Well, there is an Arduino with 84 MHz clock, called Arduino Due. It's 32 bit ARM, not 8 bit AVR. It sells for $49.
My little company makes an Arduino compatible board called Teensy 3.0, which is technically spec'd 48 MHz but overclocks to 96 MHz without any trouble. It sells for $19.
There are also other less compatible alternative boards, like ChipKit, Maple and Fubarino, with clocks speeds in the 50 to 80 MHz range, and attractive prices. Their compatibility isn't as good, which might be a factor if you're using libraries or code from websites. If you're wring all your project's code, that's less of a concern.
These boards also tend to have more RAM and other built-in resources.
The question is near the end, specifically "What is the maximum rate at which GPIO output pins can be updated?"
The answer, which you'll see if you click that link and expand the question to see the answer, is:
The GPIO output pins on Intel® Galileo are provided by an I2C Port Expander that is running at standard mode (100 kHz). Each I2C request to update a GPIO requires approximately 2ms. In addition to software overhead, this restricts the frequency achievable on the GPIO outputs to approximately 230 Hz.
The datasheet, linked from this Slashdot article, shows a full-page diagram on page 3. On the left side are the usual 6 analog inputs. On the right side are the usual 14 digital pins, with 6 clearly indicated as PWM capable.
On page 4, it says:
14 digital input/output pins, of which 6 can be used as Pulse Width Modulation (PWM) outputs;
o Each of the 14 digital pins on Galileo can be used as an input or output, using pinMode(),
digitalWrite(), and digitalRead() functions.
o The pins operate at 3.3 volts or 5 volts. Each pin can source a max of 10mA or sink a maximum of
25 mA and has an internal pull-up resistor (disconnected by default) of 5.6k to 10 kOhms.
A0 A5 - 6 analog inputs, via an AD7298 analog-to-digital (A/D) converter (datasheet)
o Each of the 6 analog inputs, labeled A0 through A5, provides 12 bits of resolution (i.e., 4096
different values). By default they measure from ground to 5 volts.
2
I C bus, TWI, with SDA and SCL pins that are near to the AREF pin.
o TWI: A4 or SDA pin and A5 or SCL pin. Support TWI communication using the Wire library.
SPI
o Defaults to 4MHz to support Arduino Uno shields. Programmable up to 25MHz.
On page 5, the list continues:
o Note: While Galileo has a native SPI controller, it will act as a master and not as an SPI slave.
Therefore, Galileo cannot be a SPI slave to another SPI master. It can act, however, as a slave
device via the USB Client connector.
UART (serial port) Programmable speed UART port (Pins 0 (RX) and 1 (TX))
ICSP (SPI) - a 6 pin in-circuit serial programming (ICSP) header, located appropriately to plug into
existing shields. These pins support SPI communication using the SPI library.
VIN. When using an external power source you can supply 5V through this pin.
o Note: When using this pin to supply power to the board, it must not be greater than 5V.
5V output pin. This pin outputs 5V from the external source or the USB connector. Maximum current
draw to the shield is 800 mA
3.3V output pin. A 3.3 volt supply generated by the on-board regulator. Maximum current draw to the
shield is 800 mA
GND. Ground pins.
IOREF. The IOREF pin on Galileo allows an attached shield with the proper configuration to adapt to the
voltage provided by the board. The IOREF pin voltage is controlled by a jumper on the board, i.e., a
selection jumper on the board is used to select between 3.3V and 5V shield operation.
RESET button/pin
o Bring this line LOW to reset the sketch. Typically used to add a reset button to shields that block
the one on the board.
AREF is unused on Galileo. Providing an external reference voltage for the analog inputs is not
supported.
o For Galileo it is not possible to change the upper end of the analog input range using the AREF pin
and the analogReference() function.
Several articles have appeared claiming "under $60".
For for free if you're one of about 50000 students or apparently about 400 people who attended a talk at Maker Faire last weekend in Rome.
However, if you check out Intel FAQ, there are a number of Arduino compatibility caveats. Probably the main on is the I/O pins are controlled by an I/O expander with approx 2ms latency. That's pretty slow compared to Arduino's slow digitalWrite() function, which run about 4us on 16 MHz AVR, or direct AVR register access, which takes 125ns.
The processor runs Linux and Arduino sketches are compiled to native Linux userspace programs, so it probably will open up a lot of possibilities.
Having created and published projects using both Raspberry Pi and Beaglebone Black, and speaking as someone who regularly publishes electronic projects and open source code (largely on the Arduino software), I'd echo what others have said... this thing really misses the mark, considering the high price and lack of I/O.
Beaglebone Black is really the one Linux-based board that's doing everything right (except for the head start Raspberry Pi enjoys). The price is under $50, size is small, there's a LOT of I/O with advanced capabilities, performance is ok, and the feature I love the most on BBB: it has a decent performing 2 GB flash disk soldered to the board.
As someone who publishes code for projects, a built-in flash disk with dependable performance a huge benefit. With a Raspberry Pi, you have no idea how their system will perform if disk I/O matters. They might use a SanDisk Ultra card (or whatever SanDisk is calling them now), which can do about 1 to 2 Mbyte/sec with random seeks, still slow by PC standards, but fast enough to be useful. But odds are they'll use a cheap SD card, where the random I/O performance can be as slow as 20 kbytes/sec.
If Intel really wants to rule this Linux-based project world, they'll need come out with something in the $40 to $60 price range, maybe with high-end options approaching $99. A good performing built-in SSD, enough RAM, lots of I/O, and good connectivity (USB, Ethernet, Wifi) are the killer features people need for real projects. A faster x86 processor on an overpriced, feature-poor board without SSD is never going to compete with great products like the Beaglebone Black.
I run a small business. Very small, only 3 people. Like virtually all small businesses, we use a payroll service. There are so many laws and regulations regarding payroll that it's crazy not to use a service. They add value by taking care of all those little details, so we're in full compliance with the many regulations. Of course, the service charges fees. There are several of these payroll processors out there, so they do have to keep the fees reasonable to compete, but they do incur real costs. If it were so easy, nobody would pay the fees, but indeed payroll processing is one of the main business functions that's outsourced. The fees are real.
The main fee is per pay period. If you pay weekly, the fees are twice as much as every 2 weeks, which in turns is roughly twice as much as monthly. It doesn't matter if you use direct deposit or live checks, the fees are the same either way. When it's an actual check, we write the physical check based on their calculations.
We pay every 2 weeks to our 1 hourly employee (and we would NEVER use bank card payment with hidden fees), and monthly for the 2 of us owners, because paying ourselves only every month saves on the fees.
The trouble with microtransactions is they'll create an incentive for content publishers to "nickel and dime" readers.
Just look at phone and tablet games with "in app purchase" models. A great idea in theory. In practice, it drives the entire game design from "pay to play" to "pay to win".
If the content industry figures out how to make microtransactions work (a pretty big if)... just watch. Content will adapt from trying to attract and genuinely appeal to readers to a "nickel and dime" them to the maximum extent possible!
When I *really* don't like something, I vote with my dollars AND by influencing others not to spend their dollars either.
I'm sure EA would greatly prefer if dissatisfied customers merely voted with their dollars, but kept quiet so as not to build a public awareness and cause others to do the same. Well, that's not how things work, especially in the modern times of widespread internet connectivity and online social networking.
I personally don't play video games much. But I recently tried a few on an iPad. My first experience, Plants vs Zombies, was fun. It seems to have been designed before this in-game purchasing became a big deal. But then I tried another, and another, and yet another... and it quickly became clear they were designed to force you to make in-game purchases. One even had 3 times of in-game resources, plus 2 types of time limits, which you could pay your way around.
Those games just aren't much fun. That's the problem. if you don't pony up real money, they're incredibly boring and repetitive... pretty much being stuck in a purgatory of inadequate resources to play the game. I tried paying on a couple. Guess what... then you've got everything you need and the game quickly becomes not very interesting either. It's a low quality experience either way.
When you make a poor product, word gets out. When an entire industry moves in a direction that's initially profitable, but ultimately results in poor products that people don't enjoy, eventually the marketplace wises up and demand for those products declines or evaporates. That's simply how free markets work.
Critical public commentary is simply part of that free market process. EA may not like it, but that's too bad. Sooner or later, as enough people vote with their dollars, EA will respond with better products, rather than wishing their dissatisfied customers would quietly go away.
We had 2 levels of rewards shipping, half within 2 weeks, the other half the next month. We did end up shipping the last several September rewards on October 1st, so technically we slipped 1 day for small group of rewards. Otherwise, all the September rewards actually shipped in September, and the rest shipped before the end of October.
Of course, a tiny number of backers didn't respond with their address or had other logistical problems with their info. Most of those shipped late, but even then, we resolved nearly all of them in October.
Much of the reason for USB's slow disk performance is the simplistic bulk-only transport protocol used by virtually all USB mass storage class devices on the market today. The problem is bulk-only transport is a synchronous protocol, where every transaction must be fully completed before the next is begun. Even though it's transporting SCSI commands, you don't get important performance enhancing features, like command queuing. It's impossible to make best use of USB scheduling by sending the next command before the previous fully replies with the status code.
There is a new protocol called UASP (USB Attached SCSI Protocol) which aims to fix all this. But who knows when or if Microsoft will ever support it?
I really wish flash advocates would stop saying "write once, run anywhere" until Adobe actually releases a Linux flash player with quality on par with the Windows version!
Truly, if you're a Flash developer/designer/artist who only tests on Windows, and there obviously MANY out there, you have no idea what a completely buggy piece of shit Abobe's Flash is on Linux. On all but the largest of sites, even trying to play video on many sites other than youtube and vimeo, Flash regularly crashes the entire browser. Yeah, Linux API are a moving target and audio is notoriously messed up, but there's no reason any plugin should ever completely lock up the browser, ever!
In reality, Adobe Flash is "write once, runs well only on Windows".
As a Linux user, I'm glad Apple is causing Adobe so much pain and I hope the horrible code that is non-Windows Flash becomes unnecessary someday. Alternately, Adobe could write a quality Flash player for Linux, but that seems to have a snowball's change in hell, especially with this horribly wrong mindset that Flash actually works well on anything other than Microsoft Windows!
Adobe's Flash player causes Firefox on Linux to regularly lock up. In fact, playing video from pretty much anywhere but Youtube and Vimeo seems to do it. I installed the flashblock extension, so all flash comes up as a blank box and I can click on it if I really want to see what it is. But I cringe every time, because more often than not, my browser is going to lock up either while that flash object is doing whatever it does, or shortly after.
It's pretty clear Adobe only invests serious effort in quality for Windows. People who only experience Flash on Windows just don't have any idea how horribly buggy it is on other platforms.
Would that complaining be about theoretically oppressive licensing restrictions, or about actual harm done to real people due to those conditions being enforced, or even threats of enforcement?
Did anyone else notice how the Q9550 and Q9650 are absent from this article?
Probably the last thing Intel wants is these previous generation (and attractively priced) chips appearing in the "overall performance per dollar" chart on "Page 17 - The value proposition". Instead, we get a graph where only the i5 and i7 chips appear to perform well beyond any of the older options, but it's a carefully crafted illusion because the faster (and attractively priced) versions of those older chips weren't tested.
The software is really what matters, not the specs.
So many things work so very nicely, almost effortlessly on the mac. It's a completely different experience. If you add up all the extra fractional seconds spent waiting for software to respond they probably don't come even close to all the hours saved because pretty much everything "just works".
Compare with Microsoft Vista, which notoriously eats up CPU and memory resources. Even if it ran the same speed (which it clearly does not, you need a substantially faster PC to get the same performance as MacOS-X), there's also all the time-consuming crap like UAC, unhelpful error messages, poorly designed control panels and dialogs, and a culture of applications that all need a different visual design to differentiate themselves. Even experienced windows users get caught up in frustrating trials resolving incompatibilities, almost always blamed on 3rd party stuff, but nonetheless, time sunk, likely more on just one driver issue then that the tiny fractional seconds saved by slightly faster hardware.
Likewise, if raw performance was all the mattered (and the software didn't) everyone would install a xfce-based linux distributions, which run nice and fast even on very old hardware with 256 megs of RAM, or they'd even use only the command line! But even amongst linux users, Gnome and KDE based distributions are by far the norm, because even on the linux desktop, tiny as its market size may be, software matters much more than raw hardware specs.
What really matters is being able to actually use the computer for your purpose, and the software much moreso than the hardware determines what your entire experience of using the computer will be.
The plain truth is the Mac platform is vastly better and for people who appreciate the difference, it's a bargain to spend 25% to 60% more for a computer than "just works".
ps: I am a linux user who also uses macs and even windows sometimes, when I have to.
weren't there a bunch of alternative PDF readers long before Adobe made PDF an open format?
Adobe from the very beginning of PDF claimed it was an open and fully documented format.
I believe the very first open source PDF reader was "xpdf" created by Derek Noonburg. I used it for years before Adobe finally released their own, and I still use it today because it is much faster and simpler.
For years there was quite a bit of tension between Derek and Adobe. His xpdf viewer, at one time, would display messages asking people to contact Adobe and make good on their claim that the PDF format was truly open, mostly with respect to the rather lame encrypted PDF features. As I recall, at one point it even printed the name and phone number of someone at Adobe. Supposedly people at Adobe blamed xpdf's programs on Derek (supposedly calling him incompetent publicly) and utterly denied they had not documented their format. Derek published on his web page exactly what features were not documented.
Today there are many other PDF viewers, though for a very long time xpdf was pretty much the only alternative to Adobe's. I haven't looked at their code, but I suspect most of them are based largely on Derek's original code. For one small anecdote along those lines, here is an advisory were Derek found integer overflows in his original xpdf code, which also effects all these other open source PDF viewers.
My point in all this is that, while today it may seem there have always been lots of PDF viewers, in reality they are mostly (if not all) due to the long, hard work of one determined man. While he didn't have to reverse engineer Adobe's software, it was nonetheless a long, difficult struggle to get the missing bits of info. We all benefit today, even though Derek probably doesn't get nearly the credit he well deserves.
The commonly used language "make money off..." (as the post was written) implies a sort of behavior of taking advantage, some sort of magical money-making simply by having/using/exploiting some particular thing.
Absent is the notion of making a genuine creative effort. Absent is the additional value created. Particularly absent in "make money off..." is the work of marketing and selling the product or service to customers/clients who are happy to pay for the value you've added that they desire.
Sure, there's plenty of much worse crap every day in slashdot "articles", but the phrase "make money off" applied to actual, genuine, bona-fide creative effort to make and market something valuable.... I just wish a better phase could be used.
So even if the SanDisk drive spent 100% of its time in active mode and the Hitachi drive was always idle, the SanDisk drive should still provide longer runtime.
However, their runtime test (page 12) shows 7:03 runtime with Hitachi, 7:02 with the SanDisk.
All they have to say about this is:
Most of the power consumption measurements are in line with our results in Mobilemark 07. However, it has become clear that idle and maximum power do not provide the full picture when we talk about flash SSDs.
I too had pretty much discounted much anti-vista sentiment as simply disliking anything new. Until recently. Two things have changed my mind.
#1 - I recently used Fubar.com, which is yet another social networking site, which mainly features chatting (the "lounges"). People there absolutely hate Vista. These aren't tech folks. Many are stay-at-home moms who get online and chat much of the day. Why do that hate vista so much? Well, it adds delay to their chatting (which also includes streaming audio for background music). They can chat just fine with XP, but the very noticeable delay vista adds is just unacceptable for a real time application. It is true they load up their html with all sorts of heavy graphics, and multiple flash applets (sometimes with streaming video from webcams), and all sorts of other crap. They love all that glitzy stuff. It works fine in XP (and I tried using linux and firefox and it works fine too), but Vista simply uses so much more memory and cpu time to do the same rendering than even on a brand new PC with plenty of CPU power and memory, the delay is very noticeable to ordinary people who only real performance requirement is about 200ms response time needed for being able to respond quickly in a conversation. It's kind of strange to think of all these stay-at-home moms having real time performance computing performance requirements, but they do, and Vista can't meet them.
#2 - I recently tried vista in vmware. Now, you might say vmware is always slow, and indeed it is not nearly as fast as running on native hardware. But I also tried XP and 2000 in the same vmware. I was testing a little program I've written, to make sure it worked on all 3. 2000 and XP run just fine in vmware (linux as the host OS). Vista is incredibly slow, even when I give it access to both CPU cores and 1 gig of RAM (XP and 2000 run just fine with single core and 256 megs). Everything in Vista (running under vmware) seems to take 1-3 seconds. Just opening a window takes a couple seconds. SP1 took 3.5 hours to install. Mounting a network share takes several seconds. Running a program takes a couple seconds, then the warnings, then a couple more, and so on. Things that didn't have any human noticeable delay in XP and 2000 take much, much longer on Vista.
Perhaps running on very fast hardware, Vista is "not too bad". But it's undeniable that it is many, many times slower given the same hardware. Imagine how fast XP would be on that same hardware?
Slashdot Mirror
Well, there is an Arduino with 84 MHz clock, called Arduino Due. It's 32 bit ARM, not 8 bit AVR. It sells for $49.
My little company makes an Arduino compatible board called Teensy 3.0, which is technically spec'd 48 MHz but overclocks to 96 MHz without any trouble. It sells for $19.
There are also other less compatible alternative boards, like ChipKit, Maple and Fubarino, with clocks speeds in the 50 to 80 MHz range, and attractive prices. Their compatibility isn't as good, which might be a factor if you're using libraries or code from websites. If you're wring all your project's code, that's less of a concern.
These boards also tend to have more RAM and other built-in resources.
The "someone" mentioning 230 Hz is INTEL, in their Galileo FAQ.
http://www.intel.com/support/galileo/faq.htm
The question is near the end, specifically "What is the maximum rate at which GPIO output pins can be updated?"
The answer, which you'll see if you click that link and expand the question to see the answer, is:
The GPIO output pins on Intel® Galileo are provided by an I2C Port Expander that is running at standard mode (100 kHz). Each I2C request to update a GPIO requires approximately 2ms. In addition to software overhead, this restricts the frequency achievable on the GPIO outputs to approximately 230 Hz.
The datasheet, linked from this Slashdot article, shows a full-page diagram on page 3. On the left side are the usual 6 analog inputs. On the right side are the usual 14 digital pins, with 6 clearly indicated as PWM capable.
On page 4, it says:
14 digital input/output pins, of which 6 can be used as Pulse Width Modulation (PWM) outputs;
o Each of the 14 digital pins on Galileo can be used as an input or output, using pinMode(),
digitalWrite(), and digitalRead() functions.
o The pins operate at 3.3 volts or 5 volts. Each pin can source a max of 10mA or sink a maximum of
25 mA and has an internal pull-up resistor (disconnected by default) of 5.6k to 10 kOhms.
A0 A5 - 6 analog inputs, via an AD7298 analog-to-digital (A/D) converter (datasheet)
o Each of the 6 analog inputs, labeled A0 through A5, provides 12 bits of resolution (i.e., 4096
different values). By default they measure from ground to 5 volts.
2
I C bus, TWI, with SDA and SCL pins that are near to the AREF pin.
o TWI: A4 or SDA pin and A5 or SCL pin. Support TWI communication using the Wire library.
SPI
o Defaults to 4MHz to support Arduino Uno shields. Programmable up to 25MHz.
On page 5, the list continues:
o Note: While Galileo has a native SPI controller, it will act as a master and not as an SPI slave.
Therefore, Galileo cannot be a SPI slave to another SPI master. It can act, however, as a slave
device via the USB Client connector.
UART (serial port) Programmable speed UART port (Pins 0 (RX) and 1 (TX))
ICSP (SPI) - a 6 pin in-circuit serial programming (ICSP) header, located appropriately to plug into
existing shields. These pins support SPI communication using the SPI library.
VIN. When using an external power source you can supply 5V through this pin.
o Note: When using this pin to supply power to the board, it must not be greater than 5V.
5V output pin. This pin outputs 5V from the external source or the USB connector. Maximum current
draw to the shield is 800 mA
3.3V output pin. A 3.3 volt supply generated by the on-board regulator. Maximum current draw to the
shield is 800 mA
GND. Ground pins.
IOREF. The IOREF pin on Galileo allows an attached shield with the proper configuration to adapt to the
voltage provided by the board. The IOREF pin voltage is controlled by a jumper on the board, i.e., a
selection jumper on the board is used to select between 3.3V and 5V shield operation.
RESET button/pin
o Bring this line LOW to reset the sketch. Typically used to add a reset button to shields that block
the one on the board.
AREF is unused on Galileo. Providing an external reference voltage for the analog inputs is not
supported.
o For Galileo it is not possible to change the upper end of the analog input range using the AREF pin
and the analogReference() function.
Several articles have appeared claiming "under $60".
For for free if you're one of about 50000 students or apparently about 400 people who attended a talk at Maker Faire last weekend in Rome.
However, if you check out Intel FAQ, there are a number of Arduino compatibility caveats. Probably the main on is the I/O pins are controlled by an I/O expander with approx 2ms latency. That's pretty slow compared to Arduino's slow digitalWrite() function, which run about 4us on 16 MHz AVR, or direct AVR register access, which takes 125ns.
The processor runs Linux and Arduino sketches are compiled to native Linux userspace programs, so it probably will open up a lot of possibilities.
Having created and published projects using both Raspberry Pi and Beaglebone Black, and speaking as someone who regularly publishes electronic projects and open source code (largely on the Arduino software), I'd echo what others have said... this thing really misses the mark, considering the high price and lack of I/O.
Beaglebone Black is really the one Linux-based board that's doing everything right (except for the head start Raspberry Pi enjoys). The price is under $50, size is small, there's a LOT of I/O with advanced capabilities, performance is ok, and the feature I love the most on BBB: it has a decent performing 2 GB flash disk soldered to the board.
As someone who publishes code for projects, a built-in flash disk with dependable performance a huge benefit. With a Raspberry Pi, you have no idea how their system will perform if disk I/O matters. They might use a SanDisk Ultra card (or whatever SanDisk is calling them now), which can do about 1 to 2 Mbyte/sec with random seeks, still slow by PC standards, but fast enough to be useful. But odds are they'll use a cheap SD card, where the random I/O performance can be as slow as 20 kbytes/sec.
If Intel really wants to rule this Linux-based project world, they'll need come out with something in the $40 to $60 price range, maybe with high-end options approaching $99. A good performing built-in SSD, enough RAM, lots of I/O, and good connectivity (USB, Ethernet, Wifi) are the killer features people need for real projects. A faster x86 processor on an overpriced, feature-poor board without SSD is never going to compete with great products like the Beaglebone Black.
I run a small business. Very small, only 3 people. Like virtually all small businesses, we use a payroll service. There are so many laws and regulations regarding payroll that it's crazy not to use a service. They add value by taking care of all those little details, so we're in full compliance with the many regulations. Of course, the service charges fees. There are several of these payroll processors out there, so they do have to keep the fees reasonable to compete, but they do incur real costs. If it were so easy, nobody would pay the fees, but indeed payroll processing is one of the main business functions that's outsourced. The fees are real.
The main fee is per pay period. If you pay weekly, the fees are twice as much as every 2 weeks, which in turns is roughly twice as much as monthly. It doesn't matter if you use direct deposit or live checks, the fees are the same either way. When it's an actual check, we write the physical check based on their calculations.
We pay every 2 weeks to our 1 hourly employee (and we would NEVER use bank card payment with hidden fees), and monthly for the 2 of us owners, because paying ourselves only every month saves on the fees.
The trouble with microtransactions is they'll create an incentive for content publishers to "nickel and dime" readers.
Just look at phone and tablet games with "in app purchase" models. A great idea in theory. In practice, it drives the entire game design from "pay to play" to "pay to win".
If the content industry figures out how to make microtransactions work (a pretty big if)... just watch. Content will adapt from trying to attract and genuinely appeal to readers to a "nickel and dime" them to the maximum extent possible!
When I *really* don't like something, I vote with my dollars AND by influencing others not to spend their dollars either.
I'm sure EA would greatly prefer if dissatisfied customers merely voted with their dollars, but kept quiet so as not to build a public awareness and cause others to do the same. Well, that's not how things work, especially in the modern times of widespread internet connectivity and online social networking.
I personally don't play video games much. But I recently tried a few on an iPad. My first experience, Plants vs Zombies, was fun. It seems to have been designed before this in-game purchasing became a big deal. But then I tried another, and another, and yet another... and it quickly became clear they were designed to force you to make in-game purchases. One even had 3 times of in-game resources, plus 2 types of time limits, which you could pay your way around.
Those games just aren't much fun. That's the problem. if you don't pony up real money, they're incredibly boring and repetitive... pretty much being stuck in a purgatory of inadequate resources to play the game. I tried paying on a couple. Guess what... then you've got everything you need and the game quickly becomes not very interesting either. It's a low quality experience either way.
When you make a poor product, word gets out. When an entire industry moves in a direction that's initially profitable, but ultimately results in poor products that people don't enjoy, eventually the marketplace wises up and demand for those products declines or evaporates. That's simply how free markets work.
Critical public commentary is simply part of that free market process. EA may not like it, but that's too bad. Sooner or later, as enough people vote with their dollars, EA will respond with better products, rather than wishing their dissatisfied customers would quietly go away.
My own Kickstarter project, used to launch Teensy 3.0 (a low-cost Arduino compatible board with a 32 bit ARM chip), shipped on time.
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/paulstoffregen/teensy-30-32-bit-arm-cortex-m4-usable-in-arduino-a
We had 2 levels of rewards shipping, half within 2 weeks, the other half the next month. We did end up shipping the last several September rewards on October 1st, so technically we slipped 1 day for small group of rewards. Otherwise, all the September rewards actually shipped in September, and the rest shipped before the end of October.
Of course, a tiny number of backers didn't respond with their address or had other logistical problems with their info. Most of those shipped late, but even then, we resolved nearly all of them in October.
Much of the reason for USB's slow disk performance is the simplistic bulk-only transport protocol used by virtually all USB mass storage class devices on the market today. The problem is bulk-only transport is a synchronous protocol, where every transaction must be fully completed before the next is begun. Even though it's transporting SCSI commands, you don't get important performance enhancing features, like command queuing. It's impossible to make best use of USB scheduling by sending the next command before the previous fully replies with the status code.
There is a new protocol called UASP (USB Attached SCSI Protocol) which aims to fix all this. But who knows when or if Microsoft will ever support it?
"The FCC's rush to takeover the Internet is just the latest example of the need for fundamental reform to protect big cable companies".
There, fixed that for you Jim (Sen. Jim DeMint)
I really wish flash advocates would stop saying "write once, run anywhere" until Adobe actually releases a Linux flash player with quality on par with the Windows version!
Truly, if you're a Flash developer/designer/artist who only tests on Windows, and there obviously MANY out there, you have no idea what a completely buggy piece of shit Abobe's Flash is on Linux. On all but the largest of sites, even trying to play video on many sites other than youtube and vimeo, Flash regularly crashes the entire browser. Yeah, Linux API are a moving target and audio is notoriously messed up, but there's no reason any plugin should ever completely lock up the browser, ever!
In reality, Adobe Flash is "write once, runs well only on Windows".
As a Linux user, I'm glad Apple is causing Adobe so much pain and I hope the horrible code that is non-Windows Flash becomes unnecessary someday. Alternately, Adobe could write a quality Flash player for Linux, but that seems to have a snowball's change in hell, especially with this horribly wrong mindset that Flash actually works well on anything other than Microsoft Windows!
Adobe's Flash player causes Firefox on Linux to regularly lock up. In fact, playing video from pretty much anywhere but Youtube and Vimeo seems to do it. I installed the flashblock extension, so all flash comes up as a blank box and I can click on it if I really want to see what it is. But I cringe every time, because more often than not, my browser is going to lock up either while that flash object is doing whatever it does, or shortly after.
It's pretty clear Adobe only invests serious effort in quality for Windows. People who only experience Flash on Windows just don't have any idea how horribly buggy it is on other platforms.
Would that complaining be about theoretically oppressive licensing restrictions, or about actual harm done to real people due to those conditions being enforced, or even threats of enforcement?
Did anyone else notice how the Q9550 and Q9650 are absent from this article?
Probably the last thing Intel wants is these previous generation (and attractively priced) chips appearing in the "overall performance per dollar" chart on "Page 17 - The value proposition". Instead, we get a graph where only the i5 and i7 chips appear to perform well beyond any of the older options, but it's a carefully crafted illusion because the faster (and attractively priced) versions of those older chips weren't tested.
Without critics Linux can't improve, yet it has improved steadily year after year.
Something just doesn't add up here.
The software is really what matters, not the specs.
So many things work so very nicely, almost effortlessly on the mac. It's a completely different experience. If you add up all the extra fractional seconds spent waiting for software to respond they probably don't come even close to all the hours saved because pretty much everything "just works".
Compare with Microsoft Vista, which notoriously eats up CPU and memory resources. Even if it ran the same speed (which it clearly does not, you need a substantially faster PC to get the same performance as MacOS-X), there's also all the time-consuming crap like UAC, unhelpful error messages, poorly designed control panels and dialogs, and a culture of applications that all need a different visual design to differentiate themselves. Even experienced windows users get caught up in frustrating trials resolving incompatibilities, almost always blamed on 3rd party stuff, but nonetheless, time sunk, likely more on just one driver issue then that the tiny fractional seconds saved by slightly faster hardware.
Likewise, if raw performance was all the mattered (and the software didn't) everyone would install a xfce-based linux distributions, which run nice and fast even on very old hardware with 256 megs of RAM, or they'd even use only the command line! But even amongst linux users, Gnome and KDE based distributions are by far the norm, because even on the linux desktop, tiny as its market size may be, software matters much more than raw hardware specs.
What really matters is being able to actually use the computer for your purpose, and the software much moreso than the hardware determines what your entire experience of using the computer will be.
The plain truth is the Mac platform is vastly better and for people who appreciate the difference, it's a bargain to spend 25% to 60% more for a computer than "just works".
ps: I am a linux user who also uses macs and even windows sometimes, when I have to.
Maybe Microsoft is hoping to get lucky?
weren't there a bunch of alternative PDF readers long before Adobe made PDF an open format?
Adobe from the very beginning of PDF claimed it was an open and fully documented format.
I believe the very first open source PDF reader was "xpdf" created by Derek Noonburg. I used it for years before Adobe finally released their own, and I still use it today because it is much faster and simpler.
For years there was quite a bit of tension between Derek and Adobe. His xpdf viewer, at one time, would display messages asking people to contact Adobe and make good on their claim that the PDF format was truly open, mostly with respect to the rather lame encrypted PDF features. As I recall, at one point it even printed the name and phone number of someone at Adobe. Supposedly people at Adobe blamed xpdf's programs on Derek (supposedly calling him incompetent publicly) and utterly denied they had not documented their format. Derek published on his web page exactly what features were not documented.
Today there are many other PDF viewers, though for a very long time xpdf was pretty much the only alternative to Adobe's. I haven't looked at their code, but I suspect most of them are based largely on Derek's original code. For one small anecdote along those lines, here is an advisory were Derek found integer overflows in his original xpdf code, which also effects all these other open source PDF viewers.
My point in all this is that, while today it may seem there have always been lots of PDF viewers, in reality they are mostly (if not all) due to the long, hard work of one determined man. While he didn't have to reverse engineer Adobe's software, it was nonetheless a long, difficult struggle to get the missing bits of info. We all benefit today, even though Derek probably doesn't get nearly the credit he well deserves.
Apple's look-and-feel lawsuit was lost, giving Microsoft a free pass to copy as much of Apple's design as they wanted.
By this valid logic, we would all favor windows 98, which is FAR faster than windows XP on the same hardware.
Likewise, gnome on most linux distributions would lose out to xfce or fvwm or twm. And macosx would never have gained acceptance either!
The commonly used language "make money off..." (as the post was written) implies a sort of behavior of taking advantage, some sort of magical money-making simply by having/using/exploiting some particular thing.
Absent is the notion of making a genuine creative effort. Absent is the additional value created. Particularly absent in "make money off..." is the work of marketing and selling the product or service to customers/clients who are happy to pay for the value you've added that they desire.
Sure, there's plenty of much worse crap every day in slashdot "articles", but the phrase "make money off" applied to actual, genuine, bona-fide creative effort to make and market something valuable.... I just wish a better phase could be used.
In TFA, there is a graph on page 14 with power consumption measurements for the 5 drives tested.
The SanDisk SSD shows 1.0 watt active, 0.5 watt idle.
The Hitachi drive (magnetic) shows 3.2 watts active, 1.1 watts idle.
So even if the SanDisk drive spent 100% of its time in active mode and the Hitachi drive was always idle, the SanDisk drive should still provide longer runtime.
However, their runtime test (page 12) shows 7:03 runtime with Hitachi, 7:02 with the SanDisk.
All they have to say about this is:
Most of the power consumption measurements are in line with our results in Mobilemark 07. However, it has become clear that idle and maximum power do not provide the full picture when we talk about flash SSDs.
Well, something clearly is wrong here.
By that trend, Windows 3.1 was good ?!?
I too had pretty much discounted much anti-vista sentiment as simply disliking anything new. Until recently. Two things have changed my mind.
#1 - I recently used Fubar.com, which is yet another social networking site, which mainly features chatting (the "lounges"). People there absolutely hate Vista. These aren't tech folks. Many are stay-at-home moms who get online and chat much of the day. Why do that hate vista so much? Well, it adds delay to their chatting (which also includes streaming audio for background music). They can chat just fine with XP, but the very noticeable delay vista adds is just unacceptable for a real time application. It is true they load up their html with all sorts of heavy graphics, and multiple flash applets (sometimes with streaming video from webcams), and all sorts of other crap. They love all that glitzy stuff. It works fine in XP (and I tried using linux and firefox and it works fine too), but Vista simply uses so much more memory and cpu time to do the same rendering than even on a brand new PC with plenty of CPU power and memory, the delay is very noticeable to ordinary people who only real performance requirement is about 200ms response time needed for being able to respond quickly in a conversation. It's kind of strange to think of all these stay-at-home moms having real time performance computing performance requirements, but they do, and Vista can't meet them.
#2 - I recently tried vista in vmware. Now, you might say vmware is always slow, and indeed it is not nearly as fast as running on native hardware. But I also tried XP and 2000 in the same vmware. I was testing a little program I've written, to make sure it worked on all 3. 2000 and XP run just fine in vmware (linux as the host OS). Vista is incredibly slow, even when I give it access to both CPU cores and 1 gig of RAM (XP and 2000 run just fine with single core and 256 megs). Everything in Vista (running under vmware) seems to take 1-3 seconds. Just opening a window takes a couple seconds. SP1 took 3.5 hours to install. Mounting a network share takes several seconds. Running a program takes a couple seconds, then the warnings, then a couple more, and so on. Things that didn't have any human noticeable delay in XP and 2000 take much, much longer on Vista.
Perhaps running on very fast hardware, Vista is "not too bad". But it's undeniable that it is many, many times slower given the same hardware. Imagine how fast XP would be on that same hardware?