While it is difficult to consider an MS that isn't predatory, you have to at least admit the following:
- MS started small, just like any other company, including RedHat. There was nothing special about MS at inception that prognosticated them becoming what they are today. Thus, it could be concluded that ANY company has the potential to be a predator monopoly, including RedHat, if the tables were thusly turned.
- Conversely, just because MS has historically been the bad guy doesn't mean they will stay that way. Twenty years ago IBM was the bad guy and now everyone is cheering them because they support Linux. Conceivably MS could do the same, so the possibility MUST be considered.
Your comments about MS being unable to write software is not just bias showing, it's also an exaggeration. They may not be able to write GOOD software ACCORDING TO YOUR STANDARDS, and perhaps not even according to mine, but the point is they've written and shipped more software and code than any other company in the history of man. Therefore, even if they don't write the "best", they certainly distribute the "most".
Historically the best competitor doesn't always win, usually because being "best" in one area leads to a lack in another. In the case of Linux, I'd have to say that they are "best" if you're a hacker but "worst" if you're just a regular schmoe. Microsoft has settled on being of average goodness in a variety of areas, and the market has rewarded them for that. Never forget that if/when you get into a business of your own. You don't need a Ferrari to get groceries when a Ford will do, even if the Ford is slower, of lower quality, and less flamboyant than the Ferrari.
A registered Libertarian? So am I. I have a very funny feeling that many people really ARE libertarian at heart, they either aren't aware of the party, aren't aware of what the party stands for, or have just written off politics as useless drivel. Obviously you understand that any of the above attitudes are folly. You cannot change something by ignoring it, you must become actively involved from within or without.
Like most libertarian's I'm a capitalist at heart, but I temper it with feeling. If the term "compassionate conservatism" wasn't so misused these days I'd say I fall somewhere into that category. I'm the kind of guy that would stop to help you change a flat tire in the dead of night in the rain and not expect anything other than a "thank you" in return, even if I'd never met you before in my life. What makes me bristle are the folks out there that demand that you must stop to change the hypothetical tire, just as you must be egalitarian all the time.
My choices are mine to make, and while I can disagree with the choices others make (Alan Cox, for example) I will not deign to impose my system of values on them. I would rather open a structured debate on this, but unfortunately whenever I try to open a debate taking the "devil's advocate" position, I inevitably get modded as "troll".
Oddly enough, them market has responded well to AMD's move from Mhz to PR equivalents. Sales are up, especially of the XP chips. Given that not much changed between the T-bird and XP chips, you have to say that the new scheme seems to have hit a nerve.
At first I didn't like it either. But in the final equation, what the call it doesn't really matter. The could rename each processor everytime they bump up the speed another 66Mhz and we'd call it whatever they call it. As long as you aren't comparing XP's to XP's or to P4's, the rating system makes sense and is easy to understand.
And if you must have your Mhz showing, the BIOS will usually show it, BogoMIPS gives you some indication, and if you're of the Windows persuasion, www.h-oda.com will supply you with CPUInfo that'll give you the skinny on your chipl
[sigh] the very people that constantly espouse the values of "open source" would do well to "open" their minds to other opinions as well. Alas, there is no cure for a twentysomething hacker with karma and naivete.
Going through the countless "corporations are bad" emails that litter/. on a regular basis, I think that any objective person could figure out that on average, most folks here hold big corporations in very low regard. Quite frequently the reason for this is the insane amount of money they have, as if wealth were a bad thing. Come on, don't tell me you haven't noted it. Perhaps you classify it as a blatant troll and ignore it, but I can't. There's too much of it.
Are there more important things than money? Most certainly, and I never suggested otherwise. But there is a fringe movement in Linux that carries the "code just wants to be free" banner and shuns anything and everything that has anything to do with profit. It's silly because it's so short sighted. We don't live in a society where things are free. You choose do donate your time, that's fine. I do the same, but many, many people don't.
And you're quite correct, nobody owes me a profit, but no one should begrudge me one either. I don't much mind donating my time and effort, but I despise being castigated if I choose not to do so, especially by posters who I doubt would have the intestinal fortitude to turn down some very lucrative offers to "go against" their principles.
And what's to say they couldn't do the same thing with RH?
AOL/TW didn't get to be a huge megalithic company by purchasing niche companies and destroying them. If there's one thing that you can be sure of, one thing that AOL/TW can be honest about, it's that they're in business to make a profit. If they perform an action, it is in some way related to increasing profits or the potential of increasing profits later on down the road. People give capitalism a bad name, but it does guarantee predictability: companies will usually do what is in their best interests first and everything else second. And if I worked at that company or was an investor in same, that's exactly what I'd expect.
If AOL/TW acquires RH, it will be to put pressure on MS, pure and simple. They'll market the hell out of it and pump all sorts of marketing info into RH for product development, but if they have a goal it's to push RH and make money with it. As long as the core principles of Linux don't get compromised (and "hard to use so it remains elitist" isn't a core principle of Linux), the expansion of the Linux market is something everyone here should be rejoicing about, not condemning.
Alan does a disservice and shows a bit of immaturity by making the statement he did. It is not principles he's sticking to by saying this, it's politics, the same thing he condemns other for "on the other side of the fence".
What if Microsoft did express an interest in acquiring RedHat? No, really. Let's think about it for a second.
Take off the anti-MS-colored glasses for a second and let's imagine what the/. community would do/say if Bill & Co. popped up and say something like:
"Microsoft intends to purchase RedHat and use Linux technology and methods to better our products and the computing experience of end users. We will use our highly-developed sense of marketting to make Linux a household 'gotta have it' product in every nation. We will use our extensive research into UI usability testing to bring an easy to use approach to Linux without removing any of the 'hardcore' factors that allow enthusiasts to tinker with things. We will aggressively push Linux in the corporate community. We will keep the source open and abide by the GPL. We will use the best of both worlds."
Now, improbable as that might be, let's assume that MS actually said it and meant it. I would imagine that millions of Linux users around the globe would STILL oppose it. The anti-corporate mentality here is deep, way too deeply rooted for the community's own good.
It seems that the Linux fanatics want to have their cake and eat it to.
They want their OS to remain free, yet they want more companies to back it. Everybody wants a paycheck for themselves but God forbid that anyone make a dime from Linux. Everyone works for someone, yet companies are evil things that ought not to intrude on Linux. They want everyone to acknowledge the superiority of Linux yet are unwilling to make entry into the Linux world any easier than it currently is.
This is what's commonly known as a pipe dream.
WinAMP and ICQ were bought by AOL/TW and prosper today. Sure, Netscape has tanked, but the argument could be made that they were damaged goods to begin with.
Do I like AOL/TW? Of course not. I think they're a bunch of left-leaning liberal hand wringers who would sell you out in a second if it made them money. That's why I don't they'd be stupid enough to buy RH and then fuck with it. They know everyone would leave in droves. AOL/TW would just love to put more pressure on Microsoft. This is a political move, if you ask me.
After all, consider that something good MIGHT come out of this, would you? RH could use more money to attract more talent, do more marketing, and improve their product. That would lead to better, more widespread uses of Linux. Isn't that what we all want? Or do we want Linux to remain the purview of server room necromancers who bathe every other week if they think about it?
I own four of these Koolance cases and I can say that they are NOT loud. For one thing, the pump is damn near noiseless unless you physically open the case and put your ear on it. Even then it's more of a vibration than a noise.
The fans on the top are low-RPM ducted fans that are thermostatically controlled. You can set the fans to one of three preset temperature gradients that ramp up fan speed to deal with increased temps. I leave mine on setting 1 (the quietest) and even with four systems in one room the noise doesn't approach even the quietest standard air cooled PC I've ever heard. Although I don't have a noise meter handy, I've got a good deal of experience in dealing with sound levels (I do audio/video work). I'd estimate that the cases produce at best 32dBa of noise.
Sure, no fans and no moving parts is nirvana, but for heavy duty systems (all of mine are dual Athlon 1800+ XP's) the heat load will overwhelm passive cooling. I give the Koolance cases 3 out of 4 stars for the overall engineering.
Cons? Well, to start with, the waterblocks they supply are far too fragile. The polycarbonate top portion cracks very easily and overenthusiastic hose clamping will crack it in a heartbeat. I've broken three of them so far (out of 8), all replaced with much better sub-mini copper blocks obtained from Chip at www.overclock-watercool.com. The original rev1 Koolance cases came with all copper blocks that were bulletproof, I wish they'd switch back.
BTW, my 1800+ dual systems running 3D Studio Max 4 rendering like mad (and running distributed.net clients) heat the water temps up to 92F in a 72F ambient air temp room. I think the best possible air cooling you're ever going to find (even with a screaming 7000RPM Delta fan) couldn't hope to cool one of these puppies down below 100F. In fact, most of them can't keep 'em below 110F.
Give Koolance a try, your ears will thank you. Just go easy on the hose clamps and you'll be just fine.
Subject says it all. Has anyone ever managed to get a crash out of an Xbox? If so, what happened, and how did the box respond? Hopefully not with a BSOD.
I was referring to the extremely public and somewhat "pointed" nature of how the debate is being carried on as being detrimental to the Linux effort.
I'm all for debate, and public discussion, but some of the comments I've seen flying around sound more like teenage namecalling than professional developers with a disagreement. Linux isn't infallible, neither is Alan or Rik.
It sounds like these two VM's are aimed at two different problems, each addressing their own problem to the detriment of the other. I'm going to go back to my original statement of "let the user choose". Maybe I want the extra speed in a uniprocessor enviroment. Maybe I need the extra scalability in a large muliprocessor environment. I should be able to choose based upon my needs, not upon what Alan, Linus, or Rik thinks is best. After all, choice is what Linux is all about.
I'm wondering why both VM's can't be included in a distro and allowing the end user to select the one he/she wishes to compile into the kernel? Are the two implementations THAT mutually exclusive?
BTW, this kind of bashing between the high priests of Linux is not good. You can bet your bottom dollar that MS is going to use this conflict to fuel their propaganda machine, saying Linux is a fractious OS run by a bunch of young upstarts who can't agree on anything.
At the moment, no computer on this planet has enough juice to emulate the Xbox
What planet do you live on? Guess what's inside an Xbox? An Intel CPU (not even a P4), some NVidia graphics hardware (not any better than a Ti500) and NVidia sound (no better than nForce). There's nothing magical inside hardware-wise that can't be easily duplicated on a PC, so no emulation would be needed.
What is difficult is what's on the Xbox ROM's, which no one has decoded yet that we know of. But that's not emulation, that's porting. The insides of an Xbox are so close to a standard PC that it would probably be child's play to port the "OS" that the Xbox uses, if only someone had the time and tools to decompile it.
A Nokia is nothing more than an x86 box (generally a pretty lowly 600Mhz Celeron for the IP330s, I think) crammed into a 1U formfactor, preloaded with a custom BSD install (according to Checkpoint) and loaded w/ the Checkpoint FW-1 software. It has no advantages over a typical x86 install on any other OS except you don't have to pay for an OS license (MS) or deal with other vendors (Sun) to get it working. It's convenient, that's why we use them.
Why is it that there's so much support for this phenominally dangerous method of power generation anyway?
Perhaps because it's not as dangerous as you imply. Now, before somebody starts downmodding me as flamebait, examine the following conversation:
Go get the movie "The Manhattan Project", the one with John Lithgow. Note the conversation between the whiz-kid and his girlfriend about nuclear bombs. He states that building a bomb is no more dangerous than building a car. She says "But cars don't kill people." He responds "Cars have killed more people than all the atomic bombs ever made."
Guess, what? That's true. "Common" sense would dictate that it is ridiculous to consider nuclear power safe, but how many people have died from cancers resulting from coal power plant pollution? Acid rain? Deforestation?
Nuclear power is called the big bugaboo because most people don't understand it. Sure, it has the potential to be dangerous, but so does a car, a baseball bat, or a piano dropped from high up. You must also understand that incredible safety measures have been taken to keep that risk in check.
How many people died last year in cars? Now how many have died due to nuclear power accidents in all of history? The former will far outnumber the latter. Consider that before you condemn nuclear power as "phenominally" dangerous. It already supplies around 25% of the power to the U.S. right now.
It'd be great to burn the waste in breeder reactors, but you've got to HAVE breeder reactors first. Due to a combination of enviro-Nazi fanaticism and corporate mismanagement problems, no new license for a nuclear reactor of any type has been even REQUESTED in over twenty years.
My company has used Checkpoint FW-1 in practically everything we've deployed up to this point, but I'm itching to experiment with a much cheaper IPTABLE's based approach. Of course, it has to be SECURE first and easy to use second -- a leaky firewall is worse than none at all as it gives a false sense of security.
I've hand crafted a few firewalls myself and run them on custom-built Linux kernels and stripped down distro's. Still, I'm not quite certain I trust myself on this, and I'd like to hear from anyone who's had experience with a good, free, IPTABLE's based fw script in a production environment. My goal is something that can displace a Nokia IP330. It has to do NAT, port forwarding, and allow logging of suspicious packets. Floppy-based stuff is highly preferred if possible to lower hardware requirements.
I appreciate the offer, but I keep pretty much all my boxes around for additional rendering power. As it is I have 5 dual AMD systems, three single-proc AMD systems, one Intel dual, and two Intel singles. No P4's at all -- the P-III FPU runs circles around the P4 even at lower clock rates. Need an example? I recently installed Powerleap's (www.powerleap.com) iP3-L/T converter than allowed me to stick a 1.2Ghz Tualatin Celeron into one of my older BX-based Slot1 systems. There result? The 1.2Ghz system is, clock for clock, about 90% as fast as an equivalently clocked Athlon. I've overclocked it to 1.3Ghz already and it flies quite nicely. Still gets spanked by the dual Athlon's, though.
Intel is so full of shit it ain't even funny, saying the P4 is better than the P-III. If Intel had spent time shrinking the P-III die instead of going megahertz-happy with the P4, they'd still be producing good stuff. 3D folks are avoiding the P4 like the plague.
What's wrong with buying a voltage converter and continuing to use your DVD player here? Of course, there's still PAL vs. NTSC issues to contend with, but if you're bringing your DVD player I'm assuming you're bringing a TV as well. That won't help if you're planning on buying new region-1 DVD's, though.
With DVD players being as cheap as they are these days, it almost doesn't hurt to have two of them. With a PAL to NTSC converter you could buy a new TV and new DVD player, but keep your old DVD player handy. This would only make sense if your collection is very large, however.
Region free players aren't always the best thing. For one thing, they officially shouldn't exist, so getting support for them is difficult if you have problems. However, when they do work, they work very well.
This is a concrete example of why region coding is a stupid, stupid idea. You legally have the right to view your DVD's no matter where on earth you wish to watch them. I wish there was other info I could give you, but short having 2 DVD players or getting a region free one, I don't have any other solutions for you.
Oh no doubt Northwood will make things very interesting. I'm looking forward to it! The only problem here is that Intel is going to charge around $600 for the first Northwoods out there, and AMD's going to be releasing their 2000+ about the same time for 2/3 the price (or less).
Since I do a lot of 3D rendering work, the Athlon has somewhat of an advantage, even moreso than normal, because of its incredible FPU. I don't think Northwood has a revamped FPU, so I really don't think even a 2.2Ghz Northwood is going to beat an Athlon 2000+, much less a dual setup.
Still, newer processors mean lower prices for everything else. What's there to lose? I love it!
You need to look at what's driving processor design these days. It isn't word processing and spreadsheets, that's for sure. There are only four areas that I can think of that are really driving the desire for more and more transistors:
#1 - Larger memory sizes. Terabyte databases require terabytes of RAM. Current 32-bit processors can't touch that with a 10-bit pole. Even the most elegant 4- and 8-bit processors can't do anything about their memory addressing limitations without huge kludges.
#2 - Engineering/Scientific problems. Ever try to model the fluid/thermal dynamics of a star? You need ungodly amounts of processor power to do this properly, or ungodly numbers of processors. Preferrably both.
#3 - 3D multimedia and design. This is my area of work. I've got five (count 'em, five) dual Athlons right this moment rendering like mad, churning through a 1 hour 3D animated sequence with lots of volumetric lights, NURBS, and tons of polygons. 3D eats cycles like they're going out of style, and in my business if you can cut your render time in half, you've just doubled your production capability. You can never buy enough render power.
#4 - Gaming. Yes, games. Doom. Quake. Doom II. Quake 2. Quake 3. Unreal Tournament. Every game pushes the triangle count, texture resolution, and framerate to higher highs. Photorealism is the holy grail, and it's going to take absurd amounts of transistors running at an unheard of clockrate to do this.
You'll note that business apps are anywhere in there, and they shouldn't be. Your average desktop processor spends about 99% of its time idle waiting on the operator between keystrokes. Nobody needs a 2Ghz P4 or a 1.6Ghz Athlon for these tasks, despite Intel's propaganda to the contrary.
I know you long for fast, tight code, but that isn't being taught in college anymore (heck, it wasn't even when I went through in 1990). Profs are encouraging rapid design and quick-to-market code over elegant design. It's unfortunate, but the market itself is rewarding this philosophy. I don't agree with it, but the fact is that the company that produces a "good enough" piece of software quickly will generally steamroller a company that produces "elegant" software but comes out later.
After all, beta means alpha, and 1.0 is really an extended beta. Kick it out the door, the marketing campaign is scheduled to start! Who cares if it works, we can always patch it later or put the bugfixes in version 2.0!
Oh, and I strongly disagree with your assessment of Lord of the Rings. I found it a very good adaptation of such a sprawling book. What did you dislike about it so much that you descend to profanity to describe it?
Your post really demostrates that your are ignorant of what you're posting about.
AMD is not copying Intel's IP. If they were, Intel would be winning the suits against AMD, not losing them as they have been. AMD has reverse-engineered the x86 instruction set that has been around for quite some time, but implemented in silicon differently. The end result is greater performance, as evidenced by any benchmark you care to run. Like it or not, the fastest x86 processor on the planet right now, even according to Intel's own benchmark suite, is the Athlon XP 2000+.
And to further add insult to your injury, AMD doesn't stand for "American Micro Devices", it stands for Advanced Micro Devices. If you'd done the slightest bit of reading, researching, or thinking before you posted your previous comment, you'd know that.
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While it is difficult to consider an MS that isn't predatory, you have to at least admit the following:
- MS started small, just like any other company, including RedHat. There was nothing special about MS at inception that prognosticated them becoming what they are today. Thus, it could be concluded that ANY company has the potential to be a predator monopoly, including RedHat, if the tables were thusly turned.
- Conversely, just because MS has historically been the bad guy doesn't mean they will stay that way. Twenty years ago IBM was the bad guy and now everyone is cheering them because they support Linux. Conceivably MS could do the same, so the possibility MUST be considered.
Your comments about MS being unable to write software is not just bias showing, it's also an exaggeration. They may not be able to write GOOD software ACCORDING TO YOUR STANDARDS, and perhaps not even according to mine, but the point is they've written and shipped more software and code than any other company in the history of man. Therefore, even if they don't write the "best", they certainly distribute the "most".
Historically the best competitor doesn't always win, usually because being "best" in one area leads to a lack in another. In the case of Linux, I'd have to say that they are "best" if you're a hacker but "worst" if you're just a regular schmoe. Microsoft has settled on being of average goodness in a variety of areas, and the market has rewarded them for that. Never forget that if/when you get into a business of your own. You don't need a Ferrari to get groceries when a Ford will do, even if the Ford is slower, of lower quality, and less flamboyant than the Ferrari.
A registered Libertarian? So am I. I have a very funny feeling that many people really ARE libertarian at heart, they either aren't aware of the party, aren't aware of what the party stands for, or have just written off politics as useless drivel. Obviously you understand that any of the above attitudes are folly. You cannot change something by ignoring it, you must become actively involved from within or without.
Like most libertarian's I'm a capitalist at heart, but I temper it with feeling. If the term "compassionate conservatism" wasn't so misused these days I'd say I fall somewhere into that category. I'm the kind of guy that would stop to help you change a flat tire in the dead of night in the rain and not expect anything other than a "thank you" in return, even if I'd never met you before in my life. What makes me bristle are the folks out there that demand that you must stop to change the hypothetical tire, just as you must be egalitarian all the time.
My choices are mine to make, and while I can disagree with the choices others make (Alan Cox, for example) I will not deign to impose my system of values on them. I would rather open a structured debate on this, but unfortunately whenever I try to open a debate taking the "devil's advocate" position, I inevitably get modded as "troll".
Oddly enough, them market has responded well to AMD's move from Mhz to PR equivalents. Sales are up, especially of the XP chips. Given that not much changed between the T-bird and XP chips, you have to say that the new scheme seems to have hit a nerve.
At first I didn't like it either. But in the final equation, what the call it doesn't really matter. The could rename each processor everytime they bump up the speed another 66Mhz and we'd call it whatever they call it. As long as you aren't comparing XP's to XP's or to P4's, the rating system makes sense and is easy to understand.
And if you must have your Mhz showing, the BIOS will usually show it, BogoMIPS gives you some indication, and if you're of the Windows persuasion, www.h-oda.com will supply you with CPUInfo that'll give you the skinny on your chipl
And to get modded down as "troll" for doing so...
[sigh] the very people that constantly espouse the values of "open source" would do well to "open" their minds to other opinions as well. Alas, there is no cure for a twentysomething hacker with karma and naivete.
Going through the countless "corporations are bad" emails that litter /. on a regular basis, I think that any objective person could figure out that on average, most folks here hold big corporations in very low regard. Quite frequently the reason for this is the insane amount of money they have, as if wealth were a bad thing. Come on, don't tell me you haven't noted it. Perhaps you classify it as a blatant troll and ignore it, but I can't. There's too much of it.
Are there more important things than money? Most certainly, and I never suggested otherwise. But there is a fringe movement in Linux that carries the "code just wants to be free" banner and shuns anything and everything that has anything to do with profit. It's silly because it's so short sighted. We don't live in a society where things are free. You choose do donate your time, that's fine. I do the same, but many, many people don't.
And you're quite correct, nobody owes me a profit, but no one should begrudge me one either. I don't much mind donating my time and effort, but I despise being castigated if I choose not to do so, especially by posters who I doubt would have the intestinal fortitude to turn down some very lucrative offers to "go against" their principles.
Somebody mod this guy down as OT, please. This isn't a political discussion, but he seems intent on making it one.
And what's to say they couldn't do the same thing with RH?
AOL/TW didn't get to be a huge megalithic company by purchasing niche companies and destroying them. If there's one thing that you can be sure of, one thing that AOL/TW can be honest about, it's that they're in business to make a profit. If they perform an action, it is in some way related to increasing profits or the potential of increasing profits later on down the road. People give capitalism a bad name, but it does guarantee predictability: companies will usually do what is in their best interests first and everything else second. And if I worked at that company or was an investor in same, that's exactly what I'd expect.
If AOL/TW acquires RH, it will be to put pressure on MS, pure and simple. They'll market the hell out of it and pump all sorts of marketing info into RH for product development, but if they have a goal it's to push RH and make money with it. As long as the core principles of Linux don't get compromised (and "hard to use so it remains elitist" isn't a core principle of Linux), the expansion of the Linux market is something everyone here should be rejoicing about, not condemning.
Alan does a disservice and shows a bit of immaturity by making the statement he did. It is not principles he's sticking to by saying this, it's politics, the same thing he condemns other for "on the other side of the fence".
What if Microsoft did express an interest in acquiring RedHat? No, really. Let's think about it for a second.
/. community would do/say if Bill & Co. popped up and say something like:
Take off the anti-MS-colored glasses for a second and let's imagine what the
"Microsoft intends to purchase RedHat and use Linux technology and methods to better our products and the computing experience of end users. We will use our highly-developed sense of marketting to make Linux a household 'gotta have it' product in every nation. We will use our extensive research into UI usability testing to bring an easy to use approach to Linux without removing any of the 'hardcore' factors that allow enthusiasts to tinker with things. We will aggressively push Linux in the corporate community. We will keep the source open and abide by the GPL. We will use the best of both worlds."
Now, improbable as that might be, let's assume that MS actually said it and meant it. I would imagine that millions of Linux users around the globe would STILL oppose it. The anti-corporate mentality here is deep, way too deeply rooted for the community's own good.
It seems that the Linux fanatics want to have their cake and eat it to.
They want their OS to remain free, yet they want more companies to back it. Everybody wants a paycheck for themselves but God forbid that anyone make a dime from Linux. Everyone works for someone, yet companies are evil things that ought not to intrude on Linux. They want everyone to acknowledge the superiority of Linux yet are unwilling to make entry into the Linux world any easier than it currently is.
This is what's commonly known as a pipe dream.
WinAMP and ICQ were bought by AOL/TW and prosper today. Sure, Netscape has tanked, but the argument could be made that they were damaged goods to begin with.
Do I like AOL/TW? Of course not. I think they're a bunch of left-leaning liberal hand wringers who would sell you out in a second if it made them money. That's why I don't they'd be stupid enough to buy RH and then fuck with it. They know everyone would leave in droves. AOL/TW would just love to put more pressure on Microsoft. This is a political move, if you ask me.
After all, consider that something good MIGHT come out of this, would you? RH could use more money to attract more talent, do more marketing, and improve their product. That would lead to better, more widespread uses of Linux. Isn't that what we all want? Or do we want Linux to remain the purview of server room necromancers who bathe every other week if they think about it?
I own four of these Koolance cases and I can say that they are NOT loud. For one thing, the pump is damn near noiseless unless you physically open the case and put your ear on it. Even then it's more of a vibration than a noise.
The fans on the top are low-RPM ducted fans that are thermostatically controlled. You can set the fans to one of three preset temperature gradients that ramp up fan speed to deal with increased temps. I leave mine on setting 1 (the quietest) and even with four systems in one room the noise doesn't approach even the quietest standard air cooled PC I've ever heard. Although I don't have a noise meter handy, I've got a good deal of experience in dealing with sound levels (I do audio/video work). I'd estimate that the cases produce at best 32dBa of noise.
Sure, no fans and no moving parts is nirvana, but for heavy duty systems (all of mine are dual Athlon 1800+ XP's) the heat load will overwhelm passive cooling. I give the Koolance cases 3 out of 4 stars for the overall engineering.
Cons? Well, to start with, the waterblocks they supply are far too fragile. The polycarbonate top portion cracks very easily and overenthusiastic hose clamping will crack it in a heartbeat. I've broken three of them so far (out of 8), all replaced with much better sub-mini copper blocks obtained from Chip at www.overclock-watercool.com. The original rev1 Koolance cases came with all copper blocks that were bulletproof, I wish they'd switch back.
BTW, my 1800+ dual systems running 3D Studio Max 4 rendering like mad (and running distributed.net clients) heat the water temps up to 92F in a 72F ambient air temp room. I think the best possible air cooling you're ever going to find (even with a screaming 7000RPM Delta fan) couldn't hope to cool one of these puppies down below 100F. In fact, most of them can't keep 'em below 110F.
Give Koolance a try, your ears will thank you. Just go easy on the hose clamps and you'll be just fine.
Subject says it all. Has anyone ever managed to get a crash out of an Xbox? If so, what happened, and how did the box respond? Hopefully not with a BSOD.
I was referring to the extremely public and somewhat "pointed" nature of how the debate is being carried on as being detrimental to the Linux effort.
I'm all for debate, and public discussion, but some of the comments I've seen flying around sound more like teenage namecalling than professional developers with a disagreement. Linux isn't infallible, neither is Alan or Rik.
It sounds like these two VM's are aimed at two different problems, each addressing their own problem to the detriment of the other. I'm going to go back to my original statement of "let the user choose". Maybe I want the extra speed in a uniprocessor enviroment. Maybe I need the extra scalability in a large muliprocessor environment. I should be able to choose based upon my needs, not upon what Alan, Linus, or Rik thinks is best. After all, choice is what Linux is all about.
It's called "figuratively speaking", just in case you didn't know.
I'm wondering why both VM's can't be included in a distro and allowing the end user to select the one he/she wishes to compile into the kernel? Are the two implementations THAT mutually exclusive?
BTW, this kind of bashing between the high priests of Linux is not good. You can bet your bottom dollar that MS is going to use this conflict to fuel their propaganda machine, saying Linux is a fractious OS run by a bunch of young upstarts who can't agree on anything.
At the moment, no computer on this planet has enough juice to emulate the Xbox
What planet do you live on? Guess what's inside an Xbox? An Intel CPU (not even a P4), some NVidia graphics hardware (not any better than a Ti500) and NVidia sound (no better than nForce). There's nothing magical inside hardware-wise that can't be easily duplicated on a PC, so no emulation would be needed.
What is difficult is what's on the Xbox ROM's, which no one has decoded yet that we know of. But that's not emulation, that's porting. The insides of an Xbox are so close to a standard PC that it would probably be child's play to port the "OS" that the Xbox uses, if only someone had the time and tools to decompile it.
A Nokia is nothing more than an x86 box (generally a pretty lowly 600Mhz Celeron for the IP330s, I think) crammed into a 1U formfactor, preloaded with a custom BSD install (according to Checkpoint) and loaded w/ the Checkpoint FW-1 software. It has no advantages over a typical x86 install on any other OS except you don't have to pay for an OS license (MS) or deal with other vendors (Sun) to get it working. It's convenient, that's why we use them.
Why is it that there's so much support for this phenominally dangerous method of power generation anyway?
Perhaps because it's not as dangerous as you imply. Now, before somebody starts downmodding me as flamebait, examine the following conversation:
Go get the movie "The Manhattan Project", the one with John Lithgow. Note the conversation between the whiz-kid and his girlfriend about nuclear bombs. He states that building a bomb is no more dangerous than building a car. She says "But cars don't kill people." He responds "Cars have killed more people than all the atomic bombs ever made."
Guess, what? That's true. "Common" sense would dictate that it is ridiculous to consider nuclear power safe, but how many people have died from cancers resulting from coal power plant pollution? Acid rain? Deforestation?
Nuclear power is called the big bugaboo because most people don't understand it. Sure, it has the potential to be dangerous, but so does a car, a baseball bat, or a piano dropped from high up. You must also understand that incredible safety measures have been taken to keep that risk in check.
How many people died last year in cars? Now how many have died due to nuclear power accidents in all of history? The former will far outnumber the latter. Consider that before you condemn nuclear power as "phenominally" dangerous. It already supplies around 25% of the power to the U.S. right now.
It'd be great to burn the waste in breeder reactors, but you've got to HAVE breeder reactors first. Due to a combination of enviro-Nazi fanaticism and corporate mismanagement problems, no new license for a nuclear reactor of any type has been even REQUESTED in over twenty years.
My company has used Checkpoint FW-1 in practically everything we've deployed up to this point, but I'm itching to experiment with a much cheaper IPTABLE's based approach. Of course, it has to be SECURE first and easy to use second -- a leaky firewall is worse than none at all as it gives a false sense of security.
I've hand crafted a few firewalls myself and run them on custom-built Linux kernels and stripped down distro's. Still, I'm not quite certain I trust myself on this, and I'd like to hear from anyone who's had experience with a good, free, IPTABLE's based fw script in a production environment. My goal is something that can displace a Nokia IP330. It has to do NAT, port forwarding, and allow logging of suspicious packets. Floppy-based stuff is highly preferred if possible to lower hardware requirements.
Recommendations, anyone?
I appreciate the offer, but I keep pretty much all my boxes around for additional rendering power. As it is I have 5 dual AMD systems, three single-proc AMD systems, one Intel dual, and two Intel singles. No P4's at all -- the P-III FPU runs circles around the P4 even at lower clock rates. Need an example? I recently installed Powerleap's (www.powerleap.com) iP3-L/T converter than allowed me to stick a 1.2Ghz Tualatin Celeron into one of my older BX-based Slot1 systems. There result? The 1.2Ghz system is, clock for clock, about 90% as fast as an equivalently clocked Athlon. I've overclocked it to 1.3Ghz already and it flies quite nicely. Still gets spanked by the dual Athlon's, though.
Intel is so full of shit it ain't even funny, saying the P4 is better than the P-III. If Intel had spent time shrinking the P-III die instead of going megahertz-happy with the P4, they'd still be producing good stuff. 3D folks are avoiding the P4 like the plague.
What's wrong with buying a voltage converter and continuing to use your DVD player here? Of course, there's still PAL vs. NTSC issues to contend with, but if you're bringing your DVD player I'm assuming you're bringing a TV as well. That won't help if you're planning on buying new region-1 DVD's, though.
With DVD players being as cheap as they are these days, it almost doesn't hurt to have two of them. With a PAL to NTSC converter you could buy a new TV and new DVD player, but keep your old DVD player handy. This would only make sense if your collection is very large, however.
Region free players aren't always the best thing. For one thing, they officially shouldn't exist, so getting support for them is difficult if you have problems. However, when they do work, they work very well.
This is a concrete example of why region coding is a stupid, stupid idea. You legally have the right to view your DVD's no matter where on earth you wish to watch them. I wish there was other info I could give you, but short having 2 DVD players or getting a region free one, I don't have any other solutions for you.
Oh no doubt Northwood will make things very interesting. I'm looking forward to it! The only problem here is that Intel is going to charge around $600 for the first Northwoods out there, and AMD's going to be releasing their 2000+ about the same time for 2/3 the price (or less).
Since I do a lot of 3D rendering work, the Athlon has somewhat of an advantage, even moreso than normal, because of its incredible FPU. I don't think Northwood has a revamped FPU, so I really don't think even a 2.2Ghz Northwood is going to beat an Athlon 2000+, much less a dual setup.
Still, newer processors mean lower prices for everything else. What's there to lose? I love it!
You need to look at what's driving processor design these days. It isn't word processing and spreadsheets, that's for sure. There are only four areas that I can think of that are really driving the desire for more and more transistors:
#1 - Larger memory sizes. Terabyte databases require terabytes of RAM. Current 32-bit processors can't touch that with a 10-bit pole. Even the most elegant 4- and 8-bit processors can't do anything about their memory addressing limitations without huge kludges.
#2 - Engineering/Scientific problems. Ever try to model the fluid/thermal dynamics of a star? You need ungodly amounts of processor power to do this properly, or ungodly numbers of processors. Preferrably both.
#3 - 3D multimedia and design. This is my area of work. I've got five (count 'em, five) dual Athlons right this moment rendering like mad, churning through a 1 hour 3D animated sequence with lots of volumetric lights, NURBS, and tons of polygons. 3D eats cycles like they're going out of style, and in my business if you can cut your render time in half, you've just doubled your production capability. You can never buy enough render power.
#4 - Gaming. Yes, games. Doom. Quake. Doom II. Quake 2. Quake 3. Unreal Tournament. Every game pushes the triangle count, texture resolution, and framerate to higher highs. Photorealism is the holy grail, and it's going to take absurd amounts of transistors running at an unheard of clockrate to do this.
You'll note that business apps are anywhere in there, and they shouldn't be. Your average desktop processor spends about 99% of its time idle waiting on the operator between keystrokes. Nobody needs a 2Ghz P4 or a 1.6Ghz Athlon for these tasks, despite Intel's propaganda to the contrary.
I know you long for fast, tight code, but that isn't being taught in college anymore (heck, it wasn't even when I went through in 1990). Profs are encouraging rapid design and quick-to-market code over elegant design. It's unfortunate, but the market itself is rewarding this philosophy. I don't agree with it, but the fact is that the company that produces a "good enough" piece of software quickly will generally steamroller a company that produces "elegant" software but comes out later.
After all, beta means alpha, and 1.0 is really an extended beta. Kick it out the door, the marketing campaign is scheduled to start! Who cares if it works, we can always patch it later or put the bugfixes in version 2.0!
Oh, and I strongly disagree with your assessment of Lord of the Rings. I found it a very good adaptation of such a sprawling book. What did you dislike about it so much that you descend to profanity to describe it?
Your post really demostrates that your are ignorant of what you're posting about.
AMD is not copying Intel's IP. If they were, Intel would be winning the suits against AMD, not losing them as they have been. AMD has reverse-engineered the x86 instruction set that has been around for quite some time, but implemented in silicon differently. The end result is greater performance, as evidenced by any benchmark you care to run. Like it or not, the fastest x86 processor on the planet right now, even according to Intel's own benchmark suite, is the Athlon XP 2000+.
And to further add insult to your injury, AMD doesn't stand for "American Micro Devices", it stands for Advanced Micro Devices. If you'd done the slightest bit of reading, researching, or thinking before you posted your previous comment, you'd know that.
A billion here, a billion there, sooner or later you're talking about a really, really hot piece of silicon.