On a recent trip to Japan I noticed the huge difference in attitude towards music sale. For example, there are many music stores in Japan that rent music CD's. I don't think there's a single store in the US where you can do this. In addition, these same stores sell bulk packs of CD-R's!! It costs about US$1.00 to rent a CD album for a few days. These stores are usually frequented by young people and are very busy on a typical day. Business must be good.
Legal complications aside, the US based music stores (and us consumers) might have something to gain by taking a lesson from the Japanese.
I would suggest putting that $7k towards your retirement. Invest it in a solid fund or IRA. This would be much wiser than blowing it on a technology that will be outdated in a couple of years.
Couple of years?? This shit will be old-hat in a few months. The guy with the $7k is obviously too stupid for his own good so his best bet is to flush the cash directly down the nearest hi-flo toilet bowl.
Too bad the processors you mentioned comparitively suck:)
Perhaps that is the case if you are a l33t g4m3r. Which I suspect you are.
If you are running a nationwide medical record database with 8000 concurrent users (I am), there is NO intel machine ANYWHERE that can handle the load.
The current crop of Itanium or Xeon servers (even 8 and 16 way) cannot even come close to the performance of the GS series Alphaservers. Not even close. Not for processing power, and definitely not for memory bandwidth. What happens when you need 32 or 64 CPU's? Or more than that even? Sorry Charlie - intel servers are tinker-toys when compared to the big-iron of today.
$7k would be plenty for a medium-sized wireless LAN.
But somehow I doubt your Aunt would be pleased if she knew that her "investment" in you was funding your desire to be a l33t g4m3r.
I'm as much an uber-geek as the next slashdotter around here, but do yourself a favor and put the cash into a CD (that's certificate of deposit - not the 12 centimeter shiny disc), or a money market account. Assuming you are young, put it on a house in a few years, or let it grow and pay for your children's college education 25 years from now.
Take this bit of advice from an elder geek who has BTDT.
the latest and greatest several-hundred-dollars-worth CPU.
Only if you're buying intel can you get the latest and greatest for only several-hundred-dollars-worth. We call the intel servers at work "tinker-toys" because they are wimpy and cannot get much real work done.
The Alphaserver GS160, the IBM RS/6000, and the Sunfire 12k. Those are the manly servers that do the real work around here. I don't think you can replace fans in these things for "several-hundred-dollars-worth".;-) The CPU's in these are a couple thousand dollars each.
Actually, no one really knows if Gentoo on your PDA works, as it hasn't finished compiling yet. It always gets about half way there (est. time: 6 weeks) and the pda starts to smoke.
Mine finished! Wireless LAN works, and it's the most stable PDA platform I've eve
"Lay her vertically against one jaw and put your nail against the other jaw and slowly crank it down. Once the two get close, adjust the position and angle so that the penetration will occur near one edge of the target. Since this is her first time, you'll want to take it nice and slow. If you go too fast, you might just ram it all the way through, that could be ugly. I padded the vise to protect her front side."
Yeah, it IS what you think.;-)
Re:Lets hope that the result is progress
on
Google v. Microsoft
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
But then again, what is it that they want to accomplice? If it is to become the best searchengine, they have a lot off work to do..
But if the main point is to keep people inside their MSN network things are much easier. Just put a search field on every page and there you go. If the results are oke'ish, most people will be satisfied and MS can put their commercials and such. After all if the MS monopoly has proven anything it is that barely good enough is more than enough for a lot of people..
Precisely. Microsoft doesn't have to be the best search engine to beat google - it just has to convince people that it's "good enough" and that it's easy to use.
Think about it. People use IE not because it's a better browser, but because that's what comes up when they click on the "Browse the Web" desktop icon. They are too lazy, too uninformed, or simply lack the technical skills required to download and install netscape or mozilla. In other words, using any other browser besides IE has become a chore - you have to download it, install it, configure it, and learn how to use it.
If Microsoft makes typing in "www.google.com" a chore, no one will use it and M$ will have won. All they have to do is use some strategy in placing their search links. Put a search link on every Microsoft web page. Put one on the taskbar in Windows. Put one on the start menu. Put one on the IE menu, and lastly, redirect all entires in the URL bar to MSN search if it isn't a valid URL.
They don't have to be best, they have to be easiest and be "just good enough".
I would consider it if I was out of work, but I can't *stand* indian cuisine. The smell makes my stomach turn and curry makes me gag. I don't mean to insult any of our indian readers, but is there readily available "american" food in India?
Correct, I typed too quickly. Mine is an AMD K6, not a PII. Don't know what I was thinking. And I'm not sure what the original K6 is. Anyone?
Original K6 is Pentium II equivalent and enjoyed speeds up to 300 Mhz.
But you forgot about the Pentium Pro. It is also i686. It came in 150, 166, 180, and 200 Mhz. I'm typing this from a 200Mhz PPro with 1MB cache and 128MB RAM using i686 build of moz.
You're not totally correct here:
686 is everything from PentiumII / K6-2 and up.
Neither are you sir. Ahem, i686 is everything from Pentium Pro and up. I'm typing this from a PPro 200 (with a huge 1MB L2 cache) and 128MB running an i686 mozilla build.
I guess it's important to ask the following question: was 2.4 ever designed to run on those kinds of processors? I mean, the O(1) scheduler is a pretty cool, processor independant change; but was 2.6 designed with specific optimizations for newer processors (and newer instructions) in mind? I'd be interested to see benchmarks from old hardware -- i.e., stuff like I've got sitting around. (If only I had a bit more time. Maybe I can borrow some cycles from 2.6 Linux boxen.)
I'm guessing that the answer is yes and no.
When you roll your own kernel, you can select which CPU you are building for. This enables optimizations for that specific CPU (but usually breaks compatibility with older CPU's). So no, I don't think it was build with these new CPU's in mind, but it does have the optional optimizations in there to take advantage of them - just like it does for 486 and pentium and Athlon.
Keep in mind that your compiler must also have approperiate optimizations for your CPU to see the best performance. I'm not sure how far gcc has come on PPC970, Opteron, and Itanium these days.
I paid $85 for my econ text book. The damn thing is a *paperback* book. It's not even a very good book. The chapers are too long and the quiz questions are too hard. What a ripoff.
I would recommend becoming an airport skycap, a washed-up athlete, or possibly the CEO of a poorly performing US company. That's where the money is these days.
It seems plenty of other slashdotters have beat me to the "Move to India" suggestion.
But realistically, the best way to get into the computer/tech industry is to get into one of the high profit vertical markets. Great examples of these are Enterprise Storage (IBM, EMC, HP, Sun, Hitachi), Supercomputing (HP, IBM, SGI), maybe even VOIP or biometric security. Additionally, consulting services which are wrapped around the aforementioned markets are particularly lucrative.
You basically want to avoid like the plague any job which can be easily outsourced to India or another cheap labor market. Programmers, Call center workers, WWW operations are a few examples.
Also, dime-a-dozen certifications like MCSE and MCP should be avoided as they are usually costly for you to get (if you are paying for them yourself) but provide little or no real world benefit to you.
People don't try on cloths to see what the cloths look like. They can do that by just looking at them. People try cloths on to see how they fit - ie, how big their boobs/asses look.
Exactly. What's preventing this computer from making the clothes appear in the simulation to fit perfectly, when in fact they wouldn't fit or look that great in real life, thereby tricking the shopper into buying something they normally wouldn't?
You are right, it dose not metter what OS you are using if logic board is dead none of the OS can fix it. I never heard that any particular OS can protect from Hardware problem
They were bought a few years ago by either Digital or Compaq. Anyhow, these computers are completely fault tolerant. You can pull fucking cpu's, system boards, and even memory out of these computers and they will not even blink. They will just keep running. Every stock exchange in the world runs on these things.
No, it's not a personal computing device (i.e. a laptop or desktop), but it DOES run an OS (NonStop Kernel, NSK) which can seamlessly work around major hardware faults.
You mean all the cars of the last 2-3 decades aren't the "worst" autos of all time? I mean hell they don't last more than 8-12 years or so anymore if that. A nice 1974 Chevy 3/4-ton pickup if kept clean (to mitigate fender rot) will outlast any new GM truck hands down. The old adage "they don't make them like they used to" is sure as hell true in my book.
I disagree. That may me true for American cars (which are poorly designed and poorly built IMO).
I've owned several German cars with very good success. My first car, an '86 VW GTI. Bought it with 285k miles (not kilometers, but miles) on it. Sold it at 330k and never had any problems.
Next (and current) car is a 1985 Audi 4000 quattro. Bought it two years ago with 126k on it. It has 199k (will be 200k by the end of the week) miles now. Yes, I really do drive 35k+ miles per year (most of them are for work). Anyhow, 199k on it right now and no problems. I fact, I just drove it over 300 miles in a day from DC to north carolina in the icestorm with no issues.
Another note about my '85 Audi. It has four wheel disc brakes, four wheel independent suspension and all-wheel drive. Many *NEW* cars do not have any of these three features. It is fairly advanced even by today's standards.
Slashdot Mirror
telephone calls placed in disregard of the foregoing will be charged at two hundred fifty dollars per telephone call.
;-)
I wonder if I could place this note next to my name in the phone book.
Go ahead and violate the terms of my EULA you telemarketing bastards!
On a recent trip to Japan I noticed the huge difference in attitude towards music sale. For example, there are many music stores in Japan that rent music CD's. I don't think there's a single store in the US where you can do this. In addition, these same stores sell bulk packs of CD-R's!! It costs about US$1.00 to rent a CD album for a few days. These stores are usually frequented by young people and are very busy on a typical day. Business must be good.
Legal complications aside, the US based music stores (and us consumers) might have something to gain by taking a lesson from the Japanese.
+4 Informative? That's it? Compared to this Ask Slashdot question, this donut thread is +5 Insightful.
I would suggest putting that $7k towards your retirement. Invest it in a solid fund or IRA. This would be much wiser than blowing it on a technology that will be outdated in a couple of years.
Couple of years?? This shit will be old-hat in a few months. The guy with the $7k is obviously too stupid for his own good so his best bet is to flush the cash directly down the nearest hi-flo toilet bowl.
Too bad the processors you mentioned comparitively suck :)
Perhaps that is the case if you are a l33t g4m3r. Which I suspect you are.
If you are running a nationwide medical record database with 8000 concurrent users (I am), there is NO intel machine ANYWHERE that can handle the load.
The current crop of Itanium or Xeon servers (even 8 and 16 way) cannot even come close to the performance of the GS series Alphaservers. Not even close. Not for processing power, and definitely not for memory bandwidth. What happens when you need 32 or 64 CPU's? Or more than that even? Sorry Charlie - intel servers are tinker-toys when compared to the big-iron of today.
$7k would be plenty for a medium-sized wireless LAN.
But somehow I doubt your Aunt would be pleased if she knew that her "investment" in you was funding your desire to be a l33t g4m3r.
I'm as much an uber-geek as the next slashdotter around here, but do yourself a favor and put the cash into a CD (that's certificate of deposit - not the 12 centimeter shiny disc), or a money market account. Assuming you are young, put it on a house in a few years, or let it grow and pay for your children's college education 25 years from now.
Take this bit of advice from an elder geek who has BTDT.
the latest and greatest several-hundred-dollars-worth CPU.
;-) The CPU's in these are a couple thousand dollars each.
Only if you're buying intel can you get the latest and greatest for only several-hundred-dollars-worth. We call the intel servers at work "tinker-toys" because they are wimpy and cannot get much real work done.
The Alphaserver GS160, the IBM RS/6000, and the Sunfire 12k. Those are the manly servers that do the real work around here. I don't think you can replace fans in these things for "several-hundred-dollars-worth".
Actually, no one really knows if Gentoo on your PDA works, as it hasn't finished compiling yet. It always gets about half way there (est. time: 6 weeks) and the pda starts to smoke.
Mine finished! Wireless LAN works, and it's the most stable PDA platform I've eve
[NO CARRIER]
Is that a penguin in your pocket, or are you just glad to see me?
;-)
Nope, just Some geek pr0n.
Here's a sample:
"Lay her vertically against one jaw and put your nail against the other jaw and slowly crank it down. Once the two get close, adjust the position and angle so that the penetration will occur near one edge of the target. Since this is her first time, you'll want to take it nice and slow. If you go too fast, you might just ram it all the way through, that could be ugly. I padded the vise to protect her front side."
Yeah, it IS what you think.
But then again, what is it that they want to accomplice? If it is to become the best searchengine, they have a lot off work to do.. But if the main point is to keep people inside their MSN network things are much easier. Just put a search field on every page and there you go. If the results are oke'ish, most people will be satisfied and MS can put their commercials and such. After all if the MS monopoly has proven anything it is that barely good enough is more than enough for a lot of people..
Precisely. Microsoft doesn't have to be the best search engine to beat google - it just has to convince people that it's "good enough" and that it's easy to use.
Think about it. People use IE not because it's a better browser, but because that's what comes up when they click on the "Browse the Web" desktop icon. They are too lazy, too uninformed, or simply lack the technical skills required to download and install netscape or mozilla. In other words, using any other browser besides IE has become a chore - you have to download it, install it, configure it, and learn how to use it.
If Microsoft makes typing in "www.google.com" a chore, no one will use it and M$ will have won. All they have to do is use some strategy in placing their search links. Put a search link on every Microsoft web page. Put one on the taskbar in Windows. Put one on the start menu. Put one on the IE menu, and lastly, redirect all entires in the URL bar to MSN search if it isn't a valid URL.
They don't have to be best, they have to be easiest and be "just good enough".
I would consider it if I was out of work, but I can't *stand* indian cuisine. The smell makes my stomach turn and curry makes me gag. I don't mean to insult any of our indian readers, but is there readily available "american" food in India?
This is a serious question, not a troll!
Most of them are writers for a reason.
That's right fuckwad. It's probably because they enjoy writing.
Does anyone know the Linux system requirements for 2.6? I.e. what gcc, libc, etc. are required to run it?
Correct, I typed too quickly. Mine is an AMD K6, not a PII. Don't know what I was thinking. And I'm not sure what the original K6 is. Anyone?
Original K6 is Pentium II equivalent and enjoyed speeds up to 300 Mhz.
But you forgot about the Pentium Pro. It is also i686. It came in 150, 166, 180, and 200 Mhz. I'm typing this from a 200Mhz PPro with 1MB cache and 128MB RAM using i686 build of moz.
You're not totally correct here: 686 is everything from PentiumII / K6-2 and up.
Neither are you sir. Ahem, i686 is everything from Pentium Pro and up. I'm typing this from a PPro 200 (with a huge 1MB L2 cache) and 128MB running an i686 mozilla build.
I guess it's important to ask the following question: was 2.4 ever designed to run on those kinds of processors? I mean, the O(1) scheduler is a pretty cool, processor independant change; but was 2.6 designed with specific optimizations for newer processors (and newer instructions) in mind? I'd be interested to see benchmarks from old hardware -- i.e., stuff like I've got sitting around. (If only I had a bit more time. Maybe I can borrow some cycles from 2.6 Linux boxen.)
I'm guessing that the answer is yes and no.
When you roll your own kernel, you can select which CPU you are building for. This enables optimizations for that specific CPU (but usually breaks compatibility with older CPU's). So no, I don't think it was build with these new CPU's in mind, but it does have the optional optimizations in there to take advantage of them - just like it does for 486 and pentium and Athlon.
Keep in mind that your compiler must also have approperiate optimizations for your CPU to see the best performance. I'm not sure how far gcc has come on PPC970, Opteron, and Itanium these days.
I paid $85 for my econ text book. The damn thing is a *paperback* book. It's not even a very good book. The chapers are too long and the quiz questions are too hard. What a ripoff.
I would recommend becoming an airport skycap, a washed-up athlete, or possibly the CEO of a poorly performing US company. That's where the money is these days.
Have a look.
Unless you got stuck being an anusologist, stay with medicine.
Ahem... I believe the correct term to be "bungholeologist" or possibly "poopchuteologist".
disclaimer: IANAD (but I play one on slashdot)
How can an old newcomer break into the industry?
It seems plenty of other slashdotters have beat me to the "Move to India" suggestion.
But realistically, the best way to get into the computer/tech industry is to get into one of the high profit vertical markets. Great examples of these are Enterprise Storage (IBM, EMC, HP, Sun, Hitachi), Supercomputing (HP, IBM, SGI), maybe even VOIP or biometric security. Additionally, consulting services which are wrapped around the aforementioned markets are particularly lucrative.
You basically want to avoid like the plague any job which can be easily outsourced to India or another cheap labor market. Programmers, Call center workers, WWW operations are a few examples.
Also, dime-a-dozen certifications like MCSE and MCP should be avoided as they are usually costly for you to get (if you are paying for them yourself) but provide little or no real world benefit to you.
Just my two cents.
Who created that 3D model of the nude chick? It couldn't have been a geek.
;-)
You'd have to have access to an attractive naked chick to make a 3D model of one.
Cool. Does this mean we will get to see naked photo-realistic avatars of all the other shoppers too??
;-)
If so, I'm going to start taking my girlfriend underwear shopping more often
People don't try on cloths to see what the cloths look like. They can do that by just looking at them. People try cloths on to see how they fit - ie, how big their boobs/asses look.
Exactly. What's preventing this computer from making the clothes appear in the simulation to fit perfectly, when in fact they wouldn't fit or look that great in real life, thereby tricking the shopper into buying something they normally wouldn't?
You are right, it dose not metter what OS you are using if logic board is dead none of the OS can fix it. I never heard that any particular OS can protect from Hardware problem
Then you haven't heard of Tandem Computers.
They were bought a few years ago by either Digital or Compaq. Anyhow, these computers are completely fault tolerant. You can pull fucking cpu's, system boards, and even memory out of these computers and they will not even blink. They will just keep running. Every stock exchange in the world runs on these things.
No, it's not a personal computing device (i.e. a laptop or desktop), but it DOES run an OS (NonStop Kernel, NSK) which can seamlessly work around major hardware faults.
You mean all the cars of the last 2-3 decades aren't the "worst" autos of all time? I mean hell they don't last more than 8-12 years or so anymore if that. A nice 1974 Chevy 3/4-ton pickup if kept clean (to mitigate fender rot) will outlast any new GM truck hands down. The old adage "they don't make them like they used to" is sure as hell true in my book.
I disagree. That may me true for American cars (which are poorly designed and poorly built IMO).
I've owned several German cars with very good success. My first car, an '86 VW GTI. Bought it with 285k miles (not kilometers, but miles) on it. Sold it at 330k and never had any problems.
Next (and current) car is a 1985 Audi 4000 quattro. Bought it two years ago with 126k on it. It has 199k (will be 200k by the end of the week) miles now. Yes, I really do drive 35k+ miles per year (most of them are for work). Anyhow, 199k on it right now and no problems. I fact, I just drove it over 300 miles in a day from DC to north carolina in the icestorm with no issues.
Another note about my '85 Audi. It has four wheel disc brakes, four wheel independent suspension and all-wheel drive. Many *NEW* cars do not have any of these three features. It is fairly advanced even by today's standards.
German cars. Mmmmmmmmm.