But if OS X is restricted (read: bundled) to "standardized" hardware (like Dell, Gateway, etc.) then the hardware problems go away.
However, I doubt if just porting OS X to x86 architecture is sufficient. Applications are needed to make it a useful platform. And guess who makes the majority of Mac application? Yep, you guessed right: Microshaft.
You could know as much as whether or not the girl next to you has a Victoria's Secret thong on, or some Jockey's brief. Perhaps even whether she has on any at all.
Or perhaps she's wearing one of those lead-lined adult diapers.....
After all, houses with pools generally don't sell for much less than half a million,
You must be in the Bay Area...
In the rest of the country (US), this isn't the case. You can buy a house with an outdoor pool for about $250K on average in "normal" areas.
Tomorrow, if Bill G. announces that Micro$oft (via Windows 9X/Me/NT/2K/CE/XP/YZ) will be collecting "anonymous statistics" about which websites you visit, what you read, etc. and assures you that these statistics will be used only to "improve your online browsing experience", without identifying you personally (other than by your ZIP code), how many of you would agree to that (assuming you use Micro$oft's products) ?
My understanding was they use the 5 digit zip code. Not the 5+4 digit zip code that will identify a unique address.
You are correct, they tag the data with the ZIP code only. But: they do have your entire address sitting in some database on their servers. All that has to happen is for some "flunky" to SELECT the "wrong" columns, and voila! Your personal viewing habits have now been exposed to the marketers.
Any information that tivo gets is anonymous, and can't be linked to you.
I'm sorry, but the information can be linked to you. Start with the fact that the uploaded data is in a file whose name depends on the time of the call. All I have to do is go to UUNET[*] (the ISP that TiVo calls) and ask for their call logs. With these call logs, I can put 2+2 together and (with the callerID in the UUNET logs) get your phone number. Once I have your phone number, I can get your name, address, etc. I'll leave the rest to your imagination.
[*] Note: you never signed up with UUNET, and UUNET never gave you any assurances about the privacy of your calls.
Why stop there? You could store four base pairs per byte with the most basic of compression schemes. You could probably compress it down much, much further.
But be careful with that compression thing! If you compress the DNA too much, you could end up like Minime
We've had issues with Mylex too. Here's our setup: a P-III 1GHz box with a Mylex eXtremeRAID 2000; an Adaptec 2940UW and a 2944UW. One of the Adaptecs is hooked to a Sun A1000 (which has a "Symbios" RAID controller built in, but we're using as a JBOD).
Anyways: when we hooked up the A1000 (our Sun server died), the system suddenly became flaky! We boot from a standalone SCSI disk, so booting wasn't a problem. But the Mylex would lose its settings; half the disks in one of the trays wouldn't show up, etc. We spent days trying to figure it out, but to no avail.After repeated messages to Mylex support, we get the solution: disable the BIOS on the Mylex. It turns out that the Symbios RAID controller in the A1000 was confusing the Mylex BIOS! Even though the A1000 was on a separate Adaptec controller. Go figure.
but if I have anything that needs to get anywhere with any level of urgency and/or reliability, I will use FedEx over the USPS anyday.
When FedEx starts delivering for $0.34, let me know and I'll also gladly switch.
BTW: compare the delivery area of US -vs- Deutschland. Alaska itself is bigger than that.
Actually, the USPS uses what is called a use-based tax. You use the service, then you pay. In my opinion, use-based taxes lead to far more efficient government programs.
By your definition, your local grocery store also uses a "use-based tax".
The USPS does not get any money from the taxpayers. They have to earn everything themselves. Since 9/11, the USPS has lost Billions of dollars in lost revenue, anthrax hassles, etc. They have to make up the money somewhere! If Micro$oft came to them and offered them a large amount of money to put up such display cases, I'm all for it!
BTW: the USPS does a tremendous job for the amount they charge for the postage. Have you looked at first-class postage rates in Europe?
ISC is throwing away most of $80,000 annually because people can't be bothered to patch their kernel, and instead rely on downloading the full 20MB tarball every time a new kernel is released.
Another thing: when I download the kernel (as an end-user), why should I have to download Sparc, MIPS, IA64, PPC, etc. sources when all I need is x86? Maybe the kernel sources can be broken apart into individual architectures for the end users (obviously not for the kernel hackers).
Just did a quick check on my 2.4.17-xfs. The "arch" directory, compressed, takes 5.1MB. But the i386 subdirectory takes just 400KB (all figures with tar | gzip -9). I see a potential savings of 4.5MB right here.
I put a 10 MB 7200 rpm disk in it and installed Windows on that, which made it even snappier.
Dude, Windows installed on a 10MB disk is called DOS . Of course it'll be snappier; it has no GUI component to it. Just don't try using more than 640KB of memory, tho...;-)
Can anyone find out how many federal workers have been killed in traffic "accidents" since September 11? I bet it's more than five.
(powers up the good ol' HP)
Lesseee.. there are 4E4 highway deaths a year, in a population of 2.8E8.. assuming Federal payroll at 5E5 excluding the military (just a number, sire), this works out to about 70 deaths per year, or about 6 per month. The answer to your question would be about 24.
Slashdot Mirror
But if OS X is restricted (read: bundled) to "standardized" hardware (like Dell, Gateway, etc.) then the hardware problems go away.
However, I doubt if just porting OS X to x86 architecture is sufficient. Applications are needed to make it a useful platform. And guess who makes the majority of Mac application? Yep, you guessed right: Microshaft.
P.S. to original poster, have you tried UPS, DHL or Fedex? Did they reject your goods like USPS?
Read the article, Einstein. He was using UPS.
Jeez... not only did *she* get slashdotted, now you've slashdotted her site also!
use Quantum; my $jump = Quantum::Leap->new(); # nothing happens... Damn! Why doesn't it work??
You could know as much as whether or not the girl next to you has a Victoria's Secret thong on, or some Jockey's brief. Perhaps even whether she has on any at all.
Or perhaps she's wearing one of those lead-lined adult diapers.....
After all, houses with pools generally don't sell for much less than half a million,
You must be in the Bay Area...
In the rest of the country (US), this isn't the case. You can buy a house with an outdoor pool for about $250K on average in "normal" areas.
From Linus' email, mentioned above:
Basically, I'm aiming to be able to accept patches directly from email,
Does Linus use PGP sigs (for example) to verify the senders of these patches? I hope he does (being Linus and all that).
Create a 100% compatible clone of Windows.
I heard the Ukrainians got into trouble for doing just that....
Tomorrow, if Bill G. announces that Micro$oft (via Windows 9X/Me/NT/2K/CE/XP/YZ) will be collecting "anonymous statistics" about which websites you visit, what you read, etc. and assures you that these statistics will be used only to "improve your online browsing experience", without identifying you personally (other than by your ZIP code), how many of you would agree to that (assuming you use Micro$oft's products) ?
My understanding was they use the 5 digit zip code. Not the 5+4 digit zip code that will identify a unique address.
You are correct, they tag the data with the ZIP code only. But: they do have your entire address sitting in some database on their servers. All that has to happen is for some "flunky" to SELECT the "wrong" columns, and voila! Your personal viewing habits have now been exposed to the marketers.
Any information that tivo gets is anonymous, and can't be linked to you.
I'm sorry, but the information can be linked to you. Start with the fact that the uploaded data is in a file whose name depends on the time of the call. All I have to do is go to UUNET[*] (the ISP that TiVo calls) and ask for their call logs. With these call logs, I can put 2+2 together and (with the callerID in the UUNET logs) get your phone number. Once I have your phone number, I can get your name, address, etc. I'll leave the rest to your imagination.
[*] Note: you never signed up with UUNET, and UUNET never gave you any assurances about the privacy of your calls.
Why stop there? You could store four base pairs per byte with the most basic of compression schemes. You could probably compress it down much, much further.
But be careful with that compression thing! If you compress the DNA too much, you could end up like Minime
We've had issues with Mylex too. Here's our setup: a P-III 1GHz box with a Mylex eXtremeRAID 2000; an Adaptec 2940UW and a 2944UW. One of the Adaptecs is hooked to a Sun A1000 (which has a "Symbios" RAID controller built in, but we're using as a JBOD).
Anyways: when we hooked up the A1000 (our Sun server died), the system suddenly became flaky! We boot from a standalone SCSI disk, so booting wasn't a problem. But the Mylex would lose its settings; half the disks in one of the trays wouldn't show up, etc. We spent days trying to figure it out, but to no avail.After repeated messages to Mylex support, we get the solution: disable the BIOS on the Mylex. It turns out that the Symbios RAID controller in the A1000 was confusing the Mylex BIOS! Even though the A1000 was on a separate Adaptec controller. Go figure.
> The office would then set it going and if it was still running a year later, they would consider the patent application.
So why don't they do this with software patents?
Because even if the software survives the 1-year test, the dot-coms that submitted the application won't ?
Fermat. Next?
but if I have anything that needs to get anywhere with any level of urgency and/or reliability, I will use FedEx over the USPS anyday.
When FedEx starts delivering for $0.34, let me know and I'll also gladly switch.
BTW: compare the delivery area of US -vs- Deutschland. Alaska itself is bigger than that.
Actually, the USPS uses what is called a use-based tax. You use the service, then you pay. In my opinion, use-based taxes lead to far more efficient government programs.
By your definition, your local grocery store also uses a "use-based tax".
The USPS does not get any money from the taxpayers. They have to earn everything themselves. Since 9/11, the USPS has lost Billions of dollars in lost revenue, anthrax hassles, etc. They have to make up the money somewhere! If Micro$oft came to them and offered them a large amount of money to put up such display cases, I'm all for it!
BTW: the USPS does a tremendous job for the amount they charge for the postage. Have you looked at first-class postage rates in Europe?
ISC is throwing away most of $80,000 annually because people can't be bothered to patch their kernel, and instead rely on downloading the full 20MB tarball every time a new kernel is released.
Another thing: when I download the kernel (as an end-user), why should I have to download Sparc, MIPS, IA64, PPC, etc. sources when all I need is x86? Maybe the kernel sources can be broken apart into individual architectures for the end users (obviously not for the kernel hackers).
Just did a quick check on my 2.4.17-xfs. The "arch" directory, compressed, takes 5.1MB. But the i386 subdirectory takes just 400KB (all figures with tar | gzip -9). I see a potential savings of 4.5MB right here.
Am I the only one?
Probably. Next question?
I put a 10 MB 7200 rpm disk in it and installed Windows on that, which made it even snappier. ;-)
Dude, Windows installed on a 10MB disk is called DOS . Of course it'll be snappier; it has no GUI component to it. Just don't try using more than 640KB of memory, tho...
First of all, we still don't know why we are here.
I'm here to read Slashdot. Why are you here?
"If the existence of the entire universe, including your happiness, necessitated the torture of even one little girl, would you want it?"
Either way, the girl's a goner... (or am I misreading the question?)
Can anyone find out how many federal workers have been killed in traffic "accidents" since September 11? I bet it's more than five.
.. assuming Federal payroll at 5E5 excluding the military (just a number, sire), this works out to about 70 deaths per year, or about 6 per month. The answer to your question would be about 24.
(powers up the good ol' HP)
Lesseee.. there are 4E4 highway deaths a year, in a population of 2.8E8
sniff... I love my calculator.... sniff...
Section 1.9 of the comp.compression FAQ is good background reading on this stuff. In particular, read the "WEB story".