> I have trouble understanding why Slashot users are such haters when it comes to Apple and Steve Jobs.
When I had my amiga, Apple-zealots would tell me I couldn't run half of the software that apple was providing, and their software was soooo superior to the amiga's (I didn't find that correct aside from photoshop), So when I've had installed Shapeshifter and emulating a Macintosh Quadra *FASTER* than apple's real hardware Quadra, (both with the same 68040 processor, but shapeshifter was putting the mac bios in fastram whereas the real quadra was on chip and dead slow, just that gave quite a boost in application speed), When I told em "here, now I run all your crap, plus MY amiga stuff, for less than the price of your quadra", they simply bitched and moaned about how the amiga wouldn't take off and it wasn't popular and mac was a much more advanced machine, basically, they couldn't find ONE architecture argument, nor anything making sense to contradict what they were seeing... "it doesn't run that (click click, runing it) oh, and that? probably not (click click, oh it works, wow) oh the benchmarks are probably crappy since it's EMULATING (click click, run the standard benchmark tools for the mac, EVERYTHING was equal or a bit faster) oh well amiga sucks anyways! that was the big Apple fan's logical conclusion.
So basically, I don't hate the mac hardware, in fact, some of their innovation are really good (I use FireWire, I hate USB for an example), but what I hate is the TOTALLY BLIND userbase, Even when I was an amiga fanatic, I could recognize that the Alpha and Mips system were superior in some aspect and architechture, I could recognize that my amiga had some limitation that the PC eventually didn't keep, I could ACCEPT THAT SOMETHING OUT THERE WAS BETTER. Problem with most of the mac users, they don't accept to be told that their investment could have been a bad choice especially for what they are doing, they don't accept that something out there could be better if Supreme Steve Jobs didn't say it's so, and I could go on for days about this.
Look in the web/dtp buisness, you'll see what I am talking about, look at the big majority of "MAC" teachers in school, pure bias.. sorry but photoshop on MAC or On PC is the *SAME* thing, the tool is the same, the interface running behind the tool might be a bit different, but it's the same god damn thing, but these people keep brainwashing student that a PSD file will open faster on a mac than on a pc and some other vapor-junk like that that is TOTALLY OS independant (just buy a cheetah and you'll smoke the standard mac for god's sake), THAT is what's pissing me the most, their attitude, and a platform is not only a computer that you use at home, soon or later you need to exchange with a community, and the majority (I know there are exeptions, I know one) of the Mac community is too close-minded for my personnal taste. While I understand that they create a strong userbase that way, they sure keep a lot of people away at the same time.
I'll always remember when people came to see me to get a second guess suggestion because their DTP teachers we're stongly "forcing" them to buy iMACS for home and commercial freelance contracts as opposed to a PC because "the PC just doesn't do what a mac can do", the guy was ready to make his student's life miserable (ever did DTP on a 15" monitor?) for Apple's sake, when they could get dual celeron 366mhz (so faster 3d for those who wanted to go 3d), with a 19" monitor for the SAME price. He didn't explain de differences nor give his student the liberty to chose their own platform, he forced with no argument, took me WEEKS to unbrainwash them and make them compare the 2 systems (I could have not care, and just sold any of the 2 and make a quick buck, it wasn't my job to be HONNEST with them and second guess their decision, but I did it because I wanted to be SURE they would be satisfied with their decision and not having to spend money twice, some got a iMAC (I was suggesting them a G3 if they really want to stay mac (eventho the G3 was way more expensive, I knew it would be more expensive to buy a G3 AFTER an iMAC ), because they would eventually need to add more stuff... no, imac, teacher is right, teacher says, they do), some took my suggestion, today, those who had an iMAC trashed their system to get a G3 or G4 (and some didn't even finish paying the first loan), for a lot more again, and the others who got my suggestion, they're still in buisness and doing their contracts without having to buy another computer from scratch because the monitor sucked or the 3d performance was bad or the ram banks maxed out or not enough room to add a DVD drive and CD-RW or extra drive), so in the end, those with the OTHER choice saved money and they can still buy another PC today and the total for their 2 systems will still come cheaper than buying a G3 originally which is almost out of date too today).
> I'm going to put the words anthrax, get the bomb, allah, and kill them all in every fucking packet. Let's see em sort through 800000 terabytes of crap a day.
Actually Slashdot is a terrorist haven, it just served a million page with your terrorists comments in it, just do that on a few 1000 sites and their carnivore will turn vegeratian.
Who needs prozac?? just read Microsoft's latest PR...
That's the second time this month that microsoft makes me spit my Pepsi out of my nose because of a terrible urge to laugh my head off.... kudos to their PR departement, I mean... it's funnier than SNL... as for my nose well...
It hurts... but it's worth every mL of lost Pepsi:)
Locked home for over a year, camping in front of his computer, camping in a game of Quake, going out for the first time since forever, for something OTHER than his job, and guess where he's going? CAMPING in front of the theatre...
I'm starting to beleive all those psychologists claiming "games have a negative impact on human behaviour":)
I want to be able to download SKINS in that system and use my own "driving playmate"... err.. I mean pet... err.. I mean AI... oh fuck it, a playmate with AI, that you don't see everyday:)
God, how can a Billion dollar company be saying something like that?! Guess it's because it's a billion dollar company, heck any small developpers saying something like that would starve...
I guess this is an easy +1 for open source, talk about self-mutilation... I can't beleive we're actually running on over 50,000$ worth of MS products and I am actually reading this...
>creation of a national ID database including fingerprints, facial scans, etc.
ETC????
God what more do you want with that!? Anal probing? if so, I suggest Larry himself does the Quality Assurance testing part... you know... to be sure it gets it right the first time... maybe after a few dozens of tries (you know how buggy those things are), he'll resort to something less 1984-ish...
... then again, I know a lot of people that would stick anything "up theirs" to get a few M $ worth of contracts... some of you pervers reading this are actually doing it for free (or fun, you pick any:) )
Some small people with CREATIVE ideas cannot go to patent their creation because of the legal fees, plus the pattent application fees, (a patent application plus extras comes over 5000$ easily for those of you who don't know)... meanwhile, big companies can patent useless stuff that will break innovation (I'm starting to hate that word) instead of it's root concept of being to PROTECT I.P.
Of course this means, those who might actually BENEFIT from the system for a just cause cannot access it (well depending on your cashflow as a startup for example , you have that great idea, you get 100K$ seed money to develop a simple prototype application/device so you can demonstrate your idea and get even more financing... will you use 5 to 10% of that budget for a PATENT (which will bring even more fees in the process) or will you concentrate on the project itself? Yep.. you guessed it right, and as soon as you go for your round of financing and approach people with money, funny how those NDAs mean nothing for them (since anyways, you won't be able to sue them) and if you get thru all of that crap, normally you get bought out for a fraction of what you could have made, because probably the investors will tell you if you don't comply with their rules they'll invest in that X company that can pull out the same thing and even better (and drive you out of buisness) etc etc, so probably you lose control over your project (51% shares not to you), and if you're really unlucky, the appointed CEO is a jerk and makes the whole thing goes down... if it works and becomes a success, notice you probably not even have 1% of the company with the dillution and all the maths applied after. (still, 1% of 100M$ is not too bad if you get there:) ).
Of course with SOFTWARE it can be a bit more positive, but for let's say, some cool hardware application, or innovative invention, it's another story.
Not enough millicandella (or candela) output, I'd suggest R G and B lasers to do it, but that would be cost prohibitive... but REALLY bright and nice color balancing.
Color (c'mon B&W is growing old)
Video (a la casio E115) or mp4 codec support
Microdrive
Camera (for video phone or whatever, camera is cool, need it. heh...)
If they want me to pay 600$ canadian for that thing, ish... not!, having a cell phone and a palm III right now is okay with me and it costed me a fraction of that, but I'd be willing to pay a bit more than 600$ if it would have all the features mentionned above, and I am sure a lot of other people here would just drool over a jam-packed pda like that.
> As long as they don't delete any of my porno they can have my MP3's
Yeah let the MPAA take care of the porn... but they won't use that law, they will need to rewrite the proposition so they can have the right to download "to be sure it's porn" before deleting it off:)
>Not quite. Polaroid has a lock on ANY "instant" or self-developing film.
>They make some professional "instant" cameras that take dynamite photos. However, there is only so big of a market for those.
His point was that the low cost instant stuff is really bad.
Friday I was taking pictures of some parts of the office to do some compositing work in my 3d software, and I needed a picture FAST, and the webcam, well... 640x480, cmos, I thought the polaroid would be a bit better than that.
Took the picture... hell... it was SO grainy, the light balance was so horrible (not that I've expected anything really amazing, but not that bad, finally the webcam which has crappy optics and is a CMOS (lower quality than ccd) and went thru a cheezy codec for compression, than recompressed to JPEG, looked WAY better than a 1200dpi polaroid scan....
Don't get me wrong, I am aware of all the technical blablah... but at 1$ a shot, jeez... a 100$ kid camera would do about the same job, and you can at least takes 100s of them without the 1$ a shot worry. If the quality of the resulting image would be a bit better (don't tell me with current technologies you can't make an instant process better contrasted and higher resolution and a bit better quality) well... it's simply not worth the cash.
So to get back to your "dynamite" analogy, all the experience I got from Polaroid BLOWS:), and before investign 1000$ on a highend polaroid, I'd go on a 3Mpixel CCD camera.
And will you be called a "gifted programmer" a "security expert" or a "terrorist"?
In these times and with all of what's happening with all the laws passed, I wouldn't even dare touching that kind of contest, sure it's gonna make a possible winner popular, but could be also seen as a prime suspect for writing trojan code, and since law enforcement at higher levels often tries to find someone to blame, well, you know the rest.... (as in wrongfully accused, lack of proofs and still convicted, etc etc).
> my boss has resisted because it would be more difficult and expensive to find a replacement admin if I leave
Sounds like the reverse-excuse:) why would you leave if you like your job? isn't it a way of saying "I want to be on the safe side if I throw you out" hehe...
Yeah maybe alarmist, but you can install BSD or Linux on the same hardware that runs windows, so if you'd leave you could always offer to put the system (or the parts you changed, i.e. probably Email firewall and httpd) back on a windows platform for the next person that would replace you... Normally when you give your 2 weeks (or more depending on the terms) notice, you have time to train someone for the basic stuff and fix/tweak the last things...
--
To take advantage of RAMdisks, you pretty much need to have your computer on all the time, or in standby mode when you're not using it. At this point, what do you need much higher disk bandwidth for?
Loading your mp3s or movies?
Loading office in 2s instead of 6s?
running your games (oh wait, that's CPU/GPU intensive not HD).
--
FORGET ABOUT HOME USE, think a bit.
There are limiting factors with hard drives, mainly LATENCY issues, this might not be a problem for you or any home users, but for some specific scenarios, it is, and a BIG one. I give you a specific case where I could benefit from such a system:
Without going in too much details, I work with a lot of files, my workstation generates over 200,000+ files for a single simulation, no it can't be put in a database for now, it has to be accessed from different software with no database support, every other part of the software is optimised to know exactly which file to open, using the maximum of memory, cropping useless data, etc etc... everything is maximized to a more than good level. The only bottleneck I have in my system right now is the drive's latency issue, and beleive me, if I could go down from the milliseconds to nanoseconds or microseconds, it would be over a tenfold increase in speed and I wouldn't need 10 machines running in parralel to do the job in one day (which unfortunately I don't have:)), one machine could replace them 10 with only that little step up. Thing is I can't afford 10 machines and the drive subsystem, nor current SSD solutions.
Most application are bandwidth hungry, but there are some stuff out there requiring LOW LATENCY, and heck, if there wasn't a need for that, you wouldn't see solid state drives for 60,000$ out there. There's a need, but sometimes you're limited by your R&D budget and you'd gladly take an emmerging technology or home-made stuff if it means saving 80% of the cost of the equivalent part, and increasing your effeciency by a factor 10.
I'll see your answer "if you need it, and it slows down you r&d, buy it, for the sake of the company" sometimes it doesn't work like that for cashflow reasons and you have to work with what you can get in your specific budget, the issue here (and title of this forum) is about cheap storage that would have a low latency and High bandwidth solution (with loads of storage). I'm sure I am not the only one that would GLADLY grab a 30GB solid state drive for a fraction of what it would cost me with the current systems (which are way overpriced considering the price of ram right now).
There's a need for Solid State, while I understand that the gap between a home user and a workstation/server class machine is blending more and more, it's not because a home user wouldn't benefit from such a device, that it's not needed for corporate or R&d levels. Current solutions wouldn't be selling for 50K$+ if there wasn't a need for them... heck, they wouldn't exist.
I was wondering the EXACT same thing, I was recently browsing the net to find if anyone did such a project for his master or just like a hobby. Or even if there was someone that actually made a home-made device (I'd even go for that).
C'mon, shouldn't be too hard to tie up a buttload of 128M+ DIMMs together and plug in a ATA100 interface and some FPGA for decoding/driving the memory? How come nobody did it? what are the big problems? I don't see any problems from my perspective it's just a load of addressing issues and plugging off the shelf parts together, the only "hard" part I could see is the timing to get the maximum throughput to max out the interface, but that's only a software issue.
Heck someone that really wants could make the first low-cost IDE (or SCSI) board/case/adapter to which we would simply have to add ram... I'd pay a lot more than what the components are costing to get my hands on something scalable and cheap like that, and I am sure I'm not the only one.
Just imagine something like.
Model-1, 4 slots, accepts up to 1GB PC133 ram per slots, ATA/100 interface 1000$ (look at the price of the components for that kind of stuff and you EASILY beat the 3x the cost of the hardware to break a profit, even home-made you could make a LOT of money (and still beating the 300% law)
Model-2, 8 Slots, blabla 2000$
Model-2 Pro, Ultra160/320 interface 2500$
Model-3, loads of slots, still WAY cheaper than the current available solutions, error correction, etc etc.
Nice buisness plan eh? copy it, make a device and send me model 2 pro;)
The thing about the XP is the new core yes, but why do people benchmark GAMES and SYSoft sandra and only stuff like that, most people that are going to go for XP instead of standard (cheap) athlon running at 1.4ghz, are Workstation users, 3d animators, video encoding application, dual cpu setups and all... Tom always aims for games games games, god... like if there was only games in life.... I agree, a lot of gamers go to that site, but he wants to be THE hardware place, he has to cover a bit more than that. He used to do 3dsmax rendering tests for example... why not now? with not single processor vs dual processor, why not dual Xeon vs dual athlonXP, why not Lightwave7.0b rendering (optimized for SSE2 so you could really see something here), etc etc etc...
There's the fact that you want to be the first online source of information for the tech-savyy people, but there's also a difference between tasting a strawberry, and a strawberry pie.
Kudos to anandtech who pushes the enveloppe a bit more than Tom.
Slashdot Mirror
> I know that sodomy is illegal in many states. Goat porn is also illegal.
:)
Speaking from experience?
Want to share with us?
> I have trouble understanding why Slashot users are such haters when it comes to Apple and Steve Jobs.
When I had my amiga, Apple-zealots would tell me I couldn't run half of the software that apple was providing, and their software was soooo superior to the amiga's (I didn't find that correct aside from photoshop), So when I've had installed Shapeshifter and emulating a Macintosh Quadra *FASTER* than apple's real hardware Quadra, (both with the same 68040 processor, but shapeshifter was putting the mac bios in fastram whereas the real quadra was on chip and dead slow, just that gave quite a boost in application speed), When I told em "here, now I run all your crap, plus MY amiga stuff, for less than the price of your quadra", they simply bitched and moaned about how the amiga wouldn't take off and it wasn't popular and mac was a much more advanced machine, basically, they couldn't find ONE architecture argument, nor anything making sense to contradict what they were seeing... "it doesn't run that (click click, runing it) oh, and that? probably not (click click, oh it works, wow) oh the benchmarks are probably crappy since it's EMULATING (click click, run the standard benchmark tools for the mac, EVERYTHING was equal or a bit faster) oh well amiga sucks anyways! that was the big Apple fan's logical conclusion.
So basically, I don't hate the mac hardware, in fact, some of their innovation are really good (I use FireWire, I hate USB for an example), but what I hate is the TOTALLY BLIND userbase, Even when I was an amiga fanatic, I could recognize that the Alpha and Mips system were superior in some aspect and architechture, I could recognize that my amiga had some limitation that the PC eventually didn't keep, I could ACCEPT THAT SOMETHING OUT THERE WAS BETTER. Problem with most of the mac users, they don't accept to be told that their investment could have been a bad choice especially for what they are doing, they don't accept that something out there could be better if Supreme Steve Jobs didn't say it's so, and I could go on for days about this.
Look in the web/dtp buisness, you'll see what I am talking about, look at the big majority of "MAC" teachers in school, pure bias.. sorry but photoshop on MAC or On PC is the *SAME* thing, the tool is the same, the interface running behind the tool might be a bit different, but it's the same god damn thing, but these people keep brainwashing student that a PSD file will open faster on a mac than on a pc and some other vapor-junk like that that is TOTALLY OS independant (just buy a cheetah and you'll smoke the standard mac for god's sake), THAT is what's pissing me the most, their attitude, and a platform is not only a computer that you use at home, soon or later you need to exchange with a community, and the majority (I know there are exeptions, I know one) of the Mac community is too close-minded for my personnal taste. While I understand that they create a strong userbase that way, they sure keep a lot of people away at the same time.
I'll always remember when people came to see me to get a second guess suggestion because their DTP teachers we're stongly "forcing" them to buy iMACS for home and commercial freelance contracts as opposed to a PC because "the PC just doesn't do what a mac can do", the guy was ready to make his student's life miserable (ever did DTP on a 15" monitor?) for Apple's sake, when they could get dual celeron 366mhz (so faster 3d for those who wanted to go 3d), with a 19" monitor for the SAME price. He didn't explain de differences nor give his student the liberty to chose their own platform, he forced with no argument, took me WEEKS to unbrainwash them and make them compare the 2 systems (I could have not care, and just sold any of the 2 and make a quick buck, it wasn't my job to be HONNEST with them and second guess their decision, but I did it because I wanted to be SURE they would be satisfied with their decision and not having to spend money twice, some got a iMAC (I was suggesting them a G3 if they really want to stay mac (eventho the G3 was way more expensive, I knew it would be more expensive to buy a G3 AFTER an iMAC ), because they would eventually need to add more stuff... no, imac, teacher is right, teacher says, they do), some took my suggestion, today, those who had an iMAC trashed their system to get a G3 or G4 (and some didn't even finish paying the first loan), for a lot more again, and the others who got my suggestion, they're still in buisness and doing their contracts without having to buy another computer from scratch because the monitor sucked or the 3d performance was bad or the ram banks maxed out or not enough room to add a DVD drive and CD-RW or extra drive), so in the end, those with the OTHER choice saved money and they can still buy another PC today and the total for their 2 systems will still come cheaper than buying a G3 originally which is almost out of date too today).
> I'm going to put the words anthrax, get the bomb, allah, and kill them all in every fucking packet. Let's see em sort through 800000 terabytes of crap a day.
Actually Slashdot is a terrorist haven, it just served a million page with your terrorists comments in it, just do that on a few 1000 sites and their carnivore will turn vegeratian.
Who needs prozac?? just read Microsoft's latest PR...
:)
That's the second time this month that microsoft makes me spit my Pepsi out of my nose because of a terrible urge to laugh my head off.... kudos to their PR departement, I mean... it's funnier than SNL... as for my nose well...
It hurts... but it's worth every mL of lost Pepsi
Locked home for over a year, camping in front of his computer, camping in a game of Quake, going out for the first time since forever, for something OTHER than his job, and guess where he's going? CAMPING in front of the theatre...
:)
I'm starting to beleive all those psychologists claiming "games have a negative impact on human behaviour"
>If you don't like it, don't hang out at a web site that pushes Open Source.
That attitude is more like SHOVING open source.
I want to be able to download SKINS in that system and use my own "driving playmate"... err.. I mean pet... err.. I mean AI... oh fuck it, a playmate with AI, that you don't see everyday :)
October 17th...
oh okay... I was so sure it was april 1st...
God, how can a Billion dollar company be saying something like that?! Guess it's because it's a billion dollar company, heck any small developpers saying something like that would starve...
I guess this is an easy +1 for open source, talk about self-mutilation... I can't beleive we're actually running on over 50,000$ worth of MS products and I am actually reading this...
>creation of a national ID database including fingerprints, facial scans, etc.
:) )
ETC????
God what more do you want with that!? Anal probing? if so, I suggest Larry himself does the Quality Assurance testing part... you know... to be sure it gets it right the first time... maybe after a few dozens of tries (you know how buggy those things are), he'll resort to something less 1984-ish...
... then again, I know a lot of people that would stick anything "up theirs" to get a few M $ worth of contracts... some of you pervers reading this are actually doing it for free (or fun, you pick any
Some small people with CREATIVE ideas cannot go to patent their creation because of the legal fees, plus the pattent application fees, (a patent application plus extras comes over 5000$ easily for those of you who don't know)... meanwhile, big companies can patent useless stuff that will break innovation (I'm starting to hate that word) instead of it's root concept of being to PROTECT I.P.
:) ).
Of course this means, those who might actually BENEFIT from the system for a just cause cannot access it (well depending on your cashflow as a startup for example , you have that great idea, you get 100K$ seed money to develop a simple prototype application/device so you can demonstrate your idea and get even more financing... will you use 5 to 10% of that budget for a PATENT (which will bring even more fees in the process) or will you concentrate on the project itself? Yep.. you guessed it right, and as soon as you go for your round of financing and approach people with money, funny how those NDAs mean nothing for them (since anyways, you won't be able to sue them) and if you get thru all of that crap, normally you get bought out for a fraction of what you could have made, because probably the investors will tell you if you don't comply with their rules they'll invest in that X company that can pull out the same thing and even better (and drive you out of buisness) etc etc, so probably you lose control over your project (51% shares not to you), and if you're really unlucky, the appointed CEO is a jerk and makes the whole thing goes down... if it works and becomes a success, notice you probably not even have 1% of the company with the dillution and all the maths applied after. (still, 1% of 100M$ is not too bad if you get there
Of course with SOFTWARE it can be a bit more positive, but for let's say, some cool hardware application, or innovative invention, it's another story.
This is almost depressing. heh...
Not enough millicandella (or candela) output, I'd suggest R G and B lasers to do it, but that would be cost prohibitive... but REALLY bright and nice color balancing.
DoS me, I've been upgraded to BSOD'ing since '95, that won't change much in my life :)
Missing:
Color (c'mon B&W is growing old)
Video (a la casio E115) or mp4 codec support
Microdrive
Camera (for video phone or whatever, camera is cool, need it. heh...)
If they want me to pay 600$ canadian for that thing, ish... not!, having a cell phone and a palm III right now is okay with me and it costed me a fraction of that, but I'd be willing to pay a bit more than 600$ if it would have all the features mentionned above, and I am sure a lot of other people here would just drool over a jam-packed pda like that.
> As long as they don't delete any of my porno they can have my MP3's
:)
Yeah let the MPAA take care of the porn... but they won't use that law, they will need to rewrite the proposition so they can have the right to download "to be sure it's porn" before deleting it off
>Not quite. Polaroid has a lock on ANY "instant" or self-developing film.
:), and before investign 1000$ on a highend polaroid, I'd go on a 3Mpixel CCD camera.
>They make some professional "instant" cameras that take dynamite photos. However, there is only so big of a market for those.
His point was that the low cost instant stuff is really bad.
Friday I was taking pictures of some parts of the office to do some compositing work in my 3d software, and I needed a picture FAST, and the webcam, well... 640x480, cmos, I thought the polaroid would be a bit better than that.
Took the picture... hell... it was SO grainy, the light balance was so horrible (not that I've expected anything really amazing, but not that bad, finally the webcam which has crappy optics and is a CMOS (lower quality than ccd) and went thru a cheezy codec for compression, than recompressed to JPEG, looked WAY better than a 1200dpi polaroid scan....
Don't get me wrong, I am aware of all the technical blablah... but at 1$ a shot, jeez... a 100$ kid camera would do about the same job, and you can at least takes 100s of them without the 1$ a shot worry. If the quality of the resulting image would be a bit better (don't tell me with current technologies you can't make an instant process better contrasted and higher resolution and a bit better quality) well... it's simply not worth the cash.
So to get back to your "dynamite" analogy, all the experience I got from Polaroid BLOWS
Sorry for being macho but....
:)
> yes, it prints, spellchecks and has online help.
...But it doesn't SUCK, so why do you think everybody is still all over MS Office?
And will you be called a "gifted programmer" a "security expert" or a "terrorist"?
In these times and with all of what's happening with all the laws passed, I wouldn't even dare touching that kind of contest, sure it's gonna make a possible winner popular, but could be also seen as a prime suspect for writing trojan code, and since law enforcement at higher levels often tries to find someone to blame, well, you know the rest.... (as in wrongfully accused, lack of proofs and still convicted, etc etc).
> my boss has resisted because it would be more difficult and expensive to find a replacement admin if I leave
:) why would you leave if you like your job? isn't it a way of saying "I want to be on the safe side if I throw you out" hehe...
Sounds like the reverse-excuse
Yeah maybe alarmist, but you can install BSD or Linux on the same hardware that runs windows, so if you'd leave you could always offer to put the system (or the parts you changed, i.e. probably Email firewall and httpd) back on a windows platform for the next person that would replace you... Normally when you give your 2 weeks (or more depending on the terms) notice, you have time to train someone for the basic stuff and fix/tweak the last things...
Moe finally tracks Bart prank calls cuz he used Homer's Samsung phone with GPS enabled on by default. :)
--
:)), one machine could replace them 10 with only that little step up. Thing is I can't afford 10 machines and the drive subsystem, nor current SSD solutions.
To take advantage of RAMdisks, you pretty much need to have your computer on all the time, or in standby mode when you're not using it. At this point, what do you need much higher disk bandwidth for?
Loading your mp3s or movies?
Loading office in 2s instead of 6s?
running your games (oh wait, that's CPU/GPU intensive not HD).
--
FORGET ABOUT HOME USE, think a bit.
There are limiting factors with hard drives, mainly LATENCY issues, this might not be a problem for you or any home users, but for some specific scenarios, it is, and a BIG one. I give you a specific case where I could benefit from such a system:
Without going in too much details, I work with a lot of files, my workstation generates over 200,000+ files for a single simulation, no it can't be put in a database for now, it has to be accessed from different software with no database support, every other part of the software is optimised to know exactly which file to open, using the maximum of memory, cropping useless data, etc etc... everything is maximized to a more than good level. The only bottleneck I have in my system right now is the drive's latency issue, and beleive me, if I could go down from the milliseconds to nanoseconds or microseconds, it would be over a tenfold increase in speed and I wouldn't need 10 machines running in parralel to do the job in one day (which unfortunately I don't have
Most application are bandwidth hungry, but there are some stuff out there requiring LOW LATENCY, and heck, if there wasn't a need for that, you wouldn't see solid state drives for 60,000$ out there. There's a need, but sometimes you're limited by your R&D budget and you'd gladly take an emmerging technology or home-made stuff if it means saving 80% of the cost of the equivalent part, and increasing your effeciency by a factor 10.
I'll see your answer "if you need it, and it slows down you r&d, buy it, for the sake of the company" sometimes it doesn't work like that for cashflow reasons and you have to work with what you can get in your specific budget, the issue here (and title of this forum) is about cheap storage that would have a low latency and High bandwidth solution (with loads of storage). I'm sure I am not the only one that would GLADLY grab a 30GB solid state drive for a fraction of what it would cost me with the current systems (which are way overpriced considering the price of ram right now).
There's a need for Solid State, while I understand that the gap between a home user and a workstation/server class machine is blending more and more, it's not because a home user wouldn't benefit from such a device, that it's not needed for corporate or R&d levels. Current solutions wouldn't be selling for 50K$+ if there wasn't a need for them... heck, they wouldn't exist.
I was wondering the EXACT same thing, I was recently browsing the net to find if anyone did such a project for his master or just like a hobby. Or even if there was someone that actually made a home-made device (I'd even go for that).
;)
C'mon, shouldn't be too hard to tie up a buttload of 128M+ DIMMs together and plug in a ATA100 interface and some FPGA for decoding/driving the memory? How come nobody did it? what are the big problems? I don't see any problems from my perspective it's just a load of addressing issues and plugging off the shelf parts together, the only "hard" part I could see is the timing to get the maximum throughput to max out the interface, but that's only a software issue.
Heck someone that really wants could make the first low-cost IDE (or SCSI) board/case/adapter to which we would simply have to add ram... I'd pay a lot more than what the components are costing to get my hands on something scalable and cheap like that, and I am sure I'm not the only one.
Just imagine something like.
Model-1, 4 slots, accepts up to 1GB PC133 ram per slots, ATA/100 interface 1000$ (look at the price of the components for that kind of stuff and you EASILY beat the 3x the cost of the hardware to break a profit, even home-made you could make a LOT of money (and still beating the 300% law)
Model-2, 8 Slots, blabla 2000$
Model-2 Pro, Ultra160/320 interface 2500$
Model-3, loads of slots, still WAY cheaper than the current available solutions, error correction, etc etc.
Nice buisness plan eh? copy it, make a device and send me model 2 pro
>>AOL on Linux.
>>Isn't that like having a red neck teach physic's at MIT?
>More like having a slashdotter teach English.
Or taco correcting at a spelling contest.
> I know people who actually use the words "I like AOL" all together in one sentence.
:)
Interresting, in my case, I tend to act like if I didn't know them
The thing about the XP is the new core yes, but why do people benchmark GAMES and SYSoft sandra and only stuff like that, most people that are going to go for XP instead of standard (cheap) athlon running at 1.4ghz, are Workstation users, 3d animators, video encoding application, dual cpu setups and all... Tom always aims for games games games, god... like if there was only games in life.... I agree, a lot of gamers go to that site, but he wants to be THE hardware place, he has to cover a bit more than that. He used to do 3dsmax rendering tests for example... why not now? with not single processor vs dual processor, why not dual Xeon vs dual athlonXP, why not Lightwave7.0b rendering (optimized for SSE2 so you could really see something here), etc etc etc...
There's the fact that you want to be the first online source of information for the tech-savyy people, but there's also a difference between tasting a strawberry, and a strawberry pie.
Kudos to anandtech who pushes the enveloppe a bit more than Tom.
>The advance here is removing the balls of solder between the chip's packaging and the microprocessor core
:)
Was I the only one who twitched when reading this?
oh man... I am a geek..... help!!