Yeah, that'll really put a hurtin' on a Viper, Vette, DB7 , XK, or 911 in the quarter mile.
Those cars are considered exotics, not sports cars. Sports cars are generally affordable - my new C70 set me back about $30k. You could buy three C70s for the price of a DB7 and still end up with change for insurance money.
Just imagine driving on a mountain road and out of a right curb comes a car driving the other way. The radar sees it right in front of you, coming your way. How does it react ?
It works fine. Check out the radar-based cruise-control from Mercedes, now available on a few models. You can set your cruise to follow a vehicle ahead automatically. You just steer, and the two (or more) of you can pass cars and go through tunnels just fine without the cruise control panicking.
I bought my C70 a couple of years ago based on Volvo's safety features. At the time, it was the safest sports car out there - whiplash protection seats, airbags all over the place, stability control, great brakes, etc. Today, the safety advances you hear aren't from Volvo - they're things like Mercedes-Benz brakes that dry themselves off in the wet, laser-based cruise control from Lexus, and now this radar-based braking from Honda. C'mon, Volvo. Get back in the race and make me proud.
SCO has 12.9 million shares, All linux users buy a one lone share per machine, and give it to linus/(someone sensible) we only need to get 51%.
Wrong answer. You'd actually be rewarding SCO's behavior by increasing their stock price. As soon as the general public got wind that the Linux community at large (or anybody else, for that matter) was doing a "group buy" on SCO's stock, the price would increase. It's a simple supply and demand. When there's suddenly a huge demand (like a takeover attempt), the stock price will just suddenly go up.
I understand that he's got skills, but the difference between this and an Apple product is that Apple products reek of sex appeal. You know, they have gorgeous curves, feminine touches, and the colors work together really well. When a woman walks into your home office and sees a bunch of Apple gear, she says "Oooo, pretty. You've got great taste." When she sees this, she's speechless, and not in a good way.
This thing is a farm implement. It's a high-quality farm implement, and I admire his work ethic, but it's still a farm implement.
Everybody's jumping to conspiracy conclusions, but here's the simple answer: when you give away browser upgrades for free, but you charge for OS installations, and you think that the browser is becoming more important than the OS, you have to merge the two together.
As time goes by, more and more applications become web-based. These days, consumers are more concerned about the version of their browser than the version of their operating system. When you try to hit your favorite web sites, check your web-based email, etc., it doesn't matter whether you're on Windows 98 or Windows XP: the browser version is what matters. They know they can't simply start charging for browsers, so the way to fix this issue is to only do new browsers with new operating systems, and blur the line between the browser version and the OS version.
Bottom line, Microsoft wants to get consumers more interested in OS versions again. If consumers see a web site that says, "Sorry, you need Windows 2005 to view this site," then they have a much higher chance of opening their pocketbooks than if the web site says, "Sorry, you need IE8 to view this site."
while Linux is able to handle such tasks much better while keeping the system still usable or at least more so than Windows(esp. if you use the cl to cp the file rather than a graphical file manager such as nautilus or konqueror).
And Windows is the same way there - the graphical file manager, Windows Explorer, is the worst way to copy large files. Either go to the command line, or use a file manager like Windows Commander. I use Windows Commander to move 10-20gb files across database servers all the time, and Windows still flies while it's running.
Which version of Windows is this? I have Win2K on a 700 MHz Athlon. It slows to a crawl when I move large files around.
You're running an IDE disk subsystem with a bad (not efficient) controller, I bet. Try running a SCSI subsystem, or an IDE system with an efficient controller chip, and your CPU use will drop dramatically.
Sadly, there's still a lot of dog-slow apps. Example: ask Macromedia Dreamweaver MX to test a stored procedure with a hundred parameters, and it'll freeze for 30-90 seconds on all of the P4's I've tried it on, pegging the CPU at 100%. On dual-CPU boxes, that means you can still be productive with the other CPU, and do things like whine on Macromedia user groups while it runs.
SMP also helps a lot if your box is both a testbed and a design system: mine runs SQL Server, IIS, and I do my design on it, so while I'm working, there's a ton of processes running.
Don't get me wrong, I still buy the "real" SMP systems with warranties, but just pointing out why I'm doing it, and I'm not rendering.
This is the kind of thing which Apple's control over hardware, software, and consumer applications together permits it to excel at. What is astonishing is that Microsoft has proved so poor at this kind of coordination.
Then why do people always protest Microsoft's bundling of browsers, media players, etc with the OS?
If Apple is "good" for bundling applications and not giving consumers the choice (for example, the music purchasing ONLY works with iTunes), then why is Microsoft "bad" for including IE and Windows Media Player with the OS? And can you imagine the outcry if Microsoft began selling music inside Windows Media Player? Slashdot would be screaming about the monopoly.
anyone running anything less than Win2k (that is, if they're running Windows) has to be out of their mind.
There's tons of older software implementations out there. Take the check-in kiosks for airlines: Continental's runs on NT4, and they're still rolling more of those kiosks out every day. One of those situations where if it works, why mess with it, especially when it would just cost more money to convert the existing check-in kiosks in Armpit, Iowa simply to be IPv6 compliant.
My ISP said that same thing, when I finally got through to somebody who knew what IPv6 was. The powers-that-be don't seem to know how many people are asking because the level-1 tech support guys have it on their "sorry-we-don't-support" list.
If you think I'm nuts, try calling your own support desk and asking for IPv4 support. Most of 'em don't know what that means, either - but it doesn't mean people don't want it, and aren't asking for it. Don't get me wrong, I'm sure there's not a lot, but those of us who are seem to get a lot of dumb looks.
In today's business climate, we can't imagine migrating without a financial incentive to do so.
IPv6 is like BetaMax tapes back in the 80's: sure, the format is technically better, but we've already got a ton of IPv4 gear and software. Even if you only use free software, there's still man-hours involved for implementation and planning. I pity the fella who walks into his boss's office and says, "Yeah, I'll be spending the next week on the IPv6 migration, getting all the desktops working, upgrading our router firmware, getting an IPv6 address from our ISP, etc."
IPv4 will work just like VHS tapes did: it'll be fine until the next dramatic quantum-leap comes along, like Tivos and DVD recorders will cut down on VHS recorder sales. IPv6 has some neat features, but nothing that a typical small business can't live without.
In the go-go-90's, you'd have been able to pull it off, but these days, if it ain't broke...
Yeah, I got into a trade recently, and that's some great advice. I wish I'd have thought about it earlier, especially the way interest rates are going. I traded up to a Volvo, and it's much more comfortable for long trips than my Oldsmobile was.
Seriously, though, I've been thinking of switching careers for a reason you don't discuss: physical presence. With the push towards telecommuting and outsourcing offshore, it's getting way too easy to replace programmers, and that's not a comfortable feeling. I'd rather be doing a career that requires physical presence, like, say, being an electrician. You can't telecommute as an electrician, and you can't fly in somebody from another country every time you need a building wired. Being a tradesman is sounding more and more attractive.
...new features aimed at leapfrogging Microsoft.... Niceties include...a fast-user-switching-type feature, and easy transferral of home directories among devices and the Web.
Not to troll, but if they're thinking they can leapfrog with user switching and roaming home directories, they need to jump a lot higher than that. User switching came with XP, and roaming home directories has been in since 2000. My home directory syncs automatically between my desktop & laptop & other home workstation, and it's been brain-free for years with Windows 2000 Server.
How's it going to handle when I walk into Starbucks and the T-Mobile Hotspot wants me to log on? Right now, you have to authenticate using HTTP.
Surely I'm not going to have to pull up a tiny browser and enter my login information on the phone just to get online or to be able to get my incoming calls. That would be horrible.
No big surprise, all gas hogs are getting grounded
on
Concorde to be Grounded
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
Check with any of the big airlines - for example, Continental just finished retiring its prop planes at Continental Express because they weren't fuel-efficient. Flying is all about lower costs these days, not glamour. After all, do you think unions at United and other airlines would even consider pay cuts otherwise?
Your hotel wouldn't allow this for very long unless you were paying for the extra bandwidth you are sucking.
Yeah, that's how it works. You pay by the day for a high-speed internet connection in most cases. There's a few places like Wingate where it's free, but for the most part, you pay to play, and that infrastructure is already in place.
Besides, why would you want to watch a show on such a small screen? TV's are always 19-inch or larger at the hotels I use.
Because boring channels are unwatchable on any size TV. I'd rather watch Robbery Homicide Division on my 14" Thinkpad than the Weather Channel, CNN, and ESPN on a 200" JumboTron.
Ya hear that giant sucking sound? That's dozens of black helicopters homing in on your anti-American web page, boy. This-here chart shows all of the missiles they're going to use to blow you to pieces.
If only my cable company had a small box at my house on top of my TV.
You're not getting it. I don't want the small box at all - I want my computer to act as a cable box, so that I can view my recorded shows without all kinds of converters, and so that I can do it from Dallas to Detroit. My computer has tons of processing power and great screen resolution - why do I have to suffer signal loss by sending the signal to my living room first, decoding it there, piping it through a converter box, and then into my PC?
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah, that'll really put a hurtin' on a Viper, Vette, DB7 , XK, or 911 in the quarter mile.
Those cars are considered exotics, not sports cars. Sports cars are generally affordable - my new C70 set me back about $30k. You could buy three C70s for the price of a DB7 and still end up with change for insurance money.
since when has a volvo ever been considered a "sports car"?
The C70 does 0-60 in 6.8 seconds, for starters. Mine tops out around 135. It's one heck of a sports car.
And here I bought a new 2003 Honda Civic Hybrid. I hate when ya buy something and then they come out with new features.
Buddy, if you're a Civic Hybrid buyer, you're not in this car's target market. The car alone is $30k, not including the option.
Just imagine driving on a mountain road and out of a right curb comes a car driving the other way. The radar sees it right in front of you, coming your way. How does it react ?
It works fine. Check out the radar-based cruise-control from Mercedes, now available on a few models. You can set your cruise to follow a vehicle ahead automatically. You just steer, and the two (or more) of you can pass cars and go through tunnels just fine without the cruise control panicking.
I bought my C70 a couple of years ago based on Volvo's safety features. At the time, it was the safest sports car out there - whiplash protection seats, airbags all over the place, stability control, great brakes, etc. Today, the safety advances you hear aren't from Volvo - they're things like Mercedes-Benz brakes that dry themselves off in the wet, laser-based cruise control from Lexus, and now this radar-based braking from Honda. C'mon, Volvo. Get back in the race and make me proud.
SCO has 12.9 million shares, All linux users buy a one lone share per machine, and give it to linus/(someone sensible) we only need to get 51%.
Wrong answer. You'd actually be rewarding SCO's behavior by increasing their stock price. As soon as the general public got wind that the Linux community at large (or anybody else, for that matter) was doing a "group buy" on SCO's stock, the price would increase. It's a simple supply and demand. When there's suddenly a huge demand (like a takeover attempt), the stock price will just suddenly go up.
They couldn't beat Tivo in the DVR game with more features and a lower price.
Now, Tivo's got the awesome Home Media Option out that lets you play MP3's on your Tivo, which Replay never had.
So now, best case scenario, they offer less features as Tivo at the same price? Or maybe a little lower?
What's the business model here again?
I understand that he's got skills, but the difference between this and an Apple product is that Apple products reek of sex appeal. You know, they have gorgeous curves, feminine touches, and the colors work together really well. When a woman walks into your home office and sees a bunch of Apple gear, she says "Oooo, pretty. You've got great taste." When she sees this, she's speechless, and not in a good way.
This thing is a farm implement. It's a high-quality farm implement, and I admire his work ethic, but it's still a farm implement.
How many minutes has it been since Microsoft spent 3/4ths of a billion dollars putting that Netscape stuff to rest?
Read the article, speedy. The TechNet article in question was posted on May 7th, long before the AOL settlement.
Everybody's jumping to conspiracy conclusions, but here's the simple answer: when you give away browser upgrades for free, but you charge for OS installations, and you think that the browser is becoming more important than the OS, you have to merge the two together.
As time goes by, more and more applications become web-based. These days, consumers are more concerned about the version of their browser than the version of their operating system. When you try to hit your favorite web sites, check your web-based email, etc., it doesn't matter whether you're on Windows 98 or Windows XP: the browser version is what matters. They know they can't simply start charging for browsers, so the way to fix this issue is to only do new browsers with new operating systems, and blur the line between the browser version and the OS version.
Bottom line, Microsoft wants to get consumers more interested in OS versions again. If consumers see a web site that says, "Sorry, you need Windows 2005 to view this site," then they have a much higher chance of opening their pocketbooks than if the web site says, "Sorry, you need IE8 to view this site."
while Linux is able to handle such tasks much better while keeping the system still usable or at least more so than Windows(esp. if you use the cl to cp the file rather than a graphical file manager such as nautilus or konqueror).
And Windows is the same way there - the graphical file manager, Windows Explorer, is the worst way to copy large files. Either go to the command line, or use a file manager like Windows Commander. I use Windows Commander to move 10-20gb files across database servers all the time, and Windows still flies while it's running.
Which version of Windows is this? I have Win2K on a 700 MHz Athlon. It slows to a crawl when I move large files around.
You're running an IDE disk subsystem with a bad (not efficient) controller, I bet. Try running a SCSI subsystem, or an IDE system with an efficient controller chip, and your CPU use will drop dramatically.
why SMP nowadays?
Sadly, there's still a lot of dog-slow apps. Example: ask Macromedia Dreamweaver MX to test a stored procedure with a hundred parameters, and it'll freeze for 30-90 seconds on all of the P4's I've tried it on, pegging the CPU at 100%. On dual-CPU boxes, that means you can still be productive with the other CPU, and do things like whine on Macromedia user groups while it runs.
SMP also helps a lot if your box is both a testbed and a design system: mine runs SQL Server, IIS, and I do my design on it, so while I'm working, there's a ton of processes running.
Don't get me wrong, I still buy the "real" SMP systems with warranties, but just pointing out why I'm doing it, and I'm not rendering.
This is the kind of thing which Apple's control over hardware, software, and consumer applications together permits it to excel at. What is astonishing is that Microsoft has proved so poor at this kind of coordination.
Then why do people always protest Microsoft's bundling of browsers, media players, etc with the OS?
If Apple is "good" for bundling applications and not giving consumers the choice (for example, the music purchasing ONLY works with iTunes), then why is Microsoft "bad" for including IE and Windows Media Player with the OS? And can you imagine the outcry if Microsoft began selling music inside Windows Media Player? Slashdot would be screaming about the monopoly.
anyone running anything less than Win2k (that is, if they're running Windows) has to be out of their mind.
There's tons of older software implementations out there. Take the check-in kiosks for airlines: Continental's runs on NT4, and they're still rolling more of those kiosks out every day. One of those situations where if it works, why mess with it, especially when it would just cost more money to convert the existing check-in kiosks in Armpit, Iowa simply to be IPv6 compliant.
but the Parallel nature that I am proposing would fix things like Security, Spam, Porn,
Baby, if IPv4 porn is wrong, I don't want to be right.
Nobody's been asking for IPv6 either.
My ISP said that same thing, when I finally got through to somebody who knew what IPv6 was. The powers-that-be don't seem to know how many people are asking because the level-1 tech support guys have it on their "sorry-we-don't-support" list.
If you think I'm nuts, try calling your own support desk and asking for IPv4 support. Most of 'em don't know what that means, either - but it doesn't mean people don't want it, and aren't asking for it. Don't get me wrong, I'm sure there's not a lot, but those of us who are seem to get a lot of dumb looks.
In today's business climate, we can't imagine migrating without a financial incentive to do so.
IPv6 is like BetaMax tapes back in the 80's: sure, the format is technically better, but we've already got a ton of IPv4 gear and software. Even if you only use free software, there's still man-hours involved for implementation and planning. I pity the fella who walks into his boss's office and says, "Yeah, I'll be spending the next week on the IPv6 migration, getting all the desktops working, upgrading our router firmware, getting an IPv6 address from our ISP, etc."
IPv4 will work just like VHS tapes did: it'll be fine until the next dramatic quantum-leap comes along, like Tivos and DVD recorders will cut down on VHS recorder sales. IPv6 has some neat features, but nothing that a typical small business can't live without.
In the go-go-90's, you'd have been able to pull it off, but these days, if it ain't broke...
...consider getting into a trade.
Yeah, I got into a trade recently, and that's some great advice. I wish I'd have thought about it earlier, especially the way interest rates are going. I traded up to a Volvo, and it's much more comfortable for long trips than my Oldsmobile was.
Seriously, though, I've been thinking of switching careers for a reason you don't discuss: physical presence. With the push towards telecommuting and outsourcing offshore, it's getting way too easy to replace programmers, and that's not a comfortable feeling. I'd rather be doing a career that requires physical presence, like, say, being an electrician. You can't telecommute as an electrician, and you can't fly in somebody from another country every time you need a building wired. Being a tradesman is sounding more and more attractive.
...new features aimed at leapfrogging Microsoft.... Niceties include...a fast-user-switching-type feature, and easy transferral of home directories among devices and the Web.
Not to troll, but if they're thinking they can leapfrog with user switching and roaming home directories, they need to jump a lot higher than that. User switching came with XP, and roaming home directories has been in since 2000. My home directory syncs automatically between my desktop & laptop & other home workstation, and it's been brain-free for years with Windows 2000 Server.
How's it going to handle when I walk into Starbucks and the T-Mobile Hotspot wants me to log on? Right now, you have to authenticate using HTTP.
Surely I'm not going to have to pull up a tiny browser and enter my login information on the phone just to get online or to be able to get my incoming calls. That would be horrible.
Check with any of the big airlines - for example, Continental just finished retiring its prop planes at Continental Express because they weren't fuel-efficient. Flying is all about lower costs these days, not glamour. After all, do you think unions at United and other airlines would even consider pay cuts otherwise?
Your hotel wouldn't allow this for very long unless you were paying for the extra bandwidth you are sucking.
Yeah, that's how it works. You pay by the day for a high-speed internet connection in most cases. There's a few places like Wingate where it's free, but for the most part, you pay to play, and that infrastructure is already in place.
Besides, why would you want to watch a show on such a small screen? TV's are always 19-inch or larger at the hotels I use.
Because boring channels are unwatchable on any size TV. I'd rather watch Robbery Homicide Division on my 14" Thinkpad than the Weather Channel, CNN, and ESPN on a 200" JumboTron.
Ya hear that giant sucking sound? That's dozens of black helicopters homing in on your anti-American web page, boy. This-here chart shows all of the missiles they're going to use to blow you to pieces.
If only my cable company had a small box at my house on top of my TV.
You're not getting it. I don't want the small box at all - I want my computer to act as a cable box, so that I can view my recorded shows without all kinds of converters, and so that I can do it from Dallas to Detroit. My computer has tons of processing power and great screen resolution - why do I have to suffer signal loss by sending the signal to my living room first, decoding it there, piping it through a converter box, and then into my PC?