having used Mac's and Windows machines for a long time, I'd definetly like to pipe in and say forget windows, copy the Mac.... Windows is horribly unitutive and relies on so many just plain stupid techniques.
Quitting programs - there's at least 4 different key combinations which will accomplish this, but each program only accepts one. (Alt-F-x, Alt-F-q, Alt-g-x (in Microsoft pinball where the file menu turns into a game menu instead), and alt-f4 occassionally.
Microsofts tabbed dialog boxes used to be nice, when there wer just a few screens worth of options. But now, when there's 10 or 20 tabs all crammed into one small window, it's utterly confusing.
If you want to create an interface that good enough, then by all means, copy windows to the T. But if you're looking to create a "better" UI, you'd be best to look past windows towards BeOS, Openstep, Mac OS, and Mac OS X.
How come it seems that the people that think that IP laws and patents are dumb are also the same people that have no IP or patents of their own? I'd be much more interested in these arguments if people or companies like Apple, IBM, Intel, Microsoft etc all came forward and said they thought that existing patent and IP laws should be done away with.
There still are plenty of original ideas waiting to be thought up... Maybe if people did, they could use those ideas as leverage to get access to other people's ideas. In most cases it just doesn't seem fair to expect to be able to use someone elses ideas or works without fairly reimbursing them... And if they don't want to share, they don't have to.
Yeah, TV does suck... Especially that show! Tom Green on the other hand... well, he's a different story.
But back on subject.
I think personally that you're buying into the slashdot hype without looking around too much... I'm not in college, but i have a step brother that goes to one in New York and I live in MA, which is chalk full of colleges. My step comes back from college asking if i've heard of MP3's, telling me about how he know a LOT of kids on campus that have literally hundreds of gigs of MP3s, that are so far as he says, not there's to have....
I think that the reality with mp3's is, unfortunately, there are the few people (mostly seem to be around/.:) that use mp3's more or less legitatmately, but the rest of the world isn't nearly as concerned with copyrights, piracy, etc....
No... It also exists to pay the artists for making the music...
We're not socialist over here in the States, which means that there's not much in the way of funds coming from the government to put food on the tables of all the starving artists/musicians that would be created if they saw no revenue from their efforts.
It's not the interface. Ever use higher end software and notice that it says that a copyright bit exists or doesn't? Ever wonder what that's there for?
An audio cd burner will read that, and if it is, will write a separate bit to the CD stating that it's a copy and not an original. Thereafter, other audio CD burners will see that the cd they're trying to copy is a copy and not an original and therefore refuse to copy the CD a second time.
Prevents copies of copies.... That's what they're really trying to stop. If everyone that bought a CD could make one copy, they'ed be fine. But if one person that buys a CD can make 500,000 copies of it, they've got some problems.... Not saying that is a regular occurance or anything. But computer users refused to pay an added tax to the recording industry, and therefore aren't afforded some of the "rights" that audiophiles might have... Even if they are physically capable of doing the same exact thing.
YOU aren't purchasing a perpetual right to the music. You're purchasing the right to listen to the music on the media you purchased it on. If your CD shatters or gets stuck in a microwave or somehting, you're not entitled to a new one.
Likewise, if you bought MS Word 5.1 for the Mac on floppies, that doesn't mean that you should be entitled to MS Word 2000 on CD due to the G4's lack of a floppy drive.
Your friends records are every bit as capable of playing as they were last year. If he's scratched them beyond recognition, that's not the music industries fault. IF he threw away his record player, again, no their fault. If he wants them to be smaller, again, the music industry doesn't need to give him CD's... If he wants the ability to push a button to skip from track to track, again, he's not owed a CD for his troubles.
There's plenty of people out there that will happily sell you a brand new record player. You can't argue the player's not available. Other players are more popular these days.
And a little FYI, though... Most real audiophiles will still argue that records sound superior to CD's.
Don't relegate me to flamebait or trolldom for this, but those sound like much better fundamentals than Redhat or VA Linux. Redhat sells a completely free product, with all their R&D also being done for all of their competitors as well... VA Linux just doesn't have the volume to *trully* compete with Dell, IBM, Gateway or Compaq, if and when they open their eyes and realize that there's a tremendous need for Linux system integrators.
Network solutions, on the other hand, profits from every company and individual registering a domain name. Even if you register through one of their competitors, they still make money. There's a constant turnover on domains, with the two year leases, which turns into almost guarenteed income. That, plus with the immanent inclusion of more top level domains, which means that the market will be opened up to even more domain names and variants, and the fact that e-commerce is still in it's infancy, means that they have a VERY solid business for the foreseeable future.
Much more solid than almost any other company in the computer industry, in my view. And i don't own any shares in netsol or verisign, either.
You're missing a distinction. A painting is a unique physical piece of work. Once you've bought it, it's your property. You can decide who gets to see it, under what circumstance they can see it, etc. Music is not "unique". You can buy it, but you're not really purchasing the music itself, but the right to listen to it.
You can not duplicate a painting 100% perfectly. You can duplicate software and digital music 100% perfectly.
Just like software. How come it's easy to understand what software license allow, but not to understand what an audio CD is and represents. It's the SAME ExACT ISSUE.
If you don't like the terms is being given to you on, find a new band to listen to that's sigend to a different label that allows you to do what you want. Make your own label, and try to convince bands to sign up... Then wince when your policy to allow MP3's comes back to bite you when you realize that it is actually a bit harder to make money now...
To recant... The artists should be allowed to control their works... They unfortunately signed away some of their control to record companies for things like cash advances, advertising, and pressing... What they gave to the record company for that was the exclusive right to decide how to distribute their music. They never gave that right to you.
The difference, so far as the recording industry is concerned, is that they've accounted for some piracy already... That price is passed on to consumers in the form of taxes on Audio CD recorders, Tape Recorders, Blank Audio CD-R's, and blank tapes... They make a little money from those sales which theoretically offsets the money they'll lose from some of them being used for illegal purposes. They receive nothing for computer CD-R's, because a lot of people will cry foul if they have to pay a tax to RIAA for something that may not ever touch an audio CD.
For what it's worth, artists generally make $1-3 bucks/CD... The artists may be getting screwed by the recording industry, but it doesn't make it any better when you (not personally) turn around and screw them a little more. Besides that, artists did unfortunately sign into a contract with a record company, saying they AGREE to receive as little as they get. They have not signed a contract with anyone else saying that they can redistribute their music for free...
I think i'm turning against MP3's... IT's cool that bands exist on mp3.com and otherwise that say it's okay to download their music as an MP3, but too many people are abusing the fact that they're easily downloadable and amassing huge collections of mp3 which they don't own, don't plan on owning, and aren't deleting. They are, you know, thieves. Let it be up to the musician to decide what happens to their recordings, not the poor college studnent that can't afford their cds.
Re:What's wrong with giving TM holders first dibs?
on
Master Of Your Domain
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· Score: 1
Who would own things like "unix-vs-net.org", "ihatewindows.com", "thingsthatNTdoesbetterthanLinux.com", etc...
The second two are fictional, btw...
But by granting trademark holders the right to yank any domain that uses their trademark, Microsoft could quell any sites that make negative or unauthorized commentary on their products. Likewise, Linux could do the same thing...
I think that domain disputes should be solved by the squatter having to show intent to do something with the domain rather than sell it... If there's an offer to sell the domain on or linked directly to the homepage, THEN the domain could be considered "squatted" and given to the trademark owner. However, if there was no such notice, and there was actual content, then the domain would be considered "valid"... Hows that sound?
Setting up a new "open-source" certificate authority really just requires an outlay of cash to AOL (in terms of Netscape) and Microsoft in order to get their root certificates into the shipping browsers. If nothing else, now that Mozilla can ship with crypto, there stands the possibility that the root certificates could at least ship in Moz.
You have to remember that Versign does not issue secure certificates, they just sign them and for the more expensive ones, do a certain amount of investigation to be sure the person or company they're giving a certificate to is indeed the who they say they are.. Anyone can make a secure website, but browsers will pop up windows saying that the certificate is from an unknown source.
Ultimately an "open source" CA would need to take some steps to assure the public that they do some checking up on company's... Verisign basically puts their neck on the line everytime you enter a secure website, in that if the certificate has been forged it will all come down on them. They're a tangible company which can take a fall and have finghers pointed at them... That's quite different from the loose banded linux community. Not that the linux community is what it is in a bad way, but it does lack some of the accountability that brick and mortar companies have.
1 - so long as they're accepting payment, why should they care if the person they sold something to gives real information or not... Kind of like radio shack, i hate getting things there because they insist on knowing who i am, so they can send me catalogs or anything.
2 - Again, it's never been their stated policy to delete domains that spammers use... It's absurd to think they should. I mean, the napster argument goes, they only give the tools, they don't encourage piracy. Likewise, Netsol sells domains, they don't encourage spamming...
3 - Again, the DNS changes, you can set whether you want to be notified before or after an update. It's in your hands, not theirs...
With your gripes about spam, what good does it do the world if one registrar will delete a domain if someone spams from it, if the others don't? it's not like spammers have to use Domain Bank to get their names. Much as i don't like spam, it shouldn't be regulated by DNS policy... I don't know who what or how to stop spam, but deleting a spammers domain seems absurd. It's easy enough to block a domain from sending email to you.
Yeah... the AOL/Time Warner thing really caught me off guard... But so far as Verisign/Netsol goes, yeah it'd be more logical if it went the other way around but the economics are much different.
Netsol makes money only from domain holders. Verisign makes up for only earning money from secure sites by charging much more for their services. They have a much lower volume business with much higher margins. Also, a lot of people also have verisigns "personal certificates" installed..
Actually, Network solutions trades at slightly saner levels (P/E wise) than Ebay, Yahoo, etc... I tried the other ecommerce companies, but what do you know, they have no earnings...
Supposing NSOL has 2,000,000 names registered, that's 140 million/year...
Pretty decent earnings, i'd say... ANd for most people they're still the 1st name and almost only name in domain registration
No... That's the customers issue, not Network Solutions... THey can easily opt for a more stringent update policy.
Scary though, how one company will now own 99% of the certificate market, as well as 99% of the domain market... At least they're not completely related, but it still looks like every hopeful e-commerce company is going to have to pay whatever toll that verisign decides to levy.
No... AGP is a completely separate bus from PCI. That's how it's able to manage much higher bandwidth than PCI, otherwise it'd be limited to PCI's maximum speed.
And you're right, the bandwidth numbers i punched out are flawed, in that you'd only ever see that if you were basically displaying random noise on your screen. On second though, photo editors would also bump into bandwidth limitations when scrolling through large documents.
If and or when that were the case, then a PCI card would indeed pull down the rest of your system as it tried to fill it's buffers.
I've always been really disappointed with AGP, in that Intel originally promised so much more (shared memory, etc...) but ultimately only delivered a faster pipeline.
IF you were running your screen at 1024 by 768 at 32-bit color depth, with a 75 Htz refresh rate, you re already moving more data per second than PCI can handle (according to my calcs, that's >160 MB/Sec - PCI does 132 MB/s)... But video is really the most demanding operation in a desktop computer.
Switching your video card to an AGP one was a great move, because you've moved the graphics into another bus. Aside from that typical bus usages would be:
CD quality sound: 176 KB/Sec 10 base T ethernet: 1.25 MB/Sec 100 base T ethernet: 12.5 MB/Sec UW2SCSI: 80 MB/Sec USB: 1.25 MB/Sec
So basically, with video on a separate bus, you can completely saturate 2 100 Megabit connections, while churning away at disk array, type constantly, and listen to several streams of CD Audio...
But Linux is pretty much 2nd tier across every arch. except x86... Yeah, it runs on PowerPC's... Yeah, it runs on SPARCs... But where are applications like Oracle, Sybase, DB/2, WordPerfect for those archictectures? Linux needs those to win it's "war"...
Unlike every OS out there aside from Win 9x, Win NT, and the Mac, Windows 2000 will be able to run Microsoft Office. There will also be BackOffice Server, soon enough. I believe Oracle is bringing Oracle8 to 2000, as IBM is doing with DB/2. Lotus, however is not bringing it's office productivity suite to 2000, or if it is, it isn't getting it certified. Say bye to another MS Office alternative.
Joe consumer doesn't care about memory footprints or anything. They'll just go buy a new machine to run 2000 on.
Though yes, I think Intel's doomed when Merced finally arrives... First it had no backward compatitbility, meaning that it would have been completely dead in the water. Now they've bolted on an x86 core, which means that there'll be little incentive for a LOT of apps out there to get ported to it (we don't really need 64 bit browsers, word processors, or email clients), except for non ported tasks, it'll run slower than any other chip because of it's lethargic clockspeed...
In the mean time, AMD is going ahead and adding their own 64 bit extensions to the x86 architecture. I wonder what the new monicker will be ? Wintel = AMDSoft? Winamd? Winalt?
I think that one of the worst clauses in the world is the one that states that Windows license aren't transferable from one computer to another.
Why should a company who might be completely satisfied with their software and only want to upgrade their hardware have to repurchase their software all over again?!? I mean, I understand that Microsoft doesn't want people to buy 1 CD and install it across the corporation, but what real justification (besides profit margins) can Microsoft have for disallowing the transferance of a software license from one machine to another, supposing the first one is headed to the scrapyard or something like that?
Well... Rob did his part and released up-to-date code just a little while back... So really, the balls in your hands... Download the code, make the changes, submit a patch and documentation... Who knows? If it's really implented in a clean way, maybe we could see story moderation one day.
No, but it could stand to bar any form of reverse engineering... Even if the only purpose of it is to be able to interoperate. That pretty much kills off a LOT of opensource projects, right there. So in essense, it would bar opensource... Openstandards would only last until a company decided to extend them a smidgen more. By keeping those changes proprietary, they could "rightfully" sue anyone that was able to communicate with their software that was using a non-approved application, on the grounds that the only way the client software could commuicate with the server is if someone had reverse engineered the protocol... It could become very scary very quickly if UCITA passes.
Well... People buying %50,000+ software licenses will probably avoid any UCITA hastles... Maybe vendors will realize it and explicity state in their licenses that UCITA will not be enforced on those packages.
However, if all desktop software is given a more restrictive license, there realy isn't that much that people can do about. Linux can't step into to Windows' space yet... As a mattr of fact projects like WINE will probably get wiped off the map relatively quickly... So many other projects, like GPG, FreeVMWare, StarOffice, Koffice, etc... would all be forced to relocate out of the country or be abandoned... They'ed no longer have meanst o provide compatibility... Or even if they did, individual users might use that software, but large companies won't want to run the risk of using "illegal" software to manage their operations
Slashdot Mirror
having used Mac's and Windows machines for a long time, I'd definetly like to pipe in and say forget windows, copy the Mac.... Windows is horribly unitutive and relies on so many just plain stupid techniques.
Quitting programs - there's at least 4 different key combinations which will accomplish this, but each program only accepts one. (Alt-F-x, Alt-F-q, Alt-g-x (in Microsoft pinball where the file menu turns into a game menu instead), and alt-f4 occassionally.
Microsofts tabbed dialog boxes used to be nice, when there wer just a few screens worth of options. But now, when there's 10 or 20 tabs all crammed into one small window, it's utterly confusing.
If you want to create an interface that good enough, then by all means, copy windows to the T. But if you're looking to create a "better" UI, you'd be best to look past windows towards BeOS, Openstep, Mac OS, and Mac OS X.
How come it seems that the people that think that IP laws and patents are dumb are also the same people that have no IP or patents of their own? I'd be much more interested in these arguments if people or companies like Apple, IBM, Intel, Microsoft etc all came forward and said they thought that existing patent and IP laws should be done away with.
There still are plenty of original ideas waiting to be thought up... Maybe if people did, they could use those ideas as leverage to get access to other people's ideas. In most cases it just doesn't seem fair to expect to be able to use someone elses ideas or works without fairly reimbursing them... And if they don't want to share, they don't have to.
Yeah, TV does suck... Especially that show! Tom Green on the other hand... well, he's a different story.
/. :) that use mp3's more or less legitatmately, but the rest of the world isn't nearly as concerned with copyrights, piracy, etc....
But back on subject.
I think personally that you're buying into the slashdot hype without looking around too much... I'm not in college, but i have a step brother that goes to one in New York and I live in MA, which is chalk full of colleges. My step comes back from college asking if i've heard of MP3's, telling me about how he know a LOT of kids on campus that have literally hundreds of gigs of MP3s, that are so far as he says, not there's to have....
I think that the reality with mp3's is, unfortunately, there are the few people (mostly seem to be around
No... It also exists to pay the artists for making the music...
We're not socialist over here in the States, which means that there's not much in the way of funds coming from the government to put food on the tables of all the starving artists/musicians that would be created if they saw no revenue from their efforts.
It's not the interface. Ever use higher end software and notice that it says that a copyright bit exists or doesn't? Ever wonder what that's there for?
An audio cd burner will read that, and if it is, will write a separate bit to the CD stating that it's a copy and not an original. Thereafter, other audio CD burners will see that the cd they're trying to copy is a copy and not an original and therefore refuse to copy the CD a second time.
Prevents copies of copies.... That's what they're really trying to stop. If everyone that bought a CD could make one copy, they'ed be fine. But if one person that buys a CD can make 500,000 copies of it, they've got some problems.... Not saying that is a regular occurance or anything. But computer users refused to pay an added tax to the recording industry, and therefore aren't afforded some of the "rights" that audiophiles might have... Even if they are physically capable of doing the same exact thing.
YOU aren't purchasing a perpetual right to the music. You're purchasing the right to listen to the music on the media you purchased it on. If your CD shatters or gets stuck in a microwave or somehting, you're not entitled to a new one.
Likewise, if you bought MS Word 5.1 for the Mac on floppies, that doesn't mean that you should be entitled to MS Word 2000 on CD due to the G4's lack of a floppy drive.
Your friends records are every bit as capable of playing as they were last year. If he's scratched them beyond recognition, that's not the music industries fault. IF he threw away his record player, again, no their fault. If he wants them to be smaller, again, the music industry doesn't need to give him CD's... If he wants the ability to push a button to skip from track to track, again, he's not owed a CD for his troubles.
There's plenty of people out there that will happily sell you a brand new record player. You can't argue the player's not available. Other players are more popular these days.
And a little FYI, though... Most real audiophiles will still argue that records sound superior to CD's.
Don't relegate me to flamebait or trolldom for this, but those sound like much better fundamentals than Redhat or VA Linux. Redhat sells a completely free product, with all their R&D also being done for all of their competitors as well... VA Linux just doesn't have the volume to *trully* compete with Dell, IBM, Gateway or Compaq, if and when they open their eyes and realize that there's a tremendous need for Linux system integrators.
Network solutions, on the other hand, profits from every company and individual registering a domain name. Even if you register through one of their competitors, they still make money. There's a constant turnover on domains, with the two year leases, which turns into almost guarenteed income. That, plus with the immanent inclusion of more top level domains, which means that the market will be opened up to even more domain names and variants, and the fact that e-commerce is still in it's infancy, means that they have a VERY solid business for the foreseeable future.
Much more solid than almost any other company in the computer industry, in my view. And i don't own any shares in netsol or verisign, either.
You're missing a distinction. A painting is a unique physical piece of work. Once you've bought it, it's your property. You can decide who gets to see it, under what circumstance they can see it, etc. Music is not "unique". You can buy it, but you're not really purchasing the music itself, but the right to listen to it.
You can not duplicate a painting 100% perfectly. You can duplicate software and digital music 100% perfectly.
Just like software. How come it's easy to understand what software license allow, but not to understand what an audio CD is and represents. It's the SAME ExACT ISSUE.
If you don't like the terms is being given to you on, find a new band to listen to that's sigend to a different label that allows you to do what you want. Make your own label, and try to convince bands to sign up... Then wince when your policy to allow MP3's comes back to bite you when you realize that it is actually a bit harder to make money now...
To recant... The artists should be allowed to control their works... They unfortunately signed away some of their control to record companies for things like cash advances, advertising, and pressing... What they gave to the record company for that was the exclusive right to decide how to distribute their music. They never gave that right to you.
The difference, so far as the recording industry is concerned, is that they've accounted for some piracy already... That price is passed on to consumers in the form of taxes on Audio CD recorders, Tape Recorders, Blank Audio CD-R's, and blank tapes... They make a little money from those sales which theoretically offsets the money they'll lose from some of them being used for illegal purposes. They receive nothing for computer CD-R's, because a lot of people will cry foul if they have to pay a tax to RIAA for something that may not ever touch an audio CD.
That's the difference. And it's signed into law.
Are you tryng to just poke holes in a non-perfect example?
It's different if you take a CD you bought and sell that CD than if you buy a CD, make copies of that CD and either sell or give them away.
It really doesn't seem that hard to understand.
For what it's worth, artists generally make $1-3 bucks/CD... The artists may be getting screwed by the recording industry, but it doesn't make it any better when you (not personally) turn around and screw them a little more. Besides that, artists did unfortunately sign into a contract with a record company, saying they AGREE to receive as little as they get. They have not signed a contract with anyone else saying that they can redistribute their music for free...
I think i'm turning against MP3's... IT's cool that bands exist on mp3.com and otherwise that say it's okay to download their music as an MP3, but too many people are abusing the fact that they're easily downloadable and amassing huge collections of mp3 which they don't own, don't plan on owning, and aren't deleting. They are, you know, thieves. Let it be up to the musician to decide what happens to their recordings, not the poor college studnent that can't afford their cds.
Who would own things like "unix-vs-net.org", "ihatewindows.com", "thingsthatNTdoesbetterthanLinux.com", etc...
The second two are fictional, btw...
But by granting trademark holders the right to yank any domain that uses their trademark, Microsoft could quell any sites that make negative or unauthorized commentary on their products. Likewise, Linux could do the same thing...
I think that domain disputes should be solved by the squatter having to show intent to do something with the domain rather than sell it... If there's an offer to sell the domain on or linked directly to the homepage, THEN the domain could be considered "squatted" and given to the trademark owner. However, if there was no such notice, and there was actual content, then the domain would be considered "valid"... Hows that sound?
Setting up a new "open-source" certificate authority really just requires an outlay of cash to AOL (in terms of Netscape) and Microsoft in order to get their root certificates into the shipping browsers. If nothing else, now that Mozilla can ship with crypto, there stands the possibility that the root certificates could at least ship in Moz.
You have to remember that Versign does not issue secure certificates, they just sign them and for the more expensive ones, do a certain amount of investigation to be sure the person or company they're giving a certificate to is indeed the who they say they are.. Anyone can make a secure website, but browsers will pop up windows saying that the certificate is from an unknown source.
Ultimately an "open source" CA would need to take some steps to assure the public that they do some checking up on company's... Verisign basically puts their neck on the line everytime you enter a secure website, in that if the certificate has been forged it will all come down on them. They're a tangible company which can take a fall and have finghers pointed at them... That's quite different from the loose banded linux community. Not that the linux community is what it is in a bad way, but it does lack some of the accountability that brick and mortar companies have.
Your arguments seem moot...
1 - so long as they're accepting payment, why should they care if the person they sold something to gives real information or not... Kind of like radio shack, i hate getting things there because they insist on knowing who i am, so they can send me catalogs or anything.
2 - Again, it's never been their stated policy to delete domains that spammers use... It's absurd to think they should. I mean, the napster argument goes, they only give the tools, they don't encourage piracy. Likewise, Netsol sells domains, they don't encourage spamming...
3 - Again, the DNS changes, you can set whether you want to be notified before or after an update. It's in your hands, not theirs...
With your gripes about spam, what good does it do the world if one registrar will delete a domain if someone spams from it, if the others don't? it's not like spammers have to use Domain Bank to get their names. Much as i don't like spam, it shouldn't be regulated by DNS policy... I don't know who what or how to stop spam, but deleting a spammers domain seems absurd. It's easy enough to block a domain from sending email to you.
Yeah... the AOL/Time Warner thing really caught me off guard... But so far as Verisign/Netsol goes, yeah it'd be more logical if it went the other way around but the economics are much different.
Netsol makes money only from domain holders. Verisign makes up for only earning money from secure sites by charging much more for their services. They have a much lower volume business with much higher margins. Also, a lot of people also have verisigns "personal certificates" installed..
Actually, Network solutions trades at slightly saner levels (P/E wise) than Ebay, Yahoo, etc... I tried the other ecommerce companies, but what do you know, they have no earnings...
Supposing NSOL has 2,000,000 names registered, that's 140 million/year...
Pretty decent earnings, i'd say... ANd for most people they're still the 1st name and almost only name in domain registration
No... That's the customers issue, not Network Solutions... THey can easily opt for a more stringent update policy.
Scary though, how one company will now own 99% of the certificate market, as well as 99% of the domain market... At least they're not completely related, but it still looks like every hopeful e-commerce company is going to have to pay whatever toll that verisign decides to levy.
No... AGP is a completely separate bus from PCI. That's how it's able to manage much higher bandwidth than PCI, otherwise it'd be limited to PCI's maximum speed.
And you're right, the bandwidth numbers i punched out are flawed, in that you'd only ever see that if you were basically displaying random noise on your screen. On second though, photo editors would also bump into bandwidth limitations when scrolling through large documents.
If and or when that were the case, then a PCI card would indeed pull down the rest of your system as it tried to fill it's buffers.
I've always been really disappointed with AGP, in that Intel originally promised so much more (shared memory, etc...) but ultimately only delivered a faster pipeline.
So far as your PCI-to-AGP thing goes....
IF you were running your screen at 1024 by 768 at 32-bit color depth, with a 75 Htz refresh rate, you
re already moving more data per second than PCI can handle (according to my calcs, that's >160 MB/Sec - PCI does 132 MB/s)... But video is really the most demanding operation in a desktop computer.
Switching your video card to an AGP one was a great move, because you've moved the graphics into another bus. Aside from that typical bus usages would be:
CD quality sound: 176 KB/Sec
10 base T ethernet: 1.25 MB/Sec
100 base T ethernet: 12.5 MB/Sec
UW2SCSI: 80 MB/Sec
USB: 1.25 MB/Sec
So basically, with video on a separate bus, you can completely saturate 2 100 Megabit connections, while churning away at disk array, type constantly, and listen to several streams of CD Audio...
But Linux is pretty much 2nd tier across every arch. except x86... Yeah, it runs on PowerPC's... Yeah, it runs on SPARCs... But where are applications like Oracle, Sybase, DB/2, WordPerfect for those archictectures? Linux needs those to win it's "war"...
Unlike every OS out there aside from Win 9x, Win NT, and the Mac, Windows 2000 will be able to run Microsoft Office. There will also be BackOffice Server, soon enough. I believe Oracle is bringing Oracle8 to 2000, as IBM is doing with DB/2. Lotus, however is not bringing it's office productivity suite to 2000, or if it is, it isn't getting it certified. Say bye to another MS Office alternative.
Joe consumer doesn't care about memory footprints or anything. They'll just go buy a new machine to run 2000 on.
Though yes, I think Intel's doomed when Merced finally arrives... First it had no backward compatitbility, meaning that it would have been completely dead in the water. Now they've bolted on an x86 core, which means that there'll be little incentive for a LOT of apps out there to get ported to it (we don't really need 64 bit browsers, word processors, or email clients), except for non ported tasks, it'll run slower than any other chip because of it's lethargic clockspeed...
In the mean time, AMD is going ahead and adding their own 64 bit extensions to the x86 architecture. I wonder what the new monicker will be ? Wintel = AMDSoft? Winamd? Winalt?
I don't know...
I think that one of the worst clauses in the world is the one that states that Windows license aren't transferable from one computer to another.
Why should a company who might be completely satisfied with their software and only want to upgrade their hardware have to repurchase their software all over again?!? I mean, I understand that Microsoft doesn't want people to buy 1 CD and install it across the corporation, but what real justification (besides profit margins) can Microsoft have for disallowing the transferance of a software license from one machine to another, supposing the first one is headed to the scrapyard or something like that?
Well... Rob did his part and released up-to-date code just a little while back... So really, the balls in your hands... Download the code, make the changes, submit a patch and documentation... Who knows? If it's really implented in a clean way, maybe we could see story moderation one day.
No, but it could stand to bar any form of reverse engineering... Even if the only purpose of it is to be able to interoperate. That pretty much kills off a LOT of opensource projects, right there. So in essense, it would bar opensource... Openstandards would only last until a company decided to extend them a smidgen more. By keeping those changes proprietary, they could "rightfully" sue anyone that was able to communicate with their software that was using a non-approved application, on the grounds that the only way the client software could commuicate with the server is if someone had reverse engineered the protocol... It could become very scary very quickly if UCITA passes.
Well... People buying %50,000+ software licenses will probably avoid any UCITA hastles... Maybe vendors will realize it and explicity state in their licenses that UCITA will not be enforced on those packages.
However, if all desktop software is given a more restrictive license, there realy isn't that much that people can do about. Linux can't step into to Windows' space yet... As a mattr of fact projects like WINE will probably get wiped off the map relatively quickly... So many other projects, like GPG, FreeVMWare, StarOffice, Koffice, etc... would all be forced to relocate out of the country or be abandoned... They'ed no longer have meanst o provide compatibility... Or even if they did, individual users might use that software, but large companies won't want to run the risk of using "illegal" software to manage their operations