Altruism != generosity even if they go hand in hand.
This is can't be stated enough, because it is so very very true.
Something else to consider is that in most cases, generosity has some underlying motivation. It's much easier for me to open my wallet for someone who I am related to than to do so for a complete stranger. The same goes for friends. At least on the subconscious level, part of this is based on the expectation that the favor will be repayed at a later date. It's not that I'm going to loan my brother $500 and expect him to pay me back $550, but that I will loan my brother $500 and that if, later on, he is in a position to help me with something (like moving, watching my dog for a week while I'm on vacation, etc) then he will. It's all about strengthening the ties between individuals.
The anticipation of reciprocation is absolutely key here. Even the most generous person tends to be offended if they believe that their generosity is not appreciated. But if their generosity is based on altruism, then why should it matter if their generosity is appreciated? It shouldn't, and that momentary twinge of indignation that occurs when the person who you just helped didn't bother to say "thank you" is evidence of that expectation of reciprocation. If they can't be bothered to verbalize their appreciation, then they probably don't appreciate your assistance, which means that they are unlikely to return the favor. Sure, some people will claim that the offense is due to a lack of manners rather than the lack of reciprocation. But then what are manners? They are a series of community-agreed rules designed to limit the incidence of offense. It's good manners to thank someone for helping you precisely because it illustrates appreciation, which indicates the possibility of future reciprocation.
Generosity begins at the immediate family level, then grows to include the extended family, then eventually a wider community of friends and associates. But the interesting thing to note is that the farther away the person is from that core group of immediate family, the less likely one is to help someone else, and the lesser the degree of help will be. For example, I would give my brother $500 if he needed it, but I wouldn't give $500 to a coworker that I have known for only 1 year. But if my coworker had a flat tire or forgot his wallet and needed $20 for gas or something, I wouldn't have any problem helping him out. What I'm getting at here is that there are degrees of generosity and they are directly related to the degree of connectedness that you feel towards the recipients of that generosity. A deeply religious person with strong involvement to their church puts more money in the offering plate than someone who only shows up on Sunday mornings and then doesn't think about church for a week.
This evolution of generosity closely resembles the evolution of society. Human beings started in small family groups of hunter-gatherers. At that time, the stakes were probably quite a bit higher than they are today. Giving a family member some food during lean times could help reinforce the family bond, increasing your chances of getting similar help yourself in the future. Over time as humans evolved, the hunter-gatherers began shifting into larger, more static communities of agriculturalists. Consequently, the circle of generosity expanded and more people worked together.
Now I do think that it is important to make the distinction between pre-wired and hard-wired. Pre-wired implies a certain level of intent, which most scientists agree is missing in this case. However, it is very likely that this tendency towards generosity is evolved, which makes hard-wired a more applicable term. In ancient times, the tribes and communities who had a physical predisposition towards generosity (in other words, the act of generosity stimulated a pleasure response in their brain, as illustrated by the functional MRI studies in the article) undoubtedly practiced a lot more
MMOG: Focus on building environments and tasks that encourage and in some cases require cooperation between individuals or groups. Characters should be powerful enough to have an effect on the world, but not so powerful as to usurp the storyline characters. There should be lots of replayable content, and a great deal of customization.
RPG: Focus on building environments and tasks that make the player the superhero of the story. Instead of goals that are so difficult that only a group of people could complete them, make them so difficult that only one who stands head and shoulders above the world can complete them. The character starts out following the storyline, and eventually becomes the story line. In this case, the world does literally revolve around them. There should be a fair amount of replayable content, and a fair amount of customization. Mostly this is so that you can approach the goal from different paths.
Two extremely important things to remember:
1. To make a good RPG, you must have a great story that the player is intricately involved in. For an MMOG, the story is important, but secondary to the social interactions.
2. To make a good MMOG, you need lots of content. Lots and lots and lots of content. And while you can script an ending to an RPG, you have to design MMOGs to be open-ended.
Yes. After crashing out in her first qualifying attempt, her team managed to put a car together again so she could qualify. And like the three other women who came before her to the Indy 500, she is little more than a novelty who is there to generate media attention. Most casual fans could tell you more about Danica Patrick (another piece of IRL eye-candy) than they could about either of the last two winners of the Indy 500 (both of which finished well ahead of her).
The "only 5.5 MPH" difference huge. That's about 4 seconds a lap which means that over a 500 mile race on a 2.5 mile track, the 1st place car will lap the 31st place car 5 times. When you factor in driver ability, strategy and pitstops, the difference will be much greater. The top 3 cars in the race will probably be within.25 second of each other after 500 miles.
Not sure where you got your math, but that's only about 1 second per lap. There was almost exactly a 4 second difference between Moreno's qualifying time and the time posted by the fastest car. And at Indy, they run 4 qualifying laps and take the total time rather than just running one or two and taking the fastest time.
Yet somehow you got the 5 laps down part right, as race laps at Indy generally run about 40 seconds and there are 200 laps.
However, had the discussion been strictly about Indy racing and the level of funding a team needs (which is mind numbing),
Bah. You can run an Indycar team on $5 million a year and be competitive. Take a look at Formula 1 (definitely more tech-focused) where top teams spend more than $200 million a year.
"Despite generating over $12K in funds, well short of the $250K goal, the Tux 500 Project was able to secure a spot in the Indy 500 with driver Roberto Moreno piloting the Linux #77 Indy car. He's back in the pack in 31st place (only 5.5 MPH separates 31st place from 1st) but was able to secure it by re-qualifying with an average speed of 220.299 MPH. Will Moreno be able to pilot the penguin-tipped Indy car to victory next week at the 91st Indianapolis 500?"
In all honestly, securing a starting spot wasn't that difficult. Indy traditionally starts 33 cars, but there are only 20-22 cars who regularly compete in the series. The remainder of the field is what we in the business called "field-filler". Basically, it's people who show up with a car (often times a year or two old), and then manage to run 4 qualifying laps without crashing. Sure, they have to have an IRL license to compete, but many of them are former drivers well past their prime (Al Unser Jr and Roberto Moreno, for example) or drivers that weren't good enough to land a full season ride from a team (but could come up with a couple hundred thousand dollars in sponsorship money to just run Indy).
To say that he's only 5.5 MPH slower than the fastest car is a minimizing statement. That's over 1 second per lap slower than the fastest car. The faster cars are turning laps in the 39-40 second range, so over 200 laps you can expect him to finish 5 laps down. Assuming that he doesn't get caught up in traffic or have handling problems, which is usually not the case. Then factor in that his team probably will be 2-3 seconds slower per pit stop than the top teams and I could see him easily finishing 7 or 8 laps behind.
So will he be able to pilot his car to an Indy 500 victory? Only if he's incredibly lucky and 30 other cars crash out of the race.
Speaking as someone who grew up in Indy and who is still heavily involved in motorsports, you really don't know what you're talking about.
1. The Indianapolis is the biggest annual sporting event. Period. More people attend, and more people watch on TV worldwide then any other event. If you wanted to get the message about linux out there, this would be the place to do it.
The Indy 500 used to be billed as the biggest single-day sporting event in the world, and pole-day qualifying used to be number 2. This was always claimed by comparing their attendance figures. Even though other single-day sporting events are far more popular, none of them have as many people in attendance. Unfortunately, the Indianapolis Motor Speedway doesn't actually release attendance figures. Neither have they actually released their actual seating capacity. When Indy was making these claims, people were publicly estimating attendance of 400,000, or even 500,000 people. A couple of years ago, the Indianapolis Star actually counted the seats, then estimated how much infield space their was, along with an estimate of the number of track workers, team members, concession stand workers, etc, and came up with an estimated maximum attendance of about 260,000. Unfortunately, attendance has fallen dramatically since 1995, and a realistic estimate would be more like 200,000 people.
As to whether it was, or still is, the world's largest single day sporting event is open to interpretation. These days, the Brickyard 400 (also held at the speedway) draws more people. Whereas you used to have to get on a multi-year waiting list to get tickets to the Indy 500 because the race would sell out the day after the previous year's race, nowdays you can purchase tickets directly from the Speedway ticket office just a couple weeks before race day. Or you can wait until race day and buy them at a discount from scalpers outside the track. For that matter, it's entirely possible that the Daytona 500 has more fans in attendance. Of course, if you include television audience in addition to fans actually in attendance, the Indy 500 doesn't even come close to the Superbowl, which in turn pales in comparison to several international events, including the World Cup final.
2. This year all Indy cars run on Ethanol 85. While this isn't solar, it's far better then the traditional Gas of the past (hell I believe NASCAR is just now *thinking* about phasing out leaded gas).
Actually, they run on pure Ethanol, not an E85 blend. This is the first year that they have run on Ethanol. It has been decades since Indy-style cars have actually run on "traditional gas of the past." Before they used Ethanol, they were running on Methanol. Methanol is considered to be much safer than gasoline because it has a much higher flashpoint, which makes it easier to transport and store. Unfortunately, it also burns with an invisible (to the human eye) flame, but they've been able to cope. The reason that the IRL has switched to Ethanol this year is 100% related to sponsorship.
3. The engineering involved in these cars is amazing, not only as far as engine development (Honda had relatively little time to develop these engines to run on Ethanol 85, and have done so admirably). Also, the engines themselves are interesting in that they are normally aspirated (i.e. no Turbo, so SuperCharger just incredibly engineered 8Cyl Engines That can drive none stop at high speeds for ling distances. FWIW Honda wasn't picked to be the only engine supplier for indy cars, they got that way through attrition. The last year there were multiple engine manufacturers Honda so blew away Chevy that it just didn't make sense for them to continue.
It honestly didn't take much effort to convert the engines from Methanol to Ethanol. One alcohol burns largely like the next. And to think of the Honda IRL engine as high-tech is like calling the typewriter state of the art. The Honda Formula 1 engine is far more interesting. Both
The notion of drills can be helpful, but you have to make sure that you're not just creating security theatre. I mean, if you add up the total number of students who have been killed by gun wielding kids/adults/fellow students while at school/university in the past 20 years, you'd probably have about 100-150 people. Taken as a percentage of the total number of students in the US, you're looking at a statistical anomaly. The problem is that these shootings are so dramatic that they capture people's attention/imagination, and they can distract people from truly dangerous situations, like fires and tornadoes.
The other thing to keep in mind is that there's little need for students to drill for shooter situations. What do you do when someone is shooting at you? You do what is instinctive, i.e., take cover and/or run away from the shooting. It's called fight or flight, and we human beings come pre-programmed for it.
But what do you do in case of a fire? Try to get away from the fire, sure. But a fire has a logical progression which allows you a greater period of time to determine the proper course of action, so not panicking can be key to saving your life. Also, the instinctive response to a fire (run away as fast as possible) isn't usually the safest course of action. You have to make sure that you know how to tell if the fire is on the other side of a closed door. You need to know how to move at ground level in a smoke-filled room rather than trying to run through it. You need to know what to do if you catch on fire. You need to know where to meet outside where it's safe. You need to know the fastest and closest route out of the building, as well as an alternative route if that primary route is blocked.
What do you do in case of a tornado? Well, the first rule is not to go to a window to stare outside at it. Second rule is to find sturdy shelter. OK, but what is sturdy? Once you're inside a sturdy building, where's the best place to hide? Well, as low in the building and as close to the center as you can get. You have to know to get as far away from windows as possible. Basements, interior closets, and interior windowless bathrooms are best. What if you're stuck outside with no shelter? Lie face down, as flat as possible in a ditch. I have lived in the midwest all of my life and have had those things drilled into me since I was a child. But I had a friend who moved here from Long Island who kept telling me that if you're stuck outside in a tornado with no shelter, your safest bet was to get into a car and fasten your seatbelts (he was wrong, don't do this, you'll probably end up dead). None of the ways to protect yourself from a tornado are intuitive in the slightest.
So, in summary:
1. Your child is many, many, many more likely to be involved in a fire or tornado at school than a shooting.
2. The appropriate self-preservation techniques in a fire or tornado are not intuitive, whereas with a shooting they are.
3. It makes sense to spend time teaching and drilling preservation techniques that aren't instinctive or obvious (like tornado or fire safety).
4. It doesn't make much sense to drill students (especially elementary school students) about how to deal with a shooter.
This is not to say that teachers and staff shouldn't be drilled on what to do in case of a shooting, since their responsibilities aren't solely about self-preservation at that point.
"Principal Catherine Stephens declined to say whether the staff members involved would face disciplinary action, but said the situation 'involved poor judgment.'"
Well, in accordance with most schools' zero-tolerance policies, they should all be fired. I recall a second grader being suspended from school for pointing a chicken tender at another student like it was a gun and saying "bang," and I have to believe that this is far, far worse. On top of that, the people who planned and executed this drill probably should be subject to some sort of criminal prosecution. Causing a public disturbance, inciting a panic, or whatever it is that students get arrested for when they call in a fake bomb threat so that they can get out of a test. Undoubtedly there will be a civil suit.
Of course, they'll probably all just get off with a slap on the wrist. After all, the rules never apply to the people in positions of authority. How would it look if the discipliners were also subject to the same discipline? At least that's what the Principal seems to be implying.
And Im pretty sure this mentality right here is why so many companies, and even many end-users, are saying "We have no intention to upgrade to Vista. Ever." Just because you had "plenty of time to work out the issues" doesnt mean you WANT to spend the time doing it. Especially when the "benefits" of upgrading are shady at best, and by and far seem to be NOTHING more than marketing mumbo-jumbo.
Meh. Vista will be the new standard. People made the same complaints about XP too, but look at where it is today. A year from now the processing requirements of Vista won't seem over the top at all and most of the more egregious problems will have been fixed. Whether you wanted to spend the time working out compatibility issues between your software and Vista isn't a concern to most people. If you do spend the time to do it, then you can sell to Vista users. If don't spend the time to do it, they'll buy from someone else and you'll lose sales. It's that simple.
Microsoft once cared a great deal about backwards compatibility. Now they seem to expect all software vendors to re-code, re-compile, re-test, and re-deploy for an OS change,
Yes, that's true. This was also the time when Microsoft didn't give a rat's ass about security. Unfortunately they kept getting raked over the coals for having glaring security holes, so they are focusing more on creating an environment that is/can be/should be more secure, and as a result developers who've been able to code however they want to for years actually have to buck up and learn about coding to the new standards.
As someone who has had to admin large Windows installations (both client and server) by far our most difficult task was keeping users from running with full admin rights on their desktop. Why should that be the case? Sure, with Windows 95/98/Me there was just a single access level - admin. But since the days of NT4 (and presumably 3.5 before that, though I never used it) there have been user accounts available with varying levels of permissions going from a standard, limited user to full admin rights. Why is it that 12+ years later we're still fighting with applications that "require" admin privileges to run for no other reason than poor coding practices?
If I'm not mistaken, since the days of Windows 95/NT your application actually had to function correctly as a limited user in order to get the "Certified for Windows" logo. Of course, that probably only applies to the 5% of commercial applications that are sold in a box, while the rest never go through a logo compliance test at all. I can't tell you how much time I've spent on the phone with software vendors (usually for niche apps in the healthcare space) trying to a) convince them that it's important that their app run without full admin rights, and b) find out what restricted system areas their applications write to so that I can modify permissions in order to get their app to work without giving away full rights. It's ridiculous. Even if IT could have a policy whereby we won't approve any application for use in our environment that won't run as a restricted user, we would inevitably be overruled when that new killer app from the leader in the marketspace dazzles our CEO with grand new functionality. What's worse, the app vendors can get away with it because NOBODY is coding to LUA standards.
and that OS was a moving target for the year preceding its release.
Uh...yeah. That's why it's called a 'beta' or a 'release candidate'. That means that the code isn't set in stone, it may have serious flaws, and it is subject to change on a daily basis. If you can't or don't want to write code for a 'moving target' then wait until gold code is available. Sure, your competitors who can write code for a 'moving target' will undoubtedly have a market lead over you, but that's the breaks.
The truth is, it sounds like you guys did a good job of staying on top of issues that your application might have had with Vista. And since the problems that showed up in the gold code were the same as had showed up in previous versions of the code, you no doubt already knew how to fix them. And since the code went gold and was available to you (via MSDN) in November of 2006, even though Vista wasn't released to retail until February of 2007, I would submit that you had plenty of time to work out the issues and that your complaining is just for the sake of having something to complain about.
Perhaps Microsoft should set up an audit unit and start giving software a 'UAC-compatible' tick if a piece of software has minimised how much UAC approval is required if its turned on, allowing the publisher to put it on their box so that the customers can tell. Who knows, perhaps one day the UAC system might actually be viable.
That's great and all, but they already do something similar. Ever see a shrink-wrapped box at the store with the "Designed for Windows" logo on it? Part of the logo testing is that the app is supposed to work with limited user rights. The problem is, the overwhelming majority of Windows software isn't sold in a shrink-wrapped box, so most software vendors don't bother with logo certification.
Hmm, I'd say he's got a good point - there's simply not a culture of privilege awareness in Windows developers.
Absolutely. It is nearly 100% the developers fault. Though I suppose some share of blame goes to IT departments for not making it clear to their software vendors that applications shouldn't require admin rights to run.
Throw some SSE4 enabled apps in the mix and the Penryn would outperform an equalized Conroe by a fair margin.
Which it does. I've seen benchmarks showing over 100% improvement using SSE4.
Penryn is mostly just a die shrink. All things equal (clock, FSB, cache) it should not be any faster or slower than a Conroe.
Well...a die shrink with more cache, higher clock and FSB, plus SSE4. But Intel and their fans are positioning it as their answer to Barcelona. My suspicion is that it will take more than that to beat Barcelona.
This is a desperation move. AMD is back on their heels and their recovery plan is too far off in the future. In hopes of saving face they are pulling the only lever they have, clock speed.
Not so. AMD never said that they wouldn't increase clock speed on their CPUs. In fact, that's pretty much standard practice to get higher performance. So now their manufacturing process is capable of producing 3 GHz CPUs in sufficient volumes to sell, and they're selling them. As the process is refined there may be faster CPUs.
Intel does the same thing. As the manufacturing process is refined they are able to produce more and more CPUs at higher clock speeds. It's not a sign of anything other than business as usual.
Funny, Intel was chumped by AMD just like this a couple of years ago, why did AMD let themselves get tagged back? Intel woke up in a major way. Can AMD? Doesn't look too good...
AMD has more than just clock speed coming, Barcelona (aka K10) is supposed to be shipping in the next month or two. That's generally expected to take back the performance crown from Intel, and even if it doesn't it should at least eliminate the performance gap. For purposes of historical reference, AMD pretty much bitchslapped Intel when they released the Athlon 64. It took Intel 4 years to finally catch up to AMD and pass them with the Core 2 architecture, and even today the Opterons are still higher performers on 4 and 8 processor systems. If Barcelona turns out to be as fast as or faster than Core 2 (and by all rights, it should be) then it will have taken them only 1 year to catch up. Conroe was "previewed" at Spring IDF in 2006, but didn't ship until several months later.
As for why it's taken AMD a year to catch up, it takes quite a long time to design, layout, test, and debug a new CPU. Once all that is done the manufacturing process has to be designed and tested too. Then the CPUs have to actually be produced, and once production has started it takes almost 2 months to go from silicon wafers to functioning CPUs. However, something to keep in mind is that Intel is a much, much larger company than AMD and that Intel runs severals CPU design teams concurrently, while AMD doesn't. Intel has several times the number of designers, engineers, and fabs that AMD does. Because of their resources, Intel is able to completely scrap a CPU project and switch to something else if they need to. AMD can't, or at least not without seriously hurting the company. The fact that AMD is even competitive with Intel says quite a lot about the talent they have in-house.
The thing that I find most interesting was that last year when Intel was on the ropes, they offered the IDF preview to select web sites in order to generate buzz and FUD regarding Intel vs. AMD. And it worked too, because for 3 months everybody was talking about how Intel was king again even though they still hadn't shipped any Conroe CPUs. This year they're doing the same thing with their new Penryn architecture, and they don't appear to be on the ropes. Why would you tip your hand early if you don't have to? That indicates to me that Intel is concerned about something, and I suspect that something is Barcelona.
Even more interesting is that none of the previews compare Conroe with Penryn at the same clock speed. Most of the benchmarks that I have seen show a roughly 20% performance advantage for Penryn. But the Penryn CPU was running at about 14% higher clock speed, a 25% higher FSB, and with 50% more L2 cache onboard. Now who's playing the Gigahertz Game? I suspect that if you overclocked a Conroe and it's FSB to reach the same speeds, you probably would see little to no difference with Penryn. Which means that Intel's response to the all-new Barcelona is going to be...you guessed it...run up the clock speed and slap on some cache, because we're in for a bumpy ride.
The common misconception that you should measure a CPU's power using GHz of a processor is one we really need to put to rest forever. That is a bad choice of deciding factor for going with a particular processor, or not. Differences between chips will always be totally immeasurable, so only fools go by chip ratings, IMHO. Customers should read as much as they can and look at final performances and make a decision of whether to buy or not buy.
They should, but we're talking about consumers here, so they won't. Lets face it, most of them can barely figure out how to make the mouse go in Windows, let alone understand the differences in CPU architecture and their relative merits with regards to CPU performance. So because the majority of computer buyers and users don't know what they're buying, then people go with the "bigger number = better computer" theory. And why shouldn't they? When we're comparing the amount of memory, hard disk space, or monitor size, bigger tends to be better. And when it comes to pricing, most people think that the more expensive computer (or parts) are better. And since a faster CPU (or PC with a faster CPU) is priced higher than a slower CPU (or PC with a slower CPU), most people would assume that it is inferior in some way.
I would place a much higher reliability factor upon balancing the chip manufacturer's position in the market, their support and services, their overall reputation, their evil factor, and the overall performance of computers that rely on the chip.
How often have you had to call on a CPU manufacturer for support? I've been using and building computers since the early 80's, and I never once had to go to a CPU manufacturer for support.
Yeah, this is cool, no doubt. How many users actually *use* how much power they already have? I use a lot, but it's mostly dependent on the graphics card.
This article is discussing 2-way, 4-way, and 8-way Opteron CPUs for servers. I don't know about you, but with all the virtualization going on nowadays, more computing power in the same size box is a good thing. We can use all the power we can get.
I don't recall so much of the "letters from our website", but I do recall being seriously disappointed with this book. For starters, it's very short. I know, that may not sound like a bad thing, but it is representative of a lack of detail. They cover several topics that I thought had the potential to be really interesting, but for the most part they cover them with a "studies have shown" or "we were able to show" or similar statements. They didn't really go into any of the details of their analysis of these interesting topics (with perhaps the exception of the section of teachers helping students cheat on standardized tests). It took about an afternoon to read, and offered very little insight, and even less data. Like I said, I don't think that it really lived up to it's expectations at all.
I think that it's neither. Dell is accustomed to being the top dog in the PC business, but they recently lost the top spot to HP. And this past quarter they lost even more marketshare to HP. At this point, Dell is ready to do just about anything that their customers suggest if they think that it can help stop their slide. That's not necessarily a bad thing though. Most of us like when companies actually listen to their customers and give us what we want rather than what they want to give us. We'll have to see how long that lasts.
My anecdotes:
HP NX6125 laptop with AMD Turion 2 GHz, 1.5GB RAM, integrated ATI graphics. No problems other than a sound driver doesn't exist for this audio chip. Runs Aero Glass just fine. Was a tad slow with only 1 GB of RAM, but adding another 512 MB fixed that.
Home built AMD Athlon 64 3000+ system with 1 GB of RAM and nVidia 6800GS graphics. No problems and runs Aero Glass just fine. I thought that the 1GB of RAM would be an issue based on my laptop experience above, but the rest of the system components are faster and seems to compensate for it.
Gateway MT6821 Laptop, Core 2 Duo 1.6 GHz, 2GB of RAM, Intel GMA950 integrated graphics. No problems, runs Aero Glass just fine. This system really flies compared to the others, but then you'd expect it to. The only issue I have is with the video driver and WoW not getting along so well. Every few minutes the driver crashes and restarts, causing the screen to go blank for a second. But the game doesn't lose it's place.
They'll do it again, particularly if the current anti-DRM sentiment snowballs and the related lockdown liabilities and performance issues for corporate customers start to get noticed.
Anti-DRM sentiment has been around for years, and it still hasn't managed to snowball. Maybe Vista will be the straw that broke the camel's back, but somehow I doubt it. The average user doesn't know (or care about) the difference between a technical limitation and an artificially imposed technical limitation. The average consumer/user is a long way from even knowing what DRM is, let alone being against it.
You know what? The users don't care. If their current hardware and software worked with XP and don't work with Vista, then as far as they are concerned, that is going to be 100% on Vista for not being backward compatible.
Frankly, I don't have a problem with this. It was always a conceit on Microsoft's part to think that an entire industry was going to pay up lots of time and money to redo work they'd already done, just to support Microsoft's latest exercise in creative marketing.
I don't think that it's a conceit whenever the industry has always done so in the past. Especially when the changes were made for good reason. Microsoft didn't change the driver or security model for Vista for marketing purposes, they changed it for security purposes. I know that Vista will undoubtedly have tons of security patches released for it, but there's no doubt that it ships in a much more secure state than any previous version of Windows.
Vista is the first version of Windows where device drivers don't run in the context of the OS kernel. Instead they run in the user context. This inherently leads to better security and stability. It also, unfortunately, means that device drivers have to be rewritten. There is a cost for security. I find it interesting that people here on Slashdot would be complaining about Windows drivers and software needing to be rewritten for the new Vista security model. Normally they're constantly bitching about how insecure Windows is, and then when Microsoft makes a change to improve security in a major way they're bitching about the fact that there was a change. Sometimes I think that the Slashdot crowd doesn't care about security, or about ways that Windows could be made better, or anything like that. They just like to bitch about Microsoft and will jump on any little thing that they think makes them sound reasonable.
But it's the users who dictate this, not Microsoft. Many hardware vendors have obsolete products still in active use by their customers but no longer for sale as new. They already invested the money to write XP drivers for that kit and got their sales as a result. If the only advantage to supporting Vista is making Microsoft look good, then any effort to upgrade drivers to support Vista is nothing but a money sink. Why should the whole industry accept that cost, just for Microsoft's benefit?
Making Microsoft look good isn't the only advantage to supporting Vista. The other (and far more important) advantage is the ability to be able to sell new hardware/software that is compatible with the most current Windows version. If I have hardware and software that doesn't work with Vista, and I upgrade to Vista, I'll probably be pissed at Microsoft for breaking compatibility. But if I have a computer with Vista and I buy brand new hardware or software that doesn't work with Vista, it's the hardware or software vendor who is going to get the blame. Funny how that works.
What if the drivers which are not vista ready are made by microsoft? This "was" the case with HP with at least some of their products, I can't say for a fact this still is the case. My recent vista experence was brought to a halt by the HP Laserjet 3390. What's the point in buying an all in one, which often is the cheapest way to get a document feeder based scanner, when it won't work under the OS your new machine shipped with.
I know that Microsoft has often included drivers for some of HP's oldest laserjet printers, but I'm pretty sure that doesn't extend to HP's entire product line (and certainly not to their all-in-one devices). For that matter, I'm not even sure that those were Microsoft-written drivers. I'm pretty sure that they were drivers provided by HP for WHQL testing that were subsequently included on the Windows installation CD.
I remember going to software etcetera in the mall with my very angry dad to buy a new copy of win 3.1 'cause i edited some file and windows no longer worked. We could have gotten win95, but we would have needed another 4mb of ram... and win95 just didn't run that well on 386s. This was durring the summer of 96
Geez! I can't believe that I forgot about that time that you went to the mall with your dad to buy a copy of Windows 3.1. I wonder why I didn't recall that?
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Altruism != generosity even if they go hand in hand.
This is can't be stated enough, because it is so very very true.
Something else to consider is that in most cases, generosity has some underlying motivation. It's much easier for me to open my wallet for someone who I am related to than to do so for a complete stranger. The same goes for friends. At least on the subconscious level, part of this is based on the expectation that the favor will be repayed at a later date. It's not that I'm going to loan my brother $500 and expect him to pay me back $550, but that I will loan my brother $500 and that if, later on, he is in a position to help me with something (like moving, watching my dog for a week while I'm on vacation, etc) then he will. It's all about strengthening the ties between individuals.
The anticipation of reciprocation is absolutely key here. Even the most generous person tends to be offended if they believe that their generosity is not appreciated. But if their generosity is based on altruism, then why should it matter if their generosity is appreciated? It shouldn't, and that momentary twinge of indignation that occurs when the person who you just helped didn't bother to say "thank you" is evidence of that expectation of reciprocation. If they can't be bothered to verbalize their appreciation, then they probably don't appreciate your assistance, which means that they are unlikely to return the favor. Sure, some people will claim that the offense is due to a lack of manners rather than the lack of reciprocation. But then what are manners? They are a series of community-agreed rules designed to limit the incidence of offense. It's good manners to thank someone for helping you precisely because it illustrates appreciation, which indicates the possibility of future reciprocation.
Generosity begins at the immediate family level, then grows to include the extended family, then eventually a wider community of friends and associates. But the interesting thing to note is that the farther away the person is from that core group of immediate family, the less likely one is to help someone else, and the lesser the degree of help will be. For example, I would give my brother $500 if he needed it, but I wouldn't give $500 to a coworker that I have known for only 1 year. But if my coworker had a flat tire or forgot his wallet and needed $20 for gas or something, I wouldn't have any problem helping him out. What I'm getting at here is that there are degrees of generosity and they are directly related to the degree of connectedness that you feel towards the recipients of that generosity. A deeply religious person with strong involvement to their church puts more money in the offering plate than someone who only shows up on Sunday mornings and then doesn't think about church for a week.
This evolution of generosity closely resembles the evolution of society. Human beings started in small family groups of hunter-gatherers. At that time, the stakes were probably quite a bit higher than they are today. Giving a family member some food during lean times could help reinforce the family bond, increasing your chances of getting similar help yourself in the future. Over time as humans evolved, the hunter-gatherers began shifting into larger, more static communities of agriculturalists. Consequently, the circle of generosity expanded and more people worked together.
Now I do think that it is important to make the distinction between pre-wired and hard-wired. Pre-wired implies a certain level of intent, which most scientists agree is missing in this case. However, it is very likely that this tendency towards generosity is evolved, which makes hard-wired a more applicable term. In ancient times, the tribes and communities who had a physical predisposition towards generosity (in other words, the act of generosity stimulated a pleasure response in their brain, as illustrated by the functional MRI studies in the article) undoubtedly practiced a lot more
MMOG: Focus on building environments and tasks that encourage and in some cases require cooperation between individuals or groups. Characters should be powerful enough to have an effect on the world, but not so powerful as to usurp the storyline characters. There should be lots of replayable content, and a great deal of customization.
RPG: Focus on building environments and tasks that make the player the superhero of the story. Instead of goals that are so difficult that only a group of people could complete them, make them so difficult that only one who stands head and shoulders above the world can complete them. The character starts out following the storyline, and eventually becomes the story line. In this case, the world does literally revolve around them. There should be a fair amount of replayable content, and a fair amount of customization. Mostly this is so that you can approach the goal from different paths.
Two extremely important things to remember:
1. To make a good RPG, you must have a great story that the player is intricately involved in. For an MMOG, the story is important, but secondary to the social interactions.
2. To make a good MMOG, you need lots of content. Lots and lots and lots of content. And while you can script an ending to an RPG, you have to design MMOGs to be open-ended.
Great MMOGs: Warcraft and LotRO.
Great RPGs: Oblivion and KotOR.
Holy hot, she qualified 29. http://www.milkaduno.com/
Yes. After crashing out in her first qualifying attempt, her team managed to put a car together again so she could qualify. And like the three other women who came before her to the Indy 500, she is little more than a novelty who is there to generate media attention. Most casual fans could tell you more about Danica Patrick (another piece of IRL eye-candy) than they could about either of the last two winners of the Indy 500 (both of which finished well ahead of her).
So a NASCAR story is on Shashdot because...The race has a car with a Penguin drawn on the hood?
Give me a break!
Who said anything about NASCAR?
The "only 5.5 MPH" difference huge. That's about 4 seconds a lap which means that over a 500 mile race on a 2.5 mile track, the 1st place car will lap the 31st place car 5 times. When you factor in driver ability, strategy and pitstops, the difference will be much greater. The top 3 cars in the race will probably be within .25 second of each other after 500 miles.
Not sure where you got your math, but that's only about 1 second per lap. There was almost exactly a 4 second difference between Moreno's qualifying time and the time posted by the fastest car. And at Indy, they run 4 qualifying laps and take the total time rather than just running one or two and taking the fastest time.
Yet somehow you got the 5 laps down part right, as race laps at Indy generally run about 40 seconds and there are 200 laps.
However, had the discussion been strictly about Indy racing and the level of funding a team needs (which is mind numbing),
Bah. You can run an Indycar team on $5 million a year and be competitive. Take a look at Formula 1 (definitely more tech-focused) where top teams spend more than $200 million a year.
"Despite generating over $12K in funds, well short of the $250K goal, the Tux 500 Project was able to secure a spot in the Indy 500 with driver Roberto Moreno piloting the Linux #77 Indy car. He's back in the pack in 31st place (only 5.5 MPH separates 31st place from 1st) but was able to secure it by re-qualifying with an average speed of 220.299 MPH. Will Moreno be able to pilot the penguin-tipped Indy car to victory next week at the 91st Indianapolis 500?"
In all honestly, securing a starting spot wasn't that difficult. Indy traditionally starts 33 cars, but there are only 20-22 cars who regularly compete in the series. The remainder of the field is what we in the business called "field-filler". Basically, it's people who show up with a car (often times a year or two old), and then manage to run 4 qualifying laps without crashing. Sure, they have to have an IRL license to compete, but many of them are former drivers well past their prime (Al Unser Jr and Roberto Moreno, for example) or drivers that weren't good enough to land a full season ride from a team (but could come up with a couple hundred thousand dollars in sponsorship money to just run Indy).
To say that he's only 5.5 MPH slower than the fastest car is a minimizing statement. That's over 1 second per lap slower than the fastest car. The faster cars are turning laps in the 39-40 second range, so over 200 laps you can expect him to finish 5 laps down. Assuming that he doesn't get caught up in traffic or have handling problems, which is usually not the case. Then factor in that his team probably will be 2-3 seconds slower per pit stop than the top teams and I could see him easily finishing 7 or 8 laps behind.
So will he be able to pilot his car to an Indy 500 victory? Only if he's incredibly lucky and 30 other cars crash out of the race.
Speaking as someone who grew up in Indy and who is still heavily involved in motorsports, you really don't know what you're talking about.
1. The Indianapolis is the biggest annual sporting event. Period. More people attend, and more people watch on TV worldwide then any other event. If you wanted to get the message about linux out there, this would be the place to do it.
The Indy 500 used to be billed as the biggest single-day sporting event in the world, and pole-day qualifying used to be number 2. This was always claimed by comparing their attendance figures. Even though other single-day sporting events are far more popular, none of them have as many people in attendance. Unfortunately, the Indianapolis Motor Speedway doesn't actually release attendance figures. Neither have they actually released their actual seating capacity. When Indy was making these claims, people were publicly estimating attendance of 400,000, or even 500,000 people. A couple of years ago, the Indianapolis Star actually counted the seats, then estimated how much infield space their was, along with an estimate of the number of track workers, team members, concession stand workers, etc, and came up with an estimated maximum attendance of about 260,000. Unfortunately, attendance has fallen dramatically since 1995, and a realistic estimate would be more like 200,000 people.
As to whether it was, or still is, the world's largest single day sporting event is open to interpretation. These days, the Brickyard 400 (also held at the speedway) draws more people. Whereas you used to have to get on a multi-year waiting list to get tickets to the Indy 500 because the race would sell out the day after the previous year's race, nowdays you can purchase tickets directly from the Speedway ticket office just a couple weeks before race day. Or you can wait until race day and buy them at a discount from scalpers outside the track. For that matter, it's entirely possible that the Daytona 500 has more fans in attendance. Of course, if you include television audience in addition to fans actually in attendance, the Indy 500 doesn't even come close to the Superbowl, which in turn pales in comparison to several international events, including the World Cup final.
2. This year all Indy cars run on Ethanol 85. While this isn't solar, it's far better then the traditional Gas of the past (hell I believe NASCAR is just now *thinking* about phasing out leaded gas).
Actually, they run on pure Ethanol, not an E85 blend. This is the first year that they have run on Ethanol. It has been decades since Indy-style cars have actually run on "traditional gas of the past." Before they used Ethanol, they were running on Methanol. Methanol is considered to be much safer than gasoline because it has a much higher flashpoint, which makes it easier to transport and store. Unfortunately, it also burns with an invisible (to the human eye) flame, but they've been able to cope. The reason that the IRL has switched to Ethanol this year is 100% related to sponsorship.
3. The engineering involved in these cars is amazing, not only as far as engine development (Honda had relatively little time to develop these engines to run on Ethanol 85, and have done so admirably). Also, the engines themselves are interesting in that they are normally aspirated (i.e. no Turbo, so SuperCharger just incredibly engineered 8Cyl Engines That can drive none stop at high speeds for ling distances. FWIW Honda wasn't picked to be the only engine supplier for indy cars, they got that way through attrition. The last year there were multiple engine manufacturers Honda so blew away Chevy that it just didn't make sense for them to continue.
It honestly didn't take much effort to convert the engines from Methanol to Ethanol. One alcohol burns largely like the next. And to think of the Honda IRL engine as high-tech is like calling the typewriter state of the art. The Honda Formula 1 engine is far more interesting. Both
The notion of drills can be helpful, but you have to make sure that you're not just creating security theatre. I mean, if you add up the total number of students who have been killed by gun wielding kids/adults/fellow students while at school/university in the past 20 years, you'd probably have about 100-150 people. Taken as a percentage of the total number of students in the US, you're looking at a statistical anomaly. The problem is that these shootings are so dramatic that they capture people's attention/imagination, and they can distract people from truly dangerous situations, like fires and tornadoes.
The other thing to keep in mind is that there's little need for students to drill for shooter situations. What do you do when someone is shooting at you? You do what is instinctive, i.e., take cover and/or run away from the shooting. It's called fight or flight, and we human beings come pre-programmed for it.
But what do you do in case of a fire? Try to get away from the fire, sure. But a fire has a logical progression which allows you a greater period of time to determine the proper course of action, so not panicking can be key to saving your life. Also, the instinctive response to a fire (run away as fast as possible) isn't usually the safest course of action. You have to make sure that you know how to tell if the fire is on the other side of a closed door. You need to know how to move at ground level in a smoke-filled room rather than trying to run through it. You need to know what to do if you catch on fire. You need to know where to meet outside where it's safe. You need to know the fastest and closest route out of the building, as well as an alternative route if that primary route is blocked.
What do you do in case of a tornado? Well, the first rule is not to go to a window to stare outside at it. Second rule is to find sturdy shelter. OK, but what is sturdy? Once you're inside a sturdy building, where's the best place to hide? Well, as low in the building and as close to the center as you can get. You have to know to get as far away from windows as possible. Basements, interior closets, and interior windowless bathrooms are best. What if you're stuck outside with no shelter? Lie face down, as flat as possible in a ditch. I have lived in the midwest all of my life and have had those things drilled into me since I was a child. But I had a friend who moved here from Long Island who kept telling me that if you're stuck outside in a tornado with no shelter, your safest bet was to get into a car and fasten your seatbelts (he was wrong, don't do this, you'll probably end up dead). None of the ways to protect yourself from a tornado are intuitive in the slightest.
So, in summary:
1. Your child is many, many, many more likely to be involved in a fire or tornado at school than a shooting.
2. The appropriate self-preservation techniques in a fire or tornado are not intuitive, whereas with a shooting they are.
3. It makes sense to spend time teaching and drilling preservation techniques that aren't instinctive or obvious (like tornado or fire safety).
4. It doesn't make much sense to drill students (especially elementary school students) about how to deal with a shooter.
This is not to say that teachers and staff shouldn't be drilled on what to do in case of a shooting, since their responsibilities aren't solely about self-preservation at that point.
"Principal Catherine Stephens declined to say whether the staff members involved would face disciplinary action, but said the situation 'involved poor judgment.'"
Well, in accordance with most schools' zero-tolerance policies, they should all be fired. I recall a second grader being suspended from school for pointing a chicken tender at another student like it was a gun and saying "bang," and I have to believe that this is far, far worse. On top of that, the people who planned and executed this drill probably should be subject to some sort of criminal prosecution. Causing a public disturbance, inciting a panic, or whatever it is that students get arrested for when they call in a fake bomb threat so that they can get out of a test. Undoubtedly there will be a civil suit.
Of course, they'll probably all just get off with a slap on the wrist. After all, the rules never apply to the people in positions of authority. How would it look if the discipliners were also subject to the same discipline? At least that's what the Principal seems to be implying.
"We can grow neurons on silicone plates; we can make the blind see; the deaf hear; we can read minds."
Growing neurons on silicone plates! Awesome! Just what we need, smarter breast implants!
If this guy can't even tell the difference between silicon and silicone, then why on earth should anyone take his tech prognosticating seriously?
And Im pretty sure this mentality right here is why so many companies, and even many end-users, are saying "We have no intention to upgrade to Vista. Ever." Just because you had "plenty of time to work out the issues" doesnt mean you WANT to spend the time doing it. Especially when the "benefits" of upgrading are shady at best, and by and far seem to be NOTHING more than marketing mumbo-jumbo.
Meh. Vista will be the new standard. People made the same complaints about XP too, but look at where it is today. A year from now the processing requirements of Vista won't seem over the top at all and most of the more egregious problems will have been fixed. Whether you wanted to spend the time working out compatibility issues between your software and Vista isn't a concern to most people. If you do spend the time to do it, then you can sell to Vista users. If don't spend the time to do it, they'll buy from someone else and you'll lose sales. It's that simple.
Microsoft once cared a great deal about backwards compatibility. Now they seem to expect all software vendors to re-code, re-compile, re-test, and re-deploy for an OS change,
Yes, that's true. This was also the time when Microsoft didn't give a rat's ass about security. Unfortunately they kept getting raked over the coals for having glaring security holes, so they are focusing more on creating an environment that is/can be/should be more secure, and as a result developers who've been able to code however they want to for years actually have to buck up and learn about coding to the new standards.
As someone who has had to admin large Windows installations (both client and server) by far our most difficult task was keeping users from running with full admin rights on their desktop. Why should that be the case? Sure, with Windows 95/98/Me there was just a single access level - admin. But since the days of NT4 (and presumably 3.5 before that, though I never used it) there have been user accounts available with varying levels of permissions going from a standard, limited user to full admin rights. Why is it that 12+ years later we're still fighting with applications that "require" admin privileges to run for no other reason than poor coding practices?
If I'm not mistaken, since the days of Windows 95/NT your application actually had to function correctly as a limited user in order to get the "Certified for Windows" logo. Of course, that probably only applies to the 5% of commercial applications that are sold in a box, while the rest never go through a logo compliance test at all. I can't tell you how much time I've spent on the phone with software vendors (usually for niche apps in the healthcare space) trying to a) convince them that it's important that their app run without full admin rights, and b) find out what restricted system areas their applications write to so that I can modify permissions in order to get their app to work without giving away full rights. It's ridiculous. Even if IT could have a policy whereby we won't approve any application for use in our environment that won't run as a restricted user, we would inevitably be overruled when that new killer app from the leader in the marketspace dazzles our CEO with grand new functionality. What's worse, the app vendors can get away with it because NOBODY is coding to LUA standards.
and that OS was a moving target for the year preceding its release.
Uh...yeah. That's why it's called a 'beta' or a 'release candidate'. That means that the code isn't set in stone, it may have serious flaws, and it is subject to change on a daily basis. If you can't or don't want to write code for a 'moving target' then wait until gold code is available. Sure, your competitors who can write code for a 'moving target' will undoubtedly have a market lead over you, but that's the breaks.
The truth is, it sounds like you guys did a good job of staying on top of issues that your application might have had with Vista. And since the problems that showed up in the gold code were the same as had showed up in previous versions of the code, you no doubt already knew how to fix them. And since the code went gold and was available to you (via MSDN) in November of 2006, even though Vista wasn't released to retail until February of 2007, I would submit that you had plenty of time to work out the issues and that your complaining is just for the sake of having something to complain about.
Perhaps Microsoft should set up an audit unit and start giving software a 'UAC-compatible' tick if a piece of software has minimised how much UAC approval is required if its turned on, allowing the publisher to put it on their box so that the customers can tell. Who knows, perhaps one day the UAC system might actually be viable.
That's great and all, but they already do something similar. Ever see a shrink-wrapped box at the store with the "Designed for Windows" logo on it? Part of the logo testing is that the app is supposed to work with limited user rights. The problem is, the overwhelming majority of Windows software isn't sold in a shrink-wrapped box, so most software vendors don't bother with logo certification.
Hmm, I'd say he's got a good point - there's simply not a culture of privilege awareness in Windows developers.
Absolutely. It is nearly 100% the developers fault. Though I suppose some share of blame goes to IT departments for not making it clear to their software vendors that applications shouldn't require admin rights to run.
Maybe if we're lucky he'll start taking his cues from Jack Valenti? You know, these things come in threes...
Throw some SSE4 enabled apps in the mix and the Penryn would outperform an equalized Conroe by a fair margin.
Which it does. I've seen benchmarks showing over 100% improvement using SSE4.
Penryn is mostly just a die shrink. All things equal (clock, FSB, cache) it should not be any faster or slower than a Conroe.
Well...a die shrink with more cache, higher clock and FSB, plus SSE4. But Intel and their fans are positioning it as their answer to Barcelona. My suspicion is that it will take more than that to beat Barcelona.
This is a desperation move. AMD is back on their heels and their recovery plan is too far off in the future. In hopes of saving face they are pulling the only lever they have, clock speed.
Not so. AMD never said that they wouldn't increase clock speed on their CPUs. In fact, that's pretty much standard practice to get higher performance. So now their manufacturing process is capable of producing 3 GHz CPUs in sufficient volumes to sell, and they're selling them. As the process is refined there may be faster CPUs.
Intel does the same thing. As the manufacturing process is refined they are able to produce more and more CPUs at higher clock speeds. It's not a sign of anything other than business as usual.
Funny, Intel was chumped by AMD just like this a couple of years ago, why did AMD let themselves get tagged back? Intel woke up in a major way. Can AMD? Doesn't look too good...
AMD has more than just clock speed coming, Barcelona (aka K10) is supposed to be shipping in the next month or two. That's generally expected to take back the performance crown from Intel, and even if it doesn't it should at least eliminate the performance gap. For purposes of historical reference, AMD pretty much bitchslapped Intel when they released the Athlon 64. It took Intel 4 years to finally catch up to AMD and pass them with the Core 2 architecture, and even today the Opterons are still higher performers on 4 and 8 processor systems. If Barcelona turns out to be as fast as or faster than Core 2 (and by all rights, it should be) then it will have taken them only 1 year to catch up. Conroe was "previewed" at Spring IDF in 2006, but didn't ship until several months later.
As for why it's taken AMD a year to catch up, it takes quite a long time to design, layout, test, and debug a new CPU. Once all that is done the manufacturing process has to be designed and tested too. Then the CPUs have to actually be produced, and once production has started it takes almost 2 months to go from silicon wafers to functioning CPUs. However, something to keep in mind is that Intel is a much, much larger company than AMD and that Intel runs severals CPU design teams concurrently, while AMD doesn't. Intel has several times the number of designers, engineers, and fabs that AMD does. Because of their resources, Intel is able to completely scrap a CPU project and switch to something else if they need to. AMD can't, or at least not without seriously hurting the company. The fact that AMD is even competitive with Intel says quite a lot about the talent they have in-house.
The thing that I find most interesting was that last year when Intel was on the ropes, they offered the IDF preview to select web sites in order to generate buzz and FUD regarding Intel vs. AMD. And it worked too, because for 3 months everybody was talking about how Intel was king again even though they still hadn't shipped any Conroe CPUs. This year they're doing the same thing with their new Penryn architecture, and they don't appear to be on the ropes. Why would you tip your hand early if you don't have to? That indicates to me that Intel is concerned about something, and I suspect that something is Barcelona.
Even more interesting is that none of the previews compare Conroe with Penryn at the same clock speed. Most of the benchmarks that I have seen show a roughly 20% performance advantage for Penryn. But the Penryn CPU was running at about 14% higher clock speed, a 25% higher FSB, and with 50% more L2 cache onboard. Now who's playing the Gigahertz Game? I suspect that if you overclocked a Conroe and it's FSB to reach the same speeds, you probably would see little to no difference with Penryn. Which means that Intel's response to the all-new Barcelona is going to be...you guessed it...run up the clock speed and slap on some cache, because we're in for a bumpy ride.
The common misconception that you should measure a CPU's power using GHz of a processor is one we really need to put to rest forever. That is a bad choice of deciding factor for going with a particular processor, or not. Differences between chips will always be totally immeasurable, so only fools go by chip ratings, IMHO. Customers should read as much as they can and look at final performances and make a decision of whether to buy or not buy.
They should, but we're talking about consumers here, so they won't. Lets face it, most of them can barely figure out how to make the mouse go in Windows, let alone understand the differences in CPU architecture and their relative merits with regards to CPU performance. So because the majority of computer buyers and users don't know what they're buying, then people go with the "bigger number = better computer" theory. And why shouldn't they? When we're comparing the amount of memory, hard disk space, or monitor size, bigger tends to be better. And when it comes to pricing, most people think that the more expensive computer (or parts) are better. And since a faster CPU (or PC with a faster CPU) is priced higher than a slower CPU (or PC with a slower CPU), most people would assume that it is inferior in some way.
I would place a much higher reliability factor upon balancing the chip manufacturer's position in the market, their support and services, their overall reputation, their evil factor, and the overall performance of computers that rely on the chip.
How often have you had to call on a CPU manufacturer for support? I've been using and building computers since the early 80's, and I never once had to go to a CPU manufacturer for support.
Yeah, this is cool, no doubt. How many users actually *use* how much power they already have? I use a lot, but it's mostly dependent on the graphics card.
This article is discussing 2-way, 4-way, and 8-way Opteron CPUs for servers. I don't know about you, but with all the virtualization going on nowadays, more computing power in the same size box is a good thing. We can use all the power we can get.
I don't recall so much of the "letters from our website", but I do recall being seriously disappointed with this book. For starters, it's very short. I know, that may not sound like a bad thing, but it is representative of a lack of detail. They cover several topics that I thought had the potential to be really interesting, but for the most part they cover them with a "studies have shown" or "we were able to show" or similar statements. They didn't really go into any of the details of their analysis of these interesting topics (with perhaps the exception of the section of teachers helping students cheat on standardized tests). It took about an afternoon to read, and offered very little insight, and even less data. Like I said, I don't think that it really lived up to it's expectations at all.
I think that it's neither. Dell is accustomed to being the top dog in the PC business, but they recently lost the top spot to HP. And this past quarter they lost even more marketshare to HP. At this point, Dell is ready to do just about anything that their customers suggest if they think that it can help stop their slide. That's not necessarily a bad thing though. Most of us like when companies actually listen to their customers and give us what we want rather than what they want to give us. We'll have to see how long that lasts.
My anecdotes: HP NX6125 laptop with AMD Turion 2 GHz, 1.5GB RAM, integrated ATI graphics. No problems other than a sound driver doesn't exist for this audio chip. Runs Aero Glass just fine. Was a tad slow with only 1 GB of RAM, but adding another 512 MB fixed that. Home built AMD Athlon 64 3000+ system with 1 GB of RAM and nVidia 6800GS graphics. No problems and runs Aero Glass just fine. I thought that the 1GB of RAM would be an issue based on my laptop experience above, but the rest of the system components are faster and seems to compensate for it. Gateway MT6821 Laptop, Core 2 Duo 1.6 GHz, 2GB of RAM, Intel GMA950 integrated graphics. No problems, runs Aero Glass just fine. This system really flies compared to the others, but then you'd expect it to. The only issue I have is with the video driver and WoW not getting along so well. Every few minutes the driver crashes and restarts, causing the screen to go blank for a second. But the game doesn't lose it's place.
They'll do it again, particularly if the current anti-DRM sentiment snowballs and the related lockdown liabilities and performance issues for corporate customers start to get noticed.
Anti-DRM sentiment has been around for years, and it still hasn't managed to snowball. Maybe Vista will be the straw that broke the camel's back, but somehow I doubt it. The average user doesn't know (or care about) the difference between a technical limitation and an artificially imposed technical limitation. The average consumer/user is a long way from even knowing what DRM is, let alone being against it.
You know what? The users don't care. If their current hardware and software worked with XP and don't work with Vista, then as far as they are concerned, that is going to be 100% on Vista for not being backward compatible.
Frankly, I don't have a problem with this. It was always a conceit on Microsoft's part to think that an entire industry was going to pay up lots of time and money to redo work they'd already done, just to support Microsoft's latest exercise in creative marketing.
I don't think that it's a conceit whenever the industry has always done so in the past. Especially when the changes were made for good reason. Microsoft didn't change the driver or security model for Vista for marketing purposes, they changed it for security purposes. I know that Vista will undoubtedly have tons of security patches released for it, but there's no doubt that it ships in a much more secure state than any previous version of Windows.
Vista is the first version of Windows where device drivers don't run in the context of the OS kernel. Instead they run in the user context. This inherently leads to better security and stability. It also, unfortunately, means that device drivers have to be rewritten. There is a cost for security. I find it interesting that people here on Slashdot would be complaining about Windows drivers and software needing to be rewritten for the new Vista security model. Normally they're constantly bitching about how insecure Windows is, and then when Microsoft makes a change to improve security in a major way they're bitching about the fact that there was a change. Sometimes I think that the Slashdot crowd doesn't care about security, or about ways that Windows could be made better, or anything like that. They just like to bitch about Microsoft and will jump on any little thing that they think makes them sound reasonable.
But it's the users who dictate this, not Microsoft. Many hardware vendors have obsolete products still in active use by their customers but no longer for sale as new. They already invested the money to write XP drivers for that kit and got their sales as a result. If the only advantage to supporting Vista is making Microsoft look good, then any effort to upgrade drivers to support Vista is nothing but a money sink. Why should the whole industry accept that cost, just for Microsoft's benefit?
Making Microsoft look good isn't the only advantage to supporting Vista. The other (and far more important) advantage is the ability to be able to sell new hardware/software that is compatible with the most current Windows version. If I have hardware and software that doesn't work with Vista, and I upgrade to Vista, I'll probably be pissed at Microsoft for breaking compatibility. But if I have a computer with Vista and I buy brand new hardware or software that doesn't work with Vista, it's the hardware or software vendor who is going to get the blame. Funny how that works.
What if the drivers which are not vista ready are made by microsoft? This "was" the case with HP with at least some of their products, I can't say for a fact this still is the case. My recent vista experence was brought to a halt by the HP Laserjet 3390. What's the point in buying an all in one, which often is the cheapest way to get a document feeder based scanner, when it won't work under the OS your new machine shipped with.
I know that Microsoft has often included drivers for some of HP's oldest laserjet printers, but I'm pretty sure that doesn't extend to HP's entire product line (and certainly not to their all-in-one devices). For that matter, I'm not even sure that those were Microsoft-written drivers. I'm pretty sure that they were drivers provided by HP for WHQL testing that were subsequently included on the Windows installation CD.
I remember going to software etcetera in the mall with my very angry dad to buy a new copy of win 3.1 'cause i edited some file and windows no longer worked. We could have gotten win95, but we would have needed another 4mb of ram... and win95 just didn't run that well on 386s. This was durring the summer of 96
Geez! I can't believe that I forgot about that time that you went to the mall with your dad to buy a copy of Windows 3.1. I wonder why I didn't recall that?