Now we need a Linus Torvalds version 2.0 to build a free open-source P2P Beowulf cluster over the Internet.
Imagine playing Doom 3 on a P-II, with the graphics being rendered by an Athlon64 somewhere in the Internet.
I bet a global P2P grid could get millions of frames per second in Doom 3! You'd be fragged before the first frame was back, but who cares? Once you'd spent a fortnight downloading all those 1600x1200 bitmaps over your 33.6K modem you'd be able to see how you died in incredible resolution!
I would suggest that copyrights should never expire.
What possible benefit to society could that have? I really can't see many authors saying "I can't pass the exclusive rights to a particular forumlation of words on to my great great grandchildren so I'm going to become a plumber instead".
Why on earth would somebody building something like this use a proprietary OS? Linux is free, it'll almost certainly work on the hardware already, it already supports all the different types of software you want...
Why on earth would anybody use GPLed software for a box like this? It'll be based on a BSD, that way they can keep their implementation a secret.
A series of large underwater explosions would be far more dangerous, controllable, and difficult to detect. (if you place them right, that is, and if you're lucky, you might trigger some earthquakes too)
Difficult to detect? I guess the cold war kind of passed you by. FYI the oceans are full of spectaularly expensive and sensitive sonar equipment which is constantly monitored and is linked to the best command and control system in the world. Trust me, the US Navy will know about it within seconds.
I have no clue why would anyone buy this. I mean Pentium M is great for laptops because of the lower power consumption but there is very little to gain from it on the desktop.
Noise. If you produce less heat you don't need as much cooling, so you don't need to shift as much air. Moving air through a PC makes noise.
Other than noise, the lower power consumption may not help much for a single PC, but saving 40W per PC when you have 200 or 2000 can add up. Remember you often pay twice for you PC's power consumption - once to heat the air and once for air-con to cool it again.
If Microsoft were to hire on the Verizon Wireless guy, they could have him walking across the country asking "Can I screw you now?"
After all these years they would start asking for permission?
They pre-authorise signed ass-screwers to ensure compatibility. The quality of the screwing, its adherance to accepted best-practice and its Micros~1-calculated compatibility with your system are ignored. Instead the price paid for the Trusted Windows Certified Ass-Screwer Certification and the relevance of the ass-screwing to helping Micros~1 to expand their monopo~1 are pecisely calculated to make Micros~1 as rich as freaking possible.
It's sort of like the story of the software monopolist with the multi-billion dollar budget and the zero-budget, GPL operating system which might yet out-compete the monopolist's amazingly expensive OS.
It may become like that if, as happened with GNU/Linux, some companies get in on the act. Zero-budget is completely wrong. A fair bit of the funkiness in the Linux kernel has been provided by the likes of IBM and Red Hat. They are not zero-budget companies.
If some company with a vested interest in EDA software thinks "hey, let's see what we can get if we spend that million bucks employing half a dozen geeks to work on the GPL stuff" then we might see gEDA improve by leaps and bounds in the way the Linux kernel and other open-source software has.
Don't get me wrong, open-source software written in an ad-hoc way produces some decent results and I use it a lot, but sometimes you need full-time people with a sense of direction to add the refinement and polish and provide the support needed to convince the beancounters it's worth investing in.
Without the likes of IBM and Red Hat contributing code and offering support I bet you wouldn't have a single blue-chip company running a Linux box.
If I ever got mod-points, I'd mod this one up. Wow, I RTFA and didn't pick up on that, and apparently the article poster didn't either.
Although to give the poster some credit, that website 'The Register' is not the best written of websites.
First line of first linked FA: "Yahoo! has licensed the X1 search software for Windows from tech incubator Idealab".
I guess the difference between you and I is that I not only read the FA but also took the time to understand it.
Is making a serious attempt at reading and understanding the article really too much to ask before you make a comment which will be seen by tens of thousands of people?
Well, you shouldn't post before getting up either.
Dude, I'm still in bed. What the hell do you think laptops are for anyway? I suppose you've been sucked in by the Intel and IBM ads and think they are for "doing business" in coffee shops or reading your email in the middle of a field. Well that's crap. They are for watching porn and reading slashdot in bed. Not necessarily at the same time.
What I don't understand is how the "flash" at the end of the streak is so clean of an image.
Electronic camera flashes last a few milliseconds, not for as long as the exposure. The only reason cameras firing flash expose for longer is to correctly expose the background that the flash doesn't reach.
Have you ever seen an image of headlights with a perfect frozen image of the car at the end? That's a long exposure with the flash at the beginning (first curtain) or end (second curtain) of the exposure. If you jiggle your camera taking a flash shot you get a similar, but less pronounced effect without deliberately setting a long exposure.
Without knowing at least two of the following: the angle of view of the lens, the distance to the insect, the size of the insect - you can't tell how fast it was going.
We can know it in terms of wingspans straight from the image. I make it about 20 wingspans. In 1/20th of a second. 400 wingspans per second.
If the bug was 10mm bug that's 4m/s.
So, any insect experts about? Is around 400 wingspans per second feasible?
This is one thing where I hope europe follows suite...
I don't think there is any EU-wide law on this. In the UK however, you can get your credit reports for a statutory £2 fee and have been able to for some years.
Nobody with any sense will ever drag a mounted network drive to the trash can, because that would erase their network drive. So they won't figure out how to unmount network drives by themselves.
They have to use Finder to mount the drive in the first place, no? And in Finder the mounted drive appears with an eject icon next to it. Or you can use the menus. Or ctrl-click.
Can I just say this very, very clearly, as this misconception has been repeated endlessly:
YOU DO NOT HAVE TO DRAG DISKS TO THE TRASHCAN TO EJECT OR UNMOUNT THEM
Slashdot Mirror
I bet a global P2P grid could get millions of frames per second in Doom 3! You'd be fragged before the first frame was back, but who cares? Once you'd spent a fortnight downloading all those 1600x1200 bitmaps over your 33.6K modem you'd be able to see how you died in incredible resolution!
What possible benefit to society could that have? I really can't see many authors saying "I can't pass the exclusive rights to a particular forumlation of words on to my great great grandchildren so I'm going to become a plumber instead".
Why on earth would anybody use GPLed software for a box like this? It'll be based on a BSD, that way they can keep their implementation a secret.
My latest Linux box has no moving parts whatsoever.
Difficult to detect? I guess the cold war kind of passed you by. FYI the oceans are full of spectaularly expensive and sensitive sonar equipment which is constantly monitored and is linked to the best command and control system in the world. Trust me, the US Navy will know about it within seconds.
Noise. If you produce less heat you don't need as much cooling, so you don't need to shift as much air. Moving air through a PC makes noise.
Other than noise, the lower power consumption may not help much for a single PC, but saving 40W per PC when you have 200 or 2000 can add up. Remember you often pay twice for you PC's power consumption - once to heat the air and once for air-con to cool it again.
So buy a Mac.
Oh, OK, don't buy a Mac then :)
Not only a US problem, but it is primarily a US-based problem. 42% of spam originates from the US.
You forgot the biggest BSD, indeed the biggest *nix-alike distribution on the desktop, Darwin.
OS X
They pre-authorise signed ass-screwers to ensure compatibility. The quality of the screwing, its adherance to accepted best-practice and its Micros~1-calculated compatibility with your system are ignored. Instead the price paid for the Trusted Windows Certified Ass-Screwer Certification and the relevance of the ass-screwing to helping Micros~1 to expand their monopo~1 are pecisely calculated to make Micros~1 as rich as freaking possible.
And the buy wouldn't even give you a pen and a pad? That really is tight...
It may become like that if, as happened with GNU/Linux, some companies get in on the act. Zero-budget is completely wrong. A fair bit of the funkiness in the Linux kernel has been provided by the likes of IBM and Red Hat. They are not zero-budget companies.
If some company with a vested interest in EDA software thinks "hey, let's see what we can get if we spend that million bucks employing half a dozen geeks to work on the GPL stuff" then we might see gEDA improve by leaps and bounds in the way the Linux kernel and other open-source software has.
Don't get me wrong, open-source software written in an ad-hoc way produces some decent results and I use it a lot, but sometimes you need full-time people with a sense of direction to add the refinement and polish and provide the support needed to convince the beancounters it's worth investing in.
Without the likes of IBM and Red Hat contributing code and offering support I bet you wouldn't have a single blue-chip company running a Linux box.
First line of first linked FA: "Yahoo! has licensed the X1 search software for Windows from tech incubator Idealab".
I guess the difference between you and I is that I not only read the FA but also took the time to understand it.
Is making a serious attempt at reading and understanding the article really too much to ask before you make a comment which will be seen by tens of thousands of people?
Dude, I'm still in bed. What the hell do you think laptops are for anyway? I suppose you've been sucked in by the Intel and IBM ads and think they are for "doing business" in coffee shops or reading your email in the middle of a field. Well that's crap. They are for watching porn and reading slashdot in bed. Not necessarily at the same time.
The Netherlands' mum:
But you promised you would move to open standards years ago!
The Netherlands:
I'll do it tomorrow.
The Netherlands' mum:
That's what you always say and it never gets done, does it? Have you tidied your room like I asked you to?
The Netherlands:
I'll do it tomorrow. God I hate you. I didn't ask to be born!
I read it as "The Press Association Sues Online 'University' For Spamming".
Electronic camera flashes last a few milliseconds, not for as long as the exposure. The only reason cameras firing flash expose for longer is to correctly expose the background that the flash doesn't reach.
Have you ever seen an image of headlights with a perfect frozen image of the car at the end? That's a long exposure with the flash at the beginning (first curtain) or end (second curtain) of the exposure. If you jiggle your camera taking a flash shot you get a similar, but less pronounced effect without deliberately setting a long exposure.
Really? The EXIF data on the shot says 9.1mm.
We can know it in terms of wingspans straight from the image. I make it about 20 wingspans. In 1/20th of a second. 400 wingspans per second.
If the bug was 10mm bug that's 4m/s.
So, any insect experts about? Is around 400 wingspans per second feasible?
Isn't it annoying when your pissed-up (that's drunk to those of you unfamiliar with English slang) friends post shit using your account?
yo dadda sucks my ass
1) It's not hearsay.
2) It's not published.
I don't think there is any EU-wide law on this. In the UK however, you can get your credit reports for a statutory £2 fee and have been able to for some years.
How much did it used to cost in the US?
They have to use Finder to mount the drive in the first place, no? And in Finder the mounted drive appears with an eject icon next to it. Or you can use the menus. Or ctrl-click.
Can I just say this very, very clearly, as this misconception has been repeated endlessly:
YOU DO NOT HAVE TO DRAG DISKS TO THE TRASHCAN TO EJECT OR UNMOUNT THEM