It is good that there was a warning on the bias of the article. It goes to show that there are too many accountants in the world - there are enough to calculate how much money isn't being spent on their products!
Really, I look at the problem as bandwidth only. I pay so much a month to have a DSL connection. I use a NAT, because it is very convienent. In fact, if my ISP institutes something such as CAT, I will purposely use up as much BW as possible as payback.
To summarize - they'll pry my NAT router from my cold, dead hands.
You know, in any other country in which an election is held, nobody would doubt that the rich son of the former leader who previously led the intellegence service would win the election in his brother's territory.
God bless America!
Yeah, while most conservatives (supposedly) are interested in preserving liberties, the ones in power sure aren't.
Let's see, there's:
-military tribunals for immigrants
-holding 1000s of people with no charges for months
-expanded wiretap provisions
-removal of lawer-client privileges
-attack on Oregon's right-to-die provision (where's State's Rights when Conservatives disagree with what those idiot voters wanted?)
-attack on California medicinal pot distrubution centers (see above)
There is two other issues with the faster drives - noise and heat. 15K RPM drives can put out a good amount of noise. The heat output needs fans, which convert heat into noise (kinda). The bottom line is they can be a little annoying to live with.
Well, my home system has 3 7200 RPM HDs, a Zip drive, a plextor CD-RW, and CD-ROM. Not hard to guess I use SCSI.
As for the SCSI and IDE being the same physical drive with a different interface - wrong. Take a look at the specs - SCSI drives have lower latencys and larger caches, even on drives with the same RPMs. Of course, forget about finding a 10K RPM IDE drive.
As for IRQs, well EACH IDE channel uses an IRQ. The SCSI controller needs only one for all the drives on it.
So play with your little IDE box and be happy, 'cause ignorance is bliss.
Well - there's more to SCSI than marketing and extra drives. Remember, only one device can be active on an IDE channel at one time. So where do you put your second drive? On the cable with the CD-ROM? That way you can access both drives at the same time, but you can't access the second drive and the CD-ROM simultaneously. And then you have to hope that the CD-ROM doesn't interfere with the 2nd HD using ATA133. SCSI has none of those issues.
Suppose a terrorist is convicted under the new laws. When(If) the law is later declared unconstitional, the Terrorist walks, and because of double jeapordy, he can't be tried again for the same crime. Of course, IANAL.
SCSI is still the best way to go. Drives are still somewhat expensive (I bought a 19GB IBM drive for $150, while a 40GB IBM EIDE cost only $110). But the SCSI drive is better - it has a 4MB cache, and 4.5ms access. The EIDE drive is only 1MB cache with 8.5ms access. Still, a 19GB drive for $150 is still cheap, just not dirt cheap.
Next, SCSI has progressed - it is now at 320MB/s. IDE and Firewire are stuck at 100MB/s.
If you have a simple pc (floppy, CD-ROM, and HD), by all means go IDE. But don't put anything else in - if you want a second drive, then you have to put it with the first drive, and only one drive is active at any one time - slowing drive-drive copies or moves. Put it with the CD-ROM, then the second drive bites whenever the CD is acessed. Or, add a CD-RW. Now where? Put it with the HD? No, because you'll make a lot more coasters when burning from the drive. So, put it with the CD-ROM, and so any CD-CD copies need to make a stop-over on the HD. SCSI doesn't have these problems.
I just escaped from Windows 2 weeks ago. Before that, I had tried Red Hat 5.2, then SuSE 6.1. I am very impressed with SuSE 7.2. The installation program was slick as anything from MS.
My background is a very good windows user (I have made several systems), and I have used SunOS/Solaris at work for several years. So the unix command line is easy for me. I still need to learn how to administer a system, but it shouldn't take long.
Here are some initial observations:
1) Fonts are a little blurry (need to learn about xfs).
2) SuSE 7.2 ships with an ancient version of BTTV (7.35, whereas bttv is at 7.73).
3) My Lexmark Z51 printer is only b/w. Oh well...
4) The automounting of the windows partitions is a nice touch.
With the exception of games, I am able to spend all my time in Linux. I still need to:
A) upgrade bttv,
B) figure out how to get the composite input on my ATI TV-Wonder card working,
C) get my digital camera working,
D) and get the hang of burning CDs under linux.
Well, a few points to make:
1) Cooling is feasible - you have a huge tank of superchilled fuel. You can use that to keep the warhead cool.
2) There is a big difference in processing time available: the velocities for a ABM and an inbound ICBM is a lot higher than a missle chasing a plane. SO SURE - your little tank could see real good in the infra-red. How fast did it refresh? Fast enough to do the number crunching for a +Mach10 closure? I doubt it. And what processor do you use to do all the image analysis - there is a lot of data to manipulate, and very little time to do it.
3) Yes, I am calling it snake oil - I don't trust that they really had an effective test. It is better to be ignorant than a fool, 'cause the ignorant can learn. A fool is always a fool.
Of course Superman never carried a gun. He didn't live in the real world.
Finally, I do agree with you on the development and deployment concerns. But for different reasons.
Of course the record labels don't care about killing the CD. They want it to exit stage left because:
1) People are catching onto the fact that the CD only costs ~$0.80 to make, and they have been raping us in higher costs, and
2) because CDs and MP3s get along so nice, they are a menace to profits, and finally,
3) they want everyone to replace their entire CD collection with the new DVD-audio, which has built-in encryption.
It is actually a pretty good plan: screw up the CD, so the audiophiles move onto the DVD-audio, and the MP3 problem with everyone else dies off.
I disagree that content would dry up. Many musicians and writers do what they do because they enjoy it. I admit that the chance to make $$$ is an added incentive. As a nerd, and I know many others, just messing around with stuff is fun. Musicians and writers are similar in that respect. You would still have music recordings and stuff. Without big business, there would be a lot more small groups with local following.
Next, regarding the legal protection- libraries are not 'stealing'. Libraries also have protection of their own. What the publishers are trying to do is to 'renegotiate' the implied contract with society in their favor, because the current model may not work due to technological advances.
Of course the industry is going to aggressively defend its revenue. But you can't follow the business line because MONEY is their prime directive. And there are more important things to society then money. For example, society values education, miltary defense, and medical care. Copyrights and patents exist for the public good, not to make anyone rich. To illustrate - what if the patent for the wheel was still valid? So everything that uses wheels - cars, rollers on printers, ball bearings, etc. would be infringing. Would humanity be better off in such a situation?
The bottom line - money is important, but the good of humanity is more important. Of course, humaity never wrote anyone a check.
Well, with napster down, the next target is usenet.
My prediction: in 6 months, there will be a/. article on a crackdown on all of the mp3 groups. Enjoy it while it lasts. And remember, one lucky person gets to be an example!
Programming is not engineering. You assert that it is simply a different toolbox. OK - is an auto mechanic an engineer? He is using a different toolbox to solve problems.
The answer is no, in most cases. Just because tools are involved and problems are solved, the activity is not engineering.
People who support ads in games because of "realism" are missing one thing. I am playing the game to get away from "reality". I am not a sports star, or a race car driver. When I imagine being one, I don't want to imagine ads also. FPS games are intrinsically not reality based. Does the fact that there is a game named "unreal" register here?
In addition, when did someone trying to sell you something become "real"?
Get over it. I graduated in 92, when the economy really sucked. This is nothing. I was lucky to get a job, and after the economy took off, I had enough experience to be really valuable.
When I kept hearing these stories on how much new hires were making and the Prima Donna attitudes, it sickened me. Well, the party is over, and you got screwed. It is nothing new, and your story is nowhere near the worst.
Find a decent job, maybe not one that gives you a new BMW, but wait. In 4 years, when the economy is good, you will have a solid amount of experience.
Tracers were really simply useless. You could
always use baby missles instead of tracers, so
that if you got the trajectory correct, you
could get the kill cheap...
Unless you were simply toying with your opponent,
and wanted to hit them with a big shot...
Slashdot Mirror
It is good that there was a warning on the bias of the article. It goes to show that there are too many accountants in the world - there are enough to calculate how much money isn't being spent on their products!
Really, I look at the problem as bandwidth only. I pay so much a month to have a DSL connection. I use a NAT, because it is very convienent. In fact, if my ISP institutes something such as CAT, I will purposely use up as much BW as possible as payback.
To summarize - they'll pry my NAT router from my cold, dead hands.
You know, in any other country in which an election is held, nobody would doubt that the rich son of the former leader who previously led the intellegence service would win the election in his brother's territory.
God bless America!
Well - considering that the Republicans/Conservatives ASKED for those provision....
Yeah, while most conservatives (supposedly) are interested in preserving liberties, the ones in power sure aren't.
Let's see, there's:
-military tribunals for immigrants
-holding 1000s of people with no charges for months
-expanded wiretap provisions
-removal of lawer-client privileges
-attack on Oregon's right-to-die provision (where's State's Rights when Conservatives disagree with what those idiot voters wanted?)
-attack on California medicinal pot distrubution centers (see above)
Let's see - my 18.3G IBM SCSI HDs cost $89. That is truly loads of cash, huh?
There is two other issues with the faster drives - noise and heat. 15K RPM drives can put out a good amount of noise. The heat output needs fans, which convert heat into noise (kinda). The bottom line is they can be a little annoying to live with.
Well, my home system has 3 7200 RPM HDs, a Zip drive, a plextor CD-RW, and CD-ROM. Not hard to guess I use SCSI.
As for the SCSI and IDE being the same physical drive with a different interface - wrong. Take a look at the specs - SCSI drives have lower latencys and larger caches, even on drives with the same RPMs. Of course, forget about finding a 10K RPM IDE drive.
As for IRQs, well EACH IDE channel uses an IRQ. The SCSI controller needs only one for all the drives on it.
So play with your little IDE box and be happy, 'cause ignorance is bliss.
Well - there's more to SCSI than marketing and extra drives. Remember, only one device can be active on an IDE channel at one time. So where do you put your second drive? On the cable with the CD-ROM? That way you can access both drives at the same time, but you can't access the second drive and the CD-ROM simultaneously. And then you have to hope that the CD-ROM doesn't interfere with the 2nd HD using ATA133. SCSI has none of those issues.
SCSI is superior.
Suppose a terrorist is convicted under the new laws. When(If) the law is later declared unconstitional, the Terrorist walks, and because of double jeapordy, he can't be tried again for the same crime. Of course, IANAL.
SCSI is still the best way to go. Drives are still somewhat expensive (I bought a 19GB IBM drive for $150, while a 40GB IBM EIDE cost only $110). But the SCSI drive is better - it has a 4MB cache, and 4.5ms access. The EIDE drive is only 1MB cache with 8.5ms access. Still, a 19GB drive for $150 is still cheap, just not dirt cheap.
Next, SCSI has progressed - it is now at 320MB/s. IDE and Firewire are stuck at 100MB/s.
If you have a simple pc (floppy, CD-ROM, and HD), by all means go IDE. But don't put anything else in - if you want a second drive, then you have to put it with the first drive, and only one drive is active at any one time - slowing drive-drive copies or moves. Put it with the CD-ROM, then the second drive bites whenever the CD is acessed. Or, add a CD-RW. Now where? Put it with the HD? No, because you'll make a lot more coasters when burning from the drive. So, put it with the CD-ROM, and so any CD-CD copies need to make a stop-over on the HD. SCSI doesn't have these problems.
Count me as a SuSE user.
I just escaped from Windows 2 weeks ago. Before that, I had tried Red Hat 5.2, then SuSE 6.1. I am very impressed with SuSE 7.2. The installation program was slick as anything from MS.
My background is a very good windows user (I have made several systems), and I have used SunOS/Solaris at work for several years. So the unix command line is easy for me. I still need to learn how to administer a system, but it shouldn't take long.
Here are some initial observations:
1) Fonts are a little blurry (need to learn about xfs).
2) SuSE 7.2 ships with an ancient version of BTTV (7.35, whereas bttv is at 7.73).
3) My Lexmark Z51 printer is only b/w. Oh well...
4) The automounting of the windows partitions is a nice touch.
With the exception of games, I am able to spend all my time in Linux. I still need to:
A) upgrade bttv,
B) figure out how to get the composite input on my ATI TV-Wonder card working,
C) get my digital camera working,
D) and get the hang of burning CDs under linux.
In 500 years, do you think people will really remember N'sync, Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Ice Cube, Brittny Spears, Prince, Beastie Boys....
People will remember Elvis and the Beatles. The reason: their work is the best of the times. All the others fade away.
So, a reasonable extrapolation says that Michaelangelo was not the only artist around at the time.
Well, a few points to make:
1) Cooling is feasible - you have a huge tank of superchilled fuel. You can use that to keep the warhead cool.
2) There is a big difference in processing time available: the velocities for a ABM and an inbound ICBM is a lot higher than a missle chasing a plane. SO SURE - your little tank could see real good in the infra-red. How fast did it refresh? Fast enough to do the number crunching for a +Mach10 closure? I doubt it. And what processor do you use to do all the image analysis - there is a lot of data to manipulate, and very little time to do it.
3) Yes, I am calling it snake oil - I don't trust that they really had an effective test. It is better to be ignorant than a fool, 'cause the ignorant can learn. A fool is always a fool.
Of course Superman never carried a gun. He didn't live in the real world.
Finally, I do agree with you on the development and deployment concerns. But for different reasons.
Of course the record labels don't care about killing the CD. They want it to exit stage left because:
1) People are catching onto the fact that the CD only costs ~$0.80 to make, and they have been raping us in higher costs, and
2) because CDs and MP3s get along so nice, they are a menace to profits, and finally,
3) they want everyone to replace their entire CD collection with the new DVD-audio, which has built-in encryption.
It is actually a pretty good plan: screw up the CD, so the audiophiles move onto the DVD-audio, and the MP3 problem with everyone else dies off.
Well, there are a few holes here.
I disagree that content would dry up. Many musicians and writers do what they do because they enjoy it. I admit that the chance to make $$$ is an added incentive. As a nerd, and I know many others, just messing around with stuff is fun. Musicians and writers are similar in that respect. You would still have music recordings and stuff. Without big business, there would be a lot more small groups with local following.
Next, regarding the legal protection- libraries are not 'stealing'. Libraries also have protection of their own. What the publishers are trying to do is to 'renegotiate' the implied contract with society in their favor, because the current model may not work due to technological advances.
Of course the industry is going to aggressively defend its revenue. But you can't follow the business line because MONEY is their prime directive. And there are more important things to society then money. For example, society values education, miltary defense, and medical care. Copyrights and patents exist for the public good, not to make anyone rich. To illustrate - what if the patent for the wheel was still valid? So everything that uses wheels - cars, rollers on printers, ball bearings, etc. would be infringing. Would humanity be better off in such a situation?
The bottom line - money is important, but the good of humanity is more important. Of course, humaity never wrote anyone a check.
Well, with napster down, the next target is usenet.
/. article on a crackdown on all of the mp3 groups. Enjoy it while it lasts. And remember, one lucky person gets to be an example!
My prediction: in 6 months, there will be a
Here we go again.
Programming is not engineering. You assert that it is simply a different toolbox. OK - is an auto mechanic an engineer? He is using a different toolbox to solve problems.
The answer is no, in most cases. Just because tools are involved and problems are solved, the activity is not engineering.
People who support ads in games because of "realism" are missing one thing. I am playing the game to get away from "reality". I am not a sports star, or a race car driver. When I imagine being one, I don't want to imagine ads also. FPS games are intrinsically not reality based. Does the fact that there is a game named "unreal" register here?
In addition, when did someone trying to sell you something become "real"?
Get over it. I graduated in 92, when the economy really sucked. This is nothing. I was lucky to get a job, and after the economy took off, I had enough experience to be really valuable.
When I kept hearing these stories on how much new hires were making and the Prima Donna attitudes, it sickened me. Well, the party is over, and you got screwed. It is nothing new, and your story is nowhere near the worst.
Find a decent job, maybe not one that gives you a new BMW, but wait. In 4 years, when the economy is good, you will have a solid amount of experience.
Then you can cash in.
Tracers were really simply useless. You could
always use baby missles instead of tracers, so
that if you got the trajectory correct, you
could get the kill cheap...
Unless you were simply toying with your opponent,
and wanted to hit them with a big shot...
Kinda interesting that this discussion on artificial intellegence has so many people calling each other idiots.