To end this comment on a bright note (hey, it's Friday, let's be optimistic about the future.), this could all be obviated by the march of technology. I'm betting on life being good once nanotechnology comes of age. Yeah, it's a while off, but then, today seemed a while off to the people of 1903.
Unfortunately everybody old enough to remember 1903 is dead.
The rise in cancer is due to increased longevity. Cancer is a "first-world" phenomenon because people in poor countries die from infection first. Developing countries see sharp rises in cancer as their life expectancy improves. Chemicals or no, there is always genetic mutation and even if you could otherwise live indefinitely, cancer would get you eventually.
I don't see why it's stupid; I think it's fabulous. $3/GB is fine, you could download an iso for under $2. And for those like me who do run servers but don't use a lot of bandwidth doing it, the business plan is great.
I welcome metered access if it persuades ISPs to stop filtering, and if the marginal fee for more bandwidth is reasonable and not a ridiculously high penalty fee.
Why are you benchmarking the best apple has got against a 900 mhz P3, which is 2 year old technology?
The Pentium-M 1.6 beat the P4 2.6, so it's at least equal to the G4 per clock cycle, and yet is clocked twice as fast as the G4 0.8. Oh, and it gets 5-7 hours of battery life. In other words, the G4 is thoroughly obsolete.
Why don't you take a look at the links? The IBM machine tested at 7 hours!
As for battery technology, slashdot has had several articles on fuel cells. (Whether these can strictly be called "batteries" we'll leave to the pedants.) Those are supposed to hit the market within a year.
Re:How can an OS be 3D?
on
Opencroquet
·
· Score: 1, Interesting
Why can't an operating system by 3d? There's no reason that the basest part of an operating system has to be a command line.
It's not disallowed, it's simply irrelevant. The idea of 3d-ness has nothing to do with arbitrating between various programs' access to computing resources, which is what an OS is.
The shell (or command line) isn't part of the OS either.
Where's the beef?
on
Opencroquet
·
· Score: 2, Flamebait
Ah, yes, the old.. "operating systems haven't changed enough recently, so let's change them... somehow... anyhow" routine. "The OS doesn't use enough computing resources. Maybe we can figure out a way to make it less efficient. Surely this will help the user somehow... wouldn't it?"
Of course the phrase "3d Operating System" is a non-sequitur in the first place. But then again, are they developing an OS at all?
The system should act as a virtual machine on top of any platform. We are not creating just another application that runs on top of Windows, or the
Macintosh - we are creating a Croquet Machine that is highly portable and happens to run bit-identical on Windows, Macintosh, Linux, and ultimately on
its own hardware... anywhere we have a CPU and a graphics processor.
OK, so it's not even remotely an OS - just yet another attempt at a useful 3d GUI which could conceivably one day run on specialized hardware.
There are no boundaries in the system. We are creating an environment where anything can be created; everything can be modified, all in the 3D world.
There is no separate development environment, no user environment. It is all be the same thing. We can even change and author the worlds in
collaboration with others inside them while they are operating
Just like a lisp machine (except 3d graphics somehow play into it?) Woohoo! You can hack the OS while you write a letter to grandma!
There are no boundaries in the system. We are creating an environment where anything can be created; everything can be modified, all in the 3D world.
No pesky memory protection, no cumbersome file permissions! I'm freeeeee! Hey, stop reading my email!
Like what? Are each of Sagan's "billions and billions" of stars unique in some way that is important or even interesting?
Sure it's true that earth contains only an infinitesimal fraction of the universe, but I don't think mass or volume are the right metrics for significance. To write off all that happens on earth because there are so many stars in outer space is wrong. Why should we feel insignificant in contrast to blobs of hydrogen that don't even care about themselves?
I'm not saying space exploration is unfruitful or wrong, and I suppose humanism can be taken too far as well. But I think Sagan is wrong in dissing earth, the only known home of intelligent life.
It think "The Great Carl Sagan" is wrong. In terms of information content, to me it seems obvious that the earth IS larger than the rest of the known universe combined.
Why limit yourself to controllers on the motherboard? With SCSI the use of an add-on controller is almost assumed, no reason not to do the same with IDE. 2 channels = $36, and that'll support 4 devices if you're willing to do the master/slave thing.
Look, the whole point of SCSI anymore is just to differentiate between "industrial-strength" drives with high markup and long warranties, and consumer-grade drives. Without some clear boundary, the "server hard drive" market would die. In other words, bringing SCSI to the masses would defeat the whole point.
This argument is overused. If it were true, companies wouldn't balk at paying for things, which they invariably do.
But it's not true. If McDonalds loses $80 in a lawsuit to somebody burned with hot coffee, they *can't* just raise their prices to recoup; their prices were already set to maximize profit before. So what gives? Profit. McDonald's shareholders lose, not the public at large.
That's like saying the Microsft registry is bad because people don't want to sit around hacking regedit, they want to use apps. So what? A commercial-level app will have graphical editing of the configuration, whatever the storage format. The question at hand is which backend storage format is best.
Config files are best, because they don't require a specific library to access and are human readable - unimportant to some, great for others, a drawback to nobody.
How does XML facilitate standardization for config files? The XML aspect of it just seems to add extra syntax.
Couldn't I just as easily have a "central" config file with the simpler syntax:
name1 = value1
name2 = valuw2 ...
and accomplish the same thing without all the decorations.
In fact this is pretty much how it's already done; your "profile" sets environment variables such as EDITOR and PRINTER that are common among many applications.
if you haven't done anything, then what do you have to worry about?
Simple, because I don't trust the govt. any more than the govt. trusts me. More power and authority = more abuses.
The whole idea of "govt. trustworthy, people untrustworthy" is wrong. Government is made up of people, who are just as fallible as the average joe, except to the extent that they are under public scrutiny.
As the Nixon era came to an end, changes were made and laws were passed to make it harder for the government to hurt and harass people. My guess is that the pendulum will swing back in that direction in a few years.
Actually, Lexmark does have patents on their cartridges.
Do you have any reason to believe that the aftermarket cartriges violate Lexmark's patents? If they did, why would Lexmark have sued under the DMCA instead of patent infringement?
We all know a defamation suit isn't going to happen, or to succeed.
Too bad we can't figure out an effective way to blacklist them though. Basically hang out a "you're not welcome" sign. Oh, sure, they could get new ip addresses sooner or later, but it would be a fitting gesture nonetheless.
I think that's why the parent said "basically" (as in almost) free. Which is not inaccurate, if you consider $1 per gigabyte almost free.
The fact is that without much competition, providing bandwith to the home will always be expensive, because there is no motivation to trim costs.
What would AT&T have said if the govt. tried to force them to provide $0.06 / min. long distance before the breakup? "We can't! It costs us triple that much to provide service!" Which it probably did. No reason to cut costs when your increased profits will only motivate regulators to reduce your prices.
Slashdot Mirror
Unfortunately everybody old enough to remember 1903 is dead.
The rise in cancer is due to increased longevity. Cancer is a "first-world" phenomenon because people in poor countries die from infection first. Developing countries see sharp rises in cancer as their life expectancy improves. Chemicals or no, there is always genetic mutation and even if you could otherwise live indefinitely, cancer would get you eventually.
I welcome metered access if it persuades ISPs to stop filtering, and if the marginal fee for more bandwidth is reasonable and not a ridiculously high penalty fee.
The Pentium-M 1.6 beat the P4 2.6, so it's at least equal to the G4 per clock cycle, and yet is clocked twice as fast as the G4 0.8. Oh, and it gets 5-7 hours of battery life. In other words, the G4 is thoroughly obsolete.
As for battery technology, slashdot has had several articles on fuel cells. (Whether these can strictly be called "batteries" we'll leave to the pedants.) Those are supposed to hit the market within a year.
The shell (or command line) isn't part of the OS either.
Of course the phrase "3d Operating System" is a non-sequitur in the first place. But then again, are they developing an OS at all?
OK, so it's not even remotely an OS - just yet another attempt at a useful 3d GUI which could conceivably one day run on specialized hardware. Just like a lisp machine (except 3d graphics somehow play into it?) Woohoo! You can hack the OS while you write a letter to grandma! No pesky memory protection, no cumbersome file permissions! I'm freeeeee! Hey, stop reading my email!Sure it's true that earth contains only an infinitesimal fraction of the universe, but I don't think mass or volume are the right metrics for significance. To write off all that happens on earth because there are so many stars in outer space is wrong. Why should we feel insignificant in contrast to blobs of hydrogen that don't even care about themselves?
I'm not saying space exploration is unfruitful or wrong, and I suppose humanism can be taken too far as well. But I think Sagan is wrong in dissing earth, the only known home of intelligent life.
It think "The Great Carl Sagan" is wrong. In terms of information content, to me it seems obvious that the earth IS larger than the rest of the known universe combined.
Why limit yourself to controllers on the motherboard? With SCSI the use of an add-on controller is almost assumed, no reason not to do the same with IDE. 2 channels = $36, and that'll support 4 devices if you're willing to do the master/slave thing.
Look, the whole point of SCSI anymore is just to differentiate between "industrial-strength" drives with high markup and long warranties, and consumer-grade drives. Without some clear boundary, the "server hard drive" market would die. In other words, bringing SCSI to the masses would defeat the whole point.
Keeping up the fight until the other side gives up the fight (for whatever reason) IS winning. Just ask Microsoft.
Unless it was under pressure, it can only be as hot as boiling.
But it's not true. If McDonalds loses $80 in a lawsuit to somebody burned with hot coffee, they *can't* just raise their prices to recoup; their prices were already set to maximize profit before. So what gives? Profit. McDonald's shareholders lose, not the public at large.
Turning every research project into a life-or-death proposition wildly inflates cost and decreases scientific ambition.
Actaully I think it's 10e6/28800 = 347.22 modems :)
Config files are best, because they don't require a specific library to access and are human readable - unimportant to some, great for others, a drawback to nobody.
Couldn't I just as easily have a "central" config file with the simpler syntax:
name1 = value1
...
name2 = valuw2
and accomplish the same thing without all the decorations.
In fact this is pretty much how it's already done; your "profile" sets environment variables such as EDITOR and PRINTER that are common among many applications.
The whole idea of "govt. trustworthy, people untrustworthy" is wrong. Government is made up of people, who are just as fallible as the average joe, except to the extent that they are under public scrutiny.
As the Nixon era came to an end, changes were made and laws were passed to make it harder for the government to hurt and harass people. My guess is that the pendulum will swing back in that direction in a few years.
Copy and paste what you want to keep into a new document (all within Word).
Corporations can be punished? The whole point of forming one is so you can't be touched.
Too bad we can't figure out an effective way to blacklist them though. Basically hang out a "you're not welcome" sign. Oh, sure, they could get new ip addresses sooner or later, but it would be a fitting gesture nonetheless.
The fact is that without much competition, providing bandwith to the home will always be expensive, because there is no motivation to trim costs.
What would AT&T have said if the govt. tried to force them to provide $0.06 / min. long distance before the breakup? "We can't! It costs us triple that much to provide service!" Which it probably did. No reason to cut costs when your increased profits will only motivate regulators to reduce your prices.