I have a reciever with both digital coax and optical inputs. When looking over the cables deciding, a Best Buy rep (Monster cable certified as well) talked to me about it. I asked what cable I should get, optical or coax. His response was to go with the coax because optical is unreliable due to vibrations that might occur, distorting the sound. I asked how an expensive Monster Cable optical could possibly get to the point of cutting off the optical signal without someone physicially bending the cable really hard, and how enterprise storage solutions seems to work fine on miles of flimsy optical cable in server rooms with tons of possible minute vibrations from the air movement.
In the end, I went with a normal RCA cable for the run since it works.
What NV number is the GeForce 4 MX? The NV17? If so, it's not that impressive, just marketing renaming a card. Apple has rarley had the top of the line graphics ship as default. And right now, it's not even an option (No 8500 or GF3Ti500)
Compaq also has an online configuration tool that runs under Linux now. With it, hot plug support and LVM, it's possible to add a hard drive, and add it to the filesysystem with no reboots.
I'm not sure how well these controllers work outside a Compaq server though, I have never tried.
Pulling up the keyboard on a Compaq Armada M700 will reveal a processor setup much like the case above, except it's a shorter pipeline, and uses a fan when necessary to dispel the heat off the pipes.
So some laptops are liquid cooled, but with a fan to get the heat off that system.
Then people need to look into sleep or hibernation. Everyone assumes it's for laptops, but it works just fine on desktops. I hibernate my media system all the time to have a middle of the road between power usage and boot times.
I threw it in my DVD equipped iMac running OS X, and up popped 3 things, an Audio CD icon, a Data CD icon with worthless.exe files, and iTunes, ready and waiting to rip the thing. It skipped passed the first track and was fine.
Remember, the best thing to do with these is a reverse boycott. Buy every copy you can from every store, then return them opened to collect your refund. Out of 7 stores I have done this at so far, only one hassled me after pointing to the sticker on the back. I said fine, I'll exchange it, what happens if this one dosen't work?
I plan on wiriting a dead wood letter here soon to Universal stating I'll be one of their best customers next year, as I plan to buy and open all their releases. Then promptly return them for a refund.
If only Transmeta would release a different CPU
on
Via One-ups Transmeta
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· Score: 4, Insightful
The low power chips are nice and all, but where is the CPU showing off Transmeta's true technology? All that code morphing stuff should enable a laptop to be made with a switch labeled "G4" or "x86".
Re:Dishnetwork, Linux and Satellite?
on
Comparing the DVRs?
·
· Score: 4, Informative
Why isn't there more open support for this? You'd think that Dishnetwork would promote this type of thing
They almost did. A while back, any Gateway system came with some DishNetworks coupons. Why? Well at the time, they were working togther to bring Dish service to the Destination systems. The deal fell through, a few cards were made by Adaptec, and not much came of it.
That card on Happauge looks interesting. My biggest hurdle was the Nagravision Dish uses, but aparently that card supports it now. If only the links wern't broken on that page...
So what happens when the sky's overcast? Will the signal get lost like satellite TV?
I have lost satelite TV signals 3 times in the past 4 years that I have had it. Twice it was due to a huge amount of snow on the dish, and the third time was actually due to weather. Weather inteference shouldn't be a huge factor, and ground based repeators are being installed to also ensure manmade obstructions don't cause a problem.
They're steep in price, but DLT or AIT are optimal. The newer models are capable of 100GB, except you can't get that much on there if the data is uncompressible (like MP3s are).
The newest DLT drives, dubbed SuperDLT do 110GB uncompressed. AIT right now is at 50gb uncompressed.
For my linux server at home, I picked up an external 15/30 DLT drive, plus 8 10 gb tapes for $250. Well worth it, just keep your eyes open for deals like this.
Last night I was switched from @Home to Adelphia Powerlink. It's working just fine this morning, and a bit faster. I feel sorry for those stuck on @Home for 3 more months.
I miss the old QuickTime installs that would put themselves on a Windows box and be a codec for other media players. (True, the Windows 3.1 insall was hell at first. Manual editing of the system.ini, etc...) What was wrong with following standards? Why do I need this bulky media player now to play Quicktime 3 and above content?
Quicktime definitly has not gotten better in the 10 years it has been out.
The internals of this box on both the hardware and software side are slightly different then the base platform in the Rio-Car, aka empeg-car. The same people built this device, and are prepairing to release a pretty hefty update for it. It's also very hackable, as was somewhat talked about in the article. In no way should this be seen as a poormans WinCE running Audiotron. More info can be found on the RioReciever BBS.
Logitech and Intel both have RF based keyboards, mice, trackballs, and game controllers. I swore I would never use an IR based product like that, (after the loads of fun I had with an IR based NES controller). They are well worth the inventment when going cordless to avoid that irritation.
It is nice to see Bluetooth becoming the standard here though. I just want a PC with USB, Firewire, Bluetooth and 802.11g for connectivity outside the box. I'd be happy. (Ok, and maybe a Gigabit ethernet port just in case)
The Xeons used in Compaq's 8 processor Proliants use a small plate bolted to the processor with two copper pipes. They go up into a radiator assembly, and the server pulls air through them with a very efficient and nice design. I've always liked the design by Compaq on some of their Proliant servers, and how they stay away from putting fans directly on a heatsync. I'll take a hot swappable fan any day.
b) a gigabyte really means 1 billion bytes, the impression that it means 1024 * 1024 * 1024 is errorneous (more BS).
No, this is the truth. Go buy a drive, any drive. If it says 20gb on the box, you have 18.62645... real GB of space. Drive manufacturers long ago switched to 1,000,000 GB units. I get customers asking this all the time, and really got tired of other techs saying "Oh, it's the partition table" or "it's the array data". I walk them through the numbers in calculator, and it works out every time.
Compaq's line of KVMs are rather nice for server managment, but come at a price. They have one that is a 2x8 KVM, aka 2 consoles and 8 ports. This is ideal for having one console in the server room, and one console in your office. And you can chain a KVM to each port, thus a total of 64 servers from one place.
Their newest idea is to use PCI cards and CAT5 to chain the systems togther. It uses the PCI power, and since the KVM is inside the server, it can save quite a bit of space and cable mess. And yes, they do pass through when the server is powered off.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but POP is a way to *retrieve* email. How does the client that you're using to *retrieve* your mail matter when it comes to spam? Granted, OE has some mail filters that can be used, but so do other clients (procmail anyone?).
They are probably switching the POP3 servers to SAP, then setting SMTP servers to only allow mail from that IP after a POP3 check is successful (and for a small window of time). It's how Gateway.net (a UU.Net based solution like MSN) did it a while back, but without the SAP.
Right now the only remotely viable solution for OGG decoding in a portable device would be to go with something like an ARM system-on-chip.
It would need to have a floating point unit, or wait for an integer OGG decoder. This problem is what is keeping OGG off my empeg car player, although rumor has it an integer decoder is either finished or close.
If only more people would realise that paying a bit more gets them a longer lifespan on their products. Sure, I payed $1200 for my car radio that can play MP3's now, but it will still happially be playing the newest formats for years to come, with it's 220mHz StrongARM. Just because a player is firmware upgradable dosen't mean it can be upgraded to a new format, due to cheaper special purpose MP3 chips being used.
10Six has ads on billboards in certain areas of the game. The nice thing is that all you have to do to play is download the client and register. Then if you like the trial, you subscribe. The ads themselves were only in areas that players meet to swap items, so it wasn't a huge hassle compaired to paying $50 to even see the game.
Re:Idea after being mugged last year...
on
GPS Meets PCS
·
· Score: 2
Of course, if you keep your keypad locked, then your are SOL.
My Nokia 8290 has a key combination that you can hit while it's locked to have it call 911. Press 0, then 8. That makes a 08 show up on my phone, then pressing the send button calls 911. I found that out accidently when I first got it, but I canceled it before it actually opened a line.
Most digital cameras, and MP3 players don't use a standard USB connector on the device side either, due to it not being small enough. It's always a standard USB plug on the other side though, so it's not a big issue. The iPaq has that one connector on the bottom that gets split out into power and USB, or power and Serial depending on what cradle you use. (Or you can hack the USB cradle to have all three).
Battery capacity in the new iPaq is higher (1400 mAh compaired to I believe 900 in the older iPaqs.)
Also, I saw over on Brighthand.coms fourms that someone offers a battery replacement service for the iPaq. One was with a 2100mAh battery.
Honestly though, on my iPaq 3630, the battery life has been fine. It sits in it's cradle and charges while I sync it. Wasn't a huge deal when I traveled either. Brought the AC adaptor (instead of extra batteries), and just plugged it in when I got the battery warning after about 3-5 days. I was doing the same for my cell phone, so whats the difference?
Can someone tell me why this did not get picked up by a more respectful network?
Because Viacom decided to keep Paramount shows on United Paramount Network instead of moving them to CBS. The FCC allowed Viacom to own two broadcast networks, overruling some old law stating a company can only have one. (UPN is broadcast in several places, it's a higher channel number here in Colorado Springs).
Slashdot Mirror
I have a reciever with both digital coax and optical inputs. When looking over the cables deciding, a Best Buy rep (Monster cable certified as well) talked to me about it. I asked what cable I should get, optical or coax. His response was to go with the coax because optical is unreliable due to vibrations that might occur, distorting the sound. I asked how an expensive Monster Cable optical could possibly get to the point of cutting off the optical signal without someone physicially bending the cable really hard, and how enterprise storage solutions seems to work fine on miles of flimsy optical cable in server rooms with tons of possible minute vibrations from the air movement.
In the end, I went with a normal RCA cable for the run since it works.
What NV number is the GeForce 4 MX? The NV17? If so, it's not that impressive, just marketing renaming a card. Apple has rarley had the top of the line graphics ship as default. And right now, it's not even an option (No 8500 or GF3Ti500)
Compaq also has an online configuration tool that runs under Linux now. With it, hot plug support and LVM, it's possible to add a hard drive, and add it to the filesysystem with no reboots.
I'm not sure how well these controllers work outside a Compaq server though, I have never tried.
Pulling up the keyboard on a Compaq Armada M700 will reveal a processor setup much like the case above, except it's a shorter pipeline, and uses a fan when necessary to dispel the heat off the pipes.
So some laptops are liquid cooled, but with a fan to get the heat off that system.
Then people need to look into sleep or hibernation. Everyone assumes it's for laptops, but it works just fine on desktops. I hibernate my media system all the time to have a middle of the road between power usage and boot times.
Macs should be using sleep mode if running OS X.
I threw it in my DVD equipped iMac running OS X, and up popped 3 things, an Audio CD icon, a Data CD icon with worthless .exe files, and iTunes, ready and waiting to rip the thing. It skipped passed the first track and was fine.
Remember, the best thing to do with these is a reverse boycott. Buy every copy you can from every store, then return them opened to collect your refund. Out of 7 stores I have done this at so far, only one hassled me after pointing to the sticker on the back. I said fine, I'll exchange it, what happens if this one dosen't work?
I plan on wiriting a dead wood letter here soon to Universal stating I'll be one of their best customers next year, as I plan to buy and open all their releases. Then promptly return them for a refund.
The low power chips are nice and all, but where is the CPU showing off Transmeta's true technology? All that code morphing stuff should enable a laptop to be made with a switch labeled "G4" or "x86".
They almost did. A while back, any Gateway system came with some DishNetworks coupons. Why? Well at the time, they were working togther to bring Dish service to the Destination systems. The deal fell through, a few cards were made by Adaptec, and not much came of it.
That card on Happauge looks interesting. My biggest hurdle was the Nagravision Dish uses, but aparently that card supports it now. If only the links wern't broken on that page...
I have lost satelite TV signals 3 times in the past 4 years that I have had it. Twice it was due to a huge amount of snow on the dish, and the third time was actually due to weather. Weather inteference shouldn't be a huge factor, and ground based repeators are being installed to also ensure manmade obstructions don't cause a problem.
They're steep in price, but DLT or AIT are optimal. The newer models are capable of 100GB, except you can't get that much on there if the data is uncompressible (like MP3s are). The newest DLT drives, dubbed SuperDLT do 110GB uncompressed. AIT right now is at 50gb uncompressed. For my linux server at home, I picked up an external 15/30 DLT drive, plus 8 10 gb tapes for $250. Well worth it, just keep your eyes open for deals like this.
Last night I was switched from @Home to Adelphia Powerlink. It's working just fine this morning, and a bit faster. I feel sorry for those stuck on @Home for 3 more months.
I miss the old QuickTime installs that would put themselves on a Windows box and be a codec for other media players. (True, the Windows 3.1 insall was hell at first. Manual editing of the system.ini, etc...) What was wrong with following standards? Why do I need this bulky media player now to play Quicktime 3 and above content?
Quicktime definitly has not gotten better in the 10 years it has been out.
Ahh, here we are, the prototype player.
Logitech and Intel both have RF based keyboards, mice, trackballs, and game controllers. I swore I would never use an IR based product like that, (after the loads of fun I had with an IR based NES controller). They are well worth the inventment when going cordless to avoid that irritation.
It is nice to see Bluetooth becoming the standard here though. I just want a PC with USB, Firewire, Bluetooth and 802.11g for connectivity outside the box. I'd be happy. (Ok, and maybe a Gigabit ethernet port just in case)
The Xeons used in Compaq's 8 processor Proliants use a small plate bolted to the processor with two copper pipes. They go up into a radiator assembly, and the server pulls air through them with a very efficient and nice design. I've always liked the design by Compaq on some of their Proliant servers, and how they stay away from putting fans directly on a heatsync. I'll take a hot swappable fan any day.
b) a gigabyte really means 1 billion bytes, the impression that it means 1024 * 1024 * 1024 is errorneous (more BS).
No, this is the truth. Go buy a drive, any drive. If it says 20gb on the box, you have 18.62645... real GB of space. Drive manufacturers long ago switched to 1,000,000 GB units. I get customers asking this all the time, and really got tired of other techs saying "Oh, it's the partition table" or "it's the array data". I walk them through the numbers in calculator, and it works out every time.
Compaq's line of KVMs are rather nice for server managment, but come at a price. They have one that is a 2x8 KVM, aka 2 consoles and 8 ports. This is ideal for having one console in the server room, and one console in your office. And you can chain a KVM to each port, thus a total of 64 servers from one place.
Their newest idea is to use PCI cards and CAT5 to chain the systems togther. It uses the PCI power, and since the KVM is inside the server, it can save quite a bit of space and cable mess. And yes, they do pass through when the server is powered off.
Sprint's horrid wireless broadband service says the same thing...
We are suspending our effort to acquire new residential and commercial Sprint Broadband Direct customers.
I guess Sprint internet is not doing well right now.
They are probably switching the POP3 servers to SAP, then setting SMTP servers to only allow mail from that IP after a POP3 check is successful (and for a small window of time). It's how Gateway.net (a UU.Net based solution like MSN) did it a while back, but without the SAP.
It would need to have a floating point unit, or wait for an integer OGG decoder. This problem is what is keeping OGG off my empeg car player, although rumor has it an integer decoder is either finished or close.
If only more people would realise that paying a bit more gets them a longer lifespan on their products. Sure, I payed $1200 for my car radio that can play MP3's now, but it will still happially be playing the newest formats for years to come, with it's 220mHz StrongARM. Just because a player is firmware upgradable dosen't mean it can be upgraded to a new format, due to cheaper special purpose MP3 chips being used.
10Six has ads on billboards in certain areas of the game. The nice thing is that all you have to do to play is download the client and register. Then if you like the trial, you subscribe. The ads themselves were only in areas that players meet to swap items, so it wasn't a huge hassle compaired to paying $50 to even see the game.
My Nokia 8290 has a key combination that you can hit while it's locked to have it call 911. Press 0, then 8. That makes a 08 show up on my phone, then pressing the send button calls 911. I found that out accidently when I first got it, but I canceled it before it actually opened a line.
Most digital cameras, and MP3 players don't use a standard USB connector on the device side either, due to it not being small enough. It's always a standard USB plug on the other side though, so it's not a big issue. The iPaq has that one connector on the bottom that gets split out into power and USB, or power and Serial depending on what cradle you use. (Or you can hack the USB cradle to have all three).
Battery capacity in the new iPaq is higher (1400 mAh compaired to I believe 900 in the older iPaqs.)
Also, I saw over on Brighthand.coms fourms that someone offers a battery replacement service for the iPaq. One was with a 2100mAh battery.
Honestly though, on my iPaq 3630, the battery life has been fine. It sits in it's cradle and charges while I sync it. Wasn't a huge deal when I traveled either. Brought the AC adaptor (instead of extra batteries), and just plugged it in when I got the battery warning after about 3-5 days. I was doing the same for my cell phone, so whats the difference?
Because Viacom decided to keep Paramount shows on United Paramount Network instead of moving them to CBS. The FCC allowed Viacom to own two broadcast networks, overruling some old law stating a company can only have one. (UPN is broadcast in several places, it's a higher channel number here in Colorado Springs).