then why hasn't the GIMP surpassed Photoshop by now?
Because everyone who needs those extra features can buy (or at least pirate) a copy of Photoshop. If Photoshop isn't available in the Chinese market (pirated OR legally), then there is great incentive for Chinese programmers to find something to replace it.
Convection cooling works, for consumer-level computers even. That's how the iMac (well, the OLD iMac) gets by without a fan: it actually uses the *heat* of the monitor to *cool* the cpu and hard drive by sucking cool air up the bottom of the case while hot air rises out the top (vents are only on the top and bottom -- not sides). Brilliant. This only works for a relatively cool CPU (G3's don't get very hot) and with a monitor in the case. The new LCD iMacs did away with the hot monitor, and so now have a (very quiet) fan.
Umm... out of the case? Using fans? Like with any other pc? Being smaller might even make it *easier* to cool, as you can channel the airflow accross the components without it swirling around inside the case too much. The air going across the CPU is then always cool exterier air and not luke warm semi-recirculated air.
Just make sure the ribbon cables inside aren't blocking the airflow (or use those more expensive cables where the strands of ribbon are just bundled up instead of one solid strip).
It's true that someone on K5 was questioned by the Secret Service (hmm, I almost abbreviated that 'SS' -- not the best name for a govt organization) but it didn't have anything to do with K5 going down. The server had hardware issues. It also sounded like the questioning was pretty routine and non-threatening ("we just wanted to talk to you and make sure you aren't serious about doing this"). His post certainly isn't threatening, but still seems reasonable to follow up on anyone who is discussing (even theorectically) how best to kill the President, VP, and cabinet members with biological weapons.
More info (the Lee's own desc of what happened to him) can be found here:
but did the exec do it again? getting caught once (and being punished in a way that means something to you) usually makes people take laws more seriously in the future.
I'm convinced this kind of democratic, community-oriented "anarchy" could work at any scale. As long as everyone feels they are part of something meaningful, and that everyone else is taking it seriously, then you can actually get "competitors" to agree on strategies to maximize the Common Good.
That's a major problem with both anarchy and communism: They are fragile systems and it only takes a small percentage of the population to mess them up. They work great as long as everyone goes along with it (and no-one is stupid or greedy), but break down quickly if everyone doesn't agree to cooperate.
American democracy, on the other hand, can *never* be as fair or fully representative as these other systems in theory, but in practice it works relatively well. Partly because of the ability of the populace to vote out politicians they don't approve of, and even to revolt should things every get really out of hand, our government mostly acts for the common good.
I think this is useful for memory storage, not processing power. If you're going to build an optical computer. you're going to need to have optical memory as well (or take a giant speed hit while accessing electronic memory).
I still think that a virus that randomly forwards all incoming and outgoing email to all the addresses in those messages would cause SERIOUS damage to companies (not just computer downtime).
Your customers get the snide comments you made about them to your co-workers. All of a manager's employees get all of the emails about all the others (complaints, performance reviews, etc). Lot's of internal mail gets sent out to lot's of external addresses. The sexy note you sent to your signifigant other about hand-cuffs and spanking is sent to all your biz contacts.
You know that most employees in companies (especially high level employees) keep tons of old email around.
Actually the current iMac designs uses the heat from the CRT to *cool* the motherboard. Whacky, eh? In an example of Apple "thinking differently", their engineers added airflow openings to only the top and bottom of the machine (not the sides), so the heated air around the monitor rises, sucking in cool air from below the machine. The result: no fan is needed, so the machine is very quiet.
The tax revenue has to come from somewhere (or the gocernment could just spend less -- heh, right!), so that lost sales tax revenue will come from increased income or property taxes.
What makes you think supernovae follow any kind of cyclic schedule? Only two dates were mentioned.
As an example, say you know I ate a burrito yesterday and I ate a burrito today. That doesn't mean that I eat a burrito every... oh wait. But that's TOTALLY different!
I think you're mixing up Brave New World with Farenheit 451 (unless BNW also had video walls -- all I remember are the "sensoriums", which were like big movie theaters, but for all your senses). In F451 they have "parlor walls", which were video walls on which bored housewives could imerse themselves in their soaps, occaisionally psuedo-interacting with the characters.
I am terribly offended at your characterization of the honorable President George W. Bush as a bumbling idiot with good intentions. I think the record clearly shows his total lack of good intentions.
(Man, I was totally unimpressed by The Tick last night. Didn't laugh once, and would have changed the channel after a few minutes but I really hoped it would get better. Family Guy was great though!)
I think you need to re-read his comment, because from the rest of what you wrote it sounds like you agree with him: that gcc is designed to be portable and correctly implement the specs, nut not to be fast or efficient (you said "Good code is not even a primary goal of gcc").
That's NOT a flaw for most uses (portablity and standards are good!), but for that extra speed you need something different. The tricks that a compiler like VectorC employs may simpley not fit into the design of gcc.
Yeah, after he rescued the Klingon, and was wondering around the base I kept expecting this scene:
"Al, why haven't I leaped yet? Ziggy said I was here to save that Klingon guy, right?"
"Hmm... Ziggy says there's now a 73% chance that you need to set up a nemesis for future episodes first.... Or maybe you're supposed to do that Vulcan chick. It's a little hazy. (Do you see the set on her? Yowza!)"
The Intelink network mentioned in the article sounds pretty wild, but I'm a little suprised it just uses standard tcp/ip tools (and that each dept is responsible for it's own servers, and can choose what server software they want to use). Seems like it would be so easy to misconfigure something, or for an intruder who can get onto the physical network to exploit holes in the server software to gain more access than is allowed.
And what happens when a bumbling FBI agent hooks up a wireless LAN base station so he can surf Intelink on his laptop? Doh!
Do you think he decided to sell it in the U.S.? He is just a 26 year old programmer at the company, and if it's anything like the software companies I've seen, the programmers have very little to do with the sales side of things. The program was meant for the domestic Russian market, but at some point they had a deal with a U.S. distributer to sell it here as well (until Adobe asked them to stop, which they did, after only selling a few copies).
If they were gonna lock somebody up, shouldn't it have been the market droids at ElComSoft?;-) Nah, frat boys in suits aren't as scary as hackers.
Except that it is law enforement's job to investigate crimes, not prevent them.
If I tell the cops that I know Joe is going to steal my car tonight at 11pm, they aren't going to try to stop him. But if he does steal my car, they will arrest him. Sure, they might wait and watch as tries to break in, and then nab him before he gets away, but they won't say "hey, don't steal that car" before he does anything.
That happened to me a few times too. I thought it was browser bug from low memory or something (IE on Mac gets that way after a day of heavy browsing) but maybe it's a real bug...
(heh, and it happened just now when I previewed this comment!)
the above poster is linking to the OLDER model, without firewire and with only 2 usb ports. if you want one of those older machines, check out this link:
Besides, Mac OS 9 is an utter joke-- for all intents and purposes, the memory and multitasking model is about as modern as DOS, but with a really pretty face.
As someone who uses MacOS 9, Win2K, and Linux on a regular basis, I gotta say that OS 9 still works quite well, even if it doesn't have all the latest tech. The cooperative mulitasking and old skool memory management aren't great, but *as long as programmers code carefully* the apps work fine. Memory protection and premptive multitasking just make it so that apps CAN'T screw anything up, even if there is something wrong with them. This means that I need to reboot OS 9 more often (maybe every other day), but that only takes about 2 minutes, and it's well worth it for me because of the quality of the OS for everything else. OS 9 is not perfect by any means, but hardly "an utter joke".
Now OS X (which DOES have all the latest tech buzzwords) is, unfortunately, a complete joke for now. I managed to use it exlusively for three days last week (and get everything I needed done) but it wasn't pleasent, and I finally rebooted to OS 9 and haven't looked back. What happened Apple? You were always so good with usability, but this is worse than Win2K in that dept (as a long time Mac fan, I would much prefer to use Win2K than OS X in it's current state). Classic apps are unusably slow (on a G4/450 w/512ram), the finder is slow, windows don't remember where I put them the last time they were opened, the finder crashs, preference panels aren't well thought out, everything just seems kludged together. It's nice to be able to open a bash shell and run all my unix stuff, but with OS9 I can just telnet to my linux box and do that there. I'll give 10.1 a look when it comes out, but I'm not holding my breath...
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then why hasn't the GIMP surpassed Photoshop by now?
Because everyone who needs those extra features can buy (or at least pirate) a copy of Photoshop. If Photoshop isn't available in the Chinese market (pirated OR legally), then there is great incentive for Chinese programmers to find something to replace it.
Is that the unit of measure that is constantly morphing into other units of measure?
Convection cooling works, for consumer-level computers even. That's how the iMac (well, the OLD iMac) gets by without a fan: it actually uses the *heat* of the monitor to *cool* the cpu and hard drive by sucking cool air up the bottom of the case while hot air rises out the top (vents are only on the top and bottom -- not sides). Brilliant. This only works for a relatively cool CPU (G3's don't get very hot) and with a monitor in the case. The new LCD iMacs did away with the hot monitor, and so now have a (very quiet) fan.
Yikes! =)
...nowhere for the heat to go
Umm... out of the case? Using fans? Like with any other pc? Being smaller might even make it *easier* to cool, as you can channel the airflow accross the components without it swirling around inside the case too much. The air going across the CPU is then always cool exterier air and not luke warm semi-recirculated air.
Just make sure the ribbon cables inside aren't blocking the airflow (or use those more expensive cables where the strands of ribbon are just bundled up instead of one solid strip).
It's true that someone on K5 was questioned by the Secret Service (hmm, I almost abbreviated that 'SS' -- not the best name for a govt organization) but it didn't have anything to do with K5 going down. The server had hardware issues. It also sounded like the questioning was pretty routine and non-threatening ("we just wanted to talk to you and make sure you aren't serious about doing this"). His post certainly isn't threatening, but still seems reasonable to follow up on anyone who is discussing (even theorectically) how best to kill the President, VP, and cabinet members with biological weapons.
4
More info (the Lee's own desc of what happened to him) can be found here:
http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2001/12/20/211923/8
but did the exec do it again? getting caught once (and being punished in a way that means something to you) usually makes people take laws more seriously in the future.
That's a major problem with both anarchy and communism: They are fragile systems and it only takes a small percentage of the population to mess them up. They work great as long as everyone goes along with it (and no-one is stupid or greedy), but break down quickly if everyone doesn't agree to cooperate.
American democracy, on the other hand, can *never* be as fair or fully representative as these other systems in theory, but in practice it works relatively well. Partly because of the ability of the populace to vote out politicians they don't approve of, and even to revolt should things every get really out of hand, our government mostly acts for the common good.
I think this is useful for memory storage, not processing power. If you're going to build an optical computer. you're going to need to have optical memory as well (or take a giant speed hit while accessing electronic memory).
Your customers get the snide comments you made about them to your co-workers. All of a manager's employees get all of the emails about all the others (complaints, performance reviews, etc). Lot's of internal mail gets sent out to lot's of external addresses. The sexy note you sent to your signifigant other about hand-cuffs and spanking is sent to all your biz contacts.
You know that most employees in companies (especially high level employees) keep tons of old email around.
Actually the current iMac designs uses the heat from the CRT to *cool* the motherboard. Whacky, eh? In an example of Apple "thinking differently", their engineers added airflow openings to only the top and bottom of the machine (not the sides), so the heated air around the monitor rises, sucking in cool air from below the machine. The result: no fan is needed, so the machine is very quiet.
The tax revenue has to come from somewhere (or the gocernment could just spend less -- heh, right!), so that lost sales tax revenue will come from increased income or property taxes.
What makes you think supernovae follow any kind of cyclic schedule? Only two dates were mentioned.
As an example, say you know I ate a burrito yesterday and I ate a burrito today. That doesn't mean that I eat a burrito every... oh wait. But that's TOTALLY different!
I think you're mixing up Brave New World with Farenheit 451 (unless BNW also had video walls -- all I remember are the "sensoriums", which were like big movie theaters, but for all your senses). In F451 they have "parlor walls", which were video walls on which bored housewives could imerse themselves in their soaps, occaisionally psuedo-interacting with the characters.
I am terribly offended at your characterization of the honorable President George W. Bush as a bumbling idiot with good intentions. I think the record clearly shows his total lack of good intentions.
(Man, I was totally unimpressed by The Tick last night. Didn't laugh once, and would have changed the channel after a few minutes but I really hoped it would get better. Family Guy was great though!)
There is nothing wrong with gcc basic design.
I think you need to re-read his comment, because from the rest of what you wrote it sounds like you agree with him: that gcc is designed to be portable and correctly implement the specs, nut not to be fast or efficient (you said "Good code is not even a primary goal of gcc").
That's NOT a flaw for most uses (portablity and standards are good!), but for that extra speed you need something different. The tricks that a compiler like VectorC employs may simpley not fit into the design of gcc.
Yeah, after he rescued the Klingon, and was wondering around the base I kept expecting this scene:
"Al, why haven't I leaped yet? Ziggy said I was here to save that Klingon guy, right?"
"Hmm... Ziggy says there's now a 73% chance that you need to set up a nemesis for future episodes first.... Or maybe you're supposed to do that Vulcan chick. It's a little hazy. (Do you see the set on her? Yowza!)"
Hmm... That looks like a Personal Computer sitting under my desk with Apple's logo on it.
The Intelink network mentioned in the article sounds pretty wild, but I'm a little suprised it just uses standard tcp/ip tools (and that each dept is responsible for it's own servers, and can choose what server software they want to use). Seems like it would be so easy to misconfigure something, or for an intruder who can get onto the physical network to exploit holes in the server software to gain more access than is allowed.
And what happens when a bumbling FBI agent hooks up a wireless LAN base station so he can surf Intelink on his laptop? Doh!
Wasn't his big mistake to sell the program?
;-) Nah, frat boys in suits aren't as scary as hackers.
Do you think he decided to sell it in the U.S.? He is just a 26 year old programmer at the company, and if it's anything like the software companies I've seen, the programmers have very little to do with the sales side of things. The program was meant for the domestic Russian market, but at some point they had a deal with a U.S. distributer to sell it here as well (until Adobe asked them to stop, which they did, after only selling a few copies).
If they were gonna lock somebody up, shouldn't it have been the market droids at ElComSoft?
Except that it is law enforement's job to investigate crimes, not prevent them.
If I tell the cops that I know Joe is going to steal my car tonight at 11pm, they aren't going to try to stop him. But if he does steal my car, they will arrest him. Sure, they might wait and watch as tries to break in, and then nab him before he gets away, but they won't say "hey, don't steal that car" before he does anything.
submitted the above bug...
That happened to me a few times too. I thought it was browser bug from low memory or something (IE on Mac gets that way after a day of heavy browsing) but maybe it's a real bug...
(heh, and it happened just now when I previewed this comment!)
Ah! This:
<BODY BGCOLOR="" TEXT="" LINK="" VLINK="">
Looks like the culprit...
the above poster is linking to the OLDER model, without firewire and with only 2 usb ports. if you want one of those older machines, check out this link:
http://www.directron.com/ezgo.html
You can get the barebones system (no ram, hd, cpu, etc) for only $420. Great if you already have that stuff lying around from previous upgrades.
i haven't seen anywhere selling the newer machines yet.
Besides, Mac OS 9 is an utter joke-- for all intents and purposes, the memory and multitasking model is about as modern as DOS, but with a really pretty face.
As someone who uses MacOS 9, Win2K, and Linux on a regular basis, I gotta say that OS 9 still works quite well, even if it doesn't have all the latest tech. The cooperative mulitasking and old skool memory management aren't great, but *as long as programmers code carefully* the apps work fine. Memory protection and premptive multitasking just make it so that apps CAN'T screw anything up, even if there is something wrong with them. This means that I need to reboot OS 9 more often (maybe every other day), but that only takes about 2 minutes, and it's well worth it for me because of the quality of the OS for everything else. OS 9 is not perfect by any means, but hardly "an utter joke".
Now OS X (which DOES have all the latest tech buzzwords) is, unfortunately, a complete joke for now. I managed to use it exlusively for three days last week (and get everything I needed done) but it wasn't pleasent, and I finally rebooted to OS 9 and haven't looked back. What happened Apple? You were always so good with usability, but this is worse than Win2K in that dept (as a long time Mac fan, I would much prefer to use Win2K than OS X in it's current state). Classic apps are unusably slow (on a G4/450 w/512ram), the finder is slow, windows don't remember where I put them the last time they were opened, the finder crashs, preference panels aren't well thought out, everything just seems kludged together. It's nice to be able to open a bash shell and run all my unix stuff, but with OS9 I can just telnet to my linux box and do that there. I'll give 10.1 a look when it comes out, but I'm not holding my breath...