It's the MX though. I have an obsolete GeForce (1) 256 DDR in my PC and at 32-bit colour it eclipses the GeForce2 MX, which itself is heavily bandwidth deprived. From the benchmarks given on Apple's site the GeForce4MX in this machine isn't all that.
If anything the GPU T&L is probably extremely fast, in which case they should have used a very high polygon test to benchmark and show the differences. As it is, using Quake 3 at 1024x768 32-bit is probably memory choking it.
The GeForce4 MX seems to be pretty seriously crippled (like the GeForce 2MX before it). On this page you can see that it pulls in about 115 fps at 1024x768. Compare that with this page which shows a GF3 Ti500 doing 190fps under similar circumstances.
I'm not saying that it's all that bad, and the graphics performance is very nice indeed, but the GeForce4 moniker might be a bit misleading to people who might presume it's the next generation: That little MX designation is a clue that it isn't necessarily a step up from a GeForce 3.
I, too, tried to tune into the Simpsons to find it preempted about 25 minutes while they said ABSOLUTELY NOTHING. What was that all about? I'm not a football fan, but it truly seemed like these guys had absolutely nothing to say and were just mandated to fill in some time. Very frustrating.
Speaking of tactics like this: Perhaps the opposite, but I've noticed something very odd on WB shows (hey, look, my wife likes them. i.e. the Gilmore Girls, etc.): Every now and then there are Matrix like slow motion/weird motion effects put in absolutely normal scenes. I noticed this first on Buffy several years ago: Often when turning there head someone with the slew dial at WB has a little fun or something. I don't know why they do it (subliminally to make it etherworldly?), but it's very disorienting.
How much time and breath (ergo keystrokes) have been wasted defending the title "hacker"? Jesus, get over it and accept that many people have negative connotations with the word. Move on. It's choosing a battle for pathetic, superficial, pseudo-intelligensia reasons.
Or are these people from Hackeria and they're defending their noble cultures traditions? Bah.
So very true. As another poster mentioned: Normally when you use the xhtml logo you directly link to the validation page for that page (indeed that is the html that the W3C page gives you), which is a sort of circular "keep 'em honest" type check to keep stuff like this from happening. How hilarious.
The compile time isn't the relevant fact: It's the runtime of the generated code. The GCC compiler is notorious for not optimizing code of specific platforms (putting cross-platform as more important) so this result is hardly surprizing.
Re:MMORPG's aren't made that good
on
Pay to Play
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· Score: 2
Thats because they're made by corporations, duh. Ask the hardcore players what is fun, and then you can start charging for your game.
Who works at the corporations? Robots? Do you remember the Simpsons where Homer was Poochie? There was a focus group segment that was so true:
Man: How many of you kids would like Itchy & Scratchy to deal with real-life problems, like the ones you face every day? Kids: [clamoring] Oh, yeah! I would! Great idea! Yeah, that's it! Man: And who would like to see them do just the opposite -- getting into far-out situations involving robots and magic powers? Kids: [clamoring] Me! Yeah! Oh, cool! Yeah, that's what I want! Man: So, you want a realistic, down-to-earth show... that's completely off-the-wall and swarming with magic robots? Kids: [all agreeing, quieter this time] That's right. Oh yeah, good.
Huh? GCC is a free, open source compiler. MS Office is a $579 US proprietary product. Not really too much of a comparison there so that doesn't make a lot of sense.
I do actually agree with you, at least with perhaps what you're trying to say: People use GCC because they know the code that they'll get and the projects they share will be with a common denominator of GCC: I have the Intel Compiler for VC++ and it works well and promises some speed benefits over VC 6, but I don't use it simply because of two reasons: a) tiny little differences between it an VC++ : It has to be 100% the same to capture the audience, b) the promise of Visual Studio.NET (which I am now using) which was the classic "Don't bother with that because soon there'll be the new extra crispy compiler!". I'm seeing the exact same sort of "you just wait!" premonitions regarding GCC 3 in here.
Let me reiterate that at no point did I ever say that software never needs to be rewritten, but rather that there are hoardes of software developers who always have "a better way" mantra, and whose approach to any coding issues is "rewrite it" (I've worked with quite a few of them. It's a classic "not made here" approach, or rather a "not made by me" approach, and they always have loads of superficial reasons to justify their rewrite conclusions). Of course 6 months later it's the exact same situation when the next continual rewriter comes in, shakes their head with a dismissive attitude, and claims that it all needs to be rewritten to encapsulate function X...
This same mentality goes into code reuse: Put together a group of developers and you'll find there are a couple that just never seem to be satisfied with common components/third party tools: There is always some spurious scapegoat reason why it just won't work and clearly needs to be rewritten or custom made, because blah blah blah. I've done it myself: The classic "why use their component when I can just spit it off myself". In software development it is easier [at the beginning] to take the first step to rebuilding it (because that seems like "progress") than it is to understand and fix what is already there.
Look, if you don't know what you're talking about, just don't post
Uh huh...Let me introduce you to the pot...
C++ has bounded strings
It does? Wow, news to me. Oh, you must mean that there are various different standard templates and proprietary classes to handle strings, that happened to be implemented in C++! Ah, okay, thanks for updating me on the obvious, but unfortunately you're wrong, and even in C++ code most developers shun the class strings for good old fashioned char * due to performance reasons. Or do you consider CString and the STL "C++"?
Note that the vast majority of the recent MS buffer overruns have been in C code, not C++
Wow you really make quite the differentiation between C++ and C, don't you? Perhaps you're not aware, but C++ is largely backwards compatible and is a superset of C, rather than a whole new ballgame : Most of those ISAPI modules are C++ programs that use C features like char * and strcpy: That doesn't preclude them from having classes or using template libraries in addition. The fact that I said "C++" was merely because it's a "no shit" type conclusion that they're using C++ features, but it is the C remnants that are usually the causation (but the code is still in C++).
And putting variables on the heap will just slow execution speed down with little to no security gain: heap overflows can be exploited too, just not as easily by cut-and-paste exploit writers.
Heap overflows are significantly more difficult to control in a deterministic fashion that stack overflows. i.e. night and day. Of course they shouldn't happen in the first place (it should have the possibility of happening), but simply brushing it off is laughable.
Rewriting by "refactoring" is very much different than throwing out the baby with the bathwater and saying "Let's start from scratch". I constantly rewrite classes, improve functions, pull out common code, and at the end of the day I might have actually replaced every single line, but I haven't actually rewritten it. While it seems odd to differentiate, there is a major difference. See the latest Joel article for an example of that.
By taking some basic steps Microsoft could dramatically improve the security of their code. The fact is that about 95% of the security faults in MS code haven't been faults with the underlying OS' design (which actually has pervasive security throughout. Indeed the ACL security model in NT/2000/XP is the best or among the best out there) per se, but rather with trivial C++ banality like buffer overflows (which has been REMARKABLY common in their code). It is simply a case of auditing code and saying "hey look here I do an strcpy(dest,source) and I don't make sure the source is smaller than the desk...". That simple check throughout their code, and the use of variables on the heap rather than the stack, would have eliminated most of the black eyes MS has gotten.
Starting from scratch is what bad programmers do when they don't have the intelligence or patience to figure out what has been done and what has been learned previously. Well, let me state that there are cases where starting from scratch makes sense, but there are the far more prevelant "It's all crap, I'm starting from scratch" mentality, which roughly translates to "It's easier for me to impose my will and start with what I know than to try to figure out what the prior person did and learned". Beware a programmer who ever claims that they need to rewrite something: 9 times out of 10 it's because they are lazy, or they're just not smart enough to figure it out.
BTW: Who you are talking about is Joel, i.e. http://joel.editthispage.com. HA! Just visited there and hilariously enough he has a co-rewriting story up. You're thinking of this article.
Doom blew everyone away with its revolutionary 3D engine, but the game was pointless. Fun, but pointless, and got old fast
Nice job with revisionist history there. The reality, of course, is that for the overwhelming majority of people Doom was extremely engrossing (the classic is jumping out of your seat when one of those red bull things appeared) and was directly responsible for billions of hours of slack time. Duke Nukem 3D was very similar in that it's a simple concept, but I played that game multiplayer for hours upon hours upon hours.
including everything id has done since
Now this is just dumb. While I haven't ever really gotten into Q3, Q2 gave me thousands of fun hours, especially with the mods. The Quake series, and this is something that many pundits fail to realize, is more of a sport than a RPG : You excel and because exemplary in it just like you would perfecting the perfect dive or running the 10s 100m, and it's the same sort of quest for perfection that draws people to excel. When I see complaints about the Quake series I often wonder if these people expect some RPGing to break out in the middle of the Olympics : Maybe the downhill skiers can have a pseudo hill economy. I mean otherwise they're just falling with gravity right?
The whole point of this? Don't discount a game just because it's not a genre that you prefer, and don't presume that if an element works in one game (i.e realism, or RPG factors, etc.) that therefore it should be in all games.
If you aren't legally required to maintain records of every email/document/etc, then why SHOULD you? Do you recall the Netscape fiasco where Microsoft subpoenad the history of every email to an employee bitch newsgroup? In that case Netscape had no legal duty to maintain backups and records of every posting, but because they made the mistake of not deleting them frequently suddenly they were required to provide them and were then barred from destroying them: It's an odd circumstance when you don't legally have to archive information, but if someone asks for it then suddenly it's legally protected and you have to defend and explain the context of every message, every word, etc, and of course everyone says something now and then that can be taken out of context (or alternately that they said in the heat of passion but backed down from).
Destroying old information quite simply removes the liability that it potentially represents, even if there is absolutely nothing indicting in it. It can also protect freedoms: Websites aren't legally required to keep IP logs, but if they DO then those IP logs can be subpoenad.
Re:WOW! A handheld "GPS transmitter"
on
Time for a Beer?
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· Score: 1
There are an awful lot of people out there who truly believe that GPS receivers are communicating with the GPS satellites, and the GPS satellites are saying "You are at X degrees W...". I've heard people worry about the privacy of GPS (because they worry that they're being tracked), and I've had people ask me what the subscription was to utilize GPS services. Definitely there is a need for some user education, because people have misinformation.
Hehe, truth be told I don't even bother anymore because my wife is right about 95% of the time. Actually I'd swear it is 100%, but I'm giving myself a bit of the benefit of the doubt. No longer do I rush to the PC to prove my memory, because it just disproves it.:-)
Another example, my girlfriend and I were watching a movie the other night and we started arguing about what other movies a particular actress was in. A quick jump to IMDB and the issue was solved (I was right this time). IMDB has helped my relationship.
Because one or the other proved the other one wrong? Being proven wrong is seldom taken gently, and usually leads to long term resentment. If you went to IMDB because you both really wanted to know then that's one thing, but if it was to prove someone wrong then that's a whole different problem.
Re:The lack of localization of the net
on
Browsing Alone
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· Score: 1
Do you work for the FBI or something? All of the sudden, being privacy concious makes me a facist, or anit-social? Just because I've done nothing wrong, I should have nothing to fear?
A large % of normal citizens would have no problem with their browser transmitting their location (that they enter themselves. If they were rebels they could say they were in Shanghai) with a certain degree of jitter so that it can't be used as a "serial number" of sorts, and with a user adjustable inaccuracy, if they agreed with the benefits of it: If you told average Joe on the Street that it was to revive the net and allow the little guy on the street corner to utilize it effectively as a targeted advertising medium, most would say "Hell yeah, do it. I'd rather see a Bob's Fishshack ad than an X10 ad". It is on sites like Slashdot where any negative is dramatized and vastly overstated, and any benefit is discarded and ignored. Advertising is evil...oh who's paying for Slashdot's bandwidth, hardware, and maintenance?
Ok, mr super-capitalist. If there is a demand, then the supply will come. With or without amending HTTP. It sounds like a "Search by Location" feature on Ebay would solve your problem just fine. For all I know, it already exists (or is in the works). And don't forget local news sites. I can go to my newspaper's website, and find their complete classified listings.
You see I hope that you've never argued that Microsoft has to be restrained in any way (because capitalism says that Linux is a much better system right? It should be on 98% of systems!), or about the evils of monopolies: Ebay is a monopoly in the auction world simply because of the network effect, and here you are stating that it's good enough. In any case geolocation tags and the dearth of local content are two totally separate topics, and my comments on the lack of local information is largely a social observation rather than a "we must fix this!" tirade.
Just a nit picking thing
on
Time for a Beer?
·
· Score: 5, Informative
It's a GPS receiver, not a transmitter. GPS works passively by listening to the timing differences of time-encoded signals from up to 12 satellites at once (there are 24, but generally the most you'll be able to "hear" at once are 12). Here's the dummies guide to it.
It is funny though how GPS is a basic technology, but every application of it is treated as some new discovery: i.e. I'm going to make a piece of software that has a database of all movie theatres, and when you have a GPS on your PDA it'll point you to the nearest theatre: Whoopee, I've developed a new theatre detector! Blah. As a sidenote: MapPoint 2002 is a very nice product. The breadth of information in it is astounding.
but it won't change the system performance of one system relative to the other
But my point is that if this is truly the "Best of the best", then both systems should include U160 15,000RPM hard drives (because it makes a BIG difference in things like kernel compile times), but they don't because most "normal" folk don't buy such a hard drive. Why? Cost. Well if cost is a factor then let's completely factor it in.
Overly complicated? I suppose for the slow it might be, but it seems incredibly simple to me.
a) Set price point(s)
b) Determine the purpose (Linux workstation, gaming, Office benchmarks, etc.)
c) Develop a benchmark plan.
d) Use your credibility as a hardware guru site to pick the best hardware that fits within each price point, for the applicable systems, and for the task set out. Document your choices so that critics (which there always are) can bitch that you didn't use the KT266a motherboard, etc. Earn your keep as a hardware site by making good choices.
e) Benchmark.
The reality (and home users) is that businesses don't say "I need a computer to do workstation tasks and I'm paying $1300 if it's an AMD system and $1600 if it's an Intel system!" : They buy based upon what they need to do, and the budget they have, and the performance that they get at that budget, otherwise there'd be a lot more options than just AMD and Intel there. Where's the IBM mini-computer options?
As I mentioned in another thread: Why not benchmark with a RAID 5 array of 7 15,000 RPM U160 SCSI hard drives?
It always comes down to $, and I really think for these comparisons to have any relevance they should be completely based upon $, rather than just blanket comparing systems built around certain clock speeds.
Well my contention is that the processor alone does not a PC make. Perhaps the AMD processor requires a more expensive motherboard and more esoteric cooling system, meaning that they'll have to sacrifice elsewhere. Perhaps RDRAM exacts a cost penalty that hurts the Intel elsewhere.
Money is never "no object", and just about anyone who states that quickly changes their tune when the $s add up. Why don't the big comparison tests include 15,000RPM hard drives and U160 SCSI? What about some of the high performance server backbones? They don't because those features exact some hefty costs, and when Joe Average who thinks he's going to max out his system sees what that costs with his GeForce3 Ti500 64MB video card, super 16 channel 24-bit soundcard, etc, something always gives. I've done that classic spreadsheet game a million times where I settle on a lesser harddrive but up the RAM, etc.
In the end the $ is always the deciding factor. Just because a Nissan Altima and a Ferrari Testarossa have 4 wheels doesn't mean that they're directly comparable.
Slashdot Mirror
It's the MX though. I have an obsolete GeForce (1) 256 DDR in my PC and at 32-bit colour it eclipses the GeForce2 MX, which itself is heavily bandwidth deprived. From the benchmarks given on Apple's site the GeForce4MX in this machine isn't all that.
If anything the GPU T&L is probably extremely fast, in which case they should have used a very high polygon test to benchmark and show the differences. As it is, using Quake 3 at 1024x768 32-bit is probably memory choking it.
The GeForce4 MX seems to be pretty seriously crippled (like the GeForce 2MX before it). On this page you can see that it pulls in about 115 fps at 1024x768. Compare that with this page which shows a GF3 Ti500 doing 190fps under similar circumstances.
I'm not saying that it's all that bad, and the graphics performance is very nice indeed, but the GeForce4 moniker might be a bit misleading to people who might presume it's the next generation: That little MX designation is a clue that it isn't necessarily a step up from a GeForce 3.
I, too, tried to tune into the Simpsons to find it preempted about 25 minutes while they said ABSOLUTELY NOTHING. What was that all about? I'm not a football fan, but it truly seemed like these guys had absolutely nothing to say and were just mandated to fill in some time. Very frustrating.
Speaking of tactics like this: Perhaps the opposite, but I've noticed something very odd on WB shows (hey, look, my wife likes them. i.e. the Gilmore Girls, etc.): Every now and then there are Matrix like slow motion/weird motion effects put in absolutely normal scenes. I noticed this first on Buffy several years ago: Often when turning there head someone with the slew dial at WB has a little fun or something. I don't know why they do it (subliminally to make it etherworldly?), but it's very disorienting.
How much time and breath (ergo keystrokes) have been wasted defending the title "hacker"? Jesus, get over it and accept that many people have negative connotations with the word. Move on. It's choosing a battle for pathetic, superficial, pseudo-intelligensia reasons.
Or are these people from Hackeria and they're defending their noble cultures traditions? Bah.
So very true. As another poster mentioned: Normally when you use the xhtml logo you directly link to the validation page for that page (indeed that is the html that the W3C page gives you), which is a sort of circular "keep 'em honest" type check to keep stuff like this from happening. How hilarious.
The compile time isn't the relevant fact: It's the runtime of the generated code. The GCC compiler is notorious for not optimizing code of specific platforms (putting cross-platform as more important) so this result is hardly surprizing.
Thats because they're made by corporations, duh. Ask the hardcore players what is fun, and then you can start charging for your game.
Who works at the corporations? Robots? Do you remember the Simpsons where Homer was Poochie? There was a focus group segment that was so true:
Man: How many of you kids would like Itchy & Scratchy to deal with real-life problems, like the ones you face every day?
Kids: [clamoring] Oh, yeah! I would! Great idea! Yeah, that's it!
Man: And who would like to see them do just the opposite -- getting into far-out situations involving robots and magic powers?
Kids: [clamoring] Me! Yeah! Oh, cool! Yeah, that's what I want!
Man: So, you want a realistic, down-to-earth show... that's completely off-the-wall and swarming with magic robots?
Kids: [all agreeing, quieter this time] That's right. Oh yeah, good.
Rock stars, is there anything they don't know?
Huh? GCC is a free, open source compiler. MS Office is a $579 US proprietary product. Not really too much of a comparison there so that doesn't make a lot of sense.
I do actually agree with you, at least with perhaps what you're trying to say: People use GCC because they know the code that they'll get and the projects they share will be with a common denominator of GCC: I have the Intel Compiler for VC++ and it works well and promises some speed benefits over VC 6, but I don't use it simply because of two reasons: a) tiny little differences between it an VC++ : It has to be 100% the same to capture the audience, b) the promise of Visual Studio.NET (which I am now using) which was the classic "Don't bother with that because soon there'll be the new extra crispy compiler!". I'm seeing the exact same sort of "you just wait!" premonitions regarding GCC 3 in here.
Let me reiterate that at no point did I ever say that software never needs to be rewritten, but rather that there are hoardes of software developers who always have "a better way" mantra, and whose approach to any coding issues is "rewrite it" (I've worked with quite a few of them. It's a classic "not made here" approach, or rather a "not made by me" approach, and they always have loads of superficial reasons to justify their rewrite conclusions). Of course 6 months later it's the exact same situation when the next continual rewriter comes in, shakes their head with a dismissive attitude, and claims that it all needs to be rewritten to encapsulate function X...
This same mentality goes into code reuse: Put together a group of developers and you'll find there are a couple that just never seem to be satisfied with common components/third party tools: There is always some spurious scapegoat reason why it just won't work and clearly needs to be rewritten or custom made, because blah blah blah. I've done it myself: The classic "why use their component when I can just spit it off myself". In software development it is easier [at the beginning] to take the first step to rebuilding it (because that seems like "progress") than it is to understand and fix what is already there.
Look, if you don't know what you're talking about, just don't post
Uh huh...Let me introduce you to the pot...
C++ has bounded strings
It does? Wow, news to me. Oh, you must mean that there are various different standard templates and proprietary classes to handle strings, that happened to be implemented in C++! Ah, okay, thanks for updating me on the obvious, but unfortunately you're wrong, and even in C++ code most developers shun the class strings for good old fashioned char * due to performance reasons. Or do you consider CString and the STL "C++"?
Note that the vast majority of the recent MS buffer overruns have been in C code, not C++
Wow you really make quite the differentiation between C++ and C, don't you? Perhaps you're not aware, but C++ is largely backwards compatible and is a superset of C, rather than a whole new ballgame : Most of those ISAPI modules are C++ programs that use C features like char * and strcpy: That doesn't preclude them from having classes or using template libraries in addition. The fact that I said "C++" was merely because it's a "no shit" type conclusion that they're using C++ features, but it is the C remnants that are usually the causation (but the code is still in C++).
And putting variables on the heap will just slow execution speed down with little to no security gain: heap overflows can be exploited too, just not as easily by cut-and-paste exploit writers.
Heap overflows are significantly more difficult to control in a deterministic fashion that stack overflows. i.e. night and day. Of course they shouldn't happen in the first place (it should have the possibility of happening), but simply brushing it off is laughable.
Rewriting by "refactoring" is very much different than throwing out the baby with the bathwater and saying "Let's start from scratch". I constantly rewrite classes, improve functions, pull out common code, and at the end of the day I might have actually replaced every single line, but I haven't actually rewritten it. While it seems odd to differentiate, there is a major difference. See the latest Joel article for an example of that.
Ah you are indeed correct. Thank you for the updated info.
By taking some basic steps Microsoft could dramatically improve the security of their code. The fact is that about 95% of the security faults in MS code haven't been faults with the underlying OS' design (which actually has pervasive security throughout. Indeed the ACL security model in NT/2000/XP is the best or among the best out there) per se, but rather with trivial C++ banality like buffer overflows (which has been REMARKABLY common in their code). It is simply a case of auditing code and saying "hey look here I do an strcpy(dest,source) and I don't make sure the source is smaller than the desk...". That simple check throughout their code, and the use of variables on the heap rather than the stack, would have eliminated most of the black eyes MS has gotten.
Starting from scratch is what bad programmers do when they don't have the intelligence or patience to figure out what has been done and what has been learned previously. Well, let me state that there are cases where starting from scratch makes sense, but there are the far more prevelant "It's all crap, I'm starting from scratch" mentality, which roughly translates to "It's easier for me to impose my will and start with what I know than to try to figure out what the prior person did and learned". Beware a programmer who ever claims that they need to rewrite something: 9 times out of 10 it's because they are lazy, or they're just not smart enough to figure it out.
BTW: Who you are talking about is Joel, i.e. http://joel.editthispage.com. HA! Just visited there and hilariously enough he has a co-rewriting story up. You're thinking of this article.
Doom blew everyone away with its revolutionary 3D engine, but the game was pointless. Fun, but pointless, and got old fast
Nice job with revisionist history there. The reality, of course, is that for the overwhelming majority of people Doom was extremely engrossing (the classic is jumping out of your seat when one of those red bull things appeared) and was directly responsible for billions of hours of slack time. Duke Nukem 3D was very similar in that it's a simple concept, but I played that game multiplayer for hours upon hours upon hours.
including everything id has done since
Now this is just dumb. While I haven't ever really gotten into Q3, Q2 gave me thousands of fun hours, especially with the mods. The Quake series, and this is something that many pundits fail to realize, is more of a sport than a RPG : You excel and because exemplary in it just like you would perfecting the perfect dive or running the 10s 100m, and it's the same sort of quest for perfection that draws people to excel. When I see complaints about the Quake series I often wonder if these people expect some RPGing to break out in the middle of the Olympics : Maybe the downhill skiers can have a pseudo hill economy. I mean otherwise they're just falling with gravity right?
The whole point of this? Don't discount a game just because it's not a genre that you prefer, and don't presume that if an element works in one game (i.e realism, or RPG factors, etc.) that therefore it should be in all games.
If you aren't legally required to maintain records of every email/document/etc, then why SHOULD you? Do you recall the Netscape fiasco where Microsoft subpoenad the history of every email to an employee bitch newsgroup? In that case Netscape had no legal duty to maintain backups and records of every posting, but because they made the mistake of not deleting them frequently suddenly they were required to provide them and were then barred from destroying them: It's an odd circumstance when you don't legally have to archive information, but if someone asks for it then suddenly it's legally protected and you have to defend and explain the context of every message, every word, etc, and of course everyone says something now and then that can be taken out of context (or alternately that they said in the heat of passion but backed down from).
Destroying old information quite simply removes the liability that it potentially represents, even if there is absolutely nothing indicting in it. It can also protect freedoms: Websites aren't legally required to keep IP logs, but if they DO then those IP logs can be subpoenad.
There are an awful lot of people out there who truly believe that GPS receivers are communicating with the GPS satellites, and the GPS satellites are saying "You are at X degrees W...". I've heard people worry about the privacy of GPS (because they worry that they're being tracked), and I've had people ask me what the subscription was to utilize GPS services. Definitely there is a need for some user education, because people have misinformation.
Hehe, truth be told I don't even bother anymore because my wife is right about 95% of the time. Actually I'd swear it is 100%, but I'm giving myself a bit of the benefit of the doubt. No longer do I rush to the PC to prove my memory, because it just disproves it. :-)
Another example, my girlfriend and I were watching a movie the other night and we started arguing about what other movies a particular actress was in. A quick jump to IMDB and the issue was solved (I was right this time). IMDB has helped my relationship.
Because one or the other proved the other one wrong? Being proven wrong is seldom taken gently, and usually leads to long term resentment. If you went to IMDB because you both really wanted to know then that's one thing, but if it was to prove someone wrong then that's a whole different problem.
Do you work for the FBI or something? All of the sudden, being privacy concious makes me a facist, or anit-social? Just because I've done nothing wrong, I should have nothing to fear?
A large % of normal citizens would have no problem with their browser transmitting their location (that they enter themselves. If they were rebels they could say they were in Shanghai) with a certain degree of jitter so that it can't be used as a "serial number" of sorts, and with a user adjustable inaccuracy, if they agreed with the benefits of it: If you told average Joe on the Street that it was to revive the net and allow the little guy on the street corner to utilize it effectively as a targeted advertising medium, most would say "Hell yeah, do it. I'd rather see a Bob's Fishshack ad than an X10 ad". It is on sites like Slashdot where any negative is dramatized and vastly overstated, and any benefit is discarded and ignored. Advertising is evil...oh who's paying for Slashdot's bandwidth, hardware, and maintenance?
Ok, mr super-capitalist. If there is a demand, then the supply will come. With or without amending HTTP. It sounds like a "Search by Location" feature on Ebay would solve your problem just fine. For all I know, it already exists (or is in the works). And don't forget local news sites. I can go to my newspaper's website, and find their complete classified listings.
You see I hope that you've never argued that Microsoft has to be restrained in any way (because capitalism says that Linux is a much better system right? It should be on 98% of systems!), or about the evils of monopolies: Ebay is a monopoly in the auction world simply because of the network effect, and here you are stating that it's good enough. In any case geolocation tags and the dearth of local content are two totally separate topics, and my comments on the lack of local information is largely a social observation rather than a "we must fix this!" tirade.
It's a GPS receiver, not a transmitter. GPS works passively by listening to the timing differences of time-encoded signals from up to 12 satellites at once (there are 24, but generally the most you'll be able to "hear" at once are 12). Here's the dummies guide to it.
It is funny though how GPS is a basic technology, but every application of it is treated as some new discovery: i.e. I'm going to make a piece of software that has a database of all movie theatres, and when you have a GPS on your PDA it'll point you to the nearest theatre: Whoopee, I've developed a new theatre detector! Blah. As a sidenote: MapPoint 2002 is a very nice product. The breadth of information in it is astounding.
but it won't change the system performance of one system relative to the other
But my point is that if this is truly the "Best of the best", then both systems should include U160 15,000RPM hard drives (because it makes a BIG difference in things like kernel compile times), but they don't because most "normal" folk don't buy such a hard drive. Why? Cost. Well if cost is a factor then let's completely factor it in.
Overly complicated? I suppose for the slow it might be, but it seems incredibly simple to me. a) Set price point(s) b) Determine the purpose (Linux workstation, gaming, Office benchmarks, etc.) c) Develop a benchmark plan. d) Use your credibility as a hardware guru site to pick the best hardware that fits within each price point, for the applicable systems, and for the task set out. Document your choices so that critics (which there always are) can bitch that you didn't use the KT266a motherboard, etc. Earn your keep as a hardware site by making good choices. e) Benchmark. The reality (and home users) is that businesses don't say "I need a computer to do workstation tasks and I'm paying $1300 if it's an AMD system and $1600 if it's an Intel system!" : They buy based upon what they need to do, and the budget they have, and the performance that they get at that budget, otherwise there'd be a lot more options than just AMD and Intel there. Where's the IBM mini-computer options?
As I mentioned in another thread: Why not benchmark with a RAID 5 array of 7 15,000 RPM U160 SCSI hard drives?
It always comes down to $, and I really think for these comparisons to have any relevance they should be completely based upon $, rather than just blanket comparing systems built around certain clock speeds.
Well my contention is that the processor alone does not a PC make. Perhaps the AMD processor requires a more expensive motherboard and more esoteric cooling system, meaning that they'll have to sacrifice elsewhere. Perhaps RDRAM exacts a cost penalty that hurts the Intel elsewhere.
Money is never "no object", and just about anyone who states that quickly changes their tune when the $s add up. Why don't the big comparison tests include 15,000RPM hard drives and U160 SCSI? What about some of the high performance server backbones? They don't because those features exact some hefty costs, and when Joe Average who thinks he's going to max out his system sees what that costs with his GeForce3 Ti500 64MB video card, super 16 channel 24-bit soundcard, etc, something always gives. I've done that classic spreadsheet game a million times where I settle on a lesser harddrive but up the RAM, etc.
In the end the $ is always the deciding factor. Just because a Nissan Altima and a Ferrari Testarossa have 4 wheels doesn't mean that they're directly comparable.