OK - if your a developer - or anybody who is - please tell me something...
I just made a big jump from Win XP Pro and MSVC 6 to Windows 7 64 bit and VS2008, and I am trying to get up to speed. I created a very simple benchmarking console app on the old system and compiled a release build under MSVC 6, and then compiled exactly the same code under VS2008 on the new machine. No matter what optimizations I used, or whether I created a 32 bit release build or a 64 bit release build with VS2008, the exe created under the old MSVC ran about 25% faster on my new platform than the new build on my new platform. Question - what is it with VS2008? This is intolerable!
THEN HOW COME I'M ONLY GETTING 256 BAUD OUT OF THIS DARN THING STOP RIP OFF STOP MUST BE LINE NOISE STOP
Lameness filter encountered. Post aborted!
Filter error: Don't use so many caps. It's like YELLING.
THAT'S NOTHING STOP I AM TYPING THIS COMMENT ON A 1950'S TELETYPE MACHINE HOOKED UP TO A 256 BAUD MODEM THE SIZE OF A SHOE BOX CRADLING THE TELEPHONE IN AN ACOUSTIC COUPLER STOP
I don't think you really gave much thought to the subject before you commented. That's OK - we all do that sometimes - just spout off with no idea what we are saying. I don't care - doesn't matter to me. That's what Slashdot is for - a forum to spout off in. Feel free!
grr... I meant to say, "This way Microsoft has a back door for their lobbyists, disguised as "sales reps", to gain the ear of people in high places throughout the US government, without having to register as lobbyists."
> Isn't it using a monopoly in one market to hinder competition in an another
> market?
In what way are they using their OS monopoly for this?
I would think that should be obvious. Microsoft's current OS is being used as a vehicle to install IE8, Bing, Silverlight, Messenger, and MSN on most every new PC sold. IE8 & Bing are installed along with the OS. These other things arrive with Windows Updates. Seems clear they are leveraging their monopoly on the desk top to unfairly compete in another market - the internet - wouldn't you think? Really strange, because the original "conviction" in the US was about integrating IE with the operating system in the first place. In fact, isn't that what the latest ruling in the EU was about? BTW: I don't think the person you are responding is a lawyer, and therefore used the word "convicted" in the laymen's sense of the word. Actually, I don't even know what the correct legal term is. You would have done us a service had you provided that.
To our friend from Germany, who finds this so hard to understand, I'll say this: Microsoft has become an arm of US Foreign Policy, and as such, has earned immunity from prosecution. The military, CIA, NSA, FBI, in fact all government departments including the White House are locked into Microsoft's products. This way Microsoft has a back door for their lobbyists, disguised as "sales reps", to gain the ear of people in high places throughout the US government, with having to register as lobbyists. Rather then gain the attention of the DOJ for the unfair bundling of IE with their OS, they had only to snap their fingers to put Google onto the DOJ's carpet in their stead.
Competition, in this particular case, may not be the best thing for customers. Why so, you may ask. It is because of the lopsidedness of the market that makes this situation so precarious.
Spot on! Mod this guy up. The lopsidedness of the market where Microsoft already enjoys a monopoly on the desk top and is easily able to leverage that to compete unfairly against Google makes this situation so precarious. Competition, in this particular case, may not be the best thing for customers, as you say. Microsoft has been unable so far to create a search engine that can compete with Google, so instead is attacking Google from every underhanded angle, including planting people right here on Slashdot to try to turn people against them.
Just don't act surprised down the road if, in the event Google becomes the market dominating monolith MS once was, they begin acting like a monopoly.
I think it is a matter of priorities. We need Google to prevent Microsoft from extending their monopoly on the desktop onto the internet. Just imagine a world where Microsoft dominates both. Really scary thought! Once the Microsoft threat of total world domination diminishes, then we will worry about Google - if we need to. Google has done so much good in this world by promoting internet standards and open source I am willing to allow them to continue this until Microsoft is cowed into a corner. Attacking Google now would be counter productive and feed right into Microsoft's strategy.
If you've been following Groklaw over the last few years, you probably have a bias against MS already.
Agreed - because everything discussed on Groklaw is backed up with documentation. Therefore, if you read Groklaw, you will have followed the links to the Comes vs Microsoft material or the links to hundreds of other documents sufficient for any thinking person to come to their own, negative conclusions about Microsoft's business conduct.
Now you will also find conspiracy theories in abundance on Groklaw as well, as was pointed out in a comment above yours. It you are looking for entertainment, you may find them amusing, but an independent thinker will not pay much attention to this kind of discussion if he want to be informed. He will go straight to the documentation and make up his or her own mind.
I'm sorry if it is because of my typo that you missed the point. I meant to say "people are still cursing IE6". Indeed you will find many still cursing it in any discussion among web developers, because they still have to live with the thousands of installations still out there. However, that is not at all why I brought up IE6. It will die soon enough. The reason I mentioned it was because IE6 was developed at a time when Microsoft did not have strong competition in the browser market. They showed their style by immediately taking advantage of this opportunity to attempt to reshape the internet to their own advantage - appropriating the commons. Microsoft has demonstrated contempt for standards in the past, IE6 being a good example. If they have their way, they will do it again in the future. If they succeed with their current attacks on Google, while at the same time converging on the internet from every angle, with all these internet applications now the default on their OS, they just might manage to tear off a big chunk of internet real estate and wall it off. That was my point.
Microsoft would like us to all forgethistory, and instead regurgitate their revisionist view. He who forgets the past is condemned to relive it! Thank you for providing us with the historical perspective on this. It appears there are many younger people in IT these days who know little of this.
You make it sound like it is just two companies fighting it out in the market place, with Google being evil because they have the dominant position in search. Nothing could be farther from the truth!
Microsoft already dominates the desktop where they enjoy a monopoly. They got there using Machiavellian business tactics and and in fact were convicted in the USA for monopoly practises. They have been fined in Europe for the same kind of thing. They are the last company we want to see gaining a strong position on the internet. We have seen what they would do once they get such a position. People are still curing about non-standards compliant IE6. The sad thing is they will get there eventually unless we discourage them by avoiding things like Bing and Silverlight. The fact is that they have made Bing the default search in IE8, and ensured that it is not easy to switch to Google. They have included Silverlight in Windows Updates - at least on Windows 7. They have a package called "Windows Essentials" on this platform as well that installs all these things, plus a tie-in to Messenger and MSN. Make no mistake who the enemy is here - it is Microsoft by a mile. Now, you may have reasons to be concerned about Google's strength in search, but promoting Microsoft is not the answer.
I bet there are many ways to build something that performs the same function as DNA but is not DNA
I really wonder about that. DNA/RNA - the whole way it works is incredibly ingenious. Who would have ever imagined such a thing before Watson and Crick? It would be interesting to hear some knowegable biologist weigh in on this question.
DNA may be the only way to create life, or at least - biological, carbon based life. However, this solution could perhaps spontaneously arise in different places in the universe via similar ubiquitous mechanisms, as a parallel of how different species may have a similar appearance when ocupying a similar ecological niche in different ecologies.
Using an EEG scan of a person's brain while they view an image could yield very different results for an image of a naked woman depending on the viewer's sex or sexual persuasion. Also, for images of objects and images of people in general - each viewer would have a different set of associations for a given image. For example, imagine the EEG of a person with arachnophobia when presented with a picture of a spider, etc.
As a drummer, I can create and reproduce the same roll on the fly. But if you asked me how many times I hit the drum pad, only then I would have to count. I did not need to count in order to reproduce the roll nor did I know how many times I actually hit the drum pads.
...and if while you weren't looking somebody switched your drum sticks for another set, longer or shorter than you were using, would you play slower or faster accordingly?
Drummers can reproduce songs with thousands of hits on the drum pads over and over again without counting.
Only because they are guided by the music perhaps, but you gave me an interesting idea. Imagine the music as a metaphor for the scenery passing by as you journey from point A to point B. In fact, imagine you are a little ant listening to the beat of your six little feet as the landscape rolls by... Passing through this little valley took so long, climbing up that hill the rhythm changed, and running down the other side was yet another rhythm for a different duration. Now imagine someone cut your legs off at the knees... Oh what cruelty!
Could it be... that cosmic rays trigger lightning?
According to Wikipedia: "Cosmic rays have been implicated in the triggering of electrical breakdown in lightning. It has been proposed that essentially all lightning is triggered through a relativistic process, "runaway breakdown", seeded by cosmic ray secondaries. Subsequent development of the lightning discharge then occurs through "conventional breakdown" mechanisms."
what I wonder though is do you end up with a tube of electrons surrounding a vacuum, or a more uniform distribution of electrons. What is the environment like that's created inside the plasma, and what happens to other high energy particles, say cosmic rays, that enter this region?
I think we have a pretty good understanding of plasma. Just look at a florescent or neon lamp.
A lightening bolt is a tube of mostly positively-charged nitrogen ions in a cloud of electrons. The super-heated gas glows brightly as the electrons pass through it. Of course it wants to expand as fast as it can, leaving a vaccuum at the centre. As the gas expands, it cools and the light it generated is extinguished as it moves away from the core, so we see tube of light. The bulk of the current preferentially remains at the centre - the path of least resistance. Of course the negatively charged electrons want to repel each other, but they are partially constrained to the core where there are fewer gass molecules to bump into by the intense magnetic field they generate. The "skin effect" is not significant. That is a function of frequency, and we are dealing with more of a direct current here.
Now we think about a cosmic ray particle passing through that rarefied super-charged gas, and it goes flying right on through as if there was nothing there. These are mostly protons, sometimes traveling in pairs, flying at a good fraction of the speed of light. Their path may be barely deflected as they pass through the magnetic field becuase they have so much mass. If one did happen to collide with an electron or ion, we will get a shower of charged mesons much the same as during any kind of collision, and maybe even a black hole or two.
Disclosure: I am not a physicist, but I saw one on TV once.
I get modded "Flamebait" for speaking the truth, in response to a shameless plug for Microsoft's latest operating system that gets modded "+5 Interesting"? Please tell me what is so damn interesting about someone's desire to see Microsoft achieve massive domination with Windows 7. We see plugs for Microsoft planted everywhere on the internet and I don't see anything interesting about that. A moderation of "+5 Disgusting" would be more appropriate. What in the world is going on here, when we can no longer speak the truth on Slashdot for fear of upsetting the shills? I will continue to call a spade a spade. For now, I have karma to burn. When my karma runs out - I'm gone, and I'll happily leave Slashdot to the shills and they can have all wonderful conversations between themselves and their sock puppets without my protests. As long as I have enough karma to be visible, however, I'll continue to fight the good fight.
Slashdot Mirror
OK - if your a developer - or anybody who is - please tell me something...
I just made a big jump from Win XP Pro and MSVC 6 to Windows 7 64 bit and VS2008, and I am trying to get up to speed. I created a very simple benchmarking console app on the old system and compiled a release build under MSVC 6, and then compiled exactly the same code under VS2008 on the new machine. No matter what optimizations I used, or whether I created a 32 bit release build or a 64 bit release build with VS2008, the exe created under the old MSVC ran about 25% faster on my new platform than the new build on my new platform. Question - what is it with VS2008? This is intolerable!
Try it yourself and get back to me.
THEN HOW COME I'M ONLY GETTING 256 BAUD OUT OF THIS DARN THING STOP RIP OFF STOP MUST BE LINE NOISE STOP Lameness filter encountered. Post aborted! Filter error: Don't use so many caps. It's like YELLING.
THAT'S NOTHING STOP I AM TYPING THIS COMMENT ON A 1950'S TELETYPE MACHINE HOOKED UP TO A 256 BAUD MODEM THE SIZE OF A SHOE BOX CRADLING THE TELEPHONE IN AN ACOUSTIC COUPLER STOP
Of course it's not. Who said it was?
Of course it's not. Who said it was?
Do you have some documents that show Comes vs Microsoft didn't happen?
I don't think you really gave much thought to the subject before you commented. That's OK - we all do that sometimes - just spout off with no idea what we are saying. I don't care - doesn't matter to me. That's what Slashdot is for - a forum to spout off in. Feel free!
Dung beetles, man - dung beetles rejoice.
grr... I meant to say, "This way Microsoft has a back door for their lobbyists, disguised as "sales reps", to gain the ear of people in high places throughout the US government, without having to register as lobbyists."
I would think that should be obvious. Microsoft's current OS is being used as a vehicle to install IE8, Bing, Silverlight, Messenger, and MSN on most every new PC sold. IE8 & Bing are installed along with the OS. These other things arrive with Windows Updates. Seems clear they are leveraging their monopoly on the desk top to unfairly compete in another market - the internet - wouldn't you think? Really strange, because the original "conviction" in the US was about integrating IE with the operating system in the first place. In fact, isn't that what the latest ruling in the EU was about? BTW: I don't think the person you are responding is a lawyer, and therefore used the word "convicted" in the laymen's sense of the word. Actually, I don't even know what the correct legal term is. You would have done us a service had you provided that.
To our friend from Germany, who finds this so hard to understand, I'll say this: Microsoft has become an arm of US Foreign Policy, and as such, has earned immunity from prosecution. The military, CIA, NSA, FBI, in fact all government departments including the White House are locked into Microsoft's products. This way Microsoft has a back door for their lobbyists, disguised as "sales reps", to gain the ear of people in high places throughout the US government, with having to register as lobbyists. Rather then gain the attention of the DOJ for the unfair bundling of IE with their OS, they had only to snap their fingers to put Google onto the DOJ's carpet in their stead.
Spot on! Mod this guy up. The lopsidedness of the market where Microsoft already enjoys a monopoly on the desk top and is easily able to leverage that to compete unfairly against Google makes this situation so precarious. Competition, in this particular case, may not be the best thing for customers, as you say. Microsoft has been unable so far to create a search engine that can compete with Google, so instead is attacking Google from every underhanded angle, including planting people right here on Slashdot to try to turn people against them.
I think it is a matter of priorities. We need Google to prevent Microsoft from extending their monopoly on the desktop onto the internet. Just imagine a world where Microsoft dominates both. Really scary thought! Once the Microsoft threat of total world domination diminishes, then we will worry about Google - if we need to. Google has done so much good in this world by promoting internet standards and open source I am willing to allow them to continue this until Microsoft is cowed into a corner. Attacking Google now would be counter productive and feed right into Microsoft's strategy.
Agreed - because everything discussed on Groklaw is backed up with documentation. Therefore, if you read Groklaw, you will have followed the links to the Comes vs Microsoft material or the links to hundreds of other documents sufficient for any thinking person to come to their own, negative conclusions about Microsoft's business conduct.
Now you will also find conspiracy theories in abundance on Groklaw as well, as was pointed out in a comment above yours. It you are looking for entertainment, you may find them amusing, but an independent thinker will not pay much attention to this kind of discussion if he want to be informed. He will go straight to the documentation and make up his or her own mind.
I'm sorry if it is because of my typo that you missed the point. I meant to say "people are still cursing IE6". Indeed you will find many still cursing it in any discussion among web developers, because they still have to live with the thousands of installations still out there. However, that is not at all why I brought up IE6. It will die soon enough. The reason I mentioned it was because IE6 was developed at a time when Microsoft did not have strong competition in the browser market. They showed their style by immediately taking advantage of this opportunity to attempt to reshape the internet to their own advantage - appropriating the commons. Microsoft has demonstrated contempt for standards in the past, IE6 being a good example. If they have their way, they will do it again in the future. If they succeed with their current attacks on Google, while at the same time converging on the internet from every angle, with all these internet applications now the default on their OS, they just might manage to tear off a big chunk of internet real estate and wall it off. That was my point.
Microsoft would like us to all forget history, and instead regurgitate their revisionist view. He who forgets the past is condemned to relive it! Thank you for providing us with the historical perspective on this. It appears there are many younger people in IT these days who know little of this.
You make it sound like it is just two companies fighting it out in the market place, with Google being evil because they have the dominant position in search. Nothing could be farther from the truth!
Microsoft already dominates the desktop where they enjoy a monopoly. They got there using Machiavellian business tactics and and in fact were convicted in the USA for monopoly practises. They have been fined in Europe for the same kind of thing. They are the last company we want to see gaining a strong position on the internet. We have seen what they would do once they get such a position. People are still curing about non-standards compliant IE6. The sad thing is they will get there eventually unless we discourage them by avoiding things like Bing and Silverlight. The fact is that they have made Bing the default search in IE8, and ensured that it is not easy to switch to Google. They have included Silverlight in Windows Updates - at least on Windows 7. They have a package called "Windows Essentials" on this platform as well that installs all these things, plus a tie-in to Messenger and MSN. Make no mistake who the enemy is here - it is Microsoft by a mile. Now, you may have reasons to be concerned about Google's strength in search, but promoting Microsoft is not the answer.
I really wonder about that. DNA/RNA - the whole way it works is incredibly ingenious. Who would have ever imagined such a thing before Watson and Crick? It would be interesting to hear some knowegable biologist weigh in on this question.
DNA may be the only way to create life, or at least - biological, carbon based life. However, this solution could perhaps spontaneously arise in different places in the universe via similar ubiquitous mechanisms, as a parallel of how different species may have a similar appearance when ocupying a similar ecological niche in different ecologies.
Or perhaps more likely it will flourish and prosper during teraforming to the point it may become overwhelming dominant on the planet once more.
Using an EEG scan of a person's brain while they view an image could yield very different results for an image of a naked woman depending on the viewer's sex or sexual persuasion. Also, for images of objects and images of people in general - each viewer would have a different set of associations for a given image. For example, imagine the EEG of a person with arachnophobia when presented with a picture of a spider, etc.
Almost as bad as the way Schrödinger treated his cat.
These six-legged insects count in base 6, of course.
...and if while you weren't looking somebody switched your drum sticks for another set, longer or shorter than you were using, would you play slower or faster accordingly?
Only because they are guided by the music perhaps, but you gave me an interesting idea. Imagine the music as a metaphor for the scenery passing by as you journey from point A to point B. In fact, imagine you are a little ant listening to the beat of your six little feet as the landscape rolls by... Passing through this little valley took so long, climbing up that hill the rhythm changed, and running down the other side was yet another rhythm for a different duration. Now imagine someone cut your legs off at the knees... Oh what cruelty!
No
According to Wikipedia: "Cosmic rays have been implicated in the triggering of electrical breakdown in lightning. It has been proposed that essentially all lightning is triggered through a relativistic process, "runaway breakdown", seeded by cosmic ray secondaries. Subsequent development of the lightning discharge then occurs through "conventional breakdown" mechanisms."
I think we have a pretty good understanding of plasma. Just look at a florescent or neon lamp. A lightening bolt is a tube of mostly positively-charged nitrogen ions in a cloud of electrons. The super-heated gas glows brightly as the electrons pass through it. Of course it wants to expand as fast as it can, leaving a vaccuum at the centre. As the gas expands, it cools and the light it generated is extinguished as it moves away from the core, so we see tube of light. The bulk of the current preferentially remains at the centre - the path of least resistance. Of course the negatively charged electrons want to repel each other, but they are partially constrained to the core where there are fewer gass molecules to bump into by the intense magnetic field they generate. The "skin effect" is not significant. That is a function of frequency, and we are dealing with more of a direct current here.
Now we think about a cosmic ray particle passing through that rarefied super-charged gas, and it goes flying right on through as if there was nothing there. These are mostly protons, sometimes traveling in pairs, flying at a good fraction of the speed of light. Their path may be barely deflected as they pass through the magnetic field becuase they have so much mass. If one did happen to collide with an electron or ion, we will get a shower of charged mesons much the same as during any kind of collision, and maybe even a black hole or two.
Disclosure: I am not a physicist, but I saw one on TV once.
God makes them
I get modded "Flamebait" for speaking the truth, in response to a shameless plug for Microsoft's latest operating system that gets modded "+5 Interesting"? Please tell me what is so damn interesting about someone's desire to see Microsoft achieve massive domination with Windows 7. We see plugs for Microsoft planted everywhere on the internet and I don't see anything interesting about that. A moderation of "+5 Disgusting" would be more appropriate. What in the world is going on here, when we can no longer speak the truth on Slashdot for fear of upsetting the shills? I will continue to call a spade a spade. For now, I have karma to burn. When my karma runs out - I'm gone, and I'll happily leave Slashdot to the shills and they can have all wonderful conversations between themselves and their sock puppets without my protests. As long as I have enough karma to be visible, however, I'll continue to fight the good fight.