Why would anyone want to bring out a new line of PC's under the Packard Bell brand? You'd be better off starting at ground zero. I guess the only thing that can really kill a brand name is an airline crash (think ValuJet, now AirTran).
Running electronics immersed in Fluorinert is an old idea. The Cray 2 was cooled that way.
That gives me an idea. I don't suppose any old liquid-cooled supercomputers are available on the surplus market, are they? Find one of those, toss out the ECL logic, the core memory, the tubes, or whatever ancient electronics are in it, but leave the heavy-duty cooling system, and put in some modern gear. That should work a lot better than any of these homebuilt styrofoam rigs.
Rebate offers, especially ones that come with obligations for internet service, are just a legal form of "bait and switch," as long as the ads mention nothing other than the bottom line price and all of the obligations and restrictions are in the fine print that consumers don't even see until they're already at the store.
I think it is also misleading to advertise prices with the rebate amount already subtracted. Rebates and coupons are always "invalid when combined with other offers," so their real value is always less than their claimed value. A $300 rebate on computer equipment for opening an E*Trade account isn't really worth $300 when anyone can get a $75 cash rebate for opening an account with no further purchase requirement. A $400 rebate for committing to an ISP for three years isn't worth $400 if you're committed to paying more per month than other users of that ISP.
Is there any computer advertising that is not misleading? True monitor sizes are always "viewable area" fine print -- has that carried over to flat screens yet? Printer pages per minute figures practically assume blank pages. 56K modems don't run faster than 53K. Disk drive manufacturers have decided that a gigabyte is 10^9 bytes, not 2^30 bytes (a 7% difference; when we start talking about terabytes it will be a 10% difference).
I'd expect that if digital signatures become recognized, more contracts will start requiring witnesses -- the importance threshold for notarization will drop. The notary public business could really boom.
As suspect as the data is, it would be nice if people were inspired to develop more free software and pay as much attention to their position on this list as they do to their seti@home rank.
Well, maybe not quite that much attention. We don't need kiddies who wouldn't know C++ from Excel macros checking in millions of lines of garbage into any open CVS.
Right! Computers will be hard for your mother to use until the GUI styles settle down and stop changing so that a normal person can learn them once and only once. Cars are not easy to drive, but practically everyone learns how, and they don't have to re-learn a new interface for each model year.
However, I don't think it's a good idea to force a stagnation of GUIs yet. If automobile controls had been standardized too soon, we'd still be starting them with cranks and steering them with tillers.
Many errors cannot be detected by trivial source code inspection, which is all that grep could ever accomplish. Show me a regexp that will tell me whether
printf(fmtString, a, b, c);
is valid without knowing what fmtString is at run time.
The Babbage Engine has always been superior, and only died because of mismanagement at Commodore, Escom, and Gateway. It's still not dead and can do things that today's PC's...
Oh, sorry, I was confusing it with another dead computer.
It's old (1996) but still worth reading the response of outspoken Cypress Semi CEO T.J. Rodgers to The Sisters of St. Francis of Philadelphia after they criticized the company for lack of minority representation on its board. Here is the link.
Please go ahead with whatever onerous changes in terms of service you need to make a buck, but leave the hardware hackable, because in a year or so when you're out of business we'll still be around to make some use of used and surplus i-openers, otherwise they'll all end up in landfills all too soon.
adding stuff to gifs and stuffing ads in text files can be completely automated....
No kidding. Of course those things are automated, but that doesn't mean they happen at completely zero cost to the BBS/WWW operator. Somebody had to develop the software tools, install, maintain, debug, etc. Automation turns out to be the most efficient way to spam your brand all over everything; automation alone is probably not the best way to prevent illegal auctions. My point is that Yahoo should care enough to make a reasonable effort. Some combination of allocating a human being to respond to emailed complaints and a software tool to flag suspicious auctions for further investigation by the same person would be enough.
It hardly diminishes my point, but you're wrong anyway. Microsoft started shipping something called Office in 1989. The term "World Wide Web" wasn't coined until 1990 and NCSA Mosaic wasn't released until 1993.
Back in the pre-WWW days, a large BBS got into trouble for being a haven for pirated software. The BBS operators argued that they didn't have enough time to screen all their material to determine whether it was pirated, but that argument didn't fly because the BBS was a lucrative, full-time operation, and while they claimed not to have enough resources to determine if a file labeled 'MS Office Disk 1 of 42' was warez, they never failed to stuff their BBS ads into every.zip comment and plaster their logo on every.gif that passed through their system.
Today, Yahoo has $billions at their disposal that BBS operators of the 80's would never have dreamed of, and they certainly make sure that every Geocities web page displays their ad banners. Is it too much to expect them to exercise a reasonable amount of care to prevent obvious illegal activity?
It was a sad testament to the shoddy state of shrink-wrap software quality that SoftRAM95, a product that absolutely did not work, continued to be sold for a while even after several industry publications reverse engineered the program to prove that it didn't do what it claimed.
It seems that we have taken a giant step in the wrong direction if today such reverse engineering of a product to verify that it performs as advertised is routinely met by lawsuits and harassment. I suspect that the reasons for this are not only the DMCA but also the fact that the web makes it possible for anybody, not just relatively well-heeled print publications, to challenge companies' assertions.
It seems to me that part of the problem is trying to fit the Linux/Open Source world into the corporate IT world of vendor certification (MSCE, CNE, etc.) Is Linus a "Certified Linux Engineer?" Is Alan Cox? Couldn't I deem myself a "Certified Linux Engineer" with as much legitimacy as Red Hat? (Anybody is welcome to join my Linux certification program. The prerequisite is that you must be able to use a Linux system to print yourself a pretty certificate. And send me $100.)
the Athlon 800 delivered a severe can of whoop-ass to the Pentium III 800
Are you looking at the same data I am? On the various benchmarks posted, I see the following Athlon performance, normalizing P3-800/133 to 100%:
102.6%, 96.0%, 97.6%, 102.4%, 103.4%, 86.6%
A couple of percent on an isolated benchmark or two hardly amounts to a "severe can of whoop-ass." If anybody thinks these benchmarks show a significant difference between Intel and AMD x86 chips, they're kidding themselves. First, benchmarks are imperfect approximations of real-world performance and expecting a few percent difference to apply to the real world is naive. Second, in my experience, it takes about a 15-20% difference in speed in interactive applications before a computer becomes noticeably faster. Any speed difference less than that is only useful if you're running some kind of loooong compute-bound task. 10% might be worth if if you're running a render farm or doing weather simulation, but then you wouldn't be building a render farm based on Quake III results.
Those of you who are either an Intel x86 advocate or an AMD x86 advocate needs to realize that you're both in one narrow corner of the CPU architecture world. It strikes me as like arguing over exactly which Corvette options make the best car while ignoring Ferraris, Porsches, etc.
The last question, and the interviewee's dodging any meaningful answer, nails a problem with politics today.
As a test, I tried searching algore2000.com for Tuition, and I found the same briefings mentioned in the question. The gist of it is that apparently Gore has a National Tuition Savings Plan. I assume that there must be something concrete to this Plan because it is capitalized everywhere it is mentioned, but the actual Plan itself does not appear to be available, only press releases mentioning the Plan -- press releases that usually go on to take a potshot at Bradley.
Since I can't find it, I wonder if Gore's National Tuition Savings Plan is anything more than those four words. I think I'll test the interactivity of Gore's site by asking them to produce the Plan document(s).
To be fair, the other candidates' sites are no better. Bradley's site won't let me search, but it will let me watch a quicktime of Michael Jordan, and it assaults me with plenty of popups asking for contributions. McCain's site lets me search press releases, and I find no match on tuition. Searching mccain2000.com for "education" results in some hits, mainly press releases announcing new radio and TV ads. Searching georgewbush.com for "tuition" finds a few hits in press releases, mostly ones quoting republicans taking potshots at McCain.
After doing this little exercise, I've lowered my opinion of all of the candidates. (Some more than others, but only because I didn't have much respect for some of them in the first place.)
All legal and ethical questions aside for a moment, I can't understand the zeal with which the DVD CCA and MPAA are pursuing this. It's a safe bet that every unscrupulous DVD bootlegger in the world already has the DeCSS code and will not hesitate to exploit it if it would do them any good. Confiscating some teenager's computer, entering T-shirts into evidence, suing web sites and Anonymous Cowards for posting links, is not going to change the fact that CSS is no longer a viable form of copy protection (or content protection or license enforcement or whatever it was ever claimed to be).
Let's presume for a second that the DVD CCA prevails in every suit -- what are they going to collect, some judgement leveled against a 16-year-old kid in Norway? That might be worth almost as much as the judgement in favor of the U.S. Football league in USFL vs. NFL ($1). What good is that going to do?
According to the article, it took weeks to make out the signal because it was so weak. It may turn out to be nothing, but if extra number crunching would help, I'll bet SETI@home participants could spare a few hundred thousand CPU-years to help pick up the signal.
I remember that on the original Pentium, it was faster to implement a bit scan (first bit set from one edge) with shifts and masks than to use the BSR or BSL opcodes.
If I remember correctly, the bit field instructions on the Motorola 68020 were also slower than shifting and masking. The index register instructions on the Zilog Z80 were so much slower than other instructions that they were pretty worthless.
Intel's designs are neither uniquely good nor uniquely bad. They're just successful and that makes them a popular target.
I use a piece of software called WinGuard. This is like saying Microsoft could pick and choose titling and naming. Think about winfiles.com too.
Funny you should mention winfiles.com. It used to be called windows95.com. It's no great stretch of the imagination to assume that Microsoft did have something to do with that domain name change.
This is all a little ambiguous...
Yes, and that's why ultimately legal issues get decided by people, not machines.
Linus owns Linux' trademark. But is he the arbiter of all things Linux? I don't think so, and I don't think he thinks so either. Someone mentioned using this to try to squash LinuxOne. I don't like that idea at all, much as I dislike what they're trying to do. It sounds very slippery (as in the slope).
I agree that it's a slippery slope and I'd rather not see the day when it becomes necessary to apply for "Official Linux(TM) logo certification." However, even if that day comes, I think most current Linux users could hardly give a damn about the name and would carry the GPL'd code over to a new project, and that's what's important in the end.
Granted in 1997. Filing date is October 26, 1995, but it's a continuation of an earlier, abandoned application filed October 6, 1993, which is what I think is the important date for establishing any prior art.
The reason LinuxOne could hurt the Linux community is because they're using the Linux name, which makes me wonder: while LinuxOne has the right to distribute the software under the GPL, do they have the right call themselves LinuxOne, or could Linus Torvalds, who holds the trademark rights to Linux, prohibit that?
That could be a delicate matter -- would Linus want to start distinguishing between companies and people authorized to use the Linux mark and ones which are not? That's a slippery slope. Is that even possible now given the multitude of "Linux" products and the usual requirements that trademark rights be defended vigorously?
...was selecting Santa Clara County, California as the venue. They couldn't have picked an area with more open source and Linux advocates willing to turn out. If I hadn't had to be at work, I would've considered being a fly on the wall myself. I wonder if they'll learn from this and file their next action in friendlier territory somewhere, either some backwoods or perhaps near Hollywood.
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Why would anyone want to bring out a new line of PC's under the Packard Bell brand? You'd be better off starting at ground zero. I guess the only thing that can really kill a brand name is an airline crash (think ValuJet, now AirTran).
That gives me an idea. I don't suppose any old liquid-cooled supercomputers are available on the surplus market, are they? Find one of those, toss out the ECL logic, the core memory, the tubes, or whatever ancient electronics are in it, but leave the heavy-duty cooling system, and put in some modern gear. That should work a lot better than any of these homebuilt styrofoam rigs.
I think it is also misleading to advertise prices with the rebate amount already subtracted. Rebates and coupons are always "invalid when combined with other offers," so their real value is always less than their claimed value. A $300 rebate on computer equipment for opening an E*Trade account isn't really worth $300 when anyone can get a $75 cash rebate for opening an account with no further purchase requirement. A $400 rebate for committing to an ISP for three years isn't worth $400 if you're committed to paying more per month than other users of that ISP.
Is there any computer advertising that is not misleading? True monitor sizes are always "viewable area" fine print -- has that carried over to flat screens yet? Printer pages per minute figures practically assume blank pages. 56K modems don't run faster than 53K. Disk drive manufacturers have decided that a gigabyte is 10^9 bytes, not 2^30 bytes (a 7% difference; when we start talking about terabytes it will be a 10% difference).
I'd expect that if digital signatures become recognized, more contracts will start requiring witnesses -- the importance threshold for notarization will drop. The notary public business could really boom.
Well, maybe not quite that much attention. We don't need kiddies who wouldn't know C++ from Excel macros checking in millions of lines of garbage into any open CVS.
However, I don't think it's a good idea to force a stagnation of GUIs yet. If automobile controls had been standardized too soon, we'd still be starting them with cranks and steering them with tillers.
printf(fmtString, a, b, c);
is valid without knowing what fmtString is at run time.
Oh, sorry, I was confusing it with another dead computer.
It's old (1996) but still worth reading the response of outspoken Cypress Semi CEO T.J. Rodgers to The Sisters of St. Francis of Philadelphia after they criticized the company for lack of minority representation on its board. Here is the link.
Please go ahead with whatever onerous changes in terms of service you need to make a buck, but leave the hardware hackable, because in a year or so when you're out of business we'll still be around to make some use of used and surplus i-openers, otherwise they'll all end up in landfills all too soon.
That's more or less what SGI's guaranteed rate I/O (grio) does. It's on the XFS todo list, but I wouldn't hold my breath.
No kidding. Of course those things are automated, but that doesn't mean they happen at completely zero cost to the BBS/WWW operator. Somebody had to develop the software tools, install, maintain, debug, etc. Automation turns out to be the most efficient way to spam your brand all over everything; automation alone is probably not the best way to prevent illegal auctions. My point is that Yahoo should care enough to make a reasonable effort. Some combination of allocating a human being to respond to emailed complaints and a software tool to flag suspicious auctions for further investigation by the same person would be enough.
It hardly diminishes my point, but you're wrong anyway. Microsoft started shipping something called Office in 1989. The term "World Wide Web" wasn't coined until 1990 and NCSA Mosaic wasn't released until 1993.
Today, Yahoo has $billions at their disposal that BBS operators of the 80's would never have dreamed of, and they certainly make sure that every Geocities web page displays their ad banners. Is it too much to expect them to exercise a reasonable amount of care to prevent obvious illegal activity?
It seems that we have taken a giant step in the wrong direction if today such reverse engineering of a product to verify that it performs as advertised is routinely met by lawsuits and harassment. I suspect that the reasons for this are not only the DMCA but also the fact that the web makes it possible for anybody, not just relatively well-heeled print publications, to challenge companies' assertions.
It seems to me that part of the problem is trying to fit the Linux/Open Source world into the corporate IT world of vendor certification (MSCE, CNE, etc.) Is Linus a "Certified Linux Engineer?" Is Alan Cox? Couldn't I deem myself a "Certified Linux Engineer" with as much legitimacy as Red Hat? (Anybody is welcome to join my Linux certification program. The prerequisite is that you must be able to use a Linux system to print yourself a pretty certificate. And send me $100.)
Are you looking at the same data I am? On the various benchmarks posted, I see the following Athlon performance, normalizing P3-800/133 to 100%:
102.6%, 96.0%, 97.6%, 102.4%, 103.4%, 86.6%
A couple of percent on an isolated benchmark or two hardly amounts to a "severe can of whoop-ass." If anybody thinks these benchmarks show a significant difference between Intel and AMD x86 chips, they're kidding themselves. First, benchmarks are imperfect approximations of real-world performance and expecting a few percent difference to apply to the real world is naive. Second, in my experience, it takes about a 15-20% difference in speed in interactive applications before a computer becomes noticeably faster. Any speed difference less than that is only useful if you're running some kind of loooong compute-bound task. 10% might be worth if if you're running a render farm or doing weather simulation, but then you wouldn't be building a render farm based on Quake III results.
Those of you who are either an Intel x86 advocate or an AMD x86 advocate needs to realize that you're both in one narrow corner of the CPU architecture world. It strikes me as like arguing over exactly which Corvette options make the best car while ignoring Ferraris, Porsches, etc.
As a test, I tried searching algore2000.com for Tuition, and I found the same briefings mentioned in the question. The gist of it is that apparently Gore has a National Tuition Savings Plan. I assume that there must be something concrete to this Plan because it is capitalized everywhere it is mentioned, but the actual Plan itself does not appear to be available, only press releases mentioning the Plan -- press releases that usually go on to take a potshot at Bradley.
Since I can't find it, I wonder if Gore's National Tuition Savings Plan is anything more than those four words. I think I'll test the interactivity of Gore's site by asking them to produce the Plan document(s).
To be fair, the other candidates' sites are no better. Bradley's site won't let me search, but it will let me watch a quicktime of Michael Jordan, and it assaults me with plenty of popups asking for contributions. McCain's site lets me search press releases, and I find no match on tuition. Searching mccain2000.com for "education" results in some hits, mainly press releases announcing new radio and TV ads. Searching georgewbush.com for "tuition" finds a few hits in press releases, mostly ones quoting republicans taking potshots at McCain.
After doing this little exercise, I've lowered my opinion of all of the candidates. (Some more than others, but only because I didn't have much respect for some of them in the first place.)
Let's presume for a second that the DVD CCA prevails in every suit -- what are they going to collect, some judgement leveled against a 16-year-old kid in Norway? That might be worth almost as much as the judgement in favor of the U.S. Football league in USFL vs. NFL ($1). What good is that going to do?
According to the article, it took weeks to make out the signal because it was so weak. It may turn out to be nothing, but if extra number crunching would help, I'll bet SETI@home participants could spare a few hundred thousand CPU-years to help pick up the signal.
If I remember correctly, the bit field instructions on the Motorola 68020 were also slower than shifting and masking. The index register instructions on the Zilog Z80 were so much slower than other instructions that they were pretty worthless.
Intel's designs are neither uniquely good nor uniquely bad. They're just successful and that makes them a popular target.
Funny you should mention winfiles.com. It used to be called windows95.com. It's no great stretch of the imagination to assume that Microsoft did have something to do with that domain name change.
This is all a little ambiguous...
Yes, and that's why ultimately legal issues get decided by people, not machines.
Linus owns Linux' trademark. But is he the arbiter of all things Linux? I don't think so, and I don't think he thinks so either. Someone mentioned using this to try to squash LinuxOne. I don't like that idea at all, much as I dislike what they're trying to do. It sounds very slippery (as in the slope).
I agree that it's a slippery slope and I'd rather not see the day when it becomes necessary to apply for "Official Linux(TM) logo certification." However, even if that day comes, I think most current Linux users could hardly give a damn about the name and would carry the GPL'd code over to a new project, and that's what's important in the end.
Granted in 1997. Filing date is October 26, 1995, but it's a continuation of an earlier, abandoned application filed October 6, 1993, which is what I think is the important date for establishing any prior art.
That could be a delicate matter -- would Linus want to start distinguishing between companies and people authorized to use the Linux mark and ones which are not? That's a slippery slope. Is that even possible now given the multitude of "Linux" products and the usual requirements that trademark rights be defended vigorously?
...was selecting Santa Clara County, California as the venue. They couldn't have picked an area with more open source and Linux advocates willing to turn out. If I hadn't had to be at work, I would've considered being a fly on the wall myself. I wonder if they'll learn from this and file their next action in friendlier territory somewhere, either some backwoods or perhaps near Hollywood.