A friend of mine and I were wondering what the all time record for comments on a slashdot story is. Does anyone know? Will this story break that record?
I don't know if MS's Allchin meant to target education as well as just educating lawmakers, but higher education may be the area where Microsoft is least popular. Academia is where the GPL is most popular. I am at Columbia University and despite the donation of a lab of 30 computers with Windows and regular visits to campus and recruitment of students, the CS department HATES Microsoft. I mean they HATE them with a passion. Students like myself are anti-MS, but it is the professors who are really vehement.
...so does this mean the boycott of Amazon by all three slashdot users who bothered to boycott Amazon will soon be over?
Well the first guy who responded to this said he was still boycotting and I am still boycotting too, especially in light of Amazon's recent anti-Union stance. I guess that is 2 of the 3 slashdoters.
Am I the only one who thinks it is a little suspicious that NEAR, which was "not designed" to land on the asteroid, and had only a 1 in 100 chance of survival. The craft is now planning to take off and land again. I think the designers may have actually had some capability of landing in mind from the start, but didn't talk about it.
Re:Looking for a new DSL provider?
on
DSL Woes
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· Score: 2
An even better place to look for new a DSL ISP [plug] is www.ispmenu.com from the company I work for, gromco. You can submit a request for a proposal and see all the different ISPs offers. [/plug]
I hope some of the moderators understand the reference of the comment. Any misuse of force at Kent State brings to mind the massacre of Vietnam protesters by the National Guard in 1970, in which four students were killed. Here's a CNN story on it.
The NYTimes has a really interesting article on a couple of math prof's at University of Vermont who using combinatorics designed the XFL's schedule so it met all sorts of crazy constraints.
Actually I don't think Copper is the critical factor. While the highest speed Althons I think the 1.1GHz and 1.2GHz are made with Copper in Dresden only, I believe the rest including the 1GHz and the non-Thunderbird 1GHz are at least sometimes made with Aluminium. Copper is probably most helpful at the extremes of clockspeed and power consumption, but it isn't why the P-III can't get beyond 1GHz without reducing the die size.
If the quality was good enough (ie, MUCH better than MP3)
The quality of MP3's can easily match that of CD's by selecting a higher bit rate. I think 192 is good enough for CD quality if not 256 is. Cover Art is another thing.
I think that might take quite a bit of business student personhours to do well.
In order for the results to be somewhat meaningful you will probably want to have plenty of business students. I would think at least 80.
The students need to play multiple games too so that one fuckup doesn't doesn't infludence.
Also, it might be better to have two different video games, if you can use the business students that long. That will help cut down on the quirks that people may have and the strategy defiencies of a single video game.
For the selection of the game, if students are unaware that they are going to be playing a video game you could ask them first to write down all the strategy video games they have played and eliminate the ones that people have played. If someone has already played the particular video game it will really throw off the results so obcsure games may be better. If the business students are not international in background foreign games may be a source.
This sounds like an interesting project for an independent study. I would suggest talking with a couple professors in sociology for some tips on running this experiment and also designing questionares if necessary.
I am not so sure The Man(TM) is going to have a choice with Gnutella and other P2P projects. I'd like to see figures on what percentage of useage for Napster and Gnutella is originating from US universities. Universities look the other way as students use their ethernet connections to download tons of warez and pr0n as well as MP3's because they are extremely adverse to trying to regulate useage, as they should be.
I see many postings citing the differiation in skill level in the tech industry as a reason not to unionize. The assumption is that either pay will be based on seniority or all workers will be paid the same. I do not see why this must be the case. My parents are both professors with Ph.D's (also high skill level) and belong to the university's faculty union. My Dad however makes a lot more than my Mom because he publishes more and gets promoted more. By the university's standards he is a better professor so he is paid more. Also the pay in different fields for professors history vs. chemistry varies a great deal.
I imagine a union of programmers would negotiate to get standards for minimum pay-level (no HB-1 visa underpaying) and working hours (no 7 days of 14 hours in a row). Beyond this different programmers could be paid different amounts. Why couldn't individuals negotiate their own salaries and still be in the union? I have known some professors at my parents' university that have negotiated special raises.
I believe it is going to vary a bit from tech industry to tech industry... If you work for Intel or AMD on CPU design there are pretty strict terms about not going to the competition since you have such a level of proprietary knowledge.
The case of non-compete against Microsoft is interesting though, from a practical standpoint what is one suppose to do... not develope any software for anything short of a mainframe.
Columbia University Checking In On Tunneling
on
Infiltration
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· Score: 2
Columbia at one point had the third largest building tunnel system in the world, behind MIT and the Kremlin. It is famous for many things including the beginning of the Manhattan Project.
This 7M pdf also contains a good article on the history of Columbia's tunnels.
Tunnels are a major part of geek life at Columbia and tunneling has been incorporated into the traditions of many campus organizations. CUMB (Columbia University Marching Band) gives an underground tour at the beginning of every school year.
NASA has been bugging the Russians forever to give up on Mir so that they could focus on the International Space Station (ISS). Although someone else posted plans for Mir2, which would be privately financed I think. Until the last year when the ISS began coming online there was just the Mir for space stations and it was in pretty bad shape. Now the Mir is being taken down, but the ISS is actually going to be fully operational soon so I think that is still progress.
I was wondering about that mutant space fungus on the Mir too. It has been up there mutating like crazy in the radiation. Isn't it a threat when it comes back to earth on board the deorbiting (crashing) Mir. Who knows what over lifeforms (like bacteria) may be up there as well. I think it would be much safer though much more expensive to blast Mir into space than to have it crash into earth.
I can sort of see how it might make things a little more difficult for crew on the ground or families of the astronaughts if every little thing that occurs in the ISS is reported on every day in great detail. It is sort of like the spouse going to the grocery store and being frantically asked by someone about some obscure airleak. That would suck. Maybe the solution would be to delay the release of the most detailed information by five or ten days.
Don't count on this. The advantage counsols have over PC's (I am told) is that the hardware is 100% standardized so that things can be super-optimized. This also means that due to the optimizations software developed for counsosn't work elsewhere.
Bush is very pro-big business and Microsoft is a very big business. It is a pretty general belief that anti-trust activity will slow down considerably in the Bush administration. Ashcroft who is up for appointment to Attn. General is very conservative and pro-business as well, more so than Bush.
From Anandtech's benchmarks the Celeron 800 now slightly outperforms the Duron 600. The Celeron 800 though costs ~$200 and with time will fall to $160. The idea is it makes sense for people with the right motherboards to upgrade to a Celeron 800 instead of getting a new system. I think it would be better to get a Duron 700+mobo for about ~$160 right now. The Duron 700+mobo will outperform the Celeron 800 and cost less. The new mobo will also allow for a later CPU upgrade to a 1.2GHz Athlon. The Duron 700 is also quite overclockable.
The thing is most of the group of people who might actually bother to upgrade their computer by taking out one CPU and putting in a new one are the same people who might overclock. Not everyone who might swap CPU's might overclock, but a lot.
This kind of makes the Celeron switch from 66MHz to 100MHz FSB less meaningful. In what situation do you have a computer where it makes more sense to buy a 100MHz FSB Celeron? If you have a Celeron 633 or less you should probably just overclock. If you have a 667 or more you still might overclock and if not, how much difference is a 800MHz/100 Celeron going to make, maybe 25%. Even once the price of the 800MHz/100 Celeron falls to $160 this is a poor use of the money. Perhaps once the 100MHz FSB Celerons reach 950 or 1000 a $160 CPU upgrade will make sense. However, by that time your 667Mhz Celeron system will be out of date enough/slow enough that only a whole new system will make sense.
Looks to me like the positioning against Celeron and Duron for this chip is a bit off since Duron will destroy it in performance and Celeron will go to a 100MHz bus soon.
Given the low power consumption, no fan required, small size this looks like direct competition for Transmeta's Crusoe more than anything. The compatibility with Intel's chipsets and mobo's is a big plus. But, VIA probably should market the chip for budget/small notebooks and webpads.
I'd like to see AnandTech or Sharkyextreme reveiw this chip. I still run a Cyrix MII-300.
Space and Home and Food
on
Green Mars
·
· Score: 1
As much as I love the prospect of veggie plantations on Mars, I wish we(humans) would get our act together and distribute the food on earth in a manner to feed all people. We already produce enough food to support the earth's population. It is just that much of it is throw out to keep prices up. Also, a lot of US farmland remains unused because of gov't subsidies.
While I am ranting on this I might as well plug thehungersite.com. They donate food when you click through to vendors and you can buy Tshirts from them. They also have other sites like thekidsaidssite.com
Slashdot Mirror
A friend of mine and I were wondering what the all time record for comments on a slashdot story is.
Does anyone know?
Will this story break that record?
I don't know if MS's Allchin meant to target education as well as just educating lawmakers, but higher education may be the area where Microsoft is least popular. Academia is where the GPL is most popular. I am at Columbia University and despite the donation of a lab of 30 computers with Windows and regular visits to campus and recruitment of students, the CS department HATES Microsoft. I mean they HATE them with a passion. Students like myself are anti-MS, but it is the professors who are really vehement.
...so does this mean the boycott of Amazon by all three slashdot users who bothered to boycott Amazon will soon be over?
Well the first guy who responded to this said he was still boycotting and I am still boycotting too, especially in light of Amazon's recent anti-Union stance. I guess that is 2 of the 3 slashdoters.
Am I the only one who thinks it is a little suspicious that NEAR, which was "not designed" to land on the asteroid, and had only a 1 in 100 chance of survival. The craft is now planning to take off and land again. I think the designers may have actually had some capability of landing in mind from the start, but didn't talk about it.
An even better place to look for new a DSL ISP [plug] is www.ispmenu.com from the company I work for, gromco.
You can submit a request for a proposal and see all the different ISPs offers. [/plug]
I hope some of the moderators understand the reference of the comment. Any misuse of force at Kent State brings to mind the massacre of Vietnam protesters by the National Guard in 1970, in which four students were killed. Here's a CNN story on it.
The NYTimes has a really interesting article on a couple of math prof's at University of Vermont who using combinatorics designed the XFL's schedule so it met all sorts of crazy constraints.
Actually I don't think Copper is the critical factor. While the highest speed Althons I think the 1.1GHz and 1.2GHz are made with Copper in Dresden only, I believe the rest including the 1GHz and the non-Thunderbird 1GHz are at least sometimes made with Aluminium. Copper is probably most helpful at the extremes of clockspeed and power consumption, but it isn't why the P-III can't get beyond 1GHz without reducing the die size.
If the quality was good enough (ie, MUCH better than MP3)
The quality of MP3's can easily match that of CD's by selecting a higher bit rate. I think 192 is good enough for CD quality if not 256 is. Cover Art is another thing.
I think that might take quite a bit of business student personhours to do well.
In order for the results to be somewhat meaningful you will probably want to have plenty of business students. I would think at least 80.
The students need to play multiple games too so that one fuckup doesn't doesn't infludence.
Also, it might be better to have two different video games, if you can use the business students that long. That will help cut down on the quirks that people may have and the strategy defiencies of a single video game.
For the selection of the game, if students are unaware that they are going to be playing a video game you could ask them first to write down all the strategy video games they have played and eliminate the ones that people have played. If someone has already played the particular video game it will really throw off the results so obcsure games may be better. If the business students are not international in background foreign games may be a source.
This sounds like an interesting project for an independent study. I would suggest talking with a couple professors in sociology for some tips on running this experiment and also designing questionares if necessary.
I am not so sure The Man(TM) is going to have a choice with Gnutella and other P2P projects. I'd like to see figures on what percentage of useage for Napster and Gnutella is originating from US universities. Universities look the other way as students use their ethernet connections to download tons of warez and pr0n as well as MP3's because they are extremely adverse to trying to regulate useage, as they should be.
I see many postings citing the differiation in skill level in the tech industry as a reason not to unionize. The assumption is that either pay will be based on seniority or all workers will be paid the same. I do not see why this must be the case. My parents are both professors with Ph.D's (also high skill level) and belong to the university's faculty union. My Dad however makes a lot more than my Mom because he publishes more and gets promoted more. By the university's standards he is a better professor so he is paid more. Also the pay in different fields for professors history vs. chemistry varies a great deal.
I imagine a union of programmers would negotiate to get standards for minimum pay-level (no HB-1 visa underpaying) and working hours (no 7 days of 14 hours in a row). Beyond this different programmers could be paid different amounts. Why couldn't individuals negotiate their own salaries and still be in the union? I have known some professors at my parents' university that have negotiated special raises.
He He... you should've posted that anonymously.
I believe it is going to vary a bit from tech industry to tech industry... If you work for Intel or AMD on CPU design there are pretty strict terms about not going to the competition since you have such a level of proprietary knowledge.
The case of non-compete against Microsoft is interesting though, from a practical standpoint what is one suppose to do... not develope any software for anything short of a mainframe.
Maybe I missed it but I can't believe no one from Columbia has posted.
Website for tunnel maps for many university campuses with maps and lots of info on Columbia.
Columbia at one point had the third largest building tunnel system in the world, behind MIT and the Kremlin. It is famous for many things including the beginning of the Manhattan Project.
This 7M pdf also contains a good article on the history of Columbia's tunnels.
Tunnels are a major part of geek life at Columbia and tunneling has been incorporated into the traditions of many campus organizations. CUMB (Columbia University Marching Band) gives an underground tour at the beginning of every school year.
The system http://www.dwp.domainvalet.com/chris.
A Sharky Extreme Forum discussion of it.
NASA has been bugging the Russians forever to give up on Mir so that they could focus on the International Space Station (ISS). Although someone else posted plans for Mir2, which would be privately financed I think. Until the last year when the ISS began coming online there was just the Mir for space stations and it was in pretty bad shape. Now the Mir is being taken down, but the ISS is actually going to be fully operational soon so I think that is still progress.
I was wondering about that mutant space fungus on the Mir too. It has been up there mutating like crazy in the radiation. Isn't it a threat when it comes back to earth on board the deorbiting (crashing) Mir. Who knows what over lifeforms (like bacteria) may be up there as well. I think it would be much safer though much more expensive to blast Mir into space than to have it crash into earth.
I can sort of see how it might make things a little more difficult for crew on the ground or families of the astronaughts if every little thing that occurs in the ISS is reported on every day in great detail. It is sort of like the spouse going to the grocery store and being frantically asked by someone about some obscure airleak. That would suck. Maybe the solution would be to delay the release of the most detailed information by five or ten days.
Don't count on this. The advantage counsols have over PC's (I am told) is that the hardware is 100% standardized so that things can be super-optimized. This also means that due to the optimizations software developed for counsosn't work elsewhere.
Bush is very pro-big business and Microsoft is a very big business. It is a pretty general belief that anti-trust activity will slow down considerably in the Bush administration. Ashcroft who is up for appointment to Attn. General is very conservative and pro-business as well, more so than Bush.
From Anandtech's benchmarks the Celeron 800 now slightly outperforms the Duron 600. The Celeron 800 though costs ~$200 and with time will fall to $160. The idea is it makes sense for people with the right motherboards to upgrade to a Celeron 800 instead of getting a new system. I think it would be better to get a Duron 700+mobo for about ~$160 right now. The Duron 700+mobo will outperform the Celeron 800 and cost less. The new mobo will also allow for a later CPU upgrade to a 1.2GHz Athlon. The Duron 700 is also quite overclockable.
The thing is most of the group of people who might actually bother to upgrade their computer by taking out one CPU and putting in a new one are the same people who might overclock. Not everyone who might swap CPU's might overclock, but a lot.
This kind of makes the Celeron switch from 66MHz to 100MHz FSB less meaningful. In what situation do you have a computer where it makes more sense to buy a 100MHz FSB Celeron? If you have a Celeron 633 or less you should probably just overclock. If you have a 667 or more you still might overclock and if not, how much difference is a 800MHz/100 Celeron going to make, maybe 25%. Even once the price of the 800MHz/100 Celeron falls to $160 this is a poor use of the money. Perhaps once the 100MHz FSB Celerons reach 950 or 1000 a $160 CPU upgrade will make sense. However, by that time your 667Mhz Celeron system will be out of date enough/slow enough that only a whole new system will make sense.
Looks to me like the positioning against Celeron and Duron for this chip is a bit off since Duron will destroy it in performance and Celeron will go to a 100MHz bus soon.
Given the low power consumption, no fan required, small size this looks like direct competition for Transmeta's Crusoe more than anything. The compatibility with Intel's chipsets and mobo's is a big plus. But, VIA probably should market the chip for budget/small notebooks and webpads.
I'd like to see AnandTech or Sharkyextreme reveiw this chip. I still run a Cyrix MII-300.
As much as I love the prospect of veggie plantations on Mars, I wish we(humans) would get our act together and distribute the food on earth in a manner to feed all people. We already produce enough food to support the earth's population. It is just that much of it is throw out to keep prices up. Also, a lot of US farmland remains unused because of gov't subsidies.
While I am ranting on this I might as well plug thehungersite.com. They donate food when you click through to vendors and you can buy Tshirts from them. They also have other sites like thekidsaidssite.com