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User: TeknoHog

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  1. Re:Extend It To Crypto - already done on VIA Announces Open Source Driver Initiative · · Score: 1

    Via really stuffed up, however, when they made repeated half-baked attempts at 'semi-binary' drivers which worked only on ancient versions like Redhat 9 and wouldn't provide any support or information on the MPEG decoding chip (in the CLE266 and above) which was essential to getting working DVD and DVB playback on the low power boards like the Nemiah.

    I agree with the general sentiments on the VIA-Linux relationship. However, my old system with a 1 GHz Nehemiah [sic] and CLE266 played DVDs just fine without MPEG2 acceleration, using MPlayer.

  2. Re:Extend It To Crypto on VIA Announces Open Source Driver Initiative · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Umm, this has been in the vanilla Linux kernel for a while. I've tried it with the C7 with great success, too bad the rest of the motherboard wasn't particularly good with Linux.

  3. Re:I'll believe it when I see it working.... on VIA Announces Open Source Driver Initiative · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I was also thinking this is too little, too late. After a few years of playing around with VIA systems, I've moved to Intel boards where opensource drivers just work.

    Nevertheless, it would be nice to see this work for real. Competition is always welcome. Frankly, it's weird that VIA hardware is geared towards embedded/mobile use, while providing drivers mainly for the most power-hungry OS on the planet.

  4. Re:panzer tank ??? on The DIY Tank · · Score: 1

    Err, no. I am german
    Ha! Caught you! If you were really German, you would have capitalized the word German. Then again, maybe you just took the English tendency to not capitalize nouns too far. ;-)

    Actually, adjectives are not capitalized in German, even when they refer to a nationality.

  5. Re:wrong much? on VR Study Says 40% of Us Are Paranoid · · Score: 4, Funny

    It's not paranoia, it's normal.

    I'll choose the halfway option: it's paranormal.

  6. Re:They should call it Photoshop C64. on Adobe Photoshop CS4 Will Be 64-Bit For Windows Only · · Score: 1

    Whoosh.

  7. Re:From the box of Office 14 on ISO Approves OOXML · · Score: 1

    My dream machine at the moment would have something like the PWRficient, a 64-bit PPC that consumes 7 watts per core at 2 GHz.

    Then again, the Intel Core (2) CPUs are not half bad, as long as you use the "mobile" versions. Consider these for example:

    http://processorfinder.intel.com/details.aspx?sSpec=SLA98
    http://processorfinder.intel.com/details.aspx?sSpec=SLA49

    They are basically the "mobile" and "desktop" versions of the same processor (Core 2 Duo at 2 GHz, 2 MB cache, 800 MHz FSB), but the desktop version consumes twice the power of the mobile one. My question is, why are these dumb and wasteful "desktop" processors produced at all? The answer is probably that they are the Celerons of today, the cheaper versions that failed some tests.

    It's a good thing there are Mini-ITX boards (like this one in my server/media center) for those who want to use "mobile" CPUs in a "desktop" environment.

  8. Re:Amazing a real story on april fools day on Rambus Wins Patent Case · · Score: 1

    The real gag seems to be that everyone is tricked into being wary of April fool's stories, while none are really posted.

  9. Re:Subverting standards organizations.... on Rambus Wins Patent Case · · Score: 1

    Honesty and open standards are not dead, they're just pining for the fjords.

  10. Re:Direct X11? on Ray Tracing To Debut in DirectX 11 · · Score: 1

    How does it differ from regular X11?

    Must be something to do with direct rendering. Which reminds me, there's nothing new about Vista's DRM, after all you need the DRM module to get accelerated 3D in Linux/X11 ;)

  11. Re: croporations on OOXML Will Pass Amid Massive Irregularities · · Score: 1

    I think the original poster meant to say "coprorations", because the copro- prefix has the crap meaning, for example in coprophilia and coprophagia. In effect, coprorations are serving rations of crap...

  12. Re:Please... on What Are Must-Sees For Open Day At the LHC? · · Score: 4, Funny

    there's nothing to do there but shop for overpriced bosons you could've picked up for half price at a more nondescript collider.

    Actually, a lot of bosons are free of charge.

  13. Re:E-mu/Ensoniq -- anyone? on Creative Goes After Driver Modder · · Score: 2, Funny

    Why is it that we have to buy expensive 5.1 speaker systems to get anywhere close these days?

    I think you just answered your own question.

    Most people have two ears, so any audio will be downmixed to 2 channels upon hearing. It's possible to get perfect positional audio with good headphones.

  14. Re:So, what to buy next? on Creative Goes After Driver Modder · · Score: 1

    Your best bet is not to do your LP conversions using your sound card. You can get Turntables with USB ports that will most likely do a better job.

    I'm pretty sure that most of these USB turntables are cheap low-quality toys, both as turntables and sound cards. Decent studio hardware is like unix applications: do one thing, do it well, and pipe them together for more complex functions.

    However, an external sound card is generally a good idea, as it's isolated from the RF noise inside a computer. I've got a Tascam US-122, originally chosen for its dedicated in-kernel Linux drivers to replace a crappy laptop sound card. There are further benefits in an external one, for example connectors and pots that would require an external box anyway. I regularly use mine as a minimal mixer, with another sound source connected to the inputs.

  15. Re:Protein Map of Human Swallows? on Researchers Create a Protein Map of Human Spit · · Score: 1

    African or European swallows?

  16. Re:Confidential....riiiiight on Meet the Laptop of 2015 · · Score: 2, Funny

    That's why they call it "GUI".

  17. Re:Multicore programming worries me... on More Interest In Parallel Programming Outside the US? · · Score: 1

    Instead of addressing the root problems with concurrency, we are just going see super-high-level languages that have no bearing or relationship to the actual hardware the underlying machine.

    In my opinion and experience, higher level tools are useful for multiproc machines, if not completely necessary. For example, if you break up a matrix multiplication into nested loops in C, you've lost some essential high-level information about the problem. The compiler can try and guess whether it can be parallelized, and it's never quite perfect. It makes more sense to convey the original problem to the compiler, using higher level constructs. I've used Fortran 90 with a good compiler to do just this.

  18. Re:sig on 'Mind Gaming' Could Enter Market This Year · · Score: 1

    It's basic number systems stuff. In any number system, 10 is equal to the base. So in binary 10 equals two, in the decimal system it equals ten. The world population is about 10 in the base of six and a half billion.

    Of course, not everyone knows about alternative number systems, so my sig doesn't work quite smoothly. The phrase "There are x people in the world" could imply that x is the total world population, whereas here it only refers to the number of people who know about these number systems.

  19. Re:Experience it first hand on The Wrath of the Apple Tribe · · Score: 5, Funny

    The author of the article (yes I actually read it) went as far as comparing the pro/anti Apple crowd to the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. Yes, he seriously did. And not by briefly alluding to it, but over the course of several paragraphs.

    I've heard of some crazy stretches for comparison, but come on, a journalist actually comparing a group of people that have an affinity for a company's products to a deeply-complicated bloody 60+ year old conflict? Talk about going off the deep end.

    It's a bit like the word "feminazi", which draws a completely unfair analogy, as it is deeply insulting to any proud member of the National Socialist party.

  20. In Soviet Russia.. on 'Mind Gaming' Could Enter Market This Year · · Score: 4, Funny

    "mind-control headsets" do exatcly what the name implies.

  21. Re:USB 3.0 desperately needed here... on Array-Based Memory May Put a Terabyte On a Chip · · Score: 1

    Firewire was not "designed for heavy media/disk usage from the beginning", it was not designed for that use at all in the beginning. Disk attachment doesn't need isochronous transfers or peer to peer protocols. [...] The real tragedy is that SSA, a technology vastly superior to either of them, lost out. At least we have SATA now.

    Firewire and USB are designed and used for many applications besides disk drives. Isochronous transfers and p2p networking are needed with DV, for example.

  22. Re:USB 3.0 desperately needed here... on Array-Based Memory May Put a Terabyte On a Chip · · Score: 2, Interesting

    USB 3.0 or *something faster* will be required for devices this large in portable storage capacity.. USB 2.0 is ~480Mbps (theoretical max) and it would take forever to transfer a terabyte over USB 2.0.

    Firewire 400 is already faster than USB 2.0 in practical use. It was designed for heavy media/disk usage from the beginning, unlike USB that was meant to replace the old serial/parallel ports for slow peripherals. For one thing, USB only has a single-pair data cable that carries either incoming or outgoing data at one time, while FW has dedicated pairs for both directions (like twisted-pair Ethernet). I haven't found USB's CPU usage a problem in practice, but nevertheless it feels much slower. For example, my external drive has both USB and Firewire ports, and with USB it takes much more time for Linux to find the drive and its partitions.

    That's just for Firewire 400, and we already have faster versions. I find it really unfortunate that USB is being pushed so much while FW is in decline. The USB 3.0 with its fiberoptic links looks like a particularly desperate move to extend the standard, not the least when you consider the fragility of fiberoptics in the hands of end users.

  23. Re:Yay for statistics on Scientists' Success Or Failure Correlated With Beer · · Score: 2, Funny

    It's not that simple. You can't just compare the Danish møøse with the Canadian moose.

  24. Re:I think on Firefox 3 May Be More Memory Efficient Than Either IE or Opera · · Score: 1

    $ my terminal is umop ap!sdn

  25. Re:Millenials Generation on Young Employees Pose Increasing Risk to Networks · · Score: 1

    I hope the originally intended term was "millennial", referring to a period of thousand years. A "year" is called "annus" in Latin, and inflexed into "-ennium", as in "millennium". If you forget one of those n's, you look like you're talking out of your ass, or perhaps more than one of them.