The page doesn't seem to list the weight of the unit anywhere. It gives the dimentions (fairly small), but if it weighs more than a few ounces it will be uncomfortable to wear for extended periods of time, like say the length of a movie you're watching on a DVD.
I need to point out that most ISPs have a tough enough time managing just providing TCP/IP service. I don't think they are really prepared to handle all of the needs you outlined above. That sounds a lot like those SANs everybody has been talking about recently (Storage area networks for those of you who havn't). It sounds great in theory, but what it boils downto is a way to convert hardware limitations into software limitations and admin overhead. The scheme you propose above allows the users to rent as much CPU time/disk space/memory/etc... as they want (and as much as the ISP has to offer that is not in use by the thousands of other people currently using the system) whereas before they would have had to buy the hardware. However the ISP will have to buy the hardware to support that, along with the broadband connections, and the connections to the users's homes. In addition the ISP will have to keep upgrading to keep in line with the times (just imagine when a new game comes out that requires a lot of resources) and find a way to administer and manage all of these resources.
Anyway, I think this is going to cause a large amount of pain with end-users (especially when they get those monthly bills) and administrators alike, and will take a long time to be implemented, if ever.
Unfortunatly size is not the problem on those terabyte servers, seek time is. I know of one company that buys 18GB drives and only uses 2GB of those just to keep the number of spindles high. They constantly complain that no drive manufacturer is using these high density technologies to build smaller faster cheaper drives, but rather to build big expensive drives.
EIDE is not going to be able to handle 100MB of access a second in random 4k blocks across all of the drives.
The article mentioned a "two stage" head positioning process where the head is aligned with the regular moter mechanism, then precisely algined with a combination of strands of fiber and mirrors. This all sounds like it adds a lot of complexity to the seek process, and possibly a few milliseconds to the seek time. Does anybody have the real specs on this yet? Is it even a real product yet (the article was a little vague)?
Re:SGI still has the best designs
on
Cool PC Cases
·
· Score: 1
If you think the O2 looks cool, you should try the Visual workstations. As an added feature, they have that door on the front that, when you press on the bottom gently) automatically slide down gracefully revealing the floppy, CDROM, tape, and Power button. More information is available on the SGi web site.
ISA devices and slots - by 2nd half of '99 Ow! I looked specifically for a motherboard with ISA slots this time around (and didn't see one with 2) I've got an old Ethernet card and Soundard that work just fine, not matter what Intel says
Gameport/MIDI Hey, this is built on my ISA soundcard, how exactly does Intel plan to kill it?
PS/2 Intel must have a huge hard-on for USB to abandon the MILLIONS of keyboards/mice out there that already use this widely accepted standard
Serial Hopefully I won't have my external modem still when they do this
Parallel Or my printer
IDE Good riddance, as long as they replace it with SCSI, Firewire, or Fibre channel (mmmm Fibre Channel) and not USB or some other lame protocol
Floppy Why are they waiting so long on this one? Who uses floppies anymore? I guess they're just holding on to this to spite Apple
VGA And replace it with what?
User-Accessible Slots Somehow I doubt this will go over very well with the people who make peripherals. If Intel released some chipset that didn't support any sort of expansion slots, you can bet somebody (maybe IBM) will release one that does. The sever market (not to mention gamers/power users/other computer savvy people) simply won't stand for this.
Well, I don't have any experiance with other systems, but I can tell you about the RCA DSS system.
First, the picture quality is very good, and stays that way even in stormy weather...to a point. Once the weather gets bad enough, the signal is broken and the decoder just stops, freezing the current picture on the screen until the weather clears up. This happens very infrequently where we live though.
Secondly, the basic offering has quite a few channels, although most of them are crap. Sci-fi is included in the basic package.
There is quite a selection of pay-per-view movies as well, at a reasonable cost ($2.50, or about what you pay to rent from a video store).
The guide is a nice feature, just poorly implemented. The interface is slow and rather clumsy, although this may be fixed in newer boxes. The one we have is also quite ugly (it looks like the preview channel with its squarish blocks of programming. All said though, the guide is about 100x better than those preview channels, since you don't have to wait for your channel to scroll up.
You won't be able to view local channels on the DSS (you will have to use the rabbit ears), unless you live in an area that has no local TV service, and then it takes an act of Congress to get broadcast channels (not to mention a monthly fee). Supposedly this will be changing in the near future, but don't bet the farm on it.
All in all though, we are very happy with the system, especially compared to the rip-you-off-at-every-corner cable service I have up here.
Of course there are several good Freecell implementations just waiting for you. Search for freecell on freshmeat. I believe the Gnome distribution also has a pretty good freecell implementation. The best part is that Freecell is now free software.
I think it would be hilarious if the Austrailan parlament (that is what you use down there isn't it?) suddenly had an AdultCheck id on their main site because their webmaster was named Pamela or whatever, the list of words is large enough that virtually no site with content can escape.
This is like suggesting that Perl is a better web scripting language than C++.
Are you suggesting it's not? I think what you really ment to say was: This is like suggesting that Perl is a better language than C++, but not saying that your only critera is CGI scripting.
Most business people I know have a machine connected to the net all the time, it is their business machine. I don't think blackberrys are ment for personal use by people with dialup lines.
I have to agree though, I wouldn't want to reply to emails on a 3.5x1.5" keyboard.
The Blackberry is being marketed as a replacement for the Palm Pilot, however I think it is more of a glorified alphanumeric pager than a PDA. For one thing, the Blackberry is only 3.5" x 2.5" big, and has a querty keyboard (not that it is actually useful, unless you have little twig fingers) which leaves only a small amount of screen space for stuff like email. Also, this product is nowhere near as versitile as a Palmpilot (as far as I can tell from their rather skimpy and overly sales oriented white paper).
The white paper also makes some pretty astounding claims. For instance, they claim to be able to run a cell modem equipped device for ~41 days on a single AAA battery.
Bottom line, I'd like to see one of these puppies in action before I decide to buy one, and even then it will only be a supplement to the Palm pilot I also want to buy.
It already is offensive in many parts of Northern Virginia. Lots and lots of people up here with a very large stick inhabiting their rectal cavity willing to go to court at the drop of a hat. This is due, in large part, to the large number of political extremists who like to hang around Congress trying to push their own agendas. I suspect other countries have a similar situitation around their lawmaking bodies, hence laws like this.
Once you get to that point, you should switch to something like SGI's crossbars and CC-NUMA arcitecture. Look at the architecture of the Origin 2000. Each Node board contains 2 MIPS R12ks, memory, and a router to talk to all of the other processors. The best part is, the memory is shared between all of the processors, so the whole thing runs as a single image. If you don't think this technology can be adaped to PC architecture, check out the SGI 320 and 540 class computers, Intel based but with a radically different "bus" that isn't really a bus at all.
MDI would be the kiss of death for any web browser I use. I usually have two or three windows open on different desktops (under WindowMaker). For instance, I'll have the Netscape HTML reference on desktop 3, the web page I'm currently working on in desktop 2, and several xterms with my current work on desktop 1. With WindowMaker's excellent ALT-# desktop switching, I find this a very efficent way to work. MDI would kill that by forcing me to stick all of the windows inside of a single window (on a single screen) and use some sort of clumsy ALT-TAB scheme or something to switch between windows.
This leads to a big IF on their part. Will Opera be shipping before Mozilla is released to the general public? Will there be a compelling reason to buy Opera by the time it reaches completion?
I thought the Gimp followed the photoshop interaface pretty closely. A friend of mine who uses Photoshop a lot noticed the considerable similarites betweent the two programs. What kind of functionality are you looking for in a KDE version of the Gimp anyway?
On a side note, ImageMagick needs some serious work on its interface. IMHO it needs to behave with Windowmanger options like focus-follows and autoraise before I can consider using it. Whenever I try to select something in that dialog box, it autorases whatever window is below it, which obscures not on the control panel, but the main window as well. Very frustrating, especially if you are going back and forth between that window and ImageMagick. On a final note, ImageMagick seems slower than the Gimp in most operations (save starting up).
I think it's only fair to point out that Windowmaker was also written from the ground up (IE no FVWM code either).
no dock (to my knowledge) or customizable panel clucky config (and I hand edit E configs...)
Eh? Are you knocking on E or on Windowmaker? WM certainly has a dock and a control panel for changing the config. There isn't a "customizeable panel" per say, but that's what dockapps are for. I don't think the config is that clunky either, even when you do it by hand with vi.
E isn't bad either, but it just isn't my style. (P.S. E is faster?!?)
I read that phrase differently than you did. It looks to me like activestate plans to add features to the "windows" version of perl that do not exist on other platforms (activex controls for example). This means that a lot of perl written by windoze coders may not run on every other version of perl, which is exactly what MS and other commercial software houses love to do. (it's called "value adding")
Of course if Activestate keeps their version of perl in line with the "main" distribution, and contributes ALL relevant changes back to the community, then this will be an undoubtedly good thing for perl. I should point out that history is against this course of events.
Isn't this like arguing that the CPU is not integrated with the computer because you can take it out? So what if they are shipped seperately, if you HAVE to install it to get the rest of the software to install, that sounds like the first half of integration to me. If in the process of removing it you render the system unusable, then you qualify for the second half of the definition. Isn't this what the DOJ proved?
The problem is that it isn't that simple. Most malicious spammers now use a technique called superceding where they basically overwrite the body of "signal" messages with noise. This makes it look like legitimate posters in the newsgroup are posting spam under legitimate titles. IMHO this is the most vile kind of spam, since not only does it increase the noise of a newsgroup, it actively decreases the signal, and destroys countless discussions. The worst part is that moderation is usually ineffective agsinst this kind of attack.
Actually, it's a good bet that the "Physics of Star Trek" is never true.:)
Also, I don't claim to understand the math exactly, but from the paper it looks like the researcher found a way to reduce the amount of energy you need to power a "warp bubble" from astronomical to merly enormous.
Despite what the blurb implies, this is all still very theoretical stuff. Don't expect to see warp drives in actual use in your lifetime.
Reading through the paper (which it WAY over my head) it sounds like the researcher found a much more efficent way to travel once we figure out how to fold space-time (with negative energy I guess).
Of course only a few years ago (like 70 or so) I'd be saying the same thing about general purpose personal computers...
Getting all of the free/share/GPL encoders to do this is easy, just threaten and sue the authors of these encoders with BS laws/copyrights/patents/etc.. and they will have to comply. It doesn't matter that it doesn't have an ounce of legal merit, just as long as you can draw out the court battle long enough to bankrupt your opponent. The RIAA has shown that they are quite willing to do this to get their way.
The final result probabally won't be exactly MP3 anyway, at least not once MS gets done with it. You can bet it will be slightly incompatable and undocumented (value adding indeed) so it will be broken with existing players. Maybe they'll change the header to make it look like a wave (oops, someone already did that) or modify the internal structure slightly to break it on older players (and maybe add some invalid assumptions to be sure it breaks on big endian machines or something).
MS has used MAC addresses for tracking purposes? That's surprising since the vast majority of home PCs don't have ethernet cards.
Don't tell politions that! Right now their understanding of the internet is so low that they only know about censoring the WWW, I'd rather like to keep it that way. Remember, the web used to be regulation free because nobody bothered to tell the lawyors, activists ("Moral" majority), and lawmakers about it.
-- The Moral Majority is a lot like the Holy Roman Empire, which was neither holy, nor Roman, nor an empire.
That sounds nice, but there is a big problem with that. Assume you save the state of the machine (say at time point x) and a few seconds later (time point y) the machine BSODs for some software reason (say NT is flaky). Now you reboot the machine and load it back to state x, what is going to keep it from crashing at state y all over again?
These sort of protection schemes are really only good at protecting you from hardware failures, which is not what you are looking for. Also, if your system has a lot of memory it can take quite a while to dump the memory to disk and read it off again on boot. I work on machines that routinely have 4GB of memory, and when they crash (and core dump) it can easily take 15-30 minutes to finish dumping the core. These machines can boot regularly in less than 10 minutes (easily). Of course with the checkpointing scheme you don't lose as much work, which is a big thing when you are using the machine to do an extremely computationally intensive task or have a huge database in memory.
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The page doesn't seem to list the weight of the unit anywhere. It gives the dimentions (fairly small), but if it weighs more than a few ounces it will be uncomfortable to wear for extended periods of time, like say the length of a movie you're watching on a DVD.
I need to point out that most ISPs have a tough enough time managing just providing TCP/IP service. I don't think they are really prepared to handle all of the needs you outlined above. That sounds a lot like those SANs everybody has been talking about recently (Storage area networks for those of you who havn't). It sounds great in theory, but what it boils downto is a way to convert hardware limitations into software limitations and admin overhead. The scheme you propose above allows the users to rent as much CPU time/disk space/memory/etc... as they want (and as much as the ISP has to offer that is not in use by the thousands of other people currently using the system) whereas before they would have had to buy the hardware. However the ISP will have to buy the hardware to support that, along with the broadband connections, and the connections to the users's homes. In addition the ISP will have to keep upgrading to keep in line with the times (just imagine when a new game comes out that requires a lot of resources) and find a way to administer and manage all of these resources.
Anyway, I think this is going to cause a large amount of pain with end-users (especially when they get those monthly bills) and administrators alike, and will take a long time to be implemented, if ever.
Unfortunatly size is not the problem on those terabyte servers, seek time is. I know of one company that buys 18GB drives and only uses 2GB of those just to keep the number of spindles high. They constantly complain that no drive manufacturer is using these high density technologies to build smaller faster cheaper drives, but rather to build big expensive drives.
EIDE is not going to be able to handle 100MB of access a second in random 4k blocks across all of the drives.
The article mentioned a "two stage" head positioning process where the head is aligned with the regular moter mechanism, then precisely algined with a combination of strands of fiber and mirrors. This all sounds like it adds a lot of complexity to the seek process, and possibly a few milliseconds to the seek time. Does anybody have the real specs on this yet? Is it even a real product yet (the article was a little vague)?
If you think the O2 looks cool, you should try the Visual workstations. As an added feature, they have that door on the front that, when you press on the bottom gently) automatically slide down gracefully revealing the floppy, CDROM, tape, and Power button. More information is available on the SGi web site.
Ow! I looked specifically for a motherboard with ISA slots this time around (and didn't see one with 2) I've got an old Ethernet card and Soundard that work just fine, not matter what Intel says
Hey, this is built on my ISA soundcard, how exactly does Intel plan to kill it?
Intel must have a huge hard-on for USB to abandon the MILLIONS of keyboards/mice out there that already use this widely accepted standard
Hopefully I won't have my external modem still when they do this
Or my printer
Good riddance, as long as they replace it with SCSI, Firewire, or Fibre channel (mmmm Fibre Channel) and not USB or some other lame protocol
Why are they waiting so long on this one? Who uses floppies anymore? I guess they're just holding on to this to spite Apple
And replace it with what?
Somehow I doubt this will go over very well with the people who make peripherals. If Intel released some chipset that didn't support any sort of expansion slots, you can bet somebody (maybe IBM) will release one that does. The sever market (not to mention gamers/power users/other computer savvy people) simply won't stand for this.
Well, I don't have any experiance with other systems, but I can tell you about the RCA DSS system.
First, the picture quality is very good, and stays that way even in stormy weather...to a point. Once the weather gets bad enough, the signal is broken and the decoder just stops, freezing the current picture on the screen until the weather clears up. This happens very infrequently where we live though.
Secondly, the basic offering has quite a few channels, although most of them are crap. Sci-fi is included in the basic package.
There is quite a selection of pay-per-view movies as well, at a reasonable cost ($2.50, or about what you pay to rent from a video store).
The guide is a nice feature, just poorly implemented. The interface is slow and rather clumsy, although this may be fixed in newer boxes. The one we have is also quite ugly (it looks like the preview channel with its squarish blocks of programming. All said though, the guide is about 100x better than those preview channels, since you don't have to wait for your channel to scroll up.
You won't be able to view local channels on the DSS (you will have to use the rabbit ears), unless you live in an area that has no local TV service, and then it takes an act of Congress to get broadcast channels (not to mention a monthly fee). Supposedly this will be changing in the near future, but don't bet the farm on it.
All in all though, we are very happy with the system, especially compared to the rip-you-off-at-every-corner cable service I have up here.
Of course there are several good Freecell implementations just waiting for you. Search for freecell on freshmeat. I believe the Gnome distribution also has a pretty good freecell implementation. The best part is that Freecell is now free software.
I think it would be hilarious if the Austrailan parlament (that is what you use down there isn't it?) suddenly had an AdultCheck id on their main site because their webmaster was named Pamela or whatever, the list of words is large enough that virtually no site with content can escape.
This is like suggesting that Perl is a better web scripting language than C++.
Are you suggesting it's not? I think what you really ment to say was: This is like suggesting that Perl is a better language than C++, but not saying that your only critera is CGI scripting.
Most business people I know have a machine connected to the net all the time, it is their business machine. I don't think blackberrys are ment for personal use by people with dialup lines.
I have to agree though, I wouldn't want to reply to emails on a 3.5x1.5" keyboard.
The Blackberry is being marketed as a replacement for the Palm Pilot, however I think it is more of a glorified alphanumeric pager than a PDA. For one thing, the Blackberry is only 3.5" x 2.5" big, and has a querty keyboard (not that it is actually useful, unless you have little twig fingers) which leaves only a small amount of screen space for stuff like email. Also, this product is nowhere near as versitile as a Palmpilot (as far as I can tell from their rather skimpy and overly sales oriented white paper).
The white paper also makes some pretty astounding claims. For instance, they claim to be able to run a cell modem equipped device for ~41 days on a single AAA battery.
Bottom line, I'd like to see one of these puppies in action before I decide to buy one, and even then it will only be a supplement to the Palm pilot I also want to buy.
It already is offensive in many parts of Northern Virginia. Lots and lots of people up here with a very large stick inhabiting their rectal cavity willing to go to court at the drop of a hat. This is due, in large part, to the large number of political extremists who like to hang around Congress trying to push their own agendas. I suspect other countries have a similar situitation around their lawmaking bodies, hence laws like this.
Once you get to that point, you should switch to something like SGI's crossbars and CC-NUMA arcitecture. Look at the architecture of the Origin 2000. Each Node board contains 2 MIPS R12ks, memory, and a router to talk to all of the other processors. The best part is, the memory is shared between all of the processors, so the whole thing runs as a single image. If you don't think this technology can be adaped to PC architecture, check out the SGI 320 and 540 class computers, Intel based but with a radically different "bus" that isn't really a bus at all.
MDI would be the kiss of death for any web browser I use. I usually have two or three windows open on different desktops (under WindowMaker). For instance, I'll have the Netscape HTML reference on desktop 3, the web page I'm currently working on in desktop 2, and several xterms with my current work on desktop 1. With WindowMaker's excellent ALT-# desktop switching, I find this a very efficent way to work. MDI would kill that by forcing me to stick all of the windows inside of a single window (on a single screen) and use some sort of clumsy ALT-TAB scheme or something to switch between windows.
This leads to a big IF on their part. Will Opera be shipping before Mozilla is released to the general public? Will there be a compelling reason to buy Opera by the time it reaches completion?
I thought the Gimp followed the photoshop interaface pretty closely. A friend of mine who uses Photoshop a lot noticed the considerable similarites betweent the two programs. What kind of functionality are you looking for in a KDE version of the Gimp anyway?
On a side note, ImageMagick needs some serious work on its interface. IMHO it needs to behave with Windowmanger options like focus-follows and autoraise before I can consider using it. Whenever I try to select something in that dialog box, it autorases whatever window is below it, which obscures not on the control panel, but the main window as well. Very frustrating, especially if you are going back and forth between that window and ImageMagick. On a final note, ImageMagick seems slower than the Gimp in most operations (save starting up).
I think it's only fair to point out that Windowmaker was also written from the ground up (IE no FVWM code either).
no dock (to my knowledge) or customizable panel
clucky config (and I hand edit E configs...)
Eh? Are you knocking on E or on Windowmaker? WM certainly has a dock and a control panel for changing the config. There isn't a "customizeable panel" per say, but that's what dockapps are for. I don't think the config is that clunky either, even when you do it by hand with vi.
E isn't bad either, but it just isn't my style. (P.S. E is faster?!?)
I read that phrase differently than you did. It looks to me like activestate plans to add features to the "windows" version of perl that do not exist on other platforms (activex controls for example). This means that a lot of perl written by windoze coders may not run on every other version of perl, which is exactly what MS and other commercial software houses love to do. (it's called "value adding")
Of course if Activestate keeps their version of perl in line with the "main" distribution, and contributes ALL relevant changes back to the community, then this will be an undoubtedly good thing for perl. I should point out that history is against this course of events.
Isn't this like arguing that the CPU is not integrated with the computer because you can take it out? So what if they are shipped seperately, if you HAVE to install it to get the rest of the software to install, that sounds like the first half of integration to me. If in the process of removing it you render the system unusable, then you qualify for the second half of the definition. Isn't this what the DOJ proved?
The problem is that it isn't that simple. Most malicious spammers now use a technique called superceding where they basically overwrite the body of "signal" messages with noise. This makes it look like legitimate posters in the newsgroup are posting spam under legitimate titles. IMHO this is the most vile kind of spam, since not only does it increase the noise of a newsgroup, it actively decreases the signal, and destroys countless discussions. The worst part is that moderation is usually ineffective agsinst this kind of attack.
Actually, it's a good bet that the "Physics of Star Trek" is never true. :)
Also, I don't claim to understand the math exactly, but from the paper it looks like the researcher found a way to reduce the amount of energy you need to power a "warp bubble" from astronomical to merly enormous.
Despite what the blurb implies, this is all still very theoretical stuff. Don't expect to see warp drives in actual use in your lifetime.
Reading through the paper (which it WAY over my head) it sounds like the researcher found a much more efficent way to travel once we figure out how to fold space-time (with negative energy I guess).
Of course only a few years ago (like 70 or so) I'd be saying the same thing about general purpose personal computers...
Getting all of the free/share/GPL encoders to do this is easy, just threaten and sue the authors of these encoders with BS laws/copyrights/patents/etc.. and they will have to comply. It doesn't matter that it doesn't have an ounce of legal merit, just as long as you can draw out the court battle long enough to bankrupt your opponent. The RIAA has shown that they are quite willing to do this to get their way.
The final result probabally won't be exactly MP3 anyway, at least not once MS gets done with it. You can bet it will be slightly incompatable and undocumented (value adding indeed) so it will be broken with existing players. Maybe they'll change the header to make it look like a wave (oops, someone already did that) or modify the internal structure slightly to break it on older players (and maybe add some invalid assumptions to be sure it breaks on big endian machines or something).
MS has used MAC addresses for tracking purposes? That's surprising since the vast majority of home PCs don't have ethernet cards.
SHHH!
Don't tell politions that! Right now their understanding of the internet is so low that they only know about censoring the WWW, I'd rather like to keep it that way. Remember, the web used to be regulation free because nobody bothered to tell the lawyors, activists ("Moral" majority), and lawmakers about it.
--
The Moral Majority is a lot like the Holy Roman Empire, which was neither holy, nor Roman, nor an empire.
That sounds nice, but there is a big problem with that. Assume you save the state of the machine (say at time point x) and a few seconds later (time point y) the machine BSODs for some software reason (say NT is flaky). Now you reboot the machine and load it back to state x, what is going to keep it from crashing at state y all over again?
These sort of protection schemes are really only good at protecting you from hardware failures, which is not what you are looking for. Also, if your system has a lot of memory it can take quite a while to dump the memory to disk and read it off again on boot. I work on machines that routinely have 4GB of memory, and when they crash (and core dump) it can easily take 15-30 minutes to finish dumping the core. These machines can boot regularly in less than 10 minutes (easily). Of course with the checkpointing scheme you don't lose as much work, which is a big thing when you are using the machine to do an extremely computationally intensive task or have a huge database in memory.