Keep in mind that I already have 3 Gentoo machines running at home, plus 1 at my Mom's house, plus a Gentoo partition on my triple-boot laptop at work.
Despite the fact that nearly all comments here about this card are negative, there's still one thing that they got...
There are lots of people talking about it.
They probably never planned to sell many of these, though I wouldn't doubt that there's a class of people (think rich brats) who will buy one out of pocket change, simply to have the BEST. (==most expensive) But nonetheless, mere Slashdotters are talking about them, and maybe some are getting a little discontent with their Radeon 8500LE, and maybe this article will increase discontent enough to spring for a new one, even if it isn't a 512MB GeForce 6800 Ultra for $999. It might be a sale. (But not here, not now.)
Remember Borlund Software, and their first product, Turbo Pascal? The license said, "Treat this software like a book. Use it, yourself. Loan it to a friend. But you and your friend can't use it at the same time.
I don't know how it interacts with this particular bug, but the same drive can be used to get packet write on a CDRW drive. In other words, turn a CDRW into a 670MB UDF floppy. Don't know if this is regular user or root-only access. But I have my system set so regular users can mount CDRWs in big-floppy mode.
Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. Except that since it's Microsoft, the industry leader, it's OK. Fool me a thousand times. Please.
(I wish there were an appropriate sad, ironic, misplaced-humor emoticon.)
You miss my point, entirely. I wasn't commenting on the ability or not to kill Mozilla/Firefox.
I was commenting on Microsoft's actions every time, in every market where they have lacked competition. Lacking competition, Microsoft will do NOTHING to a given product.
It is in ALL of our best interests for Microsoft to have competitors, across the board. There will be other things to buy, and Microsoft will produce better products.
Just for a moment, grant that assumption, then let's look at where it leads...
About as soon as Mozilla/Firefox is dead, Microsoft will begin migrating people off of the IE team, most likely onto the new XBox to compete with Sony, the base OS to compete with Linux, media stuff to compete with Apple, etc. Thereafter IE will stagnate, again. There *might* be enough people left on IE to keep chugging security fixes, but more likely they'll spend more time doing IE integration things with XBox, base OS, and media stuff, etc.
Take a look at the track record. Whenever Microsoft had smashed the competition in one arena, they have NEVER kept up the advancement, there. It doesn't make economic sense to let it do anything other than stagnate.
So the simple truth is: If you want good products from Microsoft, make sure they have competitors. The corollary: Without competitors, Microsoft's products stagnate into a mess.
Does that count hardware currently not installed in a case? How about my old XT-286 and 486slc2 motherboards? How a good old SB16? How about a Hercules monographics clone, or an old AT-bus SVGA with a whopping 256k RAM, and sockets for that much more? Oldest system running - a Cyrix P150, my old server that has gotten flakey, and I finally finished migrating off of it a month or so back, but I hadn't gotten around to taking it offline, but tomight I noticed that it is comatose, again. Maybe I'll just power it off, but then the drive might get stiction.
Oh, and there's an Alpha Multia that runs, but isn't active right now. And if you're after a REAL home network, and REAL obsolete hardware, you should check out the guy who gave me the Multia. (I suspect in pursuit of domestic tranquilty and space.) He's got Alpha MP, SGI, his own AFS cell, etc, and his offline/obsolete collection is even bigger.
Kind of like seeing the "progress" between Asimov's original Foundation Trilogy and the 500-years-later new Foundation novels mirror the 40-50 years progress in our world between the writing.
But it sounds like he's a BSD developer, so that establishes some background, (less likely to be just a black-hat) and I suspect this HT thing will establish some name recognition. In his shoes, I'd hope to parley this into a job offer.
I'd sooner guess that by presenting a paper at a conference, he's hoping to turn this into a job offer. There are any number of stories about black-hats mending their ways, and getting security jobs. Here's someone trying to start out as a white-hat, doing things the right way to begin with. Seems to me that if he's on the mark, he's a better risk for a job offer than a reformed black-hat.
Not using Windows very often, I'm not familiar with Alt-tab. Does it cycle through the windows, or does it bring up some way to allow you to select one by title? With tabbed browsing, I have my tabs lined up along the top, each with a short title. One click, and I'm where I want to be. Even if Alt-tab does allow you to pick a window by title, that's still 2 operations instead of 1.
I run with multiple desktops (8) and multiple windows per desktop. Every now and then there's just so much junk up there that I go through a deskcleaning, and close almost everything. Then I start cluttering it all over. I like having my browser stay in 1 window, it lets me go longer between deskcleanings.
The difference is that in the past US industry was always climbing up the "value ladder". As we were exporting one set of jobs, we were creating another. Now, as we're exporting our tech jobs, we don't seem to have anything better in the wings, and in fact our jobs seem to be moving downscale.
The whole point of outsourcing is to PAY India-scale wages to your workers, but at the same time, PRICE your projects according to US-scale prices.
Never mind that it's inconsistent, unsustainable, stupid, shortsighted, or any other such adjective one might care to mention. At the endpoint of the current outsourcing rage, in the US for the most part the only high-paid workers will be executives, and the rest will work at barely above minimum wage, which will still not have moved up. When that happens, the market for those fancy products will be gone, because nobody will be able to afford them. Then the execs can kiss their companies goodbye.
I know that's not really a realistic scenario. I know that there are other highly-paid service jobs, like Doctors, Lawyers, etc. But even with what can realistically come to pass, IMHO it could get pretty unpleasant.
It's just an Operating System, it's not the Second Coming. It's just a piece of plumbing, ideally it should be barely visible. It's just a piece of shim so you can buy this piece of hardware called a computer, and then go buy this piece of software called an application, and use them together. Really, it pretty much naturally a commodity, just like the hardware it enables.
The amazing thing about Microsoft's marketing is that more than once, they've gotten people to show up at midnight to buy a piece of plumbing that ought to be a commodity.
An even more amazing thing is that they've resisted commoditization. They can have the highest single profit margin component of a box that's sold on razor-thin margins. Then they turn around and say that the hardware is too expensive.
Finally what's most amazing is that they're getting away with it.
Slashdot Mirror
Can anyone compare and contrast the two?
Keep in mind that I already have 3 Gentoo machines running at home, plus 1 at my Mom's house, plus a Gentoo partition on my triple-boot laptop at work.
In the original Borlund license, with its book analogy, there may have been a line about not copying books, so don't copy the software.
Despite the fact that nearly all comments here about this card are negative, there's still one thing that they got...
There are lots of people talking about it.
They probably never planned to sell many of these, though I wouldn't doubt that there's a class of people (think rich brats) who will buy one out of pocket change, simply to have the BEST. (==most expensive) But nonetheless, mere Slashdotters are talking about them, and maybe some are getting a little discontent with their Radeon 8500LE, and maybe this article will increase discontent enough to spring for a new one, even if it isn't a 512MB GeForce 6800 Ultra for $999. It might be a sale. (But not here, not now.)
Remember Borlund Software, and their first product, Turbo Pascal? The license said, "Treat this software like a book. Use it, yourself. Loan it to a friend. But you and your friend can't use it at the same time.
Eminently sensible. This too has passed.
I don't know how it interacts with this particular bug, but the same drive can be used to get packet write on a CDRW drive. In other words, turn a CDRW into a 670MB UDF floppy. Don't know if this is regular user or root-only access. But I have my system set so regular users can mount CDRWs in big-floppy mode.
Actually, assuming the $15000/yr maintenance system works for >200 desktops, it seems quite a reasonable cost, to me.
No doubt in the US they'd take a "long and hard" look at this, and come to the same conclusion as the antitrust settlement.
But I think everywhere but the US, it would play completely differently.
Good point.
Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. Except that since it's Microsoft, the industry leader, it's OK. Fool me a thousand times. Please.
(I wish there were an appropriate sad, ironic, misplaced-humor emoticon.)
You miss my point, entirely. I wasn't commenting on the ability or not to kill Mozilla/Firefox.
I was commenting on Microsoft's actions every time, in every market where they have lacked competition. Lacking competition, Microsoft will do NOTHING to a given product.
It is in ALL of our best interests for Microsoft to have competitors, across the board. There will be other things to buy, and Microsoft will produce better products.
Just for a moment, grant that assumption, then let's look at where it leads...
About as soon as Mozilla/Firefox is dead, Microsoft will begin migrating people off of the IE team, most likely onto the new XBox to compete with Sony, the base OS to compete with Linux, media stuff to compete with Apple, etc. Thereafter IE will stagnate, again. There *might* be enough people left on IE to keep chugging security fixes, but more likely they'll spend more time doing IE integration things with XBox, base OS, and media stuff, etc.
Take a look at the track record. Whenever Microsoft had smashed the competition in one arena, they have NEVER kept up the advancement, there. It doesn't make economic sense to let it do anything other than stagnate.
So the simple truth is: If you want good products from Microsoft, make sure they have competitors.
The corollary: Without competitors, Microsoft's products stagnate into a mess.
Does that count hardware currently not installed in a case? How about my old XT-286 and 486slc2 motherboards? How a good old SB16? How about a Hercules monographics clone, or an old AT-bus SVGA with a whopping 256k RAM, and sockets for that much more? Oldest system running - a Cyrix P150, my old server that has gotten flakey, and I finally finished migrating off of it a month or so back, but I hadn't gotten around to taking it offline, but tomight I noticed that it is comatose, again. Maybe I'll just power it off, but then the drive might get stiction.
Oh, and there's an Alpha Multia that runs, but isn't active right now. And if you're after a REAL home network, and REAL obsolete hardware, you should check out the guy who gave me the Multia. (I suspect in pursuit of domestic tranquilty and space.) He's got Alpha MP, SGI, his own AFS cell, etc, and his offline/obsolete collection is even bigger.
Yeah, but Dallas only made one season a dream, and I didn't see what Family Guy did. Newhart made the entire show into a dream.
Bob Newhard already did that one, so don't count the idea as original.
Kind of like seeing the "progress" between Asimov's original Foundation Trilogy and the 500-years-later new Foundation novels mirror the 40-50 years progress in our world between the writing.
How... Dare... You.... Criticize... His... Acting... Ability!!!
OTOH, it was surprising to see him in the original, "Judgement at Nuremberg."
The article I read indicated that Jolene Blalock was sickened by her lines for the last episode, "No wonder they're cancelling us."
Well, you've got to add the Firefox vulnerability just a few days back, and the answer becomes obvious:
Microsoft.
touche'
But it sounds like he's a BSD developer, so that establishes some background, (less likely to be just a black-hat) and I suspect this HT thing will establish some name recognition. In his shoes, I'd hope to parley this into a job offer.
I'd sooner guess that by presenting a paper at a conference, he's hoping to turn this into a job offer. There are any number of stories about black-hats mending their ways, and getting security jobs. Here's someone trying to start out as a white-hat, doing things the right way to begin with. Seems to me that if he's on the mark, he's a better risk for a job offer than a reformed black-hat.
Not using Windows very often, I'm not familiar with Alt-tab. Does it cycle through the windows, or does it bring up some way to allow you to select one by title? With tabbed browsing, I have my tabs lined up along the top, each with a short title. One click, and I'm where I want to be. Even if Alt-tab does allow you to pick a window by title, that's still 2 operations instead of 1.
I run with multiple desktops (8) and multiple windows per desktop. Every now and then there's just so much junk up there that I go through a deskcleaning, and close almost everything. Then I start cluttering it all over. I like having my browser stay in 1 window, it lets me go longer between deskcleanings.
The difference is that in the past US industry was always climbing up the "value ladder". As we were exporting one set of jobs, we were creating another. Now, as we're exporting our tech jobs, we don't seem to have anything better in the wings, and in fact our jobs seem to be moving downscale.
You miss the point of outsourcing in your post.
The whole point of outsourcing is to PAY India-scale wages to your workers,
but at the same time, PRICE your projects according to US-scale prices.
Never mind that it's inconsistent, unsustainable, stupid, shortsighted, or any other such adjective one might care to mention. At the endpoint of the current outsourcing rage, in the US for the most part the only high-paid workers will be executives, and the rest will work at barely above minimum wage, which will still not have moved up. When that happens, the market for those fancy products will be gone, because nobody will be able to afford them. Then the execs can kiss their companies goodbye.
I know that's not really a realistic scenario. I know that there are other highly-paid service jobs, like Doctors, Lawyers, etc. But even with what can realistically come to pass, IMHO it could get pretty unpleasant.
How about, "The Operating System of this computer has been *hijacked* by an errant opcode." Think the airlines would like that one any better?
How about a paraphrase...
It's just an Operating System, it's not the Second Coming. It's just a piece of plumbing, ideally it should be barely visible. It's just a piece of shim so you can buy this piece of hardware called a computer, and then go buy this piece of software called an application, and use them together. Really, it pretty much naturally a commodity, just like the hardware it enables.
The amazing thing about Microsoft's marketing is that more than once, they've gotten people to show up at midnight to buy a piece of plumbing that ought to be a commodity.
An even more amazing thing is that they've resisted commoditization. They can have the highest single profit margin component of a box that's sold on razor-thin margins. Then they turn around and say that the hardware is too expensive.
Finally what's most amazing is that they're getting away with it.
Not only can it cauterize flesh as it cuts it, but it can also toast bread as you slice it.