I guess I don't understand what PCI Express does. If it's just more bandwidth, how could it make any difference? There's no game that saturates even AGP4x; why would you need something even faster than 8x? 8x will be sufficient for games a generation newer than Doom 3, I'd bet; why should we get excited about a standard that won't affect anyone for five years?
Assuming the same bus speed (which is impossible, so take these numbers to be within, say, one hundred points of reality) and linear performance progression, the 2.5GHz chip should have:
I'd like to see a Grand Theft Auto game set in 1930's Chicago. That'd be so awesome -- the mob, the depression, prohibition; there's huge number of possiblities! I just hope they don't do the 1970's... I mean, Vice City already did all the "boy, people were weird back then... look at their clothes/hair/idioms!" jokes.
The 2.5GHz number isn't the same as Intel talking about 5GHz P4s. IBM means that they're going to sell 2.5GHz Blade servers. The reason that Intel talks about their insane GHz processors is to impress consumers into buying Intel. People in the market for mid-range Blade servers couldn't care less about what IBM can do in one in a million chips, and they would likely be annoyed if IBM misrepresented it in that way. If IBM can't manufacture the chips in quantity (I'm not aware if they're manufacturing any 970's in mass yet), they will be able to shortly, certanly before the release of the chip.
Probably Not Insulation
on
More on Columbia
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· Score: 4, Interesting
My dad works for Boeing and does lots of stuff with sattelites and space, though admittedly not rockets specifically. He can't imagine how insulation could've caused the damage in question. The insulation is extremely light and low density; it would've had to have been going rediculiously fast to have the force to cause damage to the tiles, and launching speeds aren't that fast until you're a few miles up. Ice is a more likely contender than insulation, since it's very hard etc, but it's rare to have a piece fall off that is massive enough to have much kinetic energy, and most of the ice is kicked off before the rocket gets going very fast.
I find it pretty insulting when people try to imply that NASA and Boeing are being anything but absolutely forthcoming about information. Sure, it's in their best interest to displace blame, but this isn't the X-Files here. If NASA knows something, they're going to tell the public.
Look at their "Review" of the iMac. They literally took Apple's own propaganda (from a year ago, since this is an old story), added a few exclamation points, and printed it. Now I like Apple just as much as anyone here, but it doesn't help anyone to portray this propaganda for a review. Furthermore, one look at their Aquaesque forum, and their perceived credibility and objectiveness take another hit.
As promised we'll give you an update on the performance and other features of the AMD systems that we reported on yesterday. Naturally AMD wasn't very keen on disclosing clockspeed or detailed system configurations of the demo systems they had running, but we took advantage of a few fellow journalists entering the room and keeping the AMD PR people busy to run a few quick benchmarks on the Athlon-64 system. The Athlon-64 demo system we already reported on yesterday had a 2GHz clockspeed and used the SuSe 64-bit Linux operating system and was running the 64-bit version of Unreal Tournament 2003 as a demo.
(pic of monitor playing UT2k3, FPS = 42) Fig 1. The Athlon-64 system running SuSe 64-bit Linux and the 64-bits version of Unreal Tournament 2003.
Naturally we're intimately familiar with the workings of Unreal Tournament 2003 engine and after a quick look at the display settings, which were set at a 1024x768x32bit resolution with all other features at default, we measured a mere average 42fps and maximum fps around the 55...60fps mark. Considering the fact that this is a 2GHz Athlon-64 processor teamed up with a GeForce Ti 4600 we honestly expected a whole lot better. A 1.6GHz Pentium 4 with that very same GeForce Ti 4600 videocard would have no problems clocking in a similar score while running under Windows XP.
(pic of a white laptop with the terminal showing) Fig 3. The Athlon-64 notebook running CyberLink's PowerDVD actually showing the first Harry Potter movie.
But there's more, we managed to take a closer look at the notebook too and quickly found out that this indeed is a proof of concept. It plays DVDs very well, mostly courtesy of the ATi M9-series graphics card, and unfortunately all our questions about whether we could do something else with it were answered with a resounding 'no'. We did however manage to find out what was inside in terms of chipset, memory and graphics card. The notebook apparently used a Via K8T400M chipset teamed up with an ATi M9-series graphics adapter and was using PC2100, DDR266, memory. The screen was a standard 14.1 inch running at a 1024x768 resolution and the DVD software they used was none other than CyberLink's PowerDVD.
(naked pizza-box style case) Fig 2. The quad Opteron server with the top cover removed, the PCI-X slots in the back and a the four CPUs hidden underneath the huge heatsinks.
(two white LCDs next to each other, left showing a web browser and right showing UT2k3.) Fig 3. The quad Opteron with the SuSe 64-bit Linux operating system running some sort of a database benchmark, right next to the UT2003 demo machine.
We naturally also took a closer look at the quad Opteron as that's definitely something AMD is currently pushing hard. They're putting all their weight behind the launch of their server products and have postponed the launch of the desktop version of the Opteron, the Athlon-64, back to September. The server parts, including completely pre-configured two-way Opteron systems, should be available in late April, right after the April 26th launch of the Opteron server CPU family. Clockspeeds will initially range up to 1.6 or 1.8GHz and performance is expected to be similar to Intel's Xeon offerings. But as always, we'll reserve judgement until we can actually evaluate two similarly configured servers side by side, for now all they have given us are SpecInt-2000 and SpecFP-2000 scores without disclosing the system configurations, so that doesn't tell us anything.
Nevertheless it looks like AMD is indeed trying to get some new and innovative products out of the door. Whether they'll be able to make a lasting impression, both in terms of features and performance, with their new 64-bit products remains to be seen though, we'll be sure to keep a close eye on any future developments.
It's interesting to note that a constantly expanding universe is much more congruent with the concept of a creator. A constantly expanding universe must have a moment of creation which is unique whereas a cyclical universe doesn't. There's no Armageddon (well, in the "I'm burning!" sense) though, so it's not perfect for creationists. It annoys me when people think that science is utterly incompatible with theology. Indeed, the absolute most recent theory of the creation of the universe is entirely compatible with a Creator: almost eerily so.
Not only that, but a civilization that is still using radio transmissions to communicate will absolutely not be making transmissions that are powerful enough for us to hear. I doubt if people with our level of technology can hear us from more than a few light years away, if that.
Exactly. You can't take out 100% of humanity. Even 99% would leave us with more than enough to repopulate the planet in a few generations. 99% isn't good enough to exterminate us.
I referred to AIDs as the worst because it has killed the most. (I know about influenza; I'm talking about current strains.) Sure, airborn Ebola is 90% fatal, but why doesn't everyone die of it, then? Because its victims die too quickly. Even if it were spread in an airport, lots of people in cities would die, but everyone more than a day's travel away from a city with a major airport wouldn't be infected. You'd need something that is not only deadly and airborn, but also with an asymptomatic contagious stage many months long to do any real damage at all.
(Here is the properly formatted comment... what a/. newbie I am)
Tru they [viruses] wont survive if we don't, but they don't know that. What's to stop the process?
In one word: evolution. The fact that viruses aren't sentient isn't at all important. No one but humans are sentient: is every species but us just lucky that they don't all decide that it might be fun to stop breathing? Viruses that act in unfit ways, that is, contrary to their survival's best interest, become extinct. It's called "survival of the fittest"; I'm sure you've heard that phrase, but you clearly don't understand it.
I don't see AIDS as a bad example considering 80% of the population in Africa is now infected. Uhh... 80%? According to the United Nations AIDs Program, there are 42 million people in the entire world currently infected with Aids. The population of Africa is around 800 million. Even if every single person infected with AIDs in the world happened to live in Africa, only 5% of the population would be infected. Not exactly 80%.
Tru they [viruses] wont survive if we don't, but they don't know that. What's to stop the process?
In one word: evolution. The fact that viruses aren't sentient isn't at all important. No one but humans are sentient: is every species but us just lucky that they don't all decide that it might be fun to stop breathing? Viruses that act in unfit ways, that is, contrary to their survival's best interest, become extinct. It's called "survival of the fittest"; I'm sure you've heard that phrase, but you clearly don't understand it.
I don't see AIDS as a bad example considering 80% of the population in Africa is now infected.
Uhh... 80%? According to the United Nations AIDs Program, there are 42 million people in the entire world currently infected with Aids. The population of Africa is around 800 million. Even if every single person infected with AIDs in the world happened to live in Africa, only 5% of the population would be infected. Not exactly 80%.
I totally disagree with your idea that man will be killed off by viruses. At the pace medical technology is advancing today, we will be able to cure any virus-borne disease in no more than one hundred years. If all else fails, we can just use nanomachine virus death squads. Unless mankind loses all of their technology somehow, there is no chance of us being exterminated by a virus. And I can't think of a single feasible way, short of alien invasion, that that could happen. Even global thermonuclear war followed by nuclear winter wouldn't do it: there would be pockets of technology and knowledge held by the (many millions of) survivors.
And it's not like there are, or can be, incredibly deadly viruses. The worst in the world (arguably) is AIDs, and it is hardly threatening mankind's survival. Far less than one percent are infected and even fewer die from it. Furthermore, no virus will survive if it is really good at killing. Viruses exist not to kill, as you seem to imply, but rather to propagate. Evolutionarily, a virus wants to hurt its host as little as possible. A virus that kills its host super-fast would burn itself out. Why do you think smallpox was so easy to eradicate? It was one of the most deadly viruses known to man, yet it was one of the easiest to kill off. Same with Ebola: it is incredibly lethal and contagious, yet far fewer than one hundred people die from it a year.
In fact, there's no reason at all that man will ever become extinct. We will eventually colonize other planets and galaxies, exponentially reducing any threat to the species. Our technology will speed evolution up a million fold, eventually making humans effectively immortal. Nothing short of a Borg-like sentient race hell-bent on our destruction (or a planet-killing disaster in the next few hundred years) could kill us off. Sorry, universe, you're stuck with us.
Mail.app's filtering is fantastic. I only look at around one spam message every two weeks, and I've only had one false positive (which was adveritising something, as it was) in the year and a half that I've been using it. The filter is probably too CPU intensive to use on any large scale, though.
Alfa Aesar sells chemicals en masse. They'll even send you a catalog for free. I'm not sure, but you probably have to have a license to buy anything from them.
Oops... itchy "submit" finger.
The fact that every individual employee doesn't have to battle spam doesn't mean that its not a problem for business. It only means that the company has hired a $70,000/year person whose entire job is to stop spam. Or bought a ten thousand dollar program that must be constantly monitored.
The monorail only barely passed because of how they're paying for it. Virtually everyone in Seattle agrees that we need some system of mass transit (we probably have the worst traffic problem of any city in the United States, except for a very few, like LA), and a monorail is an attractive choice. It only passed by like three hundred votes, though, since how they're paying for it is all screwed up. Rather than having a flat tax or something, they're making it so the amount you pay is tied to the number of cars you own. That is, the less likely you are to use it, the more you have to pay for it.
I only voted for it because I live in West Seattle, so it _directly_ benefits me. My house is only a few miles away from the planned site. I'm actually pretty surprised that it passed; I guess we're really desperate for a system of mass transit. Incidentily, my friend's house is right next to the site of the track, so their land value is going to go down the tube. They're planning on moving before they break ground.
Why didn't they name it the GeForce5? That sounds soo much cooler than FX. FX doesn't sound powerful at all, especially when their low end chip is called the "MX." Pronouncing the two isn't that different, too. Which sounds faster: Radeon 9700 Pro or GeForce FX?
Sheesh.
I tried that, but it was constantly too paranoid about idenifying spam. I can't even remember how many of my friends and family ended up in Vladivostok for sending me bad jokes. The problem sort of solved itself though, since the filter program eventually just barracaded itself in my second hard drive and refused to come out. The only drawback is that now I can't save anything on the drive, since the Stalin Filter instantly deletes everything it can.
I find it incredibly annoying when people whine about rich people being rich. Bill Gates is fantastically rich. He could give away ten billion dollars and never notice. Whenever he does anything charatable (note that I do not consider the article to be an example of this), people always chime in on how much more he could be doing. Bullshit. As much as I lothe Microsoft's business practices and their products, Gates is one of the greatest philranthropists the world has ever had.
You said "yes, he could do nothing, but we don't have to flatter him for being more than a complete Scrooge." You're right; he could do nothing. Most people do. I'm willing to bet that you haven't donated even 2% of your annual income. As much as Gates does wrong, this is something that he does spectacularly right. However, everyone in their blind hatred of all things Microsoft somehow manipulates it into "just another example" of how evil he is.
Gates has given away billions of dollars, and plans to give away billions more. He has vowed to eradicate all diseases that can be, such as Malaria. Sure, he could just take a vow of poverty and make do with only a few hundred million. But that fact does not discount or cheapen what he has done.
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I guess I don't understand what PCI Express does. If it's just more bandwidth, how could it make any difference? There's no game that saturates even AGP4x; why would you need something even faster than 8x? 8x will be sufficient for games a generation newer than Doom 3, I'd bet; why should we get excited about a standard that won't affect anyone for five years?
Assuming the same bus speed (which is impossible, so take these numbers to be within, say, one hundred points of reality) and linear performance progression, the 2.5GHz chip should have:
;)
SPECint2000 =
937 / 1.8 = 520.5 points/GHz * 2.5
Estimated Score ~= 1300
Average P4@3.0GHz score ~= 1080 (the 970 = 20% faster)
SPECfp2000 =
1051 / 1.8 = 583.9 points/GHz * 2.5
Estimated Score ~= 1460
Average P4@3.0GHz score ~= 1100 (the 970 = 33% faster)
RC5 =
18 / 1.8 = 10 * 2.5
Estimated Score ~= 25M keys/sec
Average P4@3.0GHz score ~= 4.3M keys/sec (the 970 = 581% faster)
Take these numbers with a grain of salt, but they're somewhat interesting. I like the RC5 score, especially.
I'd like to see a Grand Theft Auto game set in 1930's Chicago. That'd be so awesome -- the mob, the depression, prohibition; there's huge number of possiblities! I just hope they don't do the 1970's... I mean, Vice City already did all the "boy, people were weird back then... look at their clothes/hair/idioms!" jokes.
The 2.5GHz number isn't the same as Intel talking about 5GHz P4s. IBM means that they're going to sell 2.5GHz Blade servers. The reason that Intel talks about their insane GHz processors is to impress consumers into buying Intel. People in the market for mid-range Blade servers couldn't care less about what IBM can do in one in a million chips, and they would likely be annoyed if IBM misrepresented it in that way. If IBM can't manufacture the chips in quantity (I'm not aware if they're manufacturing any 970's in mass yet), they will be able to shortly, certanly before the release of the chip.
My dad works for Boeing and does lots of stuff with sattelites and space, though admittedly not rockets specifically. He can't imagine how insulation could've caused the damage in question. The insulation is extremely light and low density; it would've had to have been going rediculiously fast to have the force to cause damage to the tiles, and launching speeds aren't that fast until you're a few miles up. Ice is a more likely contender than insulation, since it's very hard etc, but it's rare to have a piece fall off that is massive enough to have much kinetic energy, and most of the ice is kicked off before the rocket gets going very fast.
I find it pretty insulting when people try to imply that NASA and Boeing are being anything but absolutely forthcoming about information. Sure, it's in their best interest to displace blame, but this isn't the X-Files here. If NASA knows something, they're going to tell the public.
Look at their "Review" of the iMac. They literally took Apple's own propaganda (from a year ago, since this is an old story), added a few exclamation points, and printed it. Now I like Apple just as much as anyone here, but it doesn't help anyone to portray this propaganda for a review. Furthermore, one look at their Aquaesque forum, and their perceived credibility and objectiveness take another hit.
As promised we'll give you an update on the performance and other features of the AMD systems that we reported on yesterday. Naturally AMD wasn't very keen on disclosing clockspeed or detailed system configurations of the demo systems they had running, but we took advantage of a few fellow journalists entering the room and keeping the AMD PR people busy to run a few quick benchmarks on the Athlon-64 system. The Athlon-64 demo system we already reported on yesterday had a 2GHz clockspeed and used the SuSe 64-bit Linux operating system and was running the 64-bit version of Unreal Tournament 2003 as a demo.
(pic of monitor playing UT2k3, FPS = 42)
Fig 1. The Athlon-64 system running SuSe 64-bit Linux and the 64-bits version of Unreal Tournament 2003.
Naturally we're intimately familiar with the workings of Unreal Tournament 2003 engine and after a quick look at the display settings, which were set at a 1024x768x32bit resolution with all other features at default, we measured a mere average 42fps and maximum fps around the 55...60fps mark. Considering the fact that this is a 2GHz Athlon-64 processor teamed up with a GeForce Ti 4600 we honestly expected a whole lot better. A 1.6GHz Pentium 4 with that very same GeForce Ti 4600 videocard would have no problems clocking in a similar score while running under Windows XP.
(pic of a white laptop with the terminal showing)
Fig 3. The Athlon-64 notebook running CyberLink's PowerDVD actually showing the first Harry Potter movie.
But there's more, we managed to take a closer look at the notebook too and quickly found out that this indeed is a proof of concept. It plays DVDs very well, mostly courtesy of the ATi M9-series graphics card, and unfortunately all our questions about whether we could do something else with it were answered with a resounding 'no'. We did however manage to find out what was inside in terms of chipset, memory and graphics card. The notebook apparently used a Via K8T400M chipset teamed up with an ATi M9-series graphics adapter and was using PC2100, DDR266, memory. The screen was a standard 14.1 inch running at a 1024x768 resolution and the DVD software they used was none other than CyberLink's PowerDVD.
(naked pizza-box style case)
Fig 2. The quad Opteron server with the top cover removed, the PCI-X slots in the back and a the four CPUs hidden underneath the huge heatsinks.
(two white LCDs next to each other, left showing a web browser and right showing UT2k3.)
Fig 3. The quad Opteron with the SuSe 64-bit Linux operating system running some sort of a database benchmark, right next to the UT2003 demo machine.
We naturally also took a closer look at the quad Opteron as that's definitely something AMD is currently pushing hard. They're putting all their weight behind the launch of their server products and have postponed the launch of the desktop version of the Opteron, the Athlon-64, back to September. The server parts, including completely pre-configured two-way Opteron systems, should be available in late April, right after the April 26th launch of the Opteron server CPU family. Clockspeeds will initially range up to 1.6 or 1.8GHz and performance is expected to be similar to Intel's Xeon offerings. But as always, we'll reserve judgement until we can actually evaluate two similarly configured servers side by side, for now all they have given us are SpecInt-2000 and SpecFP-2000 scores without disclosing the system configurations, so that doesn't tell us anything.
Nevertheless it looks like AMD is indeed trying to get some new and innovative products out of the door. Whether they'll be able to make a lasting impression, both in terms of features and performance, with their new 64-bit products remains to be seen though, we'll be sure to keep a close eye on any future developments.
Sander Sassen.
It's interesting to note that a constantly expanding universe is much more congruent with the concept of a creator. A constantly expanding universe must have a moment of creation which is unique whereas a cyclical universe doesn't. There's no Armageddon (well, in the "I'm burning!" sense) though, so it's not perfect for creationists. It annoys me when people think that science is utterly incompatible with theology. Indeed, the absolute most recent theory of the creation of the universe is entirely compatible with a Creator: almost eerily so.
Not only that, but a civilization that is still using radio transmissions to communicate will absolutely not be making transmissions that are powerful enough for us to hear. I doubt if people with our level of technology can hear us from more than a few light years away, if that.
Exactly. You can't take out 100% of humanity. Even 99% would leave us with more than enough to repopulate the planet in a few generations. 99% isn't good enough to exterminate us. I referred to AIDs as the worst because it has killed the most. (I know about influenza; I'm talking about current strains.) Sure, airborn Ebola is 90% fatal, but why doesn't everyone die of it, then? Because its victims die too quickly. Even if it were spread in an airport, lots of people in cities would die, but everyone more than a day's travel away from a city with a major airport wouldn't be infected. You'd need something that is not only deadly and airborn, but also with an asymptomatic contagious stage many months long to do any real damage at all.
(Here is the properly formatted comment... what a /. newbie I am)
Tru they [viruses] wont survive if we don't, but they don't know that. What's to stop the process?
In one word: evolution. The fact that viruses aren't sentient isn't at all important. No one but humans are sentient: is every species but us just lucky that they don't all decide that it might be fun to stop breathing? Viruses that act in unfit ways, that is, contrary to their survival's best interest, become extinct. It's called "survival of the fittest"; I'm sure you've heard that phrase, but you clearly don't understand it.
I don't see AIDS as a bad example considering 80% of the population in Africa is now infected.
Uhh... 80%? According to the United Nations AIDs Program, there are 42 million people in the entire world currently infected with Aids. The population of Africa is around 800 million. Even if every single person infected with AIDs in the world happened to live in Africa, only 5% of the population would be infected. Not exactly 80%.
Tru they [viruses] wont survive if we don't, but they don't know that. What's to stop the process? In one word: evolution. The fact that viruses aren't sentient isn't at all important. No one but humans are sentient: is every species but us just lucky that they don't all decide that it might be fun to stop breathing? Viruses that act in unfit ways, that is, contrary to their survival's best interest, become extinct. It's called "survival of the fittest"; I'm sure you've heard that phrase, but you clearly don't understand it. I don't see AIDS as a bad example considering 80% of the population in Africa is now infected. Uhh... 80%? According to the United Nations AIDs Program, there are 42 million people in the entire world currently infected with Aids. The population of Africa is around 800 million. Even if every single person infected with AIDs in the world happened to live in Africa, only 5% of the population would be infected. Not exactly 80%.
I totally disagree with your idea that man will be killed off by viruses. At the pace medical technology is advancing today, we will be able to cure any virus-borne disease in no more than one hundred years. If all else fails, we can just use nanomachine virus death squads. Unless mankind loses all of their technology somehow, there is no chance of us being exterminated by a virus. And I can't think of a single feasible way, short of alien invasion, that that could happen. Even global thermonuclear war followed by nuclear winter wouldn't do it: there would be pockets of technology and knowledge held by the (many millions of) survivors.
And it's not like there are, or can be, incredibly deadly viruses. The worst in the world (arguably) is AIDs, and it is hardly threatening mankind's survival. Far less than one percent are infected and even fewer die from it. Furthermore, no virus will survive if it is really good at killing. Viruses exist not to kill, as you seem to imply, but rather to propagate. Evolutionarily, a virus wants to hurt its host as little as possible. A virus that kills its host super-fast would burn itself out. Why do you think smallpox was so easy to eradicate? It was one of the most deadly viruses known to man, yet it was one of the easiest to kill off. Same with Ebola: it is incredibly lethal and contagious, yet far fewer than one hundred people die from it a year.
In fact, there's no reason at all that man will ever become extinct. We will eventually colonize other planets and galaxies, exponentially reducing any threat to the species. Our technology will speed evolution up a million fold, eventually making humans effectively immortal. Nothing short of a Borg-like sentient race hell-bent on our destruction (or a planet-killing disaster in the next few hundred years) could kill us off. Sorry, universe, you're stuck with us.
Mail.app's filtering is fantastic. I only look at around one spam message every two weeks, and I've only had one false positive (which was adveritising something, as it was) in the year and a half that I've been using it. The filter is probably too CPU intensive to use on any large scale, though.
Alfa Aesar sells chemicals en masse. They'll even send you a catalog for free. I'm not sure, but you probably have to have a license to buy anything from them.
I guess that's where the Calculus comes in. Stupid Newton.
How is that possible? If v = c, then energy is undefined. Energy isn't undefined! That would be sad :(.
There is if you don't clean it. My fish can attest to that.
If they don't have enough bandwidth for Slashdot, how do they expect to serve all of India?
Oops... itchy "submit" finger. The fact that every individual employee doesn't have to battle spam doesn't mean that its not a problem for business. It only means that the company has hired a $70,000/year person whose entire job is to stop spam. Or bought a ten thousand dollar program that must be constantly monitored.
The fact that every individual employees don't have to battle spam doesn't mean that spam isn't a problem for business.
The monorail only barely passed because of how they're paying for it. Virtually everyone in Seattle agrees that we need some system of mass transit (we probably have the worst traffic problem of any city in the United States, except for a very few, like LA), and a monorail is an attractive choice. It only passed by like three hundred votes, though, since how they're paying for it is all screwed up. Rather than having a flat tax or something, they're making it so the amount you pay is tied to the number of cars you own. That is, the less likely you are to use it, the more you have to pay for it.
I only voted for it because I live in West Seattle, so it _directly_ benefits me. My house is only a few miles away from the planned site. I'm actually pretty surprised that it passed; I guess we're really desperate for a system of mass transit. Incidentily, my friend's house is right next to the site of the track, so their land value is going to go down the tube. They're planning on moving before they break ground.
Why didn't they name it the GeForce5? That sounds soo much cooler than FX. FX doesn't sound powerful at all, especially when their low end chip is called the "MX." Pronouncing the two isn't that different, too. Which sounds faster: Radeon 9700 Pro or GeForce FX? Sheesh.
I tried that, but it was constantly too paranoid about idenifying spam. I can't even remember how many of my friends and family ended up in Vladivostok for sending me bad jokes. The problem sort of solved itself though, since the filter program eventually just barracaded itself in my second hard drive and refused to come out. The only drawback is that now I can't save anything on the drive, since the Stalin Filter instantly deletes everything it can.
I find it incredibly annoying when people whine about rich people being rich. Bill Gates is fantastically rich. He could give away ten billion dollars and never notice. Whenever he does anything charatable (note that I do not consider the article to be an example of this), people always chime in on how much more he could be doing. Bullshit. As much as I lothe Microsoft's business practices and their products, Gates is one of the greatest philranthropists the world has ever had.
You said "yes, he could do nothing, but we don't have to flatter him for being more than a complete Scrooge." You're right; he could do nothing. Most people do. I'm willing to bet that you haven't donated even 2% of your annual income. As much as Gates does wrong, this is something that he does spectacularly right. However, everyone in their blind hatred of all things Microsoft somehow manipulates it into "just another example" of how evil he is.
Gates has given away billions of dollars, and plans to give away billions more. He has vowed to eradicate all diseases that can be, such as Malaria. Sure, he could just take a vow of poverty and make do with only a few hundred million. But that fact does not discount or cheapen what he has done.