The linked article mentions that the shuffle is an easy target for competitors.
That's funny, a year ago, the Apple had 0% market share in the flash mp3 player segment. In May, Apple had (according to their numbers) 58% of the flash player market. It seems to me that the market was easy pickings for Apple, not the other way around. Apple took over that market segment IN SPITE of (or maybe because of?) the fact that their product had fewer features than the competition. Most flash players up until then had FM tuners, most had tiny LCD screens. Apparently people really wanted what the shuffle offered.
On a side note, I just replaced my shuffle with a nano. It turns out what I really wanted was a tiny version of the big iPod, not a flash player. I wonder what effect the nano will have on shuffle sales; due to people like me? (I'm sure there are now a bunch of used shuffles appearing on the market from others who moved to the nano.)
Many NPR shows ARE available as mp3s. Through iTunes Podcast directory, even. I subscribe to Science Friday this way, along with some more local public radio podcasts; and other major public radio shows such as 'Whad'Ya Know', 'On The Media', 'The World', and 'Studio 360' are available. (In fact, NPR themselves have 17 different casts available on the iTunes directory.)
HP hardware is great, but the software sucks. (I actually like it, when it works; but it is unnecessarily bloated; and updates are few, far between, and hard to get.)
Canon hardware is marginal, but adequate for most tasks, but is 100% proprietary software (i.e. difficult to find TWAIN drivers.)
Microtek is adequate in both hardware and software.
Epson is good hardware, excellent software. (I actually prefer HP's software interface, but Epson's is more stable, better written, less bloated, etc.)
(The Epson, Canon, and HP info is based on less-than-two-year-old hardware/software, the Microtek is based on more-than-two-year-old hardware/software, so Microtek may have improved.)
The NvIOpRAM [ATA IDE] products have the selling price of $2.50 per 1GB.
NvIOpSRAM [144-pin SODIMM] products have the selling price of $4.50 per 1GB.
NvIOpSRAM [200-pin SODIMM] products have the selling price of $6.00 per 1GB.
Let's see, then that 2TB drive will cost $5000, and that included 1TB of RAM will cost $6000, for a minimum notebook cost of $11,000. And that's assuming the rest of the notebook (including their miracle processor) is free. While 1TB of RAM for $6000 is a good price, 2TB of hard drive for $5000 is a bit on the steep side.
I tried that myself once, and iTunes refused to work correctly that way. (IIRC, my login would always take over the database files, and my wife's login could no longer write to them.)
Oh well, we don't add songs to the library very often, so I just copy the database files from one user's home dir to the other's.
Personally, I have my home directory encrypted (Yes, Apple's FileVault.) But for large files that don't matter, I keep them in a different directory. For example, I keep my mp3s, photos, and videos in the 'Shared' user folder. (This has the side benefit of letting other users of the computer use the same mp3 collection; and iPhoto is nice enough to let multiple users use one folder. Sadly, iTunes insists on keeping its database file in each user's home directory, so there is no easy way to keep iTunes libraries synced between users.)
Or just remove the Dashboard icon from the Dock, and turn off all keyboard or mouse commands that activate it, then reboot. Dashboard won't launch after a reboot until activated, so if you make it so you can't activate it, it won't launch.
To get Dashboard back? Just go to the Exposé & Dashboard pref pane and give yourself a way to turn it back on!
They really aren't. The ESRB is a voluntary ratings system. For that matter, so is the MPAA's G/PG/PG-13/R/NC-17 system. If a film maker doesn't like that his film got an NC-17 rating, he can just choose to release it with NO rating. But many theater chains will snub his film to avoid unwanted criticism.
Likewise, video game ratings are a similar situation. Nothing says Rockstar has to rate GTA. They can release it unrated if they want. But many game chains will refuse to stock it then.
As for me? I think they're helpful. I have a 10-year old stepson, and I'm a liberal proponent of free speech. But, does that mean I want my stepson watching porn or playing cop-killer video games at his age? No. While media may not have a MAJOR impact on his decisions, I know that it does have SOME impact. I DON'T want him desensitized to violence. I DON'T want him thinking unprotected sex is as okay as kissing. If he chooses to have sex before he's married (even if when in high school,) I just want to make sure he understands what he's doing, and takes precautions.
Oh, and I'm not an 'outlaw all guns' liberal, either. I have taken my stepson shooting multiple times. In controlled ranges, with proper safety procedures. He hasn't yet shot a firearm, just BB and air guns. I want to make sure he fully understands that a gun can kill instantly, and that it's not a toy, before he holds one. That means I don't want him watching movies or playing video games that portray 'realistic' violence in a glorifying way. I've let him watch 'Saving Private Ryan', and 'Schindler's List', but I don't even like him watching 'Speed'.
As such, I use game ratings as a guide. If it's rated 'T', I look to see if the offending material is 'realistic'. If so, I won't buy it. If it's cartooney (Star Wars,) then probably. If it's M, not a chance. I recently had an acquaintance who also has a 10 year old son remark that now that the bad material was removed from GTA, they'd buy it for their 8 year old son! I made sure to let her know that the only bad material that was removed was the material that wasn't really officially there anyway. It's still just as violent as it was before.
(I always wondered why 'liberals' were anti-gun and pro-sex, while 'conservatives' are anti-sex, but pro-gun... Wouldn't you rather have your kid making more kids than killing other kids?)
Well, the original post was wrong. Telegraph Park isn't the smallest park. But, neither is Salem's Waldo Park. Portland's MillEndsPark is. At a whopping 452 square inches, it is too small to even hold a tree.
(I was going to have a link to the Guiness World Records page on it, but their site is a little wonky right now, and their search seems to be borked. So Answers.com will have to suffice in its place.)
And about Portland being so.org. . . I'm part of that, as my own personal domain is a.org! As is my business, for that matter. (All right, so my company is really a.com, but I happen to also own the.org. ..)
Doesn't any geek other than myself pride themselves on using "old" equipment any more?
Yes, I do. I use a Macintosh SE/30 every morning to check the headlines and read email (in a cubby in the dining room.) (iCab on System 7.5.5) I have old Macs scattered around the house for various purposes, ranging from recipe computer in the kitchen (PowerBook 5300ce running 9.1,) to a computer whose only purpose is to run a Guitar teaching software (Beige G3 desktop running 10.1 with an ATI Radeon using its TV-out to the TV, no keyboard, just a trackball, you turn it on and it loads the guitar software automatically, you press power and it shuts down.)
If I could run OS X on my Duo 2300, I'd gladly use it as my day-to-day notebook. (I did until I needed to run OS X for work.) Heck, if I could get away with it, I'd use my Newton 120 or my HP 200LX for all my portable computing needs. (Once, on a lark, I installed Windows 3.0 on the 200LX, I even hooked up a mouse that was larger than the computer.)
'RAID' basics: You don't need it.
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Basics of RAID
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· Score: 2, Insightful
1. The average user does not need RAID.
2. The enthusiast does not need RAID.
3. RAID is not a replacement for backing up.
RAID is only good for two things: To protect against a hard drive failure when an uptime as close as possible to 100% is required; and to increase performance in the form of data throughput.
Alright, let's cover them one at a time. The average user (anyone who just buys a Dell to surf the web,) doesn't need RAID. Hard drive failures are fairly uncommon. And the to the 'average' user, 100% uptime isn't anywhere near a necessity. Also, data throughput isn't that important, either. (Besides, for most people, buying a faster hard drive is both technically better and more cost effective.)
Most enthusiasts (gamers, hardware tweakers, modders, etc,) don't need RAID. Again, hard drive failures are fairly uncommon, and your average enthusiast doesn't exactly store cures to cancer or rocket science on their drives. (No, the old MS Space Simulator doesn't count as rocket science.) Besides, most enthusiasts use RAID-0, which isn't really redundant. Which brings us to point B. The only thing RAID-0 measurably improves is sequential STR speed (Spindle-to-RAM, the speed of data going from the platter to the drive's internal cache.) And there are very few enthusiast tasks that do better from a raw higher throughput. (Even capturing video doesn't matter, as the slowest hard drive today can easily keep up with uncompressed HD!) Oooh, so your Doom3 level loads 1/2 a second faster. In single-player mode, it doesn't matter at all, and in multiplayer, the server waits for everyone to load anyway. RAID doesn't help for random seeks. A faster spindle helps for that. A better drive caching algorithm and a larger drive cache helps for that. If you have a 40GB, 5400RPM, 2MB cache drive, you'll see a tremendous improvement by going to a Raptor, or to a 15k RPM SCSI drive. You will see very negligible benefit by getting a second 40GB, 5400RPM, 2MB cache drive and putting them in a RAID-0.
Finally, the assertion that RAID prevents data loss. The only data loss it prevents is loss due to a failed hard drive. It doesn't protect against user error, viruses, or physical damage that destroys the whole computer. If your data is truly vital, you need to be backing up, even if you do use a RAID. Yes, businesses with vital information who need (as close as possible to) 100% uptime need RAID. That's it. Even then they still need backups.
Then switched to Win/Intel. Then switched back just before OS X. Survived the OS X transition. So I've gone through 4 major transitions so far, I think I can survive another without incident.
(68k->PPC is one, PPCMac->WinTel is another, WinTel->OS9 is three, OS9->OS X is the fourth.)
Oh, and I kept around my old Mac(s) out of nostalgia, even during the WinTel days.
Wil Wheaton freely admits that Wesley Crusher was a horrible "character". And ST:TNG is widely seen as the best of the recent series. So this is a perfectly valid question.
Wil: Do you feel better now that there are worse-written Star Trek characters than Wesley?
I dunno, but I do know that my two Bluetooth mice both last much longer on their batteries than any of my three non-Bluetooth wireless mice.
I don't get it either. Especially for a notebook. I want a mouse that 'just connects' wirelessly. I don't want to deal with a funky dongle sticking out the side (or back) of my notebook. I just want to pull the mouse out, hit 'Power', and go.
As for the complaint that it takes a long time for Bluetooth to connect? I have a Bluetooth mouse that takes less than 2 seconds to 'wake up' from sleep. And it only goes to sleep if I don't move it or click a button for 10 minutes. If I haven't touched it in 10 minutes, an extra 2 seconds after clicking a button isn't going to kill me. And a Bluetooth headset for my phone that I can be talking on less than 5 seconds from being all the way 'off'.
I can sympathize with the 'difficulty' aspect, but come on, I don't want a funky dongle hanging off my notebook. (At least recent mice have a place to store the dongle in the mouse itself, so you don't have to worry about losing it, as long as you remember to put it back in the mouse.)
My Bluetooth mice? Apple's, and the Macally BTMicro. (The base is just a charger, and only needs to be plugged in to the wall, not the computer. Although, come to think of it, having the charger base powered through USB, with an optical 'passthrough' would be kind of cool. Use it as a 'wired' mouse to charge it, then use it wireless on battery.)
And claims of Bluetooth usable up to 30 feet? I get more than that. In fact, I have an 802.11g base station approximately 3 feet above my Bluetooth-enabled desktop computer, and if I take my notebook computer away from that room, while using a Bluetooth headset to listen to music from the desktop, the notebook loses it's 802.11g connection before the headset loses it's Bluetooth connection. (Likewise, I can use Bluetooth to transfer files slowly between the desktop and laptop farther away than with the 802.11g.)
A hoax is "a humorous or malicious deception." (Definition by Oxford, emphasis mine.) This was not meant to deceive. The website is an obvious farce. It is in the same jesting manner of operation as The Onion. Yet nobody would call an Onion story a 'hoax', they'd call it a parody.
A parody is "an imitation of the style of a particular writer, artist, or genre with deliberate exaggeration for comic effect." (Again, definition by Oxford.) That is what danamania.com is. It imitates (and exaggerates) computer news/rumor websites for comic effect.
I'm not forgetting about dual-core. I know that dual-core uses one FSB for both cores. I mean for two physically separate processors. (Heck, this could also explain why in some Apple development tools, places where it would show a fixed 2 processors now have the capability to show more than 2. Between dual-core, and hyperthreading, a 'dual-processor' system can appear to have as many as 8 processors.)
The biggest challenge for dual processor Xeons has been that they share their FSB. On AMD Opteron, and IBM PowerPC 970 systems, each processor has an independent front side bus.
The other thing, now that I watch the keynote, is that Jobs mentions better performance-per-watt. The current Pentium 4 design (the 'NetBurst Architecture',) is horrible in performance-per-watt. The Pentium-M architecture, on the other hand, is great. And since Steve was talking about *FUTURE* performance-per-watt, does this signal Intel's shift away from the P4 and toward a P-M based desktop? (I know it had been hinted at before, but this is probably the biggest hint so far.)
I mean, with the talk of how hot processors run, the dual-proc G5's are comparatively GLACIAL compared to even a single dual-core P4. The dual-core P4 puts out well over 110W, whereas two G5's combined are less than 90W. (Heck, even the older, single-core P4 puts out about 100W at its highest clock speed.)
Well, from the rumors, low-end will be first. So bleeding-edge will still be G5.
This makes me wonder about Intel's future processor plans. One of the biggest complaints is that Intel's dual-processor systems use a single front-side bus for both processors. The fact that low-end is first makes me wonder if Apple has knowledge of a 'due-in-'07' system that will use independent front side busses. So switch low-end first, then high end when the new Intel tech comes out.
Now that the revelation of OS X having been co-developed for Intel all along revealed, the existence of x86 Darwin makes this a rather obvious step, really.
It's just that nobody really wanted to admit it.
Having worked for Intel at one time, and having met Otellini, I know that Intel has coveted Apple as a client for a LONG time. (WARNING: ANCIENT NAME-DROPPING ANECDOTE COMING UP!) I was at Intel back in '99 when Apple released the first inexpensive, consumer-oriented 802.11b base, the original AirPort Base Station. (At the time, the next-cheapest base was more than twice as much.) Well, I had an 802.11b setup at home, and mentioned how cool it was to my boss. So he let me set it one up in the office, connected to our separate internet connection (we did server support, so we had our own internet connection, separate from the Intel corporate net.) I hooked it up, and discovered that if I put the 'UFO' on top of my cube wall, the signal reached the cafeteria. So we left it up there. (Yeah, we had to sit in the corner closest to our cubes, but we could surf the 'net at lunch.) Well, one day Otellini comes by on a tour. Aside from one of my co-workers accidentally running him down on a hurried dash to the bathroom, he noticed the big 'Graphite' Apple logo on top of everything else. He simply points to it 'That's not connected to our corporate LAN, is it?' My boss replies 'No, to our private internet connection.' 'Okay, very good.'
Re:First Mattell had the VR glove now this...
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Juicebox Hacking
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Mattel Electronics also made the Intellivision, a higher-end competitor to the Atari 2600. Some of the Intellivision add-ons were a voice-synthesis box (Intellivoice,) computer (a keyboard add-on that also increased processor power, and had a built-in BASIC environment,) and cable modem! (Yes, a few cable companies offered game downloads, you plugged what was essentially an early one-way cable modem into your Intellivision, and it would download a few games a month that you could try out.)
A bunch of former Intellivision programmers started a company to continue Intellivision development, and sells retro compilation packages called 'Intellivision Lives' for various modern game systems.
I'll be able to answer you tomorrow. I just got a new EDGE-enabled T-Mobile phone, but I get a crappy signal at home (true with all providers,) so I won't be able to test it until I'm on the road tomorrow. (From what I hear, T-Mobile still isn't EDGE, but at least the phone is for when T-Mobile gets their act together.)
Anyway, most of the pics are photographs of a television screen. All of those are the same quality, apparently taken from the same place relative to the TV. Those are of a fairly tame sex session.(Apparently he didn't have a video capture card.) Then there's one that the content looks very similar to the TV captures, only it's a blowjob pic, and looks more like it was captured from a video capture card, rather than taking a picture of a TV screen.
Then there is one where you don't see the woman's face, looks like a direct digicam pic, of the woman on her back showing her privates. Finally, there's the 'sucking the dog' pic. Low-quality, phone-cam or, my guess, low-res thumbnail from a porn website zoomed in a little. In both it and the previous pic, the woman has long bleach-blonde hair. In the rest of the pics, the woman has short light-brown/sandy blonde hair. THAT is why the doubt that the 'dogjog' pic is legit. (You also can't see the woman's face in that pic.) The hair in the rest of the pics looks very much like the woman at the 'company' website linked to elsewhere in this thread.
Except the solar wind slows down due to it 'running in to' interstellar particles. Larger objects are less affected by these subatomic particles, and can keep much more of their momentum.
Likewise, a solar sail isn't like a nautical sail. Once the momentum has been imparted, you need to apply energy to SLOW it down. On a sailboat, when the wind stops, the friction with the water slows you down. In interstellar space, when you don't have any solar 'wind' to power you, you just keep going...
I also have a problem with the use of the term 'subsonic'. When there is no medium for sound waves to travel in, how do you define 'subsonic'? (I don't mean you personally, I mean the schmuck that decided to use that term in this context originally.)
What I wonder is where the fan is... They are moving the heat away from the core silently, but that heat has to go somewhere, and in general, that means a fan.
All in all, isn't this just a heatpump with some new marketing-driven name for the liquid inside?
Yeah, even if it were miles, it would be a bit soon to me. I guess they are making the point that even if you stop using it after only 100k km, you still end up ahead (from an environmental perspective.) If you keep using it, it looks even better comparatively.
Slashdot Mirror
The linked article mentions that the shuffle is an easy target for competitors.
That's funny, a year ago, the Apple had 0% market share in the flash mp3 player segment. In May, Apple had (according to their numbers) 58% of the flash player market. It seems to me that the market was easy pickings for Apple, not the other way around. Apple took over that market segment IN SPITE of (or maybe because of?) the fact that their product had fewer features than the competition. Most flash players up until then had FM tuners, most had tiny LCD screens. Apparently people really wanted what the shuffle offered.
On a side note, I just replaced my shuffle with a nano. It turns out what I really wanted was a tiny version of the big iPod, not a flash player. I wonder what effect the nano will have on shuffle sales; due to people like me? (I'm sure there are now a bunch of used shuffles appearing on the market from others who moved to the nano.)
Many NPR shows ARE available as mp3s. Through iTunes Podcast directory, even. I subscribe to Science Friday this way, along with some more local public radio podcasts; and other major public radio shows such as 'Whad'Ya Know', 'On The Media', 'The World', and 'Studio 360' are available. (In fact, NPR themselves have 17 different casts available on the iTunes directory.)
HP hardware is great, but the software sucks. (I actually like it, when it works; but it is unnecessarily bloated; and updates are few, far between, and hard to get.)
Canon hardware is marginal, but adequate for most tasks, but is 100% proprietary software (i.e. difficult to find TWAIN drivers.)
Microtek is adequate in both hardware and software.
Epson is good hardware, excellent software. (I actually prefer HP's software interface, but Epson's is more stable, better written, less bloated, etc.)
(The Epson, Canon, and HP info is based on less-than-two-year-old hardware/software, the Microtek is based on more-than-two-year-old hardware/software, so Microtek may have improved.)
They say they are price competitive with non-quantum technology.
Then they have the following prices:
Let's see, then that 2TB drive will cost $5000, and that included 1TB of RAM will cost $6000, for a minimum notebook cost of $11,000. And that's assuming the rest of the notebook (including their miracle processor) is free. While 1TB of RAM for $6000 is a good price, 2TB of hard drive for $5000 is a bit on the steep side.
Oh, and some loony hardware enthusiasts have already shown that even some current processors can run at 7GHz.
I tried that myself once, and iTunes refused to work correctly that way. (IIRC, my login would always take over the database files, and my wife's login could no longer write to them.)
Oh well, we don't add songs to the library very often, so I just copy the database files from one user's home dir to the other's.
Personally, I have my home directory encrypted (Yes, Apple's FileVault.) But for large files that don't matter, I keep them in a different directory. For example, I keep my mp3s, photos, and videos in the 'Shared' user folder. (This has the side benefit of letting other users of the computer use the same mp3 collection; and iPhoto is nice enough to let multiple users use one folder. Sadly, iTunes insists on keeping its database file in each user's home directory, so there is no easy way to keep iTunes libraries synced between users.)
Or just remove the Dashboard icon from the Dock, and turn off all keyboard or mouse commands that activate it, then reboot. Dashboard won't launch after a reboot until activated, so if you make it so you can't activate it, it won't launch.
To get Dashboard back? Just go to the Exposé & Dashboard pref pane and give yourself a way to turn it back on!
They really aren't. The ESRB is a voluntary ratings system. For that matter, so is the MPAA's G/PG/PG-13/R/NC-17 system. If a film maker doesn't like that his film got an NC-17 rating, he can just choose to release it with NO rating. But many theater chains will snub his film to avoid unwanted criticism.
Likewise, video game ratings are a similar situation. Nothing says Rockstar has to rate GTA. They can release it unrated if they want. But many game chains will refuse to stock it then.
As for me? I think they're helpful. I have a 10-year old stepson, and I'm a liberal proponent of free speech. But, does that mean I want my stepson watching porn or playing cop-killer video games at his age? No. While media may not have a MAJOR impact on his decisions, I know that it does have SOME impact. I DON'T want him desensitized to violence. I DON'T want him thinking unprotected sex is as okay as kissing. If he chooses to have sex before he's married (even if when in high school,) I just want to make sure he understands what he's doing, and takes precautions.
Oh, and I'm not an 'outlaw all guns' liberal, either. I have taken my stepson shooting multiple times. In controlled ranges, with proper safety procedures. He hasn't yet shot a firearm, just BB and air guns. I want to make sure he fully understands that a gun can kill instantly, and that it's not a toy, before he holds one. That means I don't want him watching movies or playing video games that portray 'realistic' violence in a glorifying way. I've let him watch 'Saving Private Ryan', and 'Schindler's List', but I don't even like him watching 'Speed'.
As such, I use game ratings as a guide. If it's rated 'T', I look to see if the offending material is 'realistic'. If so, I won't buy it. If it's cartooney (Star Wars,) then probably. If it's M, not a chance. I recently had an acquaintance who also has a 10 year old son remark that now that the bad material was removed from GTA, they'd buy it for their 8 year old son! I made sure to let her know that the only bad material that was removed was the material that wasn't really officially there anyway. It's still just as violent as it was before.
(I always wondered why 'liberals' were anti-gun and pro-sex, while 'conservatives' are anti-sex, but pro-gun... Wouldn't you rather have your kid making more kids than killing other kids?)
Well, the original post was wrong. Telegraph Park isn't the smallest park. But, neither is Salem's Waldo Park. Portland's Mill Ends Park is. At a whopping 452 square inches, it is too small to even hold a tree.
.org. . . I'm part of that, as my own personal domain is a .org! As is my business, for that matter. (All right, so my company is really a .com, but I happen to also own the .org. . .)
(I was going to have a link to the Guiness World Records page on it, but their site is a little wonky right now, and their search seems to be borked. So Answers.com will have to suffice in its place.)
And about Portland being so
Yes, I do. I use a Macintosh SE/30 every morning to check the headlines and read email (in a cubby in the dining room.) (iCab on System 7.5.5) I have old Macs scattered around the house for various purposes, ranging from recipe computer in the kitchen (PowerBook 5300ce running 9.1,) to a computer whose only purpose is to run a Guitar teaching software (Beige G3 desktop running 10.1 with an ATI Radeon using its TV-out to the TV, no keyboard, just a trackball, you turn it on and it loads the guitar software automatically, you press power and it shuts down.)
If I could run OS X on my Duo 2300, I'd gladly use it as my day-to-day notebook. (I did until I needed to run OS X for work.) Heck, if I could get away with it, I'd use my Newton 120 or my HP 200LX for all my portable computing needs. (Once, on a lark, I installed Windows 3.0 on the 200LX, I even hooked up a mouse that was larger than the computer.)
1. The average user does not need RAID.
2. The enthusiast does not need RAID.
3. RAID is not a replacement for backing up.
RAID is only good for two things: To protect against a hard drive failure when an uptime as close as possible to 100% is required; and to increase performance in the form of data throughput.
Alright, let's cover them one at a time. The average user (anyone who just buys a Dell to surf the web,) doesn't need RAID. Hard drive failures are fairly uncommon. And the to the 'average' user, 100% uptime isn't anywhere near a necessity. Also, data throughput isn't that important, either. (Besides, for most people, buying a faster hard drive is both technically better and more cost effective.)
Most enthusiasts (gamers, hardware tweakers, modders, etc,) don't need RAID. Again, hard drive failures are fairly uncommon, and your average enthusiast doesn't exactly store cures to cancer or rocket science on their drives. (No, the old MS Space Simulator doesn't count as rocket science.) Besides, most enthusiasts use RAID-0, which isn't really redundant. Which brings us to point B. The only thing RAID-0 measurably improves is sequential STR speed (Spindle-to-RAM, the speed of data going from the platter to the drive's internal cache.) And there are very few enthusiast tasks that do better from a raw higher throughput. (Even capturing video doesn't matter, as the slowest hard drive today can easily keep up with uncompressed HD!) Oooh, so your Doom3 level loads 1/2 a second faster. In single-player mode, it doesn't matter at all, and in multiplayer, the server waits for everyone to load anyway. RAID doesn't help for random seeks. A faster spindle helps for that. A better drive caching algorithm and a larger drive cache helps for that. If you have a 40GB, 5400RPM, 2MB cache drive, you'll see a tremendous improvement by going to a Raptor, or to a 15k RPM SCSI drive. You will see very negligible benefit by getting a second 40GB, 5400RPM, 2MB cache drive and putting them in a RAID-0.
Finally, the assertion that RAID prevents data loss. The only data loss it prevents is loss due to a failed hard drive. It doesn't protect against user error, viruses, or physical damage that destroys the whole computer. If your data is truly vital, you need to be backing up, even if you do use a RAID. Yes, businesses with vital information who need (as close as possible to) 100% uptime need RAID. That's it. Even then they still need backups.
Then switched to Win/Intel. Then switched back just before OS X. Survived the OS X transition. So I've gone through 4 major transitions so far, I think I can survive another without incident.
(68k->PPC is one, PPCMac->WinTel is another, WinTel->OS9 is three, OS9->OS X is the fourth.)
Oh, and I kept around my old Mac(s) out of nostalgia, even during the WinTel days.
Dammit, that's not flamebait!
Wil Wheaton freely admits that Wesley Crusher was a horrible "character". And ST:TNG is widely seen as the best of the recent series. So this is a perfectly valid question.
Wil: Do you feel better now that there are worse-written Star Trek characters than Wesley?
I dunno, but I do know that my two Bluetooth mice both last much longer on their batteries than any of my three non-Bluetooth wireless mice.
I don't get it either. Especially for a notebook. I want a mouse that 'just connects' wirelessly. I don't want to deal with a funky dongle sticking out the side (or back) of my notebook. I just want to pull the mouse out, hit 'Power', and go.
As for the complaint that it takes a long time for Bluetooth to connect? I have a Bluetooth mouse that takes less than 2 seconds to 'wake up' from sleep. And it only goes to sleep if I don't move it or click a button for 10 minutes. If I haven't touched it in 10 minutes, an extra 2 seconds after clicking a button isn't going to kill me. And a Bluetooth headset for my phone that I can be talking on less than 5 seconds from being all the way 'off'.
I can sympathize with the 'difficulty' aspect, but come on, I don't want a funky dongle hanging off my notebook. (At least recent mice have a place to store the dongle in the mouse itself, so you don't have to worry about losing it, as long as you remember to put it back in the mouse.)
My Bluetooth mice? Apple's, and the Macally BTMicro. (The base is just a charger, and only needs to be plugged in to the wall, not the computer. Although, come to think of it, having the charger base powered through USB, with an optical 'passthrough' would be kind of cool. Use it as a 'wired' mouse to charge it, then use it wireless on battery.)
And claims of Bluetooth usable up to 30 feet? I get more than that. In fact, I have an 802.11g base station approximately 3 feet above my Bluetooth-enabled desktop computer, and if I take my notebook computer away from that room, while using a Bluetooth headset to listen to music from the desktop, the notebook loses it's 802.11g connection before the headset loses it's Bluetooth connection. (Likewise, I can use Bluetooth to transfer files slowly between the desktop and laptop farther away than with the 802.11g.)
There is a difference.
A hoax is "a humorous or malicious deception." (Definition by Oxford, emphasis mine.) This was not meant to deceive. The website is an obvious farce. It is in the same jesting manner of operation as The Onion. Yet nobody would call an Onion story a 'hoax', they'd call it a parody.
A parody is "an imitation of the style of a particular writer, artist, or genre with deliberate exaggeration for comic effect." (Again, definition by Oxford.) That is what danamania.com is. It imitates (and exaggerates) computer news/rumor websites for comic effect.
I'm not forgetting about dual-core. I know that dual-core uses one FSB for both cores. I mean for two physically separate processors. (Heck, this could also explain why in some Apple development tools, places where it would show a fixed 2 processors now have the capability to show more than 2. Between dual-core, and hyperthreading, a 'dual-processor' system can appear to have as many as 8 processors.)
The biggest challenge for dual processor Xeons has been that they share their FSB. On AMD Opteron, and IBM PowerPC 970 systems, each processor has an independent front side bus.
The other thing, now that I watch the keynote, is that Jobs mentions better performance-per-watt. The current Pentium 4 design (the 'NetBurst Architecture',) is horrible in performance-per-watt. The Pentium-M architecture, on the other hand, is great. And since Steve was talking about *FUTURE* performance-per-watt, does this signal Intel's shift away from the P4 and toward a P-M based desktop? (I know it had been hinted at before, but this is probably the biggest hint so far.)
I mean, with the talk of how hot processors run, the dual-proc G5's are comparatively GLACIAL compared to even a single dual-core P4. The dual-core P4 puts out well over 110W, whereas two G5's combined are less than 90W. (Heck, even the older, single-core P4 puts out about 100W at its highest clock speed.)
Well, from the rumors, low-end will be first. So bleeding-edge will still be G5.
This makes me wonder about Intel's future processor plans. One of the biggest complaints is that Intel's dual-processor systems use a single front-side bus for both processors. The fact that low-end is first makes me wonder if Apple has knowledge of a 'due-in-'07' system that will use independent front side busses. So switch low-end first, then high end when the new Intel tech comes out.
Now that the revelation of OS X having been co-developed for Intel all along revealed, the existence of x86 Darwin makes this a rather obvious step, really.
It's just that nobody really wanted to admit it.
Having worked for Intel at one time, and having met Otellini, I know that Intel has coveted Apple as a client for a LONG time. (WARNING: ANCIENT NAME-DROPPING ANECDOTE COMING UP!) I was at Intel back in '99 when Apple released the first inexpensive, consumer-oriented 802.11b base, the original AirPort Base Station. (At the time, the next-cheapest base was more than twice as much.) Well, I had an 802.11b setup at home, and mentioned how cool it was to my boss. So he let me set it one up in the office, connected to our separate internet connection (we did server support, so we had our own internet connection, separate from the Intel corporate net.) I hooked it up, and discovered that if I put the 'UFO' on top of my cube wall, the signal reached the cafeteria. So we left it up there. (Yeah, we had to sit in the corner closest to our cubes, but we could surf the 'net at lunch.) Well, one day Otellini comes by on a tour. Aside from one of my co-workers accidentally running him down on a hurried dash to the bathroom, he noticed the big 'Graphite' Apple logo on top of everything else. He simply points to it 'That's not connected to our corporate LAN, is it?' My boss replies 'No, to our private internet connection.' 'Okay, very good.'
Mattel Electronics also made the Intellivision, a higher-end competitor to the Atari 2600. Some of the Intellivision add-ons were a voice-synthesis box (Intellivoice,) computer (a keyboard add-on that also increased processor power, and had a built-in BASIC environment,) and cable modem! (Yes, a few cable companies offered game downloads, you plugged what was essentially an early one-way cable modem into your Intellivision, and it would download a few games a month that you could try out.)
A bunch of former Intellivision programmers started a company to continue Intellivision development, and sells retro compilation packages called 'Intellivision Lives' for various modern game systems.
I'll be able to answer you tomorrow. I just got a new EDGE-enabled T-Mobile phone, but I get a crappy signal at home (true with all providers,) so I won't be able to test it until I'm on the road tomorrow. (From what I hear, T-Mobile still isn't EDGE, but at least the phone is for when T-Mobile gets their act together.)
Yes, about three links up in this thread.
Anyway, most of the pics are photographs of a television screen. All of those are the same quality, apparently taken from the same place relative to the TV. Those are of a fairly tame sex session.(Apparently he didn't have a video capture card.) Then there's one that the content looks very similar to the TV captures, only it's a blowjob pic, and looks more like it was captured from a video capture card, rather than taking a picture of a TV screen.
Then there is one where you don't see the woman's face, looks like a direct digicam pic, of the woman on her back showing her privates. Finally, there's the 'sucking the dog' pic. Low-quality, phone-cam or, my guess, low-res thumbnail from a porn website zoomed in a little. In both it and the previous pic, the woman has long bleach-blonde hair. In the rest of the pics, the woman has short light-brown/sandy blonde hair. THAT is why the doubt that the 'dogjog' pic is legit. (You also can't see the woman's face in that pic.) The hair in the rest of the pics looks very much like the woman at the 'company' website linked to elsewhere in this thread.
Except the solar wind slows down due to it 'running in to' interstellar particles. Larger objects are less affected by these subatomic particles, and can keep much more of their momentum.
Likewise, a solar sail isn't like a nautical sail. Once the momentum has been imparted, you need to apply energy to SLOW it down. On a sailboat, when the wind stops, the friction with the water slows you down. In interstellar space, when you don't have any solar 'wind' to power you, you just keep going...
I also have a problem with the use of the term 'subsonic'. When there is no medium for sound waves to travel in, how do you define 'subsonic'? (I don't mean you personally, I mean the schmuck that decided to use that term in this context originally.)
What I wonder is where the fan is... They are moving the heat away from the core silently, but that heat has to go somewhere, and in general, that means a fan.
All in all, isn't this just a heatpump with some new marketing-driven name for the liquid inside?
Yes indeed, I've never tried before, but I figured post number 666 is an appropriate one to have my first first post with.
Even worse, I normally turn off my karma bonus, but just to be annoying, I'm turning it back on, just for this one post.
Yeah, even if it were miles, it would be a bit soon to me. I guess they are making the point that even if you stop using it after only 100k km, you still end up ahead (from an environmental perspective.) If you keep using it, it looks even better comparatively.