Re:Windows XP was great, except....
on
New Red Hat Beta
·
· Score: 1
My post was mostly a joke, but all of my points were true on some level.
(MS doesn't pick where most stuff goes. RH does. RH's fault if the menu's don't make sense.)
That would be news to me. How can redhat control where 3rd party programs install themselves?
(Hrm, both my DVD-ROM and my CD-R/CD-RW drive seem to be the correctly supported DMA mode by default in WinXP.)
Yes, it varies depending on your chipset and optical drives. Trust me, many VIA and AMD chipsets combined with certain optical drives will result in them running in PIO mode by default on XP.
(Uhh the default nVidia support for cards that existed at the time of release worked, but wern't super fast. )
Yes, and the same is true in redhat. Nvidia cards work fine in redhat, they just don't have full acceleration unless you install nvidia's binary, which is the exact same situation as with windows XP.
(My VIA and AMD stuff workes just great)
For full VIA support in windows XP, you need the VIA drivers, but it'll work ok without them. With AMD chipsets, I'm not so sure how important the drivers are, but I know the latest drivers are newer than windows XP. I know that I had to install them on my dual athlon box to get everything stable in XP Pro.
Windows XP was great, except....
on
New Red Hat Beta
·
· Score: 5, Funny
-Lack of EXT3 filesystem support by default: Near-neccessary for Linux dual-booters
-That silly "start" menu: you never quite know where software is going to turn up, some make shortcuts on the desktop and in the menu, other programs only in the menu, some don't create any shortcuts
-No MP3 encoding support in WMP
-DMA is off by default on CD-ROM drives. This is easily fixed through device manager, but for the average user, this is a hurdle to DVD playing and CD burning.
-No nVidia, ATI, S3, Creative Labs, Turtle Beach, AMD, Intel, 3Com, VIA, or Matrox drivers, except very limited (no openGL, poor directX) drivers for some older devices
-These were all easily fixed if you knew what you were doing, but kept Windows XP out of the realm of being usable for average people
I agree with you. The post you were responding to was me trying to show stupid the argument looked to me... thus the quotes. Sure, tape may be far better than IDE for backup purposes, but the idea that you either use tape or you use nothing at all is absurd- if you can't afford tape, IDE is a great backup method, and certainly far better than not backing up at all.
Oh sure, tapes ARE designed for backup. But what do you do if you only have $800 you can spend? Useing IDE drives for backup is far, far better than making no backups at all. Tapes are not even a part of the argument because the cost is out of the question.
(Who the fuck has 220GB of personal data?)
The original poster, rtfa.
(Seriously, for the cost of backing up that much porn, you can just go down to the store and buy the legit DVDs. While you're at it, you can stop off at the record store and buy some albums so you can re-rip your MP3s.)
Why would I bother? I still have all of the original CDs. However, time is money. I am far better off spending $500 on a few extra drives to keep a live backup, than I would be if I lost all my data and had to re-rip it, re-organize, etc. I guess if your time is worth nothing, you wouldn't understand this, but my time is worth something. Then again, my time isn't *quite* worth the $6,000 a highend tape system would be, so I "risk" having backups on IDE.
"I have $500 to spend on a backup solution for my 220GB data pool, and I was thinking of buying 4 120GB IDE drives along with an IDE RAID1 card and useing the array for backups, anyone have other ideas?"
"No way, you are insane. IDE is horribly unreliable and you will surely lose your data. You need a $6000 tape drive, if you can't afford it you are better off with no backups at all"
A quote doesn't prove anything, it's just a witty saying. It may be true that all mechanical devices eventually will fail, but it is a useless statement to make. If you want to shoot down the idea of using hard disks for backups, offer an alternative. Hard drives *might* be terrible for the job, but if they are the only tool available, then by default they are also the best tool for the job.
Also, what about DUIs? They may ask people to take a breathalyzer voluntarily, but in WA if you decline it's a 1 year license suspension. It's 3 months if you take it and get caught.
Sounds like the way your right to trial by jury is handled in virginia. Trial by jury costs $390 in court fees, while if I just plead guilty the fine is $100.
Don't base your decision on the statistics of a sample of one. Go read newsgroups, boards, etc and see which boards have the features you need. Find out what you need regarding cpu cooling, power supply, and case cooling. FWIW, I have 2 Dual Athlon setups at home, both running on Tyan Tiger MP boards and totally stable. They run stable *because* I checked usenet, and bought the right components, and installed all the neccessary drivers.
If you purchased the softwared, decided that you didn't agree to the EULA, then you can return it. End of story.
Huh? Return it, how? Software retailers don't accept returns, except to exchange for another copy of the same thing.
It is not like this is totally out there - these agreements popup BEFORE the software installs and they blatently say - IF YOU AGREE TO THIS CLICK HERE!!! What is so hard to understand about that?
It's a like a contract signed at gunpoint. You pay $50 for an office suite, go to install it, and it says to install you must click agree. Otherwise, kiss your $450 away because we know you can't return it and get your money back.
The real question is, why would you not like the other tracks? It's all the same artist, and usually the style on one CD is relativly consistant. Maybe there are just one or two overhyped tracks that are actually decent, and the rest is just quick garbage/filler? If that is the case, I think I would rather not support the artist at all. Not even worth my $.99 if the artist is willing to pull that sort of crap.
$.99 for one track? No linear notes or hard media copy? No option to rip it as.ogg or higher/lower bitrate? Many $12 CD's have 14+ tracks, obviously this breaks down to less than $.99/track. I think I might buy when they offer a download for $.05. Think of it like pay-per-view movie. They go for a couple bucks, vs the "hard copy" DVD going for $19.99. No one would pay for a pay-per-view movie if it cost the same as the DVD of the same movie.
that's the reason why that WD ATA133 drive with 8MB cache scores so great, it can burst up to 8MB at up to 133MB/sec
Not quite. The only ATA/133 drives in existance are made by Maxtor. Those 8MB cache Western Digital drives are built with ATA/100 interfaces. Not that it matters to any measurable degree, the Maxtors don't actually benchmark any better when run off of an ATA/133 controller vs an ATA/100.
First of all, it would be hard to make it fair and profitable at the same time. Take my current connection at home: I download 20GB/month, and pay $40/month for that capability. However, there are some people who just check email and do very little web browsing, with usage around 300MB/month. If they were paying for thier usage based on the same rate I pay, they would be paying less than $1/month. That would not be profitable for the ISP.
Another reason, is the simple fact that tracking bandwidth usage and billing for that usage can be very expensive in itself. It's not enough to just say "You transfered 8GB last month, so the bill is $80". With per MB billing, the biller would have to break down where exactly each download came from and each upload went to. That isn't cheap. This also brings to mind the fact that denial of services would take on a whole other meaning, someone on a hacked cable connection could suddenly have a $200 bill. And then the real reason against per MB charges, is that the real cost is in laying the lines, not running data over them. It doesn't cost the real ISP much at all to transfer data, why should the end users pay?
Eh. We have built a few boxes at my office, and time is *not* the issue at all. Perhaps we are the exception rather than the rule, but building a computer actually takes very little time, maybe 45 minutes a box. The real time is spent on software/user settings/configuration, and these things take just as long to do on a Dell as they do on a custom Athlon box. ESD straps/mats? Hrm, we have never used them. Out of maybe 20 builds so far we haven't had any failures, and heck if we fried 1 CPU in every 5 it would still be a lot cheaper than buying Dell boxes. Assembly area/space is about the same as what we require to setup a box to preinstall software anyway, so it's not a factor. Warranty issues are actually better with selfbuilt systems. How long does it take to get a failed drive replaced by Dell? If I need a drive replaced, I grab a spare from the computer room and send the failed drive to maxtor. The nice thing is that since we build the systems, we know what is in them. For new interns, building a computer is a good way to learn how things are supposed to be, and how to change components. Drivers are easy to find and update, and we don't have to worry about stupid non-standard powersupplies such as what Dell puts in boxes these days.
You don't seem to get it. Maybe 99% of the time the late night call staff is being underutilized, but what happens when there is a real outage, and the calls start flooding in? Under your genius idea of reducing the workforce to 3 people, you get a lot of pissed off customers who switch services, which in the long run costs much more than having a couple $12/hour employees "not doing work". Oh, you do want to keep 15 employees, you just want them to do other work as well. What exactly are they going to do? If they were skilled at other tasks, they would probably be doing them, call center work isn't exactly fun.
That is a good point, that everyone needs some basics, such as knowing how to read a newspaper. However, the basics can be learned in 2-4 years. Everyone does not need to know history, accounting, anything more than basic math, chemistry, biology etc. The few things that people *DO* need to know aren't even taught in school- how to pay your taxes, write a good resume, get a job, understanding credit, write your congressperson, etc.
I was the same type of person in school as your friend. The most depressing thing isn't how worthless schooling is, but the fact that such a large chunk of our taxes are thrown away on it.
Don't you think legal concealed weapons can act as a crime deterrent?
If criminals don't need to worry about ordinary citizens having weapons, they can rob/murder/rape without fear of retaliation.
"Well, thats what the police are for", you might say. Unless every person has a 24/7 police bodyguard, they can not protect everyone all the time. The funniest thing is all the celebritys who are opposed to guns, who have armed bodyguards. They really are just opposed to *other*people* having guns, as long as they keep their own guards.
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My post was mostly a joke, but all of my points were true on some level.
(MS doesn't pick where most stuff goes. RH does. RH's fault if the menu's don't make sense.)
That would be news to me. How can redhat control where 3rd party programs install themselves?
(Hrm, both my DVD-ROM and my CD-R/CD-RW drive seem to be the correctly supported DMA mode by default in WinXP.)
Yes, it varies depending on your chipset and optical drives. Trust me, many VIA and AMD chipsets combined with certain optical drives will result in them running in PIO mode by default on XP.
(Uhh the default nVidia support for cards that existed at the time of release worked, but wern't super fast. )
Yes, and the same is true in redhat. Nvidia cards work fine in redhat, they just don't have full acceleration unless you install nvidia's binary, which is the exact same situation as with windows XP.
(My VIA and AMD stuff workes just great)
For full VIA support in windows XP, you need the VIA drivers, but it'll work ok without them. With AMD chipsets, I'm not so sure how important the drivers are, but I know the latest drivers are newer than windows XP. I know that I had to install them on my dual athlon box to get everything stable in XP Pro.
-Lack of EXT3 filesystem support by default: Near-neccessary for Linux dual-booters
-That silly "start" menu: you never quite know where software is going to turn up, some make shortcuts on the desktop and in the menu, other programs only in the menu, some don't create any shortcuts
-No MP3 encoding support in WMP
-DMA is off by default on CD-ROM drives. This is easily fixed through device manager, but for the average user, this is a hurdle to DVD playing and CD burning.
-No nVidia, ATI, S3, Creative Labs, Turtle Beach, AMD, Intel, 3Com, VIA, or Matrox drivers, except very limited (no openGL, poor directX) drivers for some older devices
-These were all easily fixed if you knew what you were doing, but kept Windows XP out of the realm of being usable for average people
I agree with you. The post you were responding to was me trying to show stupid the argument looked to me... thus the quotes. Sure, tape may be far better than IDE for backup purposes, but the idea that you either use tape or you use nothing at all is absurd- if you can't afford tape, IDE is a great backup method, and certainly far better than not backing up at all.
Oh sure, tapes ARE designed for backup. But what do you do if you only have $800 you can spend? Useing IDE drives for backup is far, far better than making no backups at all. Tapes are not even a part of the argument because the cost is out of the question.
(Who the fuck has 220GB of personal data?)
The original poster, rtfa.
(Seriously, for the cost of backing up that much
porn, you can just go down to the store and buy
the legit DVDs. While you're at it, you can stop
off at the record store and buy some albums so you can re-rip your MP3s.)
Why would I bother? I still have all of the original CDs. However, time is money. I am far better off spending $500 on a few extra drives to keep a live backup, than I would be if I lost all my data and had to re-rip it, re-organize, etc. I guess if your time is worth nothing, you wouldn't understand this, but my time is worth something. Then again, my time isn't *quite* worth the $6,000 a highend tape system would be, so I "risk" having backups on IDE.
"I have $500 to spend on a backup solution for my 220GB data pool, and I was thinking of buying 4 120GB IDE drives along with an IDE RAID1 card and useing the array for backups, anyone have other ideas?"
"No way, you are insane. IDE is horribly unreliable and you will surely lose your data. You need a $6000 tape drive, if you can't afford it you are better off with no backups at all"
You are missing the point. What is your backup method for backing up 220GB?
Oh, you don't backup 220GB of personal data on a regular basis?
So, you trust having no backup at all over having a backup on an unreliable medium?
A quote doesn't prove anything, it's just a witty saying. It may be true that all mechanical devices eventually will fail, but it is a useless statement to make. If you want to shoot down the idea of using hard disks for backups, offer an alternative. Hard drives *might* be terrible for the job, but if they are the only tool available, then by default they are also the best tool for the job.
Also, what about DUIs? They may ask people to take a breathalyzer voluntarily, but in WA if you decline it's a 1 year license suspension. It's 3 months if you take it and get caught.
Sounds like the way your right to trial by jury is handled in virginia. Trial by jury costs $390 in court fees, while if I just plead guilty the fine is $100.
Don't base your decision on the statistics of a sample of one. Go read newsgroups, boards, etc and see which boards have the features you need. Find out what you need regarding cpu cooling, power supply, and case cooling. FWIW, I have 2 Dual Athlon setups at home, both running on Tyan Tiger MP boards and totally stable. They run stable *because* I checked usenet, and bought the right components, and installed all the neccessary drivers.
If you purchased the softwared, decided that you didn't agree to the EULA, then you can return it. End of story.
Huh? Return it, how? Software retailers don't accept returns, except to exchange for another copy of the same thing.
It is not like this is totally out there - these agreements popup BEFORE the software installs and they blatently say - IF YOU AGREE TO THIS CLICK HERE!!! What is so hard to understand about that?
It's a like a contract signed at gunpoint. You pay $50 for an office suite, go to install it, and it says to install you must click agree. Otherwise, kiss your $450 away because we know you can't return it and get your money back.
"Integrity is doing the right thing when nobody is watching you."
Interesting thought:
Most religions say to do the right thing because god is watching.
I guess they assume that people have no integrity, and would never do the right thing when nobody is watching.
And it is called "Tribes 2". Even has a linux port.
The real question is, why would you not like the other tracks? It's all the same artist, and usually the style on one CD is relativly consistant. Maybe there are just one or two overhyped tracks that are actually decent, and the rest is just quick garbage/filler? If that is the case, I think I would rather not support the artist at all. Not even worth my $.99 if the artist is willing to pull that sort of crap.
$.99 for one track? No linear notes or hard media copy? No option to rip it as .ogg or higher/lower bitrate? Many $12 CD's have 14+ tracks, obviously this breaks down to less than $.99/track. I think I might buy when they offer a download for $.05. Think of it like pay-per-view movie. They go for a couple bucks, vs the "hard copy" DVD going for $19.99. No one would pay for a pay-per-view movie if it cost the same as the DVD of the same movie.
that's the reason why that WD ATA133 drive with 8MB cache scores so great, it can burst up to 8MB at up to 133MB/sec
Not quite. The only ATA/133 drives in existance are made by Maxtor. Those 8MB cache Western Digital drives are built with ATA/100 interfaces. Not that it matters to any measurable degree, the Maxtors don't actually benchmark any better when run off of an ATA/133 controller vs an ATA/100.
See Storage Review for more information.
First of all, it would be hard to make it fair and profitable at the same time. Take my current connection at home: I download 20GB/month, and pay $40/month for that capability. However, there are some people who just check email and do very little web browsing, with usage around 300MB/month. If they were paying for thier usage based on the same rate I pay, they would be paying less than $1/month. That would not be profitable for the ISP.
Another reason, is the simple fact that tracking bandwidth usage and billing for that usage can be very expensive in itself. It's not enough to just say "You transfered 8GB last month, so the bill is $80". With per MB billing, the biller would have to break down where exactly each download came from and each upload went to. That isn't cheap. This also brings to mind the fact that denial of services would take on a whole other meaning, someone on a hacked cable connection could suddenly have a $200 bill. And then the real reason against per MB charges, is that the real cost is in laying the lines, not running data over them. It doesn't cost the real ISP much at all to transfer data, why should the end users pay?
If you write a song, and want it "protected", keep it a fscking secret. Don't play it on the radio, don't release it on CD, and don't play it.
Eh. We have built a few boxes at my office, and time is *not* the issue at all. Perhaps we are the exception rather than the rule, but building a computer actually takes very little time, maybe 45 minutes a box. The real time is spent on software/user settings/configuration, and these things take just as long to do on a Dell as they do on a custom Athlon box. ESD straps/mats? Hrm, we have never used them. Out of maybe 20 builds so far we haven't had any failures, and heck if we fried 1 CPU in every 5 it would still be a lot cheaper than buying Dell boxes. Assembly area/space is about the same as what we require to setup a box to preinstall software anyway, so it's not a factor. Warranty issues are actually better with selfbuilt systems. How long does it take to get a failed drive replaced by Dell? If I need a drive replaced, I grab a spare from the computer room and send the failed drive to maxtor. The nice thing is that since we build the systems, we know what is in them. For new interns, building a computer is a good way to learn how things are supposed to be, and how to change components. Drivers are easy to find and update, and we don't have to worry about stupid non-standard powersupplies such as what Dell puts in boxes these days.
You don't seem to get it. Maybe 99% of the time the late night call staff is being underutilized, but what happens when there is a real outage, and the calls start flooding in? Under your genius idea of reducing the workforce to 3 people, you get a lot of pissed off customers who switch services, which in the long run costs much more than having a couple $12/hour employees "not doing work". Oh, you do want to keep 15 employees, you just want them to do other work as well. What exactly are they going to do? If they were skilled at other tasks, they would probably be doing them, call center work isn't exactly fun.
"CPU utilization of about one per cent, since the computer spends most of its time waiting for human input."
Isn't that the goal? I mean, do you really want to be waiting for your computer, ever?
That is a good point, that everyone needs some basics, such as knowing how to read a newspaper. However, the basics can be learned in 2-4 years. Everyone does not need to know history, accounting, anything more than basic math, chemistry, biology etc. The few things that people *DO* need to know aren't even taught in school- how to pay your taxes, write a good resume, get a job, understanding credit, write your congressperson, etc.
"Northern Virginia" is a big place. Care to be a bit more specific?
I was the same type of person in school as your friend. The most depressing thing isn't how worthless schooling is, but the fact that such a large chunk of our taxes are thrown away on it.
Duh, and visible light is also the same thing a different frequency. No one is suggesting light waves will kill you though.
You fail to consider a few things.
Don't you think legal concealed weapons can act as a crime deterrent?
If criminals don't need to worry about ordinary citizens having weapons, they can rob/murder/rape without fear of retaliation.
"Well, thats what the police are for", you might say. Unless every person has a 24/7 police bodyguard, they can not protect everyone all the time. The funniest thing is all the celebritys who are opposed to guns, who have armed bodyguards. They really are just opposed to *other*people* having guns, as long as they keep their own guards.