I took a software design class at the university back when I was in school. This class was made up of many computer science majors, with a few electrical engineering and other engineering majors.
On the first day of class, the professor walked in and asked us:
"Is the creation of software an act of engineering, or is it art?"
My friend quickly raised his hand. After the professor called on him, he stated simply:
"Engineers can't program, so it must be art."
The discussion that followed was rather... heated. Whether or not my friend's statement is true is left as an exercise for the reader.:)
When put into a Macintosh or Windows PC, the disc installs software to keep the music secure, and an interactive menu pops up with several links, including one to copy some or all of the Windows Media tracks to your hard drive.
An audio CD that installs software on my computer automatically? NO THANKS!
... of how the Internet and the way that it connects people together is causing big changes in our culture both at a national level and globally.
I'm not saying that IM is solely responsible for the "lackluster" showing of movies, like the article insinuates.
When I think about it, the Internet really has changed my way of life. Of course I was always into the online scene (I frequented Quantum Link on my C64 back in the day, and enjoyed the online communities on BBS systems.) With the Internet I'm even more plugged-in. I can't remember the last time I send an actual paper letter via postal mail. I hardly watch TV news anymore; I get my news on the 'net.
The Internet really has been and will continue to be a driving force behind cultural changes. I think this is just the tip of the iceberg. You can either hop on and enjoy the ride, or fall behind the times.
The article relates to 802.11, however this would probably work on packet radio too.
You could achieve the same thing on packet radio by using a digipeater instead of having all nodes transmit/receive on the same frequency, and I think you'd get better thruput with a digipeater than using Frottle.
I fell in love with Mac OS X when Jaguar came out. I decided that it was worth it to make the switch to the Mac.
Granted, it's a dual 1 GHz PowerMac, but I don't find it slow in the least. I created my first DVD movie using iMovie and iDVD just last night, and I was very pleased with how easy and fast it was. The resulting DVD played great on my Sony DVD player and the picture was superb.
I realize that I'm not using the "slower" Macs you're asking about, but I certainly don't feel like my PowerMac is any slower than an AMD or Pentium 4 system. In fact, my Mac is much faster at ripping music from CDs than any Intel based system I've used. Creating my DVD wasn't slow to me, either. I believe Apple has really optimized for the AltiVec extentions in the G4.
The fact that I can get good Open Source software, commercial software, and (in my opinion) the beautiful OS X interface makes me a very happy new Macintosh user.
You specifically mention "window cycling"--what do you mean by that? You mean the way you switch between running applications in Mac OS X?
I ask because I'm considering buying a Mac, and I have used one before and rather liked the UI. I'd like to understand your beef on this point to see if it's something I've not noticed yet and if it's something that would affect whether I buy one or not.
That's very true, Apple couldn't have done it without developer support. Is Microsoft going to provide a version of Windows that'll run on Itanium while also allowing you to run your old 32-bit Windows apps? Will Itanium run them fast enough to even make this feasible?
I think the answer to the first question is most likely YES, but the answer to the second question, from what I've read, is not quite so clear.
Back in the day, Alpha had Windows NT and an emulation layer that would let you run x86 applications on it. It seems like that's the closest equivalent to the 68K migration that Apple went through. There might have been a lot of external reasons why Alpha failed, but it seems to me that in the x86 world there isn't enough support from all of the different players to make a migration possible. Of course, that's just my opinion, and maybe Intel, Microsoft, and all of the other companies out there will manage to get us all upgraded to Itanium, and do it as smoothly as Apple did.
Re:Sadly Intel has the upper hand here
on
AMD's 64-Bit Chip
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· Score: 1
Why would you want to benchmark these two chips against each other? Isn't the Itanium more of a server-class CPU, while AMD is gunning for the desktop/workstation market?
Of course that brings up the whole question of why you'd need a 64-bit CPU for a desktop machine. There is overlap in the markets these chips are targetting, but I'm not sure a direct comparison is appropriate.
I still think that in the end, backward-compatibility will rule the day and AMD has a great product on their hands. The only time I've seen a successful migration from one platform to another was when Apple managed to migrate from 68K up to PowerPC, and that was only really possible because they controlled both the hardware and the software. Intel will really have to work their business relationships to get the Itanium accepted by Microsoft and others and to work out some kind of smooth migration path.
Everybody seems to like "Full Disclosure," so here at Microsoft, we've decided to begin releasing all security vulnerabilities under a "Shared Disclosure" policy. Once the various NDAs are signed, you too can view and work with any security vulnerabilities that we know about.
Just another example of how Microsoft listens to and responds to customer requests. Have a nice day!
The problem with not publishing details of the exploit is that Microsoft and other companies will look at it and say "This doesn't look like that bad of a problem, and besides, nobody will find that easily. No sense in making a patch for it. The potential abuse of this hole is negligable."
So then we end up being at the mercy of the Black Hats to quietly spread the information among themselves.
No, keeping things secret simply won't help.
Sellers have to protect against credit card fraud.
on
A Matter Of Trust?
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· Score: 1
I am friends with a local mail-order store owner who sells computer equipment. I noticed one day while I was at his business that he had a pile of faxes of driver's licenses and credit cards.
I asked him about them, and he told me that when they first started selling and taking orders, especially overseas orders, they started getting tons of charge disputes. People were claiming that their credit card had been stolen and that they didn't order the goods.
The credit card companies promply refunded the charges, but that meant that my friend's business had now lost their income from those sales (as well as the equipment!)
He said that they had to resort to requiring the individuals to send their ID and a copy of the front of the credit card number so that they could argue that the person did indeed have that credit card at the time of sale. In that case, it makes it harder for the credit card company to just remove the charge and leave the business high and dry.
The credit card company didn't leave him much of a choice. It was either adopt this policy, or ignore all foreign sales completely.
I'm not saying that you should just go ahead and send your information to the company. I'm just trying to explain that I've seen this first-hand and that's the reason why this particular business started a similar policy. If anything, we ought to complain about the credit card companies or about the insecurity of credit cards in general. --
This reminds me of something I heard a long time ago that has to do with human tendencies:
"If you tell a man that there are millions of stars in the sky, he'll believe you. If you caution a man about wet paint, he'll have to touch it before he'll believe you."
You can remind people ad nauseum that you shouldn't execute programs attached to e-mails because they might contain viruses. Most won't remember or believe you until they experience a virus infection for themselves. --
Most previews have stated that the 3dfx board they are reviewing is an alpha or beta board with alpha or beta drivers, yet most people don't seem to pay attention to that fact and begin drawing conclusions now. "3dfx is in trouble." "The Voodoo 5 sucks, look how slow it is!"
Why doesn't everybody just calm down and wait until the retail cards arrive, and THEN start comparing to the GeForce and/or any other card that's available on the market? --
Slashdot Mirror
I don't believe in reincarnation, but I did in my previous life.
Pete Ashdown owns XMission, which is Utah's largest ISP. He understands technical issues very well and would represent the technology crowd very well.
As I was reading your post, I began to have nightmares about reading John C. Dvorak articles!
Up until now, I thought that he was the only one who wrote like that.
I took a software design class at the university back when I was in school. This class was made up of many computer science majors, with a few electrical engineering and other engineering majors.
On the first day of class, the professor walked in and asked us:
"Is the creation of software an act of engineering, or is it art?"
My friend quickly raised his hand. After the professor called on him, he stated simply:
"Engineers can't program, so it must be art."
The discussion that followed was rather... heated. Whether or not my friend's statement is true is left as an exercise for the reader.
I'm still waiting for the patch that will allow me to set my swappiness level to 11.
Actually, I was upset about it.
I was so upset that I voted with my wallet.
I bought a Mac.
From the article:
When put into a Macintosh or Windows PC, the disc installs software to keep the music secure, and an interactive menu pops up with several links, including one to copy some or all of the Windows Media tracks to your hard drive.
An audio CD that installs software on my computer automatically? NO THANKS!
LOL this is hilarious! I would mod you up if I had mod points.
:)
Thanks for the laugh today.
... of how the Internet and the way that it connects people together is causing big changes in our culture both at a national level and globally.
I'm not saying that IM is solely responsible for the "lackluster" showing of movies, like the article insinuates.
When I think about it, the Internet really has changed my way of life. Of course I was always into the online scene (I frequented Quantum Link on my C64 back in the day, and enjoyed the online communities on BBS systems.) With the Internet I'm even more plugged-in. I can't remember the last time I send an actual paper letter via postal mail. I hardly watch TV news anymore; I get my news on the 'net.
The Internet really has been and will continue to be a driving force behind cultural changes. I think this is just the tip of the iceberg. You can either hop on and enjoy the ride, or fall behind the times.
The article relates to 802.11, however this would probably work on packet radio too.
You could achieve the same thing on packet radio by using a digipeater instead of having all nodes transmit/receive on the same frequency, and I think you'd get better thruput with a digipeater than using Frottle.
I fell in love with Mac OS X when Jaguar came out. I decided that it was worth it to make the switch to the Mac.
Granted, it's a dual 1 GHz PowerMac, but I don't find it slow in the least. I created my first DVD movie using iMovie and iDVD just last night, and I was very pleased with how easy and fast it was. The resulting DVD played great on my Sony DVD player and the picture was superb.
I realize that I'm not using the "slower" Macs you're asking about, but I certainly don't feel like my PowerMac is any slower than an AMD or Pentium 4 system. In fact, my Mac is much faster at ripping music from CDs than any Intel based system I've used. Creating my DVD wasn't slow to me, either. I believe Apple has really optimized for the AltiVec extentions in the G4.
The fact that I can get good Open Source software, commercial software, and (in my opinion) the beautiful OS X interface makes me a very happy new Macintosh user.
Two jobs ago, an error message from the product I worked on that had a customer baffled was the following:
"Call to smtpsend returned something other than zero."
I had a really hard time explaining how that error message made it into the code, let alone begin to diagnose the problem.
Needless to say, I immediately changed the error message to actually say what smtpsend had returned!
You specifically mention "window cycling"--what do you mean by that? You mean the way you switch between running applications in Mac OS X?
I ask because I'm considering buying a Mac, and I have used one before and rather liked the UI. I'd like to understand your beef on this point to see if it's something I've not noticed yet and if it's something that would affect whether I buy one or not.
That's very true, Apple couldn't have done it without developer support. Is Microsoft going to provide a version of Windows that'll run on Itanium while also allowing you to run your old 32-bit Windows apps? Will Itanium run them fast enough to even make this feasible?
I think the answer to the first question is most likely YES, but the answer to the second question, from what I've read, is not quite so clear.
Back in the day, Alpha had Windows NT and an emulation layer that would let you run x86 applications on it. It seems like that's the closest equivalent to the 68K migration that Apple went through. There might have been a lot of external reasons why Alpha failed, but it seems to me that in the x86 world there isn't enough support from all of the different players to make a migration possible. Of course, that's just my opinion, and maybe Intel, Microsoft, and all of the other companies out there will manage to get us all upgraded to Itanium, and do it as smoothly as Apple did.
Why would you want to benchmark these two chips against each other? Isn't the Itanium more of a server-class CPU, while AMD is gunning for the desktop/workstation market?
Of course that brings up the whole question of why you'd need a 64-bit CPU for a desktop machine. There is overlap in the markets these chips are targetting, but I'm not sure a direct comparison is appropriate.
I still think that in the end, backward-compatibility will rule the day and AMD has a great product on their hands. The only time I've seen a successful migration from one platform to another was when Apple managed to migrate from 68K up to PowerPC, and that was only really possible because they controlled both the hardware and the software. Intel will really have to work their business relationships to get the Itanium accepted by Microsoft and others and to work out some kind of smooth migration path.
Everybody seems to like "Full Disclosure," so here at Microsoft, we've decided to begin releasing all security vulnerabilities under a "Shared Disclosure" policy. Once the various NDAs are signed, you too can view and work with any security vulnerabilities that we know about.
Just another example of how Microsoft listens to and responds to customer requests. Have a nice day!
I just can't agree with this.
The problem with not publishing details of the exploit is that Microsoft and other companies will look at it and say "This doesn't look like that bad of a problem, and besides, nobody will find that easily. No sense in making a patch for it. The potential abuse of this hole is negligable."
So then we end up being at the mercy of the Black Hats to quietly spread the information among themselves.
No, keeping things secret simply won't help.
Happy birthday, RPoet! (Just had to do it.)
--
I asked him about them, and he told me that when they first started selling and taking orders, especially overseas orders, they started getting tons of charge disputes. People were claiming that their credit card had been stolen and that they didn't order the goods.
The credit card companies promply refunded the charges, but that meant that my friend's business had now lost their income from those sales (as well as the equipment!)
He said that they had to resort to requiring the individuals to send their ID and a copy of the front of the credit card number so that they could argue that the person did indeed have that credit card at the time of sale. In that case, it makes it harder for the credit card company to just remove the charge and leave the business high and dry.
The credit card company didn't leave him much of a choice. It was either adopt this policy, or ignore all foreign sales completely.
I'm not saying that you should just go ahead and send your information to the company. I'm just trying to explain that I've seen this first-hand and that's the reason why this particular business started a similar policy. If anything, we ought to complain about the credit card companies or about the insecurity of credit cards in general.
--
"If you tell a man that there are millions of stars in the sky, he'll believe you. If you caution a man about wet paint, he'll have to touch it before he'll believe you."
You can remind people ad nauseum that you shouldn't execute programs attached to e-mails because they might contain viruses. Most won't remember or believe you until they experience a virus infection for themselves.
--
"3dfx Voodoo5 5500 AGP beta board running 4.12.01.0532 drivers"
Most previews have stated that the 3dfx board they are reviewing is an alpha or beta board with alpha or beta drivers, yet most people don't seem to pay attention to that fact and begin drawing conclusions now. "3dfx is in trouble." "The Voodoo 5 sucks, look how slow it is!"
Why doesn't everybody just calm down and wait until the retail cards arrive, and THEN start comparing to the GeForce and/or any other card that's available on the market?
--