I have 2 digital cable boxes for Shaw (Canada). The extra cost? None, except purchasing the box itself. (In my case free, as it was given to me by a friend).
There was no fee for enabling the second box, and no fee for continuing to use it. I -could- hook it up to my VCR and use it to record anything I want whenever I want. (VCR supports one of those ir-dongles to change cable box channels).
You really think having two seperate decoder boxes and an ir dongle is a great leap forward? I didn't say it wasn't possible to contort yourself through a bunch of hoops to get what you want, but why bother? I have an antenna that pulls in tv channels for free. If you're going to convince me to spend money for the same thing it needs to be easier and more convient rather than the opposite.
This is one of the big reasons I canceled cable and continue to refuse to get a satellite system--I don't want a box, with another remote (that would make 5 total) and a barrier to recording one program while I watch another. We know why cable providers love these stupid boxes (they can send more vacuous, overly-compressed channels, and don't like time-shifting anyway) but unless they can come up with a convincing reason I should pay for inferior service, I'll continue to just say no.
It's the hole you don't know about that's trouble. And the only way you know about this hole is via a mechanism HP's trying to suppress. So how will you work around the next one?
That doesn't imply that net installs will be impossible, only that a new install method is being written. "boot-floppies" is the name of the old system (even though it also supported other devices), and doesn't refer to the concept of booting from a floppy disk.
Hmm. In my experience many of these browser-based apps use activex and only work with msie. Browser-based apps are trendy, so you're seeing a lot of them--that doesn't mean the the people implementing them grasp the point.
The is absolutely no reason to go with a 64bit CPU unless you have to do a lot of work with 64bit integers (unlikely) or you need greater then 4gigs of memory space (more likely).
Hmm. Unlikely things like doing an ls in a filesystem that supports large files or doing an mmap on same? 32 bits is getting to be a common limitation as hard disks jump past 200GB and consumer systems are shipping with.5G RAM or more.
(Sure, the images load fast--it's the unnecessary shtml that's/.ed...when will they learn?)
This sort of integration is a good thing, though it really needs to be done commercially (not as a case mod hack.) At some point in the future I hope to see ubiqutous computing--people should just be able to do what they want without having to sit in front of "the computer" like a supplicant in a shrine. That sort of approach changes the design of computers out of necessity--a distinct keyboard and monitor just don't make any sense in that environment. And human nature being what it is, people are going to want machines that blend into their homes, not stick out like ugly distractions the way they do now.
You're confusing theoretical and real-world transfer rates. I've got firewire enclosures and I have usb2 enclosures, and I find that the usb2 stuff is slower, given the same hard drive. It doesn't matter that it should be faster, it's just not. That could be driver immaturity, it could be firmware immaturity, or it could just be that usb2 isn't as good at utilizing its bandwidth as is firewire. Regardless of the reason, however, I find a firewire enclosure faster and more useful than a usb2 at this time.
I've been using USB2 on linux for a while now. Since the kernel has source available, it's possible to apply patches to add features without waiting on a vendor. It would be more accurate to say something like "mainstream usb2 support" or "usb2 in released 2.4 kernel".
FWIW, I've found USB2 to be not as fast as firewire for things like hard drives, a conclusion that windows benchmarks have also shown. So it's not like the delay in releasing 2.4.19 is really hurting anything, especially since there aren't many usb2 devices or ports around anyway.
At least at my office, vital files are saved using a source control system, not on individual machines. That source control system is then backed up, both on- and off-site. My MP3s are not backed up any more than my apps are. Most generic backup systems I know of allow you to specify which directories are backed up, and again my MP3 collection wouldn't be part of that.
Yes, that would be the "trust the users to put everything in the right place" method. In my experience, not a great idea. It sounds good until the CEO demands a copy of the new business plan he put in C:\randomlocation\plan.doc after the hard drive crashes. If you keep the local hard drive small and don't allow users to write to it, that's just not an issue. Go ahead and complain about bofh if you want, but that's the only way to ensure that people don't put critical data in areas that aren't backed up.
Shouldn't your userID be BOFH? I have 10+ gigs of MP3s from my CD collection on my hard drive.
So the hard drives are cheap, but what about the extra backup capacity required for 1000 users with 10+GB of mp3's on their hard drives? Do you have those ever-so-rare users who only keep the company's critical files in the appropriate backed-up locations on the fileserver (as opposed to the huge disk you just gave them)? Or do you just skip backups?
What really suprised me in this article is that some of the commercial unices were so poor in their implementation. Solaris was only secured after tweaking, Mac OS X, while not 100% attackable, still wasn't much better. Same for IRIX and AIX. I didn't notice version numbers however, does anyone know if the state has changed for newer version of IRIX?
It wasn't clear to me whether they tested irix with the strong iss option enabled. (tcpiss_md5=1) I assume they did not.
Are you kidding? I love the 3" cd format--I've got a spindle of 50 3" cdr's on my desk right now. The music industry probably stopped using it because it's more theft-prone than the 5" format. (Small enough to fit in a pocket, smaller than the usual anti-theft boxes will hold)--but the fact that it fits in a pocket is a huge advantage for me. The jewel cases for these are *exactly* the same size as a 3.5" floppy, so you can get some more life out of your old floppy stroage bins...
Upscale clothing stores coordinate shipments of clothing with when celebrities wear them.
Tiger Woods has a staff the schedules when and where he will wear a particular shirt, pants or shoes. These items arrive in stores a day or two before he appears on TV wearing them. A few weeks after that they are shipped off to bargain basement stores like Marsalls or TJ Max.
TV ads are effective.
Hmm. Sounds to me like you're describing product placement rather than advertising. I agree that's a much more effective technique. It's also not what the discussion is about.
Now, if you have an XP machine stripped down to the bare minimum (no IE, etc) app developers have a problem. MS has to provide them with a way to statically compile the necessary libs into the app (or link via a redist. binary dll). Now, since an app maker cant be sure that the target machine has IE installed they will almost always statically compile it in or force you to install IE first. The same goes for apps that use the multimedia, graphics, video, etc facilities provided by "middleware".
Well, you said it yourself--if the app needs that it can install ie first. In fact, most apps already have this ability built in, so they can run on older versions of windows. The only way the microsoft argument holds water is if app writers only target the latest version of windows and completely restrict themselves to dll's that come with windows--which doesn't happen. Even MS themselves do this with, e.g., the Office suite: Office installs all kinds of dll's to add things that didn't come with windows. I guess it's not impossible?
The chinese economy is _heavily_ dependent on the American economy. An attack on America would effectively be an attack on their own economy. The codependence of our economies is probably the only reason all-out-war hasn't broken out between us.
Ever looked into who Germany's major trade partners were just prior to WWI?
Most normal people would be pissed at a government that inept. Oddly, the people in CA seem to accept the politicians shifting blame to "evil corporate forces." E.g., the obviously stupid long-term energy contracts are the fault of the "energy cartel" and the obviously stupid IT purchasing decision is the fault of the "evil oracle cartel". I wouldn't be surprised if the politicians even manage to whip up a frenzy of public indignation that results in a call for more governement regulation, as was the case in the energy fiasco.
What on earth gives you that idea? raid 5 is no more reliable than raid 1 (which is usually supported by hardware raid units) and can actually be less so if you're paranoid and have more than two copies of the data in a raid 1 array. raid 1 can also be faster if you combine it with raid 0 with mirrored stripes or striped mirrors. The only downsides are that raid 1 can be somewhat slower than raid 5 for certain operations (though faster for others) and that it costs a bit more in disk space. FYI, many of the really large arrays (e.g., multiterrabyte arrays from emc or hitachi) prefer raid 1 to avoid the parity generation overhead, increase resync rate, and provide better degraded performance.
> Not only is it the standard for digital video > and still cameras nowadays, IEEE 1394 aka > Firewire/iLink is rapidly eclipsing SCSI as > the standard for high-speed external storage > devices like hard drives and burners.
Ha! Despite the hype, firewire is ridiculously slower than scsi. I don't know how you can believe that it's replacing scsi for high-speed storage.
Um, have you noticed how expensive tape backup units are? The only practical way for people to protect themselves from drive failure is to raid. It's not speed, it's redundancy. I've raided my home system ever since a (scsi) drive failure took out a (luckily unimportant) partition. I've also gone ide because the scsi upgrades were just too expensive.
So what are the chances that after this ill-fated mega-merger crashes and burns (like so many others of its ilk) the next CEO with a bright idea for "early retirement," sorry, I mean "increasing shareholder value" will remember this? Or will the next CEO use exactly the same fantasy-number script that Carly is using?
>> So what? We don't have a need to change our calendar.
Err, who said we should change our calander? The "So what" as you witlessly reposted is that another civilization that is long gone did at least _one_ thing better than we do
The point you can't seem to grasp is that the calendar we use for commerce does not represent the extent of our capabilities. Timekeeping used by astronomical or other scientific research is far more accurate than that used to measure birthdays. I challenge you to demonstrate that any ancient civilization could match a cesium clock. Remember that we can tell exactly how accurate these ancient calendars are because ours are better.
>> I wait eagerly for you explanation of how the Egyptians might build the Panama Canal, or the Channel Tunnel, or the Iternational Space Station.
errr, _again_ I used the pyramids as an _example_ of how at least one previous civilization managed to do something that we can't do today. We can't even figure out _how_ the pyramids were built. Or largest heavy lift cranes are not up to the task of moving and placing the enormous stones that make up the pyramids
I fail to see where you get the idea that we couldn't build a pyramid if we wanted to. You are working under incorrect assumptions and employing "proof by wild hand-waving"! The stones used in the pyramids were an average of 2.5 tons, not 100 tons. The largest were 20 tons. Of course we do have the ability to move large objects. Cranes with lift capacity of 100 tons or more are not uncommon in shipyards. You might have noticed the shuttle Columbia moving around in Florida--it's far heavier than any rock in any egyptian pyramid, but our technology moves it around on a fairly regular basis. The Nimitz-class aircraft carriers displace 97,000 tons, and they also move around fairly freely. So no, you haven't yet demonstrated any previous civilization that did anything we'd be unable to duplicate. The problem we face is figuring out which of the many theories we have for how to build a pyramid was that employed by the ancients.
Ah, and once Troy was just the "wishful interpretations of credulous fools." But it turned out that the neigh sayers were right. And I am just repeating what the myths say
Sheesh. Most of the myths of Troy have not been validated. The fact that there was once a city of Troy doesn't mean that its walls were built by Poseidon, that there was a heavenly beauty contest, that Achilles was almost invulnerable, etc. Even if a myth has a kernel of truth (such as being set in a non-fictional city) doesn't mean that the bulk is more than fantasy or, at best, allegory. And just how many equines were discussing Troy, back in the day?
There may have been civilizations before that were just as advanced as our own. When they collapsed they may have simply vanished with nary a trace in just a couple of thousand years. It isn't as hard as you think.
It's preposterous that a civilization could have grown as large as ours (geographically & in terms of population) without consuming the same resources that have fueled our own rise. It is equally preposterous that on the merely human scale you mention (kiloyears) those elements could have been redeposited from scattered artifacts or minerals suspended in seawater.
This is the real danger our species faces, not some simple loss of archival records: should our civilation collapse there can not be a rise until our decendents somehow master deep mining and undersea drilling--because we've already consumed the resources that were lying around on the surface...
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Actually, dlt's are fragile--you've got a fairly good chance of losing your data if you have a habit of dropping them.
You really think having two seperate decoder boxes and an ir dongle is a great leap forward? I didn't say it wasn't possible to contort yourself through a bunch of hoops to get what you want, but why bother? I have an antenna that pulls in tv channels for free. If you're going to convince me to spend money for the same thing it needs to be easier and more convient rather than the opposite.
This is one of the big reasons I canceled cable and continue to refuse to get a satellite system--I don't want a box, with another remote (that would make 5 total) and a barrier to recording one program while I watch another. We know why cable providers love these stupid boxes (they can send more vacuous, overly-compressed channels, and don't like time-shifting anyway) but unless they can come up with a convincing reason I should pay for inferior service, I'll continue to just say no.
It's the hole you don't know about that's trouble. And the only way you know about this hole is via a mechanism HP's trying to suppress. So how will you work around the next one?
That doesn't imply that net installs will be impossible, only that a new install method is being written. "boot-floppies" is the name of the old system (even though it also supported other devices), and doesn't refer to the concept of booting from a floppy disk.
Hmm. In my experience many of these browser-based apps use activex and only work with msie. Browser-based apps are trendy, so you're seeing a lot of them--that doesn't mean the the people implementing them grasp the point.
(Sure, the images load fast--it's the unnecessary shtml that's /.ed...when will they learn?)
This sort of integration is a good thing, though it really needs to be done commercially (not as a case mod hack.) At some point in the future I hope to see ubiqutous computing--people should just be able to do what they want without having to sit in front of "the computer" like a supplicant in a shrine. That sort of approach changes the design of computers out of necessity--a distinct keyboard and monitor just don't make any sense in that environment. And human nature being what it is, people are going to want machines that blend into their homes, not stick out like ugly distractions the way they do now.
You're confusing theoretical and real-world transfer rates. I've got firewire enclosures and I have usb2 enclosures, and I find that the usb2 stuff is slower, given the same hard drive. It doesn't matter that it should be faster, it's just not. That could be driver immaturity, it could be firmware immaturity, or it could just be that usb2 isn't as good at utilizing its bandwidth as is firewire. Regardless of the reason, however, I find a firewire enclosure faster and more useful than a usb2 at this time.
I've been using USB2 on linux for a while now. Since the kernel has source available, it's possible to apply patches to add features without waiting on a vendor. It would be more accurate to say something like "mainstream usb2 support" or "usb2 in released 2.4 kernel".
FWIW, I've found USB2 to be not as fast as firewire for things like hard drives, a conclusion that windows benchmarks have also shown. So it's not like the delay in releasing 2.4.19 is really hurting anything, especially since there aren't many usb2 devices or ports around anyway.
It wasn't clear to me whether they tested irix with the strong iss option enabled. (tcpiss_md5=1) I assume they did not.
Are you kidding? I love the 3" cd format--I've got a spindle of 50 3" cdr's on my desk right now. The music industry probably stopped using it because it's more theft-prone than the 5" format. (Small enough to fit in a pocket, smaller than the usual anti-theft boxes will hold)--but the fact that it fits in a pocket is a huge advantage for me. The jewel cases for these are *exactly* the same size as a 3.5" floppy, so you can get some more life out of your old floppy stroage bins...
Hmm. Sounds to me like you're describing product placement rather than advertising. I agree that's a much more effective technique. It's also not what the discussion is about.
Well, you said it yourself--if the app needs that it can install ie first. In fact, most apps already have this ability built in, so they can run on older versions of windows. The only way the microsoft argument holds water is if app writers only target the latest version of windows and completely restrict themselves to dll's that come with windows--which doesn't happen. Even MS themselves do this with, e.g., the Office suite: Office installs all kinds of dll's to add things that didn't come with windows. I guess it's not impossible?
Most normal people would be pissed at a government that inept. Oddly, the people in CA seem to accept the politicians shifting blame to "evil corporate forces." E.g., the obviously stupid long-term energy contracts are the fault of the "energy cartel" and the obviously stupid IT purchasing decision is the fault of the "evil oracle cartel". I wouldn't be surprised if the politicians even manage to whip up a frenzy of public indignation that results in a call for more governement regulation, as was the case in the energy fiasco.
What on earth gives you that idea? raid 5 is no more reliable than raid 1 (which is usually supported by hardware raid units) and can actually be less so if you're paranoid and have more than two copies of the data in a raid 1 array. raid 1 can also be faster if you combine it with raid 0 with mirrored stripes or striped mirrors. The only downsides are that raid 1 can be somewhat slower than raid 5 for certain operations (though faster for others) and that it costs a bit more in disk space. FYI, many of the really large arrays (e.g., multiterrabyte arrays from emc or hitachi) prefer raid 1 to avoid the parity generation overhead, increase resync rate, and provide better degraded performance.
> Not only is it the standard for digital video
> and still cameras nowadays, IEEE 1394 aka
> Firewire/iLink is rapidly eclipsing SCSI as
> the standard for high-speed external storage
> devices like hard drives and burners.
Ha! Despite the hype, firewire is ridiculously slower than scsi. I don't know how you can believe that it's replacing scsi for high-speed storage.
Um, have you noticed how expensive tape backup units are? The only practical way for people to protect themselves from drive failure is to raid. It's not speed, it's redundancy. I've raided my home system ever since a (scsi) drive failure took out a (luckily unimportant) partition. I've also gone ide because the scsi upgrades were just too expensive.
Well, if you really really really can't live without your museum piece you could buy a ps2 to usb converter.
So what are the chances that after this ill-fated mega-merger crashes and burns (like so many others of its ilk) the next CEO with a bright idea for "early retirement," sorry, I mean "increasing shareholder value" will remember this? Or will the next CEO use exactly the same fantasy-number script that Carly is using?
>> So what? We don't have a need to change our calendar.
Err, who said we should change our calander? The "So what" as you witlessly reposted is that another civilization that is long gone did at least _one_ thing better than we do
The point you can't seem to grasp is that the calendar we use for commerce does not represent the extent of our capabilities. Timekeeping used by astronomical or other scientific research is far more accurate than that used to measure birthdays. I challenge you to demonstrate that any ancient civilization could match a cesium clock. Remember that we can tell exactly how accurate these ancient calendars are because ours are better.
>> I wait eagerly for you explanation of how the Egyptians might build the Panama Canal, or the Channel Tunnel, or the Iternational Space Station.
errr, _again_ I used the pyramids as an _example_ of how at least one previous civilization managed to do something that we can't do today. We can't even figure out _how_ the pyramids were built. Or largest heavy lift cranes are not up to the task of moving and placing the enormous stones that make up the pyramids
I fail to see where you get the idea that we couldn't build a pyramid if we wanted to. You are working under incorrect assumptions and employing "proof by wild hand-waving"! The stones used in the pyramids were an average of 2.5 tons, not 100 tons. The largest were 20 tons. Of course we do have the ability to move large objects. Cranes with lift capacity of 100 tons or more are not uncommon in shipyards. You might have noticed the shuttle Columbia moving around in Florida--it's far heavier than any rock in any egyptian pyramid, but our technology moves it around on a fairly regular basis. The Nimitz-class aircraft carriers displace 97,000 tons, and they also move around fairly freely. So no, you haven't yet demonstrated any previous civilization that did anything we'd be unable to duplicate. The problem we face is figuring out which of the many theories we have for how to build a pyramid was that employed by the ancients.
Ah, and once Troy was just the "wishful interpretations of credulous fools." But it turned out that the neigh sayers were right. And I am just repeating what the myths say
Sheesh. Most of the myths of Troy have not been validated. The fact that there was once a city of Troy doesn't mean that its walls were built by Poseidon, that there was a heavenly beauty contest, that Achilles was almost invulnerable, etc. Even if a myth has a kernel of truth (such as being set in a non-fictional city) doesn't mean that the bulk is more than fantasy or, at best, allegory. And just how many equines were discussing Troy, back in the day?
It's preposterous that a civilization could have grown as large as ours (geographically & in terms of population) without consuming the same resources that have fueled our own rise. It is equally preposterous that on the merely human scale you mention (kiloyears) those elements could have been redeposited from scattered artifacts or minerals suspended in seawater.
This is the real danger our species faces, not some simple loss of archival records: should our civilation collapse there can not be a rise until our decendents somehow master deep mining and undersea drilling--because we've already consumed the resources that were lying around on the surface...