"Or... it encourages people to keep writing viruses, knowing that the more individuals who write viruses, the less ability Microsoft is going to have to offer $250,000 to $5.0million rewards."
I know it's cool to hate Microsoft and all, but I seriously doubt anybody's gonna enjoy the idea of going to jail just to cost MS a few dollars. Microsoft isn't worth being made a martyr over.
"... Microsoft should have used the money to audit their code or something... "
Actually, you have to attack both ends of the security problem, not just the software side. Yes, Windows has some problems it needs fixing. However, no matter how secure you make a system, you're still combatting the collective creativity of people. The OS needs to be made better and there needs to be incentive for people not to write worms/trojands/viruses/etc. You guys should be happy that this type of action can benefit Linux's security, too.
"The graphics card has a lot of unused computing power, nearly equal to the main processor chip in the computer if not more, that is not being used when there is no game or video being played, right?"
Longhorn is suppossed to offload a lot of the GUI stuff to the card. So yeah, it'd take advantage of untapped power of the card. However, as for other general purpose stuff, it wouldn't be so interesting. It's kinda like comparing a Ferrari to a school bus. The Ferrari will run circles around the bus, but can only ferry 2 people. The bus can move a LOT of cargo, but not as fast as the Ferrari. We're talking about specialization here. The trick is to find ways to take what the GPU is good at and making them useful.
I have a question: From the video, it appears that the beam is invisible. The reasons for that are pretty obvious. I just wanted to ask, is it possible for a laser beam to get so hot that it causes the air inside of it to turn visibly vapourous? Just wondering if we'll ever see a beam like that so powerful it leaves con-trails like plains leave or something.
"but might this have something to do with the recently-announced Longhorn specs? "
Perhaps. Or maybe it's because it's a relatively inexpensive way to make laptops faster. If AMD isn't doing dual-core, then Intel could find itself owning the laptop market for the forseeable future.
Personally, I think we're going to see more and more about adding processors down the road. The more threads the average computer uses, the more benefit you get from multiple processors than from a really really fast single proc machine. As long as there's an available proc to handle the UI stuff, the 'faster' the computer appears to be. I enjoy that with my dual proc machine. While my computer's rendering, I can still do my other CPU intensive stuff, as opposed to really only being able to do one thing at a time.
I guess there are practical limits as to how many procs can be added. But man, I *ache* for a dual proc laptop or the equivalent.
"I don't think the pics out of Iraq are re-touched, but the ease and power of photoshop and such is something to keep in mind..."
It's harder than it looks.
It's a LOT easier to fake these photos just by setting up something convincing. Can't speak for the American ones, but the British gov'ts been criticizing the pics of their alleged abuses. The pics depicted the wrong guns, the wrong trucks, etc. Never mind Photoshop, pictures are just plain decieving.
You could always set up a web page that tracks the IP of whoever hits it. Set up the laptop to automatically go to that page when it boots. (Maybe give it a magic forwarder that sends it to Google News or something after it's visited?) Then you at least get the IP. If you wanted to be snazzier, you could also have it read the HTML that comes down and look for a self destruct message. I'm not sure how you'd do this with the Mac, but I imagine it's not too hard. In the Windows world, I'd just write a little VB app to do that, wouldn't take very long.
"You can't blame them for hiking their prices, if the market will yield a profit by doing so."
We can when there's a recent story about them not paying the artists. We also can when we know the RIAA has motivation to kill off iTunes. Maybe blame isn't the right word, but it's reasonable that a lot of us are very cautious about it.
"Someone remind me again why I'd pay exactly the same price for a lower quality MP3/AAC/Whatever when I could go to the store, buy the disc, rip my OWN MP3s with no DRM BS, *AND* have the full-quality.cda tracks?"
Because you spend less money if you only buy the songs you want? I don't want to use the word moron, but you really could have figured that one out on your own.
Besides, haven't you read about the anti-ripping measures being taken by some record companies? No better than DRM.
" Apple, for example, is charging $17 for N.E.R.D.'s new 12-track Fly or Die album, while Napster charges $14--both higher than the $13.50 Amazon is selling the physical CD for."
All you have to do in order to make Apple or Napster lower than Amazon is toss one of the songs. Amazon can't do that.
"Didn't anyone else notice that Sony was touting the new discs to be used in the PSP as a new end-user storage media (meaning not exclusive to games)? How they went on and on about how the PSP was going to be the new Walkman? How they talked about watching movies and listening to music on it?"
Probably to be expected. Sony's always trying to push their own media. The question is whether or not making an overpriced portable game system is the right way to promote it. I like the idea of using that sort of media, but I worry this'll fall flat on its face.
"It's easy enough to pirate the seemingly crackproof media PS2 uses but it would be even easier to pirate a PSP game. whats to stop me from downloading one from alt.binaries.games instead of sonys online store?"
"They're trying to get people used to paying CD prices for downloaded music so they can phase out CD sales all together, thereby significantly curtailing the trade in mp3s, reducing their distribution costs to nil, and gradually moving people to a pay-per-use model for content consumption."
I dunno if they're so eager to toss the CD production capabilities. In the digital music service world, it would be a heck of a lot easier to be beat up by newcomer competition. I'm not saying you're wrong or that I'm right, but I think the RIAA's actually scared of that model you mentioned. I think they'd like to be able to do it if they still had to provide something that it'd take a lot of capital on the competitor's side to compete with.
"I don't think that they would have shot down all four planes, even if they had fighters tailing each of them from takeoff - I don't think that they could have done it until the first plane hit the trade center. "
Probably true. However, this doesn't defeat my point. If all four planes were shot down before they hit anything, the country would have been divided. There'd be non-sensical blathering about how there was no evidence that they were hijacked, or that they would have crashed, and that we should have given the negotiators more time.
Slashdot Mirror
"Or... it encourages people to keep writing viruses, knowing that the more individuals who write viruses, the less ability Microsoft is going to have to offer $250,000 to $5.0million rewards."
I know it's cool to hate Microsoft and all, but I seriously doubt anybody's gonna enjoy the idea of going to jail just to cost MS a few dollars. Microsoft isn't worth being made a martyr over.
"... Microsoft should have used the money to audit their code or something ... "
Actually, you have to attack both ends of the security problem, not just the software side. Yes, Windows has some problems it needs fixing. However, no matter how secure you make a system, you're still combatting the collective creativity of people. The OS needs to be made better and there needs to be incentive for people not to write worms/trojands/viruses/etc. You guys should be happy that this type of action can benefit Linux's security, too.
Troll?! Did I nearly start a riot?
"The graphics card has a lot of unused computing power, nearly equal to the main processor chip in the computer if not more, that is not being used when there is no game or video being played, right?"
Longhorn is suppossed to offload a lot of the GUI stuff to the card. So yeah, it'd take advantage of untapped power of the card. However, as for other general purpose stuff, it wouldn't be so interesting. It's kinda like comparing a Ferrari to a school bus. The Ferrari will run circles around the bus, but can only ferry 2 people. The bus can move a LOT of cargo, but not as fast as the Ferrari. We're talking about specialization here. The trick is to find ways to take what the GPU is good at and making them useful.
"That is some amazing work there. "
Pity I can't see the work, slashdotted?
Well if ya wanna see s'more really talented peeps, go to www.cgtalk.com and check out their galleries. You won't be disappointed.
Are you saying that if if they did make one that was uber-hot, they could adjust the wavelength to prevent the phenomenon I described?
I have a question: From the video, it appears that the beam is invisible. The reasons for that are pretty obvious. I just wanted to ask, is it possible for a laser beam to get so hot that it causes the air inside of it to turn visibly vapourous? Just wondering if we'll ever see a beam like that so powerful it leaves con-trails like plains leave or something.
On the whole, Preperation-H was a success!
"but might this have something to do with the recently-announced Longhorn specs? "
Perhaps. Or maybe it's because it's a relatively inexpensive way to make laptops faster. If AMD isn't doing dual-core, then Intel could find itself owning the laptop market for the forseeable future.
Personally, I think we're going to see more and more about adding processors down the road. The more threads the average computer uses, the more benefit you get from multiple processors than from a really really fast single proc machine. As long as there's an available proc to handle the UI stuff, the 'faster' the computer appears to be. I enjoy that with my dual proc machine. While my computer's rendering, I can still do my other CPU intensive stuff, as opposed to really only being able to do one thing at a time.
I guess there are practical limits as to how many procs can be added. But man, I *ache* for a dual proc laptop or the equivalent.
"It's a glitch in The Matrix. They happen alot. "
It's a glitch in The Matrix. They happen alot.
"I don't think the pics out of Iraq are re-touched, but the ease and power of photoshop and such is something to keep in mind..."
It's harder than it looks.
It's a LOT easier to fake these photos just by setting up something convincing. Can't speak for the American ones, but the British gov'ts been criticizing the pics of their alleged abuses. The pics depicted the wrong guns, the wrong trucks, etc. Never mind Photoshop, pictures are just plain decieving.
Understood. What about performance wise? Better, worse, or similar to dual proc?
;)
I ask because I run dual proc now, hate to live without it.
"It's dual core, not dual processors. "
Err, how would that behave differently from a dual proc machine?
You could always set up a web page that tracks the IP of whoever hits it. Set up the laptop to automatically go to that page when it boots. (Maybe give it a magic forwarder that sends it to Google News or something after it's visited?) Then you at least get the IP. If you wanted to be snazzier, you could also have it read the HTML that comes down and look for a self destruct message. I'm not sure how you'd do this with the Mac, but I imagine it's not too hard. In the Windows world, I'd just write a little VB app to do that, wouldn't take very long.
"You can't blame them for hiking their prices, if the market will yield a profit by doing so."
We can when there's a recent story about them not paying the artists. We also can when we know the RIAA has motivation to kill off iTunes. Maybe blame isn't the right word, but it's reasonable that a lot of us are very cautious about it.
"Someone remind me again why I'd pay exactly the same price for a lower quality MP3/AAC/Whatever when I could go to the store, buy the disc, rip my OWN MP3s with no DRM BS, *AND* have the full-quality .cda tracks?"
Because you spend less money if you only buy the songs you want? I don't want to use the word moron, but you really could have figured that one out on your own.
Besides, haven't you read about the anti-ripping measures being taken by some record companies? No better than DRM.
" Apple, for example, is charging $17 for N.E.R.D.'s new 12-track Fly or Die album, while Napster charges $14--both higher than the $13.50 Amazon is selling the physical CD for."
All you have to do in order to make Apple or Napster lower than Amazon is toss one of the songs. Amazon can't do that.
"Didn't anyone else notice that Sony was touting the new discs to be used in the PSP as a new end-user storage media (meaning not exclusive to games)? How they went on and on about how the PSP was going to be the new Walkman? How they talked about watching movies and listening to music on it?"
Probably to be expected. Sony's always trying to push their own media. The question is whether or not making an overpriced portable game system is the right way to promote it. I like the idea of using that sort of media, but I worry this'll fall flat on its face.
"It's easy enough to pirate the seemingly crackproof media PS2 uses but it would be even easier to pirate a PSP game. whats to stop me from downloading one from alt.binaries.games instead of sonys online store?"
How are you going to burn those little discs?
"The people who can only get dialup access, or the're going to burn a good majority of their users.. "
This was insightful like 3 years ago. Today it's like complaining that Microsoft isn't supporting Windows 95 users.
"They're trying to get people used to paying CD prices for downloaded music so they can phase out CD sales all together, thereby significantly curtailing the trade in mp3s, reducing their distribution costs to nil, and gradually moving people to a pay-per-use model for content consumption."
I dunno if they're so eager to toss the CD production capabilities. In the digital music service world, it would be a heck of a lot easier to be beat up by newcomer competition. I'm not saying you're wrong or that I'm right, but I think the RIAA's actually scared of that model you mentioned. I think they'd like to be able to do it if they still had to provide something that it'd take a lot of capital on the competitor's side to compete with.
" MS has no obligation to pirates..."
MS isn't able to judge who is and isn't a pirate.
"It is fair to say that all the pirated versions of windows in china and south east Asia infected with a virus can easily overwhelm any network."
It's also fair to say that there are people using pirated copies that have legitimately paid for them. Discs get damaged sometimes.
"I don't think that they would have shot down all four planes, even if they had fighters tailing each of them from takeoff - I don't think that they could have done it until the first plane hit the trade center. "
Probably true. However, this doesn't defeat my point. If all four planes were shot down before they hit anything, the country would have been divided. There'd be non-sensical blathering about how there was no evidence that they were hijacked, or that they would have crashed, and that we should have given the negotiators more time.
"Who's going to win? Find out in 2008!"
Redundant? Heh I found it kinda funny. I mean, are we all bookmarking our posts here so we can whip them out in 2008 and say "HA! I was RIGHT!!"??