"I would like to see america and the males of america adopt a position of humility, and allow the dispossessed and discriminated against, such as Russians and women, to breathe free and stake their claim in society."
Its pretty obvious that you are one of the "dispossessed and discriminated against" who wants everything handed to them on a silver platter. Wake up and smell the toast burning!!! The United States is where it is at today because our founding fathers wholly believed in the idea that one could get ahead if they WORKED HARD.
In the world, as well as in the United States, there are too damn many people like you who think that hard work counts for nothing. You sound like you are one of those that says they have the "right" to steal from those who work and achieve and "support" lazy, good for nothing asswipes. BULLSHIT!!! If someone wants to "stake a claim in society"...they better get off their ass and work for it.
As a citizen of the United States...I personally invite you, and your socialist vomit spewing freinds, including all members of the US's Democratic Party, to take a very long walk off a very short pier.
I guess everyone was too young to remember the "Keep America Beautiful" ad campaign back it the 70's. It featured an Indian riding horseback though a littered landscape. The clincher of that commercial was a tear rolling down the Indian's face. So while the E-trade commercial was funny...it definately wasnt original.
If you have ever watched a shuttle launch then you seen a flame buring pure hydrogen and pure ozygen. That is what fuels the shuttles three main engines. Dont get mixed up by the readily visible flame from the solid fuel boosters. Check it out... you will see that the flame is "almost" invisible.
This stuff will never work until the p0rn community gets together and say "Let build a internet filter that will only let you access p0rn sites." Then these COPA prudes can use that filter and use its results to block the p0rn they are so offended by.
Why do you think 1 G is needed? The article just says that some form of gravity is needed for proper developement. 1/2G or even 1/5 G would be able to supply the proper "direction" for proper cell development.
At least the humans didnt use a Mac notebook to deliver a computer virus to the mothership. I still cant understand if a Mac is that cross platform, why cant it communicate easily with that other peice of alien technology....Windows.
Like most on/., I feel it it perfectly fine to quote from the posts for articles, books and such. I do think that a can of worms can be open inadvertantly by makin use of a preferences option. It woudl be very easy to see Microsoft saying "So-and-so posted this, and gave you permission to use as you please. We want you to remove it because of..." If a preference option is not worded properly it can give the impression that/. is undertaking editorial license.
It would be far simplier to display a disclaimer when posting. The disclaimer could be like the following: "All posts remain the intellectual property of the poster. By submitting this post you are giving consent to have you comments published." Simple, no mess, and covers everything.
WAKE UP AMERICA!!!!!!!!!!! We are in the midst of a revolution within our government. Liberal forces are taking away our rights every day. And the process is accelerating. COPPA is just another peice of that puzzle.
This law is not about protecting children. It is about controlling the internet. Congress sees the internet as a menace, due to its free wheeling style. Why does Congress see the internet as a menace? Simply put, the internet allows free flow of ideas. It allows the freedom of speach our country's founders envisioned as RIGHTFULLY BELONGING TO ALL CITIZENS.
Since Congress enacted legislation to create the Department of Education, the educational standards of the United States has steadily deteriorated. For those of you who dont know, the Department of Education was touted as being a way to establish a nationwide standard of educational excellence, i.e. pump money into regions that have poor literacy rates in an effort to improve schools. While this has happened, the Department of Education has also been used by Congress for some more sinister reasons. After all, what better way to make major changes to the United States' form of government than to teach our children thier point of view.
The Department of Education mandates to school boards a selection of educational materials. Over the last 2 decades this list of materials has included text books which tramples the ideals of Washington, Jefferson, and Adams. Here in Georgia there is a fight going on about a history book that leads the students to believe we do not need the Bill of Rights. Many of the text books have a blatant "government is the solution to everything" agenda.
Now I know you saying "How does this tie in with COPPA?" Very simply this. COPPA will be used as a "catch all" Law. Any web site that speaks out for the rights of the people, any site thats is educating people about the freedoms what Jefferson, Adams and their contemporaries believed in so much that they stood up and spoke out even under the threat of death, can be a target of this law. How can that be you say??? Easy...just let a child request additional information.
COPPA if it really wanted to protect children would have flatly stated what information can be obtained from children for the purposes of record keeping. Does it? No. If anything it is purposely vague about what can be asked and is riddled with loopholes. All the better in Congress' eyes for snuffing out "rabble rousers" on the web.
Keep an eye on COPPA. I gaurentee you, it WILL get employed in this way.
Train our kids to turn in their freinds/family?? while they are young. Tell our kids it is to help their freinds/family. Get them used to doing this. Where is it going to stop??? I'll tell where...with the establishment of groups similiar to East Germany's Stazi or the old Soviet KGB. Why give our government a ready made tool? Why condition our children to accept a way of life that we find abhorrent
This country is rapidly becoming a POLICE STATE. It is virtually that way now. The freedoms for which our forefathers fought and died are being taken away. Look around you!!! Every day a freedom is being taken away by federal or state governments for the purpose of "protecting" someone/group/special interest.
Instead of schools teaching our kids to be stoolies how about teaching them what our forefathers REALLY MEANT in the Declaration of Independance, The Constitution of the United States, and in the Bill of Rights. Teach our kids how the Democrats and Republicans are trading away THEIR rights for votes. Maybe then todays youth will find direction to their lives.
Data dependancies and branching currently prevents one from doing this. However, from what I understand, the forthcoming IA-64 architecture is supposed to implement this very scheme in the hardware. It is one of the reasons that the compilers for the IA-64 chips are going to have to be 'smarter'.
You're the first one I have seen in this post that understands whats involved. Who cares how fast your CPU is if your A/D converters can scan only 10 times a second. Trying to model processes that run at a rate faster than your hard drive's seek + write times, is sensless to do in a real time system...because it cant be done. Unless you want to throw away all data except then final calculation. But if you do that...how do you verify your model is correct??? Obviously, from this discussion most/.ers are more interested in horsepower than in getting the right tools for the job.
It all depends on the situation. You DO want to store you data dont you? You do want to acquire your data also, dont you?? If you are doing data acquisition, the bottleneck isnt usually the CPU its latency the A/D converter's require for perform successive reads. And god forbid if you have to control a device in realtime... because the latency of D/A's are longer. If you are doing modeling then you have to worry about your hard disk seek times. In any event.. you have to look at worse case scenarios are far as acquiring and storing data. Usually the latency involved in these tasks far exceeds ANY latency the CPU might impose.
I am rather surprised that everyone jumped to the hardware question without realizing that the problem domain was inadequately defined in the question. "real-time high-end mathematical computations" can mean just about anything. Before hardware can be selected, the problem must be examined and properly identified. For example, are you modeling or performing data acquisition? Then the questions of interval granularity, acceptable hardware reset/refresh latencies, and permissible timing errors need to be addressed. Once these have all been determined, a hard look at alternatives should be performed. For example, is a high end system required or would a Beowulf cluster be able to handle the job. Can you get by with acquiring data and shoving it to disk on a real-time basis, and make your calculations later? To many programmers today have little or no knowledge of directly manipulating the computers hardware. Why buy a real-time system when all that is needed is to set the interupt frequency of the programmable clock and chain your own interrupt handler to the current one? If your constraints arent extrememely tight even Windoze can function adequately( no not the WM_TIMER either...the timer controls in the multimedia DLL work fairly well ). Might not answer your question about what is the best hardware...but might help you determine if you really need a real-time system.
LMAO...its obvious you dont have kids. You're forgetting all about the "pester power factor", a.k.a the 'whine' co-efficient, that those 13 yo's will have on their 45 yo yuppie parents.
One area I have to disagree with you on..."The meteors manage to nick an exposed fuel line, an idea which completely contravenes all conventional engineering wisdom as well as any design that Nasa has set forth to date." Evidently you havent noticed that the International Space Station will have just about all of its major fuel and electrical routings on the outside. There are two reasons for this safety and abililty to make repairs that will continue to function...even if sections of the space stations are having problems.
One only has to look at pictures from Russia's MIR space station with the spagetti of electrical and fuel conduits zip-tied to the walls and running through hatchways, thereby preventing sealing those sections of quickly in an emergency. When MIR was hit by that cargo ship several years ago it took several minutes to disconnect all the equipment so they could close the hatch. And as a result, they lost use of the electricity produced by one of the solar arrays. NASA has learned from MIR...and routing cables and pipes on the out side is one of them.
Computer magazines are dead. I havent bought one in years. One of the main reasons is believability. How can one believe an article in a magazine is unbiased when the very subject in the artilce is paying for full page advertisements. Today PC magazines are full of ads, way more ads than content. If you want to find good unbiased reviews of software, hardware, new technologies explained just search the web. There are many good sites out there that are more relevant than paper magazines. Toms Hardware, Sharkey Extreme and ReviewFinder are what I use to keep up to date on the goings on in the PC industry. Besides, paper magazines are out of date months before they are printed since several months of lead time are needed to do editing, layouts and the printing. SAVE A TREE...Boycott paper PC magazines.
Ummmmm Lets see...2 Billion times the going price for windoze...say $120, ( OK I may be off slightly, I havent bought 98 and im not planing on buyin 2000 either) OK 2 B time $120 = 240 Billion. I can see some interesting things happening now.. for example ole Billy boy just thumbing his nose at the Justice Department and selling exclusively to PRC. But then hes liable to have problems getting permits to sell "munitions" to the enemy. Personally I dont think PRC has that much cash laying around. Besides Im sure the government of PRC can find someone who knows how to pirate! Let see what Bill does to them .
I have been in the software business for roughly 8 years now, having worked as a consultant for companies like Coca Cola, Lockheed-Martin, Lucent and the Federal Aviation Administration. I have SEEN the damage that Micro$oft, and Bill Gates, has inflicted upon the industry. As the 'vision' originally was expressed Windows was a god send. The Windows API was a way for developers to write applications without regaurd to the computer's hardware. From that perspective it has been a success. However, I have also seen where Micro$oft changes the API to better suit their overall goals. Now, in terms of fairness...is it fair that M$ application developers get to request that certain functionality that they have developed be added to the Windows API...just to make their applications appear smaller than the competitions? Is it fair to other developers that these same API calls are NOT documented in the Windows API references? We think M$ Word is bloated now...you have no idea how much functionality is hidden within the Windows API. From my perspective... M$ has been misuing their power by doing just these things...and thereby making it more difficult for outside competition to develope. In order to compete on an even level with Microsoft, one needs to decompile Windows just to find out what has been hidden away from public view.
Microsoft goes even further by publicly stateing that the presence of undocumented API's should not be relied upon. In other words they reserve th right to change the name or ordinal position of any undocumented API call which another company is relying upon to make their product WORK as intended.
Is ISS, ASP, DCOM and COM really "interesting at a minimum." As a professional developer...I dont think so. There are other tools out there that gives far more cross platform support than M$ does.
There isnt a "Linux cry for death to... M$", just a cry for someone to smack Gates and Ballmer up side the head with a healthy dose of reality. M$ needs to learn to play nicely with others in the same business. I feel being BOTH the O/S DEVELOPER and a MAJOR APPLICATIONS DEVELOPER is a BIG CONFLICT OF INTEREST. The role of O/S developer requires not playing favorites with application developers. The role of O/S developer requires knowing the difference between the O/S and applications. Micro$oft has forgotten the distinction. If Micro$soft wants to bundle applications with the O/S...fine by me.. but let me have the CHOICE to install the applications I wish....never force me, the user into a choice I didnt make. That is what this lawsuit is all about... empowering the consumer. Giving the consumer the ability to CHOOSE. I dont like M$ telling me I can install Netscape on my computer, but I STILL have to install IE5 if I want the computer to work correctly. That is taking choices away from me.
The remark concerning having problems with "gas companys" find hilarious. First you are ambiguous in what you meant, I.e. gasoline or natural gas? Either way, you cant parallel the two. If you are talking about the natural gas suppliers, in most areas they are regulated. Every time they turn around they have to get things approved by regulators. I admit some areas you can have natural gass delivered to you home by tank trucks. But even there...you have a CHOICE of who delivers to you. If you are talking about gasoline companies the situation is even farther removed. I can take my pick of about 6 service stations within a mile of my home.
Now, read my lips...the whole thing is about CHOICE.
It seems to me that Micro$oft is forgeting a couple of important items.
#1 Open source -- the more M$ tries to squeeze dollars out of the home user the more attractive open source products like Linux become. Linux and open source has made good progress against M$, and this trend will accelerate the greedier M$ becomes. Currently Linux isnt threating M$ on home systems of the general public. If M$'s scheme becomes reality I see a rapid change in Linux's potential on the home desktop. Currently most people who buy software, buy an application and use it, without upgrading for the sake of ungrading. I use Excel and M$Word versions going back pre-Win95 because they still fit my needs, and my wallet. John Q. Public wont stand for having to pay a monthly software bill. Just look at how you grumble at Uncle Sam's share of your paycheck. If there's an option... people will seek it out...especially when THEIR money is involved.
#2 Broadband thru-put -- I dont know what kind of thru-put broad band is supposed to provide but I can say this, it isnt going to be enough. I currently have an ISP who understands cable modem technology. I have 10 Mbit up/down thru-put on my internet connection, and it still isnt enough. I am constantly waiting for blockages in the internet itself. And we are only talking about web pages, e-mail, and file downloads as being the activity on the net now. And I am sure there is more going on. But now add to that current traffic, millions of programs being downloaded, software that used to reside on the individual PC. I dont see how it can work. Even if the software was stored on the ISP's servers... thats still alot of traffic...more than what even Gbit LANs can handle. Downloading the rental-software will suck up a large precentage of the bandwidth no matter where they try to place the "rental" servers. We'll be back to bitching about how slow the web is.
All in all...this is a nice way to convert broadband connections into 9600 baud modems:-)
Not flaming..just enlightening further. The median = 50 is true, if and only if the highest posible IQ is 100. But we all know there are some people whose IQ is above 100. It seems like your wanting to forget these people. Unfortunately, there arent enough people with IQs above 100 to shift the median much above 51.
Thats great, as long as you have only ONE break. I would be a very unhappy camper if I was on Madagascar and the cable got broke to the north & south of me. The ability to reroute the packet requests is not a "self healing" technology. After all ARPANET used adaptive routing back in the late 60's early 70's, which if I'm not mistaken is the SAME concept. Maybe "self-healing" is just a new catch word being used by hardware manufacturers just to promote sales. Think of it the money to be made.
Slashdot Mirror
"I would like to see america and the males of america adopt a position of humility, and allow the dispossessed and discriminated against, such as Russians and women, to breathe free and stake their claim in society."
Its pretty obvious that you are one of the "dispossessed and discriminated against" who wants everything handed to them on a silver platter. Wake up and smell the toast burning!!! The United States is where it is at today because our founding fathers wholly believed in the idea that one could get ahead if they WORKED HARD.
In the world, as well as in the United States, there are too damn many people like you who think that hard work counts for nothing. You sound like you are one of those that says they have the "right" to steal from those who work and achieve and "support" lazy, good for nothing asswipes. BULLSHIT!!! If someone wants to "stake a claim in society"...they better get off their ass and work for it.
As a citizen of the United States...I personally invite you, and your socialist vomit spewing freinds, including all members of the US's Democratic Party, to take a very long walk off a very short pier.
ummmmm where can I get a 390 GIG hard drive for $150?????????
I guess everyone was too young to remember the "Keep America Beautiful" ad campaign back it the 70's. It featured an Indian riding horseback though a littered landscape. The clincher of that commercial was a tear rolling down the Indian's face. So while the E-trade commercial was funny...it definately wasnt original.
1485 Hours??? Are you running it on an abacus????
If you have ever watched a shuttle launch then you seen a flame buring pure hydrogen and pure ozygen. That is what fuels the shuttles three main engines. Dont get mixed up by the readily visible flame from the solid fuel boosters. Check it out... you will see that the flame is "almost" invisible.
This stuff will never work until the p0rn community gets together and say "Let build a internet filter that will only let you access p0rn sites." Then these COPA prudes can use that filter and use its results to block the p0rn they are so offended by.
Why do you think 1 G is needed? The article just says that some form of gravity is needed for proper developement. 1/2G or even 1/5 G would be able to supply the proper "direction" for proper cell development.
I seen that recently on a TLC documentary...if i remember right almost 100 were killed in that one incident.
At least the humans didnt use a Mac notebook to deliver a computer virus to the mothership. I still cant understand if a Mac is that cross platform, why cant it communicate easily with that other peice of alien technology....Windows.
Like most on /., I feel it it perfectly fine to quote from the posts for articles, books and such. I do think that a can of worms can be open inadvertantly by makin use of a preferences option. It woudl be very easy to see Microsoft saying "So-and-so posted this, and gave you permission to use as you please. We want you to remove it because of..." If a preference option is not worded properly it can give the impression that /. is undertaking editorial license.
It would be far simplier to display a disclaimer when posting. The disclaimer could be like the following: "All posts remain the intellectual property of the poster. By submitting this post you are giving consent to have you comments published." Simple, no mess, and covers everything.
Who azz do I have to kiss to get a gov contract
WAKE UP AMERICA!!!!!!!!!!! We are in the midst of a revolution within our government. Liberal forces are taking away our rights every day. And the process is accelerating. COPPA is just another peice of that puzzle.
This law is not about protecting children. It is about controlling the internet. Congress sees the internet as a menace, due to its free wheeling style. Why does Congress see the internet as a menace? Simply put, the internet allows free flow of ideas. It allows the freedom of speach our country's founders envisioned as RIGHTFULLY BELONGING TO ALL CITIZENS.
Since Congress enacted legislation to create the Department of Education, the educational standards of the United States has steadily deteriorated. For those of you who dont know, the Department of Education was touted as being a way to establish a nationwide standard of educational excellence, i.e. pump money into regions that have poor literacy rates in an effort to improve schools. While this has happened, the Department of Education has also been used by Congress for some more sinister reasons. After all, what better way to make major changes to the United States' form of government than to teach our children thier point of view.
The Department of Education mandates to school boards a selection of educational materials. Over the last 2 decades this list of materials has included text books which tramples the ideals of Washington, Jefferson, and Adams. Here in Georgia there is a fight going on about a history book that leads the students to believe we do not need the Bill of Rights. Many of the text books have a blatant "government is the solution to everything" agenda.
Now I know you saying "How does this tie in with COPPA?" Very simply this. COPPA will be used as a "catch all" Law. Any web site that speaks out for the rights of the people, any site thats is educating people about the freedoms what Jefferson, Adams and their contemporaries believed in so much that they stood up and spoke out even under the threat of death, can be a target of this law. How can that be you say???
Easy...just let a child request additional information.
COPPA if it really wanted to protect children would have flatly stated what information can be obtained from children for the purposes of record keeping. Does it? No. If anything it is purposely vague about what can be asked and is riddled with loopholes. All the better in Congress' eyes for snuffing out "rabble rousers" on the web.
Keep an eye on COPPA. I gaurentee you, it WILL get employed in this way.
Train our kids to turn in their freinds/family?? while they are young. Tell our kids it is to help their freinds/family. Get them used to doing this. Where is it going to stop??? I'll tell where...with the establishment of groups similiar to East Germany's Stazi or the old Soviet KGB. Why give our government a ready made tool? Why condition our children to accept a way of life that we find abhorrent
This country is rapidly becoming a POLICE STATE. It is virtually that way now. The freedoms for which our forefathers fought and died are being taken away. Look around you!!! Every day a freedom is being taken away by federal or state governments for the purpose of "protecting" someone/group/special interest.
Instead of schools teaching our kids to be stoolies how about teaching them what our forefathers REALLY MEANT in the Declaration of Independance, The Constitution of the United States, and in the Bill of Rights. Teach our kids how the Democrats and Republicans are trading away THEIR rights for votes. Maybe then todays youth will find direction to their lives.
Data dependancies and branching currently prevents one from doing this. However, from what
I understand, the forthcoming IA-64 architecture is supposed to implement this very scheme in the hardware. It is one of the reasons that the compilers for the IA-64 chips are going to have to be 'smarter'.
Right on mekkab.
/.ers are more interested in horsepower than in getting the right tools for the job.
You're the first one I have seen in this post that understands whats involved. Who cares how fast your CPU is if your A/D converters can scan only 10 times a second. Trying to model processes that run at a rate faster than your hard drive's seek + write times, is sensless to do in a real time system...because it cant be done. Unless you want to throw away all data except then final calculation. But if you do that...how do you verify your model is correct??? Obviously, from this discussion most
It all depends on the situation. You DO want to store you data dont you? You do want to acquire your data also, dont you?? If you are doing data acquisition, the bottleneck isnt usually the CPU its latency the A/D converter's require for perform successive reads. And god forbid if you have to control a device in realtime... because the latency of D/A's are longer. If you are doing modeling then you have to worry about your hard disk seek times. In any event.. you have to look at worse case scenarios are far as acquiring and storing data. Usually the latency involved in these tasks far exceeds ANY latency the CPU might impose.
I am rather surprised that everyone jumped to the hardware question without realizing that the problem domain was inadequately defined in the question. "real-time high-end mathematical computations" can mean just about anything. Before hardware can be selected, the problem must be examined and properly identified. For example, are you modeling or performing data acquisition? Then the questions of interval granularity, acceptable hardware reset/refresh latencies, and permissible timing errors need to be addressed. Once these have all been determined, a hard look at alternatives should be performed. For example, is a high end system required or would a Beowulf cluster be able to handle the job. Can you get by with acquiring data and shoving it to disk on a real-time basis, and make your calculations later? To many programmers today have little or no knowledge of directly manipulating the computers hardware. Why buy a real-time system when all that is needed is to set the interupt frequency of the programmable clock and chain your own interrupt handler to the current one? If your constraints arent extrememely tight even Windoze can function adequately( no not the WM_TIMER either...the timer controls in the multimedia DLL work fairly well ). Might not answer your question about what is the best hardware...but might help you determine if you really need a real-time system.
LMAO...its obvious you dont have kids. You're forgetting all about the "pester power factor", a.k.a the 'whine' co-efficient, that those 13 yo's will have on their 45 yo yuppie parents.
One area I have to disagree with you on..."The meteors manage to nick an exposed fuel line, an idea which completely contravenes all conventional engineering wisdom as well as any design that Nasa has set forth to date." Evidently you havent noticed that the International Space Station will have just about all of its major fuel and electrical routings on the outside. There are two reasons for this safety and abililty to make repairs that will continue to function...even if sections of the space stations are having problems.
One only has to look at pictures from Russia's MIR space station with the spagetti of electrical and fuel conduits zip-tied to the walls and running through hatchways, thereby preventing sealing those sections of quickly in an emergency. When MIR was hit by that cargo ship several years ago it took several minutes to disconnect all the equipment so they could close the hatch. And as a result, they lost use of the electricity produced by one of the solar arrays.
NASA has learned from MIR...and routing cables and pipes on the out side is one of them.
Computer magazines are dead. I havent bought one in years. One of the main reasons is believability. How can one believe an article in a magazine is unbiased when the very subject in the artilce is paying for full page advertisements. Today PC magazines are full of ads, way more ads than content. If you want to find good unbiased reviews of software, hardware, new technologies explained just search the web. There are many good sites out there that are more relevant than paper magazines. Toms Hardware, Sharkey Extreme and ReviewFinder are what I use to keep up to date on the goings on in the PC industry. Besides, paper magazines are out of date months before they are printed since several months of lead time are needed to do editing, layouts and the printing. SAVE A TREE...Boycott paper PC magazines.
Ummmmm Lets see...2 Billion times the going price for windoze...say $120, ( OK I may be off slightly, I havent bought 98 and im not planing on buyin 2000 either) OK 2 B time $120 = 240 Billion. I can see some interesting things happening now.. for example ole Billy boy just thumbing his nose at the Justice Department and selling exclusively to PRC. But then hes liable to have problems getting permits to sell "munitions" to the enemy. Personally I dont think PRC has that much cash laying around. Besides Im sure the government of PRC can find someone who knows how to pirate! Let see what Bill does to them .
I have been in the software business for roughly 8 years now, having worked as a consultant for companies like Coca Cola, Lockheed-Martin, Lucent and the Federal Aviation Administration. I have SEEN the damage that Micro$oft, and Bill Gates, has inflicted upon the industry. As the 'vision' originally was expressed Windows was a god send. The Windows API was a way for developers to write applications without regaurd to the computer's hardware. From that perspective it has been a success. However, I have also seen where Micro$oft changes the API to better suit their overall goals. Now, in terms of fairness...is it fair that M$ application developers get to request that certain functionality that they have developed be added to the Windows API...just to make their applications appear smaller than the competitions? Is it fair to other developers that these same API calls are NOT documented in the Windows API references? We think M$ Word is bloated now...you have no idea how much functionality is hidden within the Windows API. From my perspective... M$ has been misuing their power by doing just these things...and thereby making it more difficult for outside competition to develope. In order to compete on an even level with Microsoft, one needs to decompile Windows just to find out what has been hidden away from public view.
Microsoft goes even further by publicly stateing that the presence of undocumented API's should not be relied upon. In other words they reserve th right to change the name or ordinal position of any undocumented API call which another company is relying upon to make their product WORK as intended.
Is ISS, ASP, DCOM and COM really "interesting at a minimum." As a professional developer...I dont think so. There are other tools out there that gives far more cross platform support than M$ does.
There isnt a "Linux cry for death to... M$", just a cry for someone to smack Gates and Ballmer up side the head with a healthy dose of reality. M$ needs to learn to play nicely with others in the same business. I feel being BOTH the O/S DEVELOPER and a MAJOR APPLICATIONS DEVELOPER is a BIG CONFLICT OF INTEREST. The role of O/S developer requires not playing favorites with application developers. The role of O/S developer requires knowing the difference between the O/S and applications. Micro$oft has forgotten the distinction. If Micro$soft wants to bundle applications with the O/S...fine by me.. but let me have the CHOICE to install the applications I wish....never force me, the user into a choice I didnt make. That is what this lawsuit is all about... empowering the consumer. Giving the consumer the ability to CHOOSE. I dont like M$ telling me I can install Netscape on my computer, but I STILL have to install IE5 if I want the computer to work correctly. That is taking choices away from me.
The remark concerning having problems with "gas companys" find hilarious. First you are ambiguous in what you meant, I.e. gasoline or natural gas? Either way, you cant parallel the two. If you are talking about the natural gas suppliers, in most areas they are regulated. Every time they turn around they have to get things approved by regulators. I admit some areas you can have natural gass delivered to you home by tank trucks. But even there...you have a CHOICE of who delivers to you. If you are talking about gasoline companies the situation is even farther removed. I can take my pick of about 6 service stations within a mile of my home.
Now, read my lips...the whole thing is about CHOICE.
It seems to me that Micro$oft is forgeting a couple of important items.
:-)
#1 Open source -- the more M$ tries to squeeze dollars out of the home user the more attractive open source products like Linux become. Linux and open source has made good progress against M$, and this trend will accelerate the greedier M$ becomes. Currently Linux isnt threating M$ on home systems of the general public. If M$'s scheme becomes reality I see a rapid change in Linux's potential on the home desktop. Currently most people who buy software, buy an application and use it, without upgrading for the sake of ungrading. I use Excel and M$Word versions going back pre-Win95 because they still fit my needs, and my wallet. John Q. Public wont stand for having to pay a monthly software bill. Just look at how you grumble at Uncle Sam's share of your paycheck. If there's an option... people will seek it out...especially when THEIR money is involved.
#2 Broadband thru-put -- I dont know what kind of thru-put broad band is supposed to provide but I can say this, it isnt going to be enough. I currently have an ISP who understands cable modem technology. I have 10 Mbit up/down thru-put on my internet connection, and it still isnt enough. I am constantly waiting for blockages in the internet itself. And we are only talking about web pages, e-mail, and file downloads as being the activity on the net now. And I am sure there is more going on. But now add to that current traffic, millions of programs being downloaded, software that used to reside on the individual PC. I dont see how it can work. Even if the software was stored on the ISP's servers... thats still alot of traffic...more than what even Gbit LANs can handle. Downloading the rental-software will suck up a large precentage of the bandwidth no matter where they try to place the "rental" servers. We'll be back to bitching about how slow the web is.
All in all...this is a nice way to convert broadband connections into 9600 baud modems
Not flaming..just enlightening further. The median = 50 is true, if and only if the highest posible IQ is 100. But we all know there are some people whose IQ is above 100. It seems like your wanting to forget these people. Unfortunately, there arent enough people with IQs above 100 to shift the median much above 51.
Thats great, as long as you have only ONE break. I would be a very unhappy camper if I was on Madagascar and the cable got broke to the north & south of me. The ability to reroute the packet requests is not a "self healing" technology. After all ARPANET used adaptive routing back in the late 60's early 70's, which if I'm not mistaken is the SAME concept. Maybe "self-healing" is just a new catch word being used by hardware manufacturers just to promote sales. Think of it the money to be made.