MS's decision not to allow individuals using pirated copies of the OS to install SP2 strikes me as a sound business decision.
That reminds me of one of the old 1980s Compaq ads with John Cleese. He was a stuffy uptight businessman who had just bought an IBM PC. When the narrator questioned him about his choice of computer vs. the cheaper and more capable Compaq system, he defiantly said:
"It was a sound decision...
Wrong, but sound."
(He did several Compaq ads back then; funny stuff. I wonder if they can be found anywhere on the net. His turtleneck-wearing Apple snob impression was another standout.)
OK, would you tell me how an operating system that's not giving the user write priviliages to anything other than their home directory would have the same amount of viruses as one where by default the user has write privliages to everything composing the operating system?
Sure. You write the virus executable somewhere in the user's tree and tweak one of the user's config files to fire it up every time he logs in. Now there's nothing to stop the virus from accessing anything it wants on the Internet, propagating itself to other machines, operating the user's mail programs, accessing any of the user's data, or logging the user's keystrokes via standard X APIs.
The patent process is a business and legal issue, not an engineering problem.
When they started handing out countless thousands of obvious and non-novel patents, it became an engineering problem. As in: A lot of engineers now have a problem getting their jobs done because they can no longer use the most straightforward and obvious approaches to implementing their projects.
IMO, this is an example of a much needed reform in IP laws. They need to be changed to factor out charging for pure vendor lockin. The supposed "value" of the VFAT patent was to add long filenames to a system while remaining (somewhat) compatible with OSes that only knew about short filenames.
Well, now, every modern OS knows how to deal with long filenames. There really is no reason to handle long filenames in the convoluted VFAT fashion anymore, other than compatibility with all of the software that understands VFAT itself. There are probably dozens of file systems out there, many of them free, that would be just as suitable for compact flash cards.
People still use VFAT because of pure inertia, not because they benefit from the patented features. Nobody is mounting these flash cards under MS-DOS. There should be a procedure under patent law for people to point out that the original purpose served by the patented mechanism is no longer being exercised, and the patent owner should no longer be entitled to windfall royalties based solely on compatibility with the installed base.
I made that reply simply because I'm sick of seeing arguments that say "The Chernobyl and TMI incidents are irrelevant to nuclear safety because they were caused by stupid idiots."
Maybe it's worth the risks, maybe it's not. But you can't ignore the inevitable idiots when you calculate the risks.
Nuclear power really is very safe and controlled - the only reason Chernobyl happened at all was that some idiot had the bright idea to turn off the control system, and then turn off the back-up control system. Other than that and 3 Mile Island (which was a remarkably similar, easily avoidable situation), I do not know of any problems with nuclear power
So you think that the world has solved the problem of idiots in the years since those incidents?
One thing's for sure: this world has an endless supply of idiots, they're not going away, and the law of averages says that some of those idiots will always be working at nuclear facilities.
Unfortunately, no. You see, as a child, my village was so impoverished that the only reading materials our school had available to to teach us was some discarded Sun marketing literature. The message attempts to describe reality as I understand it.
Wow, maybe I've got to take a look at Java again. Lots of people have posted comments saying that the JRE 1.4 is faster and more efficient than you'd think.
But it looks like with this new Java Desktop System, the proof is here. If Sun was able to port the entire Linux OS to run on the JRE, and Gnome too apparently... well, I'm impressed.
The only thing I wonder is why they went ahead and reimplemented yet another clone of Unix. It seems that with their pioneering Java software technology under the hood (after all, this is the language that introduced features like dynamic class loading, garbage collection and introspection to the world of computing) they could have pioneered a new modern, modular desktop OS.
Hello? We're talking Perl 6 here. It hasn't even been released yet.
No, OP was expounding on the virtues of Perl 5 vs. other existing languages: "Part of the reason why Perl is so good is that it makes development fast and easy.". Note that it did not say: "will make it fast and easy if and when it is ever released".
Contrast this to something like Python which I find barely acceptable as a high-level language. The syntax is just as tedious and verbose as something like C++ or Java.
Have you bothered learning the latest feature additions to the Python language? Some of these can make Python just as terse as Perl, especially list comprehension; for example:
print '\n'.join(dict.fromkeys([ x.lower() for x in file('foo.txt').read().split() if x not in ignore_words ]).keys())
That's nothing like C++ or Java. And it's much easier to comprehend at a glance than the equivalent Perl code would be (for example, no subtle differences between "list context" or "scalar context" depending on exact placement of @s and $s).
I think that the main benefit of swap space is that it acts like those energy absorbing crash barriers that they put in front of highway bridges. You try not to drive into them, but if you do, at least you slow down gradually.
Likewise, once you start swapping heavily, using your computer can become almost unbearable, but at least your apps don't crash. Usually it means that it's time to pick some apps and close them so get your computer back within its memory capacity running full speed.
Swapping is kind of a signal that reminds you: Don't try to simultaneously boot 3 sessions under VmWare until you buy some more DRAM.
Lots of closed standards become popular. GIF, MP3, AVI, PDF -- the list goes on. On the other hand, relatively few of the open source standards have really taken off.
Right now I really wish there was some kind of open standard that Internet sites could use to publish "pages" of text and images. That would be really cool.
However, we can say for certain that adopting treaties like Kyoto would seriously happer our economy.
We can't say that for certian. The "science" of economics involves an order of magnitude more BS than even climatology. For all we know, it might be good for the economy, just like the counterintuitive notion of nationalizing most industrial production and then blowing up most of the output was excellent for the economy during WWII.
People who practice hand wringing over how every human action could destroy the economy are just as stupid as the worst tree huggers. Maybe they should be called economentalist whackos.
The images are apparently higher resolution than can be reproduced on available printing technology (5' by 10'), but the designer hopes to use an 18' by 36' digital display wall to reproduce the images at their best possible resolution in the future.
He'd better be careful about the specifications on his display wall, or he'll end up in the same boat as Spinal Tap did.
"Dude, I got an unbelievable deal from this guy who's going to build us an 18' by 36' display wall! This is going to make a great backdrop at our concerts!"
The 1000 W (actually, looking it up, it's 1386 W/m^2 above the atmosphere) is for full sunlight. My 1% figure takes the much lower average insolation at the ground that you mention into account.
Starting from say a 200W/m^2 overall average (assuming you'd actually set up in a place more like Arizona than NJ), you then account for various inefficiencies. My 1% is a very rough rule of thumb, because it would vary depending on whether you generate electricity (via solar cells; heliostats -> steam generators; etc), or if you do direct storage of energy (thermally catalyzed H2 production; molten salt storage; etc).
Taking steam generated power, for example, you might be 80% efficient at reflecting and concentrating the sunlight, and 30% efficient at generating power from the heat (just like a coal plant). That gives you about 5% overall efficiency (200W/1000W *.8*.3) to generate electric power averaged over the year. However, I'd round that down for miscellaneous losses and distribution, say to 3%.
That's great, but generating electricity in real time isn't that interesting. Only a small fraction of our total energy consumption is electricity consumed while the sun is shining. Therefore, I assume that you convert most of the power to chemical form (such as H2). This is currently a very lossy process, so I rounded all the way down to 1%.
It's a very rough estimate, but I don't think that it's unrealistic.
This item came a little closer to the goal. I once saw a blurb that estimated that for a few nanoseconds it produced about 1% as much power as the entire sun.
He said if you covered the entire state of New Jersey with solar panels, they would generate enough energy to supply only 10 gas stations.
Let's apply a sanity check to that statement:
1 gallon of gasoline ~= 1.3e8 joules thermal
1 gas pump ~= 10 gal/minute
1 gas station ~= 10 gas pumps
=> 10 gas stations ~= 1.3e11 joules/minute ~= 2.16 Gigawatts thermal
(Of course, in the real world, a gas station only pumps a few percent of it's capacity because most pumps aren't busy around the clock, so this figure is grossly exaggerated.)
New Jersey = 19231 km^2
Solar influx @earth ~= 1000W/m^2
Solar overall system efficiency averaged over 24x7 with current technology: ~= 1%
=> 19231 x 1e6 x 1000 x.01 => 192 Gigawatts thermal
He appears to be off by 2 orders of magnitude (3 orders of magnitude assuming real-world gas station usage). I wonder if he's one of Cheney's "energy advisors".
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That reminds me of one of the old 1980s Compaq ads with John Cleese. He was a stuffy uptight businessman who had just bought an IBM PC. When the narrator questioned him about his choice of computer vs. the cheaper and more capable Compaq system, he defiantly said:
"It was a sound decision...
Wrong, but sound."
(He did several Compaq ads back then; funny stuff. I wonder if they can be found anywhere on the net. His turtleneck-wearing Apple snob impression was another standout.)
Next on the legislative agenda: If you get caught selling IR filters that can be fit onto camcorders, you'll end up sharing a cell with Tommy Chong.
Sure. You write the virus executable somewhere in the user's tree and tweak one of the user's config files to fire it up every time he logs in. Now there's nothing to stop the virus from accessing anything it wants on the Internet, propagating itself to other machines, operating the user's mail programs, accessing any of the user's data, or logging the user's keystrokes via standard X APIs.
#include <what is your name?>
#include <what is your favorite color?>
When they started handing out countless thousands of obvious and non-novel patents, it became an engineering problem. As in: A lot of engineers now have a problem getting their jobs done because they can no longer use the most straightforward and obvious approaches to implementing their projects.
Well, now, every modern OS knows how to deal with long filenames. There really is no reason to handle long filenames in the convoluted VFAT fashion anymore, other than compatibility with all of the software that understands VFAT itself. There are probably dozens of file systems out there, many of them free, that would be just as suitable for compact flash cards.
People still use VFAT because of pure inertia, not because they benefit from the patented features. Nobody is mounting these flash cards under MS-DOS. There should be a procedure under patent law for people to point out that the original purpose served by the patented mechanism is no longer being exercised, and the patent owner should no longer be entitled to windfall royalties based solely on compatibility with the installed base.
"It looks like you're trying to use the word 'loose' in a sentence. This is probably not what you want. Would you like me to help?"
I made that reply simply because I'm sick of seeing arguments that say "The Chernobyl and TMI incidents are irrelevant to nuclear safety because they were caused by stupid idiots." Maybe it's worth the risks, maybe it's not. But you can't ignore the inevitable idiots when you calculate the risks.
So you think that the world has solved the problem of idiots in the years since those incidents?
One thing's for sure: this world has an endless supply of idiots, they're not going away, and the law of averages says that some of those idiots will always be working at nuclear facilities.
Unfortunately, no. You see, as a child, my village was so impoverished that the only reading materials our school had available to to teach us was some discarded Sun marketing literature. The message attempts to describe reality as I understand it.
But it looks like with this new Java Desktop System, the proof is here. If Sun was able to port the entire Linux OS to run on the JRE, and Gnome too apparently... well, I'm impressed.
The only thing I wonder is why they went ahead and reimplemented yet another clone of Unix. It seems that with their pioneering Java software technology under the hood (after all, this is the language that introduced features like dynamic class loading, garbage collection and introspection to the world of computing) they could have pioneered a new modern, modular desktop OS.
No, OP was expounding on the virtues of Perl 5 vs. other existing languages: "Part of the reason why Perl is so good is that it makes development fast and easy.". Note that it did not say: "will make it fast and easy if and when it is ever released".
And Perl doesn't have any crap shoehorned in? LOL.
Have you bothered learning the latest feature additions to the Python language? Some of these can make Python just as terse as Perl, especially list comprehension; for example:
print '\n'.join(dict.fromkeys([ x.lower() for x in file('foo.txt').read().split() if x not in ignore_words ]).keys())
That's nothing like C++ or Java. And it's much easier to comprehend at a glance than the equivalent Perl code would be (for example, no subtle differences between "list context" or "scalar context" depending on exact placement of @s and $s).
Likewise, once you start swapping heavily, using your computer can become almost unbearable, but at least your apps don't crash. Usually it means that it's time to pick some apps and close them so get your computer back within its memory capacity running full speed.
Swapping is kind of a signal that reminds you: Don't try to simultaneously boot 3 sessions under VmWare until you buy some more DRAM.
Oh, I dunno, somewhere like here?
You wouldn't need to. Since *ntium chips use ZIF sockets, you wouldn't have broken the pin off in the first place.
Right now I really wish there was some kind of open standard that Internet sites could use to publish "pages" of text and images. That would be really cool.
But the issue being discussed here is that the music industry is ailing because the pop stars apparently aren't as popular as they used to be.
I'm surprised that this tiresome topic wasn't raised before the third post.
We can't say that for certian. The "science" of economics involves an order of magnitude more BS than even climatology. For all we know, it might be good for the economy, just like the counterintuitive notion of nationalizing most industrial production and then blowing up most of the output was excellent for the economy during WWII.
People who practice hand wringing over how every human action could destroy the economy are just as stupid as the worst tree huggers. Maybe they should be called economentalist whackos.
He'd better be careful about the specifications on his display wall, or he'll end up in the same boat as Spinal Tap did.
"Dude, I got an unbelievable deal from this guy who's going to build us an 18' by 36' display wall! This is going to make a great backdrop at our concerts!"
Starting from say a 200W/m^2 overall average (assuming you'd actually set up in a place more like Arizona than NJ), you then account for various inefficiencies. My 1% is a very rough rule of thumb, because it would vary depending on whether you generate electricity (via solar cells; heliostats -> steam generators; etc), or if you do direct storage of energy (thermally catalyzed H2 production; molten salt storage; etc).
Taking steam generated power, for example, you might be 80% efficient at reflecting and concentrating the sunlight, and 30% efficient at generating power from the heat (just like a coal plant). That gives you about 5% overall efficiency (200W/1000W * .8*.3) to generate electric power averaged over the year. However, I'd round that down for miscellaneous losses and distribution, say to 3%.
That's great, but generating electricity in real time isn't that interesting. Only a small fraction of our total energy consumption is electricity consumed while the sun is shining. Therefore, I assume that you convert most of the power to chemical form (such as H2). This is currently a very lossy process, so I rounded all the way down to 1%.
It's a very rough estimate, but I don't think that it's unrealistic.
This item came a little closer to the goal. I once saw a blurb that estimated that for a few nanoseconds it produced about 1% as much power as the entire sun.
Let's apply a sanity check to that statement:
1 gallon of gasoline ~= 1.3e8 joules thermal
1 gas pump ~= 10 gal/minute
1 gas station ~= 10 gas pumps
=> 10 gas stations ~= 1.3e11 joules/minute ~= 2.16 Gigawatts thermal
(Of course, in the real world, a gas station only pumps a few percent of it's capacity because most pumps aren't busy around the clock, so this figure is grossly exaggerated.)
New Jersey = 19231 km^2 .01 => 192 Gigawatts thermal
Solar influx @earth ~= 1000W/m^2
Solar overall system efficiency averaged over 24x7 with current technology: ~= 1%
=> 19231 x 1e6 x 1000 x
He appears to be off by 2 orders of magnitude (3 orders of magnitude assuming real-world gas station usage). I wonder if he's one of Cheney's "energy advisors".