Slashdot Mirror

A roundup of reviews from the usual major sites as well as others not mentioned in the summary above: Overclockers Review, Anandtech Review, Anandtech Undervolting/Overclocking, HardwareSecrets, Bit-tech, PCPer, Tweaktown, Hard OCP, The Inquirer, Techspot, Computer Shopper, Tom's Hardware, ExtremeTech, PC Mag, Overclockers Club, and Guru 3d

By Mr Burns

Some interesting stats behind one of the larger sites.
http://www.extremetech.com/computing/123929-just-how-big-are-porn-sites

Picture available here. It's a solar pancake!

so if a solar pancake works, with the down facing solar panels and everything, what about stacking several cubes at their corners, like several of these on top of each other? That way you don't have sections that are not facing sunlight like you do with the MIT solar pancake design since there's no solar panels on the side of the structure, with a cube balanced on a tip you'd have a sun facing panel at all times. Set-up would be a breeze too since you don't have to face it towards the sun like the MIT design.

Picture available here. It's a solar pancake!

so if a solar pancake works, with the down facing solar panels and everything, what about stacking several cubes at their corners, like several of these on top of each other? That way you don't have sections that are not facing sunlight like you do with the MIT solar pancake design since there's no solar panels on the side of the structure, with a cube balanced on a tip you'd have a sun facing panel at all times. Set-up would be a breeze too since you don't have to face it towards the sun like the MIT design.

That's an interesting article, but I found the link about using an ion cannon to make cells 1/10th as thick at 1/2 the cost of cheap chinese cells to be potentially more revolutionary.

At this point we're not especially limited on space for solar installs. Our problem is that our collection systems aren't cheap enough.

Picture available here. It's a solar pancake!

There is a ton of evidence. IN fact, they person who make those claims has said they where accurate... of course no he makes the excuse they where just theater stories and not meant to be taken as fact.

The 'Fanboy' group think is pretty alien to me in general.

http://go.bloomberg.com/tech-blog/2012-03-20-now-can-we-start-talking-about-the-real-foxconn/

http://podcast.thisamericanlife.org/podcast/460.mp3

http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/122903-does-daiseys-lie-change-what-we-know-about-apples-manufacturing

http://www.zdnet.com/blog/apple/mike-daisey-caught-lying-about-foxconn-incinerates-credibility/12569

IS Foxconn a place of magic unicornd and pixie dust? no. But it isn't nearly as bad as people like you think.

So, thre are the facts. Lets see if you are truly capable of evaluating and reflecting on your opinion in light of new facts, otr if you are another non thinking excuse making reactionary. i.e. Shitweasel

Quad core graphics, not quad core CPU...

Therefore vulnerable to attack by competing products that do have have quad core CPUs. It does seem a bit of a risk for Apple to pin its hopes solely on screen resolution and stupidly overpriced LTE without introducing any significant innovation. But I suppose this is all consistent with sliding into its new corporate identity as rapacious patent troll.

There is the promise of the with thunderbolt but latency is an issue. However I believe there is one ( at least) on the market here.

Only according to Apple apologists, fanbois, and spin doctors.

Well given that i am none of those that disproves your theory...

Wrong, your words "suing over use of patents isn't 'patent trolling', so Apple isn't a patent troll" qualify you nicely under both "apologist" and "spin doctor". Never mind the blatant logical fallacy.

Here are some links.

Message to Apple astrofurfers: the world will stop calling your company a dispicable troll when it stops being one. Trolling Slashdot just makes you appear more dispicable.

3/5 cores - this is a Tegra thing, the snapdragon does it differently.

Tegra has a 'companion' core that is low, low power for standby tasks, then it switches the main cores on individually as they are needed. Note that the Tegra main cores are on/off designs.

The Snapdragon doesn't do this, it varies the power to each core individually, so they are all running in a low-power mode all the time until they need more. This means it doesn't need a 3rd core. Its debatable which is better, but the snapdragon can run its cores at half-power unlike the Tegra which is probably more efficient overall (when you use limited resources doing boring tasks like reading your messages).

Here's a nice article on the subject

It is possible to print solar cells, electronic circuits, capacitors, batteries, and antennas on flat flexible sheets. It seems to me that if you combined those technologies with this you'd be able to make completely functional robots.

At least for one of my add-ons, they broke compatibility. That one shows "Not available for Firefox 10.0". Mozilla announced "All add-ons will be made compatible by default in the upcoming Firefox 10 release", but it didn't work.

(The add-on works fine under Firefox 10. It's Mozilla's download/upgrade/update/approve system, "AMO", that's broken. I have some of the same add-ons for both Firefox and Google Chrome, and the Google Chrome store system works much better than Mozilla's. This reflects Mozilla's focus on the browser being in control, rather than being a slave to the "cloud". Firefox updating and their "AMO" try to slave their browser to their servers. Mozilla isn't very good at that.)

x86 based Windows 8 machines will be able to boot any OS you want them too. Only ARM based Windows 8 machines will require secure boot, and that's only if the OEM wants to have the Windows 8 sticker on the machine.

http://www.extremetech.com/computing/114173-windows-8-secure-boot-calm-down-microsoft-is-simply-copying-apple

Secure boot is only required for the ARM version of Windows 8. MS has explicitly said that you'll be able to install any OS you want on x86 based Windows 8 machines. Do some research before you make accusations and you won't make yourself look like a fool.

http://www.extremetech.com/computing/114173-windows-8-secure-boot-calm-down-microsoft-is-simply-copying-apple

"At low temperatures, this number is 12; at room temperature, the number is around 150 - not quite as impressive, but still an order of magnitude better than any existing hard drive or silicon (MRAM) storage solution."

So there is even more headroom in the thermodynamic limit.

Medfield with 2.6W idle, and 3.6W playing 720p video? Numbres they they "hope" to get down to 2W and 2.6W early this year. If they haven't had a breakthrough in their power consumption, expect those phones and tablets to fail in the market as quickly as the Kin & TouchPad, or, if they're persistent, maybe they'll be out as long as the Original Xoom or PlayBook.

If you're looking for x86 SOC, Intel's new Medfield might be your best bet. Medfield article

If you were to give these the Raspberry Pi treatment...let's say a Pi board's cost is 1/2 cpu, 1/2 everything else. So the everything else is about...rounding up....let's say about 15 bucks. So add about $15 to whatever Intel charges for Medfield and you'd have your x86 Raspberry Pi.

It will be more expensive than $25 total, because...well...Intel is involved. No way a Medfield chipset will sell for ten bucks. But it would still be cheap and let you run Wine or other groovy stuff on a dinky cheap board.

It might be close though. I found this atom board for $57, and that's a full motherboard with a lot of expensive slots and heat sinks and the like. The actual Atom chip probably isn't more than $15-20 bucks. If Medfield is in this ballpark you could still be pretty cheap.

First of all, this Intel Medfield thing is, at this point, nothing more than a publicity stunt, specially its power consumption. To put it in perspective, Intel's only official statement with vaguely objective numbers puts Intel Medfield with a power usage of over 2W. This isn't particularly bad when compared to Intel's previous offering.

Yet, once you compare it with today's ARM-based products, it still can't compete. Let me explain.

If you put it in perspective with today's real world ARM-based systems, you will see that they all have a less than 1W power usage. You can check link which you provided to AnandTech's article on Intel Medfield to learn that. So, this might not appear much, but it demonstrates that Intel Medfield is a power hog that drains at idle at best over 2x the power required by ARM systems at peak demand. Intel's official figures puts Intel Medfield with a idle power usage at around 2.3 Watts. With ARM-based systems, the idle power is at worse around 40mW. That is, according to Intel's marketing department, Intel Medfield uses 60x the power that ARM-based systems use at idle. Is that what you describe as shooting a claim "out of the water"?

Then you go on boasting Intel Medfield's performance. Yet, what you don't understand is that synthetic benchmarks don't matter in the real world. All that matters is that a computer is able to perform some task with an acceptable level of performance. So, a user may not notice any performance difference between two systems whose WhateverMark is over 200% apart. Why would it matters if a system is able to play three or five concurrent HD video streams if a lower-spec system is quite able to play only one HD video stream? After a certain point, performance is irrelevant, as Intel's Atom line demonstrates.

So, knowing that Intel Medfield's computational power is irrelevant and knowing that Intel Medfield's future best-case propaganda power requirements are huge when compared with today's ARM products, why exactly are you claiming that Intel's tomorrow showcase product even competes with yesterday's ARM systems?

Yeah... no.

vr-zone

As it stands right now, the prototype version is consuming 2.6W in idle with the target being 2W, while the worst case scenarios are video playback: watching the video at 720p in Adobe Flash format will consume 3.6W, while the target for shipping parts should be 1W less (2.6W)

extremeTech

The final chips, which ship early next year, aim to cut this down to 2W and 2.6W respectively. This is in-line with the latest ARM chips, though again, we’ll need to get our hands on some production silicon to see how Medfield really performs.

And which ARM SoC's idle at 2W? That's at least an order of magnitude greater than any ARM SoC - those typically idle at a few tens or hundreds of milliAmps. ARM's big.LITTLE architectures will bring that down even further.
So, Medfield may be competitive on speed and TDP at full load, but if you are a mobile device maker, would you care? You would probably be more interested in eking out more uptime from your tiny battery.

Yeah... no.

vr-zone

As it stands right now, the prototype version is consuming 2.6W in idle with the target being 2W, while the worst case scenarios are video playback: watching the video at 720p in Adobe Flash format will consume 3.6W, while the target for shipping parts should be 1W less (2.6W)

extremeTech

The final chips, which ship early next year, aim to cut this down to 2W and 2.6W respectively. This is in-line with the latest ARM chips, though again, we’ll need to get our hands on some production silicon to see how Medfield really performs.

A commenter on a previous "Google might kill Firefox/Mozilla by not renewing default search agreement" provided a link to the following article, which I found to be an interesting read, and I would also recommend it:

http://www.extremetech.com/internet/92558-how-browsers-make-money-or-why-google-needs-firefox

In short, if Google stopped giving Mozilla the relatively small (relative to their annual profits) amount of money for each period, do you really think Microsoft would wait more than 5 seconds to snatch up such an opportunity to fill in the gap by paying an equal amount? Microsoft would love to get the current Firefox "default search" volume which is directed at Google and instead have it directed toward Bing. If Google stopped paying Mozilla, it seems reasonable to expect some other company like Microsoft to take over the cost in the blink of an eye.

Parent is almost exactly right.

When you have the headline "Firefox 9 Released" it is implied that the release is official and current. You expect that if you try to update your software through the normal update process, it will work. So they are right to expect the update to work.

The fact is that Firefox is getting released today and yesterday was an unofficial release, and as of me trying at 8:25AM Eastern Time is not available through normal update channels (i.e. help > about). The linked Extremetech article was in fact titled Firefox 9 unofficially released and states:

Ahead of an official release tomorrow, Firefox 9 has winged its way to various mirrors across the web and is now available to download from the official Firefox website — no messing around with a hammered Nightly FTP server this time, oh no!

The fact that the summary writer neglected the word "unofficial" or this very important detail that it is rolling out isn't the fault of anyone reading the article and speaks to the grand tradition of poor summary writing that Slashdot readers have grown to love/hate.

http://www.extremetech.com/gaming/97047-thank-you-farmville-pc-gaming-will-soon-overtake-consoles

For the last couple of years, the revenue from console video game sales has stagnated at around $23 billion per year. PC game sales, on the other hand, have grown from $13 billion to $18 billion over the past two years.

I'd say that's booming.

These guys recently pulled it off with wireless power transmission to an antenna that goes around the rim of the lens. Just one monochrome pixel though! And a visible wire to that pixel.

http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/107245-inside-the-worlds-largest-lan-party/16

check out the eyes of the guys laughing. thats a real laugh, and their eyes are shining with real happiness. been a while since i saw such people in media images.

fedora seems to have about 4-5 mil based on their yum stats

WTF are you talking about? Fedora has about 35 million users according to their yum stats. You "only" misplaced about 30 million of their users! And Ubuntu claims about 15-18 million users. Fedora is the most popular distro, not Ubuntu.

At Lawrence Livermore Labs in California.
  http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/101277-inside-californias-star-power-fusion-facility

It would be on my list.

http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/89710-the-fanless-spinning-heatsink-the-heatsink-is-the-fan

An n950 is already the pocket equivalent of a Panasonic ToughBook.

Or maybe the pocket equivalent of a ToughPad.

I have to agree, I'm glad to see another instant Polaroid, but $300 + $20 paper? Seems like the camera should be $99 and they could make the money off the paper.

I'd buy it for $99 and I'm sure I'd end up buying more paper than I'm willing to admit, but at $300 I will never buy this camera. Ever. $300 is a brand new top-of-the-line smartphone, why would I spend that kind of $$$$ on a camera with "poor image quality"? A $300 smartphone would take better photos AND I can instantly post them online and send them to a wireless printer.

Here's a video of it in action

I want to like it, but the $300 price is all wrong.

Louis Gray (G+ evangelist, hired by Google) said:

To clarify, Google Reader remains a stand-alone product. What is being announced is threefold: 1) Addition of sharing to Google+. 2) A new modern design. 3) Retiring of the dedicated sharing model.

This statement ( It will be impossible to use Google Reader as a standalone product) is incorrect. You can continue reading your feeds in Reader independent of Google+.

http://www.extremetech.com/computing/101011-6-google-reader-replacements#dsq-comment-23863

Interestingly, they originally filed suit against Intel in part to counter suits Intel had filed against Via. This happened ten years ago.

So somehow, rather than cross-license rights, VIA ended up with money. And because of that they certainly should feel confident they can get money out of anyone using their patent, rather than being stuck in a profitless cross-license situation.

Or maybe they'll get free iPhones for life.

From a screenshot in the ExtremeTech article: "Never run downloaded programs that are unknown to SmartScreen". So how does a software developer make a program "known to SmartScreen" for the first time other than by selling it on the Windows Store?

From the same article:

if you try to boot while an infected USB memory stick is plugged in, Windows 8 will warn you and refuse to load.

So how do I tell Windows that a USB mass storage device containing an Ubuntu install image is not "an infected USB memory stick"?

Microsoft wants you to hibernate Windows 8 rather than shut it down

So will we finally have the ability to come out of hibernate without that one peripheral not responding?

Reset restores Windows 8 to its base, just-like-new state. Refresh is similar, but it preserves all of your documents.

So now "reformat and reinstall" is becoming institutionalized.

The article links to an article about the Windows Store. It claims that "the process for getting an app certified and listed in the Windows Store will be as painless as possible." Does this include applications developed by high school students who aren't 18 yet? Or college students who don't want to spend $99 per year? It also mentions "content compliance checks", and if "content compliance checks" are anything like the ones that Microsoft uses for Xbox Live Indie Games, this could shut out entire genres of applications. It says "you won't be able to download a Metro app from Download.com", but wouldn't one just be able to load an app into Visual Studio Express and run it that way?

It's not just on Linux, I'm noticing weird behavior on Windows, too. Is it possible you don't use Firefox as much at work?

I don't like the rapid new versions; they break add-ons. Add-ons are the reason I use Firefox.

Version 6.02 of Firefox is very unstable, far more unstable than version 3.6.20. Firefox 6.02 crashes often when there are 100 tabs open, a situation that is common when doing research. Firefox 6.02 often crashes with no crash report.

Questions:

1) Why did the Mozilla team decide to play games with version numbers?

2) Google has been paying Mozilla Foundation more than $80 million each year. Can anyone say they have seen 80 million dollars of yearly development? Where does the money go?

3) Will Mozilla foundation lose its deal with Google? See this article, for example: Mozilla Extends Lucrative Deal With Google For 3 Years.

See this article also: How browsers make money, or why Google needs Firefox.

Quote: "Almost the entirety of Mozilla's income -- 97% of $104 million -- arrives in the form of royalties from the Firefox search box, and the lion's share (86%, $85 million) of those royalties are paid by the default search engine: Google.

"In November 2011, however, Mozilla's contract with Google will expire. It will then be renewed... or it will be allowed to lapse." [My emphasis]

4) Why is Firefox version 6.02 extremely unstable with many tabs and windows open? What happened? Firefox 3.6.20 was far more stable. What was done that caused the instability?

5) Why don't the Firefox programmers fix the memory and CPU hogging? It has been there for at least 8 years.

I did a little clicking from TFA, and found this page, which says : "The effect of heat is so pronounced that a temperature of 125C can slow down a processor’s frequency by up to 14%." I'm guessing this is an error... since the effect of a temperature of 125C can slow down most processors frequency by up to 100%.

The article shows clearly in both a screen shot and a video that the "Time remaining" estimate is still there in Windows 8 Explorer. It's simply hidden under a "More details" button by default.

Actually the time estimate is not gone. Check the screenshots with the TFA: http://www.extremetech.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/windows-8-copy-speeds.jpg. I clearly see time estimates there. They are just relegated to the advanced view and not in the default view.

Sebastian Anthony at Extremtech has written a very nice, seven page article named "6 computer labs that gave birth to the digital world". Bletchley Park is included, as expected.

http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/92982-6-computer-labs-that-created-the-digital-world?print

And there you go.

--
BMO

Intel will offer Intel-branded cooling solutions for the new chips, they just won't package them with the chips.

^----- This has been confirmed: "Intel has decided to offer own brand coolers for the platform, it's just that they won't come in the box with the CPU."

So Intel will offer coolers, they're just sold separately, probably because these are cpus designed for enthusiast ("The E range (which stands for ‘enthusiast’") so they're meant for people that overclock and buy separate coolers rather than use the "stock" cooler that comes with the cpu.

Pricing of the CPUs has also been released:
_name__core__threads__freq__turbo freq__L3__TDP__price_
Core i7-3820 4 8 3.6 GHz 3.9 GHz 10 MB 130 Watt $294
Core i7-3930K 6 12 3.2 GHz 3.8 GHz 12 MB 130 Watt $583
Core i7-3960X 6 12 3.3 GHz 3.9 GHz 15 MB 130 Watt $999

To original poster, I read the articles on: http://sciencedaily.com/ (all sciences- this is by far my favorite) http://spectrum.ieee.org/computing (computer science) http://mathoverflow.net/ (though this one is usually way above my head) http://extremetech.com/ (engineering) I also have Scientific American subscription, and although it occasionally has very interesting physics articles (the accuracy of which I couldn't tell you), I think there are better magazines.

So it's more closed-open bullshit from Google?

If Chrome uses open standards and protocols, there's no reason for it to be Chrome-only. You say competitors are "left in the dust" because Chrome is developed at such an "astonishing pace" (it's easy to appear that way when you constantly bump major version numbers), but Chrome is based on the open source WebKit, the same engine Safari uses that was developed mostly by Apple. There's nothing particularly unique to Chrome except for its Javascript engine, which doesn't use some futuristic version of Javascript that nobody else can run.

Not to mention that the claim that Chrome is based entirely on "open standards and protocols" is ridiculous--the browser ships the closed-source, proprietary Flash plug-in and supports both AAC and MP3 audio playback.

They're fixing it see
http://blog.mozilla.com/futurereleases/2011/07/07/firefoxaurora7/
and
http://www.extremetech.com/internet/88998-fixes-to-memory-footprint-land-in-firefox-7
where they claim to reduce memory usage by 30%. From my personal experience it seems to be really better.

howzabout a direct link to the print version that's not arbitrarily hacked into chunks to inflate ad views?

The ORIGINAL FUCKING STORY IS ON THE REGISTER

For fuck's sake, stop this linking to every scumbag linkspamming plaigiarising blogger who submits his crappy blog to scam some ad hits.

I'm sorry, you think NAS 4 years ago was cutting edge? Are you joking? Even DLink was making them four years ago (look at the published date). But somehow it was "unheard of even in geek circles". Please tell me I just missed the joke.

In this climatic battle between the scientist and the millions of clones created by the robot, the final victory is achieved by "Select all robots" and "delete"! http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,2845,2376096,00.asp?kc=ETRSS02129TX1K0000532&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+ziffdavis%2Fextremetech+(Extremetech)

Pretty sure balloon space photography takes a little more doing than a case mod.

Probably not. At least, not a good one. I feel fairly confident in my ability to send up a balloon with a camera in it. But I would have trouble making even a simple looking case like this, this, or this.