The people who run them, install them, and sell them have the inside track on making the fix.
Do you think this is all by accident?
You are absolutely correct. My comment was firmly tongue-in-cheek. Your comment, however, is chilling because it's true and I really do think there is a master scheme to fix the election like this.
You know what I was thinking just now: Wouldn't it be interesting if, instead of fighting Diebold tooth and nail like all the well educated and technically literate people nowadays seem to be doing (myself included), we simply said "Bring on the voting machines!", and used our superior intellect and computer knowledge to fix our own elections?
I've often felt that some of the more intelligent people on Slashdot could pick better leaders than the average dumb American. Maybe we implement a Slashdot based voting system and have everyone post in a story what their vote is and the reason they're voting for their candidate. The candidate with the most +5 insightful vote posts gets fixed^H^H^H^H^Helected by the VBS meisters.
It's a fine, not a settlement. They're expected to cut a check for the amount to the government, not reimburse consumers.
Do you realize how messed up our anti-trust system is? So, Infineon engaged in price-fixing, and gouged the consumers for more money. Now, the government says "pay up", and Infineon just has to raise prices in order to cover this $160 million loss. In both cases the consumer got shafted. Once by the company, and the second time by the government. These settlements should go directly to the people that bought systems during the time period that price fixing was occurring.
1. With a stationary bicycle hooked up to a small generator, a human who is classified as in moderate shape can power a 13 inch black and white television at about an even rate - pedal for half an hour, watch for half an hour.
Wow, where can I sign up to get my house converted to this type of power. If I had to ride a stationary bike for a half hour just to watch a half hour of TV, or use the computer for 4 hours, I'd be in the best shape of my life! Seriously though, I should just get some willpower and exercise because I want to, not because I'm forced to. This method kind of reminds me of the "Slashdot Deprivation Device" that cuts off your internet connection and locks you out of root for a specified period of time.
Now copy protection is disabling games if you have utilities that simply might help pirate a game - like Alcohol 120%, Nero or CloneCD... Of course, if we honestly ask ourselves how many purely legitimate users of those utilities there are, odds are probably that deep down inside we have to admit "not many".
Your reply:...When I go to see a movie; I don't want to be lectured for 5 minutes about how movie piracy is killing the industry. I just paid my 6.50$, leave me alone!!! I bought the damn game, let me play without switching discs when I get tired of one game!!!
That's a really good point. What this guy is saying is something like: How many people really go to the movie without bringing a camcorder and taping it for their friends? When we ask ourselves, deep down inside, we have to admit, not many...
Hehehe... I'm going to make myself spew coffee listening to this guy's rhetoric.
Why are you blaming the author of the article? If there are games that treat the presence of Nero as a cracking attempt and refuse to run, I think that bloody well NEEDS to be reported. It's not his fault that the copy protection software authors have blinders on.
I'm not blaming the author of the article, I'm just saying it is incorrect for him to say that not many people use Nero for anything other than (illegally) copying games.
That is really a pain. I image all my game CD's and use daemon tools to mount them.
Me too. Load times are much faster and there's no worrying about scratching your original CDs. Just copy them to the hard drive when you buy the game and put the original CDs back in the box. This article is written by some major shills for the game industry... Check out this quote:
Now copy protection is disabling games if you have utilities that simply might help pirate a game - like Alcohol 120%, Nero or CloneCD... Of course, if we honestly ask ourselves how many purely legitimate users of those utilities there are, odds are probably that deep down inside we have to admit "not many".
Wha????? Not many legitimate users of Nero? Nero is one of the best CD/DVD burning software out there. This article is clearly written by a BSA shill. Not every utility that can copy a CD is used for infringing purposes. In fact, most of us use these utilities for non-infringing fair-use purposes like backing up the games we purchased.
First, you're protesting the outcome of an election... bad start. Generally even semi-democratic processes are better than coups.
No, you're protesting the outcome of a stolen election. You would admit that anyone protesting the outcome of Saddam Hussein's last 99% vote in the election would probably be justified, right?
As for refusing to work, this may be doable in some areas, but for a great portion of the populace that relies on public services for water and power, the government is in a water-monopoly position (rebellions lasting 3 days tops are easy to deal with)
That's something I hadn't thought of, however, most of the people working at water treatment centers and public works are citizens like the rest of us. The main point though is that all the government would have to do is seize water treatment plants and public utilities and they could pretty much control the citizenry for a temporary or long-term amount of time.
The thing is, once all of these events happen:
1. Citizenry protest a corrupt and non-democratic election by work-stoppage (no taxation without representation). 2. Government dispatches the military to seize public utilities in order to extort work out of the citizenry in exchange for water and food. 3. Citizenry realizes that the government is totally fucking them over and they are not free.
Once all of these things happen, the government will be overthrown, because people will realize how corrupt they are and I'm sorry, but there is no way that our small military can stand against 280 million citizens, armed or unarmed. Besides, don't you think that most of the military are normal people too with families and relatives that are civilians, and wouldn't stand for that shit?
I'm not saying it has to come to that, but trust me, the government would lose more than it would ever gain by trying to force all of the citizens to work at the barrel of a gun, or by extorting work from them by witholding water.
My question for you is this: What type of penalties could someone expect to face for "inciting" this type of action? Life imprisonment? Public hanging? I'm talking about the US here.
Well, then you'll be a dead terrorist. You're not going to make an armed resistance against the US Government and live.
You know, I was having a conversation with my friend from the UK last week and we were discussing the difference between US and the UK, primarily gun law. I asked him, "What can you do if the government becomes corrupt?" He had a very interesting response:
"There are other ways you can overthrow a corrupt government besides violence. Imagine what would happen if all of the citizens simply refused to go to work. The government would have to agree with their demands because they don't have enough soldiers to point guns at everyone and force them to do their jobs. The economy would grind to a halt and the government would be thrown out on their ass in a moment's time."
This got me thinking: Suppose Bush decides to steal the election again in 2004... If this happens, I think one of the safest and best ways we could protest would be to stop going to work for a few weeks. Imagine what would happen...
Yes, because it is a "consumer electronics" device and they wanted to maintain performance. Stronger encryption could cause performance issues and increased costs of components. The encryption was to give the music industry some sense of security.
You don't know what you're talking about. The encryption hasn't been broken and it's not weak. It's 2048 bit encryption, which is plenty strong for most purposes. The only thing Jon did was discover the public key so that he can encrypt data destined for the Airport in any program. You'd need the private key in order to decrypt the data.
Jon really is an asshole with too much time on his hands. What is he going to hack next? Satellite receivers? Computer controlled fridges? Microwaves? Leave our consumer electronics alone Jon.
With all due respect, fuck off. Jon is providing a valuable service to the world by allowing us to do more things with our already purchased hardware. This violates no laws and doesn't steal revenue from any company. Name one way that the record industry or Apple will suffer from this. Name one way that the DVD consortium or MPAA suffered from the release of DeCSS. You can't do it because there is no proof that allowing people to play DVDs on Linux, or play music from other software than iTunes hurts anyone or any corporation.
The granparent's point is perfectly valid. The encryption over the air accomplishing nothing. It is just a placebo that Apple gives the music companies.
I agree with everything you said with regards to the decryption providing nothing new in terms of breaking DRM, but there is one thing you might not have thought of before: The encryption also accomplishes the beneficial step of encrypting audio so that a nosy neighbor can't listen to your music as well. Of course, with WPA or WEP turned on you are double encrypting the data anyway.
As with any news article, it pays to look at the source. In this case, it is CNN, a Time/Warner subsidiary, which is just another member of the RIAA. Frankly, I'm pretty much appalled whenever I watch CNN Headline News any more because their "Music" section is just blatant advertising for the latest craptacular top-40 artist they're trying to foist on the american public. I'm not saying that the Kansas AG isn't trying to censor things from the library, perhaps that's true as well, but it's far more likely that Warner Bros. sent them 1500 copies of some shit band that they couldn't sell in the stores, and only 100 CDs that were actually decent (like Lou Reed or Outkast). The funny thing is, in the article, of course they're going to tell you they are rejecting the popular bands, or the ones most people would like to hear, in order to spin the story the direction they want it.
Move along folks, the headline should read "Media Giant's News arm tries to cover up problems from Media Giant's record label."
I have an AT&T 5840 phone that uses 5.8GHz but if you read the fine print in the specifications, it also uses 2.4GHz:
I just bought that same phone and was pretty pissed when I read the specifications because it advertises on the box that it won't interfere with wireless networks. Anyway, after using it for a couple of weeks I've had no problems. I get 5 megabits a second down on my Cablevision line (through a Linksys WRT54G) whether I'm using the phone to make a call or not (tested using dslreports.com speed test). My theory is that when they say "Handset to Base" they are talking about the communication that happens when you push numbers and other buttons on the phone, which is only short, bursty, data communication, rather than a continuous stream of voice traffic. This would explain why it doesn't seem to interfere with my wireless network.
Nice phone, by the way. It would be nicer if you could customize or download new ringtones though, and I wish I could sync it via Bluetooth with my Powerbook... (hehe, never thought I'd want that many features in a cordless...)
Sun should find this project rather easy going - their motherboards ARE already pretty obsolete anyway.
I know, funny...
[/voice=Nelson Muntz]HA HA![/voice]...
But in all seriousness, Sun is pretty much at the top of the game when it comes to motherboard manufacturing. Take a look at the specs on their new AMD Opteron workstations.
2 AMD Opteron 200 series processors. (up to 2.4 ghz.)
4 PCI-X busses.
Up to 16GB PC3200 memory with 12.8GB/sec. total memory bandwidth!
Holy schnikes Batman! Sun's new workstation just ate my dual G5 for lunch.
And a more interesting topic is their consistent mentioning of taking the cache of the chip. That's a nice dream and all, but where the hell are you going to put it then? Hardwired onto the motherboard?
You are failing to completely grasp the significance of this technology. The only reason why a processor even has cache right now is because of the slow bus that connects it to main memory. Connect the processor and memory directly and now your memory is your cache.
We (CSW) don't provide "Linux apps", but we natively compile and package software for Solaris.
A big thank you is in order to you and the other folks at CSW that have made life as a Solaris sysadmin about 100 times easier.
(Now if only I could afford a Blade 2500....)
Forget about that crufty old 2500... when you get some cash, hook yourself up with the new and improved hotness...... I'm wishing I could afford one of these right now.
Re:Note this is only for Solaris x86
on
Linux Apps On Solaris
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
This only works on Solaris x86 machines, which has always been the ugly Solaris step-child.
Your point is taken, but with the release of full 64-bit Solaris 10 for X86-64 and Sun's new 2-way AMD Opteron workstations, 2 and 4-way Opteron servers, and soon to be released 8-way Opteron servers, Sun is betting the farm on X86-64. The plain and simple truth of the matter is that Opteron offers two to three times the performance of current UltraSparc chips, and I predict that Sun will replace their entire product line, except for the extreme high-end, with Opteron, in the next 5 years.
The other thing you should consider is that more Sysadmins know Solaris than any other flavor of Unix, so giving them the capability of running 64-bit Solaris with 32 or 64-bit Linux applications side-by-side is clearly a winning move on Sun's part. Now, if only they can execute properly. Some of the benchmarks on the new Java Workstations (I don't know why they call them that when they're really just AMD Opteron workstations) have them running the BLAST benchmark on Solaris 10 x86 up to 61 percent faster than a Dell Precision Workstation running Linux.
Given the choice between a 32-bit Dell Xeon workstation with no console port, running Redhat, and a real 64-bit Sun workstation with a console port and everything, running Solaris 10, with full Linux compatibility (or dual-booting to Redhat if I so desire), at a lower price, guess which one I'm going to choose?
Don't tell anybody, but this must actually break the iTunes DRM good and hard.
Don't tell anybody, but you can actually already do this on Windows or Mac by burning your iTunes music to CD, then re-ripping to.AIFF or.WAV format. It's the same exact thing; you're converting the AAC format files to uncompressed, unencumbered audio by either playing them through a virtual sound card driver or burning them to CD. Both formats are "unencumbered".
Sure the CPU can think faster, but with software RAID 5 don't you have to write twice as much data over the PCI bus as you would with hardware? Ditto RAID 1.
You're correct, but with most of these newer solutions, each drive has it's own dedicated SATA or ATA133 connection, and you're nowhere near maxing out the bandwidth of the pipe. Besides, with RAID 5 you're almost always going to be bottlenecking on writes due to the parity calculations I was speaking of earlier.
Slashdot Mirror
The people who run them, install them, and sell them have the inside track on making the fix.
Do you think this is all by accident?
You are absolutely correct. My comment was firmly tongue-in-cheek. Your comment, however, is chilling because it's true and I really do think there is a master scheme to fix the election like this.
You know what I was thinking just now: Wouldn't it be interesting if, instead of fighting Diebold tooth and nail like all the well educated and technically literate people nowadays seem to be doing (myself included), we simply said "Bring on the voting machines!", and used our superior intellect and computer knowledge to fix our own elections?
I've often felt that some of the more intelligent people on Slashdot could pick better leaders than the average dumb American. Maybe we implement a Slashdot based voting system and have everyone post in a story what their vote is and the reason they're voting for their candidate. The candidate with the most +5 insightful vote posts gets fixed^H^H^H^H^Helected by the VBS meisters.
Shameless Plug:
Check out my own blog by clicking in my signature....
Thanks!
It's a fine, not a settlement. They're expected to cut a check for the amount to the government, not reimburse consumers.
Do you realize how messed up our anti-trust system is? So, Infineon engaged in price-fixing, and gouged the consumers for more money. Now, the government says "pay up", and Infineon just has to raise prices in order to cover this $160 million loss. In both cases the consumer got shafted. Once by the company, and the second time by the government. These settlements should go directly to the people that bought systems during the time period that price fixing was occurring.
# They will lead to a fun ...
Dude, I tried to read your report, but every line was commented out and my brain just skipped right past it without executing it.
Would you mind uncommenting the sections you'd like me to execute?
1. With a stationary bicycle hooked up to a small generator, a human who is classified as in moderate shape can power a 13 inch black and white television at about an even rate - pedal for half an hour, watch for half an hour.
Wow, where can I sign up to get my house converted to this type of power. If I had to ride a stationary bike for a half hour just to watch a half hour of TV, or use the computer for 4 hours, I'd be in the best shape of my life! Seriously though, I should just get some willpower and exercise because I want to, not because I'm forced to. This method kind of reminds me of the "Slashdot Deprivation Device" that cuts off your internet connection and locks you out of root for a specified period of time.
Original article said:
...When I go to see a movie; I don't want to be lectured for 5 minutes about how movie piracy is killing the industry. I just paid my 6.50$, leave me alone!!! I bought the damn game, let me play without switching discs when I get tired of one game!!!
Now copy protection is disabling games if you have utilities that simply might help pirate a game - like Alcohol 120%, Nero or CloneCD... Of course, if we honestly ask ourselves how many purely legitimate users of those utilities there are, odds are probably that deep down inside we have to admit "not many".
Your reply:
That's a really good point. What this guy is saying is something like: How many people really go to the movie without bringing a camcorder and taping it for their friends? When we ask ourselves, deep down inside, we have to admit, not many...
Hehehe... I'm going to make myself spew coffee listening to this guy's rhetoric.
Why are you blaming the author of the article? If there are games that treat the presence of Nero as a cracking attempt and refuse to run, I think that bloody well NEEDS to be reported. It's not his fault that the copy protection software authors have blinders on.
I'm not blaming the author of the article, I'm just saying it is incorrect for him to say that not many people use Nero for anything other than (illegally) copying games.
Why not use the google stock tool to google's Stock...
Hey buddy... Don't be googling my google stock with any tool, ok?
That is really a pain. I image all my game CD's and use daemon tools to mount them.
Me too. Load times are much faster and there's no worrying about scratching your original CDs. Just copy them to the hard drive when you buy the game and put the original CDs back in the box. This article is written by some major shills for the game industry... Check out this quote:
Now copy protection is disabling games if you have utilities that simply might help pirate a game - like Alcohol 120%, Nero or CloneCD... Of course, if we honestly ask ourselves how many purely legitimate users of those utilities there are, odds are probably that deep down inside we have to admit "not many".
Wha????? Not many legitimate users of Nero? Nero is one of the best CD/DVD burning software out there. This article is clearly written by a BSA shill. Not every utility that can copy a CD is used for infringing purposes. In fact, most of us use these utilities for non-infringing fair-use purposes like backing up the games we purchased.
First, you're protesting the outcome of an election ... bad start. Generally even semi-democratic processes are better than coups.
No, you're protesting the outcome of a stolen election. You would admit that anyone protesting the outcome of Saddam Hussein's last 99% vote in the election would probably be justified, right?
As for refusing to work, this may be doable in some areas, but for a great portion of the populace that relies on public services for water and power, the government is in a water-monopoly position (rebellions lasting 3 days tops are easy to deal with)
That's something I hadn't thought of, however, most of the people working at water treatment centers and public works are citizens like the rest of us. The main point though is that all the government would have to do is seize water treatment plants and public utilities and they could pretty much control the citizenry for a temporary or long-term amount of time.
The thing is, once all of these events happen:
1. Citizenry protest a corrupt and non-democratic election by work-stoppage (no taxation without representation).
2. Government dispatches the military to seize public utilities in order to extort work out of the citizenry in exchange for water and food.
3. Citizenry realizes that the government is totally fucking them over and they are not free.
Once all of these things happen, the government will be overthrown, because people will realize how corrupt they are and I'm sorry, but there is no way that our small military can stand against 280 million citizens, armed or unarmed. Besides, don't you think that most of the military are normal people too with families and relatives that are civilians, and wouldn't stand for that shit?
I'm not saying it has to come to that, but trust me, the government would lose more than it would ever gain by trying to force all of the citizens to work at the barrel of a gun, or by extorting work from them by witholding water.
My question for you is this: What type of penalties could someone expect to face for "inciting" this type of action? Life imprisonment? Public hanging? I'm talking about the US here.
ammo box
Well, then you'll be a dead terrorist. You're not going to make an armed resistance against the US Government and live.
You know, I was having a conversation with my friend from the UK last week and we were discussing the difference between US and the UK, primarily gun law. I asked him, "What can you do if the government becomes corrupt?" He had a very interesting response:
"There are other ways you can overthrow a corrupt government besides violence. Imagine what would happen if all of the citizens simply refused to go to work. The government would have to agree with their demands because they don't have enough soldiers to point guns at everyone and force them to do their jobs. The economy would grind to a halt and the government would be thrown out on their ass in a moment's time."
This got me thinking: Suppose Bush decides to steal the election again in 2004... If this happens, I think one of the safest and best ways we could protest would be to stop going to work for a few weeks. Imagine what would happen...
Yes, because it is a "consumer electronics" device and they wanted to maintain performance. Stronger encryption could cause performance issues and increased costs of components. The encryption was to give the music industry some sense of security.
You don't know what you're talking about. The encryption hasn't been broken and it's not weak. It's 2048 bit encryption, which is plenty strong for most purposes. The only thing Jon did was discover the public key so that he can encrypt data destined for the Airport in any program. You'd need the private key in order to decrypt the data.
Jon really is an asshole with too much time on his hands. What is he going to hack next? Satellite receivers? Computer controlled fridges? Microwaves? Leave our consumer electronics alone Jon.
With all due respect, fuck off. Jon is providing a valuable service to the world by allowing us to do more things with our already purchased hardware. This violates no laws and doesn't steal revenue from any company. Name one way that the record industry or Apple will suffer from this. Name one way that the DVD consortium or MPAA suffered from the release of DeCSS. You can't do it because there is no proof that allowing people to play DVDs on Linux, or play music from other software than iTunes hurts anyone or any corporation.
The granparent's point is perfectly valid. The encryption over the air accomplishing nothing. It is just a placebo that Apple gives the music companies.
I agree with everything you said with regards to the decryption providing nothing new in terms of breaking DRM, but there is one thing you might not have thought of before: The encryption also accomplishes the beneficial step of encrypting audio so that a nosy neighbor can't listen to your music as well. Of course, with WPA or WEP turned on you are double encrypting the data anyway.
Cheers.
As with any news article, it pays to look at the source. In this case, it is CNN, a Time/Warner subsidiary, which is just another member of the RIAA. Frankly, I'm pretty much appalled whenever I watch CNN Headline News any more because their "Music" section is just blatant advertising for the latest craptacular top-40 artist they're trying to foist on the american public. I'm not saying that the Kansas AG isn't trying to censor things from the library, perhaps that's true as well, but it's far more likely that Warner Bros. sent them 1500 copies of some shit band that they couldn't sell in the stores, and only 100 CDs that were actually decent (like Lou Reed or Outkast). The funny thing is, in the article, of course they're going to tell you they are rejecting the popular bands, or the ones most people would like to hear, in order to spin the story the direction they want it.
Move along folks, the headline should read "Media Giant's News arm tries to cover up problems from Media Giant's record label."
I have an AT&T 5840 phone that uses 5.8GHz but if you read the fine print in the specifications, it also uses 2.4GHz:
I just bought that same phone and was pretty pissed when I read the specifications because it advertises on the box that it won't interfere with wireless networks. Anyway, after using it for a couple of weeks I've had no problems. I get 5 megabits a second down on my Cablevision line (through a Linksys WRT54G) whether I'm using the phone to make a call or not (tested using dslreports.com speed test). My theory is that when they say "Handset to Base" they are talking about the communication that happens when you push numbers and other buttons on the phone, which is only short, bursty, data communication, rather than a continuous stream of voice traffic. This would explain why it doesn't seem to interfere with my wireless network.
Nice phone, by the way. It would be nicer if you could customize or download new ringtones though, and I wish I could sync it via Bluetooth with my Powerbook... (hehe, never thought I'd want that many features in a cordless...)
I know, funny...
[/voice=Nelson Muntz]HA HA![/voice]...
But in all seriousness, Sun is pretty much at the top of the game when it comes to motherboard manufacturing. Take a look at the specs on their new AMD Opteron workstations.
2 AMD Opteron 200 series processors. (up to 2.4 ghz.)
4 PCI-X busses.
Up to 16GB PC3200 memory with 12.8GB/sec. total memory bandwidth!
Holy schnikes Batman! Sun's new workstation just ate my dual G5 for lunch.
And a more interesting topic is their consistent mentioning of taking the cache of the chip. That's a nice dream and all, but where the hell are you going to put it then? Hardwired onto the motherboard?
You are failing to completely grasp the significance of this technology. The only reason why a processor even has cache right now is because of the slow bus that connects it to main memory. Connect the processor and memory directly and now your memory is your cache.
why couldn't I just use jack to route itunes to audacity?
You can, but for the 'noobs that might not know what Jack is, this is a simple way to "bypass" the DRM without using any third-party software.
We (CSW) don't provide "Linux apps", but we natively compile and package software for Solaris.
A big thank you is in order to you and the other folks at CSW that have made life as a Solaris sysadmin about 100 times easier.
(Now if only I could afford a Blade 2500....)
Forget about that crufty old 2500... when you get some cash, hook yourself up with the new and improved hotness...... I'm wishing I could afford one of these right now.
This only works on Solaris x86 machines, which has always been the ugly Solaris step-child.
Your point is taken, but with the release of full 64-bit Solaris 10 for X86-64 and Sun's new 2-way AMD Opteron workstations, 2 and 4-way Opteron servers, and soon to be released 8-way Opteron servers, Sun is betting the farm on X86-64. The plain and simple truth of the matter is that Opteron offers two to three times the performance of current UltraSparc chips, and I predict that Sun will replace their entire product line, except for the extreme high-end, with Opteron, in the next 5 years.
The other thing you should consider is that more Sysadmins know Solaris than any other flavor of Unix, so giving them the capability of running 64-bit Solaris with 32 or 64-bit Linux applications side-by-side is clearly a winning move on Sun's part. Now, if only they can execute properly. Some of the benchmarks on the new Java Workstations (I don't know why they call them that when they're really just AMD Opteron workstations) have them running the BLAST benchmark on Solaris 10 x86 up to 61 percent faster than a Dell Precision Workstation running Linux.
Given the choice between a 32-bit Dell Xeon workstation with no console port, running Redhat, and a real 64-bit Sun workstation with a console port and everything, running Solaris 10, with full Linux compatibility (or dual-booting to Redhat if I so desire), at a lower price, guess which one I'm going to choose?
Don't tell anybody, but this must actually break the iTunes DRM good and hard.
.AIFF or .WAV format. It's the same exact thing; you're converting the AAC format files to uncompressed, unencumbered audio by either playing them through a virtual sound card driver or burning them to CD. Both formats are "unencumbered".
Don't tell anybody, but you can actually already do this on Windows or Mac by burning your iTunes music to CD, then re-ripping to
Nothing to see here, move along folks.
Sun has 2 billion in cash and Novell is priced at 3 billion.
Where do you get this $2 billion in cash figure? Sun had $5 billion in cash, then they got $2 more billion from MS. Now they have $7 billion in cash.
actually, all xor's are done in firmware on 3ware cards. they are asic/sram designs not cpu/memory ones.
Yes, but the question still remains, is the custom ASIC they use as fast at parity calculations as a 3 ghz. Xeon? Maybe, maybe not.
Sure the CPU can think faster, but with software RAID 5 don't you have to write twice as much data over the PCI bus as you would with hardware? Ditto RAID 1.
You're correct, but with most of these newer solutions, each drive has it's own dedicated SATA or ATA133 connection, and you're nowhere near maxing out the bandwidth of the pipe. Besides, with RAID 5 you're almost always going to be bottlenecking on writes due to the parity calculations I was speaking of earlier.