"Linux kernel itself lacks any support for [...] SMP support(sic)
Oh, excellent trolling there Mr Hive Mind. Here, have a cookie.
Next time however, perhaps you should consult the other members of the Microsoft FUD Division, because they are currently suing the Linux community via their lapdogs at SCO because they claim that "The Linux Kernel SMP support is based on (allegedly) stolen source code".
It's a bit rich to sue a group over their support for SMP if that same group actually doesn't support SMP now, isn't it?
"Nothing beats hands on, and nobody I've interviewed for a sysadmin job (and I've done quite a few recently) who didn't have a setup at home was any good"
I second that. It frustrates the hell out of your family though.
"Is the network broken? Again?"
"Err, yeah, I'm just working on something, sorry!, I'll have it back soon, I promise!"
"grrrr"
:-)
It's funny though, a lot of MS "sysadmins" have networks at home yet it doesn't seem to do any good for their skill levels, most of the time anyway.
"While the acting was hammy, the costumes lame, and the special effects a joke by today's standards, if you go through the writers of the episodes I think you'll find a surprising number of well known SF authors. A number of SF short stories from Ellison and others provided the original source for the episodes, IIFC"
While what you say is correct, you forgot to put a * at the end of that sentence.
* Does not include TOS Season three, which had lamentably bad writing due to substantial studio budget cuts.
"I recently interviewed at Microsoft and one of the teams I met was the Windows team.. I can assure you it's NOT vaporware."
Considering that WinFS has been dropped from Longhorn (soon to be renamed to Shorthorn), then it most assuredly is Vapourware. It is (and it will remain as) Vapourware right up until the point in time that it becomes an actual product that is available to be obtained and used by the great unwashed masses.
"No CD cracks exist for bad reasons, but also for good . .
I use them for the games that my kids use a lot. If I gave them the actual CD's, they would be broken/lost within days. I would rather NO-CD the game and they can just play it without having to fuck with the media.
" This is basically a 5% discount on all iTunes music?"
Well, if you purchased the music for yourself and you bought over a thousand songs each month then I guess it would be, yes.
FIn most cases though, I expect it would represent a 5% kickback to any site owner who could generate 1000 clickthrus that culminate in a purchase, which is quite a bit different.
"I would be amazed if Nintendo allowed you to use the DS as a phone. It's just not going to happen.
I think it's there to allow voice chat when playing against other people wirelessly, ala X-Box Live."
Agreed. There is no way in hell that you will ever make "free phone calls" on your DS. For you to make a telephone call, by definition your call must enter the PSTN at some point or other, and Telco companies are simply not in the habit of letting people terminate calls on their networks for free.
This so-called "story" is a load of 100% pure, unadulterated bullcrap. The best anybody should hope for is free DS to DS calls and nothing more, and even then Nintendo or somebody else is going to need to maintain a network for users to call each other over, unless people want to be dialling each other via whatever IP they have been currently allocated by the wifi hotspot operator and assuming that they actually have a real, non NAT IP address. I am thinking that they will need to do something along the lines of Skype, and I doubt very much that they would do that for free.
"What I've read about NX is that it is more like x11 than it is like a VPN. Linux does have several VPN implementations to choose from, but NX is really a lightweight windowing client / server protocol."
I have used NX and you are both sort of correct. Basically, NX is a compressed X11 session that communicates via SSH, which I guess is what the VPN stuff was a clumsy reference to.
It is a neat feature, because all you need to do to remotely control a host on the otherside of a firewall is to open a pinhole on port 22, and you can connect via either SSH on the CLI or as an graphical NX Client.
Given the NHS's spectacular track record in failed IT projects, I have grave concerns that this has as much a chance of ending up being a PR nightmare as it it does a triumph where Sun is concerned.
"The price will trickle down to us consumer types. This is the future of LCD."
Exactly. I had the same argument with a pimply-faced hi-fi shop assistant about 5 years back regarding Plasma Screens. The store had it's first plasma screen on display with a highlyu exciting price tag that said "Only $20,000!" (thats Australian dollars BTW). I commented to the youth regarding my expectation that plasma screens should be in the affordable price range in a bout 5 years. "Oh no" he opined "They will always be this expensive. He went on to explain that 'they' had been making Plasmas for years and years already for use in TV studios and such and that they hadn't gotten any cheaper ergo he claimed that this 'trend' (as it were) would remain unchanged as the units were introduced into consumer land.
Today, an equivalent or better plasma unit can be found for as little as $3,000.
From the Google article - "the trade-off between software and hardware is that the software is written with the assumption that the hardware will fail"
In other words, the Google engineerers acknowledge the fact that PC's are comparative toys, and have designed their software to accomodate that fact.
Not all companies are able to make such sweeping modifications to their OS or applications, and hence they wisely decide to build their server farms using high quality and high availability hardware. It is a simple case of "horses for courses"
"The Battle Zone games weren't first person shooters.
Errr, neither was Magic Carpet. You could call Magic Carpet a flight sim and you would be just as accurate.
Clearly the parent doesn't like FPS games, which is perfectly understandable, but pointing to a bunch of games that are not FPS games and going on to opine that these games are better than Doom 3 is about as useful as a person arguing the merits of Western movies by claiming that The Good, The Bad and The Ugly is in some way inferior to Gone With The Wind.
"Hacking the Windows Registry blows... No one likes to screw around in the registry unless you are trying to break your machine..."
Well I guess that depends entirely on ones hacking ability doesn't it? My hacking environment of choice is of course Linux, but having been employed in IT for more years than I am prepared to admit I have been forced to build and support Windows boxes throughout that entire time. I cannot count the amount of times I have been called on to do serious hacking in the registry of PC's, and I'm not just talking about changing a key value from 1 to 0 every now and then, I am talking about massive pruning of multiple branches to remove various software afflictions in order to avoid having to do the dreaded full re-install wherever possible.
I can only really remember a few instances where it has all gone pear shaped and the re-install option was taken, but I am guessing that this would be less than five percent of cases.
. . unless the phone manufacturers allow themselves to be shot in the proverbial foot by the major telcos by crippling the functionality of their devices with draconian DRM restrictions.
You better believe that ALL of the telcos are very keen to make you pay for every music file you load onto your phone, regardless of whether you already legally own the song on a CD or not.
You can see the marketing opportunities now, can't you? Just wait and you will see them advertising this "great new service" to their long suffering customer base.
"Dial 013013 followed by your selected song number from our extensive* catalog and your song will be delivered to your phone instantly!" (and billed to your phone account accordingly of course)
New phone? Well just dial 013013 again to re-order! It's that easy, and you'd better believe it baby!
From the perspective of your major Telco, there is no money in it for them when their customers can transfer mp3s from their PC's to their phones, and seeing that the phone manufacturers sell their phones to the Telco's (and not end users) the Telco's have significantly more control over the functionality (and therefore dysfunctionality) of phone devices than Microsoft will ever have in the PC world.
" Am I the only person left who thinks it is unethical to use a person's site and block their ads? "
It depends on the type of ads surely. Just because I visit a site (sometimes by accident) it doesn't give the site owner the right to inflict upon me an infestation of pop-up and pop-under ads. This is where I draw the line. Banners and other in-page ads are acceptable, and I agree it is a bit rude to block well behaved advertisments for sites that you do enjoy reading (and assumedly that you would like to see continuing on).
Sure you can, it's real easy. Even a complete n00b could figure out how to do it. You just load Windows on your PC & say 'yes' to the next trojan email that lands in your inbox.
Slashdot Mirror
"Linux kernel itself lacks any support for [...] SMP support(sic)
Oh, excellent trolling there Mr Hive Mind. Here, have a cookie.
Next time however, perhaps you should consult the other members of the Microsoft FUD Division, because they are currently suing the Linux community via their lapdogs at SCO because they claim that "The Linux Kernel SMP support is based on (allegedly) stolen source code".
It's a bit rich to sue a group over their support for SMP if that same group actually doesn't support SMP now, isn't it?
Dingbat
"Nothing beats hands on, and nobody I've interviewed for a sysadmin job (and I've done quite a few recently) who didn't have a setup at home was any good"
I second that. It frustrates the hell out of your family though.
"Is the network broken? Again?"
"Err, yeah, I'm just working on something, sorry!, I'll have it back soon, I promise!"
"grrrr"
:-)
It's funny though, a lot of MS "sysadmins" have networks at home yet it doesn't seem to do any good for their skill levels, most of the time anyway.
"Then there was that time I wanted to see if the 'paper bark' tree burnt like paper..."
So? Did it?
"While the acting was hammy, the costumes lame, and the special effects a joke by today's standards, if you go through the writers of the episodes I think you'll find a surprising number of well known SF authors. A number of SF short stories from Ellison and others provided the original source for the episodes, IIFC"
While what you say is correct, you forgot to put a * at the end of that sentence.
* Does not include TOS Season three, which had lamentably bad writing due to substantial studio budget cuts.
The prosecution presents Exhibit A as evidence.
"I recently interviewed at Microsoft and one of the teams I met was the Windows team.. I can assure you it's NOT vaporware."
Considering that WinFS has been dropped from Longhorn (soon to be renamed to Shorthorn), then it most assuredly is Vapourware. It is (and it will remain as) Vapourware right up until the point in time that it becomes an actual product that is available to be obtained and used by the great unwashed masses.
Hey, if it eats, it's gotta take a crap occasionally, right?
Imagine taking a stroll through the jungle and having somebody point to the ground and say "ewww, don't step in the robot crap just there dude."
" hehe, Soilent Green for Robots?"
Errr, that would be "Soylent" actually.
I'' take some of that action suckmahsav@yah00.com.au replace the 00's with oo doncha know!
" Pretty much everyone I know goes around going "anyone want an invite? Anyone "
I want one
*sniff*
"No CD cracks exist for bad reasons, but also for good . .
I use them for the games that my kids use a lot. If I gave them the actual CD's, they would be broken/lost within days. I would rather NO-CD the game and they can just play it without having to fuck with the media.
" This is basically a 5% discount on all iTunes music?"
Well, if you purchased the music for yourself and you bought over a thousand songs each month then I guess it would be, yes.
FIn most cases though, I expect it would represent a 5% kickback to any site owner who could generate 1000 clickthrus that culminate in a purchase, which is quite a bit different.
"I'd rather they copy apple, who's known for quality interfaces"
Does that include "quality interfaces" such as this one?
hehe, settle down apple fans, I'm just pointing out that no-one is perfect, not even apple.
"I would be amazed if Nintendo allowed you to use the DS as a phone. It's just not going to happen. I think it's there to allow voice chat when playing against other people wirelessly, ala X-Box Live."
Agreed. There is no way in hell that you will ever make "free phone calls" on your DS. For you to make a telephone call, by definition your call must enter the PSTN at some point or other, and Telco companies are simply not in the habit of letting people terminate calls on their networks for free.
This so-called "story" is a load of 100% pure, unadulterated bullcrap. The best anybody should hope for is free DS to DS calls and nothing more, and even then Nintendo or somebody else is going to need to maintain a network for users to call each other over, unless people want to be dialling each other via whatever IP they have been currently allocated by the wifi hotspot operator and assuming that they actually have a real, non NAT IP address. I am thinking that they will need to do something along the lines of Skype, and I doubt very much that they would do that for free.
"What I've read about NX is that it is more like x11 than it is like a VPN. Linux does have several VPN implementations to choose from, but NX is really a lightweight windowing client / server protocol."
I have used NX and you are both sort of correct. Basically, NX is a compressed X11 session that communicates via SSH, which I guess is what the VPN stuff was a clumsy reference to.
It is a neat feature, because all you need to do to remotely control a host on the otherside of a firewall is to open a pinhole on port 22, and you can connect via either SSH on the CLI or as an graphical NX Client.
It is a pretty good solution really.
"Avalon is very much playing catchup to Quartz Extreme."
According to this article Avalon may never catch up to Quartz .
Note: I submitted that article to /. yesterday, but it was rejected in favour of a totally engrossing story about a laser equipped mouse.
Given the NHS's spectacular track record in failed IT projects, I have grave concerns that this has as much a chance of ending up being a PR nightmare as it it does a triumph where Sun is concerned.
" Nope, I don't give a shit about my privacy . . "
. . . he says while posting behind the anonymous privacy of "anononymous coward"."The price will trickle down to us consumer types. This is the future of LCD."
Exactly. I had the same argument with a pimply-faced hi-fi shop assistant about 5 years back regarding Plasma Screens. The store had it's first plasma screen on display with a highlyu exciting price tag that said "Only $20,000!" (thats Australian dollars BTW). I commented to the youth regarding my expectation that plasma screens should be in the affordable price range in a bout 5 years. "Oh no" he opined "They will always be this expensive. He went on to explain that 'they' had been making Plasmas for years and years already for use in TV studios and such and that they hadn't gotten any cheaper ergo he claimed that this 'trend' (as it were) would remain unchanged as the units were introduced into consumer land.
Today, an equivalent or better plasma unit can be found for as little as $3,000.
"PC's are just toys
Tell that to Google.
From the Google article - "the trade-off between software and hardware is that the software is written with the assumption that the hardware will fail"
In other words, the Google engineerers acknowledge the fact that PC's are comparative toys, and have designed their software to accomodate that fact.
Not all companies are able to make such sweeping modifications to their OS or applications, and hence they wisely decide to build their server farms using high quality and high availability hardware. It is a simple case of "horses for courses"
"The Battle Zone games weren't first person shooters.
Errr, neither was Magic Carpet. You could call Magic Carpet a flight sim and you would be just as accurate.
Clearly the parent doesn't like FPS games, which is perfectly understandable, but pointing to a bunch of games that are not FPS games and going on to opine that these games are better than Doom 3 is about as useful as a person arguing the merits of Western movies by claiming that The Good, The Bad and The Ugly is in some way inferior to Gone With The Wind.
"Hacking the Windows Registry blows... No one likes to screw around in the registry unless you are trying to break your machine..."
Well I guess that depends entirely on ones hacking ability doesn't it? My hacking environment of choice is of course Linux, but having been employed in IT for more years than I am prepared to admit I have been forced to build and support Windows boxes throughout that entire time. I cannot count the amount of times I have been called on to do serious hacking in the registry of PC's, and I'm not just talking about changing a key value from 1 to 0 every now and then, I am talking about massive pruning of multiple branches to remove various software afflictions in order to avoid having to do the dreaded full re-install wherever possible.
I can only really remember a few instances where it has all gone pear shaped and the re-install option was taken, but I am guessing that this would be less than five percent of cases.
. . unless the phone manufacturers allow themselves to be shot in the proverbial foot by the major telcos by crippling the functionality of their devices with draconian DRM restrictions.
You better believe that ALL of the telcos are very keen to make you pay for every music file you load onto your phone, regardless of whether you already legally own the song on a CD or not.
You can see the marketing opportunities now, can't you? Just wait and you will see them advertising this "great new service" to their long suffering customer base.
"Dial 013013 followed by your selected song number from our extensive* catalog and your song will be delivered to your phone instantly!" (and billed to your phone account accordingly of course)
New phone? Well just dial 013013 again to re-order! It's that easy, and you'd better believe it baby!
From the perspective of your major Telco, there is no money in it for them when their customers can transfer mp3s from their PC's to their phones, and seeing that the phone manufacturers sell their phones to the Telco's (and not end users) the Telco's have significantly more control over the functionality (and therefore dysfunctionality) of phone devices than Microsoft will ever have in the PC world.
"IBM does this all the time. IBM has patents on freaking everything, way more than Microsoft. "
This is true. In fact, the same guy who originally set IBM on its path towards patenting world+dog, Marshall Phelps, now happens to work at a very large software company based in Redmond.
" Am I the only person left who thinks it is unethical to use a person's site and block their ads? "
It depends on the type of ads surely. Just because I visit a site (sometimes by accident) it doesn't give the site owner the right to inflict upon me an infestation of pop-up and pop-under ads. This is where I draw the line. Banners and other in-page ads are acceptable, and I agree it is a bit rude to block well behaved advertisments for sites that you do enjoy reading (and assumedly that you would like to see continuing on).
"Can I donate some computer time?"
Sure you can, it's real easy. Even a complete n00b could figure out how to do it. You just load Windows on your PC & say 'yes' to the next trojan email that lands in your inbox.