gosh, thanks for the tip -- I usually opt for the 20-rebate version to save 1%.
Actually, I'm pretty sure most people would pay a few dollars more to avoid dealing with rebates (depends on the total price of course, $2 more on a $5 item is significant; $2 more on $100 isn't). Do the math including the stamp, emvelope, your time, the time value of money (I use 6% these days, sigh for the good ol 20% days), and make an informed decision rather than boycotting anything (which, to me, smacks of blind rejection, which seems about as smart as blind acceptance). Anyway, that's really not a way to combat anything -- it's common sense (admittedly less common than the name would imply though, so I could be wrong). It's not really a boycott either.
I use rebates (and price matches, BVG from amex, and cashback systems from places like ebates) extensively. I get a lot of heavily discounted (occasionally free) goods (and yes, goods that I wanted anyway) by using the awesome info available on the web at places like hot-deals.org and fatwallet.com.
A quick quicken check tells me that I sent in more than $1700 in rebates last year, and I've received all but $90. The ones I didn't get were from companies that I've never heard of (and possibly no longer, or never did, exist).
Rather than assume all rebates have a value = $0, I calculate a modifed rebate price by multiplying the rebate value by a factor less than 1.0 that I assign to that company. Intel/AMD/Dell companies with something in their name they might want to lose get close to a 1.0. Imation/Buslink/UltraWiz companies I've never (or barely) heard of get close to a 0.0. Others usually get something in between.
BTW, that $90 will be recouped somewhat by claiming it as a 'bad debt' on my tax return (which I still haven't completed, unfortunately) -- if you have a business, you can do that too. Though of course IANAL, consult your tax professional, close cover before striking . . .
I guess my point in this long post is: assuming all rebates are worthless is as unwise as assuming all are worth face value.
I got one for $25 late last year at the Brookstone outlet in North Conway, NH (all Brookstones have them I think, but for $100).
I played with it for a few minutes -- voice training was quick and easy (I think it can recognize 3 or 4 people, assuming each trains it), supports macros and multiple devices (but alas, doesn't learn). Seems like a decent toy for average, mid-range stuff, but doesn't know how to talk to my ReplayTV (maybe not an issue soon, but it doesn't know TiVO-speak either) -- I just haven't had time (or desire) to program it completely, as my wife pretty much has taken over that room and seems uninterested in voice remote, despite the fact that she still juggles 5 remotes and won't even use the already-programmed yamaha universal remote that came with my receiver. Heck, she won't even enable the surround for TV most of the time (unless we're watching a movie and I insist) -- she uses the horrible TV speaker and seems fine with it. Sigh.
OT, or not, I wanted to read that site. It looked interesting. I started to read the 1st page that loaded, and as I am wont to do, right clicked an interesting link in an effort to "open in new window". Then a "that function disabled" window popped up. I tried again. Same shit. That site is more annoying than 1000 pop-up porno X-10's on steroids. So I posted the following in the feedback (which also could not be right clicked), closed the windows, and gave up. WTF is up with sites like this? WTF are they protecting anyway? That juicy IP graphic of "0101010101" in the background? Site says "powered by HTML GEAR", whatever that nightmare-worse-than-fp crap is, at least I know to avoid it. I never read the site. If it's made by a friend of yours, please consider telling him/her to try some basic, standard HTML -- people might be more inclined to actually read it, though perhaps fewer l337-types will gape in awe at his/her mad coding skillz. Anyways, here's what I send him in feedback, FWIW:
Comments:
Looks like you have a cool site -- I was really interested in reading your Bose info. Unfortunately, I can't, because whatever method your using to make your "webpages" doesn't let me right click to open a link in a new window (IE), is unreaadable in lynx, and is a mess in Netscape. IMHO, there's nothing "world wide"-friendly about your site. So I won't read it.
I assume you don't care, since you've no doubt heard this before.
But, I just wanted to let you know that someone wanted to view your pages and, possibly, contribute, but won't because of the pains you've gone to to prevent that. Thanks anyway.
Any Suggestions?
Stick to standards. Code for all browsers. Enable right-click (wtf are you protecting, anyway?). Ease up on the fancy and let me have some info. I might have been valuable to you or your site if you would have let me. Now I'm just gone.
Right again, but who cares about Windoze on a Sun box -- and where's this going?
Since Sun wants businesses to buy Solaris instead of Windows, that would seem like the thing to do, since that would narrow down the competition to basically just Linux.
Huh? Antecedent clarification please. Putting Windows on Sun boxen will help Sun, how? And they should do this by . . . stealing the source annd porting it to SPARC, or what? I'm confused.
Do they think Microsoft isn't going to sell Windows for these CPUs?
What CPU's? You mean MS is going to sell Windows for SPARC? Uh, no. I'm starting to think you're the one who's a bit confused here.
Personally I'd love to have a CPU architecture that fully departs from the x86 designs, whether it be 32 bit or 64 bit (or a hybrid).
SPARC is here now. Intel has one too (though they deny it), but it sucks. AMD is on the way (also in a bit of denial, but you can rest assured there will be some level of departure from x86). Whattaya want again?
I'd just run Linux or BSD on it. Such CPUs exist now, but they simply are not at commodity pricing, yet.
Oh, you want a $100 64-but CPU. I see. You're gonna have to wait a while, friend. And keep in mind the memory, mobo, and peripherals are gonna be expensive too. Something has to actually be a commodity to achieve commodity pricing Cutting edge != commodity.
Of course companies like Sun and IBM would rather not have to deal with such pricing. So we're probably stuck with x86 CPUs for a few more years until the high end people shake out what CPU they will use, then all the clone makers will leech.
Ah! There ya go -- you figured it out all by yourself. Atta boy.
Hey, no offense, but Solaris isn't designed for amateur install. It's not Linux. People that can afford a Sun box can afford a skilled sysadmin.
It will let you install/remove anything you want. You're supposed to have a clue. Some people want/need to remove a critical component and replace it with their own flavor. Sorry it didn't work out for you, but it's really better for you that it didn't, apparently.
The Sun gnome is still beta. Not supported, not tested, not done. Hang tight. Sun doesn't slop out crap before it's ready (as production stuff) -- people count on them too much. Too much money and rep at stake.
Latest Solaris' come with GNU goodies, including apache, perl, gcc, . . . you did check that 2nd "extras" CD, right?
No. It's a smart move to replace the relatively expensive Intel CPU's in Sun's low-end cobalt servers and the like with cheaper and better-performing (but hot, which is a bitch for Sun and their amazing RAS -- reliability, accessibility, and serviceability requirements) AMD CPU's.
They don't care about these low-end boxes very much -- the profits are low. But, it helps to have a nice full range of machines available to keep their customers from going the commodity-server (read: crap) route just to get a wimpy box to run their intranet or some non-critical app.
Oh, really? Who'd you ask to learn this erroneous fact? Maybe your office uber geek or whoever fed you this line of crap can fix your mouse driver, but apparently he's a bit behind on the industry. You (or whoever you're parroting) obviously have no idea what you're talking about.
The latest research showed a surge in Sun's market share between the last quarter of 2001 and the first quarter of 2002.
(http://www.newsfactor.com/perl/story/17758.html)
The overall Unix server market grew 11 percent, from $5.9 billion in the first quarter of 1999 to $6.6 billion in the same period in 2000, according to research firm International Data Corp. Of that, Sun kept the top spot, increasing its share from 28 percent to 32 percent, with revenue of $2.1 billion in the first quarter of 2000.
(http://news.com.com/2100-1001-242350.html?legacy= cnet)
Oh, maybe you meant internationally -- no wait, that doesn't work either:
Sun Microsystems has increased its market share in the RISC/UNIX server market in India in Q1 2002, according to IDC. Sun's RISC/UNIX server revenue market share in India grew to 48.4% in Q1 of 2002 from the 34.6% achieved in the full year 2001.
(http://www.ciol.com/content/news/repts/102070105. asp)
Before you try to complain about the dates, show me more recent data. (I have some, and it's even better for Sun that what you can find on the web right now, but I can't share my Peddie report legally -- go buy your own : http://www.jonpeddie.com/index.shtml ).
Better yet, try to explain to me what Sun does and exactly which market share they are interested in. Knowing the SPARC acronym is a simple google click away -- that demonstrates nothing, but I guess it is getting you a bit of karma; no respect from the clueful, though.
It says a lot when you take the top of the line sparc chip, and put it up against a chip a quarter of the price that kicks its butt.
I'm sorry, what machine kicks a Sun SPARC's butt in the apps they give a damn about? I don't think Sun cares if your Intel box gets more fps in Quake3 than a SPARC. You do realize Sun's are 64-bit machines, right? Do you know what that means? Or why so many corporations with deep pockets care? No, you don't. When's the last time this phantom butt-kicking CPU worked on 16GB of RAM or more?
not every case calls for a 24 cpu machine
And not every garage calls for (or can afford) a Ferrari. Duh. But the really profitable ones do. DO you have any idea what the difference in profit between a 1-CPU (or 2!) server and an enterprise server? No, of course you don't.
Good point -- there's no way to stop the Dr. Evil types, except for maybe an increasingly-un-funny 70's spy parody guy, but patents could serve as the only way to deter those who are less inclined to be obviously and gratuitously evil like, say governments and corporations.
Take, for example, the keeping-a-head-alive-without a body patent, for which someone above graciously provided the patent link (and thereby saved me from the shame of being branded a Futurama-viewer). Say some gov't or corp realizes they could save a lot of money on thier commercial space travel venture if they didn't have the hassle of the pilot's relatively useless (and heavy) body (all they need is his eyes and brain, assuming some sort of mouth-stick, speech-control, or yet-to-be-invented brain interfacing joystick).
And, say they come up with someone willing to have their head cut off and kept alive by a big blood-scrubbing box in exchange for a trip into space (and/or other valuable prizes).
It would be pretty hard to stop that sort of thing legally. But, since the inventor patented the idea, at least for a while he has some influence on how his idea is used. In this case, his moral disapproval of this implementation would have a voice, albeit not indefinite and not complete.
---
hey! -- what's this "no karma bonus" checkbox next to the submit button? Of COURSE I want a karma bonus -- I'm a karma whore:)
You can't help here but get into the debate about whether anything is really ever invented or simply discovered.
This is good, related, and thought-provoking. If these "creations" are actually discoveries rather than inventions, then one might argue that someone will eventually find the dangerous discoveries, so as a responsible scientist, one must look these even more aggressively, if only to better understand (and thereby be better prepared to control or limit damages from) them.
Sorta like the guy who developed and patented the way to keep a monkey (tested) or human (untested) head alive without a body, and then patented it to prevent evil genius torturers and insane governments with space-exploration hopes dashed by low-payload limits from exploiting them. I googled for a link, but failed -- anyone help me out on this -- or was it a hoax (very possible)?
More generally: what happens when technological advancements threaten the livelihood of various persons and/or business models?
There's the ever-popular luddites which spawned the term sabotage -- is it moral to destroy that which is thought to (or even really will) harm your livelihood? Is it defensible on grounds of self-defense/self-preservation, or is it indefensible technophobia and inflexibility/inability to adapt and ignorant short-sightedness?
Of course I'm intentionally skating around the obviously related *AA issues (MPAA, RIAA) and IP/copyright infringement, incessant extension of copyrights, etc.
But, I think this would be a fun way to start the discussion. Everyone knows about the *AA issues (well, most college students, at least). And, most will have a strong opinion on the isse one way or the other (see any/. article on *AA and IP/copyright).
But, not everyone is familiar with relatively ridiculous-sounding, but strongly-related historical episodes of things like throwing wooden shoes into a machine for fear of being replaced by it (sabots, see links above).
I, for one, would be amused to see how many students who would say stopping such a technological advancement (machinery) to keep some people in their devil-that-they-know occupations was silly and wrong (and short-sighted), and then be faced with quite a logical/moral delimma when IP/copyright laws are discussed in the same vein.
Granted, many students may be anti-RIAA/MPAA to begin with out of greed/ignorance and not really have given it much though, so you may have to find a few whose family members benefit from the *AA and IP/copytight extensions somehow to get a real reaction, but it would be enlightening to all nonetheless, IMHO.
Secondly, the US didn't ratify Kyoto for economic reasons, not scientific ones - the US Govt's own sceintists confirmed that global warming exists and is caused by a boatload of human activites - though no doubt some ignorant Congressmen voted against it because they bought the bull from phoney science. It was the protection of major US interests that drove them to not sign it... that, and ignorance and stupidity.
That's not completely true, or at least there's more to it. The Kyoto treaty was meant to cut down on emissions and to reduce possible sources of greenhouse gasses. It was supposed to be binding to all signers. Sounds great, right? But think about the full story -- especially with regard to the two most populous countries: China (~1.5 billion) and India (~1 billion). Conveniently, they were both exempted from the Kyoto accord because the benevolent governments of the world did not want to impact their economic growth potential. So why would the US, a country with less than a 5th of the combined population of those countries, saddle itself with a policy that will not touch those countries? BTW, those two countries are also the largest producers of greenhouse gasses with Mexico and Brazil following way behind them.
Jesus, dude. How many different ways does he have to spell "RTFA" for you? She was trying to replicate conditions of someone switching from Windows to Linux, which involves starting with FAT or NTFS partitions on an existing hard drive
No it doesnt. You dont know what you are talking about.
She put it on a seperate partition, NOT on a fat32 partition. IF you used partition magic or another drive to open the space, you would NOT format it as fat16 because you have to split it for seperat/boot, / and SWAP partitions anyway. Formatting it as fat16 is a silly waste of time and shows she doesnt understand what is going on. The fat16 partition she so carefully makes, is destroyed FIRST THING when you install. its irrelevent.
The point stands -- she started the first one with FAT, and she reverted to that for each subsequent trial for consistency. What's your problem with that? It it's irrelevant, why keep yammering about it? Why let it affect your eval of the article or the author's execution of the trials?
Actually, I am well under control. I just think it was a bad article, and said so, and every hard dick jumps to a ladies defense. No one ever acts this way if someone puts down an article unless its by a girl around here. Before you argue back, look back. I have.
I think its funny how sexist some of you are. Patronising. I think she is probably a big enough girl she can handle one person not liking her article.
Now, risking karma, but well worth it . . .
You, sir, are an idiot. You couldn't address my point reasonably, so you play the sexism card. That's amazingly lame. I'm not sure if "Pseu - Do - Nym" is male or female, and it doesn't matter. His/her points are valid regardless of gender, as are mine. Your posts, however, have been weak, reactionary, hyper-sensitive, short-sighted, and generally annoying.
Don't bother replying to me on this one, I don't wanna go that far OT or spoil my fine Sat night any more with your pointless vitriol. And besides, I just modded you down below my threshold, foe, so I won't see it anyway. Let the people with at least minor clue fragments post some, k?
She installed the first one on a FAT32, and to be fair, she put it back to FAT32 every time. Whether or not this is necessary is irrelevant -- it's consistent. And, if you think she should have known that Linux wants EXT3, you totally missed the point of the article.
As for your previous vitriolic tirades:
The information is flawed, the premise is flawed, the execution was terrible.
What info is flawed? Are you saying she made it all up? What is flawed about the premise? 'Cause she started with Win95, instead of what you consider the average (me or 98)? So, the results would have been much better had she started with a newer MS OS? Gimme a break. What was so terrible about the execution? You are just trolling. I guess IHBT. But it gets worse:
I have installed more distributions of Linux and every other OS than you can imagine.
The stench of egotism is overwhelming. Get over yourself. You have no idea how many installs someone else can imagine. No one is impressed with your OS skillz, and it doesn't help your argument to make silly, egomaniacal claims.
Contrary to the story post, I did find the article both fun to read and informative. It made me think a little more concretely about why I don't use linux more (I prefer Solaris and WinXP, mostly). It is the nonsense you're spouting that isn't fun to read.
the "conservatives" (self identified) call themselves Republicans, and are after no government control on the very rich, but lots of control on everyone else (emphasis mine)
What?!?! Please support this outrageous claim with an example or some sort of evidence.
I've gotta get out of this thread before I blow all of my karma, but what the hell, one more won't get me banned . . .
The thing that's not mentioned is that the guy who paid the most for dinner got an incredible feast for his money, including a hotel stay, movie, and air travel to and from the hotel... while the guy who paid the least also got the equivalent of "just crumbs".
WTF are you talking about!?!?! What extra benefits do I get for paying 25x the taxes of a "low income worker"? Or an almost-no-income worker who gets an "earned income credit" PROFIT from MY taxes? Better national defense for me and my family? More WELFARE and ENTITLEMENTS for ME? Better roads that only I can drive on? Faster postal service for me only? C'mon, stop it already. We all eat the same meal where it counts, my friend. Some of us just work harder (and smarter) for it, and in the end get punished for that . . . and reviled by confused people like you. It's reverse natural selection. I'm glad I won't be around to see the sorry state of human existence that this asinine attitude will create in 100 years.
I've been on both sides: as a starving college student hiding my enrollment from the unemployment office so I can continue to bilk the lame-ass system that simply encourages constant dependency, and now as a hard-working engineer making 6 figures. God, I hate the old me, but I realize the system encouraged me to leech. And now I feel guilty for leeching off of the hard workers that were paying my way. BUT NOW I PAY YOUR WAY and it makes me sick as hell. I know how easy it is to think you deserve that entitlement (it's in the word itself, after all). BUT YOU DON'T DESERVE IT. It's a break -- you're getting another chance, but it's poorly administered and designed to self-perpetuate rather than improve. You can't (won't) see that because it would put the onus of improving your own state of affairs squarely on YOUR shoulders, which can't (won't) handle the weight.
Corporations, like Enron, have nothing to do with this discussion, so STFU. You're just appealing to the everyone-hates-enron argument, which isn't an argument at all. Stick to the facts -- tell me -- why should I pay a higher percentage of my income in taxes because I make more than you?! Why!? Tell me you leech!
What country do you inhabit? I pay more than $25k in taxes on $120k inccome. Please, please, tell me how to fit my data point onto your curve. You can't. No one can. I'm screwed anually by taxes and you think I'm skating along. You dick.
You are utterly clueless on this topic. ALL of your numbers are hopelessly wrong. Let me suggest you start at irs.gov and try a few test runs.
The "10 men at dinner" post below is much gentler and effective than I can possibly be on this, but let me just say: go to hell you confused moron and all of your ilk who spend MY money like it's yours and cry when I get a little break. Seriously, go right to fucking hell you prick. God, you suck, and are so damn clueless it makes me irate (can you tell?).
You think I get 25x services/benefits for my taxes than someone who pays $1k/year in taxes. Think again. Yeah, I live in a nice neighborhood in Mass, but I pay state and local taxes too. Grrr fucks like you piss me off.
Morons like you who assume all "rich" people (i.e. anyone who makes more than you) somehow magically evade taxes infuriate those of us who pay massive taxes and have no idea how you can really believe such nonsense. It's such a common miscomception, and arguing against it inevitably coaxes out conspiracy therories a la Eddie Murphy dressing up as a white guy and learning that white business owners give away their products and sefvices to other whites for free. That was a parody. It DOESN'T HAPPEN between white people, and it DOESN'T HAPPEN between the irs and people who make more than you.
Just STFU until YOU make some cash (that takes work though, you probable leech, so be ready to get off the couch if you want a taste of the unpleasant reality). Until then, shut up.
Ah, I get your point. And, that is pretty cool. Assuming, of course, that you can set it on a folder level, and not necessarily on a per-file basis (which I think would have too much overhead associated with it, and might be annoying when I no longer want to use gimp for x.jpg, but forgot to change the metadata or whatever to set it back to a simple viewer).
You're right, the full "application list" browser can take a long time to populate, even on a fairly fast box. But, as I mentioned, under XP, the "open with" menu gets a very fast submenu with a list of programs you've ever used to open that file type automatically, and it's instant, so you don't need to wait for the full application list browser.
Not to be a MS fanboy (a sure karma killer, especially in a mac thread), but XP puts the open with menu on right click always (a good thing), and you can easily add/remove apps from that menu. I think all previous MS OSes required the shift or control right click to get the open with menu, which is annoying.
I'm not sure I'd use the folder-based association thing, since I rarely group things by app I want to use them. That changes depending on what I'm doing, so I want an easy, non-permanent, per-file based, quick way to choose what app to open any file with. Having a quick, short list of apps I've used for that file type seems to be the best way to do this IMHO. But, if the metadata/creator code thing could be changed as quickly, or nearly as quickly, it would be sufficient.
I love this sort of discussion, BTW, and I think the major weakness of GUI's is that they're often not tweaked or refined enough to be as efficient (and consistent) as they can be. They seem to be either dumbed-down for the lowest-common-denominator, or hyper-complex for the power-user and requiring lots of setup or learning to be efficient.
The happy medium would be (and has yet to surface, AFAIK) a GUI that's trivially easy to use by default, but massively configurable a la gnome/KDE/CDE. I think mac OS is moving away from this, and MS OS is moving closer to it. This is a bad thing -- someone should merge the best from all OS GUIs and make a really good one.
On older macs I've used, I found the GUI very efficient (but always lamented the single mouse button limitation -- seemes like it would have been 2x better with another button, and 2.5x better with a 3rd button. No scroller is annoying too). I think these things are available now (I've seen 2-button, 3-button, and scroller mac mice, but I'm not sure how well they integrate into the OS or apps, or how configurable they are). But OS X seems to be a bit of a regression -- it's prettier, but less efficient to me. And not for the same reasons that the spatial finder guy lists. It simply seems less consistent than the pre-OS X GUIs. And slower. A lot slower. I want BeOS responsiveness, even if it is an illusion, or sucks my RAM dry on boot (RAM's cheap).
Now, XP is a big improvement. Pre-XP win OSs always had so many annoyances, and the 3 buttons + scroller could not make up for them (like having to hold ctrl or shift while clicking to get certain options in the context/right-click menu -- that's just dumb, to me).
Of course, most of my real work is done via CLI (solaris at work and home, and sometimes linux). So, OS X with it's UNIX underbelly is very attractive. But, the GUI seems slow and inefficient compared to older mac OSes, and even to XP (or CDE, or gnome, . . . ). Sometimes I want a GUI for casual computing. It has to be fast, easy , predictable, consistent, AND configurable.
the PPC970 chip from IBM is coming this spring/summer. It will compete in floating point with the fastest P4 and on integer with the Athlon
. . . but with neither on both. You'll get more respect if you admit you happily trade perfomance for simplicity and gui candy. Not that there's anything wrong with that . . .
You seem to be ignoring (or ignorant of) the simple right-click + "open with" option (in windows, at least, dunno about mac). Xp even remembers the apps with which you've opened a file type, and adds them to the "open with" list.
So, you have a.txt file, and.txt is associated with notepad. Right click, select open with, and choose wordpad. Next time you right click+open with a.txt file, you'll see notepad, wordpad, and "choose program".
Slashdot Mirror
gosh, thanks for the tip -- I usually opt for the 20-rebate version to save 1%.
Actually, I'm pretty sure most people would pay a few dollars more to avoid dealing with rebates (depends on the total price of course, $2 more on a $5 item is significant; $2 more on $100 isn't). Do the math including the stamp, emvelope, your time, the time value of money (I use 6% these days, sigh for the good ol 20% days), and make an informed decision rather than boycotting anything (which, to me, smacks of blind rejection, which seems about as smart as blind acceptance). Anyway, that's really not a way to combat anything -- it's common sense (admittedly less common than the name would imply though, so I could be wrong). It's not really a boycott either.
I use rebates (and price matches, BVG from amex, and cashback systems from places like ebates) extensively. I get a lot of heavily discounted (occasionally free) goods (and yes, goods that I wanted anyway) by using the awesome info available on the web at places like hot-deals.org and fatwallet.com.
A quick quicken check tells me that I sent in more than $1700 in rebates last year, and I've received all but $90. The ones I didn't get were from companies that I've never heard of (and possibly no longer, or never did, exist).
Rather than assume all rebates have a value = $0, I calculate a modifed rebate price by multiplying the rebate value by a factor less than 1.0 that I assign to that company. Intel/AMD/Dell companies with something in their name they might want to lose get close to a 1.0. Imation/Buslink/UltraWiz companies I've never (or barely) heard of get close to a 0.0. Others usually get something in between.
BTW, that $90 will be recouped somewhat by claiming it as a 'bad debt' on my tax return (which I still haven't completed, unfortunately) -- if you have a business, you can do that too. Though of course IANAL, consult your tax professional, close cover before striking . . .
I guess my point in this long post is: assuming all rebates are worthless is as unwise as assuming all are worth face value.
You mean like this one?
I got one for $25 late last year at the Brookstone outlet in North Conway, NH (all Brookstones have them I think, but for $100).
I played with it for a few minutes -- voice training was quick and easy (I think it can recognize 3 or 4 people, assuming each trains it), supports macros and multiple devices (but alas, doesn't learn). Seems like a decent toy for average, mid-range stuff, but doesn't know how to talk to my ReplayTV (maybe not an issue soon, but it doesn't know TiVO-speak either) -- I just haven't had time (or desire) to program it completely, as my wife pretty much has taken over that room and seems uninterested in voice remote, despite the fact that she still juggles 5 remotes and won't even use the already-programmed yamaha universal remote that came with my receiver. Heck, she won't even enable the surround for TV most of the time (unless we're watching a movie and I insist) -- she uses the horrible TV speaker and seems fine with it. Sigh.
I thought Sun already had a 64-bit CPU
They do. It's called an UltraSPARC.
And I heard that CPU won't run Windows
Right again, but who cares about Windoze on a Sun box -- and where's this going?
Since Sun wants businesses to buy Solaris instead of Windows, that would seem like the thing to do, since that would narrow down the competition to basically just Linux.
Huh? Antecedent clarification please. Putting Windows on Sun boxen will help Sun, how? And they should do this by . . . stealing the source annd porting it to SPARC, or what? I'm confused.
Do they think Microsoft isn't going to sell Windows for these CPUs?
What CPU's? You mean MS is going to sell Windows for SPARC? Uh, no. I'm starting to think you're the one who's a bit confused here.
Personally I'd love to have a CPU architecture that fully departs from the x86 designs, whether it be 32 bit or 64 bit (or a hybrid).
SPARC is here now. Intel has one too (though they deny it), but it sucks. AMD is on the way (also in a bit of denial, but you can rest assured there will be some level of departure from x86). Whattaya want again?
I'd just run Linux or BSD on it. Such CPUs exist now, but they simply are not at commodity pricing, yet.
Oh, you want a $100 64-but CPU. I see. You're gonna have to wait a while, friend. And keep in mind the memory, mobo, and peripherals are gonna be expensive too. Something has to actually be a commodity to achieve commodity pricing Cutting edge != commodity.
Of course companies like Sun and IBM would rather not have to deal with such pricing. So we're probably stuck with x86 CPUs for a few more years until the high end people shake out what CPU they will use, then all the clone makers will leech.
Ah! There ya go -- you figured it out all by yourself. Atta boy.
Hey, no offense, but Solaris isn't designed for amateur install. It's not Linux. People that can afford a Sun box can afford a skilled sysadmin.
It will let you install/remove anything you want. You're supposed to have a clue. Some people want/need to remove a critical component and replace it with their own flavor. Sorry it didn't work out for you, but it's really better for you that it didn't, apparently.
The Sun gnome is still beta. Not supported, not tested, not done. Hang tight. Sun doesn't slop out crap before it's ready (as production stuff) -- people count on them too much. Too much money and rep at stake.
Latest Solaris' come with GNU goodies, including apache, perl, gcc, . . . you did check that 2nd "extras" CD, right?
No. It's a smart move to replace the relatively expensive Intel CPU's in Sun's low-end cobalt servers and the like with cheaper and better-performing (but hot, which is a bitch for Sun and their amazing RAS -- reliability, accessibility, and serviceability requirements) AMD CPU's.
They don't care about these low-end boxes very much -- the profits are low. But, it helps to have a nice full range of machines available to keep their customers from going the commodity-server (read: crap) route just to get a wimpy box to run their intranet or some non-critical app.
Sun is losing market share and fast
= cnet)
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Oh, really? Who'd you ask to learn this erroneous fact? Maybe your office uber geek or whoever fed you this line of crap can fix your mouse driver, but apparently he's a bit behind on the industry. You (or whoever you're parroting) obviously have no idea what you're talking about.
The latest research showed a surge in Sun's market share between the last quarter of 2001 and the first quarter of 2002.
(http://www.newsfactor.com/perl/story/17758.html)
The overall Unix server market grew 11 percent, from $5.9 billion in the first quarter of 1999 to $6.6 billion in the same period in 2000, according to research firm International Data Corp. Of that, Sun kept the top spot, increasing its share from 28 percent to 32 percent, with revenue of $2.1 billion in the first quarter of 2000.
(http://news.com.com/2100-1001-242350.html?legacy
Oh, maybe you meant internationally -- no wait, that doesn't work either:
Sun Microsystems has increased its market share in the RISC/UNIX server market in India in Q1 2002, according to IDC. Sun's RISC/UNIX server revenue market share in India grew to 48.4% in Q1 of 2002 from the 34.6% achieved in the full year 2001.
(http://www.ciol.com/content/news/repts/102070105
Before you try to complain about the dates, show me more recent data. (I have some, and it's even better for Sun that what you can find on the web right now, but I can't share my Peddie report legally -- go buy your own : http://www.jonpeddie.com/index.shtml ).
Better yet, try to explain to me what Sun does and exactly which market share they are interested in. Knowing the SPARC acronym is a simple google click away -- that demonstrates nothing, but I guess it is getting you a bit of karma; no respect from the clueful, though.
It says a lot when you take the top of the line sparc chip, and put it up against a chip a quarter of the price that kicks its butt.
I'm sorry, what machine kicks a Sun SPARC's butt in the apps they give a damn about? I don't think Sun cares if your Intel box gets more fps in Quake3 than a SPARC. You do realize Sun's are 64-bit machines, right? Do you know what that means? Or why so many corporations with deep pockets care? No, you don't. When's the last time this phantom butt-kicking CPU worked on 16GB of RAM or more?
not every case calls for a 24 cpu machine
And not every garage calls for (or can afford) a Ferrari. Duh. But the really profitable ones do. DO you have any idea what the difference in profit between a 1-CPU (or 2!) server and an enterprise server? No, of course you don't.
Get a clue or STFU.
Good point -- there's no way to stop the Dr. Evil types, except for maybe an increasingly-un-funny 70's spy parody guy, but patents could serve as the only way to deter those who are less inclined to be obviously and gratuitously evil like, say governments and corporations.
:)
Take, for example, the keeping-a-head-alive-without a body patent, for which someone above graciously provided the patent link (and thereby saved me from the shame of being branded a Futurama-viewer). Say some gov't or corp realizes they could save a lot of money on thier commercial space travel venture if they didn't have the hassle of the pilot's relatively useless (and heavy) body (all they need is his eyes and brain, assuming some sort of mouth-stick, speech-control, or yet-to-be-invented brain interfacing joystick).
And, say they come up with someone willing to have their head cut off and kept alive by a big blood-scrubbing box in exchange for a trip into space (and/or other valuable prizes).
It would be pretty hard to stop that sort of thing legally. But, since the inventor patented the idea, at least for a while he has some influence on how his idea is used. In this case, his moral disapproval of this implementation would have a voice, albeit not indefinite and not complete.
---
hey! -- what's this "no karma bonus" checkbox next to the submit button? Of COURSE I want a karma bonus -- I'm a karma whore
You can't help here but get into the debate about whether anything is really ever invented or simply discovered.
This is good, related, and thought-provoking. If these "creations" are actually discoveries rather than inventions, then one might argue that someone will eventually find the dangerous discoveries, so as a responsible scientist, one must look these even more aggressively, if only to better understand (and thereby be better prepared to control or limit damages from) them.
Sorta like the guy who developed and patented the way to keep a monkey (tested) or human (untested) head alive without a body, and then patented it to prevent evil genius torturers and insane governments with space-exploration hopes dashed by low-payload limits from exploiting them. I googled for a link, but failed -- anyone help me out on this -- or was it a hoax (very possible)?
More generally: what happens when technological advancements threaten the livelihood of various persons and/or business models?
/. article on *AA and IP/copyright).
There's the ever-popular luddites which spawned the term sabotage -- is it moral to destroy that which is thought to (or even really will) harm your livelihood? Is it defensible on grounds of self-defense/self-preservation, or is it indefensible technophobia and inflexibility/inability to adapt and ignorant short-sightedness?
Of course I'm intentionally skating around the obviously related *AA issues (MPAA, RIAA) and IP/copyright infringement, incessant extension of copyrights, etc.
But, I think this would be a fun way to start the discussion. Everyone knows about the *AA issues (well, most college students, at least). And, most will have a strong opinion on the isse one way or the other (see any
But, not everyone is familiar with relatively ridiculous-sounding, but strongly-related historical episodes of things like throwing wooden shoes into a machine for fear of being replaced by it (sabots, see links above).
I, for one, would be amused to see how many students who would say stopping such a technological advancement (machinery) to keep some people in their devil-that-they-know occupations was silly and wrong (and short-sighted), and then be faced with quite a logical/moral delimma when IP/copyright laws are discussed in the same vein.
Granted, many students may be anti-RIAA/MPAA to begin with out of greed/ignorance and not really have given it much though, so you may have to find a few whose family members benefit from the *AA and IP/copytight extensions somehow to get a real reaction, but it would be enlightening to all nonetheless, IMHO.
Secondly, the US didn't ratify Kyoto for economic reasons, not scientific ones - the US Govt's own sceintists confirmed that global warming exists and is caused by a boatload of human activites - though no doubt some ignorant Congressmen voted against it because they bought the bull from phoney science. It was the protection of major US interests that drove them to not sign it... that, and ignorance and stupidity.
That's not completely true, or at least there's more to it. The Kyoto treaty was meant to cut down on emissions and to reduce possible sources of greenhouse gasses. It was supposed to be binding to all signers. Sounds great, right? But think about the full story -- especially with regard to the two most populous countries: China (~1.5 billion) and India (~1 billion). Conveniently, they were both exempted from the Kyoto accord because the benevolent governments of the world did not want to impact their economic growth potential. So why would the US, a country with less than a 5th of the combined population of those countries, saddle itself with a policy that will not touch those countries? BTW, those two countries are also the largest producers of greenhouse gasses with Mexico and Brazil following way behind them.
Jesus, dude. How many different ways does he have to spell "RTFA" for you? She was trying to replicate conditions of someone switching from Windows to Linux, which involves starting with FAT or NTFS partitions on an existing hard drive
/boot, / and SWAP partitions anyway. Formatting it as fat16 is a silly waste of time and shows she doesnt understand what is going on. The fat16 partition she so carefully makes, is destroyed FIRST THING when you install. its irrelevent.
No it doesnt. You dont know what you are talking about.
She put it on a seperate partition, NOT on a fat32 partition. IF you used partition magic or another drive to open the space, you would NOT format it as fat16 because you have to split it for seperat
The point stands -- she started the first one with FAT, and she reverted to that for each subsequent trial for consistency. What's your problem with that? It it's irrelevant, why keep yammering about it? Why let it affect your eval of the article or the author's execution of the trials?
Actually, I am well under control. I just think it was a bad article, and said so, and every hard dick jumps to a ladies defense. No one ever acts this way if someone puts down an article unless its by a girl around here. Before you argue back, look back. I have.
I think its funny how sexist some of you are. Patronising. I think she is probably a big enough girl she can handle one person not liking her article.
Now, risking karma, but well worth it . . .
You, sir, are an idiot. You couldn't address my point reasonably, so you play the sexism card. That's amazingly lame. I'm not sure if "Pseu - Do - Nym" is male or female, and it doesn't matter. His/her points are valid regardless of gender, as are mine. Your posts, however, have been weak, reactionary, hyper-sensitive, short-sighted, and generally annoying.
Don't bother replying to me on this one, I don't wanna go that far OT or spoil my fine Sat night any more with your pointless vitriol. And besides, I just modded you down below my threshold, foe, so I won't see it anyway. Let the people with at least minor clue fragments post some, k?
Man, are you out of control. Calm down.
She installed the first one on a FAT32, and to be fair, she put it back to FAT32 every time. Whether or not this is necessary is irrelevant -- it's consistent. And, if you think she should have known that Linux wants EXT3, you totally missed the point of the article.
As for your previous vitriolic tirades:
The information is flawed, the premise is flawed, the execution was terrible.
What info is flawed? Are you saying she made it all up? What is flawed about the premise? 'Cause she started with Win95, instead of what you consider the average (me or 98)? So, the results would have been much better had she started with a newer MS OS? Gimme a break. What was so terrible about the execution? You are just trolling. I guess IHBT. But it gets worse:
I have installed more distributions of Linux and every other OS than you can imagine.
The stench of egotism is overwhelming. Get over yourself. You have no idea how many installs someone else can imagine. No one is impressed with your OS skillz, and it doesn't help your argument to make silly, egomaniacal claims.
Contrary to the story post, I did find the article both fun to read and informative. It made me think a little more concretely about why I don't use linux more (I prefer Solaris and WinXP, mostly). It is the nonsense you're spouting that isn't fun to read.
where are we gonna go?
please explain how the PATRIOT (sp ok?) act doesn't apply to the very rich.
if you're not joking (and I sincerely hope you are), then you're a racist moron
the "conservatives" (self identified) call themselves Republicans, and are after no government control on the very rich, but lots of control on everyone else (emphasis mine)
What?!?! Please support this outrageous claim with an example or some sort of evidence.
right, but remember: verbing wierds language.
I've gotta get out of this thread before I blow all of my karma, but what the hell, one more won't get me banned . . .
... while the guy who paid the least also got the equivalent of "just crumbs".
The thing that's not mentioned is that the guy who paid the most for dinner got an incredible feast for his money, including a hotel stay, movie, and air travel to and from the hotel
WTF are you talking about!?!?! What extra benefits do I get for paying 25x the taxes of a "low income worker"? Or an almost-no-income worker who gets an "earned income credit" PROFIT from MY taxes? Better national defense for me and my family? More WELFARE and ENTITLEMENTS for ME? Better roads that only I can drive on? Faster postal service for me only? C'mon, stop it already. We all eat the same meal where it counts, my friend. Some of us just work harder (and smarter) for it, and in the end get punished for that . . . and reviled by confused people like you. It's reverse natural selection. I'm glad I won't be around to see the sorry state of human existence that this asinine attitude will create in 100 years.
I've been on both sides: as a starving college student hiding my enrollment from the unemployment office so I can continue to bilk the lame-ass system that simply encourages constant dependency, and now as a hard-working engineer making 6 figures. God, I hate the old me, but I realize the system encouraged me to leech. And now I feel guilty for leeching off of the hard workers that were paying my way. BUT NOW I PAY YOUR WAY and it makes me sick as hell. I know how easy it is to think you deserve that entitlement (it's in the word itself, after all). BUT YOU DON'T DESERVE IT. It's a break -- you're getting another chance, but it's poorly administered and designed to self-perpetuate rather than improve. You can't (won't) see that because it would put the onus of improving your own state of affairs squarely on YOUR shoulders, which can't (won't) handle the weight.
Corporations, like Enron, have nothing to do with this discussion, so STFU. You're just appealing to the everyone-hates-enron argument, which isn't an argument at all. Stick to the facts -- tell me -- why should I pay a higher percentage of my income in taxes because I make more than you?! Why!? Tell me you leech!
What country do you inhabit? I pay more than $25k in taxes on $120k inccome. Please, please, tell me how to fit my data point onto your curve. You can't. No one can. I'm screwed anually by taxes and you think I'm skating along. You dick.
You are utterly clueless on this topic. ALL of your numbers are hopelessly wrong. Let me suggest you start at irs.gov and try a few test runs.
The "10 men at dinner" post below is much gentler and effective than I can possibly be on this, but let me just say: go to hell you confused moron and all of your ilk who spend MY money like it's yours and cry when I get a little break. Seriously, go right to fucking hell you prick. God, you suck, and are so damn clueless it makes me irate (can you tell?).
You think I get 25x services/benefits for my taxes than someone who pays $1k/year in taxes. Think again. Yeah, I live in a nice neighborhood in Mass, but I pay state and local taxes too. Grrr fucks like you piss me off.
Morons like you who assume all "rich" people (i.e. anyone who makes more than you) somehow magically evade taxes infuriate those of us who pay massive taxes and have no idea how you can really believe such nonsense. It's such a common miscomception, and arguing against it inevitably coaxes out conspiracy therories a la Eddie Murphy dressing up as a white guy and learning that white business owners give away their products and sefvices to other whites for free. That was a parody. It DOESN'T HAPPEN between white people, and it DOESN'T HAPPEN between the irs and people who make more than you.
Just STFU until YOU make some cash (that takes work though, you probable leech, so be ready to get off the couch if you want a taste of the unpleasant reality). Until then, shut up.
Ah, I get your point. And, that is pretty cool. Assuming, of course, that you can set it on a folder level, and not necessarily on a per-file basis (which I think would have too much overhead associated with it, and might be annoying when I no longer want to use gimp for x.jpg, but forgot to change the metadata or whatever to set it back to a simple viewer).
You're right, the full "application list" browser can take a long time to populate, even on a fairly fast box. But, as I mentioned, under XP, the "open with" menu gets a very fast submenu with a list of programs you've ever used to open that file type automatically, and it's instant, so you don't need to wait for the full application list browser.
Not to be a MS fanboy (a sure karma killer, especially in a mac thread), but XP puts the open with menu on right click always (a good thing), and you can easily add/remove apps from that menu. I think all previous MS OSes required the shift or control right click to get the open with menu, which is annoying.
I'm not sure I'd use the folder-based association thing, since I rarely group things by app I want to use them. That changes depending on what I'm doing, so I want an easy, non-permanent, per-file based, quick way to choose what app to open any file with. Having a quick, short list of apps I've used for that file type seems to be the best way to do this IMHO. But, if the metadata/creator code thing could be changed as quickly, or nearly as quickly, it would be sufficient.
I love this sort of discussion, BTW, and I think the major weakness of GUI's is that they're often not tweaked or refined enough to be as efficient (and consistent) as they can be. They seem to be either dumbed-down for the lowest-common-denominator, or hyper-complex for the power-user and requiring lots of setup or learning to be efficient.
The happy medium would be (and has yet to surface, AFAIK) a GUI that's trivially easy to use by default, but massively configurable a la gnome/KDE/CDE. I think mac OS is moving away from this, and MS OS is moving closer to it. This is a bad thing -- someone should merge the best from all OS GUIs and make a really good one.
On older macs I've used, I found the GUI very efficient (but always lamented the single mouse button limitation -- seemes like it would have been 2x better with another button, and 2.5x better with a 3rd button. No scroller is annoying too). I think these things are available now (I've seen 2-button, 3-button, and scroller mac mice, but I'm not sure how well they integrate into the OS or apps, or how configurable they are). But OS X seems to be a bit of a regression -- it's prettier, but less efficient to me. And not for the same reasons that the spatial finder guy lists. It simply seems less consistent than the pre-OS X GUIs. And slower. A lot slower. I want BeOS responsiveness, even if it is an illusion, or sucks my RAM dry on boot (RAM's cheap).
Now, XP is a big improvement. Pre-XP win OSs always had so many annoyances, and the 3 buttons + scroller could not make up for them (like having to hold ctrl or shift while clicking to get certain options in the context/right-click menu -- that's just dumb, to me).
Of course, most of my real work is done via CLI (solaris at work and home, and sometimes linux). So, OS X with it's UNIX underbelly is very attractive. But, the GUI seems slow and inefficient compared to older mac OSes, and even to XP (or CDE, or gnome, . . . ). Sometimes I want a GUI for casual computing. It has to be fast, easy , predictable, consistent, AND configurable.
the PPC970 chip from IBM is coming this spring/summer. It will compete in floating point with the fastest P4 and on integer with the Athlon
. . . but with neither on both. You'll get more respect if you admit you happily trade perfomance for simplicity and gui candy. Not that there's anything wrong with that . . .
You seem to be ignoring (or ignorant of) the simple right-click + "open with" option (in windows, at least, dunno about mac). Xp even remembers the apps with which you've opened a file type, and adds them to the "open with" list.
.txt file, and .txt is associated with notepad. Right click, select open with, and choose wordpad. Next time you right click+open with a .txt file, you'll see notepad, wordpad, and "choose program".
So, you have a
you already do: avoid ./ on 4/1
I smell iocaine powder!