I see what you did there. Thought I couldn't argue with you because my keyboard doesn't have one of those fancy "L" symbols on it, didn't you? Well, I know how to copy and paste as well as the next guy: £
Microsoft's support lifecycle policy was reasonable, when the company stopped selling a given operating system years before its mainstream support ended. But since they were allowing the sale of new computers with Windows XP installed pretty recently, and are still selling new computers with Windows XP install disks, perhaps they should extend the mainstream support a little more as well.
It's the equivalent of a biology class detailing the possibilities of life, by examining chemical interactions, without actually examining any actual living organisms.
There are no naturally occuring operating systems, computer languages, or hardware to study. If there were, we might study them like we study biology. As it is, operating systems, computer languages, and hardware was created by humans. We know the precepts used to design them, we know how they work, and we expect tomorrows versions to overcome today's limitations. So instead of just studying what has already been invented, computer science students study the underlying principles used in inventing what has been already been invented. If biology students were being taught with the explicit expectation that they would be creating new and better forms of life, biology might just be taught more like computer science.
>>Some people here would love to have those call center jobs (or those programming jobs, or whatever). Trust me, some people would really like to have them, especially now.
>I doubt anyone would want a call center job unless they were masochistic or desperate beyond measure.
I would love the option of the call center job that I lost back in 2005 when my fortune 50 company offshored that job to India. Maybe I am just desparate, instead of desparate beyond measure, because I might not take the job back. But only because the job would likely be offshored again, not because the work is below me.
I haven't had health insurance since then, and I am 36. With a wife and 3 kids.
And all the palava about Areo grinding systems down is rubbish too; it's all 3d accelerated (read: using hardware features otherwise doing nowt), so that too has no effect of performance.
I only question this one part of your post. I understand that the GPU is used instead of the CPU to manipulate the 3-d graphics. However, don't lower end graphics systems (ones without a lot of on-board memory) use system memory, so if the graphics card is using more memory than it otherwise would, then less system memory is available for use by the rest of the system?
In IE 7.0, If you click File ->Save As, you can save the page as a.mht file. IE refers to it as a "Web Archive, Single file". It includes the HTML and graphics a single file, and doesn't seem to munge the page up (at least not any worse than IE does in the first place, that I have noticed).
Er,uh, at least, that is what I hear, from some losers I know who use IE7 (What was I thinking? I must have forgotten where I am).
A hidden volume can only be created within a FAT TrueCrypt volume (i.e., the file system of the outer volume must either be FAT12, FAT16, or FAT32). NTFS file system stores various data throughout the entire volume (as opposed to FAT) leaving little room for the hidden volume. Therefore, the Volume Creation Wizard prevents the user from selecting NTFS as the file system for the outer volume. The hidden volume can contain any file system you like. Note that the outer volume (when file-hosted) can be stored on any file system.
I thought they kept a list of the keys that have been printed onto a Certificate of Authenticity. I also don't see how they could possibly know which ones have been sold.
It's like Microsoft feels that they need to be the market leader in every single market that includes a computer chip or software in the product. Instead of real innovation, they just reimplement whats already out there.
Most inventions are only improvements of older technology (or new combinations of previously uncombined technology). And Microsoft actually does innovate to this extent all the time. Sony didn't invent the game console, and Apple didn't invent the mp3 player, but they both improved existing technology enough to change the market forever. I suspect when people talk about "real innovation", they might be referring to disruptive technology (something radically different enough to disrupt the current status quo, like how the automobile replaced the horse & buggy). Since Microsoft is such an established company in PC software, it has everything to lose by inventing majorly disruptive technology to compete with its own existing business (and likely sued for who knows what reason this time).
And how much longer can MS keep people upgrading their operating systems and office versions enough to keep stockholders happy? To continue to meet earnings expectations quarter after quarter, they have to branch out into fields they have previously not been in. If you are going to expand your business into new fields, it does make sense to start by using proven successful formulas, and then making them better (or at least cheaper. Or at least get a vendor lock-in).
The only answer I can think of is that the Linux community is hampered by the fact that it is top-heavy with 'gurus'. They need more people who need things explained to them in simple terms, people who don't want to be told how to fix things in a 100 character command line string. Only then will they appreciate just how far Linux is from being a universal desktop system.
I was just about to say Sweet! Where do I sign up (to be the idiot n00b)? But then I realized that it's not a paying position.
There are plenty of people who would like to use Linux but need things explained to them in 'simple' terms. The only problem is lack of incentive for the gurus to help them, let alone document the journey.
It's both funny and irritating to see someone type 'www.google.com', only to enter 'www.someothersite.com' in the search box.
Yeah, that reminds me how some people feel the need to hit the backspace key before they begin typing, even though all the text is already highlighted, and would dissappear as soon as they started typing. It only really bothers me when I am having to walk someone through something simple like creating a new folder or renaming a file or folder. They have no clue how to do it, but as soon as they see all the text highlighted, their hand flies up to the backspace key, and they seem all proud that they were able to take that step with no instruction from me.
This is going to waste a lot of energy, since people won't realise the difference.
Are you sure? Doesn't a computer use a lot of energy to boot up (my laptop will always cause the power inverter in my car to complain loudly of low voltage (because it is sucking so much power) any time I cold boot the computer) ? How long does a computer have to remain off to offset the amount of energy used in booting up, as opposed to sitting in standby (which only uses enough energy to keep the volatile memory from being wiped).
I am not saying that you are wrong (I honestly don't know); I am just saying that if this is going to waste energy, it probably won't waste enough energy to even worry about. Especially when you consider how much faster the user can begin using the machine after turning it on from standby (instead of a cold boot).
I was under the impression that "slow data transfer rates" was referring to dialup's number one problem, and "slow ping times" was referring to a satellite internet connection's number one problem (latency).
I would also like to point out the self-destructive nature of the analog media they are pining over. About one third of the VHS tapes that remain in my collection are playable. The first DVD I ever bought does not skip once.
If the first DVD you ever bought does not skip once, you must not have any children.
At one point, I had grand ideas of converting every VHS tape I own into a DVD, and saving a ton of shelf space. These days, any time I come across a DVD that I own with no scratches on it, I can't help think to myself, "I should make a copy of this on VHS, so the kids can't scratch it up."
Needless to say, we stopped buying new DVDs for the kids (since they refuse to take care of them properly)
I can't think how to explain this succinctly. All the nerds in the world can download all the anarchist cookbooks they want, but that isn't going to stop the government from selectively prosecuting only the people they want, and totally ignoring the rest. It's not even like the general public is going to notice what you have on your hard drive, and move to have whatever law changed so that we aren't techincally criminals anymore.
In a world with no copyright protection, companies will simply create their own protection schemes. Absent law that states otherwise, companies will not be obligated to share their protection schemes with anyone that won't meet their terms. Of course, people could try and circumvent the protection schemes, and the schemes might prevent market success for their products (though this is not guaranteed). But, it is foolish to think that without copyright everything would be easily copy able by everyone except the technologically savvy. Without copyright, maybe even Microsoft might come up with a protection scheme that works.
I disagree. Even before the advent of the intarweb, copy protection schemes were broken on a regular basis. Now that all the geeks are organized (or at least networked) out the wazoo, copyright protection schemes don't have a chance, outside of heavy-handed legal enforcement on the part of the gubmint. Furthermore, I-Ack!
Yeah, now that I think about it, I can't imagine how it can be in a telco's best interest to constantly keep giving fatter and fatter pipes to all of its customers, unless the telco itself has infinitely fatter pipes to provide the bandwidth to all of these customers combined. I imagine this is going to differ from one location to another. How general can we be? What is the current situation across the USA? It's easy enough to find out whether your neighborhood has DSL or cable internet access or not, but who knows how much reserve bandwidth exists in any given segment of the internet between your house and location x? I guess that sort of thing is discussed in telco trade journals regularly, but for those of us who haven't kept up on that sort of thing lately, can anyone fill us in?
Yeah, it sounds like the company is using PC-centric technology (BDC, print server, file server, etc), and treating it with an extremely "mainframe" mindset (let's put it all in one corporate data center). Was a large hardware vendor trying to get them to consolidate all of those servers onto a few large pieces of hardware with virtualization, or something?
do we really need data centers to house computers or are the computers going to be placed where they are really needed?"
It depends on the purpose of the computer(s) in question, and on the value of the (combined) data they contain. Money has been small enough to carry around for a long time, but we still have banks to house large sums of them. Ironically enough, banks may eventually be nothing more than a data center one day.
Slashdot Mirror
To the contrary, I was living in South Carolina when I learned what a "liquor-cycle" (pronounced "licker-sickle") was (a moped).
I see what you did there.
Thought I couldn't argue with you because my keyboard doesn't have one of those fancy "L" symbols on it, didn't you?
Well, I know how to copy and paste as well as the next guy: £
(ha!)
Microsoft's support lifecycle policy was reasonable, when the company stopped selling a given operating system years before its mainstream support ended. But since they were allowing the sale of new computers with Windows XP installed pretty recently, and are still selling new computers with Windows XP install disks, perhaps they should extend the mainstream support a little more as well.
Just Sayin'
It's the equivalent of a biology class detailing the possibilities of life, by examining chemical interactions, without actually examining any actual living organisms.
There are no naturally occuring operating systems, computer languages, or hardware to study. If there were, we might study them like we study biology. As it is, operating systems, computer languages, and hardware was created by humans. We know the precepts used to design them, we know how they work, and we expect tomorrows versions to overcome today's limitations. So instead of just studying what has already been invented, computer science students study the underlying principles used in inventing what has been already been invented. If biology students were being taught with the explicit expectation that they would be creating new and better forms of life, biology might just be taught more like computer science.
>>Some people here would love to have those call center jobs (or those programming jobs, or whatever). Trust me, some people would really like to have them, especially now.
>I doubt anyone would want a call center job unless they were masochistic or desperate beyond measure.
I would love the option of the call center job that I lost back in 2005 when my fortune 50 company offshored that job to India. Maybe I am just desparate, instead of desparate beyond measure, because I might not take the job back. But only because the job would likely be offshored again, not because the work is below me.
I haven't had health insurance since then, and I am 36. With a wife and 3 kids.
And all the palava about Areo grinding systems down is rubbish too; it's all 3d accelerated (read: using hardware features otherwise doing nowt), so that too has no effect of performance.
I only question this one part of your post. I understand that the GPU is used instead of the CPU to manipulate the 3-d graphics. However, don't lower end graphics systems (ones without a lot of on-board memory) use system memory, so if the graphics card is using more memory than it otherwise would, then less system memory is available for use by the rest of the system?
In IE 7.0, If you click File ->Save As, you can save the page as a .mht file. IE refers to it as a "Web Archive, Single file". It includes the HTML and graphics a single file, and doesn't seem to munge the page up (at least not any worse than IE does in the first place, that I have noticed).
Er,uh, at least, that is what I hear, from some losers I know who use IE7 (What was I thinking? I must have forgotten where I am).
http://www.intechraoutlet.com/rbwww/home/search_re sults_pc_computers.asp?bin_id=world&page=1&Manufac turer_ID=&CPU_ID=&CPU_Speed_ID=&RAM_ID=&HD_Size_ID =&CD_ROM_Flag=&Price=&order_by=price_current_selli ng_price+asc
My bad. I guess I was just thinking aboout the hidden volume feature (one of the more attractive features of TrueCrypt):
From http://www.truecrypt.org/docs/?s=version-history
A hidden volume can only be created within a FAT TrueCrypt volume (i.e., the file system of the outer volume must either be FAT12, FAT16, or FAT32). NTFS file system stores various data throughout the entire volume (as opposed to FAT) leaving little room for the hidden volume. Therefore, the Volume Creation Wizard prevents the user from selecting NTFS as the file system for the outer volume. The hidden volume can contain any file system you like. Note that the outer volume (when file-hosted) can be stored on any file system.
TrueCrypt seems cool, but it doesn't work on NTFS, does it? I don't want to go back to FAT32.
Of course it can. The questions are how hard will this be to accomplish, and how long until someone does it?
I thought they kept a list of the keys that have been printed onto a Certificate of Authenticity. I also don't see how they could possibly know which ones have been sold.
It's like Microsoft feels that they need to be the market leader in every single market that includes a computer chip or software in the product. Instead of real innovation, they just reimplement whats already out there.
Most inventions are only improvements of older technology (or new combinations of previously uncombined technology). And Microsoft actually does innovate to this extent all the time.
Sony didn't invent the game console, and Apple didn't invent the mp3 player, but they both improved existing technology enough to change the market forever.
I suspect when people talk about "real innovation", they might be referring to disruptive technology (something radically different enough to disrupt the current status quo, like how the automobile replaced the horse & buggy).
Since Microsoft is such an established company in PC software, it has everything to lose by inventing majorly disruptive technology to compete with its own existing business (and likely sued for who knows what reason this time).
And how much longer can MS keep people upgrading their operating systems and office versions enough to keep stockholders happy? To continue to meet earnings expectations quarter after quarter, they have to branch out into fields they have previously not been in. If you are going to expand your business into new fields, it does make sense to start by using proven successful formulas, and then making them better (or at least cheaper. Or at least get a vendor lock-in).
The only answer I can think of is that the Linux community is hampered by the fact that it is top-heavy with 'gurus'. They need more people who need things explained to them in simple terms, people who don't want to be told how to fix things in a 100 character command line string. Only then will they appreciate just how far Linux is from being a universal desktop system.
I was just about to say Sweet! Where do I sign up (to be the idiot n00b)? But then I realized that it's not a paying position.
There are plenty of people who would like to use Linux but need things explained to them in 'simple' terms. The only problem is lack of incentive for the gurus to help them, let alone document the journey.
It's both funny and irritating to see someone type 'www.google.com', only to enter 'www.someothersite.com' in the search box.
Yeah, that reminds me how some people feel the need to hit the backspace key before they begin typing, even though all the text is already highlighted, and would dissappear as soon as they started typing. It only really bothers me when I am having to walk someone through something simple like creating a new folder or renaming a file or folder. They have no clue how to do it, but as soon as they see all the text highlighted, their hand flies up to the backspace key, and they seem all proud that they were able to take that step with no instruction from me.
Yes, I know it's anal on my part.
How does Bill Gates giving away his fortune turn Microsoft into a "good" company?
Let's say I own company X. I have a personal wealth of $300 million...
Hold it right there
$300 million? What the crap are you doing wasting your time posting on /.?
This is going to waste a lot of energy, since people won't realise the difference.
Are you sure? Doesn't a computer use a lot of energy to boot up (my laptop will always cause the power inverter in my car to complain loudly of low voltage (because it is sucking so much power) any time I cold boot the computer) ? How long does a computer have to remain off to offset the amount of energy used in booting up, as opposed to sitting in standby (which only uses enough energy to keep the volatile memory from being wiped).
I am not saying that you are wrong (I honestly don't know); I am just saying that if this is going to waste energy, it probably won't waste enough energy to even worry about. Especially when you consider how much faster the user can begin using the machine after turning it on from standby (instead of a cold boot).
Can't help but wonder if the quality of floppy drives hasn't gone down along with the decline in quality of the media.
I was under the impression that "slow data transfer rates" was referring to dialup's number one problem, and "slow ping times" was referring to a satellite internet connection's number one problem (latency).
I would also like to point out the self-destructive nature of the analog media they are pining over. About one third of the VHS tapes that remain in my collection are playable. The first DVD I ever bought does not skip once.
If the first DVD you ever bought does not skip once, you must not have any children.
At one point, I had grand ideas of converting every VHS tape I own into a DVD, and saving a ton of shelf space. These days, any time I come across a DVD that I own with no scratches on it, I can't help think to myself, "I should make a copy of this on VHS, so the kids can't scratch it up."
Needless to say, we stopped buying new DVDs for the kids (since they refuse to take care of them properly)
I can't think how to explain this succinctly. All the nerds in the world can download all the anarchist cookbooks they want, but that isn't going to stop the government from selectively prosecuting only the people they want, and totally ignoring the rest. It's not even like the general public is going to notice what you have on your hard drive, and move to have whatever law changed so that we aren't techincally criminals anymore.
In a world with no copyright protection, companies will simply create their own protection schemes. Absent law that states otherwise, companies will not be obligated to share their protection schemes with anyone that won't meet their terms. Of course, people could try and circumvent the protection schemes, and the schemes might prevent market success for their products (though this is not guaranteed). But, it is foolish to think that without copyright everything would be easily copy able by everyone except the technologically savvy.
Without copyright, maybe even Microsoft might come up with a protection scheme that works.
I disagree. Even before the advent of the intarweb, copy protection schemes were broken on a regular basis. Now that all the geeks are organized (or at least networked) out the wazoo, copyright protection schemes don't have a chance, outside of heavy-handed legal enforcement on the part of the gubmint.
Furthermore, I-Ack!
Yeah, now that I think about it, I can't imagine how it can be in a telco's best interest to constantly keep giving fatter and fatter pipes to all of its customers, unless the telco itself has infinitely fatter pipes to provide the bandwidth to all of these customers combined. I imagine this is going to differ from one location to another. How general can we be? What is the current situation across the USA? It's easy enough to find out whether your neighborhood has DSL or cable internet access or not, but who knows how much reserve bandwidth exists in any given segment of the internet between your house and location x? I guess that sort of thing is discussed in telco trade journals regularly, but for those of us who haven't kept up on that sort of thing lately, can anyone fill us in?
Yeah, it sounds like the company is using PC-centric technology (BDC, print server, file server, etc), and treating it with an extremely "mainframe" mindset (let's put it all in one corporate data center). Was a large hardware vendor trying to get them to consolidate all of those servers onto a few large pieces of hardware with virtualization, or something?
do we really need data centers to house computers or are the computers going to be placed where they are really needed?"
It depends on the purpose of the computer(s) in question, and on the value of the (combined) data they contain. Money has been small enough to carry around for a long time, but we still have banks to house large sums of them. Ironically enough, banks may eventually be nothing more than a data center one day.