How does the BIOS present the USB drive to DOS? Does it show up as another harddisk? Do you have to put a floppy image on teh USB drive like when booting from a CD?
Sure, I like commodity hardware. It lets me, as a geek, play around with lots of different things for cheap. But it is still, largely, a kudgy mess of halfassed and non-existent standards. When it comes to regular users, I will usually recommend that people pay the premium for Apple integration, features, and simplicity. It is an investment. It is well worth it in my experience. Mac users tend to love their computers. PC users tend to just kinda accept them as a necessary evil or whatever. It is amazing what so many people will put up with just to save a few bucks.
Floppies are more convenient than CDs in many cases. Although I will admit that old floppy drives/disks can be quite unreliable. Personally, I don't have a floppy drive in my home computer, but that is only because BIOS updates and such are rare. Too rare to justify the extra hardware. At work, on the other hnad, I find floppies to be useful when dealing with a variety of PC hardware. Unfortunately, floppies all too often turn out to be the lowest common denomonator. Sometimes I wish I was a Mac geek.:-)
As long as HD-DVD (or whatever) players are backward compatible with DVD, I can see it. Otherwise, DVD is good enough for most people. I envision many people with DVD players not upgrading for several years. I know I won't. Look how long HDTV is taking to catch on in the US... (I don't have HDTV either)
Yes, yes. PC hardware is kludgy, primitive crap. We get it already.;-)
Seriously, I've been using Macs a lot more lately and they really are lightyears ahead of PCs as far as integration and consistency. In many ways, Sun and SGI's are also far ahead. Although I wouldn't blame Microsoft for the PC's shortcomings. It seems to be a matter of a single company controlling the hardware and the OS. All the really cool computers come from companies that do the OS and the hardware.
Indeed. I just discovered the "target firewire" mode that can turn a Mac into an external harddisk for another computer. Can boot off of it and everything. Having stuff like that as part of the standard puts Apple years ahead of most PC manufacturers. The fact that we are still talking about floppies is case in point.
What about BIOS updates or virus recovery? Can you boot from a USB dongle? That is where floppies (still) come in handy. Unless you have a Mac (which can boot off just about anything with a "System" folder on it). floppies make good quick and dirty boot devices.
Yeah, I'm not sure what it is, but I can't even use a floppy drive for the rare occasions that I do need one (BIOS updates and the like). I probably have more like a 75% failure rate. And this is using various different machines in my office. Format a disk on one machine and it can't be read at all by another. It is ridiculous. The disks I am using look OK. Although I don't know how long they have been shelved. I use disks from different sources too... wierd.
What is the shelflife of a floppy supposed to be, anyway?
Put the stuff back where it came from. What could be more environmentally conscious?
Oh sure, take slightly radioactive impure uranium and replace it with hightly radioactive, highly purified waste. Yeah, thats real environmentally conscious.
I have. That is why I say there isn't much hope. Not from technology anyway... The only hope is that sooner rather than later human energy consumption will plateau. Until then, there is no hope.
Heh, that was a dumb statement on my part. But I think you know what I mean.
"Radioactive" is a term, it does not have to strike fear in people.
Sure, and carbon dioxide is a harmless, naturally occuring gas...
I would recommend sitting back, and running the numbers one day.
I'm not qualified to do it in a meaningful way.
Consider the lifetime of certain rock formations on land, and on the sea floor. Consider the radioactivity released by a coal power plant as opposed to a nuclear power plant. Consider the environmental destruction done by dams. Consider the storage solutions needed for wind power. Consider the coastal damage required for tidal power. Consider the manufacturing process needed for solar cells.
I have. That is why I say there isn't much hope. Not from technology anyway... The only hope is that sooner rather than later human energy consumption will plateau. Until then, there is no hope.
Face the truth -- nuclear is the best hope for clean energy.
That doesn't leave much hope. Face reality, there is no hope in the near future for clean energy. Nuclear isn't it. There is no easy answer to the radioactive waste problem. You're just shifting the problem to a different context. Fossil-fuel waste polutes the air and nuclear waste polutes the water (eventually). No amount of mindless techno-optimism can change that. We've heard it all before. Let the disillusionment commense....
So please tell me why X is dog slow while Windows' Remote Desktop is so fast its as if you are using the computer you are accessing directly (it even gives you sound and full keyboard controls).
Microsoft's protocol actually transmits the widget commands, whereas, X only transmits the primitive drawing commands. When you have toolkits like Gnome and KDE that run on top of X, you lose any advantage because their widgets have to be drawn primitively, even though a faster approach would be to only send the data required to tell what widget to draw (not how to draw it). That's why KDE's improvements are much needed, to catch up with Microsoft.
The point was that X was doing it first.
The advantage of transmitting a single application is negligable due to the piss-poor performance of X for any size window.
The performance isn't bad if you have a decent network. And the advantage is still there. It provides much better network transparency and integration. I'll admit that Microsoft has a speed advantage though.
It's much more useful to be able to access a desktop rather than just a single app, especially when breaking the connection closes the single app.
Well, if you run an all Microsoft network, I can see why you'd be so worried about it breaking and losing your connection.;-)
The Unix model doesn't require that I display very many graphical apps over the network, but when I do need to do it, the functionality is built into the system rather than an addon component as in Microsoft. I can display an application from any unix workstation or server on my desktop without taking over someone elses desktop or worrying about licensing or whatever... even through a firewall. I can easily tunnel X through ssh. With Windows you have to have a dedicated "Terminal Server" and worry about licensing and all kinds crap. As far as I can tell, all Microsoft has is a speed advantage and possibly the ability to play sound and print locally. Beyond that X is far superior in the way it integrates with a network. With improvements like KDE/NX, the Microsoft advantage is all but gone.
What you don't seem to understand is that this technology doesn't transfer the pixmap when it is displayed on the screen like VNC or PCAnywhere. THe pixmap is stored in the RAM of the local machine and an instruction to display it is what is passed over the modem link. This amounts to a longer application startup time, but the responsiveness remains reasonable.
Well, the way X (and I assume NX) works, many of the images an application needs are copied to the client (server, in X11-speak) to be stored in RAM during startup. Then they are pulled out of memory to display as needed. The image is only transfered once unlike with VNC, PCAnywhere, etc. What you end up with is a longer startup time while keeping the UI responsive. Of course, this depends on when the application decides to load pixmaps into RAM, but generally it works pretty well.
Also, a 64x64 icon will usually compress to WELL BELOW 4k. Transfering it would be trivial. And as others have pointed out, it wouldn't take 0,5 seconds to transfer 4k over a 40k/sec link. Try 0,1 seconds.;-)
X was doing it years before Microsoft in a much more modular and flexible way. KDE/NX is improving on that, not imitating Microsoft. Terminal services require you to pull a full desktop from a remote server. X allows one to pull individual single applications that display as if it were running local. WAAAAYYYY better than Terminal Server IMNSO.
I didn't RTFA, but I'll just guess that it lays the groundwork for building a computer, sometime in the next century that will be able to completely emulate [read: upload] a human personality/consciousness into an environment where they think they are still alive.
Of course, during upload their body would have been destroyed. Anyhoo, it sure will suck to have been the last person to think they had to die.
Or maybe it will suck to be the first moron to undergo this procedure only to become the joke of the after-life.
You seem awfully sure of the assumption that the mind is just a program running on a biological computer. I bet you'll be sorry when people are sharing you over P2P networks.
Yeah, too bad the 150 computers won't be seen again until they are antiques. The problem isn't just that they sieze computers. They will often hold the seized equipment for several years even if no formal charges are filed.
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How does the BIOS present the USB drive to DOS? Does it show up as another harddisk? Do you have to put a floppy image on teh USB drive like when booting from a CD?
Sure, I like commodity hardware. It lets me, as a geek, play around with lots of different things for cheap. But it is still, largely, a kudgy mess of halfassed and non-existent standards. When it comes to regular users, I will usually recommend that people pay the premium for Apple integration, features, and simplicity. It is an investment. It is well worth it in my experience. Mac users tend to love their computers. PC users tend to just kinda accept them as a necessary evil or whatever. It is amazing what so many people will put up with just to save a few bucks.
That is how most PCs do BIOS flashing. What OS are you booting off of USB to flash a BIOS?
What do you mean "it's a setting in the BIOS?" Does the BIOS present the USB stick to DOS as a harddisk?
Do the same USB drivers work on many different computers? I didn't realize that there even were USB stick drivers for DOS...
Floppies are more convenient than CDs in many cases. Although I will admit that old floppy drives/disks can be quite unreliable. Personally, I don't have a floppy drive in my home computer, but that is only because BIOS updates and such are rare. Too rare to justify the extra hardware. At work, on the other hnad, I find floppies to be useful when dealing with a variety of PC hardware. Unfortunately, floppies all too often turn out to be the lowest common denomonator. Sometimes I wish I was a Mac geek. :-)
As long as HD-DVD (or whatever) players are backward compatible with DVD, I can see it. Otherwise, DVD is good enough for most people. I envision many people with DVD players not upgrading for several years. I know I won't. Look how long HDTV is taking to catch on in the US... (I don't have HDTV either)
-matthew
Yes, yes. PC hardware is kludgy, primitive crap. We get it already. ;-)
Seriously, I've been using Macs a lot more lately and they really are lightyears ahead of PCs as far as integration and consistency. In many ways, Sun and SGI's are also far ahead. Although I wouldn't blame Microsoft for the PC's shortcomings. It seems to be a matter of a single company controlling the hardware and the OS. All the really cool computers come from companies that do the OS and the hardware.
-matthew
Indeed. I just discovered the "target firewire" mode
that can turn a Mac into an external harddisk for another computer. Can boot off of it and everything. Having stuff like that as part of the standard puts Apple years ahead of most PC manufacturers. The fact that we are still talking about floppies is case in point.
-matthew
You "can" boot from CD, but it is a pain for things such as bios/firmware updates.
-matthew
-matthew
What is the shelflife of a floppy supposed to be, anyway?
-matthew
Oh sure, take slightly radioactive impure uranium and replace it with hightly radioactive, highly purified waste. Yeah, thats real environmentally conscious.
-matthew
Heh, that was a dumb statement on my part. But I think you know what I mean.
-matthew
Sure, and carbon dioxide is a harmless, naturally occuring gas...
I would recommend sitting back, and running the numbers one day.
I'm not qualified to do it in a meaningful way.
Consider the lifetime of certain rock formations on land, and on the sea floor. Consider the radioactivity released by a coal power plant as opposed to a nuclear power plant. Consider the environmental destruction done by dams. Consider the storage solutions needed for wind power. Consider the coastal damage required for tidal power. Consider the manufacturing process needed for solar cells.
I have. That is why I say there isn't much hope. Not from technology anyway... The only hope is that sooner rather than later human energy consumption will plateau. Until then, there is no hope.
-matthew
That doesn't leave much hope. Face reality, there is no hope in the near future for clean energy. Nuclear isn't it. There is no easy answer to the radioactive waste problem. You're just shifting the problem to a different context. Fossil-fuel waste polutes the air and nuclear waste polutes the water (eventually). No amount of mindless techno-optimism can change that. We've heard it all before. Let the disillusionment commense....
-matthew
Microsoft's protocol actually transmits the widget commands, whereas, X only transmits the primitive drawing commands. When you have toolkits like Gnome and KDE that run on top of X, you lose any advantage because their widgets have to be drawn primitively, even though a faster approach would be to only send the data required to tell what widget to draw (not how to draw it). That's why KDE's improvements are much needed, to catch up with Microsoft.
The point was that X was doing it first.
The advantage of transmitting a single application is negligable due to the piss-poor performance of X for any size window.
The performance isn't bad if you have a decent network. And the advantage is still there. It provides much better network transparency and integration. I'll admit that Microsoft has a speed advantage though.
It's much more useful to be able to access a desktop rather than just a single app, especially when breaking the connection closes the single app.
Well, if you run an all Microsoft network, I can see why you'd be so worried about it breaking and losing your connection. ;-)
The Unix model doesn't require that I display very many graphical apps over the network, but when I do need to do it, the functionality is built into the system rather than an addon component as in Microsoft. I can display an application from any unix workstation or server on my desktop without taking over someone elses desktop or worrying about licensing or whatever... even through a firewall. I can easily tunnel X through ssh. With Windows you have to have a dedicated "Terminal Server" and worry about licensing and all kinds crap. As far as I can tell, all Microsoft has is a speed advantage and possibly the ability to play sound and print locally. Beyond that X is far superior in the way it integrates with a network. With improvements like KDE/NX, the Microsoft advantage is all but gone.
-matthew
What you don't seem to understand is that this technology doesn't transfer the pixmap when it is displayed on the screen like VNC or PCAnywhere. THe pixmap is stored in the RAM of the local machine and an instruction to display it is what is passed over the modem link. This amounts to a longer application startup time, but the responsiveness remains reasonable.
-matthew
Oops, forget that silly calculation. I was thinking bytes and not bits.
Well, the way X (and I assume NX) works, many of the images an application needs are copied to the client (server, in X11-speak) to be stored in RAM during startup. Then they are pulled out of memory to display as needed. The image is only transfered once unlike with VNC, PCAnywhere, etc. What you end up with is a longer startup time while keeping the UI responsive. Of course, this depends on when the application decides to load pixmaps into RAM, but generally it works pretty well.
;-)
Also, a 64x64 icon will usually compress to WELL BELOW 4k. Transfering it would be trivial. And as others have pointed out, it wouldn't take 0,5 seconds to transfer 4k over a 40k/sec link. Try 0,1 seconds.
-matthew
8kb/s??? My guess is that your QoS isn't really doing anything.
X was doing it years before Microsoft in a much more modular and flexible way. KDE/NX is improving on that, not imitating Microsoft. Terminal services require you to pull a full desktop from a remote server. X allows one to pull individual single applications that display as if it were running local. WAAAAYYYY better than Terminal Server IMNSO.
So... I don't get it. Am I supposed to feel like a fool because you are a moron?
Of course, during upload their body would have been destroyed. Anyhoo, it sure will suck to have been the last person to think they had to die.
Or maybe it will suck to be the first moron to undergo this procedure only to become the joke of the after-life.
You seem awfully sure of the assumption that the mind is just a program running on a biological computer. I bet you'll be sorry when people are sharing you over P2P networks.
-matthew
-matthew