Humans are social creatures and the need to "press the flesh" will exist long past our lifetimes.
In this case Fatal1ty is a legend, a sort of real myth. He doesn't get paid to play well, he gets paid to make public apperances. Fans want to see him. They want to hear him talk. The want to watch him play, not his avatar.
The Macdonalds spilt coffee case was a turning point. Regardless of the possible legitimacy of case (something I do not wish to argue right now). The case was high profile and was seen by many as being frivolous. The damages that were awarded in that case were unprecendented. It is not the Macdonalds suit was a first, but it recieved a lot of publicity.
Lawyers are also part of the problem. In cases like this lawyers are often not acting in the best interests of their clients. In the past a lawyer would have worked to quickly settle these types of claims (versus dating companies) for real losses: costs of the subscription service, costs of the "fake" data, and a couple of hours of lawyers fees. Lawyers on both sides of the fence now see dollar signs and are far more willing to take simple cases to court for the gamble of a big payout.
Finally there is something to be said of the eighties. A decade of greedy, self centered, shallow people and ideas. People have always measured self worth, and the worth of others, but the size of their band account. However there was also the ideals of honour and reputation. A doctor (or other professional) was held in high regard because they were a doctor, not because they were rich. The 80's really finished off those ideals. Reputation became antiquated. In the 80's how much money you made was more important then how you did it. Ambulance chaseing lawyers are the result.
None of this is to say that 50's, 60's or 70's were any good. I prefer to look forward then concentrate on the mistakes of the past. However somethings it is interesting to look back at were society came from.
The original stamped CDs will out live any CDs from a burner. Create CD images from the originals and possibly FLAC files. Put the original CDs away and never touch them again. Copy the cd images to DVD and copy the DVD every couple of years.
Have a look at the X2 block diagram. Both cores have direct access to the crossbar switch. The Opteron is the same but with more HT lanes. The situation you describe where one core or cpu accesses ram through another core is a mainboard implementation issue. Ideally each processor (of one or more cores) should have local ram. However not all boards are wired up that way. Most are.
The key here is not that there can be shared ram buses. The key is the crossbar switch versus the shared bus. The switch allows core_A to access ram while core_B accesses the HT.
You are right that the 25v stuff can be cheap. I would not hesitate to use old PA gear. My point was only that it is not required. I didn't want anyone to think that they couldn't use the old hi-fi gear sitting in their (parent's) basement.
With thicker cable you can run 50, 100, or 200 (with 10 gauge ack!) foot long runs and use 8ohm speakers. You can do longer if you are willing to accept a bit of atenuation. Regardless of the system used there are capacitance issues beyond about 50feet that will atenuate some frequencies more then others. But as the poster was willing to use awfull computer speakers they shouldn't have any issues with old 8ohm gear. Even with the atenuation and odd frequency responce it should sound better then computer speakers.
In terms of hardware Sun's opteron servers are better then Dell's server. Opteron processors are faster and cooler then Intel Xeons. In terms of performance per watt (of heat) and performance per dollar Sun has the advantage.
The Sun hardware is always going to be fully support by Solaris. The latest and greats SCSI controllers will work. The nice lights out stuff is just going to work. RHEL3 support for Dell is always going to lag a bit. And you will run into problems where a RHEL patches breaks a Dell patch or vice versa.
I would not switch to Sun overnight. I will be waiting to see how committed Sun is to opensource Solaris10, postgresql, and opteron hardware. You should consider getting a Sun for your next dev server.
As another poster pointed out it is the random reward system in Diablo 2 and similar games that keep you playing. After you have played Doom once you pretty much know what to expect behind every door. In D2 even after you have beaten the game and maxed out your character there is still the chance of a random unique or set item drop. D2 was also genius with its semi random dungeons and terrain.
Two buddies and I maxed several characters in D2 and the expansion pack. We held 2, 3 or more online sessions of several hours durring the week, and often longer sessions on the weekend (especially in winter). Then one day we burnt out on the game. In the middle of an evening session with mid level characters we stopped in town for a quick item sell and refit. We chatted for a bit, and never played the game again. Those were good times.
TSR was selling books at a lose from about the mid eighties until their demise. That is why those books were cheaper then the WotC books. It is expensive to publish a hard cover book.
Palladium has some great game worlds, but their game mechanics are probably the worst system ever published. The Palladium game mechanics are inconsistent, cumbersome, and rarely fit the game world. For example, in the TMNT game in was not possible to creat the TMNT characters under the Palladium rules.
Moderating is like voting. It only works if the voters aren't stupid.
Signal11 proved this years ago. He posted many posts conforming to your points 1 and 3. Especially 3. IIRC many of his posts were longer which gave the post an air of insight, when in reality the post was just fluff.
Insider sources say that the smaller 1024 node model will have a MSRP of 10 MegaBucks. Ofcourse shipping, installation, and remodelling the server room are extra.
Cray already offers the Opteron Based XD1. The smallest 12 processor model is estimated to cost $100k USD.
Multimode refers to electromagnetic theory and wave propagation. Wikipedia tries to explain it.
Re:Cat3-Cat7 vs. ST, SC, LC is a wash.
on
Fiber Optic vs Copper
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
Everything you wrote is contrary to my experience with fiber optics.
Changing fiber connectors is not expensive. It takes more skill then crimping copper, but it is not hard. It requires some specialized equipment but it is nothing outrageous. Changing the connector types should not be an issue. All infrastructure fiber should be terminated in a patch panel with a pigtail used to connect the hardware (servers/switchs/etc) to the patch panel. Fiber is somewhat fragile so once infrastructure fiber in in place it is best if it is not touched.
I am not aware of any shop replaceing GBICs every other week, every other month, or indeed ever. In my experience fiber transcievers have been more reliable then copper. At any rate Cisco GBICs aren't that expensive. Through Google I found multimode transcievers for $180.
Any shop that ran copper 10 years ago is running new copper now to take adavantage of 1Gbit/s. Those shops will be running new copper again in 10 years. Fiber shops are using the same old fiber with new switches. When 10Gbit becomes affordable fiber shops will switch over to that.
At my last shop every 24 devices had a 1Gbit/s fiber link to the fiber plant. This density was choosen to keep the copper runs short. Most switches are not full so there are actually fewer then 24 devices per fiber. There are 4-6 dark fibers for every fiber in use. This gives room for spares and future growth. That may be excessive, but the cost of fiber is cheaper then labour. It is a great setup.
There was a lot more wrong there then three phase power. My server room has three phase power. Most servers have redundant power supplies and are plugged into two different phases. I don't have any failing nics. It sounds like there was some big grounding faults.
The next time you run into an issue like this get an isolating transformer, two switches with fiber ports, and a short length of fiber. Problem solved. People like to think fiber is expensive. It isn't.
More shops should use fiber. Once in place fiber does not have to be upgraded. The same multimode fiber used for old 56kbit/s links can be used for 10Gbit/s. You may need a little pigtail to convert from the old bayonet connectors to the new MTRJ but that is not an issue. The only downside is that it is a little harder to replace the fiber ends compared to an RJ45 connector. But any shop large enough to use fiber can afford the kit to replace the connectors, or hire one of the many contractors to make an onsite visit.
good DC/DC converter is significantly less efficient than a transformer
A good DC-DC converter is actually a DC to AC to DC converter. It can be more efficient that a 60/50Hz AC to DC converter as a high frequency AC is used. High frequency transformers are smaller and can be more efficient the low frequency transformers. Some AC to DC converters are actually 60/50Hz AC to DC to high frequency AC to DC converters.
The question of AC vs DC power is complex. There are advantages and disadvantages to both. You can't just count the number of conversion steps, or guess the efficiency of the converters.
The record of simultaneous development isn't good. It shouldn't be a surprise. Even if the graphics capability is on par, the user controls on a console are completely different then those on a PC. User controls are often overlooked, but need to be intregal to the game. More then any other factor bad user controls will break a game. There is also an annoying tendancy to dumb down simultaneously developed games, or games ported from the PC to the console. Which I find odd as there have been some great, wonderfully complex console games.
The very best white LEDs are only as efficient as CFLs under ideal conditions. LEDs are best used for low light levels. When used for higher light levels the LEDs overheat producing less light per watt. CFLs are still the best for household lighting.
I suspect the opposite: AMD won't be bullied by Dell. In the past AMD may have been willing to cut a deal, but Dell would have been correct that the volume and performance weren't there. HP is Intel's Itanium partner and the biggest (only?) supplier of Itanic systems and they don't seem to have a problem with selling AMD systems. Given HP's recently deposed CEO, if Intel was offering killer deals I would expect HP to be Intel only. It could also be that Michael Dell is a stubborn bastard. He wouldn't be the first CEO to say something stupid and not admit to being wrong.
It is slowly happening. One the adds for Sun's Opteron servers lists "cooler" as a selling feature. About six months ago Intel stated that the next generation of cpu would emphasis operations per watt. Intel has known for a while that the power requirements of the P4 architechture was not sustainable, but it takes a while to develop new chips. These Xeons were released as a stop gap to keep investors and Dell happy.
Even with the vmware driver Windows video performance under vmware is really really slow. Slower then you would expect even with the VMware overhead. I find the the vmware driver for X11 to be faster. X under VMware is often useable when Windows isn't.
With Linux VMs I use X. With a windows host I use the Cygwin X packages. With a linux host I use the Xnest server. I enable XDMCP in xdm/gdm/kdm and start X with the option:
There is this popular notion that captureing an animal alive and releasing it into the wild is more humane. In reality it isn't. More often then not the released animal will starve to death due to increased compitition and lack of food. Death by starvation is not humane. In addition, some animals, such as the North American raccoon, are very good at finding their way home. It is better to kill the animal quickly with a properly sized killing trap. "Quick setting" or "easy setting" traps are usually weaker and should be avoided.
Do not use glue traps. The results are disturbing. Poison should only be used as a last result. Not only is poison inhumane, there is also the problem of hidden animal carcasses. Poison often dosen't work against rats anyway. Rats are smart enough to avoid it.
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Complaints of overly specialized pieces were valid for too long, but aren't valid any more. Any one still complaining hasn't looked recently.
Humans are social creatures and the need to "press the flesh" will exist long past our lifetimes.
In this case Fatal1ty is a legend, a sort of real myth. He doesn't get paid to play well, he gets paid to make public apperances. Fans want to see him. They want to hear him talk. The want to watch him play, not his avatar.
The Macdonalds spilt coffee case was a turning point. Regardless of the possible legitimacy of case (something I do not wish to argue right now). The case was high profile and was seen by many as being frivolous. The damages that were awarded in that case were unprecendented. It is not the Macdonalds suit was a first, but it recieved a lot of publicity.
Lawyers are also part of the problem. In cases like this lawyers are often not acting in the best interests of their clients. In the past a lawyer would have worked to quickly settle these types of claims (versus dating companies) for real losses: costs of the subscription service, costs of the "fake" data, and a couple of hours of lawyers fees. Lawyers on both sides of the fence now see dollar signs and are far more willing to take simple cases to court for the gamble of a big payout.
Finally there is something to be said of the eighties. A decade of greedy, self centered, shallow people and ideas. People have always measured self worth, and the worth of others, but the size of their band account. However there was also the ideals of honour and reputation. A doctor (or other professional) was held in high regard because they were a doctor, not because they were rich. The 80's really finished off those ideals. Reputation became antiquated. In the 80's how much money you made was more important then how you did it. Ambulance chaseing lawyers are the result.
None of this is to say that 50's, 60's or 70's were any good. I prefer to look forward then concentrate on the mistakes of the past. However somethings it is interesting to look back at were society came from.
Laser etching for your mac. I saw this linked in another post and am now considering it.
The original stamped CDs will out live any CDs from a burner. Create CD images from the originals and possibly FLAC files. Put the original CDs away and never touch them again. Copy the cd images to DVD and copy the DVD every couple of years.
Have a look at the X2 block diagram. Both cores have direct access to the crossbar switch. The Opteron is the same but with more HT lanes. The situation you describe where one core or cpu accesses ram through another core is a mainboard implementation issue. Ideally each processor (of one or more cores) should have local ram. However not all boards are wired up that way. Most are.
The key here is not that there can be shared ram buses. The key is the crossbar switch versus the shared bus. The switch allows core_A to access ram while core_B accesses the HT.
You are right that the 25v stuff can be cheap. I would not hesitate to use old PA gear. My point was only that it is not required. I didn't want anyone to think that they couldn't use the old hi-fi gear sitting in their (parent's) basement.
With thicker cable you can run 50, 100, or 200 (with 10 gauge ack!) foot long runs and use 8ohm speakers. You can do longer if you are willing to accept a bit of atenuation. Regardless of the system used there are capacitance issues beyond about 50feet that will atenuate some frequencies more then others. But as the poster was willing to use awfull computer speakers they shouldn't have any issues with old 8ohm gear. Even with the atenuation and odd frequency responce it should sound better then computer speakers.
RHEL3 Linux on Dell equipment.
In terms of hardware Sun's opteron servers are better then Dell's server. Opteron processors are faster and cooler then Intel Xeons. In terms of performance per watt (of heat) and performance per dollar Sun has the advantage.
The Sun hardware is always going to be fully support by Solaris. The latest and greats SCSI controllers will work. The nice lights out stuff is just going to work. RHEL3 support for Dell is always going to lag a bit. And you will run into problems where a RHEL patches breaks a Dell patch or vice versa.
I would not switch to Sun overnight. I will be waiting to see how committed Sun is to opensource Solaris10, postgresql, and opteron hardware. You should consider getting a Sun for your next dev server.
25V is overkill for most homes. Regular speaker level signals driving 8 ohm speakers will be fine in most cases.
As another poster pointed out it is the random reward system in Diablo 2 and similar games that keep you playing. After you have played Doom once you pretty much know what to expect behind every door. In D2 even after you have beaten the game and maxed out your character there is still the chance of a random unique or set item drop. D2 was also genius with its semi random dungeons and terrain.
Two buddies and I maxed several characters in D2 and the expansion pack. We held 2, 3 or more online sessions of several hours durring the week, and often longer sessions on the weekend (especially in winter). Then one day we burnt out on the game. In the middle of an evening session with mid level characters we stopped in town for a quick item sell and refit. We chatted for a bit, and never played the game again. Those were good times.
TSR was selling books at a lose from about the mid eighties until their demise. That is why those books were cheaper then the WotC books. It is expensive to publish a hard cover book.
Palladium has some great game worlds, but their game mechanics are probably the worst system ever published. The Palladium game mechanics are inconsistent, cumbersome, and rarely fit the game world. For example, in the TMNT game in was not possible to creat the TMNT characters under the Palladium rules.
Moderating is like voting. It only works if the voters aren't stupid.
Signal11 proved this years ago. He posted many posts conforming to your points 1 and 3. Especially 3. IIRC many of his posts were longer which gave the post an air of insight, when in reality the post was just fluff.
Insider sources say that the smaller 1024 node model will have a MSRP of 10 MegaBucks. Ofcourse shipping, installation, and remodelling the server room are extra.
Cray already offers the Opteron Based XD1. The smallest 12 processor model is estimated to cost $100k USD.
Multimode refers to electromagnetic theory and wave propagation. Wikipedia tries to explain it.
Everything you wrote is contrary to my experience with fiber optics.
Changing fiber connectors is not expensive. It takes more skill then crimping copper, but it is not hard. It requires some specialized equipment but it is nothing outrageous. Changing the connector types should not be an issue. All infrastructure fiber should be terminated in a patch panel with a pigtail used to connect the hardware (servers/switchs/etc) to the patch panel. Fiber is somewhat fragile so once infrastructure fiber in in place it is best if it is not touched.
I am not aware of any shop replaceing GBICs every other week, every other month, or indeed ever. In my experience fiber transcievers have been more reliable then copper. At any rate Cisco GBICs aren't that expensive. Through Google I found multimode transcievers for $180.
Any shop that ran copper 10 years ago is running new copper now to take adavantage of 1Gbit/s. Those shops will be running new copper again in 10 years. Fiber shops are using the same old fiber with new switches. When 10Gbit becomes affordable fiber shops will switch over to that.
At my last shop every 24 devices had a 1Gbit/s fiber link to the fiber plant. This density was choosen to keep the copper runs short. Most switches are not full so there are actually fewer then 24 devices per fiber. There are 4-6 dark fibers for every fiber in use. This gives room for spares and future growth. That may be excessive, but the cost of fiber is cheaper then labour. It is a great setup.
There was a lot more wrong there then three phase power. My server room has three phase power. Most servers have redundant power supplies and are plugged into two different phases. I don't have any failing nics. It sounds like there was some big grounding faults.
The next time you run into an issue like this get an isolating transformer, two switches with fiber ports, and a short length of fiber. Problem solved. People like to think fiber is expensive. It isn't.
More shops should use fiber. Once in place fiber does not have to be upgraded. The same multimode fiber used for old 56kbit/s links can be used for 10Gbit/s. You may need a little pigtail to convert from the old bayonet connectors to the new MTRJ but that is not an issue. The only downside is that it is a little harder to replace the fiber ends compared to an RJ45 connector. But any shop large enough to use fiber can afford the kit to replace the connectors, or hire one of the many contractors to make an onsite visit.
good DC/DC converter is significantly less efficient than a transformer
A good DC-DC converter is actually a DC to AC to DC converter. It can be more efficient that a 60/50Hz AC to DC converter as a high frequency AC is used. High frequency transformers are smaller and can be more efficient the low frequency transformers. Some AC to DC converters are actually 60/50Hz AC to DC to high frequency AC to DC converters.
The question of AC vs DC power is complex. There are advantages and disadvantages to both. You can't just count the number of conversion steps, or guess the efficiency of the converters.
The record of simultaneous development isn't good. It shouldn't be a surprise. Even if the graphics capability is on par, the user controls on a console are completely different then those on a PC. User controls are often overlooked, but need to be intregal to the game. More then any other factor bad user controls will break a game. There is also an annoying tendancy to dumb down simultaneously developed games, or games ported from the PC to the console. Which I find odd as there have been some great, wonderfully complex console games.
The very best white LEDs are only as efficient as CFLs under ideal conditions. LEDs are best used for low light levels. When used for higher light levels the LEDs overheat producing less light per watt. CFLs are still the best for household lighting.
I suspect the opposite: AMD won't be bullied by Dell. In the past AMD may have been willing to cut a deal, but Dell would have been correct that the volume and performance weren't there. HP is Intel's Itanium partner and the biggest (only?) supplier of Itanic systems and they don't seem to have a problem with selling AMD systems. Given HP's recently deposed CEO, if Intel was offering killer deals I would expect HP to be Intel only. It could also be that Michael Dell is a stubborn bastard. He wouldn't be the first CEO to say something stupid and not admit to being wrong.
It is slowly happening. One the adds for Sun's Opteron servers lists "cooler" as a selling feature. About six months ago Intel stated that the next generation of cpu would emphasis operations per watt. Intel has known for a while that the power requirements of the P4 architechture was not sustainable, but it takes a while to develop new chips. These Xeons were released as a stop gap to keep investors and Dell happy.
Even with the vmware driver Windows video performance under vmware is really really slow. Slower then you would expect even with the VMware overhead. I find the the vmware driver for X11 to be faster. X under VMware is often useable when Windows isn't.
With Linux VMs I use X. With a windows host I use the Cygwin X packages. With a linux host I use the Xnest server. I enable XDMCP in xdm/gdm/kdm and start X with the option:
There is this popular notion that captureing an animal alive and releasing it into the wild is more humane. In reality it isn't. More often then not the released animal will starve to death due to increased compitition and lack of food. Death by starvation is not humane. In addition, some animals, such as the North American raccoon, are very good at finding their way home. It is better to kill the animal quickly with a properly sized killing trap. "Quick setting" or "easy setting" traps are usually weaker and should be avoided.
Do not use glue traps. The results are disturbing. Poison should only be used as a last result. Not only is poison inhumane, there is also the problem of hidden animal carcasses. Poison often dosen't work against rats anyway. Rats are smart enough to avoid it.
The vmware tools just installs an optomized vga driver. There is no 3d acceleration, and little, if any, 2d acceleration.
Transgaming would work better.