Yes, you're right. First ISP to put a measure like that in place will loose a shitload of customers. It would need to be forced upon them. But as you say, they could at least block ports 135,139 and 445.
Unfortunately, the user will mindlessly disable the firewall if it stops something from working. You need a hardware solution which can't be totally disabled (like NAT).
Our retarded government is shoving broadband down everyone's throats. That means that tons and bloody tons of people are all getting broadband, without firewall software or proper instructions on how to use it.
I really don't know why ISPs don't just suspend the accounts of PCs with zombies/viruses. In the same way that you get your driving licence revoked/suspended for driving like an ass, people should get their internet accounts suspended too.
And it's not like it's hard to tell who the culprits are. Anyone who has logging enabled on their firewall will know exactly what I mean.
It depends exactly which way the facial recognition works:
If it's looking for one particular person in a crowd of people, it can (possibly) be reasonably effective.
If, however, it's comparing a single face against a set of 60 million, it has absolutely no chance. Some people look enough alike for a human to not be able to tell the difference. Add in poor focus, weather and lighting conditions, and the fact it is a 2D image, and the computer has absolutely no chance.
CCTV facial recognition is a joke, don't worry about that.
If however, they try and impose ID cards with biometric data upon us, then the oil blockades from a few years ago will look like a small obscure protest. Fuck That Shit.
Be patient. People who use Linux, BSD etc (mostly) buy hardware after checking how well they support it, and it's now starting to have an effect. ATI seem to have realised that with crappy Linux/BSD support they have lost a load of business, and are trying to bring out better Linux/BSD drivers.
When both nVidia and ATI have decent Linux/BSD support, the first one to open their drivers (3rd party IP permitting) gets the customers. It should be the same with most hardware.
Or they could disable the FPU and use a floating point emulator - which would be fine if the application used a minimal amount of floating point operations.
It's nothing to worry about.. yet. IBM is probably aiming these things at businesses, and is one of the companies least likely to cripple Linux with DRM. If implemented correctly, DRM could be used to stop people fucking around with your computer.
Linux isn't currently any real threat to Microsoft on the desktop, so I would think this is a way to control media, but who's going to buy a computer which doesn't pirate music and films anyway?
And remember that Microsoft are the people who designed the XBox DRM. Look how well that worked.
Well, you're right, it's a difficult question. But I think it's quite clear that Microsoft is a monopoly, and that when they bundle products, it stops other companies competing with similar products. Let's face it, what they did to Netscape was not right, by any stretch of the imagination.
It's not that making a product that's good enough is a monopoly, its that as long as a bundled product is reasonably acceptable, the laziness of the normal user means that other companies don't get much of a chance to compete, even by producing a better product.
It doesn't need to be any better than Firefox - it just needs to be sufficiently good enough for 'normal' people not to want to bother with using another browser.
This, is why a monopoly shouldn't be allowed to bundle software.
It's a SiS chipset, ie it's likely to be nowhere near as good as an nForce/Intel chipset, which would probably make it unsuitable for benchmarking.
Why anyone would want this is completely beyond me. How about buying a (probably cheaper) motherboard designed for a specific brand of CPU, which will almost certainly have much better performance?
the customer can come in and say "I want AMD" or "I want Intel"
You don't want to do business with people like that. Someone who gets a computer pre-built, yet still insists on the type of CPU is almost certainly a complete and total idiot.
I'm not saying that you're wrong, but please explain to me how the CPU processes more instructions at a given time when it is running at the same clock speed.
And, IIRC, a higher voltage is only useful to let a CPU run at a higher clock speed, as it pushes more electrons through per cycle to compensate.
Flamebait? He's right. They seem to have benchmarked a CPU at THE SAME CLOCK SPEED with or without the Vapochill. Now, how the hell does temperature effect performance when the thing is running at the same clock speed (feel free to correct me)?
A very good point. Don't forget that Windows has a much greater overall marketshare than it did then though.
While a killer open source game (maybe like an open source UT2004 type game?) would be great, by definition it wouldn't only work on Linux, because some bastard would port it to Windows. A killer game that puts people on Linux would have to be Linux-only.
Considering Linux has a small marketshare, and is an absolute nightmare to support (due to all the different distros), WineX/Cedega could be a very good way forward. Testing and possibly tweaking a DirectX on Cedega is one hell of a lot easier for a games company to do than a full Linux port.
There will not be a genuine market for Linux games until people stop dual-booting because they use Windows for games. Chicken and egg scenario.
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Yes, you're right. First ISP to put a measure like that in place will loose a shitload of customers. It would need to be forced upon them. But as you say, they could at least block ports 135,139 and 445.
Unfortunately, the user will mindlessly disable the firewall if it stops something from working. You need a hardware solution which can't be totally disabled (like NAT).
Our retarded government is shoving broadband down everyone's throats. That means that tons and bloody tons of people are all getting broadband, without firewall software or proper instructions on how to use it.
I really don't know why ISPs don't just suspend the accounts of PCs with zombies/viruses. In the same way that you get your driving licence revoked/suspended for driving like an ass, people should get their internet accounts suspended too.
And it's not like it's hard to tell who the culprits are. Anyone who has logging enabled on their firewall will know exactly what I mean.
It depends exactly which way the facial recognition works:
If it's looking for one particular person in a crowd of people, it can (possibly) be reasonably effective.
If, however, it's comparing a single face against a set of 60 million, it has absolutely no chance. Some people look enough alike for a human to not be able to tell the difference. Add in poor focus, weather and lighting conditions, and the fact it is a 2D image, and the computer has absolutely no chance.
CCTV facial recognition is a joke, don't worry about that.
If however, they try and impose ID cards with biometric data upon us, then the oil blockades from a few years ago will look like a small obscure protest. Fuck That Shit.
Be patient. People who use Linux, BSD etc (mostly) buy hardware after checking how well they support it, and it's now starting to have an effect. ATI seem to have realised that with crappy Linux/BSD support they have lost a load of business, and are trying to bring out better Linux/BSD drivers.
When both nVidia and ATI have decent Linux/BSD support, the first one to open their drivers (3rd party IP permitting) gets the customers. It should be the same with most hardware.
Or they could disable the FPU and use a floating point emulator - which would be fine if the application used a minimal amount of floating point operations.
"This research into making sure companies have the latest version of Windows was sponsored by Microsoft."
It's nothing to worry about.. yet. IBM is probably aiming these things at businesses, and is one of the companies least likely to cripple Linux with DRM. If implemented correctly, DRM could be used to stop people fucking around with your computer.
Linux isn't currently any real threat to Microsoft on the desktop, so I would think this is a way to control media, but who's going to buy a computer which doesn't pirate music and films anyway?
And remember that Microsoft are the people who designed the XBox DRM. Look how well that worked.
Emacs!
Seriously though, IBM has an article on it here.
Well, you're right, it's a difficult question. But I think it's quite clear that Microsoft is a monopoly, and that when they bundle products, it stops other companies competing with similar products. Let's face it, what they did to Netscape was not right, by any stretch of the imagination.
It's not that making a product that's good enough is a monopoly, its that as long as a bundled product is reasonably acceptable, the laziness of the normal user means that other companies don't get much of a chance to compete, even by producing a better product.
It doesn't need to be any better than Firefox - it just needs to be sufficiently good enough for 'normal' people not to want to bother with using another browser.
This, is why a monopoly shouldn't be allowed to bundle software.
Isn't that a bit expensive? You should be able to get an unlimited connection for the price of a few gig a month.
Given the crappy chipset I'd say the Intel chip is going to suffer more - the AMD doesn't need to use it's northbridge.
It's a SiS chipset, ie it's likely to be nowhere near as good as an nForce/Intel chipset, which would probably make it unsuitable for benchmarking.
Why anyone would want this is completely beyond me. How about buying a (probably cheaper) motherboard designed for a specific brand of CPU, which will almost certainly have much better performance?
the customer can come in and say "I want AMD" or "I want Intel"
You don't want to do business with people like that. Someone who gets a computer pre-built, yet still insists on the type of CPU is almost certainly a complete and total idiot.
$750?! You'd have to be incredibly stupid to buy it then. For that sort of money you could probably get a dual CPU system with decent cooling instead.
It also weighs 50lbs. Enough said.
I'm not saying that you're wrong, but please explain to me how the CPU processes more instructions at a given time when it is running at the same clock speed.
And, IIRC, a higher voltage is only useful to let a CPU run at a higher clock speed, as it pushes more electrons through per cycle to compensate.
Flamebait? He's right. They seem to have benchmarked a CPU at THE SAME CLOCK SPEED with or without the Vapochill. Now, how the hell does temperature effect performance when the thing is running at the same clock speed (feel free to correct me)?
A very good point. Don't forget that Windows has a much greater overall marketshare than it did then though.
While a killer open source game (maybe like an open source UT2004 type game?) would be great, by definition it wouldn't only work on Linux, because some bastard would port it to Windows. A killer game that puts people on Linux would have to be Linux-only.
SDL isn't included with every Windows and Mac system like DirectX is.
In order to get an SDL game running on a Windows system, you need about two dlls in the application's working directory. That's it.
If you're computer is that unstable, you may well have hardware problems. Do a memory test and keep an eye on what comes out of dmesg.
Considering Linux has a small marketshare, and is an absolute nightmare to support (due to all the different distros), WineX/Cedega could be a very good way forward. Testing and possibly tweaking a DirectX on Cedega is one hell of a lot easier for a games company to do than a full Linux port.
There will not be a genuine market for Linux games until people stop dual-booting because they use Windows for games. Chicken and egg scenario.