The Intel P965 Express chipset's mix of features, performance, and power consumption make it the perfect partner for Intel's new Core 2 processor and our Editor's Choice. Really, it's an easy call to make. The P965's upcoming CrossFire support kills the one reason we might have recommended the 975X. If SLI's your bag, the nForce4 SLI X16 is a solid--albeit power-hungry--option, but the more attractive nForce 590 SLI should be just around the corner. The nForce 570 SLI, meanwhile, doesn't even measure up to its own name, let alone to the P965.
That should round out the Conclusion.
As for the bias, AMD's got a few tricks up their sleeves in the next 7 months, so it will be interesting: consumer level dual CPUs (4X4), integrated shared L3 cache, 65nm fab, and quad core vs Intel's Kentsfield 65nm.
Well, download them once, and create a "software load" CD/DVD that contains all the programs you need at a fresh install. Be really geeky and create a script to autoinstall them all. It really reduces your install time on a fresh system. (although certain driver providers (ECS *cough* *cough* ATI *cough* *cough*) have horrible installers that require reboots after every little installation (or so they claim...;). As long as you install them in the correct order, 1 reboot will usually take care of everything.
Oh, and in general it's soooo long between reinstalls that I've forgotten what all drivers I need, which is why I started creating the "load" discs in the first place. It at least gives me a system that's relatively stable from the get go. Otherwise I get to spend hours researching what that one esoteric driver for the USB 2.0 Hi-speed feature required fix 89486943 rev. c to actually work properly.
Maybe its time to get users to look at Exact Audio Copy. It's by far the best ripper I've used for Windows, as I prefer quality over speed. It will produce guaranteed exact copies which corrects for minor scratches and blemishes if possible. If not possible, it will notify you exactly where in the file the problem lies to let you sample it to see if the problem is noticeable or not.
Details aside, as long as they play fine in CD players, they rip just fine, thank you, on windows or other machines.
You don't have to allow your machine to be so helpful as to install random crap from whatever disk you place into the system. Turn it off! Actually, that's another nice viral vector on MS machines - who in their right mind starts running untrusted executables off of random removable media?
Audio CDs don't have DRM and never will. They can't and still be called CDs. The term CD is trademarked, and can only be used by products that agree to the licensing.
Now, "breaking" certain aspects of the spec, such as "forgetting" to have a few tracking pits encoded, isn't DRM. It's a defective pressing, hence those can still be called CDs.
If you think that CDs have DRM, I have yet to meet an undamaged (as in scratched or worse) CD that I couldn't rip at full digital quality, on Windows, Mac, and Linux boxes.
MS ships their product with every port in the world open, even with SP2. SP2 merely turned on the almost all or nothing firewall, but didn't do anything to seriously address the core issue of security.
What the problem here is that the security console will no longer be merely a bundled component, but will be tied to the OS in such a way that it cannot be replaced and will be an added layer to any third party solution.
That is the exact same thing that was done with IE, and I can't believe MS will be able to get away with that intention for long, especially given its current track record in the courts.
If they'd actually fixed it. But they haven't. (See IE7 zero day exploits)
And they're bundling security products with their OS. They're not providing a secure OS. There's a major difference between the two. The first is illegal when you're a defacto monopoly. The second would be welcomed by everyone.
I still like IBM's EPM editor (on OS/2). It emulated Emacs, sed, ed, edlin or any other editor if you cared to customize it, and was GUI if you wanted it to be. The memories... are surely better than the reality;)
As for GVim, I like the combo interface on Windows. On the Mac, there's a few GUI inconsistencies, but you have to love the fact that the console program is identical. And who worries about 13MB anymore for a PC when a 1GB stick costs around $65?
seeing as they finally got the TCP/IP stack working reasonably well in XP SP2
multi-casting
As for your other point, if they wrote it fresh, they could start with a sandboxed language (C#) with no unsafe blocks. They also have to rewrite a bunch of plugins, such as the WMF renderer in C# though to be truly sandboxed. Not a bad idea, considering the exploits in WMF and JPG that were out recently.
You are correct. I guess the main problem is in the definition of a "real" app. When talking about web apps, in general I think large, scalable, thousands of concurrent users. I don't think ma & pa's store with 5 or even no concurrent users, although that too is a perfectly appropriate example of a webapp.
It's just that such apps are generally much more forgiving of mistakes and allow lots of choices in design and architecture not available to "enterprise" apps. Some of those choices make the app much easier to write and deploy than a corresponding application that is required to scale to large numbers.
or the ever popular "analog" hole. Seriously, there's no way to prevent recording sound, if you allow any consumer sound recording to happen ever. Last ditch - connect recording equipment to internal speaker's wires (you know, the ones that actually drive the speaker) or place microphones in front of speakers in sound-proof enclosures. It's all analog and unstoppable. Quality will most definitely deteriorate some, but for those that think MP3s are "awesome", this will be moot.
In the end, if people look at the numbers, they'll see that P2P has not significantly hurt sales, primarily because of the get a decent copy argument. The fact that fewer CDs may have been sold in any year is not indicative of piracy's effect, it could just as easily be indicative of the state of the economy such as less discretionary income, or the state of music released that year being far subpar (Mariah Carey and Celine Dion come to mind).
Rails is a good prototyping system, and a decent system for specialized functions. I wouldn't use any scripting language at this juncture for "real" systems.
I agree it'd be a great game, sometimes. In the case of Civ II, out of the box the eye-candy detracted immensely from game-play. But, does it deserver to be on a list of greatest games? That's a tough question and one for the list's author.
GalCiv II's AI is definitely interesting. I may give it another go around. Note that your choices at the beginning for map layout will also affect the types of strategies that can be used (against you and by you both - I like the fact that the AI is limited to the same strategies you are).
Others have added multiple comments, here's my short list:
"Share" as in with my own family members, when fully accounted for, is over 10 systems and 4 iPods. Why should I have to buy that song more than once for use with my family? This is a new "feature" added solely through DRM, and benefits no consumer in any way.
Then there's also the multiple MP3/other players floating around. That's another scenario. Yes, it can be gotten around, but it requires a whole hop-scotch dance and loss of quality to attain.
Middle school insults aside, to get to the only thing worth talking about in your post: real code.
Real code is code that functions over time and is maintainable.
FYI: Code that functions initially is generally known as a prototype. And that OP was me.
Lastly, the numbers were to let you know I wasn't some 12 year old talking out of my ass. I've been there, done that, and have the tattered T-shirt. 5 9s SLAs can suck, especially if it starts out with some prima donna's code regurgitation. This wasn't my only project in that space, just the one that sucked the worst.
Now, RoR/Ruby are great for prototyping, but I personally wouldn't use either for production code. There's a whole slew of reasons why, but my last project had 35,000 concurrent users during peak usage, which should give a good indication of why both Ruby and RoR are insufficient.
PHP? Ick! 30K LOCs? I personally saw a single java class with over 18KLOCs. Just one. out of over 1400. Again, last project. I'm very happy I'm no longer dealing with it.
So PHP is fine for toy apps, but for real code, you'll need something more structured. If you disagree with this, talk to me after trying it.
As for iTunes, it's not a major issue on my end. (I can hear the gasp of horror now, including from my own Powerbook.:) I tend to like audio ripped from CDs, uncompressed or losslessly compressed. The iTunes music store at this point doesn't really intrigue me except for the off-hand piece of music. (exactly 1 tune so far)
WMV also isn't an issue for me. I have no WMV video, and odds are, with the way I utilize entertainment, I won't in the foreseeable future either. (I won't say never, never's a bad word)
What I do need it to play is DVR'd content from my Dish satellite, and from OTA HD. Since I'm not impressing guests, and I would prefer guests to keep their paws off my system(s), I don't really care if they can use them or not. (So others knowing how to use it isn't a primary issue either).
So basically I need something that works. That's it. Interfaces need to please me, and that may well be asking for the moon.
He spoke poorly then. Either way, controversial sounding statements make for great soundbites when giving keynotes, and I think he got his 15 minutes again. I guess part of this is whether you view PHP as good to begin with, and think it can effectively emulate those features of Postgres not available in MySQL. Apparently 4 out of 5 mods disagree.
Rails is a framework (an implementation of a paradigm) and Ruby (scripts), are, surprisingly, scripts. "Ruby" itself is the name of the scripting language.
Actually, I was going for an insightful troll, but it looks like I got modded as having trolling insight...:)
In any case: the problems with PHP. Additionally, RoR is a better paradigm for web based developement, even though Ruby's still an interpreted script which has the same performance failings as PHP.
This is admittedly dated, and DBs have improved since, but PostgresSQL performed well at the time. Various DBs no longer allow publication of third party benchmarks. Quite understandably IMHO.
Lastly, I went and read TFA. The reason for my post was essentially "people in glass houses shouldn't throw stones". For someone who created something as admittedly bad as PHP to go criticizing a product that's designed for something other than pure sloppy speed is ludicrous. Yes, MySQL is faster in many cases. If you've got heavy transactions it was the last DB you'd want to use until just recently. It really comes down to using the right tool for the job, and configuring said tool correctly.
Slashdot Mirror
American 4X4 trucks almost always come with V8s....
Just to take the car analogy out to the extreme.
The Intel P965 Express chipset's mix of features, performance, and power consumption make it the perfect partner for Intel's new Core 2 processor and our Editor's Choice. Really, it's an easy call to make. The P965's upcoming CrossFire support kills the one reason we might have recommended the 975X. If SLI's your bag, the nForce4 SLI X16 is a solid--albeit power-hungry--option, but the more attractive nForce 590 SLI should be just around the corner. The nForce 570 SLI, meanwhile, doesn't even measure up to its own name, let alone to the P965.
That should round out the Conclusion.
As for the bias, AMD's got a few tricks up their sleeves in the next 7 months, so it will be interesting: consumer level dual CPUs (4X4), integrated shared L3 cache, 65nm fab, and quad core vs Intel's Kentsfield 65nm.
I'm eagerly awaiting the next price drops!
Well, download them once, and create a "software load" CD/DVD that contains all the programs you need at a fresh install. Be really geeky and create a script to autoinstall them all. It really reduces your install time on a fresh system. (although certain driver providers (ECS *cough* *cough* ATI *cough* *cough*) have horrible installers that require reboots after every little installation (or so they claim... ;). As long as you install them in the correct order, 1 reboot will usually take care of everything.
Oh, and in general it's soooo long between reinstalls that I've forgotten what all drivers I need, which is why I started creating the "load" discs in the first place. It at least gives me a system that's relatively stable from the get go. Otherwise I get to spend hours researching what that one esoteric driver for the USB 2.0 Hi-speed feature required fix 89486943 rev. c to actually work properly.
Maybe its time to get users to look at Exact Audio Copy. It's by far the best ripper I've used for Windows, as I prefer quality over speed. It will produce guaranteed exact copies which corrects for minor scratches and blemishes if possible. If not possible, it will notify you exactly where in the file the problem lies to let you sample it to see if the problem is noticeable or not.
It will do regular high speed rips too.
So AMD's 4X4 could essentially become an 8-way processor? That might be cool, especially when the quads come out.
Details aside, as long as they play fine in CD players, they rip just fine, thank you, on windows or other machines.
You don't have to allow your machine to be so helpful as to install random crap from whatever disk you place into the system. Turn it off! Actually, that's another nice viral vector on MS machines - who in their right mind starts running untrusted executables off of random removable media?
Audio CDs don't have DRM and never will. They can't and still be called CDs. The term CD is trademarked, and can only be used by products that agree to the licensing.
Now, "breaking" certain aspects of the spec, such as "forgetting" to have a few tracking pits encoded, isn't DRM. It's a defective pressing, hence those can still be called CDs.
If you think that CDs have DRM, I have yet to meet an undamaged (as in scratched or worse) CD that I couldn't rip at full digital quality, on Windows, Mac, and Linux boxes.
MS ships their product with every port in the world open, even with SP2. SP2 merely turned on the almost all or nothing firewall, but didn't do anything to seriously address the core issue of security.
What the problem here is that the security console will no longer be merely a bundled component, but will be tied to the OS in such a way that it cannot be replaced and will be an added layer to any third party solution.
That is the exact same thing that was done with IE, and I can't believe MS will be able to get away with that intention for long, especially given its current track record in the courts.
If they'd actually fixed it. But they haven't. (See IE7 zero day exploits)
And they're bundling security products with their OS. They're not providing a secure OS. There's a major difference between the two. The first is illegal when you're a defacto monopoly. The second would be welcomed by everyone.
This certainly looks like an excellent candidate for exhibit A in any argument against DRM.
I still like IBM's EPM editor (on OS/2). It emulated Emacs, sed, ed, edlin or any other editor if you cared to customize it, and was GUI if you wanted it to be. The memories ... are surely better than the reality ;)
As for GVim, I like the combo interface on Windows. On the Mac, there's a few GUI inconsistencies, but you have to love the fact that the console program is identical. And who worries about 13MB anymore for a PC when a 1GB stick costs around $65?
multi-casting
As for your other point, if they wrote it fresh, they could start with a sandboxed language (C#) with no unsafe blocks. They also have to rewrite a bunch of plugins, such as the WMF renderer in C# though to be truly sandboxed. Not a bad idea, considering the exploits in WMF and JPG that were out recently.
You are correct. I guess the main problem is in the definition of a "real" app. When talking about web apps, in general I think large, scalable, thousands of concurrent users. I don't think ma & pa's store with 5 or even no concurrent users, although that too is a perfectly appropriate example of a webapp.
It's just that such apps are generally much more forgiving of mistakes and allow lots of choices in design and architecture not available to "enterprise" apps. Some of those choices make the app much easier to write and deploy than a corresponding application that is required to scale to large numbers.
or the ever popular "analog" hole. Seriously, there's no way to prevent recording sound, if you allow any consumer sound recording to happen ever. Last ditch - connect recording equipment to internal speaker's wires (you know, the ones that actually drive the speaker) or place microphones in front of speakers in sound-proof enclosures. It's all analog and unstoppable. Quality will most definitely deteriorate some, but for those that think MP3s are "awesome", this will be moot.
In the end, if people look at the numbers, they'll see that P2P has not significantly hurt sales, primarily because of the get a decent copy argument. The fact that fewer CDs may have been sold in any year is not indicative of piracy's effect, it could just as easily be indicative of the state of the economy such as less discretionary income, or the state of music released that year being far subpar (Mariah Carey and Celine Dion come to mind).
neither is true - I'm saying it can't be a real application unless it scales.
Rails is a good prototyping system, and a decent system for specialized functions. I wouldn't use any scripting language at this juncture for "real" systems.
I agree it'd be a great game, sometimes. In the case of Civ II, out of the box the eye-candy detracted immensely from game-play. But, does it deserver to be on a list of greatest games? That's a tough question and one for the list's author.
GalCiv II's AI is definitely interesting. I may give it another go around. Note that your choices at the beginning for map layout will also affect the types of strategies that can be used (against you and by you both - I like the fact that the AI is limited to the same strategies you are).
I'l have to give Civ another round someday.
Others have added multiple comments, here's my short list:
"Share" as in with my own family members, when fully accounted for, is over 10 systems and 4 iPods. Why should I have to buy that song more than once for use with my family? This is a new "feature" added solely through DRM, and benefits no consumer in any way.
Then there's also the multiple MP3/other players floating around. That's another scenario. Yes, it can be gotten around, but it requires a whole hop-scotch dance and loss of quality to attain.
You're right - DRM doesn't change the sound of the music. The compression does though.
The DRM causes other issues, like no sharing, no moving to car on a throw-away CD, no taking a throw-away copy with you on vacation, etc.
Middle school insults aside, to get to the only thing worth talking about in your post: real code.
Real code is code that functions over time and is maintainable.
FYI: Code that functions initially is generally known as a prototype. And that OP was me.
Lastly, the numbers were to let you know I wasn't some 12 year old talking out of my ass. I've been there, done that, and have the tattered T-shirt. 5 9s SLAs can suck, especially if it starts out with some prima donna's code regurgitation. This wasn't my only project in that space, just the one that sucked the worst.
RoR is a framework. Ruby is a language.
Now, RoR/Ruby are great for prototyping, but I personally wouldn't use either for production code. There's a whole slew of reasons why, but my last project had 35,000 concurrent users during peak usage, which should give a good indication of why both Ruby and RoR are insufficient.
PHP? Ick! 30K LOCs? I personally saw a single java class with over 18KLOCs. Just one. out of over 1400. Again, last project. I'm very happy I'm no longer dealing with it.
So PHP is fine for toy apps, but for real code, you'll need something more structured. If you disagree with this, talk to me after trying it.
The LX100 case definitely looks cool.
:) I tend to like audio ripped from CDs, uncompressed or losslessly compressed. The iTunes music store at this point doesn't really intrigue me except for the off-hand piece of music. (exactly 1 tune so far)
As for iTunes, it's not a major issue on my end. (I can hear the gasp of horror now, including from my own Powerbook.
WMV also isn't an issue for me. I have no WMV video, and odds are, with the way I utilize entertainment, I won't in the foreseeable future either. (I won't say never, never's a bad word)
What I do need it to play is DVR'd content from my Dish satellite, and from OTA HD. Since I'm not impressing guests, and I would prefer guests to keep their paws off my system(s), I don't really care if they can use them or not. (So others knowing how to use it isn't a primary issue either).
So basically I need something that works. That's it. Interfaces need to please me, and that may well be asking for the moon.
He spoke poorly then. Either way, controversial sounding statements make for great soundbites when giving keynotes, and I think he got his 15 minutes again. I guess part of this is whether you view PHP as good to begin with, and think it can effectively emulate those features of Postgres not available in MySQL. Apparently 4 out of 5 mods disagree.
Rails is a framework (an implementation of a paradigm) and Ruby (scripts), are, surprisingly, scripts. "Ruby" itself is the name of the scripting language.
Actually, I was going for an insightful troll, but it looks like I got modded as having trolling insight... :)
In any case: the problems with PHP. Additionally, RoR is a better paradigm for web based developement, even though Ruby's still an interpreted script which has the same performance failings as PHP.
This is admittedly dated, and DBs have improved since, but PostgresSQL performed well at the time. Various DBs no longer allow publication of third party benchmarks. Quite understandably IMHO.
Lastly, I went and read TFA. The reason for my post was essentially "people in glass houses shouldn't throw stones". For someone who created something as admittedly bad as PHP to go criticizing a product that's designed for something other than pure sloppy speed is ludicrous. Yes, MySQL is faster in many cases. If you've got heavy transactions it was the last DB you'd want to use until just recently. It really comes down to using the right tool for the job, and configuring said tool correctly.
It would be better. Dem in prez, Reps in Congress = stalemate.
They would at least leave the rest of us alone.