The GOP isn't going to care about your concerns, in fact they're actively hostile to them. They'll be laughing at you, and the only attention Nader is going to get will be in another four years, when he'll be encouraged to run again. Hell, they should just fund Nader's whole campaign. He's fantastic news to them.
All actions have real, tangible consequences that must be considered. The consequence of voting for Nader in this particular election could very well be to give Bush just enough electoral votes to win this election.
It's also looking like the GOP will take the house and senate. And of course, it's perfectly timed, because several Supreme Court justices are due to kick off any time now. With control of both houses, it's much easier for Bush to appoint right-wing whackos to the Court. Since he's praised Clarence Thomas and Antonin Scalia as model justices, it's not too hard to see which kind of people he'll appoint. And then we'll have the grand slam -- house, senate, president, and supreme court, all under Republican control. The GOP will be free to remake the country in its own image.
As if the Democrats would be any better...the left-wing whackos are just as f*cked up as the right-wing whackos. Having either of Bush, Gore, or Nader in office frightens me.
As for the House and Senate, they are extremely close, and may even end up being split evenly in the Senate. It's not nearly the foregone conclusion you make it sound like.
However, the question is, are you really willing to let people who cannot afford medical care die?
My take on it is this: if they haven't gone out of their way to put themselves in harms way, then I see no problem with the government helping those who can't afford insurance with their medical bills. It seems like the humane thing to do.
However, if some individual decides that he's going to intentionally risk his life (say, by choosing to start smoking cigarettes), then society should NOT be paying for his medical expenses, regardless of his ability to pay or lack thereof. If that person has so little regard for their own life and well-being that they were willing to risk it all for some reason (be it a buzz, or whatever), why the hell should we hold his life in any higher regard than he does? And why should we pay to save him from his own recklessness?
Should we spend 2 million dollars on an exotic treatment of lung cancer for man that in 75 years old, when we know the chance of it working is only 1 in 10 and even then his odds of surviving the next 6 months is slim? Or a similar amount on a crack baby that has no chance of surving the next 6 months? Probably not. On the other hand, there are cases where we can save a person's life at a "reasonable" cost of, say, 100k. If the only way to provide that care is through government, would you still say no?
I'd rather spend the 2 million dollars to save a 75-year old who is a victim of misfortune, or a crack baby who is suffering through no fault of its own, than to spend a single dollar on some jerk who did it to themselves and now wants everyone else to pay the piper.
Don't get me wrong - I realize people make mistakes. And in the case where they realize this, and are willing to work to fix their mistakes (say, by enrolling in a quit-smoking program), I'm more than willing for us to help that person out with the program. But for those who simply aren't willing to take those steps, I think it'd be a waste of resources to pay their medical expenses, and better spent on people who realize the value of life.
I just downloaded the trailer with no problem from NewLine/Apple. The Huge was not avaiable (no link from the site nor a.mov file matching the naming scheme of the others), but other than that I had no problems.
sure, their public image may suffer. But f---edcompany.com has no obligation to make Idealab! look good. FC has a Constitutionally protected right to freely speak their mind about what they perceive as idiocy on the part of Idealab. They can make Idealab look like a bunch of utter morons if they want - that's the joy of free speech. Now, they can't go saying things that aren't true (i.e. libel), but other than that they have every right to parody. Whether or not Idealab's investors like the situation is really irrelevant - they can bitch and moan all they like, but it's not illegal or even (IMHO) immoral to point out what you see as stupidity.
This includes making a parody of the logo (totally legal, ethical). IANAL so I dunno if using the *original* logo is legit under trademark law...I suspect it's not judging by past cases (in particular, there was an Intel parody site that was using the logo...they were forced to not use it - so they flipped the 'e' in the name backwards, and it was then legal)
except that this is simply the RIAA's interpretation of the law; if you read the actual text of the law it says:
3) A ''digital audio recording device'' is any machine or
device of a type commonly distributed to individuals for use by
individuals, whether or not included with or as part of some
other machine or device, the digital recording function of which
is designed or marketed for the primary purpose of, and that is
capable of, making a digital audio copied recording for private
use, except for -
(A) professional model products, and
(B) dictation machines, answering machines, and other audio
recording equipment that is designed and marketed primarily for
the creation of sound recordings resulting from the fixation of
nonmusical sounds. "
A sound card (particularly those marketed/designed for mp3s, such as the Creative SB Live Mp3) or CD drive (if appropriately marketed) could easily be considered to be the "device of a type commonly distributed to individuals for use by individuals, whether or not included with or as part of some other machine or device". Thus general computers could fall under the AHRA by virtue of including the sound card or CDROM, which is the actual recording device.
It gets a little more into a gray area once you start talking about the recording medium. The law states:
4)
(A) A ''digital audio recording medium'' is any material
object in a form commonly distributed for use by individuals,
that is primarily marketed or most commonly used by consumers for
the purpose of making digital audio copied recordings by use of a
digital audio recording device.
(B) Such term does not include any material object -
(i) that embodies a sound recording at the time it is first
distributed by the importer or manufacturer; or
(ii) that is primarily marketed and most commonly used by
consumers either for the purpose of making copies of motion
pictures or other audiovisual works or for the purpose of
making copies of nonmusical literary works, including computer
programs or data bases.
If you're recording to hard disk (as opposed to, say a CD-R) then it's a little more gray - few hard disks I know of are primarily marketed or most commonly used by consumers as audio recording devices (granted, a lot of people use them in this way, but right now I don't think it's the *primary* use for most people).
Also keep in mind that the courts' job is to interpret the laws...and if one reads the AHRA, it seems clear that the intent of Congress (in Title 17, Chapter 10, Section 1008) is to allow consumers to make digital and analog copies for their personal (non-commercial) use. While IANAL, I would expect the courts would find in favor of any consumer who had an action brought against them for personal digital recording on their PC.
(text of Section 1008):
"No action may be brought under this title alleging infringement of copyright based on the manufacture, importation, or distribution of a digital audio recording device, a digital audio recording medium, an analog recording device, or an analog recording medium, or based on the noncommercial use by a consumer of such a device or medium for making digital musical recordings or analog musical recordings."
In my experience, SharkyExtreme has always been very accurate with their stories (they are the source of the link in the story), certainly much better than Slashdot:) So I tend to believe them on this one.
Well, the NDA may or may not be reasonable. If it's the first interview, it seems odd to me. At a first interview, the company and individual should be evaluating the other in general. The company wants to know what you understand and what you've done, and perhaps if you seem like you'd fit into their corporate culture. The individual wants to know the general job description (for programming, something along the lines of the language(s) to be used, platform, etc), what it's like to work there, etc.
There's a lot that can be said without disclosing trade secrets in the initial interview. If, after that, the company and individual want to learn more about each other, and sensitive info may be disclosed, *then* it may make sense. But to have a blanket NDA at the start of an initial interview seems to be asking an awful lot of the interviewee, since he/she doesn't even know the general scope of what may be disclosed. Thus even interviewing with a competitor might put one at legal risk (or maybe it wouldn't, but there's a lot of expense to hire the lawyer to find out, and if you don't hire one then the threat of a lawsuit hanging over your head really sucks).
actually, that's something I hadn't thought of. Good point:)
I'm kinda curious as to what the benefits of the different filesystems are (not just the Windows ones either)...anyone have a good source of info on this?
I must admit that I really don't see the point of this project, since it seems to me that it would be both easier and more desirable to put these efforts into A) improving WINE and B) improving the user-friendliness and feature sets of KDE, GNOME, et al. By focusing on these two areas, one can implement all the significant Windows functionality (and even look-and-feel if one desired) with a lot less effort, and in the process create what is arguably a technically superior solution. Of course, the one remaining issue is driver compatibility, but the list of Linux drivers is growing rapidly, so that may not be too much of a problem.
That said, I don't think that their choice of FAT as the filesystem is necessarily a bad idea. If one is going to reimplement Windows for whatever reason, it may be useful to use the same filesystem; even if only for the sake of users being able to use the same utility programs with the M$ and free versions. This may outweigh the negatives relating to not using a technically superior filesystem.
It's *way* too early to say this for sure. Willamette isn't even in production yet, and won't be out for a few months. This means it's not terribly meaningful to compare it to the Athlon, since the Athlon is out *now* and will be out in even faster versions by time Willamette ships. Now, I happen to think that Willamette will *probably* be a decent amount faster than the Athlons once the part is actually shipping. But it's a little early to say whether it will be a "lot", or just a bit.
Also consider that AMD and Intel's product schedules are offset by several months, such that they are playing leapfrog. AMD's jumped ahead with the Athlon, and Intel is likely to hop ahead with Willamette (once it actually comes out, which isn't for a while since they are moving the P3 down to.13 micron first to get out any manufacturing process problems before moving to the new core). But AMD may very well jump ahead again with the Mustang, which is their next 32-bit CPU.
Sledgehammer IS AMD's next chip. It will HAVE to save it in the 32 bit market. It is simply a 64 bit x86 chip, not a new architecture like Merced. As such, it has a similar place to the Athlon as the Athlon did to the K6
AMD has a couple of new chips in the works. One is aimed at the desktop, and the other at high-end workstation/server environments. The desktop chip is code-named Mustang, and is a 32-bit x86 chip. The server chip is Sledgehammer, which is a 64-bit extension of the x86 instruction set architecture. Sledgehammer is NOT their next desktop CPU! Sledgehammer is designed to compete against Intel's Itanium (formerly Merced), a 64-bit VLIW-like CPU. The Mustang will be AMD's competition to the Pentium4 (aka Willamette).
First, it take full advantage of SSE
Well, OK, but this requires special processor-specific coding in the software to reap any benefits, and so you only get SSE in certain apps that choose to support it (like Photoshop). Whereas the Athlon has a significantly faster FPU without need to recompile the software. Plus AMD has 3DNow, which offers many of the benefits of SSE. Granted, 3DNow isn't as powerful as SSE, but since the regular FPU on the Athlon is faster the advantage may swing in either side's favor.
Additionally, it runs the ALUs at 3 GHz
The double-speed ALUs may not provide a really large benefit, since that's only one pipeline stage of about 20. If the other stages can't keep up, you may not see the benefit at all, or maybe only partially. You certainly won't be getting the equivalent of a 3GHz CPU. Besides, the ALU often isn't the bottleneck, memory accesses and waiting for results of previous instructions often are. I suggest we all wait and see for benchmarks once Willamette/P4 is actually on the market before we speculate much on this one:-)
And keep in mind the leapfrog effect I mentioned above. AMD is by no means out of the race once Willamette comes out, even if Willamette does do the 30% better than the P3 like Intel claims it will (which it may, it's got some really new and cool features, such as the "trace cache"). Should be a fun battle to watch (almost as much fun as watching those prices drop:-)
Re:You've got to be careful with this...
on
Taking On A Spammer
·
· Score: 2
My 'victim' (and this poor dork Rodona Garst) are low-life - nasty, but also pretty stupid. Many of the new generation of Net users simply don't appreciate how the net's resources can be used to collate information about them, how much about themselves they reveal
Whether this spammer (the "poor dork Rodona Garst") is stupid or not is really irrelevant. By the fact that she is able to use a computer to send spam, con naive AOL users into providing their usernames/passwords, participate in illegal stock schemes, etc, she has demonstrated that she has sufficient mental capability to be considered mentally competent (i.e. not mentally retarded or insane), and as such is responsible for her actions. And as they say, don't play with fire unless you're willing to get burned. This time, she got burned, and I feel no sympathy for her. If she was unwilling to take the risk of her (immoral, and some illegal) actions being exposed, she should not have performed those actions, and *further* should not have framed innocent people for them.
Now, I might be swayed by your argument about stirring up a "lynch mob", had this simply been a case of political disagreement, or someone doing something unpopular/controversial, etc. But the problem here, to me, is that not only did do it, but then framed an innocent individual for her spams. If that individual then comes back and kicks her in the ass, well then c'est la vie. She can deal with it. If she was spamming people without forging her IP (or forging it to be restricted numbers, thus not implicating innocents), then maybe publishing her information would be too extreme. But in this case, I think it is appropriate.
All in all, I think she and her associates got off rather easy. If the story is true, and the Man In The Woods did indeed gain access to the computers of Garst et al., then he could have easily destroyed everything on their disks rather than simply publishing the information about her deeds on the Web. Or perhaps he could have discovered sufficient personal data to cause more personal havoc in her life. Given the hassle that she caused, I think he showed remarkable restraint:-)
Mention a loser like Mitnick and watch the/. community jump to his defense
Just because he's a loser doesn't mean we should stand by and say nothing when his Constitutional rights are being trampled. Abuses almost always start against the people who are the "losers" of society. Problem is, that category of "losers", or criminals, starts to expand pretty quickly to include everyone. I seem to remember a saying about Nazi Germany, along these lines: first they came for the Jews, and I said nothing because I wasn't a Jew; then they came for the Catholics but I was silent, I wasn't Catholic;...; then they came for me, and there was nobody left to speak. If we say nothing now, we can only expect to be the next target of government overzealousness. Besides, the Constitution doesn't have a clause that says "this document only applies to people who aren't 'losers'"; its protections apply to all.
he is making money off of his crime It's somewhat difficult to prove that, though. He's not profiting from the crime so much as his expertise; there's a significant distinction there. If he were lecturing about his exploits, then I would agree with you. But lecturing on general computer security issues is not the same - he's not talking about his crimes. His overall expertise is what makes him the money. Granted, his notoriety from the crimes has no doubt made him more in demand to speak; but nonetheless the profit is made from his expertise, not his crimes.
And beyond that distinction, I think a lot of us take issue with the idea that the government is screwing Mitnick after he's served his time by trying to deny him the right to work. Not only that, but deny him the right to work in a way that is benefiting society by telling them how to avoid similar problems in the future. It's absurd.
. If Mitnick had cracked and ripped off another individual, rather than a corporation, there wouldn't be near as much uproar
Bullshit. There sure would be as much of an uproar. This issue has absolutely nothing to do with who Mitnick chose to crack, it's about government abuse of power. The reason for the uproar is that it could just as easily happen to anyone.
I mean, isn't in a copyright owner's privalige to not allow their copyrighted work to be used to disparage them?
NO. They have no right to "not allow their copyrighted work to be used to disparage them". If someone writes a book, I buy the book at Barnes and Noble, and then use the book as the basis for a review saying how terrible the book is, that's my right of free speech under the Constitution. It's like reviewing any other product out there (aside from software, where sometimes the EULA explicitly forbids such things...though I don't know about the legality of such clauses as IANAL) If they don't want people to be able to criticize their work, they shouldn't release it.
IANAL, but they should have SOME right to prevent the distribution of copyrighted images and terms, and trademarked names
That's not what's going on here. What's being distributed isn't copies of copyrighted material. It's like if I buy a car. I can auction off any car I buy on EBay, without having to have the permission of the car company. Now, I can't go and copy their (copyrighted) designs/logos they have on the car; but I can sure as hell sell a car they made with said logos on it to whoever I want. The selling of the "e-meter", a physical device which was *sold* to the person auctioning it off, is perfectly legal. The Church of Scientology is just trying to use the threat of litigation (and one doesn't have to be a lawyer to know they'd likely have the suit thrown out in a heartbeat) to silence critics (who, naturally, point to the e-meter as being rather ridiculous as a "lie detector")
Now, the DCMA's loophole, designed to protect copyright owners, is clearly being exploited. The Church of Scientology is well known for alledgedly filing motions that won't be upheld merely to by time or harass the victim. Indeed, this is standard legal manuevering.
I would like to see more of this with specifics as to the auctions, before we just bash on the Church of Scientology. If this is using a loophole for harassment, time for a letter writing campaign, getting the law fixed would be easy in that case. The government officials are not terribly thrilled with the CoS, and if it is being used to harass law abiding citizens, it will no doubt be fixed.
Thing is, it's clearly not a loophole in the law. It's the CoS pretending such a loophole exists and saying "oh we'll sue you if you don't stop auctioning these". So it's not something the lawmakers can fix; it's merely the CoS using the threat of litigation as a tool of harassment (which as you noted, is nothing new for them). This isn't something that can really be fixed by changing the DMCA.
And really, even if the auctions contained disparaging remarks by the individual selling the devices, that still has no legal effect on the auction itself. If the individual overstepped themselves and posted defamatory remarks, then it would be possible for the CoS to sue for defamation/libel. But since the CoS isn't doing that, I think it's safe to assume that the auctions contained no such language (and EBay itself would probably pull any such postings unilaterally, anyhow)
do you honestly think that the courts anyone with half a brain is going to forgive you after you decide to purchase the albums AFTER you got caught? Thats like stealing a car and then getting caught for it and saying "Well I'll buy it now!"
The point is that they have no way of knowing when you bought the CDs (assuming you pay cash, and aren't so dumb as to use a credit card or check which could be time-verified). So as soon as you're notified of the lawsuit, go to a music store and buy the affected CDs. Bring them home, and when it's time for evidence discovery, you have all the CDs. The suit would have to be dropped for lack of evidence.
As long as you don't allow the Napster client to share mp3s (and thus act as a server) you're totally fine.
Glad to see someone else has kept some perspective on this whole issue! The great thing about these tools isn't what they're being used for right now (largely "piracy"), but the potential they have to change the way things are done in the future. The legitimate uses far outweight the illegitimate here.
This is much more important than whether John Doe can get his mp3s easier. The distributed nature of things like Gnutella allows for a Net where the individual is *really* empowered, not just nominally so. With traditional avenues like the Web, you're still under the control of a large corporation, governments, etc. This inevitably leads to easy censorship by such groups. Now, however, one can distribute information much more freely.
It could be used by people in countries such as China, where incoming information is strictly censored, to get the information being denied to them by an oppressive regime, as just one example.
The distributed nature of these systems also helps contribute in a way to the robustness of the whole. If one source goes down, there are likely others to fill in. This is good regardless of the type of information being transferred.
And who knows what uses will be found for this in the coming years? When VCRs first came out, it was lobbied against furiously by those in power in the movie industry, fearing it would be just a piracy tool. Yet, while undoubtedly some use VCRs so, the VCR has become an important, legitimate tool for people. And it's created businesses unforeseen when it came out (such as video rental stores).
I think too many people have been looking merely at the first uses to which the technology has been put, rather than considering the potential it has to benefit us all. Criminals have often been the first to use new technology, this doesn't mean the technology is in any way less legitimate. Trying to ban the technology is not going to solve anything. The criminals will still use it, and the public will lose a useful tool.
Problem is, that creating a "clone" of a game with various improved features is NOT the same as doing a cover of a song.
When you create a "clone" or some variation on a game, you are not copying the original. The underlying concept is the same, certainly, but the expression of that idea is different. The creator of the original game has rights to their *expression* of the idea "game in which a ship shoots at rocks" (ie Asteroid), but not to the *idea* itself (ie a ship-shooting-at-rocks game). (Unless they have a patent on the idea, in which cases their exclusive rights end after a certain period of years. And patents are the exception, created to promote creative invention through ensuring inventors the opportunity to profit from their inventions. If they don't have the patent, they don't have the exclusive rights to the concept itself)
If you were to do a cover of Dark Side Of The Moon, however, you would be copying the *expression* of the original artists (ie the lyrics, melody, etc). (And thus owe royalties). Now, if you were to take the *idea* (namely, what the song is about) and make a new song based on the same idea, then you're not copying their work - you were inspired by them, but didn't actually copy anything of theirs. This latter case is what is happening with the software developer in your dialogue.
problem with just using SMB is that it's Windows-specific. A cross-platform solution is preferable.
(Yes, I know about SAMBA...but then you've still got the Mac users out in the cold, and anyone who doesn't have SAMBA on their Unix boxen)
And this way you have the flexibility to go off-campus for those times where the local network doesn't have what you're looking for (details of this I'm not sure on since the site was/.ed by time I got to it).
It truly suprises me that more people on/. just don't seem to get it. Asking the government to protect you from spam is just as bad as asking them to make laws to protect you from porn
Except that porn on the Net is something you generally have to actively seek out. The existence of porn on some web server somewhere costs me absolutely nothing. It doesn't cost anyone anything aside from a little discomfort for the puritans out there. Spam, OTOH, is delivered every day to just about any email account one creates. It costs me time and money (through increased costs to my ISP which get passed on to me).
Besides, the law in question doesn't require that much. It requires three simple things that any legitimate business should be doing anyway:
1) Don't use misleading info in the subject field 2) Don't disguise the path the spam took across the Net 3) Don't use an invalid reply address
This is not unreasonable.
I wish people would stop begging legislators to inflict laws on the Internet and start asking for a technical solution.
The reason people are clamoring for this particular type of law is that the attempts at technical solutions didn't work. No technical solution is going to be able to eliminate spam that has inaccurate subject information, forges routing information, has invalid reply addresses,etc. People have tried filtering, but spammers create new email accounts to spam from faster than people can add them to blocked-senders lists. Allowing only people on an "approved-senders" list is too restrictive and removes much of the power of the medium. You can't filter based on subject line if the subjects are faked (and 99% of spam does that). You can't even filter based on where they're sending the message from if the route information is forged. The reason we need laws like this is so that technical solutions will be feasible.
And besides, if these spamming asses realize that they could lose big bucks, maybe then they'll realize they shouldn't be doing it. The burden of stopping junk email should NOT be on the recipient. It's just ridiculous to make people expend time and money for being the victim of spam. This is the reason why there were laws passed banning unsolicited commercial faxes. Email is no different.
I agree, Apple is worse than MS. Bad though MS is, if Apple were in Microsoft's monopoly position instead of MS I would expect the industry to be in far worse shape.
it scares me to think that a company set up to redress the balance of technology in favbour of the user has developed practices that would not look out of place in the companies they used to vilify
It's not just their pricing. Don't forget the "upgrade" patch for G3 machines that Apple urged all the G3 owners to install. The one that then secretly rendered the "upgraded" machines unable to use the then-upcoming G4 chips. And of course their blatantly misleading advertising. Integrity seems to be a unknown concept at Apple these days.
I don't know about everyone else, but I think any noble spirit that may once have been at Apple left long ago. So I'm not terribly surprised that Apple pulls some of the crap it does. Apple's arrogance and generally shady practices are a couple of big reasons why I would never work for Apple.
When I buy a CD I instantly transfer it to my hard drive and MP3 it. I never listen to the audio CD ever. I've got several dozen CDs I've never heard from the plastic. So would this be legal, the CD considered to be the backup or something like that?
Disclaimer: IANAL
Yes, it would be legal. Basically, under the current copyright and home recording laws, you have the right to make a backup (namely the mp3s) for your own personal use (this is considered a "fair use" under copyright law).
You may further transfer those onto a Rio for road listening (there was a case, RIAA vs Diamond Multimedia, in the 9th Circuit ruling on the Rio issue that says that's legal. This in turn was built on a case back in the days of Betamax that established the right to record TV shows for later viewing, which became known as a "time shifting". The 9th Circuit in the Rio case held that there is a similar right of "spatial shifting" that applies to consumers using Rios and the like).
Naturally, you may not then give or sell the CD to someone else without destroying your mp3s.
However, I don't see how PC133 SDRAM or DDR DRAM would decrease latency. Wouldn't it just increase the bandwidth the same way Rambus does? Care to explain, please?
As I understand it, the delays from when you send the memory an address to when you get the data that resides at that address consist of two major components: RAS/CAS delays (which is basically the memory figuring out which bits to return based on the address it's given) and then the delay from that point to when the output is ready. Each of these delays will take some number of clock cycles. So if you now increase the clock rate, from say 100 to 133MHz, the number of clock cycles remains the same but the overall time from when you supply the address to when you get data back is less. Which is a decrease in latency. (As opposed to bandwidth, which isn't a decrease in the time for a single piece of data to transfer, but rather how many pieces of data can be transferred at once).
Now, I'm not very familiar with the way DDR works. It could very well be that a given piece of data still takes the same amount of time to access versus a equal-clock-rate Single Data Rate chip, but that the RAM can simply handle more transfers by using both clock edges. In that case DDR actually is targeting bandwidth, not latency. It might be that the DDR actually transfers a given piece of data twice as fast, but the more I think about it the less likely I see that as being. So you were probably correct about DDR targeting bandwidth not latency.
As for bandwidth not being a bottleneck, it really does depend on the system. For your typical PC or low-end servers, more memory bandwidth doesn't really help much (if at all). For things like the next generation of video game consoles, it might help a lot. High-res video processing does require a *lot* of bandwidth, and something like Rambus might be very useful there (I think Nintendo or one of other the console makers is actually going to use Rambus in their next machine, I don't remember which one).
For example, look at the GeForce video cards. Those that have DDR SDRAM instead of the standard SDRAM perform much better at high resolutions, because there's just a ton of data to transfer per clock. At low-res there's no real difference, presumably because the card isn't having to access too much data from the video memory. At high res, there is more data per frame, so each transfer has to accomodate more bits (needs higher bandwidth). Thus the DDR version keeps on churning out high frame rates when the SDR version starts having real trouble.
So you'd like to see things like TM3120rev1 TM3120rev2 among the architectures supported by Linux? Of course you'd have to port GCC and the binutils over to this too. As I understand it, making a VLIW compiler is very hard, but since the Trillium guys seem to have gotten IA64 working I guess it can be done.
Well, I can't speak for Bruce, obviously. I personally don't see the benefit so much in changing the instruction set, but more so in which instructions are more efficient. I'm sure that the Transmeta "code morphing" software has methods of optimizing certain instructions more so than other instructions. Transmeta's choice of which to optimize at the expense of others was likely the result of research into those instructions which are the most common and performance-critical in the platform which the chip is likely to be used - namely Windows-based laptops (at least for the higher-end Crusoe that is targeted towards Windows). Now, Linux may not have the same distribution of instructions, so those optimizations made in the code morphing software may not be the best for Linux systems. It would be nice, if you're running Linux, to be able to have an OSS code morphing software that is optimized for Linux, and which you can download and/or hack away at.
You also mention latency -- and yes, decreasing latency would benefit performance, but this is not what Rambus, PC133 SDRAM and DDR DRAM are designed to accomplish
Actually, you are correct that the goal of Rambus is not to decrease latency, but rather to increase bandwidth. You incorrect, however, when you state that PC133 and DDR SDRAM also have that goal. PC133 and DDR RAM have the goal of decreasing the latency, *not* increasing the bandwidth. Increasing the clock speed of the RAM (as PC133 does, and as DDR "fakes" by using both clock edges rather than just one) should cut the response time for the memory (latency). It doesn't affect the volume of data transferred on a clock cycle (bandwidth).
Rambus increases bandwidth, yes, but at a cost to latency. This is why sometimes using Rambus memory will actually slow down the system - bandwidth (as you stated) is not the bottleneck. Latency, however, is more of a bottleneck. Accessing a piece of data from memory can take hundreds of CPU clock cycles, during which the CPU is often forced to stall and do nothing. Reducing this will certainly help performance, though how much depends on the specific application (and for many benchmarks, you will see little improvement - many of the benchmarks out there are intended to stress CPU performance, and as such are computation-heavy rather than I/O heavy. Applications that are more biased towards I/O operations will benefit more than others that are not). Heavy-duty multimedia can fall into the category of applications that will really benefit, since often the volume and rate of data being processed is so large that it means a smaller percentage of the data is accessed from the cache, and more from main memory.
The real bottleneck is currently the video cards
For games, I'd certainly agree. In general, hard disks are also an often-overlooked bottleneck.
Furthermore, there is absolutely nothing wrong with what the IT department has done
There is a difference between what is legal/constitutional and what is right. Clemson may be legally allowed to do what they're doing, but that does not mean it isn't wrong.
And it doesn't mean that people shouldn't write to express their outrage. Especially since, IIRC, Clemson is a state school, and as such taxpayers of that state have an interest in what's happening. People who are prospective students, or parents of prospective students, should also write. Maybe Clemson will realize that this could alienate future students enough to have them choose another school. Clemson may not have any moral sense of what's right, but if they see their bottom line threatened I bet they'll come around.
One other point: writing reasonable letters to someone in power to explain why their positions (or positions of their subordinates) are wrong, and why people are upset about it, is not spamming. It is a perfectly legitimate form of communication (while unsolicited, it isn't commercial, nor does it cost the President anything - all he has to do is throw it out if he doesn't want to read it. If it were email, you might have an argument for usage of his mail server resources, etc, but with snail mail there is no cost to him). And I'm sure Clemson would like to know if they have a PR nightmare on their hands.
Slashdot Mirror
The GOP isn't going to care about your concerns, in fact they're actively hostile to them. They'll be laughing at you, and the only attention Nader is going to get will be in another four years, when he'll be encouraged to run again. Hell, they should just fund Nader's whole campaign. He's fantastic news to them.
All actions have real, tangible consequences that must be considered. The consequence of voting for Nader in this particular election could very well be to give Bush just enough electoral votes to win this election.
It's also looking like the GOP will take the house and senate. And of course, it's perfectly timed, because several Supreme Court justices are due to kick off any time now. With control of both houses, it's much easier for Bush to appoint right-wing whackos to the Court. Since he's praised Clarence Thomas and Antonin Scalia as model justices, it's not too hard to see which kind of people he'll appoint. And then we'll have the grand slam -- house, senate, president, and supreme court, all under Republican control. The GOP will be free to remake the country in its own image.
As if the Democrats would be any better...the left-wing whackos are just as f*cked up as the right-wing whackos. Having either of Bush, Gore, or Nader in office frightens me.
As for the House and Senate, they are extremely close, and may even end up being split evenly in the Senate. It's not nearly the foregone conclusion you make it sound like.
However, the question is, are you really willing to let people who cannot afford medical care die?
My take on it is this: if they haven't gone out of their way to put themselves in harms way, then I see no problem with the government helping those who can't afford insurance with their medical bills. It seems like the humane thing to do.
However, if some individual decides that he's going to intentionally risk his life (say, by choosing to start smoking cigarettes), then society should NOT be paying for his medical expenses, regardless of his ability to pay or lack thereof. If that person has so little regard for their own life and well-being that they were willing to risk it all for some reason (be it a buzz, or whatever), why the hell should we hold his life in any higher regard than he does? And why should we pay to save him from his own recklessness?
Should we spend 2 million dollars on an exotic treatment of lung cancer for man that in 75 years old, when we know the chance of it working is only 1 in 10 and even then his odds of surviving the next 6 months is slim? Or a similar amount on a crack baby that has no chance of surving the next 6 months? Probably not. On the other hand, there are cases where we can save a person's life at a "reasonable" cost of, say, 100k. If the only way to provide that care is through government, would you still say no?
I'd rather spend the 2 million dollars to save a 75-year old who is a victim of misfortune, or a crack baby who is suffering through no fault of its own, than to spend a single dollar on some jerk who did it to themselves and now wants everyone else to pay the piper.
Don't get me wrong - I realize people make mistakes. And in the case where they realize this, and are willing to work to fix their mistakes (say, by enrolling in a quit-smoking program), I'm more than willing for us to help that person out with the program. But for those who simply aren't willing to take those steps, I think it'd be a waste of resources to pay their medical expenses, and better spent on people who realize the value of life.
I just downloaded the trailer with no problem from NewLine/Apple. The Huge was not avaiable (no link from the site nor a .mov file matching the naming scheme of the others), but other than that I had no problems.
This link still works as of this posting.
sure, their public image may suffer. But f---edcompany.com has no obligation to make Idealab! look good. FC has a Constitutionally protected right to freely speak their mind about what they perceive as idiocy on the part of Idealab. They can make Idealab look like a bunch of utter morons if they want - that's the joy of free speech. Now, they can't go saying things that aren't true (i.e. libel), but other than that they have every right to parody. Whether or not Idealab's investors like the situation is really irrelevant - they can bitch and moan all they like, but it's not illegal or even (IMHO) immoral to point out what you see as stupidity.
This includes making a parody of the logo (totally legal, ethical). IANAL so I dunno if using the *original* logo is legit under trademark law...I suspect it's not judging by past cases (in particular, there was an Intel parody site that was using the logo...they were forced to not use it - so they flipped the 'e' in the name backwards, and it was then legal)
except that this is simply the RIAA's interpretation of the law; if you read the actual text of the law it says:
3) A ''digital audio recording device'' is any machine or
device of a type commonly distributed to individuals for use by
individuals, whether or not included with or as part of some
other machine or device, the digital recording function of which
is designed or marketed for the primary purpose of, and that is
capable of, making a digital audio copied recording for private
use, except for -
(A) professional model products, and
(B) dictation machines, answering machines, and other audio
recording equipment that is designed and marketed primarily for
the creation of sound recordings resulting from the fixation of
nonmusical sounds. "
A sound card (particularly those marketed/designed for mp3s, such as the Creative SB Live Mp3) or CD drive (if appropriately marketed) could easily be considered to be the "device of a type commonly distributed to individuals for use by individuals, whether or not included with or as part of some other machine or device". Thus general computers could fall under the AHRA by virtue of including the sound card or CDROM, which is the actual recording device.
It gets a little more into a gray area once you start talking about the recording medium. The law states:
4)
(A) A ''digital audio recording medium'' is any material
object in a form commonly distributed for use by individuals,
that is primarily marketed or most commonly used by consumers for
the purpose of making digital audio copied recordings by use of a
digital audio recording device.
(B) Such term does not include any material object -
(i) that embodies a sound recording at the time it is first
distributed by the importer or manufacturer; or
(ii) that is primarily marketed and most commonly used by
consumers either for the purpose of making copies of motion
pictures or other audiovisual works or for the purpose of
making copies of nonmusical literary works, including computer
programs or data bases.
If you're recording to hard disk (as opposed to, say a CD-R) then it's a little more gray - few hard disks I know of are primarily marketed or most commonly used by consumers as audio recording devices (granted, a lot of people use them in this way, but right now I don't think it's the *primary* use for most people).
Also keep in mind that the courts' job is to interpret the laws...and if one reads the AHRA, it seems clear that the intent of Congress (in Title 17, Chapter 10, Section 1008) is to allow consumers to make digital and analog copies for their personal (non-commercial) use. While IANAL, I would expect the courts would find in favor of any consumer who had an action brought against them for personal digital recording on their PC.
(text of Section 1008):
"No action may be brought under this title alleging infringement of copyright based on the manufacture, importation, or distribution of a digital audio recording device, a digital audio recording medium, an analog recording device, or an analog recording medium, or based on the noncommercial use by a consumer of such a device or medium for making digital musical recordings or analog musical recordings."
In my experience, SharkyExtreme has always been very accurate with their stories (they are the source of the link in the story), certainly much better than Slashdot :) So I tend to believe them on this one.
Just my $.02
Well, the NDA may or may not be reasonable. If it's the first interview, it seems odd to me. At a first interview, the company and individual should be evaluating the other in general. The company wants to know what you understand and what you've done, and perhaps if you seem like you'd fit into their corporate culture. The individual wants to know the general job description (for programming, something along the lines of the language(s) to be used, platform, etc), what it's like to work there, etc.
There's a lot that can be said without disclosing trade secrets in the initial interview. If, after that, the company and individual want to learn more about each other, and sensitive info may be disclosed, *then* it may make sense. But to have a blanket NDA at the start of an initial interview seems to be asking an awful lot of the interviewee, since he/she doesn't even know the general scope of what may be disclosed. Thus even interviewing with a competitor might put one at legal risk (or maybe it wouldn't, but there's a lot of expense to hire the lawyer to find out, and if you don't hire one then the threat of a lawsuit hanging over your head really sucks).
actually, that's something I hadn't thought of. Good point :)
I'm kinda curious as to what the benefits of the different filesystems are (not just the Windows ones either)...anyone have a good source of info on this?
I must admit that I really don't see the point of this project, since it seems to me that it would be both easier and more desirable to put these efforts into A) improving WINE and B) improving the user-friendliness and feature sets of KDE, GNOME, et al. By focusing on these two areas, one can implement all the significant Windows functionality (and even look-and-feel if one desired) with a lot less effort, and in the process create what is arguably a technically superior solution. Of course, the one remaining issue is driver compatibility, but the list of Linux drivers is growing rapidly, so that may not be too much of a problem.
That said, I don't think that their choice of FAT as the filesystem is necessarily a bad idea. If one is going to reimplement Windows for whatever reason, it may be useful to use the same filesystem; even if only for the sake of users being able to use the same utility programs with the M$ and free versions. This may outweigh the negatives relating to not using a technically superior filesystem.
The Williamette is a LOT faster than an Athlon
.13 micron first to get out any manufacturing process problems before moving to the new core). But AMD may very well jump ahead again with the Mustang, which is their next 32-bit CPU.
:-)
:-)
It's *way* too early to say this for sure. Willamette isn't even in production yet, and won't be out for a few months. This means it's not terribly meaningful to compare it to the Athlon, since the Athlon is out *now* and will be out in even faster versions by time Willamette ships. Now, I happen to think that Willamette will *probably* be a decent amount faster than the Athlons once the part is actually shipping. But it's a little early to say whether it will be a "lot", or just a bit.
Also consider that AMD and Intel's product schedules are offset by several months, such that they are playing leapfrog. AMD's jumped ahead with the Athlon, and Intel is likely to hop ahead with Willamette (once it actually comes out, which isn't for a while since they are moving the P3 down to
Sledgehammer IS AMD's next chip. It will HAVE to save it in the 32 bit market. It is simply a 64 bit x86 chip, not a new architecture like Merced. As such, it has a similar place to the Athlon as the Athlon did to the K6
AMD has a couple of new chips in the works. One is aimed at the desktop, and the other at high-end workstation/server environments. The desktop chip is code-named Mustang, and is a 32-bit x86 chip. The server chip is Sledgehammer, which is a 64-bit extension of the x86 instruction set architecture. Sledgehammer is NOT their next desktop CPU! Sledgehammer is designed to compete against Intel's Itanium (formerly Merced), a 64-bit VLIW-like CPU. The Mustang will be AMD's competition to the Pentium4 (aka Willamette).
First, it take full advantage of SSE
Well, OK, but this requires special processor-specific coding in the software to reap any benefits, and so you only get SSE in certain apps that choose to support it (like Photoshop). Whereas the Athlon has a significantly faster FPU without need to recompile the software. Plus AMD has 3DNow, which offers many of the benefits of SSE. Granted, 3DNow isn't as powerful as SSE, but since the regular FPU on the Athlon is faster the advantage may swing in either side's favor.
Additionally, it runs the ALUs at 3 GHz
The double-speed ALUs may not provide a really large benefit, since that's only one pipeline stage of about 20. If the other stages can't keep up, you may not see the benefit at all, or maybe only partially. You certainly won't be getting the equivalent of a 3GHz CPU. Besides, the ALU often isn't the bottleneck, memory accesses and waiting for results of previous instructions often are. I suggest we all wait and see for benchmarks once Willamette/P4 is actually on the market before we speculate much on this one
And keep in mind the leapfrog effect I mentioned above. AMD is by no means out of the race once Willamette comes out, even if Willamette does do the 30% better than the P3 like Intel claims it will (which it may, it's got some really new and cool features, such as the "trace cache"). Should be a fun battle to watch (almost as much fun as watching those prices drop
My 'victim' (and this poor dork Rodona Garst) are low-life - nasty, but also pretty stupid. Many of the new generation of Net users simply don't appreciate how the net's resources can be used to collate information about them, how much about themselves they reveal
:-)
Whether this spammer (the "poor dork Rodona Garst") is stupid or not is really irrelevant. By the fact that she is able to use a computer to send spam, con naive AOL users into providing their usernames/passwords, participate in illegal stock schemes, etc, she has demonstrated that she has sufficient mental capability to be considered mentally competent (i.e. not mentally retarded or insane), and as such is responsible for her actions. And as they say, don't play with fire unless you're willing to get burned. This time, she got burned, and I feel no sympathy for her. If she was unwilling to take the risk of her (immoral, and some illegal) actions being exposed, she should not have performed those actions, and *further* should not have framed innocent people for them.
Now, I might be swayed by your argument about stirring up a "lynch mob", had this simply been a case of political disagreement, or someone doing something unpopular/controversial, etc. But the problem here, to me, is that not only did do it, but then framed an innocent individual for her spams. If that individual then comes back and kicks her in the ass, well then c'est la vie. She can deal with it. If she was spamming people without forging her IP (or forging it to be restricted numbers, thus not implicating innocents), then maybe publishing her information would be too extreme. But in this case, I think it is appropriate.
All in all, I think she and her associates got off rather easy. If the story is true, and the Man In The Woods did indeed gain access to the computers of Garst et al., then he could have easily destroyed everything on their disks rather than simply publishing the information about her deeds on the Web. Or perhaps he could have discovered sufficient personal data to cause more personal havoc in her life. Given the hassle that she caused, I think he showed remarkable restraint
Mention a loser like Mitnick and watch the /. community jump to his defense
...; then they came for me, and there was nobody left to speak. If we say nothing now, we can only expect to be the next target of government overzealousness. Besides, the Constitution doesn't have a clause that says "this document only applies to people who aren't 'losers'"; its protections apply to all.
Just because he's a loser doesn't mean we should stand by and say nothing when his Constitutional rights are being trampled. Abuses almost always start against the people who are the "losers" of society. Problem is, that category of "losers", or criminals, starts to expand pretty quickly to include everyone. I seem to remember a saying about Nazi Germany, along these lines: first they came for the Jews, and I said nothing because I wasn't a Jew; then they came for the Catholics but I was silent, I wasn't Catholic;
he is making money off of his crime
It's somewhat difficult to prove that, though. He's not profiting from the crime so much as his expertise; there's a significant distinction there. If he were lecturing about his exploits, then I would agree with you. But lecturing on general computer security issues is not the same - he's not talking about his crimes. His overall expertise is what makes him the money. Granted, his notoriety from the crimes has no doubt made him more in demand to speak; but nonetheless the profit is made from his expertise, not his crimes.
And beyond that distinction, I think a lot of us take issue with the idea that the government is screwing Mitnick after he's served his time by trying to deny him the right to work. Not only that, but deny him the right to work in a way that is benefiting society by telling them how to avoid similar problems in the future. It's absurd.
. If Mitnick had cracked and ripped off another individual, rather than a corporation, there wouldn't be near as much uproar
Bullshit. There sure would be as much of an uproar. This issue has absolutely nothing to do with who Mitnick chose to crack, it's about government abuse of power. The reason for the uproar is that it could just as easily happen to anyone.
I mean, isn't in a copyright owner's privalige to not allow their copyrighted work to be used to disparage them?
NO. They have no right to "not allow their copyrighted work to be used to disparage them". If someone writes a book, I buy the book at Barnes and Noble, and then use the book as the basis for a review saying how terrible the book is, that's my right of free speech under the Constitution. It's like reviewing any other product out there (aside from software, where sometimes the EULA explicitly forbids such things...though I don't know about the legality of such clauses as IANAL) If they don't want people to be able to criticize their work, they shouldn't release it.
IANAL, but they should have SOME right to prevent the distribution of copyrighted images and terms, and trademarked names
That's not what's going on here. What's being distributed isn't copies of copyrighted material. It's like if I buy a car. I can auction off any car I buy on EBay, without having to have the permission of the car company. Now, I can't go and copy their (copyrighted) designs/logos they have on the car; but I can sure as hell sell a car they made with said logos on it to whoever I want. The selling of the "e-meter", a physical device which was *sold* to the person auctioning it off, is perfectly legal. The Church of Scientology is just trying to use the threat of litigation (and one doesn't have to be a lawyer to know they'd likely have the suit thrown out in a heartbeat) to silence critics (who, naturally, point to the e-meter as being rather ridiculous as a "lie detector")
Now, the DCMA's loophole, designed to protect copyright owners, is clearly being exploited. The Church of Scientology is well known for alledgedly filing motions that won't be upheld merely to by time or harass the victim. Indeed, this is standard legal manuevering.
I would like to see more of this with specifics as to the auctions, before we just bash on the Church of Scientology. If this is using a loophole for harassment, time for a letter writing campaign, getting the law fixed would be easy in that case. The government officials are not terribly thrilled with the CoS, and if it is being used to harass law abiding citizens, it will no doubt be fixed.
Thing is, it's clearly not a loophole in the law. It's the CoS pretending such a loophole exists and saying "oh we'll sue you if you don't stop auctioning these". So it's not something the lawmakers can fix; it's merely the CoS using the threat of litigation as a tool of harassment (which as you noted, is nothing new for them). This isn't something that can really be fixed by changing the DMCA.
And really, even if the auctions contained disparaging remarks by the individual selling the devices, that still has no legal effect on the auction itself. If the individual overstepped themselves and posted defamatory remarks, then it would be possible for the CoS to sue for defamation/libel. But since the CoS isn't doing that, I think it's safe to assume that the auctions contained no such language (and EBay itself would probably pull any such postings unilaterally, anyhow)
do you honestly think that the courts anyone with half a brain is going to forgive you after you decide to purchase the albums AFTER you got caught? Thats like stealing a car and then getting caught for it and saying "Well I'll buy it now!"
The point is that they have no way of knowing when you bought the CDs (assuming you pay cash, and aren't so dumb as to use a credit card or check which could be time-verified). So as soon as you're notified of the lawsuit, go to a music store and buy the affected CDs. Bring them home, and when it's time for evidence discovery, you have all the CDs. The suit would have to be dropped for lack of evidence.
As long as you don't allow the Napster client to share mp3s (and thus act as a server) you're totally fine.
Glad to see someone else has kept some perspective on this whole issue! The great thing about these tools isn't what they're being used for right now (largely "piracy"), but the potential they have to change the way things are done in the future. The legitimate uses far outweight the illegitimate here.
This is much more important than whether John Doe can get his mp3s easier. The distributed nature of things like Gnutella allows for a Net where the individual is *really* empowered, not just nominally so. With traditional avenues like the Web, you're still under the control of a large corporation, governments, etc. This inevitably leads to easy censorship by such groups. Now, however, one can distribute information much more freely.
It could be used by people in countries such as China, where incoming information is strictly censored, to get the information being denied to them by an oppressive regime, as just one example.
The distributed nature of these systems also helps contribute in a way to the robustness of the whole. If one source goes down, there are likely others to fill in. This is good regardless of the type of information being transferred.
And who knows what uses will be found for this in the coming years? When VCRs first came out, it was lobbied against furiously by those in power in the movie industry, fearing it would be just a piracy tool. Yet, while undoubtedly some use VCRs so, the VCR has become an important, legitimate tool for people. And it's created businesses unforeseen when it came out (such as video rental stores).
I think too many people have been looking merely at the first uses to which the technology has been put, rather than considering the potential it has to benefit us all. Criminals have often been the first to use new technology, this doesn't mean the technology is in any way less legitimate. Trying to ban the technology is not going to solve anything. The criminals will still use it, and the public will lose a useful tool.
Problem is, that creating a "clone" of a game with various improved features is NOT the same as doing a cover of a song.
When you create a "clone" or some variation on a game, you are not copying the original. The underlying concept is the same, certainly, but the expression of that idea is different. The creator of the original game has rights to their *expression* of the idea "game in which a ship shoots at rocks" (ie Asteroid), but not to the *idea* itself (ie a ship-shooting-at-rocks game). (Unless they have a patent on the idea, in which cases their exclusive rights end after a certain period of years. And patents are the exception, created to promote creative invention through ensuring inventors the opportunity to profit from their inventions. If they don't have the patent, they don't have the exclusive rights to the concept itself)
If you were to do a cover of Dark Side Of The Moon, however, you would be copying the *expression* of the original artists (ie the lyrics, melody, etc). (And thus owe royalties). Now, if you were to take the *idea* (namely, what the song is about) and make a new song based on the same idea, then you're not copying their work - you were inspired by them, but didn't actually copy anything of theirs. This latter case is what is happening with the software developer in your dialogue.
problem with just using SMB is that it's Windows-specific. A cross-platform solution is preferable.
/.ed by time I got to it).
(Yes, I know about SAMBA...but then you've still got the Mac users out in the cold, and anyone who doesn't have SAMBA on their Unix boxen)
And this way you have the flexibility to go off-campus for those times where the local network doesn't have what you're looking for (details of this I'm not sure on since the site was
It truly suprises me that more people on /. just don't seem to get it. Asking the government to protect you from spam is just as bad as asking them to make laws to protect you from porn
Except that porn on the Net is something you generally have to actively seek out. The existence of porn on some web server somewhere costs me absolutely nothing. It doesn't cost anyone anything aside from a little discomfort for the puritans out there. Spam, OTOH, is delivered every day to just about any email account one creates. It costs me time and money (through increased costs to my ISP which get passed on to me).
Besides, the law in question doesn't require that much. It requires three simple things that any legitimate business should be doing anyway:
1) Don't use misleading info in the subject field
2) Don't disguise the path the spam took across the Net
3) Don't use an invalid reply address
This is not unreasonable.
I wish people would stop begging legislators to inflict laws on the Internet and start asking for a technical solution.
The reason people are clamoring for this particular type of law is that the attempts at technical solutions didn't work. No technical solution is going to be able to eliminate spam that has inaccurate subject information, forges routing information, has invalid reply addresses,etc. People have tried filtering, but spammers create new email accounts to spam from faster than people can add them to blocked-senders lists. Allowing only people on an "approved-senders" list is too restrictive and removes much of the power of the medium. You can't filter based on subject line if the subjects are faked (and 99% of spam does that). You can't even filter based on where they're sending the message from if the route information is forged. The reason we need laws like this is so that technical solutions will be feasible.
And besides, if these spamming asses realize that they could lose big bucks, maybe then they'll realize they shouldn't be doing it. The burden of stopping junk email should NOT be on the recipient. It's just ridiculous to make people expend time and money for being the victim of spam. This is the reason why there were laws passed banning unsolicited commercial faxes. Email is no different.
I agree, Apple is worse than MS. Bad though MS is, if Apple were in Microsoft's monopoly position instead of MS I would expect the industry to be in far worse shape.
it scares me to think that a company set up to redress the balance of technology in favbour of the user has developed practices that would not look out of place in the companies they used to vilify
It's not just their pricing. Don't forget the "upgrade" patch for G3 machines that Apple urged all the G3 owners to install. The one that then secretly rendered the "upgraded" machines unable to use the then-upcoming G4 chips. And of course their blatantly misleading advertising. Integrity seems to be a unknown concept at Apple these days.
I don't know about everyone else, but I think any noble spirit that may once have been at Apple left long ago. So I'm not terribly surprised that Apple pulls some of the crap it does. Apple's arrogance and generally shady practices are a couple of big reasons why I would never work for Apple.
When I buy a CD I instantly transfer it to my hard drive and MP3 it. I never listen to the audio CD ever. I've got several dozen CDs I've never heard from the plastic. So would this be legal, the CD considered to be the backup or something like that?
Disclaimer: IANAL
Yes, it would be legal. Basically, under the current copyright and home recording laws, you have the right to make a backup (namely the mp3s) for your own personal use (this is considered a "fair use" under copyright law).
You may further transfer those onto a Rio for road listening (there was a case, RIAA vs Diamond Multimedia, in the 9th Circuit ruling on the Rio issue that says that's legal. This in turn was built on a case back in the days of Betamax that established the right to record TV shows for later viewing, which became known as a "time shifting". The 9th Circuit in the Rio case held that there is a similar right of "spatial shifting" that applies to consumers using Rios and the like).
Naturally, you may not then give or sell the CD to someone else without destroying your mp3s.
If you want more detail, there's some good information from the Home Recording Rights Coalition summarizing the laws. In particular,Summary of the Audio Home Recording Act.
The Digital Millenium Copyright Act does complicate things some, but as I understand it there is still a provision for fair use.
-Stradivarius
However, I don't see how PC133 SDRAM or DDR DRAM would decrease latency. Wouldn't it just increase the bandwidth the same way Rambus does? Care to explain, please?
As I understand it, the delays from when you send the memory an address to when you get the data that resides at that address consist of two major components: RAS/CAS delays (which is basically the memory figuring out which bits to return based on the address it's given) and then the delay from that point to when the output is ready. Each of these delays will take some number of clock cycles. So if you now increase the clock rate, from say 100 to 133MHz, the number of clock cycles remains the same but the overall time from when you supply the address to when you get data back is less. Which is a decrease in latency. (As opposed to bandwidth, which isn't a decrease in the time for a single piece of data to transfer, but rather how many pieces of data can be transferred at once).
Now, I'm not very familiar with the way DDR works. It could very well be that a given piece of data still takes the same amount of time to access versus a equal-clock-rate Single Data Rate chip, but that the RAM can simply handle more transfers by using both clock edges. In that case DDR actually is targeting bandwidth, not latency. It might be that the DDR actually transfers a given piece of data twice as fast, but the more I think about it the less likely I see that as being. So you were probably correct about DDR targeting bandwidth not latency.
As for bandwidth not being a bottleneck, it really does depend on the system. For your typical PC or low-end servers, more memory bandwidth doesn't really help much (if at all). For things like the next generation of video game consoles, it might help a lot. High-res video processing does require a *lot* of bandwidth, and something like Rambus might be very useful there (I think Nintendo or one of other the console makers is actually going to use Rambus in their next machine, I don't remember which one).
For example, look at the GeForce video cards. Those that have DDR SDRAM instead of the standard SDRAM perform much better at high resolutions, because there's just a ton of data to transfer per clock. At low-res there's no real difference, presumably because the card isn't having to access too much data from the video memory. At high res, there is more data per frame, so each transfer has to accomodate more bits (needs higher bandwidth). Thus the DDR version keeps on churning out high frame rates when the SDR version starts having real trouble.
Actually, I meant hard disks were a bottleneck in general, not necessarily in games. Sorry if it was a bit ambiguous.
So you'd like to see things like TM3120rev1 TM3120rev2 among the architectures supported by Linux? Of course you'd have to port GCC and the binutils over to this too. As I understand it, making a VLIW compiler is very hard, but since the Trillium guys seem to have gotten IA64 working I guess it can be done.
Well, I can't speak for Bruce, obviously. I personally don't see the benefit so much in changing the instruction set, but more so in which instructions are more efficient. I'm sure that the Transmeta "code morphing" software has methods of optimizing certain instructions more so than other instructions. Transmeta's choice of which to optimize at the expense of others was likely the result of research into those instructions which are the most common and performance-critical in the platform which the chip is likely to be used - namely Windows-based laptops (at least for the higher-end Crusoe that is targeted towards Windows). Now, Linux may not have the same distribution of instructions, so those optimizations made in the code morphing software may not be the best for Linux systems. It would be nice, if you're running Linux, to be able to have an OSS code morphing software that is optimized for Linux, and which you can download and/or hack away at.
Just my two cents.
-Stradivarius
You also mention latency -- and yes, decreasing latency would benefit performance, but this is not what Rambus, PC133 SDRAM and DDR DRAM are designed to accomplish
Actually, you are correct that the goal of Rambus is not to decrease latency, but rather to increase bandwidth. You incorrect, however, when you state that PC133 and DDR SDRAM also have that goal. PC133 and DDR RAM have the goal of decreasing the latency, *not* increasing the bandwidth. Increasing the clock speed of the RAM (as PC133 does, and as DDR "fakes" by using both clock edges rather than just one) should cut the response time for the memory (latency). It doesn't affect the volume of data transferred on a clock cycle (bandwidth).
Rambus increases bandwidth, yes, but at a cost to latency. This is why sometimes using Rambus memory will actually slow down the system - bandwidth (as you stated) is not the bottleneck. Latency, however, is more of a bottleneck. Accessing a piece of data from memory can take hundreds of CPU clock cycles, during which the CPU is often forced to stall and do nothing. Reducing this will certainly help performance, though how much depends on the specific application (and for many benchmarks, you will see little improvement - many of the benchmarks out there are intended to stress CPU performance, and as such are computation-heavy rather than I/O heavy. Applications that are more biased towards I/O operations will benefit more than others that are not). Heavy-duty multimedia can fall into the category of applications that will really benefit, since often the volume and rate of data being processed is so large that it means a smaller percentage of the data is accessed from the cache, and more from main memory.
The real bottleneck is currently the video cards
For games, I'd certainly agree. In general, hard disks are also an often-overlooked bottleneck.
Furthermore, there is absolutely nothing wrong with what the IT department has done
There is a difference between what is legal/constitutional and what is right. Clemson may be legally allowed to do what they're doing, but that does not mean it isn't wrong.
And it doesn't mean that people shouldn't write to express their outrage. Especially since, IIRC, Clemson is a state school, and as such taxpayers of that state have an interest in what's happening. People who are prospective students, or parents of prospective students, should also write. Maybe Clemson will realize that this could alienate future students enough to have them choose another school. Clemson may not have any moral sense of what's right, but if they see their bottom line threatened I bet they'll come around.
One other point: writing reasonable letters to someone in power to explain why their positions (or positions of their subordinates) are wrong, and why people are upset about it, is not spamming. It is a perfectly legitimate form of communication (while unsolicited, it isn't commercial, nor does it cost the President anything - all he has to do is throw it out if he doesn't want to read it. If it were email, you might have an argument for usage of his mail server resources, etc, but with snail mail there is no cost to him). And I'm sure Clemson would like to know if they have a PR nightmare on their hands.