How big is the database on Slashdot right now? I'm asking because I'll be needing some intense hosting service sometime next year, and I've no clue how to go about estimating how big the database will wind up growing to. I can see it getting as big as Slashdot's database as far as content goes, maybe bigger.
So - folks at Slashdot - how much diskspace is the database taking up these days?
> Evolution makes no claim about traits being "good" or "bad", there are simply those that become common and those that don't.
I'm not sure how you think that some traits will get passed on, though. It's not through magic. If the traits in one type of mutant wind up being passed on, great. It's only going to GET passed on if that creature reproduces, which it won't do, or won't do ANY MORE THAN THE NON-MUTATED ONES, unless there's that mutant is in some way 'superior' as far as getting their genes propogated. Otherwise, those genes would wind up staying in approximately the same projected percentage as they are currently. Unless the progeny of the mutant becomes statistically more-numerous than the non-mutants, it won't become commonplace.
Slightly-improved colour detection in this day and age will do little to nothing to make those people able to reproduce more than a non-mutant. _Maybe_ the ability to detect one's progeny being ill _slightly_ faster than another might help, but with modern medicine - I find it highly unlikely.
Unfortunately, it almost certainly won't spred into the general population unless it's done on purpose. Tetrachromat vision doesn't give any measurable survival advantage in the modern world, therefore it won't be in a majority of the 'surviving' population.
But, I think we all know that strict Darwinian evolution isn't in force as much in the modern world, anyway. If it's part nature and part nurture, someone having a personality that allows them to succeed in the modern industrial world would only be partly genetic, and thus only partly subject to Darwinian principles of evolution.
But then again - who knows what this _could_ lead to? I'm all for deliberate monkeying with our genetic code - once we understand it. (all hail the Human Genome Project!) There are any number of things we could do to improve our species once we have the knowledge to do so. I even came up with a list last week as I was pondering just such a subject:
selective control over body colouring & hair growth (change eye colour, skin colour, hair colour, etc.) Colour should be fast enough for camouflage purposes.
hardened inner ear components
increased vocal range & control
enhanced reflexes & finer motor control
improved, adaptive autoimmune system
improved method of storing oxygen - should be able to hold breath for much longer (see also hibernation ability mentioned above)
gills for breathing underwater or in toxic environments?
conscious control over adrenaline & glucose levels
conscious control over tastebud sensitivity
high tolerance for pain (or conscious control over shutting off physical sensations in certain areas)
more efficient oxygen transport mechanism to allow slower heart rate
And, if we ever figure these things out:
telepathy
telekinesis
teleportation
clairvoyange
precognition
pyrokinesis
healing of others
Why not? We've circumvented Darwinian evolution to a large extent, though, what with the holes in the ozone layer and pollution and all, we might well wind up with a lot more mutants, at least this way it would be controlled.
I dunno if there's any hardware out there for that purpose, but if you can find an open source encoder and compile it with Intel's SSE or AMD's 3DNOW! (depending on machine type) you'd likely get a substantial boost.
Also, if price really is no object, for efficiency's sake, rip them all to wav first, then encode later.
If quality is a concern, use something like EAC (Exact Audio Copy - for Windows. There's a Linux/unix equivalent available, but I can't remember the name right now) when ripping. You'll get copies as accurate as possible before you start encoding.
Make sure you use the right encoder, and make DAMN sure you use the right settings!
LAME is considered the best encoder by most people, especially at higher bitrates. (I wouldn't bother with anything less than 128, but for my own collection, I do 256.)
I have a CD tower from IKEA (read here: inexpensive) that holds 444 CDs (assuming 1 CD per regular size jewel case). It rotates on it's base, and it's only 13.5" on each side, so it's got a pretty small footprint. You could easily fit 2 of these pretty much anywhere, and have more than enough space for your current collection, with space left over for yet more CDs.
Mine is black, so it goes well with anything. I'm out of space on it, so it's time to get another one.
Caveats: It took a long time to put together.:(
Also, when loaded, it sinks enough into the carpet to not rotate too well (depends on your flooring, of course). So I got a 'lazy susan' type thing of the same size as the base to put under it - rotates like a champ now.
As I recall, it was something like $80 or so, but I could be completely misremembering. Check out IKEA...
Okay, here's the deal - Sonys iLink, Apple's FireWire, and IEEE1394 are all the same. There's two different connection types - 4pin and 6pin, and the difference between them is one is powered and one isn't. Upcoming IEEE1394b will have a 9pin connector, I think. Anyway.
As for FireWire compatability with Linux - Linux supports OHCI style FireWire chips, some chips are OHCI compatible, some ain't. Sony uses some chips that are, and some that aren't. Check the FireWire chip on the particular version of PictureBook you're interested in.
"Please note as well that not all Sony VAIO systems use the proprietary chip. Some contain the CXD3222, which is reported to be OHCI compliant."
Also note, there are multiple generations of the Sony VAIO PictureBook. (the latest uses a Transmeta Crusoe processor instead of the previous Intel Celeron)
I've heard of success with Linux and the PictureBook, but I don't know what generation of PictureBook that was. Hopefully the latest uses the CXD3222 OHCI-compliant chip, as the PictureBook is _definitely_ the beast for me, if I ever have enough money. Those things are pricey!
> It's relatively hard to load up a news reader to comment on an article rather then just type something into a comment box and press "submit"
That's ridiculous. Iyou're reading a UseNet article, you've already GOT a news reader loaded up to read it. All you have to do is hit whatever letter (or click) to start a reply, click when done.
The interface for reading articles in a well-designed newsreader is about a zillion times better than ANY web-based discussion board interface I've ever seen, and that definitely includes Slashdot. It's a pathetic way to do this. But, there is hope on the horizon in the form of ForumZilla.
Using a webbrowser to read a discussion (whether it's reading a usenet article, or reading a webboard like Slashdot) is about as smart as using a webbrowser as your one and only FTP client. The interface is not designed for, and is definitely NOT optimal for the task at hand. Unfortunately, Slashdot isn't a newsgroup.:(
I don't think we should rely on that completely, though, as I alluded to in my original posting. We should use solar, wind, biomass, geothermal, as well as this. Diversification is good!
Also note the 0.1% would supposedly, according to the press release, produce 5 times the amount of energy the world needs - so divide by 5 first. Then if only a fraction of that is needed due to producing via other eco-friendly ways, it becomes even smaller. Considering the benefits of eliminating fossil-fuel and nuclear methods of power generation, I'd say we'd see a major net gain in environmental effects worldwide.
That seems backwards to me. Removing kinetic energy from the ocean would lessen such effects, I would think. (Am I missing something basic here?)
It would lessen or almost eliminate erosion at the area where the waves _would have_ hit. That's gotta be good for people living there, right?
I think the only people who would bitch about this are the surfers, dude. Total bummer.
Plus if the figure quoted is acurate, 0.1% of the ocean's kinetic energy being able to power the planet - that's a pretty small amount of the total. Plus we already alter our weather in weird ways just by building cities (take a meteorology class - it's an eye-opener!).
I say go for it. It's gotta be better to be powered by that than by what we are now. Take that, windmills, biomass power plants, geothermal, and solar, and it's very technically feasible to power the whole planet without anywhere near the amount of pollution we currently produce. It's just that it's so much cheaper to do it the dirty way. *sigh*
I agree, it'll get faster quite quickly, but noone should assume that AMD is standing still - the new Athlon core coming with Palomino will probably be able to easily keep up with any P4 improvements, especially with the higher clockrates it'll have, too.
The thing that would help the P4 most would be getting lots and lots of SSE2 optimizations in all the compilers, and having the apps vendors USE them.
Similarly, what would help AMD is having 3DNOW! optimizations in compilers, and having apps vendors use that - supposedly 3DNOW! is better than SSE2, but few use them at all.:(
As for 3gHz by 2Q2002, it won't matter - by then the Hammer family from AMD will be out, also with full SSE2 support, and will probably cream any 32-bit CPU from Intel. The real competition from Intel by then will be whatever 64-bit offering they can cook up for the desktop. 2002 will be a very interesting year for processors.:^)
Okay, so my interpretation of the problems with the P4 platform are:
Much more expensive than Athlon
Rambus DRDRAM more expensive RAM than DDR, and doesn't consistently outperform it - often performs worse than DDR!
Very few motherboards, which will likely be quite expensive
More expensive system requirements (new rev of, and higher-power power supply, higher cooling needs, etc.)
limited-life platform (that particular socket goes away in less than a year)
no dual-proc chipsets for awhile for the P4
VIA controlling the Intel DDR chipset market
and of course, lackluster performance of P4/DRDRAM vs Athlon/DDR, even with a significant clockspeed advantage over current Athlons
Also note, performance-wise to compare to the Athlon - in 1Q2001 AMD releases the Palomino version of the Athlon, which should perform even better than the current Thunderbird Athlon, plus be at higher clock rates. At the same time, SMP systems will start coming online for the Athlon, which you can use Durons, Thunderbird Athlons, or Palomino Athlons with, so you can grow your system slowly if money is tight. Take two 900mHz Durons and start SMP slowly. Most people probably won't need to go to the Athlon at all! Sweet.
Also note: DDR will get better - current comparisons are being done with systems using, I think CAS 2.5-3-3 memory. Faster DDR is coming soon (though, of course, that'll obviously cost more). I don't mind paying for performance, but I _do_ mind paying for uneven performance (better in some ways than old, worse in others, like Rambus DRDRAM and the Pentium 4).
Nice, but FC is _vastly_ more expensive than FireWire, especially in the controller/adapter area. You can get a IEEE1394a PCI adapter for well under $100 now. Not sure how much the IEEE1394b adapters will be, but I bet they'll still be much cheaper than FC.
I agree, though, that FC is some schweet technology, though.
re: who needs wireless when you have a long cable
Uhm...yeah, right.:^) Let's go for Ethernet over FC! '4240BaseT', woohoo!
I live in an apartment, so no running cables between rooms for me - can't wait for those new 802.11b and e devices shown at Comdex.
IEEE1394a (current standard) tops out at 400Mbps (megaBITS). The upcoming IEEE1394b standard spans 800-3200Mbps.
SCSI drives are currently made with interfaces for 160MBps (megaBYTES), and the newest standard - don't know if it's finalized yet - is 320MBps.
Obviously, hard drives cannot transfer at anywhere NEAR those rates, BUT, there's still a reason for them: multiple drives! With the advent of RAID (ATA RAID controllers built-in to motherboards are all the rage now), then these speeds become much more justifiable.
The problem with FireWire hard drives is, as far as I know, there aren't any that have NATIVE FireWire interfaces on them - they're still ATA native devices with FireWire converters built-on to them (usually made by TI). From what I've read online, the current crop of TI chips aren't too efficient, but the next generation (due now or soon) are much better. Nevertheless, I'd feel better about harddrives (I prefer IBM these days) with native FireWire interfaces. Let's hope IEEE1394b gets here right quick.
The advantages of FireWire are numerous:
You don't need a computer (you can connect, for example, a fireware hard drive directly to your firewire video camera or digital still camera, or whatever - no computer in between needed)
hot-plug capability built right in without any extra work necessary
you can chain I think up to 63 devices to it - that blows away scsi, ata, and I think serial-ata
cable lengths _much_ better than SCSI or ATA
say goodbye to ribbon cables
That's all I can think of right now - I'm sure there are more.
> I'll bet that these kinds of cables eventually become the standard,
> especially if the cooling requirements for x86 hardware is going to
> start requiring 1lb. heatsinks like the upcoming P4...
You bet they will - but perhaps not why you think. SerialATA, the Intel-created (or just backed?) upcoming standard for connecting low-cost harddrives (i.e. non-SCSI drives) have cables about the size of a CD-Audio cable. Very cool (but not as cool as IEEE1394b). Very nice for cooling.
Weren't we all supposed to be using FireWire harddrives by now? *sigh*
Marvin the Manic-Depressive Autonomous Helicopter
on
Smart Flying Robots
·
· Score: 4
"A brain the size of a Beowulf cluster, and what do they have me do? Fly around disasters taking pictures..." *sigh*
combine Iron Chef with fighting - it's been done!
on
Hemos The Iron Chef
·
· Score: 1
Check out the incredibly-fantastic and funny movie called, 'God of Cookery'. It's available on DVD, though quite expensive.
IE is much faster at rendering than Nav 4.x, but Nav 4.x is much faster at paging through already-rendered content than IE is. At least, it is on every machine I've used.
re: IE 'only' taking down Explorer, not Windows.
Depends on the version of Windows, and on the particular crash. IE often LOCKS UP THE MACHINE on me - this is across multiple machines, though it's almost always with Win98SE (I've had it happen many times on Win2K, though). And when Explorer crashes - it's often not even remotely stable after killing it and starting - a reboot is almost always necessary for me, under Win98SE.
re: favorites management
You don't seem to do much 'management' of your bookmarks compared to me. I have some bookmarks that are available directly with one click from the personal toolbar, and also have folders that open with one click on the personal toolbar. They are not organized alphabetically on the personal toolbar, nor do I want them to be. IE, unfortunately, insists on re-alphabetizing things on a frequent and apparently-random basis when I try configuring it that way. Also, moving bookmarks and folders around in the bookmarks list in IE is _PATHETIC_, and one of the worst interface paradigms of any program feature of any program that I've ever seen for piece of software. Ever. (I can't be any plainer in my feelings about that, can I?:). My bookmark managing needs are probably much more stringent than most people, though, so most people never notice the pathetic state of IE bookmark features. Kinda like Mac users don't seem to notice what they're lacking in features since they're not allowed to do much with their interfaces. I guess if you don't _know_ you're missing something...
re: stability and crashing when low on memory
I didn't say my stability problems with IE or Nav 4.x were caused by low memory - they aren't. I've got 128Meg of Memory, and I always close programs I'm not using.
I agree with your assessment of Netscape and an inability to write good code. That's why I'm hoping to just use the Gecko renderer wrapped up in a better shell than Mozilla or Nav6. Mozilla may eventually become a good browser sometime late next year. Maybe. But I bet a FANTASTIC browser will come along using Gecko much, much sooner. Chrome via XUL is cool, but it's not very practical, and it has too much of an impact on performance and stablity, two things which I require, since I use browsers all day long.
Okay, the IE versus Navigator 4.x vs Mozilla discussion is woefully weak on specifics.
Here's my take:
1) Standards Compliance
IE for Windows has better standards compliance than Nav 4.x, but nowhere near as good as Mozilla. IE for Mac is almost as good as that of Mozilla, from what I've read (but no way am I gonna use a Mac just for that!) IE 6 is just around the corner, apparently - let's hope it ups their standards. "We've upped our standards, so up yours!" and all that...
2) Speed
IE seems to connect & download pages faster, and displays very fast (and incrementally reflows, too, even on browser resizing). Nav 4.x connects fast, downloads okay, and displays fairly fast, but has no incremental reflow - very annoying. Mozilla connects, displays, and reflows faster than anything (at least, as of the last night's nightly build). Fastest of all - K-Meleon (Galeon for Windows, basically). Any native framework around the Gecko rendering engine is likely to be faster than anything else. You may pay the price in other features, though (K-Meleon is currently _extremely_ barebones, though that will change soon, I hope.)
3) Stability
IE on Win98SE - not the greatest, on a par (for me, on four completely different machines) with Nav 4.x - only problem is, when it crashes, it often forces you to reboot, or just locks up the whole machine, which Nav 4.x doesn't do. Mozilla - as of last night's daily build, it's 'okay' - the main problem is the Manage Bookmarks feature, which is SLOW SLOW SLOW, and buggy as hell. It doesn't correctly import older Nav 4.x bookmarks (my bookmarks file is rather huge), and moving them around you can lose things entirely, and it's just amazingly slow. It causes the browser to slow down on loadup with a large bookmarks file, too. Very irritating. Hopefully this will change - stability & speedups are currently in the works. Numerous reports of major memory leaks in Mozilla - obviously this browser is still in heavy development though.
4) Interface
IE - pretty standard Windows - easy to figure out if that's what you've been using. Horribly crippled interface for managing bookmarks. Just Horrible. And I hate how they're stored, too (each URL as an individual file, though that's a personal preference).
Nav 4.x - mostly standard for Windows - has some quirks. Very good bookmark management - allows much better bookmark access than any of the others, including Mozilla.
Mozilla - needs to take a look at managing bookmarks & accessing bookmarks in Nav 4.x and implement it. Needs 10-50x speed improvement (not exaggerating) in bookmark management. Something seriously wrong there. In the interface arena, Mozilla will have major advantages for heavy customization, and customization more easily accomplished than for IE, but with the possibility of loading down the browser with a lot of junk - but that's the user's choice! Lean and mean theme or heavy on the eye candy - it's up to you. Choice is Good(tm). I prefer a native widget set framework around the Gecko engine, so I like Galeon for Linux, and I think the K-Meleon project for Windows will do quite well in the future. I've heard that there may be a similar project for the MacOS, but I don't know. Considering the reported quality of IE for the Mac, I'm not sure how necessary that is, unless someone wants a native Mac OS X type browser.
5) Platform Independence
IE - total joke. "Multiple platforms" from MS means Win2K, WinME & Win98 at best. Nav 4.x - excellent. Mozilla - also excellent.
6) Features
IE - very very good, especially considering it's target market. Very good feature set if you're not concerned with security by default (yes, Microsoft, I mean you). On an Intranet basis, IE and it's ActiveX controls can do some fantastic things. On the Internet at large, freaking scary. It's got good regular browser features except for the horribly-crippled bookmark management & access, which should be an easy fix (you'd think).
Nav 4.x - pretty good, better cookie & cache management than IE (though I think there may be an update for additional cookie features for IE - not sure). Very good bookmark management (on a par with Spry Mosaic of old...). Incremental reflow - none, which is very very bad.
Mozilla - very very good, easily on a par with IE for Internet usage - better bookmark management, though still quite buggy in that department. Better cookie management, also has better image loading management (ability to only load images from the same domain as the website - which is not present in the Navigator 6). Very extensible, albeit in a different way than IE.
So that's my take on the situation. Each browser has it's good and bad points - like anything else, it's a matter of how things work on YOUR systems (some people find IE more stable than Nav 4.x, some less so - depends on your machine). Many interface issues are a matter of personal preference. Some people don't need the extensive bookmark handling that I demand. Some people want better security. Some people don't run Windows as their primary platform (or at all). Keep in mind many of IE's loading speed advantages are being it loads many DLLs at bootup - Nav & Mozilla aren't allowed to do that. Also note that using a native widget framework around the Gecko renderer can help approach that loading speed (you folks really should check out the K-Meleon project).
But the regions that have common issues are usually NOT state-wide, and certainly aren't in the same place as the state boundaries. Let's take the PNW as an example, as I live there, too.
Western Washington has MUCH more in common with Western Oregon than with Eastern Washington.
Also, the regions that have REAL issues are usually not as large as a state would be, even IF those state regions were homogenous. Puget Sound has issues completely different than those of, say, Portland/Vancouver. And even smaller than that - Seattle versus the 'East Side' - very different issues.
If you look at how people voted during the election - there were major differences by region even within the small states, yet all you see is the total of the EC votes for that state going to one candidate or the other.
The United States may have started out as a conglomeration of states, true, but it's over 200 years later, and things are VASTLY different now. Implementing laws (say, gun control) in one state and not all is pretty ridiculous - people will (and have) just go over the state border and bring them back in. Same thing for state-by-state abortion laws, etc. The age where a 'state' in this country really made sense is long, LONG gone.
Nope, 2/3 of _Congress_ _AND_ 3/4 of the States. You're right, though, VERY tough to pass.
What would be MUCH better would be for all the states to split their EC votes ala Maine. Then the smaller states would get to keep their unfair influence over the election, but the EC votes would much more accurately reflect the popular vote. Not completely fair, true, but vastly more likely to happen (especially after this year's fiasco).
Why 'unfair', do you ask? Simple - yes, EC votes are alloted by population, but it's not proportional - a state with a population of 10 million doesn't have twice the EC votes as a state with a population of 5 million. If you live in a populous state, THEN YOUR VOTE IS WORTH LESS.
The smaller states get their representation by their Senators & Reps - the President is for everyone, and should, IMO, be elected solely on the popular vote.
President -> Represents everyone, should be elected by everyone (against the Constitution)
Senators & Reps -> Represent their state, should be elected by their state (how it works now)
Simple, right? Fair? Seems so to me! *shrug*
I must say, though, that all this political talk on Slashdot & elsewhere is very heartening to see. Finally everyone seems to give a damn! Right on.
Slashdot Mirror
How big is the database on Slashdot right now? I'm asking because I'll be needing some intense hosting service sometime next year, and I've no clue how to go about estimating how big the database will wind up growing to. I can see it getting as big as Slashdot's database as far as content goes, maybe bigger.
So - folks at Slashdot - how much diskspace is the database taking up these days?
> Evolution makes no claim about traits being "good" or "bad", there are simply those that become common and those that don't.
I'm not sure how you think that some traits will get passed on, though. It's not through magic. If the traits in one type of mutant wind up being passed on, great. It's only going to GET passed on if that creature reproduces, which it won't do, or won't do ANY MORE THAN THE NON-MUTATED ONES, unless there's that mutant is in some way 'superior' as far as getting their genes propogated. Otherwise, those genes would wind up staying in approximately the same projected percentage as they are currently. Unless the progeny of the mutant becomes statistically more-numerous than the non-mutants, it won't become commonplace.
Slightly-improved colour detection in this day and age will do little to nothing to make those people able to reproduce more than a non-mutant. _Maybe_ the ability to detect one's progeny being ill _slightly_ faster than another might help, but with modern medicine - I find it highly unlikely.
But, I think we all know that strict Darwinian evolution isn't in force as much in the modern world, anyway. If it's part nature and part nurture, someone having a personality that allows them to succeed in the modern industrial world would only be partly genetic, and thus only partly subject to Darwinian principles of evolution.
But then again - who knows what this _could_ lead to? I'm all for deliberate monkeying with our genetic code - once we understand it. (all hail the Human Genome Project!) There are any number of things we could do to improve our species once we have the knowledge to do so. I even came up with a list last week as I was pondering just such a subject:
And, if we ever figure these things out:
Why not? We've circumvented Darwinian evolution to a large extent, though, what with the holes in the ozone layer and pollution and all, we might well wind up with a lot more mutants, at least this way it would be controlled.
I dunno if there's any hardware out there for that purpose, but if you can find an open source encoder and compile it with Intel's SSE or AMD's 3DNOW! (depending on machine type) you'd likely get a substantial boost.
Also, if price really is no object, for efficiency's sake, rip them all to wav first, then encode later.
If quality is a concern, use something like EAC (Exact Audio Copy - for Windows. There's a Linux/unix equivalent available, but I can't remember the name right now) when ripping. You'll get copies as accurate as possible before you start encoding.
Make sure you use the right encoder, and make DAMN sure you use the right settings!
LAME is considered the best encoder by most people, especially at higher bitrates. (I wouldn't bother with anything less than 128, but for my own collection, I do 256.)
I have a CD tower from IKEA (read here: inexpensive) that holds 444 CDs (assuming 1 CD per regular size jewel case). It rotates on it's base, and it's only 13.5" on each side, so it's got a pretty small footprint. You could easily fit 2 of these pretty much anywhere, and have more than enough space for your current collection, with space left over for yet more CDs.
:(
Mine is black, so it goes well with anything. I'm out of space on it, so it's time to get another one.
Caveats: It took a long time to put together.
Also, when loaded, it sinks enough into the carpet to not rotate too well (depends on your flooring, of course). So I got a 'lazy susan' type thing of the same size as the base to put under it - rotates like a champ now.
As I recall, it was something like $80 or so, but I could be completely misremembering. Check out IKEA...
As for FireWire compatability with Linux - Linux supports OHCI style FireWire chips, some chips are OHCI compatible, some ain't. Sony uses some chips that are, and some that aren't. Check the FireWire chip on the particular version of PictureBook you're interested in.
From the Linux1394 page at SourceForge:
Also note, there are multiple generations of the Sony VAIO PictureBook. (the latest uses a Transmeta Crusoe processor instead of the previous Intel Celeron)
I've heard of success with Linux and the PictureBook, but I don't know what generation of PictureBook that was. Hopefully the latest uses the CXD3222 OHCI-compliant chip, as the PictureBook is _definitely_ the beast for me, if I ever have enough money. Those things are pricey!
> It's relatively hard to load up a news reader to comment on an article rather then just type something into a comment box and press "submit"
:(
That's ridiculous. Iyou're reading a UseNet article, you've already GOT a news reader loaded up to read it. All you have to do is hit whatever letter (or click) to start a reply, click when done.
The interface for reading articles in a well-designed newsreader is about a zillion times better than ANY web-based discussion board interface I've ever seen, and that definitely includes Slashdot. It's a pathetic way to do this. But, there is hope on the horizon in the form of ForumZilla.
Using a webbrowser to read a discussion (whether it's reading a usenet article, or reading a webboard like Slashdot) is about as smart as using a webbrowser as your one and only FTP client. The interface is not designed for, and is definitely NOT optimal for the task at hand. Unfortunately, Slashdot isn't a newsgroup.
alt.slashdot.misc - Yeah!
maybe soc.news-nerds-stuff-that-matters.slashdot.misc
I don't think we should rely on that completely, though, as I alluded to in my original posting. We should use solar, wind, biomass, geothermal, as well as this. Diversification is good!
Also note the 0.1% would supposedly, according to the press release, produce 5 times the amount of energy the world needs - so divide by 5 first. Then if only a fraction of that is needed due to producing via other eco-friendly ways, it becomes even smaller. Considering the benefits of eliminating fossil-fuel and nuclear methods of power generation, I'd say we'd see a major net gain in environmental effects worldwide.
That seems backwards to me. Removing kinetic energy from the ocean would lessen such effects, I would think. (Am I missing something basic here?)
It would lessen or almost eliminate erosion at the area where the waves _would have_ hit. That's gotta be good for people living there, right?
I think the only people who would bitch about this are the surfers, dude. Total bummer.
Plus if the figure quoted is acurate, 0.1% of the ocean's kinetic energy being able to power the planet - that's a pretty small amount of the total. Plus we already alter our weather in weird ways just by building cities (take a meteorology class - it's an eye-opener!).
I say go for it. It's gotta be better to be powered by that than by what we are now. Take that, windmills, biomass power plants, geothermal, and solar, and it's very technically feasible to power the whole planet without anywhere near the amount of pollution we currently produce. It's just that it's so much cheaper to do it the dirty way. *sigh*
I agree, it'll get faster quite quickly, but noone should assume that AMD is standing still - the new Athlon core coming with Palomino will probably be able to easily keep up with any P4 improvements, especially with the higher clockrates it'll have, too.
:(
:^)
The thing that would help the P4 most would be getting lots and lots of SSE2 optimizations in all the compilers, and having the apps vendors USE them.
Similarly, what would help AMD is having 3DNOW! optimizations in compilers, and having apps vendors use that - supposedly 3DNOW! is better than SSE2, but few use them at all.
As for 3gHz by 2Q2002, it won't matter - by then the Hammer family from AMD will be out, also with full SSE2 support, and will probably cream any 32-bit CPU from Intel. The real competition from Intel by then will be whatever 64-bit offering they can cook up for the desktop. 2002 will be a very interesting year for processors.
Also note, performance-wise to compare to the Athlon - in 1Q2001 AMD releases the Palomino version of the Athlon, which should perform even better than the current Thunderbird Athlon, plus be at higher clock rates. At the same time, SMP systems will start coming online for the Athlon, which you can use Durons, Thunderbird Athlons, or Palomino Athlons with, so you can grow your system slowly if money is tight. Take two 900mHz Durons and start SMP slowly. Most people probably won't need to go to the Athlon at all! Sweet.
Also note: DDR will get better - current comparisons are being done with systems using, I think CAS 2.5-3-3 memory. Faster DDR is coming soon (though, of course, that'll obviously cost more). I don't mind paying for performance, but I _do_ mind paying for uneven performance (better in some ways than old, worse in others, like Rambus DRDRAM and the Pentium 4).
This all adds up to some pain for Intel in 2001.
Nice, but FC is _vastly_ more expensive than FireWire, especially in the controller/adapter area. You can get a IEEE1394a PCI adapter for well under $100 now. Not sure how much the IEEE1394b adapters will be, but I bet they'll still be much cheaper than FC.
:^) Let's go for Ethernet over FC! '4240BaseT', woohoo!
I agree, though, that FC is some schweet technology, though.
re: who needs wireless when you have a long cable
Uhm...yeah, right.
I live in an apartment, so no running cables between rooms for me - can't wait for those new 802.11b and e devices shown at Comdex.
IEEE1394a (current standard) tops out at 400Mbps (megaBITS). The upcoming IEEE1394b standard spans 800-3200Mbps.
SCSI drives are currently made with interfaces for 160MBps (megaBYTES), and the newest standard - don't know if it's finalized yet - is 320MBps.
Obviously, hard drives cannot transfer at anywhere NEAR those rates, BUT, there's still a reason for them: multiple drives! With the advent of RAID (ATA RAID controllers built-in to motherboards are all the rage now), then these speeds become much more justifiable.
The problem with FireWire hard drives is, as far as I know, there aren't any that have NATIVE FireWire interfaces on them - they're still ATA native devices with FireWire converters built-on to them (usually made by TI). From what I've read online, the current crop of TI chips aren't too efficient, but the next generation (due now or soon) are much better. Nevertheless, I'd feel better about harddrives (I prefer IBM these days) with native FireWire interfaces. Let's hope IEEE1394b gets here right quick.
The advantages of FireWire are numerous:
That's all I can think of right now - I'm sure there are more.
> I'll bet that these kinds of cables eventually become the standard,
> especially if the cooling requirements for x86 hardware is going to
> start requiring 1lb. heatsinks like the upcoming P4...
You bet they will - but perhaps not why you think. SerialATA, the Intel-created (or just backed?) upcoming standard for connecting low-cost harddrives (i.e. non-SCSI drives) have cables about the size of a CD-Audio cable. Very cool (but not as cool as IEEE1394b). Very nice for cooling.
Weren't we all supposed to be using FireWire harddrives by now? *sigh*
"A brain the size of a Beowulf cluster, and what do they have me do? Fly around disasters taking pictures..." *sigh*
Check out the incredibly-fantastic and funny movie called, 'God of Cookery'. It's available on DVD, though quite expensive.
Favourite quote: "Good use of folding chair!"
re: IE vs Nav in speed
:). My bookmark managing needs are probably much more stringent than most people, though, so most people never notice the pathetic state of IE bookmark features. Kinda like Mac users don't seem to notice what they're lacking in features since they're not allowed to do much with their interfaces. I guess if you don't _know_ you're missing something...
IE is much faster at rendering than Nav 4.x, but Nav 4.x is much faster at paging through already-rendered content than IE is. At least, it is on every machine I've used.
re: IE 'only' taking down Explorer, not Windows.
Depends on the version of Windows, and on the particular crash. IE often LOCKS UP THE MACHINE on me - this is across multiple machines, though it's almost always with Win98SE (I've had it happen many times on Win2K, though). And when Explorer crashes - it's often not even remotely stable after killing it and starting - a reboot is almost always necessary for me, under Win98SE.
re: favorites management
You don't seem to do much 'management' of your bookmarks compared to me. I have some bookmarks that are available directly with one click from the personal toolbar, and also have folders that open with one click on the personal toolbar. They are not organized alphabetically on the personal toolbar, nor do I want them to be. IE, unfortunately, insists on re-alphabetizing things on a frequent and apparently-random basis when I try configuring it that way. Also, moving bookmarks and folders around in the bookmarks list in IE is _PATHETIC_, and one of the worst interface paradigms of any program feature of any program that I've ever seen for piece of software. Ever. (I can't be any plainer in my feelings about that, can I?
re: stability and crashing when low on memory
I didn't say my stability problems with IE or Nav 4.x were caused by low memory - they aren't. I've got 128Meg of Memory, and I always close programs I'm not using.
I agree with your assessment of Netscape and an inability to write good code. That's why I'm hoping to just use the Gecko renderer wrapped up in a better shell than Mozilla or Nav6. Mozilla may eventually become a good browser sometime late next year. Maybe. But I bet a FANTASTIC browser will come along using Gecko much, much sooner. Chrome via XUL is cool, but it's not very practical, and it has too much of an impact on performance and stablity, two things which I require, since I use browsers all day long.
Okay, the IE versus Navigator 4.x vs Mozilla discussion is woefully weak on specifics.
Here's my take:
1) Standards Compliance
IE for Windows has better standards compliance than Nav 4.x, but nowhere near as good as Mozilla. IE for Mac is almost as good as that of Mozilla, from what I've read (but no way am I gonna use a Mac just for that!) IE 6 is just around the corner, apparently - let's hope it ups their standards. "We've upped our standards, so up yours!" and all that...
2) Speed
IE seems to connect & download pages faster, and displays very fast (and incrementally reflows, too, even on browser resizing). Nav 4.x connects fast, downloads okay, and displays fairly fast, but has no incremental reflow - very annoying. Mozilla connects, displays, and reflows faster than anything (at least, as of the last night's nightly build). Fastest of all - K-Meleon (Galeon for Windows, basically). Any native framework around the Gecko rendering engine is likely to be faster than anything else. You may pay the price in other features, though (K-Meleon is currently _extremely_ barebones, though that will change soon, I hope.)
3) Stability
IE on Win98SE - not the greatest, on a par (for me, on four completely different machines) with Nav 4.x - only problem is, when it crashes, it often forces you to reboot, or just locks up the whole machine, which Nav 4.x doesn't do. Mozilla - as of last night's daily build, it's 'okay' - the main problem is the Manage Bookmarks feature, which is SLOW SLOW SLOW, and buggy as hell. It doesn't correctly import older Nav 4.x bookmarks (my bookmarks file is rather huge), and moving them around you can lose things entirely, and it's just amazingly slow. It causes the browser to slow down on loadup with a large bookmarks file, too. Very irritating. Hopefully this will change - stability & speedups are currently in the works. Numerous reports of major memory leaks in Mozilla - obviously this browser is still in heavy development though.
4) Interface
IE - pretty standard Windows - easy to figure out if that's what you've been using. Horribly crippled interface for managing bookmarks. Just Horrible. And I hate how they're stored, too (each URL as an individual file, though that's a personal preference).
Nav 4.x - mostly standard for Windows - has some quirks. Very good bookmark management - allows much better bookmark access than any of the others, including Mozilla.
Mozilla - needs to take a look at managing bookmarks & accessing bookmarks in Nav 4.x and implement it. Needs 10-50x speed improvement (not exaggerating) in bookmark management. Something seriously wrong there. In the interface arena, Mozilla will have major advantages for heavy customization, and customization more easily accomplished than for IE, but with the possibility of loading down the browser with a lot of junk - but that's the user's choice! Lean and mean theme or heavy on the eye candy - it's up to you. Choice is Good(tm). I prefer a native widget set framework around the Gecko engine, so I like Galeon for Linux, and I think the K-Meleon project for Windows will do quite well in the future. I've heard that there may be a similar project for the MacOS, but I don't know. Considering the reported quality of IE for the Mac, I'm not sure how necessary that is, unless someone wants a native Mac OS X type browser.
5) Platform Independence
IE - total joke. "Multiple platforms" from MS means Win2K, WinME & Win98 at best. Nav 4.x - excellent. Mozilla - also excellent.
6) Features
IE - very very good, especially considering it's target market. Very good feature set if you're not concerned with security by default (yes, Microsoft, I mean you). On an Intranet basis, IE and it's ActiveX controls can do some fantastic things. On the Internet at large, freaking scary. It's got good regular browser features except for the horribly-crippled bookmark management & access, which should be an easy fix (you'd think).
Nav 4.x - pretty good, better cookie & cache management than IE (though I think there may be an update for additional cookie features for IE - not sure). Very good bookmark management (on a par with Spry Mosaic of old...). Incremental reflow - none, which is very very bad.
Mozilla - very very good, easily on a par with IE for Internet usage - better bookmark management, though still quite buggy in that department. Better cookie management, also has better image loading management (ability to only load images from the same domain as the website - which is not present in the Navigator 6). Very extensible, albeit in a different way than IE.
So that's my take on the situation. Each browser has it's good and bad points - like anything else, it's a matter of how things work on YOUR systems (some people find IE more stable than Nav 4.x, some less so - depends on your machine). Many interface issues are a matter of personal preference. Some people don't need the extensive bookmark handling that I demand. Some people want better security. Some people don't run Windows as their primary platform (or at all). Keep in mind many of IE's loading speed advantages are being it loads many DLLs at bootup - Nav & Mozilla aren't allowed to do that. Also note that using a native widget framework around the Gecko renderer can help approach that loading speed (you folks really should check out the K-Meleon project).
Okay, that's enough for now...
It's apparently more secure, due to security audits. Just hearsay, though...
"It might have been the Chad..."
:^)
ps if anyone has yet to see it - go see the movie NOW! It's stupid, but amazingly fun, despite the presence of Tom Green & Matt LeBlanc.
*grin*
Mechanically-enhanced death monkeys! Right on. Calvin (of Calvin & Hobbes) would be quite pleased.
See, kids, science _can_ be interesting!
> However, Gecko takes a little under ten seconds
> to render it from my hard drive. IE takes a
> little under two. That's a pretty bad gap.
I'd find it interesting to see how long it takes for Galeon (or K-Meleon, if you're running Windows) to render that.
But the regions that have common issues are usually NOT state-wide, and certainly aren't in the same place as the state boundaries. Let's take the PNW as an example, as I live there, too.
Western Washington has MUCH more in common with Western Oregon than with Eastern Washington.
Also, the regions that have REAL issues are usually not as large as a state would be, even IF those state regions were homogenous. Puget Sound has issues completely different than those of, say, Portland/Vancouver. And even smaller than that - Seattle versus the 'East Side' - very different issues.
If you look at how people voted during the election - there were major differences by region even within the small states, yet all you see is the total of the EC votes for that state going to one candidate or the other.
The United States may have started out as a conglomeration of states, true, but it's over 200 years later, and things are VASTLY different now. Implementing laws (say, gun control) in one state and not all is pretty ridiculous - people will (and have) just go over the state border and bring them back in. Same thing for state-by-state abortion laws, etc. The age where a 'state' in this country really made sense is long, LONG gone.
Nope, 2/3 of _Congress_ _AND_ 3/4 of the States. You're right, though, VERY tough to pass.
What would be MUCH better would be for all the states to split their EC votes ala Maine. Then the smaller states would get to keep their unfair influence over the election, but the EC votes would much more accurately reflect the popular vote. Not completely fair, true, but vastly more likely to happen (especially after this year's fiasco).
Why 'unfair', do you ask? Simple - yes, EC votes are alloted by population, but it's not proportional - a state with a population of 10 million doesn't have twice the EC votes as a state with a population of 5 million. If you live in a populous state, THEN YOUR VOTE IS WORTH LESS.
The smaller states get their representation by their Senators & Reps - the President is for everyone, and should, IMO, be elected solely on the popular vote.
President -> Represents everyone, should be elected by everyone (against the Constitution)
Senators & Reps -> Represent their state, should be elected by their state (how it works now)
Simple, right? Fair? Seems so to me! *shrug*
I must say, though, that all this political talk on Slashdot & elsewhere is very heartening to see. Finally everyone seems to give a damn! Right on.