Actually, I read from a place or two that despite Moeller's assertions that it is a stable airplane, the FAA believes otherwise and wouldn't let him fly it unteathered.
The sources I've read also paint the man as not much more than a politician crossed with a used car dealer (read: big fat liar).
My two bits on XVID: The whole DiVX frimfram is complex enough for the average user. Thanks to XViD for introducing another codec that to this day, while not groundbreaking, let alone neccesary, is making the video codec situation tricky to deal with.
That is my objection to the file format fiasco. People don't want to leave good enough alone so they'll release yet another incompatible break-away codec with only marginal improvements.
This does not make for anything resembling long term storage possible because there is no guarantee that any particular file format will still be used a year from now, forget twenty.
I guess I do have a modern LCD, and ghosting isn't that much of a problem, but it still doesn't cover the issues of poor color temperatore and bad picture with an off-axis view. They aren't horrible, but still not worth paying twice as much for an image that still isn't _quite_ up to par. The only real improvemants LCD have are size (depth), weight and power efficiency.
I agree. I am NOT a photographer and my living doesn't demand perfect colors, etc, but I can easily see the defficiencies.
As for sharpness, I think a good CRT does fine. It might take going into service mode to fine tune the beam focus.
I just bought a Samsung 17" flat panel. I am still using an old NEC 21" beast, but my desk is too small to get two such units.
This LCD unit's colors are too blue (color temp wise), and the backlighting intensity is very uneven, too bright on the sides, and too dark on the top edge. The color temp issue can't be totally remedied by the color balance, I set it to as red as possible and it is still a bit blue. I think if I can get some filter gels I might be able to tune the color of the backlight, but I won't try the thing is going back in a few days because other unexpected expenses came up.
while I acknowledge your opinions as your own, do you know WHY THE HELL your buffoons in management are killing the Alpha. It rocks/rocked!
I admit that I hate to see Alpha go away (I have a Personal Workstation 500a), but I do understand the business case behind it. PA-RISC is supposed to go away eventually too, for the same reason.
Right, now, HP has the undesirable job of maintaining _three_ high performance 64-bit processors. They designed Itanium 2 (the Itanium project is a joint Intel/HP job, Intel layed out I1, HP did I2), PA-RISC and the Compaq merger brought on the Alpha chip into the fold. That is a lot of money and baggage, and I bet that the Compaq group might still be handling some VAX support contracts too, as a lot of those machines are, surprisingly, still in use. That is a lot of money that could theoretically be saved, but I wonder how much better Alpha would be if the Itanium money went to EV8 and beyond instead, I think DEC did wonders with a much smaller R&D budget than Intel had.
The loss of Alpha is unfortunate as they still had some tricks up their sleeve for EV8, and the architecture was intended to have as much as two more decades of head room.
At least it will still be supported for a while, they still need to port VMS and maybe Tru64 to Itanium, which I'm not sure how far along that is, and how long it takes to be proven reliable.
I'd much rather wait till it gets reported on in the highly reputable newspapers & magazines... THEN i'd know its the truth
It's really a matter of degree. A UFO-centric site is probably going to be biased to a higher degree than media that isn't founded on trying to make such specific claims.
What's the diffrence between complex enough firmware handling multiple tasks and an embedded OS?? Oh yeah - NAME.
To some extent, scale, and I think modularity too.
I have been programming self-contained 8 bit chips that barely has RAM space, doesn't have memory management hardware but I do manage six different devices, four external and two internal, some through polling based I/O and some to interrupt based I/O. Is this an embedded OS?
For one, the entire piece of software is about 6k words, and the only thing missing is modularity. I can't just drop in someone else's software into it in binary or recompiled source form, like one might be able to on an embedded OS.
As I understand it, MS-Windows still has a lot of 20 year old internals... (especially the SMB stuff)... and that's still "supported"!
But it is only supported in the more recent iterations. If you had an on-board computer that couldn't even run Windows 95, forget XP. You'd be stuck trying to dig up Windows 3.1 and whatever software and drivers the manufacturer still bothers to release.
From that list, it looks like several of the P4s 2.6 GHz and higher have better SpecInt2000 performance than any of the Itanium 2s. That is still doing pretty good for something running at 40% of the clock. The SpecFP2000 numbers do look good though.
I didn't know the performance was that good, I heard that the chip was good but the compilers still needed a lot of work.
Your examples really aren't totally comparable. I don't have as much of a problem with people privately "sharing" files as I do with companies selling other's products it as if it was their own and to make it worse, more or less decieving people into thinking that they own a licenced product.
yeah, sure. You don't mind the RIAA / MPAA / SPA digging into your computer, do you?
If we allow them to track and catalog stuff that is in the public, I have no doubt that they will take every chance they can to see what you keep private. "Having nothing to hide" isn't an excuse to let these bozos act like they run a police state. At least with a police stop, they can't force a search unless they have evidence that you ARE hiding things.
I'm with the others, you don't need to be the best/fastest/most powerful to get sales. Being the best/fastest/most powerful does get more attention and press.
There is still a big market in $100 video cards, which is where most of the lesser brands occupy, and that price point makes it easier to convince computer makers to put their card into a computer.
Most architectures have been doing both, but I haven't been tracking all the RISC ones, so I can't say for sure. I believe the G4's AltiVec has both integer and FP SIMD instructions, this was part of Job's claim that Apple's 500MHz computer was a "supercomputer". As I understand it, it wasn't the first single CPU supercomputer, an Alpha did that three years prior, and it wasn't as much of a fabricated marketing stunt.
It seemed like there was only a short period of time where Alpha was cost effective compared to Intel, the rest of the time up until maybe three years ago, Alpha was often simply a heck of a lot faster and that performance was only needed in niche markets compared to today's desktop market.
Now, Alpha is just expensive. It is too bad as my Alpha is still running very strongly after five years of use.
It also took a little while for me to find an Intel based system that was faster all around AND was more reliable - I found that in an oldish XEON. I've even had a 166MHz Alpha UDB running NT - while its all-out CPU performance benchmarks were poor, its UI latency (time from clicking a button to displaying a result, such as a file list or dialog box) was still better than PIIIs twice as fast.
Everything I've seen so far suggested that the subscription was used to subsidize the cost of the device. You could bypass the monthly subsidy by just paying the flat "lifetime service fee".
Replay did it this way first, then Tivo had to follow suit so their prices "looked" similar to Replay's time shifted prices.
Now I'll be able to record the first 5 minutes of my favorite HDTV program!
I recognize that this is funny, but all the TiVo has to do is record the compressed bitstream, much like the Direct Tivo. Even on DirectTivo, recording the bitstream is higher quality and saves space over recording and encoding an analog signal.
I thought that MPEG-4 was based on some "predatory" models too. They even attempted to broadly charge a licencing fee based on how many times a video file was played. Large fragments of the DVD Forum really bitched about for the HD version, because they didn't think consumers would take pay-per-play on videos they already paid for.
So, we have more need for 6 disc changes than we do for 10 GB discs of hard drives on which to store mostly-illegally-obtained mp3s.
Even CD changers are starting to support MP3s written to CDRs. Just about any credible DVD player does now. Using that information, so I guess that gets me to ask, why this? If you have MP3s, burn them to disc and use them on such a deck.
Maybe you should read the +5 comments on stories before you take the description for gospel.
iPod doesn't support ogg.
iTunes does unofficially - but only because somebody made a module or something that adds ogg support to QuickTime - iTunes uses QuickTime as their back end.
I'll worry about FW2 when I have to stream uncompressed HD @ 1920p around the house.
Wouldn't that be 1080p? Picture modes in TV are specified by the number of active scan lines, not the dots per line. 1920x1080x24bppx30fps nets about 1.5 Gbps uncompressed. 1920p uncompressed would be about 47Gbps.
Isn't the hypothetical original number Mach 0.12? I thought that Mach 1.2 would be an order of magnitude in the base 10 system larger than Mach 0.12. A quick approximation puts Mach 0.12 at about 84 MPH, not 206.
I also don't understand how a user using Windows would have anything to do with poor web site design.
"And Linux isn't inferior, it merely follows "the specs" that have been recognized by the general community of computer professionals at large worldwide, whereas Windows, sadly, does not."
Uh, huh? Actual people (that aren't computer professionals trying to geek out) generally find Linux clunky, even recent versions. I suppose that computer professionals account for less than 5% of computer users as that's about all the installed base Linux has.
Re:SGI is finally making some new products
on
New SGI Altix 3000
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
Actually, the packaging itself sounds interesting, something that others haven't done yet.
Even if it does use chips made by someone else, there is a lot of work that goes into making those chips work together, and probably a fair amount of work adjusting the Linux kernel into something that scales so large.
I bet they had a lot of work cut out into making this thing modular like it seems to be. Probably has a lot of work just in the chipset too.
It is unfortunate that it uses Itanium2 chips. I don't think competing Opteron systems will be available for at least little while yet. I think I heard from an AMD rep that Cray had commited to making systems based on Opteron.
Diesel tractors (semis) don't operate on the same combustion principles, and of course, the displacement is higher and they have a lot of gearing. Ferriris probably top out at six gears for forward, I think some trucks have as many as eighteen forward speeds, I'll have to ask my dad. And most of the ones I have looked at under the hood are inline sixes.
Part of going with more and smaller cylinders might have something to do with emissions, so you can rev higher and not have such a huge combustion radius. When making their large engine in the 90's, I understand that Chrysler went with a 488 V-10 vs. a 440 V8 is the diameter of the piston which makes it hard for such a large and thoughrough combustion, thus making CO emmissions a problem. With higher revving engines, I think the piston size has to be smaller yet.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, I read from a place or two that despite Moeller's assertions that it is a stable airplane, the FAA believes otherwise and wouldn't let him fly it unteathered.
The sources I've read also paint the man as not much more than a politician crossed with a used car dealer (read: big fat liar).
Take that however you like it.
My two bits on XVID: The whole DiVX frimfram is complex enough for the average user. Thanks to XViD for introducing another codec that to this day, while not groundbreaking, let alone neccesary, is making the video codec situation tricky to deal with.
That is my objection to the file format fiasco. People don't want to leave good enough alone so they'll release yet another incompatible break-away codec with only marginal improvements.
This does not make for anything resembling long term storage possible because there is no guarantee that any particular file format will still be used a year from now, forget twenty.
but you shouldn't have any problems as long as you try before you buy.
How is that supposed to work? Bring in a laptop that I don't have into a shop with bad color lighting?
I guess I do have a modern LCD, and ghosting isn't that much of a problem, but it still doesn't cover the issues of poor color temperatore and bad picture with an off-axis view. They aren't horrible, but still not worth paying twice as much for an image that still isn't _quite_ up to par. The only real improvemants LCD have are size (depth), weight and power efficiency.
I agree. I am NOT a photographer and my living doesn't demand perfect colors, etc, but I can easily see the defficiencies.
As for sharpness, I think a good CRT does fine. It might take going into service mode to fine tune the beam focus.
I just bought a Samsung 17" flat panel. I am still using an old NEC 21" beast, but my desk is too small to get two such units.
This LCD unit's colors are too blue (color temp wise), and the backlighting intensity is very uneven, too bright on the sides, and too dark on the top edge. The color temp issue can't be totally remedied by the color balance, I set it to as red as possible and it is still a bit blue. I think if I can get some filter gels I might be able to tune the color of the backlight, but I won't try the thing is going back in a few days because other unexpected expenses came up.
while I acknowledge your opinions as your own, do you know WHY THE HELL your buffoons in management are killing the Alpha. It rocks/rocked!
I admit that I hate to see Alpha go away (I have a Personal Workstation 500a), but I do understand the business case behind it. PA-RISC is supposed to go away eventually too, for the same reason.
Right, now, HP has the undesirable job of maintaining _three_ high performance 64-bit processors. They designed Itanium 2 (the Itanium project is a joint Intel/HP job, Intel layed out I1, HP did I2), PA-RISC and the Compaq merger brought on the Alpha chip into the fold. That is a lot of money and baggage, and I bet that the Compaq group might still be handling some VAX support contracts too, as a lot of those machines are, surprisingly, still in use. That is a lot of money that could theoretically be saved, but I wonder how much better Alpha would be if the Itanium money went to EV8 and beyond instead, I think DEC did wonders with a much smaller R&D budget than Intel had.
The loss of Alpha is unfortunate as they still had some tricks up their sleeve for EV8, and the architecture was intended to have as much as two more decades of head room.
At least it will still be supported for a while, they still need to port VMS and maybe Tru64 to Itanium, which I'm not sure how far along that is, and how long it takes to be proven reliable.
I'd much rather wait till it gets reported on in the highly reputable newspapers & magazines... THEN i'd know its the truth
It's really a matter of degree. A UFO-centric site is probably going to be biased to a higher degree than media that isn't founded on trying to make such specific claims.
What's the diffrence between complex enough firmware handling multiple tasks and an embedded OS?? Oh yeah - NAME.
To some extent, scale, and I think modularity too.
I have been programming self-contained 8 bit chips that barely has RAM space, doesn't have memory management hardware but I do manage six different devices, four external and two internal, some through polling based I/O and some to interrupt based I/O. Is this an embedded OS?
For one, the entire piece of software is about 6k words, and the only thing missing is modularity. I can't just drop in someone else's software into it in binary or recompiled source form, like one might be able to on an embedded OS.
As I understand it, MS-Windows still has a lot of 20 year old internals... (especially the SMB stuff)... and that's still "supported"!
But it is only supported in the more recent iterations. If you had an on-board computer that couldn't even run Windows 95, forget XP. You'd be stuck trying to dig up Windows 3.1 and whatever software and drivers the manufacturer still bothers to release.
From that list, it looks like several of the P4s 2.6 GHz and higher have better SpecInt2000 performance than any of the Itanium 2s. That is still doing pretty good for something running at 40% of the clock. The SpecFP2000 numbers do look good though.
I didn't know the performance was that good, I heard that the chip was good but the compilers still needed a lot of work.
Your examples really aren't totally comparable. I don't have as much of a problem with people privately "sharing" files as I do with companies selling other's products it as if it was their own and to make it worse, more or less decieving people into thinking that they own a licenced product.
yeah, sure. You don't mind the RIAA / MPAA / SPA digging into your computer, do you?
If we allow them to track and catalog stuff that is in the public, I have no doubt that they will take every chance they can to see what you keep private. "Having nothing to hide" isn't an excuse to let these bozos act like they run a police state. At least with a police stop, they can't force a search unless they have evidence that you ARE hiding things.
I'm with the others, you don't need to be the best/fastest/most powerful to get sales. Being the best/fastest/most powerful does get more attention and press.
There is still a big market in $100 video cards, which is where most of the lesser brands occupy, and that price point makes it easier to convince computer makers to put their card into a computer.
Most architectures have been doing both, but I haven't been tracking all the RISC ones, so I can't say for sure. I believe the G4's AltiVec has both integer and FP SIMD instructions, this was part of Job's claim that Apple's 500MHz computer was a "supercomputer". As I understand it, it wasn't the first single CPU supercomputer, an Alpha did that three years prior, and it wasn't as much of a fabricated marketing stunt.
It seemed like there was only a short period of time where Alpha was cost effective compared to Intel, the rest of the time up until maybe three years ago, Alpha was often simply a heck of a lot faster and that performance was only needed in niche markets compared to today's desktop market.
Now, Alpha is just expensive. It is too bad as my Alpha is still running very strongly after five years of use.
It also took a little while for me to find an Intel based system that was faster all around AND was more reliable - I found that in an oldish XEON. I've even had a 166MHz Alpha UDB running NT - while its all-out CPU performance benchmarks were poor, its UI latency (time from clicking a button to displaying a result, such as a file list or dialog box) was still better than PIIIs twice as fast.
Everything I've seen so far suggested that the subscription was used to subsidize the cost of the device. You could bypass the monthly subsidy by just paying the flat "lifetime service fee".
Replay did it this way first, then Tivo had to follow suit so their prices "looked" similar to Replay's time shifted prices.
Now I'll be able to record the first 5 minutes of my favorite HDTV program!
I recognize that this is funny, but all the TiVo has to do is record the compressed bitstream, much like the Direct Tivo. Even on DirectTivo, recording the bitstream is higher quality and saves space over recording and encoding an analog signal.
I thought that MPEG-4 was based on some "predatory" models too. They even attempted to broadly charge a licencing fee based on how many times a video file was played. Large fragments of the DVD Forum really bitched about for the HD version, because they didn't think consumers would take pay-per-play on videos they already paid for.
So, we have more need for 6 disc changes than we do for 10 GB discs of hard drives on which to store mostly-illegally-obtained mp3s.
Even CD changers are starting to support MP3s written to CDRs. Just about any credible DVD player does now. Using that information, so I guess that gets me to ask, why this? If you have MP3s, burn them to disc and use them on such a deck.
Maybe you should read the +5 comments on stories before you take the description for gospel.
iPod doesn't support ogg.
iTunes does unofficially - but only because somebody made a module or something that adds ogg support to QuickTime - iTunes uses QuickTime as their back end.
I'll worry about FW2 when I have to stream uncompressed HD @ 1920p around the house.
Wouldn't that be 1080p? Picture modes in TV are specified by the number of active scan lines, not the dots per line. 1920x1080x24bppx30fps nets about 1.5 Gbps uncompressed. 1920p uncompressed would be about 47Gbps.
What base system is that?
Isn't the hypothetical original number Mach 0.12? I thought that Mach 1.2 would be an order of magnitude in the base 10 system larger than Mach 0.12. A quick approximation puts Mach 0.12 at about 84 MPH, not 206.
Oh well, I'm tired.
"some of us don't like continuous pop-up ads"
Some people get pop-up blockers or firewalls?
I don't understand how XP is for "rich people".
I also don't understand how a user using Windows would have anything to do with poor web site design.
"And Linux isn't inferior, it merely follows "the specs" that have been recognized by the general community of computer professionals at large worldwide, whereas Windows, sadly, does not."
Uh, huh? Actual people (that aren't computer professionals trying to geek out) generally find Linux clunky, even recent versions. I suppose that computer professionals account for less than 5% of computer users as that's about all the installed base Linux has.
Actually, the packaging itself sounds interesting, something that others haven't done yet.
Even if it does use chips made by someone else, there is a lot of work that goes into making those chips work together, and probably a fair amount of work adjusting the Linux kernel into something that scales so large.
I bet they had a lot of work cut out into making this thing modular like it seems to be. Probably has a lot of work just in the chipset too.
It is unfortunate that it uses Itanium2 chips. I don't think competing Opteron systems will be available for at least little while yet. I think I heard from an AMD rep that Cray had commited to making systems based on Opteron.
Diesel tractors (semis) don't operate on the same combustion principles, and of course, the displacement is higher and they have a lot of gearing. Ferriris probably top out at six gears for forward, I think some trucks have as many as eighteen forward speeds, I'll have to ask my dad. And most of the ones I have looked at under the hood are inline sixes.
Part of going with more and smaller cylinders might have something to do with emissions, so you can rev higher and not have such a huge combustion radius.
When making their large engine in the 90's, I understand that Chrysler went with a 488 V-10 vs. a 440 V8 is the diameter of the piston which makes it hard for such a large and thoughrough combustion, thus making CO emmissions a problem. With higher revving engines, I think the piston size has to be smaller yet.