Intel cares more about marketing and big business than they do about truly high-availability and zero-error CPUs
And that would be why a Pentium IV 2.8Ghz is the fastest tested on SpecInt? (Faster than any other processor in the world). That would also be why the SpecFP is dominated by the Intel Itanium2 (with, notably, the P4 not too far behind. The fact that the Itanium is at 1Ghz versus the P4 at 2.8Ghz is irrelevant, as both speeds are the fruits of their respective designs)?
Note that I'm not an Intel "fanboy": I have an Athlon in my machine, and if I bought a machine today it'd have an Athlon in it. However, the strategy of Intel for their P4 is just a different variation on the pursuit of speed, and obviously it works because it's the fastest processor in the world at SpecInt. Saying that it's just marketing is clearly not true when seeing the results of their efforts.
It's interesting that Sun chose the asynchronous architecture instead of taking Intel's route of over-the-horizon pipelines and other tricks.they chose
Let the results do the talking. As it is, clearly Intel is winning the processor war.
Aha...OK you were referring to specfp, as the Pentium 4 2.8Ghz owns the specint category (a lowly P4 2.8 that one would find in a Dell home computer). In SpecFP the Itanium2 has a hearty lead, though the P4 2.8 again is only a small ways behind.
I'm curious on which benchmark results are the Power4 and Itanium the kinds of the roost? On any that I see, the Itanium2 is approximately the same as a high end PIV, and the Power4 is nowhere to be seen in the top echelon...
That is complete Bullshit. I have a PII 400mhz system with a SCSI 2 full height and full width HD and 512 megs of ram. Right next to that computer I have a PIV with 1.7g cpu, IDE HD and 512 megs of ram. For regular applications, there is a minimal difference. Even high end graphic games (both have 64 meg video cards) have small difference.
I have a P3 667 aside a Athlon 1800+ (both with similar RAM and hard drives), and shortly after getting the Athlon I now find the 667 almost unbearable to use. I do some development, and just general browsing, and using the 667 is like pulling teeth some operations seem so slow. Games like Falcon 3 (a three year old game) are intolerable on the 667 (it has a GF3 Ti200, BTW).
Uh...those were both benchmarks of Specint and Specfp performance metrics, and the clock speed was indicated for reference. I highly recommend that you read up on how any modern processor, from the Pentium Pro, on, works, because your misguided notion of backwards compatibility is woefully incorrect.
I'm not quite sure if you're agreeing, or disagreeing. The original poster claimed that Sun, IBM, etc, realized that processor speed no longer matters, to which I replied that if that were the case, why are they sticking dozens of processors in single boxes. The next Joe then claimed that AMD and Intel fanboyz are all fooled, and their processors are really slow, but they just don't know it because they're misled by clock speeds, to which I replied asking what competitor processor beats a high end consumer processor. The reality is that they are few, and very far between. Maybe the Itanium2. Other than that, a high end P4 or Athlon pushes the envelope of single CPU computational power, even when compared to UltraSparcs or any other esoteric processor.
When you get right down to it, Intel and AMD fans really do believe that the performance rating of the CPU is its clock rate.
Okay, tell me what processor is faster than the current high end AMD or Intel processors? Please feel free to linkexamples of single processor competitor systems that trounce the high end AMD or Intel options on widely respected benchmarks. The reality is that the el-cheapo $200 Althlon holds its own and surpasses the majority of lauded, super-duper "RISC" (I use that laughably as most users of the term seem to have pulled a PC Magazine out of their 1988 archives, and don't understand the current state of processors) processors, but fans of UltraSparc, Alpha, etc, presume superiority just because it's rare, sort of like how the anti-Pop are sure that their particular music favourites are superior because they're "alternative".
As far as clock cycles/instruction, all current processors have superscalar instruction pipelines and generally perform at least one instruction per clock cycle (20 or 30? Geesh, you looking at an 8088 timing book?).
I don't know about you, but I'd rather have my CPU doing something more useful than copying bits back and forth between a bus and a controller all day.
IDE has had busmastering for about 7 years, removing the CPU from most disk control operations. Furthermore most modern IDE controllers also offer command queueing (i.e. Promise). Of course, it's of marginal use as controlling a hard drive takes such a micro-iota of actual processor time nowadays.
A SCSI subsystem will generally operate at about 10% CPU utilization during saturated disk I/O, the same load on an IDE subsystem will suck up closer to 80% of your CPU cycles
When I'm copying at full bore between partitions, or over a high speed network, the drive is completely saturated and the CPU usage is about 2%. During most copy operations, the most CPU intensive aspect of it is Windows drawing the "Now Copying..." dialog.
The systems are designed for different tasks than Intel/AMD desktop processors.
I'm sorry, did I somehow claim that they weren't? The prior poster claimed that Sun, et. all, proved that clock speed doesn't matter because they have lower clock speed processors on their systems. I call bullshit. Sun achieves extreme throughput by using lots of processors simultaneously. Is the net result extreme performance? Absolutely. But claims that clock speed don't matter are absurd. A Sun 15K offers up to 96Ghz of 64-bit processing power: Yeah, they don't care about CPU power at all.
However, when you add multiple tasks and a lot of disk access , SCSI beats IDE hands down. As you add drives (don't even bring up RAID yet), tag command queing and parallel data paths blows away IDE no question.
I hoped that this argument didn't erupt. It's always the same conclusion (That SCSI isn't inherently faster than IDE), though there'll be a new army of FUDsters reading your post and restating what they saw, presuming that a claim is proof.
Yes, there is a question about whether SCSI "blows away" IDE. This is, quite simply, SCSI FUD. There have been countless comparisons by people trying to prove exactly what you're claiming that have shown that with modern IDE systems, and the best current SCSI systems, the only benefit of SCSI is because the best of the best hard drives (hence extremely $) are only available for SCSI (i.e. 15,000 RPM). If these same drives had an IDE interface, there would be no advantage. The "multitasking" aspect is BS: Ever since the days of modern operating system with disk controller drivers that do exactly what the SCSI hardware would do (queuing and optimizing access), that point is moot. Additionally, most IDE controllers nowadays DO have IDE queues, and are actually recognized as "SCSI" (despite using IDE signalling and IDE drives). Promise controllers have queues, optimizations, etc.
Sun, HP, etc., have for years sold small MHz machines that outperform the GHz machines available mainly because they use RISC technology and aligned instructions
You realize that RISC machines require more cycles to achieve the same performance, right, completely countering your own argument? BTW: Intel went to Ghz clocking because they eliminated the x86 compatibility in the core (and went RISCish), but instead built a emulation layer around it. Sun, HP, etc all, haven't sold processors that are higher performing than the high end consumer processors for years. They make up for this by, as mentioned, implementing extreme, and astoundingly costly, SMP.
It's not unusual for a sub 1Ghz PC with good SCSI disks to handily outperform a 2Ghz+ machine with mere IDE
If you said "a clustered array of RAID5 15,000 RPM drives versus a 5400RPM single drive", then that would have made sense, but to use SCSI versus IDE as the big differentiation is just silly: The intrinsic SCSI advantage has been disproven countless times.
Sun sell systems with 300-400Mhz processors and gigaplane XB crossbar active backplanes
That's pretty disingenuous: Sun sells systems with tens or hundreds of those "300-400Mhz" processors, disproving your "CPU power doesn't matter" BS. I guarantee you that if Sun weren't sliding behind in the CPU game (it's hard to compete with AMD and Intel with such a small niche market) they'd sell much more powerful CPUs. Instead they compensate by clustering dozens of them together.
If you're buying a system in the near future, drop 500-1000 Mhz in CPU speed and buy faster disks or more memory with the money you saved.
You'd save next to nothing. An Athlon 2200+ costs $220 Canadian here, and puts you in the upper realm of CPUs. Considering that most power PCs have 512MB of RAM (which is virtually never exhausted. Despite having several development tools open, and SQL Server running, and several different browsers, I currently have 370MB free. Adding more memory will merely increase the capacitive load of my PC). Secondly, adding a faster disk only matters if you do tasks which are heavily disk I/O intensive, which the overwhelming majority are not (especially because people have so much memory, and hence disk cache). It's like saying you'll get better video encoding performance by equipping your PC with a faster CD-ROM drive.
This BS "CPUs are faster than we'll ever need" nonsense is as tired of an argument as it was a decade ago when contrarians were assuring us that a 386 was more power than any reasonable man would ever need. History has shown their claims to be absurd, yet as they say: History repeats itself. Take a man who claims that his Pentium 667 is "faster than I'll ever need" and give him a P4 2.2 to use for a week. Put him back on his 667. 9 times out of 10 he'll be on the phone to Dell to upgrade his PC. Most people who claim that they don't need better say so because they've never SEEN better.
Additionally, try doing some video editing on your PC. While the hard drive is a factor (because massive amounts of data are read and written), the processor is massively more an influence: An Athlon 2200+ will perform the task that much quicker than a Athlon 1500+, again thoroughly reputing your claims that processors are overpowered. That's especially telling as video processing is one of the most disk and memory bound activities.
Did you actually read his journal? Take a look at the "homeless shelter" picture he took while "giving back" to the community. Pretty damn funny, really. The fact that this guy gets away with this says a lot about the poor reputation the real Theo got himself.
can't "erase" channels - i.e. make them not appear when I'm channel surfing with the channel+ and channel- buttons
While I never actually surf through channels, I will agree that many of these boxes seem to be created more for the cable company than for the consumer (which is why it'd be great if there were a digital cable standard, and companies could compete to get you to buy their best-of-breed box. Of course that is doubtful in the Paladium world of today). Regarding channel deletion, I have the Motorola digital box, and I find shows by scanning through the online guide: One of my biggest pet peeves is the fact that I have to scan through dozens or hundreds of channels which I haven't subscribed to and don't get: Probably 50 ppv sports channels, and dozens of specialty channels. These are a waste of redraw power (which the Motorola unit has in short supply), and waste my time, and it's a real piss off that they don't offer basic functionality to exclude them from the listing.
Very true observation, but there is a side effect of this: Shortly after getting the digital box, I was annoyed to find that surfing was so brutally slow, so I took a look at the online guide. Ever since that day, I literally never flick through channels: Instead I scan through the online show listing finding shows with descriptions that sound interesting, and if there is nothing then I go do something else. It really is a superior way to watch television, and allows you to make more informed decisions (though I despise the channels that use stock show descriptions, rather than an actual episode description. For instance some describe the Simpsons episode, whereas other's simply describe the show in general).
Internet access and alcohol? Talk about stretching an analogy (sorry about the unintended goatse.cx reference).
The internet is a tool, and indeed ever since getting always on broadband years ago, I do use it many times per day in a very utilitarian manner. I have a cupboard full of booze (for guests), yet I very seldom drink. I have a fridge with some bars of butter, but I'm no scarfing them down.
Your point seems to be "high speed=bad because some people have no self control". That is a ridiculous approach to things.
Under Linux, thread creation hasn't been much faster than process creation, because process creation was so dang fast.
That's called "making lemonade out of lemons". Clearly this test has shown that thread creation in Linux was horribly broken, not the flip side that process creation was so wonderfully good.
Not only is there a savings in space, but many of these machines also emit far less noise and heat. I say this with a bit of humor as I just (literally I just got my first good ping back less than a minute ago) finished moving my firewall/play FreeBSD machine to the basement where it isn't sucking up space in my office, and isn't adding to the noise and heat problem (which is quite severe in this room. This room is constantly 5C or greater warmer than the rest of the house).
While the etiquette of flags isn't a seriously followed up here in Canada, I do consider it a shame when I see tattered, ripped up flags flying atop buildings where the owners are just too negligent to maintain it. Much like having a commercial email account that isn't monitored, flying a flag without maintaining it is much worse than not doing it at all.
Nichia...owns the patent because Nakamura had signed a certificate handing the ownership of the patent to the company....[he] countered by saying that the certificate is invalid because he didn't know scientists working for a company could legally claim patents for their products when he signed the certificate...apan's Patent Law provides that researchers who invent products as part of their company jobs have the patent for them, but adds that their employers can claim the patent after paying "deserving bonuses" to the inventors.
Sort of like the countless articles about boohoo musical acts that decide after taking the signing bonuses and all the perks that they don't like the RIAA, this is a case of "guy signs away everything and now wants an undo button".
Re:At the risk of being modded redundant. . .
on
Passport vs. Plan 9
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· Score: 1
I too will question the very advisability of single sign on. There are good reasons I keep multiple banking, credit card and merchant accounts. I specifically * don't want* one single authority to be tracking my every move. I * don't want* all my finacial and personal assets and records piled up in one location. I keep a *diversified* portfolio.
Passport has nothing to do with storing all of your records in one location. Passport, in essence, is nothing more than an ID bank: When you connect to a passport enabled site you are redirected to Microsoft where you authenticate, and Microsoft passes your passport ID to the original site. Passport is generally a good idea on tens of thousands of low value but-gonna-make-you-make-another-god-damn-username- password-combo-anyways sort of site: You have a FAR better likelihood of actually logging in another time if you don't have to pound your head wondering what lame password you made for that site. On the flip side, it can improve security as it avoids people using the same password on multiple sites (which is very common).
As far as property goes, the situation is more like you left out your bike, unlocked, with a "Use Me" sign on it. Remember, no one is forcing their way into these networks; the network access is entirely permitted to any and all. It's not stealing if someone asked your bike if they could have it, and your bike said "Well, my owner says it's OK, so sure!"
I will fully admit that my analogies are flawed, however I would respectfully disagree with your interpretation of them. My bike, when left in the bike rack outside of the Piggly Wiggly, is reflecting light waves to any and all that happen to capture photons from its direction, broadcasting to all its existence. If you get on it and start to pedal, it will respond and will move forward, and when you turn the handlebars it will readily steer from you. Does this give one the right to just go to the shopping market and take any bikes that are sitting there? Of course it doesn't.
Wireless networks are much the same: The equipment might not question whether you should be using it, but that is completely different from it giving you permission to use it.
Funny, but I proposed nothing, except a bit of intelligence on behalf of the program. Perhaps the addition of a wizard that could autopopulate the alternatives choices with installed options. Fits in the structure, and for any other company it'd be a trivial addition.
Your browser choices: Internet Explorer, Netscape, Winamp, Everquest, Textpad.
Ah, the good old strawman argument. This can be used to defend virtually anything, however that doesn't make it any more correct.
Right now I have Opera 6.03, Mozilla 1.1, Netscape, and IE installed, all well known and highly recognized "web browsers" (contrary to your and other strawman builders claims, there are actually a manageably small number of web browsers out there), yet after installing the service pack my browser choice is "What you currently have selected" (it doesn't bother giving me a description, lest I want to keep it), or Internet Explorer. Let me reiterate: All it does, at this point, is MAKE IT EASIER TO SWITCH BACK TO MICROSOFT'S PROGRAM.
Microsoft is, rightly, not held to the same standard as other companies: While I don't expect RealPlayer to make a best effort to help me to use competitors programs, I _DO_ expect Microsoft's programs to make at least the trivial effort to allow me to use other programs (especially given that I paid for the operating system, an OS which is supposed to be there to serve me. One can't even call these competitive programs as I've bought the OS regardless of whether or not I use MediaPlayer or Internet Explorer). In the Windows 2000 version, at least (which I happen to be looking at right now), there isn't even the trivial capability of browsing to another client exe! Oh, right, it'd be super difficult to add a "browse" button. What the heck was I thinking?
The next step, though, is that wardrivers claim that systems with WEP not enabled are broadcasting the MAC address of people on the system, and by extrapolation therefore MAC addresses are free for the taking, and from there therefore even MAC "secured" networks can be freely used. If they use 40-bit WEP, well then once again the Slashdot mentality would be that it's free for the taking since they didn't use 56-bit encryption. And if they used 128-bit encryption but their WAP has a known exploit, well then it's free for the taking because the exploit wasn't fixed. I could carry this on, but it all naturally leads to the justification for virtually anything.
Slashdot Mirror
Intel cares more about marketing and big business than they do about truly high-availability and zero-error CPUs
And that would be why a Pentium IV 2.8Ghz is the fastest tested on SpecInt? (Faster than any other processor in the world). That would also be why the SpecFP is dominated by the Intel Itanium2 (with, notably, the P4 not too far behind. The fact that the Itanium is at 1Ghz versus the P4 at 2.8Ghz is irrelevant, as both speeds are the fruits of their respective designs)?
Note that I'm not an Intel "fanboy": I have an Athlon in my machine, and if I bought a machine today it'd have an Athlon in it. However, the strategy of Intel for their P4 is just a different variation on the pursuit of speed, and obviously it works because it's the fastest processor in the world at SpecInt. Saying that it's just marketing is clearly not true when seeing the results of their efforts.
It's interesting that Sun chose the asynchronous architecture instead of taking Intel's route of over-the-horizon pipelines and other tricks.they chose
Let the results do the talking. As it is, clearly Intel is winning the processor war.
Aha...OK you were referring to specfp, as the Pentium 4 2.8Ghz owns the specint category (a lowly P4 2.8 that one would find in a Dell home computer). In SpecFP the Itanium2 has a hearty lead, though the P4 2.8 again is only a small ways behind.
I'm curious on which benchmark results are the Power4 and Itanium the kinds of the roost? On any that I see, the Itanium2 is approximately the same as a high end PIV, and the Power4 is nowhere to be seen in the top echelon...
That is complete Bullshit. I have a PII 400mhz system with a SCSI 2 full height and full width HD and 512 megs of ram. Right next to that computer I have a PIV with 1.7g cpu, IDE HD and 512 megs of ram. For regular applications, there is a minimal difference. Even high end graphic games (both have 64 meg video cards) have small difference.
I have a P3 667 aside a Athlon 1800+ (both with similar RAM and hard drives), and shortly after getting the Athlon I now find the 667 almost unbearable to use. I do some development, and just general browsing, and using the 667 is like pulling teeth some operations seem so slow. Games like Falcon 3 (a three year old game) are intolerable on the 667 (it has a GF3 Ti200, BTW).
Are you slow? Do you have any clue what Specint and Specfp? They measure performance. You're a moron.
Uh...those were both benchmarks of Specint and Specfp performance metrics, and the clock speed was indicated for reference. I highly recommend that you read up on how any modern processor, from the Pentium Pro, on, works, because your misguided notion of backwards compatibility is woefully incorrect.
I'm not quite sure if you're agreeing, or disagreeing. The original poster claimed that Sun, IBM, etc, realized that processor speed no longer matters, to which I replied that if that were the case, why are they sticking dozens of processors in single boxes. The next Joe then claimed that AMD and Intel fanboyz are all fooled, and their processors are really slow, but they just don't know it because they're misled by clock speeds, to which I replied asking what competitor processor beats a high end consumer processor. The reality is that they are few, and very far between. Maybe the Itanium2. Other than that, a high end P4 or Athlon pushes the envelope of single CPU computational power, even when compared to UltraSparcs or any other esoteric processor.
When you get right down to it, Intel and AMD fans really do believe that the performance rating of the CPU is its clock rate.
Okay, tell me what processor is faster than the current high end AMD or Intel processors? Please feel free to link examples of single processor competitor systems that trounce the high end AMD or Intel options on widely respected benchmarks. The reality is that the el-cheapo $200 Althlon holds its own and surpasses the majority of lauded, super-duper "RISC" (I use that laughably as most users of the term seem to have pulled a PC Magazine out of their 1988 archives, and don't understand the current state of processors) processors, but fans of UltraSparc, Alpha, etc, presume superiority just because it's rare, sort of like how the anti-Pop are sure that their particular music favourites are superior because they're "alternative".
As far as clock cycles/instruction, all current processors have superscalar instruction pipelines and generally perform at least one instruction per clock cycle (20 or 30? Geesh, you looking at an 8088 timing book?).
I don't know about you, but I'd rather have my CPU doing something more useful than copying bits back and forth between a bus and a controller all day.
IDE has had busmastering for about 7 years, removing the CPU from most disk control operations. Furthermore most modern IDE controllers also offer command queueing (i.e. Promise). Of course, it's of marginal use as controlling a hard drive takes such a micro-iota of actual processor time nowadays.
A SCSI subsystem will generally operate at about 10% CPU utilization during saturated disk I/O, the same load on an IDE subsystem will suck up closer to 80% of your CPU cycles
When I'm copying at full bore between partitions, or over a high speed network, the drive is completely saturated and the CPU usage is about 2%. During most copy operations, the most CPU intensive aspect of it is Windows drawing the "Now Copying..." dialog.
The systems are designed for different tasks than Intel/AMD desktop processors.
I'm sorry, did I somehow claim that they weren't? The prior poster claimed that Sun, et. all, proved that clock speed doesn't matter because they have lower clock speed processors on their systems. I call bullshit. Sun achieves extreme throughput by using lots of processors simultaneously. Is the net result extreme performance? Absolutely. But claims that clock speed don't matter are absurd. A Sun 15K offers up to 96Ghz of 64-bit processing power: Yeah, they don't care about CPU power at all.
However, when you add multiple tasks and a lot of disk access , SCSI beats IDE hands down. As you add drives (don't even bring up RAID yet), tag command queing and parallel data paths blows away IDE no question.
I hoped that this argument didn't erupt. It's always the same conclusion (That SCSI isn't inherently faster than IDE), though there'll be a new army of FUDsters reading your post and restating what they saw, presuming that a claim is proof.
Yes, there is a question about whether SCSI "blows away" IDE. This is, quite simply, SCSI FUD. There have been countless comparisons by people trying to prove exactly what you're claiming that have shown that with modern IDE systems, and the best current SCSI systems, the only benefit of SCSI is because the best of the best hard drives (hence extremely $) are only available for SCSI (i.e. 15,000 RPM). If these same drives had an IDE interface, there would be no advantage. The "multitasking" aspect is BS: Ever since the days of modern operating system with disk controller drivers that do exactly what the SCSI hardware would do (queuing and optimizing access), that point is moot. Additionally, most IDE controllers nowadays DO have IDE queues, and are actually recognized as "SCSI" (despite using IDE signalling and IDE drives). Promise controllers have queues, optimizations, etc.
Sun, HP, etc., have for years sold small MHz machines that outperform the GHz machines available mainly because they use RISC technology and aligned instructions
You realize that RISC machines require more cycles to achieve the same performance, right, completely countering your own argument? BTW: Intel went to Ghz clocking because they eliminated the x86 compatibility in the core (and went RISCish), but instead built a emulation layer around it. Sun, HP, etc all, haven't sold processors that are higher performing than the high end consumer processors for years. They make up for this by, as mentioned, implementing extreme, and astoundingly costly, SMP.
It's not unusual for a sub 1Ghz PC with good SCSI disks to handily outperform a 2Ghz+ machine with mere IDE
If you said "a clustered array of RAID5 15,000 RPM drives versus a 5400RPM single drive", then that would have made sense, but to use SCSI versus IDE as the big differentiation is just silly: The intrinsic SCSI advantage has been disproven countless times.
Sun sell systems with 300-400Mhz processors and gigaplane XB crossbar active backplanes
That's pretty disingenuous: Sun sells systems with tens or hundreds of those "300-400Mhz" processors, disproving your "CPU power doesn't matter" BS. I guarantee you that if Sun weren't sliding behind in the CPU game (it's hard to compete with AMD and Intel with such a small niche market) they'd sell much more powerful CPUs. Instead they compensate by clustering dozens of them together.
If you're buying a system in the near future, drop 500-1000 Mhz in CPU speed and buy faster disks or more memory with the money you saved.
You'd save next to nothing. An Athlon 2200+ costs $220 Canadian here, and puts you in the upper realm of CPUs. Considering that most power PCs have 512MB of RAM (which is virtually never exhausted. Despite having several development tools open, and SQL Server running, and several different browsers, I currently have 370MB free. Adding more memory will merely increase the capacitive load of my PC). Secondly, adding a faster disk only matters if you do tasks which are heavily disk I/O intensive, which the overwhelming majority are not (especially because people have so much memory, and hence disk cache). It's like saying you'll get better video encoding performance by equipping your PC with a faster CD-ROM drive.
This BS "CPUs are faster than we'll ever need" nonsense is as tired of an argument as it was a decade ago when contrarians were assuring us that a 386 was more power than any reasonable man would ever need. History has shown their claims to be absurd, yet as they say: History repeats itself. Take a man who claims that his Pentium 667 is "faster than I'll ever need" and give him a P4 2.2 to use for a week. Put him back on his 667. 9 times out of 10 he'll be on the phone to Dell to upgrade his PC. Most people who claim that they don't need better say so because they've never SEEN better.
Additionally, try doing some video editing on your PC. While the hard drive is a factor (because massive amounts of data are read and written), the processor is massively more an influence: An Athlon 2200+ will perform the task that much quicker than a Athlon 1500+, again thoroughly reputing your claims that processors are overpowered. That's especially telling as video processing is one of the most disk and memory bound activities.
Did you actually read his journal? Take a look at the "homeless shelter" picture he took while "giving back" to the community. Pretty damn funny, really. The fact that this guy gets away with this says a lot about the poor reputation the real Theo got himself.
...all posts not submitted regarding this article.
can't "erase" channels - i.e. make them not appear when I'm channel surfing with the channel+ and channel- buttons
While I never actually surf through channels, I will agree that many of these boxes seem to be created more for the cable company than for the consumer (which is why it'd be great if there were a digital cable standard, and companies could compete to get you to buy their best-of-breed box. Of course that is doubtful in the Paladium world of today). Regarding channel deletion, I have the Motorola digital box, and I find shows by scanning through the online guide: One of my biggest pet peeves is the fact that I have to scan through dozens or hundreds of channels which I haven't subscribed to and don't get: Probably 50 ppv sports channels, and dozens of specialty channels. These are a waste of redraw power (which the Motorola unit has in short supply), and waste my time, and it's a real piss off that they don't offer basic functionality to exclude them from the listing.
Very true observation, but there is a side effect of this: Shortly after getting the digital box, I was annoyed to find that surfing was so brutally slow, so I took a look at the online guide. Ever since that day, I literally never flick through channels: Instead I scan through the online show listing finding shows with descriptions that sound interesting, and if there is nothing then I go do something else. It really is a superior way to watch television, and allows you to make more informed decisions (though I despise the channels that use stock show descriptions, rather than an actual episode description. For instance some describe the Simpsons episode, whereas other's simply describe the show in general).
Internet access and alcohol? Talk about stretching an analogy (sorry about the unintended goatse.cx reference).
The internet is a tool, and indeed ever since getting always on broadband years ago, I do use it many times per day in a very utilitarian manner. I have a cupboard full of booze (for guests), yet I very seldom drink. I have a fridge with some bars of butter, but I'm no scarfing them down.
Your point seems to be "high speed=bad because some people have no self control". That is a ridiculous approach to things.
Under Linux, thread creation hasn't been much faster than process creation, because process creation was so dang fast.
That's called "making lemonade out of lemons". Clearly this test has shown that thread creation in Linux was horribly broken, not the flip side that process creation was so wonderfully good.
Not only is there a savings in space, but many of these machines also emit far less noise and heat. I say this with a bit of humor as I just (literally I just got my first good ping back less than a minute ago) finished moving my firewall/play FreeBSD machine to the basement where it isn't sucking up space in my office, and isn't adding to the noise and heat problem (which is quite severe in this room. This room is constantly 5C or greater warmer than the rest of the house).
While the etiquette of flags isn't a seriously followed up here in Canada, I do consider it a shame when I see tattered, ripped up flags flying atop buildings where the owners are just too negligent to maintain it. Much like having a commercial email account that isn't monitored, flying a flag without maintaining it is much worse than not doing it at all.
Nichia...owns the patent because Nakamura had signed a certificate handing the ownership of the patent to the company....[he] countered by saying that the certificate is invalid because he didn't know scientists working for a company could legally claim patents for their products when he signed the certificate...apan's Patent Law provides that researchers who invent products as part of their company jobs have the patent for them, but adds that their employers can claim the patent after paying "deserving bonuses" to the inventors.
Sort of like the countless articles about boohoo musical acts that decide after taking the signing bonuses and all the perks that they don't like the RIAA, this is a case of "guy signs away everything and now wants an undo button".
I too will question the very advisability of single sign on. There are good reasons I keep multiple banking, credit card and merchant accounts. I specifically * don't want* one single authority to be tracking my every move. I * don't want* all my finacial and personal assets and records piled up in one location. I keep a *diversified* portfolio.
- password-combo-anyways sort of site: You have a FAR better likelihood of actually logging in another time if you don't have to pound your head wondering what lame password you made for that site. On the flip side, it can improve security as it avoids people using the same password on multiple sites (which is very common).
Passport has nothing to do with storing all of your records in one location. Passport, in essence, is nothing more than an ID bank: When you connect to a passport enabled site you are redirected to Microsoft where you authenticate, and Microsoft passes your passport ID to the original site. Passport is generally a good idea on tens of thousands of low value but-gonna-make-you-make-another-god-damn-username
As far as property goes, the situation is more like you left out your bike, unlocked, with a "Use Me" sign on it. Remember, no one is forcing their way into these networks; the network access is entirely permitted to any and all. It's not stealing if someone asked your bike if they could have it, and your bike said "Well, my owner says it's OK, so sure!"
I will fully admit that my analogies are flawed, however I would respectfully disagree with your interpretation of them. My bike, when left in the bike rack outside of the Piggly Wiggly, is reflecting light waves to any and all that happen to capture photons from its direction, broadcasting to all its existence. If you get on it and start to pedal, it will respond and will move forward, and when you turn the handlebars it will readily steer from you. Does this give one the right to just go to the shopping market and take any bikes that are sitting there? Of course it doesn't.
Wireless networks are much the same: The equipment might not question whether you should be using it, but that is completely different from it giving you permission to use it.
to that convoluted mess you are proposing
Funny, but I proposed nothing, except a bit of intelligence on behalf of the program. Perhaps the addition of a wizard that could autopopulate the alternatives choices with installed options. Fits in the structure, and for any other company it'd be a trivial addition.
Your browser choices: Internet Explorer, Netscape, Winamp, Everquest, Textpad.
Ah, the good old strawman argument. This can be used to defend virtually anything, however that doesn't make it any more correct.
Right now I have Opera 6.03, Mozilla 1.1, Netscape, and IE installed, all well known and highly recognized "web browsers" (contrary to your and other strawman builders claims, there are actually a manageably small number of web browsers out there), yet after installing the service pack my browser choice is "What you currently have selected" (it doesn't bother giving me a description, lest I want to keep it), or Internet Explorer. Let me reiterate: All it does, at this point, is MAKE IT EASIER TO SWITCH BACK TO MICROSOFT'S PROGRAM.
Microsoft is, rightly, not held to the same standard as other companies: While I don't expect RealPlayer to make a best effort to help me to use competitors programs, I _DO_ expect Microsoft's programs to make at least the trivial effort to allow me to use other programs (especially given that I paid for the operating system, an OS which is supposed to be there to serve me. One can't even call these competitive programs as I've bought the OS regardless of whether or not I use MediaPlayer or Internet Explorer). In the Windows 2000 version, at least (which I happen to be looking at right now), there isn't even the trivial capability of browsing to another client exe! Oh, right, it'd be super difficult to add a "browse" button. What the heck was I thinking?
The next step, though, is that wardrivers claim that systems with WEP not enabled are broadcasting the MAC address of people on the system, and by extrapolation therefore MAC addresses are free for the taking, and from there therefore even MAC "secured" networks can be freely used. If they use 40-bit WEP, well then once again the Slashdot mentality would be that it's free for the taking since they didn't use 56-bit encryption. And if they used 128-bit encryption but their WAP has a known exploit, well then it's free for the taking because the exploit wasn't fixed. I could carry this on, but it all naturally leads to the justification for virtually anything.