I gotta say.. I'm a tad suspicious here.. there seems to be a lot of marketing flash (no pun intended) and scarce details.
What kind of CPUs are we talking about ? I'm assuming we're talking non-shared memory here, and therefore nodes that "retain" their own identies. But then isnt each cpu running it's own kernal ? That is.. This ISNT SMP , right ?
I think the details could be a lot clearer here. The lack of tech specs or simple explinations, and excessive use of buisness speak "Efficiency" "unprecendented power" etc. makes me a tad nervous.
MS didnt close shop for several reasons.
First and foremost, many of the stockholders are MS employees, and they have pride in their company, and a personal investment in the company that gives them reason to not want to just give up.
Second, it was clear that Microsoft thought it could win, and in fact, for all practical purposes, it DID win.
Third, closing shop would require all outstanding shares to be bought by the company, at enormous cost, this is potentially money they dont HAVE.
Fourth, and this is ironic coming from microsoft, but there is the issue of corporate responsibility. If Microsoft just "gives up" do you realize the impending panic in the computer world? Especially among people who've only ever known a MS-OS ?
MS giving up was never an issue, MS knew this and the DOJ knew this. I'm sure a real economist can explain better than I , and with more justification, why they didnt close shop, but I never wondered why they didnt. The idea seems, quite frankly, rediculous that they would.
I may have spoken too quickly on the audio problems, I noted the bitrate of ~ 15.5k/sec= 128 kbits/sec
That may account for some of the odd audio.... but still, thats what MP3s normally come at and i've not heard that much distortion in normal clips i've encoded at those rates.. so I doubt that that's mostly at fault.
Other things I failed to note the first time around..
The fight in the caves, the very first one, before the evil gal reveals herself (good girl vs yellow sabre). I couldnt tell if it was a vision, or if it actually happened.. I had to view it like 2 or 3 times. Maby that's just my interpretation, but it seems that when we cut back to the 3-some, we had no real view of the body on the floor, so it seems that the sequence was completely out of place (i.e. a vision sequence).
While good.. the cinematic quality isnt quite there
for instance.. voices are echoey an comm-like when they shouldnt be, for isntance in the entrance to the great hall.
The acting's generally ok... but the woman playing the emperor's hand person over/under acts, I cant quite tell, but she's definately the most "off" of all of them. Vader's voice is a tad off.. and so are some of his actions, like the force choke, it was too quick.. it didnt linger.
The holographic effects are good, as are the space/ship effects, almost equal to the current level of effects, and certainly worthy of the classic starwars movies. The extras: generally pretty good, better than the emperor's hand woman in general, except for the dancer at the beginning of the bar.
Camerawork... it's almost.. too fluid.. like a TV show... somethings' not quite right here.. not enough stationary shots that are more characteristic of the real movies. Everytime the camera pans it feels sort of like it's being shot from a home movie camera, unless it's a space-effect, in which case, it feels like the movie.
I speak not of dependancies you can reasonably expect to be there, such as libc, or say, the Win32API for basic windowing (analgous to the xlibs), but of dependancies on a whole other program that is coincidentially included with the operating system.
To analogue again, I speak not of dependancies on libc, but of a dependancy on mplayer.
I realize, as a programmer, you must expect some dependancies, or all will be from scratch, and the programs shall be huge and slow. However, I merely encourage programmers to what which dependancies they rely on. In particular, it seems to me that Windows could be made to operate perfectly fine without a depending on the media player components. Obviously the same can not be said for other pairs of programs and libraries, say libpcap and ethereal.
If, as the MS rep claims, that the registry problems are due to the removal of the normally integrated Windows Media Player, then should we be worried?
Yes. If WMP becomes another "essential component" of windows, like IE did back in the days of the DOJ trials, that is, remove it and you destroy windows, then we're in for another long round of format lock-in, the way MS wants. I think it's important to watch as MS adds "features" to the operating system to ensure that it's not just a sneaky way to further another of MS's goals (e.g. media format dominance).
It seemed like hogwash then, and it seems like hogwash now. Just because a modular component was integrated, doesnt mean it cant be undone. It may take a lot of effort, because you intentially put yourself in a dependancy ditch. But that's your fault for not thinking ahead of time and considering the possibility that one day, that dependency might not be available. And yes, it is reasonable to think that MS programmers think like that. Just because they got away with it once, doesnt mean it's going to happen again. They should be prepared for the eventuality that at some point, not every piece of MS software will be available on the install by default.
Is anyone else suprised by how this server is withstanding a slashdotting? Its' got MP3's , and a Movie on it, and i'm pulling 200k+/sec from the server right now.
There's gotta be some might big bandwidth here. Of course, it IS cornell.
Avagadro's # sounds fine to me, as long as they define Avagadro's number independantly.
Like someone else noted, Avagadro's # is based on the # of atoms in 12 grams of C-12.
I suppose they could use some ultra-pure refining method to get a small amount of absolutely pure C12 (perhaps some sort of gas-centrifuge method) to get rid of the C-14 ?), or they could pick an element with only one known stable isotope. (I think there are a couple like this, gold maby?)
Then they get that element in the ultra-refined state via whatever method. Then I suppose they could create a small flat square of this material, measure the atoms 1 by 1 w/ SEM (scanning electron microscopy) and then note the length of this square (which isnt dependant on weight). There's your new unit of mass. Scale it up by whatever mulitplication factor to make it almost exactly what a current Kg is and people wont be too annoyed either (w/ having to change balances everwhere).
This way the obsessive compulsive analytical chemists and the obsessive compulsive standards people can both be happy.
As for me, I'm an organic chemist, and as long as I've got 3 places (or maby 4 in certain situations) past the decimal point, I'm happy.
I've found Wikipedia to be a great source for even somewhat esoteric things, in particular, chemistry/biology.
For example, I needed to know the biological significance of Zinc metal for a chemistry problem set the other day... lo and behold, Wikipedia's page on Zinc had a broad answer that led me to know what to search for in books (Zinc "fingers" & DNA).
I also used Wikipedia as the starting point for a large research paper on thrombin, a blood clotting enzyme. Note: this is not some simple little tidbit, but a enzyme in a extremely complex series of reactions that are the blood clotting cascade. And who had a good overview of the process to get me started ? Wikipedia ! (Coagulation) & (Thrombin).
What I find MOST helpful about wikipedia is the cross-linking. It represents uncommon words as a treasure trove of further information instead of a confusing word just sitting there. Sometimes you avoid looking up all those words because of the effort involved, but w/ Wikipedia it's extrememly painless.
As you can see, i've had a lot of good experiences w/ Wikipedia. I've found it to be lacking in certain topics, but I've actually found myself contributing to those topics due to the help i've received from it before.
I think the fact that it provides such a high quality resource to a lot of people will only encourage them to help add to it, to make it better, or as a way of saying thanks. I sure did.
I think Tiger-pre-release should be made available to ALL ADC members (ADC signup is free). Then you'd still have everyone under the NDA, and no one who didnt want it or wasnt qualified to mess with it would get burned by a partially developed OS.
I mean, sure I see the point of making people pay for the final version. But for the betas, it seems like the more qualified testers they have the better. Besides, not all developers can afford full ADC memberships with all those software dl keys, they're freaking expensive !
Didnt we already go through this sillyness with the infinite lifetime support agreements?
these certainly are not the same thing... what makes them worthy of a suit ? I've had apple repair all my stuff that breaks.. I'm not quite sure what their problem is.
People tend to like things that are tried and true and are known to run solid.. Or with small incremental changes, done carefully.
The problem with XP is two-fold.. first.. it (the "jump" to XP) was just that, a jump, that wasnt all that carefully considered beforehand (MS just figured that most people would go with it, because after all, it IS the latest and greatest).
Second, MS marketing actually shot them in the foot here. They marketed this as the "hot new thing", "new and improved", "great new features", etc. Now, while this technique tends to work well on the general american public... it does not fly well with the government, who would much perfer "increased stability" concurrent with "improved performance". That is, they want exactly what they have but better. They dont really want the architecture that they understand pulled out from under them and replaced with a whiz-bang new thing, because, from experience, they know that sort of replacement tends to lead to troubles in critical situations.
And on the whole, they're right.. if you must must must have a system that works, it's much better not to induldge in new and potentially useless features at the expense of a solid system.
While some of these certifications seem silly and almost obvious (as in "well of COURSE it can do that").
We should remember, for non-technical people (i.e.: most of the government) this is all they have to judge tehcnical suitability for the job. And like the beauracrats they are, they adhere pretty strictly to these things.
So yes, it is a big deal that a major distro's broken through some of the red tape.
Slashdot Mirror
I gotta say.. I'm a tad suspicious here.. there seems to be a lot of marketing flash (no pun intended) and scarce details.
What kind of CPUs are we talking about ? I'm assuming we're talking non-shared memory here, and therefore nodes that "retain" their own identies. But then isnt each cpu running it's own kernal ? That is.. This ISNT SMP , right ?
I think the details could be a lot clearer here. The lack of tech specs or simple explinations, and excessive use of buisness speak "Efficiency" "unprecendented power" etc. makes me a tad nervous.
Does anyone think that this batman was influenced by the famous "Grayson" trailer/fan film that people kept wishing would be made into a movie ??
http://www.theforce.net/fanfilms/nonsw/grayson/
Does anyone think it'll ever get made ?
MS didnt close shop for several reasons. First and foremost, many of the stockholders are MS employees, and they have pride in their company, and a personal investment in the company that gives them reason to not want to just give up. Second, it was clear that Microsoft thought it could win, and in fact, for all practical purposes, it DID win. Third, closing shop would require all outstanding shares to be bought by the company, at enormous cost, this is potentially money they dont HAVE. Fourth, and this is ironic coming from microsoft, but there is the issue of corporate responsibility. If Microsoft just "gives up" do you realize the impending panic in the computer world? Especially among people who've only ever known a MS-OS ? MS giving up was never an issue, MS knew this and the DOJ knew this. I'm sure a real economist can explain better than I , and with more justification, why they didnt close shop, but I never wondered why they didnt. The idea seems, quite frankly, rediculous that they would.
"Why would you deal with legal harassment when you can just take the profits you already have, and just shake your hands and say "Too bad"?
"
1) because the cost of closing shop is very expensive, and cuts into profits.
2) this move doesnt benefeit the shareholders.
2) being the most important, since they control the company.
I may have spoken too quickly on the audio problems, I noted the bitrate of ~ 15.5k/sec= 128 kbits/sec
That may account for some of the odd audio.... but still, thats what MP3s normally come at and i've not heard that much distortion in normal clips i've encoded at those rates.. so I doubt that that's mostly at fault.
Other things I failed to note the first time around..
The fight in the caves, the very first one, before the evil gal reveals herself (good girl vs yellow sabre). I couldnt tell if it was a vision, or if it actually happened.. I had to view it like 2 or 3 times. Maby that's just my interpretation, but it seems that when we cut back to the 3-some, we had no real view of the body on the floor, so it seems that the sequence was completely out of place (i.e. a vision sequence).
Overall, again, very nice effort.
While good.. the cinematic quality isnt quite there
/ship effects, almost equal to the current level of effects, and certainly worthy of the classic starwars movies. The extras: generally pretty good, better than the emperor's hand woman in general, except for the dancer at the beginning of the bar.
for instance.. voices are echoey an comm-like when they shouldnt be, for isntance in the entrance to the great hall.
The acting's generally ok... but the woman playing the emperor's hand person over/under acts, I cant quite tell, but she's definately the most "off" of all of them. Vader's voice is a tad off.. and so are some of his actions, like the force choke, it was too quick.. it didnt linger.
The holographic effects are good, as are the space
Camerawork... it's almost.. too fluid.. like a TV show... somethings' not quite right here.. not enough stationary shots that are more characteristic of the real movies. Everytime the camera pans it feels sort of like it's being shot from a home movie camera, unless it's a space-effect, in which case, it feels like the movie.
-- brought to you by the "No-shit-sherlock" department.
I speak not of dependancies you can reasonably expect to be there, such as libc, or say, the Win32API for basic windowing (analgous to the xlibs), but of dependancies on a whole other program that is coincidentially included with the operating system.
To analogue again, I speak not of dependancies on libc, but of a dependancy on mplayer.
I realize, as a programmer, you must expect some dependancies, or all will be from scratch, and the programs shall be huge and slow. However, I merely encourage programmers to what which dependancies they rely on. In particular, it seems to me that Windows could be made to operate perfectly fine without a depending on the media player components. Obviously the same can not be said for other pairs of programs and libraries, say libpcap and ethereal.
If, as the MS rep claims, that the registry problems are due to the removal of the normally integrated Windows Media Player, then should we be worried?
Yes. If WMP becomes another "essential component" of windows, like IE did back in the days of the DOJ trials, that is, remove it and you destroy windows, then we're in for another long round of format lock-in, the way MS wants. I think it's important to watch as MS adds "features" to the operating system to ensure that it's not just a sneaky way to further another of MS's goals (e.g. media format dominance).
It seemed like hogwash then, and it seems like hogwash now. Just because a modular component was integrated, doesnt mean it cant be undone. It may take a lot of effort, because you intentially put yourself in a dependancy ditch. But that's your fault for not thinking ahead of time and considering the possibility that one day, that dependency might not be available. And yes, it is reasonable to think that MS programmers think like that. Just because they got away with it once, doesnt mean it's going to happen again. They should be prepared for the eventuality that at some point, not every piece of MS software will be available on the install by default.
As much as I dislike MS, I dont think they're stupid... and I dont think they would intentionally pull this.
On the other hand, they may just be thumbing their nose at the EU and really just not caring an incredible amount.
How long til Dell suddenly decides to back Blu-Ray, too ?
If things keep going the way they did on that last court opinion, we may not have to deal with this sillyness.
Seriously though, I predict broadcastless recievers will become as common as regionless DVD players, and that it'd be another enormous flop.
Why'd they pick an expensive P4 for the box ? I would think such a utillity type box would run just fine on a celeron, or sempron type chip..
Is all that power really nessicary ?
Is anyone else suprised by how this server is withstanding a slashdotting? Its' got MP3's , and a Movie on it, and i'm pulling 200k+/sec from the server right now.
There's gotta be some might big bandwidth here. Of course, it IS cornell.
Where's the MIDI file ??
Might be a little hard to isolate and weigh just one.
Just wait until someone comes up with a good reciever for these signals...
Man goes on subway to get lunch/groceries/whatever...
another man passes him in close proximity, takes reading, privacy invaded.
Avagadro's # sounds fine to me, as long as they define Avagadro's number independantly.
Like someone else noted, Avagadro's # is based on the # of atoms in 12 grams of C-12.
I suppose they could use some ultra-pure refining method to get a small amount of absolutely pure C12 (perhaps some sort of gas-centrifuge method) to get rid of the C-14 ?), or they could pick an element with only one known stable isotope. (I think there are a couple like this, gold maby?)
Then they get that element in the ultra-refined state via whatever method. Then I suppose they could create a small flat square of this material, measure the atoms 1 by 1 w/ SEM (scanning electron microscopy) and then note the length of this square (which isnt dependant on weight). There's your new unit of mass. Scale it up by whatever mulitplication factor to make it almost exactly what a current Kg is and people wont be too annoyed either (w/ having to change balances everwhere).
This way the obsessive compulsive analytical chemists and the obsessive compulsive standards people can both be happy.
As for me, I'm an organic chemist, and as long as I've got 3 places (or maby 4 in certain situations) past the decimal point, I'm happy.
I've found Wikipedia to be a great source for even somewhat esoteric things, in particular, chemistry/biology.
For example, I needed to know the biological significance of Zinc metal for a chemistry problem set the other day... lo and behold, Wikipedia's page on Zinc had a broad answer that led me to know what to search for in books (Zinc "fingers" & DNA).
I also used Wikipedia as the starting point for a large research paper on thrombin, a blood clotting enzyme. Note: this is not some simple little tidbit, but a enzyme in a extremely complex series of reactions that are the blood clotting cascade. And who had a good overview of the process to get me started ? Wikipedia ! (Coagulation) & (Thrombin).
What I find MOST helpful about wikipedia is the cross-linking. It represents uncommon words as a treasure trove of further information instead of a confusing word just sitting there. Sometimes you avoid looking up all those words because of the effort involved, but w/ Wikipedia it's extrememly painless.
As you can see, i've had a lot of good experiences w/ Wikipedia. I've found it to be lacking in certain topics, but I've actually found myself contributing to those topics due to the help i've received from it before.
I think the fact that it provides such a high quality resource to a lot of people will only encourage them to help add to it, to make it better, or as a way of saying thanks. I sure did.
Will the battery lifetime drop to 6 mos?
I'm not so keen on my iPod dying quicker..
I think Tiger-pre-release should be made available to ALL ADC members (ADC signup is free). Then you'd still have everyone under the NDA, and no one who didnt want it or wasnt qualified to mess with it would get burned by a partially developed OS.
I mean, sure I see the point of making people pay for the final version. But for the betas, it seems like the more qualified testers they have the better. Besides, not all developers can afford full ADC memberships with all those software dl keys, they're freaking expensive !
It's really too bad that there's such a big messy system needed....
It seems like there should be something with less red tape that gets the job done... any suggestions ?
Didnt we already go through this sillyness with the infinite lifetime support agreements?
these certainly are not the same thing... what makes them worthy of a suit ? I've had apple repair all my stuff that breaks.. I'm not quite sure what their problem is.
Re: XP's non-cert status...
People tend to like things that are tried and true and are known to run solid.. Or with small incremental changes, done carefully.
The problem with XP is two-fold.. first.. it (the "jump" to XP) was just that, a jump, that wasnt all that carefully considered beforehand (MS just figured that most people would go with it, because after all, it IS the latest and greatest).
Second, MS marketing actually shot them in the foot here. They marketed this as the "hot new thing", "new and improved", "great new features", etc. Now, while this technique tends to work well on the general american public... it does not fly well with the government, who would much perfer "increased stability" concurrent with "improved performance". That is, they want exactly what they have but better. They dont really want the architecture that they understand pulled out from under them and replaced with a whiz-bang new thing, because, from experience, they know that sort of replacement tends to lead to troubles in critical situations.
And on the whole, they're right.. if you must must must have a system that works, it's much better not to induldge in new and potentially useless features at the expense of a solid system.
While some of these certifications seem silly and almost obvious (as in "well of COURSE it can do that").
We should remember, for non-technical people (i.e.: most of the government) this is all they have to judge tehcnical suitability for the job. And like the beauracrats they are, they adhere pretty strictly to these things.
So yes, it is a big deal that a major distro's broken through some of the red tape.