I played Half-life2 through on a Geforce FX5200 (US$75 a few years ago), which is the bottom entry on the previous generations of Nvidia cards. It was perfectly playable, even though I had a PIII 1Ghz with only 256Mb RAM. OK, there were delays on loading, which is only to be expected considering the system RAM, but the game itself was happy to run at 1280x1024x32, albeit not at the highest quality graphics settings. It was perfectly playable.
Compare this to Doom3 on the same hardware, which would only run at 640x480 with most of the effects turned off, and which would dive from 24fps to 1fps as soon as any monsters appeared.
Anyone who paid US$400 for a graphics card to play Half-Life 2 is a complete sucker.
This is exactly right. If you expose kids (or anyone, really) to a bunch of different things, they very quickly learn the generics of computing. i.e. instead of "alt-this, ctrl-that works in Word", it's 'select the paragraph, then change the font' no matter what the system is.
Every school lab should contain a bunch of different systems. At the very least, some Macs as well as Windows boxes. If the staff are up to it, all the Windows boxen should dual boot into a recent Linux distro. This way, kids will learn more, and learn to be flexible.
You know, if you expose kids to two languages in the home when they're growing up, they'll be bilingual. Let them see a lab full of *nix, MacOSX, Windows, they'll very quickly work fluently with everything.
(My 5 year old daughter prefers Linux for Solitaire - it's much nicer than the Windows version she uses at school - but MacOSX is much better for talking to her grandparents, thanks to iChat.
Windows enumerates physical processors first, then logical processors. For a twin Xeon system with HT, processors 0 and 1 are physical, while 2 and 3 are the logical ones. I'm not sure how Linux does it, but the latest 2.6 kernels are aware of the distinction between logical and physical processors and use a different scheduling algorithm.
Actually, in British English, 'program' specifically refers to a computer program, while 'programme' is used in the general sense of a programme of events or a television programme.
I just wget the various updates/ix86/ directories and rpm -Fvh *.rpm in each directory.
One machine downloads the rpms, and each machine updates via a cron job over an NFS share. Voila! 50 linux boxes up to date with just some simple commands.
If an employee of Caldera worked on code which went into the Linux Kernel and he worked on this code *at* *all* during office hours, the Intellectual Property of that code belongs to Caldera. This is standard employment contract stuff.
Now, if SCO owns Caldera, and Caldera owns that code, SCO owns that code.
The only way it wouldn't be property of Caldera is if they released it under another license or gave explicit permission (in writing) to release it under another license. You have to follow the money in these cases: only the people actually paying for the work to be done have a say in how it gets released.
Well, in theory there could be higher prices from the factors that you mentioned, but in practice this does not seem to be the case. At least in my experience, I can buy books online cheaper than in local bookshops. If I go through someone's affilitate program, there does not appear to be a direct cost to me.
I would guess that the money to pay for the affiliate program comes from the budget that a 'bricks and mortar' store would allocate for advertising.
I think your point on database usage greatly exaggerates the additional time an extra SQL request takes: the website has to track your purchase through its databases anyway, adding an additional datum for affiliate_link doesn't seem like much when its already recording enough info to charge your credit card and deliver to you.
But to the main point: "the reviewer has greater incentive to give a good review". sure, but, whith an affiliate program, we're not dealing with professional reviewers. In most cases, we're dealing with someone who's read the book, liked it and written up a review for their site.
If someone like tomshardware.com starts getting kickbacks for good reviews, that's not good.
If I (as an amateur) like a book, and give it a good review, and make a few cents from that, I don't see much harm. But I think the linker should explain the affiliate program and offer an optional, non-affiliate link too.
You of course have the option of not following the affiliate link: an ideal website would have a collection of links to the subject of a review: a generic affiliate link, an affiliate link appropriate to where you are in the world (i.e. amazon.co.uk if you're in UK), a non-affiliate link, and maybe a link to a different company (e.g. CDNOW instead of Amazon.) Of course, this would require cookie tracking too, but it's an idea.
You know, if someone goes to the trouble of reviewing a book, what's wrong with having an affiliate link to purchase the book?
It doesn't cost you anything extra, and it might make the reviewer a few cents. This seems a reasonable return on the work involved in writing a review.
One of the most searched items on my site is a picture of a Rolex. I want Rolex to have an affiliate program so I can get some of that hefty green goodness.
I can just imagine the Prime Minister of the time saying: "And who, Mr. Babbage is going to help us when this 'Difference Engine' of yours breaks down? We will stay with our quills and parchment, thank you."
eManager is a piss-poor spam filter. Use SpamAssassin instead. It comes with rulesets you can check for stupid fucking mistakes before rolling them out.
Oops, pardon my French, I mean it comes with rulesets you can check for stupid fucking moronic mistakes before rollout.
Yeah, I installed eManager once. Mr Morishita and Mr Takeshita were not amused at all. And seeing as how they were the company directors, we decided that eManager was a huge steaming pile of crap.
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Apple are going to go with Pentium-M chips. Probably dual core, 64 bit Pentium-M chips. At 35W per core.
Those things will make AMD look sick. *IF* Intel can deliver.
And if Intel can't deliver, Oh Boy are we going to see a mega-pissed off Steve Jobs.
I played Half-life2 through on a Geforce FX5200 (US$75 a few years ago), which is the bottom entry on the previous generations of Nvidia cards. It was perfectly playable, even though I had a PIII 1Ghz with only 256Mb RAM. OK, there were delays on loading, which is only to be expected considering the system RAM, but the game itself was happy to run at 1280x1024x32, albeit not at the highest quality graphics settings. It was perfectly playable.
Compare this to Doom3 on the same hardware, which would only run at 640x480 with most of the effects turned off, and which would dive from 24fps to 1fps as soon as any monsters appeared.
Anyone who paid US$400 for a graphics card to play Half-Life 2 is a complete sucker.
The photography on that review is appalling. Images are out of focus and too much flash is used.
Did the guy even look at the images he was putting in the article?
This is exactly right. If you expose kids (or anyone, really) to a bunch of different things, they very quickly learn the generics of computing. i.e. instead of "alt-this, ctrl-that works in Word", it's 'select the paragraph, then change the font' no matter what the system is.
Every school lab should contain a bunch of different systems. At the very least, some Macs as well as Windows boxes. If the staff are up to it, all the Windows boxen should dual boot into a recent Linux distro. This way, kids will learn more, and learn to be flexible.
You know, if you expose kids to two languages in the home when they're growing up, they'll be bilingual. Let them see a lab full of *nix, MacOSX, Windows, they'll very quickly work fluently with everything.
(My 5 year old daughter prefers Linux for Solitaire - it's much nicer than the Windows version she uses at school - but MacOSX is much better for talking to her grandparents, thanks to iChat.
The 2.7 tree? You know, normally time-travellers are not supposed to give too much away.
You must be new here.
Windows enumerates physical processors first, then logical processors.
For a twin Xeon system with HT, processors 0 and 1 are physical, while 2 and 3 are the logical ones.
I'm not sure how Linux does it, but the latest 2.6 kernels are aware of the distinction between logical and physical processors and use a different scheduling algorithm.
A Lawsuite?
Is that like a pinstripe sofa and chairs?
Actually, in British English, 'program' specifically refers to a computer program, while 'programme' is used in the general sense of a programme of events or a television programme.
Vim does syntax highlighting too. I use Vim on linux and textpad on Windows - they both have a similar 'stripped down but powerful' feel to them.
dave
> professional writers like [...] David Gerrold are also big fans of WorldStar!
Is that why it's taking him so long to finish the Chtorr series?
dave
> I.e., can you run X11 binaries
Just what is an X11 binary? X11 is the windowing system and is not related to OSX, which is a Mac operating system.
dave
You're thinking of ShadowCaster.
dave
I just wget the various updates/ix86/ directories and rpm -Fvh *.rpm in each directory.
One machine downloads the rpms, and each machine updates via a cron job over an NFS share. Voila! 50 linux boxes up to date with just some simple commands.
dave
No, that's not reasonable at all.
If an employee of Caldera worked on code which went into the Linux Kernel and he worked on this code *at* *all* during office hours, the Intellectual Property of that code belongs to Caldera. This is standard employment contract stuff.
Now, if SCO owns Caldera, and Caldera owns that code, SCO owns that code.
The only way it wouldn't be property of Caldera is if they released it under another license or gave explicit permission (in writing) to release it under another license. You have to follow the money in these cases: only the people actually paying for the work to be done have a say in how it gets released.
dave
Well, in theory there could be higher prices from the factors that you mentioned, but in practice this does not seem to be the case. At least in my experience, I can buy books online cheaper than in local bookshops. If I go through someone's affilitate program, there does not appear to be a direct cost to me.
I would guess that the money to pay for the affiliate program comes from the budget that a 'bricks and mortar' store would allocate for advertising.
I think your point on database usage greatly exaggerates the additional time an extra SQL request takes: the website has to track your purchase through its databases anyway, adding an additional datum for affiliate_link doesn't seem like much when its already recording enough info to charge your credit card and deliver to you.
But to the main point: "the reviewer has greater incentive to give a good review". sure, but, whith an affiliate program, we're not dealing with professional reviewers. In most cases, we're dealing with someone who's read the book, liked it and written up a review for their site.
If someone like tomshardware.com starts getting kickbacks for good reviews, that's not good.
If I (as an amateur) like a book, and give it a good review, and make a few cents from that, I don't see much harm. But I think the linker should explain the affiliate program and offer an optional, non-affiliate link too.
You of course have the option of not following the affiliate link: an ideal website would have a collection of links to the subject of a review: a generic affiliate link, an affiliate link appropriate to where you are in the world (i.e. amazon.co.uk if you're in UK), a non-affiliate link, and maybe a link to a different company (e.g. CDNOW instead of Amazon.) Of course, this would require cookie tracking too, but it's an idea.
dave
You know, if someone goes to the trouble of reviewing a book, what's wrong with having an affiliate link to purchase the book?
It doesn't cost you anything extra, and it might make the reviewer a few cents. This seems a reasonable return on the work involved in writing a review.
One of the most searched items on my site is a picture of a Rolex. I want Rolex to have an affiliate program so I can get some of that hefty green goodness.
dave
I can just imagine the Prime Minister of the time saying: "And who, Mr. Babbage is going to help us when this 'Difference Engine' of yours breaks down? We will stay with our quills and parchment, thank you."
Helpdesk: "You've got a virus"
User: "But I've just plut bleach into the water tank. Do I need anti-biotics too?"
dave
See? Now *this* was funny, unlike the "My preciousssss" comment earlier.
I really value these insightful comments; they have become precious to me.
dave "it's the way I tell'em!"
http://www.marksandspencers.com/d ardchartered.com.hk/
http://www.stan
eManager is a piss-poor spam filter. Use SpamAssassin instead. It comes with rulesets you can check for stupid fucking mistakes before rolling them out.
Oops, pardon my French, I mean it comes with rulesets you can check for stupid fucking moronic mistakes before rollout.
dave
support@microsoft.com is blocked here because of the latest bloody outlook worm.
dave
Yeah, I installed eManager once. Mr Morishita and Mr Takeshita were not amused at all. And seeing as how they were the company directors, we decided that eManager was a huge steaming pile of crap.
To Trend Micro: regexps: you guys heard of these?
dave
Anti-Sam? You mean I can filter out emails from my Boss?!
Hoo Boy! Sign me up!
dave