I often sign myself 'Simon the cynic' when I read about personage X making some sweeping statement about how things are going to be - but for me it comes down to where the benefit is to be had. If there is no precedent or no perceivable advantage, my reaction is often (as the Poster's) "Yeah, right!".
In this case I have a (gut) feeling they're probably genuine. JBoss are up the proverbial creek - they're a commercial software house which relies on the same sort of markets as Open Source software, and they've just lost a lot of credibility. The only way out of it to them is to 'fess up, to publicly admit their wrongdoing, and pledge not to do it again. I'm also a firm believer in letting peoples actions decide my opinion of them - talk is after all cheap, especially in this digital age - and I believe in judging after the fact, not before. My regard for their (phenomenal) achievement dropped significantly when the story broke, but respect can be earnt over again. Let's see, indeed, but with an open mind.
Now that they *have* made a public pledge, and if they're caught again, it's game over in the reputation stakes. Anyone can make a mistake, and society usually forgives a single error of judgement - we generally expect people to learn, however. I think that this itself should be sufficient to keep them on the straight and narrow... Of course, this is just a different form of cynicism:-)
I thought the idea that pollution of the information space was a "crime" in and of itself was an interesting point - I generally consider the net to be something of a cesspool, and it's not just cream that floats to the top... On the other hand, dive right in (yuck. Nasty mental image) and there's a lot on offer freely which would be otherwise hard to obtain. I wonder when (if) the balance will tip so there's more cream than crap.
... and we didn't try and tailor the report (3 months work for 5 people including world-wide travel) to our paymasters. Our view was that we were being paid to produce a report on what is (for a fairly major computer manufacturer) rather than what they would like things to be. They already know what they would like things to be...
On the other hand, "hired guns" are mercenaries - they will do as you wish, when you wish, how you wish. The AdTI are hired guns. Some of us (the others:-) still have some self-respect and integrity - please consider each case on its merits...
Only when you are sufficiently confident in your premises do you venture to be droll to your enemies, and make no mistake, the AdTi is Linus' enemy. The use of humour is simultaneously the ultimate statement of confidence and the ultimate put-down - it's a pre-generated sound-bite. It's a kick in the vitals. To all on the (winning) side of Linux, it's a rallying cry. Go Linus.
There's nothing more satisfying than placing your critics up on a pedestal and ripping them to shreds - the pen is indeed mightier than the sword, and it doesn;t depend on pointiness:-)
What will be interesting is just how long the AdTI will remain a serious news source - the ultimate goal is obviously to get them to discredit themselves to such an extent that they can be held up as an example of how *not* to do it. Given their paymaster, the hopeless nature of their case, and the imperatives they must put forward each time, I think we have a significant chance of a sacrificial lamb in Linux' cause... Rope to hang themselves is what we want... Remember that:-)
And yet you look at the employment rates within the UK and the rest of Europe (3% vs 12% approx).... The UK is hardly a panacea but if you're willing to go for a lower paid job than you think you deserve, you'll prosper. It's always easier to get another job when you already have a job....
Personally given the fact that the UK is the driving force behind software patents in the EU, I wil be voting against the government and against anything EU-centric in the upcoming elections. I don't see that it's at all democratic for the EU parliament (I think) to decide amendments need to be made, then the EU Council of ministers to ride roughshod over the whole thing. Go Germany, I wish the UK government had half the cluebat you wield....
I wonder if the UK gets a net gain from being in Europe, I really do. Consider if we *did* become the 51st state. The real problem would be that the US people would never accept it - we have 56 million people, the US has 260 million. If the Uk became a state, it would represent 1/6 the population of the USA, never mind the influence the commonwealth brings in... The Whitehouse would have to be relocated to 10 Downing St. Can't see it myself... Empire by default - never happen, given our history...
You paraphrased the article inaccurately, attributing the commercial potential you're talking about to a technology that isn't described. Your defense is that someone else previously pointed it out so that it's a "fair cop", and that Mick Hamer used the word "teasing" to describe the process to his intended audience in the article he wrote.
[the latter part of the post remains unquoted since it deals with consequences, not statements or postulates]
[sigh]. Indeed. In the first instance I was wrong, it was a slip twixt mind and hand after I'd read the article, get over it - unless of course you've never written one thing while thinking another... In the second I used the same attribution as in the article. That's a 50% score as far as I'm concerned. By the way, "fair cop" is UK slang for "yes you're right" in this context. Perhaps it's different where you hail from.
You called me to task on 2 things - the former I believe you were right with (note that I haven't tried to defend the position at all), the latter I believe you are wrong on. That's also a 50% score as far as I'm concerned.
The reason for my reply (since it seems to have been missed) was really to point out that you weren't particularly forgiving in your rebuttal, and that you were only as right as I was. Pot, kettle, black. The fact that the general readership seems to have (as I write) elevated the post where all I point out is this fact to +4 would seem to lend some popular weight to my argument.
Enough, reply if you wish, as far as I'm concerned this argument over - it has gone on far too long already.
Simon
Manners Maketh Man
on
Metal Velcro
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· Score: 3, Insightful
With regard to the electrons rather than photons, someone else had already previously pointed that out anyway. Fair cop.
The 'teasing' I think is a fair description, since the article itself uses the word to describe the process:
"Electromagnetic fields controlled by software choreograph the electron beam's movements around the metal, teasing out many projections at once."
So, in your opinion I may not be either interesting or informative, but I am 50% correct. As were you. You're welcome too.
Simon.
Re:Fast to create as well
on
Metal Velcro
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· Score: 1
Perhaps not around my crotch [grin] but they were all originally designed for boots, and I'd probably (carefully, mind) use it to do up my boots...
Simon
Re:Fast to create as well
on
Metal Velcro
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· Score: 2, Insightful
I think the word 'modern' in that sentence implies an 'earlier' version...
Simon
Fast to create as well
on
Metal Velcro
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· Score: 3, Interesting
Whenever I read one of these articles about a process requiring X, Y and Z to all do novel things A,B and C under strict conditions, I always think 'how are you going to commercialise that?! Chip fabrication was a case in point - I guess where there's a multi-billion dollar will, there's a way...
This process requires lasers to melt the metal and tease the structures into being and yet it can do 100 cm^2 in 10 seconds... That's just not intuitive [grin]. Kudos to the researchers - us Brits have always been jealous of the Yanks for inventing the zip anyway:-)
I don't suppose you could tell me the versions that you are running that are stable, could you ? The vendor claims to have had it running just fine in Redhat with the shipped ones, so I'm assuming it's a 64-bit issue - if you have 'known-good' values, I'd appreciate them...
Cheers,
Simon
Re:I seriously didnt like Suse
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Suse 9.1 Reviews?
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· Score: 4, Informative
Suse certainly does provide you with the kernel you're running. If you look at their patches page, you can see all the.rpm's have.src.rpm equivalents, including the kernel.
I haven't checked, but I'm pretty sure that the source for all the things on side 1 of the DVD is on side 2 as well...
As for 'real package management', I think (and I've only just started to use YaST today!) it's great. No problems with package management...
Simon
Suse x64 and 3ware RAID
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Suse 9.1 Reviews?
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· Score: 5, Informative
Be careful if you're going to put an Escalade 850x RAID card into an AMD 64 box and run SUSE linux on it. I've been having hell trying to get it to work with 9.0. The vendor is sending 9.1 around on Monday (so this story came a couple of days early for me:-) but certainly it doesn't work on the 64-bit 9.0 version. I'm hopeful the shift from kernel 2.4 to 2.6 will have an effect...
The hardware is fine (works great in Windows), but the entire system can hang in 5 minutes once it's had Suse 9.0 installed on it. For some reason, the windows drivers are a lot better as well - the peak read and write speeds are higher:-(
Just a cautionary tale - I'll be as happy as anyone if 9.1 fixes it though:-))
When you're a subscriber, you get the story early, and you also get the line:
See any serious problems with this story? Email our on-duty editor.
Well, Duh!
Let's see now: 1TB of storage is the thing that stands out. I've been running a dual CPU machine with 4GB of RAM for a while now, but 1 TB of storage, what the hell for ?
I've just commissioned a dual opteron 248 (2.2 GHz) , 8 GB of RAM, 1TB of disk with a 3ware 9500 raid controller (I'll post benchmarks soon if anyone's interested - I can't find any on the net but it promises 400MB/sec sequential raid-5 reads. We'll see...) This is far and away the most powerful machine I've ever ordered, and it doesn't meet the Longhorn 'average'... Something smells...
It's also of course one of the founding principles of capitalism - to harness an individuals greed (or, more politely, desire for improved returns). The thing is that here we have a conflict of greed. One the one hand, we have the **AA and their cohorts trying to control the distribution and use of their material, on the other we have the consumers trying to maximise how they can use the material that they feel they own (irrespective of licencing agreements) because they've paid for it.
There was an article in New Scientist a while back about how even a very young child can appreciate fair play - if the child repeatedly gets given back only 4 sweets when they hand over 5 to the researcher, they quickly feel hard-done-by. Even lower primates have the same sense of 'fair play'. When we purchase a DVD or CD, we expect to be able to use it however we want, make coasters out of DVD's if that's what floats our boat. We resist limits on what we can do with something when we consider it 'ours' by right of payment. This is obviously a very basic and primitive response, but by that very nature will be very hard to eradicate...
The upshot of all this of course will be that the OSS scene will become more and more 'free' in the sense that arbitrary limits on what you can do with data (DVD, CD, whatever) are far less likely than in the controlled (mainly MS, but others too) closed-source environments.
Thank [insert random deity] for Linux and GNU, a tradition that has brought us to the point where we at least *have* a choice on what to do. Consider the alternative - without the rallying cry of the GPL and Linux, we'd be choosing between a fragmented unix market (and only Irix can really do justice to multimedia, IMHO), Apple or Windows. 99% of people would be using Windows and bemoaning that they had no real alternative. I guess we dodged that one, at least presupposing that there will be ways around the DRM imposed on the unfortunate windows users. We do have a far larger pool of talent to pull ideas from than the manufacturers though, so there is yet hope.
But then, if you think they'd be tracking you by your IP address, then 'authority' has far easier (and way more accurate) ways of getting your information than via my website. My thoughts on the subject are outlined on the 'Privacy Issues' section of the site.....
[this is reasonably political - feel free to ignore]
Whereas this is bound to be a 'good thing' (the cry 'child in trouble' is just about the most instinct-driven response any adult has), the signature is somethinng to be wary of.
Consider that analysis of people-in-crowds is pretty easy these days. Consider that tracking (after positive analysis) is again reasonably simple (I was doing it 15 years ago - the key is to track in feature-space (region features: circularity, RGB, connectivity, 1st- and 2nd-order parameters) rather than just using image intensity. Using relations between features gives you context and thus more contextual information).
Consider that if you can track individuals within crowds, and given a covert surveillance system (eg: London, UK) you can track indivduals from locality to locality. You can start to (automatically) build circles-of-trust where individuals who meet regularly are automatically associated.
Consider that biometric information is now being put forward (eg: fingerprints, DNA samples, Iris scans, head ratios (eye:nose:chin parameters) and other observable information) and encoded within a compulsory identity card
Consider the amalgamation of this automatic identification, automatic relation of associates, and automatic recognition of individuals. Consider the implications. And yet a "Labour" government (the "People's" party!) is putting this forward in the UK.
I am fortunate. I am planning to emigrate this year to the US from the UK - previously I thought the UK (despite the lack of consitution) had a reality more responsive to the people and their ideals than the US. No more. I am one of the lucky ones that Joseph "Blunkett" Stalin will have no hold over. I feel deeply for my erstwhile compatriots. Freedom, after all, is a state of mind, and mind control is a tool of (this UK) government.
Yet Darrell Luzzo, senior vice president of Junior Achievement, defends the industry's antipiracy program by saying it's not meant to cover all aspects of copyright law. Rather, the idea is to encourage student debate. ''We are learning ways to enhance classroom discussions."
I don't know, back in the dim and distant past when I were a lad, it was considered harmful to use brainwashing and coercion in education. I guess that's the price you pay for progress though. I hear they're moving onto aversion therapy next - "just put this down your pants lad, no it doesn't matter where, trust us, we know what we're doing..." ZZZAAAPPP
Doesn't this also count as political education - I mean the MPAA/RIAA are making a big deal about buying senators and so on to fight their "cause". You'd have thought they couldn't have their cake and eat it!
Oh well, it's a damn sight better than the UK at the moment anyway, with the mad blind fascist Josef Blunkett attempting to ID all and sundry:-( Think yourselves lucky as they ZZZAAAPPP you...
I was thinking more in terms of a Myth TV front-end than the whole shebang to be honest - so you either put a wireless card into it (you can get those in the PCI form factor supported) or you link it up by network to the source. You don't need the HD input to be part of the same box...
Since VIA have put a lot of effort into upping the boards memory capabilities, and running SD mpeg decode takes (on an 8mbit stream on my mini-itx box) ~12% CPU, I'd be surprised if it couldn't handle HD. My projector can only handle 1080i (1920x540 pixels/field) which is 5x PAL (720x288 pixels/field) assuming similar refresh rates. That ought to be within the capabilities of the current board, even if they haven't added more capability to the (new) chipset.
DirecTV ? Que ?
I think Myth is easily up to Tivo's level actually, it's just a bitch to configure properly. OTOH, I've never seen Tivo-2, they stopped at version 1 over here in the UK, so maybe there is a difference.
The Nano-ITX cpu/chipset from VIA also does HD mpeg decoding in hardware. Getting technical docs out of VIA is a blood/stone issue, but the existing community peeps have managed to get the SD HW mpeg decoder working, and you'd expect it to be substantially similar.... You'll need an HD MPEG capture card though because the chip's nowhere near fast enough to do it in software
(The Hoojum [see above link] box also looks very very nice, at least IMHO:-)
"... people all over the world are amazingly similar. Some anthropologists believe that this genetic homogeneity is the result of a "population bottleneck"--that at some time in the past our ancestors went through an event that greatly reduced our numbers and thus our genetic variation. Based on estimates of mutation rates, Penn State geneticist Henry Harpending says the bottleneck happened sometime after... 100,000 years ago and before a population increase... around 50,000 years ago. Now archeologist Stan Ambrose of the University of Illinois has linked Harpending's theory with geologic evidence to explain what caused the bottleneck--a giant volcanic eruption.... Mount Toba in Sumatra blew 800 cubic kilometers of ash into the air--4,000 times as much as Mount St. Helens--the largest volcanic eruption in more than 400 million years. Toba buried most of India under ash and must have darkened skies over a third of the hemisphere for weeks.... a six-year global volcanic winter ensued, caused by light-reflecting sulfur particles lingering in the atmosphere. Average summer temperatures dropped by 21 degrees at high latitudes, and 75 percent of the Northern Hemisphere's plants may have died.... A thousand-year ice age began... caused perhaps by an increasing amount of snow that failed to melt over the summer. This snow cover would have reflected more sunlight off Earth's surface, making the world still colder. The effect on humans, who had been enjoying a relatively warm period, must have been devastating.... Perhaps only a few thousand people... survived....".]
If that's 'peachy', I'd sure-as-hell not want to come across anything 'hard'. Granted it's just one view, but then any one person (you and I included) only have one view as well...
Quite apart from the fact that sometimes life didn't go on (which ought to be enough to concern anyone), if you look at how these phenomena manifest, you'll see that it's typically not a linear process. There's normally a critical point over which X happens and below which Y happens. If X is lethal to human life (snowball earth, greenhouse earth) then we'd damn well better hope we stick with Y.
A case in point is the atlantic conveyer (the 'Gulf Stream' to us Brits). If the conveyer stops, an absolutely massive amount of energy will cease to be delivered to where it currently is. The knock-on effects aren't really model-able, we just don't have the knowledge, but since staggeringly enormous amounts of warmth would cease to be delivered to the UK coastline, you could assume it will get colder, even if you don't know quite how much. To give some perspective, it generates a difference of approximately 20 degrees celcius between points at the same latitude. 20 degrees of delta-T over several hundred billion tons of water is a lot of energy to be dependent on far-easier-to-change salinity level.
The atlantic conveyer depends on salinity in different parts of the world. If it rains more (in places that it currently rains little) and rains less (in places where it currently rains significantly) the saline levels will change, and the conveyer will be affected - at the critical point, it will simply stop. There's no obvious way we could restart it either. Shifting several hundred billion tons of water is way beyond our capabilities, and restoring the initial conditions may not be sufficient.
I guess I'm sufficiently worried about the consequences (which we will not be able to counter) to pay some heed to people who try to assess risk under next-to-impossible scientific conditions. I guess, given the potential consequences, that I'm willing to listen more to those who get off their backsides and put some effort into the analysis than people who sit around saying, 'hell we've had ice ages before and we will again'.
Actually humankind hasn't had ice-ages before, and to suggest we'd just cope is hubris of the highest order. We live in a highly technological society, and yes, given an immense struggle I think we would probably cope, as in 'Western civilisation' would cope. Countless millions would die in poorer, less developed, and simply unluckily-positioned countries as weather systems went out of control. One other thought is that a highly-structured, lean-and-mean (due to commercial pressures, mainly) society is a vulnerable society. If central America were reduced to a desert (unlikely, but possible) then the food chain would break within the US, and other countries would have a hard-enough time to feed their own. 280 million people is a lot of mouths...
If the ground measurements are 0.34 degrees/decade, and the external measurements are 0.43 degrees/decade, then presumably the extra energy is contained within the circulating atmosphere. Certainly this ought to make the global dissipation happen faster (air tends to move more than water and earth (!) and has a fairly good heat-sink at the space boundary, not to mention the poles). I wonder if they've taken that into account.
On a slightly different note, I've always felt a sense of wonder when thousands of billions of air molecules synchronise their motion and hit you full in the face. I've always thought it ought to have a more poetic name than 'wind', considering the breathtaking nature of the phenomenon. Just a thought:-)
I support a football (soccer if you prefer:-) team that has a webcast of all the home matches. Since very few matches are televised per season, it's a good second-best, especially because I've got a nice fast broadband connection. Just take the portable into the front room, link it up to the projector using the VGA input, and watch the match with the video stream being served using WiFi from the router at the back of the house:-)
The quality isn't as good as broadcast TV (!) but it's a damn sight better than radio:-)
They must really love you They must think the sun shines right out of your arse, sonny! I'd love to only get 1/3 of MY mail as spam Ooh ooh ooh, my idea of heaven is to only get 1/3 of MY mail as spam What I wouldn't give to have only 1/3 spam. Nail them up I say!
Slashdot Mirror
I often sign myself 'Simon the cynic' when I read about personage X making some sweeping statement about how things are going to be - but for me it comes down to where the benefit is to be had. If there is no precedent or no perceivable advantage, my reaction is often (as the Poster's) "Yeah, right!".
In this case I have a (gut) feeling they're probably genuine. JBoss are up the proverbial creek - they're a commercial software house which relies on the same sort of markets as Open Source software, and they've just lost a lot of credibility. The only way out of it to them is to 'fess up, to publicly admit their wrongdoing, and pledge not to do it again. I'm also a firm believer in letting peoples actions decide my opinion of them - talk is after all cheap, especially in this digital age - and I believe in judging after the fact, not before. My regard for their (phenomenal) achievement dropped significantly when the story broke, but respect can be earnt over again. Let's see, indeed, but with an open mind.
Now that they *have* made a public pledge, and if they're caught again, it's game over in the reputation stakes. Anyone can make a mistake, and society usually forgives a single error of judgement - we generally expect people to learn, however. I think that this itself should be sufficient to keep them on the straight and narrow... Of course, this is just a different form of cynicism
I thought the idea that pollution of the information space was a "crime" in and of itself was an interesting point - I generally consider the net to be something of a cesspool, and it's not just cream that floats to the top... On the other hand, dive right in (yuck. Nasty mental image) and there's a lot on offer freely which would be otherwise hard to obtain. I wonder when (if) the balance will tip so there's more cream than crap.
Simon the cynic.
... and we didn't try and tailor the report (3 months work for 5 people including world-wide travel) to our paymasters. Our view was that we were being paid to produce a report on what is (for a fairly major computer manufacturer) rather than what they would like things to be. They already know what they would like things to be...
:-) still have some self-respect and integrity - please consider each case on its merits...
On the other hand, "hired guns" are mercenaries - they will do as you wish, when you wish, how you wish. The AdTI are hired guns. Some of us (the others
Simon.
Only when you are sufficiently confident in your premises do you venture to be droll to your enemies, and make no mistake, the AdTi is Linus' enemy. The use of humour is simultaneously the ultimate statement of confidence and the ultimate put-down - it's a pre-generated sound-bite. It's a kick in the vitals. To all on the (winning) side of Linux, it's a rallying cry. Go Linus.
There's nothing more satisfying than placing your critics up on a pedestal and ripping them to shreds - the pen is indeed mightier than the sword, and it doesn;t depend on pointiness
What will be interesting is just how long the AdTI will remain a serious news source - the ultimate goal is obviously to get them to discredit themselves to such an extent that they can be held up as an example of how *not* to do it. Given their paymaster, the hopeless nature of their case, and the imperatives they must put forward each time, I think we have a significant chance of a sacrificial lamb in Linux' cause... Rope to hang themselves is what we want... Remember that
Simon
And yet you look at the employment rates within the UK and the rest of Europe (3% vs 12% approx) .... The UK is hardly a panacea but if you're willing to go for a lower paid job than you think you deserve, you'll prosper. It's always easier to get another job when you already have a job....
Personally given the fact that the UK is the driving force behind software patents in the EU, I wil be voting against the government and against anything EU-centric in the upcoming elections. I don't see that it's at all democratic for the EU parliament (I think) to decide amendments need to be made, then the EU Council of ministers to ride roughshod over the whole thing. Go Germany, I wish the UK government had half the cluebat you wield....
I wonder if the UK gets a net gain from being in Europe, I really do. Consider if we *did* become the 51st state. The real problem would be that the US people would never accept it - we have 56 million people, the US has 260 million. If the Uk became a state, it would represent 1/6 the population of the USA, never mind the influence the commonwealth brings in... The Whitehouse would have to be relocated to 10 Downing St. Can't see it myself... Empire by default - never happen, given our history...
Simon
[the latter part of the post remains unquoted since it deals with consequences, not statements or postulates]
[sigh]. Indeed. In the first instance I was wrong, it was a slip twixt mind and hand after I'd read the article, get over it - unless of course you've never written one thing while thinking another... In the second I used the same attribution as in the article. That's a 50% score as far as I'm concerned. By the way, "fair cop" is UK slang for "yes you're right" in this context. Perhaps it's different where you hail from.
You called me to task on 2 things - the former I believe you were right with (note that I haven't tried to defend the position at all), the latter I believe you are wrong on. That's also a 50% score as far as I'm concerned.
The reason for my reply (since it seems to have been missed) was really to point out that you weren't particularly forgiving in your rebuttal, and that you were only as right as I was. Pot, kettle, black. The fact that the general readership seems to have (as I write) elevated the post where all I point out is this fact to +4 would seem to lend some popular weight to my argument.
Enough, reply if you wish, as far as I'm concerned this argument over - it has gone on far too long already.
Simon
The 'teasing' I think is a fair description, since the article itself uses the word to describe the process:
So, in your opinion I may not be either interesting or informative, but I am 50% correct. As were you. You're welcome too.
Simon.
Perhaps not around my crotch [grin] but they were all originally designed for boots, and I'd probably (carefully, mind) use it to do up my boots...
Simon
I think the word 'modern' in that sentence implies an 'earlier' version...
Simon
Whenever I read one of these articles about a process requiring X, Y and Z to all do novel things A,B and C under strict conditions, I always think 'how are you going to commercialise that?! Chip fabrication was a case in point - I guess where there's a multi-billion dollar will, there's a way...
:-)
This process requires lasers to melt the metal and tease the structures into being and yet it can do 100 cm^2 in 10 seconds... That's just not intuitive [grin]. Kudos to the researchers - us Brits have always been jealous of the Yanks for inventing the zip anyway
Simon
Yep - the vendor had already put 2.4.21-193 on as an upgrade to the base install (it came pre-installed).
:-)
Cheers though
ATB,
Simon
I don't suppose you could tell me the versions that you are running that are stable, could you ? The vendor claims to have had it running just fine in Redhat with the shipped ones, so I'm assuming it's a 64-bit issue - if you have 'known-good' values, I'd appreciate them...
Cheers,
Simon
Suse certainly does provide you with the kernel you're running. If you look at their patches page, you can see all the .rpm's have .src.rpm equivalents, including the kernel.
I haven't checked, but I'm pretty sure that the source for all the things on side 1 of the DVD is on side 2 as well...
As for 'real package management', I think (and I've only just started to use YaST today!) it's great. No problems with package management...
Simon
Be careful if you're going to put an Escalade 850x RAID card into an AMD 64 box and run SUSE linux on it. I've been having hell trying to get it to work with 9.0. The vendor is sending 9.1 around on Monday (so this story came a couple of days early for me
The hardware is fine (works great in Windows), but the entire system can hang in 5 minutes once it's had Suse 9.0 installed on it. For some reason, the windows drivers are a lot better as well - the peak read and write speeds are higher
Just a cautionary tale - I'll be as happy as anyone if 9.1 fixes it though
Simon
When you're a subscriber, you get the story early, and you also get the line:
Well, Duh!
Let's see now: 1TB of storage is the thing that stands out. I've been running a dual CPU machine with 4GB of RAM for a while now, but 1 TB of storage, what the hell for ?
I've just commissioned a dual opteron 248 (2.2 GHz) , 8 GB of RAM, 1TB of disk with a 3ware 9500 raid controller (I'll post benchmarks soon if anyone's interested - I can't find any on the net but it promises 400MB/sec sequential raid-5 reads. We'll see...) This is far and away the most powerful machine I've ever ordered, and it doesn't meet the Longhorn 'average'... Something smells...
Simon
It's also of course one of the founding principles of capitalism - to harness an individuals greed (or, more politely, desire for improved returns). The thing is that here we have a conflict of greed. One the one hand, we have the **AA and their cohorts trying to control the distribution and use of their material, on the other we have the consumers trying to maximise how they can use the material that they feel they own (irrespective of licencing agreements) because they've paid for it.
There was an article in New Scientist a while back about how even a very young child can appreciate fair play - if the child repeatedly gets given back only 4 sweets when they hand over 5 to the researcher, they quickly feel hard-done-by. Even lower primates have the same sense of 'fair play'. When we purchase a DVD or CD, we expect to be able to use it however we want, make coasters out of DVD's if that's what floats our boat. We resist limits on what we can do with something when we consider it 'ours' by right of payment. This is obviously a very basic and primitive response, but by that very nature will be very hard to eradicate...
The upshot of all this of course will be that the OSS scene will become more and more 'free' in the sense that arbitrary limits on what you can do with data (DVD, CD, whatever) are far less likely than in the controlled (mainly MS, but others too) closed-source environments.
Thank [insert random deity] for Linux and GNU, a tradition that has brought us to the point where we at least *have* a choice on what to do. Consider the alternative - without the rallying cry of the GPL and Linux, we'd be choosing between a fragmented unix market (and only Irix can really do justice to multimedia, IMHO), Apple or Windows. 99% of people would be using Windows and bemoaning that they had no real alternative. I guess we dodged that one, at least presupposing that there will be ways around the DRM imposed on the unfortunate windows users. We do have a far larger pool of talent to pull ideas from than the manufacturers though, so there is yet hope.
Simon
[grin] touche
But then, if you think they'd be tracking you by your IP address, then 'authority' has far easier (and way more accurate) ways of getting your information than via my website. My thoughts on the subject are outlined on the 'Privacy Issues' section of the site.....
Simon.
[this is reasonably political - feel free to ignore]
Whereas this is bound to be a 'good thing' (the cry 'child in trouble' is just about the most instinct-driven response any adult has), the signature is somethinng to be wary of.
Consider that analysis of people-in-crowds is pretty easy these days. Consider that tracking (after positive analysis) is again reasonably simple (I was doing it 15 years ago - the key is to track in feature-space (region features: circularity, RGB, connectivity, 1st- and 2nd-order parameters) rather than just using image intensity. Using relations between features gives you context and thus more contextual information).
Consider that if you can track individuals within crowds, and given a covert surveillance system (eg: London, UK) you can track indivduals from locality to locality. You can start to (automatically) build circles-of-trust where individuals who meet regularly are automatically associated.
Consider that biometric information is now being put forward (eg: fingerprints, DNA samples, Iris scans, head ratios (eye:nose:chin parameters) and other observable information) and encoded within a compulsory identity card
Consider the amalgamation of this automatic identification, automatic relation of associates, and automatic recognition of individuals. Consider the implications. And yet a "Labour" government (the "People's" party!) is putting this forward in the UK.
I am fortunate. I am planning to emigrate this year to the US from the UK - previously I thought the UK (despite the lack of consitution) had a reality more responsive to the people and their ideals than the US. No more. I am one of the lucky ones that Joseph "Blunkett" Stalin will have no hold over. I feel deeply for my erstwhile compatriots. Freedom, after all, is a state of mind, and mind control is a tool of (this UK) government.
Simon.
I don't know, back in the dim and distant past when I were a lad, it was considered harmful to use brainwashing and coercion in education. I guess that's the price you pay for progress though. I hear they're moving onto aversion therapy next - "just put this down your pants lad, no it doesn't matter where, trust us, we know what we're doing..." ZZZAAAPPP
Doesn't this also count as political education - I mean the MPAA/RIAA are making a big deal about buying senators and so on to fight their "cause". You'd have thought they couldn't have their cake and eat it!
Oh well, it's a damn sight better than the UK at the moment anyway, with the mad blind fascist Josef Blunkett attempting to ID all and sundry
Simon
I was thinking more in terms of a Myth TV front-end than the whole shebang to be honest - so you either put a wireless card into it (you can get those in the PCI form factor supported) or you link it up by network to the source. You don't need the HD input to be part of the same box...
Since VIA have put a lot of effort into upping the boards memory capabilities, and running SD mpeg decode takes (on an 8mbit stream on my mini-itx box) ~12% CPU, I'd be surprised if it couldn't handle HD. My projector can only handle 1080i (1920x540 pixels/field) which is 5x PAL (720x288 pixels/field) assuming similar refresh rates. That ought to be within the capabilities of the current board, even if they haven't added more capability to the (new) chipset.
DirecTV ? Que ?
I think Myth is easily up to Tivo's level actually, it's just a bitch to configure properly. OTOH, I've never seen Tivo-2, they stopped at version 1 over here in the UK, so maybe there is a difference.
Simon.
The Nano-ITX cpu/chipset from VIA also does HD mpeg decoding in hardware. Getting technical docs out of VIA is a blood/stone issue, but the existing community peeps have managed to get the SD HW mpeg decoder working, and you'd expect it to be substantially similar.... You'll need an HD MPEG capture card though because the chip's nowhere near fast enough to do it in software
:-)
(The Hoojum [see above link] box also looks very very nice, at least IMHO
Simon
From a google search
If that's 'peachy', I'd sure-as-hell not want to come across anything 'hard'. Granted it's just one view, but then any one person (you and I included) only have one view as well...
Quite apart from the fact that sometimes life didn't go on (which ought to be enough to concern anyone), if you look at how these phenomena manifest, you'll see that it's typically not a linear process. There's normally a critical point over which X happens and below which Y happens. If X is lethal to human life (snowball earth, greenhouse earth) then we'd damn well better hope we stick with Y.
A case in point is the atlantic conveyer (the 'Gulf Stream' to us Brits). If the conveyer stops, an absolutely massive amount of energy will cease to be delivered to where it currently is. The knock-on effects aren't really model-able, we just don't have the knowledge, but since staggeringly enormous amounts of warmth would cease to be delivered to the UK coastline, you could assume it will get colder, even if you don't know quite how much. To give some perspective, it generates a difference of approximately 20 degrees celcius between points at the same latitude. 20 degrees of delta-T over several hundred billion tons of water is a lot of energy to be dependent on far-easier-to-change salinity level.
The atlantic conveyer depends on salinity in different parts of the world. If it rains more (in places that it currently rains little) and rains less (in places where it currently rains significantly) the saline levels will change, and the conveyer will be affected - at the critical point, it will simply stop. There's no obvious way we could restart it either. Shifting several hundred billion tons of water is way beyond our capabilities, and restoring the initial conditions may not be sufficient.
I guess I'm sufficiently worried about the consequences (which we will not be able to counter) to pay some heed to people who try to assess risk under next-to-impossible scientific conditions. I guess, given the potential consequences, that I'm willing to listen more to those who get off their backsides and put some effort into the analysis than people who sit around saying, 'hell we've had ice ages before and we will again'.
Actually humankind hasn't had ice-ages before, and to suggest we'd just cope is hubris of the highest order. We live in a highly technological society, and yes, given an immense struggle I think we would probably cope, as in 'Western civilisation' would cope. Countless millions would die in poorer, less developed, and simply unluckily-positioned countries as weather systems went out of control. One other thought is that a highly-structured, lean-and-mean (due to commercial pressures, mainly) society is a vulnerable society. If central America were reduced to a desert (unlikely, but possible) then the food chain would break within the US, and other countries would have a hard-enough time to feed their own. 280 million people is a lot of mouths...
Simon
If the ground measurements are 0.34 degrees/decade, and the external measurements are 0.43 degrees/decade, then presumably the extra energy is contained within the circulating atmosphere. Certainly this ought to make the global dissipation happen faster (air tends to move more than water and earth (!) and has a fairly good heat-sink at the space boundary, not to mention the poles). I wonder if they've taken that into account.
On a slightly different note, I've always felt a sense of wonder when thousands of billions of air molecules synchronise their motion and hit you full in the face. I've always thought it ought to have a more poetic name than 'wind', considering the breathtaking nature of the phenomenon. Just a thought
Simon.
I support a football (soccer if you prefer :-) team that has a webcast of all the home matches. Since very few matches are televised per season, it's a good second-best, especially because I've got a nice fast broadband connection. Just take the portable into the front room, link it up to the projector using the VGA input, and watch the match with the video stream being served using WiFi from the router at the back of the house :-)
:-)
The quality isn't as good as broadcast TV (!) but it's a damn sight better than radio
Simon
They must really love you
:-)
They must think the sun shines right out of your arse, sonny!
I'd love to only get 1/3 of MY mail as spam
Ooh ooh ooh, my idea of heaven is to only get 1/3 of MY mail as spam
What I wouldn't give to have only 1/3 spam.
Nail them up I say!
(With apologies to MP
Simon.