Andrew Tannenbaum put it best with, "Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of tapes hurtling down the highway."
This math is not done by me, but by Bonboard on Everything2 (search "Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of quarter-inch tapes"):
13 Petabytes per second.
For comparison purposes, this is equivalent to about 650 strands of perfectly saturated, single-mode fiber optic cable.
This figure will, of course, vary depending on a number of factors. In order to compensate for your own rate of travel and storage media, simply fill in the blanks below to get your tally! It's fun for kids of all ages! BW = (( WV / (TW * TL * TH ) ) * TC * WS / WL) , where
BW = bandwidth in bytes / second WV = the volume of your station wagon, in cubic meters TW = the width of each individual quarter-inch tape, in meters TL = the length of each individual quarter-inch tape, in meters TH = the height of each individual quarter-inch tape, in meters TC = the capacity of each individual quarter-inch tape, in bytes WS = the speed of your station wagon, in meters/sec WL = the length of your station wagon, in meters
This figure assumes average instantaneous bandwidth down the length of the wagon; in reality, I would assume that the bulk of the data transfer would occur in the region nearest the trunk. To get my figure, simply plug in: WV = 2.72, TW = 0.054, TL = 0.073, TH = 0.0105, TC = 35.0 * 10 ^ 9, WS = 26.8, WL = 4.75. These numbers are meant to describe a stuffed 2001 Subaru Outback doing 60MPH using 35GiB tapes of this form factor.
18 inch footprint? Just dead wrong. The smallest Segway has a 16 x 21 footprint. The largest is 19 x 25.I said, 18 inches square (not 18 square inches), which is pretty dman close. And still orders of magnitude away from a jogging strolller.
Imagine 200 college kids with jogging strollers (to give an idea of the size) all trying to go somewhere after class.
Jogging strollers? the average jogging stroller is about two feet long, two feet wide, and has a person behind it. A segway has about an 18 inch square footprint. These are comprable how?
I hate to be a boor, but isn't this the sort of thing Windows get's criticized for all the time, having "broken" backwards compatibility? It seems like if Microsoft is going to get flamed for retaining (somewhat kludgy, perhaps) backwards compatibility, the same standards should be applied to X windows...
In case the site goes under, here here's the Google cache.
Re:Wireless Monitor? Not happening...
on
Wireless Monitors?
·
· Score: 2
The bandwidth requirements for a wireless monitor are impractical. It's certainly possible, but the amount of RF bandwidth and/or power required to do it would either kill you, cook your intestines or give you a nice bout of cancer, depending on how you implement it.
I certainly hope this isn't true. If it is, I'll have to throw out my TV and rabbit ears!
It's a MS tablet PC, running WinCE. Looking at the site will show you that.
Correct. However, it has built in remote access software (Citrix ICA, Microsoft RDP) and it's being marketed as a wireless monitor. Just take a look at the title of the page: "airpanel 100 Wireless Monitor".
Microsoft seems to have just banned any open source or even free (as in beer) CIFS implementations.
Actually, it looks to me like they just banned licenses that require the code to be distributed (ie, GPL). Take a look at the text with my emphasis:
1.4 "IPR Impairing License" shall mean the GNU General Public License, the GNU Lesser/Library General Public License, and
any license that requires in any instance that other software distributed with software subject to such license (a) be disclosed and distributed in source code form; [etc.]
It looks like BSD style liscenses are still peachy keen. My guess is that Microsoft is trying to sidestep the viral nature of GPL. That way if someone implements CIFS better than they did, Microsoft can use that code instead. =)
I think it's because technology is easier to understand. It's not as complex as humans are. Technology also scales better than personal interactions do. It lets us do things more efficiently, but, mon dieu, what kind of world are we creating?
Appearantly, an effecient, scalable, easier to understand world.
My cell phone sets its clock from the basestation automatically, and doesn't even have a way to manually set it. This is my favorite feature of my phone -- the time is always right.
Ironically, the basestation clock itself is set manually. It doesn't even automatically correct for daylight savings. I had a friend who works for a large cell phone provider. One day she had to be at work rediculously early in the morning. Why, I ask? Becasue someone has to update the main clock for daylight savings, she said! =)
How does switching to a nonstandard order fix your problem? You'll still have to convert. Oh, I forgot... you only care if your code runs on obsolete processors (8086), and don't care if it breaks on everything that has come out since the 1970s?
Your cluelessness is astounding.
Thank you for your refreshing rudeness. You know, it's assholes like you that make it less than fun for newbies like me to fully embrace the Linux community (and no offence at all meant to you nice guys, but they are quite a few assholes).
Hint: I am not a professional programmer, I'm just a kid. I wasn't born with innate knowledge of interoperability, and, suprise!, neither were you. So raise up off.
If it makes you feel any better, I realize I was wrong, thanks to the non-asshole responses I got. It does makes sense to stick by the - any - network standard, and get used to calling ntohl() every time, so that your code keeps compatible. Although the original choice of byte order was fairly arbirary, we should stick with it
In the future, remember that you don't have to be an asshole to get a point across. You'll win more friends that way. Or at the very least, you'll make less enemies.
Oh, and anythning that has come out since the 1970s? I guess I must have been mistaken about the majority of the dekstop market. Silly me. Looks like the x86 is obsolete after all, it's not like it's sitting on millions of desks across the world as we speak.
Oh, god. Look, since the start of time itself binary data on the net has been big endian. No, you do not know better.
Um, I don't mean to flame, but why does it matter? Byte ordering strikes me as rather arbitrary. Except for the fact that you probably want to keep any new standards consistent with the existing dominant processors, which seem to be little endian. At least, I for one am annoyed at having to call ntohl() every time I want an int I pulled off the network to be usuable.
I hate to burst the/. reader's bubble, but the collective group of us boycotting a game will do *nothing* to hurt blizard.
Oh, boo-hoo. Making a difference is hard. Let's not try!
If everyone sat down and decided to let their rights get run over because it was hard to make a difference, we'd still have slaverr, Hitler would still be killing Jews, and women still wouldn't be able to vote. I know this isn't the same thing, but still. If everyone decided that they were too small to make a difference, we would never progress as a society. But when a bunch of the small guys are brave enough to stand up, change happens.
Don't ever back down because you don't think you can make a difference. Stand up anyway. You'd be suprised the diffence that the little guy can make.
I run photoshop occasionally, and that soaks up a a good 100MB of memory, depending on what I'm working on. Even then, it Window's is pretty snappy on my machine, better than I remember X being on the same machine. On the other hand, I have very recently done a fresh format/reinstall, and I've got toadmit, Windows does tend to need that far too often.
Alltogether, though, I think we can both agree that VMs and kernel speed *is* important, especially in a desktop enviroment. We've both had bad experiences with GUIs due to kernel problems. Which is really the point I was trying to originally make.
Interestingly, this is why I hate Win2k. Win2k seems to always want to swap background apps out, even if you have plent of ram available. This is beyond irritating when I minimize netscape to work in a text editor, then bring it back to the front, only to have to wait 2 minutes for the thing to swap back in (I'm on a laptop--slow HD).
Really? I never have this problem at all. Win2k has always been snappy as it comes for me.
This is wild speculation, but there's an option (in conrol panel->system, I believe) to switch between optimized for applications and and optimized for background services. You may want to check and make sure that's set correctly.
A major problem with alot of linux admins is shown in the article. It's not about how fast your kernel is, especially when it comes to a 2 second difference in 50 seconds of computing time, but how long your machine will stay up.
It is about how fast your kernel is, if you want to use Linux on your Desktop. I, personally, don't , for a couple of reasons. One is, I don't have to fiddle with obscure text files every time I want to change some little thing. But the major reason is that when running it in a desktop enviroment (Ximian Gnome, the whole shebang), it's noticiably sluggish. Now from what I've gathered, this is partly due to the windowing system, etc., buty also largely due to VM issues and such like. If you want the average guy to run Linux on the desktop, you're going to have to design a system that doesn't feel sluggish. I hyave a fairly nimble computer. My windows should appear where I want them when I want them, not a tenth of a second later.
Oh, and testing how often a kernel crashes in 100 days? I sure hope your kernel doesn't crash at all is that long. Even my Win2k box can veat 100 days uptime easily.
The majority of students even in a small school can not be organized to stop running this type [morhpeus, et al] of software. They just bitch about the slow connection and keep right on downloading mp3's.
There are a reason most college kicks complain about bandwidth while running the same bandwidth sucking program: that's what they want to do. Surfing the web at top speed is nice, but most college students really just want to download music. So it doesn't really make sense for them to stop doing it in order to free up the bandwidth. Telling college kids to stop downloading music in order to free up bandwidth is like telling a computer gamer to stop playing games in orer to free up CPU cycles. What good are the freee resources if you're not using them for what you want to do?
In the end, college kids mostly just want to download music. I know, because I am one. So no matter how well intentioned, any kind of packet filtering scheme is just making the college kids madder.
I'm not entirely sure I see the point of this exercise. Bear with me. I can see upgrading the drive cables or trying to solder on extra memory for performance reasons (as some people have done), but flashing the BIOS of the XBox seems to be a pointless exercise.
Why hack up an interesting bit of hardware/software? I'm shocked a Slashdot reader even has to ask! Because it's fun to do, of course. Fiddling around and figuring out new and intersting systems is what hacking's all about. I imagine there's a lot to be learned about the system's internals by looking at the BIOS ROM. And no end of the cool hacks you can do by providing a non-standard BIOS image. Clear wall cheats, for example (if you're into that sort of thing), or make it possible to burn your own programs and run 'em (not illegally, of course), the list could go on and on, really.
Me, personally, I bought my XBox for playing games and DVDs, like most people. I love fucking around with hardware myself, but this thing is a toy to be played with and enjoyed for me, not a job.
Well, no one's forcing you to hack your XBox. Play all the games and DVDs you want, and if someone else wants to work on cool hacks, let 'em.
Re:problem with large storage mp3 players
on
80 Gig MP3 Player
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
Is how do you navigate through 80gb of content?
Very easily. Ok, I've only got 8 gigs of mp3s, but navigating through my collection is still not a problem in the least. I just have a directory structure that goes something like C:\music\Band Name\Album Name\mp3s. Compilation albums go into C:\music\Various Artists. It's just like any large physical album collection I might have, only it alphebetizes itself. Navigating through my mp3 collection has never given me any difficulty. And if I ever get a lot more bands' mp3s, I can just categorize the Band Name directories in Genre directories.
As far as I've seen, most portable mp3s players haven't been able to catch onto the value on a directory structure. With the tiniest bit of discipline and a directory structure, organizing a very large mp3 collection is not difficult at all.
Slugs? Isn't that an archaic unit of measure? Surely you meant to ask for its mass in Newtons
Good Lord no. First of all, the SI until for mass is the (kilo)gram, the newton is a measure of weight. Second, the slug, which IIRC weighs one pound in earth gravity, is a perfectly acceptable unit of mass. At least, as acceptable as imperial units get
Slashdot Mirror
18 inch footprint? Just dead wrong. The smallest Segway has a 16 x 21 footprint. The largest is 19 x 25.I said, 18 inches square (not 18 square inches), which is pretty dman close. And still orders of magnitude away from a jogging strolller.
In case the site goes under, here here's the Google cache.
I certainly hope this isn't true. If it is, I'll have to throw out my TV and rabbit ears!
Correct. However, it has built in remote access software (Citrix ICA, Microsoft RDP) and it's being marketed as a wireless monitor. Just take a look at the title of the page: "airpanel 100 Wireless Monitor".
Appearantly, an effecient, scalable, easier to understand world.
Am I the only one that finds it ironic that the moderation on this is "Insightful=3, Informative=1?"
Ironically, the basestation clock itself is set manually. It doesn't even automatically correct for daylight savings. I had a friend who works for a large cell phone provider. One day she had to be at work rediculously early in the morning. Why, I ask? Becasue someone has to update the main clock for daylight savings, she said! =)
Look like the BFAs are here. This is the seond time I've seen one. Not quite time to subscribe, though
I tihnk you have to sign yourself up for being unemployed for a month or two, first. =)
Heh. Excellently put. I'd mod you up as funny, if I could.
Thank you for your refreshing rudeness. You know, it's assholes like you that make it less than fun for newbies like me to fully embrace the Linux community (and no offence at all meant to you nice guys, but they are quite a few assholes).
Hint: I am not a professional programmer, I'm just a kid. I wasn't born with innate knowledge of interoperability, and, suprise!, neither were you. So raise up off.
If it makes you feel any better, I realize I was wrong, thanks to the non-asshole responses I got. It does makes sense to stick by the - any - network standard, and get used to calling ntohl() every time, so that your code keeps compatible. Although the original choice of byte order was fairly arbirary, we should stick with it
In the future, remember that you don't have to be an asshole to get a point across. You'll win more friends that way. Or at the very least, you'll make less enemies.
Oh, and anythning that has come out since the 1970s? I guess I must have been mistaken about the majority of the dekstop market. Silly me. Looks like the x86 is obsolete after all, it's not like it's sitting on millions of desks across the world as we speak.
Um, I don't mean to flame, but why does it matter? Byte ordering strikes me as rather arbitrary. Except for the fact that you probably want to keep any new standards consistent with the existing dominant processors, which seem to be little endian. At least, I for one am annoyed at having to call ntohl() every time I want an int I pulled off the network to be usuable.
Oh, boo-hoo. Making a difference is hard. Let's not try!
If everyone sat down and decided to let their rights get run over because it was hard to make a difference, we'd still have slaverr, Hitler would still be killing Jews, and women still wouldn't be able to vote. I know this isn't the same thing, but still. If everyone decided that they were too small to make a difference, we would never progress as a society. But when a bunch of the small guys are brave enough to stand up, change happens.
Don't ever back down because you don't think you can make a difference. Stand up anyway. You'd be suprised the diffence that the little guy can make.
I run photoshop occasionally, and that soaks up a a good 100MB of memory, depending on what I'm working on. Even then, it Window's is pretty snappy on my machine, better than I remember X being on the same machine. On the other hand, I have very recently done a fresh format/reinstall, and I've got toadmit, Windows does tend to need that far too often.
Alltogether, though, I think we can both agree that VMs and kernel speed *is* important, especially in a desktop enviroment. We've both had bad experiences with GUIs due to kernel problems. Which is really the point I was trying to originally make.
Interestingly, this is why I hate Win2k. Win2k seems to always want to swap background apps out, even if you have plent of ram available. This is beyond irritating when I minimize netscape to work in a text editor, then bring it back to the front, only to have to wait 2 minutes for the thing to swap back in (I'm on a laptop--slow HD).
Really? I never have this problem at all. Win2k has always been snappy as it comes for me.
This is wild speculation, but there's an option (in conrol panel->system, I believe) to switch between optimized for applications and and optimized for background services. You may want to check and make sure that's set correctly.
A major problem with alot of linux admins is shown in the article. It's not about how fast your kernel is, especially when it comes to a 2 second difference in 50 seconds of computing time, but how long your machine will stay up.
It is about how fast your kernel is, if you want to use Linux on your Desktop. I, personally, don't , for a couple of reasons. One is, I don't have to fiddle with obscure text files every time I want to change some little thing. But the major reason is that when running it in a desktop enviroment (Ximian Gnome, the whole shebang), it's noticiably sluggish. Now from what I've gathered, this is partly due to the windowing system, etc., buty also largely due to VM issues and such like. If you want the average guy to run Linux on the desktop, you're going to have to design a system that doesn't feel sluggish. I hyave a fairly nimble computer. My windows should appear where I want them when I want them, not a tenth of a second later.
Oh, and testing how often a kernel crashes in 100 days? I sure hope your kernel doesn't crash at all is that long. Even my Win2k box can veat 100 days uptime easily.
Doesn't minors have civil rights?
Of course not. They don't vote do they?
Sadly, this is how is seems to work...
The majority of students even in a small school can not be organized to stop running this type [morhpeus, et al] of software. They just bitch about the slow connection and keep right on downloading mp3's.
There are a reason most college kicks complain about bandwidth while running the same bandwidth sucking program: that's what they want to do. Surfing the web at top speed is nice, but most college students really just want to download music. So it doesn't really make sense for them to stop doing it in order to free up the bandwidth. Telling college kids to stop downloading music in order to free up bandwidth is like telling a computer gamer to stop playing games in orer to free up CPU cycles. What good are the freee resources if you're not using them for what you want to do?
In the end, college kids mostly just want to download music. I know, because I am one. So no matter how well intentioned, any kind of packet filtering scheme is just making the college kids madder.
I'm not entirely sure I see the point of this exercise. Bear with me. I can see upgrading the drive cables or trying to solder on extra memory for performance reasons (as some people have done), but flashing the BIOS of the XBox seems to be a pointless exercise.
Why hack up an interesting bit of hardware/software? I'm shocked a Slashdot reader even has to ask! Because it's fun to do, of course. Fiddling around and figuring out new and intersting systems is what hacking's all about. I imagine there's a lot to be learned about the system's internals by looking at the BIOS ROM. And no end of the cool hacks you can do by providing a non-standard BIOS image. Clear wall cheats, for example (if you're into that sort of thing), or make it possible to burn your own programs and run 'em (not illegally, of course), the list could go on and on, really.
Me, personally, I bought my XBox for playing games and DVDs, like most people. I love fucking around with hardware myself, but this thing is a toy to be played with and enjoyed for me, not a job.
Well, no one's forcing you to hack your XBox. Play all the games and DVDs you want, and if someone else wants to work on cool hacks, let 'em.
Is how do you navigate through 80gb of content?
Very easily. Ok, I've only got 8 gigs of mp3s, but navigating through my collection is still not a problem in the least. I just have a directory structure that goes something like C:\music\Band Name\Album Name\mp3s. Compilation albums go into C:\music\Various Artists. It's just like any large physical album collection I might have, only it alphebetizes itself. Navigating through my mp3 collection has never given me any difficulty. And if I ever get a lot more bands' mp3s, I can just categorize the Band Name directories in Genre directories.
As far as I've seen, most portable mp3s players haven't been able to catch onto the value on a directory structure. With the tiniest bit of discipline and a directory structure, organizing a very large mp3 collection is not difficult at all.
Slugs? Isn't that an archaic unit of measure? Surely you meant to ask for its mass in Newtons
Good Lord no. First of all, the SI until for mass is the (kilo)gram, the newton is a measure of weight. Second, the slug, which IIRC weighs one pound in earth gravity, is a perfectly acceptable unit of mass. At least, as acceptable as imperial units get