I've had a project in mind for a while that this board could be useful for. The problem is that it needs a 9" TFT screen but all the laptops these days seem to be 12" at smallest. Anyone know where I can find a 9" screen with the appropriate plugs to be used as a monitor for a very small computer?
The one thing that neither benchmark is taking into account is the time. Apple will be shipping their G5s in the fall, on September 5. We shouldn't be testing a 1 month old machine against a machine 2 months from its release date.
The whole thing cuts both ways. It doesn't matter if the P4 3.2Ghz or Athlon 3200+ is faster if they're released in limited quantities and I can't get my hands on a machine with one in it. It also doesn't matter if the G5 is faster if I can't get my hands on one of those either.
I'll be very interested in seeing a comparison in 2 months when these things start hitting desks. Until then it's all masturbation.
That doesn't include an internal CD-ROM drive or a decent graphics card. Apple sells "the most compact, full-featured notebook computer". That means everything in one box for a complete desktop replacement: a real 3D graphics card with dedicated memory, modem, USB, firewire, 100bT ethernet, internal 802.11g, and a 60GB hard drive.
I bought an iBook because I couldn't find any PC that was smaller AND included the same features. Not to mention that it's much better built than any PC laptop I've seen, except for maybe GRiD or ToughBook laptops.
This year's once-in-a-lifetime event
on
Meet The Leonids
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
Wasn't last year's Leonid meteor shower also a once-in-a-lifetime event? I thought this was more like an ~80-times-in-a-lifetime thing.
I know Kubrick used some specially-made wide lenses to shoot "Barry Lyndon" in candle-light, but I think they were only as open as f0.5 or f0.7. Again, only a couple steps away from f2.0, which is as wide as the average camera lens will go.
I call bullshit! It's IMPOSSIBLE to make a lens that's lower than 1.0. Fstops are a ratio of how much light gets into the front of the lens vs. how much hits the film. F1.0 is the maximum: every photon ends up on film. F0.5 would mean 119% of the incoming light hits the film.
Actually the 24fps framerate had nothing to do with minimum motion requirements. Remember those old jerky black and white animations? They were filmed at 18fps: that was the speed vs quality trade-off back when film stock was expensive. We went to 24fps when the talkies hit - you couldn't embed a decent sound signal in a slower frame rate. If emulsions had been better we'd probably still be watching 18fps movies.
[Direct Marketing Association VP Jerry]Cerasale said a federal requirement that consumers "opt in" instead of "opt out" of bulk e-mail is unacceptable. "We think the opt-in creates a true noneconomic model," Cerasale said. "We don't believe you get a viable economic model in opt-in."
The DMA had a conference this week in San Francisco which I crashed. The talks were all about "how to find the least educated demographic and either sell them crap or employ them as cheap phone labor". The law discussion groups were all about either "new loopholes to legally do something so unethical that the other guy hasn't thought of it yet", or "how to make it look like we're responsible so that real laws don't get passed". Guess which subject this Slashdot story falls under?
Zoe Lofgren would get my vote if I lived in her district. Is anyone collecting a list of the few GOOD guys in the fight for digital rights? I'm willing to cast my vote for ANYONE who sponsors anti-DRM laws, anti-DMCA action, anti-spam legislation, or otherwise shows some sort of understanding of the issues other than what an industry lobbyist will tell them.
My local free paper publishes a "voter handbook" to take with them to the polls, describing various officials' actions on crucial issues. I'd LOVE to have a similar web-accessible to print out (or sync with AvantGo) to take into the ballot box.
I don't see what the problem is - this is a hybrid format playable just like regular discs. The disc just contains a second layer with higher-resolution audio. As an audiophile I think this is a good thing, especially since you'll still be able to rip your low-quality mp3 files from low-quality CD.
I saw a talk by John Knoll a month ago at the Visual Effects Society in Marin. He pointed out that ILM continued to work on EP2 even after the movie was out in theaters. George continued to send new cuts out the door as new prints were being made. At the time there were 45-50 versions of Star Wars in theaters. Undoubtedly, the version that you get on DVD will be different than those versions. I don't see any major changes, but they'll probably add later versions of shots and some slightly different timing.
This isn't actually a new thing. Kubrick showed a different cut of 2001 in New York than he did in LA when the movie premiered. And of course George continues to revise episodes 4/5/6. The scary thing is that George is considering usign all-digital cinema to dist 'patches' to films. After the film has been running in theaters for several weeks, he can remotely add new sequences and then announce 'all new footage' so that Star Wars fans will have to come back for another viewing.
The biggest failure of the movie may be the set design and the look. At one moment, we see computers to inspire the next generation from Apple, in another moment we're in a mall that isn't as fancy or as new as the mall around the corner from my house. The logos for the Gap and Pepsi haven't changed since they were faxed over from the product-placement department. Many of the scenes look contemporary, with minimal set dressing, but then along comes a great car chase tricked out like the wet dream from some 19-year-old in an art school in Southern California.
You might call this a failure, but the set design was my favorite part of the film. I hate to burst your utopian bubble, but the fact is that most things will stay the same in the future. We are living in the future of our past, and 2002 still a lot more like 1950 than a 1950's-era picture of life in 2002.
Here in San Francisco we're still using buses and streetcars, living in houses, and going to movies just like people did nearly 100 years ago. Rich people live in nice houses, poor people live in dingy houses, and Chinese people still live in Chinatown. The differences are the little things: the palmtop computers, ATMs and cell phones. Cars are swoopier and more efficient. Companies still market crap to idiots with stupid and annoying pitches.
Minority Report's refusal to bow to the unrealistic Star Wars / Blade Runner aesthetic was one of my favorite parts of the movie. (The giant plot holes, OTOH...)
The government is installing involuntary tracking devices in order to monitor their location and movement remotely? Has anyone addressed the privacy concerns of this plan?
-- "First they came for the geese and seals, but I was not a goose or seal, so I said nothing."
Re:Society Only Appreciates Scientists In Movies
on
Enigma
·
· Score: 1
What the hell does his sexual preference have to do with anything? What's with you people and making it a big show whenever someone is gay.
Imagine if you're watching a story about the american revolution. And George Washington and Ben Franklin are sleeping together. Would that bother you? It would bother me. I don't care who's gay and who's not gay, but I do care when they change history and ignore aspects of the story that deserve some attention.
Re:Society Only Appreciates Scientists In Movies
on
Enigma
·
· Score: 1
I wanted to bring up the same point. This movie offends me since it not only whitewashes the homeosexual persecution of Turing, but it gives him a girlfriend and a love story subplot. You might as well give Mother Theresa a hunky boyfriend in a dramatized movie with lots of car chases through the streets of Calcutta.
Do any of the hardcore geeks really care what this processor is called? Call it Athlon XP, Athlon Pro, or Athlon: Pink Frilly Pony Party Dress Edition. I couldn't care less. Is it faster than Intel? Is it cheaper than Intel? Does it run programs identically to Intel? Lay it on me. There's no aesthetic or marketing error that can't be fixed by a can of flat black spraypaint. Except maybe the Pontiac Aztek.
I won't care one bit about 3G until I can actually get a call through in a real-world setting. It's very common that I have to redial the number 5-10 times in downtown San Francisco during peak hours just to get through the network congestion. For providers who have oversold their service, everyone competes for a channel in their overloaded cell. And now they want to increase the bandwidth? How about taking the 256Kbps or 2Mbps or whatever the hell the limit is and use it to support more channels?
ObProvider: Cingular Wireless
Re:NFS readdir() NOT broken. Irix broken.
on
Linux Kernel 2.4.10
·
· Score: 1
Oops, I need to revise my accusation. The NFS faq tells me that when Irix is the NFS server, it (the Irix system) doesn't handle 32-byte file handles correctly.
Apparently this is SGI's problem, which has been fixed in Irix 6.5.13
Sorry to accuse Linux of being buggy. I'll say three Hail Linus'es and be forgiven for my sins.
readdir() calls don't return all the files in a directory. For example:
> ls/d/serpent/dir
bar baz foo
>./ls.py/d/serpent/dir/
bar baz
'ls.py' is a one-line program which behaves like 'ls'. Python can't see the file 'foo' in this NFS-mounted directory, even though 'ls' can see it. It doesn't consistently drop the last file, or drop just one file. This behavior isn't Python-specific: it occurs in the file browsers of several heavily-used programs here.
I had high hopes for this release, but NFS readdir() is STILL broken, and has been since at least 2.4.5. I've got a patch that fixes it but I don't know who to send it to. Anyone know?
I can't get through to Discover's website, but if this is the Aetherwire company, it's pretty amazing stuff. The biggest wow-factor is that the protocol allows you to determine location. Since all the pulses are very precisely timed, you can tell where each transponder is located by the small time shifts that result from distances. (If you think this is farfetched, realize that police LIDAR works in exactly the same fashion.) The network can orient itself in 3D space, and route information based on the physical topology that the hardware discovers itself. Pretty amazing stuff.
If you're badmouthing Mars Attacks, I can't believe you really understood it. "Mars Attacks" was an ode to the great science fiction comic books, novels, and movies of the 50s, 60s, and 70s. For anyone who shares this view, BTW, you MUST see "Forbidden Planet" (1956). Truly amazing movie.
--
Ranger Speedbumpp, visual effects supervisor for "Candy Von Dewd and the Girls from Latexploitia", to be released Spring 2001
Slashdot Mirror
I've had a project in mind for a while that this board could be useful for. The problem is that it needs a 9" TFT screen but all the laptops these days seem to be 12" at smallest. Anyone know where I can find a 9" screen with the appropriate plugs to be used as a monitor for a very small computer?
The one thing that neither benchmark is taking into account is the time. Apple will be shipping their G5s in the fall, on September 5. We shouldn't be testing a 1 month old machine against a machine 2 months from its release date.
The whole thing cuts both ways. It doesn't matter if the P4 3.2Ghz or Athlon 3200+ is faster if they're released in limited quantities and I can't get my hands on a machine with one in it. It also doesn't matter if the G5 is faster if I can't get my hands on one of those either.
I'll be very interested in seeing a comparison in 2 months when these things start hitting desks. Until then it's all masturbation.
I bought an iBook because I couldn't find any PC that was smaller AND included the same features. Not to mention that it's much better built than any PC laptop I've seen, except for maybe GRiD or ToughBook laptops.
Wasn't last year's Leonid meteor shower also a once-in-a-lifetime event? I thought this was more like an ~80-times-in-a-lifetime thing.
Aha. I stand corrected. I was looking off this web page and possibly mis-reading it. D'oh. http://members.tripod.com/~Prophotoman/fstop.html
I call bullshit! It's IMPOSSIBLE to make a lens that's lower than 1.0. Fstops are a ratio of how much light gets into the front of the lens vs. how much hits the film. F1.0 is the maximum: every photon ends up on film. F0.5 would mean 119% of the incoming light hits the film.
Good luck with your studies.
Actually the 24fps framerate had nothing to do with minimum motion requirements. Remember those old jerky black and white animations? They were filmed at 18fps: that was the speed vs quality trade-off back when film stock was expensive. We went to 24fps when the talkies hit - you couldn't embed a decent sound signal in a slower frame rate. If emulsions had been better we'd probably still be watching 18fps movies.
C'mon, guys. You're running a major online news service. I'd let this one slide but I see these your/you're its/it's mistakes at least once per day.
I'm a new moderator. Is there any way to mod the article *itself* as a troll?
[Direct Marketing Association VP Jerry]Cerasale said a federal requirement that consumers "opt in" instead of "opt out" of bulk e-mail is unacceptable. "We think the opt-in creates a true noneconomic model," Cerasale said. "We don't believe you get a viable economic model in opt-in."
The DMA had a conference this week in San Francisco which I crashed. The talks were all about "how to find the least educated demographic and either sell them crap or employ them as cheap phone labor". The law discussion groups were all about either "new loopholes to legally do something so unethical that the other guy hasn't thought of it yet", or "how to make it look like we're responsible so that real laws don't get passed". Guess which subject this Slashdot story falls under?
Just a correction: "League of Extraordinary Gentlemen" hasn't even started shooting yet. They'll be starting in Prague in 2 weeks or so.
My local free paper publishes a "voter handbook" to take with them to the polls, describing various officials' actions on crucial issues. I'd LOVE to have a similar web-accessible to print out (or sync with AvantGo) to take into the ballot box.
I don't see what the problem is - this is a hybrid format playable just like regular discs. The disc just contains a second layer with higher-resolution audio. As an audiophile I think this is a good thing, especially since you'll still be able to rip your low-quality mp3 files from low-quality CD.
This isn't actually a new thing. Kubrick showed a different cut of 2001 in New York than he did in LA when the movie premiered. And of course George continues to revise episodes 4/5/6. The scary thing is that George is considering usign all-digital cinema to dist 'patches' to films. After the film has been running in theaters for several weeks, he can remotely add new sequences and then announce 'all new footage' so that Star Wars fans will have to come back for another viewing.
You might call this a failure, but the set design was my favorite part of the film. I hate to burst your utopian bubble, but the fact is that most things will stay the same in the future. We are living in the future of our past, and 2002 still a lot more like 1950 than a 1950's-era picture of life in 2002.
Here in San Francisco we're still using buses and streetcars, living in houses, and going to movies just like people did nearly 100 years ago. Rich people live in nice houses, poor people live in dingy houses, and Chinese people still live in Chinatown. The differences are the little things: the palmtop computers, ATMs and cell phones. Cars are swoopier and more efficient. Companies still market crap to idiots with stupid and annoying pitches.
Minority Report's refusal to bow to the unrealistic Star Wars / Blade Runner aesthetic was one of my favorite parts of the movie. (The giant plot holes, OTOH...)
The government is installing involuntary tracking devices in order to monitor their location and movement remotely? Has anyone addressed the privacy concerns of this plan?
--
"First they came for the geese and seals, but I was not a goose or seal, so I said nothing."
What the hell does his sexual preference have to do with anything? What's with you people and making it a big show whenever someone is gay.
Imagine if you're watching a story about the american revolution. And George Washington and Ben Franklin are sleeping together. Would that bother you? It would bother me. I don't care who's gay and who's not gay, but I do care when they change history and ignore aspects of the story that deserve some attention.
I wanted to bring up the same point. This movie offends me since it not only whitewashes the homeosexual persecution of Turing, but it gives him a girlfriend and a love story subplot. You might as well give Mother Theresa a hunky boyfriend in a dramatized movie with lots of car chases through the streets of Calcutta.
Do any of the hardcore geeks really care what this processor is called? Call it Athlon XP, Athlon Pro, or Athlon: Pink Frilly Pony Party Dress Edition. I couldn't care less. Is it faster than Intel? Is it cheaper than Intel? Does it run programs identically to Intel? Lay it on me. There's no aesthetic or marketing error that can't be fixed by a can of flat black spraypaint. Except maybe the Pontiac Aztek.
I won't care one bit about 3G until I can actually get a call through in a real-world setting. It's very common that I have to redial the number 5-10 times in downtown San Francisco during peak hours just to get through the network congestion. For providers who have oversold their service, everyone competes for a channel in their overloaded cell. And now they want to increase the bandwidth? How about taking the 256Kbps or 2Mbps or whatever the hell the limit is and use it to support more channels?
ObProvider: Cingular Wireless
Oops, I need to revise my accusation. The NFS faq tells me that when Irix is the NFS server, it (the Irix system) doesn't handle 32-byte file handles correctly.
Apparently this is SGI's problem, which has been fixed in Irix 6.5.13
Sorry to accuse Linux of being buggy. I'll say three Hail Linus'es and be forgiven for my sins.
readdir() calls don't return all the files in a directory. For example:
> ls /d/serpent/dir
bar baz foo
> ./ls.py /d/serpent/dir/
bar baz
'ls.py' is a one-line program which behaves like 'ls'. Python can't see the file 'foo' in this NFS-mounted directory, even though 'ls' can see it. It doesn't consistently drop the last file, or drop just one file. This behavior isn't Python-specific: it occurs in the file browsers of several heavily-used programs here.
I had high hopes for this release, but NFS readdir() is STILL broken, and has been since at least 2.4.5. I've got a patch that fixes it but I don't know who to send it to. Anyone know?
http://www.aetherwire.com/
--
Ranger Speedbumpp, visual effects supervisor for "Candy Von Dewd and the Girls from Latexploitia", to be released Spring 2001