There is really not so much that differentiates ATA from SCSI anymore.
I wouldn't go that far.
Yes, IDE has finally caught on to such things as DMA and busmastering, and throughput on IDE devices is in the same arena as SCSI now. But.
IDE is limited to two devices per bus, and generally requires one IRQ per bus. IDE also has very strict and short cable length limits, and lack a "external" connector -- you generally can't have an external IDE device (I know is is possible, but the cable restrictions make it very difficult).
There are more kinds of devices (scanners, printers, etc.) available for SCSI then IDE. SCSI is generally more capable in terms of what you can do with it.
IDE controllers tend to be very primitive compared to their SCSI counterparts. Things like bus disconnect, command queuing, scatter-gather, even busmastering are often not available or iffy on IDE controllers. This applies especially to the onboard controllers in many motherboards; the number of shortcuts taken there are incredible.
Likewise, the drive electronics and HDA components in IDE drives are often cheaper then those in SCSI drives. These are all design and engineering issues, not issues with the specification itself, but they exist. The problems stem from the fact that IDE is marketed to be cheap, cheap, cheap, and thus gets are higher incidence of cheap components. It isn't limited to IDE, either -- you can also find cheap SCSI hardware, it is just that there is less of it.
IDE often appears faster in benchmarks, because benchmarks typically try to do operations in bulk on a single device. IDE has a lower command overhead then SCSI, so for such things, IDE will be faster. But when you get into the real world, and have multiple processes trying to access multiple devices at once, that is when IDE stalls, while SCSI keeps on going.
I realize this started off as a discussion about RAID, and that IDE RAID devices are not your typical RAID devices. They usually have one drive per bus, connected to a custom controller that multiplexes them all and presents them to the host as a SCSI interface. But the topic has drifted to more general applications.
It definetely doesn't have nearly half the features of either GNOME or KDE...
You are confusing the window manager with the entire GUI environment. XFce is a window manager. While it does include a couple of extra "environmentish" tools like a launcher panel, its main purpose in life is to decorate and manage windows.
In contrast, GNOME and KDE are full GUI environments. They are not single programs. They are a collection of programs and shared libraries which use a common protocol for IPC. Both need a window manager. KDE provides one in the package; GNOME distro's generally ship with Enlightenment.
You could use XFce with GNOME or KDE if you wanted. Indeed, the GNOME people may want to "adopt" XFce as their window manager, as it seems to be pretty light-weight, and uses the same GTK toolkit the rest of GNOME does, while Enlightenment doesn't seem to quite "fit" with the rest of the GNOME stuff.
Think of the ability to fork as a fire hose. You generally don't want to use a fire hose, because the huge volume of water will cause significant damage. But if you have a bad fire in a building, the fire damage is a bigger problem then the water damage would be. So you turn on the water. The analogy isn't perfect, but it works. The GPL allows the code to be forked if things need it badly enough. However, the overhead of having an entirely seperate project often is not worth it. Thus, people generally approach forking with caution.
Freedom and choice continue to solve that problem
on
KDE 2.0 in Action
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· Score: 2
I also question where the GUI areas of Linux have been heading.
They are aiming for the sorts of features Microsoft claims's windows has: Integration, easy-to-learn, drag-and-drop, object embedding, that sort of thing. Generally, power users are only minorly interested in these sorts of things, which is why, up until recently, Unix programs often did not have them. This explains why an bare-bones Xlib program is faster: Because it is a bare-bones Xlib program. TANSTAAFL, and you're not going to get all of those new features for free, either. Fortunately, power users are generally quite content to continue to use their bare-bones Xlib programs, while "home users" get their pretty icons and such.
Fotunately, Linux is still about freedom and choice as much as it is about performance and stability.
When I started using Linux, it was touted as being an entire OS that could live in 40 megs of HD space and 16 megs of RAM on a 286.
Minor nit-pick: Linux requires protected, virtual memory, something the i286 cannot do. So an i386 is the minimum processor Linux runs on. (While there are other projects based on Linux that are targeting the 286, they are not Linux.) Additionally, no one ever claimed you could run Enlightenment on a 386.:-)
Windows, meanwhile, now comes with a bug submit program -- they just bury it real deep.
A bug submit program for Windows? Wow, that's kind of like a windshield wiper on a submarine. Run it all you want, and things still aren't going to get any better.
My experience with gnome/E was so bad with the version that shipped with RH6.0 that, even though I loved the way it looked, I probably won't try it again for quite a while.
Yah, even the GNOME people admit that the version that shipped with Red Hat 6.0 had way too many bugs. But I can say that the October GNOME release, which I am currently running, is very stable, and works quite well.
I do think GNOME needs to drop Enlightenment in favor of another window manager. I mean, E! has some great eye candy and is very feature-filled, but it really isn't designed to integrate with GNOME the way kwm integrates with KDE.
Simply make an IPO on NASDAQ. If possible, associate yourself with Linux as well. Maybe get an endorsement from Bob Young of Red Hat. Wall Street will be beating down your door to give you money, without knowing why or what you do. Use the money to buy banner ads.:-)
Even though the files swapped around on Napster could theoretically be 100% legal, the RIAA is suing.
Well, there is a difference between theory and practice. Anyone who uses Napster will tell you they use it to get bootleg copies of music. In my (very unscientific) samples, I have never seen a file on Napster that was legal. Not a one. Zip. Zero. It's all pirate. Otherwise, people would just use HTTP and FTP.
Now, keep in mind, I'm not condoning RIAA's lawsuit. Nor do I like them. I put the RIAA in the same boat with Microsoft -- a boat with a one-way ticket to the deepest, hottest depths of the underworld.
But if you think Napster is anything but a tool to violate copyright, you're just kidding yourself.:-)
One acquisition does not a monopoly make. Cygnus is not a Redhat competitor, rather what they have accomplished is vertical integration.
I agree with you, but we're losing the larger picture.
How can you have a monopoly on free software? That's like trying to have a monopoly on sunlight. You cannot do it. In order to have a monopoly, Red Hat would have to buy up every developer of every program in all of their products. That covers the entire globe, and countless countries. Even assuming all of them would be willing to do it.
Even then, what does Red Hat have? A bunch of people, that is all. The source code is still open. It cannot be locked up by any company. If Red Hat goes wrong, anyone can pick up the pieces and move on.
The power of free software is that it will always be free.
Here is my list of companies RedHat shouldn't buy... Troll Tech. This is an eggshell and we don't want it broken. Let them do QT under the QPL at there own pace.
Actually, I think this might be a Good Thing. People flame the GNOME folks for releasing GNOME 1.0 before it was ready, but look at the bugs in Qt 2.x and you'll see Troll has the same problems. The difference is, it is one company, not legions of Open Source developers. If Red Hat bought Troll, they could GPL Qt, which I think would be a Good Thing. IMNSHO.
Now my list of companies to buy... Borland/Imprise.
Fine, but don't kill off their Windows product lines. Borland's C++Builder and Delphi make Windows development bearable.
What to call it? How about RCD?
on
Penny-Sized CDs
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· Score: 1
The world does not revolve around the United States.
*ahem*
To repeat: The fact remains that most of the Internet's bandwidth and business is centered in the US.
I'm sorry, but today, the Internet does revolve around the US. I am not saying that is good or bad, but it is the truth. Thus, an OSS e-commerce solution that cannot be used inside the US is locked out of the vast majority of the market.
Next time, before you reply, please read the post you are replying to. Thank you.
You mean if they gave you a free six-pack when you bought some of their other products.
TANSTAAFL. Trust me, you're paying for all of Microsoft's "free" products.
You can ask for any software to be removed from a new computer at the store. I think this may be even supported by law. In any case the price you pay is negligible.
First of all, practical trials have shown that computer vendors are very reluctant to tamper with their OEM software package. In some cases, Microsoft actually made them sign contracts to prohibit this. Those contracts have since been ruled void, but the pressure is still there.
Second of all, the retail price for Windows98 is over two hundred dollars. I do not call that "negligible".
You say you are foced to use it, but what exactly is stopping you using Linux?
Sorry. I was speaking from the perspective of the "average" computer buyer, who is fairly clueless about things such as OSes. I should have made that more clear.
(RE: MS controlling the browser future) Why would they do that anyways? And how?
Why? To ensure their market share. Just look at all the people who buy PCs over Macs because more software runs on the PC.
How? Read Judge Jackson's Findings of Fact report. It has over two hundred pages of "how", thank you very much.:)
I dont think you realise were we would be today without microsoft. They have done quite a bit to revolutionise the computer world, and to populate the internet!
Thank you, Bill Gates. The is pure marketing drivel. Microsoft did none of the above. All they did was leverage their OS monopoly position to further their market share, riding on the success of the personal computer, which would have been popular anyway.
(RE: Forcing MS to open up their source or APIs) how the heck are they going to do that?
If Microsoft has been found to be an illegal monopoly. This makes their gains (i.e., Windows) illegal goods, and forfeit. At least, that is one (perfectly valid) way to interpret the law. It is not impossible.
The rest of your reply is pretty inflammatory and rather poorly worded at that. I'll ignore it.
Sure there is. OpenSSL. It's just not usable in the US, because of stupid software patents.
With all due respect, one might as well say that it is available, but only usable on the moon.
I am a huge Linux fan, and I hate stupid software patents as much as the next guy, but the fact remains that most of the Internet's bandwidth and business is centered in the US.
Until that patent expires, I think Red Hat has made a good move.
Think about it, nuclear subs aren't just about nuclear weapons, they can also be nuclear powered, meaning you don't have to haul all this diesel fuel around.
I'm picking nits, but the advantage to nuclear-powered submarines is that they do not need an air supply to run their diesel generators. Thus they can stay under for weeks at a time.
Ah, sorry. My bad. I'm a CS geek, not a history or physics buff.
Then why are you posting about physics and history?
Since I'm complaining about that, let me gripe about a couple other things:
If you are posting a simple apology, make use of that "No Score +1 Bonus" checkbox, since we don't all need to read your "I'm sorry" post.
The exception would be if you wanted to quote the post you are replying to, to highlight the correct information to those with a +2 hard threshold. But you didn't do that, either.
Er, no, you're thinking of fission. Nuclear bombs use fission, not fusion.
Er, no, you've got it backwards.
The bombs detonated over Japan by the USA in World War II were fission bombs. The one dropped on Hiroshima used fired a slug of uranium into a larger target of the same. The one dropped on Nagasaki used a hollow sphere of plutonium surrounded with explosives. When the explosive charge detonated, it forced the plutonium together. (Plutonium is more unstable then uranium, so they couldn't use the "gun" technique.) These are usually called atomic bombs, or A-bombs.
Modern ICBMs (Inter-Continental Ballistic Missiles) are usually tipped with fission-fusion warheads. They use a smaller fission reaction to initiate an uncontrolled hydrogen fusion reaction. The result is a much larger explosion then with fission alone. These are called "hydrogen bombs", or H-bombs.
Upsilon made a good comment with information on uranium sheath fusion bombs and cobalt bombs, which are essentially fusion bombs designed to spread more radioactive fallout.
have you ever looked at the security options in IE?... IE allows a flexible range of customization and settings - MUCH more so that Netscape.
While I agree with Microsoft's design here in theory, in practice, there have been countless holes discovered in these settings, which make them useless.
Microsoft could easily direct its resources to create a Linux version (written under GPL guidelines) that will effectively finish off Netscape once and for all.
I would love for Microsoft to do this. But they won't. The reason so many people hate Microsoft is that they don't "play nice". Doing what you suggest would be "playing nice". It won't happen.
If, through some miracle, it does happen, then great! MSIE does have some nice features, and the standard benefits of Open Source Software would still apply. By going OSS, MS would relinquish control to the users. That would be a Good Thing. So I hope they do so.
I find it entirely more likely that Microsoft would release a closed, binary-only port of MSIE for Linux, in the hopes of driving Mozilla out of the picture. Once Mozilla has fallen behind, Microsoft could then drop MSIE on Linux, leaving Linux users out in the cold.
As a developer, I can attest to the following: It is not possible to have too much information about a Beta Test system. I would really prefer an exact duplication of the test systems at the molecular level, but unfortunately, this sort of questionnaire is the best thing possible.
First of all, they are going to have to cull a list of a few testers out of the hundreds, if not thousdands, of applicants. To do that, they are going to want to pick canidates who are knowledgeable about computes, have experience with all the software involved, and have a wide variety of software, hardware, and configurations in use.
Once you get to the actual test, the exact combination of hardware, kernel, drivers, daemons, libraries, desktop environment, and everything else up to and including their background image, can make a difference. If you don't think so, you've never had to operate a Beta Test before.
I found their survey perfectly reasonable, although their were a few (excusable) DOS- and Window-ish questions on it ("TSRs" are "daemons" on Linux, etc.).
A couple of specifics --
OS and version is legit - you can run Linux programs on BSD as well, plus there are different distributions of Linux that can be considered different "OSes" depending on your definition of the term.
Windows version is legit - they could want to know if you have Windows install in a dual-boot configuration. (It could be simple stupidity, but neither you nor I know for sure.)
Me:Very true, but MS does their damndest to make sure everyone uses their propriatary extensions and not standards.
You:Uh, how, pray tell, can they do that?
Did you happen to miss all the press around Judge Jackson's Findings of Fact? Have you not heard of the Halloween Documents? Have you never so much as looked at FrontPage Express, which comes with Win98?
Microsoft starts by releasing a product which promotes their propriatary extensions. Typically, they will not mention the fact that it the resulting content is viewable only with Microsoft products. Then they bundle it with their OS whether you want it or not. Next, they integrate those features into their office suite, and promote how "Office 2000 is Web Ready", neglecting to mention that only IE uses on Windows on Intel machines will be able to view the web pages.
Repeat as many times as billions of dollars in cash and an OS monopoly will allow. Is that clear enough, or do I need to draw you a picture?
Me:No, I was simply saying that any one company controling the browser market would be a Very Bad Thing. The popular analogy is, what if a single company owned the patents on the printing press?"
You:Nonsense. There are plenty of other browser options on the market, NS, Opera, Lynx and many others.
Hello, anyone home? Did you read my post all? I said any one company controlling the market would be a bad thing. I did not say Microsoft had reached that point yet! Are you being stupid on purpose, or were you born that way?
You:Microsoft is not putting a gun to anyone's head to use IE.
Crawl out from under whatever rock you are under, and take a look at Win98 or NT 4.
I would rather see IE on Linux trounce Netscape than see any Linux users go back to Windows because Windows has a funtional browser.
That's a mighty big "if" there. MSIE is pretty much a Windows-only browser. Sure, MS has token ports to other platforms, but anyone who uses them will tell you their performance and reliability is the same as Netscape.
The thought of users turning to Windows over Linux because of the browser is bad, yes, but turning to IE over Netscape is largely the same decision.
That being said, would I complain if MS ported IE to Linux? No in and of itself. But if this hypothetical Linux IE port performed as bad as some of the other IE ports I've seen, it would only reinforce, my opinion of Microsoft products.
And that doesn't even touch the IE security-bug-of-the-month club. IE makes the old sendmail club look tame by comparison.
Slashdot Mirror
There is really not so much that differentiates ATA from SCSI anymore.
;-)
I wouldn't go that far.
Yes, IDE has finally caught on to such things as DMA and busmastering, and throughput on IDE devices is in the same arena as SCSI now. But.
IDE is limited to two devices per bus, and generally requires one IRQ per bus. IDE also has very strict and short cable length limits, and lack a "external" connector -- you generally can't have an external IDE device (I know is is possible, but the cable restrictions make it very difficult).
There are more kinds of devices (scanners, printers, etc.) available for SCSI then IDE. SCSI is generally more capable in terms of what you can do with it.
IDE controllers tend to be very primitive compared to their SCSI counterparts. Things like bus disconnect, command queuing, scatter-gather, even busmastering are often not available or iffy on IDE controllers. This applies especially to the onboard controllers in many motherboards; the number of shortcuts taken there are incredible.
Likewise, the drive electronics and HDA components in IDE drives are often cheaper then those in SCSI drives. These are all design and engineering issues, not issues with the specification itself, but they exist. The problems stem from the fact that IDE is marketed to be cheap, cheap, cheap, and thus gets are higher incidence of cheap components. It isn't limited to IDE, either -- you can also find cheap SCSI hardware, it is just that there is less of it.
IDE often appears faster in benchmarks, because benchmarks typically try to do operations in bulk on a single device. IDE has a lower command overhead then SCSI, so for such things, IDE will be faster. But when you get into the real world, and have multiple processes trying to access multiple devices at once, that is when IDE stalls, while SCSI keeps on going.
I realize this started off as a discussion about RAID, and that IDE RAID devices are not your typical RAID devices. They usually have one drive per bus, connected to a custom controller that multiplexes them all and presents them to the host as a SCSI interface. But the topic has drifted to more general applications.
Just my 1/4 of a byte.
It definetely doesn't have nearly half the features of either GNOME or KDE...
You are confusing the window manager with the entire GUI environment. XFce is a window manager. While it does include a couple of extra "environmentish" tools like a launcher panel, its main purpose in life is to decorate and manage windows.
In contrast, GNOME and KDE are full GUI environments. They are not single programs. They are a collection of programs and shared libraries which use a common protocol for IPC. Both need a window manager. KDE provides one in the package; GNOME distro's generally ship with Enlightenment.
You could use XFce with GNOME or KDE if you wanted. Indeed, the GNOME people may want to "adopt" XFce as their window manager, as it seems to be pretty light-weight, and uses the same GTK toolkit the rest of GNOME does, while Enlightenment doesn't seem to quite "fit" with the rest of the GNOME stuff.
Think of the ability to fork as a fire hose. You generally don't want to use a fire hose, because the huge volume of water will cause significant damage. But if you have a bad fire in a building, the fire damage is a bigger problem then the water damage would be. So you turn on the water. The analogy isn't perfect, but it works. The GPL allows the code to be forked if things need it badly enough. However, the overhead of having an entirely seperate project often is not worth it. Thus, people generally approach forking with caution.
I also question where the GUI areas of Linux have been heading.
:-)
They are aiming for the sorts of features Microsoft claims's windows has: Integration, easy-to-learn, drag-and-drop, object embedding, that sort of thing. Generally, power users are only minorly interested in these sorts of things, which is why, up until recently, Unix programs often did not have them. This explains why an bare-bones Xlib program is faster: Because it is a bare-bones Xlib program. TANSTAAFL, and you're not going to get all of those new features for free, either. Fortunately, power users are generally quite content to continue to use their bare-bones Xlib programs, while "home users" get their pretty icons and such.
Fotunately, Linux is still about freedom and choice as much as it is about performance and stability.
When I started using Linux, it was touted as being an entire OS that could live in 40 megs of HD space and 16 megs of RAM on a 286.
Minor nit-pick: Linux requires protected, virtual memory, something the i286 cannot do. So an i386 is the minimum processor Linux runs on. (While there are other projects based on Linux that are targeting the 286, they are not Linux.) Additionally, no one ever claimed you could run Enlightenment on a 386.
Windows, meanwhile, now comes with a bug submit program -- they just bury it real deep.
A bug submit program for Windows? Wow, that's kind of like a windshield wiper on a submarine. Run it all you want, and things still aren't going to get any better.
My experience with gnome/E was so bad with the version that shipped with RH6.0 that, even though I loved the way it looked, I probably won't try it again for quite a while.
Yah, even the GNOME people admit that the version that shipped with Red Hat 6.0 had way too many bugs. But I can say that the October GNOME release, which I am currently running, is very stable, and works quite well.
I do think GNOME needs to drop Enlightenment in favor of another window manager. I mean, E! has some great eye candy and is very feature-filled, but it really isn't designed to integrate with GNOME the way kwm integrates with KDE.
Simply make an IPO on NASDAQ. If possible, associate yourself with Linux as well. Maybe get an endorsement from Bob Young of Red Hat. Wall Street will be beating down your door to give you money, without knowing why or what you do. Use the money to buy banner ads. :-)
Even though the files swapped around on Napster could theoretically be 100% legal, the RIAA is suing.
:-)
Well, there is a difference between theory and practice. Anyone who uses Napster will tell you they use it to get bootleg copies of music. In my (very unscientific) samples, I have never seen a file on Napster that was legal. Not a one. Zip. Zero. It's all pirate. Otherwise, people would just use HTTP and FTP.
Now, keep in mind, I'm not condoning RIAA's lawsuit. Nor do I like them. I put the RIAA in the same boat with Microsoft -- a boat with a one-way ticket to the deepest, hottest depths of the underworld.
But if you think Napster is anything but a tool to violate copyright, you're just kidding yourself.
One acquisition does not a monopoly make. Cygnus is not a Redhat competitor, rather what they have accomplished is vertical integration.
I agree with you, but we're losing the larger picture.
How can you have a monopoly on free software? That's like trying to have a monopoly on sunlight. You cannot do it. In order to have a monopoly, Red Hat would have to buy up every developer of every program in all of their products. That covers the entire globe, and countless countries. Even assuming all of them would be willing to do it.
Even then, what does Red Hat have? A bunch of people, that is all. The source code is still open. It cannot be locked up by any company. If Red Hat goes wrong, anyone can pick up the pieces and move on.
The power of free software is that it will always be free.
Here is my list of companies RedHat shouldn't buy... Troll Tech. This is an eggshell and we don't want it broken. Let them do QT under the QPL at there own pace.
Actually, I think this might be a Good Thing. People flame the GNOME folks for releasing GNOME 1.0 before it was ready, but look at the bugs in Qt 2.x and you'll see Troll has the same problems. The difference is, it is one company, not legions of Open Source developers. If Red Hat bought Troll, they could GPL Qt, which I think would be a Good Thing. IMNSHO.
Now my list of companies to buy... Borland/Imprise.
Fine, but don't kill off their Windows product lines. Borland's C++Builder and Delphi make Windows development bearable.
Really Compact Disc
The world does not revolve around the United States.
*ahem*
To repeat: The fact remains that most of the Internet's bandwidth and business is centered in the US.
I'm sorry, but today, the Internet does revolve around the US. I am not saying that is good or bad, but it is the truth. Thus, an OSS e-commerce solution that cannot be used inside the US is locked out of the vast majority of the market.
Next time, before you reply, please read the post you are replying to. Thank you.
You mean if they gave you a free six-pack when you bought some of their other products.
:)
TANSTAAFL. Trust me, you're paying for all of Microsoft's "free" products.
You can ask for any software to be removed from a new computer at the store. I think this may be even supported by law. In any case the price you pay is negligible.
First of all, practical trials have shown that computer vendors are very reluctant to tamper with their OEM software package. In some cases, Microsoft actually made them sign contracts to prohibit this. Those contracts have since been ruled void, but the pressure is still there.
Second of all, the retail price for Windows98 is over two hundred dollars. I do not call that "negligible".
You say you are foced to use it, but what exactly is stopping you using Linux?
Sorry. I was speaking from the perspective of the "average" computer buyer, who is fairly clueless about things such as OSes. I should have made that more clear.
(RE: MS controlling the browser future)
Why would they do that anyways? And how?
Why? To ensure their market share. Just look at all the people who buy PCs over Macs because more software runs on the PC.
How? Read Judge Jackson's Findings of Fact report. It has over two hundred pages of "how", thank you very much.
I dont think you realise were we would be today without microsoft. They have done quite a bit to revolutionise the computer world, and to populate the internet!
Thank you, Bill Gates. The is pure marketing drivel. Microsoft did none of the above. All they did was leverage their OS monopoly position to further their market share, riding on the success of the personal computer, which would have been popular anyway.
(RE: Forcing MS to open up their source or APIs)
how the heck are they going to do that?
If Microsoft has been found to be an illegal monopoly. This makes their gains (i.e., Windows) illegal goods, and forfeit. At least, that is one (perfectly valid) way to interpret the law. It is not impossible.
The rest of your reply is pretty inflammatory and rather poorly worded at that. I'll ignore it.
Cool. If we start walking now, how long will it take us to get there?
(I remember figuring out how long it would take to walk to the sun in high school, just as an experiment in imagination.)
Sure there is. OpenSSL. It's just not usable in the US, because of stupid software patents.
With all due respect, one might as well say that it is available, but only usable on the moon.
I am a huge Linux fan, and I hate stupid software patents as much as the next guy, but the fact remains that most of the Internet's bandwidth and business is centered in the US.
Until that patent expires, I think Red Hat has made a good move.
Think about it, nuclear subs aren't just about nuclear weapons, they can also be nuclear powered, meaning you don't have to haul all this diesel fuel around.
I'm picking nits, but the advantage to nuclear-powered submarines is that they do not need an air supply to run their diesel generators. Thus they can stay under for weeks at a time.
Ah, sorry. My bad. I'm a CS geek, not a history or physics buff.
Then why are you posting about physics and history?
Since I'm complaining about that, let me gripe about a couple other things:
If you are posting a simple apology, make use of that "No Score +1 Bonus" checkbox, since we don't all need to read your "I'm sorry" post.
The exception would be if you wanted to quote the post you are replying to, to highlight the correct information to those with a +2 hard threshold. But you didn't do that, either.
/NETCOP
Er, no, you're thinking of fission. Nuclear bombs use fission, not fusion.
Er, no, you've got it backwards.
The bombs detonated over Japan by the USA in World War II were fission bombs. The one dropped on Hiroshima used fired a slug of uranium into a larger target of the same. The one dropped on Nagasaki used a hollow sphere of plutonium surrounded with explosives. When the explosive charge detonated, it forced the plutonium together. (Plutonium is more unstable then uranium, so they couldn't use the "gun" technique.) These are usually called atomic bombs, or A-bombs.
Modern ICBMs (Inter-Continental Ballistic Missiles) are usually tipped with fission-fusion warheads. They use a smaller fission reaction to initiate an uncontrolled hydrogen fusion reaction. The result is a much larger explosion then with fission alone. These are called "hydrogen bombs", or H-bombs.
Upsilon made a good comment with information on uranium sheath fusion bombs and cobalt bombs, which are essentially fusion bombs designed to spread more radioactive fallout.
So basically everyday, usable fusion is about ten years away. Nothing new there.
:)
Exactly. Usable fusion has been about ten years away for the past forty.
Who was it that said, "Atomic power will be too cheap to meter?"
Does the military already have fusion?
The military has thousands of fusion devices, mounted at the top of ICBMs.
The corrolary(sp?) is that the military never declassifies something until it has developed a countermeasure for it.
As Robert A. Heinlein said, the only defense against a nuclear bomb is not to be there when it goes off.
have you ever looked at the security options in IE? ... IE allows a flexible range of customization and settings - MUCH more so that Netscape.
While I agree with Microsoft's design here in theory, in practice, there have been countless holes discovered in these settings, which make them useless.
Microsoft could easily direct its resources to create a Linux version (written under GPL guidelines) that will effectively finish off Netscape once and for all.
I would love for Microsoft to do this. But they won't. The reason so many people hate Microsoft is that they don't "play nice". Doing what you suggest would be "playing nice". It won't happen.
If, through some miracle, it does happen, then great! MSIE does have some nice features, and the standard benefits of Open Source Software would still apply. By going OSS, MS would relinquish control to the users. That would be a Good Thing. So I hope they do so.
I find it entirely more likely that Microsoft would release a closed, binary-only port of MSIE for Linux, in the hopes of driving Mozilla out of the picture. Once Mozilla has fallen behind, Microsoft could then drop MSIE on Linux, leaving Linux users out in the cold.
As a developer, I can attest to the following: It is not possible to have too much information about a Beta Test system. I would really prefer an exact duplication of the test systems at the molecular level, but unfortunately, this sort of questionnaire is the best thing possible.
First of all, they are going to have to cull a list of a few testers out of the hundreds, if not thousdands, of applicants. To do that, they are going to want to pick canidates who are knowledgeable about computes, have experience with all the software involved, and have a wide variety of software, hardware, and configurations in use.
Once you get to the actual test, the exact combination of hardware, kernel, drivers, daemons, libraries, desktop environment, and everything else up to and including their background image, can make a difference. If you don't think so, you've never had to operate a Beta Test before.
I found their survey perfectly reasonable, although their were a few (excusable) DOS- and Window-ish questions on it ("TSRs" are "daemons" on Linux, etc.).
A couple of specifics --
OS and version is legit - you can run Linux programs on BSD as well, plus there are different distributions of Linux that can be considered different "OSes" depending on your definition of the term.
Windows version is legit - they could want to know if you have Windows install in a dual-boot configuration. (It could be simple stupidity, but neither you nor I know for sure.)
Me: Very true, but MS does their damndest to make sure everyone uses their propriatary extensions and not standards.
You: Uh, how, pray tell, can they do that?
Did you happen to miss all the press around Judge Jackson's Findings of Fact? Have you not heard of the Halloween Documents? Have you never so much as looked at FrontPage Express, which comes with Win98?
Microsoft starts by releasing a product which promotes their propriatary extensions. Typically, they will not mention the fact that it the resulting content is viewable only with Microsoft products. Then they bundle it with their OS whether you want it or not. Next, they integrate those features into their office suite, and promote how "Office 2000 is Web Ready", neglecting to mention that only IE uses on Windows on Intel machines will be able to view the web pages.
Repeat as many times as billions of dollars in cash and an OS monopoly will allow. Is that clear enough, or do I need to draw you a picture?
Me: No, I was simply saying that any one company controling the browser market would be a Very Bad Thing. The popular analogy is, what if a single company owned the patents on the printing press?"
You: Nonsense. There are plenty of other browser options on the market, NS, Opera, Lynx and many others.
Hello, anyone home? Did you read my post all? I said any one company controlling the market would be a bad thing. I did not say Microsoft had reached that point yet! Are you being stupid on purpose, or were you born that way?
You: Microsoft is not putting a gun to anyone's head to use IE.
Crawl out from under whatever rock you are under, and take a look at Win98 or NT 4.
You: (I use NS 4.08 BTW)
Thus proving that even idiots can use Netscape.
I would rather see IE on Linux trounce Netscape than see any Linux users go back to Windows because Windows has a funtional browser.
That's a mighty big "if" there. MSIE is pretty much a Windows-only browser. Sure, MS has token ports to other platforms, but anyone who uses them will tell you their performance and reliability is the same as Netscape.
The thought of users turning to Windows over Linux because of the browser is bad, yes, but turning to IE over Netscape is largely the same decision.
That being said, would I complain if MS ported IE to Linux? No in and of itself. But if this hypothetical Linux IE port performed as bad as some of the other IE ports I've seen, it would only reinforce, my opinion of Microsoft products.
And that doesn't even touch the IE security-bug-of-the-month club. IE makes the old sendmail club look tame by comparison.