I always get O'Reilly's point. I watch his show on FoxNN every night at 11, and I find myself either completely agreeing with what he has to say on an issue, or feeling exactly the opposite.;-)
> His argument was that this book should not have been published by a state-funded institution.
That's an insane argument for several reasons. The first is that a university is an academic institution, and its allegiance has to be to the facts and the truth, not to some pre-approved noncontroversial political piffle. Only despotisms dictate what academic institutions can espouse, and as Thomas Jefferson said, "An elective despotism is not the government we fought for."
The second is that nearly everything is state-funded these days. They take too much of our money in taxes--which the Constitution originally forbade them to do; they had to amend it early this century to allow the federal income tax at all. Then they use our own money to fund everything, all levels of the educational system, fom pre-kindergarten programs to college grants and loans. So by your reasoning, and O'Reilly's, no educational institution in the country should ever say anything controversial or publish anything controversial, only useless non-offensive PC junk. I call BS. Even private colleges take a lot of state money today, thanks to this insane notion we have that *everyone* should go to college. All that does is devalue a college degree and lower the common denominator, making a college degree worth no more than a HS diploma used to be, and necessitating a graduate degree to be worth as much as a BA or BS used to. And it extends state and federal tendrils where they don't belong.
But getting back to the point, we as taxpayers fund a lot of things we don't want to. I have to fund insane public schools which don't work the way they should. You have to fund books you don't like. Too bad; we have to live with it.
> If the book had been published by a 'private' publisher, O'Reilly would not have put it on his show.
Oh yes he would have! Instead of blasting the U of M press, and calling for state lawmakers to look into it, he would have called for a boycott of the private press. Hell, he pratically called for a boycott of the entire nation of Canada the other night...
If all you want is news, local channels ae good enough. Use the MP3 player for music, local channels for news and talk. After all--I hate to break it to you--but I'd be willing to bet this whole satellite radio thing is a fad that will go belly-up, bankrupt the same way Iridium did. Iridium was a quality, but more expensive and more expensive to maintain, alternative to other mobile communications. Satellite radio is a quality, but more expensive and more expensive to maintain, alternative to other radio sources.
Satellite radio is a fad because, bet you dollars to donuts, it's relying on growth to keep the bills paid. However, it will reach a ceiling within a year, and all the people interested in paying for a commercial-free version of the radio they can get for free, will have purchased their equipment and inked their subscription contracts. After that, adoption will slow to a crawl, money will become increasingly tight, royalty payments will go unmade, channels will start dropping, and XM and Sirius satellite radio will die, gone the way of all fads.
Anyone care to take that bet? Satellite radio is going to fail, plain and simple. The vast majority of people will never pay for it, and the relatively small number of adopters will not be enough to support the whole network with its tech upkeep, royalty payments, and all.
> With all the anti-Muslim propaganda currently in the news, I feel it's best to try to > understand things from another point of view.
That's how I try to approach everything. Why believe what agenda-driven media and political people claim, when you can get closer to the source and make up your own mind?
That's why, when I saw Bill O'Reilly screaming his loudest about a recent book release, complaining bitterly that a university press would dare to publish it--I knew I had to read it.:-) Controversial subject matter, but the book he said shouldn't have been published is judith Levine's *Harmful to Minors*:
So, I pre-ordered it, and I have to say it's a fantastic analysis of the current situation. The author makes a lot of sense, and I feel sad that we (Americans) live in a country where people are so outraged by the simple truths most of the civilized world already takes for granted. We in the U.S. treat 15 year olds the same as 5 year olds. No wonder some kids rebel against that...
Anyway, I always like to support free speech by buying the books of authors whose books get assailed for silly personal moral reasons. So, go buy that book, or another one in need of support, as a big F-U to those who would censor our right to read.
The "common" BIOS passwords are gone from current PC motherboards. However, I'm sure it'll only be a few days before someone posts an easy way to get around the OpenFirmware passwords on Macs, too. Hackers have a way of doing that sort of thing.;-)
> Apple's original intent was to design the Macintosh for use as an appliance
This is why I much prefer Woz's old philosophy. The Apple ]['s actually came with schematics. The Macs came with "tamper-resistant" cases. That says a lot to me about how little Apple respects tech-savvy users. They only want to build an appliance for the average user, closing it off to the point of not even making it well known that their OpenFirmware had this simple functionality which would be so useful for labs and other public Macs. (That is, if the below post about this functionality having been there for so long is accurate).
As a user who actually knows what he's doing, I feel condescended to by Apple's behaviour constantly, which is why I remain a PC user. When I graduated collage I couldn't afford a PowerMac, and very reluctantly bought a used 100MHz 486DX4 laptop. Practically burnt a hole in my leg when using it for extended periods, but it ran Windows 95 well enough and did everything the Macs did, but with less finesse and speed. By the time I could afford a new computer, I'd educated myself enough to realize that although I *much* preferred the MacOS, despite its cooperative multitasking at the time, I'd be able to build a PC from quality parts that would perform much better and be much more upgradeable. Today my PC is based around an Abit motherboard with onboard RAID; Abit not only lets users know what's in their BIOSes, it encourages tech-savvy users to change features and settings by providing a utility to change registers of a binary BIOS file before flashing to the new one. They don't hide features from me for years. I like having control over my hardware, not being condescended to about it, which is why this OpenFirmware feature being made available after so many years is so unimpressive. I love the MacOS, but I loathe the closed nature of the hardware.
> it's a positive step in an otherwise dull market where innovation is still an exception, not a rule.
Again, providing something in the Mac world which has been available on most PCs for many years, isn't innovation at all. I'm perfectly willing to award Apple the software innovation crown it richly deserves. But it doesn't deserve any credit for hardware and low-level logic innovation. In that regard it's still trailing behind x86 machines, since while Apple's logic is newer and cleaner, its functionality trails behind x86 counterparts. x86 users get the fastest and newest of almost every feature first, with quite a lag before Mac platforms get them. We get faster memory, faster and larger ATA device support for newer ATA standards, faster graphics accelerators, and the ability to interchange most of this technology with our older hardware. The few exceptions I can think of where Apple got the hardware first are areas where PCs very soon caught up, often with the mere purchase of a $40 card, like USB and Firewire. The SuperDrive (of course, to guys of my vintage that brings up memories of Apple's cool floppy drive that read both PC and Mac disks, but I digress) is the only clear victory I can give Apple for hardware innovation in a very long time, and even so I can now buy one OEM for my PC for $300.
It all just underlines what I found odd about this little bit of functionality, present in "primitive" x86 BIOSes for many many years, making it to the Apple section of/. and the front pages of several Mac enthusiast websites. It's a very basic low-level functionality which every x86 enthusiast has had at his fingertips for years, despite the "primitive" nature of the hardware.
> With your kind of logic, Apple will never impress you.
Not with Steve's reality distortion field dictating everything at Apple, unfortunately. Look! It's a small cube! Buy it; it's innovative! Look! An LCD stuck onto the computer! Buy it! It's innovative! Look! We've integrated the power and DVI signals to produce an incompatible adapter so you can't use third-party displays without buying clunky adapters! It's innovative!
Again, I like MacOS' simple, intuitive design. That would be why I have Basilisk II running OS 8 on my PC for playing old Mac games, and for a symbolic link to my loving relationship with MacOS. That's also why, if the PCI card (by one of the Mac accelerator card companies in conjunction with Microcode Solutions) which is still under wraps which will allow a real G3/G4 processor to be used in an emulation of older iMacs does become available, I'll buy it and gladly run OS X at about native speed on my x86 box. But OS X's beautiful design isn't worth the closed design and great expense of the hardwae it currently runs on.
> , I'm sure you can post to applesucks.com and not waste our bandwidth.
It ain't your bandwidth, pal. This is the Apple section of/., not a Reality Distortion Field fanboy site.
> Apple has provided quite a lot to the computer industry.
Problem is, Apple never follows through. It starts something, and then sits on the pot while other companies do their business and makle it better than Apple ever did. You mentioned video: this is why Apple has to pay big studios to release content in QuickTime, while that really crappy Windows Media quietly took over the world., and why RealPlayer, which by all rights should not exist, still does. And while Windows Media format really, really sucks, the actual Windows Media Player has become far superior to QuickTime in its support of so many formats, and in the very simplicity of its design. QuickTime has an ungainly interface which Jobs insists on for aesthetic rather than practical reasons, with functionaility not present which has been in WMP since version 6.4, like remembering that I always want my videos to play double-sized or restarting as well as stopping when the screen is clicked in succession. I can't say whether these features are present in the Mac versions, but they are entirely lacking on the Win32 versions, including the beta of QuickTime 6.0. Apple starts a lot of things, and then never takes them to their fullest potential. It ties itself to closed and proprietary bits moreso than Microsoft does, since at least Microsoft doesn't exercise near-total control over the hardware.
> I've never found a computer as easy to open and install new components as a Power Mac tower
IBM's snap-open cases of the same vintage, if not a bit earlier, were just as nice if not moreso. Push in the sides, pull the covr up, instant access. Beautiful.
> Microsoft earns its "borg" nickname for a reason.
Yes, they do. I'm by no means a Microsoft fanatic. It's not the Microsoft OSes I love; it's the x86 hardware. Because, as much as I love MacOS (and believe it or not I do), I love having the added control and flexibility over my PC and my hardwae and upgrade paths. Something as simple as a BIOS password wasn't even available to typical Mac users until recently. Not to mention the higher-level hardware, like my beloved ATI All-in-Wonder card with its sweet sweet Guide+ driven TiVo functionality, hardware DVD acceleration that puts a Mac's to shame (the picture is much better; I have compared), etc. ATI's own TV products for the Mac don't nearly offer the ame functionalities and qualities.
That's just an example, of course. It's the x86 hardware's openness I love, not Windows or x86 Linux. In contrast the Mac field of available hardware and software is...paltry. I really do hate to say that, since I do prefer the Mac OS. But its hardware just sucks.
> And they control the PC hardware design by controlling the OS
Not remotely true. PC hardware manufacture is wide-open, and writing drivers for Windows is something any company can freely do. Not just that, but Microsoft has even on rare occasion offered to write their own drivers into the OS for compatibility with older hardware that nonetheless has a large user base--Voodoo video cards, for example. Microsoft offered to write XP drivers since nVidia had purchased 3dfx and discontinued support for 3dfx cards; but nVidia refused to allow Microsoft to do so.
At any rate, the hardware is wide-open, and unconstrained--unlike in the Mac world, where hardware makers often want to make their products available to all Mac users, and so cripple their devices in order to be compatible with the smaller Macs with little or no internal expansion. Hence expensive Firewire peripherals which could have been IDE devices at half the cost. Hence crippled devices like ATI's TV devices for the Mac, which haven't the same functionality since they're external and don't have the PCI bus' data rate.
In other words, there are no hardwae constraints in the PC world, other than what none of the dozens of motherboard manufacturers, drive manufcturers, etc., want to do. MS decides nothing, except for a few "XP Compatible" or other designations which are essentially meaningless since you can still install the hardware and drivers even if the drivers aren't approved.
> PC hardware should've been free of interrupts and other stupid things that Macs and other advanced hardware > like SGIs have never dealt with.
You have to blame IBM for that, not Microsoft, since IBM is responsible both for the basic PC design and the BIOS functionality. Aside from which, none of that matters except in very rare cases anymore, since ACPI compliance is the standard. Blaming PCs for IRQ conflicts is a bit passe, don't you think? That would be like me finding fault with the 16-bit bus which crippled many 68k Macs. It';s true, but it doesn't matter anymore. All modern PC motherboards have ACPI, which typically eliminates all problems in recent OSes. A small number of users have complaints, but on the whole the issue is dead.
> Which is worse: Apple offering password protection at a time where it needed it and the OS fully supported > it, or PC users being stuck with a bootstrapping process bound in an archaic resource management > system that's so old that it makes my wristwatch seem advanced?
ACPI isn't archaic, it's a modern way to deal with low-level processes in such a way as to be compatible with the archaic. I find it very elegant in fact that I can run nearly any PC OS made in the last 20 years, and most PC software made in the last 20 years, and yet still outperform the highest-end Macintosh available on almost all applications and benchmarks. If your computer is so much better because of its "superior" clean hardware design, why does mine kick its ass? And to get back to the topic, why is yours only now getting fatures my platform has had for at least 6 years?
Archaic or not, the PC platform has both near-total backwards compatibility, and the ability to eat G4 towers for breakfast. While I greatly prefer the interface of the Mac OS, it isn't worth the deficient hardware.
To be serious, I did spend *way* too much time at the computer lab my freshman year. People were getting worried that my only girlfriend would be that sweet sweet new PowerPC 7200 machine I sat at every day, back when all but two of the lab's computers were old 68k's.
It was this whole "internet" thing that amazed me, since I'd been dropped from the high-school world of un-networked Apple ]['s and deposited behind a glorious 15-bit 17-inch screen full of high-speed-networked goodness. I was all, "Wow. Heroin for the brain. Need...more...internet..."
And then after six months of spending hours and hours in the lab, I returned to normal life. Unfortunately, I can see how some people may get too involved in computers and the Net, and stay that way. It's simultaneously a very empowering tool for communication and acquisition of knowledge, and yet can also break down real-life communications and social functions when there's too much of a good thing.
So, I can see how such offices could be useful in offering not just discipline for rule-breakers, but assistance for those who may be spending too much time online.
So, Apple has just now told its users how to use a function equivalent to the BIOS passwords available to PC users for many years now, which prevent hardware and BIOS setting changes without the password.
Not to be trollish, but c'mon--once again Apple is just now reaching a functionality with a fair equivalent in the PC world. Why am I not impresed? OS X is impressive, but on the hardware side of things, Macs have done nothing impresdsive for years.
As an old Mac fan who got started out with computers in a lab full of 68k's and two glorious new PPC 7200's, I keep wanting Apple to impress me with their hardware (not by shaping and coloring the plastic, either). Announcements of OpenFirmware doing things PC BIOS's have been doing for at least six years don't qualify as impressive; they underline the very lack of impressiveness.
Hey Apple, impress me dammit! Give me something to make your hardware worth twice the price of a PC I can build with my own two hands...
> The switching supplies usually found in PCs can produce a lot of noise which will find its way to the sound > card no matter how well it's shielded.
First, better-quality power supplies are usually made of better components, and better sheilded from the start, producing a less dirty EM noise. I like Sparkle power supplies myself, though many others are as good or better.
Second, I don't see the power supply as a big issue since my soundcard and headphone amp are sheilded--the soundcard with a little steel RF sheilding cut to fit around it and given a couple layers of nonconducting paint just in case it accidentally touches something, as well as a rubber "footer" at the bottom so that it can rest flush with the motherboard around the PCI slot. There's one hole (covered with mesh, anyway) in the RF sheilding on the side away from the power supply, with a duct leading to a fan mounted on the back of the case for venting so that the 24/96 soundcard can't overheat. The headphone amp is a Corda-type design built inside the drive-bay RF sheilding box from an old Creative 4224 CD burner that broke. The amp itself is in a small cardboard box wrapped in thin plastic, with a Faraday cage of metal mesh around that plastic, and another layer of thin plastic between the Faraday cage and the drive-bay box from the old broken CD burner. There's a hole in one part of the thin plastic layers (and through the cardboard, obviously) for an exhaust fan. It's fronted with a plastic drive-bay panel with holes for two headphone jacks (high-impedence and low-impedence) and the volume knob, and a vent hole for the small exhaust fan mounted on top of the front of the drive-bay panel. So, it's definitely better-sheilded from RF noise than almost any consumer amp.
Since I listen with a pair of nice Beyerdynamic headphones, noise from fans and drives isn't an issue.
The great thing is that anyone can do this on the cheap. Audiophile-quality headphones and headphone amps are very cheap compared to the money one would need to spend to get equivalent sound from speakers, especially since anyone with a willingness to learn to solder can build a great headphone amp for a very small price, and the plans are readily available from the two headphone sites I mentioned in my above post. The HRTFs in modern games and APIs even make headphones a good choice for gaming, too.
> high quality audio can only be reproduced outside the electrically noisy environment inside a PC case
Not strictly true--just use adequate RF sheilding. I use my PC for everything, including sound that would even be pleasing to audiophiles who didn't know where it was coming from. I use a modified high-end soundcard sheilded all around down to the sides of the PCI slot, and I've made a DIY Corda-type headphone amp (thanks, Head-Fi.org and Headwize.com!)inside a sheilded drive-bay box. Nothing is truly "external" to the PC, though it may as well be because the effect of the sheilding is the same.
RF sheilding and Faraday cages, people! It *can* be done, with a lot of elbow grease.
> What do you see as the biggest and/or most interesting questions regarding Talmudic teaching as > they apply to current/near-future technology?
On a related question about Jewish teachings and technology, I can't seem to get my Golem to work. I've mixed the four elements in the proper proportions and recited all the usual kabbalistic incantations, but the damn thing just won't come to life and smite my enemies.
> New computer parts rarely fail within the warranty period, in my experience.
Erm, tell that to all those people who bought IBM's 75GXP (? IIRC) hard drives. I've also had two brand-new Linksys LNE100TX NICs die within 4 months of purchase, but fortunately that's a cheap part. Which isn't really the point, because many organizations prefer a "conservative" approach to systems acquisition. Like the old saying, "Nobody ever got fired for buying IBM."
Yes, the money *would* be better spent on backup equipment and training, sure. However, depending on what the organization has budgeted, a nice Sun system could have the advantage of CYA, which building a system by hand does not have. If something goes wrong on the Sun machine, it's Sun's fault. If the hardware dies, It's Sun's fault. If the server gets cracked, it's Sun's fault. (At least, these are better excuses).
Whereas, build it yourself and install *nix yourself, and it's your fault. If the hardware dies, it's your fault. If the server gets cracked, it's your fault. Your boss may very well say, "I told you we should have gone with a real vendor..."
DIY systems are best for organizations with very constrained IT budgets, or organizations run by geeks who know the advantages of DIY. An IT manager in a typical company doesn't necessarily know as much as the geeks working for him, and may blame them for choosing DIY instead of a "safe" vendor. Not to mention the regular suits outside the IT department, including bean-counters who may see a server outage on your DIY server, crunch the numbers, and yell at you for not choosing, again, a "safe" vendor for a little bit more money.
"Nobody ever got fired for buying IBM" may not be strictly true, and it may be an outdated sentiment, but nonetheless it embodies a certain attitude on behalf of management at many corporations.
Not a good idea.
on
Buying Unix?
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· Score: 4, Interesting
> For less than half the cost of that Sun POS, you can build a box that will handle quite a load if you build it from generic parts.
Yes, and then he could get cursed out by his bosses if/when a part fails. Look, I build my own machines for my own personal uses, like most people here. But for a real corporate/institutional server, that isn't a safe, accepted option.
See, if the Sun box dies, Sun will fix/replace it within the contractual period, and Sun will be to blame for the malfunction. If however "IT Guy" builds the server and installs *nix himself, "IT Guy" gets all the blame when something hardware or software goes wrong.
So, Sun [or IBM/Dell/whatever] is safe, while DIY is dangerous, in a real-world server environment--if you're the guy responsible for it.
Since it will be a server, give your bosses printouts of all the gaping security vulnerabilities discovered in Windows/whatever webserver. Explain that the Sun box will likely be far less hackable, not to mention more stable, and come with Sun's excellent support and more timely patches than Microsoft could ever offer.
In other words, play the hacker card. Your boss doesn't want his servers hacked because they run Windows, if they would be safe(r) running Unix, does he?:-)
> Compiling all my apps from source removes worries about this kinda thing;)
Not hardly. Look at how something like Klez works..it can infect a system through vulnerabilities in Web browsers if you check your e-mail through a Web interface. It's only a matter of time until viruses and worms with similar abilities move to Linux and OS X. The only reason they haven't done so yet isn't superior security, it's the fact that Windows systems are the best targets since there are so many. Why infect a few Linux boxen when you can infect tens or hundreds of thousands of Windows machines with the same effort?
Re:Williams not fitting the role?
on
Review: Insomnia
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· Score: 4, Insightful
> He's just too much a nice, wacky guy to come across as a killer I guess.
Only if you've never watched his vast body of work in "serious: films which typically have a smaller audience than the mainstream releases, with a few exceptions.
Frankly, I think Robin Williams is one of the best actors out there, with one of the widest ranges, and definitely with a gift for ad-lib. This is supported by a look at his IMDB entry: http://us.imdb.com/Name?Williams,+Robin reveals a career topheavy with comedy, but containing some great dramatic roles as well.
One of my favorite films ever (despite its mediocre reviews thanks to its slow pace and serious subject-matter) is *Being Human*, which stars Williams as several different characters across several different time periods, from prehistory to the present. Each one is an Everyman who faces a dramatic challenge, often as a sad and sympathetic character. His performance is dead-on in all those roles, a feat few actors could manage. It's one of those films that "average" people think is boring and hate, which is why it's off most people's radar--too philosophical for the masses since it's about "ordinary lives."
In *Awakenings* he injected a lot of life with his deliberate expressions and mannerisms into an otherwise fairly dull fact-based character. *Good Will Hunting*, *Jakob the Liar*, and a few others also get the benefit of Williams' talent as a non-comedic actor.
Let's not forget his "mixed" roles either, where he manages to blend comedy and seriousness, even pathos, successfully like few actors could--*Dead Poets' Society*, for example, and *Patch Adams*.
His filmography is of course topheavy, because he's a naturally hilarious guy and that's what got him started in show business. But he's proven himself as a great dramatic actor as well, in few roles which nonetheless had impact.
> E3 coverage continues, at Gamespy (some cool reviews), Gamegal (good photos) and other sites beginning with "Game."
So, am I the only one who misses all the obligatory pictures we used to get from these conventions of 3dfx's latest Lara Croft booth babe?;-)
They may have fallen behind in the video card market before their demise, but they sure had *showmanship*. Teenage girls in skimpy fantasy-wear and video cards the size of...
If you're sure you've got the right BIOS for your motherboard, and you can follow the manufacturer's flashing instructions, by all means upgrade the BIOS. I don't think "If it ain't broke, don't fix it" really applies much here since/. readers are the kinds of people likely to add new hardware to PCs at some point--and that new hardwae ould cause issues unless you've bothered to upgrade the BIOS; sometimes, those issues are serious.
Case in point is the bug some VIA chipsets had a year ago--PCI cards that saturate or hog the PCI bus could cause data corruption during file transfers. The most egregious offenders were Soundblaster Live! soundcards, but several other bus-hogging PCI cards produced the same data corruption issues. So, imagine adding a new PCI card to a "not broken" system, and suddenly having your files get currupted right and left. Whereas, immediately flashing to the newest BIOS update, would have prevented that pain.
That particular bug is one that caused me many headaches on my Windows partitions. It actually corrupted my FAT32 filesystem on a drive storing all my music. The same VIA chipset was also causing instability in my Linux partitions--the CPU drive strength and enhanced chip performance settings in the stock BIOS were causing my Linux installation to behave erratically. But finally after a couple months a new BIOS came out to solve all the instability issues on my Abit KT7-RAID--new PCI timings and more conservative CPU/bus settings stopped all data corruption under Windows and stopped Linux fron giving me inexplicable errors when running intense programs.
Now, if that BIOS were out when I bought my motherboatrd, and I had flashed it before installing my OSes, I would have had no problems. I say, as long as you know what you're doing, upgrade your BIOS early and often. Since I got a very stable machine I didn't bother to keep up with newer BIOS updates, but since I needed to reinstall WinXP the other day I went to Abit's site first and flashed the newest available BIOS. No harm done, everything's still working; and what's more, the newest BIOS contains support for larger hard drives than the old one did, so I can definitely get that new 120GB Maxtor knowing that drives up to 137GB are officially supported by the new BIOS.
So, I say, flash early and often, as long as you know what you're doing.
> Besides, how much does it cost to install a FireWire adapter card anyway?
That's not the point at all--an initial $25-$50 outlay for a Firewire adapter card, or an extra $25 for a motherboard with Firewire, would be no problem.
But you have to pay a $20-$30 premium *for every Firewire-equipped item*. That's the cost that will keep Firewire off everything except video cameras, higher-end digital cameras and scanners, and things like hard drives and burners targeted toward people too lazy or stupid to attach an internal drive or people with tiny computers that have no room for an internal drive.
$20-$30 per device is a huge outlay, when you add it up over all the devices you could buy over a few years that could have either expensive Firewire ports or cheap USB 2.0/successor ports. You have this powerful chipset that's overkill for most devices since most devices don't *need* peer-to-peer connectivity or even if they could benefit from it, lack the additional logic to implement/control it due to added expense.
> This isn't the SCSI versus IDE debate, because the price differential between FireWire and USB 2.0 is much > smaller than the price differential between SCSI and IDE.
Again, not at all true because the cost is distributed across a lot of smaller items. A $20-$30 additional cost for each Firewire-equipped device could add up quick. That's why it will never be a mainstream choice except for higher-end products and products for the lazy, tech stupid, or those with tiny computers like iMacs.
Everything you say is true. Firewire is an infinitely superior interface--and more than an interface, an architecture. It supports so many things, and so much better than USB 2.0. BUT...
Replace "Firewire" in the above comment with "SCSI" and replace "USB 2.0" with IDE. Now, finish the "BUT..." BUT...none of that matters because of practical considerations like cost--whether the vendor will spend the extra money or the customer pay the extra money.
It makes sense for high-end and mid-range (but still costly) consumer electronics equipment like video cameras and more expensive "prosumer"-level digital cameras to have Firewire ports. In the former case it's necessary because we're dealing with video data which could saturate the bus and either take forever to transfer or get more easily corrupted in the process without the safeguards Firewire employs. In the latter case a person who's buying a higher level of equipment would probably expect the same sort of interface he has with his DVcam and other higher-end toys.
But for most things other than DVcams and similar equipment, Firewire makes no sense. We want better faster cheaper. That means huge IDE drives over smaller more expensive SCSI drives (unless you need what SCSI offers, just as DVcams need what Firewire offers). That means not using the better but more complicated and more expensive Firewire when USB 2.0 will work much the same.
So, most suitable items will remain USB/2.0 connected, with Firewire gaining little ground even after its speed bump thanks to the expense of implementing its more complex architecture. Aside from digital video cameras and "prosumer" digital still cameras, and hard drives for people too lazy or lacking in knowledge to open their cases and stick another IDE drive in (or people whose cases are too small, like Mac owners), there's not much place for Firewire. USB 2.0 and its future successors, however, are perfect for most things which could connect to a computer--hell, even cable modems now usually have a USB port or two, since it costs almost nothing to add; even though it won't give as much bandwidth as with a $10 ethernet card and some cat 5, it's there because it's easy and nearly costless for the manufacturer to add and easy for uses who couldn't install an ethernet card to hook up.
Firewire's cost to implement thanks to its fancy peer-to-peer model guarantees that it won't be added to many things which don't explicitly need it, while USB 2.0's low implementation costs mean it'll go into everything and the kitchen sink. In the end it's just a SCSI vs. IDE debate--one's clearly superior, but the other is "good enough and cheaper."
Apple saw the writing on the wall, which is why they're finally deciding to stop being so stingy with their catchy Firewire name. If Apple wants to get Firewire on more than cameras and overpriced external hard drives and a middling number of computers, it has to start working for it or else...
> A condom I can roll on all the way to the hilt has a better chance of staying put than some poor thing > that barely gets half way there.
Length is a different matter entirely. Premium Japanese condoms are no shorter than premium American condoms, nor tighter for that matter.
You'd find that Kimono Microthins could even accomodate a big guy like Ron Jeremy pretty well--the thinness and high-grade latex result in a condom which stretches *easier* than most others, particularly thick American condoms made of low-quality latex which are apt to be uncomfortable because they don't stretch as easily. So, guys with girth ("long and thin goes too far in; short and thick does the trick") should be well-accommodated, and guys with length will find the condoms are as long as most others.
There are some guys who like baggy condoms--such as the deliberately baggy "Pleasure Plus" and such. Me, I like to feel the girl and not the condom--and Kimono MicroThins are the next best thing to bareback.;-)
Seriously, get the good stuff. I wouldn't trust lousy American condoms for anything--especially since I recall two condom-breakage incidents back when I was a teenager.
For the good stuff, get Kimono brand condoms, from Japan. They're made to European and Japanese standards as well as American FDA standards. I use the Kimono MicroThins, which are thinner but stronger than standard condoms because they're made of a higher-grade of latex and are at the right thickness (thinness?) to have a lot more give and stretchiness before breakage. My unscientific fill-a-bunch-of-condom-brands-with-water-and-use-t hem-as-bath-toys tests confirmed that Kimono MicroThins are *a lot* stronger than the Trojans and Lifestyles I tried. Several of the higher-class escorts (call-girls) I know swear by them. And since they're thinner, they conduct heat and sensation better too. I order mine here:
http://www.condoms.net/cgi-bin/SoftCart.cgi/cond om s/kimono_microthin.html?L+csense+TBEB7864
Another good addition to a going-to-college kit would be body lubricant. Astroglide is probably the most frequently used lubricant on adult film sets. However, if you've got the money to burn, Eros from Europe is a better lubricant, based on silicone compounds instead of glycerine--making it expensive. But a drop of silicone-based lube won't dry out:
And no, I'm not trying to pimp for that online store--it's just where I happen to buy all my condoms and lubricants. Better quality, plus no more embarrassment from walking up to a 16 year old counter clerk with a big bottle of lubricant and a jumbo pack of raingear.:-)
I'm impressed at this effort. I have to admire anyone who has a dream and just does it, danger be damned. But read this--I'm surprised nobody mentioned it yet:
http://www.snopes2.com/spoons/noose/balloon.htm
Granted, a weather-balloon-covered-lawnchair doesn't have the same geek appeal and doesn't require the same technical expertise and long hours of work as a rocket, but still--this guy had a dream, he did it, he got a lot more than he bargained for, and people still read about him 20 years after his feat.
You've got to be impressed, in some manner or another...
What bothers me isn't just the "false positives," but the plain positives as well. Most of these things, like the ones getting deployed in NYC at "possible terrorit targets," are using parts of the FBI database for their facial recognition capabilities. Well, any American who's ever even been accused of a felony in recent years, even if he was never convicted, is in the FBI database.
I'm in that database because when I was an 18 year old high school senior I committed the high crime of having had consensual sex with my girlfriend, who was a year and a half younger than I was. It's bad enough to get charged with a felony for consensual sex with a partner who's within 2 years of your own age, but now maybe I'll get harassed when I go to national monuments or big events because of hits in facial recognition software. In theory the facial recognition technology will only be hooked into a partial database of certain types of people. In practice, I doubt they'll be very selective.
What if you got arrested as a teenager for having a small amount of marijuana? What if you were accused of assault for a minor altercation? What about any number of minor infractions which still would have landed your face in the FBI database? My guess is, as technology gets better and more discriminating in the field, the parts of the FBI databasde used will get wider until the full database gets scanned.
So, it's not just false-positives that are a worry, but positives against people with very minor infractions that have still landed them in the FBI database. Should you get shaken down by some overzealous dweeb who thinks you're dealing drugs because 10 years ago you got caught with your personal stash of green? And what of the potential for abuse of sensitive personal data?
Now that this particular can of worms has been opened under the excuse of 9/11, it's only going to get bigger and more invasive. First they'll assure us the database they're using only has "violent" criminals in it. Then it'll only be felons. Next it's the whole FBI database, including all the pictures of people whose parents were stupid enough to fingerprint and photograph their children and submit a packet voluntarily "to protect your chuildren in case of abduction", and DMV databases as well.
Is it just me, or is it getting kind of Orwellian in here?
I own the old Hollywood+, and have seen the newer replacement card. Fact is, neither one can hold a candle to the detail and color depth of the ATI DVD Player's Cinemaster-based decoding engine.
he only place the REALmagic cards stand out is in color saturation--which is a plus if you're going to be using a big projection system, but it comes at the cost of a lot of detail.
I spent a lot of time comparing all the Windows software players I could find, and the old REALmagic H+ card which I own, and the newer one which I saw at a trade show, and even the old Mpact hardware DVD card I got out of an old Gateway. The fact is, the REALmagic cards don't even have as much detail as the old Mpact card, which came out IIRC in 1997 and whose maker went bankrupt. I think the REALmagic cards are using hardware smoothing--which would make the picture look better on a standard-res NTSC TV, but which results in a huge lack of detail in HD resolutions when compared to the other solutions.
So, if you *really* care about the best quality, get the ATI card.
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> You did not get O'Reilly's point!
;-)
I always get O'Reilly's point. I watch his show on FoxNN every night at 11, and I find myself either completely agreeing with what he has to say on an issue, or feeling exactly the opposite.
> His argument was that this book should not have been published by a state-funded institution.
That's an insane argument for several reasons. The first is that a university is an academic institution, and its allegiance has to be to the facts and the truth, not to some pre-approved noncontroversial political piffle. Only despotisms dictate what academic institutions can espouse, and as Thomas Jefferson said, "An elective despotism is not the government we fought for."
The second is that nearly everything is state-funded these days. They take too much of our money in taxes--which the Constitution originally forbade them to do; they had to amend it early this century to allow the federal income tax at all. Then they use our own money to fund everything, all levels of the educational system, fom pre-kindergarten programs to college grants and loans. So by your reasoning, and O'Reilly's, no educational institution in the country should ever say anything controversial or publish anything controversial, only useless non-offensive PC junk. I call BS. Even private colleges take a lot of state money today, thanks to this insane notion we have that *everyone* should go to college. All that does is devalue a college degree and lower the common denominator, making a college degree worth no more than a HS diploma used to be, and necessitating a graduate degree to be worth as much as a BA or BS used to. And it extends state and federal tendrils where they don't belong.
But getting back to the point, we as taxpayers fund a lot of things we don't want to. I have to fund insane public schools which don't work the way they should. You have to fund books you don't like. Too bad; we have to live with it.
> If the book had been published by a 'private' publisher, O'Reilly would not have put it on his show.
Oh yes he would have! Instead of blasting the U of M press, and calling for state lawmakers to look into it, he would have called for a boycott of the private press. Hell, he pratically called for a boycott of the entire nation of Canada the other night...
If all you want is news, local channels ae good enough. Use the MP3 player for music, local channels for news and talk. After all--I hate to break it to you--but I'd be willing to bet this whole satellite radio thing is a fad that will go belly-up, bankrupt the same way Iridium did. Iridium was a quality, but more expensive and more expensive to maintain, alternative to other mobile communications. Satellite radio is a quality, but more expensive and more expensive to maintain, alternative to other radio sources.
Satellite radio is a fad because, bet you dollars to donuts, it's relying on growth to keep the bills paid. However, it will reach a ceiling within a year, and all the people interested in paying for a commercial-free version of the radio they can get for free, will have purchased their equipment and inked their subscription contracts. After that, adoption will slow to a crawl, money will become increasingly tight, royalty payments will go unmade, channels will start dropping, and XM and Sirius satellite radio will die, gone the way of all fads.
Anyone care to take that bet? Satellite radio is going to fail, plain and simple. The vast majority of people will never pay for it, and the relatively small number of adopters will not be enough to support the whole network with its tech upkeep, royalty payments, and all.
> With all the anti-Muslim propaganda currently in the news, I feel it's best to try to
:-) Controversial subject matter, but the book he said shouldn't have been published is judith Levine's *Harmful to Minors*:
6 8/ qid=1023794022/sr=8-1/ref=sr_8_1/102-3562730-02361 48
> understand things from another point of view.
That's how I try to approach everything. Why believe what agenda-driven media and political people claim, when you can get closer to the source and make up your own mind?
That's why, when I saw Bill O'Reilly screaming his loudest about a recent book release, complaining bitterly that a university press would dare to publish it--I knew I had to read it.
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/08166400
So, I pre-ordered it, and I have to say it's a fantastic analysis of the current situation. The author makes a lot of sense, and I feel sad that we (Americans) live in a country where people are so outraged by the simple truths most of the civilized world already takes for granted. We in the U.S. treat 15 year olds the same as 5 year olds. No wonder some kids rebel against that...
Anyway, I always like to support free speech by buying the books of authors whose books get assailed for silly personal moral reasons. So, go buy that book, or another one in need of support, as a big F-U to those who would censor our right to read.
The "common" BIOS passwords are gone from current PC motherboards. However, I'm sure it'll only be a few days before someone posts an easy way to get around the OpenFirmware passwords on Macs, too. Hackers have a way of doing that sort of thing. ;-)
> Apple's original intent was to design the Macintosh for use as an appliance
/. and the front pages of several Mac enthusiast websites. It's a very basic low-level functionality which every x86 enthusiast has had at his fingertips for years, despite the "primitive" nature of the hardware.
/., not a Reality Distortion Field fanboy site.
This is why I much prefer Woz's old philosophy. The Apple ]['s actually came with schematics. The Macs came with "tamper-resistant" cases. That says a lot to me about how little Apple respects tech-savvy users. They only want to build an appliance for the average user, closing it off to the point of not even making it well known that their OpenFirmware had this simple functionality which would be so useful for labs and other public Macs. (That is, if the below post about this functionality having been there for so long is accurate).
As a user who actually knows what he's doing, I feel condescended to by Apple's behaviour constantly, which is why I remain a PC user. When I graduated collage I couldn't afford a PowerMac, and very reluctantly bought a used 100MHz 486DX4 laptop. Practically burnt a hole in my leg when using it for extended periods, but it ran Windows 95 well enough and did everything the Macs did, but with less finesse and speed. By the time I could afford a new computer, I'd educated myself enough to realize that although I *much* preferred the MacOS, despite its cooperative multitasking at the time, I'd be able to build a PC from quality parts that would perform much better and be much more upgradeable. Today my PC is based around an Abit motherboard with onboard RAID; Abit not only lets users know what's in their BIOSes, it encourages tech-savvy users to change features and settings by providing a utility to change registers of a binary BIOS file before flashing to the new one. They don't hide features from me for years. I like having control over my hardware, not being condescended to about it, which is why this OpenFirmware feature being made available after so many years is so unimpressive. I love the MacOS, but I loathe the closed nature of the hardware.
> it's a positive step in an otherwise dull market where innovation is still an exception, not a rule.
Again, providing something in the Mac world which has been available on most PCs for many years, isn't innovation at all. I'm perfectly willing to award Apple the software innovation crown it richly deserves. But it doesn't deserve any credit for hardware and low-level logic innovation. In that regard it's still trailing behind x86 machines, since while Apple's logic is newer and cleaner, its functionality trails behind x86 counterparts. x86 users get the fastest and newest of almost every feature first, with quite a lag before Mac platforms get them. We get faster memory, faster and larger ATA device support for newer ATA standards, faster graphics accelerators, and the ability to interchange most of this technology with our older hardware. The few exceptions I can think of where Apple got the hardware first are areas where PCs very soon caught up, often with the mere purchase of a $40 card, like USB and Firewire. The SuperDrive (of course, to guys of my vintage that brings up memories of Apple's cool floppy drive that read both PC and Mac disks, but I digress) is the only clear victory I can give Apple for hardware innovation in a very long time, and even so I can now buy one OEM for my PC for $300.
It all just underlines what I found odd about this little bit of functionality, present in "primitive" x86 BIOSes for many many years, making it to the Apple section of
> With your kind of logic, Apple will never impress you.
Not with Steve's reality distortion field dictating everything at Apple, unfortunately. Look! It's a small cube! Buy it; it's innovative! Look! An LCD stuck onto the computer! Buy it! It's innovative! Look! We've integrated the power and DVI signals to produce an incompatible adapter so you can't use third-party displays without buying clunky adapters! It's innovative!
Again, I like MacOS' simple, intuitive design. That would be why I have Basilisk II running OS 8 on my PC for playing old Mac games, and for a symbolic link to my loving relationship with MacOS. That's also why, if the PCI card (by one of the Mac accelerator card companies in conjunction with Microcode Solutions) which is still under wraps which will allow a real G3/G4 processor to be used in an emulation of older iMacs does become available, I'll buy it and gladly run OS X at about native speed on my x86 box. But OS X's beautiful design isn't worth the closed design and great expense of the hardwae it currently runs on.
> , I'm sure you can post to applesucks.com and not waste our bandwidth.
It ain't your bandwidth, pal. This is the Apple section of
> Apple has provided quite a lot to the computer industry.
Problem is, Apple never follows through. It starts something, and then sits on the pot while other companies do their business and makle it better than Apple ever did. You mentioned video: this is why Apple has to pay big studios to release content in QuickTime, while that really crappy Windows Media quietly took over the world., and why RealPlayer, which by all rights should not exist, still does. And while Windows Media format really, really sucks, the actual Windows Media Player has become far superior to QuickTime in its support of so many formats, and in the very simplicity of its design. QuickTime has an ungainly interface which Jobs insists on for aesthetic rather than practical reasons, with functionaility not present which has been in WMP since version 6.4, like remembering that I always want my videos to play double-sized or restarting as well as stopping when the screen is clicked in succession. I can't say whether these features are present in the Mac versions, but they are entirely lacking on the Win32 versions, including the beta of QuickTime 6.0. Apple starts a lot of things, and then never takes them to their fullest potential. It ties itself to closed and proprietary bits moreso than Microsoft does, since at least Microsoft doesn't exercise near-total control over the hardware.
> I've never found a computer as easy to open and install new components as a Power Mac tower
IBM's snap-open cases of the same vintage, if not a bit earlier, were just as nice if not moreso. Push in the sides, pull the covr up, instant access. Beautiful.
> Microsoft earns its "borg" nickname for a reason.
Yes, they do. I'm by no means a Microsoft fanatic. It's not the Microsoft OSes I love; it's the x86 hardware. Because, as much as I love MacOS (and believe it or not I do), I love having the added control and flexibility over my PC and my hardwae and upgrade paths. Something as simple as a BIOS password wasn't even available to typical Mac users until recently. Not to mention the higher-level hardware, like my beloved ATI All-in-Wonder card with its sweet sweet Guide+ driven TiVo functionality, hardware DVD acceleration that puts a Mac's to shame (the picture is much better; I have compared), etc. ATI's own TV products for the Mac don't nearly offer the ame functionalities and qualities.
That's just an example, of course. It's the x86 hardware's openness I love, not Windows or x86 Linux. In contrast the Mac field of available hardware and software is...paltry. I really do hate to say that, since I do prefer the Mac OS. But its hardware just sucks.
> And they control the PC hardware design by controlling the OS
Not remotely true. PC hardware manufacture is wide-open, and writing drivers for Windows is something any company can freely do. Not just that, but Microsoft has even on rare occasion offered to write their own drivers into the OS for compatibility with older hardware that nonetheless has a large user base--Voodoo video cards, for example. Microsoft offered to write XP drivers since nVidia had purchased 3dfx and discontinued support for 3dfx cards; but nVidia refused to allow Microsoft to do so.
At any rate, the hardware is wide-open, and unconstrained--unlike in the Mac world, where hardware makers often want to make their products available to all Mac users, and so cripple their devices in order to be compatible with the smaller Macs with little or no internal expansion. Hence expensive Firewire peripherals which could have been IDE devices at half the cost. Hence crippled devices like ATI's TV devices for the Mac, which haven't the same functionality since they're external and don't have the PCI bus' data rate.
In other words, there are no hardwae constraints in the PC world, other than what none of the dozens of motherboard manufacturers, drive manufcturers, etc., want to do. MS decides nothing, except for a few "XP Compatible" or other designations which are essentially meaningless since you can still install the hardware and drivers even if the drivers aren't approved.
> PC hardware should've been free of interrupts and other stupid things that Macs and other advanced hardware
> like SGIs have never dealt with.
You have to blame IBM for that, not Microsoft, since IBM is responsible both for the basic PC design and the BIOS functionality. Aside from which, none of that matters except in very rare cases anymore, since ACPI compliance is the standard. Blaming PCs for IRQ conflicts is a bit passe, don't you think? That would be like me finding fault with the 16-bit bus which crippled many 68k Macs. It';s true, but it doesn't matter anymore. All modern PC motherboards have ACPI, which typically eliminates all problems in recent OSes. A small number of users have complaints, but on the whole the issue is dead.
> Which is worse: Apple offering password protection at a time where it needed it and the OS fully supported
> it, or PC users being stuck with a bootstrapping process bound in an archaic resource management
> system that's so old that it makes my wristwatch seem advanced?
ACPI isn't archaic, it's a modern way to deal with low-level processes in such a way as to be compatible with the archaic. I find it very elegant in fact that I can run nearly any PC OS made in the last 20 years, and most PC software made in the last 20 years, and yet still outperform the highest-end Macintosh available on almost all applications and benchmarks. If your computer is so much better because of its "superior" clean hardware design, why does mine kick its ass? And to get back to the topic, why is yours only now getting fatures my platform has had for at least 6 years?
Archaic or not, the PC platform has both near-total backwards compatibility, and the ability to eat G4 towers for breakfast. While I greatly prefer the interface of the Mac OS, it isn't worth the deficient hardware.
To be serious, I did spend *way* too much time at the computer lab my freshman year. People were getting worried that my only girlfriend would be that sweet sweet new PowerPC 7200 machine I sat at every day, back when all but two of the lab's computers were old 68k's.
It was this whole "internet" thing that amazed me, since I'd been dropped from the high-school world of un-networked Apple ]['s and deposited behind a glorious 15-bit 17-inch screen full of high-speed-networked goodness. I was all, "Wow. Heroin for the brain. Need...more...internet..."
And then after six months of spending hours and hours in the lab, I returned to normal life. Unfortunately, I can see how some people may get too involved in computers and the Net, and stay that way. It's simultaneously a very empowering tool for communication and acquisition of knowledge, and yet can also break down real-life communications and social functions when there's too much of a good thing.
So, I can see how such offices could be useful in offering not just discipline for rule-breakers, but assistance for those who may be spending too much time online.
So, Apple has just now told its users how to use a function equivalent to the BIOS passwords available to PC users for many years now, which prevent hardware and BIOS setting changes without the password.
Not to be trollish, but c'mon--once again Apple is just now reaching a functionality with a fair equivalent in the PC world. Why am I not impresed? OS X is impressive, but on the hardware side of things, Macs have done nothing impresdsive for years.
As an old Mac fan who got started out with computers in a lab full of 68k's and two glorious new PPC 7200's, I keep wanting Apple to impress me with their hardware (not by shaping and coloring the plastic, either). Announcements of OpenFirmware doing things PC BIOS's have been doing for at least six years don't qualify as impressive; they underline the very lack of impressiveness.
Hey Apple, impress me dammit! Give me something to make your hardware worth twice the price of a PC I can build with my own two hands...
> The switching supplies usually found in PCs can produce a lot of noise which will find its way to the sound
> card no matter how well it's shielded.
First, better-quality power supplies are usually made of better components, and better sheilded from the start, producing a less dirty EM noise. I like Sparkle power supplies myself, though many others are as good or better.
Second, I don't see the power supply as a big issue since my soundcard and headphone amp are sheilded--the soundcard with a little steel RF sheilding cut to fit around it and given a couple layers of nonconducting paint just in case it accidentally touches something, as well as a rubber "footer" at the bottom so that it can rest flush with the motherboard around the PCI slot. There's one hole (covered with mesh, anyway) in the RF sheilding on the side away from the power supply, with a duct leading to a fan mounted on the back of the case for venting so that the 24/96 soundcard can't overheat. The headphone amp is a Corda-type design built inside the drive-bay RF sheilding box from an old Creative 4224 CD burner that broke. The amp itself is in a small cardboard box wrapped in thin plastic, with a Faraday cage of metal mesh around that plastic, and another layer of thin plastic between the Faraday cage and the drive-bay box from the old broken CD burner. There's a hole in one part of the thin plastic layers (and through the cardboard, obviously) for an exhaust fan. It's fronted with a plastic drive-bay panel with holes for two headphone jacks (high-impedence and low-impedence) and the volume knob, and a vent hole for the small exhaust fan mounted on top of the front of the drive-bay panel. So, it's definitely better-sheilded from RF noise than almost any consumer amp.
Since I listen with a pair of nice Beyerdynamic headphones, noise from fans and drives isn't an issue.
The great thing is that anyone can do this on the cheap. Audiophile-quality headphones and headphone amps are very cheap compared to the money one would need to spend to get equivalent sound from speakers, especially since anyone with a willingness to learn to solder can build a great headphone amp for a very small price, and the plans are readily available from the two headphone sites I mentioned in my above post. The HRTFs in modern games and APIs even make headphones a good choice for gaming, too.
> high quality audio can only be reproduced outside the electrically noisy environment inside a PC case
Not strictly true--just use adequate RF sheilding. I use my PC for everything, including sound that would even be pleasing to audiophiles who didn't know where it was coming from. I use a modified high-end soundcard sheilded all around down to the sides of the PCI slot, and I've made a DIY Corda-type headphone amp (thanks, Head-Fi.org and Headwize.com!)inside a sheilded drive-bay box. Nothing is truly "external" to the PC, though it may as well be because the effect of the sheilding is the same.
RF sheilding and Faraday cages, people! It *can* be done, with a lot of elbow grease.
> What do you see as the biggest and/or most interesting questions regarding Talmudic teaching as
> they apply to current/near-future technology?
On a related question about Jewish teachings and technology, I can't seem to get my Golem to work. I've mixed the four elements in the proper proportions and recited all the usual kabbalistic incantations, but the damn thing just won't come to life and smite my enemies.
So, what's the proper way to compile a Golem?
;-)
> New computer parts rarely fail within the warranty period, in my experience.
Erm, tell that to all those people who bought IBM's 75GXP (? IIRC) hard drives. I've also had two brand-new Linksys LNE100TX NICs die within 4 months of purchase, but fortunately that's a cheap part. Which isn't really the point, because many organizations prefer a "conservative" approach to systems acquisition. Like the old saying, "Nobody ever got fired for buying IBM."
Yes, the money *would* be better spent on backup equipment and training, sure. However, depending on what the organization has budgeted, a nice Sun system could have the advantage of CYA, which building a system by hand does not have. If something goes wrong on the Sun machine, it's Sun's fault. If the hardware dies, It's Sun's fault. If the server gets cracked, it's Sun's fault. (At least, these are better excuses).
Whereas, build it yourself and install *nix yourself, and it's your fault. If the hardware dies, it's your fault. If the server gets cracked, it's your fault. Your boss may very well say, "I told you we should have gone with a real vendor..."
DIY systems are best for organizations with very constrained IT budgets, or organizations run by geeks who know the advantages of DIY. An IT manager in a typical company doesn't necessarily know as much as the geeks working for him, and may blame them for choosing DIY instead of a "safe" vendor. Not to mention the regular suits outside the IT department, including bean-counters who may see a server outage on your DIY server, crunch the numbers, and yell at you for not choosing, again, a "safe" vendor for a little bit more money.
"Nobody ever got fired for buying IBM" may not be strictly true, and it may be an outdated sentiment, but nonetheless it embodies a certain attitude on behalf of management at many corporations.
> For less than half the cost of that Sun POS, you can build a box that will handle quite a load if you build it from generic parts.
Yes, and then he could get cursed out by his bosses if/when a part fails. Look, I build my own machines for my own personal uses, like most people here. But for a real corporate/institutional server, that isn't a safe, accepted option.
See, if the Sun box dies, Sun will fix/replace it within the contractual period, and Sun will be to blame for the malfunction. If however "IT Guy" builds the server and installs *nix himself, "IT Guy" gets all the blame when something hardware or software goes wrong.
So, Sun [or IBM/Dell/whatever] is safe, while DIY is dangerous, in a real-world server environment--if you're the guy responsible for it.
Since it will be a server, give your bosses printouts of all the gaping security vulnerabilities discovered in Windows/whatever webserver. Explain that the Sun box will likely be far less hackable, not to mention more stable, and come with Sun's excellent support and more timely patches than Microsoft could ever offer.
:-)
In other words, play the hacker card. Your boss doesn't want his servers hacked because they run Windows, if they would be safe(r) running Unix, does he?
> Compiling all my apps from source removes worries about this kinda thing ;)
Not hardly. Look at how something like Klez works..it can infect a system through vulnerabilities in Web browsers if you check your e-mail through a Web interface. It's only a matter of time until viruses and worms with similar abilities move to Linux and OS X. The only reason they haven't done so yet isn't superior security, it's the fact that Windows systems are the best targets since there are so many. Why infect a few Linux boxen when you can infect tens or hundreds of thousands of Windows machines with the same effort?
> He's just too much a nice, wacky guy to come across as a killer I guess.
Only if you've never watched his vast body of work in "serious: films which typically have a smaller audience than the mainstream releases, with a few exceptions.
Frankly, I think Robin Williams is one of the best actors out there, with one of the widest ranges, and definitely with a gift for ad-lib. This is supported by a look at his IMDB entry: http://us.imdb.com/Name?Williams,+Robin reveals a career topheavy with comedy, but containing some great dramatic roles as well.
One of my favorite films ever (despite its mediocre reviews thanks to its slow pace and serious subject-matter) is *Being Human*, which stars Williams as several different characters across several different time periods, from prehistory to the present. Each one is an Everyman who faces a dramatic challenge, often as a sad and sympathetic character. His performance is dead-on in all those roles, a feat few actors could manage. It's one of those films that "average" people think is boring and hate, which is why it's off most people's radar--too philosophical for the masses since it's about "ordinary lives."
In *Awakenings* he injected a lot of life with his deliberate expressions and mannerisms into an otherwise fairly dull fact-based character. *Good Will Hunting*, *Jakob the Liar*, and a few others also get the benefit of Williams' talent as a non-comedic actor.
Let's not forget his "mixed" roles either, where he manages to blend comedy and seriousness, even pathos, successfully like few actors could--*Dead Poets' Society*, for example, and *Patch Adams*.
His filmography is of course topheavy, because he's a naturally hilarious guy and that's what got him started in show business. But he's proven himself as a great dramatic actor as well, in few roles which nonetheless had impact.
> E3 coverage continues, at Gamespy (some cool reviews), Gamegal (good photos) and other sites beginning with "Game."
;-)
So, am I the only one who misses all the obligatory pictures we used to get from these conventions of 3dfx's latest Lara Croft booth babe?
They may have fallen behind in the video card market before their demise, but they sure had *showmanship*. Teenage girls in skimpy fantasy-wear and video cards the size of...
If you're sure you've got the right BIOS for your motherboard, and you can follow the manufacturer's flashing instructions, by all means upgrade the BIOS. I don't think "If it ain't broke, don't fix it" really applies much here since /. readers are the kinds of people likely to add new hardware to PCs at some point--and that new hardwae ould cause issues unless you've bothered to upgrade the BIOS; sometimes, those issues are serious.
Case in point is the bug some VIA chipsets had a year ago--PCI cards that saturate or hog the PCI bus could cause data corruption during file transfers. The most egregious offenders were Soundblaster Live! soundcards, but several other bus-hogging PCI cards produced the same data corruption issues. So, imagine adding a new PCI card to a "not broken" system, and suddenly having your files get currupted right and left. Whereas, immediately flashing to the newest BIOS update, would have prevented that pain.
That particular bug is one that caused me many headaches on my Windows partitions. It actually corrupted my FAT32 filesystem on a drive storing all my music. The same VIA chipset was also causing instability in my Linux partitions--the CPU drive strength and enhanced chip performance settings in the stock BIOS were causing my Linux installation to behave erratically. But finally after a couple months a new BIOS came out to solve all the instability issues on my Abit KT7-RAID--new PCI timings and more conservative CPU/bus settings stopped all data corruption under Windows and stopped Linux fron giving me inexplicable errors when running intense programs.
Now, if that BIOS were out when I bought my motherboatrd, and I had flashed it before installing my OSes, I would have had no problems. I say, as long as you know what you're doing, upgrade your BIOS early and often. Since I got a very stable machine I didn't bother to keep up with newer BIOS updates, but since I needed to reinstall WinXP the other day I went to Abit's site first and flashed the newest available BIOS. No harm done, everything's still working; and what's more, the newest BIOS contains support for larger hard drives than the old one did, so I can definitely get that new 120GB Maxtor knowing that drives up to 137GB are officially supported by the new BIOS.
So, I say, flash early and often, as long as you know what you're doing.
> Besides, how much does it cost to install a FireWire adapter card anyway?
That's not the point at all--an initial $25-$50 outlay for a Firewire adapter card, or an extra $25 for a motherboard with Firewire, would be no problem.
But you have to pay a $20-$30 premium *for every Firewire-equipped item*. That's the cost that will keep Firewire off everything except video cameras, higher-end digital cameras and scanners, and things like hard drives and burners targeted toward people too lazy or stupid to attach an internal drive or people with tiny computers that have no room for an internal drive.
$20-$30 per device is a huge outlay, when you add it up over all the devices you could buy over a few years that could have either expensive Firewire ports or cheap USB 2.0/successor ports. You have this powerful chipset that's overkill for most devices since most devices don't *need* peer-to-peer connectivity or even if they could benefit from it, lack the additional logic to implement/control it due to added expense.
> This isn't the SCSI versus IDE debate, because the price differential between FireWire and USB 2.0 is much
> smaller than the price differential between SCSI and IDE.
Again, not at all true because the cost is distributed across a lot of smaller items. A $20-$30 additional cost for each Firewire-equipped device could add up quick. That's why it will never be a mainstream choice except for higher-end products and products for the lazy, tech stupid, or those with tiny computers like iMacs.
Everything you say is true. Firewire is an infinitely superior interface--and more than an interface, an architecture. It supports so many things, and so much better than USB 2.0. BUT...
Replace "Firewire" in the above comment with "SCSI" and replace "USB 2.0" with IDE. Now, finish the "BUT..." BUT...none of that matters because of practical considerations like cost--whether the vendor will spend the extra money or the customer pay the extra money.
It makes sense for high-end and mid-range (but still costly) consumer electronics equipment like video cameras and more expensive "prosumer"-level digital cameras to have Firewire ports. In the former case it's necessary because we're dealing with video data which could saturate the bus and either take forever to transfer or get more easily corrupted in the process without the safeguards Firewire employs. In the latter case a person who's buying a higher level of equipment would probably expect the same sort of interface he has with his DVcam and other higher-end toys.
But for most things other than DVcams and similar equipment, Firewire makes no sense. We want better faster cheaper. That means huge IDE drives over smaller more expensive SCSI drives (unless you need what SCSI offers, just as DVcams need what Firewire offers). That means not using the better but more complicated and more expensive Firewire when USB 2.0 will work much the same.
So, most suitable items will remain USB/2.0 connected, with Firewire gaining little ground even after its speed bump thanks to the expense of implementing its more complex architecture. Aside from digital video cameras and "prosumer" digital still cameras, and hard drives for people too lazy or lacking in knowledge to open their cases and stick another IDE drive in (or people whose cases are too small, like Mac owners), there's not much place for Firewire. USB 2.0 and its future successors, however, are perfect for most things which could connect to a computer--hell, even cable modems now usually have a USB port or two, since it costs almost nothing to add; even though it won't give as much bandwidth as with a $10 ethernet card and some cat 5, it's there because it's easy and nearly costless for the manufacturer to add and easy for uses who couldn't install an ethernet card to hook up.
Firewire's cost to implement thanks to its fancy peer-to-peer model guarantees that it won't be added to many things which don't explicitly need it, while USB 2.0's low implementation costs mean it'll go into everything and the kitchen sink. In the end it's just a SCSI vs. IDE debate--one's clearly superior, but the other is "good enough and cheaper."
Apple saw the writing on the wall, which is why they're finally deciding to stop being so stingy with their catchy Firewire name. If Apple wants to get Firewire on more than cameras and overpriced external hard drives and a middling number of computers, it has to start working for it or else...
> A condom I can roll on all the way to the hilt has a better chance of staying put than some poor thing
;-)
> that barely gets half way there.
Length is a different matter entirely. Premium Japanese condoms are no shorter than premium American condoms, nor tighter for that matter.
You'd find that Kimono Microthins could even accomodate a big guy like Ron Jeremy pretty well--the thinness and high-grade latex result in a condom which stretches *easier* than most others, particularly thick American condoms made of low-quality latex which are apt to be uncomfortable because they don't stretch as easily. So, guys with girth ("long and thin goes too far in; short and thick does the trick") should be well-accommodated, and guys with length will find the condoms are as long as most others.
There are some guys who like baggy condoms--such as the deliberately baggy "Pleasure Plus" and such. Me, I like to feel the girl and not the condom--and Kimono MicroThins are the next best thing to bareback.
> yeah, japanese condoms are great, as long as you're hung like a golf pencil.
;-)
You are aware that latex, in fact, stretches? Or are you one of those guys who buys Magnums and wears 'em baggier than a pair of jeans in da hood?
Seriously, get the good stuff. I wouldn't trust lousy American condoms for anything--especially since I recall two condom-breakage incidents back when I was a teenager.
t hem-as-bath-toys tests confirmed that Kimono MicroThins are *a lot* stronger than the Trojans and Lifestyles I tried. Several of the higher-class escorts (call-girls) I know swear by them. And since they're thinner, they conduct heat and sensation better too. I order mine here:
d om s/kimono_microthin.html?L+csense+TBEB7864
e s/ eros.html?L+csense+TBEB7864+1022724296
e s/ gsw_lubesamp.html?L+csense+TBEB7864
:-)
For the good stuff, get Kimono brand condoms, from Japan. They're made to European and Japanese standards as well as American FDA standards. I use the Kimono MicroThins, which are thinner but stronger than standard condoms because they're made of a higher-grade of latex and are at the right thickness (thinness?) to have a lot more give and stretchiness before breakage. My unscientific fill-a-bunch-of-condom-brands-with-water-and-use-
http://www.condoms.net/cgi-bin/SoftCart.cgi/con
Another good addition to a going-to-college kit would be body lubricant. Astroglide is probably the most frequently used lubricant on adult film sets. However, if you've got the money to burn, Eros from Europe is a better lubricant, based on silicone compounds instead of glycerine--making it expensive. But a drop of silicone-based lube won't dry out:
http://www.condoms.net/cgi-bin/SoftCart.cgi/lub
Or, there's a cheap sampler which includes small tubes of Eros and some flavored lubes:
http://www.condoms.net/cgi-bin/SoftCart.cgi/lub
And no, I'm not trying to pimp for that online store--it's just where I happen to buy all my condoms and lubricants. Better quality, plus no more embarrassment from walking up to a 16 year old counter clerk with a big bottle of lubricant and a jumbo pack of raingear.
I'm impressed at this effort. I have to admire anyone who has a dream and just does it, danger be damned. But read this--I'm surprised nobody mentioned it yet:
http://www.snopes2.com/spoons/noose/balloon.htm
Granted, a weather-balloon-covered-lawnchair doesn't have the same geek appeal and doesn't require the same technical expertise and long hours of work as a rocket, but still--this guy had a dream, he did it, he got a lot more than he bargained for, and people still read about him 20 years after his feat.
You've got to be impressed, in some manner or another...
What bothers me isn't just the "false positives," but the plain positives as well. Most of these things, like the ones getting deployed in NYC at "possible terrorit targets," are using parts of the FBI database for their facial recognition capabilities. Well, any American who's ever even been accused of a felony in recent years, even if he was never convicted, is in the FBI database.
I'm in that database because when I was an 18 year old high school senior I committed the high crime of having had consensual sex with my girlfriend, who was a year and a half younger than I was. It's bad enough to get charged with a felony for consensual sex with a partner who's within 2 years of your own age, but now maybe I'll get harassed when I go to national monuments or big events because of hits in facial recognition software. In theory the facial recognition technology will only be hooked into a partial database of certain types of people. In practice, I doubt they'll be very selective.
What if you got arrested as a teenager for having a small amount of marijuana? What if you were accused of assault for a minor altercation? What about any number of minor infractions which still would have landed your face in the FBI database? My guess is, as technology gets better and more discriminating in the field, the parts of the FBI databasde used will get wider until the full database gets scanned.
So, it's not just false-positives that are a worry, but positives against people with very minor infractions that have still landed them in the FBI database. Should you get shaken down by some overzealous dweeb who thinks you're dealing drugs because 10 years ago you got caught with your personal stash of green? And what of the potential for abuse of sensitive personal data?
Now that this particular can of worms has been opened under the excuse of 9/11, it's only going to get bigger and more invasive. First they'll assure us the database they're using only has "violent" criminals in it. Then it'll only be felons. Next it's the whole FBI database, including all the pictures of people whose parents were stupid enough to fingerprint and photograph their children and submit a packet voluntarily "to protect your chuildren in case of abduction", and DMV databases as well.
Is it just me, or is it getting kind of Orwellian in here?
I own the old Hollywood+, and have seen the newer replacement card. Fact is, neither one can hold a candle to the detail and color depth of the ATI DVD Player's Cinemaster-based decoding engine.
he only place the REALmagic cards stand out is in color saturation--which is a plus if you're going to be using a big projection system, but it comes at the cost of a lot of detail.
I spent a lot of time comparing all the Windows software players I could find, and the old REALmagic H+ card which I own, and the newer one which I saw at a trade show, and even the old Mpact hardware DVD card I got out of an old Gateway. The fact is, the REALmagic cards don't even have as much detail as the old Mpact card, which came out IIRC in 1997 and whose maker went bankrupt. I think the REALmagic cards are using hardware smoothing--which would make the picture look better on a standard-res NTSC TV, but which results in a huge lack of detail in HD resolutions when compared to the other solutions.
So, if you *really* care about the best quality, get the ATI card.