Megatron could turn into a gun that Starscream could wield.
In additon to that, I recall at least one episode where he turned into a gun that a human could wield. So, not only does his size change between modes, but it even varies in the same mode.
I grew up at the right time to catch Transformers, and I found a lot about it that is very near and dear to me. There are lots of people like me.
I, too, was a huge Transformers fan in childhood. However, from watching a few of the TV shows recently, I have found that they really haven't aged very gracefully for the most part. Even the movie is much more simplistic and a bit cheesier than I remember it being all those years ago. I guess that's a downside of being aimed at children...
> Those backslash stories belong to another site, something like "metaslashdot.org". It doesn't make sense to rehash the same thing is the same slashdot format.
It's perfect for those who can't decide whether they should browse at +4 or +5.
I had a PCG-1VN and loved it too. It was always a bit lacking in CPU power, and sucked for video playback though. My previous employer bought it though, so I no longer have it. I occasionally think about buying one on ebay, but I think the previous-gen 400MHz PII's might actually be better, CPU-wise. Too bad they never came out with another non-Crusoe model before they stopped selling it.
You might look into the Fujitsu P1000 for a replacement, too. I was looking at them, but decided to go smaller and got a Sharp Zaurus C3100 instead.
> First, $5K is your estimate, not Intel's. (Come on, $2K for graphics cards!? $1K for a Blu-Ray drive when you can't even buy PC software OR movies for Blu-Ray!?)
Top of the line nVidia cards cost about $500 these days. Quad SLI would require 4 of these (or more likely two SLI-on-a-card cards, which are twice as expensive anyway). $2K may be a ridiculous amount of money to spend on video cards, but it's not an unrealistic amount.
Really, they are different worlds. Sony is going to sell the PS3 at a loss, or close to it. 2 years from now, they will still be selling the same PS3 (though hopefully making a profit on it by then). However, 2 years from now, today's $5K PC will probably be slow compared to the day's $500 PC.
Now lets look at the "value" earlier model. To do anything other than browse an d read email you'd need to purchase the following:
1. A wireless card. Around 80 dollars or so at the apple store.
Funny, my old mini works just fine plugged into my home network via it's built in ethernet port and manages to do more than just brows and read email just fine. I have no need to pay more for an airport card that I'm not going to use.
2. A usb hub. Now that your keyboard and mouse have taken up the slots theres no room for your scanner or printer. Say 20 dollars./
Unless you bought your keyboard from Apple, in which case you plug your mouse into your keyboard and still have a port free on the back of the mini. You also have another low-speed port free on the keyboard. Sure, 4 USB ports are better than 2 but not worth an extra $50. It's probably an extra $5 cost on Apple's part, if that.
4. Upgrading 256 meg to 512. (512 is not standard I believe) another 100 bucks or so to apple, cheaper for the DIY crowd.
512MB has been standard since the first revision, well over 6 months ago. The price did not increase at that time.
The macbook is the name of the new powerbook for the most part. They have always been over 1000 dollars. WAY over 1000 dollars for a nice one. If price is an issue Apple has the ibook waiting for you.
The MacBook Pro is the name of the new powerbook. Apple has stated that the reason for changing the name of the PowerBook (which is their longest running product name, predating the Power Mac by a few years) is because they want to have "Mac" in all of the product names. Logically, this means the ibook will no longer be called the iBook, so it's expected that it will be named MacBook.
Never mind that the AMD K7 was a carbon copys of the P6 microarchitecture, with incremental tweaks most probably applied to account for P6 shortcomings found in the field. That's an euphemism for `AMD stole Intel's field experience.' The K8 core is only an incremental tweak of K7, the major feature being the on-die memory controller. So really, AMD can't blame Intel for using P6-derived cores since they're doing the same (not to mention the ethics of stealing a competitor's design). Also, their incremental tweaks aren't really that significant -- process technology changes account for the larger share of performance increase.
I don't think anyone who knows much about CPU's is "blaming" Intel for going back to the P6 core. The P6 was basically the beginning of the modern x86 CPU...more RISC than CISC. As for the K7, this article has a good summary of how it's similar to, but different from, the P6. I think a better euphamism would be 'AMD decided to build a better P6'. (Which is actually what Intel has done as well. This isn't just a faster P6, it's redesign of the P6.) AMD 'stole' from Intel about as much as Intel stole from DEC and Motorola and other RISC CPUs in building the P6, and as much as they had 'stolen' from the CPUs before them. Welcome to the evolution of the CPU, where every CPU is not designed in a vacuum with no relation to anything else, but is built on previous technology and ideas.
Intel tried to raise the bar with the P4 designs, applying some risky design features like hyperpipelined design, and unfortunately the strategy didn't work out all that well, in no small part due to power issues. Moreover they had to endure fanboy cries of `designed by marketing!', but that's the price one pays for exploring new ground in computer architecture. Meanwhile AMD will be content to follow on Intel's successful footsteps as they've always done.
Too bad the superior engineers at Intel weren't smart enough to copy AMD's supposedly "minor tweaks" and bring out a competitive CPU in the last couple of years, and instead chose to stick with their risky design which essentially hit a clock speed wall that they were apparently unable to predict. Surely the geniuses at Intel could have designed a better P6 than that "copy" which was beating their P4 in less than 6 years. Or perhaps they didn't care, and thought that marketing would keep them on top?
Nope. The 9200 in the G4 Mini is onboard. It's actually mounted on the underside of the system board. There is no way you could fit a card inside that little box with all of the other stuff that's in it, it's pretty much filled to capacity.
I had a similar problem with ATMs a couple of years ago. I had an account with a local commercial bank for years. A couple of years before this event, I had bought a car with a loan through a credit union, which automatically pulled money from a credit union account, so I set up my bill pay service to automatically transfer enough from my main bank to the credit union to cover my account (plus some extra, just in case).
So, one fine Sunday I need $1000 cash, also to purchase used goods. Can't go to the bank because it's closed. I go to my bank's ATM and withdraw $750, which is as much as it will let me have. Then, I stick in my credit union card and try to withdraw the remainer from the account and it won't let me. I try less, and I'm able to withdraw $100. I figure maybe I'm hitting some ATM limit, so I go to another bank and use their ATM. Same thing. Balance check shows plenty of cash, but if I try to withdraw anything I get "daily transaction limit exceeded." I was able to withdraw a combined total of $900 from two accounts, both of which had plenty more available in them. So apparently, daily ATM withdrawal limits don't just apply to accounts, they apply to specific people.
16.2fps from the GMA950? You're right. That just doesn't compare with 12.9fps on the old Mac Mini with it's incredibly powerful Radeon 9200 GPU...
If you're not trolling, perhaps you should read the article that was linked to by the short summary you linked to, which said as much...though the benchmarks they mentioned were even worse (9fps for the 9200 vs 13fps for the GMA950).
"The GMA950 is not capable of running games (see this Extremetech review). It uses a minimum of 80mb of the memory in the Mac Mini, further reducing what you can use for applications. In short, it's a major step down from the old Mac Minis, and not useful for those who liked running WoW on their Minis."
"If you think the Radeon 9200 in the PPC Mac Mini is a graphics powerhouse, you are mistaken. I haven't played WoW, but if the framerate isn't too high, it can probably do it just fine. I have tried Quake 3 (which the WoW engine is based on), and the performance leaves something to be desired. Good thing I didn't buy the mini to be a gaming box.;) On the plus side, it does run Q2 just fine.
However, Quake 3 also ran just as well, if not better, on my friend's Centrino laptop which was powered by the GMA945 core. So I wouldn't expect much of a difference in your 3D gaming performance...maybe even a gain in some cases due to much improved CPU power.
> Including Zaphod, who sounds like a roaring drunk in rehab, in the new series.
Good point. Zaphod ought to sound like a roaring drunk who would never go to rehab. After all, he is the man who invented the Pan-Galactic Gargleblaster.
> cars make the streets of my city dangerous to bikes and pedestrians and nobody cares about that.
Because everyone(*) knows cars are useful, because they own one. If everyone owned Segways and found them useful, they would think that the usefulness outweighed the potential dangers.
> Maybe I am missing something, but OS X already comes with perl, python, php, ruby, and tclsh.
wish (Tk) is also included as of 10.4.
ActiveTcl comes "loaded" with lots of common extensions. Presumably their other language distributions are the same. That's the only "advantage" I can see to them, when the language is already installed with the OS.
I suppose it's nice after 5 years or so they are finally supporting OSX. Last I checked, they did not. That appears to have changed. Would have been nicer 3 years ago when OSX didn't come with Tk so everyone had to install a 3rd party Tcl/Tk distribution for Tk support anyway...;)
> I never understood why Apple didnt go 64bit when they made the switch to x86. It seems its just going to bring problems up down the road when Intel decided to make only 64bit chips.
They didn't go 64-bit because the newly introduced Intel chips they are using are 32-bit only. So I wouldn't count on Intel going 64-bit only any time soon.
He didn't say replace one 300GB with a 500GB. He said replace the 300GB with 500GB drives one at a time. This makes perfect sense. You can't replace all of them at once, or you will lose your data. You would have to replace one drive, let the array rebuild on it, then do the next. If it's really smart, it might expand in steps, in exactly the sizes you give. If not, I'd expect it to just wait until you replace all of the drives with larger drives before it expands the array (900->1500GB, with no intermediate steps).
This device does sound like it may be the nicest solution for those not willing to DIY. Obviously, you can do cheaper in that case. $500 with no drives is not exactly cheap. I bought a complete Sempron-based Linux box on sale from Fry's for well under $200 that has more than enough power to do software RAID5. a 4-port SATA card and 4 drives from Newegg later, and I have my own ~$700 1.2TB (raw space) NAS.
> That said, I put a lot of blame on the metrics we use to decide who can and cannot receive a license. My driving test consisted soles of me backing out of the parking space, driving around the block, and parking back in the parking space. What a joke.
You think that's bad. Mine consisted of me backnig out of the parking space, driving around the parking lot, and parking back in a parkign space. From what I've heard from other people, that's pretty much the standard test in Florida.
Correct. But if they blocked port 80, they'd be blocking RSS as well, which makes the original post about getting "free" headlines via RSS a bit... pointless?
Heh. Right before I read this comment, I just had to send a reply to someone who asked why I sent them a message with no reply. I guess he must not have read below the "On such-and-such, so-and-so wrote:" line, since I had in fact replied to his message.
Slashdot Mirror
In additon to that, I recall at least one episode where he turned into a gun that a human could wield. So, not only does his size change between modes, but it even varies in the same mode.
I, too, was a huge Transformers fan in childhood. However, from watching a few of the TV shows recently, I have found that they really haven't aged very gracefully for the most part. Even the movie is much more simplistic and a bit cheesier than I remember it being all those years ago. I guess that's a downside of being aimed at children...
> Those backslash stories belong to another site, something like "metaslashdot.org". It doesn't make sense to rehash the same thing is the same slashdot format.
It's perfect for those who can't decide whether they should browse at +4 or +5.
Now all we have to do is get the Ms. Pac-Man playing chimp to play against the insects for absolute animal kingdom Pacman supremacy...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vqvRjHaDX6M
Old and busted: "urban" games
New hotness: ping pong games
I had a PCG-1VN and loved it too. It was always a bit lacking in CPU power, and sucked for video playback though. My previous employer bought it though, so I no longer have it. I occasionally think about buying one on ebay, but I think the previous-gen 400MHz PII's might actually be better, CPU-wise. Too bad they never came out with another non-Crusoe model before they stopped selling it.
You might look into the Fujitsu P1000 for a replacement, too. I was looking at them, but decided to go smaller and got a Sharp Zaurus C3100 instead.
> Playstation 2 2W 17.52 kWh $2.63
I'm surprised that the PS2 draws twice as much power when it's OFF as my Mac Mini in sleep mode (regular sleep, not hibernation).
> First, $5K is your estimate, not Intel's. (Come on, $2K for graphics cards!? $1K for a Blu-Ray drive when you can't even buy PC software OR movies for Blu-Ray!?)
Top of the line nVidia cards cost about $500 these days. Quad SLI would require 4 of these (or more likely two SLI-on-a-card cards, which are twice as expensive anyway). $2K may be a ridiculous amount of money to spend on video cards, but it's not an unrealistic amount.
Really, they are different worlds. Sony is going to sell the PS3 at a loss, or close to it. 2 years from now, they will still be selling the same PS3 (though hopefully making a profit on it by then). However, 2 years from now, today's $5K PC will probably be slow compared to the day's $500 PC.
Funny, my old mini works just fine plugged into my home network via it's built in ethernet port and manages to do more than just brows and read email just fine. I have no need to pay more for an airport card that I'm not going to use.
Unless you bought your keyboard from Apple, in which case you plug your mouse into your keyboard and still have a port free on the back of the mini. You also have another low-speed port free on the keyboard. Sure, 4 USB ports are better than 2 but not worth an extra $50. It's probably an extra $5 cost on Apple's part, if that.
512MB has been standard since the first revision, well over 6 months ago. The price did not increase at that time.
The MacBook Pro is the name of the new powerbook. Apple has stated that the reason for changing the name of the PowerBook (which is their longest running product name, predating the Power Mac by a few years) is because they want to have "Mac" in all of the product names. Logically, this means the ibook will no longer be called the iBook, so it's expected that it will be named MacBook.
The Core is basically a redesign/relayout of the P6 on a modern process, with some things learned from the P4 thrown in.
I don't think anyone who knows much about CPU's is "blaming" Intel for going back to the P6 core. The P6 was basically the beginning of the modern x86 CPU...more RISC than CISC. As for the K7, this article has a good summary of how it's similar to, but different from, the P6. I think a better euphamism would be 'AMD decided to build a better P6'. (Which is actually what Intel has done as well. This isn't just a faster P6, it's redesign of the P6.) AMD 'stole' from Intel about as much as Intel stole from DEC and Motorola and other RISC CPUs in building the P6, and as much as they had 'stolen' from the CPUs before them. Welcome to the evolution of the CPU, where every CPU is not designed in a vacuum with no relation to anything else, but is built on previous technology and ideas.
Too bad the superior engineers at Intel weren't smart enough to copy AMD's supposedly "minor tweaks" and bring out a competitive CPU in the last couple of years, and instead chose to stick with their risky design which essentially hit a clock speed wall that they were apparently unable to predict. Surely the geniuses at Intel could have designed a better P6 than that "copy" which was beating their P4 in less than 6 years. Or perhaps they didn't care, and thought that marketing would keep them on top?
Nope. The 9200 in the G4 Mini is onboard. It's actually mounted on the underside of the system board. There is no way you could fit a card inside that little box with all of the other stuff that's in it, it's pretty much filled to capacity.
I had a similar problem with ATMs a couple of years ago. I had an account with a local commercial bank for years. A couple of years before this event, I had bought a car with a loan through a credit union, which automatically pulled money from a credit union account, so I set up my bill pay service to automatically transfer enough from my main bank to the credit union to cover my account (plus some extra, just in case).
So, one fine Sunday I need $1000 cash, also to purchase used goods. Can't go to the bank because it's closed. I go to my bank's ATM and withdraw $750, which is as much as it will let me have. Then, I stick in my credit union card and try to withdraw the remainer from the account and it won't let me. I try less, and I'm able to withdraw $100. I figure maybe I'm hitting some ATM limit, so I go to another bank and use their ATM. Same thing. Balance check shows plenty of cash, but if I try to withdraw anything I get "daily transaction limit exceeded." I was able to withdraw a combined total of $900 from two accounts, both of which had plenty more available in them. So apparently, daily ATM withdrawal limits don't just apply to accounts, they apply to specific people.
16.2fps from the GMA950? You're right. That just doesn't compare with 12.9fps on the old Mac Mini with it's incredibly powerful Radeon 9200 GPU...
If you're not trolling, perhaps you should read the article that was linked to by the short summary you linked to, which said as much...though the benchmarks they mentioned were even worse (9fps for the 9200 vs 13fps for the GMA950).
"If you think the Radeon 9200 in the PPC Mac Mini is a graphics powerhouse, you are mistaken. I haven't played WoW, but if the framerate isn't too high, it can probably do it just fine. I have tried Quake 3 (which the WoW engine is based on), and the performance leaves something to be desired. Good thing I didn't buy the mini to be a gaming box. ;) On the plus side, it does run Q2 just fine.
However, Quake 3 also ran just as well, if not better, on my friend's Centrino laptop which was powered by the GMA945 core. So I wouldn't expect much of a difference in your 3D gaming performance...maybe even a gain in some cases due to much improved CPU power.
> Including Zaphod, who sounds like a roaring drunk in rehab, in the new series.
Good point. Zaphod ought to sound like a roaring drunk who would never go to rehab. After all, he is the man who invented the Pan-Galactic Gargleblaster.
> cars make the streets of my city dangerous to bikes and pedestrians and nobody cares about that.
Because everyone(*) knows cars are useful, because they own one. If everyone owned Segways and found them useful, they would think that the usefulness outweighed the potential dangers.
Well, they didn't have their customers arrested this time...
> Maybe I am missing something, but OS X already comes with perl, python, php, ruby, and tclsh.
;)
wish (Tk) is also included as of 10.4.
ActiveTcl comes "loaded" with lots of common extensions. Presumably their other language distributions are the same. That's the only "advantage" I can see to them, when the language is already installed with the OS.
I suppose it's nice after 5 years or so they are finally supporting OSX. Last I checked, they did not. That appears to have changed. Would have been nicer 3 years ago when OSX didn't come with Tk so everyone had to install a 3rd party Tcl/Tk distribution for Tk support anyway...
> by sillybilly (668960)
> Bullshit.. I remember that mystical feeling of the early days of surfing the net, in a library, way back in 1994, with Nescape 1.0.
You couldn't possibly remember that, you have a 6-digit user ID.
> I never understood why Apple didnt go 64bit when they made the switch to x86. It seems its just going to bring problems up down the road when Intel decided to make only 64bit chips.
They didn't go 64-bit because the newly introduced Intel chips they are using are 32-bit only. So I wouldn't count on Intel going 64-bit only any time soon.
He didn't say replace one 300GB with a 500GB. He said replace the 300GB with 500GB drives one at a time. This makes perfect sense. You can't replace all of them at once, or you will lose your data. You would have to replace one drive, let the array rebuild on it, then do the next. If it's really smart, it might expand in steps, in exactly the sizes you give. If not, I'd expect it to just wait until you replace all of the drives with larger drives before it expands the array (900->1500GB, with no intermediate steps).
This device does sound like it may be the nicest solution for those not willing to DIY. Obviously, you can do cheaper in that case. $500 with no drives is not exactly cheap. I bought a complete Sempron-based Linux box on sale from Fry's for well under $200 that has more than enough power to do software RAID5. a 4-port SATA card and 4 drives from Newegg later, and I have my own ~$700 1.2TB (raw space) NAS.
> Windows already runs on EFI on some architectures.
Great! Now all you have to do is recompile it for x86.
> That said, I put a lot of blame on the metrics we use to decide who can and cannot receive a license. My driving test consisted soles of me backing out of the parking space, driving around the block, and parking back in the parking space. What a joke.
You think that's bad. Mine consisted of me backnig out of the parking space, driving around the parking lot, and parking back in a parkign space. From what I've heard from other people, that's pretty much the standard test in Florida.
Correct. But if they blocked port 80, they'd be blocking RSS as well, which makes the original post about getting "free" headlines via RSS a bit... pointless?
Heh. Right before I read this comment, I just had to send a reply to someone who asked why I sent them a message with no reply. I guess he must not have read below the "On such-and-such, so-and-so wrote:" line, since I had in fact replied to his message.