I wouldn't be so sure. If our level of technology stays atleast at a level where we are today, the response when the Earth starts heating up will be to turn up the A/C. Humans are not going to adapt to new conditions if they change their living environments to suit what they are used to.
That's not the case for all nuclear plants. Years ago, I toured a plant and they had 2 locomotive engines to act as a back up power source (they were cemented in place, they won't going anywhere). I suspect that shutting down the reactor is costly and a big hassle to get running again, so I would expect that many plants would have a similar set up so they could keep running in case they lose power from the grid.
Re:It is all about the platform.
on
Is AMD Dead Yet?
·
· Score: 1
It was a bullshit test and everybody who had any knowledge about it agreed. The heatsink was removed. It would not "catch fire" it would burn itself out.
It was overly dramatic, yes. But those chips had no thermal protection. If your CPU fan died and you didn't catch it, you would fry your CPU and possibly lose the motherboard too. You had also better be sure you mounted tha heatsink correctly in the first place. It was a real problem.
I have an idea, remove all the coolant from an auto radiator and run the engine at 5000 rpm. OH NOES, it died.
No, it's more like the Hondas where the pistons bend the valves if the engine is running and the timing belt breaks. A fundamental design problem that other vehicles don't suffer from.
Re:It is all about the platform.
on
Is AMD Dead Yet?
·
· Score: 1
How was it a fake test? The processor had no thermal protection whatsoever, and needed to dissipate 50-75W of heat off the die. It's physically impossible to dissipate that kind of heat off the die alone and stay at a reasonably temperature. Granted, the most common failure mode is a slow death from the CPU cooling fan getting clogged with dust or simply failing. However, if you were to pull the heatsink off during a demo like Tom's Hardware did, you would get the same smoke and drama. I admit an actual fire is unlikely, but still plausible.
And how do batteries have anything to do with anything here? You might as well argue that Intel CPUs come in prettier boxes.
That is a total red herring. If it were truly even part of the equation, we would see cities enacting anti-gum chewing laws.
Actually, Singapore did exactly that. Also, throughout my entire K-12 school career, chewing gum was strictly prohibited in school (incidently, this probably caused more problems than it solved, due to kids not wanting to get caught with gum sticking it wherever convienent as opposed to the trash).
Re:It is all about the platform.
on
Is AMD Dead Yet?
·
· Score: 1
I'm not absolving Intel of anything. I'm just saying that you're more likely to get a stable problem-free PC from Intel than with AMD. For example, the Socket A platform for most of it's life was complete crap, until nVidia entered the game towards the end. I'm talking a period of years here. I should know, as I'm typing this on a Socket A system, and it took a while to get it to where it is now. Everyone else I know that was on Socket A has scrapped their systems because of some issue or another that they were tired of dealing with, while the people who went with the Pentium 4 didn't have have problems like that and those computers are still out there running.
Besides, atleast Intel did recalls in the case of the FDIV bug, the Pentium III, and the i820. I don't remember VIA ever recalling the KT133 and KT266 (not KT266A) chipsets despite their known problems, or AMD recalling their processors that could literally burn up and start a fire if something went wrong.
Re:I inadvertently switched to Intel...
on
Is AMD Dead Yet?
·
· Score: 1
And it's really amazing how retarded Apple fanboys can be. You may be right about the Mac Pro and the XServe, but most of Apple's other machines use pretty common models of Core 2 processors. Quit pretending they are any more than generic hardware in a propriety package.
I was thinking the other month if anybody has every consider a LCD monitor where the backplate can be tilted down flat with a mirror surface to shine sunlight up into the back of the screen - aka a natural backlight?
It's an interesting idea, but the mirror is going to reflect polarized light, which means it's not going to work well with a LCD screen. You would need a diffuse reflector, something more like a sheet of paper than a shiny mirror.
I'd really like to know where you are buying your hardware. 4GB of ram itself is going to cost you $200 or more by itself.
Re:I inadvertently switched to Intel...
on
Is AMD Dead Yet?
·
· Score: 1
I've always considered this argument to be nonsense. AMD and Intel are bothe x86 chips. There is no reason at all that Apple couldn't ship both Intel based and AMD based machines if they wanted to. HP does. Dell does. Compaq does. Apple just doesn't want to sell AMD systems for whatever reason, that's all there is to it.
Re:Shorting AMD stock: NASDAQ figures
on
Is AMD Dead Yet?
·
· Score: 1
The MediaGX was basically a 486 with an integrated GPU introduced in 1997. It looked to be aimed more at the embedded market, but wasn't really competitive with the solutions available at the time, nor was it really competitive with the Pentium II/AMD K6-2 on the other side of things. It did find a couple of niches, but it really isn't any surprise that it didn't do well.
What I think AMD/ATI is going to do is integrate a more modern processor and integrated graphics GPU into one unit. If they put something like a Radeon X1050 and a Sempron 64 in the same package for cheap, it could really sell well in the lowend market.
Re:It is all about the platform.
on
Is AMD Dead Yet?
·
· Score: 1
Other than the infamous i820, what Intel chipsets were bad? I have found some Intel chipsets to be real dogs in terms of performance, but they were always stable. Even the cheapest, lowend chipset running the crappiest Celeron. On the other hand, finding a good chipset for an AMD system is always a gamble. VIA used to be good (K6 days), but is crap now. AMD's own chipsets from the Athlon MP even sucked. nVidia came in and saved the day for a while - my main desktop is a nForce2 system and it is rock solid, but I recently built some nForce 410 based AMD64 systems and those managed to piss me off (memory compability issues, not stable, and the integrated ethernet is total crap). I've never tried SIS, but I would consider that to be a real gamble too, considering they compete mainly at the low end of the market. I'm at the point where if I had to build another system tomorrow it would be Intel.
I would disagree about needing needing the harddrive and the DVD drive at the same time. What if you need to burn something off the external drive to CD or DVD? Or copying the day's photos off the camera to the external harddrive or straight to CD/DVD? I guess you could copy it to the internal drive, then do a switch. Inconvienent, but doable. As far as I know, Apple's "Remote Disk" supports reading only at this point. Otherwise, I agree the chances of needing something like the modem and ethernet at the same time as pretty slim.
Your point about charging is an interesting one. A charging device is going to tie up the USB port for some time, and you can only charge one device at a time. USB charging is great for traveling, as you can potentially ditch a bunch of power adaptors. You could get one of those external USB chargers I suppose, but if you are going to go that route you might as well get a smallish powered USB hub for roughly the same size. I wouldn't count on an unpowered one working right with the Air's overdriven USB port, as there is no way for a USB hub following the spec to know that the port can supply more than 500mA, so it would limit you like on any other computer. I suppose there could be a special "Air" USB hub, but I don't see Apple offering one (yet).
I also haven't gotten an answer on whether Apple's "Remote Disk" will work without the OS (in the case that you need to do an actual restore). This is espcially important as you don't have Firewire target mode on the Air either, which would be the obvious solution if you otherwise had access to another Mac. If not, then it's nothing really more than a slick interface for mounting a drive over a network, which isn't new.
He wanted his cake (licensing fees) and to eat it too (not have to sue anyone) but they called his bluff.
Uhh, what? I would assume that getting licensing fees for your use of your work without dragging things through the legal system would be the standard operating procedure for someone who sells copyrighted works, such as stock photography.
Actually, it looks a bit more like a system to punish people who do bad things, regardless of the actual health impact. I remember a study that showed that smokers tend to incur less health care costs, because their health deteriorates faster and they end up dying younger. Yet people tend to favor charging the smokers more because "smoking is bad", and the insurance companies are more than happy to go along with it as that means they can extract more money from people.
The same thing for people who tend to be slightly overweight. Being a bit overweight (not obese) really isn't bad for your health. Yet some people I know feel that overweight people should be charged more because they are "fat", yet at the same time these same people are incuring significant healthcare costs directly related to the risky sports they like to partcipate in (things like rock climbing) and high-impact workouts they enjoy such as running. Yet they don't take too well to the argument that *they* should be the ones paying more to the insurance companies to pay for those knees they've blown out and all the broken bones from the falls they've taken.
I could see him needing any or all of the following:
USB external optical drive, USB harddrive for mass storage since the Macbook Air doesn't have much in terms of mass storage, USB mouse (granted, there is Bluetooth mice available, but I have never gotten used to the lag on a wireless mouse), USB Ethernet adaptor, USB modem, camera, MP3 player, possibly a phone if it doesn't have Bluetooth. The Macbook air is a very compact laptop, but if he finds he needs to haul a bunch of accessories around, I think a slightly larger laptop with more features would be the better choice.
On another note, I find it rather amusing that the Macbook Air ships with restore DVDs, which it can't even use unless you buy the optional external SuperDrive.
So your point being? 10.4 is not the latest and greatest Mac OS so why compare it to Vista? You'll find that the latest and greatest version of OSX won't install on a 400Mhz computer, much like Vista won't install on it either(*). Windows XP will install on 400Mhz system too, and will run somewhat reasonably if you have enough ram, which is really no different than 10.4 on similarly dated hardware.
(*) Vista doesn't check your CPU speed like OSX does, and will install on any PIII down to 450Mhz. However, a 400Mhz computer would be a PII or a K6-2/3 and I'm not sure if Vista runs on those processors.
At some point, you're going have a computer so fast that everything is going to be pretty much instantaneous with everything maxed out. You might as well set that to be the max value, because at that point, it doesn't matter how much more hardware you throw at OS, the "experience" is going to be the same. I think that's part of the problem with Vista, as we've already reached that point for XP, and people are used to that level of responsiveness.
I don't see it as that unreasonable, since it would be pretty much impossible to actually acquire that TV for under $1000.00 after paying tax/shipping/fees etc. on the purchase. While the TV example isn't the best, I can think of other examples, such as phone service or new cars, where the advertised prices are nothing like what you actually pay to get the service or item.
Entirely false. Class action law suits do not add one cent to the price of a product. I am sick of this same lie being spread over and over again, just like piracy does not add one cent to the price of a product. It is all supply and demand, greedy corporations charge as much as they possible can, there is absolutely no limit to their greed, 100%, 1000%, 10000% markups not a problem at all.
You may be right in cases like MS Windows, where Microsoft has the market wrapped pretty nicely for Windows, and charge whatever they want for it and people will pay it. However, I fail to see how that would work in more cutthroat markets, such as things like computer components. You don't see huge mark ups in computer hardware because if a company tried it, their competitors would have their lunch. If you're selling at just above cost, a class action lawsuit is going to add to the bottom line, and either cause the company to raise prices to cover the increased "costs", or go out of business eliminating competition in whatever market they compete in.
The USB hub is just something else to have to carry around, along with all the other USB devices needed to turn the Air into a functional laptop. He'd probably be better off getting another 12-13" laptop with all that built in, along with the ability to change the battery.
It's not like the record companies held a knife to Steve Jobs' throat and forced Apple to sell music. Apple still chooses to do business with the RIAA.
My personal favorite way to fight this would be wire up the outlet the computer is running from to 230V, while of course giving no indication that it's anything other than a standard outlet. Most computer equipment will run on that, but it stands a pretty good chance of blowing up their UPS if they don't check for it first.
I think physical security might work well here. Epoxy the ram into place, preferably turning the epoxy and the plastic DIMM slot into one solid piece. With that, it would be probably be impossible to get the ram out of the computer, and into something that could read it in the amount of time you have to work with.
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I wouldn't be so sure. If our level of technology stays atleast at a level where we are today, the response when the Earth starts heating up will be to turn up the A/C. Humans are not going to adapt to new conditions if they change their living environments to suit what they are used to.
That's not the case for all nuclear plants. Years ago, I toured a plant and they had 2 locomotive engines to act as a back up power source (they were cemented in place, they won't going anywhere). I suspect that shutting down the reactor is costly and a big hassle to get running again, so I would expect that many plants would have a similar set up so they could keep running in case they lose power from the grid.
It was a bullshit test and everybody who had any knowledge about it agreed. The heatsink was removed. It would not "catch fire" it would burn itself out.
It was overly dramatic, yes. But those chips had no thermal protection. If your CPU fan died and you didn't catch it, you would fry your CPU and possibly lose the motherboard too. You had also better be sure you mounted tha heatsink correctly in the first place. It was a real problem.
I have an idea, remove all the coolant from an auto radiator and run the engine at 5000 rpm. OH NOES, it died.
No, it's more like the Hondas where the pistons bend the valves if the engine is running and the timing belt breaks. A fundamental design problem that other vehicles don't suffer from.
How was it a fake test? The processor had no thermal protection whatsoever, and needed to dissipate 50-75W of heat off the die. It's physically impossible to dissipate that kind of heat off the die alone and stay at a reasonably temperature. Granted, the most common failure mode is a slow death from the CPU cooling fan getting clogged with dust or simply failing. However, if you were to pull the heatsink off during a demo like Tom's Hardware did, you would get the same smoke and drama. I admit an actual fire is unlikely, but still plausible.
And how do batteries have anything to do with anything here? You might as well argue that Intel CPUs come in prettier boxes.
Someone who doesn't want their server to burn to the ground?
That is a total red herring. If it were truly even part of the equation, we would see cities enacting anti-gum chewing laws.
Actually, Singapore did exactly that. Also, throughout my entire K-12 school career, chewing gum was strictly prohibited in school (incidently, this probably caused more problems than it solved, due to kids not wanting to get caught with gum sticking it wherever convienent as opposed to the trash).
I'm not absolving Intel of anything. I'm just saying that you're more likely to get a stable problem-free PC from Intel than with AMD. For example, the Socket A platform for most of it's life was complete crap, until nVidia entered the game towards the end. I'm talking a period of years here. I should know, as I'm typing this on a Socket A system, and it took a while to get it to where it is now. Everyone else I know that was on Socket A has scrapped their systems because of some issue or another that they were tired of dealing with, while the people who went with the Pentium 4 didn't have have problems like that and those computers are still out there running.
Besides, atleast Intel did recalls in the case of the FDIV bug, the Pentium III, and the i820. I don't remember VIA ever recalling the KT133 and KT266 (not KT266A) chipsets despite their known problems, or AMD recalling their processors that could literally burn up and start a fire if something went wrong.
And it's really amazing how retarded Apple fanboys can be. You may be right about the Mac Pro and the XServe, but most of Apple's other machines use pretty common models of Core 2 processors. Quit pretending they are any more than generic hardware in a propriety package.
I was thinking the other month if anybody has every consider a LCD monitor where the backplate can be tilted down flat with a mirror surface to shine sunlight up into the back of the screen - aka a natural backlight?
It's an interesting idea, but the mirror is going to reflect polarized light, which means it's not going to work well with a LCD screen. You would need a diffuse reflector, something more like a sheet of paper than a shiny mirror.
I'd really like to know where you are buying your hardware. 4GB of ram itself is going to cost you $200 or more by itself.
I've always considered this argument to be nonsense. AMD and Intel are bothe x86 chips. There is no reason at all that Apple couldn't ship both Intel based and AMD based machines if they wanted to. HP does. Dell does. Compaq does. Apple just doesn't want to sell AMD systems for whatever reason, that's all there is to it.
The MediaGX was basically a 486 with an integrated GPU introduced in 1997. It looked to be aimed more at the embedded market, but wasn't really competitive with the solutions available at the time, nor was it really competitive with the Pentium II/AMD K6-2 on the other side of things. It did find a couple of niches, but it really isn't any surprise that it didn't do well.
What I think AMD/ATI is going to do is integrate a more modern processor and integrated graphics GPU into one unit. If they put something like a Radeon X1050 and a Sempron 64 in the same package for cheap, it could really sell well in the lowend market.
Other than the infamous i820, what Intel chipsets were bad? I have found some Intel chipsets to be real dogs in terms of performance, but they were always stable. Even the cheapest, lowend chipset running the crappiest Celeron. On the other hand, finding a good chipset for an AMD system is always a gamble. VIA used to be good (K6 days), but is crap now. AMD's own chipsets from the Athlon MP even sucked. nVidia came in and saved the day for a while - my main desktop is a nForce2 system and it is rock solid, but I recently built some nForce 410 based AMD64 systems and those managed to piss me off (memory compability issues, not stable, and the integrated ethernet is total crap). I've never tried SIS, but I would consider that to be a real gamble too, considering they compete mainly at the low end of the market. I'm at the point where if I had to build another system tomorrow it would be Intel.
I would disagree about needing needing the harddrive and the DVD drive at the same time. What if you need to burn something off the external drive to CD or DVD? Or copying the day's photos off the camera to the external harddrive or straight to CD/DVD? I guess you could copy it to the internal drive, then do a switch. Inconvienent, but doable. As far as I know, Apple's "Remote Disk" supports reading only at this point. Otherwise, I agree the chances of needing something like the modem and ethernet at the same time as pretty slim.
Your point about charging is an interesting one. A charging device is going to tie up the USB port for some time, and you can only charge one device at a time. USB charging is great for traveling, as you can potentially ditch a bunch of power adaptors. You could get one of those external USB chargers I suppose, but if you are going to go that route you might as well get a smallish powered USB hub for roughly the same size. I wouldn't count on an unpowered one working right with the Air's overdriven USB port, as there is no way for a USB hub following the spec to know that the port can supply more than 500mA, so it would limit you like on any other computer. I suppose there could be a special "Air" USB hub, but I don't see Apple offering one (yet).
I also haven't gotten an answer on whether Apple's "Remote Disk" will work without the OS (in the case that you need to do an actual restore). This is espcially important as you don't have Firewire target mode on the Air either, which would be the obvious solution if you otherwise had access to another Mac. If not, then it's nothing really more than a slick interface for mounting a drive over a network, which isn't new.
He wanted his cake (licensing fees) and to eat it too (not have to sue anyone) but they called his bluff.
Uhh, what? I would assume that getting licensing fees for your use of your work without dragging things through the legal system would be the standard operating procedure for someone who sells copyrighted works, such as stock photography.
Actually, it looks a bit more like a system to punish people who do bad things, regardless of the actual health impact. I remember a study that showed that smokers tend to incur less health care costs, because their health deteriorates faster and they end up dying younger. Yet people tend to favor charging the smokers more because "smoking is bad", and the insurance companies are more than happy to go along with it as that means they can extract more money from people.
The same thing for people who tend to be slightly overweight. Being a bit overweight (not obese) really isn't bad for your health. Yet some people I know feel that overweight people should be charged more because they are "fat", yet at the same time these same people are incuring significant healthcare costs directly related to the risky sports they like to partcipate in (things like rock climbing) and high-impact workouts they enjoy such as running. Yet they don't take too well to the argument that *they* should be the ones paying more to the insurance companies to pay for those knees they've blown out and all the broken bones from the falls they've taken.
I could see him needing any or all of the following:
USB external optical drive, USB harddrive for mass storage since the Macbook Air doesn't have much in terms of mass storage, USB mouse (granted, there is Bluetooth mice available, but I have never gotten used to the lag on a wireless mouse), USB Ethernet adaptor, USB modem, camera, MP3 player, possibly a phone if it doesn't have Bluetooth. The Macbook air is a very compact laptop, but if he finds he needs to haul a bunch of accessories around, I think a slightly larger laptop with more features would be the better choice.
On another note, I find it rather amusing that the Macbook Air ships with restore DVDs, which it can't even use unless you buy the optional external SuperDrive.
So your point being? 10.4 is not the latest and greatest Mac OS so why compare it to Vista? You'll find that the latest and greatest version of OSX won't install on a 400Mhz computer, much like Vista won't install on it either(*). Windows XP will install on 400Mhz system too, and will run somewhat reasonably if you have enough ram, which is really no different than 10.4 on similarly dated hardware.
(*) Vista doesn't check your CPU speed like OSX does, and will install on any PIII down to 450Mhz. However, a 400Mhz computer would be a PII or a K6-2/3 and I'm not sure if Vista runs on those processors.
At some point, you're going have a computer so fast that everything is going to be pretty much instantaneous with everything maxed out. You might as well set that to be the max value, because at that point, it doesn't matter how much more hardware you throw at OS, the "experience" is going to be the same. I think that's part of the problem with Vista, as we've already reached that point for XP, and people are used to that level of responsiveness.
I don't see it as that unreasonable, since it would be pretty much impossible to actually acquire that TV for under $1000.00 after paying tax/shipping/fees etc. on the purchase. While the TV example isn't the best, I can think of other examples, such as phone service or new cars, where the advertised prices are nothing like what you actually pay to get the service or item.
Entirely false. Class action law suits do not add one cent to the price of a product. I am sick of this same lie being spread over and over again, just like piracy does not add one cent to the price of a product. It is all supply and demand, greedy corporations charge as much as they possible can, there is absolutely no limit to their greed, 100%, 1000%, 10000% markups not a problem at all.
You may be right in cases like MS Windows, where Microsoft has the market wrapped pretty nicely for Windows, and charge whatever they want for it and people will pay it. However, I fail to see how that would work in more cutthroat markets, such as things like computer components. You don't see huge mark ups in computer hardware because if a company tried it, their competitors would have their lunch. If you're selling at just above cost, a class action lawsuit is going to add to the bottom line, and either cause the company to raise prices to cover the increased "costs", or go out of business eliminating competition in whatever market they compete in.
The USB hub is just something else to have to carry around, along with all the other USB devices needed to turn the Air into a functional laptop. He'd probably be better off getting another 12-13" laptop with all that built in, along with the ability to change the battery.
It's not like the record companies held a knife to Steve Jobs' throat and forced Apple to sell music. Apple still chooses to do business with the RIAA.
My personal favorite way to fight this would be wire up the outlet the computer is running from to 230V, while of course giving no indication that it's anything other than a standard outlet. Most computer equipment will run on that, but it stands a pretty good chance of blowing up their UPS if they don't check for it first.
I think physical security might work well here. Epoxy the ram into place, preferably turning the epoxy and the plastic DIMM slot into one solid piece. With that, it would be probably be impossible to get the ram out of the computer, and into something that could read it in the amount of time you have to work with.