BUT.. this top end Quad G5 configuration has me astonished, especially the +$1650 nVidia Quadro FX 4500. I was thinking of investing in a nice 30in Cinema Display and a QuadG5, for applications like FCP, Maya, Shake, and Motion. But I wonder if it's really worth spending that kind of money on a video card, I mean jeez, that card alone is almost as much as a basic dualcore-2Ghz G5 CPU! Is this card going to really give a performance boost to make it worth that kind of money? It's not like I'm going to do the fancy tricks this card is capable of, like stereographic LCD glasses, dual 30in screens, etc.
Why not just wait for Apple to add the 7800GT to the BTO list? Given that it (mistakingly or otherwise) appeared in the specs, one can only assume that sooner or later it'll actually be orderable, and show up in the BTO list.
My office is already baking from the hot exhaust of my dual-1Ghz MDD with 4 drives, I bet a similar quadG5 config really will kick out the heat and suck up the power. It's 60 degrees outside but I'm still running the air conditioning because without it, my CPU heats my tiny office up to about 90 degrees even under moderately light CPU use.
Google for CHUD 3.5.2 and Nap mode and read http://www.xlr8yourmac.com/feedback/MDD_CHUD_feedb ack.html. My dual-1.25 MDD's nominal CPU temperature dropped 20-30 degrees after installing it and enabling Nap mode. (I only have 2 disks inside mine, but still... )
"Also, most Macs since 1999 have shipped with USB, and I'm fairly certain that the two-year-old Macs have USB 2.0"
G4 iMacs and G3 iBooks did not. PowerMacs and PowerBooks have it... but artificially constraining the cheaper machines is one of my criticisms, and leaving USB 2.0 out of the cheaper machines is an example of that.
Just to add to this, my first-generation 17" Aluminum PowerBook (1 GHz) only has USB 1.1 ports. No new iPod for me...
My goal, along with the majority of tower owners, is a machine that isn't necessarily outrageously powerful but one that can be updated, and has better capabilities. Wanting dual displays or PCI slots does not imply wanting a second CPU or having a few thousand extra dollars lying around.
Funnily enough, my officemate just mentioned this very same thing/desire yesterday. His main machine at home is a PC, but he wants to upgrade his old G3 desktop. He doesn't want to spend much money on one because he doesn't have much need for power, but a Mac mini won't do, because he has PCI cards (or a single PCI card; I'm not sure). There is no "middle ground" with Apple anymore. I suggested a used/refurbished single-CPU 1.8 GHz G5 to him; that was about the best I could come up with.
A co-worker in my group two doors down from me did some work on Pioneer 7-track tape data recovery a few years ago; the main interest at that time was actual Science data, rather than the raw spacecraft Telemetry data that seems to be the focus of this Planetary Society inquest.
And, in fact, I believe the data referenced on this page:
I've had experience with dual-boot PCs, and I still regularly use XP SP1 running under VMware on my Linux PC (RHEL 3 Taroon Update 5) at work.
I quickly found with dual-booting that I almost never booted into Windows. Just too much of a pain to switch OSes back and forth.
That said, what I'd really like to see is a hybrid approach:
Rather than a simple VMware port to OS X on Intel, where you're using a single UNIX file as an emulated Windows disk, I'd prefer to have VMware use the full-blown "real" Windows partition installed as part of the dual-boot setup. (If the present Linux-based VMware can do this, forgive me - it's been awhile since I installed the one I'm using now, which is using the emulated-file-as-disk approach.)
That way, I'd have the best of both worlds - I would run with Windows XP running inside VMware under OS X most of the time, but in the case of those once-in-a-blue-moon moments when I really needed to run Windows natively (e.g.: to back up my car's navigation discs with Alcohol 120%; or to upgrade the firmware in my Pioneer dual-layer burner - yes there's Mac versions of those updaters, but the process seems much easier if you have Windows; or to play a Windows game), I could reboot into Windows and do what I needed to do in that environment.
Truly the best of all possible worlds from where I sit. (The only thing I'd add to this would be to have VMware provide the wonderful ability to provide the native OS X Volumes to the running Windows environment as seamlessly as Microsoft's Remote Desktop Connection product provides. That's slick stuff!)
Sorry for the caps, but I wanted to get your attention;)
I work at JPL, for the last 12 1/2 years in the Multi-mission Image Processing Lab. A co-worker in my group two doors down from me did some work on Pioneer 7-track tape data recovery a few years ago; the main interest at that time was actual Science data, rather than the raw spacecraft Telemetry data that seems to be the focus of this Planetary Society inquest.
A lot of the tapes were recovered back then. They were burned to CD-ROMs and 4 copies of each were made. One set is still here at JPL at the Regional Planetary Image Facility (see http://rpif.jpl.nasa.gov/locb_mission.asp?pioneerv enusorbiter - they've got some Pioneer data), one set is in the hands of the organization that was the precursor to our current Planetary Data System (PDS) - the NASA archiving organization (they create CD-ROMs and nowadays DVD-ROMs from mission data, if we own it). Go check out http://pds.jpl.nasa.gov/. I think the original researcher got copy #4, and I've forgotten who got copy #3. If we could find one of the CD-ROMs, we could look at the index file (each CD had an index file; it was updated as newer versions of the CD's were produced) and see if any of the files contained Telemetry data.
As for the equipment, I think the PS is blowing smoke - as far as we know, Ratheon has the old VAX equipment we used to read those old 7-track tapes onto, and I suspect they might also have the actual 7-track tape drives themselves that were used in the reclamation project (i.e. by my co-worker).
Anyway, the key thing is, the main thrust of this recovery project was to recover Science data, not Telemetry. So if someone really wants all the Telemetry from launch up to 2002 (last transmission received), they'll probably still need to get it off of those old rotting 7-track tapes. We probably only have some of it on the CD-ROMs that were made from the efforts here.
(So, how many of you/.'ers out there knew that Deep Impact is about to launch a probe into the comet Tempel 1 on the 4th of July? Raise your hands... oh dear.)
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BUT.. this top end Quad G5 configuration has me astonished, especially the +$1650 nVidia Quadro FX 4500. I was thinking of investing in a nice 30in Cinema Display and a QuadG5, for applications like FCP, Maya, Shake, and Motion. But I wonder if it's really worth spending that kind of money on a video card, I mean jeez, that card alone is almost as much as a basic dualcore-2Ghz G5 CPU! Is this card going to really give a performance boost to make it worth that kind of money? It's not like I'm going to do the fancy tricks this card is capable of, like stereographic LCD glasses, dual 30in screens, etc.
b ack.html. My dual-1.25 MDD's nominal CPU temperature dropped 20-30 degrees after installing it and enabling Nap mode. (I only have 2 disks inside mine, but still ... )
Why not just wait for Apple to add the 7800GT to the BTO list? Given that it (mistakingly or otherwise) appeared in the specs, one can only assume that sooner or later it'll actually be orderable, and show up in the BTO list.
My office is already baking from the hot exhaust of my dual-1Ghz MDD with 4 drives, I bet a similar quadG5 config really will kick out the heat and suck up the power. It's 60 degrees outside but I'm still running the air conditioning because without it, my CPU heats my tiny office up to about 90 degrees even under moderately light CPU use.
Google for CHUD 3.5.2 and Nap mode and read http://www.xlr8yourmac.com/feedback/MDD_CHUD_feed
"Also, most Macs since 1999 have shipped with USB, and I'm fairly certain that the two-year-old Macs have USB 2.0"
...
G4 iMacs and G3 iBooks did not. PowerMacs and PowerBooks have it... but artificially constraining the cheaper machines is one of my criticisms, and leaving USB 2.0 out of the cheaper machines is an example of that.
Just to add to this, my first-generation 17" Aluminum PowerBook (1 GHz) only has USB 1.1 ports. No new iPod for me
My goal, along with the majority of tower owners, is a machine that isn't necessarily outrageously powerful but one that can be updated, and has better capabilities. Wanting dual displays or PCI slots does not imply wanting a second CPU or having a few thousand extra dollars lying around.
Funnily enough, my officemate just mentioned this very same thing/desire yesterday. His main machine at home is a PC, but he wants to upgrade his old G3 desktop. He doesn't want to spend much money on one because he doesn't have much need for power, but a Mac mini won't do, because he has PCI cards (or a single PCI card; I'm not sure). There is no "middle ground" with Apple anymore. I suggested a used/refurbished single-CPU 1.8 GHz G5 to him; that was about the best I could come up with.
I wrote:
? ds=PSFP-00166
A co-worker in my group two doors down from me did some work on Pioneer 7-track tape data recovery a few years ago; the main interest at that time was actual Science data, rather than the raw spacecraft Telemetry data that seems to be the focus of this Planetary Society inquest.
And, in fact, I believe the data referenced on this page:
http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/database/MasterCatalog
is from that very same task that my co-worker participated in.
Multiboot is [a] royal pain in the ass.
...
Amen, me brotha
I've had experience with dual-boot PCs, and I still regularly use XP SP1 running under VMware on my Linux PC (RHEL 3 Taroon Update 5) at work.
I quickly found with dual-booting that I almost never booted into Windows. Just too much of a pain to switch OSes back and forth.
That said, what I'd really like to see is a hybrid approach:
Rather than a simple VMware port to OS X on Intel, where you're using a single UNIX file as an emulated Windows disk, I'd prefer to have VMware use the full-blown "real" Windows partition installed as part of the dual-boot setup. (If the present Linux-based VMware can do this, forgive me - it's been awhile since I installed the one I'm using now, which is using the emulated-file-as-disk approach.)
That way, I'd have the best of both worlds - I would run with Windows XP running inside VMware under OS X most of the time, but in the case of those once-in-a-blue-moon moments when I really needed to run Windows natively (e.g.: to back up my car's navigation discs with Alcohol 120%; or to upgrade the firmware in my Pioneer dual-layer burner - yes there's Mac versions of those updaters, but the process seems much easier if you have Windows; or to play a Windows game), I could reboot into Windows and do what I needed to do in that environment.
Truly the best of all possible worlds from where I sit. (The only thing I'd add to this would be to have VMware provide the wonderful ability to provide the native OS X Volumes to the running Windows environment as seamlessly as Microsoft's Remote Desktop Connection product provides. That's slick stuff!)
Sorry for the caps, but I wanted to get your attention ;)
v enusorbiter - they've got some Pioneer data), one set is in the hands of the organization that was the precursor to our current Planetary Data System (PDS) - the NASA archiving organization (they create CD-ROMs and nowadays DVD-ROMs from mission data, if we own it). Go check out http://pds.jpl.nasa.gov/. I think the original researcher got copy #4, and I've forgotten who got copy #3. If we could find one of the CD-ROMs, we could look at the index file (each CD had an index file; it was updated as newer versions of the CD's were produced) and see if any of the files contained Telemetry data.
I work at JPL, for the last 12 1/2 years in the Multi-mission Image Processing Lab. A co-worker in my group two doors down from me did some work on Pioneer 7-track tape data recovery a few years ago; the main interest at that time was actual Science data, rather than the raw spacecraft Telemetry data that seems to be the focus of this Planetary Society inquest.
A lot of the tapes were recovered back then. They were burned to CD-ROMs and 4 copies of each were made. One set is still here at JPL at the Regional Planetary Image Facility (see http://rpif.jpl.nasa.gov/locb_mission.asp?pioneer
As for the equipment, I think the PS is blowing smoke - as far as we know, Ratheon has the old VAX equipment we used to read those old 7-track tapes onto, and I suspect they might also have the actual 7-track tape drives themselves that were used in the reclamation project (i.e. by my co-worker).
Anyway, the key thing is, the main thrust of this recovery project was to recover Science data, not Telemetry. So if someone really wants all the Telemetry from launch up to 2002 (last transmission received), they'll probably still need to get it off of those old rotting 7-track tapes. We probably only have some of it on the CD-ROMs that were made from the efforts here.
A slightly ignorant question:
/.'ers out there knew that Deep Impact is about to launch a probe into the comet Tempel 1 on the 4th of July? Raise your hands ... oh dear.)
What is NASA doing?
I can't speak for the rest of NASA, but I know what we're doing, and it's a lot:
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/missions/
(So, how many of you
I would rather it be someone that knows the correct spelling of "Caltech", personally. Like-a moi :)
(Signed, someone who went to Caltech and works at NASA)