What might be missing from the grandparent's post was not just MS special tool, which in and of itself isn't anti-competitive, but that the tool may work because of special knowledge about DLL structures not available to the non-MS development world.
This would be particularly true if they got the OS developers to modify OS DLL behavior specifically to allow them to create a superior DLL.
Despite decades of the "desktop" and "folder" metaphor, most lusers are still too stupid (lazy, foolish, etc) to navigate their filesystems. Anything that doesn't show up in their last 4 opened documents in whatever applications they use might as well be lost.
Traditional file search isn't good enough since in addition to being too brain atrophied to navigate a file system, they also think that "Document 1" is a reasonable naming convention.
It drives me right 'round the bend when our "technology savvy business leaders" who are said to walk on water because they produce TV commercials INSIST that every web site we produce, even internal ones, must be made as a giant flash object.
Apparently something that looks like a TV must act like a TV. Just another function of "if your only tool is a hammer, everything looks like a nail" I guess, but it is infuriating.
I'm pretty sure that Sweden has Bad People(TM) like every other place, but for some reason socialist propaganda (generally not Swedish) and common stereotypes suggest that just about everything except the weather is a little kinder, gentler and more socially aware than everywhere else.
For some reason I envision a maximum security prison in Sweden being more like a college dorm than a prison.
Isn't one washroom per floor kind of typical of most large buildings? I work in a 40 story downtown tower and our building only has one per floor per gender.
I'd imagine that buildings with a larger footprint might have two per floor, but I can't say I've been in too many buildings that have more than that.
When was the last time you updated JUST a Windows DLL in a Windows application?
I can only think of two instances when you might update just the libraries for an application:
1) Windows OS. Libraries make sense here, but it's not like any service pack has ever been just DLLs or there's some expectation they'll be small. IMHO the OS libraries are the only place that sharing makes sense.
2) Large applications (think SQL server, Exchange, etc). Modularity makes sense here from a scale perspective, since updating a static Exchange install would be pretty painful. But again, it's not like E2k service packs have been small, either.
The "critical security fix" usually applies to OS-supplied libraries and moreso on the UNIX side when holes have been found in stuff like ssh or other crypto libraries linked all over the place.
But this is why I said "make it an option" -- if I want to install a statically linked/private library application, I should have the choice.
I'd prefer to see FLAC support in iTunes. I know its probably not something they'd support on the iPod, but a lot of live sets are offered in FLAC format and it'd be great to be able to import the FLAC files directly into iTunes and only convert them to MP3/AAC if I wanted them playable on the iPod.
Re:Believe it or not, Apple's DRM doesn't bother m
on
iTunes DRM Hole Closed
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· Score: 2, Informative
The problem with this, though, is that the songs are already low quality (128Kbps, even though the AAC compression is pretty decent; I have a hard time hearing any artifacts in them). If you burn them, then re-rip them, you're compressing the audio even further, creating a lower-quality version of the song than you already had.
You're not making the lossy original lossier, though. I can't think of too many (any?) audio transcode applications that don't essentially decode the original format into what amounts to an uncompressed waveform and then compresses it into the new format. This is exactly the process for AAC->CD->MP3, since iTunes requires a conversion to physical media.
While its true that iterating this process many times will ultimately have a degrading effect on audio quality, the point at which this is the case is dependent on the codec, bitrate and strategy (VBR, etc). Even 5-6 years ago it was believed that dozens of analog copies between minidiscs were required to show generational effects of transcoding.
I seriously doubt that a single AAC->WAV->MP3 conversion at quality bitrates would show any noticable degredation, especially not in the usual listening environments (cars, mass transit, urban areas, most home audio setups) due to the quality of the equipment and the noise floors associated with the locations.
No. You do this, and you'll have about 157 copies of the same.dll's on your system.
Who fucking cares? Storage is $0.50 per gig, so I blow a couple of gig on duplicated libraries. Can't I at least get the choice of a "static" install that doesn't rely on shared libraries?
Most people never rebuild the own Windows DLLs, so the "dynamic update" argument for shared libraries seldom holds water for applications in that environment, and the loss of storage is meaningless in today's hard disks.
At least build the installers (or the Makefiles) such that a statically linked installation is at least a *choice*.
No, I think we were pretty cautious. Might have pranked the front desk of the dorm on a hijacked base station ("Can you tell me if there's a Harry Bush in this dorm?"), but that's it.
Just about anyone would have pinned him for any serious telecommunications misdeed, since his cordless phone stuff and his general technical creativity were well known (he soundproofed his dorm room with foam panels).
I was kind of involved in psychopharmacology, so drawing attention with potentially illegal phone prankery might have drawn unfortunate attention to my recreational interests which, while personal-use oriented and well within the spirit of collegiate inquiry, were frowned upon by the campus cops.
Just because you've been using a resource exclusively or needing to use it in a manner that is exclusive of other uses doesn't necessarily mean that you should keep getting to do it that way forever.
Back in the 1980s when cordless phones just started to reach mass appeal, a guy in my dorm had one and had figured out how to adjust the internals to maximize the power of the base and handset and would often show up at a bar that was within a block or so of our dorm with his cordless phone, and it worked there. It was pretty impressive in 1986 to see someone with a cordless phone in a non-residential setting that actually worked.
I seem to also recall the same individual had a scanner and I seem to remember(1) us using the scanner to find other cordless phones within our dorm complex and, once we figured out what channel they were on (trivial in the days of all-analog 49Mhz phones), being able to make calls on their lines or answer their phones.
(1) Disclaimer: I know we went through the technical exercise of finding out what channel one person's phone was to the extent of getting rogue dialtone. I may be misremembering the level of pranksterism we were willing to engage in.
People opposed to rational drug laws make some assumptions which have no basis in reality:
The first is that once legalized, everyone will become hopelessly addicted to the most dangerous drugs. The corallary to this assumption is that the current drug laws now are effective at preventing everyone who chooses to do drugs from doing drugs. Dependent on this assumption is the idea that people who do drugs now are somehow prevented from engaging in dangerous behaviors like driving.
The primary assumption about "everyone" becoming addicted doesn't hold any basis in reality. I don't doubt that some people might use drugs who don't now, and some percentage of them will get in over their heads, but the idea that people who aren't now injecting heroin will suddenly start for the only reason that it's no longer prohibited doesn't have any proof behind it.
The corallary to this is almost as important as the primary assumption -- the idea that drug laws now are actually preventing people from getting high now is patently absurd, since drug usage has increased and any high school student will be able to tell you where to get pot at least, if not how to cook crystal meth, even if they are NOT drug users.
The last assumption is undermined by the lack of evidence for the first and the reality of the second. People who don't get high now probably won't get high in the future, and people who want to get high now certainly are and are probably less likely to respect driving laws (and laws generally) since they've already demonstrated a willingness to break the law. If drugs were legal, people who get high might be LESS inclined to break the law since their drug use wouldn't be illegal and they might then have a greater respect for the law.
...since I can burn AACs to CD for play in a normal CD player. Should I expect that AACs will only play in iTunes and iPod? No, the user has a reasonable expectation that the program will make CDs in whatever format the program is configured to make them in.
Clearly its just a nod to the DRM needs of the music industry to prohibit AAC->mp3 conversion in a single step, although you'd think that Apple *might* be able to get away with it if they would allow only direct transcodes to mp3 for songs burned to CD that belong the same album and only once.
...but Jessica Simpson has the looks and the body most closely resembling Lynda Carter.
Most of the other choices I've seen suggested here are just not voluptuous enough to be Wonder Woman. It's not that they're not attractive, just not beautiful.
Most assets are fungible and unless the suit is about an item of such scarcity that there is no suitable replacement available (particularly unique plot of land, work of art, etc).
I can't see a judge restraining the defendants rights to their property without good cause (risk of flight, etc). And even if there was some kind of risk, there's always the option of the defendent posting a bond equivilent to the value of the property such that they may retain control over their property without the property potentially evaporating.
Blade type systems aren't really the same as what I was thinking as they lack the NUMA and (native) virtual machine capabilities that would make it truly interesting.
Imagine a system with 4 video cards and 4 CPU cards in it. With NUMA and VM capabilities, it could be one 4-CPU system with a 4-head video system. Or two dual CPU systems with dual video. Or 4 systems. Or even more if you were willing to partition the 'smaller' systems through the VM with less access to the CPU.
I honestly don't understand why Intel or AMD aren't doing more to improve the virtualization of their CPUs. VMWare is really good, but the ability to truly virtualize all the hardware without massive emulation penalties is a big problem.
Why not take this one step further and have the "motherboard" be a bus backplane with your I/O ports and slots, and the daughterboards housing a CPU+RAM. Add in some NUMA and a VM achitecture and you could have an interesting system, kind of like a real computer.
There's a discover card ad near where I work with a picture of some smug, self-satisfied middle-manager type with the caption "I'm expensing lunch AND getting cash back bonus? Is that legal?"
Not only is using your personal card with rebates common, the credit card company is encouraging it. Of course the unstated assumption is that the guy has a dubious reason for expensing lunch and he's "getting away" with a meal on the company's dime.
But hey, at a certain level of the corporate food chain, it really does become corporate welfare -- mileage reimbursements, meals, phones and other gadgets, parking, ad nauseum. Socialism for the rich, capitalism for the rest of us.
Gotta go, room service is delivering my dinner; ahh, another 75 free miles.
You know, the one where "corporate business" *is* the new national security?
What is the deal with the DL DVD costs, anyway?
on
Apple Backs Blu-ray
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· Score: 1
At first NEC tried to get away with charging extra for DL functionality until everyone found out their single-o layer drives were a rom flash away from DL, and then suddenly everyone had DL +/- drives on the market for $50.
But the DL media is STILL a zillion a pop, when you can find it. The only stuff I've seen retail has been bunlded with a bunch of overpriced -R media, *AND*, real expensive to boot.
Is it just not really viable from an engineering perspective or is there some conspiracy to keep me from DVDShrinking by less than 5%?
I don't doubt that the USB2 bus would bottleneck, but software RAID isn't what I'd want (and annoyingly, even XP won't let you do RAID over USB2 disks anyway).
I'd want actual hardware RAID so that RAID sets would be truly portable to anything supporting USB2 mass storage devices. Software RAID is truly unportable without moving it to a system that supports the exact RAID software system. Given the moving-target nature of Linux, I'd call a Linux software RAID completely non-portable.
I'm not saying its inherently bad, it's just not what I'd look for, although for the hub I dream about, an embedded CPU running linux and using Linux RAID would be fine.
Virtualization rocks. One thing I would like to see, though, is a way to have the windows opened by an application in a VM in their own windows in the host OS, the way some X servers can use the host OS' window manager to open their windows, or a Citrix-hosted app that just gives you the app, and not the desktop.
This might make the VM-hosted apps slightly more responsive (since you're not dealing with the overhead of the guest OS display), and make it seem more native when running applications out of a VM.
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What might be missing from the grandparent's post was not just MS special tool, which in and of itself isn't anti-competitive, but that the tool may work because of special knowledge about DLL structures not available to the non-MS development world.
This would be particularly true if they got the OS developers to modify OS DLL behavior specifically to allow them to create a superior DLL.
Despite decades of the "desktop" and "folder" metaphor, most lusers are still too stupid (lazy, foolish, etc) to navigate their filesystems. Anything that doesn't show up in their last 4 opened documents in whatever applications they use might as well be lost.
Traditional file search isn't good enough since in addition to being too brain atrophied to navigate a file system, they also think that "Document 1" is a reasonable naming convention.
It drives me right 'round the bend when our "technology savvy business leaders" who are said to walk on water because they produce TV commercials INSIST that every web site we produce, even internal ones, must be made as a giant flash object.
Apparently something that looks like a TV must act like a TV. Just another function of "if your only tool is a hammer, everything looks like a nail" I guess, but it is infuriating.
I'm pretty sure that Sweden has Bad People(TM) like every other place, but for some reason socialist propaganda (generally not Swedish) and common stereotypes suggest that just about everything except the weather is a little kinder, gentler and more socially aware than everywhere else.
For some reason I envision a maximum security prison in Sweden being more like a college dorm than a prison.
Isn't one washroom per floor kind of typical of most large buildings? I work in a 40 story downtown tower and our building only has one per floor per gender.
I'd imagine that buildings with a larger footprint might have two per floor, but I can't say I've been in too many buildings that have more than that.
When was the last time you updated JUST a Windows DLL in a Windows application?
I can only think of two instances when you might update just the libraries for an application:
1) Windows OS. Libraries make sense here, but it's not like any service pack has ever been just DLLs or there's some expectation they'll be small. IMHO the OS libraries are the only place that sharing makes sense.
2) Large applications (think SQL server, Exchange, etc). Modularity makes sense here from a scale perspective, since updating a static Exchange install would be pretty painful. But again, it's not like E2k service packs have been small, either.
The "critical security fix" usually applies to OS-supplied libraries and moreso on the UNIX side when holes have been found in stuff like ssh or other crypto libraries linked all over the place.
But this is why I said "make it an option" -- if I want to install a statically linked/private library application, I should have the choice.
I'd prefer to see FLAC support in iTunes. I know its probably not something they'd support on the iPod, but a lot of live sets are offered in FLAC format and it'd be great to be able to import the FLAC files directly into iTunes and only convert them to MP3/AAC if I wanted them playable on the iPod.
The problem with this, though, is that the songs are already low quality (128Kbps, even though the AAC compression is pretty decent; I have a hard time hearing any artifacts in them). If you burn them, then re-rip them, you're compressing the audio even further, creating a lower-quality version of the song than you already had.
You're not making the lossy original lossier, though. I can't think of too many (any?) audio transcode applications that don't essentially decode the original format into what amounts to an uncompressed waveform and then compresses it into the new format. This is exactly the process for AAC->CD->MP3, since iTunes requires a conversion to physical media.
While its true that iterating this process many times will ultimately have a degrading effect on audio quality, the point at which this is the case is dependent on the codec, bitrate and strategy (VBR, etc). Even 5-6 years ago it was believed that dozens of analog copies between minidiscs were required to show generational effects of transcoding.
I seriously doubt that a single AAC->WAV->MP3 conversion at quality bitrates would show any noticable degredation, especially not in the usual listening environments (cars, mass transit, urban areas, most home audio setups) due to the quality of the equipment and the noise floors associated with the locations.
No. You do this, and you'll have about 157 copies of the same .dll's on your system.
Who fucking cares? Storage is $0.50 per gig, so I blow a couple of gig on duplicated libraries. Can't I at least get the choice of a "static" install that doesn't rely on shared libraries?
Most people never rebuild the own Windows DLLs, so the "dynamic update" argument for shared libraries seldom holds water for applications in that environment, and the loss of storage is meaningless in today's hard disks.
At least build the installers (or the Makefiles) such that a statically linked installation is at least a *choice*.
No, I think we were pretty cautious. Might have pranked the front desk of the dorm on a hijacked base station ("Can you tell me if there's a Harry Bush in this dorm?"), but that's it.
Just about anyone would have pinned him for any serious telecommunications misdeed, since his cordless phone stuff and his general technical creativity were well known (he soundproofed his dorm room with foam panels).
I was kind of involved in psychopharmacology, so drawing attention with potentially illegal phone prankery might have drawn unfortunate attention to my recreational interests which, while personal-use oriented and well within the spirit of collegiate inquiry, were frowned upon by the campus cops.
Just because you've been using a resource exclusively or needing to use it in a manner that is exclusive of other uses doesn't necessarily mean that you should keep getting to do it that way forever.
Back in the 1980s when cordless phones just started to reach mass appeal, a guy in my dorm had one and had figured out how to adjust the internals to maximize the power of the base and handset and would often show up at a bar that was within a block or so of our dorm with his cordless phone, and it worked there. It was pretty impressive in 1986 to see someone with a cordless phone in a non-residential setting that actually worked.
I seem to also recall the same individual had a scanner and I seem to remember(1) us using the scanner to find other cordless phones within our dorm complex and, once we figured out what channel they were on (trivial in the days of all-analog 49Mhz phones), being able to make calls on their lines or answer their phones.
(1) Disclaimer: I know we went through the technical exercise of finding out what channel one person's phone was to the extent of getting rogue dialtone. I may be misremembering the level of pranksterism we were willing to engage in.
People opposed to rational drug laws make some assumptions which have no basis in reality:
The first is that once legalized, everyone will become hopelessly addicted to the most dangerous drugs. The corallary to this assumption is that the current drug laws now are effective at preventing everyone who chooses to do drugs from doing drugs. Dependent on this assumption is the idea that people who do drugs now are somehow prevented from engaging in dangerous behaviors like driving.
The primary assumption about "everyone" becoming addicted doesn't hold any basis in reality. I don't doubt that some people might use drugs who don't now, and some percentage of them will get in over their heads, but the idea that people who aren't now injecting heroin will suddenly start for the only reason that it's no longer prohibited doesn't have any proof behind it.
The corallary to this is almost as important as the primary assumption -- the idea that drug laws now are actually preventing people from getting high now is patently absurd, since drug usage has increased and any high school student will be able to tell you where to get pot at least, if not how to cook crystal meth, even if they are NOT drug users.
The last assumption is undermined by the lack of evidence for the first and the reality of the second. People who don't get high now probably won't get high in the future, and people who want to get high now certainly are and are probably less likely to respect driving laws (and laws generally) since they've already demonstrated a willingness to break the law. If drugs were legal, people who get high might be LESS inclined to break the law since their drug use wouldn't be illegal and they might then have a greater respect for the law.
...since I can burn AACs to CD for play in a normal CD player. Should I expect that AACs will only play in iTunes and iPod? No, the user has a reasonable expectation that the program will make CDs in whatever format the program is configured to make them in.
Clearly its just a nod to the DRM needs of the music industry to prohibit AAC->mp3 conversion in a single step, although you'd think that Apple *might* be able to get away with it if they would allow only direct transcodes to mp3 for songs burned to CD that belong the same album and only once.
...but Jessica Simpson has the looks and the body most closely resembling Lynda Carter.
Most of the other choices I've seen suggested here are just not voluptuous enough to be Wonder Woman. It's not that they're not attractive, just not beautiful.
Most assets are fungible and unless the suit is about an item of such scarcity that there is no suitable replacement available (particularly unique plot of land, work of art, etc).
I can't see a judge restraining the defendants rights to their property without good cause (risk of flight, etc). And even if there was some kind of risk, there's always the option of the defendent posting a bond equivilent to the value of the property such that they may retain control over their property without the property potentially evaporating.
Blade type systems aren't really the same as what I was thinking as they lack the NUMA and (native) virtual machine capabilities that would make it truly interesting.
Imagine a system with 4 video cards and 4 CPU cards in it. With NUMA and VM capabilities, it could be one 4-CPU system with a 4-head video system. Or two dual CPU systems with dual video. Or 4 systems. Or even more if you were willing to partition the 'smaller' systems through the VM with less access to the CPU.
I honestly don't understand why Intel or AMD aren't doing more to improve the virtualization of their CPUs. VMWare is really good, but the ability to truly virtualize all the hardware without massive emulation penalties is a big problem.
Why not take this one step further and have the "motherboard" be a bus backplane with your I/O ports and slots, and the daughterboards housing a CPU+RAM. Add in some NUMA and a VM achitecture and you could have an interesting system, kind of like a real computer.
There's a discover card ad near where I work with a picture of some smug, self-satisfied middle-manager type with the caption "I'm expensing lunch AND getting cash back bonus? Is that legal?"
Not only is using your personal card with rebates common, the credit card company is encouraging it. Of course the unstated assumption is that the guy has a dubious reason for expensing lunch and he's "getting away" with a meal on the company's dime.
But hey, at a certain level of the corporate food chain, it really does become corporate welfare -- mileage reimbursements, meals, phones and other gadgets, parking, ad nauseum. Socialism for the rich, capitalism for the rest of us.
Gotta go, room service is delivering my dinner; ahh, another 75 free miles.
And lastly, in a corporate environment I've heard of _people_ getting rebates for corporate purchases
In many larger sized companies its difficult to get the money to the company, as the "right" way to account for the income is complex and varies.
Of course, you could run them on totally seperate memory spaces, but then you'd effectively have 2 computers...
Doesn't NUMA essentially solve this problem, or at least make it work?
You know, the one where "corporate business" *is* the new national security?
At first NEC tried to get away with charging extra for DL functionality until everyone found out their single-o layer drives were a rom flash away from DL, and then suddenly everyone had DL +/- drives on the market for $50.
But the DL media is STILL a zillion a pop, when you can find it. The only stuff I've seen retail has been bunlded with a bunch of overpriced -R media, *AND*, real expensive to boot.
Is it just not really viable from an engineering perspective or is there some conspiracy to keep me from DVDShrinking by less than 5%?
I don't doubt that the USB2 bus would bottleneck, but software RAID isn't what I'd want (and annoyingly, even XP won't let you do RAID over USB2 disks anyway).
I'd want actual hardware RAID so that RAID sets would be truly portable to anything supporting USB2 mass storage devices. Software RAID is truly unportable without moving it to a system that supports the exact RAID software system. Given the moving-target nature of Linux, I'd call a Linux software RAID completely non-portable.
I'm not saying its inherently bad, it's just not what I'd look for, although for the hub I dream about, an embedded CPU running linux and using Linux RAID would be fine.
Virtualization rocks. One thing I would like to see, though, is a way to have the windows opened by an application in a VM in their own windows in the host OS, the way some X servers can use the host OS' window manager to open their windows, or a Citrix-hosted app that just gives you the app, and not the desktop.
This might make the VM-hosted apps slightly more responsive (since you're not dealing with the overhead of the guest OS display), and make it seem more native when running applications out of a VM.