[20:11] a) it's a website hack, similar to the riaa.org hack, someone ****ed with the server and put whatever tey wanted there [20:12] <C0ffeeMan> don't login to the site without going to the real site first... the real site in the topic [20:12] <flipmo> nope [20:12] <C0ffeeMan> c) loggin into the other site will prolly compromise your password [20:12] <flipmo> the actual isonews server is still intact [20:12] <C0ffeeMan> d) the doj prolly hasn't taken it down cuase they are idiots [20:13] <C0ffeeMan> d) no i haven't talked to k8 in a wile, but others have.... hence the fake website, it's not really something to give a **** about [20:13] <C0ffeeMan> e) nobody else has been charged with selling modchips,why should he... use common sense [20:13] <C0ffeeMan> f) it was a good hack, and a good joke... good job (whoever)... i hope you're listening good hsit. [20:13] <flipmo> amen
I admit: I'd never been particularly enthused upon hearing the Microsoft Sound, but decided to revist it when I came across this entry on everything2:
"The idea came up at the time when I was completely bereft of ideas. I'd been working on my own music for a while and was quite lost, actually. And I really appreciated someone coming along and saying, 'Here's a specific problem -- solve it.' The thing from the agency said, 'We want a piece of music that is inspiring, universal, blah-blah, da-da-da, optimistic, futuristic, sentimental, emotional,' this whole list of adjectives, and then at the bottom it said 'and it must be 3¼ seconds long.' I thought this was so funny and an amazing thought to actually try to make a little piece of music. It's like making a tiny little jewel. In fact, I made 84 pieces. I got completely into this world of tiny, tiny little pieces of music. I was so sensitive to microseconds at the end of this that it really broke a logjam in my own work. Then when I'd finished that and I went back to working with pieces that were like three minutes long, it seemed like oceans of time." -- Brian Eno
The 'father' of ambient himself made the sound, despite his personal use of a Macintosh. Just food for thought.
While your experience sounds pretty negative, most people have very positive experiences with them -- check out their ratings on DSLreports. The Cream of the Crop for DSL providers.
I'd also like to second Speakeasy as a cost-effective solution. My friend has our geekhouse server in our closet from Speakeasy, they sent a very knowledgable guy out to do the install, have been helpful whenever we've needed it and had extremely little downtime.
The 1100Kbps up/down connection we have runs about 350$ a month, which is less than half that of any T1 connection in the area. When I spoke to a guy at bandwith.com he said the best he could do for a simalar price was a 384Kbps dedicated connection. Our pings stay under 20 ms to most sites, and if you host a few pages, then you'll easily be able to recoop the costs of the connection.
The only potential snag you may run into is that they may try to route your packets through a far-away place; for us the packets were originally travelling from LA through Seattle, back to LA (sounds like a UPS shipping route) making latency a bit of an issue. We paid them a bit extra to move our traffic only through a LA server, but even with this additional cost, its still much cheaper than any alternative we've seen.
"Linux is only free if your time has no value" -- Jamie Zawinski
I'm assuming you're misquoting this jwz one, which I'd have to agree with. Though Windows is no learning cakewalk, to become a Joe Bloggs user of Linux certainly takes much, much more time than becoming a Joe Windows.
I tried setting up my first Linux system when about 7 years ago, the first thing I had to do was learn how to edit the X configuration to enable resolutions my video card could handle -- this sort of thing [though certainly less prevalent today] is what makes Linux a long shot at least for many people.
Getting things like newer soundcards to work, CD-Rs, Cardbus NICs, these things require large amounts of time to get to work. Without a lowered techincal demand from the fundamental level & more preinstalled systems, Linux will have a significantly hard time penetrating markets.
jwz uses Linux. I use Linux. But that doesn't mean I haven't spent endless hours fiddling to be able to use the operating system effectively. Of course, I'm still in college, and my time is relatively cheap, but many others cannot afford this initial startup cost of knowledge. I'm hopeful [and have seen good signs] of forthcoming simple, idiot proof computing using an OS with the idiology of the future.
as pointed out by other reponses, your arguments about library requirements and filesize are more or less moot points.
More importantly, we should look at the program's versatility and ui.
Java has worked hard to become usable over many os/hardware combos. For the most part it succeeds, albeit at a cost in speed. GTK+ is designed primarily for X clients, and isn't usable by the majority of filesharers. The Limewire programmers can program in a relatively nice language and develop an entirely cross-platform result at no extra cost.
UI is what matters now to people. Limewire has a well thought-out and easy to use UI. This is important for the masses -- the same ones who'll be sharing the files you want. Lean and mean doesn't equate to much when people really just want simple and effective.
bottomline: use whatever floats your boat, but most of us will stick with something we can use off of any modern machine with no need for elbowgrease.
"Linux is only free if your time has no value" -- Jamie Zawinski
Don't get me wrong, I love open software, but this is one aspect I've never quite understood -- Which information wants to be free and which doesn't. In a 1990 interview with Denning
RMS states:
I believe that all generally useful information should be free. By `free' I am not referring to price, but rather to the freedom to copy the information and to adapt it to one's own uses"
He makes clear that private information, credit card information, et cetera isn't 'generally useful'.
This has always been a difficult point of the open source community for me to fathom -- where is the line in the sand between information which is useful and should be free and that which should be kept proprietary. Is it limited to these two ideas RMS hits upon, or is their other `sacred data' that should be left unknown and inaccessible to the general populous?
Personally, I'd tend to believe that the algorithms themselves, the building blocks of devices, are what want (and should) be free, and that information / ideas / implementations of such shouldn't necessarily be free. I.e. If I encrypt my password in an MD5 hash[?], information about the algorithm to my password should be freely available, but the actual contents should not. I don't know how well this analogy holds to all things in real life, but I'm interested in others' perspectives.
I will not cover why higher processors help out hardcore computer users, this subject has been thoroughly reviewed in other
follow-ups to your post. But why the processors help Joe Consumer is another issue entirely.
Now, partially it is nothing more than a macho act of stupidity, and heavy marketing from the industry. For example,
refrigerators have been a more or less static appliance in the home for the last ~twenty years, but still have managed to keep
their price up by adding 'needed' features. But I digress.
The processor increases help Joe Consumer get technology for the future. Software programs generally aren't developed for
the top three percent of the processor market, they are developed for the mainstream. When Joe Consumer has a 1Ghz Chip
under his hood, more companies will invent software to utilize it. Back in the days of 486s, technologies such as MP3
playback and photo editing weren't widely available, because the CPU wasn't fast enough for it. But as CPU speeds
increase, more options come of age. MPEG-4 is here, MPEG-7 is around the corner, voice recognition software is
becoming effective, and other new cutting edge CPU intensive tasks are always developing.
The bottom line is, When Joe buys this computer, the market will invent reasons for him to need it. Mr. Consumer won't buy
faster computers if they don't have any effect on his usage.
Now while I do think that tech such as SMP and bandwidth are more useful, progress is progress. No point bitching about
it. As for your statements about the need for better portable storage, I think that the proliferation of high bandwidth will keep
this need to a minimal.
I remember reading an article in 2600 about using the earth itself as a means of propagating radio signals. It supposedly could transmit information across thousands of miles. Of course it was merely a 2600 article, so it may be pure bunk.
I'd appreiciate a response by anyone who knows more about the topic, as if definitely would be a neat means of communication.
From what I remember, Apple was more or less resurrected by Jobs by concentrating Apple on four things. Hopefully tangents such as this won't bring a second downfall to a company that's made it so far through so much.
Cost of CD to Consumer: $13-18 Royalties going to artist: <$1
</Common knowledge>
Obvious Fact #1: Record Labels rip the Artist. Obvious Fact #2: Record sales have been up.
Conclusion: Go bitch to the record company. They are jacking you. Don't blame the compression format. Don't blame piece of software XYZ. Don't base your opinion of where your money is coming from off some FUD the same people who are jacking you are feeding you.
Embrace the new technology -- use it to your advantage (TMBG comes to mind).
If you don't like people being rich to begin with, then please say so.
When the wealth is attained by stepping on the lower classes, yes I do have a problem. I see situations of people making masses of money by exploiting those around them. This is in my mind unjust.
The middle class can go into a bookstore and acquire any of those texts for $4.95
Do you support open source? Download Mp3's? I'm sorry for throwing a quick red herring in, but it seems to me that paying publishers for something they didn't create would follow logic goverened on the same principles as mp3s.
The poor can go into a library and borrow exactly the same works for free. Well, not really. They paid taxes to be able to access that literature. Project Gutenburg gives (e)books without any direct or indirect cost.
All said, I'm guessing that at some level it boils down to being an idealistic college student. See Bulworth.
Oh god you hurt. Do you own massive shares of Microsoft and AOL/Time or something? How can you possibly believe that corperate domination and monopolization help the world? Socialism failed respectively, but it is still the basic governmental structure of many countries. American capitalism fails in giving freedom by making the rich richer and the poor poorer.
As other responses have pointed out, copyright law is designed to give the knowledge back to the people, after a given amount of time.
This man is great. Showing that the Open Source / GPL model can be logicially extrended beyond the limits of software. I'm just waiting for 'Open Source Canidate' to be listed the next time I'm at the polls.
Since I'm assuming this thing uses custom video input over vanilla SVGA, I'm wondering if drivers are at all an issue on displays such as these? Or is it more video card problems?
It would be quite the downer to walk out of my Fry's with my pimpin' new display... but only windows compatable? It would hurt.
Now given that censoring mp3's is a next to impossible task, if any country was going to endevor into such an evil task, I'd give Germany the highest chance of suceeding (well, short of the psuedo Commie-Capitalists of China).
I am an avid fan of a certain video game, Jagged Alliance 2, and remember the amount of work Germans had to go through to get the game with its gore... smuggling, warez... Germany as a country (sadly) seems supportive of these kind of activities.
I have been using Gnutella for a few days now, and have to say that its a great product, unlike anything before it. People, please stop bitching about other Napster clones -- its really not comparable to Napster. After I started using Gnutella, I, like a good netcitizen tried to post on slashdot, which was of course a useless gesture, but I still tried. Now I'm quite glad I didn't make it. From what I can tell, the massive force behind slashdot basically caused the crumble of Gnutella. Why I think so:
Before the article the gnut network was floating at about 80 hosts mark -- now its around 220. In the hours proceeding the./ arcticle, the Gnullsoft server was doing fine -- then goes down in what Tom (member of (G)Nullsoft) described as from slashdotting.
That being said, I know that sooner or later it would've probably gone down eventually, but slash certainly helped speed it up -- slash post, then Salon, Wired, C|net and any other online publisher jump it... now AOL is aware. Which may or may not have caused this more looming downtime. But maybe if Tom and Justin were given a little more time they could've talked to AOL more about their offshoot... now probably a pointless gesture, AOL on a whole doesn't seem to like being nipped in the butt.
On other random tangents, I'll have to say the Gnutella was the first article to make me lose faith in the quality of slashdot. Hemos's opener was insulting, implying that the Nullsoft people had some agenda because they have been bought out. I'm as much against corperate mergers as the next guy, but when their are still independent positive movements coming out of one (Netscape, Nullsoft), at least support them. Stop the paranoia please. Also, the posts on slashdot from both of these articles have been rather disgraceful... the mod'ed up items have been either pastings of text from the old Gnullsoft site, or on this article file mirrors. Stupid.
While this certainly is positive in that people, not only corporations, will easily be able to obtain patents, it will mean more patents. With such silly patents flying about in the software industry (Amazon, et cetera) this could be quite bad.
On another pessimistic note, I was under the impression that most of the inventions these days came from the working class at large corporations who never get to see a nickel from their work.
Because of the sheer dominance of Windows (9x) as the gaming platform of choice, Linux seems that it is always playing catch up. The developers generally build sepecifically for Windows, certainly making your job tougher. What will it take for Linux to be a primary development platform? Does the Linux community need to make strives to enrich certain aspects of itself, or is it an issue of critical mass?
It seems to me everytime a CPU / Motherboard speed post is made, the 4+ mod'ed up respondents devolve their conversations into one of two camps, fighting the same old arguement:
1. "Why do people need faster computers? I just dropped in my shiny new _____(number) mhz processor which cost me $_____ (number), and I can't tell the difference when running _____ (noun). Sure I'll have lots of extra cpu cycles to donate to _____ (noun), but does that _____ (verb) me?
2. "Many people need faster computers. ______ (pural noun) need them to render gibs at a minimum of ___ (number) fps. _______ (plural noun) need them to handle ____ (number) hits a second, so they can survive _____ (number) simaltaneous DoS attacks! And don't forget about the ______ (plural noun), what would we do without quintupple anti-aliasing of Buzz Lightyear's helmet in Toy Story ___(number)!
Okay, so mild exagerations aside, both sides have valid points. The bottom line is that yes, their are many uses for ultra fast processors, and yes, John Zaibatsu won't notice the difference when typing up word documents, something more revolutionary than a higher clock speed and higher transistor count will have to come into play to get things rolling once again.
Why do we dally around with 50 mhz clock uppings? Because its a proven means of creating wealth for the high tech companies -- John Zaibatsu will go get that new processor regardless of whether he really needs it. Companies/research outside of the already established tech cash flow need to cause another revolution.
Bring out my microprocessors measured in atoms instead of nanometers. I want a distributed system for myself, with a processor count that can't be measured with one digit of binary. Revolutionary system design -- don't bother with getting rid of the arcane scroll lock key or ISA slot, build a new system of input! Moore's law isn't a law, only an observation. Breaking it isn't impossible.
Okay, got the futurist ramble out of the system.
(Enter flames about how I've been reading too much Science Fiction and why we need a scroll lock key:)
I find it mildly amusing that Fantasia was originally blasted by the critics, and wasn't even considered a children's movie. Fantasia didn't gain critical acclaim until the 60's, partially because of the widescale use of psychedelic drugs at the time (notice the styling on this poster). Now the Fantasia series is for kids... go figure.
I remember my friend showing me a SCSI hard drive a few years back they had somehow gotten to go spin faster than it was supposed to, and generate enough centripetal force to knock over the entire computer case. Quite amusing.
I'm an avid fan of distributed.net, have all my boxes cracking RC5, but it seems to me that SETI@home would have the implementation already set up for the distributed computing of radio waves.
Also, in all likelyhood the information needed would already be gathered by the time a server and client core was coded...
I was wondering if anyone had any insite into whether or not the same problem could crop up with RC5. I've (http://stats.distributed.net/rc5-64/psummary.php3 ?id=74973) been working on this more long term project for nearing 600 days, and a simalar mishap could be devistating to our time to completion.
Slashdot Mirror
[20:11] a) it's a website hack, similar to the riaa.org hack, someone ****ed with the server and put whatever tey wanted there ,why should he... use common sense ... i hope you're listening good hsit.
[20:12] <C0ffeeMan> don't login to the site without going to the real site first... the real site in the topic
[20:12] <flipmo> nope
[20:12] <C0ffeeMan> c) loggin into the other site will prolly compromise your password
[20:12] <flipmo> the actual isonews server is still intact
[20:12] <C0ffeeMan> d) the doj prolly hasn't taken it down cuase they are idiots
[20:13] <C0ffeeMan> d) no i haven't talked to k8 in a wile, but others have.... hence the fake website, it's not really something to give a **** about
[20:13] <C0ffeeMan> e) nobody else has been charged with selling modchips
[20:13] <C0ffeeMan> f) it was a good hack, and a good joke... good job (whoever)
[20:13] <flipmo> amen
The 'father' of ambient himself made the sound, despite his personal use of a Macintosh. Just food for thought.
While your experience sounds pretty negative, most people have very positive experiences with them -- check out their ratings on DSLreports. The Cream of the Crop for DSL providers.
I'd also like to second Speakeasy as a cost-effective solution. My friend has our geekhouse server in our closet from Speakeasy, they sent a very knowledgable guy out to do the install, have been helpful whenever we've needed it and had extremely little downtime.
The 1100Kbps up/down connection we have runs about 350$ a month, which is less than half that of any T1 connection in the area. When I spoke to a guy at bandwith.com he said the best he could do for a simalar price was a 384Kbps dedicated connection. Our pings stay under 20 ms to most sites, and if you host a few pages, then you'll easily be able to recoop the costs of the connection.
The only potential snag you may run into is that they may try to route your packets through a far-away place; for us the packets were originally travelling from LA through Seattle, back to LA (sounds like a UPS shipping route) making latency a bit of an issue. We paid them a bit extra to move our traffic only through a LA server, but even with this additional cost, its still much cheaper than any alternative we've seen.
"Linux is only free if your time has no value"
-- Jamie Zawinski
I'm assuming you're misquoting this jwz one, which I'd have to agree with. Though Windows is no learning cakewalk, to become a Joe Bloggs user of Linux certainly takes much, much more time than becoming a Joe Windows.
I tried setting up my first Linux system when about 7 years ago, the first thing I had to do was learn how to edit the X configuration to enable resolutions my video card could handle -- this sort of thing [though certainly less prevalent today] is what makes Linux a long shot at least for many people.
Getting things like newer soundcards to work, CD-Rs, Cardbus NICs, these things require large amounts of time to get to work. Without a lowered techincal demand from the fundamental level & more preinstalled systems, Linux will have a significantly hard time penetrating markets.
jwz uses Linux. I use Linux. But that doesn't mean I haven't spent endless hours fiddling to be able to use the operating system effectively. Of course, I'm still in college, and my time is relatively cheap, but many others cannot afford this initial startup cost of knowledge. I'm hopeful [and have seen good signs] of forthcoming simple, idiot proof computing using an OS with the idiology of the future.
More importantly, we should look at the program's versatility and ui.
- Java has worked hard to become usable over many os/hardware combos. For the most part it succeeds, albeit at a cost in speed. GTK+ is designed primarily for X clients, and isn't usable by the majority of filesharers. The Limewire programmers can program in a relatively nice language and develop an entirely cross-platform result at no extra cost.
- UI is what matters now to people. Limewire has a well thought-out and easy to use UI. This is important for the masses -- the same ones who'll be sharing the files you want. Lean and mean doesn't equate to much when people really just want simple and effective.
bottomline: use whatever floats your boat, but most of us will stick with something we can use off of any modern machine with no need for elbowgrease."Linux is only free if your time has no value" -- Jamie Zawinski
Don't get me wrong, I love open software, but this is one aspect I've never quite understood -- Which information wants to be free and which doesn't. In a 1990 interview with Denning RMS states:
He makes clear that private information, credit card information, et cetera isn't 'generally useful'.
This has always been a difficult point of the open source community for me to fathom -- where is the line in the sand between information which is useful and should be free and that which should be kept proprietary. Is it limited to these two ideas RMS hits upon, or is their other `sacred data' that should be left unknown and inaccessible to the general populous?
Personally, I'd tend to believe that the algorithms themselves, the building blocks of devices, are what want (and should) be free, and that information / ideas / implementations of such shouldn't necessarily be free. I.e. If I encrypt my password in an MD5 hash[?], information about the algorithm to my password should be freely available, but the actual contents should not. I don't know how well this analogy holds to all things in real life, but I'm interested in others' perspectives.
Now, partially it is nothing more than a macho act of stupidity, and heavy marketing from the industry. For example, refrigerators have been a more or less static appliance in the home for the last ~twenty years, but still have managed to keep their price up by adding 'needed' features. But I digress.
The processor increases help Joe Consumer get technology for the future. Software programs generally aren't developed for the top three percent of the processor market, they are developed for the mainstream. When Joe Consumer has a 1Ghz Chip under his hood, more companies will invent software to utilize it. Back in the days of 486s, technologies such as MP3 playback and photo editing weren't widely available, because the CPU wasn't fast enough for it. But as CPU speeds increase, more options come of age. MPEG-4 is here, MPEG-7 is around the corner, voice recognition software is becoming effective, and other new cutting edge CPU intensive tasks are always developing.
The bottom line is, When Joe buys this computer, the market will invent reasons for him to need it. Mr. Consumer won't buy faster computers if they don't have any effect on his usage.
Now while I do think that tech such as SMP and bandwidth are more useful, progress is progress. No point bitching about it. As for your statements about the need for better portable storage, I think that the proliferation of high bandwidth will keep this need to a minimal.
I'd appreiciate a response by anyone who knows more about the topic, as if definitely would be a neat means of communication.
From what I remember, Apple was more or less resurrected by Jobs by concentrating Apple on four things. Hopefully tangents such as this won't bring a second downfall to a company that's made it so far through so much.
Royalties going to artist: <$1
</Common knowledge>
Obvious Fact #1: Record Labels rip the Artist.
Obvious Fact #2: Record sales have been up.
Conclusion: Go bitch to the record company. They are jacking you. Don't blame the compression format. Don't blame piece of software XYZ. Don't base your opinion of where your money is coming from off some FUD the same people who are jacking you are feeding you.
Embrace the new technology -- use it to your advantage (TMBG comes to mind).
If you don't like people being rich to begin with, then please say so.
When the wealth is attained by stepping on the lower classes, yes I do have a problem. I see situations of people making masses of money by exploiting those around them. This is in my mind unjust.
The middle class can go into a bookstore and acquire any of those texts for $4.95
Do you support open source? Download Mp3's? I'm sorry for throwing a quick red herring in, but it seems to me that paying publishers for something they didn't create would follow logic goverened on the same principles as mp3s.
The poor can go into a library and borrow exactly the same works for free. Well, not really. They paid taxes to be able to access that literature. Project Gutenburg gives (e)books without any direct or indirect cost.
All said, I'm guessing that at some level it boils down to being an idealistic college student. See Bulworth.
I realize the mistake in my statement. I meant to convey the fact that the rich poor gap is widening.
While the country as a whole *is* attaining greater wealth, it is strongly top heavy. 'Free' helps eliminate rich privilage.
Oh god you hurt. Do you own massive shares of Microsoft and AOL/Time or something? How can you possibly believe that corperate domination and monopolization help the world? Socialism failed respectively, but it is still the basic governmental structure of many countries. American capitalism fails in giving freedom by making the rich richer and the poor poorer.
As other responses have pointed out, copyright law is designed to give the knowledge back to the people, after a given amount of time.
This man is great. Showing that the Open Source / GPL model can be logicially extrended beyond the limits of software. I'm just waiting for 'Open Source Canidate' to be listed the next time I'm at the polls.
Since I'm assuming this thing uses custom video input over vanilla SVGA, I'm wondering if drivers are at all an issue on displays such as these? Or is it more video card problems?
It would be quite the downer to walk out of my Fry's with my pimpin' new display... but only windows compatable? It would hurt.
Now given that censoring mp3's is a next to impossible task, if any country was going to endevor into such an evil task, I'd give Germany the highest chance of suceeding (well, short of the psuedo Commie-Capitalists of China).
I am an avid fan of a certain video game, Jagged Alliance 2, and remember the amount of work Germans had to go through to get the game with its gore... smuggling, warez... Germany as a country (sadly) seems supportive of these kind of activities.
I have been using Gnutella for a few days now, and have to say that its a great product, unlike anything before it. People, please stop bitching about other Napster clones -- its really not comparable to Napster. After I started using Gnutella, I, like a good netcitizen tried to post on slashdot, which was of course a useless gesture, but I still tried. Now I'm quite glad I didn't make it. From what I can tell, the massive force behind slashdot basically caused the crumble of Gnutella. Why I think so:
./ arcticle, the Gnullsoft server was doing fine -- then goes down in what Tom (member of (G)Nullsoft) described as from slashdotting.
Before the article the gnut network was floating at about 80 hosts mark -- now its around 220. In the hours proceeding the
That being said, I know that sooner or later it would've probably gone down eventually, but slash certainly helped speed it up -- slash post, then Salon, Wired, C|net and any other online publisher jump it... now AOL is aware. Which may or may not have caused this more looming downtime. But maybe if Tom and Justin were given a little more time they could've talked to AOL more about their offshoot... now probably a pointless gesture, AOL on a whole doesn't seem to like being nipped in the butt.
On other random tangents, I'll have to say the Gnutella was the first article to make me lose faith in the quality of slashdot. Hemos's opener was insulting, implying that the Nullsoft people had some agenda because they have been bought out. I'm as much against corperate mergers as the next guy, but when their are still independent positive movements coming out of one (Netscape, Nullsoft), at least support them. Stop the paranoia please. Also, the posts on slashdot from both of these articles have been rather disgraceful... the mod'ed up items have been either pastings of text from the old Gnullsoft site, or on this article file mirrors. Stupid.
While this certainly is positive in that people, not only corporations, will easily be able to obtain patents, it will mean more patents. With such silly patents flying about in the software industry (Amazon, et cetera) this could be quite bad.
On another pessimistic note, I was under the impression that most of the inventions these days came from the working class at large corporations who never get to see a nickel from their work.
This leads me to conclude that soon, AMD and Intel will also have their very own operating systems.
Now how are we ever going to get good benchmarking numbers?
*grin*
Because of the sheer dominance of Windows (9x) as the gaming platform of choice, Linux seems that it is always playing catch up. The developers generally build sepecifically for Windows, certainly making your job tougher.
What will it take for Linux to be a primary development platform? Does the Linux community need to make strives to enrich certain aspects of itself, or is it an issue of critical mass?
It seems to me everytime a CPU / Motherboard speed post is made, the 4+ mod'ed up respondents devolve their conversations into one of two camps, fighting the same old arguement:
1. "Why do people need faster computers? I just dropped in my shiny new _____(number) mhz processor which cost me $_____ (number), and I can't tell the difference when running _____ (noun). Sure I'll have lots of extra cpu cycles to donate to _____ (noun), but does that _____ (verb) me?
2. "Many people need faster computers. ______ (pural noun) need them to render gibs at a minimum of ___ (number) fps. _______ (plural noun) need them to handle ____ (number) hits a second, so they can survive _____ (number) simaltaneous DoS attacks! And don't forget about the ______ (plural noun), what would we do without quintupple anti-aliasing of Buzz Lightyear's helmet in Toy Story ___(number)!
Okay, so mild exagerations aside, both sides have valid points. The bottom line is that yes, their are many uses for ultra fast processors, and yes, John Zaibatsu won't notice the difference when typing up word documents, something more revolutionary than a higher clock speed and higher transistor count will have to come into play to get things rolling once again.
Why do we dally around with 50 mhz clock uppings? Because its a proven means of creating wealth for the high tech companies -- John Zaibatsu will go get that new processor regardless of whether he really needs it. Companies/research outside of the already established tech cash flow need to cause another revolution.
Bring out my microprocessors measured in atoms instead of nanometers. I want a distributed system for myself, with a processor count that can't be measured with one digit of binary. Revolutionary system design -- don't bother with getting rid of the arcane scroll lock key or ISA slot, build a new system of input! Moore's law isn't a law, only an observation. Breaking it isn't impossible.
Okay, got the futurist ramble out of the system.
(Enter flames about how I've been reading too much Science Fiction and why we need a scroll lock key:)
I find it mildly amusing that Fantasia was originally blasted by the critics, and wasn't even considered a children's movie. Fantasia didn't gain critical acclaim until the 60's, partially because of the widescale use of psychedelic drugs at the time (notice the styling on this poster). Now the Fantasia series is for kids... go figure.
I remember my friend showing me a SCSI hard drive a few years back they had somehow gotten to go spin faster than it was supposed to, and generate enough centripetal force to knock over the entire computer case. Quite amusing.
I'm an avid fan of distributed.net, have all my boxes cracking RC5, but it seems to me that SETI@home would have the implementation already set up for the distributed computing of radio waves.
Also, in all likelyhood the information needed would already be gathered by the time a server and client core was coded...
I was wondering if anyone had any insite into whether or not the same problem could crop up with RC5. I've (http://stats.distributed.net/rc5-64/psummary.php3 ?id=74973) been working on this more long term project for nearing 600 days, and a simalar mishap could be devistating to our time to completion.