No, the 360 has internal flash memory. Presumably the settings will be saved there.
Re:Foie Gras is some nasty shit...
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Chefs As Chemists
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· Score: 1
http://www.goveg.com/feat/foie/ What a despicable thing to do to an animal just to make it tastier to eat.
Not that I'm defending Foie Gras (not having ever had it, I don't even know whether or not I would like it), but you need to consider your source. PETA is about as far away from sanity as you can get with regards to "animal rights".
Like Greenpeace, PETA is at the fringe of the movement and by linking there you associate yourself with that fringe. If that's what you want, so be it, but if you intend to convince moderate individuals you would do better by selecting a moderate source. You don't need to be PETA to oppose Foie Gras.
Re:Foie Gras is some nasty shit...
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Chefs As Chemists
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· Score: 4, Insightful
On a side note, your little tirade didn't really seem to address the point the GP was making: Do we really need to torture animals before killing & eating them?
We kill 9 billion chickens in the US every year. 9 BILLION. Our selective breeding is so effective that meat chickens go from birth to slaughter in about 8 weeks.
The meat and poultry industry is a nasty, nasty business. Any illusion that we treat meat animals with any sort of dignity goes out the door when you learn how fiendishly optimized the whole affair is.
It is a peculiar thing that we think it's OK to eat animals. I eat meat because it's acceptable to do so in my culture and because I like the taste. I make no claims of moral righteousness. If you're not willing to face up to what needs to happen to get you your meat, you shouldn't be eating meat. I absolutely respect vegetarians (I know several) and particularly vegans for the choice they have made. It is not my choice, but it is one that I can easily justify.
When you really, really get down to it, there's little more inhumane than the breeding of animals for the sole purpose of their later slaughter. How we treat the animals has ramifications for our safety and health, and it is often the most graphic effect of the system. It does not, however, have much to do with the morality of the situation.
In essence, when we have billions of animals created essentially as expendable meat factories, force feeding a few geese seems like small potatoes.
ECEN4593. We're also using Spartan III FPGAs, which are more than sufficient.
Our CPU architecture is called "SRC", for "Simple RISC Computer". It was designed by a professor here. It's a full CPU (somewhat similar to MIPS) but has some notable shortcomings (no condition codes, integer only, no multiply/divide) to make the ALU simpler.
We do the same thing at my university in a course called "Computer Architecture". Well, not quite the same thing. We use FPGAs and Verilog to implement the CPU, and instead of a microcoded CISC CPU we implement a RISC architecture.
Since our design lacks cache, the CISC architecture that this guy implemented may be faster (it does more per instruction which is critical when instruction fetch time dominates.
However, our RISC design is fully 32-bit (registers, ALU, address and data buses) and is pipelined (classic 5-stage fetch/decode/execute/memory access/register write). We also have to deal with hazards (resolved by forwarding or pipeline bubbles). We're even working on a VLIW version now.
Of course, all of this is vastly easier when you can use a high-level hardware description language. Hats off to this tinkerer.
Definitely a step backwards, kind of like how Vista's wireless setup got a lot harder over XP.
Vista's wireless setup got a lot better, but only because XP's sucked so much. No more typing the WEP/WPA key twice for so some bizzare reason. No more "network connection OK" bubbles.
What got worse was the network connection UI. It takes three clicks "Network and Internet > Network and Sharing Center > Manage Network Connections" compared to one in XP. Not to mention that that's after you're in the control panel.
On ALL of my Vista systems, I put a shortcut to "Network Connections" in the Start Menu. It's stupid, and I shouldn't have to do it, but it works.
The network UI is one place where I think Microsoft really dropped the ball. There are some nice features, but on the whole I find it more annoying and harder to use than the UI in XP.
While I can see the technical merit in using the Ki/Mi/Gi prefix instead of K/M/G, I object to it for the simple reason that kibibyte, mibibyte and gibibyte are stupid sounding words and I refuse to use them for that reason alone.
I think that the Henry, and Coulomb are odd sounding units. It doesn't matter, they're the standard units.
Seriously, could you have picked a worse reason why to use SI prefixes in a nonstandard way?
the original scheme is a consistent exception
No, it's not. With some exceptions, such as RAM and ROM, there has never been consistency. "1.44MB" floppies are neither 1.44MiB nor 1.44MB. DVDs use SI units. Earlier flash cards, based on NOR (which is byte-addressable) is measured in binary units. Newer flash cards almost always use SI prefixes. Data transmission rates have always used SI units.
On the other hand, if someone came up with a set of power of 2 prefixes that didn't suck, I'd happily switch.
The current prefixes are ideal. Not only are they similar to the old prefixes for ease of transition, they are also short.
You are buying the drive to store base 2 numbers, so why shouldn't the value be rated in terms of base 2?
BECAUSE SI PREFIXES DON'T CHANGE BASED ON WHAT YOU ARE MEASURING.
It doesn't matter whether you are measuring distance (km), mass (kg), force (kN), energy (kJ), power (kW), pressure (kPa), frequency (kHz) or resistance (k).
Kilo always means 10^3. Mega always means 10^6. Giga always means 10^9.
Note: The following post uses SI prefixes (e.g. GB=10^9 bytes, etc.) correctly. Binary prefixes are used when appropriate.
Every operating system, whether it be Windows NT, XP, or Vista, Linux, FreeBSD, or Solaris, states that 1Kb = 1024bytes, 1Mb = 1024Kb, and so on.
WRONG. Use a modern Linux distro. You will find that many tools either use the binary prefixes or use SI-standard prefix usage.
Why rewrite all software, and god forbid, patch all old software going back however many DECADES into the past to implement this change, when harddrive manufacturers could simply start labelling their drives correctly?
Because HDD manufacturers ARE labeling their drives correctly. "Giga" means 10^9 in SI. It always has and always will. The computer industry usage has never been correct.
The disparity only grows as we go up in prefixes. 1TiB = 1.099TB. 1PiB = 1.125PB. 1PiB = 1.153PB.
Moreover, the non-SI use is ambiguous. A "1.44MB" floppy is neither 1.44MiB nor 1.44MB, it's 1 440 KiB. A "650MB" CD is 650MiB, but a 4.7GB DVD is 4.7GB.
GiB is NEVER ambiguous. If you want to keep using the power-of-two units, use the proper prefixes. IEEE, NIST, and the IEC encourage it.
I don't see why hdd manufactureres are the ONE single exception to this long standing rule, and SI units be damned.
Hard drives, flash storage, DVDs, Blu-Ray/HD-DVD, transfer rates (8Mbps = 8 000 000 bps), and everything else uses the standard SI prefixes.
Why should computer memory be the ONE EXCEPTION to the SI standard prefixes? We have binary prefixes. Use them if you want.
The problem is that a 2^k organization of bytes is fundamental to the way computers operate.
It's fundamental to the way that memory is addressed, but there's NO REASON why you need to butcher SI prefixes. We just need binary prefixes.
Oh wait, we already have binary prefixes. NIST, the IEC, and IEEE highly encourage their use.
You can't realistically design a RAM chip with 1000 bytes of memory.
You don't know what the hell you're talking about. Yes, if you have byte addressing, your addressable space will be a power of two. No, you don't need to use the whole addressable space.
Nor do you have to use byte addressing. NAND flash is addressed by sectors, and it is often specified in SI units.
et's all agree that the US is part of the Third World when it comes to mobile phone service (and broadband, too). Anyone who has spent time in Scandinavia, Korea, Japan, or other advanced countries knows that we usually pay more and get less for our money.
Anyone who has actually done research would find out that the exact opposite is true.
Seriously people. It's not hard:
T-Mobile UK Flext 25 £20.00/mo (approx $40/mo) 18-month contract 300 minutes included 20p/min thereafter (approx $0.40)
T-Mobile US $39.99/mo 0, 12, or 24-month contract 600 minutes included $0.40/min thereafter Free nights/weekends
Although the UK plan includes "free" incoming (caller pays), the US plan has twice as many inclusive minutes. In addition, the US plan has free nights and weekends, and free calls to voicemail (first 1000 minutes).
In such a condition, the other side has a clear legal superiority to have their interests protected against a hostile public, and so the astronomical damages will stay without modification.
Ahh, see, this is where you're wrong. People have realized how easy it is to commit copyright infringement. They don't see it as wrong, and I'm not sure that I see it as wrong.
Enforcing laws that people don't believe in doesn't work. We have spent billions and billions of dollars pursuing drug prohibition, and look how that has worked out. The RIAA/MPAA/whoever doesn't have that much money. Pursuing these cases is expensive.
So, RIAA/MPAA/whoever, keep being bastards. Something like 2/3rds of the US has downloaded music illegally at some point in time. The more we hate you and the more you make it difficult for us to enjoy your content legally, the more incentive we have to ignore your copyrights.
BTW. I'm surprised so many of you in the US have plans around $60/month. I pay 14 euros/month for basic service, but it's plenty enough airtime.
My family spends about 5000 minutes a month on that $60.
Most of it is calling each other (which is free), my friends (which is free, because they have the same carrier), other family (my aunt/uncle/cousins, because they have the same carrier), or my boss.
About 1000 minutes are on weekends (free) or at night (free).
The balance is covered by the 500 minutes which are included with our plan.
Americans talk on their phones a lot more.
Compare rates - you'll see that while there are cheaper plans in Europe (like your 14 euro plan), minute for minute people in the US pay less.
And, please, don't give me that "you pay for incoming calls" line. You would probably be shocked to learn that it doesn't cost more to call a mobile phone than a landline here. Nor can you tell the two apart by the phone number, either.
People in Europe text more than people in the US. Part of that is the fact that SMS is cheaper in Europe, and part of it is the fact that people in the US get absurd quantities of "free" minutes.
On weekends, at night, or when calling people with the same carrier, it's cheaper for me to call someone than it is to text them.
Perhaps, but it would damned sure thin the malware herd a bit. The script kiddies would quickly realize that it isn't so easy to build a botnet out of 48 different distros of Linux, each often reacting to a given flaw in different ways, and some simply ignoring the flaw altogether?
You don't get it, do you?
Corporations don't generally deploy "48 different distros of Linux". They deploy RedHat or SuSE. Home users don't use 48 different distros, they generally use Fedora or Ubuntu.
There are a LOT of distros. But if you look at the percentage of machines, a VERY high percentage are running RedHat (or CentOS), SuSE, or Ubuntu.
Then of course there's the common daemons. I'm sure different packaging systems and file system arrangements will protect us from that.
Thanks for bringing some fresh air to the table. Somehow it seems that anyone around here that doesn't hate Vista is somehow a "Microsoft fanboy". The problem is, I keep playing defense against a lot of the myths that are spread about MS and Vista - and in the process I look like I'm "sucking up" to Microsoft.
Let me be clear: I like Linux, I use Linux, and I think it's often the best tool for the job. I don't own a Mac but I have used Mac OS X pretty extensively (several of my CS labs have been done on Macs) and I understand why people like the polish and integration.
I'm not saying that Vista is perfect. It's a memory hog (not that XP wasn't), SearchIndexer likes to beat the crap out of your disk (although Spotlight does too), and some things are a pain in the ass (like getting to "network connections", at least until you make a shortcut in the Start Menu).
But there's a lot to like about Vista, too. You can now customize the folders in the open/save dialogs without editing the registry. You can enter a WEP/WPA key without having to type it twice! You can view a calendar without opening the date/time window. The battery meter is actually useful. The FTP and DAV clients don't lock up regularly. You don't need crappy client software for authentication (EAP) on our corporate wireless network. Driver downloading appears to actually work. You can resume CIFS/SMB transfers. The file transfer dialogs actually give reasonable estimates. You don't have to babysit the installer. You don't have to go to a web page and screw with ActiveX to install updates. You can run more than one 3D application at a time. You can use antialiasing over Remote Desktop. The "uninstall programs" screen comes up faster. You can search the Start Menu, Control Panel, and just about everything else. Crappy graphics drivers or fritzy graphics hardware doesn't crash the machine. It's easier to change power profiles. You can use fast user switching on a domain. The video thumbnailer doesn't just take the first (usually black) frame. Malloc isn't piss slow.
I could go on and on. But you get the point. Just because you don't see the benefit doesn't mean that someone else doesn't.
We beta tested this from alpha to release. It was clunky and busted all along, and it didn't even firm up until the end. Our company still, after dedicating all that effort, will not support running our product on Vista. Which is just as well, since none of our customers, all major financial institutions, are asking for it.
I have run nearly every released (on Connect) Vista build since M5. It was clunky and busted before the reboot. Today it works fine.
I haven't had a bugcheck ('bluescreen') on any of my systems since Beta 2. All of my hardware, from my generic-branded Compal EFL30 notebook (Intel 915 chipset, P-M Dothan),to my old Media Center box (Intel 845 chipset, P4), to my desktop (GeForce 6100 chipset, Athlon 64 x2) is supported. My Intel 2915 wireless worked out of the box, unlike with XP. My Brother DCP-7020 printer worked out of the box, unlike with XP. My "US Robotics" $20 USB wireless card worked out of the box, unlike with XP.
Vista runs fine with the 1.25GB of memory and 1.73GHz P-M I have in my notebook. None of my hardware is particularly high-end. I have used ATI graphics (Radeon x1300) and NVIDIA graphics (GeForce Go 6400 in my notebook, GeForce 6600 in the media box, GeForce 8600GT in my desktop). My friend's Intel GMA950 works fine too.
During Vista's long beta, I successfully ran everything from Firefox to VMWare to VB6 to Warcraft III. In the 10 months that I have used Vista as my only OS (on my personal computers), the ONLY product that I have run in to trouble with has been the Cisco VPN client, which now has a Vista-compatible version.
We will not be beta-testing yet another crazy development model from Microsoft. Ask VB6 programmers how well their legacy code bases are doing today.
My VB6 codebase is doing just fine in Vista, and my VB6 development environment runs just fine in Vista..NET is not another "crazy development model"..NET 3.0 and 3.5 run on version 2 of the CLR, and are source and object code compatible with.NET 2.0. Even.NET 1.1 isn't going anywhere.
WPF, WCF, and the other new Vista features are built on top of the existing framework. They aren't replacing it.
I'll tell you straight out, no one's going to touch it. No developer in their right mind is going to code to an API that is not backwards compatible to XP.
You don't know what the hell you're talking about..NET 3.0 and WPF are both backwards-compatible with Windows XP.
This is a load of crap. Under Aero, you cannot have a single application running within 10% of the efficiency it would have run had it been on XP. That's the problem. It's a huge step down in efficiency. Who cares if the applications are more fair if the entire subsystem is slower than its predecessor. This is a non-problem on OSX.
You also don't know what the hell you're talking about here.
Yes, GDI/GDI+ performance is worse with the DWM running ("Aero Glass"). That's because GDI/GDI+ aren't hardware accelerated with the DWM (they can't be because you aren't drawing directly to the display buffer).
However, if you are relying on fast GDI/GDI+ performance, you are deluded. GDI has never been fast and it has never been glitch free. DirectX has always been a better choice.
As for Direct3D performance, actual performance is generally 5-10% slower on Vista using the latest NVIDIA/ATI drivers.
As for everything else, performance is comparable to XP.
No. No, it's not. Arguing that is ridiculous.
No, you dismissing his claim without providing a shred of evidence is ridiculous. I know of several circumstances under which Vista is more stable than XP, OS X, or Linux. Anyone who has overclocked their GPU on Vista can tell you how much more robust the graphics system is.
The difference is (hopefully) how the signing gets done. How much does it cost me to get my app signed on Win 98/Xp/Vista? If it costs anything or if it takes a long time or if it's a pain for some other reason then it's not an effective system because most apps just won't be signed.
Microsoft tries to use signing for trust, which is usually a bad idea, because it leads towards the whole model of 'pay me to trust you so our users trust you' that Windows and Windows Mobile currently have.
Microsoft uses signing to establish the source of an executable. You pay some company (usually VeriSign) to vouch for the identity of your company. When I run a binary on Windows and it says "Adobe Corporation", I can be reasonably certain that it came from Adobe and was not modified.
If the CAs aren't doing their homework, we have a problem. But of course then we have a problem with TLS and everything else that depends on CAs.
> Of course, I'm sure that some Mac fan is going to point out how this is another Apple innovation.
Well, some Windows fanboy (you) already pointed this out as some sort of Microsoft innovation, which is no more true.
Name another OS with a pervasive X.509-based signing system. Yes, most Linux distros support signed packages, but that's a far cry from incorporating the signature into the executable file.
Feature in Windows since IE4 / Windows 98, called Authenticode. Nearly everything in a base Windows XP or Vista is signed, as are many third-party applications. Authenticode is based on X.509 certificates - I'm not sure what Apple's tech is based on. Vista checks signatures before elevating, and the signed UAC dialog looks nothing like the unsigned UAC dialog.
Application-Based Firewall
Feature in Windows since Windows XP SP2.
Stronger Encryption for Disk Images
BitLocker in Vista uses AES-256. EFS can be configured to use AES-256 in Vista.
Enhanced VPN Client Compatibility
Don't really know on this one.
Sharing and Collaboration Configuration
ACLs have been in Windows since Windows NT. Sharing can be configured through the properties dialog box of any folder.
Sandboxing
Protected mode is implemented in Vista. The primary use is Internet Explorer.
Multiple User Certificates
The central certificate store in Windows has supported multiple user certificates since at least Windows 2000.
Enhanced Smart Card Capabilities
Unknown, but Windows has had smartcard support since Windows 2000.
Library Randomization
Vista introduced this to Windows. BSD and Linux distros had it before then.
Windows SMB Packet Signing
Obviously supported by Windows Vista.
So, it looks like most of the new security features in Leopard are direct rip-offs of Vista/BSD/Linux features. Time Machine is a direct ripoff of Previous Versions in Vista, albeit with over-the-top graphical effects. Spaces are a ripoff of a feature that has been in UNIX for decades. Every modern Linux desktop has terminal tabs.
Apple, stop it with your fucking bullshit. It's fine to copy features from other software. It's not fine to copy them, claim that you're being innovative, and then accuse your competition of copying you. It's dishonest, it's sleazy, and it's cheap. Your software can stand on its own.
In the MS implementation, if you want to resurrect a file you first have to restore the whole volume. This makes it useful for sytem backup, but not very practical for "oops, I just lost 15 minutes of work" file restore things.
Not true. Right click on a file in Vista Business/Enterprise/Ultimate, choose "Properties", the choose "Previous Versions".
It may not have the same over-the-top 3D interface that Time Machine does, but it accomplishes the same goals.
Folks, If you are still watching TV in 2007, wake up. Most of the intelligent people that I know--self included--have quit wasting their lives in front of that machine. It's a waste of your life. They did a study once and found that an asleep person has more brain activity than one watching the boob tube. I quit watching it in 8th grade and my life has been much better for it.
God, I hate this fucking Slashdot elitism. "I'm too good to watch TV."
If you don't like what's on the tube, feel free not to watch. But don't pretend that it's because you're more "intelligent" than people who like TV.
Some of us enjoy shows like The Daily Show, South Park, MythBusters, Battlestar Gallactica, Dr. Who, or even Good Eats.
People who say there's nothing good on TV clearly don't watch TV. There is a lot on TV, and while only a fraction of it is worthwhile, there's still plenty of quality programming out there.
The USA has very low expectations of what a car can do. I blame the crappy suspension they put in their cars, that and all those top-heavy SUVs which roll over and kill everybody inside if you clip a curb or try and use the steering wheel.
A modern BMW M5 can do over 200Mph, and do it in reasonable safety. 125 mph in an M5 is completely safe (other idiot drivers notwithstanding). 90 mph in an M5 is so far within the limits that it's boring.
Ahh, another day, another idiot who presumes that "doing 200Mph safely" has anything to do with your car.
First off, the M5 is electronically limited to 250kph, like most European vehicles that can go that fast.
Second, stopping distance is proportional to the square of speed. Your reaction time is not.
People who claim that driving at 125MPH is safe don't understand the problem. The problem is not whether or not you can control the car. The problem is what you do when something unexpected happens.
I blame the crappy suspension they put in their cars, that and all those top-heavy SUVs which roll over and kill everybody inside if you clip a curb or try and use the steering wheel.
Considering that a pretty good fraction of our cars are manufactured in Korea, Japan, or Europe, I'm not sure what you mean by the "crappy suspension" that "we" put in "our cars". Wake up. Volvo, Jaguar, and Land Rover are owned by Ford. Until recently, Daimler owned Chrysler.
90 mph in an M5 is so far within the limits that it's boring.
This expresses everything that's wrong with your attitude. You are driving on a public highway, putting everyone else at risk by the very nature of you being there. Good drivers cause crashes. Bad drivers cause crashes. You are not so skilled that you could not screw up. Even F1 drivers screw up.
This is the LAST place where you want to be testing the limits of your vehicle. And if you do screw up, it will be far, far worse if you are going 125MPH.
Note that this driver AVERAGED 90 MPH. Considering that he had to stop for gas and other necessities, he must have been going faster than 90 MPH for a fair portion of the trip.
I am so sick and fucking tired of these arguments. Somehow, it's always the OTHER drivers who are the problem. Somehow, YOU are "skilled" enough to drive excessively fast (note that over the limit doesn't necessarily mean excessive). Perhaps YOU have never made a mistake and caused an accident. That's not the point. Perhaps someone else will make the mistake. Perhaps you will slip up. IT HAPPENS FAR MORE OFTEN THAN YOU WOULD LIKE TO ADMIT.
We design and operate airplanes with significant safety margins, so that people don't die when mistakes or failures happen. The same logic should apply to motor vehicles.
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No, the 360 has internal flash memory. Presumably the settings will be saved there.
Not that I'm defending Foie Gras (not having ever had it, I don't even know whether or not I would like it), but you need to consider your source. PETA is about as far away from sanity as you can get with regards to "animal rights".
Like Greenpeace, PETA is at the fringe of the movement and by linking there you associate yourself with that fringe. If that's what you want, so be it, but if you intend to convince moderate individuals you would do better by selecting a moderate source. You don't need to be PETA to oppose Foie Gras.
We kill 9 billion chickens in the US every year. 9 BILLION. Our selective breeding is so effective that meat chickens go from birth to slaughter in about 8 weeks.
The meat and poultry industry is a nasty, nasty business. Any illusion that we treat meat animals with any sort of dignity goes out the door when you learn how fiendishly optimized the whole affair is.
It is a peculiar thing that we think it's OK to eat animals. I eat meat because it's acceptable to do so in my culture and because I like the taste. I make no claims of moral righteousness. If you're not willing to face up to what needs to happen to get you your meat, you shouldn't be eating meat. I absolutely respect vegetarians (I know several) and particularly vegans for the choice they have made. It is not my choice, but it is one that I can easily justify.
When you really, really get down to it, there's little more inhumane than the breeding of animals for the sole purpose of their later slaughter. How we treat the animals has ramifications for our safety and health, and it is often the most graphic effect of the system. It does not, however, have much to do with the morality of the situation.
In essence, when we have billions of animals created essentially as expendable meat factories, force feeding a few geese seems like small potatoes.
University of Colorado at Boulder.
ECEN4593. We're also using Spartan III FPGAs, which are more than sufficient.
Our CPU architecture is called "SRC", for "Simple RISC Computer". It was designed by a professor here. It's a full CPU (somewhat similar to MIPS) but has some notable shortcomings (no condition codes, integer only, no multiply/divide) to make the ALU simpler.
We do the same thing at my university in a course called "Computer Architecture". Well, not quite the same thing. We use FPGAs and Verilog to implement the CPU, and instead of a microcoded CISC CPU we implement a RISC architecture.
Since our design lacks cache, the CISC architecture that this guy implemented may be faster (it does more per instruction which is critical when instruction fetch time dominates.
However, our RISC design is fully 32-bit (registers, ALU, address and data buses) and is pipelined (classic 5-stage fetch/decode/execute/memory access/register write). We also have to deal with hazards (resolved by forwarding or pipeline bubbles). We're even working on a VLIW version now.
Of course, all of this is vastly easier when you can use a high-level hardware description language. Hats off to this tinkerer.
Vista's wireless setup got a lot better, but only because XP's sucked so much. No more typing the WEP/WPA key twice for so some bizzare reason. No more "network connection OK" bubbles.
What got worse was the network connection UI. It takes three clicks "Network and Internet > Network and Sharing Center > Manage Network Connections" compared to one in XP. Not to mention that that's after you're in the control panel.
On ALL of my Vista systems, I put a shortcut to "Network Connections" in the Start Menu. It's stupid, and I shouldn't have to do it, but it works.
The network UI is one place where I think Microsoft really dropped the ball. There are some nice features, but on the whole I find it more annoying and harder to use than the UI in XP.
I think that the Henry, and Coulomb are odd sounding units. It doesn't matter, they're the standard units.
Seriously, could you have picked a worse reason why to use SI prefixes in a nonstandard way?
No, it's not. With some exceptions, such as RAM and ROM, there has never been consistency. "1.44MB" floppies are neither 1.44MiB nor 1.44MB. DVDs use SI units. Earlier flash cards, based on NOR (which is byte-addressable) is measured in binary units. Newer flash cards almost always use SI prefixes. Data transmission rates have always used SI units.
The current prefixes are ideal. Not only are they similar to the old prefixes for ease of transition, they are also short.
What's your problem with "meh be byte"?
WRONG. Use a modern Linux distro. You will find that many tools either use the binary prefixes or use SI-standard prefix usage.
Because HDD manufacturers ARE labeling their drives correctly. "Giga" means 10^9 in SI. It always has and always will. The computer industry usage has never been correct.
The disparity only grows as we go up in prefixes. 1TiB = 1.099TB. 1PiB = 1.125PB. 1PiB = 1.153PB.
Moreover, the non-SI use is ambiguous. A "1.44MB" floppy is neither 1.44MiB nor 1.44MB, it's 1 440 KiB. A "650MB" CD is 650MiB, but a 4.7GB DVD is 4.7GB.
GiB is NEVER ambiguous. If you want to keep using the power-of-two units, use the proper prefixes. IEEE, NIST, and the IEC encourage it.
Hard drives, flash storage, DVDs, Blu-Ray/HD-DVD, transfer rates (8Mbps = 8 000 000 bps), and everything else uses the standard SI prefixes.
Why should computer memory be the ONE EXCEPTION to the SI standard prefixes? We have binary prefixes. Use them if you want.
It's fundamental to the way that memory is addressed, but there's NO REASON why you need to butcher SI prefixes. We just need binary prefixes.
Oh wait, we already have binary prefixes. NIST, the IEC, and IEEE highly encourage their use.
You don't know what the hell you're talking about. Yes, if you have byte addressing, your addressable space will be a power of two. No, you don't need to use the whole addressable space.
Nor do you have to use byte addressing. NAND flash is addressed by sectors, and it is often specified in SI units.
Anyone who has actually done research would find out that the exact opposite is true.
Seriously people. It's not hard:
T-Mobile UK
Flext 25
£20.00/mo (approx $40/mo)
18-month contract
300 minutes included
20p/min thereafter (approx $0.40)
T-Mobile US
$39.99/mo
0, 12, or 24-month contract
600 minutes included
$0.40/min thereafter
Free nights/weekends
Although the UK plan includes "free" incoming (caller pays), the US plan has twice as many inclusive minutes. In addition, the US plan has free nights and weekends, and free calls to voicemail (first 1000 minutes).
Go compare. Things are not always as they seem.
Don't you mean 500% hotter? For any practical purpose, heat produced in an IC is equivalent to the amount of power it draws.
Ahh, see, this is where you're wrong. People have realized how easy it is to commit copyright infringement. They don't see it as wrong, and I'm not sure that I see it as wrong.
Enforcing laws that people don't believe in doesn't work. We have spent billions and billions of dollars pursuing drug prohibition, and look how that has worked out. The RIAA/MPAA/whoever doesn't have that much money. Pursuing these cases is expensive.
So, RIAA/MPAA/whoever, keep being bastards. Something like 2/3rds of the US has downloaded music illegally at some point in time. The more we hate you and the more you make it difficult for us to enjoy your content legally, the more incentive we have to ignore your copyrights.
My family spends about 5000 minutes a month on that $60.
Most of it is calling each other (which is free), my friends (which is free, because they have the same carrier), other family (my aunt/uncle/cousins, because they have the same carrier), or my boss.
About 1000 minutes are on weekends (free) or at night (free).
The balance is covered by the 500 minutes which are included with our plan. Compare rates - you'll see that while there are cheaper plans in Europe (like your 14 euro plan), minute for minute people in the US pay less.
And, please, don't give me that "you pay for incoming calls" line. You would probably be shocked to learn that it doesn't cost more to call a mobile phone than a landline here. Nor can you tell the two apart by the phone number, either.
People in Europe text more than people in the US. Part of that is the fact that SMS is cheaper in Europe, and part of it is the fact that people in the US get absurd quantities of "free" minutes.
On weekends, at night, or when calling people with the same carrier, it's cheaper for me to call someone than it is to text them.
Traffic Circles? Yeah, it does suck living in New Jersey. Get with the rest of the world and build some roundabouts.
Yes, there is a difference. Wikipedia knows.
(Roundabouts are generally smaller, and ALWAYS follow the "yield when entering" system, unlike traffic circles in NJ)
You don't get it, do you?
Corporations don't generally deploy "48 different distros of Linux". They deploy RedHat or SuSE.
Home users don't use 48 different distros, they generally use Fedora or Ubuntu.
There are a LOT of distros. But if you look at the percentage of machines, a VERY high percentage are running RedHat (or CentOS), SuSE, or Ubuntu.
Then of course there's the common daemons. I'm sure different packaging systems and file system arrangements will protect us from that.
Thanks for bringing some fresh air to the table. Somehow it seems that anyone around here that doesn't hate Vista is somehow a "Microsoft fanboy". The problem is, I keep playing defense against a lot of the myths that are spread about MS and Vista - and in the process I look like I'm "sucking up" to Microsoft.
Let me be clear: I like Linux, I use Linux, and I think it's often the best tool for the job. I don't own a Mac but I have used Mac OS X pretty extensively (several of my CS labs have been done on Macs) and I understand why people like the polish and integration.
I'm not saying that Vista is perfect. It's a memory hog (not that XP wasn't), SearchIndexer likes to beat the crap out of your disk (although Spotlight does too), and some things are a pain in the ass (like getting to "network connections", at least until you make a shortcut in the Start Menu).
But there's a lot to like about Vista, too. You can now customize the folders in the open/save dialogs without editing the registry. You can enter a WEP/WPA key without having to type it twice! You can view a calendar without opening the date/time window. The battery meter is actually useful. The FTP and DAV clients don't lock up regularly. You don't need crappy client software for authentication (EAP) on our corporate wireless network. Driver downloading appears to actually work. You can resume CIFS/SMB transfers. The file transfer dialogs actually give reasonable estimates. You don't have to babysit the installer. You don't have to go to a web page and screw with ActiveX to install updates. You can run more than one 3D application at a time. You can use antialiasing over Remote Desktop. The "uninstall programs" screen comes up faster. You can search the Start Menu, Control Panel, and just about everything else. Crappy graphics drivers or fritzy graphics hardware doesn't crash the machine. It's easier to change power profiles. You can use fast user switching on a domain. The video thumbnailer doesn't just take the first (usually black) frame. Malloc isn't piss slow.
I could go on and on. But you get the point. Just because you don't see the benefit doesn't mean that someone else doesn't.
I have run nearly every released (on Connect) Vista build since M5. It was clunky and busted before the reboot. Today it works fine.
,to my old Media Center box (Intel 845 chipset, P4), to my desktop (GeForce 6100 chipset, Athlon 64 x2) is supported. My Intel 2915 wireless worked out of the box, unlike with XP. My Brother DCP-7020 printer worked out of the box, unlike with XP. My "US Robotics" $20 USB wireless card worked out of the box, unlike with XP.
I haven't had a bugcheck ('bluescreen') on any of my systems since Beta 2. All of my hardware, from my generic-branded Compal EFL30 notebook (Intel 915 chipset, P-M Dothan)
Vista runs fine with the 1.25GB of memory and 1.73GHz P-M I have in my notebook. None of my hardware is particularly high-end. I have used ATI graphics (Radeon x1300) and NVIDIA graphics (GeForce Go 6400 in my notebook, GeForce 6600 in the media box, GeForce 8600GT in my desktop). My friend's Intel GMA950 works fine too.
During Vista's long beta, I successfully ran everything from Firefox to VMWare to VB6 to Warcraft III. In the 10 months that I have used Vista as my only OS (on my personal computers), the ONLY product that I have run in to trouble with has been the Cisco VPN client, which now has a Vista-compatible version.
My VB6 codebase is doing just fine in Vista, and my VB6 development environment runs just fine in Vista. .NET is not another "crazy development model". .NET 3.0 and 3.5 run on version 2 of the CLR, and are source and object code compatible with .NET 2.0. Even .NET 1.1 isn't going anywhere.
WPF, WCF, and the other new Vista features are built on top of the existing framework. They aren't replacing it.
You don't know what the hell you're talking about. .NET 3.0 and WPF are both backwards-compatible with Windows XP.
You also don't know what the hell you're talking about here.
Yes, GDI/GDI+ performance is worse with the DWM running ("Aero Glass"). That's because GDI/GDI+ aren't hardware accelerated with the DWM (they can't be because you aren't drawing directly to the display buffer).
However, if you are relying on fast GDI/GDI+ performance, you are deluded. GDI has never been fast and it has never been glitch free. DirectX has always been a better choice.
As for Direct3D performance, actual performance is generally 5-10% slower on Vista using the latest NVIDIA/ATI drivers.
As for everything else, performance is comparable to XP.
No, you dismissing his claim without providing a shred of evidence is ridiculous. I know of several circumstances under which Vista is more stable than XP, OS X, or Linux. Anyone who has overclocked their GPU on Vista can tell you how much more robust the graphics system is.
http://www.ksoftware.net/code_signing.html
Around $85 per year. A surprising number of shareware, freeware (e.g. CCleaner) and even open-source (Firefox/Thunderbird) apps are signed.
Most major commercial apps (anything from Adobe, Corel, Sun, Microsoft, Apple, Microsoft, and many other publishers) are signed.
That's news to me. I have modified and executed system utilities (such as the Disk Utility) on 10.4 without seeing any warnings.
Microsoft uses signing to establish the source of an executable. You pay some company (usually VeriSign) to vouch for the identity of your company. When I run a binary on Windows and it says "Adobe Corporation", I can be reasonably certain that it came from Adobe and was not modified.
If the CAs aren't doing their homework, we have a problem. But of course then we have a problem with TLS and everything else that depends on CAs.
Name another OS with a pervasive X.509-based signing system. Yes, most Linux distros support signed packages, but that's a far cry from incorporating the signature into the executable file.
Tagging Downloaded Applications
Feature in Windows since Windows XP SP2.
Signed Applications
Feature in Windows since IE4 / Windows 98, called Authenticode. Nearly everything in a base Windows XP or Vista is signed, as are many third-party applications. Authenticode is based on X.509 certificates - I'm not sure what Apple's tech is based on. Vista checks signatures before elevating, and the signed UAC dialog looks nothing like the unsigned UAC dialog.
Application-Based Firewall
Feature in Windows since Windows XP SP2.
Stronger Encryption for Disk Images
BitLocker in Vista uses AES-256. EFS can be configured to use AES-256 in Vista.
Enhanced VPN Client Compatibility
Don't really know on this one.
Sharing and Collaboration Configuration
ACLs have been in Windows since Windows NT. Sharing can be configured through the properties dialog box of any folder.
Sandboxing
Protected mode is implemented in Vista. The primary use is Internet Explorer.
Multiple User Certificates
The central certificate store in Windows has supported multiple user certificates since at least Windows 2000.
Enhanced Smart Card Capabilities
Unknown, but Windows has had smartcard support since Windows 2000.
Library Randomization
Vista introduced this to Windows. BSD and Linux distros had it before then.
Windows SMB Packet Signing
Obviously supported by Windows Vista.
So, it looks like most of the new security features in Leopard are direct rip-offs of Vista/BSD/Linux features. Time Machine is a direct ripoff of Previous Versions in Vista, albeit with over-the-top graphical effects. Spaces are a ripoff of a feature that has been in UNIX for decades. Every modern Linux desktop has terminal tabs.
Apple, stop it with your fucking bullshit. It's fine to copy features from other software. It's not fine to copy them, claim that you're being innovative, and then accuse your competition of copying you. It's dishonest, it's sleazy, and it's cheap. Your software can stand on its own.
Not true. Right click on a file in Vista Business/Enterprise/Ultimate, choose "Properties", the choose "Previous Versions".
It may not have the same over-the-top 3D interface that Time Machine does, but it accomplishes the same goals.
God, I hate this fucking Slashdot elitism. "I'm too good to watch TV."
If you don't like what's on the tube, feel free not to watch. But don't pretend that it's because you're more "intelligent" than people who like TV.
Some of us enjoy shows like The Daily Show, South Park, MythBusters, Battlestar Gallactica, Dr. Who, or even Good Eats.
People who say there's nothing good on TV clearly don't watch TV. There is a lot on TV, and while only a fraction of it is worthwhile, there's still plenty of quality programming out there.
Ahh, another day, another idiot who presumes that "doing 200Mph safely" has anything to do with your car.
First off, the M5 is electronically limited to 250kph, like most European vehicles that can go that fast.
Second, stopping distance is proportional to the square of speed. Your reaction time is not.
People who claim that driving at 125MPH is safe don't understand the problem. The problem is not whether or not you can control the car. The problem is what you do when something unexpected happens.
Considering that a pretty good fraction of our cars are manufactured in Korea, Japan, or Europe, I'm not sure what you mean by the "crappy suspension" that "we" put in "our cars". Wake up. Volvo, Jaguar, and Land Rover are owned by Ford. Until recently, Daimler owned Chrysler.
This expresses everything that's wrong with your attitude. You are driving on a public highway, putting everyone else at risk by the very nature of you being there. Good drivers cause crashes. Bad drivers cause crashes. You are not so skilled that you could not screw up. Even F1 drivers screw up.
This is the LAST place where you want to be testing the limits of your vehicle. And if you do screw up, it will be far, far worse if you are going 125MPH.
Note that this driver AVERAGED 90 MPH. Considering that he had to stop for gas and other necessities, he must have been going faster than 90 MPH for a fair portion of the trip.
I am so sick and fucking tired of these arguments. Somehow, it's always the OTHER drivers who are the problem. Somehow, YOU are "skilled" enough to drive excessively fast (note that over the limit doesn't necessarily mean excessive). Perhaps YOU have never made a mistake and caused an accident. That's not the point. Perhaps someone else will make the mistake. Perhaps you will slip up. IT HAPPENS FAR MORE OFTEN THAN YOU WOULD LIKE TO ADMIT.
We design and operate airplanes with significant safety margins, so that people don't die when mistakes or failures happen. The same logic should apply to motor vehicles.