AMD, Intel, Apple, they are all guilty of this kind of advertising. I don't base a chip's power on how it's advertised.
Intel also claims that if I use a P4, my pictures will be richer, my graphics more vibrant, and my sounds more realistic. I don't believe any of that either.
But instead I find myself shut up. The specs on the thing are actually quite nice when you compare it to the Area-51m (http://www.alienware.com/main/system_pages/area51 -m.asp) which costs about 250$ less.
The PowerBook has a 20GB larger HDD, the same GPU, a DVD burner, and gigabit ethernet. However, I still hold reservations about the G4. Mhz is certainly not everything, but the G4 has lagged behind to the point that its outclassed by modern x86 processors. Hopefully we'll see an Apple laptop with that new 64-bit IBM processor soon!
It's not that simple, no, but the G4 is still slower than the fastest x86 CPUs. It's lagging behind. Direct benchmark comparisons abound that, for example, compare Photoshop benchmarks on similarly priced G4 and x86 based machines. The G4 loses.
Hopefully the new IBM CPU will get Apple back in the race.
I agree, it's an excellent format for data use, but DVD-RAM discs are nearly impossible to find locally, and their scarcity on the local market doesn't help their prices.
Still, I see some ultra-cheap ones for sale on the net... A 10-pack double-sided in cartridge for 85$ US seems like a pretty good deal.
If you're looking for the best,
on
DVI Flat Panels?
·
· Score: 2
Maximum PC gave Sharp's LL-T1820 (18") a perfect 10, the "Kick Ass!" award, and called it "the best we ever tested". This was in the August 2002 issue.
It got such high accolades due to "two new technologies that can measurably improve image quality: 10-bit gamma correction and Zero Voltage Black."
10-bit gamma correction improves over the trditional 8-bit gamma correction, and provides much better colour gradients. As for Zero Voltage Black, it helps with the broken pixels that will of course be present in any LCD. To sum it up, instead of a broken pixel simply shining all the time, broken pixels don't shine at all. To quote MPC, "The upshot is that broken subpixels on Sharp's new displays are relatively unobtrusive. Because they don't beam glaring backlight, they appear as subtle, muted flecks that blend in with the pixels of whatever's being rendered onscreen.".
The review is a bit old, and the price premium is high at 1300$ US. However, in august this display beat out all other comers.
DVD-RAM is old (outdated), and DVD-R/DVD-RW is sort of the same standard, as is DVD+R/DVD+RW. AFAIK most modern drives can do the recordable-only version of their standard.
From what I've heard, the "-" (DVD-R/DVD-RW) standard is winning the formats race due to higher compatibility and wider industry support. So I'd say go with that type of drive. However there are drives coming to market that can burn both the dash and the plus standards.
They've made a mistake.
on
AOL Patents IM
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
Usually when companies get a stupid unenforcable patent, they go after small helpless companies that can't afford to defend themselves in court. However, this time, AOL has made a mistake. Not only are they not able to prove this is a valid patent in court, any company they sue is likely to have the resources to defend themselves, not to mention these companie's IM software will predate the patent.
I'd love to see what happened if AOL decided to try to sue Microsoft over Windows/MSN messenger. It'd be pretty funny.
It's not entirely anecdotal. I have heard it in action on several occasions and it sounded flawless to me. However, I am not an expert on music, so I defer to the opinion of the owner of the particular copy of GigaSampler, who is quite a bit more experienced with such things than I.
You sir, who are too corwardly to post your brainless flames from your account and instead hide behind the veil of anonymity, should put up or shut up.
320GB of SCSI storage is expensive, wheras you can get 320GB in a single IDE drive for a fraction of the cost. Most people agree that IDE is superior for non-speed-critical mass-storage.
There is at least one company offering uncapped (As far as monthly transfer cap) internet on the fastest DSL lines available here... http://www.tht.net has unlimited 3500/800 lines (Translates into roughly 640kbit upstream after overhead) for 70$ CDN per month.
It's a bit pricey, but the thought of 640kbit of unlimited upstream to do with as I please is making me drool, and I'm thinking of shelling out the extra dough to go from my current capped 3500/800 line over to THT... Once I'm with THT it seems I will be able to worry about saturating the connection rather than saturating my transfer limit;-)
Oh, and they're server friendly too. www.x-crew.net has a 14 player Natural-Selection server hosted on a resold (through cuic.ca) THT line.
"I remember my fifth-grade teacher instructing us in the metric system and telling us we would need to learn this material because we would all be using it in the future," he says. "I believed her, of course. And when that future failed to arrive I began to wonder why.
He should get a clue, the rest of the world uses the metric system, this future has materialized. If one country wants to be stubborn and hold out, whatever.
Anyhow, the real beauty of the metric system is that it's various units of measurements make sense. As in, a centimeter is a hundredth of a meter, a millimeter is a thousands of a meter, etc. The imperial system wouldn't be so strange if it was 10 inches to a foot, but it's not.
Anyhow, the meter is not the only part of the metric system, it also encompasses temperature, weight, etc. And the meter is certainly less arbitrary than the foot!
I'd argue that the software has come a long way, perhaps not in handwriting accuracy, but in integration with modern software.
And hot-damn if I'm not impressed with Alias Sketchbook, designed for Tablet PCs in particular. Just look at what Gabe threw together, this sketch. Looks real, doesn't it?
He goes on about how there has been no innovation, and even if this is true, there has certainly been progress. He's comparing Tablet PCs to desktop attachments and PDA-style devices. This is the first time we're seeing this quality of hardware at this kind of price with a world-standard OS. Many of these Tablet PCs can even convert back and forth between laptops. Comparing them to an 8088 unit from decades passed or an LCD graphics tablet is a poor comparison.
At 700kbit at that resolution... I am not very familiar with RealVideo, but if the quality is comparable to other MPEG-4 implementations, that should be a crystal-clear stream;-)
Certainly 700kbit is sufficient for DVD resolution, with reasonable artifacts.
You're right. Whoever made those encoding decisions, (codec, resolution, audio bitrate) was stupid.
He's talking about the very real problem of too much junk in orbit. It's already a very real problem, with several collisions having already occured, and the more crap we shove into orbit, the sooner the next collosion will occur.
Haven't you heard the famous "A fleck of paint can cause serious damage when it's moving fast enough" bit before?
Just because people other than the programmer are permitted to see the source doesn't make it open source... Id Software licenses the Quake 3 source for companies to make all sorts of games, but it sure isn't open source (yet).
Get the latest copy for OSX here, or if you don't have OSX, get a copy of WMP 7.1 for Mac OS here
I know it's still WMP, and it'd be great if you could use some other software, but at least this way you can still listen to the content until another solution is available.
Slashdot Mirror
I agree completely, that's why I buy AMD :)
AMD, Intel, Apple, they are all guilty of this kind of advertising. I don't base a chip's power on how it's advertised.
Intel also claims that if I use a P4, my pictures will be richer, my graphics more vibrant, and my sounds more realistic. I don't believe any of that either.
Yes. I hate asp... Everyone should use PHP ;)
But instead I find myself shut up. The specs on the thing are actually quite nice when you compare it to the Area-51m (http://www.alienware.com/main/system_pages/area51 -m.asp) which costs about 250$ less.
The PowerBook has a 20GB larger HDD, the same GPU, a DVD burner, and gigabit ethernet. However, I still hold reservations about the G4. Mhz is certainly not everything, but the G4 has lagged behind to the point that its outclassed by modern x86 processors. Hopefully we'll see an Apple laptop with that new 64-bit IBM processor soon!
It's not that simple, no, but the G4 is still slower than the fastest x86 CPUs. It's lagging behind. Direct benchmark comparisons abound that, for example, compare Photoshop benchmarks on similarly priced G4 and x86 based machines. The G4 loses.
Hopefully the new IBM CPU will get Apple back in the race.
Bell Canada offers a PVR option with Bell ExpressVu.
I agree, it's an excellent format for data use, but DVD-RAM discs are nearly impossible to find locally, and their scarcity on the local market doesn't help their prices. Still, I see some ultra-cheap ones for sale on the net... A 10-pack double-sided in cartridge for 85$ US seems like a pretty good deal.
Maximum PC gave Sharp's LL-T1820 (18") a perfect 10, the "Kick Ass!" award, and called it "the best we ever tested". This was in the August 2002 issue.
It got such high accolades due to "two new technologies that can measurably improve image quality: 10-bit gamma correction and Zero Voltage Black."
10-bit gamma correction improves over the trditional 8-bit gamma correction, and provides much better colour gradients. As for Zero Voltage Black, it helps with the broken pixels that will of course be present in any LCD. To sum it up, instead of a broken pixel simply shining all the time, broken pixels don't shine at all. To quote MPC, "The upshot is that broken subpixels on Sharp's new displays are relatively unobtrusive. Because they don't beam glaring backlight, they appear as subtle, muted flecks that blend in with the pixels of whatever's being rendered onscreen.".
The review is a bit old, and the price premium is high at 1300$ US. However, in august this display beat out all other comers.
DVD-RAM is old (outdated), and DVD-R/DVD-RW is sort of the same standard, as is DVD+R/DVD+RW. AFAIK most modern drives can do the recordable-only version of their standard.
From what I've heard, the "-" (DVD-R/DVD-RW) standard is winning the formats race due to higher compatibility and wider industry support. So I'd say go with that type of drive. However there are drives coming to market that can burn both the dash and the plus standards.
Usually when companies get a stupid unenforcable patent, they go after small helpless companies that can't afford to defend themselves in court. However, this time, AOL has made a mistake. Not only are they not able to prove this is a valid patent in court, any company they sue is likely to have the resources to defend themselves, not to mention these companie's IM software will predate the patent. I'd love to see what happened if AOL decided to try to sue Microsoft over Windows/MSN messenger. It'd be pretty funny.
It's not entirely anecdotal. I have heard it in action on several occasions and it sounded flawless to me. However, I am not an expert on music, so I defer to the opinion of the owner of the particular copy of GigaSampler, who is quite a bit more experienced with such things than I.
You sir, who are too corwardly to post your brainless flames from your account and instead hide behind the veil of anonymity, should put up or shut up.
320GB of SCSI storage is expensive, wheras you can get 320GB in a single IDE drive for a fraction of the cost. Most people agree that IDE is superior for non-speed-critical mass-storage.
I've heard good things about GigaSampler... From what I've heard it's the best for at least piano synth (when combined with GigaPiano).
I'm thinking of colocating myself in my closet ;-)
;-)
There is at least one company offering uncapped (As far as monthly transfer cap) internet on the fastest DSL lines available here... http://www.tht.net has unlimited 3500/800 lines (Translates into roughly 640kbit upstream after overhead) for 70$ CDN per month.
It's a bit pricey, but the thought of 640kbit of unlimited upstream to do with as I please is making me drool, and I'm thinking of shelling out the extra dough to go from my current capped 3500/800 line over to THT... Once I'm with THT it seems I will be able to worry about saturating the connection rather than saturating my transfer limit
Oh, and they're server friendly too. www.x-crew.net has a 14 player Natural-Selection server hosted on a resold (through cuic.ca) THT line.
20$... That's less than 2$ a month, hardly an outrageous fee.
A quote:
"I remember my fifth-grade teacher instructing us in the metric system and telling us we would need to learn this material because we would all be using it in the future," he says. "I believed her, of course. And when that future failed to arrive I began to wonder why.
He should get a clue, the rest of the world uses the metric system, this future has materialized. If one country wants to be stubborn and hold out, whatever.
Anyhow, the real beauty of the metric system is that it's various units of measurements make sense. As in, a centimeter is a hundredth of a meter, a millimeter is a thousands of a meter, etc. The imperial system wouldn't be so strange if it was 10 inches to a foot, but it's not.
Anyhow, the meter is not the only part of the metric system, it also encompasses temperature, weight, etc. And the meter is certainly less arbitrary than the foot!
I'd argue that the software has come a long way, perhaps not in handwriting accuracy, but in integration with modern software.
And hot-damn if I'm not impressed with Alias Sketchbook, designed for Tablet PCs in particular. Just look at what Gabe threw together, this sketch. Looks real, doesn't it?
He goes on about how there has been no innovation, and even if this is true, there has certainly been progress. He's comparing Tablet PCs to desktop attachments and PDA-style devices. This is the first time we're seeing this quality of hardware at this kind of price with a world-standard OS. Many of these Tablet PCs can even convert back and forth between laptops. Comparing them to an 8088 unit from decades passed or an LCD graphics tablet is a poor comparison.
At 700kbit at that resolution... I am not very familiar with RealVideo, but if the quality is comparable to other MPEG-4 implementations, that should be a crystal-clear stream ;-)
Certainly 700kbit is sufficient for DVD resolution, with reasonable artifacts.
You're right. Whoever made those encoding decisions, (codec, resolution, audio bitrate) was stupid.
Is that the measurement is qualitative. Two people could hear the same "ping sound" and come to different conclusions about the network quality.
"Network sounds a bit slow today."
"Nah, sounds OK to me. Hey Joe, what d'you think?"
"Dunno, sounds bubbly."
He's talking about the very real problem of too much junk in orbit. It's already a very real problem, with several collisions having already occured, and the more crap we shove into orbit, the sooner the next collosion will occur.
Haven't you heard the famous "A fleck of paint can cause serious damage when it's moving fast enough" bit before?
Just because people other than the programmer are permitted to see the source doesn't make it open source... Id Software licenses the Quake 3 source for companies to make all sorts of games, but it sure isn't open source (yet).
I'm not sure if the Mac version of WinAmp plays WMA files, but the windows version does, so it's worth a shot. Get it here.
Microsoft has a version of WMP for Mac.
Get the latest copy for OSX here, or if you don't have OSX, get a copy of WMP 7.1 for Mac OS here
I know it's still WMP, and it'd be great if you could use some other software, but at least this way you can still listen to the content until another solution is available.
You'd be lucky to be able to cancel the sound already coming in on those built-in mics. They pick up lots of vibrations from the computer itself.