It is VERY hard to change the voltage of DC with high efficiecy
Not true. DC-DC converters have existed for years, and they are highly efficient. Take, for example, the DC-DC convertor on your motherboard - if it were only 30% efficient, it would be dissipating more heat than the CPU. Fortunately, DC-DC converters are generally closer to 90-95% efficient.
Take, for example, the picoPSU - it outputs 120W at various voltages (from a DC source) and it doesn't even have a heatsink.
Honda's 'Metropolitan' scooter is less than $2000 (1/2 the price of the Segway), at least twice as fast (depending on weight, possibly even more), and has much greater range.
Vespa is a premium brand and is priced accordingly - somewhat ironic considering it's heritige.
And, of course, Linux and MythTV are free, and superior to MCE.
According to whom? For most users, an MCE box is an easy buy - go to Best Buy and you'll see plenty of models that you can take home and have working today.
And if you want something cheap, TiVo is far more affordable than either MCE or Myth, even when you consider the monthly fee.
But Mac OSX has always had something the PC hasn't -- stability. And that's because it's designed into the OS from the ground up. Windows has always felt like stability was "grafted in" somehow, and it's never been a comfortable fit.
Of course, you could provide evidence that supports your claim, but you don't have any.
I regularly work on Windows servers which have logged uptimes in the months or more (reboots are scheduled when patches need to be installed - this is a failing of Windows).
Prior to last Tuesday, my notebook had not been rebooted in three weeks.
On the other hand, Safari frequently likes to crash on the Macs that I use for applied mathematics, as does Mathematica and Firefox.
I can tell you which platform "feels" more stable. It's just one report, so what weight does it carry? About as much as yours.
Been to Chernobyl lately? Try walking around without a radiation suit and when you get back home, you can mutter to yourself about "irrational environment types" as you count your tumors. Hey look! I just got another one on my nuts!
There is no panacea. Our societies are going to regress for lack of forward-thinking by people in power (and those who put them in power).
Other energy sources, including hydro, coal, and natural gas, have resulted in more deaths per MWh than nuclear power. Nuclear power is the safest large-scale energy source in use today - and that's with 1970s-era technology and safety systems.
Although it is difficult to estimate the death toll (there were only 56 direct deaths), typical estimates place it at less than 4,000. Compare the Chernobyl accident to the Bhopal disaster, which killed at least 15,000 people. Few people seem to be against the manufacture of industrial chemicals, despite the fact that the Bhopal disaster alone killed more people than nuclear power ever has.
You can spread FUD about nuclear power, but at the end of the day, our options are limited. We have growing energy needs, and the energy source that has demonstrated the best potential to generate significant quantities of energy with minimal carbon emissions, contained waste, and essentially limitless reserves of cheap fuel (with the use of fast breeder reactors) is nuclear fission.
Mishaps can and will happen. Well-designed plants decrease the chances of serious accidents and help to contain accidents when they do occur. Three Mile Island is a perfect example - no deaths have been linked to what was, by all accounts, a serious disaster. The TMI-2 reactor enclosure did its job and prevented the spread of radiation, and TMI-1 even continues to operate reliably to this day.
firefox currently sitting at 0% cpu usage. perhaps you should upgrade your pentium 133:)\
Get over yourself. There is clearly a bug here; I've experienced it with multiple versions of Firefox, and it happens to me with Thunderbird on almost a daily basis. How Thunderbird/FF manages to suck up 100% of a P-M at 1.73GHz is beyond me, as is why this bug has persisted for at least 2+ years. It's a documented issue, and it's plagued FF/TB precisely because it's hard to reproduce.
From what I've heard, the Gecko codebase is a massive mess. No wonder Apple chose KHTML when they designed WebCore.
There is a unified text messaging system, it's standardised across all GSM networks. Yes some countries do have different text message lengths to others, which can get annoying if you send international texts and have them truncated. And there are a couple of countries that refuse to standardise on anything, like the USA, so use bizarre non-GSM systems. But for the vast majority of the world, which is on some variant of GSM, text messages are standardised and more or less seamless.
I don't know if you could call CDMA2000 "bizarre", particularly considering how well it performs compared to GSM from an RF standpoint. CDMA2000 would never have existed if the government had stepped in and enforced a standard (like in Europe), and while I carry a GSM phone myself, there are some major advantages that CDMA has.
Regardless, SMS interoperability is a non-issue in the US. I have no problems sending text messages to Verizon or Sprint users (CDMA2900), or to Cingular users (GSM).
Also keep in mind that there are more GSM subscribers in the US than there are CDMA2000 subscribers. Cingular + T-Mobile alone account for almost half the wireless subscribers in the US, and there are also smaller providers like Triton PCS ("SunCom") that operate GSM networks.
The US market is big enough for more than one cellular network.
1: Our search records are not private; indeed, if you are logged in, Google can tie them to your account
Moreover, Google also has access to: - Pages you've visited that use AdSense - Pages you visit (if you use the Google toolbar) - Your email (if you use GMail) - Your blog (if you use Blogger)
Re:What do corporations have to do with it?
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Can We Trust Google?
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· Score: 1
Google is dangerous because they are really the first company to try to put a vast range of information together and tie it to a single person.
If you use the "search accross computers" feature on Google Desktop, use GMail, and use the Google toolbar, Google now knows:
- Which websites you visit - What you search for - What's in your email - What is in the documents on your computer
Google is not the first company to collect this information, but they are the first company that has indicated such a desire to organize, store, and analyze all of this information. Your searches, the pages you visit, and the emails you write are all used to determine which ads to serve you - and, at some point, it's certainly possible that your documents could be used for that purpose as well.
I'm not really worried about Google abusing this information; I could care less if they use it to analyze what types of ads I should see. I am worried, however, about the government getting this information. How do we know that the NSA doesn't have Google employees on their payroll? What if Google is served with a PATRIOT ACT secret subpoena?
Sure, this threat has always existed. But Google knows more things about more people than anyone or anything on Earth. Google is Big Brother, and the more information it collects, the more dangerous it becomes.
Don't use the Google toolbar, don't install Desktop, and don't use GMail. Also, don't log on to Google - ever. Once you have logged on, Google knows every search you make and every AdSense page that you visit.
It never was a matter of trusting Google. It is a matter of trusting who has access to their data - through technological or legal means.
and the service configuration of a default install is all that a script kiddie could dream
Agreed for XP, but WS2003 is considerably tighter out of the box, as will be Longhorn.
It is easier to develop code for Linux than for Windows.
You just spat out a pretty bold assertion without providing any supporting arguments.
I've worked with C# and with GTK+, and I can tell you that programming GUI apps on Linux leaves a lot to be desired. Qt designer is better, but Qt isn't LGPL - if you want to license your code under anything but the GPL, get ready to fork over a pretty substantial chunk of change to Qt.
Many other things are easier in Windows as well - Linux is just getting a real multimedia framework (GStreamer is still not quite ready for prime time), and even things like controlling the system mixer can be problematic (assuming you want compatibility with both OSS and ALSA). Add to that the fact that there is no standardized installation/packaging system, and you end up with an environment that is less than ready for commercial development.
Many closed-source Linux products are now certified to run on one and only one distro - generally Red Hat Enterprise Linux. Even worse, many are certified on only one version of RHEL (usually 3.x).
That is why there are so many more applications for Linux than there are for Windows
That's like saying that there a paperclip company makes more paperclips per year than Toyota makes cars. Perhaps true, but completely misleading.
What's important is the number of quality applications. Where's QuickBooks, ACT, TurboTax, Office, Photoshop, or any of the other applications that business use every day?
In that sense, even Mac OS X has better software support than Linux.
Re:Console manufacturers are out of step with
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A PS3 Hands-On Report?
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· Score: 4, Insightful
the times. A true NextGen console would have had used a 64bit Intel or AMD CPU, a Linux based OS, dev tools open to all developers, a choice of Nvidia or ATI graphics hardware, a modular casing that allows for hardware upgrades and expansion cards, et cetera et cetera et cetera.
Whats the point of having three completely proprietary platforms with virtually identical hardware specs, zero compatibility between them and no hardware upgrade path? Games just 2 to 3 years from now will need more RAM, beefier graphics chipsets and quite possibly hardware physics accelerators and the like. What do you do with your PS3/360/Revolution then? Throw it away? Buy a NextGen II console? What?
Sorry, but what Sony, MS and Nintendo are doing seems very 90s-thinking-applied-to-mid-00s-tech. Difficult to get excited about three proprietary consoles with no cross-platform compatibility.
Typical Slashdot idiocy. Let's review: 64bit Intel or AMD CPU 64-bit CPUs are really only helpful when you need to address more than 4GB of memory. There are other advantages, but most code is not significantly faster on AMD64 than it is on the same CPU running in 32-bit mode. Also, x86 CPUs are expensive - MS is no doubt getting an excellent deal on the CPU in the 360.
dev tools open to all developers The majority of console profit comes from game licensing fees. Sony/MS/Nintendo gets paid for every game sold for their system. Why should they give this up?
a choice of Nvidia or ATI graphics hardware No, no, no! Consoles are about having a standardized hardware platform. By changing that, developers now have to target a range of hardware with different capabilities, different performance, and different bugs. It makes development and debugging more difficult, and takes away the fundamental advantage of having a system that "just works".
a modular casing that allows for hardware upgrades and expansion cards No, no, no, no, no! Again, the Slashdot reader misses the entire point of consoles. With a PS2, you can buy any system and any game and know that it will play the same way. Developers have one platform to target. Console add-ons have failed many times (32X, Sega CD, 64DD, PS2 HDD) for a very good reason - developers can't target hardware that is only installed on a minority of systems. You can't code a game that requires 1GB of memory if the base system only has 512M; the smart developer doesn't even bother coding for add-ons because only a minor percentage of users will actually be able to see any advantage.
What do you do with your PS3/360/Revolution then? Throw it away? No, you keep it because it still plays the same games that it played 5 years ago. And you buy a new console. It's worked well for 20 years, why should we change it now? $400 every five years is still cheaper than whatever you would pay to "upgrade" some old system.
Upgrading went out of style in the mid-90s. It's not the console makers that are stuck in the past, it's you. Ever since Intel started using new chipsets for new CPUs, it hasn't made sense to upgrade the core system. Most people never open their system; why should they, when new PCs are so affordable?
Basically, your post boils down to, "I like PCs and hate consoles, so I'm going to claim that consoles are out of date and should be like PCs". Too bad that you're 10 years too late. Consoles are more popular than PCs for gaming, and for good reason - because the games offset the cost of the hardware, and because the hardware is game-tuned (e.g. no parts that aren't needed) and standardized (economies of scale make it cheaper), consoles are cheaper than PCs. And because of their standardized platform and long lifecycle, there's a bigger selection of games and you never have to worry about whether your system will be able to handle a particular game. Pop in the disc and play.
After 20 years, you would think that the PC gaming industry would have figured that out. They haven't, and neither have you.
And then HP will become the BIGGEST COMPUTER MAKER in the entire WORLD! HP will INNOVATE and INVENT the computer of the future! While other clone makers like Dell and IBM have their computers built by third party sweatshops in China, HP will BUY Gateway, and LEAD the world into a technical future of INNOVATION and EXCELLENCE.
I don't know if you know this, but after the Compaq merger, HP was the largest computer maker in the world, on and off for a few quarters.
If you ever go look at one of their workstations, like the XW9300, you'll notice that there's a lot more "innovation" there than at Dell or most other manufacturers. While most stuff is outsourced (the motherboard is Tyan, etc.), there's a lot of testing, debugging, and qualification that goes on. I personally know three people who worked on the XW9300 here in Fort Collins, doing thermal engineering (which is why the box is extremely quiet for a 2-processor, 16GB DDR, dual-GPU system), storage qualification (which found bugs in the NForce4's RAID controller), and RF/EMI testing (which is why the box doesn't blast RF like many generic systems).
The chassis is easy to get into, almost entirely tool-less, and can even be rack-mounted. It sure as hell beats Dell's "Clamshell" design that was largely made of flimsy aluminum and plastic panels, and that was always a pain to work with. Dell's newer BTX systems are certainly better, but that has more to do with BTX than with Dell engineering.
You don't get it, do you? Netflix wants to piss off its biggest customers. A customer who checks out 35 DVDs per month pays no more than a customer who checks out 10, yet the cost to ship them the DVDs is considerably higher. The more you rent, the less Netflix makes.
It's like Comcast and their crappy "invisible" transfer limits - once you hit ~150GB, they throttle you into the ground (or cut you off altogether). Do it multiple times and they'll cancel your account.
When you provide an unlimited service, there are always going to be individuals who actually take advantage of their service to the fullest - in the real world, with things like buffets, they take measures to limit this (you can't take food out, nor can you share food - you're limited to what you can eat in one sitting). With ISPs, they have bandwidth caps. With Netflix, they have throttling.
Netflix needs to be up-front about this. They have been deceptive with their advertisements and they should be held accountable for that. But, make no mistake - Netflix does not want customers who rent 20+ DVDs a month; indeed, at a point, they are losing money.
100 Gb/s Ethernet is not for joe schmoe sitting at home on his consumer broadband connection - it's for servers connected to a backbone link.
Apparently, you missed the point as well. Servers today seldom push even 1Gb Ethernet, let alone 10Gb or 100Gb Ethernet. The primary use for 10Gb Ethernet today is in the network backbone - Comcast, for example, has an entire fiber network that carries voice and data based on 10Gb Ethernet.
While we may see server adoption in the future, it's going to be quite a while before servers can push 10GB per second. Backhaul use, on the other hand, will see adoption much sooner.
When you buy some medicine, you are paying for (P) the cost of production [normally the dominant cost factor, but at least au pair with the other cfs] + (R) the cost of research + (F) the amortization of some future research + ($) some profit to pay for the invested money. In the case of proprietary software, we have P ~~ 0.
I hate to break it to you, but in the case of medicine, P ~~ 0 as well. Look at the price of generic loratadine, a product that was 100-200 times more expensive before the patents expired. Manufacturing is a tiny part of the overall cost of a prescription drug - you are paying for the IP, plain and simple.
How is this different from software? It isn't. Is it a bad thing? I don't think so. If someone goes and invests capital in developing a product, they should be able to determine the price and licensing terms of their work. If they want to open the source code and give away the software, so long anyone making modifications does the same - that's perfectly fine. If you want to allow modification without requiring the release of changes, that's fine too. If you want to declare the software public domain and allow anyone to do anything, there should be nothing stopping you from doing so. Similarly, if you want to keep the source secret and charge licensing fees for the binaries, what's wrong with that?
We have copyright for a reason, and while it's perfectly valid to argue if it is too long (I believe it is), if it doesn't protect fair use sufficently (I believe that it does not), arguing that copyright should not exist at all - or that it should only protect those who choose to share their works is an extreme position that few share.
(for those who don't play WoW, leave your char logged off for a few weeks and when you come back you get double experience up until your next level or so)
It's actually just 10 days to hit your rest cap of 1.5 levels; each 8 hours yields 5% of a level of rested XP.
SVG though is important to the website, I suppose I could use something gay like flash or java, but I really wanted this to be a pure site. I thought that it would mean that it was Firefox only. Some friends chided me into trying to make it work with Opera and Konq though...
There's no such thing as a "pure" site because the definition of "pure" is too nebulous. There are plenty of websites that are perfectly valid XHTML/CSS and still use Flash - indeed, there is nothing in any W3 spec that indicates that Flash is "bad".
In the real world, we use Flash because we want compatibility with a wide range of platforms and browsers, including Internet Explorer. Now, Flash is overused, but it is actually an excellent product that manages to incorporate a very fast vector graphics engine, video playback (using On2 VP6), and a lot of scriptibility in a very small footprint.
Indeed, AMD's CPUs already use PD-SOI and strined silicon. As do later Pentium 4 CPUs.
Nintendo is in trouble with the Revolution
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Nintendo's New Look
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· Score: 0, Troll
Nintendo is in deep, deep trouble with the Revolution. They're like a car company saying to their customers, "You don't want a big SUV - you want our compact car with good fuel economy". While it may be true that most gamers don't have HD sets today, that's going to change in a big way in the next few years as digital TV becomes prevalent. Even the first-revision Gamecube offered 480p, and now Nintendo has abandoned that as well.
Nintendo made a number of bad decisions with the Gamecube, and it seems that they haven't learned. It's not about the "experience", it's not really even about the hardware - it's about the software. And while Nintendo is one of the best software development houses out there, they can't hold a platform alone. Why should I buy a Revolution when the 360 or PS3 has a better selection of games and is HD compatible? What's the "edge" on the Revolution? Being cheaper can't be it - Nintendo should have learned that with the Gamecube (which was $100 cheaper than the PS2 or XBOX on launch and continually stayed $50 to $100 ahead).
The 360 is an impressive hardware platform combined with an impressive software platform. Being able to plug in an iPod and play my tunes through the 5.1 system - while playing games in HD. Powering on (and turning off) the console from the controlers. Accessing music, recorded TV, and photos from my PC. Downloading indie titles for $5. The 360 brings a lot of new functionality to the table. What will the Revolution bring us? Only Nintendo knows. And that doesn't look good for the big-N.
Agree 100%. WOW was meant to be played in widescreen, I'm conviced - the game looks great on my 2005fpw and it feels so much less "crowded" than it did on my old 1.25:1 LCD.
It always amuses me when I see my friend's WOW interfaces - all of the add-ons they use add more text and more controls to the interface. In my opinion, the interface has to much text as is - studies with aircraft control design have shown that having fewer controls and less information often enhances the performance of the pilot - how much damage I do per second is functionally irrelivent 90% of the time, as are my health and mana numbers.
You don't get it, do you? People don't want a choice of window managers, they want something that works. They don't want OpenOffice, which, while an excellent product, is bloated and not fully compatible with Office.
What happens when I buy a multi-function printer? Will I be able to scan photos using it? Will my webcam work?
If I decide to get into photo editing, will I be able to run Photoshop? When I do my taxes, will TurboTax run? Will I be able to play games?
Will I be able to buy (mainstream) music and put it on my iPod? Will Mathematica run? What about Maple?
All of the things above are trivial on two operating systems: Windows and Mac OS X. Currently, Mac OS has less than 5% of the desktop market, and it is far more 'ready' for the desktop than Linux.
You can meet 80% of the needs of 80% of the people 80% of the time. But in a world where Windows just ins't that expensive, that's just not good enough.
Why do people even bother to call it "SEO" instead of "spam"?
Becauase SEO is different. Adding hidden text or adjusting links isn't spam - posting links to your website on 1000 different blogs is spam. It's arguable whether the "top links for x" advertisement pages are spam, but what BMW did, while deceptive, wasn't spam.
Slashdot Mirror
It is VERY hard to change the voltage of DC with high efficiecy
Not true. DC-DC converters have existed for years, and they are highly efficient. Take, for example, the DC-DC convertor on your motherboard - if it were only 30% efficient, it would be dissipating more heat than the CPU. Fortunately, DC-DC converters are generally closer to 90-95% efficient.
Take, for example, the picoPSU - it outputs 120W at various voltages (from a DC source) and it doesn't even have a heatsink.
PCI-X Video Card
You mean PCIe. PCI-X is 133/266MHz 64-bit PCI. PCI Express (PCIe) is the replacement for PCI/PCI-X and AGP.
Honda's 'Metropolitan' scooter is less than $2000 (1/2 the price of the Segway), at least twice as fast (depending on weight, possibly even more), and has much greater range.
Vespa is a premium brand and is priced accordingly - somewhat ironic considering it's heritige.
All it really means is that my linux/os x installs will be more functional than your Vista install.
Yeah, because it's not like there's a VLC version for Windows or anything...
And, of course, Linux and MythTV are free, and superior to MCE.
According to whom? For most users, an MCE box is an easy buy - go to Best Buy and you'll see plenty of models that you can take home and have working today.
And if you want something cheap, TiVo is far more affordable than either MCE or Myth, even when you consider the monthly fee.
But Mac OSX has always had something the PC hasn't -- stability. And that's because it's designed into the OS from the ground up. Windows has always felt like stability was "grafted in" somehow, and it's never been a comfortable fit.
Of course, you could provide evidence that supports your claim, but you don't have any.
I regularly work on Windows servers which have logged uptimes in the months or more (reboots are scheduled when patches need to be installed - this is a failing of Windows).
Prior to last Tuesday, my notebook had not been rebooted in three weeks.
On the other hand, Safari frequently likes to crash on the Macs that I use for applied mathematics, as does Mathematica and Firefox.
I can tell you which platform "feels" more stable. It's just one report, so what weight does it carry? About as much as yours.
Been to Chernobyl lately? Try walking around without a radiation suit and when you get back home, you can mutter to yourself about "irrational environment types" as you count your tumors. Hey look! I just got another one on my nuts!
There is no panacea. Our societies are going to regress for lack of forward-thinking by people in power (and those who put them in power).
Other energy sources, including hydro, coal, and natural gas, have resulted in more deaths per MWh than nuclear power. Nuclear power is the safest large-scale energy source in use today - and that's with 1970s-era technology and safety systems.
Although it is difficult to estimate the death toll (there were only 56 direct deaths), typical estimates place it at less than 4,000. Compare the Chernobyl accident to the Bhopal disaster, which killed at least 15,000 people. Few people seem to be against the manufacture of industrial chemicals, despite the fact that the Bhopal disaster alone killed more people than nuclear power ever has.
You can spread FUD about nuclear power, but at the end of the day, our options are limited. We have growing energy needs, and the energy source that has demonstrated the best potential to generate significant quantities of energy with minimal carbon emissions, contained waste, and essentially limitless reserves of cheap fuel (with the use of fast breeder reactors) is nuclear fission.
Mishaps can and will happen. Well-designed plants decrease the chances of serious accidents and help to contain accidents when they do occur. Three Mile Island is a perfect example - no deaths have been linked to what was, by all accounts, a serious disaster. The TMI-2 reactor enclosure did its job and prevented the spread of radiation, and TMI-1 even continues to operate reliably to this day.
firefox currently sitting at 0% cpu usage. perhaps you should upgrade your pentium 133 :)\
Get over yourself. There is clearly a bug here; I've experienced it with multiple versions of Firefox, and it happens to me with Thunderbird on almost a daily basis. How Thunderbird/FF manages to suck up 100% of a P-M at 1.73GHz is beyond me, as is why this bug has persisted for at least 2+ years. It's a documented issue, and it's plagued FF/TB precisely because it's hard to reproduce.
From what I've heard, the Gecko codebase is a massive mess. No wonder Apple chose KHTML when they designed WebCore.
There is a unified text messaging system, it's standardised across all GSM networks. Yes some countries do have different text message lengths to others, which can get annoying if you send international texts and have them truncated. And there are a couple of countries that refuse to standardise on anything, like the USA, so use bizarre non-GSM systems. But for the vast majority of the world, which is on some variant of GSM, text messages are standardised and more or less seamless.
I don't know if you could call CDMA2000 "bizarre", particularly considering how well it performs compared to GSM from an RF standpoint. CDMA2000 would never have existed if the government had stepped in and enforced a standard (like in Europe), and while I carry a GSM phone myself, there are some major advantages that CDMA has.
Regardless, SMS interoperability is a non-issue in the US. I have no problems sending text messages to Verizon or Sprint users (CDMA2900), or to Cingular users (GSM).
Also keep in mind that there are more GSM subscribers in the US than there are CDMA2000 subscribers. Cingular + T-Mobile alone account for almost half the wireless subscribers in the US, and there are also smaller providers like Triton PCS ("SunCom") that operate GSM networks.
The US market is big enough for more than one cellular network.
1: Our search records are not private; indeed, if you are logged in, Google can tie them to your account
Moreover, Google also has access to:
- Pages you've visited that use AdSense
- Pages you visit (if you use the Google toolbar)
- Your email (if you use GMail)
- Your blog (if you use Blogger)
Google is dangerous because they are really the first company to try to put a vast range of information together and tie it to a single person.
If you use the "search accross computers" feature on Google Desktop, use GMail, and use the Google toolbar, Google now knows:
- Which websites you visit
- What you search for
- What's in your email
- What is in the documents on your computer
Google is not the first company to collect this information, but they are the first company that has indicated such a desire to organize, store, and analyze all of this information. Your searches, the pages you visit, and the emails you write are all used to determine which ads to serve you - and, at some point, it's certainly possible that your documents could be used for that purpose as well.
I'm not really worried about Google abusing this information; I could care less if they use it to analyze what types of ads I should see. I am worried, however, about the government getting this information. How do we know that the NSA doesn't have Google employees on their payroll? What if Google is served with a PATRIOT ACT secret subpoena?
Sure, this threat has always existed. But Google knows more things about more people than anyone or anything on Earth. Google is Big Brother, and the more information it collects, the more dangerous it becomes.
Don't use the Google toolbar, don't install Desktop, and don't use GMail. Also, don't log on to Google - ever. Once you have logged on, Google knows every search you make and every AdSense page that you visit.
It never was a matter of trusting Google. It is a matter of trusting who has access to their data - through technological or legal means.
and the service configuration of a default install is all that a script kiddie could dream
Agreed for XP, but WS2003 is considerably tighter out of the box, as will be Longhorn.
It is easier to develop code for Linux than for Windows.
You just spat out a pretty bold assertion without providing any supporting arguments.
I've worked with C# and with GTK+, and I can tell you that programming GUI apps on Linux leaves a lot to be desired. Qt designer is better, but Qt isn't LGPL - if you want to license your code under anything but the GPL, get ready to fork over a pretty substantial chunk of change to Qt.
Many other things are easier in Windows as well - Linux is just getting a real multimedia framework (GStreamer is still not quite ready for prime time), and even things like controlling the system mixer can be problematic (assuming you want compatibility with both OSS and ALSA). Add to that the fact that there is no standardized installation/packaging system, and you end up with an environment that is less than ready for commercial development.
Many closed-source Linux products are now certified to run on one and only one distro - generally Red Hat Enterprise Linux. Even worse, many are certified on only one version of RHEL (usually 3.x).
That is why there are so many more applications for Linux than there are for Windows
That's like saying that there a paperclip company makes more paperclips per year than Toyota makes cars. Perhaps true, but completely misleading.
What's important is the number of quality applications. Where's QuickBooks, ACT, TurboTax, Office, Photoshop, or any of the other applications that business use every day?
In that sense, even Mac OS X has better software support than Linux.
the times. A true NextGen console would have had used a 64bit Intel or AMD CPU, a Linux based OS, dev tools open to all developers, a choice of Nvidia or ATI graphics hardware, a modular casing that allows for hardware upgrades and expansion cards, et cetera et cetera et cetera.
Whats the point of having three completely proprietary platforms with virtually identical hardware specs, zero compatibility between them and no hardware upgrade path? Games just 2 to 3 years from now will need more RAM, beefier graphics chipsets and quite possibly hardware physics accelerators and the like. What do you do with your PS3/360/Revolution then? Throw it away? Buy a NextGen II console? What?
Sorry, but what Sony, MS and Nintendo are doing seems very 90s-thinking-applied-to-mid-00s-tech. Difficult to get excited about three proprietary consoles with no cross-platform compatibility.
Typical Slashdot idiocy. Let's review:
64bit Intel or AMD CPU
64-bit CPUs are really only helpful when you need to address more than 4GB of memory. There are other advantages, but most code is not significantly faster on AMD64 than it is on the same CPU running in 32-bit mode. Also, x86 CPUs are expensive - MS is no doubt getting an excellent deal on the CPU in the 360.
dev tools open to all developers
The majority of console profit comes from game licensing fees. Sony/MS/Nintendo gets paid for every game sold for their system. Why should they give this up?
a choice of Nvidia or ATI graphics hardware
No, no, no! Consoles are about having a standardized hardware platform. By changing that, developers now have to target a range of hardware with different capabilities, different performance, and different bugs. It makes development and debugging more difficult, and takes away the fundamental advantage of having a system that "just works".
a modular casing that allows for hardware upgrades and expansion cards
No, no, no, no, no! Again, the Slashdot reader misses the entire point of consoles. With a PS2, you can buy any system and any game and know that it will play the same way. Developers have one platform to target. Console add-ons have failed many times (32X, Sega CD, 64DD, PS2 HDD) for a very good reason - developers can't target hardware that is only installed on a minority of systems. You can't code a game that requires 1GB of memory if the base system only has 512M; the smart developer doesn't even bother coding for add-ons because only a minor percentage of users will actually be able to see any advantage.
What do you do with your PS3/360/Revolution then? Throw it away?
No, you keep it because it still plays the same games that it played 5 years ago. And you buy a new console. It's worked well for 20 years, why should we change it now? $400 every five years is still cheaper than whatever you would pay to "upgrade" some old system.
Upgrading went out of style in the mid-90s. It's not the console makers that are stuck in the past, it's you. Ever since Intel started using new chipsets for new CPUs, it hasn't made sense to upgrade the core system. Most people never open their system; why should they, when new PCs are so affordable?
Basically, your post boils down to, "I like PCs and hate consoles, so I'm going to claim that consoles are out of date and should be like PCs". Too bad that you're 10 years too late. Consoles are more popular than PCs for gaming, and for good reason - because the games offset the cost of the hardware, and because the hardware is game-tuned (e.g. no parts that aren't needed) and standardized (economies of scale make it cheaper), consoles are cheaper than PCs. And because of their standardized platform and long lifecycle, there's a bigger selection of games and you never have to worry about whether your system will be able to handle a particular game. Pop in the disc and play.
After 20 years, you would think that the PC gaming industry would have figured that out. They haven't, and neither have you.
And then HP will become the BIGGEST COMPUTER MAKER in the entire WORLD!
HP will INNOVATE and INVENT the computer of the future! While other clone makers like Dell and IBM have their computers built by third party sweatshops in China, HP will BUY Gateway, and LEAD the world into a technical future of INNOVATION and EXCELLENCE.
I don't know if you know this, but after the Compaq merger, HP was the largest computer maker in the world, on and off for a few quarters.
If you ever go look at one of their workstations, like the XW9300, you'll notice that there's a lot more "innovation" there than at Dell or most other manufacturers. While most stuff is outsourced (the motherboard is Tyan, etc.), there's a lot of testing, debugging, and qualification that goes on. I personally know three people who worked on the XW9300 here in Fort Collins, doing thermal engineering (which is why the box is extremely quiet for a 2-processor, 16GB DDR, dual-GPU system), storage qualification (which found bugs in the NForce4's RAID controller), and RF/EMI testing (which is why the box doesn't blast RF like many generic systems).
The chassis is easy to get into, almost entirely tool-less, and can even be rack-mounted. It sure as hell beats Dell's "Clamshell" design that was largely made of flimsy aluminum and plastic panels, and that was always a pain to work with. Dell's newer BTX systems are certainly better, but that has more to do with BTX than with Dell engineering.
You don't get it, do you? Netflix wants to piss off its biggest customers. A customer who checks out 35 DVDs per month pays no more than a customer who checks out 10, yet the cost to ship them the DVDs is considerably higher. The more you rent, the less Netflix makes.
It's like Comcast and their crappy "invisible" transfer limits - once you hit ~150GB, they throttle you into the ground (or cut you off altogether). Do it multiple times and they'll cancel your account.
When you provide an unlimited service, there are always going to be individuals who actually take advantage of their service to the fullest - in the real world, with things like buffets, they take measures to limit this (you can't take food out, nor can you share food - you're limited to what you can eat in one sitting). With ISPs, they have bandwidth caps. With Netflix, they have throttling.
Netflix needs to be up-front about this. They have been deceptive with their advertisements and they should be held accountable for that. But, make no mistake - Netflix does not want customers who rent 20+ DVDs a month; indeed, at a point, they are losing money.
The first show will drop when Apple makes available a wireless version of the iPod. I bet this will happen before Christmas.
Next you'll be telling me that it will have more space than a Nomad. Lame.
100 Gb/s Ethernet is not for joe schmoe sitting at home on his consumer broadband connection - it's for servers connected to a backbone link.
Apparently, you missed the point as well. Servers today seldom push even 1Gb Ethernet, let alone 10Gb or 100Gb Ethernet. The primary use for 10Gb Ethernet today is in the network backbone - Comcast, for example, has an entire fiber network that carries voice and data based on 10Gb Ethernet.
While we may see server adoption in the future, it's going to be quite a while before servers can push 10GB per second. Backhaul use, on the other hand, will see adoption much sooner.
When you buy some medicine, you are paying for (P) the cost of production [normally the dominant cost factor, but at least au pair with the other cfs] + (R) the cost of research + (F) the amortization of some future research + ($) some profit to pay for the invested money. In the case of proprietary software, we have P ~~ 0.
I hate to break it to you, but in the case of medicine, P ~~ 0 as well. Look at the price of generic loratadine, a product that was 100-200 times more expensive before the patents expired. Manufacturing is a tiny part of the overall cost of a prescription drug - you are paying for the IP, plain and simple.
How is this different from software? It isn't. Is it a bad thing? I don't think so. If someone goes and invests capital in developing a product, they should be able to determine the price and licensing terms of their work. If they want to open the source code and give away the software, so long anyone making modifications does the same - that's perfectly fine. If you want to allow modification without requiring the release of changes, that's fine too. If you want to declare the software public domain and allow anyone to do anything, there should be nothing stopping you from doing so. Similarly, if you want to keep the source secret and charge licensing fees for the binaries, what's wrong with that?
We have copyright for a reason, and while it's perfectly valid to argue if it is too long (I believe it is), if it doesn't protect fair use sufficently (I believe that it does not), arguing that copyright should not exist at all - or that it should only protect those who choose to share their works is an extreme position that few share.
(for those who don't play WoW, leave your char logged off for a few weeks and when you come back you get double experience up until your next level or so)
It's actually just 10 days to hit your rest cap of 1.5 levels; each 8 hours yields 5% of a level of rested XP.
SVG though is important to the website, I suppose I could use something gay like flash or java, but I really wanted this to be a pure site. I thought that it would mean that it was Firefox only. Some friends chided me into trying to make it work with Opera and Konq though...
There's no such thing as a "pure" site because the definition of "pure" is too nebulous. There are plenty of websites that are perfectly valid XHTML/CSS and still use Flash - indeed, there is nothing in any W3 spec that indicates that Flash is "bad".
In the real world, we use Flash because we want compatibility with a wide range of platforms and browsers, including Internet Explorer. Now, Flash is overused, but it is actually an excellent product that manages to incorporate a very fast vector graphics engine, video playback (using On2 VP6), and a lot of scriptibility in a very small footprint.
Indeed, AMD's CPUs already use PD-SOI and strined silicon. As do later Pentium 4 CPUs.
Nintendo is in deep, deep trouble with the Revolution. They're like a car company saying to their customers, "You don't want a big SUV - you want our compact car with good fuel economy". While it may be true that most gamers don't have HD sets today, that's going to change in a big way in the next few years as digital TV becomes prevalent. Even the first-revision Gamecube offered 480p, and now Nintendo has abandoned that as well.
Nintendo made a number of bad decisions with the Gamecube, and it seems that they haven't learned. It's not about the "experience", it's not really even about the hardware - it's about the software. And while Nintendo is one of the best software development houses out there, they can't hold a platform alone. Why should I buy a Revolution when the 360 or PS3 has a better selection of games and is HD compatible? What's the "edge" on the Revolution? Being cheaper can't be it - Nintendo should have learned that with the Gamecube (which was $100 cheaper than the PS2 or XBOX on launch and continually stayed $50 to $100 ahead).
The 360 is an impressive hardware platform combined with an impressive software platform. Being able to plug in an iPod and play my tunes through the 5.1 system - while playing games in HD. Powering on (and turning off) the console from the controlers. Accessing music, recorded TV, and photos from my PC. Downloading indie titles for $5. The 360 brings a lot of new functionality to the table. What will the Revolution bring us? Only Nintendo knows. And that doesn't look good for the big-N.
Agree 100%. WOW was meant to be played in widescreen, I'm conviced - the game looks great on my 2005fpw and it feels so much less "crowded" than it did on my old 1.25:1 LCD.
It always amuses me when I see my friend's WOW interfaces - all of the add-ons they use add more text and more controls to the interface. In my opinion, the interface has to much text as is - studies with aircraft control design have shown that having fewer controls and less information often enhances the performance of the pilot - how much damage I do per second is functionally irrelivent 90% of the time, as are my health and mana numbers.
You don't get it, do you? People don't want a choice of window managers, they want something that works. They don't want OpenOffice, which, while an excellent product, is bloated and not fully compatible with Office.
What happens when I buy a multi-function printer? Will I be able to scan photos using it? Will my webcam work?
If I decide to get into photo editing, will I be able to run Photoshop? When I do my taxes, will TurboTax run? Will I be able to play games?
Will I be able to buy (mainstream) music and put it on my iPod? Will Mathematica run? What about Maple?
All of the things above are trivial on two operating systems: Windows and Mac OS X. Currently, Mac OS has less than 5% of the desktop market, and it is far more 'ready' for the desktop than Linux.
You can meet 80% of the needs of 80% of the people 80% of the time. But in a world where Windows just ins't that expensive, that's just not good enough.
Why do people even bother to call it "SEO" instead of "spam"?
Becauase SEO is different. Adding hidden text or adjusting links isn't spam - posting links to your website on 1000 different blogs is spam. It's arguable whether the "top links for x" advertisement pages are spam, but what BMW did, while deceptive, wasn't spam.