His Dark Materials is being produced by New Line, with Tom Stoppard (!) doing the screen-writing. I believe they're almost ready to begin pre-production. It's a promising series.
The only thing hi-fi soundcard quality depends upon is the quality and interference susceptibility of line circuits (op amps and capacitors mostly) on the DAC outputs. Given that DACs are usually given their own ICs and are somewhat spatially isolated from noisy digital components precisely because of the noise they can receive, I don't see how whether the RF amplifier and receiver lines being on chip will affect sound. By design, digital signals will not be corrupted between the components of the chipset.
Some (non-linear?) RF circuitry will probably still stay off chip, but in any case, I'm not aware of any non-digital data lines on the system chipsets, and wi-fi frequencies and their significant harmonics are far beyond the range of hearing and thus should not affect analog sound circuits, so your worry seems unfounded to me. Now, putting quality sound hardware on notebooks (where wi-fi is most ubiquitous and most closely packed) seems unpopular among notebook manufacturers, but that's another story.
Also, I don't know about the rest, but on my laptop all major components are shielded by metal sheets and boxes. On the wi-fi card, no less than 5 shields protect the components, while other shields separate it from all other components nearby.
Have you actually compared any Thinkpads to other companies' models? Have you held them and worked with them? Have you looked inside them and compared what you saw to the majority of other manufacturers' chassises?
IBM's laptops are designed with more structural integrity clearance built into their chassis and more quality control in their components than the vast majority of other manufacturers. I know, I have seen enough of them. For any structural impact/wear test you can think of, IBM's laptops on average will come out ahead of any competitor.
For the record, I own a T40, and it has the toughest chassis for its dimensions I have ever seen. It's still flimsier than I would like it to be, but it's not even comparable to the competitors. I expect to use it as my main computer for at least 3 more years, and it should sustain multiple drops and other severe conditions in the meantime.
Don't even get me started on their other advantages like component quality and expandability. IBM offers the most advanced integrated laptop line on the market, and the price is right.
The distinction of the new business model is that it uses yearly installments, like football games that are updated each season and such. Epic has obviously been far more devoted to its fans than any other FPS vendor, building unmatched expandability and scriptability into the engine and producing free expansion packs and patches which add large technical and artistic value. With this in mind, their decision to use this model is easily defended. Personally, I think Epic is the best, most fan- and technology-oriented developer in the FPS scene.
Because it's Epic's new business model. They keep the money coming by releasing yearly installments of the series, essentially shortening the release cycle, while continuing to integrate awesome new technology directly from the engine development team. This has been known since the release of UT2003.
My T40 (IBM's flagship model and best-seller) says "Made in China" on the bottom. In fact, most T40s and other product lines are made there. The build quality is extremely good.
That's a very bullshit reason. Modern power grids automatically protect against underloading by connecting and disconnecting generators. There are mechanical problems when running turbines with no load, but those problems are already encountered in the course of the usual duty cycle, which has cumulative seasonal, daily and weekly variatons of several hundred percent I think. If an underload is imminent, the grid can always dump the extra power into ground, and I'm pretty sure devices for that are ubiquitous at distribution substations.
Light pollution has little to do with making us safer. The only place we need light to make us safer is in our immediate surroundings, or possibly the surroundings of our valuables. As it stands, though, enormous amounts of power are dumped into lighting deserted areas where they can't possibly be of any use since no one is around to see anything. I can think of numerous ways that could be used to provide lighting on demand.
Listen to VNV Nation - Carbon. Look at the video track for that song. Maybe you'll understand something. Something about having to act fast to improve energy efficiency. Something about using technology (which an underload-prone power grid is a very bad example of) to ensure that our progeny has more than a barren wasteland to live in.
Stupidest thing ever... People who think they know everything really piss off those of us that actually do.
Indeed. (I suspect that I'm sometimes the one doing the pissing off, too, though.)
Banning a range of IPs from contacting an application on a privately used computer is a defensive action, not offensive. It cannot conceivably bring harm to any external party. Thus, your argument does not apply.
The most credible argument that can be used against this behavior is that the user admitted guilt of infringement by blocking these IPs (and to determine that in civil court, a subpoena would have to be issued). However, a good defense would make it all but impossible to argue this (i.e., the user can certainly claim to have a credible reason to block these IPs other than fear of discovery of infringement).
Regardless of any other factor, blocking an IP or a range of IPs in any one application or other scenario of an individual using a network is certainly not illegal and does not cross any line.
Most IBM's models and many Dell's models kick Apple in the ass in terms of durability, performance, endurance, build quality, and many other parameters. Some of them are obscenely big, but that's because they were not designed to be small. Those before P-M eat obscene amounts of power, but that's not IBM's/Dell's fault. In the portable range, IBM and Dell have models to compete with Apple formidably. Design is not just about flashy looks. Some Vaio models look awesome and work like crap.
Sharp, Panasonic, Sony and Fujitsu all have great ultraportables that will become even greater when they all migrate to ULV P-M, that's true. I look very much forward to that, and to the US manufacturers catching up to the fact that the ultraportable-portable range is the hottest market in IT right now.
All in all, it's a nice place to send a few robots to prove one's technology and show off
It is, the only problem being that it's really, really hot. As far as I understand, you have to have a reflective shield turned to the Sun at all times, and even so, your electronics are in for a very rough ride. This makes soft-landing much harder for surface probes, unless you land on the shaded side. Impact landing should be easier, but doesn't collect nearly as much information. Even worse, once you soft-land, you'll have to shield yourself from both the Sun and the ground, which makes rovers all but impossible, and soil sampling hard, too. (But if you land on the shaded side, those problems should go away.)
Also, it takes half a year to fly to Mars, but Mercury requires an elaborate orbit injection trajectory: the MESSENGER probe will spend 4 years before injection. So in terms of PR returns, it's probably better to keep sending stuff to Mars, especially because there's more to explore there. (Certainly no carbon-based life on Mercury, except maybe in craters with permanent shadow...)
Design by committee, which I think he's talking about here, is an evil evil thing.
Please explain. I don't understand how a committee of industry and academia leaders (there are hundreds of them) in a particular field designing a new standard of whatever kind is evil.
You cannot make a simple block copy of an encrypted DVD with any consumer DVD burner. I'm sure that the intersection of the set of people who want to make simple backups of their encrypted DVDs and the set of people with DVD mastering/full burning capability is empty.
Many times. My 2K and XP boxes are perfectly stable after restarting every service except the essential ones (RPC and something else). Not that I've ever had SMB fail on me.
There are many unstable and wrong things in Windows. The kernel and core services are not one of them. If you're getting problems there, something is very wrong with your setup.
This is achievable to a large extent by never installing programs on a non-defragmented disk. That way, a program writes all its files in a contiguous chunk, and assuming it will more or less want to access those files only, it has a degree of contiguousness.
True, processors can't be serviced. A lot of various other parts like various cards and drives are not serviced either - they're just salvaged for parts, while the user is sent a new unit. And there are no parts to salvage from a dead CPU.
It looks like the failure rate of the CPUs is so low (as it has to be) that AMD doesn't care if it pisses off the people who buy OEM CPUs and they break. It would not be a good way to improve customer satisfaction otherwise...
Like I said: you are wrong.
You may be under the impression that AMD does not honor warranty requests for OEM parts, but they do, because they are obligated to. No one except AMD can service these parts. Retailers usually have no clue on how to service parts - they just send them along to the OEM (in this case, AMD).
This does not particularly depend on the state you are in - the OEM (especially a very high-profile OEM like AMD) cannot refuse to honor warranty on non-retail-packaged items at least in some jurisdictions, and for most purposes, you cannot distinguish between items bought in different jurisdictions, and - more importantly - you cannot distinguish between a retailer and an end user, because most of these retailers are not on the distributor/partner list.
Again, if you buy an OEM-packaged CPU and it breaks while you are abiding by warranty (I said nothing about the hs/fan problem) you can call AMD and demand warranty service, and if the part number indicates that it is under warranty period, they cannot refuse.
Almost all OEM components are warrantied by their respective original manufacturers - it is required by law in many jurisdictions. The fact that distributors/retailers may offer their own warranty does not change that - when you ship the part to the retailer and it is not a trivial problem, the retailer ships it to the original manufacturer.
Single-byte characters suck, to put it mildly. Try using Japanese, French, Russian, and English at once with single-byte characters. (That's what I do - but not with single-byte).
With proper implementation, there is no upcase problem; your string ops library uses a Unicode upcase table that has matchings for all uppercase/lowercase character pairs in Unicode.
A Shuttle took off, orbitted twice, and landed, with no one flying the thing.
Just so you know, the STS flies fully on autopilot, except for the final landing approach, which it would also be able to fly on autopilot, but they decided that it was too risky.
Rule 1: the audio degradation caused by analog copying is LESS than that caused by MP3 compression. So...I don't care what fancy DRM they bring out, if you can hear it, you can copy and distribute it.
Got any audio tests to back that up?
It depends on the bitrate and the encoder, the DAT and ADT specs, and how you are doing the copy, but in the average case, no, I don't think so.
Funny, I have a Back-UPS Office 280 that also melted like this. Apparently it blew a thermistor. At first I thought the smell was from my 30-year-old amplifier, but after some spectacular pyrotechnics and a small blackout, it became apparent that it was indeed the UPS which was sitting right behind it.
Granted, there was somewhere between 1x and 1.5x its rated capacity plugged into it, but still, a properly designed unit should either turn off or withstand such abuse.
Slashdot Mirror
His Dark Materials is being produced by New Line, with Tom Stoppard (!) doing the screen-writing. I believe they're almost ready to begin pre-production. It's a promising series.
The only thing hi-fi soundcard quality depends upon is the quality and interference susceptibility of line circuits (op amps and capacitors mostly) on the DAC outputs. Given that DACs are usually given their own ICs and are somewhat spatially isolated from noisy digital components precisely because of the noise they can receive, I don't see how whether the RF amplifier and receiver lines being on chip will affect sound. By design, digital signals will not be corrupted between the components of the chipset.
Some (non-linear?) RF circuitry will probably still stay off chip, but in any case, I'm not aware of any non-digital data lines on the system chipsets, and wi-fi frequencies and their significant harmonics are far beyond the range of hearing and thus should not affect analog sound circuits, so your worry seems unfounded to me. Now, putting quality sound hardware on notebooks (where wi-fi is most ubiquitous and most closely packed) seems unpopular among notebook manufacturers, but that's another story.
Also, I don't know about the rest, but on my laptop all major components are shielded by metal sheets and boxes. On the wi-fi card, no less than 5 shields protect the components, while other shields separate it from all other components nearby.
Aral Sea.
WHAT?
Have you actually compared any Thinkpads to other companies' models? Have you held them and worked with them? Have you looked inside them and compared what you saw to the majority of other manufacturers' chassises?
IBM's laptops are designed with more structural integrity clearance built into their chassis and more quality control in their components than the vast majority of other manufacturers. I know, I have seen enough of them. For any structural impact/wear test you can think of, IBM's laptops on average will come out ahead of any competitor.
For the record, I own a T40, and it has the toughest chassis for its dimensions I have ever seen. It's still flimsier than I would like it to be, but it's not even comparable to the competitors. I expect to use it as my main computer for at least 3 more years, and it should sustain multiple drops and other severe conditions in the meantime.
Don't even get me started on their other advantages like component quality and expandability. IBM offers the most advanced integrated laptop line on the market, and the price is right.
For those of you from UC Berkeley and/or interested, I will be conducting a Nausicaa manga decal next semester. Also, Nausicaa is playing, among other things, at the PFA Anime showing, part of the IEAS East Asia at Berkeley program on 35mm film, which is likely the highest quality copy you'll ever see!
The distinction of the new business model is that it uses yearly installments, like football games that are updated each season and such. Epic has obviously been far more devoted to its fans than any other FPS vendor, building unmatched expandability and scriptability into the engine and producing free expansion packs and patches which add large technical and artistic value. With this in mind, their decision to use this model is easily defended. Personally, I think Epic is the best, most fan- and technology-oriented developer in the FPS scene.
Because it's Epic's new business model. They keep the money coming by releasing yearly installments of the series, essentially shortening the release cycle, while continuing to integrate awesome new technology directly from the engine development team. This has been known since the release of UT2003.
My T40 (IBM's flagship model and best-seller) says "Made in China" on the bottom. In fact, most T40s and other product lines are made there. The build quality is extremely good.
That's a very bullshit reason. Modern power grids automatically protect against underloading by connecting and disconnecting generators. There are mechanical problems when running turbines with no load, but those problems are already encountered in the course of the usual duty cycle, which has cumulative seasonal, daily and weekly variatons of several hundred percent I think. If an underload is imminent, the grid can always dump the extra power into ground, and I'm pretty sure devices for that are ubiquitous at distribution substations.
...
Light pollution has little to do with making us safer. The only place we need light to make us safer is in our immediate surroundings, or possibly the surroundings of our valuables. As it stands, though, enormous amounts of power are dumped into lighting deserted areas where they can't possibly be of any use since no one is around to see anything. I can think of numerous ways that could be used to provide lighting on demand.
Listen to VNV Nation - Carbon. Look at the video track for that song. Maybe you'll understand something. Something about having to act fast to improve energy efficiency. Something about using technology (which an underload-prone power grid is a very bad example of) to ensure that our progeny has more than a barren wasteland to live in.
Stupidest thing ever
People who think they know everything really piss off those of us that actually do.
Indeed. (I suspect that I'm sometimes the one doing the pissing off, too, though.)
Banning a range of IPs from contacting an application on a privately used computer is a defensive action, not offensive. It cannot conceivably bring harm to any external party. Thus, your argument does not apply.
The most credible argument that can be used against this behavior is that the user admitted guilt of infringement by blocking these IPs (and to determine that in civil court, a subpoena would have to be issued). However, a good defense would make it all but impossible to argue this (i.e., the user can certainly claim to have a credible reason to block these IPs other than fear of discovery of infringement).
Regardless of any other factor, blocking an IP or a range of IPs in any one application or other scenario of an individual using a network is certainly not illegal and does not cross any line.
IBM and Dell? Poorly designed?
Most IBM's models and many Dell's models kick Apple in the ass in terms of durability, performance, endurance, build quality, and many other parameters. Some of them are obscenely big, but that's because they were not designed to be small. Those before P-M eat obscene amounts of power, but that's not IBM's/Dell's fault. In the portable range, IBM and Dell have models to compete with Apple formidably. Design is not just about flashy looks. Some Vaio models look awesome and work like crap.
Sharp, Panasonic, Sony and Fujitsu all have great ultraportables that will become even greater when they all migrate to ULV P-M, that's true. I look very much forward to that, and to the US manufacturers catching up to the fact that the ultraportable-portable range is the hottest market in IT right now.
All in all, it's a nice place to send a few robots to prove one's technology and show off
It is, the only problem being that it's really, really hot. As far as I understand, you have to have a reflective shield turned to the Sun at all times, and even so, your electronics are in for a very rough ride. This makes soft-landing much harder for surface probes, unless you land on the shaded side. Impact landing should be easier, but doesn't collect nearly as much information. Even worse, once you soft-land, you'll have to shield yourself from both the Sun and the ground, which makes rovers all but impossible, and soil sampling hard, too. (But if you land on the shaded side, those problems should go away.)
Also, it takes half a year to fly to Mars, but Mercury requires an elaborate orbit injection trajectory: the MESSENGER probe will spend 4 years before injection. So in terms of PR returns, it's probably better to keep sending stuff to Mars, especially because there's more to explore there. (Certainly no carbon-based life on Mercury, except maybe in craters with permanent shadow...)
Design by committee, which I think he's talking about here, is an evil evil thing.
Please explain. I don't understand how a committee of industry and academia leaders (there are hundreds of them) in a particular field designing a new standard of whatever kind is evil.
You cannot make a simple block copy of an encrypted DVD with any consumer DVD burner. I'm sure that the intersection of the set of people who want to make simple backups of their encrypted DVDs and the set of people with DVD mastering/full burning capability is empty.
Ever done it? How stable is NT after that?
Many times. My 2K and XP boxes are perfectly stable after restarting every service except the essential ones (RPC and something else). Not that I've ever had SMB fail on me.
There are many unstable and wrong things in Windows. The kernel and core services are not one of them. If you're getting problems there, something is very wrong with your setup.
This is achievable to a large extent by never installing programs on a non-defragmented disk. That way, a program writes all its files in a contiguous chunk, and assuming it will more or less want to access those files only, it has a degree of contiguousness.
It looks like I stand corrected on this one :)
True, processors can't be serviced. A lot of various other parts like various cards and drives are not serviced either - they're just salvaged for parts, while the user is sent a new unit. And there are no parts to salvage from a dead CPU.
It looks like the failure rate of the CPUs is so low (as it has to be) that AMD doesn't care if it pisses off the people who buy OEM CPUs and they break. It would not be a good way to improve customer satisfaction otherwise...
Like I said: you are wrong. You may be under the impression that AMD does not honor warranty requests for OEM parts, but they do, because they are obligated to. No one except AMD can service these parts. Retailers usually have no clue on how to service parts - they just send them along to the OEM (in this case, AMD). This does not particularly depend on the state you are in - the OEM (especially a very high-profile OEM like AMD) cannot refuse to honor warranty on non-retail-packaged items at least in some jurisdictions, and for most purposes, you cannot distinguish between items bought in different jurisdictions, and - more importantly - you cannot distinguish between a retailer and an end user, because most of these retailers are not on the distributor/partner list. Again, if you buy an OEM-packaged CPU and it breaks while you are abiding by warranty (I said nothing about the hs/fan problem) you can call AMD and demand warranty service, and if the part number indicates that it is under warranty period, they cannot refuse.
Wrong.
Almost all OEM components are warrantied by their respective original manufacturers - it is required by law in many jurisdictions. The fact that distributors/retailers may offer their own warranty does not change that - when you ship the part to the retailer and it is not a trivial problem, the retailer ships it to the original manufacturer.
Single-byte characters suck, to put it mildly. Try using Japanese, French, Russian, and English at once with single-byte characters. (That's what I do - but not with single-byte).
With proper implementation, there is no upcase problem; your string ops library uses a Unicode upcase table that has matchings for all uppercase/lowercase character pairs in Unicode.
A Shuttle took off, orbitted twice, and landed, with no one flying the thing.
Just so you know, the STS flies fully on autopilot, except for the final landing approach, which it would also be able to fly on autopilot, but they decided that it was too risky.
Rule 1: the audio degradation caused by analog copying is LESS than that caused by MP3 compression. So...I don't care what fancy DRM they bring out, if you can hear it, you can copy and distribute it.
Got any audio tests to back that up?
It depends on the bitrate and the encoder, the DAT and ADT specs, and how you are doing the copy, but in the average case, no, I don't think so.
Funny, I have a Back-UPS Office 280 that also melted like this. Apparently it blew a thermistor. At first I thought the smell was from my 30-year-old amplifier, but after some spectacular pyrotechnics and a small blackout, it became apparent that it was indeed the UPS which was sitting right behind it.
Granted, there was somewhere between 1x and 1.5x its rated capacity plugged into it, but still, a properly designed unit should either turn off or withstand such abuse.
Oh, and remembering what Miyazaki taught me... I take some of my words back.
I don't hate Disney. At least I hope I don't.
They do some objectionable stuff though.