All of your machines have at least 128 MB of system RAM installed.
CNET.com did an article online a couple of years ago talking about the cheapest way to quickly increase performance for your computer. Their conclusion: get more RAM installed first. Easy to understand why--with more RAM installed, any operating system will dramatically lower their need to use hard disk space for virtual memory swapping, which can in some cases increase system performance as much as 100 percent.
My home machine runs a slow-by-2003 standard Celeron A 500 MHz CPU, but because the machine has 320 MB of system RAM installed both Windows 98 and Windows 2000 Professional run reasonably quick because both versions of Windows has very little need to do virtual memory paging on the hard drive.
Looking the the specs of your cobbled-up machines, I think they'll be fine except I would recommend getting at least 128 MB of RAM installed. Windows 98/98SE runs very well indeed with 128 MB installed because the OS doesn't swap to hard disk virtual memory so often, which speeds up performance quite a bit (sometimes as much as 100% over the original setup!).
I think because Internet access is so common nowadays, the community concept of a BBS has been moved onto the Internet, more or less.
Infopop's Ultimate Bulletin Board and Jelsoft's vBulletin software packages, along with the software used to create and run Slashdot, have created the means to re-create the community message boards that the old BBS systems fostered.
After reading the article, I think we have to emphasize two important things that made anime much more popular in the 1990's.
The first is the rapid acceptance of the DVD format. Unlike previous home video playback formats, DVD's allow you to have multiple-language soundtracks and multiple language caption/subtitling tracks on a single disc. In one fell swoop, the entire debate of subtitled versus dubbed anime has been rendered moot.:-)
The second is the success of Bandai Entertainment in bringing over a good number of anime titles created by Bandai Visual and Sunrise (Bandai I believe owns Sunrise) to the US market. This really opened the floodgates for lots of anime titles to finally be sold in US-legal editions.
The Optional keys you mentioned are found on a number of third-party keyboards out there. The Microsoft Natural Multimedia Keyboard and the most Logitech keyboards have multimedia keys that you wanted.
Sun better get moving, though.
on
The Faded Sun
·
· Score: 1
Thogh it would be nice if they put the screws to Fujitsu-Siemens to get access to their SPARC design... call it "SuperhyperultraSPARC" or "BadAssSPARC" or "TotallyAwesomeSPARC" or somesuch, and use it to hold the Itanium/POWER dogs at bay while they ready the UltraV.
Sun better get moving on improving the SPARC technology, though. They're going up against an awesome company called IBM and given IBM's successful implementation of Linux on IBM mainframe and minicomputer hardware--not to mention IBM's huge marketing muscle--if the UltraV CPU platform doesn't come out in time Sun will suffer from sale IBM mainframes and minicomputers using the POWER CPU technology--including POWER-based mainframes that run in massively-parallel fashion.
When I read about IBM doing that very heavy investment in Linux a few years ago I thought to myself that the handwriting was on the wall--IBM was going to fight back against Sun and IBM's vastly superior capital resources and marketing muscle would cause big trouble for Sun in the long run.
It appears my guess has become reality given the rough seas Sun has run into lately.
What REALLY worries me is the fact that al-Qaeda may have been able to cart off a small number of Pakistani-made nuclear bombs from Pakistan's nuclear weapons program.
And we're not talking an improvised nuclear device, either--we're talking a bomb that could fit inside a Chevy Surburban van and have a yield of around 10 kilotons, only slightly lower in yield than the Little Boy bomb dropped on Hiroshima in 1945. Look at what Little Boy did to Hiroshima--most of the town was essentially flattened. Detonating such a device in the middle of any large American city will result in an immediate death tool that will reach well into six figures and a radiation poisoning lingering death tool that is just as big. (eek!)
If you're asking about building an improvised atomic bomb, it's not as easy as you think.
The extreme precision needed to start a nuclear explosion means you'll need to break out the "Benjamins" big-time to get to the point of building such a device. There was actually serious concerns within the KGB whether the so-called suitcase nuke the Russians built for demolitions work would even work correctly given its design and the instability of fissile materials.
Floppy drives are heading towards obselescence because CD recordable drives are dirt-cheap and DVD recordable drives are also rapidly dropping in price, too. Why store a paltry 1.44 MB of data on a single disk when you can store 650 MB to 4.7 GB of data on a single optical disc?
As for CRT's, they'll be obselete in due time--new flat-panel display technologies such as field-effect displays (FED's) will finally put CRT's out of business before 2010.
Let's consider the market for lighter laptops in general.
Most users will use these smaller form factor laptops with programs like Microsoft Office and for lighter-duty Internet access. The thing is that with this market in mind it's not neccessary to run the fastest CPU available, since business applications and Internet access doesn't require the latest and fastest computer hardware out there. A 1.6 GHz CPU laptop with Centrino technology with 512 MB of system RAM running even Windows XP Professional is far more than fast enough for the general smaller form factor laptop user.
With Centrino technology, laptop manufacturers can build extremely light (yet fully functional) laptops that are pretty much guaranteed to run with most software out there, yet have quite long battery life. Centrino technology is going to be bad news for Transmeta, that's to be sure.
I think the biggest thing that hurt Pulp Fiction was the fact the movie had quite a lot of quite gratuitous violence. Something like that really turned off not a few AMPAS voters, so it's small wonder why Forrest Gump won.:-)
Err, I hate to say this, but Gangs of New York is actually the first time Miramax actually did something resembling an epic film. Both The Hours and Chicago are much more "intimate" style movies more in keeping with what Miramax normally does.
Mind you, Disney CEO Michael Eisner is REALLY happy that Miramax (a Disney subsidiary) has garnered three Best Picture nominations and three Disney-released animated features have garnered the Best Animated Feature nominations.
However, Moulin Rouge was totally ruined by that horrible first 20 minutes of the movie. Get past that first 20 minutes and the movie becomes an awesome experience.
Small wonder why this movie was such a polarizing experience for both movie critics and moviegoers.
I think the best-known movies Scorses directed (Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, Goodfellas, and now Gangs of New York) are not completely pleasing to AMPAS members because all of the films I've mentioned have a lot of on-screen characters that we can't be sympathetic to.
In order for a movie to get very serious consideration to actually win Best Picture Oscar, you better make darn sure you have characters on-screen moviegoers can relate to. Why do you think Forrest Gump won over Pulp Fiction? Because moviegoers cared for the Forrest Gump character, that's why.
The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers--AMPAS voters will wait till NEXT year after The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King comes out to give Peter Jackson, et al. the important Oscars for Jackson's landmark trilogy of movies.
Chicago--the front-runner, no contest. AMPAS voters are major suckers for any decent musical.
Gangs of New York--the fact the movie has gotten some seriously mixed reviews will conspire against this movie winning.
The Hours--because the movie is a bit of a difficult subject to watch (not to mention the fact it has polarized male and female viewers of the movie), it will probably not win.
The Pianist--it would have been a leading contender, but the Hollywood community has not yet completely forgiven Roman Polanski for skipping out of the USA after being convicted of statutory rape of a minor. If Polanski had actually served time back in the 1970's Hollywood would have forgiven him and The Pianist would be a runaway leading contender for Best Picture.
I think people are forgetting that the vast majority of Pentium 4 systems nowadays running above 2.0 GHz use DDR-SDRAM, NOT RDRAM.
The problem with the Anandtech and Tom's Hardware tests is that they're using i850 chipset motherboards with PC1066 RDRAM, which are starting to go out of favor in the market.
It'll be very interesting to do a comparison later this spring of a Pentium 4 3.06 GHz system running on a motherboard that supports DDR400 RAM versus a faster Barton-core Athlon XP rated at 3000+ also using DDR400 RAM.
I think right now the Athlon XP 3000+ based on the Barton CPU core is the right first step, but I think the CPU that will REALLY worry Intel will likely come later this spring when we see Barton core Athlon XP's that take full advantage of DDR400 DDR-SDRAM.
Remember, under pure-CPU tests the Athlon XP 3000+ has almost the same performance as the Intel Pentium 4 3.06 GHz CPU with HyperThreading; what will happen when the Athlon XP gets the Front Side Bus speed bump necessary to support DDR400 memory?
This is one good reason why I'm GLAD the USA does not have a parliamentary form of government.
Given the strong factionalism between different regions of the USA, the result would be like Italy--there would be MANY political parties, and coalitions of political parties to hold a majority in the legislative body would fall at the drop of a hat, resulting in the need for elections almost yearly!
I think you're forgetting why the Founding Fathers instituted the system of the Electoral College.
They had strongly (and rightly so) feared that a Presidential election by direct national vote count would put too much power to urban areas to the detriment of rural voters. In those days, who wants to have elections decided by voters in Boston, Philadelphia and New York City? The Electoral College gives rural voters a much stronger influence in the Presidential election, eliminating much of the unfair overwhelming advantages of urban areas.
Most likely, without some driving idea, without a frontier, we will see an increasing self-absorption and a general numbing of our best impulses. As they say, change is inevitable but growth is not... and the only hope lies in growth, in reaching beyond, not back.
AMEN.
I think it is time that humanity needs to reach for new frontiers again. The Moon is one place humans should return to, given that we know the Moon has a large supply of strategically important metallic elements, all of which can be used to build space colonies between the Earth and the Moon and also to eventually build spacecraft that will take Man well beyond Mars.
In regards to near-real time live CD's of a concert effect on sales of regular CD's, I think it will probably not affect that much in the way of studio-recorded albums.
First of all, Clear Channel is charging US$15 per disc, so they've already factored in royalty payment costs to ASCAP and BMI, the two largest music rights organizations in the world. Secondly, there are often big differences between a live performance and a studio-recorded performance; the studio recording has a level of polish that very few live performance versions can equal. In short, in terms of lost revenue to rights holders it's minimal, and in fact could actually add to the revenue of rights holders.
Mind you, I think if Clear Channel charges around US$11 per disc for these recordings there will be great interest by fans to buy these discs, since at US$11 per disc the incentive to pirate the discs at that price is low.
I think after the investigation is complete, we'll see the following changes to the shuttle:
1. The foam insulation material on the External Tank will be changed back to the older formula, politically incorrect as it seems. The older material didn't flake off en masse like the newer material. Given that liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen storage (MUCH colder than liquid nitrogen used by many commercial industries) will result in ice buildup fairly easily, going back to a material that won't flake off easily in the presence of heavy ice during the launch sequence is a good idea.
2. There will definitely be a switch to insulating tiles that are less vulnerable to damage by debris impact. The current insulating material is still too easily damaged by impact from any type of debris (hence the reason why when the shuttle is moved by airplane they never do it through any rainstorms). I know that NASA had been working on a new generation of insulating tiles that have more metallic material in them; it's also possible that the next generation of insulating tiles will use materials derived from Lawrence Livermore Laboratories' aerogel materials research.
You have better luck with Red Hat Linux in terms of hardware drivers because it is pretty much the best-known commercial distribution of Linux here in the USA, and the last thing Red Hat Software wants is being buried in tech support requests to get drivers for even relatively recent hardware.
But still, look at all the hardware manufacturer sites; just about all of them have necessary drivers for Windows Me, Windows 2000 and Windows XP. A lot of the hardware manufacturer sites seriously lack Linux drivers, so if you're a newbie user it could end up being a aggravating experience finding Linux hardware drivers unless the commercial Linux distribution manufacturer is really on the ball about this. Red Hat's support for the more common PC hardware is quite good, but when you get the oddball stuff, that gets troublesome fast for newbie users.:-(
...It may just kill off a lot of the incentive for people to switch to Linux.
What would happen if Microsoft suddenly cuts the pricing of a legal copy of Windows XP desktop editions by 50% or more for everyone? Because Windows is vastly better-supported in terms of hardware support than Linux, sales would definitely increase quite a bit.
Yes, Linux is cheap when you get the personal edition distributions, but when you have to spend time to tweak it to support the latest hardware, plus the fact a lot of the latest hardware lack Linux drivers, the result is a potentially frustrating experience for non-experienced users. I think a lot of people don't realize that many of the posters on/. are pretty experienced computer users, people who are willing to spend the time to carefully tweak Linux to their own satisfaction and spend the time to chase down proper Linux hardware drivers.
Slashdot Mirror
All of your machines have at least 128 MB of system RAM installed.
CNET.com did an article online a couple of years ago talking about the cheapest way to quickly increase performance for your computer. Their conclusion: get more RAM installed first. Easy to understand why--with more RAM installed, any operating system will dramatically lower their need to use hard disk space for virtual memory swapping, which can in some cases increase system performance as much as 100 percent.
My home machine runs a slow-by-2003 standard Celeron A 500 MHz CPU, but because the machine has 320 MB of system RAM installed both Windows 98 and Windows 2000 Professional run reasonably quick because both versions of Windows has very little need to do virtual memory paging on the hard drive.
Looking the the specs of your cobbled-up machines, I think they'll be fine except I would recommend getting at least 128 MB of RAM installed. Windows 98/98SE runs very well indeed with 128 MB installed because the OS doesn't swap to hard disk virtual memory so often, which speeds up performance quite a bit (sometimes as much as 100% over the original setup!).
I think because Internet access is so common nowadays, the community concept of a BBS has been moved onto the Internet, more or less.
Infopop's Ultimate Bulletin Board and Jelsoft's vBulletin software packages, along with the software used to create and run Slashdot, have created the means to re-create the community message boards that the old BBS systems fostered.
After reading the article, I think we have to emphasize two important things that made anime much more popular in the 1990's.
:-)
The first is the rapid acceptance of the DVD format. Unlike previous home video playback formats, DVD's allow you to have multiple-language soundtracks and multiple language caption/subtitling tracks on a single disc. In one fell swoop, the entire debate of subtitled versus dubbed anime has been rendered moot.
The second is the success of Bandai Entertainment in bringing over a good number of anime titles created by Bandai Visual and Sunrise (Bandai I believe owns Sunrise) to the US market. This really opened the floodgates for lots of anime titles to finally be sold in US-legal editions.
The Optional keys you mentioned are found on a number of third-party keyboards out there. The Microsoft Natural Multimedia Keyboard and the most Logitech keyboards have multimedia keys that you wanted.
Thogh it would be nice if they put the screws to Fujitsu-Siemens to get access to their SPARC design... call it "SuperhyperultraSPARC" or "BadAssSPARC" or "TotallyAwesomeSPARC" or somesuch, and use it to hold the Itanium/POWER dogs at bay while they ready the UltraV.
Sun better get moving on improving the SPARC technology, though. They're going up against an awesome company called IBM and given IBM's successful implementation of Linux on IBM mainframe and minicomputer hardware--not to mention IBM's huge marketing muscle--if the UltraV CPU platform doesn't come out in time Sun will suffer from sale IBM mainframes and minicomputers using the POWER CPU technology--including POWER-based mainframes that run in massively-parallel fashion.
When I read about IBM doing that very heavy investment in Linux a few years ago I thought to myself that the handwriting was on the wall--IBM was going to fight back against Sun and IBM's vastly superior capital resources and marketing muscle would cause big trouble for Sun in the long run.
It appears my guess has become reality given the rough seas Sun has run into lately.
What REALLY worries me is the fact that al-Qaeda may have been able to cart off a small number of Pakistani-made nuclear bombs from Pakistan's nuclear weapons program.
And we're not talking an improvised nuclear device, either--we're talking a bomb that could fit inside a Chevy Surburban van and have a yield of around 10 kilotons, only slightly lower in yield than the Little Boy bomb dropped on Hiroshima in 1945. Look at what Little Boy did to Hiroshima--most of the town was essentially flattened. Detonating such a device in the middle of any large American city will result in an immediate death tool that will reach well into six figures and a radiation poisoning lingering death tool that is just as big. (eek!)
If you're asking about building an improvised atomic bomb, it's not as easy as you think.
The extreme precision needed to start a nuclear explosion means you'll need to break out the "Benjamins" big-time to get to the point of building such a device. There was actually serious concerns within the KGB whether the so-called suitcase nuke the Russians built for demolitions work would even work correctly given its design and the instability of fissile materials.
Floppy drives are heading towards obselescence because CD recordable drives are dirt-cheap and DVD recordable drives are also rapidly dropping in price, too. Why store a paltry 1.44 MB of data on a single disk when you can store 650 MB to 4.7 GB of data on a single optical disc?
As for CRT's, they'll be obselete in due time--new flat-panel display technologies such as field-effect displays (FED's) will finally put CRT's out of business before 2010.
Let's consider the market for lighter laptops in general.
Most users will use these smaller form factor laptops with programs like Microsoft Office and for lighter-duty Internet access. The thing is that with this market in mind it's not neccessary to run the fastest CPU available, since business applications and Internet access doesn't require the latest and fastest computer hardware out there. A 1.6 GHz CPU laptop with Centrino technology with 512 MB of system RAM running even Windows XP Professional is far more than fast enough for the general smaller form factor laptop user.
With Centrino technology, laptop manufacturers can build extremely light (yet fully functional) laptops that are pretty much guaranteed to run with most software out there, yet have quite long battery life. Centrino technology is going to be bad news for Transmeta, that's to be sure.
I think the biggest thing that hurt Pulp Fiction was the fact the movie had quite a lot of quite gratuitous violence. Something like that really turned off not a few AMPAS voters, so it's small wonder why Forrest Gump won. :-)
Err, I hate to say this, but Gangs of New York is actually the first time Miramax actually did something resembling an epic film. Both The Hours and Chicago are much more "intimate" style movies more in keeping with what Miramax normally does.
Mind you, Disney CEO Michael Eisner is REALLY happy that Miramax (a Disney subsidiary) has garnered three Best Picture nominations and three Disney-released animated features have garnered the Best Animated Feature nominations.
However, Moulin Rouge was totally ruined by that horrible first 20 minutes of the movie. Get past that first 20 minutes and the movie becomes an awesome experience.
Small wonder why this movie was such a polarizing experience for both movie critics and moviegoers.
I think the best-known movies Scorses directed (Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, Goodfellas, and now Gangs of New York) are not completely pleasing to AMPAS members because all of the films I've mentioned have a lot of on-screen characters that we can't be sympathetic to.
In order for a movie to get very serious consideration to actually win Best Picture Oscar, you better make darn sure you have characters on-screen moviegoers can relate to. Why do you think Forrest Gump won over Pulp Fiction? Because moviegoers cared for the Forrest Gump character, that's why.
The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers--AMPAS voters will wait till NEXT year after The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King comes out to give Peter Jackson, et al. the important Oscars for Jackson's landmark trilogy of movies.
Chicago--the front-runner, no contest. AMPAS voters are major suckers for any decent musical.
Gangs of New York--the fact the movie has gotten some seriously mixed reviews will conspire against this movie winning.
The Hours--because the movie is a bit of a difficult subject to watch (not to mention the fact it has polarized male and female viewers of the movie), it will probably not win.
The Pianist--it would have been a leading contender, but the Hollywood community has not yet completely forgiven Roman Polanski for skipping out of the USA after being convicted of statutory rape of a minor. If Polanski had actually served time back in the 1970's Hollywood would have forgiven him and The Pianist would be a runaway leading contender for Best Picture.
I think people are forgetting that the vast majority of Pentium 4 systems nowadays running above 2.0 GHz use DDR-SDRAM, NOT RDRAM.
The problem with the Anandtech and Tom's Hardware tests is that they're using i850 chipset motherboards with PC1066 RDRAM, which are starting to go out of favor in the market.
It'll be very interesting to do a comparison later this spring of a Pentium 4 3.06 GHz system running on a motherboard that supports DDR400 RAM versus a faster Barton-core Athlon XP rated at 3000+ also using DDR400 RAM.
I think right now the Athlon XP 3000+ based on the Barton CPU core is the right first step, but I think the CPU that will REALLY worry Intel will likely come later this spring when we see Barton core Athlon XP's that take full advantage of DDR400 DDR-SDRAM.
Remember, under pure-CPU tests the Athlon XP 3000+ has almost the same performance as the Intel Pentium 4 3.06 GHz CPU with HyperThreading; what will happen when the Athlon XP gets the Front Side Bus speed bump necessary to support DDR400 memory?
This is one good reason why I'm GLAD the USA does not have a parliamentary form of government.
Given the strong factionalism between different regions of the USA, the result would be like Italy--there would be MANY political parties, and coalitions of political parties to hold a majority in the legislative body would fall at the drop of a hat, resulting in the need for elections almost yearly!
I think you're forgetting why the Founding Fathers instituted the system of the Electoral College.
They had strongly (and rightly so) feared that a Presidential election by direct national vote count would put too much power to urban areas to the detriment of rural voters. In those days, who wants to have elections decided by voters in Boston, Philadelphia and New York City? The Electoral College gives rural voters a much stronger influence in the Presidential election, eliminating much of the unfair overwhelming advantages of urban areas.
Most likely, without some driving idea, without a frontier, we will see an increasing self-absorption and a general numbing of our best impulses. As they say, change is inevitable but growth is not... and the only hope lies in growth, in reaching beyond, not back.
AMEN.
I think it is time that humanity needs to reach for new frontiers again. The Moon is one place humans should return to, given that we know the Moon has a large supply of strategically important metallic elements, all of which can be used to build space colonies between the Earth and the Moon and also to eventually build spacecraft that will take Man well beyond Mars.
In regards to near-real time live CD's of a concert effect on sales of regular CD's, I think it will probably not affect that much in the way of studio-recorded albums.
First of all, Clear Channel is charging US$15 per disc, so they've already factored in royalty payment costs to ASCAP and BMI, the two largest music rights organizations in the world. Secondly, there are often big differences between a live performance and a studio-recorded performance; the studio recording has a level of polish that very few live performance versions can equal. In short, in terms of lost revenue to rights holders it's minimal, and in fact could actually add to the revenue of rights holders.
Mind you, I think if Clear Channel charges around US$11 per disc for these recordings there will be great interest by fans to buy these discs, since at US$11 per disc the incentive to pirate the discs at that price is low.
I think after the investigation is complete, we'll see the following changes to the shuttle:
1. The foam insulation material on the External Tank will be changed back to the older formula, politically incorrect as it seems. The older material didn't flake off en masse like the newer material. Given that liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen storage (MUCH colder than liquid nitrogen used by many commercial industries) will result in ice buildup fairly easily, going back to a material that won't flake off easily in the presence of heavy ice during the launch sequence is a good idea.
2. There will definitely be a switch to insulating tiles that are less vulnerable to damage by debris impact. The current insulating material is still too easily damaged by impact from any type of debris (hence the reason why when the shuttle is moved by airplane they never do it through any rainstorms). I know that NASA had been working on a new generation of insulating tiles that have more metallic material in them; it's also possible that the next generation of insulating tiles will use materials derived from Lawrence Livermore Laboratories' aerogel materials research.
You have better luck with Red Hat Linux in terms of hardware drivers because it is pretty much the best-known commercial distribution of Linux here in the USA, and the last thing Red Hat Software wants is being buried in tech support requests to get drivers for even relatively recent hardware.
:-(
But still, look at all the hardware manufacturer sites; just about all of them have necessary drivers for Windows Me, Windows 2000 and Windows XP. A lot of the hardware manufacturer sites seriously lack Linux drivers, so if you're a newbie user it could end up being a aggravating experience finding Linux hardware drivers unless the commercial Linux distribution manufacturer is really on the ball about this. Red Hat's support for the more common PC hardware is quite good, but when you get the oddball stuff, that gets troublesome fast for newbie users.
...It may just kill off a lot of the incentive for people to switch to Linux.
/. are pretty experienced computer users, people who are willing to spend the time to carefully tweak Linux to their own satisfaction and spend the time to chase down proper Linux hardware drivers.
What would happen if Microsoft suddenly cuts the pricing of a legal copy of Windows XP desktop editions by 50% or more for everyone? Because Windows is vastly better-supported in terms of hardware support than Linux, sales would definitely increase quite a bit.
Yes, Linux is cheap when you get the personal edition distributions, but when you have to spend time to tweak it to support the latest hardware, plus the fact a lot of the latest hardware lack Linux drivers, the result is a potentially frustrating experience for non-experienced users. I think a lot of people don't realize that many of the posters on