And yes, they have drawbacks such as the locked in iphone 3g, but you know what: you don't HAVE to buy it you know...
Other than a contract, the iPhone 3G is fairly "free" - you don't have to just get apps from the iTunes App Store - jailbreaking has worked on them almost from day 1. With Cydia and Installer, making your app public is also fairly simple.
Oh, and today, if your SIM is fairly simple, there is a soft-unlock for it, so almost any SIM card can work (exceptions are those that are PIN locked, and SIMs with apps on them (sim toolkit), you'll have to hot-plug the card.
At 63,000 feet MSL, all the gases dissolved in your blood boils. You die in seconds if exposed to rapid decompression.
The Columbia began it's breakup around 200,000 feet MSL and most educated guestimates place the altitude where the pressurized crew compartment broke away from the rest of the craft at around 100,000 feet and that it held its pressure until about 60,000 feet until it broke open.
Guess what that fancy orange suits that they wear on liftoff and re-entry are for! Yes, they're pressure suits.
When the shuttles first came out, the crews would all don those pressure suits on both legs of the trip. Then as the shuttles came into regular use, they didn't wear them anymore - you can see this in the crew photos taken at launch. They'd go in initially in the suits, then a few years later, they were going up in blue flight suits. This happened until Challenger exploded, and the crew died from hypoxia. Now they all don those suits again, in case of any issues on liftoff. Part of the launch and re-entry procedures actually involves doing a pressure test to ensure the suits seal properly, and they close their helmets.
Of course, if the shuttle disintegrates on them, well, those suits don't protect much against your whole vehicle burning up and taking out your life support as well.
You mean like Half Life 1 where you jump around the alien planet platforms? It made an otherwise epic game annoying.
Actually, that wasn't that hard a jumping puzzle. It was annoying, but it wasn't hard. The distances looked a bit far, but the gravity made it doable.
No, the hard jumping puzzles were on Earth, in Black Mesa. Like the one where you jumped from box to box. If you wanted a harder challenge, do the Source version - the boxes actually dangle from moving ropes. The original version didn't. Nothing like having to deal with a jumping puzzle by jumping from moving box to moving box...
Thus, iCONICA, if you just shared the last 12 digits of your Mastercard, you now have cut down the search space of your password to 500 numbers. Moreover, credit card digits have to conform to a checksum (double every other digit + add them all up, must be 0 mod 10.) Thus, I'd estimate we could guess your card within 10 unique numbers, around 100 if VISA. There are ways of getting around the "security digits" and expiration date...
Short story is, don't share your credit card number. Even as a joke.
Not only that, but the remainder of the digits in the first group of 4 digits are used to identify the issuing bank. While it's not actually a bulletproof method, knowing where someone is can narrow down the list of valid codes even smaller. Just take the valid numbers, cross-reference them with the list of Visa or Mastercard bank codes, and with the smaller list of numbers, find the banks that are in the local area, and use it knock off a few more numbers (someone in the US will probably not have a UK credit card, for example - they might, but it's extremely rare).
The entropy in the first 4 digits is extremely low.
Anyhow, sharing codes is easy to prevent - just do IP geolocation - non-UK IPs should be restricted from using the codes (and for the most part, IP geolocation is reasonably country accurate), and ensure that one code isn't used from multiple IPs in too often a time, or one code used simultaneously.
They worked out each song cost about $3 and each song goes for about 3 minutes, and the typical compression is about 1mb/minute. Most of that is still accurate, except the price, so divide by 3. Still, no-one is spending $24k to fill their 80 gig iPod. I believe Apple's solution to this was to say "hey, you can use it for video too!!" and that just invited the MPAA to join the party.
Actually, Apple quotes an 80Gig iPod as holding 24,000 songs. At iTunes' price of about $1/song, that is slightly less than $24k.
And it wasn't Apple doing that - it was Napster or other people selling subscription services (e.g., why pay $24k to fill up your iPod, when you can pay $15/month and get all the songs you want?).
But yeah, no one is going to fill up their iPod with $24k worth of music. They're going to rip their CD collections (after all, iTunes makes it easy), and there are videos too...
The initial lpw on HPS is usually about 140 but this goes down as you near the end of the bulbs lifetime. LEDs have fairly consistent output until they die.
Actually, LEDs get dimmer as they get used. If they don't fail due to the semiconductor turning into molten metal, they get dimmer and dimmer and dimmer. The 100,000 hour lifetime figure on LEDs is usually the time until 50% brightness (considered to be the point where one would notice the light being dimmer).
There are many reasons for this - degradation of the junction itself, but the semiconductor itself leads to a large index of refraction - a lot of the light in a LED gets reflected back into the semiconductor. And then there's degradation of the epoxy used to seal the LED. All these conspire to make the LEDs much dimmer, and get dimmer over time.
Think of the history: the iPod, the MacBook Air, the iPhone... By having someone else present the keynote this year, our collective expectations just sunk by an order of magnitude. I, for one, don't expect anything amazing this year. But on the other hand, it's only fair: even Apple can't pull off revolution after revolution, year after year. Give them a break, they are doing so much already by showing everyone how boring other products are.
I think this was bound to happen when Apple made the switch to Intel. Apple traditionally releases product on these big events - MacWorld, WWDC (more to the things developers want), and other big conferences. New product appears on a regular schedule, and advances could be easily plotted. This was because Apple's source hardware (e.g., PowerPC) roadmaps were quite tightly sealed, and thus, Apple could gather up momentum leading up to the event on what the next big thing was.
But now, Intel and AMD have roadmaps known to the public way in advance. New chips, chipsets, graphics, etc., come out monthly, and there's no way Apple can wait 6 months to the next event to showcase their latest computers, using a CPU/chipset/GPU everyone else has been shipping the past 3 months. Apple can't wait for these big events to announce new product, because they happen at inconvenient times.
Apple is large enough that it can draw a huge crowd easily, which it does with these "spotlight" meetings/keynotes. The advantage is that Apple can release product around the same time everyone else releases product. A new chipset released by Intel? Well, hold a spotlight and release the new notebooks within a month or two from the first manufacturer releasing them, before it becomes "old news."
Apple has to release product, and they can't wait for the Next Big Expo to do it - to compete with all the other PC manufacturers now, they have to release in a timely fashion. (Think about how long it took for Apple to release Santa Rosa notebooks - everyone else had them for months!)
Once Apple went Intel, they have to follow Intel's schedule for product releases, which won't coincide with most of the Mac Expos. Or get left behind releasing old technology, with everyone annoyed waiting for the notebooks to use the latest and greatest. It's not practical for Apple to wait - they have to release. Holding a spotlight meeting is easier than holding a random Expo (scheduled months to years in advance) to release product in a timely manner.
True, Apple entered the portable mp3 player market late, and with an, arguably, inferior product. But, through marketing and tight integration with the computer, managed to get 90% of people to trade in their Discmans for iPods. They were able to dominate a market which didn't even exist a few years before (and probably would not be nearly as large without Apple).
Actually, I'd argue that Apple entered the portable MP3 player market at the right time. Consider the market at the time - small flash-based players that could barely hold 1 album, maybe 2 if you compressed them below 128kbps, or humongous hard-drive based MP3 players that were larger than a discman (i.e., the Nomad), or when they weren't, were huge bricks.
Now, Apple releases an MP3 player that has most of the space of the large hard disk players, but is only maybe 1 1/2 to 2 times of the flash-based player. Oh yeah, and instead of syncing via painfully slow USB 1.1 (or parallel/serial!), it would work at firewire speeds. So copying lots of music to the hard disk takes minutes, not hours (1GB would take around 15-20 minutes via USB 1.1 versus 2-5 minutes via firewire...).
So what did Apple do? They released an MP3 player in a formfactor that's usable, and made filling it much less of an all-nighter thing and something that someone can do on their way out the door.
Oh yeah, they also marketed the heck out of the iPod, and made everyone who would normally carry CDs or listen to tapes... consider buying one and carrying their entire collection in a handheld device, rather than a huge stack of CDs. Instead of MP3 players being relegated to the realms of the techie, Apple made them wanted and usable to the masses.
And Apple did this a month after 9/11 - when no one was willing to spend $600 nor have they fully recovered. Apple won out because Jobs seized upon the concept just as it was beginning to take off, then when the huge growth happens, they were already on the 3rd generation iPod (total sales under 1 million units at the point, yet it was the #1 selling MP3 player). Boom, the market takes off, Apple has a refined 3rd generation iPod on sale, and people start wanting iPods and MP3 players, to the point where Apple sells millions per month.
Apple got really lucky with the iPod. They were at the right place at the right time.
It's not like Macs don't come with expansion card slots (PCI or ExpressCard) that could take a WiFi card with a RealTek chip
Actually the MacBook doesn't have an expansion slot - that's what caused the big hoo-ha about the lack of Firewire support, there's no way to add it in later.
For the other Macs you're absolutely right - especially if they had a wireless N driver as I could conceive of some Mac users upgrading toa third party card to provide wireless N functionality.
Well, MiniPCIe is certainly available on the MacBooks - it may not be exposed as a connector, but the old wireless card most certainly is connected via MiniPCIe (really, PCIe x1). So RealTek may pitch to Apple to use their chipsets in future Macs. (It's not like the crab isn't used elsewhere - unless things have changed recently, Apple uses the Realtek audio chips).
Anyhow, USB is available on the MacBooks as well - as USB2 is fast enough for 802.11n.
And the lack of Firewire/Expresscard on the MacBook was because the circuit board only runs along two sides of the case - and the edge where there are connectors already has connectors down its entire side. The only option Apple has is to put the connector on the back (fugly), or put the connector on the other side (oh wait, there's an optical drive in the way) with a ribbon cable. Or use one of those godawful 4 pin connectors (seriously, given the weight of a Firewire cable, it feels like the cable will rip that thing out just from gravity).
Sorry to disturb your ramblings, but GoW3 appears to be PS3-exclusive.
I wouldn't say appears. After all, it's being created by SCE Studios Santa Monica, with "SCE" meaning "Sony Computer Entertainment". If it wasn't a PS3 exclusive, there's no hope for the PS3 (if Sony's own studio has to port to other platforms in order for a title to succeed...).
And since GoW isn't ported to PC, it's a likely to stay PS3 only.
The fun part is that those who bought the cheap $400 PS3s can't play the predecessors on their shiny PS3 because those are PS2 only. (Of course, we can hope that GoW/GoW2 gets re-done for PS3, can't we? Just like Final Fantasy 7...).
sure, there's all the convoluted diamond market, debeers monopoly explanations, but that's like saying no one can buy marijuana because its illegal
if i want to get a diamond, why can't i pay $5 and go get one the size of my fist? its just carbon. that i can't do that right now, seems absurd to me, and even more absurd, that we should still be digging this stuff up and considering it valuable
Diamonds are precious because about 70+ years of marketing by DeBeers has made popular opinion think they are valuable. All those "Diamonds are forever" type of ads you see? Marketing. And not just any diamond, they had to be big, beautiful expensive diamonds, not the cheap ones people used to buy in the early 1900's. And not only that, but marketing to convince people they need to keep buying diamonds.
And yes, we can make them artificially - either vapor deposition, or large pressures and high temperatures, or probably a ton of other methods. Look up for industrial diamonds (they're quite useful in industry).
It's basically all DeBeers marketing - DeBeers basically bought up all the diamond mines and established a complex network of distributors that effectively took over all cosmetic diamond sales. These diamonds were then effectively rationed to make their price go up. When some shrewd business practice causes potential losses in the value of diamonds, DeBeers puts some control that effectively disrupts the practice. (DeBeers has tried hard to quash any sort of thing that might disrupt the price of diamonds and collapse its monopoly). The price of a diamond is artificially inflated, and kept that way. And marketing ensures that you can't get away with some low-quality diamond, you must buy a nice expensive one for your significant other.
In fact, the resale value of diamonds is quite poor, so as investments, you can do better elsewhere.
Here's an interesting read on how DeBeers turned a relatively cheap gem into something desirable, and managed to keep tight control over production in order to keep value up.
Instead, they take one or two factories running the oldest tech, and upgrade them. Once they are ready, they start manufacturing the high-end processors. The last-generation tech manufactures lower-end processors. The generation before that manufactures chipsets, graphics chips, etc. The generation before that manufactures DRAM / flash / whatever else is needed. This is just an example, I have no idea what the split is in reality.
Actually, memory devices often use the most cutting-edge technology available, and can often be a half-generation or more ahead of what's used for a CPU. The reasoning is simple - memory devices have very high transistor density and they capitalize on the fact that memory devices have a very regular layout. In fact, when going up a technology level, a memory device is created because you want to pack in the transistors, and its trivial to test them in all sorts of conditions. (Think of it this way - you can get flash memory in 32GB sizes. Assuming MLC flash, that's 16 billion transistors, plus the support logic). CPUs and other ICs don't have such a high transistor density due to their "random logic" arrangement. The vast majority of transistors used on a CPU actually go towards the cache - and are so dense they take up only half the die space.
Memory devices are silicon-limited - their storage capacity is limited by the silicon area you can use. CPUs are pin-limited - their functionality is limited by the number of pins their package has (and some pins have mutliple functions, as on many System-On-Chip). A die shrink that doubles the number of transistors means you get a doubling of storage capacity - and people want more RAM and more flash.
I'm imagining a game between two people determined by how much they spend on the game. Oh wait, they already did that with Magic The Gathering.
Well, you do what every other cheap player does - you do proxy cards! While worthless as an item, they can level the game somewhat so you don't have to spend too much to get a lot out of it. Of course, many Magic players will scoff, but I've never understood why since it levels the fields between those who can pay, and those who can't. (I will admit it lowers the worth of those cards a tiny bit since players don't have to own the card, lowering demand).
Of course, I don't know if tournaments restrict them (why? All the same rules apply to the proxies as regulars, and those that can play well and construct a good deck shouldn't be limited to how much they can spend to complete their deck...).
Funny, I would have thought it sat on a hard drive or a usb key or something...
"You have downloads on my bookshelf!" "You have bookshelves on my downloads!"
Nope, sorry -unlike peanut butter and chocolate, downloads don't mix with bookshelves.
Thankfully, there are many devices in this nice modern day and age that can convert downloads into books, and likewise, there are devices that can take books and turn them into downloads. I think someone created a whole movement around the former device when he couldn't get it to work "properly", and a large company got sued when they did the latter, even though they made it very difficult to get whole books that way.
Really? You can't leave negative feedback for buyers?
What is the point of feedback?
Because a good chunk of sellers won't leave feedback until the buyers leave them positive feedback. It became a tit-for-tat system, where sellers could get 100% feedback ratings because buyers who got scammed refused to leave neutral or negative feedback. There were even lawsuits threatened (and maybe even launched) because sellers took negative feedback as libel.
Buyers have few recourses if scammed by a bad seller. Sellers who have a non-paying bidder though, should file a complaint with eBay (who is supposed to refund all fees due, and mark the buyer, I don't know if this happens).
Feedback is supposed to rate the trustworthiness of buyers and (especially) sellers. It's a bit more important for a seller because buyers use that to determine if they should bid since once payment is sent, recourse is limited. Pretty much the worst that can happen for a seller who has a bad buyer is they don't pay. (Of course, there is the issue with sellers claiming they didn't receive it or it was damaged, which is why there's tracking information and insurance, all of which a seller can mandate).
I will agree though that eBay's system is horribly screwed up (as a buyer). Some sellers have gone to use the (neg) in the comments to mean negative feedback. A system where feedback is kept hidden until both parties have sent it in (keeping tit-for-tat at bay) would work better.
Great, so I can re-write every application to support a half-assed workaround like NAT. I'd much rather have each host bugging the crap out of the router to forward a specific port, please! than to just get the migration over with and be done with it. If you think that NAT+uPNP is a replacement for IPv6, then you need to find a hobby more suited to your skill level.
Or intelligently design protocols to assume that not everyone has a direct IP back to them? In the early days of online gaming, one had to forward easily a half-dozen ports (UDP, and maybe 3 ports TCP) to play online. These days, it's normally 1 UDP and 1 TCP port, if that.
IPv6 won't change any of the issues seen with NAT. At best, you'll have a firewall blocking incoming connections to all but a single IP (the system providing the gateway and firewall), so you'll juat have huge spaces of IPv6 addresses that are unreachable anyways. So your toilet might have a real live IPv6 address, but it's not reachable outside the local network anyhow. Heck, that gateway may very well perform NAT on IPv6. To assume all the issues with NAT, firewalls, etc, go away magically by using IPv6 is naive - they're still going to be around. At the minimum, there's going to be firewalls up, and apps will still have to request people poke holes in it somehow. Most likely, nothing will change.
Despite having all these addresses available to them, most ISPs will probably just offer the user 1 or 2 IP addresses (though, an IPv4 and IPv6 address), and charge them an extra $5/month for another one. Or maybe they'll get a clue and give them a pile of addresses, to which the user will probably just stick a router in and use 1 address. And might as well stick all the machines behind it in the private address range anyhow.
IPv6 is important because we're running out of addresses (or some countries already have). But unless the protocol mandates things like evil bits and other junk, people are still going to put up firewalls, NAT-based routers, etc, and we're really just going to end up in the same situation we're in now. Everyone talks grand of "even your toilet can be connected", then it just takes someone to say "well, if it is, I don't want people to hack into it". IPv6 won't save us from buggy exploitable services, spam, OSes with poor default security, etc. The only thing it may save us from is that portscanning blocks of IPs got significantly harder, but botnets are good for that sort of thing. Heck, even exploits have seemed to work around the fact that a good chunk of people are behind a firewall.
What I've always wondered is if the increased distraction a cell phone brings vs. a passenger has something to do with the brain activity of talking on a cell vs. in person.
I like to think of it as the "ability to be rude" factor.
If a passenger is in the car, it is very acceptable socially to shout "SHUT UP!" or "BE QUIET!" during periods of the drive where higher concentration is required (e.g., merging, changing lanes), especially if the passenger(s) don't automatically realize it and shut up themselves. Passengers realize it's for their safety, and tend to obey. Ignoring people during this time is also acceptable. (Also, good passengers realize it might be dangerous to distract the driver, and automatically pause their conversation.)
Replace the passenger with a cellphone, and it's not so nice to say these things to the person on the other end. If it's your significant other, or boss, I'm sure you can't scream at them to be quiet while you're trying to merge onto the freeway. Or you can try, but then you'll spend the next few minutes explaining. It probably has something to do with the social expectation that the person on the other end expects your full attention, which you cannot give, and thus try to make do.
Handsfree laws do help a tiny bit, by at least ensuring you can have two hands on the wheel (always important in case you need to swerve or other sudden maneuver), and maybe, just maybe, if you act stupidly in traffic, the honking will be noticed by the guy on the other end, who will have the politeness to call back later.
And yes, changing radio stations, etc are also dangerous, except they take less time to perform (and if the car UI is done properly, could be done without having to look at the radio - just push, if it isn't what you want, repeat). Of course, too many accidents are the result of "I only looked away for a second!", too. And yes, I also consider messing around with your iPod to be equally bad since it takes far too long to do adjust if you're trying to choose a playlist or something.
No scientific studies nor citations, just stating my belief that no one wants to be rude to the person at the other end of the line.
Interesting results, and great if you're planning a server, but what about desktop use?
How well does each OS do when doing something like playing back audio/video, and handling background processing loads? What about performance and system response as the load climbs up? (load averages of 5/10/20 ?).
Only because I've seen Linux systems start to crumble around 5 (uniproc machine), and easily get unusuable, but have heard reports of BSD machines being able to still play MP3s without skipping/suttering even around 20 or so...
(And yes, I'll allow tweaking system priorities - it only gets you so far, and impacts the other background processing tasks, to which we'll also be interested in how long they take to run. So renicing the media player to -20 works, but not if it makes all the other tasks take 10x as long to finish...).
My guess as to why chips last so well when thermally cycled would be because they undergo very little contraction as they cool. Microchips are made from extremely pure single crystals of silicon (essentially) so they are already in a very low energy state. Cooling them down isn't going to change very much. I wouldn't be surprised if newer SOI chips break more often when thermally cycled as they are in a higher energy state to begin with. Anyway, I have no evidence of this, just a gut feel from studying materials at a wide range of temperatues.
And probably from the fact that these experiments last only a short time, and are probably never repeated again? All these overclocking experiments are great, but it's also true that once it's done, well, it's a shelved project. If you're lucky, it'll be reassembled and work normally, but probably have a shortened lifetime (not that it matters - the thing will be long replaced even by then).
The issue isn't the chip itself, it's the chip's bonding with the packaging and packaging with the circuit board - those undergo much larger stresses.
But given that this is probably the last we'll see of that particular device, it'll probably end up collecting dust somewhere since it's been heavily modded to go out of spec. Or if it could be used again, well, used for a few months and then forgotten / tossed. If it breaks, it breaks - these things are supposed to be cheap - who really knows if it's because of the experiment or something else?
All this shows is that Atom is clock limited by design. A 700MHz speed up - less than 50% in this case - from using liquid nitrogen? And all to get a CPU that's about as powerful as a 1.5GHz Pentium M or a 1.2GHz Core 2 Duo...
Atom is reasonably neat, but I would have been more impressed with under-volting to half power consumption. Or designing a better chipset.
Well, Atom's market isn't in the high-performance desktop/laptop realm, it's in the netbook realm, where the primary goal (for the most part) is "cheap", followed by "small". Powerful isn't one of them, since a modern CPU is already more than powerful enough for surfing and email.
It's basically the first step towards an embedded x86 SoC to compete in the embedded processor space. Even now, Atom is a battery guzzler compared to the ARM CPUs used in practically everything people buy - media players, cellphones, etc.
The question is... has Intel finally started fabbing Atoms in one of their fabs, or are they still using the now-overloaded research fab?
The thing here is that litigation is always anticipated at Apple - if they're not currently suing someone, its because they're getting ready to sue. (or the legal team are on holiday [legal team pictured on the right hand side of that photo])
Or... they're being sued. It's practically a rare day these days when Apple isn't being sued by someone.
It's a wonder Apple can release product considering how much the probably spend on legal...
I know that this is rather off-topic, but can anyone recommend a decent mp3-player that is similar to the ipod classic (i.e. at least 30gb storage, preferably more, not too expensive, acceptable battery) ?
My creative player died this week and I would like to replace it with something that can hold all my music files. The ipod classic really appeals to me , but the fact that apple tries to force their software upon customers makes me want to avoid their products like the plague.
So I would be really grateful if somebody could give me a pointer, I can't seem to find anything that is on par with the ipod (feature and price-wise).
You can try the Archos, and with the Gen5 being clearanced out to make room for the Archos 5/7, they're available cheaply. However, you'll have to put up with ads, crappy hardware, and low battery life. But you get a device that works as a mass-storage device, so no software needed. They also run Linux (but you cannot mod the firmware - they're signed).
The ads are just for Archos accessories and "plugins" (really, an unlock code). E.g., play an AAC file and it'll tell you that you have to buy the "podcast" plugin, and let you buy it instantly. Or try to do a recording and it'll say you need to buy a dock (and oh yeah, you can buy it now!). Perhaps the worse one is when you first plug it into a computer, it says you should buy the dock to charge it faster (you can disable this), and oh yeah, you can buy it now from Archos. It's gotten worse lately, so the new Archos 5/7 I've heard it's quite in-your-face - since half the options are practically disabled until you pay for the plugins. (The same goes for videos - if you want h.264 support or MPEG2.) Kind of annoying, since AAC and h.264 videos are becoming more common.
Hardware quality - well, the specs are very nice, but I hate the LCD. Buy from a place with a good return policy, because you may have to return several units to get one without a dead pixel - nothing like watching a video with one or more bright dots in your face (Archos requires 5 before you can RMA it). It's also not as nicely designed as the iPod, but the Archos 5/7 do look better.
Firmware - well, you can download the GPL package, and there are hacks so you can run normal ARM-Linux apps (including ssh), but you cannot create your own firmware and load it in (it's like a TiVo). The hacks rely on various exploits in the Archos main application (which may or may not be patched up).
Other than those faults, really, the Archos may be your best bet - lots of storage, and USB mass storage and works with anything (unlike say, the Zune, which requires Windows).
ARM was never owned by Intel. Intel licensed ARM cores and produced them under the StrongARM brand. They then got some ex-Alpha people to do the XScale design, which ended up being a typical Intel chip of the era - high clock frequency, low instruction-per-clock. They then sold the entire XScale division to Marvell, and now do not make any ARM-compatible chips. Meanwhile, the likes of Samsung and TI are making ARM chips with a performance per watt ratio around an order of magnitude better than anything Intel produces.
Actually, Intel, through the Digital/Compaq lawsuits, acquired a microarchitecture license from ARM (most licensees only get the core license - thus they can take the ARM core as designed by ARM and plunk it onto their chips). WIth this license, Intel could produce ARM compatible chips with any microarchitecture they want. First they inherited the StrongARM architecture from Digital, then created the XScale architecture. TI and Samsung are dependent on ARM to produce faster rated cores...
It should be noted that Intel still owns the license, and thus, it's "Intel XScale". They sold the Communications and Handheld processors to Marvell (PXAxxx), but they kept the I/O and network processors division (IOPxxx).
While it seems difficult in reverse, it still might help someone before they are learning a true instrument. I'm sure that Guitar Hero & Rock Band do teach good finger coordination and decent timing skills and music can be simplified to a combo of good rhythm and a melody which usually requires decent finger coordination.
I know a person who was learning to play an electric guitar (he was a restaurant owner, so I'd come in and hear him practics as I ordered my food). One day, I came in with GH2 and he asked about it, and he bought his own copy. Turned out he liked it because it helped fix several issues he was having with his hammer-ons/pull-offs and his strumming technique.
No, Guitar Hero/Rock Band won't make you able to play an instrument, but it may help if you're not undergoing formal training in playing the instrument where technique is demonstrated.
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Other than a contract, the iPhone 3G is fairly "free" - you don't have to just get apps from the iTunes App Store - jailbreaking has worked on them almost from day 1. With Cydia and Installer, making your app public is also fairly simple.
Oh, and today, if your SIM is fairly simple, there is a soft-unlock for it, so almost any SIM card can work (exceptions are those that are PIN locked, and SIMs with apps on them (sim toolkit), you'll have to hot-plug the card.
Guess what that fancy orange suits that they wear on liftoff and re-entry are for! Yes, they're pressure suits.
When the shuttles first came out, the crews would all don those pressure suits on both legs of the trip. Then as the shuttles came into regular use, they didn't wear them anymore - you can see this in the crew photos taken at launch. They'd go in initially in the suits, then a few years later, they were going up in blue flight suits. This happened until Challenger exploded, and the crew died from hypoxia. Now they all don those suits again, in case of any issues on liftoff. Part of the launch and re-entry procedures actually involves doing a pressure test to ensure the suits seal properly, and they close their helmets.
Of course, if the shuttle disintegrates on them, well, those suits don't protect much against your whole vehicle burning up and taking out your life support as well.
Actually, that wasn't that hard a jumping puzzle. It was annoying, but it wasn't hard. The distances looked a bit far, but the gravity made it doable.
No, the hard jumping puzzles were on Earth, in Black Mesa. Like the one where you jumped from box to box. If you wanted a harder challenge, do the Source version - the boxes actually dangle from moving ropes. The original version didn't. Nothing like having to deal with a jumping puzzle by jumping from moving box to moving box...
Not only that, but the remainder of the digits in the first group of 4 digits are used to identify the issuing bank. While it's not actually a bulletproof method, knowing where someone is can narrow down the list of valid codes even smaller. Just take the valid numbers, cross-reference them with the list of Visa or Mastercard bank codes, and with the smaller list of numbers, find the banks that are in the local area, and use it knock off a few more numbers (someone in the US will probably not have a UK credit card, for example - they might, but it's extremely rare).
The entropy in the first 4 digits is extremely low.
Anyhow, sharing codes is easy to prevent - just do IP geolocation - non-UK IPs should be restricted from using the codes (and for the most part, IP geolocation is reasonably country accurate), and ensure that one code isn't used from multiple IPs in too often a time, or one code used simultaneously.
Actually, Apple quotes an 80Gig iPod as holding 24,000 songs. At iTunes' price of about $1/song, that is slightly less than $24k.
And it wasn't Apple doing that - it was Napster or other people selling subscription services (e.g., why pay $24k to fill up your iPod, when you can pay $15/month and get all the songs you want?).
But yeah, no one is going to fill up their iPod with $24k worth of music. They're going to rip their CD collections (after all, iTunes makes it easy), and there are videos too...
Actually, LEDs get dimmer as they get used. If they don't fail due to the semiconductor turning into molten metal, they get dimmer and dimmer and dimmer. The 100,000 hour lifetime figure on LEDs is usually the time until 50% brightness (considered to be the point where one would notice the light being dimmer).
There are many reasons for this - degradation of the junction itself, but the semiconductor itself leads to a large index of refraction - a lot of the light in a LED gets reflected back into the semiconductor. And then there's degradation of the epoxy used to seal the LED. All these conspire to make the LEDs much dimmer, and get dimmer over time.
I think this was bound to happen when Apple made the switch to Intel. Apple traditionally releases product on these big events - MacWorld, WWDC (more to the things developers want), and other big conferences. New product appears on a regular schedule, and advances could be easily plotted. This was because Apple's source hardware (e.g., PowerPC) roadmaps were quite tightly sealed, and thus, Apple could gather up momentum leading up to the event on what the next big thing was.
But now, Intel and AMD have roadmaps known to the public way in advance. New chips, chipsets, graphics, etc., come out monthly, and there's no way Apple can wait 6 months to the next event to showcase their latest computers, using a CPU/chipset/GPU everyone else has been shipping the past 3 months. Apple can't wait for these big events to announce new product, because they happen at inconvenient times.
Apple is large enough that it can draw a huge crowd easily, which it does with these "spotlight" meetings/keynotes. The advantage is that Apple can release product around the same time everyone else releases product. A new chipset released by Intel? Well, hold a spotlight and release the new notebooks within a month or two from the first manufacturer releasing them, before it becomes "old news."
Apple has to release product, and they can't wait for the Next Big Expo to do it - to compete with all the other PC manufacturers now, they have to release in a timely fashion. (Think about how long it took for Apple to release Santa Rosa notebooks - everyone else had them for months!)
Once Apple went Intel, they have to follow Intel's schedule for product releases, which won't coincide with most of the Mac Expos. Or get left behind releasing old technology, with everyone annoyed waiting for the notebooks to use the latest and greatest. It's not practical for Apple to wait - they have to release. Holding a spotlight meeting is easier than holding a random Expo (scheduled months to years in advance) to release product in a timely manner.
Actually, I'd argue that Apple entered the portable MP3 player market at the right time. Consider the market at the time - small flash-based players that could barely hold 1 album, maybe 2 if you compressed them below 128kbps, or humongous hard-drive based MP3 players that were larger than a discman (i.e., the Nomad), or when they weren't, were huge bricks.
Now, Apple releases an MP3 player that has most of the space of the large hard disk players, but is only maybe 1 1/2 to 2 times of the flash-based player. Oh yeah, and instead of syncing via painfully slow USB 1.1 (or parallel/serial!), it would work at firewire speeds. So copying lots of music to the hard disk takes minutes, not hours (1GB would take around 15-20 minutes via USB 1.1 versus 2-5 minutes via firewire...).
So what did Apple do? They released an MP3 player in a formfactor that's usable, and made filling it much less of an all-nighter thing and something that someone can do on their way out the door.
Oh yeah, they also marketed the heck out of the iPod, and made everyone who would normally carry CDs or listen to tapes... consider buying one and carrying their entire collection in a handheld device, rather than a huge stack of CDs. Instead of MP3 players being relegated to the realms of the techie, Apple made them wanted and usable to the masses.
And Apple did this a month after 9/11 - when no one was willing to spend $600 nor have they fully recovered. Apple won out because Jobs seized upon the concept just as it was beginning to take off, then when the huge growth happens, they were already on the 3rd generation iPod (total sales under 1 million units at the point, yet it was the #1 selling MP3 player). Boom, the market takes off, Apple has a refined 3rd generation iPod on sale, and people start wanting iPods and MP3 players, to the point where Apple sells millions per month.
Apple got really lucky with the iPod. They were at the right place at the right time.
Well, MiniPCIe is certainly available on the MacBooks - it may not be exposed as a connector, but the old wireless card most certainly is connected via MiniPCIe (really, PCIe x1). So RealTek may pitch to Apple to use their chipsets in future Macs. (It's not like the crab isn't used elsewhere - unless things have changed recently, Apple uses the Realtek audio chips).
Anyhow, USB is available on the MacBooks as well - as USB2 is fast enough for 802.11n.
And the lack of Firewire/Expresscard on the MacBook was because the circuit board only runs along two sides of the case - and the edge where there are connectors already has connectors down its entire side. The only option Apple has is to put the connector on the back (fugly), or put the connector on the other side (oh wait, there's an optical drive in the way) with a ribbon cable. Or use one of those godawful 4 pin connectors (seriously, given the weight of a Firewire cable, it feels like the cable will rip that thing out just from gravity).
I wouldn't say appears. After all, it's being created by SCE Studios Santa Monica, with "SCE" meaning "Sony Computer Entertainment". If it wasn't a PS3 exclusive, there's no hope for the PS3 (if Sony's own studio has to port to other platforms in order for a title to succeed...).
And since GoW isn't ported to PC, it's a likely to stay PS3 only.
The fun part is that those who bought the cheap $400 PS3s can't play the predecessors on their shiny PS3 because those are PS2 only. (Of course, we can hope that GoW/GoW2 gets re-done for PS3, can't we? Just like Final Fantasy 7...).
Diamonds are precious because about 70+ years of marketing by DeBeers has made popular opinion think they are valuable. All those "Diamonds are forever" type of ads you see? Marketing. And not just any diamond, they had to be big, beautiful expensive diamonds, not the cheap ones people used to buy in the early 1900's. And not only that, but marketing to convince people they need to keep buying diamonds.
And yes, we can make them artificially - either vapor deposition, or large pressures and high temperatures, or probably a ton of other methods. Look up for industrial diamonds (they're quite useful in industry).
It's basically all DeBeers marketing - DeBeers basically bought up all the diamond mines and established a complex network of distributors that effectively took over all cosmetic diamond sales. These diamonds were then effectively rationed to make their price go up. When some shrewd business practice causes potential losses in the value of diamonds, DeBeers puts some control that effectively disrupts the practice. (DeBeers has tried hard to quash any sort of thing that might disrupt the price of diamonds and collapse its monopoly). The price of a diamond is artificially inflated, and kept that way. And marketing ensures that you can't get away with some low-quality diamond, you must buy a nice expensive one for your significant other.
In fact, the resale value of diamonds is quite poor, so as investments, you can do better elsewhere.
Here's an interesting read on how DeBeers turned a relatively cheap gem into something desirable, and managed to keep tight control over production in order to keep value up.
http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/print/198202/diamond
Actually, memory devices often use the most cutting-edge technology available, and can often be a half-generation or more ahead of what's used for a CPU. The reasoning is simple - memory devices have very high transistor density and they capitalize on the fact that memory devices have a very regular layout. In fact, when going up a technology level, a memory device is created because you want to pack in the transistors, and its trivial to test them in all sorts of conditions. (Think of it this way - you can get flash memory in 32GB sizes. Assuming MLC flash, that's 16 billion transistors, plus the support logic). CPUs and other ICs don't have such a high transistor density due to their "random logic" arrangement. The vast majority of transistors used on a CPU actually go towards the cache - and are so dense they take up only half the die space.
Memory devices are silicon-limited - their storage capacity is limited by the silicon area you can use. CPUs are pin-limited - their functionality is limited by the number of pins their package has (and some pins have mutliple functions, as on many System-On-Chip). A die shrink that doubles the number of transistors means you get a doubling of storage capacity - and people want more RAM and more flash.
Well, you do what every other cheap player does - you do proxy cards! While worthless as an item, they can level the game somewhat so you don't have to spend too much to get a lot out of it. Of course, many Magic players will scoff, but I've never understood why since it levels the fields between those who can pay, and those who can't. (I will admit it lowers the worth of those cards a tiny bit since players don't have to own the card, lowering demand).
Of course, I don't know if tournaments restrict them (why? All the same rules apply to the proxies as regulars, and those that can play well and construct a good deck shouldn't be limited to how much they can spend to complete their deck...).
Thankfully, there are many devices in this nice modern day and age that can convert downloads into books, and likewise, there are devices that can take books and turn them into downloads. I think someone created a whole movement around the former device when he couldn't get it to work "properly", and a large company got sued when they did the latter, even though they made it very difficult to get whole books that way.
Because a good chunk of sellers won't leave feedback until the buyers leave them positive feedback. It became a tit-for-tat system, where sellers could get 100% feedback ratings because buyers who got scammed refused to leave neutral or negative feedback. There were even lawsuits threatened (and maybe even launched) because sellers took negative feedback as libel.
Buyers have few recourses if scammed by a bad seller. Sellers who have a non-paying bidder though, should file a complaint with eBay (who is supposed to refund all fees due, and mark the buyer, I don't know if this happens).
Feedback is supposed to rate the trustworthiness of buyers and (especially) sellers. It's a bit more important for a seller because buyers use that to determine if they should bid since once payment is sent, recourse is limited. Pretty much the worst that can happen for a seller who has a bad buyer is they don't pay. (Of course, there is the issue with sellers claiming they didn't receive it or it was damaged, which is why there's tracking information and insurance, all of which a seller can mandate).
I will agree though that eBay's system is horribly screwed up (as a buyer). Some sellers have gone to use the (neg) in the comments to mean negative feedback. A system where feedback is kept hidden until both parties have sent it in (keeping tit-for-tat at bay) would work better.
Or intelligently design protocols to assume that not everyone has a direct IP back to them? In the early days of online gaming, one had to forward easily a half-dozen ports (UDP, and maybe 3 ports TCP) to play online. These days, it's normally 1 UDP and 1 TCP port, if that.
IPv6 won't change any of the issues seen with NAT. At best, you'll have a firewall blocking incoming connections to all but a single IP (the system providing the gateway and firewall), so you'll juat have huge spaces of IPv6 addresses that are unreachable anyways. So your toilet might have a real live IPv6 address, but it's not reachable outside the local network anyhow. Heck, that gateway may very well perform NAT on IPv6. To assume all the issues with NAT, firewalls, etc, go away magically by using IPv6 is naive - they're still going to be around. At the minimum, there's going to be firewalls up, and apps will still have to request people poke holes in it somehow. Most likely, nothing will change.
Despite having all these addresses available to them, most ISPs will probably just offer the user 1 or 2 IP addresses (though, an IPv4 and IPv6 address), and charge them an extra $5/month for another one. Or maybe they'll get a clue and give them a pile of addresses, to which the user will probably just stick a router in and use 1 address. And might as well stick all the machines behind it in the private address range anyhow.
IPv6 is important because we're running out of addresses (or some countries already have). But unless the protocol mandates things like evil bits and other junk, people are still going to put up firewalls, NAT-based routers, etc, and we're really just going to end up in the same situation we're in now. Everyone talks grand of "even your toilet can be connected", then it just takes someone to say "well, if it is, I don't want people to hack into it". IPv6 won't save us from buggy exploitable services, spam, OSes with poor default security, etc. The only thing it may save us from is that portscanning blocks of IPs got significantly harder, but botnets are good for that sort of thing. Heck, even exploits have seemed to work around the fact that a good chunk of people are behind a firewall.
Actually, both are only 512MB. Xbox360 is shared (512 for 3 PowerPCs plus GPU), PS3 has 256MB main system RAM and 256MB for GPU.
I like to think of it as the "ability to be rude" factor.
If a passenger is in the car, it is very acceptable socially to shout "SHUT UP!" or "BE QUIET!" during periods of the drive where higher concentration is required (e.g., merging, changing lanes), especially if the passenger(s) don't automatically realize it and shut up themselves. Passengers realize it's for their safety, and tend to obey. Ignoring people during this time is also acceptable. (Also, good passengers realize it might be dangerous to distract the driver, and automatically pause their conversation.)
Replace the passenger with a cellphone, and it's not so nice to say these things to the person on the other end. If it's your significant other, or boss, I'm sure you can't scream at them to be quiet while you're trying to merge onto the freeway. Or you can try, but then you'll spend the next few minutes explaining. It probably has something to do with the social expectation that the person on the other end expects your full attention, which you cannot give, and thus try to make do.
Handsfree laws do help a tiny bit, by at least ensuring you can have two hands on the wheel (always important in case you need to swerve or other sudden maneuver), and maybe, just maybe, if you act stupidly in traffic, the honking will be noticed by the guy on the other end, who will have the politeness to call back later.
And yes, changing radio stations, etc are also dangerous, except they take less time to perform (and if the car UI is done properly, could be done without having to look at the radio - just push, if it isn't what you want, repeat). Of course, too many accidents are the result of "I only looked away for a second!", too. And yes, I also consider messing around with your iPod to be equally bad since it takes far too long to do adjust if you're trying to choose a playlist or something.
No scientific studies nor citations, just stating my belief that no one wants to be rude to the person at the other end of the line.
Interesting results, and great if you're planning a server, but what about desktop use?
How well does each OS do when doing something like playing back audio/video, and handling background processing loads? What about performance and system response as the load climbs up? (load averages of 5/10/20 ?).
Only because I've seen Linux systems start to crumble around 5 (uniproc machine), and easily get unusuable, but have heard reports of BSD machines being able to still play MP3s without skipping/suttering even around 20 or so...
(And yes, I'll allow tweaking system priorities - it only gets you so far, and impacts the other background processing tasks, to which we'll also be interested in how long they take to run. So renicing the media player to -20 works, but not if it makes all the other tasks take 10x as long to finish...).
And probably from the fact that these experiments last only a short time, and are probably never repeated again? All these overclocking experiments are great, but it's also true that once it's done, well, it's a shelved project. If you're lucky, it'll be reassembled and work normally, but probably have a shortened lifetime (not that it matters - the thing will be long replaced even by then).
The issue isn't the chip itself, it's the chip's bonding with the packaging and packaging with the circuit board - those undergo much larger stresses.
But given that this is probably the last we'll see of that particular device, it'll probably end up collecting dust somewhere since it's been heavily modded to go out of spec. Or if it could be used again, well, used for a few months and then forgotten / tossed. If it breaks, it breaks - these things are supposed to be cheap - who really knows if it's because of the experiment or something else?
Well, Atom's market isn't in the high-performance desktop/laptop realm, it's in the netbook realm, where the primary goal (for the most part) is "cheap", followed by "small". Powerful isn't one of them, since a modern CPU is already more than powerful enough for surfing and email.
It's basically the first step towards an embedded x86 SoC to compete in the embedded processor space. Even now, Atom is a battery guzzler compared to the ARM CPUs used in practically everything people buy - media players, cellphones, etc.
The question is... has Intel finally started fabbing Atoms in one of their fabs, or are they still using the now-overloaded research fab?
Or... they're being sued. It's practically a rare day these days when Apple isn't being sued by someone.
It's a wonder Apple can release product considering how much the probably spend on legal...
You can try the Archos, and with the Gen5 being clearanced out to make room for the Archos 5/7, they're available cheaply. However, you'll have to put up with ads, crappy hardware, and low battery life. But you get a device that works as a mass-storage device, so no software needed. They also run Linux (but you cannot mod the firmware - they're signed).
The ads are just for Archos accessories and "plugins" (really, an unlock code). E.g., play an AAC file and it'll tell you that you have to buy the "podcast" plugin, and let you buy it instantly. Or try to do a recording and it'll say you need to buy a dock (and oh yeah, you can buy it now!). Perhaps the worse one is when you first plug it into a computer, it says you should buy the dock to charge it faster (you can disable this), and oh yeah, you can buy it now from Archos. It's gotten worse lately, so the new Archos 5/7 I've heard it's quite in-your-face - since half the options are practically disabled until you pay for the plugins. (The same goes for videos - if you want h.264 support or MPEG2.) Kind of annoying, since AAC and h.264 videos are becoming more common.
Hardware quality - well, the specs are very nice, but I hate the LCD. Buy from a place with a good return policy, because you may have to return several units to get one without a dead pixel - nothing like watching a video with one or more bright dots in your face (Archos requires 5 before you can RMA it). It's also not as nicely designed as the iPod, but the Archos 5/7 do look better.
Firmware - well, you can download the GPL package, and there are hacks so you can run normal ARM-Linux apps (including ssh), but you cannot create your own firmware and load it in (it's like a TiVo). The hacks rely on various exploits in the Archos main application (which may or may not be patched up).
Other than those faults, really, the Archos may be your best bet - lots of storage, and USB mass storage and works with anything (unlike say, the Zune, which requires Windows).
Actually, Intel, through the Digital/Compaq lawsuits, acquired a microarchitecture license from ARM (most licensees only get the core license - thus they can take the ARM core as designed by ARM and plunk it onto their chips). WIth this license, Intel could produce ARM compatible chips with any microarchitecture they want. First they inherited the StrongARM architecture from Digital, then created the XScale architecture. TI and Samsung are dependent on ARM to produce faster rated cores...
It should be noted that Intel still owns the license, and thus, it's "Intel XScale". They sold the Communications and Handheld processors to Marvell (PXAxxx), but they kept the I/O and network processors division (IOPxxx).
I know a person who was learning to play an electric guitar (he was a restaurant owner, so I'd come in and hear him practics as I ordered my food). One day, I came in with GH2 and he asked about it, and he bought his own copy. Turned out he liked it because it helped fix several issues he was having with his hammer-ons/pull-offs and his strumming technique.
No, Guitar Hero/Rock Band won't make you able to play an instrument, but it may help if you're not undergoing formal training in playing the instrument where technique is demonstrated.