I hate to rain on your parade, but that 1k machine isn't all that impressive.
A quad-core PhenomII @ 2.0Ghz is not nearly as fast as a dual-core Core2Duo @ 2.53Ghz. Only software written to make use of multiple CPUs will ever see a speed increase with multiple cores. Since very few programs are written this way (very, very few games) you are smarter to buy a dual-core CPU with faster cores than you are to buy a quad-core CPU with slower cores. Also, the Phenom isn't even as fast as the C2D clock-for-clock, so that 2.0Ghz is probably more equivalent to a 1.8Ghz C2D.
The gfx card is an Nvidia 9500 GS. That's the cheap version of the 9500 GT, which is itself on the low end of the performance spectrum. The best of it's generation was the 9800 GTX, which is already far surpassed by the GTX280. Bottom line: This is not a serious gaming rig. You'd be lucky if it had playable frame-rates in Crysis at 1024x768 with mid-tier quality settings.
A cheap TV tuner card is $50, which I'm sure is what you're getting in a Walmart 'special'. Such a card is going to need that quad-core CPU just to keep the video playing if you intend to watch HD channels because it won't have an integrated decoder so all that processing gets offloaded to the CPU. I guess that's fine for most people, but anyone with a bit of common computer sense wouldn't consider it a big selling point.
10/100 networking? Really?? What century was this motherboard manufactured?
Overall, this system is clearly designed to be a PVR and/or word processor. A performance/gaming rig it is not.
I don't know if the poster you responded too was trying to build a gaming rig, or just wanted some serious performance, but their computer is far better than what you've suggested. On the other hand, if all they wanted was an average computer to do work then there are perfectly decent low-end models on Dell starting at $400.
R&D isn't done in order to develop ideas, it's done to develop ideas *first*. If MS didn't spend millions (billions?) on R&D then they'd be eclipsed overnight (and were: Google, Mozilla, Apple, etc.).
In the software industry, patents do not create ideas nor do patents improve innovation. In fact, patents do exactly the opposite because they enable companies to buy old ideas and prevent anyone else from developing new ideas based on them. The same issue plagues the biotech industry, to the detriment of all humanity
The proper course of action is to remove the patent system and let the market decide. As the author has discovered, software doesn't provide unlimited royalties. As a software company you must constantly develop new ideas before your competition and implement them before your competition. Failing to do so results in your product losing value as your competitors catch up and eventually surpass you with innovations of their own.
Frankly, the author is just whining because he sees MS making money hand over fist from an illegal monopoly and he can't understand why he shouldn't also get to have a monopoly of his own. If this were Digg, I'd have buried the question as Flaimbait.
I'm already running into problems similar to this.
Our company VPN was working fine until Telus (Canada) decided to start redirecting DNS errors. Now, our Intranet services have stopped working because the client's computer tries to contact the external DNS server before our internal (over the VPN) servers and gets back a positive, but wrong, response.
It has totally fracked with our system and I've already left one very nasty complaint with them about it. Unfortunately, they will probably make more money off their ads than we pay for our Inet connection.
The telco monopoly is dead, long live the telco monopoly!
You are correct that legally it is not theft, it is copyright infringement. However, you are absolutely wrong when you claim that no damage is done. I've heard this argument a thousand times on the 'net and I still can't understand how intelligent people can convince themselves of it's truth.
You claim that file sharing does not harm the artist because it can only impact potential earnings. This is demonstrably false as the cost to buy the equipment, the cost in time to compose and record, the cost of living while doing all this all add up to a loss if the artist is prevented from selling that which she creates. This is why copyright was instituted in the first place, except back then it was to protect artists from the publishers who were distributing without paying the artists. Today, it is the general public who have become the problem as they distribute with nary a thought to copyright.
So, the cost of doing the work of creating a work is not a potential loss it is a very real loss. Circumventing copyright on the scale allowed by technologies like BitTorrent is a very damaging phenomenon.
Unfortunately, there are two things driving this and neither of them are the fault of BitTorrent:
The 'industry' has lobbied too successfully for increased copyright terms for decades. The result is the heavily skewed version of copyright we have today, one in which works can stay copyright for more than one hundred years. Originally, copyright lasted only 14 years. Back then it was barely long enough to make enough money to cover the costs of the artist but it was considered appropriate. Today, the 'industry' pays off the bills in the first 12 months of distribution and then the 'next big thing' gets introduced. The money made after the first 12 months is much less, but over the current copyright period it can support a multi-billion dollar industry. So, we have an entire industry 'floating' on profits that depend entirely on a legislated monopoly. Clearly, this was not the intention of the original copyright laws and it is a sad reminder that even Democracy doesn't really serve 'we the people' when money is involved. With the invention of the Internet the public has only now been empowered to act out their angst against this inequality and as usual, the young generation are leading the charge.
In the past the real-work done by the artist to create a work was more visible. The public had a better understanding of the costs, both monetary and personal, incurred by artists. These days those costs are hidden. The 'industrialization' of artistry means that the public almost never sees the actual process of creation that goes into a work, they only see the final polished result when it is ready to be consumed. When something is made to look easy, the typical response will be to assume it is easy. This doesn't mean that every work is deserving of millions of dollars in profit, but it does cause the public to lose perspective. It is a common problem that rich kids grow up spoiled because they never learn to do without. In the case of music, kids today are spoiled because they have no idea how much work must be done before a single song can find it's way onto their MP3 player.
So, is it right to share music over BitTorrent? Ethically, no because you *are* harming the artist by circumventing the legal channels through which they get paid.
However, it could also be argued that the **AA's of the world have been asking for it. If copyright had stayed at 14 years it would never have been possible for the industry to bloat into the trough feeding hog that it has become. In fact, the 'industry' probably wouldn't even exist and we would instead have a plethora of independent artists whose individual skills, rather than marketing budgets, would dictate the top 100 charts. We can dream though, right?
It already exists in Firefox, with the use of XUL + XPCOM + XBL. You can do anything to the browser you want, and even call external binary libs to do heavy lifting if necessary. It is what ActiveX was promised to be, without the security issues and with far more power.
I would kiss my own ass to see XUL become a popular standard for creating rich web apps. Consider Thunderbird, Sunbird, Songbird and other such products as examples of what can be done with this technology.
Windows 98SE made Windows 95 stable = worth it. Also, the speed decrease was minor.
Windows XP was an upgrade to Win2k not Win98 and it was *faster* than Win2k for most tasks. Also, Win2k (and thus WinXP) added amazing new features like BSOD recovery, true multi-threading, almost-real user profiles (I'm sure they'll get there eventually), built-in VPN (PPTP) client, Remote Desktop Sharing, etc, etc.
Vista added, what? In the home version...a pretty desktop? The business version has some stuff, like BitLocker support, but they also *removed* features like Novell NDS support (which sucked for us). For us, an 'upgrade' to Vista actually removed half the features we relied on.
Further, in what way do you consider your list a defence of MS? If anything, I'd call that a list of shame. Linux and Mac both manage to keep approx. the same level of performance from major version to major version, whilst adding major new features (none of which happens to be kernel-level DRM). And even more damning is the fact that Linux land keeps coming up with better performing versions of their major desktops (KDE4, XFCE, IceWM, etc).
If you want to feel terrible, download a copy of XUbuntu and compare it to XP. You'll never be the same again.
What make/model?
We have been ordering HP business machines (currently the 6710b) from CDW for years and we were never given the choice of XP by default. We have had to downgrade every one of them.
"Everyone here is complaining about a system they don't use and haven't seen"
That's simply not true. Slashdot's primary audience is technophiles and I expect the majority of them have had experience with Vista. Yours is certainly not the first post I've seen praising Vista. I think if the audience of any social-driven news site has the right to comment, it is we.
I tried VirtualBox just 2 weeks ago (v1.6.2?) and it ran fine. My problem was that I needed to use a VPN from within the vm, but that won't work through the default NAT setup they provide. In order to setup networking to do anything useful you have to manually configure a bridged device in Linux. If you've never tried to get a bridged device in Linux working, you're not missing any fun. Don't even think about trying to do this with a *wireless* device!
At the end of the day I was able to get the networking setup, but it required hours of researching Google, wasn't entirely stable (because it used rc.local scripts to apply changes), and couldn't make use of the wireless.
So, I gave up and went back to VMWare which provides a GUI for doing all that. It took about 30 seconds to have it working.
Further, to anyone that thinks VMWare is slower than VirtualBox...it is but only out-of-the-box. Set the memory use setting to keep everything in RAM rather than swapping and you'll find it speeds up 100%. For some reason or another VMWare does a lot of disk swapping if you don't force it to keep everything in ram...
You spewed a lot of made up facts in that rant. How do you know that carbon-based molecules are the 'best'? Maybe evolution simply hasn't found a 'better' solution yet. We (including you) certainly don't know because it is beyond our abilities to test the trillions of possible chemical permutations to verify this as fact or not fact.
Further, there is real evidence that the number of base pairs in our DNA is simply the result of being 'good enough'. Scientists have created artificial DNA with 6 base pairs that theoretically should be just as stable, but provide a much larger number of possible evolutionary paths (permutations). Article
I'm an atheist, but I do have to take issue with the following comment:
Plus, you'll be able to sleep in on Sundays for a change and not have to give part of your income to something that sucks the life out of society and produces nations of sheep.
Even as an atheist I still volunteer to help at the local Presbyterian church. Why? Because the church provides community services that are not offered anywhere else. The church where I volunteer provides baby-sitting, computer education classes, yard-sales, book readings, community meeting space, discussion groups, and much more. There are so many good things that church groups do that I find it foolish and irrational that so many Atheists automatically discount the very real and tangible benefits of their presence.
I suggest you at least try to respect the good things done by your local church, even if you disagree with the beliefs. It wouldn't hurt to show them up a bit and actually leave your computer for a few hours a week to join a local charity or community group either.
When you look at the whole Bible, including everything it says on Creation, it describes Big Bang cosmology fairly accurately (well not the science of the BB itself of course, but the effects of a BB universe).
Did it ever occur to you that the reason the Bible describes such a Universe is simply because it was written by people living in such a Universe?
Also, no, the Bible doesn't describe our Universe at all. So, either way you feel like interpreting it, you're wrong.
You're right I don't have professional experience. I'm not entirely without knowledge though. My University thesis for Software Eng. was to code a nuclear power reactor monitoring system. So, yes I do have some inside knowledge of their workings from all the research I had to do.
While your explanation of the inter-networking systems and protocols was all very interesting, it isn't really relevant to what I posted previously. I already know that the monitoring and reporting systems are highly networked, often using 3rd party software and hardware (writing this kind of software was what my thesis was about!).
The problem as I see it, is that the localized safety system at the plant was receiving data from what amounts to an insecure terminal. Now, I know that there are other back-up systems acting redundantly, but as I see it, the fact that there is a failure mode that depends on an insecure server is a threat that doesn't need to exist.
I disagree. In this case the failure mode of the error was not foreseen, and while the code reacted in a safe way, there is no reason to believe that it was specifically coded to do this. From the description it appears to me that the system requires continous input of coolant levels, without that input the level appears to be zero (a continous input of 0). What would have happened if the software upgrade had caused the same levels to be reported continuously? A real drop in coolant might not have been detected!
Not foreseeing a failure mode in which a data-provider becomes corrupt seems like a serious problem to me.
I think you're missing the real point, which is that the central safety systems are being fed data from a 'business network'. What would happen if that computer had an issue that caused it to send the same data continuously even when the coolant level had really dropped? WHY are any safety systems receiving data from an insecure network?
It's bad enough that most reactors use regular PC's to do the data collection and reporting, given the security risks posed by such systems (especially if networked), but I never realized they would be so stupid as to feed data in the other direction like this!
See, if Google made you pay for this, I could see your argument. See, if you start implying that cost is the main factor in quality then you're really just saying OSS is a second-class product. So, no, the fact that it is free of cost should not be a factor in whether or not it is considered reliable.
First, Monsanto does not sell seeds alone. What they do sell is a combination of their pesticide 'RoundUp' with their modified seeds 'RoundUp Ready'. The seeds are highly resistant to RoundUp and thus when the pesticide is applied it kills everything except the seeds. This 'feature' makes their product very effective (even if environmentally devastating). However, their work to 'modify' the seeds to be RoundUp resistant was hardly a feat of engineering brilliance. Mostly, they used the same technique farmers have used for millenia: they cross-bred the resistant strains for many generations until they developed one that had near 100% resistance. They then worked out which gene(s) was responsible and patented it. The 'innovative' work of actual genetic modification was mostly to create a kill switch in the seeds that would prevent the resulting plant from developing viable seeds of its' own. This of course is how they prevent farmers from re-using their seeds. Note, however, that there have been cases of cross-pollination creating hybrids that were viable. Monsanto, of course, claims rights to these as well though they have no legal claim. No one fights the issue simply because Monsanto would crush them financially with a long drawn out court case.
Second, Monsanto seeds do in fact contaminate farmers' fields all the time. A simple search of Google will net you dozens of examples where Monsanto has sued the pants off some random farmer because his field happened to have some percentage of GM seeds growing on it. IIRC, there was a case near my home in Ontario in which a farmers' field was next to a Monsanto testing site and they sued him when they discovered GM crops on his land. They lost, but it was his wallet that suffered.
DO not expect freedom of existence without a fight for it...you must earn it. So, what do you do when someone else is cheating? Monsanto did not create the genes that give their seeds resistance, they merely devised a means to enhance the expression of existing genes. Farmers have been doing similarly since before recorded history. The very seeds Monsanto modified are in fact already modified versions of what were once wild plants. Why does Monsanto get profit from the shared advances of the last 6,000 years of human agriculture without giving back in kind?
...course you live in a world in which there is no scarcity, so no one would ever steal from you. There are different types of scarcity. There is natural scarcity, meaning there simply isn't enough of something for everyone to have as much as they need or want. Then there is artificial scarcity which is created by imposing limitations like Intellectual Property laws. DRM is one example of an attempt to create scarcity where there is none. Monsantos' 'kill switch' is another such example. Thankfully, because we live in a capitalist society, such restrictions tend to be short lived. Capitalism virtually guarantees that any unlimited resource will be exploited in an unlimited fashion.
Given their history of chaotic rulership I'd say that mentality is forgivable. On the other hand, it's unfortunate that they don't see the connection between liberty and lasting order.
I had a poor experience with GoDaddy support. I was forced to revoke a cert less than a year into a 2 year contract because our site was hax0red and they refused to refund or even give me another cert for the remaining time.
Granted it's a cheap cert, but they would have saved themselves money to have simply given me a new cert when I requested rather than keep running me in circles between their ra and billing depts for several days.
The brilliance of up-marketing Boot Camp on OSX is that it helps people overcome their fear of losing Windows compatibility. The idea is to get people onto the Mac platform in a way that makes OSX the primary desktop while Windows becomes 'just another application'. I think that long term this is a great strategy for weening leery Windows users off that platform as it hides the MS branding behind the OSX branding.
I would agree that Apple was not a direct competitor to MS for many years. They were not trying to be. However, it cannot be denied that their markets are overlapping considerably today. Apple has made its' iLife products very attractive to young people who are more involved in the 'online social revolution'. MS is trying desperately to find a way to exploit the same market segment, but have so far had little luck.
It seems a fair question to ask, given the extraordinary numbers Microsoft has been posting for fiscal 2008. 20% growth in European revenues. 30% in the emerging markets of Asia, Africa, etc. Each quarter. I am talking PC hardware sales, a metric which is considered one of the most reliable means of estimating install base. The 8% estimate was for 2005, though I went researching and that number was 11% in 2006 and 13% in 2007. Back to your point, note that increased software revenues do not necessarily reflect an increase in the number of installations. In the case of Vista a 20% increase in revenue can almost entirely be attributed to the increased cost of the OS itself. This cost is more pronounced in the EU where MS has made it even more difficult to acquire XP (over Vista) as compared to the US.
The growth in Asia is similar. MS has historically looked the other way while Asia pirated their software. With the introduction of Vista MS has implemented several new initiatives aimed at getting the millions of Asian users that already have pirated copies of Windows XP to upgrade to a legal copy of Vista. The fact that these users are now paying for Windows (at a much reduced cost, btw) does not imply a larger install base.
I am not, however, implying that the growth will not increase substantially in Asia. It should be noted that much of that growth has been in the low-cost segments, where Linux products like the EeePC really shine. Will Asian consumers prefer cheaper Linux alternatives over more expensive Windows? I don't know, but if even a small percentage, say 5%, chose to do so in the next few years as the market grows it will be a success for Linux and a chink in MS' armor in the future.
Is the Mac a significant challenge to Microsoft outside the US? That's a very good question. Honestly, I haven't really looked into it. I am only aware that Apple has been doing extremely well in the US, and that this year they were the (by far) leader in online PC sales (see links below).
With Apple pushing that much hardware the only plausible conclusion is that people are switching and where the US market goes, others' tend to follow.
Is MS doing well? Sure. But is it climbing faster than their competitors? I think the numbers refute that claim. Given a decade or two we may see a market in which Apple commands as much as 30% and Linux may be approaching double-digits. With such adoption of competing platforms MS would be forced to put more effort into interoperability, open standards, and real innovation. I think we can agree that would be good for everyone.
Vista is eating XP share, but it is not *growing* the Windows market. The desktop market as a whole has been growing at something like 8% per year since 2005. So, at best the Windows brand as a whole can only grow about 8%/yr. However, the growth of OSX is almost entirely at the expense of Windows (and, interestingly greatest in the laptop segment). The result is that Windows isn't really growing at all, it's practically stagnant.
The growth of Linux on the desktop is somewhat at the expense of Windows, but not so much as Apple. Most Linux converts are tech-savvy or early-adopter types that don't really figure into MS's bottom line. Most Linux adopters will likely have a copy Windows around 'just in case', so their impact on the market is practically nil. Where we might start to see Linux eat into MS share is on the entry-level products like the gPC and the EeePC. However, it is still too early to tell if these 'almost-appliance' products will have sustained demand in the market.
FTA: "But they say many schools requested the drives be left out to prevent students from playing unauthorized games."
I find that interesting as historically manufacturers just try to fast talk schools into buying the latest and greatest when in fact those products just encourage the kids to play instead of work. I think schools that want to equip their students with a tool instead of a toy should take a close look at these things. In this case the 'limitations' may be a 'feature'!
Then why wasn't that cost included in the game cost?
In other words, why would I encourage them to explore a revenue model that has the potential to negatively impact my gaming experience?
As I said, if they can meet the above criteria, I'll look the other way. However, there is no good reason for me to want to 'support' them this way. I'd rather they asked for donations if that that's what they need.
Why would I want to 'help out' if the company is making money without extra 'help'?
This would be an understandable addition to the game if it were a necessary revenue stream, but it isn't. I do not at all feel compelled to look at them if they detract from my game playing experience in even the slightest way.
That said, if:
They are not an eyesore and blend in as though they were a part of the game world itself.
They do not add 'bloat' to the game in the form of lag while adverts load or cause extra overhead that impacts performance.
They do not incorporate any 'tracking' of my habits or behaviours.
They do not advert stuff I don't want my kid exposed too.
Then: I'm ok with it. Unfortunately (fortunately?), I've never seen anyone succeed at all of the above requirements.
Slashdot Mirror
I hate to rain on your parade, but that 1k machine isn't all that impressive.
Overall, this system is clearly designed to be a PVR and/or word processor. A performance/gaming rig it is not.
I don't know if the poster you responded too was trying to build a gaming rig, or just wanted some serious performance, but their computer is far better than what you've suggested. On the other hand, if all they wanted was an average computer to do work then there are perfectly decent low-end models on Dell starting at $400.
R&D isn't done in order to develop ideas, it's done to develop ideas *first*. If MS didn't spend millions (billions?) on R&D then they'd be eclipsed overnight (and were: Google, Mozilla, Apple, etc.).
In the software industry, patents do not create ideas nor do patents improve innovation. In fact, patents do exactly the opposite because they enable companies to buy old ideas and prevent anyone else from developing new ideas based on them. The same issue plagues the biotech industry, to the detriment of all humanity
The proper course of action is to remove the patent system and let the market decide. As the author has discovered, software doesn't provide unlimited royalties. As a software company you must constantly develop new ideas before your competition and implement them before your competition. Failing to do so results in your product losing value as your competitors catch up and eventually surpass you with innovations of their own.
Frankly, the author is just whining because he sees MS making money hand over fist from an illegal monopoly and he can't understand why he shouldn't also get to have a monopoly of his own. If this were Digg, I'd have buried the question as Flaimbait.
I'm already running into problems similar to this.
Our company VPN was working fine until Telus (Canada) decided to start redirecting DNS errors. Now, our Intranet services have stopped working because the client's computer tries to contact the external DNS server before our internal (over the VPN) servers and gets back a positive, but wrong, response.
It has totally fracked with our system and I've already left one very nasty complaint with them about it. Unfortunately, they will probably make more money off their ads than we pay for our Inet connection.
The telco monopoly is dead, long live the telco monopoly!
You are correct that legally it is not theft, it is copyright infringement. However, you are absolutely wrong when you claim that no damage is done. I've heard this argument a thousand times on the 'net and I still can't understand how intelligent people can convince themselves of it's truth.
You claim that file sharing does not harm the artist because it can only impact potential earnings. This is demonstrably false as the cost to buy the equipment, the cost in time to compose and record, the cost of living while doing all this all add up to a loss if the artist is prevented from selling that which she creates. This is why copyright was instituted in the first place, except back then it was to protect artists from the publishers who were distributing without paying the artists. Today, it is the general public who have become the problem as they distribute with nary a thought to copyright.
So, the cost of doing the work of creating a work is not a potential loss it is a very real loss. Circumventing copyright on the scale allowed by technologies like BitTorrent is a very damaging phenomenon.
Unfortunately, there are two things driving this and neither of them are the fault of BitTorrent:
So, is it right to share music over BitTorrent? Ethically, no because you *are* harming the artist by circumventing the legal channels through which they get paid.
However, it could also be argued that the **AA's of the world have been asking for it. If copyright had stayed at 14 years it would never have been possible for the industry to bloat into the trough feeding hog that it has become. In fact, the 'industry' probably wouldn't even exist and we would instead have a plethora of independent artists whose individual skills, rather than marketing budgets, would dictate the top 100 charts. We can dream though, right?
It already exists in Firefox, with the use of XUL + XPCOM + XBL. You can do anything to the browser you want, and even call external binary libs to do heavy lifting if necessary. It is what ActiveX was promised to be, without the security issues and with far more power.
I would kiss my own ass to see XUL become a popular standard for creating rich web apps. Consider Thunderbird, Sunbird, Songbird and other such products as examples of what can be done with this technology.
Windows 98SE made Windows 95 stable = worth it. Also, the speed decrease was minor.
Windows XP was an upgrade to Win2k not Win98 and it was *faster* than Win2k for most tasks. Also, Win2k (and thus WinXP) added amazing new features like BSOD recovery, true multi-threading, almost-real user profiles (I'm sure they'll get there eventually), built-in VPN (PPTP) client, Remote Desktop Sharing, etc, etc.
Vista added, what? In the home version...a pretty desktop? The business version has some stuff, like BitLocker support, but they also *removed* features like Novell NDS support (which sucked for us). For us, an 'upgrade' to Vista actually removed half the features we relied on.
Further, in what way do you consider your list a defence of MS? If anything, I'd call that a list of shame. Linux and Mac both manage to keep approx. the same level of performance from major version to major version, whilst adding major new features (none of which happens to be kernel-level DRM). And even more damning is the fact that Linux land keeps coming up with better performing versions of their major desktops (KDE4, XFCE, IceWM, etc).
If you want to feel terrible, download a copy of XUbuntu and compare it to XP. You'll never be the same again.
What make/model? We have been ordering HP business machines (currently the 6710b) from CDW for years and we were never given the choice of XP by default. We have had to downgrade every one of them.
"Everyone here is complaining about a system they don't use and haven't seen"
That's simply not true. Slashdot's primary audience is technophiles and I expect the majority of them have had experience with Vista. Yours is certainly not the first post I've seen praising Vista. I think if the audience of any social-driven news site has the right to comment, it is we.
I tried VirtualBox just 2 weeks ago (v1.6.2?) and it ran fine. My problem was that I needed to use a VPN from within the vm, but that won't work through the default NAT setup they provide. In order to setup networking to do anything useful you have to manually configure a bridged device in Linux. If you've never tried to get a bridged device in Linux working, you're not missing any fun. Don't even think about trying to do this with a *wireless* device!
At the end of the day I was able to get the networking setup, but it required hours of researching Google, wasn't entirely stable (because it used rc.local scripts to apply changes), and couldn't make use of the wireless.
So, I gave up and went back to VMWare which provides a GUI for doing all that. It took about 30 seconds to have it working.
Further, to anyone that thinks VMWare is slower than VirtualBox...it is but only out-of-the-box. Set the memory use setting to keep everything in RAM rather than swapping and you'll find it speeds up 100%. For some reason or another VMWare does a lot of disk swapping if you don't force it to keep everything in ram...
You spewed a lot of made up facts in that rant. How do you know that carbon-based molecules are the 'best'? Maybe evolution simply hasn't found a 'better' solution yet. We (including you) certainly don't know because it is beyond our abilities to test the trillions of possible chemical permutations to verify this as fact or not fact.
Further, there is real evidence that the number of base pairs in our DNA is simply the result of being 'good enough'. Scientists have created artificial DNA with 6 base pairs that theoretically should be just as stable, but provide a much larger number of possible evolutionary paths (permutations). Article
I'm an atheist, but I do have to take issue with the following comment:
Plus, you'll be able to sleep in on Sundays for a change and not have to give part of your income to something that sucks the life out of society and produces nations of sheep.Even as an atheist I still volunteer to help at the local Presbyterian church. Why? Because the church provides community services that are not offered anywhere else. The church where I volunteer provides baby-sitting, computer education classes, yard-sales, book readings, community meeting space, discussion groups, and much more. There are so many good things that church groups do that I find it foolish and irrational that so many Atheists automatically discount the very real and tangible benefits of their presence.
I suggest you at least try to respect the good things done by your local church, even if you disagree with the beliefs. It wouldn't hurt to show them up a bit and actually leave your computer for a few hours a week to join a local charity or community group either.
Did it ever occur to you that the reason the Bible describes such a Universe is simply because it was written by people living in such a Universe?
Also, no, the Bible doesn't describe our Universe at all. So, either way you feel like interpreting it, you're wrong.
You're right I don't have professional experience. I'm not entirely without knowledge though. My University thesis for Software Eng. was to code a nuclear power reactor monitoring system. So, yes I do have some inside knowledge of their workings from all the research I had to do.
While your explanation of the inter-networking systems and protocols was all very interesting, it isn't really relevant to what I posted previously. I already know that the monitoring and reporting systems are highly networked, often using 3rd party software and hardware (writing this kind of software was what my thesis was about!).
The problem as I see it, is that the localized safety system at the plant was receiving data from what amounts to an insecure terminal. Now, I know that there are other back-up systems acting redundantly, but as I see it, the fact that there is a failure mode that depends on an insecure server is a threat that doesn't need to exist.
I disagree. In this case the failure mode of the error was not foreseen, and while the code reacted in a safe way, there is no reason to believe that it was specifically coded to do this. From the description it appears to me that the system requires continous input of coolant levels, without that input the level appears to be zero (a continous input of 0). What would have happened if the software upgrade had caused the same levels to be reported continuously? A real drop in coolant might not have been detected! Not foreseeing a failure mode in which a data-provider becomes corrupt seems like a serious problem to me.
I think you're missing the real point, which is that the central safety systems are being fed data from a 'business network'. What would happen if that computer had an issue that caused it to send the same data continuously even when the coolant level had really dropped? WHY are any safety systems receiving data from an insecure network?
It's bad enough that most reactors use regular PC's to do the data collection and reporting, given the security risks posed by such systems (especially if networked), but I never realized they would be so stupid as to feed data in the other direction like this!
First, Monsanto does not sell seeds alone. What they do sell is a combination of their pesticide 'RoundUp' with their modified seeds 'RoundUp Ready'. The seeds are highly resistant to RoundUp and thus when the pesticide is applied it kills everything except the seeds. This 'feature' makes their product very effective (even if environmentally devastating). However, their work to 'modify' the seeds to be RoundUp resistant was hardly a feat of engineering brilliance. Mostly, they used the same technique farmers have used for millenia: they cross-bred the resistant strains for many generations until they developed one that had near 100% resistance. They then worked out which gene(s) was responsible and patented it. The 'innovative' work of actual genetic modification was mostly to create a kill switch in the seeds that would prevent the resulting plant from developing viable seeds of its' own. This of course is how they prevent farmers from re-using their seeds. Note, however, that there have been cases of cross-pollination creating hybrids that were viable. Monsanto, of course, claims rights to these as well though they have no legal claim. No one fights the issue simply because Monsanto would crush them financially with a long drawn out court case.
Second, Monsanto seeds do in fact contaminate farmers' fields all the time. A simple search of Google will net you dozens of examples where Monsanto has sued the pants off some random farmer because his field happened to have some percentage of GM seeds growing on it. IIRC, there was a case near my home in Ontario in which a farmers' field was next to a Monsanto testing site and they sued him when they discovered GM crops on his land. They lost, but it was his wallet that suffered.
DO not expect freedom of existence without a fight for it...you must earn it. So, what do you do when someone else is cheating? Monsanto did not create the genes that give their seeds resistance, they merely devised a means to enhance the expression of existing genes. Farmers have been doing similarly since before recorded history. The very seeds Monsanto modified are in fact already modified versions of what were once wild plants. Why does Monsanto get profit from the shared advances of the last 6,000 years of human agriculture without giving back in kind?
...course you live in a world in which there is no scarcity, so no one would ever steal from you. There are different types of scarcity. There is natural scarcity, meaning there simply isn't enough of something for everyone to have as much as they need or want. Then there is artificial scarcity which is created by imposing limitations like Intellectual Property laws. DRM is one example of an attempt to create scarcity where there is none. Monsantos' 'kill switch' is another such example. Thankfully, because we live in a capitalist society, such restrictions tend to be short lived. Capitalism virtually guarantees that any unlimited resource will be exploited in an unlimited fashion.Given their history of chaotic rulership I'd say that mentality is forgivable. On the other hand, it's unfortunate that they don't see the connection between liberty and lasting order.
I had a poor experience with GoDaddy support. I was forced to revoke a cert less than a year into a 2 year contract because our site was hax0red and they refused to refund or even give me another cert for the remaining time.
Granted it's a cheap cert, but they would have saved themselves money to have simply given me a new cert when I requested rather than keep running me in circles between their ra and billing depts for several days.
In Soviet Russia, Internet browses you!
The brilliance of up-marketing Boot Camp on OSX is that it helps people overcome their fear of losing Windows compatibility. The idea is to get people onto the Mac platform in a way that makes OSX the primary desktop while Windows becomes 'just another application'. I think that long term this is a great strategy for weening leery Windows users off that platform as it hides the MS branding behind the OSX branding.
I would agree that Apple was not a direct competitor to MS for many years. They were not trying to be. However, it cannot be denied that their markets are overlapping considerably today. Apple has made its' iLife products very attractive to young people who are more involved in the 'online social revolution'. MS is trying desperately to find a way to exploit the same market segment, but have so far had little luck.
It seems a fair question to ask, given the extraordinary numbers Microsoft has been posting for fiscal 2008. 20% growth in European revenues. 30% in the emerging markets of Asia, Africa, etc. Each quarter. I am talking PC hardware sales, a metric which is considered one of the most reliable means of estimating install base. The 8% estimate was for 2005, though I went researching and that number was 11% in 2006 and 13% in 2007. Back to your point, note that increased software revenues do not necessarily reflect an increase in the number of installations. In the case of Vista a 20% increase in revenue can almost entirely be attributed to the increased cost of the OS itself. This cost is more pronounced in the EU where MS has made it even more difficult to acquire XP (over Vista) as compared to the US.The growth in Asia is similar. MS has historically looked the other way while Asia pirated their software. With the introduction of Vista MS has implemented several new initiatives aimed at getting the millions of Asian users that already have pirated copies of Windows XP to upgrade to a legal copy of Vista. The fact that these users are now paying for Windows (at a much reduced cost, btw) does not imply a larger install base.
Is the Mac a significant challenge to Microsoft outside the US? That's a very good question. Honestly, I haven't really looked into it. I am only aware that Apple has been doing extremely well in the US, and that this year they were the (by far) leader in online PC sales (see links below).I am not, however, implying that the growth will not increase substantially in Asia. It should be noted that much of that growth has been in the low-cost segments, where Linux products like the EeePC really shine. Will Asian consumers prefer cheaper Linux alternatives over more expensive Windows? I don't know, but if even a small percentage, say 5%, chose to do so in the next few years as the market grows it will be a success for Linux and a chink in MS' armor in the future.
With Apple pushing that much hardware the only plausible conclusion is that people are switching and where the US market goes, others' tend to follow.
Is MS doing well? Sure. But is it climbing faster than their competitors? I think the numbers refute that claim. Given a decade or two we may see a market in which Apple commands as much as 30% and Linux may be approaching double-digits. With such adoption of competing platforms MS would be forced to put more effort into interoperability, open standards, and real innovation. I think we can agree that would be good for everyone.
http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2008/03/19/apple_us_retail_sales_feb/
http://www.internetretailer.com/internet/marketing-conference/30424-applecom-at-top-computer-hardware-sites-nielsen-netratings-reports.html
Vista is eating XP share, but it is not *growing* the Windows market. The desktop market as a whole has been growing at something like 8% per year since 2005. So, at best the Windows brand as a whole can only grow about 8%/yr. However, the growth of OSX is almost entirely at the expense of Windows (and, interestingly greatest in the laptop segment). The result is that Windows isn't really growing at all, it's practically stagnant.
The growth of Linux on the desktop is somewhat at the expense of Windows, but not so much as Apple. Most Linux converts are tech-savvy or early-adopter types that don't really figure into MS's bottom line. Most Linux adopters will likely have a copy Windows around 'just in case', so their impact on the market is practically nil. Where we might start to see Linux eat into MS share is on the entry-level products like the gPC and the EeePC. However, it is still too early to tell if these 'almost-appliance' products will have sustained demand in the market.
FTA: "But they say many schools requested the drives be left out to prevent students from playing unauthorized games."
I find that interesting as historically manufacturers just try to fast talk schools into buying the latest and greatest when in fact those products just encourage the kids to play instead of work. I think schools that want to equip their students with a tool instead of a toy should take a close look at these things. In this case the 'limitations' may be a 'feature'!
Then why wasn't that cost included in the game cost?
In other words, why would I encourage them to explore a revenue model that has the potential to negatively impact my gaming experience?
As I said, if they can meet the above criteria, I'll look the other way. However, there is no good reason for me to want to 'support' them this way. I'd rather they asked for donations if that that's what they need.
Why would I want to 'help out' if the company is making money without extra 'help'?
This would be an understandable addition to the game if it were a necessary revenue stream, but it isn't. I do not at all feel compelled to look at them if they detract from my game playing experience in even the slightest way.
That said, if:
- They are not an eyesore and blend in as though they were a part of the game world itself.
- They do not add 'bloat' to the game in the form of lag while adverts load or cause extra overhead that impacts performance.
- They do not incorporate any 'tracking' of my habits or behaviours.
- They do not advert stuff I don't want my kid exposed too.
Then: I'm ok with it. Unfortunately (fortunately?), I've never seen anyone succeed at all of the above requirements.