Re:Probably it will always stay...
on
BitTorrent Guide
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
Lots of reasons, actually.
For one, the originator ('seed') of the file maintains authority over the file, and maintains canonical checksums for the segments of the file. This means that the originator is known, not anonymous, and you know that what you're getting is the same as the seed (i.e., I can't download the RedHat ISOs, insert a Trojan, and then propagate it to others unless I seed it myself.). Sure, this will crack down on illegitimate sharing, but it will also eliminates the fake files (i.e., "What the *&%! do you think you're doing?!") currently swarming over Gnutella.
Second, the protocol is a step ahead of Gnutella's. Leech control and segmented download are built into the protocol, so it's guaranteed to work with other torrent clients.
A direct comparison with Gnutella is not terribly applicable, as they serve different needs. Gnutella was created in the shadow of Napster, for completely dispersed, distributed, and somewhat-anonymous peer to peer file sharing. BitTorrent was created to offload most (but not all) of the bandwidth required to host large, popular files. Horses for courses.
They are now. At the time that they were living, there was no significant culture of Greater Europe as there was during the time of Descartes, so it's not at all incorrect to refer to them separately.
"For those wanting an Apple Powerbook feel with Windows OS and functionality, the 200A5 is about as close as you can get."
So, the Apple Powerbook doesn't have functionality? Windows OS does?
I think the word 'Windows' distributes over both 'OS' and 'functionality'. So the sentence equates to "For those wanting an Apple Powerbook feel with Windows OS and Windows functionality...' Whether that's better or worse than a Mac OS and Mac functionality, well, I won't comment.
As for the tech support issue, I have one comment: buy it on a decent credit card. You get the equivalent of Best Buy's protection plan (one year extension on the manufacturer's warranty) for free, as well as protection in the unlikely event that the thing doesn't show up.
One of the few positives to buying Dell over VPR Matrix or a whitebox machine is Dell's protection plan... if the machine gets damaged in any way other than intentionally, they'll fix it. Personally, I picked up the low-end VPR Matrix laptop for $950 (plus a $150 rebate on top)... 1.6MHz P4M, 256MB. Cheap enough that if it craters from the top of the staircase at work, my heart won't stop completely.
Maybe, except that VPR Matrix has been around a hell of a lot longer than the movie. They were an independent manufacturer back in the mid-nineties before Best Buy acquired them.
Interesting. Did you call Best Buy support or VPRMatrix support? BestBuy was worse than useless, but I found the VPR Matrix guys were on top of it.
I picked up a 175B4 a few weeks ago, and like you I called their support line to check on the specs (one difference--I called customer support rather than technical support).
I had a number of questions: 1. What kind of memory does it use? 2. Are there any slots free as delivered? 3. Is the video adapter on the backplane or in a Micro-AGP slot? 4. Is the video adapter memory-upgradable? 5. What audio chipset does it use? 6. How hard is it to end-user upgrade the hard drive?
The only question he couldn't answer off the top of his head was #3, and he checked with someone else for a few minutes before he gave me the answer. All the answers were correct, by the way.
I suppose it all depends on which support person you happen to get on a particular call...
Not really, and you're probably confusing "food coupons" with "food stamps".
Rebates are limited-time offers in which, after you buy an item you receive money back. Sometimes rebates are provided by the store (an 'in-store rebate', which amounts to nothing more than a simple discount); sometimes they're an affair where you have to mail a form, the UPC symbol from the box, and your cash register receipt, and they mail you a cheque (usually after about 4-6 weeks or so). This is the rebate they're talking about in the article.
'Coupons' are papers that you can redeem at the time of purchase to receive a discount on an item. They're issued either by the manufacturer (in which case they're good at just about any store), or by a particular retailer (in which case they're only good at that retailer). They're most common for grocery items, but nowadays many manufacturers print coupons. In the case of manufacturers' coupons, the retailer who accepts your coupon sends them in to the manufacturer, and the manufacturer pays the retailer the value of the discount plus a small fee.
'Food stamps' are issued by the U. S. government to low-income households. They're accepted by grocery stores just like cash, but they're limited in what you can use them for (you can't buy cigarettes or alcohol with them, for example).
I've bought two different machines from Dell in the last year. Both machines arrived almost a week early. One included a rebate; I received the rebate about six weeks after I returned the form.
I'm currently waiting on a similar rebate from Best Buy for a notebook I just bought; I'm hoping they're as good as Dell was.
So the critical issue is whether the fat composition of a diet can influence one's ability to control caloric intake. In other words, does eating fat leave you more or less hungry than eating protein or carbohydrates? There are various theories about why one diet should be better than another, but few long-term studies have been done. In randomized trials, individuals assigned to low-fat diets tend to lose a few pounds during the first months but then regain the weight. In studies lasting a year or longer, low-fat diets have consistently not led to greater weight loss.
REBOL is a nice language; when I was casting about for a higher-level language to learn after C++, I considered it.
Unfortunately, it's not going to go very far without either a publically-available and implementable language description (as C and BASIC did), or else a controlled specification and a freely-available, fully-functional environment (as Java, Perl, and Python have).
That's an interesting point... the hardware equivalent would, of course, be FPGA-based computers.
The drawback to such adaptive methods is the reduction in generality, of course. It's much easier to quickly understand a system when it isn't quite as adaptive (think of new programmers coming onto a project, or a company that has multiple, heterogeneous projects, each of which has a language that's been adapted to the project's problem domain).
He's talking about being about to resurrect a dead machine via a boot disk and images stored elsewhere on a LAN.
There's nothing worse than reaching for your "recovery CD" and finding that you've closed a paper clip in the case, scratching a 5mm long gash in the top side of the now-coaster.
Probably not. It could probably be reimplemented in a higher-level language (C) by now, given the machine speed increases since Duke was released (unless you're adamant about running it on the hardware of the times).
Don't assume that the original poster is talking about performance tuning. Performance tuning still comes last (if at all) on an XP project.
Any optimizations done on the fly are more likely things like code clarity optimization ("actually, 'itemIndex' isn't really an index after all; it's a hash value, so let's rename it 'itemHash'").
And even if the original poster really did mean performance optimization, do you judge ANY concept by one post from a random person on Slashdot? If so, I feel very sorry for you...
Actually, according to mostdictionaries, that's no longer the only acceptable meaning. In fact, many list the original, literal meaning as a secondary definition, not the primary one.
Yes... when it GETS to the courts. But until it's tested in court, it can be used for quite a lot of intimidation, arrest, and disruption (again, the DMCA is a great example).
The DAs and law enforcement people don't (and shouldn't) dither over legislative intent.
Certainly. But is your average Aunt Tillie-style user savvy enough to know to download this tool, and then run it, and then know that she should go back to the VAR and complain?
Remember, the truly hardware-savvy user is a tiny, tiny fraction of the user base for x86 processors. Most of the users don't even know what clock speed or overclocking means, and those are the people Intel wants to protect.
You might reply that those people are likely to buy from Dell, Gateway, or another reputable retailer, but I'd disagree... at least half of the "family tech support" I've had to do has been on no-name, white box machines that when bought are a few years out of spec, because of cost reasons.
Honestly, I doubt crooks remarking processors are exactly up to writing a custom BIOS or designing motherboard chipsets to hide the fact
I wasn't talking about this. I was talking about the case where mainstream BIOS or OS providers do provide an alarm feature, and also provide a legit OCer a way to turn it off (most BIOS providers are OC-friendly enough that they'd want to do that).
Then bad system integrators would just go into BIOS setup and turn it off before selling it to the unsuspecting public.
But I can't find fault with the rest of your reply.
Well, instead of locking it, why not just add a way for the processor to report it's intended speed?
Would it really fix the problem? To whom does the CPU report it? How? Intel doesn't make the BIOS or the OS; it would have to talk to every BIOS vendor and OS vendor to make sure there's some kind of reporting scheme in place (which wouldn't get shipped anyway for a long lead time).
And if there's a way to report it, if it's not blatant and obnoxious (beep the PC speaker and print a message at BIOS boot time, or raise a message in an OS), then 90% of the PC-buying public won't notice. If it is blatant and obnoxious, people who legitimately OC will want a way to turn it off in the BIOS or OS. And then, guess what? The white-box reseller will just push that button before selling it to the user.
I don't like it, but I can see why that's their best bet.
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Lots of reasons, actually.
For one, the originator ('seed') of the file maintains authority over the file, and maintains canonical checksums for the segments of the file. This means that the originator is known, not anonymous, and you know that what you're getting is the same as the seed (i.e., I can't download the RedHat ISOs, insert a Trojan, and then propagate it to others unless I seed it myself.). Sure, this will crack down on illegitimate sharing, but it will also eliminates the fake files (i.e., "What the *&%! do you think you're doing?!") currently swarming over Gnutella.
Second, the protocol is a step ahead of Gnutella's. Leech control and segmented download are built into the protocol, so it's guaranteed to work with other torrent clients.
A direct comparison with Gnutella is not terribly applicable, as they serve different needs. Gnutella was created in the shadow of Napster, for completely dispersed, distributed, and somewhat-anonymous peer to peer file sharing. BitTorrent was created to offload most (but not all) of the bandwidth required to host large, popular files. Horses for courses.
Last time I checked, Greeks were Europeans too...
They are now. At the time that they were living, there was no significant culture of Greater Europe as there was during the time of Descartes, so it's not at all incorrect to refer to them separately.
Ahem. Read what you quoted:
Disclaimer of warranties. To the maximum extent permitted by applicable law,
The "applicable law" is what the poster is referring to.
Heh... I had the same reaction to Red Dawn a few years ago. When I first saw it as a pre-teen, it was the best... movie... ever.
When I saw it again, GOOD LORD.
"For those wanting an Apple Powerbook feel with Windows OS and functionality, the 200A5 is about as close as you can get."
So, the Apple Powerbook doesn't have functionality? Windows OS does?
I think the word 'Windows' distributes over both 'OS' and 'functionality'. So the sentence equates to "For those wanting an Apple Powerbook feel with Windows OS and Windows functionality...' Whether that's better or worse than a Mac OS and Mac functionality, well, I won't comment.
As for the tech support issue, I have one comment: buy it on a decent credit card. You get the equivalent of Best Buy's protection plan (one year extension on the manufacturer's warranty) for free, as well as protection in the unlikely event that the thing doesn't show up.
One of the few positives to buying Dell over VPR Matrix or a whitebox machine is Dell's protection plan... if the machine gets damaged in any way other than intentionally, they'll fix it. Personally, I picked up the low-end VPR Matrix laptop for $950 (plus a $150 rebate on top)... 1.6MHz P4M, 256MB. Cheap enough that if it craters from the top of the staircase at work, my heart won't stop completely.
Maybe, except that VPR Matrix has been around a hell of a lot longer than the movie. They were an independent manufacturer back in the mid-nineties before Best Buy acquired them.
Interesting. Did you call Best Buy support or VPRMatrix support? BestBuy was worse than useless, but I found the VPR Matrix guys were on top of it.
I picked up a 175B4 a few weeks ago, and like you I called their support line to check on the specs (one difference--I called customer support rather than technical support).
I had a number of questions:
1. What kind of memory does it use?
2. Are there any slots free as delivered?
3. Is the video adapter on the backplane or in a Micro-AGP slot?
4. Is the video adapter memory-upgradable?
5. What audio chipset does it use?
6. How hard is it to end-user upgrade the hard drive?
The only question he couldn't answer off the top of his head was #3, and he checked with someone else for a few minutes before he gave me the answer. All the answers were correct, by the way.
I suppose it all depends on which support person you happen to get on a particular call...
He wasn't at the time the sculpture was carved. This is 20-year-old news.
Wow... I thought I was the only one, and I was about to post the same thing. My first thought was that it was a link to The Onion...
Is this proof that not everything that comes out of Microsoft is evil, or is it just a way to expand the market for Windows? :-)
Not really, and you're probably confusing "food coupons" with "food stamps".
Rebates are limited-time offers in which, after you buy an item you receive money back. Sometimes rebates are provided by the store (an 'in-store rebate', which amounts to nothing more than a simple discount); sometimes they're an affair where you have to mail a form, the UPC symbol from the box, and your cash register receipt, and they mail you a cheque (usually after about 4-6 weeks or so). This is the rebate they're talking about in the article.
'Coupons' are papers that you can redeem at the time of purchase to receive a discount on an item. They're issued either by the manufacturer (in which case they're good at just about any store), or by a particular retailer (in which case they're only good at that retailer). They're most common for grocery items, but nowadays many manufacturers print coupons. In the case of manufacturers' coupons, the retailer who accepts your coupon sends them in to the manufacturer, and the manufacturer pays the retailer the value of the discount plus a small fee.
'Food stamps' are issued by the U. S. government to low-income households. They're accepted by grocery stores just like cash, but they're limited in what you can use them for (you can't buy cigarettes or alcohol with them, for example).
I've bought two different machines from Dell in the last year. Both machines arrived almost a week early. One included a rebate; I received the rebate about six weeks after I returned the form.
I'm currently waiting on a similar rebate from Best Buy for a notebook I just bought; I'm hoping they're as good as Dell was.
RTFA:
So the critical issue is whether the fat composition of a diet can influence one's ability to control caloric intake. In other words, does eating fat leave you more or less hungry than eating protein or carbohydrates? There are various theories about why one diet should be better than another, but few long-term studies have been done. In randomized trials, individuals assigned to low-fat diets tend to lose a few pounds during the first months but then regain the weight. In studies lasting a year or longer, low-fat diets have consistently not led to greater weight loss.
It can be done, but not quite as cheaply as a $1.00 digital watch. BodyMedia makes a wireless monitor that would be a great platform for an eat watch.
REBOL is a nice language; when I was casting about for a higher-level language to learn after C++, I considered it.
Unfortunately, it's not going to go very far without either a publically-available and implementable language description (as C and BASIC did), or else a controlled specification and a freely-available, fully-functional environment (as Java, Perl, and Python have).
As it ended up, I chose Python.
That's an interesting point... the hardware equivalent would, of course, be FPGA-based computers.
The drawback to such adaptive methods is the reduction in generality, of course. It's much easier to quickly understand a system when it isn't quite as adaptive (think of new programmers coming onto a project, or a company that has multiple, heterogeneous projects, each of which has a language that's been adapted to the project's problem domain).
Umm... he said "network", not "internet access".
He's talking about being about to resurrect a dead machine via a boot disk and images stored elsewhere on a LAN.
There's nothing worse than reaching for your "recovery CD" and finding that you've closed a paper clip in the case, scratching a 5mm long gash in the top side of the now-coaster.
Probably not. It could probably be reimplemented in a higher-level language (C) by now, given the machine speed increases since Duke was released (unless you're adamant about running it on the hardware of the times).
Don't assume that the original poster is talking about performance tuning. Performance tuning still comes last (if at all) on an XP project.
Any optimizations done on the fly are more likely things like code clarity optimization ("actually, 'itemIndex' isn't really an index after all; it's a hash value, so let's rename it 'itemHash'").
And even if the original poster really did mean performance optimization, do you judge ANY concept by one post from a random person on Slashdot? If so, I feel very sorry for you...
But wouldn't you agree that it is wrong?
No. If I did, I'd still be talking about napron strings (instead of apron strings), and I'd pronounce all the consonants in "knight".
Language evolves. In my opinion, prescriptive linguists are railing at the sea (and I should know; I used to be one).
Actually, according to most dictionaries, that's no longer the only acceptable meaning. In fact, many list the original, literal meaning as a secondary definition, not the primary one.
:-)
Language, like software, evolves.
Yes... when it GETS to the courts. But until it's tested in court, it can be used for quite a lot of intimidation, arrest, and disruption (again, the DMCA is a great example).
The DAs and law enforcement people don't (and shouldn't) dither over legislative intent.
Certainly. But is your average Aunt Tillie-style user savvy enough to know to download this tool, and then run it, and then know that she should go back to the VAR and complain?
Remember, the truly hardware-savvy user is a tiny, tiny fraction of the user base for x86 processors. Most of the users don't even know what clock speed or overclocking means, and those are the people Intel wants to protect.
You might reply that those people are likely to buy from Dell, Gateway, or another reputable retailer, but I'd disagree... at least half of the "family tech support" I've had to do has been on no-name, white box machines that when bought are a few years out of spec, because of cost reasons.
Honestly, I doubt crooks remarking processors are exactly up to writing a custom BIOS or designing motherboard chipsets to hide the fact
I wasn't talking about this. I was talking about the case where mainstream BIOS or OS providers do provide an alarm feature, and also provide a legit OCer a way to turn it off (most BIOS providers are OC-friendly enough that they'd want to do that).
Then bad system integrators would just go into BIOS setup and turn it off before selling it to the unsuspecting public.
But I can't find fault with the rest of your reply.
Well, instead of locking it, why not just add a way for the processor to report it's intended speed?
Would it really fix the problem? To whom does the CPU report it? How? Intel doesn't make the BIOS or the OS; it would have to talk to every BIOS vendor and OS vendor to make sure there's some kind of reporting scheme in place (which wouldn't get shipped anyway for a long lead time).
And if there's a way to report it, if it's not blatant and obnoxious (beep the PC speaker and print a message at BIOS boot time, or raise a message in an OS), then 90% of the PC-buying public won't notice. If it is blatant and obnoxious, people who legitimately OC will want a way to turn it off in the BIOS or OS. And then, guess what? The white-box reseller will just push that button before selling it to the user.
I don't like it, but I can see why that's their best bet.