Re:Buying other items with small performance incre
on
P4 3.2GHz Reviews
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· Score: 1
I disagree about your theory of the toaster farm. We have real-life data: Krispy Kreme.
OK, it's not toast, but when a large company wants to sell donuts in every town, they custom build a mass-production donut machine, rather than installing lots of little donut machines.
The whole analogy is toast, just because both alternatives (cheap toasters and expensive slightly-faster toasters) would not be used in real life.
Hell, even restaurants and bagel shops use Hobart brand belt-fed toasters, which happen to be far more expensive than ordinary consumer toasters.
That is a horrible comparason, MacOS X can be uninstalled from your mac, and you can install somthing different, you can't uninstall internet explorer and put in Mozilla though, you have to keep IE.
Actually this is a good comparison. You can uninstall Windows from your computer just as easily as you can uninstall MacOS X from your computer.
And, even if you want to use Windows and still cannot uninstall IE, you can install Mozilla or any browser you want. The only horrible fate you suffer from keeping IE on your computer is the loss of a few megabytes of otherwise usable hard drive space. You can still build your own Windows PC using parts you can buy anywhere you want, without Microsoft's say-so.
Both Windows and MacOS are closed source. But the hardware used to run Windows is pretty much open source, compared with Apple's hardware. Apples are usually more reliable because Apple exerts dictatorial control over the entire computer, to an extent that Microsoft cannot do, both because of MS's monopoly status, and the simple fact that they don't run the hardware.
My point is that Apple's control of the hardware is much more significant than Microsoft's inclusion of IE with Windows. You don't have to use IE if you don't want to and you can run Windows on hardware you can buy anywhere, but if you want to run MacOS, you are stuck with Apple's hardware. There is less freedom when you go with Apple. For most Apple users, the greater reliability is worth it, but there is less freedom nonetheless.
Whenever anyone talks about how Microsoft destroyed Netscape by giving away IE, I always remember that I never had to actually pay for Netscape either. Netscape was free, up to version 4.0, and IE 4.0 was, at least for me, better than Netscape 4.0. I'm sure many many people didn't bother downloading Netscape because IE was incorporated into Win 98, but by then, Netscape wasn't any better than IE.
Ah. So it's all George Bush's fault, isn't it? Because George Bush was the one who deregulated California's electric power industry, and got Bill Clinton to appoint his right wing buddies to the FERC.
Trying to blame this one on the Republicans is silly. The deregulation bill passed the California legislature by an overwhelming majority of both parties. Both the right and the left fell asleep at the switch, and to say that Enron is a bunch of Bush cronies completely ignores the very close ties that Enron had with the Clinton administration and the millions that Enron gave to Democratic Party candidates and to the Democratic National Committee.
This was a completely non-partisan screw-over and a complete failure of government. If you want to learn how to prevent this from happening again, you have to take off your liberal/conservative blinders and examine the truth, rather than just casting blame in the direction of those you oppose.
God, why did you have to mention that? The only water-breathing superhero that managed to be lamer than both Aquaman and The Submariner.
Hell, let's go all the way back and redo Wonder Woman. Hmmm? What about a live-action Superfriends program? Think of what they could do with the Wonder Twins?
But here's a better thought? Why not something new? Or at least newer? Maybe Sergent Fury? Or Sergent Rock? Or even that damn Ghost Tank comic book?
Or Reality TV: A group of overweight geeks talking about/. postings and saying things like "Dude, like what if Wonder Woman fought Wolverine?"
Seriously, isn't everyone really disturbed by now about how everything old is new again? I'm tired of "Let's Redo CRAP" arguments. Just the other day, the Sci-Fi channel broadcast the Galactica 1980 series (all five episodes). I remember watching it as a kid, thinking about how really good it was. But it wasn't. It completely sucked, and so did V. The heavy-handed jewish/nazi/earthling/visitor comparisons mentioned above were so bad, that I couldn't watch the program when I borrowed the DVD from my sister and her husband (who are now in therapy and doing better). Fifteen years from now, I'll probably watch B5 and Firefly and think that they suck too. Why can't they just give us something original to watch?
One of the reasons Mr. Novak may have declared bankruptcy is that filing the bankruptcy petition should result in an automatic stay of the Sheriff's Sale of the petswarehouse.com domain name. This may result in Mr. Novak being allowed to continue to use his domain name until the bankrutpcy is settled. Since the Sheriff's sale was schedule for tomorrow (seek the link at on the front page posting), it should now not take place until some time after the bankruptcy court's hearing schedule for September 30, 2003.
The reason why a stay is permitted is simple - all of Mr. Novak's creditors are to be treated on an equal footing. He's also complaining that he was not properly within the jurisdicton of the Alabama court that instructed the county Sheriff to sell the domain name.
The interesting thing about the third-party icons on the Windows desktop is that they are put there by the OEM, not by Microsoft - and the OEMs' right to do this was one of the results of the anti-trust settlement with Microsoft. If Microsoft had entered into an exclusive arrangement with an ISP, especially their own MSN, it would be seen as a monopolistic move. Apple gets away with this only because of 1) their absolute control of the hardware and software platform; and 2) their smaller market share exempts them from being treated as a monopoly.
I will buy an iPod, iTunes and maybe even a Mac if Apple starts distributing music directly from performers in addition to selling music from big and small labels.
More specifically, my pledge is to buy an iPod when iTunes sells music from these three SF Bay Area Bands, none of which have recording contracts:
The Sermon The Sleeves Hammerdown Turpentine
iTunes will be truly beneficial for performers if those not encumbered by record label contracts can sell their music on iTunes under the same terms and conditions as the labels. Otherwise, it's just the same old exploitative record industry crap.
The potential of iTunes is that it makes record labels obsolete for the purpose of distributing music if performers are allowed to market their music directly to the fans. Bands will not need labels to distribute their music, because they won't need to press CD's and distribute them to retailers. They can do it all online.
Of course, once this is in place, the remaining hurdle is to stop record industry kickbacks to radio stations, and at least give independent performers the same theorectical opportunity to have their music aired as the big labels.
Re:Bawk? Are you Jhn Clux0r?
on
Chicken Run
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· Score: 4, Funny
Please don't refer to it as the "Chickenator". The technical term you should be using is the "Chicken Zamboni".
Seriously
on
Chicken Run
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· Score: 3, Interesting
This is more of a "News for Farmers, Stuff that Moos" story. But from a technological viewpoint, it's an interesting story. I for one didn't realize that chickens bred for meat were actually allowed to run free (albeit in a darkened warehouse). It's actually more "humane" than I had thought.
But this isn't really an advance in treating chickens more humanely. The farmers profit because of 1) reduced labor costs; 2) reduced worker's comp claims; and 3) reduced "breakage" allowing them to send more chickens to market. I can see why animal rights groups would be supportive of this technology, but it's really only a change on the level of replacing the axe-man with the guillotine.
Build a better chicken trap...
on
Chicken Run
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· Score: 1, Insightful
Forget about SCO. They don't have a leg to stand on, legally, by bringing up the SEC investigation unless it actually has something to do with SCO's dispute with IBM. Otherwise, the evidence would be deemed inadmissable as either irrelevant, or character evidence.
Yes, evidence of falsehood could be used to challenge the veracity of a witness - but not the general veracity of the defendant. In any event, an investigation does not equal guilt, and, believe it or not, our legal system recognzies this.
Why would I want a portable blue screen? I get enough of that at home.:)
As amusing as this is, your message just struck me that since I installed XP, I haven't seen the Blue Screen Of Death, except maybe once, and that's over the course of a couple of years with my computers at home and another 16 at the office.
Except for my crash-happy HP notebook. Right now, I'm still blaming HP for that.
And what of the risk of sending a crew up on a mission with zero training for that specific mission? As I understand it, they practice space walks for months ahead of time... The suggest this space walk with no training at all. And rushing another space shuttle into orbit doesn't exactly sound safe.
Simple. We already have astronauts with experience in space walking. Send them. And we wouldn't have needed to send a full crew on the second shuttle. Just a pilot and copilot, and maybe a third crew member. That and a couple of spacesuits and some of those emergency "tetherballs".
Sure, it IS rocket science, and it's a lot more complicated than Flash and Zarkov flying off yet another time to rescue Dale. But it's not as if our astronauts forget everything they know in between missions. By the time the second shuttle was ready, the crew would have been ready. The whole point here is that a rescue was impossible only because NASA failed to take the steps needed to recognize that a rescue was necessary.
And forget about the lawsuits already. The families of the crew have as much of a case against NASA as the families of our dead soldiers have against President Bush - none at all.
You're assuming that it's not possible to modify these ECUs to indicate that for the last 5 seconds you were driving 45 miles per hour, and not touching the brake or the gas.
You have a point, but I'm sure that it's possible to engineer the black box so that it's data cannot be modified without physically breaking it open and breaking a tamper-proof seal. Maybe the input data would have to be encrypted, but it's possible.
This is utter bullshit. Dealers should have to inform their customers that the car they're buying has a device that could incriminate them with ease in court. And who's paying for these devices? The consumer? Maybe they should be an optional extra. Yeah right.
Why? There's no reasonable expectation to privacy with respect to the speed you are driving, or anything else related to how you are driving. Despite the wishes of some, there is no constitutional right to privacy here. Since your legal rights are not being violated, the auto manufacturers and auto rental agencies don't have to tell you anything about this. If such a right to privacy while driving did exist, would you make cops get a search warrant before they could use a radar gun on a speeding vehicle?
And what's the big deal here? The truth is the truth. For every person who's at fault who is hung out to dry by black box data, there's another person who isn't going to be held liable unjustly for an automobile collision. Innocent people will save thousands of dollars. And guess what, the person who is condemned by his black box REALLY DID IT AND SHOULD BE HELD LIABLE.
Philosophers have been dealing with this issue in a logical manner for over a millenium. You may or may not accept their arguments, but they are as fiercely logicial as any philosophical work.
What's so wrong about product activation? Seriously. Win XP's product activation isn't particularly sinister, and its goal is a legitimate goal for any publisher of closed-source software: Making sure that people installing the software actually own it.
Any Windows release prior to XP could be installed on as many computers as you wanted. There are offices out there with many multiple machines running a single copy of Windows 98.
XP does require the occasional reactivation if and only if substantial changes have been made to the hardware. It's happened to me a couple of times, and I haven't been bothered by it. Apple may not have such a "draconian" product activation scheme, but they don't need one because Apple gets most of its money from the hardware, not the OS.
If the unit cost of Longhorn is prohibitive, then Microsoft will die a fiery death, and that would be just. There's nothing wrong with Microsoft's death by the rules of the marketplace. But clamping down on illegal duplication may help reduce unit cost, if Microsoft manages its marbles correctly, and prevents me from paying as much as I would otherwise.
Besides, XP has reached a level of stability that is very high. I manage an office network of about 16 machines, all but two of which run XP. My computers are much, much more reliable than ever before. Sure, people will claim that computers running their choice of OS are better, and XP could be better, but that doesn't change XP's very good reliability. Will I upgrade to Longhorn? Probably not. But it's not an issue of the cost - it's an issue of whether or not the dollar cost is supported by the advantages of upgrading, and upgrading from a pretty stable system isn't necessary unless I need the new OS to support new software that I need. And since we're still using WordPerfect 6.1 for Windows, I don't think I'll need to upgrade any time soon.
I hate to say this, but Garfield just plain sucks. I don't know if most people feel the same way, but Garfield is so tired and past its sell-by date that I have trained myself to overlook it on the comics page. I'm glad that Watterson stopped writing Calvin and Hobbes, just because it will (absent Broken Memories) remain pure and unspoiled.
Not to mention the joystick on the X-Box controller, and probably other game controllers as well.
Frankly, I think it won't work. Sure, you can tilt to the side, etc. But, when you try to press down to click, very frequently you will wind up being a little bit off and tilt to one direction. At least, this has been my experience with the X-Box controller.
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I disagree about your theory of the toaster farm. We have real-life data: Krispy Kreme.
OK, it's not toast, but when a large company wants to sell donuts in every town, they custom build a mass-production donut machine, rather than installing lots of little donut machines.
The whole analogy is toast, just because both alternatives (cheap toasters and expensive slightly-faster toasters) would not be used in real life.
Hell, even restaurants and bagel shops use Hobart brand belt-fed toasters, which happen to be far more expensive than ordinary consumer toasters.
That is a horrible comparason, MacOS X can be uninstalled from your mac, and you can install somthing different, you can't uninstall internet explorer and put in Mozilla though, you have to keep IE.
Actually this is a good comparison. You can uninstall Windows from your computer just as easily as you can uninstall MacOS X from your computer.
And, even if you want to use Windows and still cannot uninstall IE, you can install Mozilla or any browser you want. The only horrible fate you suffer from keeping IE on your computer is the loss of a few megabytes of otherwise usable hard drive space. You can still build your own Windows PC using parts you can buy anywhere you want, without Microsoft's say-so.
Both Windows and MacOS are closed source. But the hardware used to run Windows is pretty much open source, compared with Apple's hardware. Apples are usually more reliable because Apple exerts dictatorial control over the entire computer, to an extent that Microsoft cannot do, both because of MS's monopoly status, and the simple fact that they don't run the hardware.
My point is that Apple's control of the hardware is much more significant than Microsoft's inclusion of IE with Windows. You don't have to use IE if you don't want to and you can run Windows on hardware you can buy anywhere, but if you want to run MacOS, you are stuck with Apple's hardware. There is less freedom when you go with Apple. For most Apple users, the greater reliability is worth it, but there is less freedom nonetheless.
Whenever anyone talks about how Microsoft destroyed Netscape by giving away IE, I always remember that I never had to actually pay for Netscape either. Netscape was free, up to version 4.0, and IE 4.0 was, at least for me, better than Netscape 4.0. I'm sure many many people didn't bother downloading Netscape because IE was incorporated into Win 98, but by then, Netscape wasn't any better than IE.
Ah. So it's all George Bush's fault, isn't it? Because George Bush was the one who deregulated California's electric power industry, and got Bill Clinton to appoint his right wing buddies to the FERC.
Trying to blame this one on the Republicans is silly. The deregulation bill passed the California legislature by an overwhelming majority of both parties. Both the right and the left fell asleep at the switch, and to say that Enron is a bunch of Bush cronies completely ignores the very close ties that Enron had with the Clinton administration and the millions that Enron gave to Democratic Party candidates and to the Democratic National Committee.
This was a completely non-partisan screw-over and a complete failure of government. If you want to learn how to prevent this from happening again, you have to take off your liberal/conservative blinders and examine the truth, rather than just casting blame in the direction of those you oppose.
The Childhood's End aliens looked were demons. That is to say, when they botched first contact long, long ago, we remembered them in myth as demons.
Next up: Man from Atlantis
/. postings and saying things like "Dude, like what if Wonder Woman fought Wolverine?"
God, why did you have to mention that? The only water-breathing superhero that managed to be lamer than both Aquaman and The Submariner.
Hell, let's go all the way back and redo Wonder Woman. Hmmm? What about a live-action Superfriends program? Think of what they could do with the Wonder Twins?
But here's a better thought? Why not something new? Or at least newer? Maybe Sergent Fury? Or Sergent Rock? Or even that damn Ghost Tank comic book?
Or Reality TV: A group of overweight geeks talking about
Seriously, isn't everyone really disturbed by now about how everything old is new again? I'm tired of "Let's Redo CRAP" arguments. Just the other day, the Sci-Fi channel broadcast the Galactica 1980 series (all five episodes). I remember watching it as a kid, thinking about how really good it was. But it wasn't. It completely sucked, and so did V. The heavy-handed jewish/nazi/earthling/visitor comparisons mentioned above were so bad, that I couldn't watch the program when I borrowed the DVD from my sister and her husband (who are now in therapy and doing better). Fifteen years from now, I'll probably watch B5 and Firefly and think that they suck too. Why can't they just give us something original to watch?
One of the reasons Mr. Novak may have declared bankruptcy is that filing the bankruptcy petition should result in an automatic stay of the Sheriff's Sale of the petswarehouse.com domain name. This may result in Mr. Novak being allowed to continue to use his domain name until the bankrutpcy is settled. Since the Sheriff's sale was schedule for tomorrow (seek the link at on the front page posting), it should now not take place until some time after the bankruptcy court's hearing schedule for September 30, 2003.
The reason why a stay is permitted is simple - all of Mr. Novak's creditors are to be treated on an equal footing. He's also complaining that he was not properly within the jurisdicton of the Alabama court that instructed the county Sheriff to sell the domain name.
Yah - I mean, where the hell's the suicide booth?
Stupid meatbags.
The interesting thing about the third-party icons on the Windows desktop is that they are put there by the OEM, not by Microsoft - and the OEMs' right to do this was one of the results of the anti-trust settlement with Microsoft. If Microsoft had entered into an exclusive arrangement with an ISP, especially their own MSN, it would be seen as a monopolistic move. Apple gets away with this only because of 1) their absolute control of the hardware and software platform; and 2) their smaller market share exempts them from being treated as a monopoly.
I will buy an iPod, iTunes and maybe even a Mac if Apple starts distributing music directly from performers in addition to selling music from big and small labels.
More specifically, my pledge is to buy an iPod when iTunes sells music from these three SF Bay Area Bands, none of which have recording contracts:
The Sermon
The Sleeves
Hammerdown Turpentine
iTunes will be truly beneficial for performers if those not encumbered by record label contracts can sell their music on iTunes under the same terms and conditions as the labels. Otherwise, it's just the same old exploitative record industry crap.
The potential of iTunes is that it makes record labels obsolete for the purpose of distributing music if performers are allowed to market their music directly to the fans. Bands will not need labels to distribute their music, because they won't need to press CD's and distribute them to retailers. They can do it all online.
Of course, once this is in place, the remaining hurdle is to stop record industry kickbacks to radio stations, and at least give independent performers the same theorectical opportunity to have their music aired as the big labels.
Please don't refer to it as the "Chickenator". The technical term you should be using is the "Chicken Zamboni".
This is more of a "News for Farmers, Stuff that Moos" story. But from a technological viewpoint, it's an interesting story. I for one didn't realize that chickens bred for meat were actually allowed to run free (albeit in a darkened warehouse). It's actually more "humane" than I had thought.
But this isn't really an advance in treating chickens more humanely. The farmers profit because of 1) reduced labor costs; 2) reduced worker's comp claims; and 3) reduced "breakage" allowing them to send more chickens to market. I can see why animal rights groups would be supportive of this technology, but it's really only a change on the level of replacing the axe-man with the guillotine.
...and the world will come clucking at your door.
We need MATRIX technology now! Just put a six-volt power plug in the base of each soldier's neck, and they'll have all the power they need.
As long as they keep drinking their PowerAde.
... that the Normandy invasion took place on June 6, 1944, not in 1943.
Just thought you'd like to know.
Forget about SCO. They don't have a leg to stand on, legally, by bringing up the SEC investigation unless it actually has something to do with SCO's dispute with IBM. Otherwise, the evidence would be deemed inadmissable as either irrelevant, or character evidence.
Yes, evidence of falsehood could be used to challenge the veracity of a witness - but not the general veracity of the defendant. In any event, an investigation does not equal guilt, and, believe it or not, our legal system recognzies this.
Why would I want a portable blue screen? I get enough of that at home. :)
As amusing as this is, your message just struck me that since I installed XP, I haven't seen the Blue Screen Of Death, except maybe once, and that's over the course of a couple of years with my computers at home and another 16 at the office.
Except for my crash-happy HP notebook. Right now, I'm still blaming HP for that.
And what of the risk of sending a crew up on a mission with zero training for that specific mission? As I understand it, they practice space walks for months ahead of time... The suggest this space walk with no training at all. And rushing another space shuttle into orbit doesn't exactly sound safe.
Simple. We already have astronauts with experience in space walking. Send them. And we wouldn't have needed to send a full crew on the second shuttle. Just a pilot and copilot, and maybe a third crew member. That and a couple of spacesuits and some of those emergency "tetherballs".
Sure, it IS rocket science, and it's a lot more complicated than Flash and Zarkov flying off yet another time to rescue Dale. But it's not as if our astronauts forget everything they know in between missions. By the time the second shuttle was ready, the crew would have been ready. The whole point here is that a rescue was impossible only because NASA failed to take the steps needed to recognize that a rescue was necessary.
And forget about the lawsuits already. The families of the crew have as much of a case against NASA as the families of our dead soldiers have against President Bush - none at all.
You have a point, but I'm sure that it's possible to engineer the black box so that it's data cannot be modified without physically breaking it open and breaking a tamper-proof seal. Maybe the input data would have to be encrypted, but it's possible.
Why? There's no reasonable expectation to privacy with respect to the speed you are driving, or anything else related to how you are driving. Despite the wishes of some, there is no constitutional right to privacy here. Since your legal rights are not being violated, the auto manufacturers and auto rental agencies don't have to tell you anything about this. If such a right to privacy while driving did exist, would you make cops get a search warrant before they could use a radar gun on a speeding vehicle?
And what's the big deal here? The truth is the truth. For every person who's at fault who is hung out to dry by black box data, there's another person who isn't going to be held liable unjustly for an automobile collision. Innocent people will save thousands of dollars. And guess what, the person who is condemned by his black box REALLY DID IT AND SHOULD BE HELD LIABLE.
Aquinas, Chesterton, C.S. Lewis., etc.
Philosophers have been dealing with this issue in a logical manner for over a millenium. You may or may not accept their arguments, but they are as fiercely logicial as any philosophical work.
What's so wrong about product activation? Seriously. Win XP's product activation isn't particularly sinister, and its goal is a legitimate goal for any publisher of closed-source software: Making sure that people installing the software actually own it.
Any Windows release prior to XP could be installed on as many computers as you wanted. There are offices out there with many multiple machines running a single copy of Windows 98.
XP does require the occasional reactivation if and only if substantial changes have been made to the hardware. It's happened to me a couple of times, and I haven't been bothered by it. Apple may not have such a "draconian" product activation scheme, but they don't need one because Apple gets most of its money from the hardware, not the OS.
If the unit cost of Longhorn is prohibitive, then Microsoft will die a fiery death, and that would be just. There's nothing wrong with Microsoft's death by the rules of the marketplace. But clamping down on illegal duplication may help reduce unit cost, if Microsoft manages its marbles correctly, and prevents me from paying as much as I would otherwise.
Besides, XP has reached a level of stability that is very high. I manage an office network of about 16 machines, all but two of which run XP. My computers are much, much more reliable than ever before. Sure, people will claim that computers running their choice of OS are better, and XP could be better, but that doesn't change XP's very good reliability. Will I upgrade to Longhorn? Probably not. But it's not an issue of the cost - it's an issue of whether or not the dollar cost is supported by the advantages of upgrading, and upgrading from a pretty stable system isn't necessary unless I need the new OS to support new software that I need. And since we're still using WordPerfect 6.1 for Windows, I don't think I'll need to upgrade any time soon.
I hate to say this, but Garfield just plain sucks. I don't know if most people feel the same way, but Garfield is so tired and past its sell-by date that I have trained myself to overlook it on the comics page. I'm glad that Watterson stopped writing Calvin and Hobbes, just because it will (absent Broken Memories) remain pure and unspoiled.
Not to mention the joystick on the X-Box controller, and probably other game controllers as well.
Frankly, I think it won't work. Sure, you can tilt to the side, etc. But, when you try to press down to click, very frequently you will wind up being a little bit off and tilt to one direction. At least, this has been my experience with the X-Box controller.
Hey, you got modded insightful, you big karma whore you!
Hey, you got modded funny, you big karma whore you!