Intel has been slowly losing credibility in my (and possibly others) eyes for some time now. Processor ID's sucked. However, they 'did the right thing' and got rid of them. Their implimentation of 64-bit computing sucked (or was ahead of its time) but they 'did the right thing' and swiped AMD's:). I used to be a Intel fanatic (yes, I owned several bunny people) and dismissed AMD's processors because of thier floating point performance. AMD wised up and finally gave chase to Intel on all performance matters to the point where I'm now running a AMD processor. I've always been concerened that Microsoft and Intel are a little too friendly, especially in regards to 64-bit windows versions and Microsoft/Intel's chip/release timing.
Anyway, the BIG concern for me on the horizon is the upcoming DRM-from-the-bios-to-the-speaker-cone mentality that some unnamed people are trying to push. If Intel wants to score major bonus points in my book, opening up the bios (or whatever they feel like calling it) could definately do it.
If I know that I can always depend on my computer to do what I tell it to and not what Intel/Microsoft/Belken tell it to do, I will go that route.
Also, to Intel... I'm buying a new server next month. I had decided on AMD. I'm now considering Intel as an option. Now everyone in the marketing department go tell the engineering department to go impliment this!
I wouldn't worry too much about the night vision goggles. Anyone smart enough to bring a camcorder into a theater is surely going to know how to defeat anyone with night vision goggles.
The price is NOT a doller/ton. It is a dollar per ton/mile.
Incase there are actually people not reading the linked article, the interesting part is quoted here:
Blimps into space looks insane but they have flown some of the parts of a 3 stage to orbit system and they are talking about costs to space of a dollar a ton/mile.
Dating back to when linux (the kernel) didn't even have a version number, code was always attributed to where it came from. I'm sure everyone is familiar with at least the changelog and its attributions. And of course actual comments with names and email addresses are all over the sourcecode itself.
Now, Mr. McKusick might have a partial point. Its entirely possible that some gremlin over at Caldera took a bunch of SCO's 'Intelectual' Property and threw it into the main kernel under the GPL. In which case once the lines of code are actually identified, I suspect we will know who contributed them in under 20 minutes (10 minutes of which will be the article sitting on/. in The Mysterious Future!) In the unlikely event of SCO ever saying which lines are thiers, we may end up with the interesting situation where a Caldera/SCO employee put them there - and get to slap SCO for abusing the legal system.
In any event, I'd be willing to put money on Linux's source code source documentation beating SCO's out any day of the week.
Ronald Reagan, despite what anyone believes about his presidency came up with one good saying regarding communism. Trust - but verify. I more or less trust all our friends in the EU (well, except France). I trust them more when I have gone over all thier top secret communications and I know they aren't planning to nuke me.
So, with an unmarked van in long-term parking, a few deep cycle batteries, a power inverter, a laptop, a frequency generator, and a pringles cantenna I can single handedly take out an entire airports luggage tracking system whenever I want?
Granted this would probably be an act of terrorisim, but rfid is not a secure system. Using it to track your inventory is ok because if it fails, you have alternate means of tracking it. Additionaly there isn't too much incentive for 'terrorists' to jam it (NYT Headline: Gilette unable to locate 22 pallets of Mach3 Turbo razor blades for 30 minutes during terrorist cyber-attack). Now, if the same happened to our luggage system (NYT Headline: Air traffic around the country delayed because of Jacksonville terrorist cyber-attack) people would notice.
Perhaps a even more destructive approach would be to record and randomly playback rfid signals. You'd have luggage going all over the country.
RFID is a good means of tracking items no one is going to go to the effort to jam/misdirect. It is not a secure means of tracking those items and should never be the only means.
Think about the upcoming system. Right now, pallets and maybe cases are tracked on the manufacturing/distribution level. If they were tracked individually _and_ were the sole means for product checkout.. well.. just sticking that pack of razor blades under your tin-foil hat during your full-cart insta-checkout would fool it (not that sticking it under any other hat in our bar code system is any different). The point is with RFID I can sit outside a wallmart on christmas eve at 5pm and shut down thier checkout systems.
Well, enough ranting RFID can be a great tracking tool when added to current systems. It is not a replacement for all current systems. Anyway, i'm not planning on flying through florida any time soon.
Watch it fall in near-real time! Go go go! Ahhh... this makes my day:) At time of posting, last trade was 8.68. Also, check the trade volumes after the press release (at 1:45pm). People are paying attention.
Go wireless USB! Now, with only a mere pringles can, I can "borrow" my neighbors printer, turn his keyboard satanic, and upload the latest Simpsons theme to his PDA!
I used to use altavista as my search engine way back when. Then, they decided that thier users were less important than thier customers. From there after about 8-9 months of use and being set as my homepage - I dumped altavista for google.
Google has proven over and over again that thier primary concern is for thier users. They have found ways to make money via ads that in no way interupt the user. New features are constantly being developed that will benefit users.
[side note: I am planning on signing up for gmail and using it as my primary webmail app. I do not consider it an invasion of privacy if I see an add for serial cables when someone sends me an email with a set of rs232 pinouts. I actually find it to be a unique situation where both google's users and customers can benefit]
Now, look at amazon. This is a company that has decieved users numerous times. Anyone remember the price mismatches between repeat customers and new customers? How honest is my search going to be if I look for '+"golf club" order online'? Something tells me I'll end up at a amazon.com page.
I understand that a similar situation could occour with froggle. The fact is it has not happened in either of them yet. However based on reputation, I would bet it would happen with google last.
Wouldn't it be wonderfull once the WMA standard becomes available everywhere? All online music stores will use it because it will be so secure. On-demand video companies will spring up from this new found industry standard. Portable players and home stereo systems will all support it. Every media file on your computer will fall under one standard.
And then a code monky from Argentina will be codeing at 3am and have a Mountain Dew inspired breakthrough, and WMA will be broken wide open forever.
Software companies continue to forget the days of dongles, code wheeles, and manual page/paragraph/word lookups. All it will do is annoy real consumers.
First off, I'm assuming you want a mail order dell laptop. The simplest way to go is to get a mailbox in New York via a company like The Mail Box or a UPS store. They give you a full address that is not a PO box, and they will sign for packages for you. Pre-pay for 1 month. That's step 1.
Step 2 is order your laptop and have it sent to your brand new address. You are going to want expedited shipping here - probably next day shipping because it might take a few days for them to ship it.
Step 3, pick up your cheap laptop when it arrives and consider the difference as... profit!
They aren't quotes ('), they are backtics (`). They are used to denote that a particular keyword is a field and not a command. For example, if you had a field called LIKE, some sql parsers may become confused. Now, not to many dba's would create a field called LIKE but often in programming you have no idea what the name of the field will be when you are generating a sql call. Placing the table name in backtics prevents problems both from odd table/field names and from users who abuse software.
The thing about black holes emiting radiation is that they don't actually emit any radiation. Anything that enters the event horizon is gone - for good. It doesn't come back ever, even as black body radiation.
The way theorists get around this is through virtual particles. Assume that virtual particle pairs are blinking in and out of existance all the time, but are never noticed because before they become 'real' particles they destroy each other (think particle/anti particle). The fun part comes when the particles appear on opposite sides of an event horizon. One gets sucked into the black hole, and the other becomes a full-fledged particle with a small chance of escapeing. Because the escapeing particle was never in the event horizon to begin with, it can contain no information from within the black hole.
Now, how the black hole doesn't gain mass from the anti-particle I'm not quite sure... I'll leave that up to all the./ theoretical physisists.
-Changing your parents VCR's so they revert back to blinking 12:00 24 hours after thier time has been set. -Breaking tips of pens of people who regularly place them in thier shirt pockets. -Altering automatic coffee makers around the world to turn back on after you turn them off in the morning. -Modifying geometries of glasses from circular to oval so as to increase dribble. -Abusing multi-line phone systems to induce irony. (Pizza hut and Dominos both on the same line, and both believe the other called them. Multiple departments in Kinko's are just as interesting.) -Reflashing firmware in cell phones to slowly increase ringger volume over the period of a week to the point it can crack plaster. -Disabeling the left turn signal indicators in cars and rewiring the bar to be in the left turn position by default. -Altering the speed of clothes dryer tumblers so as to be the most efficient at both inverting socks and assuring any metalic snaps on jeans slam against the outside wall on every rotation. -Using an epoxy weld to alter the natural curve and velocity of drinking fountain streams. -Abuseing power window buttons while in the back seat of a car at night to make the driver believe there is something wrong with his electrical system. -Placing white-out on fax machine mirrors. -Changing keymaps from US to French and waiting for the user to just swap thier g and j keys. -Replacing the ferrite cores on monitor cables with magnets.
No, I do not think they should have given up thier name. They are entitled to use it as much as Pontiac is. From my understanding of the situation, the Phoenix code name was changed to Firebird, and then to Firefox for thier final brand. They were code names for projects similar to Merced or Coppermine. The final name was always going to be changed to something once the release came.
Also, from what I remember from the incident I had a very bad impression of the Firebird project. I no longer have any links but what I remember now about it (granted it may be totaly different from what actually happened.. but this is how I view it right now) was the Firebird people attacking Mozilla and writing a very forcefull letter demanding the name change. I believe that a less agressive approach would have produced the same results, and a more positive image for the company.
As far as the relational database vs SQL, I don't know *anything* about the firebird project. All I know is the title here on/. about the 'Firebird relational database.' I always believed the database was relationaly designed and interfaced via SQL but what do I know..
I've already generated a ton of negative comments about my post, but remember this is just my opinion. It's the opinion of a linux sysadmin/perl monk/mysql user who is probably in thier target market. I'm just letting them know why I just don't care.
Some other users have posted some interesting information regarding the 'stink' that the FBDB people did, including mailbombing the mozilla developers. Any project that resorts to that level of action has to do a heck of a lot to not be considered crap in my eyes.
Also, for the record I don't work for/on Mozilla/Firebird/Firefox. I have submitted several bug reports regarding mozilla and I use Mozilla as my primary browser. I have played around with firefox and I do like it. I have never heard of firebird before thier actions, and I have never used thier products ever.
Please explain, what exactly didn't you like about how they handled the naming conflict? You didn't like that they hadn't just given up their name?
No, I do not think they should have given up thier name. They are entitled to use it as much as Pontiac is. From my understanding of the situation, the Phoenix code name was changed to Firebird, and then to Firefox for thier final brand. They were code names for projects similar to Merced or Coppermine. The final name was always going to be changed to something once the release came.
Also, from what I remember from the incident I had a very bad impression of the Firebird project. I no longer have any links but what I remember now about it (granted it may be totaly different from what actually happened.. but this is how I view it right now) was the Firebird people attacking Mozilla and writing a very forcefull letter demanding the name change. I believe that a less agressive approach would have produced the same results, and a more positive image for the company.
As far as the relational database vs SQL, I don't know *anything* about the firebird project. All I know is the title here on/. about the 'Firebird relational database.' I always believed the database was relationaly designed and interfaced via SQL but what do I know..
I've already generated a ton of negative comments about my post, but remember this is just my opinion. It's the opinion of a linux sysadmin/perl monk/mysql user who is probably in thier target market. I'm just letting them know why I just don't care.
You know, I really don't have anything against the firebird(tm) db people. I'm sure they are all fine coders and the DB is probably fairly decent. Personaly, I'm not leaving mysql anytime soon but that is beside the point.
I'm not looking at thier web page. I'm not considering Firebird(tm) for any projects. I'm not recommending it to other people. I don't even really care about any new features in yet another relational database.
Why? Why would anyone go out of thier way to not learn about a (free?) new database release? My reasons are simple. I don't like the way they handled the Mozilla/Firebird naming issue. Does that have anything at all to do with the quality of thier products? I doubt it. Should I be so shallow so as to pre-judge an entire company and thier products by the way they handle thier PR? Probably not... but I'm still not sending SCO $699.
I'd like to put forth the observation that computing power _can_ increase forever. Once we hit the wall here in our universe, we simply move the computer into another dimension. Processing without the speed of light limitation would be a plus. Also, 4D "transistors" (or thier appropriate counterpart) could be a huge improvement.
Granted, that type of engineering would definately be considered magical - but not impossible.
Slashdot Mirror
Intel has been slowly losing credibility in my (and possibly others) eyes for some time now. Processor ID's sucked. However, they 'did the right thing' and got rid of them. Their implimentation of 64-bit computing sucked (or was ahead of its time) but they 'did the right thing' and swiped AMD's :). I used to be a Intel fanatic (yes, I owned several bunny people) and dismissed AMD's processors because of thier floating point performance. AMD wised up and finally gave chase to Intel on all performance matters to the point where I'm now running a AMD processor. I've always been concerened that Microsoft and Intel are a little too friendly, especially in regards to 64-bit windows versions and Microsoft/Intel's chip/release timing.
Anyway, the BIG concern for me on the horizon is the upcoming DRM-from-the-bios-to-the-speaker-cone mentality that some unnamed people are trying to push. If Intel wants to score major bonus points in my book, opening up the bios (or whatever they feel like calling it) could definately do it.
If I know that I can always depend on my computer to do what I tell it to and not what Intel/Microsoft/Belken tell it to do, I will go that route.
Also, to Intel... I'm buying a new server next month. I had decided on AMD. I'm now considering Intel as an option. Now everyone in the marketing department go tell the engineering department to go impliment this!
I wouldn't worry too much about the night vision goggles. Anyone smart enough to bring a camcorder into a theater is surely going to know how to defeat anyone with night vision goggles.
Magnesium flares!
Incase there are actually people not reading the linked article, the interesting part is quoted here:
Dating back to when linux (the kernel) didn't even have a version number, code was always attributed to where it came from. I'm sure everyone is familiar with at least the changelog and its attributions. And of course actual comments with names and email addresses are all over the sourcecode itself.
/. in The Mysterious Future!) In the unlikely event of SCO ever saying which lines are thiers, we may end up with the interesting situation where a Caldera/SCO employee put them there - and get to slap SCO for abusing the legal system.
Now, Mr. McKusick might have a partial point. Its entirely possible that some gremlin over at Caldera took a bunch of SCO's 'Intelectual' Property and threw it into the main kernel under the GPL. In which case once the lines of code are actually identified, I suspect we will know who contributed them in under 20 minutes (10 minutes of which will be the article sitting on
In any event, I'd be willing to put money on Linux's source code source documentation beating SCO's out any day of the week.
Ronald Reagan, despite what anyone believes about his presidency came up with one good saying regarding communism. Trust - but verify. I more or less trust all our friends in the EU (well, except France). I trust them more when I have gone over all thier top secret communications and I know they aren't planning to nuke me.
So, with an unmarked van in long-term parking, a few deep cycle batteries, a power inverter, a laptop, a frequency generator, and a pringles cantenna I can single handedly take out an entire airports luggage tracking system whenever I want?
Granted this would probably be an act of terrorisim, but rfid is not a secure system. Using it to track your inventory is ok because if it fails, you have alternate means of tracking it. Additionaly there isn't too much incentive for 'terrorists' to jam it (NYT Headline: Gilette unable to locate 22 pallets of Mach3 Turbo razor blades for 30 minutes during terrorist cyber-attack). Now, if the same happened to our luggage system (NYT Headline: Air traffic around the country delayed because of Jacksonville terrorist cyber-attack) people would notice.
Perhaps a even more destructive approach would be to record and randomly playback rfid signals. You'd have luggage going all over the country.
RFID is a good means of tracking items no one is going to go to the effort to jam/misdirect. It is not a secure means of tracking those items and should never be the only means.
Think about the upcoming system. Right now, pallets and maybe cases are tracked on the manufacturing/distribution level. If they were tracked individually _and_ were the sole means for product checkout.. well.. just sticking that pack of razor blades under your tin-foil hat during your full-cart insta-checkout would fool it (not that sticking it under any other hat in our bar code system is any different). The point is with RFID I can sit outside a wallmart on christmas eve at 5pm and shut down thier checkout systems.
Well, enough ranting RFID can be a great tracking tool when added to current systems. It is not a replacement for all current systems. Anyway, i'm not planning on flying through florida any time soon.
Watch it fall in near-real time! Go go go! Ahhh... this makes my day :) At time of posting, last trade was 8.68. Also, check the trade volumes after the press release (at 1:45pm). People are paying attention.
Go wireless USB! Now, with only a mere pringles can, I can "borrow" my neighbors printer, turn his keyboard satanic, and upload the latest Simpsons theme to his PDA!
:)
Joy
I used to use altavista as my search engine way back when. Then, they decided that thier users were less important than thier customers. From there after about 8-9 months of use and being set as my homepage - I dumped altavista for google.
Google has proven over and over again that thier primary concern is for thier users. They have found ways to make money via ads that in no way interupt the user. New features are constantly being developed that will benefit users.
[side note: I am planning on signing up for gmail and using it as my primary webmail app. I do not consider it an invasion of privacy if I see an add for serial cables when someone sends me an email with a set of rs232 pinouts. I actually find it to be a unique situation where both google's users and customers can benefit]
Now, look at amazon. This is a company that has decieved users numerous times. Anyone remember the price mismatches between repeat customers and new customers? How honest is my search going to be if I look for '+"golf club" order online'? Something tells me I'll end up at a amazon.com page.
I understand that a similar situation could occour with froggle. The fact is it has not happened in either of them yet. However based on reputation, I would bet it would happen with google last.
I haven't gotten a DMCA takedown notice in the last week or so, so here is a torrent for everyone to enjoy:
t
http://www.isthatdamngood.com/playfair-0.2.torren
Enjoy!
Wouldn't it be wonderfull once the WMA standard becomes available everywhere? All online music stores will use it because it will be so secure. On-demand video companies will spring up from this new found industry standard. Portable players and home stereo systems will all support it. Every media file on your computer will fall under one standard.
And then a code monky from Argentina will be codeing at 3am and have a Mountain Dew inspired breakthrough, and WMA will be broken wide open forever.
Software companies continue to forget the days of dongles, code wheeles, and manual page/paragraph/word lookups. All it will do is annoy real consumers.
Why is it all professional ice skaters are choosing to go to hell now? This is realy going to throw someones metrics off.
Someone should really point this out to Steve. I think using this type on installation on Macs would increase useability by leaps and bounds.
I ordered 2 laptops from Dell last year. They both shipped the business day after I ordered them.
First off, I'm assuming you want a mail order dell laptop. The simplest way to go is to get a mailbox in New York via a company like The Mail Box or a UPS store. They give you a full address that is not a PO box, and they will sign for packages for you. Pre-pay for 1 month. That's step 1.
Step 2 is order your laptop and have it sent to your brand new address. You are going to want expedited shipping here - probably next day shipping because it might take a few days for them to ship it.
Step 3, pick up your cheap laptop when it arrives and consider the difference as... profit!
They aren't quotes ('), they are backtics (`). They are used to denote that a particular keyword is a field and not a command. For example, if you had a field called LIKE, some sql parsers may become confused. Now, not to many dba's would create a field called LIKE but often in programming you have no idea what the name of the field will be when you are generating a sql call. Placing the table name in backtics prevents problems both from odd table/field names and from users who abuse software.
The thing about black holes emiting radiation is that they don't actually emit any radiation. Anything that enters the event horizon is gone - for good. It doesn't come back ever, even as black body radiation.
./ theoretical physisists.
The way theorists get around this is through virtual particles. Assume that virtual particle pairs are blinking in and out of existance all the time, but are never noticed because before they become 'real' particles they destroy each other (think particle/anti particle). The fun part comes when the particles appear on opposite sides of an event horizon. One gets sucked into the black hole, and the other becomes a full-fledged particle with a small chance of escapeing. Because the escapeing particle was never in the event horizon to begin with, it can contain no information from within the black hole.
Now, how the black hole doesn't gain mass from the anti-particle I'm not quite sure... I'll leave that up to all the
I've hacked hardware all across the country :)
Some more noteable exploits have been:
-Changing your parents VCR's so they revert back to blinking 12:00 24 hours after thier time has been set.
-Breaking tips of pens of people who regularly place them in thier shirt pockets.
-Altering automatic coffee makers around the world to turn back on after you turn them off in the morning.
-Modifying geometries of glasses from circular to oval so as to increase dribble.
-Abusing multi-line phone systems to induce irony. (Pizza hut and Dominos both on the same line, and both believe the other called them. Multiple departments in Kinko's are just as interesting.)
-Reflashing firmware in cell phones to slowly increase ringger volume over the period of a week to the point it can crack plaster.
-Disabeling the left turn signal indicators in cars and rewiring the bar to be in the left turn position by default.
-Altering the speed of clothes dryer tumblers so as to be the most efficient at both inverting socks and assuring any metalic snaps on jeans slam against the outside wall on every rotation.
-Using an epoxy weld to alter the natural curve and velocity of drinking fountain streams.
-Abuseing power window buttons while in the back seat of a car at night to make the driver believe there is something wrong with his electrical system.
-Placing white-out on fax machine mirrors.
-Changing keymaps from US to French and waiting for the user to just swap thier g and j keys.
-Replacing the ferrite cores on monitor cables with magnets.
Ahh... the joys of hacking.
No, I do not think they should have given up thier name. They are entitled to use it as much as Pontiac is. From my understanding of the situation, the Phoenix code name was changed to Firebird, and then to Firefox for thier final brand. They were code names for projects similar to Merced or Coppermine. The final name was always going to be changed to something once the release came.
/. about the 'Firebird relational database.' I always believed the database was relationaly designed and interfaced via SQL but what do I know..
Also, from what I remember from the incident I had a very bad impression of the Firebird project. I no longer have any links but what I remember now about it (granted it may be totaly different from what actually happened.. but this is how I view it right now) was the Firebird people attacking Mozilla and writing a very forcefull letter demanding the name change. I believe that a less agressive approach would have produced the same results, and a more positive image for the company.
As far as the relational database vs SQL, I don't know *anything* about the firebird project. All I know is the title here on
I've already generated a ton of negative comments about my post, but remember this is just my opinion. It's the opinion of a linux sysadmin/perl monk/mysql user who is probably in thier target market. I'm just letting them know why I just don't care.
Some other users have posted some interesting information regarding the 'stink' that the FBDB people did, including mailbombing the mozilla developers. Any project that resorts to that level of action has to do a heck of a lot to not be considered crap in my eyes.
Also, for the record I don't work for/on Mozilla/Firebird/Firefox. I have submitted several bug reports regarding mozilla and I use Mozilla as my primary browser. I have played around with firefox and I do like it. I have never heard of firebird before thier actions, and I have never used thier products ever.
Also, from what I remember from the incident I had a very bad impression of the Firebird project. I no longer have any links but what I remember now about it (granted it may be totaly different from what actually happened.. but this is how I view it right now) was the Firebird people attacking Mozilla and writing a very forcefull letter demanding the name change. I believe that a less agressive approach would have produced the same results, and a more positive image for the company.
As far as the relational database vs SQL, I don't know *anything* about the firebird project. All I know is the title here on
I've already generated a ton of negative comments about my post, but remember this is just my opinion. It's the opinion of a linux sysadmin/perl monk/mysql user who is probably in thier target market. I'm just letting them know why I just don't care.
You know, I really don't have anything against the firebird(tm) db people. I'm sure they are all fine coders and the DB is probably fairly decent. Personaly, I'm not leaving mysql anytime soon but that is beside the point.
I'm not looking at thier web page. I'm not considering Firebird(tm) for any projects. I'm not recommending it to other people. I don't even really care about any new features in yet another relational database.
Why? Why would anyone go out of thier way to not learn about a (free?) new database release? My reasons are simple. I don't like the way they handled the Mozilla/Firebird naming issue. Does that have anything at all to do with the quality of thier products? I doubt it. Should I be so shallow so as to pre-judge an entire company and thier products by the way they handle thier PR? Probably not... but I'm still not sending SCO $699.
Well heck, I guess to make this fair we are going to have to impliment SMB support.
I'd like to put forth the observation that computing power _can_ increase forever. Once we hit the wall here in our universe, we simply move the computer into another dimension. Processing without the speed of light limitation would be a plus. Also, 4D "transistors" (or thier appropriate counterpart) could be a huge improvement.
Granted, that type of engineering would definately be considered magical - but not impossible.
Let me guess.. he says that the new topological object is universe-shaped?