I cannot understand in the slightest why this has any relevance at all on a "news for nerds" website, except for the possible purpose of pushing a political agenda. This kind of stuff belongs on DailyKos or some other site aimed at agitating the masses, not a site where the prime focus ought to be technical.
I love how 'left' and 'liberal' are dirty words now, say what you want about the Republican party, but their PR is top notch
You act like the left hasn't demonized the term "neocon" to death. Excuse me, Mr. Pot? Your friend Kettle is calling.
If liberals don't want to be "dirty words" then perhaps they ought to stop associating themselves with ideologies more akin to Marxist/Communist thinking. Being pink on the inside yet dressing yourself up as a "progressive liberal" isn't fooling anyone.
It's relevant because the nerds who pay attention to this site are interested in the topic. Look, there are already almost 200 comments talking about it.
Yelling fire in a crowded theater is sure to stir folks up, too. Doesn't mean it's any more appropriate of a forum./. is a geek site, supposedly peddling news on geek-related issues like software, hardware, and technology in general. This article has none of that, and isn't even remotely close. Ergo, it has no place here except to stir folks up...but to stir them up in a particular direction which is all but spelled out in the article. QED.
If you want left-leaning political blog forums, go to DailyKos.
Slashdot generally leans left, but this article is not evidence of that.
The fact that this site is generally about technical issues and this hasn't even the slightest bit to do with it indicates to me that those approving articles want to stir up controversy over this non-issue. So a few innocent people get put on a bad guy list. The get questioned at the gate, the whole thing is over in 15 minutes and does not re-occur. This is a big deal...why?
Anyway, from that viewpoint, a huge heat-sink signals high energy consumption.
"High energy consumption" is a very relative term. When compared to the video cards sporting multiple 5000rpm fans, heatpipes, and three pounds of copper-cored heatsink fins, a little one-inch-by-one-inch heatsink covering the GPU generally signals low energy consumption.
As for cards with no heatsinks at all, I think you'll agree that such animals are becoming very, very scarce these days, and they represent the barest fringe of what's available. Minor heatsinks can still represent the lower end of mainstream performance, whereas what you're suggesting typically cannot.
I fail to understand in the slightest why this has any relevance at all on a "news for nerds" website, except for the possible purpose of pushing a political agenda. Could/. be any more transparent in its bias? I didn't think so, but I continue to be proven wrong time and time again as this whole site slides further and further to the left every day.
You haven't bothered looking much, have you? Fanless video cards are available for the taking. They're quite prevalent in Home Theater PC's (HTPC's) due to low noise levels, and the lack of a fan pretty much puts a very conservative upper limit on how much juice it can pull. Even given those limitations, you can find cards that'll give you fairly decent performance. Just look at AnandTech's recent HD-DVD/Blu-ray video card comparison.
The point is this: people do have choices now, and they're choosing the higher-powered cards. The OP's point is clearly correct here. It's not about lack of choices, it's about the fact that, for most consumers, power consumption isn't yet an issue. I mean, how many people do you know of that have dual GeForce 7950X2's (quad GPU's)? My single 7900GT is a veritable Prius compared to such a supercharged big-block V8 behemoth, even though a 7900GT is damn close to the fastest single card solution you can possibly buy.
It would be interesting to see this arranaged by the operating system of the infected computer.
And what exactly would this prove? If 95 out of every 100 computers on the planet run Windows, wouldn't you logically expect there to be more Windows 'bots than any other? This kind of breakdown would be no less silly than the current by-country ranking system, as the numbers it produces proves nothing more than huge portion of Internet users reside in America.
Now, if you wanted to show normalized numbers, such as the percentage of Windows infections against the total number of Windows users compared with similar percentage-based numbers of Mac and Linux users, then you'd have some useful data. Not very useful data, though, because Windows users by and large tend to be less technically savvy than, say, your average Linux nerd or Macophile. Windows is marketed for the masses, and its infection rates reflect that. That does not imply Windows is a fundamentally inferior product, it implies it is a different product with different goals being marketed to a different user base than what we have here at/.
Why do so many people here feel the need to compare their OS to another one in some silly attempt at a mine-is-better-than-yours childish argument?
Besides, even if one design adopted 64-bitness earlier in the process than the other, of what benefit is this? If this is advantageous, it should show up in improved performance on 64-bit benchmarks. Is this the case?
As with all things of this type, it depends on the application and its data set. A straight port of a 32-bit app with a 32-bit data set to a 64-bit environment probably isn't going to gain you much. In fact, performance might even suffer, as 64-bit stuff tends to clog up the L2 cache more than 32-bit stuff since it's "bigger" data. Compiler optimizations might help a few things here and there, but I haven't seen huge gains.
Now, if your app specifically takes advantage of 64-bit stuff, such as the larger number of registers, the ability to natively operate on 64-bit data chunks vice 32-bit chunks, and so forth, you can get quite a few gains. I think I've seen POV-Ray benchmarks showing more than 50% gains in performance, although I can't put my finger on a URL right this second.
But the biggest draw for 64-bitness right now is mainly oriented around those of us who want to run relatively large amounts of RAM. Although most 32-bit OS's seem to work fine with 4GB of RAM, in reality some (notably Windows) require some funky tricks to effectively use more than 1GB. 1GB isn't a lot of RAM anymore (I have 8GB in my home dual-CPU, dual-core Opteron setup because I do lots of 3D rendering). A 64-bit OS makes working with this much RAM a breeze. Even if the performance "increase" were near zero, I'd still go 64-bit simply because all the memory issues inherent in 32-bit OS's disappear. Sure, the per-process limits on 32-bit apps still apply, but you can run lots more processes to get around that if need be.
Think multi-core CPU where one (or more) of the cores could serve as a graphics processor on demand. Oh, the power...
A general purpose CPU like the "Hammer" line is poorly suited to doing the kinds of things done by GPU's like NVIDIA's GeForce or ATi's Catalyst line. Graphics work requires a lot of vector work which is signficantly different than what a CPU is optimized for. In simple terms, vector works best when you have millions of tiny bits of data that all need the same kind of functions applied to them (i.e. pixels being lit, shaded, antialised, etc.), but vector is poor when you need to do general-purpose computations on other things (i.e. AI for 'bots and such).
In short, what you're suggesting is not worthwhile. Now if you wanted to talk about putting a GPU or Physics-Processing Unit (PPU) in a CPU socket, connected via HyperTransport to main memory and the CPU, then you've got something. Unfortunately for you, AMD has already thought of that, and numerous companies are out there ready to produce custom FPGA's performing massively-vectorized calculations for industries like oil and gas exploration. Gaming can't be far behind if this trend takes off (which is a big if).
Well of course, but bear in mind that although we employed different strategies we were playing on the same field, by the same rules. The terrorists aren't.
Asymmetric warfare is a fixture of modern life. There is no way around it, not when AK-47's, RPG's, and shoulder-mounted SAM's are available for the international equivalent of a few dollars. Or you can simply take advantage of the laughable security of airlines and turn a plane into a bomb a la 9/11. One could argue asymmetric warfare extends far before "modern" times, with partisans and guerilla tactics working against well-equipped, well-trained, well-financed armed forces (see American Revolution, French Resistance, etc.) That doesn't mean you can ignore it, it just means that the smaller, more nebulous partisan is going to require a disproportionate effort in order to neutralize or marginalize them. Ignoring it, though, does not solve the problem and merely encourages the offensive side. You are forced to engage the attacker even though it's a foregone conclusion you'll spend more time, effort, and resources than he will to do so.
What did they spend to bring down the WTC? What have we spent in response?
We have many orders of magnitude more assets which can be attacked, ergo we are more vulnerable. The fact that we've spent amazing sums of money since then proves nothing. The argument could be made that we should've been spending this much all along, the results of which might've prevented 9/11 in the first place. However, much like trying to sell a CEO on a disaster recovery plan, people only seem to want to spend money on something after a major disaster.
There was this day in 1929 when the confidence went away. My grandparents were 20 years old on that day. My parents grew up in its aftermath (you can read a short description of conditions on my family's farm in the book Finding Dr. Schatz. Ask your library to buy a copy) and so, as a result, to an extent, did I. I have no illusions about the ultimate strength of our economy. In some ways we are stronger now than we were in the 20's, but in many ways we have made ourselves far, far weaker as well. Our strength is brittle and may thus be shattered.
I think you worry too much on this point, although it's worth worrying about at least somewhat. American strength is based on resolve as much as it's based on anything else. Historically, this country has risen to every challenge ever put before it regardless of the circumstances preceding the challenge. Your Depression example is particularly apt at proving this, as the economy was still feeling the effects of it on December 7, 1941. Yet we prevailed there as well. Assuming American apathy doesn't continue to encroach on our society as a whole, we will win the war on terror simply by outlasting them. Eventually, they will either all be killed or they'll get tired of fighting a war in which they cannot win. The only way the terrorists can win is if we give up.
I might also argue that it wasn't really the Soviet Union's economic philosophy that caused its collapse, but rather its social philosophy, which in response to the terrorist attacks we are daily moving closer and closer to adopting.
You are correct that it's more of a social philosophy thing because the economic philosophy was thusly derived. As for us moving in that direction, I'm far more worried about people's fervent desire to avoid freedom and responsibility (and their eagerness to depend on government to solve all their ills) than I am about any kind of government-instigated coup. Power isn't seized, it is given by the masses. Our founding fathers would weep if the knew how pathetically cognizant the average American is about the concepts of freedom and liberty today.
Ya know how we caused the Soviet Union to collapse by forcing their military to spend, spend, spend?
This is only half true because you're missing the most important part of the equation: we outspent the Russians because we were in a better position economically to do so. Our strength is our Capitalism, which has collectively allowed the citizens of this country to build up wealth the likes of which cannot be found anywhere else on Earth. Even the poorest person in ths nation generally has a home, a car, cable TV, air conditioning, and a cell phone. Reagan knew the Russian strength was gross manpower, quantity over quality. If we tried to beat them using the same philosophy, we'd have lost. You never fight your enemy where he is strong, you fight him where he is weak. Case in point, we outspent the Russians and still won the Cold War. They spent less and went bankrupt. Q.E.D.
While it is true the current crop of Republicans is spending like a bunch of drunken sailors, it's important to keep perspective. We beat the Russians because our economic philosophy was so much more efficient than the Russian planned economy. What's so damned tragic is that after we beat them, we're now starting to resemble them more and more each day.
They link to the Frontmotion MSI, so although it's not approved by Mozilla, they must think pretty highly of it.
We're already evaluating it, and thus far it looks pretty good.
Also, please don't think my sibling poster's comment reflects the views of the entire open source community.
Sometimes it's difficult not to, especially when asses like him show just how out of touch they are with what's required in the real world. I'm glad you're above it.
You're an IT director, and you don't know that to fix/support an MSI (and not the underlying program) doesn't require programming skills, but rather general sysadmin skills?
Yes, I'm well aware of it, just as I'm well aware that you're some snot-nosed little kid who thinks he knows enough about his betters to go around insulting them. When you've got a couple of decades of experience under your belt, try coming back and lecturing me then.
In the meantime, in your haste to be an absolute ass, you missed the entire point: rolling my own MSI is definitely within the boundaries of my skillset and those under me. However, I don't want to roll my own, I want the application developer to do it for me. That way, if there's a problem, I can go to the application developer to get it resolved. If I roll my own and it freaks out, who do I blame? My MSI? Or something funky being done by Mozilla? If I try to open a bug report with Mozilla, are they just going to say "sorry, we don't support third-party rolled MSI's" and leave it at that? If there's even a chance of that, the option itself is not acceptable. If you had even an ounce of maturity in that cranium of yours, you'd understand that applications for the enterprise require enterprise-level support in order to work right. Dinking around with handmade MSI's doesn't fall into this category unless you've got a fulltime development staff around to go to when things don't work the way they're supposed to. Most firms don't have such people on staff (and if they do, they've likely got far better things to do than roll MSI's, like managing the in-house customized CRM and ERP apps).
Go grow up. You're just annoying those around you who know far more than you do.
BTW, it is possible to install applications via loginscripts even for locked down users, but you need to use some tricks with "runas".
Unless you know something I don't, what you're suggesting with the RunAs command is possible but not secure. What this usually involves is embedding the admin password somewhere in the login script for the purposes of a temporary privilege escalation. The obvious problem with this is that the admin password is now available in the login script. Oh, there's things that'll let you encrypt it so it's not plaintext, but the decrypter must also be in the script, making it easy to get the plaintext password for anyone who cares to look. Sorry, that's not a solution, that's a gaping security hole just waiting to be exploited.
I wouldn't dismiss it because it's not "official"; the whole point of open-source is third parties being able to do things with the code.
While your statement is more or less true, you're missing the point here. Third party stuff is sometimes good. However, when Joe Schmoe cooks up something in his garage, I have to wonder if he'll still be supporting it six months later when I have an issue with it. No doubt the most common comeback to this complaint is "well, you have the code, so why don't you fix it?" To this I will respond "I am an I.T. Director, not a programmer. My company is not in the business of writing code or maintaining the code of others. We have more important things to do, like run our business. If this is the best you can do, we'll stick with closed-source, off-the-shelf stuff that either works or supplies me with a guaranteed support infrastructure that will stick with me until the problem is solved."
This is not elitist, or snooty, or close-minded, it is merely a reflection of the reality of being somewhere in the management infrastructure of an I.T. organization. You don't have time to tinker with crap. It either has to work and be well supported it isn't even going to make the short list of solutions to consider.
I'm going to take a very close look at this MSI packager. It does seem well thought out, although I would still prefer something directly made and supported by Mozilla. I still can't understand why Mozilla is too dense to produce something like this. It's not like the MSI format is something closed and accessible only to Microsoft; it's a published spec that's easy to use and -- if I'm not mistaken -- free. I certainly hope it's not some sense of high-minded idealism on the part of Mozilla trying to shun anything created or sanctioned by Microsoft. That's simply cutting off your nose to spite your face.
I'd love to know why Mozilla still refuses to publish an MSI installer! I know many other I.T. Directors like me that would love to push out FF but are unable to do so because (a) Mozilla doesn't provide an MSI package and (b) pushing this out via SMS/Altiris/etc. is a royal pain to configure. Why is Mozilla being to tragically and stupidly stubborn about this? It's only hurting FF adoption.
I'm an I.T. Director at a large firm, and I've been eager to try deployment of Firefox to our corporate desktops. However, I've been stymied by this as there seems to be no MSI installation package for FF. Our desktop users are locked down and cannot install apps, so deploying FF via login script is not an option. I'd love to be able to push this out via GPO's, but with no MSI installer, that's more or less impossible.
Does anyone know of a good way to push installations of FF via GPO? If so, are patches also available to be pushed in this fashion? Note that if users don't have local admin privs, they aren't able to use FF's auto-update function.
Lastly, I'm sure there are various people who have cobbled together MSI's manually in some fashion. I don't think this is acceptable to us at this time, as we would prefer something "official" from Mozilla if at all possible. Third party hacks are great for home use, but we need something more or less "officially recognized" by Mozilla before I'm going to do a mass push to hundreds of desktops.
Concorde made substantial profits for BA and Air France when in service, and both fleets were paid for at the list price rate. Neither airline has operated Concorde under subsidies and even before the BA buyout of Concorde from the government in 1984, Concorde was producing a profit.
I will direct you to the Wikipedia page on the Concorde, which has the following juicy bit of info:
The governments continued to take a cut of any profits made, in the case of BA 80% of the profit was kept by the government, whilst the cost of buying the aircraft was covered by a loan offered by the government.
Now, just why was the government taking a chunk of Concorde's profits? Ah! To cover subsidized development costs, of course! And note that little bit about the government offering loans to airlines. What it doesn't say is those loans were offered well below market rates, to the point where they more or less constituted a gift.
Now, I'm not going to say Boeing doesn't get similar handouts from the U.S. government, but you're trying to paint the Concorde as some white knight, free of any sort of government graft that kept it in development, production, and flying at all. That simply isn't true, and it's quite easy (as shown above) to demonstrate such.
(unions in the U.S. are a joke compared to European counterparts and in many cases are being dismantled in some industries).
Ah! That would explain why the average U.S. worker is so much less productive than, say, his counterpart in France. Oh, wait, I've got that backwards...
Unions can be a good thing when used properly (the same can be said of company management). However, as U.S. airlines and automakers are finding out, the unions have been used to make the entire industry uncompetitive with foreign competition. If the union demands a wage and working conditions that runs the company out of business, is it really "protecting" worker's rights at all? Kind of hard to be protected when you're unemployed. If you doubt this, just look up the history of companies like GM, Ford, Delta, and so forth. They're all in very bad shape, yet there labor force was (and some still is) the highest paid in the world. Gee, doyathink there could be a connection? Nah, couldn't be. That would merely puncture the myth that unions are the all-around good guys fighting against the evil, greedy, corporate capitalists.
It's clear by your spelling (aeroplane vs. airplane) that you're of European stock, so your deference to the Concorde is understandable if misplaced. Was (note the past tense) the Concorde a wonderful engineering achievement? Sure. Did it ever reallly turn a profit? Nope. It was hideously expensive to operate, kept alive only by the massive subsidies showered on it by the French and British governments. Over here on our side of the pond, the 747 had to earn its keep. It did, which is why it's still flying while the remaining Concorde airframes are rusting somewhere in an empty lot or museum.
However, I'd stop short of saying either vehicle is the "greatest" ever built. If I had to put that moniker on any modern heavier-than-air vehicle, it would have to be the SR-71 Blackbird, which is still unequaled in performance nearly forty years after it was designed. Granted, it never had to turn a profit, but then again it wasn't designed to (whereas the 747 and Concorde both were). I can call it the "greatest" because it met its design goals. So did the 747, albeit in a less spectacular fashion. The Concorde -- ostensibly a passenger craft and not some sort of experiment -- did not.
As for the A380 having "loans" instead of "subsidies," you are hiding behind semantics: Airbus is given massive tax breaks by the governments involved (to be fair, so is Boeing). As for the "loans" in question, past history has shown that the government can and have "forgiven" the loan payments when the airlines complain loudly enough. If it's a loan that never needs paying back, that's a subsidy, my friend. Don't try being disingenous to prove your point. In a public forum such as this, the deception is too easily revealed.
Oh yeah, and I'll note finally that, being a "no-voiceover-only" viewer, it seemed clear to me that Deckard was a replicant.:)
Interesting! Thank you for your take on this. Since I was born a lot earlier than most who frequent this board, I saw BR in the theaters and thus consider that version to be the "canonical" BR. Can't be helped, I suppose. What we know first we generally consider to be the "original" for anything. Han shot first, no question about it (grin).
Anyway, your take on Deckard's humanity (or lack thereof) is even more interesting when you take the book sequel into account. In it, it's rather clear Deckard is human. I've heard the book is non-canonical, though. Also, the book completely disregards the sappy, happy ending of the theatrical version.
Personally, if I could have it all, I'd like the Director's Cut with the theatrical version's voiceover. The sappy ending definitely has no place in the film, not after Roy's death. I like it better when the movie ends with Deckard & Rachel leaving in the elevator, their fate left to the imagination.
Seriously I am getting tired of this "Is he human or replicate" crap. For the story to work, he needs to be human. Otherwise all kinds of plot problems open up.
While I agree Deckard should be human, your analysis is not up to snuff. Note my comments below:
Like if he was a replicate, how come he sucks so much in a fight? All the other models kick the shit out of him--including the so called pleasure models.
This has been heavily discussed. First off, during the scene where Deckard is being shown the replicant models, you'll note each replicant model has a "phsyical" and "mental" score, rated with letters. Roy Batty is given the maximum in both categories, whereas Leon is given high physical but low mental scores (and given his job as a "nuclear loader," it's probably a good thing he's not well aware of what he's doing). Deckard could be high on the mental score and low on the physical score, thus allowing even Priss to beat him up.
In fact, there is discussion that Deckard is a replicant because of the physical strength he displays. You'll note he pulls himself up with broken fingers, something many say would be beyond a normal human. I say adrenaline does a lot for you.
The other explanation is that, if Deckard does not know he's a replicant, he may be unaware of his strength and thus mentally unable to make use of it.
And does not explain if he escaped with the other models on the spaceship, why don't they know him?
A big hole, but what makes you think they don't recognize him? At no point to Batty and Priss indicate they don't know Deckard. If they knew Deckard had been taken and "turned," their behavior might be very similar to what we saw. As for Zora, it could be argued that Zora did recognize Deckard but played along until she could strangle him.
It's thin, I admit it, but it's not impossible.
And if he is a special model like Rachel, why the hell does Tyrell not know this?
Who says he doesn't know? He's keeping his knowledge of Rachel being a replicant from Rachel. Why couldn't he be doing the same with Deckard? After all, he's apparently very interested in seeing how his replicants function without the knowledge of their true origins.
For Blade runner, seeing Deckard as human is critical because it explores the question more deeply of what it is to be human.
The same thing could be said of a replicant who thinks he's human but isn't. What makes a replicant not a human -- or vice versa -- if they both think and feel the same things. Roy's dying speech illustrates this very well. The dichotomy works both ways.
Personally I think voice over adds a lot to the story, I would even go far as to say it makes the real crux of the story possible with the internal dialogue we have of the characters.
I agree. There's a lot going on inside those characters. Without the voiceover, much of it might be lost on the typical viewer -- or even the experienced one. When I watch the Director's Cut, I hear Deckard's voice in my memory. I wonder what it's like for someone who's never seen the theatrical release? I can't imagine it.
OK, here's one: their cookie implementation via Javascript has been broken since before IE6 in 2001.
(sigh) It would seem you failed to grasp the important part of the requirement. Here, let my try to help you a bit: "Other than failing a variety of tests that also make Firefox puke (ie ACID test), please explain how IE is "broken" in a way that matters to the average user." You've given me a dissertation on why it's difficult for web developers, but in the same breath you indicate there are workarounds. Sure, they're a pain for you. So what? I don't say that to be trite, but the end user doesn't give one damn how many nights you've lost sleep over some non-RFC-compliant thing Microsoft did. If there's a workaround that doesn't involve the user doing anything, I've got news for you: the user doesn't care! And ultimately it's the user's experience -- not your coding experience -- that matters. Sorry to break it to you like that, but it's true.
And while we're on the subject of RFC's, let's remember something: an RFC is a guideline, not a rule. Anyone is free to do anything they want, however they want, using whatever tools, languages, or widgets that they want. If it works and people like it, it doesn't matter whether it's RFC compliant or not. If it gets enough market share, it becomes a standard whether you like it or not, RFC be damned. You ignore this reality at your peril.
Defacto standard or not, it's broken and you're irresponsible bragging about it.
I'm not bragging about it, I'm just dragging you kicking and screaming into reality. The only standards that matter are those standards that are accepted into widespread usage. History is littered with the corpses of standards that never got adopted because either a better standard emerged or a proprietary one did a better job...and in the latter case, many proprietary standards eventually became public domain standards or "generic" versions of them were reverse-engineered into the public domain. I abhor non-standard stuff as much as you do, but I'm not so stupid that I don't recognize the value of a de facto standard.
Slashdot Mirror
I cannot understand in the slightest why this has any relevance at all on a "news for nerds" website, except for the possible purpose of pushing a political agenda. This kind of stuff belongs on DailyKos or some other site aimed at agitating the masses, not a site where the prime focus ought to be technical.
I love how 'left' and 'liberal' are dirty words now, say what you want about the Republican party, but their PR is top notch
You act like the left hasn't demonized the term "neocon" to death. Excuse me, Mr. Pot? Your friend Kettle is calling.
If liberals don't want to be "dirty words" then perhaps they ought to stop associating themselves with ideologies more akin to Marxist/Communist thinking. Being pink on the inside yet dressing yourself up as a "progressive liberal" isn't fooling anyone.
It's relevant because the nerds who pay attention to this site are interested in the topic. Look, there are already almost 200 comments talking about it.
/. is a geek site, supposedly peddling news on geek-related issues like software, hardware, and technology in general. This article has none of that, and isn't even remotely close. Ergo, it has no place here except to stir folks up...but to stir them up in a particular direction which is all but spelled out in the article. QED.
Yelling fire in a crowded theater is sure to stir folks up, too. Doesn't mean it's any more appropriate of a forum.
If you want left-leaning political blog forums, go to DailyKos.
Slashdot generally leans left, but this article is not evidence of that.
The fact that this site is generally about technical issues and this hasn't even the slightest bit to do with it indicates to me that those approving articles want to stir up controversy over this non-issue. So a few innocent people get put on a bad guy list. The get questioned at the gate, the whole thing is over in 15 minutes and does not re-occur. This is a big deal...why?
Anyway, from that viewpoint, a huge heat-sink signals high energy consumption.
"High energy consumption" is a very relative term. When compared to the video cards sporting multiple 5000rpm fans, heatpipes, and three pounds of copper-cored heatsink fins, a little one-inch-by-one-inch heatsink covering the GPU generally signals low energy consumption.
As for cards with no heatsinks at all, I think you'll agree that such animals are becoming very, very scarce these days, and they represent the barest fringe of what's available. Minor heatsinks can still represent the lower end of mainstream performance, whereas what you're suggesting typically cannot.
I fail to understand in the slightest why this has any relevance at all on a "news for nerds" website, except for the possible purpose of pushing a political agenda. Could /. be any more transparent in its bias? I didn't think so, but I continue to be proven wrong time and time again as this whole site slides further and further to the left every day.
And what choice do we currently have?
You haven't bothered looking much, have you? Fanless video cards are available for the taking. They're quite prevalent in Home Theater PC's (HTPC's) due to low noise levels, and the lack of a fan pretty much puts a very conservative upper limit on how much juice it can pull. Even given those limitations, you can find cards that'll give you fairly decent performance. Just look at AnandTech's recent HD-DVD/Blu-ray video card comparison.
The point is this: people do have choices now, and they're choosing the higher-powered cards. The OP's point is clearly correct here. It's not about lack of choices, it's about the fact that, for most consumers, power consumption isn't yet an issue. I mean, how many people do you know of that have dual GeForce 7950X2's (quad GPU's)? My single 7900GT is a veritable Prius compared to such a supercharged big-block V8 behemoth, even though a 7900GT is damn close to the fastest single card solution you can possibly buy.
It would be interesting to see this arranaged by the operating system of the infected computer.
/.
And what exactly would this prove? If 95 out of every 100 computers on the planet run Windows, wouldn't you logically expect there to be more Windows 'bots than any other? This kind of breakdown would be no less silly than the current by-country ranking system, as the numbers it produces proves nothing more than huge portion of Internet users reside in America.
Now, if you wanted to show normalized numbers, such as the percentage of Windows infections against the total number of Windows users compared with similar percentage-based numbers of Mac and Linux users, then you'd have some useful data. Not very useful data, though, because Windows users by and large tend to be less technically savvy than, say, your average Linux nerd or Macophile. Windows is marketed for the masses, and its infection rates reflect that. That does not imply Windows is a fundamentally inferior product, it implies it is a different product with different goals being marketed to a different user base than what we have here at
Why do so many people here feel the need to compare their OS to another one in some silly attempt at a mine-is-better-than-yours childish argument?
Besides, even if one design adopted 64-bitness earlier in the process than the other, of what benefit is this? If this is advantageous, it should show up in improved performance on 64-bit benchmarks. Is this the case?
As with all things of this type, it depends on the application and its data set. A straight port of a 32-bit app with a 32-bit data set to a 64-bit environment probably isn't going to gain you much. In fact, performance might even suffer, as 64-bit stuff tends to clog up the L2 cache more than 32-bit stuff since it's "bigger" data. Compiler optimizations might help a few things here and there, but I haven't seen huge gains.
Now, if your app specifically takes advantage of 64-bit stuff, such as the larger number of registers, the ability to natively operate on 64-bit data chunks vice 32-bit chunks, and so forth, you can get quite a few gains. I think I've seen POV-Ray benchmarks showing more than 50% gains in performance, although I can't put my finger on a URL right this second.
But the biggest draw for 64-bitness right now is mainly oriented around those of us who want to run relatively large amounts of RAM. Although most 32-bit OS's seem to work fine with 4GB of RAM, in reality some (notably Windows) require some funky tricks to effectively use more than 1GB. 1GB isn't a lot of RAM anymore (I have 8GB in my home dual-CPU, dual-core Opteron setup because I do lots of 3D rendering). A 64-bit OS makes working with this much RAM a breeze. Even if the performance "increase" were near zero, I'd still go 64-bit simply because all the memory issues inherent in 32-bit OS's disappear. Sure, the per-process limits on 32-bit apps still apply, but you can run lots more processes to get around that if need be.
Think multi-core CPU where one (or more) of the cores could serve as a graphics processor on demand. Oh, the power...
A general purpose CPU like the "Hammer" line is poorly suited to doing the kinds of things done by GPU's like NVIDIA's GeForce or ATi's Catalyst line. Graphics work requires a lot of vector work which is signficantly different than what a CPU is optimized for. In simple terms, vector works best when you have millions of tiny bits of data that all need the same kind of functions applied to them (i.e. pixels being lit, shaded, antialised, etc.), but vector is poor when you need to do general-purpose computations on other things (i.e. AI for 'bots and such).
In short, what you're suggesting is not worthwhile. Now if you wanted to talk about putting a GPU or Physics-Processing Unit (PPU) in a CPU socket, connected via HyperTransport to main memory and the CPU, then you've got something. Unfortunately for you, AMD has already thought of that, and numerous companies are out there ready to produce custom FPGA's performing massively-vectorized calculations for industries like oil and gas exploration. Gaming can't be far behind if this trend takes off (which is a big if).
Well of course, but bear in mind that although we employed different strategies we were playing on the same field, by the same rules. The terrorists aren't.
Asymmetric warfare is a fixture of modern life. There is no way around it, not when AK-47's, RPG's, and shoulder-mounted SAM's are available for the international equivalent of a few dollars. Or you can simply take advantage of the laughable security of airlines and turn a plane into a bomb a la 9/11. One could argue asymmetric warfare extends far before "modern" times, with partisans and guerilla tactics working against well-equipped, well-trained, well-financed armed forces (see American Revolution, French Resistance, etc.) That doesn't mean you can ignore it, it just means that the smaller, more nebulous partisan is going to require a disproportionate effort in order to neutralize or marginalize them. Ignoring it, though, does not solve the problem and merely encourages the offensive side. You are forced to engage the attacker even though it's a foregone conclusion you'll spend more time, effort, and resources than he will to do so.
What did they spend to bring down the WTC? What have we spent in response?
We have many orders of magnitude more assets which can be attacked, ergo we are more vulnerable. The fact that we've spent amazing sums of money since then proves nothing. The argument could be made that we should've been spending this much all along, the results of which might've prevented 9/11 in the first place. However, much like trying to sell a CEO on a disaster recovery plan, people only seem to want to spend money on something after a major disaster.
There was this day in 1929 when the confidence went away. My grandparents were 20 years old on that day. My parents grew up in its aftermath (you can read a short description of conditions on my family's farm in the book Finding Dr. Schatz. Ask your library to buy a copy) and so, as a result, to an extent, did I. I have no illusions about the ultimate strength of our economy. In some ways we are stronger now than we were in the 20's, but in many ways we have made ourselves far, far weaker as well. Our strength is brittle and may thus be shattered.
I think you worry too much on this point, although it's worth worrying about at least somewhat. American strength is based on resolve as much as it's based on anything else. Historically, this country has risen to every challenge ever put before it regardless of the circumstances preceding the challenge. Your Depression example is particularly apt at proving this, as the economy was still feeling the effects of it on December 7, 1941. Yet we prevailed there as well. Assuming American apathy doesn't continue to encroach on our society as a whole, we will win the war on terror simply by outlasting them. Eventually, they will either all be killed or they'll get tired of fighting a war in which they cannot win. The only way the terrorists can win is if we give up.
I might also argue that it wasn't really the Soviet Union's economic philosophy that caused its collapse, but rather its social philosophy, which in response to the terrorist attacks we are daily moving closer and closer to adopting.
You are correct that it's more of a social philosophy thing because the economic philosophy was thusly derived. As for us moving in that direction, I'm far more worried about people's fervent desire to avoid freedom and responsibility (and their eagerness to depend on government to solve all their ills) than I am about any kind of government-instigated coup. Power isn't seized, it is given by the masses. Our founding fathers would weep if the knew how pathetically cognizant the average American is about the concepts of freedom and liberty today.
Ya know how we caused the Soviet Union to collapse by forcing their military to spend, spend, spend?
This is only half true because you're missing the most important part of the equation: we outspent the Russians because we were in a better position economically to do so. Our strength is our Capitalism, which has collectively allowed the citizens of this country to build up wealth the likes of which cannot be found anywhere else on Earth. Even the poorest person in ths nation generally has a home, a car, cable TV, air conditioning, and a cell phone. Reagan knew the Russian strength was gross manpower, quantity over quality. If we tried to beat them using the same philosophy, we'd have lost. You never fight your enemy where he is strong, you fight him where he is weak. Case in point, we outspent the Russians and still won the Cold War. They spent less and went bankrupt. Q.E.D.
While it is true the current crop of Republicans is spending like a bunch of drunken sailors, it's important to keep perspective. We beat the Russians because our economic philosophy was so much more efficient than the Russian planned economy. What's so damned tragic is that after we beat them, we're now starting to resemble them more and more each day.
They link to the Frontmotion MSI, so although it's not approved by Mozilla, they must think pretty highly of it.
We're already evaluating it, and thus far it looks pretty good.
Also, please don't think my sibling poster's comment reflects the views of the entire open source community.
Sometimes it's difficult not to, especially when asses like him show just how out of touch they are with what's required in the real world. I'm glad you're above it.
You're an IT director, and you don't know that to fix/support an MSI (and not the underlying program) doesn't require programming skills, but rather general sysadmin skills?
Yes, I'm well aware of it, just as I'm well aware that you're some snot-nosed little kid who thinks he knows enough about his betters to go around insulting them. When you've got a couple of decades of experience under your belt, try coming back and lecturing me then.
In the meantime, in your haste to be an absolute ass, you missed the entire point: rolling my own MSI is definitely within the boundaries of my skillset and those under me. However, I don't want to roll my own, I want the application developer to do it for me. That way, if there's a problem, I can go to the application developer to get it resolved. If I roll my own and it freaks out, who do I blame? My MSI? Or something funky being done by Mozilla? If I try to open a bug report with Mozilla, are they just going to say "sorry, we don't support third-party rolled MSI's" and leave it at that? If there's even a chance of that, the option itself is not acceptable. If you had even an ounce of maturity in that cranium of yours, you'd understand that applications for the enterprise require enterprise-level support in order to work right. Dinking around with handmade MSI's doesn't fall into this category unless you've got a fulltime development staff around to go to when things don't work the way they're supposed to. Most firms don't have such people on staff (and if they do, they've likely got far better things to do than roll MSI's, like managing the in-house customized CRM and ERP apps).
Go grow up. You're just annoying those around you who know far more than you do.
BTW, it is possible to install applications via loginscripts even for locked down users, but you need to use some tricks with "runas".
Unless you know something I don't, what you're suggesting with the RunAs command is possible but not secure. What this usually involves is embedding the admin password somewhere in the login script for the purposes of a temporary privilege escalation. The obvious problem with this is that the admin password is now available in the login script. Oh, there's things that'll let you encrypt it so it's not plaintext, but the decrypter must also be in the script, making it easy to get the plaintext password for anyone who cares to look. Sorry, that's not a solution, that's a gaping security hole just waiting to be exploited.
I wouldn't dismiss it because it's not "official"; the whole point of open-source is third parties being able to do things with the code.
While your statement is more or less true, you're missing the point here. Third party stuff is sometimes good. However, when Joe Schmoe cooks up something in his garage, I have to wonder if he'll still be supporting it six months later when I have an issue with it. No doubt the most common comeback to this complaint is "well, you have the code, so why don't you fix it?" To this I will respond "I am an I.T. Director, not a programmer. My company is not in the business of writing code or maintaining the code of others. We have more important things to do, like run our business. If this is the best you can do, we'll stick with closed-source, off-the-shelf stuff that either works or supplies me with a guaranteed support infrastructure that will stick with me until the problem is solved."
This is not elitist, or snooty, or close-minded, it is merely a reflection of the reality of being somewhere in the management infrastructure of an I.T. organization. You don't have time to tinker with crap. It either has to work and be well supported it isn't even going to make the short list of solutions to consider.
I'm going to take a very close look at this MSI packager. It does seem well thought out, although I would still prefer something directly made and supported by Mozilla. I still can't understand why Mozilla is too dense to produce something like this. It's not like the MSI format is something closed and accessible only to Microsoft; it's a published spec that's easy to use and -- if I'm not mistaken -- free. I certainly hope it's not some sense of high-minded idealism on the part of Mozilla trying to shun anything created or sanctioned by Microsoft. That's simply cutting off your nose to spite your face.
Thanks, I'll give this a try!
I'd love to know why Mozilla still refuses to publish an MSI installer! I know many other I.T. Directors like me that would love to push out FF but are unable to do so because (a) Mozilla doesn't provide an MSI package and (b) pushing this out via SMS/Altiris/etc. is a royal pain to configure. Why is Mozilla being to tragically and stupidly stubborn about this? It's only hurting FF adoption.
I'm an I.T. Director at a large firm, and I've been eager to try deployment of Firefox to our corporate desktops. However, I've been stymied by this as there seems to be no MSI installation package for FF. Our desktop users are locked down and cannot install apps, so deploying FF via login script is not an option. I'd love to be able to push this out via GPO's, but with no MSI installer, that's more or less impossible.
Does anyone know of a good way to push installations of FF via GPO? If so, are patches also available to be pushed in this fashion? Note that if users don't have local admin privs, they aren't able to use FF's auto-update function.
Lastly, I'm sure there are various people who have cobbled together MSI's manually in some fashion. I don't think this is acceptable to us at this time, as we would prefer something "official" from Mozilla if at all possible. Third party hacks are great for home use, but we need something more or less "officially recognized" by Mozilla before I'm going to do a mass push to hundreds of desktops.
I will direct you to the Wikipedia page on the Concorde, which has the following juicy bit of info:
Now, just why was the government taking a chunk of Concorde's profits? Ah! To cover subsidized development costs, of course! And note that little bit about the government offering loans to airlines. What it doesn't say is those loans were offered well below market rates, to the point where they more or less constituted a gift.
Now, I'm not going to say Boeing doesn't get similar handouts from the U.S. government, but you're trying to paint the Concorde as some white knight, free of any sort of government graft that kept it in development, production, and flying at all. That simply isn't true, and it's quite easy (as shown above) to demonstrate such.
(unions in the U.S. are a joke compared to European counterparts and in many cases are being dismantled in some industries).
Ah! That would explain why the average U.S. worker is so much less productive than, say, his counterpart in France. Oh, wait, I've got that backwards...
Unions can be a good thing when used properly (the same can be said of company management). However, as U.S. airlines and automakers are finding out, the unions have been used to make the entire industry uncompetitive with foreign competition. If the union demands a wage and working conditions that runs the company out of business, is it really "protecting" worker's rights at all? Kind of hard to be protected when you're unemployed. If you doubt this, just look up the history of companies like GM, Ford, Delta, and so forth. They're all in very bad shape, yet there labor force was (and some still is) the highest paid in the world. Gee, doyathink there could be a connection? Nah, couldn't be. That would merely puncture the myth that unions are the all-around good guys fighting against the evil, greedy, corporate capitalists.
It's clear by your spelling (aeroplane vs. airplane) that you're of European stock, so your deference to the Concorde is understandable if misplaced. Was (note the past tense) the Concorde a wonderful engineering achievement? Sure. Did it ever reallly turn a profit? Nope. It was hideously expensive to operate, kept alive only by the massive subsidies showered on it by the French and British governments. Over here on our side of the pond, the 747 had to earn its keep. It did, which is why it's still flying while the remaining Concorde airframes are rusting somewhere in an empty lot or museum.
However, I'd stop short of saying either vehicle is the "greatest" ever built. If I had to put that moniker on any modern heavier-than-air vehicle, it would have to be the SR-71 Blackbird, which is still unequaled in performance nearly forty years after it was designed. Granted, it never had to turn a profit, but then again it wasn't designed to (whereas the 747 and Concorde both were). I can call it the "greatest" because it met its design goals. So did the 747, albeit in a less spectacular fashion. The Concorde -- ostensibly a passenger craft and not some sort of experiment -- did not.
As for the A380 having "loans" instead of "subsidies," you are hiding behind semantics: Airbus is given massive tax breaks by the governments involved (to be fair, so is Boeing). As for the "loans" in question, past history has shown that the government can and have "forgiven" the loan payments when the airlines complain loudly enough. If it's a loan that never needs paying back, that's a subsidy, my friend. Don't try being disingenous to prove your point. In a public forum such as this, the deception is too easily revealed.
Oh yeah, and I'll note finally that, being a "no-voiceover-only" viewer, it seemed clear to me that Deckard was a replicant. :)
Interesting! Thank you for your take on this. Since I was born a lot earlier than most who frequent this board, I saw BR in the theaters and thus consider that version to be the "canonical" BR. Can't be helped, I suppose. What we know first we generally consider to be the "original" for anything. Han shot first, no question about it (grin).
Anyway, your take on Deckard's humanity (or lack thereof) is even more interesting when you take the book sequel into account. In it, it's rather clear Deckard is human. I've heard the book is non-canonical, though. Also, the book completely disregards the sappy, happy ending of the theatrical version.
Personally, if I could have it all, I'd like the Director's Cut with the theatrical version's voiceover. The sappy ending definitely has no place in the film, not after Roy's death. I like it better when the movie ends with Deckard & Rachel leaving in the elevator, their fate left to the imagination.
Just ignore the AC. He's been spouting BS for a long time. Let him try to fool someone else.
And, for the record, I don't work at Microsoft.
Seriously I am getting tired of this "Is he human or replicate" crap. For the story to work, he needs to be human. Otherwise all kinds of plot problems open up.
While I agree Deckard should be human, your analysis is not up to snuff. Note my comments below:
Like if he was a replicate, how come he sucks so much in a fight? All the other models kick the shit out of him--including the so called pleasure models.
This has been heavily discussed. First off, during the scene where Deckard is being shown the replicant models, you'll note each replicant model has a "phsyical" and "mental" score, rated with letters. Roy Batty is given the maximum in both categories, whereas Leon is given high physical but low mental scores (and given his job as a "nuclear loader," it's probably a good thing he's not well aware of what he's doing). Deckard could be high on the mental score and low on the physical score, thus allowing even Priss to beat him up.
In fact, there is discussion that Deckard is a replicant because of the physical strength he displays. You'll note he pulls himself up with broken fingers, something many say would be beyond a normal human. I say adrenaline does a lot for you.
The other explanation is that, if Deckard does not know he's a replicant, he may be unaware of his strength and thus mentally unable to make use of it.
And does not explain if he escaped with the other models on the spaceship, why don't they know him?
A big hole, but what makes you think they don't recognize him? At no point to Batty and Priss indicate they don't know Deckard. If they knew Deckard had been taken and "turned," their behavior might be very similar to what we saw. As for Zora, it could be argued that Zora did recognize Deckard but played along until she could strangle him.
It's thin, I admit it, but it's not impossible.
And if he is a special model like Rachel, why the hell does Tyrell not know this?
Who says he doesn't know? He's keeping his knowledge of Rachel being a replicant from Rachel. Why couldn't he be doing the same with Deckard? After all, he's apparently very interested in seeing how his replicants function without the knowledge of their true origins.
For Blade runner, seeing Deckard as human is critical because it explores the question more deeply of what it is to be human.
The same thing could be said of a replicant who thinks he's human but isn't. What makes a replicant not a human -- or vice versa -- if they both think and feel the same things. Roy's dying speech illustrates this very well. The dichotomy works both ways.
Personally I think voice over adds a lot to the story, I would even go far as to say it makes the real crux of the story possible with the internal dialogue we have of the characters.
I agree. There's a lot going on inside those characters. Without the voiceover, much of it might be lost on the typical viewer -- or even the experienced one. When I watch the Director's Cut, I hear Deckard's voice in my memory. I wonder what it's like for someone who's never seen the theatrical release? I can't imagine it.
OK, here's one: their cookie implementation via Javascript has been broken since before IE6 in 2001.
(sigh) It would seem you failed to grasp the important part of the requirement. Here, let my try to help you a bit: "Other than failing a variety of tests that also make Firefox puke (ie ACID test), please explain how IE is "broken" in a way that matters to the average user." You've given me a dissertation on why it's difficult for web developers, but in the same breath you indicate there are workarounds. Sure, they're a pain for you. So what? I don't say that to be trite, but the end user doesn't give one damn how many nights you've lost sleep over some non-RFC-compliant thing Microsoft did. If there's a workaround that doesn't involve the user doing anything, I've got news for you: the user doesn't care! And ultimately it's the user's experience -- not your coding experience -- that matters. Sorry to break it to you like that, but it's true.
And while we're on the subject of RFC's, let's remember something: an RFC is a guideline, not a rule. Anyone is free to do anything they want, however they want, using whatever tools, languages, or widgets that they want. If it works and people like it, it doesn't matter whether it's RFC compliant or not. If it gets enough market share, it becomes a standard whether you like it or not, RFC be damned. You ignore this reality at your peril.
Defacto standard or not, it's broken and you're irresponsible bragging about it.
I'm not bragging about it, I'm just dragging you kicking and screaming into reality. The only standards that matter are those standards that are accepted into widespread usage. History is littered with the corpses of standards that never got adopted because either a better standard emerged or a proprietary one did a better job...and in the latter case, many proprietary standards eventually became public domain standards or "generic" versions of them were reverse-engineered into the public domain. I abhor non-standard stuff as much as you do, but I'm not so stupid that I don't recognize the value of a de facto standard.