The cost of entering the operating systems market is low (if not negligable thanks to GNU and Linux)
Uhm, the cost of the final product has nothing to do with the cost of entering a market.
Look at the amount of man-hours that have gone into Linux (and Gnome/KDE etc etc). That's not negligable.
Entering the OS market is _very_ expensive, if not for the incredible cost of development, then for the plain fact that MS will try to crush you.
By definition, it's almost impossible to get into a market ruled by a monopolist. (unless you have unlimited funding, making it a very expensive market to enter)
The only reason MS is unable to crush Linux is that it is not one entity, not one company that they can screw over. (and it has practically unlimited funding; if you consider man-hours == $$$) This is great for Linux, and I'm glad it's there, BUT it would be even better if other companies could also compete without the risk of losing everything as soon as they appear on the Redmond radar.
Microsoft desperately wants to claim "we're using XML, so it's all 'open'", but in reality their XML "standards" are loaded with chunks of GUIDs and unparseable binary data in undocumented formats that require embedded use of other proprietary Microsoft components to access.
As another post pointed out, you probably based this entirely on some +5 Funny comments on/.
However, it is utter bullshit.
I just downloaded the XML schemas and the only GUID used is for a unique ID of a document. Their XML is very open/understandable/clear indeed.
A lot of Slashdotter's should be getting used to the taste of crow right about now. Many people here predicted that teh iPod Mini would be a bust, that no one would buy a 4GB unit for $50.00 (US) less than a 15GB unit.
And they were 100% dead wrong. Why? Because the iPod Mini isn't aimed at the tech-savy/. market.
The lesson here: Don't predict the market based solely on your preferences.
Well, doh. What the hell did you expect?! If we were so friggin good at predicting the market, then we wouldn't be programming (or more accurately, fucking around on./), now would we?
I mean, seriously, if you have the time to read the 30+ comments that are moderated +5 on say, a story or 10 a day, AND you have time to post your own comments, obviously you don't have a lot of important stuff to do.
All I have to say: moderators: fuck you! maybe that will get me modded down and into enough of a depression to stay away from all this bullshit.;)
I agree with pretty much all you said, except this little one:
I alledge this is another reason for the dotcom bubble burst.
The end of the dotcom era had (practically) nothing to do with MS. It had everything to do with overvalued companies and skill-less people going home with >70K salaries.
Some people actually tried to inovate during that period, but quite frankly, it was not what the investors were looking for.
I worked for a company with a solid product (and nice prototypes to prove it) and a solid market (it still is). We did however need money to grow. We couldn't find any funding because according to the VCs "we didn't fit the.com picture".
On the other hand, a lot of my friends worked for.coms, all of which pretty much had NOTHING, except for millions of dollars which they couldn't spend quick enough (hey the biz plan says we got to hire 40 people in one month, so let's just offer a bunch of kids that read "HTML in 8 hours" 70K a year...). Man, the parties they'd take me to. I had great times, but it was infuriating, the money spent on the parties that I've been to would have probably been more than enough to bootstrap our company...
Anyways, I don't see how MS was even remotely responsible for the investors stopping dumping money into a bottomless pit. It had to happen.
In any case, ending the.com era did not stop innovation. I would argue to the contrary. Maybe the funding will go to _real_ innovation now.
My idea, then, is that instead of having an operating system kernel on your hard drive, it and its bootloader should reside in a really friggen powerful BIOS chip.
You can do that today. Get a CompactFlash to IDE adapter and a CompactFlash device of the size of your choice. You probably think that's slower than putting it in the same Flash as the BIOS. Well, it's not. The BIOS Flash sits on most motherboards on the ISA bus, which is notoriously slow.
Remember, the BIOS is nothing more than a Flash device. And because it sits on a relatively slow interface, it really is not a great place to store large amounts of data.
BIOS itself should be a relatively powerful microprocessor.
You misunderstand what the BIOS is. The BIOS is just a chunk of code, nothing more. It's not a microprocessor. The microprocessor is whatever Intel, AMD, Via etc. chip you have on the board. That's what executes the BIOS.
and since the BIOS is designed for the computer (by the factory) or configured (by a hacker who puts together his own system), there is nothing to detect or load
Again, this is something you can do today. You have to configure the Linux kernel to do that. Before modules people would do this a lot more often, but one of the downsides of Linux going 'big' is that most people don't know/understand how to strip their kernel from stuff they don't need, while on the other hand, features such as Plug and Play detection etc have increased the boot time dramatically.
then you "freeze" it a la VMWare, put it in the BIOS Flash,
Remember that Flash write speed is very slow compared to a harddrive, no matter what bus it sits on. Even CompactFlash is much slower than even a slow harddrive. Imagine storing a snapshot on a fully loaded system with 1GB or RAM. That's a lot of stuff to write to anything.
Anyways, I know where you are coming from, but with all due respect, you don't really have the background to come up with a realistic system design.
Believe me, BIOS & OS coders _do_ come up with ideas like this all the time and I think that alternatives to the old (obsolete) BIOS will come up more and more. (hint: I am a BIOS coder that might be working on a skunkworks project;-)).
In the meantime, if you want a fast boot, do the following: - use LinuxBIOS - put your kernel on CompactFlash. CompactFlash is available almost immediately vs. the 3-5 sec spin-up time of a normal HDD. - configure your kernel properly and link all drivers you need statically instead of using modules (as much as you can). - As soon as the HDD is ready, you can mount your main filesystem on that.
No offense, but this will probably become a false second start.
The specs are sorta last year's (well, 2002 really), maybe not the CPU but the amount of RAM & Flash, the enclosure looks clunky and really, it's nice it runs Linux, but that's not going to sell a product. (and of course there's nicer devices that run Linux)
Unfortunately, this device does not belong on frontpage/.
The problem with creating stuff like this is that time to market is everything. Not only that, competing on consumer electronics with HP and the likes is pretty much impossible in the long run. The biggest problem is that most companies do not plan this far ahead and think they can get a piece of the pie and stay there. They sometimes do for a little while, but at the end of the day you need the infrastructure to produce VERY HIGH volume consumer electronics, which ALWAYS means extremely low margins.
Sorry to sound so negative. I still think people should try, I'm just saying that most of the time the best approach for these companies is to plan to be bought by the likes of HP or Sony.
1. It plays movies in WMV and audio in WMA. So where am I going to get the WMV movies?... snip...
And if I have to rip the movies myself with an unofficial DVD, will I still go to jail/get fined?
No, with this device that will be just fine. It comes with an agreement that will make any previously illegal activity now legal. [/sarcasm]
RTFA:
To that end, Microsoft is busy assembling media partners to provide content including movies, music videos and news. It has signed up music label EMI (EMI.L: Quote, Profile, Research) and digital music outfit Napster (ROXI.O: Quote, Profile, Research)
2. Battery power? I'm seeing 3 hours - seriously? iPod killer with 3 hours of battery power? That's like the Sega handheld devices that were going to kill the Gameboy with 3 hours battery power.
What's the question?
Where in the article did you read 3 hours?
3. TV out? Suppose I do pick it up and put movies on it so when I'm at a friend's house we can watch something. Can I have a TV-out so we don't have to scrunch around a tiny little screen?
RTFA:
It has a USB port and comes with audio and
video outputs cable to play media on a television or stereo hi-fi.
This is way off-topic, the MS ruling has nothing to do with an anti-American sentiment. The ruling has to do with MS abusing their monopoly position. It stiffles inovation, and the Europeans want to protect it's software industry. For some reason the US thinks it's software industry is Microsoft (and Microsoft alone), at least it seems that way from they way they protect it.
Anyways back to your comment: There's been anti-Americanism regardless of which yahoo was in the White House. Clinton did just as much damage as anyone else.
I left Holland in the Clinton years for the US and returned recently.
The difference in the way people look at the US is staggering. Yeah, there was some mockery about Monica. But I think it's fair to say that the average Dutch person would also say 'so what?'. If this is the biggest problem your country has, then that's awesome.
Now I hear lots of people that don't want to have anything to do with the US. When you ask them what the main reason is, guess what they answer? That's right: Bush.
Well, it's not only Bush. They are worried about all the people supporting him as well. Apparently people that were blinded by a need for revenge for the 9/11 attacks and thus supported an aggressive and arrogant invasion of Iraq.
It's made them wonder, maybe the US is not such a friendly country after all.
I'm sad to see the big change. I still think the US is a great country with great people. I just think the next elections can't be fast enough.
I started poking around the root filesystem looking for a link to the executable. I noticed a directory called "autoexec" so I checked it out only to find that it contained neither the executable nor a link thereto. I finally found the actual location of the executable--it seemed to be on a datacard of some sort--and started it for them.
That's absolutely rediculous. You obviously don't understand the responsibility of the job.
You CAN NOT do something like that! What if you found the wrong executable? Maybe it was an earlier debug version that doesn't actually register the vote? Or it has a bug and actually casts the wrong one?
What if that executable required some other software to be run first, but fails quitely if that doesn't happen??
That's just crazy; the machine has to be started as per instructions. If it does not it is taken off-line. It's as simple as that, no questions and certainly no fucking around to 'fix' it.
In fact it's insane that you even had the level of control that you did. It's obvious these machines are not ready yet for prime time.
We haven't seen a SCO story of slashdot for a while.
Tssss.... (Score:-1, Offtopic)
Silly mods probably didn't understand the humor... If anything that should have been Redundant, not Offtopic. (although redundancy doesn't normally seem to bother the mods very often)
Maybe there should be a 'Score:-1, Old Joke' moderation.
According to this 3d map (updated every 30 seconds) the Caltech Bot is running since a 30 minutes or so
Hmm, I don't know how you got that information, but their status page indicates that no-one has started, as of yet (5:10am in Barstow). The race is supposed to start at 6:30am, so that would make sense.
If it was required for credit card companies not to transfer money to businesses that employed spammers to push their goods - then that would also help some.
Here's another one for you: if everyone receiving spam would use their credit card to purchase the product, and subsequently call the credit card company to dispute the charge (honestly, my willy did NOT grow by 2 inches!), then: a) the credit card company would no longer provide services to that business because of the large number of charge-backs b) the spammers would hurt badly because of the incurred cost of charge-backs (around $25 or so, from what I understand).
Of course I'm mostly joking, but if done in an organized manner, it would be possible to hurt some of the spammers badly. Possibly enough to make the others think twice about their practice.
Only CMU is doing well. It's not the money, by the way. Their actual cash outlays are only about $300K to date.
I find this an awkward comment. How can you say it's not the money, when these guys have gotten incredible amounts of equipment donated by their sponsors? Sure, that's not cash out of their pocket, but someone is paying for it.
Their site is one of the most commercial websites I've ever come across with almost every other line having a link to a sponsor.
And we're not only talking hardware being provided, there's also talk about software co-developed with one of the sponsors.
It's the body count and the fear. They have about fifty people on the project, a slavedriver boss, and the full backing of CMU. CMU has to do well; most of the Robotics Institute funding over the last three decades is from DARPA, and DARPA can turn that money off at any time.
That might explain why they got all those sponsors. DARPA already has a relationship with CMU.
Don't get me wrong though, the people in the team may be very talented. I was just looking forward to 'unexpected' results from teams that were not so heavily backed by big money, like yours, presumably.
They do though, so no using mp3search.ru is not legal. Stop fooling yourself into thinking it is.
Interesting thing: I've just spent the last hour tooling around on mp3search.ru. Spent 20 bucks to download a bunch of old stuff that I hadn't heard for years or never heard before.
Guess what? I just realized I have to go out and buy the original CDs for the stuff I downloaded, because I want higher quality.
Why does it take a 'dubious' Russian website to accomplish this?
I think it's safe to say that I have no respect for the RIAA. Nor do I for lazy artists that bitch about their music being 'stolen' after selling their sole to the devil because they had $$ signs in their eyes.
Legal or not, we are at a state of flux and as far as I am concerned, the RIAA can go fuck themselves. When all this is sorted THEN we'll see what's illegal and what's not.
What a lot of bullshit. There is no such a thing as a 48-bit LBA drive. The BIOS has to have 48-bit LBA support not the drive. This single mistake disqualifies everything you have said.
Riiiight. Why don't you download the ATA spec. You obviously have no clue what you are talking about. Have you ever implemented 48-bit LBA mode?
If you actually read the ATA spec you would know that the hard disk indicates if it supports 48-bit LBA through the IDENTIFY DEVICE command. Bit 10 of word 83.
48-bit LBA was added to ATA-6, if memory serves me correct.
Before 48-bit LBA, LBA drives only supported addressing of sectors through a 28-bit address. In other words the largest addressable sector is 268,435,455. * 512 bytes per sector = max 137,438,952,960 in size. Or 137.4GB, as I stated. So how exactly do YOU think a 250GB drive handles addressing sectors above that?
What those idiots described would not work, but your knowledge of the matter stinks.
Yeah, no kidding. Fortunately the drivers I've had to write from scratch had very specific requirements and didn't need to support every drive on the planet.
To support modern drives actually doesn't require that much code. Too bad the interface for UDMA controllers wasn't standardized though.
Slashdot Mirror
The cost of entering the operating systems market is low (if not negligable thanks to GNU and Linux)
Uhm, the cost of the final product has nothing to do with the cost of entering a market.
Look at the amount of man-hours that have gone into Linux (and Gnome/KDE etc etc). That's not negligable.
Entering the OS market is _very_ expensive, if not for the incredible cost of development, then for the plain fact that MS will try to crush you.
By definition, it's almost impossible to get into a market ruled by a monopolist. (unless you have unlimited funding, making it a very expensive market to enter)
The only reason MS is unable to crush Linux is that it is not one entity, not one company that they can screw over. (and it has practically unlimited funding; if you consider man-hours == $$$) This is great for Linux, and I'm glad it's there, BUT it would be even better if other companies could also compete without the risk of losing everything as soon as they appear on the Redmond radar.
Microsoft desperately wants to claim "we're using XML, so it's all 'open'", but in reality their XML "standards" are loaded with chunks of GUIDs and unparseable binary data in undocumented formats that require embedded use of other proprietary Microsoft components to access.
/.
As another post pointed out, you probably based this entirely on some +5 Funny comments on
However, it is utter bullshit.
I just downloaded the XML schemas and the only GUID used is for a unique ID of a document. Their XML is very open/understandable/clear indeed.
Talk about FUD.
but personally, I _hate_ Clippy.
Now common, that's just crazy talk.
A lot of Slashdotter's should be getting used to the taste of crow right about now. Many people here predicted that teh iPod Mini would be a bust, that no one would buy a 4GB unit for $50.00 (US) less than a 15GB unit.
/. market.
./), now would we?
;)
And they were 100% dead wrong. Why? Because the iPod Mini isn't aimed at the tech-savy
The lesson here: Don't predict the market based solely on your preferences.
Well, doh. What the hell did you expect?! If we were so friggin good at predicting the market, then we wouldn't be programming (or more accurately, fucking around on
I mean, seriously, if you have the time to read the 30+ comments that are moderated +5 on say, a story or 10 a day, AND you have time to post your own comments, obviously you don't have a lot of important stuff to do.
All I have to say: moderators: fuck you! maybe that will get me modded down and into enough of a depression to stay away from all this bullshit.
I agree with pretty much all you said, except this little one:
.com picture".
.coms, all of which pretty much had NOTHING, except for millions of dollars which they couldn't spend quick enough (hey the biz plan says we got to hire 40 people in one month, so let's just offer a bunch of kids that read "HTML in 8 hours" 70K a year...). Man, the parties they'd take me to. I had great times, but it was infuriating, the money spent on the parties that I've been to would have probably been more than enough to bootstrap our company...
.com era did not stop innovation. I would argue to the contrary. Maybe the funding will go to _real_ innovation now.
I alledge this is another reason for the dotcom bubble burst.
The end of the dotcom era had (practically) nothing to do with MS. It had everything to do with overvalued companies and skill-less people going home with >70K salaries.
Some people actually tried to inovate during that period, but quite frankly, it was not what the investors were looking for.
I worked for a company with a solid product (and nice prototypes to prove it) and a solid market (it still is). We did however need money to grow. We couldn't find any funding because according to the VCs "we didn't fit the
On the other hand, a lot of my friends worked for
Anyways, I don't see how MS was even remotely responsible for the investors stopping dumping money into a bottomless pit. It had to happen.
In any case, ending the
My idea, then, is that instead of having an operating system kernel on your hard drive, it and its bootloader should reside in a really friggen powerful BIOS chip.
;-)).
You can do that today. Get a CompactFlash to IDE adapter and a CompactFlash device of the size of your choice. You probably think that's slower than putting it in the same Flash as the BIOS. Well, it's not. The BIOS Flash sits on most motherboards on the ISA bus, which is notoriously slow.
Remember, the BIOS is nothing more than a Flash device. And because it sits on a relatively slow interface, it really is not a great place to store large amounts of data.
BIOS itself should be a relatively powerful microprocessor.
You misunderstand what the BIOS is. The BIOS is just a chunk of code, nothing more. It's not a microprocessor. The microprocessor is whatever Intel, AMD, Via etc. chip you have on the board. That's what executes the BIOS.
and since the BIOS is designed for the computer (by the factory) or configured (by a hacker who puts together his own system), there is nothing to detect or load
Again, this is something you can do today. You have to configure the Linux kernel to do that. Before modules people would do this a lot more often, but one of the downsides of Linux going 'big' is that most people don't know/understand how to strip their kernel from stuff they don't need, while on the other hand, features such as Plug and Play detection etc have increased the boot time dramatically.
then you "freeze" it a la VMWare, put it in the BIOS Flash,
Remember that Flash write speed is very slow compared to a harddrive, no matter what bus it sits on. Even CompactFlash is much slower than even a slow harddrive. Imagine storing a snapshot on a fully loaded system with 1GB or RAM. That's a lot of stuff to write to anything.
Anyways, I know where you are coming from, but with all due respect, you don't really have the background to come up with a realistic system design.
Believe me, BIOS & OS coders _do_ come up with ideas like this all the time and I think that alternatives to the old (obsolete) BIOS will come up more and more. (hint: I am a BIOS coder that might be working on a skunkworks project
In the meantime, if you want a fast boot, do the following:
- use LinuxBIOS
- put your kernel on CompactFlash. CompactFlash is available almost immediately vs. the 3-5 sec spin-up time of a normal HDD.
- configure your kernel properly and link all drivers you need statically instead of using modules (as much as you can).
- As soon as the HDD is ready, you can mount your main filesystem on that.
I am a hardware engineer for E Ink by the way
And the sysadmin just blocked all P2P ports, so I'll get him back this way.
"See how you like a good ole slashdotting, bastard!!"
You can't beat all the crackers
Heh, now there's a sentiment you rarely hear when certain other software is involved.
(I agree though)
No offense, but this will probably become a false second start.
/.
The specs are sorta last year's (well, 2002 really), maybe not the CPU but the amount of RAM & Flash, the enclosure looks clunky and really, it's nice it runs Linux, but that's not going to sell a product. (and of course there's nicer devices that run Linux)
Unfortunately, this device does not belong on frontpage
The problem with creating stuff like this is that time to market is everything. Not only that, competing on consumer electronics with HP and the likes is pretty much impossible in the long run. The biggest problem is that most companies do not plan this far ahead and think they can get a piece of the pie and stay there. They sometimes do for a little while, but at the end of the day you need the infrastructure to produce VERY HIGH volume consumer electronics, which ALWAYS means extremely low margins.
Sorry to sound so negative. I still think people should try, I'm just saying that most of the time the best approach for these companies is to plan to be bought by the likes of HP or Sony.
The article claims that this is not competition for Bluetooth, IR, or Wi-Fi. Unlike what the summary claims.
Of course it is! Instead of using Bluetooth, you just touch your earpiece with your cell-phone.
1. It plays movies in WMV and audio in WMA. So where am I going to get the WMV movies?
And if I have to rip the movies myself with an unofficial DVD, will I still go to jail/get fined?
No, with this device that will be just fine. It comes with an agreement that will make any previously illegal activity now legal.
[/sarcasm]
RTFA:
2. Battery power? I'm seeing 3 hours - seriously? iPod killer with 3 hours of battery power? That's like the Sega handheld devices that were going to kill the Gameboy with 3 hours battery power.
What's the question?
Where in the article did you read 3 hours?
3. TV out? Suppose I do pick it up and put movies on it so when I'm at a friend's house we can watch something. Can I have a TV-out so we don't have to scrunch around a tiny little screen?
RTFA:
This is way off-topic, the MS ruling has nothing to do with an anti-American sentiment. The ruling has to do with MS abusing their monopoly position. It stiffles inovation, and the Europeans want to protect it's software industry. For some reason the US thinks it's software industry is Microsoft (and Microsoft alone), at least it seems that way from they way they protect it.
Anyways back to your comment:
There's been anti-Americanism regardless of which yahoo was in the White House. Clinton did just as much damage as anyone else.
I left Holland in the Clinton years for the US and returned recently.
The difference in the way people look at the US is staggering. Yeah, there was some mockery about Monica. But I think it's fair to say that the average Dutch person would also say 'so what?'. If this is the biggest problem your country has, then that's awesome.
Now I hear lots of people that don't want to have anything to do with the US. When you ask them what the main reason is, guess what they answer? That's right: Bush.
Well, it's not only Bush. They are worried about all the people supporting him as well. Apparently people that were blinded by a need for revenge for the 9/11 attacks and thus supported an aggressive and arrogant invasion of Iraq.
It's made them wonder, maybe the US is not such a friendly country after all.
I'm sad to see the big change. I still think the US is a great country with great people. I just think the next elections can't be fast enough.
I started poking around the root filesystem looking for a link to the executable. I noticed a directory called "autoexec" so I checked it out only to find that it contained neither the executable nor a link thereto. I finally found the actual location of the executable--it seemed to be on a datacard of some sort--and started it for them.
That's absolutely rediculous. You obviously don't understand the responsibility of the job.
You CAN NOT do something like that! What if you found the wrong executable? Maybe it was an earlier debug version that doesn't actually register the vote? Or it has a bug and actually casts the wrong one?
What if that executable required some other software to be run first, but fails quitely if that doesn't happen??
That's just crazy; the machine has to be started as per instructions. If it does not it is taken off-line. It's as simple as that, no questions and certainly no fucking around to 'fix' it.
In fact it's insane that you even had the level of control that you did. It's obvious these machines are not ready yet for prime time.
We haven't seen a SCO story of slashdot for a while.
Tssss.... (Score:-1, Offtopic)
Silly mods probably didn't understand the humor... If anything that should have been Redundant, not Offtopic. (although redundancy doesn't normally seem to bother the mods very often)
Maybe there should be a 'Score:-1, Old Joke' moderation.
According to this 3d map (updated every 30 seconds) the Caltech Bot is running since a 30 minutes or so
Hmm, I don't know how you got that information, but their status page indicates that no-one has started, as of yet (5:10am in Barstow). The race is supposed to start at 6:30am, so that would make sense.
Maybe they had some incorrect data initially. Anyways, this slightly 'lighter' page shows the status.
btw, P4-2GHz also at 100% / 125MB RAM
What the hell is the CTO of Sony, Netherlands doing on /. all day? :-)
If it was required for credit card companies not to transfer money to businesses that employed spammers to push their goods - then that would also help some.
Here's another one for you: if everyone receiving spam would use their credit card to purchase the product, and subsequently call the credit card company to dispute the charge (honestly, my willy did NOT grow by 2 inches!), then:
a) the credit card company would no longer provide services to that business because of the large number of charge-backs
b) the spammers would hurt badly because of the incurred cost of charge-backs (around $25 or so, from what I understand).
Of course I'm mostly joking, but if done in an organized manner, it would be possible to hurt some of the spammers badly. Possibly enough to make the others think twice about their practice.
You did a great job! I've only had to make a few tweaks to the code (like better PNG/palette support for my menus!)
Of course we hope you submitted those changes back.
Only CMU is doing well. It's not the money, by the way. Their actual cash outlays are only about $300K to date.
I find this an awkward comment. How can you say it's not the money, when these guys have gotten incredible amounts of equipment donated by their sponsors? Sure, that's not cash out of their pocket, but someone is paying for it.
Their site is one of the most commercial websites I've ever come across with almost every other line having a link to a sponsor.
And we're not only talking hardware being provided, there's also talk about software co-developed with one of the sponsors.
It's the body count and the fear. They have about fifty people on the project, a slavedriver boss, and the full backing of CMU. CMU has to do well; most of the Robotics Institute funding over the last three decades is from DARPA, and DARPA can turn that money off at any time.
That might explain why they got all those sponsors. DARPA already has a relationship with CMU.
Don't get me wrong though, the people in the team may be very talented. I was just looking forward to 'unexpected' results from teams that were not so heavily backed by big money, like yours, presumably.
:-) Sorry... My spelling sucks, and English is not my native language.
I found an fake potted plant in an isolated corner of the airport and hid the knife under some bark chips.
Yeah, I know. I make a habit of checking a couple of fake plants on my way out of the airport. You never know what you're gonna find.
They do though, so no using mp3search.ru is not legal. Stop fooling yourself into thinking it is.
Interesting thing: I've just spent the last hour tooling around on mp3search.ru. Spent 20 bucks to download a bunch of old stuff that I hadn't heard for years or never heard before.
Guess what? I just realized I have to go out and buy the original CDs for the stuff I downloaded, because I want higher quality.
Why does it take a 'dubious' Russian website to accomplish this?
I think it's safe to say that I have no respect for the RIAA. Nor do I for lazy artists that bitch about their music being 'stolen' after selling their sole to the devil because they had $$ signs in their eyes.
Legal or not, we are at a state of flux and as far as I am concerned, the RIAA can go fuck themselves. When all this is sorted THEN we'll see what's illegal and what's not.
What a lot of bullshit. There is no such a thing as a 48-bit LBA drive. The BIOS has to have 48-bit LBA support not the drive. This single mistake disqualifies everything you have said.
Riiiight. Why don't you download the ATA spec. You obviously have no clue what you are talking about. Have you ever implemented 48-bit LBA mode?
If you actually read the ATA spec you would know that the hard disk indicates if it supports 48-bit LBA through the IDENTIFY DEVICE command. Bit 10 of word 83.
48-bit LBA was added to ATA-6, if memory serves me correct.
Before 48-bit LBA, LBA drives only supported addressing of sectors through a 28-bit address. In other words the largest addressable sector is 268,435,455. * 512 bytes per sector = max 137,438,952,960 in size. Or 137.4GB, as I stated. So how exactly do YOU think a 250GB drive handles addressing sectors above that?
What those idiots described would not work, but your knowledge of the matter stinks.
Whatever dude. You can verify all I've said.
Yeah, no kidding. Fortunately the drivers I've had to write from scratch had very specific requirements and didn't need to support every drive on the planet.
To support modern drives actually doesn't require that much code. Too bad the interface for UDMA controllers wasn't standardized though.