You clearly didn't read much. They are using a graphical benchmark because they need something to show to the spectators. Showing a console benchmark application or Sunspider wouldn't draw anyone's attention at Linaro Connect. Also, none of the code they did is related to graphics at all, they've e.g. optimized memset and strcpy which very very clearly have nothing to do with graphics or GPU whatsoever. Read the following excerpt from Bero's comment below:
Obviously saying we’ve made it “twice as fast” is a bit of an oversimplification.
This particular benchmark (the 3D benchmark included in 0xbench) runs twice as fast on this particular hardware. Other benchmarks (e.g. Sunspider) are “merely” 30% faster, some others are only slightly faster (e.g. GLMark2 – as it’s mostly GPU bound), and it would be possible to craft a benchmark showing that our build is 10 times faster (write a benchmark that uses strcpy, memset and friends heavily, which I’ve actually done, not to show off but to test if our changes are as beneficial as we’re hoping).
Obviously saying we’ve made it “twice as fast” is a bit of an oversimplification.
This particular benchmark (the 3D benchmark included in 0xbench) runs twice as fast on this particular hardware. Other benchmarks (e.g. Sunspider) are “merely” 30% faster, some others are only slightly faster (e.g. GLMark2 – as it’s mostly GPU bound), and it would be possible to craft a benchmark showing that our build is 10 times faster (write a benchmark that uses strcpy, memset and friends heavily, which I’ve actually done, not to show off but to test if our changes are as beneficial as we’re hoping).
As they say, the benchmark used is CPU-bound and as such what you're referring to is irrelevant. You can go ahead and test the optimizations made if you feel like, it is all there. A 3D benchmark was only chosen so they have something more interesting for the spectators to look at than a console application or Sunspider.
Not me. I'd rather have current resolution and anti-aliasing than a slightly higher resolution.
Hm. At 1080p resolution I do not find any need for anti-aliasing whatsoever, plus thanks to higher display resolution UI-elements, text and textures themselves are much sharper than on a low-res display with anti-aliasing.
I worked on a random desktop rollout contract that was paying stupid amounts of money, and one evening I observed one of my fellow contractors entering his password.
clickity clickity clickity clickity...
I said "wow... hardcore password", he replied "yeah, I worked on a contract before this where we had to manually put in the MS Office CD Key across a few hundred desktops, so I've memorised it. It's now my go-to password"
Haha:D I thought I was the only one! I use Windows - installation CD-Keys, though, not Office ones. I remember several versions of Win95 keys and two Win98 keys, and the latter ones makes for excellent passwords:)
This is more-or-less the same thing I've been saying all along: Steam DRM itself is really benign, but in exchange for the DRM you simply get so many advantages that it is worth it. My favorite features are that all my games are accessible from anywhere as long as I have Internet so I don't have to bother with physical discs, or keeping the damn CD-keys safe, and that all my games are kept up-to-date without me having to do anything about it. My collection of games is something a bit over 100 games at the moment and if Valve doesn't screw thing up my collection will keep on growing.
Here in Finland HDD prices have always been high for some reason, but before the floods I could get a 1TB drive for 50 euro (~$63) whereas now a similar one costs 82 euro (~$102). That is quite a high difference in price, 164% the price it was back then.
Earth orbits the Sun.. pretty fast to cover 360 degrees in 365 days. Sun dies.. it loses mass (lots of it) because it burns it and radiates it away. Less mass means less gravity. Why doesn't anybody take into consideration the centripetal force acting on Earth (and everything else that orbits around the Sun)?
My guess is that as the Sun's gravity weakens the Earth will be allowed to further away from the Sun.
Earth's orbit will become more and more elliptical over time and will eventually either slingshot Earth out of the orbit and directly into the Sun.
Earth however will be sort of slingshot eventually and it will either be catched by Jupiter (direct hit or very very very lucky but way too long shot catched in orbit as Jupiter's moon)
I'm not a rocket-scientist or anything, but as far as I can see if Earth was getting slingshot out of orbit Jupiter would in no way have enough mass to catch it.
Raspberry Pi is first and foremost meant for hardware hacking which is quite obvious from the generous amounts of GPIO, I2C et. al. connectors on it. This thing lacks all that and is apparently aimed more at half-assed HTPC-tasks.
Even on the hardware-side this one is quite lacking. Yes, 4 USB2.0 - ports and a Gigabit ethernet are good features to have, but then they're paired with a measly 720p video output? What do you need all that bandwidth for if you can't even do full 1080p? In theory it could be used for data-processing or such, but then again, the thing would need more RAM and faster CPU for that. Well, it will make for a quite useable small box for running emulators and watching low-quality media, like e.g. YouTube videos.
I personally quite enjoy Google+. I write there about once or twice a week on average and I write about things that I feel are worth saying and I always write in English so as for my thoughts to be internationally readable. The site is clean and useable, though I still think the layout needs some more work. Facebook on the other hand.... well, I write there only like once or twice every two-three months and even then only as a response to something; Facebook is cluttered, annoying, and I have relegated it for only the irrelevant, meaningless flutter that my so-called 'friends' like to share. I tend to use Google+ more like an interactive blog than a chatting- or trend-watching-platform, so perhaps that explains why I like it so much better. Nevertheless, the fact remains that Google+ suits me better than anything else I've found so far.
That said, I also have to agree with the sentiment that Google+ feels like a rather empty place. I still haven't found anything worth following, for example, and many of the entities I might actually care to follow aren't there. I can understand why, though: Facebook attracts people with short attention-spans, people who like to follow trends and what others do and say, and people who can be rather easily swayed, whereas Google+ seems to attract people with more pronounced individual traits. In other words, Facebook attracts exactly the kind of people companies love. This should obviously not be seen as a failure on Google+'s part -- something so many seem to imply -- but instead as a success in attracting entirely different kind of people; how can it be a failure when you are successfully attracting people who aren't attracted to other offerings?
The OP commented that he was fine simply removing the magnets from hard drives, leaving them unusable (which isn't exactly true, because you can still read the information if it's on the platter and the platter hasn't been destroyed)
That was kind of my point: removing magnets from the drive does not make the data there unreadable, it only makes it a tad bit more difficult. Ie. if he is removing magnets as a means of trying to make the data inaccessible he should rather do a Secure Erase first. Of course, if he doesn't care about that and just wants the magnets to toy with then I got no complaints:)
I pass them through DBAN before taking them to the computer recyclers.
With DBAN one must make certain to use the ATA-6 wipe method to also clear out remapped sectors, something it doesn't do by default. And DBAN apparently does not support wiping out HPA at all. How important it is to wipe out remapped sectors and HPA is certainly an entirely different matter and for most regular users is irrelevant because of how difficult it is to access those, but with today's drives having multiple gigabytes -- even tens of gigabytes -- of sectors reserved for remapping it is entirely possible for passwords and other important bits to end up there and thus it would likely make sense to be properly prepared and clear those out, too.
The ATA Secure Erase - feature is a process where the hard-drive itself re-initializes all its content, including the spare sectors - area, thereby erasing more than you can regularly access via an operating system and as the whole process is handled by the drive itself it does not consume any other resources from the host except power. More importantly, ATA Secure Erase is supported by SSDs, too.
Not even nearly. One of the more prominent examples of an entity using High Profile is Apple; the streams to AppleTV are High Profile - encoded and it has provided them with clearly superior picture-quality while also consuming less bandwidth compared to Main Profile. Media that is to be consumed on mobile devices is still mostly Main Profile, yes, but even there the movement is towards High Profile.
Not that I am doubting you, but could you provide the encoding settings you used for both VP8 and H.264? The tests I have conducted myself were more-or-less of the same quality so I am curious as to whether or not I did something wrong myself.
Ogg Theora and WebM are no better in quality than MPEG3
You're comparing video codecs to an audio codec? Besides, VP8 is actually more-or-less equal to H.264 in quality and compression, you can easily verify that yourself with libvpx and x264. If you're comparing Theora to VP8 and claiming they're of the same quality then you're only displaying your ignorance on the subject and/or that you're trying to troll.
Just because Steam will now run officially on linux doesn't mean all the titles existing for windows will magically be available for linux.
Of course not, but there's actually several hundreds of games there already that have also Linux-binaries and with Steam coming for Linux the publishers only need to push those Linux-binaries there, too, so people will already at launch have atleast something play. Most more-popular Indie-games atleast seem to sport Linux-support, I've got a handful of such games in my library and I know for a fact that they do run well under Linux. The good thing about this all is that Steam for Linux won't be totally empty even on launch, and with a true-and-tried games delivery platform there's much more incentive for people to release Linux-binaries, too. How much it actually affects publishers and developers in the end remains to be seen, but nevertheless, the chances are now bigger than ever before.
Not half-life, not Portal, not TF2, not Counter Strike
You might like to open the link pointing to the article. You don't even need to read anything, but you can just look at the pretty pictures and then go facepalm in your corner!
Slashdot Mirror
Locking an account after 20 wrong guesses enables a simple denial-of-service attack by your enemies.
Adding an ever-increasing delay for the attacker's IP-address would more-or-less solve both issues.
It makes me wonder why they're allowed to exist in the first place. Trolls, not humans.
To be honest, I'd just as well apply the first of the quoted sentences to cover most of humanity, too.
You might wish to practice on your reading-comprehension skills: none of the things Linaro devs did are Pandaboard-specific.
Not sure what the board they're demonstrating this on is actually intended for either.
http://pandaboard.org/
You clearly didn't read much. They are using a graphical benchmark because they need something to show to the spectators. Showing a console benchmark application or Sunspider wouldn't draw anyone's attention at Linaro Connect. Also, none of the code they did is related to graphics at all, they've e.g. optimized memset and strcpy which very very clearly have nothing to do with graphics or GPU whatsoever. Read the following excerpt from Bero's comment below:
Obviously saying we’ve made it “twice as fast” is a bit of an oversimplification.
This particular benchmark (the 3D benchmark included in 0xbench) runs twice as fast on this particular hardware. Other benchmarks (e.g. Sunspider) are “merely” 30% faster, some others are only slightly faster (e.g. GLMark2 – as it’s mostly GPU bound), and it would be possible to craft a benchmark showing that our build is 10 times faster (write a benchmark that uses strcpy, memset and friends heavily, which I’ve actually done, not to show off but to test if our changes are as beneficial as we’re hoping).
Taken from Bero's comment:
Obviously saying we’ve made it “twice as fast” is a bit of an oversimplification.
This particular benchmark (the 3D benchmark included in 0xbench) runs twice as fast on this particular hardware. Other benchmarks (e.g. Sunspider) are “merely” 30% faster, some others are only slightly faster (e.g. GLMark2 – as it’s mostly GPU bound), and it would be possible to craft a benchmark showing that our build is 10 times faster (write a benchmark that uses strcpy, memset and friends heavily, which I’ve actually done, not to show off but to test if our changes are as beneficial as we’re hoping).
As they say, the benchmark used is CPU-bound and as such what you're referring to is irrelevant. You can go ahead and test the optimizations made if you feel like, it is all there. A 3D benchmark was only chosen so they have something more interesting for the spectators to look at than a console application or Sunspider.
Read more: http://www.cnx-software.com/2012/06/03/linaro-android-puts-stock-android-to-shame-on-ti-pandaboard-omap4430/#ixzz1xPbZP4t0
Not me. I'd rather have current resolution and anti-aliasing than a slightly higher resolution.
Hm. At 1080p resolution I do not find any need for anti-aliasing whatsoever, plus thanks to higher display resolution UI-elements, text and textures themselves are much sharper than on a low-res display with anti-aliasing.
I worked on a random desktop rollout contract that was paying stupid amounts of money, and one evening I observed one of my fellow contractors entering his password.
clickity clickity clickity clickity...
I said "wow... hardcore password", he replied "yeah, I worked on a contract before this where we had to manually put in the MS Office CD Key across a few hundred desktops, so I've memorised it. It's now my go-to password"
Haha :D I thought I was the only one! I use Windows - installation CD-Keys, though, not Office ones. I remember several versions of Win95 keys and two Win98 keys, and the latter ones makes for excellent passwords :)
This is more-or-less the same thing I've been saying all along: Steam DRM itself is really benign, but in exchange for the DRM you simply get so many advantages that it is worth it. My favorite features are that all my games are accessible from anywhere as long as I have Internet so I don't have to bother with physical discs, or keeping the damn CD-keys safe, and that all my games are kept up-to-date without me having to do anything about it. My collection of games is something a bit over 100 games at the moment and if Valve doesn't screw thing up my collection will keep on growing.
< ie. plain-old HTML special entities :)
Here in Finland HDD prices have always been high for some reason, but before the floods I could get a 1TB drive for 50 euro (~$63) whereas now a similar one costs 82 euro (~$102). That is quite a high difference in price, 164% the price it was back then.
Earth orbits the Sun .. pretty fast to cover 360 degrees in 365 days. Sun dies .. it loses mass (lots of it) because it burns it and radiates it away. Less mass means less gravity. Why doesn't anybody take into consideration the centripetal force acting on Earth (and everything else that orbits around the Sun)?
My guess is that as the Sun's gravity weakens the Earth will be allowed to further away from the Sun.
Earth's orbit will become more and more elliptical over time and will eventually either slingshot Earth out of the orbit and directly into the Sun.
Earth however will be sort of slingshot eventually and it will either be catched by Jupiter (direct hit or very very very lucky but way too long shot catched in orbit as Jupiter's moon)
I'm not a rocket-scientist or anything, but as far as I can see if Earth was getting slingshot out of orbit Jupiter would in no way have enough mass to catch it.
"I have been advised by my lawyer not to answer any questions about the whereabouts of my wife."
"..."
"..."
"You, uh, you have a good night sir."
Ahaha :D
It actually says in the TFA that there is a gigabit ethernet.
Raspberry Pi is first and foremost meant for hardware hacking which is quite obvious from the generous amounts of GPIO, I2C et. al. connectors on it. This thing lacks all that and is apparently aimed more at half-assed HTPC-tasks.
Even on the hardware-side this one is quite lacking. Yes, 4 USB2.0 - ports and a Gigabit ethernet are good features to have, but then they're paired with a measly 720p video output? What do you need all that bandwidth for if you can't even do full 1080p? In theory it could be used for data-processing or such, but then again, the thing would need more RAM and faster CPU for that. Well, it will make for a quite useable small box for running emulators and watching low-quality media, like e.g. YouTube videos.
Not over my dead body!
I personally quite enjoy Google+. I write there about once or twice a week on average and I write about things that I feel are worth saying and I always write in English so as for my thoughts to be internationally readable. The site is clean and useable, though I still think the layout needs some more work. Facebook on the other hand.... well, I write there only like once or twice every two-three months and even then only as a response to something; Facebook is cluttered, annoying, and I have relegated it for only the irrelevant, meaningless flutter that my so-called 'friends' like to share. I tend to use Google+ more like an interactive blog than a chatting- or trend-watching-platform, so perhaps that explains why I like it so much better. Nevertheless, the fact remains that Google+ suits me better than anything else I've found so far.
That said, I also have to agree with the sentiment that Google+ feels like a rather empty place. I still haven't found anything worth following, for example, and many of the entities I might actually care to follow aren't there. I can understand why, though: Facebook attracts people with short attention-spans, people who like to follow trends and what others do and say, and people who can be rather easily swayed, whereas Google+ seems to attract people with more pronounced individual traits. In other words, Facebook attracts exactly the kind of people companies love. This should obviously not be seen as a failure on Google+'s part -- something so many seem to imply -- but instead as a success in attracting entirely different kind of people; how can it be a failure when you are successfully attracting people who aren't attracted to other offerings?
The OP commented that he was fine simply removing the magnets from hard drives, leaving them unusable (which isn't exactly true, because you can still read the information if it's on the platter and the platter hasn't been destroyed)
That was kind of my point: removing magnets from the drive does not make the data there unreadable, it only makes it a tad bit more difficult. Ie. if he is removing magnets as a means of trying to make the data inaccessible he should rather do a Secure Erase first. Of course, if he doesn't care about that and just wants the magnets to toy with then I got no complaints :)
I pass them through DBAN before taking them to the computer recyclers.
With DBAN one must make certain to use the ATA-6 wipe method to also clear out remapped sectors, something it doesn't do by default. And DBAN apparently does not support wiping out HPA at all. How important it is to wipe out remapped sectors and HPA is certainly an entirely different matter and for most regular users is irrelevant because of how difficult it is to access those, but with today's drives having multiple gigabytes -- even tens of gigabytes -- of sectors reserved for remapping it is entirely possible for passwords and other important bits to end up there and thus it would likely make sense to be properly prepared and clear those out, too.
Your tinfoil hat might be a tad bit too tight there, mate.
I suggest both you and the OP take a good look at the ATA-specification's part called 'Secure Erase': https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Write_amplification#Secure_erase
The ATA Secure Erase - feature is a process where the hard-drive itself re-initializes all its content, including the spare sectors - area, thereby erasing more than you can regularly access via an operating system and as the whole process is handled by the drive itself it does not consume any other resources from the host except power. More importantly, ATA Secure Erase is supported by SSDs, too.
Not even nearly. One of the more prominent examples of an entity using High Profile is Apple; the streams to AppleTV are High Profile - encoded and it has provided them with clearly superior picture-quality while also consuming less bandwidth compared to Main Profile. Media that is to be consumed on mobile devices is still mostly Main Profile, yes, but even there the movement is towards High Profile.
Not that I am doubting you, but could you provide the encoding settings you used for both VP8 and H.264? The tests I have conducted myself were more-or-less of the same quality so I am curious as to whether or not I did something wrong myself.
Ogg Theora and WebM are no better in quality than MPEG3
You're comparing video codecs to an audio codec? Besides, VP8 is actually more-or-less equal to H.264 in quality and compression, you can easily verify that yourself with libvpx and x264. If you're comparing Theora to VP8 and claiming they're of the same quality then you're only displaying your ignorance on the subject and/or that you're trying to troll.
Just because Steam will now run officially on linux doesn't mean all the titles existing for windows will magically be available for linux.
Of course not, but there's actually several hundreds of games there already that have also Linux-binaries and with Steam coming for Linux the publishers only need to push those Linux-binaries there, too, so people will already at launch have atleast something play. Most more-popular Indie-games atleast seem to sport Linux-support, I've got a handful of such games in my library and I know for a fact that they do run well under Linux. The good thing about this all is that Steam for Linux won't be totally empty even on launch, and with a true-and-tried games delivery platform there's much more incentive for people to release Linux-binaries, too. How much it actually affects publishers and developers in the end remains to be seen, but nevertheless, the chances are now bigger than ever before.
Not half-life, not Portal, not TF2, not Counter Strike
You might like to open the link pointing to the article. You don't even need to read anything, but you can just look at the pretty pictures and then go facepalm in your corner!