well... not the way the WTC was designed. It was kind of neat, actually; the shell of each tower was entirely self-supporting. By having a series of small "pillars" around the outside, it prevented the need for internal columns. If the WTC had been hollow, the walls and windows would have stood with no interior support.
The central column, with all sorts of steel beams, was actually only needed because there had to be elevators. 3 segments of about 35 floors each, as it happens. You actually had to get off at the mezzanines and switch to get to the top.
Anyway, the floors themselves were basically a layer of concrete and steel spanning from that central column, out to the self-supporting shell. So, the floors were by their nature not designed to hold anything but themselves. Don't view the WTC as a stack of 110 pancakes; it's more like an elevator shaft within a shell, with some incidental floors because people have to go SOMEWHERE.
Why not turn your idea into a perpetual motion machine? Replace the solar and wind generation with electricy taken from the fuel cell.
Heh. Electrolysis is almost certainly not the best way to get H2, even though if you set it up with a wind/solar electricity input, the electricity you used would basically be free (your perpetual motion logic is specious - there's more energy than we could ever use passing us by each day).
Aren't there some pretty simple and clean chemical reactions that release hydrogen? For one, I'm pretty sure that Silver acts as a catalyst to break down H2O2. Although then we have to take peroxide generations costs into account... grr...
Dude. If they come through on these promises to clamp down on mp3s, and media player starts shutting people's boxes off for trying to save a stream, then mp3 and other file sharing will be killer apps.
Of course, linux will become the OS of "hax0rs and war3z" even more than now, so I'm not entirely sure that's positive...
"There are a lot of (angry) chief information officers out there," says Steven Steinbrecher, CIO for California's Contra Costa County. His 3-year costs will jump to $651 per desktop from $335.
Q.E.D.
Okay, but look at it from Microsoft's perspective: price almost doubles, by the clients' own calculations. Even if HALF the Windows users jump ship (not likely!), they'll still have broken even. Of course, break even isn't what they're going for, but do you really think HALF of the market will abandon windows in the next 2 years?
I'm reading the responses to my post and wondering if "Any arguments you make about either being good, bad, or anything in between, is dogshit." deserves a rebuttal and you're complaining about the absence of citations in my sig!?!
Hence, the OT marking and forgoing my +1. If you wanna skip it, skip it. I actually really appreciate the explanation you did just offer, though.
[ for those who didn't click on the link, it's an image at Gamla called leb4.jpg, showing a group of people of middle-easter appearance wearing chicago bears uniforms, lakers hats, etc. ]
Why this does not demonstrate "why it's hard to take anti-US sentiment seriously":
1. It is completely out of context. This is simply a jpg image of "Arab-lookin'" people with american clothes. Maybe they were partying in LA?
2. However, given that it appeared on a.il (Israeli) server and had the name "leb" in the image title, I suppose it's meant to indicated that "middle eastern people actually like the US." But consider the source! Gamla is called "news AND VIEWS" from israel. They have a bit of a vested interest in being pro-america and anti-islam, to say the least.
So, if you'd like to thoroughly argue anti-americanism into the ground, please proceed to do so, but kindly use reasonable arguments, in context, with citations. Furthermore, realize that this won't stop certain agents throughout the world from FEELING that sentiment, emotionally, so it will be something of a pyrrhic victory.
Okay, here I go, proving my lack of server programming skilz: is it really so hard to prevent buffer overflows? Why does the length of a URL (for example) ever cause a server to crash?
It seems like every time you get input from the outside, you would only accept it in segments of a known length, and whatever was longer would just wait for the next "get" or whatever. At least this is the case in my (obviously limited) socket programming experience. So when some program is hit with a buffer overflow error, does the team of programmers smack their collective head and say "d'oh"?
I'm torn! Do I tell that looser what drives people to visit the place and give him a clue, or do I keep my mouth shut and let him keep buying ads?
Yeah, no doubt, I thought that too as soon a I read it. Google could be in some real trouble if they go public on the theory that "our ads work because people don't know they're ads."
Why does google want to go public anyway? No, really. If they're already profitable without any outside investing, why trade equity away for some one-time capitol? Seems like it could be part of an expansion / diversification strategy, with google potentially becoming a leviathan "portal" like yahoo. Personally I'd rather they stick to good searches.
That said, I DO like their ads. Not because I'm fooled, but because they're actually correlated to the search topic (what a concept!) and they're minimally intrusive. Go google, just don't go public.
They also must provide the code on a physical medium on request for no more than the cost of media and shipping; simply putting it up on ftp is not sufficient.
Electrons are physical media, and since they don't cost anything, publishing the changes on FTP seems okay with me. Oh! If they meant "optical or magnetic storage media," they should have said that.
Starting around WWII (I believe), Zionism, or the desire for a Jewish homeland started to grow.
Not to pick nits, but the Zionist movement actually started much earlier, in the late 1890s in western Russia, basically as a response to jewish persecution. The movement expanded as the problem became more widespread, reaching a fever pitch in the 1930s. Here's more information on the "What is Zionism" page at JSource. Yes, it's a pro-zionist page, but sometimes going to the source is the best way to define a movement.
All in all, it seems like the FSF has successfuly enforced the GPL even though it was neither an owner nor co-owner of the software...
But in this "enforcement," as in others by the EFF, the change required was minor and the party was cooperative when the problem was pointed out -- the blurb even said that RTLinux was "happy to change" license provisions to comply with the GPL.
We still need a test against a genuinely aggressive GPL violator. One who either denies the violation, or tells the EFF to go fsck themselves. The "enforcement" so far seem like a football team scrimmaging against itself: conceptually useful, but not necessarily predictive of real victory.
Given that the human face recognition performed by the check-in agents did not keep the hijackers out, there is no reason to think that computer face recognition would help.
Likewise, since human face recognition has not eliminated civil liberties in America, there is no reason to think that computer face recognition would do so. So what's the big deal?
Perhaps a better argument is that current face recognition technology sucks, and almost certainly would NOT have helped in this situation.
... and you don't need a password, it asks for your username and email address. Plus, it's just a mailto form anyway, so compose a message to the address and ask to be opt-ed out.
Furthermore, call 1-800-EGG HEAD to get a customer service representative for help if the above process doesn't seem to work.
Try the proceedure before you panic and say they're screwing you over! Remember, egg head no longer has anything to lose by 5% of their customers opting out this way.
Re:LLL vs HLL, Menuet vs World
on
MenuetOS Debuts
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
People claim that C compilers can generate code that is similar to what an ASM programmer is capable of. This is not true. A well-planned and pain-stakingly optimized C program can approach a novice ASM programmer.
You know, maybe that's true if you have a genuine 80386 or -486 chip, but with the "Family 6" of Intel processors (p 2, 3, and 4), customized compilers produced by the manufacturer know WAY more about the particular branch predicting and out of order dispatch, to name just 2, than any novice ASM hacker.
The problem is we don't really deal with the fundamental instruction set of the processor anymore. The intel family 6 and the AMD K6 and 7 are super-pipelined beasts which re-implement the x86 instruction set by basically having a front-end block transform those macrocodes into custom micro-ops.
So you probably still CAN produce faster code with an assembler than, for instance, "gcc -o2," but you'd better have the block diagram for the processor sitting around to guide you, and that's not exactly a task for the novice. And I'd still be willing to bet that your margin over a manufacturer's custom compiler would be razor-thin, at best.
Plus, there is also the inherent "beauty" of well-designed ASM code that most high level languages will never reproduce.
Well, that's an aesthetic choice, and I'll let you have it, but I'll take the inherent "beauty" of well-commented C code any day.
Well, for the record, I meant ideologically beneath us. I didn't mean to say that it's never been attempted: note the targetted bombing of Mumar Khadafi's residence a decade ago. What we say we believe, and what we practice, are often very different.
First of all, in defense of Environmentally friendly weapons: it is a generally understood rule of combat among civilized countries that civilians are not to be harmed if possible. Using dirty weapons and "scorched earth" tactics does more than just kill butterflies, it also puts the general populace at risk for years to come. So it's actually very consistent with our policy against, for example, Iraq, to try and minimize civilian casualties in all ways, including environmental degradation.
The only way stuff like this can work on a large scale is if everyone agrees to do it (or at least everyone that matters).
Yes and no. Nulclear nonproliferation, for example, only works if all major players agree, but we regard certain tactics as "beneath" us as Americans, such as chemical warfare and assassination. If we can raise the bar a bit more and try not to do any more harm than necessary to achieve our political ends, then go us.
Disclaimer: this is not to imply that I agree with all American defense policy, I'm just citing it as I understand it.
That's right, it is still possible to email Donald Knuth. With my new E2P (electronic-to-postal) communications protocol, your message will automatically be converted from email to printed postal mail and forwarded (physically!) to Prof. Knuth. This allows everyone the best of both worlds: you get the convenience of instant electronic communications, and Dr. Knuth will get it in a "paper" format consistent with his chosen inbox.
So fire away those emails to Donald Knuth. For now, you may send them directly to me for processing in my E2P environment. For faster processing (and fewer "what the fsck are you talking about" replies), be sure to use the subject "Dear Dr. Knuth" in your messages.
I might even submit this to W3C as a new communications protocol if it really takes off. HOWEVER, please note that, unlike other internet protocols, there is a *per-transaction fee* associated with E2P. Along with the email note, please send USD 0.00007 per byte (35 cents per page) to cover processing costs. Payment may be sent via PayPal or any other internet micropayment agent of your choice.
there are a lot of good arguments to be made for keeping this information open to the public.
Very true. And since the contact address given was public_relations@tridentmicro.com, I chose a PR-related arguement: first of all, all open source users (growing in number!) will have to avoid this new chipset, since it won't be supported. But more importantly, we'll remember Trident's decision and be less likely to support them in the future. Here's the letter I sent to that address; feel free use it as an inspiration for a note (not flame) of your own:
Hi -
I recently learned that Trident has decided not to provide chipset
documentation for the CyberBladeXP chipset to open source developers.
The effect of this decision is that Trident customers who choose to use
open source operating systems such as Linux or BSD with their computers
will not enjoy the full functionality of their CyberBladeXP video
systems. In fact, the systems may not work at all.
Besides being rude and alienating to your own customers, this news of
these non-functioning systems will spread by word of mouth, and people
will avoid Trident chipsets intentionally. At first, it will only be
certain chipsets that they try to avoid. But, as I'm sure you know, once
a company's name has been associated with a poor product, it becomes
difficult to trust that company for other products, as well.
In short, I'm not sure if I would even have bought a CyberBladeXP chip
from any vendor. But now that I know it won't work on my system, I will
be sure to avoid it. And now that I know Trident is upsupportive of my
software, I will probably have to avoid your products altogether in the
future.
Please reconsider your decision about the chipset documentation.
Well, not so much, but I did mean it as a farcical solution. You know, shift the focus from one number not in their favor, to another that is.
Look at RISC chips. They're MADE for high CPI count.
Wait, don't smaller, simpler instructions mean FEWER cycles per instruction? It just takes more instructions to get anything done.
And how will you determine WHICH instruction they use for measuring the speed?
Average CPI, over the entire instruction set. Seems the only way that's fair. Then again, remember, I don't really think switching to CPI would be any more accurate than getting hung up on megahertz. Just maybe something that's in Athlon's favor.
...consumers can't get it through their heads that clock speed is not even close to being everything.
How about cycles per instruction?
I mean, really. AMD and Cyrix already won one battle, if you think about, by calling attention to MHz in the first place. Before that, it was "increasing intel product numbers mean better processors." But then some clones came about and said, "Wait. This newfangled 486 does basically what the 386 does, but at 66MHz instead of 25. Well, WE make a chip that does the same thing at 100MHz!"
Now, let's do the same thing with CPI. Instead of "Megahertz GOOD!", let's all stomp our feet and say, "CPI BAD!" I'm thinking of that metallica parody here. Anyway, people understand golf scores, where lower is better -- they can be made to understand that lower CPI is better. So why doesn't AMD come out with an ad campaign saying, "The pentium 4's average CPI is 97, and ours is just 2. Therefore, our chip is FIVE TIMES as fast as a p4 at the same clock rate!!"
I mean, that's a bit hyperbolic, but it's just as valid as saying "Megahertz GOOD!" like everyone's doing now. And it's not a lot more complicated. They could even start pitching it as an efficiency thing, since you know we hate waste: "Intel is simply offering you a bigger and bigger gastank, while we're offering to improve your mileage."
The new athlon part numbers will all contain the "GHz" suffix, which AMD insists is "simply an internal product code," and is "certainly not meant to be confused with an actual statement of clock speed."
Accordingly, the first chip released under this new nomenclature will be the 1600 MHz "Athlon 2.1GHz." AMD expects sales to improve immediately.
Waitaminnit -- The operating system we all know and love is gaining a following in South America, with the ensuing increase in demand for programmers familiar with that OS (us!) in beautiful, inexpensive beach locations with scantily clad people everywhere?
No way. It must be april fool's day.
Whoo hoo!
What CrossOver is, and what it isn't
on
Quicktime In Linux
·
· Score: 5, Informative
CrossOver is NOT:
quicktime for linux
flash for linux
Word for linux
CrossOver IS a "netscape for linux" plugin that interfaces with a custom build of WINE, the Windows Emulator. Through this windows emulator, you may install and run the Quicktime (for Windows!), Flash (for windows!), and Word Reader (for Windows!) plugins. And CrossOver will handle the interaction for you, to make the windows VM appear in the appropriate window/panel for your browser of choice.
Since it's a Netscape plugin, it will work with varying degrees of success with other browsers, like moz and konq. Remember, the Netscape plugin format is the one IE is abandoning, so there might not even be any plugins to use with CrossOver after a couple of years.
That said, it's pretty damn neat. And I can see why they're charging for it - it's kind of a way to get *any* windows plugin to work as native plugins would under Linux. Of course the functionality isn't perfect, but I can definitely see business customers being interested if they have a need for things like that. Could be the essential migration tool for some shop...
primarily due to the ad hoc attacks you insist on making to me.
Dude, first of all, it's ad hominem attacks you want to compain about, ad hoc arguments are A-OK. Secondly, ad hominem means (roughly) "to the person," viz, attacking YOU because you smell or something. Whereas, where the poster may have taken a mocking tone, he was addressing your arguments, and not your person, at all times.
Lastly, you don't make attacks "to" someone, you either attack them (intransitive), or make an attack "on" or "against" them (transitive).
Now back to your regularly scheduled pissing argument.
And I claim that Scott Hacker (writer of the article) is an Ass Burgler Of The 33rd Order. Since he has not denied it, it must be true.
Ohhhh come on now. Somebody probably asked Microsoft some very pointed questions about exactly that, and either got no answer, or a dodgy answer that made them sound good without denying any particular action. Eg:
interviewer: So do you have a clause that vendors must not allow dual-boot?
MS: Microsoft has many license restrictions deemed necessary to enhance our competitiveness.
Etc etc. Now, I'll be the first to admit that this is conjecture on my part, but there are circumstances in which a lack of denial can be taken as an implicit confirmation. For example, several reporters in mid-2000 asked GWB, "have you ever done cocaine?" His response was to confirm that, essentially, he had definitely not done it in the past 15 years. Now, any reasonable politician who could HONESTLY say that he had never done cocaine, would!! So we must conclude, albeit somewhat skeptically, that W did coke at some point in his life. And no, I don't think he should be impeached for this. I'm just sayin'.
Similarly, we know that MS wants to appear non-monopolistic whenever possible, without actually ceasing to be a monopoly. So if someone asked, "Do you play nice with others," we would expect them to jump right on the bandwagon = if they could do so honestly =. So my conclusion is the same as the authors, though I can't absolutely prove it with known facts.
Slashdot Mirror
well... not the way the WTC was designed. It was kind of neat, actually; the shell of each tower was entirely self-supporting. By having a series of small "pillars" around the outside, it prevented the need for internal columns. If the WTC had been hollow, the walls and windows would have stood with no interior support.
The central column, with all sorts of steel beams, was actually only needed because there had to be elevators. 3 segments of about 35 floors each, as it happens. You actually had to get off at the mezzanines and switch to get to the top.
Anyway, the floors themselves were basically a layer of concrete and steel spanning from that central column, out to the self-supporting shell. So, the floors were by their nature not designed to hold anything but themselves. Don't view the WTC as a stack of 110 pancakes; it's more like an elevator shaft within a shell, with some incidental floors because people have to go SOMEWHERE.
Why not turn your idea into a perpetual motion machine? Replace the solar and wind generation with electricy taken from the fuel cell.
Heh. Electrolysis is almost certainly not the best way to get H2, even though if you set it up with a wind/solar electricity input, the electricity you used would basically be free (your perpetual motion logic is specious - there's more energy than we could ever use passing us by each day).
Aren't there some pretty simple and clean chemical reactions that release hydrogen? For one, I'm pretty sure that Silver acts as a catalyst to break down H2O2. Although then we have to take peroxide generations costs into account... grr...
There will be no killer app for linux
Dude. If they come through on these promises to clamp down on mp3s, and media player starts shutting people's boxes off for trying to save a stream, then mp3 and other file sharing will be killer apps.
Of course, linux will become the OS of "hax0rs and war3z" even more than now, so I'm not entirely sure that's positive...
"There are a lot of (angry) chief information officers out there," says Steven Steinbrecher, CIO for California's Contra Costa County. His 3-year costs will jump to $651 per desktop from $335.
Q.E.D.
Okay, but look at it from Microsoft's perspective: price almost doubles, by the clients' own calculations. Even if HALF the Windows users jump ship (not likely!), they'll still have broken even. Of course, break even isn't what they're going for, but do you really think HALF of the market will abandon windows in the next 2 years?
I'm reading the responses to my post and wondering if "Any arguments you make about either being good, bad, or anything in between, is dogshit." deserves a rebuttal and you're complaining about the absence of citations in my sig!?!
Hence, the OT marking and forgoing my +1. If you wanna skip it, skip it. I actually really appreciate the explanation you did just offer, though.
[ for those who didn't click on the link, it's an image at Gamla called leb4.jpg, showing a group of people of middle-easter appearance wearing chicago bears uniforms, lakers hats, etc. ]
.il (Israeli) server and had the name "leb" in the image title, I suppose it's meant to indicated that "middle eastern people actually like the US." But consider the source! Gamla is called "news AND VIEWS" from israel. They have a bit of a vested interest in being pro-america and anti-islam, to say the least.
Why this does not demonstrate "why it's hard to take anti-US sentiment seriously":
1. It is completely out of context. This is simply a jpg image of "Arab-lookin'" people with american clothes. Maybe they were partying in LA?
2. However, given that it appeared on a
So, if you'd like to thoroughly argue anti-americanism into the ground, please proceed to do so, but kindly use reasonable arguments, in context, with citations. Furthermore, realize that this won't stop certain agents throughout the world from FEELING that sentiment, emotionally, so it will be something of a pyrrhic victory.
Okay, here I go, proving my lack of server programming skilz: is it really so hard to prevent buffer overflows? Why does the length of a URL (for example) ever cause a server to crash?
It seems like every time you get input from the outside, you would only accept it in segments of a known length, and whatever was longer would just wait for the next "get" or whatever. At least this is the case in my (obviously limited) socket programming experience. So when some program is hit with a buffer overflow error, does the team of programmers smack their collective head and say "d'oh"?
I'm torn! Do I tell that looser what drives people to visit the place and give him a clue, or do I keep my mouth shut and let him keep buying ads?
Yeah, no doubt, I thought that too as soon a I read it. Google could be in some real trouble if they go public on the theory that "our ads work because people don't know they're ads."
Why does google want to go public anyway? No, really. If they're already profitable without any outside investing, why trade equity away for some one-time capitol? Seems like it could be part of an expansion / diversification strategy, with google potentially becoming a leviathan "portal" like yahoo. Personally I'd rather they stick to good searches.
That said, I DO like their ads. Not because I'm fooled, but because they're actually correlated to the search topic (what a concept!) and they're minimally intrusive. Go google, just don't go public.
They also must provide the code on a physical medium on request for no more than the cost of media and shipping; simply putting it up on ftp is not sufficient.
Electrons are physical media, and since they don't cost anything, publishing the changes on FTP seems okay with me. Oh! If they meant "optical or magnetic storage media," they should have said that.
Starting around WWII (I believe), Zionism, or the desire for a Jewish homeland started to grow.
Not to pick nits, but the Zionist movement actually started much earlier, in the late 1890s in western Russia, basically as a response to jewish persecution. The movement expanded as the problem became more widespread, reaching a fever pitch in the 1930s. Here's more information on the "What is Zionism" page at JSource. Yes, it's a pro-zionist page, but sometimes going to the source is the best way to define a movement.
All in all, it seems like the FSF has successfuly enforced the GPL even though it was neither an owner nor co-owner of the software...
But in this "enforcement," as in others by the EFF, the change required was minor and the party was cooperative when the problem was pointed out -- the blurb even said that RTLinux was "happy to change" license provisions to comply with the GPL.
We still need a test against a genuinely aggressive GPL violator. One who either denies the violation, or tells the EFF to go fsck themselves. The "enforcement" so far seem like a football team scrimmaging against itself: conceptually useful, but not necessarily predictive of real victory.
Given that the human face recognition performed by the check-in agents did not keep the hijackers out, there is no reason to think that computer face recognition would help.
Likewise, since human face recognition has not eliminated civil liberties in America, there is no reason to think that computer face recognition would do so. So what's the big deal?
Perhaps a better argument is that current face recognition technology sucks, and almost certainly would NOT have helped in this situation.
dude, here's the URL for the opt-out page:
t _p
http://www.egghead.com/ShowPage.dll?page=b_1_op
... and you don't need a password, it asks for your username and email address. Plus, it's just a mailto form anyway, so compose a message to the address and ask to be opt-ed out.
Furthermore, call 1-800-EGG HEAD to get a customer service representative for help if the above process doesn't seem to work.
Try the proceedure before you panic and say they're screwing you over! Remember, egg head no longer has anything to lose by 5% of their customers opting out this way.
People claim that C compilers can generate code that is similar to what an ASM programmer is capable of. This is not true. A well-planned and pain-stakingly optimized C program can approach a novice ASM programmer.
You know, maybe that's true if you have a genuine 80386 or -486 chip, but with the "Family 6" of Intel processors (p 2, 3, and 4), customized compilers produced by the manufacturer know WAY more about the particular branch predicting and out of order dispatch, to name just 2, than any novice ASM hacker.
The problem is we don't really deal with the fundamental instruction set of the processor anymore. The intel family 6 and the AMD K6 and 7 are super-pipelined beasts which re-implement the x86 instruction set by basically having a front-end block transform those macrocodes into custom micro-ops.
So you probably still CAN produce faster code with an assembler than, for instance, "gcc -o2," but you'd better have the block diagram for the processor sitting around to guide you, and that's not exactly a task for the novice. And I'd still be willing to bet that your margin over a manufacturer's custom compiler would be razor-thin, at best.
Plus, there is also the inherent "beauty" of well-designed ASM code that most high level languages will never reproduce.
Well, that's an aesthetic choice, and I'll let you have it, but I'll take the inherent "beauty" of well-commented C code any day.
It's not that assassination is "beneath us",
Well, for the record, I meant ideologically beneath us. I didn't mean to say that it's never been attempted: note the targetted bombing of Mumar Khadafi's residence a decade ago. What we say we believe, and what we practice, are often very different.
First of all, in defense of Environmentally friendly weapons: it is a generally understood rule of combat among civilized countries that civilians are not to be harmed if possible. Using dirty weapons and "scorched earth" tactics does more than just kill butterflies, it also puts the general populace at risk for years to come. So it's actually very consistent with our policy against, for example, Iraq, to try and minimize civilian casualties in all ways, including environmental degradation.
The only way stuff like this can work on a large scale is if everyone agrees to do it (or at least everyone that matters).
Yes and no. Nulclear nonproliferation, for example, only works if all major players agree, but we regard certain tactics as "beneath" us as Americans, such as chemical warfare and assassination. If we can raise the bar a bit more and try not to do any more harm than necessary to achieve our political ends, then go us.
Disclaimer: this is not to imply that I agree with all American defense policy, I'm just citing it as I understand it.
That's right, it is still possible to email Donald Knuth. With my new E2P (electronic-to-postal) communications protocol, your message will automatically be converted from email to printed postal mail and forwarded (physically!) to Prof. Knuth. This allows everyone the best of both worlds: you get the convenience of instant electronic communications, and Dr. Knuth will get it in a "paper" format consistent with his chosen inbox.
So fire away those emails to Donald Knuth. For now, you may send them directly to me for processing in my E2P environment. For faster processing (and fewer "what the fsck are you talking about" replies), be sure to use the subject "Dear Dr. Knuth" in your messages.
I might even submit this to W3C as a new communications protocol if it really takes off. HOWEVER, please note that, unlike other internet protocols, there is a *per-transaction fee* associated with E2P. Along with the email note, please send USD 0.00007 per byte (35 cents per page) to cover processing costs. Payment may be sent via PayPal or any other internet micropayment agent of your choice.
Thanks for choosing E2P!
there are a lot of good arguments to be made for keeping this information open to the public.
Very true. And since the contact address given was public_relations@tridentmicro.com, I chose a PR-related arguement: first of all, all open source users (growing in number!) will have to avoid this new chipset, since it won't be supported. But more importantly, we'll remember Trident's decision and be less likely to support them in the future. Here's the letter I sent to that address; feel free use it as an inspiration for a note (not flame) of your own:
Hi -
I recently learned that Trident has decided not to provide chipset
documentation for the CyberBladeXP chipset to open source developers.
The effect of this decision is that Trident customers who choose to use
open source operating systems such as Linux or BSD with their computers
will not enjoy the full functionality of their CyberBladeXP video
systems. In fact, the systems may not work at all.
Besides being rude and alienating to your own customers, this news of
these non-functioning systems will spread by word of mouth, and people
will avoid Trident chipsets intentionally. At first, it will only be
certain chipsets that they try to avoid. But, as I'm sure you know, once
a company's name has been associated with a poor product, it becomes
difficult to trust that company for other products, as well.
In short, I'm not sure if I would even have bought a CyberBladeXP chip
from any vendor. But now that I know it won't work on my system, I will
be sure to avoid it. And now that I know Trident is upsupportive of my
software, I will probably have to avoid your products altogether in the
future.
Please reconsider your decision about the chipset documentation.
Sincerely,
[my name was here, put in yours]
You're trolling, right?
Well, not so much, but I did mean it as a farcical solution. You know, shift the focus from one number not in their favor, to another that is.
Look at RISC chips. They're MADE for high CPI count.
Wait, don't smaller, simpler instructions mean FEWER cycles per instruction? It just takes more instructions to get anything done.
And how will you determine WHICH instruction they use for measuring the speed?
Average CPI, over the entire instruction set. Seems the only way that's fair. Then again, remember, I don't really think switching to CPI would be any more accurate than getting hung up on megahertz. Just maybe something that's in Athlon's favor.
...consumers can't get it through their heads that clock speed is not even close to being everything.
How about cycles per instruction?
I mean, really. AMD and Cyrix already won one battle, if you think about, by calling attention to MHz in the first place. Before that, it was "increasing intel product numbers mean better processors." But then some clones came about and said, "Wait. This newfangled 486 does basically what the 386 does, but at 66MHz instead of 25. Well, WE make a chip that does the same thing at 100MHz!"
Now, let's do the same thing with CPI. Instead of "Megahertz GOOD!", let's all stomp our feet and say, "CPI BAD!" I'm thinking of that metallica parody here. Anyway, people understand golf scores, where lower is better -- they can be made to understand that lower CPI is better. So why doesn't AMD come out with an ad campaign saying, "The pentium 4's average CPI is 97, and ours is just 2. Therefore, our chip is FIVE TIMES as fast as a p4 at the same clock rate!!"
I mean, that's a bit hyperbolic, but it's just as valid as saying "Megahertz GOOD!" like everyone's doing now. And it's not a lot more complicated. They could even start pitching it as an efficiency thing, since you know we hate waste: "Intel is simply offering you a bigger and bigger gastank, while we're offering to improve your mileage."
Accordingly, the first chip released under this new nomenclature will be the 1600 MHz "Athlon 2.1GHz." AMD expects sales to improve immediately.
No way. It must be april fool's day.
Whoo hoo!
- quicktime for linux
- flash for linux
- Word for linux
CrossOver IS a "netscape for linux" plugin that interfaces with a custom build of WINE, the Windows Emulator. Through this windows emulator, you may install and run the Quicktime (for Windows!), Flash (for windows!), and Word Reader (for Windows!) plugins. And CrossOver will handle the interaction for you, to make the windows VM appear in the appropriate window/panel for your browser of choice.Since it's a Netscape plugin, it will work with varying degrees of success with other browsers, like moz and konq. Remember, the Netscape plugin format is the one IE is abandoning, so there might not even be any plugins to use with CrossOver after a couple of years.
That said, it's pretty damn neat. And I can see why they're charging for it - it's kind of a way to get *any* windows plugin to work as native plugins would under Linux. Of course the functionality isn't perfect, but I can definitely see business customers being interested if they have a need for things like that. Could be the essential migration tool for some shop...
Dude, first of all, it's ad hominem attacks you want to compain about, ad hoc arguments are A-OK. Secondly, ad hominem means (roughly) "to the person," viz, attacking YOU because you smell or something. Whereas, where the poster may have taken a mocking tone, he was addressing your arguments, and not your person, at all times.
Lastly, you don't make attacks "to" someone, you either attack them (intransitive), or make an attack "on" or "against" them (transitive).
Now back to your regularly scheduled pissing argument.
Ohhhh come on now. Somebody probably asked Microsoft some very pointed questions about exactly that, and either got no answer, or a dodgy answer that made them sound good without denying any particular action. Eg:
interviewer: So do you have a clause that vendors must not allow dual-boot?
MS: Microsoft has many license restrictions deemed necessary to enhance our competitiveness.
Etc etc. Now, I'll be the first to admit that this is conjecture on my part, but there are circumstances in which a lack of denial can be taken as an implicit confirmation. For example, several reporters in mid-2000 asked GWB, "have you ever done cocaine?" His response was to confirm that, essentially, he had definitely not done it in the past 15 years. Now, any reasonable politician who could HONESTLY say that he had never done cocaine, would!! So we must conclude, albeit somewhat skeptically, that W did coke at some point in his life. And no, I don't think he should be impeached for this. I'm just sayin'.
Similarly, we know that MS wants to appear non-monopolistic whenever possible, without actually ceasing to be a monopoly. So if someone asked, "Do you play nice with others," we would expect them to jump right on the bandwagon = if they could do so honestly =. So my conclusion is the same as the authors, though I can't absolutely prove it with known facts.