Yes, of course you are right. I guess a better example would be something that does require admin level permissions, like setting up a web or FTP server on a standard port. It is, however, easier to clean up after a standard user, since the worst case scenario would be to wipe their home directory and start again.
No.
It's more like the doctor exposing you to several deadly viruses/bacteria and then charging you an annual fee to give you perscription drugs that treat the symptoms of the ailments, without curing them.
While it is true that many things can be done without admin priviliges, the whole point of having a distinction between regular users and an admin user is that the regular user can only bork his own little corner of the computer. The parts that are essential to the proper functioning of the computer should only be writable by the admin user. So Joe loses all his porn, but his 'puter does not become part of some zombie network used to distribute spam to the world.
What I wonder is why more people (you know, average computer users, not/. posters) don't think about alternative platforms such as Linux or Mac.
I had to think about that for a minute. Human nature is to take the path of least resistance, but it is also true that people sit up and take notice when you tell them they have to give you more of their money for something you thought you already bought (i.e. a working computer). Hell, most people would be annoyed even if it were logical that they should pay extra for AV software. That's human nature too.
So if users are not being outraged by demands that they pay more to fix their system, then either users don't feel they need the "protection" or the demands are not being made.
Then it dawned on me. It isn't the end users that are being shaken down here; it's the large vendors like DELL and HP. Joe average isn't going to call MS when his system blows up. Instead, he's going to call DELL (god help him). So someone at DELL has figured out that it is cheaper to bundle the AV software with the box than it would be to have a tech guy have the customer reseat his video card or low level format his hard drive.
So, once again, economics dictates the actions of big business. No big surprise, I guess.
If we're going to go after the root cause of the problem, then we should be prosecuting all these high end consumer product companies. I mean, if Rolex made a cheap ass $50 watch, then people would buy a genuine Rolex and the spammers would be out of business right quick.
With regards to not holding a stable image @ 1920x1200, I might have a solution for you.
I had problems driving a 1600x1200 DVI-D panel @60Hz. The screen would flicker and shake intermittently, and I would sometimes get colored static on the screen.
It turns out that the panel was supplying a modeline to the video card that had a dotclock of 163 MHz. It had huge overscan areas off the screen for sync pulse and raster retrace. The theoretical bandwidth for a DVI-D signal is about 165 MHz, and the EDID supplied timing is pretty close to that bandwidth limit. It looks like either my card can't produce a clean signal or the panel can't resolve the signal cleanly at 163 MHz.
My solution was to override the EDID data from the panel, and write my own modeline for 1600x1200. With a little trial and error, I found that my panel can properly display a modeline with 64 pixels of overscan and an 8 pixel sync pulse horizontally, and 8 pixels of overscan and a 3 pixel sync pulse vertically. This dropped my dotclock from 162 MHz to 120 MHz, and the picture was stable again.
This is the modeline:
ModeLine 120 1600 1608 1616 1664 1200 1201 1204 1208
This probably wouldn't work for an analog input because the sync pulses and overscan are so small, but I can write a modeline with more spacing, that has a dotclock somewhere between 120 MHz and 165 MHz, that would probably work with an analog input and still be clean on the DVI-D input.
This would be a cool way to implement wireless internet access in remote areas. Imagine taking a cross-country road trip and letting the kids in the back seat surf the net by routing the packets from car to car, back to the nearest stationary access point. As long as there's a certain minimum amount of traffic, you'd pretty much always be connected, even out in the middle of Saskatchewan.
I would say copyright only restricts distribution of duplicates of your work, and has no bearing on any of the other things I can do with it. For example, If I buy a copy of your book, copyright does not restrict me from cutting it up into paper snowflakes or using it to prop open my bedroom door. Likewise, copyright does not restrict me from listening to a song I bought on iTunes, or from inviting my friends over to my house to listen to it. It also doesn't prohibit those same friends from actually listening to the song, as long as they don't take home a copy.
If you want to control those sorts of things, then you need a EULA, and even if you get the user to agree to one, I don't think they are enforcable in any meaningful sense.
I'd buy one of these in a heartbeat, just on principle. I'd be willing to spend maybe up to three hundred bucks for the first few iterations.
The way I see it, most of the cost of the latest ATi or nVidia cards is to cover R+D expenses. The fact that the price drops drastically in a year or two is evidence of this.
The advantage of an open source hardware project isn't just that you have documentation for the hardware and can therefore write drivers for it. The real advantage is the same advantage that open source software gives you; namely that you can hack on it and make it better.
Imagine an open source video chip project that you could send design patches to in the same way that you can send patches to the Linux kernel. There could be simulation software to run tests with, and if you wanted some reference chips, you could download a snapshot spec and take it to a fabricator. In fact, there's a business opportunity right there. You could take orders and print chips on a regular release cycle, say twice a year. Of course, I didn't RTFA, but might this not be what this company is proposing?
Sure, it might be a bit expensive now to have chips printed, but if there is a demand for this kind of service, the price will drop and the options will multiply. Eventually, you might be able to buy a kit at Radio Shack that will burn chips equivalent to today's high end graphics chips. And when that happens, there will be this open source (GPL?) chip spec waiting for you to burn, and there will be a driver ready for it when the HURD is finally released.
at ~44 minutes per episode, that's 113 hours of TV.
Assuming 30 days in a month, that's 5 episodes a day, every day, or about 3 hours and 45 minutes of SG-1 every day, for the entire month.
If you watched one disk every day, it would take you a little over a month to complete the whole series.
Of course you could binge watch on the weekends too. I watched season seven last Sunday, but I was really burned out after that (probably because I watched Farscape season 4 the day before).
Eric Lander of the Broad Institute in Cambridge, Massachusetts is quoted in the CNN story as saying that the number of genes isn't as crucial as how they are used.
If only I could convince the technical lead on my project that the same is true for lines of code in software...
It's clean. Matter + antimatter = light. Lots of light. Of course once you start burning matter and antimatter, you're using the ultimate non-renewable resource;)
Matter and antimatter are both equally good energy containers. Separation issues aside, all we need to do is find a more efficient conversion path from one of these containers to the other.
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Mr Gates? Is that you?
Yes, of course you are right. I guess a better example would be something that does require admin level permissions, like setting up a web or FTP server on a standard port. It is, however, easier to clean up after a standard user, since the worst case scenario would be to wipe their home directory and start again.
So, what are you saying? That Microsoft should not be selling AV software because it is pointless?
No.
It's more like the doctor exposing you to several deadly viruses/bacteria and then charging you an annual fee to give you perscription drugs that treat the symptoms of the ailments, without curing them.
While it is true that many things can be done without admin priviliges, the whole point of having a distinction between regular users and an admin user is that the regular user can only bork his own little corner of the computer. The parts that are essential to the proper functioning of the computer should only be writable by the admin user. So Joe loses all his porn, but his 'puter does not become part of some zombie network used to distribute spam to the world.
I had to think about that for a minute. Human nature is to take the path of least resistance, but it is also true that people sit up and take notice when you tell them they have to give you more of their money for something you thought you already bought (i.e. a working computer). Hell, most people would be annoyed even if it were logical that they should pay extra for AV software. That's human nature too.
So if users are not being outraged by demands that they pay more to fix their system, then either users don't feel they need the "protection" or the demands are not being made.
Then it dawned on me. It isn't the end users that are being shaken down here; it's the large vendors like DELL and HP. Joe average isn't going to call MS when his system blows up. Instead, he's going to call DELL (god help him). So someone at DELL has figured out that it is cheaper to bundle the AV software with the box than it would be to have a tech guy have the customer reseat his video card or low level format his hard drive.
So, once again, economics dictates the actions of big business. No big surprise, I guess.
If we're going to go after the root cause of the problem, then we should be prosecuting all these high end consumer product companies. I mean, if Rolex made a cheap ass $50 watch, then people would buy a genuine Rolex and the spammers would be out of business right quick.
me too. Dvorak rocks.
I will still buy one. Thanks for continuing to exist.
I had problems driving a 1600x1200 DVI-D panel @60Hz. The screen would flicker and shake intermittently, and I would sometimes get colored static on the screen.
It turns out that the panel was supplying a modeline to the video card that had a dotclock of 163 MHz. It had huge overscan areas off the screen for sync pulse and raster retrace. The theoretical bandwidth for a DVI-D signal is about 165 MHz, and the EDID supplied timing is pretty close to that bandwidth limit. It looks like either my card can't produce a clean signal or the panel can't resolve the signal cleanly at 163 MHz.
My solution was to override the EDID data from the panel, and write my own modeline for 1600x1200. With a little trial and error, I found that my panel can properly display a modeline with 64 pixels of overscan and an 8 pixel sync pulse horizontally, and 8 pixels of overscan and a 3 pixel sync pulse vertically. This dropped my dotclock from 162 MHz to 120 MHz, and the picture was stable again.
This is the modeline:
ModeLine 120 1600 1608 1616 1664 1200 1201 1204 1208
This probably wouldn't work for an analog input because the sync pulses and overscan are so small, but I can write a modeline with more spacing, that has a dotclock somewhere between 120 MHz and 165 MHz, that would probably work with an analog input and still be clean on the DVI-D input.
Network connectivity not necessary after first install. Portage keeps the downloaded files under /usr/portage/distfiles.
This could be a great way to quickly produce needed vaccines on demand. I wonder how many phages per minute the first models will print...
B5 was written specifically to run in five seasons. JMS Had the whole story planned out before they even started rolling tape.
This would be a cool way to implement wireless internet access in remote areas. Imagine taking a cross-country road trip and letting the kids in the back seat surf the net by routing the packets from car to car, back to the nearest stationary access point. As long as there's a certain minimum amount of traffic, you'd pretty much always be connected, even out in the middle of Saskatchewan.
If you want to control those sorts of things, then you need a EULA, and even if you get the user to agree to one, I don't think they are enforcable in any meaningful sense.
Flamebait!?? K' I was joking about the HURD thing, but I'm seroius about the rest - Sorry if i offended someone...
The way I see it, most of the cost of the latest ATi or nVidia cards is to cover R+D expenses. The fact that the price drops drastically in a year or two is evidence of this.
The advantage of an open source hardware project isn't just that you have documentation for the hardware and can therefore write drivers for it. The real advantage is the same advantage that open source software gives you; namely that you can hack on it and make it better.
Imagine an open source video chip project that you could send design patches to in the same way that you can send patches to the Linux kernel. There could be simulation software to run tests with, and if you wanted some reference chips, you could download a snapshot spec and take it to a fabricator. In fact, there's a business opportunity right there. You could take orders and print chips on a regular release cycle, say twice a year. Of course, I didn't RTFA, but might this not be what this company is proposing?
Sure, it might be a bit expensive now to have chips printed, but if there is a demand for this kind of service, the price will drop and the options will multiply. Eventually, you might be able to buy a kit at Radio Shack that will burn chips equivalent to today's high end graphics chips. And when that happens, there will be this open source (GPL?) chip spec waiting for you to burn, and there will be a driver ready for it when the HURD is finally released.
Oh, the irony of a bunch of dicks wanting to be a "member"...
Software is a bit different...because it has no 'sex appeal'
To paraphrase a certain famous coder who worked for Id Software, when asked why he coded a linux client for Quake:
"Linux makes me hard."
Sorry, my mind's ear just made the connection.
Great, now I'll never be able to watch the trilogy without giggling.
Mmmmm... supergrover...
seasons 1 to 7 = 154 episodes.
at ~44 minutes per episode, that's 113 hours of TV.
Assuming 30 days in a month, that's 5 episodes a day, every day, or about 3 hours and 45 minutes of SG-1 every day, for the entire month.
If you watched one disk every day, it would take you a little over a month to complete the whole series.
Of course you could binge watch on the weekends too. I watched season seven last Sunday, but I was really burned out after that (probably because I watched Farscape season 4 the day before).
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The irony of this is almost too rich to believe. Did these guys actually just commit corporate suicide in front of the entire internet?
If only I could convince the technical lead on my project that the same is true for lines of code in software...
It's clean. Matter + antimatter = light. Lots of light. Of course once you start burning matter and antimatter, you're using the ultimate non-renewable resource ;)
Matter and antimatter are both equally good energy containers. Separation issues aside, all we need to do is find a more efficient conversion path from one of these containers to the other.