There's an ad in the latest Embedded Linux Journal for a company called Aspen Systems (1-800-992-9242) advertising Beowulf clusters. Thtat's about the sum total of all I know about them;).
It will be a DragonBall processor, not a StrongARM, if that's what you're looking for. But really, does it matter what kind of processor is in your handheld? As long as it has good battery life and runs all the important PalmOS software, who cares?
That's a nice idea, but as much as we'd like to do it, it's basically impossible to compare perforance of two distinct processors with one catch-all number. Microprocessors accomplish many different tasks, and each task has its own optimal set of requirements. Some operations can be well-tailored to take full advantage of a vector processing engine like Altivec on the G4, whereas others require brute-forcing integer arithmetic at high clock speeds that the P4 does best. All of this means that categorizing a processor's "speed" with one number is next to impossible for the wide range of tasks that computers are expected to accomplish.
Additionally the processor speed is only one factor in the overall speed of the computer. Other componets in the system are just as important, as is the quality of the software that's being used. If the software isn't optimized to take full advantage of the hardware then all hardware benchmarks are useless to the end user.
Because of these problems of using standardized benchmark numbers to compare processors and computer systems, bechmarks should only be used at an application level. It has been said for years that one should buy a computer based on the software they need to use, and I believe that this logic is applicable in comparing processors as well. To benchmark two computers, take an particularly power-hungry application that you will often use, and compare the application speed on the two systems. If one computer runs the applications you require at a faster speed than another computer then your decision is made, and all other numerical benchmarks are useless.
The fact of the matter is that computers are very complex. It's easy to "benchmark" the performance of a car because it only has to perform one task: drive. Computers on the other hand don't have the luxury of single-task devices, and as a result any attempt to compare dissimilar computers with a single becnhmark are doomed to failure.
While many people criticize Apple for their Photoshop (and more recently, MPEG-encoding) benchmarks, this is ultimately the right way to approach the problem. If I am a professional graphic artists who's job it is to deal with high-resolution digital video and compression CODECs on a regular basis, I should choose the computer system that best completes these tasks. And while the G4 is inferior to a Pentium-4 at nearly three times the clock speed at some tasks, it does not mean that the G4 is inferior at all tasks. Apple's recent benchmarks are completely applicable to their target market of graphics and video professionals, and the chips they are using are ideally designed for that very market. If you believe that a G4 is not comparable to a Pentium-4, this is most likely because the Pentium-4 is superior in performing the tasks that you need. This does not mean however, that the G4 is an inferior chip.
I completed a degree in Electrical Engineering a few years ago and my emphasis in fourth-year was on microprocessor design. During my time at Univeristly I met people who are considerably smarter and more educated in microprocessor design than anybody I have ever read on slashdot or anywhere else online, and yet even these people have a difficult time comparing dissimilar processors. If you believe that you can compare processors with one single catch-all benchmark, you are sadly mistaken.
Actually regular email is really nothing like a postcard. Posting to a web-board is more like a postcard: anybody who happens by can choose to read it without any other barriers to overcome. Regular email is insecure, true, but in order to "intercept" an email message a person would need to be between mail servers and use some kind of ethernet packet scanner. While this is fairly easy to do for someone who's computer and network literate, it still requires some work. This would be comparable to the real-world example of taking the time to intercept an envelope and open it in order to read it.
Encryption, on the other hand, doesn't really have a feasible real-world parallel, but if I had to create one I would say it's akin to sending your postcard inside of a gigantic steel safe and shipping by courier. Anybody who would want to read your message could, but it would require considerable time and effort to crack the safe.
Now I'm not proposing that all safes, er, encryption, should have government back doors, but an envelope is the wrong metaphore to use. Arguing by metaphore is a bad idea in most cases, as a metaphore will never exactly describe the situation for which it is applied, leaving holes in the argument. Still, I believe that this particular comparison to envelopes is intentionally deceptive, and it brings questions to the rest of the arguments posted above. If we're to argue about the legalities of encryption, let's try to stick to the honest facts.
- j
Re:How to manage popup windows in the new Mozilla
on
Mozilla 0.9.4 Released
·
· Score: 3
I've put in my vote. Still, it's remarkable that people would even consider this a "feature" when you have to edit obscure configuration files to make it work. I've been a Linux user since 1995, but I think this is a good example of the major reason I've now switched to Mac OS X: Apple wouldn't dream of making a feature that didn't have a UI interface whereas with Linux it's the norm.
Apart from Linux, I've been using UNIX for over 15 years and quite frankly I'm done with text files. I've put all 10 of my votes for Mozilla bugs into UI bugs because in 2001 I shouldn't have to be editing text files if I don't want to. It's amazing that these features have been in Mozilla for months but still don't have even a rudimentary graphical interface.
On the topic of pop-ups, I've read through the page you cited, but I still have one more question: does Mozilla have the ability to enable pop-ups only from clicking on a link? Disabling pop-ups entirely is irritating as many genuinly useful sites use pop-ups when a link is clicked. It seems that the Mozilla solution is to add each legitimate site by hand; hardly an optimal solution.
Yes, in a relative sense. If a device (RAM or a bus) has "high latency" it can take many clock ticks to send a piece of data. This isn't too much of a big deal if you have a large burst (say a DMA transfer) as the latency is only a small fraction of the data transfer time, but if you have many small packets of data, or many different devices sending data at the same time (switching between them for instance) then the latency can really start to add up. These latencies will severely affect your throughput in non-burst conditions.
And most people that are going to buy a car have already bought those too, but I'd hardly say that market is saturated.
You would be wrong in that assumption: it's the very definition of the phrase "saturated market." No offense, but have you ever taken a business course in your life?
- j
USB 2.0 transfer rates
on
USB 2.0 For Linux
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
With a transfer rate of 480mbps (more than firewire's 400mbps) it seems promising
Let me guess: you also buy processors based soley on the megahertz rating. If you seriously believe that the "480mb/s" rating of USB 2.0 (chosen only because it appears on paper to be faster than FireWire), then I have a bridge to sell you.
USB was meant to be a replacement for serial ports; for low-speed devices that could tolerate high-latencies, like keyboards and mice. It was never meant for devices like digital camcoders; that's FireWire's specialty. USB 2.0 is a hack. A wide adoption of USB 2.0 over FireWire would be a very bad thing. Thankfully FireWire 2.0 will reach very close to real and sustainable speeds of 800mb/s, cleanly beating even the highly exaggerated speeds of USB 2.0.
People that buy on "specs" really piss me off. Learn something about the underlying technology before you go making rampant generalizations.
- j
Re:Implications for alpha?
on
HP Buys Compaq
·
· Score: 2
There's potential for MIPS too: there are lots of vendors bring out some very impressive 64-bit MIPS processors. PMC-Sierra has their new RM9000x2, SiByte has something similar and NEC has some 64-bit offerings as well. Granted all of these chips are targeted at the telecom/datacom market but the technology could be adapted for use in servers if necessary. Still, it is sad to see the Alpha go.
- j
Re:Interesting...
on
HP Buys Compaq
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
When it comes to marketing a product the main goal is to differentiate your product from your competitors. In the case of PC manufacturers, this is extremely difficult, as there's a lot of competition and everybody uses the same standard parts. Tech support, bundled software and brandname works to differentiate between "mom & pop" assembled computers but between "big-name" manufacturers there really isn't much difference (i.e. as you mentioned, Gateway is pretty much screwed). Interestingly enough this article singled out Apple as the only company that can truly differentiate themselves from the pack.
As we all know, the PC market is quite saturated. Most people who are going to buy a PC have bought one and PC manufacturers are now almostly completely reliant on upgrades to existing computers to drive sales. In this kind of a market differentiation is going to be important; the question is, how are they going to do it? Since Microsoft really isn't going anywhere it's quite likely that it'll be in the form of proprietary hardware. While a manufacturer can get a better volume discount on generic parts, gross margins on more custom hardware are much higher. witness the 20%+ margins of laptops compared to the razor thin margins of desktop PCs.
Compaq has already started on this trend with some of thier iPaq line and I think we'll see more of this in the future. In the current industry climate the small guys (like Gateway) aren't going to last long and it seems that mergers are the key to success. With only a few "big name" PC vendors out there it will be a lot easier to push proprietary hardware than it was in the days of the PS/2.
As long as "standard" hardware can still be purchases then it won't affect the geeks much, but let's just hope that standard PC hardware is still supported at large. I'd hate to see the latest and greatest hard drives, RAM or video cards only supporting IBM or HP motherboards. Mergers the size of this one bring us a lot closer to the possibility of a much more closed PC market.
802.11 Transmitter/Receivers are far too expensive and power-hungry for devices like Palms and cell phones. 802.11 doesn't really fit in these devices without significantly increasing the cost and severely decreasing the battery life. That's why Bluetooth is designed the way it is.
Well that's a rediculous comparison. First of all the iBook is smaller and lighter, and size is one of the most expensive aspects of buying a laptop. Second of all the Celeron is a bad enough chip in desktops, but a mobile Celeron is a piece of garbage. You have to at least compare to a mobile Pentium III 700.
..but whatever. If you're buying 100% on price then you don't buy a Mac (or a BMW), same as always. The iBook is still fiercely competitive however.
I imagine cocaine would probably make someone a better chess player. Some of the effects include increased alertness, wakefulness, clearer thinking, increased concentration and increased energy. I'm sure there are other drugs that would give similar benefits.
Agreed. The first few first-person shooters were impressive but since "Quake" there have been only a few that actually progressed the genre. I refuse to believe that there were that many genuinly good FPS games in the past few years.
One glaring omission (unless I missed it somewhere) was the lack of a single Sierra *Quest game. Sure King's Quest got pretty silly when it became all point-and-click but King's Quest I was a great game for it's time, King's Quest III was really well done, and the Space Quest series was really clever. At least one of these deserves to be on the top 50 games of all time. It's good to see they remembered Star Control II though.;)
Well this program 'only' puts a yellow underline under certain keywords in the text. That's not really "altering" the content as the content is exactly the same (albeit with little yellow underlines). I think you'd have a tough time arguing against this on copyright grounds.
I saw the "special report" on CNN this morning. Pretty standard stuff for a non-technical news show but what was funny (or disturbing, depending on your take) was when the "technology expert" said that "a simple re-boot" would solve the problem in the near-term. He went on to say that regular reboots (on your servers) are a "good idea," as it's like "cleansing your system." The host agreed and said she solveds all her computer problems with a reboot:).
They took a while to explain that only Windows NT/2000 are at risk while Windows 98/Me are not. No mention of any other alternatives besides Windows of course (I guess that's too much to ask:). Of course what I can't believe is that they're still talking about this! Are there that many admins that still haven't patched this?
I don't want to get this thread too off topic but the practise of extension-hiding has come up recently on a lot of Mac boards. Apparently Apple's MacOS 10.1 (due in September) has an option to turn off filename extensions. Why they're doing this I don't know (it has cause so many problems in the Windows world) but if anybody here is all concerned about this you may want to send Apple some feedback.
I don't mean to be rude, but maybe they don't care about the "home prototype builder." I mean really, if you can't spend $40k on a proper station or send out your parts to be assembled by a contract house, then how many chips are you going to buy? 1? 5? 20? That's nothing. What these people would care about is selling in volumes of 100k/year to a company that makes embedded systems.
Additionally, when you start to get a very large number of components on a chip you're going to have a lot of pinouts and that just isn't cost-feasible in a PQFP package. BGAs are designed for large die and a large number of pins, that's why they're used. I work at a semiconductor company that's making a big move into SOC and from my experience every major company I've talked to wants BGAs for these types of parts. The only people who want PQFPs are those who aren't going to buy in very large volumes and it just isn't worth putting the chip in a whole other package for these people. Not to mention the fact that a 600-pin PQFP just isn't possible no matter who's asking for it.
It's unfortunate that the home prototype builders can't build their own boards at home anymore but that's just the way the industry is going. You can't blame this company for making their part available in only a BGA: it's just not possible to keep PQFPs around anymore for both economic and technical reasons.
I've been on the EFNet since 1991 (#iCE and #ANSi back in the day;) and it's been a shame to see it steadily decline in the last few years. I used to frequent it all the time but about three years ago it just started getting ridiculous: netplits all the time, lamers taking over the channels, and very difficult to have any decent conversation. It used to be fun to have it on in the background at work but now it's just not worth it.
This year has definitely been the worst however. I've seen every single channel I've ever frequented move to other networks. #iCE was the last to go (they're very nostalgic) and while they've tried to keep a relay bot up on EFNet to keep the conversation on both servers it just isn't working: EFNet has officially gone to hell.
I hate to see it go. Now I can't find any two interesting channels on the same network and everybody I used to talk to is fragmented on different nets. It's really too bad that a few immature individuals can ruin it for the rest of us.
Slashdot Mirror
There's an ad in the latest Embedded Linux Journal for a company called Aspen Systems (1-800-992-9242) advertising Beowulf clusters. Thtat's about the sum total of all I know about them ;).
- j
If you had ever taken a statistics course you'd know that 94% of all statistics are useless ;).
- j
Taco keeps mentions that he wants ".dot" as well; I'm surprised there wasn't another stupid comment attached to this story.
Still, it would be pretty funny to have http:(slash)(slash)slashdot(dot)dot.
- j
It will be a DragonBall processor, not a StrongARM, if that's what you're looking for. But really, does it matter what kind of processor is in your handheld? As long as it has good battery life and runs all the important PalmOS software, who cares?
- j
That's a nice idea, but as much as we'd like to do it, it's basically impossible to compare perforance of two distinct processors with one catch-all number. Microprocessors accomplish many different tasks, and each task has its own optimal set of requirements. Some operations can be well-tailored to take full advantage of a vector processing engine like Altivec on the G4, whereas others require brute-forcing integer arithmetic at high clock speeds that the P4 does best. All of this means that categorizing a processor's "speed" with one number is next to impossible for the wide range of tasks that computers are expected to accomplish.
Additionally the processor speed is only one factor in the overall speed of the computer. Other componets in the system are just as important, as is the quality of the software that's being used. If the software isn't optimized to take full advantage of the hardware then all hardware benchmarks are useless to the end user.
Because of these problems of using standardized benchmark numbers to compare processors and computer systems, bechmarks should only be used at an application level. It has been said for years that one should buy a computer based on the software they need to use, and I believe that this logic is applicable in comparing processors as well. To benchmark two computers, take an particularly power-hungry application that you will often use, and compare the application speed on the two systems. If one computer runs the applications you require at a faster speed than another computer then your decision is made, and all other numerical benchmarks are useless.
The fact of the matter is that computers are very complex. It's easy to "benchmark" the performance of a car because it only has to perform one task: drive. Computers on the other hand don't have the luxury of single-task devices, and as a result any attempt to compare dissimilar computers with a single becnhmark are doomed to failure.
While many people criticize Apple for their Photoshop (and more recently, MPEG-encoding) benchmarks, this is ultimately the right way to approach the problem. If I am a professional graphic artists who's job it is to deal with high-resolution digital video and compression CODECs on a regular basis, I should choose the computer system that best completes these tasks. And while the G4 is inferior to a Pentium-4 at nearly three times the clock speed at some tasks, it does not mean that the G4 is inferior at all tasks. Apple's recent benchmarks are completely applicable to their target market of graphics and video professionals, and the chips they are using are ideally designed for that very market. If you believe that a G4 is not comparable to a Pentium-4, this is most likely because the Pentium-4 is superior in performing the tasks that you need. This does not mean however, that the G4 is an inferior chip.
I completed a degree in Electrical Engineering a few years ago and my emphasis in fourth-year was on microprocessor design. During my time at Univeristly I met people who are considerably smarter and more educated in microprocessor design than anybody I have ever read on slashdot or anywhere else online, and yet even these people have a difficult time comparing dissimilar processors. If you believe that you can compare processors with one single catch-all benchmark, you are sadly mistaken.
- j
Actually regular email is really nothing like a postcard. Posting to a web-board is more like a postcard: anybody who happens by can choose to read it without any other barriers to overcome. Regular email is insecure, true, but in order to "intercept" an email message a person would need to be between mail servers and use some kind of ethernet packet scanner. While this is fairly easy to do for someone who's computer and network literate, it still requires some work. This would be comparable to the real-world example of taking the time to intercept an envelope and open it in order to read it.
Encryption, on the other hand, doesn't really have a feasible real-world parallel, but if I had to create one I would say it's akin to sending your postcard inside of a gigantic steel safe and shipping by courier. Anybody who would want to read your message could, but it would require considerable time and effort to crack the safe.
Now I'm not proposing that all safes, er, encryption, should have government back doors, but an envelope is the wrong metaphore to use. Arguing by metaphore is a bad idea in most cases, as a metaphore will never exactly describe the situation for which it is applied, leaving holes in the argument. Still, I believe that this particular comparison to envelopes is intentionally deceptive, and it brings questions to the rest of the arguments posted above. If we're to argue about the legalities of encryption, let's try to stick to the honest facts.
- j
I've put in my vote. Still, it's remarkable that people would even consider this a "feature" when you have to edit obscure configuration files to make it work. I've been a Linux user since 1995, but I think this is a good example of the major reason I've now switched to Mac OS X: Apple wouldn't dream of making a feature that didn't have a UI interface whereas with Linux it's the norm.
Apart from Linux, I've been using UNIX for over 15 years and quite frankly I'm done with text files. I've put all 10 of my votes for Mozilla bugs into UI bugs because in 2001 I shouldn't have to be editing text files if I don't want to. It's amazing that these features have been in Mozilla for months but still don't have even a rudimentary graphical interface.
- j
On the topic of pop-ups, I've read through the page you cited, but I still have one more question: does Mozilla have the ability to enable pop-ups only from clicking on a link? Disabling pop-ups entirely is irritating as many genuinly useful sites use pop-ups when a link is clicked. It seems that the Mozilla solution is to add each legitimate site by hand; hardly an optimal solution.
FWIW, OmniWeb has this feature.
- j
Yes, in a relative sense. If a device (RAM or a bus) has "high latency" it can take many clock ticks to send a piece of data. This isn't too much of a big deal if you have a large burst (say a DMA transfer) as the latency is only a small fraction of the data transfer time, but if you have many small packets of data, or many different devices sending data at the same time (switching between them for instance) then the latency can really start to add up. These latencies will severely affect your throughput in non-burst conditions.
- j
Along the same lines, has anybody ever seen software that will sync a cellphone to a Mac? It will definitely influence my next cellphone purchase.
- j
And most people that are going to buy a car have already bought those too, but I'd hardly say that market is saturated.
You would be wrong in that assumption: it's the very definition of the phrase "saturated market." No offense, but have you ever taken a business course in your life?
- j
With a transfer rate of 480mbps (more than firewire's 400mbps) it seems promising
Let me guess: you also buy processors based soley on the megahertz rating. If you seriously believe that the "480mb/s" rating of USB 2.0 (chosen only because it appears on paper to be faster than FireWire), then I have a bridge to sell you.
USB was meant to be a replacement for serial ports; for low-speed devices that could tolerate high-latencies, like keyboards and mice. It was never meant for devices like digital camcoders; that's FireWire's specialty. USB 2.0 is a hack. A wide adoption of USB 2.0 over FireWire would be a very bad thing. Thankfully FireWire 2.0 will reach very close to real and sustainable speeds of 800mb/s, cleanly beating even the highly exaggerated speeds of USB 2.0.
People that buy on "specs" really piss me off. Learn something about the underlying technology before you go making rampant generalizations.
- j
There's potential for MIPS too: there are lots of vendors bring out some very impressive 64-bit MIPS processors. PMC-Sierra has their new RM9000x2, SiByte has something similar and NEC has some 64-bit offerings as well. Granted all of these chips are targeted at the telecom/datacom market but the technology could be adapted for use in servers if necessary. Still, it is sad to see the Alpha go.
- j
When it comes to marketing a product the main goal is to differentiate your product from your competitors. In the case of PC manufacturers, this is extremely difficult, as there's a lot of competition and everybody uses the same standard parts. Tech support, bundled software and brandname works to differentiate between "mom & pop" assembled computers but between "big-name" manufacturers there really isn't much difference (i.e. as you mentioned, Gateway is pretty much screwed). Interestingly enough this article singled out Apple as the only company that can truly differentiate themselves from the pack.
As we all know, the PC market is quite saturated. Most people who are going to buy a PC have bought one and PC manufacturers are now almostly completely reliant on upgrades to existing computers to drive sales. In this kind of a market differentiation is going to be important; the question is, how are they going to do it? Since Microsoft really isn't going anywhere it's quite likely that it'll be in the form of proprietary hardware. While a manufacturer can get a better volume discount on generic parts, gross margins on more custom hardware are much higher. witness the 20%+ margins of laptops compared to the razor thin margins of desktop PCs.
Compaq has already started on this trend with some of thier iPaq line and I think we'll see more of this in the future. In the current industry climate the small guys (like Gateway) aren't going to last long and it seems that mergers are the key to success. With only a few "big name" PC vendors out there it will be a lot easier to push proprietary hardware than it was in the days of the PS/2.
As long as "standard" hardware can still be purchases then it won't affect the geeks much, but let's just hope that standard PC hardware is still supported at large. I'd hate to see the latest and greatest hard drives, RAM or video cards only supporting IBM or HP motherboards. Mergers the size of this one bring us a lot closer to the possibility of a much more closed PC market.
- j
802.11 Transmitter/Receivers are far too expensive and power-hungry for devices like Palms and cell phones. 802.11 doesn't really fit in these devices without significantly increasing the cost and severely decreasing the battery life. That's why Bluetooth is designed the way it is.
- j
Well that's a rediculous comparison. First of all the iBook is smaller and lighter, and size is one of the most expensive aspects of buying a laptop. Second of all the Celeron is a bad enough chip in desktops, but a mobile Celeron is a piece of garbage. You have to at least compare to a mobile Pentium III 700.
..but whatever. If you're buying 100% on price then you don't buy a Mac (or a BMW), same as always. The iBook is still fiercely competitive however.
- j
Not sure why they wouldn't try for a desktop pc solution...?
Power, efficiency & scalability. Embedded systems are far more complex than just a PC in a little box.
I imagine cocaine would probably make someone a better chess player. Some of the effects include increased alertness, wakefulness, clearer thinking, increased concentration and increased energy. I'm sure there are other drugs that would give similar benefits.
- j
Agreed. The first few first-person shooters were impressive but since "Quake" there have been only a few that actually progressed the genre. I refuse to believe that there were that many genuinly good FPS games in the past few years.
One glaring omission (unless I missed it somewhere) was the lack of a single Sierra *Quest game. Sure King's Quest got pretty silly when it became all point-and-click but King's Quest I was a great game for it's time, King's Quest III was really well done, and the Space Quest series was really clever. At least one of these deserves to be on the top 50 games of all time. It's good to see they remembered Star Control II though. ;)
- j
Well this program 'only' puts a yellow underline under certain keywords in the text. That's not really "altering" the content as the content is exactly the same (albeit with little yellow underlines). I think you'd have a tough time arguing against this on copyright grounds.
- j
I saw the "special report" on CNN this morning. Pretty standard stuff for a non-technical news show but what was funny (or disturbing, depending on your take) was when the "technology expert" said that "a simple re-boot" would solve the problem in the near-term. He went on to say that regular reboots (on your servers) are a "good idea," as it's like "cleansing your system." The host agreed and said she solveds all her computer problems with a reboot :).
They took a while to explain that only Windows NT/2000 are at risk while Windows 98/Me are not. No mention of any other alternatives besides Windows of course (I guess that's too much to ask :). Of course what I can't believe is that they're still talking about this! Are there that many admins that still haven't patched this?
- j
I don't want to get this thread too off topic but the practise of extension-hiding has come up recently on a lot of Mac boards. Apparently Apple's MacOS 10.1 (due in September) has an option to turn off filename extensions. Why they're doing this I don't know (it has cause so many problems in the Windows world) but if anybody here is all concerned about this you may want to send Apple some feedback.
- j
I don't mean to be rude, but maybe they don't care about the "home prototype builder." I mean really, if you can't spend $40k on a proper station or send out your parts to be assembled by a contract house, then how many chips are you going to buy? 1? 5? 20? That's nothing. What these people would care about is selling in volumes of 100k/year to a company that makes embedded systems.
Additionally, when you start to get a very large number of components on a chip you're going to have a lot of pinouts and that just isn't cost-feasible in a PQFP package. BGAs are designed for large die and a large number of pins, that's why they're used. I work at a semiconductor company that's making a big move into SOC and from my experience every major company I've talked to wants BGAs for these types of parts. The only people who want PQFPs are those who aren't going to buy in very large volumes and it just isn't worth putting the chip in a whole other package for these people. Not to mention the fact that a 600-pin PQFP just isn't possible no matter who's asking for it.
It's unfortunate that the home prototype builders can't build their own boards at home anymore but that's just the way the industry is going. You can't blame this company for making their part available in only a BGA: it's just not possible to keep PQFPs around anymore for both economic and technical reasons.
- j
I've been on the EFNet since 1991 (#iCE and #ANSi back in the day ;) and it's been a shame to see it steadily decline in the last few years. I used to frequent it all the time but about three years ago it just started getting ridiculous: netplits all the time, lamers taking over the channels, and very difficult to have any decent conversation. It used to be fun to have it on in the background at work but now it's just not worth it.
This year has definitely been the worst however. I've seen every single channel I've ever frequented move to other networks. #iCE was the last to go (they're very nostalgic) and while they've tried to keep a relay bot up on EFNet to keep the conversation on both servers it just isn't working: EFNet has officially gone to hell.
I hate to see it go. Now I can't find any two interesting channels on the same network and everybody I used to talk to is fragmented on different nets. It's really too bad that a few immature individuals can ruin it for the rest of us.
- j
the girl looks very fake.
So you're saying that she looks like every other Hollywood actress?
- j