suggest DirectPC to anyone. A friend of mine decided to get it since he was already getting DirectTV and could't get cable access. First of all you're paying for two ISPs, the upstream provider and then DirectPC's downstream service. Not only are you paying out the bum for the service but you are also charged for bandwidth usage in the same fashion as ISDN. He also had serious trouble gaming since his ping was always >800ms. I don't recall if he ever got it working on his Linux box because of the funky network setup (him and I aren't gurus). I have a similar problem with my cable modem, I use my modem for upstream traffic and the cable for downstream. I had trouble configuring Linux to work right with it so I left it on my Windows machine. The service is a little Windows centric in my opinion because they require you to use two different network protocols at the same time which Macs can't do without third party software and it takes some wrestling (for me at least) to do it with Linux. Thats just my experience I could be wrong.
the transistor as the greatest invention of our time but it is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to this century's technology. A good deal of this century's technological feats sprouted from one of last century's technologies. In 1879 the first incandecent light bulb was produced and after that the world got addicted to electricity. Telephones, TVs, transistors all would be useless without electricity. Anyways, I think top of the list after eletricity would probably be the telephone. The telegraph was and is a good means of communication but Morse code isn't for novices, only technicians and above. The telephone was to the telegraph that Windows was to DOS. After the telephone would have to be the gasoline engine. The gasoline engine leads to my next one, powered flight. Before the gasoline engine it was nearly impossible to build a powered aircraft because the propulsion was just too darned heavy. After powered flight I would probably say television, not that it was a good invention, merely popular and major. Next on my list would easily be manned/unmanned space flight. Transistors would barely be maturing right now if it hadn't been for an agressive space program that poured billions into the industry. Then transistors and microelectronics and eventually the internet. I think networking two computers together is more of a technological achievement than e-commerce and webcams though. Maybe Twinkies should go at the top od the list, I realized today while eating some Cheetoes that if I died out in the desert somewhere that the food I was munching would outlast my carcas. Thats somethin to think about.
an article doing more than advertising OS X. I have some of my own complaints about Mac OS, I have been using it since 5.something and have had plenty of time to learn to dislike certain aspects of it. Alot of my gripes were handled in OS 8, sticky menus, shortcuts on the Apple menu, scalable slide bars, ect. One thing in Windows that I really like interface wise is the two button mouse. I know a single button mouse has been a Mac stable since before the Mac was even a wet dream but it makes the Mac too keyboard dependant. I can of course take the time to pearn all of the keyboard commands for all of my programs (I know them by now) but the first time you use a particular program can be non-intuitive. The functionality at a mouseclick is something Microsoft added to Windows 95 that gave it a big advantage over 3.11 and Mac OS 7 when it first came out. By right clicking in a window you could control all the aspects of a file or add filters and such to an image, not to mention the ability to close down a program with a single click. OS 8 added similar functions to the window close box for some of their programs but you still need to Apple+Q most programs. I share the author's complaints about professionals not liking Aqua, if I want to get something done in Photoshop I don't want to wrestle with the GUI's icons and pictures to do it. Completely aside from GUI are my questions about what else is being revised in OS X. Networking for Mac sucks and most of the time you need extra software just to communicate with other computers on your network. It's a hassle for me to network my Powerbook and PCs together. OS X needs to have a greatly improved interface for controls too, half of the controls have been updated while the rest of them harken back to the days of OS 6 and 7. And another thing, I want to be able to access my programs from a small text/icon based menu in easy reach, not a huge launcher window or having to hunt through the Apple menu down to the favourites list.
IBM and Sun both produce products in the same catagories and would be a good (albeit expensive) choice for a new or old company in terms of computing power. They also share the same problem, bad PR. To find success stories using one of the companies' solutions you need to look several layers down, it would be alot more impressive to people (especially PHBs) if they would really show off their technology and tout its good performance. Both offer a network computing solution which if you used it in your office would solve a host of problems associated with managing a hundred or more PCs but do you see commercials or banners about them? Nope. IBM is sort of sitting on its thumbs lately, partially (in my opinion) due to their reduction in funding for them dropping "pure science" research for "profitable science" research. They are refining established technologies and not looking for new ones. Both companies need to simplify their product line-up and show their potential customers what they can do. Apple (go flame your bottoms and not me) is a very good example of how to work the machine we call consumerism. Make your product line visible and clean, show people what exactly your products can do, and unify your OS strategy. Your big servers need to communicate well with your small clients and your thin clients better communicate damn well with both your servers and other clients thin or otherwise not to mention everyone else's clients and networks.
Linux advocacy is nice until it reaches the point where you're kicking and scraping to convince yourself and others that it is the greatest thing since sliced bread. Solaris is a very good operating system on its native hardware (SPARC et al) it is however a little weaker on non-native hardware. You also have to remember that Sun is in the enterprise solution/packages business, not merely some hardware with a webserver on it like Dell and others. Since most of these packages are not development environments (the ones that are develope for Solaris on Solaris in a business to business sense for the most part) it would seem kinda silly for them to come jam packed with a bunch of source code and compilers, who is going to be using their brand new E10k ultra server box for hacking out some C++? Solaris also scales very well RIGHT OUT OF THE BOX, that is something I think open source people take for granted. Since you recompile the kernel to make changes it is really easy if you know what you're doing to scale it to a 10 node server farm. Solaris does this WITHOUT recompiling and does it very well. For the me toos out there that love to call it Slowaris, learn to read. There are what we called "system requirements" and we use that information to figure out if we can indeed run a certain piece of software on our hardware. Of course it runs slower on x86 hardware, it is natively run on SPARC machines! Solaris also likes to use alot of RAM, so you would be hard pressed to slap it on your old 486 with 16 megs of RAM. Come on people, quit the "if it ain't Linux we bash it" attitude. I think it's really cool that Sun is going to release Solaris 8 for free, I have my copy already. They aren't releasing it free to copy Linux (which should be stated as copying the GPL rather than Linux itself since Sun isn't trying to make the Solaris kernel run like the Linux kernel), it's an appetizer so sysadmins can get ahold of a copy and see if they want to invest in Sun or want to stick with what they have.
that someone would do a nice article on who the RIAA actually are so the people that read the article will realize why the rest of us get so pissed off when we hear about them suing someone. The RIAA is composed of a very small handful of recording companies, the companies that own most of the distrobution channels of music and do everything they can to keep a strangle hold on it. When the whole audio CD-ROM format was just a twingle in some engineer's eye, they could have doubled the quality of CD audio but the RIAA decided not to give consumers TOO good of quality music recordings. Mostly because they were weary of the popularity of CDs. They were right, who would ever buy a shiney five inch disk?
Atari hit it right on the money when saying alot of magazines don't appeal to people who don't like exclusively violent games male or female. I think the reason is the magazine editorial staff is predominantly Quake-playing males (not as a slight against anyone mind you) and so they report on the stuff that interests them. One of the reasons ads appeal more to boys than girls is that it's easy to convince most guys of a game's appeal with Lara Croft in a bikini than it would be to entice a girl with some kinda character. Who knows, I'm just guessing.
like the Ars article, it was well written. I think the Crusoe is impressive because it does what RISC was originally concepted to do. Look at MIPS, it's a RISC architecture yet it has some of the most complex processing units you'll find. Things like Crusoe and MAJC really rattle the cages of other chip makers because they take an entirely different approach to the chip design. Even PPC is getting really complex, especially by adding the AltiVec unit onto the die, while it improves performance in come calculations it adds signifigantly to the price and complexity of the chip. The human brain can calculate some pretty complex things yet it's processing is done in a massive amount of simple processes rather than a small number of complex ones. I think the next generation of super computers will be built a little more like Crusoe chips, maybe even using Crusoes. The more times it works a calculation the faster it does it, this would add phenominal performance to alot of things we use super computers for right now. Maybe in the next ten years we'll see desktop teraflop systems.
The best way for games to run would be like nVidia is doing with the GeForce's GPU, the GPU handles the graphics and transforms and all the heavy duty FPU calculations while the system's CPU handles the actual code of the game. The instruction set I would guess would be best for gaming is true RISC, it gets the job done as simple and quick as possible. Games as well as any graphical pose a challenge to processors and programmers because you have two things going on, the data manipulation and control of the program and then the graphical manipulation of the graphics. Look at any CLI programs, they have a single job to do usually at a time and can work in order, Quake needs to do 30 things at once.
I have used both SCSI and IDE based systems and I have to say SCSI fares much better in the performance area like anyone here could tell you. The big deal with IDE on desktop systems is back when a 1.2gb drive was enormous the drives on your PC were IDE. For hard drive manufacturers to keep selling their products they need to make damn sure their products work with legacy systems. So many years of IDE being dominant has left IDE the dominant standard today, SCSI is still too expensive for most people not to mention the need for a SCSI adapter. Motherboards with SCSI adapters built onto them cost way more than boards with just IDE, which is something I can't understand. The controller chips can't be very expensive anymore (if you use Moore's law) but I figure the companies keep the prices high because they are figuring they will sell to corporate customers with oodles of cash. I personally think the standard should be changed from IDE and SCSI to IEEE 1394. My reasoning is this, since all 1394 devices can work independantly from the CPU and from each other it would make the system all around more efficient if your DVD, HDD, scanner, and video camera were all connected to the same bus. The speed isn't bad either, 400 or 800 Mbps which is comparable to ATA-66 and faster SCSI speeds. I also rather like the idea of power being supplied by the bus itself rather than by a separate connector, that leaves me with alot less wires hanging around in my system.
Someone else pointed out an EPA report on methanol, which is very toxic to humans and other animals as it is processed by the liver. With enough in your body you will die, non-lethal doasges will probably kill most if not all of your liver. I would be worried about replacable cartidges not being resilient enough to withstand dropping or some such (methanol has a low boiling point which means in alot of cases it would be gaseous). Batteries aren't safer for the most part but they are sealed pretty well, enough for use in your children's electronics. People talked about methanol replacement cartridges bought like replacable pen cartridges, I think I'd like a little heavier aluminum cases or something. Besides methanol's toxicity, there is the question of pollution. They will be producing water and carbon dioxide, humans produce much more than their share of carbon dioxide already, proliferation of this fashion of fuel cell would increase that. I'm all for the longer lasting battery but you have to weigh it's TOTAL cost against its apparent costs.
even if it has been done already. That sounds like something a troll would say but it is true, several companies tried this before. I think Crusoe will become popular because it has Linus working on it (free publicity) and it is compatible with current software. Of course mobile users will be all over this but it also has some applications in thin clients and terminals and probably POS terminals. The power consumption and low cost would work to save companies oodle of dollars, not to mention the chips are software upgradable so their useful lifetime is probably 50-75% longer than a regular processor. Does anyone think they might release a code translator for IA-64?
is great! Not too many people see Be and want to try it because the OS itself costs money and then you need to find software for it. Maybe this will lead IS guys will try it out and decide to use it in offices and such, especially where user interface is important. I think a move like this will really help increase the user base of BeOS, people will be able to try it at home and get to like it. I can even hope that other programmers might adopt a similar distribution model with Be software, free software with enhanced versions and support available for people who want to buy it. Hmm maybe someday Adobe will port their suite of toys to Be.
The biggest reason people use AOL (when asked) was they liked the AOL chat and buddy lists. AOL is just an ISP version of TalkCity or rather, TalkCity is a net version of AOL. For years AOL has been churning out a disgustingly cluttered interface that did everything for the user who didn't know whether or not they had a modem. But the chat and e-mail is only so interesting before people get bored and stop watching the ads that make AOL so much money, they needed content. Time Warner has content to spare but had a crappy internet setup. AOL now has royalty free content they can cram down the throats of their 20 million or so users. Now with their high speed connections popping up they can easily make exclusive content only available to their users. People on Earthlink, AT&T, MSN, and the others won't have nearly the same content availability and will therefore be hard pressed to capture the eyes of their users. This is why monopoly is bad folks, when you own the distribution channels and content you can do anything you want, even when there were only ABC, NBC, and CBS those companies didn't own the radio waves they were broadcasting on, thats why they needed commercials to pay their bills. AOL now owns the content and "air waves" as it were so they have free reign with their new toy. This will lead to an exclusively AOL network and an exclusively MSN or Disney or what have you. The internet will turn into a giant corporate slop. The difference between the net monopolies and the broadcast monopolies of the 50s is that the net monopolies are going to own the pipe that the data comes through into your house or business. If you think it won't affect you because you don't use MSN or AOL, think ahead a few years when they own all the high speed and most of the low speed pipes available to you or when they decide they will go after the net backbones to really increase their hold on their slice of the net. Now I sound like a conspiracy theorist but it is the direction things are heading.
to have the bandwidth available to run our own small server at home? A T1 would be fine for a small personal website, even half of a T1 would be nice. My problem while looking for a web host is to find a site that has the features I want while still being affordable. I've yet to find a decent web host with personal websites in mind. They either don't offer enough space or don't have extras like a telnet account or ssh.
Some people deny with conviction that the AOL/TW merger will affect them in any way because they are not AOL users, while other claim it is the end of the world. This is a bad thing for many reasons. AOL for a long time has owned only their private network (a glorified virtual private network), then they got into the media game and started buying up high speed internet access. If AOL (or any company) has control of a majority of the data pipes coming into people's houses they control the data coming into people's houses. Now they own alot of pipes, they merge with Time Warner who happen to own a good deal of the data coming through those pipes that AOL owns. Now AOL has the ability to control the wires and the data. Smaller companies will have a real tough time competing with AOL since AOL can get alot of data into the homes and do it cheaper than anyone else. The small companies will have to sell out to MSN or some other huge network so we end up how we started, a handful of huge mega networks providing all of our content. After AOL owns as much of the content and home pipes as they can get their hands on, what will stop them from going after huge backbone providers like MCI and AT&T? If they own the backbones of the internet there is no room for competition, the T3 your website is on may be owned by some co-lo company but if the backbone is owned by AOL and they don't like you, you're screwed. Personally I don't want to see content only provided by Disney, AOL, and MSN. We are slowly turning into a giant corporate market. In the future there won't be countries, just different market demographics. The DOJ needs to look into AOL for a monopoly investigation, I don't think any company will buy all the media content they can and then share it in the name of good business.
The Star Wars DVD saga is really bothering me, not because I keep reading about it but because Lucas doesn't see fit to release the freakin things on DVD. I think they would look really pretty if they were set up similar to Star Wars: Behind the Magic; good interface, some littles goodies that make it worthwhile, and a little bit of behind the scenes stuff. I would settle for the SEs released on DVD, they would make enough money for him to make four TPMs. I understand him wanting to make them look good but we've been waiting for years to get just the original trilogy on DVD.
instead of an entirely new codec why not just use a version of MPEG-2 compression? MPEG-2 does not mean CSS, just in case anyone is flame happy for whatever reason. MPEG-2 is designed to be streamed, it's what DTV among other things are going to use. The bonuses of MPEG-2 is that a good number of newer video cards have hardware decompression and a good deal of those cards have X servers already written for them so a good deal of their specs are already known. MPEG-1 and 2 are also open formats and any Joe Programmer can makes an app using the codec. The hardware acceleration is a big bonus but even without it a smaller video frame wouldn't be too difficult for your CPU to decode. One of the best advantages of MPEG-2 is the good compression ratio, even lowbanders on 28.8s and 14.8s could get a decent quality picture and sound.
The FCC's mandate to oust NTSC from the airwaves so soon is just a bonehead idea in my opinion. Digital TV is an upper class toy than something beneficial to everyone. Look for example at the prices of the DTVs, they are thousands of dollars, where the analog 25" one I have was only a few hundred and I rather like its picture quality. As for DTV broadcasting, why would cable companies want to try to convert? They are just now starting to roll out cable internet service which is pretty profitable for them. DTV over coax would be difficult at best due to bandwidth problems. Right now only microwave satillite has the capacity to stream 19Mbps per channel to everyone on your block. Cable companies would have to overhaul their whole coax network just to match the bandwidth. TV manufacturers are making quite a profit building relativly cheap TVs that have coax/RCA connections that have much higher profit margines than digital TVs. Even if a lot of people could afford the TVs and service, how many people does the FCC think would buy it? Cable on a good day only comes through to 55% or so of the country, what happens to everyone who can't afford DTV? Oh yeah, broadcasters CAN as an option broadcast NTSC...does that seem like a bullshit plan to anyone else? Simulcasting is expensive, there would be 5 minute commercial spreads just to cover the price of the double broadcasting. I can imagine broadcasters are as aprehensive as the cable companies for the same reason. Digital broadcasting needs entirely new equipment and that equipment costs money. What was the FCC thinking?
Not to mention Apple themselves got sued over the Mac by Xerox because they said it copied their interface. Jobs started work on the Lisa after he visited Xerox.
Come on people, learn to read. Darwin is what is/has been open sourced. Mach and BSD have been open sourced a long time, the OS X kernel is based of these. Unlike Linux Apple is going with a microkernel which I think is a much better choice for the kind of work you're probably going to be doing on an OS X box. It sure does make me happy to see all this coming about, a couple years ago I was figuring Apple was going to go under. OS X is a culmination of YEARS of work by Apple's software people. I see people complaining it isn't completely open sourced and how some idiots want to make the backend Linux rather than Mach. Apple would never open source all of it's GUI stuff and basically give its OS away for free. The kernel is open sourced so it is much easier for developers to work on the platform since they can go look at the kernel's code rather than read a manual describing how it works. Apple won't change the backend to Linux because it has already tweaked the Mach kernel to be backwards compatible with existing Mac software. And the 12 month transition I think is an excellent idea because it gives companies plenty of time to get their hands on production copies of the OS and develop on it rather than having beta software that is being changed every month or two like Win2k. The only thing I am worried about with OS X is if I will be able to run it on my powerbook or not. With a desktop I'd have a little more expandibility but my powerbook I can add memory and disk space and the like but there isn't much I can do about the processor. 128x128 pixel icons must look beautiful on a 21" cinema display but how about on my 14.1" screen on my PB? I can't wait ti play with Adobe's stuff on OS X though, a stable kernel would be nice for those >2MB pictures. Speaking of Adobe, does the new GUI remind anyone else of MetaCreations software just a little bit?
especially the e-commerce mania that everyone talks about but you never heard people profiting from. And it is inevitable that companies not making profits will die, thats how capitalism works. I think the problem with alot of the.coms is they are run by computer geeks who've never been to business school and have only read a couple books on the subject. Probably the "Commerce for Dummies". As for their Linux prediction I don't think it is entirely correct. It's my belief (contrary to most people) that Linux will not be popular to the public in it's GNU form. For corporate systems and servers it works really well, a cheap x86 (among other chipsets) way to have Unix instead of paying oodles of noodles for Sun business machines. On the other hand personal users might try it and use it grudgingly but I doubt it will ever replace Windows in its present form. Using the Graymalkiball I predict a company will come along offering a commercial Unix for the home. Maybe a GNU kernel but an entirely commercial (open or closed source I don't know) operating environment. Right now everyone is just repackaging a bunch of GNU software while only adding a few things themselves (yes there are exceptions like Redhat, don't piss yourselves), I think that it will take a coporate mindset like Be's to really get Linux onto the average user's desktop. Make everything run fast and make it easy to use.
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suggest DirectPC to anyone. A friend of mine decided to get it since he was already getting DirectTV and could't get cable access. First of all you're paying for two ISPs, the upstream provider and then DirectPC's downstream service. Not only are you paying out the bum for the service but you are also charged for bandwidth usage in the same fashion as ISDN. He also had serious trouble gaming since his ping was always >800ms. I don't recall if he ever got it working on his Linux box because of the funky network setup (him and I aren't gurus). I have a similar problem with my cable modem, I use my modem for upstream traffic and the cable for downstream. I had trouble configuring Linux to work right with it so I left it on my Windows machine. The service is a little Windows centric in my opinion because they require you to use two different network protocols at the same time which Macs can't do without third party software and it takes some wrestling (for me at least) to do it with Linux. Thats just my experience I could be wrong.
the transistor as the greatest invention of our time but it is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to this century's technology. A good deal of this century's technological feats sprouted from one of last century's technologies. In 1879 the first incandecent light bulb was produced and after that the world got addicted to electricity. Telephones, TVs, transistors all would be useless without electricity. Anyways, I think top of the list after eletricity would probably be the telephone. The telegraph was and is a good means of communication but Morse code isn't for novices, only technicians and above. The telephone was to the telegraph that Windows was to DOS. After the telephone would have to be the gasoline engine. The gasoline engine leads to my next one, powered flight. Before the gasoline engine it was nearly impossible to build a powered aircraft because the propulsion was just too darned heavy. After powered flight I would probably say television, not that it was a good invention, merely popular and major. Next on my list would easily be manned/unmanned space flight. Transistors would barely be maturing right now if it hadn't been for an agressive space program that poured billions into the industry. Then transistors and microelectronics and eventually the internet. I think networking two computers together is more of a technological achievement than e-commerce and webcams though. Maybe Twinkies should go at the top od the list, I realized today while eating some Cheetoes that if I died out in the desert somewhere that the food I was munching would outlast my carcas. Thats somethin to think about.
an article doing more than advertising OS X. I have some of my own complaints about Mac OS, I have been using it since 5.something and have had plenty of time to learn to dislike certain aspects of it. Alot of my gripes were handled in OS 8, sticky menus, shortcuts on the Apple menu, scalable slide bars, ect. One thing in Windows that I really like interface wise is the two button mouse. I know a single button mouse has been a Mac stable since before the Mac was even a wet dream but it makes the Mac too keyboard dependant. I can of course take the time to pearn all of the keyboard commands for all of my programs (I know them by now) but the first time you use a particular program can be non-intuitive. The functionality at a mouseclick is something Microsoft added to Windows 95 that gave it a big advantage over 3.11 and Mac OS 7 when it first came out. By right clicking in a window you could control all the aspects of a file or add filters and such to an image, not to mention the ability to close down a program with a single click. OS 8 added similar functions to the window close box for some of their programs but you still need to Apple+Q most programs. I share the author's complaints about professionals not liking Aqua, if I want to get something done in Photoshop I don't want to wrestle with the GUI's icons and pictures to do it. Completely aside from GUI are my questions about what else is being revised in OS X. Networking for Mac sucks and most of the time you need extra software just to communicate with other computers on your network. It's a hassle for me to network my Powerbook and PCs together. OS X needs to have a greatly improved interface for controls too, half of the controls have been updated while the rest of them harken back to the days of OS 6 and 7. And another thing, I want to be able to access my programs from a small text/icon based menu in easy reach, not a huge launcher window or having to hunt through the Apple menu down to the favourites list.
IBM and Sun both produce products in the same catagories and would be a good (albeit expensive) choice for a new or old company in terms of computing power. They also share the same problem, bad PR. To find success stories using one of the companies' solutions you need to look several layers down, it would be alot more impressive to people (especially PHBs) if they would really show off their technology and tout its good performance. Both offer a network computing solution which if you used it in your office would solve a host of problems associated with managing a hundred or more PCs but do you see commercials or banners about them? Nope. IBM is sort of sitting on its thumbs lately, partially (in my opinion) due to their reduction in funding for them dropping "pure science" research for "profitable science" research. They are refining established technologies and not looking for new ones. Both companies need to simplify their product line-up and show their potential customers what they can do. Apple (go flame your bottoms and not me) is a very good example of how to work the machine we call consumerism. Make your product line visible and clean, show people what exactly your products can do, and unify your OS strategy. Your big servers need to communicate well with your small clients and your thin clients better communicate damn well with both your servers and other clients thin or otherwise not to mention everyone else's clients and networks.
Linux advocacy is nice until it reaches the point where you're kicking and scraping to convince yourself and others that it is the greatest thing since sliced bread. Solaris is a very good operating system on its native hardware (SPARC et al) it is however a little weaker on non-native hardware. You also have to remember that Sun is in the enterprise solution/packages business, not merely some hardware with a webserver on it like Dell and others. Since most of these packages are not development environments (the ones that are develope for Solaris on Solaris in a business to business sense for the most part) it would seem kinda silly for them to come jam packed with a bunch of source code and compilers, who is going to be using their brand new E10k ultra server box for hacking out some C++? Solaris also scales very well RIGHT OUT OF THE BOX, that is something I think open source people take for granted. Since you recompile the kernel to make changes it is really easy if you know what you're doing to scale it to a 10 node server farm. Solaris does this WITHOUT recompiling and does it very well. For the me toos out there that love to call it Slowaris, learn to read. There are what we called "system requirements" and we use that information to figure out if we can indeed run a certain piece of software on our hardware. Of course it runs slower on x86 hardware, it is natively run on SPARC machines! Solaris also likes to use alot of RAM, so you would be hard pressed to slap it on your old 486 with 16 megs of RAM. Come on people, quit the "if it ain't Linux we bash it" attitude. I think it's really cool that Sun is going to release Solaris 8 for free, I have my copy already. They aren't releasing it free to copy Linux (which should be stated as copying the GPL rather than Linux itself since Sun isn't trying to make the Solaris kernel run like the Linux kernel), it's an appetizer so sysadmins can get ahold of a copy and see if they want to invest in Sun or want to stick with what they have.
that someone would do a nice article on who the RIAA actually are so the people that read the article will realize why the rest of us get so pissed off when we hear about them suing someone. The RIAA is composed of a very small handful of recording companies, the companies that own most of the distrobution channels of music and do everything they can to keep a strangle hold on it. When the whole audio CD-ROM format was just a twingle in some engineer's eye, they could have doubled the quality of CD audio but the RIAA decided not to give consumers TOO good of quality music recordings. Mostly because they were weary of the popularity of CDs. They were right, who would ever buy a shiney five inch disk?
Atari hit it right on the money when saying alot of magazines don't appeal to people who don't like exclusively violent games male or female. I think the reason is the magazine editorial staff is predominantly Quake-playing males (not as a slight against anyone mind you) and so they report on the stuff that interests them. One of the reasons ads appeal more to boys than girls is that it's easy to convince most guys of a game's appeal with Lara Croft in a bikini than it would be to entice a girl with some kinda character. Who knows, I'm just guessing.
like the Ars article, it was well written. I think the Crusoe is impressive because it does what RISC was originally concepted to do. Look at MIPS, it's a RISC architecture yet it has some of the most complex processing units you'll find. Things like Crusoe and MAJC really rattle the cages of other chip makers because they take an entirely different approach to the chip design. Even PPC is getting really complex, especially by adding the AltiVec unit onto the die, while it improves performance in come calculations it adds signifigantly to the price and complexity of the chip. The human brain can calculate some pretty complex things yet it's processing is done in a massive amount of simple processes rather than a small number of complex ones. I think the next generation of super computers will be built a little more like Crusoe chips, maybe even using Crusoes. The more times it works a calculation the faster it does it, this would add phenominal performance to alot of things we use super computers for right now. Maybe in the next ten years we'll see desktop teraflop systems.
The best way for games to run would be like nVidia is doing with the GeForce's GPU, the GPU handles the graphics and transforms and all the heavy duty FPU calculations while the system's CPU handles the actual code of the game. The instruction set I would guess would be best for gaming is true RISC, it gets the job done as simple and quick as possible. Games as well as any graphical pose a challenge to processors and programmers because you have two things going on, the data manipulation and control of the program and then the graphical manipulation of the graphics. Look at any CLI programs, they have a single job to do usually at a time and can work in order, Quake needs to do 30 things at once.
I have used both SCSI and IDE based systems and I have to say SCSI fares much better in the performance area like anyone here could tell you. The big deal with IDE on desktop systems is back when a 1.2gb drive was enormous the drives on your PC were IDE. For hard drive manufacturers to keep selling their products they need to make damn sure their products work with legacy systems. So many years of IDE being dominant has left IDE the dominant standard today, SCSI is still too expensive for most people not to mention the need for a SCSI adapter. Motherboards with SCSI adapters built onto them cost way more than boards with just IDE, which is something I can't understand. The controller chips can't be very expensive anymore (if you use Moore's law) but I figure the companies keep the prices high because they are figuring they will sell to corporate customers with oodles of cash. I personally think the standard should be changed from IDE and SCSI to IEEE 1394. My reasoning is this, since all 1394 devices can work independantly from the CPU and from each other it would make the system all around more efficient if your DVD, HDD, scanner, and video camera were all connected to the same bus. The speed isn't bad either, 400 or 800 Mbps which is comparable to ATA-66 and faster SCSI speeds. I also rather like the idea of power being supplied by the bus itself rather than by a separate connector, that leaves me with alot less wires hanging around in my system.
Someone else pointed out an EPA report on methanol, which is very toxic to humans and other animals as it is processed by the liver. With enough in your body you will die, non-lethal doasges will probably kill most if not all of your liver. I would be worried about replacable cartidges not being resilient enough to withstand dropping or some such (methanol has a low boiling point which means in alot of cases it would be gaseous). Batteries aren't safer for the most part but they are sealed pretty well, enough for use in your children's electronics. People talked about methanol replacement cartridges bought like replacable pen cartridges, I think I'd like a little heavier aluminum cases or something. Besides methanol's toxicity, there is the question of pollution. They will be producing water and carbon dioxide, humans produce much more than their share of carbon dioxide already, proliferation of this fashion of fuel cell would increase that. I'm all for the longer lasting battery but you have to weigh it's TOTAL cost against its apparent costs.
even if it has been done already. That sounds like something a troll would say but it is true, several companies tried this before. I think Crusoe will become popular because it has Linus working on it (free publicity) and it is compatible with current software. Of course mobile users will be all over this but it also has some applications in thin clients and terminals and probably POS terminals. The power consumption and low cost would work to save companies oodle of dollars, not to mention the chips are software upgradable so their useful lifetime is probably 50-75% longer than a regular processor. Does anyone think they might release a code translator for IA-64?
is great! Not too many people see Be and want to try it because the OS itself costs money and then you need to find software for it. Maybe this will lead IS guys will try it out and decide to use it in offices and such, especially where user interface is important. I think a move like this will really help increase the user base of BeOS, people will be able to try it at home and get to like it. I can even hope that other programmers might adopt a similar distribution model with Be software, free software with enhanced versions and support available for people who want to buy it. Hmm maybe someday Adobe will port their suite of toys to Be.
The biggest reason people use AOL (when asked) was they liked the AOL chat and buddy lists. AOL is just an ISP version of TalkCity or rather, TalkCity is a net version of AOL. For years AOL has been churning out a disgustingly cluttered interface that did everything for the user who didn't know whether or not they had a modem. But the chat and e-mail is only so interesting before people get bored and stop watching the ads that make AOL so much money, they needed content. Time Warner has content to spare but had a crappy internet setup. AOL now has royalty free content they can cram down the throats of their 20 million or so users. Now with their high speed connections popping up they can easily make exclusive content only available to their users. People on Earthlink, AT&T, MSN, and the others won't have nearly the same content availability and will therefore be hard pressed to capture the eyes of their users. This is why monopoly is bad folks, when you own the distribution channels and content you can do anything you want, even when there were only ABC, NBC, and CBS those companies didn't own the radio waves they were broadcasting on, thats why they needed commercials to pay their bills. AOL now owns the content and "air waves" as it were so they have free reign with their new toy. This will lead to an exclusively AOL network and an exclusively MSN or Disney or what have you. The internet will turn into a giant corporate slop. The difference between the net monopolies and the broadcast monopolies of the 50s is that the net monopolies are going to own the pipe that the data comes through into your house or business. If you think it won't affect you because you don't use MSN or AOL, think ahead a few years when they own all the high speed and most of the low speed pipes available to you or when they decide they will go after the net backbones to really increase their hold on their slice of the net. Now I sound like a conspiracy theorist but it is the direction things are heading.
to have the bandwidth available to run our own small server at home? A T1 would be fine for a small personal website, even half of a T1 would be nice. My problem while looking for a web host is to find a site that has the features I want while still being affordable. I've yet to find a decent web host with personal websites in mind. They either don't offer enough space or don't have extras like a telnet account or ssh.
Whoops, replace & with $.
Walt Anderson isnt an anagram for Hagbar Celine is it?
Some people deny with conviction that the AOL/TW merger will affect them in any way because they are not AOL users, while other claim it is the end of the world. This is a bad thing for many reasons. AOL for a long time has owned only their private network (a glorified virtual private network), then they got into the media game and started buying up high speed internet access. If AOL (or any company) has control of a majority of the data pipes coming into people's houses they control the data coming into people's houses. Now they own alot of pipes, they merge with Time Warner who happen to own a good deal of the data coming through those pipes that AOL owns. Now AOL has the ability to control the wires and the data. Smaller companies will have a real tough time competing with AOL since AOL can get alot of data into the homes and do it cheaper than anyone else. The small companies will have to sell out to MSN or some other huge network so we end up how we started, a handful of huge mega networks providing all of our content.
After AOL owns as much of the content and home pipes as they can get their hands on, what will stop them from going after huge backbone providers like MCI and AT&T? If they own the backbones of the internet there is no room for competition, the T3 your website is on may be owned by some co-lo company but if the backbone is owned by AOL and they don't like you, you're screwed. Personally I don't want to see content only provided by Disney, AOL, and MSN. We are slowly turning into a giant corporate market. In the future there won't be countries, just different market demographics. The DOJ needs to look into AOL for a monopoly investigation, I don't think any company will buy all the media content they can and then share it in the name of good business.
The Star Wars DVD saga is really bothering me, not because I keep reading about it but because Lucas doesn't see fit to release the freakin things on DVD. I think they would look really pretty if they were set up similar to Star Wars: Behind the Magic; good interface, some littles goodies that make it worthwhile, and a little bit of behind the scenes stuff. I would settle for the SEs released on DVD, they would make enough money for him to make four TPMs. I understand him wanting to make them look good but we've been waiting for years to get just the original trilogy on DVD.
instead of an entirely new codec why not just use a version of MPEG-2 compression? MPEG-2 does not mean CSS, just in case anyone is flame happy for whatever reason. MPEG-2 is designed to be streamed, it's what DTV among other things are going to use. The bonuses of MPEG-2 is that a good number of newer video cards have hardware decompression and a good deal of those cards have X servers already written for them so a good deal of their specs are already known. MPEG-1 and 2 are also open formats and any Joe Programmer can makes an app using the codec. The hardware acceleration is a big bonus but even without it a smaller video frame wouldn't be too difficult for your CPU to decode. One of the best advantages of MPEG-2 is the good compression ratio, even lowbanders on 28.8s and 14.8s could get a decent quality picture and sound.
Wow can you cook on that sucker like I can on my old coax box?
The FCC's mandate to oust NTSC from the airwaves so soon is just a bonehead idea in my opinion. Digital TV is an upper class toy than something beneficial to everyone. Look for example at the prices of the DTVs, they are thousands of dollars, where the analog 25" one I have was only a few hundred and I rather like its picture quality. As for DTV broadcasting, why would cable companies want to try to convert? They are just now starting to roll out cable internet service which is pretty profitable for them. DTV over coax would be difficult at best due to bandwidth problems. Right now only microwave satillite has the capacity to stream 19Mbps per channel to everyone on your block. Cable companies would have to overhaul their whole coax network just to match the bandwidth. TV manufacturers are making quite a profit building relativly cheap TVs that have coax/RCA connections that have much higher profit margines than digital TVs. Even if a lot of people could afford the TVs and service, how many people does the FCC think would buy it? Cable on a good day only comes through to 55% or so of the country, what happens to everyone who can't afford DTV? Oh yeah, broadcasters CAN as an option broadcast NTSC...does that seem like a bullshit plan to anyone else? Simulcasting is expensive, there would be 5 minute commercial spreads just to cover the price of the double broadcasting. I can imagine broadcasters are as aprehensive as the cable companies for the same reason. Digital broadcasting needs entirely new equipment and that equipment costs money. What was the FCC thinking?
Not to mention Apple themselves got sued over the Mac by Xerox because they said it copied their interface. Jobs started work on the Lisa after he visited Xerox.
Come on people, learn to read. Darwin is what is/has been open sourced. Mach and BSD have been open sourced a long time, the OS X kernel is based of these. Unlike Linux Apple is going with a microkernel which I think is a much better choice for the kind of work you're probably going to be doing on an OS X box. It sure does make me happy to see all this coming about, a couple years ago I was figuring Apple was going to go under. OS X is a culmination of YEARS of work by Apple's software people. I see people complaining it isn't completely open sourced and how some idiots want to make the backend Linux rather than Mach. Apple would never open source all of it's GUI stuff and basically give its OS away for free. The kernel is open sourced so it is much easier for developers to work on the platform since they can go look at the kernel's code rather than read a manual describing how it works. Apple won't change the backend to Linux because it has already tweaked the Mach kernel to be backwards compatible with existing Mac software. And the 12 month transition I think is an excellent idea because it gives companies plenty of time to get their hands on production copies of the OS and develop on it rather than having beta software that is being changed every month or two like Win2k. The only thing I am worried about with OS X is if I will be able to run it on my powerbook or not. With a desktop I'd have a little more expandibility but my powerbook I can add memory and disk space and the like but there isn't much I can do about the processor. 128x128 pixel icons must look beautiful on a 21" cinema display but how about on my 14.1" screen on my PB? I can't wait ti play with Adobe's stuff on OS X though, a stable kernel would be nice for those >2MB pictures. Speaking of Adobe, does the new GUI remind anyone else of MetaCreations software just a little bit?
especially the e-commerce mania that everyone talks about but you never heard people profiting from. And it is inevitable that companies not making profits will die, thats how capitalism works. I think the problem with alot of the .coms is they are run by computer geeks who've never been to business school and have only read a couple books on the subject. Probably the "Commerce for Dummies". As for their Linux prediction I don't think it is entirely correct. It's my belief (contrary to most people) that Linux will not be popular to the public in it's GNU form. For corporate systems and servers it works really well, a cheap x86 (among other chipsets) way to have Unix instead of paying oodles of noodles for Sun business machines. On the other hand personal users might try it and use it grudgingly but I doubt it will ever replace Windows in its present form. Using the Graymalkiball I predict a company will come along offering a commercial Unix for the home. Maybe a GNU kernel but an entirely commercial (open or closed source I don't know) operating environment. Right now everyone is just repackaging a bunch of GNU software while only adding a few things themselves (yes there are exceptions like Redhat, don't piss yourselves), I think that it will take a coporate mindset like Be's to really get Linux onto the average user's desktop. Make everything run fast and make it easy to use.