Yeah, I forgot to switch my spammer-speak translating device on. He presumably just avoided mentioning that 99.999% of those replies were along the lines of "stop sending me this f***ing crap you bastard".
1-2 percent?
on
I, Spammer
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· Score: 2, Insightful
If he's sending 240 million emails a day and getting 1-2 percent return, even if he only make a few dollars off each sale that's a profit in the order of billions a year. Do you get the feeling he's lying to the senate?
It's quantum mechanics that proves radio waves are safe (well, certainly from a cancer causing/mutation point of view).
Electromagnetic radiation either has the energy to ionise an atom by knocking an electron out of its shell, or it doesn't. There isn't a middle ground; no matter how many of the weak radio signal photons you fire, you still won't cause any damage.
I can see how this might be useful in large open-plan areas (offices etc.). For that you would need an auto-emptying dust box though.
For a normal-sized home though, I'd have thought the setup time - setting the thing going, laying the magnetic strips, emptying the (presumably small) dust box and kicking it when it gets stuck - would be similar to the amount of time it would take to vacuum the place yourself.
If Nvidia GPL their drivers, no other company can directly incorporate code from them without also releasing their drivers under the GPL. So, NVidia found out just as much as ATI do.
GPLing the drivers would give NVidia:
1) Thousands of developers willing to submit detailed bug reports, port drivers, improve performance on 'alternative' operating systems etc. 2) Protection from these kind of cheating accusations 3) Better relationship with game developers - optimising for an NVidia card when you've got details of exactly how the drivers work is going to be much easier than for a competitor card. 4) A huge popularity boost amongst the geek community, who spend a lot on hardware every year.
NVidia is, first and foremost, a hardware company. In the same way that Sun, IBM etc. contribute to open-source projects in order to make their hardware or other services more appealing, NVidia stand to gain a lot too.
And as for rogue drivers? I suppose you're worried about rogue versions of the Linux kernel destroying your processor?
An interesting variation on the standard graphics-card article troll.Personally I can see at 34.152 fps on a good day, but can only manage 28.693 when I'm tired.
The problem is that people are buying cards based on these silly synthetic benchmarks. When performance in one arbitrary set of tests is so important to sales, naturally you're going to see drivers tailored to improving performance in those tests.
Of course, if Nvidia's drivers were released under the GPL, none of the mud from this would stick as they could just point to the source code and say "look, no tricks". As it is, we just get a nasty combination of the murky world of benchmarks and the murky world of modern 3D graphics.
No! They did benchmarks using Quake3 again. Who cares about Quake3 performance?
How about useful benchmarks - can I have a 10 plane dogfight over the front line in a Falcon 4SP campaign at 40fps+ with all the settings maxed out? My guess is no.
This isn't really a problem with Free software development as such. Most free software developers' time is extremely limited, so they spend it where they think it will do most good i.e. implementing new features.
Personally I think what is needed is a kind of free software meta-project that goes round looking at other projects and providing help and suggestions on fixing the sort of interoperability issues you describe. The distro developers do this to some extent, but a distro-neutral group could be more effective I think.
>stupid languages like C don't do array bounds checking... >Who cares if it takes a few cycles more - for almost all applications is just isn't going to matter
This is exactly the point with C - if you want array bound checking, add it yourself. That way, there is no 'invisible' overhead in code where those extra few cycles *do* matter. It's not 'stupid', it's just simple.
The case that appears to have decided current legal status for ISPs in the UK was the Demon case, which effectively decided that UK ISPs are responsible for removing libelous material from their servers. No 'Common Carrier' immunity in Airstrip one.
Nothing seems to have happened to improve the situation since, either, despite official reports suggesting following the US model.
Opinion articles would mostly be covered under 'Fair Comment'.
In general, if you sue for libel you have to prove that the paper either knew that what was said was false, or didn't make a reasonable effort to make sure that it was.
I doubt Delia Smith has much effect on 'Trendy' Londoners. She's not exactly a style icon except for middle-aged, middle-class small-country town folk.
Living in london, the trendies do really annoy me. Screaming into their ridiculously overpowered mobile phones while knocking pedestrians aside in there Mercedes.
I guess his only excuse is that it's not the easiest site to read - dark grey on black, plus a truncated message in pop-up saying "we haven't tested our site on your browser. Javascript W...".
What is it with web designers these days? Light background, dark text is pretty much universal and easy to read (like, say, in these strange items called books ).
One major thing that seems to be needed is a detailed, up-to-date guide on how to develop fast graphical apps for xfree86. So many comments here saying "X is slow" are followed by comments blaming the toolkit/app developers.
A set of guidelines for modern xfree86 on how to get the best performance would help a huge fraction of the open-source world and improve the appearance of Unices on the desktop.
In a hundred years time, the cost of processing power will be likely be *much* lower. The price difference between putting a 1 MIPS or a 10 GigaMIPS processor in a toaster will be in the order of a fractions of a pence.
The few remaining areas for ASM programming - embedded, SSE-like optimisations - are being eroded gradually as processors and compilers get better.
In the honeypot test, the first unauthorised connection to the WLANs was made in just over two-and-a-half hours.
There was a TV show in the UK that recently did something similar to this with bike theft. They left an unlocked bicycle on the high street of a northern town and set up hidden cameras to watch. Somebody nicked the bike within 30 seconds of the owner walking away. I guess spammers are a bit slower than your average criminal.
While I disagree with much of what the article says, dislike its angry tone, and realise it is a troll, it does make a few valid points.
Open-source development relies on people doing what they want to do, and the result sometimes also being useful to others. So you can't force people to develop what you think is best.
However, some thought of how to help the free software community would be nice. A few bugfix patches to a project with a large installed base is going to help many more people than starting yetanother$PROGRAM_TYPE on freshmeat. Probably with much less work too. It may not get you 'fame' on freshmeat, but you're probably doing more good that way.
I say let Microsoft buy google. Give them enough rope and they'll shoot themselves in both feet. Google is one of the only sites that *everyone*, techs and non-techs alike, knows about and likes. Most of Microsoft's screw-ups are in areas that average people don't think about much, so our complaints about them go unnoticed. If they take over Google and ruin it (as everyone knows they will), Microsoft hatred will become far more mainstream.
>screen area increases exponentially with respect to the inch number.
I don't think you mean exponential - the area increases as the square of the inch number, which is a polynomial increase, not exponential (which would be something like 2^(inch number)).
Re:The screenshots look just as beautiful ...
on
State of the E-nion
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· Score: 2, Funny
... or they just drew them in GIMP to start with. Maybe it's a Zen thing - "there is no Enlightenment".
Re:X *does* need a change
on
XFree86 Politics
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· Score: 3, Funny
Me: Installs 3 series drivers Me: marvels at sudden increase in 2D performance
Anyway, as I was saying, XFree86 is an excellent implementation and I won't hear a word said against it.
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah, I forgot to switch my spammer-speak translating device on. He presumably just avoided mentioning that 99.999% of those replies were along the lines of "stop sending me this f***ing crap you bastard".
If he's sending 240 million emails a day and getting 1-2 percent return, even if he only make a few dollars off each sale that's a profit in the order of billions a year. Do you get the feeling he's lying to the senate?
It's quantum mechanics that proves radio waves are safe (well, certainly from a cancer causing/mutation point of view).
Electromagnetic radiation either has the energy to ionise an atom by knocking an electron out of its shell, or it doesn't. There isn't a middle ground; no matter how many of the weak radio signal photons you fire, you still won't cause any damage.
> If someone broke into your house, would you mind
>if a friendly neighbor quietly quietly followed
>them in and escorted the intruder out?
As long as the neighbour doesn't accidentally knock that priceless Ming vase on my mantlepiece over on the way out...
I can see how this might be useful in large open-plan areas (offices etc.). For that you would need an auto-emptying dust box though.
For a normal-sized home though, I'd have thought the setup time - setting the thing going, laying the magnetic strips, emptying the (presumably small) dust box and kicking it when it gets stuck - would be similar to the amount of time it would take to vacuum the place yourself.
If Nvidia GPL their drivers, no other company can directly incorporate code from them without also releasing their drivers under the GPL. So, NVidia found out just as much as ATI do.
GPLing the drivers would give NVidia:
1) Thousands of developers willing to submit detailed bug reports, port drivers, improve performance on 'alternative' operating systems etc.
2) Protection from these kind of cheating accusations
3) Better relationship with game developers - optimising for an NVidia card when you've got details of exactly how the drivers work is going to be much easier than for a competitor card.
4) A huge popularity boost amongst the geek community, who spend a lot on hardware every year.
NVidia is, first and foremost, a hardware company. In the same way that Sun, IBM etc. contribute to open-source projects in order to make their hardware or other services more appealing, NVidia stand to gain a lot too.
And as for rogue drivers? I suppose you're worried about rogue versions of the Linux kernel destroying your processor?
An interesting variation on the standard graphics-card article troll.Personally I can see at 34.152 fps on a good day, but can only manage 28.693 when I'm tired.
The problem is that people are buying cards based on these silly synthetic benchmarks. When performance in one arbitrary set of tests is so important to sales, naturally you're going to see drivers tailored to improving performance in those tests.
Of course, if Nvidia's drivers were released under the GPL, none of the mud from this would stick as they could just point to the source code and say "look, no tricks". As it is, we just get a nasty combination of the murky world of benchmarks and the murky world of modern 3D graphics.
Comments down the page praising Prolog!
I have to use it every day and it makes me want to gouge my eyes out. It's too damn freaky and recursive. For example, finding a member of a list:
member(X,[X|T]).
member(X,[_|T]):-
member(X,T).
No! They did benchmarks using Quake3 again. Who cares about Quake3 performance?
How about useful benchmarks - can I have a 10 plane dogfight over the front line in a Falcon 4SP campaign at 40fps+ with all the settings maxed out? My guess is no.
This isn't really a problem with Free software development as such. Most free software developers' time is extremely limited, so they spend it where they think it will do most good i.e. implementing new features.
Personally I think what is needed is a kind of free software meta-project that goes round looking at other projects and providing help and suggestions on fixing the sort of interoperability issues you describe. The distro developers do this to some extent, but a distro-neutral group could be more effective I think.
Yeah, that option occurred to me about three seconds after clicking submit. Isn't it always the way?
>stupid languages like C don't do array bounds checking ...
>Who cares if it takes a few cycles more - for almost all applications is just isn't going to matter
This is exactly the point with C - if you want array bound checking, add it yourself. That way, there is no 'invisible' overhead in code where those extra few cycles *do* matter. It's not 'stupid', it's just simple.
The case that appears to have decided current legal status for ISPs in the UK was the Demon case, which effectively decided that UK ISPs are responsible for removing libelous material from their servers. No 'Common Carrier' immunity in Airstrip one.
Nothing seems to have happened to improve the situation since, either, despite official reports suggesting following the US model.
Opinion articles would mostly be covered under 'Fair Comment'.
In general, if you sue for libel you have to prove that the paper either knew that what was said was false, or didn't make a reasonable effort to make sure that it was.
I doubt Delia Smith has much effect on 'Trendy' Londoners. She's not exactly a style icon except for middle-aged, middle-class small-country town folk.
Living in london, the trendies do really annoy me. Screaming into their ridiculously overpowered mobile phones while knocking pedestrians aside in there Mercedes.
I guess his only excuse is that it's not the easiest site to read - dark grey on black, plus a truncated message in pop-up saying "we haven't tested our site on your browser. Javascript W...".
What is it with web designers these days? Light background, dark text is pretty much universal and easy to read (like, say, in these strange items called books ).
One major thing that seems to be needed is a detailed, up-to-date guide on how to develop fast graphical apps for xfree86. So many comments here saying "X is slow" are followed by comments blaming the toolkit/app developers.
A set of guidelines for modern xfree86 on how to get the best performance would help a huge fraction of the open-source world and improve the appearance of Unices on the desktop.
In a hundred years time, the cost of processing power will be likely be *much* lower. The price difference between putting a 1 MIPS or a 10 GigaMIPS processor in a toaster will be in the order of a fractions of a pence.
The few remaining areas for ASM programming - embedded, SSE-like optimisations - are being eroded gradually as processors and compilers get better.
In the honeypot test, the first unauthorised connection to the WLANs was made in just over two-and-a-half hours.
There was a TV show in the UK that recently did something similar to this with bike theft. They left an unlocked bicycle on the high street of a northern town and set up hidden cameras to watch. Somebody nicked the bike within 30 seconds of the owner walking away. I guess spammers are a bit slower than your average criminal.
While I disagree with much of what the article says, dislike its angry tone, and realise it is a troll, it does make a few valid points.
Open-source development relies on people doing what they want to do, and the result sometimes also being useful to others. So you can't force people to develop what you think is best.
However, some thought of how to help the free software community would be nice. A few bugfix patches to a project with a large installed base is going to help many more people than starting yetanother$PROGRAM_TYPE on freshmeat. Probably with much less work too. It may not get you 'fame' on freshmeat, but you're probably doing more good that way.
I say let Microsoft buy google. Give them enough rope and they'll shoot themselves in both feet. Google is one of the only sites that *everyone*, techs and non-techs alike, knows about and likes.
Most of Microsoft's screw-ups are in areas that average people don't think about much, so our complaints about them go unnoticed. If they take over Google and ruin it (as everyone knows they will), Microsoft hatred will become far more mainstream.
>screen area increases exponentially with respect to the inch number.
I don't think you mean exponential - the area increases as the square of the inch number, which is a polynomial increase, not exponential (which would be something like 2^(inch number)).
... or they just drew them in GIMP to start with. Maybe it's a Zen thing - "there is no Enlightenment".
Me: Installs 3 series drivers
Me: marvels at sudden increase in 2D performance
Anyway, as I was saying, XFree86 is an excellent implementation and I won't hear a word said against it.
Me: attempts to mod own comment down