I really don't like Madonna's songs, so here goes:
Alternate XP Theme Songs from Madonna
Dress You Up (but you're still dodgy)
Burning Up (my bank account)
Deeper & Deeper (into MS's pocket)
Borderline (antitrust violation)
Material Girl (looking pretty but costing heaps)
This sounds right, from dealings I've had with Microsoft reps & techs. Since they have access to an frighteningly large money hose, they simply don't have to deal with normal financial problems. They then assume that everyone has this kind of money, to spend on new hardware, licenses, development, marketing, etc.
Reminds me of a Blackadder episode "A piddling thousand? Pay the man Edmund, and damn his impudence!"
".Net is everywhere. It is all around us. Even now, in this very room. You can see it when you look out your window or when you turn on your television. You can feel it when you go to work, when you go to church, when you pay your taxes."
Microsoft are.Netting everything it seems, so much so that no-one seems quite sure what.Net is. This muddies the waters for their competitors, and confuses their customers into thinking they have to have it, whatever.Net is. This kind of incoherent strategy is usually lethal to a company, but MS is so dominant that it can afford to cover every angle, sometimes even wasting resources by competing against itself. It's a framework. No, it's a server. No, it's a strategy. It's everything you want it to be. Pretty easy to say, harder to deliver thanks very much.
.Net & XP are designed to make money for Microsoft - that's the whole point. CIOs who are "looking forward to the new XP licensing scheme" have got to be insane if they think things are going to get cheaper. XP rent is going to be more expensive than current licenses - any other option isn't good business for MS. Of course, this kind of move is pretty gutsy considering the current financial climate, but hey... they seem to be used to trying to do everything at once.
Ok, so Microsoft has extraordinary power in computing world. The key thing is that choice still exists. If.Net is expensive, or restrictive, or full of security holes, people will walk away. People like Gartner are starting to pay attention - running an IIS webserver will probably end up costing you money, and people don't like that. They can't just scoop into the war chest and get more money - they have bills to pay and businesses to run.
"the artificial intelligence and other technologies tested in NeCoRo would find applications in more practical items, such as user-friendly vending machines for train tickets."
Riiiiiight... vending machines covered in fur, that make 48 types of cat noise and purr when you rub them.
Before AMDMB went splat, I read enough to see that in some tests (most notably memory), the Athlon XP (yes, SINGLE) beat the dual Athlon MP setup soundly. This is because the XP tested in a VIA KT266A motherboard, which has the edge in performance over the standard AMD760MP.
I think the Athlon MPs are awesome, but having a much cheaper, single-processor setup beat out a dually in some tests throws a bit of cold water on my upgrade lust.
Gotta love the way a Broadband Is Dead story appears on Slashdot two stories after a story on wireless broadband in Maine. Hmmmm...
As far as I'm aware, "broadband internet connection" just means "fast net", right? It's pretty silly to say that fast net connections are all dead, now and for the forseeable future. I have DSL, my friends have DSL, and many of my workmates have just gotten DSL. If all our DSL companies went out of business simultaneously (insert telco conspiracy theory here), we'd go to someone else with our money, or run 802.11x, or string cable across rooftops, or dig trenches and lay optic fibre, or we'd move somewhere where we can. Hell, we might even start our own local broadband company.
Broadband's too simple a concept to die, really. It's like normal net, except faster. Duh.
Creating an open, free, online resource like this and building it with closed-source software is like paying McDonalds to provide food at a homeless shelter.
If MIT is serious about intellectual idealism (and it looks like they are), this system should be built using open source. Then the code should be released to the world under a license like the GPL, to allow other universities & organisations to build their own online resources using the system.
If they JUST HAVE TO spend that $100 million they talk about, sponsor swarms of hackers to build systems that might be a little useful to the MIT project, but generally just improve the world. (databases, search engines, etc).
while (moneyleft(RIAA_bank_account))
get_company_details(Napster-of-the-month)
if (buy_them_out(Napster-of-the-month)) then
quietly_put_out_of_business(Napster-of-the-month)
else
release_legal_winged_monkeys(Napster-of-the- month)
endif
wend
You're prolly right, "distribution" is best left to the experts (like Akamai). But if a company isn't willing to commit to that kind of resource, even a bunch of decent servers all over the world would be better than a single one. Something like europe.cnn.com, australia.cnn.com, africa.cnn.com, etc. At least it would spread the load.
Yep, like I said... golf claps for them this time around (usually they make it streaming and nothing else) but since the site has gone all melty, no-one can download anything.:-(
Hang on... that trailer is dated September 6th, people. I've seen it before as well. I don't think it's the same as what is being offered on the official site (although it's completely smoked, so I can't make a comparison).
I really wish big companies would GET A CLUE when it comes to distributing popular content on the net. They just keep on screwing it up, over and over, during the WTC attack and every time anything to do with LoTR or Star Wars gets posted.
Mirroring is essential. And NOT like having three web servers in the same building, you fools. Scatter them all over the world, and provide links from the official site so people can make choices about where they slurp from.
Choose providers who can handle this sort of load balancing, like Akamai. What the hell piddly server is squeeze.sorensen.com? No wonder it exploded a nansecond after it got posted.
Allow downloads, instead of streaming-only distribution. Golf claps for doing this for the latest LoTR trailer, but big boos for messing the rest up.
Let people mirror the files themselves - in fact, ENCOURAGE it. People want to help, let them. Don't get all caught up in legal crap, in case you haven't realised it, we're making copies for our friends already.
Throw files on a P2P service like Kazaa. P2P is PERFECT for this kind of distribution.
Well, since MS Windows is quite obviously the pinnacle of OS perfection, they're just the guys to step up to a more challenging problem: a distributed, self-healing, self-tuning, self-configuring, self-monitoring, secure, world-scalable, seamless, fault-tolerant, load-balancing, highly abstracted, non-hierarchical, introspective (self-aware?) & self-optimizing global OS.
Hey, my Hotmail just crashed...
shut up man
Re:what is it good for?
on
2.2 GHz Xeon
·
· Score: 1
I think you're wrong... but right, and right again.
If the framerate were 40-100, you're wrong... high-action dips in performance cause your fps to drop significantly, taking your 40fps to 10fps where your 100fps would've gone to 50fps. But... gaming machines aren't running at 40fps anymore. Last year's models are running Quake3 at 120fps, and this year's models are topping 200fps. So you're right, we've got power galore.
You're right again when you mention a new killer app, and maybe more than you realise when you mention Doom. John Carmack has stated that id software's new Doom will run at 30fps on GeForce3, likely coupled with a 1Ghz+ CPU. These are *serious* hardware requirements, well beyond your AMD K6-2 450.
The new Doom also sounds like it's designed for an immersive, realistic experience, so it's not the kind of game you can strip down to get extra frames. Avoiding Doom also won't work, since about a zillion game companies will license the engine, so the bar will be raised across the board.
Chip makers really should be stepping up and funding game development in an effort to create a requirement for crunch, and which will create demand for their products. Game companies are dropping like flies right now (Dynamix, Interplay, even Loki is looking sick), that can't help push technology along.
So, two big companies are getting behind an open, high-quality video standard? Sounds good, and
I suspect MPEG4 has a better chance against MS/Real/Apple than people realise.
Being an open standard means that you can check out the technical overview on the MPEG4
site right now if you want an idea of how it works. MS/Real/Apple is NEVER going to be this
forthcoming - they even change their format regularly to force upgrades (and royally annoy
developers and userbase). People can stop yelling at each other about what language they should be speaking and spend their time writing fast, small, elegant implementations of the standard. Kinda like TCP/IP.
Any hacker with an itch can write their own MPEG4 decoder for Linux, Palm, Amiga, Timex Datawatch, mobile phone, whatever, which breaks the Windows/Mac video hegemony. I know I'm preaching to the converted on/., but it's always good.
The possible downside lies with the licensing - hopefully we'll avoid a repeat of the Fraunhoffer mp3 fiasco, where they started demanding payment for what was meant to be an open standard.
I seriously doubt the authenticity of someone posting on a public noticeboard about joining the Jihad. It's most likely government agents, looking to round up the more gullible terrorists out there. Hopefully they aren't asking them to meet for training out the back of FBI headquarters though - a bit obvious.
In the unlikely event that it is genuine, maybe boards like these could be a source of leads for the hunters...
Maybe Mark could talk to Lego to build additional, improved kits for their Lego Mindstorms line. His depth of knowledge in modular robotics might drive their products towards being less of toys, and more a general-purpose toolkit for robot construction.
There was no doubt in Ender's mind. There was no help for him. Whatever he faced, now and forever, no one would save him from it. Peter might be scum, but Peter had been right, always right; the power to cause pain is the only power that matters, the power to kill and destroy, because if you can't kill you are always subject to those who can, and nothing no one will ever save you.
The USA must be seen to move against this attack, or the world's terrorists will realise that attacks of the nature are a viable strategy. As with Ender and Bonzo Madrid, the US must hit back with such force that every other terrorist in future dares not consider attacks of this nature. Ender destroyed Bonzo, and thus no-one at Battle School ever touched him again.
I really don't like what I'm suggesting, but I fear it may be the only reaction that terrorists understand.
> Do you seriously believe that movies that have passed into the pay-per-view window are of lower
> quality than those still in theaters or being sold on DVD? Classic movies (top 10%[1] of black-
> and-white and early releases) are classics for a reason
Ah... I should've been more clear - I'm talking about quality of catalog, not quality of movies. By only releasing movies that have already been released on DVD (so as not to cut into their DVD sales), their catalog isn't as good as the "possible DivX catalog", which includes the latest DVD movies as well.
I don't think it will be long until whatever security they use is cracked - since one of the parties in the secure transaction is the enemy, it makes it pretty easy. What remains to be seen is if the companies involved can balance the difficulty of cracking the system against the following:
Ease of use - AOL Joe isn't l33t. No codes, no dongles, no Captain Crunch decoder wheels. Quick initial registration, download and double-click, get billed monthly.
Speed of download - Downloading DivX movies still costs TIME. The corps need to have monster servers, monster pipe, and redundant, distributed infrastructure (kinda like a P2P network;). This is something a DSL user cannot compete with.
Film quality - It's pretty irritating to spend all day downloading a movie, only to find the aspect ratio all wrong, the soundtrack in some unheard-of codec or the video stream corrupt. If the companies guarantee quality, that's a big advantage.
Quality of catalog - Underground sites only host movies the operator likes, or have managed to get hold of. Having a broad catalog gives more choice, which makes the service more attractive. The catalog should also be as current as DVD, or else people will grab the DivX instead.
Cost - The companies ARE competing against a free service, but they can charge a small fee for the aforementioned enhancements. Small. As in, not large. As in, "Oh pfffft, I'll get it off MovieCorp, that's nothing."
That's the recipe for a winning net movie delivery system. From the article, it sounds like they are screwing up cost (pay per view? ewww!) and quality of catalog (post-DVD releases only). Still, it's a start...
Slashdot Mirror
I really don't like Madonna's songs, so here goes:
Alternate XP Theme Songs from Madonna
Dress You Up (but you're still dodgy)
Burning Up (my bank account)
Deeper & Deeper (into MS's pocket)
Borderline (antitrust violation)
Material Girl (looking pretty but costing heaps)
shut up man
This sounds right, from dealings I've had with Microsoft reps & techs. Since they have access to an frighteningly large money hose, they simply don't have to deal with normal financial problems. They then assume that everyone has this kind of money, to spend on new hardware, licenses, development, marketing, etc.
Reminds me of a Blackadder episode "A piddling thousand? Pay the man Edmund, and damn his impudence!"
Since the reg seems pretty clogged, here's a copy of the zip.
shut up man
Microsoft are .Netting everything it seems, so much so that no-one seems quite sure what .Net is. This muddies the waters for their competitors, and confuses their customers into thinking they have to have it, whatever .Net is. This kind of incoherent strategy is usually lethal to a company, but MS is so dominant that it can afford to cover every angle, sometimes even wasting resources by competing against itself. It's a framework. No, it's a server. No, it's a strategy. It's everything you want it to be. Pretty easy to say, harder to deliver thanks very much.
Ok, so Microsoft has extraordinary power in computing world. The key thing is that choice still exists. If .Net is expensive, or restrictive, or full of security holes, people will walk away. People like Gartner are starting to pay attention - running an IIS webserver will probably end up costing you money, and people don't like that. They can't just scoop into the war chest and get more money - they have bills to pay and businesses to run.
shut up man
"the artificial intelligence and other technologies tested in NeCoRo would find applications in more practical items, such as user-friendly vending machines for train tickets."
Riiiiiight... vending machines covered in fur, that make 48 types of cat noise and purr when you rub them.
shut up man
Before AMDMB went splat, I read enough to see that in some tests (most notably memory), the Athlon XP (yes, SINGLE) beat the dual Athlon MP setup soundly. This is because the XP tested in a VIA KT266A motherboard, which has the edge in performance over the standard AMD760MP.
I think the Athlon MPs are awesome, but having a much cheaper, single-processor setup beat out a dually in some tests throws a bit of cold water on my upgrade lust.
shut up man
http://www.tech-report.com/onearticle.x/2994
They only compare against the 1.2Ghz Athlon MP though... although they intend to do an expanded article soon.
shut up man
Well, a pair of spanky new Athlon MP 1800+s might help www.amdmb.com when it gets slashdotted, right?
shut up man
As far as I'm aware, "broadband internet connection" just means "fast net", right? It's pretty silly to say that fast net connections are all dead, now and for the forseeable future. I have DSL, my friends have DSL, and many of my workmates have just gotten DSL. If all our DSL companies went out of business simultaneously (insert telco conspiracy theory here), we'd go to someone else with our money, or run 802.11x, or string cable across rooftops, or dig trenches and lay optic fibre, or we'd move somewhere where we can. Hell, we might even start our own local broadband company.
Broadband's too simple a concept to die, really. It's like normal net, except faster. Duh.
If MIT is serious about intellectual idealism (and it looks like they are), this system should be built using open source. Then the code should be released to the world under a license like the GPL, to allow other universities & organisations to build their own online resources using the system.
If they JUST HAVE TO spend that $100 million they talk about, sponsor swarms of hackers to build systems that might be a little useful to the MIT project, but generally just improve the world. (databases, search engines, etc).
while (moneyleft(RIAA_bank_account))
get_company_details(Napster-of-the-month)
if (buy_them_out(Napster-of-the-month)) then
quietly_put_out_of_business(Napster-of-the-month)
else
release_legal_winged_monkeys(Napster-of-the- month)
endif
wend
You're prolly right, "distribution" is best left to the experts (like Akamai). But if a company isn't willing to commit to that kind of resource, even a bunch of decent servers all over the world would be better than a single one. Something like europe.cnn.com, australia.cnn.com, africa.cnn.com, etc. At least it would spread the load.
Meh... I'll have to stand corrected on that one, none of the streaming ones got to the point where I could see they were from Akamai. :-)
Yep, like I said... golf claps for them this time around (usually they make it streaming and nothing else) but since the site has gone all melty, no-one can download anything. :-(
Hang on... that trailer is dated September 6th, people. I've seen it before as well. I don't think it's the same as what is being offered on the official site (although it's completely smoked, so I can't make a comparison).
shut up man
It's all freaking simple, people.
shut up man
Well, since MS Windows is quite obviously the pinnacle of OS perfection, they're just the guys to step up to a more challenging problem: a distributed, self-healing, self-tuning, self-configuring, self-monitoring, secure, world-scalable, seamless, fault-tolerant, load-balancing, highly abstracted, non-hierarchical, introspective (self-aware?) & self-optimizing global OS.
Hey, my Hotmail just crashed...
shut up man
I think you're wrong... but right, and right again.
If the framerate were 40-100, you're wrong... high-action dips in performance cause your fps to drop significantly, taking your 40fps to 10fps where your 100fps would've gone to 50fps. But... gaming machines aren't running at 40fps anymore. Last year's models are running Quake3 at 120fps, and this year's models are topping 200fps. So you're right, we've got power galore.
You're right again when you mention a new killer app, and maybe more than you realise when you mention Doom. John Carmack has stated that id software's new Doom will run at 30fps on GeForce3, likely coupled with a 1Ghz+ CPU. These are *serious* hardware requirements, well beyond your AMD K6-2 450.
The new Doom also sounds like it's designed for an immersive, realistic experience, so it's not the kind of game you can strip down to get extra frames. Avoiding Doom also won't work, since about a zillion game companies will license the engine, so the bar will be raised across the board.
Chip makers really should be stepping up and funding game development in an effort to create a requirement for crunch, and which will create demand for their products. Game companies are dropping like flies right now (Dynamix, Interplay, even Loki is looking sick), that can't help push technology along.
shut up man
So, two big companies are getting behind an open, high-quality video standard? Sounds good, and
/., but it's always good.
I suspect MPEG4 has a better chance against MS/Real/Apple than people realise.
Being an open standard means that you can check out the technical overview on the MPEG4
site right now if you want an idea of how it works. MS/Real/Apple is NEVER going to be this
forthcoming - they even change their format regularly to force upgrades (and royally annoy
developers and userbase). People can stop yelling at each other about what language they should be speaking and spend their time writing fast, small, elegant implementations of the standard. Kinda like TCP/IP.
Any hacker with an itch can write their own MPEG4 decoder for Linux, Palm, Amiga, Timex Datawatch, mobile phone, whatever, which breaks the Windows/Mac video hegemony. I know I'm preaching to the converted on
The possible downside lies with the licensing - hopefully we'll avoid a repeat of the Fraunhoffer mp3 fiasco, where they started demanding payment for what was meant to be an open standard.
shut up man
I seriously doubt the authenticity of someone posting on a public noticeboard about joining the Jihad. It's most likely government agents, looking to round up the more gullible terrorists out there. Hopefully they aren't asking them to meet for training out the back of FBI headquarters though - a bit obvious.
In the unlikely event that it is genuine, maybe boards like these could be a source of leads for the hunters...
shut up man
Plus, based on their recent comments on IP, they seem like a pretty cool company.
shut up man
There was no doubt in Ender's mind. There was no help for him. Whatever he faced, now and forever, no one would save him from it. Peter might be scum, but Peter had been right, always right; the power to cause pain is the only power that matters, the power to kill and destroy, because if you can't kill you are always subject to those who can, and nothing no one will ever save you.
The USA must be seen to move against this attack, or the world's terrorists will realise that attacks of the nature are a viable strategy. As with Ender and Bonzo Madrid, the US must hit back with such force that every other terrorist in future dares not consider attacks of this nature. Ender destroyed Bonzo, and thus no-one at Battle School ever touched him again.
I really don't like what I'm suggesting, but I fear it may be the only reaction that terrorists understand.
> Do you seriously believe that movies that have passed into the pay-per-view window are of lower
> quality than those still in theaters or being sold on DVD? Classic movies (top 10%[1] of black-
> and-white and early releases) are classics for a reason
Ah... I should've been more clear - I'm talking about quality of catalog, not quality of movies. By only releasing movies that have already been released on DVD (so as not to cut into their DVD sales), their catalog isn't as good as the "possible DivX catalog", which includes the latest DVD movies as well.
That's the recipe for a winning net movie delivery system. From the article, it sounds like they are screwing up cost (pay per view? ewww!) and quality of catalog (post-DVD releases only). Still, it's a start...
shut up man