HOWEVER, do note that some VIA processors will advertise themselves as "686-compliant", when in fact their instruction set is missing 1 vital MMX instruction (SSE, I think). So do make sure your binaries are built for the 586. You'll thank me in the morning.
MMX is a set of integer vector operations, SSE is the same for floating point. Neither of these implies 686; Pentium Pro was the first processor with i686 core, and it has neither of these instruction sets.
To complicate matters further, GCC's idea of i686 seems a little different than the official spec (whatever that is). AFAIK, AMD's K6 processors are i686, but programs compiled with gcc for i686 won't run on it. I think it's about the CMOV instruction; please correct me if I'm wrong.
Boxen is not the plural of box and Unices is not the plural of Unix. But this is part of hacker culture. They are jokes.
Unfortunately many non-hackers take these seriously. For example, using 'bandwidth' to denote data rate was originally a hacker joke. It pisses me off that this usage has leaked into the mainstream as a supposedly proper synonym, along with derivations like 'broadband'.
I'm also on a kind of crusade to educate people on this one. For instance CD Audio has a bandwidth of 44.1 kHz per channel, and a data rate of about 1.4 Mbit/s. These are different numbers in different units and they mean different things. When you multiply the former by 16 bits/sample times 2 channels, you get the latter. It's a conversion you could compare to volume vs. mass, where the factor of density varies with the material. Please please think about this. This is most certainly not a case of language evolving.
Boxen is not the plural of box and Unices is not the plural of Unix. But this is part of hacker culture. They are jokes.
The problem is that non-hackers tend to take these seriously. For example, the use of 'bandwidth' to denote data rate was originally a hacker joke, and the two concepts are fundamentally quite different. It pisses me off that the joke has propagated into mainstream as a supposedly proper synonym, along with derivations like 'broadband'.
In fact it's one of my personal crusades to make this difference known. For example CD Audio has a bandwidth of 44.1 kHz per channel, and a data rate of about 1.4 Mbit/s. These are different numbers in different units. The latter comes from multiplying the former by 16 bits per sample times 2 channels. Please please think about it.
Quietness should be a design goal/philosophy from the beginning, not an afterthought; much like security. I think it's dumb to start with power-hungry CPUs and noisy fans, and then bolt on a 'solution' for quietness.
One of the many things I don't understand about current computer hardware is the segregation between quiet/small/laptop and big/noisy/desktop/server components. If you can design a low-noise and low-power component, why limit its use to laptops and other portable/embedded devices?
I understand there are real drawbacks to laptop components, such as underperforming hard drives. But cost should not be an issue; these components are expensive only because of the limited demand. Surely it would be cheaper to use the same component everywhere, instead of producing two kinds of everything.
I agree with this one. I have a laptop also, it has a very loud fan which is fortunately off when doing normal work. However, I usually turn a distributed.project on when I leave the house.
There's also GTK+ for DirectFB, which is aimed at the embedded crowd.
Re:Isn't 64M still too big?
on
Mozilla's Mini-Me
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· Score: 2, Interesting
We were using browsers on computers that only had 16M on memory.
I started my online life with a 486 laptop with 8 MB running Windows 3.1. Browsing with IE, Netscape and Opera (the fastest). Even ran a web server, Wsplug, to server my first homepages.
This 400 MHz K6 laptop with 160 MB is blazingly fast with Firefox (or whatever it's called this week), almost overkill:)
It's an obvious problem, but a first contact has to be understood by both parties, and that includes us. Radio transmissions have their limitations, but it's really the best long-range technology we have right now.
do you wanna know where the matrix authors stole the idea of these human-driven fighting robots?
Battletech! And you don't call them robots for they are 'mechs.
However, I agree with your points about Lem, whose writing is IMHO much more fun and much more SF than that of many 'famous' SF authors, including Adams.
NEC maybe ships a bunch of dual layer capible drives as single layer drivers to keep the market price up?
All DVD readers can focus the laser onto two layers anyway. It should be a matter of firmware only to allow this for burning as well as reading. (Though it's possible that second layer burning is slower because of power limitations.)
(I think about 20 degrees is the max angle that you are supposed to go with fibre)
The parameter you're looking for is radius of curvature. IIRC, fibre needs a minimum of 15 cm / 6 inch or thereabouts. For example, it's safe to wrap it around a tube 30 cm thick, but not much thinner. This probably varies with the kind of fibre you use, be sure to check it.
How do you know that five or ten years down the road these contemporary, super-duper codecs won'T be held in the same disregard? Listening is a learning process too.
Moreover, we should remember that the raw 16-bit 44.1 kHz audio is also a lossy encoding of the original analogue sound.
What does your school system tell you to say about evolution? How does that affect what you teach the kids in your class?
I only teach math/physics/chemisty/CS, but anyway.... teaching evolution is a non-issue in Finland, and I believe it's the same way in the rest of Europe. It's hard for me to understand the creationist viewpoint that has come up in the States; we try to keep religion away from science. On the other hand we do keep in mind that simple Darwinian evolution may not be the whole truth.
...it was actually pseudo-science that got me interested in the real thing. Books from the elementary school library about UFOs, Bigfoot, and ghosts scared the hell out of my teachers, I'm sure, but they got me interested in peeking into life's mysteries on my own.
The same thing happened to me, more or less. One line of thought that got me into real science was this: there must be something real behind UFO sightings, ghost stories etc. Our knowledge of the world is not complete.
Currently working as a highschool science teacher, I try to convey the idea of having an open mind towards things, not judging things too early. It's dangerous to assume that science is complete and anything we don't currently understand is bogus. On the other hand it's dangerous to believe everything you're told.
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MMX is a set of integer vector operations, SSE is the same for floating point. Neither of these implies 686; Pentium Pro was the first processor with i686 core, and it has neither of these instruction sets.
To complicate matters further, GCC's idea of i686 seems a little different than the official spec (whatever that is). AFAIK, AMD's K6 processors are i686, but programs compiled with gcc for i686 won't run on it. I think it's about the CMOV instruction; please correct me if I'm wrong.
Unfortunately many non-hackers take these seriously. For example, using 'bandwidth' to denote data rate was originally a hacker joke. It pisses me off that this usage has leaked into the mainstream as a supposedly proper synonym, along with derivations like 'broadband'.
I'm also on a kind of crusade to educate people on this one. For instance CD Audio has a bandwidth of 44.1 kHz per channel, and a data rate of about 1.4 Mbit/s. These are different numbers in different units and they mean different things. When you multiply the former by 16 bits/sample times 2 channels, you get the latter. It's a conversion you could compare to volume vs. mass, where the factor of density varies with the material. Please please think about this. This is most certainly not a case of language evolving.
The problem is that non-hackers tend to take these seriously. For example, the use of 'bandwidth' to denote data rate was originally a hacker joke, and the two concepts are fundamentally quite different. It pisses me off that the joke has propagated into mainstream as a supposedly proper synonym, along with derivations like 'broadband'.
In fact it's one of my personal crusades to make this difference known. For example CD Audio has a bandwidth of 44.1 kHz per channel, and a data rate of about 1.4 Mbit/s. These are different numbers in different units. The latter comes from multiplying the former by 16 bits per sample times 2 channels. Please please think about it.
One of the many things I don't understand about current computer hardware is the segregation between quiet/small/laptop and big/noisy/desktop/server components. If you can design a low-noise and low-power component, why limit its use to laptops and other portable/embedded devices?
I understand there are real drawbacks to laptop components, such as underperforming hard drives. But cost should not be an issue; these components are expensive only because of the limited demand. Surely it would be cheaper to use the same component everywhere, instead of producing two kinds of everything.
No, but you could probably lose weight if you lived in Deutsche Demokratische Republik.
No, but I PINE for the good old days of text-only email.
I agree with this one. I have a laptop also, it has a very loud fan which is fortunately off when doing normal work. However, I usually turn a distributed.project on when I leave the house.
Great! Now I know what the D and H stand for :)
There's also GTK+ for DirectFB, which is aimed at the embedded crowd.
I started my online life with a 486 laptop with 8 MB running Windows 3.1. Browsing with IE, Netscape and Opera (the fastest). Even ran a web server, Wsplug, to server my first homepages.
This 400 MHz K6 laptop with 160 MB is blazingly fast with Firefox (or whatever it's called this week), almost overkill :)
I hate to see CPU time being wasted. If you're worried about power consumption you might just as well turn the machine off entirely.
It's an obvious problem, but a first contact has to be understood by both parties, and that includes us. Radio transmissions have their limitations, but it's really the best long-range technology we have right now.
Battletech! And you don't call them robots for they are 'mechs.
However, I agree with your points about Lem, whose writing is IMHO much more fun and much more SF than that of many 'famous' SF authors, including Adams.
The same applies to all scientific projects, yet we somehow manage with proper use of approximations.
All DVD readers can focus the laser onto two layers anyway. It should be a matter of firmware only to allow this for burning as well as reading. (Though it's possible that second layer burning is slower because of power limitations.)
The parameter you're looking for is radius of curvature. IIRC, fibre needs a minimum of 15 cm / 6 inch or thereabouts. For example, it's safe to wrap it around a tube 30 cm thick, but not much thinner. This probably varies with the kind of fibre you use, be sure to check it.
Moreover, we should remember that the raw 16-bit 44.1 kHz audio is also a lossy encoding of the original analogue sound.
Instead, they could use an OS born in Finland, the archenemy of Sweden ;)
If it's not a bus but a port, I don't see how it's radically better than AGP.
This laptop does WiFi/GPRS/CDMA/Bluetooth and then some, and runs a Transmeta processor.
Does it have hardware bzip2?
I only teach math/physics/chemisty/CS, but anyway.... teaching evolution is a non-issue in Finland, and I believe it's the same way in the rest of Europe. It's hard for me to understand the creationist viewpoint that has come up in the States; we try to keep religion away from science. On the other hand we do keep in mind that simple Darwinian evolution may not be the whole truth.
The same thing happened to me, more or less. One line of thought that got me into real science was this: there must be something real behind UFO sightings, ghost stories etc. Our knowledge of the world is not complete.
Currently working as a highschool science teacher, I try to convey the idea of having an open mind towards things, not judging things too early. It's dangerous to assume that science is complete and anything we don't currently understand is bogus. On the other hand it's dangerous to believe everything you're told.
Windows 95 and 98 are actually version 4.something, which you can see with the 'ver' command in a DOS shell. Bloated and disappointing, you said?
I'm sure I've come across the surname 'Hacker' as well. Wonder if it means the same thing today though...