Yeah and what happens when someone thinks it's a good idea to microwave a snack while chatting on a 2.4GHz cordless phone during the middle of some intense 802.11g/n gaming? Say goodbye to your packets!
Well if you're a really paranoid person and you leave your anti-virus on at full settings, all the time, to scan EVERY single file, at the HIGHEST level of security, then yeah I guess it would help.
Honestly, if you're a gamer and you're launching a game, you'll leave the virus scanner OFF. Having a processes in the background eating CPU cycles everytime you load a resource into the game is absolutely ridiculus. The only time you should really use anti-virus is when you are downloading executables of the internet. Or at least set it to only scan executable extensions on write.
I think you're missing some information here. An application (in user level) will only consume 100% of the CPU if there are no other user level applications of the same priority. Otherwise, they will be switched efficiently through the operating system between the two apps so that it's about 50%/50%. And actually, two CPU's may help at least at the driver level, since Windows XP should be multithreaded aware, it can at least accelerate say subsystems like the audio driver. I really think though that developers have to get up to speed on multithreading programming. For example, if you say have a game with 100 entities to fight against, each with it's own AI you represent each entity as a thread. That way, as you increase the number of core's in the system, you'll get an almost linear increase in performance. In fact, if you had enough cores it could make the need for a physics acceleration unit unnecessary.
Yeah, most people miss the mass-manufacturing aspect of semiconductors. It has _never_ been about how fast your chip is. You can essentially make the fastest CPU you want.... that is if you want to spend $1,000,000 to manufacture one chip, and that's just the manufacture it, not even counting design costs. The important thing is who can mass manufacture something at the lowest cost? Intel still has the advantage here over AMD. Not only that, but they have more money to spend on R&D and building new fabs utilizing the latest technologies. Yeah, AMD is the popular stock right now and it's had a big run up because everyone thinks it's going to replace Intel. But I think if you were to look at the roadmaps of the two companies I still think Intel will get to 45nm and beyond before AMD. So yes, AMD has better designs now, but really I think any company can design these CPU's, all the information is out there. But who has the most fabs? That's all that matters.
And when Windows Vista finally comes out? Everyone wins! There will be huge demand from businesses to replace their computers with new ones running Vista. But the key here will be volume and Intel still has that.
Okay as a fan of the Dvorak layout I'm going to throw this out there: The failure isn't in minaturization, it's a failure in developing an optimal input method for the device of this size. I'm sick and tired of manufactures throwing a "QWERTY" keyboard on every small minature device thinking that their customers are too stupid to learn a more optimal input method. If you are going to make a small input device, make it optimal, don't just make it QWERTY. We have ten fingures on our hands for a reason, why develop a device that requires the use of two thumbs with a sub-optimal input layout?
That being said, it's a shame this device failed. I think Nokia was perhaps a bit too ambitious, trying to develop their own portable platform from scratch. They would have been better off if they based it off WindowsCE, and focused more on the applications aspect.
Yeah I totally agree there really isn't much of a market for this product other than the stock traders that want to hook up their laptop to there monitors, but why not just get a desktop to do this?
My home system is kind of a weird combination of monitors/LCD's so this box definately wouldn't work: Radeon 7500 PCI analog, Viewsonic 19" CRT 1280x960@85Hz
So I've had the freedom to upgrade one monitor at a time, I started with 3 CRT monitors and just replaced them with mismatched LCD's. My next LCD will probably replace the 19" CRT with a 21" LCD at 1600x1200. If I had something like the TripleHead I'd be forced to buy all three monitors at once, AND be limited to the 1280x1024 resolution on each.
It's amazing that LCD's are so cheap now days, but I'm believing there would be diminishing returns at 4 monitors. For one, my desk only has so much space, and my direct field of view is limited. I was thinking of buying one of those custom LCD monitor arms, but that starts to get a bit ridiculus.
First, why did the price of registering domain names get so cheap? I mean, how much are these companies paying now to register domain names? $1 each? Less? Where does this money go? Does it go to the people who have to maintain these DNS servers with bogus parking domains? If we think about how spam got out of hand, you could imagine that someday 90% of all domain names are "spam".
Why did we have to make registration so cheap to begin with? I don't see what's wrong with charging $50 for a a year for a domain name. If someone needed it that bad they should pay up. Now with the ultra low cost anyone can buy up a bunch of domain names and sell them back for an excessive fee.
So... when will legislation be inacted to prevent domain parking? It's obvious that parking a domain can bring no benefit to the economy or society, it's just an unecessary middleman tactic. Also, registering a domain name and a copyright are two seperate things. If you own the copyright you should definately be able to sue these domain parkers for infringement.
It's just absolutely ridiculus that we got into a situation where every imaginable word, phrase, or typo is now registered.
Yeah, it's amazing that this is overlooked simply because it's from Microsoft, but it's just about the only Microsoft product (err... other than Windows) that I'll use on a regular basis. I mean, I've installed OpenOffice awhile back and played with their equivalent of Excel and I was just underwelmed. It just seemed like they were trying _really_ hard to be Excel instead of something unique. I mean, why bother doing that?
Okay, floppy disks were successful in being a technology that just wouldn't go away. I mean, when they invented the 1.44MB floppy did anyone have an upgrade path in mind for the future? 2.88MB floppies? 5MB floppies? Why didn't they double every couple years or so? Why did it stop at 1.44MB and then become obsolete only when memory sticks came out? And even 5 years after memory sticks came out, we STILL find manufactures putting these antiquated devices on computers.
Do you think the music industry cares who they partner with? They can partner with Apple to distribute the music, or with the cellphone companies who will likely be much more flexible with pricing schemes (something other than $0.99/song). If you realize the success that ring tones have (which cost far more than the actual song) you'll see that this is simply the logical next step.
I don't know what the big deal with iPods are and why you need a seperate device. Decoding MP3's is pretty trivial now days and thanks to Samsung and Apple, 4GB's of storage space in a cellphone will be pretty trivial in the next year or so. With highspeed digital cell networks becoming more common, music could be directly downloaded to the customers device without syncing to a PC. That right there is a BIG deal because it makes things even easier for the consumer.
Do people really think that apple having "easy" to use software is so special? Nothing Apple does is really all that unique, it's just a matter of quantities of production and spending the time to develop the interface right.
I was thinking about this for awhile and the reason why OGG is not supported on most MP3/DRM audio players is actually pretty obvious. The MP3/AAC decoder in the iPod is a specially designed chip, optomized for those two codects. I believe it's an ASIC component designed for just those codecs. Now, to play OGG you would need to develop a similar ASIC just for that purpose, and no hardware manufacture is going to want to shell out the cost for that when they can buy an off the shelf MP3/WMA decoder. So, any player that does support OGG probably does so through a general purpose DSP or CPU, with the disadvantage being... surprise... shorter battery life.
Actually, I still use OGG on my PC for what little music I have, don't own an MP3 player, and don't really care. I'm not much into music anyway, just listen to whatever is on shoutcast.
I think ythe RIAA will be happier once music is more of a service. You'll be charged $30/month for unlimited downloads, maybe $2-$3 a song for new releases, of course you will no longer be able to buy the CD because it's too easy to pirate. Just wait and see, it will happen.
Yeah it's enough processing power; here's my question though: Will the video card run at full speed to render in 3D? My experience has been that once you initialize a 3D game on any computer, the video card will want to run at 100% GPU speed. I've never really seen a GPU adjust speed and run slower, it's always optimized to run at the fastest FPS it possibly can. This is going to be a serious noise/power issue unless Microsoft and the video card vendors can work on some sort of 3D mode that doesn't require the GPU to run at full speed all the time. It would still need to run at 60fps though to match the LCD refresh rate, it would be unacceptable for the desktop performance to be any less than it was in 2D mode (using the old GDI renderer??).
What it essentially means is that these movies are not "download to own". They are probably only functional as long as your PC's generated key is properly validated against their servers. Once this mechanism no longer functions, you will not be able to watch the movies. Download to own this isn't.
are you kidding? If HD discs have as much storage as they say they have, then it should be no problem to add extra features. However, just like on DVD's they will probably be encoded at a super low quality in and even in MPG4 to fit 2 hours of special features in a fraction of the disc space.
I once saw a plasma TV hooked up in someone's living room to.... a COAX cable! The worst quality interface you could possibly imagine and they spent $2000+ on a plasma screen! That's just pure ignorance if you ask me.
Same thing with people swapping the left and right sound channels and not knowing the difference.
If you are super paranoid though, even cross-cut shredders are not sufficient. There is probably software out there somewhere that you can layout and place piles of paper strips on a scanner bed and have documents reconstructed by a computer. If you think about it for awhile, such an algorithm is possible given enough scanner resolution and processing time.
For the truly paranoid, you would probably want to get a shredder that will litteraly turn the document into paper dust. Either that, or you could shred it and then burn it if you have a fireplace.
Well, that might be possible. The thing is if it's CD format, you'll have 25% less space on average. If it's rock music, less, classical more. Different styles of music compress differently on FLAC so it's difficult to guarantee a certain length of music will fit on it.
What you're thinking about is DVD-Audio or Super Audio CD. I believe they both have or exceed all the features you listed. They already exist, but are unpopular because most people can't hear the difference. They also cost more unfortunately. Probably because they listen to the music too loud in the first place!
I certainly would like to be able to pay for downloadable FLAC files though.
I guess it was a good idea they named it "Orbiter" instead of "Crasher". I hope they can keep this level of quality up, NASA has been doing some great science lately.
"displace an awful lot of people, costing an awful lot of money, and having a significant economic impact."
And what is the cost of stopping all CO2 emissions right now? I'm guessing the economic impact is far greater than that of 1m of shoreline which _may_ be eaten away in the next 100 years. Structures along the shores will be destroyed, and always have been, by storm events that occur periodically (hurricans anyone?) They will simply set the building line back after each storm event. Or maybe they will just build things on stilts and spend more money on construction, either way.
It's not that things are going to be worse, they are just going to be _different_. And it doesn't really effect the developed world anyway because we have technology to overcome limitations in our environment. It's just about how we can share this technology with the rest of the world.
Okay, here's an important point that people are missing: How many Mules can you transport safely in a cargo plane? Where would you keep them when not in use? How much food do they consume? What is their upkeep cost?
With a robot, you pack it tightly in a box, one next to another, and leave it on a shelf for months at a time until it's ready to deploy. You can use a common fuel source, gasoline. With economies of scale, you could manufacture thousands of these things and deploy them at will and air drop them from a plane. Given the success of the Darpa grand challenge, I'm certain they will be able to program enough intelligence into these robots to be useful.
It's all about logistics. If you consider how difficult it is to transport and store goods, you'd appreciate being able to have something like this.
I'm actually more interested to see what happens when they attach a shotgun to one of these.
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah and what happens when someone thinks it's a good idea to microwave a snack while chatting on a 2.4GHz cordless phone during the middle of some intense 802.11g/n gaming? Say goodbye to your packets!
You forgot...
keyword = easily
Well if you're a really paranoid person and you leave your anti-virus on at full settings, all the time, to scan EVERY single file, at the HIGHEST level of security, then yeah I guess it would help.
Honestly, if you're a gamer and you're launching a game, you'll leave the virus scanner OFF. Having a processes in the background eating CPU cycles everytime you load a resource into the game is absolutely ridiculus. The only time you should really use anti-virus is when you are downloading executables of the internet. Or at least set it to only scan executable extensions on write.
Again... bad selling point!
I think you're missing some information here. An application (in user level) will only consume 100% of the CPU if there are no other user level applications of the same priority. Otherwise, they will be switched efficiently through the operating system between the two apps so that it's about 50%/50%. And actually, two CPU's may help at least at the driver level, since Windows XP should be multithreaded aware, it can at least accelerate say subsystems like the audio driver. I really think though that developers have to get up to speed on multithreading programming. For example, if you say have a game with 100 entities to fight against, each with it's own AI you represent each entity as a thread. That way, as you increase the number of core's in the system, you'll get an almost linear increase in performance. In fact, if you had enough cores it could make the need for a physics acceleration unit unnecessary.
Yeah, most people miss the mass-manufacturing aspect of semiconductors. It has _never_ been about how fast your chip is. You can essentially make the fastest CPU you want.... that is if you want to spend $1,000,000 to manufacture one chip, and that's just the manufacture it, not even counting design costs. The important thing is who can mass manufacture something at the lowest cost? Intel still has the advantage here over AMD. Not only that, but they have more money to spend on R&D and building new fabs utilizing the latest technologies. Yeah, AMD is the popular stock right now and it's had a big run up because everyone thinks it's going to replace Intel. But I think if you were to look at the roadmaps of the two companies I still think Intel will get to 45nm and beyond before AMD. So yes, AMD has better designs now, but really I think any company can design these CPU's, all the information is out there. But who has the most fabs? That's all that matters.
And when Windows Vista finally comes out? Everyone wins! There will be huge demand from businesses to replace their computers with new ones running Vista. But the key here will be volume and Intel still has that.
Okay as a fan of the Dvorak layout I'm going to throw this out there:
The failure isn't in minaturization, it's a failure in developing an optimal input method for the device of this size. I'm sick and tired of manufactures throwing a "QWERTY" keyboard on every small minature device thinking that their customers are too stupid to learn a more optimal input method. If you are going to make a small input device, make it optimal, don't just make it QWERTY. We have ten fingures on our hands for a reason, why develop a device that requires the use of two thumbs with a sub-optimal input layout?
That being said, it's a shame this device failed. I think Nokia was perhaps a bit too ambitious, trying to develop their own portable platform from scratch. They would have been better off if they based it off WindowsCE, and focused more on the applications aspect.
Yeah I totally agree there really isn't much of a market for this product other than the stock traders that want to hook up their laptop to there monitors, but why not just get a desktop to do this?
My home system is kind of a weird combination of monitors/LCD's so this box definately wouldn't work:
Radeon 7500 PCI
analog, Viewsonic 19" CRT 1280x960@85Hz
Radeon X800 AGP
DVI, 24" Dell LCD 1920x1200@60Hz,12ms
analog, 19" Viewsonic 19" LCD 1280x1024@60Hz,2ms
So I've had the freedom to upgrade one monitor at a time, I started with 3 CRT monitors and just replaced them with mismatched LCD's. My next LCD will probably replace the 19" CRT with a 21" LCD at 1600x1200. If I had something like the TripleHead I'd be forced to buy all three monitors at once, AND be limited to the 1280x1024 resolution on each.
It's amazing that LCD's are so cheap now days, but I'm believing there would be diminishing returns at 4 monitors. For one, my desk only has so much space, and my direct field of view is limited. I was thinking of buying one of those custom LCD monitor arms, but that starts to get a bit ridiculus.
First, why did the price of registering domain names get so cheap? I mean, how much are these companies paying now to register domain names? $1 each? Less? Where does this money go? Does it go to the people who have to maintain these DNS servers with bogus parking domains? If we think about how spam got out of hand, you could imagine that someday 90% of all domain names are "spam".
Why did we have to make registration so cheap to begin with? I don't see what's wrong with charging $50 for a a year for a domain name. If someone needed it that bad they should pay up. Now with the ultra low cost anyone can buy up a bunch of domain names and sell them back for an excessive fee.
So... when will legislation be inacted to prevent domain parking? It's obvious that parking a domain can bring no benefit to the economy or society, it's just an unecessary middleman tactic. Also, registering a domain name and a copyright are two seperate things. If you own the copyright you should definately be able to sue these domain parkers for infringement.
It's just absolutely ridiculus that we got into a situation where every imaginable word, phrase, or typo is now registered.
Yeah, it's amazing that this is overlooked simply because it's from Microsoft, but it's just about the only Microsoft product (err... other than Windows) that I'll use on a regular basis. I mean, I've installed OpenOffice awhile back and played with their equivalent of Excel and I was just underwelmed. It just seemed like they were trying _really_ hard to be Excel instead of something unique. I mean, why bother doing that?
Okay, floppy disks were successful in being a technology that just wouldn't go away. I mean, when they invented the 1.44MB floppy did anyone have an upgrade path in mind for the future? 2.88MB floppies? 5MB floppies? Why didn't they double every couple years or so? Why did it stop at 1.44MB and then become obsolete only when memory sticks came out? And even 5 years after memory sticks came out, we STILL find manufactures putting these antiquated devices on computers.
Do you think the music industry cares who they partner with? They can partner with Apple to distribute the music, or with the cellphone companies who will likely be much more flexible with pricing schemes (something other than $0.99/song). If you realize the success that ring tones have (which cost far more than the actual song) you'll see that this is simply the logical next step.
I don't know what the big deal with iPods are and why you need a seperate device. Decoding MP3's is pretty trivial now days and thanks to Samsung and Apple, 4GB's of storage space in a cellphone will be pretty trivial in the next year or so. With highspeed digital cell networks becoming more common, music could be directly downloaded to the customers device without syncing to a PC. That right there is a BIG deal because it makes things even easier for the consumer.
Do people really think that apple having "easy" to use software is so special? Nothing Apple does is really all that unique, it's just a matter of quantities of production and spending the time to develop the interface right.
I was thinking about this for awhile and the reason why OGG is not supported on most MP3/DRM audio players is actually pretty obvious. The MP3/AAC decoder in the iPod is a specially designed chip, optomized for those two codects. I believe it's an ASIC component designed for just those codecs. Now, to play OGG you would need to develop a similar ASIC just for that purpose, and no hardware manufacture is going to want to shell out the cost for that when they can buy an off the shelf MP3/WMA decoder. So, any player that does support OGG probably does so through a general purpose DSP or CPU, with the disadvantage being... surprise... shorter battery life.
Actually, I still use OGG on my PC for what little music I have, don't own an MP3 player, and don't really care. I'm not much into music anyway, just listen to whatever is on shoutcast.
I think ythe RIAA will be happier once music is more of a service. You'll be charged $30/month for unlimited downloads, maybe $2-$3 a song for new releases, of course you will no longer be able to buy the CD because it's too easy to pirate. Just wait and see, it will happen.
Userfriendly has not been funny in like 5 years. I mean, how many times can you say "microsoft is stupid, linux is the best!" without it getting old?
Yeah it's enough processing power; here's my question though: Will the video card run at full speed to render in 3D? My experience has been that once you initialize a 3D game on any computer, the video card will want to run at 100% GPU speed. I've never really seen a GPU adjust speed and run slower, it's always optimized to run at the fastest FPS it possibly can. This is going to be a serious noise/power issue unless Microsoft and the video card vendors can work on some sort of 3D mode that doesn't require the GPU to run at full speed all the time. It would still need to run at 60fps though to match the LCD refresh rate, it would be unacceptable for the desktop performance to be any less than it was in 2D mode (using the old GDI renderer??).
What it essentially means is that these movies are not "download to own". They are probably only functional as long as your PC's generated key is properly validated against their servers. Once this mechanism no longer functions, you will not be able to watch the movies. Download to own this isn't.
are you kidding? If HD discs have as much storage as they say they have, then it should be no problem to add extra features. However, just like on DVD's they will probably be encoded at a super low quality in and even in MPG4 to fit 2 hours of special features in a fraction of the disc space.
I once saw a plasma TV hooked up in someone's living room to.... a COAX cable! The worst quality interface you could possibly imagine and they spent $2000+ on a plasma screen! That's just pure ignorance if you ask me.
Same thing with people swapping the left and right sound channels and not knowing the difference.
If you are super paranoid though, even cross-cut shredders are not sufficient. There is probably software out there somewhere that you can layout and place piles of paper strips on a scanner bed and have documents reconstructed by a computer. If you think about it for awhile, such an algorithm is possible given enough scanner resolution and processing time.
For the truly paranoid, you would probably want to get a shredder that will litteraly turn the document into paper dust. Either that, or you could shred it and then burn it if you have a fireplace.
24bit 96kHz FLAC tracks
Well, that might be possible. The thing is if it's CD format, you'll have 25% less space on average. If it's rock music, less, classical more. Different styles of music compress differently on FLAC so it's difficult to guarantee a certain length of music will fit on it.
What you're thinking about is DVD-Audio or Super Audio CD. I believe they both have or exceed all the features you listed. They already exist, but are unpopular because most people can't hear the difference. They also cost more unfortunately. Probably because they listen to the music too loud in the first place!
I certainly would like to be able to pay for downloadable FLAC files though.
I second that. Slashdot isn't a blog, and you don't have to link every single word of your post. If you don't know what something means, look it up!
I guess it was a good idea they named it "Orbiter" instead of "Crasher". I hope they can keep this level of quality up, NASA has been doing some great science lately.
Wait, isn't /16 only about 2^16 addresses? Or am I forgetting something.
"displace an awful lot of people, costing an awful lot of money, and having a significant economic impact."
And what is the cost of stopping all CO2 emissions right now? I'm guessing the economic impact is far greater than that of 1m of shoreline which _may_ be eaten away in the next 100 years. Structures along the shores will be destroyed, and always have been, by storm events that occur periodically (hurricans anyone?) They will simply set the building line back after each storm event. Or maybe they will just build things on stilts and spend more money on construction, either way.
It's not that things are going to be worse, they are just going to be _different_. And it doesn't really effect the developed world anyway because we have technology to overcome limitations in our environment. It's just about how we can share this technology with the rest of the world.
Okay, here's an important point that people are missing:
How many Mules can you transport safely in a cargo plane? Where would you keep them when not in use? How much food do they consume? What is their upkeep cost?
With a robot, you pack it tightly in a box, one next to another, and leave it on a shelf for months at a time until it's ready to deploy. You can use a common fuel source, gasoline. With economies of scale, you could manufacture thousands of these things and deploy them at will and air drop them from a plane. Given the success of the Darpa grand challenge, I'm certain they will be able to program enough intelligence into these robots to be useful.
It's all about logistics. If you consider how difficult it is to transport and store goods, you'd appreciate being able to have something like this.
I'm actually more interested to see what happens when they attach a shotgun to one of these.