Every hardware and software manufacturer gives them out lke candy. It's the same thing. You get that free T-Shirt from your server or switch vendor. When you wear it you become a wlaking bill board.
I have plenty of vendor T-Shirts. I have never worn any of them. I use them for cleaning rags.
Re:Four-year-old-style Anime
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Essential Anime
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· Score: 1
Card Captor Sakura is definitely something you should check it. It's excellently done, very cute without being sappy.
The only concern I have is how boadly the US broadcast (Card Captors on the WB) will butcher the original Japanese anime. The networks tend to take anime down to a 2 year old's intellectual capacity and edit out a lot.
He wants a portable gaming system. The expresso is based on the Intel 810 chipset - which has a very weak 3D graphics accelerator. It is pretty much unsuitable for 3D OpenGL or DirectX games.
The smallest possible gaming rig I can envision would require an NLX motherboard that has an AGP slot (Intel has some) and a decent low profile 3D accelerator. Regretfully the "best" low profile AGP 3D carts are low end ATI cards. Nothing really exciting.
I picked up an old lunchbox PC system at a computer flea market. It is a Dolch case and features a 640x480 VGA gas plasma display. It had a standard baby AT form factor 486 motherboard. The Dolch case is extremely sturdy, much better than most such cases I have seen. It has an aluminum chassis/frame surrounded by a plastic shell. The cheaper clone units just have the plastic shell. The case is quite compact and has a well made carrying handle on top.
I replaced the motherboard with a baby AT factor slot-1 board. It is currently a portable P2-333 server. It is a very, very tight fit and agony to work inside. It works great. I have a PCI nic, 4G HD, and the original ISA VGA card connected to the VGA gas plasma display. The plasma display is usable, but I usually use VNC to control it. It's just a server so I don't care about graphics.
Another case I've made is an industrial 486 motherboard mounted into a gutted Toshiba external SCSI CD-ROM drive case. The board is a 5 1/4" form factor and mounted with litte effort. It's quite slick looking - much more attract than a project box or anything I could have made. I mounted video and keyboard connectors on the front of the case.
Lars compares buying a Suburban to buying a Metallica CD. He says we are in a capitalist society and fair compeition dictates prices. That is true. The problem is there is no price competition in the music industry. It is a true cartel consisting of large corporations working to protect their lucrative monopolies.
If I want to buy a Metallica CD, I have to buy it from Time Warner. There is a single source. Since there is no competition, Time Warner is free to dictate whatever price they choose.
Since there is no fair competition, it becomes an issue of cost and value. The perceived value of CD's is much less than the cost so a black market has arisen. It is human nature.
The high cost of purchasing music has created this black market. It is the music industries fault. There are really only two solutions I see:
1.) Law enforcement can try to eliminate the black market. We all know that is not going to happen. Black markets are rarely eliminated - "the war on MP3s" would be even less succesful than the "war on drugs". The music industry could run into extreme public backlash if they took this route. 2.) View the black market as what it is: competition against a cartel's illegally fixed prices. How do you respond to competition? Increase your value. In the case of the music industry it means lowering prices.
The music industry cannot stop the trading of digital music. People don't like to steal or break the law. They also don't like being unfairly taken advantage of buy high prices. The music industry needs to appeal to people's sense of right and wrong AND significantly drop prices.
I wonder if the music industry has ever thought of sliding scale prices? The first three months a CD is $16, Next three months it is $12, then it drops down to $5.00. Customers that really want the CD will buy it right away. The rest of us will wait for it to hit the discount rack. A similar model is working in the computer game industry. Popular titles released at $49.95 often appear among the top ten sellers 6 months after initial release when they drop to $19.95.
On a personal note: I don't by many CDs because they cost to much - $16 to get the one song I want makes little sense. So maybe - theoretically - I download an MP3 for free. I can make the argument that the record company and recording artist are not losing money because I was not going to buy the CD in any event. Sure it would be theft - but truly there has been no monetary harm. If the MP3 was not available, I just would never have listened to the song.
I know this argument has no legal justification - but it doesn't change the validity of the argument.
MP3s are the only reason I am buying CDs. There was a good 5 year stretch when I bought almost no CDs, except for a few bands I love - like the Gresttful Dead. Then I discovered Japanese Anime sound tracks. I love that music genre. I don't speak or read Japanese. I have to download MP3's to identify Albums I want to purchase.
And all because of MP3's I've bought 20+ CD's I would never have purchased otherwise. I will being buying more.
The benefits of closed software
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WinDSL Coming?
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· Score: 1
God I hope Motorola keeps the source closed, wraps it in onerous licensing, and sends assassins after anyone caught developing non-windows drivers.
If they do make open source driver code, I think the Linux community should send death squads after anybody caught writing drivers.
Do you have to do everything Billy is doing? If Billy jumps in front of a car, does the Penguin have too! Stop the suckage now!
There is some common sense at work here. The games in question are clearly knock-offs/copies of games owned by Hasbro. They should be going to court. Icing on the cake is it seems things are being settled out of court for reasonable amounts. So far it seems like things are preceding very well.
It would be a wrong if Hasbro decided to go after huge, broad genres of gaming. It would be wrong if a company was awarded owndership of the FPS concept, or the flight simulator concept. The problem is the courts back extremely broad patents that hamstring industries for years or decades.
When will AI systems start appearing that help with context issues? A common annoyance I encounter is spell checkers not truly grasping context - a word is spelled correctly, but it is the wrong spelling in the context of the sentence (ie. They're, their and there). Of course context can be extremely complicated, but there do seem to be many limited scope applications.
Inference is trickier, and requires a huge knowledgebase and complex reasoning/logic. Most people can infer that since they have 10 fingers, all other people have 10 fingers (there are exceptions - 12 fingers and more). If I ask a young child how many fingers they have, they will reply 10. If I ask that same child how many fingers their best friend has, they will not know the answer. Below a certain developmental level the child cannot make the inference. It gets more complicated when you start drawing broader inferences - ie. chimps, apes, and monkeys all have 10 fingers - infered by their close relationship to humans.
It seems this is a monumental task requiring a complex logical foundation combined with an enormous knowledgebase. It seems necessary if an AI system is to comprehend the real world and safely interact with its surroundings. It is a foundation for common sense.
What is being done to forward AI's ability to understand context and draw inferences? To give AI the base knowledge of reality that humans gain during childhood?
Jamie and his group seem caught up on technicalities and words which most people don't understand. That is not a good way to sway the public to one's viewpoint.
Many parents believe the internet contains threats to their children. These parents feel the library should be a safe place. They will vote to protect their children. The instinct to protect one's offspring is far more powerful than the love of liberty (short sighted as that may be).
The only way the anti-censoreware movement will succeed is to address the fears of these parents/voters. They can scream censorhip until they are blue in the face. It seems they will.
Jamie needs to stop mocking the voters in his town and start listening to them. They will vote and they will make the decision, unless Jamie persuades them to do otherwise.
I am sick and tired of anti-censorware groups because of people like Jamie.
Let me start by saying that I love freedom and the bill of rights. I find censorship to be repulsive and evil. At the same time, absolute freedom is wrong - it becomes anarchy.
I think a library should be a bastion of uncensored reading material. On the other hand, I think a library should not have pornography in it (and I mean porn - illustrated sex guides and manuals are fine). If a library has porn, it will drive away more people than it brings in. Then what value is it to society? I would rather have a slightly flawed library that broadens the minds of 90% of a community, than a 100% free library that most parents will not let their kids in. A library should be a good place for families and children to be. I would only apply this to porn. I think libraries should have the anarchist cookbook, mein kampf and lesbian erotic poetry (though I have only read the anarchist cookbook).
I know I get pissed off when I do a legitimate web search and have dozens of porn sites appear in my search. I'd be really pissed if I had an 8 year old daughter and she received the same listing. I'd feel better if I knew the library was doing something to shield kids.
Jamie is doing a grave disservice to the anti-censorship movement. My first reaction is to always rally toward any group fighting censorship... but with the anti-censoreware movements I back away.
There are several issues I do not see the anti-censoreware/anti-censorship movement addressing: 1.) Does all press deserve protection? I am sure NAMBLA has some very lewd publications they think should be protected. Will the anti-censoreware groups defend the write of publishing hardcore child pornography? I think not. I hope not. 2.) Must all press/speech be accessible in all venues at all times? 3.) How are the needs of children met? A society has a duty to its protect and guide its youngest members. Some material is not appropriate for children. It is widely accepted and proven that children are developmentally different than adults. This is a responsibility that all society's must shoulder. Adults have to make sacrifices, have to give up things, if they are to have happy, healthy children. This applies at a societal level too. 4.) How are the fears and concerns of adults favoring censorship being addressed? Many of these people have legitimate concerns for their children, and these people and their views should be respected. These people are the voters.
Jamie is clearly well educated and intelligent. He seems to know his technical facts. He also seems to be quite literate.
One of his big mistakes is his total lack of respect for the League of Women voters, the key speaker, and by association everyone choosing censorship. In his first paragraph Jamie states "felt like I'd walked into a ridiculous play". How utterly disrespectful. This attitude continues through all of Jamie's writing. I have no doubt that when Jamie did address the meeting, his disrespect came through - nobody at the meeting could hear what Jamie said because he presented in such an insulting manner.
Jamie states "It opened with a detailed talk by a lawyer about exactly what the local ballot initiative means in legal terms, which was interesting to me but which many attendees found tedious." That is a very important lesson. Clearly the lawyer did not know how to communicate to his audience - they were bored. Jamie said he found it interesting. Good point - what the anti-censorship community finds interesting may be boring to the public. The public does the voting. Better find a way to gain the interest of the public.
Jamie states "I wanted to point out that, even if the library did keep logs, it would be a full-time job just to keep figures on the appropriateness of patrons' reading choices." I am glad he didn't. The people would not have cared, and rightly so. The public wants a solution that addresses their concerns - they could care less about the futility of log file analysis. They also would not have understood anything he said.
While I like a sense of humor, Jamie's use of the phrase "from the don't-look-at-those-boobies dept." was probably taken as an insulting/belittling slap in the face by Ms. Kimberly Fraiser. People take the safety of there children very, very seriously. Many parents kill people that harm their children. Why on earth is Jamie using such levity? This is a poor use of humor.
Jamie gives a detailed example about The Onion being blocked (which is an example of totally inappropriate censoring). His argument about it is very technical - and would be totally confusing to most members of the public. I agree that this shows a severe problem with censoring software, but it has to be communicated in a way that the average computer illiterate member of the public understands.
Jamie describes the meeting ending " Kimberley retorting, "If my child sees porn, how will you erase that image from his mind?" I assume that was a rhetorical question.". This is the core issue. Jamie has done nothing to address it.
Jamie states that he has spent a lot of time over the past two years analyzing blocking software. I think that is kind of sad. I think it is sad because in his own words "The issue will be decided purely on the basis of emotion. Gigabytes evaporate down to two bits of data: (1) there exists porn; (2) filters block porn." Jamie does not realize it is not that bad. It comes down to the fact that the vast majority of parents would rather be too protective of their children, than not protective enough. The anti-censorware movement will get nowhere until they offer a better solution for parents. Instead they offer to take away what seems to be the only solution.
I almost hope the anti-censorware movement will shut up or start addressing the concerns and issues of parents. I think the anti-censorware movement is doing more harm than good, they certainly have in Jamie's case. Exchanges like his could help elicit a knee jerk reaction from the public and lawmakers.
I agree that the lack of standards is a problem and slows the growth of the Internet.
You state "Is the future of the Internet going to be one perpetual standards war because everyone believes that a monopoly is the only way to do business?"
It is when there is not a standards war that a monopoly exists. A standards war implies there are at least two available choices, and they are both competing in a vigorous market place.
It seems that your real issue is with commercialization, not monopolization. Commercialization has negative aspects. It likes to lock customers into proprietary solutions - achieving a guaranteed income for a company. In a competitive market place with many companies developing competing proprietary formats, the best tend to gain market share and adoption, the worse tend to fade from usage. There are many exceptions, and it is often unfair. Many times the best technology does not succeed. There are other factors. Whatever technology is most popular usually has some merit. But what better way exists to evolve new technology?
Companies have the budget and the profit motive to develop new technology. Standards committees do not have a large R&D budget or a profit motive. Fortunately many corporations hand over portions of patented intellectual property to become a new standard. Corporations realize that proprietary technology is not well received and that being proprietary tends to limit a technology from being adopted.
The profit motive also causes corporations to adopt open standards over proprietary standards. Proprietary standards are costly and require licensing fees. A good example is Firewire. Apple decided to require licensing fees. Most of the adopters of the technology told Apple they would drop firewire. Apple had to capitulate and drop all licensing fees.
There is a closely knit relationship between proprietary and open standards. Proprietary technology exists first since it is profit driven. The open standards incorporate proprietary technology developed by corporations. The open standards take time to create. Open standards should be acceptable and usable in the broadest scope possible and it should have longevity (often not a concern in proprietaty technologies). Once the open standard is created, the original proprietary solutions can fade from usage. And so the cycle continues.
I think the corporate driven solution is probably the best real world solution. There is room for improvement. The open source community is fantastic and has done some amazing things. Many corporations have been embracing open source to one degree or another. That is great for the Internet and computing world in general. I do not perceive the open source community as driving the development that leads to new standards. Corporations will continue in that role. The open source community is helping those same corporations see more advantages in being open than proprietary and I hope the trend continues.
The Internet tends to prevent true monopolization from occurring. Whenever interoperability is needed, no single company can gain dominance. There are needs for checks and balances. I think the lawyers of the world will take patents to obscene lengths in coming years. I also think it will lead to serious legal reform worldwide. One individual or company should not be able to hamstring or hinder the development of computing in general. Monopolies are another problem. I hate Microsoft because in many areas the Microsoft solution wins - not the best solution. That is true monopoly power. I hope effective remedies are placed against them, but I fear there will be a Republican president, and the case will amount to nothing.
Specifically related to video technology, Microsoft will find it difficult to dominate unless they allow their video technology to become an open standard. It appears that in the near future there will be many more Linux and proprietary OS devices for Internet access. These devices need to support streaming video. I wonder what they will use? What will the Sony Playstation 2 and Nintendo's next generation system use? Windows CE is not going to be Window Everywhere.
I have done a little bit of reading about video standards and codecs. It seems there are several issues here.
1.) Windows media is centered around the ASF file format. The documents I have read at Microsoft's web site give lip service to ASF being a new, open standard. There certainly seems to be an oppurtunity to pressure Microsoft, and see just how open they are willing to be. Maybe they would be willing to hand over the specs and not sue the daylights out of the open source/Linux community (hold on... gotta stop laughing). Personally I don't like ASF. It embeds a GUID into all ASF files. The GUID contains the MAC address and other information about the PC creating the files. Maybe open source tools would give back privacy.
2.) Codecs. Even if Microsoft allowed open development of the ASF format, that really solves very little. ASF is just a wrapper. The appropriate codecs will need to be available in order to play any given ASF file. The most popular video codec seems to be the three versions of Microsoft's MPEG 4 codec. According to Microsoft the codec is based on the proposed MPEG 4 standard. That could be bad news. That sounds like MS Speak for "proprietary". It may be difficult, costly or impossible to make a legal codec. Such a codec would threaten MS dominance.
3.) Workstation apps and streaming media server apps are needed to support the ASF/ASX pseudo standard. I don't know what exists in the Linux world, but it may have to be updated to support windows media. Workstations require the codec to view streams. Does a streaming server app need to actually have the codec to transmit the data, or is understanding the ASF format sufficient?
MP3 seems to be a seperate issue. Real and MS have the streaming video/audio market locked up for now. I think MS could take over, and it is forward planning on there part. It seems that nothing exists to threaten MP3, the cat is out of the bag on that one. Perhaps something similar would happen if a high performance, open source, free MPEG4 codec existed.
The current state of streaming media seems to be a joke. I have found some radio programs I would like to listen to, but the "high speed" feeds are for 28.8 modems and stream at 16kbps. The quality is horrid. Its a shame, considering I have ADSL. I want a 128kbps feed for audio, until then I think it is just a novelty and to painful to listen to. I wonder if the broadcasting industry will legally prevent high quality streaming media.
CA is huge. They aquire company after company to expand their product line. Usually within 6 months of being aquired by CA, any good product is damned to hell (CA) for all eternity, product is no longer useable, all good in it has been destroyed.
About 3 years ago I was setting up a Netware 4.10 SFT 3 mirrored server. The company was using Arcserve at the time. I purchased Arcserve 6 and a DLT drive. There was a nice appendix dedicated to installing on an SFT3 server. It was nicely laid out, and clearly written. It did not work.
I downloaded all of the patches. Still the backups would not work. I opened several support tickets. When I called for support I was never on hold for LESS than 1 hour. My record was being on hold for 2.5 hours. That was the standard queue time for a level 1 technician that knew nothing. They of course said it was due to unexpected call volume, yet amazingly they had the same "unexpected" call volume when I called them a year and half later for another client.
Cheyenne did offer to sell me a support contract. For the small cost of $8,000 per year they would put me at the front of the queue - I would only hold 15 or 30 minutes. I would get no higher lever support, no extended hours support. What a deal.
I spent the better part of 2 weeks running through tests and different configs. I placed yet another support call and the help desk tech informed "You're trying to use SFT 3! I thought everybody knew! That's never worked. It shouldn't even be in the manual!" It seems that CA was to cheap to reprint their manuals, and did not really like to admit it, but sure enough the truth was out. The product would never work.
I did get CA to send me about 2 grand of retail arcserve software, which I sold.
CA is evil, and I will never do business with them. Arcserve is the worst piece of shit I have ever used. I also hate CA because they purchased Remotely Possible and turned it into "Control It". Remote Possible was the best Win32 remote control package on the market, and they turned it into a piece of "It".
Look at the CA product names - all of the products are pieces of "It".
Personally, I am a true believer that if you are doing it right, it doesn't matter what is on the workstations. They turn into big (OK HUGE) pseudo terminals.
Your users store data on the workstations? How do you ever back them up? It is on FAT partitions? You can't have any security - and locked doors don't count.
Put the data on the server where it belongs. Use profiles. Use a system management package. Use unattended installs or a disk cloning package in conjunction with a application snap shot package. With a little creativity it can be done affordably.
If you do it that way, you get security, data integrity and piece of mind. Data on the server is secure and gets backed up. If a workstation is having problems and nobody cares. You just re-install it. In the above scenario it takes 10-30 minutes to redeploy a PC.
One of the most advanced packages I've seen let's you store workstation configuration information in a Bootp table. A user's computer crashes, you make one minor change in the Bootp tab. The user turns their computer back on and with no interaction it proceeds to re-install the OS and all apps in whatever fashion you choose.
I think that is much better method than trying to figure why windows has once again crashed.
Yes, it does. Usually it has to be manually enabled - but then there are many, many settings in NT that require registry changes.
Microsoft makes a program called DMACHECK to enable DMA under NT4 - the program has been around since 1996. The MS DMACHECK utility sets NT to use DMA if it detects it. The caveat is that sometimes the NT IDE drivers not detect that DMA mode can be used. The best thing to do is go into the registry and hard code your system for DMA drive access. It is a single registry change that alters how the IDE driver works.
If I remember correctly, DMA support began in SP4. Prior to MS adding support to the OS, Intel offered a bus mastering IDE driver for PIIX chipset motherboards.
It makes a huge difference in benchmarks, but as Microsoft continues to prove to the world: benchmarks rarely tell a true story. More importantly it makes a very significant, very noticeable improvement for real world usage.
You can get the details here: http://www.arstechnica.com/tweak/nt/udma.html
Another fine study commisioned by Microsoft - "our friends in marketing".
I just read the Microsoft "Windows 2000 Performance Tests" document, by ZD Labs, which is found at http://www.microsoft.com/windows2000/guide/platfor m/performance/zdlabs.asp It is a performance comparison between 6 identically configured PCs running Win 95, Win 98, NT 4 and Windows 2000 Pro.
According to Microsoft, NT 2000 Pro is faster than Windows NT 4 - as long as you only have 32M of RAM. If you have more than 32M of RAM, NT 4 takes the lead. With 128 MB of RAM, Windows 2000 was 3 percent slower than Windows NT 4.0. I wish they had done tests with 256M of RAM - if the tests indicate a trend, a 256M RAM NT 2000 workstation could be 5-10% slower than an identical NT 4 system.
What really disgusted me is how Microsoft improperly configured the NT 4 test systems, giving NT 2000 an unfair advantage. According to Microsoft's document describing the tests, the NT 4 platforms were configured with PIO mode IDE drivers, while the NT 2000 platforms were configured with DMA mode drivers. That gives NT 2000 a significant advantage - and it was still slower. In the system configuration documentation, MS specifically states they manually enabled DMA on the Win 95 and Win 98 systems. They do not do it for the NT 4 or NT 2000 platforms. Not surprisingly, NT 2000 auto detected and loaded DMA mode IDE driver support. The NT4 box is installed with service pack 5, so it could be manually configured for DMA support - as they did they did for the Win 9x systems. But then NT 2000 would have been slower.
Also, MS emphasized that the goal of the tests was to show performance in a real world scenario. Which brings up another question: why did they use a single 2G FAT 16 partition on all the systems? Who on earth uses FAT 16 partitions on real world NT deployments?
Microsoft has a marketing document at: http://www.microsoft.com/PressPass/press/1999/dec9 9/w2krtmpr.asp that states, among other things: "Windows 2000 Professional is the fastest Windows client yet. Independent tests conducted by Ziff-Davis Labs and IT Week show that Windows 2000 Professional is up to 39 percent faster than Windows 95, 30 percent faster than Windows 98, and up to 24 percent faster than Windows NT Workstation 4.0 in configurations with 64 MB of memory or higher." After reading Microsoft's own performance study, I can't figure out how they can honestly state those numbers.
Ideally it is done through covert attacks to cause disruption, while not giving your target anything to clearly defend against. An enemy could be significantly weakened while causing little or no death and destruction.
This type of warfare goes against traditional western military strategy - which involved enormous destructive battles that consumed large amounts of resources for everyone involved.
It does fit beautifully with the military philosophy of Sun Tzu's "The Art of War". Arguably the oldest and most brilliant treatise on warfare, it also happens to be Chinese.
BTW: The Art of War is an amazing book, applicable to warfare, business and many other areas of life. It stresses that the ultimate military victory is one in which the enemy is defeated with no loss of life or destruction.
Most likely, China is not a military threat to the US or China's neighbors in Asia.
The weight of history says China is not a military threat. They were the empire of the sun - and have always been an inward turned empire. China tried to build a wall around its nation - it did not invade and take over its neighbors.
On two occasions, expedition fleets were sent out to explore the world. I believe it took place in the 13 century. Each of the fleets had around 350 ships. When they returned the emperor declared there would be no more expeditions. That was that. Contrast that with the puny expeditions that occurred to Europe's age of discovery. China had the power base at numerous times in history to take over all of Asia much of the rest of the ancient world, but never did. I am not aware of China ever having a far flung empire, as most of the Western powers have.
I have talked to some Chinese friends I have. These gentlemen spent the first 30+ years of their lives in China, before leaving for the US. One friend really enlightened me. In terms of land, he said that what is China's is China's, what is not China's is not China's. He said that as far as China is concerned, Tibet and Taiwan are China - and will remain so forever. He said that the Chinese have a very clear concept of their national boundaries and China has no desire to expand. (BTW: He also said that although Tibet is part of China, what is being done in Tibet is wrong - he thought the Tibetans should be allowed to live as they choose).
He also said he finds it disturbing that the US is always sticking itself into other countries business. This is a common official stance of the Chinese government.
Korea and Vietnam were military messes with China and the US backing opposite sides. The US was involved in major military actions in countries directly bordering China. Look how we reacted to Soviet military actions in Cuba and Central America - our back yard.
Looking at the history of the region, and how the current Chinese government reacts, this paints a reassuring picture for me. I do not think China is a threat. They will arm themselves to the teeth, but they will not strike out.
The biggest mistake is judging China from our Western viewpoint. It is a different culture with significantly different values, beliefs, and history. It is a very successful culture, simply be merit of its age. China will do things differently and it would be best if we worked to understand their reasons and accept their differences.
Most likely, China is not a military threat to the US or China's neighbors in Asia. The weight of history says China is not a military threat. They were the empire of the sun - and have always been an inward turned empire. China tried to build a wall around its nation - it did not invade and take over its neighbors. On two occasions, expedition fleets were sent out to explore the world. I believe it took place in the 13 century. Each of the fleets had around 350 ships. When they returned the emperor declared there would be no more expeditions. That was that. Contrast that with the puny expeditions that occurred to Europe's age of discovery. China had the power base at numerous times in history to take over all of Asia much of the rest of the ancient world, but never did. I am not aware of China ever having a far flung empire, as most of the Western powers have. I have talked to some Chinese friends I have. These gentlemen spent the first 30+ years of their lives in China, before leaving for the US. One friend really enlightened me. In terms of land, he said that what is China's is China's, what is not China's is not China's. He said that as far as China is concerned, Tibet and Taiwan are China - and will remain so forever. He said that the Chinese have a very clear concept of their national boundaries and China has no desire to expand. (BTW: He also said that although Tibet is part of China, what is being done in Tibet is wrong - he thought the Tibetans should be allowed to live as they choose). He also said he finds it disturbing that the US is always sticking itself into other countries business. This is a common official stance of the Chinese government. Korea and Vietnam were military messes with China and the US backing opposite sides. The US was involved in major military actions in countries directly bordering China. Look how we reacted to Soviet military actions in Cuba and Central America - our back yard. Looking at the history of the region, and how the current Chinese government reacts, this paints a reassuring picture for me. I do not think China is a threat. They will arm themselves to the teeth, but they will not strike out. The biggest mistake is judging China from our Western viewpoint. It is a different culture with significantly different values, beliefs, and history. It is a very successful culture, simply be merit of its age. China will do things differently and it would be best if we worked to understand their reasons and accept their differences.
Among them is diabetes. By all accounts it is being passed along my mothers side of the family. Without treatment, those family members would die quite young.
I think that is an excellent reason for me to not have children, to strengthen the gene pool. Healty natural selection in action, by my responsible choice.
Likewise, I believe that just because a life can be saved does not mean that it should. The world has a finite amount of resources. We should learn to use them effectively/efficiently instead of in knee jerk emoitonal reactions.
I enjoyed the Darkover books a great deal and I gained something from them: a favorite quote. I don't think MZB is the originator of the phrase, but it was the first time I saw it, and it has always stuck with me:
"The humans destroy what they do not understand"
It is becoming more true very day. From geeks and kids dressed in black to the planetary ecosystem, that statement is being proved.
I spent a couple of years as a network admin at a company with about 500 employees. Around 200 hundred employees did order entry in a call center.
This company wanted no monitoring, limitations, or lockdown on desktop PCs. It wasn't surprising that the company was not profitable. This was a very costly policy.
Common/ Constant Problems encountered: - Employees surfing for porn for hours during 9-5. This happened all the time. The proxy logs showed who was most active. Shouldn't the company know if employees are not working? If an employee was sitting around reading playboy for 2-3 hours everyday shouldn't they be counseled and then fired if they do not start doing their job - Employees surfing entertainment sites. I could walk around and usually see at least 20 employees in the call center glued to ESPN's home page. Considering it was a computer company was that really right? If an employee sat around reading sports illustrated all day, that's a problem. If an employee is at ESPN all day, that is a problem - and hard to detect. - If it were your company would you be happy knowing that employees are getting entertained instead of working? - Email - used to pass porn, games, Word macro viruses that blew out most of a call center (I had already gone). The system's in the call center had to run some very strange, very problematic third party, non-commercial apps. It gets really old, really fast when employees keep crashing their systems because of some strange program their buddy emailed them. On one occasion I went through and traced through a software trading ring that existed in the call center - it usually took about 2 days for a program to hit 80% of the call center. - The female employees do NOT like seeing hard core porn on their coworkers screens. This happened a lot, daily in some instances.
Because there were no clear rules, a very ugly form of favoritism evolved in the call center. If the managers liked an employee (Or often if they found a female employee attractive) the employee could get away with a anything. They easily fired many hard working, but unpopular employees.
Eventually the call center deployed a PC and phone call monitoring system. At any time a manager could be listening to the employees phone and viewing their PC screen - and recording everything. Call Center's love that technology, personally I find it TOTALLY offensive. I think it has little value and simply indicates incompetent management. A good management team would never use or need such methods.
There needs to be a balance. A company needs to manage operational costs, keep productivity high, and respect employees. If employees are not respected, the most valuable will depart.
A company needs to clearly and public state what is acceptable. Any "measures taken" should be kept to a minimum and made public knowledge - Big Brother works in secret, a company working to contain costs should not. Employees need to be trusted and respected. At the same time though, some measures have to be taken to keep costs down. At the company I was at, there were a lot of young people that had not worked very long. Some restraint was needed. I saw what happened with no restraint and it was ridiculous. Some IS employees started referring to the call center as "High School" - it was all about being popular and getting away with as much as possible. I am serious - it really was like this.
I think acceptable measures are locking down desktops completely and blocking access to non-work related web sites (that's why its called work!). Fire employees that get caught a third time viewing porn. Fire them because they are not doing their job - don't even bring up the porn issue.
I like locking down and blocking. It sets limits but does not invade privacy, it is not watching over anyone's shoulder. One alternative is have an open environment, which rarely works in the real world where there are hundreds or thousands of users. Another alternative is monitoring, and that is to degrading and disrespectful.
Please don't flame me. I know how popular my opinion isn't. I'm just relating my experience and if you know of a better way, I honestly would like to know.
I've got a dead laptop with a good 800x600 Color LCD. You need to look into the Industrial PC Market. Controllers are out there, Typically the controllers are good for windows, no 3D, maybe multimedia capabilities. The bad part is they all seem to be expensive - I haven't bought one yet.
I seem to have lost the bookmarks I had... There are quite a variety of decent sounding PCI controllers out there though, just start searching. You could also look into Industrial PC - small foot print single board computers (SBC's). You could have a decent but very small PC driving the display.
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Every hardware and software manufacturer gives them out lke candy. It's the same thing. You get that free T-Shirt from your server or switch vendor. When you wear it you become a wlaking bill board.
I have plenty of vendor T-Shirts. I have never worn any of them. I use them for cleaning rags.
Card Captor Sakura is definitely something you should check it. It's excellently done, very cute without being sappy.
The only concern I have is how boadly the US broadcast (Card Captors on the WB) will butcher the original Japanese anime. The networks tend to take anime down to a 2 year old's intellectual capacity and edit out a lot.
Actually the Expresso will not meet his needs.
He wants a portable gaming system. The expresso is based on the Intel 810 chipset - which has a very weak 3D graphics accelerator. It is pretty much unsuitable for 3D OpenGL or DirectX games.
The smallest possible gaming rig I can envision would require an NLX motherboard that has an AGP slot (Intel has some) and a decent low profile 3D accelerator. Regretfully the "best" low profile AGP 3D carts are low end ATI cards. Nothing really exciting.
I picked up an old lunchbox PC system at a computer flea market. It is a Dolch case and features a 640x480 VGA gas plasma display. It had a standard baby AT form factor 486 motherboard. The Dolch case is extremely sturdy, much better than most such cases I have seen. It has an aluminum chassis/frame surrounded by a plastic shell. The cheaper clone units just have the plastic shell. The case is quite compact and has a well made carrying handle on top.
I replaced the motherboard with a baby AT factor slot-1 board. It is currently a portable P2-333 server. It is a very, very tight fit and agony to work inside. It works great. I have a PCI nic, 4G HD, and the original ISA VGA card connected to the VGA gas plasma display. The plasma display is usable, but I usually use VNC to control it. It's just a server so I don't care about graphics.
Another case I've made is an industrial 486 motherboard mounted into a gutted Toshiba external SCSI CD-ROM drive case. The board is a 5 1/4" form factor and mounted with litte effort. It's quite slick looking - much more attract than a project box or anything I could have made. I mounted video and keyboard connectors on the front of the case.
Lars compares buying a Suburban to buying a Metallica CD. He says we are in a capitalist society and fair compeition dictates prices. That is true. The problem is there is no price competition in the music industry. It is a true cartel consisting of large corporations working to protect their lucrative monopolies.
If I want to buy a Metallica CD, I have to buy it from Time Warner. There is a single source. Since there is no competition, Time Warner is free to dictate whatever price they choose.
Since there is no fair competition, it becomes an issue of cost and value. The perceived value of CD's is much less than the cost so a black market has arisen. It is human nature.
The high cost of purchasing music has created this black market. It is the music industries fault. There are really only two solutions I see:
1.) Law enforcement can try to eliminate the black market. We all know that is not going to happen. Black markets are rarely eliminated - "the war on MP3s" would be even less succesful than the "war on drugs". The music industry could run into extreme public backlash if they took this route.
2.) View the black market as what it is: competition against a cartel's illegally fixed prices. How do you respond to competition? Increase your value. In the case of the music industry it means lowering prices.
The music industry cannot stop the trading of digital music. People don't like to steal or break the law. They also don't like being unfairly taken advantage of buy high prices. The music industry needs to appeal to people's sense of right and wrong AND significantly drop prices.
I wonder if the music industry has ever thought of sliding scale prices? The first three months a CD is $16, Next three months it is $12, then it drops down to $5.00. Customers that really want the CD will buy it right away. The rest of us will wait for it to hit the discount rack. A similar model is working in the computer game industry. Popular titles released at $49.95 often appear among the top ten sellers 6 months after initial release when they drop to $19.95.
On a personal note: I don't by many CDs because they cost to much - $16 to get the one song I want makes little sense. So maybe - theoretically - I download an MP3 for free. I can make the argument that the record company and recording artist are not losing money because I was not going to buy the CD in any event. Sure it would be theft - but truly there has been no monetary harm. If the MP3 was not available, I just would never have listened to the song.
I know this argument has no legal justification - but it doesn't change the validity of the argument.
MP3s are the only reason I am buying CDs. There was a good 5 year stretch when I bought almost no CDs, except for a few bands I love - like the Gresttful Dead. Then I discovered Japanese Anime sound tracks. I love that music genre. I don't speak or read Japanese. I have to download MP3's to identify Albums I want to purchase.
And all because of MP3's I've bought 20+ CD's I would never have purchased otherwise. I will being buying more.
God I hope Motorola keeps the source closed, wraps it in onerous licensing, and sends assassins after anyone caught developing non-windows drivers.
If they do make open source driver code, I think the Linux community should send death squads after anybody caught writing drivers.
Do you have to do everything Billy is doing? If Billy jumps in front of a car, does the Penguin have too! Stop the suckage now!
There is some common sense at work here. The games in question are clearly knock-offs/copies of games owned by Hasbro. They should be going to court. Icing on the cake is it seems things are being settled out of court for reasonable amounts. So far it seems like things are preceding very well.
It would be a wrong if Hasbro decided to go after huge, broad genres of gaming. It would be wrong if a company was awarded owndership of the FPS concept, or the flight simulator concept. The problem is the courts back extremely broad patents that hamstring industries for years or decades.
Hasbro is acting appropiately.
When will AI systems start appearing that help with context issues? A common annoyance I encounter is spell checkers not truly grasping context - a word is spelled correctly, but it is the wrong spelling in the context of the sentence (ie. They're, their and there). Of course context can be extremely complicated, but there do seem to be many limited scope applications.
Inference is trickier, and requires a huge knowledgebase and complex reasoning/logic. Most people can infer that since they have 10 fingers, all other people have 10 fingers (there are exceptions - 12 fingers and more). If I ask a young child how many fingers they have, they will reply 10. If I ask that same child how many fingers their best friend has, they will not know the answer. Below a certain developmental level the child cannot make the inference. It gets more complicated when you start drawing broader inferences - ie. chimps, apes, and monkeys all have 10 fingers - infered by their close relationship to humans.
It seems this is a monumental task requiring a complex logical foundation combined with an enormous knowledgebase. It seems necessary if an AI system is to comprehend the real world and safely interact with its surroundings. It is a foundation for common sense.
What is being done to forward AI's ability to understand context and draw inferences? To give AI the base knowledge of reality that humans gain during childhood?
How many decades such a system is put to use?
Jamie and his group seem caught up on technicalities and words which most people don't understand. That is not a good way to sway the public to one's viewpoint.
Many parents believe the internet contains threats to their children. These parents feel the library should be a safe place. They will vote to protect their children. The instinct to protect one's offspring is far more powerful than the love of liberty (short sighted as that may be).
The only way the anti-censoreware movement will succeed is to address the fears of these parents/voters. They can scream censorhip until they are blue in the face. It seems they will.
Jamie needs to stop mocking the voters in his town and start listening to them. They will vote and they will make the decision, unless Jamie persuades them to do otherwise.
I am sick and tired of anti-censorware groups because of people like Jamie.
Let me start by saying that I love freedom and the bill of rights. I find censorship to be repulsive and evil. At the same time, absolute freedom is wrong - it becomes anarchy.
I think a library should be a bastion of uncensored reading material. On the other hand, I think a library should not have pornography in it (and I mean porn - illustrated sex guides and manuals are fine). If a library has porn, it will drive away more people than it brings in. Then what value is it to society? I would rather have a slightly flawed library that broadens the minds of 90% of a community, than a 100% free library that most parents will not let their kids in. A library should be a good place for families and children to be. I would only apply this to porn. I think libraries should have the anarchist cookbook, mein kampf and lesbian erotic poetry (though I have only read the anarchist cookbook).
I know I get pissed off when I do a legitimate web search and have dozens of porn sites appear in my search. I'd be really pissed if I had an 8 year old daughter and she received the same listing. I'd feel better if I knew the library was doing something to shield kids.
Jamie is doing a grave disservice to the anti-censorship movement. My first reaction is to always rally toward any group fighting censorship... but with the anti-censoreware movements I back away.
There are several issues I do not see the anti-censoreware/anti-censorship movement addressing:
1.) Does all press deserve protection? I am sure NAMBLA has some very lewd publications they think should be protected. Will the anti-censoreware groups defend the write of publishing hardcore child pornography? I think not. I hope not.
2.) Must all press/speech be accessible in all venues at all times?
3.) How are the needs of children met? A society has a duty to its protect and guide its youngest members. Some material is not appropriate for children. It is widely accepted and proven that children are developmentally different than adults. This is a responsibility that all society's must shoulder. Adults have to make sacrifices, have to give up things, if they are to have happy, healthy children. This applies at a societal level too.
4.) How are the fears and concerns of adults favoring censorship being addressed? Many of these people have legitimate concerns for their children, and these people and their views should be respected. These people are the voters.
Jamie is clearly well educated and intelligent. He seems to know his technical facts. He also seems to be quite literate.
One of his big mistakes is his total lack of respect for the League of Women voters, the key speaker, and by association everyone choosing censorship. In his first paragraph Jamie states "felt like I'd walked into a ridiculous play". How utterly disrespectful. This attitude continues through all of Jamie's writing. I have no doubt that when Jamie did address the meeting, his disrespect came through - nobody at the meeting could hear what Jamie said because he presented in such an insulting manner.
Jamie states "It opened with a detailed talk by a lawyer about exactly what the local ballot initiative means in legal terms, which was interesting to me but which many attendees found tedious." That is a very important lesson. Clearly the lawyer did not know how to communicate to his audience - they were bored. Jamie said he found it interesting. Good point - what the anti-censorship community finds interesting may be boring to the public. The public does the voting. Better find a way to gain the interest of the public.
Jamie states "I wanted to point out that, even if the library did keep logs, it would be a full-time job just to keep figures on the appropriateness of patrons' reading choices." I am glad he didn't. The people would not have cared, and rightly so. The public wants a solution that addresses their concerns - they could care less about the futility of log file analysis. They also would not have understood anything he said.
While I like a sense of humor, Jamie's use of the phrase "from the don't-look-at-those-boobies dept." was probably taken as an insulting/belittling slap in the face by Ms. Kimberly Fraiser. People take the safety of there children very, very seriously. Many parents kill people that harm their children. Why on earth is Jamie using such levity? This is a poor use of humor.
Jamie gives a detailed example about The Onion being blocked (which is an example of totally inappropriate censoring). His argument about it is very technical - and would be totally confusing to most members of the public. I agree that this shows a severe problem with censoring software, but it has to be communicated in a way that the average computer illiterate member of the public understands.
Jamie describes the meeting ending " Kimberley retorting, "If my child sees porn, how will you erase that image from his mind?" I assume that was a rhetorical question.". This is the core issue. Jamie has done nothing to address it.
Jamie states that he has spent a lot of time over the past two years analyzing blocking software. I think that is kind of sad. I think it is sad because in his own words "The issue will be decided purely on the basis of emotion. Gigabytes evaporate down to two bits of data: (1) there exists porn; (2) filters block porn." Jamie does not realize it is not that bad. It comes down to the fact that the vast majority of parents would rather be too protective of their children, than not protective enough. The anti-censorware movement will get nowhere until they offer a better solution for parents. Instead they offer to take away what seems to be the only solution.
I almost hope the anti-censorware movement will shut up or start addressing the concerns and issues of parents. I think the anti-censorware movement is doing more harm than good, they certainly have in Jamie's case. Exchanges like his could help elicit a knee jerk reaction from the public and lawmakers.
I agree that the lack of standards is a problem and slows the growth of the Internet.
You state "Is the future of the Internet going to be one perpetual standards war because everyone believes that a monopoly is the only way to do business?"
It is when there is not a standards war that a monopoly exists. A standards war implies there are at least two available choices, and they are both competing in a vigorous market place.
It seems that your real issue is with commercialization, not monopolization. Commercialization has negative aspects. It likes to lock customers into proprietary solutions - achieving a guaranteed income for a company. In a competitive market place with many companies developing competing proprietary formats, the best tend to gain market share and adoption, the worse tend to fade from usage. There are many exceptions, and it is often unfair. Many times the best technology does not succeed. There are other factors. Whatever technology is most popular usually has some merit. But what better way exists to evolve new technology?
Companies have the budget and the profit motive to develop new technology. Standards committees do not have a large R&D budget or a profit motive. Fortunately many corporations hand over portions of patented intellectual property to become a new standard. Corporations realize that proprietary technology is not well received and that being proprietary tends to limit a technology from being adopted.
The profit motive also causes corporations to adopt open standards over proprietary standards. Proprietary standards are costly and require licensing fees. A good example is Firewire. Apple decided to require licensing fees. Most of the adopters of the technology told Apple they would drop firewire. Apple had to capitulate and drop all licensing fees.
There is a closely knit relationship between proprietary and open standards. Proprietary technology exists first since it is profit driven. The open standards incorporate proprietary technology developed by corporations. The open standards take time to create. Open standards should be acceptable and usable in the broadest scope possible and it should have longevity (often not a concern in proprietaty technologies). Once the open standard is created, the original proprietary solutions can fade from usage. And so the cycle continues.
I think the corporate driven solution is probably the best real world solution. There is room for improvement. The open source community is fantastic and has done some amazing things. Many corporations have been embracing open source to one degree or another. That is great for the Internet and computing world in general. I do not perceive the open source community as driving the development that leads to new standards. Corporations will continue in that role. The open source community is helping those same corporations see more advantages in being open than proprietary and I hope the trend continues.
The Internet tends to prevent true monopolization from occurring. Whenever interoperability is needed, no single company can gain dominance. There are needs for checks and balances. I think the lawyers of the world will take patents to obscene lengths in coming years. I also think it will lead to serious legal reform worldwide. One individual or company should not be able to hamstring or hinder the development of computing in general. Monopolies are another problem. I hate Microsoft because in many areas the Microsoft solution wins - not the best solution. That is true monopoly power. I hope effective remedies are placed against them, but I fear there will be a Republican president, and the case will amount to nothing.
Specifically related to video technology, Microsoft will find it difficult to dominate unless they allow their video technology to become an open standard. It appears that in the near future there will be many more Linux and proprietary OS devices for Internet access. These devices need to support streaming video. I wonder what they will use? What will the Sony Playstation 2 and Nintendo's next generation system use? Windows CE is not going to be Window Everywhere.
Oh well, rant done. This is all IMHO.
I have done a little bit of reading about video standards and codecs. It seems there are several issues here.
1.) Windows media is centered around the ASF file format. The documents I have read at Microsoft's web site give lip service to ASF being a new, open standard. There certainly seems to be an oppurtunity to pressure Microsoft, and see just how open they are willing to be. Maybe they would be willing to hand over the specs and not sue the daylights out of the open source/Linux community (hold on... gotta stop laughing). Personally I don't like ASF. It embeds a GUID into all ASF files. The GUID contains the MAC address and other information about the PC creating the files. Maybe open source tools would give back privacy.
2.) Codecs. Even if Microsoft allowed open development of the ASF format, that really solves very little. ASF is just a wrapper. The appropriate codecs will need to be available in order to play any given ASF file. The most popular video codec seems to be the three versions of Microsoft's MPEG 4 codec. According to Microsoft the codec is based on the proposed MPEG 4 standard. That could be bad news. That sounds like MS Speak for "proprietary". It may be difficult, costly or impossible to make a legal codec. Such a codec would threaten MS dominance.
3.) Workstation apps and streaming media server apps are needed to support the ASF/ASX pseudo standard. I don't know what exists in the Linux world, but it may have to be updated to support windows media. Workstations require the codec to view streams. Does a streaming server app need to actually have the codec to transmit the data, or is understanding the ASF format sufficient?
MP3 seems to be a seperate issue. Real and MS have the streaming video/audio market locked up for now. I think MS could take over, and it is forward planning on there part. It seems that nothing exists to threaten MP3, the cat is out of the bag on that one. Perhaps something similar would happen if a high performance, open source, free MPEG4 codec existed.
The current state of streaming media seems to be a joke. I have found some radio programs I would like to listen to, but the "high speed" feeds are for 28.8 modems and stream at 16kbps. The quality is horrid. Its a shame, considering I have ADSL. I want a 128kbps feed for audio, until then I think it is just a novelty and to painful to listen to. I wonder if the broadcasting industry will legally prevent high quality streaming media.
CA is huge. They aquire company after company to expand their product line. Usually within 6 months of being aquired by CA, any good product is damned to hell (CA) for all eternity, product is no longer useable, all good in it has been destroyed.
About 3 years ago I was setting up a Netware 4.10 SFT 3 mirrored server. The company was using Arcserve at the time. I purchased Arcserve 6 and a DLT drive. There was a nice appendix dedicated to installing on an SFT3 server. It was nicely laid out, and clearly written. It did not work.
I downloaded all of the patches. Still the backups would not work. I opened several support tickets. When I called for support I was never on hold for LESS than 1 hour. My record was being on hold for 2.5 hours. That was the standard queue time for a level 1 technician that knew nothing. They of course said it was due to unexpected call volume, yet amazingly they had the same "unexpected" call volume when I called them a year and half later for another client.
Cheyenne did offer to sell me a support contract. For the small cost of $8,000 per year they would put me at the front of the queue - I would only hold 15 or 30 minutes. I would get no higher lever support, no extended hours support. What a deal.
I spent the better part of 2 weeks running through tests and different configs. I placed yet another support call and the help desk tech informed "You're trying to use SFT 3! I thought everybody knew! That's never worked. It shouldn't even be in the manual!" It seems that CA was to cheap to reprint their manuals, and did not really like to admit it, but sure enough the truth was out. The product would never work.
I did get CA to send me about 2 grand of retail arcserve software, which I sold.
CA is evil, and I will never do business with them. Arcserve is the worst piece of shit I have ever used. I also hate CA because they purchased Remotely Possible and turned it into "Control It". Remote Possible was the best Win32 remote control package on the market, and they turned it into a piece of "It".
Look at the CA product names - all of the products are pieces of "It".
Personally, I am a true believer that if you are doing it right, it doesn't matter what is on the workstations. They turn into big (OK HUGE) pseudo terminals.
Your users store data on the workstations? How do you ever back them up? It is on FAT partitions? You can't have any security - and locked doors don't count.
Put the data on the server where it belongs. Use profiles. Use a system management package. Use unattended installs or a disk cloning package in conjunction with a application snap shot package. With a little creativity it can be done affordably.
If you do it that way, you get security, data integrity and piece of mind. Data on the server is secure and gets backed up. If a workstation is having problems and nobody cares. You just re-install it. In the above scenario it takes 10-30 minutes to redeploy a PC.
One of the most advanced packages I've seen let's you store workstation configuration information in a Bootp table. A user's computer crashes, you make one minor change in the Bootp tab. The user turns their computer back on and with no interaction it proceeds to re-install the OS and all apps in whatever fashion you choose.
I think that is much better method than trying to figure why windows has once again crashed.
Yes, it does. Usually it has to be manually enabled - but then there are many, many settings in NT that require registry changes.
Microsoft makes a program called DMACHECK to enable DMA under NT4 - the program has been around since 1996. The MS DMACHECK utility sets NT to use DMA if it detects it. The caveat is that sometimes the NT IDE drivers not detect that DMA mode can be used. The best thing to do is go into the registry and hard code your system for DMA drive access. It is a single registry change that alters how the IDE driver works.
If I remember correctly, DMA support began in SP4. Prior to MS adding support to the OS, Intel offered a bus mastering IDE driver for PIIX chipset motherboards.
It makes a huge difference in benchmarks, but as Microsoft continues to prove to the world: benchmarks rarely tell a true story. More importantly it makes a very significant, very noticeable improvement for real world usage.
You can get the details here:
http://www.arstechnica.com/tweak/nt/udma.html
Another fine study commisioned by Microsoft - "our friends in marketing".
r m/performance/zdlabs.asp It is a performance comparison between 6 identically configured PCs running Win 95, Win 98, NT 4 and Windows 2000 Pro.
9 9/w2krtmpr.asp that states, among other things: "Windows 2000 Professional is the fastest Windows client yet. Independent tests conducted by Ziff-Davis Labs and IT Week show that Windows 2000 Professional is up to 39 percent faster than Windows 95, 30 percent faster than Windows 98, and up to 24 percent faster than Windows NT Workstation 4.0 in configurations with 64 MB of memory or higher." After reading Microsoft's own performance study, I can't figure out how they can honestly state those numbers.
I just read the Microsoft "Windows 2000 Performance Tests" document, by ZD Labs, which is found at http://www.microsoft.com/windows2000/guide/platfo
According to Microsoft, NT 2000 Pro is faster than Windows NT 4 - as long as you only have 32M of RAM. If you have more than 32M of RAM, NT 4 takes the lead. With 128 MB of RAM, Windows 2000 was 3 percent slower than Windows NT 4.0. I wish they had done tests with 256M of RAM - if the tests indicate a trend, a 256M RAM NT 2000 workstation could be 5-10% slower than an identical NT 4 system.
What really disgusted me is how Microsoft improperly configured the NT 4 test systems, giving NT 2000 an unfair advantage. According to Microsoft's document describing the tests, the NT 4 platforms were configured with PIO mode IDE drivers, while the NT 2000 platforms were configured with DMA mode drivers. That gives NT 2000 a significant advantage - and it was still slower. In the system configuration documentation, MS specifically states they manually enabled DMA on the Win 95 and Win 98 systems. They do not do it for the NT 4 or NT 2000 platforms. Not surprisingly, NT 2000 auto detected and loaded DMA mode IDE driver support. The NT4 box is installed with service pack 5, so it could be manually configured for DMA support - as they did they did for the Win 9x systems. But then NT 2000 would have been slower.
Also, MS emphasized that the goal of the tests was to show performance in a real world scenario. Which brings up another question: why did they use a single 2G FAT 16 partition on all the systems? Who on earth uses FAT 16 partitions on real world NT deployments?
Microsoft has a marketing document at: http://www.microsoft.com/PressPass/press/1999/dec
Warfare over the internet is an excellent idea.
Ideally it is done through covert attacks to cause disruption, while not giving your target anything to clearly defend against. An enemy could be significantly weakened while causing little or no death and destruction.
This type of warfare goes against traditional western military strategy - which involved enormous destructive battles that consumed large amounts of resources for everyone involved.
It does fit beautifully with the military philosophy of Sun Tzu's "The Art of War". Arguably the oldest and most brilliant treatise on warfare, it also happens to be Chinese.
BTW: The Art of War is an amazing book, applicable to warfare, business and many other areas of life. It stresses that the ultimate military victory is one in which the enemy is defeated with no loss of life or destruction.
Most likely, China is not a military threat to the US or China's neighbors in Asia.
The weight of history says China is not a military threat. They were the empire of the sun - and have always been an inward turned empire. China tried to build a wall around its nation - it did not invade and take over its neighbors.
On two occasions, expedition fleets were sent out to explore the world. I believe it took place in the 13 century. Each of the fleets had around 350 ships. When they returned the emperor declared there would be no more expeditions. That was that. Contrast that with the puny expeditions that occurred to Europe's age of discovery. China had the power base at numerous times in history to take over all of Asia much of the rest of the ancient world, but never did. I am not aware of China ever having a far flung empire, as most of the Western powers have.
I have talked to some Chinese friends I have. These gentlemen spent the first 30+ years of their lives in China, before leaving for the US. One friend really enlightened me. In terms of land, he said that what is China's is China's, what is not China's is not China's. He said that as far as China is concerned, Tibet and Taiwan are China - and will remain so forever. He said that the Chinese have a very clear concept of their national boundaries and China has no desire to expand. (BTW: He also said that although Tibet is part of China, what is being done in Tibet is wrong - he thought the Tibetans should be allowed to live as they choose).
He also said he finds it disturbing that the US is always sticking itself into other countries business. This is a common official stance of the Chinese government.
Korea and Vietnam were military messes with China and the US backing opposite sides. The US was involved in major military actions in countries directly bordering China. Look how we reacted to Soviet military actions in Cuba and Central America - our back yard.
Looking at the history of the region, and how the current Chinese government reacts, this paints a reassuring picture for me. I do not think China is a threat. They will arm themselves to the teeth, but they will not strike out.
The biggest mistake is judging China from our Western viewpoint. It is a different culture with significantly different values, beliefs, and history. It is a very successful culture, simply be merit of its age. China will do things differently and it would be best if we worked to understand their reasons and accept their differences.
Most likely, China is not a military threat to the US or China's neighbors in Asia. The weight of history says China is not a military threat. They were the empire of the sun - and have always been an inward turned empire. China tried to build a wall around its nation - it did not invade and take over its neighbors. On two occasions, expedition fleets were sent out to explore the world. I believe it took place in the 13 century. Each of the fleets had around 350 ships. When they returned the emperor declared there would be no more expeditions. That was that. Contrast that with the puny expeditions that occurred to Europe's age of discovery. China had the power base at numerous times in history to take over all of Asia much of the rest of the ancient world, but never did. I am not aware of China ever having a far flung empire, as most of the Western powers have. I have talked to some Chinese friends I have. These gentlemen spent the first 30+ years of their lives in China, before leaving for the US. One friend really enlightened me. In terms of land, he said that what is China's is China's, what is not China's is not China's. He said that as far as China is concerned, Tibet and Taiwan are China - and will remain so forever. He said that the Chinese have a very clear concept of their national boundaries and China has no desire to expand. (BTW: He also said that although Tibet is part of China, what is being done in Tibet is wrong - he thought the Tibetans should be allowed to live as they choose). He also said he finds it disturbing that the US is always sticking itself into other countries business. This is a common official stance of the Chinese government. Korea and Vietnam were military messes with China and the US backing opposite sides. The US was involved in major military actions in countries directly bordering China. Look how we reacted to Soviet military actions in Cuba and Central America - our back yard. Looking at the history of the region, and how the current Chinese government reacts, this paints a reassuring picture for me. I do not think China is a threat. They will arm themselves to the teeth, but they will not strike out. The biggest mistake is judging China from our Western viewpoint. It is a different culture with significantly different values, beliefs, and history. It is a very successful culture, simply be merit of its age. China will do things differently and it would be best if we worked to understand their reasons and accept their differences.
My family has a history of several diseases.
Among them is diabetes. By all accounts it is being passed along my mothers side of the family. Without treatment, those family members would die quite young.
I think that is an excellent reason for me to not have children, to strengthen the gene pool. Healty natural selection in action, by my responsible choice.
Likewise, I believe that just because a life can be saved does not mean that it should. The world has a finite amount of resources. We should learn to use them effectively/efficiently instead of in knee jerk emoitonal reactions.
I enjoyed the Darkover books a great deal and I gained something from them: a favorite quote. I don't think MZB is the originator of the phrase, but it was the first time I saw it, and it has always stuck with me:
"The humans destroy what they do not understand"
It is becoming more true very day. From geeks and kids dressed in black to the planetary ecosystem, that statement is being proved.
If you tape cardboard over your microwave's inside light and turn off the lights in your house, the 3 second CD-R lightning show is nice.
I trust my DLT - only backup device I trust at all. It's so consistently reliable - media and drive mechanism.
If I have any doubts or questions, then its not a good backup device. I through money into backups, in the hope I never really need them.
I've realized that if I really have something I want to say, I will put my name to it. Even it is something controversial or disturbing.
Anonymous writings lack credibility and conviction.
I spent a couple of years as a network admin at a company with about 500 employees. Around 200 hundred employees did order entry in a call center.
This company wanted no monitoring, limitations, or lockdown on desktop PCs. It wasn't surprising that the company was not profitable. This was a very costly policy.
Common/ Constant Problems encountered:
- Employees surfing for porn for hours during 9-5. This happened all the time. The proxy logs showed who was most active. Shouldn't the company know if employees are not working? If an employee was sitting around reading playboy for 2-3 hours everyday shouldn't they be counseled and then fired if they do not start doing their job
- Employees surfing entertainment sites. I could walk around and usually see at least 20 employees in the call center glued to ESPN's home page. Considering it was a computer company was that really right? If an employee sat around reading sports illustrated all day, that's a problem. If an employee is at ESPN all day, that is a problem - and hard to detect.
- If it were your company would you be happy knowing that employees are getting entertained instead of working?
- Email - used to pass porn, games, Word macro viruses that blew out most of a call center (I had already gone). The system's in the call center had to run some very strange, very problematic third party, non-commercial apps. It gets really old, really fast when employees keep crashing their systems because of some strange program their buddy emailed them. On one occasion I went through and traced through a software trading ring that existed in the call center - it usually took about 2 days for a program to hit 80% of the call center.
- The female employees do NOT like seeing hard core porn on their coworkers screens. This happened a lot, daily in some instances.
Because there were no clear rules, a very ugly form of favoritism evolved in the call center. If the managers liked an employee (Or often if they found a female employee attractive) the employee could get away with a anything. They easily fired many hard working, but unpopular employees.
Eventually the call center deployed a PC and phone call monitoring system. At any time a manager could be listening to the employees phone and viewing their PC screen - and recording everything. Call Center's love that technology, personally I find it TOTALLY offensive. I think it has little value and simply indicates incompetent management. A good management team would never use or need such methods.
There needs to be a balance. A company needs to manage operational costs, keep productivity high, and respect employees. If employees are not respected, the most valuable will depart.
A company needs to clearly and public state what is acceptable. Any "measures taken" should be kept to a minimum and made public knowledge - Big Brother works in secret, a company working to contain costs should not. Employees need to be trusted and respected. At the same time though, some measures have to be taken to keep costs down. At the company I was at, there were a lot of young people that had not worked very long. Some restraint was needed. I saw what happened with no restraint and it was ridiculous. Some IS employees started referring to the call center as "High School" - it was all about being popular and getting away with as much as possible. I am serious - it really was like this.
I think acceptable measures are locking down desktops completely and blocking access to non-work related web sites (that's why its called work!). Fire employees that get caught a third time viewing porn. Fire them because they are not doing their job - don't even bring up the porn issue.
I like locking down and blocking. It sets limits but does not invade privacy, it is not watching over anyone's shoulder. One alternative is have an open environment, which rarely works in the real world where there are hundreds or thousands of users. Another alternative is monitoring, and that is to degrading and disrespectful.
Please don't flame me. I know how popular my opinion isn't. I'm just relating my experience and if you know of a better way, I honestly would like to know.
I've got a dead laptop with a good 800x600 Color LCD. You need to look into the Industrial PC Market. Controllers are out there, Typically the controllers are good for windows, no 3D, maybe multimedia capabilities. The bad part is they all seem to be expensive - I haven't bought one yet.
I seem to have lost the bookmarks I had... There are quite a variety of decent sounding PCI controllers out there though, just start searching. You could also look into Industrial PC - small foot print single board computers (SBC's). You could have a decent but very small PC driving the display.
Goodluck!