This article has some interesting "facts" about how transistors work. I particularly like the following quote:
Transistors are essentially microscopic on/off switches that consist of a source (where electrons come from), a drain (where they go) and a gate that controls the flow of electrons through a channel that connects the source and the drain.
When current flows from the source to the drain, a computer reads this as a "1." When current is not flowing, the transistor is read as a "0."
This is amazing. MSNBC has apparently re-written everything known about current, and logic sensing! As any undergraduate Electrical Engineer could tell you (and quite a few other people too), current flows against the direction of electron flow, not with it. If electrons are going one way, current is going the other way. That's been the convention for a VERY long time. Current is positive flow, not negative.
The other somewhat amazing claim here is that there is a logic "1" when the transistor is on and allowing electrons to flow, and a logic "0" when it is blocking them. That's amazing to me, since actually, it's the voltage at any given spot that determines the logic, not the on/off state of the transistors. And actually, one of the main benefits of CMOS technology is that between clock cycles when nothing is happening with the circuit (it is static), it consumes almost no power since no current is flowing. Charges exist, and some transistors are "on" and others are "off", but no current is flowing! (Note to other EEs: Yes I know that at current blindingly fast clock speeds, this benefit is largely gone, since few logical cells at any given time are actually not switching and charging up/down, but that was the original idea.)
Oh ya. The last thing is that in NMOS transistors, the electrons do flow from the Source to the Drain as the article said, but in PMOS, they flow from the drain to the source. And it's the Gate-to-Source voltage that's important, not just a voltage applied to the gate.
I wish they had somebody with any engineering skill, or at least a basic understanding, or at least run the article past somebody with some basic understanding of this. The writer of the article obviously has no actual knowledge whatsoever.
Perhaps it would have taken, say, 600 people, and that will bring down zones in Everquest, I think.
Do you remember the first few days of the bazaar after it opened to PC traders? It was lag hell. Even with good machines you had to have your face looking at the floor or you couldn't move. You SURE there wasn't more than 600 people in that zone at the same time? There was a LOT. Same idea in EC before the bazaar came about. That tunnel was crowded 24/7.
I justify it using my own personal set of morals, that of course do not coincide with those implied by law.
Hey, I'm the last person who would try and convince anyone that laws in any country even come close to what would be considered a set of morals. They often go directly opposite each other.
Perhaps your categories are just too narrow.
You're right. My catagories ARE narrow. Because it's a sweeping generalization. I don't fit exactly into any of them either. It's the message that's important, and it's a message that most of the mainstream media has missed: Some people will pirate no matter what, some people won't, and most people are "morally flexible". Trying to deter the first is a waste of time, and trying to punish the 3rd is equally useless. But restricting everybody just ticks everybody off, and not just the pirates.
DivX is free to download, and people everywhere can use it.
I will agree with you though that WMA is usually better than MPEG-1 or -2, but any MPEG-4-based codec like DivX is a GREAT way to encode/show movies with small filesize, and since it's free, and not MS-related, why not?
FLAC is too big. I think it's a great solution for permanent archiving where you want EVERY little thing to be preserved, but most of us just do not have the hard drive space, or more importantly, the portable player space to hold that stuff.
And for those who need a link, here's the FLAC homepage.
It makes piracy a hassle for whom? Certainly not the pirates. They'll just go on sharing perfectly unenecrypted files.
DRM only inconveniences the people who are paying for their music.
Exactly. In reality, there are only a few types of people out there in terms of music, and piracy in general:
Die-hard Piraters: These people will pirate whatever they can, from whatever source. They pay for nothing, ever, be it software or music, movies, etc. VERY legally Liable
Convenience Piraters: If it's easy, and they think that the legal way of getting it is too expensive/inconvenient/restricting, they'll pirate stuff, but only at near-zero risk of getting caught. Only really liable to RIAA, and not worth pursuing.
Non-pirates, but Hackers (us): Won't do it because their morals actually tell them that even if it IS easy, if there is NO chance of getting caught, it's still wrong, and so they don't pirate anything because of morals, but wanting to help the little guy too.
RIAA and MPAA Lackeys: These people are the absolute angels to people like the MPAA and the RIAA. Do what you're told, buy our things at our terms, and we'll all be happy. Ya right, but they do exist, and at least they are safe from lawsuits (probably, but DMCAv2 and other things may make even the innocent guilty).
The first group are NOT in large supply, but do provide a fair amount of content you otherwise wouldn't see, like movies out before they are in theatres, cracked full versions of expensive software tools (almost any Adobe product), etc. These people are NOT going to be stopped by anything short of MASSIVE inconvenience to pirate something, or uselessness even if they did. CD Keys for Online Play are a good example of foiling these people, at least to a degree. Games that have MOST of their value online (Quakes, *Craft, etc) will lose relatively fewer players to piracy, since the CD Keys will keep the online stuff straight (for the most part. I know that there are workarounds, etc, but this is in general).
The Second group, of what I call "Convenience Piraters" is quite a large group. Most people who download music that they didn't buy fall into this catagory. They are also the group that is most easily targeted by Online Music Services like iTunes. Most times, the things pirated by them they see as not hurting anybody, and/or that it's overpriced anyways (music fits this perfectly). A moral discussion about this is a whole topic in itself, but most of these people don't see what they are doing as really "wrong", or else they probably wouldn't do it, because they are basically good people.
The Fourth group of Lackeys is self-explanatory.
US! Some of us sometimes fall under Convenience Pirates, but most of the time we don't. But most of us believe in Fair Use, and we make many great tools that let us use our LEGALLY obtained media and other things. MPlayer should be completely legal everywhere, as any other "player" should be. Same thing as DeCSS. The first group of rampant pirates use tools like DeCSS to pirate and hurt people, but people like us use them for playing our stuff, not distributing it to 100k people.
We are the most misunderstood group, but also often the easist to target with lawsuits, like Jon Lech Johansen with DeCSS, and recently with the iTunes crack. We want to use our legally purchased stuff however we want, and even though bad apples (that first group again) will misuse it, that doesn't mean that it should be illegal.
It is ironic how Sony went to bat for the consumer in the BetaMax case with VCRs, and is now on the RIAA's side for music. These companies need to realize that if iTunes distributed music in OGG format, that piracy would not go up much, if at all. People would be HAPPY with what they have, and any distribution of such files would be 100% illegal, with NO legal middle ground. (For those who don't know, in the early da
Don't worry. The government will give Bombardier all the money they need to produce these, and then STILL charge 100k+ for them. They give them money for anything they want. And if it fails, they still won't be in the hole. Taxpayers to the rescue of corporations.
Remember, that company is from Quebec, so they'll get anything they want. That's how it works in this country.
First good news I've heard regarding IP, the DMCA, etc in a LONG time. FINALLY some people are realizing how monumentally stupid that piece of legislation is.
You're right, but you missed one of the most disturbing parts IMO.
From the article:
In some ways, these Free Software Foundation "enforcement actions" can be more dangerous than a typical copyright spat, because usually copyright holders seek money--say, royalties on the product that infringing companies are selling. But the Free Software Foundation doesn't want royalties--it wants you to burn down your house, or at the very least share it with cloners.
This basically means that "It's alright to do whatever you want, and infringe on anybody's stuff, as long as you pay them off at the end. Asking them to stop, or comply with the way the code was released is bad, because nothing should be free." This is disturbing in and of itself.
As for me, my list is: Mozilla: Like many others, this is the 1st thing installed after my drivers (and often before, to get the newest off the net). www.mozilla.org
Winamp: I install this early too, and should have thought of it. Credit goes to the parent though. classic.winamp.com
Java: The full mozilla installer SHOULD take care of it for you, but make sure that nothing went wrong. java.sun.com
Macromedia Flash: Too many websites out there need this, so make sure you have it, though Mozilla should be able to re-direct you if you hit a page and don't have it. www.macromedia.com
Quicktime: For Linux, mplayer is what you need, but for Windows, get it. Very useful. www.apple.com/quicktime
Openoffice: I don't see the need to use MS when you have this. It works for virtually everything. www.openoffice.org
Acrobat Reader: You're bound to get it with SOMETHING you install, but go to adobe.com to get the latest just in case. www.adobe.com
PkZip: People like WinZip, and XP has a compression utility built-in, but I still use an old shareware version of PkZip (They INVENTED.zip) that works great. No frills, and does the job. www.pkware.com
Don't think that there's anything else I use on a regular basis that's not a game or something.
Actually you can't "buy" your way past any waiting line for 99% of the procedures out there. Private health care is supposed to be illegal here. The only things that private people can make money off of up here are services that aren't deemed medically necessary (like most cosmetic surgery).
About the only thing you CAN buy beforehand is if you live near a private MRI clinic, and while there has been talk about shutting them down, or "appropriating" them for the public system, it will never happen because the rich politicians like to use them.
Those who want to jump the queue because they have money go to the US and pay for it there. It's impossible to pay for it here.
Erioll
P.S. I live in Alberta, about the biggest centre of health-care controversy in Canada outside of SARS-infected Toronto.
IEEE is responsible for a LARGE number of the computer-related standards out there. They are not just "someone" that puts out a standard. IEEE is probably the largest organization of computer and electronic-related people anywhere.
Of course anybody can ignore a standard, but if the largest organization in the world in this industry goes one way, do you really want to go the other way?
Actually It's even more complacated than this in the naming scheme. It's mentioned in Heretics of Dune where the priests are arguing that the God Emperor should be Leto the 3rd, since Maud'dib's father was Leto I, his first son that was killed by the infant was Leto II, and the God Emperor Leto III, but there was also a discussion about how II and III are really the same person because II died to open the way of heaven (or something like that) for the God Emperor.
Whatever. Herbert didn't forget it, and specifically addressed it. Whatever interpretation you go by, later on, Leto II referred to the God Emperor in almost all cases.
In the August 2002 edition of Scientific American, an alternative to Dark Matter is explored in the cover article. This alternative, called Modified Newtonian Dynamics (MOND), basically (VERY basically) proposes that F != ma, and that there is a very slight exponential component to the curve at extremely low accellerations, such as is experienced by large galaxies interacting. At more "traditional" accelerations, the curves become virtually identical, and MOND behaves almost exactly like the classical equation governing motion.
A gateway to some knowledge about this topic is at The MOND Pages . I'm sure if people search around, they can find better sources, but it remains an interesting topic to discuss in relation to the "missing matter" problem. If this pans out, then maybe not much is really missing at all. Or maybe a lot is. Only time will tell which theory is correct.
Thanks. This is exactly the kind of answer I was looking for. I'm glad that the problem has been tackled on other architectures at least. I don't know anything about sparc, and didn't know that they had already done something similar to what AMD is doing (different instruction set, but same general idea).
Thanks for answering my question.
Erioll
Re:Microsoft Quote, and Kernel Dev Question
on
AMD's 64-bit Plot
·
· Score: 1
I know that. But how many of those kernels also had to handle old 32-bit applications as well? I know there have been 64-bit kernels for different architectures, but I'm wondering if this new AMD "feature" causes problems, or if it's trivial to deal with, and is only a re-compile. It's a valid question.
Anybody that has actually coded for it have an answer to this?
Erioll
Microsoft Quote, and Kernel Dev Question
on
AMD's 64-bit Plot
·
· Score: 1
My favorite part so far (not at the end yet) is the part about why Microsoft would support it: "The relationship [with Microsoft] is very strong, and I think one of the things Microsoft would like to ensure is the tremendous opportunity Hammer presents for them to continue the evolution of the X86 investment is awesome. If you can imagine, put yourself in Microsoft's shoes, you see instead of having to do a right turn, 90 degrees, with the Itanium stuff, now they can see a way of evolving all this investment and technology and continue to be in that dominant position they've had and probably even make it stronger. So Microsoft is obviously selfishly, incredibly interested in making sure Hammer is a success."
The second last sentence is the best. But I like how in the previous paragraph that it says that Linux users are way ahead. Good for us.
As a side-note, any kernel devs out there have anything to say about this new processor? How much benefit do we get out of a 64-bit kernel? How hard is the kernel to port to native 64-bit, and dealing with running old 32-bit apps? I haven't done ANY kernel development myself, but am interested to know what the issues are.
I'm going to use that feedback page. I have a retail Radeon 8500, and I find the drivers work reasonably well, but there are, in specific places, graphical artifacts, like missing polygons, etc. But for the most part, I do find that they work quite well. I would of course prefer if they would re-release them as open source supported by the company (they would get a LOT of great free press then), but I do like the performance i'm getting except for the few issues left.
I just hope that they keep updating the drivers, or at least keep with a unified driver architecture like they seem to be doing for the 8x00 and 9x00 series of cards. That would ensure continual release of binaries for newer distros even for older cards as long they keep it all unified.
But I would like them to release the source. Sometimes you just need to be able to compile for your own unique hardware/software configuration.
Erioll
P.S. Btw. The graphical problem of mine is in Return to Castle Wolfenstein V. 1.4. running the Linux binaries. Not through WineX or anything. In a specific place in MP-Beach, the ground beneath me and in front of me just disappears. It's where you run in from the sea wall breach after you blow it up. The hill. A somewhat large (and not rectangular) chunk just disappears and you see what's behind it. Comes back if you run forward past where it clips out, but still a rather weird error. I dunno if driver or program problem, but it doesn't happen in XP.
It's Mandrake Root that kills with it's scream, not Nightshade.
Minor error, but your point is still valid. Children's stories ARE violent, and have terrifying things in them. You can't just have a story about generic "flat" villians all the time and have it become popular. Sometimes things go bad, and having such things in children's books is not necessarily a bad thing. Show children that evil DOES exist, but that it can be conquered by ordinary people. I would say that is the real message of the Harry Potter books/movies.
You're right. For payment purposes, a unique ID is necessary. But they shouldn't be "piggybacking" tracking technology on top of that as is being done in the article. That's the danger in any "convergent" technology. It's just too easy to have unique identifiers to track you all over the place. Sure, if you had some good data miners, you could see "ah. That guy paid this toll, then this one, etc so he's heading east (west, north whatever)." But with it being used for both, and MEANT that way, you obviously are being tracked on a per-person basis.
I was probably wrong to say that it should be legislated in so that everybody has to have one. Just enough drivers in the program to have a representative sample of the number of people on that road is probably enough, so a volunteer system would probably work, but regardless, it shouldn't be a "combined" tag with tolls, etc, since that promotes tracking. Just make them seperate.
I think the idea of tags to track traffic if used for purely congestion purposes, and helping ems, etc finding the quickest way to some place, but not if able to be used for tracking individuals. Just make tags that everyone is required by law to have in their vehicles, but make them with no ID tags at all. Each transponder will basically be saying "yes there is a tag here" rather than "tag 13489023094 is here". It would allow better traffic flow dynamics with real-time data on how dense traffic is, while keeping anonymity.
Being able to be tracked, in any form, isn't a good thing for innocent people. Maybe (BIG maybe) for conviced child molestors, murderors, etc it'd be OK to have a unique ID, and police trackable, but for the innocent (remember innocent until proven guilty you big-brother types?), there should be NO means of finding them, even if they are a suspect in a crime. Police shouldn't have access to that kind of data on normal law-abiding people. And making the tags themselves "generic" will make it impossible for them to know.
Slashdot Mirror
Maybe, but the current direction thing was my biggest peeve. That's just egregiously wrong.
Erioll
This article has some interesting "facts" about how transistors work. I particularly like the following quote:
This is amazing. MSNBC has apparently re-written everything known about current, and logic sensing! As any undergraduate Electrical Engineer could tell you (and quite a few other people too), current flows against the direction of electron flow, not with it. If electrons are going one way, current is going the other way. That's been the convention for a VERY long time. Current is positive flow, not negative.
The other somewhat amazing claim here is that there is a logic "1" when the transistor is on and allowing electrons to flow, and a logic "0" when it is blocking them. That's amazing to me, since actually, it's the voltage at any given spot that determines the logic, not the on/off state of the transistors. And actually, one of the main benefits of CMOS technology is that between clock cycles when nothing is happening with the circuit (it is static), it consumes almost no power since no current is flowing. Charges exist, and some transistors are "on" and others are "off", but no current is flowing! (Note to other EEs: Yes I know that at current blindingly fast clock speeds, this benefit is largely gone, since few logical cells at any given time are actually not switching and charging up/down, but that was the original idea.)
Oh ya. The last thing is that in NMOS transistors, the electrons do flow from the Source to the Drain as the article said, but in PMOS, they flow from the drain to the source. And it's the Gate-to-Source voltage that's important, not just a voltage applied to the gate.
I wish they had somebody with any engineering skill, or at least a basic understanding, or at least run the article past somebody with some basic understanding of this. The writer of the article obviously has no actual knowledge whatsoever.
Erioll
4th Year Undergraduate Electrical Engineer
Do you remember the first few days of the bazaar after it opened to PC traders? It was lag hell. Even with good machines you had to have your face looking at the floor or you couldn't move. You SURE there wasn't more than 600 people in that zone at the same time? There was a LOT. Same idea in EC before the bazaar came about. That tunnel was crowded 24/7.
Erioll
Hey, I'm the last person who would try and convince anyone that laws in any country even come close to what would be considered a set of morals. They often go directly opposite each other.
You're right. My catagories ARE narrow. Because it's a sweeping generalization. I don't fit exactly into any of them either. It's the message that's important, and it's a message that most of the mainstream media has missed: Some people will pirate no matter what, some people won't, and most people are "morally flexible". Trying to deter the first is a waste of time, and trying to punish the 3rd is equally useless. But restricting everybody just ticks everybody off, and not just the pirates.
Erioll
DivX is free to download, and people everywhere can use it.
I will agree with you though that WMA is usually better than MPEG-1 or -2, but any MPEG-4-based codec like DivX is a GREAT way to encode/show movies with small filesize, and since it's free, and not MS-related, why not?
Erioll
FLAC is too big. I think it's a great solution for permanent archiving where you want EVERY little thing to be preserved, but most of us just do not have the hard drive space, or more importantly, the portable player space to hold that stuff.
And for those who need a link, here's the FLAC homepage.
Erioll
Exactly. In reality, there are only a few types of people out there in terms of music, and piracy in general:
The first group are NOT in large supply, but do provide a fair amount of content you otherwise wouldn't see, like movies out before they are in theatres, cracked full versions of expensive software tools (almost any Adobe product), etc. These people are NOT going to be stopped by anything short of MASSIVE inconvenience to pirate something, or uselessness even if they did. CD Keys for Online Play are a good example of foiling these people, at least to a degree. Games that have MOST of their value online (Quakes, *Craft, etc) will lose relatively fewer players to piracy, since the CD Keys will keep the online stuff straight (for the most part. I know that there are workarounds, etc, but this is in general).
The Second group, of what I call "Convenience Piraters" is quite a large group. Most people who download music that they didn't buy fall into this catagory. They are also the group that is most easily targeted by Online Music Services like iTunes. Most times, the things pirated by them they see as not hurting anybody, and/or that it's overpriced anyways (music fits this perfectly). A moral discussion about this is a whole topic in itself, but most of these people don't see what they are doing as really "wrong", or else they probably wouldn't do it, because they are basically good people.
The Fourth group of Lackeys is self-explanatory.
US! Some of us sometimes fall under Convenience Pirates, but most of the time we don't. But most of us believe in Fair Use, and we make many great tools that let us use our LEGALLY obtained media and other things. MPlayer should be completely legal everywhere, as any other "player" should be. Same thing as DeCSS. The first group of rampant pirates use tools like DeCSS to pirate and hurt people, but people like us use them for playing our stuff, not distributing it to 100k people.
We are the most misunderstood group, but also often the easist to target with lawsuits, like Jon Lech Johansen with DeCSS, and recently with the iTunes crack. We want to use our legally purchased stuff however we want, and even though bad apples (that first group again) will misuse it, that doesn't mean that it should be illegal.
It is ironic how Sony went to bat for the consumer in the BetaMax case with VCRs, and is now on the RIAA's side for music. These companies need to realize that if iTunes distributed music in OGG format, that piracy would not go up much, if at all. People would be HAPPY with what they have, and any distribution of such files would be 100% illegal, with NO legal middle ground. (For those who don't know, in the early da
Don't worry. The government will give Bombardier all the money they need to produce these, and then STILL charge 100k+ for them. They give them money for anything they want. And if it fails, they still won't be in the hole. Taxpayers to the rescue of corporations.
Remember, that company is from Quebec, so they'll get anything they want. That's how it works in this country.
Erioll
First good news I've heard regarding IP, the DMCA, etc in a LONG time. FINALLY some people are realizing how monumentally stupid that piece of legislation is.
Erioll
You're right, but you missed one of the most disturbing parts IMO.
From the article:
This basically means that "It's alright to do whatever you want, and infringe on anybody's stuff, as long as you pay them off at the end. Asking them to stop, or comply with the way the code was released is bad, because nothing should be free." This is disturbing in and of itself.
Erioll
I'm suprised nobody else thought of it yet.
As for me, my list is:
Mozilla: Like many others, this is the 1st thing installed after my drivers (and often before, to get the newest off the net). www.mozilla.org
Winamp: I install this early too, and should have thought of it. Credit goes to the parent though. classic.winamp.com
Java: The full mozilla installer SHOULD take care of it for you, but make sure that nothing went wrong. java.sun.com
Macromedia Flash: Too many websites out there need this, so make sure you have it, though Mozilla should be able to re-direct you if you hit a page and don't have it. www.macromedia.com
Quicktime: For Linux, mplayer is what you need, but for Windows, get it. Very useful. www.apple.com/quicktime
Openoffice: I don't see the need to use MS when you have this. It works for virtually everything. www.openoffice.org
Acrobat Reader: You're bound to get it with SOMETHING you install, but go to adobe.com to get the latest just in case. www.adobe.com
PkZip: People like WinZip, and XP has a compression utility built-in, but I still use an old shareware version of PkZip (They INVENTED .zip) that works great. No frills, and does the job. www.pkware.com
Don't think that there's anything else I use on a regular basis that's not a game or something.
Erioll
I think that's what the analysis of head shape as related to intelligence, etc, but my spelling could be totally off.
Best recent use of it was in the Simpsons. Burns has a phrenology bust and uses it to analyse Homer (I think) and definietly Smithers.
Erioll
Actually you can't "buy" your way past any waiting line for 99% of the procedures out there. Private health care is supposed to be illegal here. The only things that private people can make money off of up here are services that aren't deemed medically necessary (like most cosmetic surgery).
About the only thing you CAN buy beforehand is if you live near a private MRI clinic, and while there has been talk about shutting them down, or "appropriating" them for the public system, it will never happen because the rich politicians like to use them.
Those who want to jump the queue because they have money go to the US and pay for it there. It's impossible to pay for it here.
Erioll
P.S. I live in Alberta, about the biggest centre of health-care controversy in Canada outside of SARS-infected Toronto.
IEEE is responsible for a LARGE number of the computer-related standards out there. They are not just "someone" that puts out a standard. IEEE is probably the largest organization of computer and electronic-related people anywhere.
Of course anybody can ignore a standard, but if the largest organization in the world in this industry goes one way, do you really want to go the other way?
Erioll
Actually It's even more complacated than this in the naming scheme. It's mentioned in Heretics of Dune where the priests are arguing that the God Emperor should be Leto the 3rd, since Maud'dib's father was Leto I, his first son that was killed by the infant was Leto II, and the God Emperor Leto III, but there was also a discussion about how II and III are really the same person because II died to open the way of heaven (or something like that) for the God Emperor.
Whatever. Herbert didn't forget it, and specifically addressed it. Whatever interpretation you go by, later on, Leto II referred to the God Emperor in almost all cases.
Erioll
Jet fuel is what is put in most(all?) airliners. Rocket fuel is what you use to get into space, and maybe other "fun" applications.
Change the title.
Erioll
In the August 2002 edition of Scientific American, an alternative to Dark Matter is explored in the cover article. This alternative, called Modified Newtonian Dynamics (MOND), basically (VERY basically) proposes that F != ma, and that there is a very slight exponential component to the curve at extremely low accellerations, such as is experienced by large galaxies interacting. At more "traditional" accelerations, the curves become virtually identical, and MOND behaves almost exactly like the classical equation governing motion.
A gateway to some knowledge about this topic is at The MOND Pages . I'm sure if people search around, they can find better sources, but it remains an interesting topic to discuss in relation to the "missing matter" problem. If this pans out, then maybe not much is really missing at all. Or maybe a lot is. Only time will tell which theory is correct.
Erioll
Thanks. This is exactly the kind of answer I was looking for. I'm glad that the problem has been tackled on other architectures at least. I don't know anything about sparc, and didn't know that they had already done something similar to what AMD is doing (different instruction set, but same general idea).
Thanks for answering my question.
Erioll
I know that. But how many of those kernels also had to handle old 32-bit applications as well? I know there have been 64-bit kernels for different architectures, but I'm wondering if this new AMD "feature" causes problems, or if it's trivial to deal with, and is only a re-compile. It's a valid question.
Anybody that has actually coded for it have an answer to this?
Erioll
My favorite part so far (not at the end yet) is the part about why Microsoft would support it: "The relationship [with Microsoft] is very strong, and I think one of the things Microsoft would like to ensure is the tremendous opportunity Hammer presents for them to continue the evolution of the X86 investment is awesome. If you can imagine, put yourself in Microsoft's shoes, you see instead of having to do a right turn, 90 degrees, with the Itanium stuff, now they can see a way of evolving all this investment and technology and continue to be in that dominant position they've had and probably even make it stronger. So Microsoft is obviously selfishly, incredibly interested in making sure Hammer is a success."
The second last sentence is the best. But I like how in the previous paragraph that it says that Linux users are way ahead. Good for us.
As a side-note, any kernel devs out there have anything to say about this new processor? How much benefit do we get out of a 64-bit kernel? How hard is the kernel to port to native 64-bit, and dealing with running old 32-bit apps? I haven't done ANY kernel development myself, but am interested to know what the issues are.
Erioll
I'm going to use that feedback page. I have a retail Radeon 8500, and I find the drivers work reasonably well, but there are, in specific places, graphical artifacts, like missing polygons, etc. But for the most part, I do find that they work quite well. I would of course prefer if they would re-release them as open source supported by the company (they would get a LOT of great free press then), but I do like the performance i'm getting except for the few issues left.
I just hope that they keep updating the drivers, or at least keep with a unified driver architecture like they seem to be doing for the 8x00 and 9x00 series of cards. That would ensure continual release of binaries for newer distros even for older cards as long they keep it all unified.
But I would like them to release the source. Sometimes you just need to be able to compile for your own unique hardware/software configuration.
Erioll
P.S. Btw. The graphical problem of mine is in Return to Castle Wolfenstein V. 1.4. running the Linux binaries. Not through WineX or anything. In a specific place in MP-Beach, the ground beneath me and in front of me just disappears. It's where you run in from the sea wall breach after you blow it up. The hill. A somewhat large (and not rectangular) chunk just disappears and you see what's behind it. Comes back if you run forward past where it clips out, but still a rather weird error. I dunno if driver or program problem, but it doesn't happen in XP.
It's Mandrake Root that kills with it's scream, not Nightshade.
Minor error, but your point is still valid. Children's stories ARE violent, and have terrifying things in them. You can't just have a story about generic "flat" villians all the time and have it become popular. Sometimes things go bad, and having such things in children's books is not necessarily a bad thing. Show children that evil DOES exist, but that it can be conquered by ordinary people. I would say that is the real message of the Harry Potter books/movies.
Erioll
That is the best part of it. Whenever I wonder how stupid people can get, I just look at that and shake my head.
You're right. For payment purposes, a unique ID is necessary. But they shouldn't be "piggybacking" tracking technology on top of that as is being done in the article. That's the danger in any "convergent" technology. It's just too easy to have unique identifiers to track you all over the place. Sure, if you had some good data miners, you could see "ah. That guy paid this toll, then this one, etc so he's heading east (west, north whatever)." But with it being used for both, and MEANT that way, you obviously are being tracked on a per-person basis.
I was probably wrong to say that it should be legislated in so that everybody has to have one. Just enough drivers in the program to have a representative sample of the number of people on that road is probably enough, so a volunteer system would probably work, but regardless, it shouldn't be a "combined" tag with tolls, etc, since that promotes tracking. Just make them seperate.
Erioll
I think the idea of tags to track traffic if used for purely congestion purposes, and helping ems, etc finding the quickest way to some place, but not if able to be used for tracking individuals. Just make tags that everyone is required by law to have in their vehicles, but make them with no ID tags at all. Each transponder will basically be saying "yes there is a tag here" rather than "tag 13489023094 is here". It would allow better traffic flow dynamics with real-time data on how dense traffic is, while keeping anonymity.
Being able to be tracked, in any form, isn't a good thing for innocent people. Maybe (BIG maybe) for conviced child molestors, murderors, etc it'd be OK to have a unique ID, and police trackable, but for the innocent (remember innocent until proven guilty you big-brother types?), there should be NO means of finding them, even if they are a suspect in a crime. Police shouldn't have access to that kind of data on normal law-abiding people. And making the tags themselves "generic" will make it impossible for them to know.
Erioll