Well, they have already decided to use OpenSecSH for the new name - look at the websites with that name.
There is more to security than encryption. Security at a basic level is authentication (you are who you say you are), validation (you sent what was received) and encryption (no one else could read what you sent).
Other names it could have are "OpenSRSH" for "Open Secure Remote Shell", or why not come up with a good name for once, like microsoft always manage to do? "Secure Terminal Client|Server" just to get one over M$, and it describes what it does very nicely.
Most people don't want to fork out ~$1000 for a new monitor that often. I know I plan on keeping my CRT for a lot longer than that.
Well, in three years time these things will have come down in price significantly. If a 1280x1024 18" one of these displays costs $2000 this time next year, then it will cost $800 three years afterwards, and have a resolution of 1600x1200 or more....
Still, I am more excited about the use of these displays in PDAs and mobile phones. This story was on ZDNet.co.uk a lot earlier today, and they mentioned that mobile phone displays using this technology had already been produced, in full colour. Anything make makes a monochrome low-contrast crappy screen like a mobile phone is good in my books. Imagine an Ericsson R380 with one of these screens. *** Drool *** (like the blubbering eedeeot that I am).
This drive has a few advantages over the standard floppy:
USB based so you can take the drive as well as the disks with you when you want to transfer some files to another computer - this obviates the problem of the target computer needing a compatible media drive, the main problem with Zips and SuperDisks. Being USB should mean that it can transfer data faster as well as it isn't limited by the MFM controller on the PC. The Sony Mavica used 3.5" floppies, but had a custom MFM controller that worked 4-8 times faster (oh why can't VIA et al use this in their chipsets).
Slimline Drive that is under 1/2" high. When an IDE version is made, then this could become the floppy disk drive of choice for servers etc, and all thin clients and compact PCs.
240MB capacity need I say any more?
Price at under $40 for an external slimline drive, this isn't priced too badly. An internal IDE (or USB version that connects to a motherboard USB header) version should be even cheaper. Still, an internal version would have to be under $25 to become a viable alternative to a $10 floppy.
Erm....
However, the market is crowded in this area, and later this year a 500MB 'floppy' technology is going to be released, the PlayDrive or something, and the disks are small. Now if they would license the technology for free then maybe a real floppy replacement would be created, but if it remains proprietary then its success may be limited.
The problem with USB is that you cannot boot from it at the moment. This would require BIOS support, and most BIOS manufacturers are more interested in adding overclocking features rather than hardware support to them at the moment. Still, this makes a pretty good laptop disk drive for simple file transfer (unlike CD-R which is too much effort to transfer a single file). Now if only ATX cases came with a space for front-facing USB ports to be inserted...
At least Linux/FreeBSD/Solaris etc are now converging on a common interface or two, instead of 20. Gnome is going to be the Solaris common interface for everything, although apps will most likely take some time to move to GTK from the old Solaris widget set (ugly, but standard [but there is an increasing amount of Solaris software with their own widget sets now]).
KDE and Gnome are the two interfaces on Linux. Once the increasingly few programs that don't use these interfaces have finally moved out of the stone age then things will be one standard or the other. Still, two interfaces is one interface too many, but both interfaces have their pros and cons, and for the slightly advanced user there is no problem.
Most people seem to be able to deal with the multiple interface changes on Windows anyway, and they could deal with Netscape 4's non standard (and crap) interface.
These fans are 1mm across in size. assuming that they can be placed side to side, on a 100mm2 chip there would be 100 fans, and on a 200mm^2 chip there would be 200 fans. Any noise they make would probably drive your dog mad after a few hours, bit nothing more.
These fans rotate pretty slowly too. A typical fan can do anything from 3000RPM to 10000RPM, these do from 50 to 200RPM, so they are pretty slow at the moment. I doubt that they shift the same amount of air through them that a normal fan does.
Now they guy talking about 1 million RPM fans... that would probably make your processor explode from the sudden vacuum between in and the fan when it started up. Any bits of dust going through the fan would probably smash through the computers case! I would love the sound of a 1MRPM fan in my house, honest!
What the future should be is cooler running CPUs. Efficiency is the key. The Palomino CPUs from AMD will go a long way to cooling down the high end of the CPU market - they can run without a fan at 1GHz. Transmeta CPUs are great for the notebook market (unlike the 'cooler' PIIIs that generate 10W when running at full speed, but 0.5W when running at under half the speed).
If one day I can have a powerful fanless computer - it doesn't have to be the bees knees in hardware - then I will be happy. The really powerful computer can go in the garage or in the loft and make lots of noise AFAIAC, and it can do all of the Divx and MP3 encoding. Shame I won't be able to play the latest and greatest in games, but then again I never get the time to play them, so no loss there.
Seriously, I can do all the work I need to do on a 200MHz processor, or a 400MHz processor with MP3 player and some other stuff (and this is using Windows and Office 2000 and Outlook etc). If I ever wanted to play a game, then it would be nice for the processor to double its speed and turn on the fan whilst that was required, and then turn it off when it wasn't (same goes for the graphics card), but the only place you can use these processors is in laptops at the moment - hardly the ultimate gaming machines. AMDs PowerNow! technology will be supported in desktop chipsets soon though, which I hope will provide this functionality.
Agreed about Richer Sounds - they are the place to get great priced low to medium range equipment.
When I was a student (crikey, 2 years ago), I decided that the naff cheapo korean all-in-one naffo-crappo stereo system would have to go. But I had no money at the time. When the CD part of said stereo broke, I had to buy a CD player, and I went with a Technics (that was 4 years ago, and it is still going great). Darn thing is, it doesn't have a digital output, so when I get a better system that system will be relegated to the kitchen/dining room/bathroom. It wasn't much, around £120 then, and the better models are only £70 now from Richer Sounds. If this sounds cheap to you, remember I was a student.
I next went for some Mission 731s. £130 at the time, and still going strong. Best sound quality at the time for under £150. The Mission floorstanding speakers are also great, but look in a Hi-Fi magazine to read up on the latest speakers. The 731's will probably make good front speakers or rear speakers when I get a surround sound system, IF I get one. I don't watch or own a TV or video or DVD player, and I won't until I can buy a huge TV like system that isn't a TV (read - huge monitor) so I don't have to pay the TV tax^H^H^Hlicense in the UK.
I then got a Marantz amplifier (pre-amp for you weirdos with real amps). Got a great review at the time in the Hi-Fi magazines, but obviously doesn't do any sort of surround sound wizardry. Not that I care for a Hi Fi system, especially when I won't be buying a TV ever anyway.
Cheap Awia tape desk as well (this was before mp3) with decent noise reduction (Dolby A,B,C,S) which is currently only used for the Russian and Japanese language tapes. What a waste of money. Still probably quite good for what it is.
Anyone got any good recommendations for tuners? Maybe interested in the digital radio available in the UK, but the receivers are a lot still.
When I get a bigger house, I will invest in some better speakers for audio use only (classical and heavy rock/metal/industrial music - don't ask, except that in my opinion out of all pop, dance, rap, and metal, metal is the most nearest to classical music in terms of composition and effort, erm... anyway...)
What speakers do people recommend for a home audio setup? Maybe one connected to a PC (I don't play that many games, but I will get a DVD drive so I want good movie sound). Anyone know where I can buy a widescreen 32" - 50" PC monitor - resolution not important:-) only for DVD playing! Maybe a projector would be a good bet - only need a low-res one for that use...
The guy was wrong when he talked about not compressing the video stream. It is compressed using MPEG-2, like DVD, but not as much, so the picture quality is a lot higher (e.g., compare a 600k JPEG to a 200k JPEG of the same picture, at the same resolution).
The format also includes a video navigation system and automatic forwardwind and rewind mechanisms to get to the correct place on a tape. However it will take 5 minutes to get to a place on the tape that is 60 minutes away, as 12x rewind/forwardwind is the fastest available.
So even though finding things on a tape will not be a problem with this technology, it will take a long time. DVD wins this round.
The format can record 7 hours in HQ mode, and 21 hours in SD mode (same as DVD quality). DVD cannot currently record, but will be able to record soon. Draw.
Quality: D-VHS wins outright, as it uses a 14mbps stream, not a 4mbps stream like DVD.
Clunkiness. D-VHS is big and clunky. DVD is flat and nice. DVD wins this round obviously, however wouldn't a 60mm or 80mm DVD format be nice, and very portable. Should be an option for DVD-2 when it comes out with a higher capacity. However FMD might wake up soon and smash everything into the ground.
Support. DVD wins, it has won the next generation video format wars before they began. Most video stores have DVDs in stock. People own DVD players. In a couple of years this may change, but not at $2000 a player.
Features. DVD wins. Instant access to any point in a film. Additional features and information. Multiple soundtracks. Multiple endings. D-VHS is an unknown with some of these features, but they will not be as simple to use as DVD.
Lifespan: DVD if looked after will last a long time (hundreds of playings). D-VHS is an unknown, but if things follow how VHS works, then there will be a lot worse degradation than DVD. DVD wins. However, D-VHS's higher bitrate will mean that a lot more errors have to occur to mess the picture up noticably, but it has the point for quality elsewhere already.:-)
Score: DVD 6 D-VHS 1.
And I tried to be friendly to D-VHS... It will be used by broadcasters though to store material.
Yes we do. We have a whole range of electric toothbrushes, toothpicks, dental floss, whitening toothpastes and private dental health in the UK, thank you very much.
Sure, nobody buys any of the stuff, but it is available.:-)
Anyway, the main reason for having these robots controlled by a doctor is that there is a shortage of doctors in the UK. Using these, one doctor can perform surgery on many patients at the same time. All the patients are lined up next to each other, with their own robot, and the doctor lies in his jacuzzi with his robot controller and Quake III in front of him, and then surgery can proceed... Brings a new meaning to deathmatch for sure, but it increases the hospitals turnover no end, which gives it a high rating.
1) The new generation always takes longer, runs slower, and has more things taken out than was originally suggested
Guess you haven't seen the specs for the new Alphas then. Instruction throughput per clock is still higher than the previous version, whereas with the P4 it is less than the PIII. One of these processors is going in the right direction.
Shame that Alphas cost so flippin' much. But considering the 150million transistors on the 21364 and the 300-400 million transistors on the 21464 this can be understood I suppose. 1.5MB of on-die cache adds to this though. I want to read more about the SMT the 21464 is using though.
Oh, yes, the Alpha article can be found from the front page of AMDZone.
Stoopid < character - have to wait for Slashdot to allow me to post, and then not tell me that the comment has been posted already... Knew I should have Previewed the post...
especially servers (which is currently the only thing P4s are worthwhile in right now)
Erm, riiiight. The lack of dual and quad processor capable P4s and P4 motherboards is a major reason why the P4 will not be used in servers in any company that thinks its policies through.
The fact that the CPU and chipsets are also unproven will mean that corporates will hold back. They also realise that for servers, the FPU performance is not an issue, nor is the presence of amazing SIMD capabilities. Multi-processor capability yes, CPUs with lots more cache that 256K yes.
The power requirements of the P4 are also staggering - up to 75W. Compare this with the "too hot" Athlon at 40 -60W, and with the <20W Palomino 1.5GHz coming out in March/April next year... AMD760MP chipset... Foster not arriving for another year... PIIIs not getting any faster... AMD have to leap at the chance to get a foothold in the multiprocessor server market in the next 6 months.
I for one will jump at the chance to build dual 1.5GHz Palomino based servers (and home computers!) that use less power than ONE P4 at 1.5GHz, use DDR SDRAM, not RIMMs, cost less and have over a years market life behind it so it can be seen as a proven solution.
I am more interested in the Alpha though - 8 channel RAMBUS for 10GB/s bandwidth! Shame I can't afford them:-(
especially servers (which is currently the only thing P4s are worthwhile in right now)
Erm, riiiight. The lack of dual and quad processor capable P4s and P4 motherboards is a major reason why the P4 will not be used in servers in any company that thinks its policies through.
The fact that the CPU and chipsets are also unproven will mean that corporates will hold back. They also realise that for servers, the FPU performance is not an issue, nor is the presence of amazing SIMD capabilities. Multi-processor capability yes, CPUs with lots more cache that 256K yes.
The power requirements of the P4 are also staggering - up to 75W. Compare this with the "too hot" Athlon at 40 -60W, and with the coming out in March/April next year... AMD760MP chipset... Foster not arriving for another year... PIIIs not getting any faster... AMD have to leap at the chance to get a foothold in the multiprocessor server market in the next 6 months.
I for one will jump at the chance to build dual 1.5GHz Palomino based servers (and home computers!) that use less power than ONE P4 at 1.5GHz, use DDR SDRAM, not RIMMs, cost less and have over a years market life behind it so it can be seen as a proven solution.
I am more interested in the Alpha though - 8 channel RAMBUS for 10GB/s bandwidth! Shame I can't afford them:-(
The contents of the first email were allegedly the following:
To: bob@stanford.edu
From: Mikeyboy@hardon.edu
Subject: I Own You!
Dear Bob,
I own you and your pisky 4004 based computer.
Mike.
The second email sent was the following:
Bcc: bob@stanford.edu, Mikeyboy@hardon.edu
From: Ery732@aol.com
Subject: Free! Viagra for a year!
You received this email because you possibly signed up for it when visiting an affiliates telex site. You can unsubscribe from this mailing list by sending an email with the contents "Unsubscribe" un the Subject line to megamailinglists@fnord.com
Since these heady days, email has gone downhill at a rapid rate, resulting in many people using MUDs to talk to their friends.
We have a Wacom Intuos A5 - a very nice bit of hardware.
Gimp for windows tries. But fails all too often. I will try an update of WinGimp - that might fix the problems.
Anyway, even with proper tablet support, Gimp is not a natural media package like Painter. Painter creates natural, smooth graphics. Gimp generates a series of varying sized circles. It doesn't know what to do with the tablet in the end, which is a shame. A lot more work is required in this area for the Gimp to have decent natural media functionality and decent tablet support.
We use Gimp at work for our advertising work in magazines in the UK.
The lack of CMYK is a bit of a pain, but then again, I wouldn't have much of a clue about it anyway!:-)
That means we work with 600dpi A4 images within the Gimp. We load them using the postscript filters provided by Ghostscript, which is the only program in the known universe that can load Postscript generated by Microsoft Publisher. We know for a fact that Quark can't.
We do this on a laptop running Mandrake 7.1. With 64 Megs of RAM, 2 Gig of partition and a 266MHz PII processor. (HP Omnibook 4100). We also use Gimp for Windows for photo work for the adverts (version 1.1.28 I think for the latest ads) which is generally very stable. It has bugs, but not having to pay £500 for Photoshop, plus the time required to learn it is significant for an internet company.
Yep, we don't use the best tools (Publisher is really bad, but we have it and it can be made to do most things). When a really good DTP program for Unix comes out that works, provides all the functionality (or a subset of) Quark and Publisher, then we will be migrating to that.
Anyway, UK readers might have seen the adverts for our company in magazines like Practical Internet, Surfed, MacUser (once, and once only), EWEB, Internet Money, Essential Internet and a few more. Oh, the company - we register domain names at firevision.co.uk. Expanding soon to even more services... [end mini-ad]. We don't think that the lack of CYMK support has affected the outcome that much at all - but we aren't laying out an entire magazine where things like this become a lot more important.
Maybe I should write an article on real business use of the Gimp...
Crikey. An 8Mb ATI All in wonder Pro AGP card is like $25, and also provides TV input and output facilities and good DVD functionality. An AC-97 codec chip is like 1 dollar maximum.
The problem is that there are no low cost Socket A motherboards full stop. Integrated chipset or no. Please point out where I can buy a $65 dollar socket A motherboard. Integrated graphics, ATA100, etc need not apply.
Once Socket A motherboards cost $65, then you can put a helluvva lot of real hardware in for the cost differential between a Celeron and a Duron at the same performance level.
Still, I would like someone to review systems against each other based on price. Put a $500 AMD system up against a $500 Intel system. Put a $1000 AMD system against a $1000 Intel system. I think we know who the winner will be every time. Integrated graphics will just shave off $10 or so - allowing another 50MHz or a faster DVD or CD drive.
What new motherboards these days don't support USB?
The SIS730 supports 6 USB ports. Considering that a UCB port block must cost like 10 cents or less, not including at least 2 ports should result in the death sentence.
In general, most peoples parents just need the computer that you are getting rid of soon. The PII233 with 32Mb RAM and a 2 Gig HD. They don't need any more, why get them a Duron 800 system at all:-)
"how many of you would buy a 60 dollar motherboard?"
I would. Not for playing games on, but for most things it is more than adequate.
Considering that the SiS730 board with an AGP card got "only" 90+ FPS in QuakeIII at 1024x768, I don't think that most geeks would complain. A lot of them are at college or younger anyway, and can't afford a board double the price.
And my Grandma is known as "Ace Dog Btch" on her ISPs game servers. (okay, I made that bit up, give me some slack here)
What is more intersting is that this chipset will be *ideal* for FlexATX motherboards (and MicroFlexATX motherboards:-). You know, the tiny ones without any slots - basically a processor, chipset and ports with a DIMM sticking off of one side, and a PCI signal carrying expansion edge connector the other side.
Who cares 'cos your coffee machine will be a lot cheaper than the slower more optimised version. And it will offer 10 different brews of coffee in the morning based upon the amount of redness in your eyes when you wake up. The built-in mp3 player (an SSE4 instruction, PLAYMP3) also helps, as do the other SSE4 instructions (ENCODEMP3, ENCODEDIVX, PLAYDIVX, CRACKMPAA, and more). Couple this is the latest Epsom A3 400dpi screenprinter ($300 at CompUSA) to get yourself 40 inch flexible widescreen monitors, then the future is looking bright.
I bet nobody has thought about using the almighty power of the PS2 to write... text adventure games in BASIC!!!
oh yes...
1000 REM Room Data
1010 DATA "You are in a dark cave. The floor is sandy under your feet, and the walls are a cold, hard black obsidian. A cold wind rustles through you long hair as you hear the sound of the sea outside crashing against the remnants of your boat.", 2,3,0,0,0,0 ... ...
90250 DATA 1, "a lantern", "A bronze lantern, covered old barnacles that prevent you from opening it up to light it" ...
Oh yes. I can't wait to program this on a TV screen.
Can anybody say "type-in games from Compute!s Gazette"?
Yes! For your average 1984 BASIC shoot-em-up.
I imagine that some of the 3D models in use on many of todays games would takes up an entire magazine by themselves. Even if all the graphical and audio data was supplied on a CD with the magazine, the code would still be huge for anything but the most simple of games. I imagine that the code could be included on the CD though, and an article in the magazine devoted to describing bits of the code and how they work as opposed to just a brute force listing - much more useful for the end programmer.
Between this and the new Blitz Basic here a whole new world of BASIC programming games and stuff could occur. I feel that the fun might be returning to cumputing after a while away.
Sure, BASIC is, well, basic, but in terms of getting something done it could be pretty good. No having to chase pointers through twisted evil C code anymore, just the ability to express and create your ideas quickly and rapidly.
In a year or so these chips will be amazing. 0.13 micron <1W max graphics processors doing 2000texels per second will start to appear, and the lowend will be as powerful as todays high end, but suitable for palmtop PCs... well, okay in 2 - 3 years time for this, but still.
I don't know about most people here, but that mobile GeForce chip is still more powerful than most of the desktop graphics chips being sold today. Now I for one wouldn't mind having it in my machine, without requiring any fan or heatsink on the graphics card, which has been the problem recently.
Still, this will make one powerful laptop, although destined more for the power laptop (mostly plugged into an external power supply) rather than the mobile laptop (low power requirements from battery). Don't expect to see one of these in a Transmeta powered laptop soon. Maybe a die reduced ATI mobile chip will make it there, where power consumption is the priority and killer 3D graphics are less important.
In a year or so these chips will be amazing. 0.13 micron
Now I can rewrite all those cheesy Amiga games that I never finished, but better and able to take advantage of decent graphics and computers. Quazatron II here I come again.
I hope it isn't that hard to come up with a Linux version either. I hope that it hasn't been coded in such a way that it ties in too directly with Windows, and that the underlying libraries that interface with DirectX can be replaced with libraries that interface with OpenGL. Still, doesn't mean that a language compatible, if not source compatible version can't be made for Linux.
Oh, forgot. I was going to get into Amiga SDK programming and then there is the company website, and where will I get the time to do graphics these days! Oh, it was great being at school and being a student - there was time available to do interesting things. Now there isn't any at all.:-(
Oh, the the PSX2 is shipping with BASIC in Europe to get around a 2% tax on games machines as opposed to computers. They are arguing that if the machine can be programmed by users, then it is a computer, not a games machine. Good on them as well, as there needs to be an outlet for the next generation of games creators.
This is one of the first real 200dpi monitors that I have seen on a product, and put to a great use. Obviously these screens are only economical to make at 6.4", but Sony seem to be consistently good at putting the latest TFT LCD screens on their devices. It can't be that long before they release a laptop with a 200dpi screen at a decent size like 12.8" (2048x1536).
The battery life quoted is impressive as well - up to 17 hours seems to validate everything that Transmeta have claimed. TFTs are getting lower power, and new technology is coming our like LEP displays and the like which will cut power usage even more. Hard drives are drawing less power as well, and DDR memory is lower power than SDR memory. That leaves the processor and northbridge - both solved by the Transmeta processor. Sony's use of the processor is also a big plus for Transmeta.
But these high resolution monitors are starting to make things like font smoothing a thing of the past. X11 will look smooth and good on one of these screens without having to implement anti-aliased fonts or graphics. This leaves alpha transparency as the one major missing feature.
Intel are only moving their PIII line to a 0.13 micron process in Q3 2001, that is when the 1.26GHz PIII will be released. That is nearly a year away.
AMD promised a speed step upgrade of the Athlon every 6 weeks - it started with the 1.1GHz Athlon a few weeks ago - the 1.2GHz Athlon should be released by the beginning of October. 1.3GHz in November, and 1.4GHz at the beginning of the new year. The Athlon is the PIII competitor - they have roughly the same amount of zoom in them, both 0.18micron at the moment etc. The Pentium 4, when it is released, will be a hugely expensive processor, trying to compete with Alphas from Compaq and Power3/4 processors from IBM. It is not going to compete for the desktop, corporate or home for at least a year.
So AMD will be outgunning Intel for another 6 months, possibly 9 months in terms of GHz and overall performance (ignoring the Pentium 4, as it really should figure here, and even so, the overall performance of the Athlon 1.3GHz is likely to be more than the 1.5GHz Pentium 4!)
Still, good to see Intel going with DDR SDRAM at last, and the move to 0.13micron fabs is great - although 1 taiwanese fab is already there and making stuff. AMD are going 0.15micron, probably using Motorola technology there, as the G4's were 0.15 micron...
Slashdot Mirror
Well, they have already decided to use OpenSecSH for the new name - look at the websites with that name.
There is more to security than encryption. Security at a basic level is authentication (you are who you say you are), validation (you sent what was received) and encryption (no one else could read what you sent).
Other names it could have are "OpenSRSH" for "Open Secure Remote Shell", or why not come up with a good name for once, like microsoft always manage to do? "Secure Terminal Client|Server" just to get one over M$, and it describes what it does very nicely.
Still, I am more excited about the use of these displays in PDAs and mobile phones. This story was on ZDNet.co.uk a lot earlier today, and they mentioned that mobile phone displays using this technology had already been produced, in full colour. Anything make makes a monochrome low-contrast crappy screen like a mobile phone is good in my books. Imagine an Ericsson R380 with one of these screens. *** Drool *** (like the blubbering eedeeot that I am).
This drive has a few advantages over the standard floppy:
However, the market is crowded in this area, and later this year a 500MB 'floppy' technology is going to be released, the PlayDrive or something, and the disks are small. Now if they would license the technology for free then maybe a real floppy replacement would be created, but if it remains proprietary then its success may be limited.
The problem with USB is that you cannot boot from it at the moment. This would require BIOS support, and most BIOS manufacturers are more interested in adding overclocking features rather than hardware support to them at the moment. Still, this makes a pretty good laptop disk drive for simple file transfer (unlike CD-R which is too much effort to transfer a single file). Now if only ATX cases came with a space for front-facing USB ports to be inserted...
KDE and Gnome are the two interfaces on Linux. Once the increasingly few programs that don't use these interfaces have finally moved out of the stone age then things will be one standard or the other. Still, two interfaces is one interface too many, but both interfaces have their pros and cons, and for the slightly advanced user there is no problem.
Most people seem to be able to deal with the multiple interface changes on Windows anyway, and they could deal with Netscape 4's non standard (and crap) interface.
These fans are 1mm across in size. assuming that they can be placed side to side, on a 100mm2 chip there would be 100 fans, and on a 200mm^2 chip there would be 200 fans. Any noise they make would probably drive your dog mad after a few hours, bit nothing more.
These fans rotate pretty slowly too. A typical fan can do anything from 3000RPM to 10000RPM, these do from 50 to 200RPM, so they are pretty slow at the moment. I doubt that they shift the same amount of air through them that a normal fan does.
Now they guy talking about 1 million RPM fans... that would probably make your processor explode from the sudden vacuum between in and the fan when it started up. Any bits of dust going through the fan would probably smash through the computers case! I would love the sound of a 1MRPM fan in my house, honest!
What the future should be is cooler running CPUs. Efficiency is the key. The Palomino CPUs from AMD will go a long way to cooling down the high end of the CPU market - they can run without a fan at 1GHz. Transmeta CPUs are great for the notebook market (unlike the 'cooler' PIIIs that generate 10W when running at full speed, but 0.5W when running at under half the speed).
If one day I can have a powerful fanless computer - it doesn't have to be the bees knees in hardware - then I will be happy. The really powerful computer can go in the garage or in the loft and make lots of noise AFAIAC, and it can do all of the Divx and MP3 encoding. Shame I won't be able to play the latest and greatest in games, but then again I never get the time to play them, so no loss there.
Seriously, I can do all the work I need to do on a 200MHz processor, or a 400MHz processor with MP3 player and some other stuff (and this is using Windows and Office 2000 and Outlook etc). If I ever wanted to play a game, then it would be nice for the processor to double its speed and turn on the fan whilst that was required, and then turn it off when it wasn't (same goes for the graphics card), but the only place you can use these processors is in laptops at the moment - hardly the ultimate gaming machines. AMDs PowerNow! technology will be supported in desktop chipsets soon though, which I hope will provide this functionality.
When I was a student (crikey, 2 years ago), I decided that the naff cheapo korean all-in-one naffo-crappo stereo system would have to go. But I had no money at the time. When the CD part of said stereo broke, I had to buy a CD player, and I went with a Technics (that was 4 years ago, and it is still going great). Darn thing is, it doesn't have a digital output, so when I get a better system that system will be relegated to the kitchen/dining room/bathroom. It wasn't much, around £120 then, and the better models are only £70 now from Richer Sounds. If this sounds cheap to you, remember I was a student.
I next went for some Mission 731s. £130 at the time, and still going strong. Best sound quality at the time for under £150. The Mission floorstanding speakers are also great, but look in a Hi-Fi magazine to read up on the latest speakers. The 731's will probably make good front speakers or rear speakers when I get a surround sound system, IF I get one. I don't watch or own a TV or video or DVD player, and I won't until I can buy a huge TV like system that isn't a TV (read - huge monitor) so I don't have to pay the TV tax^H^H^Hlicense in the UK.
I then got a Marantz amplifier (pre-amp for you weirdos with real amps). Got a great review at the time in the Hi-Fi magazines, but obviously doesn't do any sort of surround sound wizardry. Not that I care for a Hi Fi system, especially when I won't be buying a TV ever anyway.
Cheap Awia tape desk as well (this was before mp3) with decent noise reduction (Dolby A,B,C,S) which is currently only used for the Russian and Japanese language tapes. What a waste of money. Still probably quite good for what it is.
Anyone got any good recommendations for tuners? Maybe interested in the digital radio available in the UK, but the receivers are a lot still.
When I get a bigger house, I will invest in some better speakers for audio use only (classical and heavy rock/metal/industrial music - don't ask, except that in my opinion out of all pop, dance, rap, and metal, metal is the most nearest to classical music in terms of composition and effort, erm... anyway...)
What speakers do people recommend for a home audio setup? Maybe one connected to a PC (I don't play that many games, but I will get a DVD drive so I want good movie sound). Anyone know where I can buy a widescreen 32" - 50" PC monitor - resolution not important :-) only for DVD playing! Maybe a projector would be a good bet - only need a low-res one for that use...
No. Sorry.
The guy was wrong when he talked about not compressing the video stream. It is compressed using MPEG-2, like DVD, but not as much, so the picture quality is a lot higher (e.g., compare a 600k JPEG to a 200k JPEG of the same picture, at the same resolution).
The information is here.
The format also includes a video navigation system and automatic forwardwind and rewind mechanisms to get to the correct place on a tape. However it will take 5 minutes to get to a place on the tape that is 60 minutes away, as 12x rewind/forwardwind is the fastest available.
So even though finding things on a tape will not be a problem with this technology, it will take a long time. DVD wins this round.
The format can record 7 hours in HQ mode, and 21 hours in SD mode (same as DVD quality). DVD cannot currently record, but will be able to record soon. Draw.
Quality: D-VHS wins outright, as it uses a 14mbps stream, not a 4mbps stream like DVD.
Clunkiness. D-VHS is big and clunky. DVD is flat and nice. DVD wins this round obviously, however wouldn't a 60mm or 80mm DVD format be nice, and very portable. Should be an option for DVD-2 when it comes out with a higher capacity. However FMD might wake up soon and smash everything into the ground.
Support. DVD wins, it has won the next generation video format wars before they began. Most video stores have DVDs in stock. People own DVD players. In a couple of years this may change, but not at $2000 a player.
Features. DVD wins. Instant access to any point in a film. Additional features and information. Multiple soundtracks. Multiple endings. D-VHS is an unknown with some of these features, but they will not be as simple to use as DVD.
Lifespan: DVD if looked after will last a long time (hundreds of playings). D-VHS is an unknown, but if things follow how VHS works, then there will be a lot worse degradation than DVD. DVD wins. However, D-VHS's higher bitrate will mean that a lot more errors have to occur to mess the picture up noticably, but it has the point for quality elsewhere already. :-)
Score: DVD 6 D-VHS 1.
And I tried to be friendly to D-VHS... It will be used by broadcasters though to store material.
Yes we do. We have a whole range of electric toothbrushes, toothpicks, dental floss, whitening toothpastes and private dental health in the UK, thank you very much.
Sure, nobody buys any of the stuff, but it is available. :-)
Anyway, the main reason for having these robots controlled by a doctor is that there is a shortage of doctors in the UK. Using these, one doctor can perform surgery on many patients at the same time. All the patients are lined up next to each other, with their own robot, and the doctor lies in his jacuzzi with his robot controller and Quake III in front of him, and then surgery can proceed... Brings a new meaning to deathmatch for sure, but it increases the hospitals turnover no end, which gives it a high rating.
Guess you haven't seen the specs for the new Alphas then. Instruction throughput per clock is still higher than the previous version, whereas with the P4 it is less than the PIII. One of these processors is going in the right direction.
Shame that Alphas cost so flippin' much. But considering the 150million transistors on the 21364 and the 300-400 million transistors on the 21464 this can be understood I suppose. 1.5MB of on-die cache adds to this though. I want to read more about the SMT the 21464 is using though.
Oh, yes, the Alpha article can be found from the front page of AMDZone.
especially servers (which is currently the only thing P4s are worthwhile in right now)
Erm, riiiight. The lack of dual and quad processor capable P4s and P4 motherboards is a major reason why the P4 will not be used in servers in any company that thinks its policies through.
The fact that the CPU and chipsets are also unproven will mean that corporates will hold back. They also realise that for servers, the FPU performance is not an issue, nor is the presence of amazing SIMD capabilities. Multi-processor capability yes, CPUs with lots more cache that 256K yes.
The power requirements of the P4 are also staggering - up to 75W. Compare this with the "too hot" Athlon at 40 -60W, and with the <20W Palomino 1.5GHz coming out in March/April next year... AMD760MP chipset... Foster not arriving for another year... PIIIs not getting any faster... AMD have to leap at the chance to get a foothold in the multiprocessor server market in the next 6 months.
I for one will jump at the chance to build dual 1.5GHz Palomino based servers (and home computers!) that use less power than ONE P4 at 1.5GHz, use DDR SDRAM, not RIMMs, cost less and have over a years market life behind it so it can be seen as a proven solution.
I am more interested in the Alpha though - 8 channel RAMBUS for 10GB/s bandwidth! Shame I can't afford them :-(
Erm, riiiight. The lack of dual and quad processor capable P4s and P4 motherboards is a major reason why the P4 will not be used in servers in any company that thinks its policies through.
The fact that the CPU and chipsets are also unproven will mean that corporates will hold back. They also realise that for servers, the FPU performance is not an issue, nor is the presence of amazing SIMD capabilities. Multi-processor capability yes, CPUs with lots more cache that 256K yes.
The power requirements of the P4 are also staggering - up to 75W. Compare this with the "too hot" Athlon at 40 -60W, and with the coming out in March/April next year... AMD760MP chipset... Foster not arriving for another year... PIIIs not getting any faster... AMD have to leap at the chance to get a foothold in the multiprocessor server market in the next 6 months.
I for one will jump at the chance to build dual 1.5GHz Palomino based servers (and home computers!) that use less power than ONE P4 at 1.5GHz, use DDR SDRAM, not RIMMs, cost less and have over a years market life behind it so it can be seen as a proven solution.
I am more interested in the Alpha though - 8 channel RAMBUS for 10GB/s bandwidth! Shame I can't afford them :-(
The contents of the first email were allegedly the following:
To: bob@stanford.edu
From: Mikeyboy@hardon.edu
Subject: I Own You!
Dear Bob,
I own you and your pisky 4004 based computer.
Mike.
The second email sent was the following:
Bcc: bob@stanford.edu, Mikeyboy@hardon.edu
From: Ery732@aol.com
Subject: Free! Viagra for a year!
You received this email because you possibly signed up for it when visiting an affiliates telex site. You can unsubscribe from this mailing list by sending an email with the contents "Unsubscribe" un the Subject line to megamailinglists@fnord.com
Since these heady days, email has gone downhill at a rapid rate, resulting in many people using MUDs to talk to their friends.
Oh, and about the graphics tablet stuff...
We have a Wacom Intuos A5 - a very nice bit of hardware.
Gimp for windows tries. But fails all too often. I will try an update of WinGimp - that might fix the problems.
Anyway, even with proper tablet support, Gimp is not a natural media package like Painter. Painter creates natural, smooth graphics. Gimp generates a series of varying sized circles. It doesn't know what to do with the tablet in the end, which is a shame. A lot more work is required in this area for the Gimp to have decent natural media functionality and decent tablet support.
We use Gimp at work for our advertising work in magazines in the UK.
The lack of CMYK is a bit of a pain, but then again, I wouldn't have much of a clue about it anyway!
That means we work with 600dpi A4 images within the Gimp. We load them using the postscript filters provided by Ghostscript, which is the only program in the known universe that can load Postscript generated by Microsoft Publisher. We know for a fact that Quark can't.
We do this on a laptop running Mandrake 7.1. With 64 Megs of RAM, 2 Gig of partition and a 266MHz PII processor. (HP Omnibook 4100). We also use Gimp for Windows for photo work for the adverts (version 1.1.28 I think for the latest ads) which is generally very stable. It has bugs, but not having to pay £500 for Photoshop, plus the time required to learn it is significant for an internet company.
Yep, we don't use the best tools (Publisher is really bad, but we have it and it can be made to do most things). When a really good DTP program for Unix comes out that works, provides all the functionality (or a subset of) Quark and Publisher, then we will be migrating to that.
Anyway, UK readers might have seen the adverts for our company in magazines like Practical Internet, Surfed, MacUser (once, and once only), EWEB, Internet Money, Essential Internet and a few more. Oh, the company - we register domain names at firevision.co.uk. Expanding soon to even more services... [end mini-ad]. We don't think that the lack of CYMK support has affected the outcome that much at all - but we aren't laying out an entire magazine where things like this become a lot more important.
Maybe I should write an article on real business use of the Gimp...
The problem is that there are no low cost Socket A motherboards full stop. Integrated chipset or no. Please point out where I can buy a $65 dollar socket A motherboard. Integrated graphics, ATA100, etc need not apply.
Once Socket A motherboards cost $65, then you can put a helluvva lot of real hardware in for the cost differential between a Celeron and a Duron at the same performance level.
Still, I would like someone to review systems against each other based on price. Put a $500 AMD system up against a $500 Intel system. Put a $1000 AMD system against a $1000 Intel system. I think we know who the winner will be every time. Integrated graphics will just shave off $10 or so - allowing another 50MHz or a faster DVD or CD drive.
What new motherboards these days don't support USB? The SIS730 supports 6 USB ports. Considering that a UCB port block must cost like 10 cents or less, not including at least 2 ports should result in the death sentence. In general, most peoples parents just need the computer that you are getting rid of soon. The PII233 with 32Mb RAM and a 2 Gig HD. They don't need any more, why get them a Duron 800 system at all :-)
I would. Not for playing games on, but for most things it is more than adequate.
Considering that the SiS730 board with an AGP card got "only" 90+ FPS in QuakeIII at 1024x768, I don't think that most geeks would complain. A lot of them are at college or younger anyway, and can't afford a board double the price.
And my Grandma is known as "Ace Dog Btch" on her ISPs game servers. (okay, I made that bit up, give me some slack here)
What is more intersting is that this chipset will be *ideal* for FlexATX motherboards (and MicroFlexATX motherboards
Who cares 'cos your coffee machine will be a lot cheaper than the slower more optimised version. And it will offer 10 different brews of coffee in the morning based upon the amount of redness in your eyes when you wake up. The built-in mp3 player (an SSE4 instruction, PLAYMP3) also helps, as do the other SSE4 instructions (ENCODEMP3, ENCODEDIVX, PLAYDIVX, CRACKMPAA, and more). Couple this is the latest Epsom A3 400dpi screenprinter ($300 at CompUSA) to get yourself 40 inch flexible widescreen monitors, then the future is looking bright.
oh yes... 1000 REM Room Data
...
...
...
1010 DATA "You are in a dark cave. The floor is sandy under your feet, and the walls are a cold, hard black obsidian. A cold wind rustles through you long hair as you hear the sound of the sea outside crashing against the remnants of your boat.", 2,3,0,0,0,0
90250 DATA 1, "a lantern", "A bronze lantern, covered old barnacles that prevent you from opening it up to light it"
Oh yes. I can't wait to program this on a TV screen.
Yes! For your average 1984 BASIC shoot-em-up.
I imagine that some of the 3D models in use on many of todays games would takes up an entire magazine by themselves. Even if all the graphical and audio data was supplied on a CD with the magazine, the code would still be huge for anything but the most simple of games. I imagine that the code could be included on the CD though, and an article in the magazine devoted to describing bits of the code and how they work as opposed to just a brute force listing - much more useful for the end programmer.
Between this and the new Blitz Basic here a whole new world of BASIC programming games and stuff could occur. I feel that the fun might be returning to cumputing after a while away.
Sure, BASIC is, well, basic, but in terms of getting something done it could be pretty good. No having to chase pointers through twisted evil C code anymore, just the ability to express and create your ideas quickly and rapidly.
As long as it isn't interpreted. :-)
In a year or so these chips will be amazing. 0.13 micron <1W max graphics processors doing 2000texels per second will start to appear, and the lowend will be as powerful as todays high end, but suitable for palmtop PCs... well, okay in 2 - 3 years time for this, but still.
I don't know about most people here, but that mobile GeForce chip is still more powerful than most of the desktop graphics chips being sold today. Now I for one wouldn't mind having it in my machine, without requiring any fan or heatsink on the graphics card, which has been the problem recently.
Still, this will make one powerful laptop, although destined more for the power laptop (mostly plugged into an external power supply) rather than the mobile laptop (low power requirements from battery). Don't expect to see one of these in a Transmeta powered laptop soon. Maybe a die reduced ATI mobile chip will make it there, where power consumption is the priority and killer 3D graphics are less important.
In a year or so these chips will be amazing. 0.13 micron
Oh yes! Blitz Basic for the PC. Excellent!
Now I can rewrite all those cheesy Amiga games that I never finished, but better and able to take advantage of decent graphics and computers. Quazatron II here I come again.
I hope it isn't that hard to come up with a Linux version either. I hope that it hasn't been coded in such a way that it ties in too directly with Windows, and that the underlying libraries that interface with DirectX can be replaced with libraries that interface with OpenGL. Still, doesn't mean that a language compatible, if not source compatible version can't be made for Linux.
Oh, forgot. I was going to get into Amiga SDK programming and then there is the company website, and where will I get the time to do graphics these days! Oh, it was great being at school and being a student - there was time available to do interesting things. Now there isn't any at all. :-(
Oh, the the PSX2 is shipping with BASIC in Europe to get around a 2% tax on games machines as opposed to computers. They are arguing that if the machine can be programmed by users, then it is a computer, not a games machine. Good on them as well, as there needs to be an outlet for the next generation of games creators.
This is one of the first real 200dpi monitors that I have seen on a product, and put to a great use. Obviously these screens are only economical to make at 6.4", but Sony seem to be consistently good at putting the latest TFT LCD screens on their devices. It can't be that long before they release a laptop with a 200dpi screen at a decent size like 12.8" (2048x1536).
The battery life quoted is impressive as well - up to 17 hours seems to validate everything that Transmeta have claimed. TFTs are getting lower power, and new technology is coming our like LEP displays and the like which will cut power usage even more. Hard drives are drawing less power as well, and DDR memory is lower power than SDR memory. That leaves the processor and northbridge - both solved by the Transmeta processor. Sony's use of the processor is also a big plus for Transmeta.
But these high resolution monitors are starting to make things like font smoothing a thing of the past. X11 will look smooth and good on one of these screens without having to implement anti-aliased fonts or graphics. This leaves alpha transparency as the one major missing feature.
AMD promised a speed step upgrade of the Athlon every 6 weeks - it started with the 1.1GHz Athlon a few weeks ago - the 1.2GHz Athlon should be released by the beginning of October. 1.3GHz in November, and 1.4GHz at the beginning of the new year. The Athlon is the PIII competitor - they have roughly the same amount of zoom in them, both 0.18micron at the moment etc. The Pentium 4, when it is released, will be a hugely expensive processor, trying to compete with Alphas from Compaq and Power3/4 processors from IBM. It is not going to compete for the desktop, corporate or home for at least a year.
So AMD will be outgunning Intel for another 6 months, possibly 9 months in terms of GHz and overall performance (ignoring the Pentium 4, as it really should figure here, and even so, the overall performance of the Athlon 1.3GHz is likely to be more than the 1.5GHz Pentium 4!)
Still, good to see Intel going with DDR SDRAM at last, and the move to 0.13micron fabs is great - although 1 taiwanese fab is already there and making stuff. AMD are going 0.15micron, probably using Motorola technology there, as the G4's were 0.15 micron...