Why is this modded Offtopic? I use the damn OS 8 hours/day. I spend enough time looking at hourglass cursors and otherwise unresponsive UI to know that there are bottlenecks. CPU access isn't so bad these days (since W2k and XP), but I still have apps that can monopolize my single-core machine. Firefox is one of them (loading Java applets). Quadralay Webworks Publisher is another [1]. Windows disk access looks rather single-threaded to me. And while we're at it, the other mainstream OS (OS X) isn't scot-free in this regard. The infamous Finder network issues come to mind. Disk access is arbitrated much better than on XP, though.
1: although that stems in part from the application forcing itself to be the frontmost window, so you can't use the computer to do anything else while WWP is doing its hour-long processing cycle.
This refers to the power regulator onboard - i.e. internal to the motherboard itself; it's nothing to do with the 240v PSU.
The onboard power regulator is the part of the motherboard which converts the standard 3.3v to the exact voltages the CPU, RAM, etc require. The theory goes that the more phases, the cooler running, more efficient and more reliable the motherboard will be (but it's mostly about e-penis, rather than any genuine advantage).
Why stick so many ports (4x LAN, 10x SATA) on the motherboard? Is there a performance benefit to putting those ports there, instead of providing lots of PCI slots so you can create your own optimal mix of ports?
I was hoping to read about a new standard monitor connection that replaces DVI (and HDMI) with fiber. Instead Matrox has opted to move the graphics processor out of the computer, and use a (no doubt proprietary-format) optical link between the two.
At 70 GHz+ you're talking about line-of-sight links. That solves one problem, but causes others. And at those frequencies, things like rain will interfere with the link.
There's a lot of spectrum.
But you'll notice that commercial applications above 2 GHz are rare. Above that, you've got microwave links, but those are not consumer-level technology. Gigabeam is basically an attempt at downscaling/making cheaper microwave links. The Gigabeam site doesn't mention pricing of their product, but engineering for these frequencies isn't easy. The validity of their claims (cheaper than installing fibre) remains to be seen.
Is it any surprise that Cisco is dismissing "radio" as "old fashioned" (nice choice of calling it "radio" instead of "wireless"), when high-bandwidth wireless technologies like WiMAX [wikipedia.org] and UMTS Rev 8 [wikipedia.org] are at least an option worth considering as a solution to the "last mile" problem?
An option? There's no wireless technology in sight that can deliver anywhere near 40 Gbit/s, let alone deliver multiple streams at that speed in an area. A 40 Gbit/s stream encoded with e.g. 256QAM (256 bits sent as a single signal) still needs 156 MHz of bandwidth. You need the entire radio spectrum to transmit 10 channels at this speed. This means wireless technologies are only a 'last mile' option in areas with low-density population.
Besides, given the awful performance of current WiFi standards [1], I really don't want my high-speed link to depend on radio technology.
1: at the slightest provocation, my 802.11g network delivers no more than 10 Mbit/s, making it annoyingly slow for large file transfers. I'm sticking with 100Base-T for anything but casual websurfing.
It seems to me you'd want to minimise leakage. On earth spattering the surroundings is an annoyance [1], in space it can be catastrophic. Why take the chance?
1: that said, I've never understood why so many men insist on peeing standing up, when it's cleaner, more comfortable and doesn't cost more time to sit down.
Argh! It looks like it should cost $30 instead of $300. And what's with the stupid rounded corners? They're giving up valuable internal volume and screen real estate to make the phone look smaller while still having the exact same height and width of a brick-shaped phone.
Sure. That's why we've been seeing regular bombings of offshore oil installations (which would be way more interesting from a terrorist's POV than a dumb ol' wind turbine).
Come to think of it: the majority of the power grid isn't protected much at all. Your armed forces won't do much good if they're 50 km away when an idiot tries to bring down a power station. The only facilities enjoying serious security are nuclear power stations. Maybe that's because the power grid has never been a major target? Terrorists target people because that's where the shock value is. Purely economic attacks are very rare.
The Mac mini hasn't seen an update for a while, and the rumours have been mostly negative (discontinuation of the line). I want one, and Apple's strategy of not talking about future products (or lack thereof) is annoying.
With the mandatory service plan, you're basically buying a $2000 phone. Anyone who can afford that, shouldn't blink at a $100 repair bill. The time without your phone is a much bigger deal than the price, although a loaner (covered) and a seamless sync procedure to get your data into the loaner (remains to be seen, but knowing Apple, that should be the case) would mitigate that problem.
Good point. My idea was to avoid having to build an emulator for a 100 year-old platform [1]. By stacking them, the emulator you're writing only needs to understand software that was written 10 years ago.
1: I figured that to do this, you need to know how the 100-year-old system works. That's no problem now, since there's still enough of the old hardware (and its documentation) lying around. But some day, those will have turned to dust. Your archive better contain complete information on all the old data formats (in a robust format) and software if you plan on using the old data in 100 years.
I can't believe the National Archives partnered with the company that caused this mess in the first place, ie Microsoft.
Second, why on earth do they think virtualisation is a long-term solution? Sure, you can emulate Windows 95 within Windows XP today, but what happens in another ten years? Another layer gets wrapped around XP? So in 100 years, you're relying on a stack of emulators to access the old software. You better hope Moore's law holds up, because you're going to need it. Also, who will know how Word 95 worked in 10 years, let alone 100?
IMO translation of the old documents would be a better solution. Translate the documents into a well-documented, open format, and throw away all of the old formatting idiosyncrasities while you're at it. That way, you only have to maintain one way to access the documents with the software-du-jour, instead of having to prop up the entire teetering stack of virtualisation layers.
Half the replies so far assume that you have to supply a sample of your handwriting every time you log in. That's not what this system does! This system just presents a few lines of handwriting, and invites you to choose the correct one. A useless system, basically reducing security to a 1-in-10 guess. This is supposed to be developed by a university?
What's the incentive in collecting *full* cans of beer? AIU, beer doesn't get better with age, so why bother? If all you're after is the pretty pictures on the bottle/can, why not drink the beer when it's still drinkable?
It recently struck me how large the MBP's trackpad is. It's more than twice the area of the pad on my Dell D600. Multi-touch would be useless on a small trackpad, but the MBP's looks to be large enough to make it practical.
Oil pressure reduces significantly as oil is removed from the well, so yes, oil pumps are common devices. Techniques like steam injection are also used to increase flow to the well.
AIU, the Russian oilfields have only recently been developed so it's only natural they produce more than the older Saudi oilfields.
Also, the same Western corporations that exploit Middle-Eastern and Western wells, also work in Russia. You think Shell et al wouldn't jump at the chance to increase the yield from existing oil field, rather than having to expensively develop new fields?
The 'conspiracy theory' overtones are clouding whatever merit your argument may have.
Slashdot Mirror
Why is this modded Offtopic? I use the damn OS 8 hours/day. I spend enough time looking at hourglass cursors and otherwise unresponsive UI to know that there are bottlenecks. CPU access isn't so bad these days (since W2k and XP), but I still have apps that can monopolize my single-core machine. Firefox is one of them (loading Java applets). Quadralay Webworks Publisher is another [1]. Windows disk access looks rather single-threaded to me.
And while we're at it, the other mainstream OS (OS X) isn't scot-free in this regard. The infamous Finder network issues come to mind. Disk access is arbitrated much better than on XP, though.
1: although that stems in part from the application forcing itself to be the frontmost window, so you can't use the computer to do anything else while WWP is doing its hour-long processing cycle.
given that Windows still bogs down at the drop of a hat.
sort of, in his short story The Feeling of Power.
This refers to the power regulator onboard - i.e. internal to the motherboard itself; it's nothing to do with the 240v PSU.
The onboard power regulator is the part of the motherboard which converts the standard 3.3v to the exact voltages the CPU, RAM, etc require. The theory goes that the more phases, the cooler running, more efficient and more reliable the motherboard will be (but it's mostly about e-penis, rather than any genuine advantage).
Why stick so many ports (4x LAN, 10x SATA) on the motherboard? Is there a performance benefit to putting those ports there, instead of providing lots of PCI slots so you can create your own optimal mix of ports?
I was hoping to read about a new standard monitor connection that replaces DVI (and HDMI) with fiber.
Instead Matrox has opted to move the graphics processor out of the computer, and use a (no doubt proprietary-format) optical link between the two.
At 70 GHz+ you're talking about line-of-sight links. That solves one problem, but causes others. And at those frequencies, things like rain will interfere with the link.
There's a lot of spectrum.
But you'll notice that commercial applications above 2 GHz are rare. Above that, you've got microwave links, but those are not consumer-level technology. Gigabeam is basically an attempt at downscaling/making cheaper microwave links.
The Gigabeam site doesn't mention pricing of their product, but engineering for these frequencies isn't easy. The validity of their claims (cheaper than installing fibre) remains to be seen.
Is it any surprise that Cisco is dismissing "radio" as "old fashioned" (nice choice of calling it "radio" instead of "wireless"), when high-bandwidth wireless technologies like WiMAX [wikipedia.org] and UMTS Rev 8 [wikipedia.org] are at least an option worth considering as a solution to the "last mile" problem?
An option? There's no wireless technology in sight that can deliver anywhere near 40 Gbit/s, let alone deliver multiple streams at that speed in an area. A 40 Gbit/s stream encoded with e.g. 256QAM (256 bits sent as a single signal) still needs 156 MHz of bandwidth. You need the entire radio spectrum to transmit 10 channels at this speed. This means wireless technologies are only a 'last mile' option in areas with low-density population.
Besides, given the awful performance of current WiFi standards [1], I really don't want my high-speed link to depend on radio technology.
1: at the slightest provocation, my 802.11g network delivers no more than 10 Mbit/s, making it annoyingly slow for large file transfers. I'm sticking with 100Base-T for anything but casual websurfing.
The Nano just doesn't have enough internal volume for phone electronics plus a battery that'll give decent battery life.
So it's a rotary-dial phone, then?
Spell-check says "moreso" isn't a word?
It's not a word, it's two words.
Captain's log, September 29th, 2007...
regarding standing up...
It seems to me you'd want to minimise leakage. On earth spattering the surroundings is an annoyance [1], in space it can be catastrophic. Why take the chance?
1: that said, I've never understood why so many men insist on peeing standing up, when it's cleaner, more comfortable and doesn't cost more time to sit down.
Argh! It looks like it should cost $30 instead of $300. And what's with the stupid rounded corners? They're giving up valuable internal volume and screen real estate to make the phone look smaller while still having the exact same height and width of a brick-shaped phone.
...what seems to me to be a major concern...
Sure. That's why we've been seeing regular bombings of offshore oil installations (which would be way more interesting from a terrorist's POV than a dumb ol' wind turbine).
Come to think of it: the majority of the power grid isn't protected much at all. Your armed forces won't do much good if they're 50 km away when an idiot tries to bring down a power station. The only facilities enjoying serious security are nuclear power stations. Maybe that's because the power grid has never been a major target? Terrorists target people because that's where the shock value is. Purely economic attacks are very rare.
The Mac mini hasn't seen an update for a while, and the rumours have been mostly negative (discontinuation of the line). I want one, and Apple's strategy of not talking about future products (or lack thereof) is annoying.
With the mandatory service plan, you're basically buying a $2000 phone. Anyone who can afford that, shouldn't blink at a $100 repair bill. The time without your phone is a much bigger deal than the price, although a loaner (covered) and a seamless sync procedure to get your data into the loaner (remains to be seen, but knowing Apple, that should be the case) would mitigate that problem.
Good point. My idea was to avoid having to build an emulator for a 100 year-old platform [1]. By stacking them, the emulator you're writing only needs to understand software that was written 10 years ago.
1: I figured that to do this, you need to know how the 100-year-old system works. That's no problem now, since there's still enough of the old hardware (and its documentation) lying around. But some day, those will have turned to dust. Your archive better contain complete information on all the old data formats (in a robust format) and software if you plan on using the old data in 100 years.
I can't believe the National Archives partnered with the company that caused this mess in the first place, ie Microsoft.
Second, why on earth do they think virtualisation is a long-term solution? Sure, you can emulate Windows 95 within Windows XP today, but what happens in another ten years? Another layer gets wrapped around XP? So in 100 years, you're relying on a stack of emulators to access the old software. You better hope Moore's law holds up, because you're going to need it. Also, who will know how Word 95 worked in 10 years, let alone 100?
IMO translation of the old documents would be a better solution. Translate the documents into a well-documented, open format, and throw away all of the old formatting idiosyncrasities while you're at it. That way, you only have to maintain one way to access the documents with the software-du-jour, instead of having to prop up the entire teetering stack of virtualisation layers.
So it's not a water cooling system, it's a steam engine! Or at least the 'boiler' part of one.
Half the replies so far assume that you have to supply a sample of your handwriting every time you log in. That's not what this system does!
This system just presents a few lines of handwriting, and invites you to choose the correct one. A useless system, basically reducing security to a 1-in-10 guess. This is supposed to be developed by a university?
What's the incentive in collecting *full* cans of beer? AIU, beer doesn't get better with age, so why bother? If all you're after is the pretty pictures on the bottle/can, why not drink the beer when it's still drinkable?
Sissies, selling cola and other mundane items, and only changing the packaging. I want Soylent Green! Acme Earthquake pills! Romulan ale!
It recently struck me how large the MBP's trackpad is. It's more than twice the area of the pad on my Dell D600. Multi-touch would be useless on a small trackpad, but the MBP's looks to be large enough to make it practical.
Oil pressure reduces significantly as oil is removed from the well, so yes, oil pumps are common devices. Techniques like steam injection are also used to increase flow to the well.
AIU, the Russian oilfields have only recently been developed so it's only natural they produce more than the older Saudi oilfields.
Also, the same Western corporations that exploit Middle-Eastern and Western wells, also work in Russia. You think Shell et al wouldn't jump at the chance to increase the yield from existing oil field, rather than having to expensively develop new fields?
The 'conspiracy theory' overtones are clouding whatever merit your argument may have.