How true. Just last week, the wife and I went shopping for a toaster. They are all made in China now! So we settled for a brushed-aluminum model that contained no paint at least. Works great, but I think I'm probably going to be spending an innordinate ammount of the rest of my life trying to find well-made stuff that isn't made in China. Unless, of course, they clean up over there...
...it would seem that I am in the minority, considering that due to my lack of friends and/or social acquaintances that I actually spend more time online than I normally would. The wife and I left a close-knit Navy community when we ended our enlistments, and moved to Silicon Valley to take new jobs. Now our closest friends have moved back to the East coast and we both work in a slightly hostile environment where everyone is at least 10 years our senior, or they have kids, or they are just plain unsociable.
So I find that I increasingly spend more time online than I normally would because all of the people I am now remotely close to are on Teamspeak, Ventrillo, various forums, and (ugh) Myspace. Oh, how I wish it were the other way around, but until we have enough money saved up to get the hell out of here and move to someplace far less materialistic and divisive across social boundaries it looks like we are stuck. At least I don't have to worry about getting laid but then again it's harder and harder to get in the mood when you're drowning in depression.
Wait, wait, wait... What? Good eye for finding this one. At first glance it would seem that this is the opposite of what record companies would want to do--promote a single based on how popular of a download it is--because the more the hype it, the more people will simply steal it. However, after thinking about it for a minute, aren't we (the technoliteratti) still a relative minority compared to the Walmart/Target/Bestbuy consumers of the world (read: USA)? Are the record companies using "us" as a sort of popularity guage in order to determine what to sell to "them"? I need to ponder on this some more in leu of the fact that the RIAA members are so staunchly anti-P2P. Are they "oppressing" us on one hand while using us as a resource on the other hand? I suddenly feel so... dirty.
Anyone remember when DDR2 was rolled out and was actually *slower* than the standard of the day, regular DDR? It took about a year IIR for the speed of the newer ramm to catch up and overtake the older ram, and even then it was still pricey. I expect with the current glut in the market of DDR2 that it will take quite a while for DDR3 to be considered a worthy upgrade.
I dunno. I'm one of those few (I won't call myself rare) that can detect the slightest bit of off-key-edness and it drives me bat shit crazy when I can hear it. Like I'll be grooving to a live performance and then I'll notice that the lead guitarist is oh-ever-so-slightly out of tune, and it will ruin the whole experience for me. But as long as everyone is in tune with each other, then what does it really matter, or am I missing something?
I'll also look up if I hear an airplane engine when the pitch doesn't sound "right" to me. Not that I'd really know or anything, I'm no airplane mech or anything.
1) Bittorrent depends on the number of seeders and their location. My downloads vary greatly and there is no way to benchmark this. 2) I Skype with my traveling spouse quite a bit; the connection is always very good. 3) Don't know but Fark, Slashdot, Digg, Engadget, Gmail, Weatherchannel (all my favourites) load very quickly so what's the point? 4) Utube vids usually load very quickly, unless I'm downloading something. Again, hard to benchmark. 5) What's tor? What's freenet? No clue. (I will look them up later) 6) I don't know what SIP is but Teamspeak has usually less than 1% packet loss, and Ventrilo is clear as a bell.
Point is, it's hard to benchmark something that gets its sources from so many different things. I have Comcast and I do download quite a bit--I'm no fanboy--it is quite simply the only cable internet provider in my area and there are no plans for anyone (Verizon) to roll out FOIS in my neck of the woods any time soon (which in itself sucks and is also ironic, considering I live in SILICON FREAKING VALLEY).
Now I pose a question. Consider that a DVD version of a linux distro is 4.7gb. Just how many of you out there are downloading more than 20 DVD-length Linux distros a month? Because that seems to me to be the only legitimate use of BT. I myself d/l multiple shows via BT but have never hit the limit--what exactly could anyone be downloading that takwes mroe than 100gb a month??
Another thought. The reason why Comcast won't disclose the bandwidth limit is maybe to instill FUD among the masses... Suppose they go on record and say the limit is 100gb. Then everyone knows the limit and tries to get their money's worth, where as now, most cautious users will do as little as possible, lest Comcast shut them off? Think of how slow the internet would be for everyone if we all tried to max out our 100gb limit...
One more thing. I'd love to be able to shop for an ISP like we used to when 56k was the golden standard, but today you can either choose your local cable provider or any number of DSL choices. Since cable > DSL there is really no choice if you want the fastest service (nope! no FOIS in SILICON FREAKING VALLEY) and the only cable provider in town is.. you guessed it, COMCAST.
That's what I get for trying to reconstruct my post from memory due to Slashdot telling me I was behind a firewall and errored out... Sry for the double post.
So you're saying that 30 seconds is considered normal for restarting all these "devices"? Our hardware operates in the milli- to nano-second range nowadays (ok maybe a couple of seconds for hard drives to spin up). Heck, my WinXP box boots up in under 50 seconds, I might as well start fresh everytime.. which is what I do actually.
I agree with your statement but you're missing the point; we're not talking about 286-era devices here. Thanks.
And you're saying that doing all of that should normally take 30 seconds or more? These "devices" operate in the millisecond to nanosecond range (OK maybe a second or two for hard drive platters to spin up). Heck, my WinXP box boots up in 50 seconds, I might as well power down and start fresh every time.
I agree with your statement but you're missing the point. We're not talking about 286-era stuff here.
On one hand, I finally caved and shelled out $650 for a new 8800GTX after the fallout from AMD/ATI's recent release did not result in a price drop like I hoped. Oh well, I finally (after 8 months of waiting) have a leading-edge video card that is DX10 compliant and will last me a couple of years hopefully. I can finally crank up all the eye candy in all of my games that my two 7900GTs couldn't handle on my 22" widescreen. Sweet, and game on.
I am still running WinXP because all of my current hardware and software run on it just fine with no problems and I have the OS set up just the way I like. I have no intention of "upgrading" to Vista though so the DX10 compliance of my new card did not really factor in my purchase decision--it's just a nice bullet point that if I wanted to, I could install Vista and run Crysis the way it is meant to be played (when it comes out).
On the other hand, I'm kinda PO'ed that through some arbitrary decision, my expensive new hardware has been "obsoleted". I'd hardly call myself an early adopter since I waited so long to get this card but now that I have it just leaves a bad taste in my mouth.
Could "crush" IE? Come now, that's a little euphamistic, no? Is Microsoft's browser still the juggernaut that it once was, and what is so important about "crushing" it?
with lots of pictures but no real "meat". This one from 2004 is far superior; They even have pictures of the solder wave machine which this article didn't even include at all. BTW that first machine that the author couldn't name is a solder paste screen printer. The other machine the athor hinted at (the one with the reels) is apparently a bios chip testing station. Really, for such a good site I'm suprised they bothered to type this one up when it's been done so well before...
I think Gigabyte does this every year or couple of years as a pretty decent PR op. My advice: RTFA Extremetech's first, then go to the link above for a lot more detail if you're still interested.
I tend to get random crashes most often when I go to enter text in a forum reply (I do frequent a lot of forums I guess), but it has always "Restored this session" with most of my comments intact to it's credit. So at least when it does crash (for me at least) it doesn't cause more than a few second's frustration.
And I've noticed this on a clean fresh install on a clean fresh OS install, so it's nothing I've done. And by random, I mean maybe 2 or 3 times a week.
We do need some serious competition from AMD/ATI in order to drive down NVidia's prices. And yes, I'm a gaming enthusiast so this matters to me. I'm rockin som eold 7900GT's and I want to upgrade but only if there's a significant performance improvement per dollar ratio.
I buy them. I like some of the features of Max PC, and it's always nice to see what the top-of-the-line hardware is out there right now and how it stacks up to mine. (I also like to be able to take it to the bathroom...) although they are pandering to the masses more and more these days. But I find ther real meat in CPU. Whitepapers, industry buzz, in depth and insightful editorials by movers and shakers (cough *cmdrtaco* cough *anand* cough). Actually, I have subscriptions to these two, plus a couple of game mags because I'm into that.
I leave the rest of it alone--they are good for novice users (OK, occasionally Dvorak has something interesting to say) or people who are interested in the latest word-processing or spreadsheet software.
Let's say I have a couple album's worth of music that I've created over the years. Say, 30 songs or so. Now what if I want to stream that from my website? Does this mean the RIAA owns my work?
There are certain bands' CDs that I'll always buy even if I haven't heard any of the songs, and I doubt I'm alone in this. Trent's already made his money from me and countless other fans; I think it's really a cool thing to do to release the tracks in modifiable format for all of us.
Another good thing I see more and more nowadays are the bands who make their songs available to listen to online. I bought the Black Keys CD after listening to their songs this way.
Boggles the mind indeed. Could be a good way to promote Blu-ray or HD DVD's...
Actually, I like to download a week's worth of Stewart and Colbert and then watch it in my off-time (and don't question the legality of my choice--I'd do the same thing if I had a Tivo and that's how I justify it so there). But I find that if I get behind by a couple of weeks that I'll just let those episodes go because they aren't current anymore.
A good Daily Show DVD would contain all the interviews, all the comic bits, and perhaps some of the better "news" pieces to browse through. That's easily doable, and not just with the Daily show; you could probably do it for any of the Late-night talk shows.
to make the corporate lawyers feel comfortable. And shameful as it may be, there is no small amount of greed involved; the big corps want to maximize the earning potential of their products and the established way to do that is to clamp down on who gets access to what. NBC/CBS/FOX/CommedyCentral/etc want you to go it THEIR websites to see their content so they can generate discreet viewership tallies to entice more advertisers to give them more money.
The flaw (as I think the common view is) in espousing the "virtues" of spreading content around for free is that the people who produce the content do not benefit from it directly and that's all the traditional been counters care about. "We lost X amount of potential viewers to our site (which is oriented to get them to see what we want them to see) and that equates to Y amount of lost revenue. Clamp all our content down so that we can maximize our profit." Think of the NFL's end-of-broadcast disclaimer for a perfect example.
Put simply, the crux is this: juxtaposing the need for people to see your product with the need to make real, quantifiable dollars from it. It used to be that we lived in a 3-channel-plus-PBS TV world, where the best way to spread interest about your shows was found in the TV guide, seconded by word-of-mouth. These companies need to embrace our digital world rather than try to fight it like the RIAA and MPAA have done (with questionable success). Offering their content on DVD's and Itunes is a great start but what better way to get people to want to purchase this stuff than by releasing low quality 320x240 vids on Youtube? I'll even go so far as to posit that the spreading and sharing and bookmarking of popular "viral" videos is the new "word-of-mouth"...
So it's all well and good that some celebrities are promoting the easy spreading of digital media such as the TV shows they produce and star in; let's just try to understand it in a way that satisfies the demands of the bottom line and also the public's need for more content. It's going to have to be a compromise...
Slashdot Mirror
Question. Where are the ships? I wanted to read about video cards and ships. This article only half-delivers.
How true. Just last week, the wife and I went shopping for a toaster. They are all made in China now! So we settled for a brushed-aluminum model that contained no paint at least. Works great, but I think I'm probably going to be spending an innordinate ammount of the rest of my life trying to find well-made stuff that isn't made in China. Unless, of course, they clean up over there...
...it would seem that I am in the minority, considering that due to my lack of friends and/or social acquaintances that I actually spend more time online than I normally would. The wife and I left a close-knit Navy community when we ended our enlistments, and moved to Silicon Valley to take new jobs. Now our closest friends have moved back to the East coast and we both work in a slightly hostile environment where everyone is at least 10 years our senior, or they have kids, or they are just plain unsociable.
So I find that I increasingly spend more time online than I normally would because all of the people I am now remotely close to are on Teamspeak, Ventrillo, various forums, and (ugh) Myspace. Oh, how I wish it were the other way around, but until we have enough money saved up to get the hell out of here and move to someplace far less materialistic and divisive across social boundaries it looks like we are stuck. At least I don't have to worry about getting laid but then again it's harder and harder to get in the mood when you're drowning in depression.
Wait, wait, wait... What? Good eye for finding this one. At first glance it would seem that this is the opposite of what record companies would want to do--promote a single based on how popular of a download it is--because the more the hype it, the more people will simply steal it. However, after thinking about it for a minute, aren't we (the technoliteratti) still a relative minority compared to the Walmart/Target/Bestbuy consumers of the world (read: USA)? Are the record companies using "us" as a sort of popularity guage in order to determine what to sell to "them"? I need to ponder on this some more in leu of the fact that the RIAA members are so staunchly anti-P2P. Are they "oppressing" us on one hand while using us as a resource on the other hand? I suddenly feel so... dirty.
Verrrrrrrrrry interesting.
Anyone remember when DDR2 was rolled out and was actually *slower* than the standard of the day, regular DDR? It took about a year IIR for the speed of the newer ramm to catch up and overtake the older ram, and even then it was still pricey. I expect with the current glut in the market of DDR2 that it will take quite a while for DDR3 to be considered a worthy upgrade.
I dunno. I'm one of those few (I won't call myself rare) that can detect the slightest bit of off-key-edness and it drives me bat shit crazy when I can hear it. Like I'll be grooving to a live performance and then I'll notice that the lead guitarist is oh-ever-so-slightly out of tune, and it will ruin the whole experience for me. But as long as everyone is in tune with each other, then what does it really matter, or am I missing something?
I'll also look up if I hear an airplane engine when the pitch doesn't sound "right" to me. Not that I'd really know or anything, I'm no airplane mech or anything.
1) Bittorrent depends on the number of seeders and their location. My downloads vary greatly and there is no way to benchmark this.
2) I Skype with my traveling spouse quite a bit; the connection is always very good.
3) Don't know but Fark, Slashdot, Digg, Engadget, Gmail, Weatherchannel (all my favourites) load very quickly so what's the point?
4) Utube vids usually load very quickly, unless I'm downloading something. Again, hard to benchmark.
5) What's tor? What's freenet? No clue. (I will look them up later)
6) I don't know what SIP is but Teamspeak has usually less than 1% packet loss, and Ventrilo is clear as a bell.
Point is, it's hard to benchmark something that gets its sources from so many different things. I have Comcast and I do download quite a bit--I'm no fanboy--it is quite simply the only cable internet provider in my area and there are no plans for anyone (Verizon) to roll out FOIS in my neck of the woods any time soon (which in itself sucks and is also ironic, considering I live in SILICON FREAKING VALLEY).
Now I pose a question. Consider that a DVD version of a linux distro is 4.7gb. Just how many of you out there are downloading more than 20 DVD-length Linux distros a month? Because that seems to me to be the only legitimate use of BT. I myself d/l multiple shows via BT but have never hit the limit--what exactly could anyone be downloading that takwes mroe than 100gb a month??
Another thought. The reason why Comcast won't disclose the bandwidth limit is maybe to instill FUD among the masses... Suppose they go on record and say the limit is 100gb. Then everyone knows the limit and tries to get their money's worth, where as now, most cautious users will do as little as possible, lest Comcast shut them off? Think of how slow the internet would be for everyone if we all tried to max out our 100gb limit...
One more thing. I'd love to be able to shop for an ISP like we used to when 56k was the golden standard, but today you can either choose your local cable provider or any number of DSL choices. Since cable > DSL there is really no choice if you want the fastest service (nope! no FOIS in SILICON FREAKING VALLEY) and the only cable provider in town is.. you guessed it, COMCAST.
That's what I get for trying to reconstruct my post from memory due to Slashdot telling me I was behind a firewall and errored out... Sry for the double post.
So you're saying that 30 seconds is considered normal for restarting all these "devices"? Our hardware operates in the milli- to nano-second range nowadays (ok maybe a couple of seconds for hard drives to spin up). Heck, my WinXP box boots up in under 50 seconds, I might as well start fresh everytime.. which is what I do actually.
I agree with your statement but you're missing the point; we're not talking about 286-era devices here. Thanks.
And you're saying that doing all of that should normally take 30 seconds or more? These "devices" operate in the millisecond to nanosecond range (OK maybe a second or two for hard drive platters to spin up). Heck, my WinXP box boots up in 50 seconds, I might as well power down and start fresh every time.
I agree with your statement but you're missing the point. We're not talking about 286-era stuff here.
On one hand, I finally caved and shelled out $650 for a new 8800GTX after the fallout from AMD/ATI's recent release did not result in a price drop like I hoped. Oh well, I finally (after 8 months of waiting) have a leading-edge video card that is DX10 compliant and will last me a couple of years hopefully. I can finally crank up all the eye candy in all of my games that my two 7900GTs couldn't handle on my 22" widescreen. Sweet, and game on.
I am still running WinXP because all of my current hardware and software run on it just fine with no problems and I have the OS set up just the way I like. I have no intention of "upgrading" to Vista though so the DX10 compliance of my new card did not really factor in my purchase decision--it's just a nice bullet point that if I wanted to, I could install Vista and run Crysis the way it is meant to be played (when it comes out).
On the other hand, I'm kinda PO'ed that through some arbitrary decision, my expensive new hardware has been "obsoleted". I'd hardly call myself an early adopter since I waited so long to get this card but now that I have it just leaves a bad taste in my mouth.
Oh well, I guess I'm stuck with it. Meh.
...when they can make a hard drive to rival the performance of my Raptors, and then I'll be impressed.
Feh.
Could "crush" IE? Come now, that's a little euphamistic, no? Is Microsoft's browser still the juggernaut that it once was, and what is so important about "crushing" it?
with lots of pictures but no real "meat". This one from 2004 is far superior; They even have pictures of the solder wave machine which this article didn't even include at all. BTW that first machine that the author couldn't name is a solder paste screen printer. The other machine the athor hinted at (the one with the reels) is apparently a bios chip testing station. Really, for such a good site I'm suprised they bothered to type this one up when it's been done so well before... I think Gigabyte does this every year or couple of years as a pretty decent PR op. My advice: RTFA Extremetech's first, then go to the link above for a lot more detail if you're still interested.
I tend to get random crashes most often when I go to enter text in a forum reply (I do frequent a lot of forums I guess), but it has always "Restored this session" with most of my comments intact to it's credit. So at least when it does crash (for me at least) it doesn't cause more than a few second's frustration.
And I've noticed this on a clean fresh install on a clean fresh OS install, so it's nothing I've done. And by random, I mean maybe 2 or 3 times a week.
Sounds like a good time to start another distributed computing project like Seti or the Genome project...
Anyone?
this drives down prices. I still want an 8800GTX. :)
We do need some serious competition from AMD/ATI in order to drive down NVidia's prices. And yes, I'm a gaming enthusiast so this matters to me. I'm rockin som eold 7900GT's and I want to upgrade but only if there's a significant performance improvement per dollar ratio.
...could be as simple as, oh, I dunno, logging off, perhaps?
I buy them. I like some of the features of Max PC, and it's always nice to see what the top-of-the-line hardware is out there right now and how it stacks up to mine. (I also like to be able to take it to the bathroom...) although they are pandering to the masses more and more these days. But I find ther real meat in CPU. Whitepapers, industry buzz, in depth and insightful editorials by movers and shakers (cough *cmdrtaco* cough *anand* cough). Actually, I have subscriptions to these two, plus a couple of game mags because I'm into that.
I leave the rest of it alone--they are good for novice users (OK, occasionally Dvorak has something interesting to say) or people who are interested in the latest word-processing or spreadsheet software.
Let's say I have a couple album's worth of music that I've created over the years. Say, 30 songs or so. Now what if I want to stream that from my website? Does this mean the RIAA owns my work?
I don't get it.
There are certain bands' CDs that I'll always buy even if I haven't heard any of the songs, and I doubt I'm alone in this. Trent's already made his money from me and countless other fans; I think it's really a cool thing to do to release the tracks in modifiable format for all of us.
Another good thing I see more and more nowadays are the bands who make their songs available to listen to online. I bought the Black Keys CD after listening to their songs this way.
How long before the RIAA gets the hint?
Boggles the mind indeed. Could be a good way to promote Blu-ray or HD DVD's...
Actually, I like to download a week's worth of Stewart and Colbert and then watch it in my off-time (and don't question the legality of my choice--I'd do the same thing if I had a Tivo and that's how I justify it so there). But I find that if I get behind by a couple of weeks that I'll just let those episodes go because they aren't current anymore.
A good Daily Show DVD would contain all the interviews, all the comic bits, and perhaps some of the better "news" pieces to browse through. That's easily doable, and not just with the Daily show; you could probably do it for any of the Late-night talk shows.
to make the corporate lawyers feel comfortable. And shameful as it may be, there is no small amount of greed involved; the big corps want to maximize the earning potential of their products and the established way to do that is to clamp down on who gets access to what. NBC/CBS/FOX/CommedyCentral/etc want you to go it THEIR websites to see their content so they can generate discreet viewership tallies to entice more advertisers to give them more money.
The flaw (as I think the common view is) in espousing the "virtues" of spreading content around for free is that the people who produce the content do not benefit from it directly and that's all the traditional been counters care about. "We lost X amount of potential viewers to our site (which is oriented to get them to see what we want them to see) and that equates to Y amount of lost revenue. Clamp all our content down so that we can maximize our profit." Think of the NFL's end-of-broadcast disclaimer for a perfect example.
Put simply, the crux is this: juxtaposing the need for people to see your product with the need to make real, quantifiable dollars from it. It used to be that we lived in a 3-channel-plus-PBS TV world, where the best way to spread interest about your shows was found in the TV guide, seconded by word-of-mouth. These companies need to embrace our digital world rather than try to fight it like the RIAA and MPAA have done (with questionable success). Offering their content on DVD's and Itunes is a great start but what better way to get people to want to purchase this stuff than by releasing low quality 320x240 vids on Youtube? I'll even go so far as to posit that the spreading and sharing and bookmarking of popular "viral" videos is the new "word-of-mouth"...
So it's all well and good that some celebrities are promoting the easy spreading of digital media such as the TV shows they produce and star in; let's just try to understand it in a way that satisfies the demands of the bottom line and also the public's need for more content. It's going to have to be a compromise...
Does this mean I should go out and buy some XP disks just in case? This is totally weird.