Do we know anything about the fabled Osbourne 2? I'd like to know what was supposed to make it so much better than the first, if we know anything. Did the thing even exist on the planning board (other than "the O1 is making money, let's make an O2!") at the time?
On my PC (win 2k, using MS Outlook (not express)) I've managed to get almost all my spam filtered out. I still get 1 or 2 a day, but that's way better than the 30+ I used to get. All it took was spamassassian (to catch most of the spam) and cloudmark spamnet (which catches many/most of the viruses that seem to find their way to me). Works great.
One of the applications that is supposed to get a large boost from going from 32 to 64 bits is cryptography. Are you very excited about the move to 64 bits? Do you really think that it would make that much of a difference? Are there any downsides to going to 64 bit compuiting in cryptography (other than the time to port the software)?
Now I have to say that I don't like the idea of cloning and genetic enginering (of humans) in the first place. But I'm very focused on the needs and well being of children, so let me ask all of you a few questions. I'm obviously against this, BTW. I think it's cruel and, in fact, just plain EVIL to concieve a child for the purpose of saving someone else's life. That right there is treating the kid like cattle. It's a human being.
What happens if this kid's cells don't cure the couple's first kid? That means that they brought a life into the world with the sole intent of curing someone else's life, and it didn't work. Wouldn't that make this kid a failure? How would you like to know that you were concieved to save someone's life and didn't? How would you like to know that you weren't concieved because your parrents wanted a second kid, but because they wanted their first kid to live? It's too bad that their kid is ill, but this is a terrible thing to do to a kid. It's not like they'll be able to hide it from him. It was bad enough when that couple tried to concieve a kid a few years ago for the same reason, but at least they didn't engineer the kid. If your parrents concieved you to save the life of your older sibling, doesn't that clearly imply that they love that other sibling more? What kind of psychological damage will all of this cause to this kid.
What if this new kid has health problems. Will they have a 3rd kid to save its life? What's the difference, other than they may have caused this kid's problems, as opposed to it just being a chance of genetics.
What if there is a miscarrige? Wouldn't you still get the cells needed if it was far enough along? Is this then a success or a failure? Someone was concieved so that someone could live, but that first person died and the second person still lived. What does that mean? Was the first person worthless? Why not just have an abortion partway through? Then how could one possibly argue that the kid who was aborted wasn't just a "sack of organs"? What kind of person tries to concieves a child knowing full well that they will kill it if they succede? Yes, I'm against abortion, but this is one of the reasons why.
If someone kills the new kid before it can save the life of the first kid, is that double homicide? On the one hand, you've doomed the first kid. On the other hand, he's already dead, so can he be killed?
May I remind you all of "Brave New World", "Gattaca", and such other works of fiction?
Should we even save the first kids life in the first place? This one is a thought expirament, I'm not proposing this (I'd be dead in such a case). One can easily argue that medical technology has rendered evolution mute on our species, which is probably why the rates of just about everything bad (cancer, obiesity, diabetes, heart disease, asethma, allergies, etc.) have been rising over the last century. Should we be allowed to play god (genetic engineering) to help us play god better (by curing the first kid who should, purely by evolution, not survive)?
If it's cord cells they're after, why not test the cells from every baby born in a hospital, and ask the parrents of any matching kids if they'll help out by allowing the use of the cord cells. Why even create a second kid?
What does it teach their first kid that they concieve another just to save his life? Does it teach him that life is sacred? Or does it teach him that kids are more like a commodity, and that he can be replaced. Does this give his life more or less value?
That said, what do you make of this quote in the article?
"The couple's child is believed to have a terminal illness. Its only chance of survival is to receive a transfusion of umbilical cord blood from a perfectly matched sibling."
They don't even know if the kid has the illness and THEY ARE DOING ALL OF THIS? Am I the only one who sees something wrong with this part ALONE? How do they know that this is the only chance if they don't even know if this kid has this illness?
I realize that this post might seem kind of "troll"-y, but these are serious questions? Even if you are "pro-choice" (a misnomer, but that's another issue), would you agree with the abortion in #3? If you think I'm a troll, please reply to this and give me logical arguements why I'm wrong (I'll just assume the "You're an idiot because you suck" posts) instead of modding me down.
Overall, this site is quite nice. It does seem rather objective to me. My biggest peeve about this site is that it needs "next" and "previous" links at the bottom of each page.
As for actual content, there are a few things that I disagree with. This person said that they are a Mac fan, so I'm not too suprised at these things. Here is what I see wrong/disagree with:
Numlock/number pad - This is listed in the last section as something odd. He complains that you can only use the number keys when numlock is on. His site shows that this was explained to him, but I don't think he quite "gets" it. First of all, you can have the computer start up with numlock on (I do). That said, this is a hardware issue that he's juding on, which he doesn't seem to see it that way. It's tradition (like where the capslock key is, or that there even IS a scroll lock key).
He talks about that, but doesn't chide the Mac for having a one button mouse. This is also a hardware issue, but it's rediculous. I have a friend who has used Macs for nearly 20 years and JUST GOT A PC RECENTLY. They didn't know what the 2nd button was for, and it took me a little time to get them to get the idea. But once they got it, they LOVED it. It's SO much more convinent than holding option and clicking. That is there to cover up for the lack of a second button. Everyone I know who uses Macs alot (real computer people, not just people who only use AOL or something like that) have bought 2+ button mice for their Macs, because they are simply superior in usuability.
Windows is chided for having a menubar for every application. I think this is a good thing. I find it convinent. When using OS X if I want to access a menu in a application that isn't in focus, I have to switch to that application by clicking on a window it owns, then using the menu bar. In Windows, I can just click IMMEDIATLY on the mendu that I want. That article a while ago that talked about "cruft" explained why Mac did things that way. The windows way is superior (IMHO), but he doens't agree with me. Fine. The option-click thing above is also cruft.
Application vs Window. I don't remember if this was mentioned, but this has always annoyed me about Macs. In windows, if I close Word or some other program by clicking on the "close" button on the top right of the window, it closes. On a Mac, the window closes but the application stays open. This wouldn't be a problem for notepad or somesuch, but for large programs like Word, Photoshop, and other things, this can eat ALOT of memeory. This too, is cruft.
Do I have a preference? I've always liked Macs, but I use PCs because they cost less (I can build a PC for much cheaper than the lowest-end-mac costs). From Win95 on, the IBM/PC has had a superior OS over OS 7/8/9. OS X changes things. It's a great OS. Would I rather have OS X or XP? I'm not quite sure. I'd probably chose OS X, all else being equal. It's done so well. I also don't like alot of the stuff XP does. If the choice was between 2k and X, I'm not sure. I would probably go with X again, but only because of the Unix core; wihtout that it'd be 2k. I use 2k and love it. It's a very good interface.
Of course, this is just another one of those KDE vs. Gnome (KDE for me), PC vs. Mac (PC for me), DVD-R vs. DVD+R (whichever one someone wants to give me;), Linux vs. BSD (Linux for me) type things. It has no answer.
There are a few things to keep in mind about these numbers. Most of them are mentioned in the article, but they're scattered around. Just think about these things:
Seperate Card - Remember that the SATA controller is on a seperate card, it's not integrated into the chipset. So these number could (and probably will) change for the better when we see SATA built into the southbridge later this year (was it Grandale from Intel that will do this? I'm too lazy to look it up).
Drive Size - The drive in the review is up to 1/6th the size of some of the other drives in the review. So if you're comparing this drive you have to remember that it would perform better if it was a 160 gig drive and didn't have to work all over it's platter.
SATA - All the other drives in this review are either ATA or SCSI. So as SATA goes, this drive might be king of the hill by far.
Those said, I have a few other things I'd like to say. First of all, it's nice to see that the drive is quiet. Even many 5400 and 7200 RPM drives are quite loud today. It's nice to know that going to 10k isn't going to turn my PC into a jet engine. Also, they mention that the reason that we haven't seen 10k IDE drives before was that servers didn't want them since they couldn't be hotswapped like SCSI. SATA supports hotswap in theory, but can you hotswap today? I don't think Windows lets you, IIRC (or if it does the system is a bit unstable afterwards). Does Linux let you hotswap SATA drives? If all the drives are one one controller (say RAID 5, or something else redundant) and you swap a drive, does the OS even know it happened? I don't have any expirence with hotswapping hard drives.
They damaged your property, they should be liable. In the US I would take them to small claims court, and force them to pay for a new cable modem, court costs, and any rental fees for the modem them lent you. From what you said they clearly violated what they were allowed to do, and they should be held liable.
That siad, if you do go to court remember one simple fact that makes their behavior look questionable: THEY broke something of YOURS, and now are making YOU pay THEM for the replacement they're LENDING you. If they broke your modem on purpose, this would be extortion; but I doubt they did that.
You can buy a repleacement keyboard from Dell, they're very easy to change. That said, I'm quite suprised. I've owned a couple of Dell laptops that have had TONS of abuse and never flinched.
On the other hand, I owned a Winbook and that thing would fall apart if you were to breath in it's general direction from the other side of a football field. NEVER BUY WINBOOK. Junk junk junk junk. I could give you examples. I WILL give you examples:
The time I set it down (not dropped, set) on a table and the thing refused to boot up. Had to send it in for repairs, the CPU was loose. The factory never screwed the CPU module in.
One day I opened the screen and it just fell off it's hinges. The cables kept holding it on, but the dang hinges just fell off.
I just loved the time when it came back from repair and the PC card slots wouldn't work. They worked BEFORE the repair. Well, after a little inspection with a flashlight, I found that 2 screws had been jammed into the pins of the PCMCIA slots, so it immediatly had to be sent back.
I loved how no matter what the repair, they always reinstalled windows. I could have sent it in asking that they just send it straight back, and I'd have gotten a new install of windows.
And that's just a TASTE of what they put me through...
The worst thing that's happened to me was when my little sister put 5 or 6 CDs in my CD drive. Now if it was a CD changer, things wouldn't be so bad, but it wasn't. I had to disassemble the drive just to get the door open, but once I got the CDs out it work just fine, and still works to this day.
Appartenly, someone didn't teach her that while you have to put a CD in the drive to play her games, you also have to TAKE THAT CD OUT when you want to play a different game. I'm still trying to figure out how she managed to get the drive to open/close when there were 4 CDs in there.
I don't know about the rest of you, but I get the idea that this is alot like busting Al Capone on tax evasion. They can't make a case on the REAL charge (pirating) so they use something else to make sure the site gets closed. They're just getting the site closed.
That said, I agree that modchips aren't (or at least shouldn't be) illegal.
Wrong! You're a good boy for doing your homework, but you didn't quite complete it. Firing Squad links to a site that tells the reason. The GeForce 4 can actually switch its configuration. It can run with 8 rendering pipelines or do the 4/2 thing that it does. nVidia is enforcing this through software because they say that it is faster in today's games. They say that when newer games come out, they'll switch it to have 8 rendering pipelines to perform better in the games that will come out in the comming years.
I've been reading about this, and the big rift seems to come down to this: the pixel/vertex shader programs are not optomized. This is why nVidia doesn't like the benchmark but ATI does. From what I've read, ATI's hardware performs very well with unoptomized code while nVidias does not. nVidia's hardware is faster than ATIs, but it doesn't do well with non optomized code. All of the complaints about the benchmark seem to be about "unneccessary complexity" and other "no one would do it like that" type things. These are all basically "you could optomize that, so why don't you do it" type complaints.
The under-issue here is that nVidia is no longer a "partner" of madonion (I know they changed their name, whoever they are now, futuremark or whatever) but ATI is (IIRC). This is helping fuel suspicion that the benchmark is designed to perform better on ATI hardware than on nVidias. You must pay a fee to be a "partnet" so there is the unspoken idea that what Futuremark is doing might be some kind of extortion.
Where the answer lies is up to you. Personally, I do think that the benchmark is unfair/not a good benchmark. For example, chaning the graphics card in your computer should have next to no effect on the CPU score, if any; yet it has a measureable effect. But all of this is mute, IMHO, since Doom III will be the new Uber benchmark trusted above all else when it comes out. Untill then, argue amongst yourselves.
Can someone explain the logic in allowing spam? Spammers cost MS money, so why would they want them? Spammers:
Use up hotmails/MSNs bandwidth and CPU power
Sign up for accounts and don't ever look at the ads (because it's done by scripts, I'd assume)
Annoy the hell out of everyone signed up for MSN and any other service
Does MS activly court spammers? Does MS actually SELL it's OWN SUBSCRIBER LISTS to spammers? This doesn't make any sense to me, unless MS will soon start spamming everyone on the planet to buy XP, Office 2k3, and all 12 million unsold copies of MS Bob. On the plus side, that would make MS more hated by the general public;)
Wasn't Yamhill supposed to be Intel's back-burner x86-64 project? Personally, it looks a little like Intel is betting the farm (at least pride wise) on their ia-64. The thread makes a good point that the x86-64 is much more likely to seep up into high end servers from low end servers and desktops than ia-64 is to drip down to low end servers and desktops. Intel might yet have to "give up" and go x86-64 to stay compeditive in the desktop/server CPU market.
Linus isn't saying he won't let it in. He's simply saying that the thinks it's not a good arch based on technical merit. He'll let it in. He never said he wouldn't. He's just saying he doesn't like the way the chip was designed (what choices they made, etc).
Now I'm no programming guru, but it seems to me that the x86-64 architecture is a great one. In fact, the only thing that I could see being done to improve it would be to add more general purpose registers. I believe that the new registers are all GP (IIRC), but I think that makeing them ALL GP (even the older ones) would be good, and maybe bring up the number of registers to a good round 32 or something. Am I missing something glaring wrong? If you're going to toss out all of the x86 stuff (like ia-64), I think you should be able to emulate it in hardware about as fast as current x86 processors can. When Apple switched to PPC, couldn't they emulate 68k code about as fast (or at least faster than 1/2 the speed of) the fastest 68k chips?
About what percent of the messages that go through your ISP per day are spam? Can you guess what that spam costs you per day in the increased bandwidth and better computers you need to be able to handle it? Do many customers quit giving spam as the reason?
Slashdot Mirror
Do we know anything about the fabled Osbourne 2? I'd like to know what was supposed to make it so much better than the first, if we know anything. Did the thing even exist on the planning board (other than "the O1 is making money, let's make an O2!") at the time?
On my PC (win 2k, using MS Outlook (not express)) I've managed to get almost all my spam filtered out. I still get 1 or 2 a day, but that's way better than the 30+ I used to get. All it took was spamassassian (to catch most of the spam) and cloudmark spamnet (which catches many/most of the viruses that seem to find their way to me). Works great.
That sounds like a challenge! Everyone, hit AOL quick! We can do it! GO GO GO!
Sorry, couldn't resist ;)
Bicycle Smile
One of the applications that is supposed to get a large boost from going from 32 to 64 bits is cryptography. Are you very excited about the move to 64 bits? Do you really think that it would make that much of a difference? Are there any downsides to going to 64 bit compuiting in cryptography (other than the time to port the software)?
- What happens if this kid's cells don't cure the couple's first kid? That means that they brought a life into the world with the sole intent of curing someone else's life, and it didn't work. Wouldn't that make this kid a failure? How would you like to know that you were concieved to save someone's life and didn't? How would you like to know that you weren't concieved because your parrents wanted a second kid, but because they wanted their first kid to live? It's too bad that their kid is ill, but this is a terrible thing to do to a kid. It's not like they'll be able to hide it from him. It was bad enough when that couple tried to concieve a kid a few years ago for the same reason, but at least they didn't engineer the kid. If your parrents concieved you to save the life of your older sibling, doesn't that clearly imply that they love that other sibling more? What kind of psychological damage will all of this cause to this kid.
- What if this new kid has health problems. Will they have a 3rd kid to save its life? What's the difference, other than they may have caused this kid's problems, as opposed to it just being a chance of genetics.
- What if there is a miscarrige? Wouldn't you still get the cells needed if it was far enough along? Is this then a success or a failure? Someone was concieved so that someone could live, but that first person died and the second person still lived. What does that mean? Was the first person worthless? Why not just have an abortion partway through? Then how could one possibly argue that the kid who was aborted wasn't just a "sack of organs"? What kind of person tries to concieves a child knowing full well that they will kill it if they succede? Yes, I'm against abortion, but this is one of the reasons why.
- If someone kills the new kid before it can save the life of the first kid, is that double homicide? On the one hand, you've doomed the first kid. On the other hand, he's already dead, so can he be killed?
- May I remind you all of "Brave New World", "Gattaca", and such other works of fiction?
- Should we even save the first kids life in the first place? This one is a thought expirament, I'm not proposing this (I'd be dead in such a case). One can easily argue that medical technology has rendered evolution mute on our species, which is probably why the rates of just about everything bad (cancer, obiesity, diabetes, heart disease, asethma, allergies, etc.) have been rising over the last century. Should we be allowed to play god (genetic engineering) to help us play god better (by curing the first kid who should, purely by evolution, not survive)?
- If it's cord cells they're after, why not test the cells from every baby born in a hospital, and ask the parrents of any matching kids if they'll help out by allowing the use of the cord cells. Why even create a second kid?
- What does it teach their first kid that they concieve another just to save his life? Does it teach him that life is sacred? Or does it teach him that kids are more like a commodity, and that he can be replaced. Does this give his life more or less value?
That said, what do you make of this quote in the article? They don't even know if the kid has the illness and THEY ARE DOING ALL OF THIS? Am I the only one who sees something wrong with this part ALONE? How do they know that this is the only chance if they don't even know if this kid has this illness?I realize that this post might seem kind of "troll"-y, but these are serious questions? Even if you are "pro-choice" (a misnomer, but that's another issue), would you agree with the abortion in #3? If you think I'm a troll, please reply to this and give me logical arguements why I'm wrong (I'll just assume the "You're an idiot because you suck" posts) instead of modding me down.
As for actual content, there are a few things that I disagree with. This person said that they are a Mac fan, so I'm not too suprised at these things. Here is what I see wrong/disagree with:
Do I have a preference? I've always liked Macs, but I use PCs because they cost less (I can build a PC for much cheaper than the lowest-end-mac costs). From Win95 on, the IBM/PC has had a superior OS over OS 7/8/9. OS X changes things. It's a great OS. Would I rather have OS X or XP? I'm not quite sure. I'd probably chose OS X, all else being equal. It's done so well. I also don't like alot of the stuff XP does. If the choice was between 2k and X, I'm not sure. I would probably go with X again, but only because of the Unix core; wihtout that it'd be 2k. I use 2k and love it. It's a very good interface.
Of course, this is just another one of those KDE vs. Gnome (KDE for me), PC vs. Mac (PC for me), DVD-R vs. DVD+R (whichever one someone wants to give me ;), Linux vs. BSD (Linux for me) type things. It has no answer.
Those said, I have a few other things I'd like to say. First of all, it's nice to see that the drive is quiet. Even many 5400 and 7200 RPM drives are quite loud today. It's nice to know that going to 10k isn't going to turn my PC into a jet engine. Also, they mention that the reason that we haven't seen 10k IDE drives before was that servers didn't want them since they couldn't be hotswapped like SCSI. SATA supports hotswap in theory, but can you hotswap today? I don't think Windows lets you, IIRC (or if it does the system is a bit unstable afterwards). Does Linux let you hotswap SATA drives? If all the drives are one one controller (say RAID 5, or something else redundant) and you swap a drive, does the OS even know it happened? I don't have any expirence with hotswapping hard drives.
That siad, if you do go to court remember one simple fact that makes their behavior look questionable: THEY broke something of YOURS, and now are making YOU pay THEM for the replacement they're LENDING you. If they broke your modem on purpose, this would be extortion; but I doubt they did that.
Your transmeta would probably get 8 hours. That's 5 hours with a "normal" laptop.
On the other hand, I owned a Winbook and that thing would fall apart if you were to breath in it's general direction from the other side of a football field. NEVER BUY WINBOOK. Junk junk junk junk. I could give you examples. I WILL give you examples:
And that's just a TASTE of what they put me through...
Appartenly, someone didn't teach her that while you have to put a CD in the drive to play her games, you also have to TAKE THAT CD OUT when you want to play a different game. I'm still trying to figure out how she managed to get the drive to open/close when there were 4 CDs in there.
I just ran into ancukiewiczd, he says he's having trouble getting his laptop to run. Go figure.
You either get it or you don't. If you don't, watch more TechTV :)
That said, I agree that modchips aren't (or at least shouldn't be) illegal.
On a side note I've been running 2.5s for about 3 months now and I've definatly noticed improvements in response time and such. It's a great kernel.
Looks like we'll have to wait and see.
The under-issue here is that nVidia is no longer a "partner" of madonion (I know they changed their name, whoever they are now, futuremark or whatever) but ATI is (IIRC). This is helping fuel suspicion that the benchmark is designed to perform better on ATI hardware than on nVidias. You must pay a fee to be a "partnet" so there is the unspoken idea that what Futuremark is doing might be some kind of extortion.
Where the answer lies is up to you. Personally, I do think that the benchmark is unfair/not a good benchmark. For example, chaning the graphics card in your computer should have next to no effect on the CPU score, if any; yet it has a measureable effect. But all of this is mute, IMHO, since Doom III will be the new Uber benchmark trusted above all else when it comes out. Untill then, argue amongst yourselves.
Does MS activly court spammers? Does MS actually SELL it's OWN SUBSCRIBER LISTS to spammers? This doesn't make any sense to me, unless MS will soon start spamming everyone on the planet to buy XP, Office 2k3, and all 12 million unsold copies of MS Bob. On the plus side, that would make MS more hated by the general public ;)
And that's the only joke you could think of? I think it's time for an upgrade my friend.
0% * 10,000% = 0%
Therefor, the Itanium grew 10,000% last month. The Itanium is a major hit! Get your numbers straight man. Geeze.
:)
Wasn't Yamhill supposed to be Intel's back-burner x86-64 project? Personally, it looks a little like Intel is betting the farm (at least pride wise) on their ia-64. The thread makes a good point that the x86-64 is much more likely to seep up into high end servers from low end servers and desktops than ia-64 is to drip down to low end servers and desktops. Intel might yet have to "give up" and go x86-64 to stay compeditive in the desktop/server CPU market.
Linus isn't saying he won't let it in. He's simply saying that the thinks it's not a good arch based on technical merit. He'll let it in. He never said he wouldn't. He's just saying he doesn't like the way the chip was designed (what choices they made, etc).
Now I'm no programming guru, but it seems to me that the x86-64 architecture is a great one. In fact, the only thing that I could see being done to improve it would be to add more general purpose registers. I believe that the new registers are all GP (IIRC), but I think that makeing them ALL GP (even the older ones) would be good, and maybe bring up the number of registers to a good round 32 or something. Am I missing something glaring wrong? If you're going to toss out all of the x86 stuff (like ia-64), I think you should be able to emulate it in hardware about as fast as current x86 processors can. When Apple switched to PPC, couldn't they emulate 68k code about as fast (or at least faster than 1/2 the speed of) the fastest 68k chips?
About what percent of the messages that go through your ISP per day are spam? Can you guess what that spam costs you per day in the increased bandwidth and better computers you need to be able to handle it? Do many customers quit giving spam as the reason?