Without 2600, Patrick says he would "probably be one of those pot-smoking, crack-sniffing guys who gave up on life a long time ago."
Well, we know he probably meant crack-smoking. But maybe crack-sniffing was a popular recreational activity among baby-boomers? Hey, ask your parents!:-)
Another massive, expensive upgrade, that all the latest games will require you to use (after all, they won't run on old cards 'cause they can't be programmed)...
Clueless. Tried to play a new game on a TNT2 or a Voodoo II lately? No, because if you had you would know that it is no problem. Let's take a look at some minimum system requirements: Oni - "3D graphics card (OpenGL compatible)". Mechwarrior 4 - "Super VGA, 16-bit color monitor or better". Diablo II - "DirectX compatible video card".
You have failed to consider that to some people $600 is hardly worth getting out of bed for. Unfortunately I'm not one of those, but $600 is a reasonable price for performance like Carmack showed off at MacWorld Tokyo. Relatively speaking it's a bargain. Games are not the only use for a 3D card.
And if you're buying the kind of lame system that needs a rebate to move it, the video card is hardly your biggest problem. You get only what you pay for, and you always pay for what you get.
Still useless. You _can_ run an Apple Cinema Display on your PC, see here for full details. BUT you can only use the older DVI-connector display. The new ones (sold now) have ADC connectors, with power, USB and video in one connector. While there may be a converter at some time (From Margi), eBay is your best source of 22" LCD goodness for the PC. Dr. Bott has a DVI monitor switch, allowing PC and Mac to co-exist with that nice monitor.
Yes code is art, but more often than not the wrong kind of code is seen as art. Some people think "art" is using every obscure language feature to pack as much as possible onto one line. Others think it is getting creative with the preprocessor. Usually these are kids who don't know the language and are still excited by newly discovered features.
If you don't have to think too hard about a piece of code to re-use it then it's art.
REAL art code is obvious, even to a VB programmer. Anyone can read it and understand it easily. It's efficient, but does not sacrifice readability for cycles unless it absolutely has to. And it even looks nice.
Richochet and others may become unnecesary if 802.11b takes off - look at SFLan for an example of how community-based free wireless networking is being implemented in the bay area.
One example is Apple's Airport, but PC cards are available too. It will be cool when you can beam MP3s down to the empeg in your car before work:-)
Cheap? If any number of 2nd hand Palm IIIe organizers are available on eBay for about $130, how is $179 "cheap"? Especially considering the software base, quality of developer tools and resale value? For slightly more money, go IIIx or a Handspring Visor.
Call it a fun opportunity to hack on a Linux-based PDA for not an exorbitant amount, but don't call it a cheap PDA.
Can't say _exactly_ how. I'm just reporting what I've seen from compiling the same large project multiple times on both systems, with or without other tasks running.
Wow, deja vu! I haven't seen reclining SIMM sockets since 286 30-pin SIMM days. (That's about 1991 for all you youngsters.) Anyone remember de-soldering the pins from SIPPs to make SIMMs? Shortly after, AMD released their first truly hot product for the home PC market - the 386DX40.
The positioning of the power socket is really strange - smack in the middle. Notice some other interesting features - on the edge closest to the camera those black trapezoid sockets look like they might be SCSI? And what's the large beige rectangle right next to the Intel logo chip?
I sure hope they get this out soon. I have a dual PIII system right now, and an 800MHz Thunderbird also. The Athlon is as fast as the PIII system for most tasks, except when multitasking - playing MP3s at the same time really slows the single-CPU system, while the dual-PIIIs are barely affected. While SMP systems don't tend to go faster on specific tasks (as the link in the main story would have you believe) the real benefit is that you never have to wait - while something is processing, just start another window and do something else. Hope they include ATA100 raid, like many of the slot-A boards do now.
(Ob-bedroom-hardware-review-site comment: "Obviously this is an extrememly stable board, because there are lots of capacitors and they are big ones.")
I don't think so. I guess it could have been, but it's a big risk for the studios! Probably they were pretty surprised when it got cracked, and maybe it would have been safe much longer if Xing had not screwed up and let a key out of the bag. What I'm suggesting is that they're in damage control mode right now, and will make sure (if they get the chance) that it won't happen again.
Whether or not 2600 has an injunction against it is an insignificant question next to what the studios are trying to achive.
step 1: Establish precedent for squashing DVD decryption methods, tools or knowledge.
step 2: switch to son-of-CSS - and you can bet that it will be 10e27 * more powerful than CSS was.
If this happens you can say goodbye to DVD on any Open Source OS forever. Also you can say hello to more expensive home DVD players - as newer models are required to have phenomenal computing power to decode this new CSS format. And you can relegate your old machine to watching movies released before son-of-CSS.
Read any patent - you'll see the word "method" a lot. And the patent office is considering a "method using apparatus A" to be distinct from "method using apparatus B".
And if you read the reviews carefully, you'll find some information about the backdoor in some Zoran chipsets allowing you to select your region with the remote... ssshh:-)
But on the subject of the Dulux/Hakko linked - those pictures do look like crap.
OK, it's about double your price point, but I don't believe you'll find better.
The Arcam DIVA components are awesome. The DV88 DVD player (about $1500), besides being one of the best DVD players bar none, also plays CDs with audiophile quality and MP3s from CDRW, and can be set to any region using the remote (although this is undocumented) - you can even select PAL or NTSC output. The AVR100 Receiver (about $1200)is an excellent Stereo/Dolby5.1 decoder and amp combo - too many features/inputs/outputs to describe here.
Both these components are DVD-Audio upgradable... the DV88 is HDCD-capable right now. The DV88 is also progressive-scan ugradable. The really nice thing about Arcam is that they make their products modular, and don't abandon older products.
I have read that this cable works, but only in a few resolutions - also that the reason is because the Cinema Display expects some configuration information from the video card that Apple ship.
There would be NO question about the 22" Cinema Display being the better monitor except for the proprietary connector. I don't care much about the price, when you get to that level you stop counting anyway.
The Cinema Display can only be used with a Mac.
The 24" CRT can display your Mac, your PC, your Sun, your TV, your DVD, your older Mac, and anything else you like.
Right. But, more pragmatically, and with greater bitterness over having to deal with a CIO:
A CTO is a real engineer who knows what he's doing. He's the last word on technology in the company. Typically he's the head of the division responsible for Product Development.
A CIO is someone with a CCNA (at best) whose responsibility it is to make sure that his customers (i.e. the rest of the people working for the company) remain productive as a result of his products (i.e. networks, email, software, phones, hardware) BUT thinks it is his job to make sure that people who know better than he does are not permitted to use software, hardware, phones, email or networks not administered and approved by him or his little empire. In this context "administered" means that his team grows every time you have a problem, because he can get more budget and resources, and "approved" means "what he understands without having to learn anything new". This requirement for "approval" has been traced to the sole cause for survival of Novell in the last five years.
To these ends he will resort to creative interpretation of license agreements, "accidental" disabling of accounts, and I have even heard whispers of intentional virus plants... Threatening company-wide emails in upper-case are not unknown when breaches of the approval or administration process are suspected. Typically inhabits an office with frosted-glass windows so that nobody can see that he reads the newspaper (tabloid: takes five hours)and surfs the net for porn all day. The CEO likes it that nobody can see the CIO.
Yup. If only the US telcos had had the foresight to standardize on GSM! If you've ever been to Europe or Australia and experienced how good and easy cell phones should be, you'll know that relatively speaking, the US sucks in this regard.
"It'll be nice when low cost knockoffs start flooding in from the Far East."
Why? Because the product you end up with will be flimsy? Because you'll have to return the first three before finding one that works? Because the company that developed this product will stop receiving any return on their R&D? Because your Uncle is some slave-labor king in Malaysia? You sure won't be "vouching for the life" of any low-cost knockoff.
If you think about the success of the MAG light, you will realize that low-cost knockoffs probably wouldn't even be attractive to most people.
The Infinity task light linked to is a good little light. If I could only have one LED light it would be the Photon Micro Light, but the Infinity is still a good option if you don't want to use button cells. It could benefit from some reflective material around the LED perhaps, as the light output is much less than the Photon. Maybe I'll polish the metal around the LED... hmmm.
The days of the laptop are numbered. My travel gear is now:
Handpsring Prism
CardAccess Thinmodem module (hacked - see below)
Stowaway keyboard
Handspring backup module
Phone cable/adaptor
LED button-cell lamp
This does IMAP or POP email, and lets me work or write on long boring flights. The built-in Memo application has a 4K size limit for documents, so some third-party software is important. I can even telnet around, and play Nethack while I'm connected!
I chose the Stowaway because I'm used to it - it's almost exactly like my Thinkpad. I think it's cool too, and bundled software is useless unless it's the software that you happen to want. It fits in a pocket. That's worth the extra $30.
A third option is the Apple Newton keyboard - there is an adaptor for Palm devices at least that will let you use one of these. But they're not better than the GoType in any way I can see.
Unfortunately nobody is making a Springboard modem yet that does not require a dongle AND does not stick out beyond the dimensions of the Handspring. The Xircom you mentioned is one of the "fat" modems - the Thinmodem can stay in the Prism all the time and you don't notice it is there. Further advantages are that it is flash upgradable (v.90 upgrade due soon) and has about 500K of user-accessible flash. You can store important stuff on the module using the included software, so in the event of running out of batteries you won't lose anything really important. Something to keep in mind if you outfit all your reporters.
The Thinmodem is close to perfect but I don't like dongles. I found a PCMCIA card with XJACK on eBay for 50 cents, and managed to modify the Thinmodem to have an XJACK instead. This involved moving the analog section of the surface mount components around, and a lot of careful dremel and scalpel work. But it works like a bought one and meets the design goals. CardAccess say the XJACK license fee is just way too high to enable them to go into production that way.
All this fits on two packages. The Prism/backup module/lamp in a small zip-up camera case, and the keyboard by itself. The Prism charger travels separately, in checked luggage.
And about the Prism - there is no doubt that this is the finest PDA you can get right now. There's not a single thing I don't like about it. A real internet browser would be good, but that's just a matter of time and software.
We're blaming colleges for being too short-sighted to realize they're binding their students company-specific software.
Binding? How? You've just said that courses requiring work that can be OS-independent don't rule out the use of any particular company's tools. A free copy of Visual C++ just enables a choice - you can choose this tool, or you can install Linux and use make/vi/emacs/gdb for the same price.
It doesn't matter what tool you use, you're doing the same thing. What if Honda gave away a Civic to college students, then stopped providing that free car once they graduated? Would that be evil? Would that be unfair to Buick? Or Trek?
Try to see past the unfortunately all-too-common Microsoft==evil attitude on Slashdot. Sometimes they are! Not this time. If Microsoft want to give away the best IDE around, great. One possible effect of this is that people will cease to be satisfied by inefficient tools like command-line gdb and write better ones. There IS a sad lack of good IDEs for free operating systems. This IS a problem faced by engineers who might think about porting code from Windows, even if they have only used vanilla C/C++.
Don't blame colleges for accepting free stuff that is useful in providing education. I don't see any need to blame anyone, but if you do, blame people who make money out of free operating systems for not having the foresight to compete directly with Microsoft in education.
(And I'm sure there are lots of gdb gods out there, who find command-line gdb much faster than the MSVC integrated debugger. But if so, you are way different from all those students wondering what "stack trace" means. For a programmer new to a platform, a great IDE is an excellent aid.)
Not even Elite. You can't call something an "Ultimate Video Game Library" unless it has Elite. This guy is very console-oriented, but the NES version is said to be one of the best.
FYI, the actual patent is for a valid memory read/write occuring on either the leading or trailing edge of a timing cycle. Hence "dual" data rate - you can R/W twice every clock instead of once.
Most people will realize that this does not exactly double the rate but it does help a whole lot.
Slashdot Mirror
Without 2600, Patrick says he would "probably be one of those pot-smoking, crack-sniffing guys who gave up on life a long time ago."
:-)
Well, we know he probably meant crack-smoking. But maybe crack-sniffing was a popular recreational activity among baby-boomers? Hey, ask your parents!
Q. How do you turn failure into a "spin-off"? A. Apply spin.
Another massive, expensive upgrade, that all the latest games will require you to use (after all, they won't run on old cards 'cause they can't be programmed)...
Clueless. Tried to play a new game on a TNT2 or a Voodoo II lately? No, because if you had you would know that it is no problem. Let's take a look at some minimum system requirements: Oni - "3D graphics card (OpenGL compatible)". Mechwarrior 4 - "Super VGA, 16-bit color monitor or better". Diablo II - "DirectX compatible video card".
You have failed to consider that to some people $600 is hardly worth getting out of bed for. Unfortunately I'm not one of those, but $600 is a reasonable price for performance like Carmack showed off at MacWorld Tokyo. Relatively speaking it's a bargain. Games are not the only use for a 3D card.
And if you're buying the kind of lame system that needs a rebate to move it, the video card is hardly your biggest problem. You get only what you pay for, and you always pay for what you get.
Still useless. You _can_ run an Apple Cinema Display on your PC, see here for full details. BUT you can only use the older DVI-connector display. The new ones (sold now) have ADC connectors, with power, USB and video in one connector. While there may be a converter at some time (From Margi), eBay is your best source of 22" LCD goodness for the PC. Dr. Bott has a DVI monitor switch, allowing PC and Mac to co-exist with that nice monitor.
Yes code is art, but more often than not the wrong kind of code is seen as art. Some people think "art" is using every obscure language feature to pack as much as possible onto one line. Others think it is getting creative with the preprocessor. Usually these are kids who don't know the language and are still excited by newly discovered features.
If you don't have to think too hard about a piece of code to re-use it then it's art.
REAL art code is obvious, even to a VB programmer. Anyone can read it and understand it easily. It's efficient, but does not sacrifice readability for cycles unless it absolutely has to. And it even looks nice.
Richochet and others may become unnecesary if 802.11b takes off - look at SFLan for an example of how community-based free wireless networking is being implemented in the bay area.
:-)
One example is Apple's Airport, but PC cards are available too. It will be cool when you can beam MP3s down to the empeg in your car before work
Cheap? If any number of 2nd hand Palm IIIe organizers are available on eBay for about $130, how is $179 "cheap"? Especially considering the software base, quality of developer tools and resale value? For slightly more money, go IIIx or a Handspring Visor.
Call it a fun opportunity to hack on a Linux-based PDA for not an exorbitant amount, but don't call it a cheap PDA.
Can't say _exactly_ how. I'm just reporting what I've seen from compiling the same large project multiple times on both systems, with or without other tasks running.
Wow, deja vu! I haven't seen reclining SIMM sockets since 286 30-pin SIMM days. (That's about 1991 for all you youngsters.) Anyone remember de-soldering the pins from SIPPs to make SIMMs? Shortly after, AMD released their first truly hot product for the home PC market - the 386DX40.
The positioning of the power socket is really strange - smack in the middle. Notice some other interesting features - on the edge closest to the camera those black trapezoid sockets look like they might be SCSI? And what's the large beige rectangle right next to the Intel logo chip?
I sure hope they get this out soon. I have a dual PIII system right now, and an 800MHz Thunderbird also. The Athlon is as fast as the PIII system for most tasks, except when multitasking - playing MP3s at the same time really slows the single-CPU system, while the dual-PIIIs are barely affected. While SMP systems don't tend to go faster on specific tasks (as the link in the main story would have you believe) the real benefit is that you never have to wait - while something is processing, just start another window and do something else. Hope they include ATA100 raid, like many of the slot-A boards do now.
(Ob-bedroom-hardware-review-site comment: "Obviously this is an extrememly stable board, because there are lots of capacitors and they are big ones.")
I don't think so. I guess it could have been, but it's a big risk for the studios! Probably they were pretty surprised when it got cracked, and maybe it would have been safe much longer if Xing had not screwed up and let a key out of the bag. What I'm suggesting is that they're in damage control mode right now, and will make sure (if they get the chance) that it won't happen again.
Whether or not 2600 has an injunction against it is an insignificant question next to what the studios are trying to achive.
step 1: Establish precedent for squashing DVD decryption methods, tools or knowledge.
step 2: switch to son-of-CSS - and you can bet that it will be 10e27 * more powerful than CSS was.
If this happens you can say goodbye to DVD on any Open Source OS forever. Also you can say hello to more expensive home DVD players - as newer models are required to have phenomenal computing power to decode this new CSS format. And you can relegate your old machine to watching movies released before son-of-CSS.
Read any patent - you'll see the word "method" a lot. And the patent office is considering a "method using apparatus A" to be distinct from "method using apparatus B".
The presence of a Zoran chipset shouldn't indicate a cheap player. Arcam use a Zoran in their DV88 player, by all reviews one of the best players available at any price. You can find out more about it at the distributor's web site, and you'll also find links to reviews there.
:-)
And if you read the reviews carefully, you'll find some information about the backdoor in some Zoran chipsets allowing you to select your region with the remote... ssshh
But on the subject of the Dulux/Hakko linked - those pictures do look like crap.
Lack of wind? No way. More Taco Bells in California than anywhere.
OK, it's about double your price point, but I don't believe you'll find better.
The Arcam DIVA components are awesome. The DV88 DVD player (about $1500), besides being one of the best DVD players bar none, also plays CDs with audiophile quality and MP3s from CDRW, and can be set to any region using the remote (although this is undocumented) - you can even select PAL or NTSC output. The AVR100 Receiver (about $1200)is an excellent Stereo/Dolby5.1 decoder and amp combo - too many features/inputs/outputs to describe here.
Both these components are DVD-Audio upgradable... the DV88 is HDCD-capable right now. The DV88 is also progressive-scan ugradable. The really nice thing about Arcam is that they make their products modular, and don't abandon older products.
See them here
I have read that this cable works, but only in a few resolutions - also that the reason is because the Cinema Display expects some configuration information from the video card that Apple ship.
What resolutions and color depths do you get?
There would be NO question about the 22" Cinema Display being the better monitor except for the proprietary connector. I don't care much about the price, when you get to that level you stop counting anyway.
The Cinema Display can only be used with a Mac.
The 24" CRT can display your Mac, your PC, your Sun, your TV, your DVD, your older Mac, and anything else you like.
Right. But, more pragmatically, and with greater bitterness over having to deal with a CIO:
A CTO is a real engineer who knows what he's doing. He's the last word on technology in the company. Typically he's the head of the division responsible for Product Development.
A CIO is someone with a CCNA (at best) whose responsibility it is to make sure that his customers (i.e. the rest of the people working for the company) remain productive as a result of his products (i.e. networks, email, software, phones, hardware) BUT thinks it is his job to make sure that people who know better than he does are not permitted to use software, hardware, phones, email or networks not administered and approved by him or his little empire. In this context "administered" means that his team grows every time you have a problem, because he can get more budget and resources, and "approved" means "what he understands without having to learn anything new". This requirement for "approval" has been traced to the sole cause for survival of Novell in the last five years.
To these ends he will resort to creative interpretation of license agreements, "accidental" disabling of accounts, and I have even heard whispers of intentional virus plants... Threatening company-wide emails in upper-case are not unknown when breaches of the approval or administration process are suspected. Typically inhabits an office with frosted-glass windows so that nobody can see that he reads the newspaper (tabloid: takes five hours)and surfs the net for porn all day. The CEO likes it that nobody can see the CIO.
In short, a CIO is a BOFH without the IQ.
Yup. If only the US telcos had had the foresight to standardize on GSM! If you've ever been to Europe or Australia and experienced how good and easy cell phones should be, you'll know that relatively speaking, the US sucks in this regard.
"It'll be nice when low cost knockoffs start flooding in from the Far East."
Why? Because the product you end up with will be flimsy? Because you'll have to return the first three before finding one that works? Because the company that developed this product will stop receiving any return on their R&D? Because your Uncle is some slave-labor king in Malaysia? You sure won't be "vouching for the life" of any low-cost knockoff.
If you think about the success of the MAG light, you will realize that low-cost knockoffs probably wouldn't even be attractive to most people.
The Infinity task light linked to is a good little light. If I could only have one LED light it would be the Photon Micro Light, but the Infinity is still a good option if you don't want to use button cells. It could benefit from some reflective material around the LED perhaps, as the light output is much less than the Photon. Maybe I'll polish the metal around the LED... hmmm.
The days of the laptop are numbered. My travel gear is now:
Handpsring Prism
CardAccess Thinmodem module (hacked - see below)
Stowaway keyboard
Handspring backup module
Phone cable/adaptor
LED button-cell lamp
This does IMAP or POP email, and lets me work or write on long boring flights. The built-in Memo application has a 4K size limit for documents, so some third-party software is important. I can even telnet around, and play Nethack while I'm connected!
I chose the Stowaway because I'm used to it - it's almost exactly like my Thinkpad. I think it's cool too, and bundled software is useless unless it's the software that you happen to want. It fits in a pocket. That's worth the extra $30.
A third option is the Apple Newton keyboard - there is an adaptor for Palm devices at least that will let you use one of these. But they're not better than the GoType in any way I can see.
Unfortunately nobody is making a Springboard modem yet that does not require a dongle AND does not stick out beyond the dimensions of the Handspring. The Xircom you mentioned is one of the "fat" modems - the Thinmodem can stay in the Prism all the time and you don't notice it is there. Further advantages are that it is flash upgradable (v.90 upgrade due soon) and has about 500K of user-accessible flash. You can store important stuff on the module using the included software, so in the event of running out of batteries you won't lose anything really important. Something to keep in mind if you outfit all your reporters.
The Thinmodem is close to perfect but I don't like dongles. I found a PCMCIA card with XJACK on eBay for 50 cents, and managed to modify the Thinmodem to have an XJACK instead. This involved moving the analog section of the surface mount components around, and a lot of careful dremel and scalpel work. But it works like a bought one and meets the design goals. CardAccess say the XJACK license fee is just way too high to enable them to go into production that way.
All this fits on two packages. The Prism/backup module/lamp in a small zip-up camera case, and the keyboard by itself. The Prism charger travels separately, in checked luggage.
And about the Prism - there is no doubt that this is the finest PDA you can get right now. There's not a single thing I don't like about it. A real internet browser would be good, but that's just a matter of time and software.
We're blaming colleges for being too short-sighted to realize they're binding their students company-specific software.
Binding? How? You've just said that courses requiring work that can be OS-independent don't rule out the use of any particular company's tools. A free copy of Visual C++ just enables a choice - you can choose this tool, or you can install Linux and use make/vi/emacs/gdb for the same price.
It doesn't matter what tool you use, you're doing the same thing. What if Honda gave away a Civic to college students, then stopped providing that free car once they graduated? Would that be evil? Would that be unfair to Buick? Or Trek?
Try to see past the unfortunately all-too-common Microsoft==evil attitude on Slashdot. Sometimes they are! Not this time. If Microsoft want to give away the best IDE around, great. One possible effect of this is that people will cease to be satisfied by inefficient tools like command-line gdb and write better ones. There IS a sad lack of good IDEs for free operating systems. This IS a problem faced by engineers who might think about porting code from Windows, even if they have only used vanilla C/C++.
Don't blame colleges for accepting free stuff that is useful in providing education. I don't see any need to blame anyone, but if you do, blame people who make money out of free operating systems for not having the foresight to compete directly with Microsoft in education.
(And I'm sure there are lots of gdb gods out there, who find command-line gdb much faster than the MSVC integrated debugger. But if so, you are way different from all those students wondering what "stack trace" means. For a programmer new to a platform, a great IDE is an excellent aid.)
Not even Elite. You can't call something an "Ultimate Video Game Library" unless it has Elite. This guy is very console-oriented, but the NES version is said to be one of the best.
"Tongans-R-Us" franchises will soon be available. Please apply Autogen, Sydney, Australia.
FYI, the actual patent is for a valid memory read/write occuring on either the leading or trailing edge of a timing cycle. Hence "dual" data rate - you can R/W twice every clock instead of once.
Most people will realize that this does not exactly double the rate but it does help a whole lot.