I don't know about where you are, but 6 is much less than "most" of my available local channels.
In fact most of the major broadcasters here broadcast on VHF-low. They're all going to do the number scramble thing, and end up as some random number, high in the UHF range. Hope you've got a good antenna.
The other prominent build-able design is called a Yagi.
It's actually a "Yagi/Corner-Reflector".
It consists of connected bow-ties, rather than zig-zag elements.
"Bowtie" refers to a specific type of antenna, a "multi-bay" unit... an antenna that is most definitely NOT a yagi. In fact a multi-bay bowtie antenna resembles a Grey-Hovermann much more than a Yagi/Corner-Reflector.
The Yagi design is nice, because its gain is roughly even across UHF.
That's completely wrong. Yagis have extremely good gain at high frequencies (most of which aren't being used for TV anymore), and almost always very poor gain at lower frequencies. The idea of getting ANY VHF frequencies with a yagi is laughable.
I think they have some crazy thing in the US that you don't have to pay sales tax for things ordered online from another state. I've never heard of anything like that in any other country,
Indeed. But no doubt you HAVE heard of it, when ordering a product from another country. US states are largely sovereign, and so far, the federal government has chosen not to levy a tax on interstate commerce.
If you find that "crazy", it's because you really don't understand the US. Most individual US states are, by themselves, geographically larger than most countries around the world. At the time, centralized control over such a diverse area wouldn't have even been technologically possible... A similar case to Russia, more than a century ago.
It's not, because it's not discriminatory against interstate commerce; it is an equalizer--all purchases are taxed, regardless of origin.
Discrimination hasn't got a thing to do with it.
My state has no authority to tell me what I, nor my representatives, can do, while acting in another state. They can't charge me with crimes I may commit while out of state, and they certainly can't collect taxes, based on a purchase I made in another state. Either is quite obviously illegal on the face of it.
It's worse because it's not what was intended when the pages were designed and it's not what users have come to expect.
HTML is a markup language. You don't have any control over how the user chooses to display it.
Setting a minimum font size so I can actually READ what's on screen? Disabling javascript pop-ups? Clearly bad things, because it's not what was intended, and not what the users have come to expect.
This thing boots up in 10 seconds. That's certainly not what users have come to expect, so it's clearly a deficiency that should be "fixed".
Were you a used car salesman in a former life?
I could ask if you were a mindless marketing droid...
What if they don't want it in its own window? What if they want it to appear in the web page as it does on their real computer, as the designer intended, as it should?
And what if they DO want it in it's own window? They'll be pissed when they go back to their "real computer" and can't get it to work that way.
There are two ways to do it, and each is different. You've utterly failed so far to demonstrate that there is anything better or worse about doing it one way, versus another.
I think the right place to do this is way up in the OS,
Indeed... And every OS since Win3.1 already does... Welcome to the world of file caching in RAM.
Got 2GBs of files to write to disk? If you've got more than 2GBs of RAM, the user will see the write complete almost instantaneously. The OS will automatically reorder the data so that it can be written to the HDD in the way that first ensures file system consistency, and secondly, as fast as possible (the fewest seeks).
And if you need to read from those 2GBs worth of files, they're now cached in RAM, and can be read, in full, instantly. That is, unless/until you load or write a file or run an app that needs that RAM space.
Back when everyone was running 32-bits, solid state RAM disks were entirely understandable for anyone that needed high I/O. But with 64-bit systems offering the ability to have terabytes of of RAM, and falling memory prices, there's no reason to worry about the speed of your hard drive. Load up on ultra-fast RAM, and let your OS worry about it.
The only place RAM doesn't help is in initial boot-up times, since nothing has been loaded into RAM yet, and you have to wait for your HDD to read all the necessary files. However, with S3/Suspend working reliably on most systems these days, I don't reboot any of my systems for months on end. The power just goes off when the system is idle, all the files cache in RAM remain, and once you hit the button, your system is fully up and working (everything right where you left it) in a couple second.
IMHO, we should all skip the Flash SSDs craze, unless you need a ruggedized system. Right now, it's cheapest to get all the RAM you can afford, and a large, relatively slow HDD. SSDs won't be practical enough to replace HDDs until you can squeeze 100GBs of RAM, with a 1 month battery back-up, into the same amount of space.
I owned a Metro for several years - it can and does go faster than 65MPH I assure you!
Sure it does, as long as you're going downhill......and there's a tail wind......and you've already built up some momentum......and your tires are over-inflated......and the windows are rolled up...
These things make some of today's hybrids look like jokes IMO.
I'm afraid I have to agree. Using more modern engine technology, better aerodynamics, and lightweight materials, a new car could get vastly better fuel efficiency as a Metro, rather than all new cars being substantially WORSE, while gas prices are higher than they've ever been.
MIPS CPUs are very simple to design, if you're willing to accept the limitation of one instruction per clock. [...] MIPS was overrun by the superscalar architectures, where you get more than one instruction per clock, at the cost of a huge increase in CPU logic complexity.
That may be the case with this Ingenic XBurst CPU. However the second and third revisions of the Chinese "Loongson" CPU (Dragon chip) are, in fact, superscalar.
According to their paper in the "Journal of Computer Science and Technology", benchmarks show the chip (Godson 2E) to outperform Pentium 4 CPUs running at the same clock (ie. 1GHz). This is while the Dragon chip runs on just 4watts. Link: http://jcste.ict.ac.cn/paper/hww_071.pdf Of course, being ~5 years, and a CPU generation behind Intel isn't exactly a great accomplishment, but there is no doubt still a big low-end market that can be filled, particularly in China, where the chip is doing reasonably well, even being used in a modest supercomputer.
Admittedly, Ingenic's CPU, being used here, isn't a Dragon chip. But considering the fact that the Dragon chip is the only modern CPU China is known to be able to produce domestically, I think it's fairly obvious that Ingenic's XBurst chips are a direct spin-off of the (non-superscalar) first revision of the Dragon chip, along with some added SIMD instructions which should improve performance significantly, at least for multimedia.
The force needed to control a jumbo jet is far beyond the means of a single human... So, yeah, if hydraulic system failed, you're going down. But that's quite the opposite of a car, where the power steering is just a luxury.
Secondly, you can bet aircraft are extremely well design, though-out, and built by experts, with exceptional attention to detail. Again, quite the opposite of mass-market automobiles.
You'll note I did say it could be done right, but because of extra complexity and expense, I don't believe any automobile manufacturer would ever take that route. and considering the device in question, it's really not necessary, either.
The problem with natural gas is that there's not enough of it.
There's not enough Ethanol or Biodiesel either...
However, if even 5% of petroleum usage can be offset by these alternatives, oil prices will fall drastically, eliminating the need for imports from one or more US-hostile OPEC nations, and pushing the pain out a little further into the future, when, hopefully, other technologies (ie. batteries, flywheels, ultra-capacitors) will have developed far enough, and become cheap enough, that switching even more vehicles off oil isn't as painful as it would be, today...
In fact, there's not enough wind, not enough uranium/plutonium, not enough water, not enough of ANYTHING. It's always the temporary lesser of two evils.
That's the most horrifying thing I've ever heard of.
I could live with no physical linkages for the accelerator, and possibly for the floor brakes, provided the parking break is still conventional, but I would never trust fully electronic steering.
Not that I'm a complete Luddite... Let's just say, it's possible, but quite extremely impractical to make it really fail-safe (eg. high current loop required for any movement, with independent backup batteries and substantial separation from all other electrical systems).
Then again, I had to think for a long time before getting an automatic transmission, knowing that I wouldn't be able to push-start my new car should the battery die while I'm out in the middle of nowhere... (18V cordless drills are nice and cheap)...
I think from past experience (Linux 64-bit) that we'll be waiting a long time for Flash on this one...
Flash animations, and Flash Video are two very different things, and almost entirely separate.
FLV is already supported everywhere, thanks to libavcodec. You just need to parse the SWF player and find the actual file to play.
SWF animations, however, require a full-fledged player, and won't be supported. Still, how big of an issue is that going to be? Are there many websites out there that provide no alternative to their SWF menus?
For games, and the like, there is a standalone SWF player for MIPS Linux (found on similar portables--see my recent posts), which would trivially allow SWF animations launched by web pages to be played separate from the browser.
So that's a fairly narrow case of SWF that doesn't work on this sytem, and I suppose that might be worked around as well by somehow sending feedback between the standalone SWF player and the browser.
I fail to believe it's being sold at a 100% mark-up, or that any magic they can do in the next couple years is going to half the materials and production costs of a laptop.
It looks like a decent bit of hardware, but don't count on it getting significantly cheaper while you wait. Even if the price of the chips (Flash, CPU, RAM, etc.) suddenly drop dramatically (which is highly unlikely), you've still got to deal with the base cost of NiMH batteries, plastic, lights, keyboards, touch pads, power supplies, LCD displays, assembly (man hours aren't getting any cheaper), etc., etc.
If you want a low-end system, pay the $250. Don't wait for the vapor to clear.
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That's not true. VHF-low is considered pretty much useless for digital, due mainly to the amount of noise there is in the range.
So, HALF of the VHF spectrum is going to be unused almost everywhere in the country (Alaska notwithstanding), leaving just 6 VHF slots available. See: http://hraunfoss.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/DA-06-1082A2.pdf
I don't know about where you are, but 6 is much less than "most" of my available local channels.
In fact most of the major broadcasters here broadcast on VHF-low. They're all going to do the number scramble thing, and end up as some random number, high in the UHF range. Hope you've got a good antenna.
It's actually a "Yagi/Corner-Reflector".
"Bowtie" refers to a specific type of antenna, a "multi-bay" unit... an antenna that is most definitely NOT a yagi. In fact a multi-bay bowtie antenna resembles a Grey-Hovermann much more than a Yagi/Corner-Reflector.
Yagi/Corner-Reflector: http://www.solidsignal.com/prod_display.asp?PROD=MXU59
Multi-bay/Bowtie: http://www.solidsignal.com/prod_display.asp?PROD=ANC4228
That's completely wrong. Yagis have extremely good gain at high frequencies (most of which aren't being used for TV anymore), and almost always very poor gain at lower frequencies. The idea of getting ANY VHF frequencies with a yagi is laughable.
See: http://www.hdtvprimer.com/ANTENNAS/comparing.html
Because they're very good at self-promotion? And there's a lot of people out there with more money and time, than brains?
Customer satisfaction often has nothing to do with the quality of the product.
Indeed. But no doubt you HAVE heard of it, when ordering a product from another country. US states are largely sovereign, and so far, the federal government has chosen not to levy a tax on interstate commerce.
If you find that "crazy", it's because you really don't understand the US. Most individual US states are, by themselves, geographically larger than most countries around the world. At the time, centralized control over such a diverse area wouldn't have even been technologically possible... A similar case to Russia, more than a century ago.
Discrimination hasn't got a thing to do with it.
My state has no authority to tell me what I, nor my representatives, can do, while acting in another state. They can't charge me with crimes I may commit while out of state, and they certainly can't collect taxes, based on a purchase I made in another state. Either is quite obviously illegal on the face of it.
HTML is a markup language. You don't have any control over how the user chooses to display it.
Setting a minimum font size so I can actually READ what's on screen? Disabling javascript pop-ups? Clearly bad things, because it's not what was intended, and not what the users have come to expect.
This thing boots up in 10 seconds. That's certainly not what users have come to expect, so it's clearly a deficiency that should be "fixed".
I could ask if you were a mindless marketing droid...
You've still got nothing but baseless assertions.
Goodbye.
And what if they DO want it in it's own window? They'll be pissed when they go back to their "real computer" and can't get it to work that way.
There are two ways to do it, and each is different. You've utterly failed so far to demonstrate that there is anything better or worse about doing it one way, versus another.
Indeed... And every OS since Win3.1 already does... Welcome to the world of file caching in RAM.
Got 2GBs of files to write to disk? If you've got more than 2GBs of RAM, the user will see the write complete almost instantaneously. The OS will automatically reorder the data so that it can be written to the HDD in the way that first ensures file system consistency, and secondly, as fast as possible (the fewest seeks).
And if you need to read from those 2GBs worth of files, they're now cached in RAM, and can be read, in full, instantly. That is, unless/until you load or write a file or run an app that needs that RAM space.
Back when everyone was running 32-bits, solid state RAM disks were entirely understandable for anyone that needed high I/O. But with 64-bit systems offering the ability to have terabytes of of RAM, and falling memory prices, there's no reason to worry about the speed of your hard drive. Load up on ultra-fast RAM, and let your OS worry about it.
The only place RAM doesn't help is in initial boot-up times, since nothing has been loaded into RAM yet, and you have to wait for your HDD to read all the necessary files. However, with S3/Suspend working reliably on most systems these days, I don't reboot any of my systems for months on end. The power just goes off when the system is idle, all the files cache in RAM remain, and once you hit the button, your system is fully up and working (everything right where you left it) in a couple second.
IMHO, we should all skip the Flash SSDs craze, unless you need a ruggedized system. Right now, it's cheapest to get all the RAM you can afford, and a large, relatively slow HDD. SSDs won't be practical enough to replace HDDs until you can squeeze 100GBs of RAM, with a 1 month battery back-up, into the same amount of space.
That's a bit like saying, if a car has more than 4 wheels, it doesn't work.
Just because it will appear differently (it's own window), doesn't mean it won't do everything they want it to do.
Sure it does, as long as you're going downhill... ...and there's a tail wind... ...and you've already built up some momentum... ...and your tires are over-inflated... ...and the windows are rolled up...
I'm afraid I have to agree. Using more modern engine technology, better aerodynamics, and lightweight materials, a new car could get vastly better fuel efficiency as a Metro, rather than all new cars being substantially WORSE, while gas prices are higher than they've ever been.
BMW is in the same boat, running their cars on WinCE for years now.
That may be the case with this Ingenic XBurst CPU. However the second and third revisions of the Chinese "Loongson" CPU (Dragon chip) are, in fact, superscalar.
According to their paper in the "Journal of Computer Science and Technology", benchmarks show the chip (Godson 2E) to outperform Pentium 4 CPUs running at the same clock (ie. 1GHz). This is while the Dragon chip runs on just 4watts. Link: http://jcste.ict.ac.cn/paper/hww_071.pdf
Of course, being ~5 years, and a CPU generation behind Intel isn't exactly a great accomplishment, but there is no doubt still a big low-end market that can be filled, particularly in China, where the chip is doing reasonably well, even being used in a modest supercomputer.
Admittedly, Ingenic's CPU, being used here, isn't a Dragon chip. But considering the fact that the Dragon chip is the only modern CPU China is known to be able to produce domestically, I think it's fairly obvious that Ingenic's XBurst chips are a direct spin-off of the (non-superscalar) first revision of the Dragon chip, along with some added SIMD instructions which should improve performance significantly, at least for multimedia.
Adding on a new catalytic converter would be trivial.
I suggest you try reading my post again, because you clearly didn't get the idea the first time through.
Linux/MIPS can play FLV, and Flash, it just won't be embedded, and info can't be passed back and forth.
According to Linuxdevices, the manufacturer was selling them for $180 as of 3 months ago: http://linuxdevices.com/news/NS9047481010.html
$60 in 3 months is a big sudden price drop, and 100% seller markup is pretty hard to believe.
Aircraft aren't cars:
The force needed to control a jumbo jet is far beyond the means of a single human... So, yeah, if hydraulic system failed, you're going down. But that's quite the opposite of a car, where the power steering is just a luxury.
Secondly, you can bet aircraft are extremely well design, though-out, and built by experts, with exceptional attention to detail. Again, quite the opposite of mass-market automobiles.
You'll note I did say it could be done right, but because of extra complexity and expense, I don't believe any automobile manufacturer would ever take that route. and considering the device in question, it's really not necessary, either.
There's not enough Ethanol or Biodiesel either...
However, if even 5% of petroleum usage can be offset by these alternatives, oil prices will fall drastically, eliminating the need for imports from one or more US-hostile OPEC nations, and pushing the pain out a little further into the future, when, hopefully, other technologies (ie. batteries, flywheels, ultra-capacitors) will have developed far enough, and become cheap enough, that switching even more vehicles off oil isn't as painful as it would be, today...
In fact, there's not enough wind, not enough uranium/plutonium, not enough water, not enough of ANYTHING. It's always the temporary lesser of two evils.
That's the most horrifying thing I've ever heard of.
I could live with no physical linkages for the accelerator, and possibly for the floor brakes, provided the parking break is still conventional, but I would never trust fully electronic steering.
Not that I'm a complete Luddite... Let's just say, it's possible, but quite extremely impractical to make it really fail-safe (eg. high current loop required for any movement, with independent backup batteries and substantial separation from all other electrical systems).
Then again, I had to think for a long time before getting an automatic transmission, knowing that I wouldn't be able to push-start my new car should the battery die while I'm out in the middle of nowhere... (18V cordless drills are nice and cheap)...
I suggest you look into the old-as-dirt Geo Metro (or Chevy Metro, or Suzuki Swift, or any of the dozens of other names it was sold under).
It's smaller than an Insight, and doesn't have the horsepower for 65mph+ Freeway driving, but most certainly gets incredible gas mileage.
Sorry, wrong link...
http://www.3kcomputers.com/shop/index.php?act=viewProd&productId=57
Good to know Honda's merger with Satan Corp. is working out for them.
If you're willing to pay double that, you can in fact buy practically the exact laptop they have described:
http://www.compsource.com/pn/3KRZ40074GB/3k_Computers_2340/
Both hardware and software appear to match the description perfectly.
Flash animations, and Flash Video are two very different things, and almost entirely separate.
FLV is already supported everywhere, thanks to libavcodec. You just need to parse the SWF player and find the actual file to play.
SWF animations, however, require a full-fledged player, and won't be supported. Still, how big of an issue is that going to be? Are there many websites out there that provide no alternative to their SWF menus?
For games, and the like, there is a standalone SWF player for MIPS Linux (found on similar portables--see my recent posts), which would trivially allow SWF animations launched by web pages to be played separate from the browser.
So that's a fairly narrow case of SWF that doesn't work on this sytem, and I suppose that might be worked around as well by somehow sending feedback between the standalone SWF player and the browser.
I think it's extremely safe to say this is completely vaporware hype, with no substance at all.
Laptops that just about exactly match the specs and description of this supposed $100 machine, currently retail for $250:
http://www.compsource.com/pn/3KRZ40074GB/3k_Computers_2340/
I fail to believe it's being sold at a 100% mark-up, or that any magic they can do in the next couple years is going to half the materials and production costs of a laptop.
It looks like a decent bit of hardware, but don't count on it getting significantly cheaper while you wait. Even if the price of the chips (Flash, CPU, RAM, etc.) suddenly drop dramatically (which is highly unlikely), you've still got to deal with the base cost of NiMH batteries, plastic, lights, keyboards, touch pads, power supplies, LCD displays, assembly (man hours aren't getting any cheaper), etc., etc.
If you want a low-end system, pay the $250. Don't wait for the vapor to clear.
No? Have you heard of acronym collisions before?
Millions of Instructions Per Second
vs.
Microprocessor without Interlocked Pipeline Stages
And don't get me started on "POWER"/"PowerPC", because, of course, those terms would never refer to anything other than a CPU architecture...