Actually it shouldn't be too bad. I hear it'll run fine on a GeForce4 Ti or Radeon 8500, which are from 2002 and 2001, respectively, and can be had for very little money. For the full effect, you'll need a Radeon 9500+ or GeForceFX, of course, but even then, the lower end of those isn't exactly overpriced.
From what I've heard, defragging used to help performance, but with high-speed seek speeds, large clusters, IO scheduling, and better file systems, etc. the need for defragging is very much reduced, almost unnoticeable. In the few instances where it would be noticeable, you probably would end up re-fragmenting everything very quickly anyway. Besides, defragging takes ages and slows your computer down for a few hours, so that kind of defeats the purpose of speeding things up.
Actually, they did continue development of the Pentium Pro series. The Pentium 2 is a beefed up PPro, and the Pentium 3 is the Pentium 2 with some enhancements. Now, look at what the Pentium M is. It's based on the Pentium 3 core, and a totally independent development to the P4 series.
Being a student I currently can't afford a Mac, and even if I could I'd probably not run all my machines on MacOS. I'm currently running Linux on all machines, with dual booting into Win2K for the occasional game or for testing. I run SuSE for anything that should *just work*, and Gentoo on my laptop, as I can play around with that. Once I'm out of uni, I'll definitely reconsider Apple stuff because it's just so well designed all around, even if I do end up running Linux on it most of the time.
Why any OS maker give there email and browser so much system level privileges is beyond me. Longhorn had better give the power back to the user and not to Microsoft.
I think the point of Longhorn is actually the opposite - give any remaining power that the user has had so far to Microsoft, and make every machine as DRMed up as possible.
Well, I've made my choice, and it's not Microsoft...
Yeah, the same thing happens under Windows if you read from CD-ROM. The whole thing just slows to a crawl if you try to read two files at once. I'd assume it's a hardware problem, (long seek times, large error margins) not necessarily Windows' fault, but I don't use CDs much anymore (hooray for ethernet and huge hard drives) so I don't know.
Of course, this raises the point that aligning the data on a game CD or DVD for a console is a science in itself. PC game development is easy in comparison! (plonk everything on the hard drive)
Assuming Firewire is like USB the IPod will only work as a client, the CDRW will be a client making this impossible
You're making a false assumption. Firewire is a peer-to-peer bus, in theory, each device can talk to any other device on the bus. There is a root node, but that's elected on every bus reset ([un-]plugging of a device) as far as I know. So a CD-RW may well be possible.
phil
We were considering going to the US for my girlfriend's 21st birthday, as her family used to own a holiday house in Florida, but we've pretty much scrapped that idea now. If I'm bringing tourism money into a bloody country I'd expect not to be treated like a criminal. Also, it probably won't stop there, either, who knows what other crap they'll start making tourists go through.
If Bush gets re-elected, my bet is that he'll lower the land along the US/Canadian and US/Mexican border to build a moat.
You can bet that MS would be willing to go to such extreme's as pulling out of the EU market rather than supply the source.
1. Um, no, they wouldn't. Pulling out of a market gives competitors incredible chances. Both FOSS and non-MS proprietary software would suddenly boom in Europe, with companies growing big enough to collectively push MS even out of its home market. I would think that Microsoft definitely realise this.
2. I don't think they have to disclose the source, just document ALL the APIs.
By your logic, if a European company reached a monopolistic position in America, you would say they're immune from US law, as that would be anti-European. (interestingly, "anti-European" doesn't get thrown around in the media as much as "anti-American")
The EU could still enforce all of the other restrictions without the confiscatory fine.
I think the beef of the court order is certainly the the documentation of APIs and the unbundling of WMP. However, the cash fine is supposed to be a deterrant for the future.
I say: give it to DVD Jon, of DeCSS fame. Oh, wait, dammit - he's Norwegian isn't he, they're not part of the EU.
Seriously, they should donate it to various relevant open source projects, i.e. media players (mplayer, xine, KDE and GNOME media software, etc.), and free Windows interop software, such as Samba, Wine, the guys working on NTFS in Linux, etc.
This is certainly an argument that will, and has been raised, but I think Microsoft's APIs do change over the years. In a few years they'll have new OSes out, (Longhorn is going to be a big change, I hear) and Win2K(3) and XP and their respective APIs will be old hats. By that time, the FOSS community would have reverse engineered the vital bits, open API or not. So in my opinion opening the APIs now won't do permanent damage, although it'll still be a huge step for Microsoft.
I believe what they're supposed to document isn't so much the Win32 API, but things like Windows networking, so other companies or organisations (Samba?) can offer products that have the same functionality but are in other ways superior to say, Windows Domain Controllers, MS Exchange/Outlook, and so forth.
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Actually it shouldn't be too bad. I hear it'll run fine on a GeForce4 Ti or Radeon 8500, which are from 2002 and 2001, respectively, and can be had for very little money. For the full effect, you'll need a Radeon 9500+ or GeForceFX, of course, but even then, the lower end of those isn't exactly overpriced.
From what I've heard, defragging used to help performance, but with high-speed seek speeds, large clusters, IO scheduling, and better file systems, etc. the need for defragging is very much reduced, almost unnoticeable. In the few instances where it would be noticeable, you probably would end up re-fragmenting everything very quickly anyway. Besides, defragging takes ages and slows your computer down for a few hours, so that kind of defeats the purpose of speeding things up.
Actually, they did continue development of the Pentium Pro series. The Pentium 2 is a beefed up PPro, and the Pentium 3 is the Pentium 2 with some enhancements. Now, look at what the Pentium M is. It's based on the Pentium 3 core, and a totally independent development to the P4 series.
phil
Being a student I currently can't afford a Mac, and even if I could I'd probably not run all my machines on MacOS. I'm currently running Linux on all machines, with dual booting into Win2K for the occasional game or for testing. I run SuSE for anything that should *just work*, and Gentoo on my laptop, as I can play around with that. Once I'm out of uni, I'll definitely reconsider Apple stuff because it's just so well designed all around, even if I do end up running Linux on it most of the time.
Why any OS maker give there email and browser so much system level privileges is beyond me. Longhorn had better give the power back to the user and not to Microsoft.
I think the point of Longhorn is actually the opposite - give any remaining power that the user has had so far to Microsoft, and make every machine as DRMed up as possible.
Well, I've made my choice, and it's not Microsoft...
Yeah, the same thing happens under Windows if you read from CD-ROM. The whole thing just slows to a crawl if you try to read two files at once. I'd assume it's a hardware problem, (long seek times, large error margins) not necessarily Windows' fault, but I don't use CDs much anymore (hooray for ethernet and huge hard drives) so I don't know.
Of course, this raises the point that aligning the data on a game CD or DVD for a console is a science in itself. PC game development is easy in comparison! (plonk everything on the hard drive)
phil
Assuming Firewire is like USB the IPod will only work as a client, the CDRW will be a client making this impossible
You're making a false assumption. Firewire is a peer-to-peer bus, in theory, each device can talk to any other device on the bus. There is a root node, but that's elected on every bus reset ([un-]plugging of a device) as far as I know. So a CD-RW may well be possible. phil
Haha, you just made my day!
phil
IBM may have sensed that google was going to make it big, so they sent them stuff, hoping to get a massive paid deal later on.
Or, it was just a dotcom thing to do - "Hey, I have an idea!" - "OK, I don't care what it is, but have this server!"
phil
We were considering going to the US for my girlfriend's 21st birthday, as her family used to own a holiday house in Florida, but we've pretty much scrapped that idea now. If I'm bringing tourism money into a bloody country I'd expect not to be treated like a criminal. Also, it probably won't stop there, either, who knows what other crap they'll start making tourists go through.
If Bush gets re-elected, my bet is that he'll lower the land along the US/Canadian and US/Mexican border to build a moat.
phil
I heard they're going to make a mobile version of the XBox: the YBoy.
I say: give it to DVD Jon, of DeCSS fame. Oh, wait, dammit - he's Norwegian isn't he, they're not part of the EU.
Seriously, they should donate it to various relevant open source projects, i.e. media players (mplayer, xine, KDE and GNOME media software, etc.), and free Windows interop software, such as Samba, Wine, the guys working on NTFS in Linux, etc.
This is certainly an argument that will, and has been raised, but I think Microsoft's APIs do change over the years. In a few years they'll have new OSes out, (Longhorn is going to be a big change, I hear) and Win2K(3) and XP and their respective APIs will be old hats. By that time, the FOSS community would have reverse engineered the vital bits, open API or not. So in my opinion opening the APIs now won't do permanent damage, although it'll still be a huge step for Microsoft.
phil
I believe what they're supposed to document isn't so much the Win32 API, but things like Windows networking, so other companies or organisations (Samba?) can offer products that have the same functionality but are in other ways superior to say, Windows Domain Controllers, MS Exchange/Outlook, and so forth.