Very good point about the GUI applications. If you can't *use* the application with a command line, there's no reason you should be able to *run* it that way.
Hmmm... don't they all launch using a command line type command? I mean, there is a little icon, which is associated with some text command (which you can change), that runs that command when the icon is double clicked (or single clicked in KDE).
I like this feature. You can also get useful debugging info if you run in a shell, instead of stuff just dying, like in Windows. If you don't want to run stuff in a shell, make an icon. Simple!
I believe that Taco was referring to the practice of blocking networks (Fox, NBC, ABC, CBS) which have a local affiliate near your area. I think there may even be a law that forces them to. This way, you have to watch the local affiliate with local commercials. Unfortunately, you usually have to have cable in order to get decent reception of the local stations. This is true in my area, you can't get a damn thing if you try to use the bunny ears.
Looking at the quote again:
just to get a damn FOX affiliate over my dish
He is already paying for his service. He's just pissed that he's not allowed to get Fox.
The stablity of the wing is in it's implementation, not it's inherent concepts.
That's true.
If the wing
was inherently unstable, the design would of never been considered, since designers focus on making the plane as stable as possible, without
having computers make many, many corrections per second.
That's not necessarily true. If you're trying to design a commercial aircraft, that's going to carry civilians, then yes, you want a very stable plane. But, there are certain advantages to having an inherently unstable aircraft. One being agility. I hate making blanket statements, but in this case, I think it's true... All modern fighter planes (F-xx) are inherently unstable. It improves their maneuverability, but you have to use a fly-by-wire system.
Nope, you don't even own a copy of the software that you purchased. If you did, they couldn't put as many restrictions on its use as they do. You're given a license to use the software (hence the EULA), but you don't own it. The only thing you own is the media that contains the software.
Although, there really isn't (currently) any way for Big Evil Corp(tm) to track you down, so in a practical sense, you own it. Just not in a legal sense.
UD has to take part of the blame for: a) not being upfront about the rest of it's business
I have to believe that UD was taken by surpise by all this. I sure was... I just run the client, I don't work for UD, though. But if you notice, Michael got his info from the UD web site. I signed up for UD a little over a month ago, and before I even downloaded the client, I made sure to read everything, and I knew that they were going to try to get commercial projects. I think that qualifies as being upfront about it's business strategy.
and b) not providing along some reassuring terms in the contract saying that those cpu cycles will not be used for anything else (there is anyway a contract with the code saying you may not reverse engineer the code, why not put something in there to the effect that the Program will only work on the cure for cancer Project?)
But you can choose what category of projects you want to run, I think that qualifies as a reassurance. You don't want to run commercial projects? Hey, that's great! Don't! They knew that not everyone would want to, so they let you choose.
About the reverse engineering clause... The point is that the client is supposed to be a platform. That means that you can do lots of different types of projects with the same client, yes, even commercial ones. If someone fooled around with it, they could artificially inflate their stats by returning bogus data. Even in nonprofit projects, where no money is involved, this is a problem, what happens when you throw money in the mix? People trying to make a quick buck, thus they have more incentive than just the envy of a few geeks.
For all you know the first two computers work on this problem, and the next 20000 computers work on making a buck for someone else.
I don't really see how this is different from another closed source project, Seti@home. In the end you're choosing to trust that you're working on what they say you're working on. All the pretty screensavers in the world don't mean squat.
I like UD because they at least give you a shot at making money on the nonprofit projects, and whenever they start doing commercial projects (because they are not currently, they just came out of beta for THINK today), they'll give adequate compensation then. I've been on the message boards, the people there are great, UD employees post regularly (even Moose of D.net fame). All in all, I think it's a cool company to be involved with.
Gee, I might agree with you if you didn't do the same damn thing! The above poster pointed out a glaring omission on Michael's part, and all you can do is call him a karma whore.
The point is that you can choose which category of projects you want to run. If you don't want to run any commercial projects, that's fine! Gee, I guess I'm just biased because I've been running the client for a month and I've had plenty of time to go through the site and the message boards to get a real feel for the project instead of posting some poorly researched rant as Michael did.
I personally have no problem with what UD is doing. What!? You mean there's a company that's trying to make a profit! Those bastards! How dare they try to make money from what they love to do?!
They are not currently running commercial projects, hell they just came out of beta with the cancer project. They're already awarding money, both in contests for computing power and random drawings. Whenever they start doing commercial projects, I'm confident that I'll be adequately compensated if I choose to run them. If I feel shafted, then I'll go elsewhere, but really, Michael has no excuse here. He obviously has not talked to anyone from the company, and he is spreading some major FUD.
Just a nitpick, but the Planetary Society was not just founded by Carl Sagan, it was founded by Carl Sagan, Bruce Murray, and Louis Friedman in 1980. Info here.
People always forget about those other two guys... kinda like Apollo 11. Everyone remembers Neil Armstrong, some people remember Buzz Aldrin (probably because he has a cool name), but who remembers Michael Collins?
Hmmm... I think I'll back away from the unnecessary jabs at Chinese people. I think you probably meant the Chinese government, rather than the Chinese as a people.
Back to the topic, I think that genetically engineering a crew is a great idea, as far as the technical aspects go. In order to survive in space, you'd need some kind of hard skin, maybe an exoskeleton. You'd also need a good supply of oxygen, which you may be able to get from chlorophyll, as long as you's relatively close to the sun.
But what could you do about radiation? Are there any organisms that are really tough in that respect? (Insert joke about cockroaches surviving nuclear holocaust)
People's attitudes will have to change a lot before this happens because these new creatures will be intelligent and human-ish, but they won't really look like us. Nowadays people have problems when someone's skin is a different color. What's going to happen when they try to converse with a big green insect-like humanoid?
Actually, I've always been a big fan of Sega, but I've always thought of them as being "that other console maker". When SMS came out, it didn't have the number of games that the NES did. When the Genesis/MD came out, they had a great console, but Nintendo had the SNES that still dominated. Sega Saturn never really took off, even though it was a great system (IMO), due to competition from Sony.
Finally, the Dreamcast was in competition with the PS2, a console that didn't even enter the market more than a year after the Dreamcast. I was just amazed when I would talk to people about consoles and I'd mention the Dreamcast, and they'd say, "I'm waiting for the PS2".
As for the Nvidia thing... I wouldn't say that, "Nvidia is a known monopolist." Their lock on the video card industry is a fairly recent phenomenon... when the Geforce came out (1.5 years ago?). Anyway, there is fairly stiff competition for them on the horizon. Hardly a Microsoft situation.
Just about 100 years ago the cops couldn't tap phones to solve crimes, there weren't any
I'm a nitpicker...
March 10th of this year will be the 125th anniversary of that historic incident in which A.G. Bell spilled acid on himself and proceeded to convert his voice into an analog electrical signal that traversed a wire and alerted Thomas Watson to his plight.
So actually there were quite a few phones 100 years ago. I don't know about the history of wiretapping, though.:)
Correct me if I'm wrong, as I don't own an smp system, but don't you have to reboot to change from uniprocessor mode to dual processor mode? I seem to remember reading something about pulling out the processor and installing a termintor in the socket. Of course, there may be an easier way to disable one processor, but I still think that you'd have to reboot in order to make the switch.
Why do people consider 142% for two processors impressive?
If they had said that the dual athlon system was 142% as fast as the uniprocessor system, then it would have been disappointing, but 142% faster is more than twice as fast.
Of course, the benchmark was flawed, as many others have pointed out, so the real numbers may not be as impressive.
As for advertising 1.5GHz Macs, if Apple/Motorola had wanted to do that, they would have needed to do little more than add a 2x clock divider to the processor (I'm sure they could have found some technical justification).
Hmmm...
1) I think you mean clock multiplier.
2) If it were that easy, it would have been done already. The reason it hasn't been done is that the architecture, in its current form, cannot scale to GHz speeds. It wasn't designed to.
I know that you and edremy are being sarcastic, but that analogy is really flawed. It's the same kind of misleading argument that Metallica made against Napster and "stealing" of music.
If I steal your car, I have your car, and you don't have your car anymore. BUT, if I use my CD burner to make a copy of your Win 98 CD, then I have Win 98 but you still have the original Win 98 CD.
What's really happened is that Microsoft (and all middle men) have lost out on a sale. Something that is much more intangible (and harder to track) than a stolen truck. Which is why it is so difficult to stop.
If you don't trust The People with Choice, how can you trust them with children?
That's funny, I thought that pro-choice legislation was about giving people a chance to make up their own mind and not letting the government decide for them. That is, letting us (the people) make a very personal decision (emotional and medical) about our own welfare.
It is not about screwing up the environment that is already there. We know that there isn't any life there worth saving. I think the point was that there needs to be a lot more research that needs to be done before we start terraforming Mars.
I am no expert on planetary biology or atmospheric science (is there such a field?), but it seems like there is a chance that we might make Mars more hostile to human life if we aren't careful. If we screw up Mars, where else are we going to go?
And now this, when the ICH2 is coupled with the i850 and i860 MTHs
Emphasis mine. Actually, it's MCH. Memory Controller Hub. An MTH was used when you wanted to use PC100 sdram in a RIMM slot.
Re: Glad to see someone else who hates Mesa.
on
3dfx Does OpenGL
·
· Score: 1
3dfx is staying with a 128-bit 2D accelerator when the world has
moved onto 256-bit.
Oh no... It happened to you too. Check out
this article over at Tom's. The Geforce is NOT a 256 bit chip. It's all marketing.
Here's the quote:
I could hardly believe my ears when I was finally told what the '256' stands for. NVIDIA adds the 32-bit deep color, the 24-bit deep Z-buffer and the 8-bit stencil buffer of each rendering pipeline and multiplies it with 4, for each pipeline, which indeed adds up to 256.
It looks like ATI got sucked into doing it as well because it seems this strategy to confuse consumers actually works.
Or how about the way that "morons" and "retards" stereotype people? I myself am an Aggie, and proud of it damnit! I have never worked on the bonfire, I'm not in the Corps of Cadets, and (gasp!) I'm a Mexican!
I know many Hispanics in the Corps, and I have Asian, Indian, and African American friends and acquaintances who have not (in their time here in College Station) been on the receiving end of racial hostilities. That's not to say that there are no racial incidents, but they are not as widespread as you imply.
Or how about the
predominately macho military centric views they espise?
Give me a break! Where did you get that nonsense? I assume you are making a reference to the Corps. Do you have any idea what percentage of the student population they make up? Well, I don't, but I'd say that out of 45,000 students, there are 6,000 CT's, tops. Not enough to sway the entire student body into a "macho military centric view".
As for Bonfire, well, okay, it turned out to be a bad design, a bit too tall, and not enough support (IIRC)... Drinking while building Bonfire is a long and ill-advised tradition, but there was no evidence that it led to the accident.
As for the Aggie jokes, who do you think makes up most of them? < flamebait> Do you think the t-sips are smart enough to make them up on their own? </flamebait>
Anyway, I just had to respond. I love this town and I love this university, and I can't stand it when someone says what you said. If I was moderating your comment, it would have either been Flamebait or Troll. I find it amusing that you decided to use the automatic +1 even when it had nothing to do with the main topic.
"... message passing as the fundamental operation of the OS is just an excercise in computer science masturbation."
Did you even read it? Please, show where says that we shouldn't eat meat.
He said that he doesn't eat meat, but he never says that we shouldn't eat meat. His "analysis" was on the hypocrisy of stating that simulated violence against animals is wrong when we live in a society that (for the most part) lives off violence done to animals. In order to eat an animal, it must be killed. When it is killed it dies in pain (unless they've started tranquilizing them and nobody told me). Is that not violence?
Personally, I'm a proud omnivore, except I try to stay away from pork because, for some reason, pork and I (er, my digestive tract, that is) don't get along. I wasn't at all offended by the rant. In fact, I rather liked it because an actual reason was given for opposition to the rating, rather than a simple, "Ratings SUCK!" blurb.
Actually, I rather like this defense of the article.
"... message passing as the fundamental operation of the OS is just an excercise in computer science masturbation."
Well, it didn't seem like Rob was making a political statement or a protest about free software vs proprietary. It was more indirect...
(note to story submittors: if video clips aren't viewable under Linux, I can't view them to consider them for posting, so don't bother submitting those quicktime clips;).
... is a long way from: "Since Quick time is an evil proprietary format, DON'T SUBMIT QUICKTIME CLIPS." Besides, the Real format is also proprietary, but it just happens to have better Linux support. It's kind of like when I tell people that I run Linux, so I can't see those silly executable animations that they keep emailing me. Not that I would run them anyway because of the security risk, but I think it hurts people's feelings when I say that (like I don't trust them or something), so I stick with the Linux story.
Having principles is good, and I agree that Real Networks hasn't been a good neighbor lately, but come on... do you have to have your hand held for you? If you want the Quicktime clips, can't you find them yourself?
"... message passing as the fundamental operation of the OS is just an excercise in computer science masturbation."
While telling people where to find copies of a document is, arguably, a free speech issue, posting verbatim copies of a copyrighted work clearly isn't.
I don't know... I saw the posting of the full text as a form of protest against Microsoft's proprietary extensions to Kerberos, which is supposed to be an open standard. If you look at it from that point of view, couldn't it be argued that it was a form of free speech?
And another thing... comment #86 by smartin, which is listed above as having a copy of the full text, has nothing of the sort. I think they meant to put comment #87 by an AC, which does. The two comments made by BlueUnderwear also don't contain the full text, as stated in the letter. The merely contain this link.
"... message passing as the fundamental operation of the OS is just an excercise in computer science masturbation."
Apparently, they found out it was popular... check out the link that you put up. They have a banner ad from doubleclick.net up there now.
Personally, Google is good enough for me, but if I can't seem to find it, I check out Altavista. I guess now I can use Raging.com as my second choice now.
"... message passing as the fundamental operation of the OS is just an excercise in computer science masturbation."
Slashdot Mirror
Hmmm... don't they all launch using a command line type command? I mean, there is a little icon, which is associated with some text command (which you can change), that runs that command when the icon is double clicked (or single clicked in KDE).
I like this feature. You can also get useful debugging info if you run in a shell, instead of stuff just dying, like in Windows. If you don't want to run stuff in a shell, make an icon. Simple!
Looking at the quote again:
just to get a damn FOX affiliate over my dish
He is already paying for his service. He's just pissed that he's not allowed to get Fox.
That's true.
If the wing was inherently unstable, the design would of never been considered, since designers focus on making the plane as stable as possible, without having computers make many, many corrections per second.
That's not necessarily true. If you're trying to design a commercial aircraft, that's going to carry civilians, then yes, you want a very stable plane. But, there are certain advantages to having an inherently unstable aircraft. One being agility. I hate making blanket statements, but in this case, I think it's true... All modern fighter planes (F-xx) are inherently unstable. It improves their maneuverability, but you have to use a fly-by-wire system.
Hmmm... When I read that statement, it seemed like a rather ludicrous point of view, so I read it as sarcasm, and it made a lot more sense.
Although, there really isn't (currently) any way for Big Evil Corp(tm) to track you down, so in a practical sense, you own it. Just not in a legal sense.
I have to believe that UD was taken by surpise by all this. I sure was... I just run the client, I don't work for UD, though. But if you notice, Michael got his info from the UD web site. I signed up for UD a little over a month ago, and before I even downloaded the client, I made sure to read everything, and I knew that they were going to try to get commercial projects. I think that qualifies as being upfront about it's business strategy.
and b) not providing along some reassuring terms in the contract saying that those cpu cycles will not be used for anything else (there is anyway a contract with the code saying you may not reverse engineer the code, why not put something in there to the effect that the Program will only work on the cure for cancer Project?)
But you can choose what category of projects you want to run, I think that qualifies as a reassurance. You don't want to run commercial projects? Hey, that's great! Don't! They knew that not everyone would want to, so they let you choose.
About the reverse engineering clause... The point is that the client is supposed to be a platform. That means that you can do lots of different types of projects with the same client, yes, even commercial ones. If someone fooled around with it, they could artificially inflate their stats by returning bogus data. Even in nonprofit projects, where no money is involved, this is a problem, what happens when you throw money in the mix? People trying to make a quick buck, thus they have more incentive than just the envy of a few geeks.
I don't really see how this is different from another closed source project, Seti@home. In the end you're choosing to trust that you're working on what they say you're working on. All the pretty screensavers in the world don't mean squat.
I like UD because they at least give you a shot at making money on the nonprofit projects, and whenever they start doing commercial projects (because they are not currently, they just came out of beta for THINK today), they'll give adequate compensation then. I've been on the message boards, the people there are great, UD employees post regularly (even Moose of D.net fame). All in all, I think it's a cool company to be involved with.
The point is that you can choose which category of projects you want to run. If you don't want to run any commercial projects, that's fine! Gee, I guess I'm just biased because I've been running the client for a month and I've had plenty of time to go through the site and the message boards to get a real feel for the project instead of posting some poorly researched rant as Michael did.
I personally have no problem with what UD is doing. What!? You mean there's a company that's trying to make a profit! Those bastards! How dare they try to make money from what they love to do?!
They are not currently running commercial projects, hell they just came out of beta with the cancer project. They're already awarding money, both in contests for computing power and random drawings. Whenever they start doing commercial projects, I'm confident that I'll be adequately compensated if I choose to run them. If I feel shafted, then I'll go elsewhere, but really, Michael has no excuse here. He obviously has not talked to anyone from the company, and he is spreading some major FUD.
People always forget about those other two guys... kinda like Apollo 11. Everyone remembers Neil Armstrong, some people remember Buzz Aldrin (probably because he has a cool name), but who remembers Michael Collins?
Back to the topic, I think that genetically engineering a crew is a great idea, as far as the technical aspects go. In order to survive in space, you'd need some kind of hard skin, maybe an exoskeleton. You'd also need a good supply of oxygen, which you may be able to get from chlorophyll, as long as you's relatively close to the sun.
But what could you do about radiation? Are there any organisms that are really tough in that respect? (Insert joke about cockroaches surviving nuclear holocaust)
People's attitudes will have to change a lot before this happens because these new creatures will be intelligent and human-ish, but they won't really look like us. Nowadays people have problems when someone's skin is a different color. What's going to happen when they try to converse with a big green insect-like humanoid?
Finally, the Dreamcast was in competition with the PS2, a console that didn't even enter the market more than a year after the Dreamcast. I was just amazed when I would talk to people about consoles and I'd mention the Dreamcast, and they'd say, "I'm waiting for the PS2".
As for the Nvidia thing... I wouldn't say that, "Nvidia is a known monopolist." Their lock on the video card industry is a fairly recent phenomenon... when the Geforce came out (1.5 years ago?). Anyway, there is fairly stiff competition for them on the horizon. Hardly a Microsoft situation.
I'm a nitpicker...
March 10th of this year will be the 125th anniversary of that historic incident in which A.G. Bell spilled acid on himself and proceeded to convert his voice into an analog electrical signal that traversed a wire and alerted Thomas Watson to his plight.
So actually there were quite a few phones 100 years ago. I don't know about the history of wiretapping, though. :)
Correct me if I'm wrong, as I don't own an smp system, but don't you have to reboot to change from uniprocessor mode to dual processor mode? I seem to remember reading something about pulling out the processor and installing a termintor in the socket. Of course, there may be an easier way to disable one processor, but I still think that you'd have to reboot in order to make the switch.
If they had said that the dual athlon system was 142% as fast as the uniprocessor system, then it would have been disappointing, but 142% faster is more than twice as fast.
Of course, the benchmark was flawed, as many others have pointed out, so the real numbers may not be as impressive.
Hmmm...
1) I think you mean clock multiplier.
2) If it were that easy, it would have been done already. The reason it hasn't been done is that the architecture, in its current form, cannot scale to GHz speeds. It wasn't designed to.
If I steal your car, I have your car, and you don't have your car anymore. BUT, if I use my CD burner to make a copy of your Win 98 CD, then I have Win 98 but you still have the original Win 98 CD.
What's really happened is that Microsoft (and all middle men) have lost out on a sale. Something that is much more intangible (and harder to track) than a stolen truck. Which is why it is so difficult to stop.
That's funny, I thought that pro-choice legislation was about giving people a chance to make up their own mind and not letting the government decide for them. That is, letting us (the people) make a very personal decision (emotional and medical) about our own welfare.
I am no expert on planetary biology or atmospheric science (is there such a field?), but it seems like there is a chance that we might make Mars more hostile to human life if we aren't careful. If we screw up Mars, where else are we going to go?
Emphasis mine. Actually, it's MCH. Memory Controller Hub. An MTH was used when you wanted to use PC100 sdram in a RIMM slot.
Oh no... It happened to you too. Check out this article over at Tom's. The Geforce is NOT a 256 bit chip. It's all marketing.
Here's the quote:
I could hardly believe my ears when I was finally told what the '256' stands for. NVIDIA adds the 32-bit deep color, the 24-bit deep Z-buffer and the 8-bit stencil buffer of each rendering pipeline and multiplies it with 4, for each pipeline, which indeed adds up to 256.
It looks like ATI got sucked into doing it as well because it seems this strategy to confuse consumers actually works.
Or how about the predominately macho military centric views they espise?
Give me a break! Where did you get that nonsense? I assume you are making a reference to the Corps. Do you have any idea what percentage of the student population they make up? Well, I don't, but I'd say that out of 45,000 students, there are 6,000 CT's, tops. Not enough to sway the entire student body into a "macho military centric view".
As for Bonfire, well, okay, it turned out to be a bad design, a bit too tall, and not enough support (IIRC)... Drinking while building Bonfire is a long and ill-advised tradition, but there was no evidence that it led to the accident.
As for the Aggie jokes, who do you think makes up most of them? < flamebait> Do you think the t-sips are smart enough to make them up on their own? </flamebait>
Anyway, I just had to respond. I love this town and I love this university, and I can't stand it when someone says what you said. If I was moderating your comment, it would have either been Flamebait or Troll. I find it amusing that you decided to use the automatic +1 even when it had nothing to do with the main topic.
"... message passing as the fundamental operation of the OS is just an excercise in computer science masturbation."
He said that he doesn't eat meat, but he never says that we shouldn't eat meat. His "analysis" was on the hypocrisy of stating that simulated violence against animals is wrong when we live in a society that (for the most part) lives off violence done to animals. In order to eat an animal, it must be killed. When it is killed it dies in pain (unless they've started tranquilizing them and nobody told me). Is that not violence?
Personally, I'm a proud omnivore, except I try to stay away from pork because, for some reason, pork and I (er, my digestive tract, that is) don't get along. I wasn't at all offended by the rant. In fact, I rather liked it because an actual reason was given for opposition to the rating, rather than a simple, "Ratings SUCK!" blurb.
Actually, I rather like this defense of the article.
"... message passing as the fundamental operation of the OS is just an excercise in computer science masturbation."
(note to story submittors: if video clips aren't viewable under Linux, I can't view them to consider them for posting, so don't bother submitting those quicktime clips ;).
Having principles is good, and I agree that Real Networks hasn't been a good neighbor lately, but come on... do you have to have your hand held for you? If you want the Quicktime clips, can't you find them yourself?
"... message passing as the fundamental operation of the OS is just an excercise in computer science masturbation."
I don't know... I saw the posting of the full text as a form of protest against Microsoft's proprietary extensions to Kerberos, which is supposed to be an open standard. If you look at it from that point of view, couldn't it be argued that it was a form of free speech?
And another thing... comment #86 by smartin, which is listed above as having a copy of the full text, has nothing of the sort. I think they meant to put comment #87 by an AC, which does. The two comments made by BlueUnderwear also don't contain the full text, as stated in the letter. The merely contain this link.
"... message passing as the fundamental operation of the OS is just an excercise in computer science masturbation."
Personally, Google is good enough for me, but if I can't seem to find it, I check out Altavista. I guess now I can use Raging.com as my second choice now.
"... message passing as the fundamental operation of the OS is just an excercise in computer science masturbation."