AOL runs a free service and people bitch about how they should run it...
Just wait, 10 years down the road when we're all using DRM and.NET apps. I'm sure Microsoft's Instant Messaging service fees will make long distance seem inexpensive.
If my next employment interview includes the question "Please come up with a mathematical formula to convert the ASCII value of your full name to 666", I'll QUIT before they hire me.
It's done very little to improve the quality of life for humans and quite a bit to degrade it. I am by no means an avid environmentalist, yet anyone can recognize all the damage caused by freon and the tremendous strain that condensors place on the power grid.
Nice try. The quality of life has improved greatly due to air conditioning. Many of the food products that you stated are a "necessity in life" would have a significantly reduced shelf life in a hot, humid climate. (Does "store in a cool, dry place" ring any bells?) Air conditioning potentially saves water, for many people would shower several times a day to avoid becoming smelly, although that is more of an enviormental issue than a quality-of-life one.
The compressor and fan motors are the source of power consumption on an air conditioning system. The condensor is a coil of pipe where the freshly-compressed refriderant cools - it does not require external power. While air conditioning does contribute to power consumption, many homes have electric stoves, electric water heaters and electric clothes dryers... Don't forget the businesses that leave computers, lights and even their AC unit on when no one is even there. Power consumption really becomes a problem when it is power that is wasted - with a proper conservation plan, there is still room for air conditioning.
As for the enviormental concerns of the coolant used, freon (R-12) is no longer manufactured in the US and is illegal to import. There's still a black market for it, but it will continue to deminish as older units that require it break and are replaced with new enviormentally-friendly R-134a compatible units.
While gas consumption would probably drop considerably if everyone turned off their automobile's AC unit, it would drop substancially more if more USians lost their obsession with large engines. I'll keep driving my 4 cylender Toyota with the AC on... I'm still getting better gas mileage than those 6+ cylender cars/suvs even with their AC off.;)
ATI's drivers suck badly. I made the mistake of upgrading my Radeon 7200's drivers from the 4-13-7075 version to whatever happens to be current at the moment and now Visual Basic 5sp3 crashes when I try to compile (VB, yes, I know... Please don't go there.) and only half of my DIVX movies play with overlay enabled. On the plus side, now I can actually play GTA3 with a VERY THICK FOG, which is much better than the old drivers which just caused it to crash.
As much as I like playing GTA3 slowly with extra fog, I found a patch to fix the fog problem on ATI's site. I reported the other issues I was having to ATI's technical support; however, since ATI doesn't even have a checkbox for reporting application or video related issues (I'm not kidding, see for yourself on their support page!), I have my doubts about the issues being resolved. My only recourse is to go back to the old drivers and get a Playstation2 if I want to play GTA3... Course, there's also Nivida.
Re:Freon worked better than R-134a
on
Microsoft Freon
·
· Score: 1
The true disaster is owning a vehicle that uses freon (Also known by its generic name of R-12) and having to retrofit it to use R-134a (the same gas used in those "dust blaster" canned "air"). Most automotive air conditioners designed to use R-12 have inadequate condenser cooling capacity for R-134a and perform poorly after a retrofit. Don't believe me? Do a search on Google, it's true.
It is quite possible that Microsoft's use of Freon is a nostalgic refrence to "The Good Old Days" when women were homemakers, McDonalds burgers were kept toasty warm by styrofoam, insect poison was actually toxic, school shootings didn't exist and your air conditioning actually got *cold*.
Or maybe it's an analogy... If you consider Tivo as R-134a and Microsoft as Freon, does that mean Microsoft's offering is more expensive, bad for the enviorment, but much more appealing from a performence standpoint?
Welcome to the Quake (umpteenth version) server! Would you like the cheating or non-cheating section?
Seriously though... Some people such as myself suck so bad at FPS that the only way I'd consider playing online would be with some kind of advantage. Getting my ass handed to me all the time just isn't fun. Game companies either need to allow cheating on certain servers, or adopt a help/handicap option for players who basically suck. No disrespect to hardcore gamers, but some of us simply want to play a game every once in awhile - not usurping all our free time to practice some game. At least playing offline you can adjust the bot skill... Online, the "newbie" or "novice" channels seem to be full of experts getting their jollys off by fragging inexperienced players. Tell me, how is *that* not cheating?
None. My wasted CPU cycles are MINE I TELL YOU, ALL MINE! Muahahahahah!
If I ever become rich, I'll build a beowulf cluster of the most powerful PCs I can afford - and just let them idle. No one can have my unused clock cycles, NO ONE!
I actually own a pressure assisted toilet. It sounds like tornado flushing (scares the crap, pun intended, out of people that don't expect it), but it has never clogged. The only downside was the price, it cost $199. If you hate plunging and don't mind the noise - a pressure assisted toilet is DEFINTLY the way to go.
Damn, I guess that means I can't print out a picture of you-know-what and tell the MPAA that's where they can stick their "content" if they want to copy protect it.
"I got your digital rights management right here - reach on up 'ere and get it!"
Of course there are extra, invisible dimensions! Where else do you think all those socks go when you wash them in the laundry?
It has something to do with static electricity. It is interesting to note that while man has found a way to artificially create this phenomenon with a major appliance, dogs are able to do it on their own. Dave Barry wrote a great article about this a few years ago. To quote:
Darrell's theory is that ''the dirt is being pawed into the ozone layer,'' or that ''enough dirt is being tossed into the sky that another planet will be formed somewhere between Earth and Mars.'' Thanks to the Hubble astronomers, we now know that this is not the case; a more logical explanation is that dogs have somehow figured out how to paw the dirt into (speaking of Newt Gingrich) a completely different dimension.
More fundamentally, CD audio itself is "lossy" because even its sampling rate misses too much information from the original analog sound recording (most records are still originally recorded in the analog domain, then digitized).
What a crock of... Sorry to burst your bubble, but most (if not all) professional recording is done digitally. Just because your $20 K-Mart brand CD player doesn't sound as good as your LPs doesn't mean the format is shit - it means you didn't get a good CD player. DAC quality varies substancially between different models (and price ranges) of players, so "you get what you pay for" definitly applies.
It's not even like the full dynamic range of CDs gets used most of the time... The majority of pop music is normalized to 99% so it can be loud for radio airplay. The ONLY type of music that would actually benefit from more dynamic range would be classical.
As for more spectral range offered by higher sampling rates, do you honestly believe you can hear above the 20,000Hz that current 44.1KHz sampling provides? Get some good headphones (Radio Shack Pro 35's go up to 25,000Hz and they're inexpensive) and some tone generation software - then prove yourself wrong. Sorry, the benefit would only be for your pet dog, and I'm sure he'd be more interested in you spending your money towards juicy steaks than audio hardware to reproduce the notes you can't hear in Backstreet's latest pop song.
My problem with OS X (Or is it 10.1, or X.1) is... (Drum roll please)
It's too slow! Okay, so that's just an immediate problem and will be fixed with beefier hardware. If OS X ran on X86 hardware, it would be great since fast processors are plentiful and cheap. (Enough with the "Is there an echo in here?" jokes! I know the OS X on X86 comment is more overplayed than the latest Brittany Spears song!) Before you go off and comment that I've probably only used a Mac at the local CompUSA for 5 minutes while my friend is on a quest for the super-secret hidden location of the public restrooms, well, you'd be right. However, I also own a Mac too.
Granted, it is an iMac 500MHz G3 with 256MB of RAM, which would be considered "entry level" in the Mac world. Would a top-of-the-line G4 have more snap when running OS X? You bet - I tried one of those out too at CompUSA (the bathrooms must be REALLY hard to find, cause my friend was gone FOREVER). The G4s run OS X great, and for a brief moment in time, I felt like this OS had a real chance - until I returned to reality and realized how it runs on the system I was able to afford.
My only hope is that the Apple fairy comes in the night and sprinkles some speedup dust on my iMac - otherwise getting $800 for it on eBay is starting to look really good. That money could get me a REALLY nice Athlon XP barebones system.
..considering the limited options the government had to choose between.
Let's face it, we all know the best way to dispose of something is to flush it down the toilet. Hell, it works for fish - it should work for nuclear waste too! Just a quick flush later, and it should be on its way to a nuclear waste treatment plant. Unfortunately, in 1992, congress shot themselves in the foot by limiting the volume of flush water to 1.6 gallons (6.08 liters, to the rest of the world) per flush. As anyone who has tried to flush the end result of a recent mexican buffet knows, this isn't even enough water to flush the average feces log, let alone nuclear waste!
Clearly, flushing down the toilet is still a good solution, so I propose the government take a long hard look at the new pressure assisted toilets available today, which make the best use of the 1.6 gallons available to them by using the line pressure to increase the velocity of the flush. I've had the pleasure of trying one of these toilets out for myself and I have yet to find anything this toilet cannot flush. The sheer sucking power is nothing short of breathtaking. I'm sure this is our solution to nuclear waste disposal.
Sunnyvale, CA - AMD revealed today it's new line of processors called the Moron. Jerry Sanders CEO of AMD said, "This is a proud day for AMD as we continue the success that started with the Athlon to the Duron and now the Moron. We wanted a name that signified that the processor had "More Power" than the Duron. Hence Moron."
He continued, "Our target market for the Moron is in servers running Windows 2000. A Moron and Windows 2000 are a perfect solution for any company planning to enter the e-commerce marketplace."
The AMD Moron processor is derived from the AMD Duron(TM) processor core and features full-speed, on-chip L2 cache memory, a 200MHz front side system bus, and enhanced 3DNow!(TM) technology.
Tim Allen has been tapped by AMD as the spokesman for the Moron processor. "I'm happy to be behind the Moron. I'm not sure exactly what it does, but Jerry tells me it has more power and I love more power, ARR, ARR, ARR!"
Tech analyst Ashok Minmar said, "The prototype Moron processor has impressive performance and exceeds Intel's Itanium and even their yet to be released Otassium processor in key benchmarks. However, I think it might be the worst product naming disaster since GM sent the Nova to Mexico."
The Moron chip is the first product from AMD's secretive Moron Design Team, and is the first chip from AMD to use the new copper process developed by IBM. AMD plans to start shipping the Moron processor in late August. AMD's stock was down on the news.
...and they're still going to charge ten clams a month for guide data that's freely available on the web? I'm willing to bet, the answer is yes.
This is the ONLY reason I'm not a Tivo user. Sure, the hardware is cool and it would be great to set something to record Battlebots, the Crocodile Hunter and a few other *special* shows... But for $119.88 a year for freely available data? I think not.
Oh well, maybe if the new features work without a subscription, I'll take a look.... But wait, didn't the release of extractstream (can't find link at the moment, I'll leave this up to you link-finders out there) make Tivo respond by saying the next version of the Tivo hardware would use millitary-grade crypto? So much for hackability.
While the parent post is obviously a bit over-the-top, it isn't entirely untrue...
I hacked a Netpliance I-Opener, connected a USB hub, D-Link network adapter, a canon USB inkjet printer and an Iomega ZIP CD-R drive to it. This setup isn't exactly trouble-free:
The network adapter dies after a few days up uptime and needs to be unplugged and plugged back in to get it working again.
Uploads from the I-Opener to another system through the adapter become corrupted.
Replaced the adapter and the problems still remained, according to the message boards at http://www.linux-hacker.net, this is a common problem relating to VIA's (the chipset the I-Opener uses) MVP4 USB implentation. Yuck.
The printer every once in awhile just decides to lose connection with the I-Opener. Luckily, it doesn't happen often so it's not a huge concern. I imagine it is also related to the VIA USB controller problem.
The ZIP CD-RW drive works fine.
Of course, I'd be judging USB badly if I just mentioned how a few devices misfunctioned connected to a modified Internet appliance... Except, I've had trouble with USB devices on my ASUSm motherboard BX chipset PIII 850 system as well as on a IMac.
The PIII seems to hate USB mice. Everything else worsk great - USB mice just never show up... Go figure.
Most common problem on the iMac is that devices simply will not show up until you disconnect and reconnect them a few times. Most notably, this applies to my Canon scanner and my Microsoft cheap-ass sidewinder joystick. The scanner usually works after two tries, the joystick - that's a different story; sometimes I give up before I can get the computer to recognize it.
Overall, USB seems to be a general pain in the ass - I'd gladly buy internal cards over ANTHING USB whenever possible.
Not being a fan of the games, I didn't expect much of "The Spirits Within", boy was I wrong. The animation was nothing short of breathtaking and I was actually surprised by the unpredictability of the plot. In short, the movie far outshined my expectations and I eagerly awaited a sequel.
Now I have to explain to everyone I told about this movie (who were also equally impressed by it) that there won't be a sequel. This is really a shame - we can wipe Circuit City out of I-Openers, but we couldn't make movies such as Final Fantasy profitable for the studio.
Nope. Unless I put a different CD in the stereo's CD player... Those AOL CDs sound pretty bad. As MP3 has proven, you can lose imperceivable parts of even a "lowly" 44.1kHz 16-bit audio stream and most people *still* can't tell the difference.
The range of human hearing is considered to be 20Hz to 20kHz. While you speak of DACs, have you looked at a more critical component yet - your speakers? Unless you're running a 12" or larger woofer, chances are (check your speaker's specs) - you're missing some of the low end. What about those tweeters? Sure, they may go up to 20kHz, but how many decibels does it drop towards the top end? Don't overlook your weakest link - your speakers.
Finally, just enjoy the music. As the saying goes, "an audiophile is someone who listens to the hardware instead of the music".
Ladies and gentleman, put our hands together for the largest ass on the Internet
G to the izz-O, A to the izz-T, S to the izz-E
Welcome ladies and gentlemen to the 8th wonder of the world
The ass of the century, oh it's timeless, GOATSE!
Thanks for clicking that link
You coulda been anywhere on the web
But you're here with me
I appreciate that
G to the izz-O, A to the izz-T, S to the izz-E
Reading drivel on that press release 'bout VA (Linux)
Was wondern' why the changed their names
Dumped that dirt cheap stock, through with them
If I worked there, I'd quit, no way I'd work for them
Wasn't born a coder, I just make fun of em'
G to the izz-O, A to the izz-T, S to the izz-E
Porno for freezy keeps my hard drive so sleasy
Can't leave Everquest alone, the game needs me
Hex editing my name into VB progs, it ain't easy
Slashdot wanna IP block me, I hang up and dial back in
And somehow, I beat the lameness filter like Rocky
G to the izz-O, A to the izz-T, S to the izz-E
Not guilty, he who mods me down is not real to me
Therefore he doesn't exist
So poof... vamoose son of a bitch
[Chorus]
G to the izz-O, A to the izz-T, S to the izz-E
Reading drivel on that press release 'bout VA (Linux)
G to the izz-O, A to the izz-T, S to the izz-E
That's the anthem get'cha damn hands up
G to the izz-O, A to the izz-T, S to the izz-E
Not guilty ya'll got-ta feel me
G to the izz-O, A to the izz-T, S to the izz-E
That's the anthem get'cha damn hands UP!
Holla at me...
I do this for the posters
To let 'em know what enlarged ass look like... when they shoulda looked at that link closer
Show 'em how to avoid a room full 'o taco snot coaxers
Get some good trolls in before the story's over
Posts with redirect goatse links even get modded up
I'm dissin JonKatz for those 15-year-old boys he seems to have a crush
Pay for premium Slashdot? You gotta be kidding us.
If/. ain't profitable, pimp your boy whores for mo' bucks
[Chorus]
Yeah...
GOATSE is back, trollin' parody of rap
Go on, click that link, view the crater in that crack
Like I told you sell boys, no
JonKatz does that so hopefully you won't have to go through that
I was raised on Windows, point and click
if you don't like that, you can suck my dick
Got an X10 camera, focused on my ass
Wanna see the picture, PayPal me some cash
Threshold under 0, why I got it so low?
Save good trolls on my disk, watchin' all the time for more
So you know I seen it all before
I seen redundant on karma whores when their link post was too late
Crapfloods and mod downs, the two things I hate
A good troll modded up, the two things is great
G to the izz-O, A to the izz-T, S to the izz-E
What else can I say about Slashdot, it'll turn a man gay
[Chorus]
G to the izz-O, A to the izz-T, S to the izz-E
(4x to fade out)
Warning: Audiophiles can just skip over this post. If you have a dolby 5.1 speaker system connected to your fanless, netbooting PC located in a soundproof room - you probably won't agree with this post. If you're like the average computer user with a reasonably-priced PAIR of amplifed speakers, keep reading...
Has human hearing improved to the point we require sound cards to keep advancing? It seems Creative Labs ran out of ideas after the Sound Blaster 16. 44.1kHz 16-bit stereo is CD quality - sure, a card with a better sampling rate can record, but honestly, when was the last time you recorded anything and needed better than CD quality? The noise generated by your PC's fans and hard drive would offset any improved quality in the sampling hardware. Of course, if you have a recording studio - you probably aren't using a PC for your sampling, and if you were - it's not using a Creative Labs product.
After the Sound Blaster 16, Creative Labs figured MIDI was the future and produced the AWE 32, several variations of it, and then the AWE 64. A few computer publications were even confused by the 32 and 64 note polyphony with bit depth and called them 32 and 64 bit soundcards, respectively; whereas in reality - they featured the same 16-bit DAC and ADC capabilities as the Sound Blaster 16.
The fact of the matter is, so-called "high-end" Creative Labs cards are the "Monster Cables" of the sound card industry. Sure, they look nice and cost a lot, but they're not noticably better than a standard PCI Sound Blaster 16. I've been using an old ISA Sound Blaster 16 since I bought it, and it still sounds just as good as the day I first installed it. I hear they're less than $10 on eBay now.
Thanks to Google, thousands of dead Usenet threads will be resurrected. I can see the flame post now...
"What could have possibly possessed you to reply to a thread that's over a decade old? For Crissakes, it's an ARCHIVE, not a parallel dimension by which you can communicate with people in the past!"
I think we'll have a little trouble this time trying to take over its name (after it fails in the marketplace) for use on an alternative compression format. Besides, who'd use a codec called "Windows Media" anyway? It sounds so un-1337.
Slashdot Mirror
AOL runs a free service and people bitch about how they should run it...
.NET apps. I'm sure Microsoft's Instant Messaging service fees will make long distance seem inexpensive.
Just wait, 10 years down the road when we're all using DRM and
If my next employment interview includes the question "Please come up with a mathematical formula to convert the ASCII value of your full name to 666", I'll QUIT before they hire me.
It's done very little to improve the quality of life for humans and quite a bit to degrade it. I am by no means an avid environmentalist, yet anyone can recognize all the damage caused by freon and the tremendous strain that condensors place on the power grid.
;)
Nice try. The quality of life has improved greatly due to air conditioning. Many of the food products that you stated are a "necessity in life" would have a significantly reduced shelf life in a hot, humid climate. (Does "store in a cool, dry place" ring any bells?) Air conditioning potentially saves water, for many people would shower several times a day to avoid becoming smelly, although that is more of an enviormental issue than a quality-of-life one.
The compressor and fan motors are the source of power consumption on an air conditioning system. The condensor is a coil of pipe where the freshly-compressed refriderant cools - it does not require external power. While air conditioning does contribute to power consumption, many homes have electric stoves, electric water heaters and electric clothes dryers... Don't forget the businesses that leave computers, lights and even their AC unit on when no one is even there. Power consumption really becomes a problem when it is power that is wasted - with a proper conservation plan, there is still room for air conditioning.
As for the enviormental concerns of the coolant used, freon (R-12) is no longer manufactured in the US and is illegal to import. There's still a black market for it, but it will continue to deminish as older units that require it break and are replaced with new enviormentally-friendly R-134a compatible units.
While gas consumption would probably drop considerably if everyone turned off their automobile's AC unit, it would drop substancially more if more USians lost their obsession with large engines. I'll keep driving my 4 cylender Toyota with the AC on... I'm still getting better gas mileage than those 6+ cylender cars/suvs even with their AC off.
ATI's drivers suck badly. I made the mistake of upgrading my Radeon 7200's drivers from the 4-13-7075 version to whatever happens to be current at the moment and now Visual Basic 5sp3 crashes when I try to compile (VB, yes, I know... Please don't go there.) and only half of my DIVX movies play with overlay enabled. On the plus side, now I can actually play GTA3 with a VERY THICK FOG, which is much better than the old drivers which just caused it to crash.
As much as I like playing GTA3 slowly with extra fog, I found a patch to fix the fog problem on ATI's site. I reported the other issues I was having to ATI's technical support; however, since ATI doesn't even have a checkbox for reporting application or video related issues (I'm not kidding, see for yourself on their support page!), I have my doubts about the issues being resolved. My only recourse is to go back to the old drivers and get a Playstation2 if I want to play GTA3... Course, there's also Nivida.
The true disaster is owning a vehicle that uses freon (Also known by its generic name of R-12) and having to retrofit it to use R-134a (the same gas used in those "dust blaster" canned "air"). Most automotive air conditioners designed to use R-12 have inadequate condenser cooling capacity for R-134a and perform poorly after a retrofit. Don't believe me? Do a search on Google, it's true.
It is quite possible that Microsoft's use of Freon is a nostalgic refrence to "The Good Old Days" when women were homemakers, McDonalds burgers were kept toasty warm by styrofoam, insect poison was actually toxic, school shootings didn't exist and your air conditioning actually got *cold*.
Or maybe it's an analogy... If you consider Tivo as R-134a and Microsoft as Freon, does that mean Microsoft's offering is more expensive, bad for the enviorment, but much more appealing from a performence standpoint?
How about we deal with it like smoking?
Welcome to the Quake (umpteenth version) server! Would you like the cheating or non-cheating section?
Seriously though... Some people such as myself suck so bad at FPS that the only way I'd consider playing online would be with some kind of advantage. Getting my ass handed to me all the time just isn't fun. Game companies either need to allow cheating on certain servers, or adopt a help/handicap option for players who basically suck. No disrespect to hardcore gamers, but some of us simply want to play a game every once in awhile - not usurping all our free time to practice some game. At least playing offline you can adjust the bot skill... Online, the "newbie" or "novice" channels seem to be full of experts getting their jollys off by fragging inexperienced players. Tell me, how is *that* not cheating?
None. My wasted CPU cycles are MINE I TELL YOU, ALL MINE! Muahahahahah! If I ever become rich, I'll build a beowulf cluster of the most powerful PCs I can afford - and just let them idle. No one can have my unused clock cycles, NO ONE!
I actually own a pressure assisted toilet. It sounds like tornado flushing (scares the crap, pun intended, out of people that don't expect it), but it has never clogged. The only downside was the price, it cost $199. If you hate plunging and don't mind the noise - a pressure assisted toilet is DEFINTLY the way to go.
Looks like the smoke of a burning CueCat against a pretty background.
No trolling?
Damn, I guess that means I can't print out a picture of you-know-what and tell the MPAA that's where they can stick their "content" if they want to copy protect it.
"I got your digital rights management right here - reach on up 'ere and get it!"
It has something to do with static electricity. It is interesting to note that while man has found a way to artificially create this phenomenon with a major appliance, dogs are able to do it on their own. Dave Barry wrote a great article about this a few years ago. To quote:
I love my KDS RAD-5. Plus, with a Radeon graphics card - my display information dialog in Win98 says:
Radius Rad-5 on RADEON
Try saying that three times fast.
More fundamentally, CD audio itself is "lossy" because even its sampling rate misses too much information from the original analog sound recording (most records are still originally recorded in the analog domain, then digitized).
What a crock of... Sorry to burst your bubble, but most (if not all) professional recording is done digitally. Just because your $20 K-Mart brand CD player doesn't sound as good as your LPs doesn't mean the format is shit - it means you didn't get a good CD player. DAC quality varies substancially between different models (and price ranges) of players, so "you get what you pay for" definitly applies.
It's not even like the full dynamic range of CDs gets used most of the time... The majority of pop music is normalized to 99% so it can be loud for radio airplay. The ONLY type of music that would actually benefit from more dynamic range would be classical.
As for more spectral range offered by higher sampling rates, do you honestly believe you can hear above the 20,000Hz that current 44.1KHz sampling provides? Get some good headphones (Radio Shack Pro 35's go up to 25,000Hz and they're inexpensive) and some tone generation software - then prove yourself wrong. Sorry, the benefit would only be for your pet dog, and I'm sure he'd be more interested in you spending your money towards juicy steaks than audio hardware to reproduce the notes you can't hear in Backstreet's latest pop song.
Come on, this one was obvious even before the vaporware lists took notice. The timetable is IN THE FREAKING TITLE! It will clearly take FOREVER.
My problem with OS X (Or is it 10.1, or X.1) is... (Drum roll please)
It's too slow! Okay, so that's just an immediate problem and will be fixed with beefier hardware. If OS X ran on X86 hardware, it would be great since fast processors are plentiful and cheap. (Enough with the "Is there an echo in here?" jokes! I know the OS X on X86 comment is more overplayed than the latest Brittany Spears song!) Before you go off and comment that I've probably only used a Mac at the local CompUSA for 5 minutes while my friend is on a quest for the super-secret hidden location of the public restrooms, well, you'd be right. However, I also own a Mac too.
Granted, it is an iMac 500MHz G3 with 256MB of RAM, which would be considered "entry level" in the Mac world. Would a top-of-the-line G4 have more snap when running OS X? You bet - I tried one of those out too at CompUSA (the bathrooms must be REALLY hard to find, cause my friend was gone FOREVER). The G4s run OS X great, and for a brief moment in time, I felt like this OS had a real chance - until I returned to reality and realized how it runs on the system I was able to afford.
My only hope is that the Apple fairy comes in the night and sprinkles some speedup dust on my iMac - otherwise getting $800 for it on eBay is starting to look really good. That money could get me a REALLY nice Athlon XP barebones system.
..considering the limited options the government had to choose between.
Let's face it, we all know the best way to dispose of something is to flush it down the toilet. Hell, it works for fish - it should work for nuclear waste too! Just a quick flush later, and it should be on its way to a nuclear waste treatment plant. Unfortunately, in 1992, congress shot themselves in the foot by limiting the volume of flush water to 1.6 gallons (6.08 liters, to the rest of the world) per flush. As anyone who has tried to flush the end result of a recent mexican buffet knows, this isn't even enough water to flush the average feces log, let alone nuclear waste!
Clearly, flushing down the toilet is still a good solution, so I propose the government take a long hard look at the new pressure assisted toilets available today, which make the best use of the 1.6 gallons available to them by using the line pressure to increase the velocity of the flush. I've had the pleasure of trying one of these toilets out for myself and I have yet to find anything this toilet cannot flush. The sheer sucking power is nothing short of breathtaking. I'm sure this is our solution to nuclear waste disposal.
AMD to Release New Moron Processor
Sunnyvale, CA - AMD revealed today it's new line of processors called the Moron. Jerry Sanders CEO of AMD said, "This is a proud day for AMD as we continue the success that started with the Athlon to the Duron and now the Moron. We wanted a name that signified that the processor had "More Power" than the Duron. Hence Moron."
He continued, "Our target market for the Moron is in servers running Windows 2000. A Moron and Windows 2000 are a perfect solution for any company planning to enter the e-commerce marketplace."
The AMD Moron processor is derived from the AMD Duron(TM) processor core and features full-speed, on-chip L2 cache memory, a 200MHz front side system bus, and enhanced 3DNow!(TM) technology.
Tim Allen has been tapped by AMD as the spokesman for the Moron processor. "I'm happy to be behind the Moron. I'm not sure exactly what it does, but Jerry tells me it has more power and I love more power, ARR, ARR, ARR!"
Tech analyst Ashok Minmar said, "The prototype Moron processor has impressive performance and exceeds Intel's Itanium and even their yet to be released Otassium processor in key benchmarks. However, I think it might be the worst product naming disaster since GM sent the Nova to Mexico."
The Moron chip is the first product from AMD's secretive Moron Design Team, and is the first chip from AMD to use the new copper process developed by IBM. AMD plans to start shipping the Moron processor in late August. AMD's stock was down on the news.
...and they're still going to charge ten clams a month for guide data that's freely available on the web? I'm willing to bet, the answer is yes.
This is the ONLY reason I'm not a Tivo user. Sure, the hardware is cool and it would be great to set something to record Battlebots, the Crocodile Hunter and a few other *special* shows... But for $119.88 a year for freely available data? I think not.
Oh well, maybe if the new features work without a subscription, I'll take a look.... But wait, didn't the release of extractstream (can't find link at the moment, I'll leave this up to you link-finders out there) make Tivo respond by saying the next version of the Tivo hardware would use millitary-grade crypto? So much for hackability.
While the parent post is obviously a bit over-the-top, it isn't entirely untrue...
I hacked a Netpliance I-Opener, connected a USB hub, D-Link network adapter, a canon USB inkjet printer and an Iomega ZIP CD-R drive to it. This setup isn't exactly trouble-free:
The network adapter dies after a few days up uptime and needs to be unplugged and plugged back in to get it working again.
Uploads from the I-Opener to another system through the adapter become corrupted.
Replaced the adapter and the problems still remained, according to the message boards at http://www.linux-hacker.net, this is a common problem relating to VIA's (the chipset the I-Opener uses) MVP4 USB implentation. Yuck.
The printer every once in awhile just decides to lose connection with the I-Opener. Luckily, it doesn't happen often so it's not a huge concern. I imagine it is also related to the VIA USB controller problem.
The ZIP CD-RW drive works fine.
Of course, I'd be judging USB badly if I just mentioned how a few devices misfunctioned connected to a modified Internet appliance... Except, I've had trouble with USB devices on my ASUSm motherboard BX chipset PIII 850 system as well as on a IMac.
The PIII seems to hate USB mice. Everything else worsk great - USB mice just never show up... Go figure.
Most common problem on the iMac is that devices simply will not show up until you disconnect and reconnect them a few times. Most notably, this applies to my Canon scanner and my Microsoft cheap-ass sidewinder joystick. The scanner usually works after two tries, the joystick - that's a different story; sometimes I give up before I can get the computer to recognize it.
Overall, USB seems to be a general pain in the ass - I'd gladly buy internal cards over ANTHING USB whenever possible.
Not being a fan of the games, I didn't expect much of "The Spirits Within", boy was I wrong. The animation was nothing short of breathtaking and I was actually surprised by the unpredictability of the plot. In short, the movie far outshined my expectations and I eagerly awaited a sequel.
Now I have to explain to everyone I told about this movie (who were also equally impressed by it) that there won't be a sequel. This is really a shame - we can wipe Circuit City out of I-Openers, but we couldn't make movies such as Final Fantasy profitable for the studio.
Ladies and gentleman, put our hands together for the largest ass on the Internet
/. ain't profitable, pimp your boy whores for mo' bucks
G to the izz-O, A to the izz-T, S to the izz-E
Welcome ladies and gentlemen to the 8th wonder of the world
The ass of the century, oh it's timeless, GOATSE!
Thanks for clicking that link
You coulda been anywhere on the web
But you're here with me
I appreciate that
G to the izz-O, A to the izz-T, S to the izz-E
Reading drivel on that press release 'bout VA (Linux)
Was wondern' why the changed their names
Dumped that dirt cheap stock, through with them
If I worked there, I'd quit, no way I'd work for them
Wasn't born a coder, I just make fun of em'
G to the izz-O, A to the izz-T, S to the izz-E
Porno for freezy keeps my hard drive so sleasy
Can't leave Everquest alone, the game needs me
Hex editing my name into VB progs, it ain't easy
Slashdot wanna IP block me, I hang up and dial back in
And somehow, I beat the lameness filter like Rocky
G to the izz-O, A to the izz-T, S to the izz-E
Not guilty, he who mods me down is not real to me
Therefore he doesn't exist
So poof... vamoose son of a bitch
[Chorus]
G to the izz-O, A to the izz-T, S to the izz-E
Reading drivel on that press release 'bout VA (Linux)
G to the izz-O, A to the izz-T, S to the izz-E
That's the anthem get'cha damn hands up
G to the izz-O, A to the izz-T, S to the izz-E
Not guilty ya'll got-ta feel me
G to the izz-O, A to the izz-T, S to the izz-E
That's the anthem get'cha damn hands UP!
Holla at me...
I do this for the posters
To let 'em know what enlarged ass look like... when they shoulda looked at that link closer
Show 'em how to avoid a room full 'o taco snot coaxers
Get some good trolls in before the story's over
Posts with redirect goatse links even get modded up
I'm dissin JonKatz for those 15-year-old boys he seems to have a crush
Pay for premium Slashdot? You gotta be kidding us.
If
[Chorus]
Yeah...
GOATSE is back, trollin' parody of rap
Go on, click that link, view the crater in that crack
Like I told you sell boys, no
JonKatz does that so hopefully you won't have to go through that
I was raised on Windows, point and click
if you don't like that, you can suck my dick
Got an X10 camera, focused on my ass
Wanna see the picture, PayPal me some cash
Threshold under 0, why I got it so low?
Save good trolls on my disk, watchin' all the time for more
So you know I seen it all before
I seen redundant on karma whores when their link post was too late
Crapfloods and mod downs, the two things I hate
A good troll modded up, the two things is great
G to the izz-O, A to the izz-T, S to the izz-E
What else can I say about Slashdot, it'll turn a man gay
[Chorus]
G to the izz-O, A to the izz-T, S to the izz-E
(4x to fade out)
Despite my log in name, this is a serious post.
Warning: Audiophiles can just skip over this post. If you have a dolby 5.1 speaker system connected to your fanless, netbooting PC located in a soundproof room - you probably won't agree with this post. If you're like the average computer user with a reasonably-priced PAIR of amplifed speakers, keep reading...
Has human hearing improved to the point we require sound cards to keep advancing? It seems Creative Labs ran out of ideas after the Sound Blaster 16. 44.1kHz 16-bit stereo is CD quality - sure, a card with a better sampling rate can record, but honestly, when was the last time you recorded anything and needed better than CD quality? The noise generated by your PC's fans and hard drive would offset any improved quality in the sampling hardware. Of course, if you have a recording studio - you probably aren't using a PC for your sampling, and if you were - it's not using a Creative Labs product.
After the Sound Blaster 16, Creative Labs figured MIDI was the future and produced the AWE 32, several variations of it, and then the AWE 64. A few computer publications were even confused by the 32 and 64 note polyphony with bit depth and called them 32 and 64 bit soundcards, respectively; whereas in reality - they featured the same 16-bit DAC and ADC capabilities as the Sound Blaster 16.
The fact of the matter is, so-called "high-end" Creative Labs cards are the "Monster Cables" of the sound card industry. Sure, they look nice and cost a lot, but they're not noticably better than a standard PCI Sound Blaster 16. I've been using an old ISA Sound Blaster 16 since I bought it, and it still sounds just as good as the day I first installed it. I hear they're less than $10 on eBay now.
Thanks to Google, thousands of dead Usenet threads will be resurrected. I can see the flame post now...
"What could have possibly possessed you to reply to a thread that's over a decade old? For Crissakes, it's an ARCHIVE, not a parallel dimension by which you can communicate with people in the past!"
I think we'll have a little trouble this time trying to take over its name (after it fails in the marketplace) for use on an alternative compression format. Besides, who'd use a codec called "Windows Media" anyway? It sounds so un-1337.