I suspect a big reason why Microsoft grew as fast as it did was folks ran software from work at home. It was easy to take a single copy of Office 6.0-97 and install it everywhere. Compliance happened, but it was because they were 'doing the right thing' rather than forced by the software. I've read speculation that ID's success was due to the enormous number of folks installing, generating a buzz that got the folks who were going to pay to go with the leader rather than those who tried to protect every sale with goofy copy protection that just does not work very well for those who paid.
Now that XP - Office and OS - make casual copying difficult, I wonder how fast folks will transition. Often stuff gets installed first, legal details second. That seems to be fading... I won't touch XP for my work or personal equipment, and I don't see very much in my dealings with corporate America either. 2K, lots... but little XP. Better chance of finding win95 on the box out there.
Anyhow, when you do it now, you pay. You have to think about what this thing is going to cost. Less hiding, playing OEM games, and avoiding the $300+/box/year they are going to sock you with. That adds up whether it's a small city department, school, whatever. Of course that one Linux CD will work at home and office. Not perfect, but getting there....
Putty is an amazing little win32 ssh client (does telnet and a few other things as well). For me, if I am working on windows and need to check my mail, I ssh out to my linux box and fire up pine. No muss, no fuss. It is worth checking out the license link... Simon, you ROCK!
When I dig through reviews on the latest CPU and/or mainboard, I initially groaned at the increasing number of benchmarks folks would put out. It is more than just increasing click-through rates (well maybe not for some, but...) - it lets me see applications that I use. Synthetic benchmarks and politician's promises garner then same level of trust from me.
Anyhow, I game and code but use games to judge where my cash goes. When the P4 came out, I saw it did great job with Quake and I started to get excited about the CPU. Then I saw the benchmarks on the games I actually play - UT, CS, and a few others - and it was not black and white. After the ATI fiasco, Quake is up there with synthetic benchmarks IMHO. As for Photoshop, you can pick what platform you want to 'win' by tuning the filters. Apple does it, their dually box wipes out the competition, the other do it and the tables are turned.
There are great graphs out there that show benchmarks using different sizes of data. Its like comparing a small turbo charged engine to a larger normally aspirated one - so what RPM were you at when you ran your test? BMW's M5 feels slower than an Audi S4 at the start, but get the RPM's up there and it is a different story. Even pickup trucks can beat a Ferrari if you tune the test to take advantage of a sweet spot.
I've done my homework, and my personal cluster is mostly AMD today. Still have one celeron 566@800 as a CS server, but my workstation (Intel Xeon box) was replaced by AMD MP chips. Secondary boxes are all XP chips, but they use to be PII&III's when Citrix and the K5 sucked. They run Oracle, Weblogic, LDAP, and other stuff quite well when I'm working, and one swap of a hard drive later I'm getting some solid fragging in on the same box. In another year or so, if Intel really hold the crown , the price is right, and my boxes are 'only fast enough for web browsing and email', I'll chose them.
Actually, its a good thing. I patched when I saw the notice here and theregister.co.uk.... I am not an admin, but I don't like my work box slagged when I jack into a hotel network. When something big hits or a roleup is out there, I grab it. Consider postings that make it here a moderated -- better go get this -- patch.
This goes double for the linux side. I see patches for stuff I may or may not have installed. I hate to say it, but I have two linux boxes I know exactly what is in there - an MP3 player for my car and home. Everything else I am at the mercy of Sun, RedHat, and SUSE's installer. I trim, but don't really know what is bundled.. The OpenSSH thing was a big wakeup call for me to check the bloody MD5 hashes - not just install from a mirror.
I was very happy to see the nickel cap on their new CPU. After crushing a couple of AMD chips, I became very weary of removing the heat sink after a successful mounting. More so than I probably should be, but after chipping the edge off of some $100+ CPU's, I was very nervous about picking up any of the cutting edge processors.
I look forward to lapping the cap to a shinny mirror finish!
We may have been on a conference call a few weeks ago. Call it a hunch.
Here is my take...
I suspect you did a big cost analysis of the different Application servers out there. Looked at IBM, BEA, and a few of the other smaller players. Tomcat was listed, but written off. Things moving at the speed of business - the developers started building with Tomcat. Now there is lots of code and tweaking to Tomcat that may (may not) prove difficult to migrate. Additionally, it looks like your not going to worry about an EJB container for the first couple phases and focus on STRUTS instead.
Tomcat works great for development. It works amazingly well for fewer than 100 concurrent users - and that really works out to a lot of people. The cost factor is less of an issue. The full blown EJB container / CORBA ORB / kitchen sink tend to cost a pretty penny.... but a strait JSP / Servlet container do not. Weblogic Express goes for a couple grand - and contrary to what folks my say, you can get decent support from them. (Just make sure you are the contact rather than someone on the "business" side). I guess I view the cost as irrelevant at that point. Take the time to benchmark and load test on a production box (sparc?) a couple different solutions. . Some of the commercial Servlet engines are very fast - at the expense of some bleeding edge features you may get with Tomcat. Figure out if runtime or development time is more important.
That being said, yes... there are folks using Tomcat in production. I have seen tons of departmental stuff out there. Enterprise gets a little rougher - I've seen a few companies wedge it in.
I'm one. The first time was for an audio work station. Computer needed to be in the room, but no noise allowed. Very fun project. The kicker was building a water cooled ATX power supply. Heat exchanger was in another room. Koolance(sp?) makes a power supply, btw, if you don't want to role your own.
Since then, I've slowly dumped my fans for water based systems. I don't mind the noise from my power supplies, hdd, and video cards, but dumping a 48db ytech fan was fantastic.
As for water, no overclock, no need for a peltier. I have no condensation issues since the water is running around room temp. Cold water presents some interesting issues, but not at 30C....
You are correct - I assumed it had full screen and letterbox. No letterbox. (import swear.like.a.sailor;)
All I really wanted was some cheap fishing gear my daughter could loose at the lake this week. But no, I had to go buy something extra while I was there. Now I understand why my wife won't touch the place.
so I usually won't pay extra for "gold" edition collector tins, an interview with someone who's uncle did CG work, or DVD games. Usually they charge a small fortune for these extras. All I really want is a clean copy of the movie.
Walmart has the "basic" DVD version for under $16USD right now... $80 perhaps for all three movies seems pricy, but one movie + bonus tracks? Count me out.
STAY AWAY FROM MUDS! Nothing can eat up more time than a mud -- from the old school text based ones I used to Evercrack. Other games may suck you in, but steer clear of the never ending, level building, just one more quest games.
Much better off doing kegs -- at least you will hate yourself in the morning, and might get some social interaction to boot. Course, better to study hard, work a bit, and enjoy the time.
Not sure about RC stuff... I have played with a friend's kit - an RC sim that had a normal control via the serial port. Lets just say the microsoft simulator won't save you lots of time learning how to fly a real helicopter. Airplane, perhaps...
I cannot speak for the RC ones, but nothing was as infuriating as just trying to hover a R22. While building time to get my instrument ticket, I had the chance to pick up some helicopter time. Seemed like an easy thing to do, right? After all, I knew the airspace - all I had to do was learn to use some new controls. Many weekends later, I came home to celebrate... I hovered! Nothing ever made me swear like trying to get something to just stay in one spot.
I cannot imaging trying to control an RC version from a third person perspective....
Hell, it's free for systems up to 8 CPUs, and everything over that size comes with an OS license.
They fixed that with Solaris 9 -- they charge a couple hundred bucks for a 2 cpu version...
Re:Here is a copy of the changes...
on
More MS EULA Fun
·
· Score: 2
And you actually want to allow them to do this? If you agree to this it seems as if you are agreeing to them doing what they want on your computer, since they don't define what "improvements", "upgrades" or "services" mean.
It is a work box. I really don't care if the EULA wanted to paint the case green. What I cannot risk is an unpatched box since I may or may not have it outside the firewall at any point in time. Same goes for my Solaris and Linux boxes... If there is a hole, I'll try to patch it as soon as possible. I got nailed by an unpatched ISAPI filter back in the code red days and lost a Linux box with a wsftp that needed patching. Some times the cure is worse than the cold, but I have too much at stake if someone owns my box.
I looked at the EULA because of the crap they tried to pull with media player last time. Guess I was looking for the microsoft version of "all your base..."
Here is a copy of the changes...
on
More MS EULA Fun
·
· Score: 2, Informative
Additional Rights and Limitations.
* With respect to the OS Components only, if the licensor of the
applicable OS Product was an entity other than Microsoft,
then for the purposes of this Supplemental EULA Microsoft
will be the licensor with respect to such OS Components in
lieu of the "Manufacturer" or other entity and support, if
any, for such OS Components shall not be provided by
Manufacturer. With respect to the existing functionality
contained in the applicable OS Product which is not updated,
supplemented, or replaced by the OS Components, the EULA
for the OS Product shall remain in full force and effect as to
that OS Product.
* If you choose to utilize the update features within the OS
Product or OS Components, it is necessary to use certain
computer system, hardware, and software information to
implement the features. By using these features, you
explicitly authorize Microsoft or its designated agent to
access and utilize the necessary information for updating
purposes. Microsoft may use this information solely to
improve our products or to provide customized services or
technologies to you. Microsoft may disclose this
information to others, but not in a form that personally
identifies you.
* The OS Product or OS Components contain components that
enable and facilitate the use of certain Internet-based
services. You acknowledge and agree that Microsoft may
automatically check the version of the OS Product and/or its
components that you are utilizing and may provide upgrades
or fixes to the OS Product that will be automatically
downloaded to your computer.
* If you have multiple validly licensed copies of the applicable
OS Product(s), you may reproduce, install and use one copy
of the OS Components as part of such applicable OS Product
(s) on all of your computers running validly licensed copies
of the OS Product(s) provided that you use such additional
copies of the OS Components in accordance with the terms
and conditions above. Microsoft, its subsidiaries and/or
suppliers retain all right, title and interest in and to the
OS Components. All rights not expressly granted are
reserved by Microsoft, its subsidiaries and/or suppliers.
First off, I picked up couple used laser printers - a couple of HP laserjet 4M+ w/fonts, network, and extra ram for about $75 each. They are pretty quick, do a great job with black and white, and I will get many thousand pages of copy from the toner it came with, with refurbs running about $50 each when the time comes.
On the bad side, these things take a fair amount of power. I plugged the thing into my wife's office and the UPS in my home's server room clicked on. DON'T EVER PLUG ONE INTO A UPS! You may have to run an extra line of power into the room.
I see others have pointed out the IDE (Eclipse) != App Server. The integration can confuse folks, however. IBM is spending big bucks to make Webshphere Studio -- Eclipse with WAS debugger and build integration their main development tool.
Anyhow, I've found that IBM will cost you just as much.... except you get something that is much rougher around the edges. Want EJB 2 support? IBM should be out with their first cut in another month or so. BEA went gold within a month of the spec coming out last November. My benchmarks showed it is not even close to a fair fight with the current v4 or beta5 vs BEA.
Solid EJB containers cost real money. Oracle is getting cheaper -- just starting to work with it. Sun looks like they are giving one away for free, but not sure how solid that one is. JBoss gets pretty high praises from those in developement.
Low cost IDE's for doing EJB work are the bane of Enterprise Java Bean developemnt. You end up spending big bucks 2K+ for an IDE like JBuilder, or you get something that works for only one App server. If JBoss expands the eclipse tool the same way IBM did, it will be a nice kit.
had a real address who the spammers used for the fake header. William.Gates@microsoft.com has a large legal department, but imagine your_mom's_emai@yahoo.com having to fend off all the angry folks who look at only the "sender's" email address as the person who did the spamming?
The real trick is to get them to run from batteries -- like a 12V car, or a stack of D cells. I'm spending some quality time with the ATX spec these days.... the wife looked at me and said to just buy a DC->DC ATX ps, but it has been a REALLY long time since I had to pull out the tools for anything but water cooling kits. That, and paying 2-3x more for the PS than the cpu/mainboard hurts.... not that time is money. (grin)
I don't know about your area, but Time Warner flooded the area with "digital" cable. The quality? Crap.... The problem with digital cable was not near enough bandwith to the box. You would see all sorts of artifact, etc. I was lucky and was able to go back to analog. When they forced the issue, I picked up a dish. After replacing the roof, I dropped from a sig str of high 80's to low 30's.... same crappy picture issues, but this one I can fix.
Yes, their "digital" cable was not HDTV - but the public does not see that. They see "digital" on thier current sets and it is lame. Plug in a crappy picture into a lovely HDTV - sharper crap, since most shows are not in HDTV format anyhow. I can see why this is a hard sell.
It is a retail box -- not OEM -- no it was not a huge worry as long as they shipped it.
I suspect the 666mhz fanless version is due to hit the streets any day. If you can deal with a small fan, they have the 800mhz version for cheap too. Since this was going in my car, heat was more of an issue than speed. Green box, fanless / blue box, w/fan.
I tried to buy one of these from VIA, but had a devil of a time. How many do you want? One? (click)
Took some hunting... I ended up ordering from iDot computers -- Shipping was $4USD, shipping was about 6 days. First order with them. Take a look at the mini-itx.com site for a (small) list of vendors depending on where you are located.
http://www.idot.com/TheStore/Desktop/551Spec.asp ?P roduct.id=551&Cate.id=5&Product.status=gre en
Lots of small form factor boards coming...
on
Modern Retro computing
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
Slashdot Mirror
it's 1:34 minutes long, encoding in DivX 5/mp3 and it shows him...
So why is it that this, and just about all the other (ahem) DivX content has the same soundtrack? Must be an encoder thing...
I suspect a big reason why Microsoft grew as fast as it did was folks ran software from work at home. It was easy to take a single copy of Office 6.0-97 and install it everywhere. Compliance happened, but it was because they were 'doing the right thing' rather than forced by the software. I've read speculation that ID's success was due to the enormous number of folks installing, generating a buzz that got the folks who were going to pay to go with the leader rather than those who tried to protect every sale with goofy copy protection that just does not work very well for those who paid.
Now that XP - Office and OS - make casual copying difficult, I wonder how fast folks will transition. Often stuff gets installed first, legal details second. That seems to be fading... I won't touch XP for my work or personal equipment, and I don't see very much in my dealings with corporate America either. 2K, lots... but little XP. Better chance of finding win95 on the box out there.
Anyhow, when you do it now, you pay. You have to think about what this thing is going to cost. Less hiding, playing OEM games, and avoiding the $300+/box/year they are going to sock you with. That adds up whether it's a small city department, school, whatever. Of course that one Linux CD will work at home and office. Not perfect, but getting there....
Putty is an amazing little win32 ssh client (does telnet and a few other things as well). For me, if I am working on windows and need to check my mail, I ssh out to my linux box and fire up pine. No muss, no fuss. It is worth checking out the license link... Simon, you ROCK!
When I dig through reviews on the latest CPU and/or mainboard, I initially groaned at the increasing number of benchmarks folks would put out. It is more than just increasing click-through rates (well maybe not for some, but...) - it lets me see applications that I use. Synthetic benchmarks and politician's promises garner then same level of trust from me.
Anyhow, I game and code but use games to judge where my cash goes. When the P4 came out, I saw it did great job with Quake and I started to get excited about the CPU. Then I saw the benchmarks on the games I actually play - UT, CS, and a few others - and it was not black and white. After the ATI fiasco, Quake is up there with synthetic benchmarks IMHO. As for Photoshop, you can pick what platform you want to 'win' by tuning the filters. Apple does it, their dually box wipes out the competition, the other do it and the tables are turned.
There are great graphs out there that show benchmarks using different sizes of data. Its like comparing a small turbo charged engine to a larger normally aspirated one - so what RPM were you at when you ran your test? BMW's M5 feels slower than an Audi S4 at the start, but get the RPM's up there and it is a different story. Even pickup trucks can beat a Ferrari if you tune the test to take advantage of a sweet spot.
I've done my homework, and my personal cluster is mostly AMD today. Still have one celeron 566@800 as a CS server, but my workstation (Intel Xeon box) was replaced by AMD MP chips. Secondary boxes are all XP chips, but they use to be PII&III's when Citrix and the K5 sucked. They run Oracle, Weblogic, LDAP, and other stuff quite well when I'm working, and one swap of a hard drive later I'm getting some solid fragging in on the same box. In another year or so, if Intel really hold the crown , the price is right, and my boxes are 'only fast enough for web browsing and email', I'll chose them.
Actually, its a good thing. I patched when I saw the notice here and theregister.co.uk.... I am not an admin, but I don't like my work box slagged when I jack into a hotel network. When something big hits or a roleup is out there, I grab it. Consider postings that make it here a moderated -- better go get this -- patch.
This goes double for the linux side. I see patches for stuff I may or may not have installed. I hate to say it, but I have two linux boxes I know exactly what is in there - an MP3 player for my car and home. Everything else I am at the mercy of Sun, RedHat, and SUSE's installer. I trim, but don't really know what is bundled.. The OpenSSH thing was a big wakeup call for me to check the bloody MD5 hashes - not just install from a mirror.
I was very happy to see the nickel cap on their new CPU. After crushing a couple of AMD chips, I became very weary of removing the heat sink after a successful mounting. More so than I probably should be, but after chipping the edge off of some $100+ CPU's, I was very nervous about picking up any of the cutting edge processors.
I look forward to lapping the cap to a shinny mirror finish!
We may have been on a conference call a few weeks ago. Call it a hunch.
Here is my take...
I suspect you did a big cost analysis of the different Application servers out there. Looked at IBM, BEA, and a few of the other smaller players. Tomcat was listed, but written off. Things moving at the speed of business - the developers started building with Tomcat. Now there is lots of code and tweaking to Tomcat that may (may not) prove difficult to migrate. Additionally, it looks like your not going to worry about an EJB container for the first couple phases and focus on STRUTS instead.
Tomcat works great for development. It works amazingly well for fewer than 100 concurrent users - and that really works out to a lot of people. The cost factor is less of an issue. The full blown EJB container / CORBA ORB / kitchen sink tend to cost a pretty penny.... but a strait JSP / Servlet container do not. Weblogic Express goes for a couple grand - and contrary to what folks my say, you can get decent support from them. (Just make sure you are the contact rather than someone on the "business" side). I guess I view the cost as irrelevant at that point. Take the time to benchmark and load test on a production box (sparc?) a couple different solutions. . Some of the commercial Servlet engines are very fast - at the expense of some bleeding edge features you may get with Tomcat. Figure out if runtime or development time is more important.
That being said, yes... there are folks using Tomcat in production. I have seen tons of departmental stuff out there. Enterprise gets a little rougher - I've seen a few companies wedge it in.
I'm one. The first time was for an audio work station. Computer needed to be in the room, but no noise allowed. Very fun project. The kicker was building a water cooled ATX power supply. Heat exchanger was in another room. Koolance(sp?) makes a power supply, btw, if you don't want to role your own.
Since then, I've slowly dumped my fans for water based systems. I don't mind the noise from my power supplies, hdd, and video cards, but dumping a 48db ytech fan was fantastic.
As for water, no overclock, no need for a peltier. I have no condensation issues since the water is running around room temp. Cold water presents some interesting issues, but not at 30C....
ARGH!!!!!!!!
.sailor;)
You are correct - I assumed it had full screen and letterbox. No letterbox. (import swear.like.a
All I really wanted was some cheap fishing gear my daughter could loose at the lake this week. But no, I had to go buy something extra while I was there. Now I understand why my wife won't touch the place.
so I usually won't pay extra for "gold" edition collector tins, an interview with someone who's uncle did CG work, or DVD games. Usually they charge a small fortune for these extras. All I really want is a clean copy of the movie.
Walmart has the "basic" DVD version for under $16USD right now... $80 perhaps for all three movies seems pricy, but one movie + bonus tracks? Count me out.
STAY AWAY FROM MUDS! Nothing can eat up more time than a mud -- from the old school text based ones I used to Evercrack. Other games may suck you in, but steer clear of the never ending, level building, just one more quest games.
Much better off doing kegs -- at least you will hate yourself in the morning, and might get some social interaction to boot. Course, better to study hard, work a bit, and enjoy the time.
Not sure about RC stuff... I have played with a friend's kit - an RC sim that had a normal control via the serial port. Lets just say the microsoft simulator won't save you lots of time learning how to fly a real helicopter. Airplane, perhaps...
Aren't the real deals hard to fly?
I cannot speak for the RC ones, but nothing was as infuriating as just trying to hover a R22. While building time to get my instrument ticket, I had the chance to pick up some helicopter time. Seemed like an easy thing to do, right? After all, I knew the airspace - all I had to do was learn to use some new controls. Many weekends later, I came home to celebrate... I hovered! Nothing ever made me swear like trying to get something to just stay in one spot.
I cannot imaging trying to control an RC version from a third person perspective....
Hell, it's free for systems up to 8 CPUs, and everything over that size comes with an OS license.
They fixed that with Solaris 9 -- they charge a couple hundred bucks for a 2 cpu version...
And you actually want to allow them to do this? If you agree to this it seems as if you are agreeing to them doing what they want on your computer, since they don't define what "improvements", "upgrades" or "services" mean.
It is a work box. I really don't care if the EULA wanted to paint the case green. What I cannot risk is an unpatched box since I may or may not have it outside the firewall at any point in time. Same goes for my Solaris and Linux boxes... If there is a hole, I'll try to patch it as soon as possible. I got nailed by an unpatched ISAPI filter back in the code red days and lost a Linux box with a wsftp that needed patching. Some times the cure is worse than the cold, but I have too much at stake if someone owns my box.
I looked at the EULA because of the crap they tried to pull with media player last time. Guess I was looking for the microsoft version of "all your base..."
Additional Rights and Limitations.
* With respect to the OS Components only, if the licensor of the
applicable OS Product was an entity other than Microsoft,
then for the purposes of this Supplemental EULA Microsoft
will be the licensor with respect to such OS Components in
lieu of the "Manufacturer" or other entity and support, if
any, for such OS Components shall not be provided by
Manufacturer. With respect to the existing functionality
contained in the applicable OS Product which is not updated,
supplemented, or replaced by the OS Components, the EULA
for the OS Product shall remain in full force and effect as to
that OS Product.
* If you choose to utilize the update features within the OS
Product or OS Components, it is necessary to use certain
computer system, hardware, and software information to
implement the features. By using these features, you
explicitly authorize Microsoft or its designated agent to
access and utilize the necessary information for updating
purposes. Microsoft may use this information solely to
improve our products or to provide customized services or
technologies to you. Microsoft may disclose this
information to others, but not in a form that personally
identifies you.
* The OS Product or OS Components contain components that
enable and facilitate the use of certain Internet-based
services. You acknowledge and agree that Microsoft may
automatically check the version of the OS Product and/or its
components that you are utilizing and may provide upgrades
or fixes to the OS Product that will be automatically
downloaded to your computer.
* If you have multiple validly licensed copies of the applicable
OS Product(s), you may reproduce, install and use one copy
of the OS Components as part of such applicable OS Product
(s) on all of your computers running validly licensed copies
of the OS Product(s) provided that you use such additional
copies of the OS Components in accordance with the terms
and conditions above. Microsoft, its subsidiaries and/or
suppliers retain all right, title and interest in and to the
OS Components. All rights not expressly granted are
reserved by Microsoft, its subsidiaries and/or suppliers.
First off, I picked up couple used laser printers - a couple of HP laserjet 4M+ w/fonts, network, and extra ram for about $75 each. They are pretty quick, do a great job with black and white, and I will get many thousand pages of copy from the toner it came with, with refurbs running about $50 each when the time comes.
On the bad side, these things take a fair amount of power. I plugged the thing into my wife's office and the UPS in my home's server room clicked on. DON'T EVER PLUG ONE INTO A UPS! You may have to run an extra line of power into the room.
I see others have pointed out the IDE (Eclipse) != App Server. The integration can confuse folks, however. IBM is spending big bucks to make Webshphere Studio -- Eclipse with WAS debugger and build integration their main development tool.
Anyhow, I've found that IBM will cost you just as much.... except you get something that is much rougher around the edges. Want EJB 2 support? IBM should be out with their first cut in another month or so. BEA went gold within a month of the spec coming out last November. My benchmarks showed it is not even close to a fair fight with the current v4 or beta5 vs BEA.
Solid EJB containers cost real money. Oracle is getting cheaper -- just starting to work with it. Sun looks like they are giving one away for free, but not sure how solid that one is. JBoss gets pretty high praises from those in developement.
Low cost IDE's for doing EJB work are the bane of Enterprise Java Bean developemnt. You end up spending big bucks 2K+ for an IDE like JBuilder, or you get something that works for only one App server. If JBoss expands the eclipse tool the same way IBM did, it will be a nice kit.
had a real address who the spammers used for the fake header. William.Gates@microsoft.com has a large legal department, but imagine your_mom's_emai@yahoo.com having to fend off all the angry folks who look at only the "sender's" email address as the person who did the spamming?
The real trick is to get them to run from batteries -- like a 12V car, or a stack of D cells. I'm spending some quality time with the ATX spec these days.... the wife looked at me and said to just buy a DC->DC ATX ps, but it has been a REALLY long time since I had to pull out the tools for anything but water cooling kits. That, and paying 2-3x more for the PS than the cpu/mainboard hurts.... not that time is money. (grin)
I don't know about your area, but Time Warner flooded the area with "digital" cable. The quality? Crap.... The problem with digital cable was not near enough bandwith to the box. You would see all sorts of artifact, etc. I was lucky and was able to go back to analog. When they forced the issue, I picked up a dish. After replacing the roof, I dropped from a sig str of high 80's to low 30's.... same crappy picture issues, but this one I can fix.
Yes, their "digital" cable was not HDTV - but the public does not see that. They see "digital" on thier current sets and it is lame. Plug in a crappy picture into a lovely HDTV - sharper crap, since most shows are not in HDTV format anyhow. I can see why this is a hard sell.
It is a retail box -- not OEM -- no it was not a huge worry as long as they shipped it.
I suspect the 666mhz fanless version is due to hit the streets any day. If you can deal with a small fan, they have the 800mhz version for cheap too. Since this was going in my car, heat was more of an issue than speed. Green box, fanless / blue box, w/fan.
I tried to buy one of these from VIA, but had a devil of a time. How many do you want? One? (click)
Took some hunting... I ended up ordering from iDot computers -- Shipping was $4USD, shipping was about 6 days. First order with them. Take a look at the mini-itx.com site for a (small) list of vendors depending on where you are located.
p ?P roduct.id=551&Cate.id=5&Product.status=gre en
http://www.idot.com/TheStore/Desktop/551Spec.as
I just picked up a mini-itx board for a mp3/divx player in my car. These things are really tiny. I saw one project where they stuffed one of these boards into a playstation, old sparcstations, and lots of other strange places. Not a gaming board, but those are starting to happen too - take a look at the small Shuttle boards that have a bit more kick (and heat) to them.
True -- for me, reading Applied Cryptography gave me a healthy slice of humble pie.