Ya, it bothers me too. But if Intel hadn't messed it all up by designing a "clock speed only" processor, then we wouldn't be in this situation. I definately agree that the Performance Ratings are a very poor way to describe a processor...
Exactly...if you allow Microsoft to give you a low-cost anything, you're just locking yourself into high-cost something else, since it's all Integrated. They'll make their 80% margin somewhere else...
I will agree that the concept and basic execution are great...it's a wonderful idea in the perfect form factor (the 12" is the one I'm talking about...) I'm just dismayed to see Apple falling from its previous pinnacle of quality to a level no better than "the other guys." There was a time when Apple meant buying the absolute best; but it seems that is no longer the case. I have been told many times by Apple salesmen to "buy Applecare!" but it is no substitute for cheap construction.
Yes...nothing like shattering screens or malfunctioning latches to make you think that Apple has a quality product. The most recent iBooks are abysmal in my opinion, certainly no better than the run-of-the-mill HP's and Compaq's you see in Best Buy or Circuit City.
I know you're being sarcastic, but it is interesting for one reason....IT IS HAPPENING ON A GRAPHING CALCULATOR. I am well aware of the swarms of buffer overflow exploits out there...but again, this was on a graphing calculator, and was put to good use, not DOS'ing SCO.
Okay....OVERrun...or overflow, whatever you want to call it. The TI-92 allowed you to transfer data between machines, and make and restore backups. But normally this was limited to the "user" area of the calculator. By crafting some extra long strings, a buffer in the calc would overflow, and fill the normally-un-accessable "OS" area, resulting in the ability to run all sorts of assembly applications.
I still love my TI-92...While in college waiting for teachers to show up, I played lots of Tetris games on Fargo, which was the assembly-language system made possible only because of a buffer underrun...
Here's part of a STRINGS output from a Windows 2000 version of FTP.EXE:
@(#) Copyright (c) 1983 The Regents of the University of California.
Here's another STRINGS, of NSLOOKUP.EXE:
@(#) Copyright (c) 1985,1989 Regents of the University of California.
I would imagine that lots more BSD code is liberally spread about Windows somewhere...So Microsoft's hand is definitely in the cookie jar still. Dunno if they've re-written for XP, but I doubt it.
Since I'm always yakking about computers in education, I'll apply my experience here..."Computer Professionals" that know Windows in an educational context are rapidly becoming a dime a dozen. Their role has gone from having to diagnose anything to being little more than paper-tray fillers and ink-changers. Thus, their wages have dropped too. Hire a "Linux Professional", and you've got somebody that can do a bit more, but certainly costs a lot more, and is much more rare. No schools that I know of even hire MCSE's for their "professional" work...it's all left to people that sometimes haven't even graduated high school....and have the skills and work ethics to prove it.
In my field, education, IT directors/coordinators are little more than zombie-like followers of their associated "consultants"...who of course lead them down the road of most profit to them, aka Microsoft.
I will agree with #2, but this is NOT good. School boards and clueless administrators turn EVERYTHING over to the directors/coordinators, who just as quickly toss it over in the lap of the overpriced, lock-in consultants. What is needed is people willing to do some of the work themselves, and not leave it to the consultants. Only then will education, and to an extent corporations, free themselves from the grasp of yearly license increases and forced upgrades.
I couldn't agree more. The idea that one can do something (whether it be a lawsuit or designing a killer ap) that will put them on a work-less road to eternal luxury so permeates our society that it's difficult for someone to accept something as different as free and open source software. The idea that you must have money and stuff, and do everything in your power to get more money and more stuff, is what WILL end our civilization.
Google's search results seem to be disintegrating. If you search for almost anything, you are bombarded with dozens of sites that have nothing at all to do with your search, but everything to do with installing trojans and popup-producers. It's depressing to see what used to be a useful tool totally swamped by noise....I just hope they can bring it back from the brink.
That's also how monopolies like Microsoft are built. We can continue to move towards the closed-source simgularity of MS or go the other direction towards openness and freedom. If nobody makes a $100 billion fortune off of it, then ok...Microsoft's empire wasn't built completely off of the hard work of their employees; some of it was won off of the back of altruistic programmers of things like BSD. If Microsoft had been somewhat more altrustic (maybe open-source Windows 95/98, since it's not economically viable for them anymore?) then we'd all be better off.
No I don't...because the people that can write a simple application will become the most-used software...I mean, I could write a complicated competitor to DHCPD tomorrow that took days to install and required dozens of support calls to maintain...but nobody would switch to it because of the easy, no-nonsense operation of the existing product. I will agree that there is no intrinsic "reward" mechanism for software that is simpler...but again the cyclic nature of open software comes into play; it's the concept of "people wrote free software for me, so I should write free software."
I think that if your application is so simple as to not require support for installation or operation, then perhaps you shouldn't make lots of money off of it anyway. I mean, something as complicated as OpenOffice needs someone to provide support all along the way; something as simple as DHCPD probably doesn't. The assumption would be that the programmer, freed from the costs of buying a commercial version of some software (aka he can use the aforementioned DHCPD on an old Pentium instead of buying an expensive, dedicated Cisco router to do the same thing), could then put his resources into making still better software. I do understand what you're saying; but I think the benefits of open-source software transcend cost.
You make money like everything in the GNU/FOSS movement...by charging for services, installation, operation. Electronic and engineered items are harder to pass on to someone else, who can also make a contribution; software, on the other hand, allows you to make a copy, change it, and pass it on to someone else who might also make changes. That's hard to do with a bridge or a VCR.
I agree...And have some additional points. The Brahmos has a warhead of 440 pounds, wheras the Tomahawk has a 1000-pound warhead. The point about not being supersonic has not been stressed enough. If you launch a dozen Tomahawks from a submarine, nobody is going to know what happened until things start blowing up somewhere, 800 miles away. If you launch a dozen Brahmos' from the same (non-existent, since it's not a SLCM) submarine, as soon as it goes supersonic, you have given everybody in audible range a rough bearing to find your sub. It's the same reason the Advanced Cruise Missile is subsonic. If you really need to get a bomb on target in remarkably little time, a Mach-2 F-15E will do just fine. If you need to get a bomb on target and have nobody know where it came from, you use a subsonic, terrain-following cruise missile.
I don't know about the 1.Unleash vigilante justice on spammers suggestion...imagine millions of machines in DDOS battles with quadrillions of bits...The Internet has enough problems already.
Ya...just wait until one of your "home" users wipes out a directory full of payroll information, and 150 angry employees that want their money NOW come beating on your door...in a home network, you at least can kick someone out for screwing things up....in business, it's hard to do that to the boss.
Aren't "The Ancients" the race that always allowed technology, self-assurance and hubris to overtake their civilization, leading to their ultimate extinction? Wait...you're right, we're well on our way.
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Ya, it bothers me too. But if Intel hadn't messed it all up by designing a "clock speed only" processor, then we wouldn't be in this situation. I definately agree that the Performance Ratings are a very poor way to describe a processor...
Maybe all of this preliminary information will help Intel markitecture their way to the Pentium 6!
My guess is that they got ahold of somebody's voice mail...or maybe had a conversation with the voice mail system itself.
Exactly...if you allow Microsoft to give you a low-cost anything, you're just locking yourself into high-cost something else, since it's all Integrated. They'll make their 80% margin somewhere else...
I will agree that the concept and basic execution are great...it's a wonderful idea in the perfect form factor (the 12" is the one I'm talking about...) I'm just dismayed to see Apple falling from its previous pinnacle of quality to a level no better than "the other guys." There was a time when Apple meant buying the absolute best; but it seems that is no longer the case. I have been told many times by Apple salesmen to "buy Applecare!" but it is no substitute for cheap construction.
I think it only works if you've got $100 billion and enough lawyers to build a four-lane highway from Los Angeles to New York...
Yes...nothing like shattering screens or malfunctioning latches to make you think that Apple has a quality product. The most recent iBooks are abysmal in my opinion, certainly no better than the run-of-the-mill HP's and Compaq's you see in Best Buy or Circuit City.
I know you're being sarcastic, but it is interesting for one reason....IT IS HAPPENING ON A GRAPHING CALCULATOR. I am well aware of the swarms of buffer overflow exploits out there...but again, this was on a graphing calculator, and was put to good use, not DOS'ing SCO.
Okay....OVERrun...or overflow, whatever you want to call it. The TI-92 allowed you to transfer data between machines, and make and restore backups. But normally this was limited to the "user" area of the calculator. By crafting some extra long strings, a buffer in the calc would overflow, and fill the normally-un-accessable "OS" area, resulting in the ability to run all sorts of assembly applications.
I still love my TI-92...While in college waiting for teachers to show up, I played lots of Tetris games on Fargo, which was the assembly-language system made possible only because of a buffer underrun...
Let's use an indestructable shell around the entire unit, made of a couple of layers of Unobtanium! And also maybe some chocolate milkshakes.
Here's part of a STRINGS output from a Windows 2000 version of FTP.EXE: @(#) Copyright (c) 1983 The Regents of the University of California. Here's another STRINGS, of NSLOOKUP.EXE: @(#) Copyright (c) 1985,1989 Regents of the University of California. I would imagine that lots more BSD code is liberally spread about Windows somewhere...So Microsoft's hand is definitely in the cookie jar still. Dunno if they've re-written for XP, but I doubt it.
Since I'm always yakking about computers in education, I'll apply my experience here..."Computer Professionals" that know Windows in an educational context are rapidly becoming a dime a dozen. Their role has gone from having to diagnose anything to being little more than paper-tray fillers and ink-changers. Thus, their wages have dropped too. Hire a "Linux Professional", and you've got somebody that can do a bit more, but certainly costs a lot more, and is much more rare. No schools that I know of even hire MCSE's for their "professional" work...it's all left to people that sometimes haven't even graduated high school....and have the skills and work ethics to prove it.
In my field, education, IT directors/coordinators are little more than zombie-like followers of their associated "consultants"...who of course lead them down the road of most profit to them, aka Microsoft. I will agree with #2, but this is NOT good. School boards and clueless administrators turn EVERYTHING over to the directors/coordinators, who just as quickly toss it over in the lap of the overpriced, lock-in consultants. What is needed is people willing to do some of the work themselves, and not leave it to the consultants. Only then will education, and to an extent corporations, free themselves from the grasp of yearly license increases and forced upgrades.
In my experience, the mindless spewing is usually "MICROSOFT! MICROSOFT! MICROSOFT!"
I couldn't agree more. The idea that one can do something (whether it be a lawsuit or designing a killer ap) that will put them on a work-less road to eternal luxury so permeates our society that it's difficult for someone to accept something as different as free and open source software. The idea that you must have money and stuff, and do everything in your power to get more money and more stuff, is what WILL end our civilization.
Google's search results seem to be disintegrating. If you search for almost anything, you are bombarded with dozens of sites that have nothing at all to do with your search, but everything to do with installing trojans and popup-producers. It's depressing to see what used to be a useful tool totally swamped by noise....I just hope they can bring it back from the brink.
That's also how monopolies like Microsoft are built. We can continue to move towards the closed-source simgularity of MS or go the other direction towards openness and freedom. If nobody makes a $100 billion fortune off of it, then ok...Microsoft's empire wasn't built completely off of the hard work of their employees; some of it was won off of the back of altruistic programmers of things like BSD. If Microsoft had been somewhat more altrustic (maybe open-source Windows 95/98, since it's not economically viable for them anymore?) then we'd all be better off.
No I don't...because the people that can write a simple application will become the most-used software...I mean, I could write a complicated competitor to DHCPD tomorrow that took days to install and required dozens of support calls to maintain...but nobody would switch to it because of the easy, no-nonsense operation of the existing product. I will agree that there is no intrinsic "reward" mechanism for software that is simpler...but again the cyclic nature of open software comes into play; it's the concept of "people wrote free software for me, so I should write free software."
I think that if your application is so simple as to not require support for installation or operation, then perhaps you shouldn't make lots of money off of it anyway. I mean, something as complicated as OpenOffice needs someone to provide support all along the way; something as simple as DHCPD probably doesn't. The assumption would be that the programmer, freed from the costs of buying a commercial version of some software (aka he can use the aforementioned DHCPD on an old Pentium instead of buying an expensive, dedicated Cisco router to do the same thing), could then put his resources into making still better software. I do understand what you're saying; but I think the benefits of open-source software transcend cost.
You make money like everything in the GNU/FOSS movement...by charging for services, installation, operation. Electronic and engineered items are harder to pass on to someone else, who can also make a contribution; software, on the other hand, allows you to make a copy, change it, and pass it on to someone else who might also make changes. That's hard to do with a bridge or a VCR.
I agree...And have some additional points. The Brahmos has a warhead of 440 pounds, wheras the Tomahawk has a 1000-pound warhead. The point about not being supersonic has not been stressed enough. If you launch a dozen Tomahawks from a submarine, nobody is going to know what happened until things start blowing up somewhere, 800 miles away. If you launch a dozen Brahmos' from the same (non-existent, since it's not a SLCM) submarine, as soon as it goes supersonic, you have given everybody in audible range a rough bearing to find your sub. It's the same reason the Advanced Cruise Missile is subsonic. If you really need to get a bomb on target in remarkably little time, a Mach-2 F-15E will do just fine. If you need to get a bomb on target and have nobody know where it came from, you use a subsonic, terrain-following cruise missile.
I don't know about the 1.Unleash vigilante justice on spammers suggestion...imagine millions of machines in DDOS battles with quadrillions of bits...The Internet has enough problems already.
Ya...just wait until one of your "home" users wipes out a directory full of payroll information, and 150 angry employees that want their money NOW come beating on your door...in a home network, you at least can kick someone out for screwing things up....in business, it's hard to do that to the boss.
Aren't "The Ancients" the race that always allowed technology, self-assurance and hubris to overtake their civilization, leading to their ultimate extinction? Wait...you're right, we're well on our way.