You're making assumptions here. I know it's painful, but I must ask you to watch I and II again, you missed an important detail.
In episode I, Obi Wan never leaves the ship, and C-3P0 stays on the planet. They do not meet. We do not see any dialog that has Anakin explain to Obi-Wan that he built a droid.
In episode II, Obi Wan does not set foot on Tattooine and does not see C-3P0 there. C-3P0 companies Anakin and Amidala to the Genosia, but Obi Wan never sees C-3P0 there either, nor is there any dialog in the film about Anakin discussing C-3P0 with Obi Wan.
Therefore, in Episode III, we do see that C-3P0 is working for Amidala, but we do not see any interaction so far between Obi Wan and C-3P0. Let's assume Lucas does the same thing in Episdoe III with regards to Obi-Wan and the droids. On what basis then do you determine that Obi-Wan and C-3P0 are best buddies? Speculation?
Now, we do know that Obi-Wan has at least seen R2-D2 with both Amidala and Anakin, and he knows that R2-D2 belongs to Amidala. However, when R2-D2 is introduced, there were 4 other very similar droids in the same scene! Also, that kind of droid is undoubtedly the most common type seen in any of the movies. It is plausible that Obi-Wan wouldn't immediately recognise the droid, and even if he does, he doesn't spend a whole lot of time in a position to chat about it with Luke. He's more like, "Well we're stuck on the Death Star and I have an inkling from the force I'm gonna die soon" (your destiny lies upon a different path from mine) so he wasn't about to pop out with "Hey man, I knew your mum, she had a droid kinda like that one once, maybe."
If you remember Attack of the Clones (yes many people are trying to forget), Obi Wan doesn't actually share any screen time with R2D2 or C-3P0. If Sith is written smartly, he won't share any screen time there either. In fact, even in Phantom, Obi-Wan never left the ship to walk around on Tattoine, so he never met 3P0 there either. He may have seen R2D2 but only as Padme's personal astromech droid. Because Padme needed an astromech droid. Anyway. Blah.
Having said that, I do believe there's a couple of AMD64 Linux distros around. So what's really happening here, based on Steve's really wacky and bizarre logic, is that Microsoft is ripping off several Linux distros by producing a 64-bit OS, and now Apple is ripping off Microsoft by producing a 64-bit OS (long after just about everyone else on the block has one).
I hate this kind of journalism. It's not really journalism at all, it's FUD for Apple. Steve Jobs did *not* invent 64 bit computing. Microsoft is not ripping off Apple by producing a 64 bit OS.
That works both ways, however. While France has done a most excellent thing for it's people and for freedom, this will not last.
The EU is more and more consistently demonstrating the hold that corporations are taking. Corporations have owned the US for some time, but the EU is a new player on the market and it's been doing some things they don't really like.
As we can see with the software patent issue, the EU is starting to make US like backflips to appease the copyright industry as investors start making the usual bribes and threats behind closed doors.
Sadly, I envisage the EU will step in soon and reverse the decision that France has made.
I'm much more jealous of my monitor's real estate than you are! I autohide the task bar. That way I don't see it unless I need it at the bottom of the screen. You can bounce the mouse down to the bottom of the screen to bring it up, or hit the windows key to make the start menu pop up. This has all the benefits of maximinising your real estate.
Admittedly, you do miss out on the additional space for extra "hooks" or "tasks", and the system tray space (but I also despise filling up the system tray with meaningless apps that like chewing up my system resources, I keep a clean windows whenever I can).
There will be some changes to this movie to make it more understandable for the intended audience, and for budgetary reasons:
1) The movie will be about developers who make a game that takes place on Earth, not Mars 2) The movie will be about developers who make a game with monsters that are humans who were mutated by a rogue virus, not demons from Hell
What? You think finding out budweiser is made out of rice instead of malted barley, hops, water and yeast isn't a major disincentive? Before we even start thinking about the specifics of the ingredients origin, we should make sure we're actually using ingredients that are supposed to be in beer, not fried up in a wok.
This is beer! Beer is not made from rice. Foolish american brewers.
Budweiser is definately one of the worst beers I have ever encountered. As a home brewer and alcoholic, I can safely say even I can make better beer.
Fosters Lager is almost completely unobtainable here in Australia, with perhaps one in every four bottleshops selling it in small quantities, which nobody buys.
A little pointer for even the pretentious to be aware of: Guinness is a stout, specifically a draught stout beer, and should not be confused with a blonde beer. Amusingly, the Guinness brewery actually has a license to produce Budweiser. (source: Wikipedia)
Blonde beers and ales are generally lighter in colour, texture and flavour than a stout, although it's likely that a good beer drinker will have a diverse palate that enables enjoyment of a variety of beers not including budweiser, fosters, or any beer produced by the Swan Brewery in WA.
In defense of american beer (yes, I can hear you all laughing from here) there is a strong community of home brewers and microbreweries in the states that produce beer which is around as good as anything you'll find in the world (excluding europe).
This article is revealing however, that the barley prices must be so high in the USA that breweries use rice to bulk their wort. That would be unforgivable in Australia and I believe downright illegal in Germany (feel free to correct me if I'm wrong, IANABL)
Are you seriously saying that in this day and age, you are actively and aggressively distributing Windows 98 to the general population and *deliberately* connecting these PC's to the internet?
I know it's important to be constructive on Slashdot so I will endeavour to be so. But I must say. What you are doing is sheer stupidity. Windows 98 is buggy. It's insecure. It's also unsupported. Microsoft don't like it, Microsoft don't patch it. It has known security holes that will never be patched because MS doesn't support the OS anymore.
When you couple this with an internet connection (even dial up), you are actively contributing to the overwhelming crisis of spam, malware, trojan and DDOS attacks. Perhaps you should save a little time and deliver the boxes directly to the virus writers to use as zombies?
Let me save you and the world a tremendous burden. If you have to go cheap, go free, use Linux. Don't make the problems of the world even worse than they are. At least Linux, even on old hardware, would be up to date, secure, and significantly more stable than Win9x.
1) Pentium 4 is a quick way to get yourself laughed at in serious gaming circles. 2) RAM... this box has 1/2 the *minimum* RAM a new gaming rig should have. Dell clearly sells incomplete systems. 3) 80GB is tiny by today's standards 4) LCD != Gaming display. At least not one that Dell would provide. A CRT would be cheaper and offer better IQ for the purposes of gaming.
Unfortunately, with your expectations of "premium", I wouldn't expect a "premium" gaming experience either. Having said that, any way you look at it, a white box will probably be more expensive, but the performance would be perhaps twice that of Mr Dell, or possibly more.
If "game" means solitaire and minesweeper, then "Dell" means "computer" and we leave it at that.
Let's assume you mean the HL2/DooM3 generation of games.
The quality of your rig is, to a large extent, proportionate to the amount you spend on it. This in turn, for the discerning gamer, yield much better enjoyment through smooth gameplay with crisper images, immersive sound and higher resolutions. Gaming at this level is very much like audiophilia (all the hi-fi freaks out there know what I'm talking about, starving to save up for a new set of drivers, crossovers, whatever).
Careful spending will yield better performance/price. The objective for almost everyone I know is to maximise performance and quality and minimise financial outlay. Buying Dell and upgrading is no way to build a rig. Let's look at the options.
You could buy a complete system from a company like Alienware. Alienware are a lot like the Apple of the gaming industry. Their stuff is pretty proprietary, you can't change or mess with some of it, it costs *heaps* more than a more generic equivalent whilst doing more or less the same thing. You'll spend a lot, and you'll get a decent rig. But you said you didn't want to spend a lot of money, so here's your only real choice.
Do it yourself. Go to the hardware sites, read reviews and do-it-yourself guides, check out the benchmarks, decide which components fit within your budget, shop around for the cheapest prices on quality parts, and assemble the system yourself. You did mention you had plenty of time.
Alternatively you could get a buddy to do it for you. I build complete systems for a carton of beer and the price of the parts, although I wouldn't do that for just anyone.
Not necessarily. A lot of CPU's fail testing at very high speeds but run with perfect stability at lower speeds. The CPU companies are profit driven, so they're happy to get some money for the CPU instead of throwing it.
Now, you can get yourself a cheaper CPU and overclock it, knowing it's probably capable of higher speeds, but there's a big risk of stability issues.
The current generations of CPU manufacturing process make very good error free batches compared to what it used to be like. So CPU's tend to work quite well at high speeds but still get badged down. That makes sense from a corporate perspective - if there is demand for a slower, cheaper CPU, you can sell into that market with higher specced CPU's. That just happens to be the way the market works.
The alternatives are untenable. It makes no sense for AMD to deliberately make a batch of CPU's specifically intended to be 2.0GHz when it costs the same as making a batch of 2.8GHz CPUs. AMD then has the *choice* of selling these CPUs at whatever speeds and prices the market demands.
Would the parent prefer than AMD make special 2GHz only CPU's to sell? Or perhaps AMD should instead only sell > $600 high end CPUs and not sell budget range CPUs at all?
This is the way the industry works. If you don't like it, feel free to go back to using transistors instead of IC's.
Downloading music "for free" from the internet should be illegal?
Hypothetical situation. I am a young independant unsigned artist. I make music, and would like to increase my listening audience. I put MP3's of songs I composed and performed on a website and I seed the songs onto a P2P network. What is the duration of my jail term?
Also a few people are commenting that the "copying levy" on blank media should be repealed - under this juristiction, it shouldn't. That levy is to pay for "fair use" copying of copyrighted works. This has no bearing on internet downloads.
From the benchmarks of the Beta's, the performance for Windows XP-64 was worse than that of XP-32 for the most important MS benchmark, gaming. (I say that simply because gaming is the only thing I can do better on Windows than Linux).
Hopefully Microsoft fixed that before they went gold, otherwise this OS will prove a bit of a dog and it won't get very wide acceptance from the marketplace. Also, it's lacking more legacy support than you usually get from Microsoft, so again that will decrease the adoption rate.
Yeah that seems to be the Sony way. They seem to think they can offer the same thing that everyone else does, but charge a higher price and use proprietary media, equipment and standards.
Like the good old memory stick and minidisc. They could have been the next-best-thing, they fit very snugly into much needed market niche's. Then Sony priced and proprietarised their new wondertechnology into obscurity.
1) Sony's format won't be DRM free at all, so people will continue to make their own DRM free versions. 2) Jon will break the DRM about a month after it's available 3) Sony will sue Jon under DMCA (even though it's not applicable where he lives) 4) Napster will try to get in on the act 5) Apple/Sharman/Somebody will sue Sony for patent infringement 6) Sales will be great but copyright infringement won't take a dent. 7) Retail sales will take a dent and Sony will blame that on P2P instead of their own better-than-retail sales mechanism.
Also (newbie question), won't soldering the ends of your wire increase resistance if the solder has higher resistance than the copper? Isn't the point of using copper because of the relatively low resistance?
$2K worth of gear, yeah, I would spend $200 on high quality cables (not monster cable however, well insulated copper or similar), wall sockets, running cables in the walls, mounting brackets, make the place look all nice. You know?
I'm pretty sure you can't get 19" plasma screens, at least, not at any decent resolution. There are problems with scaling down the size of the plasma cells.
And thanks to you, I'm going to get modded offtopic.
That's the whole crux of the article, if you read it.
It never was much of a problem, but Symantec are saying that because of increasing numbers of Macs connected to the 'net, there's an increase in sighted Malware/viruses/adware/spyware.
Although you should take the words of a vendor trying to sell you something with a bag of salt, it is inevitable that incidence of external threat to an OS will be proportionate to the market share of that OS.
Perhaps the era of security through obscurity for Apple is drawing to an end, and the true security of OS-X will be tested. Should be interesting to watch.
Slashdot Mirror
You're making assumptions here. I know it's painful, but I must ask you to watch I and II again, you missed an important detail.
In episode I, Obi Wan never leaves the ship, and C-3P0 stays on the planet. They do not meet. We do not see any dialog that has Anakin explain to Obi-Wan that he built a droid.
In episode II, Obi Wan does not set foot on Tattooine and does not see C-3P0 there. C-3P0 companies Anakin and Amidala to the Genosia, but Obi Wan never sees C-3P0 there either, nor is there any dialog in the film about Anakin discussing C-3P0 with Obi Wan.
Therefore, in Episode III, we do see that C-3P0 is working for Amidala, but we do not see any interaction so far between Obi Wan and C-3P0. Let's assume Lucas does the same thing in Episdoe III with regards to Obi-Wan and the droids. On what basis then do you determine that Obi-Wan and C-3P0 are best buddies? Speculation?
Now, we do know that Obi-Wan has at least seen R2-D2 with both Amidala and Anakin, and he knows that R2-D2 belongs to Amidala. However, when R2-D2 is introduced, there were 4 other very similar droids in the same scene! Also, that kind of droid is undoubtedly the most common type seen in any of the movies. It is plausible that Obi-Wan wouldn't immediately recognise the droid, and even if he does, he doesn't spend a whole lot of time in a position to chat about it with Luke. He's more like, "Well we're stuck on the Death Star and I have an inkling from the force I'm gonna die soon" (your destiny lies upon a different path from mine) so he wasn't about to pop out with "Hey man, I knew your mum, she had a droid kinda like that one once, maybe."
If you remember Attack of the Clones (yes many people are trying to forget), Obi Wan doesn't actually share any screen time with R2D2 or C-3P0. If Sith is written smartly, he won't share any screen time there either. In fact, even in Phantom, Obi-Wan never left the ship to walk around on Tattoine, so he never met 3P0 there either. He may have seen R2D2 but only as Padme's personal astromech droid. Because Padme needed an astromech droid. Anyway. Blah.
Windows XP 64-bit edition has already shipped.
Having said that, I do believe there's a couple of AMD64 Linux distros around. So what's really happening here, based on Steve's really wacky and bizarre logic, is that Microsoft is ripping off several Linux distros by producing a 64-bit OS, and now Apple is ripping off Microsoft by producing a 64-bit OS (long after just about everyone else on the block has one).
I hate this kind of journalism. It's not really journalism at all, it's FUD for Apple. Steve Jobs did *not* invent 64 bit computing. Microsoft is not ripping off Apple by producing a 64 bit OS.
That works both ways, however. While France has done a most excellent thing for it's people and for freedom, this will not last.
The EU is more and more consistently demonstrating the hold that corporations are taking. Corporations have owned the US for some time, but the EU is a new player on the market and it's been doing some things they don't really like.
As we can see with the software patent issue, the EU is starting to make US like backflips to appease the copyright industry as investors start making the usual bribes and threats behind closed doors.
Sadly, I envisage the EU will step in soon and reverse the decision that France has made.
I'm much more jealous of my monitor's real estate than you are! I autohide the task bar. That way I don't see it unless I need it at the bottom of the screen. You can bounce the mouse down to the bottom of the screen to bring it up, or hit the windows key to make the start menu pop up. This has all the benefits of maximinising your real estate.
Admittedly, you do miss out on the additional space for extra "hooks" or "tasks", and the system tray space (but I also despise filling up the system tray with meaningless apps that like chewing up my system resources, I keep a clean windows whenever I can).
There will be some changes to this movie to make it more understandable for the intended audience, and for budgetary reasons:
1) The movie will be about developers who make a game that takes place on Earth, not Mars
2) The movie will be about developers who make a game with monsters that are humans who were mutated by a rogue virus, not demons from Hell
What? You think finding out budweiser is made out of rice instead of malted barley, hops, water and yeast isn't a major disincentive? Before we even start thinking about the specifics of the ingredients origin, we should make sure we're actually using ingredients that are supposed to be in beer, not fried up in a wok.
This is beer! Beer is not made from rice. Foolish american brewers.
Budweiser is definately one of the worst beers I have ever encountered. As a home brewer and alcoholic, I can safely say even I can make better beer.
Fosters Lager is almost completely unobtainable here in Australia, with perhaps one in every four bottleshops selling it in small quantities, which nobody buys.
A little pointer for even the pretentious to be aware of: Guinness is a stout, specifically a draught stout beer, and should not be confused with a blonde beer. Amusingly, the Guinness brewery actually has a license to produce Budweiser. (source: Wikipedia)
Blonde beers and ales are generally lighter in colour, texture and flavour than a stout, although it's likely that a good beer drinker will have a diverse palate that enables enjoyment of a variety of beers not including budweiser, fosters, or any beer produced by the Swan Brewery in WA.
In defense of american beer (yes, I can hear you all laughing from here) there is a strong community of home brewers and microbreweries in the states that produce beer which is around as good as anything you'll find in the world (excluding europe).
This article is revealing however, that the barley prices must be so high in the USA that breweries use rice to bulk their wort. That would be unforgivable in Australia and I believe downright illegal in Germany (feel free to correct me if I'm wrong, IANABL)
Are you seriously saying that in this day and age, you are actively and aggressively distributing Windows 98 to the general population and *deliberately* connecting these PC's to the internet?
I know it's important to be constructive on Slashdot so I will endeavour to be so. But I must say. What you are doing is sheer stupidity. Windows 98 is buggy. It's insecure. It's also unsupported. Microsoft don't like it, Microsoft don't patch it. It has known security holes that will never be patched because MS doesn't support the OS anymore.
When you couple this with an internet connection (even dial up), you are actively contributing to the overwhelming crisis of spam, malware, trojan and DDOS attacks. Perhaps you should save a little time and deliver the boxes directly to the virus writers to use as zombies?
Let me save you and the world a tremendous burden. If you have to go cheap, go free, use Linux. Don't make the problems of the world even worse than they are. At least Linux, even on old hardware, would be up to date, secure, and significantly more stable than Win9x.
Few problems with this:
1) Pentium 4 is a quick way to get yourself laughed at in serious gaming circles.
2) RAM... this box has 1/2 the *minimum* RAM a new gaming rig should have. Dell clearly sells incomplete systems.
3) 80GB is tiny by today's standards
4) LCD != Gaming display. At least not one that Dell would provide. A CRT would be cheaper and offer better IQ for the purposes of gaming.
Unfortunately, with your expectations of "premium", I wouldn't expect a "premium" gaming experience either. Having said that, any way you look at it, a white box will probably be more expensive, but the performance would be perhaps twice that of Mr Dell, or possibly more.
We need to define "game" and "affordable" better.
If "game" means solitaire and minesweeper, then "Dell" means "computer" and we leave it at that.
Let's assume you mean the HL2/DooM3 generation of games.
The quality of your rig is, to a large extent, proportionate to the amount you spend on it. This in turn, for the discerning gamer, yield much better enjoyment through smooth gameplay with crisper images, immersive sound and higher resolutions. Gaming at this level is very much like audiophilia (all the hi-fi freaks out there know what I'm talking about, starving to save up for a new set of drivers, crossovers, whatever).
Careful spending will yield better performance/price. The objective for almost everyone I know is to maximise performance and quality and minimise financial outlay. Buying Dell and upgrading is no way to build a rig. Let's look at the options.
You could buy a complete system from a company like Alienware. Alienware are a lot like the Apple of the gaming industry. Their stuff is pretty proprietary, you can't change or mess with some of it, it costs *heaps* more than a more generic equivalent whilst doing more or less the same thing. You'll spend a lot, and you'll get a decent rig. But you said you didn't want to spend a lot of money, so here's your only real choice.
Do it yourself. Go to the hardware sites, read reviews and do-it-yourself guides, check out the benchmarks, decide which components fit within your budget, shop around for the cheapest prices on quality parts, and assemble the system yourself. You did mention you had plenty of time.
Alternatively you could get a buddy to do it for you. I build complete systems for a carton of beer and the price of the parts, although I wouldn't do that for just anyone.
Not necessarily. A lot of CPU's fail testing at very high speeds but run with perfect stability at lower speeds. The CPU companies are profit driven, so they're happy to get some money for the CPU instead of throwing it.
Now, you can get yourself a cheaper CPU and overclock it, knowing it's probably capable of higher speeds, but there's a big risk of stability issues.
The current generations of CPU manufacturing process make very good error free batches compared to what it used to be like. So CPU's tend to work quite well at high speeds but still get badged down. That makes sense from a corporate perspective - if there is demand for a slower, cheaper CPU, you can sell into that market with higher specced CPU's. That just happens to be the way the market works.
The alternatives are untenable. It makes no sense for AMD to deliberately make a batch of CPU's specifically intended to be 2.0GHz when it costs the same as making a batch of 2.8GHz CPUs. AMD then has the *choice* of selling these CPUs at whatever speeds and prices the market demands.
Would the parent prefer than AMD make special 2GHz only CPU's to sell? Or perhaps AMD should instead only sell > $600 high end CPUs and not sell budget range CPUs at all?
This is the way the industry works. If you don't like it, feel free to go back to using transistors instead of IC's.
Downloading music "for free" from the internet should be illegal?
Hypothetical situation. I am a young independant unsigned artist. I make music, and would like to increase my listening audience. I put MP3's of songs I composed and performed on a website and I seed the songs onto a P2P network. What is the duration of my jail term?
Also a few people are commenting that the "copying levy" on blank media should be repealed - under this juristiction, it shouldn't. That levy is to pay for "fair use" copying of copyrighted works. This has no bearing on internet downloads.
From the benchmarks of the Beta's, the performance for Windows XP-64 was worse than that of XP-32 for the most important MS benchmark, gaming. (I say that simply because gaming is the only thing I can do better on Windows than Linux).
Hopefully Microsoft fixed that before they went gold, otherwise this OS will prove a bit of a dog and it won't get very wide acceptance from the marketplace. Also, it's lacking more legacy support than you usually get from Microsoft, so again that will decrease the adoption rate.
Yeah that seems to be the Sony way. They seem to think they can offer the same thing that everyone else does, but charge a higher price and use proprietary media, equipment and standards.
Like the good old memory stick and minidisc. They could have been the next-best-thing, they fit very snugly into much needed market niche's. Then Sony priced and proprietarised their new wondertechnology into obscurity.
So Link is a furry now?
That is definately becoming more and more of a plague on our society. Furries are bad, mmkay?
1) Sony's format won't be DRM free at all, so people will continue to make their own DRM free versions.
2) Jon will break the DRM about a month after it's available
3) Sony will sue Jon under DMCA (even though it's not applicable where he lives)
4) Napster will try to get in on the act
5) Apple/Sharman/Somebody will sue Sony for patent infringement
6) Sales will be great but copyright infringement won't take a dent.
7) Retail sales will take a dent and Sony will blame that on P2P instead of their own better-than-retail sales mechanism.
Am I missing anything?
Huh? The pirate servers are all working fine... just fine. I guess you don't always get what you pay for, eh?
You forgot the how-to?
Also (newbie question), won't soldering the ends of your wire increase resistance if the solder has higher resistance than the copper? Isn't the point of using copper because of the relatively low resistance?
$2K worth of gear, yeah, I would spend $200 on high quality cables (not monster cable however, well insulated copper or similar), wall sockets, running cables in the walls, mounting brackets, make the place look all nice. You know?
Your understanding is... wrong.
The numbers are based on a "hidden" series of benchmarks used internally at AMD.
Since it's a model number, it's no guarantee of performance, it's just a shopping guide for retail consumers.
AMD's corporate options are labelled more obfuscatingly, for instance the Opterons have numbers like 244 and 424.
I understand that Microsoft's 64 bit Windows XP doesn't install from i386, it installs from a folder called "AMD64"
Sure, it doesn't help AMD become a household name, but somewhere, some part of intel is crouched in a corner sobbing.
I'm pretty sure you can't get 19" plasma screens, at least, not at any decent resolution. There are problems with scaling down the size of the plasma cells.
And thanks to you, I'm going to get modded offtopic.
Sad Panda.
I think the parent was trying to say just that - the language skills of modern americans are becoming so bad that the point is *not* getting across.
People don't even have the basic courtesy to proofread the sentence they just wrote. By proofreading, you can tell if what you've written is legible.
If you're communicating with someone, isn't it worth showing that you respect them enough to communcate properly with them?
That's the whole crux of the article, if you read it.
It never was much of a problem, but Symantec are saying that because of increasing numbers of Macs connected to the 'net, there's an increase in sighted Malware/viruses/adware/spyware.
Although you should take the words of a vendor trying to sell you something with a bag of salt, it is inevitable that incidence of external threat to an OS will be proportionate to the market share of that OS.
Perhaps the era of security through obscurity for Apple is drawing to an end, and the true security of OS-X will be tested. Should be interesting to watch.