OK, I'm quite familiar with the fact that MHZ is a bad speed rating for a CPU in the sense that it does not always correlate with performance (i.e., 50% more MHZ does not always equal 50% better speed). Any computer scientist/engineer worth his salt has heard a thousand times that if you really want to know how a system is going to perform, test it out on *your* target workload.
This is like suing the Big Three over the fact that horsepower is a terrible measure of a car's performance/power/speed because other factors (tires, the four fatass guys in the back, whatever) can make the "50% more horsepower" not add up to "50% more power".
I think you're going to get a lot of people giving you the Kissinger line: "Academic politics are so vicious precisely because so little is at stake". I have a different take.
I would highly recommend that you read The Lecturer's Tale by James Hynes for an entertaining, if dark, look at this academic politics thing taken to the nth degree. Mind you, I'm not saying that it's an accurate representation -- it is fiction. My experience with academia has been, largely, gratifying.
Quoth the parent: Out of this came the four Indian missiles long-range Agni (fire), medium range Akash (sky), surface-to-surface Prithvi (earth) and anti-tank Nag (cobra) and the now infamous nukes.
Which one of these does not belong? No points for random guesses.
This guy is an embarressment to the profession of "web journalist", which is saying a lot in a world of Matt Drudges. I wonder if Declan would ever protect a source. Would he refuse a request from police? Would he refuse a subpoena? Would he go to prison to protect a source?
I doubt it. Why? Because he's a coward.
Actually, au contraire, he has answered to a subpoena before (last year) and then gone on the stand to protect a source, being treated as a hostile witness in the process (though luckily for him, not jailed). Check out his website, the whole story is there. Better check the facts before you next try to make an ad hominem attack.
I've decided to switch to linux, as soon as they port vim to it.
What are you talking about? vim works just fine on linux. Either grab the src and compile it yourself or if you use redhat/debian get the.rpm/.deb. Read the download page under "Unix" on vim.org.
Perhaps it's time to make a new version of the GPL that includes some clause(s) prohibiting derivative works from incorporating spyware/adware? I realize that since the derivative work must release source code you can always compile it without the spy/adware, but what about Joe Blow who just downloads the binary version? Seems reasonable, and I don't think anyone who is currently GPLing their code (but not also adding spy/adware) would object...
ALS is commonly known as "Lou Gehrig's Disease", not "Stephen Hawking's Ailment".
Yes, but this is Slashdot. Consider how many more readers know who Stephen Hawking is than know who Lou Gehrig is. Uh huh, yeah, I thought so. I rest my case.
Re:further indication that DMCA does not hold wate
on
HP Backs Off DMCA Threat
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
i think companies *know* that if the DMCA gets taken to court, it will die and we will all live free, so they don't want to risk it. which, incidentally, means that we should try to as much as possible (within reason)
On the contrary, I think that if corporations were under the impression that this "tool" would soon disappear from their arsenal, they would have incentive to make use of it ASAP and "get while the getting is good". It's like when retailers make sure to stress that an offer is for a limited time only to try to get people to half-panic and hurry in to the store. More likely, corporations that try to make use of the DMCA are encountering some seriously bad backlash from the community that makes them think twice about using the DMCA. I would suspect that they would only resort to the DMCA when no other weapons are available. That's sort of a good thing, I guess, but it suggests that the DMCA will be the corporate legal equivalent of the H-bomb -- the "no more Mr. Nice Guy" gun that's used more as a scare tactic than an actual weapon.
Re:Economic reasons to scare John Q. Public
on
What, Me Worry?
·
· Score: 1
More spending? It wouldn't take much more. After all, you'd only need to make one spaceship to fight the war.
Technically, in this scenario win98 would be "rebooted" every time the car was turned on. By my calculations this would mean that Win98 would outperform linux by a factor of 3 (assuming that the car is used 3 times in a day). The more frequently you reboot a Win98 box the better performance you get from it because the memory is freed from improper malloc(s), the cache is cleared, and the buffers are as pure as the morning dew.
What, and linux saves all the improperly malloc'ed memory to nonvolatile storage before rebooting? WTF?
I think Ximian's Mono project may do something unintentially pro-Microsoft: it could turn the entire Microsoft.NET initiative into a de facto standard before Sun figures out what hit them.
I don't think you know what "de facto standard" [webopedia.com] means.
Actually, I don't think you understand the handy definition to which you linked. He was trying to say that by supporting.NET with Mono, this will encourage industry adoption of.NET thereby making it a de facto standard, as opposed to a de jure standard which would be mandated by a standards body/organization.
If you slow things down extreme, you'll see the flashing really is a screen being updated, blanked out, and updated again. One thing that happens is when a lot of functions are finishing up, they refresh. Over the course of some updates, this may happen several times. That's not bad if the refresh doesn't blank everything to background color and re-draw. It really is a blanking operation very often (not only on X Windows, but also on MS Windows).
Unless you're talking about the way the physical hardware draws things on your screen, or some specific particularly bad program, you're full of shit. Wait, no, you're still full of shit even if you are talking about the way the hardware does it, because it blank during a vertical refresh.
Who wants that? Encrypting everything is usually not the answer. Since usually you don't really care if you're browsing a website securely or not, and https incurs performance-damaging overhead, I would be hesitant to use an https-always browser.
This is largely because it's easier to spot stupidity in written form, when you're not distracted by boobies, animated graphics and short sound/video clips.
Have you ever seen Playboy? It's probably full of stupid (written) articles, but I would never know because the boobies distract me to the point that I can't even read them.
Slashdot Mirror
OK, I'm quite familiar with the fact that MHZ is a bad speed rating for a CPU in the sense that it does not always correlate with performance (i.e., 50% more MHZ does not always equal 50% better speed). Any computer scientist/engineer worth his salt has heard a thousand times that if you really want to know how a system is going to perform, test it out on *your* target workload.
This is like suing the Big Three over the fact that horsepower is a terrible measure of a car's performance/power/speed because other factors (tires, the four fatass guys in the back, whatever) can make the "50% more horsepower" not add up to "50% more power".
I think you're going to get a lot of people giving you the Kissinger line: "Academic politics are so vicious precisely because so little is at stake". I have a different take.
I would highly recommend that you read The Lecturer's Tale by James Hynes for an entertaining, if dark, look at this academic politics thing taken to the nth degree. Mind you, I'm not saying that it's an accurate representation -- it is fiction. My experience with academia has been, largely, gratifying.
I guess it's better than the rampade poverty India faces, but hey, gotta find something to rag on the US about, right?
:) Apologies for the paraphrase.
You use this word 'rampade'. I do not think it is the word you think it is.
Quoth the parent: Out of this came the four Indian missiles long-range Agni (fire), medium range Akash (sky), surface-to-surface Prithvi (earth) and anti-tank Nag (cobra) and the now infamous nukes.
Which one of these does not belong? No points for random guesses.
This guy is an embarressment to the profession of "web journalist", which is saying a lot in a world of Matt Drudges. I wonder if Declan would ever protect a source. Would he refuse a request from police? Would he refuse a subpoena? Would he go to prison to protect a source?
I doubt it. Why? Because he's a coward.
Actually, au contraire, he has answered to a subpoena before (last year) and then gone on the stand to protect a source, being treated as a hostile witness in the process (though luckily for him, not jailed). Check out his website, the whole story is there. Better check the facts before you next try to make an ad hominem attack.
I've decided to switch to linux, as soon as they port vim to it.
.rpm/.deb. Read the download page under "Unix" on vim.org.
What are you talking about? vim works just fine on linux. Either grab the src and compile it yourself or if you use redhat/debian get the
objectivity is for lame-os.
Where can I get a copy of this LameOS? It's objective, you say!? I always hated how redhat was so subjective...
Yes, I am a wisecracking asshole.
When the IT staff is asking for corporate accounts at a local strip club, can you really blame the company for undervaluing them?
:)
Vonnegut should write a book about this:
Hemos had become unstuck in time.
But, Carmack says, "we are taking complimentary directions to space."
I hope those directions are up.
Perhaps it's time to make a new version of the GPL that includes some clause(s) prohibiting derivative works from incorporating spyware/adware? I realize that since the derivative work must release source code you can always compile it without the spy/adware, but what about Joe Blow who just downloads the binary version? Seems reasonable, and I don't think anyone who is currently GPLing their code (but not also adding spy/adware) would object...
Another disadvantage: It's parenthesis hell. CLISP gives me a headache if I ever try to read it for more than a few minutes.
I just read that headline as "Speed of Light Incontinent?", and thought "Well why doesn't it eat more fiber?". Time to go to bed.
yep, put me down for one of those - who the hell is Lou Gehrig? Ok, I obviously know the disease, but who is the guy himself?
Criminy. He's a famous baseball player. You know, baseball, America's favorite pastime? What are you, some kind of terrorist?!
ALS is commonly known as "Lou Gehrig's Disease", not "Stephen Hawking's Ailment".
Yes, but this is Slashdot. Consider how many more readers know who Stephen Hawking is than know who Lou Gehrig is. Uh huh, yeah, I thought so. I rest my case.
i think companies *know* that if the DMCA gets taken to court, it will die and we will all live free, so they don't want to risk it. which, incidentally, means that we should try to as much as possible (within reason)
On the contrary, I think that if corporations were under the impression that this "tool" would soon disappear from their arsenal, they would have incentive to make use of it ASAP and "get while the getting is good". It's like when retailers make sure to stress that an offer is for a limited time only to try to get people to half-panic and hurry in to the store. More likely, corporations that try to make use of the DMCA are encountering some seriously bad backlash from the community that makes them think twice about using the DMCA. I would suspect that they would only resort to the DMCA when no other weapons are available. That's sort of a good thing, I guess, but it suggests that the DMCA will be the corporate legal equivalent of the H-bomb -- the "no more Mr. Nice Guy" gun that's used more as a scare tactic than an actual weapon.
More spending? It wouldn't take much more. After all, you'd only need to make one spaceship to fight the war.
America's Asteriod Corps: An army of one.
*ducks*
Technically, in this scenario win98 would be "rebooted" every time the car was turned on. By my calculations this would mean that Win98 would outperform linux by a factor of 3 (assuming that the car is used 3 times in a day). The more frequently you reboot a Win98 box the better performance you get from it because the memory is freed from improper malloc(s), the cache is cleared, and the buffers are as pure as the morning dew.
What, and linux saves all the improperly malloc'ed memory to nonvolatile storage before rebooting? WTF?
This is the kind of things that would cause the other part of your split personality to develop SOAP-based protocols.
You know what Tyler Durden says...
I think Ximian's Mono project may do something unintentially pro-Microsoft: it could turn the entire Microsoft .NET initiative into a de facto standard before Sun figures out what hit them.
.NET with Mono, this will encourage industry adoption of .NET thereby making it a de facto standard, as opposed to a de jure standard which would be mandated by a standards body/organization.
I don't think you know what "de facto standard" [webopedia.com] means.
Actually, I don't think you understand the handy definition to which you linked. He was trying to say that by supporting
Parent should read "...it does not blank during a vertical refresh".
:\
So that's what the preview button is for!
If you slow things down extreme, you'll see the flashing really is a screen being updated, blanked out, and updated again. One thing that happens is when a lot of functions are finishing up, they refresh. Over the course of some updates, this may happen several times. That's not bad if the refresh doesn't blank everything to background color and re-draw. It really is a blanking operation very often (not only on X Windows, but also on MS Windows).
Unless you're talking about the way the physical hardware draws things on your screen, or some specific particularly bad program, you're full of shit. Wait, no, you're still full of shit even if you are talking about the way the hardware does it, because it blank during a vertical refresh.
and web browsers would default to https
Who wants that? Encrypting everything is usually not the answer. Since usually you don't really care if you're browsing a website securely or not, and https incurs performance-damaging overhead, I would be hesitant to use an https-always browser.
slashdot.c: In post `Re: Occams Razor':
slashdot.c:9: redeclaration of `B)'
slashdot.c:9: `B)' previously declared here
Yes, I'm drunk.
This is largely because it's easier to spot stupidity in written form, when you're not distracted by boobies, animated graphics and short sound/video clips.
:)
Have you ever seen Playboy? It's probably full of stupid (written) articles, but I would never know because the boobies distract me to the point that I can't even read them.