The only use for multiple cores and 4 gigs of RAM is if 80% of your CPU cycles are given over to DRM and Norton 360.
Or video editing. Or other such media creation efforts. Or CAD. Or (really) high end gaming. How about emulation(s)?
Not nitpicking, but yes, if you just need a toaster, then go to walmart and buy a cheap 1 slot toaster. But, if you're REALLY INTO TOAST, that just won't do. You'll need a 4 slot toaster or maybe even a toaster oven.
I plan to put XP on my next box, unless SP1 fixes a lot of problems. I simply don't want to deal with them. BTW, my next box will have 4 cores. (and I don't use norton and don't encounter DRM very much) These guys will still install XP if you don't roll your own: www.jncs.com
Some houses and/or apartments (I don't know how common it is, I suspect fairly common) will get two loops or pairs from the pole, with only one active. That way if the customer should want to get two phone lines (I did that for one phone, one dialup back in the day) it's relatively easy to get the 2nd loop going because the wires are there. Now, THREE lines - that'll cost ya.
On the West side there are 5 lines headed towards Asia, but on the Asian side there are only 2 lines coming in from the East. Do we have 3 cables only going to the mid-pacific?
That's the secret under-sea military base / command center. Sit quietly while the men in black suits come to collect you.
Reminds me of an anecdote I read somewhere about a blind kid who began to click his tongue or something and learned to listen to the faint echoes of his surroundings. He could navigate in new places quite well, acting like a bat to interrogate the area and hear what it was like.
It might have been a video, I'm not 100% sure, I remember seeing him walking along clicking his tongue, saying "there's a trashcan. That's a sign" or some such things.
Quite a lot cheaper and simpler than some high tech gizmo, but I suppose not everyone could adapt quite as well as that kid did. Someone up the page linked to a wired article where they put some kind of electrode matrix on the tongue and could map your surroundings onto your tongue. That would rock! I mean, if I were blind or something...
The obvious units of measurement would be football field tall stacks of floppy disks per day, or football field tall CD spindles per week, etc.
Personally I'd like to see GigaBYTES per month, and a way to measure it. How can they possibly hold people to some metric and not provide a way to know the status? How about a link to something that will measure consumed bandwidth? Or better, something on my account I can log into and see? What about Joe web Luser who hooks up his garage sale computer to his interwebs via his walmart wireless router and installs the first weather bug/rootkit he finds, then the l33t dude next door discovers the free internets that just came online. ISO's for all, yo!
I'm not a comcast customer, but I was. I'm now a mediacom cable user, comcast isn't in THIS area. When I signed up for mediacom I never saw a TOS, never got an email address, nothing. The guy came out, turned it on, hooked up MY modem and saw that it worked, and left.
What does it take to become an ISP? I'd like to liberate my town (or neighborhood) from the craptastic mediacom, and the craptastic local DSL ISP that is held hostage by the AT+T behemoth that owns all the sub-par copper and can't do anything about it. Seriously. Anyone buy a T1 (or T3?) to their house and set up some kind of self sustaining neighborhood ISP by wireless or some other means?
"Golly Gee, We've got SO STINKING MANY nukes around here we can't keep 'em all straight. They're just laying around! I've got one in my desk drawer, and another in my trunk. I took one home for my kids to play with. They're in VENDING MACHINES over here! Sometimes we just strap 'em on our planes and fly around for kicks! Don't make us nervous, cuz, we might accidentally shoot off a rocket, and it might have a nuke on it. We're good at that, you know, shooting off rockets..."
Politicians get the background checks automatically - by the press. A politician of any significance can't escape that. If there's something sleazy or nasty it will probably come out.
That works up to a certain point, though. When you get to significant power, IE nominated to run for president and could actually WIN, then you are beyond that level and generally you are the one doing the blackmailing, or wielding influence of a similar power, anyway.
Think about it. Bush had his alcohol problem etc, Clinton had his - various things. Bush is on his 2nd term and Clinton would get elected a 3rd term if he could run. Neither one's dirty laundry mattered.
The powerful politicians and their handlers are masters of public image. They'll leak damaging information so they can control the spin and how it is leaked, so that they can control the mindshare. Power.
Bingo. Very informative re: the "value channel" stuff. Sorta like the "store brand" groceries which are basically the same stuff as name brand, but in the cheapo-box and less margin.
Had they been using 15 year olds to design it, we wouldn't have this issue to begin with. Have you ever seen a teenager surf on a slow connection? It's not a pretty sight.
Yes, and It's even uglier when the connection goes out. Yeesh!
He is (I think) talking about the miles and miles of old copper phone lines in various places such as the midwest. So, if the old farmhouse you're living in was built in 1830, and the phone lines running down your county road were hung in the 1920's, and your house was wired to HAVE a phone in the 1930's, you just might have some pretty old and sub-par infrastructure. That could possibly cause some quality issues for the interwebs.
The biggest problem in the US that I recall for widespread high speed internet has been the last mile. The loops my office gets it's DSL on are owned by AT+T. They are, apparently, crap. We've already made our ISP who leases the lines from AT+T make them switch us to a different loop to get a stable connection, and it hasn't worked. I don't think the last mile problem has gone away yet, and I don't think the GP does either - regardless of his hasty generalities...
Yeah, parent is the answer to the question. It must be based on uptime. Or, if he's a rabid golfer, downtime -> the lower the number the better.
Or, do like AT+T and the iphone bill - give him a list of every byte transferred and the time, date and user. The weight of the report in lbs is your metric. Look, boss, we done did 20 pounds of IT yesterday!
BTW, you know that Simon T would get rid of this guy in 20 minutes, don't you?
I've ridden in cabs very few times. I thought the fare was based on time. So, wouldn't cheapest equal fastest? Or is it by the mile? Or does it depend?
I used to work in the HVAC field down in SW Florida. I worked for a well known consulting firm and we were designing HVAC systems for various new construction or renovations - colleges, mansions (20k+ sq. ft.) and of course your typical 5k to 10k sq. ft. condo. This was a couple years ago before the crash where now they can't "give away" the thousands of condos they built.
Any way, one day we needed a computer control system for this real complicated HVAC system we were putting in. Needed to be the kind of thing where the rich guy could "log in" to his house from his plane and make sure the aircon was set to a comfy level for when he got there.
We called in this guy who we had dealt with before, and he ended up giving me a demo of a SCADA type system he did for Mr. XXX, where XXX = the name of the county to the south of us. Turns out his ancestors owned all the swamp land in SW Florida, so he's worth billions.
He took out a scrap of paper from his wallet and typed some numbers into my web browser. Logged in, and there's the aircon system for Mr. XXX's private car museum, where he keeps all his cars to show off for his friends. "Ah, so here you can see that AHU 3 is putting out 54 degree air at 800 CFM....." and so on. It showed the pumps, fans, chillers, all of it. And, of course, there is control too. He logged off and we went about working. I did log in later to look at it, but the IP and login are long since forgotten.
SCADA systems can be secure, and they can be insecure. It depends if they are secured, just like anything else - wireless routers, VPNs, web mail, monster.com, your windows box with no firewall, anything.
...how do you distinguish them from access points that are unintentionally left open for anyone to use?
When they complain, (or don't) and/or you get caught (or don't)
How many people intentionally leave the router open with the SSID "FREE ACCESS TO EVERYONE"? I don't know the answer, I've heard of people doing it, never seen it though, but that would be the only time you REALLY know.
My first thought is that this is something like the QoS service, but instead of taking some network bandwidth off the top for "quality purposes" it is taking some off the top in preparation for some kind of real-time DRM.
Playing some Media? Call it in. Legit? Ok. No? Send the log to the **AA and cc Bill Gates. 10 times a second.
Since when is an engineer liable for mistakes? Now, an Engineer, a Professional Engineer, IS responsible. His name, and his seal are on his drawings. A PE has liability insurance just like a doctor. A non-professional engineer working under a Professional Engineer, or in a company, is not liable.
However, screw up too many times, and you'll likely pay with your job.
I worked for a largish corporation in the corporate office. I supported the users and their computers in the corporate engineering R+D office as an official part of my R+D engineering job. (I'm a mech eng, but sufficiently clued to do the light computer support duties.)
One fine day the company gets audited by microsoft. I was buddy buddy with the IT department for the whole office, of course, so I got to be closely involved with this whole "issue" and had to provide accurate results to them as far as: How many installations of MS operating systems and MS software on each and every computer in the engineering office. This included the ancient boxes running MS-DOS 3.2 hooked up to SEM's and so on. EVERYTHING. But at the end of the day, all that mattered was this: How many installs of X? How many shiny hologramish stickers that say "license for X". Repeat for Y. If the shinies was the same or greater than the installs, you're good.
So my point is, if you have a shiny sticker somewhere that says "license for XP" and you need to score a CD either off a warez site or your neighbor in order to reinstall your OS, you should basically be fine. You have one install of XP and one license of XP. It's your computer OEM that put you in that bind. Go to a software vendor and you can buy paper licenses for MS products, no CD. All that matters is the stickers. No IT department has 1000 install CDs for 1000 PCs.
Now, if you have a license for 98 and install vista ultimate, that might be a discrepancy.... License for XP home yet you have XP pro installed? Maybe also a discrepancy.
YMMV, my experience of a corporate shakedown doesn't necessarily apply to the typical home user. There are always stories of draconian policies about what you can and can't do with your personal copy of MS products. The whole activation problem with changed hardware, etc. Of course, I do recall an interesting story on/. once which plainly showed that Microsoft doesn't necessarily mind a little piracy because every install on a computer is an increase in their global mindshare. They'd rather have someone pirate and use one of their products than to use someone else's products.
Slashdot Mirror
Let's just hope they don't lower the price as well! That would be really bad.
Or video editing. Or other such media creation efforts. Or CAD. Or (really) high end gaming. How about emulation(s)?
Not nitpicking, but yes, if you just need a toaster, then go to walmart and buy a cheap 1 slot toaster. But, if you're REALLY INTO TOAST, that just won't do. You'll need a 4 slot toaster or maybe even a toaster oven.
I plan to put XP on my next box, unless SP1 fixes a lot of problems. I simply don't want to deal with them. BTW, my next box will have 4 cores. (and I don't use norton and don't encounter DRM very much) These guys will still install XP if you don't roll your own: www.jncs.com
I think some people are annoyed by the price drop because they actually thought it was worth that much.
Some houses and/or apartments (I don't know how common it is, I suspect fairly common) will get two loops or pairs from the pole, with only one active. That way if the customer should want to get two phone lines (I did that for one phone, one dialup back in the day) it's relatively easy to get the 2nd loop going because the wires are there. Now, THREE lines - that'll cost ya.
Reminds me of an anecdote I read somewhere about a blind kid who began to click his tongue or something and learned to listen to the faint echoes of his surroundings. He could navigate in new places quite well, acting like a bat to interrogate the area and hear what it was like.
It might have been a video, I'm not 100% sure, I remember seeing him walking along clicking his tongue, saying "there's a trashcan. That's a sign" or some such things.
Quite a lot cheaper and simpler than some high tech gizmo, but I suppose not everyone could adapt quite as well as that kid did. Someone up the page linked to a wired article where they put some kind of electrode matrix on the tongue and could map your surroundings onto your tongue. That would rock! I mean, if I were blind or something...
+1.5 Insightful and slightly unsettling and maybe a little disturbing.
The obvious units of measurement would be football field tall stacks of floppy disks per day, or football field tall CD spindles per week, etc.
Personally I'd like to see GigaBYTES per month, and a way to measure it. How can they possibly hold people to some metric and not provide a way to know the status? How about a link to something that will measure consumed bandwidth? Or better, something on my account I can log into and see? What about Joe web Luser who hooks up his garage sale computer to his interwebs via his walmart wireless router and installs the first weather bug/rootkit he finds, then the l33t dude next door discovers the free internets that just came online. ISO's for all, yo!
I'm not a comcast customer, but I was. I'm now a mediacom cable user, comcast isn't in THIS area. When I signed up for mediacom I never saw a TOS, never got an email address, nothing. The guy came out, turned it on, hooked up MY modem and saw that it worked, and left.
What does it take to become an ISP? I'd like to liberate my town (or neighborhood) from the craptastic mediacom, and the craptastic local DSL ISP that is held hostage by the AT+T behemoth that owns all the sub-par copper and can't do anything about it. Seriously. Anyone buy a T1 (or T3?) to their house and set up some kind of self sustaining neighborhood ISP by wireless or some other means?
Now you're thinking!
No, the video said there isn't an operating system, it isn't really a "computer".
...Whoosh...
silo rattling, like for instance -
"Golly Gee, We've got SO STINKING MANY nukes around here we can't keep 'em all straight. They're just laying around! I've got one in my desk drawer, and another in my trunk. I took one home for my kids to play with. They're in VENDING MACHINES over here! Sometimes we just strap 'em on our planes and fly around for kicks! Don't make us nervous, cuz, we might accidentally shoot off a rocket, and it might have a nuke on it. We're good at that, you know, shooting off rockets..."
Politicians get the background checks automatically - by the press. A politician of any significance can't escape that. If there's something sleazy or nasty it will probably come out.
That works up to a certain point, though. When you get to significant power, IE nominated to run for president and could actually WIN, then you are beyond that level and generally you are the one doing the blackmailing, or wielding influence of a similar power, anyway.
Think about it. Bush had his alcohol problem etc, Clinton had his - various things. Bush is on his 2nd term and Clinton would get elected a 3rd term if he could run. Neither one's dirty laundry mattered.
The powerful politicians and their handlers are masters of public image. They'll leak damaging information so they can control the spin and how it is leaked, so that they can control the mindshare. Power.
Sorry. I was reading real fast while cyberslacking at work.
What are some of those nice amber ales that are not microbrewery piss? (I would have assumed that only a microbrewery would make a nice amber ale?).
I'm genuinely curious.
Bingo. Very informative re: the "value channel" stuff. Sorta like the "store brand" groceries which are basically the same stuff as name brand, but in the cheapo-box and less margin.
Yes, and It's even uglier when the connection goes out. Yeesh!
He is (I think) talking about the miles and miles of old copper phone lines in various places such as the midwest. So, if the old farmhouse you're living in was built in 1830, and the phone lines running down your county road were hung in the 1920's, and your house was wired to HAVE a phone in the 1930's, you just might have some pretty old and sub-par infrastructure. That could possibly cause some quality issues for the interwebs.
The biggest problem in the US that I recall for widespread high speed internet has been the last mile. The loops my office gets it's DSL on are owned by AT+T. They are, apparently, crap. We've already made our ISP who leases the lines from AT+T make them switch us to a different loop to get a stable connection, and it hasn't worked. I don't think the last mile problem has gone away yet, and I don't think the GP does either - regardless of his hasty generalities...
Yeah, parent is the answer to the question. It must be based on uptime. Or, if he's a rabid golfer, downtime -> the lower the number the better.
Or, do like AT+T and the iphone bill - give him a list of every byte transferred and the time, date and user. The weight of the report in lbs is your metric. Look, boss, we done did 20 pounds of IT yesterday!
BTW, you know that Simon T would get rid of this guy in 20 minutes, don't you?
I've ridden in cabs very few times. I thought the fare was based on time. So, wouldn't cheapest equal fastest? Or is it by the mile? Or does it depend?
Wow, that's a great analogy. Which, for /., is nice!
lol.
I used to work in the HVAC field down in SW Florida. I worked for a well known consulting firm and we were designing HVAC systems for various new construction or renovations - colleges, mansions (20k+ sq. ft.) and of course your typical 5k to 10k sq. ft. condo. This was a couple years ago before the crash where now they can't "give away" the thousands of condos they built.
....." and so on. It showed the pumps, fans, chillers, all of it. And, of course, there is control too. He logged off and we went about working. I did log in later to look at it, but the IP and login are long since forgotten.
Any way, one day we needed a computer control system for this real complicated HVAC system we were putting in. Needed to be the kind of thing where the rich guy could "log in" to his house from his plane and make sure the aircon was set to a comfy level for when he got there.
We called in this guy who we had dealt with before, and he ended up giving me a demo of a SCADA type system he did for Mr. XXX, where XXX = the name of the county to the south of us. Turns out his ancestors owned all the swamp land in SW Florida, so he's worth billions.
He took out a scrap of paper from his wallet and typed some numbers into my web browser. Logged in, and there's the aircon system for Mr. XXX's private car museum, where he keeps all his cars to show off for his friends. "Ah, so here you can see that AHU 3 is putting out 54 degree air at 800 CFM
SCADA systems can be secure, and they can be insecure. It depends if they are secured, just like anything else - wireless routers, VPNs, web mail, monster.com, your windows box with no firewall, anything.
When they complain, (or don't) and/or you get caught (or don't)
How many people intentionally leave the router open with the SSID "FREE ACCESS TO EVERYONE"? I don't know the answer, I've heard of people doing it, never seen it though, but that would be the only time you REALLY know.
good solid info there.
My first thought is that this is something like the QoS service, but instead of taking some network bandwidth off the top for "quality purposes" it is taking some off the top in preparation for some kind of real-time DRM.
Playing some Media? Call it in. Legit? Ok. No? Send the log to the **AA and cc Bill Gates. 10 times a second.
Since when is an engineer liable for mistakes? Now, an Engineer, a Professional Engineer, IS responsible. His name, and his seal are on his drawings. A PE has liability insurance just like a doctor. A non-professional engineer working under a Professional Engineer, or in a company, is not liable.
However, screw up too many times, and you'll likely pay with your job.
I worked for a largish corporation in the corporate office. I supported the users and their computers in the corporate engineering R+D office as an official part of my R+D engineering job. (I'm a mech eng, but sufficiently clued to do the light computer support duties.)
/. once which plainly showed that Microsoft doesn't necessarily mind a little piracy because every install on a computer is an increase in their global mindshare. They'd rather have someone pirate and use one of their products than to use someone else's products.
One fine day the company gets audited by microsoft. I was buddy buddy with the IT department for the whole office, of course, so I got to be closely involved with this whole "issue" and had to provide accurate results to them as far as: How many installations of MS operating systems and MS software on each and every computer in the engineering office. This included the ancient boxes running MS-DOS 3.2 hooked up to SEM's and so on. EVERYTHING. But at the end of the day, all that mattered was this: How many installs of X? How many shiny hologramish stickers that say "license for X". Repeat for Y. If the shinies was the same or greater than the installs, you're good.
So my point is, if you have a shiny sticker somewhere that says "license for XP" and you need to score a CD either off a warez site or your neighbor in order to reinstall your OS, you should basically be fine. You have one install of XP and one license of XP. It's your computer OEM that put you in that bind. Go to a software vendor and you can buy paper licenses for MS products, no CD. All that matters is the stickers. No IT department has 1000 install CDs for 1000 PCs.
Now, if you have a license for 98 and install vista ultimate, that might be a discrepancy.... License for XP home yet you have XP pro installed? Maybe also a discrepancy.
YMMV, my experience of a corporate shakedown doesn't necessarily apply to the typical home user. There are always stories of draconian policies about what you can and can't do with your personal copy of MS products. The whole activation problem with changed hardware, etc. Of course, I do recall an interesting story on