A WW1 biplane could keep flying after it had been shot full of holes, yet the Shuttle seems to have a number of extremely fragile technologies failure of any one of which could destroy it on re-entry.
Well, WW1 biplanes didn't need to cope with temperatures reaching 3,500 degrees centigrade, or wind resistance when travelling at speeds reaching thousands of miles per hour.
Nor did they have to cope with expansion and compression due to extreme temperature change. Or pressure differences between inside the crew cabin and the vacuums of space.
Or, for that matter, high radiation from the sun.
I gather that the shuttle would quite happily fly having been shot full of holes. Just not while the heat tiles are still needed.
Every overclocker/game phr34k worth his salt already knows not to use the PCI slot next to the AGP slot anyway.
Something to do with bus mastering, I believe - apparently using the PCI slot next to the AGP slot causes whatever is in the AGP slot to slow down slightly.
You lose a significant number of frames per second not to want to do it anyway.
Besides, wasn't the card released to 'Toms Hardware' a pre-release alpha version / developers' model that was never intended to be used (size-wise) as a guide to the finished product ?
Just a thought, in nVidia's defence...
So let me get this straight...
on
Peephole Displays
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· Score: 2, Funny
...this is a PDA concept where what you can see on the PDA screen depends on the physical orientation, position, and movement of the PDA?
This reminds me somewhat of the ACME(tm) Portable Hole favoured by Wile E. Coyote; the kind where you stick it to a wall and where the hole leads you to depends where on the wall the hole is stuck to.
Now if I stick my PDA to the wall, does it mean that passing Roadrunners will be able to Meep Meep their way through the screen, and I'll just splat comically against it on my way through?
Don't get me wrong, this is an interesting concept, but execution would be difficult to use in the real world. Someone already suggested the difficulties of using it on a bus - this would certainly cause real problems. Plus the fact that it would need gyros would increase the cost.
Projecting keyboards would be the ideal solution for palmtoppers on the move, IMHO.
Hey; don't knock it - I USED that software on my Amiga.
Honestly; it was included as a user submission on one of Amiga Format's cover discs (meaning it was as good as free).
For another thing, it ran with total stability. No crashes !
And you simply wouldn't believe the frequency of these mind control broadcasts that these intelligence agencies send out.
Running this program on your Amiga/Linux machine is like taking the right pill in the Matrix (except without being ejected from a weird pod thing, all covered in goo and with nasty wires plugged into various parts of your body).
This is the sort of innovation I would have expected to see firstly from an interior design firm.
I don't know about you guys, but whenever it's time to put up new wallpaper, I run like hell... I hate it, I'm not good at it, and whenever I pay for someone else to come in and redecorate, it costs me an arm and a leg!
What I'd like to see this used for is adaptive wallpaper - change the colour scheme of my whole room whenever I feel like it.
Even better if this allows for fast changes - imagine every room in your house being decorated with video walls; press a button and all of a sudden you're in space! Or you're in a forest! Or you're on Mars!
Take it further, and allow your car to be adaptive in colour. Let the Wifely Person drive, and it can be her favourite shade of pastel blue. When you want to drive it, it can be your favourite red-with-flames-and-go-faster-stripes - or even better, a virtual Knight Rider/KITT chaser light on the front!
Clothing! Wearable colour changing fibres - you could wear a leather jacket one minute, and then the next minute, it could be a light blue shirt-and-tie...
Seriously, if this is as good as I hope it is, Apple could branch into so many markets and make a colossal amount from cool stuff like that.
If AMD can deliver this on a desktop level, then Moore's Law can once again be considered applicable...
Think about it - the main problem in terms of pushing computing power these days is electron migration, caused by extremely high clock rates.
By doubling the word length to 64-bits, you can reduce the clock rate of the chip, and will still be able to perform more instructions per second than your top-of-the-range Athlon/Pentiums.
This was always the case with graphics cards; the GeForce 256 was a big step up from the Riva chipset, due to doubling the word length.
Supercomputers, such as the SGI Origin series, have been using 64-bit processing for quite some time now (MIPS processors), and while the Itanium series has its flaws (like a lack of backward compatibility), surely it's time to move on from the same old x86 architecture?
We don't all have to wait for Microsoft to make their WinXP 64-bit version mainstream; there's no point in them pushing this until the 64-bit architecture breaks into the home market.
Because the Opteron has this backward compatibility, then the 64-bit architecture will reach the home users, and they can upgrade to the 64-bit version as soon as it is deemed economically viable by Microsoft to release it.
I wonder what kind of performance increase you'd get from a program such as SETI@home or Distributed.net by upgrading to a 64-bit platform...
...a Beowulf Cluster linked together by one of those!
Note - this is certainly my first and probably my only 'Beowulf Cluster' joke, and am hoping to be modded 'Funny', and will manage to pull this off by sheer beginners' luck.
From the Windows 2000/XP Professional command prompt, type:
NET USER [username] [password]/ADD [options]/DOMAIN [domainname]
The [options] can include:-
/ACTIVE:(yes/no) - activates or deactivates the account.
/COMMENT:"text" - description of account
/EXPIRES:(date/never) - set date of expiry of account
/HOMEDIR:pathname - home directory
/PASSWORDCHG:(yes/no) - users can/can't change their own password
/PASSWORDREQ:(yes/no) - users require/don't require a password
/PROFILEPATH[:path] - roaming profile path
/SCRIPTPATH:path - login script path
/TIMES:(times/ALL) - what times users are allowed to log on at
There are more options that can be set, but the big question is, do you really want this much control over the operating system, given Microsoft's track record at OS security ?
A simple batch script could be created by a virus that would be able to delete users on the domain. That'd sure suck.
If Microsoft are reintegrating a powerful command prompt into their new.NET operating systems, I would want to make damn sure that the functionality this introduces to Windows isn't just another massive security hole for hackers and virus writers.
I can see it now... Microsoft.NET Server Service Pack 37b - 194 MB, 4 weeks after release of.NET Server...
CD prices have fallen surprisingly little in 20 years -- about a third in inflation-adjusted dollars. I don't remember prices like this with vinyl, and when CD's came along there was a hefty premium for them. Yes, they provided higher quality, but I bet their production costs are now far lower.
It costs roughly £0.50 ($0.80) to press each CD that is sold to a member of the public. The expensive parts are the actual recording/mixing/mastering processes, and the advertising.
I wonder what percentage the artist gets off each copy of their work that is sold...? The post about Meatloaf is maybe outdated, but I wonder if the situation has improved for the artist or for the record labels...
A Compaq ProLiant 4500R rackmount multiprocessor server.
Yes, I know it's a retired product - sure, it was 2nd hand - OK, it's only 3x Pentium 166 MHz processors...
But - a SERVER - as my Christmas present ?
How Geek is that !
PS on a side note I got a Bluetooth-enabled GPRS-compatible mobile phone (Sony Ericsson T68i)...
Slashdot Mirror
Which is exactly my point - the space shuttle is the limit of our current space-age technology.
Well, WW1 biplanes didn't need to cope with temperatures reaching 3,500 degrees centigrade, or wind resistance when travelling at speeds reaching thousands of miles per hour.
Nor did they have to cope with expansion and compression due to extreme temperature change. Or pressure differences between inside the crew cabin and the vacuums of space.
Or, for that matter, high radiation from the sun.
I gather that the shuttle would quite happily fly having been shot full of holes. Just not while the heat tiles are still needed.
Something to do with bus mastering, I believe - apparently using the PCI slot next to the AGP slot causes whatever is in the AGP slot to slow down slightly.
You lose a significant number of frames per second not to want to do it anyway.
Besides, wasn't the card released to 'Toms Hardware' a pre-release alpha version / developers' model that was never intended to be used (size-wise) as a guide to the finished product ?
Just a thought, in nVidia's defence...
This reminds me somewhat of the ACME(tm) Portable Hole favoured by Wile E. Coyote; the kind where you stick it to a wall and where the hole leads you to depends where on the wall the hole is stuck to.
Now if I stick my PDA to the wall, does it mean that passing Roadrunners will be able to Meep Meep their way through the screen, and I'll just splat comically against it on my way through?
Don't get me wrong, this is an interesting concept, but execution would be difficult to use in the real world. Someone already suggested the difficulties of using it on a bus - this would certainly cause real problems. Plus the fact that it would need gyros would increase the cost.
Projecting keyboards would be the ideal solution for palmtoppers on the move, IMHO.
Hey; don't knock it - I USED that software on my Amiga.
Honestly; it was included as a user submission on one of Amiga Format's cover discs (meaning it was as good as free).
For another thing, it ran with total stability. No crashes !
And you simply wouldn't believe the frequency of these mind control broadcasts that these intelligence agencies send out.
Running this program on your Amiga/Linux machine is like taking the right pill in the Matrix (except without being ejected from a weird pod thing, all covered in goo and with nasty wires plugged into various parts of your body).
Well, no - I can't say the same.
But have you got :-
I know; it's not very impressive compared to the old computer collection that other people in here have, but I'm proud of it none-the-less.
On the more modern computer front, I also have :-
I'd like to revive my big Amiga tower and connect it to my network but compatible PCMCIA cards are getting hard to find these days... :o(
This is the sort of innovation I would have expected to see firstly from an interior design firm.
I don't know about you guys, but whenever it's time to put up new wallpaper, I run like hell... I hate it, I'm not good at it, and whenever I pay for someone else to come in and redecorate, it costs me an arm and a leg!
What I'd like to see this used for is adaptive wallpaper - change the colour scheme of my whole room whenever I feel like it.
Even better if this allows for fast changes - imagine every room in your house being decorated with video walls; press a button and all of a sudden you're in space! Or you're in a forest! Or you're on Mars!
Take it further, and allow your car to be adaptive in colour. Let the Wifely Person drive, and it can be her favourite shade of pastel blue. When you want to drive it, it can be your favourite red-with-flames-and-go-faster-stripes - or even better, a virtual Knight Rider/KITT chaser light on the front!
Clothing! Wearable colour changing fibres - you could wear a leather jacket one minute, and then the next minute, it could be a light blue shirt-and-tie...
Seriously, if this is as good as I hope it is, Apple could branch into so many markets and make a colossal amount from cool stuff like that.
Wasn't it Intel that raved about Palladium and signed up to support it straight away?
I thought AMD were against it.
There'll be ways to hack Palladium anyway; it's Microsoft we're talking about here...
If AMD can deliver this on a desktop level, then Moore's Law can once again be considered applicable...
Think about it - the main problem in terms of pushing computing power these days is electron migration, caused by extremely high clock rates.
By doubling the word length to 64-bits, you can reduce the clock rate of the chip, and will still be able to perform more instructions per second than your top-of-the-range Athlon/Pentiums.
This was always the case with graphics cards; the GeForce 256 was a big step up from the Riva chipset, due to doubling the word length.
Supercomputers, such as the SGI Origin series, have been using 64-bit processing for quite some time now (MIPS processors), and while the Itanium series has its flaws (like a lack of backward compatibility), surely it's time to move on from the same old x86 architecture?
We don't all have to wait for Microsoft to make their WinXP 64-bit version mainstream; there's no point in them pushing this until the 64-bit architecture breaks into the home market.
Because the Opteron has this backward compatibility, then the 64-bit architecture will reach the home users, and they can upgrade to the 64-bit version as soon as it is deemed economically viable by Microsoft to release it.
I wonder what kind of performance increase you'd get from a program such as SETI@home or Distributed.net by upgrading to a 64-bit platform...
So I guess my cunning plan didn't work then..?
Damn... ;o)
...a Beowulf Cluster linked together by one of those!
Note - this is certainly my first and probably my only 'Beowulf Cluster' joke, and am hoping to be modded 'Funny', and will manage to pull this off by sheer beginners' luck.
From the Windows 2000/XP Professional command prompt, type:
NET USER [username] [password] /ADD [options] /DOMAIN [domainname]
The [options] can include :-
There are more options that can be set, but the big question is, do you really want this much control over the operating system, given Microsoft's track record at OS security ?
A simple batch script could be created by a virus that would be able to delete users on the domain. That'd sure suck.
If Microsoft are reintegrating a powerful command prompt into their new .NET operating systems, I would want to make damn sure that the functionality this introduces to Windows isn't just another massive security hole for hackers and virus writers.
I can see it now... Microsoft .NET Server Service Pack 37b - 194 MB, 4 weeks after release of .NET Server...
It costs roughly £0.50 ($0.80) to press each CD that is sold to a member of the public. The expensive parts are the actual recording/mixing/mastering processes, and the advertising.
I wonder what percentage the artist gets off each copy of their work that is sold...? The post about Meatloaf is maybe outdated, but I wonder if the situation has improved for the artist or for the record labels...
Here in the UK, most new CD's cost £15-£20, which (according to the Universal Currency Converter) is about $24-$32 at the moment.
We get it worse over here by far, and the RIAA and MP3 aren't in the news nearly as much as over there.
I may be accused of whining / trolling etc, but some things just get blown out of proportion.
A Compaq ProLiant 4500R rackmount multiprocessor server. Yes, I know it's a retired product - sure, it was 2nd hand - OK, it's only 3x Pentium 166 MHz processors... But - a SERVER - as my Christmas present ? How Geek is that ! PS on a side note I got a Bluetooth-enabled GPRS-compatible mobile phone (Sony Ericsson T68i)...