Dell probably recommends you to get the extra 512MB because they intend to preload lots of crap on Vista just like they preload lots of crap onto their XP systems.
512MB can support Vista + a few apps, but maybe not Vista + a few apps + the usual preloads...
That said, I'd stick to 2000/XP if I were you.
I'm just hoping that the WINE + Cedega + whoever get an XP+DirectX10 compatible out sometime end of this year or so.
Then they may do what AMD did to Intel when Intel told everyone to leave x86 and jump on the Itanic... AMD said - hey guys, you could always use these AMD64 chips instead.:).
Re:This is why my company is starting a move to Li
on
The End is Nigh for XP
·
· Score: 1
Well it sure depends on which courts you end up in.
But nowadays you could get extradited to the USA for all sorts of things...
Given that Microsoft has agreed not to sue Novell's customers over patent infringements then Novell just needs to have customers that do the compiling and testing of software for Novell.
Basically the coders just write code without testing and then check it in, and the customers download, compile (if necessary) and test it.
Heck, something like this already happens in many software companies around the world;).
And AMD is better in the "if the CPU fits in the motherboard socket it's likely to be compatible". Even if it's not recognized in the BIOS and you just see the MHz etc, it doesn't matter - it still works.
Whereas for recent Intel CPUs even if their CPUs fit in the socket, they often only work with particular chipsets.
Intel has definitely been worse- they moved from socket to slot (remember slot1?), to socket etc.
Uh the word you are looking for is upgrade. You upgraded to XP from Vista.
If more people kept to XP, maybe we can make Vista to Microsoft what the Itanium was to Intel.
Now if the Wine etc people would come up with an XP+DirectX compatible ASAP, then when Microsoft tries to pull the plug on Windows XP, lots would switch to "XP" on Linux. Just like when Intel tried to kick people off x86 and on to the Itanium, AMD started raking it in;).
Nah it's a crap design. Doesn't do that well in SPEC CPU 2000 or SPEC CPU 2006 and most real world apps. See: http://www.spec.org/cpu2006/results/cpu2006.html and http://www.spec.org/cpu/results/cpu2000.html
The fastest Itanium 2 there isn't faster than the fastest x86 in floating point performance or integer performance when you compare quad cores with quad cores, etc.
And look at price, power consumption for the performance you get. Expensive (the same number of transistors in an Itanium 2 system (18MB or even 24MB cache!) will get you a fair number of Core 2 Duo/X2 cores), hot, and only fast in very specific cases. If I wanted an expensive solution that's high performance only in specialized cases I'd be using an ASIC or DSP.
Compare the Itanic with IBM's POWER range and you'll see the problem- if you are going to pick a platform that is expensive, isn't x86 compatible, you might as well switch to IBM's POWER range. You provide the large sums of money and at least IBM will provide the hardware, O/S, apps, the people to blame aka consultants;), and people to yell at aka support. Whereas Intel has nothing but the CPU.
Scientific computing? go talk to the HPC people nowadays and see what they are buying. They aren't betting on the Itanic.
Database? I don't see how VLIW helps for DB aps. AFAIK Opterons currently (better memory bandwidth) are the way to go for that. Whatever it is, it sure isn't Itanium 2 unless your "Enterprise" DB fits in the 24MB caches of the Itanium.
The advantage of the x86 ISA is that it is CISC and thus fairly dense - think of it as compressed instructions - and nowadays when bandwidth is an issue (memory bandwidth, cache bandwidth etc), CISC isn't so bad. IBM's POWER is pretty dense as well.
x86 is still ugly though. The pig with a jetpack is flying faster than the eagles etc, but it's still a pig;).
"In a global economy, if one of the players just cuts corners by stealing someone work, why should anyone do anything?"
0) Get real. You think that widespread copying isn't already happening in China _amongst_ the companies there? You really think that the companies in China have already given up "doing anything" because their own competitors in China copy them? Nope, they are competing like crazy. If the US/Euro/etc companies give up so easily, well too bad for them then.
Sure once those Chinese companies get big enough they'll start bribing politicians for laws to reduce competition (if they haven't already started doing so), but meanwhile it's business as usual.
1) Copying is not stealing. (and I'm not talking about plagiarism or trademark infringement which both involve a form of lying/deceit).
2) R&D costs don't make up the bulk of the costs of most products on the market. Even the Biotech giants who keep talking about extending patents to recoup R&D costs spend more on marketing+advertising than R&D (probably since most people only seem to have room in their brains for 2 or 3 brands for a particular type of product/service. Being able to copy things for cheaper may get you a temporary "appearance", but it's not a good way of staying there, esp if the management chooses to produce an inferior copy for cost reasons (Chinese quality culture isn't top notch yet) ).
3) Copying isn't always zero cost- especially if you are copying those maglev trains given current technology - and there's always other things you need, even if you can copy the processes, documentation, in-head knowledge, support staff+infrastructure etc.
Maybe by the time China copies everything, China would resemble USA and go around trying to stop others copying them;)
In the ancient days you just had a few occupations. Now you have zillions with lots of specialists AND worse there are tons of interdependencies nowadays.
If something happened to your food/water/fuel/energy supply it'll be pretty disastrous, BUT nowadays, that is dependent on so many things.
In most of the developed countries already a relatively few farmers are producing food for more and more people.
Now add the distribution and preparation of that food.
And look up how many weeks of fuel reserves countries have stored. Japan has about 170 days but not as many countries can afford that (or actually have decent contingency planning). See what happened when Russia started throttling their gas supply to various countries - major unpleasantness.
If there was a global pandemic there would be a high chance of too many specialists being wiped out with the corresponding "knock on" effects. And the effects of widespread quarantines (the only solution if you don't have a cure) would be pretty drastic to modern civilization.
If you aren't a farmer and were quarantined, how many weeks supply of food do you have? How would supplies get from A to B?
The aboriginal peoples living in rainforests etc would do ok, but people living in and reliant on cities would be in big trouble.
Oh yeah as for the German perspective? I forgot to mention that it's just like Felix Hoffmann "stealing" from Charles Frederic Gerhardt (French guy) the formula for what became trademarked and patented as Aspirin by Bayer (a German company which Felix worked for).
Bayer's trademarks to Aspirin (and Heroin) were lost as "spoils of war" in the 1919 Treaty of Versailles.
Many big companies about nowadays were built on what they now call "theft" and "infringement". And these big companies are now working to keep competitors out.
"Are you telling me a transportation system as complicated as a magnetically levitated train under development for 24 years can be replicated in 22 months because one guy cleverer than the next"
I personally think it is stupid and a waste of resources to reinvent a good wheel (badly or in a twisted manner to avoid "patent infringement") when you can copy it. After that you can spend the resources (you saved from not reinventing stuff) on improving it if necessary.
It is ridiculous to restrict 6 billion people from copying an idea/thought/speech just because one person lays claim to it. If you plan really long term, this system won't scale _well_ to trillions or more people - nobody would be able to think of something without infringing. In the near future brains could be seamlessly augmented with computers - so accurate playback AND sharing of what you "remember" would be technically possible if not legally possible (DMCA + DRM = crippled).
This concept of "intellectual property" introduces artificial scarcities. At various stages of a country's development it is better for it to ignore such "constructs" if possible - such as USA in the 1800s (see Charles Dickens;) ), and same for Switzerland, Netherlands etc in those days.
Quote: ''Exhibition data are particularly useful for studying the effects of patent laws on innovation because they measure economically useful innovation in a way that is independent of changes in patent laws,'' Professor Moser said. ''Countries without patent laws were really doing quite well.''
So what is the lesson for Brazil, China, India and other countries that are being pressed by industrialized nations to create strong patent systems?
''We try to force patent laws on developing countries and say, This is best for you,'' she said. ''Then we are surprised when they say they don't want patent laws. But they have a point. Such laws could actually hinder innovation in those countries.''
"I question their effectiveness because all the locals seem to know exactly where they are)"
Uh so do they slow down at those spots? If they do then aren't the cameras effective then?
In some countries they put speed cameras AND prominent signs warning drivers of them. So it's a bit like "speed limit=80", and "speed limit=80 and we really mean it".
"Cars crumple to absorb energy that would otherwise transfer into your internal organs"
Seems like the popular POV is to let the OTHER car do the crumpling AND better for it to be YOUR (not mine!) internal organs, hence the SUV and Hummers;).
Anyway, IMO, in event of a car accident it is usually better to have the impact energy transferred to your vital organs than having bits of metal "transferred" into your vital organs. Most people can survive fairly high instantaneous Gs, but they don't tend to live very long after getting squished or impaled in vital areas.
Until we go nuclear big time or "cold fusion" or whatever, we'll still be stuck with coal, gas and petroleum (carbon + hydrocarbons). All that talk about hydrogen is just bullshit.
So I'd prefer a car that uses hydrocarbon fuel cells, with some form of regenerative braking. You'd still be using "fossil fuels", but it should be a lot more efficient.
Big snag is practical and efficent hydrocarbon fuel cell systems haven't been made yet that can cope with the gunk from the local fuel stations;). BUT, I don't really think it's such a difficult problem technically, the problem seems to be it's just not politically correct to throw money at this.
Alcohols would probably be easier - but it's still easier and cheaper to get enough hydrocarbons from the ground.
Once you've got the cars with electric motors, regenerative braking etc, it'll be easier to switch them to other fuels/energy carriers if hydrocarbons start getting more expensive.
Uh, then run your browser as another user, or in a virtual machine.
Works for me. I run firefox as a different user from my main user account. I run IE in a vmware server virtual machine (and nowadays I even run that IE using a different user account - coz I do IM and use MS viewers in that vm ).
If stuff happens I can just click "revert" on the virtual machine and it's back to what it was.
What would worry me would probably be a graphics, sound or network driver exploit.
Sure the _newer_ LTO3 drives do 80MB/sec native - not compressed. 160MB/sec compressed.
But one LTO3 drive is about the same price as about 15 x 400GB SATA HDDs, and a single 7200 rpm SATA HDD already does sustained 40-60MB/sec native.
So with HDDs you can backup/restore 15 servers at the same time for the same price as one LTO3 drive. Whereas if you have 15 servers and one LTO3 drive you can only backup two servers in the same amount of time.
And you still need to spend more to buy extra tapes for the LTO3 drive (I doubt you get 15 free LTO3 tapes with your USD1500 LTO3 drive).
If you store your HDDs carefully they should last for quite a while.
"The tapes are about $100, which is close to par with hard drives now (400 GB native), but in the not too distant future, LTO4 will be out, which doubles the capacity."
Yeah, but when LTO4 is out you can't use them without buying a new _expensive_ LTO4 drive.
Whereas in the not too distant future when new hard drives with double the capacity are out, you can still use them with your existing computers (as long as they still support SATA).
Basically HDDs = media + drive, and they are about the same price as tapes on a per GB basis if not cheaper. Multiple HDDs have better bandwidth than multiple tapes with one tape drive.
And I've heard horror stories where backup tapes can only be read by the same drive the backups were made on.
When you factor all that in, tape isn't that great, it's still better in some areas, but it should be cheaper for all its disadvantages.
Yep pretty familiar with modem disconnect strings - a company I worked for used to sell modems, and some customers were using EDI that sent lots of data with +++. So the modems were disconnecting pretty often - due to a design flaw where +++<any stuff>ATH<cr> will hang up a modem, instead of requiring there to be a pause in the data stream.
As for my sig, think of it as giving "cow pox" to people to save them from "small pox". It only affects people who click on stuff without thinking, and the impact is pretty low. People who click without thinking are likely to click on worse links one day (if they haven't already). You can always turn off sigs.
People who want to stay anonymous while surfing have to be very careful on what they click and which sites they go to - if the wrong thing somehow gets executed they could lose their anonymity.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't think there's a single cause for migraines.
Following are possible migraine causes I found interesting:
1) caffeine withdrawal
2) "hole in the heart" aka Patent Foramen Ovale.
The wait for a CT scan could be too long. There can be far more of these devices than CT scanners.
This will help determine if patients need immediate attention.
As long as the false positive rates aren't high and this device is sensitive enough to detect the common cases, it will be useful.
Well the stuff self-builds and self-repairs, so I wonder how well the tech will actually do when you factor all that in.
Dell probably recommends you to get the extra 512MB because they intend to preload lots of crap on Vista just like they preload lots of crap onto their XP systems.
:).
512MB can support Vista + a few apps, but maybe not Vista + a few apps + the usual preloads...
That said, I'd stick to 2000/XP if I were you.
I'm just hoping that the WINE + Cedega + whoever get an XP+DirectX10 compatible out sometime end of this year or so.
Then they may do what AMD did to Intel when Intel told everyone to leave x86 and jump on the Itanic... AMD said - hey guys, you could always use these AMD64 chips instead.
Well it sure depends on which courts you end up in.
But nowadays you could get extradited to the USA for all sorts of things...
Given that Microsoft has agreed not to sue Novell's customers over patent infringements then Novell just needs to have customers that do the compiling and testing of software for Novell.
;).
Basically the coders just write code without testing and then check it in, and the customers download, compile (if necessary) and test it.
Heck, something like this already happens in many software companies around the world
And AMD is better in the "if the CPU fits in the motherboard socket it's likely to be compatible". Even if it's not recognized in the BIOS and you just see the MHz etc, it doesn't matter - it still works.
Whereas for recent Intel CPUs even if their CPUs fit in the socket, they often only work with particular chipsets.
Intel has definitely been worse- they moved from socket to slot (remember slot1?), to socket etc.
Uh the word you are looking for is upgrade. You upgraded to XP from Vista.
;).
If more people kept to XP, maybe we can make Vista to Microsoft what the Itanium was to Intel.
Now if the Wine etc people would come up with an XP+DirectX compatible ASAP, then when Microsoft tries to pull the plug on Windows XP, lots would switch to "XP" on Linux. Just like when Intel tried to kick people off x86 and on to the Itanium, AMD started raking it in
Nah it's a crap design. Doesn't do that well in SPEC CPU 2000 or SPEC CPU 2006 and most real world apps. See: http://www.spec.org/cpu2006/results/cpu2006.html and http://www.spec.org/cpu/results/cpu2000.html
;), and people to yell at aka support. Whereas Intel has nothing but the CPU.
;).
The fastest Itanium 2 there isn't faster than the fastest x86 in floating point performance or integer performance when you compare quad cores with quad cores, etc.
And look at price, power consumption for the performance you get. Expensive (the same number of transistors in an Itanium 2 system (18MB or even 24MB cache!) will get you a fair number of Core 2 Duo/X2 cores), hot, and only fast in very specific cases. If I wanted an expensive solution that's high performance only in specialized cases I'd be using an ASIC or DSP.
Compare the Itanic with IBM's POWER range and you'll see the problem- if you are going to pick a platform that is expensive, isn't x86 compatible, you might as well switch to IBM's POWER range. You provide the large sums of money and at least IBM will provide the hardware, O/S, apps, the people to blame aka consultants
Scientific computing? go talk to the HPC people nowadays and see what they are buying. They aren't betting on the Itanic.
Database? I don't see how VLIW helps for DB aps. AFAIK Opterons currently (better memory bandwidth) are the way to go for that. Whatever it is, it sure isn't Itanium 2 unless your "Enterprise" DB fits in the 24MB caches of the Itanium.
The advantage of the x86 ISA is that it is CISC and thus fairly dense - think of it as compressed instructions - and nowadays when bandwidth is an issue (memory bandwidth, cache bandwidth etc), CISC isn't so bad. IBM's POWER is pretty dense as well.
x86 is still ugly though. The pig with a jetpack is flying faster than the eagles etc, but it's still a pig
"In a global economy, if one of the players just cuts corners by stealing someone work, why should anyone do anything?"
;)
0) Get real. You think that widespread copying isn't already happening in China _amongst_ the companies there? You really think that the companies in China have already given up "doing anything" because their own competitors in China copy them? Nope, they are competing like crazy. If the US/Euro/etc companies give up so easily, well too bad for them then.
Sure once those Chinese companies get big enough they'll start bribing politicians for laws to reduce competition (if they haven't already started doing so), but meanwhile it's business as usual.
1) Copying is not stealing. (and I'm not talking about plagiarism or trademark infringement which both involve a form of lying/deceit).
2) R&D costs don't make up the bulk of the costs of most products on the market. Even the Biotech giants who keep talking about extending patents to recoup R&D costs spend more on marketing+advertising than R&D (probably since most people only seem to have room in their brains for 2 or 3 brands for a particular type of product/service. Being able to copy things for cheaper may get you a temporary "appearance", but it's not a good way of staying there, esp if the management chooses to produce an inferior copy for cost reasons (Chinese quality culture isn't top notch yet) ).
3) Copying isn't always zero cost- especially if you are copying those maglev trains given current technology - and there's always other things you need, even if you can copy the processes, documentation, in-head knowledge, support staff+infrastructure etc.
Maybe by the time China copies everything, China would resemble USA and go around trying to stop others copying them
In the ancient days you just had a few occupations. Now you have zillions with lots of specialists AND worse there are tons of interdependencies nowadays.
If something happened to your food/water/fuel/energy supply it'll be pretty disastrous, BUT nowadays, that is dependent on so many things.
In most of the developed countries already a relatively few farmers are producing food for more and more people.
Now add the distribution and preparation of that food.
And look up how many weeks of fuel reserves countries have stored. Japan has about 170 days but not as many countries can afford that (or actually have decent contingency planning). See what happened when Russia started throttling their gas supply to various countries - major unpleasantness.
If there was a global pandemic there would be a high chance of too many specialists being wiped out with the corresponding "knock on" effects. And the effects of widespread quarantines (the only solution if you don't have a cure) would be pretty drastic to modern civilization.
If you aren't a farmer and were quarantined, how many weeks supply of food do you have? How would supplies get from A to B?
The aboriginal peoples living in rainforests etc would do ok, but people living in and reliant on cities would be in big trouble.
Even if they don't their representatives behave that way though.
See the CD-R tax in Canada. Now it seems they aren't satisfied with that and want more.
Oh yeah as for the German perspective? I forgot to mention that it's just like Felix Hoffmann "stealing" from Charles Frederic Gerhardt (French guy) the formula for what became trademarked and patented as Aspirin by Bayer (a German company which Felix worked for).
Bayer's trademarks to Aspirin (and Heroin) were lost as "spoils of war" in the 1919 Treaty of Versailles.
Many big companies about nowadays were built on what they now call "theft" and "infringement". And these big companies are now working to keep competitors out.
"Are you telling me a transportation system as complicated as a magnetically levitated train under development for 24 years can be replicated in 22 months because one guy cleverer than the next"
;) ), and same for Switzerland, Netherlands etc in those days.
0 6E2D9103DF93AA1575AC0A9659C8B63&sec=&spon=&pagewan ted=print
I personally think it is stupid and a waste of resources to reinvent a good wheel (badly or in a twisted manner to avoid "patent infringement") when you can copy it. After that you can spend the resources (you saved from not reinventing stuff) on improving it if necessary.
It is ridiculous to restrict 6 billion people from copying an idea/thought/speech just because one person lays claim to it. If you plan really long term, this system won't scale _well_ to trillions or more people - nobody would be able to think of something without infringing. In the near future brains could be seamlessly augmented with computers - so accurate playback AND sharing of what you "remember" would be technically possible if not legally possible (DMCA + DRM = crippled).
This concept of "intellectual property" introduces artificial scarcities. At various stages of a country's development it is better for it to ignore such "constructs" if possible - such as USA in the 1800s (see Charles Dickens
see: "Patents; An economist strolls through history and turns patent theory upside down". http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C
Quote:
''Exhibition data are particularly useful for studying the effects of patent laws on innovation because they measure economically useful innovation in a way that is independent of changes in patent laws,'' Professor Moser said. ''Countries without patent laws were really doing quite well.''
So what is the lesson for Brazil, China, India and other countries that are being pressed by industrialized nations to create strong patent systems?
''We try to force patent laws on developing countries and say, This is best for you,'' she said. ''Then we are surprised when they say they don't want patent laws. But they have a point. Such laws could actually hinder innovation in those countries.''
"I question their effectiveness because all the locals seem to know exactly where they are)"
Uh so do they slow down at those spots? If they do then aren't the cameras effective then?
In some countries they put speed cameras AND prominent signs warning drivers of them. So it's a bit like "speed limit=80", and "speed limit=80 and we really mean it".
"Cars crumple to absorb energy that would otherwise transfer into your internal organs"
;).
Seems like the popular POV is to let the OTHER car do the crumpling AND better for it to be YOUR (not mine!) internal organs, hence the SUV and Hummers
Anyway, IMO, in event of a car accident it is usually better to have the impact energy transferred to your vital organs than having bits of metal "transferred" into your vital organs. Most people can survive fairly high instantaneous Gs, but they don't tend to live very long after getting squished or impaled in vital areas.
Until we go nuclear big time or "cold fusion" or whatever, we'll still be stuck with coal, gas and petroleum (carbon + hydrocarbons). All that talk about hydrogen is just bullshit.
;). BUT, I don't really think it's such a difficult problem technically, the problem seems to be it's just not politically correct to throw money at this.
So I'd prefer a car that uses hydrocarbon fuel cells, with some form of regenerative braking. You'd still be using "fossil fuels", but it should be a lot more efficient.
Big snag is practical and efficent hydrocarbon fuel cell systems haven't been made yet that can cope with the gunk from the local fuel stations
Alcohols would probably be easier - but it's still easier and cheaper to get enough hydrocarbons from the ground.
Once you've got the cars with electric motors, regenerative braking etc, it'll be easier to switch them to other fuels/energy carriers if hydrocarbons start getting more expensive.
How much would it cost to repair a CF car if I ram into something at 25mph?
0% or >30% of original car price?
Who is going to jail for the Sony rootkit/trojan incident?
Or is it one rule for Sony (remember their rootkit thing) and one rule for wacko people looking for UFOs?
Uh, then run your browser as another user, or in a virtual machine.
Works for me. I run firefox as a different user from my main user account. I run IE in a vmware server virtual machine (and nowadays I even run that IE using a different user account - coz I do IM and use MS viewers in that vm ).
If stuff happens I can just click "revert" on the virtual machine and it's back to what it was.
What would worry me would probably be a graphics, sound or network driver exploit.
Sure the _newer_ LTO3 drives do 80MB/sec native - not compressed. 160MB/sec compressed.
But one LTO3 drive is about the same price as about 15 x 400GB SATA HDDs, and a single 7200 rpm SATA HDD already does sustained 40-60MB/sec native.
So with HDDs you can backup/restore 15 servers at the same time for the same price as one LTO3 drive. Whereas if you have 15 servers and one LTO3 drive you can only backup two servers in the same amount of time.
And you still need to spend more to buy extra tapes for the LTO3 drive (I doubt you get 15 free LTO3 tapes with your USD1500 LTO3 drive).
If you store your HDDs carefully they should last for quite a while.
"The tapes are about $100, which is close to par with hard drives now (400 GB native), but in the not too distant future, LTO4 will be out, which doubles the capacity."
Yeah, but when LTO4 is out you can't use them without buying a new _expensive_ LTO4 drive.
Whereas in the not too distant future when new hard drives with double the capacity are out, you can still use them with your existing computers (as long as they still support SATA).
Basically HDDs = media + drive, and they are about the same price as tapes on a per GB basis if not cheaper. Multiple HDDs have better bandwidth than multiple tapes with one tape drive.
And I've heard horror stories where backup tapes can only be read by the same drive the backups were made on.
When you factor all that in, tape isn't that great, it's still better in some areas, but it should be cheaper for all its disadvantages.
Nope, never linked to goatse and tubgirl.
Yep pretty familiar with modem disconnect strings - a company I worked for used to sell modems, and some customers were using EDI that sent lots of data with +++. So the modems were disconnecting pretty often - due to a design flaw where +++<any stuff>ATH<cr> will hang up a modem, instead of requiring there to be a pause in the data stream.
As for my sig, think of it as giving "cow pox" to people to save them from "small pox". It only affects people who click on stuff without thinking, and the impact is pretty low. People who click without thinking are likely to click on worse links one day (if they haven't already). You can always turn off sigs.
People who want to stay anonymous while surfing have to be very careful on what they click and which sites they go to - if the wrong thing somehow gets executed they could lose their anonymity.
It's not illegal in my country yet. But I think the US is working hard to change that ASAP.
Free Trade Agreements, Gene Patents, DMCA and all that crap.
50ms is a long time when you are playing games where response time is important.
50ms is 4 frames at 85 fps. And I believe it gets worse if you use an LCD monitor.