I remember when I got my start online, in late 1992 (yes, I was a bit late to the party, but I did already know about the Internet, so I was at least a little prepared for the future). First board I used was one in Alexandria, VA, and originally, I hit the BBSes to look for files (especially since Prodigy, which I used for a few months in 1993, didn't have *any* file areas). Later on, I moved on to message boards (I miss RIME and Fido), and for a while I was getting Internet mail at home through one of the Fido boards I called.
All this started disappearing in 1995-1996; the board I was getting email through closed down in December 1995, and still others closed throughout 1996. There used to be a list of local BBSes for my area (prince william co., VA), but I have no idea where it went; I just found Mike Focke's list (updated 2/1999), and there were about 72 active BBses left in the entire DC metro area at the time.
It's good to see that some boards (like the ufies board) still exist, though.
I was impressed that the CD kept playing, even after the BSOD.
That's because almost all CD-ROM drives have standalone audio CD player hardware in them. It's not like MP3, where the host CPU has to be alive to get a sound -- the CD player does all the work.
I'm reading some of these comments, and it seems there's a lot of parallels to the MP3 scene, but with a few differences. In both cases, a cadre of large companies (Microsoft in particular in software, Sony, Warners, Universal, EMI, Bertelsmann and PolyGram in music) have a hammerlock on competition -- there's basically no way you could, say, write a competitor to Office 97 or 2000 and expect to charge as much as Microsoft does, nor could you make a CD full of music and expect to sell more than a few copies unless you signed up with a label. Most programs written by small companies fall outside this; someone is trying to make it on their own, and with the Internet, it's possible to get a decent customer base for your program quickly, without having to (say) take out ads in magazines. If I used these programs enough to justify it (like mIRC, Opera, etc.), I'd pay up -- it's not that expensive. As for MP3s and CDs, if I found an atist I like on, say, mp3.com, I'd listen to a few songs, then buy their CD if I thought it was good -- the difference being that they'd get fully half of the profit from the CD.
The problem comes in when you're as big and mean (read the findings of fact!) as Microsoft or the record companies. It's not about the little guy anymore. I figure piracy doesn't hurt a megalith like M$ nearly as much as, say, its stock losing 25% of its value, no matter what they say (keep in mind that most of Microsoft's employees have stock options); as a matter of fact, it keeps Microsoft in clover because the unlicensed copies sell licenses for other copies, generally by either word of mouth or skittishness on someone's part. The fact that Microsoft's products are (generally) highly proprietary and of mediocre structural integrity doesn't help, either. And the record companies try to keep their subjects at bay by slapping excise taxes on blank media, suing people (even the artists themselves!) that try to distribute work their artists recorded in a way Mr. Executive doesn't like, screwing artists on royalties, and trying their best to eliminate MP3. Also, the stuff they put out isn't that great; most CDs in the past few years have at most 2 or 3 good songs on them, the rest is filler, and since singles aren't common anymore, you generally have to get all of it and pay through the nose for it.
To sum up:
If someone wants to give it away, that's wonderful (and if it's software, opening the source makes it better).
If someone is working on their own, are small and trustworthy, have a useful or entertaining product and charge a fair price ($50 or less for software, $10 or less for CDs/MP3s), then I'll pay it. BTW, this is the idea that started Borland in 1983 -- they wanted just $50 for Turbo Pascal, whilst others were charging several hundred dollars for their products.
If someone is a large, hungry corporation, and expects people to pay exorbitant prices for every copy (even if it's total crap), then it loses a sale. Whether or not I use a warezed copy or use the product at all is at my discretion now, and since it's software, they didn't lose a physical copy if it's warezed -- that copy will still be sold to someone, eventually, and the boxmarkers and the CD pressers and the print shops that make the manuals get their money. I simply can't justify paying more than $100 for any software package for personal use (which is one reason my home machine runs FreeBSD), and I don't want to pay $12-15 for a CD that cost at most $1 to press, either.
And shooting the protesters doesn't help either. If you give them what they want, on mutually agreeable terms, both parties will be much happier. I'm not saying everything should be free; I'm saying that some things just cost too damn much.
-lee
PS: The BSA has a reputation of being in Microsoft's pocket. I've seen horror stories of BSA making people with any unlicensed software do multi-thousand-dollar "upgrades" to Microsoft products, or face a possible 7-figure lawsuit. They're evil.
Most of the time, if two people on IRC get to know and like each other, they'll make plans to meet/date/whatever. That is how they get it to work, usually -- they become friends on IRC, then they meet and become something more. There are people that try to have a meaningful relationship entirely on IRC or MU* (it usually involves some sort of role-playing, I've noticed), but I've also noticed that for many of them, it's never enough -- they want RL interaction, even if it's completely non-committal.
I've been through the whole "trying to fall in love over IRC" thing; the biggest lesson I learned is that, well, it doesn't work (not to mention that the girl's personality turned out to clash with mine very often, and that it was an LDR). I'm smarter for it now, even though it took a while to realise it.
Back when I first got online in 1995-1996, I was afraid to go anywhere near IRC or chat rooms of any sort -- I was paranoid about people that were "unclean" (long story), and was buying into the horror stories that were circulating about horny old men posing as attractive girls and such online. Eventually, I found my way to a channel about the show Animaniacs (well, nominally), and little by little, my fears disappeared.
You're right; you can meet some decent people online. You just have to keep your brain in gear and watch out for obvious trolls and such. IRC is good for getting to know people in the sense that you *have* to "talk" to communicate -- you can't judge them by their appearance (at least, not in the same way as RL) or their voice or anything else. And since you have to talk, deepness is pretty much enforced, assuming people like and trust each other enough to confide things (and assuming people care about each other for more than, say, netsex).
My first online dating experience started off fairly decently, but soured after a few months. It also had the dubious distinctions of being my first-ever serious attempt at a relationship, after years of having crushes on people (indeed, this one was influenced somewhat by a past crush), and of being my first long-distance relationship.
It started around May 1997. I was (and still am) a frequenter of the Usenet group alt.tv.animaniacs (having been a fan of that show basically since Day One), and also of the IRC channel #watertower, and had been for a few months at this point. I saw someone posting on the newsgroup, expressing a desire to get more involved in one of the fan documents. I eventually helped her out, and told her about #wt, and we became close friends. In early 1998, I started to take a liking to her, as it were, and things started clicking very quickly. By August, though, things were falling apart. Both of us were very immature and inexperienced about this sort of thing; I had begged my way into the relationship in the first place (on the false belief that someone female couldn't be special without being a SO), she expected me to be something I just wasn't, and also could be very manipulative and condescending at times. It came to a head when I came down for a weekend, and she said I couldn't stay at her house -- this was a problem because she lives near a resort town, it was a Friday night in the middle of August, and I didn't have any hotel reservations or the money to even get a room on such short notice. I ended up sleeping in my car, and going home the next day. I was reluctant to talk to her for a long while, but eventually got over that...as far as I know, we're still at least acquaintances, but she hasn't been on IRC in a while.
Now, I should note that I'm not very experienced about this; before I got to IRC, I was very paranoid about people I didn't know from HS or church. I'm only now shattering some myths and phobias I've long had about how talking to other people and having friends works. That said, though, there are cases where meeting online does work; some people from #wt have gotten together, with excellent results (one couple is now married).
As of right now, I'm not sure if anything will happen again; my situation at the moment is such that having a SO would be a drain on my time and resources (not to mention the fact that meeting online increases the chances of an LDR substantially), so I'm not really looking. I'm hoping that the next time, things will go more smoothly for me and the person I'm seeing -- whether it starts online or off.
If you'd actually read them, you'd see that it goes quite a bit further than just declaring that Microsoft is a monopoly. While it's by no means a final judgement, the wording of it strongly suggests that Judge Jackson believes that Microsoft did abuse their monopoly power, and that they may be in violation or the Sherman Act. Some of the relevant bits have been posted by others -- if you can't get to the real thing, at least read those.
Oh, I know, the ET4000s were great for raw speed (as were the Cirrus 542x chips, and their predecessors the AcuMOS AVGA2 and AVGA3). I'm sorry about grouping it together with the Trident (and Trident still sucks. sorry, personal grudge -- the 9680 is *not* a good XFree86 chip IME), but my point was that most cards in those days (fast, slow or otherwise) were frame-buffers.
Next, lets go after McDonald's for making their burgers too tasty to be fair, and for bundling their fries with said burgers.
The thing you miss here is that McDonald's, while it may not seem like it sometimes, has plenty of well-known competition (Burger King, Wendy's, KFC, Taco Bell, delivered pizzas, not to mention the regional chains, convenience stores, grocery stores, delis, the list goes on and on).
Microsoft doesn't have much competition in the eyes of Joe Best-Buy...all the computers come loaded with WinDuSemaine, the majority of mass-market software is Windows-only, and Microsoft has gone to great pains to keep it that way. Whenever someone tries to make a dent (by preloading, say, OS/2 or Linux, or by trying to give a non-Microsoft product equal or better showing on the desktop), Microsoft starts threatening to jack up the prices on copies of Windows (which, like it or not, is most places' bread and butter), or even threatening to pull OEM licenses -- which would spell trouble (at best, a very nasty stab wound; at worst, bankuptcy and/or cessation of business) for a lot of manufacturers. This sort of practice is what the trial is concerning; Microsoft can (and does) bully OEMs into doing things their way, and since they have such a lock on the market, not following them would be disastrous.
My brother is a Beta fan, and he's noted that Macrovision is keyed to the way VHS works (VHS and Beta encode video differently). Apparently, older VHS machines [roughly 1978-1985, though a few newer machines can do it] are immune to Macrovision as well.
If you're in the market for a Beta deck, Sony does still make them, but there's only one model available (at least, if you don't want to drop at least 4 figures on professional Betacam gear, which many TV stations and production houses use) and it's kinda bare-bones (I think it has Super Beta and hi-fi capability though). You may also want to check out the auction sites like eBay; older Beta and VHS gear sell there all the time. A few stores also still stock L-750 Beta tapes (in Manassas, Target is the place to find them, but of course, your mileage may vary).
VMware isn't really an emulator; it's a program that virtualises the processor you already have (something like the trick IBM VM does on System/3[79]0s, and also similar to what Win3.1/95/98 do to allow you to run DOS programs), so you can run another x86 OS inside the OS you already run. Those virtualisation tricks also (IIRC) add a good amount of overhead to the system, so it slows it down, but the hit is a lot less than actually running a software emulator (though actually, I think certain peripherals like the VGA may be emulated).
If you're looking for something that *does* run on non-PC hardware, you may want to check out Bochs, though like any software emulation, that's very slow unless your machine's own CPU is very fast. Also, the guy behind Bochs is also organising his own "freemware" project, which is basically a Open Source clone of VMware.
At least nobody's come up with the bright idea that "Hey, we can churn out winmodems for dirt cheap, why not try the same thing with graphics cards? So what's a few hundred lost cycles anyway?"
Actually, that's exactly how PC video cards started -- until the late 1980s, they were all fairly dumb frame-buffer cards with no onboard processing whatsoever. Before 1990 (and Windows 3.0), there were a few cards that used TI TMS340 processors, but those were mostly very expensive and meant for CAD use and such; most regular cards were generally all ISA-based VGA clones that *maybe* could do higher resolutions or 256 colors (raise your hand if you remember the Trident 8900 or the Tseng ET4000, or the Paradise PVGA1/Western Digital 90C00 for that matter). I believe S3's first integrated VGA/2D accelerator chips came out in 1990 or 1991, which brought prices down a lot (especially compared to the TMS340 boards). It's been a while since I saw any of this stuff, so I'm sure I made a few glitches...
If this is like most other IPsec accelerator chips I've seen, the chip just does the encryption and MAC, and doesn't make any suppositions about what the format of the packet is (which means that IPv6 support should be easy).
Look people: copying a movie is THEFT. George Lucas made the movie. The movie belongs to George Lucas. If George Lucas doesn't want the movie distributed on the internet, that is George Lucas's decision.
Technically, yes, it is Lucasfilm's decision to do it, and legally they are in the right on this. But a lot of people will do it, never get caught, and honestly will never care.
This is similar to what I see on the freeway on the way into work every day. The posted speed limit is 55 MPH, and you're supposed to obey the speed limit...but almost no one does. Usual cruising speed is 65-75 MPH, and not even the traffic cops care anymore unless you're doing around 90 or doing something truly reckless (like weaving across the road aimlessly). The thing is, while it may be illegal for everyone to do what they're doing (speeding 20 MPH over the limit is considered reckless driving in VA, I understand), the fact that everyone does it makes the rule nearly impossible to enforce in this case.
The same is true of warez/MP3/VCDs. It's illegal to make and pass them around, and the IP owners all wish that they could stop it (and lord knows they try), but the fact is, it's not going to go away. People, as a whole, like freedom and will pass these things around no matter what anyone else says.
I really hope that, in the rush to "protect our rights," that the IP police don't go too far and turn this into another War on Drugs. Again, it's not something you're supposed to condone, but maybe if the offended parties would just pay attention to the REAL cause (inflated, unfair prices being one of them, especially in the music area) instead of going around sniping at anyone who copies a CD or downloads MP3s, and perhaps lighten up about things like lyrics databases, then they'd get some cooperation.
This is because the biggest bottleneck isn't the WARP engine setup details, or anything chip-related, it's the fact that GLX (the OpenGL framework the G200/G400 and nvidia drivers use) relies on the X protocol, and moving that much info through sockets is gonna slow it down. I would not expect to see anything better than 10-20 fps on X at all until XFree86 4.0 and DRI are out later this year.
Despite the impressive pictures of the explosion, most of the "smoke" was water vapor. The crew of the Challenger were not killed in the explosion. The shuttle remained largely intact and only broke apart on impact of falling into the ocean. The crew were conscious until they hit the water.
I remember hearing about this much maybe a few days after it happened. So much for the coverup there.
I don't understand this. Why is BSD unix and Linux not?
I mean, if Linux is not unix, wtf is it then?
It's partially because of history, partially because of trademark law. BSD is a branch from the original AT&T source, at a point just after Version 7, so in that sense it could be considered "real Unix."
But in a technical, trademark sense, any OS can be considered UNIX(R) if it meets The Open Group's Single UNIX Specification (and you pay the $$$ to have the certification done); I understand that it doesn't even have to be based directly on SysV, and I also understand that at least one group was making a certified Linux distribution.
There's only 4 forks of BSD, and AFAIK no one else want to create another -- that's undue paranoia. Also, it's not like the GPL can *always* prevent forking; two of FSF's own projects (gcc and GNU emacs) have forked (egcs and XEmacs, though egcs was recently declared the "official" gcc).
-lee...never mind that Unix's own history tree looks like a Manhattan subway map...
Actually, Unix wasn't the centrepoint OS in the early days of the ARPANET. Most machines in those days were 'frames and PDP-10s and 11s running DEC's OSes. Unix and the ARPANET didn't really get crossed until 1982, when Berkeley introduced their TCP/IP stack code in 4.2BSD.
What I heard is that Windows NT is actually more VMSish than anything else. The guy responsible for most of the design of NT was ex-DEC, and one of the original VMS programmers.
-lee...oh, and Microsoft didn't write Xenix, they paid SCO to do it. PS: VMS + 1 = WNT.
Slashdot Mirror
I remember when I got my start online, in late 1992 (yes, I was a bit late to the party, but I did already know about the Internet, so I was at least a little prepared for the future). First board I used was one in Alexandria, VA, and originally, I hit the BBSes to look for files (especially since Prodigy, which I used for a few months in 1993, didn't have *any* file areas). Later on, I moved on to message boards (I miss RIME and Fido), and for a while I was getting Internet mail at home through one of the Fido boards I called.
All this started disappearing in 1995-1996; the board I was getting email through closed down in December 1995, and still others closed throughout 1996. There used to be a list of local BBSes for my area (prince william co., VA), but I have no idea where it went; I just found Mike Focke's list (updated 2/1999), and there were about 72 active BBses left in the entire DC metro area at the time.
It's good to see that some boards (like the ufies board) still exist, though.
-lee
I was impressed that the CD kept playing, even after the BSOD.
That's because almost all CD-ROM drives have standalone audio CD player hardware in them. It's not like MP3, where the host CPU has to be alive to get a sound -- the CD player does all the work.
-lee
The problem comes in when you're as big and mean (read the findings of fact!) as Microsoft or the record companies. It's not about the little guy anymore. I figure piracy doesn't hurt a megalith like M$ nearly as much as, say, its stock losing 25% of its value, no matter what they say (keep in mind that most of Microsoft's employees have stock options); as a matter of fact, it keeps Microsoft in clover because the unlicensed copies sell licenses for other copies, generally by either word of mouth or skittishness on someone's part. The fact that Microsoft's products are (generally) highly proprietary and of mediocre structural integrity doesn't help, either. And the record companies try to keep their subjects at bay by slapping excise taxes on blank media, suing people (even the artists themselves!) that try to distribute work their artists recorded in a way Mr. Executive doesn't like, screwing artists on royalties, and trying their best to eliminate MP3. Also, the stuff they put out isn't that great; most CDs in the past few years have at most 2 or 3 good songs on them, the rest is filler, and since singles aren't common anymore, you generally have to get all of it and pay through the nose for it.
To sum up:
-lee
PS: The BSA has a reputation of being in Microsoft's pocket. I've seen horror stories of BSA making people with any unlicensed software do multi-thousand-dollar "upgrades" to Microsoft products, or face a possible 7-figure lawsuit. They're evil.
Most of the time, if two people on IRC get to know and like each other, they'll make plans to meet/date/whatever. That is how they get it to work, usually -- they become friends on IRC, then they meet and become something more. There are people that try to have a meaningful relationship entirely on IRC or MU* (it usually involves some sort of role-playing, I've noticed), but I've also noticed that for many of them, it's never enough -- they want RL interaction, even if it's completely non-committal.
I've been through the whole "trying to fall in love over IRC" thing; the biggest lesson I learned is that, well, it doesn't work (not to mention that the girl's personality turned out to clash with mine very often, and that it was an LDR). I'm smarter for it now, even though it took a while to realise it.
-lee
Back when I first got online in 1995-1996, I was afraid to go anywhere near IRC or chat rooms of any sort -- I was paranoid about people that were "unclean" (long story), and was buying into the horror stories that were circulating about horny old men posing as attractive girls and such online. Eventually, I found my way to a channel about the show Animaniacs (well, nominally), and little by little, my fears disappeared.
You're right; you can meet some decent people online. You just have to keep your brain in gear and watch out for obvious trolls and such. IRC is good for getting to know people in the sense that you *have* to "talk" to communicate -- you can't judge them by their appearance (at least, not in the same way as RL) or their voice or anything else. And since you have to talk, deepness is pretty much enforced, assuming people like and trust each other enough to confide things (and assuming people care about each other for more than, say, netsex).
-lee
My first online dating experience started off fairly decently, but soured after a few months. It also had the dubious distinctions of being my first-ever serious attempt at a relationship, after years of having crushes on people (indeed, this one was influenced somewhat by a past crush), and of being my first long-distance relationship.
It started around May 1997. I was (and still am) a frequenter of the Usenet group alt.tv.animaniacs (having been a fan of that show basically since Day One), and also of the IRC channel #watertower, and had been for a few months at this point. I saw someone posting on the newsgroup, expressing a desire to get more involved in one of the fan documents. I eventually helped her out, and told her about #wt, and we became close friends. In early 1998, I started to take a liking to her, as it were, and things started clicking very quickly. By August, though, things were falling apart. Both of us were very immature and inexperienced about this sort of thing; I had begged my way into the relationship in the first place (on the false belief that someone female couldn't be special without being a SO), she expected me to be something I just wasn't, and also could be very manipulative and condescending at times. It came to a head when I came down for a weekend, and she said I couldn't stay at her house -- this was a problem because she lives near a resort town, it was a Friday night in the middle of August, and I didn't have any hotel reservations or the money to even get a room on such short notice. I ended up sleeping in my car, and going home the next day. I was reluctant to talk to her for a long while, but eventually got over that...as far as I know, we're still at least acquaintances, but she hasn't been on IRC in a while.
Now, I should note that I'm not very experienced about this; before I got to IRC, I was very paranoid about people I didn't know from HS or church. I'm only now shattering some myths and phobias I've long had about how talking to other people and having friends works. That said, though, there are cases where meeting online does work; some people from #wt have gotten together, with excellent results (one couple is now married).
As of right now, I'm not sure if anything will happen again; my situation at the moment is such that having a SO would be a drain on my time and resources (not to mention the fact that meeting online increases the chances of an LDR substantially), so I'm not really looking. I'm hoping that the next time, things will go more smoothly for me and the person I'm seeing -- whether it starts online or off.
-lee
If you'd actually read them, you'd see that it goes quite a bit further than just declaring that Microsoft is a monopoly. While it's by no means a final judgement, the wording of it strongly suggests that Judge Jackson believes that Microsoft did abuse their monopoly power, and that they may be in violation or the Sherman Act. Some of the relevant bits have been posted by others -- if you can't get to the real thing, at least read those.
-lee
Oh, I know, the ET4000s were great for raw speed (as were the Cirrus 542x chips, and their predecessors the AcuMOS AVGA2 and AVGA3). I'm sorry about grouping it together with the Trident (and Trident still sucks. sorry, personal grudge -- the 9680 is *not* a good XFree86 chip IME), but my point was that most cards in those days (fast, slow or otherwise) were frame-buffers.
-lee
Next, lets go after McDonald's for making their burgers too tasty to be fair, and for bundling their fries with said burgers.
The thing you miss here is that McDonald's, while it may not seem like it sometimes, has plenty of well-known competition (Burger King, Wendy's, KFC, Taco Bell, delivered pizzas, not to mention the regional chains, convenience stores, grocery stores, delis, the list goes on and on).
Microsoft doesn't have much competition in the eyes of Joe Best-Buy...all the computers come loaded with WinDuSemaine, the majority of mass-market software is Windows-only, and Microsoft has gone to great pains to keep it that way. Whenever someone tries to make a dent (by preloading, say, OS/2 or Linux, or by trying to give a non-Microsoft product equal or better showing on the desktop), Microsoft starts threatening to jack up the prices on copies of Windows (which, like it or not, is most places' bread and butter), or even threatening to pull OEM licenses -- which would spell trouble (at best, a very nasty stab wound; at worst, bankuptcy and/or cessation of business) for a lot of manufacturers. This sort of practice is what the trial is concerning; Microsoft can (and does) bully OEMs into doing things their way, and since they have such a lock on the market, not following them would be disastrous.
-lee
My brother is a Beta fan, and he's noted that Macrovision is keyed to the way VHS works (VHS and Beta encode video differently). Apparently, older VHS machines [roughly 1978-1985, though a few newer machines can do it] are immune to Macrovision as well.
If you're in the market for a Beta deck, Sony does still make them, but there's only one model available (at least, if you don't want to drop at least 4 figures on professional Betacam gear, which many TV stations and production houses use) and it's kinda bare-bones (I think it has Super Beta and hi-fi capability though). You may also want to check out the auction sites like eBay; older Beta and VHS gear sell there all the time. A few stores also still stock L-750 Beta tapes (in Manassas, Target is the place to find them, but of course, your mileage may vary).
-lee
VMware isn't really an emulator; it's a program that virtualises the processor you already have (something like the trick IBM VM does on System/3[79]0s, and also similar to what Win3.1/95/98 do to allow you to run DOS programs), so you can run another x86 OS inside the OS you already run. Those virtualisation tricks also (IIRC) add a good amount of overhead to the system, so it slows it down, but the hit is a lot less than actually running a software emulator (though actually, I think certain peripherals like the VGA may be emulated).
If you're looking for something that *does* run on non-PC hardware, you may want to check out Bochs, though like any software emulation, that's very slow unless your machine's own CPU is very fast. Also, the guy behind Bochs is also organising his own "freemware" project, which is basically a Open Source clone of VMware.
-lee
At least nobody's come up with the bright idea that "Hey, we can churn out winmodems for dirt cheap, why not try the same thing with graphics cards? So what's a few hundred lost cycles anyway?"
Actually, that's exactly how PC video cards started -- until the late 1980s, they were all fairly dumb frame-buffer cards with no onboard processing whatsoever. Before 1990 (and Windows 3.0), there were a few cards that used TI TMS340 processors, but those were mostly very expensive and meant for CAD use and such; most regular cards were generally all ISA-based VGA clones that *maybe* could do higher resolutions or 256 colors (raise your hand if you remember the Trident 8900 or the Tseng ET4000, or the Paradise PVGA1/Western Digital 90C00 for that matter). I believe S3's first integrated VGA/2D accelerator chips came out in 1990 or 1991, which brought prices down a lot (especially compared to the TMS340 boards). It's been a while since I saw any of this stuff, so I'm sure I made a few glitches...
"holy smoke!"
-lee
If this is like most other IPsec accelerator chips I've seen, the chip just does the encryption and MAC, and doesn't make any suppositions about what the format of the packet is (which means that IPv6 support should be easy).
-lee
I think they mean "integral" as in "it's inside the cartridge somewhere", not "it's on the die".
-lee
Toward the end of the article, he mentions that he works for an E-commerce company now. Did you see that part?
-lee
Never mind that those would be Intel's anyway. :) (they're pulled directly from their manuals, and they go back as far as the 80286).
-lee
Look people: copying a movie is THEFT. George Lucas made the movie. The movie belongs to George Lucas. If George Lucas doesn't want the movie distributed on the internet, that is George Lucas's decision.
Technically, yes, it is Lucasfilm's decision to do it, and legally they are in the right on this. But a lot of people will do it, never get caught, and honestly will never care.
This is similar to what I see on the freeway on the way into work every day. The posted speed limit is 55 MPH, and you're supposed to obey the speed limit...but almost no one does. Usual cruising speed is 65-75 MPH, and not even the traffic cops care anymore unless you're doing around 90 or doing something truly reckless (like weaving across the road aimlessly). The thing is, while it may be illegal for everyone to do what they're doing (speeding 20 MPH over the limit is considered reckless driving in VA, I understand), the fact that everyone does it makes the rule nearly impossible to enforce in this case.
The same is true of warez/MP3/VCDs. It's illegal to make and pass them around, and the IP owners all wish that they could stop it (and lord knows they try), but the fact is, it's not going to go away. People, as a whole, like freedom and will pass these things around no matter what anyone else says.
I really hope that, in the rush to "protect our rights," that the IP police don't go too far and turn this into another War on Drugs. Again, it's not something you're supposed to condone, but maybe if the offended parties would just pay attention to the REAL cause (inflated, unfair prices being one of them, especially in the music area) instead of going around sniping at anyone who copies a CD or downloads MP3s, and perhaps lighten up about things like lyrics databases, then they'd get some cooperation.
-lee
And the new mayor (Williams) is actually (at least) trying to make things better there.
-lee...though the city was so fucked when he got that that it'll take a while.
This is because the biggest bottleneck isn't the WARP engine setup details, or anything chip-related, it's the fact that GLX (the OpenGL framework the G200/G400 and nvidia drivers use) relies on the X protocol, and moving that much info through sockets is gonna slow it down. I would not expect to see anything better than 10-20 fps on X at all until XFree86 4.0 and DRI are out later this year.
-lee
Despite the impressive pictures of the explosion, most of the "smoke" was water vapor. The crew of the Challenger were not killed in the explosion. The shuttle remained largely intact and only broke apart on impact of falling into the ocean. The crew were conscious until they hit the water.
I remember hearing about this much maybe a few days after it happened. So much for the coverup there.
-lee
I don't understand this. Why is BSD unix and Linux not?
I mean, if Linux is not unix, wtf is it then?
It's partially because of history, partially because of trademark law. BSD is a branch from the original AT&T source, at a point just after Version 7, so in that sense it could be considered "real Unix."
But in a technical, trademark sense, any OS can be considered UNIX(R) if it meets The Open Group's Single UNIX Specification (and you pay the $$$ to have the certification done); I understand that it doesn't even have to be based directly on SysV, and I also understand that at least one group was making a certified Linux distribution.
-lee
There's only 4 forks of BSD, and AFAIK no one else want to create another -- that's undue paranoia. Also, it's not like the GPL can *always* prevent forking; two of FSF's own projects (gcc and GNU emacs) have forked (egcs and XEmacs, though egcs was recently declared the "official" gcc).
-lee...never mind that Unix's own history tree looks like a Manhattan subway map...
Actually, Unix wasn't the centrepoint OS in the early days of the ARPANET. Most machines in those days were 'frames and PDP-10s and 11s running DEC's OSes. Unix and the ARPANET didn't really get crossed until 1982, when Berkeley introduced their TCP/IP stack code in 4.2BSD.
-lee
What I heard is that Windows NT is actually more VMSish than anything else. The guy responsible for most of the design of NT was ex-DEC, and one of the original VMS programmers.
-lee...oh, and Microsoft didn't write Xenix, they paid SCO to do it. PS: VMS + 1 = WNT.