HeroineWarrior has a click-through GNU GPL v2 license agreement for their downloads. Do any of the lawyers here (do any lawyers even real slashdot??) know if that would help make the GPL more enforcable?
And Moderators, this isn't OT - Cinelerra is a video editing tool.
What computer program do any of you use that you had to be trained to use? Microsoft Office? Umm, *most* people have no use for any of the apps other than Word. I was able to sufficiently use Access and Excel in 30 mins or less.
Yes, but you have to remember that you are a slashdot geek who compiles your own kernel while coding in java across an SSH session. There are still people in this world who have never touched a computer in their life (My girlfriend's redneck father for example. - no, really.).
When it comes to corporate employees and especially government agencies, they have to cater to the lowest common denominator so as not to discriminate against anyone. i.e. they have to make sure that the complete computer-illiterate retarded moron who doesnt understand the concept of the "print" button can do his job properly when new tools (i.e. software) are rolled out.
Most people can fumble their way through the current Word version by searching the menus and using their doc "wizards".
Most computer literate people, yes. But what about the 70 old guy who's type-writer just got upgraded to a PC, and he's still having trouble operating the mouse. It happens. Forget about Start->Programs-> and any of that, this guy is still learning to use the mouse for crying out loud! He's having trouble getting the pointer where he wants it on the screen....and then when he gets it there (after 5 minutes) he doesnt know what to do with it. It does happen, and they can't discriminate against the guy and fire him because of it. They have to teach him. That's why computer training is so dummied down.
My first reaction was "Yay Dell!". Then I thought what if I need to update the BIOS of my motherboard.
Does the average Joe User know how to make a bootable CD? Most PC BIOS are unable to boot from USB or Firewire yet, so it seems like creating a bootable CD to do firmware upgrades is the only option.
'It looks like protection will be in place to ensure that even content recorded by users (through the use of a special adapter) will not be able to be shared with other users.'
Ok, someone correct me if I'm wrong, doesn't this take away a great deal of it's usefulness? For example, if I want to record some lecture notes (i.e. audio) I will not be able to share those notes with my peers? Seems like there are plenty of more flexible alternatives already out there.
These people won't be Microsoft programers who don't know how to write tight code...
Seriously todays programmers aren't taught tight code... and giving yourself limitations like these you would have to. When write in the "popular" languages of today the overhead alone would kill the likelyhood of a programmer just "throwing something together".
Of course they're not taught that. If they wrote tight clean code, why would you need to upgrade your PC every six months?
Imagine that, programmers having to write efficient code for a change. These days, a "hello world" program won't even fit on a floppy after the required libraries have been compiled in...
So which version of Microsoft Visual Studio are you using?
Ok, so we have a consortium for this now. Great. Whatever. What the community really needs is a large company (IBM, HP, whoever) that will provide commercial desktop support for a desktop version of Linux. Whether that's Suse, Gentoo, or Mandrake, or some other player, doesnt really matter.
What matters is having a financially stable commercial backer who has the resources to support large desktop installations with rapid deployment tools and on-site service workers. Then we will start seeing large corporations who have thousands of desktop PC's migrating to Linux en masse.
I consider myself sucessful in my computer-related career, yet I don't entirely enjoy it. I'd much rather be a mechanic of better cars (Porsche, Audi, BMW). That however would require that I took a year or so off from work to go through the training, and I just can't afford to do that right now.
I say lets hold a slashdot poll for whether you change jobs or not!
Of course there's no toilet. That's what "Microsoft Bob" was designed for. You simply excrete your waste while performing standard household tasks, without interruption - and Bob cleans it up! Amazing!
Another question: Is running IDE drives 24/7 bad for them when, as you say, they are designed for multiple power on/off cycles?
I wouldn't go so far as to say that it's bad for them, however the motor in most IDE drives is not as robust as the motor in most SCSI drives is. This is a significant portion of the additional cost of a SCSI drive (the more robust motor).
In your specific case, the motor probably crapped out due to heat. Newer drives using the fluid bearings produce less heat (and noise) but the 4 year old cheetah's have standard ball bearings. I use the Lian-Li aluminum PC cases for all 3 of my home PC's (which BTW have a mix of 10k and 15k SCSI drives - no IDE for me) due to their dual cooling fans in front of the drive bays. Even when packed with 15k drives, these fans keep them cool to the touch. (I have no affiliation with Lian-Li other than being a pleased customer.)
Heat really is a big enemy of 10k and 15k SCSI drives since they run so warm. Have a look at large enterprise storage solutions from HP, IBM, EMC, or Sun. They have dozens of very loud noisy fans blowing many many CFM of air over the drives. I used to work for Compaq/DEC and the drive carriers in their enterprise storage systems had been revised several times as faster drives became available over the years. The reason for the revisions was to provide a better cooling solution to cope with the increased heat of the faster spinning drives.
Just my personal experience here with keeping drives cool: I currently have 12 drives (10k and 15k) that I keep powered on 24/7. I've had these running for a little over two years now, and not a single failure. I attribute this partly to the good cooling that they all receive.
Turning the system on and off all the time is bad as well.
Well, your half right. IDE drives are designed for MANY power on/off cycles (as the typical home or office PC is turned on and off at least once a day) but not for continuous operation. SCSI drives on the other hand are designed for continuous operation, and NOT for many power on/off cycles.
I had a Seagate 15K rpm Cheetah that recently took a dump. No special filtering, no real cooling scheme to speak off. It ran for 4 years almost to the day. Then during a load of windows, it said bye-bye. Found out the motor crapped out.
I'm willing to bet it's because you turned your PC on and off each day, and you didn't have adequate cooling. The original 15k cheetahs were DAMN hot and without active cooling, they ran above the manufacturer's operating spec. Remember, SCSI drives are designed to be in Servers where noise is not an issue, and they expect to be cooled with fans! And before some AC jumps in with a "your full of crap!" post, I'm a data storage engineer for a large storage vendor so I know what I'm talking about.
Your 15k cheetah BTW should have a 5 year warranty. Not sure if that was voided because you probably overheated it or exceded it's rated number of power on/off cycles.
You are forgetting the intended purpose of his machine. It isn't to play games! I'll bet every one of your "benchmarks" and reviews compares an 8x AGP card to a 4x AGP card using current "applications" - most likely games. He is creating content which will certainly involve textures beyond the 128MB of current high end gaming cards, which means the graphics chip will be accessing main memory a lot. 8x will provide a significant speedup. Remember, most games are tuned to fit all their textures within texture memory on the card, so the speed of the AGP bus is hardly significant.
With the proliferation of broadband 'net access, commonplace CD burners (even those $399 el cheapo PC's are shipping with them) and the ever increasing quality of "consumer" grade printers, it is becoming that much simpler to produce an identical copy of a store purchased CD. I don't just mean the music, but the CD cover, the little book, the illustration on the CD disc itself.
The RIAA knows this. The LAST thing they want is every high school and college kid owning a 50x CDR, a photo quality CD label printer, and a photo quality PC printer.
Today, these are several hundred dollars worth of peripherals that are not standard fare on your average consumer PC. It would be impractical to purchase these accessories for the sole purpose of illegally duplicating CD's. But in not too many months from now, these could be every-day items that even the Wal-Mart PC comes with. I think you get the picture.
Damn you must be my long lost twin or something. I'm an aircooled VW/Porsche nut who wishes that computers could just be a hobby again, but can't afford to get a lower paying job (i.e. mechanic.).
BTW I have a '59 sunroof Beetle sedan and a '74 914-6 (converted with a 3.0 from an '81 911 SC). I wish I had a Ducati Monster 750S.
My wife's 3 week old German car (Audi) has already incurred more repair costs than the '72 Chevelle incurred in the 13 years I owned it. Obviously it was under warranty and I didn't pay it..
I'm no mathematician, but if it was under warranty so you didn't pay, your repair costs were $0. Obviously.
One of my vehicles is also an Audi. A 1984 Audi 4000S Quattro. It has 239k miles on it and in 19 years of heavy service, it has never broken down or required a tow. It still starts immediately on the first try and runs smooth as silk. It's never incured any major repair bills. I use 0W-30 oil in it as it doesn't burn or leak a drop.
Most American cars are on their last dying breath at around 100k. An example of American automotive "quality" is a former co worker of mine, Carl. He had a Ford Taurus. ONE month after the sickeningly short warranty expired, it blew a head gasket (at only 39k miles) and the transmission died completely two months later. Another fine example is my girlfriend's Father's '98 Cadillac. Transmission died completely in that one at only 58k miles. Warranty was also expired and he had to eat the 3k repair bill. My last tribute to American automotive quality is my good buddy Mike. He had a Pontiac 6000STE. The crankshaft broke at 98k miles! The repair costs were more than the ugly car was worth, so he gave it to charity for the tax writeoff.
What does war with Iraq have to do with car quality? Please come back when you actually have a real argument to make! Sad. Very sad.
If MS offers huge discounts for windows insurance, then the would loose GOBS of money when it comes time to pay out those insurance claims. I'm guessing the profit margin on insurance generally isn't as big as it is on software! They would essentially have to pay for their own bugs.
Of course they would lose gobs of money on the claims. But gobs of money is exactly what Microsoft has! Look at the Xbox. It's losing millions and millions of dollars for MS. Do they care? No! It's all about market share.
Remember, although MS has 90% market share on the desktop, they have a far lower percentage of the server market. And the server market is where the big profit margins are.
Whats a few million here and there (in claim payouts) if they can flex their "insurance muscle" and "force" all large corporations to switch to Windows on the Servers.
Remember - it's usually not the techies in the server room making these decisions. Mr. Big Boss sees that it's just a nickel and a dime to insure his Windows servers with Microsoft Insurance Co. while it costs him an arm and a leg to insure oBSD, Linux, etc. It's doesn't take Einstein to do the math and watch the non M$ platforms disappear.
I see some posts here about insurance cost of Windoze vs. oBSD. oBSD is about as secure as it gets - certainly it's several orders of magnitude stronger than the toys from Redmond. A Logical human would conclude that it should be much cheaper to insure oBSD than Windoze. Not necessarily so...
The problem here, is that Microsoft has already admitted that their products have crap security. What's preventing M$ from opening their own (or buying out another) hacker insurance co. and giving large discounts to Windoze based corporations? Would other corporations stick with a non-M$ operating system if they had to pay double the insurance premium and/or accept reduced coverage?
Slashdot Mirror
HeroineWarrior has a click-through GNU GPL v2 license agreement for their downloads. Do any of the lawyers here (do any lawyers even real slashdot??) know if that would help make the GPL more enforcable?
And Moderators, this isn't OT - Cinelerra is a video editing tool.
What computer program do any of you use that you had to be trained to use? Microsoft Office? Umm, *most* people have no use for any of the apps other than Word. I was able to sufficiently use Access and Excel in 30 mins or less.
Yes, but you have to remember that you are a slashdot geek who compiles your own kernel while coding in java across an SSH session. There are still people in this world who have never touched a computer in their life (My girlfriend's redneck father for example. - no, really.).
When it comes to corporate employees and especially government agencies, they have to cater to the lowest common denominator so as not to discriminate against anyone. i.e. they have to make sure that the complete computer-illiterate retarded moron who doesnt understand the concept of the "print" button can do his job properly when new tools (i.e. software) are rolled out.
Most people can fumble their way through the current Word version by searching the menus and using their doc "wizards".
Most computer literate people, yes. But what about the 70 old guy who's type-writer just got upgraded to a PC, and he's still having trouble operating the mouse. It happens. Forget about Start->Programs-> and any of that, this guy is still learning to use the mouse for crying out loud! He's having trouble getting the pointer where he wants it on the screen....and then when he gets it there (after 5 minutes) he doesnt know what to do with it. It does happen, and they can't discriminate against the guy and fire him because of it. They have to teach him. That's why computer training is so dummied down.
eat my ass for modding me down.
Posting as AC, I sense a disturbing lack of balls and/or accountability.
I am a homosexual. I bought an Apple computer because of its well earned reputation for being "the" gay computer.
Hey, whatever floats your boat buddy. I'm not gay, I just use Macs because they're cool.
Hydrogen peroxide is available from any common drug store. Why would the suppliers have a problem selling it to these guys?
Even if they cant get it directly from the suppliers, surely it's available in bulk through retail channels?
My first reaction was "Yay Dell!". Then I thought what if I need to update the BIOS of my motherboard.
Does the average Joe User know how to make a bootable CD? Most PC BIOS are unable to boot from USB or Firewire yet, so it seems like creating a bootable CD to do firmware upgrades is the only option.
Who is Jack Valenti? And why are we supposed to care?
JV is a ruthless scumbag who deserves to be put into a mental institution for being a quack.
He wants to eliminate all fair use of movies, anyone who stands in his way, and he wants you to him pay for it.
Jack can kiss my ass.
'It looks like protection will be in place to ensure that even content recorded by users (through the use of a special adapter) will not be able to be shared with other users.'
Ok, someone correct me if I'm wrong, doesn't this take away a great deal of it's usefulness? For example, if I want to record some lecture notes (i.e. audio) I will not be able to share those notes with my peers? Seems like there are plenty of more flexible alternatives already out there.
These people won't be Microsoft programers who don't know how to write tight code... Seriously todays programmers aren't taught tight code... and giving yourself limitations like these you would have to. When write in the "popular" languages of today the overhead alone would kill the likelyhood of a programmer just "throwing something together".
Of course they're not taught that. If they wrote tight clean code, why would you need to upgrade your PC every six months?
Imagine that, programmers having to write efficient code for a change. These days, a "hello world" program won't even fit on a floppy after the required libraries have been compiled in...
So which version of Microsoft Visual Studio are you using?
Try using .PNG file format.
And scale those pics down, what do you want with a 4096x3072 nude Britney image anyways? Oh wait.... nevermind.
Ok, so we have a consortium for this now. Great. Whatever. What the community really needs is a large company (IBM, HP, whoever) that will provide commercial desktop support for a desktop version of Linux. Whether that's Suse, Gentoo, or Mandrake, or some other player, doesnt really matter.
What matters is having a financially stable commercial backer who has the resources to support large desktop installations with rapid deployment tools and on-site service workers. Then we will start seeing large corporations who have thousands of desktop PC's migrating to Linux en masse.
I consider myself sucessful in my computer-related career, yet I don't entirely enjoy it. I'd much rather be a mechanic of better cars (Porsche, Audi, BMW). That however would require that I took a year or so off from work to go through the training, and I just can't afford to do that right now.
I say lets hold a slashdot poll for whether you change jobs or not!
Of course there's no toilet. That's what "Microsoft Bob" was designed for. You simply excrete your waste while performing standard household tasks, without interruption - and Bob cleans it up! Amazing!
Another question: Is running IDE drives 24/7 bad for them when, as you say, they are designed for multiple power on/off cycles?
I wouldn't go so far as to say that it's bad for them, however the motor in most IDE drives is not as robust as the motor in most SCSI drives is. This is a significant portion of the additional cost of a SCSI drive (the more robust motor).
In your specific case, the motor probably crapped out due to heat. Newer drives using the fluid bearings produce less heat (and noise) but the 4 year old cheetah's have standard ball bearings. I use the Lian-Li aluminum PC cases for all 3 of my home PC's (which BTW have a mix of 10k and 15k SCSI drives - no IDE for me) due to their dual cooling fans in front of the drive bays. Even when packed with 15k drives, these fans keep them cool to the touch. (I have no affiliation with Lian-Li other than being a pleased customer.)
Heat really is a big enemy of 10k and 15k SCSI drives since they run so warm. Have a look at large enterprise storage solutions from HP, IBM, EMC, or Sun. They have dozens of very loud noisy fans blowing many many CFM of air over the drives. I used to work for Compaq/DEC and the drive carriers in their enterprise storage systems had been revised several times as faster drives became available over the years. The reason for the revisions was to provide a better cooling solution to cope with the increased heat of the faster spinning drives.
Just my personal experience here with keeping drives cool: I currently have 12 drives (10k and 15k) that I keep powered on 24/7. I've had these running for a little over two years now, and not a single failure. I attribute this partly to the good cooling that they all receive.
Good luck!
Turning the system on and off all the time is bad as well.
Well, your half right. IDE drives are designed for MANY power on/off cycles (as the typical home or office PC is turned on and off at least once a day) but not for continuous operation. SCSI drives on the other hand are designed for continuous operation, and NOT for many power on/off cycles.
I had a Seagate 15K rpm Cheetah that recently took a dump. No special filtering, no real cooling scheme to speak off. It ran for 4 years almost to the day. Then during a load of windows, it said bye-bye. Found out the motor crapped out.
I'm willing to bet it's because you turned your PC on and off each day, and you didn't have adequate cooling. The original 15k cheetahs were DAMN hot and without active cooling, they ran above the manufacturer's operating spec. Remember, SCSI drives are designed to be in Servers where noise is not an issue, and they expect to be cooled with fans! And before some AC jumps in with a "your full of crap!" post, I'm a data storage engineer for a large storage vendor so I know what I'm talking about.
Your 15k cheetah BTW should have a 5 year warranty. Not sure if that was voided because you probably overheated it or exceded it's rated number of power on/off cycles.
You are forgetting the intended purpose of his machine. It isn't to play games! I'll bet every one of your "benchmarks" and reviews compares an 8x AGP card to a 4x AGP card using current "applications" - most likely games. He is creating content which will certainly involve textures beyond the 128MB of current high end gaming cards, which means the graphics chip will be accessing main memory a lot. 8x will provide a significant speedup. Remember, most games are tuned to fit all their textures within texture memory on the card, so the speed of the AGP bus is hardly significant.
Let's not forget about 3D content creation.
This is exactly wrong.
With the proliferation of broadband 'net access, commonplace CD burners (even those $399 el cheapo PC's are shipping with them) and the ever increasing quality of "consumer" grade printers, it is becoming that much simpler to produce an identical copy of a store purchased CD. I don't just mean the music, but the CD cover, the little book, the illustration on the CD disc itself.
The RIAA knows this. The LAST thing they want is every high school and college kid owning a 50x CDR, a photo quality CD label printer, and a photo quality PC printer.
Today, these are several hundred dollars worth of peripherals that are not standard fare on your average consumer PC. It would be impractical to purchase these accessories for the sole purpose of illegally duplicating CD's. But in not too many months from now, these could be every-day items that even the Wal-Mart PC comes with. I think you get the picture.
Damn you must be my long lost twin or something. I'm an aircooled VW/Porsche nut who wishes that computers could just be a hobby again, but can't afford to get a lower paying job (i.e. mechanic.).
BTW I have a '59 sunroof Beetle sedan and a '74 914-6 (converted with a 3.0 from an '81 911 SC). I wish I had a Ducati Monster 750S.
My wife's 3 week old German car (Audi) has already incurred more repair costs than the '72 Chevelle incurred in the 13 years I owned it. Obviously it was under warranty and I didn't pay it..
I'm no mathematician, but if it was under warranty so you didn't pay, your repair costs were $0. Obviously.
One of my vehicles is also an Audi. A 1984 Audi 4000S Quattro. It has 239k miles on it and in 19 years of heavy service, it has never broken down or required a tow. It still starts immediately on the first try and runs smooth as silk. It's never incured any major repair bills. I use 0W-30 oil in it as it doesn't burn or leak a drop.
Most American cars are on their last dying breath at around 100k. An example of American automotive "quality" is a former co worker of mine, Carl. He had a Ford Taurus. ONE month after the sickeningly short warranty expired, it blew a head gasket (at only 39k miles) and the transmission died completely two months later. Another fine example is my girlfriend's Father's '98 Cadillac. Transmission died completely in that one at only 58k miles. Warranty was also expired and he had to eat the 3k repair bill. My last tribute to American automotive quality is my good buddy Mike. He had a Pontiac 6000STE. The crankshaft broke at 98k miles! The repair costs were more than the ugly car was worth, so he gave it to charity for the tax writeoff.
What does war with Iraq have to do with car quality? Please come back when you actually have a real argument to make! Sad. Very sad.
well.. duh... someone has to pay the claims
If MS offers huge discounts for windows insurance, then the would loose GOBS of money when it comes time to pay out those insurance claims. I'm guessing the profit margin on insurance generally isn't as big as it is on software! They would essentially have to pay for their own bugs.
Of course they would lose gobs of money on the claims. But gobs of money is exactly what Microsoft has! Look at the Xbox. It's losing millions and millions of dollars for MS. Do they care? No! It's all about market share.
Remember, although MS has 90% market share on the desktop, they have a far lower percentage of the server market. And the server market is where the big profit margins are.
Whats a few million here and there (in claim payouts) if they can flex their "insurance muscle" and "force" all large corporations to switch to Windows on the Servers.
Remember - it's usually not the techies in the server room making these decisions. Mr. Big Boss sees that it's just a nickel and a dime to insure his Windows servers with Microsoft Insurance Co. while it costs him an arm and a leg to insure oBSD, Linux, etc. It's doesn't take Einstein to do the math and watch the non M$ platforms disappear.
Scary.
I see some posts here about insurance cost of Windoze vs. oBSD. oBSD is about as secure as it gets - certainly it's several orders of magnitude stronger than the toys from Redmond. A Logical human would conclude that it should be much cheaper to insure oBSD than Windoze. Not necessarily so...
The problem here, is that Microsoft has already admitted that their products have crap security. What's preventing M$ from opening their own (or buying out another) hacker insurance co. and giving large discounts to Windoze based corporations? Would other corporations stick with a non-M$ operating system if they had to pay double the insurance premium and/or accept reduced coverage?
There is definite potantial for abuse here.
Amen. Chevy Nova's (and most other Mer'can cars too) belong in the trash can (or recycle bin).
Nova means "No Go" is several other languages. Might as well name it the "Piece-O-Crap".
It's a mystery why so many of those mer'can rednecks haven't yet realized that German cars are the best cars on this earth!