Yep.. Indeed, everyone keeps saying the XBox is a test for Palladium. I think perhaps they are correct. In fact, all evidence supports this rationalization. MS has patents in the works for their DRM operating system. Intel's working on the hardware, and AMD is playing follow the leader.
That's precicely why I'm scared; once all new computers are hardware secure*, open source will have to relegate itself to older platforms (or ones that have no hope to run software designed to be run on a secure platform). It's a sad state of affairs, and a future I think could come about.
*As the XBox has illustrated, hardware security is a laughable--unless one is willing to take extreme (and expensive) measures. Anything short of strapping a small block of C4 on the motherboard, and rigging it such that any attempt to circumvent the hardware causes it to blow the thing to hell, will fail. Hardware will be cracked; it's a function of how badly it needs to be done, and how many people are working on it. Though, in all practicality, draconian legislation like the DMCA will criminalize anyone attempting to distribute that knowledge. Freenet may be our savior after all.
While it may be true that MS will be spreading as much FUD as possible about OSS, I don't think that's where they will fight the war.
If I were MS, I would do everything in my power to make sure that OSS users were isolated as much as possible from the main computing public, in what they do, and how they do it. As you have said, they are trying pretty hard to build up a community around themselves..NET and maybe to a greater degree DRM with Palladium will be the things that form their community--by forcing those who disapprove to OSS. These are the devices that will enable them to wage war; and in regular MicroSoft fashion, I expect them to weild those weapons without mercy. They are banking on the fact that Joe Sixpack, his grandma and neice, and the rest of the non-professional (and possibly some professional) computer users will stick with their systems because it allows them to do the things they want to do--easier (or legally).
If DRM legislation comes about, the sides may very well have turned. I, for one, am scared that the American Public will let it happen. Afterall, it's pretty clear that even with the outcry of hundreds of important industry leaders, the government doesn't really care about MicroSoft's anti-competative actions... This one will just be the action to end all competition.
Nope, there's no swap partition by default on OSX. It uses a swap file on the boot volume. I think you can create a partition to use for swap, but it's certianly not an install option.
The problem is that most cats have better taste than to use XBox debris for litter. I think you would have to either find a cat that dosen't care, or is very desperate to do his thing, or both.
Battery size chart here. Apparently A size batteries are 17mm in diameter by 50mm. They have a slightly larger diameter than AA (at 14.3mm). I don't think I have seen one--ever.
Hrm, interpersonal LAN parties... Gives "First Person Shooter" a whole 'nother meaning! Wonder just how far tweakers will go to get lower pings though?
Well, I find that my milk usually stays quite usable up to a week and a half after the due date. Horizon Organic milk, and Lucerne, have always been quite robust milks, as far as I'm concerned. My local dairy produces some damn good milk, as well.
Now I need a freaking brownie, so I can get some milk... See what you've done?!
Both of these games have ports for Win and *nix systems (started as *nix only.) Both of them have been around forever, but are endlessly entertaining (and Carpal Tunnel Syndrome provoking.)
I have to agree with ya, PuTTY is an essential tool for anybody. If my mom can use to ssh to check her mail, anyone can use it. All that for the low low cost of a couple hundred KBs... Amazing.
X-pilot, and X-Evil, hands down. I wonder if there's any active Xpilot players around anymore... I'll have to confess, it's been a while since I've played.
I agree with your comment whole-heartedly. Commercial support is necessary if the Linux comunnity expects to have commercial products.
However, I think it's an extremely foolish thing to buy a product which you are never going to use, let alone never enjoy. Burning money for the sake of appeasing the Linux gods does little to help anyone. It dosen't give useful feedback to the creators of the software, as the buyer (admittedly) could care less. It dosen't diectly help the Linux community, therefore the purchase is testamount to throwing the unopened box into the landfill.
It would do more good to setup a young game playing relative with a Linux machine, and his own copy of UT2003, and teach this youngster about Linux.
If you're not a gamer, then why even bother? Do you want to see more games ported to Linux, so that you will buy, but not play those, as well?
It's a great thing if you're some kind of Linux evangelist that has wads of money to throw around, but don't be wasteful. Want to help the cause? Donate the $60 to the EFF that would have bought your game that you would have never played anyway. Or, perhaps find a project that you like and use, and support them monetarily. I on the other hand, will buy this game, play it to death, tell my friends and cow-orkers how much better it runs on my minimal Linux PC, and rave about it (if the game itself warrants it.)
I swear, if everyone in the world put as much energy into stuff they didn't want, this place might be pretty screwed up. As if.
Yeah, my O2's power supply fan went wacky, luckily I was there to shut it down, as I'm not sure if the bugger has ways to deal with that. It was a blessing though, I stuck a quiter fan with the same air flow in it, and have never been happier. To it's credit, that little bastard ran a very long time with no malfunction at all.
It still can't beat my Indigo2 though, it's been running almost continiously since it was bought (was moved a few times, and had some various upgrades, etc.) with nary a problem. That thing is indestructible, knock on wood.
I'll have to agree that Napster protocol/OpenNAP worked far better than pretty much everything I have tried since. MusicCity, before it became the Morpheous/FastTrack hell hole, was a great place to hang out, talk with like minded people from all over, and browse a very diverse music selection. #Gnapster, now that was the place for trout weilding VAX hurlers(not to mention the prolific eyebrow licking), I tells ya. I'll have to say that I bought more CDs when MusicCity was going then I have, ever. It was just too easy to find great new sounds, tell everyone else who cared, and be happy.
Gnutella is ok, but I almost always have problems with nodes not responding, poorly configured firewalls, users terminating transfers, poor or mis-named media, etc. If I leave my session on for a good long time it usually finds a few good nodes, so it's not a great network for impulse searches (atleast in my experience) Not to mention that Gnutella by design is woefully impersonal; and even though some modern clients have a chat ability, people rarely respond, or are complete dickheads. There is no community to speak of in Gnutella.
I haven't had the desire to really mess with any of the other sharing networks, but I hear edonkey2000 is okay, so I may have to give it a go.
IIRC, Linus' holdups on Linux changes (from SGI and other places that are really cranking out the code), patches and features are mainly due to the fact that they are usually really big changes. That's understandable, I suppose, as intergrating alot of that stuff could be quite troublesome, and have unforseen consequences to other untested setups (and Linus is only 1 person).
That, however will not stop me from drewling at the idea that XFS and FAM could someday be intergrated into the greater Linux. Heck, hopefully it will be part of kernel 2.6, that would be something to celibrate.
It is a shame though, that SGI is hurting so badly from what appear to be very poor management decisions. They've been through one lame CEO after the next, and all but a few have had their heads planted firmly between their buttocks. I guess it can happen to even the best of 'em.
First, you're going to instantly forget to close your bold tags. All joking and prodding aside, I really don't see a problem with using LCDs for an electric car (or any car for that matter, all things considered). LCDs have good enough longevity and MTBF to warrant their use, as well as market penetration and availibility. LCDs are permentantly mounted in some vehicles, as the parent pointed out, but their use is not limited to state of the art jet powered street bikes. Most police forces have an installed laptop (Toshiba ToughBook is a popular product), Garbage haulers often have a camera mounted in the back (whether they use an LCD is unknowenst to myself, but it's a possibility), and the applications aren't limited to just these vehicles. The major problems with LCD, as I see them: any modern LCD setup is going to cost a fair ammount of weight. This includes camera, cabling, power cables, the LCD unit, mountng hardware, and the battery that's going to power it. Having something modern like that stands out (good or bad way, folks), no doubt, and would be very cool indeed. However, since this is a competition, it would be best to choose the most efficient solution (if cutting drag from removing mirrors in their design has a net benefit--energy efficency wize, then it's the best solution). It also depends on what the particular goal of this test is; if the goal is win at all costs(monetary)that sure changes things, when compared to whether or not budget is a consideration. As an engineering principle, though, it's probably best to follow this rule of thumb: KISS (Keep It Simple, Stupid), many problems can occour from over-engineering something, especially in a project as sensitive as this.
Perhaps they could even get a donation (and possible engineering help or consultation) from one of the major manufactures for their project, if they stuck a sticker on their car or something...
I really like the idea of Xiph releasing the fixed point decoder, It has the possibility to revolutionize the portable music market.
However, I'm worried, still. Since it is under the BSD liscense nobody could see changes to the code that manufactures might make. Shoddy/out of spec, or smaller subsets of the Ogg spec could be marketed this way (since the manufactures won't have to open the code for everyone to see), and dilution of faith in Ogg could result. As I see it, someone (maybe Xiph themselves) should contract with manufactures to ensure that their products are Ogg v1.0 compliant (with a sticker on the box to prove it).
On the plus side, you get the full implementation of Ogg in your favorite portable. Xiph might also have a nice income making sure products using Ogg are within specification.
On the negative side, products might be slower to deploy, and cost just a tad more.
Wow, guess it's much more common than I ever thought possible. It may be possible to use the VRAM for semi-reliable storage afterall. I'd still be very nervous about putting something important in there without a backup, though...
I've also expierienced this phenomenon. This used to happen often with a TNT2/Linux combo (Nvidia drivers as well), and also on my SGI O2. Always thought it was pretty odd...
Iv'e been a RISC idiot for a long time now, and on damn near every architecture Iv'e messed with, a RISC chip whooped a similary clocked x86 chip by as much as a 50% margin. They did it while running cooler, and taking less energy to boot. It might be because the machine in question had a better memory subsystem (SGI for instance), or because it could parallel calculate well (Dec ALPHA), or because it had a huge cache and great prediction (SPARC), or whatever the case. The fact is that there's alot of things that can make a chip excell over it's competitiors, or suck dust like a Hoover.
Also (as off topic as I'm going here), Diesel as a fuel is better than gasolone. It has about an 8% better energy/weight ratio than gasoline. Diesel is easier to manufacture, and requires less refinement than gasoline (thus more efficient to manufacture). The only problem with it is that it's not as flammabe as gasoline, meaning that a Diesel engine is usually larger than a Gasolone engine, because it has to operate at higher pressures, and requires more mechanicaics. Parts are larger to handle the greater torque from Diesel combustion, need a high pressure fuel pump to get the pintles to work correctly, etc. The only reason gasoline took off as a fuel was because it's just so easy to work with, and it dosen't have the tendancy to gell in cold weather (although in really cold weather gasoline just won't work because it needs to vaporize to become flammable, whereas a Diesel with fuel line warmers will work just fine)
Not to mention the fact that jet fuel is very close to kerosene, which is kind of a more refined version of Diesel (both of which can be used as turbine fuel for non-aviation related use). Diesel(or kerosene) with liquid oxygen also makes an amazingly cheap but powerful rocket fuel. I think the best way I can explain what I'm getting at is that what you get out of something depends on how you use it, whether is is a CPU or whatever.
If you turn around and invest that 200K into another home that you will live in, it's completely non-taxable. I think you have 6 months (could be wrong on that, but who would wait 6mos any way?) after the sale to find another residence, longer than that, it's subject to capitol-gains taxes.
And, who says the bank needs to be involved with financing, or even a relitor for that matter? If you can find a private party that wants to sell you a house, and you both know a little about selling real estate, don't need a relitor. Got liquid funds? Then you don't need financing.
The only way you might not be able to get away without loosing is this: in some states, the sales on estate are taxable. Yeah, it sucks, but those are the breaks.
You might check with other ISPs in your area, some of them may have an agreement with QWEST, such that QWEST provides the DSL loop to you, then to your ISP. The loop charge is $29/month for 712Kbps in my area, and my ISP is pretty reasonable at $25/month.
It's more expensive than cable and plain 'ol QWEST service, but it suits me well--my ISP is the type that's very non-restrictive, I can have servers or whatever, and they don't care. They have mutiple DS3s to a level3 backbone, and techs that know what to do when some asshole puts a rogue DHCP server on the ethernet segment.
Slashdot Mirror
Yep.. Indeed, everyone keeps saying the XBox is a test for Palladium. I think perhaps they are correct. In fact, all evidence supports this rationalization. MS has patents in the works for their DRM operating system. Intel's working on the hardware, and AMD is playing follow the leader.
That's precicely why I'm scared; once all new computers are hardware secure*, open source will have to relegate itself to older platforms (or ones that have no hope to run software designed to be run on a secure platform). It's a sad state of affairs, and a future I think could come about.
*As the XBox has illustrated, hardware security is a laughable--unless one is willing to take extreme (and expensive) measures. Anything short of strapping a small block of C4 on the motherboard, and rigging it such that any attempt to circumvent the hardware causes it to blow the thing to hell, will fail. Hardware will be cracked; it's a function of how badly it needs to be done, and how many people are working on it. Though, in all practicality, draconian legislation like the DMCA will criminalize anyone attempting to distribute that knowledge. Freenet may be our savior after all.
While it may be true that MS will be spreading as much FUD as possible about OSS, I don't think that's where they will fight the war.
.NET and maybe to a greater degree DRM with Palladium will be the things that form their community--by forcing those who disapprove to OSS. These are the devices that will enable them to wage war; and in regular MicroSoft fashion, I expect them to weild those weapons without mercy. They are banking on the fact that Joe Sixpack, his grandma and neice, and the rest of the non-professional (and possibly some professional) computer users will stick with their systems because it allows them to do the things they want to do--easier (or legally).
If I were MS, I would do everything in my power to make sure that OSS users were isolated as much as possible from the main computing public, in what they do, and how they do it. As you have said, they are trying pretty hard to build up a community around themselves.
If DRM legislation comes about, the sides may very well have turned. I, for one, am scared that the American Public will let it happen. Afterall, it's pretty clear that even with the outcry of hundreds of important industry leaders, the government doesn't really care about MicroSoft's anti-competative actions... This one will just be the action to end all competition.
Nope, there's no swap partition by default on OSX. It uses a swap file on the boot volume. I think you can create a partition to use for swap, but it's certianly not an install option.
The problem is that most cats have better taste than to use XBox debris for litter. I think you would have to either find a cat that dosen't care, or is very desperate to do his thing, or both.
Market them as tiger genitalia, and you could make a fortune in the asian aphrodisiac sector!
Battery size chart here. Apparently A size batteries are 17mm in diameter by 50mm. They have a slightly larger diameter than AA (at 14.3mm). I don't think I have seen one--ever.
Hrm, interpersonal LAN parties... Gives "First Person Shooter" a whole 'nother meaning!
Wonder just how far tweakers will go to get lower pings though?
Yeah, definitely time for bed.
Well, I find that my milk usually stays quite usable up to a week and a half after the due date. Horizon Organic milk, and Lucerne, have always been quite robust milks, as far as I'm concerned. My local dairy produces some damn good milk, as well.
Now I need a freaking brownie, so I can get some milk... See what you've done?!
XEvil
XPilot
Both of these games have ports for Win and *nix systems (started as *nix only.) Both of them have been around forever, but are endlessly entertaining (and Carpal Tunnel Syndrome provoking.)
I have to agree with ya, PuTTY is an essential tool for anybody. If my mom can use to ssh to check her mail, anyone can use it. All that for the low low cost of a couple hundred KBs... Amazing.
X-pilot, and X-Evil, hands down. I wonder if there's any active Xpilot players around anymore... I'll have to confess, it's been a while since I've played.
I agree with your comment whole-heartedly. Commercial support is necessary if the Linux comunnity expects to have commercial products.
However, I think it's an extremely foolish thing to buy a product which you are never going to use, let alone never enjoy. Burning money for the sake of appeasing the Linux gods does little to help anyone. It dosen't give useful feedback to the creators of the software, as the buyer (admittedly) could care less. It dosen't diectly help the Linux community, therefore the purchase is testamount to throwing the unopened box into the landfill.
It would do more good to setup a young game playing relative with a Linux machine, and his own copy of UT2003, and teach this youngster about Linux.
If you're not a gamer, then why even bother? Do you want to see more games ported to Linux, so that you will buy, but not play those, as well?
It's a great thing if you're some kind of Linux evangelist that has wads of money to throw around, but don't be wasteful. Want to help the cause? Donate the $60 to the EFF that would have bought your game that you would have never played anyway. Or, perhaps find a project that you like and use, and support them monetarily. I on the other hand, will buy this game, play it to death, tell my friends and cow-orkers how much better it runs on my minimal Linux PC, and rave about it (if the game itself warrants it.)
I swear, if everyone in the world put as much energy into stuff they didn't want, this place might be pretty screwed up. As if.
Yeah, my O2's power supply fan went wacky, luckily I was there to shut it down, as I'm not sure if the bugger has ways to deal with that. It was a blessing though, I stuck a quiter fan with the same air flow in it, and have never been happier. To it's credit, that little bastard ran a very long time with no malfunction at all.
It still can't beat my Indigo2 though, it's been running almost continiously since it was bought (was moved a few times, and had some various upgrades, etc.) with nary a problem. That thing is indestructible, knock on wood.
Hell, even if he dosen't get awarded the patents, the ideas will get tied up for a few years at minimum. That does indeed Rock.
Wonder what sort of beer Lucky likes? I think he needs a case or two.
I'll have to agree that Napster protocol/OpenNAP worked far better than pretty much everything I have tried since. MusicCity, before it became the Morpheous/FastTrack hell hole, was a great place to hang out, talk with like minded people from all over, and browse a very diverse music selection. #Gnapster, now that was the place for trout weilding VAX hurlers(not to mention the prolific eyebrow licking), I tells ya. I'll have to say that I bought more CDs when MusicCity was going then I have, ever. It was just too easy to find great new sounds, tell everyone else who cared, and be happy.
Gnutella is ok, but I almost always have problems with nodes not responding, poorly configured firewalls, users terminating transfers, poor or mis-named media, etc. If I leave my session on for a good long time it usually finds a few good nodes, so it's not a great network for impulse searches (atleast in my experience) Not to mention that Gnutella by design is woefully impersonal; and even though some modern clients have a chat ability, people rarely respond, or are complete dickheads. There is no community to speak of in Gnutella.
I haven't had the desire to really mess with any of the other sharing networks, but I hear edonkey2000 is okay, so I may have to give it a go.
IIRC, Linus' holdups on Linux changes (from SGI and other places that are really cranking out the code), patches and features are mainly due to the fact that they are usually really big changes. That's understandable, I suppose, as intergrating alot of that stuff could be quite troublesome, and have unforseen consequences to other untested setups (and Linus is only 1 person).
That, however will not stop me from drewling at the idea that XFS and FAM could someday be intergrated into the greater Linux. Heck, hopefully it will be part of kernel 2.6, that would be something to celibrate.
It is a shame though, that SGI is hurting so badly from what appear to be very poor management decisions. They've been through one lame CEO after the next, and all but a few have had their heads planted firmly between their buttocks.
I guess it can happen to even the best of 'em.
First, you're going to instantly forget to close your bold tags. All joking and prodding aside, I really don't see a problem with using LCDs for an electric car (or any car for that matter, all things considered). LCDs have good enough longevity and MTBF to warrant their use, as well as market penetration and availibility. LCDs are permentantly mounted in some vehicles, as the parent pointed out, but their use is not limited to state of the art jet powered street bikes. Most police forces have an installed laptop (Toshiba ToughBook is a popular product), Garbage haulers often have a camera mounted in the back (whether they use an LCD is unknowenst to myself, but it's a possibility), and the applications aren't limited to just these vehicles.
The major problems with LCD, as I see them: any modern LCD setup is going to cost a fair ammount of weight. This includes camera, cabling, power cables, the LCD unit, mountng hardware, and the battery that's going to power it. Having something modern like that stands out (good or bad way, folks), no doubt, and would be very cool indeed. However, since this is a competition, it would be best to choose the most efficient solution (if cutting drag from removing mirrors in their design has a net benefit--energy efficency wize, then it's the best solution). It also depends on what the particular goal of this test is; if the goal is win at all costs(monetary)that sure changes things, when compared to whether or not budget is a consideration. As an engineering principle, though, it's probably best to follow this rule of thumb: KISS (Keep It Simple, Stupid), many problems can occour from over-engineering something, especially in a project as sensitive as this.
Perhaps they could even get a donation (and possible engineering help or consultation) from one of the major manufactures for their project, if they stuck a sticker on their car or something...
I really like the idea of Xiph releasing the fixed point decoder, It has the possibility to revolutionize the portable music market.
However, I'm worried, still. Since it is under the BSD liscense nobody could see changes to the code that manufactures might make. Shoddy/out of spec, or smaller subsets of the Ogg spec could be marketed this way (since the manufactures won't have to open the code for everyone to see), and dilution of faith in Ogg could result. As I see it, someone (maybe Xiph themselves) should contract with manufactures to ensure that their products are Ogg v1.0 compliant (with a sticker on the box to prove it).
On the plus side, you get the full implementation of Ogg in your favorite portable. Xiph might also have a nice income making sure products using Ogg are within specification.
On the negative side, products might be slower to deploy, and cost just a tad more.
That said, Xiph rocks. Them's some good folk.
Wow, guess it's much more common than I ever thought possible. It may be possible to use the VRAM for semi-reliable storage afterall. I'd still be very nervous about putting something important in there without a backup, though...
I've also expierienced this phenomenon. This used to happen often with a TNT2/Linux combo (Nvidia drivers as well), and also on my SGI O2. Always thought it was pretty odd...
Obviously, someone didn't get my point, but who cares? Just an AC.
Iv'e been a RISC idiot for a long time now, and on damn near every architecture Iv'e messed with, a RISC chip whooped a similary clocked x86 chip by as much as a 50% margin. They did it while running cooler, and taking less energy to boot. It might be because the machine in question had a better memory subsystem (SGI for instance), or because it could parallel calculate well (Dec ALPHA), or because it had a huge cache and great prediction (SPARC), or whatever the case. The fact is that there's alot of things that can make a chip excell over it's competitiors, or suck dust like a Hoover.
Also (as off topic as I'm going here), Diesel as a fuel is better than gasolone. It has about an 8% better energy/weight ratio than gasoline. Diesel is easier to manufacture, and requires less refinement than gasoline (thus more efficient to manufacture). The only problem with it is that it's not as flammabe as gasoline, meaning that a Diesel engine is usually larger than a Gasolone engine, because it has to operate at higher pressures, and requires more mechanicaics. Parts are larger to handle the greater torque from Diesel combustion, need a high pressure fuel pump to get the pintles to work correctly, etc. The only reason gasoline took off as a fuel was because it's just so easy to work with, and it dosen't have the tendancy to gell in cold weather (although in really cold weather gasoline just won't work because it needs to vaporize to become flammable, whereas a Diesel with fuel line warmers will work just fine)
Not to mention the fact that jet fuel is very close to kerosene, which is kind of a more refined version of Diesel (both of which can be used as turbine fuel for non-aviation related use). Diesel(or kerosene) with liquid oxygen also makes an amazingly cheap but powerful rocket fuel. I think the best way I can explain what I'm getting at is that what you get out of something depends on how you use it, whether is is a CPU or whatever.
[/end rant]
If you turn around and invest that 200K into another home that you will live in, it's completely non-taxable. I think you have 6 months (could be wrong on that, but who would wait 6mos any way?) after the sale to find another residence, longer than that, it's subject to capitol-gains taxes.
And, who says the bank needs to be involved with financing, or even a relitor for that matter? If you can find a private party that wants to sell you a house, and you both know a little about selling real estate, don't need a relitor. Got liquid funds? Then you don't need financing.
The only way you might not be able to get away without loosing is this: in some states, the sales on estate are taxable. Yeah, it sucks, but those are the breaks.
You might check with other ISPs in your area, some of them may have an agreement with QWEST, such that QWEST provides the DSL loop to you, then to your ISP.
The loop charge is $29/month for 712Kbps in my area, and my ISP is pretty reasonable at $25/month.
It's more expensive than cable and plain 'ol QWEST service, but it suits me well--my ISP is the type that's very non-restrictive, I can have servers or whatever, and they don't care. They have mutiple DS3s to a level3 backbone, and techs that know what to do when some asshole puts a rogue DHCP server on the ethernet segment.
In all, a very good comprimise.