You're twisting it. It's got more overhead then a single client-server connection, but given the type of network the Internet is it makes more efficient USE of the network by using bandwidth that would otherwise go unused.
The not-so-small benefit of this is to give people and organizations that aren't rich (Akamai is expensive and ISP's aren't going to set up these "edge" caches for free) the ability to distribute large files to large groups of people. It's awesome for things like Linux distributions.
You can't be asked whether or not there's any civil cases "pending" against you. In fact, in the US you can only be asked to disclose any felony charges that have been *judged* against you.
Even asking the question is illegal, and both asking AND denying employment because of it would be doubly illegal.
Not to mention, until you've had a judgement ruled against you, you're innocent. If I sued you for stealing my PC (even though I don't know you, or I'm mistaken,) would you go and tell everyone you interviewed for that you have a civil case pending against you?
That you don't see how bittorrent utilizes the network more effeciently.
"One other misconception is the "bandwidth-accelerating" aspects. It may just be my perspective from looking at the code, but perhaps you can tell me how sending out thousands of requests to thousands of servers asking for bits and pieces of a file is more "efficient" bandwidth-wise?"
It's more effecient because the bandwidth that's normally unused (end-user upstream) is used. And no single routing path will become saturated with packets because clients get data from all over.
Sure, there's bandwidth "wasted" compared to a straight FTP or http download, but it makes use of the network that exists much more effectively, and thus effeciently.
This guy probably wouldn't have been busted if he didn't include a bunch of games with the modded Xboxes. The spin makes it sound like it was all about modding, but it was more about the 80 games he included with the things.
But the thing about software. I do agree that some companies are trying to push the envelope when it comes to ownership versus a licence to "use" the software. But there's a reson for it.
Sure, you can buy that tire and use it as a rope swing, but you can't copy the tire and equip all your cars, your friends' cars, and anyone connected to the roads' cars. With software, you can do that. So, it's different.
But, now that there's the internet connected to almost everyone's house - at least, anyone that would want to play "top pirated" software like games - it doesn't even matter anymore. Game publishers just make their software check-in every once in awhile to make sure you have a good copy, or you can't play online, or register, or whatever.
As far as the Microsoft hardware sale, well, we all know that the game console companies lose tons of money when they sell these things. They only make money on the game licensing or royalty-type money from the game publishers. That's why there's so hard of a push to stop console hacking. Not that I agree with it - it's not my problem that you're selling these at a loss of profit.
According to the article, the original intent of the device was to prove that a cockroach would be able to control the machine more effectively then a computer chip, in a school project.
In the end, it proved not to be true. While the cockroach would often respond correctly to the lights he put into the device, it would not always do so. And sometimes the cockroach would just "spaz out" and run in circles for awhile. Other times it control the robot perfectly for a while, then decide to ram it into the wall no matter what the lights said.
I'm guessing that if the initial trial run was more successful, he would have made the device do more then just avoid walls.
Apparently, his new robot will be a little better at letting the cockroach know that it needed to do something new.
I think it's pretty interesting, if nothing else but to help better understand the cockroach itself.
I see balanced 1/4" jacks on a lot of audio gear. Most of the stuff you'll find at a "pro-sumer" type place like Guitar Center makes use of these connectors. Most "pro" level PC sound cards, mixers, effects panels, etc, use this connector.
Almost nothing uses a BNC connector, even though I like BNC- if for nothing else because they always lock in place.
But really, the 1/4" balanaced jacks provide for a solid connection with low resistance. They click into place fairly securely, and many 1/4" jacks have screw threads so you can securely fasten the jack into place (ala electric guitar style.)
I believe in good cables, but I really hate the cable scamming that goes on so often. You walk into any Best Buy and you'll have these guys telling you how amazing this $60 cable is, compared to the perfectly good and well matched $20 cable you have in your hand is. I've asked them to show me before (because it's clearly bullshit) and they won't do it. Various excuses.
$1550 for a pair of 6 foot cables is inexcusable. But some retarded sound engineer will insist on them for some new studio going in, and some unknowing manager will sign for it - and that's why they exist.
It's no different in any other field, really. You can go with the super expensive ridiculous Vendor A enterprise computer solution for $800,000, or you can go with the Vendor B solution - both will get the job done but the Vendor B will cost 1/4 the price. Yet people will go with Vendor A because of their name, the boss likes the sales guy, or whatever other crap reason.
" go and see one of the game where player-killing is done properly."
Name a few. Name a few that have both good PvP and interesting PvE in the same game.
"Christ, you're just an Everquest fanboy."
No, although it's obvious that I played EQ more then any of the others. I draw from my experience in that game - pointing out that many of the ideas mentioned were already in EQ and it obviously didn't help the casual gamer any.
So, your ideas aren't new. They've been attempted in one form or another; pretty much from the start.
"1. Make the earlier levels more enjoyable."
EQ2 had a crap load to do at low levels. Even EQ has plenty to do, explore, etc. At low levels. You've put your own pressure on yourself to "grind" them away instead of enjoying them. And there's even games without levels at all (SWG, etc.)
"2. Find a new genre. No, you're not Tolkien. Every single game doesn't need trolls, orcs and dragons. Nor magic spells."
But a lot of us LIKE dungeons and dragons. And magic, and orcs. I do. It's not a bad setting, and it happens to play exceptionally well in the MMORPG genre. However, if it's not for you, you could check out SWG or a few of the others that don't follow the mystical theme. But what else is there? What else works as well? I can't think of too much. And anything I could come up with is probably already on the drawing board somewhere.
"3. If you're having PK make it reasonable. You don't want high players going round killing every lowbie they find"
What MMORPG's have you played, exactly? Besides original OU, most MMORPG's have limits on player killing. You must be within level ranges, or something like that. Or you must agree to do PvP with another player (ala/duel.) You can play on a full PVP server, or not. You could play WoW with only some areas PvP. Likewise with others.
One of the biggest problems with PvP is class balance. EQ was never really designed for PvP - it came after. Classes had a lot of different traits that made them useful in groups or raids, but not in PvP. A Wizard could bomb the shit out of you, or a cleric could just keep healing himself. A pure melee would be fucked, even with all his armor and hit points.
So how do you make a game both good for raids or PvE encounters, and PvP, without dulling both?
"4. Make the game rewarding and exciting."
I'm sure the goal of every MMORPG developer is to make the game crappy and boring.
" Of course grinding-games like Everquest with fixed-mobs and fixed-loads will never be that exciting. Equipment can't load consistently, it has to be random. That evil dragon can't load the magic potion every time, it has to be say 1 in 5. And you can't find out 'till it's dead. That's what makes it exciting."
Okay - wait. How is your idea different from EQ, exactly? Killing the same mob over and over to get that rare epic drop or armor component? And since when can you tell what EQ mobs have for loot before they die? ShowEQ hasn't shown loot for many years.
"When you gain a level, it has to mean something, even at low levels. Going from level 1 to 2, or 4 to 5 should give you something on top of the number. "
Nothing new here. Even in EQ, you get more abilities and spells quite often, even at low levels. When I played EQ, I enjoyed every level UNTIL the higher levels. So I'm really not sure where you keep coming from with this "low levels need to be fun" stuff. They were/are.
In fact, what kept the pressure OFF me to level in EQ, until maybe level 47, was the insurmountable amount of time that was required to reach 60. I didn't worry about it, because it was so far away.
"5. Keep the levels down. Don't let people get to level one million so if you only play a few hours a week you may as well not bother. Level gain should not be linear."
Herein lies the crux of the matter. None of the other garbage means much, because it all comes down to this.
If some guy can spend a lot of time in the game, and does, and works hard at advancing his character - is it right that JoeShmoe casual player with no dedication to the game gets the same level of play? And what's to keep the people that can spend time playing, paying?
You need to benefit players that play a lot, because these players will pay month after month as long as the game keeps them going. If you deliberately ne
You tell me which has more overhead? A notable part of the difference is the encoding; FTP can transfer data straight binary - no MIME types or special encoding to send the data over the channel.
"the overhead of FTP can be significantly higher than HTTP (logon banners)."
Are you kidding?
" For HTTP, you send the request and sit back and wait for the data. "
If browsers were as simple as an FTP client, this might be true. But don't forget about all the banners and lots of extra data that gets communicated between your average browser and HTTP server these days. Not to mention cookies.
"With FTP, you have to login (USER, PASS), which both require you to wait for confirmation before you can PORT and RETR."
All of this is is likely done in less then 100 bytes of data transferred.
"Not to mention the overhead of establishing another TCP socket to pass the data over."
Here's a quick run down of how a TCP connection is established:
1. Packet sent from initiating machine. Very small packet (bytes) with the SYN flag set. 2. Recieving machine gets packet with SYN. Sends packet back (bytes) with the SYN and ACK flags set. 3. Initiating machine sends back another small packet (bytes) with the ACK flag set.
The amount of data necessary to open a raw TCP connection is so miniscule that it's almost not worth mentioning.
"If you need to retrieve a tree structure of files, download several files from a single server, or need to upload files, FTP is the way to do it. If you need to download only one file, or several files in parallel (typical webbrowsing), then HTTP is your friend."
You're looking at this from a user perspective, not a technical one.
FTP is very low overhead (read: almost zero,) it's a very intelligent design, and it works great over slow and unreliable connections to boot.
Nobody is saying we should replace HTTP with the FTP protocol.
AMD has a pretty big market. They have facilities worth billions, they have thousands of employees, and they sell a crap load of processors and other chips. They're not exactly a desperate company.
But if something like this DID happens (meaning, if Intel did strong-arm the PC makers) would you expect the competition to sit back and take it?
If you were looking for a job, and someone came in and said "if you hire this other guy, we'll give him to you for half price, but if you hire THIS guy, we'll charge you twice for any future people" you'd be pretty hurting. And you'd probably sue. I would.
"Both CPU and GPU performance are now limited by power dissipation issues."
Somewhat.
There's a lot more room for growth in the GPU arena then there currently is in the CPU. They're only running at about 500Mhz right now, and they can add more processing pipelines and other enhancements currently found in the CPU, as well as shrinking the manufacturing process that will allow higher Mhz and more processing power.
The present-day GPU is very advanced, but they're still behind modern CPU's in terms of manufacturing processes by a generation.
I guess the whole idea around doing something like this is the old "why not" and also the ability to perform these functions on large amounts of data without tying up the CPU.
I'd agree with your presumtion; Windows can do the same thing. Take VMWare GSX server, for instance; you can instruct it to never swap VM memory, or swap some of it, or swap all of it.
You couldn't have 50Mbit down, 16Kbit up. You need enough upstream in order to send acknowledgement packets, not only on the TCP level but on the application level if so required (which often is.) With 16kBit, you might be able to reach 384Kbit downstream. MAYBE.
When my cable went to 4Mbit, they increased the upstream to 512Kbit. When I'm downloading at a full 4Mbit via http, I'm almost completely saturating the 512Kbit upstream. So they didn't increase my upstream because they were just feeling nice, they did it because they had to, so the downstream would scale upwards.
If it were really 50Mbit downstream, they'd need to give something like 8Mbit up, or at the very least 4. Unless, of course, it's just a marketing gimmick and they're using the lack of upstream to effectively cap the downstream where they want it.
That's only one part as to why OS/2 failed. And Linux is already strong is some segments.
The Wine project website used to have a good explination as to why they do it, and to answer these claims. Problem is, I can't seem to locate it at the moment.
But the jist is, by making these programs compatible with Linux it might discourage SOME developers from writing Linux native apps; but the truth of the matter is that those houses never had a plan in the first place.
Whatever gets more people over to Linux the better, and we're already seeing more native things being written all the time. Core technologies.
If this discouragement thing were a rule, then how come OpenOffice keeps on truckin' along? I mean, you can run MS Office nearly flawlessly with CrossOver office. Same with IE; that runs great in CrossOver too.
If I'm already running a few of my favorite Windows games in Linux, when the next game comes out they might look at the stats and see, hey, there's a lot of gamers running Linux these days - let's develop our app for both at the same time.
I think it's an encouragement. It shows that people are willing to run their games under sub-optimal conditions in order to use the system they like. Imagine how willing people will be to buy your game if it runs natively?
Sure, but those aren't the same people that are trying to squeeze performance for ubergaming. If you have 64MB ram, you aren't playing any 3D games made after 2001.
Sure, why not. I do, on Windows too. Why close all my shit down when I want to play CS for a round or two? I've never really noticed any slow-downs when I have 8 browser windows, Office, photoshop, etc etc open. And it's not like I have gobs of RAM; only 1GB.
All this performance squeezing is an illusion. In real-world uses, having idle background apps won't slow anything down. It might show 2FPS in some benchmark but you'll never notice that.
The only flaw in that is that I think a lot of folks wouldn't just jump into another closed-source proprietary microsoft system just because it's running on a linux kernel. It wouldn't be any different then Windows.
I'll just ignore the odd comments about living by the schedule of the machine thing, and comment on the less human contact thing.
It's not true!
While it may be true that *some* people have less face-to-face contact, I dare say it's not significantly less then anytime in the past.
I'd say we have a lot more communication then ever before.
Every day I communicate with people all across the globe; via Slashdot and other forums. I have conversations with people I would have never been able to meet, ever, even if you lived 10 miles away. The Internet has allowed me to meet so many people that I stay in contact with regularly but I have never met face to face or even spoken to on the phone. And some of those casual friendships feel no less real the casual friendships I have offline.
I'm not really into the whole blogging thing, but it's another great way that people are getting to know each other; communicating with each other.
So, considering all this, I'm not sure how technology has hindered human contact.
And about free time, well. Looking back at the last two centuries, I'd say my work schedule is pretty darned good compared to the amount of work the average middle class person has had to work in the past. Ohh, boo. I might have to go in at night and fix a server. Well, I'm not getting up at dawn to milk cows or bake bread until dusk, so I think it's a good trade-off.
And to the last point, I don't think this man invisioned anything when he created the IC. He probably thought it would greatly help reduce the cost of the circuit and help him keep his job.
IC's made computers possible. They led to further development into full processing units.
While I'm sure the IC would have been developed without this man eventually, it could have taken a lot longer and this mans initiative prevented the delay.
It's for the people that don't know better, for the people that CAN'T use anything else, for the people that are locked into it without even realizing it. And the people that do realize it.
I wanted to expand on your comment about how MSH could prove to be fairly useless because there's going to be no standard userland tools to go with it.
It's not just the normal userland tools that will be a setback. It's everything else, too.
In a Unix-style system, almost everything is ASCII text based. While there's GUI interfaces for a lot of stuff now a days, most configuration, logging, etc are done with text. This makes a powerful shell the perfect companion to those applications - you can process the text and do whatever you want with things so incredibly easy.
You can practically backup the entire configuration of a system to a floppy disk. A few.conf files and a standard system image, you've got your system back and running in minutes. This is just an example of how powerful the CLI is - and you don't have to be a career programmer to make extremely useful and powerful scripts.
So, without the same methodology as a Unix system, a powerful CLI on windows will probably have minimal impact to the system at large. Hey, I'll be glad to have it as a standard feature, but it won't change my life.
I mean, how much did you pay for Linux? Or OpenSolaris? How much code did you write for either? What's your personal stake in this?
I think it's great - GNU/Linux has been made possible by people writing software that suits their needs. We've got some great software, viable operating systems, and Linux systems are all basically compatible with one another. Your "favorite programs" wouldn't exist without it.
So why don't you stop bitching about what YOU want, and appreciate the work that's been done thus far. Sure, sometimes the dependencies thing is a pain, but it's only because OSS is moving so fast that it can be painfull. And I'll take that trade-off any day.
I hope not, then. See, where I come from, Earth, the people here can be a fan of more then one thing. And we can be a fan of one thing and not hate everything else.
Slashdot Mirror
You're twisting it. It's got more overhead then a single client-server connection, but given the type of network the Internet is it makes more efficient USE of the network by using bandwidth that would otherwise go unused.
The not-so-small benefit of this is to give people and organizations that aren't rich (Akamai is expensive and ISP's aren't going to set up these "edge" caches for free) the ability to distribute large files to large groups of people. It's awesome for things like Linux distributions.
You can't be asked whether or not there's any civil cases "pending" against you. In fact, in the US you can only be asked to disclose any felony charges that have been *judged* against you.
Even asking the question is illegal, and both asking AND denying employment because of it would be doubly illegal.
Not to mention, until you've had a judgement ruled against you, you're innocent. If I sued you for stealing my PC (even though I don't know you, or I'm mistaken,) would you go and tell everyone you interviewed for that you have a civil case pending against you?
That you don't see how bittorrent utilizes the network more effeciently.
"One other misconception is the "bandwidth-accelerating" aspects. It may just be my perspective from looking at the code, but perhaps you can tell me how sending out thousands of requests to thousands of servers asking for bits and pieces of a file is more "efficient" bandwidth-wise?"
It's more effecient because the bandwidth that's normally unused (end-user upstream) is used. And no single routing path will become saturated with packets because clients get data from all over.
Sure, there's bandwidth "wasted" compared to a straight FTP or http download, but it makes use of the network that exists much more effectively, and thus effeciently.
This guy probably wouldn't have been busted if he didn't include a bunch of games with the modded Xboxes. The spin makes it sound like it was all about modding, but it was more about the 80 games he included with the things.
But the thing about software. I do agree that some companies are trying to push the envelope when it comes to ownership versus a licence to "use" the software. But there's a reson for it.
Sure, you can buy that tire and use it as a rope swing, but you can't copy the tire and equip all your cars, your friends' cars, and anyone connected to the roads' cars. With software, you can do that. So, it's different.
But, now that there's the internet connected to almost everyone's house - at least, anyone that would want to play "top pirated" software like games - it doesn't even matter anymore. Game publishers just make their software check-in every once in awhile to make sure you have a good copy, or you can't play online, or register, or whatever.
As far as the Microsoft hardware sale, well, we all know that the game console companies lose tons of money when they sell these things. They only make money on the game licensing or royalty-type money from the game publishers. That's why there's so hard of a push to stop console hacking. Not that I agree with it - it's not my problem that you're selling these at a loss of profit.
According to the article, the original intent of the device was to prove that a cockroach would be able to control the machine more effectively then a computer chip, in a school project.
In the end, it proved not to be true. While the cockroach would often respond correctly to the lights he put into the device, it would not always do so. And sometimes the cockroach would just "spaz out" and run in circles for awhile. Other times it control the robot perfectly for a while, then decide to ram it into the wall no matter what the lights said.
I'm guessing that if the initial trial run was more successful, he would have made the device do more then just avoid walls.
Apparently, his new robot will be a little better at letting the cockroach know that it needed to do something new.
I think it's pretty interesting, if nothing else but to help better understand the cockroach itself.
I see balanced 1/4" jacks on a lot of audio gear. Most of the stuff you'll find at a "pro-sumer" type place like Guitar Center makes use of these connectors. Most "pro" level PC sound cards, mixers, effects panels, etc, use this connector.
Almost nothing uses a BNC connector, even though I like BNC- if for nothing else because they always lock in place.
But really, the 1/4" balanaced jacks provide for a solid connection with low resistance. They click into place fairly securely, and many 1/4" jacks have screw threads so you can securely fasten the jack into place (ala electric guitar style.)
I believe in good cables, but I really hate the cable scamming that goes on so often. You walk into any Best Buy and you'll have these guys telling you how amazing this $60 cable is, compared to the perfectly good and well matched $20 cable you have in your hand is. I've asked them to show me before (because it's clearly bullshit) and they won't do it. Various excuses.
$1550 for a pair of 6 foot cables is inexcusable. But some retarded sound engineer will insist on them for some new studio going in, and some unknowing manager will sign for it - and that's why they exist.
It's no different in any other field, really. You can go with the super expensive ridiculous Vendor A enterprise computer solution for $800,000, or you can go with the Vendor B solution - both will get the job done but the Vendor B will cost 1/4 the price. Yet people will go with Vendor A because of their name, the boss likes the sales guy, or whatever other crap reason.
" go and see one of the game where player-killing is done properly."
Name a few. Name a few that have both good PvP and interesting PvE in the same game.
"Christ, you're just an Everquest fanboy."
No, although it's obvious that I played EQ more then any of the others. I draw from my experience in that game - pointing out that many of the ideas mentioned were already in EQ and it obviously didn't help the casual gamer any.
So, your ideas aren't new. They've been attempted in one form or another; pretty much from the start.
/duel.) You can play on a full PVP server, or not. You could play WoW with only some areas PvP. Likewise with others.
"1. Make the earlier levels more enjoyable."
EQ2 had a crap load to do at low levels. Even EQ has plenty to do, explore, etc. At low levels. You've put your own pressure on yourself to "grind" them away instead of enjoying them. And there's even games without levels at all (SWG, etc.)
"2. Find a new genre. No, you're not Tolkien. Every single game doesn't need trolls, orcs and dragons. Nor magic spells."
But a lot of us LIKE dungeons and dragons. And magic, and orcs. I do. It's not a bad setting, and it happens to play exceptionally well in the MMORPG genre. However, if it's not for you, you could check out SWG or a few of the others that don't follow the mystical theme. But what else is there? What else works as well? I can't think of too much. And anything I could come up with is probably already on the drawing board somewhere.
"3. If you're having PK make it reasonable. You don't want high players going round killing every lowbie they find"
What MMORPG's have you played, exactly? Besides original OU, most MMORPG's have limits on player killing. You must be within level ranges, or something like that. Or you must agree to do PvP with another player (ala
One of the biggest problems with PvP is class balance. EQ was never really designed for PvP - it came after. Classes had a lot of different traits that made them useful in groups or raids, but not in PvP. A Wizard could bomb the shit out of you, or a cleric could just keep healing himself. A pure melee would be fucked, even with all his armor and hit points.
So how do you make a game both good for raids or PvE encounters, and PvP, without dulling both?
"4. Make the game rewarding and exciting."
I'm sure the goal of every MMORPG developer is to make the game crappy and boring.
" Of course grinding-games like Everquest with fixed-mobs and fixed-loads will never be that exciting. Equipment can't load consistently, it has to be random. That evil dragon can't load the magic potion every time, it has to be say 1 in 5. And you can't find out 'till it's dead. That's what makes it exciting."
Okay - wait. How is your idea different from EQ, exactly? Killing the same mob over and over to get that rare epic drop or armor component? And since when can you tell what EQ mobs have for loot before they die? ShowEQ hasn't shown loot for many years.
"When you gain a level, it has to mean something, even at low levels. Going from level 1 to 2, or 4 to 5 should give you something on top of the number. "
Nothing new here. Even in EQ, you get more abilities and spells quite often, even at low levels. When I played EQ, I enjoyed every level UNTIL the higher levels. So I'm really not sure where you keep coming from with this "low levels need to be fun" stuff. They were/are.
In fact, what kept the pressure OFF me to level in EQ, until maybe level 47, was the insurmountable amount of time that was required to reach 60. I didn't worry about it, because it was so far away.
"5. Keep the levels down. Don't let people get to level one million so if you only play a few hours a week you may as well not bother. Level gain should not be linear."
Herein lies the crux of the matter. None of the other garbage means much, because it all comes down to this.
If some guy can spend a lot of time in the game, and does, and works hard at advancing his character - is it right that JoeShmoe casual player with no dedication to the game gets the same level of play? And what's to keep the people that can spend time playing, paying?
You need to benefit players that play a lot, because these players will pay month after month as long as the game keeps them going. If you deliberately ne
You just don't get what he's saying, and you're not making any sense.
"The only time FTP has less overhead than TCP is when you're retrieving several files."
I'm going to make a guess here and assume you mean HTTP, not TCP.
First, take a look at the FTP RFC.
http://www.freesoft.org/CIE/RFC/959/index.htm
Then, take a look at the HTTP 1.1 RFC:
ftp://ftp.isi.edu/in-notes/rfc2616.txt
You tell me which has more overhead? A notable part of the difference is the encoding; FTP can transfer data straight binary - no MIME types or special encoding to send the data over the channel.
"the overhead of FTP can be significantly higher than HTTP (logon banners)."
Are you kidding?
" For HTTP, you send the request and sit back and wait for the data. "
If browsers were as simple as an FTP client, this might be true. But don't forget about all the banners and lots of extra data that gets communicated between your average browser and HTTP server these days. Not to mention cookies.
"With FTP, you have to login (USER, PASS), which both require you to wait for confirmation before you can PORT and RETR."
All of this is is likely done in less then 100 bytes of data transferred.
"Not to mention the overhead of establishing another TCP socket to pass the data over."
Here's a quick run down of how a TCP connection is established:
1. Packet sent from initiating machine. Very small packet (bytes) with the SYN flag set.
2. Recieving machine gets packet with SYN. Sends packet back (bytes) with the SYN and ACK flags set.
3. Initiating machine sends back another small packet (bytes) with the ACK flag set.
The amount of data necessary to open a raw TCP connection is so miniscule that it's almost not worth mentioning.
"If you need to retrieve a tree structure of files, download several files from a single server, or need to upload files, FTP is the way to do it. If you need to download only one file, or several files in parallel (typical webbrowsing), then HTTP is your friend."
You're looking at this from a user perspective, not a technical one.
FTP is very low overhead (read: almost zero,) it's a very intelligent design, and it works great over slow and unreliable connections to boot.
Nobody is saying we should replace HTTP with the FTP protocol.
AMD has a pretty big market. They have facilities worth billions, they have thousands of employees, and they sell a crap load of processors and other chips. They're not exactly a desperate company.
But if something like this DID happens (meaning, if Intel did strong-arm the PC makers) would you expect the competition to sit back and take it?
If you were looking for a job, and someone came in and said "if you hire this other guy, we'll give him to you for half price, but if you hire THIS guy, we'll charge you twice for any future people" you'd be pretty hurting. And you'd probably sue. I would.
"Both CPU and GPU performance are now limited by power dissipation issues."
Somewhat.
There's a lot more room for growth in the GPU arena then there currently is in the CPU. They're only running at about 500Mhz right now, and they can add more processing pipelines and other enhancements currently found in the CPU, as well as shrinking the manufacturing process that will allow higher Mhz and more processing power.
The present-day GPU is very advanced, but they're still behind modern CPU's in terms of manufacturing processes by a generation.
I guess the whole idea around doing something like this is the old "why not" and also the ability to perform these functions on large amounts of data without tying up the CPU.
I'd agree with your presumtion; Windows can do the same thing. Take VMWare GSX server, for instance; you can instruct it to never swap VM memory, or swap some of it, or swap all of it.
You couldn't have 50Mbit down, 16Kbit up. You need enough upstream in order to send acknowledgement packets, not only on the TCP level but on the application level if so required (which often is.) With 16kBit, you might be able to reach 384Kbit downstream. MAYBE.
When my cable went to 4Mbit, they increased the upstream to 512Kbit. When I'm downloading at a full 4Mbit via http, I'm almost completely saturating the 512Kbit upstream. So they didn't increase my upstream because they were just feeling nice, they did it because they had to, so the downstream would scale upwards.
If it were really 50Mbit downstream, they'd need to give something like 8Mbit up, or at the very least 4. Unless, of course, it's just a marketing gimmick and they're using the lack of upstream to effectively cap the downstream where they want it.
I see someone already mentioned OS/2, as well.
That's only one part as to why OS/2 failed. And Linux is already strong is some segments.
The Wine project website used to have a good explination as to why they do it, and to answer these claims. Problem is, I can't seem to locate it at the moment.
But the jist is, by making these programs compatible with Linux it might discourage SOME developers from writing Linux native apps; but the truth of the matter is that those houses never had a plan in the first place.
Whatever gets more people over to Linux the better, and we're already seeing more native things being written all the time. Core technologies.
If this discouragement thing were a rule, then how come OpenOffice keeps on truckin' along? I mean, you can run MS Office nearly flawlessly with CrossOver office. Same with IE; that runs great in CrossOver too.
If I'm already running a few of my favorite Windows games in Linux, when the next game comes out they might look at the stats and see, hey, there's a lot of gamers running Linux these days - let's develop our app for both at the same time.
I think it's an encouragement. It shows that people are willing to run their games under sub-optimal conditions in order to use the system they like. Imagine how willing people will be to buy your game if it runs natively?
Sure, but those aren't the same people that are trying to squeeze performance for ubergaming. If you have 64MB ram, you aren't playing any 3D games made after 2001.
Sure, why not. I do, on Windows too. Why close all my shit down when I want to play CS for a round or two? I've never really noticed any slow-downs when I have 8 browser windows, Office, photoshop, etc etc open. And it's not like I have gobs of RAM; only 1GB.
All this performance squeezing is an illusion. In real-world uses, having idle background apps won't slow anything down. It might show 2FPS in some benchmark but you'll never notice that.
The only flaw in that is that I think a lot of folks wouldn't just jump into another closed-source proprietary microsoft system just because it's running on a linux kernel. It wouldn't be any different then Windows.
It would be too easy to smell that kind of stink.
I'll just ignore the odd comments about living by the schedule of the machine thing, and comment on the less human contact thing.
It's not true!
While it may be true that *some* people have less face-to-face contact, I dare say it's not significantly less then anytime in the past.
I'd say we have a lot more communication then ever before.
Every day I communicate with people all across the globe; via Slashdot and other forums. I have conversations with people I would have never been able to meet, ever, even if you lived 10 miles away. The Internet has allowed me to meet so many people that I stay in contact with regularly but I have never met face to face or even spoken to on the phone. And some of those casual friendships feel no less real the casual friendships I have offline.
I'm not really into the whole blogging thing, but it's another great way that people are getting to know each other; communicating with each other.
So, considering all this, I'm not sure how technology has hindered human contact.
And about free time, well. Looking back at the last two centuries, I'd say my work schedule is pretty darned good compared to the amount of work the average middle class person has had to work in the past. Ohh, boo. I might have to go in at night and fix a server. Well, I'm not getting up at dawn to milk cows or bake bread until dusk, so I think it's a good trade-off.
And to the last point, I don't think this man invisioned anything when he created the IC. He probably thought it would greatly help reduce the cost of the circuit and help him keep his job.
IC's made computers possible. They led to further development into full processing units.
While I'm sure the IC would have been developed without this man eventually, it could have taken a lot longer and this mans initiative prevented the delay.
"I rarely 'use' the computer in my office. It's only function is to write papers, check email, and surf the internet. "
.. err.. 'use' it to check e-mail and browse the internet.
Okay, I'm confused. Because the computer isn't doing scientific calculations, you're not actually using it?
Not sure how you can avoid using the computer yet still
Not even.
It's for the people that don't know better, for the people that CAN'T use anything else, for the people that are locked into it without even realizing it. And the people that do realize it.
In time, let's hope things improve.
I wanted to expand on your comment about how MSH could prove to be fairly useless because there's going to be no standard userland tools to go with it.
.conf files and a standard system image, you've got your system back and running in minutes. This is just an example of how powerful the CLI is - and you don't have to be a career programmer to make extremely useful and powerful scripts.
It's not just the normal userland tools that will be a setback. It's everything else, too.
In a Unix-style system, almost everything is ASCII text based. While there's GUI interfaces for a lot of stuff now a days, most configuration, logging, etc are done with text. This makes a powerful shell the perfect companion to those applications - you can process the text and do whatever you want with things so incredibly easy.
You can practically backup the entire configuration of a system to a floppy disk. A few
So, without the same methodology as a Unix system, a powerful CLI on windows will probably have minimal impact to the system at large. Hey, I'll be glad to have it as a standard feature, but it won't change my life.
I mean, how much did you pay for Linux? Or OpenSolaris? How much code did you write for either? What's your personal stake in this?
I think it's great - GNU/Linux has been made possible by people writing software that suits their needs. We've got some great software, viable operating systems, and Linux systems are all basically compatible with one another. Your "favorite programs" wouldn't exist without it.
So why don't you stop bitching about what YOU want, and appreciate the work that's been done thus far. Sure, sometimes the dependencies thing is a pain, but it's only because OSS is moving so fast that it can be painfull. And I'll take that trade-off any day.
"We don't live on the same planet.
A fan is a fan is a fan
Spreads shit everywhere."
I hope not, then. See, where I come from, Earth, the people here can be a fan of more then one thing. And we can be a fan of one thing and not hate everything else.
You read too many blogs and forum posts, I think.
I think that's a parody on the whole Netcraft thing?
Anyways, the Linux boxes are too busy running the Internet to browse web sites.