This looks like a nice display. And, who wouldn't like to have a big TV that was only 3" deep?
But, if I'm gonna get into something in this price range, it better do EVERYTHING I want. Unfortunately, with a resolution of 1,365 by 768, it doesn't even measure up to current HDTV broadcasts (1920 x 1080).
There are HDTV tuners that can downconvert to 720p, which should look pretty good on this display. And, DVD movies upconverted to 1365x768 would be great.. But, one more generation of these things should get it to HDTV resolutions, and probably lower the prices a few thousand dollars.
Umm.. Look at the subject that this was posted under.. Linux on DREAMCAST. You cannot just run x86 binaries on a SH4 based Dreamcast box.
With a significant effort, the open source browsers could be ported to this platform. It would be interesting to see if Mozilla could work within the memory constraints of the Dreamcast (16MB).
If someone could do this, it would be a huge hit with the DC Broadband users. Because Sega never released a WWW browser for the Dreamcast, and appear to have completely abandoned any effort to release one.
The REAL problem here is that the first article got posted at all. It was obviously a load of garbage.
Slashdot has evolved into a powerful media outlet for an important group of people. Spreading misinformation to these people can have bad effects. When a group is starting a new project, and have doubt about something, like Unicode, caused by a seemingly authoritative source, they will do the wrong thing.
It's time for slashdot to mature & behave as a major media outlet. This should include:
- Independant verification of stories before posting
- Caching (when achievable) of sites referenced in articles. -- Some sites WANT the huge number of hits, others can't begin to handle that type of load. So, ASK THEM, then cache as appropriate. Google does it, so can/.
Keep treating consumers like criminals.. The more you spit on them, the more they will want your product!
Almost every CD I own (300+) is in a cardboard box at the bottom of a stack in my closet. It is perfectly legal for me to listen to those songs I have converted into MP3 format. I, for one, will not be paying a cent more to move them to another media to be played in my car.
So, I guess I'll stick to my Linux CD Burner application.
Why would one want to represent all character sets of the world simultaneously??
In the WWW, doesn't the HTTP header contain character set information, so the client knows which of the many character sets/languages to use? Then, only the size of that one character set is important (which will always be FAR less than 64K).
I saw no mention of SMP support in any of the material I read. From what I can see, that's the only thing holding this back from making the ultimate system.
I didn't see any mention of the BIOS they were using in this system..
I think it's great to see some innovation/competition in the chipset market. Now that they are tightly integrating all of the chipset functions, it would be nice to see some innovation in the BIOS area to go along with it. That's an area that's been stagnant since the PC-XT clone days.
I have the same situation.. I have a home office with five computers, and the cumulative noise can be quite loud.
Of those five computers, only one is used all the time. The others are used for server functions, test scenarios, etc.
The systems that are not used frequently can be silenced by using power management. I guess it would be limited in part by the hardware & what support for power management control it has. But, many systems will stop or slow the case fans & spin down the hard drives.
Complete power management is not trivial to set up. But, a simple method for eliminating the hard drive noise is to use hdparm to tell the drive to spin down after a period without use.
"hdparm -S 240/dev/hda" tells the drive to spin down after 20 minutes without use. It automatically starts up when a disk request is made.
Come on guys.. we all love Linux, and want to see companies that are helping to advance it succeed. But, propping up linux companies will do no good in the end.
Like every other for-profit company, they need to compete in the open market. They will win or lose based on the merits of their product, their marketing, economic factors, etc. Saying that the need charity to survive is sort of insulting to Linux.
Like many other Internet related sectors, Linux companies were started and grew with irrational exuberance in the last few years. Like all those Internet companies, the ones with no chance of competing in the open market will fail. This had to be expected. This does not mean Linux will somehow die. It means that Linux will evolve. Some projects will die, some will return to their roots as community projects, some will get swallowed up by larger corporations, and others will flourish on their own.
If a Linux company wants community financial support, it should be set up as a non-profit company, and donations should be tax deductable.
The article is a pure piece of Marketing
on
Smart Routers
·
· Score: 5
The stuff he says about the "smart network" is a big piece of crap, intended to make them look better than the giant, cisco.
'He designed the Internet to be dumb at the core, so he could keep control at his lab' What a load of crap.. The Internet of his day bears little resemblance to the Internet of today. The reason the core doesn't get into complexities is just because of CPU power. The relatively low bandwidths on the edge was the only place that had enough CPU power to do heavy processing. If you tried to do that in the core, where all the links were aggregated, you could not keep up with the load and do complex processing.
And, the junk about smart routers telling different data types is REALLY simplistic. Labelling packets for their type of data is not the challenge. Allocating bandwidth per customer, billing per usage were more difficult. And, for a really tough issue to overcome.... Your ISP, say AT&T, labels your packet high priority voice data.. It zips through their network, then goes through a NAP & gets passed to MCI's network.. You don't pay MCI a dime.. Why should they honor your priority & preempt their paying customers?
Also, he tries to make it out to be a big benefit to everyone. As if, my WWW browsing will get faster if they do prioritized switching in the core. But, in reality, today my packets are treated equally with everyone else's. With prioritized routing, I will be at a lower priority than Mr. Deep Pockets at GM, CitiBank, GE, and other high paying customers.
Re:2600 is completely WRONG on this one.
on
2600 v. Ford Motors
·
· Score: 1
It has never been the consumer's responsibility to understand how something works before operating it. Anything with that requirement would never reach mass-market status.
Using a Ford example, if consumers had to understand the intricacies of how a car worked in order to operate it, there would be very few cars on the road. Instead, I need only know how to turn the key to start the car, I do not need to know the details of the electrical system. If there is a problem with that, I take it to the expert who has the tools to diagnose it.
Read the info that 2600 put up on this fight with Ford.. The come of as childish whiners, with poorly reasoned and exaggerated claims.
I hope this is not representative of their behavior/ability in general. If it is, the DeCSS case is DOOMED.
Of course, nobody in their right mind would jump to Ford's conclusion. And most people who remain in their right mind would have no problem doing a "whois" on the Domain Name which clearly shows no connection to Ford
Yeah.... right... We're are in the right here, because anyone accessing the WWW site can easily do a whois lookup to find the owner.. Every internet user knows all about DNS, and the process for registering a domain, and whois. I'm sure most people keep a seperate browser open so they can do a whois search on every site they go to.
This frivilous crap hurts the whole community, and tarnishes any REAL issues that come up. Like, all the DeCSS, MPAA, RIAA battles. 2600 even drags the EFF into this, claiming "the EFF supports our stand" on their WWW site.
To 99% of people accessing the WWW site, this would look like Ford had registered fuckgeneralmotors.com.
I disagree with the vast majority of domain protection lawsuits. But, I do agree with them in the case that someone is trying to pass themselves off as the company in question. If they have logos of the company & confuse consumers, they have stepped over the line.
This standard has been upheld in many other cases. That is why you always see a disclaimer if there any confusion.. "This is not an official BobCo site". The 2600 DNS thing clearly gives no indication of being non-Ford. In 2600's info, they say "anyone confused can easily do a whois lookup", ya, let me explain this to my Mom.. If you ever are unsure about a domain name, telnet into my Linux box & run whois.
I thought it was a decent show. I watched it a few times, mostly to get a look at Fox's Enhanced Definition TV (EDTV) picture quality (on Fox stations supporting digital broadcasts).
It was broadcast in 16:9 Widescreen format, like HDTV, and 60 fps progressive scan, but was at a lower resolution: 480p. While not up to the quality that CBS shows, in 1080i, it was MUCH better than standard TV.
FYI - Fox also does The X-Files, Malcolm in the Middle, Ally McBeal, Boston Public, Titus, & Dark Angel in this format. CBS does even more, in full HDTV, 1080i mode.
If they follow through on this, I will be the first one in line to buy one. The feature set of this thing is incredible.
There is no way they could compete as a stand-alone game system. But, by bundling that as one of many features, they have a much better chance.
For me, the compelling app is the digital TV set top box (Hopefully, fully HDTV capable). Combine that with Tivo-like functionality, and it's the killer app for HDTV enthusiasts. If it also has DirecTV functionality, it is the ultimate device!
I think anyone that knows anything about modern systems (and is not 100% tied to Windows) would like to have a PowerPC system.
But, I can get any one of 50 different motherboards for around $100 for an x86. It's really hard to justify spending 3,4, or 5 times as much for a PPC system.
Come on Abit, VIA, Soyo, etc.. How about a cheap PPC motherboard.
I'm sick of buying a huge heat sink with a big fan & 3 case fans to keep my crappy x86 from melting. Give me a reasonably priced motherboard for a RISC processor.
There seems to be a lot of confusion as to what this is really saying. Other methods have been around for a long time to broadcast quake-like games. But, that is not the key here.. the key is multicast technology. Theoretically, this means that the broadcast proxy server sends ONE stream out, to a special multicast address, e.g. 224.1.1.1, and it is sent to all interested hosts (and not to those who don't want it). So, it is a very efficient use of bandwidth, and makes mass viewing possible. You no longer need a huge pipe to allow mass viewing, and your BANDWIDTH NEEDS DO NOT INCREASE as more viewers connect.
This technology has been around a LONG time.. But, has never gotten over the hump for implementation/acceptance. The problems have included protocol issues, cooperation among ISP's to accept each other's multicast routing/pruning, and lack of compelling applications.
Hopefully, a cool application like this can help push acceptance along. With this technology, low cost streaming of audio content is very easy, and video is realistic with a bit more effort.
On the down side... As others have stated, I would expect very few people to be able to actually use this when it becomes available. But, if you have problems, complain loudly to your ISP, let them know the demand is out there.
Obviously, this device is in the future.. Hopefully in the near future broadcast digital TV will be the norm. So, the box needs to be able to output 720p and 1080i via component video or RGB outputs. Also, the recording of video MUST be able to handle HDTV sources. The Telemann DTV-200 already does this.
There are almost no HDTV stories on/.
Maybe because in West Michigan, only one channel has gone digital, WOOD-8 (NBC). Rob: beg/borrow/steal an HDTV decoder & check out the tonight show (the ONLY thing NBC shows in HD.. CBS is much better) using a cheap UHF antenna. This free, off the air broadcast, is amazing in quality.
"But ESR will be responsible for holding off that state of affairs for a few years."
Isn't that giving Mr. Raymond way too much credit? I agree he was a part of a much greater whole.
My problem with him is that I don't agree with a good deal of what he says. I certainly don't agree with how he says it. He would not be in my top 20 list of open source community "mouthpieces", and for him to appoint himself as such is offensive.
Up until his series of idiotic writings (Take my job..., I am really rich, etc.) I didn't mind him. After those, he just leaves a bad impression & I shudder to think what dumb-ass things he is saying behind closed doors to government and industry leaders that can truly effect Linux, Open Source, and Free Software.
One problem with this solution is that it is USB based, and almost all PC BIOS's do not support booting from a USB floppy. Some laptops, such as the Sony SR7K do, but I have not seen any desktop PC's supporting USB boot.
If you want something bootable, how about BIOS extensions to boot from a compactflash card in a SanDisk usb reader.. That would make an excellent Linux Router.. solid state boot media offers the kind of reliability you want in a network device. Combine that with a tiny ATX motherboard, a few ethernet ports, and a small enclosure & you would have a kick-ass router.
I would love to start playing with this, and eventually get an MP3 player running on it, accessing my MP3 library (approximately 200 of my CD's ripped to MP3) via NFS.
Anyone know where to find a NetBSD ISO image for the Dreamcast?
I was also not fortunate enough to have the Transformer toys (I think they overlapped with the Star Wars action figures, so I always chose Luke & Yoda over robo-XXX).
But, the ultimate toy from this generation is the Stomper 4x4. These little plastic beauties had big rubber or foam wheels, a two gear transmission (if I remember correctly), and a whoop-ass monster truck plastic shell.
There have been several attempts to revive the Stomper line for later generations, but apparently they have all failed. Looking through Toys R' Us today, it seems that every car needs 8 buttons with various annoying sound effects & voice clips.
Now that the hardware platform is dead, why not open it up for broader development?
They could still require their licensing for games that are sold/distributed.. But, release all the hardware/software specs and development tools so that maybe an Open Source type community could grow around the DC.
Also, they could license the technology to other vendors (as has been rumored in the past). I'm sure they could find some manufacturer of DVD players that would like to include DC functionality as a feature of their product. Or, license it to MS or Nintendo to kick start their new consoles.
For a company that is struggling to survive, as we know Sega is, they have shown no urgency in getting this thing out to a broad market.
First they had several major delays, then they scaled back the launch to only include sega.com, now even when it is supposedly out, it is still not shipping.
I ordered one on the 10th, the first day they were actually available for purchase. I selected the more expensive 2-Day Air shipping option. And, as of today, the 16th, it has still not been shipped. I called Sega, and they say that there are shipping problems, and they will begin shipping tomorrow, but it will happen "very slowly", so there is no way to tell when mine will ship.
Also, prior to the adapter becoming available, sega.com (online & via phone) were unable to take pre-orders, so that I didn't have to keep checking back at their site until it was finally made available. According to the representative on the phone, the phone sales people were only able to order via the same WWW site the customers accessed. They had no more ability to do pre-orders or anything. They could not take orders until the WWW people had updated the site... Pretty poor integration/automation for a high tech company.
After seeing this performance by Sega, I have no doubt that they will fail in the console gaming market. Not because the Playstation 2 is so much better, it is not, but because Sega has repeatedly failed to execute, and continuously fails to capitalize on their advantages.
Low Ping time is just another way of saying lower latency. And, YES, it is true.
The ping/latency/round-trip time is the sum total of how long it takes to cross each hop in your network path and back.
If your modem sends 28,800 bits per second ( = 3600 Bytes per second ) you can invert that and say it sends one byte in 1/3600 of a second. So, a 1.5Mbps connection would send the same amount of data much quicker (1/187,500 of a sec.)
Last time I used a 56K modem, I was getting ping times around 130-150ms. With my current DSL service, I ping my ISP's router in 25ms.
In many applications, like voice, video, or gaming, the amount of data being sent is less important than the latency involved in the transmission (i.e. if the data isn't received fast enough, it's useless).
Slashdot Mirror
This looks like a nice display. And, who wouldn't like to have a big TV that was only 3" deep? But, if I'm gonna get into something in this price range, it better do EVERYTHING I want. Unfortunately, with a resolution of 1,365 by 768, it doesn't even measure up to current HDTV broadcasts (1920 x 1080). There are HDTV tuners that can downconvert to 720p, which should look pretty good on this display. And, DVD movies upconverted to 1365x768 would be great.. But, one more generation of these things should get it to HDTV resolutions, and probably lower the prices a few thousand dollars.
With a significant effort, the open source browsers could be ported to this platform. It would be interesting to see if Mozilla could work within the memory constraints of the Dreamcast (16MB).
If someone could do this, it would be a huge hit with the DC Broadband users. Because Sega never released a WWW browser for the Dreamcast, and appear to have completely abandoned any effort to release one.
Slashdot has evolved into a powerful media outlet for an important group of people. Spreading misinformation to these people can have bad effects. When a group is starting a new project, and have doubt about something, like Unicode, caused by a seemingly authoritative source, they will do the wrong thing.
It's time for slashdot to mature & behave as a major media outlet. This should include:
- Independant verification of stories before posting
- Caching (when achievable) of sites referenced in articles. -- Some sites WANT the huge number of hits, others can't begin to handle that type of load. So, ASK THEM, then cache as appropriate. Google does it, so can /.
Almost every CD I own (300+) is in a cardboard box at the bottom of a stack in my closet. It is perfectly legal for me to listen to those songs I have converted into MP3 format. I, for one, will not be paying a cent more to move them to another media to be played in my car.
So, I guess I'll stick to my Linux CD Burner application.
In the WWW, doesn't the HTTP header contain character set information, so the client knows which of the many character sets/languages to use? Then, only the size of that one character set is important (which will always be FAR less than 64K).
I saw no mention of SMP support in any of the material I read. From what I can see, that's the only thing holding this back from making the ultimate system.
I think it's great to see some innovation/competition in the chipset market. Now that they are tightly integrating all of the chipset functions, it would be nice to see some innovation in the BIOS area to go along with it. That's an area that's been stagnant since the PC-XT clone days.
Of those five computers, only one is used all the time. The others are used for server functions, test scenarios, etc.
The systems that are not used frequently can be silenced by using power management. I guess it would be limited in part by the hardware & what support for power management control it has. But, many systems will stop or slow the case fans & spin down the hard drives.
Complete power management is not trivial to set up. But, a simple method for eliminating the hard drive noise is to use hdparm to tell the drive to spin down after a period without use.
"hdparm -S 240 /dev/hda" tells the drive to spin down after 20 minutes without use. It automatically starts up when a disk request is made.
Like every other for-profit company, they need to compete in the open market. They will win or lose based on the merits of their product, their marketing, economic factors, etc. Saying that the need charity to survive is sort of insulting to Linux.
Like many other Internet related sectors, Linux companies were started and grew with irrational exuberance in the last few years. Like all those Internet companies, the ones with no chance of competing in the open market will fail. This had to be expected. This does not mean Linux will somehow die. It means that Linux will evolve. Some projects will die, some will return to their roots as community projects, some will get swallowed up by larger corporations, and others will flourish on their own.
If a Linux company wants community financial support, it should be set up as a non-profit company, and donations should be tax deductable.
'He designed the Internet to be dumb at the core, so he could keep control at his lab' What a load of crap.. The Internet of his day bears little resemblance to the Internet of today. The reason the core doesn't get into complexities is just because of CPU power. The relatively low bandwidths on the edge was the only place that had enough CPU power to do heavy processing. If you tried to do that in the core, where all the links were aggregated, you could not keep up with the load and do complex processing.
And, the junk about smart routers telling different data types is REALLY simplistic. Labelling packets for their type of data is not the challenge. Allocating bandwidth per customer, billing per usage were more difficult. And, for a really tough issue to overcome.... Your ISP, say AT&T, labels your packet high priority voice data.. It zips through their network, then goes through a NAP & gets passed to MCI's network.. You don't pay MCI a dime.. Why should they honor your priority & preempt their paying customers?
Also, he tries to make it out to be a big benefit to everyone. As if, my WWW browsing will get faster if they do prioritized switching in the core. But, in reality, today my packets are treated equally with everyone else's. With prioritized routing, I will be at a lower priority than Mr. Deep Pockets at GM, CitiBank, GE, and other high paying customers.
Using a Ford example, if consumers had to understand the intricacies of how a car worked in order to operate it, there would be very few cars on the road. Instead, I need only know how to turn the key to start the car, I do not need to know the details of the electrical system. If there is a problem with that, I take it to the expert who has the tools to diagnose it.
I hope this is not representative of their behavior/ability in general. If it is, the DeCSS case is DOOMED.
Yeah.... right... We're are in the right here, because anyone accessing the WWW site can easily do a whois lookup to find the owner.. Every internet user knows all about DNS, and the process for registering a domain, and whois. I'm sure most people keep a seperate browser open so they can do a whois search on every site they go to.
This frivilous crap hurts the whole community, and tarnishes any REAL issues that come up. Like, all the DeCSS, MPAA, RIAA battles. 2600 even drags the EFF into this, claiming "the EFF supports our stand" on their WWW site.
To 99% of people accessing the WWW site, this would look like Ford had registered fuckgeneralmotors.com.
I disagree with the vast majority of domain protection lawsuits. But, I do agree with them in the case that someone is trying to pass themselves off as the company in question. If they have logos of the company & confuse consumers, they have stepped over the line.
This standard has been upheld in many other cases. That is why you always see a disclaimer if there any confusion.. "This is not an official BobCo site". The 2600 DNS thing clearly gives no indication of being non-Ford. In 2600's info, they say "anyone confused can easily do a whois lookup", ya, let me explain this to my Mom.. If you ever are unsure about a domain name, telnet into my Linux box & run whois.
It was broadcast in 16:9 Widescreen format, like HDTV, and 60 fps progressive scan, but was at a lower resolution: 480p. While not up to the quality that CBS shows, in 1080i, it was MUCH better than standard TV.
FYI - Fox also does The X-Files, Malcolm in the Middle, Ally McBeal, Boston Public, Titus, & Dark Angel in this format. CBS does even more, in full HDTV, 1080i mode.
If they follow through on this, I will be the first one in line to buy one. The feature set of this thing is incredible. There is no way they could compete as a stand-alone game system. But, by bundling that as one of many features, they have a much better chance. For me, the compelling app is the digital TV set top box (Hopefully, fully HDTV capable). Combine that with Tivo-like functionality, and it's the killer app for HDTV enthusiasts. If it also has DirecTV functionality, it is the ultimate device!
Come on Abit, VIA, Soyo, etc.. How about a cheap PPC motherboard.
I'm sick of buying a huge heat sink with a big fan & 3 case fans to keep my crappy x86 from melting. Give me a reasonably priced motherboard for a RISC processor.
This technology has been around a LONG time.. But, has never gotten over the hump for implementation/acceptance. The problems have included protocol issues, cooperation among ISP's to accept each other's multicast routing/pruning, and lack of compelling applications.
Hopefully, a cool application like this can help push acceptance along. With this technology, low cost streaming of audio content is very easy, and video is realistic with a bit more effort.
On the down side... As others have stated, I would expect very few people to be able to actually use this when it becomes available. But, if you have problems, complain loudly to your ISP, let them know the demand is out there.
There are almost no HDTV stories on /.
Maybe because in West Michigan, only one channel has gone digital, WOOD-8 (NBC). Rob: beg/borrow/steal an HDTV decoder & check out the tonight show (the ONLY thing NBC shows in HD.. CBS is much better) using a cheap UHF antenna. This free, off the air broadcast, is amazing in quality.
Isn't that giving Mr. Raymond way too much credit? I agree he was a part of a much greater whole.
My problem with him is that I don't agree with a good deal of what he says. I certainly don't agree with how he says it. He would not be in my top 20 list of open source community "mouthpieces", and for him to appoint himself as such is offensive.
Up until his series of idiotic writings (Take my job..., I am really rich, etc.) I didn't mind him. After those, he just leaves a bad impression & I shudder to think what dumb-ass things he is saying behind closed doors to government and industry leaders that can truly effect Linux, Open Source, and Free Software.
One problem with this solution is that it is USB based, and almost all PC BIOS's do not support booting from a USB floppy. Some laptops, such as the Sony SR7K do, but I have not seen any desktop PC's supporting USB boot. If you want something bootable, how about BIOS extensions to boot from a compactflash card in a SanDisk usb reader.. That would make an excellent Linux Router.. solid state boot media offers the kind of reliability you want in a network device. Combine that with a tiny ATX motherboard, a few ethernet ports, and a small enclosure & you would have a kick-ass router.
I would love to start playing with this, and eventually get an MP3 player running on it, accessing my MP3 library (approximately 200 of my CD's ripped to MP3) via NFS. Anyone know where to find a NetBSD ISO image for the Dreamcast?
I was also not fortunate enough to have the Transformer toys (I think they overlapped with the Star Wars action figures, so I always chose Luke & Yoda over robo-XXX). But, the ultimate toy from this generation is the Stomper 4x4. These little plastic beauties had big rubber or foam wheels, a two gear transmission (if I remember correctly), and a whoop-ass monster truck plastic shell. There have been several attempts to revive the Stomper line for later generations, but apparently they have all failed. Looking through Toys R' Us today, it seems that every car needs 8 buttons with various annoying sound effects & voice clips.
They could still require their licensing for games that are sold/distributed.. But, release all the hardware/software specs and development tools so that maybe an Open Source type community could grow around the DC.
Also, they could license the technology to other vendors (as has been rumored in the past). I'm sure they could find some manufacturer of DVD players that would like to include DC functionality as a feature of their product. Or, license it to MS or Nintendo to kick start their new consoles.
First they had several major delays, then they scaled back the launch to only include sega.com, now even when it is supposedly out, it is still not shipping.
I ordered one on the 10th, the first day they were actually available for purchase. I selected the more expensive 2-Day Air shipping option. And, as of today, the 16th, it has still not been shipped. I called Sega, and they say that there are shipping problems, and they will begin shipping tomorrow, but it will happen "very slowly", so there is no way to tell when mine will ship.
Also, prior to the adapter becoming available, sega.com (online & via phone) were unable to take pre-orders, so that I didn't have to keep checking back at their site until it was finally made available. According to the representative on the phone, the phone sales people were only able to order via the same WWW site the customers accessed. They had no more ability to do pre-orders or anything. They could not take orders until the WWW people had updated the site... Pretty poor integration/automation for a high tech company.
After seeing this performance by Sega, I have no doubt that they will fail in the console gaming market. Not because the Playstation 2 is so much better, it is not, but because Sega has repeatedly failed to execute, and continuously fails to capitalize on their advantages.
The ping/latency/round-trip time is the sum total of how long it takes to cross each hop in your network path and back.
If your modem sends 28,800 bits per second ( = 3600 Bytes per second ) you can invert that and say it sends one byte in 1/3600 of a second. So, a 1.5Mbps connection would send the same amount of data much quicker (1/187,500 of a sec.)
Last time I used a 56K modem, I was getting ping times around 130-150ms. With my current DSL service, I ping my ISP's router in 25ms.
In many applications, like voice, video, or gaming, the amount of data being sent is less important than the latency involved in the transmission (i.e. if the data isn't received fast enough, it's useless).