Flash has a limited no. of write cycles (10^5 - 10^6 depending on tehchnology) so when the flash memory has been written too many times, then you have to replace the hard drive too. Great idea only if you're an HD manufacturer. Costly for consumers.
>> Whereas XP is king of the OSes, right? Nope, that would be Linux:-)
>> Why invest in a system that's in the process of being superseded? I agree. However vista will still suck because of all the extra drm and minimum required hw specs that means they'll probably have to upgrade their hardware too. My reccomendation: let the try out linux instead. That way, it won't cost a thing and they'll actually end up with a good operating system that won't lock them out of their own hardware.
Jeez you want your parents to continue to suffer with Microsoft's shitware? Why don't you just upgrade them to a better OS (Linux) instead? Make sure firefox and openoffice are installed and they probably won't even spot the difference anyway.
>> we have discovered that it is possible to drill past the new security measures introduced by Microsoft - if we use the same techniques used by hackers
Go ahead and use them. Going by how long it normally takes Microsoft to respond, you've probably got at least 6 months before they close the hole you use, and MS don't know how to write secure code so there will always be some hack-attack you can use.
But selling product is all about perception, not reality. The perception of the majority is determined by advertising + some intuitive belief. Its credible and maybe intuitive that 8 cores must be 8x faster than one core. The fact that its actually wrong is known by anyone who has studied Computer Science, but that relatively small minority promoting the facts is not enough to disrupt the mighty advertising machine.
>> having trouble hiring and keeping the kind of brilliant employees that have always been the company's competitive weapon.
The problem is that Microsoft, like many companies, hire good engineers then don't give them enough freedom or listen to their ideas. Consequently, the good engineers get disillusioned and leave and only the bad engineers stay around. Thats one of the reasons why most Microsoft software is a piece of sh1t.
>> I want everybody to go from a frequency world to a number-of-cores-world.
Obviously an Intel guy would say that. Its a great way of shifting bulk product. All of a sudden, your consumers want multiples of what they considered sufficient before.
Intel & AMD don't want Joe Public to know that just increasing the number of cores does not speed up a single-threaded app. or one that has an inherently sequential problem to solve. They are trying to gloss over that reality.
In fact, the majority of every-day computational problems are inherently sequential in nature and do not benefit much if at all from parallelism. In fact, introducing paralellism in these cases frequently causes a performance decrease due to the additional synchronisation overhead.
Raw CPU Mhz is still going to give performance increases, however the whole core-count thing is a new marketing concept, especially as joe public can be easily convinced to falsely believe that an 8 core machine must always be 8x faster than a single core machine.
Microsoft 'working closely with' someone means 'Microsoft strongarming someone'. In this case, its probably to ensure that Linux performance is artificially crippled by Xen until it is worse than Windows performance under Xen.
What is this assumption that EVERYONE must have an ipod? I already have a way-cooler, smaller MP3 player with more features than any ipod (google for MPIO one).
I tell ya, if next time I go to buy a car and it has an ipod interface (especially one that only works with ipods and not other audio players) I'll be looking for another car.
Engineering skills in the US are already undervalued. We are just heading to a point where no-on at all in the US will actually DO anything. Everyone will just be middle-men managing everyone else. It's like one of those pyramid schemes. If someone somewhere in the business pyramid doesn't actually produce some tangible product (i.e. made by engineers) then you've got no basis on which to exist.
>> register the disc to that particular game console, then wipe out verification data so the disc would be rendered unreadable in other PlayStations.
So what happens if the console breaks or its CD drive wears out and you have to buy a new one? all of a sudden you can't play your own collection of games anymore, even though you've bought a licence to use the software.
Typical manure storage facilities allow methane to escape into the environment, while a farm with a digester captures the methane. Methane is roughly 20 times more potent as a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. The generation process produces CO2, but on the Blue Spruce Farm in Bridport, for example, the reduction in CO2 equivalents is estimated at 2,000 to 3,000 tons annually.
from TFA : "Imagine someone builds a lighthouse," argued Psiaki. "And I've gone by and see how often the light flashes and measured where the coordinates are. Can the owner charge me a licensing fee for looking at the light?... No. How is looking at the Galileo satellite any different?"
So.. this is also justification also for decoding any signal in the eloctromagnetic spectrum, such as pay-per-view etc.
Slashdot Mirror
Flash has a limited no. of write cycles (10^5 - 10^6 depending on tehchnology) so when the flash memory has been written too many times, then you have to replace the hard drive too. Great idea only if you're an HD manufacturer. Costly for consumers.
P roducts_Others_Storage.html.
Its a much better idea to keep the flash separate, say on a PCI-e card. So you could replace it when it burns out without replacing the drive. Even better would be something like this but with a bigger battery:
http://www.gigabyte-usa.com/Peripherals/Products/
Another benefit of memory on a system bus rather than the ATA bus is I/O performance.
>> Whereas XP is king of the OSes, right? :-)
Nope, that would be Linux
>> Why invest in a system that's in the process of being superseded?
I agree. However vista will still suck because of all the extra drm and minimum required hw specs that means they'll probably have to upgrade their hardware too. My reccomendation: let the try out linux instead. That way, it won't cost a thing and they'll actually end up with a good operating system that won't lock them out of their own hardware.
Jeez you want your parents to continue to suffer with Microsoft's shitware? Why don't you just upgrade them to a better OS (Linux) instead?
Make sure firefox and openoffice are installed and they probably won't even spot the difference anyway.
Becuase vista is gonna suck.
>> we have discovered that it is possible to drill past the new security measures introduced by Microsoft - if we use the same techniques used by hackers
Go ahead and use them. Going by how long it normally takes Microsoft to respond, you've probably got at least 6 months before they close the hole you use, and MS don't know how to write secure code so there will always be some hack-attack you can use.
But selling product is all about perception, not reality.
The perception of the majority is determined by advertising + some intuitive belief. Its credible and maybe intuitive that 8 cores must be 8x faster than one core. The fact that its actually wrong is known by anyone who has studied Computer Science, but that relatively small minority promoting the facts is not enough to disrupt the mighty advertising machine.
Sysadmins have their own day? Does god not want to loose his internet access or something?
>> having trouble hiring and keeping the kind of brilliant employees that have always been the company's competitive weapon.
The problem is that Microsoft, like many companies, hire good engineers then don't give them enough freedom or listen to their ideas. Consequently, the good engineers get disillusioned and leave and only the bad engineers stay around. Thats one of the reasons why most Microsoft software is a piece of sh1t.
umm nope. it either is or it isnt high definition. something not fully high definition is just not high definition. simple logic vs. marketing speak.
>> I want everybody to go from a frequency world to a number-of-cores-world.
Obviously an Intel guy would say that. Its a great way of shifting bulk product. All of a sudden, your consumers want multiples of what they considered sufficient before.
Intel & AMD don't want Joe Public to know that just increasing the number of cores does not speed up a single-threaded app. or one that has an inherently sequential problem to solve. They are trying to gloss over that reality.
In fact, the majority of every-day computational problems are inherently sequential in nature and do not benefit much if at all from parallelism. In fact, introducing paralellism in these cases frequently causes a performance decrease due to the additional synchronisation overhead.
Raw CPU Mhz is still going to give performance increases, however the whole core-count thing is a new marketing concept, especially as joe public can be easily convinced to falsely believe that an 8 core machine must always be 8x faster than a single core machine.
I love (NOT) the way that nearly all LCD and plasma products that claim to be HD compatable have a screen res. of 800x600 pixels or something.
A screen needs to be at least 1920*1080 in order to show all high-res formats. Anything less IS NOT HD.
>> we will be compelled to write more efficient code
Spoken like a true Microsoft programmer.
Microsoft 'working closely with' someone means 'Microsoft strongarming someone'.
In this case, its probably to ensure that Linux performance is artificially crippled by Xen until it is worse than Windows performance under Xen.
Not true. In order for XEN to run an OS, that OS has to have XEN support in the kernel even on VT-enabled hardware.
>> everyone should do what they can to the best of their ability
The trouble is that most people consistently overestimate their own ability. Especially Americans, for some reason.
> The fact is if I can manage to change tracks on my portable music player, and answer cell phones while driving I should be able to.
Now there would be an interesting driving test.
What is this assumption that EVERYONE must have an ipod? I already have a way-cooler, smaller MP3 player with more features than any ipod (google for MPIO one).
I tell ya, if next time I go to buy a car and it has an ipod interface (especially one that only works with ipods and not other audio players) I'll be looking for another car.
Engineering skills in the US are already undervalued.
We are just heading to a point where no-on at all in the US will actually DO anything. Everyone will just be middle-men managing everyone else. It's like one of those pyramid schemes.
If someone somewhere in the business pyramid doesn't actually produce some tangible product (i.e. made by engineers) then you've got no basis on which to exist.
Dude anyone who thinks P2 and Cyrix is or ever was where its at for high-end performance should have their slashdot username revoked.
At what point do we say enough is enough? Who the hell is stupid enough to allow their employer to put a data feed directly in their brain?
>> register the disc to that particular game console, then wipe out verification data so the disc would be rendered unreadable in other PlayStations.
So what happens if the console breaks or its CD drive wears out and you have to buy a new one? all of a sudden you can't play your own collection of games anymore, even though you've bought a licence to use the software.
>> And other factors like flexibility, correctness, security, and reliability generally come before performance.
Yep, those are almost exactly the reasons why my company chose to never use the Microsoft stack ( or come to that, most of their other products too ).
There's an ecological reason too.
From the article:
Typical manure storage facilities allow methane to escape into the environment, while a farm with a digester captures the methane. Methane is roughly 20 times more potent as a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. The generation process produces CO2, but on the Blue Spruce Farm in Bridport, for example, the reduction in CO2 equivalents is estimated at 2,000 to 3,000 tons annually.
from TFA : "Imagine someone builds a lighthouse," argued Psiaki. "And I've gone by and see how often the light flashes and measured where the coordinates are. Can the owner charge me a licensing fee for looking at the light? ... No. How is looking at the Galileo satellite any different?"
.. this is also justification also for decoding any signal in the eloctromagnetic spectrum, such as pay-per-view etc.
So
Wow. I certainly wouldn't be buying an AMD anything right now. Intel's new chips are creaming AMD.
ABC are attempting to have a new US law enacted which makes it illegal to get up and go to the bathroom during commercials.