Precisely. It should really be this easy. OS X has a Directory Services manager where you can add the AD server in - LDAP compatibility will need to be enabled, obviously. At that point, you have the login. Setting up home-dirs might be a tad more tricky, but maybe not. I don't have an AD server here to mess with, but it really shouldn't be too difficult, as long as the 'standards compliant' features of AD are enabled.
Not really. As in most Unices, if the GUI is not being interacted with, it isn't eating up any cycles, either. The scheduler just puts it to sleep, awaiting an event (interaction).
Having a GUI on the server allows for simpler administration. Many folks that I know, that don't have a GUI on their server, also don't have a disply. Yet, they use VNC to more easily administer the server - or something like webmin or linuxconf in HTTP mode. Either way, you're still running a GUI.
Of course, console based administration is fine, too - but, Apple is about making things simple, even if you weren't raised a systems administrator. And contrary to Microsoft, their definition of "easy" doesn't correlate with the level of insecurity the system has.
This is the type of idea I had a while back, but the short answer, unfortunately, is no. At least, there's no way of building a hardware-based DVD player on the up-n-up (e.g. no DeCSS) w/o getting your own decryption key approved (that ought to set ya back a few).
It'd be nice, though.. its gettin' to be more and more that the DIY type thing is out of the picture. And just think, we don't even have broadcast flags yet! Even so, I can't think of any way that I can build my own box that can play DVDs, have TiVO like functionality, tune both my regular cable channels as well as my digital cable channels - never mind if I had satellite, which I don't, and never mind premium cable channels or InDemand or PPV, which might require totally different chips on your tuner.
Ah well, that's what we've got capitalism for, right? To see to our every need... supply & demand, God bless.
This is basically the same reason you're not supposed to use your cell phone (or leave your car on) when you're at the gas station. That's not to say that many people don't do it anyway, but you're not supposed to. Any electronic equipment, for the most part, could, in theory, generate a spark that, in theory, could ignite the fumes that you smell from the fuel, be it jet fuel or 87 octane gasoline.
I recently found out that you sent out a statement opposing the use of GNU-style licenses such as the GPL for Federal software R&D. Your letter indicates to me that you may not be aware of certain aspects of such licenses.
As a WI taxpayer, I wanted to voice my concern to you, that tax-funded software development may be licensed under restrictive proprietary licenses by commercial entities, with the intent to sell products to US taxpayers. This seems wrong to me, as the software development is funded by public means, so it seems that any intellectual property funded by the public should remain property of the public, forever.
Licenses such as the GNU GPL license ensure exactly this. The GPL license would prevent a company from line-for-line replicating federally funded R&D software and repackaging it as *their own* product. This scenario would remove publicly funded intellectual property from the public. Commercial entities are in no way prevented from looking at federal R&D efforts and re-implementing the research for their own commercial products. They are also not prevented from taking a GPL'd product and selling it, at a profit that they determine, to the public. These are all allowed under GPL licensing terms. This latitude is obviously not something that opponents to GPL software, such as Microsoft, want congressmen to know about, of course, but nevertheless, the latitude exists.
The only stipulation the GPL makes is that if a company distributes, in any way shape or form, a product that uses GPL code internally, they must provide the source code to the product using the GPL'd code to anyone requesting it. Within the software engineering field, there are many, many ways to use and interact with code that would allow a product to use GPL'd code without being subject to the GPL's license terms. The main thing the GPL prevents is the outright copying of code and repackaging of that code as one's own. This, in my opinion, is absolutely correct for publicly funded software projects.
You cite TCP/IP as an example against GPL licensing. However, TCP/IP is a protocol definition, not a software project. Most of the operating systems and software that use TCP/IP these days use software that is written under a variety of open and proprietary licenses, with the original code maintaining little or no resemblance to the initial *reference* implementation of TCP/IP. This initial *reference* implementation is the only item covered by the BSD-style license that is credited with allowing TCP/IP to flourish. However, the research papers that explain TCP/IP and allow a software developer to reimplement a 100% compliant TCP/IP system are not restricted in any way. Commercial entities can and have used these papers to create highly optimized TCP/IP systems (see the high-availability servers by IBM, Sun, Microsoft et al.) Had the initial *unoptimized* reference implementation not been licensed under a BSD-style copyright, this would STILL be possible. Had the initial reference implementation been licensed under the GPL, there would be little or no difference to the landscape of the Internet today. If anything, the Internet would have arrived sooner. Commercial entities would certainly not have made any less money.
Let me reiterate one important point: having R&D licensed under the GPL does not in any way shape or form prevent commercial entities from using the research to sell products. This is if they reimplement the results of the research OR if they choose to use the GPL'd code directly. If they choose to use the GPL'd code directly, they must simply honor the request to access the source code of the product using the GPL'd source to anyone requesting it. This does not in any way prevent a company from selling a product, for profit, based on GPL'd code. It is being done today, successfully, by many software development businesses.
By and large, for the vast majority of citizens in the US, having access to the source of a product is worthless. Allowing other developers, to whom the source might have value, to view the source of a product based on GPL'd code will only promote innovation in the high-technology industry.
I urge you to use the Internet and other resources at your disposal to learn more about the possibilities and the *true* limitations of licenses such as the GPL. Please, do not support the use of proprietary licenses, such as those used by Microsoft, to limit the public's access to federally funded R&D and software that is based on publicly funded research and development.
Your description of the computer is first rate. Absolutely excellent. I'm literally typing this from where I fell on the floor, next to my chair. Thank you!!
On this note, I'd like to share a thought I recently had: while driving one evening, it occurred to me that it might be an interesting endeavor to build a truly feature-rich home-theatre appliance, PVR, DVD player, component video outs, digital in/out - bells and whistles galore. Then it occurred to me that there is no (legal) way to DIY build a DVD player. With hardware decoding and all, just as a real player does. What's missing? Well, the keys for the CSS encryption, of course. Even without the DMCA, you can't just put your own hardware DVD player together, to my knowledge. Each manufacturer is assigned a key for CSS, if I recall - and you don't get one!
Needless to say, I was irritated, angered and more than a bit disappointed at this revelation.
The point is, when you have an enormous company, the execs can't keep track of each individual employee.
True, the execs cannot and should not. But, someone at Microsoft was responsible for approving this piece from the PR agency. Guaranteed. Someone at Microsoft approved it, that person's boss was aware of it and it was probably mentioned to that person's supervisor as well. What level is the last person to know about it in the chain at? Good question - probably not at the executive level, but at least a few 'higher-ups' knew this was going on. The fact that no name was mentioned and no byline was given would have been apparent to the persons at Microsoft who approved the article and provided technical information for it, so saying that they didn't know this PR woman used herself is probably incorrect as well.
Just an FYI. Ad agencies and PR firms may have the appearance of being dishonest and what not, as you allege, but in the end, everything the ad agency or PR firm does is approved by SOMEONE on the client's side. Someone at Microsoft saw this, read it, and agreed to it - probably went through a couple of rounds of revisions to get the wording right and to choose which images to show in the article. Ad agencies don't just go off on their own and do whatever they think ought to be done. Thinking that is ludicrous.
Not only is the PR consultant who wrote the piece not at fault because it was approved by someone at Microsoft, but the initial concepts of the idea and each draft of the article was routed through various levels of higher-up directors, in an ad agency, you'd have a designer, an art director, a creative director and an account executive before the client even sees anything. I'm not sure how its structured in a PR firm, but its likely similar. For Microsoft to target one person for such an elaborate article is ridiculous.
What you learned in high school is absolutely correct. Our founding fathers purposefully created a system of bureaucracy to prevent the gov't. from being able to act swiftly.
The problem with corporations is their status as "individuals" which allows them to lobby. I have yet to hear anything *good* result from this, maybe somebody could provide an example where allowing corporations to behave as individuals under the law benefits society?
I know exactly what they all mean. I've had long discussions with my audiophile brother and I've read all the articles in Home Theatre magazine and god knows what else is out there. I'm no audiophile, but I'm as interested as the next guy in cool tech, so things like THX and DTS interest me. What makes me a 'non-audiophile' is the lack of any sort of desire to spend thousands of dollars on audio equipment.
I know very well what the differences are between THX,DTS, even regular THX and THX EX (and DTS v. DTS ES). I can run down all the salient points between composite, component and s-video connections. I'm there, man. The thing is - the end effect should be a noticeable difference in what you experience. And that isn't really there. Maybe its there between DTS/THX and Dolby Digital. Given the right equipment, blah, blah, blah. But, in the environment that many people setup their home theater systems, the differences are lost quite easily.
Know how to avoid standing waves in your home theater setup? How 'bout measuring the distance between furniture objects, walls and speakers to provide the appropriate distance for sound waves to expand appropriately? Know how to tell if the audio you're listening to has a compressed signal? Not digitally compressed to save space - compressed to change the way the sound waves come out of the speakers. These are the things that ya need to know about. If every audiophile were an audio engineer, these are the things they *would* know about. But, its far easier to spend the money on high-end audio equipment than it is to get into a decent audio engineering school, isn't it?
The Panasonic system is more than a receiver, fortunately. It came with all necessary speakers to do 5.1, save the dedicated sub. The main front speakers have built-in subs, though (obviously not as good as a dedicated, but they put out decent, warm bass). It also has a 5-disc CD changer that plays CD-R/RW discs as well. Two digital audio inputs (coax & fiber), two analog audio inputs, tape deck, radio tuner, etc. Puts out somewhere in the range of 320W total power (don't know if that's RMS or not) to all the speakers. As I said before, I don't have the rears hooked up, but the power to the fronts is decent - more than loud enough to bother the neighbors and quite crisp in a carpeted room.
If it were just about a receiver, I'd have gotten something w/ DTS capability, since my DVD player has that capability as well. But, given that I was replacing the whole bit with an all-in-one system, I thought $250 for a Dolby Digital system wasn't too bad. Better than the $500-$600 Sony system:)
Many of the folks I know use external Firewire drives on their iMacs. Its dead easy that even a novice can do it - unpack the box, plug-in the cable, follow the screen prompts (if any) and voila, you're done.
If this JFS has an option to put the journal on an external Firewire drive, I'll certainly be enabling that. Otherwise, much of my work doesn't involve disk-intensive tasks, so the 10-15% penalty won't be that noticeable for me. Anyway, if Elvis goes the way of the rest of the OS, that 10-15% penalty will erode away over the next few updates/releases.
Mostly this, I imagine. Especially given the focus of the music industry of late. SACD has been out for a while and even the audiophiles are slow at picking it up - more money, imperceptible quality difference, etc. Not to mention expensive-ass hardware to actually pick up the higher quality SACD decoding. The format will stick around, but probably won't get wildly popular or anything. That's my $0.02 prediction, at least.
Totally agree. The only decent 'hi-fi' thing I've seen of late which actually seems to be worthwhile, are superbit DVDs. These are essentially releases of popular "smash-hit" movies (like Terminator and the like) with all the "extra" DVD crap cut out. No director's commentary, no outtakes, none of that. Instead, the entire 9+GB of DVD space is consumed by the highest possible encoding of the video, after the audio track is laid down. If you're the type of person that can easily notice MPEG-2 compression artifacts, then you'll seriously appreciate the extra effort put into these "superbit" CDs. My bro is a hi-fi fanatic and audio/videophile. I got him one of these for Christmas and was impressed by the quality on his Sony Wega HDTV. Quite impressive. Definitely wasn't noticing any compression artifacts anymore!
I don't want to hear that the sound is better from any "audiophiles" either. Audiophiles are the same morons who bought distilled water from discWasher for $5 for 4 ounces and buy "directional" speaker cables today and who use a green magic marker on the rim of their CDs. And then claim to be able to hear phase-shift distortion in CD music.
Amen. Glad someone else thinks as I do. I guess everyone needs to feel that they're special, eh?:) I recently got a Dolby Digital capable stereo system (the old shelf-top Aiwa crapped out, $200 for ~3 yrs, not bad). Panasonic's shelf-top, Dolby Digital 5.1 system for $250 at Circuit City seemed a decent buy. I'm happy with it - my DVDs sound discernably more clear than through the analog RCA jack connection. I don't have the rear surrounds hooked up (doesn't make sense in my apt.), but having a cleaner sound is nice.
Now, talking with my bro this morning (owner of a multi-thousand dollar home theatre system w/ THX EX, DTS ES, and all the other acronyms) and I have to say - I doubt that the subtle differences between Dolby Digital 5.1, THX, and DTS are even perceptible, lest you have a special room that you've sound proofed, dampened, accounted for any possible standing waves, etc.
Same goes for the higher quality D/A conversion on the SACD and such... c'mon. How many folks out there are perfectly happy listening to 128kbps MP3s now, and you're selling more hi-fi sound than CDs? Nevermind the signal processing that systems like Bose's live audio do to translate a normal stereo signal into multiple surround channels, in an effort to "encompass" the listener with the music... think what you might about those technologies, but they already exist and I dare say we don't need much of anything better!
Glad to hear it. You enjoy Linux/*BSD/Windows and I'll enjoy OS X. You're happy, I'm happy - what more could we ask for? World peace? Maybe... I'm not holdin' my breath, though.
I actually did select the 1yr instead of 3 yr warranty.. hmmmm. However, an "entry level notebook" wouldn't necessarily be the 14.1" custom built iBook with DVD/CD-RW. Something like the base $1199 model would probably be just spiffy as an entry level model.
PCs can certainly be cheaper than Macs. No question. I find it strange that they decided to compare laptops, though... those are pretty expensive any way you cut the cheese.
This new player is 'ruggedized' with a 16MB cache which *should* cache ~12-15 minutes of hard-disk-access-free audio, depending on encoding quality. The iPod is similarly equipped with 32MB of cache, if I recall, giving it roughly twice that. I could be way off on those times, by the way - its quite dependent on the encoding quality.
I have heard on forums that disk-based MP3 players are susceptible to scratching and such - but, from what I've heard, Apple's 1yr warranty handles that quite nicely. I would be somewhat leary of the Nomad's 90-day warranty.
What product did I miss from Archos that had the capacity of the initial iPod (5GB), the form-factor (1.8" drive), the battery time (10hrs+), the interface speed (Firewire) and the software interface (iTunes) and the very slick looking design?
Sure, 5GB+ players existed when the iPod was released. But, the iPod is much more than that. I'm not privy to Archos' sales figures, but I imagine they'd love to have sold as many of their players as Apple has sold iPods. Just a guess..
Shock absorption is loosely related to how much buffer cache you have. This player has 16MB, the iPod, if I recall, has 32MB. So, in theory, the iPod should last a little while better. I've heard of people jogging with the iPod, though, and screwing up the drive - just depends on how you handle it, I guess.
I also heard that Apple took those units back and replaced 'em with no hassle... ?!?
Depends on what you define as "a comparable iBook"... I priced out a Dell Inspiron 2600 (the "basic" laptop) w/ 512MB RAM and a 14.1" iBook w/ 640MB RAM, each w/ DVD/CD-RW, 30GB drive, etc. This is the closest config I could come up with and the price difference is $163. Dell Inspiron: $1676, Apple iBook: $1839.
This is all, of course, assuming that the 1.2GHz Mobile Celeron is comparable to the 700MHz G3 in the iBook. I have my doubts, but I'll let it go at that.
Personally, the ability to run Linux OR Mac OS X, both better operating systems than WinXP Home Edition is more than worth the $163 cost difference!
By "in flight" I'm assuming you mean "in some stage of the processing pipeline at any given moment" - I believe the P4 has something like a 20stage pipeline, the G3/G4 I believe is more along the lines of an 8 stage pipeline, if memory serves.
Part of what's at stake here is how many instructions are decoded/dispatched each clock cycle and then other factors like branch-prediction and such muddy the waters a bit more. In the end, the 'instructions per cycle' is really more of an average than anything else, as not every instruction will be a candidate for sending through the parallel functional units, etc. Taking into account the efficiency of the branch-prediction unit is important, too, since you could take a wrong turn and have to clear out all your functional units, at every stage of the pipeline and start over again, in certain circumstances. The fewer times this happens, the more effective your CPU will be at pushing the bits around.
Bottom line: modern processor mechanics are far more sophisticated than can be easily summarized by any one number or neat phrase. Just ask AMD about that one..
Not speaking as a pro here, but I do know that Apple's mobo architecture recently has been to split as many system pieces onto their own independent buses as possible. Surfing over to apple.com's hardware section should provide some insight, as should ars technica & tom's hardware, which recently had some articles about this.
Its been cited as a key difference between the Mac system architecture and the PC system architecture - different buses for AGP bus data, processormemory, processorPCI, etc.
I imagine this will continue to be the case - don't know if it impacts the aforementioned speeds, though.
Slashdot Mirror
Precisely. It should really be this easy. OS X has a Directory Services manager where you can add the AD server in - LDAP compatibility will need to be enabled, obviously. At that point, you have the login. Setting up home-dirs might be a tad more tricky, but maybe not. I don't have an AD server here to mess with, but it really shouldn't be too difficult, as long as the 'standards compliant' features of AD are enabled.
Cheers.
Not really. As in most Unices, if the GUI is not being interacted with, it isn't eating up any cycles, either. The scheduler just puts it to sleep, awaiting an event (interaction).
Having a GUI on the server allows for simpler administration. Many folks that I know, that don't have a GUI on their server, also don't have a disply. Yet, they use VNC to more easily administer the server - or something like webmin or linuxconf in HTTP mode. Either way, you're still running a GUI.
Of course, console based administration is fine, too - but, Apple is about making things simple, even if you weren't raised a systems administrator. And contrary to Microsoft, their definition of "easy" doesn't correlate with the level of insecurity the system has.
Cheers.
This is the type of idea I had a while back, but the short answer, unfortunately, is no. At least, there's no way of building a hardware-based DVD player on the up-n-up (e.g. no DeCSS) w/o getting your own decryption key approved (that ought to set ya back a few).
.. its gettin' to be more and more that the DIY type thing is out of the picture. And just think, we don't even have broadcast flags yet! Even so, I can't think of any way that I can build my own box that can play DVDs, have TiVO like functionality, tune both my regular cable channels as well as my digital cable channels - never mind if I had satellite, which I don't, and never mind premium cable channels or InDemand or PPV, which might require totally different chips on your tuner.
... supply & demand, God bless.
It'd be nice, though
Ah well, that's what we've got capitalism for, right? To see to our every need
Cheers.
This is basically the same reason you're not supposed to use your cell phone (or leave your car on) when you're at the gas station. That's not to say that many people don't do it anyway, but you're not supposed to. Any electronic equipment, for the most part, could, in theory, generate a spark that, in theory, could ignite the fumes that you smell from the fuel, be it jet fuel or 87 octane gasoline.
:)
Just an FYI
Dear Congressman Kind,
I recently found out that you sent out a statement opposing the use of GNU-style licenses such as the GPL for Federal software R&D. Your letter indicates to me that you may not be aware of certain aspects of such licenses.
As a WI taxpayer, I wanted to voice my concern to you, that tax-funded software development may be licensed under restrictive proprietary licenses by commercial entities, with the intent to sell products to US taxpayers. This seems wrong to me, as the software development is funded by public means, so it seems that any intellectual property funded by the public should remain property of the public, forever.
Licenses such as the GNU GPL license ensure exactly this. The GPL license would prevent a company from line-for-line replicating federally funded R&D software and repackaging it as *their own* product. This scenario would remove publicly funded intellectual property from the public. Commercial entities are in no way prevented from looking at federal R&D efforts and re-implementing the research for their own commercial products. They are also not prevented from taking a GPL'd product and selling it, at a profit that they determine, to the public. These are all allowed under GPL licensing terms. This latitude is obviously not something that opponents to GPL software, such as Microsoft, want congressmen to know about, of course, but nevertheless, the latitude exists.
The only stipulation the GPL makes is that if a company distributes, in any way shape or form, a product that uses GPL code internally, they must provide the source code to the product using the GPL'd code to anyone requesting it. Within the software engineering field, there are many, many ways to use and interact with code that would allow a product to use GPL'd code without being subject to the GPL's license terms. The main thing the GPL prevents is the outright copying of code and repackaging of that code as one's own. This, in my opinion, is absolutely correct for publicly funded software projects.
You cite TCP/IP as an example against GPL licensing. However, TCP/IP is a protocol definition, not a software project. Most of the operating systems and software that use TCP/IP these days use software that is written under a variety of open and proprietary licenses, with the original code maintaining little or no resemblance to the initial *reference* implementation of TCP/IP. This initial *reference* implementation is the only item covered by the BSD-style license that is credited with allowing TCP/IP to flourish. However, the research papers that explain TCP/IP and allow a software developer to reimplement a 100% compliant TCP/IP system are not restricted in any way. Commercial entities can and have used these papers to create highly optimized TCP/IP systems (see the high-availability servers by IBM, Sun, Microsoft et al.) Had the initial *unoptimized* reference implementation not been licensed under a BSD-style copyright, this would STILL be possible. Had the initial reference implementation been licensed under the GPL, there would be little or no difference to the landscape of the Internet today. If anything, the Internet would have arrived sooner. Commercial entities would certainly not have made any less money.
Let me reiterate one important point: having R&D licensed under the GPL does not in any way shape or form prevent commercial entities from using the research to sell products. This is if they reimplement the results of the research OR if they choose to use the GPL'd code directly. If they choose to use the GPL'd code directly, they must simply honor the request to access the source code of the product using the GPL'd source to anyone requesting it. This does not in any way prevent a company from selling a product, for profit, based on GPL'd code. It is being done today, successfully, by many software development businesses.
By and large, for the vast majority of citizens in the US, having access to the source of a product is worthless. Allowing other developers, to whom the source might have value, to view the source of a product based on GPL'd code will only promote innovation in the high-technology industry.
I urge you to use the Internet and other resources at your disposal to learn more about the possibilities and the *true* limitations of licenses such as the GPL. Please, do not support the use of proprietary licenses, such as those used by Microsoft, to limit the public's access to federally funded R&D and software that is based on publicly funded research and development.
Most respectfully,
Brice D. Ruth
Your description of the computer is first rate. Absolutely excellent. I'm literally typing this from where I fell on the floor, next to my chair. Thank you!!
On this note, I'd like to share a thought I recently had: while driving one evening, it occurred to me that it might be an interesting endeavor to build a truly feature-rich home-theatre appliance, PVR, DVD player, component video outs, digital in/out - bells and whistles galore. Then it occurred to me that there is no (legal) way to DIY build a DVD player. With hardware decoding and all, just as a real player does. What's missing? Well, the keys for the CSS encryption, of course. Even without the DMCA, you can't just put your own hardware DVD player together, to my knowledge. Each manufacturer is assigned a key for CSS, if I recall - and you don't get one!
Needless to say, I was irritated, angered and more than a bit disappointed at this revelation.
True, the execs cannot and should not. But, someone at Microsoft was responsible for approving this piece from the PR agency. Guaranteed. Someone at Microsoft approved it, that person's boss was aware of it and it was probably mentioned to that person's supervisor as well. What level is the last person to know about it in the chain at? Good question - probably not at the executive level, but at least a few 'higher-ups' knew this was going on. The fact that no name was mentioned and no byline was given would have been apparent to the persons at Microsoft who approved the article and provided technical information for it, so saying that they didn't know this PR woman used herself is probably incorrect as well.
Just an FYI. Ad agencies and PR firms may have the appearance of being dishonest and what not, as you allege, but in the end, everything the ad agency or PR firm does is approved by SOMEONE on the client's side. Someone at Microsoft saw this, read it, and agreed to it - probably went through a couple of rounds of revisions to get the wording right and to choose which images to show in the article. Ad agencies don't just go off on their own and do whatever they think ought to be done. Thinking that is ludicrous.
Not only is the PR consultant who wrote the piece not at fault because it was approved by someone at Microsoft, but the initial concepts of the idea and each draft of the article was routed through various levels of higher-up directors, in an ad agency, you'd have a designer, an art director, a creative director and an account executive before the client even sees anything. I'm not sure how its structured in a PR firm, but its likely similar. For Microsoft to target one person for such an elaborate article is ridiculous.
Cheers.
What you learned in high school is absolutely correct. Our founding fathers purposefully created a system of bureaucracy to prevent the gov't. from being able to act swiftly.
The problem with corporations is their status as "individuals" which allows them to lobby. I have yet to hear anything *good* result from this, maybe somebody could provide an example where allowing corporations to behave as individuals under the law benefits society?
Cheers.
I know exactly what they all mean. I've had long discussions with my audiophile brother and I've read all the articles in Home Theatre magazine and god knows what else is out there. I'm no audiophile, but I'm as interested as the next guy in cool tech, so things like THX and DTS interest me. What makes me a 'non-audiophile' is the lack of any sort of desire to spend thousands of dollars on audio equipment.
I know very well what the differences are between THX,DTS, even regular THX and THX EX (and DTS v. DTS ES). I can run down all the salient points between composite, component and s-video connections. I'm there, man. The thing is - the end effect should be a noticeable difference in what you experience. And that isn't really there. Maybe its there between DTS/THX and Dolby Digital. Given the right equipment, blah, blah, blah. But, in the environment that many people setup their home theater systems, the differences are lost quite easily.
Know how to avoid standing waves in your home theater setup? How 'bout measuring the distance between furniture objects, walls and speakers to provide the appropriate distance for sound waves to expand appropriately? Know how to tell if the audio you're listening to has a compressed signal? Not digitally compressed to save space - compressed to change the way the sound waves come out of the speakers. These are the things that ya need to know about. If every audiophile were an audio engineer, these are the things they *would* know about. But, its far easier to spend the money on high-end audio equipment than it is to get into a decent audio engineering school, isn't it?
Cheers.
The Panasonic system is more than a receiver, fortunately. It came with all necessary speakers to do 5.1, save the dedicated sub. The main front speakers have built-in subs, though (obviously not as good as a dedicated, but they put out decent, warm bass). It also has a 5-disc CD changer that plays CD-R/RW discs as well. Two digital audio inputs (coax & fiber), two analog audio inputs, tape deck, radio tuner, etc. Puts out somewhere in the range of 320W total power (don't know if that's RMS or not) to all the speakers. As I said before, I don't have the rears hooked up, but the power to the fronts is decent - more than loud enough to bother the neighbors and quite crisp in a carpeted room.
:)
If it were just about a receiver, I'd have gotten something w/ DTS capability, since my DVD player has that capability as well. But, given that I was replacing the whole bit with an all-in-one system, I thought $250 for a Dolby Digital system wasn't too bad. Better than the $500-$600 Sony system
Many of the folks I know use external Firewire drives on their iMacs. Its dead easy that even a novice can do it - unpack the box, plug-in the cable, follow the screen prompts (if any) and voila, you're done.
If this JFS has an option to put the journal on an external Firewire drive, I'll certainly be enabling that. Otherwise, much of my work doesn't involve disk-intensive tasks, so the 10-15% penalty won't be that noticeable for me. Anyway, if Elvis goes the way of the rest of the OS, that 10-15% penalty will erode away over the next few updates/releases.
Cheers.
Mostly this, I imagine. Especially given the focus of the music industry of late. SACD has been out for a while and even the audiophiles are slow at picking it up - more money, imperceptible quality difference, etc. Not to mention expensive-ass hardware to actually pick up the higher quality SACD decoding. The format will stick around, but probably won't get wildly popular or anything. That's my $0.02 prediction, at least.
Cheers.
Totally agree. The only decent 'hi-fi' thing I've seen of late which actually seems to be worthwhile, are superbit DVDs. These are essentially releases of popular "smash-hit" movies (like Terminator and the like) with all the "extra" DVD crap cut out. No director's commentary, no outtakes, none of that. Instead, the entire 9+GB of DVD space is consumed by the highest possible encoding of the video, after the audio track is laid down. If you're the type of person that can easily notice MPEG-2 compression artifacts, then you'll seriously appreciate the extra effort put into these "superbit" CDs. My bro is a hi-fi fanatic and audio/videophile. I got him one of these for Christmas and was impressed by the quality on his Sony Wega HDTV. Quite impressive. Definitely wasn't noticing any compression artifacts anymore!
Cheers.
Enough of a reason for most audiophiles, wouldn't you say? :)
Amen. Glad someone else thinks as I do. I guess everyone needs to feel that they're special, eh? :) I recently got a Dolby Digital capable stereo system (the old shelf-top Aiwa crapped out, $200 for ~3 yrs, not bad). Panasonic's shelf-top, Dolby Digital 5.1 system for $250 at Circuit City seemed a decent buy. I'm happy with it - my DVDs sound discernably more clear than through the analog RCA jack connection. I don't have the rear surrounds hooked up (doesn't make sense in my apt.), but having a cleaner sound is nice.
... c'mon. How many folks out there are perfectly happy listening to 128kbps MP3s now, and you're selling more hi-fi sound than CDs? Nevermind the signal processing that systems like Bose's live audio do to translate a normal stereo signal into multiple surround channels, in an effort to "encompass" the listener with the music ... think what you might about those technologies, but they already exist and I dare say we don't need much of anything better!
Now, talking with my bro this morning (owner of a multi-thousand dollar home theatre system w/ THX EX, DTS ES, and all the other acronyms) and I have to say - I doubt that the subtle differences between Dolby Digital 5.1, THX, and DTS are even perceptible, lest you have a special room that you've sound proofed, dampened, accounted for any possible standing waves, etc.
Same goes for the higher quality D/A conversion on the SACD and such
Cheers.
Glad to hear it. You enjoy Linux/*BSD/Windows and I'll enjoy OS X. You're happy, I'm happy - what more could we ask for? World peace? Maybe ... I'm not holdin' my breath, though.
I actually did select the 1yr instead of 3 yr warranty .. hmmmm. However, an "entry level notebook" wouldn't necessarily be the 14.1" custom built iBook with DVD/CD-RW. Something like the base $1199 model would probably be just spiffy as an entry level model.
... those are pretty expensive any way you cut the cheese.
PCs can certainly be cheaper than Macs. No question. I find it strange that they decided to compare laptops, though
This new player is 'ruggedized' with a 16MB cache which *should* cache ~12-15 minutes of hard-disk-access-free audio, depending on encoding quality. The iPod is similarly equipped with 32MB of cache, if I recall, giving it roughly twice that. I could be way off on those times, by the way - its quite dependent on the encoding quality.
I have heard on forums that disk-based MP3 players are susceptible to scratching and such - but, from what I've heard, Apple's 1yr warranty handles that quite nicely. I would be somewhat leary of the Nomad's 90-day warranty.
Cheers.
What product did I miss from Archos that had the capacity of the initial iPod (5GB), the form-factor (1.8" drive), the battery time (10hrs+), the interface speed (Firewire) and the software interface (iTunes) and the very slick looking design?
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Sure, 5GB+ players existed when the iPod was released. But, the iPod is much more than that. I'm not privy to Archos' sales figures, but I imagine they'd love to have sold as many of their players as Apple has sold iPods. Just a guess
Shock absorption is loosely related to how much buffer cache you have. This player has 16MB, the iPod, if I recall, has 32MB. So, in theory, the iPod should last a little while better. I've heard of people jogging with the iPod, though, and screwing up the drive - just depends on how you handle it, I guess.
... ?!?
I also heard that Apple took those units back and replaced 'em with no hassle
Depends on what you define as "a comparable iBook" ... I priced out a Dell Inspiron 2600 (the "basic" laptop) w/ 512MB RAM and a 14.1" iBook w/ 640MB RAM, each w/ DVD/CD-RW, 30GB drive, etc. This is the closest config I could come up with and the price difference is $163. Dell Inspiron: $1676, Apple iBook: $1839.
This is all, of course, assuming that the 1.2GHz Mobile Celeron is comparable to the 700MHz G3 in the iBook. I have my doubts, but I'll let it go at that.
Personally, the ability to run Linux OR Mac OS X, both better operating systems than WinXP Home Edition is more than worth the $163 cost difference!
Cheers.
By "in flight" I'm assuming you mean "in some stage of the processing pipeline at any given moment" - I believe the P4 has something like a 20stage pipeline, the G3/G4 I believe is more along the lines of an 8 stage pipeline, if memory serves.
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Part of what's at stake here is how many instructions are decoded/dispatched each clock cycle and then other factors like branch-prediction and such muddy the waters a bit more. In the end, the 'instructions per cycle' is really more of an average than anything else, as not every instruction will be a candidate for sending through the parallel functional units, etc. Taking into account the efficiency of the branch-prediction unit is important, too, since you could take a wrong turn and have to clear out all your functional units, at every stage of the pipeline and start over again, in certain circumstances. The fewer times this happens, the more effective your CPU will be at pushing the bits around.
Bottom line: modern processor mechanics are far more sophisticated than can be easily summarized by any one number or neat phrase. Just ask AMD about that one
Not speaking as a pro here, but I do know that Apple's mobo architecture recently has been to split as many system pieces onto their own independent buses as possible. Surfing over to apple.com's hardware section should provide some insight, as should ars technica & tom's hardware, which recently had some articles about this.
Its been cited as a key difference between the Mac system architecture and the PC system architecture - different buses for AGP bus data, processormemory, processorPCI, etc.
I imagine this will continue to be the case - don't know if it impacts the aforementioned speeds, though.