In real-world testing using instrumented motorcycles and automobiles, while motorcycles have the advantage in the initial acceleration once you throw in a lot of curves a higher-powered sports car wins hand down. Indeed, I remember reading an article showing that a Dodge Viper will lap the Willow Springs race course substantially faster than all but maybe 2-3 models of very high-end motorcycles.
Take for example the animation move done based on "The Last Unicorn" by Peter S. Beagle. Can you believe it? serious fantasy, in animation, not targeted at kids! In a word: a flop. You probably never even heard of it, but trust me, you won't regret seeing it, even if you've read the book.
Fortunately, I've seen it on video and it is surprisingly quite good.:-) Hopefully, one of these days they'll transfer it to DVD and market it properly, because it is a much-underrated movie.
The very fact that the Sony protection scheme could actually render a optical (CD-RW or DVD Recordable) drive on a Macintosh useless is grounds for a major lawsuit against Sony by Apple.
Making discs difficult to copy is one thing, but damaging computer hardware is quite something else.
I think any very serious attempt to look for Earth-like planets (e.g., rocky crust on the planet instead of a gas giant like most of our Outer Planets) will have to wait until future generations of space telescopes become available after 2010.
The problem is that even with advancing telescope technology on ground-based telescopes they still can't completely overcome the refractive effects of the atmosphere, which reduces the quality of any picture taken even at high-altitude locations like Mauna Kea in Hawaii. With NASA working on the Next-Generation Space Telescope (NGST) and the European Space Agency working on something similar, we may just see after 2010 space-based telescopes with much higher resolving power than the Hubble Space Telescope; these might just be able to see fairly clearly the gas giant planet(s) orbiting nearby stars and could help deduce if there are rocky crust planets also orbiting those stars.
Re:Penis Envy (was Re:America is better.)
on
Globalism Post 9/11
·
· Score: 2
There hasn't been a single "great" nation/empire which has lasted.
I think the USA stands a chance to last a lot longer than people think.
Besides the fact we are a representative republic with a strong tradition of capitalism, the USA is also blessed with the fact that we have two oceans to keep out large scale land invasions. The last time the USA had a large-scale land invasion as the War of 1812. If you look at the history of Europe, northern Africa and most of Asia, land invasions was a big factor in the fall of many empires. The Roman Empire, the Persian Empire, the ancient Egyptian dynasties, the early empires of the Indian subcontinent, and the Chinese dynasties all fell because they couldn't contain invasions from large outside armies. It was only recently that the USA was under threat, not from invading armies but from Soviet ICBM's.
Now you know why Europe is trying to unify under the European Union; it's the only way Europe will be able attempt an economic comeback to wrest the #1 economic superstatus from the USA.
Once and for all: Middle Eastern countries are not backwards because of Islam.
And you wonder why Israel has several times the Gross Domestic Product output per capita than every country surrounding it.
The problem is that most Islamic countries don't understand our concepts of individual liberty--in a way they remind me of the Holy Roman Empire of the Middle Ages in Europe, where religious authorities have the final say on every aspect of life.
Now you know why Islamic religious authorities should really go through the Sunnah (Islamic laws) with a fine tooth comb and update their laws to reflect the 21st Century. We are seeing inside the Islamic world right now upheavals in a way that reminds me of the Reformation movement of the late 1400's and 1500's in Europe.
Re:The sad truth: foreigners gobble up US culture
on
Globalism Post 9/11
·
· Score: 2
These regimes are frightened by Western culture because they realize their rule cannot withstand open examination, but instead must be enforced autocratically or through religious dogma.
Now you know what al-Jazeera TV--the most popular satellite TV channel in the Middle East--is loved and loathed by people who watch it. This channel often asks questions that would be considered extreme heresy by the local Imam or mullah, namely the place of women in Islam, questions about whether the parts of the Sunnah (Islamic laws) are even relevant today, and how to modernize Islam to be relevant in 2002.
The questions asked by this channel may be just the thing to get Islamic religious leaders to get off their duffs and get a concensus (sp?) about improving Islam's image to the non-Islamic world. This was exactly what the Council of Trent in the 16th Century and the Second Vatican Council in the 20th Century did to the Roman Catholic Church. Islam desperately need to hold such a council, IMHO.
I think what makes the USA so resented is the very fact that because of the fact our Constitution has been pretty much stable since 1789, we have perhaps the second longest-lasting representative republic (the first being Great Britain) in the world. This has provided a stable base for economic development in this country.
It also has helped that even with our unfortunate War Between the States in 1861 to 1865, our country never had a situation where the entire country suffered grevious losses on an unimagined scale. Look at Great Britain--they lost a very large fraction of their country's finest young men in World War I, which began their decline as a world power. France and Germany in the 20th Century suffered seriously from the effects of two World Wars. A large part of the former Soviet Union in its European parts suffered horribly in World War II. Japan suffered heavy losses during World War II. Chinca suffered heavy losses during World War II, especially the areas under Japanese occupation.
I think the world envies us because when we put the mind to it, we have the capacity to out-produce just about anyone on this planet. Why do you think we pretty much put the structure of the Internet into place? CERN in Europe may have invented the World Wide Web, but it was here in the USA that the World Wide Web was developed to be very easy to use, thanks to the development of the Mosaic web browser in the early 1990's.
I also think the success of the USA has shown that Islam is often incapable of relevancy in the 21st Century. Their religious leaders need to form the equivalent of the Council of Trent AND the Second Vatican Council so they can make the religion relevant in our modern world.
I can understand your concerns, but solar power for amateur radios have been around for a long time.
Given the small size of today's amateur radio units, they can easily be powered by a set of solar arrays just in case regular power becomes unavailable.
Having worked in an office where pressurized toilets were installed, I can say they're not quiet units!
Actually, at places like movie theaters or stadiums, I don't think toilets even have water tanks behind them anymore. I believe for such places they are directly connected to the water main and each flush "meters" out 1.6 gallons of water per flush at pretty high pressure.
There is one big downside to those Kohler toilets: they cost big money. I've checked with Lowe's and Home Depot and they want at minimum US$350 for these really nice Kohler units.:-(
Americans don't need high-tech toilets
on
Best High-Tech Toilet?
·
· Score: 3, Informative
I think these Japanese toilets are a bit overkill for Americans, especially when you consider most American homes don't suffer the issue of really cold toilet seats.
What I do want is toilets that flush completely in only 1.6 gallons of water per flush. This was a major problem with the early water-saving toilets, since often you had to flush twice to flush the toilet bowl cleanly. I believe it was Kohler that first corrected this problem with very careful design of the way water circulates in the toiler bowl during the flush cycle. I know that some toilet makers resorted in using pressurized water tanks (I kid you not!), but I'm not sure if the potential for mechanical trouble is worth it.
I know I'm going to be modded down big time for this, but there are two major flaws that might hamper Linux:
1. The lack of a single, consistent GUI for the operating system. Sure, it's nice to have choice for GUI (Gnome and KDE), but all that does is cause considerable confusion for IT departments as they will have to decide which GUI to deploy over many, many users.
2. The issue of hardware support. Most of today's multimedia hardware aren't well-supported by Linux, and hot-docking external USB and IEEE-1394 port devices is still a bit of an iffy proposition. Linux desperately needs Advanced Configuration and Power Interface (ACPI) support; small wonder why the Linux 2.6.x kernel will have such aupport.
Because Microsoft keeps a reasonably consistent interface for their OS (e.g., Windows 95 to Windows XP have a lot of common interface features), that makes programming for the OS quite a bit easier.
This is why Linux supporters must support efforts such as the Linux Standard Base, which will at least define standards compatibility for all aspects of Linux. Choice becomes dangerous when it causes no end of IT support issues.
Given that most computers nowadays can support a PPP connection to the Internet without loading extra software, I think ISP's should provide for more expert users a setup phamplet that tells you how to set up your Internet connection depending on your operating system, including how to set up the web browser so your first connection is to any setup pages the ISP wants.
However, the AMD K6 CPU's were hampered by the limitations of the Socket 7 design and the fact that the FPU unit on the K6 wasn't really that great.
Because the Athlon borrowed a lot of technology from DEC (specifically the very fast EV6 CPU bus), the result was a vastly superior CPU. I still am impressed by the fact that except for programs that really take advantage of Intel's SSE2 extensions, the current Athlon XP CPU's are more than competitive with the Pentium 4.
I'm going to watch with interest what AMD does with the new 0.13 micron process Thoroughbred Athlon CPU's. Don't be surprised that AMD does incorporate an on-die L2 cache of 512 KB eventually, just like what Intel did with their current 0.13 micron process Northwood Pentium 4's.
I would agree that the earlier VIA chipsets for AMD CPU's were not exactly great, but VIA has redeemed itself with the excellent VT266A chipset that properly supports DDR-SDRAM.
I really have to shake my head in amazement that Intel of all things would do such a report in the first place.
People already know that thanks to the vastly more modern CPU core, the AMD Athlon CPU core on a true per MHz basis is way faster than any Intel CPU. The proof of the pudding is this: the current AMD Athlon XP 2100+ running at 1,733 MHz actually out-performs the Pentium 4 running at 2,200 MHz on several benchmark tests, and of course the AMD CPU is quite a bit less expensive, too.
I think the report was done as a pre-emptive strike against the upcoming AMD Thoroughbred CPU's, which should be out very soon.
Contrary to what a lot of people think, there will be another boom coming to Silicon Valley fairly soon.
This new boom will not be the excesses of the dot-com era of the late 1990's, but based on real needs and government mandates.
First, the Internet will need to fairly soon advance beyond our current IPv4 address system. Sure, modern routers has extended the usefulness of IPv4, but the new IPv6 addressing system can easily accommodate way more devices operating over the Internet. As the switch to IPv6 begins in ernest over the next few years, there will be considerable need to either upgrade current installed network hardware and/or install new network hardware that supports IPv6. It also means we have to upgrade our software to support IPv6 easily for all Windows, Macintosh, Linux, BSD, and commercial Unix users.
Second, all the major cellular companies (AT&T, Cingular, Verizon, Sprint PCS) are preparing to make the technological jump to 3G cellular phones that support far faster data tranmission speeds than today's systems, meaning we can have things like high-quality streaming media over cellphones. Because 3G cellular systems require new hardware, there will be big demand for new telecommunications equipment that support 3G.
Finally, the FCC's mandate of digital TV will mean the need to upgrade our current cable TV, broadcast TV and satellite systems. That means lots of demand for new telecommunications equipment to support digital TV, especially 1080i 16:9 aspect ratio HDTV.
I think we may see a revival of the tech industry pretty soon anyway.
There are three reasons for this:
First, the Internet is in desperate need of updating. Our current IPv4-based networks can only be described as the equivalent of chewing gum and bailing wire on an old biplane--the use of routers and other techniques to extend the use of IPv4 can only take us so far.
Once the switch to IPv6 begins in earnest, there is going to be a massive need for IPv6 compatible networking equipment.
Secondly, our cellular telephone systems will soon begin the transition to 3G phones later this decade. Again, there will be a major need for cellular system upgrades to take advantage of 3G cellular technology.
Finally, the FCC mandate for digital TV means we will have to start improving both cable TV and DBS systems later this decade.
In short, hardware manufacturers are going to enjoy a major revival by 2005 as the changes I mention start getting implemented.
Re:Serial ATA could REALLY cut into SCSI sales
on
Serial ATA Coming
·
· Score: 2
If you read my original message, the two biggest benefits of Serial ATA is faster disk access and dispensing with that finicky ribbon cable.
Just the switch to thin cables will definitely help the system case cooling issue.
Re:Serial ATA could REALLY cut into SCSI sales
on
Serial ATA Coming
·
· Score: 2
I agree with at least your first paragraph.
Because today's bus-mastering SCSI host adapters off-load storage device access to minimize CPU cycle usage, this already means very fast access to any storage device connected to the SCSI bus. That's why SCSI is very popular for servers, where fast access to the hard drive is a must.
However, for standalone computer users, SCSI is way overkill except in a very few cases (for example, multimedia authoring). The majority of computer users don't really stand to benefit from bus-mastered SCSI, alas....
I checked the web page of the Serial ATA working group and since AMD, Acer Labs (ALi chipset builder), SiS and VIA Technologies are contributors to the Serial ATA standard, expect Athlon-compatible motherboards to have Serial ATA connectors by at least late this summer. They have to anyway given that we'll be starting to see Serial ATA interface hard drives and optical drives about the same time.
I would not be surprised that both nVidia and ATI will have motherboard chipsets with Serial ATA support about the same time, too.
Serial ATA could REALLY cut into SCSI sales
on
Serial ATA Coming
·
· Score: 2, Flamebait
I think if you're willing to live with the four-device limitation of Serial ATA, the new standard will have a number of great benefits.
First, Serial ATA will offer a major leap up in terms of transfer speeds. The initial speeds will be equivalent of ATA-150, but we will eventually see the equivalent of ATA-300 and ATA-600 speeds, which far surpasses even the current Ultra-Wide SCSI 160 standard. I'm sure companies like Promise are working on RAID controllers for Serial ATA that will allow an even bigger leap up in hard disk performance.
Second, because Serial ATA has finally dispensed with using a ribbon cable, this means way less clutter inside the computer and could also mean system cases can be designed for more efficient air cooling.
Third, Serial ATA--unlike SCSI--doesn't require you to load device drivers out of the wazoo to support devices on the bus. The only driver you'll probably need is the driver for the motherboard chipset that incorporates Serial ATA support.
I mean, let's face it--SCSI is still pretty expensive due to the cost of host adapters, cabling and SCSI peripherals. SCSI is only really useful where lots of SCSI device access (for example, hard disks) is required, primarily in server environments. For workstation and home computer use, Serial ATA offer most of the high-speed disk access of SCSI, but at a much lower cost.
In short, SCSI will become increasingly a niche product. And SCSI may eventually get competition from the high end of mass storage interfaces as the cost of Fibre Channel devices drops.
I use a Matrox G400 DualHead AGP myself and frankly, I have YET to see a graphics card using the ATI or nVidia chipsets that match the amazing sharpness of the current Matrox AGP cards on 2-D graphics. These cards are perfect for business users, desktop publishers and CAD/CAM users, where picture quality takes precedent over 3-D graphics speed.
This is why I really want to plead to Matrox to develop a no-holds-barred 3-D graphics card that can match the ATI Radeon 8500 card and any card that uses the nVidia GeForce4 Ti4400/Ti4600 in terms of 3-D graphics acceleration and also assist in MPEG-2 decoding for DVD movies, but still maintain the legendary display quality sharpness Matrox is famous for. I can say that even if the resulting card costs slightly more than cards that use the GeForce4 Ti chipsets you know gamers are going to lap this potential Matrox card up in a New York minute, mostly because many gamers have been disappointed by the sub-par sharpness of ATI and nVidia chipset graphics cards.
As a current user of a Matrox G400 DualHead AGP 32 MB card, I can definitely say that the 2-D graphics quality of this card--like all Matrox cards--is second to none. Not even the latest ATI Radeon 8500 series comes close to the amazing sharpness of 2D graphics that the Matrox cards now offer. I've seen the output of the better quality cards that use the nVidia chipsets and they (on the average) don't even come close to the crisp display quality you get from Matrox cards.
This is why I'm REALLY hoping that Matrox does make another stab at a high-end 3-D graphics card that can compete against the Radeon 8500 and GeForce4 Ti4200/Ti4600 series but still offer the unrivalled 2-D display quality Matrox is famous for. Using the modern 0.13 micron process to make the next-generation Matrox chip, they could easily offer industry-leading graphics acceleration and MPEG-2 decoding equal to that of the GeForce4 series. Such a card--even if it costs slightly more than the cards that use the GeForce4 Ti chipsets--would be instantly lapped up by gamers who want the clearest graphics display.
Slashdot Mirror
That's what YOU think. (smile)
In real-world testing using instrumented motorcycles and automobiles, while motorcycles have the advantage in the initial acceleration once you throw in a lot of curves a higher-powered sports car wins hand down. Indeed, I remember reading an article showing that a Dodge Viper will lap the Willow Springs race course substantially faster than all but maybe 2-3 models of very high-end motorcycles.
Take for example the animation move done based on "The Last Unicorn" by Peter S. Beagle. Can you believe it? serious fantasy, in animation, not targeted at kids! In a word: a flop. You probably never even heard of it, but trust me, you won't regret seeing it, even if you've read the book.
:-) Hopefully, one of these days they'll transfer it to DVD and market it properly, because it is a much-underrated movie.
Fortunately, I've seen it on video and it is surprisingly quite good.
The very fact that the Sony protection scheme could actually render a optical (CD-RW or DVD Recordable) drive on a Macintosh useless is grounds for a major lawsuit against Sony by Apple.
Making discs difficult to copy is one thing, but damaging computer hardware is quite something else.
I think any very serious attempt to look for Earth-like planets (e.g., rocky crust on the planet instead of a gas giant like most of our Outer Planets) will have to wait until future generations of space telescopes become available after 2010.
The problem is that even with advancing telescope technology on ground-based telescopes they still can't completely overcome the refractive effects of the atmosphere, which reduces the quality of any picture taken even at high-altitude locations like Mauna Kea in Hawaii. With NASA working on the Next-Generation Space Telescope (NGST) and the European Space Agency working on something similar, we may just see after 2010 space-based telescopes with much higher resolving power than the Hubble Space Telescope; these might just be able to see fairly clearly the gas giant planet(s) orbiting nearby stars and could help deduce if there are rocky crust planets also orbiting those stars.
There hasn't been a single "great" nation/empire which has lasted.
I think the USA stands a chance to last a lot longer than people think.
Besides the fact we are a representative republic with a strong tradition of capitalism, the USA is also blessed with the fact that we have two oceans to keep out large scale land invasions. The last time the USA had a large-scale land invasion as the War of 1812. If you look at the history of Europe, northern Africa and most of Asia, land invasions was a big factor in the fall of many empires. The Roman Empire, the Persian Empire, the ancient Egyptian dynasties, the early empires of the Indian subcontinent, and the Chinese dynasties all fell because they couldn't contain invasions from large outside armies. It was only recently that the USA was under threat, not from invading armies but from Soviet ICBM's.
Now you know why Europe is trying to unify under the European Union; it's the only way Europe will be able attempt an economic comeback to wrest the #1 economic superstatus from the USA.
Once and for all: Middle Eastern countries are not backwards because of Islam.
And you wonder why Israel has several times the Gross Domestic Product output per capita than every country surrounding it.
The problem is that most Islamic countries don't understand our concepts of individual liberty--in a way they remind me of the Holy Roman Empire of the Middle Ages in Europe, where religious authorities have the final say on every aspect of life.
Now you know why Islamic religious authorities should really go through the Sunnah (Islamic laws) with a fine tooth comb and update their laws to reflect the 21st Century. We are seeing inside the Islamic world right now upheavals in a way that reminds me of the Reformation movement of the late 1400's and 1500's in Europe.
These regimes are frightened by Western culture because they realize their rule cannot withstand open examination, but instead must be enforced autocratically or through religious dogma.
Now you know what al-Jazeera TV--the most popular satellite TV channel in the Middle East--is loved and loathed by people who watch it. This channel often asks questions that would be considered extreme heresy by the local Imam or mullah, namely the place of women in Islam, questions about whether the parts of the Sunnah (Islamic laws) are even relevant today, and how to modernize Islam to be relevant in 2002.
The questions asked by this channel may be just the thing to get Islamic religious leaders to get off their duffs and get a concensus (sp?) about improving Islam's image to the non-Islamic world. This was exactly what the Council of Trent in the 16th Century and the Second Vatican Council in the 20th Century did to the Roman Catholic Church. Islam desperately need to hold such a council, IMHO.
AMEN!!
I think what makes the USA so resented is the very fact that because of the fact our Constitution has been pretty much stable since 1789, we have perhaps the second longest-lasting representative republic (the first being Great Britain) in the world. This has provided a stable base for economic development in this country.
It also has helped that even with our unfortunate War Between the States in 1861 to 1865, our country never had a situation where the entire country suffered grevious losses on an unimagined scale. Look at Great Britain--they lost a very large fraction of their country's finest young men in World War I, which began their decline as a world power. France and Germany in the 20th Century suffered seriously from the effects of two World Wars. A large part of the former Soviet Union in its European parts suffered horribly in World War II. Japan suffered heavy losses during World War II. Chinca suffered heavy losses during World War II, especially the areas under Japanese occupation.
I think the world envies us because when we put the mind to it, we have the capacity to out-produce just about anyone on this planet. Why do you think we pretty much put the structure of the Internet into place? CERN in Europe may have invented the World Wide Web, but it was here in the USA that the World Wide Web was developed to be very easy to use, thanks to the development of the Mosaic web browser in the early 1990's.
I also think the success of the USA has shown that Islam is often incapable of relevancy in the 21st Century. Their religious leaders need to form the equivalent of the Council of Trent AND the Second Vatican Council so they can make the religion relevant in our modern world.
I can understand your concerns, but solar power for amateur radios have been around for a long time.
Given the small size of today's amateur radio units, they can easily be powered by a set of solar arrays just in case regular power becomes unavailable.
Having worked in an office where pressurized toilets were installed, I can say they're not quiet units!
Actually, at places like movie theaters or stadiums, I don't think toilets even have water tanks behind them anymore. I believe for such places they are directly connected to the water main and each flush "meters" out 1.6 gallons of water per flush at pretty high pressure.
There is one big downside to those Kohler toilets: they cost big money. I've checked with Lowe's and Home Depot and they want at minimum US$350 for these really nice Kohler units. :-(
I think these Japanese toilets are a bit overkill for Americans, especially when you consider most American homes don't suffer the issue of really cold toilet seats.
What I do want is toilets that flush completely in only 1.6 gallons of water per flush. This was a major problem with the early water-saving toilets, since often you had to flush twice to flush the toilet bowl cleanly. I believe it was Kohler that first corrected this problem with very careful design of the way water circulates in the toiler bowl during the flush cycle. I know that some toilet makers resorted in using pressurized water tanks (I kid you not!), but I'm not sure if the potential for mechanical trouble is worth it.
I know I'm going to be modded down big time for this, but there are two major flaws that might hamper Linux:
1. The lack of a single, consistent GUI for the operating system. Sure, it's nice to have choice for GUI (Gnome and KDE), but all that does is cause considerable confusion for IT departments as they will have to decide which GUI to deploy over many, many users.
2. The issue of hardware support. Most of today's multimedia hardware aren't well-supported by Linux, and hot-docking external USB and IEEE-1394 port devices is still a bit of an iffy proposition. Linux desperately needs Advanced Configuration and Power Interface (ACPI) support; small wonder why the Linux 2.6.x kernel will have such aupport.
Because Microsoft keeps a reasonably consistent interface for their OS (e.g., Windows 95 to Windows XP have a lot of common interface features), that makes programming for the OS quite a bit easier.
This is why Linux supporters must support efforts such as the Linux Standard Base, which will at least define standards compatibility for all aspects of Linux. Choice becomes dangerous when it causes no end of IT support issues.
Given that most computers nowadays can support a PPP connection to the Internet without loading extra software, I think ISP's should provide for more expert users a setup phamplet that tells you how to set up your Internet connection depending on your operating system, including how to set up the web browser so your first connection is to any setup pages the ISP wants.
However, the AMD K6 CPU's were hampered by the limitations of the Socket 7 design and the fact that the FPU unit on the K6 wasn't really that great.
Because the Athlon borrowed a lot of technology from DEC (specifically the very fast EV6 CPU bus), the result was a vastly superior CPU. I still am impressed by the fact that except for programs that really take advantage of Intel's SSE2 extensions, the current Athlon XP CPU's are more than competitive with the Pentium 4.
I'm going to watch with interest what AMD does with the new 0.13 micron process Thoroughbred Athlon CPU's. Don't be surprised that AMD does incorporate an on-die L2 cache of 512 KB eventually, just like what Intel did with their current 0.13 micron process Northwood Pentium 4's.
I would agree that the earlier VIA chipsets for AMD CPU's were not exactly great, but VIA has redeemed itself with the excellent VT266A chipset that properly supports DDR-SDRAM.
I really have to shake my head in amazement that Intel of all things would do such a report in the first place.
People already know that thanks to the vastly more modern CPU core, the AMD Athlon CPU core on a true per MHz basis is way faster than any Intel CPU. The proof of the pudding is this: the current AMD Athlon XP 2100+ running at 1,733 MHz actually out-performs the Pentium 4 running at 2,200 MHz on several benchmark tests, and of course the AMD CPU is quite a bit less expensive, too.
I think the report was done as a pre-emptive strike against the upcoming AMD Thoroughbred CPU's, which should be out very soon.
Folks,
I read with interest Jon Katz's comments.
Contrary to what a lot of people think, there will be another boom coming to Silicon Valley fairly soon.
This new boom will not be the excesses of the dot-com era of the late 1990's, but based on real needs and government mandates.
First, the Internet will need to fairly soon advance beyond our current IPv4 address system. Sure, modern routers has extended the usefulness of IPv4, but the new IPv6 addressing system can easily accommodate way more devices operating over the Internet. As the switch to IPv6 begins in ernest over the next few years, there will be considerable need to either upgrade current installed network hardware and/or install new network hardware that supports IPv6. It also means we have to upgrade our software to support IPv6 easily for all Windows, Macintosh, Linux, BSD, and commercial Unix users.
Second, all the major cellular companies (AT&T, Cingular, Verizon, Sprint PCS) are preparing to make the technological jump to 3G cellular phones that support far faster data tranmission speeds than today's systems, meaning we can have things like high-quality streaming media over cellphones. Because 3G cellular systems require new hardware, there will be big demand for new telecommunications equipment that support 3G.
Finally, the FCC's mandate of digital TV will mean the need to upgrade our current cable TV, broadcast TV and satellite systems. That means lots of demand for new telecommunications equipment to support digital TV, especially 1080i 16:9 aspect ratio HDTV.
I think we may see a revival of the tech industry pretty soon anyway.
There are three reasons for this:
First, the Internet is in desperate need of updating. Our current IPv4-based networks can only be described as the equivalent of chewing gum and bailing wire on an old biplane--the use of routers and other techniques to extend the use of IPv4 can only take us so far.
Once the switch to IPv6 begins in earnest, there is going to be a massive need for IPv6 compatible networking equipment.
Secondly, our cellular telephone systems will soon begin the transition to 3G phones later this decade. Again, there will be a major need for cellular system upgrades to take advantage of 3G cellular technology.
Finally, the FCC mandate for digital TV means we will have to start improving both cable TV and DBS systems later this decade.
In short, hardware manufacturers are going to enjoy a major revival by 2005 as the changes I mention start getting implemented.
If you read my original message, the two biggest benefits of Serial ATA is faster disk access and dispensing with that finicky ribbon cable.
Just the switch to thin cables will definitely help the system case cooling issue.
I agree with at least your first paragraph.
Because today's bus-mastering SCSI host adapters off-load storage device access to minimize CPU cycle usage, this already means very fast access to any storage device connected to the SCSI bus. That's why SCSI is very popular for servers, where fast access to the hard drive is a must.
However, for standalone computer users, SCSI is way overkill except in a very few cases (for example, multimedia authoring). The majority of computer users don't really stand to benefit from bus-mastered SCSI, alas....
Not to worry. :-)
I checked the web page of the Serial ATA working group and since AMD, Acer Labs (ALi chipset builder), SiS and VIA Technologies are contributors to the Serial ATA standard, expect Athlon-compatible motherboards to have Serial ATA connectors by at least late this summer. They have to anyway given that we'll be starting to see Serial ATA interface hard drives and optical drives about the same time.
I would not be surprised that both nVidia and ATI will have motherboard chipsets with Serial ATA support about the same time, too.
I think if you're willing to live with the four-device limitation of Serial ATA, the new standard will have a number of great benefits.
First, Serial ATA will offer a major leap up in terms of transfer speeds. The initial speeds will be equivalent of ATA-150, but we will eventually see the equivalent of ATA-300 and ATA-600 speeds, which far surpasses even the current Ultra-Wide SCSI 160 standard. I'm sure companies like Promise are working on RAID controllers for Serial ATA that will allow an even bigger leap up in hard disk performance.
Second, because Serial ATA has finally dispensed with using a ribbon cable, this means way less clutter inside the computer and could also mean system cases can be designed for more efficient air cooling.
Third, Serial ATA--unlike SCSI--doesn't require you to load device drivers out of the wazoo to support devices on the bus. The only driver you'll probably need is the driver for the motherboard chipset that incorporates Serial ATA support.
I mean, let's face it--SCSI is still pretty expensive due to the cost of host adapters, cabling and SCSI peripherals. SCSI is only really useful where lots of SCSI device access (for example, hard disks) is required, primarily in server environments. For workstation and home computer use, Serial ATA offer most of the high-speed disk access of SCSI, but at a much lower cost.
In short, SCSI will become increasingly a niche product. And SCSI may eventually get competition from the high end of mass storage interfaces as the cost of Fibre Channel devices drops.
I agree with your assessment of Matrox cards.
I use a Matrox G400 DualHead AGP myself and frankly, I have YET to see a graphics card using the ATI or nVidia chipsets that match the amazing sharpness of the current Matrox AGP cards on 2-D graphics. These cards are perfect for business users, desktop publishers and CAD/CAM users, where picture quality takes precedent over 3-D graphics speed.
This is why I really want to plead to Matrox to develop a no-holds-barred 3-D graphics card that can match the ATI Radeon 8500 card and any card that uses the nVidia GeForce4 Ti4400/Ti4600 in terms of 3-D graphics acceleration and also assist in MPEG-2 decoding for DVD movies, but still maintain the legendary display quality sharpness Matrox is famous for. I can say that even if the resulting card costs slightly more than cards that use the GeForce4 Ti chipsets you know gamers are going to lap this potential Matrox card up in a New York minute, mostly because many gamers have been disappointed by the sub-par sharpness of ATI and nVidia chipset graphics cards.
As a current user of a Matrox G400 DualHead AGP 32 MB card, I can definitely say that the 2-D graphics quality of this card--like all Matrox cards--is second to none. Not even the latest ATI Radeon 8500 series comes close to the amazing sharpness of 2D graphics that the Matrox cards now offer. I've seen the output of the better quality cards that use the nVidia chipsets and they (on the average) don't even come close to the crisp display quality you get from Matrox cards.
This is why I'm REALLY hoping that Matrox does make another stab at a high-end 3-D graphics card that can compete against the Radeon 8500 and GeForce4 Ti4200/Ti4600 series but still offer the unrivalled 2-D display quality Matrox is famous for. Using the modern 0.13 micron process to make the next-generation Matrox chip, they could easily offer industry-leading graphics acceleration and MPEG-2 decoding equal to that of the GeForce4 series. Such a card--even if it costs slightly more than the cards that use the GeForce4 Ti chipsets--would be instantly lapped up by gamers who want the clearest graphics display.