United parcel smashing screwed me twice (why did I trust them again? it was 2 years later and I didn't remember that it happened before, I thought it was another carrrier that did it to me).
Get this: Got a relative that sent me a cassiopeia thru ups for me to play around with, he wrote "gift not for resale" on the duties declaration, basically, it was already payed and taxed and all... he wasn't getting cash from me for it, there's supposed to be a free trade between canada and US anyways, especially for the computer stuff...
Thing is, guess what stupid surprise I got? he insured it for 200$ in case something would happen, I got TAXED on the 200$US (provencial and federal tax, a nice total of 15%) so that costed me a nice extra 30$, plus another 30$ for duties.... basically I had to pay over 90$ canadian to get the unit or else it would be returned. Thing is I didn't answer the door, I was at work, my girlfriend payed them because she knew I was expecting it (and beside my relative would have lost his shipping $$), they didn't give me any receipt (aside from a 2cmx10cm note that was attached to the box) and GOD was I pissed. I've phoned them explaining the situation, they said that gifts thing works for value under 60$, for christ sake, the tax thing, I can understand, to some extent, but 15% of DUTY tax?? no that's called stealing, that's total abuse, and while they may increase they profit margin with that, they'll lose just about EVERY small customers they could get (and sometimes small customers like me have power to chose which carrrier to use at work) you can be sure no package will go thru them anymore.
And for a reference, I used federal express, and DHL, never had that kind of problem, package insured for 500$US another insured for 300$, so it's really a UPS issue, it's really bad customer service and total abusing. Of course they didn't give a receipt, they pulled that one off, I've got no papertrail exept their database, and for 60$ I won't go thru all the trouble of getting my relative to piss on them to get a refund... really clever, but this time I will remember.
I'm sure there will be a hundred of similar stories posted here, I never heard anything good from UPS since this happened to me, I keep hearing horror stories.
You probably DON'T want to put us2000$+ on a laptop if it's stuck at 1024x768. Now 1280x1024 is standard on midrange laptops, don't look at resolution on LCD like you see CRT, like, getting 1280x1024 sucks (blurs, etc) on most 17" monitors, but it's really crisp and nice on a 15" laptop screen. The Dell 8000 I use has 1600x1200, when I saw that on dell's site I was "ok I'll probably run it at 1280x1024 because it's gonna suck" but to my surprise, it's readable crisp and usable (I Never ran 1600x1200 before, not even on a 21" hehe), and beleive me, you can put a quadro8-2go in the laptop, if it's 1024x768, you'll feel screwed when you'll see better resolution, unless you don't pay much for it.
Of course most people manage with 800x600/1024x768, and I guess for running linux it's not a big issue, but since you mentionned it, I guess it's because it matters to you, unless it's dirt cheap, if you have doubts about the resolution size, don't go for it because chances are you'll regret it, it's not like buying a 200$ CRT monitor, you'll be stucked with it afterwards.
Stuff you might want to know about Maxtor firewire
on
Firewire and Linux?
·
· Score: 5, Informative
1. The supplied cable is the "standard" 6 pin firewire... 6 pins to 6 pins.
2. If you have a Dell Inspirion 8x00 laptop for example, you need an extra cable to convert 6 pins to 4 pins (smaller connector) to fit in the laptop (had to buy it as an extra).
3. The transfer speed I got here (Dell inspiron 8000) was around 15-20MB/s read, and ~5-7MB/s write (pretty sustained)
on win2k pro.
4. It rocks for big dumb storage, but it sucks if you need fast access to your data, you'd be better off with a 48Gig drive with a 20gig partition with NTFS encryption on for most tasks, but then again, if you need the full 80 gig for some reason, it's the best choice for the money (and so much faster than crappy Usb 1.0). I formatted 2 partition (works from disk manager, doesn't need any extra software), 40 gig normal 40 gig with compression... NOW I have enough space.. and yes the hotswap feature works like a charm.
Aside from the fact that when I tried bearshare last year, it DIDN'T ASK me if I wanted to install extra stuff, I was running norton internet security, and guess what I found? A nice little program that was running in the background, ALWAYS pluging EVERY site I was visiting in a database somewhere before going to connect to that typed site I sent, all this transparent if you didn't have any firewalling software installed. (I kept seeing a connection to some place that I didn't know of), I uninstalled bearshare, guess what, it stayed there! (standard uninstaller, not cleansweep or any advanced cleaners).
What pissed me off the most about this is NOWHERE in the install process or the website from front page to download link was this indicated.
I was happy to see alternative to napster, but I was REALLY angry at the fact that people are installing spying crap on my system not EVEN with small notices anywhere in the install or download process! That happened after the REAL.COM spyware fiasco, I thought people learned, I'm sure today it's not doing it anymore for that precise example (after a zillion complain probably)
But WHY do we have to go thru this?? these people should be treated the same way VIRUS WRITERS would be, heck, you can get jailed in some contries just to try to log in a.mil site for fun or do portscanning on any major sites, why the heck do these people install stuff that tracks your every moves and gets out of it with not even a scratch? 20$ you'd write something like that and treat it with a virus label, you'd get fined and jailed! I stopped using bearshare from that day and told all my friends, sent an article here about it and all the specs but it got rejected.
Anyways, I can't beleive people are still pulling that stunt, mandatory banner adds, it's okay in my book, even if it's totally useless and normally it means that the application will die (because who click these adds anyways?! the only advertising system I saw working were porn sites and some loyal people on a specific site (i.e. Here probably). The fact is they SAY so, they WARN you, if you go thru the process and something slows down your system or tracks your moves, at least you know! that's the BIG difference and even if it's almost ironic to say, I guess with all the spycrap around, people being honnest about the stuff they install on your system should get a praise. (yike!!)
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| Bearshare pops up to an immediate ad, and also usually spawns a browser window to show an ad. Pretty annoying, but it's not a big deal to just close the spawned window and get on with your business... not really a big deal if limewire does it... besides, if it helps keep them in business, then i say go for it!
EVERYTHING is there in a laptop to replace an average workstation, but there's one thing I'd really like for overall performance boost... if you can stick a high power processor, high resolution LCD panel with super brightness, and have a 3d GPU in the lot, how about IDE raid, imagine having 2x48GB striped under your laptop, a second drive wouldn't take that much more volume (ok forget about the ultrathin or small laptops, we're talking about a nice workstation replacement here:)) I'd like booting off a laptop faster... IDE RAID would be the best solution for speed increase in that area. The drawback of course would be doubling the chance of losing data but then again you could also put mirroring or striping as options (so mirroring would actually ensure data integrity from disk drive failure).
I am using a Dell 8100 notebook 512MB ram, external 80GB firewire drive for dumping data that I won't access too often, 48GB 2.5" drive, overall my rating is 9/10, it ROCKS, the IDE raid thing would really be welcomed but I know it's not a mainsream request, unfortunately.
Supposed to ship today, THAT'S the baby, raid-5 with 48bits LBA support. That means 960GB (6x160Gig using maxtor 160GB drives) of storage for dirt cheap, plus Raid-5 support.
I am planning a non-critical datacenter (rendered frames and so on) with that setup, it's crazy, while a single drive is not offering the performance of the barracuda 180GB 7200rpm drive from seagate, it's like C$500 for a 160GB drive whereas the seagate would cost me around C$2500, you can get to the same performance (plus increased storage and safety with Raid 1 or 5) for the same price than a single seagate drive. it ROCKS.
I can't beleive I payed C$300 for a 40MB on my amiga1200 not even 10 years ago:)
I buy what's good, I buy the TOOL that gets the job done.
I need a mission critical server that is x86 based? Forget intel chipsets, forget VIA, forget SiS, I go with Serverworks chipsets With pentium III processors, Serverworks are proven reliable chipsets vendor, and while the cost of the motherboard is a bit (well a big bit:) ) higher, it's still way cheaper than goind into most other platforms.
I need building an x86 renderfarm? NOTHING beats the power of a tigerMP with dual athlon price/performance wise. Stability? it is, it's simply rendering, not running quake while processing SETI units and running beta video drivers with leaked chipsets drivers.
The processors are a tool, you don't see people fighting over mastercraft vs black and decker when they come to buy a screwdriver, why you guys gets so religious about processors? I remember how happy most of you were when celerons with cache came out, overclocking that 300A to 450... you didn't think about AMD back then (well most of you didn't).. you were just saying "the k6 sucks, celeron rules" (I own a dual 366->550 that I'll probably change to a tigerMP). Of course most of what intel did to get flamed happened after that (rambus, crappy chipsets after BX, patent crap with via, etc), It's still pathetic to see how people react so badly...
Don't get me wrong, I find what intel did (especially with the rambus and via case) disgusting, but buisness is buisness, if they deliver good stuff at a decent price, I'll still get it, I have a company to maintain and a job to do. Of course if in the process I can do something about it as a IT manager, I will do it, but NOT at the demise of the company that employs me. There are alternatives to Rambus (serverworks gives a nice memory bandwidth with standard PC133 ram, they should come out with the same technology with DDR memory soon so that WILL kick hard). This is where I voice my opinion. Still, I wouldn't pay 50% more for AMD if intel would offer a similar technology same specs, same performance for less, this is where it becomes religious and pathetic.
If tomorrow I could get dual 2.2GHZ intel processors with rambus, 33% cheaper than an AMD based solution with DDR ram, I'd go for it, right now, it's AMD that has the upper hand, so these are the guys that I buy from for general computing/renderfarming.
>Your PC case doesn't roll over and kill 3 of your family members when the OS blows out.
Not true... when IE freeze on that specific p0rn site and your wife comes in the room at the same time, and CTRL-ALT-DEL doesn't work anymore (ahhh life's unexpected coincidences), and you're too slow to reach the reset button... tell me where the case/keyboard/monitor ends? If it doesn't kill you... you'd wish it did:)
Music artists: you're unknown? you want to get known? fuck RIAA, if you're too little, they won't care, if you're big, you're probably screwed already with a 1000 pages contract.
The hell with anyone who claims MP3 traders make artists starve. With the price of CD-Rs right now, an artist would make far more doing a burn production by a little nerd in a basement and going to sell his stuff and probably making a much bigger profit/disk than what ANYTHING THESE BIG RECORD LABELS WILL EVER OFFER YOU.
Who cares about exportation, it's not them that will get you known, it's the quality of your content and the ear to ear, distribute your music, get popular, and CASH IN with shows, tshirts, and maybe someone with big courage could emulate (was it a part of CDNOW's buisness model?) the idea of having online music a la mp3.com and a burning CDs service to which you'd get royalties. and make the CDs cheap, 4$ each MAXIMUM with maybe a minimal quantity buyout (so better price to cut shipping and encourage to buy even more, etc etc) and not converted from Mp3 but original stuff. 4$ for ~10 songs minus 1$ for a good quality CD (in quantities you can get a fairly decent price, we're talking about a buisness anyways), that would come to 30cents per song, give 5 cents per song to the service, get 25cents per song sold, if you reach 100,000 people that way, that's an EASY 25K$, that will be way more than what you would have gotten with RIAA, because you need a lawyer for X contract, you need an accountant you need to payback X/Y of the advertizing you need to pay this and that fee, screw that, my model benefit BOTH the consumer (cheaper CDs) and the artist (you're good, you'll get paid accordingly), 100,000 may seem big, but when you consider the amount of stuff swapped per month (don't remember the numbers) even if only 5% of that total traffic goes to a legit buisness like I've proposed, it'll be way enough.
And like I said, there's always Shows, merchandise, etc.. There's a way to circumvent the current system for the people that aren't tied in a bigass contract.... I just hope they'll be smart enough.
Does EFF has a Paypal donation address or something similar without having to go thru all the problems of writing a check putting it in an envelope and actually GO OUTSIDE to mail it? It would be really useful and I encourage people that support the EFF to do the same.
Timelapse recording is legal in my book. Swapping movies over the net wouldn't be happening THAT much if the crap they shove at us would be worth seeing in a theatre... I go see movies about every week or 2, so I am a customer, and that gives me the right to complain as well, there will always be pirates, you will never get rid of them, but Movie swapping over the net wouldn't be happening that much if the DVDs would be set at a reasonable price and the movies themselves WORTH SEEING ON A BIGGER SCREEN. I won't repeat What I said in a previous similar post again but for god's sake, put up some better content to protect in the first place!
RIAA, I won't even talk about them, I don't wanna reduce de lifespan of my $9.75 keyboard for that subject:).
But with the G5 around the corner, I think THAT will be THE interresting comparison.. expecially since Intel plans on keeping the P4 for a while (, ramping it up in speed, when you Read adobe saying the G5 are significantly faster than P4 (and if you go read the article, the same people do say that the P4 is faster than a G4 (exept for altivec stuff) so if they say G5 is faster than P4, it probably will be:)...it should be really nice to see something that kills the P4 in raw performance other than AMD).
I thought "131mhz, should be enough for those gameboy and NES (heck even C64) emulators...
God I got a bad surprise... not only it's unplayable, I can't beleive it's tight-assembly code, either the microsoft compiler is really really crappy for MIPS device, or WinCE sucks too much ressources, or both of these reasons... The device isn't intended for gameplay, that I can understand, but heck, at 300$ a pop, (400-500$ for ipaq?) they might as well throw in just about every features they could.
I know that the processor in the E-115 is a crippled MIPS R3000/4000 without the FPU and some other "useless and current consuming" core components. I can overclock it but it still won't change de fact that I feel some application would greatly improve with simple lowlevel optimization.
All that said, It's nice to see some people coding low-level and pushing the envelope... Maybe they should work on pocketquake so I can get more than 1fps:)
>. "While on-site, you should CARRY A PHOTO ID (DRIVER'S LICENSE OR PASSPORT) ON YOU AT ALL TIMES."
I use Microsoft Passport, it's a tech show afterall no?, MS passport is the Most Secure Thing available, Microsoft told us you guys do support latest technologies that big corporations shove at us, no? yeah... it's your sponsors....what? sorry, but it's in my laptop that you didn't want me to bring in at the entrance.
Joking aside, I have one word for comdex since a few years... unorganized computer flea market... And it could be so much more, computers did take off since 5 years with the internet and all that, why did Comdex go completely the opposite direction?
>How come Intel chips have increased clock speed by a factor of 20 while Alpha have increased by a factor of 3?
Without going too technical, intel designed it's pentium IV to be highly scalable in speed (but look at how poor it performs mhz/mhz-wise compared with AMD), Alpha had a good design from the start and they've built around it, intel went for the marketting hype machine.
Also keep in mind that since over 2 years, not much work or funding has been put on Alpha technology... basically it's the same chip with more cache, reducing die size to increase clock speed and stick yet more cache, nothing much, nothing new, intel did the same with the pentium II/III... but in the same timeframe, intel pushed a lot of R&D and $$$ to pump out it's next generation processors. There's NO DOUBT that with the same energy, you'd probably have a 21464 making the IA64 a bigger joke that it is right now.
The thing that pisses me the most in this story, is I come from an amiga background, I had a lot of respect for both alpha and Mips back then (remember the Raptor Screamernet renderfarm (Mips-based) that you'd stick near you amiga toaster system and it would render 25 to 40 times faster?, or the first lightwave port to alpha, screaming over 40 times the speed or my poor amiga 4000?), I knew that if my platform would eventually die, I'd have a supersweet alternative.
But what happened? Microsoft pulled the plug on Windows2000 on the alpha, ok no problem, there's still some unix alternatives (but kiss goodbye to seeing alpha as a powerfull Windows workstation), and like if that wasn't enough, compaq bought it, waited, left it to die.. just like gateway did with the amiga. Wait till the technology gets too old (funny fact is even 2 years later the alpha CPU is still good and can be compared to current systems...2 years.... think about it).
Anyways, the treatment the Alpha got is so unfair, it went the same way MIPS went, same way amiga went, and it's a proof that it's not the best technologies that wins. When I was still dreaming about seeing Win2K on alpha, and Compaq released it's workstation shortly after buying DEC, I knew there was something wrong because they would NEVER compare to intel, NEVER. but NEVER I thought that one day, the potential INTEL competitor would get bought by.... INTEL.
Here goes my dream of seeing intel shoving 64bits technology into mainstream and normal people and general benchmarks sites noticing "hey, speaking of 64 bits, there's that Alpha processor that is 3 times faster... woah 3times?!? it's worth to check!!! it might be the next AMD!"
It is.. (even if it's pre-amd) only geeks like us,and some powerusers/scientists, noticed.
FPGA technology to replace (or more like having a "flashable") Current processors could/would be a great leap in computing, it would mean having a "soft-hardware upgrade", microcode or "sillicon" bugs could be addressed, but there would probably be the downside of everything else in the computing industry: companies would released bugged stuff, beta would go around like current drivers:), etc etc.
All this said, unless some big breakthrough happens, we won't see out Athlon or Pentium IV system replaced by these, the 2 main limitation of FPGA are the number of available gates, and the speed at which they operate.
While they've managed to increase the number of gates to something quite big (last time I read about this I think it was in the low million? 1 or 2, but I can't be sure), this is enough to "emulate" microcontrollers or lower end processors, but not enough for higher end microprocessors. While eventually they will catch up and maybe someone will do his thesis on emulating an Athlon off FPGA stuff, by that time we'll be at the 2nd or 3rd rev of Post-hammer processors, so it will look like today being able to emulate a 486 (granted, there could be some use in that, but none come to mind right now.. parrallel processing? 1 athlon can replace zillion of 486s...) Also the developpement of microprocessor is going at a faster pace than FPGA technology. I am not saying this couldn't happen, but it would need a serious bump in the fab process and technology to be able to reach Ghz speed, and probably few 100M's of gates.
Heh... with most hollywood production, plot discussing IS the spoilage, everybody knows the endings are either predictable (80%) or scrap the entire movie (K-pax) (15%) in some rare cases you have a good ending that doesn't make you feel raped off your 9$ entrance fee (well here in canada anyways:) ).
Example of a good balance of storyline, action, effects and ending for Sci-fi movies: Terminator II. You can have an hollywood ending without spoiling the entire movie, I almost cried when I saw him going down... I don't recall any movies that got my full attention and even got me right into it to the point that I was all messed up when I got out, not THAT'S entertaining, that's worth the price ticket, that's worth not being copied and BOUGHT on DVD, that I can have all respect from the MPAA or any other organisation behind it trying to protect their trademark and all.
Maybe if hollywood would start pumping more good productions like these (T2, 2001, heck, remember ET when you were a kid?, etc), people wouldn't download them off the internet and actually go see them in a big theatre with super dooper sound and popcorn, that would be worth it. Watching that on a monitor, or 25 inch tv would spoil most of it... Face it, it's far from being every pirate that owns a projection system or a 60" TV to enjoy a movie almost like if he was in a theatre. So maybe by making quality stuff and not taking their customers (audience) for complete retards, they would bring in more people.
My reasonning works when we look at almost every classics. Anything that is unbalanced, sucks or flop. (battlefield earth is a nice example of unbalanced).
Ask yourself what were the biggest success in the last 25 years... aside from tron that flopped because the people weren't ready for that kind of stuff, they all had something in common: Amazing or simple but good storyline, Excellent effects, good acting, good ambiance, all of this balanced.
I'd pay 20$ per movie if I was sure that I wouldn't be pissed or left on my appetite at the end, of course it's a matter of taste also, that being noted, there's also a baseline if you don't like scifi movies, you don't want to go see one just to get pissed afterwards:) , I'd be so freakin PLEASED to pay more just to filter out the garbage and not was my time and gas for that matter.
266mhz max. Their target audience is the firewall/network application.
Too bad a Dual Athlon-based solution (on a full length PCI card) would suck too much juice... at least from the current PCI specs... AMD needs to make a move like intel did with their Low wattage PIII, I'd love to see a 12 processor (5 pci slots plus host) renderfarm in a single box for a decent price. Not only it would be space saving, but imagine that in a plexi-glass case:) a geek's dream.
It's not really supprising, I've installed XP on my dual celeron 400 system and a week later, I've trashed it and reinstalled win2k.
There are 2 issues here. The HOME version and the (supposely) PRO version.
the PRO has WAY too much "take me by the hand I am a complete newbie" stuff in it, too much monitoring, too much popups for crap that I should do myself anyways. While I can understand this in the "home version", it's PERFECT for home, it's nice looking easy and made for newbies... but the professionnal version really is NOT aimed at professionnals that's for sure...
heck I can see myself if I need updates
I can see myself if my drives are full
I don't need any importer utilities to copy files from my previous version, even less converting my Mp3 to WMA
I don't need a stinkin popup window everytime I throw in a CD-R or RW.
Etc...
Oh and for those who will say "you can turn them off too you know?" Well, I don't need these options turned on by default and having to turn them all off just to be less annoyed right off the start, it should be the opposite, no? (again for the pro version, not home).
I don't want this to be a flame, even if it sounds like bitching, but if you look at the points mentionned, it's weird that a "pro" version has all of these little annoying things, people that will buy pro are used to NT/2K environment (usually) so why would he downgrade to the "clippy-age" when he upgrades?
Especially considering I've just downloaded the new version of messenger and it weighted 1.6 megs... MSN is going the same path that ICQ went to... small efficient, does the job, to getting bloated, bigger downloads and 3/4 of the stuff you'll NEVER use, all this without giving you the option to have a simple light-memory-usage solution still available (forcing you to go to alternatives or archives sites to download older clients, which eventually will become incompatible with a newer build that will change the protocol.
I'll support anything that is not following that path. Things don't have to be BIG to be good, (of course I am talking only software here:) ).
On another note, the new.NET version of messenger has UGLY icons, man, the:) is scary, and you even have one smiley guy on crack (try:-| )
I'd be really curious to see something running in WINE versus the "In-Windows" running difference...
I guess it's how much api calls are made, but that could be interresting for porting some stuff (especially rendering like Lightwave or MAX or truespace) over linux, build cheap renderfarms and not having to pay a 33% microsoft tax over each system for the OS to run over EACH node.
Anyone that is PRO-MS (I am neutral, well WAS) about the fact that the DOJ should investigate on smaller crooks or computer stores that do things way worse than microsoft (saying you have to change your hard drive because it had a virus, and selling back your hardrive to a new system, to name one example), well here's the quote that totally disgust me and gives credibility to the anti-MS-buisness practices crowd:
"Microsoft is seeing (that) it is an Opera browser and shutting it out," said Tetzchner, whose team was testing the problem Thursday. "If you change the Opera string by one letter, it is letting us in."
I am a bit worried if that is true, even if it's patched because people yelled, just the fact that they've TRIED this worries me a lot.
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United parcel smashing screwed me twice (why did I trust them again? it was 2 years later and I didn't remember that it happened before, I thought it was another carrrier that did it to me).
Get this: Got a relative that sent me a cassiopeia thru ups for me to play around with, he wrote "gift not for resale" on the duties declaration, basically, it was already payed and taxed and all... he wasn't getting cash from me for it, there's supposed to be a free trade between canada and US anyways, especially for the computer stuff...
Thing is, guess what stupid surprise I got? he insured it for 200$ in case something would happen, I got TAXED on the 200$US (provencial and federal tax, a nice total of 15%) so that costed me a nice extra 30$, plus another 30$ for duties.... basically I had to pay over 90$ canadian to get the unit or else it would be returned. Thing is I didn't answer the door, I was at work, my girlfriend payed them because she knew I was expecting it (and beside my relative would have lost his shipping $$), they didn't give me any receipt (aside from a 2cmx10cm note that was attached to the box) and GOD was I pissed. I've phoned them explaining the situation, they said that gifts thing works for value under 60$, for christ sake, the tax thing, I can understand, to some extent, but 15% of DUTY tax?? no that's called stealing, that's total abuse, and while they may increase they profit margin with that, they'll lose just about EVERY small customers they could get (and sometimes small customers like me have power to chose which carrrier to use at work) you can be sure no package will go thru them anymore.
And for a reference, I used federal express, and DHL, never had that kind of problem, package insured for 500$US another insured for 300$, so it's really a UPS issue, it's really bad customer service and total abusing. Of course they didn't give a receipt, they pulled that one off, I've got no papertrail exept their database, and for 60$ I won't go thru all the trouble of getting my relative to piss on them to get a refund... really clever, but this time I will remember.
I'm sure there will be a hundred of similar stories posted here, I never heard anything good from UPS since this happened to me, I keep hearing horror stories.
You probably DON'T want to put us2000$+ on a laptop if it's stuck at 1024x768. Now 1280x1024 is standard on midrange laptops, don't look at resolution on LCD like you see CRT, like, getting 1280x1024 sucks (blurs, etc) on most 17" monitors, but it's really crisp and nice on a 15" laptop screen. The Dell 8000 I use has 1600x1200, when I saw that on dell's site I was "ok I'll probably run it at 1280x1024 because it's gonna suck" but to my surprise, it's readable crisp and usable (I Never ran 1600x1200 before, not even on a 21" hehe), and beleive me, you can put a quadro8-2go in the laptop, if it's 1024x768, you'll feel screwed when you'll see better resolution, unless you don't pay much for it.
Of course most people manage with 800x600/1024x768, and I guess for running linux it's not a big issue, but since you mentionned it, I guess it's because it matters to you, unless it's dirt cheap, if you have doubts about the resolution size, don't go for it because chances are you'll regret it, it's not like buying a 200$ CRT monitor, you'll be stucked with it afterwards.
1. The supplied cable is the "standard" 6 pin firewire... 6 pins to 6 pins.
2. If you have a Dell Inspirion 8x00 laptop for example, you need an extra cable to convert 6 pins to 4 pins (smaller connector) to fit in the laptop (had to buy it as an extra).
3. The transfer speed I got here (Dell inspiron 8000) was around 15-20MB/s read, and ~5-7MB/s write (pretty sustained)
on win2k pro.
4. It rocks for big dumb storage, but it sucks if you need fast access to your data, you'd be better off with a 48Gig drive with a 20gig partition with NTFS encryption on for most tasks, but then again, if you need the full 80 gig for some reason, it's the best choice for the money (and so much faster than crappy Usb 1.0). I formatted 2 partition (works from disk manager, doesn't need any extra software), 40 gig normal 40 gig with compression... NOW I have enough space.. and yes the hotswap feature works like a charm.
Aside from the fact that when I tried bearshare last year, it DIDN'T ASK me if I wanted to install extra stuff, I was running norton internet security, and guess what I found? A nice little program that was running in the background, ALWAYS pluging EVERY site I was visiting in a database somewhere before going to connect to that typed site I sent, all this transparent if you didn't have any firewalling software installed. (I kept seeing a connection to some place that I didn't know of), I uninstalled bearshare, guess what, it stayed there! (standard uninstaller, not cleansweep or any advanced cleaners).
.mil site for fun or do portscanning on any major sites, why the heck do these people install stuff that tracks your every moves and gets out of it with not even a scratch? 20$ you'd write something like that and treat it with a virus label, you'd get fined and jailed! I stopped using bearshare from that day and told all my friends, sent an article here about it and all the specs but it got rejected.
What pissed me off the most about this is NOWHERE in the install process or the website from front page to download link was this indicated.
I was happy to see alternative to napster, but I was REALLY angry at the fact that people are installing spying crap on my system not EVEN with small notices anywhere in the install or download process! That happened after the REAL.COM spyware fiasco, I thought people learned, I'm sure today it's not doing it anymore for that precise example (after a zillion complain probably)
But WHY do we have to go thru this?? these people should be treated the same way VIRUS WRITERS would be, heck, you can get jailed in some contries just to try to log in a
Anyways, I can't beleive people are still pulling that stunt, mandatory banner adds, it's okay in my book, even if it's totally useless and normally it means that the application will die (because who click these adds anyways?! the only advertising system I saw working were porn sites and some loyal people on a specific site (i.e. Here probably). The fact is they SAY so, they WARN you, if you go thru the process and something slows down your system or tracks your moves, at least you know! that's the BIG difference and even if it's almost ironic to say, I guess with all the spycrap around, people being honnest about the stuff they install on your system should get a praise. (yike!!)
----
| Bearshare pops up to an immediate ad, and also usually spawns a browser window to show an ad. Pretty annoying, but it's not a big deal to just close the spawned window and get on with your business... not really a big deal if limewire does it... besides, if it helps keep them in business, then i say go for it!
EVERYTHING is there in a laptop to replace an average workstation, but there's one thing I'd really like for overall performance boost... if you can stick a high power processor, high resolution LCD panel with super brightness, and have a 3d GPU in the lot, how about IDE raid, imagine having 2x48GB striped under your laptop, a second drive wouldn't take that much more volume (ok forget about the ultrathin or small laptops, we're talking about a nice workstation replacement here :)) I'd like booting off a laptop faster... IDE RAID would be the best solution for speed increase in that area. The drawback of course would be doubling the chance of losing data but then again you could also put mirroring or striping as options (so mirroring would actually ensure data integrity from disk drive failure).
I am using a Dell 8100 notebook 512MB ram, external 80GB firewire drive for dumping data that I won't access too often, 48GB 2.5" drive, overall my rating is 9/10, it ROCKS, the IDE raid thing would really be welcomed but I know it's not a mainsream request, unfortunately.
Supposed to ship today, THAT'S the baby, raid-5 with 48bits LBA support. That means 960GB (6x160Gig using maxtor 160GB drives) of storage for dirt cheap, plus Raid-5 support.
:)
I am planning a non-critical datacenter (rendered frames and so on) with that setup, it's crazy, while a single drive is not offering the performance of the barracuda 180GB 7200rpm drive from seagate, it's like C$500 for a 160GB drive whereas the seagate would cost me around C$2500, you can get to the same performance (plus increased storage and safety with Raid 1 or 5) for the same price than a single seagate drive. it ROCKS.
I can't beleive I payed C$300 for a 40MB on my amiga1200 not even 10 years ago
that means even more room to overclock when it'll shrink to .13 microns.
:)
I didn't think the current process would go above 1.5 with standard cooling, this is good news
Now where are those Nvidia boards...
I need a mission critical server that is x86 based? Forget intel chipsets, forget VIA, forget SiS, I go with Serverworks chipsets With pentium III processors, Serverworks are proven reliable chipsets vendor, and while the cost of the motherboard is a bit (well a big bit :) ) higher, it's still way cheaper than goind into most other platforms.
I need building an x86 renderfarm? NOTHING beats the power of a tigerMP with dual athlon price/performance wise. Stability? it is, it's simply rendering, not running quake while processing SETI units and running beta video drivers with leaked chipsets drivers.
The processors are a tool, you don't see people fighting over mastercraft vs black and decker when they come to buy a screwdriver, why you guys gets so religious about processors? I remember how happy most of you were when celerons with cache came out, overclocking that 300A to 450... you didn't think about AMD back then (well most of you didn't).. you were just saying "the k6 sucks, celeron rules" (I own a dual 366->550 that I'll probably change to a tigerMP). Of course most of what intel did to get flamed happened after that (rambus, crappy chipsets after BX, patent crap with via, etc), It's still pathetic to see how people react so badly...
Don't get me wrong, I find what intel did (especially with the rambus and via case) disgusting, but buisness is buisness, if they deliver good stuff at a decent price, I'll still get it, I have a company to maintain and a job to do. Of course if in the process I can do something about it as a IT manager, I will do it, but NOT at the demise of the company that employs me. There are alternatives to Rambus (serverworks gives a nice memory bandwidth with standard PC133 ram, they should come out with the same technology with DDR memory soon so that WILL kick hard). This is where I voice my opinion. Still, I wouldn't pay 50% more for AMD if intel would offer a similar technology same specs, same performance for less, this is where it becomes religious and pathetic.
If tomorrow I could get dual 2.2GHZ intel processors with rambus, 33% cheaper than an AMD based solution with DDR ram, I'd go for it, right now, it's AMD that has the upper hand, so these are the guys that I buy from for general computing/renderfarming.
>Your PC case doesn't roll over and kill 3 of your family members when the OS blows out.
:)
Not true... when IE freeze on that specific p0rn site and your wife comes in the room at the same time, and CTRL-ALT-DEL doesn't work anymore (ahhh life's unexpected coincidences), and you're too slow to reach the reset button... tell me where the case/keyboard/monitor ends? If it doesn't kill you... you'd wish it did
>Besides, what I really want is a combo phone/mp3 player/PDA watch, dammit
You forgot video cam and playback with Mpeg4 hardware chip.
Music artists: you're unknown? you want to get known? fuck RIAA, if you're too little, they won't care, if you're big, you're probably screwed already with a 1000 pages contract.
/disk than what ANYTHING THESE BIG RECORD LABELS WILL EVER OFFER YOU.
The hell with anyone who claims MP3 traders make artists starve. With the price of CD-Rs right now, an artist would make far more doing a burn production by a little nerd in a basement and going to sell his stuff and probably making a much bigger profit
Who cares about exportation, it's not them that will get you known, it's the quality of your content and the ear to ear, distribute your music, get popular, and CASH IN with shows, tshirts, and maybe someone with big courage could emulate (was it a part of CDNOW's buisness model?) the idea of having online music a la mp3.com and a burning CDs service to which you'd get royalties. and make the CDs cheap, 4$ each MAXIMUM with maybe a minimal quantity buyout (so better price to cut shipping and encourage to buy even more, etc etc) and not converted from Mp3 but original stuff. 4$ for ~10 songs minus 1$ for a good quality CD (in quantities you can get a fairly decent price, we're talking about a buisness anyways), that would come to 30cents per song, give 5 cents per song to the service, get 25cents per song sold, if you reach 100,000 people that way, that's an EASY 25K$, that will be way more than what you would have gotten with RIAA, because you need a lawyer for X contract, you need an accountant you need to payback X/Y of the advertizing you need to pay this and that fee, screw that, my model benefit BOTH the consumer (cheaper CDs) and the artist (you're good, you'll get paid accordingly), 100,000 may seem big, but when you consider the amount of stuff swapped per month (don't remember the numbers) even if only 5% of that total traffic goes to a legit buisness like I've proposed, it'll be way enough.
And like I said, there's always Shows, merchandise, etc.. There's a way to circumvent the current system for the people that aren't tied in a bigass contract.... I just hope they'll be smart enough.
Timelapse recording is legal in my book. Swapping movies over the net wouldn't be happening THAT much if the crap they shove at us would be worth seeing in a theatre... I go see movies about every week or 2, so I am a customer, and that gives me the right to complain as well, there will always be pirates, you will never get rid of them, but Movie swapping over the net wouldn't be happening that much if the DVDs would be set at a reasonable price and the movies themselves WORTH SEEING ON A BIGGER SCREEN. I won't repeat What I said in a previous similar post again but for god's sake, put up some better content to protect in the first place!
RIAA, I won't even talk about them, I don't wanna reduce de lifespan of my $9.75 keyboard for that subject :).
But with the G5 around the corner, I think THAT will be THE interresting comparison.. expecially since Intel plans on keeping the P4 for a while (, ramping it up in speed, when you Read adobe saying the G5 are significantly faster than P4 (and if you go read the article, the same people do say that the P4 is faster than a G4 (exept for altivec stuff) so if they say G5 is faster than P4, it probably will be :)...it should be really nice to see something that kills the P4 in raw performance other than AMD).
>I also can't remember what other built in high color modes the A1200 had.
Still have my Trusty old A1200 here...
the HAM-8 on A1200 is 262,144 colors.
I thought "131mhz, should be enough for those gameboy and NES (heck even C64) emulators...
:)
God I got a bad surprise... not only it's unplayable, I can't beleive it's tight-assembly code, either the microsoft compiler is really really crappy for MIPS device, or WinCE sucks too much ressources, or both of these reasons... The device isn't intended for gameplay, that I can understand, but heck, at 300$ a pop, (400-500$ for ipaq?) they might as well throw in just about every features they could.
I know that the processor in the E-115 is a crippled MIPS R3000/4000 without the FPU and some other "useless and current consuming" core components. I can overclock it but it still won't change de fact that I feel some application would greatly improve with simple lowlevel optimization.
All that said, It's nice to see some people coding low-level and pushing the envelope... Maybe they should work on pocketquake so I can get more than 1fps
I use Microsoft Passport, it's a tech show afterall no?, MS passport is the Most Secure Thing available, Microsoft told us you guys do support latest technologies that big corporations shove at us, no? yeah... it's your sponsors....what? sorry, but it's in my laptop that you didn't want me to bring in at the entrance.
Joking aside, I have one word for comdex since a few years... unorganized computer flea market... And it could be so much more, computers did take off since 5 years with the internet and all that, why did Comdex go completely the opposite direction?
>How come Intel chips have increased clock speed by a factor of 20 while Alpha have increased by a factor of 3?
,and some powerusers/scientists, noticed.
Without going too technical, intel designed it's pentium IV to be highly scalable in speed (but look at how poor it performs mhz/mhz-wise compared with AMD), Alpha had a good design from the start and they've built around it, intel went for the marketting hype machine.
Also keep in mind that since over 2 years, not much work or funding has been put on Alpha technology... basically it's the same chip with more cache, reducing die size to increase clock speed and stick yet more cache, nothing much, nothing new, intel did the same with the pentium II/III... but in the same timeframe, intel pushed a lot of R&D and $$$ to pump out it's next generation processors. There's NO DOUBT that with the same energy, you'd probably have a 21464 making the IA64 a bigger joke that it is right now.
The thing that pisses me the most in this story, is I come from an amiga background, I had a lot of respect for both alpha and Mips back then (remember the Raptor Screamernet renderfarm (Mips-based) that you'd stick near you amiga toaster system and it would render 25 to 40 times faster?, or the first lightwave port to alpha, screaming over 40 times the speed or my poor amiga 4000?), I knew that if my platform would eventually die, I'd have a supersweet alternative.
But what happened? Microsoft pulled the plug on Windows2000 on the alpha, ok no problem, there's still some unix alternatives (but kiss goodbye to seeing alpha as a powerfull Windows workstation), and like if that wasn't enough, compaq bought it, waited, left it to die.. just like gateway did with the amiga. Wait till the technology gets too old (funny fact is even 2 years later the alpha CPU is still good and can be compared to current systems...2 years.... think about it).
Anyways, the treatment the Alpha got is so unfair, it went the same way MIPS went, same way amiga went, and it's a proof that it's not the best technologies that wins. When I was still dreaming about seeing Win2K on alpha, and Compaq released it's workstation shortly after buying DEC, I knew there was something wrong because they would NEVER compare to intel, NEVER. but NEVER I thought that one day, the potential INTEL competitor would get bought by.... INTEL.
Here goes my dream of seeing intel shoving 64bits technology into mainstream and normal people and general benchmarks sites noticing "hey, speaking of 64 bits, there's that Alpha processor that is 3 times faster... woah 3times?!? it's worth to check!!! it might be the next AMD!"
It is.. (even if it's pre-amd) only geeks like us
FPGA technology to replace (or more like having a "flashable") Current processors could/would be a great leap in computing, it would mean having a "soft-hardware upgrade", microcode or "sillicon" bugs could be addressed, but there would probably be the downside of everything else in the computing industry: companies would released bugged stuff, beta would go around like current drivers :), etc etc.
All this said, unless some big breakthrough happens, we won't see out Athlon or Pentium IV system replaced by these, the 2 main limitation of FPGA are the number of available gates, and the speed at which they operate.
While they've managed to increase the number of gates to something quite big (last time I read about this I think it was in the low million? 1 or 2, but I can't be sure), this is enough to "emulate" microcontrollers or lower end processors, but not enough for higher end microprocessors. While eventually they will catch up and maybe someone will do his thesis on emulating an Athlon off FPGA stuff, by that time we'll be at the 2nd or 3rd rev of Post-hammer processors, so it will look like today being able to emulate a 486 (granted, there could be some use in that, but none come to mind right now.. parrallel processing? 1 athlon can replace zillion of 486s...) Also the developpement of microprocessor is going at a faster pace than FPGA technology. I am not saying this couldn't happen, but it would need a serious bump in the fab process and technology to be able to reach Ghz speed, and probably few 100M's of gates.
Still, it's a very interresting technology.
Heh... with most hollywood production, plot discussing IS the spoilage, everybody knows the endings are either predictable (80%) or scrap the entire movie (K-pax) (15%) in some rare cases you have a good ending that doesn't make you feel raped off your 9$ entrance fee (well here in canada anyways :) ).
:) , I'd be so freakin PLEASED to pay more just to filter out the garbage and not was my time and gas for that matter.
Example of a good balance of storyline, action, effects and ending for Sci-fi movies: Terminator II. You can have an hollywood ending without spoiling the entire movie, I almost cried when I saw him going down... I don't recall any movies that got my full attention and even got me right into it to the point that I was all messed up when I got out, not THAT'S entertaining, that's worth the price ticket, that's worth not being copied and BOUGHT on DVD, that I can have all respect from the MPAA or any other organisation behind it trying to protect their trademark and all.
Maybe if hollywood would start pumping more good productions like these (T2, 2001, heck, remember ET when you were a kid?, etc), people wouldn't download them off the internet and actually go see them in a big theatre with super dooper sound and popcorn, that would be worth it. Watching that on a monitor, or 25 inch tv would spoil most of it... Face it, it's far from being every pirate that owns a projection system or a 60" TV to enjoy a movie almost like if he was in a theatre. So maybe by making quality stuff and not taking their customers (audience) for complete retards, they would bring in more people.
My reasonning works when we look at almost every classics. Anything that is unbalanced, sucks or flop. (battlefield earth is a nice example of unbalanced).
Ask yourself what were the biggest success in the last 25 years... aside from tron that flopped because the people weren't ready for that kind of stuff, they all had something in common: Amazing or simple but good storyline, Excellent effects, good acting, good ambiance, all of this balanced.
I'd pay 20$ per movie if I was sure that I wouldn't be pissed or left on my appetite at the end, of course it's a matter of taste also, that being noted, there's also a baseline if you don't like scifi movies, you don't want to go see one just to get pissed afterwards
I'm sure I am not the only one.
266mhz max. Their target audience is the firewall/network application.
:) a geek's dream.
Too bad a Dual Athlon-based solution (on a full length PCI card) would suck too much juice... at least from the current PCI specs... AMD needs to make a move like intel did with their Low wattage PIII, I'd love to see a 12 processor (5 pci slots plus host) renderfarm in a single box for a decent price. Not only it would be space saving, but imagine that in a plexi-glass case
It's not really supprising, I've installed XP on my dual celeron 400 system and a week later, I've trashed it and reinstalled win2k.
There are 2 issues here. The HOME version and the (supposely) PRO version.
the PRO has WAY too much "take me by the hand I am a complete newbie" stuff in it, too much monitoring, too much popups for crap that I should do myself anyways. While I can understand this in the "home version", it's PERFECT for home, it's nice looking easy and made for newbies... but the professionnal version really is NOT aimed at professionnals that's for sure...
heck I can see myself if I need updates
I can see myself if my drives are full
I don't need any importer utilities to copy files from my previous version, even less converting my Mp3 to WMA
I don't need a stinkin popup window everytime I throw in a CD-R or RW.
Etc...
Oh and for those who will say "you can turn them off too you know?" Well, I don't need these options turned on by default and having to turn them all off just to be less annoyed right off the start, it should be the opposite, no? (again for the pro version, not home).
I don't want this to be a flame, even if it sounds like bitching, but if you look at the points mentionned, it's weird that a "pro" version has all of these little annoying things, people that will buy pro are used to NT/2K environment (usually) so why would he downgrade to the "clippy-age" when he upgrades?
Especially considering I've just downloaded the new version of messenger and it weighted 1.6 megs... MSN is going the same path that ICQ went to... small efficient, does the job, to getting bloated, bigger downloads and 3/4 of the stuff you'll NEVER use, all this without giving you the option to have a simple light-memory-usage solution still available (forcing you to go to alternatives or archives sites to download older clients, which eventually will become incompatible with a newer build that will change the protocol.
:) ).
.NET version of messenger has UGLY icons, man, the :) is scary, and you even have one smiley guy on crack (try :-| )
I'll support anything that is not following that path. Things don't have to be BIG to be good, (of course I am talking only software here
On another note, the new
I'd be really curious to see something running in WINE versus the "In-Windows" running difference...
I guess it's how much api calls are made, but that could be interresting for porting some stuff (especially rendering like Lightwave or MAX or truespace) over linux, build cheap renderfarms and not having to pay a 33% microsoft tax over each system for the OS to run over EACH node.
1.1
main( arguments ){
try{
--code goes here--
}catch( exception ){
printout "I'm sorry $username, I'm affraid I can't do that"
}}
Anyone that is PRO-MS (I am neutral, well WAS) about the fact that the DOJ should investigate on smaller crooks or computer stores that do things way worse than microsoft (saying you have to change your hard drive because it had a virus, and selling back your hardrive to a new system, to name one example), well here's the quote that totally disgust me and gives credibility to the anti-MS-buisness practices crowd:
"Microsoft is seeing (that) it is an Opera browser and shutting it out," said Tetzchner, whose team was testing the problem Thursday. "If you change the Opera string by one letter, it is letting us in."
I am a bit worried if that is true, even if it's patched because people yelled, just the fact that they've TRIED this worries me a lot.