Ok, this may be vaguely off the topic of currently running shows, though it's one to watch out for if they re-run it, or bother to get round to series 2..
That's "Ultraviolet". It's well worth watching out for, although it's (in current form) just a 6 episode mini series.
Keep the eyes peeled,
Umm.. Isn't that ever so slightly illegal?
When an ISP charges you your monthly fee, they are contractually obliged to maintain your connection with the internet.
While it's quite feasible for them to suspend the agreement with you because they believe you've done something they're not happy with, I don't believe they actually have the power to charge you for that time, as you're not actually receiving a service from them. And the service is just about all the ISP offers..
Check the conditions very carefully. If it's stipulated in the agreement that they can charge you for services not rendered, then advertise that they could charge you for installations of nuclear submarines in your house, despite the fact they never do so.
If they're allowed to charge you for suspension of your account, get out now. And get other people out too.
Eventually, they could easily make the terms and conditions so strict that they could indefinately suspend everyone, and charge for doing nothing
A lot of home users these days buy computer mags, just to try and learn a little more about them..
This is the original distribution method for both IE and Netscape.. They appeared on the cover disks of magazines.. With big titles proclaiming the latest releases
A lot of people still use dialups, and will be more than a little miffed that they're supposed to download such huge bits simply to view java..
However, putting an installer on a CD would be a bit of a sales booster for people not wanting to spend hours downloading over a 14.4 modem.:)
And it would also be able to proclaim all these new releases of Java, nudging people to stay current.
From the review, it seems that all Jon Katz things computer games should be is lots of shooting, explosions, and similar inane garbage.
Personally, I love the games that don't have lots of bangs and mindless stomping around.
Final Fantasy the games were all about looking deeper into things, and not fitting in with the norm.
I've not yet gone to see it, but I wasn't expecting to see a high adventure movie in the same vein as Tomb Raider et. al.
I was expecting something with a little thought, that I'd have to think quite deeply on, and look for the meaning behind.
I'll reserve judgement until I've seen the movie, but I think slating it, just because it's something different, not just the usual guns and regular modus operandi of killing things, is pretty lame.
There is nothing intrinsically valuable about space.
Hmm.. It's only where all the resources are, and just about everything that's not on this tiny planet of ours..
It's just about the most valuable place there is
I do agree with the sentiment that today's astronauts aren't as ground breaking as their forerunners tho.
is to get a 'company' together, owned jointly by players in the open source arena (Red Hat, FSF, so on), with sales and marketing experience to go and run demonstrations at schools.
This is exactly how many places got exposed to MS in the first place. A suit turning up, running a slick presentation, demonstrating how EASY it is to run, and giving a professional image.
After all, it's the exposure and image that gets the beancounters to spend the money.. Or not, in the case of open source.
Once the presentation is made, a small brochure can be given on where to get support for open source, what it's about, how easy it is to use, where to get the free apps that can drive the institution, and so on.
Also, have a team on standby to do a few installs, in case institutions want to 'try before they buy into it'.
This same team to provide basic training on installation to members from institutions (possibly for a small fee to cover the costs of placing someone at a site, possibly hosted by the institution itself). After all, it doesn't take much to teach someone how to install a Mandrake (or Debian, FreeBSD, Red Hat etc) distribution from a CD image.This will be a loss maker financially, but, given that you can call around and have talks with many schools in an area in a day, and take one day to get maximum exposure for a demo, the costs can be minimised.
As has been mentioned on posts here, the school system is a good place to raise awareness. And once that awareness is present, and people are used to using particular software, it can then slowly move out into the business arena.
After all, even the more clueless PHBs out there had to have used software at Uni, or somewhere previously (assuming they use it at all). If they KNOW that the Open Source apps work as efficiently for a user (at least) as stuff they pay for.. No prizes for guessing what option they're going to take.
But, the push needs to come in a slick, businesslike package, presented by the kind of people that are well versed in selling a concept
Hopefully, this is something already out there, or soon to come about...
Hey, and people thought I was paranoid!!
I don't believe for a moment that the failure of online magazines is the fault of the big monopolies and existing media providers.
For a start, the existing media providers all set up with the model that to produce an expensive distribution (I.e. magazines, tv shows, movies etc) they had to sort out a means whereby they could make enough money from it to enable them to make the next one, and pay the staff for their time.
A lot of online magazines simply didn't do this, and relied on revenue streams of banner ads, if that, to pay their bandwidth and staff bills.
With the proliferation of banner ads (they're far cheaper than magazine ads), eventually, their revenue won't keep up with costs.. Thus the company goes out of business.
This problem has been afflicting many suberb publications since time immemorial in many different media...
I happen to work for an online publication (a very sizable sports information site), in which the management, to gain extra revenue, contract out the skills of the staff to implement projects for other companies who don't have the necessary skills/resources to achieve this.
Lo and behold, the company is still going strong, and with a decent revenue stream, capitalising on the skills it has.
Why blame the big guys, just because the little guys didn't quite get it right?
It's sad, but it happens.
It's a money driven world in the net these days, and to stay in the game, you need to pay your distributors (ISPs instead of printers) and staff, just like all the other businesses in there..
Perhaps many of us techs suffer from the arrogance that just because we operate in an advanced and new media, we're exempt from all the practices that have preceeded for hundreds of years..
Well, I work for a pretty large site on the web, and the amount of pages we have in our archives of news, data and just about anything else on cricket you can think of amounts to many millions of pages.
These all need to be updated across the world, and we have enough hassle maintaining correct mirroring as it is, with bandwidth issues in many places like India.
To disable the smart tags on all the pages we have would be a gargantuan effort. Unfeasable for us to do. And then mirror them out to all servers we have... Whoah...
It seems that by this statement, Microsoft have just about said "We want the web to look this way. Change the whole way you build your sites if you want them to look how they always have, or else it'll look how we want it to!"
Just think of all the people who've spent hours/days/years getting their sites to look just the way they want. Millions spent by corporations getting the right "look and feel".
And Microsoft step in and say "Well, you can edit everything you have if you want to keep your look, otherwise, we own you."
Rather than set a default of 'disabled' on one of their 'features', they expect the world to spend millions and millions of man hours going over existing working web pages to get them to work as they were originally intended to!
This, perhaps, could be classified as the biggest piece of intentional vandalism in history!
For the graphics card market, they've certainly become the standard these days, and perhaps a little complacent about how they approach things.
However, they're the newcomer to a very cutthroat market, and very soon they'll have Intel and VIA (and probably SiS and co. too) breathing down their necks.
If they keep the programming info close to their chests, they'll be limiting the compatibility of their board. And any limiting factor these days is a Bad Thing (TM).
A good dose of open-ness wouldn't hurt the adoption of the board early on, and may even become a deciding factor in it's continued survival in the marketplace, once all it's competitors wake up and produce a more open answer.
One can but hope.
Well, as they said in the article, when queried about why they didn't have an Intel version:
"We don't have an Intel bus license"
From this, I assume that Intel are trying to do what IBM did with the MCA architecture over a decade ago.
They're forcing developers into restrictive licenses, and possibly expensive ones, to use an architecture.
This was a really bad idea, as IBM found when nobody used MCA, and instead went for the inferior EISA bus, which didn't have such heavy restrictions.
I can't blame NVIDIA for trying to get their dedicated graphics cards looking and performing to the best possible standard (as they already have optimisations for the PIII and AMD processors), and it's only logical for them to optimise for P4 if they can. And they have.
However, this new chipset is simply saying that AMD are more open, and easier to develop with, rather than having Intel breathing down their neck with licensing issues at every step of the way.
My view on it is that AMD just gave NVIDIA the license to innovate properly, and good things are now happening.
Well, as per usual, it seems to prove that extra competition in an industry forces innovation.
With the Intel/VIA etc. wars, it just seemed to be a war to see who could produce the same solution at lower cost. Very little new actually happened.
When NVIDIA talked about their memory specs in the GeForce3, I was wondering how long it would take for the powers that be in the industry to have the same kind of foreward thinking on motherboards.
Now it seems that it took NVIDIA to jump in with both feet to wake everyone up.
Well, succeed or fail in this new venture, they've certainly given everyone a lot to think about, and I'll definately be putting money aside to buy one as soon as I hear they're settled in and stable.
It'll be fun to see where this race of new ideas ends.:)
Long live innovation, competition, and hats off to NVIDIA.
Weird lawyers.
It's quoted in the article that pointing the fuckgeneralmotors.com domain at ford is like putting a billboard by a highway saying "Fuck General Motors" and saying it's sponsored by Ford.
Doh!
Last I checked, if you want to look who's 'sponsoring' the site, you use "whois".
And doing:
whois -h whois.geektools.com fuckgeneralmotors.com
Query: fuckgeneralmotors.com
Registry: whois.corenic.net
Results:
- 2600 Enterprises (template COCO-12817)
emmanuel@2600.com
PO Box 99
Middle Island, NY 11953 US
Domain Name: fuckgeneralmotors.com
Status: production
Database last updated on 2001-05-18 15:46:51 UTC
That kinda tells me EXACTLY who sponsored that billboard.
Poof, that's this excuse out the window.
In effect, what's happend is that the sponsored by is in the style and colours of Ford ads, (can you remember the nice little 'Fuct' logo done in Ford colours and style that nobody's complaining about??).
Urrr... Next case???
There's been a lot of media hype about Linux in the news for the last several years, although very little that the average 'guy in the street' gets to hear about, or finds very relevant.
Now, with this on the way, we find a big brand name that many seem to identify with 'cool' (can you count the number of young teens chasing the latest images for their Nokia phones, and identifying that with the brand 'Nokia'?) that's leveraging Linux.
If it sells well, which, given Nokia's marketing engine, it should do.. Just think.
When people say "Linux, that's that hard to use unfriendly system, isn't it?", you can point to their easy to use box by the TV, and politely let them know that they're already using Linux...
Once people get the idea there's nothing to be afraid of, then a lot of the FUD from Redmond counts for naught.
It's a far cry from beating Windows on the desktop, but it's certainly stealing a march on MS in getting market penetration of product.:)
Bravo, Nokia. I'll be watching this with interest.
Urrr.. I tend to use Perl a lot.
Ya know, it's quite easy to pick up (I got up and running in an afternoon on the basics).
The prefixed identifier is pretty useful as a memory aid, so that you are ALWAYS aware of what type you're dealing with (scalar, array, hash, sub, or typeglob).
To learn what these are, you read one page in a book, and all is clear. Now, how difficult is that??
If you're having trouble extracting values out of variables, then I think you have a weird view of 'difficult'. Pulling a value out of a deep struct in C can be difficult, but using $_ being difficult? Bah.
Still, if you don't like it, fine. Your choice. But, please don't keep saying it's so difficult.
I taught my Girlfriend to use Perl in a day (at the basics), and she's never learned a programming language in her life prior to this. She's now sailing away in it happily.
Oh, c'mon...
I've admined both NT and Linux.
I've found Linux upgrades far far easier (due to things such as ftp updates, apt-get, so on, so forth.
You could teach a newbie to keep Debian up to date.
Log in, apt-get.
Takes a little more teaching, going to each machine and doing tweaks and fiddles.
If you can't expect ports while giving source away for free, just give free binaries. That works nicely, don't you agree?
Nothing to stop that happening.
Plus, if someone ports, and tries to give it away, they're effectively copying an IBM program (same source, it's copywrite).
Giving away someone else's code as yours is a big no no in ALL licenses.
As for time to learn.. To do the job properly, an NT admin takes just as long to teach. It's not teaching them which buttons to press, it's teaching them WHY they need to press buttons/type things in in the first place!
If you don't know what you're doing, you shouldn't be doing it.
A good admin is competent on ALL platfroms necessary to get a job done.
As for businesses having to hire a Linux admin.. Learn before you preach.
I'm a consultant (used to be full time, now part time) to many small businesses. I've installed Linux boxes for FAR less than NT licensing would cost.
The IT support techie on site gets a crash course in how to use the admin tools provided, and my phone number in case of emergencies.
And ya know what? They never call. They have a list of Linux sites, they have the books, and they learn darn fast.
However, in the main part, I work for a small company, which is one of the largest European based Web companies (yes, it's weathering the.com crash very well, thanks).
We managed a nice round 250,000,000 page VIEWS (about 5x that in hits). This was done on a pleasant 50 Debian boxes (dual pIII 500s).
They are spread out around the world in places such as India, Pakistan, USA, UK, South Africa, Australia, Newzealand.
Essentially, they are administered by two people.
There are guidelines to make sure that all the rest of active maintenance staff for 24x7x52 support know what to do when things go strange in any server.
All in all, there are about 7 people maintining and developing these machines, along with other projects. That includes a 24 hour support in three different shifts.
They are updated just about weekly, with the latest tested versions of various tools and so on.
One person does the updates around the world.
I'd sorely love to see NT do that, without thousands of dollars worth of extra software and configuration.
As for default installations. Do check out apt-get, and rpm installs and uninstalls.
Please, please get a clue before posting.
NT does a good job in some arenas, Linux does well in others.
I find Linux better for the tasks I have to achieve.
When you've learned both, and you're EXPERIENCED with both, please comment again.
But, learn your subject first.
Let's just hope they have the original 'install disks' ready and at hand when they come to swap out anything that breaks.
And a good comms method to get their new install key.
Well, many a year ago, I was in the same kind of position that Sean was in. I.e. at the bottom of the pecking order, and everyone thought it would be good to pick on me.
As a result, I have several scars from attacks by stick, broken bottle and various other items, and these physical scars are with me over 20 years after I left this school.
If my parents had found out about it, I'm sure they'd have intervened. Or tried something.
But, when you're threatened with more, by many people, then.. You learn to keep things hidden.
I did. And I got rather good at it.
Now, years later, my younger brother attended the same school (well after I eventually told my parents what had happened at this place), and they assumed that things would be different.
They weren't.. My brother is another free thinker, and different to the herd.
This time, when my folks spotted the 'signs' (and yes, you _really_ have to look hard in a lot of cases), they confronted the school board.
The solution?
The School Head suggested that my parents "Invite the bully in question around, take them both out for a day, or a weekend, and 'let them get to know each other better'.."..
In other words, my folks should pay for the bully's entertainment and food and what not for a weekend or so, just because he beat up my brother.
Since that day, I lost all respect for the politicos and ass convering administrators across the world.
A ruling that said some bananas couldn't be sold because they were too straight and a ruling that certain apples (Granny Smith's, a popular English variety) couldn't legally be called apples because they were too small.
Something tells me these people have WAY too much time on their hands.
Still, once people catch on that you can't lend something out anymore, you'll see the end of 'group buys' from people on a low budget making a purchase where one couldn't on their own, no peer copying and learning, then purchasing when someone gets used to a product.
Many products have only BEEN so successful because it was possible to copy them, thus allowing them to saturate the market. And eventually, a good quantity of these people end up making a purchase they otherwise would never have considered.
This law, like the DMCA will eventually stomp all the newer, heavily protected stuff, because people simply don't get the 'preview' of it in action.
No confidence and familiarity==no reason to by speculatively (except in a lot fewer cases of people wanting the newest).
In the end, methinks the older tech will end up being used far past what the manufacturers wish, to keep their turnover going, just to avoid these rules.
So, either they back down, or they go out of business.
All I can say is 'Ouch!'.
I'm damn glad I've got a cable modem, which doesn't seem to be doing all this crazy stuff.
I find it rather perturbing that anybody in their right mind these days could leave an unauthenticated TFTP server running, with permissions to overwrite a password.
Even if it is 'supposed' to be run from the LAN side of the device.
Backdooring is also very very evil. All it takes is for one black hat to acquire the cryptovariables and algorithm, then it's script kiddie heaven!
Alcatel, being one of the major telecoms providers, I'd have thought would be a little more careful about the production and security of their devices. It's not as if it'd break their bank hiring a few good security consultants to go over their device before selling it. Lawsuits that may ensue due to their negligence in correctly allowing security configuration of the device may seriously damage it though.
All this in mind, having a device with this lax security on it is a contravention of most ISPs TOS. I know I'd get thrown off in an instant if I had a machine this insecure on my cable!
Again, it looks like a victory for the beancounters (we can shave a few grand off the development costs by not hiring security consultants, and that'll make this department look nicer on the profit side. Who cares abbout the other departments who have to cope with the flak later).
I think I'l just say I've very disappointed with a company of this standing to have procedures this lax, and leave it at that.
Cheers,
Malk
Re:I'm worried about this. It could be a disaster.
on
Microchips That Evolve
·
· Score: 1
Well, note that the hardware reconfigures to perform the task to it's best abilities.
A part of this task is definately going to be stability.
If an area of the chip breaks down, the rest of the circuit will re-adapt to compensate, until it reaches equilibrium again.
Self repairing hardware has been being studied for ages now, and FPGA is a very good medium for this.
As for hackers 'getting in and modifying the code'.. Well, it's a little different in this game.
Just how, exactly, is the hacker going to alter the code? Where? What line? How the hell does this thing work in the first place?
Hackers of this breed of computer will doubtless evolve in their own way, but they may well be a different breed to todays.. And I somehow doubt script kiddiedom will survive.
How can you script an attack against a million machines when each one is different?
If you step back and look at FPGA and the tech it's likely to spin off, it looks to be FAR more reliable than what we have now, as it can 'heal' itself from even physical damage.
*Cough* Well, 'scuse me..
The governments et. al have a hard enough job actually getting the film out when needed in a crime that people are jumping up and down about.
When you go in a picket line, you frequently rely on the police present to guard yer butt against people who don't really want you to be there.
And yes, there are a lot of scary clashes on picket lines between opposed pressure groups, not groups and police.
Do you really think they're going to waste their time getting a group of people to pick out each face in thousands, cross reference it against any files they may have, and write notes on you if you're having a peaceful demonstration?
Whoah, please keep taking the paranoia pills.
All government departments (well, over here in the UK anyway, and most likely over there too) are cash starved for keeping up with what needs to really be done, not just what they'd like to do.
I'm of the feeling that when I'm out in public, I don't care if it's a camera or people's eyes that see me. All equates to the same thing. I'm in public. Note the difference between public and private.
Interestingly enough, I knew a few people who actually use the stuff from surveillance cameras. Most are pretty much automated, with no real operator control, although, the one or two people operating huge numbers of cameras can override in the case of emergency.
I'd sorely love to know where your sources of that state they're not used for the advertised use come from.
From what I note in the article, the people who are really getting hot under the collar about this are the publishers.
Perhaps, this is because, like the music industry, they're beginning to see that anybody can go direct with their content in a digital format, and bypass them completely.
As soon as this is really understood, then nobody, or at the very least far far fewer people will be relying on them, and thus paying their huge cut of each book paid for.
It looks like another outmoded dinosaur is desperately thrashing around with tooth and claw (read litigation) in an attempt to protect their revenue streams in an age when they're no longer required.
About the only way they can stay required is if they make it near enough illegal for anyone to publish their own content and not go through them.
And this looks like the first step in that direction.
Slashdot Mirror
Ok, this may be vaguely off the topic of currently running shows, though it's one to watch out for if they re-run it, or bother to get round to series 2..
That's "Ultraviolet". It's well worth watching out for, although it's (in current form) just a 6 episode mini series.
Keep the eyes peeled,
Malk
Umm.. Isn't that ever so slightly illegal?
When an ISP charges you your monthly fee, they are contractually obliged to maintain your connection with the internet.
While it's quite feasible for them to suspend the agreement with you because they believe you've done something they're not happy with, I don't believe they actually have the power to charge you for that time, as you're not actually receiving a service from them. And the service is just about all the ISP offers..
Check the conditions very carefully. If it's stipulated in the agreement that they can charge you for services not rendered, then advertise that they could charge you for installations of nuclear submarines in your house, despite the fact they never do so.
If they're allowed to charge you for suspension of your account, get out now. And get other people out too.
Eventually, they could easily make the terms and conditions so strict that they could indefinately suspend everyone, and charge for doing nothing
Just seems like a BIG scam to me..
Malk
A lot of home users these days buy computer mags, just to try and learn a little more about them.. :)
This is the original distribution method for both IE and Netscape.. They appeared on the cover disks of magazines.. With big titles proclaiming the latest releases
A lot of people still use dialups, and will be more than a little miffed that they're supposed to download such huge bits simply to view java..
However, putting an installer on a CD would be a bit of a sales booster for people not wanting to spend hours downloading over a 14.4 modem.
And it would also be able to proclaim all these new releases of Java, nudging people to stay current.
Malk
From the review, it seems that all Jon Katz things computer games should be is lots of shooting, explosions, and similar inane garbage.
Personally, I love the games that don't have lots of bangs and mindless stomping around.
Final Fantasy the games were all about looking deeper into things, and not fitting in with the norm.
I've not yet gone to see it, but I wasn't expecting to see a high adventure movie in the same vein as Tomb Raider et. al.
I was expecting something with a little thought, that I'd have to think quite deeply on, and look for the meaning behind.
I'll reserve judgement until I've seen the movie, but I think slating it, just because it's something different, not just the usual guns and regular modus operandi of killing things, is pretty lame.
There is nothing intrinsically valuable about space.
Hmm.. It's only where all the resources are, and just about everything that's not on this tiny planet of ours..
It's just about the most valuable place there is
I do agree with the sentiment that today's astronauts aren't as ground breaking as their forerunners tho.
Malk
is to get a 'company' together, owned jointly by players in the open source arena (Red Hat, FSF, so on), with sales and marketing experience to go and run demonstrations at schools.
This is exactly how many places got exposed to MS in the first place. A suit turning up, running a slick presentation, demonstrating how EASY it is to run, and giving a professional image.
After all, it's the exposure and image that gets the beancounters to spend the money.. Or not, in the case of open source.
Once the presentation is made, a small brochure can be given on where to get support for open source, what it's about, how easy it is to use, where to get the free apps that can drive the institution, and so on.
Also, have a team on standby to do a few installs, in case institutions want to 'try before they buy into it'.
This same team to provide basic training on installation to members from institutions (possibly for a small fee to cover the costs of placing someone at a site, possibly hosted by the institution itself). After all, it doesn't take much to teach someone how to install a Mandrake (or Debian, FreeBSD, Red Hat etc) distribution from a CD image.This will be a loss maker financially, but, given that you can call around and have talks with many schools in an area in a day, and take one day to get maximum exposure for a demo, the costs can be minimised.
As has been mentioned on posts here, the school system is a good place to raise awareness. And once that awareness is present, and people are used to using particular software, it can then slowly move out into the business arena.
After all, even the more clueless PHBs out there had to have used software at Uni, or somewhere previously (assuming they use it at all). If they KNOW that the Open Source apps work as efficiently for a user (at least) as stuff they pay for.. No prizes for guessing what option they're going to take.
But, the push needs to come in a slick, businesslike package, presented by the kind of people that are well versed in selling a concept
Hopefully, this is something already out there, or soon to come about...
Malk
Hey, and people thought I was paranoid!!
I don't believe for a moment that the failure of online magazines is the fault of the big monopolies and existing media providers.
For a start, the existing media providers all set up with the model that to produce an expensive distribution (I.e. magazines, tv shows, movies etc) they had to sort out a means whereby they could make enough money from it to enable them to make the next one, and pay the staff for their time.
A lot of online magazines simply didn't do this, and relied on revenue streams of banner ads, if that, to pay their bandwidth and staff bills.
With the proliferation of banner ads (they're far cheaper than magazine ads), eventually, their revenue won't keep up with costs.. Thus the company goes out of business.
This problem has been afflicting many suberb publications since time immemorial in many different media...
I happen to work for an online publication (a very sizable sports information site), in which the management, to gain extra revenue, contract out the skills of the staff to implement projects for other companies who don't have the necessary skills/resources to achieve this.
Lo and behold, the company is still going strong, and with a decent revenue stream, capitalising on the skills it has.
Why blame the big guys, just because the little guys didn't quite get it right?
It's sad, but it happens.
It's a money driven world in the net these days, and to stay in the game, you need to pay your distributors (ISPs instead of printers) and staff, just like all the other businesses in there..
Perhaps many of us techs suffer from the arrogance that just because we operate in an advanced and new media, we're exempt from all the practices that have preceeded for hundreds of years..
Malk
Well, I work for a pretty large site on the web, and the amount of pages we have in our archives of news, data and just about anything else on cricket you can think of amounts to many millions of pages.
These all need to be updated across the world, and we have enough hassle maintaining correct mirroring as it is, with bandwidth issues in many places like India.
To disable the smart tags on all the pages we have would be a gargantuan effort. Unfeasable for us to do. And then mirror them out to all servers we have... Whoah...
It seems that by this statement, Microsoft have just about said "We want the web to look this way. Change the whole way you build your sites if you want them to look how they always have, or else it'll look how we want it to!"
Just think of all the people who've spent hours/days/years getting their sites to look just the way they want. Millions spent by corporations getting the right "look and feel".
And Microsoft step in and say "Well, you can edit everything you have if you want to keep your look, otherwise, we own you."
Rather than set a default of 'disabled' on one of their 'features', they expect the world to spend millions and millions of man hours going over existing working web pages to get them to work as they were originally intended to!
This, perhaps, could be classified as the biggest piece of intentional vandalism in history!
Malk.
The article says it's hardware accelerated for DirectX.
This, I'd assume is because a lot of this is X-Box spinoff tech.
If I understand the article fully, then it'd Cirect-X compliant from the word go.
Malk
Precompiled modules?
Though, I very much hope that this doesn't come to pass.
Malk
For the graphics card market, they've certainly become the standard these days, and perhaps a little complacent about how they approach things.
However, they're the newcomer to a very cutthroat market, and very soon they'll have Intel and VIA (and probably SiS and co. too) breathing down their necks.
If they keep the programming info close to their chests, they'll be limiting the compatibility of their board. And any limiting factor these days is a Bad Thing (TM).
A good dose of open-ness wouldn't hurt the adoption of the board early on, and may even become a deciding factor in it's continued survival in the marketplace, once all it's competitors wake up and produce a more open answer.
One can but hope.
Malk
Well, as they said in the article, when queried about why they didn't have an Intel version:
"We don't have an Intel bus license"
From this, I assume that Intel are trying to do what IBM did with the MCA architecture over a decade ago.
They're forcing developers into restrictive licenses, and possibly expensive ones, to use an architecture.
This was a really bad idea, as IBM found when nobody used MCA, and instead went for the inferior EISA bus, which didn't have such heavy restrictions.
I can't blame NVIDIA for trying to get their dedicated graphics cards looking and performing to the best possible standard (as they already have optimisations for the PIII and AMD processors), and it's only logical for them to optimise for P4 if they can. And they have.
However, this new chipset is simply saying that AMD are more open, and easier to develop with, rather than having Intel breathing down their neck with licensing issues at every step of the way.
My view on it is that AMD just gave NVIDIA the license to innovate properly, and good things are now happening.
Malk
Well, as per usual, it seems to prove that extra competition in an industry forces innovation. :)
With the Intel/VIA etc. wars, it just seemed to be a war to see who could produce the same solution at lower cost. Very little new actually happened.
When NVIDIA talked about their memory specs in the GeForce3, I was wondering how long it would take for the powers that be in the industry to have the same kind of foreward thinking on motherboards.
Now it seems that it took NVIDIA to jump in with both feet to wake everyone up.
Well, succeed or fail in this new venture, they've certainly given everyone a lot to think about, and I'll definately be putting money aside to buy one as soon as I hear they're settled in and stable.
It'll be fun to see where this race of new ideas ends.
Long live innovation, competition, and hats off to NVIDIA.
Malk
Weird lawyers.
It's quoted in the article that pointing the fuckgeneralmotors.com domain at ford is like putting a billboard by a highway saying "Fuck General Motors" and saying it's sponsored by Ford.
Doh!
Last I checked, if you want to look who's 'sponsoring' the site, you use "whois".
And doing:
whois -h whois.geektools.com fuckgeneralmotors.com
Query: fuckgeneralmotors.com
Registry: whois.corenic.net
Results:
- 2600 Enterprises (template COCO-12817)
emmanuel@2600.com
PO Box 99
Middle Island, NY 11953 US
Domain Name: fuckgeneralmotors.com
Status: production
Admin Contact, Technical Contact, Zone Contact:
Emmanuel Goldstein (COCO-12818) emmanuel@2600.com
+1 516 751 2600 (FAX) +1 516 474 2677
CORE Registrar: CORE-20
Record created: 1999-09-26 23:21:21 UTC by CORE-20
Record expires: 2001-09-25 00:00:00 UTC
Domain servers in listed order:
phalse.2600.com 216.66.24.2
ns2.icsnet.net 204.194.104.4
Database last updated on 2001-05-18 15:46:51 UTC
That kinda tells me EXACTLY who sponsored that billboard.
Poof, that's this excuse out the window.
In effect, what's happend is that the sponsored by is in the style and colours of Ford ads, (can you remember the nice little 'Fuct' logo done in Ford colours and style that nobody's complaining about??).
Urrr... Next case???
Cheers,
Malk
There's been a lot of media hype about Linux in the news for the last several years, although very little that the average 'guy in the street' gets to hear about, or finds very relevant. :)
Now, with this on the way, we find a big brand name that many seem to identify with 'cool' (can you count the number of young teens chasing the latest images for their Nokia phones, and identifying that with the brand 'Nokia'?) that's leveraging Linux.
If it sells well, which, given Nokia's marketing engine, it should do.. Just think.
When people say "Linux, that's that hard to use unfriendly system, isn't it?", you can point to their easy to use box by the TV, and politely let them know that they're already using Linux...
Once people get the idea there's nothing to be afraid of, then a lot of the FUD from Redmond counts for naught.
It's a far cry from beating Windows on the desktop, but it's certainly stealing a march on MS in getting market penetration of product.
Bravo, Nokia. I'll be watching this with interest.
Malk
Urrr.. I tend to use Perl a lot.
Ya know, it's quite easy to pick up (I got up and running in an afternoon on the basics).
The prefixed identifier is pretty useful as a memory aid, so that you are ALWAYS aware of what type you're dealing with (scalar, array, hash, sub, or typeglob).
To learn what these are, you read one page in a book, and all is clear. Now, how difficult is that??
If you're having trouble extracting values out of variables, then I think you have a weird view of 'difficult'. Pulling a value out of a deep struct in C can be difficult, but using $_ being difficult? Bah.
Still, if you don't like it, fine. Your choice. But, please don't keep saying it's so difficult.
I taught my Girlfriend to use Perl in a day (at the basics), and she's never learned a programming language in her life prior to this. She's now sailing away in it happily.
Cheers,
Malk
Oh, c'mon...
.com crash very well, thanks).
I've admined both NT and Linux.
I've found Linux upgrades far far easier (due to things such as ftp updates, apt-get, so on, so forth.
You could teach a newbie to keep Debian up to date.
Log in, apt-get.
Takes a little more teaching, going to each machine and doing tweaks and fiddles.
If you can't expect ports while giving source away for free, just give free binaries. That works nicely, don't you agree?
Nothing to stop that happening.
Plus, if someone ports, and tries to give it away, they're effectively copying an IBM program (same source, it's copywrite).
Giving away someone else's code as yours is a big no no in ALL licenses.
As for time to learn.. To do the job properly, an NT admin takes just as long to teach. It's not teaching them which buttons to press, it's teaching them WHY they need to press buttons/type things in in the first place!
If you don't know what you're doing, you shouldn't be doing it.
A good admin is competent on ALL platfroms necessary to get a job done.
As for businesses having to hire a Linux admin.. Learn before you preach.
I'm a consultant (used to be full time, now part time) to many small businesses. I've installed Linux boxes for FAR less than NT licensing would cost.
The IT support techie on site gets a crash course in how to use the admin tools provided, and my phone number in case of emergencies.
And ya know what? They never call. They have a list of Linux sites, they have the books, and they learn darn fast.
However, in the main part, I work for a small company, which is one of the largest European based Web companies (yes, it's weathering the
We managed a nice round 250,000,000 page VIEWS (about 5x that in hits). This was done on a pleasant 50 Debian boxes (dual pIII 500s).
They are spread out around the world in places such as India, Pakistan, USA, UK, South Africa, Australia, Newzealand. Essentially, they are administered by two people. There are guidelines to make sure that all the rest of active maintenance staff for 24x7x52 support know what to do when things go strange in any server.
All in all, there are about 7 people maintining and developing these machines, along with other projects. That includes a 24 hour support in three different shifts.
They are updated just about weekly, with the latest tested versions of various tools and so on.
One person does the updates around the world.
I'd sorely love to see NT do that, without thousands of dollars worth of extra software and configuration.
As for default installations. Do check out apt-get, and rpm installs and uninstalls.
Please, please get a clue before posting.
NT does a good job in some arenas, Linux does well in others.
I find Linux better for the tasks I have to achieve.
When you've learned both, and you're EXPERIENCED with both, please comment again.
But, learn your subject first.
Thanks,
Malk
Let's just hope they have the original 'install disks' ready and at hand when they come to swap out anything that breaks.
And a good comms method to get their new install key.
Well, many a year ago, I was in the same kind of position that Sean was in. I.e. at the bottom of the pecking order, and everyone thought it would be good to pick on me.
As a result, I have several scars from attacks by stick, broken bottle and various other items, and these physical scars are with me over 20 years after I left this school.
If my parents had found out about it, I'm sure they'd have intervened. Or tried something.
But, when you're threatened with more, by many people, then.. You learn to keep things hidden.
I did. And I got rather good at it.
Now, years later, my younger brother attended the same school (well after I eventually told my parents what had happened at this place), and they assumed that things would be different.
They weren't.. My brother is another free thinker, and different to the herd.
This time, when my folks spotted the 'signs' (and yes, you _really_ have to look hard in a lot of cases), they confronted the school board.
The solution?
The School Head suggested that my parents "Invite the bully in question around, take them both out for a day, or a weekend, and 'let them get to know each other better'.."..
In other words, my folks should pay for the bully's entertainment and food and what not for a weekend or so, just because he beat up my brother.
Since that day, I lost all respect for the politicos and ass convering administrators across the world.
Malk
A ruling that said some bananas couldn't be sold because they were too straight and a ruling that certain apples (Granny Smith's, a popular English variety) couldn't legally be called apples because they were too small.
Something tells me these people have WAY too much time on their hands.
Still, once people catch on that you can't lend something out anymore, you'll see the end of 'group buys' from people on a low budget making a purchase where one couldn't on their own, no peer copying and learning, then purchasing when someone gets used to a product.
Many products have only BEEN so successful because it was possible to copy them, thus allowing them to saturate the market. And eventually, a good quantity of these people end up making a purchase they otherwise would never have considered.
This law, like the DMCA will eventually stomp all the newer, heavily protected stuff, because people simply don't get the 'preview' of it in action.
No confidence and familiarity==no reason to by speculatively (except in a lot fewer cases of people wanting the newest).
In the end, methinks the older tech will end up being used far past what the manufacturers wish, to keep their turnover going, just to avoid these rules.
So, either they back down, or they go out of business.
Cheers,
Malk
All I can say is 'Ouch!'.
I'm damn glad I've got a cable modem, which doesn't seem to be doing all this crazy stuff.
I find it rather perturbing that anybody in their right mind these days could leave an unauthenticated TFTP server running, with permissions to overwrite a password.
Even if it is 'supposed' to be run from the LAN side of the device.
Backdooring is also very very evil. All it takes is for one black hat to acquire the cryptovariables and algorithm, then it's script kiddie heaven!
Alcatel, being one of the major telecoms providers, I'd have thought would be a little more careful about the production and security of their devices. It's not as if it'd break their bank hiring a few good security consultants to go over their device before selling it. Lawsuits that may ensue due to their negligence in correctly allowing security configuration of the device may seriously damage it though.
All this in mind, having a device with this lax security on it is a contravention of most ISPs TOS. I know I'd get thrown off in an instant if I had a machine this insecure on my cable!
Again, it looks like a victory for the beancounters (we can shave a few grand off the development costs by not hiring security consultants, and that'll make this department look nicer on the profit side. Who cares abbout the other departments who have to cope with the flak later).
I think I'l just say I've very disappointed with a company of this standing to have procedures this lax, and leave it at that.
Cheers,
Malk
Well, note that the hardware reconfigures to perform the task to it's best abilities.
:)
A part of this task is definately going to be stability.
If an area of the chip breaks down, the rest of the circuit will re-adapt to compensate, until it reaches equilibrium again.
Self repairing hardware has been being studied for ages now, and FPGA is a very good medium for this.
As for hackers 'getting in and modifying the code'.. Well, it's a little different in this game.
Just how, exactly, is the hacker going to alter the code? Where? What line? How the hell does this thing work in the first place?
Hackers of this breed of computer will doubtless evolve in their own way, but they may well be a different breed to todays.. And I somehow doubt script kiddiedom will survive.
How can you script an attack against a million machines when each one is different?
If you step back and look at FPGA and the tech it's likely to spin off, it looks to be FAR more reliable than what we have now, as it can 'heal' itself from even physical damage.
Just a thought or two..
Malk
And lo, you do more damage in a few words to your cause than a whole horde of decriers from the other side of the fence.
*Cough* Well, 'scuse me..
The governments et. al have a hard enough job actually getting the film out when needed in a crime that people are jumping up and down about.
When you go in a picket line, you frequently rely on the police present to guard yer butt against people who don't really want you to be there.
And yes, there are a lot of scary clashes on picket lines between opposed pressure groups, not groups and police.
Do you really think they're going to waste their time getting a group of people to pick out each face in thousands, cross reference it against any files they may have, and write notes on you if you're having a peaceful demonstration?
Whoah, please keep taking the paranoia pills.
All government departments (well, over here in the UK anyway, and most likely over there too) are cash starved for keeping up with what needs to really be done, not just what they'd like to do.
I'm of the feeling that when I'm out in public, I don't care if it's a camera or people's eyes that see me. All equates to the same thing. I'm in public. Note the difference between public and private.
Interestingly enough, I knew a few people who actually use the stuff from surveillance cameras. Most are pretty much automated, with no real operator control, although, the one or two people operating huge numbers of cameras can override in the case of emergency.
I'd sorely love to know where your sources of that state they're not used for the advertised use come from.
Cheers,
Malk
From what I note in the article, the people who are really getting hot under the collar about this are the publishers.
Perhaps, this is because, like the music industry, they're beginning to see that anybody can go direct with their content in a digital format, and bypass them completely.
As soon as this is really understood, then nobody, or at the very least far far fewer people will be relying on them, and thus paying their huge cut of each book paid for.
It looks like another outmoded dinosaur is desperately thrashing around with tooth and claw (read litigation) in an attempt to protect their revenue streams in an age when they're no longer required.
About the only way they can stay required is if they make it near enough illegal for anyone to publish their own content and not go through them.
And this looks like the first step in that direction.
Just a pondering,
Malk