The first is that there is a constant use of proper names, for places and people, that for most readers will be unfamiliar. Not only that, they will be difficult to pronounce.
When I read a book and encounter a name that I can't "pronounce", I substitute. Supposed the main character has a name Tmaegedornrea or something.... I substitute "T-guy", "the main character", "the main character's sidekick", "bob's friend", "the evil wizard", "the bad guy", "the king of dragons", or some other made up pronunciation "Tee-meg-dorna", or something else when I see that name written and move on, understanding that character's role in the story. There are *lots* of names in JRRT's work, but hanging yourself up on pronunciation is not a reason to get emo about the book. This is a simple trick that most people learn early on, I'd have thought.
I didn't say people have computers at home *to* play games. I said that people who have computers at home tend to (maybe sometimes) play games on them. I thought about it a bit after reading these comments and, to be honest, I was kind of surprised my post was marked "Troll", but I stand by my original statement... I don't know anybody who has a computer at home who doesn't also play games on that computer.
Cheap machines are one thing, but I don't know of anyone who has a computer at home who doesn't play games. Until Linux can get a stable of games as well as a few of those 'killer apps' (TurboTax, QuickBooks, etc.), people will just ask "Can it play GameBlah?" and when the answer is "No" or "Yes, but you have to do all this configuration work and edit config files as root and [whatever]" their eyes will just glaze over and they'll just walk over to the Windows displays because the answer is "Yes, just put the CD in and install it".
The problem is that you can do all that you want, but until you pay a fab to make it for you (and that ain't cheap for small runs), you're just doing some mental masturbation over how neat this stuff is. It isn't like OSS where you can just download the stuff and use it for free. You can't download hardware... you either have to get it fabbed yourself or you have to hope someone fabs it and sells the stuff so you can get it.
Having been involved in two standards bodies, those bodies found enormous benefit to having reference implementations being built at the same time the standards were being developed. It certainly helps drive out issues during the standardization process that would otherwise/sometimes make the standard unusable.
Granted, what Microsoft is doing may not be a 'reference implementation' but still... there are benefits to doing *some* implementation in parallel with standardization.
Not when you run multiple single-process web servers in parallel;)
One of the best models for these type things is a multithreaded/multiprocess application (using kernel/preemptive threads if using threads), basically one thread/process per core on the machine (this is a fudge, but for simplicity it's ok as an example). Each kernel thread cooperatively threads (no kernel calls or context switches to get in the way, much lower latency and overhead that way) over the task(s) given to it. It's a bit more complicated to program but you get precise control over when your cooperative tasking switches state and you don't get the overhead of context switches, while you are still able to use every core in the system to tackle your problem. This model is good for high IO tasks that have many channels to satisfy (an application that has many sockets open satisfying web requests, for example, or blasting email, etc.).
Every CPU maker publishes the errata for their CPUs because system designers/vendors/whatever need to know these things. Every CPU made for the past (insert very long time in the computer world here) has had a big list of errata publicly published. Just got to the Intel or AMD site, for example, and look up the errata on the PPro, P3, P4, Core, Core2, Athlon, Athlon XP, Athlon64, Athlon64 X2, or whatever your favorite CPU happens to be.
The thing is, the CPU is actually broken a bit and AMD has pulled the Barcelona line but are continuing to sell the Phenom(inal Failure) line to customers and, evidently, don't plan to 'fix' the problem later (Intel offered replacements for the Pentium floating point bug after they got dinged on it, for example... I know... I had one and replaced it).
So... if you actually get your hands on (or got your hands on) a Phenom, realize you have a broken CPU and the more you load it, the more likely you'll have stability issues.... and AMD isn't (currently) going to fix it.
Not to say which has a better drag coefficient, but drag will quickly sap power. The thrust/weight ratio is fine, but drag can kill that very fast, limiting the top speed.
Plus, Mach is relative to altitude. Mach 2 at 60,000ft is not the same velocity as Mach 2 at 10,000 ft. I'm not sure (and don't have time to look it up) but the supercruise capability set in the specifications were defined for a certain altitude. Also, it was a minimum, not a maximum, so even if they say supercruise (Mach 1+) at 90% power, it certainly didn't limit the team from making a plane that could supercruise (Mach 2+) at 90% power.
This is one of those statements that's hard to deal with... If you say "Yeah! stick it to them!" because you hate Microsoft or some other advocacy reason, then you have to also realize that you're agreeing with them that your choice of non-Microsoft OS/software has been declared by them to be junk.
If you disagree because you think your choice is viable, then you're saying they're wrong and that goes against your advocacy.;)
Economies of scale apply to software development efforts, as well. Do you want to sell your services or your software on a platform that has 1% of the market share, or 90%? If the market is segmented into a dozen platforms, you have to pick one, or a set of them. Each one is probably a non-trivial port, increasing your costs, time, and resources required to do so. That cuts into profit.
Yeah... and it's not like cell phone companies have to deal with enough repairing/replacing phones dropped in normal operation already (which normally doesn't require shaking or slinging the phone around), but they're asking users to actually shake the phones around to determine information about them... Neat... but I'm guessing they may say "Doh!" later...
Electrical companies, by the way, are on a grid, so it's useful to have standards by which they interoperate. It also greatly benefits consumer electronics to be able to build for certain standards. It's in their best interests (economies of scale, even) to standardize. The grids also operate in an interstate configuration, which gives the federal government some control (various bits about the controlling of interstate commerce in the various relevant documents).
Anyway, I covered both bases... talking about standards (ODF/OOXML) and about a product (Microsoft Office and even if the gov't tried to mandate using only OpenOffice, I'd have the same opinion).
Also, do you have any proof for this assertion?
b) MS will sue you for violating their IP when partially implementing OOXML
Actually, electrical wiring standards vary (for houses, at least) check up on state building codesfor example. FCC is a better example, but still not completely accurate.
I didn't stupidly think ODF was a product, you incorrectly inferred that. I said they should mandate open standards and that pretty much covers ODF. They should not mandate products (like Microsoft Office) regardless of whether or not it uses open standards.
Also... it's evidently a fairly large area with a sparse population of sliding rocks... how many cameras and instrument packs do you need for full coverage to a reasonable resolution? How many to have reasonable coverage enough to perhaps capture one moving and the conditions during which it moves?
Obviously, other countries may be different, but it should be illegal for the USA Government to enforce, by law, the use of one product/standard over the other, IMO. Certainly laws should exist saying something like all data should be stored in open standards formats approved by X$ organization, which at this point is the same thing (since OOXML isn't approved by any such organization, yet). It shouldn't dictate exactly which standard, though... because at the very least, they'll also get bogged down in specifying what version(s) are allowed, and all sorts of other issues, not the least of which is depriving free-market decisions on which standard(s) to support by various vendors.
The government technically isn't allowed to compete with private industry either (for obvious reasons), but unfortunately, that happens often enough these days as well:(
2) The Apple Tax and associated other 'benefits', such as the free Kool-Aid, are a pretty high price to pay.
This discussion is quite old by now, but just to make sure, ever tried putting a 13" Dell laptop together, with the same hardware as a MacBook? Because last time I tried to do that, the Dell was about EUR 400 more expensive (not kidding..). I am of course aware that there are much, much cheaper 15" models with lesser specifications available from Dell, whereas lesser hardware is an option you simply don't get with Apple. So yes, you pay for it, that's true. But you also get nice hardware.
Why in $Diety_Name would I want to? Why not put a Dell together with what I want/need in it rather than mimicing a machine that probably has more stuff than I want (driving the price up)? How about you show me how to order a $500 Mac laptop?;)
D) There is no OS that I want to use. I use applications. The various OSs out there enable that activity.
Some do better at this than others, though. You probably understand this perfectly well, but I'll bite just in case you aren't: the OS these days is considered to include such stuff as a desktop environment, window manager, standard utilities, a program to compile and burn DVD's/CD's, play music, play movies, browse the web, read email, manage photo's, do some simple sound editing, etc. etc. I have seen both Vista's and Mac OS X's version of those, and happen to like Mac OS X version of all such apps a lot better. Then there's the amount of effort required to set up your hardware (drivers etc.), all of which happen to work a lot nicer on Mac OS X. So I completely disagree. There is definitely such a thing as "an OS that you want (or don't want) to use". After seeing Vista or Windows ME, in fact I wonder how anyway could say there is no such thing.
Unfortunately, there are those who want to force some companies from unbundling all those things while allowing others to bundle them, and call that a 'level playing field', but that's a tangent. I'm not a 'typical' user so my experiences are just anecdotal... but I prefer to put a machine together from parts that are 'best of breed' at the time of purchase. Yesterday, that might be an AMD CPU with an ATI video card. Today, that might be an Intel CPU with an NVIDIA video card. That requires me to install various drivers, sure. It also requires a much more flexible system (mostly due to market-share... you have to support lots more variation)... comodity parts all over. I upgrade parts over time for a few years, then upgrade the entire box. I know most don't do this (just buy, for all intents and purposes, a set-top box periodically).
To be honest, the #1 issue that makes me refuse to use a Mac is the menu bar and (from what I've seen) so many detached windows, which seems to be the standard application GUI design (I also have the detached windows complain about certain applications on Windows and Linux). There are some great applications in MacOSX, though, but not enough for me to buy one (OmniGraffle, for instance, is *very* nice from what I've seen of it).
Sure, you pay an Apple tax instead, but at least this provides you with an OS that you actually want to use!
a) You also will probably have to start drinking the Kool-Aid... I'm not sure I want to do that just yet. 2) The Apple Tax and associated other 'benefits', such as the free Kool-Aid, are a pretty high price to pay. D) There is no OS that I want to use. I use applications. The various OSs out there enable that activity. I don't sit around looking at my OS all day thinking "Gee, this OS is great!". In fact, if I'm doing that, then I'm not doing anything worthwhile (work, play, or whatever in-between) - I'm just sitting staring at a machine doing nothing. Additionally, IF I'm aware of the OS, then something is wrong... it should be out of my way and not be noticed. Any other blathering about OSs is just advocacy and/or fanboi-ism.
Various machines that I own run various OSs (Windows, Linux, primarily)... and that's so that I can use various applications that allow me to do stuff I want to do (work, play, etc.). So far, there hasn't been one OS that all the applications I want to run, run on. Or, versions of those applications that run on certain OSs basically suck in some form or the other (apps written/developed on Linux tend to suck when ported to Windows and vice versa, IME). So... either dedicated hardware or (increasingly) Virtual Machines allow me to use the apps I want to use.
a pair of 7200RPM 500GB SATA2 drives. You could configure a mirrored RAID 0 array
A mirrored RAID-0 array with only two drives? Besides... he specifically stated that he wanted reliability so RAID-0 probably isn't in the picture (increased failure rate proportional to the number of drives).
Slashdot Mirror
When I read a book and encounter a name that I can't "pronounce", I substitute. Supposed the main character has a name Tmaegedornrea or something.... I substitute "T-guy", "the main character", "the main character's sidekick", "bob's friend", "the evil wizard", "the bad guy", "the king of dragons", or some other made up pronunciation "Tee-meg-dorna", or something else when I see that name written and move on, understanding that character's role in the story. There are *lots* of names in JRRT's work, but hanging yourself up on pronunciation is not a reason to get emo about the book. This is a simple trick that most people learn early on, I'd have thought.
Or right after... as the pirates had used up the supply and it took some time to get more.
Ride a bike or make your dog/cat run on a treadmill to turn a generator to produce the electrical power for it. Otherwise, it isn't that green.
Let's compare single threaded performance ;)
Also, 128 threads per socket were done a decade ago by Tera and their barrel processor (256 threads in two sockets).
iPrank
iBully
iTorture
iDefame
iNag
iTaunt
iFight
iBeating
iRazz
iHaze
I didn't say people have computers at home *to* play games. I said that people who have computers at home tend to (maybe sometimes) play games on them. I thought about it a bit after reading these comments and, to be honest, I was kind of surprised my post was marked "Troll", but I stand by my original statement... I don't know anybody who has a computer at home who doesn't also play games on that computer.
Cheap machines are one thing, but I don't know of anyone who has a computer at home who doesn't play games. Until Linux can get a stable of games as well as a few of those 'killer apps' (TurboTax, QuickBooks, etc.), people will just ask "Can it play GameBlah?" and when the answer is "No" or "Yes, but you have to do all this configuration work and edit config files as root and [whatever]" their eyes will just glaze over and they'll just walk over to the Windows displays because the answer is "Yes, just put the CD in and install it".
The problem is that you can do all that you want, but until you pay a fab to make it for you (and that ain't cheap for small runs), you're just doing some mental masturbation over how neat this stuff is. It isn't like OSS where you can just download the stuff and use it for free. You can't download hardware... you either have to get it fabbed yourself or you have to hope someone fabs it and sells the stuff so you can get it.
Having been involved in two standards bodies, those bodies found enormous benefit to having reference implementations being built at the same time the standards were being developed. It certainly helps drive out issues during the standardization process that would otherwise/sometimes make the standard unusable.
Granted, what Microsoft is doing may not be a 'reference implementation' but still... there are benefits to doing *some* implementation in parallel with standardization.
Not when you run multiple single-process web servers in parallel ;)
One of the best models for these type things is a multithreaded/multiprocess application (using kernel/preemptive threads if using threads), basically one thread/process per core on the machine (this is a fudge, but for simplicity it's ok as an example). Each kernel thread cooperatively threads (no kernel calls or context switches to get in the way, much lower latency and overhead that way) over the task(s) given to it. It's a bit more complicated to program but you get precise control over when your cooperative tasking switches state and you don't get the overhead of context switches, while you are still able to use every core in the system to tackle your problem. This model is good for high IO tasks that have many channels to satisfy (an application that has many sockets open satisfying web requests, for example, or blasting email, etc.).
"fix it" as in replace your defective, slow part with one that doesn't have that problem.
Every CPU maker publishes the errata for their CPUs because system designers/vendors/whatever need to know these things. Every CPU made for the past (insert very long time in the computer world here) has had a big list of errata publicly published. Just got to the Intel or AMD site, for example, and look up the errata on the PPro, P3, P4, Core, Core2, Athlon, Athlon XP, Athlon64, Athlon64 X2, or whatever your favorite CPU happens to be.
The thing is, the CPU is actually broken a bit and AMD has pulled the Barcelona line but are continuing to sell the Phenom(inal Failure) line to customers and, evidently, don't plan to 'fix' the problem later (Intel offered replacements for the Pentium floating point bug after they got dinged on it, for example... I know... I had one and replaced it).
So... if you actually get your hands on (or got your hands on) a Phenom, realize you have a broken CPU and the more you load it, the more likely you'll have stability issues.... and AMD isn't (currently) going to fix it.
Actually, it may even be more effective against some targets. Explosive force and kinetic-kill weapons are two different things.
Not to say which has a better drag coefficient, but drag will quickly sap power. The thrust/weight ratio is fine, but drag can kill that very fast, limiting the top speed.
Plus, Mach is relative to altitude. Mach 2 at 60,000ft is not the same velocity as Mach 2 at 10,000 ft. I'm not sure (and don't have time to look it up) but the supercruise capability set in the specifications were defined for a certain altitude. Also, it was a minimum, not a maximum, so even if they say supercruise (Mach 1+) at 90% power, it certainly didn't limit the team from making a plane that could supercruise (Mach 2+) at 90% power.
This is one of those statements that's hard to deal with... If you say "Yeah! stick it to them!" because you hate Microsoft or some other advocacy reason, then you have to also realize that you're agreeing with them that your choice of non-Microsoft OS/software has been declared by them to be junk.
;)
If you disagree because you think your choice is viable, then you're saying they're wrong and that goes against your advocacy.
Economies of scale apply to software development efforts, as well. Do you want to sell your services or your software on a platform that has 1% of the market share, or 90%? If the market is segmented into a dozen platforms, you have to pick one, or a set of them. Each one is probably a non-trivial port, increasing your costs, time, and resources required to do so. That cuts into profit.
Yeah... and it's not like cell phone companies have to deal with enough repairing/replacing phones dropped in normal operation already (which normally doesn't require shaking or slinging the phone around), but they're asking users to actually shake the phones around to determine information about them... Neat... but I'm guessing they may say "Doh!" later...
Electrical companies, by the way, are on a grid, so it's useful to have standards by which they interoperate. It also greatly benefits consumer electronics to be able to build for certain standards. It's in their best interests (economies of scale, even) to standardize. The grids also operate in an interstate configuration, which gives the federal government some control (various bits about the controlling of interstate commerce in the various relevant documents).
Anyway, I covered both bases... talking about standards (ODF/OOXML) and about a product (Microsoft Office and even if the gov't tried to mandate using only OpenOffice, I'd have the same opinion).
Also, do you have any proof for this assertion?
Actually, electrical wiring standards vary (for houses, at least) check up on state building codesfor example. FCC is a better example, but still not completely accurate.
I didn't stupidly think ODF was a product, you incorrectly inferred that. I said they should mandate open standards and that pretty much covers ODF. They should not mandate products (like Microsoft Office) regardless of whether or not it uses open standards.
Also... it's evidently a fairly large area with a sparse population of sliding rocks... how many cameras and instrument packs do you need for full coverage to a reasonable resolution? How many to have reasonable coverage enough to perhaps capture one moving and the conditions during which it moves?
Obviously, other countries may be different, but it should be illegal for the USA Government to enforce, by law, the use of one product/standard over the other, IMO. Certainly laws should exist saying something like all data should be stored in open standards formats approved by X$ organization, which at this point is the same thing (since OOXML isn't approved by any such organization, yet). It shouldn't dictate exactly which standard, though... because at the very least, they'll also get bogged down in specifying what version(s) are allowed, and all sorts of other issues, not the least of which is depriving free-market decisions on which standard(s) to support by various vendors.
:(
The government technically isn't allowed to compete with private industry either (for obvious reasons), but unfortunately, that happens often enough these days as well
Why in $Diety_Name would I want to? Why not put a Dell together with what I want/need in it rather than mimicing a machine that probably has more stuff than I want (driving the price up)? How about you show me how to order a $500 Mac laptop?
Unfortunately, there are those who want to force some companies from unbundling all those things while allowing others to bundle them, and call that a 'level playing field', but that's a tangent. I'm not a 'typical' user so my experiences are just anecdotal... but I prefer to put a machine together from parts that are 'best of breed' at the time of purchase. Yesterday, that might be an AMD CPU with an ATI video card. Today, that might be an Intel CPU with an NVIDIA video card. That requires me to install various drivers, sure. It also requires a much more flexible system (mostly due to market-share... you have to support lots more variation)... comodity parts all over. I upgrade parts over time for a few years, then upgrade the entire box. I know most don't do this (just buy, for all intents and purposes, a set-top box periodically).
To be honest, the #1 issue that makes me refuse to use a Mac is the menu bar and (from what I've seen) so many detached windows, which seems to be the standard application GUI design (I also have the detached windows complain about certain applications on Windows and Linux). There are some great applications in MacOSX, though, but not enough for me to buy one (OmniGraffle, for instance, is *very* nice from what I've seen of it).
a) You also will probably have to start drinking the Kool-Aid... I'm not sure I want to do that just yet.
2) The Apple Tax and associated other 'benefits', such as the free Kool-Aid, are a pretty high price to pay.
D) There is no OS that I want to use. I use applications. The various OSs out there enable that activity. I don't sit around looking at my OS all day thinking "Gee, this OS is great!". In fact, if I'm doing that, then I'm not doing anything worthwhile (work, play, or whatever in-between) - I'm just sitting staring at a machine doing nothing. Additionally, IF I'm aware of the OS, then something is wrong... it should be out of my way and not be noticed. Any other blathering about OSs is just advocacy and/or fanboi-ism.
Various machines that I own run various OSs (Windows, Linux, primarily)... and that's so that I can use various applications that allow me to do stuff I want to do (work, play, etc.). So far, there hasn't been one OS that all the applications I want to run, run on. Or, versions of those applications that run on certain OSs basically suck in some form or the other (apps written/developed on Linux tend to suck when ported to Windows and vice versa, IME). So... either dedicated hardware or (increasingly) Virtual Machines allow me to use the apps I want to use.
Detaining someone and depriving him of his freedom is also a form of torture... so I guess the solution is to just stop enforcing any laws.
A mirrored RAID-0 array with only two drives? Besides... he specifically stated that he wanted reliability so RAID-0 probably isn't in the picture (increased failure rate proportional to the number of drives).