In North America alone, something like 60,000 people die on the roads every year. Many thousands of those deaths are caused by such non-mechanical problems as speeding, driving drunk, talking on cell phones, masturbating to porn on the in-car DVD player, hitting black ice, etc. The possibility of dying from a computer malfunction in a drive-by-wire system is going to be significantly less likely than any of the above possibilities.
The hysteria over this bug is starting to sound a LOT like the "exploding battery" hysteria drummed up by people who are, for some stupid reason or another, threatened by the popularity of cars that get good fuel economy.
I can't speak for anyone else, but it wouldn't bother me in the least. I would welcome competition between Microsoft Linux and the other Linux distributions out there. So long as Microsoft honours the GPL, it would be great.
Because they are already there. In fact I'd say 90% of all web sites out there are already running on less than the power of a 486 today. All 3 of my extremely low-volume web sites, for example, are not even running on real hardware. They are all virtually hosted along with hundreds of other sites on a single high power box. Web hosting companies operate on such a slim margin these days that they are the first to take advantage of any technology that saves energy.
That's funny. I've ordered stuff from them as well and all of the it was new in the original boxes with the original seals, and worked just fine. The biggest problem I had when I ordered from them was actually with UPS who, being UPS, couldn't find their asses with a GPS.
Another thing that pisses me off is that he tests these 64 bit CPU's with 32 bit Windows, claiming that Linux is "hardly mainstream".
What a load of crap.
These dual core chips are PERFECT for high performance NON-GAMER Linux systems, and yet these guys disregard the most mature and stable 64 bit platform to run game benchmarks on 32 bit windows.
Nonetheless, the guy is Canadian and Canada has extremely strict privacy laws. So it seems his "performance art" hasn't had as much of a negative effect on the issue of promoting privacy rights as you make it sound.
I have one and it works well, with the following problems:
1. The audio/video inputs are recessed in the case, making it hard to plug in my higer quality, shielded audio/video cables. My SVHS cable connector fits the SVHS plug on the Plextor, but only barely and it can fall out easily. I will need to modify the case to fix this problem.
2. The only way to capture video on Linux right now is by using the sample "gorecord" application, which while it works fine for simple captures, has a lot of problems doing bigger stuff.
3. Related to #2, there is a dearth of applications that support the device via its V4L2 interface. I undrstand that MythTV supports it, but I have not tried it yet so I cannot say how well it works. It would be great if other apps like mencoder, ffmpeg and transcoder picked up support for it too.
My guess is that you're going to be waiting a very long time.
Or no time at all. I just got a Plextor M402U MJPEG/MPEG2/MPEG4 encoder (which is a USB2 device) and it works under Fedora Core 3 just fine. I can record video at the highest quality settings without any problems using the open source drivers provided by Plextor themselves. I've done MPEG2 at 6000k/s and it works fine and uses almost zero CPU time. The only downside right now is a lack of applications that support the necessary V4L2 extensions.
I recently bought a Plextor M402U. It's a USB2 device that supports hardware MPEG4 encoding and has open source GPL'd drivers (except for the firmware, but thats freely distributable at least). MythTV supports it too, although I haven't tried it yet.
As of March 19th, support for the Plextor *-402 series of MPEG4/DivX encoders has been added to MythTV! Finally we have a device that is supported extremely well under Linux and has fully GPL'd open source drivers. I may have once considered getting a Tivo, but I am a lot less likely now. I am not an employee of Plextor, just a happy purchaser of their goods.
Electric cars are about twice as efficient in hte overall process of converting fossil fuels into miles driven. As new sources of energy like nuclear, solar and wind gain traction, this difference will only get wider. Pure electrics also generate only a tiny fraction of the emissions that fossil fuel (including hybrid) cars produce for the same number of miles driven.
Linux support is one reason why, despite its shortcomings for use in a PVR compared to hauppauge's products, I'm going with a Plextor M402U as the encoder hardware for my box.
A government developed program is not necessarily always worse, but it does lack the drive to improve that comes with competition. With that said, I've done my taxes using different software for the last 6 years and they ALL work exactly the same. I always buy the cheapest one.
The sword cuts both ways, though. If this sort of thing is NOT allowed to continue, all someone has to do to libel you legally online is make sure the web site is located in a place like "sealand" where they may not be any libel laws. Trash rags like the "National Enquirer" and in this case, the Washington Post, that profit from spreading rumours or false news about people could simply move their web sites there and never again be responsible for what they say.
And why stop at libel? Political campaigns could get around all advertising restrictions by hosting their ads there. Drug compaies could advertise hokum cures for cancer and dangerous weight loss drugs. Microsoft could claim Linus Torvalds is a terrorist, and noone would be able to stop them.
Ever since IBM announced their so called "OpenPOWER" machines, I've been lusting after one. Sure, they are more expensive, but he could afford it and a dual POWER5 at 1.6Ghz would blow the pants off any current Mac.
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In North America alone, something like 60,000 people die on the roads every year. Many thousands of those deaths are caused by such non-mechanical problems as speeding, driving drunk, talking on cell phones, masturbating to porn on the in-car DVD player, hitting black ice, etc. The possibility of dying from a computer malfunction in a drive-by-wire system is going to be significantly less likely than any of the above possibilities.
The hysteria over this bug is starting to sound a LOT like the "exploding battery" hysteria drummed up by people who are, for some stupid reason or another, threatened by the popularity of cars that get good fuel economy.
I can't speak for anyone else, but it wouldn't bother me in the least. I would welcome competition between Microsoft Linux and the other Linux distributions out there. So long as Microsoft honours the GPL, it would be great.
Because they are already there. In fact I'd say 90% of all web sites out there are already running on less than the power of a 486 today. All 3 of my extremely low-volume web sites, for example, are not even running on real hardware. They are all virtually hosted along with hundreds of other sites on a single high power box. Web hosting companies operate on such a slim margin these days that they are the first to take advantage of any technology that saves energy.
You should also try a Plextor M402U or TV402U. It's a hardware MPEG encoder with fully open sourced drivers for Linux.
Like noone has ever thought of making a tablet before? There has to be more to this if it is true.
That's funny. I've ordered stuff from them as well and all of the it was new in the original boxes with the original seals, and worked just fine. The biggest problem I had when I ordered from them was actually with UPS who, being UPS, couldn't find their asses with a GPS.
NT on Alpha 10 years ago was NOT a 64 bit os. It was a 32 bit OS running on a 64 bit cpu.
but they blew it. as did everybody else.
Tell that to my dual 667 Alpha7 box that I've had for almost 6 years now running 64bit Linux.
Another thing that pisses me off is that he tests these 64 bit CPU's with 32 bit Windows, claiming that Linux is "hardly mainstream".
What a load of crap.
These dual core chips are PERFECT for high performance NON-GAMER Linux systems, and yet these guys disregard the most mature and stable 64 bit platform to run game benchmarks on 32 bit windows.
Nonetheless, the guy is Canadian and Canada has extremely strict privacy laws. So it seems his "performance art" hasn't had as much of a negative effect on the issue of promoting privacy rights as you make it sound.
Unfortunately no. At the moment it is too new. I haven't had time to look into using Myth with it yet.
I have one and it works well, with the following problems:
1. The audio/video inputs are recessed in the case, making it hard to plug in my higer quality, shielded audio/video cables. My SVHS cable connector fits the SVHS plug on the Plextor, but only barely and it can fall out easily. I will need to modify the case to fix this problem.
2. The only way to capture video on Linux right now is by using the sample "gorecord" application, which while it works fine for simple captures, has a lot of problems doing bigger stuff.
3. Related to #2, there is a dearth of applications that support the device via its V4L2 interface. I undrstand that MythTV supports it, but I have not tried it yet so I cannot say how well it works. It would be great if other apps like mencoder, ffmpeg and transcoder picked up support for it too.
Or no time at all. I just got a Plextor M402U MJPEG/MPEG2/MPEG4 encoder (which is a USB2 device) and it works under Fedora Core 3 just fine. I can record video at the highest quality settings without any problems using the open source drivers provided by Plextor themselves. I've done MPEG2 at 6000k/s and it works fine and uses almost zero CPU time. The only downside right now is a lack of applications that support the necessary V4L2 extensions.
I recently bought a Plextor M402U. It's a USB2 device that supports hardware MPEG4 encoding and has open source GPL'd drivers (except for the firmware, but thats freely distributable at least). MythTV supports it too, although I haven't tried it yet.
Why?
As of March 19th, support for the Plextor *-402 series of MPEG4/DivX encoders has been added to MythTV! Finally we have a device that is supported extremely well under Linux and has fully GPL'd open source drivers. I may have once considered getting a Tivo, but I am a lot less likely now. I am not an employee of Plextor, just a happy purchaser of their goods.
Electric cars are about twice as efficient in hte overall process of converting fossil fuels into miles driven. As new sources of energy like nuclear, solar and wind gain traction, this difference will only get wider. Pure electrics also generate only a tiny fraction of the emissions that fossil fuel (including hybrid) cars produce for the same number of miles driven.
http://www.evadc.org/pwrplnt.pdf
Bzzzt. Wrong. Yes they do. Electric cars powered by coal and gas plants are about twice as efficient than gas cars (28% versus 14% for cars).
In addition to that, electric cars (powered by fossil fuel sources) have only about 0.2% the emissions of a gas car per 100,000km driven.
I don't think it does. It sounds very very similar, and they even cite an Intel paper on Hyperthreading in the bibliography.
Linux support is one reason why, despite its shortcomings for use in a PVR compared to hauppauge's products, I'm going with a Plextor M402U as the encoder hardware for my box.
A government developed program is not necessarily always worse, but it does lack the drive to improve that comes with competition. With that said, I've done my taxes using different software for the last 6 years and they ALL work exactly the same. I always buy the cheapest one.
The sword cuts both ways, though. If this sort of thing is NOT allowed to continue, all someone has to do to libel you legally online is make sure the web site is located in a place like "sealand" where they may not be any libel laws. Trash rags like the "National Enquirer" and in this case, the Washington Post, that profit from spreading rumours or false news about people could simply move their web sites there and never again be responsible for what they say.
And why stop at libel? Political campaigns could get around all advertising restrictions by hosting their ads there. Drug compaies could advertise hokum cures for cancer and dangerous weight loss drugs. Microsoft could claim Linus Torvalds is a terrorist, and noone would be able to stop them.
Ever since IBM announced their so called "OpenPOWER" machines, I've been lusting after one. Sure, they are more expensive, but he could afford it and a dual POWER5 at 1.6Ghz would blow the pants off any current Mac.
If it were true.
Canadian life expectancy: 79.4 years.
American life expectancy: 77.1 years.
Source.
Private health care costs more. For example:
Illness and medical bills now cause roughly half of all bankruptcies in the United States, more than a 23-fold increase since 1981, according to a new study. The study, which estimated that medical bankruptcies affect 2.2 million Americans annually, also found most of those bankrupted by illness had health insurance or lost it only because of the illness. (Emphasis mine)
As a Canadian with many American friends, I wish you the greatest luck in overcoming your fundamentalist alter-ego.