Talking about cluster munitions at this point, not landmines... the US has been using self-terminating mines for sometime now. It's a helluva lot cheaper than actually clearing the field afterwards.
90 nations signed on, what about the other 140!
Huh? According to this official page there are 150 countries on board, one way or another. There's only 44 holdouts still (as of last October).
the editors haven't spelt (yes, "spelt" not "spelled")
Webster disagrees with you.
spell spelt
Dictionary.com at least lists it as a past tense of spell, but so is spelled.
In fact, every dictionary I've checked lists either spelled or both spelled and spelt. It's pretty clear which way the language is moving though. And, unusually, for once it's towards consistency.
Agreed... and I did mean to mention that in my post. After a tad more research it looks like cluster munitions might be covered by the treaty as well, which would be a significant problem for the US military.
That said, other countries which have signed the landmine treaty still use cluster munitions. Notably, the UK.
You'd think that with as much money as is spent on munitions, they could use a fuse/timer that reliably detonates every single cluster...
If you look at the US as a whole, it isn't widely prevalent. It only grows that well in dense clay soil like the soil found in the Southeastern US (excluding Florida). It's prevalent there, but try and find some in the Midwest or Northeast.
The US military has an issue with getting rid of landmines. North Korea. The entire defense of South Korea weighs heavily on the use of landmines (both anti-personnel and anti-tank).
The US does, however, clean up areas that it's mined once it's done with them. I doubt it's a perfect job, but it's considerably better than the vast number of military forces that use mines and don't clean them up (which is where the issue has come from).
If anyone can suggest an equally effective deterrent to invasion that requires an equal amount of manpower, I'm sure the US Army would like to hear about it.
It's not an issue of "landmine lovers", it's an issue of doing protection in an effective manner. (Which, BTW, is the condition on signing in 2006... AFAIK, nobody has stepped up to the plate). I haven't found any reports of the US using landmines anywhere else -- including Iraq -- since 1997 (the mines at Guantanamo were removed in 1999). They did stockpile them, but they apparantly weren't used. The US has not sold landmines internationally since 1993.
BTW, you missed Pakistan, Georgia, Belarus, Egypt, Estonia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Latvia, Mongolia (parliamentary - very much questionable), Morocco (constitutional monarchy; similar to the UK's), Nepal, Palau, Papua New Guinea, Singapore, Sri Lanka, and Tuvalu. All have some form of representive government along the lines of a republic or democracy (no, the US is not a democracy -- it's a republic). Between those and the ones you listed, it's about a third of the list. Admittedly, some of the countries on the (full) list probably just haven't bothered -- particularly Tuvalu and Tonga.
A man in Texas decided he wanted a nice gazebo in his backyard and wanted some nice ivy growing over it. He didn't want to wait a decade or so for the ivy to grow around the gazebo. He'd heard that kudzu was pretty fast growing though and so he planted some near the base of the gazebo.
A year later he burned the thing to the ground, poured concrete over it, and sold the place. The kudzu probably came back.
Serious notes -- planting kudzu anywhere in the US is a federal crime, a violation of the Noxious Weed Act of 1974. It's virtually impossible to kill the roots -- which can have root nodules the size of a basketball -- and so while RoundUp and similar herbicides will kill the leaves it'll simply be back within a few weeks or months (depending on time of year -- kudzu goes dormant in winter. Never, ever buy any land in the SE US during late fall or winter if there are vines anywhere near; very few other ivys go dormant during this time period). Those root nodules will let it keep doing this for a decade or more.
There are actually a couple of much better quotes. Note that the December he's speaking of was Dec. 2002, not 2003. At that point SCO wasn't getting much press, not even here (I believe there was a story, but not much of one).
The better quotes?
McBride: We spent two weeks talking to IBM about how we could work together, and that didn't get anywhere.
IBM (written statement): SCO did not give IBM any notice or warning of them prior to filing its lawsuit.
And...
Q: So your lawyers are talking to their [Google's] lawyers? A: We've got a team that's engaged in going back and forth.
A Google spokesman says the search giant has not discussed with SCO its demands.
So, how, exactly, are they going back and forth? Is your team going to Google, asking to talk to someone, being told to shove off, and coming back? That's not "back and forth". That's humiliation.
And, finally...
We came out last summer and put out some code that the Linux community on one hand said, preposterous, that's [Berkeley software]. On the other hand, some people in the Linux community said, hold on, you may have some copyright issues there....
The code that I saw was under the BSD license and/or in the public domain. The ties back to SysV had been severed repeatedly. The SGI code was removed shortly after it was put in place and isn't in any current kernel or distro, and hasn't been for a long time. There is no copyright issue -- copyright law would only allow you to get a court order to cease infringement, which is exactly what happened.
So, exactly what is he talking about here? Or is it just all spin and the same BS we've been seeing for months now? SCO would be well advised to stick to the small bits of their case that they might have a chance with (namely contract breech with IBM)... but, of course, those don't have anywhere near the payoff they need.
They still do, but they're utter crap. No admin worth their paycheck uses them.
Most older Oracle admins have a litany of scripts that they do their work with... usually scripts they've written over many, many years that do really nifty stuff very efficiently. Augmented by scripts from user groups, books, coworkers, and websites.
The smart older ones and most of the younger ones also use tools like Toad or TOra (I use TOra but I am not a DBA, despite having to play one at times at work). There are some other high end tools out there for performance profiling and stuff -- they're well beyond my sphere of knowledge though.
That said I'd be surprised if the mySQL front end didn't run under multiple OSes... certainly most of mySQLs deployment is on Linux. It'd be silly not to have the GUI tool be cross platform too.
Re:IP6s problem is the numeric addresses r so comp
on
The State of IPv6
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
The same charges were leveled at IPv4 back when it came out -- it was considerably longer than was considered necessary (32-bits? That's way too much space!), it's a far bigger number than is convienently held in short-term memory, and yet, according to you, it's simple.
Funny how people adapt.
Between that and the mystic thing called "cut and paste" that's available on pretty much every platform known to man nowadays, this is a real non-issue.
Yes, but current houses are far more leaky than they need to be
Untrue. We're having to build leaks into the houses now since the house wraps, spray-in foam insulation, and other technologies are essentially impermeable (the house wraps are actually intentionally permeated for instance). That's why a lot of new homes have major mold problems. Older homes are another issue, but you're not going to use aerogel insulation on them without a major reconstruction project anyway.
Even if we had it in the walls, the windows probably leak enough to provide sufficient ventilation.
If you leave them open, sure. Modern triple paned windows with vinyl sashes don't leak much. Nor do properly insulated doors.
Incidentally, TiVo is supposed to be putting in XM capability into one of their new receivers, does anyone know if you'll be able to timeshift it?
Sigh.
No, they're not. They're adding the ability to use an XM receiver via HMO -- that's it. Nothing more. No, you can't timeshift it. It's essentially taking an XM receiver and making it networkable to HMO-enabled TiVos. It's really deeply underwhelming.
Re:Spirit not that impressive...?
on
News from Mars
·
· Score: 1
Yeah, and we had people driving around the Moon before that even.
Mars is not the Moon... it's a lot further away, it's a harsher environment in many ways, and there's a lot less known about it. Really it's the "further away" bit that makes it difficult -- you have to spend an immense amount of energy to go really fast in order to get there. And then you have to get rid of all of it once you're there unless you want to just plow a new crater. The Russians sent, what, 9 probes to Mars in the 70s as well -- only one survived. And only for a few seconds at that.
As for comparing it to Pathfinder, realize that Spirit fits into the same physical space as Pathfinder. But Pathfinder left the computer, the camera, and most of the sensors back on the lander. Spirit has to pack all of that onboard, as well as some actual science tools (of which Pathfinder had nearly none) into the same physical volume, with only a 50% mass increase (which necessitated redesign of the entire landing system, since the Pathfinder airbags and parachute couldn't handle the additional load). It'd also be nice if Spirit doesn't get stuck on a rock -- so toss in improved mobility as well as some basic self guidance capability.
Venera was impressive -- but that doesn't diminish the accomplishments of Spirit. Nor does Spirit diminish the accomplishments of Venera. Despite what you may think, this isn't a game of "mine is bigger".
Actually, yes they are. Numerous companies require the use of Windows. Many companies have legacy programs that run on x86 under Windows (or DOS) which are not easily or affordably moved to other platforms.
If your product is viable it will sell just as well on Apple...or...*gasp* an open source platform.
Read as -- if you have a monopoly on your market and can force your customers to bend to your whim then you can do whatever the hell you want. Otherwise you're going to kiss your ass goodbye if you move off of the platform that >90% of the world uses.
What's next? Coke is going to sue Pepsi for not allowing them to store their beverages in Pepsi equipment? GM is going to sue ford for not having standard brakes?
Neither Pepsi nor Ford have a monopoly in their markets. Microsoft does.
For some reason in the realm of software both consumers and developers think they are entitled to whatever they want.
Yeah, I never would've thought that changing my default web browser might actually mean that. How foolish of me! I mean, I actually dared to use a product that competes with Microsoft -- clearly Microsoft shouldn't allow me to do that. I'm surprised they haven't had my systems format themselves too.
No other market works that way.
Damn right. I mean, it's absurd to think that you can buy your own phone and use it. Simply rent this nice rotary dial phone from AT&T for a mere $6/mo. If you use another phone, we won't guarantee that you'll be able to place all of your calls, or that it'll work all the time. After all, it's our network and you'll just have to do things our way. If you don't like that, feel free to use something other than the telephone system. The US Postal Service is happy to deliver.
By refusing to stop using Microsoft products and just suing them...they prolong microsoft.
And some people find that they just happen to like using MS OS's because they just happen to like the software available on them. That doesn't mean they like everything else MS produces. Why does using one mean you have to use the other? Particularly when there are alleged interfaces for not doing so?
It's called playing fair. MS hasn't been doing it for well over a decade, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't stop trying to make them do so.
I've got an ancient (1992-ish) 14" Dell monitor attached to my RH9 server... I managed to find timings (on Dell's website no less -- impressed the hell out of me) for 640x480. It doesn't support anything higher. It was donated to me from my sister.
The oldest monitor I use on a regular basis is my ViewSonic 21PS from 1996.
Sadly a LCD flatscreen is nowhere in my near future... even if my monitor or my wife's monitor (a 19" VS) died we have two spare 19" monitors from when we both ran 2 computers.
Agreed. I just checked... Photoshop CS (the subject of the article) is available for $650. That's a freaking drop in the bucket for anyone that actually needs those kind of photo editing capabilities.
Most of the people whining about the price are people who wouldn't use Photoshop's power anyway, and could easily use a much less expensive package. And, heck, there's always The Gimp -- which offers most of Photoshop's power for absolutely no cost. And yes, it runs on Windows too.
You're definition of price/performance is only to apply it to the purchase price, no matter if the power usage costs many times that.
You saw my post regarding this, so why bring it up again? The additional power usage is deeply unlikely to exceed the amount saved on the purchase price... even if it's only $100 (which, btw, it isn't... not even close).
My definition of price/performance did not include "only" the purchase price... it also takes into account operation costs (electricity and cooling). If you'd like, I can throw in software availability... but that's not necessary.
No, I'm thinking of PowerPC 970, which has a "typical" dissapation of ~50W and maximum of ~75W. That's the only PowerPC chip that's even vaguely close in computing power to x86 chips.
If you want to start talking about lower powered chips (as in computational capacity), then I'll happily bring up Via's line of x86 CPUs, which have extremely low power dissapation. Performance is roughly that of a P3, which is about the same as the 750FX. And they're really, insanely inexpensive.
It -works- but whay do that when the real thing is available?
Uh, because it works well, is producing results that are better than "the real thing", and happens to run all those existing millions of programs out there without any problems?
I think PowerPC would have a real future if MS lost full dominance of the PC market
Yeah, and Segway might have a real future if it wasn't for all those pesky cars out there. (No, not a perfect analogy, but they're equally based in reality)
This is exactly the kind of thing I'm talking about. Yes, the x86 ISA is crap. So what? Has it really caused any problems? Is it so incredibly bad that the competition is stomping it? No? Why hasn't that happened yet then? Why have Intel's own attempts failed so miserably?
Why, exactly, has x86 been making more and more inroads into high-end markets if it's so godawful?
The reality is that the market demands x86 compatibility. There are millions of apps out there that do their job perfectly, every day. Which couldn't be replaced without a lot of cost -- the source may not exist anymore, they may never have had the source, even if you have it the original requirements and domain knowledge is probably long gone, etc. And that's not going to change anytime soon, no matter how much you gripe about how bad x86 sucks on paper.
And the point remains -- x86 may suck on paper, but it damn well flies in reality.
Unless you want to factor in things like power consumption....
Feel free to. x86 is still cheaper. Equivalent speed systems don't use vastly less power. Best number I've seen is ~75W, which is 3/4 of what a P4 or Athlon64 uses. That's not an abundance in savings.
To put it clearly -- 25W saves you 219 kWh/year (assuming it's on 24 hours a day year round (365.25 days/year)). If electricity costs $0.10 kWh then that's a savings of $22. Wow.
And that, of course, is assuming that the CPU is fully loaded the entire year. If you aren't using 100% CPU power then the CPU will reduce its power draw -- not massively (these aren't laptop CPUs), but somewhat.
You can point to other CPUs that draw less power than a P4/AMD64/970, but they cost vastly more to purchase. The PowerPC 970 is already overly expensive -- particularly given that AMD has already cut prices on the Athlon64 and Opteron lines since introduction.
Unless you are a gamer or looking to compute Pi to the last digit
Or are wanting to do things like rip MP3s (trivial) or burn DVDs (non-trivial; technically it's the MPEG2 mastering, not the burning, that takes the CPU time). Developers, graphics artists, and most engineering can also use as much CPU as is available. For just a plain old file server you do very well by using the cheapest (in terms of purchase and run cost) that you can get. A webserver probably needs more juice. A database server definitely does. Trivial home use excluded of course. I'm not talking about trivial usages -- they can always be solved easily.
Wake me when a cheap "build your own system" RISC alternative hits the market.
When you realize that the core ISA of all x86 chips is RISC let me know. Not to mention that most of the classic "RISC" designs have deviated far from the "reduced" portion of that moniker. Looked at the Power or PowerPC ISA recently? RISC was created not because a reduced instruction set is inherently better, but because it allowed for a number of technologies such as pipelining, branch prediction, caching, and so forth to be implemented. Every single one of those is in x86 architecture now. Sure, the ISA is still a mess, but it's a better price/performance than anything else out there. All the naysayers have been disproven, time and time again. And yes, when I was a little college student I was horrified at the design of x86. Then I grew up.
To which he replied "Try living on $7 bucks an hour"
Well, it's gone up since then at least -- it's $13-15/hour now. See here or here.
That said, $13-15/hour isn't going to be a whole lot of money if you're living in So. Cal. -- it's livable, but you're not going to be buying a lot of toys (except lego obviously) or live in a big house (unless you make it out of the aforementioned lego).
Based on the "Lego Master Builder" FAQ page (here's a Google cache, since the main is toast) there are decent benefits as well, plus some travel (which probably means a good bit of travel, for which you'd be paid extra).
Whether or not you can live on that money is obviously dependant on lifestyle and other income, but, hey -- it still is a dream job (if you like Lego).
When I was in college taking my technical writing course (required, which I think is a good thing) the teacher gave us a in class project. She handed out a small baggie of lego, maybe 10 pieces each, and told us to make whatever we wanted in groups of 4. We then had to document what we made and how to reassemble it. Then take it apart, hand the baggie and instructions to another group, and see how they do.
Nobody got anywhere close.
The funny thing was that she had previously taught an English 1001 course. One of the first writing assignments she gave was to ask "What was your favorite childhood toy?"
She'll never give that assignment again. Not at an engineering college. She got to read 30 essays extolling the virtues of Lego, how they inspired creativity and building, and how all the newer sets suck because they have overly specific pieces.
I wasn't in that class, but I suspect my essay would've been similar. Lego just rocks. My first child is due in a month and we already have some of the newborn Lego stuff. My sister gave me a bag full of Duplo blocks (many of which came from me) since her kids have outgrown them, and I'll give them to my kid when she's capable of using them.
Honestly... I'd much rather see a kid playing with blocks or lego than with most of the electronic toys nowadays. For one thing, they're far quieter... and they don't need batteries (although you can some sets with them nowadays -- which I only dreamed of when I was a kid).
I'd much rather see uses like this (although I'm not too excited about the double broadcast of the HD signal, but maybe they have plenty of bandwidth) than the theorized many-disperate-channels that people talked about initially.
I'm not up on the current situation, but isn't the whole point of HD being undercut by broadcasters taking advantage of digital broadcasting to cramm 6 channels into the space of one, thus delivering a very inferior image
Aiieeee!
No, you're quite thoroughly confused. But that's because the ATSC standard is confusing.
ATSC (Advanced Television Systems Committee) replaces the current NTSC (National...) standard. It has 18 different modes, ranging from 480i (480 lines of vertical resolution, interlaced) to 720p and 1080i (p = progressive/non-interlaced; which is better depends on what you need. The 1080i has a higher resolution, but 720p is better for fast moving action). The maximum broadcast rate is 21 Mbps, which you can use for one program or multiple programs. The bitstream is MPEG2 encoded with Dolby Digital (aka AC3 or DD) audio. Note that DD is a requirement -- no other sound encodings are allowed by the spec. For reference, DVDs are MPEG2 encoded video with a variety of audio options (dolby digital is required, but DTS is on many disks as well; DTS is usually recorded at a higher bitrate, so some people prefer it).
All of that said, how much they can fit into a single "channel" depends on how much compression is used. Thus far nobody has really tried the multiple channels on one station gambit, although it is allowed. Even if it is done, odds are that you'll have a much better picture than what you get off cable (digital or analog) or either of the sat systems (although DirecTV is allegedly going to change this -- with their new sats going up later this year they'll have tons of bandwidth, and there are rumors that they'll bump picture quality back up to mid-90s levels). Realistically, both cable and sat systems broadcast their SD (standard def) programs at sub VCR quality nowadays -- roughly 240i. Yes, it really is that piss poor. On small sets you generally don't notice. On big ones you do. The digital broadcasts are cleaner (less static, no ghosting, etc) than the analog ones, but are prone to macro blocking if the bitrate is too low.
Broadcasting in 480i or 480p is generally considered "DTV" (digital TV). Broadcasting in 720p or 1080i is considered HDTV (High Def TV). True HDTV is considerably more detailed and clear than anything you'll get out of current generation DVD players (the next generation HD DVD will be another story of course).
So, when they say HD-PVR, what kind of compression are we talking about?
Whatever the broadcaster has done. The HD DirecTiVo will do no compression of its own -- it simply writes the bitstreams directly to disk.
Slashdot Mirror
Talking about cluster munitions at this point, not landmines... the US has been using self-terminating mines for sometime now. It's a helluva lot cheaper than actually clearing the field afterwards.
90 nations signed on, what about the other 140!
Huh? According to this official page there are 150 countries on board, one way or another. There's only 44 holdouts still (as of last October).
the editors haven't spelt (yes, "spelt" not "spelled")
Webster disagrees with you.
spell
spelt
Dictionary.com at least lists it as a past tense of spell, but so is spelled.
In fact, every dictionary I've checked lists either spelled or both spelled and spelt. It's pretty clear which way the language is moving though. And, unusually, for once it's towards consistency.
Agreed... and I did mean to mention that in my post. After a tad more research it looks like cluster munitions might be covered by the treaty as well, which would be a significant problem for the US military.
That said, other countries which have signed the landmine treaty still use cluster munitions. Notably, the UK.
You'd think that with as much money as is spent on munitions, they could use a fuse/timer that reliably detonates every single cluster...
If you look at the US as a whole, it isn't widely prevalent. It only grows that well in dense clay soil like the soil found in the Southeastern US (excluding Florida). It's prevalent there, but try and find some in the Midwest or Northeast.
The US military has an issue with getting rid of landmines. North Korea. The entire defense of South Korea weighs heavily on the use of landmines (both anti-personnel and anti-tank).
The US does, however, clean up areas that it's mined once it's done with them. I doubt it's a perfect job, but it's considerably better than the vast number of military forces that use mines and don't clean them up (which is where the issue has come from).
If anyone can suggest an equally effective deterrent to invasion that requires an equal amount of manpower, I'm sure the US Army would like to hear about it.
It's not an issue of "landmine lovers", it's an issue of doing protection in an effective manner. (Which, BTW, is the condition on signing in 2006... AFAIK, nobody has stepped up to the plate). I haven't found any reports of the US using landmines anywhere else -- including Iraq -- since 1997 (the mines at Guantanamo were removed in 1999). They did stockpile them, but they apparantly weren't used. The US has not sold landmines internationally since 1993.
BTW, you missed Pakistan, Georgia, Belarus, Egypt, Estonia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Latvia, Mongolia (parliamentary - very much questionable), Morocco (constitutional monarchy; similar to the UK's), Nepal, Palau, Papua New Guinea, Singapore, Sri Lanka, and Tuvalu. All have some form of representive government along the lines of a republic or democracy (no, the US is not a democracy -- it's a republic). Between those and the ones you listed, it's about a third of the list. Admittedly, some of the countries on the (full) list probably just haven't bothered -- particularly Tuvalu and Tonga.
Obligatory kudzu joke:
A man in Texas decided he wanted a nice gazebo in his backyard and wanted some nice ivy growing over it. He didn't want to wait a decade or so for the ivy to grow around the gazebo. He'd heard that kudzu was pretty fast growing though and so he planted some near the base of the gazebo.
A year later he burned the thing to the ground, poured concrete over it, and sold the place. The kudzu probably came back.
Serious notes -- planting kudzu anywhere in the US is a federal crime, a violation of the Noxious Weed Act of 1974. It's virtually impossible to kill the roots -- which can have root nodules the size of a basketball -- and so while RoundUp and similar herbicides will kill the leaves it'll simply be back within a few weeks or months (depending on time of year -- kudzu goes dormant in winter. Never, ever buy any land in the SE US during late fall or winter if there are vines anywhere near; very few other ivys go dormant during this time period). Those root nodules will let it keep doing this for a decade or more.
There are actually a couple of much better quotes. Note that the December he's speaking of was Dec. 2002, not 2003. At that point SCO wasn't getting much press, not even here (I believe there was a story, but not much of one).
The better quotes?
McBride: We spent two weeks talking to IBM about how we could work together, and that didn't get anywhere.
IBM (written statement): SCO did not give IBM any notice or warning of them prior to filing its lawsuit.
And...
Q: So your lawyers are talking to their [Google's] lawyers?
A: We've got a team that's engaged in going back and forth.
A Google spokesman says the search giant has not discussed with SCO its demands.
So, how, exactly, are they going back and forth? Is your team going to Google, asking to talk to someone, being told to shove off, and coming back? That's not "back and forth". That's humiliation.
And, finally...
We came out last summer and put out some code that the Linux community on one hand said, preposterous, that's [Berkeley software]. On the other hand, some people in the Linux community said, hold on, you may have some copyright issues there....
The code that I saw was under the BSD license and/or in the public domain. The ties back to SysV had been severed repeatedly. The SGI code was removed shortly after it was put in place and isn't in any current kernel or distro, and hasn't been for a long time. There is no copyright issue -- copyright law would only allow you to get a court order to cease infringement, which is exactly what happened.
So, exactly what is he talking about here? Or is it just all spin and the same BS we've been seeing for months now? SCO would be well advised to stick to the small bits of their case that they might have a chance with (namely contract breech with IBM)... but, of course, those don't have anywhere near the payoff they need.
They still do, but they're utter crap. No admin worth their paycheck uses them.
Most older Oracle admins have a litany of scripts that they do their work with... usually scripts they've written over many, many years that do really nifty stuff very efficiently. Augmented by scripts from user groups, books, coworkers, and websites.
The smart older ones and most of the younger ones also use tools like Toad or TOra (I use TOra but I am not a DBA, despite having to play one at times at work). There are some other high end tools out there for performance profiling and stuff -- they're well beyond my sphere of knowledge though.
That said I'd be surprised if the mySQL front end didn't run under multiple OSes... certainly most of mySQLs deployment is on Linux. It'd be silly not to have the GUI tool be cross platform too.
The same charges were leveled at IPv4 back when it came out -- it was considerably longer than was considered necessary (32-bits? That's way too much space!), it's a far bigger number than is convienently held in short-term memory, and yet, according to you, it's simple.
Funny how people adapt.
Between that and the mystic thing called "cut and paste" that's available on pretty much every platform known to man nowadays, this is a real non-issue.
Yes, but current houses are far more leaky than they need to be
Untrue. We're having to build leaks into the houses now since the house wraps, spray-in foam insulation, and other technologies are essentially impermeable (the house wraps are actually intentionally permeated for instance). That's why a lot of new homes have major mold problems. Older homes are another issue, but you're not going to use aerogel insulation on them without a major reconstruction project anyway.
Even if we had it in the walls, the windows probably leak enough to provide sufficient ventilation.
If you leave them open, sure. Modern triple paned windows with vinyl sashes don't leak much. Nor do properly insulated doors.
Incidentally, TiVo is supposed to be putting in XM capability into one of their new receivers, does anyone know if you'll be able to timeshift it?
Sigh.
No, they're not. They're adding the ability to use an XM receiver via HMO -- that's it. Nothing more. No, you can't timeshift it. It's essentially taking an XM receiver and making it networkable to HMO-enabled TiVos. It's really deeply underwhelming.
Yeah, and we had people driving around the Moon before that even.
Mars is not the Moon... it's a lot further away, it's a harsher environment in many ways, and there's a lot less known about it. Really it's the "further away" bit that makes it difficult -- you have to spend an immense amount of energy to go really fast in order to get there. And then you have to get rid of all of it once you're there unless you want to just plow a new crater. The Russians sent, what, 9 probes to Mars in the 70s as well -- only one survived. And only for a few seconds at that.
As for comparing it to Pathfinder, realize that Spirit fits into the same physical space as Pathfinder. But Pathfinder left the computer, the camera, and most of the sensors back on the lander. Spirit has to pack all of that onboard, as well as some actual science tools (of which Pathfinder had nearly none) into the same physical volume, with only a 50% mass increase (which necessitated redesign of the entire landing system, since the Pathfinder airbags and parachute couldn't handle the additional load). It'd also be nice if Spirit doesn't get stuck on a rock -- so toss in improved mobility as well as some basic self guidance capability.
Venera was impressive -- but that doesn't diminish the accomplishments of Spirit. Nor does Spirit diminish the accomplishments of Venera. Despite what you may think, this isn't a game of "mine is bigger".
No one is forcing you.
Actually, yes they are. Numerous companies require the use of Windows. Many companies have legacy programs that run on x86 under Windows (or DOS) which are not easily or affordably moved to other platforms.
If your product is viable it will sell just as well on Apple...or...*gasp* an open source platform.
Read as -- if you have a monopoly on your market and can force your customers to bend to your whim then you can do whatever the hell you want. Otherwise you're going to kiss your ass goodbye if you move off of the platform that >90% of the world uses.
What's next? Coke is going to sue Pepsi for not allowing them to store their beverages in Pepsi equipment? GM is going to sue ford for not having standard brakes?
Neither Pepsi nor Ford have a monopoly in their markets. Microsoft does.
For some reason in the realm of software both consumers and developers think they are entitled to whatever they want.
Yeah, I never would've thought that changing my default web browser might actually mean that. How foolish of me! I mean, I actually dared to use a product that competes with Microsoft -- clearly Microsoft shouldn't allow me to do that. I'm surprised they haven't had my systems format themselves too.
No other market works that way.
Damn right. I mean, it's absurd to think that you can buy your own phone and use it. Simply rent this nice rotary dial phone from AT&T for a mere $6/mo. If you use another phone, we won't guarantee that you'll be able to place all of your calls, or that it'll work all the time. After all, it's our network and you'll just have to do things our way. If you don't like that, feel free to use something other than the telephone system. The US Postal Service is happy to deliver.
By refusing to stop using Microsoft products and just suing them...they prolong microsoft.
And some people find that they just happen to like using MS OS's because they just happen to like the software available on them. That doesn't mean they like everything else MS produces. Why does using one mean you have to use the other? Particularly when there are alleged interfaces for not doing so?
It's called playing fair. MS hasn't been doing it for well over a decade, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't stop trying to make them do so.
I've got an ancient (1992-ish) 14" Dell monitor attached to my RH9 server... I managed to find timings (on Dell's website no less -- impressed the hell out of me) for 640x480. It doesn't support anything higher. It was donated to me from my sister.
The oldest monitor I use on a regular basis is my ViewSonic 21PS from 1996.
Sadly a LCD flatscreen is nowhere in my near future... even if my monitor or my wife's monitor (a 19" VS) died we have two spare 19" monitors from when we both ran 2 computers.
Agreed. I just checked... Photoshop CS (the subject of the article) is available for $650. That's a freaking drop in the bucket for anyone that actually needs those kind of photo editing capabilities.
Most of the people whining about the price are people who wouldn't use Photoshop's power anyway, and could easily use a much less expensive package. And, heck, there's always The Gimp -- which offers most of Photoshop's power for absolutely no cost. And yes, it runs on Windows too.
You're definition of price/performance is only to apply it to the purchase price, no matter if the power usage costs many times that.
You saw my post regarding this, so why bring it up again? The additional power usage is deeply unlikely to exceed the amount saved on the purchase price... even if it's only $100 (which, btw, it isn't... not even close).
My definition of price/performance did not include "only" the purchase price... it also takes into account operation costs (electricity and cooling). If you'd like, I can throw in software availability... but that's not necessary.
No, I'm thinking of PowerPC 970, which has a "typical" dissapation of ~50W and maximum of ~75W. That's the only PowerPC chip that's even vaguely close in computing power to x86 chips.
If you want to start talking about lower powered chips (as in computational capacity), then I'll happily bring up Via's line of x86 CPUs, which have extremely low power dissapation. Performance is roughly that of a P3, which is about the same as the 750FX. And they're really, insanely inexpensive.
It -works- but whay do that when the real thing is available?
Uh, because it works well, is producing results that are better than "the real thing", and happens to run all those existing millions of programs out there without any problems?
I think PowerPC would have a real future if MS lost full dominance of the PC market
Yeah, and Segway might have a real future if it wasn't for all those pesky cars out there. (No, not a perfect analogy, but they're equally based in reality)
This is exactly the kind of thing I'm talking about. Yes, the x86 ISA is crap. So what? Has it really caused any problems? Is it so incredibly bad that the competition is stomping it? No? Why hasn't that happened yet then? Why have Intel's own attempts failed so miserably?
Why, exactly, has x86 been making more and more inroads into high-end markets if it's so godawful?
The reality is that the market demands x86 compatibility. There are millions of apps out there that do their job perfectly, every day. Which couldn't be replaced without a lot of cost -- the source may not exist anymore, they may never have had the source, even if you have it the original requirements and domain knowledge is probably long gone, etc. And that's not going to change anytime soon, no matter how much you gripe about how bad x86 sucks on paper.
And the point remains -- x86 may suck on paper, but it damn well flies in reality.
Unless you want to factor in things like power consumption....
Feel free to. x86 is still cheaper. Equivalent speed systems don't use vastly less power. Best number I've seen is ~75W, which is 3/4 of what a P4 or Athlon64 uses. That's not an abundance in savings.
To put it clearly -- 25W saves you 219 kWh/year (assuming it's on 24 hours a day year round (365.25 days/year)). If electricity costs $0.10 kWh then that's a savings of $22. Wow.
And that, of course, is assuming that the CPU is fully loaded the entire year. If you aren't using 100% CPU power then the CPU will reduce its power draw -- not massively (these aren't laptop CPUs), but somewhat.
You can point to other CPUs that draw less power than a P4/AMD64/970, but they cost vastly more to purchase. The PowerPC 970 is already overly expensive -- particularly given that AMD has already cut prices on the Athlon64 and Opteron lines since introduction.
Unless you are a gamer or looking to compute Pi to the last digit
Or are wanting to do things like rip MP3s (trivial) or burn DVDs (non-trivial; technically it's the MPEG2 mastering, not the burning, that takes the CPU time). Developers, graphics artists, and most engineering can also use as much CPU as is available. For just a plain old file server you do very well by using the cheapest (in terms of purchase and run cost) that you can get. A webserver probably needs more juice. A database server definitely does. Trivial home use excluded of course. I'm not talking about trivial usages -- they can always be solved easily.
Wake me when a cheap "build your own system" RISC alternative hits the market.
When you realize that the core ISA of all x86 chips is RISC let me know. Not to mention that most of the classic "RISC" designs have deviated far from the "reduced" portion of that moniker. Looked at the Power or PowerPC ISA recently? RISC was created not because a reduced instruction set is inherently better, but because it allowed for a number of technologies such as pipelining, branch prediction, caching, and so forth to be implemented. Every single one of those is in x86 architecture now. Sure, the ISA is still a mess, but it's a better price/performance than anything else out there. All the naysayers have been disproven, time and time again. And yes, when I was a little college student I was horrified at the design of x86. Then I grew up.
Yup. Hell if I recall when I took it or what the teacher's name was though.
To which he replied "Try living on $7 bucks an hour"
Well, it's gone up since then at least -- it's $13-15/hour now. See here or here.
That said, $13-15/hour isn't going to be a whole lot of money if you're living in So. Cal. -- it's livable, but you're not going to be buying a lot of toys (except lego obviously) or live in a big house (unless you make it out of the aforementioned lego).
Based on the "Lego Master Builder" FAQ page (here's a Google cache, since the main is toast) there are decent benefits as well, plus some travel (which probably means a good bit of travel, for which you'd be paid extra).
Whether or not you can live on that money is obviously dependant on lifestyle and other income, but, hey -- it still is a dream job (if you like Lego).
When I was in college taking my technical writing course (required, which I think is a good thing) the teacher gave us a in class project. She handed out a small baggie of lego, maybe 10 pieces each, and told us to make whatever we wanted in groups of 4. We then had to document what we made and how to reassemble it. Then take it apart, hand the baggie and instructions to another group, and see how they do.
Nobody got anywhere close.
The funny thing was that she had previously taught an English 1001 course. One of the first writing assignments she gave was to ask "What was your favorite childhood toy?"
She'll never give that assignment again. Not at an engineering college. She got to read 30 essays extolling the virtues of Lego, how they inspired creativity and building, and how all the newer sets suck because they have overly specific pieces.
I wasn't in that class, but I suspect my essay would've been similar. Lego just rocks. My first child is due in a month and we already have some of the newborn Lego stuff. My sister gave me a bag full of Duplo blocks (many of which came from me) since her kids have outgrown them, and I'll give them to my kid when she's capable of using them.
Honestly... I'd much rather see a kid playing with blocks or lego than with most of the electronic toys nowadays. For one thing, they're far quieter... and they don't need batteries (although you can some sets with them nowadays -- which I only dreamed of when I was a kid).
Ah... nifty. Particularly the doppler radar :)
I'd much rather see uses like this (although I'm not too excited about the double broadcast of the HD signal, but maybe they have plenty of bandwidth) than the theorized many-disperate-channels that people talked about initially.
I'm not up on the current situation, but isn't the whole point of HD being undercut by broadcasters taking advantage of digital broadcasting to cramm 6 channels into the space of one, thus delivering a very inferior image
...) standard. It has 18 different modes, ranging from 480i (480 lines of vertical resolution, interlaced) to 720p and 1080i (p = progressive/non-interlaced; which is better depends on what you need. The 1080i has a higher resolution, but 720p is better for fast moving action). The maximum broadcast rate is 21 Mbps, which you can use for one program or multiple programs. The bitstream is MPEG2 encoded with Dolby Digital (aka AC3 or DD) audio. Note that DD is a requirement -- no other sound encodings are allowed by the spec. For reference, DVDs are MPEG2 encoded video with a variety of audio options (dolby digital is required, but DTS is on many disks as well; DTS is usually recorded at a higher bitrate, so some people prefer it).
Aiieeee!
No, you're quite thoroughly confused. But that's because the ATSC standard is confusing.
ATSC (Advanced Television Systems Committee) replaces the current NTSC (National
All of that said, how much they can fit into a single "channel" depends on how much compression is used. Thus far nobody has really tried the multiple channels on one station gambit, although it is allowed. Even if it is done, odds are that you'll have a much better picture than what you get off cable (digital or analog) or either of the sat systems (although DirecTV is allegedly going to change this -- with their new sats going up later this year they'll have tons of bandwidth, and there are rumors that they'll bump picture quality back up to mid-90s levels). Realistically, both cable and sat systems broadcast their SD (standard def) programs at sub VCR quality nowadays -- roughly 240i. Yes, it really is that piss poor. On small sets you generally don't notice. On big ones you do. The digital broadcasts are cleaner (less static, no ghosting, etc) than the analog ones, but are prone to macro blocking if the bitrate is too low.
Broadcasting in 480i or 480p is generally considered "DTV" (digital TV). Broadcasting in 720p or 1080i is considered HDTV (High Def TV). True HDTV is considerably more detailed and clear than anything you'll get out of current generation DVD players (the next generation HD DVD will be another story of course).
So, when they say HD-PVR, what kind of compression are we talking about?
Whatever the broadcaster has done. The HD DirecTiVo will do no compression of its own -- it simply writes the bitstreams directly to disk.