neocon writes "Today's National Review Online has an interesting piece from John Bloom of UPI on the origin of Thimble Rights (what Thimblerights really are) and the current attacks on Earl of Sandwich in Congress and elsewhere."
Yeah, I remove the heatsink from my machine while it's running all the time... I saw the video too, and while it's amusing, I fail to see how this could even happen. The heatsinks on AMD CPUs is on so hard you need to work at it to get it off. Anybody who has one "accidentally" fall off didn't put it on right in the first place.
Haha... what I worry about is catastrophic "smash the flathead screwdriver through the motherboard while trying to loosen the clip" failure.
or also, catastrophic "heatsink clip breaks off the cheap plastic socket notch upon removal" faliure.
Much more likely...
If anything, I wish AMD would do more in the way of promoting bolted heatsinks rather than the cheesy clips.
It's nice to see that the industry isn't playing too much of the "more is faster" game, at least as much as they used to. When an 800mhz part is comparable to a 1600mhz, you've got to wonder what intel isn't doing to optimize.
AFAIK, the FPU of the P4 is crap (not that the IA32 FPU stack isn't crap in general). Intel's strategy is to get software designers to switch calculations that would normally involve the FPU over to their SSE2 instruction set. This really does improve P4 performance considerably.
This is happening, but adoption is slow. Also, the Opteron core has SSE2 support.
I would have liked to see an SSE2 heavy benchmark run on both machines.
Why is Quake the benchmark of a good processor? Maybe computers can do something other than cache intense graphics?
You are right, and in fact Quake is not even a good benchmark for gaming in general. However, it is very memory intensive and was generally the P4's strong point.
Saying that the Opteron will smoke a P4 at Quake is saying that it smokes the P4 at its own game.
The test is a good indicator that if...if... AMD can deliver at somewhere near the promised clockspeeds, Intel is going to have to ramp the P4 very high to compete.
A good, really good intel chip is the 1.6 GHz Northwood. They are ~$137 on pricewatch, and have incredible overclocking capabilities.
Most people are sorely dissapointed with their 1.6a if it only overclocks to 2.2 GHz (stable with standard cooling). Most people can ramp it up to between 2.4 and 2.6.
At that speed, it can smoke everything AMD is offering, and at a low cost. Lots of the OCers are buying the P4 1.6a with an Asus P4S533 motherboard.
I know far too many people who have built AMD boxes - people who certainly know what they are doing - to have them crash and burn on a number of applications and games. The problem is so widespread across the AMD platform that the processor is the only logical point of failure.
I am one of those people, and I tend to disagree with you. I had a machine subject to random lockups and general disintergration of system integrity (on linux!). It was a K6-2 on a FIC-VA503+. The motherboard had issues. My friend who went with a nearly idenitcal system but used an older FIC motherboard with a higher stepping never had any problems, and is still using the machine today, five years later (six?).
I am not saying that the K7 is definitely not to blame, but it is also not the only logical point of failure. The amount of poorly tested crap that comes out for the K7 is a suspect for higher failure rates.
OTOH, the last two AMD machines I have built, a TBird 1.0 GHz on an Asus A7V133A, and an XP 1800+ on an A7V333 have worked flawlessly.
Plus, I don't think I need to bring up the issue of the flaming AMD Athlon in too much detail to get everybody's minds on that Toms Hardware video. There have been rebuttals and claims of inaccuracy from the AMD camp, but for the record:
Removing the heatsink/fan from a P4 chip caused the machine to BSOD.
Removing the heatsink/fan from an Athlon caused it to BURST INTO FLAMES AND MELT
I don't care what the details of the situation were, I have absolutely zero desire to run a chip that has the possibility of catching fire. There's an old saying that I'm rather fond of, it goes "The bitterness of poor quality lasts much longer than the sweetness of low cost." If you buy AMD simply because it's cheaper... eh. Your machine, your loss.
This is no longer a valid argument. If you are willing to shell out the $40 for a quality Mobo, then you are now likely to get thermal protection. If my heatsink falls off with my Asus A7V333, the chip does not fry. However, this fall would crush my All-In-Wonder 7500, which I am more worried about.
"Incompatible with some sites built for Internet Explorer"
It's strange that I've not managed to find a site that Mozilla can't render correctly for the last six months or so. Do C|Net's reviews get to use a different version or something?
This may have been fixed, I am too lazy to upgrade from RC2, but MSNBC seems to have a few minor visual glitches.
On the other hand, this is the only website that I still see having problems. Overall, I agree with you, that the web is 99.99999% rendered correctly.
Re:TECHNO is not the same as electronica.
on
lowercase music
·
· Score: 2
You differentiate between "Jungle" and "D&B" (which IMHO is a fairly subtle distinction) but lump everything else into "House"?
I know it is unorthodox, but I like to view "Jungle" as not a genre but a flavor of D&B.
D&B is a genre, it is anything that leans more on the rhythm of the drum, uses the heavy bass for the "melody", and has that specific syncopation on every other beat that the rythmic structure is architected around.
There are "flavors" you can mix in:
Jungle - loose dirty breaks, ragga sounds, stratching and high pitched bleeps.
Jump-Up - Simple, repeated rhythm. Rounded repeated bass melody. Gangsta rap, get up and dance.
Atmospheric - Slowed down, relaxing bass. A few jazz or trance elements usually thrown in.
Intelligent - Complicated non-repeating breaks to make your mind reel. DJ Unfriendly, who cares if you can dance to it.
Most good D&B is a mix of these styles, and other styles that I don't know much about. Subgenrefication of electronic music is really more for giving people adjectives to talk about music in terms of style than for categorization. Each of these subgenres is a mix of things that go well together and produce a really nice feel in combination.
Unfortunately, alot of people are so attached to "the new sound" that they only listen and dance to very specific styles/subgenres
I know this will come off sounding like a shameless plug for a radio station, but the folks at CD101 [cd101.com] in Columbus really have it right. They are one of the only non-corporatized radio stations in the city, and have won the local "Columbus Magazine" award for best radio station for the past 10 years or so.
Yea, a bit south of you down here in Oxford, OH we have WOXY 97X which is a killer indie station.
Too bad I am more of an electronic listener than indie rock, but they do play a bunch of stuff I like.
Does the Andyman-a-thon have anything to do with Andyman's Treehouse? I am moving to Grandview in two months and trying to feel out the scene.
Re:Thought about it, and you're wrong.
on
Homogenized Music
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· Score: 2
Theivery and Ani both own their own labels (ESL and Righteous Babe, respectively), and apparently have chosen to give the finger to the major ones. These are the folks you should buy CDs from if you really want to stick it to the RIAA.
Or you can just download the whole ESL catalog on emusic, it is cheaper. (If you have a T1, it is literally faster to download the catalog than go to the store)
Granted, 128kb mp3s kinda suck if you have a really clean sounding rig.
There will be no time in the near future that a PC will replace the home theatre. First off Sound, you may have a nice DSP, but you will have **** for sound output. Unless of course, A.) You have a GIANT fan in your case, and a totally sound proof CPU unit or double case for it. 2.) You can fit a nice sounding 500 watt in a CPU.) D.) You have good Component video out with progressicde scan in 1 box. Otherwise, you have an over priced office machine that has no use for normal, or even abnormal computing.
No, You can get a Digital Sound Output and plug it into a high end DAC and then into your dobly processor which goes to the power amp. Either that or get a dolby digital receiver with a digital input. Same as any other sound source. Playing a CD or DVD off the thing will not sound any different than from any consumer or prosumer CD or DVD player. Actually, in many cases it will sound better.
As for video, you use DVI out to a projector or large screen multimedia monitor. Higher progressive scan quality than component or any other analog source.
Computers are better for Home Theatre, you just have to steer clear of analog.
It sounds like you are supporting a business model you like. Excellant! As for me, I don't want a subscription. I prefer impulse purchasing.
I felt exactly the same way you do about eMusic, but decided to go with the free two week trial.
I am still with the service and trust me, impulse downloads that turn out to be gems far outweigh the paltry $15/month cost.
Not only that, it is FAST. At school I can download an entire album in under 45 seconds (over 800kb/sec)
At the risk of sounding like an advertisement, I would encourage you to try it for free. If you hate it, you can opt out in 14 days and keep what you downloaded.
That's just bizarre. So rap is completely dependent on sampling the music of other artists? That's like piecing together a book based on snippets of other books.
Most artwork is designed by ripping off snippets of other works. Ever heard of a literary allusion?
Instead of ripping off, some call it standing on the shoulders of giants.
Nobody complains when guitarists rip off each others licks, but when someone participates in the same type of activity digitally, then it is suddenly a copyright issue. Even if the samples are intermingled in a technically difficult and clever manner transcending the intent of the original works.
When AMD released the Athlon XP 1800+, every reviewer on the planet ran a battery of benchmarks and concluded that for most applications, the XP 1800+ not only beat the P4 1800 MHz, but also the P4 2000 MHz.
When AMD released the Athlon XP 1900+, every reviewer on the planet ran a battery of benchmarks and concluded that for most applications, the XP 1900+ not only beat the P4 1900 MHz, but also the P4 2000 MHz.
When Intel released the Northwood 2000 and 2200 MHz P4s and AMD released the XP 2000+, every reviewer on the planet ran a battery of benchmarks and concluded that for most applications the XP 2000+ beat the P4 2.0A but could not quite beat the P4 2.2A
Then when AMD released the XP 2100+, many reviewers concluded that it tied or beat the P4 2.2A, although I really think that the 2.2A has the edge.
Based on this data, what really happened, what is really happening, and what disinterested parties seem to believe, I would conclude that the AMD PR Rating system provides a very nice comparison of Athlon performance relative to P4 performance at the clockspeed of the PR rating. Even though AMD says the rating is to compare the Athlon XP to other AMD products, it is incredible how well it scales athlon performance to the P4 performance at the clockspeed of the rating.
Therefore, if I wished to buy a machine, as a general purpose user, I think the best way to compare prices would be to match the AMD PR Rating against the Intel P4 clockspeed.
OTOH, comparing raw clockspeeds would give a false conclusion that an Athlon XP 2000+ would not outperform a P4 1.7 GHz. Sure, this is true if you plan on using Newtek Lightwave (where all P4s beat all Athlons), but for most tasks you would be horribly in error.
It would seem fairly obvious, that for this point in time, and with the current set of processors available, for the user who uses a variety of applications, the consumer would be better informed by using the AMD rating system than by just about any other comparison (other than carefully studying a battery of 30 different benchmarks)
However, there has been a flurry of criticism of the PR rating.
As much as I hate to cheerlead corporations, I just have to yell...
FUD!
...and anyone who disagrees with me is invited to study any of the following review sites:
Well, it'd be nice to see an intellectual sport at the Olympics, were it not for the simple fact that chess is broken. We've got computers beating world champions
My Toyota Camry can run a mile in well under 40 seconds. Cars can beat people because the mile run is related to only one variable - speed.
There are not many games left that a well designed machine can not beat the entire human population at.
Sure, if you get a board w backwards compatibility. It took forever for ISA slots to dissapear. I remember there were boards with 3 PCI, 3 ISA, and 1 VLB slot. The AGP-Pro will perhaps take the place of the VLB as the outdated quirky standard still supported.
I bet you will not want to keep it though. PCI3 would offer a shared 6.6 GB/s peak versus an AGP 4x peak of 1 GB/s. At that point, a GeForce 3 MX PCI3 with 128 MB DDR-333 will most likely run for under $40 online, if they are still bothering to sell them. Drool...
lol, please tell me about this. Name a situation when this along with the same type of security in airports has been used to arrest an innocent person.
They bust boatloads of stupid kids bringing back small amounts of KB for personal use. They kids are dumb for pulling the move, but are neither hurting themselves or anyone else, and thus not criminals or offenders.
While I understand the need and want for privacy, I stand by my belief...why should I worry if I've done nothing wrong? They aren't using this information to arrest innocent people.
Yes they are.
To be a criminal you must cause another person harm, against their will.
Payola to the networks for anti-drug messages, removal of constitutional search and seizure protection, deals with Amtrak...
It doesn't stop there, I am sure people will uncover multiple intrusions, and every day the DEA looks to invade our lives even more. In the future, they will certainly be checking your mail if the war on our children...err...drugs is to continue.
Slashdot Mirror
neocon writes "Today's National Review Online has an interesting piece from John Bloom of UPI on the origin of Thimble Rights (what Thimblerights really are) and the current attacks on Earl of Sandwich in Congress and elsewhere."
Yeah, I remove the heatsink from my machine while it's running all the time...
I saw the video too, and while it's amusing, I fail to see how this could even happen. The heatsinks on AMD CPUs is on so hard you need to work at it to get it off. Anybody who has one "accidentally" fall off didn't put it on right in the first place.
Haha... what I worry about is catastrophic "smash the flathead screwdriver through the motherboard while trying to loosen the clip" failure.
or also, catastrophic "heatsink clip breaks off the cheap plastic socket notch upon removal" faliure.
Much more likely...
If anything, I wish AMD would do more in the way of promoting bolted heatsinks rather than the cheesy clips.
It's nice to see that the industry isn't playing too much of the "more is faster" game, at least as much as they used to. When an 800mhz part is comparable to a 1600mhz, you've got to wonder what intel isn't doing to optimize.
AFAIK, the FPU of the P4 is crap (not that the IA32 FPU stack isn't crap in general). Intel's strategy is to get software designers to switch calculations that would normally involve the FPU over to their SSE2 instruction set. This really does improve P4 performance considerably.
This is happening, but adoption is slow. Also, the Opteron core has SSE2 support.
I would have liked to see an SSE2 heavy benchmark run on both machines.
Why is Quake the benchmark of a good processor? Maybe computers can do something other than cache intense graphics?
...if... AMD can deliver at somewhere near the promised clockspeeds, Intel is going to have to ramp the P4 very high to compete.
You are right, and in fact Quake is not even a good benchmark for gaming in general. However, it is very memory intensive and was generally the P4's strong point.
Saying that the Opteron will smoke a P4 at Quake is saying that it smokes the P4 at its own game.
The test is a good indicator that if
A good, really good intel chip is the 1.6 GHz Northwood. They are ~$137 on pricewatch, and have incredible overclocking capabilities.
Most people are sorely dissapointed with their 1.6a if it only overclocks to 2.2 GHz (stable with standard cooling). Most people can ramp it up to between 2.4 and 2.6.
At that speed, it can smoke everything AMD is offering, and at a low cost. Lots of the OCers are buying the P4 1.6a with an Asus P4S533 motherboard.
I know far too many people who have built AMD boxes - people who certainly know what they are doing - to have them crash and burn on a number of applications and games. The problem is so widespread across the AMD platform that the processor is the only logical point of failure.
I am one of those people, and I tend to disagree with you. I had a machine subject to random lockups and general disintergration of system integrity (on linux!). It was a K6-2 on a FIC-VA503+. The motherboard had issues. My friend who went with a nearly idenitcal system but used an older FIC motherboard with a higher stepping never had any problems, and is still using the machine today, five years later (six?).
I am not saying that the K7 is definitely not to blame, but it is also not the only logical point of failure. The amount of poorly tested crap that comes out for the K7 is a suspect for higher failure rates.
OTOH, the last two AMD machines I have built, a TBird 1.0 GHz on an Asus A7V133A, and an XP 1800+ on an A7V333 have worked flawlessly.
Plus, I don't think I need to bring up the issue of the flaming AMD Athlon in too much detail to get everybody's minds on that Toms Hardware video. There have been rebuttals and claims of inaccuracy from the AMD camp, but for the record:
Removing the heatsink/fan from a P4 chip caused the machine to BSOD.
Removing the heatsink/fan from an Athlon caused it to BURST INTO FLAMES AND MELT
I don't care what the details of the situation were, I have absolutely zero desire to run a chip that has the possibility of catching fire. There's an old saying that I'm rather fond of, it goes "The bitterness of poor quality lasts much longer than the sweetness of low cost." If you buy AMD simply because it's cheaper... eh. Your machine, your loss.
This is no longer a valid argument. If you are willing to shell out the $40 for a quality Mobo, then you are now likely to get thermal protection. If my heatsink falls off with my Asus A7V333, the chip does not fry. However, this fall would crush my All-In-Wonder 7500, which I am more worried about.
"Incompatible with some sites built for Internet Explorer"
It's strange that I've not managed to find a site that Mozilla can't render correctly for the last six months or so. Do C|Net's reviews get to use a different version or something?
This may have been fixed, I am too lazy to upgrade from RC2, but MSNBC seems to have a few minor visual glitches.
On the other hand, this is the only website that I still see having problems. Overall, I agree with you, that the web is 99.99999% rendered correctly.
You differentiate between "Jungle" and "D&B" (which IMHO is a fairly subtle distinction) but lump everything else into "House"?
I know it is unorthodox, but I like to view "Jungle" as not a genre but a flavor of D&B.
D&B is a genre, it is anything that leans more on the rhythm of the drum, uses the heavy bass for the "melody", and has that specific syncopation on every other beat that the rythmic structure is architected around.
There are "flavors" you can mix in:
Jungle - loose dirty breaks, ragga sounds, stratching and high pitched bleeps.
Jump-Up - Simple, repeated rhythm. Rounded repeated bass melody. Gangsta rap, get up and dance.
Techstep/Hardstep - Tight controlled breaks. Sci-fi samples, rolling bass, unadulterated computer evil.
Atmospheric - Slowed down, relaxing bass. A few jazz or trance elements usually thrown in.
Intelligent - Complicated non-repeating breaks to make your mind reel. DJ Unfriendly, who cares if you can dance to it.
Most good D&B is a mix of these styles, and other styles that I don't know much about. Subgenrefication of electronic music is really more for giving people adjectives to talk about music in terms of style than for categorization. Each of these subgenres is a mix of things that go well together and produce a really nice feel in combination.
Unfortunately, alot of people are so attached to "the new sound" that they only listen and dance to very specific styles/subgenres
I know this will come off sounding like a shameless plug for a radio station, but the folks at CD101 [cd101.com] in Columbus really have it right. They are one of the only non-corporatized radio stations in the city, and have won the local "Columbus Magazine" award for best radio station for the past 10 years or so.
Yea, a bit south of you down here in Oxford, OH we have WOXY 97X which is a killer indie station.
Too bad I am more of an electronic listener than indie rock, but they do play a bunch of stuff I like.
Does the Andyman-a-thon have anything to do with Andyman's Treehouse? I am moving to Grandview in two months and trying to feel out the scene.
Theivery and Ani both own their own labels (ESL and Righteous Babe, respectively), and apparently have chosen to give the finger to the major ones. These are the folks you should buy CDs from if you really want to stick it to the RIAA.
Or you can just download the whole ESL catalog on emusic, it is cheaper. (If you have a T1, it is literally faster to download the catalog than go to the store)
Granted, 128kb mp3s kinda suck if you have a really clean sounding rig.
-Syllepsis
There will be no time in the near future that a PC will replace the home theatre. First off Sound, you may have a nice DSP, but you will have **** for sound output. Unless of course, A.) You have a GIANT fan in your case, and a totally sound proof CPU unit or double case for it.
2.) You can fit a nice sounding 500 watt in a CPU.)
D.) You have good Component video out with progressicde scan in 1 box.
Otherwise, you have an over priced office machine that has no use for normal, or even abnormal computing.
No, You can get a Digital Sound Output and plug it into a high end DAC and then into your dobly processor which goes to the power amp. Either that or get a dolby digital receiver with a digital input. Same as any other sound source. Playing a CD or DVD off the thing will not sound any different than from any consumer or prosumer CD or DVD player. Actually, in many cases it will sound better.
As for video, you use DVI out to a projector or large screen multimedia monitor. Higher progressive scan quality than component or any other analog source.
Computers are better for Home Theatre, you just have to steer clear of analog.
I thought that radio was for my wireless appliances and for truckers to communicate.
Does this have something to do with the "FM" button on my receiver? I thought that was a white noise generator.
I'm not sure which word threw you, so here's links to the definition of each:
I [dictionary.com] don't [dictionary.com] want [dictionary.com] a [dictionary.com] subscription [dictionary.com].
Oh, I'm sorry. I didn't realize that you were an asshole.
It sounds like you are supporting a business model you like. Excellant! As for me, I don't want a subscription. I prefer impulse purchasing.
I felt exactly the same way you do about eMusic, but decided to go with the free two week trial.
I am still with the service and trust me, impulse downloads that turn out to be gems far outweigh the paltry $15/month cost.
Not only that, it is FAST. At school I can download an entire album in under 45 seconds (over 800kb/sec)
At the risk of sounding like an advertisement, I would encourage you to try it for free. If you hate it, you can opt out in 14 days and keep what you downloaded.
That's just bizarre. So rap is completely dependent on sampling the music of other artists? That's like piecing together a book based on snippets of other books.
Most artwork is designed by ripping off snippets of other works. Ever heard of a literary allusion?
Instead of ripping off, some call it standing on the shoulders of giants.
Nobody complains when guitarists rip off each others licks, but when someone participates in the same type of activity digitally, then it is suddenly a copyright issue. Even if the samples are intermingled in a technically difficult and clever manner transcending the intent of the original works.
-Syllepsis
When AMD released the Athlon XP 1800+, every reviewer on the planet ran a battery of benchmarks and concluded that for most applications, the XP 1800+ not only beat the P4 1800 MHz, but also the P4 2000 MHz.
When AMD released the Athlon XP 1900+, every reviewer on the planet ran a battery of benchmarks and concluded that for most applications, the XP 1900+ not only beat the P4 1900 MHz, but also the P4 2000 MHz.
When Intel released the Northwood 2000 and 2200 MHz P4s and AMD released the XP 2000+, every reviewer on the planet ran a battery of benchmarks and concluded that for most applications the XP 2000+ beat the P4 2.0A but could not quite beat the P4 2.2A
Then when AMD released the XP 2100+, many reviewers concluded that it tied or beat the P4 2.2A, although I really think that the 2.2A has the edge.
Based on this data, what really happened, what is really happening, and what disinterested parties seem to believe, I would conclude that the AMD PR Rating system provides a very nice comparison of Athlon performance relative to P4 performance at the clockspeed of the PR rating. Even though AMD says the rating is to compare the Athlon XP to other AMD products, it is incredible how well it scales athlon performance to the P4 performance at the clockspeed of the rating.
Therefore, if I wished to buy a machine, as a general purpose user, I think the best way to compare prices would be to match the AMD PR Rating against the Intel P4 clockspeed.
OTOH, comparing raw clockspeeds would give a false conclusion that an Athlon XP 2000+ would not outperform a P4 1.7 GHz. Sure, this is true if you plan on using Newtek Lightwave (where all P4s beat all Athlons), but for most tasks you would be horribly in error.
It would seem fairly obvious, that for this point in time, and with the current set of processors available, for the user who uses a variety of applications, the consumer would be better informed by using the AMD rating system than by just about any other comparison (other than carefully studying a battery of 30 different benchmarks)
However, there has been a flurry of criticism of the PR rating.
As much as I hate to cheerlead corporations, I just have to yell...
FUD!
...and anyone who disagrees with me is invited to study any of the following review sites:
Tom's Hardware
Anandtech
XBitLabs
Sharky Extreme
Lost Circuits
etc... etc... etc...
Well, it is certainly a good thing that the Supreme Court holds that a language having a "functional aspect" is still protected speech.
Now I can rest easy that when good english language processors come about and all human language is source code we will still have a first amendment.
Besides, it was really taking my little brother a long time to decrypt some of my DVDs with the instructions I told him in English.
Duhhhh....
Maybe a bit off topic, but arent file formats for things like office documents becoming obsolete with XML?
I would hope so.
My Toyota Camry can run a mile in well under 40 seconds. Cars can beat people because the mile run is related to only one variable - speed.
There are not many games left that a well designed machine can not beat the entire human population at.
I bet you will not want to keep it though. PCI3 would offer a shared 6.6 GB/s peak versus an AGP 4x peak of 1 GB/s. At that point, a GeForce 3 MX PCI3 with 128 MB DDR-333 will most likely run for under $40 online, if they are still bothering to sell them. Drool...
They bust boatloads of stupid kids bringing back small amounts of KB for personal use. They kids are dumb for pulling the move, but are neither hurting themselves or anyone else, and thus not criminals or offenders.
Hmmm... If our jails were not full of non-violent drug offenders, sexual predators might not be released so quickly.
I think you need to read Brave New World, 1984, and We.
Yes they are.
To be a criminal you must cause another person harm, against their will.
It doesn't stop there, I am sure people will uncover multiple intrusions, and every day the DEA looks to invade our lives even more. In the future, they will certainly be checking your mail if the war on our children...err...drugs is to continue.
The only drug free state is a police state.
Nothing posting cant fix :)