I do most of my browsing from a SPARC Solaris machine using Netscape. The flash plugin works, but is missing several features which are available in the Win32 versions. It'd be nice to have the source available, because then maybe this thing can finally be brought up to speed.
On the other hand, it's really nice that a standard that is becoming very popular on the net is going to be available like this. If you use it on the net, it should be publically available, free and open.
Entirely possible, but not the same idea as it was when the Apple ][ came with the schematics; hardware has become much more complex.
If you have one, look at the schematics for the Apple ][. Essentially every component on the board is an off-the-shelf part. Mind you I am NOT referring to the//e,//c or IIgs, because they have custom ICs (which essentially merged several chips into one). Today's desktop computers use even MORE complex ICs.
Open up a PC. There are very few chips these days: the CPU, the PCI bridge, the "chipset" (read: 440FX or whatever glue chip the CPU connects to the rest of the board with) and the memory SIMMs. Of course you'll find SCSI/16550 UART/Sound/etc chips, but the basic idea is connecting the CPU to your expansion cards with some memory to throw around. These chips, while available off the shelf, are not easy for the hobby-enthusiast to put together on a breadboard and solder together. The Apple ][, on the other hand, was exactly this idea (save ROM code, naturally).
I loved reading the schematics from the technical reference manual from my old Apple ][+. However, it's quite a different time and the detail given for JUST the Apple ][ probably couldn't even match the detail documenting just the PCI controller chip.
I don't find much humor in the technology impaired; mainly because most of my relatives are. I've tried to help them use the computer as a tool and have made some progress (dad surfs the net, sister surfs, chats and does resumes), but it isn't an easy task. Additionally, back when I was in college I used to work in computer labs helping people use PCs and Macintosh computers. Some people just don't understand things the way "geeks" do; something that is obvious to us may not be to someone else because they just don't put things together in their head that way.
As for User Friendly, I do read the strip. I will say that I don't find it the most humorous comic, but once in a while my geek side will get a chuckle. <flamebait=on>I think User Friendly is simply a comic strip written by someone who loves Bloom County / Outland and wanted to apply it to computers somehow, but unfortunately isn't as funny as Berke Breathed.<flamebait=off>. Not saying I could do better, but that is the face value which I give it. My two cents; no refunds. --
Actually, the version I quote is from Tiny Tim's first album sang just before "All I want is 30 million dollars" (or whatever the title was exactly).
Anyway...
Obviously a Perl script written by a programmer who didn't RTFM!
For those who don't know, perl gives you back a year value which is the number of years SINCE 1900. Therefore, you calculate your year with $year = $perlYear + 1900;.. they probably just did "print '19$perlYear';"
I think Linux and *BSD are fairly equal on the features and abilities front (yes, you can nitpick this if you want), but there are a few things:
Linux is under the GPL, and wasn't held back by any ATT garbage
The 'Image' of Linux; created by a single man (media view for the most part) and the logo is cute (the Daemon is cool, but probably scares someone, even WITH the halo)
Microsoft is scared of Linux, not BSD.
Yes, I fully agree that *BSD has numerous merits and that this is something that could easially be flamebait. However, Linux is just a bit ahead of the game (most likely due to the ATT crap), and it has caught the media attention. Its one thing when something comes out of a university, but when "the young finnish student created his own operating system because he didn't like what was out there" grabs peoples' attention, it seems to be a more heartwarming story.
Ok, now let's look at this part about the "heartwarming". Yes, we as techies like to look at things for their technical merit, not their popularity. As I said above, they are both quite good and nitpicking is justified, but almost pointless. Wall Street knows about BSD, but they just don't really care. There are no Red Hats or VA Linux companies for *BSD, and Microsoft doesn't acknowledge *BSD (from what I've seen; tell me otherwise, please). I remember a few months back reading in the Wall Street Journal an article on how "If you thought Linux was the underdog, BSD is underground". People have read about it. They don't care.
I guess I could rant about this for a while, and I'm sure people will flame and argue with this. The point I'm getting to is that Linux just has the head start on the public eye, and it is simply the center of a lot of attention. *BSD may be better than Linux. Linux may be better than *BSD. However, they're both quite good and certainly much better than that software from Redmond. RedHat and VA have both brought Linux to the public attention. I fear, however, that if there is a 'Red Hat BSD', it will just confuse people; it could turn out to be a good thing, but it could also just bring us back to the 80s when there were 20 different platforms and little in the way of 'cross platform' standards.
Rant, rant, rant. I better stop before I talk in circles
I understand the idea of speed behind it, I admire that it is 100% assembler. What I don't quite get is why they claim 386+; this is implying that they don't use 486/586/686 instructions in the code? Why not make it at least 586 instructions?
Honestly, I wouldn't imagine that there would be much use for a 386 machine these days besides a print server or some other minimal task, and for that, you probably would use another operating system. In reality, by the time they get around to implementing the features for such things as routing, print serving, file serving, etc., the 786 would be out (partially joking here).
What I guess I'm trying to say is that the concept of it being a demo coding OS is just fine. But for practical applications, I can't quite see why. With this, why would someone be coding a demo to run on a 386? Should at least take advantage of some of the features of the 586 chip.
Take this simple little test, and find out if you're insane. Then submit the results to the Surgeon General. BTW: I didn't realize sitting in the middle of the road singing show tunes at the top of your lungs was insane, but then again, who knew...
Why AOL? Because there are more people using AIM than any other instant messaging protocol. In addition to the hundreds of thousands (millions?) of people using the AIM client, there are also the (what is it) 18 million people on AOL? Granted it might not be the best protocol, but it certainly is the most widely used one.
I'm sure other protocols are better, and I'm sure one that is far superior could be developed. But if history serves us correctly, the best technology is never the one which becomes the standard (Read: Beta VS VHS, Amiga VS everything else;-)
The only complaint I have about AIM is that everything goes through the server. What the optimal protocol should be doing is using the server for finding people, and then (at the user's discretion) making direct connections. It would partially lift the guilt of putting all of this on AOL's servers, but would also reduce some traffic.
I don't care about Yahoo! Pager, I don't care about MICROS~1 pager, and I haven't used ICQ in a while (slow piece of steaming...).. AIM is the popular one, it will probably be the standard.
I was at the press / analyst conference at the Javits Center in NYC on Monday, and they were very clear in saying that in the beginning, Java was all about cross platform compatibility. They have removed Java from the ECMA to protect this concept. With the quote, "Let all of us build this industry".
Aagh! If this had only been posted at around 2-3pm yesterday, I could have asked the head of Inprise and Pat Seltz (?) who is the president of Sun's software division yesterday at a press conference. FYI, it was at the Javits Center in NYC, a public "unveiling" of Java 2 Enterprise Edition. They were both there and fielding questions..
What I would like to see is the Linux version of Quake III released on a bootable CD which would detect your configuration and just 'run'. You know, that ancient concept which goes back to the Apple ][ days when you'd just stick a disk in the drive, turn on the machine and the program would just load and run automatically? I think it's certainly feasible, as long as there is at least 100MB available on the CD.
Of course, you'd also have to be able to run it from your booted system, but it would be a very cool thing (and powerful message?) if the most popular game of 2000 was just boot-and-run, and was powered by Linux.
Speaking of their support for non-Win32 platforms and Purify, I have to mention that I've been using Purify for Solaris for some time now and love it. Recently I installed Purify for NT at work, and found that it is no where near the caliber of product that it is for Solaris. I guess since they bought Purify, they probably don't really have the development force behind it? Read: I think it originally was a Solaris-only product until someone else acquired it.
As an interesting side note about Purify for NT, you wouldn't believe how many errors pop up that are coming from the operating system. Leaks, bad pointers, etc. If you thought NT was bad, use Purify on it. Kind of makes you wonder why Visual C++ books/teachers/etc preach that you should use error checking level 3 or better, however, the VC++ standard includes fail under anything more strict than that level. Hmm... What's going on in their development departments? --
It's a pretty logical URL for someone to enter: www.business.com. Honestly, how many times have you taken a stab at a web site by entering something, say, www.linux.com? www.lego.com? www.sloppylargetitties.com? Especially with the browsers these days and their 'internet keywords', you can enter one word and most likely have it trying 'www.xxxxxx.[com|org|net]' first. An entrepreneur would probably try www.business.com at some point.
Maybe $7.5 million dollars is a lot of money. However, consider today how much money is getting made on the web. If the implementer of the domain does it right, this will be a small price to pay. I only wish I had the money and the idea of what to do with it:-)
I used to run a small 30/callsPerDay BBS in the 201 area code (northern new jersey) called Dronefone. Originally on an Apple ][ with 2 floppy drives and a 300 baud modem. Ahh, those were the days. You would come home, kick up your feet, and read the messages posted by your users and relax. When I eventually got 2400 baud, I was one of the first boards in the area to have it. It was too cool.
Strange, but when I refer to the modem days I refer to the speeds as 'baud'. Now you see modems rated in 'bps', but you can spot an 'old timer on the modem' if they refer to the speed (accidentally) as baud rate. The technical difference is that baud is the number of times per second (or something like that) that the signal does a wave. Bps (bits per second) is the number of bits per second that the signal can transmit. Up until 2400 baud, bps and baud were synonymous since the modem sent one 'bit per wave'. With 9600, they were using 2400 baud, but were able to stick 4 bits into each wave. Interesting...
Enough of my rambling... Any of my old community out there? Any of you still remember my BBS?;-)
..now running Linux. Just think of the ads.. Giant S/390 mainframes standing alone in the middle of an old part of Rome.. no, make that a penguin exhibit at a Zoo.
Well, at least you can imagine the size of the Tux sticker they could slap on the side of that thing!
If the argument is that Windows is easier to use, then why does it take so much time (Sweat Equity) to get it done? I feel it takes just as much time to get the job done on both platforms, and in the end UNIX just turns out to be more reliable. My recent experience below:
My house mate and myself have our rooms networked (the builders put 12 wires to each phone jack!) and all was good. About a month ago, we got DSL installed in the apartment. Now, we used to share a phone line for our dialup access (we had two different ISPs), and sharing a single 56K modem can be painful, so we never did connection sharing. With the DSL, however, we needed an internet connection sharing (masquerading) solution. So, I pulled out a dusty old 486DX2/50 (16MB) and started to experiment with connection sharing.
Unfortunately, one of the two NICs in the machine (a 3C507) never quite worked well under Linux in this box, so I figured I'd go buy another NE2000. In the meantime, however, my house mate (a Win98 user) decided that we should throw Win98 with internet connection sharing on the machine to get it going for now. Blasphemy, but I was interested anyway.
I spent all afternoon with that darn box trying to get Win98 to work on it. Granted a lot of problems were due to the old hardware (Win98 required a minimum of 66MHz:= chip swap, Old SoundBlaster CD-ROM:= driver hunt), but in the end the GUI didn't make things any easier, just prettier. I didn't need to configure chains or anything, but it still was tricky.
A week or so ago, I finally got another NE2000 and installed it in the box along with Linux. Since I haven't done MASQ before, I had to do some reading, but I got it done in the end. Works just fine now.
I guess what I'm trying to get at is that I had just as much work involved in getting a Windows box to do the masquerading job as I did with Linux. Granted once you've learned everything it's a breeze, but administrators are always learning how to do things. Yes, Win98 is a nice GUI and UNIX is command line, but it takes just as much to know that you open this control panel and click on this and check that to get a job done as it does to know that you edit rc.local and call ipchains.
Now what I'd really like to point out is the fact that I'm MUCH happier with the job that Linux is doing than Win98 was. The connection is faster, the machine has more resources available, and on top of all that, I can access the box from the outside world (I used VNC for Win98, BTW). While I had to reboot the Win98 box at least once every few days, the Linux box has been running without a hitch since I installed it.
It takes time for either Windows or UNIX. The end result, however, is that UNIX is just plain better; and that is from experience.
To argue that "poor helpless people" can't see the fine print that says that a machine was overclocked to the advertized MHz doesn't help much. Did you ever get help when going to a used car dealer? Did you ever get help when you went to purchase a stereo? Ok, maybe the used car dealer is dealing in used equipment and we're talking new equipment, but the idea is that things aren't always as they appear. Let's go back to the stereo. You see a 5-disc CD player for $400 and one for $200. Same thing, right? (same MHz, right?) but you bring the $200 product home and it only works for 2 months before the tray stops rotating or the laser gets out of alignment.
This could be arguing apples and oranges, but I think what I'm really trying to say is that people need to know a little more about what they buy. That is why the magazine Consumer Reports exists.
But what about those situations where the chip has been overclocked and there is no fine print? Maybe it is time that BIOS chips reported the CPU configuration. It seems that overclocking has gotten much more exposure in the last few years, and it seems that a new chipset comes out for each new processor, so why not create a hook in the chipset (for the BIOSs' sake) that reports what the chip should be running at and what it is running at? In the startup screen of your computer, report if the machine is running above it's spec'd speed. It'd be a benefit to the hackers out there who like to overclock because they can see what they've achieved, and it would be informative to the consumer because they could see that their machine is the correct chip. If Intel can write a program to detect their CPU configurations, then this should be a snap.
I guess the big thing is that Intel has been cracking down on overclockers for some time new because (supposedly) of the abuses by the resellers overclocking and repackaging. This at least would bring to the surface situations which might normally be hidden without extra software. Maybe it'll hinder Intel's efforts to block overclocking? Who knows.
I'm sure some people won't agree with this, but I strongly believe that we need to get Mozilla out soon so that Microsoft won't have an opportunity to 'standardize' the internet. What I mean is that if most of the general population uses Internet Explorer long enough, web developers will start developing sites that work ONLY with IE. This hasn't quite happened yet, but with some more time and some more 'features' put out with IE, this most likely will happen.
What we need is competition in the browser market to prevent this and to ensure that standards, not companies, rule the internet's content.
This is why we need Mozilla. It is Netscape. People know who Netscape is. Netscape might be in a strange state right now, but they are the underdog and people did use them at one point. Now I'm not bashing KDE or Opera (I use both browsers), but telling web designers that their new IE feature won't work under those browsers probably won't hold much weight (I hope I'm wrong there). Netscape, on the other hand, will get them to think about it.
I guess it comes down to the number of people who use a particular browser. There is still a significant number of people using Netscape, so you can argue that you need to support that browser. I just hope we can see Mozilla in force before its too late.
"I think in the future there is the possibility of Sega becoming a software-only company." This makes more sense, sort-of. I guess they lose enough money on each console they sell. Since the money is in the software, they probably figure if they crank out another Sonic the Hedgehog or other such hit, they can be doing as well as (say) Id software. Or maybe it is due to the fact that the Sega Saturn was essentially a flop in the US (have you ever seen one?) Or maybe they just believe that PC games are the future and the console isn't necessary.
I think it's a bit of a silly move, though. I know far too many people who'd rather plug the darn thing into a big screen TV and drink a few beers to a Playstation game than sit around their $2000 PC and play games on a keyboard, mouse or single-joystick (I don't know of more than one or two obscure devices which allow you to connect more than one joystick). Also, if you own the console, you can get royalties for each software title that companies make for your platform. Nintendo has been doing it for years, and I'm sure Sega and Sony do it.
I guess Sega has been hit-and-miss in the business ever since they got into consoles. The first Sega console (what was it called again? The one with the cards or cartridges) wasn't that big a hit, then the Genesis was a hit, then the Saturn wasn't, now the Dreamcast _should_ be; Christmas season 1999 will decide.
Well, I won't be too sad to see them go since I haven't owned a console since the 8-bit Nintendo. I will be sad to see the competitive push diminish on the companies (Nintendo is no driver; they have been behind the times for years now). Ahh well..
An all USB machine, for now, means that is is a Win98 box. The reason why I say this is because I've tried a USB keyboard and mouse on a few different operating systems. Win98 and Win2000 had no problem. However, neither Linux or BeOS worked as well; granted with Linux I am not even completely sure if it is really supported yet (or at least in the kernel I used). BeOS "worked", but I found an interesting problem that with the mouse, to click on a button you need to press the button down, slightly move the mouse, then release.
I wouldn't mind seeing ISA go, but as with many, I've got a good selection of ISA cards which I'm not quite ready to give up. I too prefer jumpers. --
Yes, there are issues with credit where credit is due...
Yes, there are issues with quoting Anonymous Coward and wondering who he is...
Yes, there are issues with how they are taking a shortcut by just going to slashdot...
BUT... think about all the times that you've read a mainstream media article which didn't seem to have much sense of how it really was. At least now, we have the opportunity to provide these people with the right information.
Now if only FUD master John C. Dvorak would get a clue...
Slashdot Mirror
On the other hand, it's really nice that a standard that is becoming very popular on the net is going to be available like this. If you use it on the net, it should be publically available, free and open.
--
If you have one, look at the schematics for the Apple ][. Essentially every component on the board is an off-the-shelf part. Mind you I am NOT referring to the //e, //c or IIgs, because they have custom ICs (which essentially merged several chips into one). Today's desktop computers use even MORE complex ICs.
Open up a PC. There are very few chips these days: the CPU, the PCI bridge, the "chipset" (read: 440FX or whatever glue chip the CPU connects to the rest of the board with) and the memory SIMMs. Of course you'll find SCSI/16550 UART/Sound/etc chips, but the basic idea is connecting the CPU to your expansion cards with some memory to throw around. These chips, while available off the shelf, are not easy for the hobby-enthusiast to put together on a breadboard and solder together. The Apple ][, on the other hand, was exactly this idea (save ROM code, naturally).
I loved reading the schematics from the technical reference manual from my old Apple ][+. However, it's quite a different time and the detail given for JUST the Apple ][ probably couldn't even match the detail documenting just the PCI controller chip.
Ahh, those were the days...
--
As for User Friendly, I do read the strip. I will say that I don't find it the most humorous comic, but once in a while my geek side will get a chuckle. <flamebait=on>I think User Friendly is simply a comic strip written by someone who loves Bloom County / Outland and wanted to apply it to computers somehow, but unfortunately isn't as funny as Berke Breathed.<flamebait=off>. Not saying I could do better, but that is the face value which I give it.
My two cents; no refunds.
--
Actually, the version I quote is from Tiny Tim's first album sang just before "All I want is 30 million dollars" (or whatever the title was exactly). Anyway...
--
For those who don't know, perl gives you back a year value which is the number of years SINCE 1900. Therefore, you calculate your year with $year = $perlYear + 1900; .. they probably just did "print '19$perlYear';"
AGH
--
Just figured I'd mention it..
--
Yes, I fully agree that *BSD has numerous merits and that this is something that could easially be flamebait. However, Linux is just a bit ahead of the game (most likely due to the ATT crap), and it has caught the media attention. Its one thing when something comes out of a university, but when "the young finnish student created his own operating system because he didn't like what was out there" grabs peoples' attention, it seems to be a more heartwarming story.
Ok, now let's look at this part about the "heartwarming". Yes, we as techies like to look at things for their technical merit, not their popularity. As I said above, they are both quite good and nitpicking is justified, but almost pointless. Wall Street knows about BSD, but they just don't really care. There are no Red Hats or VA Linux companies for *BSD, and Microsoft doesn't acknowledge *BSD (from what I've seen; tell me otherwise, please). I remember a few months back reading in the Wall Street Journal an article on how "If you thought Linux was the underdog, BSD is underground". People have read about it. They don't care.
I guess I could rant about this for a while, and I'm sure people will flame and argue with this. The point I'm getting to is that Linux just has the head start on the public eye, and it is simply the center of a lot of attention. *BSD may be better than Linux. Linux may be better than *BSD. However, they're both quite good and certainly much better than that software from Redmond. RedHat and VA have both brought Linux to the public attention. I fear, however, that if there is a 'Red Hat BSD', it will just confuse people; it could turn out to be a good thing, but it could also just bring us back to the 80s when there were 20 different platforms and little in the way of 'cross platform' standards.
Rant, rant, rant. I better stop before I talk in circles
--
Funny, after all the commercials Toys'R'Us had with the kid playing with his rain check receipt; it has become reality?
--
Honestly, I wouldn't imagine that there would be much use for a 386 machine these days besides a print server or some other minimal task, and for that, you probably would use another operating system. In reality, by the time they get around to implementing the features for such things as routing, print serving, file serving, etc., the 786 would be out (partially joking here).
What I guess I'm trying to say is that the concept of it being a demo coding OS is just fine. But for practical applications, I can't quite see why. With this, why would someone be coding a demo to run on a 386? Should at least take advantage of some of the features of the 586 chip.
--
Maybe in the next Linux distro release, we can have an .au file of Linus pronouncing Linux, and a sound byte of RMS shouting 'AAHH-AAAAAAAHHHHHHH!!!'
Just a thought...
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Check out: http://www.msu.edu/user/loossean/ erin/sanity.html for the test.
--
I'm sure other protocols are better, and I'm sure one that is far superior could be developed. But if history serves us correctly, the best technology is never the one which becomes the standard (Read: Beta VS VHS, Amiga VS everything else ;-)
The only complaint I have about AIM is that everything goes through the server. What the optimal protocol should be doing is using the server for finding people, and then (at the user's discretion) making direct connections. It would partially lift the guilt of putting all of this on AOL's servers, but would also reduce some traffic.
I don't care about Yahoo! Pager, I don't care about MICROS~1 pager, and I haven't used ICQ in a while (slow piece of steaming...) .. AIM is the popular one, it will probably be the standard.
--
I was at the press / analyst conference at the Javits Center in NYC on Monday, and they were very clear in saying that in the beginning, Java was all about cross platform compatibility. They have removed Java from the ECMA to protect this concept. With the quote, "Let all of us build this industry".
--
Should'a, Could'a, Would'a..
--
Of course, you'd also have to be able to run it from your booted system, but it would be a very cool thing (and powerful message?) if the most popular game of 2000 was just boot-and-run, and was powered by Linux.
--
As an interesting side note about Purify for NT, you wouldn't believe how many errors pop up that are coming from the operating system. Leaks, bad pointers, etc. If you thought NT was bad, use Purify on it. Kind of makes you wonder why Visual C++ books/teachers/etc preach that you should use error checking level 3 or better, however, the VC++ standard includes fail under anything more strict than that level. Hmm... What's going on in their development departments?
--
Maybe $7.5 million dollars is a lot of money. However, consider today how much money is getting made on the web. If the implementer of the domain does it right, this will be a small price to pay. I only wish I had the money and the idea of what to do with it :-)
--
Strange, but when I refer to the modem days I refer to the speeds as 'baud'. Now you see modems rated in 'bps', but you can spot an 'old timer on the modem' if they refer to the speed (accidentally) as baud rate. The technical difference is that baud is the number of times per second (or something like that) that the signal does a wave. Bps (bits per second) is the number of bits per second that the signal can transmit. Up until 2400 baud, bps and baud were synonymous since the modem sent one 'bit per wave'. With 9600, they were using 2400 baud, but were able to stick 4 bits into each wave. Interesting...
Enough of my rambling... Any of my old community out there? Any of you still remember my BBS? ;-)
--
Annoying Operating System (which PF-key?)
Well, at least you can imagine the size of the Tux sticker they could slap on the side of that thing!
Reality: not much to say except "cool".
--
My house mate and myself have our rooms networked (the builders put 12 wires to each phone jack!) and all was good. About a month ago, we got DSL installed in the apartment. Now, we used to share a phone line for our dialup access (we had two different ISPs), and sharing a single 56K modem can be painful, so we never did connection sharing. With the DSL, however, we needed an internet connection sharing (masquerading) solution. So, I pulled out a dusty old 486DX2/50 (16MB) and started to experiment with connection sharing.
Unfortunately, one of the two NICs in the machine (a 3C507) never quite worked well under Linux in this box, so I figured I'd go buy another NE2000. In the meantime, however, my house mate (a Win98 user) decided that we should throw Win98 with internet connection sharing on the machine to get it going for now. Blasphemy, but I was interested anyway.
I spent all afternoon with that darn box trying to get Win98 to work on it. Granted a lot of problems were due to the old hardware (Win98 required a minimum of 66MHz := chip swap, Old SoundBlaster CD-ROM := driver hunt), but in the end the GUI didn't make things any easier, just prettier. I didn't need to configure chains or anything, but it still was tricky.
A week or so ago, I finally got another NE2000 and installed it in the box along with Linux. Since I haven't done MASQ before, I had to do some reading, but I got it done in the end. Works just fine now.
I guess what I'm trying to get at is that I had just as much work involved in getting a Windows box to do the masquerading job as I did with Linux. Granted once you've learned everything it's a breeze, but administrators are always learning how to do things. Yes, Win98 is a nice GUI and UNIX is command line, but it takes just as much to know that you open this control panel and click on this and check that to get a job done as it does to know that you edit rc.local and call ipchains.
Now what I'd really like to point out is the fact that I'm MUCH happier with the job that Linux is doing than Win98 was. The connection is faster, the machine has more resources available, and on top of all that, I can access the box from the outside world (I used VNC for Win98, BTW). While I had to reboot the Win98 box at least once every few days, the Linux box has been running without a hitch since I installed it.
It takes time for either Windows or UNIX. The end result, however, is that UNIX is just plain better; and that is from experience.
--
This could be arguing apples and oranges, but I think what I'm really trying to say is that people need to know a little more about what they buy. That is why the magazine Consumer Reports exists.
But what about those situations where the chip has been overclocked and there is no fine print? Maybe it is time that BIOS chips reported the CPU configuration. It seems that overclocking has gotten much more exposure in the last few years, and it seems that a new chipset comes out for each new processor, so why not create a hook in the chipset (for the BIOSs' sake) that reports what the chip should be running at and what it is running at? In the startup screen of your computer, report if the machine is running above it's spec'd speed. It'd be a benefit to the hackers out there who like to overclock because they can see what they've achieved, and it would be informative to the consumer because they could see that their machine is the correct chip. If Intel can write a program to detect their CPU configurations, then this should be a snap.
I guess the big thing is that Intel has been cracking down on overclockers for some time new because (supposedly) of the abuses by the resellers overclocking and repackaging. This at least would bring to the surface situations which might normally be hidden without extra software. Maybe it'll hinder Intel's efforts to block overclocking? Who knows.
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What we need is competition in the browser market to prevent this and to ensure that standards, not companies, rule the internet's content.
This is why we need Mozilla. It is Netscape. People know who Netscape is. Netscape might be in a strange state right now, but they are the underdog and people did use them at one point. Now I'm not bashing KDE or Opera (I use both browsers), but telling web designers that their new IE feature won't work under those browsers probably won't hold much weight (I hope I'm wrong there). Netscape, on the other hand, will get them to think about it.
I guess it comes down to the number of people who use a particular browser. There is still a significant number of people using Netscape, so you can argue that you need to support that browser. I just hope we can see Mozilla in force before its too late.
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This makes more sense, sort-of. I guess they lose enough money on each console they sell. Since the money is in the software, they probably figure if they crank out another Sonic the Hedgehog or other such hit, they can be doing as well as (say) Id software. Or maybe it is due to the fact that the Sega Saturn was essentially a flop in the US (have you ever seen one?) Or maybe they just believe that PC games are the future and the console isn't necessary.
I think it's a bit of a silly move, though. I know far too many people who'd rather plug the darn thing into a big screen TV and drink a few beers to a Playstation game than sit around their $2000 PC and play games on a keyboard, mouse or single-joystick (I don't know of more than one or two obscure devices which allow you to connect more than one joystick). Also, if you own the console, you can get royalties for each software title that companies make for your platform. Nintendo has been doing it for years, and I'm sure Sega and Sony do it.
I guess Sega has been hit-and-miss in the business ever since they got into consoles. The first Sega console (what was it called again? The one with the cards or cartridges) wasn't that big a hit, then the Genesis was a hit, then the Saturn wasn't, now the Dreamcast _should_ be; Christmas season 1999 will decide.
Well, I won't be too sad to see them go since I haven't owned a console since the 8-bit Nintendo. I will be sad to see the competitive push diminish on the companies (Nintendo is no driver; they have been behind the times for years now). Ahh well..
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I wouldn't mind seeing ISA go, but as with many, I've got a good selection of ISA cards which I'm not quite ready to give up. I too prefer jumpers.
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Yes, there are issues with quoting Anonymous Coward and wondering who he is...
Yes, there are issues with how they are taking a shortcut by just going to slashdot...
BUT... think about all the times that you've read a mainstream media article which didn't seem to have much sense of how it really was. At least now, we have the opportunity to provide these people with the right information.
Now if only FUD master John C. Dvorak would get a clue...
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