Do you think people would hide goatse.cx links if their posts could be easily traced back to them?
Yup.
It might even encourage some of them. Did your grade school have that kid who would moon people? It's pretty easy to trace sombody's naked ass back to their actual identity... You just need to wait for them to stand up. That proverbial kid was in it for the attention. Similarly, it makes some punk goatse troll feel special to know somebody noticed his antics. The troll gets proof of the attention from a -1 moderation. Actual official recognition can only fuel the fire.
I bet some slashdot trolls would use their real name now if they thought anybody would believe they were telling the truth.
If they show that there is Linux code that is identical to SCO code, how will they be able to prove that Linux stole SCO code and not the other way around? It will be interesting to see how this turns out, since a SCO victory won't really help SCO's business any but will hurt all the other players in the Linux market. Perhaps they're hoping to take everybody else out with them?
I don't even want to know what you'd call me if I'd start talking about "the Mac OS X application".
I didn't "call" you anything. I was mearly pointing out that I realized too late that I was being unclear given your train of thought at the time...
Anyway, whether consumers consider the OS to be an application or not is hardly justification for advocating/opposing 64-bit processors. If you're going to use consumers perception as a basis, then 64-bit computing is a no brainer, because 64 is bigger than 32 and the marketing possibilities are endless.
I think that pervasive availability of 64-bit computing has the potential to allow the reinvention of HCI. We can't find out until we go there. Its quite possible that "most" of the application we're running in 10 years will benefit significantly from 64-bit integer operations. (I put "most" in quotes as you did, because by your logic "most" of what we do today didn't really benefit from the transition from 16 to 32-bit, but from clock speed increases. I think you'll agree now, though, that it would have been a mistake to downplay 32-bit computing back then). However I'm glad that AMD and IBM are making an effort to allow for 32-bit/64-bit coexistance since we really don't know when a large number of apps will benefit from 64-bit computations. Anyway, it all comes down to the following quote, which is what I took issue with and have been ranting to the contrary about:
The only real advantage of being 64 bit will be the ability to address more memory.
We don't know what all the real advantages will be, so we certainly can't say that additional memory will be the only one, or if it will be an advantage at all early on, as most 64-bit consumer machines that ship initially will have less than 3 GB of memory.
No. And I still don't think that's the reason. How can you make a word processor better using 64 bit code instead of 32 bit code? A spreadsheet? A web browser? An email client? A terminal emulator? A shell? A pdf viewer? I stand by my original point that most consumer apps don't need 64 bit operations.
I anticipated your short sighted response as soon as I hit the submit button. I should have realized that you would think I was talking about optimizing existing applications rather than designing new ones for new problems and I should have said all the rest of this stuff the first time... I even had a horrific vision of the word processor analogy. It was scary. Anyway:
I'm not talking about optimizing existing applications, I'm talking about new applications; programs that do things that we don't use our PCs for now. When we had 8-bit PCs nobody did photo editing or full color page layout on a PC. When we had 16-bit machines nobody used a PC for CAD. Now we have 32-bit machines and are moving to 64-bit. There will be some major tasks that will become possible with 64-bit PCs, but the software isn't there yet because the customers don't have the processors.
Also, I can think of two applications that every single computer user runs that can benefit dramatically from 64-bits, and Microsoft is waiting with the code already written for widespread 64-bit processor deployment to release them: Operating systems and filesystems. Having a 64-bit virtual address space can make your OS much more elegant and efficient since every possible I/O operation can be memory-mapped at once. Similarly, it has already been demonstrated that large relational databases benefit from 64-bit addressing even without taking advantage of the additional memory capacity, and many next generation filesystems will be relational databases.
Sure current consumer apps don't really need 64-bits. If they did we wouldn't have them. It's the PC apps of tomorrow that will benefit. If you don't care to do more with your PC then essentially what you can do today, just more quickly then keep buying 32-bit CPUs. They'll continue to be available for decades...
Did you ever think that the reason there are few consumer level apps that will take advantage of 64 bit architectures is that nobody has a 64 bit PC yet?
If your hard drive dies, you can't re-download it.
I don't see how this has anything to do with DRM. If they did let you re-download it people would be screaming about Apple keeping tabs on what their users buy.
Make backups. Then if your computer dies a fiery death you can restore from your backup and keep listening to your music. Apple even made it easy to make backups to writeable DVDs. It's a single mouse click!
I don't see anybody bitching that record stores don't replace your CDs if you scratch them...
That chart told me that a mere 1.8% of his contributions come from Lockheed. Statistics can show anything in the right context.
Perhaps he doesn't want shuttle parts raining down on the houses of his constituents. That seems more likely to me that such a policy decision being influenced by a mere 1.8% of his campaign finances in a non-election year.
That's really too bad. I would think that such a program would be at the graduate level considering how much math you should know to be good at writing graphics engines; not to mention the need for a good background in algorithms.
It's all moot anyway. Even without these programs, the number of top notch game/graphics programmers out there already outnumbers the well paying jobs available for such people.
Did you ever thing he was perhaps doing this for fun?
How much money do you make per hour at your current job?
It's funny you ask that. It seems the longer I work the less I make per hour... I also don't make any more or less overall if I spend time away from work on crazy schemes to avoid spending $100.
Try using enjoyment instead of dollars when measuring the value of what to do with your free time. You may find you'll be happier.
C'mon, it's 10-13, they need a PS2, not apt-get and bootloaders.
As I fondly recall being 11 years old and learning 'C' from the manual of my then recently purchased Borland compiler while the Atari sat idle in the corner, I'm wondering: What are you talking about?
Would you say that is a good way to make a device that I could hook up to Linux?
It certainly is. If you use the USB scanner driver (which actualy isn't necissarily just for scanners at all) you can write all your control software without having to change kernel code. Your favorite distro almost certainly has the scanner module built already. Personally I find writing a kernel based driver easier (probably because it's what I do for a living and I'm used to it), and you can do that too.
If you want to access your device from the kernel, the Programming Guide for Linux USB Device Drivers is where you should start. If you don't want to mess with the kernel, read the scanner.txt file that comes with the kernel documentation. There's an example program at the bottom that uses the scanner driver to talk to an HP scanner, but the device at the other end of the cable can be any non-scanner device too.
I was reminded recently as I waited in line for two hours to download drivers from their website for the third time (Unexplicable disconnection from their site during the first two tries) never to purchase another Creative product again. Nobody else makes you wait until there's only 5-10 other people downloading... Can't they spring for some decent hosting? Perhaps they should try to reduce the size (30MB!?) of their driver files if they cant afford the bandwidth. Six hours is a long time to wait for a single driver when you've got a 1.5Mbit connection.
If only they'd just stop buying companies that make cool stuff and turing it to shit...
Done it. Here's the one I worked on back in the early days of college: The Button It's 8 LEDs and a button connected to a paralel port (The button is attached to the select line... We got 9 uses out ouf ours!). When the button is pressed some scripts are run on the host that update this website, turn on the LEDs and other things. What the LEDs do is controlled by this web form.
Am I the only person that *only* cares about my personal files and not about the system?
No...
Corruption of personal files is *catastrophic*. Imagine your house burns down, what do you want to save most?
You convieniently ignored the "Personal files can be restored from backup" part of the parent comment. Even the best security in the world doesn't protect you from hardware failure, so it's a given that you should be backing up your personal data. It's not that hard or expensive, you just need to get in the habit of doing it. When you take that into account your house analogy falls apart. You can't easily make a duplicate of all your personal stuff from your house, but you CAN backup your data. If you DO backup your data, all all that's left to save is "the house".
If you're not backing up your data, you will loose it. You're flirting with catastrophe. You've been warned.
the way i use a regular mouse that causes me pain is to rotate my hand. a vertical mouse means less rotation, so less pain.
Ok, I'll buy it. I even basically said that in my post.
it is not a matter of habit, it is the way the mouse is built.
Here's where I disagree. You are not moving your wrist because of the way the mouse is built. I cannot think of a mouse design that would force you to move your wrist during use, short of one that straps to the forearm. The use of your wrist is a bad habit, potentially caused by the use of a wrist rest. The vertical mouse makes wrist movement ineffective for mouse movement and forces you to abandon your bad habit. There is nothing stopping you from using a regular mouse without moving your wrists. You could use either of the methods I suggested (the fingertips, or entire arm... try having your whole forearm move back and forth when you move the mouse instead of moving your wrist). I'm not saying that a vertical mouse isn't a good tool for people who have a hard time breaking such bad habits, but a better thing to do would be to encourage good posture and movement from the beginning. Take some piano lessons. Your teacher will straighten you out, and the practices you learn will find their way into your computer use.
Wrist pain is easily equated to most back pain. People with back troubles are told to lift with their knees instead of their back. The vertical mouse equivalent would be replacing their spine with something inflexable so they would be forced to use their knees, however a little dicipline is the only solution that is typically necissary.
You know, if everything he says is actually true, there must be lots of copyright violations in commercial software too; the only difference is that we can't see the code to prove they are there.
This is like the little rubber things they put on school children's pencils when they refuse to hold them correctly. It's just a way to force you to abandon a bad habit. If you don't like using a regular mouse in a way that won't cause you pain, then you won't like using this mouse either.
People do the weirdest, seemingly unnatural things with their wrist when using computers. I really don't understand where these habits come from. Perhaps it's a lack of training early on? Using a computer keyboard should produce similar wrist movements to using a piano keyboard: hardly any. Rotate your whole arm when typing on a traditional keyboard, don't pivot your wrist. Turn your mouse speed all the way up and only move the mouse with your fingertips, or turn the speed way down and move your whole arm.
If those things are too annoying for you, ergonomic input devices will be annoying too, because all they do is force you to move in a healthy way.
I'm also not using anywhere near the least expensive ISP in my area. I pay more than double what I could be paying because I have an excelent SLA.
I also live in one of the few towns in my area where cable modems are not available. I would not be interested in getting one if they were though. I don't know anybody who lives near me who doesn't complain about downtime and poor customer service. To to it off, they don't offer static IPs, and they block many ports. Unacceptable. Especially since I typically use my line to access my home machines from outside, and the only thing I ever really download from home are debian updates.
You might have thought his exact views were out of place
I did think they were out of place, but not in the way you imply. I don't think they fit the character. I also don't think that the types of people that showed up for fight club (probably fucked up just like him) were the type that would be interested in that kind of thing. Fight Club was shown as a way to get a way from real life, not as a way to change it.... until the end of the movie when suddenly the fat drunks that hated life turned into like pseudo-marine cultists or something. It just didn't seem to me like it fit the buildup.
You have to keep in mand that the connections you're pricing are more than 100% faster than the averages the article talks about. It says that Cable is 50% faster than DSL on average, but they also say the fastest average (Comcast) is only around 800Kbps. That's less than half the speed that you get, which means you're one of the lucky ones. Your anecdotal evidence is hardly the norm, and those prices for DSL you're quoting don't really relate to what the article is saying. Prices on 768k/128k ADSL would be more relevant.
If you don't switch your CLEC there shouldn't be any downtime. You keep your circuit and your hardware and they just reconfigure the upstream router. I've done it twice. Painless if you do your homework.
Slashdot Mirror
Do you think people would hide goatse.cx links if their posts could be easily traced back to them?
Yup.
It might even encourage some of them. Did your grade school have that kid who would moon people? It's pretty easy to trace sombody's naked ass back to their actual identity... You just need to wait for them to stand up. That proverbial kid was in it for the attention. Similarly, it makes some punk goatse troll feel special to know somebody noticed his antics. The troll gets proof of the attention from a -1 moderation. Actual official recognition can only fuel the fire.
I bet some slashdot trolls would use their real name now if they thought anybody would believe they were telling the truth.
Do you think they are spending their time wondering how to goof off?
When's the last time you went over to India and checked?
If they show that there is Linux code that is identical to SCO code, how will they be able to prove that Linux stole SCO code and not the other way around? It will be interesting to see how this turns out, since a SCO victory won't really help SCO's business any but will hurt all the other players in the Linux market. Perhaps they're hoping to take everybody else out with them?
I don't even want to know what you'd call me if I'd start talking about "the Mac OS X application".
I didn't "call" you anything. I was mearly pointing out that I realized too late that I was being unclear given your train of thought at the time...
Anyway, whether consumers consider the OS to be an application or not is hardly justification for advocating/opposing 64-bit processors. If you're going to use consumers perception as a basis, then 64-bit computing is a no brainer, because 64 is bigger than 32 and the marketing possibilities are endless.
I think that pervasive availability of 64-bit computing has the potential to allow the reinvention of HCI. We can't find out until we go there. Its quite possible that "most" of the application we're running in 10 years will benefit significantly from 64-bit integer operations. (I put "most" in quotes as you did, because by your logic "most" of what we do today didn't really benefit from the transition from 16 to 32-bit, but from clock speed increases. I think you'll agree now, though, that it would have been a mistake to downplay 32-bit computing back then). However I'm glad that AMD and IBM are making an effort to allow for 32-bit/64-bit coexistance since we really don't know when a large number of apps will benefit from 64-bit computations. Anyway, it all comes down to the following quote, which is what I took issue with and have been ranting to the contrary about:
The only real advantage of being 64 bit will be the ability to address more memory.
We don't know what all the real advantages will be, so we certainly can't say that additional memory will be the only one, or if it will be an advantage at all early on, as most 64-bit consumer machines that ship initially will have less than 3 GB of memory.
No. And I still don't think that's the reason. How can you make a word processor better using 64 bit code instead of 32 bit code? A spreadsheet? A web browser? An email client? A terminal emulator? A shell? A pdf viewer? I stand by my original point that most consumer apps don't need 64 bit operations.
I anticipated your short sighted response as soon as I hit the submit button. I should have realized that you would think I was talking about optimizing existing applications rather than designing new ones for new problems and I should have said all the rest of this stuff the first time... I even had a horrific vision of the word processor analogy. It was scary. Anyway:
I'm not talking about optimizing existing applications, I'm talking about new applications; programs that do things that we don't use our PCs for now. When we had 8-bit PCs nobody did photo editing or full color page layout on a PC. When we had 16-bit machines nobody used a PC for CAD. Now we have 32-bit machines and are moving to 64-bit. There will be some major tasks that will become possible with 64-bit PCs, but the software isn't there yet because the customers don't have the processors.
Also, I can think of two applications that every single computer user runs that can benefit dramatically from 64-bits, and Microsoft is waiting with the code already written for widespread 64-bit processor deployment to release them: Operating systems and filesystems. Having a 64-bit virtual address space can make your OS much more elegant and efficient since every possible I/O operation can be memory-mapped at once. Similarly, it has already been demonstrated that large relational databases benefit from 64-bit addressing even without taking advantage of the additional memory capacity, and many next generation filesystems will be relational databases.
Sure current consumer apps don't really need 64-bits. If they did we wouldn't have them. It's the PC apps of tomorrow that will benefit. If you don't care to do more with your PC then essentially what you can do today, just more quickly then keep buying 32-bit CPUs. They'll continue to be available for decades...
Did you ever think that the reason there are few consumer level apps that will take advantage of 64 bit architectures is that nobody has a 64 bit PC yet?
If your hard drive dies, you can't re-download it.
I don't see how this has anything to do with DRM. If they did let you re-download it people would be screaming about Apple keeping tabs on what their users buy.
Make backups. Then if your computer dies a fiery death you can restore from your backup and keep listening to your music. Apple even made it easy to make backups to writeable DVDs. It's a single mouse click!
I don't see anybody bitching that record stores don't replace your CDs if you scratch them...
How do you keep particles of RAM out of your lungs now? I'd go with the same method.
That chart told me that a mere 1.8% of his contributions come from Lockheed. Statistics can show anything in the right context.
Perhaps he doesn't want shuttle parts raining down on the houses of his constituents. That seems more likely to me that such a policy decision being influenced by a mere 1.8% of his campaign finances in a non-election year.
That's really too bad. I would think that such a program would be at the graduate level considering how much math you should know to be good at writing graphics engines; not to mention the need for a good background in algorithms.
It's all moot anyway. Even without these programs, the number of top notch game/graphics programmers out there already outnumbers the well paying jobs available for such people.
Did you ever thing he was perhaps doing this for fun?
How much money do you make per hour at your current job?
It's funny you ask that. It seems the longer I work the less I make per hour... I also don't make any more or less overall if I spend time away from work on crazy schemes to avoid spending $100.
Try using enjoyment instead of dollars when measuring the value of what to do with your free time. You may find you'll be happier.
C'mon, it's 10-13, they need a PS2, not apt-get and bootloaders.
As I fondly recall being 11 years old and learning 'C' from the manual of my then recently purchased Borland compiler while the Atari sat idle in the corner, I'm wondering: What are you talking about?
Would you say that is a good way to make a device that I could hook up to Linux?
It certainly is. If you use the USB scanner driver (which actualy isn't necissarily just for scanners at all) you can write all your control software without having to change kernel code. Your favorite distro almost certainly has the scanner module built already. Personally I find writing a kernel based driver easier (probably because it's what I do for a living and I'm used to it), and you can do that too.
If you want to access your device from the kernel, the Programming Guide for Linux USB Device Drivers is where you should start. If you don't want to mess with the kernel, read the scanner.txt file that comes with the kernel documentation. There's an example program at the bottom that uses the scanner driver to talk to an HP scanner, but the device at the other end of the cable can be any non-scanner device too.
I was reminded recently as I waited in line for two hours to download drivers from their website for the third time (Unexplicable disconnection from their site during the first two tries) never to purchase another Creative product again. Nobody else makes you wait until there's only 5-10 other people downloading... Can't they spring for some decent hosting? Perhaps they should try to reduce the size (30MB!?) of their driver files if they cant afford the bandwidth. Six hours is a long time to wait for a single driver when you've got a 1.5Mbit connection.
If only they'd just stop buying companies that make cool stuff and turing it to shit...
Done it. Here's the one I worked on back in the early days of college: The Button It's 8 LEDs and a button connected to a paralel port (The button is attached to the select line... We got 9 uses out ouf ours!). When the button is pressed some scripts are run on the host that update this website, turn on the LEDs and other things. What the LEDs do is controlled by this web form.
This story is so 1996.
Am I the only person that *only* cares about my personal files and not about the system?
No...
Corruption of personal files is *catastrophic*. Imagine your house burns down, what do you want to save most?
You convieniently ignored the "Personal files can be restored from backup" part of the parent comment. Even the best security in the world doesn't protect you from hardware failure, so it's a given that you should be backing up your personal data. It's not that hard or expensive, you just need to get in the habit of doing it. When you take that into account your house analogy falls apart. You can't easily make a duplicate of all your personal stuff from your house, but you CAN backup your data. If you DO backup your data, all all that's left to save is "the house".
If you're not backing up your data, you will loose it. You're flirting with catastrophe. You've been warned.
the way i use a regular mouse that causes me pain is to rotate my hand. a vertical mouse means less rotation, so less pain.
Ok, I'll buy it. I even basically said that in my post.
it is not a matter of habit, it is the way the mouse is built.
Here's where I disagree. You are not moving your wrist because of the way the mouse is built. I cannot think of a mouse design that would force you to move your wrist during use, short of one that straps to the forearm. The use of your wrist is a bad habit, potentially caused by the use of a wrist rest. The vertical mouse makes wrist movement ineffective for mouse movement and forces you to abandon your bad habit. There is nothing stopping you from using a regular mouse without moving your wrists. You could use either of the methods I suggested (the fingertips, or entire arm... try having your whole forearm move back and forth when you move the mouse instead of moving your wrist). I'm not saying that a vertical mouse isn't a good tool for people who have a hard time breaking such bad habits, but a better thing to do would be to encourage good posture and movement from the beginning. Take some piano lessons. Your teacher will straighten you out, and the practices you learn will find their way into your computer use.
Wrist pain is easily equated to most back pain. People with back troubles are told to lift with their knees instead of their back. The vertical mouse equivalent would be replacing their spine with something inflexable so they would be forced to use their knees, however a little dicipline is the only solution that is typically necissary.
You know, if everything he says is actually true, there must be lots of copyright violations in commercial software too; the only difference is that we can't see the code to prove they are there.
This is like the little rubber things they put on school children's pencils when they refuse to hold them correctly. It's just a way to force you to abandon a bad habit. If you don't like using a regular mouse in a way that won't cause you pain, then you won't like using this mouse either.
People do the weirdest, seemingly unnatural things with their wrist when using computers. I really don't understand where these habits come from. Perhaps it's a lack of training early on? Using a computer keyboard should produce similar wrist movements to using a piano keyboard: hardly any. Rotate your whole arm when typing on a traditional keyboard, don't pivot your wrist. Turn your mouse speed all the way up and only move the mouse with your fingertips, or turn the speed way down and move your whole arm.
If those things are too annoying for you, ergonomic input devices will be annoying too, because all they do is force you to move in a healthy way.
"You don't want to miss out on this wonderful opportunity, do you?"
By your method I get to charge you $30 now. Thanks.
I'm paying significantly more than you.
I'm also not using anywhere near the least expensive ISP in my area. I pay more than double what I could be paying because I have an excelent SLA.
I also live in one of the few towns in my area where cable modems are not available. I would not be interested in getting one if they were though. I don't know anybody who lives near me who doesn't complain about downtime and poor customer service. To to it off, they don't offer static IPs, and they block many ports. Unacceptable. Especially since I typically use my line to access my home machines from outside, and the only thing I ever really download from home are debian updates.
You might have thought his exact views were out of place
I did think they were out of place, but not in the way you imply. I don't think they fit the character. I also don't think that the types of people that showed up for fight club (probably fucked up just like him) were the type that would be interested in that kind of thing. Fight Club was shown as a way to get a way from real life, not as a way to change it.... until the end of the movie when suddenly the fat drunks that hated life turned into like pseudo-marine cultists or something. It just didn't seem to me like it fit the buildup.
You have to keep in mand that the connections you're pricing are more than 100% faster than the averages the article talks about. It says that Cable is 50% faster than DSL on average, but they also say the fastest average (Comcast) is only around 800Kbps. That's less than half the speed that you get, which means you're one of the lucky ones. Your anecdotal evidence is hardly the norm, and those prices for DSL you're quoting don't really relate to what the article is saying. Prices on 768k/128k ADSL would be more relevant.
If you don't switch your CLEC there shouldn't be any downtime. You keep your circuit and your hardware and they just reconfigure the upstream router. I've done it twice. Painless if you do your homework.
Would you like your ROI in the form of source code that your probably don't care about or in cash that will keep your tax bill down?
Your choice.