Sky At Night magazine website

On 19 Mar 2005 06:02:30 -0800, Jeffk1965 wrote:

I was told the United States cost would be $141 US dollars!!

Too much for me,.

69GBP quoted for me in France, 100 euro ish, also too much I'm afraid. I
wouldn't be interested in the CD either really, we never seem to have time
for these things, shame they're not going to sell the magazine on it's own.

--
Holly, in France
Holiday home in Dordogne
http://la-plaine.chez.tiscali.fr

On Mon, 21 Mar 2005 18:52:59 +0000, Holly in France
wrote:

On 19 Mar 2005 06:02:30 -0800, Jeffk1965 wrote:

I was told the United States cost would be $141 US dollars!!

Too much for me,.

69GBP quoted for me in France, 100 euro ish, also too much I'm afraid. I
wouldn't be interested in the CD either really, we never seem to have time
for these things, shame they're not going to sell the magazine on it's own.

The main library in the town where I live gets both Astronomy and Sky
and Telescope: the smaller neighborhood branch libraries have Sky &
Telescope. They keep the back issues as well. Perhaps you could
convince your local library to subscribe, unless being a British
publication would be too objectionable.

You might tell them that even the libraries in the cultural backwaters
of the world (Texas, where I live) subscribe to this type of magazine
and that a civilized nation would surely do the same or more. :-)

Zane

John Stolz wrote in message .. .
On Fri, 18 Mar 2005 05:02:15 -0800, Roger Steer wrote:

A computer is to me a tool which I use to enable me to do what I want.
It's not a toy, nor a hobby in itself. So I will not be subscribing
unless the disc contents reflect the proportion of OS useage in the
country - i.e. mostly Windows, quite a lot of Mac OS, a very little
Linux. I gave up most computer magazines when they seemed to be
devoted to Linux which, as Windows did all I needed, I neither had nor
wanted

I agree, but why would you make Windows the default choice when almost all
of the alternatives are better in every concievable way.

Because just about everything you might ever need runs on it and works
pretty much ok out from the box. Apart from that I don't see any
purported superiority in Unixes or Macs, end user wise. Actually,
quite the opposite.


Seems to that since Linux is free (mostly) and open, Windows would
have to show some serious advantages to justify its price - in fact the
oposite is the case.

Because it works without asking the user to be a system manager and be
fully conversant with just too many tools and or OS innards to start
with. No kernel recompiling or other BS. I've been using computers in
the broadest sense since 25 years ago and Windows is still my
preferred choice, Unix the last and Macs would be good if they had as
much software coverage as WinX. I had few of them but never felt much
of an attraction/need.

Andrea T.

(andrea tasselli) wrote:

Because just about everything you might ever need runs on it and works
pretty much ok out from the box. Apart from that I don't see any
purported superiority in Unixes or Macs, end user wise. Actually,
quite the opposite.
SNIPS
Because it works without asking the user to be a system manager and be
fully conversant with just too many tools and or OS innards to start
with. No kernel recompiling or other BS.

I agree with most of this except for straight out of the box which is
at best half true. But it is irking to realise that 2.95 gH of your
3.0gH processor is working for windows and not for your application.
Just watch how much quicker any processor hungry applications run in
Unix than in windows.

Cheers

Martin

--
Martin Frey
http://www.hadastro.org.uk
N 51 02 E 0 47

I agree with most of this except for straight out of the box which is
at best half true. But it is irking to realise that 2.95 gH of your
3.0gH processor is working for windows and not for your application.

Not true.

Not unless you're frantically moving windows etc. around the screen
with your mouse or something.

If it's just sitting there running minimal background services, etc.,
and running your number-crunching app, the above simply isn't true.


Martin
--
M.A.Poyser Tel.: 07967 110890
Manchester, U.K. http://www.fleetie.demon.co.uk

"Fleetie" wrote:

I agree with most of this except for straight out of the box which is
at best half true. But it is irking to realise that 2.95 gH of your
3.0gH processor is working for windows and not for your application.

Not true.

Not unless you're frantically moving windows etc. around the screen
with your mouse or something.

If it's just sitting there running minimal background services, etc.,
and running your number-crunching app, the above simply isn't true.

I've always assumed that was the reason. So why is Unix so much
faster? When I had 2 computers hooked together, one (25mhz) running
Unix the other 750Mhz P2, the Unix could compile a C++ program before
my finger had fully keft the enter key, while I could make a cup of
coffee before windows was done. I admit it took longer to tell Unix
what to do

Cheers

Martin

--
Martin Frey
http://www.hadastro.org.uk
N 51 02 E 0 47

"Martin Frey" wrote in message
...
"Fleetie" wrote:

I agree with most of this except for straight out of the box which is
at best half true. But it is irking to realise that 2.95 gH of your
3.0gH processor is working for windows and not for your application.

Not true.

Not unless you're frantically moving windows etc. around the screen
with your mouse or something.

If it's just sitting there running minimal background services, etc.,
and running your number-crunching app, the above simply isn't true.

I've always assumed that was the reason. So why is Unix so much
faster? When I had 2 computers hooked together, one (25mhz) running
Unix the other 750Mhz P2, the Unix could compile a C++ program before
my finger had fully keft the enter key, while I could make a cup of
coffee before windows was done. I admit it took longer to tell Unix
what to do

Cheers

Martin
If the system as a SCSI disk system, Unix makes much better use of this,
with overlapped I/O. Historically as an example, Windows using a SCSI disk
(except in the latter versions of the OS's), still handles the interface
through what is basically the IDE driver 'model', and as such waits for
the I/O to complete. There is somewhat more overhead in running Windows
than you may think (the processor useage inside ring 0, for the drivers,
is not reported by task manager). Windows still polls quite a few bits of
hardware at this level, and this makes a noticeable difference. There is
also a polling overhead for P&P, USB etc.. It is quite salutory to use one
of the 'embedded' versions of Windows, where you can remove things like
'plug and play', and drivers for things you don't want, and run a speed
comparison. On a modern machine, the cost is not at the 2.95Ghz level, but
it is still a very noticeable fraction of the processors performance.

Best Wishes