Slashdot Mirror

Well, I found this old link in my bookmark manager. It details the history of EMS (sound studio) in vivid detail, including a listing of all their original equipment.

The interesting part is that they posted high resolution images of their setup, which includes PDP-8 microcomputers!

The image: http://www.ems-synthi.demon.co.uk/studiopz.gif
The PDP-8s:
Left side - Teletype for PDP8
Left bay - PDP8/L Computer ("Leo") 4K x 12 bits (=6K bytes) 1.3 s cycle (0.77MHz), 32K Hard Disk Store
Center left bay - PDP8/S Computer

Well, I found this old link in my bookmark manager. It details the history of EMS (sound studio) in vivid detail, including a listing of all their original equipment.

The interesting part is that they posted high resolution images of their setup, which includes PDP-8 microcomputers!

The image: http://www.ems-synthi.demon.co.uk/studiopz.gif
The PDP-8s:
Left side - Teletype for PDP8
Left bay - PDP8/L Computer ("Leo") 4K x 12 bits (=6K bytes) 1.3 s cycle (0.77MHz), 32K Hard Disk Store
Center left bay - PDP8/S Computer

AS other pointed out Hubble would probably get fried. ALso, even if it could do it, it would only be able to see things down to about 100 meters across.

see here

and here

More generally, yes, there is a strong current of non-scientific and anti-scientific thought in modern US society. The right answer to that is to patiently explain scientific facts so that people can make up their own minds, and to start at whatever level people need. Science is something that doesn't have to rely on faith, it's something that reasonable people can spend time on and figure out, and make up their own mind about. And if a scientific project (be it the moon landing or some solid state physics experiment) cannot provide enough evidence for its results, well, then people are justified in doubting its validity until the evidence is forthcoming.

On the other hand, telling people that it must be true because they have seen it on TV is the wrong approach. We want people to question things they see in the mass media, because while the moon landing is not a hoax, a lot of other stuff in the mass media is completely fabricated, from television commercials for superior toothpaste to the validity of presidential elections.

Blocking dirty words with Soundex would provide too much collateral damage. At least the following words have the same Soundex hash as "fuck" (F200):

• fsck (but this was a given)
• fag
• fig
• fuzzy
• fugue
• fuss
• fizz

The following "words" do NOT hash to F200:

• fcuk (F220 because there's a vowel between the 2's)

The Transformed Man, you say?

I do belive this is a good time to plug my site.

The only logical conclusion here is that I'm a perfectionist crackpot doom-sayer idiot and that you should stop reading this and catch up on some minesweeper.

So here are the minesweeper clones: xbomb,
KMines, and more (all on Freshmeat.net).

I guess I'm not the only one who will be following his suggestion.

Cloudmark is the commercial end of Vipul's Razor, which you can get working on Unix.

For various reasons, I prefer the Distributed Checksum Clearinghouse (DCC) over Razor: I've written a HOWTO on getting the DCC working on a home Debian system (Exim/fetchmail). It catches a lot of spam.

CRASH
Sinclair User

The alternative is that the public just takes everything scientists say for granted. If the moon landing had been faked, it wouldn't really have mattered. But other issues do matter. For example, when the Pentagon fakes missile defense, that endangers us all: a public that thinks its protected from missile strikes is going to make different political choices from one that doesn't.

On a more serious level I like this site (yes, yes, I nicked the link from the BBC article but it is good)

http://www.faqs.org/faqs/astronomy/faq/part2/secti on-22.html
http://sm3a.gsfc.nasa.gov/messages/676.html
http://www.redzero.demon.co.uk/moonhoax/telescopes .html

Just to name a few.

Well there are quite a few companies planning games for new AmigaOS4/AmigaDE poweres systems.

Of course Hyperion themselves (who BTW just released Quake2 + source code at the recent WoA show) has AmigaOS licenses for games including:

Herectic2, Shogo and Freespace (all of which are already available for classic Amigas and perform very well, even on low powered hybrid systems)

The also own licenses for porting Worms: Armageddon, Sin, Soldier of Fortune and a couple of other games and applications.

Here at AmigaFlame you can read about a few other planned software titles.

This sort of coverage is great news,

I've been going around trying to convince my clients that Linux is a viable corporate alternative ( see here) and every story avocating its use for political (free speech), environmental (recycling and making those old 386s usable again), societal (adding value to people in third-world countries) and technological (A Globally Wide pool of people with diverse ideas rather than those in Redmond) as well as valid business reasons (increases profitability, adds value, reduces costs, etc) make the Linux argument even stronger.

We need more of the "I switched to Linux because it was good for my business model" rather than "I switched cos Microsoft was mean and horrible to me so I took my ball and went to another park" because mean and 'orrible Microsoft will just replace the usual suspects with new friendly (and more insidious) faces and rebrand themselves as the NEW microsoft and pull those customers back in again (Hey look they said they were sorry and I can go back to the park again).

Action

Except we can't. The lander and stuff is just way too damn small to see from Earth. Or Earth orbit.

Nope, sorry...

The landing spot is just too darn small...

The Trouble with Hubble

Thanks guys. I just read this page and it basically said the same thing.

Apple's never going to start up clones again after getting burned so bad on them last time (and as a result, I'm never going to get an Apple system again.)

Also, what company would be stupid enough to throw tons of money at building up a brand only to be at Apple's mercy? That takes a lot of faith, and you saw what happened last time someone had faith in Apple not to screw them over...

This whole thing reminds me of this (older, 680x0 era) book "Build your own Macintosh and Save a Bundle".

They WERE taken out of service. The one you saw was put back after the only place people saw them for decades was as the TARDIS.

Maybe it's an artistic period?
Remember Picasso and Braque? This is where they came from. The cubists are known for there radical use of multiple viewpoints in the same drawing, refer to the link for more information.

Features | Chess | Go
# moves in a game | ~80 | ~300
Branching factor | ~35 | ~200
Horizion effect | Applies basically at Grandmaster level | Applies at beginner level
End of game | Strictly defined checkmate | Loosely defined territory conquest(see seki and ko fights)
Evaluation of board position | Correlates to number and quality of pieces on board | Poor correlation with either pieces or territory

A quote from his paper may also help,

"3.3 Why Go Cannot be Programmed Like Chess

Chess programs typically use a heuristic search and evaluation technique. Search trees of board positions are generated to a fixed depth and are heuristically pruned according to an evaluation of the merit of the board positions. This approach works well in Chess because the board size is sufficiently small and the nature of Chess is more tactical than strategic.

Evaluation of a board position in Go presents problems not encountered in Chess. Go is a much more strategic game in comparison to Chess. Unlike Chess, Go does not focus around the capture of a single piece. Positional advantages are slowly built up in achieving the long term goal of acquiring more territory than the opponent. There are many direct and indirect ways to achieve this goal such as making territory, building influence, attacking weak enemy groups, securing friendly groups, destroying enemy territory etc. Due to the large size of the board, a Go game is comprised of many small local skirmishes. If a game of Chess were described as a battle, a game of Go could be described as a war. Many good tactical moves at the local level must all compete for selection in the context of strategic global considerations. Thus a player must balance resources to achieve local goals at many locations whilst trying to pursue an overall global objective."

Read more about computer Go at Mike's Computer Go. Sit down and try a game of Go for yourself and you will see why computers won't get to the same level anytime soon.

crulx

But I'd like to see them get a Breakout clone in 1K

Anna, who understands TCP/IP pretty well.

Of course you do, you're a guy like the rest of us... :P

But why do you obfuscate your homepage URL? Are you ashamed of the freak that you are?

The style of web browsing I use is to load all the links I want to read in new windows by clicking on them with the middle button. Then they can be loading in the background while I read the first part of the article. It forms a kind of queue of pages to read, so when I've finished reading the first page I just close that window and go on to the next (which is ready instantly). The result is up to a hundred browser windows open at once - but I know that I'm not the only person who browses like this. Of course, it helps to have a browser which can open lots of windows without thrashing and slowing the machine to a crawl (like Dillo) or one that has tabbed browsing.

This style of following links can also work well with offline browsing and a proxy server designed for offline use like WWWOFFLE. If you go online briefly and click on all the links you want to load, the proxy remembers to download them. Then a few minutes later you can go online again and all the pages will be loaded ASAP. Once they've loaded you can disconnect again and continue browsing. This makes the most sense for people whose internet access is metered (hmm, I wonder if something like this could work for palmtops).

But what I'd really like to see in a browser is an explicit 'to read' queue. When you click on a link with the middle button, it doesn't immediately open in a new window or tab but instead is added to the queue and starts downloading in the background. On the browser's toolbar there is a 'next page' button which goes to the next URL you have marked for reading.

Automatic prefetching of all links from a page, la wget -r, would be crazy for many heavily-linked sites. But you could have heuristics for it or specify particular sites where the link following should be more aggressive.

Sorry, dag - Union Pacific beat you to it by about 4 decades.

Actually, the LMS has that beat by about 30 years. See this.

You need a Space Mountain :)

http://www.hopf.demon.co.uk/demon/turing.txt

Well I've got 3469 of the MAME ROMs on the server on the webserver on my DSL line for download ;-) Not sure where the other 17 come from - I built my database by using a script to pull the game details from MAME itself, so I thought I had all of them for the latest version???

There's a guy here who's incredibly proud of the fact that he's "had to" spend $150 on cables to connect his bp2002 fronts. He claims that with cheap $75 cables he wouldn't be getting the same sound quality and he'd be wasting his speakers.

Nothing irks me more than people who believe that the money:quality ratio is constant.

FWIW my mirror's at http://www.zpok.demon.co.uk/deCSS/ . The last time I posted that URL here I got a nastygram from
my ISP (who are now playing nice, to be fair.)

The special effect for blake 7 are infamous and legendary. but bearing in mind that they were unbelievably cheap, wasn't it something like £50 per episode? Considering the restricted budge Matt Irvine ( http://www.smallspace.demon.co.uk) did a terrific job

It's nice to know that here in the UK we have the good sense to hide the antennas in something inconspicuous.

Any decent evidence. It does not have to be mathematical. That would be nice, but probably not possible at this stage.

Well, there are mathematical theories of objects, probably the most well-known of which is put forth by Abadi and Cardelli in A Theory of Objects. Read the prologue for an overview.

However, as that prologue points out, procedural and especially functional languages have much better formal underpinnings than do object languages. The functional languages in particular, examples being Scheme, Haskell, and ML, evolved from mathematical theories like lambda calculus and type theory, which makes them much more rigorous than less formally founded languages, and therefore, by some measures, "better".

The existence of mathematical theories of objects primarily serve to demonstrate the ways in which OO languages deviate from those theories. This is not surprising, since OOP was developed on a mostly ad-hoc basis. No single definition of what OOP is exists, and different languages implement OO in different ways.

To provide "decent evidence OOP is objectively better", you would first need to clearly define what you mean by OOP. You would also, as my original post asked, have to answer the question "better than what", or more specifically, "better than what, for what purpose". For example, it's easy enough to make an objective case that many object languages are more expressive, in general, than most purely procedural languages. By "expressive" I mean capable of expressing the same program both more concisely and understandably. It's also easy to make the case that in many situations - such as implementing algorithms involving functions on relatively simple data structures - that a purely procedural language is no less expressive than an OO language. So, as with Deep Thought's answer of 42, a lot depends on the definition of the question.

My own take on this, which is based on having researched, developed and sold a commercial OO language product back in the early '90s, is that OO contains some very good and important ideas, but that they're rather arbitrarily lumped together as though they all inherently belong together, although they don't necessarily. Part of this lumping often involves conflating otherwise unrelated ideas, which can lead to design strategies that aren't as clearly decomposed as they might otherwise be. Language limits thought, and the limitations of OO languages tend to limit the thought of those who treat a particular OO language or design methodology as The One True Way to design systems. It's a variation on the old "everything looks like a nail" syndrome.

One of the better ideas which OO adopts - but did not invent - is that of subtype polymorphism, which aside from its useful properties from a type theory perspective, is a big enabler of reusability in real-world code. However, OO languages regularly confuse types with implementations of those types, i.e. they don't set up a sufficiently clear or enforceable distinction between interface and implementation. With class inheritance in particular, these boundaries are blurred to the point of causing confusion in the minds of many OO advocates.

Given the arbitrary and varying collection of features that usually consitute OO, I would answer your question of "I wonder if other civilizations use OO?" by saying that other civilizations with sufficiently advanced programming languages would almost certainly use many of the concepts inherent in OO, but that they may be organized in different ways, and an OO "purist" (a rather outdated notion, with what we know about languages today) would possibly not be inclined to call those languages OO. For example, neither Haskell nor ML are OO languages, but both incorporate many features that would be considered part of OO by most OO practitioners. OCaml explicitly incorporates OO, but it is necessarily a little different than in most other OO languages, because OCaml is a functional language.

To summarize, OOP arose to address certain problems in the organization and reusability of code, and in doing so adopted some important ideas, such as subtype polymorphism. It's certainly possible to demonstrate that a language with subtype polymorphism is more expressive than one without, so an OO language would beat out, say, BASIC, FORTRAN, or C in this respect. In that sense, OO languages tend to represent a step forward from what went before, but it was something of an ad-hoc step.

I have no doubt that future languages will take what's been learned about OO's various features into account, but will integrate them in a more rigorous and well-factored way. This can already be seen happening in languages like Java, which is the first mainstream OO language to introduce an explicit notion of an "interface", thus correcting a limitation in many prior OO languages. These baby-step improvements in mainstream languages are about the best we can expect, since it takes a long time to communicate academic knowledge about programming languages into the commercial world, and a similarly long time for the academic world to sift out the actually useful (or simply un-ignorable) innovations from the commercial world.

That all said, I think it's dangerous to dismiss OO as being hype or whatever. That's why I asked "better than what". If you were trying defend pure C against OO, for example, then I think you have something yet to learn, not about OO necessarily, but about programming languages in general; but once again, it depends on the exact question.

Sorry for the essay; brevity and conciseness takes more effort.

It's not a micorwave relay site, that's just part of it!

It was to be the seat of government for a post WWIII UK.

The Bunker Website here has loads of info.

Nice fact, all the defenses were designed to keep the general public out in times of strife and the one time it was fully stocked and ready to be buttoned up.... during our miners strike in the 1980's

You have to admit, your sig is pretty corny. Couldn't you have picked someone better to quote than Mel Gibson?

How about George Bernard Shaw???

He's got some really insightful and funny ones that will blow your mind if you think about them enough.

You reminded me of a recent tour on the Circle Line Tour Boat that goes around New York, where when upon passing the Statue of Liberty, everybody moved to one side causing the boat to significantly bank to one side.

I remember an eight year old kid screaming like he was pretending to be Mel Gibson, "Freedom! Freedom! Freedom!" Like most 8 year olds, he probably has a very superficial understand of freedom. To him, freedom probably means getting even with a bully or some other bad guy so they will leave you alone.

Let go of the inner child, and find your outer adult.

Choosing Chips Pt. 3

It's easy to see that assumptions may lead a consumer to believe that the INTEL product is a better processor. These basics may have some validity on paper but not so in the real world. Why the lesson on MHz, die size, bus speeds and cache? The lesson is not which processor is better. The lesson is to not make performance assumptions based in the belief that bigger numbers are better.

AMD has changed the fact that more MHz means better. As mentioned previously, side by side processor comparisons between INTEL and AMD chips prove this. The 64-dollar question is why?

By using a layman's analogy once again, an INTEL CPU engine may run at a higher RPM (MHz) but it doesn't have the equivalent torque to match the high RPM (MHz). An AMD processor may run at a lower megahertz but it does have better torque. This is an incredibly simplified explanation but it gives the needed broad brush strokes. AMD technology on how the processor is geared allows their processors to rival and, in some cases, surpass INTEL processors that are clocked at a much higher frequency.

So how does a consumer decide upon which processor? It's safe to say that the majority of PC buyers only care that it works and works fast enough for their needs. The average consumer either doesn't understand or could care less about Front Side Bus Speed, how many transistors there are, or how small a die is. A lot of PC buyers also do not realize that there is another choice beyond what is widely and visibly available on store shelves. AMD vs. INTEL marketing and product awareness is another topic altogether and best left alone lest we travel down another long road.

To berate a point, AMD has shown that in today's marketplace GHz is not the defining mark of a processor. The important piece to the education puzzle is how each of these processors compares in benchmark tests especially introducing the performance to cost side of the equation. There are many comparisons that pit the AMD processor against rival INTEL in the never-ending battle of who's the best. Read a couple of these reviews and they will show in the multitude of benchmark tests that these processors trade off pole positions. In one test AMD may edge out INTEL and in another INTEL may come out ahead. In most the difference between the two is a matter of seconds, frames, or a handful of points. In real world everyday performance there would be an almost unnoticeable difference in most applications when comparing similar processors.

Bar graphs may show who's ahead but it's important to look at the physical numbers before making a decision. Ask yourself who's ahead and by how much and in what particular application. A 2.8 GHz INTEL processor may achieve more frames per second than an AMD 2600+ in Quake but without insult, the difference is small and most likely unnoticed by the user actually playing the game unless their goal is boasting rights.

That being said what would be another deciding factor? The AMD processor is priced far more competitively than the INTEL processor which means there's more money left over to pocket or spend on more RAM, a better video card or another hard drive.

Processor Prices*

AMD

INTEL

Athlon XP 2600+ (2.13 GHz)

$300

Pentium 4 2.8 GHz

$537

Athlon XP 2400+ (2 GHz)

$200

Pentium 4 2.53 GHz

$240

Athlon XP 2200+ (1.8 GHz)

$146

Pentium 4 2.4 GHz

$206

Athlon XP 2100+ (1.73 GHz)

$112

Pentium 4 2.2 GHz

$202

Athlon XP 2000+ (1.67 GHz)

$59

Pentium 4 2.0 GHz

$161

Athlon XP 1900+ (1.6 GHz)

$78

Pentium 4 1.9 GHz

$154

Athlon XP 1800+ (1.53 GHz)

$64

Pentium 4 1.8 GHz

$139

Athlon XP 1700+ (1.47 GHz)

$59

Pentium 4 1.7 GHz

$125

Athlon XP 1600+ (1.43 GHz)

$52

Pentium 4 1.6 GHz

$117

Athlon XP 1500+ (1.4 GHz)

$53

Pentium 4 1.5 GHz

$102

*Prices in USDfrom www.pricewatch.com August 31, 02 Socket A/478 processors.

But you may think GHz to GHz again and wonder why you are paying $200 for an AMD 2400+ (2 GHz) when for another $6 more the 2.6 GHz Intel processor is available. A buyer may think that $6 for another point four GHz may be better. But that's just not the case. Read a review or three and there will be a performance picture that will form. Combine the performance/price analysis with your expectations and then the answer should be clearer.

The final scoff any nay-sayer of AMD product may volunteer is that of stability. Many consumers state the reason for choosing INTEL is due to the perception that INTEL systems are more stable and require less driver updates and tweaking. This may have been the case years ago but is completely false at present. Any system can be properly set up and IF LEFT ALONE will or should continue to operate as intended. AMD systems are stable. If a consumer purchases a pre-configured AMD system from a reputable source they are going to have the same stability experience as if they purchased a pre-configured INTEL system. Large pre-configured PC suppliers go to great lengths to ensure that all of the components as sold work reliably with each other right out of the box. Intel is also the dominant force with far more processors per PC than AMD. Software and hardware developers would choose to align and optimize their product with the processor product that is in more homes and businesses. It's a marketing move. If a consumer chooses to build the computer from individually purchased components then they run the same risk of hardware conflicts and problems regardless of processor choice.

Which processor is better? Which truck is better, Chevy or Ford? I don't think an overall clear-cut winner can be crowned but when trying to build a powerful system within a budget we think of ourselves as smart shoppers by getting the most with AMD.

The mother of all boards

Selecting an AMD based system has other advantages. AMD based motherboards offer a wider range of motherboard configuration options than rival INTEL based motherboards. Which AMD driven motherboard is a matter of the requirements mixed with a dash of personal experience, a pinch of recommendations from friends, a paragraph or twenty from the forums and a page or four or sixty of research.

I admit I've had a preference for ABIT product. I've grown to rely on ABIT for their stability and flexibility. They offer a wide range of choices to suit almost any need. The ABIT AT7 was supplied to us for this system which proved to be really good...and really bad.

CPU

• Supports AMD-K7 Athlon /Athlon XP Socket A 200/266MHz FSB Processors
  
• Supports AMD-K7 Duron Socket A 200 MHz FSB Processors
  
  

Chipset

• VIA KT333 / VIA VT8233A
  
• Supports Ultra DMA 33/66/100/133 IDE protocol
  
• Supports Advanced Configuration and Power Management Interface (ACPI)
  
• Accelerated Graphics Port connector supports AGP 2X(3.3V)and 4X(1.5V)mode (Sideband) device
  
• Supports 200/266/333 MHz (100/133/166MHz Double Data Rate) Memory Bus Setting
  
  

Ultra DMA 133/ RAID

• High Point HPT374 IDE Controller
  
• Ultra DMA 133MB/sec data transfer rate
  
• RAID 0 (striping mode for boosting performance)
  
• RAID 1 (mirroring mode for data security)
  
• RAID 0 + 1(striping and mirroring)
  
  

Memory

• Four 184-pin DIMM sockets support PC1600/PC2100/PC2700 DDR DRAM modules
  
• Supports DDR333 unbuffered DRAMs up to 2GB and registered DRAMs up to 3GB
  
• Supports 6 banks up to 3GB DRAMs for unbuffered DDR200/266 modules
  
• Supports 8 banks up to 3.5GB DRAMs for registered DDR200/266 modules
  
  

Audio

• Realtek ALC650 (AC-Link)
  
• Supports 6CH DAC for AC3 5.1 CH purpose
  
• Professional digital audio interface supporting 24-bit SPDIF OUT
  
• Card Reader (Optional)
  
• Supports Memory card (MS or SD) Interface
  
• Supports SONY Memory Stick Interface/ SD Memory Card Interface
  
• Supports Compact Flash ROM Interface
  
  

System BIOS

• SoftMenu III Technology to set CPU parameters
  
• Supports Plug-and-Play (PNP)
  
• Supports Advanced Configuration Power Interface (ACPI)
  
• Supports Desktop Management Interface (DMI)
  
• Write-Protect Anti-Virus function by AWARD BIOS
  
  

LAN

• On board Realtek 8100B single chip Ethernet controller interface
  
• 10/100Mb Operation
  
• User friendly driver included
  
  

Multi I/O Functions

• 2 Channels of Bus Master IDE Ports supporting up to 4 Ultra DMA 33/66/100/133 devices
  
• 4 Channels of Bus Master IDE Ports supporting up to 8 Ultra DMA 33/66/100/133 (RAID 0/1/1+0) devices
  
• 4 USB 1.1 Connectors
  
• On board VIA VT6202 USB 2.0 header for four extra USB channels
  
• Three 1394a fully compliant cable ports at 100/200/400 megabits per second
  
• Audio connector (Line-in, Center/Sub, Surround Spk , Front Spk , Mic-in)
  
  

Miscellaneous

• ATX form factor
  
• 1 AGP 1.5v slot, 3 PCI slots
  
• Hardware monitoring - Including Fan speeds, Voltages, System environment temperature
  

Motherboard Pros and Cons

It boils down to a few obvious reasons why this board made the top of the list. The AT7 has the capacity to support an obscene amount of hard drive space. When working in broadcast design with uncompressed video it's going to be needed. External storage solutions of any substance are extremely expensive. The AT7 could feasibly run eight 160 Gigabyte drives off the highpoint controller. That's over a terabyte of hard drive space which is almost 1000 hours of video at DVD quality. As I said before...it's an obscene amount of hard drive space. Data integrity is of a concern but a mirrored array can be easily set up. As a rule, in a professional work environment, projects should and are backed up to external media as completed.

The AT7 has 4 USB headers which is becoming commonplace but is always of benefit. The AT7 also features USB 2.0 support and it's good to have technology that looks forward anticipating options rather than falling quickly into obsolescence.

Two built-in 1394a (FireWire) ports were of great value. Shoving large files (400-800 MB) around a network can be excruciatingly slow. A quick solution was to transfer data to an external FireWire drive and then walk the drive from system to system as it was required and that isn't too often. It's a reusable and fast conduit for large file transfer between the graphic workstations and the edit suite, MAC or PC. It's true. Not every business is perfect and the IT folks just haven't got around to connecting the graphic design workstations with the non-linear suites on their own large bandwidth network.

The AT7 came with other onboard features that presented a cost effective solution compared to purchasing 3rd party PCI cards and these include surprisingly good 6 Channel sound and NIC.

There is only one caution with the AT7 and one issue.

The AT7 does not have parallel or serial ports on the back plane. It is a legacy free motherboard. If there is a need to attach these types of peripherals then the AT7 will disappoint.

The issue with the AT7 was of questionable support of the new AMD Thoroughbred processors. The AT7 wasn't totally compatible with this new series of processors. It was extremely unstable with any amount or combination of DIMMS of Registered ECC ram. Unbuffered RAM in any amount or combination would eventually generate a HARDWARE MALFUNCTION blue screen. This occurred every 3-5 hours for no apparent reason. It is hoped that a future BIOS will fix this or future AT7 boards have been tweaked at the assembly plant.

Please note that a 1900+ Palomino processor functioned beautifully with 4 DIMMS of 256 MB PC2100 memory in either Registered ECC or unbuffered sampling. The AT7 test system chugged magnificently through render after render without a problem. I hope ABIT is focused on the concerns pointed out and will hopefully have a solution soon.

A Clear Choice

This comment comes from the art director and makes me cringe as powerful hardware costs powerful bucks. Complex 2D and 3D work has a tendency to eat video cards for breakfast. A fast gaming card usually does not have the supporting features and will quickly expose its shortcomings under a task especially in 3D design. Enter a powerful Matrox Parhelia at a significantly less than powerful cost.

A clear choice

The background on the Matrox Parhelia 512 comes from Icrontic's initial review.

The Parhelia-512 is the world's first 512-bit Graphics Processing Unit packed with 256 MB DDR on board. A 256-bit memory interface shoveling out a hefty 17.6 GB/s 275 MHz memory bandwidth.

Matrox is well known for their world class DualHead dual monitor support and now they have taken it one step further by adding a third monitor. The third monitor opens up a new era of gaming that Matrox has dubbed Surround Gaming. How are they going to do this and maintain frame rates AND take gaming environments to the next level? Matrox created a Quad Vertex Shader Array made up of four 128-bit vertex shader engines. Add the highest quality trilinear and anistropic filtering through their 64 Super Sample Texture Filtering. Matrox also boasts that their 36-Stage Shader Array is the most complex rendering engine ever built. Smooth it all out with 16x Fragment Antialiasing (FAA-16x).

SURROUND GAMING obviously wasn't a priority in a video card for broadcast design. It wouldn't be productive for the designers to be fragging away in Quake instead of doing their work. But they still did anyway. The term used was research but I didn't believe that for a minute. Below Softimage XSIoccupies two monitors and the third is available for Illustrator. This is very handy for changing any textures inside Softimage.

Another phrase floating about the Matrox offices these days is SURROUND DESIGN. In the past PC monitors got larger as graphic designers needed more elbow room to work. Then came two monitors providing space to place and there isn't a system in the author's design department that isn't dual monitor. If it's single monitor then it's for e-mail and that's because that hardware hasn't been replaced yet.

Then in came the Parhelia sporting triple monitors and the designers looked at me as if I was nuts. Sebastian MacDougal of Matrox explains:

Matrox Parhelia and Surround Design are enjoying a lot of support from design focused Independent Software Vendors (ISV's) who agree that the more you can see, the more productive you will become. The ability to either spread a project across three displays or having the ability to place various windows strategically across your desktop for better organization is something that workstation users have been asking for, for years. However, in the past it required using multiple cards which drastically reduced performance, and unless you are using Parhelia, this is still the case with competing graphics solutions today. But perhaps the most substantial benefit for the ISV's that we work so closely with is that Surround Design, in most cases, requires no direct intervention at the SW level in order to get it to work, meaning it is very easy for most ISV's to support and the advantages are enormous. To give you an idea, with the current 1.01 driver, Parhelia and Surround Design is optimized for: Softimage|XSI , 3ds max, AutoCAD and Microstation, with many other applications to follow shortly. At Siggraph 2002 in San Antonio Texas, the reception on the part of attendees to Parhelia and Surround Design was tremendous and it is completely understandable. An interesting analogy is how designing on one monitor is similar to a horse with blinders, having three displays just opens things up and allows you to be more productive.

Initially the designers didn't know what to do with the third monitor but in time they began using the extra display each in their own way. Due to the fact that the system had sufficient power and resources they could work in two or three programs simultaneously. For example After Effects is much easier to work in over two monitors and, thus, the third monitor allowed for Photoshop or Illustrator to remain open and easily accessible to adjust or create any elements for use within the After Effects project. The Parhelia has the memory size and graphics processing power to allow for smooth interaction with these programs. Combine this with the strength of the CPU and available system RAM and many a designer were kept happy.

How a user may work with three monitors is up to them but a third desktop enables a user to work within a program that is better suited for two monitors AND keep access to other tools without having to minimize or hide the main program. For example Adobe After Effects stays open in two monitors and Photoshop remains accessible on the third. Pictures above speak louder than words.

One of the Parhelia's strong selling features is, what Matrox has termed, GigaColor. This feature and its benefits were expanded upon in Icrontic's first review.

Dig around and there's a feature that most may not pay attention to but for the 2D/3D graphics professional and even the home user it will mean stunning images right to the desktop. Matrox hung the term 10-bit GigaColor on it. To you and me it is 10-bit video technology and it runs through a very speedy dual integrated 400 MHz 10-bit RAMDAC. That leaves the competition many MHz back. 10-bit technology is the same technology that allows for precise picture control in home theatre DVD players. 10-bit technology can partially be found in high-end video cards that cost thousands of dollars.

The difference is that Parhelia-512 delivers 10-bit technology through the entire card.

It must be told that 10-bit GigaColor still remains a bit of a mystery though it has been literally beaten into my ears by the kind folks over at Matrox. 10-bit GigaColor provides for an increase in the shades of any given color from the standard of 256 to 1024. The color palette leaps up from 16.7 million to 1 billion. This is a benefit when acquiring images such as through the use of a scanner where image control will be to a greater precision at time of capture. A greater range of the shades of a color is available thus greater control over what is kept or discarded is possible. This would primarily benefit print and magazine pre-press artists.

But sadly we people in television deal in comparatively grainy and low rest images and the benefits of GigaColor didn't jump out and bite us on the nose. For the record the designers did notice the desktop appeared more saturated and colorful when it was pointed out to them. You have to understand that designers work with what they have. Technology is not such a big deal. They care about what they can do with it rather than what it has under the hood. Though we would be much more satisfied if the rest of the computer system moved to 10-bit color base but that would mean new technology for ...well...everything.

There is good news on the horizon about GigaColor according to Matrox.

Upcoming OS's from Microsoft (i.e. Longhorn) will include support for greater than 8-bit per color channel precision at the desktop level, which is why you are seeing more and more companies include support for higher precision color depths. But of course, we were the first and are the first shipping product to offer that functionality, and as we make our own boards you know you'll get the right components for sustained image quality

The designers were quick to adapt to the flexibility the Parhelia offered and enjoyed working in an environment that produced clear, crisp images to the desktop. The only drawback is each of them would like a Parhelia of their own and 3 digital flat panels. That means a few more dollars added to this year's capital purchase forms. More paperwork....just what I enjoy.

Keeping Cool

The heatsink is also just another player in the heat game. As the Case Cooling Tweaks articles point out the correct choice of a PC case and additional fan modifications can help win the battle against heat and noise.

On the Case

Breaking out of the beige box...the right way.

AMK Computers came to the table with the SX1000 and set up a workstation case that delivers looks, cooling efficiency and a few other treats. The base SX1000 case comes standard with

• Space 4 drives in a removable bay
  
• Space for a zip and floppy in a removable bay.
  
• fan mounts (two front-two rear)
  
• space for 4 external 5.25 inch drives
  
• locking access panel
  
• locking front drive cover
  
  

To this AMK added:

• A side window with 2 more fans
  
• A top blowhole
  
• VBLOCK sound dampening material
  
• Cable Loom
  
• Rounded cables
  
• Digital Doc 5
  
• Enermax 465 PSU (FC)
  
• Fan filters
  
  

The neon lights were thrown in for this article just to make the case look better. I think they add a few MHz here and there due to the fact the case looks faster.

Seven fans plus the two Enermax PSU fans and heatsink fan may seem like a lot and loud. Quite the opposite as all the case fans were kept to ADDA 25 CFM/ 25 dBA specifications and regulated by the Digital Doc 5 fan controller. When the fans were not needed they were shut off. Only two fans, the top exhaust blowhole fan and one of the rear exhaust fans, were kept constantly running. (In addition to the PSU and heatsink fans). The two always on fans provided continual airflow yet emitted a minimum of noise. Again the computer in non-stress applications or when not rendering ran at below 30 dBA...less than a normal whisper.

The heatsink is warmed by the processor as the system was stressed. The fin design of the CAK4-76T allowed for the tips of the Digital Doc 5 thermistors to be inserted between the fins. This did not block airflow but this configuration allowed the Digital Doc 5 to directly read the temperature of the heatsink. Fans were turned on or off in a preset order to compensate for the increases or decreases in temperature. A full roar my cat was louder.

The last cooling tweak was to apply the WPCRSET tweak to enable the CPU halt command. This halts the processor and allows it to drop 5-10 degrees Celsius off pre-tweak levels. Besides updating the drivers the WPCRSET tweak was the only software OS hack if it could be called that.

In order to test this configuration a SOFTIMAGE project followed by an After Effects project were rendered out. The Softimage render took approximately 50 minutes (the first flat peak) and the After Effects render (the second peak) took 10 minutes. The following graph shows the temperatures never exceeded 46 degrees Celsius (23.5 C room temperature) which is only a 10-12 degree Celsius increase over base line temperature. That's a very satisfactory result especially with a system that operates through a range of 25-35 dBA.

The neon lights are available as an option and it was rather humorous watching designers and other employees wander by, stop, and back up to take a second look. Most came in and peered into the side window of the PC and said the word cool a lot. It is true that these people know of nothing other than the beige box. They asked why the window? The answer was why not?

Computers can become very dusty even in apparently clean offices. Filters are the solution to greatly cut down on the amount of dust that collects and clogs a PC after months of use. Filters do reduce airflow but they are worth it. A picture is worth a thousand words and this was the result of only 3 weeks of operation. The fans these filters covered were also not spinning at all times. This dust was the result of what was sucked into the case (or tried to be) from the airflow generated by the back plate and PSU fan. The filter on the left is clean and the one on the right...ugh.

The plethora of benchmark programs can be important when determining what does what task faster or better. These are specific assessments of individual functions. For this article it was decided to add a few more of what is our assessment of real world tests. It was also thought important to show how a change in one particular component could affect end results. It is hoped that the result of these tests will help you assess priorities in system configuration to match the priorities in system expectations.

The test system.

• AMD 2100+ Thoroughbred Core Processor
  
• AMD 1900+ Palomino Core Processor
  
• ABIT AT7 motherboard
  
• Matrox Parhelia 512 triple head video card in single head mode* 1.01.69 beta driver
  
• 2 x 512 MB Micron PC2100 RAM
  
• Sony 52x CD
  
• LG 32x10x40x CDRW
  
• 16 x DVD (not included in pricing)
  
• 40 GB Maxtor ATA133 Hard Drive
  
• 60 GB Maxtor ATA133 Hard Drive
  
• 2 x Samsung 950p 19 Monitors
  
• USB Keyboard and Logitech USB wireless Optical Mouse
  
• Globalwin CAK4-76T HSF
  
• AMK SX1000 modded PC case (window, fans, cables, loom)
  
• Enermax 465 Watt FC PSU
  
• Windows XP Professional build 2600 updated
  
• Digital Doc5
  
  

*dual and triple monitors enabled for Adobe After Effects and Softimage benchmarks only.

Programs used:

• Sisoft Sandra 2002
  
• ZD Media Business Winstone 2001
  
• ZD Media Content Creation Winstone 2001
  
• MadOnion 3DMark 2001 SE
  
• Quake III Arena
  
• Passmark Performance.
  
• Commanche 4
  
• Serious Sam: the Second Encounter
  
• GL Excess
  
• Drone Z
  
• SpecviewPerf 7.0
  
• PSBench
  
• Adobe Photoshop 7.0
  
• Adobe After Effects 5.5
  
• SoftimageXSI 2.0.1
  
• MediaCleaner Pro 5
  

The above benchmark programs are publicly available. For more about Ziff Davis and the etesting labs program go here.

I couldn't agree more.... and sorry I did indeed mean "If he had not written"

btw eramus darwin was one of the lunatics that founded the
lunatics society

and do the darwin quiz!

--Mike--

You're mostly right, of course -- but didn't you mean to say "before Apple came along with TrueType"? :-)

And lucky thing, too. Given Microsoft's historical concern with usability, I suspect that if TrueType _had_ come from that corporate monster in Redmond, we'd have fonts designed by math instead of by eye -- like that idiot you were replying to would have.

Slashdot Revenue Denial HOWTO version 0.02

Slashdot provides information. Information has value protected under intellectual property laws. Since Slashdot does not believe in intellectual property, as demonstrated by its support of an organisation which does not believe an author should have any rights on the products of his mind, its editors are implying that Slashdot itself has no value. As such, it should not claim compensation for its services.

So much for the philosophy. How can you fulfil Slashdot's own wishes? The basic aim is to stop views of Slashdot's advertisements, so its sponsors no longer perceive Slashdot as providing worthwhile exposure, and stop sponsoring it.

• If you are using Mozilla, simply right-click the advert at the top of the page, and select "Block images from this server". Do this whenever you see a new advert appear on a Slashdot browser window.
• Or you can add an entry to /etc/hosts under a Unix-based system or C:\WINNT\SYSTEM32\DRIVERS\ETC\HOSTS under an NT-based system:

  127.0.0.1 images.slashdot.org
  127.0.0.1 images2.slashdot.org
  127.0.0.1 ad.doubleclick.net
  127.0.0.1 ln.doubleclick.net
  127.0.0.1 m.doubleclick.net
  127.0.0.1 m2.doubleclick.net

• Looking for a ready-built revenue denial product? On Windows or Unix, you could try AdBuster, AdKiller or Internet Junkbuster. And WWWoffle is a comprehensive caching solution.

Please distribute this HOWTO widely and add to it if you have further useful advice.

Slashdot Revenue Denial HOWTO version 0.02

Slashdot provides information. Information has value protected under intellectual property laws. Since Slashdot does not believe in intellectual property, as demonstrated by its support of an organisation which does not believe an author should have any rights on the products of his mind, its editors are implying that Slashdot itself has no value. As such, it should not claim compensation for its services.

So much for the philosophy. How can you fulfil Slashdot's own wishes? The basic aim is to stop views of Slashdot's advertisements, so its sponsors no longer perceive Slashdot as providing worthwhile exposure, and stop sponsoring it.

• If you are using Mozilla, simply right-click the advert at the top of the page, and select "Block images from this server". Do this whenever you see a new advert appear on a Slashdot browser window.
• Or you can add an entry to /etc/hosts under a Unix-based system or C:\WINNT\SYSTEM32\DRIVERS\ETC\HOSTS under an NT-based system:

  127.0.0.1 images.slashdot.org
  127.0.0.1 images2.slashdot.org
  127.0.0.1 ad.doubleclick.net
  127.0.0.1 ln.doubleclick.net
  127.0.0.1 m.doubleclick.net
  127.0.0.1 m2.doubleclick.net

• Looking for a ready-built revenue denial product? On Windows or Unix, you could try AdBuster, AdKiller or Internet Junkbuster. And WWWoffle is a comprehensive caching solution.

Please distribute this HOWTO widely and add to it if you have further useful advice.

Slashdot Revenue Denial HOWTO version 0.02

Slashdot provides information. Information has value protected under intellectual property laws. Since Slashdot does not believe in intellectual property, as demonstrated by its support of an organisation which does not believe an author should have any rights on the products of his mind, its editors are implying that Slashdot itself has no value. As such, it should not claim compensation for its services.

So much for the philosophy. How can you fulfil Slashdot's own wishes? The basic aim is to stop views of Slashdot's advertisements, so its sponsors no longer perceive Slashdot as providing worthwhile exposure, and stop sponsoring it.

• If you are using Mozilla, simply right-click the advert at the top of the page, and select "Block images from this server". Do this whenever you see a new advert appear on a Slashdot browser window.
• Or you can add an entry to /etc/hosts under a Unix-based system or C:\WINNT\SYSTEM32\DRIVERS\ETC\HOSTS under an NT-based system:

  127.0.0.1 images.slashdot.org
  127.0.0.1 images2.slashdot.org
  127.0.0.1 ad.doubleclick.net
  127.0.0.1 ln.doubleclick.net
  127.0.0.1 m.doubleclick.net
  127.0.0.1 m2.doubleclick.net

• Looking for a ready-built revenue denial product? On Windows or Unix, you could try AdBuster, AdKiller or Internet Junkbuster. And WWWoffle is a comprehensive caching solution.

Please distribute this HOWTO widely and add to it if you have further useful advice.

Slashdot Revenue Denial HOWTO version 0.01

Slashdot provides information, which has value under intellectual property laws. Since Slashdot does not believe in intellectual property, as demonstrated by its support an organisation which does not believe an author should have any rights on the products of his mind, Slashdot is implying that it itself has no value. As such, it should not claim compensation for its services.

So much for the philosophy. How can you fulfil Slashdot's own wishes? The basic aim is to stop views of Slashdot's advertisements, so its sponsors no longer perceive Slashdot as providing worthwhile exposure, and stop sponsoring it.

• If you are using Mozilla, simply right-click the advert at the top of the page, and select "Block images from this server".
• Or you can add an entry to /etc/hosts under a Unix-based system or C:\WINNT\SYSTEM32\DRIVERS\ETC\HOSTS under an NT-based system:

  127.0.0.1 images.slashdot.org

• Looking for a ready-built revenue denial product? On Windows or Unix, you could try AdBuster, AdKiller or Internet Junkbuster. And WWWoffle is a comprehensive caching solution.

Please distribute this HOWTO widely and add to it if you have further useful advice.

• Here is a link to Chesley Bonestells web site where you can find more art.
• His Bio,
• And some more art is here.
• But this one has a bunch of scans.
• Other space artist links.

1. add AutoDia/Dia2Code/Dia2SQL/DiaCanvas etc, daVinci Presenter (nonfree), JGraphPad, ObjectArtist, ...
2. Add JProjectTimer, Ma href="http://www.logilab.org/pygantt/">PyGANTT, jgantt/DayOrganiser, Narval::ProjMan, QtGantt, ...
3. Add KOffice, SIAG Office, gobeProductive (nonfree today, being groomed for GPLing as you read this, ...
4. One thing missing so far is a PDF editor; there is no problem with tools for making, viewing and converting PDFs.
5. Can't go past PuTTY for making Windows useful! (-: Try also WinSCP, and there are many GUI ssh managers available for Linux.
6. Mozilla's great. There are also `lite' versions (SkipStone, Galeon etc) and alternatives like Konqueror.
7. What can I say?
8. That's as bad as using an autodialler (the best way of forgetting numbers that I know of): what do you do when Password Safe or the system it runs on gronks and you need one of the passwords in it to restore a backup of it? Nevertheless, Free equivalents abound.
9. sorry, afk for now.

Unfortunately I couldn't be chauvinistic enough to find a mechanical one-handed version of Babbage's machine, so we Brits can't claim to have invented this one....

Actually, go is a very popular game world wide, arguably more popular than chess. It's true that the areas in which go is popular aren't the most affluent in the world, but there are a great deal of programmers working on go. A very wealthy Tawainese man, the late Mr. Ing set up a foundation to award $40 million (TWD) to the first go program to beat a 1-dan player. He also set up incremental prizes for each kyu level a computer could advance to. Literally thousands of programs have competed, and none can win against a one dan amateur, even with a 9 stone handicap.

Go is very unlike chess. Chess computers improve greatly with improvements in hardware. In fact, very straight forward chess programs with simple evaluation algorithms and minimal pruning can defeat master level chess players when run on modern PCs. One example is the ever popular TSCP . Go programs on the other hand do not improve notably simply by using a brute force approach. Handtalk, the former computer go champion plays less than one kyu better on an Athlon2000 than it does on a 386. For more info, check the links on Mick's Computer Go Page

0x0d0a didst speak thusly:

The SEC also went after Rice, the guy that hired her. Everything got covered. I've seen attempts to sue spammers, to complain to them, to flood their phones, to complain to local police/attorney general. Nothing does much...except this. Seems that the first effective clean sweep against a spammer that I've ever seen -- and it was done by a black hat. Frankly, I'm quite pleased.

Actually, not quite the first clean sweep...

The first clean sweep I am aware of, or rather clue-by-fouring en masse, was of a particularly notorious spammer (both Usenet and email) by name of "Krazy" Kevin Lipsitz (notation in the Spam Timeline here: http://keithlynch.net/spamline.html).

Krazy Kevin was one of the parties that directly lead to confirmation of accounts--he used to use Compuserve throwaway accounts in particular, as I recall, to promote his magazine scheme.

It came out after a while on many net.abuse forums that not only was he spamming, but he also failed to deliver magazines...

Eventually the State of New York spanked him in probably one of the first court precedents in regards to spam. (Reference here: http://www.oag.state.ny.us/internet/litigation/leb edeff.html)

This all happened around '96 or '97...Krazy Kev was busted around 1997ish.

"Krazy Kevin" no longer is spamming, and apparently makes much of his living now being a professional gourmand (he apparently holds a world's record for consuming the most amount of pickles in a five-minute span, and is a regular contestant at the Nathan's hot-dog eating contest)...at least it's a bit more honest a way of life than spamming, I suppose. :) (More about Krazy Kev going honest, in a sense: http://abcnews.go.com/sections/us/WolfFiles/wolffi les204.html) Still selling magazines too, but hopefully people get them now :)

Sanford, aka "Spamford", Wallace also was whacked into sense between being sued by both AOL *and* Compuserve (pre-merger) and getting ordered not to spam them (info on that lawsuit here: http://www.netlitigation.com/netlitigation/cases/c ompucase.htm)--and having literally been nearly banned from the Internet entirely and causing one of the major "backbone" sites of the Internet to be nearly universally shunned as well (the Agis.net UDP around 1996--Wallace and the nancy.com spammers were almost completely responsible) after it ended up being the last site on the Internet to deal with him...

In fact, Sanford Wallace has the rather dubious distinction of not only having been the reason behind many states' proposed antispam statutes, not only does he have the dubious distinction of having also been a junk faxer before he went into spamming and being almost singlehandedly responsible for the US law prohibiting junk faxing, but is singlehandedly responsible for much if not most of the early case law in regards to spamming...

After having realised the errors of his ways around 1998 or so, he started running an opt-in mail service for a while and (in a theme that seems to recur among reformed spammers) also apparently does entertainment, specifically, he's a DJ (more info here: http://www.canismajor.demon.co.uk/antispam/sanford .htm; info regarding his present company here: http://www.annonline.com/interviews/970522/biograp hy.html)...

(Now, mind, I've just included the first two cases I can recall off the top of my head involving people being sued directly for stuff related to spamming...)

The original Slashdot story about Jon prompted me throw up a mirror on my own site, and link to it from a comment. (I'm a UK citizen resident in the UK, as is the server holding my little site.) A couple of months later I was clearing the christmas mail list backlog when I came across a legalistic document concerning deCSS. To my amazement it seemed I was a defendant ("John Doe #13") in the California case. (The 2600 case is in NYC.)

In the ensuing two and a half years I've become increasingly radicalised (in the geek sense: I had a flirtation with "IRL" politics for a few years in my late teens/early 20s and lost interest pretty thoroughly after that.) In retrospect, this event was the first time I made a small gesture of public support for the freedoms we all consider so important. The reaction to it, whilst amusing, has given me a different perspective on matters which previously seemed unconnected: the importance of the GPL, for instance, the reasons *why* the DMCA is just the tip of an iceberg...

The only moral to my anecdote is this: where's *your* mirror of deCSS? Mine's still there =)

The original Slashdot story about Jon prompted me throw up a mirror on my own site, and link to it from a comment. (I'm a UK citizen resident in the UK, as is the server holding my little site.) A couple of months later I was clearing the christmas mail list backlog when I came across a legalistic document concerning deCSS. To my amazement it seemed I was a defendant ("John Doe #13") in the California case. (The 2600 case is in NYC.)

In the ensuing two and a half years I've become increasingly radicalised (in the geek sense: I had a flirtation with "IRL" politics for a few years in my late teens/early 20s and lost interest pretty thoroughly after that.) In retrospect, this event was the first time I made a small gesture of public support for the freedoms we all consider so important. The reaction to it, whilst amusing, has given me a different perspective on matters which previously seemed unconnected: the importance of the GPL, for instance, the reasons *why* the DMCA is just the tip of an iceberg...

The only moral to my anecdote is this: where's *your* mirror of deCSS? Mine's still there =)