DMCA regulates something that is strictly my own business, like do I watch my DVD under Windows or under Linux? If you send spam, you are making it a million people's business.
I tend to talk to people I know on the phone and just check my e-mail once per week to see if anyone sent a message about my programs. Even if you are right, I have to sit for 14 minutes doing nothing except deciding which messages with "Hi, Oleg" subject to open. And I deleted quite a few legitimate messages because I didn't recognize the address.
By the same token, if I went to sleep at 4am I won't want to have a chat with a telemarketer at 9. So I end up turning off my phone until I wake up and possibly missing calls from friends. And I don't want my physical mailbox to overflow just because I went on a one week trip during the holiday season. But spam is definitely the worst.
Communication between people is good. I should be able to publish my postal address, my phone number and by e-mail on the web and invite people to contact me if they looked at my stuff and want to chat. Remember when shareware came with a README file with all kind of contact information to send $15? I actually got a few nice snail mail letters with checks.
Spam has destroyed our ability for this kind of casual communication. People sending it or selling the products advertized make very little money compared to the value of our time or forced changes in our behaviour. It's time to stop them using technological, political or cultural methods, whatever works best.
Mean that Sun will probably phase out Intel chips over the next 1-2 years in its low end Linux systems, and move entirely to AMD for their 32-bit lower end Linux and 64- and 32-bit mid level systems. Given that so many companies (e.g., Sun, IBM, and Dell) want to increase their 64-bit x86 offerings, Microsoft had better work double time to release 64-bit Windows.
Five varities of Linux, three BSD's, IBM's DB2, CA Ingres and Oracle have confirmed firm support for Opteron. Delaying Windows for this segment will mean that as Opteron becomes popular in the coming months, Linux will become the dominant operating system. This will mean a further boost to Linux.
A few months back, Sandia National labs signed up to put 10,000 Opteron's in a supercomputer named Red storm, which is supposed to become operational in 2004.
Sun needs to start looking at implementing new techniques in regards to it's OS and hardware integration business. Everyone knows that Sun UNIX can perform admirably and is very powerful, but at the same time, IBM is showing that Linux can be substituted for UNIX in the low to mid-level range, and HP has proven that they can sell Linux servers in the absence of huge corporate support.
Many pointy hairs are also awakening to the fact that Linux is evolving way faster then any previous OS in history. This realization is forcing many of them to position themselves in order to benefit from Linux. They are starting by replacing all of their low to medium-level extremely expensive UNIX solutions with Linux implementations, and waiting for Linux to overtake UNIX on the top tier. This saves them tons "in the meantime" and prepares them for the eventual replacement of their high-end solutions. Sun has to know that this scenario is inevitable and play along. Pride will only get you but so far.
McNealy has been fighting Linux for far too long, calling it "just another tool". I got news for you, all OS's are tools. Only this tool here can save your ass a ton while doing everything that every other tool promises to do on the low and medium ends.
Right now, Linux is "it" - and it shows no signs of slowing up. Microsoft makes their money off desktops and their office suite. UNIX makes money off stability and power. Stability and power is what the open source developers aim to improve. UNIX beware - evolve or perish, because you're next..
Granted. I don't see how any word processor can justifiably require a 1.6Ghz processor and 512Mb of RAM. In fact, I think Office 97 on a Pentium Pro 200 was perfectly usable in it's day and is just as usable now, but that's not the whole story. There's a whole plethora of applications which are now commonplace, which weren't even considered feasible ten (?) years ago. I can remember a piece of DOS software on my old 286 which displayed JPEG images. That was it. It took noticeable time just to decode the file, and then sample it down to 320x200 to display on a normal VGA monitor. Nowadays, we don't even consider the decoding process when viewing JPGs.
There's other similar applications - DivX movies, strong encryption, even MP3 audio - which we now take for granted 'cos we've got so much horsepower to play with that processing overhead is no longer an issue. Now we're getting into the realm of PVRs, digital camcorders, encoding real-time video straight into DivX - applications which appeal to ordinary home users, and which require some *serious* megahertz. The games industry provides a convenient milestone - anyone can tell that Quake III looks better than the original Wolfenstein 3D, but more importantly, they can see that they're fundamentally the same thing. It's a lot harder to compare modern video editing software with that of ten years ago, because ten years ago the only people editing movies on their home PCs were masochistic millionaires.
Rather than focusing on all those wasted MHz driving more and more bloated word-processors, consider some of the things we just *couldn't* do with slower hardware, and wonder what we're going to be taking for granted ten years from now.:)
I've recently put together three boxen for family and friends from my spares pile. We're talking 120-150Mhz PIs, 48-64MB SIMM RAM, 1GB drives, quad speed CD-ROMs, 56K modems and 1MB S3 cards, with Win98SE, Word 97, Outlook Express and not much else.
Now, to me and thee, that spec sucks, but to someone that just wants a box for email, browsing and word processing, it does everything that they need to do, as fast as they need to do it.
Sure, I like being able to buy 3Ghz monsters, but you need to sell a lot of systems to make back the the cost of the R&D for them. And given that we should all be aware by now of the environmental cost of computer systems, I'm going to be keeping "obsolete" hardware in service just as long as I can, and thumb my nose at the marketeers who tell me that there are compelling reasons to upgrade other than the magic smoke getting out.
It is easy enough to check this before you buy. Go up to the display case at your local computer parts retailer and ask to see XYZ motherboard that you are thinking of buying. Jot down all the markings on the electrolytic caps. Now go home and look up the datasheet for those caps. A good computer grade capacitor will have longevity of 2000 to 3000 hours or more at maximum ripple current and a temperature of 105 or 125C. Reputable brands are Panasonic HA or NHG, Rubycon, etc.
Forget case mods, maybe we need to start modding our mainboards with better caps.
However, I'm glad that this is happening to boards that end up in the hands of tech-savvy individuals that can spot the problem. People who buy ABIT, Asus, etc... boards expect a lot from the product that they recieve and are usuially knowledgeable about the equipment that they run.
I could only imagine if this happened to a major computer company, how it would be swept under the rug (which it may already have been). I see that IBM is named in the article, so at least they are willing to accept the failures. IBM is one of the only computer makers that I trust anymore after the way that they handled their hard drive failure issues. Yes, they tried to fix the problem by changing the uptime specs, but in the end, they got the problem worked out without too much hassle to customers (hardware zealots excluded).
I would like to know if this problem has been documented by any users that aren't using products from the manufacturers listed in the article and their expierence with the equipment, service and support.
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DMCA regulates something that is strictly my own business, like do I watch my DVD under Windows or under Linux? If you send spam, you are making it a million people's business.
I tend to talk to people I know on the phone and just check my e-mail once per week to see if anyone sent a message about my programs. Even if you are right, I have to sit for 14 minutes doing nothing except deciding which messages with "Hi, Oleg" subject to open. And I deleted quite a few legitimate messages because I didn't recognize the address.
By the same token, if I went to sleep at 4am I won't want to have a chat with a telemarketer at 9. So I end up turning off my phone until I wake up and possibly missing calls from friends. And I don't want my physical mailbox to overflow just because I went on a one week trip during the holiday season. But spam is definitely the worst.
Communication between people is good. I should be able to publish my postal address, my phone number and by e-mail on the web and invite people to contact me if they looked at my stuff and want to chat. Remember when shareware came with a README file with all kind of contact information to send $15? I actually got a few nice snail mail letters with checks.
Spam has destroyed our ability for this kind of casual communication. People sending it or selling the products advertized make very little money compared to the value of our time or forced changes in our behaviour. It's time to stop them using technological, political or cultural methods, whatever works best.
Mean that Sun will probably phase out Intel chips over the next 1-2 years in its low end Linux systems, and move entirely to AMD for their 32-bit lower end Linux and 64- and 32-bit mid level systems. Given that so many companies (e.g., Sun, IBM, and Dell) want to increase their 64-bit x86 offerings, Microsoft had better work double time to release 64-bit Windows.
Five varities of Linux, three BSD's, IBM's DB2, CA Ingres and Oracle have confirmed firm support for Opteron. Delaying Windows for this segment will mean that as Opteron becomes popular in the coming months, Linux will become the dominant operating system. This will mean a further boost to Linux.
A few months back, Sandia National labs signed up to put 10,000 Opteron's in a supercomputer named Red storm, which is supposed to become operational in 2004.
Sun needs to start looking at implementing new techniques in regards to it's OS and hardware integration business. Everyone knows that Sun UNIX can perform admirably and is very powerful, but at the same time, IBM is showing that Linux can be substituted for UNIX in the low to mid-level range, and HP has proven that they can sell Linux servers in the absence of huge corporate support.
Many pointy hairs are also awakening to the fact that Linux is evolving way faster then any previous OS in history. This realization is forcing many of them to position themselves in order to benefit from Linux. They are starting by replacing all of their low to medium-level extremely expensive UNIX solutions with Linux implementations, and waiting for Linux to overtake UNIX on the top tier. This saves them tons "in the meantime" and prepares them for the eventual replacement of their high-end solutions. Sun has to know that this scenario is inevitable and play along. Pride will only get you but so far.
McNealy has been fighting Linux for far too long, calling it "just another tool". I got news for you, all OS's are tools. Only this tool here can save your ass a ton while doing everything that every other tool promises to do on the low and medium ends.
Right now, Linux is "it" - and it shows no signs of slowing up. Microsoft makes their money off desktops and their office suite. UNIX makes money off stability and power. Stability and power is what the open source developers aim to improve. UNIX beware - evolve or perish, because you're next..
Granted. I don't see how any word processor can justifiably require a 1.6Ghz processor and 512Mb of RAM. In fact, I think Office 97 on a Pentium Pro 200 was perfectly usable in it's day and is just as usable now, but that's not the whole story. There's a whole plethora of applications which are now commonplace, which weren't even considered feasible ten (?) years ago. I can remember a piece of DOS software on my old 286 which displayed JPEG images. That was it. It took noticeable time just to decode the file, and then sample it down to 320x200 to display on a normal VGA monitor. Nowadays, we don't even consider the decoding process when viewing JPGs.
:)
There's other similar applications - DivX movies, strong encryption, even MP3 audio - which we now take for granted 'cos we've got so much horsepower to play with that processing overhead is no longer an issue. Now we're getting into the realm of PVRs, digital camcorders, encoding real-time video straight into DivX - applications which appeal to ordinary home users, and which require some *serious* megahertz. The games industry provides a convenient milestone - anyone can tell that Quake III looks better than the original Wolfenstein 3D, but more importantly, they can see that they're fundamentally the same thing. It's a lot harder to compare modern video editing software with that of ten years ago, because ten years ago the only people editing movies on their home PCs were masochistic millionaires.
Rather than focusing on all those wasted MHz driving more and more bloated word-processors, consider some of the things we just *couldn't* do with slower hardware, and wonder what we're going to be taking for granted ten years from now.
I've recently put together three boxen for family and friends from my spares pile. We're talking 120-150Mhz PIs, 48-64MB SIMM RAM, 1GB drives, quad speed CD-ROMs, 56K modems and 1MB S3 cards, with Win98SE, Word 97, Outlook Express and not much else.
Now, to me and thee, that spec sucks, but to someone that just wants a box for email, browsing and word processing, it does everything that they need to do, as fast as they need to do it.
Sure, I like being able to buy 3Ghz monsters, but you need to sell a lot of systems to make back the the cost of the R&D for them. And given that we should all be aware by now of the environmental cost of computer systems, I'm going to be keeping "obsolete" hardware in service just as long as I can, and thumb my nose at the marketeers who tell me that there are compelling reasons to upgrade other than the magic smoke getting out.
It is easy enough to check this before you buy. Go up to the display case at your local computer parts retailer and ask to see XYZ motherboard that you are thinking of buying. Jot down all the markings on the electrolytic caps. Now go home and look up the datasheet for those caps. A good computer grade capacitor will have longevity of 2000 to 3000 hours or more at maximum ripple current and a temperature of 105 or 125C. Reputable brands are Panasonic HA or NHG, Rubycon, etc.
Forget case mods, maybe we need to start modding our mainboards with better caps.
However, I'm glad that this is happening to boards that end up in the hands of tech-savvy individuals that can spot the problem. People who buy ABIT, Asus, etc... boards expect a lot from the product that they recieve and are usuially knowledgeable about the equipment that they run.
I could only imagine if this happened to a major computer company, how it would be swept under the rug (which it may already have been). I see that IBM is named in the article, so at least they are willing to accept the failures. IBM is one of the only computer makers that I trust anymore after the way that they handled their hard drive failure issues. Yes, they tried to fix the problem by changing the uptime specs, but in the end, they got the problem worked out without too much hassle to customers (hardware zealots excluded).
I would like to know if this problem has been documented by any users that aren't using products from the manufacturers listed in the article and their expierence with the equipment, service and support.