In theory, ABL works fine against a solid-fueled missile. It just has to burn through the motor casing, at which point the laser will either ignite unburnt propellant, or there will be a pressure failue that causes the missle motor to destroy itself (see the Challenger disaster).
The problems confronted by ABL are numerous:
-- Range is limited to a few hundred KM. The range limitation has to do with propogating a laser through the atmosphere at approx 40,000 feet and below. This requires incredible stabilization.
-- You have to hit the missile in the boost phase, so you have to have air superiority to defend the sitting-duck ABL platform within range of the launch site. If the missile has exhausted its propellant, there is nothing for the ABL to ignite, and it has too much inertia for a small hole to cause meaningful deflection off course. The range limitation means that it *might* work against short-range systems, but to work against long-range systems, the US military will have to own the skies and the ground (to protect against SAM launches) within 300KM of the prospective launch site. Mobile MRBM and ICBM launchers make this even more difficult.
-- You have to put enough energy on the missile's outer skin to burn through, at max range, after losing some of your initial energy to the admosphere (mostly water vapor). You need a dwell time of at least a few seconds. This means that the missile designer can defeat your ABL by putting reflective material on the missile airframe, or by designing a slight rotation into the missile during flight.
-- These are chemical lasers. The number of shots you can take depends on how much of the chemicals (like iodine) you can carry. Typically, ABL will be limited to less than 30 shots. For protection, you will have to have many ABLs on station, flying a race-track pattern at the forward edge of the defended area. This is expensive, and each platform has to be protected.
As a technology, this is cool. As a practical defensive system, it is a dismal failure--this is just the USAF's bid to have an iron in the non-space-based missile defense budget fire.
Rambus never cast a vote on the SDRAM specifications while it was a member of JEDEC (1991-1995).
Every member of JEDEC's memory committee was under Rambus NDA. They individually knew (corporately) about the patent applications. The patents were applied for in 1990, before JEDEC ever started deliberating the SDRAM specification. JEDEC did not start deliberating the DDR-SDRAM spec until two years after Rambus attended its last JEDEC meeting.
JEDEC's patent disclosure policy was not a written policy until 1993, and even then only 60 patents were ever disclosed by the participants--which are awarded thousands of patents annually. Even Infineon failed to disclose an SDRAM test patent. JEDEC disclosure policy never covered patent applications.
I don't think that rambus' hands were entire clean here, but neither was anyone elses. Business as usual--everyone trying to out-screw each other.
In the next week(s) or so, Infineon will probably file a petition for rehearing/rehearing en banc. This is not uncommon, especially when a panel opinion is accompanied by a dissent. A petition for rehearing is just a request that the panel reconsider its decision. These are almost never granted. A petition for rehearing en banc is a request that the appeal be reheard by the entire court (or a quorum thereof), as opposed to a 3-judge panel. These are occasionally granted in very important cases or in cases where a judge who dissented from the original panel's opinion is able to convince enough of his colleagues that the panel opinion flaunts existing circuit precedent or sets an undesirable precedent. I'm pretty confident, though, that there is virtually no chance that an en banc rehearing will be granted in this case. Why? First, they're not going to rehear the claims construction issues. The panel was unanimous on that aspect of the decision. Second, they're not going to rehear the fraud claim, because Judge Rader disposed of that part of the case entirely on the ground that there was no basis for a jury to find that Rambus violated a duty to disclose. But this was framed as being purely a matter of Virginia commonwealth law, which the other judges have no reason to care about. A stroke of genius on Judge Rader's part.
For similar reasons, the U.S. Supreme Court will not have any interest in hearing this case. The U.S. Supreme Court's jurisdiction is almost entirely discretionary, which means basically that it hears only the cases it wants to hear (with some exceptions not relevant here). But there are absolutely no interesting legal issues raised by Judge Rader's claims construction. And there is no question of federal law raised by the disposition of the fraud claim. So, don't be fooled by anyone who says this case isn't over because the Supreme Court might take the case and reverse. It just ain't gonna happen.
Keep in mind that the fraud case is *not* going to be retried in the district court. Judge Rader reversed the district court's denial of Rambus's motion for JMOL of no fraud; this means that judgment must now enter as a matter of law in Rambus's favor on the fraud claim. It's over for the fraud claim. O-V-E-R.
I wonder a little bit about whether Judge Payne will get this case back on remand -- I don't know exactly what the local rules provide for in this kind of situation. But I hardly think it matters, given how favorable Judge Rader's claims construction was for Rambus. And I really do believe that Infineon and the others will try to settle with Rambus before the case ever gets back to the district court. The only question is whether Rambus will accept any such offers. (vbg)
All of those pesky shareholder class action lawsuits are now all dead in the water.
when it comes to patent law, the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC), which just overturned in favor of rambus, *IS* the supreme court. Infineon's next step is to ask the CAFC for an "en banc" ruling by the entire CAFC (not just a 3-judge panel); these are almost never granted.
There is no point of constitutional law for the Supreme Court to review. Stick a fork in it-- this is over. The fraud conviction is overturned, and fraud was the basis for the FTC's antitrust case, which almost certainly just evaporated.
The CAFC also threw out the Virginia court's claims construction and "Markman" and basically wrote their own, which could not favor Rambus any more if Rambus attorney's had written it themselves.
The judge who wrote the majority opinion (there is one dissenter) is Raeder, who is the patent law expert on this court.
I've always used an IBM Model "M" AT keyboard. It's loud, it uses "buckling-spring" ALPS key switches. It's heavy (about 6 lbs). I am a touch typist, and you can tell that whoever at IBM designed this beast was trying to capture the feel of an IBM Selectric. When you press a key, you know damned well that you did.
About once a year it is rediscovered as the best keyboard in the world by some site on the web. This year it's this one:
this assumes you are already using accelerated nvidia drivers and not the SVGA-nv driver that comes with XFree86-4.1xx. If that's not true, read the Nvidia readme on changes you'll need to make to your/etc/X11/XF86.config-4.
First, download the tag.gz source files, not the rpm. Even if they have rpms/debs for you rdistro and kernel, don't do it. You dont' save any time by using sources, assuming you have a config that compiles.
Uncompress the archive, save it somewhere logical. You can be in X-vindows if it's easier to use gedit/kedit instead of vi (but learning to use vi even minimally is a life saver; do it now b4 you really need it).
Okay, in the NVIDIA_kernel-1.xxxx directory, you'll find a file called "os-registry.c" This is the make configuration file. Read up and turn features on or off depending on your chipset (like AGP 4X, FastWrites, and sideband addressing; the first two are the better enhancements). Save your changes. I would recommend being conservative to start-- leave the defaults alone and if it works, turn on AGP4X,then Fastwrites, and then SBA in that order.
It's a good idea before you complile to a backup. Brush up on what you would need to do to install the older drivers that are already working for you.
Quit Xwindows, and become su if you aren't already. Change to to NVIDIA_GLX-1.xxxx directory first and do:
make install
this takes care of the 3D rendering backend, particulary if you already have mesa installed.
change (cd) to the NVIDIA_kernel-1.xxxx directory, and do:
make install
it should say somthing like "module nvidia.o complied successfully." If you get any errors, be ready to implement your backup plan (revert to known good drivers or edit your os-registry.c.
If you are repetitively trying to get the drivers to work or to change compile options, do a "make clean" before you "make install" in the NVIDIA_kernel directory.
okay, assume it compiled without errors, do a:/sbin/lsmod
you should see the older verion of your NVdriver or nvidia module and the agpgart or nvgart modules still loaded. Just do a :/sbin/rmmmod NVdriver or/sbin/rmmod nvidia
and/sbin/rmmod agpgart or/sbin/rmmod nvgart
depending on which modules you have loaded. Okay, let's see if it works:
startx
Obviously, you should have runlevel 3 as your default-- do have a graphical GUI/logon prompt if you are going to be messing with your video drivers.
Some people have complained about a 2D slowdown; you can turn on the accelerated renderer in your/etc/X11/XF86config-4 by adding the following under the "Device" section:
Option "renderAccel"
for reference, here's what that portion of my XF86config-4 looks like:
Sorry, but the 3.06GHz HT crushes any dual AthlonMP. So sad...
"The Hyperthreaded CPU has a big advantage over DUAL Athlons: it performs very well in single threaded applications too. In those applications the Dual Athlon configurations is hampered by the higher latency and lower bandwidth of the AMD760MP chipset and its memory subsystem."
I hope it doesn't sound too harsh to say that you are talking out of your ass. I have a P-4 i850E PC with PC1066 RDRAM. You can lay your finger on the heatspreader and it is barely warm to the touch. Any memory that is running at 400-533MHz is going to need some thermal management.
BTW, dual-channel RDRAM's latency is pretty low-- as low as DDR or SDRAM:
"You might be surprised by the significant reduction in latency seen with PC1066 over PC800. As addresses are sent 33% faster and the data returns from memory 33% sooner, latency is, according to Cachemem, 30% lower."
"It looks like my assumptions were correct. The use of the CRIMMs does indeed introduce some extra latency to the RDRAM mix. Again, it isn't a huge amount, but the difference is definitely there. If you look at those MPX/DDR numbers, it makes you wonder why anyone ever complained about RDRAM's latency to begin with. Heh."
If you sit in your parent's basement moaning about how you can't afford
Starbucks anymore, you deserve to fail. Or you could be the next "Greatest
Generation," who make anything that the current genX has to "overcome"
look like a tough mosh pit.
we might as well act like thieves. I had stopped listening to popular music, let alone buying any, until mp3s came along. Now I rip my own, and buy CDs all the time.
When is the music industry going to get it? Instead of seeing every mp3 download as a "theft," they should think about it as sampling and previewing. Music industry sales went UP throughout the heyday of napster. They are down over the past two years. They greedheads at the RIAA and the movie industry need to be beaten with a cluestick-- allowing reasonable, personal use of copies widens their market.
I'll stop downloading and ripping mp3s when the RIAA allows a reasonable for-fee music downloading service.
Remember when Enlightenment DR0.15 was all that? Sure, it was buggy as hell and was a bitch to install, but it was not TWM. This guy has been working on DR0.17 for so long I thought he was dead. I know he's been through a lot--first he left RedHat , and Redhat dropped E in favor of Sawfish, then he went to work for VALinux, until they fired everyone who had anything to do with linux.
Just because he can't finish E-17 doesn't mean that desktop linux is dead. Quite the contrary. We don't miss or need E-17 anymore. Shit, Raster, the grapes are so sour they converted to vinegar on the vine.
in what ways do you think X is slower? To load the desktop (from "startx")? Not sure how you measure this in 2D. In 3D, I actually get equal or better framerates in OpenGL under Linux (RH 7.3) than I do with Win98SE or Win2K, ever since they added page flipping to the Linux drivers. Mozilla is kind of slow under either Linux/X or Windows. Just curious.
I've been using Gnome-2 betas/RC1-2, and found that I must erase/rename all the standard Gnome configuration files (.gnome,.gnome2, etc.) in order to avoid problems and see the default desktop that the developers intended.
Handing out technology is pretty much the mindset that has prevailed in the schools up to now, and it doesn't work. Teachers don't have the time or resources to effectively use the Macs/PCs they have, and most schools have no competent SysAdmin--they usually draft a teacher and they grudgingly do it for a year.
Talk to your local elem. school teachers, esp. ones with diverse classrooms, and get a feel for their challenges. Then tailor a technology approach that meets their needs; if you can find ways to improve the effectiveness of teaching, you will help more kids.
I think that the ideal device would be a PDA that is so ubiquitous and inexpensive that it is not worth stealing, and no great loss if damaged or misplaced. Now, design a classroom around that device-- the child carriers the PDA home or to school, but at either place it can be plugged into the desktop and become part of a more capable, flexible learning system, with a keyboard, mouse, or other input device depending on the child's need. No more text books-- all instructional media is electronic and licensed to the school system.
The main initial benefit of the EDA (let's call it) is to provide local storage of homework assignments, calandar, contact, basic reference information, and statistics on use. This ensures that kids can't forget their textbook, or homework assignment, or spelling list, or worksheet, because the teacher can synch every EDA in the class at the end of the day.
Unplugged, the EDA stores key imformation for homework, reading, and studies-- much like a handspring or palmpilot. Plugged into class net or a home PC, it is the front-end of a more powerful networked information device.
More ambitiously, use the EDA and the wired classroom to give teachers instantaneous feedback on student interaction, learning, participation. No more night spent grading papers, other than writing assignments. Basic skills tests are graded instantaneously, proving the teacher with immediate feedback on instructional effectiveness. Each kid can advance at his/her own pace--"leave no kid behind" would become a reality.
The Teacher's workstation would enable them to scan the entire class during a writing or reading assignment, enable or disable instant messaging or polling, and even measure the time use and interaction on a class assignment, realtime, or record statistics that can be analyzed later. This would also make standardized testing much more consistent across classrooms, schools, and school districts.
Stop with the "Apples for the Students" already. It is having little positive impact on learning, burdens teachers that are already overloaded, and amounts to little more than a toy that teachers use to distract students while they provide individual attention on handle admin duties.
thanks for the dramatic improvements in Linux Detonator drivers over the past year. Now every partition on this PC is ext3.
Now, if only Transgaming (which I support with $) could actually get some MS games working under Linux. The "Sims" version they tout is a port, not the native Win32 game. Every other game I've tried has failed to run. I'm really missing Loki.
I saw the story, read it, and then expected to find what I've come to expect in the discussion-- a bunch of yahoos who hadn't even read that wonderful piece.
I then I saw the magnificent posts (sorting by highest score) and other stories, and felt like the first time I found/.
Slashdot Mirror
In theory, ABL works fine against a solid-fueled missile. It just has to burn through the motor casing, at which point the laser will either ignite unburnt propellant, or there will be a pressure failue that causes the missle motor to destroy itself (see the Challenger disaster).
The problems confronted by ABL are numerous:
-- Range is limited to a few hundred KM. The range limitation has to do with propogating a laser through the atmosphere at approx 40,000 feet and below. This requires incredible stabilization.
-- You have to hit the missile in the boost phase, so you have to have air superiority to defend the sitting-duck ABL platform within range of the launch site. If the missile has exhausted its propellant, there is nothing for the ABL to ignite, and it has too much inertia for a small hole to cause meaningful deflection off course. The range limitation means that it *might* work against short-range systems, but to work against long-range systems, the US military will have to own the skies and the ground (to protect against SAM launches) within 300KM of the prospective launch site. Mobile MRBM and ICBM launchers make this even more difficult.
-- You have to put enough energy on the missile's outer skin to burn through, at max range, after losing some of your initial energy to the admosphere (mostly water vapor). You need a dwell time of at least a few seconds. This means that the missile designer can defeat your ABL by putting reflective material on the missile airframe, or by designing a slight rotation into the missile during flight.
-- These are chemical lasers. The number of shots you can take depends on how much of the chemicals (like iodine) you can carry. Typically, ABL will be limited to less than 30 shots. For protection, you will have to have many ABLs on station, flying a race-track pattern at the forward edge of the defended area. This is expensive, and each platform has to be protected.
As a technology, this is cool. As a practical defensive system, it is a dismal failure--this is just the USAF's bid to have an iron in the non-space-based missile defense budget fire.
Rambus never cast a vote on the SDRAM specifications while it was a member of JEDEC (1991-1995).
Every member of JEDEC's memory committee was under Rambus NDA. They individually knew (corporately) about the patent applications. The patents were applied for in 1990, before JEDEC ever started deliberating the SDRAM specification. JEDEC did not start deliberating the DDR-SDRAM spec until two years after Rambus attended its last JEDEC meeting.
JEDEC's patent disclosure policy was not a written policy until 1993, and even then only 60 patents were ever disclosed by the participants--which are awarded thousands of patents annually. Even Infineon failed to disclose an SDRAM test patent. JEDEC disclosure policy never covered patent applications.
I don't think that rambus' hands were entire clean here, but neither was anyone elses. Business as usual--everyone trying to out-screw each other.
In the next week(s) or so, Infineon will probably file a petition for rehearing/rehearing en banc. This is not uncommon, especially when a panel opinion is accompanied by a dissent. A petition for rehearing is just a request that the panel reconsider its decision. These are almost never granted. A petition for rehearing en banc is a request that the appeal be reheard by the entire court (or a quorum thereof), as opposed to a 3-judge panel. These are occasionally granted in very important cases or in cases where a judge who dissented from the original panel's opinion is able to convince enough of his colleagues that the panel opinion flaunts existing circuit precedent or sets an undesirable precedent. I'm pretty confident, though, that there is virtually no chance that an en banc rehearing will be granted in this case. Why? First, they're not going to rehear the claims construction issues. The panel was unanimous on that aspect of the decision. Second, they're not going to rehear the fraud claim, because Judge Rader disposed of that part of the case entirely on the ground that there was no basis for a jury to find that Rambus violated a duty to disclose. But this was framed as being purely a matter of Virginia commonwealth law, which the other judges have no reason to care about. A stroke of genius on Judge Rader's part.
For similar reasons, the U.S. Supreme Court will not have any interest in hearing this case. The U.S. Supreme Court's jurisdiction is almost entirely discretionary, which means basically that it hears only the cases it wants to hear (with some exceptions not relevant here). But there are absolutely no interesting legal issues raised by Judge Rader's claims construction. And there is no question of federal law raised by the disposition of the fraud claim. So, don't be fooled by anyone who says this case isn't over because the Supreme Court might take the case and reverse. It just ain't gonna happen.
Keep in mind that the fraud case is *not* going to be retried in the district court. Judge Rader reversed the district court's denial of Rambus's motion for JMOL of no fraud; this means that judgment must now enter as a matter of law in Rambus's favor on the fraud claim. It's over for the fraud claim. O-V-E-R.
I wonder a little bit about whether Judge Payne will get this case back on remand -- I don't know exactly what the local rules provide for in this kind of situation. But I hardly think it matters, given how favorable Judge Rader's claims construction was for Rambus. And I really do believe that Infineon and the others will try to settle with Rambus before the case ever gets back to the district court. The only question is whether Rambus will accept any such offers. (vbg)
All of those pesky shareholder class action lawsuits are now all dead in the water.
when it comes to patent law, the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC), which just overturned in favor of rambus, *IS* the supreme court. Infineon's next step is to ask the CAFC for an "en banc" ruling by the entire CAFC (not just a 3-judge panel); these are almost never granted.
There is no point of constitutional law for the Supreme Court to review. Stick a fork in it-- this is over. The fraud conviction is overturned, and fraud was the basis for the FTC's antitrust case, which almost certainly just evaporated.
The CAFC also threw out the Virginia court's claims construction and "Markman" and basically wrote their own, which could not favor Rambus any more if Rambus attorney's had written it themselves.
The judge who wrote the majority opinion (there is one dissenter) is Raeder, who is the patent law expert on this court.
I've always used an IBM Model "M" AT keyboard. It's loud, it uses "buckling-spring" ALPS key switches. It's heavy (about 6 lbs). I am a touch typist, and you can tell that whoever at IBM designed this beast was trying to capture the feel of an IBM Selectric. When you press a key, you know damned well that you did.
d elm.org/e =IBM%20Mod el%20M%20Keyboard
p ut /bsmembrane.shtmlp
h tm
About once a year it is rediscovered as the best keyboard in the world by some site on the web. This year it's this one:
http://www.overclockers.com/tips00223/
And it has it's own cult following.
http://www.3m3718.com/modelm.php
http://www.mo
http://www.everything2.com/index.pl?nod
There is even Model M porn:
http://www.viperlair.com/articles/techreport/in
http://www.3m3718.com/mpr0n.ph
You can buy a reasonable new facimile made by Unicomp for $49.00,
http://www.pckeyboard.com/
but you can also find perfectly good ones on ebay for a lot less. Just search for the terms: Ibm keyboard click*
Or you can get snooty about it and pay $149 for a 104-key "programable" version.
http://www.cvtinc.com/products/keyboards/prime.
I find this board the least fatiguing because the "feel" is so tactile, and I make fewer errors.
this assumes you are already using accelerated nvidia drivers and not the SVGA-nv driver that comes with XFree86-4.1xx. If that's not true, read the Nvidia readme on changes you'll need to make to your /etc/X11/XF86.config-4.
/sbin/lsmod
/sbin/rmmmod NVdriver /sbin/rmmod nvidia
/sbin/rmmod agpgart /sbin/rmmod nvgart
/etc/X11/XF86config-4 by adding the following under the "Device" section:
First, download the tag.gz source files, not the rpm. Even if they have rpms/debs for you rdistro and kernel, don't do it. You dont' save any time by using sources, assuming you have a config that compiles.
Uncompress the archive, save it somewhere logical. You can be in X-vindows if it's easier to use gedit/kedit instead of vi (but learning to use vi even minimally is a life saver; do it now b4 you really need it).
Okay, in the NVIDIA_kernel-1.xxxx directory, you'll find a file called "os-registry.c" This is the make configuration file. Read up and turn features on or off depending on your chipset (like AGP 4X, FastWrites, and sideband addressing; the first two are the better enhancements). Save your changes. I would recommend being conservative to start-- leave the defaults alone and if it works, turn on AGP4X,then Fastwrites, and then SBA in that order.
It's a good idea before you complile to a backup. Brush up on what you would need to do to install the older drivers that are already working for you.
Quit Xwindows, and become su if you aren't already. Change to to NVIDIA_GLX-1.xxxx directory first and do:
make install
this takes care of the 3D rendering backend, particulary if you already have mesa installed.
change (cd) to the NVIDIA_kernel-1.xxxx directory, and do:
make install
it should say somthing like "module nvidia.o complied successfully." If you get any errors, be ready to implement your backup plan (revert to known good drivers or edit your os-registry.c.
If you are repetitively trying to get the drivers to work or to change compile options, do a "make clean" before you "make install" in the NVIDIA_kernel directory.
okay, assume it compiled without errors, do a:
you should see the older verion of your NVdriver or nvidia module and the agpgart or nvgart modules still loaded. Just do a :
or
and
or
depending on which modules you have loaded. Okay, let's see if it works:
startx
Obviously, you should have runlevel 3 as your default-- do have a graphical GUI/logon prompt if you are going to be messing with your video drivers.
Some people have complained about a 2D slowdown; you can turn on the accelerated renderer in your
Option "renderAccel"
for reference, here's what that portion of my XF86config-4 looks like:
Section "Device"
# no known options
Identifier "NVIDIA GeForce 2 GTS (generic)"
Driver "nvidia"
VendorName "NVIDIA GeForce 2 GTS (generic)"
BoardName "NVIDIA GeForce 2 GTS (generic)"
Option "NvAgp" "3"
Option "renderAccel"
BusID "PCI:1:0:0"
EndSection
good post. This also means that not only is Linux the only OS that is Opteron-ready, including video drivers, it is also Doom-III ready.
Sorry, but the 3.06GHz HT crushes any dual AthlonMP. So sad...
8
"The Hyperthreaded CPU has a big advantage over DUAL Athlons: it performs very well in single threaded applications too. In those applications the Dual Athlon configurations is hampered by the higher latency and lower bandwidth of the AMD760MP chipset and its memory subsystem."
http://www.aceshardware.com/read.jsp?id=5000032
I hope it doesn't sound too harsh to say that you are talking out of your ass. I have a P-4 i850E PC with PC1066 RDRAM. You can lay your finger on the heatspreader and it is barely warm to the touch. Any memory that is running at 400-533MHz is going to need some thermal management.
i cl e_id=45000219
4 .h tml
BTW, dual-channel RDRAM's latency is pretty low-- as low as DDR or SDRAM:
http://www.aceshardware.com/Spades/read.php?art
"You might be surprised by the significant reduction in latency seen with PC1066 over PC800. As addresses are sent 33% faster and the data returns from memory 33% sooner, latency is, according to Cachemem, 30% lower."
http://www.2cpu.com/Hardware/iwill_dp400/index_
"It looks like my assumptions were correct. The use of the CRIMMs does indeed introduce some extra latency to the RDRAM mix. Again, it isn't a huge amount, but the difference is definitely there. If you look at those MPX/DDR numbers, it makes you wonder why anyone ever complained about RDRAM's latency to begin with. Heh."
Look at any DDR333 or DDR400 sticks lately? Notice the heatspreaders?
I guess they mean since this one .
If you sit in your parent's basement moaning about how you can't afford Starbucks anymore, you deserve to fail. Or you could be the next "Greatest Generation," who make anything that the current genX has to "overcome" look like a tough mosh pit.
AMD crashed and burned.
I was thinking about getting one of these, but didn't see a specific cups driver for it. Which CUPS driver are you using?
nevermind...
that was a nice surprise. But full screen (linux) doesn't work so good when you are using Gnome and have a panel at the top.
Would be nice if they added full screen on/off as a right-click option over the window.
1. Intel shoves Rambus down the throats of anyone wanting a Pentium-III.
2. Rambus sues world, loses, fades into background.
3. RDRAM prices fall, P-4 is launched.
4. Intel moves away from RDRAM, embracing DDR.
4. Intel 2.8GHz loses to AMD 2.1Ghz unless the P-4 is using PC1066 RDRAM.
"We want our benchmark to reflect typical PC users. Since Intel has 83% of the market, we optimized 83% of our benchmark to favor the P-4"
we might as well act like thieves. I had stopped listening to popular music, let alone buying any, until mp3s came along. Now I rip my own, and buy CDs all the time.
When is the music industry going to get it? Instead of seeing every mp3 download as a "theft," they should think about it as sampling and previewing. Music industry sales went UP throughout the heyday of napster. They are down over the past two years. They greedheads at the RIAA and the movie industry need to be beaten with a cluestick-- allowing reasonable, personal use of copies widens their market.
I'll stop downloading and ripping mp3s when the RIAA allows a reasonable for-fee music downloading service.
some would take a lot of people and time,and some incredible organization.
k 01 df.html
l hi ll/windmillhill2002a.html
http://home.clara.net/lucypringle/photos/2001/u
http://www.cropcircleconnector.com/2002/windmil
Remember when Enlightenment DR0.15 was all that? Sure, it was buggy as hell and was a bitch to install, but it was not TWM. This guy has been working on DR0.17 for so long I thought he was dead. I know he's been through a lot--first he left RedHat , and Redhat dropped E in favor of Sawfish, then he went to work for VALinux, until they fired everyone who had anything to do with linux.
Just because he can't finish E-17 doesn't mean that desktop linux is dead. Quite the contrary. We don't miss or need E-17 anymore. Shit, Raster, the grapes are so sour they converted to vinegar on the vine.
sorry, should have added, "they" is Nvidia, adding page flipping to their Linux OpenGL drivers. Card is a GF3-TI200.
in what ways do you think X is slower? To load the desktop (from "startx")? Not sure how you measure this in 2D. In 3D, I actually get equal or better framerates in OpenGL under Linux (RH 7.3) than I do with Win98SE or Win2K, ever since they added page flipping to the Linux drivers. Mozilla is kind of slow under either Linux/X or Windows. Just curious.
I've been using Gnome-2 betas/RC1-2, and found that I must erase/rename all the standard Gnome configuration files (.gnome, .gnome2, etc.) in order to avoid problems and see the default desktop that the developers intended.
Handing out technology is pretty much the mindset that has prevailed in the schools up to now, and it doesn't work. Teachers don't have the time or resources to effectively use the Macs/PCs they have, and most schools have no competent SysAdmin--they usually draft a teacher and they grudgingly do it for a year.
Talk to your local elem. school teachers, esp. ones with diverse classrooms, and get a feel for their challenges. Then tailor a technology approach that meets their needs; if you can find ways to improve the effectiveness of teaching, you will help more kids.
I think that the ideal device would be a PDA that is so ubiquitous and inexpensive that it is not worth stealing, and no great loss if damaged or misplaced. Now, design a classroom around that device-- the child carriers the PDA home or to school, but at either place it can be plugged into the desktop and become part of a more capable, flexible learning system, with a keyboard, mouse, or other input device depending on the child's need. No more text books-- all instructional media is electronic and licensed to the school system.
The main initial benefit of the EDA (let's call it) is to provide local storage of homework assignments, calandar, contact, basic reference information, and statistics on use. This ensures that kids can't forget their textbook, or homework assignment, or spelling list, or worksheet, because the teacher can synch every EDA in the class at the end of the day.
Unplugged, the EDA stores key imformation for homework, reading, and studies-- much like a handspring or palmpilot. Plugged into class net or a home PC, it is the front-end of a more powerful networked information device.
More ambitiously, use the EDA and the wired classroom to give teachers instantaneous feedback on student interaction, learning, participation. No more night spent grading papers, other than writing assignments. Basic skills tests are graded instantaneously, proving the teacher with immediate feedback on instructional effectiveness. Each kid can advance at his/her own pace--"leave no kid behind" would become a reality.
The Teacher's workstation would enable them to scan the entire class during a writing or reading assignment, enable or disable instant messaging or polling, and even measure the time use and interaction on a class assignment, realtime, or record statistics that can be analyzed later. This would also make standardized testing much more consistent across classrooms, schools, and school districts.
Stop with the "Apples for the Students" already. It is having little positive impact on learning, burdens teachers that are already overloaded, and amounts to little more than a toy that teachers use to distract students while they provide individual attention on handle admin duties.
thanks for the dramatic improvements in Linux Detonator drivers over the past year. Now every partition on this PC is ext3.
Now, if only Transgaming (which I support with $) could actually get some MS games working under Linux. The "Sims" version they tout is a port, not the native Win32 game. Every other game I've tried has failed to run. I'm really missing Loki.
I saw the story, read it, and then expected to find what I've come to expect in the discussion-- a bunch of yahoos who hadn't even read that wonderful piece.
/.
I then I saw the magnificent posts (sorting by highest score) and other stories, and felt like the first time I found
yeah, I'm a little drunk.