I used to work there. Rough times for telco suppliers these days, the technology does work OK though. It has some glitches, but basically, there aren't that many people interested in big capital investments into telecom gear these days.
-Reasonably objective opinion follows-
on
Is Mac OS X Slow?
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· Score: 2
I'm going to try and be objective here. I've run a variety of machines over the years, I used to be militantly pro-linux, although since I've graduated I interact daily with machines running Solaris, OpenBSD, FreeBSD, Linux, Windows 2000, Windows 98, etc etc.
I tried OS X because I heard great things about it, I really needed a notebook, and configuring linux was beginning to take up too much of my time. It takes signifigant effort to maintain and tweak linux, and the temptation is too much to ignore. The titanium powerbook was sexy, offered true instant on, and would run long enough to let me code for 4 hours on a charge. That's what sucked me in. I think it's a great os, it has great integrated development tools and documentation bar none. It is expensive, but so is my time.
That said, OS X is still a lot slower than a comparable machine running windows or linux. Programs run fine - never had a problem there. It shows in the Finder, mainly. Explorer is something windows did right, and it is very, very, very, very, very fast compared to finder. Put a few hundred files in a directory and launch finder, and you will be waiting. The graphics were a little laggy in 10.1, but that has been solved with Quartz Extreme in 10.2. The transparency is really quite beautiful, and doesn't come at a cpu hit. This is on a second generation 550mhz Tibook, so it is comparable to the machines asked about here.
Finder is slow. There are reasons for that, but finder is very, very slow. People who have run macs all the time will not notice it, people with large number of files moving from windows will be driven insane.
Trust me.
Yes, everything else makes up for it:).
The command prompt, sweet, sweet bash, is lightning fast, so I don't usually notice. The rest of the OS is acceptable, and the slow finder is definately tolerable given how nice a machine this is otherwise. I'll be upgrading to a 1ghz powerbook in the new year, and it'll be faster still, but the finder is still going to be dog slow compared to windows. Office, Mozilla, everything - they run great. I really like the Tibook, but I'll say it again - finder is very slow.
This appears to be a software issue, and I hope it will be resolved. Mac people can be in denial or refuse to accept things, and I really love my powerbook - it's my primary machine, when I'm not doing something on my workstation. That's job specific to vhdl or pspice - most EDA tools, used to make the toys you all love, are windows 2000 based now.
Forget about making use of a directory with 500 mp3's in it. It ain't gunna happen on a mid range machine.
Please fix this apple! Otherwise, it's a great OS, but remember it hasn't hit it's second major revision yet. There is definate room for improvement, and I hope I will see it soon.
I get rid of drives after a year, or put them doing something not that important. My drives are properly cooled. I have never had a hard drive fail in 10 years of computing with them, although the 4 years before I got a HD kinda sucked.
What's the big deal with backup? I have all my data online in two places. Work files get dumped to CVS, which is backed up, and as I decomission drives, I use them for redundant copies of media.
No worries about backup or MTBF here. If it bothers you, get 4 drives and run a stripe/mirror configuration on them, and use a regimen as above. Really, there isn't a problem that I can see.
This whole MTBF thing is blown way out of proportion IMHO.
Get a raid card or raid-supporting mobo. Run striped. I have a two way striped raid at work that is very, very fast, constructed from IDE drives. It benches favorably against single high-speed SCSI drives for a small fraction of the price. I am unsure of 4-way striping is available on IDE drives, but would improve things even more.
Stuck on the notebooks though. Solution there is to put as much ram as possible in them so you don't have to hit the disk much.
The CBC (cbc.ca) has some great science and culture shows, and they're all ready to go in mp3 format and usually archived. Apply your favorite tool (e.g. wget) and off you go. Our politics aren't really as entertaining though.:-)
As another poster mentioned, a fm card or a sound card connected to a normal radio is another way to go, as well. It's all about cron. I've done this with TV as well, I drive a lot.
128mb rio == one whola hella pile of radio talk shows @ 64kbit.
Step one is getting the infrastructure in place, so let it run wild. Step two is securing that, and it is very easy using software like FreeNet, or even more mundane technologies like VPN. Or just encrypting the traffic you send over the public channel.
The key assumption with any public network or wireless data transfer is that it is fundamentally insecure once it leaves your physical location. The paranoid don't even assume that.
Lots of articles appear on slashdot about ISPs monitoring communications for the government, shutting sites down without authorization or anything resembling due process (important if you are a US citizen!), operating system and software vendors restricting freedoms, abuses of media by government PsyOps (ack!) organizations, media conglomerates manipulating editorials, ad nauseum.
While all of that may or may not be true, there is now a technology that can greatly reduce the reliance of the technically inclined and general populace alike on these large, controlled networks. This is the first time in history that a viable, high bandwidth technology can be bought into for a hundred bucks and some clever thought. The signifigance of that is not immediately apparent now, but I suspect it will become VERY important in the years to come.
If you really care about getting shafted by your ISP and care about free speech this is a avenue to pursue in addition to your standard channels of protest. Set up local networks! Once upon a time, we did this with modems, call forwarding lines, and crummy XTs. A bunch of kids trading software provoked national secret service investigations. Not with the internet, but with long distance phone calls. 802.11 is making being a ham radio operator interesting again - I can play with antennas and build networks on the cheap! At 11mbits to boot! When I was in high school, I thought the kenwood handheld and a battery operated packet modem was pretty pimp - and it cost me a lot more than a d-link pcmcia card!
If you live in a high density area, look at getting together a co-op for bandwidth. Distribute it on WiFi. Get people together and pool some cash. The networks are there, and once they're built, they only have to be connected. There is no reason that in 5 years, there can't be an alternative to commercial ISPs for bandwidth. Just as nobody thought the internet would work (what! no circuits! no central provide!), there is no evidence a widely distributed decentralized wireless network won't, either.
Security is a non starter. Make the network all-encompassing and encrypt your traffic.
Combine the technologies with something like Freenet (freenetproject.org), and you have a real motivator for social change (like it or not). Run more static nodes!
If you short large capacitors to ground, you are likely (At best) going to vaporize the screwdriver you attempted to do this with. Don't ask me how I know. Please use a proper capacitor discharge apparatus, and if you don't know how to build one or where to get one, then do not attempt this. Power supplies and monitors can carry lethal charges for days or weeks after they are unplugged.
Have a look at the DSP Village over on the Texas Instruments web site. There are whole families of DSP chips that are reprogrammable and accellerate media functionality in all sorts of ways. Even your example of the GF4 - it is specialized towards 3D accelleration, it is customizable with the Cg language extensions. I won't even get into crazier ideas like shipping a FPGA and putting the algorithms on it (the general purpose CPU is probably cheaper). This is the case today, but maybe not tomorrow. This device probably does use some crummy chipset, you're right.
What people should be asking is why the hell the folks at ATI - who already make exactly what you want, by the way, with their all in wonder cards - can't get their act together and write some decent, bulletproof software for windows 2k or linux (I don't really care at this point, if it's solid software). A general purpose PC with more power than you could ever need for this is about $500 away. Just add the card (maybe with some goodies like support for HDTV) and you're off to the races. Or just get a projector.
The problem with that right now is stability. That ATI software is not very stable or good, doesn't integrate DiVX and scheduling functionality, doesn't want to work with my satellite reciever, etc. Get some good software in there and you have something.
Well.. being the advocate, millions of people use cell phones every day on the road without any incident whatsoever. By your logic, millions could drive intoxicated?
Comparing a cell phone to intoxication is invalid. The cell phone does not affect reflexes, perceptions, inhibitions, and judgement. I can through the phone on the floor (and I have) to handle a traffic situtation. You cannot chose to do same under the influence of alcohol. There is a difference between using a phone with no traffic on a freeway and driving on same freeway drunk.
You must remember - millions of people do this every day without incident. Millions of people DO NOT drive drunk (at least not in my country!).
I'm going to play devils advocate here. First off, millions of people use phones on the road without a problem. Second, it's become so engrained, no amount of policing action is going to make much of a difference. I do it, my mom does it, everyone does it. There's a difference between using a phone in 5pm rush hour traffic and at 10pm on a empty freeway. I see cops driving with phones on all the time here.
Given the above, it makes since to find ways to make this a little safer. Yes, you can't navigate a cone course and talk on the phone. I autoslalom and I doubt you could listen to the radio and do that. It makes sense that you might NOT use the phone in those situations, or tell the other party you have to stop talking for a second (or just stop).
Lawmakers can do what they want, it's not going to stop anyone. It would be impossible to tell someone is talking on the phone if they're on handsfree anyhow.
Laws and phones do not make up the primary problem: Lack of driver skill and attention to the road, and bad driving habits. Most people have no idea how to do basic emergency avoidance maneuvers, or drive vehicles which make those maneuvers life threatening or impossible.
I do a lot of VHDL at work, and let me tell you, it sure as shootin is worth it for me. Large FPGAs take forever to synthesize, even on mighty big hardware. The industry (at least where I work:) is moving away from Solaris to Linux & Win 2k solutions. The reason is largely bang for the buck and speed..
So, I have a watercooler on my PC. I upgrade the CPU every couple months. That watercooler always lets me eek out another couple hundred Mhz of speed where I couldn't before, and it does make a difference. 10 minutes here and there does add up.
It isn't as signifigant as it used to be, but it is still definately worthwhile. My machine is also much quieter without the 60mm turbine on top of most CPUs.
Then it's time to get organized and see how much it really does cost. If you're in a major center, it's quite likely you can work out an alternative to current ISPs - go get pricing on a T3 level connection (hint: they're not cheap), and look at some distribution options. You might be able to get a long way with 802.11 - crummy latencies though - or look at running your own wires, cobble something together. There are alternatives to the last mile problem. It -is- possible to lease wires (or run your own!). Expensive, maybe. But then you're free.
It's called a co-op, and it's worked in locales where corporations have tried to screw over the consumers before. Talk to a farmer.
Yes, I know it's unfair that the FCC et al are doing this. If they won't listen to you, very publically take matters into your own hands. The sad fact is that the majority of users don't make use of their broadband connections and the providers bank on that. Then they try to get rid of those that do - that's not right.
If you get 100, 500, or 1000 people together in a urban area that are willing to pay more - like, $100/mo - for better service, that's a serious pile of money. If they pledged that in advance and ponied up, you could probably match it again in some sort of local investment. Or maybe even 10 times that. Getting $100k together -will- attract attention. Maybe the initial cost might be worse than $100/mo, maybe it'll be better. Get a solid foundation and then you can bring those costs down.
If you're geeks, you should be able to find the technical know how in a group that size to make it happen. Maybe even the legal expertise to CYA in this legal-happy world.
Networking gear is CHEAP fellas, and I know not everyone out there makes big money, if you want to make a change, do something about it. If you live in a big center, take control of your own fates. Be smarter than the telcos. If the worst-case scenarios happen, it might be your only alternative.
It beats bitching to people who apparently have been coopted or straight up don't care.
I believe viewsonic and others have or will have shortly sub-10ms LCD reponse time as well. I use a LCD for gaming and don't notice too much difference at the native resolution relative to my Sony E400 CRT. Of course, I also think that mp3s are more than sufficient quality, too. Heh.
The extra terminals are usually control logic. A little investigation can reveal what they are, or you can do what I did: I got a half dozen Compaq notebook batteries for $5/each surplus and smashed up the cases and took out the cells, and made my own packs sans logic (with charger chip). I forget what I was doing with them now though, but with 20 or so li-ion cells you have about the same power as a mid-size lead acid.
Lead acid batteries don't need much in the way of charging intelligence. If they're 12V, the cheapest solution is to use a trickle-charger from an auto store.
The coin cells, heh.. well, I needed to use my meter and back in the day the only one I had was a crummy radio shack piece of junk that took coin cells. I figured if I pulsed some current into 'em, I'd get some measurements. It worked until I got greedy and did it a few times, then it went off with a LARGE bang and almost embedded itself into my arm. Not recommended.
You can get a battery charger IC cheap cheap cheap from any number of sources now. Most come with a example application that details how to build the charging logic. Do not attempt to charge a li-ion battery any other way, they will explode violently. I've had coin cells go off like small grenades by pulsing them with 1A @ 12V (don't ask).
Even on chipsets that come with so-called "Active" cooling (laughter), that piddly little fan doesn't do much except make noise. You could add a new fan, but small fans are all likely to fail and mainly just add noise.
I have a heavily overclocked abit mobo running at a bus of 152mhz, rock solid. The processor is watercooled, but the chipset isn't. All I did was take off the joke heatsink it comes with and do some mods.
If you want to cure northbridge woes forever, you need:
- A athlon heat sink (I used a volcano-II) - A saw, dremel, or other primitive machine tools - Goop-brand adhesive - Some alcohol and arctic silver
Take the stock heatsink off. Cut the large one so it can fit on the motherboard. Clean the northbridge off with some alcohol. Put arctic silver on the chip, and a good pile of goop around the outside of the chip. Goop can be worked off, it is a weak bond against the metal of the heat sink. Put the sink on and smoosh it down. Put something heavy on it for 24 hrs, presto. If you have any airflow through your case whatsoever your northbridge will stay at ~29-30C even heavily overclocked.
I've built one of these. It works very, very well. Never tested it in practice though, as photo radar was axed here before it got off the ground. The system is known in photography circles as a "slave flash".
A polarized LCD plate that goes black would work equally well.
Yes, it'll work for you, too. You'd be amazed what dressing well, maintaining some personal grooming, a big smile (think someone mailed you a new TiBook smile), and an enthusiastic "hi" will get you.
You can also use a wooden door to the same effect. Just make sure it's solid, and all you need is a surface. You can take a set of metal legs off another table or get some sawhorse legs from a hardware store. I did this when I was in university to get an obscene amount of desk space.
The solution to the problem is a huge, huge, huge desk. I use a heavy-duty kitchen table for development at home, and have an actual huge desk at work. I find that the typical cube arrangements aren't very good, so if you're stuck with one..
The thing with a big table is you can shuffle stuff around fairly easily. I like to have the biggest monitor possible in front of me, with my notebook to the side of that. If you have the aforementioned LARGE desk, then there is enough room to put a book between you, the monitor, and the keyboard, in addition to having lots of papers and crap on whichever side your notebook isn't on.
If I need to do any more reading (in depth) I have a smaller table with a reading lamp.
Seriously, try an obscenely large desk. Just a flat table. Aim for 4-5 feet deep as a bare minium, at least 6 feet long. It makes things seem a lot easier to deal with. I usually have 2-3 references and a pile of trade rags open on top of all the computer junk.
I resent that. I used to be a hardcore linux zealot. Hell, I ran linux througout university and sometime thereafter, from about 1996 until 2001. Something happened once I graduated and got experience though, all of a sudden, my time wasn't free, and messing with linux to get it "just right" started to get EXPENSIVE. A day or two of playing to get a digital camera or mp3 player working all of a sudden costs me more than the gadget in question.
Now, I use a tibook for my primary machine, along with Solaris, linux, BSD and Windows 2000. Most of the EDA industry - designers of the toys we love - runs on Windows 2000. With the latest releases from Mentor Graphics, we've completely swtiched to Windows 2000 and Linux in the lab. But those machines do one thing, they are TOOLS. Just like the mac is a tool. It just happens to be a better tool (for me) to do most computing chores. Project builder is really nice. If something new that's even better comes along, I'll switch to that.
It really does just work. Apple has themselves a real winner here, but luck or design. The perfect home for open source software, oh, the irony.
Of course, that's just because I don't have time to be a zealot anymore. So maybe you're right.:-)
Network more, be unemployed less
on
Resume Tips For Jobs
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· Score: 3, Informative
Something a lot of people out there need to do is build up a solid network of friends and contacts, moreso than anything else. A solid recommendation from someone inside an organization will go farther than anything else; there is more than a grain of truth to the fact that the good jobs never make it to a forum like Monster. Especially so in today's economic climate.
It's worthwhile to keep business cards. It's worthwhile to go out of your way to socialize with people in your industry. Go to trade meetings when you can. Hell, get involved in some open source projects where you can meet some people.
Learning to sell yourself is the biggest thing. A resume is part of that, but it's only a part. Unfortunately, the/. crowd do not represent the demographic who sell themselves best:).
Slashdot Mirror
www.imagictv.com
I used to work there. Rough times for telco suppliers these days, the technology does work OK though. It has some glitches, but basically, there aren't that many people interested in big capital investments into telecom gear these days.
*ahem*
I'm going to try and be objective here. I've run a variety of machines over the years, I used to be militantly pro-linux, although since I've graduated I interact daily with machines running Solaris, OpenBSD, FreeBSD, Linux, Windows 2000, Windows 98, etc etc.
:).
I tried OS X because I heard great things about it, I really needed a notebook, and configuring linux was beginning to take up too much of my time. It takes signifigant effort to maintain and tweak linux, and the temptation is too much to ignore. The titanium powerbook was sexy, offered true instant on, and would run long enough to let me code for 4 hours on a charge. That's what sucked me in. I think it's a great os, it has great integrated development tools and documentation bar none. It is expensive, but so is my time.
That said, OS X is still a lot slower than a comparable machine running windows or linux. Programs run fine - never had a problem there. It shows in the Finder, mainly. Explorer is something windows did right, and it is very, very, very, very, very fast compared to finder. Put a few hundred files in a directory and launch finder, and you will be waiting. The graphics were a little laggy in 10.1, but that has been solved with Quartz Extreme in 10.2. The transparency is really quite beautiful, and doesn't come at a cpu hit. This is on a second generation 550mhz Tibook, so it is comparable to the machines asked about here.
Finder is slow. There are reasons for that, but finder is very, very slow. People who have run macs all the time will not notice it, people with large number of files moving from windows will be driven insane.
Trust me.
Yes, everything else makes up for it
The command prompt, sweet, sweet bash, is lightning fast, so I don't usually notice. The rest of the OS is acceptable, and the slow finder is definately tolerable given how nice a machine this is otherwise. I'll be upgrading to a 1ghz powerbook in the new year, and it'll be faster still, but the finder is still going to be dog slow compared to windows. Office, Mozilla, everything - they run great. I really like the Tibook, but I'll say it again - finder is very slow.
This appears to be a software issue, and I hope it will be resolved. Mac people can be in denial or refuse to accept things, and I really love my powerbook - it's my primary machine, when I'm not doing something on my workstation. That's job specific to vhdl or pspice - most EDA tools, used to make the toys you all love, are windows 2000 based now.
Forget about making use of a directory with 500 mp3's in it. It ain't gunna happen on a mid range machine.
Please fix this apple! Otherwise, it's a great OS, but remember it hasn't hit it's second major revision yet. There is definate room for improvement, and I hope I will see it soon.
My $0.02.
I get rid of drives after a year, or put them doing something not that important. My drives are properly cooled. I have never had a hard drive fail in 10 years of computing with them, although the 4 years before I got a HD kinda sucked.
What's the big deal with backup? I have all my data online in two places. Work files get dumped to CVS, which is backed up, and as I decomission drives, I use them for redundant copies of media.
No worries about backup or MTBF here. If it bothers you, get 4 drives and run a stripe/mirror configuration on them, and use a regimen as above. Really, there isn't a problem that I can see.
This whole MTBF thing is blown way out of proportion IMHO.
Get a raid card or raid-supporting mobo. Run striped. I have a two way striped raid at work that is very, very fast, constructed from IDE drives. It benches favorably against single high-speed SCSI drives for a small fraction of the price. I am unsure of 4-way striping is available on IDE drives, but would improve things even more.
Stuck on the notebooks though. Solution there is to put as much ram as possible in them so you don't have to hit the disk much.
The CBC (cbc.ca) has some great science and culture shows, and they're all ready to go in mp3 format and usually archived. Apply your favorite tool (e.g. wget) and off you go. Our politics aren't really as entertaining though. :-)
As another poster mentioned, a fm card or a sound card connected to a normal radio is another way to go, as well. It's all about cron. I've done this with TV as well, I drive a lot.
128mb rio == one whola hella pile of radio talk shows @ 64kbit.
Step one is getting the infrastructure in place, so let it run wild. Step two is securing that, and it is very easy using software like FreeNet, or even more mundane technologies like VPN. Or just encrypting the traffic you send over the public channel.
The key assumption with any public network or wireless data transfer is that it is fundamentally insecure once it leaves your physical location. The paranoid don't even assume that.
Lots of articles appear on slashdot about ISPs monitoring communications for the government, shutting sites down without authorization or anything resembling due process (important if you are a US citizen!), operating system and software vendors restricting freedoms, abuses of media by government PsyOps (ack!) organizations, media conglomerates manipulating editorials, ad nauseum.
While all of that may or may not be true, there is now a technology that can greatly reduce the reliance of the technically inclined and general populace alike on these large, controlled networks. This is the first time in history that a viable, high bandwidth technology can be bought into for a hundred bucks and some clever thought. The signifigance of that is not immediately apparent now, but I suspect it will become VERY important in the years to come.
If you really care about getting shafted by your ISP and care about free speech this is a avenue to pursue in addition to your standard channels of protest. Set up local networks! Once upon a time, we did this with modems, call forwarding lines, and crummy XTs. A bunch of kids trading software provoked national secret service investigations. Not with the internet, but with long distance phone calls. 802.11 is making being a ham radio operator interesting again - I can play with antennas and build networks on the cheap! At 11mbits to boot! When I was in high school, I thought the kenwood handheld and a battery operated packet modem was pretty pimp - and it cost me a lot more than a d-link pcmcia card!
If you live in a high density area, look at getting together a co-op for bandwidth. Distribute it on WiFi. Get people together and pool some cash. The networks are there, and once they're built, they only have to be connected. There is no reason that in 5 years, there can't be an alternative to commercial ISPs for bandwidth. Just as nobody thought the internet would work (what! no circuits! no central provide!), there is no evidence a widely distributed decentralized wireless network won't, either.
Security is a non starter. Make the network all-encompassing and encrypt your traffic.
Combine the technologies with something like Freenet (freenetproject.org), and you have a real motivator for social change (like it or not). Run more static nodes!
My $0.02. 802.11 isn't hyped enough.
If you short large capacitors to ground, you are likely (At best) going to vaporize the screwdriver you attempted to do this with. Don't ask me how I know. Please use a proper capacitor discharge apparatus, and if you don't know how to build one or where to get one, then do not attempt this. Power supplies and monitors can carry lethal charges for days or weeks after they are unplugged.
Have a look at the DSP Village over on the Texas Instruments web site. There are whole families of DSP chips that are reprogrammable and accellerate media functionality in all sorts of ways. Even your example of the GF4 - it is specialized towards 3D accelleration, it is customizable with the Cg language extensions. I won't even get into crazier ideas like shipping a FPGA and putting the algorithms on it (the general purpose CPU is probably cheaper). This is the case today, but maybe not tomorrow. This device probably does use some crummy chipset, you're right.
What people should be asking is why the hell the folks at ATI - who already make exactly what you want, by the way, with their all in wonder cards - can't get their act together and write some decent, bulletproof software for windows 2k or linux (I don't really care at this point, if it's solid software). A general purpose PC with more power than you could ever need for this is about $500 away. Just add the card (maybe with some goodies like support for HDTV) and you're off to the races. Or just get a projector.
The problem with that right now is stability. That ATI software is not very stable or good, doesn't integrate DiVX and scheduling functionality, doesn't want to work with my satellite reciever, etc. Get some good software in there and you have something.
My $0.02.
Well.. being the advocate, millions of people use cell phones every day on the road without any incident whatsoever. By your logic, millions could drive intoxicated?
Comparing a cell phone to intoxication is invalid. The cell phone does not affect reflexes, perceptions, inhibitions, and judgement. I can through the phone on the floor (and I have) to handle a traffic situtation. You cannot chose to do same under the influence of alcohol. There is a difference between using a phone with no traffic on a freeway and driving on same freeway drunk.
You must remember - millions of people do this every day without incident. Millions of people DO NOT drive drunk (at least not in my country!).
I'm going to play devils advocate here. First off, millions of people use phones on the road without a problem. Second, it's become so engrained, no amount of policing action is going to make much of a difference. I do it, my mom does it, everyone does it. There's a difference between using a phone in 5pm rush hour traffic and at 10pm on a empty freeway. I see cops driving with phones on all the time here.
Given the above, it makes since to find ways to make this a little safer. Yes, you can't navigate a cone course and talk on the phone. I autoslalom and I doubt you could listen to the radio and do that. It makes sense that you might NOT use the phone in those situations, or tell the other party you have to stop talking for a second (or just stop).
Lawmakers can do what they want, it's not going to stop anyone. It would be impossible to tell someone is talking on the phone if they're on handsfree anyhow.
Laws and phones do not make up the primary problem: Lack of driver skill and attention to the road, and bad driving habits. Most people have no idea how to do basic emergency avoidance maneuvers, or drive vehicles which make those maneuvers life threatening or impossible.
I do a lot of VHDL at work, and let me tell you, it sure as shootin is worth it for me. Large FPGAs take forever to synthesize, even on mighty big hardware. The industry (at least where I work :) is moving away from Solaris to Linux & Win 2k solutions. The reason is largely bang for the buck and speed..
So, I have a watercooler on my PC. I upgrade the CPU every couple months. That watercooler always lets me eek out another couple hundred Mhz of speed where I couldn't before, and it does make a difference. 10 minutes here and there does add up.
It isn't as signifigant as it used to be, but it is still definately worthwhile. My machine is also much quieter without the 60mm turbine on top of most CPUs.
Then it's time to get organized and see how much it really does cost. If you're in a major center, it's quite likely you can work out an alternative to current ISPs - go get pricing on a T3 level connection (hint: they're not cheap), and look at some distribution options. You might be able to get a long way with 802.11 - crummy latencies though - or look at running your own wires, cobble something together. There are alternatives to the last mile problem. It -is- possible to lease wires (or run your own!). Expensive, maybe. But then you're free.
It's called a co-op, and it's worked in locales where corporations have tried to screw over the consumers before. Talk to a farmer.
Yes, I know it's unfair that the FCC et al are doing this. If they won't listen to you, very publically take matters into your own hands. The sad fact is that the majority of users don't make use of their broadband connections and the providers bank on that. Then they try to get rid of those that do - that's not right.
If you get 100, 500, or 1000 people together in a urban area that are willing to pay more - like, $100/mo - for better service, that's a serious pile of money. If they pledged that in advance and ponied up, you could probably match it again in some sort of local investment. Or maybe even 10 times that. Getting $100k together -will- attract attention. Maybe the initial cost might be worse than $100/mo, maybe it'll be better. Get a solid foundation and then you can bring those costs down.
If you're geeks, you should be able to find the technical know how in a group that size to make it happen. Maybe even the legal expertise to CYA in this legal-happy world.
Networking gear is CHEAP fellas, and I know not everyone out there makes big money, if you want to make a change, do something about it. If you live in a big center, take control of your own fates. Be smarter than the telcos. If the worst-case scenarios happen, it might be your only alternative.
It beats bitching to people who apparently have been coopted or straight up don't care.
I believe viewsonic and others have or will have shortly sub-10ms LCD reponse time as well. I use a LCD for gaming and don't notice too much difference at the native resolution relative to my Sony E400 CRT. Of course, I also think that mp3s are more than sufficient quality, too. Heh.
I've flown cross country a few times, mind you, on commercial carriers - but let me tell you this, most of Canada is E M P T Y. M - T.
Would you want to live there, well, that's another issue.
The extra terminals are usually control logic. A little investigation can reveal what they are, or you can do what I did: I got a half dozen Compaq notebook batteries for $5/each surplus and smashed up the cases and took out the cells, and made my own packs sans logic (with charger chip). I forget what I was doing with them now though, but with 20 or so li-ion cells you have about the same power as a mid-size lead acid.
Lead acid batteries don't need much in the way of charging intelligence. If they're 12V, the cheapest solution is to use a trickle-charger from an auto store.
The coin cells, heh.. well, I needed to use my meter and back in the day the only one I had was a crummy radio shack piece of junk that took coin cells. I figured if I pulsed some current into 'em, I'd get some measurements. It worked until I got greedy and did it a few times, then it went off with a LARGE bang and almost embedded itself into my arm. Not recommended.
You can get a battery charger IC cheap cheap cheap from any number of sources now. Most come with a example application that details how to build the charging logic. Do not attempt to charge a li-ion battery any other way, they will explode violently. I've had coin cells go off like small grenades by pulsing them with 1A @ 12V (don't ask).
Steve
Even on chipsets that come with so-called "Active" cooling (laughter), that piddly little fan doesn't do much except make noise. You could add a new fan, but small fans are all likely to fail and mainly just add noise.
I have a heavily overclocked abit mobo running at a bus of 152mhz, rock solid. The processor is watercooled, but the chipset isn't. All I did was take off the joke heatsink it comes with and do some mods.
If you want to cure northbridge woes forever, you need:
- A athlon heat sink (I used a volcano-II)
- A saw, dremel, or other primitive machine tools
- Goop-brand adhesive
- Some alcohol and arctic silver
Take the stock heatsink off. Cut the large one so it can fit on the motherboard. Clean the northbridge off with some alcohol. Put arctic silver on the chip, and a good pile of goop around the outside of the chip. Goop can be worked off, it is a weak bond against the metal of the heat sink. Put the sink on and smoosh it down. Put something heavy on it for 24 hrs, presto. If you have any airflow through your case whatsoever your northbridge will stay at ~29-30C even heavily overclocked.
I've built one of these. It works very, very well. Never tested it in practice though, as photo radar was axed here before it got off the ground. The system is known in photography circles as a "slave flash".
A polarized LCD plate that goes black would work equally well.
Yes, it'll work for you, too. You'd be amazed what dressing well, maintaining some personal grooming, a big smile (think someone mailed you a new TiBook smile), and an enthusiastic "hi" will get you.
Steve
You can also use a wooden door to the same effect. Just make sure it's solid, and all you need is a surface. You can take a set of metal legs off another table or get some sawhorse legs from a hardware store. I did this when I was in university to get an obscene amount of desk space.
The solution to the problem is a huge, huge, huge desk. I use a heavy-duty kitchen table for development at home, and have an actual huge desk at work. I find that the typical cube arrangements aren't very good, so if you're stuck with one ..
The thing with a big table is you can shuffle stuff around fairly easily. I like to have the biggest monitor possible in front of me, with my notebook to the side of that. If you have the aforementioned LARGE desk, then there is enough room to put a book between you, the monitor, and the keyboard, in addition to having lots of papers and crap on whichever side your notebook isn't on.
If I need to do any more reading (in depth) I have a smaller table with a reading lamp.
Seriously, try an obscenely large desk. Just a flat table. Aim for 4-5 feet deep as a bare minium, at least 6 feet long. It makes things seem a lot easier to deal with. I usually have 2-3 references and a pile of trade rags open on top of all the computer junk.
I resent that. I used to be a hardcore linux zealot. Hell, I ran linux througout university and sometime thereafter, from about 1996 until 2001. Something happened once I graduated and got experience though, all of a sudden, my time wasn't free, and messing with linux to get it "just right" started to get EXPENSIVE. A day or two of playing to get a digital camera or mp3 player working all of a sudden costs me more than the gadget in question.
:-)
Now, I use a tibook for my primary machine, along with Solaris, linux, BSD and Windows 2000. Most of the EDA industry - designers of the toys we love - runs on Windows 2000. With the latest releases from Mentor Graphics, we've completely swtiched to Windows 2000 and Linux in the lab. But those machines do one thing, they are TOOLS. Just like the mac is a tool. It just happens to be a better tool (for me) to do most computing chores. Project builder is really nice. If something new that's even better comes along, I'll switch to that.
It really does just work. Apple has themselves a real winner here, but luck or design. The perfect home for open source software, oh, the irony.
Of course, that's just because I don't have time to be a zealot anymore. So maybe you're right.
Something a lot of people out there need to do is build up a solid network of friends and contacts, moreso than anything else. A solid recommendation from someone inside an organization will go farther than anything else; there is more than a grain of truth to the fact that the good jobs never make it to a forum like Monster. Especially so in today's economic climate.
/. crowd do not represent the demographic who sell themselves best :).
It's worthwhile to keep business cards. It's worthwhile to go out of your way to socialize with people in your industry. Go to trade meetings when you can. Hell, get involved in some open source projects where you can meet some people.
Learning to sell yourself is the biggest thing. A resume is part of that, but it's only a part. Unfortunately, the