I remember back in the glory days when howstuffworks.com used to have articles about actual products and phenomena. They still do that sometimes, right? -- Don't fight Firefox! Let FireFox fight YOU!
That means companies like Broadcom (they tend to not have any drivers for linux) won't get chosen by anyone wanting to run Linux, and thus will lose money as people will chose non-Broadcom hardware.
I'm not sure about all hardware, but I'm sure part of the reason Broadcom doesn't openly document their WiFi hardware is because they use software radios, where all of the channel number to frequency conversion is done in the driver and not in the hardware.
This would mean that someone writing an open source driver would have to properly tell the hardware what frequencies to use--something that shouldn't be a problem.
However, it also means that you could easily tell the radio to broadcast in frequencies (and possibly powers) that aren't within the spectrum their FCC license covers. IE, people could do things they aren't supposed to and maybe Broadcomm is worried about law suits. -- Don't fight Firefox! Let FireFox fight YOU!
This is a huge blow to PowerPC's credibility, though.... By contrast, the chips I.B.M. makes for Apple represent less than 2 percent of chip production at its largest factory in East Fishkill,... And... it is a small part of the revenue of a company that increasingly focuses on services
What does this have to do with PowerPC's credibility? The parent didn't say "WOW!! IBM is/so/ screwed!" He said "There goes PowerPC's credibility." And he's right.
While Apple may only account for 2 percent of IBM's chip production, I can guarentee it accounts for much more than that percentage of it's PowerPC production. Apple was one of IBM's largest PowerPC consumers.
Now, IBM's Power5 and Cell processors still have a huge future, I would predict, but I wouldn't expect to see very much more to do with the PowerPC. -- Don't fight Firefox! Let FireFox fight YOU!
[snip] The insects I use lead normal, healthy lives: if you don't believe me, send me your address and I'll slip some eggs under your front door. -- Don't fight Firefox! Let FireFox fight YOU!
Most of the land is empty, yes, but overwhelmingly the earth is empty water. Without any planning what-so-ever, you'd likely end up in an ocean, which woudlnt' hurt anyone. -- Don't fight Firefox! Let FireFox fight YOU!
I don't think that's true with people buying computers. I think most people who buy computers turn immediately to the Dell's and HP's, maybe a Gateway, or similar. Basically, they buy what PCMagazine tells them to, or stop into BestBuy (or similar) to browse the product, but never even consider a Mac. -- Don't fight Firefox! Let FireFox fight YOU!
The *potential* market for Apple computers is anyone looking for a computer (100%), and they get 5% of them. The potential market for Yahoo is 20%, and they will then get some fraction of that.
You make a very valid point, but why is the potential for Apple computers 100% when the potential for Yahoo is 20%?
Obviously I understand that the Apple iPod accounts for nearly 80% of the market that Yahoo is entering, but IBM compatibles account for much more than that in the market Apple computer competes.
Just as I would never consider a WMA based MP3 player at this time (I love my ipod, what can I say?) I would also never consider buying a mac. I only buy computers in part form, something Apple doesn't really facilitate. -- Need Referals? -- Don't fight Firefox! Let FireFox fight YOU!
Why the need for decentralized trackers? I don't get it! Bittorrent is supposed to be a haven for law-abiding citizens to trade Linux ISOs and Project Gutenberg text files.
One of the things that's long made Azureus great was the integrated tracker.
So, in the old system JoeSmoe Blogger could upload a torrent to a homemovie and both seed the torrent and track the torrent using Azureus. However, on a cable/dsl modem, if you get enough people downloading eventually you'll out strip your ability to effectively track, let alone seed (which by this point, hopefully others will take over)
With the P2P tracker, you can start by tracking and seeding yourself, and then eventually drop back to "Only Seed if the number of copies on the network is less than x" and not even worry about tracking. You could even drop out all together and hope the community maintains your torrent...
I'm sure a centrally hosted tracker would be much more efficient, but Joe Shmoe blogger doesn't have access to a webserver, and blogger.com doesn't host torrents AFAIK, and a lot of the public trackers stop tracking torrents after a couple of weeks (so all the late commers are stuck with a 1 gig file half done. This fills the gap. -- Need Referals? The ref stops here -- Don't fight Firefox! Let FireFox fight YOU!
Sure, the major tracker/torrent hosting websites (Loki and Suprnova) woudl still be there if the had primarily legal stuff rather than primarily illegal stuff, but one of the things that's long made Azureus great are the fact that it only uses 1 port for everything, and the integrated tracker.
So, in the old system JoeSmoe Blogger could upload a torrent to a homemovie and both seed the torrent and track the torrent using Azureus. However, on a cable/dsl modem, if you get enough people downloading eventually you'll out strip your ability to effectively track, let alone seed (which by this point, hopefully others will take over)
With the P2P tracker, you can start by tracking and seeding yourself, and then eventually drop back to "Only Seed if the number of copies on the network is less than x."
I'm sure a centrally hosted tracker would be much better, but Joe Shmoe blogger doesn't have access to a webserver, and blogger.com doesn't host torrents AFAIK. This fills the gap. -- Need Referals? The ref stops here
Try seeding 30 or 40 torrents out of a modest (2GHz, 1GB RAM) machine sometime. It's horrible. If you're web browsing, editing/encoding video, using PhotoShop, scanning film, etc on the same machine, you'll be crying.
If you were doing all of that on a 2GHz with only 1GB RAM, you'd be crying even if you weren't running Azureus. -- Need Referals? The ref stops here
The question is: why do these people insist on developing their own isolated software instead of using established protocols and systems ? Just merge Bittorrent and gnutella/edonkey and be done with it.
Merging the code would likely be even more difficult that adding code to either product to achieve a similar result. Even if you were to successfully merge the code, you'd probably end up with an inferior product to maintain backwards compatibility with the older un-merged clients. -- Looking for a pyramid? Join the conga!
Netflix's customers are huge evangelists for the service and they view the service as fun, innovative and exciting -- not bad for a growing company with very little debt.
This guy is probably a customer for this young and new company w/o many subscribers (compared to Blockbuster). I really can't speak either way about it though as I have never used them myself.
Umm.. Blockbuster Online is the "young company." Sure, Blockbuster is old, but their online rental business is very new (a reaction to Netflix) and lacks not only in Queue & Family managment features, but also in number of titles available and, from my experience, DVD turn around time.
The only thing Blockbuster leads in is price, which happens to be what I care most about so I've stayed with Blockbuster. That said, I tell everyone who's interested in this sort of thing to try Netflix first, since it's a better experience.
Cutting back hours?...[snip] He's talking about cutting back employee hours, not store hours. Where they'd often have two employees staffed, they now have 1, etc. -- Looking for a pyramid? Join the conga!
The problem I have with this is that it really doesn't have any place in the internet at large. Sure, it's great for point to point direct connections--ie, my secure installation has a direct diamond-fibre connection to your secure installation, but it really doesn't do much for more public transfers, like internet banking.
This will secure transmissions between banks and internally at banks, but a secure system is only as secure as it's weakest link, and this doesn't improve security on the internet.
Since the internet uses routers, switches, and hubs someone could always gain access to the router or pickup the broadcast from a hub through some other means and cause that system to log packets or duplicate them elsewhere, etc.
Or is there a way to incorporate this into a system similar to the internet as we know it and make my home connection to my bank/paypal/yahoo shopping more secure?
I doubt that most project acquisitions are done specifically for that purpose, though.
They are when you buy a competitor. Look at Oracle's origional statements when it announced they were buying PeopleSoft. They intended to kill off the project.
I fully expect a lot of the current macromedia software to disappear as well. Definately Fireworks will completely disappear, perhaps with whatever features it has that Adobe ImageReady doesn't will be rolled in, but Fireworks is gone, guarenteed.
Microsoft has a lot more experience with 64-bit desktop OSs than anyone else.
I'm not sure the relevance of that comment right now. I'd say the Unix (HP, Sun, IBM) crowd probably has the most experience, but I don't see where experience matters... That's more of a pissing contest than it is anything.
Now, the fact that MS is doing it's Windows with a 64bit kernel is refreshing and prefered the patch job in OSX, but it's still going have all of the MS bloat running on top of it. It's a big announcement, but don't try to make it something it's not.
If you built your PC yourself [snip] the link to the right.
The link to the right being the same link given in the/. story.
Funny. When you click that link on the right (or the one in the slashdot summary) you're taken to a page that says otherwise:
Technology Advancement Program Eligibility
In order to be eligible to receive Windows® XP Professional x64 Edition, your computer must have been ordered between March 31, 2003 and July 31, 2005 with Microsoft Windows® XP Pro (32 Bit) preinstalled.(Emphasis mine)
In addition, you must read and agree to the following:
Right now, I click the link but can't agree to the terms on their form, so 64bit for $12 is impossible for me--I installed WinXP on my own from a copy I bought from NewEgg. Maybe it's a catch-22, or maybe the webdev team just screwed up. I sure hope it's the second and your right.
And in my opinion, the $12 trade sounds like a nice deal.
The $12 trade in deal is only valid if you purchased a PC with WinXP preinstalled. If you built your own system and installed a retail WinXP the offer doesn't apply.
Slashdot Mirror
I remember back in the glory days when howstuffworks.com used to have articles about actual products and phenomena. They still do that sometimes, right?
--
Don't fight Firefox! Let FireFox fight YOU!
That means companies like Broadcom (they tend to not have any drivers for linux) won't get chosen by anyone wanting to run Linux, and thus will lose money as people will chose non-Broadcom hardware.
I'm not sure about all hardware, but I'm sure part of the reason Broadcom doesn't openly document their WiFi hardware is because they use software radios, where all of the channel number to frequency conversion is done in the driver and not in the hardware.
This would mean that someone writing an open source driver would have to properly tell the hardware what frequencies to use--something that shouldn't be a problem.
However, it also means that you could easily tell the radio to broadcast in frequencies (and possibly powers) that aren't within the spectrum their FCC license covers. IE, people could do things they aren't supposed to and maybe Broadcomm is worried about law suits.
--
Don't fight Firefox! Let FireFox fight YOU!
This is a huge blow to PowerPC's credibility, though. ... ... it is a small part of the revenue of a company that increasingly focuses on services
/so/ screwed!" He said "There goes PowerPC's credibility." And he's right.
By contrast, the chips I.B.M. makes for Apple represent less than 2 percent of chip production at its largest factory in East Fishkill,... And
What does this have to do with PowerPC's credibility? The parent didn't say "WOW!! IBM is
While Apple may only account for 2 percent of IBM's chip production, I can guarentee it accounts for much more than that percentage of it's PowerPC production. Apple was one of IBM's largest PowerPC consumers.
Now, IBM's Power5 and Cell processors still have a huge future, I would predict, but I wouldn't expect to see very much more to do with the PowerPC.
--
Don't fight Firefox! Let FireFox fight YOU!
A: He wanted to take a leek.
The vegetable??
No, seriously. I don't get it
--
Don't fight Firefox!
Godwin's Law invoked PRIOR to the first post!
This is incredible! Someone obviously has the FAQ
--
Don\'t fight Firefox! Let FireFox fight YOU!
They already have.
--
Don't Fight Firefox! Let Firefox fight you!
Isn't it cruel to use a cockroach like this?
[snip] The insects I use lead normal, healthy lives: if you don't believe me, send me your address and I'll slip some eggs under your front door.
--
Don't fight Firefox! Let FireFox fight YOU!
1 The earth is mostly empty land.
Most of the land is empty, yes, but overwhelmingly the earth is empty water. Without any planning what-so-ever, you'd likely end up in an ocean, which woudlnt' hurt anyone.
--
Don't fight Firefox! Let FireFox fight YOU!
Normally I don't make frivolous requests like this to the moderators, but seriosly.
MOD THE PARENT UP
Don't piss and moan (and mod down) because some fucking loud mouth got a little fucking passionate and said the fucking F-word a few fucking times!
I mean fuck! Did you read his post, or just mod down because he said fuck? Sometimes even arrogant insults can contain painfully valid points!
"Remember: When moderating, try to focus on modding up rather than modding down."
--Slashdot Moderator Guide
--
Don't fight Firefox! Let FireFox fight YOU!
I don't think that's true with people buying computers. I think most people who buy computers turn immediately to the Dell's and HP's, maybe a Gateway, or similar. Basically, they buy what PCMagazine tells them to, or stop into BestBuy (or similar) to browse the product, but never even consider a Mac.
--
Don't fight Firefox! Let FireFox fight YOU!
The *potential* market for Apple computers is anyone looking for a computer (100%), and they get 5% of them. The potential market for Yahoo is 20%, and they will then get some fraction of that.
You make a very valid point, but why is the potential for Apple computers 100% when the potential for Yahoo is 20%?
Obviously I understand that the Apple iPod accounts for nearly 80% of the market that Yahoo is entering, but IBM compatibles account for much more than that in the market Apple computer competes.
Just as I would never consider a WMA based MP3 player at this time (I love my ipod, what can I say?) I would also never consider buying a mac. I only buy computers in part form, something Apple doesn't really facilitate.
--
Need Referals?
--
Don't fight Firefox! Let FireFox fight YOU!
How exactly would a portable player connect to a remote key server?
That's why God made computers.
--
Need Referals? The ref stops here
Why the need for decentralized trackers? I don't get it! Bittorrent is supposed to be a haven for law-abiding citizens to trade Linux ISOs and Project Gutenberg text files.
One of the things that's long made Azureus great was the integrated tracker.
So, in the old system JoeSmoe Blogger could upload a torrent to a homemovie and both seed the torrent and track the torrent using Azureus. However, on a cable/dsl modem, if you get enough people downloading eventually you'll out strip your ability to effectively track, let alone seed (which by this point, hopefully others will take over)
With the P2P tracker, you can start by tracking and seeding yourself, and then eventually drop back to "Only Seed if the number of copies on the network is less than x" and not even worry about tracking. You could even drop out all together and hope the community maintains your torrent...
I'm sure a centrally hosted tracker would be much more efficient, but Joe Shmoe blogger doesn't have access to a webserver, and blogger.com doesn't host torrents AFAIK, and a lot of the public trackers stop tracking torrents after a couple of weeks (so all the late commers are stuck with a 1 gig file half done. This fills the gap.
--
Need Referals? The ref stops here
--
Don't fight Firefox! Let FireFox fight YOU!
Sure, the major tracker/torrent hosting websites (Loki and Suprnova) woudl still be there if the had primarily legal stuff rather than primarily illegal stuff, but one of the things that's long made Azureus great are the fact that it only uses 1 port for everything, and the integrated tracker.
So, in the old system JoeSmoe Blogger could upload a torrent to a homemovie and both seed the torrent and track the torrent using Azureus. However, on a cable/dsl modem, if you get enough people downloading eventually you'll out strip your ability to effectively track, let alone seed (which by this point, hopefully others will take over)
With the P2P tracker, you can start by tracking and seeding yourself, and then eventually drop back to "Only Seed if the number of copies on the network is less than x."
I'm sure a centrally hosted tracker would be much better, but Joe Shmoe blogger doesn't have access to a webserver, and blogger.com doesn't host torrents AFAIK. This fills the gap.
--
Need Referals? The ref stops here
Try seeding 30 or 40 torrents out of a modest (2GHz, 1GB RAM) machine sometime. It's horrible. If you're web browsing, editing/encoding video, using PhotoShop, scanning film, etc on the same machine, you'll be crying.
If you were doing all of that on a 2GHz with only 1GB RAM, you'd be crying even if you weren't running Azureus.
--
Need Referals? The ref stops here
The question is: why do these people insist on developing their own isolated software instead of using established protocols and systems ? Just merge Bittorrent and gnutella/edonkey and be done with it.
Merging the code would likely be even more difficult that adding code to either product to achieve a similar result. Even if you were to successfully merge the code, you'd probably end up with an inferior product to maintain backwards compatibility with the older un-merged clients.
--
Looking for a pyramid? Join the conga!
Netflix's customers are huge evangelists for the service and they view the service as fun, innovative and exciting -- not bad for a growing company with very little debt.
This guy is probably a customer for this young and new company w/o many subscribers (compared to Blockbuster). I really can't speak either way about it though as I have never used them myself.
Umm.. Blockbuster Online is the "young company." Sure, Blockbuster is old, but their online rental business is very new (a reaction to Netflix) and lacks not only in Queue & Family managment features, but also in number of titles available and, from my experience, DVD turn around time.
The only thing Blockbuster leads in is price, which happens to be what I care most about so I've stayed with Blockbuster. That said, I tell everyone who's interested in this sort of thing to try Netflix first, since it's a better experience.
Cutting back hours?...[snip]
He's talking about cutting back employee hours, not store hours. Where they'd often have two employees staffed, they now have 1, etc.
--
Looking for a pyramid? Join the conga!
The problem I have with this is that it really doesn't have any place in the internet at large. Sure, it's great for point to point direct connections--ie, my secure installation has a direct diamond-fibre connection to your secure installation, but it really doesn't do much for more public transfers, like internet banking.
This will secure transmissions between banks and internally at banks, but a secure system is only as secure as it's weakest link, and this doesn't improve security on the internet.
Since the internet uses routers, switches, and hubs someone could always gain access to the router or pickup the broadcast from a hub through some other means and cause that system to log packets or duplicate them elsewhere, etc.
Or is there a way to incorporate this into a system similar to the internet as we know it and make my home connection to my bank/paypal/yahoo shopping more secure?
Stupid public terminals.... you hit the back button and slashdot logs you out! grrr..
--
Don't Fight Firefox, Let Firefox fight you! (Or something)
I doubt that most project acquisitions are done specifically for that purpose, though.
They are when you buy a competitor. Look at Oracle's origional statements when it announced they were buying PeopleSoft. They intended to kill off the project.
I fully expect a lot of the current macromedia software to disappear as well. Definately Fireworks will completely disappear, perhaps with whatever features it has that Adobe ImageReady doesn't will be rolled in, but Fireworks is gone, guarenteed.
Microsoft has a lot more experience with 64-bit desktop OSs than anyone else.
I'm not sure the relevance of that comment right now. I'd say the Unix (HP, Sun, IBM) crowd probably has the most experience, but I don't see where experience matters... That's more of a pissing contest than it is anything.
Now, the fact that MS is doing it's Windows with a 64bit kernel is refreshing and prefered the patch job in OSX, but it's still going have all of the MS bloat running on top of it. It's a big announcement, but don't try to make it something it's not.
32-bit apps will work with the transparent WOW emulator just like 16bit apps run on Windows XP. You can't just upgrade... you need to reformat.
You'll probably have driver problems, esp with old hardware
Wrong. See here:
/. story.
If you built your PC yourself [snip] the link to the right.
The link to the right being the same link given in the
Funny. When you click that link on the right (or the one in the slashdot summary) you're taken to a page that says otherwise:
Technology Advancement Program Eligibility
In order to be eligible to receive Windows® XP Professional x64 Edition, your computer must have been ordered between March 31, 2003 and July 31, 2005 with Microsoft Windows® XP Pro (32 Bit) preinstalled. (Emphasis mine)
In addition, you must read and agree to the following:
Right now, I click the link but can't agree to the terms on their form, so 64bit for $12 is impossible for me--I installed WinXP on my own from a copy I bought from NewEgg. Maybe it's a catch-22, or maybe the webdev team just screwed up. I sure hope it's the second and your right.
Oh, you're right... wow32 is the dll...
And in my opinion, the $12 trade sounds like a nice deal.
The $12 trade in deal is only valid if you purchased a PC with WinXP preinstalled. If you built your own system and installed a retail WinXP the offer doesn't apply.