I hear what you are saying.. nothing wrong with 914's
There is a big difference between a "real" Porsche owner and the owner of a "real" Porsche.
The former can be found selling real-estate or insurance (or Spam), whilst the latter can be found under the car with a spanner, making minor suspension tweaks prior to taking a short trip to the supermarket to pickup some milk.
Down in my neck of the woods, the Cayenne is selling surprising well, but only amongst real estate agents, insurance salesmen, and people that play Golf. I not sure where Cayenne earns its badge - Porsche has always been about applying brute force engineering to a set of requirements, and has resulted in a wild variety of gear (the 917 moby dick, the Panther / Tiger / Elephant tanks of WW2, light aircraft engines, and of course the 911). Porsche is not always about cars, and it has never been about fashion.
Id have to assume that the Cayenne's requirements were "to extract the maximum amount of cash out of the pockets of worthless blots on society", in which case, they may well be acheiving their goals. (Apologies to Cayenne owners who actually do anything useful)
If you are looking for an affordable, modern, daily driver Porsche, then consider a temporary brand change and have a serious look at the BMW Mini Cooper - it totally Rocks ! Beneath all that over-the-top-concession-to-fashion there is some serious engineering going on.
Quoting from the BBC article - "AOL says the Porsche has "symbolic value""
No shit !
ALL Porsches have symbolic value - that goes deeper than the badge.
If you ever get the chance to own a Porsche, especially an older model, then do spend some time digging around under the surface and get your hands dirty. Every single component of the car has a wonderful consistent feel to the design of it. You can see that a strong single mind stamped its presence on each design decision, right down to the choice of nuts and bolts.
Every peice of a Porsche is brutally simple, with no concessions made for fashion or cost. Its just like a really good peice of software.
Problem is, the Boxster is a damn fine car, but is perhaps the first real Porsche to have made concessions towards fashion and cost. (The VW 924 does not count, since it was a never meant to be a Porsche).
If you win the Porsche sweepstakes, then have a bit of fun in the Boxster, but then sell it, and use the money to get 1973 Carrera 2.4, or build up an insane 2.7ltr 911 RS replica. Then again, its your car, your dream, dont let me force my dream down your throat.
Having said that - whoever wins the Porsche sweepstakes needs to remember 1 very important thing - it is pronounced 'Porrr-Sch-A' not 'Porsh'. Calling a Porsche a 'Porsh' is like calling Bill Gates the 'inventor of the internet.'
"Along with a chikki, you can play hours and hours of CD-quality music "
So, Im not sure I read the advert correctly, but it sounds like you DO actually get a Chikki with each simputer.
Either that, or they are available for purchase direct from the site. (Chikki may be available for purchase online, pursuant to the governing laws of your State)
In response to some of the negative 'So What ?' comments, I shall use AC's brilliant explanation to deduce a practical application of this most excellent theorum.
You need to look past the obvious sometimes, young Grasshoppers. Lets apply the Atiyah-Singer Theorum to a night club scenario.
A nightclub, is a bounded 3-D dimensional space, which may be inhabited by (amongst other things), a collection of personages, which are nothing more than manifolds in a 4-D continuum.
The Atiyah-Singer theorum proposes that there is a deep connection between the index of the manifold, and the topological nature for each personage.
Having a rich understanding of the index of the vector bundles for these manifolds can then allow you to derive the underlying topology of these unbounded mainfolds.
The underlying aim of being in the Night Club, for our purposes, is to ultimately deduce the underlying topology of the subject, without having to physically remove their clothes, or subject them to X-rays or invasive procedures.
By applying the Atiyah-Singer theorum in this case, we can compare the vector normals for surface vectors around the chest area of the subject. You will quickly note that some subjects have a more or less constant vector normal for this section, whilst others have an interesting flowing perturbation of the surface, yieling a set of vectors which significantly alter the index of the entire manifold.
Other more subtle clues abound.. but generally if you are able to observe and compute the vector normals, then by appling Atiyah-Singer, we now have the ability to deduce topological invariants, as well as the probable vectors of these invariant-holding bounded manifolds in the 4-D continuum.
As AC explained in the pretzel example, topological invariants include things like the number of holes in the preztel. And here is the crux of the matter, my learned friends.
We can now select from a set of 4-D manifolds, those manifolds which are most likely to offer up a set of invariants for a finite space of time in the near future space-time continuum, because amongst all of the nightclub inhabitants, our superior mathematical abilities allow us to quickly compute indeces and probabilities, as well as quantum outcomes.
Your choice of invariants is entirely up to you, each to his / her own, I say.
This, ladies and gentleman, is why great mathematians of both sexes and persuasions, manage to get laid as often and as varied as they so choose, whilst the dumb-ass jocks of the world have to make do with watching football, getting drunk with their mates, or mindlessly burning rubber on public roads.
Its is a sad reflection on the world that so many computer users out there are willing to mess around pushing their already exceptionally good hardware to acheive modest speed increases, whilst being scared of looking at the software underneath.
Ill make an off-the-cuff assertion that modern hardware is already exceptionally well engineered, and that modern software is bloated crap.
For most tasks, I reckon that if the effort was applied to profile, hand optimise and re-factor the underlying software, much greater gains can be acheived than by ever dicking with the hardware.
Its like if you have a car which is not going so well, because the handbrake is stuck on, the oil is crudded up into lumps in the engine, and there is 100kg of dirt and mire under the floorpan to carry around - solution - whack a supercharger on the engine and make it faster.
"Gollum and the ents still looked fake. I could pretend they weren't but it wasn't real to me. I dunno how to fix it, but my standards are still higher than what's being done today."
Fair call..
By then again, havent you ever bumped into a person in real life, who looked fake ?
Im not talking about lawyers or MS sales critters here, I mean people who just look sort of like CG animations, who are lacking in detail ?
They are friggen everywhere man - next time you are in a busy mall, stop and watch the crowd. Spot the fake CG animations walking along with the throng.
I would estimate that there are between 5-20 obviously fake animated individuals for every 1000 people that you sample.. in real life. I imagine that this ratio is only going to get worse over time, but you wont notice it since the technology is getting better every day.
Each human eye contains an array of exactly 5760 x 4608 receptors, each of which act as a 16bit CCD.
Data is sampled from this array at a rate of exactly 148Hz, transferred to a framebuffer, and then pushed up along the optic pipeline, where it undergoes various transforms, such as flipping about the X axis so it does not appear to be upside down.
You will note that the resolution of 5760x4608 pixels is an exact multiple of PAL standard resolution 720x576 (8 times, to be exact)
So, if you are having trouble with Gollum appearing a little 'fake', then its probably because you are watching LOTR on a silly NTSC resolution of 720 x 480. This can create banding and other visual artifacts caused by incorrect interpolation along the optic pipeline.
Watch LOTR in PAL format, and you should notice that Gollum is anything but fake.
On a side related issue, it should also be noted that the biological processes which combine the left and right optic framebuffers to produce 3D perception rely on the gathering of meta-data from the environment to aid as hints in the calculations.
The format of this meta-data conforms closely with OpenGL 1.4 standard. For this reason, you will find that a lot of OpenGL based games appear a lot more realistic than their DirectX brethren, since the emitted meta-data is compatible with human internal data processing.
This may change soon, since Microsoft is pushing the DirectX format, and it is widely known that certain processed foods contain genetic mutagens which when combined with exposure to DirectX meta-data cause a 're-programming' of the optic pipeline to use 3D algorithms which are closer to DirectX's meta data than OpenGL's.
So, if you have been playing a lot of XBox games, and merrily munching down McDonalds, then your visual perception may well have been morphing slowly towards a new format.
How many infants and other folks people could be saved by spending this money elsewhere?
That is a good argument.
Still, however ethically challenged the whole operation may of been, it probably cost no more than the money required to design, build, ship overseas, and launch a single cruise missile.
Certainly a lot cheaper than, say, launching a pointless lawsuit against Lawrence Livermore and NERSC for alleged IP violation.
Maybe in their next life, all lawyers need to come back as doctors or something. Maybe this particular doctor was a lawyer in the last life.
Id agree that it seems a bit over the top that this child is using up so many organs from donars that could conceivably save a lot of other lives.
She may only live another 6 months, 6 years, 30 years, whatever.. who knows ? Maybe she will fully recover in a few years time, and then get run over by a truck - who knows ? The world is an odd place indeed.
I met a girl not too long ago who by all rights should never have survived, and who's whole life could be seen as a drain of resources to the people around her.
But then again, she managed to write a way controversial film script, and convinced enough people to produce the film.
The film went into production, and made it to the Cannes film festival, where she was hauled up the steps and taken along the red carpet.
After the screening of the film, the stunned audience wiped away their tears and gave a standing ovation.
RIP Heather.. Im sure you can read this where you are now.
So ever since meeting Heather, Ive learned that there is no relationship between someone's physical condition, and their productive value to the rest of society. Its all pretty random really.
Fair enough.. but how many materials are required for just a standard air-cooled puter without the l33t glow-in-the=dark watercooling unit ?
Seriously though, the UN is full of crap sometimes. Sure, a pile of water gets consumed, but what becomes of that water ? Ill bet a lot it returns to the atmosphere as vapour, rises, condenses, and then forms rain drops eventually. Its not like the individual Hydrogen and Oxygen atoms get totally and irrevocably anihilliated in the production process.
I read somewhere else that rice is a shocker for water consumption - something like a hundred million billion litres of water are consumed just to produce a single grain of rice ! In comparison, you could build a million billion computers for each grain of rice produced, or some such rubbish.
I know the actual details are in dispute, but the fact is that SCO/Caldera purchased _something_ from Novell, for around $100m. Whether it is the full UNIX copyright or not, lets just call it 'the intellectual property in question'.
Now that SCO is in it's final days, and will end up bankrupt and disgraced real soon now, what is the likely fate of this intellectual property in question ?
Who, or what is standing by the sidelines ready to collect this intellectual property in question when SCO falls down ?
Either IBM will buy it up and formally release it into the public domain once and for all, or Dr Evil will pick it up, and take off from where SCO left off.
Maybe we could do a blender, and put in a community effort to purchase this intellectual property in question, and then do the right thing by it.
It will definately be either Google, or a firewall manufacturer.
Why ?
Microsoft has made big noises lately about moving into the search engine space, and also made noises about an impending firewall product.
SCO, taking orders from above, will target the competion in these areas, hoping to tie them up in court for ages, so that Microsoft can enter these markets with reduced competition.
You dont even need a tinfoil hat to see that one coming.
I must admit that Im not too up to date on the contemptorary Japanese Legal System, (I studied Japanese law and customs of the early Samurai era), but isnt the standard penalty for this sort of crime something like giving the guilty party the choice between an honorable Hari Kari, or take a public beheading ?
It was back in the 1600's, has anything changed over there ? Just curious.
Actually, the last brand new WD 120GB that I bought died bigtime about a month after I got it. Something just came loose in the drive and the whole thing rattled like a bucket of nails.
I put the drive in the fridge for a while, and was able to mount 3 out of the 4 partitions on the drive and backup the data to CD. I could only burn a couple of CD's at a time before having to cool the drive down again.
Later on, I got the idea of putting ice packs around the drive to make it last a little longer, and managed to get the rest of the stuff backed up.
Some parts where fsck failed to rebuild the FS, I managed to cat/dev/hda2 > a big file on a cleared parition, and extract a number of MP3's from the big file manually using emacs - worked well.
All up, it took me 2 weeks to recover the data (doing a bit each night).
It seems the rattling was isolated to 1 partition (maybe a platter had come loose ??) , so that was an object lesson on the benefits of partitioning.
Oh - and for the record, I have tried RAID-1 on a single drive, just because I only had 1 drive spare, and wanted to try out this new-fangled software raid setup. (It was on a brand new K6-450, so what vintage is that ?). It was a waste of time, of course. The additional work that the drive has to do would significantly reduce the life of the drive, so as a disaster-prevention scheme it is a braindead idea.
Having admitted to that, do I qualify for the 3 Million to 1 odds ? Ill see your 3 Million, and raise you another 3 Million that there is someone else out there who has done this as well. Ive seen a lot of people do really stupid things with computers over the past 20 years, so I reckon that your odds are short.
It could be Raid-1 on a single disk - just using 2 partitions mirrored.
If the disk dies bigtime, then you are out of luck, but if the disk crash is localised to 1 partition, then you can at least recover.
Dumb idea perhaps, but technically RAID-1.
That would also mean that their 80GB unit can store no more than 40GB if it is truly RAID-1. They should come clean about this in their advertising either way.
> if there are bad cells in both, they throw it away.
Hmm.. would a chip work at all with Zero cache ?
How about a $2 Athlon64 2999+ ?? - 2.0GHz, 0kb cache. Maybe they could bundle it with rejected motherboards, where the COM port, one of the IDE channels, or the USB ports are fried.
Who has the contract to empty the dumpsters from AMD I wonder ?
True, but from what I have seen with Windows on AMD64:
1) The 32 bit mode performance is pretty impressive anyway (so AMD were clever to hedge their bets here)
2) The performance of Win32 code on Win64 base is WORSE than Win32 code on Win32 base using this processor.
I dont trust Microsoft to fully support x86-64 till Intel comes to the party as well.
Keep in mind, that if Linux never existed, then Microsoft would hold all the cards, and would be in a position to sink this chip if they wanted to. Microsoft mouthing support for x86-64 is a reaction to Linux being able to support it. They are playing follow-the-leader now, which is a significant change to the status quo.
If that was not the case, and Linux did not exist, then it would have been way too risky for AMD to try this on. They would have put their resources into a cheaper/better/faster Athlon 32bit core.
My point is that I believe we have reached a significant milestone here, where Microsoft no longer calls the shots to hardware vendors, and that as a result of this change, hardware vendors can feel safe to finally break away from the awful, restricted PeeCee architecture over time, since Linux support will allow such new architectures to be instantly useable.
I also doubt that Windows, being so deeply tied to that old architecture, will find it increasingly difficult to keep pace with such changes.. so, bring em on, I say.
I cant wait to go into a PeeCeeSoftware shop after Longhorn is out and see the titles on the shelves. Are we going to have 8 different shelves, with 'Win98 / WinXP / Win2K / Longhorn32 / Lornhorn64 /.NET CLR / XBox / XBox2' titles. I cant wait for the support calls to start rolling in. What about businesses that 'Need' to standardize on Longhorn64-Office, but also need to keep support up for some legacy WinXP apps which dont run under Longhorn64 for whatever reason. Microsoft's stock answer will be to push complete and uncompromising migration to Longhorn. I cant wait to see the confusion and resentment this is going to cause.
This is also going to add a lot of additional burden onto any proprietry software vendor, making support and porting a lot more complex than it already is. Are we likely to see the average Windows developer in a couple of years time having 4 different PC's on each desk just to keep pace with this mess ? Im buying shares in KVM manufacturers I reckon.
Just watch for China in the coming years to introduce something way better, simpler, and cheaper in the way of architecture and even CPU design. If it only runs Linux, that will suit them well - they can leapfrog the Windows-laden west in 1 easy step. They have the tech and the political will to be able to do this.
Its also quite possible that such a rapid advance in mass-market architecture can happen BEFORE Longhorn hits the market, which will really splash some water into the frying pan. Microsoft's long term outlook is pretty fucked up now.
Dont you just love the way that AMD dropped this 64bit chip on the market - WITHOUT WAITING FOR MICROSOFT TO CATCH UP - Like, trust that Linux support alone will be enough to push this thing into the low-end 64bit market.
And its selling like hot cakes - so the market is proving them right.
Maybe it is a sign of things to come - hardware vendors pushing forward and bringing real innovation back into PeeCees, knowing that Linux alone will be there to support the innovations, and that Linux support is enough to drive sales.
Remember how back in the good old days, Hardware makers (Commodore, Atari, Apple, etc) were free to introduce radical new hardware every 12 months, with no regard to operating software portability - they knew that the software guys were capable of keeping up back then.
The current situation, with Microsoft being the sole supplier of OS's means that any new hardware has to conform to some horrid, and aging 'standard' invented back in the 80's, simply because Microsoft seems to be incapable of keeping pace with innovations in hardware.
Well done AMD - for daring to break the status Quo, and for sticking one up Microsoft at the same time.
Slashdot Mirror
I hear what you are saying .. nothing wrong with 914's
There is a big difference between a "real" Porsche owner and the owner of a "real" Porsche.
The former can be found selling real-estate or insurance (or Spam), whilst the latter can be found under the car with a spanner, making minor suspension tweaks prior to taking a short trip to the supermarket to pickup some milk.
Down in my neck of the woods, the Cayenne is selling surprising well, but only amongst real estate agents, insurance salesmen, and people that play Golf. I not sure where Cayenne earns its badge - Porsche has always been about applying brute force engineering to a set of requirements, and has resulted in a wild variety of gear (the 917 moby dick, the Panther / Tiger / Elephant tanks of WW2, light aircraft engines, and of course the 911). Porsche is not always about cars, and it has never been about fashion.
Id have to assume that the Cayenne's requirements were "to extract the maximum amount of cash out of the pockets of worthless blots on society", in which case, they may well be acheiving their goals. (Apologies to Cayenne owners who actually do anything useful)
If you are looking for an affordable, modern, daily driver Porsche, then consider a temporary brand change and have a serious look at the BMW Mini Cooper - it totally Rocks ! Beneath all that over-the-top-concession-to-fashion there is some serious engineering going on.
Quoting from the BBC article - "AOL says the Porsche has "symbolic value""
No shit !
ALL Porsches have symbolic value - that goes deeper than the badge.
If you ever get the chance to own a Porsche, especially an older model, then do spend some time digging around under the surface and get your hands dirty. Every single component of the car has a wonderful consistent feel to the design of it. You can see that a strong single mind stamped its presence on each design decision, right down to the choice of nuts and bolts.
Every peice of a Porsche is brutally simple, with no concessions made for fashion or cost. Its just like a really good peice of software.
Problem is, the Boxster is a damn fine car, but is perhaps the first real Porsche to have made concessions towards fashion and cost. (The VW 924 does not count, since it was a never meant to be a Porsche).
If you win the Porsche sweepstakes, then have a bit of fun in the Boxster, but then sell it, and use the money to get 1973 Carrera 2.4, or build up an insane 2.7ltr 911 RS replica. Then again, its your car, your dream, dont let me force my dream down your throat.
Having said that - whoever wins the Porsche sweepstakes needs to remember 1 very important thing - it is pronounced 'Porrr-Sch-A' not 'Porsh'. Calling a Porsche a 'Porsh' is like calling Bill Gates the 'inventor of the internet.'
http://www.amidasimputer.com/tour/stop4.php
"Along with a chikki, you can play hours and hours of CD-quality music "
So, Im not sure I read the advert correctly, but it sounds like you DO actually get a Chikki with each simputer.
Either that, or they are available for purchase direct from the site. (Chikki may be available for purchase online, pursuant to the governing laws of your State)
In response to some of the negative 'So What ?' comments, I shall use AC's brilliant explanation to deduce a practical application of this most excellent theorum.
.. but generally if you are able to observe and compute the vector normals, then by appling Atiyah-Singer, we now have the ability to deduce topological invariants, as well as the probable vectors of these invariant-holding bounded manifolds in the 4-D continuum.
You need to look past the obvious sometimes, young Grasshoppers. Lets apply the Atiyah-Singer Theorum to a night club scenario.
A nightclub, is a bounded 3-D dimensional space, which may be inhabited by (amongst other things), a collection of personages, which are nothing more than manifolds in a 4-D continuum.
The Atiyah-Singer theorum proposes that there is a deep connection between the index of the manifold, and the topological nature for each personage.
Having a rich understanding of the index of the vector bundles for these manifolds can then allow you to derive the underlying topology of these unbounded mainfolds.
The underlying aim of being in the Night Club, for our purposes, is to ultimately deduce the underlying topology of the subject, without having to physically remove their clothes, or subject them to X-rays or invasive procedures.
By applying the Atiyah-Singer theorum in this case, we can compare the vector normals for surface vectors around the chest area of the subject. You will quickly note that some subjects have a more or less constant vector normal for this section, whilst others have an interesting flowing perturbation of the surface, yieling a set of vectors which significantly alter the index of the entire manifold.
Other more subtle clues abound
As AC explained in the pretzel example, topological invariants include things like the number of holes in the preztel. And here is the crux of the matter, my learned friends.
We can now select from a set of 4-D manifolds, those manifolds which are most likely to offer up a set of invariants for a finite space of time in the near future space-time continuum, because amongst all of the nightclub inhabitants, our superior mathematical abilities allow us to quickly compute indeces and probabilities, as well as quantum outcomes.
Your choice of invariants is entirely up to you, each to his / her own, I say.
This, ladies and gentleman, is why great mathematians of both sexes and persuasions, manage to get laid as often and as varied as they so choose, whilst the dumb-ass jocks of the world have to make do with watching football, getting drunk with their mates, or mindlessly burning rubber on public roads.
Its pure Darwinism in action.
Ill make an off-the-cuff assertion that modern hardware is already exceptionally well engineered, and that modern software is bloated crap.
For most tasks, I reckon that if the effort was applied to profile, hand optimise and re-factor the underlying software, much greater gains can be acheived than by ever dicking with the hardware.
Its like if you have a car which is not going so well, because the handbrake is stuck on, the oil is crudded up into lumps in the engine, and there is 100kg of dirt and mire under the floorpan to carry around - solution - whack a supercharger on the engine and make it faster.
Fair call
By then again, havent you ever bumped into a person in real life, who looked fake ?
Im not talking about lawyers or MS sales critters here, I mean people who just look sort of like CG animations, who are lacking in detail ?
They are friggen everywhere man - next time you are in a busy mall, stop and watch the crowd. Spot the fake CG animations walking along with the throng.
I would estimate that there are between 5-20 obviously fake animated individuals for every 1000 people that you sample
If I recall correctly from biology class :
Each human eye contains an array of exactly 5760 x 4608 receptors, each of which act as a 16bit CCD.
Data is sampled from this array at a rate of exactly 148Hz, transferred to a framebuffer, and then pushed up along the optic pipeline, where it undergoes various transforms, such as flipping about the X axis so it does not appear to be upside down.
You will note that the resolution of 5760x4608 pixels is an exact multiple of PAL standard resolution 720x576 (8 times, to be exact)
So, if you are having trouble with Gollum appearing a little 'fake', then its probably because you are watching LOTR on a silly NTSC resolution of 720 x 480. This can create banding and other visual artifacts caused by incorrect interpolation along the optic pipeline.
Watch LOTR in PAL format, and you should notice that Gollum is anything but fake.
On a side related issue, it should also be noted that the biological processes which combine the left and right optic framebuffers to produce 3D perception rely on the gathering of meta-data from the environment to aid as hints in the calculations.
The format of this meta-data conforms closely with OpenGL 1.4 standard. For this reason, you will find that a lot of OpenGL based games appear a lot more realistic than their DirectX brethren, since the emitted meta-data is compatible with human internal data processing.
This may change soon, since Microsoft is pushing the DirectX format, and it is widely known that certain processed foods contain genetic mutagens which when combined with exposure to DirectX meta-data cause a 're-programming' of the optic pipeline to use 3D algorithms which are closer to DirectX's meta data than OpenGL's.
So, if you have been playing a lot of XBox games, and merrily munching down McDonalds, then your visual perception may well have been morphing slowly towards a new format.
Worth considering.
That is a good argument.
Still, however ethically challenged the whole operation may of been, it probably cost no more than the money required to design, build, ship overseas, and launch a single cruise missile.
Certainly a lot cheaper than, say, launching a pointless lawsuit against Lawrence Livermore and NERSC for alleged IP violation.
Maybe in their next life, all lawyers need to come back as doctors or something. Maybe this particular doctor was a lawyer in the last life.
She may only live another 6 months, 6 years, 30 years, whatever .. who knows ? Maybe she will fully recover in a few years time, and then get run over by a truck - who knows ? The world is an odd place indeed.
I met a girl not too long ago who by all rights should never have survived, and who's whole life could be seen as a drain of resources to the people around her.
But then again, she managed to write a way controversial film script, and convinced enough people to produce the film.
The film went into production, and made it to the Cannes film festival, where she was hauled up the steps and taken along the red carpet.
After the screening of the film, the stunned audience wiped away their tears and gave a standing ovation.
Her name was Heather Rose Slattery. ACPA Site Here
Or you can read my small contribution Here
RIP Heather .. Im sure you can read this where you are now.
So ever since meeting Heather, Ive learned that there is no relationship between someone's physical condition, and their productive value to the rest of society. Its all pretty random really.
What is the great need to 'change' him, so that he 'fits in better' with 'normal people'.
Let the fucking kid be himself, and allow him to be proud of who is is. Allow him to grow into whatever personality he is most comfortable with.
"Although most of it (1.5 metric tons) is water"
.. but how many materials are required for just a standard air-cooled puter without the l33t glow-in-the=dark watercooling unit ?
Fair enough
Seriously though, the UN is full of crap sometimes. Sure, a pile of water gets consumed, but what becomes of that water ? Ill bet a lot it returns to the atmosphere as vapour, rises, condenses, and then forms rain drops eventually. Its not like the individual Hydrogen and Oxygen atoms get totally and irrevocably anihilliated in the production process.
I read somewhere else that rice is a shocker for water consumption - something like a hundred million billion litres of water are consumed just to produce a single grain of rice ! In comparison, you could build a million billion computers for each grain of rice produced, or some such rubbish.
All recipies are published royalty free and unencumbered. Any submissions most welcome.
You can download free linux software to run a pizza bar from this site as well. (but that is incidental)
Probably Daimler-Chrysler.
Dont be surprised if they throw in a free-os Linux CD with every free-energy car that they sell as well.
Also included with every electric car will be a $100 voucher for accessories of your choice, from AutoZone.
SCO owns the copyrights to UNIX, right ?
I know the actual details are in dispute, but the fact is that SCO/Caldera purchased _something_ from Novell, for around $100m. Whether it is the full UNIX copyright or not, lets just call it 'the intellectual property in question'.
Now that SCO is in it's final days, and will end up bankrupt and disgraced real soon now, what is the likely fate of this intellectual property in question ?
Who, or what is standing by the sidelines ready to collect this intellectual property in question when SCO falls down ?
Either IBM will buy it up and formally release it into the public domain once and for all, or Dr Evil will pick it up, and take off from where SCO left off.
Maybe we could do a blender, and put in a community effort to purchase this intellectual property in question, and then do the right thing by it.
It will definately be either Google, or a firewall manufacturer.
Why ?
Microsoft has made big noises lately about moving into the search engine space, and also made noises about an impending firewall product.
SCO, taking orders from above, will target the competion in these areas, hoping to tie them up in court for ages, so that Microsoft can enter these markets with reduced competition.
You dont even need a tinfoil hat to see that one coming.
I must admit that Im not too up to date on the contemptorary Japanese Legal System, (I studied Japanese law and customs of the early Samurai era), but isnt the standard penalty for this sort of crime something like giving the guilty party the choice between an honorable Hari Kari, or take a public beheading ?
It was back in the 1600's, has anything changed over there ? Just curious.
Guess that means Im perfectly safe to have around.
- evil grin -
Er ..
An array can have 0 or more elements. (Not sure about the validity of negative numbers as array indices though)
Therefore, I can sell you a machine with Zero hard disks, and still make the mathematically viable claim that it includes a RAID storage system.
Plenty of companies have survived for years on making hollow claims, so why not 0-Disk RAID as well ?
Actually, the last brand new WD 120GB that I bought died bigtime about a month after I got it. Something just came loose in the drive and the whole thing rattled like a bucket of nails.
/dev/hda2 > a big file on a cleared parition, and extract a number of MP3's from the big file manually using emacs - worked well.
I put the drive in the fridge for a while, and was able to mount 3 out of the 4 partitions on the drive and backup the data to CD. I could only burn a couple of CD's at a time before having to cool the drive down again.
Later on, I got the idea of putting ice packs around the drive to make it last a little longer, and managed to get the rest of the stuff backed up.
Some parts where fsck failed to rebuild the FS, I managed to cat
All up, it took me 2 weeks to recover the data (doing a bit each night).
It seems the rattling was isolated to 1 partition (maybe a platter had come loose ??) , so that was an object lesson on the benefits of partitioning.
Oh - and for the record, I have tried RAID-1 on a single drive, just because I only had 1 drive spare, and wanted to try out this new-fangled software raid setup. (It was on a brand new K6-450, so what vintage is that ?). It was a waste of time, of course. The additional work that the drive has to do would significantly reduce the life of the drive, so as a disaster-prevention scheme it is a braindead idea.
Having admitted to that, do I qualify for the 3 Million to 1 odds ? Ill see your 3 Million, and raise you another 3 Million that there is someone else out there who has done this as well. Ive seen a lot of people do really stupid things with computers over the past 20 years, so I reckon that your odds are short.
It could be Raid-1 on a single disk - just using 2 partitions mirrored.
If the disk dies bigtime, then you are out of luck, but if the disk crash is localised to 1 partition, then you can at least recover.
Dumb idea perhaps, but technically RAID-1.
That would also mean that their 80GB unit can store no more than 40GB if it is truly RAID-1. They should come clean about this in their advertising either way.
Bandwidth ?
:
What about this
A64 3000 __________________ (316fps)
A64 3200 ____________________ (328fps)
P4 3.2EE __________ (142fps)
Works in lynx too.
> if there are bad cells in both, they throw it away.
.. would a chip work at all with Zero cache ?
Hmm
How about a $2 Athlon64 2999+ ?? - 2.0GHz, 0kb cache. Maybe they could bundle it with rejected motherboards, where the COM port, one of the IDE channels, or the USB ports are fried.
Who has the contract to empty the dumpsters from AMD I wonder ?
True, but from what I have seen with Windows on AMD64 :
.. so, bring em on, I say.
.NET CLR / XBox / XBox2' titles. I cant wait for the support calls to start rolling in. What about businesses that 'Need' to standardize on Longhorn64-Office, but also need to keep support up for some legacy WinXP apps which dont run under Longhorn64 for whatever reason. Microsoft's stock answer will be to push complete and uncompromising migration to Longhorn. I cant wait to see the confusion and resentment this is going to cause.
1) The 32 bit mode performance is pretty impressive anyway (so AMD were clever to hedge their bets here)
2) The performance of Win32 code on Win64 base is WORSE than Win32 code on Win32 base using this processor.
I dont trust Microsoft to fully support x86-64 till Intel comes to the party as well.
Keep in mind, that if Linux never existed, then Microsoft would hold all the cards, and would be in a position to sink this chip if they wanted to. Microsoft mouthing support for x86-64 is a reaction to Linux being able to support it. They are playing follow-the-leader now, which is a significant change to the status quo.
If that was not the case, and Linux did not exist, then it would have been way too risky for AMD to try this on. They would have put their resources into a cheaper/better/faster Athlon 32bit core.
My point is that I believe we have reached a significant milestone here, where Microsoft no longer calls the shots to hardware vendors, and that as a result of this change, hardware vendors can feel safe to finally break away from the awful, restricted PeeCee architecture over time, since Linux support will allow such new architectures to be instantly useable.
I also doubt that Windows, being so deeply tied to that old architecture, will find it increasingly difficult to keep pace with such changes
I cant wait to go into a PeeCeeSoftware shop after Longhorn is out and see the titles on the shelves. Are we going to have 8 different shelves, with 'Win98 / WinXP / Win2K / Longhorn32 / Lornhorn64 /
This is also going to add a lot of additional burden onto any proprietry software vendor, making support and porting a lot more complex than it already is. Are we likely to see the average Windows developer in a couple of years time having 4 different PC's on each desk just to keep pace with this mess ? Im buying shares in KVM manufacturers I reckon.
Just watch for China in the coming years to introduce something way better, simpler, and cheaper in the way of architecture and even CPU design. If it only runs Linux, that will suit them well - they can leapfrog the Windows-laden west in 1 easy step. They have the tech and the political will to be able to do this.
Its also quite possible that such a rapid advance in mass-market architecture can happen BEFORE Longhorn hits the market, which will really splash some water into the frying pan. Microsoft's long term outlook is pretty fucked up now.
Dont you just love the way that AMD dropped this 64bit chip on the market - WITHOUT WAITING FOR MICROSOFT TO CATCH UP - Like, trust that Linux support alone will be enough to push this thing into the low-end 64bit market.
And its selling like hot cakes - so the market is proving them right.
Maybe it is a sign of things to come - hardware vendors pushing forward and bringing real innovation back into PeeCees, knowing that Linux alone will be there to support the innovations, and that Linux support is enough to drive sales.
Remember how back in the good old days, Hardware makers (Commodore, Atari, Apple, etc) were free to introduce radical new hardware every 12 months, with no regard to operating software portability - they knew that the software guys were capable of keeping up back then.
The current situation, with Microsoft being the sole supplier of OS's means that any new hardware has to conform to some horrid, and aging 'standard' invented back in the 80's, simply because Microsoft seems to be incapable of keeping pace with innovations in hardware.
Well done AMD - for daring to break the status Quo, and for sticking one up Microsoft at the same time.
Does Saddam count as a WMD ?