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User: CastrTroy

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  1. Re:Sorry what? on Inside AMD's Phenom Architecture · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Does multi-cores really help things like video rendering that much? Usually multicore means faster processor so yes it would help, but do you actually get better performance on 4x1GHz than you would on 1x4GHz? If not, then what you're actually looking for is a faster processor, not necessarily dual core. Servers need multiple cores because they are often fulfilling multiple requests at the same time. Desktops on the other hand are usually only doing 1 processor intensive thing at a time, and therefore, would probably not benefit as much as you might think from multiple processors/cores. That being said, it's a lot easier to get a 10 GHz computer with 4x2.5GHz CPUs, than it is to make a single 10 GHz CPU.

  2. Re:An advertisers dream on LG.Philips Develops World's First Color E-Paper · · Score: 1

    Here's an option, if they can't get the refresh rate high enough. Have a laptop, with a screen that turns around, like all those tablet PCs. Then, one one side, have a regular LCD, and on the other side an eInk display. When you are doing something that doesn't require a high refresh rate, then use the eInk display. When you are watching a movie, use the LCD display. Combine this with flash hard drives, and we may actually have a laptop that can last an entire day without needing to be recharged.

  3. Re:Old fashioned on Web 2.0 Distracts from Good Design · · Score: 5, Interesting

    The point is, is that they don't want to make it possible. By making the resulting html not human readable, they lock you into using their application to edit it. So once you have hundreds of pages developed in dreamweaver, it's very hard to move away from using dreamweaver.

  4. Re:Crying "wolf" on Teachers Fake Gunman Attack · · Score: 1

    My brother wanted to become a teacher but decided not to after doing a semester as a teacher's helper in highschool as a replacement for one of his regular classes. Teaching people who want to learn isn't that bad of a job. Teaching students who don't want to learn, and who will do everything in their power to resist learning, or even paying attention, or even not disrupt the rest of the class who does want to learn can be very stressful.

  5. Re:Right Idea, Wrong Implementation on Teachers Fake Gunman Attack · · Score: 1

    However, with fire drills, I don't think most of the students knew we were going to have one. I think they teachers may have known, but the students did not. The point of drills isn't to see how people will react when there is no danger. It's to prepare them for when there really is a problem. However, I think that they really shouldn't be having drills that make the kids feel like they're actually in danger. You don't see fire drills with controlled fires, and non-toxic smoke, so that children actually know what it's really like to be in a fire.

  6. Re:ISPs have to be the solution on Botnet Mafia in Online Turf War · · Score: 1

    I can think of a few instances where it's not the user's fault. If you install windows xp, no service packs, because that's what came with your computer, and you aren't behind a router or any other firewall, then the computer will become infected before you can even download the updates. Even if the only thing you do is go to the windows update site to do the updating. That's a pretty sad state of affairs. It's something MS needs to fix. There should be no open ports by default on any machine they sell, even the servers. It should be something that explicitly needs to be turned on.

  7. Re:ISPs have to be the solution on Botnet Mafia in Online Turf War · · Score: 2, Insightful

    But MS gets very little grief to fix it, because the users don't experience any direct problems. Those who know what they're doing, including Computer savvy people and network admins for large companies will put the proper measures in place to protect against potential problems, just as their would with any OS. But as long as grandma is still able to send email, then she is happy. It might be a little show if her computer is part of a botnet, but she's still able to do her work. If the ISPs start to cut enough people off, and telling them why, then maybe MS will start to have to make home machines without any ports open by default.

  8. Re:Flip side on CBS Moving To Syndication Across the Internet · · Score: 1

    The difference with tv not on broadcast is that you'd most likely be able to get the same show from several different sources. So if part of the network is down, then you'd still be able to watch the same show from some other online distributor. If something was wrong with part of the network that was out of the internet provider's control, and all their customers (or a significant percentage) were complaining, I'm sure they'd put a lot of pressure on whoever is in control to get the content back up.

  9. Re:ISPs have to be the solution on Botnet Mafia in Online Turf War · · Score: 1

    I haven't heard of much of that happening on the other side of the pond. It is a good idea though. However, I think there would be a lot of backlash, as North Americans feel it is their god given right to have internet, and will probably cause a lot of legal trouble for the company cutting them off. It's much like trying to take someone's drivers license away. Even if they have been charged multiple times with drunk driving, they are able to get their license back, because it's something they "need". In some situations a car is needed, but if you continually show that you aren't going to be responsible, then you really think you have the need for a car.

  10. Re:Flip side on CBS Moving To Syndication Across the Internet · · Score: 1

    But if the options are either over-the-air, for people who aren't paying, or $40 for cable, plus $40 for internet, for those who do pay, I think that you could get a lot of people moving to $60 for faster internet, and cutting the cable bill. Provided they made it easy to put the image full screen on your tv via s-video out, or some wireless box that connects to your router, I think that broadcast cable tv as we know it could be gone if 50 years. Which is a pretty short time considering how ubiquitous it is.

  11. Re:The last horse crosses the finish line on CBS Moving To Syndication Across the Internet · · Score: 2, Informative

    investing potentially millions

    I think that most networks have have invested way more than millions in these internet portals. hire 20 people (which isn't a lot for these large corporations), and you're probably already spending over 1 million dollars. Money for servers, bandwidth, and all the other hosting fees (electicity, heating, building maintenance costs), and i'm sure that they've spent a whole lot more than necessary, and haven't really gotten much out of it. I think this is a great approach for CBS. Sell the content to other companies who understand distribution, and you will get a lot more bang for your buck.
  12. Re:An advertisers dream on LG.Philips Develops World's First Color E-Paper · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Isn't the whole point of ePaper that you don't have to refresh it 60 times a second to keep the image there? Isn't that where all the power savings come from? It makes it ideal for books and things, where the image only changes once ever minute, at most, but nto ideal when you're playing a video, where you would need to change the display at least 24 times a second. Idealy you would only have to change the pixels that change (like how mpeg encodes video), but that's still a lot of changes. Maybe i'm just a little naive, but I don't see this being the right technology for video.

  13. Re:Thanks, but... on First R600 Review - The Radeon HD 2900XT · · Score: 1

    That's almost hot enough to boil water. I don't know why anybody would buy something that operated at such high temperatures. It's sure to burn a hole in itself within the first year.

  14. Re:Yet another reason not to get a Series3 TiVo on TiVo Awarded Patent For Password You Can't Hack · · Score: 1

    I did what the other poster did. Even if you have digital cable, you most likely still get a lot of stuff on analog cable. I get 70 channels. That lets me record just about any show I watch. The only thing offered to me by the other 300 channels on digital is the same channels, time shifted from different time zones. Plus the quality is better on analog, because they over compress my digital cable.

  15. Re:Yet another reason not to get a Series3 TiVo on TiVo Awarded Patent For Password You Can't Hack · · Score: 4, Informative

    This is the reason why SageTV, MythTV, and other free-to-do-what-I-want-to-PVR-software for the computer is the way to go. PVRs that try to control what we can record, when we can fast forward, and what we can do with the recorded content aren't giving the consumers what they want. You can buy a $300 PC, add a $100 TV Tuner, and buy a copy of sageTV for $80 (because setting up MythTV is more complicated than it should be), and you have a complete PVR that doesn't try to control what you do. You can even get it with an IR Blaster to control that set top box.

  16. Re:Just an idea... on Seeking Next Gen Online Order Entry Software? · · Score: 1

    Don't even get me started on the monstrosity that is EDI. They thought they could standardize every document computers would ever have to send to eachother. Then they forgot that some companies might want to send different information in these documents. So somebody decides that this field that they aren't using, well, we'll use it for this other thing that we do need. So, you end up with this hard-to-parse, non-human-readable, file format that isn't standardized. You're basically writing custom code for every system you want to talk to.

  17. Re:TrustedFlash security? on Microsoft & SanDisk To Provide Desktop on Thumb Drive · · Score: 1

    My favourite example of this is "terrific". The root word is terror. You still here some people (British?) use it to describe things like "a terrific storm". However, most people use it as a positive word.

  18. Re:Who cares? on Some Truth to Wii as GameCube 1.5? · · Score: 1

    They're still stocking the consoles, I'm pretty sure they're stocking the controllers. Actually the GC section at my local walmart is twice as big as the Wii section.

  19. Re:Just an idea... on Seeking Next Gen Online Order Entry Software? · · Score: 1

    One thing that makes them notoriously hard is making them talk to all the other esoteric systems. You're business doesn't operate inside a bubble. If one of your big customers wants to integrate your order system, with their procurement system, then you're going to have a lot of work ahead of you to make them talk to each other.

  20. Re:Who cares? on Some Truth to Wii as GameCube 1.5? · · Score: 1

    Nintendo has a good history of not doing stuff until it's technologically ready. They held off on optical media, because optical media has terrible load times. And the load times om the GC are almost as good as with cartridges, at least on most first party games. I can't stand waiting for the load times on the Playstation or XBox. Drives me nuts. I don't think developers really realize how bad it is when you have to wait for your game to load.

  21. Re:Who cares? on Some Truth to Wii as GameCube 1.5? · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I like that the GC moved away from the diamond button configuration. They added the big green "A" home button, with all the other buttons easily reachable from the home button. Just like the J and F home keys on your keyboard. It helps you to always know which button you are pressing. The only thing I didn't like about the GC controller was the Z button. It's hard to press. luckily it isn't needed for much in most games, at least not for anything you have to press quick, usually just to bring up the map or something. However, Nintendo is the only one to use the d-pad (from what I see) not as a directional control, but more of a hat-switch-extra button thing. Look at Zelda WW, or TW, or Metroid. Pressing the dpad in different directions lets you choose weapons, bring up maps, or other menus. It's great, and something I haven't seen on other systems, although I'm sure there are other games that use this.

  22. Re:Who cares? on Some Truth to Wii as GameCube 1.5? · · Score: 2, Interesting

    And you can still plug in your old GC controllers. Although I'm not sure if you can use these controllers for playing Wii games, or if any Wii games require you to use one. I would be a nice option for game publishers who don't want to utilize any motion sensing capabilities. You can get a GC controller for about $20 now, so I think a lot of people would buy one, if they didn't already have one left over from their GC.

  23. Re:Who cares? on Some Truth to Wii as GameCube 1.5? · · Score: 1

    A lot of people thought Nintendo was crazy when they released the analog stick for the N64. Remember, there was no dual shock controllers at this time for PS1, it's main competitor. A lot of people didn't like it. Now every console (minus the wii) is using this control scheme, and everybody has gotten used to them.

  24. Re:Who cares? on Some Truth to Wii as GameCube 1.5? · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Also, about the graphics not being as good as XBox 1. Even GC was as good as xBox1. I've had people hook it up to their TV with the SVideo cable, and be amazed at how well some of the games look, especailly coming from such a small,quiet, and light machine. There's games on the Wii right now, like wii sports, that don't have stellar graphics, but nobody was trying to make it a visual masterpiece. While I admit that I saw a PS3 in stores the other day, and was amazed by the graphics, they were completely awesome, I'm not about to spend $700 on a game console. The graphics have gotten to a point where they are good enough, and companies should really start to focus on gameplay, lest they lose their audience.

  25. Re:Games of the past, e.g. Quake 3 on Games of the Future - User Generated Content · · Score: 1

    You could do this with the Descent Level editor too. The level editor is called Devil. I hooked it up on dosbox a little while ago. Actually it crashed dosbox, so i ran it under freedos in vmware, but Descent would only run at usable speeds in dosbox, so I set up a disc image file to transfer files between them. Anyway, one of my favourite things to do, was to put a floating cube in a room, with a door on it, and when you entered the door, you entered another room of the same size, with a similar cube in the middle. I started to build one with many layers, but I haven't touched it in about a month, I think I'll get back to working on that soon.