stop [next] posting [next] articles [next] which [next] are [next] nothing [next] but [next] ad [next] impression [next] generators [next].
I agree with you in general (Tom's Hardware is the worst), but this one really wasn't very bad. About a screen and a half full of text per page (a LOT more than 3 sentences) and only split over 4 pages.
The 10+ page hardware review sites are the real nightmare.
You should actually READ before you make an ass of yourself:
AirSage President Cy Smith says that the AirSage-VDOT system is now "up-and-running and providing live data,"
In 1999, the Washington Post reported that Virginia and Maryland had partnered with a cell phone carrier to track traffic patterns by monitoring cell phone usage on roadways. The two states tested the technology on a 15-mile stretch of the Beltway, between the Springfield interchange and Route 5.
More than that, all the stories are quite old, so what they were "going to" do back then, is the present and past now. Why start on a new one, rather than follow-up on any of the several they'd already given people a heads-up on? Or better yet, why not just a slashback followup?
Or make it a damn category, so we can filter out these unbelivably ridiculous dupes.
Who needs Soviet-style internal passports when they can not only GPS-track your cell phone, but can also track how fast you are moving.
You couldn't turn-off your "Soviet-style internal passports" whenever you felt like it, and they certainly weren't opt-in (this is just one more reason to trash your cellphone).
Ridiculous paranoid extremism is just as bad as (the more common) public apathy.
We are now back to one architecture again, which is good for compatibility, but sucks for platform diversity.
Well, IBM's Power/PowerPC seems to be doing just fine, as are several handheld architectures (Arm, MIPS, SHx).
And, you're acting like a single common architecture is a bad thing. With the switch to x86-64, and other parallel advances, almost all of the benefits of the alternative architectures are gone. Who's to say that a common hardware platform is bad?
Where will the new computer architecture ideas (or, more specifically, microprocessor ideas) come from?
Well, since AMD came up with x86-64 in the first place, and Intel was pushing Itanium, I'd say they're likely to continue advancing the technology, without the need for other architectures competing.
Imagine what happens when the law/**AA/Microsoft/whatever demands hardware-enforced DRM.
Imagine what happens when the law impose prohibition on alcohol... We won't be able to find a drop.
Seriously though, whatever forces would drive Intel and AMD to require DRM, would surely have forced the same move on other propritary architectures as well. The ways to workaround DRM are exactly the same, no matter how many architectures there happen to be.
Reading the article before spouting off isn't so much to ask of you, is it? I mean, this wasn't some highly technical, 20-page review.
He explained his position, in no uncertain terms:
I see this as becoming a spectacular alternative to Windows for any Windows user. Why? Because the software management is so familiar for any semi-experienced Windows user.
* Clusters can not compete with supercomputers. They aren't even in the same market space. Cray doesn't make clusters, and clusters have not taken away their business.
That's not very true. Supercomputers will have a solid market into the foreseeable future, but they certainly are facing competition from improvements in clusters.
Sometimes interconnect speed can be reasonably traded-off in exchange for a significantly reduced price, or for additional CPU power, local RAM, etc. Often, problems that are generally considered single-threaded can be parallelized, with a performance hit, but still turns out cheaper because of the huge price difference between clusters and supercomputers.
Claiming there is no competition between the two is nonsense.
This prevents one manufacturer from imposing their wishes on us. If Microsoft had control of their personal computer platform the way apple does, we surely would have lost the battle to DRM already.
If the PC was as tightly controlled as Apple's platform was... You probably would not ever have heard of Microsoft.
Microsoft didn't make the PC, IBM did. They were just lucky enough to be in the right place at the right time, to ride the wave of "openness", which depended on their closed software for interoperability.
A bit off-topic, but have you heard they're going to be tracking cell-phone signals to monitor traffic patterns? It's amazing! Why doesn't slashdot ever accept a story on the subject?
Real science doesn't label something based on feel good social acceptance, but strives for as much exactness as possible.
Social acceptance is a good metric for whether a classification actually makes sense. Pluto looks, and acts very much unlike asteroids, and much more like recognized planets.
Science, however, really doesn't care about any of this. They will continue calling everything a 'body', as the boundry between planet and asteroid is really of no relevance to any of their work.
Of course, I'd like to hear how "science" defines "motor" and "engine", and how those definitions are not based on arbitrary "feel good" public opinion.
Or perhaps how the rating system for stars is (somehow) possibly not arbitrary.
Wireless peripherals would have to draw independent power and be "always on" - guaranteeing that even when everything is shut off and you're on vacation in the islands, your home computer gear is still sucking power.
Your computer gear is "still" sucking power right now. With practically every system supporting wake-on-keyboard/mouse, you're guaranteed that some power is being drawn, even when off.
For any (wireless) device which is only useful when activated (keyboard, mouse, etc.) you only need a trickle of always-on current so it can detect user activity, and only THEN powering-on the RF transciever.
So, the standby power usage will be the same. Still, I'm not interested in swapping batteries in ANYTHING that doesn't ever need to move. It's a bit of a trend, with the cheaper Chinese electronics.
Even if users names had been used, you don't have a right to privacy of submitted internet form data unless you are using encryption and the server operator has agreed to enforce your privacy.
If your search engine and ISP has a privacy policy, you have a reasonable expectation of privacy. Your data isn't going to be routed through Joe Blow's cable modem, or through routers in China. A reasonable expectation isn't a guarantee, but that's not the point.
It's really only those two parties that could have put together a list like this.
Not looking at something, doesn't make it go away.
I've never heard anyone say that everyone on the planet should be on the honor system to NOT LOOK at private data. They always say the "trusted" party should NOT be GIVING AWAY the data in the first place.
Fox News, for example, is looked down on for its conservative bias. I look down on them as well - not because they have a bias, at least they're more open about it - but because they try to conform to the American press ideal of supposedly unbiased reporting by claiming they're "fair and balanced". Just come out and say it!
That wouldn't help anyone. It's one thing to have an opinion on a subject, it's another thing to twist the facts, words, etc., around, to make someone look better or worse than they actually are.
Absolutely nobody wants to give up enough control to make the media-center PC practical (therefore possible).
Media companies are scared that you can edit out commercials, make copies, etc. Tech companies are scared to death of being sued by the media companies, and also trying their hardest to get the kind of propritary lock-in with media files that Microsoft has with Windows.
The open source projects are actually doing alright, but it's a lot of work to set-up. Get a good source for XMLTV, and start distributing user-friendly Linux distros with every possible Freevo/MythTV feature enabled (one-click DVD-mastering, etc.) in a package with a TV-tuner and remote (and possibly a videocard with TV-out) which can be plugged into any PC, and you might finally have something easy enough for more people to use. Though I think Freevo and MythTV could use a lot of design and polishing.
You can already reliably state that not everyone will say no.
Exactly. You can also state there is life on earth.
Your margin of error is high,
Ridiculously, insanely high.
Statistically, all we can say at this time is that the odds of us being the only life in the universe are one in uncounted trillions against.
Not at all. If it takes billions and billions of very specific circumstances, all occuring in just the right time-frame, the odds may be very, very small.
That's not to say it's necessarily the case, it's just that you can't possibly assign statistics to something we are so completely ignorant of, and have NO statistical data to base the decision on.
If one person in a hundred says yes, chances are a few more in that 6 billion will agree.
No, that's the whole point. You don't know if 60 million others will agree, or if absolutely no-one else will agree. At the absolute least, you need more than one sample to make an educated guess.
if life can exist in one place, it's an excellent bet that it also exists in many many other places.
No, it's not a good bet at all. You don't have any way of knowing that what we have here is common, or an utter freak occurance.
The chances of us being the only biosphere in the entire universe are ridiculously small, to put it mildly.
Prove it. To even claim that, you would have to know EXACTLY what it takes to create life (good luck with that). And, you have to know exactly what percentage of planets have conducive conditions to life. With the Earth being the only example we know of, we don't have any way of telling how likely that is that a similarly developed environment could exist elsewhere.
There are too many variables, that are utterly unknown, to even make a rational guess at the problem. It's entirely a question of beliefs.
You know, I can understand complaints of rejected stories when they were submitted weeks or months before... But 24 hours? Give me a break.
So, the editors (using that term loosly here) probably got 1000 submissions of the story, and picked the one they prefered, instead of just the FIRST ONE, which probably wasn't yours (but somebody else before you) anyhow.
They decided, for environmental reasons obstensively, that they didn't want any more power plants built.
That's complete nonsense. You can't really build any COAL or OIL powerplants anymore, but NATURAL GAS, WIND, SOLAR, etc., is wide-open. Natural gas power plants are being built all the time. There's a new one right near me. Even private companies are building their own natural gas power plants, rather than running on-grid.
Eventually useage started exceeding capacity and they lose power.
Nice theory, except... Recently, most of the country has been having MORE power problems than California.
The Enron-era rolling blackouts had nothing to do with environmental regulations, and there haven't been serious power problems since then. Right now it's the "We can't meet peek summer demand." whining, but you're seeing that, and worse, across the rest of the country.
Slashdot Mirror
I agree with you in general (Tom's Hardware is the worst), but this one really wasn't very bad. About a screen and a half full of text per page (a LOT more than 3 sentences) and only split over 4 pages.
The 10+ page hardware review sites are the real nightmare.
True, but that was only because the installer currently isn't bug-free. When that's improved, the "if" will be gone.
That's an entirely seperate subject, but I've seen enough incredibly frustrated Windows users to be sure there's a big market.
More than that, all the stories are quite old, so what they were "going to" do back then, is the present and past now. Why start on a new one, rather than follow-up on any of the several they'd already given people a heads-up on? Or better yet, why not just a slashback followup?
Or make it a damn category, so we can filter out these unbelivably ridiculous dupes.
Congratulations on blandly demonstrating that different countries are not exactly the same as every other.
You couldn't turn-off your "Soviet-style internal passports" whenever you felt like it, and they certainly weren't opt-in (this is just one more reason to trash your cellphone).
Ridiculous paranoid extremism is just as bad as (the more common) public apathy.
Well, IBM's Power/PowerPC seems to be doing just fine, as are several handheld architectures (Arm, MIPS, SHx).
And, you're acting like a single common architecture is a bad thing. With the switch to x86-64, and other parallel advances, almost all of the benefits of the alternative architectures are gone. Who's to say that a common hardware platform is bad?
Well, since AMD came up with x86-64 in the first place, and Intel was pushing Itanium, I'd say they're likely to continue advancing the technology, without the need for other architectures competing.
Imagine what happens when the law impose prohibition on alcohol... We won't be able to find a drop.
Seriously though, whatever forces would drive Intel and AMD to require DRM, would surely have forced the same move on other propritary architectures as well. The ways to workaround DRM are exactly the same, no matter how many architectures there happen to be.
He explained his position, in no uncertain terms:
That's not very true. Supercomputers will have a solid market into the foreseeable future, but they certainly are facing competition from improvements in clusters.
Sometimes interconnect speed can be reasonably traded-off in exchange for a significantly reduced price, or for additional CPU power, local RAM, etc. Often, problems that are generally considered single-threaded can be parallelized, with a performance hit, but still turns out cheaper because of the huge price difference between clusters and supercomputers.
Claiming there is no competition between the two is nonsense.
If the PC was as tightly controlled as Apple's platform was... You probably would not ever have heard of Microsoft.
Microsoft didn't make the PC, IBM did. They were just lucky enough to be in the right place at the right time, to ride the wave of "openness", which depended on their closed software for interoperability.
A bit off-topic, but have you heard they're going to be tracking cell-phone signals to monitor traffic patterns? It's amazing! Why doesn't slashdot ever accept a story on the subject?
7
4 8
1
7
4 7
2 9
You can read more here:
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/11/19/14324
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/11/19/07452
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/11/01/15924
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/10/16/07621
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/12/30/12432
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/06/13/04282
There, that's better. Hopefully, one day they'll come to their senses, and post a story or two on the subject.
Social acceptance is a good metric for whether a classification actually makes sense. Pluto looks, and acts very much unlike asteroids, and much more like recognized planets.
Science, however, really doesn't care about any of this. They will continue calling everything a 'body', as the boundry between planet and asteroid is really of no relevance to any of their work.
Of course, I'd like to hear how "science" defines "motor" and "engine", and how those definitions are not based on arbitrary "feel good" public opinion.
Or perhaps how the rating system for stars is (somehow) possibly not arbitrary.
Complete nonsense. Edison wanted DC power all around because HE was heavily invested in DC, and had a lot to lose if people chose AC instead.
He focused on the safety of lower-voltage DC because the high-voltage AC had advantages over DC in every other comparison.
A single AC wire isn't a circuit, anymore than a single DC wire is.
Your computer gear is "still" sucking power right now. With practically every system supporting wake-on-keyboard/mouse, you're guaranteed that some power is being drawn, even when off.
For any (wireless) device which is only useful when activated (keyboard, mouse, etc.) you only need a trickle of always-on current so it can detect user activity, and only THEN powering-on the RF transciever.
So, the standby power usage will be the same. Still, I'm not interested in swapping batteries in ANYTHING that doesn't ever need to move. It's a bit of a trend, with the cheaper Chinese electronics.
I'm not Evilviper, nor do I have any association with him.
And these are not the droids you're looking for.
If your search engine and ISP has a privacy policy, you have a reasonable expectation of privacy. Your data isn't going to be routed through Joe Blow's cable modem, or through routers in China. A reasonable expectation isn't a guarantee, but that's not the point.
It's really only those two parties that could have put together a list like this.
Not looking at something, doesn't make it go away.
I've never heard anyone say that everyone on the planet should be on the honor system to NOT LOOK at private data. They always say the "trusted" party should NOT be GIVING AWAY the data in the first place.
Hmm, let me think... December 25th sounds good.
Or maybe Apple changed their mind about being evil, because of so many people "being bitchy".
That wouldn't help anyone. It's one thing to have an opinion on a subject, it's another thing to twist the facts, words, etc., around, to make someone look better or worse than they actually are.
Absolutely nobody wants to give up enough control to make the media-center PC practical (therefore possible).
Media companies are scared that you can edit out commercials, make copies, etc. Tech companies are scared to death of being sued by the media companies, and also trying their hardest to get the kind of propritary lock-in with media files that Microsoft has with Windows.
The open source projects are actually doing alright, but it's a lot of work to set-up. Get a good source for XMLTV, and start distributing user-friendly Linux distros with every possible Freevo/MythTV feature enabled (one-click DVD-mastering, etc.) in a package with a TV-tuner and remote (and possibly a videocard with TV-out) which can be plugged into any PC, and you might finally have something easy enough for more people to use. Though I think Freevo and MythTV could use a lot of design and polishing.
Exactly. You can also state there is life on earth.
Ridiculously, insanely high.
Not at all. If it takes billions and billions of very specific circumstances, all occuring in just the right time-frame, the odds may be very, very small.
That's not to say it's necessarily the case, it's just that you can't possibly assign statistics to something we are so completely ignorant of, and have NO statistical data to base the decision on.
No, it's an analogy. You were talking statistics, with absolutely no basis in reality.
You didn't a couple days ago:
"Therefore if there is life HERE, there is and has been life all over the damned place."
The rest of your post is a completely off-topic troll/rant.
No, that's the whole point. You don't know if 60 million others will agree, or if absolutely no-one else will agree. At the absolute least, you need more than one sample to make an educated guess.
No, it's not a good bet at all. You don't have any way of knowing that what we have here is common, or an utter freak occurance.
Prove it. To even claim that, you would have to know EXACTLY what it takes to create life (good luck with that). And, you have to know exactly what percentage of planets have conducive conditions to life. With the Earth being the only example we know of, we don't have any way of telling how likely that is that a similarly developed environment could exist elsewhere.
There are too many variables, that are utterly unknown, to even make a rational guess at the problem. It's entirely a question of beliefs.
You know, I can understand complaints of rejected stories when they were submitted weeks or months before... But 24 hours? Give me a break.
So, the editors (using that term loosly here) probably got 1000 submissions of the story, and picked the one they prefered, instead of just the FIRST ONE, which probably wasn't yours (but somebody else before you) anyhow.
That's complete nonsense. You can't really build any COAL or OIL powerplants anymore, but NATURAL GAS, WIND, SOLAR, etc., is wide-open. Natural gas power plants are being built all the time. There's a new one right near me. Even private companies are building their own natural gas power plants, rather than running on-grid.
Nice theory, except... Recently, most of the country has been having MORE power problems than California.
The Enron-era rolling blackouts had nothing to do with environmental regulations, and there haven't been serious power problems since then. Right now it's the "We can't meet peek summer demand." whining, but you're seeing that, and worse, across the rest of the country.