As a private reseller, I've already built several "home-media computers" for clients. They cost well below $1500 to build a very good one, and have full TiVo-esque functionality, no copy protection, plus you can use it as a full fledged computer too. With a quick Visual-Basic frontend children can use it without a hassle, and channels can be password protected. I've been building machines like this for awhile now and barely make any profit on it. If this becomes Microsoft's new multi-million dollar product I am going to cry.
The only thing even close to being almost ready about the PS3 is that the processor has been taped out. This means that they have the plans on paper for the chip -- that's it. There's no working chip, no fab process figured out yet, no software, no sound or off-core GPU (if there is one?) or anything. Claiming the PS3 is almost ready is like a real estate agent claiming your new house is almost ready when all he has is a blueprint with no lot, and no materials.
I'm a system builder and a recent high school graduate and I'd have to say the biggest culprit stopping us from ditching the floppy disk altogether is schools first, and businesses who aren't "with-it" second. I got rid of the floppy drive in my system about 3 years ago but had to put it back in for "higher level" Computer Science IB courses (which are a total waste of time BTW) and even now that I'm going to the University of Calgary, the same place our beloved creator of Java graduated from, my courses need me to move my files via floppy disk.
Every single system I've built in the last 6 months, my customers needed floppy disks for school or for non-computer-oriented businesses. The problem is all because everyone relies on floppy disks, either to move files, or for booting off of.
We need better flash adaptors!! The only flash card adaptors I've seen in person are for Sony Memorysticks and require watch batteries. I think all the legacy-floppy problems would be solved if someone were to produce a universal flash adaptor that worked in a floppy drive, and accepted all of the common flash media types: memory stick, compact flash, smart media, MMC, and secure digital. Best yet, it would use a small generator driven by the floppy drive's motor instead of a watch battery. Eventually, certain flash memory types would be phased out, and all hardware would be oriented to accept a standard type of flash memory. Flash readers should be made available that plug directly into the ide-floppy cable. The closest I've seen to this is a internal universal USB flash reader, which doesn't solve the legacy issues because so many existing motherboard can't boot from a USB device.
Please excuse my lack of organization in the above post; I'm ferret-sitting right now and no matter what I do I can't seem to stop the little bugger from taking a crap on the carpet or digging on the carpet.
My brother's currently on an engineering internship in Japan and he says many of the larger arcades already have this. Forget DDR, there's people swinging swords around, swinging baseball bats, and even golf clubs. There's even some *AHEM* adult interactive games.
Met with some folks at AMD a few weeks ago, so maybe I can contribute here:
It does have a IHS (Integrated heat spreader) so you will not chip cores!
It still runs damn hot though.
It is HEAVY. I mean physically heavy. I don't know why.
Current Opteron chips (the Clawhammer) are running at 800-900MHz, and have a very high number of IPCs (instructions per clock cycle) so they perform very well.
They will ship at relatively low clock speeds, but perform equivlently to AthlonXPs or Pentium 4s clocked much higher.
The first of the series will likely either be called the Opteron 3000+.
I remember when my HP8100 4x2x24x burner was a rippin' little machine and I got it at a steal for only $450 Canadian. When I got it home, I found it could only burn up to 74 minutes on a CD, where a friend of mine could burn right up to 83 minutes! I was frustrated with my purchase and started digging around on the internet. It turns out that the limit was a firmware thing and not hardware at all; some nice fella out there even put up a modded firmware for me, so I could get those extra few minutes onto a CD-R. I flashed my burner's firmware, and voila! I can now fully utilize 80 minute discs.
I now have a 40x Liteon I got for barely more than $100 Canadian, and I've been running it at 48x for a while now. Not only is it marginally faster, but my burner now supports Mt. Rainier, and the burn quality is significantly better! Before discs from this burner done at higher than 16x skipped in my car, now I can write them right up to 48x and they work great.
There's also a lot of CD-R media out there that's rebadged falsely. There's got to be hundreds of brands of CD-Rs out there, but there aren't nearly that many factories producing CD-Rs. It's not the case so much anymore, but 80 minute discs and discs rated past 4x used to cost quite a lot more than other ones, but if you knew what no-name brands to buy, you'd end up with identical discs to the more expensive ones.
Rebadging takes place everywhere in the computer market, so keep your eyes peeled. Now and again, Dell sells refurbished monitors at REALLY good prices. I mean $300 Canadian for a 21" monitor. A friend of mine grabbed two of them a while ago, and he popped it open to check the manufacture date. Not only were the monitors only a couple of months old, there were giant Sony stickers inside. It's no secret that Dell monitors are usually remarked Sonys, but these were barely used, high end Sony monitors selling dirt cheap.
Slashdot Mirror
Dev-C++ 5
What does "no mo mo mo" mean?
Screwed up errors suck.
Dev-C++ 5
What's wrong with the debugger?
Who wrote this crap-pile?
... war driving from the comfort of your living room.
They also don't have a problem with selling "Mama Peckeroni" pasta. It's peckerlicious!
Upon further examination, the article made a lot more sense.
Oh no, I love ferretstore.com. I'd call this guy a but I'd be afraid of getting myself sued too.
As a private reseller, I've already built several "home-media computers" for clients. They cost well below $1500 to build a very good one, and have full TiVo-esque functionality, no copy protection, plus you can use it as a full fledged computer too. With a quick Visual-Basic frontend children can use it without a hassle, and channels can be password protected. I've been building machines like this for awhile now and barely make any profit on it. If this becomes Microsoft's new multi-million dollar product I am going to cry.
Damn! Does that mean that my patent on vowels won't hold up in court?
The only thing even close to being almost ready about the PS3 is that the processor has been taped out. This means that they have the plans on paper for the chip -- that's it. There's no working chip, no fab process figured out yet, no software, no sound or off-core GPU (if there is one?) or anything. Claiming the PS3 is almost ready is like a real estate agent claiming your new house is almost ready when all he has is a blueprint with no lot, and no materials.
If only I understood Thai, so I could set Anti-Mal to Anti-CowboyNeal mode.
I'm a system builder and a recent high school graduate and I'd have to say the biggest culprit stopping us from ditching the floppy disk altogether is schools first, and businesses who aren't "with-it" second. I got rid of the floppy drive in my system about 3 years ago but had to put it back in for "higher level" Computer Science IB courses (which are a total waste of time BTW) and even now that I'm going to the University of Calgary, the same place our beloved creator of Java graduated from, my courses need me to move my files via floppy disk.
Every single system I've built in the last 6 months, my customers needed floppy disks for school or for non-computer-oriented businesses. The problem is all because everyone relies on floppy disks, either to move files, or for booting off of.
We need better flash adaptors!! The only flash card adaptors I've seen in person are for Sony Memorysticks and require watch batteries. I think all the legacy-floppy problems would be solved if someone were to produce a universal flash adaptor that worked in a floppy drive, and accepted all of the common flash media types: memory stick, compact flash, smart media, MMC, and secure digital. Best yet, it would use a small generator driven by the floppy drive's motor instead of a watch battery. Eventually, certain flash memory types would be phased out, and all hardware would be oriented to accept a standard type of flash memory. Flash readers should be made available that plug directly into the ide-floppy cable. The closest I've seen to this is a internal universal USB flash reader, which doesn't solve the legacy issues because so many existing motherboard can't boot from a USB device.
Please excuse my lack of organization in the above post; I'm ferret-sitting right now and no matter what I do I can't seem to stop the little bugger from taking a crap on the carpet or digging on the carpet.
My brother's currently on an engineering internship in Japan and he says many of the larger arcades already have this. Forget DDR, there's people swinging swords around, swinging baseball bats, and even golf clubs. There's even some *AHEM* adult interactive games.
Finally, I can store all my nude photos of CowboyNeal on a single drive!
Met with some folks at AMD a few weeks ago, so maybe I can contribute here:
It does have a IHS (Integrated heat spreader) so you will not chip cores!
It still runs damn hot though.
It is HEAVY. I mean physically heavy. I don't know why.
Current Opteron chips (the Clawhammer) are running at 800-900MHz, and have a very high number of IPCs (instructions per clock cycle) so they perform very well.
They will ship at relatively low clock speeds, but perform equivlently to AthlonXPs or Pentium 4s clocked much higher.
The first of the series will likely either be called the Opteron 3000+.
I remember when my HP8100 4x2x24x burner was a rippin' little machine and I got it at a steal for only $450 Canadian. When I got it home, I found it could only burn up to 74 minutes on a CD, where a friend of mine could burn right up to 83 minutes! I was frustrated with my purchase and started digging around on the internet. It turns out that the limit was a firmware thing and not hardware at all; some nice fella out there even put up a modded firmware for me, so I could get those extra few minutes onto a CD-R. I flashed my burner's firmware, and voila! I can now fully utilize 80 minute discs.
I now have a 40x Liteon I got for barely more than $100 Canadian, and I've been running it at 48x for a while now. Not only is it marginally faster, but my burner now supports Mt. Rainier, and the burn quality is significantly better! Before discs from this burner done at higher than 16x skipped in my car, now I can write them right up to 48x and they work great.
There's also a lot of CD-R media out there that's rebadged falsely. There's got to be hundreds of brands of CD-Rs out there, but there aren't nearly that many factories producing CD-Rs. It's not the case so much anymore, but 80 minute discs and discs rated past 4x used to cost quite a lot more than other ones, but if you knew what no-name brands to buy, you'd end up with identical discs to the more expensive ones.
Rebadging takes place everywhere in the computer market, so keep your eyes peeled. Now and again, Dell sells refurbished monitors at REALLY good prices. I mean $300 Canadian for a 21" monitor. A friend of mine grabbed two of them a while ago, and he popped it open to check the manufacture date. Not only were the monitors only a couple of months old, there were giant Sony stickers inside. It's no secret that Dell monitors are usually remarked Sonys, but these were barely used, high end Sony monitors selling dirt cheap.