I've looked in to OLED technology, and indeed the claims are pretty impressive. But there is a downside, particularly when it comes to power consumption.
OLED's burn power only when on - with white using by far the most juice. Black is almost free.
Therefore - if you run white text on a black background, you get great battery life. Black text on a white background (what we are used to) sucks battery like no tomorrow.
Unless the public will accept a switch to white on black interfaces (or hey, an amber screen works great!), OLED's will have limited application in battery powered devices.
That was my doing. I was the original tech editor of boot, and the internal alt-os champion. Trimming down a micro-Debian distribution and QA'ing that CD was an amazing marathon job. What fun.
I wonder how many people got their first Linux experience from that dist?
We definately got a lot of great feedback for that issue.
I guess this makes me the grandfather of Max Linux. A shame it is dead.:-(
I've been playing around with a very cool PDA case from AquaPac. (http://www.aquapac.net)
It is a tough flexible plastic "bag" that holds a Palm PDA, has an external pocket for a stylus, and a nifty rope to hang around your neck. They claim it is waterproof to 10m depth.
The case is designed to be flexible enough to use your PDA right through the case. I've had no trouble at all - even grafitti works well.
They also make some cases for cell phones and other devices, but I haven't tried them out.
I don't think Gutenberg should even accept partial texts. It is nothing more than subsidizing a book's marketing expenses. Yuck.
A shame it's hard to find...
on
Hackers
·
· Score: 2
Hackers was a great book, it definately inspired me when I first read it years ago.
It is a real shame that "Copyright Law" allows great books like this to become rare historical artifacts after so few years. What would the downside be of having old, out of print books migrate in their entirety to the net much much sooner than is currently allowed?
Waiting a century for Project Gutenberg to pick things up once the copyright expires just isn't the answer. How many great (and even just 'interesting') works are lost to obscurity because of this?
Bah!
chris
Free Hardware to Reviewers is a GOOD THING
on
Nvidia Apologizes
·
· Score: 2
Free hardware to reviewers is a good thing, when handled responsibly by all parties involved.
As the former Technical Editor (responsible for untold amounts on benchmarking) of 'boot Magazine' (now known as 'Maximum PC') - I know what I am talking about. Let me explain why some of the proposed 'sollutions' don't work.
A: Buying the hardware retail. This chief value of many reviews is to allow people to get a feel for a product before they can buy it. Reviews that come out weeks (or even months) after a product is on store shelves lose an immense amount of value. Particularly with a print magazine, lead times are such that it is not at all practical to delay a review until the propper retail experience can be tried.
B: Loaner hardware. This seems nice in theory - ask for the boards back to make sure that the reviewer has nothing to gain by keeping it. But - reviewers NEED to keep boards they test around so that they can later be held accountable for recreating their results, and so that they have boards handy to do comparative reviews.
Imagine if all the Voodoo 5 reviews on the net came out with no comparative results with a GeForce2. It doesn't work. Reviewers need to be able to build a library of all the products that they test.
The real problem here is small, not very credible sites that are pushing one-off reviews. Anyone who is getting paid to professionally review products should be smart enough to have no conflicts of interest caused by the free hardware around them. But fan sites that crank out a review or two every month or so - well, they have to go a lot further to prove their credibility and lack of bias.
If somebody doesn't care enough to renew their work, what gives them the right to suddenly wake up and claim rights if someone else much later thinks of a new value?
"It's a Wonderful Life" would be unknown today if it hadn't entered the Public Domain, and been used by cash-starved PBS channels as Christmas filler.
But... As soon as the movie studio saw it getting ratings, they managed to yank the movie back out of the public domain - and began making a mint off it. Now you won't see it on PBS anymore, just on NBC. Gross.
One thing I've not seen addressed in the whole copyright debate - what rights does a DVD owner have when the copyright on a DVD they own expires?
For example, 50 years or so from now when The Matrix enters the public domain, will Macrovision magically turn itself off? Will the DVD decss itself? Will it magically become region free?
If you take the long view, there is a real legitimate reason for technology (and hidden menus) that get around technological copy protection.
Review boards often come to reviewers (particularly print magazines with long lead times) way before the final packaging and configuration details are nailed down. Reviewers have to trust that the hardware companies are giving them as close as possible exactly what end-users will soon be able to buy.
So, unless every end-user gets a tech from the hardware company to pay a visit and help tune the board - shipping a tweaked / tuned board to a reviewer is unfair, and very sleazy.
Even worse is sifting through all the boards coming off the assembly line, and finding the 1% that can run stable when clocked 30-50% over spec. Shipping these to a magazine and claiming that they are "typical" is downright fraud.
Free hardware for reviewers is standard practice in the industry, and for the most part the system works and is not abused.
Prominent publications have too much to lose by compromising their editorial integrity, and hardware companies have too much to lose by being ommited from coverage. A nice balance of power prevents either side from taking advantage of the other.
But a hardware company has little to lose if "Joe's Nifty Keen Hardware Site" does not publish a review, so the balance is broken and apperantly nVidia has gone a little too far in "managing" their relationships with these smaller sites.
But even with larger publications - sometimes hardware companies play it less than honest.
I know of several instances of hardware companies trying to slip "overclocked" and rigged boards to reviewers, hoping to slip ahead in the benchmarks.
One good story: I was the original tech editor of boot magazine, and reviewed dozens and dozens of graphics cards in my day. Once at a tradeshow (Comdex, I think), I was fiddling around with one of the demo machines showing off a new 3D graphics accelerator from one of the major graphics board companies - and noticed frame rates noticably slower than I was getting on my new test board at home.
I hid my press badge and found a booth peon to talk to, and managed to get him to admit that some press boards were the "pick of the litter" and had been seriously overclocked. Just as he was explaining this to me, the VP of Marketing recognized me, walked up, heard our conversation, and nearly had a heart attack. He tried to stammer an excuse, and scowled to the peon "why are you talking to the press!" - but it was too late. Caught red handed, he had to come clean.
Usually though companies are smarter than this. Cheating at benchmarks is caught, sooner or later - and can affect their reputation and credibility for an awfully long time.
Slashdot Mirror
Check out www.kpig.com.
Small local station that still has a lot of character. Been broadcasting on the net longer than anyone.
And they don't suck. Amazing.
I hate local San Jose radio. Yuck. Give me an independent DJ any day!
I've looked in to OLED technology, and indeed the claims are pretty impressive. But there is a downside, particularly when it comes to power consumption.
OLED's burn power only when on - with white using by far the most juice. Black is almost free.
Therefore - if you run white text on a black background, you get great battery life. Black text on a white background (what we are used to) sucks battery like no tomorrow.
Unless the public will accept a switch to white on black interfaces (or hey, an amber screen works great!), OLED's will have limited application in battery powered devices.
Better luck next time....
That was my doing. I was the original tech editor of boot, and the internal alt-os champion. Trimming down a micro-Debian distribution and QA'ing that CD was an amazing marathon job. What fun.
:-(
I wonder how many people got their first Linux experience from that dist?
We definately got a lot of great feedback for that issue.
I guess this makes me the grandfather of Max Linux. A shame it is dead.
I've been playing around with a very cool PDA case from AquaPac. (http://www.aquapac.net)
It is a tough flexible plastic "bag" that holds a Palm PDA, has an external pocket for a stylus, and a nifty rope to hang around your neck. They claim it is waterproof to 10m depth.
The case is designed to be flexible enough to use your PDA right through the case. I've had no trouble at all - even grafitti works well.
They also make some cases for cell phones and other devices, but I haven't tried them out.
- RadVen
L3 cache in the core logic is really overkill, but if you have free space you might as well use it.
But, what would be real cool would be adding a decent graphics core with enough embedded memory to still run fast.
Ah, now that would be nice....
Gutenberg only has the first two chapters. Not very useful.
GMontag wrote:
e text96/hckrs10.txt
ftp://metalab.unc.edu/pub/docs/books/gutenberg/
Might save you a century.
---
Nope - only the first two chapters.
I don't think Gutenberg should even accept partial texts. It is nothing more than subsidizing a book's marketing expenses. Yuck.
Hackers was a great book, it definately inspired me when I first read it years ago.
It is a real shame that "Copyright Law" allows great books like this to become rare historical artifacts after so few years. What would the downside be of having old, out of print books migrate in their entirety to the net much much sooner than is currently allowed?
Waiting a century for Project Gutenberg to pick things up once the copyright expires just isn't the answer. How many great (and even just 'interesting') works are lost to obscurity because of this?
Bah!
chris
Free hardware to reviewers is a good thing, when handled responsibly by all parties involved.
As the former Technical Editor (responsible for untold amounts on benchmarking) of 'boot Magazine' (now known as 'Maximum PC') - I know what I am talking about. Let me explain why some of the proposed 'sollutions' don't work.
A: Buying the hardware retail.
This chief value of many reviews is to allow people to get a feel for a product before they can buy it. Reviews that come out weeks (or even months) after a product is on store shelves lose an immense amount of value. Particularly with a print magazine, lead times are such that it is not at all practical to delay a review until the propper retail experience can be tried.
B: Loaner hardware.
This seems nice in theory - ask for the boards back to make sure that the reviewer has nothing to gain by keeping it. But - reviewers NEED to keep boards they test around so that they can later be held accountable for recreating their results, and so that they have boards handy to do comparative reviews.
Imagine if all the Voodoo 5 reviews on the net came out with no comparative results with a GeForce2. It doesn't work. Reviewers need to be able to build a library of all the products that they test.
The real problem here is small, not very credible sites that are pushing one-off reviews. Anyone who is getting paid to professionally review products should be smart enough to have no conflicts of interest caused by the free hardware around them. But fan sites that crank out a review or two every month or so - well, they have to go a lot further to prove their credibility and lack of bias.
- chris dunphy
This just seems so wrong.
If somebody doesn't care enough to renew their work, what gives them the right to suddenly wake up and claim rights if someone else much later thinks of a new value?
"It's a Wonderful Life" would be unknown today if it hadn't entered the Public Domain, and been used by cash-starved PBS channels as Christmas filler.
But... As soon as the movie studio saw it getting ratings, they managed to yank the movie back out of the public domain - and began making a mint off it. Now you won't see it on PBS anymore, just on NBC. Gross.
This system is fucked. It needs to change.
-- RadVen
One thing I've not seen addressed in the whole copyright debate - what rights does a DVD owner have when the copyright on a DVD they own expires?
For example, 50 years or so from now when The Matrix enters the public domain, will Macrovision magically turn itself off? Will the DVD decss itself? Will it magically become region free?
If you take the long view, there is a real legitimate reason for technology (and hidden menus) that get around technological copy protection.
chris
Review boards often come to reviewers (particularly print magazines with long lead times) way before the final packaging and configuration details are nailed down. Reviewers have to trust that the hardware companies are giving them as close as possible exactly what end-users will soon be able to buy.
So, unless every end-user gets a tech from the hardware company to pay a visit and help tune the board - shipping a tweaked / tuned board to a reviewer is unfair, and very sleazy.
Even worse is sifting through all the boards coming off the assembly line, and finding the 1% that can run stable when clocked 30-50% over spec. Shipping these to a magazine and claiming that they are "typical" is downright fraud.
chris
Free hardware for reviewers is standard practice in the industry, and for the most part the system works and is not abused.
Prominent publications have too much to lose by compromising their editorial integrity, and hardware companies have too much to lose by being ommited from coverage. A nice balance of power prevents either side from taking advantage of the other.
But a hardware company has little to lose if "Joe's Nifty Keen Hardware Site" does not publish a review, so the balance is broken and apperantly nVidia has gone a little too far in "managing" their relationships with these smaller sites.
But even with larger publications - sometimes hardware companies play it less than honest.
I know of several instances of hardware companies trying to slip "overclocked" and rigged boards to reviewers, hoping to slip ahead in the benchmarks.
One good story:
I was the original tech editor of boot magazine, and reviewed dozens and dozens of graphics cards in my day. Once at a tradeshow (Comdex, I think), I was fiddling around with one of the demo machines showing off a new 3D graphics accelerator from one of the major graphics board companies - and noticed frame rates noticably slower than I was getting on my new test board at home.
I hid my press badge and found a booth peon to talk to, and managed to get him to admit that some press boards were the "pick of the litter" and had been seriously overclocked. Just as he was explaining this to me, the VP of Marketing recognized me, walked up, heard our conversation, and nearly had a heart attack. He tried to stammer an excuse, and scowled to the peon "why are you talking to the press!" - but it was too late. Caught red handed, he had to come clean.
Usually though companies are smarter than this. Cheating at benchmarks is caught, sooner or later - and can affect their reputation and credibility for an awfully long time.
chris