All of these years continuing to drag their feet on licensing simplification, removal of extraneous licensing requirements like morse code knowledge, and continuing to protect bandwidth for ancient modes while limiting bandwidth for newer modes . ..
The Morse code leniency is somewhat a religious debate right now. I personally believe that removing it is a good thing for the entry-level Technician license, and those who feel so inclined can take the Technicial+ license for Morse code, and get some extra privilidges with it.
As far as ancient modes, is digital network packets not new enough for you? HAM is the place for tinkerers to try out new techniques. I bet quite a few of the pioneers of electronics devices started out as kids using ham as a hobby.
Adapt or die, baby. Auction 'em off, I say - and good riddance...
And let the greedy megacorporations make hand-over-fist in money by monopolizing the radio frequencies? Then we'll let their corrupt execs run our economy into the ground countless times, causing layoffs to a lot of us, while they have total control over the airwaves that flow around and above our homes.
And in the event of emergencies, we'll just let the corporations to convey our essential emergency communications for us... I'm sure they'll be very reliable in this respect. I'm sure a big earthquake or hurricane won't knock out everything they have and that there will be plenty of electricity around to run their transmitters and repeaters.
P.S. The anti-government wackos who seemed to be the more vocal inhabitants of the ham bands didn't help endear you to the powers-that-be, either.
There's nothing anti-governmental about it. Ham operators for the most part help preserve a very vital medium for keeping our citizens safe and preserving our liberties. The First Amendment does apply here, since the government would be involved in taking away the frequencies.
Generally based on Maltin's ratings, here is the empirical formula to a successful new Star Trek movie:
Directed by Frakes.
Story and executive production by Nimoy.
Keep Shatner the heck away from the set.
Keep it fast and not too much dialog.
Bring in Whoopi again.
Throw in some Klingons and Borg.
Music by Jerry Goldsmith.
What about Q?
And at last but not least, for the last half of the movie, turn it into a comedy where the crew goes back to the 20th Century with the help of dolphins and Lassie to help save Wil Wheaton's career by coercing him not to accept the role in the series. Suddenly, a disruption in the time-space continuoum causes Richard Simmons to suddenly replace Wil Wheaton in all the series and movies, and the whole thing was just an aerobic workout video to begin with.
Maybe I'm an idiot but why not just copy all the files from a windows install?
Ach, mein lebe, these fine folk want to be able to install RTCW directly from Linux and not have to boot up into a Windows partition to play it. Think about it, "RTCW for Linux" should really mean that, and not "RTCW for Linux through Windows".
Here's a lame analogy: If you want to go down the street one block, don't take the ferry across the river and a bus back across the bridge to get there. Just walk down one block.:p
Alright, my bad.;) Your post was certainly more informative than the original post trying to explain why 12 blades would make the frequency 12 times as much.
With the cost of legally buying software products from the United States and Europe, and with piracy being a very attractive option to Saudis (and citizens of any other country), of course these corporations are willing to donate blocking software to ISPs. It's in their best interest, especially if they are funded by large software corporations like Microsoft.
Notice how most business and Windows software boxes say "Not for Export". Microsoft sells special localized software to regions such as the Middle East. And guess what, it's more expensive. Big surprise there. And because of this, piracy is a really big problem. Nobody (except the rich princes) is going to spend almost twice as much on their operating system. This is unfair, really. It's the same sort of control that the MPAA has over movies distributed internationally, with price-fixing and such.
If anything, this should end up promoting open source to these parts of the world. I'm sure there are plenty people who said: "Screw paying Windows, I'm installing Linux." We already have this widespread sentiment in the U.S., where Windows is cheapest. This sentiment is probably amplified elsewhere.
Your calculation would be accurate if the turbine had only 1 blade. Since it has 12, there are actually 12 oscillations in air pressure for every single rotation... 40kHz * 12.
Wrong. Each blade rotates at 40kHz, which is a frequency. Just because there are 12 blades doesn't mean that the frequency (pitch) increases.
Think of an orchestra. If 50 violins played the exact same note, does that mean that the frequency of the note is Note * 50? Nope. The amplitude of the sound waves just become greater. This is called volume.
Therefore, 12 blades on a fan spinning at 40kHz creates a noise 12 times as strong (roughly) as a single blade.
I think this is a better proposal, particularly because it doesn't allow Microsoft to advertise itself as much. Think about it, Microsoft giving away its operating system (with a computer) for free to schools is basically advertising; they're paying the school (in-directly) to use their software, where the payment is a free computer and license for Windows. How is this supposed to be an acceptable settlement for those opposing Microsoft's illegal monopoly?
If Microsoft gave something tangible away such as hardware with no strings attached to what operating system must be installed on them, then I think the settlement would be more fair to competition such as RedHat. Microsoft needs to prove that competition can viably exist, not the other way around, in order to achieve a settlement.
Now, I'm not sure that RedHat should be the only company in on the agreement. This smells of opportunism. Like I said, whomever gets this deal is effectively advertising to the school children and teachers. What about making Microsoft pay for some iMacs too?
I've only played the multiplayer demo (both versions so far) and haven't gotten the full release game yet. It ran pretty well on my 900MHz Athlon w/ a GeForce DDR card in Win2k. I remember reading in some preview articles that RTC Wolfenstein was supposed to tax systems pretty well, but I haven't observed this yet. I've only had slowdowns with the demo when leiutenants throw airstrikes, the explosions do hell on my system.
Although, the characters are supposed to be much more detailed in the full version, especially in single-player mode--I'm assuming that they may leave character models less complex for multiplayer mode for better performance, although I can't confirm this yet.
But overall, it looks like it'll perform pretty well. And there's always the details settings to adjust for slower systems. I know one game that'll really spank all current systems will be Doom 3.:P
I can't wait to play. The flame thrower is a wicked weapon, but Kingpin did it first to my knowledge.
Actually, there was a flame-thrower Blood (and Blood 2?). There was also a flame-thrower in the Mac version of Wolfenstein 3D (so it's really the second time it's appeared in a Wolfenstein game). Not quite the same fancy effects as in RTC Wolfenstein or Kingpin, but...;)
Can I hear a "Mein Leibin!" (I think that is how it's spelled).
It's "mein leben," which means "my life" (i.e., my life is leaving me).
....for that price I can buy two. One to use and one to hold up the low end of the couch!
I think this should be modded as "Funny", unless someone really considers the fact that MrWinkey's couch is low on one end being an insightful piece of information to them.:P
Let me get this straight. ATI takes the time to create optimizations in their drivers that make Quake III run faster, and people are unhappy about it?
[snip]
Maybe I'm wrong, and folks just haven't taken the time to think about this issue and instead are reacting w/o understanding. Frankly, I'm not sure which thought depresses me more.
I agree with your last paragraph. You need to understand what you're talking about before you make assumptions. Take a look at some of the graphics quality comparisons between the original and quack executable names for Quake 3. It's pretty damn obvious that ATi forced some reduced visual settings (which are normally settable by the user in-game) in order to gain extra FPS, which is really really bad. ATi is causing uneven visual quality when compared to a GeForce at better image quality in order to get better benchmark scores.
It's not the job of the graphics card manufacturers to dictate visual qualities; benchmarkers will benchmark each game with the same settings (when available) for all cards. When the reviewer loses control of these settings, the benchmarks become tainted and meaningless, and become just a tool for ATi marketing.
Just showing the love-story part of the movie hardly is revealing the plot of the movie. But I have a feeling that we're in for a big surprise when the movie comes around in May. Getting to see the Clone Wars in action will definately be a treat, in a war of Jedi against Mandalorians (the race whom Boba Fett's armor originates), Jedi against Dark Jedi, etc.
To me, the Clone Wars is the ultimate climax of the Star Wars Universe. Luke defeating Vader pales in comparison.
Re:It's called HUMOR guys
on
XBox Released
·
· Score: 2
Come on. The comment was a joke.
Yeah, kinda odd. At Slashdot, of all places, I would get my comment modded to Flamebait just for cracking a joke about MS.;P
Heck, I'm just as big of an MS consumer as anyone else. I own probably easily $2,000 of MS products over the past few years. Does that preclude me from being able to make fun of them? Would being an American citizen preclude someone from making fun of their president?
Whatever...
No more BSOD
on
XBox Released
·
· Score: 1, Flamebait
Microsoft has actually done something to guarantee against getting a Blue Screen of Death on their XBox systems.
I doubt this model would work. If one is an avid enough reader of a particular website, chances are that they are willing to play a flat monthly fee for access to their "premium" content.
Now, perhaps the penny-per-page model would work as a trial model, where potential customers can try out your website by viewing a few pages (with some minimal rate, like $2), and then decide whether it's worth playing the flat rate (which is cheaper in the long run, but guarantees the site owner a cashflow from that individual). Loyal customers will not appreciate being charged for the actual amount of content they use.
Take a look at print media, for instance. If you pick up a newspaper or magazine at a store/kiosk, you're paying the list price for it. You know you are paying more, but aren't quite sure yet if it's worth signing up for a one-year subscription. Then when you do decide that a subscription is worth it, you can get the magazine or newspaper at a discounted rate. The number of pages between each issue can vary, as can the quality of the content. But that's okay, you're not paying for individual pages, but the whole issue. You can read whatever articles you are interested in and skip over the rest. Or you may get bored one day while on the bus and read the rest of the articles you normally don't read. It's your decision, and you're not forced to pay for your unique reading habit.
Yes, I know that the Internet is supposed to be different, but there are some fundamentals that are carried over from print media that influences how people use the Web, especially since almost everybody surfing the Web is familiar with how other non-Internet markets work. They'll know that they are getting ripped off just by comparing a Web site to their favorite magazine or newspaper.
The amd engineers made it much harder this time. This is 100x harder to do than just connect them with a standard graphite pencil, like the T-Birds.
Actually, AMD's engineers didn't do anything specifically to make overclocking Athlons harder. Converting from the hard ceramic processors to newer organic grid array, for economic reasons, causes the laser cutting of the bridges to make deeper pits. It looks like they probably used the original laser power initially, since the first batch of Athlon XPs had large, charred pits, while newer batches have smaller, cleaner pits.
<humor>I just hope they use soap and deoderant to clean their pits.</humor>
Man, you can't get me to revert back to dial-up modems. I've waited so long just to dump the unreliable, slow, and randomely-disconnecting devices for a better solution for a home Internet connection. I have AT&T Mediaone cable, and it works great. I can download stuff at 177KB/sec every night, while I was lucky to download at 3KB/sec with a 56k modem that only connected at 28.8kbps because of the line noise.
I've used modems in about 6 different locations around the country; out of these, only 1 place yielded a connection speed greater than 50k. On average, I've experienced connection speeds of 24k. Then factor in the extra packet latencies from having such a narrower pipeline to the ISP, and download speeds will never actually reach 24k, not even close. Then count all the extra bloat that Web pages have nowadays, which are designed for broadband connections for the most part, which is enough to make a normal person go insane and jump out the window.
No sir-reee... I ain't dumping my broadband for nuttin'.
It comes into play now when you buy a new super fast computer and 6 months later its starting to look a little slugish compared to the newest models... you then overclock it and it will be as good as new again. Until you have to buy a new mobo/cpu to get the newest tech that is.
A couple of problems with this.
First, computers are hardly getting sluggish after a few months. Before the Athlon/PIII era, new processors actually were significantly faster than their prior versions/ratings, especially with Windows and software bloating almost faster than the hardware. We now see a general levelling off of software bloat, with certain games as an exception, while hardware is only getting better at small percentages. My 900MHz Athlon, which I got almost a year ago, performs admirably well in all my applications, and can even play the latest games just fine.
Secondly, as the previous poster mentioned, you can't overclock newer processors as much. The older Celeron varieties were underclocked in order to make a big dent in the economy PC market, and overclocked by as much as 100% or more for many people. Pretty much all processors released now are close to their yield. Intel and AMD are ramping out processors as fast as they can make them, there's no time to underclock the processors, especially when it won't result in any market gains.
With current processors, we can't just simply overclock it by any significant amount when they start to appear "sluggish" compared to newer ones. And just buy a new processor, it'll cost less than a watercooler kit.:P
Generally speaking, with current economic conditions, I'd say that it's a pretty good time to buy up some shares of tech companies like Transmeta. True, a stock at $1.75 can stand to lose even more value, and can result in a high percentage loss in value in the short run at "bad" case. And in "ugly" case, the stock could just be removed from NASDAQ. Given NASDAQ's commitment towards helping out companies in the slumping economy, I would gander to say that Transmeta will not be removed from the stock market when they fall below the minimum value.
Unless you are a day trader, this shouldn't pose a problem. There is an element of risk involved, especially when investing in the short run. Looking in the long run, however, one can stand to make a great return on their investment. Transmeta isn't done; they have newer processors planned. Manufacturers have thus far only focused on the low-power properties of the Crusoe, and not very much has happened with the code morphing, which is evident from the C|Net article. Code morphing is a potential technology; when companies realize the value of it, then you will see manufacturers flocking over it rather than dropping it like a bad dream.
Considering that most of Transmeta's research over the past few years have been on concepts such as code morphing, and considering that Intel and AMD haven't been researching this venue, Transmeta would therefore have the lead in such a category for quite a while. The only question is: when will companies realize the value of this technology?
Note: I am not an analyst nor an investor (no money here). Feel free to take my argument with a grain of salt.
I knew that I wanted to build a machine that would be able to play games very well, and look nice, but since I didn't want to totally break the bank on doing it, I decided to go with some lower-cost components in part.
$2000 is hardly considered cheap, especially for your gaming purposes (mostly 2D games on Win98). You can easily get this system down to around $1000 if you try harder, and have equivalent noise levels.
First of all, PC Power & Cooling is some high quality stuff, but too expensive. I've found that CPU coolers are way too expensive for what you get. Go with a nice Alpha heatsink with a 60mm Sanyo Denki fan, which is really quiet.
PC Power & Cooling power supplies are very good, but going with a 400W is a bit much. You can probably make your own "Ultraquiet" power supply from another brand like Enermax or Sparkle, and replace the fan with a 80mm Sanyo Denki fan. A 300W should be sufficient.
The case is definately cool, so I guess it's okay to splurge there. But $200+ is a bit much.
Corsair memory, although one of the best, is overpriced. Get Crucial instead (even directly from their own web site), for much cheaper, and comparable quality.
In general, IBM drives are not well-known for being quiet. I don't know about the 40GV, but many models I've seen lately were loud on access. IBM's data sheet only shows idle noise, but I know on access these drive make loud crunching sounds. I know Maxtor's DiamondMax drives are a bit quieter on accessing, and there are other brands and models that are quiet.
GeForce3, for the games you listed? Go GeForce2 MX or something instead. Or GeForce Titanium.
Soundblaster Live Platinum: You Spent Too Much. There are other front panel products out there.
Negatory. I do IT consulting for a huge company and they have no plans to move to XP anytime in the next three years, much less six months.
Then I doubt this company is aware of Microsoft's "expiration" plans for its older operating system like Windows NT 4.0. For one thing, volume discounts will no longer be available, so any companies buying new computers from OEM vendors will be bundled with Windows XP. Supposedly this was supposed to begin happening on October 1st.
Microsoft is offering the ability to "downgrade" from an XP license to an older operating system without additional costs, for a while. By the end of June next year, Microsoft will reduce their technical support for Windows NT 4.0 and will be more costly to run. Then, all forms of support for NT4 will be cut off in 2003.
For individuals, this isn't much of an issue. But for big corporations running thousands of workstations and hundreds of servers, running obsolete Microsoft operating systems, and expecting support for them, will become prohibitively expensive.
So - you REALLY think that all the corporate people who waited to see if Win2k was stable enough to use are going to go out in droves all of a sudden & snap up XP? Please -
Not in droves, no. What I said was within about 6 months for WinXP sales to beat Win98SE, ME, and Win2k sales. A lot of businesses have halted planned Win2k deployments to wait for today's release, so that they can test it. Many corporations have already said (in news articles by CNet and such) that they will probably end up deploying WinXP when the first service pack is released sometime in early 2002.
Slashdot Mirror
As far as ancient modes, is digital network packets not new enough for you? HAM is the place for tinkerers to try out new techniques. I bet quite a few of the pioneers of electronics devices started out as kids using ham as a hobby.
And let the greedy megacorporations make hand-over-fist in money by monopolizing the radio frequencies? Then we'll let their corrupt execs run our economy into the ground countless times, causing layoffs to a lot of us, while they have total control over the airwaves that flow around and above our homes.And in the event of emergencies, we'll just let the corporations to convey our essential emergency communications for us... I'm sure they'll be very reliable in this respect. I'm sure a big earthquake or hurricane won't knock out everything they have and that there will be plenty of electricity around to run their transmitters and repeaters.
There's nothing anti-governmental about it. Ham operators for the most part help preserve a very vital medium for keeping our citizens safe and preserving our liberties. The First Amendment does apply here, since the government would be involved in taking away the frequencies.- Directed by Frakes.
- Story and executive production by Nimoy.
- Keep Shatner the heck away from the set.
- Keep it fast and not too much dialog.
- Bring in Whoopi again.
- Throw in some Klingons and Borg.
- Music by Jerry Goldsmith.
- What about Q?
- And at last but not least, for the last half of the movie, turn it into a comedy where the crew goes back to the 20th Century with the help of dolphins and Lassie to help save Wil Wheaton's career by coercing him not to accept the role in the series. Suddenly, a disruption in the time-space continuoum causes Richard Simmons to suddenly replace Wil Wheaton in all the series and movies, and the whole thing was just an aerobic workout video to begin with.
What do you think?Here's a lame analogy: If you want to go down the street one block, don't take the ferry across the river and a bus back across the bridge to get there. Just walk down one block. :p
Alright, my bad. ;) Your post was certainly more informative than the original post trying to explain why 12 blades would make the frequency 12 times as much.
Notice how most business and Windows software boxes say "Not for Export". Microsoft sells special localized software to regions such as the Middle East. And guess what, it's more expensive. Big surprise there. And because of this, piracy is a really big problem. Nobody (except the rich princes) is going to spend almost twice as much on their operating system. This is unfair, really. It's the same sort of control that the MPAA has over movies distributed internationally, with price-fixing and such.
If anything, this should end up promoting open source to these parts of the world. I'm sure there are plenty people who said: "Screw paying Windows, I'm installing Linux." We already have this widespread sentiment in the U.S., where Windows is cheapest. This sentiment is probably amplified elsewhere.
Think of an orchestra. If 50 violins played the exact same note, does that mean that the frequency of the note is Note * 50? Nope. The amplitude of the sound waves just become greater. This is called volume.
Therefore, 12 blades on a fan spinning at 40kHz creates a noise 12 times as strong (roughly) as a single blade.
If Microsoft gave something tangible away such as hardware with no strings attached to what operating system must be installed on them, then I think the settlement would be more fair to competition such as RedHat. Microsoft needs to prove that competition can viably exist, not the other way around, in order to achieve a settlement.
Now, I'm not sure that RedHat should be the only company in on the agreement. This smells of opportunism. Like I said, whomever gets this deal is effectively advertising to the school children and teachers. What about making Microsoft pay for some iMacs too?
Although, the characters are supposed to be much more detailed in the full version, especially in single-player mode--I'm assuming that they may leave character models less complex for multiplayer mode for better performance, although I can't confirm this yet.
But overall, it looks like it'll perform pretty well. And there's always the details settings to adjust for slower systems. I know one game that'll really spank all current systems will be Doom 3. :P
But then again, what do I know...?
It's not the job of the graphics card manufacturers to dictate visual qualities; benchmarkers will benchmark each game with the same settings (when available) for all cards. When the reviewer loses control of these settings, the benchmarks become tainted and meaningless, and become just a tool for ATi marketing.
The irony. :P
To me, the Clone Wars is the ultimate climax of the Star Wars Universe. Luke defeating Vader pales in comparison.
Heck, I'm just as big of an MS consumer as anyone else. I own probably easily $2,000 of MS products over the past few years. Does that preclude me from being able to make fun of them? Would being an American citizen preclude someone from making fun of their president?
Whatever...
It's now the Green Screen of Death. :P
Now, perhaps the penny-per-page model would work as a trial model, where potential customers can try out your website by viewing a few pages (with some minimal rate, like $2), and then decide whether it's worth playing the flat rate (which is cheaper in the long run, but guarantees the site owner a cashflow from that individual). Loyal customers will not appreciate being charged for the actual amount of content they use.
Take a look at print media, for instance. If you pick up a newspaper or magazine at a store/kiosk, you're paying the list price for it. You know you are paying more, but aren't quite sure yet if it's worth signing up for a one-year subscription. Then when you do decide that a subscription is worth it, you can get the magazine or newspaper at a discounted rate. The number of pages between each issue can vary, as can the quality of the content. But that's okay, you're not paying for individual pages, but the whole issue. You can read whatever articles you are interested in and skip over the rest. Or you may get bored one day while on the bus and read the rest of the articles you normally don't read. It's your decision, and you're not forced to pay for your unique reading habit.
Yes, I know that the Internet is supposed to be different, but there are some fundamentals that are carried over from print media that influences how people use the Web, especially since almost everybody surfing the Web is familiar with how other non-Internet markets work. They'll know that they are getting ripped off just by comparing a Web site to their favorite magazine or newspaper.
<humor>I just hope they use soap and deoderant to clean their pits.</humor>
I've used modems in about 6 different locations around the country; out of these, only 1 place yielded a connection speed greater than 50k. On average, I've experienced connection speeds of 24k. Then factor in the extra packet latencies from having such a narrower pipeline to the ISP, and download speeds will never actually reach 24k, not even close. Then count all the extra bloat that Web pages have nowadays, which are designed for broadband connections for the most part, which is enough to make a normal person go insane and jump out the window.
No sir-reee... I ain't dumping my broadband for nuttin'.
Secondly, as the previous poster mentioned, you can't overclock newer processors as much. The older Celeron varieties were underclocked in order to make a big dent in the economy PC market, and overclocked by as much as 100% or more for many people. Pretty much all processors released now are close to their yield. Intel and AMD are ramping out processors as fast as they can make them, there's no time to underclock the processors, especially when it won't result in any market gains.
With current processors, we can't just simply overclock it by any significant amount when they start to appear "sluggish" compared to newer ones. And just buy a new processor, it'll cost less than a watercooler kit. :P
I don't know either, I don't understand. ;)
Unless you are a day trader, this shouldn't pose a problem. There is an element of risk involved, especially when investing in the short run. Looking in the long run, however, one can stand to make a great return on their investment. Transmeta isn't done; they have newer processors planned. Manufacturers have thus far only focused on the low-power properties of the Crusoe, and not very much has happened with the code morphing, which is evident from the C|Net article. Code morphing is a potential technology; when companies realize the value of it, then you will see manufacturers flocking over it rather than dropping it like a bad dream.
Considering that most of Transmeta's research over the past few years have been on concepts such as code morphing, and considering that Intel and AMD haven't been researching this venue, Transmeta would therefore have the lead in such a category for quite a while. The only question is: when will companies realize the value of this technology?
Note: I am not an analyst nor an investor (no money here). Feel free to take my argument with a grain of salt.
First of all, PC Power & Cooling is some high quality stuff, but too expensive. I've found that CPU coolers are way too expensive for what you get. Go with a nice Alpha heatsink with a 60mm Sanyo Denki fan, which is really quiet.
PC Power & Cooling power supplies are very good, but going with a 400W is a bit much. You can probably make your own "Ultraquiet" power supply from another brand like Enermax or Sparkle, and replace the fan with a 80mm Sanyo Denki fan. A 300W should be sufficient.
The case is definately cool, so I guess it's okay to splurge there. But $200+ is a bit much.
Corsair memory, although one of the best, is overpriced. Get Crucial instead (even directly from their own web site), for much cheaper, and comparable quality.
In general, IBM drives are not well-known for being quiet. I don't know about the 40GV, but many models I've seen lately were loud on access. IBM's data sheet only shows idle noise, but I know on access these drive make loud crunching sounds. I know Maxtor's DiamondMax drives are a bit quieter on accessing, and there are other brands and models that are quiet.
GeForce3, for the games you listed? Go GeForce2 MX or something instead. Or GeForce Titanium.
Soundblaster Live Platinum: You Spent Too Much. There are other front panel products out there.
Yada yada yada.
Microsoft is offering the ability to "downgrade" from an XP license to an older operating system without additional costs, for a while. By the end of June next year, Microsoft will reduce their technical support for Windows NT 4.0 and will be more costly to run. Then, all forms of support for NT4 will be cut off in 2003.
For individuals, this isn't much of an issue. But for big corporations running thousands of workstations and hundreds of servers, running obsolete Microsoft operating systems, and expecting support for them, will become prohibitively expensive.
That would fit within my 6-month time frame.