I am a physics major at Cornell University and the atmosphere is totally different. Students are very much encouraged to work on problem sets together. I even had one professor who set up a BBS on the class website for this express purpose. I can't imagine getting through some of my problem sets without working together.
I meet with my physics "support group" at least once a week. In fact, what little social life seems to revolve around doing physics in groups. Uh...I'll stop talking now...
If you don't have any idea what you are talking about, please refrain from speaking.
Honestly, if you were just debating the topic in question I wouldn't really care one way or the other, but your post was so blatantly technically inaccurate I can't help but correct it.
Intel *NEVER* integrated a Rambus controller into the P4. To my knowledge they've never produced any CPU with an integrated memory controller, although it's possible that they may have done something like that in an embedded chip. I'm not sure. I am sure that they've never made an x86 chip with an integrated memory controller.
What Intel did do has no technical basis. It was simply a marketing decision. They decreed that the P4 should use Rambus and only produced chipsets that used Rambus. They tried to force the market to adopt Rambus when it didn't want to.
This is not related in even the most remote way to what AMD is doing. AMD decided to integrate their memory controller onto the die of the CPU. They did not do this for marketing reasons. They did not do this to try to get people to use a certain type of memory (as it is, the hammer series will support different kinds of memory, including DDR). They did this for technical reasons. The fact of the matter is, if you integrate the memory controller onto the CPU die you can get better performance. Latencies are much lower, and it is potentially easier to support greater bandwidth as well (while Clawhammer will only use a 64 bit memory controller, like all existing ones, Sledgehammer will use a 128 bit memory controller). In addition, in a multiprocessor solution each CPU has its one direct, dedicated channel to the memory rather than a shared bus that quickly gets clogged.
A lot of very smart people believe that the integration of the memory controller is the single best new feature in the hammer series, offering more benefit than even going 64 bit. It is not a marketing decision.
But you can't blame the parents. Afterall, they're the constituents. Who do you think they're going to vote for? The guy who blames their problems on their own gross neglect or the guy who comes up with a scapegoat for everything?
I believe you that you had this experience, but don't make the mistake of assuming that it's always like that. I've used GNOME on a variety of different machines (all slower than yours) and I don't have any of the problems you refer to. And yes, I do compare it to the same hardware running other OSes. If anything, it's faster in Linux.
What video card are you using? What version of X? How did you configure it? I'm sure there's a way you can make it faster.
What the hell are you talking about? The SSC was supposed to be in Texas. Fermilab is in Chicago. How on earth could Fermilab be used as a step up system? Furthermore, what do you mean "rebuilding Fermilab"? Fermilab is built, was never unbuilt, and is running just fine.
I don't see how any reasonable person could possibly be upset about this. Afterall, do you see anyone attacking VCRs or DVD players because they can be used to show pornography? What's the big deal about the fact that the PS2 could be used for pornography? I'm sure that any such blatantly pornographic materials will be regulated just the same as any other pornographic materials. I'll leave the debate of whether this is good or not for another time, but my point in this post is the simple fact that I don't see what makes this case in any way unique.
I too often fear that TV will control me. Afterall, it does send out those mind rays...oh, wait. That was just in one of those really awful Batman movies.
Give me a break, Mr. Luddite. If you honestly believe that owning some inanimate objects is going to cause them to control you, then you must not have any faith at all in yourself. I simply don't understand how you, or anyone else for that matter, can say that technology is going to cause you to lose control of your life. Technology is a tool. It does what you tell it to. It does not tell you what to do. In fact, it is quite incapable of telling you what to do. As it is, technology can be quite enpowering. If wedid not have technology, we would have virtually no control over our lives. We would have to spend every single day just focussing on survival, with the possibility of dying at any moment because of circumstances beyond our control (Admittedly, that is still possible today. However, the chance of it happening is far less since there is so much more that is under our control thanks to technology.).
People who have cellphones and pagers use them because they want to. Nobody is putting guns to their heads telling them to use their cellphones. Nothing is preventing them from turning them off. But they would rather be in touch with people so they keep them on. That is, presumably, the whole reason they bought them in the first place. Now, if you have no need to keep in touch with people and you don't want to buy a cellphone, that's fine. Don't. But telling yourself that cellphones are controlling people isn't going to make it so.
Um...are you sure you installed Debian? Because from your description it sure doesn't sound like you did. First of all, you say that "basic configuration is 10 clicks away". Last time I installed Debian the installer didn't even have mouse support. Maybe they've changed it since then, but I was under the impression the installer has remained identical (which is the whole reason this new installer is news). Furthermore, you said you didn't have to select packages, but I know of no way to install Debian without selecting packages. There are common groups of packages so that you don't have to select every package individually, but there is still some package selection involved.
But the thing which REALLY makes me doubt you installed Debian is the fact that you say you spent $50 for it. Huh? Debian is free. Sure, VA Linux packaged a version of it, but the most I've ever seen that sell for is around $30. How the heck did you pay $50 for it? And $10 for the source CD? That's nonsense. You can get source CDs for about $2 plus shipping if you shop online.
I can't understand why so many people saying that Konqueror will overtake Mozilla. Have you ever compard the two? Well, I did just that recently, and this is the conclusion I came to:
Mozilla has an excellent rendering engine. It is very fast and displays all the pages I go to without any errors. While some people have complained about instability in Mozilla, personally I have found it to be quite stable. The biggest problem with it, in my opinion, is just the amount of memory that it consumes. Hopefully later revisions will improve this and removing the debugging code and compiling with proper optimizations should help as well.
Konqueror is the complete opposite. Sure, it is a lot lighter than Mozilla, but that's about the only thing it has going for it. The rendering engine is horrible. I recently had the displeasure of watching it make my T3 feel like a 28.8. I would load a page with Konqueror and watch in almost disbelief as it SLOWLY loaded the images one at a time. I fired up Mozilla to look at the same exact page and it loaded in an instant. Not only that, but Konqueror frequently displayed pages incorrectly, even pages that are targeted at Linux users and presumably follow proper HTML standards.
Now which of these would you rather have? An excellent rendering engine in a bloated app or a crappy rendering engine in a not-so-bloated app? Personally, I'll take Mozilla myself, although I suppose you could make a case for Konqueror. However, what really guarantees Mozilla's success, even if Mozilla itself is never slimmed down, is the fact that you can take the Gecko rendering engine and use it as part of less-bloated apps (Galeon anyone?). It really is a great rendering engine. But hopefully that won't even be necessary if the Mozilla developers work on optimizing it some more.
Well this is at least true of myself and maybe Im wrong in my generalization but im interested in your comments.
That's an understatement
Look, you're obviously not an atheist, so stop pretending to know what all atheist in the world are thinking. Heck, even if you were an atheist you could never know that. Personally, I am an atheist, and it is not something I go around advertising. I am not the least bit vocal about it. In fact, a lot of good friends of mine probably don't even know it. The only reason I bring it up here is because it is relevant to the discussion. I'm not trying to hide anything, it's just that if the subject doesn't come up I don't mention it.
I think I know where you're getting this idea that most atheists are vocal about it, as I've experienced it firsthand, but you have a very important fact confused: it's generally not the atheists who bring it up. For example, back at my old high school I can remember the subject of religion coming up casually in a conversation, and I made the mistake of mentioning I was an atheist. Because of this, I was harrassed for years. I had people constantly bringing up the subject, again and again and again. I had people trying to convert me just about every single day. They always ask, "why are you an atheist?" Had said I was christian, jewish, muslim, or even budhist I can't imagine being asked that question so many times. But I was asked, "why are you an atheist" just about every single day by somebody or other. It's as if everyone felt that there was something wrong with me and it was their job to fix it. So what do I do? I tell them why I'm an atheist! I've had to tell them why so many times because I've been asked that damn question so many times.
And now we get people like you claiming that atheists go around advertising that fact because they want to be converted. You'll excuse me if I'm more than a little bitter after reading your comment, but you couldn't possibly be further from the truth. You ask why I don't treat religious people just like anyone else has their facts wrong? Guess what? I do! I have never once in my life tried to convince anyone to give up religion. I do not bring up the subject of religion for no reason. I have plenty of friends who are religious. No, I don't treat them any differently. It is religious people (admittedly not all religious people, but definately a large number of them) who treat me differently.
Well, I guess I'm about done with this ramp. You can disagree with me all you want, just don't try to convert me.
Recall? What are they recalling? They have to actually have sold some of the chips before they can recall them. Even Dell, Intel's lapdog, has been unable to get these chips in any kind of volume. This "product" was pure vaporware from day one.
Yeah, I know Perl code looks like crap. I'm not trying to deny it. However, this "joke" just isn't funny anymore. Seriously, I happened to be looking at an old/. post about the 4th annual contest, and this same stupid joke was made like 50 times. And here it is again! You'd better believe it won't be the last either. Come on! Can't you at least thing of an original way to make fun of perl?
Word 2.0 kicks ass! I used it for years and years and years. Even when everyone else was using Word 6.0 or higher, I was still chugging away with Word 2.0. When I told people I used Word 2.0 they looked at me in shock, like I was just thawed out a 1000 year old block of ice or something. The thing is, Word 2.0 did everything I needed it to. I looked at later versions, but they were all bloated messes filled with "features" that I neither needed nor wanted. Word 2.0 was quick and light, and it ran without any difficulty on OS/2, which was my operating system of choice for a while. I couldn't understand why so many people shelled out so much money for the next version every time it came out. I was using 2.0 and liking it!
I'm really getting off-topic here, but what the hey.
I can't believe how many posts I see complaining about the project just because it can't be used to trade warez and mp3s. I find it incredibly hypocritical. Systems like Freenet are often defended because of their legitimate uses include the ability to protect people from being prosecuted by unjust governments, etc. Now we have a system which can do the same thing, but that's about all it can do.
Now, I'm not here to debate the ethics of filesharing. I think there can be a good case made for the legitimacy of mp3s under certain circumstanes, but that's besides the point. Whether or not you believe mp3 sharing is right has nothing to do with whether or not it is illegal. And if it is considered illegal (which it almost certainly will be, seeing how the RIAA 0wnz Congress), then the RIAA can attack systems like Freenet and possibly even get them declared illegal. Now here we have an alternative which can accomplish the legitimate and considerably more important use of Freenet without being attacked by the RIAA.
I not only remember it, I'm wearing one right now! It's useful, really! Sure, I've lost the software to actually program it and I've never really used it for anything even when I had the software, but there's nothing quite like holding your watch up to your computer screen to program it with a bunch of flashing lines. Try it. It will change your life.
I think you hit the nail right on the head there, but I think I'll generalize your point to reflect a certain belief I've had for a long time (watch out for the abuse of html tags):
Creating laws which cannot be universally enforced leads to arbitrary enforcement
OK, I'm kind of stating the obvious there, so I'll explain further. If we as a society create laws which have no hope of being enforced consistently because of the number of people already breaking these laws, then we are opening the doors to abuse by the government and police. We end up with a society in which everyone is guilty of something, but the only ones being punished are those who are disliked for some reason. The reason can be just about anything. You give the example of racism, which is a very good one, but is also unfortunately only the beginning. We could end up with a society in which a reporter uncovers some dirt about somebody in power, and ends up going to jail because of it. Sure, the reporter in question could never be directly prosecuted for uncovering dirt (hopefully, although the way our society is going...), but those in power might tell the police to go and arrest the reporter for a crime that everyone commits. This creates an atmosphere in which people are afraid of criticising their leaders. Unfortunately, we are already headed down that path. How many of you can honestly say that you never do anything illegal, and that if the police were watching you 24 hours a day they could find nothing to arrest you for?
Unfortunately, more and more laws are being made that can never (and should never) be effectively enforced. It's not part of a grand conspiracy, but the end result is the same. The reason is simply that the people are always screaming for the goverment to do something, but they never seem to care whether or not what the government did had any effect. They just want laws to "protect the children" and whatnot. But this doesn't simply result in a bunch of worthless laws that we can all laugh at and go home. It ends up creating an environment that is practically asking for government abuse. And abuse they do. And it's only getting worse...
You know, this is one reason I like Debian. Now, I stumbled on to this fact by accident and I have never seen it mentioned in any documentation anywhere, so I don't know how many people use it, but there is a directory/var/lib/dpkg/info which contains files in the form <package name>.list . Every single package on my machine has a file in this directory, and that file contains a list of all the files in that package. To see what files were installed by a particular package all one needs to do is read the corresponding file. Also, one can use grep to find out what package a particular file belongs to. It's a great feature. Frankly, I don't know why this information is hidden away in some obscure directory. I think there should be a symlink or something to this directory to make it more accessible.
The answer is simple: cost. I'm sure it would be possible to create a small LCD with that kind of resolution, but the cost would be enormous. Do you really want to pay several thousand dollars just for a display? I didn't think so...
And what makes you think that major vendors aren't working on making this more practical? Just because it's not here right now? These things take time. There are a lot of people working on it, and maybe one day it will be a reality, but for now we're stuck with current technology.
Oh come on now! AMD's chip numbering makes far more sense then Intel's. When Intel changes their number, who knows what it might mean? When AMD does it, it is perfectly clear.
The pentium was Intel's fith generation chip. It came after the 486 and is effectively a 586, but they decided to give it a real name for marketing reasons (and the fact that you can't trademark a number). But then they came out with the PentiumII, which is their sixth generation product. It should really have been called the Hexium, but I guess that name isn't very good from a marketing perspective;-) . To add to the inconsistency, the PIII is still based on the same sixth generation core as the PII, with just a few minor revisions. Then they came out with the Coppermine (that was its codename), which was a bigger revision of the PII core than took place with the PIII, but it didn't even get a new name! It's called a PIII, just like the earlier PIIIs even though there's a significant difference. Now we have the PIV coming up, and that's a seventh generation design. So does increasing the number after "pentium" indicate a revision of a core or a new core? The answer: it depends on Intel's mood at the moment.
With AMD it's clear as day. The K5 is their fith generation chip. The K6 is their sixth generation chip. The K6-2 is a revision of the K6 core, and the K6-3 is another revision. These revisions roughly corespond to what Intel did with the PIII and Coppermine, respectively. The Athlon is AMD's seventh generation chip, and it was codenamed the K7, but they decided to give it a name (again, for marketing). The K6-2+ is a revision of the K6-2. K6-3 was taken, and calling it a K6-4 would be misleading because it really fits in between the K6-2 and K6-3. There's also the K6-3+ which does the same thing to the K6-3 as the K6-2+ did to the K6-2.
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I am a physics major at Cornell University and the atmosphere is totally different. Students are very much encouraged to work on problem sets together. I even had one professor who set up a BBS on the class website for this express purpose. I can't imagine getting through some of my problem sets without working together.
I meet with my physics "support group" at least once a week. In fact, what little social life seems to revolve around doing physics in groups. Uh...I'll stop talking now...
If you don't have any idea what you are talking about, please refrain from speaking.
Honestly, if you were just debating the topic in question I wouldn't really care one way or the other, but your post was so blatantly technically inaccurate I can't help but correct it.
Intel *NEVER* integrated a Rambus controller into the P4. To my knowledge they've never produced any CPU with an integrated memory controller, although it's possible that they may have done something like that in an embedded chip. I'm not sure. I am sure that they've never made an x86 chip with an integrated memory controller.
What Intel did do has no technical basis. It was simply a marketing decision. They decreed that the P4 should use Rambus and only produced chipsets that used Rambus. They tried to force the market to adopt Rambus when it didn't want to.
This is not related in even the most remote way to what AMD is doing. AMD decided to integrate their memory controller onto the die of the CPU. They did not do this for marketing reasons. They did not do this to try to get people to use a certain type of memory (as it is, the hammer series will support different kinds of memory, including DDR). They did this for technical reasons. The fact of the matter is, if you integrate the memory controller onto the CPU die you can get better performance. Latencies are much lower, and it is potentially easier to support greater bandwidth as well (while Clawhammer will only use a 64 bit memory controller, like all existing ones, Sledgehammer will use a 128 bit memory controller). In addition, in a multiprocessor solution each CPU has its one direct, dedicated channel to the memory rather than a shared bus that quickly gets clogged.
A lot of very smart people believe that the integration of the memory controller is the single best new feature in the hammer series, offering more benefit than even going 64 bit. It is not a marketing decision.
So if Microsoft took the Linux source code, made a couple modifications, slapped an NDA on it, and started selling it for $99 you'd be OK with it?
The point is you can't put an NDA on Linux. That's relicensing GPL code.
Firearms and 3-ton trucks generate revenue. That's all you need to explain it.
This country is no longer about freedom or anything of the sort. It's about big corporations milking everyone else for every single penny they have.
If you've ever actually played Go you'd know that there is no equivalent to "checkmate" in it.
You know, I bought 6 Loki games. I also specifically didn't buy Deus Ex for windows because I heard Loki was going to port it. So much for that...
Quite frankly this is one Linux user who doesn't mind paying for software. I spend more on Linux software than I ever spent on windows software.
But you can't blame the parents. Afterall, they're the constituents. Who do you think they're going to vote for? The guy who blames their problems on their own gross neglect or the guy who comes up with a scapegoat for everything?
I believe you that you had this experience, but don't make the mistake of assuming that it's always like that. I've used GNOME on a variety of different machines (all slower than yours) and I don't have any of the problems you refer to. And yes, I do compare it to the same hardware running other OSes. If anything, it's faster in Linux.
What video card are you using? What version of X? How did you configure it? I'm sure there's a way you can make it faster.
200 megabytes?! I've done Debian updates that have taken up more than that...
What the hell are you talking about? The SSC was supposed to be in Texas. Fermilab is in Chicago. How on earth could Fermilab be used as a step up system? Furthermore, what do you mean "rebuilding Fermilab"? Fermilab is built, was never unbuilt, and is running just fine.
I don't see how any reasonable person could possibly be upset about this. Afterall, do you see anyone attacking VCRs or DVD players because they can be used to show pornography? What's the big deal about the fact that the PS2 could be used for pornography? I'm sure that any such blatantly pornographic materials will be regulated just the same as any other pornographic materials. I'll leave the debate of whether this is good or not for another time, but my point in this post is the simple fact that I don't see what makes this case in any way unique.
Give me a break, Mr. Luddite. If you honestly believe that owning some inanimate objects is going to cause them to control you, then you must not have any faith at all in yourself. I simply don't understand how you, or anyone else for that matter, can say that technology is going to cause you to lose control of your life. Technology is a tool. It does what you tell it to. It does not tell you what to do. In fact, it is quite incapable of telling you what to do. As it is, technology can be quite enpowering. If wedid not have technology, we would have virtually no control over our lives. We would have to spend every single day just focussing on survival, with the possibility of dying at any moment because of circumstances beyond our control (Admittedly, that is still possible today. However, the chance of it happening is far less since there is so much more that is under our control thanks to technology.).
People who have cellphones and pagers use them because they want to. Nobody is putting guns to their heads telling them to use their cellphones. Nothing is preventing them from turning them off. But they would rather be in touch with people so they keep them on. That is, presumably, the whole reason they bought them in the first place. Now, if you have no need to keep in touch with people and you don't want to buy a cellphone, that's fine. Don't. But telling yourself that cellphones are controlling people isn't going to make it so.
Um...are you sure you installed Debian? Because from your description it sure doesn't sound like you did. First of all, you say that "basic configuration is 10 clicks away". Last time I installed Debian the installer didn't even have mouse support. Maybe they've changed it since then, but I was under the impression the installer has remained identical (which is the whole reason this new installer is news). Furthermore, you said you didn't have to select packages, but I know of no way to install Debian without selecting packages. There are common groups of packages so that you don't have to select every package individually, but there is still some package selection involved.
But the thing which REALLY makes me doubt you installed Debian is the fact that you say you spent $50 for it. Huh? Debian is free. Sure, VA Linux packaged a version of it, but the most I've ever seen that sell for is around $30. How the heck did you pay $50 for it? And $10 for the source CD? That's nonsense. You can get source CDs for about $2 plus shipping if you shop online.
Are you sure it was Debian?
I can't understand why so many people saying that Konqueror will overtake Mozilla. Have you ever compard the two? Well, I did just that recently, and this is the conclusion I came to:
Mozilla has an excellent rendering engine. It is very fast and displays all the pages I go to without any errors. While some people have complained about instability in Mozilla, personally I have found it to be quite stable. The biggest problem with it, in my opinion, is just the amount of memory that it consumes. Hopefully later revisions will improve this and removing the debugging code and compiling with proper optimizations should help as well.
Konqueror is the complete opposite. Sure, it is a lot lighter than Mozilla, but that's about the only thing it has going for it. The rendering engine is horrible. I recently had the displeasure of watching it make my T3 feel like a 28.8. I would load a page with Konqueror and watch in almost disbelief as it SLOWLY loaded the images one at a time. I fired up Mozilla to look at the same exact page and it loaded in an instant. Not only that, but Konqueror frequently displayed pages incorrectly, even pages that are targeted at Linux users and presumably follow proper HTML standards.
Now which of these would you rather have? An excellent rendering engine in a bloated app or a crappy rendering engine in a not-so-bloated app? Personally, I'll take Mozilla myself, although I suppose you could make a case for Konqueror. However, what really guarantees Mozilla's success, even if Mozilla itself is never slimmed down, is the fact that you can take the Gecko rendering engine and use it as part of less-bloated apps (Galeon anyone?). It really is a great rendering engine. But hopefully that won't even be necessary if the Mozilla developers work on optimizing it some more.
That's an understatement
Look, you're obviously not an atheist, so stop pretending to know what all atheist in the world are thinking. Heck, even if you were an atheist you could never know that. Personally, I am an atheist, and it is not something I go around advertising. I am not the least bit vocal about it. In fact, a lot of good friends of mine probably don't even know it. The only reason I bring it up here is because it is relevant to the discussion. I'm not trying to hide anything, it's just that if the subject doesn't come up I don't mention it.
I think I know where you're getting this idea that most atheists are vocal about it, as I've experienced it firsthand, but you have a very important fact confused: it's generally not the atheists who bring it up. For example, back at my old high school I can remember the subject of religion coming up casually in a conversation, and I made the mistake of mentioning I was an atheist. Because of this, I was harrassed for years. I had people constantly bringing up the subject, again and again and again. I had people trying to convert me just about every single day. They always ask, "why are you an atheist?" Had said I was christian, jewish, muslim, or even budhist I can't imagine being asked that question so many times. But I was asked, "why are you an atheist" just about every single day by somebody or other. It's as if everyone felt that there was something wrong with me and it was their job to fix it. So what do I do? I tell them why I'm an atheist! I've had to tell them why so many times because I've been asked that damn question so many times.
And now we get people like you claiming that atheists go around advertising that fact because they want to be converted. You'll excuse me if I'm more than a little bitter after reading your comment, but you couldn't possibly be further from the truth. You ask why I don't treat religious people just like anyone else has their facts wrong? Guess what? I do! I have never once in my life tried to convince anyone to give up religion. I do not bring up the subject of religion for no reason. I have plenty of friends who are religious. No, I don't treat them any differently. It is religious people (admittedly not all religious people, but definately a large number of them) who treat me differently.
Well, I guess I'm about done with this ramp. You can disagree with me all you want, just don't try to convert me.
Recall? What are they recalling? They have to actually have sold some of the chips before they can recall them. Even Dell, Intel's lapdog, has been unable to get these chips in any kind of volume. This "product" was pure vaporware from day one.
Yeah, I know Perl code looks like crap. I'm not trying to deny it. However, this "joke" just isn't funny anymore. Seriously, I happened to be looking at an old /. post about the 4th annual contest, and this same stupid joke was made like 50 times. And here it is again! You'd better believe it won't be the last either. Come on! Can't you at least thing of an original way to make fun of perl?
I'm really getting off-topic here, but what the hey.
Now, I'm not here to debate the ethics of filesharing. I think there can be a good case made for the legitimacy of mp3s under certain circumstanes, but that's besides the point. Whether or not you believe mp3 sharing is right has nothing to do with whether or not it is illegal. And if it is considered illegal (which it almost certainly will be, seeing how the RIAA 0wnz Congress), then the RIAA can attack systems like Freenet and possibly even get them declared illegal. Now here we have an alternative which can accomplish the legitimate and considerably more important use of Freenet without being attacked by the RIAA.
I not only remember it, I'm wearing one right now! It's useful, really! Sure, I've lost the software to actually program it and I've never really used it for anything even when I had the software, but there's nothing quite like holding your watch up to your computer screen to program it with a bunch of flashing lines. Try it. It will change your life.
Creating laws which cannot be universally enforced leads to arbitrary enforcement
OK, I'm kind of stating the obvious there, so I'll explain further. If we as a society create laws which have no hope of being enforced consistently because of the number of people already breaking these laws, then we are opening the doors to abuse by the government and police. We end up with a society in which everyone is guilty of something, but the only ones being punished are those who are disliked for some reason. The reason can be just about anything. You give the example of racism, which is a very good one, but is also unfortunately only the beginning. We could end up with a society in which a reporter uncovers some dirt about somebody in power, and ends up going to jail because of it. Sure, the reporter in question could never be directly prosecuted for uncovering dirt (hopefully, although the way our society is going...), but those in power might tell the police to go and arrest the reporter for a crime that everyone commits. This creates an atmosphere in which people are afraid of criticising their leaders. Unfortunately, we are already headed down that path. How many of you can honestly say that you never do anything illegal, and that if the police were watching you 24 hours a day they could find nothing to arrest you for?
Unfortunately, more and more laws are being made that can never (and should never) be effectively enforced. It's not part of a grand conspiracy, but the end result is the same. The reason is simply that the people are always screaming for the goverment to do something, but they never seem to care whether or not what the government did had any effect. They just want laws to "protect the children" and whatnot. But this doesn't simply result in a bunch of worthless laws that we can all laugh at and go home. It ends up creating an environment that is practically asking for government abuse. And abuse they do. And it's only getting worse...
You know, this is one reason I like Debian. Now, I stumbled on to this fact by accident and I have never seen it mentioned in any documentation anywhere, so I don't know how many people use it, but there is a directory /var/lib/dpkg/info which contains files in the form <package name>.list . Every single package on my machine has a file in this directory, and that file contains a list of all the files in that package. To see what files were installed by a particular package all one needs to do is read the corresponding file. Also, one can use grep to find out what package a particular file belongs to. It's a great feature. Frankly, I don't know why this information is hidden away in some obscure directory. I think there should be a symlink or something to this directory to make it more accessible.
Damn straight! I don't know how anyone could claim that all classical music is the same. It just goes to show you how low are society has sunk.
The answer is simple: cost. I'm sure it would be possible to create a small LCD with that kind of resolution, but the cost would be enormous. Do you really want to pay several thousand dollars just for a display? I didn't think so...
And what makes you think that major vendors aren't working on making this more practical? Just because it's not here right now? These things take time. There are a lot of people working on it, and maybe one day it will be a reality, but for now we're stuck with current technology.
The pentium was Intel's fith generation chip. It came after the 486 and is effectively a 586, but they decided to give it a real name for marketing reasons (and the fact that you can't trademark a number). But then they came out with the PentiumII, which is their sixth generation product. It should really have been called the Hexium, but I guess that name isn't very good from a marketing perspective ;-) . To add to the inconsistency, the PIII is still based on the same sixth generation core as the PII, with just a few minor revisions. Then they came out with the Coppermine (that was its codename), which was a bigger revision of the PII core than took place with the PIII, but it didn't even get a new name! It's called a PIII, just like the earlier PIIIs even though there's a significant difference. Now we have the PIV coming up, and that's a seventh generation design. So does increasing the number after "pentium" indicate a revision of a core or a new core? The answer: it depends on Intel's mood at the moment.
With AMD it's clear as day. The K5 is their fith generation chip. The K6 is their sixth generation chip. The K6-2 is a revision of the K6 core, and the K6-3 is another revision. These revisions roughly corespond to what Intel did with the PIII and Coppermine, respectively. The Athlon is AMD's seventh generation chip, and it was codenamed the K7, but they decided to give it a name (again, for marketing). The K6-2+ is a revision of the K6-2. K6-3 was taken, and calling it a K6-4 would be misleading because it really fits in between the K6-2 and K6-3. There's also the K6-3+ which does the same thing to the K6-3 as the K6-2+ did to the K6-2.