Hey, I hate to blow Microsoft's horn as much as everyone else, but with the case of Windows XP I have to give them Kudos. If you install it correctly then it can be a very resilient operating system; heck, it's certainly passed the Wife Test (patent pending) over the last twelve months and she's installed all kinds of crud on it!:) The greatest area of vulnerability that I've found so far has been in the area of dodgy device drivers (you know who you are nVidia and VIA), but hey it's pretty difficult to protect an O/S from something running in Kernel mode.
Of course, the User Interface to XP still has the crap beaten out of it by OS/X...
To be totally clear at this point, it should be noted that the Windows crash reports are not reporting O/S crashes. They're more along the lines of:
"The crappy application you were trying to run has tried to access memory/resources that it's not allowed to. The O/S stopped it from doing that, and consequently the application freaked out. Have a nice day."
My copy of XP Pro has been up three months also, and is running just fine thanks. Also, the last time I rebooted was due to a hardware upgrade.
Yes, the TiVo. You just phone up customer support and say "Please don't collect anonymous statistics on my viewing habits." They'll remove you from the list.
Unfortunately (and I've seen this happen up-close-and-personal) the sparkly new features are quite often the thing that'll sell your package to the PHB sitting opposite you in the demonstration room.
It's very easy to run your demo and say - lookit the pretty colours! This is what our software does that our competitors doesn't! It's much harder to wow your audience with "This demo machine has been running for two weeks without a single crash!" The uptime statistics for these large corporate packages often end up as a dry piece of paper which ends up landing on a SysAdmin's desk and causing him to cry.
Remember that Chicago song "Give 'em the old Razzle Dazzle!"
Phillips also announced the expansion of their new 'technology splicing' line with the addition of the mobile phone/tazer and the combination bidet/kitchen blender.
Given these issues, are we likely to see carriers like Nextel bypassing 3G for 4G technologies such as OFDM (Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing) by Flarion Technologies?"
I suspect that will be almost entirely dependant on the amount of political lobbying carried out by the 3G and 4G proponents. Technical superiority is only one small part of the puzzle these days.
There are a couple of good programming games out there based on Java. The ones that come to mind are CodeRally and RoboCode both available from IBM's AlphaWorks. I'm currently teaching a friends eight year old to program using Java, and with a little discipline it seems a pretty good language to learn on.
Of course, the fact that the learning turns out to be controlling robot tanks or rally cars can't hurt any:-)
It's a nice thought, and I'd certainly like it to happen, but I suspect it won't.
You see, there are still a lot of Joe Consumers in this world that don't have a PC, and won't ever consider getting one.
However, these same Joe Consumers would feel perfectly comfortable in buying a silver VCR sized box that sits next to their satellite/cable decoder box and works entirely from one simple remote control unit.
The whole question of technological acceptance hinges almost entirely on price and form-factor. Average Joe Consumer just doesn't care about advanced feature set or Geek-Chic.
This was beaten to death with a large stick in the TiVo article, but at the risk of repeating all that...
TiVo's business model always included the (future) sale of viewers watching statistics. They never tried to hide this. There's no identifying information in any of the viewer demographic information supplied to TiVo by your box, and hey if you don't like them selling that information then you just call up their support people and tell them to take you off that list! Again, TiVo have been completely up-front and honest with all of this information.
Sometimes there's no conspiracy, no matter how hard you look.
Had exactly the same thing happen to my MSI K7T266A about six months ago. In my case it was two of the 1100uF capacitors to the north of the processor that popped their tops one day.
Microsoft were originally in league with Rupert Murdoch on his attempt to get the News Corp. to buy DirecTV. This was all part of Microsoft's 'Ultimate TV' product strategy.
How about these...
on
Haiku vs Spam
·
· Score: 5, Funny
From Nigeria Someone owes you millions too good to be true!
SlashDot article Hyperlinks call to me but afraid of GoatSex
Dear hated spammer, You vandalise my hotmail. Die with spike up ass!
SlashDot educates, I thought Haiku Japanese, Now I know better.
Unfortunately this is unlikely to happen. The biggest problem with turning a profit in farming these days is the price of the commodity in the first place. My father-in-law owns a fairly sizeable (2000 acre) spread in Iowa, and only just breaks even WITH subsidy help. The prices of corn and soybeans (his staple crops) are so low that it's barely worth growing it.
Ironically, having the smaller farmers going out of business doesn't often affect the price. The problem isn't over-saturation of the market with product, but the farming mega-corporations buying out the smaller farms and driving the independants who are left out of business by undercutting their prices. The livestock marketplace is already a business area where the smaller independant farmer can't now turn a profit. Pretty much everybody left working in it is now just a 'farm manager' for one of the big conglomerates.
Sadly I think the days of the independant farmer are numbered.
As an aside, DirecTV should be carrying most, if not all, local channels for the major markets come Jan 1st 2002 (that's when the FCC 'must carry' regulations come into force.)
Slashdot Mirror
IBM has been producing Compact Flash Type 2 form-factor micro drives for some time now.
Here's one:
Clicky!
Wow, there'll be some REALLY rich lawyers living out on Pluto by then!
Hey, I hate to blow Microsoft's horn as much as everyone else, but with the case of Windows XP I have to give them Kudos. If you install it correctly then it can be a very resilient operating system; heck, it's certainly passed the Wife Test (patent pending) over the last twelve months and she's installed all kinds of crud on it! :) The greatest area of vulnerability that I've found so far has been in the area of dodgy device drivers (you know who you are nVidia and VIA), but hey it's pretty difficult to protect an O/S from something running in Kernel mode.
Of course, the User Interface to XP still has the crap beaten out of it by OS/X...
To be totally clear at this point, it should be noted that the Windows crash reports are not reporting O/S crashes. They're more along the lines of:
"The crappy application you were trying to run has tried to access memory/resources that it's not allowed to. The O/S stopped it from doing that, and consequently the application freaked out. Have a nice day."
My copy of XP Pro has been up three months also, and is running just fine thanks. Also, the last time I rebooted was due to a hardware upgrade.
Just for balance.
Yes, the TiVo. You just phone up customer support and say "Please don't collect anonymous statistics on my viewing habits." They'll remove you from the list.
Unfortunately (and I've seen this happen up-close-and-personal) the sparkly new features are quite often the thing that'll sell your package to the PHB sitting opposite you in the demonstration room.
It's very easy to run your demo and say - lookit the pretty colours! This is what our software does that our competitors doesn't! It's much harder to wow your audience with "This demo machine has been running for two weeks without a single crash!" The uptime statistics for these large corporate packages often end up as a dry piece of paper which ends up landing on a SysAdmin's desk and causing him to cry.
Remember that Chicago song "Give 'em the old Razzle Dazzle!"
That's easy - just run a cable from your house to the 13,000 feet marker and hook the extension up there. Voila! Faster DSL!
Phillips also announced the expansion of their new 'technology splicing' line with the addition of the mobile phone/tazer and the combination bidet/kitchen blender.
There are a couple of good programming games out there based on Java. The ones that come to mind are CodeRally and RoboCode both available from IBM's AlphaWorks. I'm currently teaching a friends eight year old to program using Java, and with a little discipline it seems a pretty good language to learn on.
:-)
Of course, the fact that the learning turns out to be controlling robot tanks or rally cars can't hurt any
It's a nice thought, and I'd certainly like it to happen, but I suspect it won't.
You see, there are still a lot of Joe Consumers in this world that don't have a PC, and won't ever consider getting one.
However, these same Joe Consumers would feel perfectly comfortable in buying a silver VCR sized box that sits next to their satellite/cable decoder box and works entirely from one simple remote control unit.
The whole question of technological acceptance hinges almost entirely on price and form-factor. Average Joe Consumer just doesn't care about advanced feature set or Geek-Chic.
This was beaten to death with a large stick in the TiVo article, but at the risk of repeating all that...
TiVo's business model always included the (future) sale of viewers watching statistics. They never tried to hide this. There's no identifying information in any of the viewer demographic information supplied to TiVo by your box, and hey if you don't like them selling that information then you just call up their support people and tell them to take you off that list! Again, TiVo have been completely up-front and honest with all of this information.
Sometimes there's no conspiracy, no matter how hard you look.
Not to mention the fact that they filmed a lot of the 'web-swinging' shots outside my office building in Chicago a few months ago.
A very tall crane, and a very complex gyro-stabilized computer controlled camera mount, if you're interested.
The purple! It burns my eyes!
Had exactly the same thing happen to my MSI K7T266A about six months ago. In my case it was two of the 1100uF capacitors to the north of the processor that popped their tops one day.
Needless to say, I won't be buying MSI again.
Microsoft were originally in league with Rupert Murdoch on his attempt to get the News Corp. to buy DirecTV. This was all part of Microsoft's 'Ultimate TV' product strategy.
From Nigeria
Someone owes you millions
too good to be true!
SlashDot article
Hyperlinks call to me but
afraid of GoatSex
Dear hated spammer,
You vandalise my hotmail.
Die with spike up ass!
SlashDot educates,
I thought Haiku Japanese,
Now I know better.
Most of my programs turn out to be dirty Limericks.
Unfortunately this is unlikely to happen. The biggest problem with turning a profit in farming these days is the price of the commodity in the first place. My father-in-law owns a fairly sizeable (2000 acre) spread in Iowa, and only just breaks even WITH subsidy help. The prices of corn and soybeans (his staple crops) are so low that it's barely worth growing it.
Ironically, having the smaller farmers going out of business doesn't often affect the price. The problem isn't over-saturation of the market with product, but the farming mega-corporations buying out the smaller farms and driving the independants who are left out of business by undercutting their prices. The livestock marketplace is already a business area where the smaller independant farmer can't now turn a profit. Pretty much everybody left working in it is now just a 'farm manager' for one of the big conglomerates.
Sadly I think the days of the independant farmer are numbered.
I can see it now...
"Frist Ps0t! I 0wNz j0o Ge0Rg3 \/\/!"
As an aside, DirecTV should be carrying most, if not all, local channels for the major markets come Jan 1st 2002 (that's when the FCC 'must carry' regulations come into force.)
...of attaching these magnets to NT servers? I could do with one that doesn't die at least once every thirty days.
Thanks in advance.
--
I'd settle for recieving a cubic centimeter of flesh for each spam message sent
;-)
So, that would be one spammer penis then.
--
...instead of Agent Smith, we're going to have Agent Bob and his side-kick Clippy.
You thought the LAST movie was scary!
--
...but how the heck are we supposed to back it up?
;-)
--