My definition of evil is more along the lines of Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, or the dude that's in the news for murdering his wife and infant daughter. What Microsoft does is certainly aggressive business -- possibly even illegal at times, but evil? lol.. You truely do belong on/.
Just so you're a little less ignorant sounding, the Gates' charity was founded at the behest of Bill's wife, whom is known to be a very compassionate woman. And since it's inception it has been quite prolific. They don't just toss money around to look good, they actually spend a good amount of their time making sure that the money is being properly and effectively used. Having anything but respect for their charity is just juvenile.
Not so. Illegal, yes, but evil? I think that is a pretty big exaggeration. Everything that Microsoft did would have been perfectly legal, had it not been for one fact: their install base was large enough to constitute a monopoly (which they gained legally). Unfortunately for them, the tactics that they were used to employing -- which were perfectly legal for a non-monopoly -- became illegal for them once they gained monopoly status.
And, let's face it... who did they drive out of business? Real? Netscape? Neither of these companies made anything truely stellar, and both were known for abusing their own monopoly positions while they had them. You'll forgive me if I fail to mourne the loss.
As to Google: they've been a decent enough company, so far.. but they're just now out of their infancy. You haven't given them time to do anything wrong. It's not really a fair comparison, is it? Let's compare Google in 20 years with the Microsoft of today, and see if Google hasn't made a mistake or three.
I hate defending Microsoft, but the ridiculous anti-everything-to-do-with-Microsoft attitudes on/. pretty much force me to.
"Netscape was a commercial product before IE was bundled with Windows. Once Microsoft put Netscape out of business, it became free."
I've said it before, and I'm sure that I'll have to say it again: Netscape is not to be pitied. They sealed their own fate. If your memory were better, you'd recall that Netscape's CEO publically announced, repeatedly, that they were going to turn Netscape into a platform independant API which would make the OS your computer ran irrelevant, as all applications were built for Netscape, and not Windows/Posix/DOS, etc.
Yes, Microsoft drove them out of business. But that doesn't mean it was done out of spite. And, beyond that, let's face it: Netscape sucked. Anyone that claims it was more web-compliant than IE was at the time is smoking crack. And, to top it off, its interface was even worse than IE's. Why anyone gets nostalgic over Netscape is beyond me.
Bill Gates is the single largest philanthropist in the world... and, yet, he's still thought of as the antiChrist by many. If it didn't work for Bill Gates, what makes Google think it will work for it?
However, this is not to say that such endeavors are not worth doing. I'm all for big companies striving to make the world a better place.
Seriously, how did this make it to the front page. Not only does the poster obviously know very little about networking or computers in general (come on... "hosting someone else's packets on my hard drive... eh.. that's retarded. hard drives are SLOW), but this idea is patently stupid. The originall gnutella was a great example of what would happen -- it would work just fine in small environments, but as the users scaled, the speed would actually decrease due to no centralised DNs et all.
I most ignore the trolls about slashdot going to hell... but this technologically infeasiable and outright rediculous idea should never have made it past the editors. Come'on guys, what is the deal?
"and ATI is now modifying key areas of its website, removing any mention of 'HDCP-ready'."
While I'm not saying it's cool to advertise features that do not exist in a product, isn't it the responsible thing for ATi to remove references to HDCP-ready on its websites, so as to not further mislead potential customers?
That being said, of course ATi should roll out a driver that has hardware HDCP enabled, or offer some form of compensation to previous buyers whom were mislead.
"Chances are, if you're smart enough to run Linux, then you're probably smart enough to backup your important files."
That's rather presumptuous, isn't it? Not everyone that installs linux on their pc is automatically a linux-nerd... In fact, these days, there are probably just as many people running linux that wouldn't be able to set up a cron script to backup their stuff. The vast majority of linux users that I've known were not professional admins, and would never have had the patience to install linux if they hadn't found distros with fancy gui installers.
I think it's time to face the facts: Linux may still be mainly for geeks -- but it no longer requires a PhD to run it on a daily basis.
"...privacy advocates have a growing list of concerns about everything from its e-mail service to its desktop search function, both of which may make it easier for hackers or government agencies to gather information about individuals without their consent."
1. Gmail has had its share of security holes.. then again, so has just about every other email service. Nothing to go getting your knickers in a twist over. If you want serious security, you get yourself a professional email service, anyways. (And I'm NOT talking about a paid hotmail account!)
2. The desktop search function is limited by your user rights. If your on an admin account then of course you're able to read other users' files. Google's desktop search isn't a security problem, in and of itself. If it is able to scan other users' files, then the security problem is not desktop search, it's that your users have rights that they should not have. Google desktop search does not enable them to do anything that they could not already do. Once again, nothing to get your knickers in a twist over.
Seriously, why are people getting all freaked out that google is branching into different markets. I say let them. If it's a good idea, then they will grow rich(er). And -- as evidenced by their stock drop -- if it's a bad move, then they will flounder. It's what makes capitalism great.
'So, basically you're saying the game is a bunch of crap because the main aspect (aiming, shooting well) is essentially not a requirement for "playing well."'
Thanks for the rabid misquote. I said nothing of the like. If you weren't so intent on bending what I said to suit your own distate for CS, then you might have realised that my comment was a pun about my own skills. I said nothing about being a good shot not being a requirement for playing well. I never even claimed that I was a good player, at all.
"That is yet another reason why CS is crap, IMO."
Yes, you've made it abundantly clear that you dislike CS. Maybe you needed to find better servers to play on? Or, maybe you yourself were never able to aquire any skill in the game, either? Whatever the case, I think it's safe to say that nobody cares. Go find yourself a single-player FPS, where the only competition are mindless bots.
Last I knew, Counter-Strike and Counter-Strike: Source were the most played FPS's around. Even with CS:S running on the HL2 engine, it's still very much the same game -- just a little prettier. That's pretty damn impressive considering the game has been around for ~8years.
The irony, in the 6 years that I've played the game, I have yet to learn how to aim.. instead, I've learned how to improve my spray-and-pray. <shrugs> I must be the most leet noob I know.
"Azureus, to be fair, takes up only 151KB; BitTorrent is 184KB.."
This guy really doesn't seem to take the time to do any research. Azureus relies upon the Java runtime, which isn't a small package. The BitTorrent client itself might only be 184K (depending upon your platform), but it relies upon python & gtk+ libraries, which are also take up space.
Seriously, how did this guy ever get a job writing tech columns. His "facts" seem to be closer to misinformation half the time. Geez how PC Magazine has gone downhill over the years.
In refernce to the stock BitTorrent client, v4.2.2:
"This client is clean and simple; it requires JRE (Java Runtime Environment) 1.5."
Bittorrent is written in Python, and currently uses the GTK for its interface (though prior versions had used wxPython). This isn't the kind of mistake that someone who actually knew anything about the subject he was writing about would make. Seriously.
"Also, due to moore's law, the amount of die space a hardware decoder requires is unimportant."
Not true. Imagine if instead we could use that space for increased cache, or a more complex integer or floating point unit? How much more powerful would or processors be if we weren't burdened with a decode unit that takes up 1/4 of the processor's space???
There is more to the RISC architecture than the instruction set. RISC introduced not only a Reduced Instruction Set, but also the cpu cache and multiple pipelines.
These are all elements found on modern x86 cpu's, yet they are RISC-derived. If you look at the features found and architectures of any moder x86 clone, you will find it far more like a RISC chip than the CISC of yesteryear. The only part of these chips that is CISC is the instruction set that is used by software. Internally, it has a RISC instruction set.
To ignore the other aspects of RISC architecture is an injustice to the revolutionary concepts that RISC was. These days, all desktop, notebook and server cpu's are either pure RISC, or far more RISC than CISC. It's just a fact.
"But to say that Intels chips are RISC-like because instructions get decoded to micro-ops is to fundamentally misunderstand the philosophy of RISC."
There is also the matter of the on-die cache and mutliple pipelines. These are both classic RISC architecture. The difference is in more than the command set, it's in the design of the processor.
All Intel (and Intel clones -- AMD, IBM, Cyrix, etc) chips from the past 10+ years have had architectures far more in line with RISC than CISC. The only part of any modern x86 cpu that is CISC is the legacy command set, which is then in-turn decoded into a RISC-like command set that is used internally by the processor.
I'm not saying that any x86 chip on the market is a pure RISC chip. But they bare more resemblence to a RISC architecture than they do a CISC.
"In other words, CISC processors, i.e. the implementations of CISC instruction sets, may have sucked, but the instruction sets themselves sucked less than people thought."
That could be it. Oooor, it could be that Intel had the foresight to understand that while RISC-architecture processes faster, the legacy CISC instruction set was far too entrenched to get rid of. Thus, they made their new RISC-like chips backwards compatible, via a hardware decoder.
It's always important to remember that the best design doesn't necessarily when. This is especially true when their is a legacy product with a substantial user-base.
"CISC and RISC are arbitrary distinctions. It's not like there's a line where a chip becomes CISC or RISC."
True, there is no "line," per-say. However, internally, Intel's cpu's all use RISC-type instructions. This began with the original Pentium, and has continued ever since.
What happens is that software is compiled, more-or-less, for the i386. Thus, the instructions sent from your software to the cpu are old-school CISC commands. However, there is a decoder on all x86 compatible cpu's that transforms a single CISC command into (sometimes) many micro-ops, which are then executed in a very classical RISC-like manner.
"But most RISC chips usually have small pipelines, and the P4s have a pipline anywhere from 20 to 31 stages."
True, traditional RISC architecture did not have many stages in the pipeline. However, neither did your older CISC chips. All modern (ie. faster mhz) processors have longer pipelines than their predecessors. True, not everyone has such massive pipelines as the P4.. but all of them have longer pipelines than their ancestors.
"And as we all know, Intel's phasing out this architecture, and instead focusing on the Pentium M/Intel Core chips. These chips are based on a heavily modified version of the P3, which was based on the Pentium Pro. I believe they're a bit more "traditional" CISC-type processors."
Yes, the Pentium M is derived from the Pentium III. However, it is not as closely associated with the P3 line as, say, the P3 line is w/ the PPro. If memory serves, it was one of the Intel teams in Israel that designed it. However, the big-chiefs in Intel had already decided to push the P4 architecture, instead.. and so the Pentium M was relegated to the lower-end of notebooks. Still, it was (and still is) a superior architecture in most respects. And, although it does not have the insanely long pipeline of the P4, it still has a RISC-like core. Instructions are decoded into micro-ops, and only then are they executed. Even on older cpu's (Pentium, PPro, etc) the decode unit takes somewhere around 20-25% of the chip's real-estate!
Anyhoo.. in short: you're mostly correct.. but realize that Intel has been been selling RISC chips for ~10 years now.
"and that said... CISC processors sucked until they switched to them."
None of Intel's desktop, notebook or server cpu's are CISC. They haven't been for several years, now. They are actually RISC-like in nature, with a big fat CISC decoder that transforms those nasty CISC commands into "micro-ops."
BoVD is not unbalanced, but:
1. It and the Book of Exalted Deeds are meant to be used together or not at all, and
2. The creatures in it are meant to be used in a game that involves characters similarly empowered.
I hate to sound like one of those obnoxious, rule-whore gamers... but you're quite wrong.
The BoVD was created over a year prior to the BoED (which is also less than balanced, but not quite as badly so as the BoVD). While the BoED's index even says that it was written as a counter to the BoVD, you cannot turn that around and say that the BoVD was written with the BoED in mind. The BoVD was very much intended to stand on its own. Thusly, its material must be viewed as such.
As to your second assertation, only a fool would attempt to run a "normal" game and use the BoVD. Not only does that not counter my claim that the BoVD bends the dnd rules, but actually lends support to my claim.
Why? Simple: his books, though certainly original, are consistently the least balanced in the DnD world.
One perfect example of this is The Book of Vile Darkness (BoVD). Anyone that's actually used this book knows that the creatures inside are far more powerful than they are listed as. The result is an imbalanced game where the players and DM alike constantly have to second-guess the information inside the book. Wise DM's often outright ban it.
What about Malhavoc Press? Those books make the ludicrous foes found inside the BoVD look like child's play. Malhavoc Press books consistently bend and break the DnD system, and an experienced DM carefully restricts their useage.
So, does my rant have a purpose? Yeah, it does. Monte Cook should be relegated to an "idea man," where he comes up w/ ideas and leaves the implementations to people that know what they're doing. Unfortunately, he has a direct hand in his creations. This results in the George Lucas effect, where something that could have been wonderful is turned into a horrid aberration. All you really need to know is to stay away from any product with his name on it. (The only exception being the core DND books.)
And, no, I'm not trolling. I'm speaking from a wealth of experience with this man's books.
"...it is clear that the poorly designed 'SetAbortProc,' the function that allows printing jobs to be canceled, was ported over to Vista."
It's more like SetAbortProc was never removed from the common code-base that Vista inherited from XP. Saying it was "ported" would lead one to believe that MS actually re-writes the entire OS with every major release. They do not. They simply tack on some new stuff.
Slashdot Mirror
My definition of evil is more along the lines of Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, or the dude that's in the news for murdering his wife and infant daughter. What Microsoft does is certainly aggressive business -- possibly even illegal at times, but evil? lol.. You truely do belong on /.
Get over it - Netscape practically dared them to do it.
Just so you're a little less ignorant sounding, the Gates' charity was founded at the behest of Bill's wife, whom is known to be a very compassionate woman. And since it's inception it has been quite prolific. They don't just toss money around to look good, they actually spend a good amount of their time making sure that the money is being properly and effectively used. Having anything but respect for their charity is just juvenile.
And, let's face it... who did they drive out of business? Real? Netscape? Neither of these companies made anything truely stellar, and both were known for abusing their own monopoly positions while they had them. You'll forgive me if I fail to mourne the loss.
As to Google: they've been a decent enough company, so far.. but they're just now out of their infancy. You haven't given them time to do anything wrong. It's not really a fair comparison, is it? Let's compare Google in 20 years with the Microsoft of today, and see if Google hasn't made a mistake or three.
I hate defending Microsoft, but the ridiculous anti-everything-to-do-with-Microsoft attitudes on /. pretty much force me to.
Yes, Microsoft drove them out of business. But that doesn't mean it was done out of spite. And, beyond that, let's face it: Netscape sucked. Anyone that claims it was more web-compliant than IE was at the time is smoking crack. And, to top it off, its interface was even worse than IE's. Why anyone gets nostalgic over Netscape is beyond me.
However, this is not to say that such endeavors are not worth doing. I'm all for big companies striving to make the world a better place.
I most ignore the trolls about slashdot going to hell ... but this technologically infeasiable and outright rediculous idea should never have made it past the editors. Come'on guys, what is the deal?
That being said, of course ATi should roll out a driver that has hardware HDCP enabled, or offer some form of compensation to previous buyers whom were mislead.
I think it's time to face the facts: Linux may still be mainly for geeks -- but it no longer requires a PhD to run it on a daily basis.
2. The desktop search function is limited by your user rights. If your on an admin account then of course you're able to read other users' files. Google's desktop search isn't a security problem, in and of itself. If it is able to scan other users' files, then the security problem is not desktop search, it's that your users have rights that they should not have. Google desktop search does not enable them to do anything that they could not already do. Once again, nothing to get your knickers in a twist over.
Seriously, why are people getting all freaked out that google is branching into different markets. I say let them. If it's a good idea, then they will grow rich(er). And -- as evidenced by their stock drop -- if it's a bad move, then they will flounder. It's what makes capitalism great.
The irony, in the 6 years that I've played the game, I have yet to learn how to aim.. instead, I've learned how to improve my spray-and-pray. <shrugs> I must be the most leet noob I know.
Seriously, how did this guy ever get a job writing tech columns. His "facts" seem to be closer to misinformation half the time. Geez how PC Magazine has gone downhill over the years.
These are all elements found on modern x86 cpu's, yet they are RISC-derived. If you look at the features found and architectures of any moder x86 clone, you will find it far more like a RISC chip than the CISC of yesteryear. The only part of these chips that is CISC is the instruction set that is used by software. Internally, it has a RISC instruction set.
To ignore the other aspects of RISC architecture is an injustice to the revolutionary concepts that RISC was. These days, all desktop, notebook and server cpu's are either pure RISC, or far more RISC than CISC. It's just a fact.
All Intel (and Intel clones -- AMD, IBM, Cyrix, etc) chips from the past 10+ years have had architectures far more in line with RISC than CISC. The only part of any modern x86 cpu that is CISC is the legacy command set, which is then in-turn decoded into a RISC-like command set that is used internally by the processor.
I'm not saying that any x86 chip on the market is a pure RISC chip. But they bare more resemblence to a RISC architecture than they do a CISC.
It's always important to remember that the best design doesn't necessarily when. This is especially true when their is a legacy product with a substantial user-base.
What happens is that software is compiled, more-or-less, for the i386. Thus, the instructions sent from your software to the cpu are old-school CISC commands. However, there is a decoder on all x86 compatible cpu's that transforms a single CISC command into (sometimes) many micro-ops, which are then executed in a very classical RISC-like manner.
True, traditional RISC architecture did not have many stages in the pipeline. However, neither did your older CISC chips. All modern (ie. faster mhz) processors have longer pipelines than their predecessors. True, not everyone has such massive pipelines as the P4.. but all of them have longer pipelines than their ancestors. Yes, the Pentium M is derived from the Pentium III. However, it is not as closely associated with the P3 line as, say, the P3 line is w/ the PPro. If memory serves, it was one of the Intel teams in Israel that designed it. However, the big-chiefs in Intel had already decided to push the P4 architecture, instead.. and so the Pentium M was relegated to the lower-end of notebooks. Still, it was (and still is) a superior architecture in most respects. And, although it does not have the insanely long pipeline of the P4, it still has a RISC-like core. Instructions are decoded into micro-ops, and only then are they executed. Even on older cpu's (Pentium, PPro, etc) the decode unit takes somewhere around 20-25% of the chip's real-estate!Anyhoo.. in short: you're mostly correct.. but realize that Intel has been been selling RISC chips for ~10 years now.
The BoVD was created over a year prior to the BoED (which is also less than balanced, but not quite as badly so as the BoVD). While the BoED's index even says that it was written as a counter to the BoVD, you cannot turn that around and say that the BoVD was written with the BoED in mind. The BoVD was very much intended to stand on its own. Thusly, its material must be viewed as such.
As to your second assertation, only a fool would attempt to run a "normal" game and use the BoVD. Not only does that not counter my claim that the BoVD bends the dnd rules, but actually lends support to my claim.
Why? Simple: his books, though certainly original, are consistently the least balanced in the DnD world.
One perfect example of this is The Book of Vile Darkness (BoVD). Anyone that's actually used this book knows that the creatures inside are far more powerful than they are listed as. The result is an imbalanced game where the players and DM alike constantly have to second-guess the information inside the book. Wise DM's often outright ban it.
What about Malhavoc Press? Those books make the ludicrous foes found inside the BoVD look like child's play. Malhavoc Press books consistently bend and break the DnD system, and an experienced DM carefully restricts their useage.
So, does my rant have a purpose? Yeah, it does. Monte Cook should be relegated to an "idea man," where he comes up w/ ideas and leaves the implementations to people that know what they're doing. Unfortunately, he has a direct hand in his creations. This results in the George Lucas effect, where something that could have been wonderful is turned into a horrid aberration. All you really need to know is to stay away from any product with his name on it. (The only exception being the core DND books.)
And, no, I'm not trolling. I'm speaking from a wealth of experience with this man's books.