It's not people that are saing these devices are a replacement to the Palm (x).. It's MS Marketing that's saing that. Obviously MS want's to position WinCE as a competitor to the PalmOS. It seems to me like these PocketPC are more of a competition to super thin laptops (Which also run WinCE BTW) then Palms.
When I was looking for an electronic organizer, I was looking at size, ease of use and utility. The palm fits those requirements to the tee. The PocketPC devices are feature bloated, expensive and to still too big to carry around in your pocket comfortably. That and the lack of linux sync/backup software is really a bummer.
Ahh, but WHY do schools have to be run by the government? Look at all the other "government funded" programs. They WASTE an incredibly disproportionate amount of money for what they cost. Currently Schools are the same way.
The only way to fix this is to promote competition BETWEEN schools. No parent wants to send their kid to a lousy school.. but right now we don't have that choice.
Religion vs. Science is a non argument here. If people had choice there could be achool that teaches creationism and one that teaches evolution. Let me choose which school I want to send my kids too.
And if you're worried about the left or the right wing having too much of an effect in those schools.. you don't have to worry.. most people are down the middle and the extremist wwould have much less power trying to influence 10000 independant schools vs. our lovely "if you have the $$$ we will do your biding" government.
The only thing we need government for is to build roads, and fund the police and millitary. Everything else is a waste.. just look at the SS program. (If you're under 35 and think you're gona see a penny of the money you fork out to SS every paycheck when you hit 65..haha.. I'd start looking for a good 401K plan)
I've used windriver at my work place. It's a neat idea but has a LOT of problems.
1st the good news:
1 YES it does allow you to write truelly crossplatform drivers. I've done this. 2. It's easy to use (a lot easier then learning kernel stuff) 3. It's very stable.
The BAD news:
1. It's SLOOOWWWW! This is because a driver written usiong this tool kit runs in USER space/mode. Which means there is a kernel switch penalty for every io operation.
2. It does NOT allow REALTIME IRQ handling. (Well it does but it makes you jump through hoops and you have to learn about KERNEL stuff for the OS you're writing tis for).
3. It's no good to you if you're looking to write a block device driver. It's only usefull if your writing drivers for weird custom hardware.
4. You need to redistibute their kernel-user mode driver module with your product. IE the kit DOES NOT generate a standalone driver.
4. Did I say it's slow?
If any one has specific questions Let me know.. I've used this product extensively.
Sure.. you'll get rid of "rage" killings.. which are VERY rare. And replace them with higher counts of Armed robbery, burglary, and drug related killings.
Ask any criminal with a violent past and THEY will tell you outright that they avoid people/houses that they think may have a weapon inside. Wonder y?
All this BS about banning guns is driven by paranoia instiled by the media. If anyone would actually take the time to look at the REAL statsitics instead of what the media want's you to believe you would see that the child on child crime rate has actually declined in the last 5 years.
That's wonderfully idealistic, but what if the flaw with the door falling off would allow anyone who knew about it to be able to steal your car too?
Should the manufacturer just go off and announce "If you have a 97 ford tempo by doing this and this you can open the car and steal it" before they have a fix for the problem?
No thank you.
The whole argument here is whether to announce the volnerabilities BEFORE a fix is ready.. or to keep it hush hush. Until AFTER a patch is available. This seems to me like a perfectly resonable to me.
I'd like to prove you wrong. I though the Matrix had amazing action sequences.. which goes to prove that YOU CAN film "real" (well as real as I move around in quake anyways) tactic with amazing results.
The lousy action sequences in last nights episode were do to:
1. Lack Of Imagination 2. Lack of Budget ($$$) 3. Or just plain bad writing.
Because with the possible breakeup of MS into seperate divisions by the DOJ it would be wise for MS to hedge it's bets. Don't you think?
After all they have enough money to pay for the development but they DON'T have to ever release it. If they are indeed going to be broken up then it would be in the BEST interest of the Applications group to have a Linux version of Office.
Re:My 2 units of local currency's worth
on
Hackers
·
· Score: 1
Nature vs. Nurture..
Depending on who you listen to it must be one or the other. But the truth is all these self proclaimed experts are talking out of their respective arses. No one has done a REAL study on this. Instead they quote their experiances and un scientific questioinaires.
To really answer this question you would have to do a massive study where random children are taken from birth and bundled into two groups. Males and females that are tought what women are tought today. And the 2nd group of males and females that are tought the way males are. And of course make sure they are not influenced by outside circumstances.
At the end of a 20 year time see what careers they chose and how they faired compared to the population at large. Of course such a study would never happen. We might not like the answer it provides.
The MPAA and what is happening to DVD is a prime example why big conglomerate companies are a BAD THING for the consumer. Remeber when SOny came out with BETAMAX?? At that time sony didn't own any media outlets.. so they didn't care what the big media outlets wanted.. they cared about what the CONSUMER wanted.
No Sony owns Studios, record companies etc etc... so now their primary concern is to protect those assets. Which is in conflict with what the consumer wants. Time Warner-AOL same deal. Remeber when AOL wanted open brodband/cable access to peoples PC (because they said it would benefit the consumer). Do you think they care now that they own TimeWarner and the RoadRunner cable service? I think NOT. (not that they cared in the 1st place.. but at least it would have been beneficial to the end user)
These big conglomorates simply can't be good for consumers because of major conflicting interests.
Ahh.. you may not feel oppressed now because these companies haven't YET taken away your ability to make MP3 from YOUR OWN CD collection. But that is precisely what they are TRYING to do.
I have nothing against a big company trying to make some $$$. What I have a problem with is big buisness telling me what I can and cannot do with my OWN posessions. Hey if I want to make an MPEG1 version of my DVD to use some clips in a HOME MOVIE.. why can't I?
UDMA66 drives CAN transfer upto 66MB/sec. Currently generation IDE drives sustained transfer rates are just above 34MB/sec but can burst data at 66MB/sec.
Additionaly there are only 2 IDE drives per channel. That is if 2 drives are both working at the same time the max bandwith on the whiore is 66MB/sec.
ULTRA/160.. um those drives don't transfer at 160MB/sec. 160MB/sec is just the max bandwith of the bus. SCSI drives are still limited by the same read/write channel as IDE drives.. which means they too can only stream around 34-35MB/sec right now.
NOW ULTRA/160 can have up to 16 devices (ok 15 without counting the controller) so 160/16 = 10MB/sec. So if you have 15 drives on a single SCSI channel none of the drives can transfer faster then 10MB/sec (if they are all talking at the same time).
IDE is perfect if you don't need more then 160Gigs worth of storage (40Gig x 4 drives) And BTW you can;t tell the diferance in speed between a 7200RPM ide drive in UDMA mode 4 and a 7200 SCSI drive.
The only problem is that Fuel cell technology is a good 10-15 years from practical application. 20 years before people will actually use them.
My old man worked on fuel cells for 5 years. And the companies working on them are geting close and there is definetly a LOT of promise. But the curent FC technology is still way to primitive. IE very little yield. (not enough power to drive a vehicle reliably)
Here is an idea. Setup a trust fund! If a company want's to use the Linux trademark to sell a product they have to pay say $5000 to the Linux trust fund as a licensing fee. Then this money gets redistributed back into the community to pay for free software projects.
eToys wanting to protect their trademark. (After all if they don't protect it they loose it) But there are much better ways of doing so. I mean if I was eToys the only thing I would ask is to have "etoy" put mabey a one liner "If your looking for toys click here" with a link to eToys. (And vice versa from eToys to etoy)
What about filing a class action lawsuit against DVD manufacturers for stiffling competition. (From FREE players) harrassment of customers and breaking the fair use regulations? Hey I'm supposed to be able to legaly copy something I *OWN* to make an archive of it.. aren't I? Wasn't the big thing these same DVD companies using against DIVX is that with DIVX you didn't *OWN* the movie (only *RENTED* it) but with DVD you actually *OWNED* it???
I'm with you on this one.. shopping in the malls for x-mas gifts is one of the most frustrating experiances in the world. You can run from mall to mall for days looking for that one gift and never find it. On the Internet I can usually find it within 30min without moving my arse from my chair. Jump to a couple of sites do a search check if it's in stock.. and order.
I've been shoping on the Internet for over 5 years and I have NEVER.. and I mean NEVER gotten something I didn't order, or got over charged or a late shipment. But then again I go into it with the mind set of not needing it RIGHT NOW. I can wait the 2-7 days before it arrives instead of having to deal with the crowds and the unhelpfull clerks in the local mall.
I did all my x-mas shopping over the internet this year.. and everything came just as I wanted.
It seems the majority of governments that are instituting censorship legislation are doing this "behind their populations backs". And certainly without majority support of the people they govern over. Mailing/calling our representatives doesn't seem to help much since they just blow us off for special interest groups.
So what can we as individuals do prevent this? What other avenues can we take?
Gee, when the police does it to Black people because "they are more likely to have drugs in their car" everyone screams Racism! And that it's wrong and that it steps on peoples rights. But when they do it to children and especially a certain group of those children.. well that's ok!
I wonder when people will realize that giving up Liberty for the sake of personal Security will destroy the whole idea behind democracy and freedom. Can you imagine having your high-school "profile" get into the hands of the company you're trying to get a job at 10 years later?
"Hmm, his profile say he has a 10% inclanation for violent behavior.. we don't need someone like that working here!" And that being in your "profile" simply because someone that didn't like you thought it be funny to anonymously lie and turn you in for planning to blow up the school.
No US West has NOT done this to all of it's customers. The service you describe above is a "lower" priced solution for people that do not need an ALWAYS ON connection.
Pardon me, but Netscape WAS NOT giving away their browser untill MS started to. You could download Navigator and use it for free in an "Educational" environment. But for use in a comercial application you were suposed to purchase a full license.
MS came along and tried to push their way into the market place with Explorer under the same license as Netscape. It wasn't working so they began bundling it with Windows and allowing download use with no restrictions. Netscape was then forced to begin to give away their browser for free use inorder to maintain their market share.
Power outages.. big deal, Trains not working.. Who cares. I really don't think that computers will be responsible for the majority of Y2K problems. It's far more likely that public paranoia driven by our wonderful sensationalistic media will create artificial panic. People pulling out money from cash machines the night before Y2K driving the economy into chaos. I see that as a far more likely scenario.
I mean think about it. The media got burned once with the "9/9/99 will be the death of us" stories. But man were they all waiting for something "BIG" to fail. I watched the evening news on the 8th and they were just itching for it, predicting all sorts of problems. Something tells me that they are going to do even better on the 31st.
I'd hate to be pro-MS here but they had a good idea with the "Year" versioning scheme. However their execution was terrible. (win 95 in 96?!?)
I say the verion numbers should be year.month of actual release. So if mandrake releases "7.1" in June the version should be "Mandrake 2000.6".
I know it looks weird at first but at least to me it makes perfect sense. From the version numbers I can tell which distribution was released last.
IE Mandrake 2000.6 VS. Redhat 2000.3
But that will never happen,
Sigh
Ex-Nt-User
It's not people that are saing these devices are a replacement to the Palm (x).. It's MS Marketing that's saing that. Obviously MS want's to position WinCE as a competitor to the PalmOS. It seems to me like these PocketPC are more of a competition to super thin laptops (Which also run WinCE BTW) then Palms.
When I was looking for an electronic organizer, I was looking at size, ease of use and utility. The palm fits those requirements to the tee. The PocketPC devices are feature bloated, expensive and to still too big to carry around in your pocket comfortably. That and the lack of linux sync/backup software is really a bummer.
Ahh, but WHY do schools have to be run by the government? Look at all the other "government funded" programs. They WASTE an incredibly disproportionate amount of money for what they cost. Currently Schools are the same way.
The only way to fix this is to promote competition BETWEEN schools. No parent wants to send their kid to a lousy school.. but right now we don't have that choice.
Religion vs. Science is a non argument here. If people had choice there could be achool that teaches creationism and one that teaches evolution. Let me choose which school I want to send my kids too.
And if you're worried about the left or the right wing having too much of an effect in those schools.. you don't have to worry.. most people are down the middle and the extremist wwould have much less power trying to influence 10000 independant schools vs. our lovely "if you have the $$$ we will do your biding" government.
The only thing we need government for is to build roads, and fund the police and millitary. Everything else is a waste.. just look at the SS program. (If you're under 35 and think you're gona see a penny of the money you fork out to SS every paycheck when you hit 65..haha.. I'd start looking for a good 401K plan)
Ex-Nt-User
PS. Mabey I'm just a cynic
I've used windriver at my work place. It's a neat idea but has a LOT of problems.
1st the good news:
1 YES it does allow you to write truelly crossplatform drivers. I've done this.
2. It's easy to use (a lot easier then learning kernel stuff)
3. It's very stable.
The BAD news:
1. It's SLOOOWWWW! This is because a driver written usiong this tool kit runs in USER space/mode. Which means there is a kernel switch penalty for every io operation.
2. It does NOT allow REALTIME IRQ handling. (Well it does but it makes you jump through hoops and you have to learn about KERNEL stuff for the OS you're writing tis for).
3. It's no good to you if you're looking to write a block device driver. It's only usefull if your writing drivers for weird custom hardware.
4. You need to redistibute their kernel-user mode driver module with your product. IE the kit DOES NOT generate a standalone driver.
4. Did I say it's slow?
If any one has specific questions Let me know.. I've used this product extensively.
-Ex-Nt-User
Sure.. you'll get rid of "rage" killings.. which are VERY rare. And replace them with higher counts of Armed robbery, burglary, and drug related killings.
Ask any criminal with a violent past and THEY will tell you outright that they avoid people/houses that they think may have a weapon inside. Wonder y?
All this BS about banning guns is driven by paranoia instiled by the media. If anyone would actually take the time to look at the REAL statsitics instead of what the media want's you to believe you would see that the child on child crime rate has actually declined in the last 5 years.
Bah.
-Seb
um... whatever happaned to that?
That's wonderfully idealistic, but what if the flaw with the door falling off would allow anyone who knew about it to be able to steal your car too?
Should the manufacturer just go off and announce "If you have a 97 ford tempo by doing this and this you can open the car and steal it" before they have a fix for the problem?
No thank you.
The whole argument here is whether to announce the volnerabilities BEFORE a fix is ready.. or to keep it hush hush. Until AFTER a patch is available. This seems to me like a perfectly resonable to me.
I'd like to prove you wrong. I though the Matrix had amazing action sequences.. which goes to prove that YOU CAN film "real" (well as real as I move around in quake anyways) tactic with amazing results.
The lousy action sequences in last nights episode were do to:
1. Lack Of Imagination
2. Lack of Budget ($$$)
3. Or just plain bad writing.
Ex-Nt-User
Because with the possible breakeup of MS into seperate divisions by the DOJ it would be wise for MS to hedge it's bets. Don't you think?
After all they have enough money to pay for the development but they DON'T have to ever release it. If they are indeed going to be broken up then it would be in the BEST interest of the Applications group to have a Linux version of Office.
Nature vs. Nurture..
Depending on who you listen to it must be one or the other. But the truth is all these self proclaimed experts are talking out of their respective arses. No one has done a REAL study on this. Instead they quote their experiances and un scientific questioinaires.
To really answer this question you would have to do a massive study where random children are taken from birth and bundled into two groups. Males and females that are tought what women are tought today. And the 2nd group of males and females that are tought the way males are. And of course make sure they are not influenced by outside circumstances.
At the end of a 20 year time see what careers they chose and how they faired compared to the population at large. Of course such a study would never happen. We might not like the answer it provides.
The MPAA and what is happening to DVD is a prime example why big conglomerate companies are a BAD THING for the consumer. Remeber when SOny came out with BETAMAX?? At that time sony didn't own any media outlets.. so they didn't care what the big media outlets wanted.. they cared about what the CONSUMER wanted.
No Sony owns Studios, record companies etc etc... so now their primary concern is to protect those assets. Which is in conflict with what the consumer wants. Time Warner-AOL same deal. Remeber when AOL wanted open brodband/cable access to peoples PC (because they said it would benefit the consumer). Do you think they care now that they own TimeWarner and the RoadRunner cable service? I think NOT. (not that they cared in the 1st place.. but at least it would have been beneficial to the end user)
These big conglomorates simply can't be good for consumers because of major conflicting interests.
You have a good point there. The PCI bus (Ala PC architecture) is capabel of 132 MB/Sec max.
32bit @ 33Mhz == 132MB/sec
Which would mean that if you would never be able to hit 100% utilization in a standard PC.
On the other hand on a PCI-X bus (64bit @ 66Mhz) it would be quite nice.
Ahh.. you may not feel oppressed now because these companies haven't YET taken away your ability to make MP3 from YOUR OWN CD collection. But that is precisely what they are TRYING to do.
I have nothing against a big company trying to make some $$$. What I have a problem with is big buisness telling me what I can and cannot do with my OWN posessions. Hey if I want to make an MPEG1 version of my DVD to use some clips in a HOME MOVIE.. why can't I?
Ahem.. check your spec's buddy.
UDMA66 drives CAN transfer upto 66MB/sec. Currently generation IDE drives sustained transfer rates are just above 34MB/sec but can burst data at 66MB/sec.
Additionaly there are only 2 IDE drives per channel. That is if 2 drives are both working at the same time the max bandwith on the whiore is 66MB/sec.
ULTRA/160.. um those drives don't transfer at 160MB/sec. 160MB/sec is just the max bandwith of the bus. SCSI drives are still limited by the same read/write channel as IDE drives.. which means they too can only stream around 34-35MB/sec right now.
NOW ULTRA/160 can have up to 16 devices (ok 15 without counting the controller) so 160/16 = 10MB/sec. So if you have 15 drives on a single SCSI channel none of the drives can transfer faster then 10MB/sec (if they are all talking at the same time).
IDE is perfect if you don't need more then 160Gigs worth of storage (40Gig x 4 drives) And BTW you can;t tell the diferance in speed between a 7200RPM ide drive in UDMA mode 4 and a 7200 SCSI drive.
Ex-Nt-User
The only problem is that Fuel cell technology is a good 10-15 years from practical application. 20 years before people will actually use them.
My old man worked on fuel cells for 5 years. And the companies working on them are geting close and there is definetly a LOT of promise. But the curent FC technology is still way to primitive. IE very little yield. (not enough power to drive a vehicle reliably)
Ex-Nt-User
Here is an idea. Setup a trust fund! If a company want's to use the Linux trademark to sell a product they have to pay say $5000 to the Linux trust fund as a licensing fee. Then this money gets redistributed back into the community to pay for free software projects.
eToys wanting to protect their trademark. (After all if they don't protect it they loose it) But there are much better ways of doing so. I mean if I was eToys the only thing I would ask is to have "etoy" put mabey a one liner "If your looking for toys click here" with a link to eToys. (And vice versa from eToys to etoy)
Does that seem fair?
think the Protector looks like the Quake Logo?
Or mabey it's just me..
Ex-Nt-User
What about filing a class action lawsuit against DVD manufacturers for stiffling competition. (From FREE players) harrassment of customers and breaking the fair use regulations? Hey I'm supposed to be able to legaly copy something I *OWN* to make an archive of it.. aren't I? Wasn't the big thing these same DVD companies using against DIVX is that with DIVX you didn't *OWN* the movie (only *RENTED* it) but with DVD you actually *OWNED* it???
One pissed off DVD owner.
Ex-Nt-User
I'm with you on this one.. shopping in the malls for x-mas gifts is one of the most frustrating experiances in the world. You can run from mall to mall for days looking for that one gift and never find it. On the Internet I can usually find it within 30min without moving my arse from my chair. Jump to a couple of sites do a search check if it's in stock.. and order.
I've been shoping on the Internet for over 5 years and I have NEVER.. and I mean NEVER gotten something I didn't order, or got over charged or a late shipment. But then again I go into it with the mind set of not needing it RIGHT NOW. I can wait the 2-7 days before it arrives instead of having to deal with the crowds and the unhelpfull clerks in the local mall.
I did all my x-mas shopping over the internet this year.. and everything came just as I wanted.
Ex-Nt-User
It seems the majority of governments that are instituting censorship legislation are doing this "behind their populations backs". And certainly without majority support of the people they govern over. Mailing/calling our representatives doesn't seem to help much since they just blow us off for special interest groups.
So what can we as individuals do prevent this? What other avenues can we take?
Ex-Nt-User
Gee, when the police does it to Black people because "they are more likely to have drugs in their car" everyone screams Racism! And that it's wrong and that it steps on peoples rights. But when they do it to children and especially a certain group of those children.. well that's ok!
I wonder when people will realize that giving up Liberty for the sake of personal Security will destroy the whole idea behind democracy and freedom. Can you imagine having your high-school "profile" get into the hands of the company you're trying to get a job at 10 years later?
"Hmm, his profile say he has a 10% inclanation for violent behavior.. we don't need someone like that working here!" And that being in your "profile" simply because someone that didn't like you thought it be funny to anonymously lie and turn you in for planning to blow up the school.
Ex-Nt-User
No US West has NOT done this to all of it's customers. The service you describe above is a "lower" priced solution for people that do not need an ALWAYS ON connection.
It's called MegaBit 256 Select..
The always on service is still available.
I personally received a letter from US West advertising this "PPP" style solution at about 1/2 the price of the regular ALWAYS ON service.
Ex-Nt-User
Pardon me, but Netscape WAS NOT giving away their browser untill MS started to. You could download Navigator and use it for free in an "Educational" environment. But for use in a comercial application you were suposed to purchase a full license.
MS came along and tried to push their way into the market place with Explorer under the same license as Netscape. It wasn't working so they began bundling it with Windows and allowing download use with no restrictions. Netscape was then forced to begin to give away their browser for free use inorder to maintain their market share.
Ex-Nt-User
Power outages.. big deal, Trains not working.. Who cares. I really don't think that computers will be responsible for the majority of Y2K problems. It's far more likely that public paranoia driven by our wonderful sensationalistic media will create artificial panic. People pulling out money from cash machines the night before Y2K driving the economy into chaos. I see that as a far more likely scenario.
I mean think about it. The media got burned once with the "9/9/99 will be the death of us" stories. But man were they all waiting for something "BIG" to fail. I watched the evening news on the 8th and they were just itching for it, predicting all sorts of problems. Something tells me that they are going to do even better on the 31st.
Ex-Nt-User