I know a guy who could beat that. He moved out here from Virginia, and moved in with his brother. For a solid 18 months, he didn't date, didn't get a job, didn't go to school: He spent all day, every day playing SOCOM and a couple of other games online. All day, all night. That's all he'd do.
The saddest part of this isn't that he has no job, no education, and no girlfriend: It's that he's wasting what could otherwise be the most productive time of his life in gaining those things. When he's 35 and decides he needs a college degree, it's going to be a lot tougher than had he been doing it now.
(on the note of the 10,000 Iraqi casualties, note that the UN figures (not JWB's figures) on those found in mass graves, murdered by Saddam's regime, are in the tens of thousands. Human Rights Watch estimates that over 290,000 people were murdered by Saddam's regime. It could well be argued that 10,000 innocent deaths might be favorable to another quarter-million innocent deaths.
I have met a number of Iraqis, every one of which has told me of immediate family members murdered by Saddam's regime.)
The hysteria generated by ~2000 deaths in the US on Sept 11 compared with the indifference shown over 3 million tutsis deaths, or ferver for a war with 10,000 iraqi civilian casualties, speaks better than any words could about how the western world values human life in other cultures.
That is certainly true. Although you've heard a lot about the terrorist attacks from Chechen rebels since 9/11, they've been going on for far longer - bombing apartment complexes and killing hundreds and even thousands at a time - yet they rarely, if ever, made the U.S. news before terrorism became front-page.
If you think that 3 million deaths over 60 years makes the US government the worst in history, you should go back to the history books.
In African history, there were plenty of times when 3 million over 60 years would pale in comparison. Then, look into the colonial period of England, France, Spain, Portugal, and Belgium. Between the numbers of natives murdered, worked to death, killed by disease, and the slaves brought in to replace them, 3 million over 60 years wouldn't look so bad at all. In fact, one particularly dark period of Belgian rule in the Congo brought about 10 million deaths over 40 years.
Germany, of course, slaughtered far more than 3 million (perhaps as high as 11 million) during WW2. The Russian gulag system would rival the 3 million mark, and that was perpetrated against it's own citizens.
I'm not in any way taking any side on any part - American or otherwise. I'm just saying that your statement of the US government being the worst in the history of the world would take an awfully skewed, narrow viewpoint to accept.
Before the DNC list, I'd ask them not to call even using the magic phrase...and they still called.
My magic phrase has always been "I'm sorry, I don't do business with companies that call me on the telephone."
It works like magic. It's not rude, so they don't put your number back on the list to spite you. And it tells them immediately that they're not going to make ANY money off of you, so their incentive to keep calling is completely removed. It's been terrific.
I plugged each computer into a watt-meter, which was plugged into the wall outlet.
Steve
Re:Intel's past arrogance is killing them!
on
AMD 90nm Evaluated
·
· Score: 1
Actually, Intel was even more arrogant than that. It didn't just ignore what the market asked for, it tried to tell the market what it should want.
steve
Re:Electricity cost may be more/less than you thin
on
AMD 90nm Evaluated
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
The one place where your figures aren't quite right is in the air conditioning department. An air conditioner, being a heat pump, just needs to move the heat from one spot to another, and the "typical" phase-change A/C unit is fairly efficient at it.
To put some figures on it, an air conditioner with an EER of 12 means that it can move 12,000 BTUs with 1000 watt-hours of electricity.
Now, 12,000 BTUs is equivalent to 3516 watt-hours of heat. So for every 3,516 watts of heat generation, you'll be expending 1,000 watts to move that heat to the outside of your building. And that's with an EER of 12, some units exist with EERs as high as 17.
So, for every 150 watts of power your computer is using, figure 40 to 60 watts for your A/C.
On the other hand, were you using a peltier device for cooling, you'd be in bad shape. If the EER figure were applied to them, it would be less than 1. For example, to move 30 watts of heat across a peltier, you'd need to apply approximately 45 watts of heat to it - meaning you'd be removing 30 watts from the cold side, but you'd need to remove 75(!) watts from the hot side.
steve
Re:Electricity cost may be more/less than you thin
on
AMD 90nm Evaluated
·
· Score: 1
... which still ends up as heat. Those electrons eventually collide with something, blah, blah, ad nauseum. But it all ends up as heat. Even the energy from the fans imparted into moving air eventually ends up as heat, as friction slows down the air. One way or another, it all ends up as heat.
Recently, I took some "at-the-wall" measurements of various systems in my computing room. My router is a dual-CPU system, using Pentium 133's. I always thought I was probably being wasteful in the electrical department, but when I measured it, the entire machine, under load, only drew 47 watts of power. I was pretty surprised.
My file server, a P3/650 with 4x120 gig drives and a 3ware card (running SETI) drew 85 watts. And my primary machine, under full gaming load, drew 270+ watts from the wall *without* a monitor. Yikes.
There are still apps that will suck up every CPU cycle you can throw at them, and still want more. Look at video compression. When you've got hours of video to run through, every extra gigahertz counts!
If you search around, there are people that have got non-MP Bartons working on the MPX chipset, but if I recall, it takes some work, and is still somewhat of a crap-shoot.
They do, however, still product Barton-core MP's up to 2.8 GHz. I know, I've got a pair of them in this machine right now. : )
The one exception would be when using something like DVD Shrink. As with any video compression, it takes a lot of CPU cycles to make it happen quickly - especially if you're using 3.2 with the improved artifct-reduction stuff.
That being said, one of the most important aspects in burning is actually your IDE controller. One of my friends has a cheap no-name motherboard with an Athlon 1600 and 512 megs, but because of the crappy IDE controller, he can't sustain a read or burn faster than 2x with any drive that he tries. It used to be about 1.6x, until we fiddled with various driver versions and other settings to get it up to about 2x.
The board was actually built by one of the big manufacturers (Asus, if I recall), but it was a custom, stripped-down, cheap-as-can-be model for some small OEM, and (if I recall) wasn't ever really put into much of a production. The OEM is out of business, and Asus won't support it, so he's screwed. He got it cheap on ebay, but it's just an example of being penny-wise and pound-foolish.
Unless you're really in need of more CPU cycles, it might not be worth it - as you'd still be using DDR266 memory. With a new motherboard and some decent memory, a 400MHz memory clock would be the least you should be looking to get.
Even with Doom3, you'll be perfectly fine. I have a 2500+ clocked up pretty high, but even at 2500+ levels, D3 is silky-smooth on my 6800GT.
A friend of mine plays D3 on a GF 5600 with an Athlon 1600+. He's had to turn down some of the visual details to accomodate the older card, but it plays just fine.
I've got the same board running right now with dual AthlonMP 2800+ chips - Barton core, 512k cache, and all.
Even the newest BIOS for the board is very old, and doesn't recognize Barton cores as being MP capable, even though they are. Windows doesn't care, for Linux to run, you just disable the "MP support check" in the BIOS. Everything trucks along nice and dandy.
For overclocking, the mobile 2500+ is simply the bomb. It's pretty cheap, is not multiplier-locked, and is hand-picked to run at lower voltages. By raising the voltage to normal, standard voltages, you won't find one that won't go to at least 3200+ levels (2.2GHz). It's not uncommon to get them to 2.5 GHz, which gives you a LOT of power for the money.
Of course, the real beauty is that because the multiplier isn't locked, you can adjust the FSB/memory clock as high as your board and memory will be stable, and *then* adjust the multiplier to get more CPU cycles.
And the *best* thing i taught my dog was to pee on command.
Again, agreed!
Even without the "parlor-trick" aspect of it ("Hey, watch this: Mishka, go potty!"), it's immensely useful. If I'm going to leave for a couple of hours, and want to leave them in the house instead of the yard, I can take them out, tell them to go, they do, then I know they won't be "holding it" for the next two hours. : )
Be carful what you choose and dont say it while fido is on top of the bed
I was in a pet store a while ago, one of the dogs was with my wife. The dog I had was walking around, and a lady trying to get her bulldog to go on a potty-pad kept saying "go potty, go potty". I didn't even hear it, so I wasn't paying attention - I just noticed that my dog was peeing in the store. I guess the lady noticed the surprise on my face (the dog would never normally do that), and told me that the whole time she was saying it, my dog kept looking at her with a really uncomfortable look on her face like "But I don't go inside!", but finally gave in and did as she was being told. : )
Read "the other end of the leash", by a person who has spent not only most of their life studying canine psychology and ethology, but done a tremendous amount of research into it, and you'll find that the "don't let them sleep on the bed" idea is nearly entirely bunk - along with quite a bit more of the traditional "dominance" ideas.
I also do quite a bit of work at a local animal shelter, and have been involved with dogs for about 25 years. Everything I've seen over that time corresponds exactly with what the author of the book presents.
My dogs have always been free to sleep on the bed if they want to. Some times they do, sometimes they don't. Sometimes, they sleep in my spot, and I move over and sleep in another spot. And I've never hit them. I've never alpha-rolled them. And I let them have some of my food before, while, or after I'm eating it. It's an entirely benevelent relationship. And yet, they have absolutely no problem with the fact that I'm the leader. If I tell them to do something, they do it, and they do it well.
Even the strong-willed girl can be inches from getting a piece of chicken, and if I say "mishka, leave it", she does.
Once you get away from the confrontational implications of the mis-chosen English word "dominance", then things become a lot easier to work with. Read the book, and give it some thought.
steve
Re:Well said! Here are a few other tips
on
Upgrade Your Dog
·
· Score: 1
I've tried a crate, and so have other people. Sure, the size of the den shrinks immensely, but... (1) by being smart about taking them out, you can avoid most accidents in the house anyway, and (2) I want the entire house to be recognized as the den as soon as possible.
Because of those two, as well as the seperation thing (would you lock your human baby in a cage in solitary confinement? Puppies like it even less than human babies), it's just not my cup of tea - and really doesn't seem to get to the final goal any faster than the way I do it.
With both of my puppies, I took them outside whenever they would need to go. That's not so hard to figure out. A puppy will need to pee:
1. Within a few minutes of waking up from ANY duration of sleep. 2. Within a few minutes of drinking ANY water. 3. After playing for a little bit, and after they stop playing.
They'll have to poop within 10 to 20 minutes after eating any amount of food, and after waking up from sleeping.
At those times, take the puppy outside. Wait until he goes. IMMEDIATELY (within 1 second) give him a reward.
If it goes in the house, make a noise to interrupt it, pick it up, take it outside, let it finish, and when it does, IMMEDIATELY reward it. Don't hit it, swat it, rub it's nose in it, or anything else.
I can't tell you how many puppies I've seen that work like a MIRACLE for - but only if YOU are consistent.
Dogs instinctively won't go in their "den". The trick is that you need to help the dog realize that the entire house is a den.
I've also seen people trying to crate-train that achieved near instant success the day after they started letting the puppies sleep on the bed - that just helped the puppy learn that the house was the den, not the crate.
That no matter how hard he tries to make himself (or perhaps others) feel better with the following statement:
You need that to get a really big bubble: you need to have something solid at the center, so that even smart people are sucked in. (Isaac Newton and Jonathan Swift both lost money in the South Sea Bubble of 1720.)
He's wrong. Really wrong. I, and others, were able to see through the hype and stupidity during the bubble, and see what companies had real value, which didn't, which were over-valued, and in some cases, which were under-valued. I don't know how much money he lost, but claiming that "even smart people are sucked in" isn't a valid excuse, and no amount of history on how physicists and poets don't necessarily good economists is going to change that.
The difference is grain vs. noise. The noise from digital photography is often (but not always) less desirable than the grain from film.
In fact, I think that time would be better spent reducing noise in digital cameras than in increasing resolution. Here's an extreme example:
I have a 1.7MP camera that has very, very little noise. My friend, against my recommendations, bought a Sony 5MP camera that has a LOT of noise. In dye-sub prints, the lower resolution of my images does show - but the prints are still preferable to my friend's, where the noise is just flat-out AWFUL.
Slashdot Mirror
I know a guy who could beat that. He moved out here from Virginia, and moved in with his brother. For a solid 18 months, he didn't date, didn't get a job, didn't go to school: He spent all day, every day playing SOCOM and a couple of other games online. All day, all night. That's all he'd do.
The saddest part of this isn't that he has no job, no education, and no girlfriend: It's that he's wasting what could otherwise be the most productive time of his life in gaining those things. When he's 35 and decides he needs a college degree, it's going to be a lot tougher than had he been doing it now.
steve
I'd agree. I played Doom3 for a week, and FarCry for two weeks, now I'm back to just an occasional WC3 game.
Civilization, on the other hand, is an entirely different story. I can still blow a month on Civ2 if I let myself.
steve
And if it weren't happening now, those large numbers of murders would be happening now. What's your point?
steve
DOH! I hit "submit" too early. Here's the rest.
(on the note of the 10,000 Iraqi casualties, note that the UN figures (not JWB's figures) on those found in mass graves, murdered by Saddam's regime, are in the tens of thousands. Human Rights Watch estimates that over 290,000 people were murdered by Saddam's regime. It could well be argued that 10,000 innocent deaths might be favorable to another quarter-million innocent deaths.
I have met a number of Iraqis, every one of which has told me of immediate family members murdered by Saddam's regime.)
steve
The hysteria generated by ~2000 deaths in the US on Sept 11 compared with the indifference shown over 3 million tutsis deaths, or ferver for a war with 10,000 iraqi civilian casualties, speaks better than any words could about how the western world values human life in other cultures.
That is certainly true. Although you've heard a lot about the terrorist attacks from Chechen rebels since 9/11, they've been going on for far longer - bombing apartment complexes and killing hundreds and even thousands at a time - yet they rarely, if ever, made the U.S. news before terrorism became front-page.
steve
If you think that 3 million deaths over 60 years makes the US government the worst in history, you should go back to the history books.
In African history, there were plenty of times when 3 million over 60 years would pale in comparison. Then, look into the colonial period of England, France, Spain, Portugal, and Belgium. Between the numbers of natives murdered, worked to death, killed by disease, and the slaves brought in to replace them, 3 million over 60 years wouldn't look so bad at all. In fact, one particularly dark period of Belgian rule in the Congo brought about 10 million deaths over 40 years.
Germany, of course, slaughtered far more than 3 million (perhaps as high as 11 million) during WW2. The Russian gulag system would rival the 3 million mark, and that was perpetrated against it's own citizens.
I'm not in any way taking any side on any part - American or otherwise. I'm just saying that your statement of the US government being the worst in the history of the world would take an awfully skewed, narrow viewpoint to accept.
steve
Before the DNC list, I'd ask them not to call even using the magic phrase...and they still called.
My magic phrase has always been "I'm sorry, I don't do business with companies that call me on the telephone."
It works like magic. It's not rude, so they don't put your number back on the list to spite you. And it tells them immediately that they're not going to make ANY money off of you, so their incentive to keep calling is completely removed. It's been terrific.
steve
I plugged each computer into a watt-meter, which was plugged into the wall outlet.
Steve
Actually, Intel was even more arrogant than that. It didn't just ignore what the market asked for, it tried to tell the market what it should want.
steve
The one place where your figures aren't quite right is in the air conditioning department. An air conditioner, being a heat pump, just needs to move the heat from one spot to another, and the "typical" phase-change A/C unit is fairly efficient at it.
To put some figures on it, an air conditioner with an EER of 12 means that it can move 12,000 BTUs with 1000 watt-hours of electricity.
Now, 12,000 BTUs is equivalent to 3516 watt-hours of heat. So for every 3,516 watts of heat generation, you'll be expending 1,000 watts to move that heat to the outside of your building. And that's with an EER of 12, some units exist with EERs as high as 17.
So, for every 150 watts of power your computer is using, figure 40 to 60 watts for your A/C.
On the other hand, were you using a peltier device for cooling, you'd be in bad shape. If the EER figure were applied to them, it would be less than 1. For example, to move 30 watts of heat across a peltier, you'd need to apply approximately 45 watts of heat to it - meaning you'd be removing 30 watts from the cold side, but you'd need to remove 75(!) watts from the hot side.
steve
steve
Recently, I took some "at-the-wall" measurements of various systems in my computing room. My router is a dual-CPU system, using Pentium 133's. I always thought I was probably being wasteful in the electrical department, but when I measured it, the entire machine, under load, only drew 47 watts of power. I was pretty surprised.
My file server, a P3/650 with 4x120 gig drives and a 3ware card (running SETI) drew 85 watts. And my primary machine, under full gaming load, drew 270+ watts from the wall *without* a monitor. Yikes.
steve
There are still apps that will suck up every CPU cycle you can throw at them, and still want more. Look at video compression. When you've got hours of video to run through, every extra gigahertz counts!
: )
steve
If you search around, there are people that have got non-MP Bartons working on the MPX chipset, but if I recall, it takes some work, and is still somewhat of a crap-shoot.
They do, however, still product Barton-core MP's up to 2.8 GHz. I know, I've got a pair of them in this machine right now. : )
steve
The one exception would be when using something like DVD Shrink. As with any video compression, it takes a lot of CPU cycles to make it happen quickly - especially if you're using 3.2 with the improved artifct-reduction stuff.
That being said, one of the most important aspects in burning is actually your IDE controller. One of my friends has a cheap no-name motherboard with an Athlon 1600 and 512 megs, but because of the crappy IDE controller, he can't sustain a read or burn faster than 2x with any drive that he tries. It used to be about 1.6x, until we fiddled with various driver versions and other settings to get it up to about 2x.
The board was actually built by one of the big manufacturers (Asus, if I recall), but it was a custom, stripped-down, cheap-as-can-be model for some small OEM, and (if I recall) wasn't ever really put into much of a production. The OEM is out of business, and Asus won't support it, so he's screwed. He got it cheap on ebay, but it's just an example of being penny-wise and pound-foolish.
steve
Unless you're really in need of more CPU cycles, it might not be worth it - as you'd still be using DDR266 memory. With a new motherboard and some decent memory, a 400MHz memory clock would be the least you should be looking to get.
steve
Even with Doom3, you'll be perfectly fine. I have a 2500+ clocked up pretty high, but even at 2500+ levels, D3 is silky-smooth on my 6800GT.
A friend of mine plays D3 on a GF 5600 with an Athlon 1600+. He's had to turn down some of the visual details to accomodate the older card, but it plays just fine.
steve
I've got the same board running right now with dual AthlonMP 2800+ chips - Barton core, 512k cache, and all.
Even the newest BIOS for the board is very old, and doesn't recognize Barton cores as being MP capable, even though they are. Windows doesn't care, for Linux to run, you just disable the "MP support check" in the BIOS. Everything trucks along nice and dandy.
steve
For overclocking, the mobile 2500+ is simply the bomb. It's pretty cheap, is not multiplier-locked, and is hand-picked to run at lower voltages. By raising the voltage to normal, standard voltages, you won't find one that won't go to at least 3200+ levels (2.2GHz). It's not uncommon to get them to 2.5 GHz, which gives you a LOT of power for the money.
Of course, the real beauty is that because the multiplier isn't locked, you can adjust the FSB/memory clock as high as your board and memory will be stable, and *then* adjust the multiplier to get more CPU cycles.
For what you pay, they're amazingly good chips.
steve
And the *best* thing i taught my dog was to pee on command.
Again, agreed!
Even without the "parlor-trick" aspect of it ("Hey, watch this: Mishka, go potty!"), it's immensely useful. If I'm going to leave for a couple of hours, and want to leave them in the house instead of the yard, I can take them out, tell them to go, they do, then I know they won't be "holding it" for the next two hours. : )
Be carful what you choose and dont say it while fido is on top of the bed
I was in a pet store a while ago, one of the dogs was with my wife. The dog I had was walking around, and a lady trying to get her bulldog to go on a potty-pad kept saying "go potty, go potty". I didn't even hear it, so I wasn't paying attention - I just noticed that my dog was peeing in the store. I guess the lady noticed the surprise on my face (the dog would never normally do that), and told me that the whole time she was saying it, my dog kept looking at her with a really uncomfortable look on her face like "But I don't go inside!", but finally gave in and did as she was being told. : )
steve
Read "the other end of the leash", by a person who has spent not only most of their life studying canine psychology and ethology, but done a tremendous amount of research into it, and you'll find that the "don't let them sleep on the bed" idea is nearly entirely bunk - along with quite a bit more of the traditional "dominance" ideas.
I also do quite a bit of work at a local animal shelter, and have been involved with dogs for about 25 years. Everything I've seen over that time corresponds exactly with what the author of the book presents.
My dogs have always been free to sleep on the bed if they want to. Some times they do, sometimes they don't. Sometimes, they sleep in my spot, and I move over and sleep in another spot. And I've never hit them. I've never alpha-rolled them. And I let them have some of my food before, while, or after I'm eating it. It's an entirely benevelent relationship. And yet, they have absolutely no problem with the fact that I'm the leader. If I tell them to do something, they do it, and they do it well.
Even the strong-willed girl can be inches from getting a piece of chicken, and if I say "mishka, leave it", she does.
Once you get away from the confrontational implications of the mis-chosen English word "dominance", then things become a lot easier to work with. Read the book, and give it some thought.
steve
I've tried a crate, and so have other people. Sure, the size of the den shrinks immensely, but... (1) by being smart about taking them out, you can avoid most accidents in the house anyway, and (2) I want the entire house to be recognized as the den as soon as possible.
Because of those two, as well as the seperation thing (would you lock your human baby in a cage in solitary confinement? Puppies like it even less than human babies), it's just not my cup of tea - and really doesn't seem to get to the final goal any faster than the way I do it.
steve
With both of my puppies, I took them outside whenever they would need to go. That's not so hard to figure out. A puppy will need to pee:
1. Within a few minutes of waking up from ANY duration of sleep.
2. Within a few minutes of drinking ANY water.
3. After playing for a little bit, and after they stop playing.
They'll have to poop within 10 to 20 minutes after eating any amount of food, and after waking up from sleeping.
At those times, take the puppy outside. Wait until he goes. IMMEDIATELY (within 1 second) give him a reward.
If it goes in the house, make a noise to interrupt it, pick it up, take it outside, let it finish, and when it does, IMMEDIATELY reward it. Don't hit it, swat it, rub it's nose in it, or anything else.
I can't tell you how many puppies I've seen that work like a MIRACLE for - but only if YOU are consistent.
Dogs instinctively won't go in their "den". The trick is that you need to help the dog realize that the entire house is a den.
I've also seen people trying to crate-train that achieved near instant success the day after they started letting the puppies sleep on the bed - that just helped the puppy learn that the house was the den, not the crate.
steve
That no matter how hard he tries to make himself (or perhaps others) feel better with the following statement:
You need that to get a really big bubble: you need to have something solid at the center, so that even smart people are sucked in. (Isaac Newton and Jonathan Swift both lost money in the South Sea Bubble of 1720.)
He's wrong. Really wrong. I, and others, were able to see through the hype and stupidity during the bubble, and see what companies had real value, which didn't, which were over-valued, and in some cases, which were under-valued. I don't know how much money he lost, but claiming that "even smart people are sucked in" isn't a valid excuse, and no amount of history on how physicists and poets don't necessarily good economists is going to change that.
steve
The difference is grain vs. noise. The noise from digital photography is often (but not always) less desirable than the grain from film.
In fact, I think that time would be better spent reducing noise in digital cameras than in increasing resolution. Here's an extreme example:
I have a 1.7MP camera that has very, very little noise. My friend, against my recommendations, bought a Sony 5MP camera that has a LOT of noise. In dye-sub prints, the lower resolution of my images does show - but the prints are still preferable to my friend's, where the noise is just flat-out AWFUL.
steve