We're essentially working our way back to where we started,
Not quite.
First, back in the good old days, CPUs didn't idle very well... With CnQ and SpeedStep on desktop CPUs now, they're using less power when idle, than ever before. Even if the peak is higher (which it usually isn't) your CPU is still largely idle 90% of the time, so there's tons of room for power saving with CnQ.
Second, that only applies to the CPU, while the rest of the system is falling... Specifically, with AMD installing the memory controller on the CPU, they've practically eliminated the northbridge, which was drawing up to 50% as much power as the CPU itself, as the bus got faster. That was specifically the situation on the Via KM600 chipset.
I don't think there's been anything you could reasonably call a general Internet outage in the last 15 years.
And I don't think you're correct...
The root DNS attacks in 2002. The SQL Slammer worm in 2003. etc.
Both clogged the pipes thoroughly enough to make most (all?) of the internet extremely unresponsive, and many parts largely offline.
But seriously, I can imagine the Web still being useful without DNS if search engines linked to IP addresses instead of hostnames.
I can't. A great many sites are virtual, meaning they share a single IP address with numerous DNS hostnames. Accessing them via their IP address will get you a server error page.
And now that email is largely a WWW service (hotmail, gmail...) a big chunk of it could survive too.
The WWW would have a better chance of survival than the WWW. Put your IMAP/POP/SMTP servers in your hosts file, then e-mail anyone, via their service's IP address: fred@10.130.19.12 .
Personally, I'll be happy to see the DNS system go down. Thanks to MaraDNS, all the IP addresses in my router's cache (any place I've visited in the past 4 months) will continue to function indefinitely. If it goes long-term, I'll stick them all in my/etc/hosts file, and visit sites like slashdot to download some publicly made hosts file, with the majority of all popular internet sites listed.
Of course, I'll be spending most of my time using Gnutella. Without DNS, I'd expect a major surge in usage, and lots of bandwidth to go around. No doubt it could largely replace the WWW as the file distribution mechanism, if needed.
When Linux 2.8 comes out, you can't upgrade until Linus releases 2.7
Skipping a dot-version wouldn't be remotely as significant as new whole version numbers for every trivial change, and skipping a whole number to inflate numbers, to try and match the competition's equally arbitrary version numbers.
But besides that, Linux has always had odd version number releases. They're just unstable, so very few people use them.
"The power consumption of modern PCs has skyrocketed the past few years.
No, it WAS rising, several years ago.
When AMD switched Opteron/Athlon64/Sempron64, power consumption fell, and continues falling.
When Intel got off the P4 chip, power consumption fell.
When 80%+ efficient (consumer) PSUs came out, power consumption fell.
etc.
Power consumption is significantly falling. Unfortunately, many companies are sticking to the slightly cheaper, but vastly more power hungry components, like P4-based Celerons, cheap "500W" 50% efficient Asian PSUs, etc.
You can put together desktop systems today, which are more energy efficient than some of the larger notebooks computers. Unfortunately, only the premium (read: expensive) computer manufacturers are doing that.
With no friction, and low relative inertia, a few magnets should draw all nearby magnetic debris together, and eventually, all the various magnets will come together as well.
I'll try out the Netscape version when v5.2 hits... That's right, no AOL version number inflation stupidity for me, thanks.
Ditto for Winamp... I'm still awaiting Winamp v3.1, or perhaps 4.0.
Maybe when they come to their senses about version numbers, they might come to their senses about all the other stupid crap and other restrictions they include in all their software.
All he's got are some general, highly exaggerated stereotypes to spout out. Just two actual examples, which aren't that significant, and sure as hell don't lead him to the conclusion that you're going to be sued (when MICROSOFT goes out of business and sells their rights to a patent troll??? What?)
Anybody who bothered to read a clickwrap or shrinkwrap agreement would never install any software, click on any link on the Web, open an account with anyone, or even shop at many retail stores.
I have, and do. I'm a meticulous person that way. It hasn't stopped me from doing any of the above.
1) No sane person would agree to its text, and
I do believe I'm sane... License terms are reasonable for 90% of everything out there, and just what you'd expect before even reading it. ie. You agree we aren't liable if this doesn't work, You agree to sue us in our county or state, etc.
It's only that last 10% of software that I absolutely refuse to install. Usually there's only a passing mention of software from some different company, in one line, near the end, to indicate a dozen pieces of spyware bundled with your program. With that, I "opt out" and delete the program/installer, and look elsewhere.
2) Even if you disagree, no one will negotiate a better agreement with you?
For software that more than a handful of people would ever want to use, there's always some other alternative, with a license that isn't so incredibly underhanded.
Certainly, Windows XP and Vista qualifies. So long as my copy of 2000 (or NT4, 98, 95, Win 3.11, Dos 6) works for the Windows-only software I only occasionally need to use, I'm not even going to CONSIDER upgrading. And no more machines pre-loaded, either. I can go to pricewatch find a fully customizable, no-OS system cheaper anyhow.
have you seen the fine print on their credit-card slips?
Since I don't use credit cards... No. Nor do I care.
When returning products to Best Buy, however, I do stand at the front of the line, reading the paper they want me to sign... verbatim. They ALWAYS tell me it's just a standard form, and that they'll give me a copy to read later... AFTER I sign it. I'm more than happy to hold up their line, since they insist I agree to the legalese they've thrust upon me, for no good reason.
because Linux quite simply hurts to use as a desktop on a daily basis.
I'm guaranteed to get modded Troll for this on/. but for the record, FreeBSD is a much nicer and far easier system to use. Unlike Linux, 99% of the system configuration is in one single file. Far fewer bugs to be found in a FreeBSD release than any Linux distro I've ever seen. And damn-near every bit of hardware is autodetected, and just works (perfectly, forever)...
With Linux, you need to run hdparm to set your hard drive up (a few years ago, DMA wasn't even enabled), while FreeBSD will just select what's appropriate on boot-up, and has done so for many years.
Network cards are the same. No hardware configuration at all, just put it in, boot-up, and give it an IP address. On Linux, I've had numerous problems. Right now my (tulip) network card will fail after a little heavy traffic on Linux. Never seen any such thing on FreeBSD.
Soundcards are loadable kernel modules, but nothing like Linux... You don't have modules.conf, and a dozen different interdependent modules. You load one module for each brand of soundcard, and it will work. The end. The FreeBSD installer can automatically do that for you, as well. Unlike Linux, I've NEVER had any sound issues.
Ports and packages make the world easier, as well. If you want to use your USB digital camera, you just cd into the gphoto2 folder, and run 'make install'. Or you can just pkg_add it if you don't want to compile and wait. The same goes for nvidia's binary driver, all the Mesa/DRI/DRM drivers, etc. Just 'make install' and restart X.
I've even upgraded between 3 different major versions of FreeBSD, with no bugs to speak of at all. While I've never been able to get that to work (at all, let alone so cleanly) with Linux or Windows. And with the latest version (6.2) I've even got ACPI S3 (Suspend) working almost perfectly on my desktop system, which Linux and even the latest version of Windows can never manage. Major power savings, and really much more convenient.
Last I checked, the reader was a 60+ meg install, and it's such a pig that PDF's take MINUTES to open on some of our machines,
On my software CD, I keep a copy of Acrobat Reader v 4. Works perfectly on the newest systems, reads all the newest files I've ever come across, and is tiny in comparison.
If you don't like that, there are other options like the Foxit PDF reader, and more.
That, and the file format itself is so bloated that it makes MS Word files look trim by comparison.
That's not even remotely true. Convert a DOC to PDF, and it will always be smaller.
The bad rep PDFs get, is mostly because of scanned documents (images) being converted to PDFs, without OCR. So people think they've got a 1MB PDF for a few pages of text, but they've really got several 8x11 images, highly compressed.
I remember when Windows 3.1 came out. Home users willingly bought and installed it on their existing 286/386 machines in droves, which were running DOS up to that point.
They bought it because it was the only way to get a real GUI on their existing system. They didn't want to buy new Mac hardware, and they wanted to maintain compatibility with all their DOS apps.
Some similarities to the current situation.
The OEM bundling resulted as a by-product.
No, the OEM bundling happened because Windows was the upgrade from DOS6. DOS was OEM bundled because of the IBM legacy, and there was hardly any real alternative at the time.
The same reasons are behind Intel/x86 PC hardware becoming standard, and continuing to hold the market against other, better architectures. Once you've got your foot in the door, the inertia is huge. Unlike Intel, however, there is no other company making 100% compatible Windows alternatives.
I doubt you can find a more efficient wall tumor than that!
The only omission is that most devices aren't going to run natively on 48V. So for efficiency calculations, you also need to take into account the losses from the regulator needed to convert from 48V down to 12, 9, 5, etc. That isn't currently required, since they just use a 9V wall wart to begin with, so it must be figured into the losses of any single-voltage DC power scheme.
Slashdot Mirror
First, back in the good old days, CPUs didn't idle very well... With CnQ and SpeedStep on desktop CPUs now, they're using less power when idle, than ever before. Even if the peak is higher (which it usually isn't) your CPU is still largely idle 90% of the time, so there's tons of room for power saving with CnQ.
Second, that only applies to the CPU, while the rest of the system is falling... Specifically, with AMD installing the memory controller on the CPU, they've practically eliminated the northbridge, which was drawing up to 50% as much power as the CPU itself, as the bus got faster. That was specifically the situation on the Via KM600 chipset.
No manual entry for tmpwatch
$
There's always the odd floppy or CD-based mini distro, but that's really not relevant. I just checked my Slackware machine's init scripts. It clears
DOH!
E-mail would have a better chance of survival than the WWW.
Windows is slightly worse, but not by a lot.
The root DNS attacks in 2002.
The SQL Slammer worm in 2003.
etc.
Both clogged the pipes thoroughly enough to make most (all?) of the internet extremely unresponsive, and many parts largely offline. I can't. A great many sites are virtual, meaning they share a single IP address with numerous DNS hostnames. Accessing them via their IP address will get you a server error page. The WWW would have a better chance of survival than the WWW. Put your IMAP/POP/SMTP servers in your hosts file, then e-mail anyone, via their service's IP address: fred@10.130.19.12
.
Personally, I'll be happy to see the DNS system go down. Thanks to MaraDNS, all the IP addresses in my router's cache (any place I've visited in the past 4 months) will continue to function indefinitely. If it goes long-term, I'll stick them all in my
Of course, I'll be spending most of my time using Gnutella. Without DNS, I'd expect a major surge in usage, and lots of bandwidth to go around. No doubt it could largely replace the WWW as the file distribution mechanism, if needed.
But besides that, Linux has always had odd version number releases. They're just unstable, so very few people use them.
Reliability is nothing without features. Features come from innovation.
You can easily have a "cluster" of two or three machines, for fail-over in the event of software or hardware faults.
When AMD switched Opteron/Athlon64/Sempron64, power consumption fell, and continues falling.
When Intel got off the P4 chip, power consumption fell.
When 80%+ efficient (consumer) PSUs came out, power consumption fell.
etc.
Power consumption is significantly falling. Unfortunately, many companies are sticking to the slightly cheaper, but vastly more power hungry components, like P4-based Celerons, cheap "500W" 50% efficient Asian PSUs, etc.
You can put together desktop systems today, which are more energy efficient than some of the larger notebooks computers. Unfortunately, only the premium (read: expensive) computer manufacturers are doing that.
Magnets! Several large magnets!
With no friction, and low relative inertia, a few magnets should draw all nearby magnetic debris together, and eventually, all the various magnets will come together as well.
I'll try out the Netscape version when v5.2 hits... That's right, no AOL version number inflation stupidity for me, thanks.
Ditto for Winamp... I'm still awaiting Winamp v3.1, or perhaps 4.0.
Maybe when they come to their senses about version numbers, they might come to their senses about all the other stupid crap and other restrictions they include in all their software.
They won't then use it to crush any protests over unlivable working wages, and the like. Of course not.
It's only that last 10% of software that I absolutely refuse to install. Usually there's only a passing mention of software from some different company, in one line, near the end, to indicate a dozen pieces of spyware bundled with your program. With that, I "opt out" and delete the program/installer, and look elsewhere. For software that more than a handful of people would ever want to use, there's always some other alternative, with a license that isn't so incredibly underhanded.
Certainly, Windows XP and Vista qualifies. So long as my copy of 2000 (or NT4, 98, 95, Win 3.11, Dos 6) works for the Windows-only software I only occasionally need to use, I'm not even going to CONSIDER upgrading. And no more machines pre-loaded, either. I can go to pricewatch find a fully customizable, no-OS system cheaper anyhow. Since I don't use credit cards... No. Nor do I care.
When returning products to Best Buy, however, I do stand at the front of the line, reading the paper they want me to sign... verbatim. They ALWAYS tell me it's just a standard form, and that they'll give me a copy to read later... AFTER I sign it. I'm more than happy to hold up their line, since they insist I agree to the legalese they've thrust upon me, for no good reason.
With Linux, you need to run hdparm to set your hard drive up (a few years ago, DMA wasn't even enabled), while FreeBSD will just select what's appropriate on boot-up, and has done so for many years.
Network cards are the same. No hardware configuration at all, just put it in, boot-up, and give it an IP address. On Linux, I've had numerous problems. Right now my (tulip) network card will fail after a little heavy traffic on Linux. Never seen any such thing on FreeBSD.
Soundcards are loadable kernel modules, but nothing like Linux... You don't have modules.conf, and a dozen different interdependent modules. You load one module for each brand of soundcard, and it will work. The end. The FreeBSD installer can automatically do that for you, as well. Unlike Linux, I've NEVER had any sound issues.
Ports and packages make the world easier, as well. If you want to use your USB digital camera, you just cd into the gphoto2 folder, and run 'make install'. Or you can just pkg_add it if you don't want to compile and wait. The same goes for nvidia's binary driver, all the Mesa/DRI/DRM drivers, etc. Just 'make install' and restart X.
I've even upgraded between 3 different major versions of FreeBSD, with no bugs to speak of at all. While I've never been able to get that to work (at all, let alone so cleanly) with Linux or Windows. And with the latest version (6.2) I've even got ACPI S3 (Suspend) working almost perfectly on my desktop system, which Linux and even the latest version of Windows can never manage. Major power savings, and really much more convenient.
If you don't like that, there are other options like the Foxit PDF reader, and more. That's not even remotely true. Convert a DOC to PDF, and it will always be smaller.
The bad rep PDFs get, is mostly because of scanned documents (images) being converted to PDFs, without OCR. So people think they've got a 1MB PDF for a few pages of text, but they've really got several 8x11 images, highly compressed.
Some similarities to the current situation. No, the OEM bundling happened because Windows was the upgrade from DOS6. DOS was OEM bundled because of the IBM legacy, and there was hardly any real alternative at the time.
The same reasons are behind Intel/x86 PC hardware becoming standard, and continuing to hold the market against other, better architectures. Once you've got your foot in the door, the inertia is huge. Unlike Intel, however, there is no other company making 100% compatible Windows alternatives.
Did you perhaps upgrade from ME to XP, and never get a chance to use 2000?