Sure, you might be able to code up an XviD decoder. The Au1100 has an onboard graphics controller, and a pretty fast memory interface which is key. I've seen the MPEG decoding real-time on this processor and it works pretty well. This isn't their normal x86 processor, it's a low-power MIPS32 core.
Re:C'mon, money where the mouth is people!
on
Review: Sun StarOffice 7
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
Yeah, OK. I just sent an email to our comptroller / CIO to see what he thinks. We've been under some pretty serious budget constraints, and MS Office is really costly. If it passes muster, that'll be a $1500 check to Sun.
I actually hope it works, because PDF and Flash export options are really killer. We've got one copy of Acrobat for the whole office, which sucks the big one. Don't get me started on how cool I think Flash would be for presentations. Our Prez is kinda fat-fingered during presentations and borks up the flow sometimes.
With the size and complexity of the Internet as we know it, single word search terms like "apple" are completely stupid. I think the reporter was just screwing around with Google and noticed that the publishing deadline was approaching. Sure, there are some unique words that make sense to use as a single term search, but anyone who has used a search engine for more than 3 seconds knows to qualify the search somehow.
As far as shopping results, that's the character of the web today. Lots of commercial interests. It takes money to maintain a web presence, no matter what Geocities tells you. Google is just presenting you with what it's got, really.
Finally, a lot more papers are published than books. It's not surprising that you don't get a lot more hits on book-printed resources.
This is more interesting as a statement on what the Internet has become, rather than what Google might be showing you while filtering other things out.
The obvious answer is YES, but of course the publishers don't see it that way.
I admittedly don't know much about book publishing, but I'd think that they have the text in some electronic form. Replication of that document is essentially free (cp/archives/Noir.tex/home/dielectric/ ) so what's the big deal? The publisher is just hoarding that book until the copyright runs out; if they can't make money, no one gets the book! It seems selfish to me.
Ah, but look! Amazon has about 60 copies, used, waiting for your money. The publishers don't get a dime of that money, AFAIK. If Amazon is selling it, don't you think there's a demand? If the publisher isn't willing to put up the money to run another batch of books, why don't they let us have the file (for a fee?) and print it ourselves? Because that would completely blow their current business model, and we all know that established industries (RIAA, MPAA, book publishers) are loathe to change, so they spend a little cash and buy themselves a senator or two.
Yeah, I'm completely cynical and distrust the whole process now. Can ya blame me?
BTW, I completely forgot about the debtors in "Noir." Scary. I'm off to pay down my credit cards!
Please, tell me someone else here has read "Noir" by K W Jeter? It's a near-future sci-fi where copyright law has gone off into the weeds. The main character is a copyright violation hunter who finds the violators and takes their spinal cord. This law would be one more step closer to that. It was really scary when I read it two years ago, and it seems more relevant than Orwell's "1984" sometimes.
Apparently it's out of print, at least that's what Amazon says, but I picked it up at my local library. I urge everyone else to do the same, it's a good read.
They're just following established practices, just like they did with their crappy OS. There are several companies that consist only of lawyers, created with the express purpose of defending IP and making it difficult for the rest of the non-scumsucking (productive) world.
The logo on the lower side then says Full Speed USB.
I don't mean to be a dick, but it said right on the box that it was Full Speed, which is 12mbps. I'll grant that marking it as 2.0 is kind of gray, but who believes box art anyway? Next time, do your research ahead of time.
It's not a marketing ploy. It's confusing for everyone, including us engineers sometimes. The names are just that way because they wanted to maintain naming consistency. If they renamed the old Full Speed to Medium Speed, it would require a revision to an established specification, so then the older USB 1.1 would be 1.2 and everyone would be confused anyway.
Yeah, stick with firewire. The economy needs your cash.
Yeah, I had one of those. That was bar none the coolest expansion box I've ever seen. Too bad it all got sold at a garage sale while I was away at college. I've never seen another one since then.:(
IIRC it had lots of metal plating and fake wood grain on the outside. Sweet. And the cable used to hook it to the console was like a big black python. You could have beat someone to death with it, I'm sure.
The top came off like the hood of a car, and the cards were the size of a book.
I had almost all of the card slots used, stuff like RAM and a TI-FORTH interpreter. One 5.25" floppy. And we liked it that way.
This sounds like some really bad reporting, like the reporter went to buy a computer and believed what the salesman told him.
Facts: USB 1.0 and 1.1 had "Low Speed" and "Full Speed" modes, way before USB 2.0 came out. USB 2.0 was developed, Full Speed was taken so we had to call it "Hi-Speed." That's not new, though the article presents it as such.
I have heard absolutely no news about calling all USB 1.1 products 2.0. No press releases or other articles on the USB Implementors Forum show this change. I am an applications engineer for a major USB silicon manufacturer, and I'm sure I'd have heard about this.
A move like that would be outright fraud, but it is pure fiction. The USB-IF has no interest in doing something like that. There may be a certain disreputable motherboard manufacturer faking it, but it certainly isn't part of the USB spec.
Intel has the new XScale, and AMD has their Alchemy processors (MIPS32) for the Mira displays. AMD demoed the Mira running with the Au1500 recently, and ran better/faster than the PXA stuff from Intel. I saw it, it was reasonably cool.
The sad thing is, they're just re-inventing X-terminals. Mira is just a dumb display, the magic still happens on some big, beefy iron in the background. Everything old becomes new.
Jail is nasty for a reason. Otherwise, we'd all be committing petty crimes for the free grub, TV, and workout equipment. For me, the rectal bleeding is deterrent enough. I can't really blame them for desisting.
Hopefully it'll blow up in BB's face, but we all know it won't. These kids will probably get expelled and BB will never patch their system. The last DMCA challenge (Felton) ended up as a fart in the wind. The judge rules "no harm" and they all go home. The only clear winners are the lawyers. Damn, why didn't I go to law school instead of engineering? That's where the money is! Even if you lose, you get paid by someone!
No, don't give up. I implore you. Yes, there are things that we, as geeks, like to to that may be on the wrong side of the law. We just have to be smarter than the law. Remember, the people that made the law are, by and large, booze-guzzling womanizers who are on the take. That dulls their senses. Stay sharp, and you will prevail.
I take a lot of inspiration from the aftermarket car scene. The carmakers have computerized the heck out of the automobile, but people still find ways to tweak them. My car, with a new engine map, will put out an extra 30 HP. That's just a software change. And it's something the carmakers don't want you to do. Lots of modifications will make you fail an emissions test at some point, but the clever people can avoid or disguise it.
I don't see much difference between computer/IT hacking and computer/auto hacking. Both will land you in a heap of trouble with the authorities if you aren't careful, but both have really great outcomes if you try.
Yes, AMD and Fujitsu have been in cahoots for a long time, but it was a really great venture rather than the poor one you hint at. They created FASL (Fujitsu-AMD Semiconductor Limited) which ships the lion's share of the world's flash. Several more fabs have been started as part of the FASL venture. Iw was, and is, a great success.
Intel has been in multi-level cells, but the practical limit on it is the four-level cell they have now. They have just recently gotten that to work reliably. AMD's Mirror Bit cell is new, and obviously has only a four-bit cell, but when combined with the mirroring and multi-level, you've got a 16-bit cell. Evil.
AMD will never, ever go into DRAM. It's a loser. Prices fluctuate way too much and you can't make much money at it. Their strength is in flash memory, and they know it.
Re:The USA military has already done it
on
Life Made to Order
·
· Score: 1
Blue light is pretty crappy for illumination in almost every situation. The wavelength is too short for our eyes to pick up properly.
Quick experiment: Drive down the street and find a blue lighted sign and a red lighted sign. Best if they are both letters. The blue will appear fuzzier and will probably be hard to focus on. The red is going to be pretty good.
All those crazy kids putting blue lights in their cars are morons. Driving lights should be white, fog lamps should be yellow-ish. None of that blue crap. Yes, it may look cool, but it's worthless.
More people in the US have outhouses than PVRs. I think that was in Newsweek or something. You may love your ReplayTV, but those poor people in the Blue Ridge Mountains don't even have indoor plumbing. Just for some perspective, I know you love your PVR as I do mine.
You could sue, I suppose, but there would be no point in suing a company with no money!
TiVO shouldn't have any more problems with lawsuits than it has right now. By not having a few key features that ReplayTV had, TiVO has successfully skirted a lot of those issues. Commerical skipping and program sharing were two biggies that would likely bring down the thunder, but TiVO has smartly avoided that. Yes, I know TiVO has a secret code for 30-second skip, but I tried it and it sucked. I like the fast-forward much better.
The TiVO hacking community has been careful about allowing program sharing for these reasons as well. None of us want to see TiVO go down for some dumb lawsuit.
I think this is probably good for TiVO in some respects, but the uncertainty it will cast for PVRs in general will probably overshadow the good bits. Man, double metaphor. What do I win?
I disagree somewhat. $500M is cheap. Linksys must have been dying to have let themselves go for that little.
OTOH, I do think we're at the end of the downturn. All historic signs point to rising stocks in the next few quarters. This comes from quite a few fine, upstanding CEOs in the electronics biz. Not those crappy ones who lay people off to cut costs, but real CEOs who care about their companies.
OTOOTH (other other hand), that's what I thought before we started pounding Iraq last night. Now we're just gonna have to wait and see. NYSE opened down amid stockholder fears from impending open war with Iraq. I hope the stock-people recover and get back to work.
Let us do this - let us stop all immigration and close the borders completely.
Fine by me. Meddling around the rest of the world hasn't done us much good so far. Jeezus, look at the mess we've made for ourselves in the Middle East. I think we've got enough natural resources to survive on our own. Let the rest of the damn world fend for themselves, I'm tired of the US propping up worthless economies.
I'm so pissed off right now, I could breathe fire. I don't normally say crap like this, but dammit, I'm tired of it all. I'm sure there's a valid reason for us to protect all those people, but we're not doing a very good job at it.
Slashdot Mirror
Sure, you might be able to code up an XviD decoder. The Au1100 has an onboard graphics controller, and a pretty fast memory interface which is key. I've seen the MPEG decoding real-time on this processor and it works pretty well. This isn't their normal x86 processor, it's a low-power MIPS32 core.
Yeah, OK. I just sent an email to our comptroller / CIO to see what he thinks. We've been under some pretty serious budget constraints, and MS Office is really costly. If it passes muster, that'll be a $1500 check to Sun.
I actually hope it works, because PDF and Flash export options are really killer. We've got one copy of Acrobat for the whole office, which sucks the big one. Don't get me started on how cool I think Flash would be for presentations. Our Prez is kinda fat-fingered during presentations and borks up the flow sometimes.
Follow the money.
1. Who bought the FCC? The Media.
2. Who controls The Media? The Masons.
3. What did The Masons build? Washington DC.
4. What was DC built on? Swamp Land.
5. Who likes stuff underground (oil)? President Bush.
6. Who did Bush put in power? GOTO 1.
This information probably looks all wrong, but that's what the Tri-Lateral Commission wants you to think.
Yes, but it'll be no match for my Adrian Barbo-bot with laser beam eyes.
Not close at all, but interestingly they go after the same applications. The Au1x00 chips are MIPS cored, so they're not even close architecturally.
I really have no good idea why AMD bought these jokers. Maybe AMD was infringing on NS's IP, and the results was that AMD just buys that part of NS?
Damn, it's hot under this tinfoil hat.
Rip the system.
I filled out my super-duper-saver card with false info. I get my Mountain Dew on the cheap, they get broken demographic data.
I giggle every time they swipe that thing. It's just such a sham.
With the size and complexity of the Internet as we know it, single word search terms like "apple" are completely stupid. I think the reporter was just screwing around with Google and noticed that the publishing deadline was approaching. Sure, there are some unique words that make sense to use as a single term search, but anyone who has used a search engine for more than 3 seconds knows to qualify the search somehow.
As far as shopping results, that's the character of the web today. Lots of commercial interests. It takes money to maintain a web presence, no matter what Geocities tells you. Google is just presenting you with what it's got, really.
Finally, a lot more papers are published than books. It's not surprising that you don't get a lot more hits on book-printed resources.
This is more interesting as a statement on what the Internet has become, rather than what Google might be showing you while filtering other things out.
The obvious answer is YES, but of course the publishers don't see it that way.
/archives/Noir.tex /home/dielectric/ ) so what's the big deal? The publisher is just hoarding that book until the copyright runs out; if they can't make money, no one gets the book! It seems selfish to me.
I admittedly don't know much about book publishing, but I'd think that they have the text in some electronic form. Replication of that document is essentially free (cp
Ah, but look! Amazon has about 60 copies, used, waiting for your money. The publishers don't get a dime of that money, AFAIK. If Amazon is selling it, don't you think there's a demand? If the publisher isn't willing to put up the money to run another batch of books, why don't they let us have the file (for a fee?) and print it ourselves? Because that would completely blow their current business model, and we all know that established industries (RIAA, MPAA, book publishers) are loathe to change, so they spend a little cash and buy themselves a senator or two.
Yeah, I'm completely cynical and distrust the whole process now. Can ya blame me?
BTW, I completely forgot about the debtors in "Noir." Scary. I'm off to pay down my credit cards!
Please, tell me someone else here has read "Noir" by K W Jeter? It's a near-future sci-fi where copyright law has gone off into the weeds. The main character is a copyright violation hunter who finds the violators and takes their spinal cord. This law would be one more step closer to that. It was really scary when I read it two years ago, and it seems more relevant than Orwell's "1984" sometimes.
Apparently it's out of print, at least that's what Amazon says, but I picked it up at my local library. I urge everyone else to do the same, it's a good read.
They're just following established practices, just like they did with their crappy OS. There are several companies that consist only of lawyers, created with the express purpose of defending IP and making it difficult for the rest of the non-scumsucking (productive) world.
Screw 'em, I hope they die.
I find myself saying that a lot lately.
I don't mean to be a dick, but it said right on the box that it was Full Speed, which is 12mbps. I'll grant that marking it as 2.0 is kind of gray, but who believes box art anyway? Next time, do your research ahead of time.
It's not a marketing ploy. It's confusing for everyone, including us engineers sometimes. The names are just that way because they wanted to maintain naming consistency. If they renamed the old Full Speed to Medium Speed, it would require a revision to an established specification, so then the older USB 1.1 would be 1.2 and everyone would be confused anyway.
Yeah, stick with firewire. The economy needs your cash.
Yeah, I had one of those. That was bar none the coolest expansion box I've ever seen. Too bad it all got sold at a garage sale while I was away at college. I've never seen another one since then. :(
IIRC it had lots of metal plating and fake wood grain on the outside. Sweet. And the cable used to hook it to the console was like a big black python. You could have beat someone to death with it, I'm sure.
The top came off like the hood of a car, and the cards were the size of a book.
I had almost all of the card slots used, stuff like RAM and a TI-FORTH interpreter. One 5.25" floppy. And we liked it that way.
This sounds like some really bad reporting, like the reporter went to buy a computer and believed what the salesman told him.
Facts: USB 1.0 and 1.1 had "Low Speed" and "Full Speed" modes, way before USB 2.0 came out. USB 2.0 was developed, Full Speed was taken so we had to call it "Hi-Speed." That's not new, though the article presents it as such.
I have heard absolutely no news about calling all USB 1.1 products 2.0. No press releases or other articles on the USB Implementors Forum show this change. I am an applications engineer for a major USB silicon manufacturer, and I'm sure I'd have heard about this.
A move like that would be outright fraud, but it is pure fiction. The USB-IF has no interest in doing something like that. There may be a certain disreputable motherboard manufacturer faking it, but it certainly isn't part of the USB spec.
OK, the funniest thing is that 5 people (probably more by now) have replied with helpful comments. God bless the internet, and god bless pornography!
I saw banners ads for this place:
Sugar DVD
And a search on Google for "adult DVD rental" turns up a bunch of other ones, too. HTH, HAND.
Intel has the new XScale, and AMD has their Alchemy processors (MIPS32) for the Mira displays. AMD demoed the Mira running with the Au1500 recently, and ran better/faster than the PXA stuff from Intel. I saw it, it was reasonably cool.
The sad thing is, they're just re-inventing X-terminals. Mira is just a dumb display, the magic still happens on some big, beefy iron in the background. Everything old becomes new.
4) Get to know Bubba the Bull Raper real well.
Jail is nasty for a reason. Otherwise, we'd all be committing petty crimes for the free grub, TV, and workout equipment. For me, the rectal bleeding is deterrent enough. I can't really blame them for desisting.
Hopefully it'll blow up in BB's face, but we all know it won't. These kids will probably get expelled and BB will never patch their system. The last DMCA challenge (Felton) ended up as a fart in the wind. The judge rules "no harm" and they all go home. The only clear winners are the lawyers. Damn, why didn't I go to law school instead of engineering? That's where the money is! Even if you lose, you get paid by someone!
No, don't give up. I implore you. Yes, there are things that we, as geeks, like to to that may be on the wrong side of the law. We just have to be smarter than the law. Remember, the people that made the law are, by and large, booze-guzzling womanizers who are on the take. That dulls their senses. Stay sharp, and you will prevail.
I take a lot of inspiration from the aftermarket car scene. The carmakers have computerized the heck out of the automobile, but people still find ways to tweak them. My car, with a new engine map, will put out an extra 30 HP. That's just a software change. And it's something the carmakers don't want you to do. Lots of modifications will make you fail an emissions test at some point, but the clever people can avoid or disguise it.
I don't see much difference between computer/IT hacking and computer/auto hacking. Both will land you in a heap of trouble with the authorities if you aren't careful, but both have really great outcomes if you try.
There are some points to clear up here.
Yes, AMD and Fujitsu have been in cahoots for a long time, but it was a really great venture rather than the poor one you hint at. They created FASL (Fujitsu-AMD Semiconductor Limited) which ships the lion's share of the world's flash. Several more fabs have been started as part of the FASL venture. Iw was, and is, a great success.
Intel has been in multi-level cells, but the practical limit on it is the four-level cell they have now. They have just recently gotten that to work reliably. AMD's Mirror Bit cell is new, and obviously has only a four-bit cell, but when combined with the mirroring and multi-level, you've got a 16-bit cell. Evil.
AMD will never, ever go into DRAM. It's a loser. Prices fluctuate way too much and you can't make much money at it. Their strength is in flash memory, and they know it.
No, you're thinking CIA, not the military.
Blue light is pretty crappy for illumination in almost every situation. The wavelength is too short for our eyes to pick up properly.
Quick experiment: Drive down the street and find a blue lighted sign and a red lighted sign. Best if they are both letters. The blue will appear fuzzier and will probably be hard to focus on. The red is going to be pretty good.
All those crazy kids putting blue lights in their cars are morons. Driving lights should be white, fog lamps should be yellow-ish. None of that blue crap. Yes, it may look cool, but it's worthless.
Yep, I think you're screwed Mr. Nick.
More people in the US have outhouses than PVRs. I think that was in Newsweek or something. You may love your ReplayTV, but those poor people in the Blue Ridge Mountains don't even have indoor plumbing. Just for some perspective, I know you love your PVR as I do mine.
You could sue, I suppose, but there would be no point in suing a company with no money!
TiVO shouldn't have any more problems with lawsuits than it has right now. By not having a few key features that ReplayTV had, TiVO has successfully skirted a lot of those issues. Commerical skipping and program sharing were two biggies that would likely bring down the thunder, but TiVO has smartly avoided that. Yes, I know TiVO has a secret code for 30-second skip, but I tried it and it sucked. I like the fast-forward much better.
The TiVO hacking community has been careful about allowing program sharing for these reasons as well. None of us want to see TiVO go down for some dumb lawsuit.
I think this is probably good for TiVO in some respects, but the uncertainty it will cast for PVRs in general will probably overshadow the good bits. Man, double metaphor. What do I win?
I disagree somewhat. $500M is cheap. Linksys must have been dying to have let themselves go for that little.
OTOH, I do think we're at the end of the downturn. All historic signs point to rising stocks in the next few quarters. This comes from quite a few fine, upstanding CEOs in the electronics biz. Not those crappy ones who lay people off to cut costs, but real CEOs who care about their companies.
OTOOTH (other other hand), that's what I thought before we started pounding Iraq last night. Now we're just gonna have to wait and see. NYSE opened down amid stockholder fears from impending open war with Iraq. I hope the stock-people recover and get back to work.
Fine by me. Meddling around the rest of the world hasn't done us much good so far. Jeezus, look at the mess we've made for ourselves in the Middle East. I think we've got enough natural resources to survive on our own. Let the rest of the damn world fend for themselves, I'm tired of the US propping up worthless economies.
I'm so pissed off right now, I could breathe fire. I don't normally say crap like this, but dammit, I'm tired of it all. I'm sure there's a valid reason for us to protect all those people, but we're not doing a very good job at it.