Hmmm... I'm not a Scientologist (not affiliated with ANY religion), but I've looked over your web site and watched the flash animation. All I can say is this:
Most all of what you say is also applicable to the Roman Catholic Church:
They exist soley to collect money (sure they spend some of it on charitable things but what's with the gold goblets, fine linen robes, vast tracks of land, incredible ornate arcitecture, etc) They intend to take over the world by converting everyone to their faith and using their vast monetary reserves to pay for votes in government Followers of the religion are often lied to by and coerced out of their money. Many give upwards of 50% of their income to the church. Many people have died because of their beliefs that where brainwashed in to them by the curch. How many suicides are caused by people's depression over their not living up to the ideal of the curch? When corruption is alledged within the curch, lies, coverups and misdirection are applied to 'fix' the sitution. The victims are chastized and declared as partially responsible for their victimization. Issues that get to court are often settled before trial with large undisclosed amounts of money from the curch They encourage their members to NOT read material about other religions, and detractors of the curch Many members of the curch use violence or legal tactics to silence detractors of the curch
So what's the problem again? Oh yea. the RCC has been around for 1500 or so years, and Scientology is only about 20 years old. Older MUST be better. So why not go back to the oldest religions and worship as the Greeks, or the Chineese?
It may not be released, but it has been demoed at least twice now that I've seen. I don't imagine that they would so prominently display such a feature and then can it in the release.
Really can't do it.
on
Mac OS in a Lab
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· Score: 4, Informative
Older Macs don't have the OpenFirmware ROMs, and so don't have the ability to lock out alternate boot devices, I recall they also can't boot to the network. You don't mention what type of protection level you are trying to achive, or the repricutions of a security failure, I can't really get a handle on that from the responses either. Is this just a lab on campus where you want to keep games and P2P apps off the systems, or is this a research lab where a breach could cause panic or lost money or saftey concernes?
Unless you remove or disable the floppy, CD-ROM drive, and external SCSI connector you have little chance of truely securing a Mac lab. There will always be some way for a malcontent to get control, rather easily in fact.
I recall some stuff like DiskVault, I think, that would alter the directory layout or something so that unless you booted to the drive that was protected, you couldn't use the protected volumes. Of course, installing the software on a bootable CDR would get you around this, as would booting to an external drive that the hacker controlled and had installed the software on.
Personally, I have never encountered a disk/system lockdown utility on older Macs that I couldn't bypass with an alternate boot disk and, at most, a few hours of tinkering. The most you could ask for is that wandering lab monitors might find people hacking the thing before it goes too far. Anectodally, at one place I worked they installed GraceLAN to keep track of app lauches, prevent software installs, force LAN-wide software installs, etc. I used ResEdit and a disk editor on a floppy to locate the admin password. I then installed the admin program on my own system and force installed the old "Energizer Bunny" init on all 120 systems in the office. Of course I renamed it to something like "Apple SoundManager Tuner". THAT was a blast!
If it's just simple protection to keep the honest people honest: use SimpleFinder or AtEase that each limit what users can do. For all its problems, AtEast is a nice little application/Finder replacement for labs. It allows you to create a tab for each type of application, or on a per-course basis.
AS another poster mentioned, Steve (the undeniable voice of Apple) at the Grammys stated that Apple believes consumers should control their own content while being discouraged from illegal copying. Not the word discouraged, not prevented. Apple has put that philosophy in to action with the iPod... no DRM. You CAN get the songs from an iPod to another computer, they just don't support it, and contorted things a litte. They discouraged copying, but did not prevent it.
With Rendevous they encourage streaming version of MP3 and video sharing while generally preventing copying by default. Any two Macs with AiirPort and Redevous enables will be able to listen and watch each other's content, but unless specifically shared as a folder via the sharing panel, it will not be copyable.
So pretty much at every point where Apple has to decide between enabling or restricting consumer choice, they choose to enable consumer choice while discouraging abuse, but not eliminating it. I think this goes simply beyond just spouting a tag line.
None of these are 486 or other "modern" CPU systems. But they are good starting places for learning basic system and board design. Once you understand timing, busses, signaling, etc you can just start reading chip specs and work out how to connect them together via buffers and controllers.
These pages don't necesarily have a lot of design stuff on them, but have many references to places the people pulled info from.
With a few exceptions like wiress/cordless phones you are allowed to recieve and listen to / watch most any non-encypted transmission made on the "public airwaves". Therefore, since the digital TV broadcasts are in a publicly accessible format and not encrypted, it seems anyone should be legally able to build a tuner that does not honor the broadcast/copy control flag.
I'd bet that in the not too distant future there will be freely available plans for set top boxes you can build at home, or perhaps order from overseas.
I agree that the digital tuners are currently expensive. The estimates I've seen are that an add-on set-top box will cost about $100 retail. That's rediculous to me. If the FCC is going to force a non-backward compatible standard for broadcast TV, then it should be their responsibility to get digital tuners to those with analog sets. I'd guess that price will drop precipitously once someone puts the circuitry on a dedicted chip that can be easily incorporated in to a device.
Even if only 10% of the populationviews only over-the-air content, that's still like 30 million people. The broadcast networks won't allow that large an audience to dissapear. They'll either lobby to get the analog/digital simulcast period extended a few years, or collaborate to subsidize these boxes for people that would rely on them to view content.
Anyone know how much 30 million potential impressions in prime time slots are worth to the networks? I'd bet that the cost of a few million boxes pale in comparison.
The deadline is ONLY for over the air broadcasters using the 2-63 channels on the standard dial.
The deadline only mandates the inclusion of digital tuners, not HDTV or any other resolution or format change.
There will likely be no end to analog broadcasts on the deadline date, but years afterward. At least not until there is evidence that a significant majority of people have new sets or converters.
Even when digital is broadcast exclusively, all you'll need is a set-top converter to view these broadcasts on a standard(today) analog TV. (these should be cheap, I but I think they should be free)
If you subscribe to cable TV, your current analog cable stations can stay analog.
Another FCC mandate requires all digital simulast of analog content by April 2004. That's not going to happen.
The whole thing here is that the FCC wants this conversion to take place as soon as possible so they can re-parcel the old televisions spectrum and sell it at auction for bug $$$. TV stations pay nothing for the airwaves under the "public good" clause.
All those analog TVs will still be useful. Just as B&W monural TVs can still be used today in the age of color image and stereo sound. Please don't use such alarmist tones unless you really understand the issues at hand.
For $20 I can purchase a line level to FM converter in the form of an automobile CD player adapter. Pull the thing apart and run the RF output through the linear amp. Granted, these converters aren't the most stable things in the world, but stable enough and very cheap. This also limits me to one or perhaps two frequencies.
The linear amp could be something as simple as a TV antenna or cable TV distribution amp. Remember that the FM spectrum falls nicely between channels 6 and 7 on the standard TV dial. That means there are plenty of low-cost, low power amps out there. The FM radio band is also in the 3 to 4 meter range and you should be able to purchase ham radio equipment and modify it, or build it from scratch to work in this band.
Yea, with a rig like this you might only get a couple of watts output max, and a mile to five miles of range, but in a university setting that's probably enough to reach all the dorm rooms with a signal worth listening to.
The cost:
Line / RF converter: $20 RF amp: $50 about 20ft of copper tube and fittings: $10 Coaxial cable (amp to antenna): $20
Viola. A low power pirate radio station on the air for $100 (or less). I even splurged and included a "fancy" j pole antenna. A simple antenna made of simple wire would also work and cost less.
In that case it's rather simple if you are electronically inclined or have such friends.
RF amplifiers arerather simple beasts and it would be rather simple to build one that runs in the 88-101MHz range. You mght be able to start with some off-the-shelf 'linear amp' and modify it to the appropriate range.
Antennas are easy t come by or build. There are many books on the subject for CBers and HAMs. As long as you know the frequency and power you are targeting making the right size and shape is pretty simple.
Source material: A computer with a large MP3 random playlist and a line-out connection to an R/F converter would take care of that.
With 802.11b, a custom set of directional antennas and a second low-end computer, you might rig up a system to move the converter/amp/antenna around town randomly, and provide remote control of the transmitter.
The question is: in this day of the Bush dictatorship, would you be labeled a terrorist for running a pirate radio station? Seriously, I don't dobt that if caught today that you wouldn't be held indefinitely by the military until you could prove that you weren't encoding secret plans in the music and sending them out to terrorist cells.
They are OUR (the people's) airwaves. If we, the people, use them in a conciencious manner (low power, not trampling other's freqs, etc) then I don't think the FCC should bother us. That of course is my opinion, not reality.
I would just like to remind people (again) that we in the United States do NOT live in a Democracy. We live in a Republic. As for the "politicians must do something" argument. Why don't they try telling the truth and educating the public about these types of issues rather than catering to unfounded fears by passing knee-jerk legislation, aka egg cooking laws, roller-coaster G force limits, and the Patriot Act.
This is about as comparable to building a Mac from scratch as making a meal from scratch is to tearing the platic from the pudding, poking holes over the remaining items and microwaving for 6 minutes. (Do you think I eat too many microwave meals)
No-one builds computers from scratch any more, they just assemble off the shelf parts with idiot-proof keyed connectors. These lamoid "new generation" hackers don't know what "from scratch" means. They should try wire-wrapping or resist ething your own board some time. I'll bet they couldn't build a simple countdown timer with LED output from scratch if their life depended on it. Computer from scratch; humf.
Why don't the financial companies in quesion get together and decide amongst themselves what IM system they will all use? Seems to me that would solve their problems and keep a healthy competition amogst the current services.
While their at it, why don't get demand that all keyboard manufacurers all use the same exact layout. Or that all cars use the same size/type tires?
The difference is that each version of windows has been an evolutionary step (arguably not always in the positive sense). Each version of MS Windows' releases essentially existed for only a certain time, then was replaced by the new version. Yes at changeover to a new system there is a lot of overlap, and some people never change to newer versions.
Compare that with current open software systems. There are major distributions, minor distributions, roll-your own. Then there are modified versions of all those, derivitive works, and forks within many of the core components. With Linux you can't even guarantee a kernel function will exist given the several forks of patches that exist. The major way for Linix to fix that problem is to stop making re-compiles of the kernel necessary. IT should be easier for developers and users to create extensions to the kernel and drop them in to a folder for inclusion when needed by an application. Modules do this to some degree, but it is far from a simple process for 3rd party modules.
But saying that X percent of desktop systems run Gnu/Linux is not a very valid statement. There are at least three major distributions of Gnu/Linux that are fairly incompatible with each other, given different directory layouts, package managment systems and the like.
Saying "Linux system" has become some sort of misnomer and masks the fact that there is no single "Linux System". There are probably more than 20 different operating systems using the Linux kernel, many of which are incompatible with each other on some level, or at least present the user/admin with significantly different interfaces and tools. And yes you get the source, and can "fix" it, but that's a lot of cost in time and skills that never seems to get added in to the TCO of the system.
Until THAT get solved (even within the same CPU family) no distro will ever challenge the major two desktop OSes. Both of which offer standard package management, user interface and administration to every user that installs them.
To look at the larger picture for a second: The overall percentage of open-source (at least partially) based OSes seems to be growing, what with *BSD, Linux, GNU, and OS X (darwin). If more companies are seeing the light of non-Microsoft and open Unixy systems, then who benifits the most? Apple it seems. With MacOS you can write an app for OSX in the text console with all the Unix features you like, or compile most exising stuff. You can also take your base code and evolve it in to a Carbon app that will run on OSX and OS9 with all the "bells and whistles" of a standardised GUI that you know will be the same across all installations. None of this "do I have the KDE library installed, oops, I've got to install the BZip developer libraries".
The SCIFI web page for FarScape has no mention of a cancellation, and in fact they are touting new epsisodes in January. They are also touting the new FarScape video game.
On top of that, SCIFI doesn't seem (from my brief research and the recollection of the credits) to have anything to do with production, they seem merely to purchase the show for "broadcast". What I understand is that Jim Henson Productions owns the show (characters, plots, elements, etc). So if JH owns the show, why would SCIFI cancelling the show cause JH and the production company to tear down sets when apparently the show runs on several other channels/stations in other countries (like BBC2 in England, FoxTel in Australia, etc).
While SCIFI has a history of cancelling good shows, and I can't completely discount this as rumor/hoax the story just doesn't make a whole lot of sense, and there is no press release or the like that I can find on a credible site.
If you do believe that the story is true and SCIFI is indeed cancelling FarScape, then I suggest that along with your letters/calls/emails/faxes to the SCIFI headquarters, that you also write/contact the programming managers at some other stations, just in case. HBO comes to mind, they are a major force in commercial-free original series, and they currently lack a SciFi based show. In order to compete with Odyssey 5 and Jeremiah on ShowTime (don't they also show SG-1?), HBO might very well be willing to pick up FarScape along with the installed viewer base. A letter writing campaign to them might better scure the future of FarScape in the event of cancellation by SciFi Network and cesssation of production by Henson, et al.
Sounds useless in its current incarnation, but imagine this:
Customer to furniture: "I need the TV section 3 inceh wider" Furniture: "You will need a 3/16" drill bit, and a measuring tape to complete the modofication" Instructions follow....
Or... as is(at least used to be) so common, you are missing some bit that is essential to contruction. You can point to the missing piece on some pressure sensitive photo of parts, and the computer will automatically call-up the store and order the missing bits for you. You don't have to try explaining what you need to a person "The long brown screw with the stop sign hole at the top. It's a little longer than the door handle on the glass and shorter than the crosspiece at the shelf support"
I never said AMD makes well balanced efficient chips, I said AIM makes well balanced efficienc chips. If you knew much about the PPC you would know AIM stands for Apple, IBM, Motorola, the three companies that set the design standards for the PPC lineup. Apple's system bus problems are not a limitation of Apple's design, but part of the issue of Motorola's lagging behind in keeping thing up to date. That is what lead to the initial discussion of moving to another chipset.
As for current draw I thought I'd read the P4s take something more like 65W, not 40W. IF I get ti right, Intel's own specs pin the P4 2.8 at a max draw of 75W.
The benchmarks you referenced are interesting but I must say I am troubled by comments like this in the text: "And, as expected, the Mac dual 1GHz G4 could not even come close to keeping up". While I don't dispute that the Mac looses many of the benchmarks (never said it was faster than a P4, just that the MHz gap doesn't provide as substantial a gap as one might think), I will state that it isn't soundly trounced. Many of their benchmarks are entirely too short running to be useful for comparison (1 to 5 second run times). Most of the longer ones show the x86 machines to be 60% faster at most. So again I state... 2.5 times the clock speed, and only 60% better performance?
You keep calling the PPC a weaklink, underperformer, etc yet continually fauly to provide a link to any benchmark that shows a P4 syatem beating a PPC system by anything close to the ratio of their clock speed difference.
Your "treatise" is littered with opinion (apparently mostly quoted from Ars Technica). I prefer fact to opinion, and at this point, fact is that no-one can show me the benchmark results that show what I'm asking for. Noplace has anyone shown (that I know of) that at 2.5 times the clock speed, that a P4 system is even twice as fast as a PowerMac. My opinion remains that Intel builds CPUs, support shipsets and mobos that are designed soley to achieve higher clock speeds with actual real-world performance being far less than should be expected for that transistor count and current draw. AIM designs chips that are overall well balanced, and efficiet, Apple is now designing systems that are fairly well balanced and remove many previous bottlenecks (many with still exist in P4 systems).
I don't know why you say Itanium is slower than the P4. HP's testing shows that cycle for cycle the Itanium outperforms the P4 in the SPEC tests you like so much. Ex: a 1GHz Itanium is 2.1x as fast in FP than a 1.6GHz P4 Xenon.
Lets stop making this a platform war and look at Intel's own designs:
The P4 Intel sells to consumers is designed such that is runs at high clock speeds with long pipelines. The Xeneon and ia64 chips they market for performance in servers and professional workstations are all lower clock speed, shorter pipeline chips than the P4. Seems to me that Intel themselves are the best evidence that you get more real-world work completed with lower clock speed, more efficient chips. The last I recall is that at about 1/2 the clock speed an Itanium outperforms a P4 by a sizable margin. AMD is also proving this with chips that run at lower clock speeds, yet provide the performance of Intel's clock speed gobblers.
Marketing info reveals secret featur
on
An R2 Of Your Own
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· Score: 2
Following the link to the toys-r-us page for purchase (via amazon) lists the following specs:
Shipping: Currently, item can be shipped only within the U.S. Box Size (in inches): 10.5 x 7.5 x 17.5 Shipping weight: 0.039198 pounds. ----- ASIN: B000063KCP SKN: 527772
It seems R2 comes with an anti-gravity module. Figure a 15" metal robot should weigh a few pounds at least. The packaging and box should weigh a few ounces to maybe two pounds. Yet the shipping weight of the entire deal is just over 1/2 of an ounce. R2 must be generating a hover field that supports its own weight and most of the box and packaging. Hope it doesn't get blown away when I open the front door!
How can you state that Mhz != performance, then in the very next sentence argue that Mhz = performance? The PPC can keep up when it requires fewer instructions to process any task, and when vector processing allows massive scaling of clock cycle to work performed. Also note that there's nothing inherent in the PPC design that is limiting clock speed, it's Motorola's corporate issues that keep the speeds down.
The benchmarks in SPEC are artificial. They test particular oddball functions of a system. How often does an average user cross-compile pre-processesed C code files into Motorola 88100 processor machine language? When was the last time you needed to process the "lithography artwork needed for the production of microchips"? Never would be a reasonable guess. Of course, the point is moot as I can't locate a single PPC chip test result, never mind a PowerMac system.
A real-world benchmark in my opinion (for general use desktop systems) is using a program/code compiled and optimized for a given CPU to test some complete task that is commonly performed by the average user. Ex: Rip an audio CD to.mp3 format, make some alterations and burn out to CDR. Load an image and perform some editing and convert it to a web suitable size/format. Frame rates of games are pointless benchmarks. What's the point of having a graphics subsystem that can do 200FPS in quake when your monitor can only refresh at 120Hz max, and your eye can't see anything above 80hz anyway. It's like comparing the top speed of a cars when they'll never go faster than 80mph anyway. The speed becomes insignificant compared to other aspects of the system or car.
RC5 scores are not a real-world benchmark, neither are SPEC. The first is a highly specific, CPU/cache intensive algorithm the other two are artificial benchmarks designed to test particular parts of the sytstem. By real world benchmarks I mean, launch an app and perform some common tasks, much the way Steve does with the PS tests on stage or the BYTEmark system and media suites. Many CPUs are faster than the PPC at particular tasks, just as many CPUs are slower than the PPC at particular tasks. In particular, RC5 relies heavily on an instruction that PPC, AMD and Intel happen to impliment. Alpha, MIPS, and most other CPUs don't have this particular instruction and hence must execute many others to emulate it, slowing down their performance in this endeavor.
I didn't state that the PPC "smokes" any other chip, just that I've yet to see a real-world performance test where a 2.5GHz P4 ran 2.5x faster than a G4 at 1GHz (single CPU). Yes the P4 will win some benchmarks in any test suite, perhaps all. But not by a factor that equates to the ratio of clock speed differernce between the chips. In fact the best I've seen is that in some tasks a P4@2.5Ghz is 30% faster than a G4@1Ghz. Not very impressive for a system that has 150% more clockspeed to only run 30% faster at some things, and up to 50% slower for some things than its lower clock speed competitor. Please... point me to a relatively broad-based benchmark that shows a P4 outperforming a G4 by a factor proportional to their clock speed difference.
Saying the PPC is slow because it runs at much lower clock speed is like saying that an F16 should be slower than a 747 because the 747 has more and larger engines. Yet, producing 200,000lbs of thrust, the 747 reaches less than half the top speed(~mach.9) of the F16(~mach 2) that only produces 15,000lbs of thrust. In simple terms, despite having 13 times the thrust of an F16, the 747 only goes 1/2 as fast. Some numbers just aren't meant to be compared, and you need to look at the whole picture to understand what's going on. Thrust != speed and Mhz != performance
There is no lie. In the tests Apple puts forth (and others verify), the PPCs at lower clock rates regularly keep up with, or surpass the performancof a P4.
I have yet to see objective test of real-world tasks where a P4 at 2x the clock speed will significantly outperforma PPC.
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Hmmm...
I'm not a Scientologist (not affiliated with ANY religion), but I've looked over your web site and watched the flash animation. All I can say is this:
Most all of what you say is also applicable to the Roman Catholic Church:
They exist soley to collect money (sure they spend some of it on charitable things but what's with the gold goblets, fine linen robes, vast tracks of land, incredible ornate arcitecture, etc)
They intend to take over the world by converting everyone to their faith and using their vast monetary reserves to pay for votes in government
Followers of the religion are often lied to by and coerced out of their money. Many give upwards of 50% of their income to the church.
Many people have died because of their beliefs that where brainwashed in to them by the curch. How many suicides are caused by people's depression over their not living up to the ideal of the curch?
When corruption is alledged within the curch, lies, coverups and misdirection are applied to 'fix' the sitution. The victims are chastized and declared as partially responsible for their victimization.
Issues that get to court are often settled before trial with large undisclosed amounts of money from the curch
They encourage their members to NOT read material about other religions, and detractors of the curch
Many members of the curch use violence or legal tactics to silence detractors of the curch
So what's the problem again? Oh yea. the RCC has been around for 1500 or so years, and Scientology is only about 20 years old. Older MUST be better. So why not go back to the oldest religions and worship as the Greeks, or the Chineese?
It may not be released, but it has been demoed at least twice now that I've seen. I don't imagine that they would so prominently display such a feature and then can it in the release.
Older Macs don't have the OpenFirmware ROMs, and so don't have the ability to lock out alternate boot devices, I recall they also can't boot to the network. You don't mention what type of protection level you are trying to achive, or the repricutions of a security failure, I can't really get a handle on that from the responses either. Is this just a lab on campus where you want to keep games and P2P apps off the systems, or is this a research lab where a breach could cause panic or lost money or saftey concernes?
Unless you remove or disable the floppy, CD-ROM drive, and external SCSI connector you have little chance of truely securing a Mac lab. There will always be some way for a malcontent to get control, rather easily in fact.
I recall some stuff like DiskVault, I think, that would alter the directory layout or something so that unless you booted to the drive that was protected, you couldn't use the protected volumes. Of course, installing the software on a bootable CDR would get you around this, as would booting to an external drive that the hacker controlled and had installed the software on.
Personally, I have never encountered a disk/system lockdown utility on older Macs that I couldn't bypass with an alternate boot disk and, at most, a few hours of tinkering. The most you could ask for is that wandering lab monitors might find people hacking the thing before it goes too far. Anectodally, at one place I worked they installed GraceLAN to keep track of app lauches, prevent software installs, force LAN-wide software installs, etc. I used ResEdit and a disk editor on a floppy to locate the admin password. I then installed the admin program on my own system and force installed the old "Energizer Bunny" init on all 120 systems in the office. Of course I renamed it to something like "Apple SoundManager Tuner". THAT was a blast!
If it's just simple protection to keep the honest people honest: use SimpleFinder or AtEase that each limit what users can do. For all its problems, AtEast is a nice little application/Finder replacement for labs. It allows you to create a tab for each type of application, or on a per-course basis.
AS another poster mentioned, Steve (the undeniable voice of Apple) at the Grammys stated that Apple believes consumers should control their own content while being discouraged from illegal copying. Not the word discouraged, not prevented.
Apple has put that philosophy in to action with the iPod... no DRM. You CAN get the songs from an iPod to another computer, they just don't support it, and contorted things a litte. They discouraged copying, but did not prevent it.
With Rendevous they encourage streaming version of MP3 and video sharing while generally preventing copying by default. Any two Macs with AiirPort and Redevous enables will be able to listen and watch each other's content, but unless specifically shared as a folder via the sharing panel, it will not be copyable.
So pretty much at every point where Apple has to decide between enabling or restricting consumer choice, they choose to enable consumer choice while discouraging abuse, but not eliminating it. I think this goes simply beyond just spouting a tag line.
None of these are 486 or other "modern" CPU systems. But they are good starting places for learning basic system and board design. Once you understand timing, busses, signaling, etc you can just start reading chip specs and work out how to connect them together via buffers and controllers.
h tm 1 01 .html6 5tools/ diy6502/diy6502.html 98/electronics/zargar i/zargari.html
These pages don't necesarily have a lot of design stuff on them, but have many references to places the people pulled info from.
http://fie.engrng.pitt.edu/fie95/2a2/2a23/2a23.
http://www.home-micros.freeserve.co.uk/uk101/uk
http://www2.whidbey.com/~beattidp/comput/x
http://et.nmsu.edu/~etti/fal
With a few exceptions like wiress/cordless phones you are allowed to recieve and listen to / watch most any non-encypted transmission made on the "public airwaves". Therefore, since the digital TV broadcasts are in a publicly accessible format and not encrypted, it seems anyone should be legally able to build a tuner that does not honor the broadcast/copy control flag.
I'd bet that in the not too distant future there will be freely available plans for set top boxes you can build at home, or perhaps order from overseas.
I agree that the digital tuners are currently expensive. The estimates I've seen are that an add-on set-top box will cost about $100 retail. That's rediculous to me. If the FCC is going to force a non-backward compatible standard for broadcast TV, then it should be their responsibility to get digital tuners to those with analog sets.
I'd guess that price will drop precipitously once someone puts the circuitry on a dedicted chip that can be easily incorporated in to a device.
Even if only 10% of the populationviews only over-the-air content, that's still like 30 million people. The broadcast networks won't allow that large an audience to dissapear. They'll either lobby to get the analog/digital simulcast period extended a few years, or collaborate to subsidize these boxes for people that would rely on them to view content.
Anyone know how much 30 million potential impressions in prime time slots are worth to the networks? I'd bet that the cost of a few million boxes pale in comparison.
The whole thing here is that the FCC wants this conversion to take place as soon as possible so they can re-parcel the old televisions spectrum and sell it at auction for bug $$$. TV stations pay nothing for the airwaves under the "public good" clause.
All those analog TVs will still be useful. Just as B&W monural TVs can still be used today in the age of color image and stereo sound. Please don't use such alarmist tones unless you really understand the issues at hand.
I disagree.
For $20 I can purchase a line level to FM converter in the form of an automobile CD player adapter. Pull the thing apart and run the RF output through the linear amp. Granted, these converters aren't the most stable things in the world, but stable enough and very cheap. This also limits me to one or perhaps two frequencies.
The linear amp could be something as simple as a TV antenna or cable TV distribution amp. Remember that the FM spectrum falls nicely between channels 6 and 7 on the standard TV dial. That means there are plenty of low-cost, low power amps out there. The FM radio band is also in the 3 to 4 meter range and you should be able to purchase ham radio equipment and modify it, or build it from scratch to work in this band.
Yea, with a rig like this you might only get a couple of watts output max, and a mile to five miles of range, but in a university setting that's probably enough to reach all the dorm rooms with a signal worth listening to.
The cost:
Line / RF converter: $20
RF amp: $50
about 20ft of copper tube and fittings: $10
Coaxial cable (amp to antenna): $20
Viola. A low power pirate radio station on the air for $100 (or less). I even splurged and included a "fancy" j pole antenna. A simple antenna made of simple wire would also work and cost less.
In that case it's rather simple if you are electronically inclined or have such friends.
RF amplifiers arerather simple beasts and it would be rather simple to build one that runs in the 88-101MHz range. You mght be able to start with some off-the-shelf 'linear amp' and modify it to the appropriate range.
Antennas are easy t come by or build. There are many books on the subject for CBers and HAMs. As long as you know the frequency and power you are targeting making the right size and shape is pretty simple.
Source material: A computer with a large MP3 random playlist and a line-out connection to an R/F converter would take care of that.
With 802.11b, a custom set of directional antennas and a second low-end computer, you might rig up a system to move the converter/amp/antenna around town randomly, and provide remote control of the transmitter.
The question is: in this day of the Bush dictatorship, would you be labeled a terrorist for running a pirate radio station? Seriously, I don't dobt that if caught today that you wouldn't be held indefinitely by the military until you could prove that you weren't encoding secret plans in the music and sending them out to terrorist cells.
They are OUR (the people's) airwaves. If we, the people, use them in a conciencious manner (low power, not trampling other's freqs, etc) then I don't think the FCC should bother us. That of course is my opinion, not reality.
I would just like to remind people (again) that we in the United States do NOT live in a Democracy. We live in a Republic.
As for the "politicians must do something" argument. Why don't they try telling the truth and educating the public about these types of issues rather than catering to unfounded fears by passing knee-jerk legislation, aka egg cooking laws, roller-coaster G force limits, and the Patriot Act.
This is about as comparable to building a Mac from scratch as making a meal from scratch is to tearing the platic from the pudding, poking holes over the remaining items and microwaving for 6 minutes. (Do you think I eat too many microwave meals)
No-one builds computers from scratch any more, they just assemble off the shelf parts with idiot-proof keyed connectors.
These lamoid "new generation" hackers don't know what "from scratch" means. They should try wire-wrapping or resist ething your own board some time. I'll bet they couldn't build a simple countdown timer with LED output from scratch if their life depended on it. Computer from scratch; humf.
Why don't the financial companies in quesion get together and decide amongst themselves what IM system they will all use? Seems to me that would solve their problems and keep a healthy competition amogst the current services.
While their at it, why don't get demand that all keyboard manufacurers all use the same exact layout. Or that all cars use the same size/type tires?
The difference is that each version of windows has been an evolutionary step (arguably not always in the positive sense). Each version of MS Windows' releases essentially existed for only a certain time, then was replaced by the new version. Yes at changeover to a new system there is a lot of overlap, and some people never change to newer versions.
Compare that with current open software systems. There are major distributions, minor distributions, roll-your own. Then there are modified versions of all those, derivitive works, and forks within many of the core components. With Linux you can't even guarantee a kernel function will exist given the several forks of patches that exist.
The major way for Linix to fix that problem is to stop making re-compiles of the kernel necessary. IT should be easier for developers and users to create extensions to the kernel and drop them in to a folder for inclusion when needed by an application. Modules do this to some degree, but it is far from a simple process for 3rd party modules.
But saying that X percent of desktop systems run Gnu/Linux is not a very valid statement. There are at least three major distributions of Gnu/Linux that are fairly incompatible with each other, given different directory layouts, package managment systems and the like.
Saying "Linux system" has become some sort of misnomer and masks the fact that there is no single "Linux System". There are probably more than 20 different operating systems using the Linux kernel, many of which are incompatible with each other on some level, or at least present the user/admin with significantly different interfaces and tools. And yes you get the source, and can "fix" it, but that's a lot of cost in time and skills that never seems to get added in to the TCO of the system.
Until THAT get solved (even within the same CPU family) no distro will ever challenge the major two desktop OSes. Both of which offer standard package management, user interface and administration to every user that installs them.
To look at the larger picture for a second:
The overall percentage of open-source (at least partially) based OSes seems to be growing, what with *BSD, Linux, GNU, and OS X (darwin). If more companies are seeing the light of non-Microsoft and open Unixy systems, then who benifits the most? Apple it seems.
With MacOS you can write an app for OSX in the text console with all the Unix features you like, or compile most exising stuff. You can also take your base code and evolve it in to a Carbon app that will run on OSX and OS9 with all the "bells and whistles" of a standardised GUI that you know will be the same across all installations. None of this "do I have the KDE library installed, oops, I've got to install the BZip developer libraries".
First off, since when can you trust anyone's identity on IRC or the Internet in general?
The SCIFI web page for FarScape has no mention of a cancellation, and in fact they are touting new epsisodes in January. They are also touting the new FarScape video game.
On top of that, SCIFI doesn't seem (from my brief research and the recollection of the credits) to have anything to do with production, they seem merely to purchase the show for "broadcast". What I understand is that Jim Henson Productions owns the show (characters, plots, elements, etc). So if JH owns the show, why would SCIFI cancelling the show cause JH and the production company to tear down sets when apparently the show runs on several other channels/stations in other countries (like BBC2 in England, FoxTel in Australia, etc).
While SCIFI has a history of cancelling good shows, and I can't completely discount this as rumor/hoax the story just doesn't make a whole lot of sense, and there is no press release or the like that I can find on a credible site.
If you do believe that the story is true and SCIFI is indeed cancelling FarScape, then I suggest that along with your letters/calls/emails/faxes to the SCIFI headquarters, that you also write/contact the programming managers at some other stations, just in case.
HBO comes to mind, they are a major force in commercial-free original series, and they currently lack a SciFi based show. In order to compete with Odyssey 5 and Jeremiah on ShowTime (don't they also show SG-1?), HBO might very well be willing to pick up FarScape along with the installed viewer base. A letter writing campaign to them might better scure the future of FarScape in the event of cancellation by SciFi Network and cesssation of production by Henson, et al.
Sounds useless in its current incarnation, but imagine this:
Customer to furniture: "I need the TV section 3 inceh wider"
Furniture: "You will need a 3/16" drill bit, and a measuring tape to complete the modofication"
Instructions follow....
Or... as is(at least used to be) so common, you are missing some bit that is essential to contruction. You can point to the missing piece on some pressure sensitive photo of parts, and the computer will automatically call-up the store and order the missing bits for you. You don't have to try explaining what you need to a person "The long brown screw with the stop sign hole at the top. It's a little longer than the door handle on the glass and shorter than the crosspiece at the shelf support"
I never said AMD makes well balanced efficient chips, I said AIM makes well balanced efficienc chips. If you knew much about the PPC you would know AIM stands for Apple, IBM, Motorola, the three companies that set the design standards for the PPC lineup.
Apple's system bus problems are not a limitation of Apple's design, but part of the issue of Motorola's lagging behind in keeping thing up to date. That is what lead to the initial discussion of moving to another chipset.
As for current draw I thought I'd read the P4s take something more like 65W, not 40W. IF I get ti right, Intel's own specs pin the P4 2.8 at a max draw of 75W.
The benchmarks you referenced are interesting but I must say I am troubled by comments like this in the text: "And, as expected, the Mac dual 1GHz G4 could not even come close to keeping up". While I don't dispute that the Mac looses many of the benchmarks (never said it was faster than a P4, just that the MHz gap doesn't provide as substantial a gap as one might think), I will state that it isn't soundly trounced. Many of their benchmarks are entirely too short running to be useful for comparison (1 to 5 second run times). Most of the longer ones show the x86 machines to be 60% faster at most. So again I state... 2.5 times the clock speed, and only 60% better performance?
You keep calling the PPC a weaklink, underperformer, etc yet continually fauly to provide a link to any benchmark that shows a P4 syatem beating a PPC system by anything close to the ratio of their clock speed difference.
Your "treatise" is littered with opinion (apparently mostly quoted from Ars Technica). I prefer fact to opinion, and at this point, fact is that no-one can show me the benchmark results that show what I'm asking for.
Noplace has anyone shown (that I know of) that at 2.5 times the clock speed, that a P4 system is even twice as fast as a PowerMac.
My opinion remains that Intel builds CPUs, support shipsets and mobos that are designed soley to achieve higher clock speeds with actual real-world performance being far less than should be expected for that transistor count and current draw. AIM designs chips that are overall well balanced, and efficiet, Apple is now designing systems that are fairly well balanced and remove many previous bottlenecks (many with still exist in P4 systems).
I don't know why you say Itanium is slower than the P4. HP's testing shows that cycle for cycle the Itanium outperforms the P4 in the SPEC tests you like so much. Ex: a 1GHz Itanium is 2.1x as fast in FP than a 1.6GHz P4 Xenon.
Lets stop making this a platform war and look at Intel's own designs:
The P4 Intel sells to consumers is designed such that is runs at high clock speeds with long pipelines.
The Xeneon and ia64 chips they market for performance in servers and professional workstations are all lower clock speed, shorter pipeline chips than the P4. Seems to me that Intel themselves are the best evidence that you get more real-world work completed with lower clock speed, more efficient chips. The last I recall is that at about 1/2 the clock speed an Itanium outperforms a P4 by a sizable margin.
AMD is also proving this with chips that run at lower clock speeds, yet provide the performance of Intel's clock speed gobblers.
Following the link to the toys-r-us page for purchase (via amazon) lists the following specs:
Shipping: Currently, item can be shipped only within the U.S.
Box Size (in inches): 10.5 x 7.5 x 17.5
Shipping weight: 0.039198 pounds. -----
ASIN: B000063KCP
SKN: 527772
It seems R2 comes with an anti-gravity module. Figure a 15" metal robot should weigh a few pounds at least. The packaging and box should weigh a few ounces to maybe two pounds. Yet the shipping weight of the entire deal is just over 1/2 of an ounce. R2 must be generating a hover field that supports its own weight and most of the box and packaging. Hope it doesn't get blown away when I open the front door!
How can you state that Mhz != performance, then in the very next sentence argue that Mhz = performance?
.mp3 format, make some alterations and burn out to CDR. Load an image and perform some editing and convert it to a web suitable size/format.
The PPC can keep up when it requires fewer instructions to process any task, and when vector processing allows massive scaling of clock cycle to work performed. Also note that there's nothing inherent in the PPC design that is limiting clock speed, it's Motorola's corporate issues that keep the speeds down.
The benchmarks in SPEC are artificial. They test particular oddball functions of a system. How often does an average user cross-compile pre-processesed C code files into Motorola 88100 processor machine language? When was the last time you needed to process the "lithography artwork needed for the production of microchips"? Never would be a reasonable guess. Of course, the point is moot as I can't locate a single PPC chip test result, never mind a PowerMac system.
A real-world benchmark in my opinion (for general use desktop systems) is using a program/code compiled and optimized for a given CPU to test some complete task that is commonly performed by the average user.
Ex: Rip an audio CD to
Frame rates of games are pointless benchmarks. What's the point of having a graphics subsystem that can do 200FPS in quake when your monitor can only refresh at 120Hz max, and your eye can't see anything above 80hz anyway. It's like comparing the top speed of a cars when they'll never go faster than 80mph anyway. The speed becomes insignificant compared to other aspects of the system or car.
RC5 scores are not a real-world benchmark, neither are SPEC. The first is a highly specific, CPU/cache intensive algorithm the other two are artificial benchmarks designed to test particular parts of the sytstem. By real world benchmarks I mean, launch an app and perform some common tasks, much the way Steve does with the PS tests on stage or the BYTEmark system and media suites. Many CPUs are faster than the PPC at particular tasks, just as many CPUs are slower than the PPC at particular tasks. In particular, RC5 relies heavily on an instruction that PPC, AMD and Intel happen to impliment. Alpha, MIPS, and most other CPUs don't have this particular instruction and hence must execute many others to emulate it, slowing down their performance in this endeavor.
.9) of the F16(~mach 2) that only produces 15,000lbs of thrust. In simple terms, despite having 13 times the thrust of an F16, the 747 only goes 1/2 as fast.
I didn't state that the PPC "smokes" any other chip, just that I've yet to see a real-world performance test where a 2.5GHz P4 ran 2.5x faster than a G4 at 1GHz (single CPU). Yes the P4 will win some benchmarks in any test suite, perhaps all. But not by a factor that equates to the ratio of clock speed differernce between the chips. In fact the best I've seen is that in some tasks a P4@2.5Ghz is 30% faster than a G4@1Ghz. Not very impressive for a system that has 150% more clockspeed to only run 30% faster at some things, and up to 50% slower for some things than its lower clock speed competitor. Please... point me to a relatively broad-based benchmark that shows a P4 outperforming a G4 by a factor proportional to their clock speed difference.
Saying the PPC is slow because it runs at much lower clock speed is like saying that an F16 should be slower than a 747 because the 747 has more and larger engines. Yet, producing 200,000lbs of thrust, the 747 reaches less than half the top speed(~mach
Some numbers just aren't meant to be compared, and you need to look at the whole picture to understand what's going on.
Thrust != speed and Mhz != performance
There is no lie. In the tests Apple puts forth (and others verify), the PPCs at lower clock rates regularly keep up with, or surpass the performancof a P4.
I have yet to see objective test of real-world tasks where a P4 at 2x the clock speed will significantly outperforma PPC.