A computer with spec similar to the story can be gotten for about $800-900 today.
What I'd really like to see is a list of all the things my modern system does or can do while I am matching speeds with my MacPlus. So I can be listening to streaming audio over the internet, have 6 other critical apps open, and still open my file in MS word in about the same amount of time it took to just open a file in Word on the Mac Plus.
If you look at the tests being run, most of those procedures are performed by the computer faster than the user can input them. While you factor in how many times more powerful todays system is, you also must factor in how much more that system is doing for you.
Still an interesting comparison, wonderful discussion-bait for/.'ers...
The different is, everyone knows IE is insecure because of this. But everyone expects Firefox to be this totally secure, unhackable browser when it really isn't. The point is that the same things can be done on both browsers.
Another point is how this affects the Google Gears project that was in a previous post. Now you have cross platform hackability for an application that could potentially host your critical apps.
So the problem is we have, what? 3 OS platforms, and 5 or 6 browsers. Seems just as easy to create apps to run on the 3 OS platforms than even the 4 major browsers. If the idea is web-hosted applications and files, sure the browser based app could make sense.
I guess the solution is we all use Firefox for offline web apps, that way we trust Google to create the foundation for the application, ultimately the "OS within the browser" to run apps on. Why bother using the browser as a platform when you don't have any control over the capabilities of that browser and you have to contend with compatibility between multiple browsers?
Why not just create a basic virtual machine client and load it with this fast, simple "Google OS"? The capabilities would be similar - it needs access to the local file system to store documents, and the app would run in a highly stable evironment that needs to do nothing but run apps.
What's the point of having an offline web application?
You might as well create your own traditional app so that you don't have to deal with compatibility and security issues with a multitude of browsers and platforms. Or maybe the idea is doing something completely opposite to what Microsoft has been doing for almost a decade now, putting the browser functionality within the app.
If my name and itunes account info start showing up on music all over P2P sites, the evil RIAA may come knocking on my door.
Or for that matter, if I've got music my friend gave me in my library and itunes locks me out because I might be pirating music. It just depends on how much sucking up to the RIAA that Apple does.
Is that you can buy them and give them to your friends, whereas the music download sites seem to be headed toward preventing you from letting anyone else play your purchase.
It's not like MS and Sony are going to be sitting on their heels for the next 3 years either. Although unless they start making money on their product I can sure see the next release being the last for one of those two.
By the time Nintendo leapfrogs the PS3 and Xbox360, the PS4 and 720 will have leapfrogged the Nintendo box again, at least if Nintendo intends to keep the price at Wii levels.
It is very irresponsible, and that is exactly what Blagojevich has been during the past 5 or so years in office.
His whole government is one big marketing campaign, touting all his crazy ideas without any regard to whether they are legal, whether they are good for the state, or whether they can be paid for.
The health insurance for kids that he touts as being revolutionary was paid for by borrowing money, ensuring that the program will cost us 4 times as much 20 years from now as it would have if there was money budgeted for it to begin with. The Gross receipts tax he proposed, which would have been the largest tax increase ever in the state, if not the entire U.S., and would have cost the average family $2500/yr in cost of living, was voted down unanimously in the state house. Everything is a marketing angle and this was twisted into a press conference where Blagojevich stated that he asked the reps to vote it down because it needed more work to finalize it. Hogwash, and everyone knows it, and that's all we get in this state from this creep.
Exactly. Why would you be stupid enough to spend $180 on this, when $50 buys you a decent hardware firewall. And it has to hijack your driver stack to do it. At least when you have problems with software firewalls you can disable them or uninstall them - if this driver got messed up you'd be screwed.
Apparently some new accounting guy fresh out of college found a $16K budget surplus, and another new IT guy fresh out of college came up with a use for it.
IMO the main draw to PC gaming is the user editable and user created content. Heck, 12 years ago we were playing MS Monster Truck Madness 1 and later 2 on the Zone with user created trucks and tracks, and if you look around there are still guys playing MTM2.
The real reason the console programmers haven't included this capability is because if millions of people kept playing the same game with user created content in it for 10 years, they would lose billions of dollars worth of potential new game sales over that time. I think you will start to see it because of consumer demand - people know that if it's possible on PC they should be able to do the same thing on a console - but I don't see anyone embracing console addons because of the money factor.
Re:Here's how it works from another perspective
on
How Image Spam Works
·
· Score: 2, Informative
Then a bunch of clueless yahoos with some backdoor spyware on their system will simply get a bunch more spam back from us.
Do you really think that spammers are actually sending mail from their own computers or even their own mail servers?
If I use your number (F9090211749D5BE341D8C5565663C088) in this reply, I guess slashdot will have to remove my comment if you file a complaint with the DMCA. Go ahead and try it, I'd like to see what happens with my posting of your number F9090211749D5BE341D8C5565663C088. There I said it again! Ha!
There's been a lot said, and always is a lot said any time anybody starts comparing Linux (any flavor) to Windows (any flavor).
The fact is, the Out of box experience is different and is designed to be different between Vista and Ubuntu. I also think that many reviewers and many slashdotters hold Windows to a higher standard than they do the various Linux distros. Any hardware incompatibility in Windows is a serious flaw; the same incompatibility in Linux draws a response of "well we can't have drivers for everything - buy compatible hardware". Any configuration issue in Windows that can't be handled easily by clicking a button is roasted by all comers; a similar configuration issue in Linux is touted as "easily fixed by editing xxxx.txt file". If Windows includes any full featured utilities such as backup in the initial installation, Microsoft is accused of monopolistic practices and discouraging third party innovation and competition; a Linux distro includes many apps/packages and is praised for including them - never mind that 90% of them are patches, obscure utilities, dependencies, and god-awful applications that noone would review favourably next to their payware counterparts.
So I think the expectations are totally different and thus difficult to objectively compare, thus why you have so many heated opinions on why one is better than the other.
What I do know is that in my personal experience with Linux, I got along with it plenty well. Sometimes it took me a little longer to get something done on it than it did with Windows, but I can attribute that to the fact that I've been working with Windows for 20 years. However, when I put my wife, who is not so experienced, on the Linux machine, she had an immensely hard time with it. Sure, she could get email and browse the web without too much trouble. But when it came to things like accessing pictures off of a camera and editing them with GIMP, she found Windows and a simpler photo editor to be much easier to handle. I got tired of helping her out every time she couldn't figure out why Linux didn't handle something a certain way or why her USB card reader didn't mount when she plugged it in. Since I gave her Windows about 3 months ago, I haven't had to deal with any of that.
Again, if we hold Linux up to the same standard as we do Windows, for the average skill level of computer user, then we can objectively compare where one falls short and where one pulls ahead.
I was wondering whether or not schools had written policies about this type of thing, and whether this punishment was according to the book or just made up out of thin air.
It seems that most of the time when school officials are faced with an issue like this, they have no idea what they ought to do and either let it slide completely, or overreact and deal a much harder punishment than necessary. This case seems like the latter, as there doesn't appear to be any malicious intent.
It's wacky, stupid, hypocritical - but mostly on the part of the overzealous Linux junkie who can't bear to hear anything negative about their baby.
The whole "Linux is a kernel" argument is weak. 99% of the Linux fanboys go around talking about how Linux does this better than Windows and Linux does that better than Windows; then when it is pointed out how Windows handles something far better, then Linux is conveniently "just a Kernel." Idiotic. No end user cares about the kernel - they care about how the overall OS experience is as a whole. So as long as people keep thinking of Linux as a bunch of separate items hashed together, each of which can be compared separately vs. Windows, we'll have gotten nowhere. It's the finished distros such as Ubuntu or Red Hat or Suse or Mandriva that give a intelligent, open-minded reviewer a basis with which to compare the Linux experience to the Windows experience.
Yeah I know, a comment like this among wolves is likely to be shredded, but hey the pro-Linux anti-Windows crowd puts out far more trollish nonsense than guys like Enderle.
3-5 day shipping on that system is listed at $29. You'd be doing well to get all the parts shipped from newegg for $30. And if you went pricewatch happy, you'd probably spend even more to get parts shipped in from multiple vendors.
Granted, I wouldn't buy the Dell anyways, even if it was cheaper, but you've still got to compare apples to apples (maybe that isn't such a great analogy haha) here.
The problem with this is that you are in the vast minority on this subject. Most people want EVERYTHING pre-installed. They don't have the time or the technical know-how to install an OS and all the drivers and utilities you get with a pre-installed OS. This is paramount to demanding that you be able to go to a retailer and buy a Mac without OSX so you can load Windows on it. Apple doesn't do it, why should MS?
My company does offer computers with no OS installed but noone has ever bought one. And from Microsoft's perspective, chances are very good that if machines started to be sold at volume with no OS, people using pirated, unlicensed software would skyrocket. You'd end up with thousands or millions of users with non-genuine, unpatchable, security risks; and Microsoft would field the blame for this also.
Dell uses BIOS locking, which does not require Internet activation. So as long as you reinstall XP (or Vista) on a machine with the same BIOS (or a replacement board with that Dell BIOS) you will not be prompted to activate online or over the phone.
The problem with this emachines computer is that the OEM version of XP used is BIOS locked, not activated via internet or phone, and MS does not handle activation or re-activation of said product.
So, when you call MS, they will tell you that they don't handle your particular activation, you will have to go back to the OEM. So, as the original poster stated, you're stuck with buying an overpriced hardware bundle from Emachines. As an alternative, it's usually cheaper to buy a Home edition upgrade and an inexpensive replacement motherboard.
Also, #18:
Buried Controls
Many options and controls are further buried, requiring a half-dozen mouse clicks or more to get to. Network settings and display settings are offenders here.
Well speaking of buried controls... I can just see the network settings in most linux distros now...
I didn't see anything on the 2006 list that became a buzzword in 2006 - maybe they will in 2007, who knows. Only two on the list, Fiber to Home and IP Television, have made much news. There's a few obscure technologies that people will never care to know the name of, and the rest simply haven't come about.
For 2007, how long will we be waiting for these? And why is Body Area Network on the list, a mere repeat of things that didn't make it to prime time in 2006 and is admittedly something they don't think will become widely manufactured or even accepted. In other words, these lists are a total washout.
Slashdot Mirror
A computer with spec similar to the story can be gotten for about $800-900 today.
/.'ers...
What I'd really like to see is a list of all the things my modern system does or can do while I am matching speeds with my MacPlus. So I can be listening to streaming audio over the internet, have 6 other critical apps open, and still open my file in MS word in about the same amount of time it took to just open a file in Word on the Mac Plus.
If you look at the tests being run, most of those procedures are performed by the computer faster than the user can input them. While you factor in how many times more powerful todays system is, you also must factor in how much more that system is doing for you.
Still an interesting comparison, wonderful discussion-bait for
The different is, everyone knows IE is insecure because of this. But everyone expects Firefox to be this totally secure, unhackable browser when it really isn't. The point is that the same things can be done on both browsers.
Another point is how this affects the Google Gears project that was in a previous post. Now you have cross platform hackability for an application that could potentially host your critical apps.
So the problem is we have, what? 3 OS platforms, and 5 or 6 browsers. Seems just as easy to create apps to run on the 3 OS platforms than even the 4 major browsers. If the idea is web-hosted applications and files, sure the browser based app could make sense.
I guess the solution is we all use Firefox for offline web apps, that way we trust Google to create the foundation for the application, ultimately the "OS within the browser" to run apps on. Why bother using the browser as a platform when you don't have any control over the capabilities of that browser and you have to contend with compatibility between multiple browsers?
Why not just create a basic virtual machine client and load it with this fast, simple "Google OS"? The capabilities would be similar - it needs access to the local file system to store documents, and the app would run in a highly stable evironment that needs to do nothing but run apps.
What's the point of having an offline web application?
You might as well create your own traditional app so that you don't have to deal with compatibility and security issues with a multitude of browsers and platforms. Or maybe the idea is doing something completely opposite to what Microsoft has been doing for almost a decade now, putting the browser functionality within the app.
If my name and itunes account info start showing up on music all over P2P sites, the evil RIAA may come knocking on my door.
Or for that matter, if I've got music my friend gave me in my library and itunes locks me out because I might be pirating music. It just depends on how much sucking up to the RIAA that Apple does.
Is that you can buy them and give them to your friends, whereas the music download sites seem to be headed toward preventing you from letting anyone else play your purchase.
It's not like MS and Sony are going to be sitting on their heels for the next 3 years either. Although unless they start making money on their product I can sure see the next release being the last for one of those two.
By the time Nintendo leapfrogs the PS3 and Xbox360, the PS4 and 720 will have leapfrogged the Nintendo box again, at least if Nintendo intends to keep the price at Wii levels.
It is very irresponsible, and that is exactly what Blagojevich has been during the past 5 or so years in office.
His whole government is one big marketing campaign, touting all his crazy ideas without any regard to whether they are legal, whether they are good for the state, or whether they can be paid for.
The health insurance for kids that he touts as being revolutionary was paid for by borrowing money, ensuring that the program will cost us 4 times as much 20 years from now as it would have if there was money budgeted for it to begin with. The Gross receipts tax he proposed, which would have been the largest tax increase ever in the state, if not the entire U.S., and would have cost the average family $2500/yr in cost of living, was voted down unanimously in the state house. Everything is a marketing angle and this was twisted into a press conference where Blagojevich stated that he asked the reps to vote it down because it needed more work to finalize it. Hogwash, and everyone knows it, and that's all we get in this state from this creep.
Did I just say all that?
Exactly. Why would you be stupid enough to spend $180 on this, when $50 buys you a decent hardware firewall. And it has to hijack your driver stack to do it. At least when you have problems with software firewalls you can disable them or uninstall them - if this driver got messed up you'd be screwed.
Apparently some new accounting guy fresh out of college found a $16K budget surplus, and another new IT guy fresh out of college came up with a use for it.
They still don't have it right because the gigabyte is 10^9 bytes, not 10^6. A gibibyte is 2^30 bytes, not 2^20 bytes.
IMO the main draw to PC gaming is the user editable and user created content. Heck, 12 years ago we were playing MS Monster Truck Madness 1 and later 2 on the Zone with user created trucks and tracks, and if you look around there are still guys playing MTM2.
The real reason the console programmers haven't included this capability is because if millions of people kept playing the same game with user created content in it for 10 years, they would lose billions of dollars worth of potential new game sales over that time. I think you will start to see it because of consumer demand - people know that if it's possible on PC they should be able to do the same thing on a console - but I don't see anyone embracing console addons because of the money factor.
Then a bunch of clueless yahoos with some backdoor spyware on their system will simply get a bunch more spam back from us.
Do you really think that spammers are actually sending mail from their own computers or even their own mail servers?
Microsoft would patent the moon, and try to get money from licensing deals from everyone who looked at it.
If I use your number (F9090211749D5BE341D8C5565663C088) in this reply, I guess slashdot will have to remove my comment if you file a complaint with the DMCA. Go ahead and try it, I'd like to see what happens with my posting of your number F9090211749D5BE341D8C5565663C088. There I said it again! Ha!
There's been a lot said, and always is a lot said any time anybody starts comparing Linux (any flavor) to Windows (any flavor).
The fact is, the Out of box experience is different and is designed to be different between Vista and Ubuntu. I also think that many reviewers and many slashdotters hold Windows to a higher standard than they do the various Linux distros. Any hardware incompatibility in Windows is a serious flaw; the same incompatibility in Linux draws a response of "well we can't have drivers for everything - buy compatible hardware". Any configuration issue in Windows that can't be handled easily by clicking a button is roasted by all comers; a similar configuration issue in Linux is touted as "easily fixed by editing xxxx.txt file". If Windows includes any full featured utilities such as backup in the initial installation, Microsoft is accused of monopolistic practices and discouraging third party innovation and competition; a Linux distro includes many apps/packages and is praised for including them - never mind that 90% of them are patches, obscure utilities, dependencies, and god-awful applications that noone would review favourably next to their payware counterparts.
So I think the expectations are totally different and thus difficult to objectively compare, thus why you have so many heated opinions on why one is better than the other.
What I do know is that in my personal experience with Linux, I got along with it plenty well. Sometimes it took me a little longer to get something done on it than it did with Windows, but I can attribute that to the fact that I've been working with Windows for 20 years. However, when I put my wife, who is not so experienced, on the Linux machine, she had an immensely hard time with it. Sure, she could get email and browse the web without too much trouble. But when it came to things like accessing pictures off of a camera and editing them with GIMP, she found Windows and a simpler photo editor to be much easier to handle. I got tired of helping her out every time she couldn't figure out why Linux didn't handle something a certain way or why her USB card reader didn't mount when she plugged it in. Since I gave her Windows about 3 months ago, I haven't had to deal with any of that.
Again, if we hold Linux up to the same standard as we do Windows, for the average skill level of computer user, then we can objectively compare where one falls short and where one pulls ahead.
I was wondering whether or not schools had written policies about this type of thing, and whether this punishment was according to the book or just made up out of thin air.
It seems that most of the time when school officials are faced with an issue like this, they have no idea what they ought to do and either let it slide completely, or overreact and deal a much harder punishment than necessary. This case seems like the latter, as there doesn't appear to be any malicious intent.
It's wacky, stupid, hypocritical - but mostly on the part of the overzealous Linux junkie who can't bear to hear anything negative about their baby.
The whole "Linux is a kernel" argument is weak. 99% of the Linux fanboys go around talking about how Linux does this better than Windows and Linux does that better than Windows; then when it is pointed out how Windows handles something far better, then Linux is conveniently "just a Kernel." Idiotic. No end user cares about the kernel - they care about how the overall OS experience is as a whole. So as long as people keep thinking of Linux as a bunch of separate items hashed together, each of which can be compared separately vs. Windows, we'll have gotten nowhere. It's the finished distros such as Ubuntu or Red Hat or Suse or Mandriva that give a intelligent, open-minded reviewer a basis with which to compare the Linux experience to the Windows experience.
Yeah I know, a comment like this among wolves is likely to be shredded, but hey the pro-Linux anti-Windows crowd puts out far more trollish nonsense than guys like Enderle.
3-5 day shipping on that system is listed at $29. You'd be doing well to get all the parts shipped from newegg for $30. And if you went pricewatch happy, you'd probably spend even more to get parts shipped in from multiple vendors. Granted, I wouldn't buy the Dell anyways, even if it was cheaper, but you've still got to compare apples to apples (maybe that isn't such a great analogy haha) here.
The problem with this is that you are in the vast minority on this subject. Most people want EVERYTHING pre-installed. They don't have the time or the technical know-how to install an OS and all the drivers and utilities you get with a pre-installed OS. This is paramount to demanding that you be able to go to a retailer and buy a Mac without OSX so you can load Windows on it. Apple doesn't do it, why should MS?
My company does offer computers with no OS installed but noone has ever bought one. And from Microsoft's perspective, chances are very good that if machines started to be sold at volume with no OS, people using pirated, unlicensed software would skyrocket. You'd end up with thousands or millions of users with non-genuine, unpatchable, security risks; and Microsoft would field the blame for this also.
Dell uses BIOS locking, which does not require Internet activation. So as long as you reinstall XP (or Vista) on a machine with the same BIOS (or a replacement board with that Dell BIOS) you will not be prompted to activate online or over the phone.
The problem with this emachines computer is that the OEM version of XP used is BIOS locked, not activated via internet or phone, and MS does not handle activation or re-activation of said product. So, when you call MS, they will tell you that they don't handle your particular activation, you will have to go back to the OEM. So, as the original poster stated, you're stuck with buying an overpriced hardware bundle from Emachines. As an alternative, it's usually cheaper to buy a Home edition upgrade and an inexpensive replacement motherboard.
So if you can't buy gas, neither the train nor the cars move very quickly. It's starting to come together... :)
Buried Controls Many options and controls are further buried, requiring a half-dozen mouse clicks or more to get to. Network settings and display settings are offenders here.
Well speaking of buried controls... I can just see the network settings in most linux distros now...
I didn't see anything on the 2006 list that became a buzzword in 2006 - maybe they will in 2007, who knows. Only two on the list, Fiber to Home and IP Television, have made much news. There's a few obscure technologies that people will never care to know the name of, and the rest simply haven't come about. For 2007, how long will we be waiting for these? And why is Body Area Network on the list, a mere repeat of things that didn't make it to prime time in 2006 and is admittedly something they don't think will become widely manufactured or even accepted. In other words, these lists are a total washout.