Intel graphics chips said to be designed for minimal power draw rather than all out performance
I somehow doubt Intel's key design goal is minimal power draw - cheap mass production is likely top of the bill.
As an example, just look at the Intel Atom - the CPU is designed to use a tiny amount of power, but the Intel graphics chipset it's usually integrated with uses a lot more power (relatively speaking) than the CPU and other chipsets out there.
That OpenOffice bug appears to have been first reported over three years ago, would be frustrating/confusing to those affected, and it doesn't sound as if it would be excessively difficult to fix.
After 3+ years, the latest post says "Sorry, no time left to integrate the fix into 3.0 code line". That doesn't fill me with too much confidence.
I strongly disagree that "most of the improvement has come from the change to digital, not HD". TVs don't magically become a higher resolution when you add a digital decoder! The main benefit(?) of digital has been more channels.
I see a huge difference in quality between SD and HD. The most damaging thing for HD that I've seen is that many retailers used to play SD content on HDTVs, which isn't particularly suited for a TFT/LCD screen and can look terrible.
It's not even a good example of an album to study. Radiohead had enormous success with it, but they were hugely helped by two things:
1) They were already a very well-established band. 2) They had a huge amount of publicity given to them because the method of distribution was 'revolutionary' (and they got that publicity largely because of 1) above).
Is it a copyrightable work though? They directly modified somebody elses copyrighted work. I could understand it if it was a patcher, but not a actual executable file.
The label of 'stealing' is in the story headline itself. If Slashdot ran a story on music/software piracy with a headline labelling those people in the same way, I am sure there would be far more critical posts.
I'm not sure anyone is criticising the foundation's financial model
Some people are taking it in a negative way though because of the tone of the article and how it mentions but doesn't explain the financial model. Just look at the parent post I replied to, to see somebody who took the financial model as a negative:
So basically, he being outed as a Charity basher because he is citing the LA times article [latimes.com] that the foundation only spends 10% of its money on actual helping the poor.
The reason they 'only spend 10%' is because they have a endowment to maintain. It's far better for them to use 10% of their endowment yearly, recouping that money through investment, and then being able to sustain that level of spending indefinitely (rather than spending everything in one go!)
For anybody wishing to bash the foundation though, the 'only spending 10%' figure provides a useful point as many people will jump to a negative conclusion without actually thinking about it.
As someone who doesn't really follow the free software movement, I think he should have focused on promoting the advantages of open-source, rather than bashing those that are free to license their software whichever way they choose.
Gates didn't invent proprietary software, and thousands of other companies do the same thing. It's wrong, no matter who does it.
Utter nonsense - and it reflects badly on the FSF. How exactly are you going to persuade these companies to become more open-source friendly, if all you do is bash them?
Practically all ISPs will have terms in their small print detailing the actions they can take. You may not like it, and their advertising may be misleading, but in most cases it won't be fraud.
The point is, any ISP declaring these terms on their front page will not get business. On the other hand, any ISP truly prepared to put in the infrastructure to support heavy users will have to charge considerably more to cover those costs.
The problem is, an Internet Service Provider needs to compete against other ISPs. A new ISP would not go very far if it was totally open about the limitations of a contended service at the point of sale.
The average customer would just go for the ISP that labels itself as 'unlimited', and ignore a 'limited' ISP at the same price.
As said in my first post, if you want a higher / guaranteed level of service, you'll likely have to pay for a business-level service - rather than a likely highly-contended home service. It's in both the ISP's commercial interests and the typical home users interests for certain traffic to be prioritised on a highly-contended service.
You're talking about terms and conditions that the law wouldn't permit and thus could never be enforced - but a traffic shaping T&C has nothing to do with "granting.. powers far beyond what is allowed for under the law" here, does it?
Unless you're saying that traffic shaping is actually illegal (with or without those terms and conditions), that has no relevance really. If you think it is illegal, perhaps somebody could take legal action.
When SOMEONE is doing that to SOMEONE ELSE'S traffic, it is not.
This isn't just 'someone' though, it's an ISP, whose terms and conditions that you agreed to likely include provisions for ensuring a better quality of service for the typical customer. HTTP prioritising almost certainly benefits the typical user.
I'm not excusing it, as most ISPs need to be more open about how they shape their traffic, but if you want a higher / guaranteed level of service, you'll likely have to pay for a business-level service.
ISPs probably don't really care whether it's legitimate or not though, it's the impact that large amounts of data has on their network that's the issue for them.
I don't see that prioritising HTTP traffic etc is harmful though - it can provide a better quality of service to most users, I prioritise HTTP traffic myself. The real issue is whether ISPs are open to the consumer about how their traffic is shaped.
The silly thing is, it's even easier to research how vulnerabilities would work on unpatched systems for open-source software - you don't need to examine the patch, you have access to the changes in the source code!
If they just banned every IP, yes, that'd have a high number of false positives, but they could track the following:
1. A user has previously logged onto Eve Online 2. The IP linked to that user's previous session downloads the code. 3. The user logs onto Eve Online again with the same IP (i.e. the same IP/username is maintained throughout).
Put those three events together, and it'd be easy to track/ban a lot of those downloading.
You've misinterpreted what I've said - there were two groups of beta testers.
The official beta testers got full versions afterwards if they had submitted anything (as you said), but those in the more public beta programme got told they could buy and use the 'upgrade' version if they wished to get the final. Since they'd be upgrading from 'Vista beta' to 'Vista', you'd need to use this 'upgrade' trick.
Slashdot Mirror
I somehow doubt Intel's key design goal is minimal power draw - cheap mass production is likely top of the bill.
As an example, just look at the Intel Atom - the CPU is designed to use a tiny amount of power, but the Intel graphics chipset it's usually integrated with uses a lot more power (relatively speaking) than the CPU and other chipsets out there.
That OpenOffice bug appears to have been first reported over three years ago, would be frustrating/confusing to those affected, and it doesn't sound as if it would be excessively difficult to fix.
After 3+ years, the latest post says "Sorry, no time left to integrate the fix into 3.0 code line". That doesn't fill me with too much confidence.
I strongly disagree that "most of the improvement has come from the change to digital, not HD". TVs don't magically become a higher resolution when you add a digital decoder! The main benefit(?) of digital has been more channels.
I see a huge difference in quality between SD and HD. The most damaging thing for HD that I've seen is that many retailers used to play SD content on HDTVs, which isn't particularly suited for a TFT/LCD screen and can look terrible.
They do have games that run perfectly on 3 year old computers - they're 3 year old games re-released on budget.
It's not even a good example of an album to study. Radiohead had enormous success with it, but they were hugely helped by two things:
1) They were already a very well-established band.
2) They had a huge amount of publicity given to them because the method of distribution was 'revolutionary' (and they got that publicity largely because of 1) above).
Web forums may not beat USENET clients on features, but for the average user they certainly win on ease of use and accessibility.
Is it a copyrightable work though? They directly modified somebody elses copyrighted work. I could understand it if it was a patcher, but not a actual executable file.
The label of 'stealing' is in the story headline itself. If Slashdot ran a story on music/software piracy with a headline labelling those people in the same way, I am sure there would be far more critical posts.
So I suppose saying people are "free to license their software whichever way they choose" isn't a coherent argument then?
I'm not sure anyone is criticising the foundation's financial model
Some people are taking it in a negative way though because of the tone of the article and how it mentions but doesn't explain the financial model. Just look at the parent post I replied to, to see somebody who took the financial model as a negative:
So basically, he being outed as a Charity basher because he is citing the LA times article [latimes.com] that the foundation only spends 10% of its money on actual helping the poor.
The reason they 'only spend 10%' is because they have a endowment to maintain. It's far better for them to use 10% of their endowment yearly, recouping that money through investment, and then being able to sustain that level of spending indefinitely (rather than spending everything in one go!)
For anybody wishing to bash the foundation though, the 'only spending 10%' figure provides a useful point as many people will jump to a negative conclusion without actually thinking about it.
As someone who doesn't really follow the free software movement, I think he should have focused on promoting the advantages of open-source, rather than bashing those that are free to license their software whichever way they choose.
Gates didn't invent proprietary software, and thousands of other companies do the same thing. It's wrong, no matter who does it.
Utter nonsense - and it reflects badly on the FSF. How exactly are you going to persuade these companies to become more open-source friendly, if all you do is bash them?
Practically all ISPs will have terms in their small print detailing the actions they can take. You may not like it, and their advertising may be misleading, but in most cases it won't be fraud.
The point is, any ISP declaring these terms on their front page will not get business. On the other hand, any ISP truly prepared to put in the infrastructure to support heavy users will have to charge considerably more to cover those costs.
The problem is, an Internet Service Provider needs to compete against other ISPs. A new ISP would not go very far if it was totally open about the limitations of a contended service at the point of sale.
The average customer would just go for the ISP that labels itself as 'unlimited', and ignore a 'limited' ISP at the same price.
As said in my first post, if you want a higher / guaranteed level of service, you'll likely have to pay for a business-level service - rather than a likely highly-contended home service. It's in both the ISP's commercial interests and the typical home users interests for certain traffic to be prioritised on a highly-contended service.
You're talking about terms and conditions that the law wouldn't permit and thus could never be enforced - but a traffic shaping T&C has nothing to do with "granting .. powers far beyond what is allowed for under the law" here, does it?
Unless you're saying that traffic shaping is actually illegal (with or without those terms and conditions), that has no relevance really. If you think it is illegal, perhaps somebody could take legal action.
When SOMEONE is doing that to SOMEONE ELSE'S traffic, it is not.
This isn't just 'someone' though, it's an ISP, whose terms and conditions that you agreed to likely include provisions for ensuring a better quality of service for the typical customer. HTTP prioritising almost certainly benefits the typical user.
I'm not excusing it, as most ISPs need to be more open about how they shape their traffic, but if you want a higher / guaranteed level of service, you'll likely have to pay for a business-level service.
ISPs probably don't really care whether it's legitimate or not though, it's the impact that large amounts of data has on their network that's the issue for them.
I don't see that prioritising HTTP traffic etc is harmful though - it can provide a better quality of service to most users, I prioritise HTTP traffic myself. The real issue is whether ISPs are open to the consumer about how their traffic is shaped.
Not going to happen, sorry.
My time is better spent installing it now, rather than having to check in a few hours just to aid a pointless record.
It's 18% of all households, not 20% of the US population.
The silly thing is, it's even easier to research how vulnerabilities would work on unpatched systems for open-source software - you don't need to examine the patch, you have access to the changes in the source code!
If they just banned every IP, yes, that'd have a high number of false positives, but they could track the following:
1. A user has previously logged onto Eve Online
2. The IP linked to that user's previous session downloads the code.
3. The user logs onto Eve Online again with the same IP (i.e. the same IP/username is maintained throughout).
Put those three events together, and it'd be easy to track/ban a lot of those downloading.
The problem is, one case of vigilantism 'gone right' doesn't balance out one case of vigilantism 'gone wrong'.
The official beta testers got full versions afterwards if they had submitted anything (as you said), but those in the more public beta programme got told they could buy and use the 'upgrade' version if they wished to get the final. Since they'd be upgrading from 'Vista beta' to 'Vista', you'd need to use this 'upgrade' trick.