Actually, the format has died. Sony (only recently) discontinued making the players. Their niche market, I assume, is migrating towards digital recording.
I thought that the professional decks were still being produced, with the consumer line being axed. I don't know what broadcasters use now because less than a year ago the broadcast news standard was still Beta, and I imagine the equipment would have to be replacable for that market to continue useing it.
Doesn't the format live on in the Digital Beta decks? I know the D-VHS decks are backward compatible with original VHS and S-VHS, so it is just an assumption that the digital version of Beta would be backward compatible.
Don't count on new tech being so cheap so quickly.
It will be a while before a higher density optical writer will be affordable. DVD-R drives used to cost well over $1000 (I think several thousand at start), I am certain that the next format's writers will follow that trend, it may be a few years before you can get a $200 BluRay drive or the like.
One notorious problem is that fabbing blue lasers is highly unreliable, it's no coincidence that Sony's BluRay set-top recorder costs $3500. The labcoats are working on the problem though.
and I can tell you that the Pioneer is not worth the money when you can buy Sony for a bit more and have it do both standards.
Well, that's not the whole picture. The people that I've talked to say that Pioneer DVD writing drives make more compatible discs than Sony drives, on the same media. One guy does a lot of burns for set-top drives and he says he consistently gets better player compatibility results with the Pioneer.
Plus, if you look online, you can get the Pioneer A05 for a lot cheaper than the Sony, often over $100 less. It's hard to find the Sony for much less than $350 anywhere.
IIRC, DVD+R was introduced _after_ the DVD forum approved the dash format. I think it was a political move by the companies that designed the format that lost.
Another fork in your theory is that most computer retailers are heavily biased to the DVD+R recorders, the exception usually being Sony's dual mode +/- drive. When the retail exposure of drives is that heavily biased, I fear the viability of the DVD-R format, I want DVD-R to survive.
The media costs the same and at most stores are equally available though. It seems the plus-only recorders are often at $10 cheaper than the dash-only recorders, but I'm not bothered in paying 5% more for that 5% more player compatibility.
In a way, yes, but while Unix might be considered a standard but the fact that everyone tried to "innovate" their own way is one reason porting software between unices (and now, even between Linux distributions) became such a b!tch.
So even an inefficient standard might be better for software than a whole bunch of fragmented ways of doing things, even if each way in itself is a good way to do it.
Error in the last paragraph, correction in bold, sorry about that. Corrected line:
The dash version was put into the final standard but a group of manufacturers on that board still decided they had to split and make the plus format, of which there was negligible improvement, if any, over the already existing dash standard.
Well, a committee can't invent new technologies but they can define how they will be put to use. A problem is that the "standards wars" often take too much of a toll, where in theory the market chooses which standard should reign supreme. What happens is that the people that bought into the loosing standard end up having to invest again so they can use the infrastructure of the chosen standard.
For one, I think an example that design by commitee can be good is the DVD format. The format went from nothing to being the dominant video sales format in five years, with an unprecedented household adoption rate.
If there was a DVD format war then it probably would have taken another five years as people more or less learned from the Beta / VHS thing to not invest until there is a clear "winner".
In a way, there is a DVD format war as there are the plus and dash recordable formats. The dash version was put into the final standard but a group of manufacturers on that board still decided they had to split and make the dash format, of which there was negligible improvement, if any, over the already existing dash standard. This split from committee is cited as one of the reasons why DVD recordable formats hasn't really taken hold very quickly.
The conversion was tried in the US, in the late 60's early 70's I think. The biggest reason that I read that it didn't go through is that people as a whole didn't trust the gas station operators, they thought they were being overcharged and shorted fuel. I dunno. I don't think it matters what measurement system they use, some of them will try to rip you off.
It also helps to point out the US "Imperial" measurements have been long defined in terms of SI, 1 inch being defined as exactly 2.54cm and so on.
Why bother? Why not push for full digital convergence and have everyone use EFT for ALL transactions? We're headed that way anyway, I haven't used paper cash in nearly a month now for anything.
Of course. Echelon knows what you've been buying all this time.
an anime cannot properly portray the deaths of 7 billion human beings.
For one, I don't think special effects will either. A lot of people complain a lot about how excessively bloody anime is already, so I'd say it's pretty effective.
On a story line note, I don't think the population could possibly be up to 7 billion at that time. The second impact, its ecological disasters and the resulting wars had already killed half the earth's population.
Sadly, no one has a truly heavy lifter any more. Russia had one that could lift a lot more than the shuttle, but I think NASA's shuttle fleet has the most capacity still in use. I'm not sure what happened to Russia's system, I think that heavy lifter had chronic problems due to having too many small engines, and that the engines failed too often. I think ESA's Araine(sp?) 5 has suffered something like three or four failures in its dozen or so launches, which is more failures than the preceeding "4" version which ran over a hundred flights.
I agree that separate heavy lifting and people moving system is needed, the people moving system could be much smaller, but hopefully still be able to fix and upgrade things in orbit. I think someone suggested that the current shuttle could still be used sparingly for return flights on heavier cargoes if needed.
Sadly, no one has a truly heavy lifter any more. Russia had one that could lift a lot more than the shuttle, but I think NASA's shuttle fleet has the most capacity still in use. I'm not sure what happened to Russia's system, I think that heavy lifter had chronic problems due to having too many small engines, and that the engines failed too often. I think ESA's Araine(sp?) 5 has suffered something like three or four failures in its dozen or so launches, which is more failures than the preceeding "4" version which ran over a hundred flights.
I agree that separate heavy lifting and people moving system is needed.
No, I've been getting used workstations, or ones that just came off lease. My refurbed Alpha is the most reliable computer I have ever seen. Its over five years old and it has NEVER BSOD'd in NT. I _never_ got an OS crash with my Compaq Xeon workstation.
My general experience is that most "white boxes" are far shittier for using cheap budget components.
The problem is that a lot of that "targeted" code is specifically keyed to particular benchmarks, so if you use software that wasn't targeted then you don't get any of those tweaks & enhancements at all.
I do like it a lot but I think the design could have been more universal, the bucket sides could have curved down rather than up, much like the front edge.
A few of the mesh bands have broken though, on a bare back, the broken ends are a bit abrasive.
I'm not too worried about pipelines and such, I wouldn't use it to make a decision on whether the system is worthwhile. I'd rather use real-world performance in my particular task as a guide. While pipelines and such do affect real world performance, the end user shouldn't care too much the hows or whys, but how well the system will fit the task.
only have one machine left that even bothers with a CRT
Are LCDs better yet? I find it hard to imagine that LCDs match color quality well enough to a CRT, heck, on all the LCDs I've looked at, the colors change at least a little based on viewpoint. I don't see how this is acceptable to Apple's base of graphic designers.
A 3200+ is supposed to give about the same performance a tbird would, if it was clocked to 3.2GHz.
If this is really true, then the AMD engineering rep that I talked to got it wrong. He sayd that the rating was in comparison with the most directly equivalent MHz/GHz Intel chip. He said _nothing_ about the older AMD processors, and I would think such a comparison wouldn't be easy to make or relevant. It might also show that a 3.2GHz P4 might not have any gains over a 3GHz version. Or the series of benchmarks used internally by AMD to determine the "+" number is somewhat different than that of what the review sites use.
First, that assumes that all XPs are alike and will operate the same in the long run, which there's no guarantee. I imagine that a jumper might be the main difference in logic, but the MPs are also supposed to be more heavily tested, and even are binned so that they are lower power use. A chip that won't pass as an MP might be marked as an XP, so you might have a non-obvious fabrication flaw in the unused "MP section" of an XP chip.
Secondly, how many people are going to buy four processors to test a two processor machine on a free project? You'd want more than just a few people to do the testing, and the testing would only be valid for that pair of chips.
I have a PIII Xeon, 500MHz, and since upgrading it to dual processors it really does nicely.
A lot of programs are multithreaded.
not to mention that the motherboard / chipset technology is usually a few monthes to two years behind the cutting edge stuff..
That's because for one, AMD takes an extra month or so of testing to qualify a CPU and the parts.
Because the market is so small for them, only AMD makes DP chipsets for Athlon chips and they don't seem to keep up with VIA and the rest of the chipset makers for single processors.
I would _never_ pull a hack like this one because I get a DP machine for reliability, and I don't know if I'd buy a DIY kind of computer either, I'd rather buy a used workstation qualified by the big guys. Mind you, if I had to choose between a residential grade computer and a DIY, I'd go DIY, but a used commercial grade workstation IMO works better for me. My current machine is a Compaq workstation and it's been the best x86 computer I've ever owned - NEVER a crash due to hardware, NEVER a crash due to a bad driver, NEVER an OS crash running Windows 2000. I bought it used about a year back and don't regret it one bit.
Unfortunately, no AMD system DP or otherwise was currently sold as a true workstation to the full demands of the workstation market, so I probably won't buy an AMD system until the Opterons have been around for a while so I can afford a used one.
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Yeah, Fox news and CNN are all I need for my edutainment.
Actually, the format has died. Sony (only recently) discontinued making the players. Their niche market, I assume, is migrating towards digital recording.
I thought that the professional decks were still being produced, with the consumer line being axed. I don't know what broadcasters use now because less than a year ago the broadcast news standard was still Beta, and I imagine the equipment would have to be replacable for that market to continue useing it.
Doesn't the format live on in the Digital Beta decks? I know the D-VHS decks are backward compatible with original VHS and S-VHS, so it is just an assumption that the digital version of Beta would be backward compatible.
Don't count on new tech being so cheap so quickly.
It will be a while before a higher density optical writer will be affordable. DVD-R drives used to cost well over $1000 (I think several thousand at start), I am certain that the next format's writers will follow that trend, it may be a few years before you can get a $200 BluRay drive or the like.
One notorious problem is that fabbing blue lasers is highly unreliable, it's no coincidence that Sony's BluRay set-top recorder costs $3500. The labcoats are working on the problem though.
and I can tell you that the Pioneer is not worth the money when you can buy Sony for a bit more and have it do both standards.
Well, that's not the whole picture. The people that I've talked to say that Pioneer DVD writing drives make more compatible discs than Sony drives, on the same media. One guy does a lot of burns for set-top drives and he says he consistently gets better player compatibility results with the Pioneer.
Plus, if you look online, you can get the Pioneer A05 for a lot cheaper than the Sony, often over $100 less. It's hard to find the Sony for much less than $350 anywhere.
I wouldn't count DVD+R so quickly.
IIRC, DVD+R was introduced _after_ the DVD forum approved the dash format. I think it was a political move by the companies that designed the format that lost.
Another fork in your theory is that most computer retailers are heavily biased to the DVD+R recorders, the exception usually being Sony's dual mode +/- drive. When the retail exposure of drives is that heavily biased, I fear the viability of the DVD-R format, I want DVD-R to survive.
The media costs the same and at most stores are equally available though. It seems the plus-only recorders are often at $10 cheaper than the dash-only recorders, but I'm not bothered in paying 5% more for that 5% more player compatibility.
I'm pretty sure it's just an encoder thing, not a writable disc format thing.
In a way, yes, but while Unix might be considered a standard but the fact that everyone tried to "innovate" their own way is one reason porting software between unices (and now, even between Linux distributions) became such a b!tch.
So even an inefficient standard might be better for software than a whole bunch of fragmented ways of doing things, even if each way in itself is a good way to do it.
Error in the last paragraph, correction in bold, sorry about that. Corrected line:
The dash version was put into the final standard but a group of manufacturers on that board still decided they had to split and make the plus format, of which there was negligible improvement, if any, over the already existing dash standard.
Do you have any figures to show that rentals are being hurt because of movie downloads?
How do you know they aren't being hurt by cheap DVD sales? WB pushed cheaper DVDs specifically to bite back at Blockbuster.
Well, a committee can't invent new technologies but they can define how they will be put to use. A problem is that the "standards wars" often take too much of a toll, where in theory the market chooses which standard should reign supreme. What happens is that the people that bought into the loosing standard end up having to invest again so they can use the infrastructure of the chosen standard.
For one, I think an example that design by commitee can be good is the DVD format. The format went from nothing to being the dominant video sales format in five years, with an unprecedented household adoption rate.
If there was a DVD format war then it probably would have taken another five years as people more or less learned from the Beta / VHS thing to not invest until there is a clear "winner".
In a way, there is a DVD format war as there are the plus and dash recordable formats. The dash version was put into the final standard but a group of manufacturers on that board still decided they had to split and make the dash format, of which there was negligible improvement, if any, over the already existing dash standard. This split from committee is cited as one of the reasons why DVD recordable formats hasn't really taken hold very quickly.
The conversion was tried in the US, in the late 60's early 70's I think. The biggest reason that I read that it didn't go through is that people as a whole didn't trust the gas station operators, they thought they were being overcharged and shorted fuel. I dunno. I don't think it matters what measurement system they use, some of them will try to rip you off.
It also helps to point out the US "Imperial" measurements have been long defined in terms of SI, 1 inch being defined as exactly 2.54cm and so on.
Why bother? Why not push for full digital convergence and have everyone use EFT for ALL transactions? We're headed that way anyway, I haven't used paper cash in nearly a month now for anything.
Of course. Echelon knows what you've been buying all this time.
I don't see the point in wanting another Gundam movie, I don't think it will have a better reputation than G-Savior or whatever they called it.
an anime cannot properly portray the deaths of 7 billion human beings.
For one, I don't think special effects will either. A lot of people complain a lot about how excessively bloody anime is already, so I'd say it's pretty effective.
On a story line note, I don't think the population could possibly be up to 7 billion at that time. The second impact, its ecological disasters and the resulting wars had already killed half the earth's population.
Sorry about the italics.
Sadly, no one has a truly heavy lifter any more. Russia had one that could lift a lot more than the shuttle, but I think NASA's shuttle fleet has the most capacity still in use. I'm not sure what happened to Russia's system, I think that heavy lifter had chronic problems due to having too many small engines, and that the engines failed too often. I think ESA's Araine(sp?) 5 has suffered something like three or four failures in its dozen or so launches, which is more failures than the preceeding "4" version which ran over a hundred flights.
I agree that separate heavy lifting and people moving system is needed, the people moving system could be much smaller, but hopefully still be able to fix and upgrade things in orbit. I think someone suggested that the current shuttle could still be used sparingly for return flights on heavier cargoes if needed.
Sadly, no one has a truly heavy lifter any more. Russia had one that could lift a lot more than the shuttle, but I think NASA's shuttle fleet has the most capacity still in use. I'm not sure what happened to Russia's system, I think that heavy lifter had chronic problems due to having too many small engines, and that the engines failed too often. I think ESA's Araine(sp?) 5 has suffered something like three or four failures in its dozen or so launches, which is more failures than the preceeding "4" version which ran over a hundred flights.
I agree that separate heavy lifting and people moving system is needed.
Well, that's kind of a "creative" way at best for them to pretend a problem doesn't exist and avoid an errata.
No, I've been getting used workstations, or ones that just came off lease. My refurbed Alpha is the most reliable computer I have ever seen. Its over five years old and it has NEVER BSOD'd in NT. I _never_ got an OS crash with my Compaq Xeon workstation.
My general experience is that most "white boxes" are far shittier for using cheap budget components.
I'd never buy a Dell either.
The problem is that a lot of that "targeted" code is specifically keyed to particular benchmarks, so if you use software that wasn't targeted then you don't get any of those tweaks & enhancements at all.
I've owned one for maybe six years now.
I do like it a lot but I think the design could have been more universal, the bucket sides could have curved down rather than up, much like the front edge.
A few of the mesh bands have broken though, on a bare back, the broken ends are a bit abrasive.
I'm not too worried about pipelines and such, I wouldn't use it to make a decision on whether the system is worthwhile. I'd rather use real-world performance in my particular task as a guide. While pipelines and such do affect real world performance, the end user shouldn't care too much the hows or whys, but how well the system will fit the task.
only have one machine left that even bothers with a CRT
Are LCDs better yet? I find it hard to imagine that LCDs match color quality well enough to a CRT, heck, on all the LCDs I've looked at, the colors change at least a little based on viewpoint. I don't see how this is acceptable to Apple's base of graphic designers.
A 3200+ is supposed to give about the same performance a tbird would, if it was clocked to 3.2GHz.
If this is really true, then the AMD engineering rep that I talked to got it wrong. He sayd that the rating was in comparison with the most directly equivalent MHz/GHz Intel chip. He said _nothing_ about the older AMD processors, and I would think such a comparison wouldn't be easy to make or relevant. It might also show that a 3.2GHz P4 might not have any gains over a 3GHz version. Or the series of benchmarks used internally by AMD to determine the "+" number is somewhat different than that of what the review sites use.
Test with both modded XPs and regular MPs.
First, that assumes that all XPs are alike and will operate the same in the long run, which there's no guarantee. I imagine that a jumper might be the main difference in logic, but the MPs are also supposed to be more heavily tested, and even are binned so that they are lower power use. A chip that won't pass as an MP might be marked as an XP, so you might have a non-obvious fabrication flaw in the unused "MP section" of an XP chip.
Secondly, how many people are going to buy four processors to test a two processor machine on a free project? You'd want more than just a few people to do the testing, and the testing would only be valid for that pair of chips.
You are right on many points.
I have a PIII Xeon, 500MHz, and since upgrading it to dual processors it really does nicely.
A lot of programs are multithreaded.
not to mention that the motherboard / chipset technology is usually a few monthes to two years behind the cutting edge stuff..
That's because for one, AMD takes an extra month or so of testing to qualify a CPU and the parts.
Because the market is so small for them, only AMD makes DP chipsets for Athlon chips and they don't seem to keep up with VIA and the rest of the chipset makers for single processors.
I would _never_ pull a hack like this one because I get a DP machine for reliability, and I don't know if I'd buy a DIY kind of computer either, I'd rather buy a used workstation qualified by the big guys. Mind you, if I had to choose between a residential grade computer and a DIY, I'd go DIY, but a used commercial grade workstation IMO works better for me. My current machine is a Compaq workstation and it's been the best x86 computer I've ever owned - NEVER a crash due to hardware, NEVER a crash due to a bad driver, NEVER an OS crash running Windows 2000. I bought it used about a year back and don't regret it one bit.
Unfortunately, no AMD system DP or otherwise was currently sold as a true workstation to the full demands of the workstation market, so I probably won't buy an AMD system until the Opterons have been around for a while so I can afford a used one.