Is there any point to these "huge" caches? My Linux system uses a few hundred MB's as disk cache so I don't really expext another few MB's on the disk to make any noticable difference (and, if I recall it correctly, when disks with 8 MB caches were new they did not really gave any performance advantage compared to models with only 2 MB of cache).
Actually Stallman does not believe that we should be able to charge money for producing code
Care to back that statement with something? (This really seems to indicate that he thinks selling software is OK.)
Your point about shareware is pretty rubbish
Perhaps you should have read it more carefully. My point was that: 1) shareware is closed source, and 2) yet in many cases it fails to be profitable (or even to generate any revenue at all)
It's not much of a counterpoint, since this guy basically argues that programmers should be able to get paid for their work (something that noone really contested) not that SW should be closed (which would be a real counterpoint). The lack of copyright and programming as a profitable business are not the same. You can find examples of copyrighted programs failing to bring in any money (just ask shareware authors) and there are programmers who are paid to work on copyleft stuff (I would venture to guess that most of the Linux code submitted lately is written by professionals paid to do so).
Sure, you can argue that copyright is a useful tool when it comes to bringing together supply and demand on the marketplace but it would be foolish to state that it is the only possible method to do so.
We are said that file-sharing is killing the business of publishers so they may give up creating new content. Following that logic, file-sharing child porn is something that everybody should do as it would make creating child porn economically unfeasible and would end it.
Jesus, it's macroeconomics 101, how does a two-level banking system operate. I did not sit through the whole video, but it's a well-known mechanism (like, there's a Wikipedia article about it), not some closely guarded secret.
It is safe to say that climbing Everest has no more significance now than parking your car
Yeah, I agree. Every obese, untrained geek can do it. Ten times a day.
I mean, de you really mean it? Of course, a trained, highly experienced, thoroughly prepared team nowadays has a good chance of actually reaching the top and not dying on the way (though many do) but it is still very far from being trivial.
"it is totally legal to visit Cuba (up to X times per year, [IIRC X is one])"
You know, having grown up in an Eastern Block country where a symptom of the dictatorship we had was that we were allowed to go to the "West" only once in every four yours, I find this limit in the "Land of Free" totally hilarious (and, on the other hand, totally sad).
It is a really interesting theory you propose: those who cheat in a game should be subject to a different set of laws than others. I know that in the USA it's a popular opinion in certain circles that suspects of terrorism should be stripped of all of their rights, but to extend it to cheaters is something really new.
Seriously: a groundless lawsuit is a groundless lawsuit even when the defendant is a slimeball. In the USA's precedent based-system this is even more important since the precedent set by this lawsuit will apply to non-slimeballs, too.
And what exactly had the SB16 to do with "realistic polyphonic sound/music"?... For music, mostly its FM synth was used which was everything but realistic-sounding. It had a single digital channel, which, in fact, did not differ much from the internal speaker as far as technology goes. SB16 was introduced in the same year (1992) as the Gravis Ultrasound, which, in contrast, had a 32 channel sample-based synthetiser with antialiasing and this card was largely responsible for creating the PC module scene. Since the GUS came with detailed programming information (very unlike the SB16) and it could off-load sound mixing from the CPU (mixing a few digital channels to 44.1 kHz 16 bit stereo sound was a big task for a 486DX2-66) it quickly became the de-facto standard in the demo scene and the games which natively supported it sounded really good when compared to the beep-beep of the SB16. But, going a little bit further, there was the Paula, the sound chip of the Amiga which also offered HW-mixed sample playback in the mid-80's. And, finally, there's the SID, the music chip of the C64, designed by Robert Yannes (Ensoniq co-founder) which - despite its relatively simplistic design - was the first audio chip in home computers that enabled creating complex music.
Going on an other direction, Aureal was the company that brought real 3D sound to the PC (although GUS also made some early attempts) that was superior to Creative's technology.
(Oh, yeah, both Gravis and Aureal was driven out of business by Creative's less than admirable tactics, in the case of Aureal only to buy the technology and let it rot. That's really something that helped the advance of the PC sound, isn't it?)
So, well, i am not sure what the hell does SB16 on this list, since it was neither really innovative, nor really good, not even a good quality product (it was awfully noisy).
MS has tried all of those options (low-quality specs, outrageous licensing terms) and the EU repeatedly said no to those attempts. And while I am pretty sure that MS would happily risk another hefty fine for its delays on delivering the specs as requested by the EU if it could buy them time to come up with some smart solution for this "problem" (i.e. satisfying the EU and keeping the specs secret) there does not seem to be many avenues left to try.
So - being the optimistic I am - I definitely look forward to eventually getting the specs.
"The same feeling that people in Europe that have been provided with the XP-E edition ( no media player ) think that XP is shit because it cannot read a stupid AVI file."
This is ignorant bullshit. The sans-WMP version was aimed at OEMs who would then install an other player (since, you know, that was the fucking point of it all) so the user would receive a computer that has a media player. The chances that an end user would end up buying an "Edition N" (since that's how it's called) are rather slim and most probably he would have to get out of his way to get one. (Also, from what I have seen, in a default Win XP install WMP probably is not able to play DivX/Xvid encoded avis.)
The transputer was an invention of Inmos and they were interconnected little CPUs designed for parallelizable task. Transputers had an own language, Occam where for every block you had to specify if its instructions were to be executed in serial or parallel manner. It was a rather fascinating system (especially for its time) but it has died on the market. (Sorry for the off-topic ranting, but I programmed these during my studies and quite liked the concept)
I find it rather fortunate, that we have this genius called Paris Hilton. She sure deserved her wealth with her superior intelligence and financial insight.
Is there any evidence that such features are implemented in (GSM) phones? Because to me it looks more like an urban legend than anything else. Such a feature should have to have some traces: like being part of the GSM specifications, for one. Also, programmers working on cell phones should also be aware of such functionality (when I was working on conventional telephone switches I had - not too deep, since I was uninterested - knowledge of the wiretapping features). But, it seems, all this craze comes from some over-paranoid tinhats and has no grounding in reality.
Why? It's just something you learn, actually an icon of a floppy probably would not mean "save" to anyone - even if they saw a FD previously - until they have seen this exact use. This is an absolutely small detail, kids will just learn it (as we did learn BASIC back in the day even though we did not speak English at all).
If someone wants such a phone then why on earth would they get a smartphone? If you need something simple then, for God's sake, get something simple. For example, there's the Nokia 1112: B&W display, big buttons, simple features. That's it.
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Is there any point to these "huge" caches? My Linux system uses a few hundred MB's as disk cache so I don't really expext another few MB's on the disk to make any noticable difference (and, if I recall it correctly, when disks with 8 MB caches were new they did not really gave any performance advantage compared to models with only 2 MB of cache).
Care to back that statement with something? (This really seems to indicate that he thinks selling software is OK.)
Perhaps you should have read it more carefully. My point was that:
1) shareware is closed source, and
2) yet in many cases it fails to be profitable (or even to generate any revenue at all)
It's not much of a counterpoint, since this guy basically argues that programmers should be able to get paid for their work (something that noone really contested) not that SW should be closed (which would be a real counterpoint).
The lack of copyright and programming as a profitable business are not the same. You can find examples of copyrighted programs failing to bring in any money (just ask shareware authors) and there are programmers who are paid to work on copyleft stuff (I would venture to guess that most of the Linux code submitted lately is written by professionals paid to do so).
Sure, you can argue that copyright is a useful tool when it comes to bringing together supply and demand on the marketplace but it would be foolish to state that it is the only possible method to do so.
It's the "Given the compression" part that it's all about.
We are said that file-sharing is killing the business of publishers so they may give up creating new content.
Following that logic, file-sharing child porn is something that everybody should do as it would make creating child porn economically unfeasible and would end it.
(Of course, I am just joking.)
Jesus, it's macroeconomics 101, how does a two-level banking system operate.
I did not sit through the whole video, but it's a well-known mechanism (like, there's a Wikipedia article about it), not some closely guarded secret.
Yeah, I agree. Every obese, untrained geek can do it. Ten times a day.
I mean, de you really mean it? Of course, a trained, highly experienced, thoroughly prepared team nowadays has a good chance of actually reaching the top and not dying on the way (though many do) but it is still very far from being trivial.
"it is totally legal to visit Cuba (up to X times per year, [IIRC X is one])"
You know, having grown up in an Eastern Block country where a symptom of the dictatorship we had was that we were allowed to go to the "West" only once in every four yours, I find this limit in the "Land of Free" totally hilarious (and, on the other hand, totally sad).
The Road to Guantanamo - about three British muslims who end up in Gitmo, get abused and then released.
It is a really interesting theory you propose: those who cheat in a game should be subject to a different set of laws than others.
I know that in the USA it's a popular opinion in certain circles that suspects of terrorism should be stripped of all of their rights, but to extend it to cheaters is something really new.
Seriously: a groundless lawsuit is a groundless lawsuit even when the defendant is a slimeball. In the USA's precedent based-system this is even more important since the precedent set by this lawsuit will apply to non-slimeballs, too.
And what exactly had the SB16 to do with "realistic polyphonic sound/music"?... For music, mostly its FM synth was used which was everything but realistic-sounding. It had a single digital channel, which, in fact, did not differ much from the internal speaker as far as technology goes.
SB16 was introduced in the same year (1992) as the Gravis Ultrasound, which, in contrast, had a 32 channel sample-based synthetiser with antialiasing and this card was largely responsible for creating the PC module scene. Since the GUS came with detailed programming information (very unlike the SB16) and it could off-load sound mixing from the CPU (mixing a few digital channels to 44.1 kHz 16 bit stereo sound was a big task for a 486DX2-66) it quickly became the de-facto standard in the demo scene and the games which natively supported it sounded really good when compared to the beep-beep of the SB16.
But, going a little bit further, there was the Paula, the sound chip of the Amiga which also offered HW-mixed sample playback in the mid-80's.
And, finally, there's the SID, the music chip of the C64, designed by Robert Yannes (Ensoniq co-founder) which - despite its relatively simplistic design - was the first audio chip in home computers that enabled creating complex music.
Going on an other direction, Aureal was the company that brought real 3D sound to the PC (although GUS also made some early attempts) that was superior to Creative's technology.
(Oh, yeah, both Gravis and Aureal was driven out of business by Creative's less than admirable tactics, in the case of Aureal only to buy the technology and let it rot. That's really something that helped the advance of the PC sound, isn't it?)
So, well, i am not sure what the hell does SB16 on this list, since it was neither really innovative, nor really good, not even a good quality product (it was awfully noisy).
MS has tried all of those options (low-quality specs, outrageous licensing terms) and the EU repeatedly said no to those attempts. And while I am pretty sure that MS would happily risk another hefty fine for its delays on delivering the specs as requested by the EU if it could buy them time to come up with some smart solution for this "problem" (i.e. satisfying the EU and keeping the specs secret) there does not seem to be many avenues left to try.
So - being the optimistic I am - I definitely look forward to eventually getting the specs.
I guess the first real-time strategy game was Johnny Reb II written in 1985.
dupe
dupe
Oh. It must be the locale setting - it's probably set to "C", or something. (And please note: it's doing absolutely what it should do.)
"The same feeling that people in Europe that have been provided with the XP-E edition ( no media player ) think that XP is shit because it cannot read a stupid AVI file."
This is ignorant bullshit. The sans-WMP version was aimed at OEMs who would then install an other player (since, you know, that was the fucking point of it all) so the user would receive a computer that has a media player. The chances that an end user would end up buying an "Edition N" (since that's how it's called) are rather slim and most probably he would have to get out of his way to get one.
(Also, from what I have seen, in a default Win XP install WMP probably is not able to play DivX/Xvid encoded avis.)
But of course! :)
It has wireless and more space than a Nomad, so it must be a hit
You have apparently totally missed the - completely off-topic - parody of typical homophobic speech.
The transputer was an invention of Inmos and they were interconnected little CPUs designed for parallelizable task. Transputers had an own language, Occam where for every block you had to specify if its instructions were to be executed in serial or parallel manner.
It was a rather fascinating system (especially for its time) but it has died on the market.
(Sorry for the off-topic ranting, but I programmed these during my studies and quite liked the concept)
I find it rather fortunate, that we have this genius called Paris Hilton. She sure deserved her wealth with her superior intelligence and financial insight.
Is there any evidence that such features are implemented in (GSM) phones? Because to me it looks more like an urban legend than anything else. Such a feature should have to have some traces: like being part of the GSM specifications, for one. Also, programmers working on cell phones should also be aware of such functionality (when I was working on conventional telephone switches I had - not too deep, since I was uninterested - knowledge of the wiretapping features).
But, it seems, all this craze comes from some over-paranoid tinhats and has no grounding in reality.
Why? It's just something you learn, actually an icon of a floppy probably would not mean "save" to anyone - even if they saw a FD previously - until they have seen this exact use.
This is an absolutely small detail, kids will just learn it (as we did learn BASIC back in the day even though we did not speak English at all).
If someone wants such a phone then why on earth would they get a smartphone? If you need something simple then, for God's sake, get something simple. For example, there's the Nokia 1112: B&W display, big buttons, simple features. That's it.
For me /. is real fast - I use lynx :-)