It's likely that your performance isn't being constrained so much by processor and memory as by disk access speed. You would probably see the same time loading Adobe on a P-III 450 w/ 128MB RAM.
Disk has become the biggest remaining bottleneck in most computers. The only way I've found to get around this is to use RAID controllers and stripe data across several disks to do parallel reads and writes. Believe it or not, Promise has an ATA-RAID controller than can bind up to four IDE disks together for about $100. Use something like this, and you could cut your load time down by half or better.
There is a big difference between ads such as banners and SPAM. Banner ads pay to keep a site running. SPAM is a parasite that chews up resources without providing any value back (except to the SPAM sender). If anything, SPAM is hurting the growth of the Internet.
BlueTooth will likely replace IR in many devices which has been a complete failure due to line of sight limitations. Imagine your portable MP3 player sending music through your car stereo (and being controlled by the car stereo) even though it is in your pocket. Reliable wireless comm opens up all sorts of possibilities.
Actually, if it hadn't been for the Russians the Americans would have been holding up the show. The lab module (Destiny) was not ready to go 18 months ago. A lot of time has been spent trying to get the software straightened out. Granted, if the service module had gone up we would have been farther along, but the delay did help cover up some problems on the US side.
Don't forget that NASA had a 2nd Skylab built and waiting on the ground. It was ready to go up in case the first Skylab was lost. That was the good old '60s/'70s way of doing business. Why build one when you can build two for only 20% (or so) more? It's the tooling that costs the money more than the actual fabrication.
FYI, the 2nd Skylab is now in the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum. Makes for one hell of a big exibit.
If some investor had given $50M to Rotary Rockets two years ago, they would probably be doing sub-orbital flights by now. They might have even made it to full orbit. When someone is spending their own money, they tend to be a lot more frugal than someone spending the government's money.
Nuclear thermal engines have pretty much been ruled out for launching, but they are still being considered for interplanetary use. I believe Zubrin's Mars Direct plan calls for their use. The nice thing here is that the fuel can be stored in an explosion resistant container during launch and only moved to the engine once in orbit. You just can't beat the specific impulse these guys carry.
Don't forget laser launch. Some interesting experiments have been done towards launching small payloads using high power lasers against a mirrored, focusing surface. For small sats, there is the potential to launch a vehice to LEO with no fuel.
What is costs you in fuel weight you save in structural weight. A VTHL craft has to have reinforcements along two axis. Mass is pushed to the back during takeoff and to the bottom during landing. Also, I believe the type of landing gear system used in the unpowered landing is heavier than what is found on the VTVL craft.
This is where Rotary was trying to come out ahead. They would have used rotor wing power to provide the lift at landing with only a very small amount of fuel to spin the rotors. This had the potential of an even greater weight savings. The logic here being that rotor wings would weigh less than fuel.
How about if you could push a button on your sat radio receive and store the song internally? Hear a song you like, push a button to keep it. Over time, your car would build up it's own play list of music you enjoy listening to. Since you are already paying a monthly subscription fee with that radio, there is no reason to have to pay to store songs from that radio on that radio.
Unfortunately, multicast hasn't gone anywhere. I saw a big demo of multicast technology at Networld+Interop in 1994. Six years later I've got as many mulitcast feeds on my computer today as I did back then -- zero. Yes, it's a great technology, but the Internet service providers appear to have no interest in deploying it. It will be much more difficult to deploy pay content when anyone can put out a full stream video with a single machine that anyone on the Internet can receive.
Keep in mind that this sat radio technology is wireless. The biggest deployment of these devices will be in cars. You don't usually have an Internet connection in your car. Someday, maybe, but not today.
Pictures I've seen of the sat radios show the artist and song being displayed on the radio during play. Since it is a digital signial, all sorts of extra info can be stuck in there. I suppose a digitized voice reading off the song wouldn't be difficult either. Hopefully, the protocol for the digital data is extensible.
You have got to be kidding here. Since when did terrorism and vandalism become American values? This non-stop rant against "globalization" makes no sense! It's a last ditch effort by people to stir up trouble in what has become an age of prosperity where living conditions are improving the world over.
I'm sure all the anarchists would be much happier if we went back to subsistence farming and raiding our neighbor using clubs when our own crop failed. That is what these anarchists stand for! No rules, no laws, no personal responsibility, no socital responsibility. Then they can rape and pilage to their own heart's content.
The IMF, World Bank, Sony, and McDonalds are not the enemy here. Ignorance is the enemy. Do you think the big corporations want us poor and down trodden? Hell no! They want us all to be rich and properous so we will buy yet more of their goods and services. Rich people are consuming people are happy people.
Change does happen. Live with it. Many of these protesters are people who can't handle changes to the economic direction in the world. If they spent less time protesting and vandalizing, and instead took some classes and spent time learning, they would find that there are many more opportunities being created than being lost.
It all comes down to one simple statement, "get a life!"
Why not use the approach Linux and PHP has and make it so MySQL can be compiled with just the feature set a particular installation requires? This could avoid much of the performance sacrafice without keeping new features from being introduced.
Apologize, heck, you should get a Pulitzer for that post. Actually, your message you be added on to the original posting being that it gives the background information that is all to often missing.
Hmm, pre-ionized particles free in space. Catch them, heat them, throw them out the back just like your initial fuel. Bam, you've got a ram scoop. If the magnetic field can be pushed forward of the vessel, it can act just like a big funnel. Sort of like how the Earth's magnetic field funnels particles towards the poles.
First we need the distribution providers to start turning on IPv6 support. I've managed to setup a RedHat box to do IPv6, but it required redoing the kernel, manually patching a couple of packages, and replaing quite a few other packages. Your average user just isn't ready for this yet.
Let me throw a few links at anyone who wants to try setting up IPv6 on their box. Be careful, you can really foul up a machine doing this wrong.
Instead of doing a IPv6 use day, we need an IPv6 lobbying day. Get your distribution provider to compile IPv6 support in to the default kernel (at least as a module), and start including the IPv6 packages and scripts with their installation.
Hey, it could be worse! You know you've been around Linux for too long when you can remember having to boot off floppy disks because there was no hard disk boot loader available.
One thing to remember about boot loaders is that their only purpose is to help the disk boot. You don't want a large application sitting here or you slow your system boot time down even more. I could be wrong here, but I believe that LILO has to fit completely in the MBR. This severly constrains how much can be put into it.
If something more is really needed, you would have to have a first stage loader like LILO boot a 2nd stage loader with all the bells and whistles. The problem this is that you have to get the 2nd stage loader out of the way for the kernel to come into memory.
Ask yourself the question, is this really necessary? Machine boots, I'm happy. Put your time in configuration tools to help with setting up LILO in the first place
If Microsoft had created a "WinWeb" interface similar to the "WinSock" interface, all these browser wars would have been a non issue. If any program wanted a web widget, it would just call the general API and get back whatever browser was set as the default tool. This is along the lines of how KDE is doing it. Any app can embed a browser and it won't care which browser tool is installed.
The landing method used for Pathfinder can't be used for all types of landers. Many types of instruments wouldn't survive the bounce shocks. Also, the powered landers tend to be a lot heavier than Pathfinder. The beach ball certainly was successful, and should be used more, but it takes a variety of types of landers to do everything needed.
NASA does resuse technology. The 2001 Lander was going to use the same basic platform as the Polar Lander. That was part of the reason for scrubbing the mission.
Face it, the screwups over the last couple of years have pushed back any chance for a human Mars landing by at least five years.
One thing to remember about the ultra rich is that they don't always have a lot of cash sitting around. Even an evil bastard such as Bill Gates doesn't keep $5B stuffed under his mattress. It's tied up in company stock. If he gives away that stock, he looses control of the company.
Yes, there are tax writeoffs, but at that level of wealth I doubt they make too much difference. This is more than likely someone who is approaching the end of their career and no longer needs to have so much wealth. Back to Bill Gates again, he has stated that he has no intention of leaving more than a few hundred million to his kids. That means that Bill could end up being the biggest philanthropist in history as he gives away $100B+ over the next twenty or thirty years.
Konqueror may be the default web browser, but I wouldn't call it integrated in the same sense that Microsoft does. Even if you delete Konqueror off your system, most of the applications will still run. Plus, if Netscape, Microsoft, or Opera wanted to, they could tweak the bottom end of their browsers to take over for Konqueror and provide the same services it does.
If Microsoft had treated browser objects the same way they did ODBC and WinSock, there never would have been a problem. Applications would have just used which ever browser happened to be present when embedding an HTML object.
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Disk has become the biggest remaining bottleneck in most computers. The only way I've found to get around this is to use RAID controllers and stripe data across several disks to do parallel reads and writes. Believe it or not, Promise has an ATA-RAID controller than can bind up to four IDE disks together for about $100. Use something like this, and you could cut your load time down by half or better.
There is a big difference between ads such as banners and SPAM. Banner ads pay to keep a site running. SPAM is a parasite that chews up resources without providing any value back (except to the SPAM sender). If anything, SPAM is hurting the growth of the Internet.
I can see it now. Airplanes will be refusing to push back from the gate because people can't figure out how to turn off their watch.
BlueTooth will likely replace IR in many devices which has been a complete failure due to line of sight limitations. Imagine your portable MP3 player sending music through your car stereo (and being controlled by the car stereo) even though it is in your pocket. Reliable wireless comm opens up all sorts of possibilities.
Actually, if it hadn't been for the Russians the Americans would have been holding up the show. The lab module (Destiny) was not ready to go 18 months ago. A lot of time has been spent trying to get the software straightened out. Granted, if the service module had gone up we would have been farther along, but the delay did help cover up some problems on the US side.
Don't forget that NASA had a 2nd Skylab built and waiting on the ground. It was ready to go up in case the first Skylab was lost. That was the good old '60s/'70s way of doing business. Why build one when you can build two for only 20% (or so) more? It's the tooling that costs the money more than the actual fabrication.
FYI, the 2nd Skylab is now in the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum. Makes for one hell of a big exibit.
If some investor had given $50M to Rotary Rockets two years ago, they would probably be doing sub-orbital flights by now. They might have even made it to full orbit. When someone is spending their own money, they tend to be a lot more frugal than someone spending the government's money.
Nuclear thermal engines have pretty much been ruled out for launching, but they are still being considered for interplanetary use. I believe Zubrin's Mars Direct plan calls for their use. The nice thing here is that the fuel can be stored in an explosion resistant container during launch and only moved to the engine once in orbit. You just can't beat the specific impulse these guys carry.
Don't forget laser launch. Some interesting experiments have been done towards launching small payloads using high power lasers against a mirrored, focusing surface. For small sats, there is the potential to launch a vehice to LEO with no fuel.
What is costs you in fuel weight you save in structural weight. A VTHL craft has to have reinforcements along two axis. Mass is pushed to the back during takeoff and to the bottom during landing. Also, I believe the type of landing gear system used in the unpowered landing is heavier than what is found on the VTVL craft.
This is where Rotary was trying to come out ahead. They would have used rotor wing power to provide the lift at landing with only a very small amount of fuel to spin the rotors. This had the potential of an even greater weight savings. The logic here being that rotor wings would weigh less than fuel.
How about if you could push a button on your sat radio receive and store the song internally? Hear a song you like, push a button to keep it. Over time, your car would build up it's own play list of music you enjoy listening to. Since you are already paying a monthly subscription fee with that radio, there is no reason to have to pay to store songs from that radio on that radio.
Unfortunately, multicast hasn't gone anywhere. I saw a big demo of multicast technology at Networld+Interop in 1994. Six years later I've got as many mulitcast feeds on my computer today as I did back then -- zero. Yes, it's a great technology, but the Internet service providers appear to have no interest in deploying it. It will be much more difficult to deploy pay content when anyone can put out a full stream video with a single machine that anyone on the Internet can receive.
Keep in mind that this sat radio technology is wireless. The biggest deployment of these devices will be in cars. You don't usually have an Internet connection in your car. Someday, maybe, but not today.
Pictures I've seen of the sat radios show the artist and song being displayed on the radio during play. Since it is a digital signial, all sorts of extra info can be stuck in there. I suppose a digitized voice reading off the song wouldn't be difficult either. Hopefully, the protocol for the digital data is extensible.
You have got to be kidding here. Since when did terrorism and vandalism become American values? This non-stop rant against "globalization" makes no sense! It's a last ditch effort by people to stir up trouble in what has become an age of prosperity where living conditions are improving the world over.
I'm sure all the anarchists would be much happier if we went back to subsistence farming and raiding our neighbor using clubs when our own crop failed. That is what these anarchists stand for! No rules, no laws, no personal responsibility, no socital responsibility. Then they can rape and pilage to their own heart's content.
The IMF, World Bank, Sony, and McDonalds are not the enemy here. Ignorance is the enemy. Do you think the big corporations want us poor and down trodden? Hell no! They want us all to be rich and properous so we will buy yet more of their goods and services. Rich people are consuming people are happy people.
Change does happen. Live with it. Many of these protesters are people who can't handle changes to the economic direction in the world. If they spent less time protesting and vandalizing, and instead took some classes and spent time learning, they would find that there are many more opportunities being created than being lost.
It all comes down to one simple statement, "get a life!"
That was the "Dr. Freeze" project. Unfortunately, none of the links I can find work anymore. There was an article sometime back on SlashDot about it.
It's always good to strive for improvement.
Why not use the approach Linux and PHP has and make it so MySQL can be compiled with just the feature set a particular installation requires? This could avoid much of the performance sacrafice without keeping new features from being introduced.
Apologize, heck, you should get a Pulitzer for that post. Actually, your message you be added on to the original posting being that it gives the background information that is all to often missing.
Now, there is some exaust you don't want flying in your face! And you thought bugs stung when they hit you.
Hmm, pre-ionized particles free in space. Catch them, heat them, throw them out the back just like your initial fuel. Bam, you've got a ram scoop. If the magnetic field can be pushed forward of the vessel, it can act just like a big funnel. Sort of like how the Earth's magnetic field funnels particles towards the poles.
First we need the distribution providers to start turning on IPv6 support. I've managed to setup a RedHat box to do IPv6, but it required redoing the kernel, manually patching a couple of packages, and replaing quite a few other packages. Your average user just isn't ready for this yet.
Let me throw a few links at anyone who wants to try setting up IPv6 on their box. Be careful, you can really foul up a machine doing this wrong.
Instead of doing a IPv6 use day, we need an IPv6 lobbying day. Get your distribution provider to compile IPv6 support in to the default kernel (at least as a module), and start including the IPv6 packages and scripts with their installation.
Hey, it could be worse! You know you've been around Linux for too long when you can remember having to boot off floppy disks because there was no hard disk boot loader available.
One thing to remember about boot loaders is that their only purpose is to help the disk boot. You don't want a large application sitting here or you slow your system boot time down even more. I could be wrong here, but I believe that LILO has to fit completely in the MBR. This severly constrains how much can be put into it.
If something more is really needed, you would have to have a first stage loader like LILO boot a 2nd stage loader with all the bells and whistles. The problem this is that you have to get the 2nd stage loader out of the way for the kernel to come into memory.
Ask yourself the question, is this really necessary? Machine boots, I'm happy. Put your time in configuration tools to help with setting up LILO in the first place
If Microsoft had created a "WinWeb" interface similar to the "WinSock" interface, all these browser wars would have been a non issue. If any program wanted a web widget, it would just call the general API and get back whatever browser was set as the default tool. This is along the lines of how KDE is doing it. Any app can embed a browser and it won't care which browser tool is installed.
The landing method used for Pathfinder can't be used for all types of landers. Many types of instruments wouldn't survive the bounce shocks. Also, the powered landers tend to be a lot heavier than Pathfinder. The beach ball certainly was successful, and should be used more, but it takes a variety of types of landers to do everything needed.
NASA does resuse technology. The 2001 Lander was going to use the same basic platform as the Polar Lander. That was part of the reason for scrubbing the mission.
Face it, the screwups over the last couple of years have pushed back any chance for a human Mars landing by at least five years.
One thing to remember about the ultra rich is that they don't always have a lot of cash sitting around. Even an evil bastard such as Bill Gates doesn't keep $5B stuffed under his mattress. It's tied up in company stock. If he gives away that stock, he looses control of the company.
Yes, there are tax writeoffs, but at that level of wealth I doubt they make too much difference. This is more than likely someone who is approaching the end of their career and no longer needs to have so much wealth. Back to Bill Gates again, he has stated that he has no intention of leaving more than a few hundred million to his kids. That means that Bill could end up being the biggest philanthropist in history as he gives away $100B+ over the next twenty or thirty years.
Konqueror may be the default web browser, but I wouldn't call it integrated in the same sense that Microsoft does. Even if you delete Konqueror off your system, most of the applications will still run. Plus, if Netscape, Microsoft, or Opera wanted to, they could tweak the bottom end of their browsers to take over for Konqueror and provide the same services it does.
If Microsoft had treated browser objects the same way they did ODBC and WinSock, there never would have been a problem. Applications would have just used which ever browser happened to be present when embedding an HTML object.