I never said it would happen; merely that it could. I think we would have reached the end of September before the outcries were sufficient to put a halt to such genocide.
How many people wanted to throw every nuclear weapon we had at Afghanistan as soon as the Bush Administration pointed a finger it its general direction. Did anyone care about innocents dying? No. Did anyone care about women and children who meant no harm to the US? No. Did anyone care who or what the Taliban was, what they stood for, or why they remained in power in Afghanistan? No. The President put a name in front of the American people and he told them where the man begind that name could be found. The next few weeks were filled with frustration and anger because our President didn't immediately order the carpet bombing of every square inch of that nation.
We were in shock, and that shock turned to anger. We allowed ourselves to be led around quite easily, as I suspect any group of people would in such a situation. I'm not afraid to say that while I despise much of what the Bush Administration stands for, they had a much clearer head than I did during that time - I was one of the ones hoping to see the use of nuclear weapons to retaliate. Why would I even think such a thing? Allow me to quote:
"Did you know that 2000 years ago, a Roman Citizen could walk across the face of the known world free of the fear of molestation. He could walk across the earth unharmed, cloaked only in the protection of the words âcivus romanus': I am a Roman citizen. So great was the retribution of Rome universally understood as certain, should any harm befall even one of its citizens."
"Well I'm sure people thought the same thing of the PATRIOT ACT..."
In the days following Sept 11th, Congress could have passed a bill stating that "ragheads, dotheads, and people who look arab will be summarily executed by the military", and I doubt anyone would have raised a finger or a care. This, of course, excluding the arab community. The nation and indeed, the world was in shock following Sept 11th, so it's no surprise to most that Ashcroft managed to sneak one past everyone.
If someone actually destroyed the server hosting his website, he'd be the first person lining up to put them in jail. Come on, Hatch, of all the things to take a ridiculous stand on; copyrights? Is $18,000/yr really that important to you?
I'd like to see how Hatch's constituents react when they find out he's the one who authored the law that let the music company destroy their computer because little Johnny wanted to hear the latest trendy music hit.
And yes, I understand that no such bill would ever make it anywhere, but for a high-ranking Senator to even suggest such an idea is absolutely unforgiveable. There's no excuse for violating imaginary property rights, but there is an excuse for willfully destroying the physical property of someone? I don't know whether he's really serious about such an idea, but assuming for a moment that there's a bit of sanity left in his noggin, I think he needs to choose his words more wisely. The fact is, this simply cannot work out well for him, and will only provide fuel for his critics and those who would like to take his seat.
Quite frankly, the man has no concept of what he's talking about, and needs to sit down, shut up, and listen to what others have to say for a change.
Laws, laws, laws. When your business is failing, laws. When your prices are too high, laws. When you're exposed for the fraud you are, laws. Laws are supposed to ensure the safety and security of folks within a society. This round of DMCA-style laws is just the latest in series of laws designed to ensure that the few on top remain on top. Those who enact the strictest and most ridiculous laws simply hasten their own demise. The issue of copyrights will become an election-decider within two to four years. Folks like us who stay informed are the canaries in the mine shaft of laws. When those in charge get out of hand, we're the first to be alarmed, yet no one has taken notice since we started yelling about copyright abuses in 1999. What will make them take notice is when these broad, overbearing laws begin to affect a large portion of the population, thereby ensuring a backlash the likes of which copyright holders can hardly imagine.
I predict, on this day, that within 5 years, we will see the crippling or perhaps even the complete elimination of all copyright, patent, and trademark laws. Things will get worse, much worse, before they get better. But mind you, when things get rough, we must remember to continue getting the word out to the uninformed masses while we wait for our revenge to fully take hold, that it may obliterate the copyright bastards of our time.
I've never done a "me too" post before, but looking at that site has convinced me that the time has come to make an exception. My God, it's a 1996 website using 2001 technology. It's about as bad as the Powerpoint presentations a couple of my customers do (and then, of course, make me watch).
"AMD needs to ratchet up consumer perceived speed through high GHz to battle Intel."
You obviously haven't seen their new chip, the Holyshiteron. It features a 12,000 stage pipeline which allows it to run at speeds in excess of 7 PetaHz.
" I wonder which and how many of the 30,000 patents IBM owns SCO will get accused of violating."
If IBM really wanted to make a point about not filing silly-ass lawsuits against them like what SCO has done, they'd file 30,000 simultaneous lawsuits against SCO for violating every single one of IBM's patents. Now, let's see if SCO's legal team (which is essentially all that is left of SCO) figure out how to prepare themselves for 30,000 lawsuits.
"I can't think of anything more disgusting than handling something that is guaranteed to have been in the possession of someone clutching their own genitals."
How about eating something that is guaranteed to have been in the possession of someone clutching someone else's genitals?
Come on now, we've all been served by a slutty chick at a diner before.:)
Incorrect. Quoth the article: "Auction sites such as eBay and Yahoo! sell just about everything and have been used by NASA for some of the more hard-to-find items."
Probably because you don't manufacture software. Once the software is written, you only look for upgrades and/or bugfixes from the vendor. Switching software is a hell of a lot easier than switching hardware. Besides, alternate sources for "compatible" software (as in: will do the same thing on the same hardware) is usually widely available anyway.
"Look at the B-52. The design has been flying since the 50's. They carry nuclear weopons. They have to operate on a budget. "
$300 - $400 Billion spent annually on defense.
NASA operates on $10billion - $15billion.
I'll bet the boys down at NASA would just love to switch up budgets with the Dept of Defense. You'd have your wish and more. Give NASA $400Billion annually and we'll have space colonies on Pluto within 20 years and a brand new fleet of state-of-the-art Space Shuttles that are 10 times better than what we have now. Until you find $400Billion to give NASA every year, they'll just have to do the best they can with what they've got.
"Now ask yourself: are the running a museum or a space program?"
They're running a space program on a museum budget. Seriously, while NASA's been trying to go further into space and explore deeper than ever, we, the people, have been trimming their budget down steadily since the 1970s.
"I realize a board requires thousands of dollars worth of labor to re-design and certify."
For space travel? Are you joking? Think about it for a moment; they're dealing with millions, if not billions of unknown variables in outter space. NASA's looking for stuff that works; stuff they know. You're telling them that every few years, they need to tear everything apart and start from scratch? Who's going to strip down every single space shuttle and replace every board and chip in the entire thing? Who's going to redesign the chassis so it still fits? Who's going to rewrite all the software and test it tens of thousands of times under tons of different conditions to ensure that when and if it fails, it fails in such a way that the mission continues if possible. Failing that, it has to fail in a predictable enough manner that human life is not lost. Furthermore, the hardware/software has to be known well enough by everyone involved (from the engineers to the astronaughts) that massive systemic failures can be bypassed and/or worked around in such a way as to make it work long enough to get our people home safe. Look at Apollo 13 for an example of a bunch of people who knew enough about what they were working with to make it all come together. Now you're telling them to redo it all every few years? How could anyone, save a few select people involved in a very specific role keep up?
The thing is, NASA folks know this hardware - they know every little problem, every fix, how it reacts under extreme conditions, and they know how to make it work in space. Intel couldn't tell you how a P4 will work in space. Nor could they tell you how a P4 mainboard will work in space. They can't tell you how it'll react after being bombarded with tons of EM interference, nor can they tell you every single problem you can face with it.
Then you look at cost. It's much cheaper for NASA to replace existing, albeit old, parts than it is to redesign the entire system. You can't have part of the system designed for an 8088 and another part running with a P4. Well, you can, it just will crash/explode/do nothing/kill the astronaughts. Or it might do something entirely different, getting back to the previous paragraph. How on Earth can you expect NASA to retool all their equipment with the piss-poor budget they're running on? You've got champagne tastes and they're on a beer budget.
And finally, you also need to look at engineering. The processors and boards at the time were not designed for the masses, by any stretch of the imagination. The stuff NASA's using, while it may be old, was very well manufactured. It was designed at a time where the consumer $60 mainboard and $70 microchip weren't even a figment of someone's sick imagination. In other words, people were actually paying for something back then. This gave Intel and the board makers a whole lot more room to work on things like quality, and it means that the parts tend to be much more reliable and much better tested. What you end up with is the "heavy duty" version of what we have now, only much, much slower. Fact is, though? It works.
"But we are spending BILLIONS on the project every year. If that money is not going into R&D, where is it going?"
Well, let's see. We've got the top scientists in the world, working with the top engineers in the world, working with top notch management, working on a very wide range of ultra high-tech stuff. Much of it is going into R&D, but not the kind us consumers are used to. We look at Intel or AMD R&D and we see them pushing the limits of the technology. This isn't what NASA's trying to do, as they don't have the luxery of having the whole thing screw
Come on now, Winzip, why not just drop the whole.zip compression altogether and do.rar instead? Not only is it much better, but you could very easily change your name from Winzip to Winra... oh, wait...
" AMD gave them a run during the 1GHz era but Intel is now ahead of the competition."
I'm sure you don't mean to imply that Intel is far out front of AMD, right? I mean, every bench I see puts the AthlonXP 3000+ pretty close to the P4 @ ~3GHz. The newest P4 on the 800MHz FSB pulls ahead slightly more, but then you have to look at the AthlonXP 3200+ on the 400MHz FSB, which is due out soon and competes quite well with it. There's no doubt that Intel has the performance crown right now, but AMD is most certainly not far behind them. Quite impressive when you consider that the K7 chips were competing with the first PIIIs, and are now in good competition with the latest and greatest P4s.
"They had already hit the 2 billion by now if AMD hadn't appeared in the scene as it has."
x86 wouldn't be the dominant chip without AMD. Intel never would have landed the life-giving government contracts without AMD, as government regulations regarding purchasing required that a backup distributor be available with compatible products in case the primary distributor fell on hard times. Intel should be thanking AMD wholeheartedly for their help in securing x86's, and of course, Intel's future as market leaders.
The real question is when will the Athlon64 (aka Clawhammer) CPUs be in full production? The survival of AMD is not riding on the AthlonXP 3200+; it's riding on the success of the Athlon64. The K7 has just about reached its architectual limits, and is fast becoming a legacy product that's more trouble than it's worth to AMD. The K8 is where AMD has poured much of its R&D into over recent years, and it's probably the biggest gamble they've ever taken. K7 was designed extraordinarily well, but it was never intended to be pushed into competing with 3GHz chips. The effort to continuously modify the CPU to compete simply isn't worth it. K8, on the other hand, is designed to scale much better than the K7, making it a very good prospect for AMD's future, assuming it works as advertised.
"Conversly, I wonder how many of the early ones (8088, et al) are still being used?"
Look to NASA for your answers to questions such as this. They're still using a lot of the old, old parts because that's what the equipment and the software were designed to work with. Aside from that, they've had ample time to fully test the old stuff, making sure that their CPU isn't going to fail or perform unexpectedly when human life and multi-billion dollar projects are on the line. I seem to recall reading about NASA looking to eBay amoung other places for the old 8086's and such to replace old parts. The problem is that they haven't been made in so long, it's virtually impossible for them to find replacements for parts which are beginning to wear out after so many years and so much use.
Slashdot Mirror
I never said it would happen; merely that it could. I think we would have reached the end of September before the outcries were sufficient to put a halt to such genocide.
How many people wanted to throw every nuclear weapon we had at Afghanistan as soon as the Bush Administration pointed a finger it its general direction. Did anyone care about innocents dying? No. Did anyone care about women and children who meant no harm to the US? No. Did anyone care who or what the Taliban was, what they stood for, or why they remained in power in Afghanistan? No. The President put a name in front of the American people and he told them where the man begind that name could be found. The next few weeks were filled with frustration and anger because our President didn't immediately order the carpet bombing of every square inch of that nation.
We were in shock, and that shock turned to anger. We allowed ourselves to be led around quite easily, as I suspect any group of people would in such a situation. I'm not afraid to say that while I despise much of what the Bush Administration stands for, they had a much clearer head than I did during that time - I was one of the ones hoping to see the use of nuclear weapons to retaliate. Why would I even think such a thing? Allow me to quote:
"Did you know that 2000 years ago, a Roman Citizen could walk across the face of the known world free of the fear of molestation. He could walk across the earth unharmed, cloaked only in the protection of the words âcivus romanus': I am a Roman citizen. So great was the retribution of Rome universally understood as certain, should any harm befall even one of its citizens."
"Well I'm sure people thought the same thing of the PATRIOT ACT ..."
In the days following Sept 11th, Congress could have passed a bill stating that "ragheads, dotheads, and people who look arab will be summarily executed by the military", and I doubt anyone would have raised a finger or a care. This, of course, excluding the arab community. The nation and indeed, the world was in shock following Sept 11th, so it's no surprise to most that Ashcroft managed to sneak one past everyone.
If someone actually destroyed the server hosting his website, he'd be the first person lining up to put them in jail. Come on, Hatch, of all the things to take a ridiculous stand on; copyrights? Is $18,000/yr really that important to you?
I'd like to see how Hatch's constituents react when they find out he's the one who authored the law that let the music company destroy their computer because little Johnny wanted to hear the latest trendy music hit.
And yes, I understand that no such bill would ever make it anywhere, but for a high-ranking Senator to even suggest such an idea is absolutely unforgiveable. There's no excuse for violating imaginary property rights, but there is an excuse for willfully destroying the physical property of someone? I don't know whether he's really serious about such an idea, but assuming for a moment that there's a bit of sanity left in his noggin, I think he needs to choose his words more wisely. The fact is, this simply cannot work out well for him, and will only provide fuel for his critics and those who would like to take his seat.
Quite frankly, the man has no concept of what he's talking about, and needs to sit down, shut up, and listen to what others have to say for a change.
Laws, laws, laws. When your business is failing, laws. When your prices are too high, laws. When you're exposed for the fraud you are, laws. Laws are supposed to ensure the safety and security of folks within a society. This round of DMCA-style laws is just the latest in series of laws designed to ensure that the few on top remain on top. Those who enact the strictest and most ridiculous laws simply hasten their own demise. The issue of copyrights will become an election-decider within two to four years. Folks like us who stay informed are the canaries in the mine shaft of laws. When those in charge get out of hand, we're the first to be alarmed, yet no one has taken notice since we started yelling about copyright abuses in 1999. What will make them take notice is when these broad, overbearing laws begin to affect a large portion of the population, thereby ensuring a backlash the likes of which copyright holders can hardly imagine.
I predict, on this day, that within 5 years, we will see the crippling or perhaps even the complete elimination of all copyright, patent, and trademark laws. Things will get worse, much worse, before they get better. But mind you, when things get rough, we must remember to continue getting the word out to the uninformed masses while we wait for our revenge to fully take hold, that it may obliterate the copyright bastards of our time.
"(I'm just have a lowly Math degree.)"
:)
Still working on the English degree, hmm?
"--- Samuel Bellamy"
Damn, I was half expecting to see that quote attributed to "--- Gollum".
"Too bad their webpage sucks "
I've never done a "me too" post before, but looking at that site has convinced me that the time has come to make an exception. My God, it's a 1996 website using 2001 technology. It's about as bad as the Powerpoint presentations a couple of my customers do (and then, of course, make me watch).
" So, who's the backup distributor with a compatible product for Windows?"
You're asking me this on a site overrun by Linux junkies? Heh.
"AMD needs to ratchet up consumer perceived speed through high GHz to battle Intel."
You obviously haven't seen their new chip, the Holyshiteron. It features a 12,000 stage pipeline which allows it to run at speeds in excess of 7 PetaHz.
" I wonder which and how many of the 30,000 patents IBM owns SCO will get accused of violating."
If IBM really wanted to make a point about not filing silly-ass lawsuits against them like what SCO has done, they'd file 30,000 simultaneous lawsuits against SCO for violating every single one of IBM's patents. Now, let's see if SCO's legal team (which is essentially all that is left of SCO) figure out how to prepare themselves for 30,000 lawsuits.
In other news, IBM spokesperson John Ashton responded to SCO's reported Friday dealine by simply saying, "Blow me."
"I can't think of anything more disgusting than handling something that is guaranteed to have been in the possession of someone clutching their own genitals."
:)
How about eating something that is guaranteed to have been in the possession of someone clutching someone else's genitals?
Come on now, we've all been served by a slutty chick at a diner before.
" I doubt they are using old 8088's."
Incorrect.
Quoth the article: "Auction sites such as eBay and Yahoo! sell just about everything and have been used by NASA for some of the more hard-to-find items."
"Hmmm..why doesn't that apply to software?"
Probably because you don't manufacture software. Once the software is written, you only look for upgrades and/or bugfixes from the vendor. Switching software is a hell of a lot easier than switching hardware. Besides, alternate sources for "compatible" software (as in: will do the same thing on the same hardware) is usually widely available anyway.
"Look at the B-52. The design has been flying since the 50's. They carry nuclear weopons. They have to operate on a budget. "
$300 - $400 Billion spent annually on defense.
NASA operates on $10billion - $15billion.
I'll bet the boys down at NASA would just love to switch up budgets with the Dept of Defense. You'd have your wish and more. Give NASA $400Billion annually and we'll have space colonies on Pluto within 20 years and a brand new fleet of state-of-the-art Space Shuttles that are 10 times better than what we have now. Until you find $400Billion to give NASA every year, they'll just have to do the best they can with what they've got.
"Now ask yourself: are the running a museum or a space program?"
They're running a space program on a museum budget. Seriously, while NASA's been trying to go further into space and explore deeper than ever, we, the people, have been trimming their budget down steadily since the 1970s.
"I realize a board requires thousands of dollars worth of labor to re-design and certify."
For space travel? Are you joking? Think about it for a moment; they're dealing with millions, if not billions of unknown variables in outter space. NASA's looking for stuff that works; stuff they know. You're telling them that every few years, they need to tear everything apart and start from scratch? Who's going to strip down every single space shuttle and replace every board and chip in the entire thing? Who's going to redesign the chassis so it still fits? Who's going to rewrite all the software and test it tens of thousands of times under tons of different conditions to ensure that when and if it fails, it fails in such a way that the mission continues if possible. Failing that, it has to fail in a predictable enough manner that human life is not lost. Furthermore, the hardware/software has to be known well enough by everyone involved (from the engineers to the astronaughts) that massive systemic failures can be bypassed and/or worked around in such a way as to make it work long enough to get our people home safe. Look at Apollo 13 for an example of a bunch of people who knew enough about what they were working with to make it all come together. Now you're telling them to redo it all every few years? How could anyone, save a few select people involved in a very specific role keep up?
The thing is, NASA folks know this hardware - they know every little problem, every fix, how it reacts under extreme conditions, and they know how to make it work in space. Intel couldn't tell you how a P4 will work in space. Nor could they tell you how a P4 mainboard will work in space. They can't tell you how it'll react after being bombarded with tons of EM interference, nor can they tell you every single problem you can face with it.
Then you look at cost. It's much cheaper for NASA to replace existing, albeit old, parts than it is to redesign the entire system. You can't have part of the system designed for an 8088 and another part running with a P4. Well, you can, it just will crash/explode/do nothing/kill the astronaughts. Or it might do something entirely different, getting back to the previous paragraph. How on Earth can you expect NASA to retool all their equipment with the piss-poor budget they're running on? You've got champagne tastes and they're on a beer budget.
And finally, you also need to look at engineering. The processors and boards at the time were not designed for the masses, by any stretch of the imagination. The stuff NASA's using, while it may be old, was very well manufactured. It was designed at a time where the consumer $60 mainboard and $70 microchip weren't even a figment of someone's sick imagination. In other words, people were actually paying for something back then. This gave Intel and the board makers a whole lot more room to work on things like quality, and it means that the parts tend to be much more reliable and much better tested. What you end up with is the "heavy duty" version of what we have now, only much, much slower. Fact is, though? It works.
"But we are spending BILLIONS on the project every year. If that money is not going into R&D, where is it going?"
Well, let's see. We've got the top scientists in the world, working with the top engineers in the world, working with top notch management, working on a very wide range of ultra high-tech stuff. Much of it is going into R&D, but not the kind us consumers are used to. We look at Intel or AMD R&D and we see them pushing the limits of the technology. This isn't what NASA's trying to do, as they don't have the luxery of having the whole thing screw
"Apple would be severely upset to find out that they're "almost extinct"."
If Steve Jobs read that, he'd immediately respond by raising the prices on all Apple computers. Heh.
I have a patent for beating idiots like Fernandez with a baseball bat.
:) )
Who wants to violate it?
(silly moderators, it's a joke, chill out
Come on now, Winzip, why not just drop the whole .zip compression altogether and do .rar instead? Not only is it much better, but you could very easily change your name from Winzip to Winra... oh, wait...
" AMD gave them a run during the 1GHz era but Intel is now ahead of the competition."
I'm sure you don't mean to imply that Intel is far out front of AMD, right? I mean, every bench I see puts the AthlonXP 3000+ pretty close to the P4 @ ~3GHz. The newest P4 on the 800MHz FSB pulls ahead slightly more, but then you have to look at the AthlonXP 3200+ on the 400MHz FSB, which is due out soon and competes quite well with it. There's no doubt that Intel has the performance crown right now, but AMD is most certainly not far behind them. Quite impressive when you consider that the K7 chips were competing with the first PIIIs, and are now in good competition with the latest and greatest P4s.
This site actually has a lot of good info on the early microprocessors, complete with pictures. They've even got info and pictures of the 4004! :)
Actually, it was more of a technological issue. Check here for more info on the topic.
"They had already hit the 2 billion by now if AMD hadn't appeared in the scene as it has."
x86 wouldn't be the dominant chip without AMD. Intel never would have landed the life-giving government contracts without AMD, as government regulations regarding purchasing required that a backup distributor be available with compatible products in case the primary distributor fell on hard times. Intel should be thanking AMD wholeheartedly for their help in securing x86's, and of course, Intel's future as market leaders.
"The real question is...."
The real question is when will the Athlon64 (aka Clawhammer) CPUs be in full production? The survival of AMD is not riding on the AthlonXP 3200+; it's riding on the success of the Athlon64. The K7 has just about reached its architectual limits, and is fast becoming a legacy product that's more trouble than it's worth to AMD. The K8 is where AMD has poured much of its R&D into over recent years, and it's probably the biggest gamble they've ever taken. K7 was designed extraordinarily well, but it was never intended to be pushed into competing with 3GHz chips. The effort to continuously modify the CPU to compete simply isn't worth it. K8, on the other hand, is designed to scale much better than the K7, making it a very good prospect for AMD's future, assuming it works as advertised.
"Conversly, I wonder how many of the early ones (8088, et al) are still being used?"
Look to NASA for your answers to questions such as this. They're still using a lot of the old, old parts because that's what the equipment and the software were designed to work with. Aside from that, they've had ample time to fully test the old stuff, making sure that their CPU isn't going to fail or perform unexpectedly when human life and multi-billion dollar projects are on the line. I seem to recall reading about NASA looking to eBay amoung other places for the old 8086's and such to replace old parts. The problem is that they haven't been made in so long, it's virtually impossible for them to find replacements for parts which are beginning to wear out after so many years and so much use.