Most Windows users couldn't care less about using "shareware" software vs freeware. Evidence: WinRAR
The gaudy interfaces of most FOSS software(like Sumatra) will frighten most sheeple away. Windows users expect complete programs with lots of features, rather than simplistic single-purpose designs.
Okular looks good though - just different - but I'd still opt for Foxit for most people simply because of the presentation... it's good enough that nobody will question where Adobe Reader went.
I really doubt Intel would branch out with a new architecture - or at least, not a low power one. Remember that 80-core processor they made a while back? They'd probably make a new architecture for processors like that, to improve their dominance in the server/render-farm market.
ARM really has low power and small locked down. An Atom is impressive at 2 watts, but ARM will soon be doing the same at 0.1 watts, and with ARM SoCs everything is in a single chip, so you can also cut out 20 watts from the other components in the netbook.
There's no point really... The Atom(and netbooks in general) are huge cash cows, but x86 will never try to take over the Cellphone/Ultra-Low-Power-Device market.
That thing is handy.:D Makes applets start up quite a bit quicker. It's easy to turn off too - look at the post below. (or maybe above)
Honestly, if you want to pick a beef with Java, you should be calling it on the Automated Updates that keep re-enabling themselves. I had to set my firewall to block the damn thing!
No, I DO NOT want you to check for updates! Don't remind me! Turn off! Spybot S&D - Kill it! - Die die die die!
I don't know about you, but most of my boot time is spent waiting for it to POST and get to the boot menu.
I've tried Asus boards with ExpressGate, and unfortunately, the POSTing seems to take even longer!
Of all the computers in my home, the one that boots the fastest is a 1.2ghz VIA Eden Nano-ITX board. Takes about 14-15 seconds to reach the desktop from Power-ON, compared to 30-35 seconds for my other systems. It seems to have quite efficient BIOS code; the POST is done before my LCD monitors flick on, rather than 15 seconds later.
I think I'm gonna change the drop box on my browser to Yahoo! for a while. Need to spread the love.
Ahh!...hahaha!
The company that hands over info without a warrant.:D You're screwed!
At this point I'd rather give my info to Google than another company. The other companies(Yahoo, Microsoft, Alexa, etc. etc. etc.) share info so much that I can't keep track of it anymore. At least with Google, it seems to stay with Google.
I saw on a TV documentary that old and infrequently used knowledge can be refreshed easily. Often only an hour of doing something will bring it right back.
For the documentary, they monitored the brains of people that 1) Don't use computers and 2) use them regularly. They were tasked with searching the internet for stuff for 15 minutes. The first group was clueless for about 5 days - then their brains started getting really active. The others had active brains from the start.
Paired with other studies done, this seems to suggest that even if it doesn't help you learn, it certainly reinforces what you've already learned, and brings it back into active use.
I'm starting to picture the brain as a big HDD, and it takes about an hour to swap stuff from it into RAM.:P Then it sits there for a few days, until you need room for something else, and then gets swapped back to the HDD.
The benefit is the same one as using Windows rather than DOS, or using Python rather than C++.
Easier management of more complex things to use more of the available resources.
It results in: -Faster dev time. -Easier to spot errors. -Easier to spot performance snags. (like waiting for a device to initialize - for 5 seconds - without doing anything else)
Compilers are less falliable than people, especially when it comes to complex optimization like this must involve.
I'm impressed by the nano. It's a tad heavy on power consumption, but the performance is great; beats Atoms.
But if power consumption is really a factor, there's no way to beat ARM SoCs. Those Cortex A8/A9 processors are fast, and some have TDPs under 0.1 watts. You can run the chips without a headsink, and they won't even heat up at full load.
Minority? Only on the desktop PC. You'd be surprised at how many games on other platforms use OpenGL.
Most mobile phones and other ARM-based devices run OpenGL rather than DirectX, so anything 3D for low-power devices is probably OpenGL.
The PS3 uses a cousin to OpenGL, if I remember right.
That right there has to be at least 50 million devices with OpenGL - granted, they have varying power and capabilities, but you can't really say OpenGL isn't common.:P It's everywhere!
Winning Blu-Ray paid for any losses Sony sustained by not "winning" the console wars.
But how do you define winning? Sony released the PS3 later than Microsoft, and had less console sales - but they also have less production.
Consoles not produced and consoles sold at a loss are better than consoles sitting in warehouses not sold, as sitting in a warehouse ties up the most money, and costs money over time.
And speaking of money, as far as I can tell Microsoft lost way more on the hardware than Sony. If you add up what Microsoft lost selling each console, then add in costs of taking it back when it RRoDs and either fixing it or replacing it, then shipping it back... it far outstrips the meager amounts Sony lost.
I don't know about you, but I'd rather lose $100 per console(Sony) rather than $300 per console.:P (guesstimate)
It's all about the shaders and texture handling now. Polygons are nice, but without shading they look like bland triangles.
Years back I saw one of the GeForce 7 tech demos - Mad Mod Mike - it used dynamic polygon subdivision, which I believe boosts polygon density based on distance from the "camera". Conversely, it also simplifies distant objects where the detail doesn't matter. This tech works well and is present in many engines.
Now they're working on the same thing, but for textures. Few games get it right; most games have very blurry textures when you get close to stuff - textures that are obviously less detailed than other objects on-screen, but farther away.
Supreme Commander is one game that didn't have this, which is reflected in the benchmarks and extremely heavy GPU memory usage. If you zoom in, in SupCom, everything gets more detailed, seamlessly, and identically.
Left4Dead and Crysis also seem to have good texture handling. New games seem to be putting an effort into getting textures right.
But shaders are where it's all at. Shaders do all the fancy stuff. That's why rendering something without shading takes 20 miliseconds, but rendering it in pov-ray with tons of fancy shading takes 8 hours.;)
We just have to wait for companies and engineers to come up with better algorithms that let more accurate shading be done in realtime.
Interesting statistic: I heard that for modern games, like Crysis, more than half the memory the GPU uses is used for shading operations, rather than textures/framebuffer/etc.
That's why I'm holding out for a FusionIO. Their cards go through PCIe4x - not SATA. I want 600MB/sec reads/writes! 60k ops/sec, and cheaper than this thing!
I just hope their consumer grade products perform as well as their enterprise ones. Apparently tech report will be reviewing them as soon as they can get their hands on them.
Most ARM handhelds have 800x480 screens, or smaller. 4:3 isn't that common, unless you're talking about relatively new tablets where larger displays matter.
Gnome is rather heavy. Nice to see them using something lighter, at least until ARM processors reach netbook speeds.
Your math is off a bit. You don't need 5 square meters to generate 300 watts; maybe if you average it out to include night, it'd come to that, but in a place like Mexico I doubt it'd be that low.
At last Mayâ(TM)s CeBIT trade show, Sun Microsystems (JAVA) demonstrated a solar Blackbox shipping container hooked to a 700 square foot array of solar panels, which produced about 10 kilowatts of power. Thatâ(TM)s barely enough power to support a single rack in a typical high-density configuration in a Blackbox (since renamed the Sun MD).
700 square feet converts to 65 square metres? ~154 watts per square metre? That's 750w for 5 square meters - 2.5x your estimate, according to the article.
Why store it? Pump it back into the grid and avoid all the costs of batteries. It's not a replacement for a generator. It's just a way to offset power demands and get some credit back during off-hours. And since you can get tax breaks to implement it, it may even be profitable for some businesses.
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For me, I've never had Sumatra ever properly read a PDF file. I use Foxit on windows myself, but would rather use a free reader if I had to.
You too? I didn't want to mention it, as the tone of my post was already fairly negative.
I'm definitely going to look into Okular.
What - no Foxit?
Most Windows users couldn't care less about using "shareware" software vs freeware. Evidence: WinRAR
The gaudy interfaces of most FOSS software(like Sumatra) will frighten most sheeple away. Windows users expect complete programs with lots of features, rather than simplistic single-purpose designs.
Okular looks good though - just different - but I'd still opt for Foxit for most people simply because of the presentation... it's good enough that nobody will question where Adobe Reader went.
I really doubt Intel would branch out with a new architecture - or at least, not a low power one. Remember that 80-core processor they made a while back? They'd probably make a new architecture for processors like that, to improve their dominance in the server/render-farm market.
ARM really has low power and small locked down. An Atom is impressive at 2 watts, but ARM will soon be doing the same at 0.1 watts, and with ARM SoCs everything is in a single chip, so you can also cut out 20 watts from the other components in the netbook.
There's no point really... The Atom(and netbooks in general) are huge cash cows, but x86 will never try to take over the Cellphone/Ultra-Low-Power-Device market.
Then you either need a Pandora, or an expensive Tablet.
That thing is handy. :D Makes applets start up quite a bit quicker. It's easy to turn off too - look at the post below. (or maybe above)
Honestly, if you want to pick a beef with Java, you should be calling it on the Automated Updates that keep re-enabling themselves. I had to set my firewall to block the damn thing!
No, I DO NOT want you to check for updates! Don't remind me! Turn off! Spybot S&D - Kill it! - Die die die die!
JQS is easy to turn off from the java control panel.
And get this - you can do it without uninstalling java!
Unfortunately, this .net thingy seems to require a painful uninstall process, or you have to toss .net
Keyboards are meant to be mashed! I pick mine up off woot for $10 per bundle! :P
I don't know about you, but most of my boot time is spent waiting for it to POST and get to the boot menu.
I've tried Asus boards with ExpressGate, and unfortunately, the POSTing seems to take even longer!
Of all the computers in my home, the one that boots the fastest is a 1.2ghz VIA Eden Nano-ITX board. Takes about 14-15 seconds to reach the desktop from Power-ON, compared to 30-35 seconds for my other systems. It seems to have quite efficient BIOS code; the POST is done before my LCD monitors flick on, rather than 15 seconds later.
I think I'm gonna change the drop box on my browser to Yahoo! for a while. Need to spread the love.
Ahh!...hahaha!
The company that hands over info without a warrant. :D You're screwed!
At this point I'd rather give my info to Google than another company. The other companies(Yahoo, Microsoft, Alexa, etc. etc. etc.) share info so much that I can't keep track of it anymore. At least with Google, it seems to stay with Google.
See, the catch22 with DRM is, it's fine until it interferes with your gaming - and then it's gone too far.
Most DRM seems "fine" until the day you realize it has crossed the line. :P
And lately it seems just about all DRM is like that.
I saw on a TV documentary that old and infrequently used knowledge can be refreshed easily. Often only an hour of doing something will bring it right back.
For the documentary, they monitored the brains of people that 1) Don't use computers and 2) use them regularly. They were tasked with searching the internet for stuff for 15 minutes. The first group was clueless for about 5 days - then their brains started getting really active. The others had active brains from the start.
Paired with other studies done, this seems to suggest that even if it doesn't help you learn, it certainly reinforces what you've already learned, and brings it back into active use.
I'm starting to picture the brain as a big HDD, and it takes about an hour to swap stuff from it into RAM. :P Then it sits there for a few days, until you need room for something else, and then gets swapped back to the HDD.
The benefit is the same one as using Windows rather than DOS, or using Python rather than C++.
Easier management of more complex things to use more of the available resources.
It results in:
-Faster dev time.
-Easier to spot errors.
-Easier to spot performance snags. (like waiting for a device to initialize - for 5 seconds - without doing anything else)
Compilers are less falliable than people, especially when it comes to complex optimization like this must involve.
VIA and ARM will rule the low power market.
I'm impressed by the nano. It's a tad heavy on power consumption, but the performance is great; beats Atoms.
But if power consumption is really a factor, there's no way to beat ARM SoCs. Those Cortex A8/A9 processors are fast, and some have TDPs under 0.1 watts. You can run the chips without a headsink, and they won't even heat up at full load.
Minority? Only on the desktop PC. You'd be surprised at how many games on other platforms use OpenGL.
Most mobile phones and other ARM-based devices run OpenGL rather than DirectX, so anything 3D for low-power devices is probably OpenGL.
The PS3 uses a cousin to OpenGL, if I remember right.
That right there has to be at least 50 million devices with OpenGL - granted, they have varying power and capabilities, but you can't really say OpenGL isn't common. :P It's everywhere!
Really?
I thought these guys were one of the first. They had CSS2 support in... 1999?
But they aren't releasing a free-to-the-masses browser, and it looks like the company hasn't been doing much lately.
I don't have a computer with IE7/8 on it. For those, I use IE NetRenderer.
http://ipinfo.info/netrenderer/
Addon: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/6455
Winning Blu-Ray paid for any losses Sony sustained by not "winning" the console wars.
But how do you define winning? Sony released the PS3 later than Microsoft, and had less console sales - but they also have less production.
Consoles not produced and consoles sold at a loss are better than consoles sitting in warehouses not sold, as sitting in a warehouse ties up the most money, and costs money over time.
And speaking of money, as far as I can tell Microsoft lost way more on the hardware than Sony. If you add up what Microsoft lost selling each console, then add in costs of taking it back when it RRoDs and either fixing it or replacing it, then shipping it back... it far outstrips the meager amounts Sony lost.
I don't know about you, but I'd rather lose $100 per console(Sony) rather than $300 per console. :P (guesstimate)
It's all about the shaders and texture handling now. Polygons are nice, but without shading they look like bland triangles.
Years back I saw one of the GeForce 7 tech demos - Mad Mod Mike - it used dynamic polygon subdivision, which I believe boosts polygon density based on distance from the "camera". Conversely, it also simplifies distant objects where the detail doesn't matter. This tech works well and is present in many engines.
Now they're working on the same thing, but for textures. Few games get it right; most games have very blurry textures when you get close to stuff - textures that are obviously less detailed than other objects on-screen, but farther away.
Supreme Commander is one game that didn't have this, which is reflected in the benchmarks and extremely heavy GPU memory usage. If you zoom in, in SupCom, everything gets more detailed, seamlessly, and identically.
Left4Dead and Crysis also seem to have good texture handling. New games seem to be putting an effort into getting textures right.
But shaders are where it's all at. Shaders do all the fancy stuff. That's why rendering something without shading takes 20 miliseconds, but rendering it in pov-ray with tons of fancy shading takes 8 hours. ;)
We just have to wait for companies and engineers to come up with better algorithms that let more accurate shading be done in realtime.
Interesting statistic: I heard that for modern games, like Crysis, more than half the memory the GPU uses is used for shading operations, rather than textures/framebuffer/etc.
Bingo.
That's why I'm holding out for a FusionIO. Their cards go through PCIe4x - not SATA. I want 600MB/sec reads/writes! 60k ops/sec, and cheaper than this thing!
I just hope their consumer grade products perform as well as their enterprise ones. Apparently tech report will be reviewing them as soon as they can get their hands on them.
I'm so tired of reading the "XP (read: an operating system that came out many years ago) is faster on current hardware than Vista/Windows 7!"
XP SP3 got an updated kernel with more performance enhancements. Can't fault it for being faster, if Microsoft keeps making it faster.
Yeah, I know. I've seen 480x240 screens, 320x240, 320x200, 800x480... never seen an 800x600 myself, on an ARM-powered device.
Greyscale? Most of the ones I've used were either 15-16bit or 24bit. Luxury, I suppose!
Most ARM handhelds have 800x480 screens, or smaller. 4:3 isn't that common, unless you're talking about relatively new tablets where larger displays matter.
Gnome is rather heavy. Nice to see them using something lighter, at least until ARM processors reach netbook speeds.
Your math is off a bit. You don't need 5 square meters to generate 300 watts; maybe if you average it out to include night, it'd come to that, but in a place like Mexico I doubt it'd be that low.
At last Mayâ(TM)s CeBIT trade show, Sun Microsystems (JAVA) demonstrated a solar Blackbox shipping container hooked to a 700 square foot array of solar panels, which produced about 10 kilowatts of power. Thatâ(TM)s barely enough power to support a single rack in a typical high-density configuration in a Blackbox (since renamed the Sun MD).
700 square feet converts to 65 square metres? ~154 watts per square metre? That's 750w for 5 square meters - 2.5x your estimate, according to the article.
Why store it? Pump it back into the grid and avoid all the costs of batteries. It's not a replacement for a generator. It's just a way to offset power demands and get some credit back during off-hours. And since you can get tax breaks to implement it, it may even be profitable for some businesses.
Google? What is this google? Why isn't it in my "Applications" menu?
File format support has improved a lot in three years. It's almost flawless for doc files and spreadsheets.
Potential issues would be macros, powerpoint presentations, database access, and excel/word extensions.