gah.. i mean, from a server standpoint i'd much rather run linux for reliability reasons, but this data is all garbage.
this must be with a standard install. they're basing the linux numbers on distrobutions when what they should be doing is reviewing IIS vs. various packages and so forth. it is possible to install and properly configure redhat with no known remote exploits.. just as it is possible to more or less secure a windows box.
the #1 security vunerability that exists for absolutely EVERY platform is a lazy sysadm.
however, for my love of video games, nothing replaces windows on the desktop for me.:)
agreed.. it ads to the realism. while i'm still opposed to planted ads on a very basic level, i can tolerate the GT ads.
i saw another user mention crazy taxi.. fun game, but the ads there are just waaay too in-your-face. it's not yet as bad as paying $7 to watch 30 minutes of previews and other ads before a movie though.
I also have a related question: What's the deal with the car brands in Gran Turismo? Do the car companies pay to have their products "featured" in the game, does the game company pay for the rights to use real cars, or does no money change hands?
i really don't know, but i'm going to venture a guess here. i'd say that for a game like that, where content is dependant on using brand names, there is probably no money changing hands for the cars. as long as nothing bad is said about their products during the course of the game the car companies are getting free advertising and the game makers are getting realism.
everything else in Gran Turismo is paid by the companies with the ads. the ads for Shell gas, Perelli tires, and Brand-X upgrade components scattered around the various tracks are secondary to gameplay. as such, with the only real benefit going to the purveyor of the product, the companies must surely be paying for it. i mean it adds to the realism, but they could be ads for anything.. whereas, you couldn't really drive a Pizza Hut brand car.
advertising is so pervasive now that it borders on intrusive. i got w/ my gf to see LOTR the other night and guess what i have to endure for 30 minutes before the movie.. Pepsi ads! All shapes and sizes of them!
ads are crammed down our throats constantly. i for one am sick of paying people to throw ads at me. television (being 'free') is of course the worst.. 22 minutes of every hour is advertising. if it's renting a movie for $3.79 it's bad enough that they put 20 minutes of 'trailers' in front of the movie. it's worse if i'm paying $7 a crack to see something on the big screen and i have to endure MORE ads than i would if i'd waited for the video!
now i pay $50 for THPS3 and get to see ads constantly every time i fire it up?
i pointedly avoid products with ads that are forced on me..
with the number of objects we've put into orbit around our planet at an all time high and increasing constantly this will become more and more common. logic dictates that ultimately these things will make land in someone's yard (living room, white house, etc.).
the real problem here is what to do about it...
i propose using defunct home Internet appliances as projectiles. it would be extremely inexpensive and, when fired from a railgun at speeds in excess of 30,000ft/sec, these little beauties could easily eliminate a chunk of space debris weighing 100 or more lbs.
calling me a dim-witted fuck was just uncalled for.. i think i'm going to cry.
thanks to everyone who corrected my typo. yes.. it is an rs/6k running aix 4.3. even though it has the relative power of a P90 and a full compliment of 96 1MB memory modules in addition to the nike raid array w/ 16 1GB HDDs ad weighs over 600 lbs. fully assebmled, it'll be churning away with this install until the HDDs have all crashed. meanwhile, you'll all be cursing over your linux boxes and praying for kernel revisions.
Bill gates states that there are 7000 users of Windows 2000.
dude, where are you getting this info from? a friend of mine works for United Health Care and they alone have over 3,000 win2k workstations. does that mean the UHC accounts for almost half of the windows 2000 boxes in use?
Therefore there are (7000+1400+700)*4 = 36400
Windows 98 users.
one of the last places i worked was a computer mfg.. i was there the entire time 98/se was being pushed and we sold over 10,000 systems configured with the OS. do you really expect me to believe that almost all of these work-a-day Joe 6-Pack users converted to linux when they can't even send a proper email attachment?
i live in minneapolis and use Qwest DSL currently. the service has been total crap lately.. it's a 640k line which disconnects constantly and fluctuates between 320k and 640k, usually capping-out at about 540k.
now they're going to crap MSN down my throat? don't think so! that could only make things worse imo..
so, yeah, a roadrunner rep will be out next week to get us set up with cable..
since i use voicestream for my only phone i think i'll just tell Qwest to get fucked.
XP is like having to pay continuesly for the right to watch those shows.
i could accept that model if you were talking about a subscription to Office or to a game because then you are confined to one piece of software.. but Windows is an OS, it's what enables you to use other software. in the case of XP i'd have to again liken it to paying for a cable subscription..
i don't agree with it.. if fact, i think charging subscriptions for software is a very perverted business model. but, leave it to gates, who has been quoted as saying "..write it once, sell it a million times.." only now he's written it once and wants to sell it 100 million times.
now, without going back to your slashdotter highground..
sorry.. that was off-sides.. i was just seeing the same thing happen that always seems to happen on/. when you're trying to illustrate 'real world' scenarios: many slashdotters are unable to step back from everything they know in order to try to make observations from the standpoint of the lay person. again, sorry..
Ok, but I don't see hot the crash itself further illustrates your point.
many people were, are, and will continue to be cautious when it comes to technology. don't forget that more than half the people in this country are 45-55 years old, and many have no computer experience and can't be bothered.
the dotcoms were, in many people's minds, representative of the technology sector as a whole. the dotcom crash signified the end of an era in our history (the tech boom) in that many of the companies operating in the way which you described ended up failing where only a few had succeeded. why did those few succeed? consumer confidence.. blind faith actually. the initial round of crashes triggered a landslide as the daytraders and analysts headed for the hills with their confidence in tatters.
the dotcom crash killed the technology boom by killing consumer confidence and indirectly caused a recession. to the lay person, all of this could easilly reduce already shaky confidence in 'new' technology (ASP, software subscriptions (or anything for that matter) purchased via the internet). the only notable exceptions are console systems, which are tried and true in the arena of public opinion, and DVD, which is long overdue and being churned out of the hype machine at a phenomenal rate.
then again.. these technologies are user friendly in all the ways that computers (especially XP:) and dotcom startups aren't.
..I can pay a fixed amount for one month of cable, use my VCR to tape as much content as I want..
okay, the ASP i worked for was an accounting firm.. if you were a business customer who used the firm for accounting services you also had the option of using the accounting software via the ASP to streamline your accounting process. taping shows off of HBO to watch endlessly and then cancelling your subscription would be like printing screen captures of the accounting software (or Windows, or whatever) and flipping through them.
my *POINT* is further illustrated by the dotcom crash.
now, without going back to your slashdotter highground, read back over my post. i was talking about the general masses. a lot of people are very sketchy when it comes to doing business online because they saw a 20/20 episode or something about failing dotcoms. they can't tell you exactly why they're not comfortable with the idea.. (to quote one of the ASPs potential customers) "..it just doesn't seem secure to me.."
one of the biggest problems with software or service subscriptions is skepticism. if you're talking something established like cable there's no question in most peoples' minds. when it comes to the internet too many of the people (individuals, small companies) who would actually be paying for things like this are too under-educated to trust the internet as a medium for doing serious business.
my point is further illustrated by the dotcom crash.
even in our high tech age, we have a ways to go before companies can try to charge for goods an services this way.
a sub-5lb. notebook machine spawned of an apple/sun partnership. this box would utilize a revolutionary expansion technology which would allow the user to replace a component (video card for instance) by replacing a module that piggy-backs the mainboard and uses standard connections soldered onto the mainboard.
it would have to have onboard SCSI, IDE, 1394, USB, 10/100/1000 NIC, composite/s-video in/outs, and ADAT/Lightpipe audio (as well as the usual 1/8" stereo).
this device claims to be capable of 24bit/96kHz audio. that's 24 bits * 96,000 samples per second (or 2,304,000bps). how exactly does it do that over a USB 1.1 pipe at 1.2Mb?
.. flushing money down the crapper on beaming information out into space. this is tantamount to cramming LPs into a spacecraft and flinging it to the far reaches of the universe. so, 10,000 years from now, when we've all been dead 9,900 years from nuclear holocaust, some race of beings will just be getting this signal.
percentage of noise regardless.. this approach to contacting distant civilizations is totally lame. we're taking information loaded with earth-centric logic and counting on someone (or something) else to 1.) pick up the information 2.) have any idea what it is or what to do with it 3.) care enough to do anything about it.
they'll hear a hum if you have a ground loop somewhere.. what they'll hear during silence is a slight hiss (less slight the crappier your sound card gets).. sound blasters have notoriously shitty D/A converters and the highest noise floor of any sound card, but that doesn't stop them from selling like hotcakes.
not that anyone's fooled man.. they just don't notice.:)
my point is that playing out with 24/96 is like killing a cockroach with a bazooka. the best soundcard on the planet can't compensate for crappy signal wiring intertwined with power leads, noisy amps, and crap speakers. a chain is only as strong as it's weakest link, and the weakest link in this case is NOT going to be your soundcard.
unless you need the 24/96 fidelity for something (and if you're playing live it's not really going to make a difference) just use what comes built into the notebook and get a $6 patch cable at the shack. i know many musicians who use PCs (some highly successful) and only the truly anal and wealthy among them has invested in high-end sound for the PC that they take to gigs.
here's my alternate solution: get a portable 19" audio rack bin ($60-$200 available at any fine audio gear merchant) and a cheap 1U rackmount box with 1 PCI clot from siliconrax or somebody ($700-$2000 depending on configuration). get a delta66 adapter (probably $150 by now) and shut off the onboard sound. in this way, your computer is fairly self-contained and portable, and you have more rack space for your effects, mixers, nord lead or whatever else you need to carry.
.. it seems to me like we're recording these 'near misses' quite a bit lately. i'm sure it has a lot to do with the low cost of computing power and high availability of observation equipment, but with so many eyes looking now it stands to reason that we're just noticing what's been there all along.
yeah, there are belts of space debris that we pass through at certain times which increase the likelihood of an encounter with some extraterrestrial projectile, but with 3 or more 'close calls' in the last year it would seem that this is pretty commonplace on a universal timeline.
then, every 20,000 years or so we have an encounter in which an object actually penetrates the atmosphere and hurtles toward earth. and even then, there's a 70-some-odd% chance that whatever it is will slam into an ocean. logic would then dictate that we're looking at a chance of one of these things making land about every 60,000 years (though i've heard estimates that put it up around 100-150,000).
go back to your must-see prime time tv lineup.. this is only a drill.
i know a lot of canadians who are pretty cool to me, and i never hear them bitch about my country (just that a lot of people here seem to hate canadians for no reason).. but that's beside the point.
instead of trying to finger canadians for some imagined wrongdoing you should check out that book listed at the end of my post. then you can have something to be legitimately upset about.
look at this picture the screen image is tilted. perhaps more importantly, that poorly superimposed reflection is not mirroring the hand hovering above the screen.
i mean.. think about it. if you're the head of some strategic research lab designated for simulating chemical or nuclear reactions for use in arms i'd think it'd be pretty easy to drum up the cash necessary to purchase/build the equipment necessary to do so.
aside from that, what's to stop pakistan, india or anyone else from carrying out tests in any of the manners forbidden by test ban treaties? i seem to remember a story from a couple of years ago about china being lambasted for firing medium range ballistic missles over hong kong and into the ocean.. but maybe it was a dream i had.
seems like a waste of time and effort to me. let them have their nukes if it makes them feel that important.
Slashdot Mirror
Li-Ion rechargeable battery (3.7V/1200mAh) for over 12 hours of playback
you can't really get a gig worth of MP3s out of that..
gah.. i mean, from a server standpoint i'd much rather run linux for reliability reasons, but this data is all garbage.
:)
this must be with a standard install. they're basing the linux numbers on distrobutions when what they should be doing is reviewing IIS vs. various packages and so forth. it is possible to install and properly configure redhat with no known remote exploits.. just as it is possible to more or less secure a windows box.
the #1 security vunerability that exists for absolutely EVERY platform is a lazy sysadm.
however, for my love of video games, nothing replaces windows on the desktop for me.
maybe it's marcus theatres i should hate then eh? i guess that makes sense..
agreed.. it ads to the realism. while i'm still opposed to planted ads on a very basic level, i can tolerate the GT ads.
i saw another user mention crazy taxi.. fun game, but the ads there are just waaay too in-your-face. it's not yet as bad as paying $7 to watch 30 minutes of previews and other ads before a movie though.
I also have a related question: What's the deal with the car brands in Gran Turismo? Do the car companies pay to have their products "featured" in the game, does the game company pay for the rights to use real cars, or does no money change hands?
i really don't know, but i'm going to venture a guess here. i'd say that for a game like that, where content is dependant on using brand names, there is probably no money changing hands for the cars. as long as nothing bad is said about their products during the course of the game the car companies are getting free advertising and the game makers are getting realism.
everything else in Gran Turismo is paid by the companies with the ads. the ads for Shell gas, Perelli tires, and Brand-X upgrade components scattered around the various tracks are secondary to gameplay. as such, with the only real benefit going to the purveyor of the product, the companies must surely be paying for it. i mean it adds to the realism, but they could be ads for anything.. whereas, you couldn't really drive a Pizza Hut brand car.
just my thoughts..
advertising is so pervasive now that it borders on intrusive. i got w/ my gf to see LOTR the other night and guess what i have to endure for 30 minutes before the movie.. Pepsi ads! All shapes and sizes of them!
ads are crammed down our throats constantly. i for one am sick of paying people to throw ads at me. television (being 'free') is of course the worst.. 22 minutes of every hour is advertising. if it's renting a movie for $3.79 it's bad enough that they put 20 minutes of 'trailers' in front of the movie. it's worse if i'm paying $7 a crack to see something on the big screen and i have to endure MORE ads than i would if i'd waited for the video!
now i pay $50 for THPS3 and get to see ads constantly every time i fire it up?
i pointedly avoid products with ads that are forced on me..
/me just shoots himself
with the number of objects we've put into orbit around our planet at an all time high and increasing constantly this will become more and more common. logic dictates that ultimately these things will make land in someone's yard (living room, white house, etc.).
the real problem here is what to do about it...
i propose using defunct home Internet appliances as projectiles. it would be extremely inexpensive and, when fired from a railgun at speeds in excess of 30,000ft/sec, these little beauties could easily eliminate a chunk of space debris weighing 100 or more lbs.
calling me a dim-witted fuck was just uncalled for.. i think i'm going to cry.
thanks to everyone who corrected my typo. yes.. it is an rs/6k running aix 4.3. even though it has the relative power of a P90 and a full compliment of 96 1MB memory modules in addition to the nike raid array w/ 16 1GB HDDs ad weighs over 600 lbs. fully assebmled, it'll be churning away with this install until the HDDs have all crashed. meanwhile, you'll all be cursing over your linux boxes and praying for kernel revisions.
unix forever.. =)
who in their right mind would ditch IRIX in favor of linux (of all things)!?
:)
if you need a high-end linux workstation that bad, give me the SGI! i'll sell it, use the proceeds to build you one, and pocket the $10,000 left over.
on an interesting side note: i installed linux on my toaster and it tried to strangle my AS/6000 with a length of CAT-5.
mod -1.. just do it.
Bill gates states that there are 7000 users of Windows 2000.
dude, where are you getting this info from? a friend of mine works for United Health Care and they alone have over 3,000 win2k workstations. does that mean the UHC accounts for almost half of the windows 2000 boxes in use?
Therefore there are (7000+1400+700)*4 = 36400
Windows 98 users.
one of the last places i worked was a computer mfg.. i was there the entire time 98/se was being pushed and we sold over 10,000 systems configured with the OS. do you really expect me to believe that almost all of these work-a-day Joe 6-Pack users converted to linux when they can't even send a proper email attachment?
i had dsl via telocity/ameritech in milwaukee and ended up ditching it when my '512k' line dropped to 68k.
i got a cable modem through roadrunner and was able to uncap it for 3Mb up/down. it was down once for 3 hours in about 10 months.
i live in minneapolis and use Qwest DSL currently. the service has been total crap lately.. it's a 640k line which disconnects constantly and fluctuates between 320k and 640k, usually capping-out at about 540k.
now they're going to crap MSN down my throat? don't think so! that could only make things worse imo..
so, yeah, a roadrunner rep will be out next week to get us set up with cable..
since i use voicestream for my only phone i think i'll just tell Qwest to get fucked.
XP is like having to pay continuesly for the right to watch those shows.
/. when you're trying to illustrate 'real world' scenarios: many slashdotters are unable to step back from everything they know in order to try to make observations from the standpoint of the lay person. again, sorry..
i could accept that model if you were talking about a subscription to Office or to a game because then you are confined to one piece of software.. but Windows is an OS, it's what enables you to use other software. in the case of XP i'd have to again liken it to paying for a cable subscription..
i don't agree with it.. if fact, i think charging subscriptions for software is a very perverted business model. but, leave it to gates, who has been quoted as saying "..write it once, sell it a million times.." only now he's written it once and wants to sell it 100 million times.
now, without going back to your slashdotter highground..
sorry.. that was off-sides.. i was just seeing the same thing happen that always seems to happen on
Ok, but I don't see hot the crash itself further illustrates your point.
many people were, are, and will continue to be cautious when it comes to technology. don't forget that more than half the people in this country are 45-55 years old, and many have no computer experience and can't be bothered.
the dotcoms were, in many people's minds, representative of the technology sector as a whole. the dotcom crash signified the end of an era in our history (the tech boom) in that many of the companies operating in the way which you described ended up failing where only a few had succeeded. why did those few succeed? consumer confidence.. blind faith actually. the initial round of crashes triggered a landslide as the daytraders and analysts headed for the hills with their confidence in tatters.
the dotcom crash killed the technology boom by killing consumer confidence and indirectly caused a recession. to the lay person, all of this could easilly reduce already shaky confidence in 'new' technology (ASP, software subscriptions (or anything for that matter) purchased via the internet). the only notable exceptions are console systems, which are tried and true in the arena of public opinion, and DVD, which is long overdue and being churned out of the hype machine at a phenomenal rate.
then again.. these technologies are user friendly in all the ways that computers (especially XP:) and dotcom startups aren't.
..I can pay a fixed amount for one month of cable, use my VCR to tape as much content as I want..
okay, the ASP i worked for was an accounting firm.. if you were a business customer who used the firm for accounting services you also had the option of using the accounting software via the ASP to streamline your accounting process. taping shows off of HBO to watch endlessly and then cancelling your subscription would be like printing screen captures of the accounting software (or Windows, or whatever) and flipping through them.
my *POINT* is further illustrated by the dotcom crash.
now, without going back to your slashdotter highground, read back over my post. i was talking about the general masses. a lot of people are very sketchy when it comes to doing business online because they saw a 20/20 episode or something about failing dotcoms. they can't tell you exactly why they're not comfortable with the idea.. (to quote one of the ASPs potential customers) "..it just doesn't seem secure to me.."
i worked briefly for an ASP and i can say this:
one of the biggest problems with software or service subscriptions is skepticism. if you're talking something established like cable there's no question in most peoples' minds. when it comes to the internet too many of the people (individuals, small companies) who would actually be paying for things like this are too under-educated to trust the internet as a medium for doing serious business.
my point is further illustrated by the dotcom crash.
even in our high tech age, we have a ways to go before companies can try to charge for goods an services this way.
a sub-5lb. notebook machine spawned of an apple/sun partnership. this box would utilize a revolutionary expansion technology which would allow the user to replace a component (video card for instance) by replacing a module that piggy-backs the mainboard and uses standard connections soldered onto the mainboard.
it would have to have onboard SCSI, IDE, 1394, USB, 10/100/1000 NIC, composite/s-video in/outs, and ADAT/Lightpipe audio (as well as the usual 1/8" stereo).
oh, it needs to run x86 flawlessly. =)
this device claims to be capable of 24bit/96kHz audio. that's 24 bits * 96,000 samples per second (or 2,304,000bps). how exactly does it do that over a USB 1.1 pipe at 1.2Mb?
.. flushing money down the crapper on beaming information out into space. this is tantamount to cramming LPs into a spacecraft and flinging it to the far reaches of the universe. so, 10,000 years from now, when we've all been dead 9,900 years from nuclear holocaust, some race of beings will just be getting this signal.
percentage of noise regardless.. this approach to contacting distant civilizations is totally lame. we're taking information loaded with earth-centric logic and counting on someone (or something) else to 1.) pick up the information 2.) have any idea what it is or what to do with it 3.) care enough to do anything about it.
they'll hear a hum if you have a ground loop somewhere.. what they'll hear during silence is a slight hiss (less slight the crappier your sound card gets).. sound blasters have notoriously shitty D/A converters and the highest noise floor of any sound card, but that doesn't stop them from selling like hotcakes.
:)
not that anyone's fooled man.. they just don't notice.
my point is that playing out with 24/96 is like killing a cockroach with a bazooka. the best soundcard on the planet can't compensate for crappy signal wiring intertwined with power leads, noisy amps, and crap speakers. a chain is only as strong as it's weakest link, and the weakest link in this case is NOT going to be your soundcard.
unless you need the 24/96 fidelity for something (and if you're playing live it's not really going to make a difference) just use what comes built into the notebook and get a $6 patch cable at the shack. i know many musicians who use PCs (some highly successful) and only the truly anal and wealthy among them has invested in high-end sound for the PC that they take to gigs.
here's my alternate solution: get a portable 19" audio rack bin ($60-$200 available at any fine audio gear merchant) and a cheap 1U rackmount box with 1 PCI clot from siliconrax or somebody ($700-$2000 depending on configuration). get a delta66 adapter (probably $150 by now) and shut off the onboard sound. in this way, your computer is fairly self-contained and portable, and you have more rack space for your effects, mixers, nord lead or whatever else you need to carry.
.. it seems to me like we're recording these 'near misses' quite a bit lately. i'm sure it has a lot to do with the low cost of computing power and high availability of observation equipment, but with so many eyes looking now it stands to reason that we're just noticing what's been there all along.
yeah, there are belts of space debris that we pass through at certain times which increase the likelihood of an encounter with some extraterrestrial projectile, but with 3 or more 'close calls' in the last year it would seem that this is pretty commonplace on a universal timeline.
then, every 20,000 years or so we have an encounter in which an object actually penetrates the atmosphere and hurtles toward earth. and even then, there's a 70-some-odd% chance that whatever it is will slam into an ocean. logic would then dictate that we're looking at a chance of one of these things making land about every 60,000 years (though i've heard estimates that put it up around 100-150,000).
go back to your must-see prime time tv lineup.. this is only a drill.
i know a lot of canadians who are pretty cool to me, and i never hear them bitch about my country (just that a lot of people here seem to hate canadians for no reason).. but that's beside the point.
instead of trying to finger canadians for some imagined wrongdoing you should check out that book listed at the end of my post. then you can have something to be legitimately upset about.
look at this picture the screen image is tilted. perhaps more importantly, that poorly superimposed reflection is not mirroring the hand hovering above the screen.
/me pishaws..
-j0nah
okay flamebait.. go back to business school and review. the 'P' stands for product not profit.
i mean.. think about it. if you're the head of some strategic research lab designated for simulating chemical or nuclear reactions for use in arms i'd think it'd be pretty easy to drum up the cash necessary to purchase/build the equipment necessary to do so.
aside from that, what's to stop pakistan, india or anyone else from carrying out tests in any of the manners forbidden by test ban treaties? i seem to remember a story from a couple of years ago about china being lambasted for firing medium range ballistic missles over hong kong and into the ocean.. but maybe it was a dream i had.
seems like a waste of time and effort to me. let them have their nukes if it makes them feel that important.