hmmm.. somehow my numbers got off there. 1. should have been that my numbers on RC5 give me bragging rights along the lines of "mine's bigger than yours."
Now imagine you owned such a machine and were using it to play Quake, but Popular Power wanted to use it to design flu vaccines. To compensate you for an hour of your computing time, Popular Power should be willing to offer you a nickel, which is to say 1/20,000th of $1,000, the cost of your device for that hour. Would you be willing to give up an hour of playing Quake (or working on a spreadsheet, or chatting with your friends) for a nickel? No. And yet, once the cost crosses the nickel threshold, Popular Power is spending enough, pro-rata, to buy their own box.
This hits the nail on the head. I'm willing to install the RC5 client on my machines for several reasons:
2. It's a project whose goals I more or less believe in. (SETI would be an even better match, but I ended up installing the dneet client first.)
3. I already installed it. Once it's been configured and set to run on my FreeBSD and linux boxen I can forget about it. More trouble to disable it or find a new distributed project, install that, configure it, and get it running on all my computers.
I think this article gets it right. The returns for me contributing my spare cycles as well as the effort to install and set up the clients is not worth whatever change they are paying. Like the article says, if they pay a nickel per processing hour, that takes roughly 2.28 years to earn a thousand dollars if my system is running the client 100% of the time at full processor speed. (I have no idea how much these systems actually pay, I'm just quoting the articles example.) The actual amount earned would actually be much less as I do various things with my system: burn CD's, play quake, write papers, etc. The long term return of pennies, or less than pennies on the hour makes me say that it's not worth it. And I suspect that without some higher incentive, like distributed.net crunching keys has been turned into a competition, most people just aren't going to take the trouble to signup for these paid distributed services. To have enough computers to make some serious money, you had to have enough money in the first place to make whatever they pay you small change.
Analogy: 1. similarity or correspondence between two otherwise dissimilar things.
/me explains in a patient tone that "HDTV is like IPv6" is an analogy because it points out a "similarity or correspondence between two dissimilar things."
It is slow to tune in stations and you see MPEG artifacts all over the place. admittedly analog broadcasts are worse, but scrolling through digital cable channels, at least here in boston on ATT, really sucks.
Plus, speaking of MPEG artifacts, has anyone else notices how ugly DVD's get when you have a solid dark color. For instance, in dark scenes the whole background becomes a bunch of black squares.
to understand the joke, you would have to have seen Arnold's Sixth Day. Believe me, this post is on topic and fairly funny if you have seen the movie. No mod points for me == a post to explain that yeah, the above post is funny.
NTT DoCoMo will begin offering a European version of its hit i-mode wireless Web service in Europe in cooperation with KPN Mobile N.V. of the Netherlands and Telecom Italia Mobile, the Japanese telecom company said Thursday.
When I was in Japan recently I began to understand why laptops and sub-laptops, like phones, are so popular. No one has the space in their house for a full-sized computer and computer desk, furniture, etc. My mother lives there in a two-bedroom apartment: both rooms are tatami rooms with no furniture. She has a laptop and two cell-phones. Anything that saves space is great in Japan. I would assume that, while the space problem is not so chronic in Europe, small nifty gadgets that offer Internet access cheaply would be a big hit.
Re:how fast were these things?
on
PDP-10 Revival
·
· Score: 1
thank you. i was, of course, kidding that 25MHz from one processor was the same as 25MHz on a different processor. apparently you missed the irony. that's why I said "but seriously folks" which was used to indicate that the preceding statement was a joke.
umm.. how fast does your car go?
6000rpm!
Wow, that's fast! Mine only does 5000rpm!
Obviously comparing speed in terms of how fast something cycles is silly. That's why we guage the speed of cars with different real world benchmarks: like mph, and 0-60 times.
how fast were these things?
on
PDP-10 Revival
·
· Score: 1
The PDP-10: 25 MHz in 1974! Umm... like that means that its as fast as my 486/25 from 1990, right? I mean, 25 MHz is 25Mhz, isn't it?
But seriously folks, anyone have any idea about the comparative speed of the PDP-10? How well did these things scale up? Anyone tried using gcc to compile a linux kernel on it? My guess would be more in the days than the hours category.
Umm.. actually, System 7.5.5 is the latest version which is free. And yes, it is the *full* version. Only catch is you have to download 7.5.3 first, then do the 7.5.5 upgrade with 3 more disks. Apple has always released their older operating systems after a while. 7.5.5 is the most recent one before you start getting into the OS 8 era, where presumably they would prefer you upgrade to OS 9 and pay them. Just wait, Apple will release 7.6 and eventually 8 and 8.1 for free download.
One thing I have always liked about Apple is how they do this. Just try finding a free (legal) copy of windows 95, or even win 3.1 or dos for download from microsoft.
users have started equating such designs with advertising which they routinely ignore. These days, it is extremely important for any content and navigation elements to look very different than prevailing advertising designs since users tune out anything that they don't think will be relevant to their task.
An example of this is I went to download a program and couldn't find it because the only link to download was a flashy graphic. I spent 5 minutes looking for the text that said "download" but didn't see the big graphical link saying "download for free" right at the top. This was iTunes, by the way, on Apple's site. I couldn't believe they made such a big mistake.
People just filter anything resembling an ad out as a matter of course. If advertisers were smart they would design oddly shaped static and text based ads to get people to pay more attention to them. So yeah, advertisers should target more, but they need to be a little smarter about the way ads are designed too.
By the way, did anyone else have the same problem finding the download link? The two other people I sent to the site had a hard time finding it too.
i think it comes from Old English, when en was a much more common ending. many words should be en but time and habir have changed that. of course, old english and german are very closely related.
i never said there wasn't a premium on apple hardware. there is. just like there's a premium on bmw, mercedes, and ferrari products. thanks for responding so intelligently and anonymously. troll.
if you mean Mhz and hard drive space and ram, then, yeah. in fact, you can't even buy a wintel box with a 350Mhz processor anymore. If you think systems are made on specifications alone, hey, go on living in your world. you go and buy that e-machine for $400. load it up in the back of your yugo while your at it. I mean, hey, you did buy the yugo, didn't you. At a top speed of 6000rpm it can easily compete with the corvette, right?
oh, you say the damn knob on the gear shift falls off on your yugo? And the cheap vinyl keeps cracking. oh, and you've had to pay out the nose to replace every damn part in it cause they all failed 1 day after the warranty expired?
if you're like me, you don't care about replacing cheap pc parts with other cheap pc parts--but some people actually like the machine to stay together.
by the way, i have yet to see a wintel system crank through 4 megakeys per sec of RC5 at the $1299 price point.
seriously. i count 1 relevant answer
here, which basically said "check freshmeat."
and 1 possibly relevant
here, which was more for a presence provider.
The rest recommended e-commerce solutions (which the original poster did not want to know about), or discussed various aspects of billing software, some interesting, some not.
The point is, with over 100 comments, very few actually answering the question, why would someone send in a question like this to slashdot? Wouldn't IRC be better?
don't get me wrong, I enjoyed reading most of the threads. But with so few relevant answers, why even bother with Ask Slashdot?
Never hit your mother with a shovel, it will leave a dull impression on her mind.
That's how I heard it first. Can't remember what movie, though. Someone's singing it to themselves... hmmm....
anyway, I think "dull impression" milks the joke a bit more than "bad impression."
And you, my friend, have obviously never had to fix computers based on the damn Cyrix processors. Sure, it's owned by a new company, sure they probably have some new engineers on it. But when your overarching goal is still cheap cheap cheap you still get a piece-o-shit processor.
I agree that Via has some nice products: AMD wouldn't be competitive without VIA chipsets. But I have to agree with the parent post: Cyrix processors were terrible as far as quality goes (at least once they reached the MediaGX line and beyond), and I see no reason for a change just because they are being made by a different company. Like I said, the emphasis is still cheap cheap cheap.
The reason Celerons and Durons are nice reliable processors is because they are basically the same technology as their big brothers, the PIII's and Athlons. Intel and AMD in effect subsidize their low-end chips with revenues and technologies from their high-end chips.
On a personal note, I don't think it is possible for any company to sustain a level of quality while aiming exclusively for the low end. E.g. Yugo cars, e-machines, et al. The low end has to be used to increase market share, which drives purchases at the high-end, which are what really funds companies. I still don't see any high-end processors coming out under the Cyrix name. I fully expect the new Cyrix processors to be the same pieces of crap the old Cyrix processors were (but hey, I'm willing to be pleasantly surprised).
dude, that is not a very reliable way to back up. CD-R's really weren't designed to do single file writes. Try taking that CD to another computer (one that's not running Adaptec directCD) and see if it reads it. Most likely it won't.
There's a reason it doesn't work like that under linux--it's not worth the trouble when your backed up data disappears all of a sudden.
But hey, it's your data, do what you want with it. YMMV.
Slashdot Mirror
Quick, before the trademark gets diluted, somebody from KDE (K desktop environment) needs to sue!
hmmm.. somehow my numbers got off there. 1. should have been that my numbers on RC5 give me bragging rights along the lines of "mine's bigger than yours."
This hits the nail on the head. I'm willing to install the RC5 client on my machines for several reasons: 2. It's a project whose goals I more or less believe in. (SETI would be an even better match, but I ended up installing the dneet client first.)
3. I already installed it. Once it's been configured and set to run on my FreeBSD and linux boxen I can forget about it. More trouble to disable it or find a new distributed project, install that, configure it, and get it running on all my computers.
I think this article gets it right. The returns for me contributing my spare cycles as well as the effort to install and set up the clients is not worth whatever change they are paying. Like the article says, if they pay a nickel per processing hour, that takes roughly 2.28 years to earn a thousand dollars if my system is running the client 100% of the time at full processor speed. (I have no idea how much these systems actually pay, I'm just quoting the articles example.) The actual amount earned would actually be much less as I do various things with my system: burn CD's, play quake, write papers, etc. The long term return of pennies, or less than pennies on the hour makes me say that it's not worth it. And I suspect that without some higher incentive, like distributed.net crunching keys has been turned into a competition, most people just aren't going to take the trouble to signup for these paid distributed services. To have enough computers to make some serious money, you had to have enough money in the first place to make whatever they pay you small change.
was that the lighter side of morons?
Perhaps you'd like to look up the word cretin.
hehe, good analogy.
Plus, speaking of MPEG artifacts, has anyone else notices how ugly DVD's get when you have a solid dark color. For instance, in dark scenes the whole background becomes a bunch of black squares.
to understand the joke, you would have to have seen Arnold's Sixth Day. Believe me, this post is on topic and fairly funny if you have seen the movie. No mod points for me == a post to explain that yeah, the above post is funny.
NTT DoCoMo will begin offering a European version of its hit i-mode wireless Web service in Europe in cooperation with KPN Mobile N.V. of the Netherlands and Telecom Italia Mobile, the Japanese telecom company said Thursday. When I was in Japan recently I began to understand why laptops and sub-laptops, like phones, are so popular. No one has the space in their house for a full-sized computer and computer desk, furniture, etc. My mother lives there in a two-bedroom apartment: both rooms are tatami rooms with no furniture. She has a laptop and two cell-phones. Anything that saves space is great in Japan. I would assume that, while the space problem is not so chronic in Europe, small nifty gadgets that offer Internet access cheaply would be a big hit.
umm.. how fast does your car go?
6000rpm!
Wow, that's fast! Mine only does 5000rpm!
Obviously comparing speed in terms of how fast something cycles is silly. That's why we guage the speed of cars with different real world benchmarks: like mph, and 0-60 times.
But seriously folks, anyone have any idea about the comparative speed of the PDP-10? How well did these things scale up? Anyone tried using gcc to compile a linux kernel on it? My guess would be more in the days than the hours category.
One thing I have always liked about Apple is how they do this. Just try finding a free (legal) copy of windows 95, or even win 3.1 or dos for download from microsoft.
users have started equating such designs with advertising which they routinely ignore. These days, it is extremely important for any content and navigation elements to look very different than prevailing advertising designs since users tune out anything that they don't think will be relevant to their task.
An example of this is I went to download a program and couldn't find it because the only link to download was a flashy graphic. I spent 5 minutes looking for the text that said "download" but didn't see the big graphical link saying "download for free" right at the top. This was iTunes, by the way, on Apple's site. I couldn't believe they made such a big mistake.
People just filter anything resembling an ad out as a matter of course. If advertisers were smart they would design oddly shaped static and text based ads to get people to pay more attention to them. So yeah, advertisers should target more, but they need to be a little smarter about the way ads are designed too.
By the way, did anyone else have the same problem finding the download link? The two other people I sent to the site had a hard time finding it too.
hey, i swear the first response wasn't there when I submitted. must have beat me by seconds.
first step toward making that thing a saint, of course.
i think it comes from Old English, when en was a much more common ending. many words should be en but time and habir have changed that. of course, old english and german are very closely related.
ummm... windows 3.1 runs reall fast on a 486. you must mean windows 95/98. 3.1 was very small, very fast. terrible interface, but very fast.
i never said there wasn't a premium on apple hardware. there is. just like there's a premium on bmw, mercedes, and ferrari products. thanks for responding so intelligently and anonymously. troll.
if you mean Mhz and hard drive space and ram, then, yeah. in fact, you can't even buy a wintel box with a 350Mhz processor anymore. If you think systems are made on specifications alone, hey, go on living in your world. you go and buy that e-machine for $400. load it up in the back of your yugo while your at it. I mean, hey, you did buy the yugo, didn't you. At a top speed of 6000rpm it can easily compete with the corvette, right?
oh, you say the damn knob on the gear shift falls off on your yugo? And the cheap vinyl keeps cracking. oh, and you've had to pay out the nose to replace every damn part in it cause they all failed 1 day after the warranty expired?
if you're like me, you don't care about replacing cheap pc parts with other cheap pc parts--but some people actually like the machine to stay together.
by the way, i have yet to see a wintel system crank through 4 megakeys per sec of RC5 at the $1299 price point.
and 1 possibly relevant here, which was more for a presence provider.
The rest recommended e-commerce solutions (which the original poster did not want to know about), or discussed various aspects of billing software, some interesting, some not.
The point is, with over 100 comments, very few actually answering the question, why would someone send in a question like this to slashdot? Wouldn't IRC be better?
don't get me wrong, I enjoyed reading most of the threads. But with so few relevant answers, why even bother with Ask Slashdot?
Never hit your mother with a shovel, it will leave a dull impression on her mind.
That's how I heard it first. Can't remember what movie, though. Someone's singing it to themselves... hmmm....
anyway, I think "dull impression" milks the joke a bit more than "bad impression."
I agree that Via has some nice products: AMD wouldn't be competitive without VIA chipsets. But I have to agree with the parent post: Cyrix processors were terrible as far as quality goes (at least once they reached the MediaGX line and beyond), and I see no reason for a change just because they are being made by a different company. Like I said, the emphasis is still cheap cheap cheap.
The reason Celerons and Durons are nice reliable processors is because they are basically the same technology as their big brothers, the PIII's and Athlons. Intel and AMD in effect subsidize their low-end chips with revenues and technologies from their high-end chips.
On a personal note, I don't think it is possible for any company to sustain a level of quality while aiming exclusively for the low end. E.g. Yugo cars, e-machines, et al. The low end has to be used to increase market share, which drives purchases at the high-end, which are what really funds companies. I still don't see any high-end processors coming out under the Cyrix name. I fully expect the new Cyrix processors to be the same pieces of crap the old Cyrix processors were (but hey, I'm willing to be pleasantly surprised).
There's a reason it doesn't work like that under linux--it's not worth the trouble when your backed up data disappears all of a sudden.
But hey, it's your data, do what you want with it. YMMV.
is this the "Lighter Side of OpenBSD?" Or is your name really Dave Berg?