* slower - and don't give me garbage about the "megahertz myth." Sure, it's true that mhz isn't a great measure of efficiency across architectural platforms, but any techno weeny knows that it isn't irrelevant either. The latest P4s are much faster than the fastest G4s in both standard integer and floating point operations. Now on the other hand, is it important? Probably not, an 800 mhz or 1 Ghz G4 is still plenty fast for everything a person actually needs to do and even gaming.
I have this discussion just about every week with one of my friends. He is pro Mac all the way. He still believes the hype that the PPC is "twice as fast" as X86 in all things. Sure, a 600 mhz G4 is going to be faster than a 600 Mhz P3. But It's not going to keep pace with a 1.2gz P4 or Athlon. Keep in mind that we're just talking about raw number crunching ability.
Another thing that annoys me to no end about Jobs's drones is that they complain about things when other companies do it, but when Apple does it's brilliant strategy.
Remember hearing them bitch about Win 9X's bloat? I do, I also remember not hearing them bitch about the same thing in the MacOS. I remember when you could fit a bootable system onto a floppy with System 7.1, by 7.5.5 there were so many system enablers that you needed a good 5 Megs or so just to boot up and run Norton Utils.
Theft is theft - justifying it by saying that companies charge too much is attempting to skirt the issue.
Just because you keep saying something doesn't make it true. Just like the MP3 issue, software piracy is NOT theft. It is copyright infringement, it is illegal, it may even be wrong, but it is not theft.
Shoplifting a package from CompUSA is theft. Bogarting someone's serial number for Escape Velocity is NOT theft. When person A has a widget and person B comes along and takes that widget without person A's permission, person A is thereby denied posession of the aforementioned widget, person B has stolen from person A.
As I have said numerous times before, you can put a cat in the oven, that doesn't make it a biscuit.
No matter how many times people scream from the rooftops that unauthorized copying is stealing, that doesn't make it so.
No question about it, copyright infringement is illegal. When discussing a company like microsoft who (allegedly) stole Stac's code for doublespace, it's hard to get a groundswell of sympathy for their "lost revenue".
If people don't feel too bad about copyright infringement to do it, some people think that they can change this by calling it stealing. The use of that word conjurs up imagery of parents scolding children about not ripping off candybars from the corner store.
Let's examine this, by making an illegal copy of Windows 2x, you have denied a sale to Microsoft and have cost them money. By costing them money, you have stolen from Microsoft.
Every linux distro that includes Samba is a potential lost sale for Microsoft. For every one of those lost sales, Microsoft has lost money. If one follows the logic train, RedHat, Mandrake, SuSe, Debian, Slackware, Yellowdog, and countless others are stealing money out of Microsoft's pockets by costing them sales of Win2k.
It doesn't add up. Even if it is illegal and morally wrong, the former example is no more stealing than the latter.
In normal times the opinion of these 2 avowed members of the ultra conservative christian right would be ridiculed, but at this moment in time they will get wide support in some areas.
Chuck Schumer as a part of the "ultra conservatice christian right"?
Are you smoking crack? Schumer is one of the most hated senators by those on the right.
I suggest you do a little more research next time.
DirectX is so prolific, and MS has people who do nothing but provide support to developers for DirectX. If there is an issue with DirectX, MS patches it (how well they do that is another issue).
It's going to be a HARD sell to get development companies to move away from DX. More than 90% of the games you are going to sell will be for a platform that supports DX.
If you have a team of well paid developers who have several years developing for DX, why does it make sense to switch?
Though, I know this is not possible, I'd love to see an "embrace and extend" approach to this. Make an API that is "compatible" with DX, but has some "features" that DX does not support.
I know this is fanciful, but everyone is entitled to a dream, right?
Though there are many good points like making it MUCH harder to commit tax fraud and larceny, these benefits are gained at the cost of privacy.
Meaning, if I'm out and about and I decide to pick up a new adult video and I can't pay cash, someone somewhere will be able to prove that I bought it. Sure there's nothing illegal about buying Foreskin Gump or Naughty Librarians 4, but I'd rather keep certain things private.
Or what if some new revolutionary excryption program is developed that is exponentially more secure than PGP or whathaveyou. If you can't buy it with cash, when it is made illegal, they can prove that you bought it and force you to give up your copy(ies).
It will be like the drug dealers out-gunning the cops because they have more money to spend on guns.
This is a fallacy. Police departments can get federal grants so that they can get nice new MP5s, or Colt AR-15/M-16s. There is no way in hell that cops who have prefessionally manufactured weapons are being outgunned by crooks who have hacked together AK-47s.
Sure, there have been isolated incidents where the cops on the scene at the time only had handguns and shotguns, but in short order backup was there and armed to the teeth.
In short BS. I can just as easliy say that if Gore hadn't run Nader would have won. This is the problem with traditional liberals, they think that people are entitled to something. If Gore wanted the votes of the Nader voters he should have EARNED them.
Gore, Bush, Nader, Buchanan, Browne, et all had to earn every vote they got. None of them were entitled to a single vote.
Have a look at this page, the date on the page info shows when it was created. That quote is doctored.
http://www.ed.brocku.ca/~nmarshal/nostradamus.ht m
What Nostradamus actually said was "In the City of God there will be a great thunder, Two brothers torn apart by Chaos, while the fortress endures, the great leader will succumb"
Although primarily aimed at cleaning up huge space rockets like the European Space Agency's Ariane 4 and 5, the technology can be scaled down for handguns, making them safer for soldiers and police officers who risk lead poisoning from hours of indoor target practice.
There have been concerns for many years that lead particles contained in gun smoke might affect soldiers' health.
Copper, Bismuth and Steel are suitable replacements for casting bullets without using lead. In fact, military personnel are required to use full metal jacket ammunition in war.
Almost without exception full metal jackets consist of a steel or steel/lead core surrounded by copper. I suppose that lead contaminating the air is for boat tailed ammunition, where the lead portion of the core is exposed in the rear of the bullet. It has a minimal detrimental effect on the accuracy of the bullet and almost no effect on the cost of manufacture of the bullets to completely encase the lead portion of the core with copper.
In the case of police officers, the jacketed hollow points that they almost invariably use have lead that is only exposed on the "front" of the bullet. So when the bullet is fired the explosion of the powder doesn't have much of an effect on the lead, very little lead is released into the air. I suppose that this is only a real problem for the ones who are still using revolvers, but I haven't seen a police officer with a revolver since I was a teenager.
I wonder if throwing in the references to police officers and soldiers and "handguns" is more about getting support for an environmental project than they would otherwise be able to get.
News headline from the future
on
HP Buys Compaq
·
· Score: 2, Funny
Today software, media, entertainment giant Micro-TimeWarner-AOL-Soft came to an agreement with the US justice department regarding a controversial licensing practice that they and their partner, pharmaceutical and computer hardare juggernaut, Pfizer-Hewlett Compaqard Dell had been requiring users to agree to. AOL Windows 2050 will now be available to customers who wish to pay cash money instead of exchanging whole organs, human embryos or brain tissue to obtain a license.
Bill Gates has been quoted as saying "It was unfortunate that we were forced by the government to stop innovating new ways to increase our power, er,,, our product's quality. This measure is temporary, when the our current crop of congressmen are knocking on death's door, I'm sure that our stem cell research will provide us with a few bargaining chips to get laws passed that we agree with."
Though floppies may suck, they are standard. Until the iMac, every computer on the market for nearly a decade had the ability to read 3.5" floppies.
Need to take a file somewhere? Anywhere? Put it o na 3.5" floppy. Though it's rare, sometimes I still take assignments to class on a 3.5" floppy. I can tweak them while I'm at work, and print them out in the computer lab. Sure, I could just email the file to myself everywhere I go, but the floppy is perfect for version control. At most there may be 2 versions of any given file in circulation.
Steve Jobs is just unable to admit that he made a mistake, and the people caught in the reality distortion field are unable to see his mistake.
but please don't give me this "depriving me of my property" bullshit. It's as bad as the Reagan Years' war on drugs rhetoric that if you try marijuana once you are guaranteed to become a heroin addict. Tell a lie and you lose your credibility.
Did you have the use of your computer before? Do you still have the use of your computer? Sure, until you delete it, the spam message in question may occupy a few k on your 20 GB hard drive. Have you really lost the use of it?
To extend this logic you can say that people who send unsolicited mailers through the USPS have denied you the use of >1.0 cubic inch of your physical mailbox, and have thus violated your rights. It's silly to make such a claim.
I don't have an easy answer for spam other than this, DELETE IT.
LK
Re:/. crew's pro-democrat/left wing bias
on
Carnivore To Die?
·
· Score: 1
This is not true. Under Federal law, all absentee ballots must be counted and certified with the offical election results for each state.
Under which federal law? None. Outside of the US Constitution, the federal government has no authority to dictate to a state how they certify their election results.
States do not have to submit their popular vote totals when they certify their election results.
Remember, under the system that we have (and are likely to have for the forseeable future) the popular vote means dick in a presidential election. Maybe it should be different, maybe it shouldn't be different, but it isn't.
As it stands, we'll never know who really won the popular vote.
LK
Re:/. crew's pro-democrat/left wing bias
on
Carnivore To Die?
·
· Score: 1
The majority of American voters did not get who they wanted for president and with a nearly perfectly devided house/senate you could be sure that people would scrutinize Ashcroft.
We will never know who the majority voted for, in states like California, New York, Texas the like there were more than enough uncounted absentee ballots to change the popular vote tally in Bush's favor or enough to cememnt a clear Gore lead. But in the states where they made no difference they were not counted.
With a less than 500,000 vote difference, there is no way to tell who won the popular vote.
LK
Re:/. crew's pro-democrat/left wing bias
on
Carnivore To Die?
·
· Score: 1
Yet Reno gleefully made this system possible, was on watch during Waco, Ruby Ridge, refused to investigate top Democratic fundraisers for illegalities, sent federal agents to Miami gestapo style to get Elian Gonzalez among other things.
As much as I despised Janet Reno, the incident at Ruby Ridge occured before her watch began. It's just the investigatoin of that event that can be blamed on her.
With almost every other type of removable storage (DVD excluded) it was incompatible with everything that was on the market previously.
Punch cards didn't work in cassette tape drives. Cassettes didn't work in 5.25" floppy drives. 5.25" floppies didn't fit in 3.5" drives. 3.5" floppies didn't fit into CD rom drives.
So what? This isn't something that Iomega invented, it's the way that things work.
If you don't think it's a good idea, don't buy it and it'll die like the LS-120 has pretty much done.
Apple's monitors have always been overpriced. Even before they included USB hubs. As I said in my previous post, unless you need easy color calibration, you are overpaying by buying an Apple monitor.
Look at the 15" Multiscan monitor. The ones that had all of those color problems. For less than the cost of the Apple monitor, you could have bought a Viewsonic and had about the same chances of a defect showing up later.
Unless you're in a graphics shop that has standardized on all Apple equipment, buying an Apple branded CRT meant that you overpaid.
As long as you can still get a CRT elsewhere, this is no big deal. Unless you need easy color calibration, there is no compelling reason to buy an apple display anyway. If you're not using colorsync then you overpaid for your apple monitor. Apples CRTs are usually 20-25% more expensive than similar monitors from other manufacturers
But even if they do break support for CRTs, watch how the Apple faithful trumped how great it is that Apple is forcing people to go to something better than those "Old antiquated CRT monitors".
Presumably it recognizes some humanly inaudible signal sent out by participating stations.
Perhaps what it picks up is audible to the human ear. I listen to alot of AM radio. Every AM station's dead air sounds different to me.
It's possible that each participating station will be assigned a carrier frequency to embed into their broadcasts.
LK
Re:I Never Thought I'd Hear It. You didn't!
on
Palm In Trouble?
·
· Score: 2
A Slashdot editor admitting MS makes a superior product?
Let's look at what Rob said.
Wince devices are better.
The devices are better. Not the OS. Last time I checked MS didn't make the devices. Companies like HP, Casio, and Compaq make the devices. The fact that they run an MS OS is secondary.
Remember when the federal omnibus anti-terrorism bill was in congress and many people said that anti-terrorism legilation could be used to persecute non violent political dissidents?
In this case it's a state law, but the point is still the same. Whenever you put a restriction on free speech, someone will be able to twist it to persecute their enemies.
Since the precedent has been set that the rights of the first amendment are not absolute, why not make membership in a "dangerous religious cult" illegal. We could fight scientology that way.
I am joking, I believe that the rights granted by the first amendment are absolute. If you want to join a cult. That is your business.
* slower - and don't give me garbage about the "megahertz myth." Sure, it's true that mhz isn't a great measure of efficiency across architectural platforms, but any techno weeny knows that it isn't irrelevant either. The latest P4s are much faster than the fastest G4s in both standard integer and floating point operations. Now on the other hand, is it important? Probably not, an 800 mhz or 1 Ghz G4 is still plenty fast for everything a person actually needs to do and even gaming.
I have this discussion just about every week with one of my friends. He is pro Mac all the way. He still believes the hype that the PPC is "twice as fast" as X86 in all things. Sure, a 600 mhz G4 is going to be faster than a 600 Mhz P3. But It's not going to keep pace with a 1.2gz P4 or Athlon. Keep in mind that we're just talking about raw number crunching ability.
Another thing that annoys me to no end about Jobs's drones is that they complain about things when other companies do it, but when Apple does it's brilliant strategy.
Remember hearing them bitch about Win 9X's bloat? I do, I also remember not hearing them bitch about the same thing in the MacOS. I remember when you could fit a bootable system onto a floppy with System 7.1, by 7.5.5 there were so many system enablers that you needed a good 5 Megs or so just to boot up and run Norton Utils.
Theft is theft - justifying it by saying that companies charge too much is attempting to skirt the issue.
Just because you keep saying something doesn't make it true. Just like the MP3 issue, software piracy is NOT theft. It is copyright infringement, it is illegal, it may even be wrong, but it is not theft.
Shoplifting a package from CompUSA is theft. Bogarting someone's serial number for Escape Velocity is NOT theft. When person A has a widget and person B comes along and takes that widget without person A's permission, person A is thereby denied posession of the aforementioned widget, person B has stolen from person A.
As I have said numerous times before, you can put a cat in the oven, that doesn't make it a biscuit.
LK
but that doesn't make it a biscuit.
No matter how many times people scream from the rooftops that unauthorized copying is stealing, that doesn't make it so.
No question about it, copyright infringement is illegal. When discussing a company like microsoft who (allegedly) stole Stac's code for doublespace, it's hard to get a groundswell of sympathy for their "lost revenue".
If people don't feel too bad about copyright infringement to do it, some people think that they can change this by calling it stealing. The use of that word conjurs up imagery of parents scolding children about not ripping off candybars from the corner store.
Let's examine this, by making an illegal copy of Windows 2x, you have denied a sale to Microsoft and have cost them money. By costing them money, you have stolen from Microsoft.
Every linux distro that includes Samba is a potential lost sale for Microsoft. For every one of those lost sales, Microsoft has lost money. If one follows the logic train, RedHat, Mandrake, SuSe, Debian, Slackware, Yellowdog, and countless others are stealing money out of Microsoft's pockets by costing them sales of Win2k.
It doesn't add up. Even if it is illegal and morally wrong, the former example is no more stealing than the latter.
In normal times the opinion of these 2 avowed members of the ultra conservative christian right would be ridiculed, but at this moment in time they will get wide support in some areas.
Chuck Schumer as a part of the "ultra conservatice christian right"?
Are you smoking crack? Schumer is one of the most hated senators by those on the right.
I suggest you do a little more research next time.
DirectX is so prolific, and MS has people who do nothing but provide support to developers for DirectX. If there is an issue with DirectX, MS patches it (how well they do that is another issue).
It's going to be a HARD sell to get development companies to move away from DX. More than 90% of the games you are going to sell will be for a platform that supports DX.
If you have a team of well paid developers who have several years developing for DX, why does it make sense to switch?
Though, I know this is not possible, I'd love to see an "embrace and extend" approach to this. Make an API that is "compatible" with DX, but has some "features" that DX does not support.
I know this is fanciful, but everyone is entitled to a dream, right?
Though there are many good points like making it MUCH harder to commit tax fraud and larceny, these benefits are gained at the cost of privacy.
Meaning, if I'm out and about and I decide to pick up a new adult video and I can't pay cash, someone somewhere will be able to prove that I bought it. Sure there's nothing illegal about buying Foreskin Gump or Naughty Librarians 4, but I'd rather keep certain things private.
Or what if some new revolutionary excryption program is developed that is exponentially more secure than PGP or whathaveyou. If you can't buy it with cash, when it is made illegal, they can prove that you bought it and force you to give up your copy(ies).
It will be like the drug dealers out-gunning the cops because they have more money to spend on guns.
This is a fallacy. Police departments can get federal grants so that they can get nice new MP5s, or Colt AR-15/M-16s. There is no way in hell that cops who have prefessionally manufactured weapons are being outgunned by crooks who have hacked together AK-47s.
Sure, there have been isolated incidents where the cops on the scene at the time only had handguns and shotguns, but in short order backup was there and armed to the teeth.
In short BS. I can just as easliy say that if Gore hadn't run Nader would have won. This is the problem with traditional liberals, they think that people are entitled to something. If Gore wanted the votes of the Nader voters he should have EARNED them.
Gore, Bush, Nader, Buchanan, Browne, et all had to earn every vote they got. None of them were entitled to a single vote.
Have a look at this page, the date on the page info shows when it was created. That quote is doctored.
t m
http://www.ed.brocku.ca/~nmarshal/nostradamus.h
What Nostradamus actually said was "In the City of God there will be a great thunder, Two brothers torn apart by Chaos, while the fortress endures, the great leader will succumb"
Although primarily aimed at cleaning up huge space rockets like the European Space Agency's Ariane 4 and 5, the technology can be scaled down for handguns, making them safer for soldiers and police officers who risk lead poisoning from hours of indoor target practice.
There have been concerns for many years that lead particles contained in gun smoke might affect soldiers' health.
Copper, Bismuth and Steel are suitable replacements for casting bullets without using lead. In fact, military personnel are required to use full metal jacket ammunition in war.
Almost without exception full metal jackets consist of a steel or steel/lead core surrounded by copper. I suppose that lead contaminating the air is for boat tailed ammunition, where the lead portion of the core is exposed in the rear of the bullet. It has a minimal detrimental effect on the accuracy of the bullet and almost no effect on the cost of manufacture of the bullets to completely encase the lead portion of the core with copper.
In the case of police officers, the jacketed hollow points that they almost invariably use have lead that is only exposed on the "front" of the bullet. So when the bullet is fired the explosion of the powder doesn't have much of an effect on the lead, very little lead is released into the air. I suppose that this is only a real problem for the ones who are still using revolvers, but I haven't seen a police officer with a revolver since I was a teenager.
I wonder if throwing in the references to police officers and soldiers and "handguns" is more about getting support for an environmental project than they would otherwise be able to get.
Today software, media, entertainment giant Micro-TimeWarner-AOL-Soft came to an agreement with the US justice department regarding a controversial licensing practice that they and their partner, pharmaceutical and computer hardare juggernaut, Pfizer-Hewlett Compaqard Dell had been requiring users to agree to. AOL Windows 2050 will now be available to customers who wish to pay cash money instead of exchanging whole organs, human embryos or brain tissue to obtain a license.
Bill Gates has been quoted as saying "It was unfortunate that we were forced by the government to stop innovating new ways to increase our power, er,,, our product's quality. This measure is temporary, when the our current crop of congressmen are knocking on death's door, I'm sure that our stem cell research will provide us with a few bargaining chips to get laws passed that we agree with."
Short answer, no, you may not lick my balls.
Though floppies may suck, they are standard. Until the iMac, every computer on the market for nearly a decade had the ability to read 3.5" floppies.
Need to take a file somewhere? Anywhere? Put it o na 3.5" floppy. Though it's rare, sometimes I still take assignments to class on a 3.5" floppy. I can tweak them while I'm at work, and print them out in the computer lab. Sure, I could just email the file to myself everywhere I go, but the floppy is perfect for version control. At most there may be 2 versions of any given file in circulation.
Steve Jobs is just unable to admit that he made a mistake, and the people caught in the reality distortion field are unable to see his mistake.
but please don't give me this "depriving me of my property" bullshit. It's as bad as the Reagan Years' war on drugs rhetoric that if you try marijuana once you are guaranteed to become a heroin addict. Tell a lie and you lose your credibility.
Did you have the use of your computer before? Do you still have the use of your computer? Sure, until you delete it, the spam message in question may occupy a few k on your 20 GB hard drive. Have you really lost the use of it?
To extend this logic you can say that people who send unsolicited mailers through the USPS have denied you the use of >1.0 cubic inch of your physical mailbox, and have thus violated your rights. It's silly to make such a claim.
I don't have an easy answer for spam other than this, DELETE IT.
LK
This is not true. Under Federal law, all absentee ballots must be counted and certified with the offical election results for each state.
Under which federal law? None. Outside of the US Constitution, the federal government has no authority to dictate to a state how they certify their election results.
States do not have to submit their popular vote totals when they certify their election results.
Remember, under the system that we have (and are likely to have for the forseeable future) the popular vote means dick in a presidential election. Maybe it should be different, maybe it shouldn't be different, but it isn't.
As it stands, we'll never know who really won the popular vote.
LK
The majority of American voters did not get who they wanted for president and with a nearly perfectly devided house/senate you could be sure that people would scrutinize Ashcroft.
We will never know who the majority voted for, in states like California, New York, Texas the like there were more than enough uncounted absentee ballots to change the popular vote tally in Bush's favor or enough to cememnt a clear Gore lead. But in the states where they made no difference they were not counted.
With a less than 500,000 vote difference, there is no way to tell who won the popular vote.
LK
Yet Reno gleefully made this system possible, was on watch during Waco, Ruby Ridge, refused to investigate top Democratic fundraisers for illegalities, sent federal agents to Miami gestapo style to get Elian Gonzalez among other things.
As much as I despised Janet Reno, the incident at Ruby Ridge occured before her watch began. It's just the investigatoin of that event that can be blamed on her.
LK
With almost every other type of removable storage (DVD excluded) it was incompatible with everything that was on the market previously.
Punch cards didn't work in cassette tape drives. Cassettes didn't work in 5.25" floppy drives. 5.25" floppies didn't fit in 3.5" drives. 3.5" floppies didn't fit into CD rom drives.
So what? This isn't something that Iomega invented, it's the way that things work.
If you don't think it's a good idea, don't buy it and it'll die like the LS-120 has pretty much done.
LK
You've never had to by apple monitors for Macs, you still don't have to.
Like I said. As long as they don't break support for vga, this is no big deal.
I can't understand why this is so hard.
Then it must not have been paying attention to the where Steve Jobs has been leading Apple for te past few years.
LK
Apple's monitors have always been overpriced. Even before they included USB hubs. As I said in my previous post, unless you need easy color calibration, you are overpaying by buying an Apple monitor.
Look at the 15" Multiscan monitor. The ones that had all of those color problems. For less than the cost of the Apple monitor, you could have bought a Viewsonic and had about the same chances of a defect showing up later.
Unless you're in a graphics shop that has standardized on all Apple equipment, buying an Apple branded CRT meant that you overpaid.
LK
As long as you can still get a CRT elsewhere, this is no big deal. Unless you need easy color calibration, there is no compelling reason to buy an apple display anyway. If you're not using colorsync then you overpaid for your apple monitor. Apples CRTs are usually 20-25% more expensive than similar monitors from other manufacturers
But even if they do break support for CRTs, watch how the Apple faithful trumped how great it is that Apple is forcing people to go to something better than those "Old antiquated CRT monitors".
Refresh rates? BAH! It's all about toy value.
LK
Presumably it recognizes some humanly inaudible signal sent out by participating stations.
Perhaps what it picks up is audible to the human ear. I listen to alot of AM radio. Every AM station's dead air sounds different to me.
It's possible that each participating station will be assigned a carrier frequency to embed into their broadcasts.
LK
A Slashdot editor admitting MS makes a superior product?
Let's look at what Rob said.
Wince devices are better.
The devices are better. Not the OS. Last time I checked MS didn't make the devices. Companies like HP, Casio, and Compaq make the devices. The fact that they run an MS OS is secondary.
LK
Remember when the federal omnibus anti-terrorism bill was in congress and many people said that anti-terrorism legilation could be used to persecute non violent political dissidents?
In this case it's a state law, but the point is still the same. Whenever you put a restriction on free speech, someone will be able to twist it to persecute their enemies.
Since the precedent has been set that the rights of the first amendment are not absolute, why not make membership in a "dangerous religious cult" illegal. We could fight scientology that way.
I am joking, I believe that the rights granted by the first amendment are absolute. If you want to join a cult. That is your business.
http://vagina.rotten.com/elron/
LK
Dropping bombs down airshafts not just for the USAF anymore!
Think bigger (or smaller, depending on your perspective). The Army of God can now put Anthrax into any building from a quarter of the world away.
LK