I dropped my Thinkpad 385XD off the roof of my car into the corner of the laptop without any case... twice. It didn't even skip a beat and is still used for e-mail and excel as a 'spare' field laptop in case anything goes wrong.
P-233/96MB ram/6GB HDD.
Man that was quality. Every Dell I've had since them (purchased due to price, and I've owned 3 of them since)- has had failed parts, is falling apart, has loose components.
IBM Had it down pat. That cost needs to come down a bit though to compete with Dell's laptops- even if the quality is higher.
The last thing I want is some fancy pants CPU hog with Rosie O'Donnel sized memory footprints running around in the background!
I'd argue that offloading the graphic generation from the CPU/RAM to a video board and video memory might be a good thing. It could mean a more responsive GUI, less bogged down processor, and a better user experience.
The real pirates are going to try everything to be able to crack and sell these advanced copies. They'll do it regardless of what features Windows has. There's already speculation on how to do it [com.com].
Don't make it 1K and you'll be in business. Take Adobe's offerings for example. 1600-2000USD for Production Studio ( http://www.adobe.com/products/productionstudio/mai n.html ). They're obviously targeting business and TV stations that can afford such a thing. Meanwhile, students and home users looking to have some fun making neat videos are of course going to pirate. Macromedia Studio 8 (Flash and Dreamweaver) - $999USD. The home user wanting to make a cool Web page suffers.
Pricing always leads to pirating. Make it a pain in the @$$ and offer it for $50 for home users, or sell groups of licenses (4 computers per street address) and most people will buy. Make it $500 and people won't. Windows XP is $200USD, Word in itself is $180USD! It's a question of value. These days the OS costs as much if not more than a new PC!
Sell high to enterprise, and low to home and small business. Get people hooked on Office, so that if they go to a place of business, they're pre-trained in it. Make it cheap and attainable for home users and few-man office shops.
If you're making one version more secure than another, you're simply admitting that you're not too concerned about the minimal package being pirated but you cannot afford to have Aero pirated.
I don't think this is it. If an organization is pirating Windows, which is extremely common in businesses, then they'll stand out like a sore thumb as I'm sure the 'basic' version won't be a corporate offering. It's like a call-home. The 'Microsoft Police' come in and will very simply see what computers look crappy and which don't. You know where the licenses are right away. You can't assume a license is there, as you'll see it. As a user in a University, you'll see right away which PCs are legit.
Microsoft relies on the fact that its communication protocols are technologically innovative and are covered by intellectual-property rights
The bigger question is why do they need to protect the protocols and APIs? _IF_ their product is superior, who would use anything else? If someone made software that could communicate with Windows clients/servers (Samba makes a good example), and Windows is still better, few if any people would use Samba, and hence it would cease to exist.
So the question becomes- are they artificially making themselves the only player when something better is likely to arrise. The answer is probably a yes.
Releasing protocols shouldn't hurt their market share if they're the top player and have the best product and keep their product good. Now if they don't have the best product, but are keeping players out of the market by hording information, then an anti-trust suit is in order... oh wait...
Oh Come on! Is this any surprise. WalMart likely makes up the largest percentage of the retail market for major game consoles in the US. Why produce a game if revenues are going to be half of what is expected, when you can put more effort into another game that will receive full revenues? Why spread your marketing and production too thin on too many titles, when some will never see store shelves of major retailers, and hence never make it 'big'. This is a world of revenues, and you have to maximize them.
You think Microsoft didn't go to Dell, IBM, Governments, and other big corporate clients for opinions on what features they want in the next Windows, and scrap the ones nobody was interested in? You think electronics makers don't go to retail outlets and say "is this something you'd buy" and see if they can get a commitment? You think movie production companies don't go to distribution companies with a script and say "would you buy and distribute this film if we made it".
It's all about finding the good product out of the bad (and there are so many bad). If Walmart doesn't think it has appeal to their clients, which represent much of the 'status quo', then maybe they're right! The developer still has the choice to make the game, and of course Walmart could see the result and stand corrected... but seriously- odds are, they know enough about their market to be right.
Seared, broken monitors and CPUs are nestled in weeds
Drive along any of the 'i' highways (not similar to iMacs) and find burnt out cars, CRT monitors, and old PCs. Go into random off-highway marshes off major US highways and find the same. We've all seen them. Having garbage scattered isn't that uncommon anywhere
The U.S. is the only industrialized nation not to have ratified the Basel Convention, which would prevent it from trading in hazardous waste
It's US policy to not sign any agreement that restricts or may restrict the US's action in the future. It's rather short-sighted in my opinion, as if they have to resort to some of these actions, there are other issues at stake. Now whether they abide by the treaties anyway without signing is another story. Guess what? The US hasn't signed any greenhouse gas treaties either... That doesn't mean they're doing nothing to reduce emissions or tighten up allowances.
What this all comes down to is simple:
- why do countries accept things they know are harmful for their people? I know many car mechanics who have guys coming by all the time offering to take used tires, brake rotors, etc for scrap. Some want money and get paid for it (and you can imagine they end up in a river somewhere). Others actually recycle it for the scrap metal and rubber.
- ignorance is bliss. the US sends trash off under the front that they believe it's being safely recycled and handled. If it's not, that's another problem, and something that needs to be dealt with within the offending country.
A clock is a timer, as measured in Hz (oscellations per second). Generally the actions within each device, such as your processor or video card, operate on their own clock (this is the GHz number), while devices communicate with each other using the bus at the speed of the bus (more distance, mismatched components, and possibility for interference causes slower speeds, closer to 800MHz-1GHz these days).
Essentially (as an example), when a processor wants to copy something from a register to memory, it puts a signal on a control bus to tell the memory controller to charge a specific address of memory. The memory controller is reading this, and starts the action, knowing that it takes a fixed number of clock cycles to do this (think the timings of memory). After that time has passed, the processor routes the data in question to the bus. So the signal is being produced, the memory controller has it attached to the memory and charged properly, and the processor keeps it there long enough to write to the memory. That signal needs to be there as long as the memory is attached and set to write.
Now- imagine this type of situation (which applies to all devices, and within the processor's internal actions) should the timing be slightly off between all devices. Not very effective is it? The memory controller may still be reading while the processor stops writing, leading to corrupt data. Essentially, it syncs up the talking, listening, and computing.
This is true within each device as well, such as making sure that all elements of a function are performed at the same time and you don't end up with half of your answer after you actually need it.
Aync means that there's no clock, but rather, the timing of it is established before communication, using a few control signals and regularly adjusting accordingly.
My notification of e-mail is off. it doesn't ring, vibrate, etc. just blinks. I check it from time to time. Some special e-mail notifies, but that's different. Lots of filtering and prioritizing.
Those people that depend on it as their e-mail readers are idiots.
How is it any WORSE than Palm or any other daytimer device? Or daytime device with e-mail? They're not ratting the blackberry- the solution in general and they're calling it Blackberry. It's like calling inline skates 'Rollerblades' or tissues Kleenex.
The oil industry is good. They're saving us from the clean air that causes global warming. Don't buy into the hype. That layer of black oil and coal on your house siding just shows that it's working... like the wear indicator on a toothbrush.
these systems are used by more experienced user (eg. not clicking on NakedPamela.exe wchich arrived from 235gdsfge4@235cs.com...)
It said that if I forwarded it to 174 (no more, no less) of my friends and then waited 1 hour I'd get it delivered to my inbox. It didn't show so I sent it again. How was one to know this didn't work?
Windows users are prepared for viruses and the reason Linux users do not sweat them much is not because linux viruses do not exist; it is because system design makes their impact minimal.
There are lots of reasons why it's harder to infect 'NIX systems.
1. Since on many LiNuX distros, the single source of binaries is usually the distributions' package system, it is usually very easy to detect anything out of the ordinary. The trusted channel is a GOOD thing in these cases.
2. Add in a tool like AIDE (or Tripwire) and you can immediately see everything that is off with your system.
3. How about Linux (and most UNIX) not allowing ctime changes to anything but the current time? The ctime (often said as creation time, but wrongly so- it's the CHANGE time) on any update will always be the current time. The _only_ way around this is to change the system time before you modify files
4. Priv seperation is a big thing. Daemons aren't run as root (or if they do, they drop privs right away). There is no svchost.exe running your services at NT_AUTHORITY or SYSTEM like there is in Windows. Then of course there's no need to run your Web browser as a user with any rights at all. IE7/Vista will fix this of course. Personally I like making, even FireFox, setuid to some untrusted user with no access to files
5. Embedding scripting in every tool isn't as popular in the UNIX worlds, as the core tools work so well. There's no need for office software to have scripting capabilities to change all the files on teh system. There's no need for it!
Actually, you're quite wrong. Linux flaws have existed
So do cars, toasters, appliances, and pretty much every item. Welcome to the age where quality means nothing.
The reason Linux users don't sweat is because flaws are spotted quickly by many people who read the code, and fixed quickly too. That and people who code open-source tend to produce good code, as a matter of pride.
They produce good code because they do it for themselves. Most open-source developers are developing for themselves. Every project starts up as "this IMAP server doesn't suit my needs. I'll make a better one". Of course the people who do that are normally the technically able. People make projects for themselves because there's a need that hasn't been met or they're unhappy how it's being met by someone else. Otherwise there's lots of people wasting their time. DJB was unhappy with sendmail/BIND and made alternates. BincIMAP, COurier, and Dovecat folks make them because the others and UW-IMAP didn't do what they want. Patches are submitted to fix something that's affecting them, may affect them, or to add an enhancement they want. Time is money, and people ultimately want to contribute their time for their own benefit somewhere down the road.
Oh and by the way, Windows has a "safe"(well, safer) operating mode in the form of a user account, but nobody uses it because it's a PITA
Even then, you'd be surprised what you can accomplish to destroy the system. Keep in mind, if you're running a SINGLE USER system as a user in order to add security, you're protecting your LEAST valuable asset. I can blow away a system and install Windows/Office/Adobe and all the tools I need in a few hours and have it configured perfectly. I'm sure most people here can. Now replacing the data would take years! Replacing the productivity lost to viruses/spyware/virii can't be measured. Assessing the impact of leaked administrator and bank passwords could be huge!
The tradeoff is always performance when creating either compression or redundancy, as well as reliability.
Usually with more advanced compression comes more information dependency, lessening the chances of recovering a partial archive, a partial file, or dealing with any damage. This could make it bad for tape storage or anything that can have small portions damanged (CDs, etc)
Additionally there's performance. Of course we can all compress and compress based on dictionary sizes and algorithms specific to any application, but as those dictionary sizes get bigger, the huge amount of memory and processor power is needed. Think about an algorithm that depends on 50% of a file... Huge calculations, and having to load the whole file into memory in order to work on only a small part of it.
We keep pushing the data transfer envelope, so why are we caring so much about packing compression? Think the past 10 years- 10Mbit, 100Mbit, 1Gbit, 10Gbit have all had their day and many gone. Circut speeds are increasing as well as wireless transmission speeds. Disc subsystems have enough trouble keeping up with Ethernet! You can't compress data as fast as you need to send it out, nor even read it from the disk!
Compression was super in a day of floppy disks and 9600bps modems, but it hasn't evolved much. ZIP and RAR are still what they were. Other formats from the early 90's have mostly disappeared (LHA, ARC, etc) as despite better compression just aren't needed.
Want proof? You can download your latest movie in XVid (700MB) or DVD-R (4.3GB) with similar quality- why are so many people downloading the DVD? Bandwidth at the consumer level is cheap and abundant. Broadband is everywhere. [note: I know the argument is that this compression is lossy and file compression isn't-- but the point is that bandwidth makes pulling extra data something of non-concern, compared to the user's processing time and interest].
To put this into context for anyone who's thinking "huh?"
Bad debtors were once jailed within 'Debtors Prison', being removed as functional members of society, until their debts were paid. Once this was proved to be ineffective, and as modern considerations on fair rights came to play, an effect coined as 'The Race of the Swiftest' occurred. Creditors would, upon learning of a company's misfortune, take legal action against a debtor and be granted a portion of the company's assets in compensation for their debts. While this was reasonably effective for such creditors, there was no remedy for those creditors who were not as 'swift' to learn of the insolvency soon enough.
As a result of this unfairness, various governments introduced Bankruptcy, such as Canada's 'Bankruptcy & Insolvency Act' and the US's 'Bankruptcy Act' (Chapter 11). The intention of these is to balance all interests, while being fair. They are all, in one form or another, intended to (a) give an honest but unfortunate debtor a 'fresh start' by relieving of them of the burden of most of their debts, and (b) to repay creditors in an orderly and fair manner using the resources of the debtor (read: liquidate assets and distribute to creditors based on a fair order of security and distributed evenly within each class).
It's interesting actually, as I'm sure many small businesses are run this way. If the sole staff member of a one-man shop disappears, will anyone be able to get into those servers and recover the data and get value for it? Or will someone just pull the plug on your equipment not knowing what to do. Can someone get into your customer list? Where is your customer list? What is its format? What is the intranet address? Username/password? Root password? What amounts are owing on each account?
People who start their own business maintain a lot of information in their head, and very little on paper. As you expand to many, you start to see the need to document and share information. Document what you're doing, have password lists, and have more information.
What happens if you get injured. Who will make sure your clients don't all leave for a few weeks that you're unable to manage a computer?
This information needs to be documented even as a one-man shop in order to get value from it for your loved ones or even your own benefit due to permenant or temporary absences.
"Hey _____, you look particularly happy today. What's your secret" "I've got a miracle cure that's solved all my problems. It's called 'Money'!" "Where can I get said money?" "Just go into your wallet and take the money from it" "But what if I don't have any money in there" "Just go to your ATM machine and get some money" "But how does the money get in there" "Simply go to your bank and deposit some money" "But how do I get that money?" *looks around a bit* "Bye!" *walks away*
First, I still use Beta, and have a great professional-grade late 70s early 80s beta deck. I love Beta.
Many Beta lovers (like I used to) tout the "Beta is better quality than VHS" line, and this was 100% true. Beta lost due to marketing ploys and buying off video distributors/publishers into VHS, ultimately killing the technology. Also killing the technology was Beta's choice to make smaller, neater tapes that lasted for an hour, whereas the VHS manufacturers used basically the same technology with a bulkier tape that lasted two hours, sacrificing quality. Beta fixed this with Beta II and Beta III record modes, so it was only in the initial recorders, plus of course additional extensions like SuperBeta, Hi-Fi Audio, and so on. Beta offered more luminance detail and a cleaner image.
Can any modern late 80's or higher VHS VCR run circles around beta? Damn straight! The technology has since evolved in all recorders, in film, in the filters on various images, in audio and video pickups, etc. Had Beta still been evolving today, they're be pretty close BUT Beta was defeated in '88 (officially).
Then what the fuck are you paying for when you "buy" media? Don't tell me "a license" because licensing deals with far more lawyers and paperwork than a click-through EULA or anything related to copyright. Licensing would be applicable if you were going to be a distributor of the media (for profit mind you), and buying media for your own private, non-commercial use definitely does not have anything to do with that.
You're paying for a right to the media. My argument is simple- you are purchasing something, that once purchased you should have some degree of freedom with. Price is worked into how much freedom you have (ie: of course a copy of Windows you could install on any number of PCs may be more expensive than a copy licensed for one). Don't use technology to enforce the your EULA- most users will comply with the EULA, or the license that you buy a movie under.
You're taking this out of context- my point was, to the 'trust us' comment and the argument of video cameras... A video camera is there to prevent you from stealing someone elses property. Your retailer couldn't care less what you do with it once you pay them for it.
"If you don't trust me, your customer giving my money, I'm not buying."
Then you must not shop or go anywhere in the real world. Security guards, cameras, devices, inspectors, ticket takers, why, any typical bricks-and-morter store has more security and "lack-of-trust" than you can shake a stick at.
The problem is that you say I should trust you. Fine, but I don't know you. You might be trustworthy.. and you might not be. You say I should assume everyone is trustworthy. Fine, but when I turn off the cameras and fire the guards my shrinkage levels reach astronomical numbers. Obviously, that's an assumption I can't make, and one which leaves us at an impasse given your hardline approach.
So from my perspective I think it's only rational to recognize that, unfortunately, we DO need locks on the front door. But given that assumption, I also think we should make sure that those locks suit us, and are as easy to use and unrestrictive as possible. Something designed from the ground up with the user's rights in mind.
You're taking this way too far. The reality is that the security systems are not targeted at preventing what you can do with YOUR goods but rather preventing what you can do with SOMEONE ELSE'S goods. As soon as I hand over my $200-odd bucks for a XBox, it's not my property. You can't prevent me from leaving with it (they're making sure you don't have other goods of theirs at the door). At which point I can disassemble it, set it on fire, smash it, play it, or pretty much anything else. If I were to do those things within the store with someone elses' property, then they have every right to take me down. I'm not a customer until I purchase something- before that I'm just a guy hovering around their goods.
It's not a question of trust, but rather of ownership. That song on iTunes is yours. When I purchase it, and download it, it's now mine. That CD in the store is FutureShops, but when I pay $18 for it, it's now mine. I should be able to what I want with that good. You can't tell me or restrict what I can do.
So, if that's the case, then why are there so many camera phones out there?
Because there are times when a mediocre quality picture with no zoom is acceptable for a few one-off pictures.
The camera phone is increasing in pixels, but still has poor quality, lots of digital enhancements rather than using quality optics, a poor interface, lack of features, lack of flash, lack of any optical zoom, red eye removal, etc.
Having a few bells and whistles is always a plus, but in the end, a phone needs to work. Combining a phone and a PDA is a great idea, as the device is always on you and there's a lot of cross (address books for example). Crossing the camera is for the occasional time when you need to grab a picture (insurance, profile picture, fully scene, etc) where you wouldn't carry a camera... but don't think for a second that you can replace a camera with a phone.
seeing a movie in the theater is a 'fuller, more entertaining experience'
First I'd argue that yes seeing the movie in a theatre _is_ a better experience. Being in the movie theatre is not. The sound, screen and environment is great. The yelling teenagers, overpriced food, sticky floors, and so on aren't.
More importantly, as soon as the demand drops off in theatres, there is no money to be made. The theatres are saying that fewer people will go if the DVD will come out sooner, but if it is, in fact, such a fuller experience, then that's not the case. People will go to the threatre if it's a fuller experience. On the other hand, if the theatres are full of it, and in fact people only go to the theatres because they must, then of course theatre-goers will drop off.
Besides- studios and distribution want to get their money back as soon as possible- and if they can speed the DVD release and play off the advertising and hype already in the market, they're in better shape.
PS: *still waiting for the limited release Sarah Silverman's "Jesus is Magic" to come to DVD*
I used TSL (Trustix Secure Linux) 2.2 and 3.0 on various servers for some time. I liked where it was heading and how it provided a nice stable platform. I liked it's clean policy, and while not being as 'legacy' as Debian for using old versions, wasn't the first to jump on the bandwagon. I also liked that it didn't manage to link everything with the X libraries (*cough* RedHat *cough*)
What I didn't like was the upgrade path issues. Debian, for example was a breeze to do major upgrades of the distribution and core software. trustix struggles a bit more, requiring manual intervention and breaking things here and there. Trustix did offer swup to do so, but still lacked a certain perfection of some of its counterparts. Core system upgrades tells the men from the boys when you're trying to run a high-uptime server and only really want to throw one reboot into there and not break much.
It's package selection wasn't as high as I would have needed, even with a focus of servers, it still lacked core monitoring applications, and even packages like snmp. It lacks many libraries that you may need, so you may find yourself relying on source more often. For whatever reason, there were a few driver quirks as well that didn't exist in same kernel versions of other distros, such as counters for incoming traffic not working properly.
Overall, yes- trustix is a great distro and a good contender to anyone wanting a simple and small (150-250MB) distro to run a Web server, mail server, or equivalent on it. Trustix may not suit you if you need lots of libraries often, need to install almost any application quickly, need a larger community for support, or need a clean upgrade path to newer versions in the future and want to be more assured of a trouble-free upgrade.
I mix Trustix and Debian these days- Trustix was the popular choice in my shop when Debian 2.x was rather dated and 3.x was on the horizon. Trustix provided everything I needed. Now? Debian 3.x may be a better choice depending on your needs. Still a supporter of Trustix though.
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I dropped my Thinkpad 385XD off the roof of my car into the corner of the laptop without any case... twice.
It didn't even skip a beat and is still used for e-mail and excel as a 'spare' field laptop in case anything goes wrong.
P-233/96MB ram/6GB HDD.
Man that was quality. Every Dell I've had since them (purchased due to price, and I've owned 3 of them since)- has had failed parts, is falling apart, has loose components.
IBM Had it down pat. That cost needs to come down a bit though to compete with Dell's laptops- even if the quality is higher.
-M
I'd argue that offloading the graphic generation from the CPU/RAM to a video board and video memory might be a good thing. It could mean a more responsive GUI, less bogged down processor, and a better user experience.
Don't make it 1K and you'll be in business. Take Adobe's offerings for example. 1600-2000USD for Production Studio ( http://www.adobe.com/products/productionstudio/ma
Pricing always leads to pirating. Make it a pain in the @$$ and offer it for $50 for home users, or sell groups of licenses (4 computers per street address) and most people will buy. Make it $500 and people won't. Windows XP is $200USD, Word in itself is $180USD! It's a question of value. These days the OS costs as much if not more than a new PC!
Sell high to enterprise, and low to home and small business. Get people hooked on Office, so that if they go to a place of business, they're pre-trained in it. Make it cheap and attainable for home users and few-man office shops.
I don't think this is it. If an organization is pirating Windows, which is extremely common in businesses, then they'll stand out like a sore thumb as I'm sure the 'basic' version won't be a corporate offering. It's like a call-home. The 'Microsoft Police' come in and will very simply see what computers look crappy and which don't. You know where the licenses are right away. You can't assume a license is there, as you'll see it. As a user in a University, you'll see right away which PCs are legit.
-M
The bigger question is why do they need to protect the protocols and APIs? _IF_ their product is superior, who would use anything else? If someone made software that could communicate with Windows clients/servers (Samba makes a good example), and Windows is still better, few if any people would use Samba, and hence it would cease to exist.
So the question becomes- are they artificially making themselves the only player when something better is likely to arrise. The answer is probably a yes.
Releasing protocols shouldn't hurt their market share if they're the top player and have the best product and keep their product good. Now if they don't have the best product, but are keeping players out of the market by hording information, then an anti-trust suit is in order... oh wait...
-M
Oh Come on!
Is this any surprise. WalMart likely makes up the largest percentage of the retail market for major game consoles in the US. Why produce a game if revenues are going to be half of what is expected, when you can put more effort into another game that will receive full revenues? Why spread your marketing and production too thin on too many titles, when some will never see store shelves of major retailers, and hence never make it 'big'. This is a world of revenues, and you have to maximize them.
You think Microsoft didn't go to Dell, IBM, Governments, and other big corporate clients for opinions on what features they want in the next Windows, and scrap the ones nobody was interested in? You think electronics makers don't go to retail outlets and say "is this something you'd buy" and see if they can get a commitment? You think movie production companies don't go to distribution companies with a script and say "would you buy and distribute this film if we made it".
It's all about finding the good product out of the bad (and there are so many bad). If Walmart doesn't think it has appeal to their clients, which represent much of the 'status quo', then maybe they're right! The developer still has the choice to make the game, and of course Walmart could see the result and stand corrected... but seriously- odds are, they know enough about their market to be right.
-M
Drive along any of the 'i' highways (not similar to iMacs) and find burnt out cars, CRT monitors, and old PCs. Go into random off-highway marshes off major US highways and find the same. We've all seen them. Having garbage scattered isn't that uncommon anywhere
It's US policy to not sign any agreement that restricts or may restrict the US's action in the future. It's rather short-sighted in my opinion, as if they have to resort to some of these actions, there are other issues at stake. Now whether they abide by the treaties anyway without signing is another story. Guess what? The US hasn't signed any greenhouse gas treaties either... That doesn't mean they're doing nothing to reduce emissions or tighten up allowances.
What this all comes down to is simple:
- why do countries accept things they know are harmful for their people? I know many car mechanics who have guys coming by all the time offering to take used tires, brake rotors, etc for scrap. Some want money and get paid for it (and you can imagine they end up in a river somewhere). Others actually recycle it for the scrap metal and rubber.
- ignorance is bliss. the US sends trash off under the front that they believe it's being safely recycled and handled. If it's not, that's another problem, and something that needs to be dealt with within the offending country.
-M
A clock is a timer, as measured in Hz (oscellations per second). Generally the actions within each device, such as your processor or video card, operate on their own clock (this is the GHz number), while devices communicate with each other using the bus at the speed of the bus (more distance, mismatched components, and possibility for interference causes slower speeds, closer to 800MHz-1GHz these days).
Essentially (as an example), when a processor wants to copy something from a register to memory, it puts a signal on a control bus to tell the memory controller to charge a specific address of memory. The memory controller is reading this, and starts the action, knowing that it takes a fixed number of clock cycles to do this (think the timings of memory). After that time has passed, the processor routes the data in question to the bus. So the signal is being produced, the memory controller has it attached to the memory and charged properly, and the processor keeps it there long enough to write to the memory. That signal needs to be there as long as the memory is attached and set to write.
Now- imagine this type of situation (which applies to all devices, and within the processor's internal actions) should the timing be slightly off between all devices. Not very effective is it? The memory controller may still be reading while the processor stops writing, leading to corrupt data. Essentially, it syncs up the talking, listening, and computing.
This is true within each device as well, such as making sure that all elements of a function are performed at the same time and you don't end up with half of your answer after you actually need it.
Aync means that there's no clock, but rather, the timing of it is established before communication, using a few control signals and regularly adjusting accordingly.
-M
My notification of e-mail is off. it doesn't ring, vibrate, etc. just blinks.
I check it from time to time. Some special e-mail notifies, but that's different.
Lots of filtering and prioritizing.
Those people that depend on it as their e-mail readers are idiots.
How is it any WORSE than Palm or any other daytimer device? Or daytime device with e-mail? They're not ratting the blackberry- the solution in general and they're calling it Blackberry. It's like calling inline skates 'Rollerblades' or tissues Kleenex.
-M
According to today's article: http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/04/0 7/1540219
[sarcasm]
The oil industry is good. They're saving us from the clean air that causes global warming. Don't buy into the hype. That layer of black oil and coal on your house siding just shows that it's working... like the wear indicator on a toothbrush.
[/sarcasm]
-M
It said that if I forwarded it to 174 (no more, no less) of my friends and then waited 1 hour I'd get it delivered to my inbox. It didn't show so I sent it again. How was one to know this didn't work?
-M
There are lots of reasons why it's harder to infect 'NIX systems.
1. Since on many LiNuX distros, the single source of binaries is usually the distributions' package system, it is usually very easy to detect anything out of the ordinary. The trusted channel is a GOOD thing in these cases.
2. Add in a tool like AIDE (or Tripwire) and you can immediately see everything that is off with your system.
3. How about Linux (and most UNIX) not allowing ctime changes to anything but the current time? The ctime (often said as creation time, but wrongly so- it's the CHANGE time) on any update will always be the current time. The _only_ way around this is to change the system time before you modify files
4. Priv seperation is a big thing. Daemons aren't run as root (or if they do, they drop privs right away). There is no svchost.exe running your services at NT_AUTHORITY or SYSTEM like there is in Windows. Then of course there's no need to run your Web browser as a user with any rights at all. IE7/Vista will fix this of course. Personally I like making, even FireFox, setuid to some untrusted user with no access to files
5. Embedding scripting in every tool isn't as popular in the UNIX worlds, as the core tools work so well. There's no need for office software to have scripting capabilities to change all the files on teh system. There's no need for it!
So do cars, toasters, appliances, and pretty much every item. Welcome to the age where quality means nothing.
They produce good code because they do it for themselves. Most open-source developers are developing for themselves. Every project starts up as "this IMAP server doesn't suit my needs. I'll make a better one". Of course the people who do that are normally the technically able. People make projects for themselves because there's a need that hasn't been met or they're unhappy how it's being met by someone else. Otherwise there's lots of people wasting their time. DJB was unhappy with sendmail/BIND and made alternates. BincIMAP, COurier, and Dovecat folks make them because the others and UW-IMAP didn't do what they want. Patches are submitted to fix something that's affecting them, may affect them, or to add an enhancement they want. Time is money, and people ultimately want to contribute their time for their own benefit somewhere down the road.
Even then, you'd be surprised what you can accomplish to destroy the system. Keep in mind, if you're running a SINGLE USER system as a user in order to add security, you're protecting your LEAST valuable asset. I can blow away a system and install Windows/Office/Adobe and all the tools I need in a few hours and have it configured perfectly. I'm sure most people here can. Now replacing the data would take years! Replacing the productivity lost to viruses/spyware/virii can't be measured. Assessing the impact of leaked administrator and bank passwords could be huge!
-M
The tradeoff is always performance when creating either compression or redundancy, as well as reliability.
Usually with more advanced compression comes more information dependency, lessening the chances of recovering a partial archive, a partial file, or dealing with any damage. This could make it bad for tape storage or anything that can have small portions damanged (CDs, etc)
Additionally there's performance. Of course we can all compress and compress based on dictionary sizes and algorithms specific to any application, but as those dictionary sizes get bigger, the huge amount of memory and processor power is needed. Think about an algorithm that depends on 50% of a file... Huge calculations, and having to load the whole file into memory in order to work on only a small part of it.
We keep pushing the data transfer envelope, so why are we caring so much about packing compression? Think the past 10 years- 10Mbit, 100Mbit, 1Gbit, 10Gbit have all had their day and many gone. Circut speeds are increasing as well as wireless transmission speeds. Disc subsystems have enough trouble keeping up with Ethernet! You can't compress data as fast as you need to send it out, nor even read it from the disk!
Compression was super in a day of floppy disks and 9600bps modems, but it hasn't evolved much. ZIP and RAR are still what they were. Other formats from the early 90's have mostly disappeared (LHA, ARC, etc) as despite better compression just aren't needed.
Want proof? You can download your latest movie in XVid (700MB) or DVD-R (4.3GB) with similar quality- why are so many people downloading the DVD? Bandwidth at the consumer level is cheap and abundant. Broadband is everywhere. [note: I know the argument is that this compression is lossy and file compression isn't-- but the point is that bandwidth makes pulling extra data something of non-concern, compared to the user's processing time and interest].
-M
To put this into context for anyone who's thinking "huh?"
:)
Bad debtors were once jailed within 'Debtors Prison', being removed as functional members of society, until their debts were paid. Once this was proved to be ineffective, and as modern considerations on fair rights came to play, an effect coined as 'The Race of the Swiftest' occurred. Creditors would, upon learning of a company's misfortune, take legal action against a debtor and be granted a portion of the company's assets in compensation for their debts. While this was reasonably effective for such creditors, there was no remedy for those creditors who were not as 'swift' to learn of the insolvency soon enough.
As a result of this unfairness, various governments introduced Bankruptcy, such as Canada's 'Bankruptcy & Insolvency Act' and the US's 'Bankruptcy Act' (Chapter 11). The intention of these is to balance all interests, while being fair. They are all, in one form or another, intended to (a) give an honest but unfortunate debtor a 'fresh start' by relieving of them of the burden of most of their debts, and (b) to repay creditors in an orderly and fair manner using the resources of the debtor (read: liquidate assets and distribute to creditors based on a fair order of security and distributed evenly within each class).
Just in case debtors prison sounds confusing
-M
It's interesting actually, as I'm sure many small businesses are run this way. If the sole staff member of a one-man shop disappears, will anyone be able to get into those servers and recover the data and get value for it? Or will someone just pull the plug on your equipment not knowing what to do. Can someone get into your customer list? Where is your customer list? What is its format? What is the intranet address? Username/password? Root password? What amounts are owing on each account?
People who start their own business maintain a lot of information in their head, and very little on paper. As you expand to many, you start to see the need to document and share information. Document what you're doing, have password lists, and have more information.
What happens if you get injured. Who will make sure your clients don't all leave for a few weeks that you're unable to manage a computer?
This information needs to be documented even as a one-man shop in order to get value from it for your loved ones or even your own benefit due to permenant or temporary absences.
-M
Did you ever see the MadTV 'money' infomercial...
*loosely quoted from many years ago*
"Hey _____, you look particularly happy today. What's your secret"
"I've got a miracle cure that's solved all my problems. It's called 'Money'!"
"Where can I get said money?"
"Just go into your wallet and take the money from it"
"But what if I don't have any money in there"
"Just go to your ATM machine and get some money"
"But how does the money get in there"
"Simply go to your bank and deposit some money"
"But how do I get that money?"
*looks around a bit* "Bye!" *walks away*
-M
Anyone else picturing PacMan?
First, I still use Beta, and have a great professional-grade late 70s early 80s beta deck. I love Beta.
Many Beta lovers (like I used to) tout the "Beta is better quality than VHS" line, and this was 100% true. Beta lost due to marketing ploys and buying off video distributors/publishers into VHS, ultimately killing the technology. Also killing the technology was Beta's choice to make smaller, neater tapes that lasted for an hour, whereas the VHS manufacturers used basically the same technology with a bulkier tape that lasted two hours, sacrificing quality. Beta fixed this with Beta II and Beta III record modes, so it was only in the initial recorders, plus of course additional extensions like SuperBeta, Hi-Fi Audio, and so on. Beta offered more luminance detail and a cleaner image.
Can any modern late 80's or higher VHS VCR run circles around beta? Damn straight! The technology has since evolved in all recorders, in film, in the filters on various images, in audio and video pickups, etc.
Had Beta still been evolving today, they're be pretty close BUT Beta was defeated in '88 (officially).
-M
Start Making Sense Or I'll put you into a home!
You're paying for a right to the media. My argument is simple- you are purchasing something, that once purchased you should have some degree of freedom with. Price is worked into how much freedom you have (ie: of course a copy of Windows you could install on any number of PCs may be more expensive than a copy licensed for one). Don't use technology to enforce the your EULA- most users will comply with the EULA, or the license that you buy a movie under.
You're taking this out of context- my point was, to the 'trust us' comment and the argument of video cameras... A video camera is there to prevent you from stealing someone elses property. Your retailer couldn't care less what you do with it once you pay them for it.
-M
"As soon as I hand over my $200-odd bucks for a XBox, it's not my property."
:)
Of course I meant "it's NOW my property". Sorry
You're taking this way too far. The reality is that the security systems are not targeted at preventing what you can do with YOUR goods but rather preventing what you can do with SOMEONE ELSE'S goods. As soon as I hand over my $200-odd bucks for a XBox, it's not my property. You can't prevent me from leaving with it (they're making sure you don't have other goods of theirs at the door). At which point I can disassemble it, set it on fire, smash it, play it, or pretty much anything else. If I were to do those things within the store with someone elses' property, then they have every right to take me down. I'm not a customer until I purchase something- before that I'm just a guy hovering around their goods.
It's not a question of trust, but rather of ownership. That song on iTunes is yours. When I purchase it, and download it, it's now mine. That CD in the store is FutureShops, but when I pay $18 for it, it's now mine. I should be able to what I want with that good. You can't tell me or restrict what I can do.
-M
Slow news day :)
We used all the _real_ news yesterday.
from TFA: Posted March 14, 2006.
Because there are times when a mediocre quality picture with no zoom is acceptable for a few one-off pictures.
The camera phone is increasing in pixels, but still has poor quality, lots of digital enhancements rather than using quality optics, a poor interface, lack of features, lack of flash, lack of any optical zoom, red eye removal, etc.
Having a few bells and whistles is always a plus, but in the end, a phone needs to work. Combining a phone and a PDA is a great idea, as the device is always on you and there's a lot of cross (address books for example). Crossing the camera is for the occasional time when you need to grab a picture (insurance, profile picture, fully scene, etc) where you wouldn't carry a camera... but don't think for a second that you can replace a camera with a phone.
-M
First I'd argue that yes seeing the movie in a theatre _is_ a better experience. Being in the movie theatre is not. The sound, screen and environment is great. The yelling teenagers, overpriced food, sticky floors, and so on aren't.
More importantly, as soon as the demand drops off in theatres, there is no money to be made. The theatres are saying that fewer people will go if the DVD will come out sooner, but if it is, in fact, such a fuller experience, then that's not the case. People will go to the threatre if it's a fuller experience. On the other hand, if the theatres are full of it, and in fact people only go to the theatres because they must, then of course theatre-goers will drop off.
Besides- studios and distribution want to get their money back as soon as possible- and if they can speed the DVD release and play off the advertising and hype already in the market, they're in better shape.
PS: *still waiting for the limited release Sarah Silverman's "Jesus is Magic" to come to DVD*
-M
I used TSL (Trustix Secure Linux) 2.2 and 3.0 on various servers for some time. I liked where it was heading and how it provided a nice stable platform. I liked it's clean policy, and while not being as 'legacy' as Debian for using old versions, wasn't the first to jump on the bandwagon. I also liked that it didn't manage to link everything with the X libraries (*cough* RedHat *cough*)
What I didn't like was the upgrade path issues. Debian, for example was a breeze to do major upgrades of the distribution and core software. trustix struggles a bit more, requiring manual intervention and breaking things here and there. Trustix did offer swup to do so, but still lacked a certain perfection of some of its counterparts. Core system upgrades tells the men from the boys when you're trying to run a high-uptime server and only really want to throw one reboot into there and not break much.
It's package selection wasn't as high as I would have needed, even with a focus of servers, it still lacked core monitoring applications, and even packages like snmp. It lacks many libraries that you may need, so you may find yourself relying on source more often. For whatever reason, there were a few driver quirks as well that didn't exist in same kernel versions of other distros, such as counters for incoming traffic not working properly.
Overall, yes- trustix is a great distro and a good contender to anyone wanting a simple and small (150-250MB) distro to run a Web server, mail server, or equivalent on it. Trustix may not suit you if you need lots of libraries often, need to install almost any application quickly, need a larger community for support, or need a clean upgrade path to newer versions in the future and want to be more assured of a trouble-free upgrade.
I mix Trustix and Debian these days- Trustix was the popular choice in my shop when Debian 2.x was rather dated and 3.x was on the horizon. Trustix provided everything I needed. Now? Debian 3.x may be a better choice depending on your needs. Still a supporter of Trustix though.
-M