What good is a top notch GPU if it shares memory access with the CPU? I would assume it matters in some cases, but I'm not sure to what extent. As I do a lot of iterated render to texture, I feel much safer with a fairly basic discrete GPU with its own fast RAM, than the latest and greatest integrated one.
You probably mean performance per watt. I was actually thinking of (D) best performance in a laptop, which is why I have Intel laptops and AMD everywhere else. Of course, there are other good reasons to want power efficiency besides mobile uses. (In my case, cooling/heat in laptop form factor is much more of an issue than battery life.)
BTW, am I the only one who cringes at all these unmatched parentheses like "A)", "B)" and "C)"?
It's basically the same reason as vinyl records: you make more money by selling things that wear out over time and cannot be copied exactly. Of course, you need to market it properly as the new hipster fad. I guess the next stage in this retro cycle is DCC or Minidisc, with their warm and fuzzy lossy encodings.
This. If you're going to abandon the natural basis of time where the sun is at its highest at 12, then feel free to use any arbitrary system. For example, use the alphabet instead of numbers. Or maybe, just maybe, keep the time itself as-is and (omg) change your own schedule instead.
Since the DST proponents often talk about getting an extra hour of sunlight for free, why stop there? Let's have something like 24 hours of DST, so we can have a whole extra day for free, and not mess up our sleep cycles.
5-row keyboards and trackballs sound a bit too large to my tastes. My N900 only has three rows and a touchscreen, and it's about half the size of the smallest touchslabs. I wouldn't mind something a little larger though, should a modern slide phone somehow become available.
Your bank savings account is exactly as grammatically incorrect as daylight savings time.
Or grammatically correct... From a certain viewpoint. You save multiple dollars multiple times. Multiple people save multiple minutes.
A "savings account" is the account where you keep your savings. Or, a "saving account" is the account you use for saving money. I guess the different viewpoints are between active usage vs. passive storage. (In my native Finnish, "säästötili" can be interpreted both ways.)
Anyway, this whole topic beg's the question, have the grammer nazi's won?
True -- in fact the sound chip often includes digital I/O but they are not wired to any connectors. I once soldered the requisite wires straight onto the pins of the chip on one motherboard.
The idea is not really that new. CPU time has been worth money long before cryptocurrencies. I recall around the turn of the century, as projects like Seti@Home came up, there were also projects that would pay you for the CPU time. So the idea of stealing that commodity wasn't that far fetched, see Parasitic computing for example. (Incidentally, I was just reading a book on networks/graphs by Barabasi, where this topic is also discussed.)
I also use S/PDIF solely for playing audio via my amplifier/receiver, and it's good enough for me. My surround audio sources are rarely better than plain AC3 or DTS; it hurts a little when I have to re-encode other formats on the fly, but it's still more practical than running 3 separate analog stereo cables.
I think the general lack of inputs is related to copy protection. Back in the days of DAT, the industry was scared of bit-exact copying of CDs, and fully featured inputs were only found on professional equipment. Consumers don't need to do anything more than playback.
I do have a semi-professional USB audio interface with S/PDIF inputs, and I sometimes wonder if the bit-exact transport could be used for networking with some custom software...
I still use S/PDIF in one form or another, and some of my computers only have the optical version. For starters, I don't have a TV that can input audio via HDMI, and if I did, I'd still need a S/PDIF from that to my amplifier. The display is a regular monitor which I might some day recycle into desktop use.
I first came across S/PDIF last decade, as I found out my laptop could output the optical version through the 3.5 mm plug with an adapter. I still think it's a great solution to the limited space issue for laptop connectors. However, they seemed to disappear the moment HDMI came about; who needs separate geeky cables, when you can just buy an all-in-one solution for docile consumers.
That aside why the heck are slashdot people so damn fascinated/obsessed with high-speed internet access? A huge number of people would be perfectly OK with 1meg service (i.e. a slight improvement over a phone modem) if it was dead-nuts reliable and you always got 1 meg, they are screwing around with social media that is mostly a text medium and playing youtube videos, what they heck are they going to do with 50-100 meg or higher?
I agree with the general idea. I used to have a 1 MB/s ADSL for years, as I didn't need anything more. However, at some point my building was connected to a fiber network, and the new provider offered speeds starting from 10 meg, for a lower price. So it was a no brainer, in fact I took the next level of 50 meg as it was only a few euros more per month, and it helps with the occasional bulk downloads. I've since moved to another fiber-connected building with better wiring, so I get Ethernet from the wall with lower prices still. (I kept my 50 meg level, paying about 15 eur/month. The maximum they offer is 1 GB/s, and I see no way in providing that extensively in practice.)
Anecdata aside, my point: a faster connection is often more reliable, and possibly even cheaper than the slow alternative. When you get proper wiring instead of POTS, there's little point in providing the slow rates any more.
To me, being human is all about using your body, and I find it idiotic to try and separate "exercise" from other forms of being. I do catch a ride if it's going to be more than a few miles, and I do certain exercises that are not immediately useful besides maintaining a healthy body. Still, I have a hard time understanding people who drive a car to a gym, and then proceed to run on a treadmill or something. When I was in college, I used to run to the gym and back again.
So it's just like USB 3.0, where the old and new electrical systems are glued side by side for the sake of being universal. In comparison, imagine if USB 1.0 had solved the problem of serial/parallel/keyboard/mouse ports by making this first-sized lump of old connectors.
IIRC, here in Finland there are highly populated areas where the natural background radiation is higher than some of the Fukushima evacuation zones. I don't have any sources at hand, though. I have a background (pun intended) in physics and I used to wear a film badge at one job for a few months, so I generally take any radiation hysteria with a healthy dose of uranium salts.
Slashdot Mirror
What good is a top notch GPU if it shares memory access with the CPU? I would assume it matters in some cases, but I'm not sure to what extent. As I do a lot of iterated render to texture, I feel much safer with a fairly basic discrete GPU with its own fast RAM, than the latest and greatest integrated one.
You probably mean performance per watt. I was actually thinking of (D) best performance in a laptop, which is why I have Intel laptops and AMD everywhere else. Of course, there are other good reasons to want power efficiency besides mobile uses. (In my case, cooling/heat in laptop form factor is much more of an issue than battery life.)
BTW, am I the only one who cringes at all these unmatched parentheses like "A)", "B)" and "C)"?
Oh yeah? Well I used to melt my own beeskneeswax for my phonograph cylinders before it was cool.
It's basically the same reason as vinyl records: you make more money by selling things that wear out over time and cannot be copied exactly. Of course, you need to market it properly as the new hipster fad. I guess the next stage in this retro cycle is DCC or Minidisc, with their warm and fuzzy lossy encodings.
This. If you're going to abandon the natural basis of time where the sun is at its highest at 12, then feel free to use any arbitrary system. For example, use the alphabet instead of numbers. Or maybe, just maybe, keep the time itself as-is and (omg) change your own schedule instead.
Since the DST proponents often talk about getting an extra hour of sunlight for free, why stop there? Let's have something like 24 hours of DST, so we can have a whole extra day for free, and not mess up our sleep cycles.
5-row keyboards and trackballs sound a bit too large to my tastes. My N900 only has three rows and a touchscreen, and it's about half the size of the smallest touchslabs. I wouldn't mind something a little larger though, should a modern slide phone somehow become available.
Your bank savings account is exactly as grammatically incorrect as daylight savings time. Or grammatically correct... From a certain viewpoint. You save multiple dollars multiple times. Multiple people save multiple minutes.
A "savings account" is the account where you keep your savings. Or, a "saving account" is the account you use for saving money. I guess the different viewpoints are between active usage vs. passive storage. (In my native Finnish, "säästötili" can be interpreted both ways.)
Anyway, this whole topic beg's the question, have the grammer nazi's won?
True -- in fact the sound chip often includes digital I/O but they are not wired to any connectors. I once soldered the requisite wires straight onto the pins of the chip on one motherboard.
The idea is not really that new. CPU time has been worth money long before cryptocurrencies. I recall around the turn of the century, as projects like Seti@Home came up, there were also projects that would pay you for the CPU time. So the idea of stealing that commodity wasn't that far fetched, see Parasitic computing for example. (Incidentally, I was just reading a book on networks/graphs by Barabasi, where this topic is also discussed.)
I also use S/PDIF solely for playing audio via my amplifier/receiver, and it's good enough for me. My surround audio sources are rarely better than plain AC3 or DTS; it hurts a little when I have to re-encode other formats on the fly, but it's still more practical than running 3 separate analog stereo cables.
I think the general lack of inputs is related to copy protection. Back in the days of DAT, the industry was scared of bit-exact copying of CDs, and fully featured inputs were only found on professional equipment. Consumers don't need to do anything more than playback.
I do have a semi-professional USB audio interface with S/PDIF inputs, and I sometimes wonder if the bit-exact transport could be used for networking with some custom software...
I still use S/PDIF in one form or another, and some of my computers only have the optical version. For starters, I don't have a TV that can input audio via HDMI, and if I did, I'd still need a S/PDIF from that to my amplifier. The display is a regular monitor which I might some day recycle into desktop use.
I first came across S/PDIF last decade, as I found out my laptop could output the optical version through the 3.5 mm plug with an adapter. I still think it's a great solution to the limited space issue for laptop connectors. However, they seemed to disappear the moment HDMI came about; who needs separate geeky cables, when you can just buy an all-in-one solution for docile consumers.
All we really need is a merger of USB3 and HDMI and we have one connector for ABSOLUTELY everything. Including a decent amount of power.
That would be USB-C, which can do even more. For example Displayport, which is technically more versatile than consumer-oriented HDMI.
I guess software volume control is enough for the same kids who think lossy-compressed music over white iBuds is the beez kneez.
Chemists, unionize!
That aside why the heck are slashdot people so damn fascinated/obsessed with high-speed internet access? A huge number of people would be perfectly OK with 1meg service (i.e. a slight improvement over a phone modem) if it was dead-nuts reliable and you always got 1 meg, they are screwing around with social media that is mostly a text medium and playing youtube videos, what they heck are they going to do with 50-100 meg or higher?
I agree with the general idea. I used to have a 1 MB/s ADSL for years, as I didn't need anything more. However, at some point my building was connected to a fiber network, and the new provider offered speeds starting from 10 meg, for a lower price. So it was a no brainer, in fact I took the next level of 50 meg as it was only a few euros more per month, and it helps with the occasional bulk downloads. I've since moved to another fiber-connected building with better wiring, so I get Ethernet from the wall with lower prices still. (I kept my 50 meg level, paying about 15 eur/month. The maximum they offer is 1 GB/s, and I see no way in providing that extensively in practice.)
Anecdata aside, my point: a faster connection is often more reliable, and possibly even cheaper than the slow alternative. When you get proper wiring instead of POTS, there's little point in providing the slow rates any more.
Mmmm... KASLR...
What, no tulips?
I am a middle aged man that loves cupcakes of all colors, especially the pink ones.
Not that there's anything wrong with that.
To me, being human is all about using your body, and I find it idiotic to try and separate "exercise" from other forms of being. I do catch a ride if it's going to be more than a few miles, and I do certain exercises that are not immediately useful besides maintaining a healthy body. Still, I have a hard time understanding people who drive a car to a gym, and then proceed to run on a treadmill or something. When I was in college, I used to run to the gym and back again.
So it's just like USB 3.0, where the old and new electrical systems are glued side by side for the sake of being universal. In comparison, imagine if USB 1.0 had solved the problem of serial/parallel/keyboard/mouse ports by making this first-sized lump of old connectors.
OTOH, trying to compete with USB would've made the new standard the next FireWire
At a glance, USB-C looks a lot like Firewire:
Well, maybe not that much, but it does remind you how much more advanced FW was compared to USB back in the day.
Well, my government can grab the bottom half of your government and be proud of it, so nyah nyah nyah!
IIRC, here in Finland there are highly populated areas where the natural background radiation is higher than some of the Fukushima evacuation zones. I don't have any sources at hand, though. I have a background (pun intended) in physics and I used to wear a film badge at one job for a few months, so I generally take any radiation hysteria with a healthy dose of uranium salts.
http://iki.fi/teknohog/music/c...
Would that be regular soot or "clean coal" soot?