While the sibling post should explain the off-center issue, I should probably elaborate on the "better, not more keys" idea. I'm used to traditional navigation keys such as Home/End/PgUp/PgDn and the arrow keys. I also use the function keys a lot, and I appreciate the traditional grouping into 4s for quick access in near-dark conditions (such as DJing and theatre sound tech). My current Thinkpad does this pretty well for a laptop, they actually put some thought into grouping the keys nicely in a tight space.
Conversely, in Macbook-style keyboards which are often found in non-Apple computers likewise, there's barely anything besides the main qwerty of letters and numbers. It's obviously not due to space constraints, as most such machines have plenty of empty real estate around the keyboard.
Besides the Macbook style, the other major laptop keyboard style today fills the extra space with a numeric keypad. This doesn't exactly help the issues with the function keys etc., especially when many people don't have any use for the numeric keypad. It just looks like they needed to slap something on the side without thinking actual needs and ergonomics.
The idea behind Macbook keyboards is probably those who do a lot of things with a mouse/touchpad, so the extra navigation keys aren't necessary any more, and that's a fine decision per se. However, if you put the keys back for those of us who like to use them, then please give it some thought, instead of this alphabet soup vomit.
This. Laptop keyboards are already full of compromises, so the extra space should be used for better keys, not just more keys. To me, a good keyboard was one of the key reasons for getting a Thinkpad, but I wouldn't pay for this crap.
they completely missed the boat when it came to smart phones.
Nokia was developing tablets with a cloud ecosystem over 10 years ago, and their first tablet came out in 2005, the precursor to N900 and N9 GNU/Linux phones. I guess they were too early for the world that was waiting for Apple to invent tablets and apps and the current idea of "smart"phones, as opposed to real computers in your pocket. Also, the Linux team faced internal competition from the old mainline of Symbian phones and the newer Windows phones.
It's not a notebook GPU. It is a desktop GPU. Why would you be worrying about power consumption and heat? This is marketed toward PCs.
BECAUSE I DON'T WANT TO HAVE TO SHOUT OVER ALL THIS FAN NOISE!
Well, the noise issue is mostly solved with aftermarket coolers, but that still leaves power consumption and heat. I guess none of this matters for the occasional gamer, but if you do productive work on GPUs 24/7, and (gasp) pay for your electricity, then these things matter.
(I've been building silent, often fanless computers since about 2003, since I simply don't want any extra noise where I live. Besides, I've never understood why it's OK to waste energy willy-nilly just because it's plugged in. Most of my computers have "laptop" parts in "desktop" cases for the best combination of low power consumption and cooling.)
If there were no scarcity then how could there be greed? I mean... imagine a world where you could have as much of everything as any sane person... even a really greedy one... could possibly want?
Greed isn't a question of absolute amounts. It's about having more than others, whether or not you can actually use/consume/enjoy it. It's about status and power -- limiting what others can have so that you get to have something special.
Of course, a sane person will care little about status. If your neighbour has a faster computer, you can still be a better programmer, which is something no amount of greed will ever take away.
This cannot stand. Two people with the same major marrying each other is completely against my just-now-made-up religion. It says that Frank (my just-made-up religions version of god) specifically wrote that "Thou shalt not lie with a fellow computer science major as you would with a psychology major".
But is it OK if they both are stoned, which is probably something a lot of CS majors tend to do anyway?
TLC means three bits per cell, not three voltages:
Samsung has pioneered high-performance MLC technology with three bits per cell for eight total states. This is commonly referred to as Triple Level Cell (TLC) and was first seen in the 840 EVO Series SSDs. Link
Well, I sort of figured this out, and hence wanted to point out that the terminology does not make sense. "Triple Level" does not sound like three bits or eight levels.
Only if you don't know what a warranty is or how it works.
They guarantee that the drive won't magically stop working for no reason. Your data is entirely in your own hands.
Well, my general understanding is that these warranties never cover the data itself, as it would be unrealistic to recover in many cases. But if the drive won't return my data, it means it's not working as intended, so the drive itself should be replaced.
I guess SSD warranties now need a clause about not being unused for too long. In fact, I wouldn't expect a HD to stay fully functional after 10 years of shelf time.
Also, the way I understand the term TLC, it would mean three voltage levels. So it can store log2(3) or about 1.58 bits per cell. Of course, "triple level" could mean it has 3x the old number of levels. Since you need 8 levels to store 3 bits, then I guess the old kind had 8/3 or a bit over 2 levels.
Well, I haven't been diagnosed thusly, but there's something related going on. I find sitting still uncomfortable (though I have no problems on focusing per se), and I've realized the point of standing desks is that you can move around a little all the time. Or actually you have to, in order to stay comfortable. If you're one of these people who need to walk around when making a speech or thinking about a problem, you'll love a standing desk. I think I might actually go back to office work now that I realize it's possible to do that without sitting all day. (I've also been a teacher for a few years, and I loved the aspect of not sitting down while doing something relatively geeky -- I actually found my leg muscles getting stronger.)
After hearing a lot about standing desks from friends (and being generally interested about ergonomics, with my Stokke chair for example), I started hacking together one about 2 years ago. I now simply have a coffee table on top of a desk -- I think the monitor could be a little higher, but for keyboarding the height is perfect, with my forearms pretty much horizontal. It took a couple of months to really get used to, and it helps to have some temporary solutions; I still have another sitting desk for paperwork such as math.
(Speaking of keyboards, I've always preferred playing one standing up. It's much better for getting in the mood in live shows, but it also helps my playing when I can move around to the music. So the other standing keyboard is just a logical continuation.)
As per treadmills and exercise bikes, I already made the point of naturally moving around. Frankly, I've never understood either of them in any setting, but it probably depends on where you live. I walk everywhere within my roughly 2-km radius of daily life, and I much prefer doing it in fresh air anyway.
I don't get your logic, because both EVs and computers use electricity. Are you saying that EVs get their electricity from green sources, and Bitcoins are mined with filthy old fossil-fuel power?
Also, consider monetary systems where banknotes are hauled around in armoured trucks, vs. a computer network that accomplished the same with a fraction of the resources.
In general, people should do more with computers/networks, instead of driving around to offices.
It's actually Professor Tekno A. Hogg, M.Pupp. (Cantab). Now that you know my full name, I'm sure you will take my opinions much more seriously, because free speech is all about who says something, not what is actually being discussed.
Give up 4:3/5:4 monitor? There's no reason if it still works.
IMHO, 4:3 or 5:4 (which I'm using right now) is much better for most of the computing tasks I do -- see my cousin post on text line widths. I'd gladly get a new monitor with such dimensions (and a modern resolution, naturally).
For the inevitable comments on turning a widescreen monitor in a vertical orientation, please go and educate yourselves on subpixel font rendering. Of course, as videos don't use that, an ideal monitor might have their subpixels oriented in the long direction, so it could serve both purposes optimally.
I'd prefer cooler vp8 or even cooler vp9 because they soundly beat theora in rate/distortion.
(Did you mean "theorems"?)
I'm aware of the Theora codec. "Theora" is also a fancy Latin-like plural for "theorem", though probably not technically correct in English (cf. virus/viri).
You just need to stretch out your browsers windows so that it is wide enough to accommodate the headline layout as envisaged by the might/. design team.
Or in other words the idiots at/. designed a layout that looks good on their monitors and never tested it beyond that. Why should they, as it works on their systems!
The/. designers must now be wondering why newspaper text is laid out in narrow columns. After all, a newspaper has a lot of horizontal space, so why don't they just print long lines of text...
Displayport to DVI/HDMI can be done with a passive adapter. Basically, DP can output DMI/HDMI signal once it detects that kind of a monitor. I'm not sure if this applies to newer versions of HDMI, though.
The whole separation between AV and PC worlds seems silly anyway. For example, the first time I connected my AMD GPU to my "computer" monitor via HDMI, the computer was detecting/sending a correct resolution, but the output was shrunk, leaving black bands on all sides and the image ugly and blurred. It turned out that the HDMI output does 15% underscanning by default, presumably to compensate something that TVs do. And presumably because HDMI implies TV which implies I don't care for exact pixels (what's this 4k or 1920x1080 crap anyway), just a huge picture. Fortunately, the default could be easily overridden. I understand this kind of thinking might have been important in the days of analogue TVs, where you needed the occasional adjustments to account for different source materials in a less well-defined analogue display, but in the days of full HD and beyond it's just idiotic.
"Up To" is a weasel word/expression. It doesn't actually mean anything, or at least nothing useful to the consumer.
To a mathematician, knowing that something is "up to" a number is very valuable. Not only does it guarantee that a value is bounded, it also gives an explicit upper bound. In this case, when the rate of bits per second is bounded, we know that the amount of data as a function of time is Lipschitz continuous, which enables all kinds of cool theora to be applied. So while it may not seem much to a mere mortal consumer, mathematicians all over the world are overjoyed.
In measure theory, a positive number divided by zero is defined to be infinity, and there's likewise a negative infinity. OTOH, in complex analysis there's a single point at infinity. I'm sure there are other well-defined notions of infinity, and you can dig deeper into things like compactification. However, none of the definitions of infinity is equal to zero, for the obvious reason that 0 times 0 is still 0. Also, you need rules such as infinity times zero being undefined, so by having a numerical value for infinity (like NaN) would just push the problem further. The unfortunate fact is that the set of real numbers is not closed with respect to division, and you have to deal with it one way or another, rather than hiding the problem.
Slashdot Mirror
While the sibling post should explain the off-center issue, I should probably elaborate on the "better, not more keys" idea. I'm used to traditional navigation keys such as Home/End/PgUp/PgDn and the arrow keys. I also use the function keys a lot, and I appreciate the traditional grouping into 4s for quick access in near-dark conditions (such as DJing and theatre sound tech). My current Thinkpad does this pretty well for a laptop, they actually put some thought into grouping the keys nicely in a tight space.
Conversely, in Macbook-style keyboards which are often found in non-Apple computers likewise, there's barely anything besides the main qwerty of letters and numbers. It's obviously not due to space constraints, as most such machines have plenty of empty real estate around the keyboard.
Besides the Macbook style, the other major laptop keyboard style today fills the extra space with a numeric keypad. This doesn't exactly help the issues with the function keys etc., especially when many people don't have any use for the numeric keypad. It just looks like they needed to slap something on the side without thinking actual needs and ergonomics.
The idea behind Macbook keyboards is probably those who do a lot of things with a mouse/touchpad, so the extra navigation keys aren't necessary any more, and that's a fine decision per se. However, if you put the keys back for those of us who like to use them, then please give it some thought, instead of this alphabet soup vomit.
This. Laptop keyboards are already full of compromises, so the extra space should be used for better keys, not just more keys. To me, a good keyboard was one of the key reasons for getting a Thinkpad, but I wouldn't pay for this crap.
they completely missed the boat when it came to smart phones.
Nokia was developing tablets with a cloud ecosystem over 10 years ago, and their first tablet came out in 2005, the precursor to N900 and N9 GNU/Linux phones. I guess they were too early for the world that was waiting for Apple to invent tablets and apps and the current idea of "smart"phones, as opposed to real computers in your pocket. Also, the Linux team faced internal competition from the old mainline of Symbian phones and the newer Windows phones.
It's not a notebook GPU. It is a desktop GPU. Why would you be worrying about power consumption and heat? This is marketed toward PCs.
BECAUSE I DON'T WANT TO HAVE TO SHOUT OVER ALL THIS FAN NOISE!
Well, the noise issue is mostly solved with aftermarket coolers, but that still leaves power consumption and heat. I guess none of this matters for the occasional gamer, but if you do productive work on GPUs 24/7, and (gasp) pay for your electricity, then these things matter.
(I've been building silent, often fanless computers since about 2003, since I simply don't want any extra noise where I live. Besides, I've never understood why it's OK to waste energy willy-nilly just because it's plugged in. Most of my computers have "laptop" parts in "desktop" cases for the best combination of low power consumption and cooling.)
If there were no scarcity then how could there be greed? I mean... imagine a world where you could have as much of everything as any sane person... even a really greedy one... could possibly want?
Greed isn't a question of absolute amounts. It's about having more than others, whether or not you can actually use/consume/enjoy it. It's about status and power -- limiting what others can have so that you get to have something special.
Of course, a sane person will care little about status. If your neighbour has a faster computer, you can still be a better programmer, which is something no amount of greed will ever take away.
I don't think that will fly.... :-)
I'm pretty sure the aerodynamics will be quite adequate. Never mind the passengers.
This cannot stand. Two people with the same major marrying each other is completely against my just-now-made-up religion. It says that Frank (my just-made-up religions version of god) specifically wrote that "Thou shalt not lie with a fellow computer science major as you would with a psychology major".
But is it OK if they both are stoned, which is probably something a lot of CS majors tend to do anyway?
TLC means three bits per cell, not three voltages:
Samsung has pioneered high-performance MLC technology with three bits per cell for eight total states. This is commonly referred to as Triple Level Cell (TLC) and was first seen in the 840 EVO Series SSDs. Link
Well, I sort of figured this out, and hence wanted to point out that the terminology does not make sense. "Triple Level" does not sound like three bits or eight levels.
Only if you don't know what a warranty is or how it works.
They guarantee that the drive won't magically stop working for no reason. Your data is entirely in your own hands.
Well, my general understanding is that these warranties never cover the data itself, as it would be unrealistic to recover in many cases. But if the drive won't return my data, it means it's not working as intended, so the drive itself should be replaced.
I guess SSD warranties now need a clause about not being unused for too long. In fact, I wouldn't expect a HD to stay fully functional after 10 years of shelf time.
So, if I fill the drive with my current backups and shelf it for 10 years, they guarantee it won't lose the data?
Also, the way I understand the term TLC, it would mean three voltage levels. So it can store log2(3) or about 1.58 bits per cell. Of course, "triple level" could mean it has 3x the old number of levels. Since you need 8 levels to store 3 bits, then I guess the old kind had 8/3 or a bit over 2 levels.
Well, I haven't been diagnosed thusly, but there's something related going on. I find sitting still uncomfortable (though I have no problems on focusing per se), and I've realized the point of standing desks is that you can move around a little all the time. Or actually you have to, in order to stay comfortable. If you're one of these people who need to walk around when making a speech or thinking about a problem, you'll love a standing desk. I think I might actually go back to office work now that I realize it's possible to do that without sitting all day. (I've also been a teacher for a few years, and I loved the aspect of not sitting down while doing something relatively geeky -- I actually found my leg muscles getting stronger.)
After hearing a lot about standing desks from friends (and being generally interested about ergonomics, with my Stokke chair for example), I started hacking together one about 2 years ago. I now simply have a coffee table on top of a desk -- I think the monitor could be a little higher, but for keyboarding the height is perfect, with my forearms pretty much horizontal. It took a couple of months to really get used to, and it helps to have some temporary solutions; I still have another sitting desk for paperwork such as math.
(Speaking of keyboards, I've always preferred playing one standing up. It's much better for getting in the mood in live shows, but it also helps my playing when I can move around to the music. So the other standing keyboard is just a logical continuation.)
As per treadmills and exercise bikes, I already made the point of naturally moving around. Frankly, I've never understood either of them in any setting, but it probably depends on where you live. I walk everywhere within my roughly 2-km radius of daily life, and I much prefer doing it in fresh air anyway.
I don't get your logic, because both EVs and computers use electricity. Are you saying that EVs get their electricity from green sources, and Bitcoins are mined with filthy old fossil-fuel power?
Also, consider monetary systems where banknotes are hauled around in armoured trucks, vs. a computer network that accomplished the same with a fraction of the resources.
In general, people should do more with computers/networks, instead of driving around to offices.
Except Pluto. Attempt no landing there.
They're trying to sell this as the ultimate graphics crunching box...
So does it have the GTX Titan, or at least an 980?
I've had it with these motherfucking eels on this motherfucking hovercraft!
A container is what used to be called a virtual machine running a single application.
Remember when men were men and such containment was the job of an "operating system"?
It's actually Professor Tekno A. Hogg, M.Pupp. (Cantab). Now that you know my full name, I'm sure you will take my opinions much more seriously, because free speech is all about who says something, not what is actually being discussed.
Give up 4:3/5:4 monitor? There's no reason if it still works.
IMHO, 4:3 or 5:4 (which I'm using right now) is much better for most of the computing tasks I do -- see my cousin post on text line widths. I'd gladly get a new monitor with such dimensions (and a modern resolution, naturally).
For the inevitable comments on turning a widescreen monitor in a vertical orientation, please go and educate yourselves on subpixel font rendering. Of course, as videos don't use that, an ideal monitor might have their subpixels oriented in the long direction, so it could serve both purposes optimally.
I'd prefer cooler vp8 or even cooler vp9 because they soundly beat theora in rate/distortion.
(Did you mean "theorems"?)
I'm aware of the Theora codec. "Theora" is also a fancy Latin-like plural for "theorem", though probably not technically correct in English (cf. virus/viri).
You just need to stretch out your browsers windows so that it is wide enough to accommodate the headline layout as envisaged by the might /. design team.
Or in other words the idiots at /. designed a layout that looks good on their monitors and never tested it beyond that. Why should they, as it works on their systems!
The /. designers must now be wondering why newspaper text is laid out in narrow columns. After all, a newspaper has a lot of horizontal space, so why don't they just print long lines of text...
Displayport to DVI/HDMI can be done with a passive adapter. Basically, DP can output DMI/HDMI signal once it detects that kind of a monitor. I'm not sure if this applies to newer versions of HDMI, though.
The whole separation between AV and PC worlds seems silly anyway. For example, the first time I connected my AMD GPU to my "computer" monitor via HDMI, the computer was detecting/sending a correct resolution, but the output was shrunk, leaving black bands on all sides and the image ugly and blurred. It turned out that the HDMI output does 15% underscanning by default, presumably to compensate something that TVs do. And presumably because HDMI implies TV which implies I don't care for exact pixels (what's this 4k or 1920x1080 crap anyway), just a huge picture. Fortunately, the default could be easily overridden. I understand this kind of thinking might have been important in the days of analogue TVs, where you needed the occasional adjustments to account for different source materials in a less well-defined analogue display, but in the days of full HD and beyond it's just idiotic.
"Up To" is a weasel word/expression. It doesn't actually mean anything, or at least nothing useful to the consumer.
To a mathematician, knowing that something is "up to" a number is very valuable. Not only does it guarantee that a value is bounded, it also gives an explicit upper bound. In this case, when the rate of bits per second is bounded, we know that the amount of data as a function of time is Lipschitz continuous, which enables all kinds of cool theora to be applied. So while it may not seem much to a mere mortal consumer, mathematicians all over the world are overjoyed.
please do my job for me. Thank you.
In measure theory, a positive number divided by zero is defined to be infinity, and there's likewise a negative infinity. OTOH, in complex analysis there's a single point at infinity. I'm sure there are other well-defined notions of infinity, and you can dig deeper into things like compactification. However, none of the definitions of infinity is equal to zero, for the obvious reason that 0 times 0 is still 0. Also, you need rules such as infinity times zero being undefined, so by having a numerical value for infinity (like NaN) would just push the problem further. The unfortunate fact is that the set of real numbers is not closed with respect to division, and you have to deal with it one way or another, rather than hiding the problem.