10 for ISP services (email, homepage, etc.), and it would be more if I wasn't getting it all through the local telco. The local telco owns the physical connection and is responsible for it's maintenance. They're required by law to allow outside companies access to their networks, but they are allowed to charge for that access. Long distance companies such as AT&T and Sprint pay local telco's $.04/minute for access to the local lines (that's what they pay in CA, anyway). I don't know what alternative broadband providers have to pay, but their charges seem to run about $10/month more.
The charges to long distance carriers are mostly to cover the costs of the universal access requirements (they're required to provide service to small and remote communities that aren't profitable). Alternative broadband providors are literally renting space for their equipment in the CO in addition to any network access charges they may have to pay.
I don't know anything about the Canadian telephone system, so I can't really say why it's so much cheaper. Here are some things that might reduce costs though:
Nationwide provider. Competition is great in a lot of ways, competition generally drives prices down. But it also increases the operating costs of the competitors, which raises the minimum price that a service can be provided profitably.
Government provider. This generally hides a portion of the cost from the consumer through tax subsidies. The government isn't necessarily providing directly, it could be subsidizing a private company to do so. The end result is the same, though. If the government is providing directly, the requirement of profitability is theoretically removed, which could be to the consumers advantage provided beuracracy is kept under control.
I don't know if that answer's your question or not...
Teamexcess has some excellent deals on monitors in their clearance section. I've bought 5 monitors from them (3 21" and 2 20", all Hitachi) and haven't had any problems. I was a little nervous about the "B Grade" rating, but so far all I've seen is some slight yellowing of the plastic casing and a few barely perceptable scratches. Functionally they've all been perfect, all the damage has been purely cosmetic.
They don't have any 21" in right now, but the Hitachi 20" are sweet monitors, especially at $139 (and yes, they will do 1600x1200 at 75+Hz). If you absolutely must have 21" though, check back regularly, they are generally $149. Add about $30 for shipping
There is also the motivation of gaining community recognition.
More than just community recognition, also professional recognition.
Until about 2 years ago I was strictly a hardware guy. I got into electronics when I was in highschool, and I focused on electronics my first 3 semesters of college, figuring I could get a tech job and use that to pay for my engineering degree. Yeah, right! Everywhere I went I got the same responses: "We're looking for someone with at least 5 years of experience in our highly specialized field" and "It doesn't matter what you know because we do things differently here". Don't ask me what they meant by "different", I could never get a straight answer about that. Almost 10 years later I still haven't run into any hardware that doesn't obey the basic laws of electronics.
Anyway, the real problem was not so much idiot managers who believed their hardware is fundamentaly different from anyone elses, as how to get experience if you can't get a job. It didn't matter that I spent a large portion of my spare time fixing stereos and VCRs and trying to turn my old 8088 into a digital sampler, I hadn't proved myself in a professional capacity.
I think Open Source gives programmers a way to demonstrate their skills in a verifiable way. You can say, "Look, here is a package that people actually use, and here are my contributions to it." That can be invaluable to someone trying to get a foot in the door, something that is going to get increasingly more difficult in the current economy.
Of course Linux doesn't need to succeed on the desktop, but why shouldn't it? There are plenty of people who want it there, myself included, because we feel it is a superior OS; one truely capable of being all things to all people. Any developement that extends the capabilities of Linux is a benefit. Any project that increases the visibility of Linux is a benefit.
Ask yourself why MS has been making such inroads in the server and embedded markets. Is it because their products are better? Nope. It's because the people who pay for these projects see it every single day, every time they boot up their computer, and they trust what they know.
Most technical products don't get approved based on technical merit, they get approved based on marketability, and marketability is heavily dependent on familiarity. People are more likely to buy what they know, even if it sucks. That's why Ford sells more cars than Subaru, and Chicago Cutlery sells more knives than Cutco. Marketroids call it "Brand".
Linux doesn't need to succeed anywhere for it to continue to exist, but if it doesn't, what's the point? And how can it succeed anywhere without visibility? What better way is there to acheive visibility than by succeeding on the desktop.
Unfortunately the Windows CE v3.0 that's running on the AquaPad severely limits its functionality; the platform is in dire need of an upgrade to PocketPC 2002...
Hehe
I'd prefer Linux, and it's only a matter of time...
I guess we'll just have to wait and see what they want for them. I'm definately interested in a tablet PC. Having never learned to type I can't say I'd miss the keyboard much.
Not everyone has access to broadband. I would guess it's about 50-50, and of those that could get it, most have no need for it, certainly not at $50/month. How many of them use Linux? Probably not many, and it's going to stay that way if they can't get their modems to work. There are also plenty of Linux-users who are still modem-bound, and real modems are expensive, and not that easy to find in the 56kbps variety. When you can find one, you're looking at $70 vs $20 for a winmodem.
Another thing somebody mentioned was laptops, which tend to come with built-in winmodems.
It comes down to this; if you bought a computer in the last 2 years, laptop or desktop, it came with a winmodem. Most people hate it when you tell them they need to buy more hardware before they can do what they want to do. They want everything to work out of the box. Therefore, real winmodem support is absolutely essential for Linux's future on the desktop.
If this guy has a bunch of people working in the field on laptops, it could easily be worth $20k to his company, especially if it means breaking free of the Windows upgrade cycle, which would likely cost them a lot more than $20k over the life of those laptops.
The neat part about this is that you should (in theory) be able to use your soundcard and a part-68 interface for a modem if this is pulled off.
reminded me of a problem I had with my first computer where my sound stopped working and my modem got flaky at the same time. It turned out that my modem had spontaneously reinstalled itself as a sound card, replacing my existing sound card. I could pick up any phone in the house and hear whatever was supposed to be going to my speakers.
I got it fixed, but I never figured out how it happened. Ah, the joys of Windows...
The bright side, of course, is that was the event that first got me to muck about with drivers. The rest, as they say, is history!
Garage bands was what I was talking about, and certainly unsigned acts account for the vast majority of music created. However, the RIAA isn't concerned with music created, only music recorded and sold. I allowed them a generously high amount in that case only due to volume. Garage bands, almost by defenition, can't afford to press a million CDs.
The only real reasons to reboot are the occasional kernel panic (once in a blue moon, usually after installing a badly written kernel extension)
Like I said...
I run Linux at home, and I have managed to lock it up, and I don't just mean X, I know how to deal with that. Don't ask me how, but I've done it.
At work, though, I don't have the luxury of choosing my OS, and the CAD package we use isn't available for anything but windows.
I'm glad to hear that Macs are stable these days. I haven't used a Mac since OS8, and that POS went down harder, faster, and more often than even my old win95A box.
I don't mean that as flamebait, that was just my experience.
Since the only reason I ever shut my computer down is because it locks up, I think I'll stick with volatile RAM, thank you very much. Software is going to have to get A LOT more stable before I'll be willing to change my mind.
RIAA members create, manufacture and/or distribute approximately 90% of all legitimate sound recordings produced and sold in the United States.
That's an interesting assertion, I wonder where they get the numbers to back that up?
Having been a part of the local music scene of a fairly small town for about 10 years now, I would estimate it at more like 50-60% based on the evidence available to me. It's very easy to produce your own CD. If you've got a day job that pays more than your rent you can pull it off. Of course, they could be defining "legitimate" as "stuff that makes us money"...
And "create"? Please! "Manufacture" I'll give them, but "create"? I think not.
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So was I. My brother-in-law was an installer for ATT Broadband. Cable Modems require a fiber local loop (that's what I meant by backbone), with the only copper being between the pole and your hookup.
I live in a fairly rural area, and only a few gated communities have loops run recently enough to be fiber. The main town is still all copper, and it wasn't economical for them to roll out cable modems in my area, since they could only offer the service to those on the fiber loops.
That doesn't rule out a faulty connection, though. I've heard stories about fiber that was cut because somebody thought it was coax and rather than admit their mistake and get it fixed properly they kludged it. In a strange way you have to have some respect for a guy who can tape together a cut fiber and have it work even intermitently...
The junctions, of coarse, aren't purely optical. Optical links are difficult to switch at high speeds, so they are converted to electronic for switching inside the junction box.
But if they charged you for it they'd have to allow you to use it, which would mean that none of the channels they provide could use macrovision.
I doubt that it was the ancient cables; cable modems require a fiber backbone (that's why it isn't available in my area). More likely it's simply unreliable equipment, either on their end or your end.
I thought my DSL was unreliable until I got my Netgear RT314 and proved that it was the crappy connection software they had me using. The Netgear doesn't have all the features of the other ones, like the Linksys' nice admin interface, but it's got all of them beat on stability. Who cares about a pretty interface if you never have to use it?
I totally agree with the rest of your post, though.
It's good to see the kernel compilation back in the benchmarks. Tom's Hardware started that last year and then it kind of disappeared for a while. It's a shame that whoever did that graphic is such an idiot, though...
I just upgraded to SuSE 7.3 from 7.1 and it is sweet. I was amazed at the improvements from an incremental release, especially the hardware management capabilities in YAST2. KDE2.2 is much smoother and more responsive as well. I would be totally comfortable handing the CDs to my mom and letting her install it herself (she'd be scared shitless, but she could do it). It's certainly a distro I'd wave in the face of the Linux naysayers that whine about how Linux is to difficult to install and configure.
SuSE's not just for wierd Germans anymore!
That's essentially what this is, and last time I checked, phone taps still required a warrant, and warrants still require probable cause. As long as this ability is governed by the same laws that phone taps are, I will recognize it as a legitimate law enforcement tool. They bear the burden of proof in our system, and they need to be able to gather evidence.
Sure they could "require" me to give them my password or subpeona the information. I could also accidentally low-level format my harddrive or "forget" my password. Yes, that would open me up to prosecution for other crimes, but maybe those are less severe than the ones I'm being investigated for.
In the end, the FBI's actions are still governed by the Bill of Rights. For any evidence to be admissable in court, it still has to pass the 4th Amendment.
Of course, anyone who would be vulnerabe to this is either a moron or doesn't feel that they have anything to hide, so it seems kind of pointless.
Of course, the truely paranoid communicate with their computer using morse code with their space bar and scroll lock LED. I can see it now:
Head of Investigation: "What have we got from the J Random Hacker log file?"
Computer Specialist: "84,365,928 spaces, sir"
I'm serious. This isn't meant to be flamebait or a troll. I post this same question regularly in various forums and have yet to get an answer.
ABUSING the monopoly you have IS.
That is what Microsoft needs to be punished for.
The charges to long distance carriers are mostly to cover the costs of the universal access requirements (they're required to provide service to small and remote communities that aren't profitable). Alternative broadband providors are literally renting space for their equipment in the CO in addition to any network access charges they may have to pay.
I don't know anything about the Canadian telephone system, so I can't really say why it's so much cheaper. Here are some things that might reduce costs though:
Nationwide provider. Competition is great in a lot of ways, competition generally drives prices down. But it also increases the operating costs of the competitors, which raises the minimum price that a service can be provided profitably.
Government provider. This generally hides a portion of the cost from the consumer through tax subsidies. The government isn't necessarily providing directly, it could be subsidizing a private company to do so. The end result is the same, though. If the government is providing directly, the requirement of profitability is theoretically removed, which could be to the consumers advantage provided beuracracy is kept under control.
I don't know if that answer's your question or not...
I'll have to check out the movie sometime when I'm not at work, of course...
They don't have any 21" in right now, but the Hitachi 20" are sweet monitors, especially at $139 (and yes, they will do 1600x1200 at 75+Hz). If you absolutely must have 21" though, check back regularly, they are generally $149. Add about $30 for shipping
More than just community recognition, also professional recognition.
Until about 2 years ago I was strictly a hardware guy. I got into electronics when I was in highschool, and I focused on electronics my first 3 semesters of college, figuring I could get a tech job and use that to pay for my engineering degree. Yeah, right! Everywhere I went I got the same responses: "We're looking for someone with at least 5 years of experience in our highly specialized field" and "It doesn't matter what you know because we do things differently here". Don't ask me what they meant by "different", I could never get a straight answer about that. Almost 10 years later I still haven't run into any hardware that doesn't obey the basic laws of electronics.
Anyway, the real problem was not so much idiot managers who believed their hardware is fundamentaly different from anyone elses, as how to get experience if you can't get a job. It didn't matter that I spent a large portion of my spare time fixing stereos and VCRs and trying to turn my old 8088 into a digital sampler, I hadn't proved myself in a professional capacity.
I think Open Source gives programmers a way to demonstrate their skills in a verifiable way. You can say, "Look, here is a package that people actually use, and here are my contributions to it." That can be invaluable to someone trying to get a foot in the door, something that is going to get increasingly more difficult in the current economy.
Ask yourself why MS has been making such inroads in the server and embedded markets. Is it because their products are better? Nope. It's because the people who pay for these projects see it every single day, every time they boot up their computer, and they trust what they know.
Most technical products don't get approved based on technical merit, they get approved based on marketability, and marketability is heavily dependent on familiarity. People are more likely to buy what they know, even if it sucks. That's why Ford sells more cars than Subaru, and Chicago Cutlery sells more knives than Cutco. Marketroids call it "Brand".
Linux doesn't need to succeed anywhere for it to continue to exist, but if it doesn't, what's the point? And how can it succeed anywhere without visibility? What better way is there to acheive visibility than by succeeding on the desktop.
Hehe
I'd prefer Linux, and it's only a matter of time...
I guess we'll just have to wait and see what they want for them. I'm definately interested in a tablet PC. Having never learned to type I can't say I'd miss the keyboard much.
Not everyone has access to broadband. I would guess it's about 50-50, and of those that could get it, most have no need for it, certainly not at $50/month. How many of them use Linux? Probably not many, and it's going to stay that way if they can't get their modems to work. There are also plenty of Linux-users who are still modem-bound, and real modems are expensive, and not that easy to find in the 56kbps variety. When you can find one, you're looking at $70 vs $20 for a winmodem.
Another thing somebody mentioned was laptops, which tend to come with built-in winmodems.
It comes down to this; if you bought a computer in the last 2 years, laptop or desktop, it came with a winmodem. Most people hate it when you tell them they need to buy more hardware before they can do what they want to do. They want everything to work out of the box. Therefore, real winmodem support is absolutely essential for Linux's future on the desktop.
If this guy has a bunch of people working in the field on laptops, it could easily be worth $20k to his company, especially if it means breaking free of the Windows upgrade cycle, which would likely cost them a lot more than $20k over the life of those laptops.
The neat part about this is that you should (in theory) be able to use your soundcard and a part-68 interface for a modem if this is pulled off.
reminded me of a problem I had with my first computer where my sound stopped working and my modem got flaky at the same time. It turned out that my modem had spontaneously reinstalled itself as a sound card, replacing my existing sound card. I could pick up any phone in the house and hear whatever was supposed to be going to my speakers.
I got it fixed, but I never figured out how it happened. Ah, the joys of Windows...
The bright side, of course, is that was the event that first got me to muck about with drivers. The rest, as they say, is history!
Like I said...
I run Linux at home, and I have managed to lock it up, and I don't just mean X, I know how to deal with that. Don't ask me how, but I've done it.
At work, though, I don't have the luxury of choosing my OS, and the CAD package we use isn't available for anything but windows.
I'm glad to hear that Macs are stable these days. I haven't used a Mac since OS8, and that POS went down harder, faster, and more often than even my old win95A box.
I don't mean that as flamebait, that was just my experience.
I am excited about it though, I've become pretty attached to KDE in the last year, especially Konqueror.
That's what managers are for. Too bad so many managers are only in it for their 10-15%.
That's an interesting assertion, I wonder where they get the numbers to back that up?
Having been a part of the local music scene of a fairly small town for about 10 years now, I would estimate it at more like 50-60% based on the evidence available to me. It's very easy to produce your own CD. If you've got a day job that pays more than your rent you can pull it off. Of course, they could be defining "legitimate" as "stuff that makes us money"...
And "create"? Please! "Manufacture" I'll give them, but "create"? I think not.