With increasing bandwidth requirements (eg, ATA RAID, Gigabit Ethernet), PCI32 is already nearning its end of life. I sure as hell don't want to be stuck with a slow peripheral I/O bus on my next PC.
It's just a sample. AMD released the Clawhammer processor to manufacturers for demonistrations and testing, so they can develop the platform, so that, get this, benchmark results would not be released. Let's face it - who in their RIGHT MIND would benchmark an 800MHz CPU against the latest and greatest processors?
Obviously, these guys did. AMD will NOT be happy about this.
Also remember that the Opteron will be running at MUCH higher clock speeds upon release. I'd guess above the 2GHz range for sure, but AMD doesn't want anybody to know that. This also suggests that this lil' 800MHz sample could be very overclockable.
This is AMD's weapon that can really take a LOT of market share. Microsoft already have a Windows XP build ported to the Opteron/x86-64 platform. The Opteron runs cooler, as well.
One thing that disappoints me - I have not seen ONE PCI64 slot on any of these test boards!! I hope that this'll be worked out before release.
As a big fan of both Apple and PC hardware, I find myself making a tough decision over the next two weeks.
Yes, I'm getting the Dell Inspiron 8200, but I'd absolutely love a PowerBook G4. It's just unfortunate that it doesn't do what I want it to do.
This thing's a desktop replacement for me. I use PCs everywhere. I'm one of the organisers of a large LANning event down here in Melbourne so I need to construct/test game server configs for a variety of games. I'm a Uni student and see less and less of my desktop PC. I play MP3s and watch files encoded in DIVX, while encoding these files is quite speedy on a G4, playback of MP3s, for example, can use over 20% with iTunes on my G3 400 PowerBook. Compare that to my PII 266 notebook which does it in about 3%. The G4s are more efficient, but over 10% on a G4 500 is hardly what I'd call efficient. I can't play DIVX on the G3 400 without it struggling - the PII 266 does a better job.
I don't use Photoshop, so that argument bites the dust. My game of choice - Tribes 2 - won't run on any Mac hardware. I can't get a 1600x1200 LCD panel on a PowerBook, which can be a godsend when using X and ssh'ing into a bunch of servers - something I'm already used to.
Still, the PB G4s are fantastic machines, they look REALLY cool and run one of the nicest OS's I've ever used. It's just unfortunate that it doesn't do what I want it to do - it doesn't suit *me* and the stuff that *I* do.
However, for all those considering a new notebook, I do urge you to take a look at the G4 - if it does what you want it to do, I envy you.
The nVidia GeForce4Go 440 is basically a low power version of the GeForce4 MX 440 which lacks the vertex and pixel shading engines that the GeForce3 and the GF4 Ti series have. Since DOOM3 will make extensive use of these, we can probably expect a new GPU that's more in-line with high performance cards soon.
It's just a case of greed. Corporate greed and user greed. The OptusNet cable division has turned a profit for the first time, but they need more money to pay for the other bits of optus, so to speak, that run at a loss.
The users want more. Fair enough, people like me have become accustomed to the soft download limits we have previously had. We don't use the phonebook. I don't watch TV or listen to the radio. The Internet is everywhere, accessible anywhere in the house from the nearest PC or laptop with wireless card.
Compared to Telstra users, who are used to their 3GB/month cap, this is a major blow to our habits. This also affects the broadband acceptance in Australia - we've had all sorts of politicians and companies (even Bill Gates himself) tell us that our broadband is too expensive and inaccessible.
For Melbourne users, there is a group called Melbourne Digital and Wireless who are dedicated to building a community wireless network. Other states have the same (there are links on that page).
There is the Planet Mirror archive and the AARNet mirror site, which are both located on the AARNnet not-for-profit network, which is currently operated by Optus backbone-wise. It would be a good idea if we had unmetered traffic to these sites. Telstra may win me as a customer based on their mirror archive on GameArena.
They are. When OptusNet aquired the optus@home business after the partnership died, they upgraded the solaris based system to one centered around Linux.
The movie tickets I've got say that the session starts at 11:59PM on Wednesday night? I suppose this is cool because they show trailers and advertisments and so on and don't start the movie till later perhaps?
What people don't seem to realise is that each company (Sony Music and Sony Electronics) are TWO seperate entities. This is how things like this happen.
Mind you, I'm sure Sony Electronics are not thrilled at all about this. Not only would this not work in any of their VAIO systems, but it won't work with their "new-age" network enabled devices such as NetMD (they're pushing that high-speed transfer using a PC thing *very hard*) or their network/memory stick walkman.
I have an MD. I use PCs to listen to music. I've encoded my CDs because it's hellishly more convenient to play songs (and mix/match song mixes) on my PC as it is to switch CDs all the time. And it protects the CDs etc.
Remember the whole LP issue? Everybody recorded LPs onto tape. Did the RIAA complain? No.
Not only this, but each and every MP3 ripping group generally has a Linux person in it. The said Linux person is probably familiar with the environment and its tools to produce wave files.
These big rips find themselves onto audiogalaxy and other P2P sharing networks pretty damn fast.
THe end result is me needing to aquire the album in MP3 because I simply don't have means of playing it normally (i.e. I carry two laptops and an MD around - I don't have anything that plays CDs other than the DVD player in the HT setup which I don't carry with me on the go).
There seems to be a lot of talk about getting DVD apps to synch external audio sources with DVDs. While this seems like a quick fix, I prefer to watch DVDs on my home theatre system.
Is there some way to use a DVD authoring package to duplicate a DVD and add an extra soundtrack stream to it? DVDs already have multiple soundtracks for commentaries, other languages and different compression formats so I don't see why it wouldn't be possible to add one of your own.
Re:23" Cinema Display is not the largest available
on
Apple @ MacWorld Tokyo
·
· Score: 1
Yes, but note the pricing. $3400 for the 23" display, $4500 for the Sun 24.1" screen (which I believe is a rebadged Samsung - I may be wrong here). Sure, you need a DVI -> ADC connector but they're not too expensive.
It's good to see that Apple's embracing the technology, giving it a greater chance of widespread adoption. Remember what Apple did for us with USB and Firewire?
Now if only they had bluetooth support for the iPod, I'd be happy about not having to connect it up to the PC every time I wanted to transfer a file.
Having played with an iPod before and found that the sound is a bit try, the EQ is a welcome addition and was the one thing that didn't convince me to buy one over a NetMD-based walkman. Contact management is just damn cool, evidence that Apple listens to the community out there (remember that iPod contact hack?). Good work, Apple:)
24/7 vs. on and off, failures and Seagate in RAID
on
IBM 120GXP Revisited
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
I've had numerous hard drives fail and for numerous reasons.
My PC remains on 24/7. It gets switched off during power outages and for transportation to/from LAN party events, but other than that, it stays on all the time. I have *never* had a hard drive fail in this machine, mind you, I've always bought good qualtiy power supplies although I have never paid any real attention to cooling as I have seven hard drives in a full tower case, there's not much room for a fan!
My brother's got a small, average systen. His power supply died a year ago and ( I suspect) took a Quantum Fireball CX with it. 13GB of data is still there on the disk but the controller board stopped spinning the drive up, then the main IC decided to burn. The Australian distributor for Quantum told me that they would not replace the drive due to that fact. He also lost a Quantum 3.2GB disk in it which I've swapped controller boards on - it's a physical problem. He turns his PC on and off all the time.
My current PC has the following drives:
4x Seagate Barracuda IV 80GB ATA disks in RAID 0 1x IBM 75GXP 30GB (as primary boot drive) 1x Maxtor 60GB 5400RPM disk (bought a week after I got cable Internet almost two years ago).
The IBM drive has been flawless although I back-up frequently. The Maxtor drive has also been fantastic, although you'll find that the 5400s are more reliable than the 7200s these days. The Seagates have been fine, too, and while the IBM outperforms them, they're silent and solid.
The point here is that hard drives seem to prefer 24/7 operation than being powered on/off every day. By spinning these drives up and down, you not only increase the chances of a head crash but you place more strain on the drive.
On topic, I've had several friends who have had their IBM drives die on me. Some are in 24/7 machines, others in desktop machines with low usage. It's interesting to note that I know two people who have had 75GB 75GXP drive and both have had theirs replaced, one of them twice. I know three people who have had 45GB drives fail on them. I know one person who's had a 30GB drive fail on them. I don't know anybody who's had the 20GB or 15GB models fail.
Mind you, i know a LOT of people who have the 30 and 45GB variants. So it seems tbat it's related to the amount of disk platters in the drive. More platters = more heat. So cooling seems to be the culprit here.
What bothers me, is that I recently suggested an 80GB drive to a friend, a 120GXP series drive. Now that IBM have announced their little limitation, I'm now going to look VERY bad in the eyes of that friend. Sigh.
The last thing I wish to mention is with regards to my Seagate 80GB drives. These drives underperform a single drive when placed in a RAID 0 configuration. While this bothers me, Seagate have offered a refund for their drives apparently. Pity Seagate won't admit to it publically, so it's not just IBM who are doing this sort of thing... .t
I recall a Microsoft Windows 95 ("Chicago") demonstration in March of 1995. They were claiming (and I've got magazines and books to prove it) that the new Windows NT 4.0 beast (then called 'Cairo' and was planned as the next version of NT but it became 5.0) would include an object oriented filesystem.
I was expecting it in NT 5.0 (after they decided not to release NT4 with FAT32 and full PnP/multimedia) but it never came. XP? Yep, expected it to be there, too. It's not going to be there in.net. I'll believe it when I see it.
Microsoft have always wanted to replace NTFS with an OO-based FS. Probably to get away from HPFS (IBM's OS/2 32bit FS, where NTFS was derived from) more than anything. Heh.
Tribes has to be one of my fav. games for team play. It's mature and as long as your PC supports some sort of SIMD instructions (AMD's 3dnow or Intel's SSE, meaning K6-2 or P3 and better) it'll run fine.
A lot of the tribes 2 community still play the original Tribes game.
The thing with audio is that choice is very personal. Not everybody has the same ear, not everybody has the same music listening tastes and only few people have a large wallet.
I'm the sort of person who can walk into a HiFi store and casually listen to loudspeakers, amplifiers, decoders, preamps, receivers and what not with very high price tags. Although I can only dream about one day owning some of the more expensive stuff out there, price doesn't always mean it's better. I've heard speakers with five figure price tags that I've been quite unhappy with.
I'm not a big headphone listener. I've heard the HD495s (been very impressed with them) and a few other models that I've not been too happy with but I really don't remember the model number (HD500 series, unsure which ones). I've got a pair of Sony MDR-E888 earbud headphones which I use with my Sony MZ-R91 MD walkman. They suit the task well, are very clear and well defined on middle and high frequencies but lack a bit of intensity on very low frequencies.
Sennheiser make fantastic headphones. I can't say I've heard the Sony high end series but I haven't been impressed with any of their loudspeakers. If I had the need for a good set of headphones, I'd probably go for the 495s.
Minidiscs are fantastic. Pity my R91 no longer records and has trouble reading some discs now, but you get that. Bought it in April 2000 and have used it literally every day since. It goes wherever I go.
As for the realtime bit, perhaps your next MD unit should be NetMD compatible (USB transfer) - there'll be some info over at minidisc.org
That's in Sydney, by the way. Melbourne, where I live, it got up to 20 degrees today celsius, tomorrow, a top of 21 and showers. This is summer, or supposed to be, and the coldest December we've ever had in Melbourne on record.
It feels weird to have such a cool Christmas. I'm used to opening presents and putting on tree decorations in 30+ degrees.
We know how popular domains such as "to.us", "r.us", "are.us" and so on will be just from the response here.
These domains will go first.
If they charged, say, $10,000 for any domain sold within the first month, I'm sure they'll go a lot slower. The registrar will make a small fortune and the companies will finally start having to pay for their domain. After all, they'll almost certainly have something in the com/net/org namespace.
If you're going to jump in and say that the companies with the dollars are getting an unfair advantage, well, think of it this way. The companies will get their domains anyway, and if they don't, I'm sure they'll sue whoever for "trademark infringement".
Otherwise some private squatter will register half the namespace and make a fortune on their own greed.
boo to DNS, let's go back to using numbers and a phone book-like directory.
This illustrates the importance of non-rooting. While this is an installer script and installer scripts are mostly run as root anyway, we can cut down on the amount of data loss if we test everything without root so we don't lose -everything- in the case of a booboo.
I rarely listen to CDs as a CD. The first thing I do when I buy one is rip it and encode it on my hard drive - it's a lot easier managing a collection of music on a hard drive than it is on a CD rack - especially when I want to do a playlist.
When I go out, I take my mindisc walkman with me. Almost all my CDs have been dubbed to MD.
Now, if you can play it in a modern CD/DVD player that has digital out, what's stopping someone from duplicating it? It may be "rip-proof" but nothing's stopping you from running a digital cable from the CD/DVD player to a sound card (and what's really neat about sound cards is they have a tendency to strip the SDMS copy protect bit...).
THis will only prevent high-speed dubbing of the disc (mind you, I'd be interested to see whether Sony will jump on the bandwagon when they start releasing their NetMD products which promote the use of computers for high speed transfer via USB from CD as well as MP3/WAV/etc).
Yes, but *how soon* is IPv6 coming? It'll only become mainstream when all the mainstream systems (i.e. Windows) will support it out of the box. It's all still experimental.-
Why I want OS X but won't go for a Mac soon
on
OS X on x86?
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· Score: 2
One word. Investment.
I've got loads of PC hardware. I live and breathe the stuff. I've also got an old PowerMac 7500/100 and even if I were to get a G3 upgrade, the outdated motherboard is still not supported by OS X. I'm not about to chuck it all and get a new Mac.
It's FreeBSD with a GUI and a nice selection of industry-supported and backed applications. How easy would it be to port them BACK to x86 and other platforms? It's quite literally, my dream OS. X is cool but has always felt unfinished to me. I'd like apps, native and with industry backing and support.
The hardware that Apple has, although expensive, is rock solid. I'm happy they've moved over to standards like Ultra ATA and even using PC133 SDRAM in their new G4s - something you can get at your local PC store. Even Gigabit ethernet integrated into these machines has been a huge surprise. I've played with lots of networking stuff but seen few Gigabit NICs, especially in workstations.
Their hardware is expensive. I currently run a well stocked P933 with ample storage and 512MB RAM. I have no need for an upgrade in the immediate future.
There is no way I'm going to abandon the PC platform and get a Mac. I haven't got the thousands (in AU$) to throw around at a new platform. However, I am certain that if someone were to give me a G4 at no cost, my P3 933 would quickly become just anothet seti cruncher. I'd probably move my storage into the G4 along with the RAM. It's a great platform and I would probably convert to it almost purely based on the OS.
Will they learn from Sun? I've worked at an ISP where they standardised on Solaris in some older Pentium Pro machines. They loved the OS and support. Their next machine? A geniune Sun box. Nothing high end but it ran the OS much more efficiently. If they hadn't used Solaris on Intel machines, they'd probably have ignored the platform altogether.
Some people don't WANT to invest thousands of dollars into Sun hardware just as I don't feel like ditching everything and going Apple.
Luckily, I'm in the market for a new notebook and will consider the G4 powerbook as one of my options. I just wish I'd have more experience with the OS X platform before throwing thousands at it.
For the record, the 7500 was a freebie that I got from a friend.
Slashdot Mirror
I never said that.
With increasing bandwidth requirements (eg, ATA RAID, Gigabit Ethernet), PCI32 is already nearning its end of life. I sure as hell don't want to be stuck with a slow peripheral I/O bus on my next PC.
It's just a sample. AMD released the Clawhammer processor to manufacturers for demonistrations and testing, so they can develop the platform, so that, get this, benchmark results would not be released. Let's face it - who in their RIGHT MIND would benchmark an 800MHz CPU against the latest and greatest processors?
Obviously, these guys did. AMD will NOT be happy about this.
Also remember that the Opteron will be running at MUCH higher clock speeds upon release. I'd guess above the 2GHz range for sure, but AMD doesn't want anybody to know that. This also suggests that this lil' 800MHz sample could be very overclockable.
This is AMD's weapon that can really take a LOT of market share. Microsoft already have a Windows XP build ported to the Opteron/x86-64 platform. The Opteron runs cooler, as well.
One thing that disappoints me - I have not seen ONE PCI64 slot on any of these test boards!! I hope that this'll be worked out before release.
Different tape formats have different tolerences. You'll find that DLT media can handle many more passes than DAT media can.
Perhaps we can consider DAT audio (or, perhaps even the horrible Philips DCC format) as a better comparision here.
As a big fan of both Apple and PC hardware, I find myself making a tough decision over the next two weeks.
Yes, I'm getting the Dell Inspiron 8200, but I'd absolutely love a PowerBook G4. It's just unfortunate that it doesn't do what I want it to do.
This thing's a desktop replacement for me. I use PCs everywhere. I'm one of the organisers of a large LANning event down here in Melbourne so I need to construct/test game server configs for a variety of games. I'm a Uni student and see less and less of my desktop PC. I play MP3s and watch files encoded in DIVX, while encoding these files is quite speedy on a G4, playback of MP3s, for example, can use over 20% with iTunes on my G3 400 PowerBook. Compare that to my PII 266 notebook which does it in about 3%. The G4s are more efficient, but over 10% on a G4 500 is hardly what I'd call efficient. I can't play DIVX on the G3 400 without it struggling - the PII 266 does a better job.
I don't use Photoshop, so that argument bites the dust. My game of choice - Tribes 2 - won't run on any Mac hardware. I can't get a 1600x1200 LCD panel on a PowerBook, which can be a godsend when using X and ssh'ing into a bunch of servers - something I'm already used to.
Still, the PB G4s are fantastic machines, they look REALLY cool and run one of the nicest OS's I've ever used. It's just unfortunate that it doesn't do what I want it to do - it doesn't suit *me* and the stuff that *I* do.
However, for all those considering a new notebook, I do urge you to take a look at the G4 - if it does what you want it to do, I envy you.
The nVidia GeForce4Go 440 is basically a low power version of the GeForce4 MX 440 which lacks the vertex and pixel shading engines that the GeForce3 and the GF4 Ti series have. Since DOOM3 will make extensive use of these, we can probably expect a new GPU that's more in-line with high performance cards soon.
It's just a case of greed. Corporate greed and user greed. The OptusNet cable division has turned a profit for the first time, but they need more money to pay for the other bits of optus, so to speak, that run at a loss.
The users want more. Fair enough, people like me have become accustomed to the soft download limits we have previously had. We don't use the phonebook. I don't watch TV or listen to the radio. The Internet is everywhere, accessible anywhere in the house from the nearest PC or laptop with wireless card.
Compared to Telstra users, who are used to their 3GB/month cap, this is a major blow to our habits. This also affects the broadband acceptance in Australia - we've had all sorts of politicians and companies (even Bill Gates himself) tell us that our broadband is too expensive and inaccessible.
For Melbourne users, there is a group called Melbourne Digital and Wireless who are dedicated to building a community wireless network. Other states have the same (there are links on that page).
There is the Planet Mirror archive and the AARNet mirror site, which are both located on the AARNnet not-for-profit network, which is currently operated by Optus backbone-wise. It would be a good idea if we had unmetered traffic to these sites. Telstra may win me as a customer based on their mirror archive on GameArena.
They are. When OptusNet aquired the optus@home business after the partnership died, they upgraded the solaris based system to one centered around Linux.
The movie tickets I've got say that the session starts at 11:59PM on Wednesday night? I suppose this is cool because they show trailers and advertisments and so on and don't start the movie till later perhaps?
What people don't seem to realise is that each company (Sony Music and Sony Electronics) are TWO seperate entities. This is how things like this happen.
Mind you, I'm sure Sony Electronics are not thrilled at all about this. Not only would this not work in any of their VAIO systems, but it won't work with their "new-age" network enabled devices such as NetMD (they're pushing that high-speed transfer using a PC thing *very hard*) or their network/memory stick walkman.
I have an MD. I use PCs to listen to music. I've encoded my CDs because it's hellishly more convenient to play songs (and mix/match song mixes) on my PC as it is to switch CDs all the time. And it protects the CDs etc.
Remember the whole LP issue? Everybody recorded LPs onto tape. Did the RIAA complain? No.
Not only this, but each and every MP3 ripping group generally has a Linux person in it. The said Linux person is probably familiar with the environment and its tools to produce wave files.
These big rips find themselves onto audiogalaxy and other P2P sharing networks pretty damn fast.
THe end result is me needing to aquire the album in MP3 because I simply don't have means of playing it normally (i.e. I carry two laptops and an MD around - I don't have anything that plays CDs other than the DVD player in the HT setup which I don't carry with me on the go).
There seems to be a lot of talk about getting DVD apps to synch external audio sources with DVDs. While this seems like a quick fix, I prefer to watch DVDs on my home theatre system.
Is there some way to use a DVD authoring package to duplicate a DVD and add an extra soundtrack stream to it? DVDs already have multiple soundtracks for commentaries, other languages and different compression formats so I don't see why it wouldn't be possible to add one of your own.
Yes, but note the pricing. $3400 for the 23" display, $4500 for the Sun 24.1" screen (which I believe is a rebadged Samsung - I may be wrong here). Sure, you need a DVI -> ADC connector but they're not too expensive.
It's good to see that Apple's embracing the technology, giving it a greater chance of widespread adoption. Remember what Apple did for us with USB and Firewire?
:)
Now if only they had bluetooth support for the iPod, I'd be happy about not having to connect it up to the PC every time I wanted to transfer a file.
Having played with an iPod before and found that the sound is a bit try, the EQ is a welcome addition and was the one thing that didn't convince me to buy one over a NetMD-based walkman. Contact management is just damn cool, evidence that Apple listens to the community out there (remember that iPod contact hack?). Good work, Apple
I've had numerous hard drives fail and for numerous reasons.
My PC remains on 24/7. It gets switched off during power outages and for transportation to/from LAN party events, but other than that, it stays on all the time. I have *never* had a hard drive fail in this machine, mind you, I've always bought good qualtiy power supplies although I have never paid any real attention to cooling as I have seven hard drives in a full tower case, there's not much room for a fan!
My brother's got a small, average systen. His power supply died a year ago and ( I suspect) took a Quantum Fireball CX with it. 13GB of data is still there on the disk but the controller board stopped spinning the drive up, then the main IC decided to burn. The Australian distributor for Quantum told me that they would not replace the drive due to that fact. He also lost a Quantum 3.2GB disk in it which I've swapped controller boards on - it's a physical problem. He turns his PC on and off all the time.
My current PC has the following drives:
4x Seagate Barracuda IV 80GB ATA disks in RAID 0
1x IBM 75GXP 30GB (as primary boot drive)
1x Maxtor 60GB 5400RPM disk (bought a week after I got cable Internet almost two years ago).
The IBM drive has been flawless although I back-up frequently. The Maxtor drive has also been fantastic, although you'll find that the 5400s are more reliable than the 7200s these days. The Seagates have been fine, too, and while the IBM outperforms them, they're silent and solid.
The point here is that hard drives seem to prefer 24/7 operation than being powered on/off every day. By spinning these drives up and down, you not only increase the chances of a head crash but you place more strain on the drive.
On topic, I've had several friends who have had their IBM drives die on me. Some are in 24/7 machines, others in desktop machines with low usage. It's interesting to note that I know two people who have had 75GB 75GXP drive and both have had theirs replaced, one of them twice. I know three people who have had 45GB drives fail on them. I know one person who's had a 30GB drive fail on them. I don't know anybody who's had the 20GB or 15GB models fail.
Mind you, i know a LOT of people who have the 30 and 45GB variants. So it seems tbat it's related to the amount of disk platters in the drive. More platters = more heat. So cooling seems to be the culprit here.
What bothers me, is that I recently suggested an 80GB drive to a friend, a 120GXP series drive. Now that IBM have announced their little limitation, I'm now going to look VERY bad in the eyes of that friend. Sigh.
The last thing I wish to mention is with regards to my Seagate 80GB drives. These drives underperform a single drive when placed in a RAID 0 configuration. While this bothers me, Seagate have offered a refund for their drives apparently. Pity Seagate won't admit to it publically, so it's not just IBM who are doing this sort of thing...
.t
I recall a Microsoft Windows 95 ("Chicago") demonstration in March of 1995. They were claiming (and I've got magazines and books to prove it) that the new Windows NT 4.0 beast (then called 'Cairo' and was planned as the next version of NT but it became 5.0) would include an object oriented filesystem.
.net. I'll believe it when I see it.
I was expecting it in NT 5.0 (after they decided not to release NT4 with FAT32 and full PnP/multimedia) but it never came. XP? Yep, expected it to be there, too. It's not going to be there in
Microsoft have always wanted to replace NTFS with an OO-based FS. Probably to get away from HPFS (IBM's OS/2 32bit FS, where NTFS was derived from) more than anything. Heh.
Tribes has to be one of my fav. games for team play. It's mature and as long as your PC supports some sort of SIMD instructions (AMD's 3dnow or Intel's SSE, meaning K6-2 or P3 and better) it'll run fine.
A lot of the tribes 2 community still play the original Tribes game.
The thing with audio is that choice is very personal. Not everybody has the same ear, not everybody has the same music listening tastes and only few people have a large wallet.
I'm the sort of person who can walk into a HiFi store and casually listen to loudspeakers, amplifiers, decoders, preamps, receivers and what not with very high price tags. Although I can only dream about one day owning some of the more expensive stuff out there, price doesn't always mean it's better. I've heard speakers with five figure price tags that I've been quite unhappy with.
I'm not a big headphone listener. I've heard the HD495s (been very impressed with them) and a few other models that I've not been too happy with but I really don't remember the model number (HD500 series, unsure which ones). I've got a pair of Sony MDR-E888 earbud headphones which I use with my Sony MZ-R91 MD walkman. They suit the task well, are very clear and well defined on middle and high frequencies but lack a bit of intensity on very low frequencies.
Sennheiser make fantastic headphones. I can't say I've heard the Sony high end series but I haven't been impressed with any of their loudspeakers. If I had the need for a good set of headphones, I'd probably go for the 495s.
Minidiscs are fantastic. Pity my R91 no longer records and has trouble reading some discs now, but you get that. Bought it in April 2000 and have used it literally every day since. It goes wherever I go.
As for the realtime bit, perhaps your next MD unit should be NetMD compatible (USB transfer) - there'll be some info over at minidisc.org
-t.
That's in Sydney, by the way. Melbourne, where I live, it got up to 20 degrees today celsius, tomorrow, a top of 21 and showers. This is summer, or supposed to be, and the coldest December we've ever had in Melbourne on record.
It feels weird to have such a cool Christmas. I'm used to opening presents and putting on tree decorations in 30+ degrees.
Simple idea for them.
We know how popular domains such as "to.us", "r.us", "are.us" and so on will be just from the response here.
These domains will go first.
If they charged, say, $10,000 for any domain sold within the first month, I'm sure they'll go a lot slower. The registrar will make a small fortune and the companies will finally start having to pay for their domain. After all, they'll almost certainly have something in the com/net/org namespace.
If you're going to jump in and say that the companies with the dollars are getting an unfair advantage, well, think of it this way. The companies will get their domains anyway, and if they don't, I'm sure they'll sue whoever for "trademark infringement".
Otherwise some private squatter will register half the namespace and make a fortune on their own greed.
boo to DNS, let's go back to using numbers and a phone book-like directory.
This illustrates the importance of non-rooting. While this is an installer script and installer scripts are mostly run as root anyway, we can cut down on the amount of data loss if we test everything without root so we don't lose -everything- in the case of a booboo.
I rarely listen to CDs as a CD. The first thing I do when I buy one is rip it and encode it on my hard drive - it's a lot easier managing a collection of music on a hard drive than it is on a CD rack - especially when I want to do a playlist.
When I go out, I take my mindisc walkman with me. Almost all my CDs have been dubbed to MD.
Now, if you can play it in a modern CD/DVD player that has digital out, what's stopping someone from duplicating it? It may be "rip-proof" but nothing's stopping you from running a digital cable from the CD/DVD player to a sound card (and what's really neat about sound cards is they have a tendency to strip the SDMS copy protect bit...).
THis will only prevent high-speed dubbing of the disc (mind you, I'd be interested to see whether Sony will jump on the bandwagon when they start releasing their NetMD products which promote the use of computers for high speed transfer via USB from CD as well as MP3/WAV/etc).
Yes, but *how soon* is IPv6 coming? It'll only become mainstream when all the mainstream systems (i.e. Windows) will support it out of the box. It's all still experimental.-
One word. Investment.
I've got loads of PC hardware. I live and breathe the stuff. I've also got an old PowerMac 7500/100 and even if I were to get a G3 upgrade, the outdated motherboard is still not supported by OS X. I'm not about to chuck it all and get a new Mac.
It's FreeBSD with a GUI and a nice selection of industry-supported and backed applications. How easy would it be to port them BACK to x86 and other platforms? It's quite literally, my dream OS. X is cool but has always felt unfinished to me. I'd like apps, native and with industry backing and support.
The hardware that Apple has, although expensive, is rock solid. I'm happy they've moved over to standards like Ultra ATA and even using PC133 SDRAM in their new G4s - something you can get at your local PC store. Even Gigabit ethernet integrated into these machines has been a huge surprise. I've played with lots of networking stuff but seen few Gigabit NICs, especially in workstations.
Their hardware is expensive. I currently run a well stocked P933 with ample storage and 512MB RAM. I have no need for an upgrade in the immediate future.
There is no way I'm going to abandon the PC platform and get a Mac. I haven't got the thousands (in AU$) to throw around at a new platform. However, I am certain that if someone were to give me a G4 at no cost, my P3 933 would quickly become just anothet seti cruncher. I'd probably move my storage into the G4 along with the RAM. It's a great platform and I would probably convert to it almost purely based on the OS.
Will they learn from Sun? I've worked at an ISP where they standardised on Solaris in some older Pentium Pro machines. They loved the OS and support. Their next machine? A geniune Sun box. Nothing high end but it ran the OS much more efficiently. If they hadn't used Solaris on Intel machines, they'd probably have ignored the platform altogether.
Some people don't WANT to invest thousands of dollars into Sun hardware just as I don't feel like ditching everything and going Apple.
Luckily, I'm in the market for a new notebook and will consider the G4 powerbook as one of my options. I just wish I'd have more experience with the OS X platform before throwing thousands at it.
For the record, the 7500 was a freebie that I got from a friend.