Fortunately, Mr. Gilmore is inadvertently doing a huge favor for the entire nation. By publicly challenging a very important airline security policy, he is allowing the courts (hopefully not the wacky "anti-God" court in California) to set a precedent allowing airlines to protect themselves from terrorists. And that will help us all be safer in our offices and in our planes.
We don't need people to protect us in our planes. We're perfectly capable of protecting ourselves on a flight. Look at the shoebomber. He tried something funny and got the shit kicked out of him, then arrested. If you scan news reports in the months after 9/11 you'll find several instances of people causing disturbances on airplanes and in every single instance they got ganked by the passengers and were restrained until the plane could land.
Americans won't stand for it anymore. In the 1980's the stakes were lower. Americans knew that if the plane was hijacked that they could keep their cool and cooperate and be released relatively unscathed when it was all over. Now days we know that the price of complacency during a hijacking is death, and Americans like to go down swinging. The odds of anybody being able to successfully hijack an airliner are drastically lower than they were on September 10th, and the terrorists know this. That's why I think that their next target will not be airplanes. It will likely be truck bombs on bridges or in front of buildings (a la Tim McVeigh). It will probably eventually be suicide bombers in our shopping malls. It might even be biological and chemical agents being disseminated in our office buildings and schools or dropped from small private airplanes. Commercial airlines haven't got anything to be worried about now I'd imagine.
I mean honestly, what is more terrifying to the average person? The possibility that someone may crash a fully loaded commercial airliner into the Statue of Liberty or that you may get blown to shreds while standing in the checkout line at the Piggly Wiggley (or whatever grocery store you frequent)?
When Microsoft released Windows XP NVidia would not let them rebuild the 3dfx 3D drivers for it (they were in the beta builds, but not the final). So if you have a 3dfx card and upgraded to Windows XP you had to buy a new card to get 3D support. Guess what you were going to buy, uhmmm, probably NVidia cause they had the best card.
While the 3dfx web site is no longer available, the official 3dfx drivers (including Windows XP) are available from other sources. Just look for them, you'll find them. It took me all of 5 seconds with Google.
Fortunately we still have Linux drivers because they were GPLed.
The wonderful thing about the GPLed 3dfx Linux drivers is that you could use them (if you had a mind) to write your own drivers for other operating systems. Like so. Again, nVidia bought the IP from 3dfx because that's all that they were interested in. If they were interested in supporting 3dfx hardware they would have just bought the company lock stock and barrel.
I've got TW Digital cable in Columbus Ohio, and they've just recently started pitching their iControl system to us. Apparently it is a system that will allow us to pause and resume our PPV programming without missing anything. This is kinda nice in that I often use PPV instead of hitting blockbuster and sometimes have to leave the room during the movie for a minute.
As far as the digital recorder function goes, it sounds neat but I imagine that we will be charged extra for the privilege. In my case, I still have a VCR if there's something that I really want too see that badly, and I don't have any problems recording off of any of the digital TV channels. At any rate, I wouldn't be too concerned about there being a lack of a "Commercial Zapper" button in their digital recording service, so long as you can still manually hold down the Fast Fordward button like you can with an old-school VCR.
Now regarding the digital TV channels, I am not impressed with the quality. I have a relatively new TV that has excellent sharpness and clarity, but the picture when watching the digital channels doesn't look any better than the analog channels do on it. What's worse, I can often catch pixellation in action shots (usually sports), especially with (drum roll please) straight lines that run at a diagonal on the screen. I see this all the time when watching CART races on Speedvision (one of the digital channels) but I never see it when watching CART races on CBS (one of the analog channels).
More importantly, why am I paying for digial cable but only receiving the allegedly "sharper, clearer" digital signal on half of my channels? I know that it sounds odd, but all of the channels that were previously available on my analog cable package work as they had previously. All of the channels that only became available with digital service all have a 2-3 second delay before they are displayed while changing channels (it has to switch data streams with the mothership, I assume). This is annoying. If it weren't for Speedvision (I need my CART and F1 fix) I wouldn't even have bothered with digital service, nor would I recommend it for someone who doesn't need it for a specific channel like I did as TW's implementation is less than impressive.
Re:Whatever it is..Its good
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ATI R300 and R250V
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· Score: 4, Informative
We, 3dfx owners know how a company they are... Since we are without new drivers since nvidia bought 3dfx.
No need to describe, I guess 3dfx owners with a clue understood what kind of a company they are... In hard way...
Oh me? When it ships (or shipped already), I am buying it... I won't buy from a company which left me in "digital cold" just because they bought my card/chip maker...
mod me as you wish, I couldn't stand not saying this stuff...
You've not got the slightest idea what you're talking about. Nvidia did not buy 3dfx. They bought the intellectual property of 3dfx. They bought most of the 3dfx design work, technology, patents, etc. They didn't buy any of the office space, manufacturing plants or employees. They bought the IP because they thought that there was something in it that would be useful in their future chip designs.
3dfx Interactive is still a company and is still in business, in a manner of speaking. If you want more info on the nVidia purchase of 3dfx IP, you can read about it here, here, or here. But don't go blaming nVidia because your favorite graphics card company stopped producing and supporting your product.
Re:It'll be MORE interesting by end of the year
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ATI R300 and R250V
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· Score: 1
If you think the Radeon 9700 is amazing, just wait till ATI produces the R300 chipset in the 0.13 micron process version and cranks up the graphics card clock speed to likely way over 400 MHz.
If you think that's fast, just wait till you see the Bitboys Oy Glaze 3D chipset. It's gonna spank everything! Oh wait...nevermind.
Re:Why two ethernet controllers?
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nForce2 Preview
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· Score: 2
but when they add the second controller to the MCP-T, it's something along the lines of a 3C920 ASIC.
That actually makes sense. Thanks.
Additionally, 3Com provides no support for OEM products, so yes, there're two different drivers, but no, you don't have to call two different companies for support.
Yeah, actually what I meant was that it would be potentially more headache for whoever ends up supporting it, whether that is Joe Hardware at the screwdriver shop or someone troubleshooting their own system. I wasn't even thinking about manufacturer support.
The nFORCE concept is to capture low-end market share by providing much better specs than the alternatives, for people who are price-constrained.
I'm not sure that's the case. If it were, the nForce2 chipset would have more expensive higher performing optional components. Would you like your Southbridge to have firewire, dual nics or a Dolby Digital 5.1 audio processing unit? If not, they have a stripped down version for the cost conscious. Do you want your Northbridge to have a GeForce4MX core integrated, or would you prefer one without the integrated graphics so that you can choose your own card? Either way you're still getting Dual Channel DDR400 memory interfaces, a performance option only available on nForce boards.
Not exactly accurate
on
nForce2 Preview
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· Score: 3, Insightful
Intel has always been a little hostile to anyone else producing chipsets. I believe with the Pentium IV, Intel has forbidden any third parties from producing chipsets. They went after VIA hard over this issue.
Intel actually licenses the IP necessary to design chipsets for the Pentium IV. The reason that they went after VIA for making a Pentium IV chipset was because VIA didn't go to Intel to get a license for the technology. VIA claimed that when they acquired S3 they also acquired the license to utilize the Pentium IV bus technology (since S3 had a license), and it's been fought out in the courts since then.
Regarding Intel's hostility to third-party chipset makers, that only makes sense. After all, making chipsets for their CPU's is a large portion of Intel's business. By licensing their bus protocols to third parties Intel is making sure that they get a cut of every Pentium 4 chipset sold. They're also raising the costs of competitors chipsets to put them roughly in line with their own. Given the choice in that situation, most people would go with Intel.
Also keep in mind that controlling the chipsets also allows you to control the technology that is used in them. The Rambus memory fiasco is an excellent example of that. Rambus turned out to be an expensive dud on the early Pentium 4 systems, but Intel was contractually obligated to support only Rambus RDRAM memory and no other memory type on the Pentium 4 for a certain period of time. During that time VIA was producing a less expensive and better performing SDRAM-based chipset for the Pentium 4. Most people went for VIA chipsets on their Pentium 4 systems and that was hurting Intel's chipset business, so Intel of course attacked in any way it could.
Re:remember: it's not a geforce4!
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nForce2 Preview
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· Score: 4, Informative
It seems nvidia is going the same road as intel and sis with their cheap video-on-board motherboard. All of them sucked! Good luck!
Hmm...maybe that's why nVidia also makes an nForce2 part that doesn't have integrated video. Oh wait, you'd have actually had to read the article to know that. Nevermind.
Seriously folks, integrated video is not always a bad thing. When I built a system for my father I used an nForce board because for $120 I could get a system with onboard video, audio, and ethernet. If I had bought a non-integrated solution it would have cost me over $200 for components of similar quality separately. Does my father need screaming fast graphics power or Dolby Digital 5.1 so that he can play Doom 3? No, an nForce was more than adequate. All he wants to do is browse the web, send emails, work on his geneaology database and VPN into work so that he can do his job (UNIX tools development for Lucent).
Now with the nForce2 there's another option for me. If I want I can get an nForce2 board without integrated video that still takes advantage of Dual Channel DDR400 (how many other mainboards have that?) and has high-end audio, USB 2.0, Firewire, and dual ethernet controllers built in. Then I can go out and buy a GeForce5 (or whatever they want to call it then) and have a screaming gaming system.
What would be really nice is to see this in one of the new Shuttle SS-series systems.
From some of the other comments, this seems not to be aimed at the gamer audience--the on-board video apparently beats other on-board video but can't touch "real" video cards.
And from the articles, there are actually two different northbridge and southbridge chipsets available. You've got the "low-end" integrated solution for OEMs with integrated graphics, AC97 audio and a single ethernet port. Then you've got the "high-end" solution targetting at gamers without onboard video but with and integrated APU that does Dolby Digital 5.1 and has Firewire and dual network controllers.
Re:Why two ethernet controllers?
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nForce2 Preview
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· Score: 2
This chipset is designed to be used in OEM boards for good performance and enthusiast customers...not servers. I can't think of any legitimate use for *two* ethernet controllers other than in a broader network application (Firewall, for instance).
Well, there's apparently a lot fo different uses for having a second ethernet port, and I won't bother to list them all here (as others have done so for me). My question is why two different ethernet controllers? If you've already got your own controller built in once, why not just duplicate it? Why license someone else's controller? Granted, 3Com makes pretty solid NICs (they're all I use) but if you're concerned that yours aren't up to snuff, why not just license 3Com's from the beginning? It would certainly simplify things from a configuration and support perspective anyway.
According to the NVNews article, they have a reference motherboard?
That's not what it says. If you read closely, you'll see that they tried to simulate the performance of an nForce2 mainboard by using an nForce motherboard with an underclocked GeForce4MX 460.
no biggie. and maybe that'll cut down on in-between commercials.
Don't be ridiculous. Can you honestly see a TV exec saying "We had $200 million in interstitial ad revenue in 2002, but since we've picked up an additional $80 million in pop-up ad revenue we can afford to accept $80 million less of interstitial advertising." Big business is after big money, and they don't care how hard they have to annoy consumers to get it. Your only option will be to turn off the TV or turn the channel.
The funny thing about all of this is that the advertisers feel that people don't give commercials the "respect and attention" that they think they deserve. That's because the consumers don't think that commercials are generally worthy of respect or attention. They started doing interstitial advertising and people started flipping channels because they don't want to watch ads. They increased the amount of interstitial advertising and people switch channels and stay longer or they buy a Tivo to filter it all out. I wonder why? Oh yeah, that's right. People don't like advertising.
So now they want to adopt the Internet's most annoying, least respected and most ignored form of advertising: the pop-up. That will get them the "respect and attention" that their products deserve. Nevermind that people have already learned to ignore the popup windows on their PCs, which should greatly ease the transitition to ignoring the popups in their TV programming.
The only real difference between the Internet pop-ups and TV popups is that the TV pop-ups have the potential to be much more annoying. The first time that they pop up and block something important (the text of a suicide note in that mystery show, the car spinning out during the Indy 500, the outfielder failing to catch the fly ball that results in the game-winning run, etc) there will be ten kinds of hell to pay from every direction. Do the advertising agencies honestly think that by cramming themselves down our throats we will become more enamored of advertising? No, we'll just start watching channels that don't advertise with popups, if we watch TV at all.
The sad thing about this is that it is truly unnecessary. Actual commercials in general have been getting better over the years. Many of them are funny, some even quite entertaining. Adcritic.com built a web site that's sole reason to exist was to provide commercials for download over the net, and they were crushed by the demand and folded. What that says to me is that even though the average commercial is derided and ignored, people will go out of their way to see entertaining advertising.
If ad agencies made their commercials more entertaining then I wouldn't mind watching them so much. Ideas like the product placements in Survivor work well. You see the bag of Doritos, you see 7 starving contestants competing for the bag of Doritos, and you see the winning contestant chowing through them like they were ambrosia. Next time you get the munchies you think of Doritos. Advertising via sponsorship seems to work well too, at least in auto racing. Race fans are some of the most loyal consumers in the world, so long as their product is sponsoring their favorite driver or team. When choosing between two roughly equivalent products, I always choose the one that sponsors auto racing (if there is one), even if it is slightly more expensive. It makes sense to support those companies that support your interests, and I'm not the only sports fan that thinks that way.
It's interesting that TNT claims to have already trialed such a pop-up system last year during a showing of "Father of the Bride II" and didn't receive any phone calls complaining. What kind of ratings they got for that showing? How many people switched channels when they started seeing the ads? Does TNT realize that 90% of lost customers don't say anything about being unhappy before switching to a competitor? Would there have been a more significant response had they tested these ads during a more popular show? Just how many people actually tune in to watch a second-rate sequel that's seven years old on a second-rate cable network?
I guess in summary, there is a way to advertise effectively. If someone is thinks that pop-ups are effective then they obviously haven't figured it out yet.
You quoted it yourself before asking your question: "Winning genetic strategy."
Certainly it isn't a winning strategy for propagating one's genetic material, but it may be a winning stragegy for improving one's own quality of life -- supporting unwanted/unexpected offspring is expensive.
If you are in fact supporting offspring, then yes it can be expensive. But you're by no means forced to support your offspring. Honestly, let's compare two different genetic strategies. Your strategy will be to have a spouse and raise 3 children, supporting them until they reach the age of 18. My strategy will be to spend the 40 or so years of reproductive life that I have travelling the world having unprotected sex with as many different women as I can as often as possible (no NBA jokes please) and supporting as few of them as I can get away with. At the end of our respective lives, who is going to have created more offspring? Even if I only sire one child per year and only 25% of those children survive to reproduce, I will have still have been three times as effective as you have at propogating my genes.
If one wants to make an evolutionary argument, then one must accept that free will would not arise if it didn't have an evolutionary advantage as well. I can think that having fewer offspring that are better cared for, and thus fitter than average, might be one.
I've already discussed the second portion of your statement, but the first portion I find interesting. I think that you likely have fallen into a fairly common logical trap - that of thinking that simply because something exists that it must have been selected by evolution. This is not always the case. Some things are unintended side effects of natural selection. I'm not sure that you can make a reasonable argument that something as ephemeral as "free will" was selected for, though you are certainly welome to try. I rather suspect that a notion of "free will" is more of a side-effect of having evolved complicated brains that are capable of self-awareness and rational problem solving.
occasionally fast breeding is necessary to save the species from some global calamity, left unchecked, the resulting population explosion would have dire consequences.
That's an interesting Lamarckian error you've made there. If fast breeding is selected for then eventually we will end up with a population of fast breeders. The "dire consequences" of a population explosion are presumably death of a percentage of the population. But when you're done with all the death you're still left with a population of fast breeders. The fast breeders won't realize the error of their ways and pass their new found knowledge on through their genes. Adopted traits (like knowledge) are not inheritable. If any "equilibrium" is to be gained from your example, it is only that of a boom and bust cycle.
Re:What are these people's problems?
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Piers Anthony Unbound
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· Score: 3, Interesting
Because, people are generally irresponsible, especially when they are young, for one. People also seem to have a problem with accepting the consequences of their actions, or considering the consequences of their actions on others.
Eh...people have been irresponsible and have had trouble dealing with the consequences of their actions for millions of years. Why change now? Let me re-phrase that: Why do you expect it to change now? Being 100% responsible and considering the consequences of your actions before having sex is not a winning genetic strategy. We are all the products of many generations of irresponsible people people who don't think before they have sex. Saying a few words (or not saying a few words) won't change that.
You gave two of the damn good reasons not to have sex as a teenager (or irresponsible adult): Unwanted pregnancy and STDs.
Those are two good reasons, but they're largely irrelevant. You've pointed out yourself that people are irresponsible and don't think before they act. Reason doesn't figure into the equation at all. For example, while I'm sitting at my desk at work I can rationally weigh the benefits of having sex versus the potential costs. Benefits: feels good. Potential costs: unwanted pregnancy, STDs, unwanted emotional ties, a mess to clean up. Well eating a candy bar feels good too, so the "potential costs" side wins out for now. But when I go home and my girlfriend comes over and starts getting frisky the equation goes out the window and I'm gonna get busy. The "benefits" side wins hands down nearly every time. Logically it may make no sense, but that's because you're looking at too small of an equation. You need to be looking at the way that human beings have evolved.
Thing is, it took almost six months for her to tell me about it, and I still had to figure it out from hints and crap. She would never have told me outright. Anyway, she also said that she was using "protection" at the time. When she got HPV, her partner had a condom on, and when she got pregnant, she was on the pill. So much for two of the most popular "protections."
Don't you find it odd that you attack her integrity in one sentence and then accept her words as truth in the next sentence? Isn't it possible that perhaps she was not telling you the truth because she didn't want to be seen as easy, careless, and dangerous to be with? She was embarrassed enough by having HPV that she wouldn't come out and tell you about it, how much worse would it be to have to admit to you that it was her fault that she got them?
You realize, of course, that STDs would, for the most part, go away if promiscuity was eliminated? Also, your nemesis the Christian Coalition would be a lot happier if less abortions happened due to irresponsible sex.
Yes, STD infections would be reduced greatly if promiscuity were eliminated. Just like death would be reduced greatly if violence were eliminated, and obesity would be reduced greatly if food were eliminated. The problem with that is that promiscuity will never be eliminated. It exists today because in the past it was a winning genetic strategy, and it is still a winning genetic strategy today. As time goes by people will likely only get more promiscuous.
As far as the "Christian Coalition" goes, I'm not particularly concerned with trying to make them happy.
Ummm... neither the PC floppy bus nor the ATA bus is hot swap capable.
Which would almost be relevant if I had actually claimed that either of them was. But I didn't, and I find it odd that the only way you could come up with anything to post about was to cut and paste my post to make it look like I have made claims that I have not made. Are you really that bored?
And you tell me how that little tiny thing is going to hold three hard drives,.
Ditch the three hard drives for one large hard drive. Partition as necessary.
a CD-R, regular CD-ROM,
If you're got a CDRW, you don't really need a "regular CD-ROM drive." In fact, if you buy a CDRW/DVD drive, you've got all of your bases covered.
Zip drive,
Put an IDE internal ZIP drive in the floppy bay, or use an external parallel port/USB ZIP drive.
floppy (yes, I still use a floppy),
Put it in the 3.5" floppy drive bay. Duh!
and my video card / sound card upgrades I periodically buy.
There's already a PCI slot for your sound card upgrades, and the next model is supposed to have an AGP slot so that you can upgrade your video card. I'm not trying to be a troll here, but you did ask how to put it all together. I'm just answering.
Last but not least... you get what you pay for. I know, nobody wants to believe that, but it's mostly true. If you put down $60 for a motherboard, $20 for your RAM, and $30 for your case, I pity the stability of your computer. Every one of those components are going to be flakey, unless you're lucky (sometimes you do luck out and get good quality items).
If you carefully research the components that you are interested in then you can often times get excellent parts for considerably less than top dollar. It's all a matter of evaluating needs versus cost. For example, I paid less than $100 7 months ago for my DDR Athlon mainboard and got an Epox 8KHA+. It's an excellent board, is very fast and rock-solid stable. No compatibility issues and it has plenty of slots for expansion. At the same time I paid $40 for my Enlight 7237 mid-tower case with a 300W PSU. It's easy to get into, installation was simple and it looks and works fine. Around the same time I picked up a TDK VeloCD 24x10x40 CDRW for $70. It works great, burns everything I need to burn and hasn't made a single coaster. There's a lot more at work here than simple dumb luck. While I'm at it, I'd also like to point out the obvious: just because it costs more money doesn't mean that it's any better.
Don't get me wrong, I use $2 mice and $39 motherboards sometimes. But I know what I'm getting myself into,
And the implication you make here is that nobody else does. That's a bit of a ridiculous notion, especially when you consider the talents of the average Slashdot reader.
Holy shit, this post is long. I better get moderated up for all this typing.
It's usually quality, not quantity that matters.
Now, on to the matter of this "Mac-alike" case. It looks nice. It seems to be fairly well designed, though still not as well done as a true PowerMac case. The smoked glass/charcoal color doesn't really do much for me personally, but that's just a matter of personal taste (like the rest of my comments about it). When it comes down to it though, it basically looks like any other mid-tower case. I've got a room full of PCs that look basically the same as this one. What is really far more interesting to me are cases like the Shuttle SS40. I think that the small form factor is probably the way to go for the average user nowdays, and the Shuttle systems look damn good. And they're quiet. And if you're really obsessed with wanting a "Mac-alike", just pretend it's a G4 Cube.
After posting an embedded image on a Web site, someone can notify intended recipients by e-mail with code words such as 'Go to this URL to see pictures from my birthday party.'"
This product must have already been released since I've been getting emails like that for months now. "I just turned 18! Click here for hot pictures from my 18th birthday party! You won't believe how wild my barely 18 year old friends and I got that night!"
I guess if you get completely technical, it could be considered a breach of contract. Most ISPs have clauses against running servers of any kind on their networks. P2P programs could be considered servers since they "serve" content to other clients who want it. I'd say they are justified, but it still kinda sux...
But what if I use AOL Instant Messenger (AOL/TW owned of course) to directly transfer a file to another AIM user? That is also a kind of P2P, and my PC is technically acting like a server. Would they be justified in blocking that?
Its probably just 1600x1200, just like the 15 inchers. Some people are hawking 14 and 15 inchers that only do 1024x768. ugh!
What' the point of 1600x1200 on a 15 inch screen? I have a 19 inch monitor at home and I never push it farther than 1280x960 because 1600x1200 is still too small for it to be readble. Especially if you spend any amount of time working with it on the road at all.
That means that your parachutists are experiencing over 15G on takeoff. Which is well beyond the point at which every human (even top jet pilots) black out.
That's not exactly true. A pilot doing a sustained 15 G loop would probably black out as the blood is pulled to his feet. A pilot doing a sustained 15 G inverted loop would probably red out as the blood is forced into his head.
It's the sustained Gs that cause the problems, not the Gs themselves. Champ car drivers have frequently sustained deceleration forces in excess of 100 Gs during crashes. Even with an energy-absorbing impact barrier in pace (like in this past years Indy 500) the impacts still deliver 40-60 Gs of force. The big difference is that the force in these cases is only experienced for a fraction of a second. A sustained G force of that magnitude would likely be fatal.
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Fortunately, Mr. Gilmore is inadvertently doing a huge favor for the entire nation. By publicly challenging a very important airline security policy, he is allowing the courts (hopefully not the wacky "anti-God" court in California) to set a precedent allowing airlines to protect themselves from terrorists. And that will help us all be safer in our offices and in our planes.
We don't need people to protect us in our planes. We're perfectly capable of protecting ourselves on a flight. Look at the shoebomber. He tried something funny and got the shit kicked out of him, then arrested. If you scan news reports in the months after 9/11 you'll find several instances of people causing disturbances on airplanes and in every single instance they got ganked by the passengers and were restrained until the plane could land.
Americans won't stand for it anymore. In the 1980's the stakes were lower. Americans knew that if the plane was hijacked that they could keep their cool and cooperate and be released relatively unscathed when it was all over. Now days we know that the price of complacency during a hijacking is death, and Americans like to go down swinging. The odds of anybody being able to successfully hijack an airliner are drastically lower than they were on September 10th, and the terrorists know this. That's why I think that their next target will not be airplanes. It will likely be truck bombs on bridges or in front of buildings (a la Tim McVeigh). It will probably eventually be suicide bombers in our shopping malls. It might even be biological and chemical agents being disseminated in our office buildings and schools or dropped from small private airplanes. Commercial airlines haven't got anything to be worried about now I'd imagine.
I mean honestly, what is more terrifying to the average person? The possibility that someone may crash a fully loaded commercial airliner into the Statue of Liberty or that you may get blown to shreds while standing in the checkout line at the Piggly Wiggley (or whatever grocery store you frequent)?
If he chooses to travel via airplane, he needs to show an ID. But, he can travel by car, bus, or train and have none of these restrictions.
When was the last time that you drive to Hawaii?
When Microsoft released Windows XP NVidia would not let them rebuild the 3dfx 3D drivers for it (they were in the beta builds, but not the final). So if you have a 3dfx card and upgraded to Windows XP you had to buy a new card to get 3D support. Guess what you were going to buy, uhmmm, probably NVidia cause they had the best card.
While the 3dfx web site is no longer available, the official 3dfx drivers (including Windows XP) are available from other sources. Just look for them, you'll find them. It took me all of 5 seconds with Google.
Fortunately we still have Linux drivers because they were GPLed.
The wonderful thing about the GPLed 3dfx Linux drivers is that you could use them (if you had a mind) to write your own drivers for other operating systems. Like so. Again, nVidia bought the IP from 3dfx because that's all that they were interested in. If they were interested in supporting 3dfx hardware they would have just bought the company lock stock and barrel.
I've got TW Digital cable in Columbus Ohio, and they've just recently started pitching their iControl system to us. Apparently it is a system that will allow us to pause and resume our PPV programming without missing anything. This is kinda nice in that I often use PPV instead of hitting blockbuster and sometimes have to leave the room during the movie for a minute.
As far as the digital recorder function goes, it sounds neat but I imagine that we will be charged extra for the privilege. In my case, I still have a VCR if there's something that I really want too see that badly, and I don't have any problems recording off of any of the digital TV channels. At any rate, I wouldn't be too concerned about there being a lack of a "Commercial Zapper" button in their digital recording service, so long as you can still manually hold down the Fast Fordward button like you can with an old-school VCR.
Now regarding the digital TV channels, I am not impressed with the quality. I have a relatively new TV that has excellent sharpness and clarity, but the picture when watching the digital channels doesn't look any better than the analog channels do on it. What's worse, I can often catch pixellation in action shots (usually sports), especially with (drum roll please) straight lines that run at a diagonal on the screen. I see this all the time when watching CART races on Speedvision (one of the digital channels) but I never see it when watching CART races on CBS (one of the analog channels).
More importantly, why am I paying for digial cable but only receiving the allegedly "sharper, clearer" digital signal on half of my channels? I know that it sounds odd, but all of the channels that were previously available on my analog cable package work as they had previously. All of the channels that only became available with digital service all have a 2-3 second delay before they are displayed while changing channels (it has to switch data streams with the mothership, I assume). This is annoying. If it weren't for Speedvision (I need my CART and F1 fix) I wouldn't even have bothered with digital service, nor would I recommend it for someone who doesn't need it for a specific channel like I did as TW's implementation is less than impressive.
We, 3dfx owners know how a company they are... Since we are without new drivers since nvidia bought 3dfx.
No need to describe, I guess 3dfx owners with a clue understood what kind of a company they are... In hard way...
Oh me? When it ships (or shipped already), I am buying it... I won't buy from a company which left me in "digital cold" just because they bought my card/chip maker...
mod me as you wish, I couldn't stand not saying this stuff...
You've not got the slightest idea what you're talking about. Nvidia did not buy 3dfx. They bought the intellectual property of 3dfx. They bought most of the 3dfx design work, technology, patents, etc. They didn't buy any of the office space, manufacturing plants or employees. They bought the IP because they thought that there was something in it that would be useful in their future chip designs.
3dfx Interactive is still a company and is still in business, in a manner of speaking. If you want more info on the nVidia purchase of 3dfx IP, you can read about it here, here, or here. But don't go blaming nVidia because your favorite graphics card company stopped producing and supporting your product.
If you think the Radeon 9700 is amazing, just wait till ATI produces the R300 chipset in the 0.13 micron process version and cranks up the graphics card clock speed to likely way over 400 MHz.
If you think that's fast, just wait till you see the Bitboys Oy Glaze 3D chipset. It's gonna spank everything! Oh wait...nevermind.
but when they add the second controller to the MCP-T, it's something along the lines of a 3C920 ASIC.
That actually makes sense. Thanks.
Additionally, 3Com provides no support for OEM products, so yes, there're two different drivers, but no, you don't have to call two different companies for support.
Yeah, actually what I meant was that it would be potentially more headache for whoever ends up supporting it, whether that is Joe Hardware at the screwdriver shop or someone troubleshooting their own system. I wasn't even thinking about manufacturer support.
The nFORCE concept is to capture low-end market share by providing much better specs than the alternatives, for people who are price-constrained.
I'm not sure that's the case. If it were, the nForce2 chipset would have more expensive higher performing optional components. Would you like your Southbridge to have firewire, dual nics or a Dolby Digital 5.1 audio processing unit? If not, they have a stripped down version for the cost conscious. Do you want your Northbridge to have a GeForce4MX core integrated, or would you prefer one without the integrated graphics so that you can choose your own card? Either way you're still getting Dual Channel DDR400 memory interfaces, a performance option only available on nForce boards.
Intel has always been a little hostile to anyone else producing chipsets. I believe with the Pentium IV, Intel has forbidden any third parties from producing chipsets. They went after VIA hard over this issue.
Intel actually licenses the IP necessary to design chipsets for the Pentium IV. The reason that they went after VIA for making a Pentium IV chipset was because VIA didn't go to Intel to get a license for the technology. VIA claimed that when they acquired S3 they also acquired the license to utilize the Pentium IV bus technology (since S3 had a license), and it's been fought out in the courts since then.
Regarding Intel's hostility to third-party chipset makers, that only makes sense. After all, making chipsets for their CPU's is a large portion of Intel's business. By licensing their bus protocols to third parties Intel is making sure that they get a cut of every Pentium 4 chipset sold. They're also raising the costs of competitors chipsets to put them roughly in line with their own. Given the choice in that situation, most people would go with Intel.
Also keep in mind that controlling the chipsets also allows you to control the technology that is used in them. The Rambus memory fiasco is an excellent example of that. Rambus turned out to be an expensive dud on the early Pentium 4 systems, but Intel was contractually obligated to support only Rambus RDRAM memory and no other memory type on the Pentium 4 for a certain period of time. During that time VIA was producing a less expensive and better performing SDRAM-based chipset for the Pentium 4. Most people went for VIA chipsets on their Pentium 4 systems and that was hurting Intel's chipset business, so Intel of course attacked in any way it could.
It seems nvidia is going the same road as intel and sis with their cheap video-on-board motherboard. All of them sucked! Good luck!
Hmm...maybe that's why nVidia also makes an nForce2 part that doesn't have integrated video. Oh wait, you'd have actually had to read the article to know that. Nevermind.
Seriously folks, integrated video is not always a bad thing. When I built a system for my father I used an nForce board because for $120 I could get a system with onboard video, audio, and ethernet. If I had bought a non-integrated solution it would have cost me over $200 for components of similar quality separately. Does my father need screaming fast graphics power or Dolby Digital 5.1 so that he can play Doom 3? No, an nForce was more than adequate. All he wants to do is browse the web, send emails, work on his geneaology database and VPN into work so that he can do his job (UNIX tools development for Lucent).
Now with the nForce2 there's another option for me. If I want I can get an nForce2 board without integrated video that still takes advantage of Dual Channel DDR400 (how many other mainboards have that?) and has high-end audio, USB 2.0, Firewire, and dual ethernet controllers built in. Then I can go out and buy a GeForce5 (or whatever they want to call it then) and have a screaming gaming system.
What would be really nice is to see this in one of the new Shuttle SS-series systems.
From some of the other comments, this seems not to be aimed at the gamer audience--the on-board video apparently beats other on-board video but can't touch "real" video cards.
And from the articles, there are actually two different northbridge and southbridge chipsets available. You've got the "low-end" integrated solution for OEMs with integrated graphics, AC97 audio and a single ethernet port. Then you've got the "high-end" solution targetting at gamers without onboard video but with and integrated APU that does Dolby Digital 5.1 and has Firewire and dual network controllers.
This chipset is designed to be used in OEM boards for good performance and enthusiast customers...not servers. I can't think of any legitimate use for *two* ethernet controllers other than in a broader network application (Firewall, for instance).
Well, there's apparently a lot fo different uses for having a second ethernet port, and I won't bother to list them all here (as others have done so for me). My question is why two different ethernet controllers? If you've already got your own controller built in once, why not just duplicate it? Why license someone else's controller? Granted, 3Com makes pretty solid NICs (they're all I use) but if you're concerned that yours aren't up to snuff, why not just license 3Com's from the beginning? It would certainly simplify things from a configuration and support perspective anyway.
According to the NVNews article, they have a reference motherboard?
That's not what it says. If you read closely, you'll see that they tried to simulate the performance of an nForce2 mainboard by using an nForce motherboard with an underclocked GeForce4MX 460.
no biggie. and maybe that'll cut down on in-between commercials.
Don't be ridiculous. Can you honestly see a TV exec saying "We had $200 million in interstitial ad revenue in 2002, but since we've picked up an additional $80 million in pop-up ad revenue we can afford to accept $80 million less of interstitial advertising." Big business is after big money, and they don't care how hard they have to annoy consumers to get it. Your only option will be to turn off the TV or turn the channel.
The funny thing about all of this is that the advertisers feel that people don't give commercials the "respect and attention" that they think they deserve. That's because the consumers don't think that commercials are generally worthy of respect or attention. They started doing interstitial advertising and people started flipping channels because they don't want to watch ads. They increased the amount of interstitial advertising and people switch channels and stay longer or they buy a Tivo to filter it all out. I wonder why? Oh yeah, that's right. People don't like advertising.
So now they want to adopt the Internet's most annoying, least respected and most ignored form of advertising: the pop-up. That will get them the "respect and attention" that their products deserve. Nevermind that people have already learned to ignore the popup windows on their PCs, which should greatly ease the transitition to ignoring the popups in their TV programming.
The only real difference between the Internet pop-ups and TV popups is that the TV pop-ups have the potential to be much more annoying. The first time that they pop up and block something important (the text of a suicide note in that mystery show, the car spinning out during the Indy 500, the outfielder failing to catch the fly ball that results in the game-winning run, etc) there will be ten kinds of hell to pay from every direction. Do the advertising agencies honestly think that by cramming themselves down our throats we will become more enamored of advertising? No, we'll just start watching channels that don't advertise with popups, if we watch TV at all.
The sad thing about this is that it is truly unnecessary. Actual commercials in general have been getting better over the years. Many of them are funny, some even quite entertaining. Adcritic.com built a web site that's sole reason to exist was to provide commercials for download over the net, and they were crushed by the demand and folded. What that says to me is that even though the average commercial is derided and ignored, people will go out of their way to see entertaining advertising.
If ad agencies made their commercials more entertaining then I wouldn't mind watching them so much. Ideas like the product placements in Survivor work well. You see the bag of Doritos, you see 7 starving contestants competing for the bag of Doritos, and you see the winning contestant chowing through them like they were ambrosia. Next time you get the munchies you think of Doritos. Advertising via sponsorship seems to work well too, at least in auto racing. Race fans are some of the most loyal consumers in the world, so long as their product is sponsoring their favorite driver or team. When choosing between two roughly equivalent products, I always choose the one that sponsors auto racing (if there is one), even if it is slightly more expensive. It makes sense to support those companies that support your interests, and I'm not the only sports fan that thinks that way.
It's interesting that TNT claims to have already trialed such a pop-up system last year during a showing of "Father of the Bride II" and didn't receive any phone calls complaining. What kind of ratings they got for that showing? How many people switched channels when they started seeing the ads? Does TNT realize that 90% of lost customers don't say anything about being unhappy before switching to a competitor? Would there have been a more significant response had they tested these ads during a more popular show? Just how many people actually tune in to watch a second-rate sequel that's seven years old on a second-rate cable network?
I guess in summary, there is a way to advertise effectively. If someone is thinks that pop-ups are effective then they obviously haven't figured it out yet.
Nothing got changed, did anyone even verify this?
Yes, it does change it. Oddly enough, they apparently got smart enough to stop switching "evaluate" out though.
Winning stragegy for what?
You quoted it yourself before asking your question: "Winning genetic strategy."
Certainly it isn't a winning strategy for propagating one's genetic material, but it may be a winning stragegy for improving one's own quality of life -- supporting unwanted/unexpected offspring is expensive.
If you are in fact supporting offspring, then yes it can be expensive. But you're by no means forced to support your offspring. Honestly, let's compare two different genetic strategies. Your strategy will be to have a spouse and raise 3 children, supporting them until they reach the age of 18. My strategy will be to spend the 40 or so years of reproductive life that I have travelling the world having unprotected sex with as many different women as I can as often as possible (no NBA jokes please) and supporting as few of them as I can get away with. At the end of our respective lives, who is going to have created more offspring? Even if I only sire one child per year and only 25% of those children survive to reproduce, I will have still have been three times as effective as you have at propogating my genes.
If one wants to make an evolutionary argument, then one must accept that free will would not arise if it didn't have an evolutionary advantage as well. I can think that having fewer offspring that are better cared for, and thus fitter than average, might be one.
I've already discussed the second portion of your statement, but the first portion I find interesting. I think that you likely have fallen into a fairly common logical trap - that of thinking that simply because something exists that it must have been selected by evolution. This is not always the case. Some things are unintended side effects of natural selection. I'm not sure that you can make a reasonable argument that something as ephemeral as "free will" was selected for, though you are certainly welome to try. I rather suspect that a notion of "free will" is more of a side-effect of having evolved complicated brains that are capable of self-awareness and rational problem solving.
occasionally fast breeding is necessary to save the species from some global calamity, left unchecked, the resulting population explosion would have dire consequences.
That's an interesting Lamarckian error you've made there. If fast breeding is selected for then eventually we will end up with a population of fast breeders. The "dire consequences" of a population explosion are presumably death of a percentage of the population. But when you're done with all the death you're still left with a population of fast breeders. The fast breeders won't realize the error of their ways and pass their new found knowledge on through their genes. Adopted traits (like knowledge) are not inheritable. If any "equilibrium" is to be gained from your example, it is only that of a boom and bust cycle.
Because, people are generally irresponsible, especially when they are young, for one. People also seem to have a problem with accepting the consequences of their actions, or considering the consequences of their actions on others.
Eh...people have been irresponsible and have had trouble dealing with the consequences of their actions for millions of years. Why change now? Let me re-phrase that: Why do you expect it to change now? Being 100% responsible and considering the consequences of your actions before having sex is not a winning genetic strategy. We are all the products of many generations of irresponsible people people who don't think before they have sex. Saying a few words (or not saying a few words) won't change that.
You gave two of the damn good reasons not to have sex as a teenager (or irresponsible adult): Unwanted pregnancy and STDs.
Those are two good reasons, but they're largely irrelevant. You've pointed out yourself that people are irresponsible and don't think before they act. Reason doesn't figure into the equation at all. For example, while I'm sitting at my desk at work I can rationally weigh the benefits of having sex versus the potential costs. Benefits: feels good. Potential costs: unwanted pregnancy, STDs, unwanted emotional ties, a mess to clean up. Well eating a candy bar feels good too, so the "potential costs" side wins out for now. But when I go home and my girlfriend comes over and starts getting frisky the equation goes out the window and I'm gonna get busy. The "benefits" side wins hands down nearly every time. Logically it may make no sense, but that's because you're looking at too small of an equation. You need to be looking at the way that human beings have evolved.
Thing is, it took almost six months for her to tell me about it, and I still had to figure it out from hints and crap. She would never have told me outright. Anyway, she also said that she was using "protection" at the time. When she got HPV, her partner had a condom on, and when she got pregnant, she was on the pill. So much for two of the most popular "protections."
Don't you find it odd that you attack her integrity in one sentence and then accept her words as truth in the next sentence? Isn't it possible that perhaps she was not telling you the truth because she didn't want to be seen as easy, careless, and dangerous to be with? She was embarrassed enough by having HPV that she wouldn't come out and tell you about it, how much worse would it be to have to admit to you that it was her fault that she got them?
You realize, of course, that STDs would, for the most part, go away if promiscuity was eliminated? Also, your nemesis the Christian Coalition would be a lot happier if less abortions happened due to irresponsible sex.
Yes, STD infections would be reduced greatly if promiscuity were eliminated. Just like death would be reduced greatly if violence were eliminated, and obesity would be reduced greatly if food were eliminated. The problem with that is that promiscuity will never be eliminated. It exists today because in the past it was a winning genetic strategy, and it is still a winning genetic strategy today. As time goes by people will likely only get more promiscuous.
As far as the "Christian Coalition" goes, I'm not particularly concerned with trying to make them happy.
Ummm... neither the PC floppy bus nor the ATA bus is hot swap capable.
Which would almost be relevant if I had actually claimed that either of them was. But I didn't, and I find it odd that the only way you could come up with anything to post about was to cut and paste my post to make it look like I have made claims that I have not made. Are you really that bored?
And you tell me how that little tiny thing is going to hold three hard drives,.
Ditch the three hard drives for one large hard drive. Partition as necessary.
a CD-R, regular CD-ROM,
If you're got a CDRW, you don't really need a "regular CD-ROM drive." In fact, if you buy a CDRW/DVD drive, you've got all of your bases covered.
Zip drive,
Put an IDE internal ZIP drive in the floppy bay, or use an external parallel port/USB ZIP drive.
floppy (yes, I still use a floppy),
Put it in the 3.5" floppy drive bay. Duh!
and my video card / sound card upgrades I periodically buy.
There's already a PCI slot for your sound card upgrades, and the next model is supposed to have an AGP slot so that you can upgrade your video card. I'm not trying to be a troll here, but you did ask how to put it all together. I'm just answering.
Calling that a clone of the Mac case is like calling a Pontiac Firebird a clone of a Ferrari.
Dont' be ridiculous. Nobody would call a Pontiac Firebird a clone of a Ferrari. On the other hand, some people might try that with a Pontiac Fiero.
Last but not least... you get what you pay for. I know, nobody wants to believe that, but it's mostly true. If you put down $60 for a motherboard, $20 for your RAM, and $30 for your case, I pity the stability of your computer. Every one of those components are going to be flakey, unless you're lucky (sometimes you do luck out and get good quality items).
If you carefully research the components that you are interested in then you can often times get excellent parts for considerably less than top dollar. It's all a matter of evaluating needs versus cost. For example, I paid less than $100 7 months ago for my DDR Athlon mainboard and got an Epox 8KHA+. It's an excellent board, is very fast and rock-solid stable. No compatibility issues and it has plenty of slots for expansion. At the same time I paid $40 for my Enlight 7237 mid-tower case with a 300W PSU. It's easy to get into, installation was simple and it looks and works fine. Around the same time I picked up a TDK VeloCD 24x10x40 CDRW for $70. It works great, burns everything I need to burn and hasn't made a single coaster. There's a lot more at work here than simple dumb luck. While I'm at it, I'd also like to point out the obvious: just because it costs more money doesn't mean that it's any better.
Don't get me wrong, I use $2 mice and $39 motherboards sometimes. But I know what I'm getting myself into,
And the implication you make here is that nobody else does. That's a bit of a ridiculous notion, especially when you consider the talents of the average Slashdot reader.
Holy shit, this post is long. I better get moderated up for all this typing.
It's usually quality, not quantity that matters.
Now, on to the matter of this "Mac-alike" case. It looks nice. It seems to be fairly well designed, though still not as well done as a true PowerMac case. The smoked glass/charcoal color doesn't really do much for me personally, but that's just a matter of personal taste (like the rest of my comments about it). When it comes down to it though, it basically looks like any other mid-tower case. I've got a room full of PCs that look basically the same as this one. What is really far more interesting to me are cases like the Shuttle SS40. I think that the small form factor is probably the way to go for the average user nowdays, and the Shuttle systems look damn good. And they're quiet. And if you're really obsessed with wanting a "Mac-alike", just pretend it's a G4 Cube.
After posting an embedded image on a Web site, someone can notify intended recipients by e-mail with code words such as 'Go to this URL to see pictures from my birthday party.'"
This product must have already been released since I've been getting emails like that for months now. "I just turned 18! Click here for hot pictures from my 18th birthday party! You won't believe how wild my barely 18 year old friends and I got that night!"
I guess if you get completely technical, it could be considered a breach of contract. Most ISPs have clauses against running servers of any kind on their networks. P2P programs could be considered servers since they "serve" content to other clients who want it. I'd say they are justified, but it still kinda sux...
But what if I use AOL Instant Messenger (AOL/TW owned of course) to directly transfer a file to another AIM user? That is also a kind of P2P, and my PC is technically acting like a server. Would they be justified in blocking that?
Its probably just 1600x1200, just like the 15 inchers. Some people are hawking 14 and 15 inchers that only do 1024x768. ugh!
What' the point of 1600x1200 on a 15 inch screen? I have a 19 inch monitor at home and I never push it farther than 1280x960 because 1600x1200 is still too small for it to be readble. Especially if you spend any amount of time working with it on the road at all.
That means that your parachutists are experiencing over 15G on takeoff. Which is well beyond the point at which every human (even top jet pilots) black out.
That's not exactly true. A pilot doing a sustained 15 G loop would probably black out as the blood is pulled to his feet. A pilot doing a sustained 15 G inverted loop would probably red out as the blood is forced into his head.
It's the sustained Gs that cause the problems, not the Gs themselves. Champ car drivers have frequently sustained deceleration forces in excess of 100 Gs during crashes. Even with an energy-absorbing impact barrier in pace (like in this past years Indy 500) the impacts still deliver 40-60 Gs of force. The big difference is that the force in these cases is only experienced for a fraction of a second. A sustained G force of that magnitude would likely be fatal.