How hard would it be to make a REALLY CHEAP commodity ram board. Something with about 20 slots that you can fill with your old pc66 ram or with el-cheapo 512m sdram chips with crummy specs. On pricewatch they are $28/each. 4g = $224 = 8 slots
Or maybe it could take half-broken or really sub-spec chips with errors that can be mapped out or software ecc'd. A bogus 512mb chip with 1 chip bad might be $10, but have 450m usable.
Don't even bother with power backup in the design, market it to gamers.
Possibly, you could integrate it with a disk controller and just have a lot of cache. The disk would just get faster the longer the system was up. Maybe you could tune things to pre-cache certain files or say that a certain parition was always read entirely into ram (like the / partition or c:\windoze) Or put the swap parition entirely on it and don't worry about losing it.
Also, it would also be cool to have a cdrom drive with 700mb of cache that starts reading the disc sequentially the moment it is installed in the drive.
But the key here is commodity. $795 for an unpopulated 4g board seems high.
I think you're being a little simplistic figuring out the support costs.
You're figuring on 1/10 of a full-time engineer to support the search engine. Do you think that with a commercial product that you can devote NO engineers? Even with a commercial product somebody has to keep tabs on things. Even when you buy support, the support engineers don't typically call you and remind you of bugs or do any of the work.
You'll need to dedicate time to the product regardless, and in some cases more time to commercial products.
Yes, but disk drive lifetime is directly related to temperature. I believe a disk drive at 17C may last longer than a drive at 40C. There are also hot spots within machines that are proportional to the outside temperature.
I don't know why this got moderated up, because I don't think the poster quite understands the technology.
The special paper provides unique coordinates. You know which page is which, when you've changed pages, when you've gone back and annotated old pages, what type of page you're on. You could define special forms and print millions of them, and be able to tell what data was captured and what (unique) form it was written on - even what the order of capture was. It's quite a powerful concept.
I mean, I can see forms that are all identical and print on the same coordinates. Maybe this would be good for anonymity and cheaper to reproduce.
There are already plenty of handwriting capture pads and stuff, but the special paper really is the technology, not the pen.
or it could be thought of as shareware that you can use, but if you really support it, put some money in the tip jar to free the source. Or if you're a company and want to build something, buy it outright (and incidentally, free the source)
I would think that dc-dc step-down or conversion could be done in a much smaller space than ac-dc conversion. And the power could be filtered already before the conversion had to take place. Don't most laptops take battery voltage and convert it to several different voltages internally? I mean, the cpu runs at less than 2 volts, the memory might run at a different voltage, the hard disk might be 12/5 volts and the screen might be something different altogether.
I think wall-warts are large because they convert a high-power ac source to dc.
Maybe I should make that clearer: Some laptops don't have CDROM drives, or they are external and have to be lugged around and connected to use them.
With tools like CD Space or I think daemon tools you don't have to deal with this hassle.
These tools are CDROM emulators. You can scan in the image to a hard disk file on your desktop, then transfer the file to your laptop's hard disk. Then your laptop can mount the file as a "virtual cdrom" and you can install and play the game while traveling without a physical cdrom drive or the game CD. No lugging.
People who have laptops that do not HAVE CD's will use tools to copy the cd to a virtual cd image on disk. Then they can play them without having to tote around the game cd.
But I do it for the convenience of not having to manually swap the CD in the drive, because my monitor, keyboard and speakers are not in the same room as the system.
The Audiotron is probably what you're looking for... except for the ogg. I don't think it does ogg, but if the slimp3 can do transcoding, this one can play raw.wav files, so maybe the server can decode the.ogg and the raw data can stream across the network (which could be better than transcoding)
Oh yeah, and it looks like a stereo component and has a high-contrast display.
Slashdot Mirror
How hard would it be to make a REALLY CHEAP commodity ram board. Something with about 20 slots that you can fill with your old pc66 ram or with el-cheapo 512m sdram chips with crummy specs.
On pricewatch they are $28/each. 4g = $224 = 8 slots
Or maybe it could take half-broken or really sub-spec chips with errors that can be mapped out or software ecc'd. A bogus 512mb chip with 1 chip
bad might be $10, but have 450m usable.
Don't even bother with power backup in the design, market it to gamers.
Possibly, you could integrate it with a disk controller and just have a lot of cache. The disk would just get faster the longer the system was up. Maybe you could tune things to pre-cache certain files or say that a certain parition was always read entirely into ram (like the / partition or c:\windoze) Or put the swap parition entirely on it and don't worry about losing it.
Also, it would also be cool to have a cdrom drive with 700mb of cache that starts reading the disc sequentially the moment it is installed in the drive.
But the key here is commodity. $795 for an unpopulated 4g board seems high.
Actually, A mac would just have a blue bar with ;)
"About 15 minutes"
under it.
(of course, it would wildly swing to 45 minutes, 12 minutes, 22 minutes and so forth throughout)
I thought I read an article where a russian inventor had invented a way of using electricity to change the coefficient of friction with snow/ice?
;)
I thought the first application of this technology would be brakes for skiis or snowboards.
I don't have a reference to this, but this could be the geeky way of solving the problem...
I mean if somebody is constructing a cleanroom to build a satellite in his basement, THIS would be a no-brainer...
I think you're being a little simplistic figuring out the support costs.
You're figuring on 1/10 of a full-time engineer to support the search engine. Do you think that with a commercial product that you can devote NO engineers? Even with a commercial product somebody has to keep tabs on things. Even when you buy support, the support engineers don't typically call you and remind you of bugs or do any of the work.
You'll need to dedicate time to the product regardless, and in some cases more time to commercial products.
I would assume that there will soon be:
VODNSOIP
VOHTTPOIP
VOICMP
Actually, what's funny is that this works on Everyhing BUT PC's. It works on Suns and on Macs.
On sun it's called openboot and it's called open firmware on the mac.
You can access it with STOP-A on a Sun, and for a Mac it's Command-Option-O-F on boot.
Here's info from sun and A Sun Example
Here's Open Firmware info from apple and Mac Example.
I think the public markets became a different animal with the advent of ubiquitous online trading.
But I really liked Spirited away
Apparently, so did the reviewers at rotten tomatoes
Yes, but disk drive lifetime is directly related to temperature. I believe a disk drive at 17C may last longer than a drive at 40C. There are also hot spots within machines that are proportional to the outside temperature.
Yeah, but an entire Grateful Dead album would be $0.99... ;)
I did this.
once.
Snicker...
;)
But I think the PAPER is the technology.
I'm sure someone will come up with a way to simplify that pesky pen away...
I don't know why this got moderated up, because I don't think the poster quite understands the technology.
The special paper provides unique coordinates. You know which page is which, when you've changed pages, when you've gone back and annotated old pages, what type of page you're on. You could define special forms and print millions of them, and be able to tell what data was captured and what (unique) form it was written on - even what the order of capture was. It's quite a powerful concept.
I mean, I can see forms that are all identical and print on the same coordinates. Maybe this would be good for anonymity and cheaper to reproduce.
There are already plenty of handwriting capture pads and stuff, but the special paper really is the technology, not the pen.
Heck, EVERYONE Balks at MS Licensing.
How many people have passed on XP because of the licensing crap? I'll bet a LOT of people have.
I have, and it has nothing to do with piracy.
or it could be thought of as shareware that you can use, but if you really support it, put some money in the tip jar to free the source. Or if you're a company and want to build something, buy it outright (and incidentally, free the source)
Since no man is truly complete without a portable power drill, I eagerly await a consumer version of this drill. ;)
This matches the rules for propaganda
Check the section on Fear
I would think that dc-dc step-down or conversion could be done in a much smaller space than ac-dc conversion. And the power could be filtered already before the conversion had to take place. Don't most laptops take battery voltage and convert it to several different voltages internally? I mean, the cpu runs at less than 2 volts, the memory might run at a different voltage, the hard disk might be 12/5 volts and the screen might be something different altogether.
I think wall-warts are large because they convert a high-power ac source to dc.
I would buy it... I wonder if they could connect other stuff (like ethernet) this way... No, not wireless.
Here's a link
and A technology overview
and Another link...
You slashdotted radio shack.
Maybe I should make that clearer: Some laptops don't have CDROM drives, or they are external and have to be lugged around and connected to use them.
With tools like CD Space or I think daemon tools you don't have to deal with this hassle.
These tools are CDROM emulators. You can scan in the image to a hard disk file on your desktop, then transfer the file to your laptop's hard disk. Then your laptop can mount the file as a "virtual cdrom" and you can install and play the game while traveling without a physical cdrom drive or the game CD. No lugging.
People who have laptops that do not HAVE CD's will use tools to copy the cd to a virtual cd image on disk. Then they can play them without having to tote around the game cd.
But I do it for the convenience of not having to manually swap the CD in the drive, because my monitor, keyboard and speakers are not in the same room as the system.
Yeah, and Penn sure knows how to Fly in Style... ;)
The Audiotron is probably what you're looking for... except for the ogg. I don't think it does ogg, but if the slimp3 can do transcoding, this one can play raw .wav files, so maybe the server can decode the .ogg and the raw data can stream across the network (which could be better than transcoding)
Oh yeah, and it looks like a stereo component and has a high-contrast display.
Just reading about this is causing me much Mental Anguish. Can I sue?