And before you could be targetting this as flamebait, think of this -- we could be talking about gene sequencing right now (or PARC's recent contributions to digital paper).
Is there anything that pulls more on the heartstrings than a bunch of Linux zealots going "Rah rah Linux" in reaction to some idiot's "article"? Let's face it, Moody's a total moron -- why are we even giving it the time of day? Then we post "rebuttals" from people we like more. How childish.
Dear Rob Malda: get a clue. It's supposed to be "News for Nerds. Stuff that matters." not "Dumb articles from supposed Nerds. Stupid advocacy." "Rah rah Linux" -- fuck it. Give me something that actually matters.
An interesting fold, and for the first time I definitely agree with the Slashdot consensus - this is an asshole tendencey on the part of MS.
But a question: who actually pays for MS licenses? At my school we have burned hundreds of copies of Windows 98 (and more recently, Windows 2000) on the machines - and have only paid the license for one client of Windows 98 and 2000 each. Steal a few serial numbers off of Deja.com and bingo - instant 50 clients.
And one person on CNet made the argument decisively clear: buy one boxed copy of Linux and download StarOffice. Simple.
Actually, no, the whole Linux box crashes. X Windows (when I use it) crashes more often, but even at the terminal my system has been known to go down. Not often, but again, about as often as Win2000 (which is running a full GUI and supporting many more hardware devices at once).
Not to bely your points, but don't Linux users (and hell, let's make it Slashdot users), not only have a bias against Microsoft, but are uninformed as well? Hear me out.
If you're a diehard Open Source advocate, when was the last time you purchased an operating system, specifically a Microsoft one? If you really are for "the movement", chances are not lately. So how can you argue that OS's like Windows 2000 are highly crashable when YOU HAVEN'T USED THEM?
Granted, I was way skeptical about Windows 2000 Professional -- hearing all the mularchy about 60,000-some odd bugs and other mass media nonsense, but once I tried it (and bought it) I was pretty damn impressed. It crashes very infrequently -- about as often as my Linux box (once every 4 weeks), and only when I'm deliberately trying to crash it, like running Unreal Tournament, Quake 3 Arena and an OpenGL screensaver at the same time. At the highest resolutions.:)
My point is, don't knock what you haven't tried. One of the major reasons why Linux isn't garnering the attention it deserves is because of the zealots who argue without thinking. Put a robe and a pointed hat on them, and you may as well call them Ku Klux Klan members.
I like game like Crazy Taxi, which mix the old (racking up points and pulling off cool maneuvers) with the new (great graphics). I played this game for hours.
The lastest version of Mozilla is actually a playoff of the word Mozzarella: GUI, sticky and once you play with it, you have a hard time getting it out of your hair.
Someone made an interesting point: why WOULDN'T we compare a Win2000 server to a Linux setup using KDE or Gnome? The whole point (or argument, if you will) is that people use Win2000 because it's easier to operate (and there is a single point of reference to call when blame needs to be placed). If you're comparing Win2000 to a command-line server, aren't you weighing an unnecessary bias against Win2000. Why not go GUI on GUI?
First the KDE's were clients, not servers. I wouldn't necessarily run KDE on a server (unless I had an admin who was totally clueless and needed a GUI to admin the server).
And yes, it's 180 megs - buffers included. I find it hard to guess why you wouldn't include buffers in the total (this is memory that is being taken up by the system which needs to be given up before other apps can use it).
Why is free memory a good thing? Well for starters, my client at home runs games.:) But the people at work use tools like Photoshop and Premiere, which eat up a ton of memory. Either this or they poll the memory from disk (speedwise, you do the math).
The TCP/IP stack *is* different, as somebody else mentioned - I definitely notice improved performance on both the Win2000 clients and the one Win2000 server lying around. Memory usage is better too - out of 256 megs on one of the clients only 60 is being used by the system directly (that's a lot better than KDE, which eats up around 180).
Not to say that an NT-based system will auction best the Linux and FreeBSD's of the world, but from what I've seen (despite the still extraorbinant-price MS charges) it's a pretty good, very reliable system.
I'm running 256 megs on my machine. That's one step down from this guy - how is that obscene? You'd be amazed how much 256 speeds up app loads in that most of the files are cached in RAM (that is, in Win2000. In Linux more than 180 megs were eaten up by KDE.)
Imagine a system with millions of users (similar to the way Windows has the lionshare of users today), with a billion-fold prioritized thread system. One that could scour all of the users in a given distance radius and determine which are available for higher end calculations and data manipulations.
A computer working on a 3D render, for example, could pull the resources of an idling computer 50 miles away stuck in a screensaver. A company employee who has to perform the backup of 3000 files could cache some of them in a RAM monster in Cleveland.
Granted, the only issue that comes straight to the fold is security. With millions of file transactions taking place on a daily basis, it would become critical to make sure rogue users couldn't snoop on the contents of a file without permission.
Still, with a relatively secure operating system as a standard point (Linux, BSD, or even to some extent Windows 2000) it's possible this wouldn't even be an issue.
Add complex AI to the mix (such as monitoring what resources are most in need - RAM in a rendering circle of computers, bandwidth for streaming across a company wide system stuck in screensaver mode), and finally those wasted CPU cycles would be put to proper use. Not just in monitoring for alien life or searching for the cure to the flu, but speeding up all operations on computers in everyday life.
If it was kicked off Uranus, wouldn't it be in some sorta orbit around Uranus (either round or eliptical)?
It seems strange that the sun would provide more of a gravitational pull from millions of miles away than a nearby planet the satelite was just "kicked off of" (think of the Earth and its moon).
Myst was universally deplored as one of the driving forces that the computer game industry *backwards*. Nearly every gaming publication (including mine at the time) shot down Myst as a mass-market, hype-filled pile of dog shit in line with the Deer Hunter games being sold today. Crap technology with little to no content.
The problems with Myst (in no particular order):
- No usable inventory field - No driving story, besides new-age sounds and lopsided environments that were supposed to "drive an internally-woven story" (new-age bs) - Technology essentially mounting to an Apple Hypercard stack (what the brothers originally programmed Myst in) - Rendered still frames in a gaming world quickly going to real-time 3D (Doom, Marathon). Hell, even 7th Guest was able to combine mouse clicks with *some* motion - years before Myst. - No definable ending - All videos relating to the story could be viewed easily off the CD without playing the game (this was laughable) - No true goal system (a result of the hacked-together inventory system) - Worst of all, that "mass-media taste" that has been embraced by games like the "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire" CD-ROM, which has been on top of the gaming charts for several months. Games like Quake and Diablo more adequately brought gaming to masses - without sacrificing technology
In short, "Myst games" are nothing but mass-marketed dribble. Games like Thief, which are revolutionary, should not be placed into the same slot. Games like Myst should be shot off the planet.
I couple this right along with that X.cam always being advertised on ZDNet. You know the one - the advertisements always spout "security concerns" while showing gorgeous models.
Sounds like another excuse to create photos for VoyeurWeb.:)
This would transcend the gap between the two portable lines somewhat (the one Steve showed on the big slide during the keynote).
A device with a keyboard and pen/tablet would be almost like a handheld on steroids. Something like a PDA for business people but also something appealing to the consumer set. Throw in writing directly to the screen and Apple would have a real winnner.
(Hell, throw in cellular modem capabilities built-in and they'd have a real winner).
The slot-loaded DVD drive is a nice idea, but I wonder if it's sound engineering-wise. There's already a great number of users who have "mistaken" slot-loaded drives for other devices (a friend of mine, freshman year of college, stuck her floppy disk in the slot drive of a CD-ROM).
I think one of the benefits to the tray design is, unless you're really stupid, you'll pick up on the fact that you're opening up the drive. With slot-loading, you're just kinda searching for an opening in the computer. It's understandable when you insert the wrong media.
With notebooks, isn't this situation going to be even worse? We've already heard the horror stories of clever designs going bad in the rough-and-tumble world of travel (another friend of mine owned one of the "butterfly keyboard" IBM Thinkpads. Threw his suitcase on a hotel bed hard enough to press the button to pop it open, crashed into the bed and brought the keyboard down with it.
Slashdot Mirror
In fact, I haven't run into one game yet that *hasn't* worked on my copy of Windows 2000 (Everquest, Half-Life, etc.)
I say, program in SML. Strongly typed, no functions, no variable statments. A perfect functional language.
And before you could be targetting this as flamebait, think of this -- we could be talking about gene sequencing right now (or PARC's recent contributions to digital paper).
Dear Rob Malda: get a clue. It's supposed to be "News for Nerds. Stuff that matters." not "Dumb articles from supposed Nerds. Stupid advocacy." "Rah rah Linux" -- fuck it. Give me something that actually matters.
% of Lynx-using public: 0.01%.
But a question: who actually pays for MS licenses? At my school we have burned hundreds of copies of Windows 98 (and more recently, Windows 2000) on the machines - and have only paid the license for one client of Windows 98 and 2000 each. Steal a few serial numbers off of Deja.com and bingo - instant 50 clients.
And one person on CNet made the argument decisively clear: buy one boxed copy of Linux and download StarOffice. Simple.
Actually, no, the whole Linux box crashes. X Windows (when I use it) crashes more often, but even at the terminal my system has been known to go down. Not often, but again, about as often as Win2000 (which is running a full GUI and supporting many more hardware devices at once).
Um... I think that bug report is mass media nonsense. I haven't encountered anything that threatening.
If you're a diehard Open Source advocate, when was the last time you purchased an operating system, specifically a Microsoft one? If you really are for "the movement", chances are not lately. So how can you argue that OS's like Windows 2000 are highly crashable when YOU HAVEN'T USED THEM?
Granted, I was way skeptical about Windows 2000 Professional -- hearing all the mularchy about 60,000-some odd bugs and other mass media nonsense, but once I tried it (and bought it) I was pretty damn impressed. It crashes very infrequently -- about as often as my Linux box (once every 4 weeks), and only when I'm deliberately trying to crash it, like running Unreal Tournament, Quake 3 Arena and an OpenGL screensaver at the same time. At the highest resolutions. :)
My point is, don't knock what you haven't tried. One of the major reasons why Linux isn't garnering the attention it deserves is because of the zealots who argue without thinking. Put a robe and a pointed hat on them, and you may as well call them Ku Klux Klan members.
I like game like Crazy Taxi, which mix the old (racking up points and pulling off cool maneuvers) with the new (great graphics). I played this game for hours.
The lastest version of Mozilla is actually a playoff of the word Mozzarella: GUI, sticky and once you play with it, you have a hard time getting it out of your hair.
Someone made an interesting point: why WOULDN'T we compare a Win2000 server to a Linux setup using KDE or Gnome? The whole point (or argument, if you will) is that people use Win2000 because it's easier to operate (and there is a single point of reference to call when blame needs to be placed). If you're comparing Win2000 to a command-line server, aren't you weighing an unnecessary bias against Win2000. Why not go GUI on GUI?
First the KDE's were clients, not servers. I wouldn't necessarily run KDE on a server (unless I had an admin who was totally clueless and needed a GUI to admin the server).
And yes, it's 180 megs - buffers included. I find it hard to guess why you wouldn't include buffers in the total (this is memory that is being taken up by the system which needs to be given up before other apps can use it).
Why is free memory a good thing? Well for starters, my client at home runs games. :) But the people at work use tools like Photoshop and Premiere, which eat up a ton of memory. Either this or they poll the memory from disk (speedwise, you do the math).
Not to say that an NT-based system will auction best the Linux and FreeBSD's of the world, but from what I've seen (despite the still extraorbinant-price MS charges) it's a pretty good, very reliable system.
I'm running 256 megs on my machine. That's one step down from this guy - how is that obscene? You'd be amazed how much 256 speeds up app loads in that most of the files are cached in RAM (that is, in Win2000. In Linux more than 180 megs were eaten up by KDE.)
A computer working on a 3D render, for example, could pull the resources of an idling computer 50 miles away stuck in a screensaver. A company employee who has to perform the backup of 3000 files could cache some of them in a RAM monster in Cleveland.
Granted, the only issue that comes straight to the fold is security. With millions of file transactions taking place on a daily basis, it would become critical to make sure rogue users couldn't snoop on the contents of a file without permission.
Still, with a relatively secure operating system as a standard point (Linux, BSD, or even to some extent Windows 2000) it's possible this wouldn't even be an issue.
Add complex AI to the mix (such as monitoring what resources are most in need - RAM in a rendering circle of computers, bandwidth for streaming across a company wide system stuck in screensaver mode), and finally those wasted CPU cycles would be put to proper use. Not just in monitoring for alien life or searching for the cure to the flu, but speeding up all operations on computers in everyday life.
Wait, I have to go contact Bubbles and see if she can talk to a few squirrels to get help.
It seems strange that the sun would provide more of a gravitational pull from millions of miles away than a nearby planet the satelite was just "kicked off of" (think of the Earth and its moon).
Is it desirable? Warcraft III, Diablo II, Deus Ex, and a host of other games help warrant my vote: yes.
And the Lithtech engine? Please. The frame rates in that thing, even on a decent machine, are nothing to be excited about.
The problems with Myst (in no particular order):
- No usable inventory field
- No driving story, besides new-age sounds and lopsided environments that were supposed to "drive an internally-woven story" (new-age bs)
- Technology essentially mounting to an Apple Hypercard stack (what the brothers originally programmed Myst in)
- Rendered still frames in a gaming world quickly going to real-time 3D (Doom, Marathon). Hell, even 7th Guest was able to combine mouse clicks with *some* motion - years before Myst.
- No definable ending
- All videos relating to the story could be viewed easily off the CD without playing the game (this was laughable)
- No true goal system (a result of the hacked-together inventory system)
- Worst of all, that "mass-media taste" that has been embraced by games like the "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire" CD-ROM, which has been on top of the gaming charts for several months. Games like Quake and Diablo more adequately brought gaming to masses - without sacrificing technology
In short, "Myst games" are nothing but mass-marketed dribble. Games like Thief, which are revolutionary, should not be placed into the same slot. Games like Myst should be shot off the planet.
Sounds like another excuse to create photos for VoyeurWeb. :)
A device with a keyboard and pen/tablet would be almost like a handheld on steroids. Something like a PDA for business people but also something appealing to the consumer set. Throw in writing directly to the screen and Apple would have a real winnner.
(Hell, throw in cellular modem capabilities built-in and they'd have a real winner).
No, but she wasn't as pretty as the one I did. :)
I think one of the benefits to the tray design is, unless you're really stupid, you'll pick up on the fact that you're opening up the drive. With slot-loading, you're just kinda searching for an opening in the computer. It's understandable when you insert the wrong media.
With notebooks, isn't this situation going to be even worse? We've already heard the horror stories of clever designs going bad in the rough-and-tumble world of travel (another friend of mine owned one of the "butterfly keyboard" IBM Thinkpads. Threw his suitcase on a hotel bed hard enough to press the button to pop it open, crashed into the bed and brought the keyboard down with it.