"Error correcing code" or "Error checking and correction", depending upon who you ask. more expensive and slightly slower than normal SDRAM, and it's mostly used in servers.
Why is it the PC world can't get rid of ISA slots and serial ports?
Because with such a large market of people with all sorts of different needs, there's going to be many, many people out there with legacy peripherals. I still need a serial port to link my PC and my HP48 calculator.
And USB would still suck if it weren't for Apple creating the market by making it the only way to add peripherals to the iMac.
Bull. USB took so long to take off in the PC market because there was no decent support for it until Windows 98. Sure, Win95 OSR2 had the USB supplement, but it was hard to find if it didn't come with your PC and OSR2 wasn't available on the shelves.
I'm pretty sure it was here that a story about an article on the CBC's website regarding the definitions of hacker and cracker was posted. Let's face it. Everyday people use the word "gender" when referring to something that, in the strictest intended definition, should call for the word "sex". Deal with it. "Sex" is often thought of as an intimate act between two people. Thus, in everyday conversation and writing, the less potentially offensive word "gender" is used. It's just like the word "hacker" implying a violent/destructive act and therefore being associated with things like the DoS attacks back in February. I don't get the same idea in my head when I hear the word "cracker".
Go ahead and use whatever words you choose, but keep in mind you're not the lord of dictionary.
Exactly. Look around at people bashing Netscape for crashing all the time. My University uses Communicator 4.5 on Windows 95 and I've never seen it crash. Not once. However, Netscape started crashing on me on my home box one day, right after I upgraded to - (gasp) - Windows 98!
Over time, Netscape has become better (4.73 is head and shoulders more stable than any other version in Win98), but there's no reason for this. I hear Microsoft apologists everywhere saying they should be able to do this, and I can't help but wonder why other than the possibility that they've heavily invested in Microsoft and depend on their success.
The OS should be completely application agnostic. And if it is so, then everyone has the freedom to innovate on a level playing field.
p.s. - I've been using Netscape for years, and I only use IE for pages that I imperatively need to view that don't work in NS. Last night, I came across one such page. I opened IE, and within fifteen seconds of loading the page, IE bluescreened - something Netscape has never done.
Well, yeah. Radio waves and light photons are both electromagnetic radiation, just at different frequencies. Both have the same wave-particle duality, so radio towers emit photons just like light sources.
I'm not sure of the easiset way to answer that question, anyway -- think about telephone lines, for example. Used to be, everyone figured that they had an "audio bandwidth" of about 3000 Hz (or am I way off here?) So you might figure that means about 3kbps total maximum throughput. However, we're getting 56k (or so) over those same lines, through clever use of multiple channels, multiple bits per baud, etc, etc.
The standard telephone system is 8-bits per sample at a sampling rate of 8kHz. 8bits/sample*8000samples/s = 64kbps theoretical max. But with all the variables involved like noise, 56k is a big stretch at best. The "audio bandwidth" comes from the 8kHz sampling rate. At that rate, the ideal audio bandwidth is 4kHz, but practical filters limit it to lower than that.
As for the data rate/bandwidth ratio, it depends on the line coding (how ones and zeros are represented by the signal). Looking at baseband, each different method of coding was different frequency spectra for random data, and most of the information is held in the "first null bandwidth", which is from 0Hz to the first zero component. The lowest that the first null goes is the data rate, where 1Mbps takes 1MHz, but coding methods with that bandwidth generally make it harder to recover the clock (data) rate from the signal. Of course, the bandwidth taken by the transmitted signal after conversion to bandpass may vary depending on the modulation method (single/double/vestigal sideband, etc).
I was doing some "field research" on firewall security when I stumbled across this from an Intel engineer. It got chopped off at the end in the process, but there's still some juicy stuff here. --------------------------- To: Head Cheese of Intel From: P4 project manager Re: P4 chip layout
Message:
The die layout of the latest revision of the prototype P4 is in the attached JPEG. Here's the rundown of the labelled sections:
1. 11,290,491 transistors: CISC-to-RISC conversion. Handles a bunch of 1978 legacy bullshit.
2. I know this looks like just a dot on the chip, but it turned out the MMX stuff could be done with only eight transistors.
3. 12 Superpipelined floating point units: We designed them so that hopefully the next version of Excel will run tolerably, but we're not getting our hopes up.
4. Instruction scheduler: Arranges instructions in the fastest manner possible for those too wussy to use assembler.
5. We etched in a proposal from you to your secretary like you asked.
6. 453 transistors, 35 varicaps, four inductors and an op amp: I think this was put in while someone was drunk, but everything stops working if we take it out.
Brand new P4 1.4 GHz: $1000 New motherboard: $200 Rambus RDRAM to replace SDRAM: $11800 The smiles on the faces of Intel and Rambus stockholders: Priceless.
The Pentium Pro's cache wasn't on-die, but it was in the same package as the CPU. Also, the original Pentium II core was named "Klamath", and was fabbed at.35 microns. Deschutes was.25 microns.
Also, the theory of identically clocked PPro and Coppermines having the same performance isn't quite right. Sometimes in minor revisions to the core, circuit layouts will be simplified and optimized. Run a non-SSE CPU benchmark test between a 450MHz PII and a 450MHz PIII and chances are the PIII will have an edge.
Fractions? Um, no. Run a complex signal at say, 500Hz through a spectrum analyzer, and you'll get components at 500Hz, 1000Hz, 1500Hz, and so on. There'll be nothing at 250Hz, 166.67Hz, or any other fraction. Otherwise it couldn't be a true periodic signal at 500Hz.
ESDRAM, as you describe it, sounds like Virtual Channel SDRAM, which can be used with recent VIA chipsets. It too, uses a SRAM cache. I think only Kingston makes it - too bad, because VC does improve performance somewhat.
Actually, it was a collaboration between Sony and Philips. Hence digital outputs (like a CD/DVD-ROM's CD digital output) are often called S/PDIFs, for Sony/Philips Digital InterFace.
Interesting point. I live near a video game rental store that also rents out PC games (this is in Canada). Some of the games it has in stock are imports from overseas, such as Carmageddon, Grand Theft Auto, Worms and other UK-developed games, and the boxes for the imports are quite a bit smaller than the North American packages. Not quite as small as a DVD case, but still, it's a very noticeable difference.
The other thing that I've noticed is that there's a slight variance in package size among PC games, and the largest boxes contain games where the instruction manual is packaged in the jewel case like a music CD's liner notes. Feh.
What he was referring to was EA Sports' habit of only doing small incremental updates. The NHL series in particular gets rave reviews year in and year out yet with every iteration I haven't seen justification of dropping another $50 every year. Triple Play 2001, anyone? Thought not.
Remember MS buying Access Software? Links LS 2000 (The first under the Microsoft banner) got hammered by a bunch of reviewers for not being enough of an upgrade. The original poster is worried about the same thing here.
Oh, and anyone who thinks that inventing new sports is a dumb idea obviously has never played Rocket Jockey. Inventing a new sport just takes actual skill, something sorely lacking in the computer gaming industry.
Well, for one thing, that's a shot from Win98. But anyway, he's actually right. That shot may have been from my P2-400 (no such bug in the P2, so no need for the workaround), but I checked my old P200 running Win98, and it wasn't enabled there by default. Regardless, I'd like to see evidence that what Win98 does is avoid running programs in which the instructions are found. I honestly don't believe that, but he's more than welcome to prove me wrong.
Hmmm... Here's a screenshot from the advanced options of the Win98 System Configuration utility. Are you saying that all that the last option there does is check EXEs for F0 0F C7 C8 and avoid running them? Where'd you find that out?
you will see that Linux is now beginning to support both USB
How long has USB been around? My other computer, an old P200 has a 430VX motherboard that has USB support right in the chipset - and the chipset is stamped (c)1995 Intel.
For those in the back - USB has been around for five years. And only now it's getting support in Linux?
Then again, I could be making an ass out of myself here - if it's because USB specs were unavailable to Linux programmers for the longest time, much like the undocumented BIOS function that limits Linux's RAM autodetection to 64MB, then by all means, tell me.
To be honest, there is no need on the desktop as far as I can tell. How many hard drives can sustain 33MB/s, let alone 66 or 100? None that I know of. Sure, burst speeds go up, but when is that needed?
Different coutries have different patent laws. There is an organization of patent offices that tries to maintain a decently uniform set of patent laws across borders, but there are some holdouts. For example, In all countries except one, a patent is awarded to the "first to patent". Early bird gets the worm and all that. However, this one country seems to be holding out with its policy of granting patents to "first to invent". I don't know if it's obvious, but this country, the only one in which "prior art" means anything with patents, is the United States.
And while I appreciate Tord's efforts, Blade is simply way behind the others out there. First, there's no VBR. Second, it seriously lags behind LAME and Fraunhofer in terms of quality (I've been forewarned of Xing and therefore haven't even bothered with it). I got serious high frequency artifacts, and sharp sounds (the sound of two drumsticks striking each other, for example) get badly smoothed out even at 256kbps. Third, it's pretty slow compared to Fraunhofer. On a P2-400, Fraunhofer encodes at 5x, Blade at 1.2x and LAME is around 0.8x.
Regardless, it's too bad this happened, but considering Sweden doesn't allow patents on algorithms, then this really should be an open and shut case. A patent in one country is unenforcable in other countries, so only the Swedish law should apply (I got this info from a recent lecture at my University by an alumnus patent and copyright lawyer).
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One compound word: Junkbuster. Blocks cookies like a charm, and it's not near as hard to use as they make it sound.
"Error correcing code" or "Error checking and correction", depending upon who you ask. more expensive and slightly slower than normal SDRAM, and it's mostly used in servers.
Because with such a large market of people with all sorts of different needs, there's going to be many, many people out there with legacy peripherals. I still need a serial port to link my PC and my HP48 calculator.
Bull. USB took so long to take off in the PC market because there was no decent support for it until Windows 98. Sure, Win95 OSR2 had the USB supplement, but it was hard to find if it didn't come with your PC and OSR2 wasn't available on the shelves.
Gender/Sex, Hacker/Cracker, whine whine whine.
I'm pretty sure it was here that a story about an article on the CBC's website regarding the definitions of hacker and cracker was posted. Let's face it. Everyday people use the word "gender" when referring to something that, in the strictest intended definition, should call for the word "sex". Deal with it. "Sex" is often thought of as an intimate act between two people. Thus, in everyday conversation and writing, the less potentially offensive word "gender" is used. It's just like the word "hacker" implying a violent/destructive act and therefore being associated with things like the DoS attacks back in February. I don't get the same idea in my head when I hear the word "cracker".
Go ahead and use whatever words you choose, but keep in mind you're not the lord of dictionary.
Exactly. Look around at people bashing Netscape for crashing all the time. My University uses Communicator 4.5 on Windows 95 and I've never seen it crash. Not once. However, Netscape started crashing on me on my home box one day, right after I upgraded to - (gasp) - Windows 98!
Over time, Netscape has become better (4.73 is head and shoulders more stable than any other version in Win98), but there's no reason for this. I hear Microsoft apologists everywhere saying they should be able to do this, and I can't help but wonder why other than the possibility that they've heavily invested in Microsoft and depend on their success.
The OS should be completely application agnostic. And if it is so, then everyone has the freedom to innovate on a level playing field.
p.s. - I've been using Netscape for years, and I only use IE for pages that I imperatively need to view that don't work in NS. Last night, I came across one such page. I opened IE, and within fifteen seconds of loading the page, IE bluescreened - something Netscape has never done.
NT4? Yes, according to Blizzard D2 site. 3D in NT4? Well, it's a D3D/Glide game, so only if you have a Voodoo.
Well, yeah. Radio waves and light photons are both electromagnetic radiation, just at different frequencies. Both have the same wave-particle duality, so radio towers emit photons just like light sources.
The standard telephone system is 8-bits per sample at a sampling rate of 8kHz. 8bits/sample*8000samples/s = 64kbps theoretical max. But with all the variables involved like noise, 56k is a big stretch at best. The "audio bandwidth" comes from the 8kHz sampling rate. At that rate, the ideal audio bandwidth is 4kHz, but practical filters limit it to lower than that.
As for the data rate/bandwidth ratio, it depends on the line coding (how ones and zeros are represented by the signal). Looking at baseband, each different method of coding was different frequency spectra for random data, and most of the information is held in the "first null bandwidth", which is from 0Hz to the first zero component. The lowest that the first null goes is the data rate, where 1Mbps takes 1MHz, but coding methods with that bandwidth generally make it harder to recover the clock (data) rate from the signal. Of course, the bandwidth taken by the transmitted signal after conversion to bandpass may vary depending on the modulation method (single/double/vestigal sideband, etc).
I think you mean L2. I was under the assumption that all L1 is full speed since it's on-die.
I was doing some "field research" on firewall security when I stumbled across this from an Intel engineer. It got chopped off at the end in the process, but there's still some juicy stuff here.
---------------------------
To: Head Cheese of Intel
From: P4 project manager
Re: P4 chip layout
Message:
The die layout of the latest revision of the prototype P4 is in the attached JPEG. Here's the rundown of the labelled sections:
1. 11,290,491 transistors: CISC-to-RISC conversion. Handles a bunch of 1978 legacy bullshit.
2. I know this looks like just a dot on the chip, but it turned out the MMX stuff could be done with only eight transistors.
3. 12 Superpipelined floating point units: We designed them so that hopefully the next version of Excel will run tolerably, but we're not getting our hopes up.
4. Instruction scheduler: Arranges instructions in the fastest manner possible for those too wussy to use assembler.
5. We etched in a proposal from you to your secretary like you asked.
6. 453 transistors, 35 varicaps, four inductors and an op amp: I think this was put in while someone was drunk, but everything stops working if we take it out.
They remembered Rocky, but forgot Police Academy.
Brand new P4 1.4 GHz: $1000
New motherboard: $200
Rambus RDRAM to replace SDRAM: $11800
The smiles on the faces of Intel and Rambus stockholders: Priceless.
Okay, I tried.
The Pentium Pro's cache wasn't on-die, but it was in the same package as the CPU. Also, the original Pentium II core was named "Klamath", and was fabbed at .35 microns. Deschutes was .25 microns.
Also, the theory of identically clocked PPro and Coppermines having the same performance isn't quite right. Sometimes in minor revisions to the core, circuit layouts will be simplified and optimized. Run a non-SSE CPU benchmark test between a 450MHz PII and a 450MHz PIII and chances are the PIII will have an edge.
Fractions? Um, no. Run a complex signal at say, 500Hz through a spectrum analyzer, and you'll get components at 500Hz, 1000Hz, 1500Hz, and so on. There'll be nothing at 250Hz, 166.67Hz, or any other fraction. Otherwise it couldn't be a true periodic signal at 500Hz.
ESDRAM, as you describe it, sounds like Virtual Channel SDRAM, which can be used with recent VIA chipsets. It too, uses a SRAM cache. I think only Kingston makes it - too bad, because VC does improve performance somewhat.
Actually, it was a collaboration between Sony and Philips. Hence digital outputs (like a CD/DVD-ROM's CD digital output) are often called S/PDIFs, for Sony/Philips Digital InterFace.
Interesting point. I live near a video game rental store that also rents out PC games (this is in Canada). Some of the games it has in stock are imports from overseas, such as Carmageddon, Grand Theft Auto, Worms and other UK-developed games, and the boxes for the imports are quite a bit smaller than the North American packages. Not quite as small as a DVD case, but still, it's a very noticeable difference.
The other thing that I've noticed is that there's a slight variance in package size among PC games, and the largest boxes contain games where the instruction manual is packaged in the jewel case like a music CD's liner notes. Feh.
What he was referring to was EA Sports' habit of only doing small incremental updates. The NHL series in particular gets rave reviews year in and year out yet with every iteration I haven't seen justification of dropping another $50 every year. Triple Play 2001, anyone? Thought not.
Remember MS buying Access Software? Links LS 2000 (The first under the Microsoft banner) got hammered by a bunch of reviewers for not being enough of an upgrade. The original poster is worried about the same thing here.
Oh, and anyone who thinks that inventing new sports is a dumb idea obviously has never played Rocket Jockey. Inventing a new sport just takes actual skill, something sorely lacking in the computer gaming industry.
Well, for one thing, that's a shot from Win98. But anyway, he's actually right. That shot may have been from my P2-400 (no such bug in the P2, so no need for the workaround), but I checked my old P200 running Win98, and it wasn't enabled there by default. Regardless, I'd like to see evidence that what Win98 does is avoid running programs in which the instructions are found. I honestly don't believe that, but he's more than welcome to prove me wrong.
Hmmm... Here's a screenshot from the advanced options of the Win98 System Configuration utility. Are you saying that all that the last option there does is check EXEs for F0 0F C7 C8 and avoid running them? Where'd you find that out?
How long has USB been around? My other computer, an old P200 has a 430VX motherboard that has USB support right in the chipset - and the chipset is stamped (c)1995 Intel.
For those in the back - USB has been around for five years. And only now it's getting support in Linux?
Then again, I could be making an ass out of myself here - if it's because USB specs were unavailable to Linux programmers for the longest time, much like the undocumented BIOS function that limits Linux's RAM autodetection to 64MB, then by all means, tell me.
To be honest, there is no need on the desktop as far as I can tell. How many hard drives can sustain 33MB/s, let alone 66 or 100? None that I know of. Sure, burst speeds go up, but when is that needed?
Different coutries have different patent laws. There is an organization of patent offices that tries to maintain a decently uniform set of patent laws across borders, but there are some holdouts. For example, In all countries except one, a patent is awarded to the "first to patent". Early bird gets the worm and all that. However, this one country seems to be holding out with its policy of granting patents to "first to invent". I don't know if it's obvious, but this country, the only one in which "prior art" means anything with patents, is the United States.
http://bladeenc.mp3.no/binar ies/BladeDLL-091-intel.zip
And while I appreciate Tord's efforts, Blade is simply way behind the others out there. First, there's no VBR. Second, it seriously lags behind LAME and Fraunhofer in terms of quality (I've been forewarned of Xing and therefore haven't even bothered with it). I got serious high frequency artifacts, and sharp sounds (the sound of two drumsticks striking each other, for example) get badly smoothed out even at 256kbps. Third, it's pretty slow compared to Fraunhofer. On a P2-400, Fraunhofer encodes at 5x, Blade at 1.2x and LAME is around 0.8x.
Regardless, it's too bad this happened, but considering Sweden doesn't allow patents on algorithms, then this really should be an open and shut case. A patent in one country is unenforcable in other countries, so only the Swedish law should apply (I got this info from a recent lecture at my University by an alumnus patent and copyright lawyer).