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User: Targon

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  1. I still remember saving/loading programs on cassette tape back in the late 1970s and early 1980s with my first modem being a US Robotics 212A 1200 baud modem in 1986 I think it was. Far higher quality than the Zoom 2400 baud modem I replaced it with, that's for sure.

  2. There was no "World Wide Web" prior to HTML. There was an Internet(and still other networks such as bitnet), but the idea of the web really was derived from gopher. Gopher allowed an administrator to set up a menu style layout to find information, and what made HTML(the language web pages are written in), is the ability to have links within a document that would then connect you directly to other documents. Lynx was the go-to command line web browser, non-graphical, and MOSAIC was the graphical web browser in those early days. Netscape quickly came out as something faster(initially available to the general Internet as version 0.8 that I remember using, with that big pulsing "N" to show activity) which became the dominant graphical web browser.

    I will again note, there was no such thing as a "web page", because the idea of having links from within one document to another document somewhere else on the Internet wasn't there before HTML.

  3. Some standards would be nice on Ask Slashdot: Should CPU, GPU Name-Numbering Indicate Real World Performance? · · Score: 1

    Because processors in general are general purpose in nature, it would be impossible to assign a model number based on some made up score. How many processor cores, how much L1, L2, L3 cache is there, clock speeds, how well optimized the operating system is for the chip in question, chipsets, RAM speeds, storage speeds.

    Special purpose chips, not having flexibility in terms of what gets run, does not have that sort of confusion. How quickly can you handle various video codecs for example, will not have as many outside factors when it comes to the performance.

    One thing that SHOULD be standardized is within each company, what the core count is, and if SMT is enabled/available or not. The Intel chips for example, some are dual-core, some quad-core, some have SMT or HyperThreading support, some do not. AMD also has some confusion, all AMD A8, A10, and A12 chips are quad-core for the CPU, the A9 is a dual-core chip. There are some A4 and A6 chips that are quad-core, while most are dual-core. Trying to navigate that sort of thing does take an online search to see just how many cores and threads a given processor has. Adding a U at the end for those very low power mobile chips can take a quad-core for the regular version to a dual-core for the "U" version, but not always.

  4. You may have missed that Ryzen can go up beyond DDR4-3600 memory now. The new AGESA 1.0.0.0a isn't perfect yet, but the platform has been seeing some nice improvements.

  5. Experimentation comes into play on Bill Gates Just Bought 25,000 Acres in the Arizona Desert (kgw.com) · · Score: 1

    For all of the people seeing the reasons for this to fail, there are other possible motivations that may be at play. First, he may actually put up a dome over the whole place, and there may be some ways to pull in whatever moisture there is in the air at night, though I don't know if it would be nearly enough. The dome solution would help with both the heat and the pure dehydration effects caused by the heat, and might also apply to those who want to see people living on Mars.

    This is all speculation, but too many people think in terms of your typical developers who expect people to just build houses and wonder why it doesn't work. Those with the resources, as well as some vision for the future, may look for ways to deal with climate change, and what better way to experiment than by going into an extreme climate and trying to make things work THERE?

    Then again, experimenting with things like climate change, pump in tons of water from the pacific ocean in a pipeline the way oil is pumped in, and see what happens if you desalinate that water and use it to grow plants and actually try to convert the desert. It may take decades, but that is to be expected if that is attempted.

  6. As usual, stock analysts are idiots! on AMD, Which Lost Over $2.8 Billion In 5 Years, Takes a Hit After New Report (arstechnica.com) · · Score: 1

    What these people don't understand is that the PC/laptop market dropped due to a lack of innovation by Intel in the years where AMD was not competitive. How many people with a second generation i7 saw no reason to upgrade until this year? AMD Ryzen came out in March, and for the first time in a VERY long time, AMD was fully competitive again, to the point where Intel started to flail around and try to figure out how to respond. The results are that people are responding to the shift in the industry and are looking to upgrade their computers, not because their old one has died, but because there is actually an improvement. Those with dual-core processors are finally moving up to quad-core Ryzen or Intel chips, those with quad-core processors are upgrading to six or eight core processors, and we are seeing a surge in advertising for the new chips from both AMD and Intel.

    In addition to this, the AMD Raven Ridge laptop processors also look VERY promising, 15 watt quad-core laptop processors that may very well beat Intel chips, so all those "Ultrabooks" will now have real competition from AMD based systems that are just as thin and light, with good battery life. There will also be laptops with these chips running at up to 25 watts for even better performance due to better cooling, even if the laptops are not as thin.

    As far as cryptocurrency, the demand for video cards never ends, with many people not able to buy their video card of choice due to supply shortages. If there was no cryptocurrency mining, these cards would have sold out at launch ANYWAY.

  7. Re:longer lifetime on Traditional PC Sales Continue To Slide (zdnet.com) · · Score: 1

    The reason people have kept their machines for longer is because the new machines are not all that much faster. When new machines are a significant improvement over older machines, people are more inclined to upgrade. I will note that the smartphone market has slowed for that very reason, the new phones are not significantly better until you look at the improvements over three generations, not one.

  8. Re:longer lifetime on Traditional PC Sales Continue To Slide (zdnet.com) · · Score: 1

    There is the whole issue of lowest common denominator when it comes to computers, and what developers base their designs around. Intel really has not been improving processor performance, or system design for a long time, due to AMD not being competitive in the low end. The result is that we still see the majority of new chips being two core processors, up until the 8th generation came out, and not long enough to actually impact the market. AMD is finally competitive again, which is pushing Intel into finally killing dual-core chips.

    Now, you need to also look at programming....why code to take advantage of more threads if the majority of systems are only dual core? Now, clock speed is another story, where clock speeds mean less than looking at performance per clock cycle. When 3.9GHz from one chip is competitive with another chip that runs at 4.5GHz, the pure "clock speed" isn't a important, except if the programs you run are VERY VERY simple, without much complexity.

  9. Sales of complete systems, or sales of components? on Traditional PC Sales Continue To Slide (zdnet.com) · · Score: 1

    Considering that Ryzen has pushed the PC industry for the first time in close to ten years, and the resulting excitement for people to buy or build their first new system in over six years, I doubt that the PC market is slowing down. The pre-built PC market may be slowing, due to a lack of Ryzen based systems by the large OEMs, and that means people are building their own systems. On the low end, you don't see the new chips showing up in large numbers yet as well, though that will improve in the next few months. If you include laptops, AMD Raven Ridge isn't out yet, and 8th generation Intel won't show up in large numbers for a few months.

    So, the market is heating up, but the big names like HP and Dell may not have seen it yet, due to being slow to market with products people would actually care about.

  10. Add features, and what happens.... on Apple Doesn't Deliberately Slow Down Older Devices According To Benchmark Analysis (macrumors.com) · · Score: 3, Insightful

    It makes sense that as features are added, it will require more CPU and/or GPU to handle it. The only exceptions are when the features are not active, which CAN be the case for some things, but not for all. The real question should be why you don't see more of a performance decrease on older devices, unless there just isn't much that has been added to the newer versions.

    As I said, there CAN be exceptions, but the more things that are actually active, the more CPU/GPU you SHOULD expect will be needed to handle those things.

  11. This is why I ignore what critics say on Rotten Tomatoes Scores Don't Correlate To Box Office Success or Woes, Research Shows (polygon.com) · · Score: 1

    For decades, I have seen how the movies that have critics excited either bore me to tears, or disgust me. I can see when something is well done from a production standpoint, but the stories in movies that critics love are the movies that I HATE. I remember when "Driving Mrs. Daisy" had critics saying how wonderful a movie it was....and yet, everyone I have ever talked to hated that movie. From decade to decade, you get years where this movie or that movie has the critics going wild and praising them, and every time, I find I hate those movies.

    Just because something is good from an artistic perspective does not mean the subject matter will appeal to audiences. There are times when movies make a statement about social injustice for this or that group, but it doesn't mean that the movie does more than just speak out about the issues. If it is about gay rights, women, African-American issues, or whatever the statement is, no matter that I may agree with the message of rights for EVERYONE, it doesn't mean I, or many people, will really feel it is a movie to be watched multiple times. Until critics can think like normal people who are more interested in "is the story INTERESTING", outside of some message that the writer/producers/directors want to tell to the world, we will find the opinions of critics are worthless.

  12. Re:Sure but what if it's all a big hoax on The Health Benefits of Wind and Solar Exceed the Cost of All Subsidies (arstechnica.com) · · Score: 1

    The problem in politics is entirely about the leadership of both major parties not having a clue. The focus has been too much about petty politics and the LEADERSHIP trying to make as much money for themselves without figuring out that the focus needs to be on what is best for the people of this country, not just the wealthy.

    You are right that population density is a key to why the Democratic Party still has a chance, but again, that is due to the DNC leadership pushing for candidates who really don't seem to understand that helping the ENTIRE country is more important than trying to help just their own wealthy donors.

    Now, when it comes to "games", if we were to let the South, those who still cling to "The Confederacy" leave the USA, the level of racism would drop and average education levels would suddenly go way up for the USA, since "The South" doesn't want to fund education in areas with a high African American population, or really, spend any money in places where the majority of people are poor.

    A focus on "what is best for my state" will always fail if those who are in control of a state actually look down on higher education. If education were financed on a national level, with the local only responsible for extra programs such as sports, that would go a long way toward fixing problems, but the "States rights" people want to be free to make public education as pathetic as they can, with only the wealthy able to send their children to decent schools.

  13. Re:Electric Cars won't pollute where they are on The Health Benefits of Wind and Solar Exceed the Cost of All Subsidies (arstechnica.com) · · Score: 1

    Diesel engines here in the USA tend to generate more of that nasty black smoke as well, causing what I would expect to be more health issues. It always amazes me that you constantly hear about new EPA regulations on fuel economy while allowing these big rigs that seem to cause more pollution to remain on the road or to not have THAT issue addressed.

  14. Flawed logic used negates the positives on The Health Benefits of Wind and Solar Exceed the Cost of All Subsidies (arstechnica.com) · · Score: 1

    Considering that health care and a focus on environmental regulations to reduce pollution have been helping environmental quality by itself, the idea that wind/solar energy is the reason for the improved health/reduced death rates is flawed. New filters and methods of using coal/oil to generate power could also do the same thing in theory.

    With that said, we should not downplay the benefit of moving away from oil to generate power, since it would eliminate the power of the oil producers in the Middle East, and we could just leave that region alone fully. Also, it is a good thing to look for power generation that does not require additional materials to produce, such as radioactive materials in the case of nuclear power.

    There is also the benefit of not producing as any greenhouse gasses via "burning" of materials to generate power.

  15. Why can these machines even be accessed remotely? on US Voting Machines Cracked In 90 Minutes At DEFCON (thehill.com) · · Score: 1

    Seriously, why should these voting machines be accessable remotely? Private network, machines talk locally, no WiFi, and all ethernet ports should be locked down. The information can then be uploaded via a manual process, data pull every 30 minutes or something, and then uploaded, again via a closed and secured connection. Local network not being connected to the Internet means any hacking would have to be done locally, local numbers can be verified as well as what was uploaded at each interval. The only thing to be concerned with then, is if individual voting machines are properly counting votes(a printout and display of what a voter voted for SHOULD be shown, just saying, "We have your vote" gives reason to doubt if a vote was properly counted...for all people know, you vote one way, and votes are randomly given to other people if an electronic system does not display who it thinks you have voted for.

  16. Re:So is win10 Vulnerable? on WannaCry Exploit Could Infect Windows 10 (threatpost.com) · · Score: 1

    The design of Windows 10 helps to prevent these TYPE of attacks, but even then, some vulnerabilities will always be found over time. Patches released back in March of 2017 fixed the problem, unless the OP is talking about a new version that bypasses the FIX that Microsoft released. That is what isn't clear.

  17. This is why turning off updates is bad on WannaCry Exploit Could Infect Windows 10 (threatpost.com) · · Score: 2

    One of the biggest problems with Windows 7 is that the Windows Update system can break, and the automatic repair tools don't have the ability to fix the problem in a number of cases. If you intentionally turn off Windows Updates for whatever reason, and then do not go through the patches each week and install the "good" ones, you are setting yourself up for trouble. The vulnerabilities in Windows for Wannacry had a patch for Vista and newer back in March, so only those not installing updates were really vulnerable by the time Wannacry hit the news.

    So, like the changes to Windows or not, if you refuse the fixes that are made available, and THEN something happens, it is actually your fault at that point. It is like recall notices on cars, where if you get a recall notice saying your transmission might catch on fire in some situations without the recall, and you choose to ignore it or put it off, and then your transmission catches on fire, that is YOUR fault. A free fix was offered to prevent problems, and you ignored it.

  18. These people must be living under a rock on A New Report Finds No Evidence That People Will Work Less Under a Universal Basic Income (theoutline.com) · · Score: 1

    Many people work two or even three jobs these days to pay the bills, including mortgage/rent. With a universal basic income, they might cut back to a single 40-hour/week job. The real issue is more about the stagnant wages and increasing cost of living here in the USA. Yes, wages are going up for SOME people, but for many, the cost of living is going up faster than their income. Employers limiting employees to 24-28 hours per week just so they are not required to offer health insurance or other benefits is another issue, but again, it comes down to most people WISHING they could survive by working 40 hours per week.

    I will note that the amount of vacation and sick time offered here in the USA is also very low compared to Europe. Two weeks of vacation per year, and 5 days of sick time per year is the standard here in the USA, and many people don't even get that, because employers are limiting people to part-time status that does not offer sick/vacation time.

  19. It is all about depth in scenes, and a lack of it on Ask Slashdot: Why Did 3D TVs and Stereoscopic 3D Television Broadcasting Fail? · · Score: 1

    When you look at 3D movies that did well, such as Avatar, the thing that struck me was that there was a DEPTH to everything. It isn't about objects popping out of the screen, it is about scenes having a feeling that objects are in front of, or behind others. Things that pop out of the screen are more of a gimick to try to grab the attention of a viewer, and it almost always fails.

    When you see 3D broadcasts, do you feel like there is that sense of depth? Of course not, because it takes someone with an understanding of what works and what does not to make a new technology thrive. Stereo when it first came out, it wasn't necessary, but it added to what you were watching. Surround sound also adds, but you may notice that it isn't used well all that often(music gets too loud, you can't hear what is being said over the music in some cases, etc). When done well, you feel that surround sound really adds to what you are watching, from crowds of people and people talking behind the viewer, to the sound of shots and explosions that come from all around, not just in front.

    Until those who add 3D to broadcasts figure out that you CAN add depth to ANYTHING to enhance it, without objects needing to pop out of the screen, 3D just won't seem like much of an evolution. Again, it will never be seen as NECESSARY, but if it makes the experience of watching a movie, show, or even news broadcast feel more like you are there in the audience, it won't take off.

    Things like 4K definitely enhance the experience. If you go into an IMAX(or IMAX experience) theater, you probably notice that the sound and visuals can be spectacular. Rogue One on the IMAX....it really is worth going out to see, but compare a typical movie theater to having a 55 inch or larger 4K TV with surround sound, and you may wonder if it is worth going out to see. 3D....it has potential if done well, but most of the time, you get something that is very low budget.

  20. Common sense issues apply on Most Firefox Users Still Running Windows 7 (softpedia.com) · · Score: 1

    There will always be people running old computers that should NOT run a new OS. Many, if not most of you don't remember when low end computers had 128MB or 256MB of RAM when Windows XP was first released. Needless to say, Windows XP was painfully slow for those who decided to pay to upgrade their computers to XP back in 2001-2002. When faced with "too little RAM" as the reason for the performance issues with XP, you had people who either stuck with Windows 98 or ME, or they upgraded their computers, either replacing them, or adding RAM.

    Windows 10 feels a bit sluggish with less than 4GB of RAM, and that, or problems with a lack of drivers, will be good reasons to hold people back. Many didn't care for Windows 8 for a number of reasons, and some people don't realize that Windows 10 fixed many design issues introduced with Windows 8.

    And then, of course, you have those who don't like Windows 10 for various issues, paranoid about security and what may be shared, and waiting to see if there will be fixes for the complaints they personally may have. There were also the initial problems that have scared people off, where they tried to upgrade to Windows 10 and something happened to break Windows for them in a way that wouldn't let them recover on their own.

  21. Idiots looking in the wrong place for a reason on Donald Trump Won Because of Facebook (nymag.com) · · Score: 1

    It has been a given that almost all Republicans hate the Clintons. It is also a given that the majority of Democrats hate Trump, and what he has been saying. So, you now have a contest about who is disliked by more people, rather than how much people actually like the candidate. Add to all of this that the Democratic primaries were effectively stolen, and the DNC establishment rigged the primaries, so that the one candidate with genuine energy and enthusiasm was pushed out.

    I blame Debbie and the rest of those Clinton-loving people in the DNC who rigged the process.

  22. Religion is NOT the answer on Belief In God Correlates With Better Mental Health Treatment Outcomes · · Score: 2

    The real issue is that those who believe in a God that watches over them also tend to feel that their lives are being guided, and they PREFER to feel that someone is guiding/controlling/watching over them. Now, a big part of depression comes from feeling powerless about your situation in life, so from that point of view, feeling like SOMETHING is looking out for you is a positive thing, no matter what or who it may be. The solution to treating depression then, is to provide a system(can be peer based, not government) where people who are depressed have others who may be able to help them, or watch out for them to give support. What has happened with modern society is that there is a notable lack of community in most places, and that lack of community leads to depression, and a feeling of isolation. Picture if you had no friends living near you, and the only thing you do is go to a bar and drink by yourself, where you see others who have connections or are making connections. Do that for years, and depression is sure to set in. Neighbors would help, but if society makes it so people are not interested in being connected to your neighbors, that leads to depression.

  23. Re:So what... on Where Will Apple Get Flash Memory Now? · · Score: 4, Insightful

    A fab isn't just some generic piece of equipment, and getting beyond 32nm has proven difficult for most companies. If it were so easy, then AMD would have 22nm processors currently and wouldn't be having nearly as many problems competing in the CPU space. There is also expertise that is required beyond the basic equipment.

  24. Re:Samsung can suck it on Samsung Claims iPad Mini, iPad 4, New iPod Touch Also Infringe Patents · · Score: -1, Flamebait

    When Apple has not really brought anything NEW to the table in years, and instead has just done a copy of what others have invented, it becomes clear that people are not copying APPLE, but instead can be copying from the same inspiration that Apple used. For example, NFC is available on multiple Android devices, but it is NOT a new idea. Apple looks at this, comes up with its own modified implementation, and then claims it invented the idea of NFC, rather than their own implementation of the idea. Invention then becomes a new implementation of an existing idea to Apple, while for others, it is working on new concepts that really are new and innovative.

    Larger screens and higher resolutions for screens, smaller, lighter, thinner implementations of the same thing...those are not INVENTIONS, and should be seen as naturally evolving things. Individual solutions in the form of copyright can make sense, since even if a concept is known, there is a lot of work that goes into figuring out how to implement that concept, and THAT should not automatically be open for others to duplicate. Without the concept of copyright, there is nothing that would prevent AMD from just looking at the exact designs that Intel is using in chips and then implementing them in its own chips.

  25. Re:Article is misleading on Supreme Court To Decide Whether Or Not You Own What You Own · · Score: 2

    This also brings into question the idea of special pricing based on market being what is at fault. Why should the exact same product that is being sold for a low price in China sell for more in the USA, except for the cost of shipping, import tariffs, and taxes? From that point of view then, if you buy a product outside of the USA and then sell it here, the seller should be expected to pay all of the associated fees, and that would generally eliminate any benefit for selling the product cheap(because you give up your profits and then some).