Good point. That's why I have NO FLOPPY DRIVE in my PC. Not one. CD-RW, Check. DVD-ROM, Check. 2x 80GB drives, Check. Gigabit Lan, Check. GeForce4, Check. Floppy? Nope. Instead I have a CF/SmartMedia/MMC/SD/MC card reader/writer.
"scale down its product, clean out bugs, adapt the software to be real-time"
Windows CE is already scaled down. It already has had the bugs cleaned out (they are on the fourth version now). And, as of CE 3.0, it is a real-time OS.
I have PHP and MySQL on my system. They run fine (most things install without modification). I also have the GIMP, GTK, AbiWord, and several other "Linux" products on my system.
- File Serving
Windows sharing leaves something to be desired, but I've developed my own system with Apache. You can download/upload with just a web browser or use a client program which integrates into the shell for true drag-and-drip use.
- Remote interactive prompt (Have you *seen* windows terminal server???)
Terminal Services is actually quite nippy over most connections (I have 128kb uplink on my cable modem and it's quite usable).
You can also use the command prompt (.net server actually improves the command prompt quite a bit)
- Web Serving
I run Apache on my system. It works fine and is quite stable (the 2.x series was developed with win32 in mind). IIS 5.x is swiss cheese, of course, but IIS6 (.net server) is quite a bit more secure.
- Or anything else that requires the least modicum of stability
Windows XP Professional; SP1; build 2600. Uptime: 23 days 14 hours 22 minutes. And that's just because a roommate tripped over the f****** power strip cord! Windows IS stable; datacenter server proves that. Sometimes apps die, sometimes the shell dies. But I have never had the OS die on me (except for the time when I attempted to install RAM while the computer was sleeping... ugh; or the time that I installed a driver that turned out to be a virus - that was fun).
I run an NForce system with an Athlon XP 1667 (2000+), GeForce4 Ti 4200 128M, 256M of Samsung PC2100, 2x Samsung 7200RPM 80G disks (RAID0), an old IBM 10G disk (Linux partition), TDK 32x burner (that has NEVER ONCE had a CDRW in it - just plenty of good old CDRs), Hitachi DVD (same used in PowerMacs. It's cool. I have insane uptime, and everything is stable and fast. This is what computing should be.
Now, don't get me wrong. I love Linux. It's a great operating system for some applications (I would never use Windows for a web server - even though it works fine, Linux is cheaper). Linux is not the end all OS, however, and perhaps it shouldn't try to be one. Windows is better on the desktop and it is better on the 32 proc massive DB server. Windows is probably functionally better than Linux in most ways. Linux wins when Windows is too inflexible, too closed, or too expensive. Windows server is $600+; Linux is free. That's what it comes down to: do you want "all that" or "all that and a bag of chips" for thirty five cents extra?
Not a problem on my 1x AthlonXP 1667 (2000+). Most modern operating systems can balance processes pretty well (I can burn a CD while playing a game, for example; my burner rarely has to use BURN-Proof). The point is that a process should never take over the system because it should never be allowed to take over the system. I'd say that Windows does a pretty good job of that.
It's not really as bad as you think. Sprint, for example, offers reasonably priced (well, sort of) unlimited plans (as does Verizion). AT&T just has high prices.
BTW: Both Verizion and Sprint use CDMA; not GSM; however, CDMA is actually a tad bit faster than GPRS.
You don't use VS much, do you? Autocomplete doesn't force you to do anything; it just provides suggustions. You can ignore them. It's actually pretty damn smart, and it is a wonderful time saver.
No, you didn't. One standard is great, but in the long run competing standards are more benificial. Look at CDMA - there are several healthy CDMA carriers in the US (Sprint, Verizion, etc.), and there are several TDMA/GSM carriers (ATT, T-Mobile). No, you can't use any phone on any service. No, that doesn't matter - phones are pretty much free over here. Some carriers do lock SIM cards, but most carriers don't even use them. I don't know about prices in Europe but I do know that they are falling like plutonium bricks over here. You can choose how you want your cellular too, unlimited local usage for $32/month (Cricket), pre-pay (ATT, Virgin Mobile, Others), free nights/weekends (several carriers), lots of "anytime" minutes (several carriers), no roaming/long distance (Sprint, ATT, others), mobile internet (Verizion, Sprint, AT&T, others), SMS (almost all carriers), etc.
OK, it's nice to have one standard for a whole continent. But, when comparing size and population, the US is pretty much the same as Western Europe. Everytime someone brags about having universal service throughout Europe, I respond with the fact that our service is pretty universal also. Coverage is pretty good, no matter what carrier you use. OK, so you can't use your AT&T phone if you want to switch to Verizion. Big deal, Verizion is perfectly happy to give you a free or nearly free phone.
Cellular service is different here. We are not Europe, and we do not try to be Europe. For better or worse, the government pretty much keeps it's hands out of things (although that is slowly changing). Instead of forcing one communication standard, the government has let the market decide. Ultimately, CDMA will probably win. Europe is stuck with TDMA GSM service. Why is CDMA better? Mostly because it can handle two to three times more calls per channel. CDMA is a better technology; even the European carriers recognize this (and are rushing to change their networks). I am not sure about costs today, but in the long run mobile phone service in the US will be cheaper than it is in Europe. It happened here with long distance (remember 25 cents a minute?), and it will happen with cellular service. Switching to CDMA is not hard in the US because we never had a standard. Sprint was CDMA from the start. No standard = best technology wins. Unfortunately, no standard = chaos. Until a few years ago, US cellular service was a joke - mostly analog service, with terrible digital coverage. Europe laughed, with good reason - our system sucked. Then CDMA came out, and carriers began to use it. CDMA put the heat on, and carriers responded with digital TDMA that didn't stink. The cellular systems in this country became digital almost overnight.
So, no, I can't take my SIM out and use my phone with a different carrier. But there are really only two GSM carriers, and GSM is not the wireless standard in the US. There really is no standard over here, which is a mixed blessing. Ultimately, however, the customer will win. TDMA is going to go away in the US; even AT&T will eventually migrate their network to CDMA.
This is an excelent idea, this would allow more than one person to be watchin it at a time, the price would eventually be so much lower than Blockbuster that a lot of people would want to use it. I know that I would probably go to something like that as long as the equipment is good and the compression is not low quality.
The big problem is getting it from the central storage unit to the individual rooms, this can be done by 2 methods that i can think of: pipe it over uncompressed which would make it so you would not have to have anything to decompress it on the viewers end, but on the other hand this would put an incredible strain on the central computer to decompress all the movies requirein a lot of money to be put into the central system. the second idea is to have a small computer at the viewers end to decript it, i am not sure if this would be more expensive or less expensive(i will leave it up to you to crunch the numbers) this would also require a very fast lan or other method to get the data from one place to another.
I am really excited to see if this idea catches on, it is a great idea that i hope will spread.
(sorry for any and all: typos, mispellings, mispunctuations and other errors; i am typing this up at 10:00 on a verry small keyboard)
Come on... that screenshot is lame. They didn't even take the time to doctor it correctly (They are running Office 2000 but have the Office 97-style assistant).
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Good point. That's why I have NO FLOPPY DRIVE in my PC. Not one. CD-RW, Check. DVD-ROM, Check. 2x 80GB drives, Check. Gigabit Lan, Check. GeForce4, Check. Floppy? Nope. Instead I have a CF/SmartMedia/MMC/SD/MC card reader/writer.
That's what I have. 8045 + Panaflo 29CFM. Now if only my GeForce4 were civil.
Not classic bond, you say? That's why I liked it.
Dial 1-800-555-TELL
Try it. You have to speak clearly, but it works pretty well. MUCH BETTER than the old style phone trees.
No, 15 GB/HR with MPEG2 VBR Compression.
HD Uncompressed would be 250GB+ per hour
"scale down its product, clean out bugs, adapt the software to be real-time"
Windows CE is already scaled down. It already has had the bugs cleaned out (they are on the fourth version now). And, as of CE 3.0, it is a real-time OS.
"This leaves a relative handful of people who are able to rip MP3s, and Sony can go after these folks personally"
There's where p2p comes in... it doesn't matter if you shut those people down - if the music is popular it will be EVERYWHERE.
"That everyone hates their PC?"
I don't. Your statement is incorrect.
- MySQL daemon
I have PHP and MySQL on my system. They run fine (most things install without modification). I also have the GIMP, GTK, AbiWord, and several other "Linux" products on my system.
- File Serving
Windows sharing leaves something to be desired, but I've developed my own system with Apache. You can download/upload with just a web browser or use a client program which integrates into the shell for true drag-and-drip use.
- Remote interactive prompt (Have you *seen* windows terminal server???)
Terminal Services is actually quite nippy over most connections (I have 128kb uplink on my cable modem and it's quite usable).
You can also use the command prompt (.net server actually improves the command prompt quite a bit)
- Web Serving
I run Apache on my system. It works fine and is quite stable (the 2.x series was developed with win32 in mind). IIS 5.x is swiss cheese, of course, but IIS6 (.net server) is quite a bit more secure.
- Or anything else that requires the least modicum of stability
Windows XP Professional; SP1; build 2600. Uptime: 23 days 14 hours 22 minutes. And that's just because a roommate tripped over the f****** power strip cord! Windows IS stable; datacenter server proves that. Sometimes apps die, sometimes the shell dies. But I have never had the OS die on me (except for the time when I attempted to install RAM while the computer was sleeping... ugh; or the time that I installed a driver that turned out to be a virus - that was fun).
I run an NForce system with an Athlon XP 1667 (2000+), GeForce4 Ti 4200 128M, 256M of Samsung PC2100, 2x Samsung 7200RPM 80G disks (RAID0), an old IBM 10G disk (Linux partition), TDK 32x burner (that has NEVER ONCE had a CDRW in it - just plenty of good old CDRs), Hitachi DVD (same used in PowerMacs. It's cool. I have insane uptime, and everything is stable and fast. This is what computing should be.
Now, don't get me wrong. I love Linux. It's a great operating system for some applications (I would never use Windows for a web server - even though it works fine, Linux is cheaper). Linux is not the end all OS, however, and perhaps it shouldn't try to be one. Windows is better on the desktop and it is better on the 32 proc massive DB server. Windows is probably functionally better than Linux in most ways. Linux wins when Windows is too inflexible, too closed, or too expensive. Windows server is $600+; Linux is free. That's what it comes down to: do you want "all that" or "all that and a bag of chips" for thirty five cents extra?
Not a problem on my 1x AthlonXP 1667 (2000+). Most modern operating systems can balance processes pretty well (I can burn a CD while playing a game, for example; my burner rarely has to use BURN-Proof). The point is that a process should never take over the system because it should never be allowed to take over the system. I'd say that Windows does a pretty good job of that.
Yeah, but a 4.77 ghz P4 would be a lot faster than a 4.77 ghz IBM PC.
It's not really as bad as you think.
Sprint, for example, offers reasonably priced (well, sort of) unlimited plans (as does Verizion). AT&T just has high prices.
BTW: Both Verizion and Sprint use CDMA; not GSM; however, CDMA is actually a tad bit faster than GPRS.
"Visual Studio's auto-complete"
You don't use VS much, do you?
Autocomplete doesn't force you to do anything; it just provides suggustions. You can ignore them. It's actually pretty damn smart, and it is a wonderful time saver.
You must have a darn fast horse.
"but at least we got that right"
No, you didn't. One standard is great, but in the long run competing standards are more benificial. Look at CDMA - there are several healthy CDMA carriers in the US (Sprint, Verizion, etc.), and there are several TDMA/GSM carriers (ATT, T-Mobile). No, you can't use any phone on any service. No, that doesn't matter - phones are pretty much free over here. Some carriers do lock SIM cards, but most carriers don't even use them. I don't know about prices in Europe but I do know that they are falling like plutonium bricks over here. You can choose how you want your cellular too, unlimited local usage for $32/month (Cricket), pre-pay (ATT, Virgin Mobile, Others), free nights/weekends (several carriers), lots of "anytime" minutes (several carriers), no roaming/long distance (Sprint, ATT, others), mobile internet (Verizion, Sprint, AT&T, others), SMS (almost all carriers), etc.
OK, it's nice to have one standard for a whole continent. But, when comparing size and population, the US is pretty much the same as Western Europe. Everytime someone brags about having universal service throughout Europe, I respond with the fact that our service is pretty universal also. Coverage is pretty good, no matter what carrier you use. OK, so you can't use your AT&T phone if you want to switch to Verizion. Big deal, Verizion is perfectly happy to give you a free or nearly free phone.
Cellular service is different here. We are not Europe, and we do not try to be Europe. For better or worse, the government pretty much keeps it's hands out of things (although that is slowly changing). Instead of forcing one communication standard, the government has let the market decide. Ultimately, CDMA will probably win. Europe is stuck with TDMA GSM service. Why is CDMA better? Mostly because it can handle two to three times more calls per channel. CDMA is a better technology; even the European carriers recognize this (and are rushing to change their networks). I am not sure about costs today, but in the long run mobile phone service in the US will be cheaper than it is in Europe. It happened here with long distance (remember 25 cents a minute?), and it will happen with cellular service. Switching to CDMA is not hard in the US because we never had a standard. Sprint was CDMA from the start. No standard = best technology wins. Unfortunately, no standard = chaos. Until a few years ago, US cellular service was a joke - mostly analog service, with terrible digital coverage. Europe laughed, with good reason - our system sucked. Then CDMA came out, and carriers began to use it. CDMA put the heat on, and carriers responded with digital TDMA that didn't stink. The cellular systems in this country became digital almost overnight.
So, no, I can't take my SIM out and use my phone with a different carrier. But there are really only two GSM carriers, and GSM is not the wireless standard in the US. There really is no standard over here, which is a mixed blessing. Ultimately, however, the customer will win. TDMA is going to go away in the US; even AT&T will eventually migrate their network to CDMA.
I wouldn't have it any other way.
Man, you must have seen that TV show too.
What really got me was the department store. Stupid!
This is an excelent idea, this would allow more than one person to be watchin it at a time, the price would eventually be so much lower than Blockbuster that a lot of people would want to use it. I know that I would probably go to something like that as long as the equipment is good and the compression is not low quality.
The big problem is getting it from the central storage unit to the individual rooms, this can be done by 2 methods that i can think of: pipe it over uncompressed which would make it so you would not have to have anything to decompress it on the viewers end, but on the other hand this would put an incredible strain on the central computer to decompress all the movies requirein a lot of money to be put into the central system. the second idea is to have a small computer at the viewers end to decript it, i am not sure if this would be more expensive or less expensive(i will leave it up to you to crunch the numbers) this would also require a very fast lan or other method to get the data from one place to another.
I am really excited to see if this idea catches on, it is a great idea that i hope will spread.
(sorry for any and all: typos, mispellings, mispunctuations and other errors; i am typing this up at 10:00 on a verry small keyboard)
"...or 1024 chickens"
Wouldn't that be pigeons?
Try this.
Windows XP? Yeah, I did that. Legally. It was $10. I downloaded RC2 from Microsoft's website.
"This new XP crap needs no less than 256 megs to live relatively well on a PIII 900MHz."
Not by a long shot.
128MB, Celeron 300A@450
Runs great.
Come on... that screenshot is lame. They didn't even take the time to doctor it correctly (They are running Office 2000 but have the Office 97-style assistant).
They do.
"But neither Linux or Microsoft actually seem to develop intuitive interfaces and software that Just Works."
Linux is not a company.
Windows isn't intuitive. Neither is Mac OS. Both are learned.
"Because, you know the Chinese or any of those other Asian countries have no originality. Only Westerners are creative."
No.
Very few CPUs today are original.