Ahhh!!! I get it! So open source software is evil and will send the world straight into the fiery pits of hell. Unless it's open source software that can be bought out and made closed source.
Why was I so stupid to have not seen that before?!?
Even ignoring the feasibility of BMD, try seeing what happens when the Middle East decides to cut off the US's oil and the US is totally impotent to do anything about it.
I can see it now.....
Big Oil companies would promptly open up domestic oil wells, so that the US's needs for oild can be served from within the US, and then OPEC countries suffer massive "heart attacks" as they realize the just threw 70% of their money away...
People keep pointing out that if the source code is ruled illegal, that it is illegal in any form, and that maoving to a T-shirt doesn't matter.
That is true, and I agree with it, but what the defense in this case is trying to do is point out that code is speech, and as such the DMCA may well be in violation of the 1st amendment. Because under the DMCA, code can be considered (in some circumstances) to be copyright circumvention tools, yet the code is protected as speech.
Since the Defense pointed that out that in the sense the DMCA is written/being interpretted a T-shirt is a cpyright circumvention tool, the MPAA is just following the logical conclusion. This "logical" conclusion is something the MPAA must do if they want to look serious in their fight against it.
You go up far enough and in most companies you end up hitting the ubiquitous "Pointy-Haired Boss" who says something like: "Dammit! I want it to do that new flashy thing I saw in my (insert name of trade magazine written for and by "Pointy-Haired Boss" types) yesterday!"
When faced with this sort of "do it or we'll find someone else to" fiat it's no wonder IE can deadlock the browser market...
And the worst part about it is you can do it with using standards, but those are the standards that IE breaks with. Of course the PHB ONLY uses IE...:)
Java doesn't let you use primitives (int, short, etc) as classes without wrapping them yourself (lots of overhead).
Java has built in object wrappers for those primitives, and many of the function need are static function so you don't have to instantiate an object and incur that overhead.
Java doesn't let you drop down to native code and turn off the garbage collector if you need to. Or use pointers if you want to talk to the underlying C-based OS.
Correct! One of the great things about java.. PLATFORM INDEPENDANCE
Java doesn't have a "foreach" statement.
Haven't looked into it. I haven't found the lack of a "foreach" to be an issue
Java doesn't have property-handlers (eg. write functions that are treated as member variables
So java is consistant, so methods are always treated as methods and variables are always treated as varibles. I don't really see how that is a bad thing. Please enlighten me.
Java doesn't have any versioning mechanism (other than the woefully inadequate @deprecated tag.
Never done/worried about versioning... No comment
Java doesn't support indexers (methods on a class - say List, which allow you to take the object of type List, and use it like an array - eg: List l; l[index] = "asjdasid"
I'm not really sure how this would be a needed thing. Whether I access it as l.foo, l->foo or l[foo] it all does the same...
Seems that RAMbus is engaging in some pretty heavyhanded BS to wipe out competing technology
If they were working to wipe out competing tech, they wouldn't be agreeing to license it. They would instead be sueing companies to have them stop producing, and not signing ANY licensing agreements
The "black box" idea can be used on trade secrets. IIRC IBMs BIOS wasn't patented, rather it was held as a trade secret, and because of this clones were able to "black box" it and make compatable versions.
If Rambus really has a valid patent on this (which I hope they don't) then you're stuck either paying royalties or not using DDR-SDRAM. I personally find it hard to believe that Rambus has patents that give them control over who can manufacture parts that are using an open standard.
I wake up this morning, check/. as usual and see this story. About 5mins after seeing the story and chuckling to myself about the entire idea of virii, guess what appeared in my inbox.. Yup A copy of this trojan for my very own;)
Yeah, the Geforce card were one of the main compatability issues. The problems stemmed from the card pulling too much power and the MB not being able to give it the power because of the proc using it. These problems have been cleared up though with BIOS revisions and driver updates.
The 500MHz G4 isn't new at all -- it's what the G4 was supposed to be from the beginning, if only Motorola's chip factory hadn't screwed things up.1
Uhh it wasn't Motorola's fabs screwing things up. Apple KNEW that Motorola couldn't get them enough 500MHz parts in time. But due to Steve Job's reality distortion field, they decided to announce it anyway. Apple KNEW they wouldn't be able to ship the 500's, but the PR department decided that they should put it out, doing so without thinking about the consequences of what would happen when the 99% chance of not getting enough chips became real.
Yes, you want the network as homgenous as possible, but there are ALWAYS going to be the oddball box. You could use AD and just find hacks and workarounds to get those systems that can't run 2k to work, OR you could use a directory service (Novell) that is cross-platform and have few (if any) problems integrating the oddballs with the network
(and AMD, also, will likely have problems ramping their.18 up)
Intel has 7 or 8 really big fabs, all of which ALREADY are 0.18. AMD has one, which is in the process or being ramped up.
All Athlons coming out of AMD's Austin Fab since they released the 750 have been on.18 micron. Not so much as even a hiccup, and every chip to come out of Dresden is going to be.18micron with copper interconnects
Will Microsoft release software (including NT/Win2K) optimized for the AMD system?
Uhh Windows 98SE (not sure about reg 98) does have 3DNow! optimization.
Will third parties release drivers that don't suck it up under AMD chipsets (see the GeForce fiasco, mentions on Tom's site)?
Hmm My Voodoo3 drivers have 3DNow! support, they're stable, and they are FAST.
The entire problem with the GeForce cards on Athlons hasn't been performance problems so much as power consumption. Too much power pulled between the Athlon and the GeForce and the power supply couldn't handle that. Yes there are some problems left with the AGP implementation of those, but these drivers are improving and the situation has been getting better.
My old school uses Netware(I still work there as a tech assistant.) It's NetWare 4 (would be 5 if not for all the macs we have to support) We have a BoderManager firewall, and 4 NetWare servers. It works great to manage all the WIN9x boxes on the network.
With another Novell addon (Zenworks) we're allowed complete, total and easy admin over all of the 600-700 workstations.
There's a basic risk here, though: from what I understand, the 'Code Morphing' software doesn't reside in main system memory - instead, it's in a special on-chip memory area, which is loaded from a ROM at boot time. So you replace the ROM with an EEPROM, and make it possible for users to cram a new instruction set in there. What happens if there's a bug in that new instruction set, or the flash process fouls up? Your computer won't boot. It won't even come close to booting - this isn't something you can fix with a bootable floppy, because the code to load the system on the boot floppy won't run any more. Now how do you fix it?
How do you fix it? Well if this code-morphing software is on a flash ROM so that it can be rewritten, it would be in essence like having a second flash BIOS. There would be no greater threat here than simply flashing you BIOS. It's a pretty safe process if you take a little care.
I'm curious where you got the info about AMD's "buggy" chipset. I'm running an Athlon 500 using the one and only AMD 750 chipset. I had had NO s/w compatibility probs. I've found this chip/chipset to be VERY stable... more so than a PII-300 on the i440EX chipset. And as far as I've seen/heard it's pretty easy to get a hold of the CPU (yes, yes, ok the mobos are rare, but I didn't have probs finding a FIC SD11)
you keep waiting. while we enjoy our 700mhz athlons.
Or 500's because they're 1/4th price of the 700's:)
A little heat is a resonable price to pay (IMO). plus the PIII's arn't that hot (athlons are though, arn't they)?
Athlon's? Hot? I heard those rumors... mine is about at room temperature after a hard workout of some massive compiling and compressing/decompressing. My PII-300 ran hotter.
It is a guarentee written into the constitution to allow the general populous to have to means to rise up and overthrown the government by force if/when it becomes necessary....
Also the average gun owner doesn't own their gun to have a weapon around to kill people, the average gun owner owns their gun(s) for one of two reasons:
1) The firearms are family heirlooms. There is little/no ammo around for it and besides, Grandpa's 80 year old colt hasn't fired in the past 30yrs and probably won't be able to (reliably at least)
2) Hunting. Many people hunt for sport/food in the US. The people who do so treat their guns with respect. They know how to handle them responsibly and do.
I think the image of a 'gun culture' is wrong. Yea, many people own guns, but that doesn't mean that guns are all those people think about.
I am proud to say I have friends who do keep guns around. They know how and do treat their firearms with proper respect. When I am over at his house, we never think of or even notice the weapons.... They are just there, without a cult surrounding them.
I'll grant you that the idea of ID badges is stupid, and things like video cameras in inappropriate places are uncalled for, and I even believe strong encryption is in the interest of the greater good. But crying over loss of personal freedom to carry GUNS? Gimme a break...
Loss of personal freedom to carry guns??! If I recall correctly we here in the US have this thing called the Constitution. In there as part of the Bill of Rights there is a guarentee: The right of the people to bear arms shall not be infringed. ANY gun control laws are in direct violation of this, one of the basic freedoms set aside for citizens. Therfore 'crying over loss of personal freedom to carry guns' is NOT a petty complaint, rather it is a DUTY of all good and well informed citizens.
The students must legally go to school, yes, but is there any regulation that states they must go to/that/school? As a poster has already pointed out, there's always home schooling, and I will add private schools to that thought.
In the case of many areas, there are NO practical alternatives. Homeschooling is impractical because of parents working and it is extremely difficult to produce an education that equals a well planned high school cirriculum. Going to an alternate school in many cases may not work, for example I am from rural Minnesota, in order to attend an alternate school, it could take more than an hour to get to the next closest school!
The other part about these is often the students may protest, but the administration will only listen to the parents. The parents don't want to bother with the situation or think the students are just complaining because they want to.
If I am thinking right, it's not so much because AMD can't produce the Athlons, but it's because very few MB manufacturers have come out with Slot A MBs yet. There is also the point of getting the new technology polished... AMD has built the core for the Athlon from nothing, and as such the firmware and hardware to go with it and support it aren't perfect yet. AMD has several big name companies that are gonna sell Athlon systems, but these companies aren't gonna release their boxes until all the kinks are worked out.
Give AMD time to break into the market. Monopolies can be made overnight, but time is required to break a monopoly. AMD has slowly been working on breaking the Intel monopoly, and AMD is succeeding, albeit slowly..
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Ahhh!!! I get it! So open source software is evil and will send the world straight into the fiery pits of hell. Unless it's open source software that can be bought out and made closed source.
Why was I so stupid to have not seen that before?!?
Even ignoring the feasibility of BMD, try seeing what happens when the Middle East decides to cut off the US's oil and the US is totally impotent to do anything about it.
I can see it now.....
Big Oil companies would promptly open up domestic oil wells, so that the US's needs for oild can be served from within the US, and then OPEC countries suffer massive "heart attacks" as they realize the just threw 70% of their money away...
People keep pointing out that if the source code is ruled illegal, that it is illegal in any form, and that maoving to a T-shirt doesn't matter.
That is true, and I agree with it, but what the defense in this case is trying to do is point out that code is speech, and as such the DMCA may well be in violation of the 1st amendment. Because under the DMCA, code can be considered (in some circumstances) to be copyright circumvention tools, yet the code is protected as speech.
Since the Defense pointed that out that in the sense the DMCA is written/being interpretted a T-shirt is a cpyright circumvention tool, the MPAA is just following the logical conclusion. This "logical" conclusion is something the MPAA must do if they want to look serious in their fight against it.
You go up far enough and in most companies you end up hitting the ubiquitous "Pointy-Haired Boss" who says something like: "Dammit! I want it to do that new flashy thing I saw in my (insert name of trade magazine written for and by "Pointy-Haired Boss" types) yesterday!"
:)
When faced with this sort of "do it or we'll find someone else to" fiat it's no wonder IE can deadlock the browser market...
And the worst part about it is you can do it with using standards, but those are the standards that IE breaks with. Of course the PHB ONLY uses IE...
Java doesn't let you use primitives (int, short, etc) as classes without wrapping them yourself (lots of overhead).
:P
Java has built in object wrappers for those primitives, and many of the function need are static function so you don't have to instantiate an object and incur that overhead.
Java doesn't let you drop down to native code and turn off the garbage collector if you need to. Or use pointers if you want to talk to the underlying C-based OS.
Correct! One of the great things about java.. PLATFORM INDEPENDANCE
Java doesn't have a "foreach" statement.
Haven't looked into it. I haven't found the lack of a "foreach" to be an issue
Java doesn't have property-handlers (eg. write functions that are treated as member variables
So java is consistant, so methods are always treated as methods and variables are always treated as varibles. I don't really see how that is a bad thing. Please enlighten me.
Java doesn't have any versioning mechanism (other than the woefully inadequate @deprecated tag.
Never done/worried about versioning... No comment
Java doesn't support indexers (methods on a class - say List, which allow you to take the object of type List, and use it like an array - eg:
List l;
l[index] = "asjdasid"
I'm not really sure how this would be a needed thing. Whether I access it as l.foo, l->foo or l[foo] it all does the same...
Need I continue?
Yes
Seems that RAMbus is engaging in some pretty heavyhanded BS to wipe out competing technology
If they were working to wipe out competing tech, they wouldn't be agreeing to license it. They would instead be sueing companies to have them stop producing, and not signing ANY licensing agreements
I don't want to have to pay royalties to RMBS in order to buy RAM developed off of an open standard that has been around for years!
The "black box" idea can be used on trade secrets. IIRC IBMs BIOS wasn't patented, rather it was held as a trade secret, and because of this clones were able to "black box" it and make compatable versions.
If Rambus really has a valid patent on this (which I hope they don't) then you're stuck either paying royalties or not using DDR-SDRAM. I personally find it hard to believe that Rambus has patents that give them control over who can manufacture parts that are using an open standard.
I wake up this morning, check /. as usual and see this story. About 5mins after seeing the story and chuckling to myself about the entire idea of virii, guess what appeared in my inbox.. Yup A copy of this trojan for my very own ;)
Yeah, the Geforce card were one of the main compatability issues. The problems stemmed from the card pulling too much power and the MB not being able to give it the power because of the proc using it. These problems have been cleared up though with BIOS revisions and driver updates.
The 500MHz G4 isn't new at all -- it's what the G4 was supposed to be from the beginning, if only Motorola's chip factory hadn't screwed things up.1
Uhh it wasn't Motorola's fabs screwing things up. Apple KNEW that Motorola couldn't get them enough 500MHz parts in time. But due to Steve Job's reality distortion field, they decided to announce it anyway. Apple KNEW they wouldn't be able to ship the 500's, but the PR department decided that they should put it out, doing so without thinking about the consequences of what would happen when the 99% chance of not getting enough chips became real.
Yes, you want the network as homgenous as possible, but there are ALWAYS going to be the oddball box. You could use AD and just find hacks and workarounds to get those systems that can't run 2k to work, OR you could use a directory service (Novell) that is cross-platform and have few (if any) problems integrating the oddballs with the network
I get the impression that the searches aren't simple password verifies. They appear to be searches for actual files or directories on the server.
Now put that at 8-8:30 AM at a mid-large sized business, and your server ignoring 12% of the directory lookups it gets would be a bad thing.
(and AMD, also, will likely have problems ramping their .18 up)
.18 micron. Not so much as even a hiccup, and every chip to come out of Dresden is going to be .18micron with copper interconnects
Intel has 7 or 8 really big fabs, all of which ALREADY are 0.18. AMD has one, which is in the process or being ramped up.
All Athlons coming out of AMD's Austin Fab since they released the 750 have been on
Will Microsoft release software (including NT/Win2K) optimized for the AMD system?
Uhh Windows 98SE (not sure about reg 98) does have 3DNow! optimization.
Will third parties release drivers that don't suck it up under AMD chipsets (see the GeForce fiasco, mentions on Tom's site)?
Hmm My Voodoo3 drivers have 3DNow! support, they're stable, and they are FAST.
The entire problem with the GeForce cards on Athlons hasn't been performance problems so much as power consumption. Too much power pulled between the Athlon and the GeForce and the power supply couldn't handle that. Yes there are some problems left with the AGP implementation of those, but these drivers are improving and the situation has been getting better.
My old school uses Netware(I still work there as a tech assistant.) It's NetWare 4 (would be 5 if not for all the macs we have to support) We have a BoderManager firewall, and 4 NetWare servers. It works great to manage all the WIN9x boxes on the network.
With another Novell addon (Zenworks) we're allowed complete, total and easy admin over all of the 600-700 workstations.
There's a basic risk here, though: from what I understand, the 'Code Morphing' software doesn't reside in main system memory - instead, it's in a special on-chip memory area, which is loaded from a ROM at boot time. So you replace the ROM with an EEPROM, and make it possible for users to cram a new instruction set in there. What happens if there's a bug in that new instruction set, or the flash process fouls up? Your computer won't boot. It won't even come close to booting - this isn't something you can fix with a bootable floppy, because the code to load the system on the boot floppy won't run any more. Now how do you fix it?
How do you fix it? Well if this code-morphing software is on a flash ROM so that it can be rewritten, it would be in essence like having a second flash BIOS. There would be no greater threat here than simply flashing you BIOS. It's a pretty safe process if you take a little care.
Now look at their website. www.slackware.com
:)
Everybody just chill until we've released 7.0
Anyone else get the feeling that they're just messing with our minds?
I'm curious where you got the info about AMD's "buggy" chipset. I'm running an Athlon 500 using the one and only AMD 750 chipset. I had had NO s/w compatibility probs. I've found this chip/chipset to be VERY stable... more so than a PII-300 on the i440EX chipset. And as far as I've seen/heard it's pretty easy to get a hold of the CPU (yes, yes, ok the mobos are rare, but I didn't have probs finding a FIC SD11)
you keep waiting. while we enjoy our 700mhz athlons.
:)
Or 500's because they're 1/4th price of the 700's
A little heat is a resonable price to pay (IMO). plus the PIII's arn't that hot (athlons are though, arn't they)?
Athlon's? Hot? I heard those rumors... mine is about at room temperature after a hard workout of some massive compiling and compressing/decompressing. My PII-300 ran hotter.
Unless, Talkback always crashes too. Suddenly I don't feel so warm and fuzzy then.
Gotta agree there... I have it disabled because it seems to cause 80% of my NS crashes
It is a guarentee written into the constitution to allow the general populous to have to means to rise up and overthrown the government by force if/when it becomes necessary....
Also the average gun owner doesn't own their gun to have a weapon around to kill people, the average gun owner owns their gun(s) for one of two reasons:
1) The firearms are family heirlooms. There is little/no ammo around for it and besides, Grandpa's 80 year old colt hasn't fired in the past 30yrs and probably won't be able to (reliably at least)
2) Hunting. Many people hunt for sport/food in the US. The people who do so treat their guns with respect. They know how to handle them responsibly and do.
I think the image of a 'gun culture' is wrong. Yea, many people own guns, but that doesn't mean that guns are all those people think about.
I am proud to say I have friends who do keep guns around. They know how and do treat their firearms with proper respect. When I am over at his house, we never think of or even notice the weapons.... They are just there, without a cult surrounding them.
I'll grant you that the idea of ID badges is stupid, and things like video cameras in inappropriate places are uncalled for, and I even believe strong encryption is in the interest of the greater good. But crying over loss of personal freedom to carry GUNS? Gimme a break...
Loss of personal freedom to carry guns??! If I recall correctly we here in the US have this thing called the Constitution. In there as part of the Bill of Rights there is a guarentee: The right of the people to bear arms shall not be infringed. ANY gun control laws are in direct violation of this, one of the basic freedoms set aside for citizens. Therfore 'crying over loss of personal freedom to carry guns' is NOT a petty complaint, rather it is a DUTY of all good and well informed citizens.
The students must legally go to school, yes, but is there any regulation that states they must go to /that/school? As a poster has already pointed out, there's always home schooling, and I will add private schools to that thought.
In the case of many areas, there are NO practical alternatives. Homeschooling is impractical because of parents working and it is extremely difficult to produce an education that equals a well planned high school cirriculum. Going to an alternate school in many cases may not work, for example I am from rural Minnesota, in order to attend an alternate school, it could take more than an hour to get to the next closest school!
The other part about these is often the students may protest, but the administration will only listen to the parents. The parents don't want to bother with the situation or think the students are just complaining because they want to.
If I am thinking right, it's not so much because AMD can't produce the Athlons, but it's because very few MB manufacturers have come out with Slot A MBs yet. There is also the point of getting the new technology polished... AMD has built the core for the Athlon from nothing, and as such the firmware and hardware to go with it and support it aren't perfect yet. AMD has several big name companies that are gonna sell Athlon systems, but these companies aren't gonna release their boxes until all the kinks are worked out.
Give AMD time to break into the market. Monopolies can be made overnight, but time is required to break a monopoly. AMD has slowly been working on breaking the Intel monopoly, and AMD is succeeding, albeit slowly..