And yet, you can run, say, DOS on all of those computers. Critical devices will support a "generic" instruction set. Any VGA card will support standard VGA instructions, disk drives can be accessed using standard IDE interface (SATA controllers can emulate it). SCSI drives can be accessed using INT13h, the controller BIOS takes care of it. Keyboard/mouse use one of the few interfaces (and USB can emulate PS/2).
Now, when you get the basic system running, you can load drivers to access all of the features of the hardware (for example, different resolutions of the VGA card).
For ARM you have to recompile the kernel for most of the chips and boards for it to even boot. So, how would you create a way to install an operating system from me media not using another PC?
I have a Fujitsu Primergy N400 (old, I know), the POST takes quite long - it initializes RAM (6 seconds for every GB, so 10GB = 1 minute) then slowly tests the memory. With 9GB RAM it takes about 10 minutes in POST. alone.
The CD/DVD read head is kept really close to the disk, the lens also has to be able to move to change the focus, it is usually held in place by a magnetic field. A small chock can bend whatever is holding the head away from the disk and/or move the lens out of place and hit the disk.
The read/write head of a hard drive is kept much closer to the disk, but by a very fast stream of air instead of a mechanical part. The head is essentially flying over the disk. While the distance is smaller, the shock required to reduce it to zero is greater.
In addition, some laptop hard drives sense when they are being dropped, suspend all read/write operations and move the head away from the disk to the ramp that heads go to when the drive is turned off. CD/DVD drives are too slow for that.
When the head hits the disk it makes a circular scratch in both cases, since the medium is spinning and the head is stationary.
My grandfather rarely crashed ecause he drove carefully, even when he was 81.
Google says: 15 mph = 24.14016 km/h
Going 24 km/h over the limit would get you a fine (up to about 87EUR). You are also more likely to crash because now everybody else is going at least 24 km/h slower. OTOH, driving 24km/h slower can be better or worse depending where you are. In a city, going 26m/h instead of the allowed 50 would probably be bad as you would be creating traffic jams, especially on single lane streets. On a two lane highway, going 76 or 106 instead of the allowed 100 or 130 would most likely be OK, since everyone else can easily pass you.
reality indicates that the faster you are going, the less likely you are to be in the crash in the first place.
For some reason most of the big crashes happen because the driver was drunk or was talking/texting on his cellphone without hands-free equipment or was going too fast and went out of control. Or some combination of the three. If you drive faster than everyone else on the road you will have to pass them, this probably increases the probability of a crash, especially on single lane roads.
Well, assuming the software is perfect and is not similar to the modern software that is full of bugs, needs to be updated once a month or more frequently and still does not work as expected. Oh, and if the cars are networked, I really hope that the network is more secure than the one Sony has and cannot be hacked at all.
In my experience, currently, people can do hardware quite well, but software sucks. Hardware wears out over time, software shouldn't, but I have to update it quite often (and should stop using it when the version no longer receives support and updates), while I do not have to replace the hardware that often and can use hardware that is way past the warranty period.
However, I doubt that human drivers will be banned (human pilots are not banned and planes had autopilot before cars). The reason is that the process of replacing humans with AI will not happen overnight it will be gradual (people buying robot cars for convenience when their current car breaks and is uneconomical to repair), so the robots would have to be able to coexist with human drivers to be allowed on the road. If that's the case, then there would be no pressing need to ban human drivers.
As for your 210km/h - well, maybe it would be safer than now, but it would still be even more safe at lower speeds (since the result of, say, a brake failure would be pretty much the same).
BTW planes and trains at least are highly automated.
Planes are also heavily controlled, that is, you need to get permission to take of, fly at a certain altitude, land and so on. Trains are, well, on tracks, not much control there - just forward, stop, reverse. They also are controlled by dispatch, like planes.
Cars have more freedoms of movement than trains but are not controller. There are traffic rules, but not everyone respects them, people forget to turn on (or off) the turning signals, do not let you go first even though the law says you can, drive even though the red light is on etc. So, a robot car will require much more complex AI than a robot plane or train.
Since you get more injured if you were going faster before the crash, the robot driver would still have to go at a safe speed. Even it you are paying attention you can crash - something in thecar breaks and makes it uncontrollable, someone else hits you etc.
And still maybe other people would choose differently. For example, if my grandfather was given the option I think he would have chosen to be infected with the real HIV instead of dying from cancer.
When I play a game, I only play that game and do not do anything else with the PC (though some programs would still be running) while I play it.
When I browse the web, I usually also listen to music have other software running (maybe word/excel to write down the information I find or whatever), so while a game can get away with using all resources on my PC, if a web browser did that, I would have to use a second PC for those other programs, which would be less convenient.
90% is probably the piracy rate of everything. However, what you need to ask is out of those 90%, how many would have bought the game is the pirated version was not available. My guess is vast majority of them would just pirate some other game if WoG was not available. I know because I do this (though I did not pirate WoG, nor did I buy it). I usually go something like this: 1. Oh, a new (previously unknown to me) game that I might like, let's see it it can be played on PC as I do not have a console. 2. Good, it can, let's go to TPB. 3. If it is available, download, if not, choose a different game and goto 1.
Yes, I sometimes buy games, but rarely and only if the price is less then 15EUR and I feel like I should support the developers (which means mostly indie games, not games from huge corporations, to buy one of those the price needs to be less than 9EUR).
I'm probably alone, but I rather like the new UI. Reminds me of Chrome.
And I hate it for the same reason (that is, I hate Chrome-style UI). I have a big monitor, so there is no point in hiding the menu or the status bar to make it fit. FF3 with all toolbars (menu bar, navigation bar, bookmarks bar, tab bar, status bar) enabled still has enough screen space that I do not need to maximize it (my desktop resolution is 1600x1200 btw).
Permanent status bars are a good thing to be rid of, for instance.
Why? Status bar is useful for me: 1.It displays the URL of the link that I am about to click. 2.It allows some addons to have icons there to access their functions. 3.Without the status bar, the active area of a corner (to resize diagonally) is much smaller than with it. Without it, it is easier to click on the scroll button or some ad on the web page when I want to resize the window.
And all it takes is 20 pixels of height and my desktop height is 1200 pixels.
Also, what wrong with the FF3 look? Just because it is "old" does not mean it is bad. What does the new UI accomplish aside from saving a few pixels of screen space on modern big monitors?
As I usually want to save money, I keep the old drives. For example, I have about 3TB distributed over ~10 drives (and multiple PCs). I could buy a 3TB drive and stop using the old ones, but then I would just pay money for no increase in capacity. I would not be able to afford a lot of 3TB drives, but if I wanted I could buy a 2TB drive and place it in an empty slot to use it together with all my other drives. Now, if I reached a point where all slots are full and still need more space, I would consider buying a new drive to replace an old one, but then for the price of the new drive I would not be buying $new_drive_capacity, I would be buying ($new_drive_capacity - $old_drive_capacity).
SSDs are way more expensive per gigabyte than hard drives. However, they are faster, use less power* and are more reliable, or it was said. So, if you do not care about speed SSDs are probably not worth the high prices, since they are not more reliable than HDDs.
* seems to me that the power consumption is not much less than that of the hard drives too.
Yes. With current technology it is easy to compress on the fly (as I said in another post, DVD players can already do that for Dolby Digital at least). On the other hand, once compressed it is almost impossible to expand back to the original dynamic range, this is why the recording (CD, record) should be in the full dynamic range (or at least as high as the medium allows).
That's different. It boosts low and high frequencies at low volumes so you hear them better. This is because human ear does not have a flat frequency response.
As a result, this may be a case where too much dynamic range is lost on the listening audience, as the listener just wants to be able to hear everything without having to fiddle with the volume every few seconds.
Dolby Digital on DVD has the option to compress the dynamic range if you are in a noisy environment (or watching the movie at night). I don't see why this could not also be applied to music. Just have a setting on the player to turn on the compression (or even better - adjust how much compression to use).
Also, a home media center is a lot better than most VCRs.
Depends. When I tried to use a PC for recording TV shows, the reliability sucked (it would record without audio or without video or it was out of sync or the PC crashed during recording etc), also I had to store all the files somewhere, which meant a lot of hard drives or a lot of DVD-Rs. Now when I record to VHS it is reliable most of the time (there are occasional glitches, but they are far less common than on a PC), I can edit out commercials by using another VCR (or, if I can, I edit them out during the first recording) and the resulting tape can be played on any VCR.
Also, even if Linux Mint ran all of my software (including all games) it would still most likely not worth the pain of reinstalling.
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And yet, you can run, say, DOS on all of those computers. Critical devices will support a "generic" instruction set. Any VGA card will support standard VGA instructions, disk drives can be accessed using standard IDE interface (SATA controllers can emulate it). SCSI drives can be accessed using INT13h, the controller BIOS takes care of it. Keyboard/mouse use one of the few interfaces (and USB can emulate PS/2).
Now, when you get the basic system running, you can load drivers to access all of the features of the hardware (for example, different resolutions of the VGA card).
For ARM you have to recompile the kernel for most of the chips and boards for it to even boot. So, how would you create a way to install an operating system from me media not using another PC?
So, I take it you either never installed an older Socket A CPU or never screwed up the heatsink install on them?
I have a Fujitsu Primergy N400 (old, I know), the POST takes quite long - it initializes RAM (6 seconds for every GB, so 10GB = 1 minute) then slowly tests the memory. With 9GB RAM it takes about 10 minutes in POST. alone.
t takes nearly a minute to resume from hibernate, and the system will cold-boot in less than 30 seconds... WHY would I hibernate there?
In case restoring the previous state (open web pages, documents, running programs) takes more than 30 seconds that you have after cold boot.
The CD/DVD read head is kept really close to the disk, the lens also has to be able to move to change the focus, it is usually held in place by a magnetic field. A small chock can bend whatever is holding the head away from the disk and/or move the lens out of place and hit the disk.
The read/write head of a hard drive is kept much closer to the disk, but by a very fast stream of air instead of a mechanical part. The head is essentially flying over the disk. While the distance is smaller, the shock required to reduce it to zero is greater.
In addition, some laptop hard drives sense when they are being dropped, suspend all read/write operations and move the head away from the disk to the ramp that heads go to when the drive is turned off. CD/DVD drives are too slow for that.
When the head hits the disk it makes a circular scratch in both cases, since the medium is spinning and the head is stationary.
My grandfather rarely crashed ecause he drove carefully, even when he was 81.
Google says: 15 mph = 24.14016 km/h
Going 24 km/h over the limit would get you a fine (up to about 87EUR). You are also more likely to crash because now everybody else is going at least 24 km/h slower. OTOH, driving 24km/h slower can be better or worse depending where you are. In a city, going 26m/h instead of the allowed 50 would probably be bad as you would be creating traffic jams, especially on single lane streets. On a two lane highway, going 76 or 106 instead of the allowed 100 or 130 would most likely be OK, since everyone else can easily pass you.
reality indicates that the faster you are going, the less likely you are to be in the crash in the first place.
For some reason most of the big crashes happen because the driver was drunk or was talking/texting on his cellphone without hands-free equipment or was going too fast and went out of control. Or some combination of the three.
If you drive faster than everyone else on the road you will have to pass them, this probably increases the probability of a crash, especially on single lane roads.
It does not run on a 286 though.
Well, assuming the software is perfect and is not similar to the modern software that is full of bugs, needs to be updated once a month or more frequently and still does not work as expected. Oh, and if the cars are networked, I really hope that the network is more secure than the one Sony has and cannot be hacked at all.
In my experience, currently, people can do hardware quite well, but software sucks. Hardware wears out over time, software shouldn't, but I have to update it quite often (and should stop using it when the version no longer receives support and updates), while I do not have to replace the hardware that often and can use hardware that is way past the warranty period.
However, I doubt that human drivers will be banned (human pilots are not banned and planes had autopilot before cars). The reason is that the process of replacing humans with AI will not happen overnight it will be gradual (people buying robot cars for convenience when their current car breaks and is uneconomical to repair), so the robots would have to be able to coexist with human drivers to be allowed on the road. If that's the case, then there would be no pressing need to ban human drivers.
As for your 210km/h - well, maybe it would be safer than now, but it would still be even more safe at lower speeds (since the result of, say, a brake failure would be pretty much the same).
Yea, especially since not using a trope can get you listed as averting it or be a trope in itself.
terrible, terrible shots (I'd cite the TV Trope for that, only I don't want to lose another fifteen hours of my day to that damn site...)
You mean this? You're welcome
BTW planes and trains at least are highly automated.
Planes are also heavily controlled, that is, you need to get permission to take of, fly at a certain altitude, land and so on.
Trains are, well, on tracks, not much control there - just forward, stop, reverse. They also are controlled by dispatch, like planes.
Cars have more freedoms of movement than trains but are not controller. There are traffic rules, but not everyone respects them, people forget to turn on (or off) the turning signals, do not let you go first even though the law says you can, drive even though the red light is on etc. So, a robot car will require much more complex AI than a robot plane or train.
Since you get more injured if you were going faster before the crash, the robot driver would still have to go at a safe speed. Even it you are paying attention you can crash - something in thecar breaks and makes it uncontrollable, someone else hits you etc.
And still maybe other people would choose differently. For example, if my grandfather was given the option I think he would have chosen to be infected with the real HIV instead of dying from cancer.
As pointed out multiple times, not the real HIV.
Also, this would give you choice. Even after the cure, you can still kill yourself if/when you think life without sex is worthless.
About the same for me, I was just replying to the comparison between web pages and video games.
When I play a game, I only play that game and do not do anything else with the PC (though some programs would still be running) while I play it.
When I browse the web, I usually also listen to music have other software running (maybe word/excel to write down the information I find or whatever), so while a game can get away with using all resources on my PC, if a web browser did that, I would have to use a second PC for those other programs, which would be less convenient.
90% is probably the piracy rate of everything. However, what you need to ask is out of those 90%, how many would have bought the game is the pirated version was not available. My guess is vast majority of them would just pirate some other game if WoG was not available. I know because I do this (though I did not pirate WoG, nor did I buy it). I usually go something like this:
1. Oh, a new (previously unknown to me) game that I might like, let's see it it can be played on PC as I do not have a console.
2. Good, it can, let's go to TPB.
3. If it is available, download, if not, choose a different game and goto 1.
Yes, I sometimes buy games, but rarely and only if the price is less then 15EUR and I feel like I should support the developers (which means mostly indie games, not games from huge corporations, to buy one of those the price needs to be less than 9EUR).
I'm probably alone, but I rather like the new UI. Reminds me of Chrome.
And I hate it for the same reason (that is, I hate Chrome-style UI). I have a big monitor, so there is no point in hiding the menu or the status bar to make it fit. FF3 with all toolbars (menu bar, navigation bar, bookmarks bar, tab bar, status bar) enabled still has enough screen space that I do not need to maximize it (my desktop resolution is 1600x1200 btw).
Permanent status bars are a good thing to be rid of, for instance.
Why?
Status bar is useful for me:
1.It displays the URL of the link that I am about to click.
2.It allows some addons to have icons there to access their functions.
3.Without the status bar, the active area of a corner (to resize diagonally) is much smaller than with it. Without it, it is easier to click on the scroll button or some ad on the web page when I want to resize the window.
And all it takes is 20 pixels of height and my desktop height is 1200 pixels.
Also, what wrong with the FF3 look? Just because it is "old" does not mean it is bad. What does the new UI accomplish aside from saving a few pixels of screen space on modern big monitors?
As I usually want to save money, I keep the old drives. For example, I have about 3TB distributed over ~10 drives (and multiple PCs). I could buy a 3TB drive and stop using the old ones, but then I would just pay money for no increase in capacity. I would not be able to afford a lot of 3TB drives, but if I wanted I could buy a 2TB drive and place it in an empty slot to use it together with all my other drives. Now, if I reached a point where all slots are full and still need more space, I would consider buying a new drive to replace an old one, but then for the price of the new drive I would not be buying $new_drive_capacity, I would be buying ($new_drive_capacity - $old_drive_capacity).
I do not replace working drives. If I need the space I add a new drive to the system, not replace an old one with a new one.
They do not need to be.
What I mean is:
SSDs are way more expensive per gigabyte than hard drives. However, they are faster, use less power* and are more reliable, or it was said. So, if you do not care about speed SSDs are probably not worth the high prices, since they are not more reliable than HDDs.
* seems to me that the power consumption is not much less than that of the hard drives too.
Yes. With current technology it is easy to compress on the fly (as I said in another post, DVD players can already do that for Dolby Digital at least). On the other hand, once compressed it is almost impossible to expand back to the original dynamic range, this is why the recording (CD, record) should be in the full dynamic range (or at least as high as the medium allows).
That's different. It boosts low and high frequencies at low volumes so you hear them better. This is because human ear does not have a flat frequency response.
As a result, this may be a case where too much dynamic range is lost on the listening audience, as the listener just wants to be able to hear everything without having to fiddle with the volume every few seconds.
Dolby Digital on DVD has the option to compress the dynamic range if you are in a noisy environment (or watching the movie at night). I don't see why this could not also be applied to music. Just have a setting on the player to turn on the compression (or even better - adjust how much compression to use).
Also, a home media center is a lot better than most VCRs.
Depends. When I tried to use a PC for recording TV shows, the reliability sucked (it would record without audio or without video or it was out of sync or the PC crashed during recording etc), also I had to store all the files somewhere, which meant a lot of hard drives or a lot of DVD-Rs. Now when I record to VHS it is reliable most of the time (there are occasional glitches, but they are far less common than on a PC), I can edit out commercials by using another VCR (or, if I can, I edit them out during the first recording) and the resulting tape can be played on any VCR.
Also, even if Linux Mint ran all of my software (including all games) it would still most likely not worth the pain of reinstalling.