And despite it being a very low-end system, it should perform pretty well.
I bought my mother a 667 Mhz/256MB G4 tower a few years back because she knew Macs already, and it is still quite competant for email, web, photoshop/pagemaker, scanning/etc... double the speed and the ability to double(Or better?) the ram and I'd expect it to be pretty decent.
Benchmarks tell me my Radeon 9800 is horribly out of date and imply its too weak to play any modern games. But I know from experience, that's bullshit.
I'm somewhat curious what benchmarks tell you that, since the benchmarks I read(Most on www.anandtech.com) tell me my Radeon 9700 Pro is still capable of chugging out a playable FPS in most current games, and my personal experience says it's more than capable(Since I run at a slightly lower resolution than their current 'low res' benchmark.;P)
Benchmarks are usefull tools, if they are presented and read right.
My experience with Pentium M is that it clocks down BIG time if you don't plug in the power cord. So much so that the laptop is virtually useless. YMMV.
Luckily, this is 100% configurable.
Even if you don't want to turn it off completely, you can set up your system to be less aggressive in down-clocking your CPU.
In windows 2k/XP, open the 'power' control panel, and change the setting from whatever it's set at(I'm guessing "Max Battery" to something less drastic, like Portable/Laptop, or Home/Office Desk(Yes, home/office desk will still allow it to downlock, but it will clock it back up when you start using it more.). "Always on" and "Minimal power management" both disable down-clocking, I believe. And the on-demand CPU frequency scaling does wonders for battery life. I've never felt that my laptop was hampered by being unplugged, but any time I stop using a lot cpu, it down-clocks to save battery.
Under linux, you just need to have a decent kernel and cpufreqd or speedfreqd(And I was just compiling 2.6.9 last night, it seems that it includes a kernel driver that will dynamically change the clock speed dependant on CPU load, so cpufreqd/speedfreqd are not strictly necessary if that is enabled.
I've also done some benchmarks/useage comparisons, and my Pentium M laptop is signifigantly faster than my desktop at several things(Nothing disk-bound though.;P), like compiling a lot of software, and working with some encryption formats. All-in-all, my 1.5 year old Penium M is still a fairly usefull system, that even plays most games competantly, if not with all the pretty features turned on.:(
Anyone else here thinking about space elevators all of a sudden? If anyone seriously builds one, what's to stop us from designing the core of the tether to house superconductors(Or just an extremely well designed transmission system?) and bring the electricity down that way.
You are still adding energy that wouldn't normally be here(Using the electricity creates heat, but I don't see us stopping that any time in the near future anyways.:P)
"When entire pages can be written on "password strategy", it's gotten out of control."
17 pages. Yes, 17. Thats how many I had to read and sign that I understood before I could take my last HELPDESK job. And all users on the helpdesk were required to have 14 character passwords.
And I do believe every new employee has to read that 17 page document, but normal employees were only required to have 7 character passwords.
2) it's entirely arguable that such a copy is for "personal and private use" Damnit, now I can't use my neural link or I won't be allowed to listen to my CDs anymore, for fear of being prosecuted.
Just a quick one, because this touches on a personal pet peeve:
Why should we, as americans(No, the parent posters may not be american, but myself and the PA guys are..) help other countries before we help ourselves?
We run around the world causing wars and causing hardship, then spend 10 years doing a half-assed job at cleaning it up.. all because we believe we are morally superior..
Yet we let many of the same 'wrongs' we say we are going to war to end persist in our own country. Fix our country first, THEN fix the rest of the world.
I contend that Mac OS 7.x was also a good OS. When 7.0.1 was still new, Windows 3.11 was the order of the day for businesses, so it was quite a breath of fresh air... until the internet came around, and we had to upgrade(To 7.6.1) just to get online... and imagine our annoyance that our expensive 2400 baud modem was too slow for the intarweb.:(
So, I guess the question is, what kinda bandwidth does RDP take? And is there a remote desktop server for 2k pro? I use vnc + ssh(vnc in an ssh tunnel) to access my home computer via the internet, and it's usable but laggy.
I personally hate xp's reomte desktop, since my laptop's screen res is about 500 pixels wider, and 80 taller than my desktops, so when I remote desktop to my laptop, my icon placement gets re-adjusted for the screen space, and it remembers the changes when I log off remote desktop, and log back in locally.:(
And to top it off, even over 100Mbit lines, remote desktop can't handle full-motion video. RealVNC doesn't even try, overlay isn't forwarded, and I don't know any windows video players that don't use the overlay for the video.. (And I'm too lazy to boot my laptop just to see if I can run a video from a linux vnc server.)
When they started shipping keys with a full keyboard instead of that silly old 'mac keyboard' I thought it was a good thing.
Then I finally got one(A G4 tower running OS X(10.1 and 10.2)) and try and use those extra, extended keyboard, keys... like home and end.. and find that in 99% of text boxes, they do NOTHING.
That is, in mozilla's address bar, in safari's, in most OS config dialogues, you cannot go to the beginning or end of the box by using home or end!
Why did they pay the extra cost to get those keys on there again?
Refinements to the design(Or possibly a completely different internal architecture) could even double the fill rate without ANY clock speed increase...
That said, pixel fill rate doesn't mean much, and as games start using more and more pixel and shader programs, you'll eventually want shader benchmarks and won't care about fill rate.
It isn't sucking air in, it's being pushed by the wind. Is the problem that the birds don't see them? or what? A metal grating might be more effective than you think, it would at least prevent the birds from running into the fast moving blades, even if they are still stupid enough to hit the grating, and it would likely increase visibility of each turbine.
On the other hand, the problem might be more related to the massive amount of turbulence that many turbines would create. If a bird is trying to fly between em all I bet they have trouble.
D-Link DL-704P. It has a printer port, AND a serial port. The serial port can be used with an old serial modem OR a null modem cable, to give you a serial console to the modem. Only has like 20 or 30 port ranges that can be forwarded at one time, but you can forward any ports you want(Unlike some routers I've seen:( )... of course, this makes the firewall noticeably less effective, depending on the port forwarded.:P
And before you scream "But then they have to buy a modem too!"... pick one up used, I did, and it works great at 56k.
Oh, heres the other thing.. I replied to your reply lower, but I forgot about this point.
For them knowing where packets 'end up' at. It's not quite that easy if the packets are encrypted properly. Yes, they can tell that encrypted packets are going to your computer, but they shouldn't be able to tell if they're destined for your computer, since you'll be uploading encrypted packets at the same time. The could make an assumption that some are destined for your computer, if you're downloading many more encrypted packets than you upload. But if, like freenet, the network stores encrypted data on your hard drive that you didn't request, this isn't a fair assumption. Of course, if you then decrypt the data and store it in the clear on your hard drive, all it takes is one properly worded warrant to find out that you DID download something illegal.:P If they can get the warrant.:P
"I considered this, but I s'pose encryption partly covers it. If the contents are unknown, it'd be pretty hard to prove that they're illegal."
Thats one big advantage in the US, but it still makes me wonder how usefull freenet will be in totalitarian governments like china. If you are not hindered by due process, you can assume that anyone using these protocols is doing illegal things with it, and beat it out of them.
"What about hiding the source by changing packet sizes?"
This is already covered by most modern encryption systems. I forget which one I was reading about specifically, but older schemes(esp password encryption schemes) had weaknesses where a certain length cyphertext could only be made by a small subset of possible source texts. This made guessing cyphertext much simpler. These days, most schemes pad packets to the max size possible every time. No matter how much actual encrypted data is included. This makes it harder to guess what the packets contain.
"Or what about splitting a packet into multiple packets, and routing them hither and yon, before bringing them back together? Although I guess thats kinda whats happening already..."
I should really read the spec before saying this, but hopefully I won't look too stupid.
I am going to have to assume that each packet will be encrypted between individual nodes, and at least partially decrypted at each node to get the routing information for the next hop. then re-encrypted. So theoretically during transport, it's impossible to know what an individual packet is for at ALL. It could be a search packet, or a request, or a data packet, or a search result packet. Of course, this is all assuming each node encrypts all data with the key of the next node over, rather than passing encrypted data straight across the network(or perhaps encrypts the payload, then sticks on a routing header and encrypts that WITH the encrypted payload, so A: Sniffers/ISPs can't tell where a packet is intended to go, B: nodes can't tell what's in the packet they're forwarding to it's destination.)
Unfortunately, I think that wouldn't float in court. You were negligent for not updating the college with your local address. If you don't supply them with one, they don't have any way of knowing you aren't still living at home. Many colleges put somewhere in the registration "Is this address your current address?" "Please make corrections below" or something similar, so if they did that, I think their ass is legally covered.
it says "Bittorrent technology" they could have co-opted the protocol, but changed bits and pieces of headers and tracker communication so only a 'mandrake-club' downloader will work with it..
or they could just be using the honor system to ask their members not to hand out the.torrents
well, it just means the RIAA REALLY won't get any of my money.. as I only ever discover new bands on the radio, and if I have to pay for that, I won't listen, cause as sturgeon's law says, 90% of everything is crap, and I'm not paying to hear 90% crap.
And since I won't learn about new bands.. I won't buy any new CDs/DVD audios/etc.. becuase I already have what I want, and fair use DOES exist, so I can keep putting songs from my CD's onto new media(Hell, if I want to, I can rip them to a lossless audio format, then burn(as in combust) the CDs, so I still only have one copy, then use my portable player as my backup copy.)
XGI also just announced a new set of graphics chips, they're really the people who were part of the Trident/SiS GPU people, but this looks like good news for the video card industry. while ATI and nVidia battle for the headline-making #1 graphics card, normal users will have a better selection of low price, yet high quality parts.
"Hawking Radiation" is not actually coming from inside the black hole.
According to the theory(which I read a LONG time ago.. I could be mistaken), matter and anti-matter particles randomly 'appear' in pairs(which is basically stated in quantum mechanics as being a matter of course).. Hawking radiation is when one particle of the pair is sucked into a black hole, and the other narrowly misses it.. now theres an extra particle that is coming from the general vicinity of the black hole, this is the radiation that is observable.
However, I think the universe being inside a black hole would explain why it's flat.. I seem to recall the idea that black holes are flat(well.. how can a singularity be shaped? but thats way beyond me.)
Slashdot Mirror
And despite it being a very low-end system, it should perform pretty well.
I bought my mother a 667 Mhz/256MB G4 tower a few years back because she knew Macs already, and it is still quite competant for email, web, photoshop/pagemaker, scanning/etc... double the speed and the ability to double(Or better?) the ram and I'd expect it to be pretty decent.
Benchmarks tell me my Radeon 9800 is horribly out of date and imply its too weak to play any modern games. But I know from experience, that's bullshit.
;P)
I'm somewhat curious what benchmarks tell you that, since the benchmarks I read(Most on www.anandtech.com) tell me my Radeon 9700 Pro is still capable of chugging out a playable FPS in most current games, and my personal experience says it's more than capable(Since I run at a slightly lower resolution than their current 'low res' benchmark.
Benchmarks are usefull tools, if they are presented and read right.
My experience with Pentium M is that it clocks down BIG time if you don't plug in the power cord. So much so that the laptop is virtually useless. YMMV.
;P), like compiling a lot of software, and working with some encryption formats. All-in-all, my 1.5 year old Penium M is still a fairly usefull system, that even plays most games competantly, if not with all the pretty features turned on. :(
Luckily, this is 100% configurable.
Even if you don't want to turn it off completely, you can set up your system to be less aggressive in down-clocking your CPU.
In windows 2k/XP, open the 'power' control panel, and change the setting from whatever it's set at(I'm guessing "Max Battery" to something less drastic, like Portable/Laptop, or Home/Office Desk(Yes, home/office desk will still allow it to downlock, but it will clock it back up when you start using it more.). "Always on" and "Minimal power management" both disable down-clocking, I believe. And the on-demand CPU frequency scaling does wonders for battery life. I've never felt that my laptop was hampered by being unplugged, but any time I stop using a lot cpu, it down-clocks to save battery.
Under linux, you just need to have a decent kernel and cpufreqd or speedfreqd(And I was just compiling 2.6.9 last night, it seems that it includes a kernel driver that will dynamically change the clock speed dependant on CPU load, so cpufreqd/speedfreqd are not strictly necessary if that is enabled.
I've also done some benchmarks/useage comparisons, and my Pentium M laptop is signifigantly faster than my desktop at several things(Nothing disk-bound though.
"VMware is an interesting case: it emulates most of the hardware, but only a little bit of the CPU; the bulk of the CPU work is done natively."
But how does this work out when running, say, Mac OS X on an Athlon/P4? (Unless I am mistaken about VMWare's capabilities)
Anyone else here thinking about space elevators all of a sudden? If anyone seriously builds one, what's to stop us from designing the core of the tether to house superconductors(Or just an extremely well designed transmission system?) and bring the electricity down that way.
:P)
You are still adding energy that wouldn't normally be here(Using the electricity creates heat, but I don't see us stopping that any time in the near future anyways.
"When entire pages can be written on "password strategy", it's gotten out of control."
17 pages. Yes, 17. Thats how many I had to read and sign that I understood before I could take my last HELPDESK job. And all users on the helpdesk were required to have 14 character passwords.
And I do believe every new employee has to read that 17 page document, but normal employees were only required to have 7 character passwords.
I guess that's slightly better than 616. (If you don't know, don't ask.)
2) it's entirely arguable that such a copy is for "personal and private use"
Damnit, now I can't use my neural link or I won't be allowed to listen to my CDs anymore, for fear of being prosecuted.
Just a quick one, because this touches on a personal pet peeve:
Why should we, as americans(No, the parent posters may not be american, but myself and the PA guys are..) help other countries before we help ourselves?
We run around the world causing wars and causing hardship, then spend 10 years doing a half-assed job at cleaning it up.. all because we believe we are morally superior..
Yet we let many of the same 'wrongs' we say we are going to war to end persist in our own country. Fix our country first, THEN fix the rest of the world.
I contend that Mac OS 7.x was also a good OS. When 7.0.1 was still new, Windows 3.11 was the order of the day for businesses, so it was quite a breath of fresh air... until the internet came around, and we had to upgrade(To 7.6.1) just to get online... and imagine our annoyance that our expensive 2400 baud modem was too slow for the intarweb. :(
So, I guess the question is, what kinda bandwidth does RDP take? And is there a remote desktop server for 2k pro? I use vnc + ssh(vnc in an ssh tunnel) to access my home computer via the internet, and it's usable but laggy.
:(
I personally hate xp's reomte desktop, since my laptop's screen res is about 500 pixels wider, and 80 taller than my desktops, so when I remote desktop to my laptop, my icon placement gets re-adjusted for the screen space, and it remembers the changes when I log off remote desktop, and log back in locally.
And to top it off, even over 100Mbit lines, remote desktop can't handle full-motion video. RealVNC doesn't even try, overlay isn't forwarded, and I don't know any windows video players that don't use the overlay for the video.. (And I'm too lazy to boot my laptop just to see if I can run a video from a linux vnc server.)
Let me name my #1 complaint about OS X.
When they started shipping keys with a full keyboard instead of that silly old 'mac keyboard' I thought it was a good thing.
Then I finally got one(A G4 tower running OS X(10.1 and 10.2)) and try and use those extra, extended keyboard, keys... like home and end.. and find that in 99% of text boxes, they do NOTHING.
That is, in mozilla's address bar, in safari's, in most OS config dialogues, you cannot go to the beginning or end of the box by using home or end!
Why did they pay the extra cost to get those keys on there again?
Mhz isn't everything.
Refinements to the design(Or possibly a completely different internal architecture) could even double the fill rate without ANY clock speed increase...
That said, pixel fill rate doesn't mean much, and as games start using more and more pixel and shader programs, you'll eventually want shader benchmarks and won't care about fill rate.
But, it's not a fan.
It isn't sucking air in, it's being pushed by the wind. Is the problem that the birds don't see them? or what? A metal grating might be more effective than you think, it would at least prevent the birds from running into the fast moving blades, even if they are still stupid enough to hit the grating, and it would likely increase visibility of each turbine.
On the other hand, the problem might be more related to the massive amount of turbulence that many turbines would create. If a bird is trying to fly between em all I bet they have trouble.
D-Link DL-704P. :( ) ... of course, this makes the firewall noticeably less effective, depending on the port forwarded. :P
... pick one up used, I did, and it works great at 56k.
It has a printer port, AND a serial port. The serial port can be used with an old serial modem OR a null modem cable, to give you a serial console to the modem. Only has like 20 or 30 port ranges that can be forwarded at one time, but you can forward any ports you want(Unlike some routers I've seen
And before you scream "But then they have to buy a modem too!"
Oh, heres the other thing.. I replied to your reply lower, but I forgot about this point.
:P If they can get the warrant. :P
For them knowing where packets 'end up' at. It's not quite that easy if the packets are encrypted properly. Yes, they can tell that encrypted packets are going to your computer, but they shouldn't be able to tell if they're destined for your computer, since you'll be uploading encrypted packets at the same time. The could make an assumption that some are destined for your computer, if you're downloading many more encrypted packets than you upload. But if, like freenet, the network stores encrypted data on your hard drive that you didn't request, this isn't a fair assumption. Of course, if you then decrypt the data and store it in the clear on your hard drive, all it takes is one properly worded warrant to find out that you DID download something illegal.
"I considered this, but I s'pose encryption partly covers it. If the contents are unknown, it'd be pretty hard to prove that they're illegal."
Thats one big advantage in the US, but it still makes me wonder how usefull freenet will be in totalitarian governments like china. If you are not hindered by due process, you can assume that anyone using these protocols is doing illegal things with it, and beat it out of them.
"What about hiding the source by changing packet sizes?"
This is already covered by most modern encryption systems. I forget which one I was reading about specifically, but older schemes(esp password encryption schemes) had weaknesses where a certain length cyphertext could only be made by a small subset of possible source texts. This made guessing cyphertext much simpler. These days, most schemes pad packets to the max size possible every time. No matter how much actual encrypted data is included. This makes it harder to guess what the packets contain.
"Or what about splitting a packet into multiple packets, and routing them hither and yon, before bringing them back together? Although I guess thats kinda whats happening already..."
I should really read the spec before saying this, but hopefully I won't look too stupid.
I am going to have to assume that each packet will be encrypted between individual nodes, and at least partially decrypted at each node to get the routing information for the next hop. then re-encrypted. So theoretically during transport, it's impossible to know what an individual packet is for at ALL. It could be a search packet, or a request, or a data packet, or a search result packet. Of course, this is all assuming each node encrypts all data with the key of the next node over, rather than passing encrypted data straight across the network(or perhaps encrypts the payload, then sticks on a routing header and encrypts that WITH the encrypted payload, so A: Sniffers/ISPs can't tell where a packet is intended to go, B: nodes can't tell what's in the packet they're forwarding to it's destination.)
Jazz-disk? You just reformatted your hard drive, you idiot! You get paid for this crap?
Unfortunately, I think that wouldn't float in court. You were negligent for not updating the college with your local address. If you don't supply them with one, they don't have any way of knowing you aren't still living at home. Many colleges put somewhere in the registration "Is this address your current address?" "Please make corrections below" or something similar, so if they did that, I think their ass is legally covered.
It's not called a 'bug database', it's called a 'Manual' or "knowledge base" or "White paper".. by documenting them, bugs are turned into features.
it says "Bittorrent technology" they could have co-opted the protocol, but changed bits and pieces of headers and tracker communication so only a 'mandrake-club' downloader will work with it..
.torrents
or they could just be using the honor system to ask their members not to hand out the
If that link is true..
well, it just means the RIAA REALLY won't get any of my money.. as I only ever discover new bands on the radio, and if I have to pay for that, I won't listen, cause as sturgeon's law says, 90% of everything is crap, and I'm not paying to hear 90% crap.
And since I won't learn about new bands.. I won't buy any new CDs/DVD audios/etc.. becuase I already have what I want, and fair use DOES exist, so I can keep putting songs from my CD's onto new media(Hell, if I want to, I can rip them to a lossless audio format, then burn(as in combust) the CDs, so I still only have one copy, then use my portable player as my backup copy.)
XGI also just announced a new set of graphics chips, they're really the people who were part of the Trident/SiS GPU people, but this looks like good news for the video card industry.
while ATI and nVidia battle for the headline-making #1 graphics card, normal users will have a better selection of low price, yet high quality parts.
"Hawking Radiation" is not actually coming from inside the black hole.
According to the theory(which I read a LONG time ago.. I could be mistaken), matter and anti-matter particles randomly 'appear' in pairs(which is basically stated in quantum mechanics as being a matter of course).. Hawking radiation is when one particle of the pair is sucked into a black hole, and the other narrowly misses it.. now theres an extra particle that is coming from the general vicinity of the black hole, this is the radiation that is observable.
However, I think the universe being inside a black hole would explain why it's flat.. I seem to recall the idea that black holes are flat(well.. how can a singularity be shaped? but thats way beyond me.)
... I didn't change the title.. thats odd..