"The prices on decent panels (H-IPS, specifically) are coming down now, and it's possible to get a really nice 24" display for under $500. 1920x1200, too,"
Pretty please with sugar on top: back that up with a link.
We have been stuck on 1920x1080 for a while now. I can get a Samsung display that does 1920x1200 for 200 euro, but it is already a few years (!) old. Good thing is that it has an anti-reflective display, probably/because/ it is so old.
All the screens are TN displays except the high end Dell's and some MAC's (OK, and many very costly displays that are priced beyond those affordable by a consumer).
Basically, for development, I've been stuck with a depth of 1080 pixels, which is just way way too low. The absolutely *terrible* support of Linux for two unmatched monitors does not do any good either.
"Your second monitor, though, you just rotate so that it is now taller than it is wide, and offers rather more horizontal resolution than any but the nicest 4:3 monitors ever did."
Yeah, I would do that too, if not all the screens you can currently buy wouldn't be TN screens. Well, except the high end Dell and Apple ones of course. Turning a TN screen is a nightmare waiting to happen. You know, the ones with 170/160 degrees of viewing angle (well, that would be about 10 degree viewing angle for people that care about color/contrast).
That link provides no solution for a DVD drive as in my SL300. That's just a physical place holder for a slimline desktop case. I need to have a connector as well. One that is not using a 30 cm cable, if anywhere possible.
The Mac sites clearly describe soldering cables. And even the Mac Mini is easier for storing cables than in a standard DVD drive bay.
So, care to backup your claim instead of wasting my time with another fruitless search?
For instance, I like to keep my browser open while gaming. This can be a catastrophe waiting to happen if disk caching and - of course - flash is not disabled. JavaScript seems to be less of an issue.
Most of the time the disk cache is supported by my RAM, but there is still disk latency to worry about. Disks simply suck at multi-tasking.
No, of course not, good gods. I use the memory cache instead. CacheViewer shows that.js and images are nicely stored in RAM. Of course, they are gone when I restart FF, but I can live with that. Why do *you* think there is a memory and a disk cache?
SSD is much cheaper than RAM, may computers have serious limitations on the amount of RAM that can be added and finally you don't want oodles of write cache in case your power fails.
That said, adding a lot of RAM to a system for cheap is certainly a good thing people should consider before going the SSD way. I'm using 77% of my 8 GB RAM for disk cache at the moment, and my system certainly is faster than my laptop once it has started up and applications have been loaded. Of course, it being a desktop, it's continuous power makes it easy to simply suspend to RAM the whole time (and with the new motherboard it actually manages not just to sleep but to wake up as well), so it basically never reboots unless required for an update.
A fast SSD is not 1 Gb/s under ideal conditions. A fast SSD is up to 2 Gb/s (about 250 MB/s) under real life conditions (while reading). Anyway, it still makes sense to cache network content to disk if the other side of the connection is slow or not reliable.
Somebody forgot that you cannot create speed by just using a slow flash chip or two. You need speedy chips, and a lot of them, to create a fast SSD. Besides a good controller and software for that controller of course. Besides that, 256 MB is so low that I wonder if RAM would not already perform most of the caching, even for writes.
Actually, my S300 Thinkpad does have a second SATA connector - it's used by the rather useless DVD writer. I've looked everywhere but I cannot find anybody that sells a simple slim-DVD drive bracket. I cannot even find a cable that is suited. There is a site that build their own cable, but the cable that they build it out of is hard to get and I'm not that great at soldering electronics either.
The problem is of course that there are a few different connectors out there (3 to 4 is my current estimation). Furthermore, people would whine about the looks of the drive bay (not in the right color or form). And for high end laptops vendors already sell so called multi-bays that fit hard disk drives. Still, since a bracket would basically consist of a well ventilated bracket with two cables, I cannot fathom why there is nobody in the entire world manufacturing these - especially if you have a look at the oodles of components and cables available that fill other niches.
If you really want two disks you'll have to opt for a desktop replacement with 2 bays or a high end with multi-bay (and pay about 50 dollars for the plastic bracket). Or go for one of many external options of course.
OK, but CPU L1/2/3 is a data cache. Of course it will help but it's just not configured as a disk cache. Multi-processor systems for instance would not benefit from the CPU caches.
Furthermore, I don't know about you, but my disk is certainly not used for network or internet cache. For network resources there is no such thing as configuring life-time and the browser disk cache is the first thing I disable (using a spinning system disk for internet cache is stupidity IMHO).
Besides all that, it's just an example to provide an explanation to microbee, nitpicking on my response does not make for a better answer. Of course, this being Slashdot, I could have expected it to happen:)
What's wrong with VIA or Intel based boards? For fully embedded you don't need multi-media features or SATA and where you do you have the x86 based boards. Especially VIA is interesting there; their processor is maybe less powerfull, but their southbridges are much much better than anything Intel has. Power usage is low enough to warrant fanless designs. ARM will use less juice, but they don't seem to have the chipset to go with it.
The beagle board seems to have no (S)ATA. It does seem to have DVD-D, but XGA output won't please too many people. Interesting board, but hardly a Mini-ITX as most people know it (I mean, not comparable with full featured VIA or Intel designs).
Uh, 2) things are not evil because they are blocked for the reason of being evil? That's, um, interesting. If I plan to kill somebody and the cops stop me, I'm not being evil?
As for 4), if other companies were able to "inch into the niche", wouldn't they be doing so already? Look at the Intel atom. It's pretty good regarding power usage for an x86 platform, but it is nowhere near some of the ARM designs. Stepping into that nich might be pretty hard. Of course, eventually somebody would, but it might take a lot of time before they even get into the spot where ARM is now. And all the while Apple would be making mince-meat of the competition.
This is about doing double caching: cache to fast but limited RAM (L1) first and then have a much larger but slower cache, that being the SSD (L2). Difference being with other caching systems that the SSD of course holds state if power is down (so often use sectors may never be written do disk).
Is there really a need for this? Intel 40 GB SSD still has a read speed of 170 MB/s and costs about 100 euro here in NL. Why have some kind of experimental configuration while prices are like that? OK, 35 MB/s write speed is not that high, but with the high IOPS and seek times you still have most of the benefits.
I can see why you would want something like this, but I doubt the benefits are that large over a normal SSD + HDD configuration.
No, you don't understand. The problem is that there are many products, especially application services, that use port 80 or 443 for something that has little or nothing to do with web pages. E.g. port 80 is used for server to server communications using SOAP. SOAP is basically calling remote procedures on the other side.
Now you've got to understand that many companies leave port 80 and 443 open because people can use those for connecting to outside web-pages. Nowadays, this means that you can connect to almost any web-service out there as well. So this is a security hole from client to server so to speak.
Of course it is worse if you configure each and every service on port 80 on the server side. Normally you open port 80 for just web-pages. You can for instance configure a state-full firewall to catch anything that is not web related. You cannot distinguish between your services anymore using the port.
This is all mitigated by the fact that just having security using ports is a terribly bad idea anyway. And you still block ports to that SSH port you mistakenly opened on the server. But it still weakens the overall security.
My provider (xs4all.nl) has SSH running on port 443. Most proxies forget to look if 443 is really used for SSL instead of SSH. Together with their web-proxy it is very very easy to break out of company firewall rules as long as you are allowed to run (port forwarding) applications. This is a huge convenience if you've got an IT dept that tries to block porn by disallowing the word "sex" in URL's (processexplorer.com). It certainly took me a moment to figure out why zallmanusa.com was blocked.
In that case you are already in trouble. Firewalls are good at keeping things out. If the malware is already in, you're too late. Besides, on what PC are you proposing to view the firewall settings? On the already pwned PC? And what do you think the end-user will understand when he views the firewall settings page?
I know a shop that also sells laptops with the Intel 40 GB SSD in high quantities. Don't forget, these cheap things (100 euro *retail* here) still push 170 GB read times. Together with higher reliability, these drives make lots of sense for businesses. Consumers of course are more interested in movies and pictures - and they don't know SSD's - so they care more about GB than speed and reliability.
That's because programming C++ is hard. Lessons start in Java for a good reason. BTW, I've not seen that problem with switching to C unless you are talking about designing a large software package in C. Of course, when I started, many persons still knew how to program assembly and basic and other non-OOP languages.
I'll never forget the compiler and linker errors I got when I started learning how to program using C++. That almost made me quite straight away. If that (and makefiles) was required for app. development, I could not see me pursuing a career in it. (oh, and programming had to be done in VI or Emacs of course with CLI compilers and linkers, just to make the experience even more fun).
And then it doesn't work. Sorry, I'm typing this on 64bit Ubuntu, and flash may work now and then. No guarantees. There are problems with Firefox interaction, sound and video (e.g. try it with compiz).
Some shithead is of course going to argue that this is all me. Well, I've been using computers since MSX, have got 8 slackware CD's distro's, numerous versions of RH/fedora and Suse and I cannot get it to work reliable. I'm both a power user and a programmer.
So if flash is high on your list of must have features (and for many people it is, using youtube/flashy newssites or tuning in to a flash based radio station is common use), don't install 64 bit Ubuntu or you'll be sorry.
Desktop Linux has a long way to go, unfortunately that requires even more industry support.
Slashdot Mirror
"The prices on decent panels (H-IPS, specifically) are coming down now, and it's possible to get a really nice 24" display for under $500. 1920x1200, too,"
Pretty please with sugar on top: back that up with a link.
We have been stuck on 1920x1080 for a while now. I can get a Samsung display that does 1920x1200 for 200 euro, but it is already a few years (!) old. Good thing is that it has an anti-reflective display, probably /because/ it is so old.
All the screens are TN displays except the high end Dell's and some MAC's (OK, and many very costly displays that are priced beyond those affordable by a consumer).
Basically, for development, I've been stuck with a depth of 1080 pixels, which is just way way too low. The absolutely *terrible* support of Linux for two unmatched monitors does not do any good either.
"Your second monitor, though, you just rotate so that it is now taller than it is wide, and offers rather more horizontal resolution than any but the nicest 4:3 monitors ever did."
Yeah, I would do that too, if not all the screens you can currently buy wouldn't be TN screens. Well, except the high end Dell and Apple ones of course. Turning a TN screen is a nightmare waiting to happen. You know, the ones with 170/160 degrees of viewing angle (well, that would be about 10 degree viewing angle for people that care about color/contrast).
Shouldn't that be "way up"? If there are more dots per inch, then your higher res display can have less (virtual) inches...
That link provides no solution for a DVD drive as in my SL300. That's just a physical place holder for a slimline desktop case. I need to have a connector as well. One that is not using a 30 cm cable, if anywhere possible.
The Mac sites clearly describe soldering cables. And even the Mac Mini is easier for storing cables than in a standard DVD drive bay.
So, care to backup your claim instead of wasting my time with another fruitless search?
Depends if I am multi-tasking really.
For instance, I like to keep my browser open while gaming. This can be a catastrophe waiting to happen if disk caching and - of course - flash is not disabled. JavaScript seems to be less of an issue.
Most of the time the disk cache is supported by my RAM, but there is still disk latency to worry about. Disks simply suck at multi-tasking.
No, of course not, good gods. I use the memory cache instead. CacheViewer shows that .js and images are nicely stored in RAM. Of course, they are gone when I restart FF, but I can live with that. Why do *you* think there is a memory and a disk cache?
I did mean DVI-D not DVD-D of course. Or HDMI or any other high res output to a display.
SSD is much cheaper than RAM, may computers have serious limitations on the amount of RAM that can be added and finally you don't want oodles of write cache in case your power fails.
That said, adding a lot of RAM to a system for cheap is certainly a good thing people should consider before going the SSD way. I'm using 77% of my 8 GB RAM for disk cache at the moment, and my system certainly is faster than my laptop once it has started up and applications have been loaded. Of course, it being a desktop, it's continuous power makes it easy to simply suspend to RAM the whole time (and with the new motherboard it actually manages not just to sleep but to wake up as well), so it basically never reboots unless required for an update.
A fast SSD is not 1 Gb/s under ideal conditions. A fast SSD is up to 2 Gb/s (about 250 MB/s) under real life conditions (while reading). Anyway, it still makes sense to cache network content to disk if the other side of the connection is slow or not reliable.
Somebody forgot that you cannot create speed by just using a slow flash chip or two. You need speedy chips, and a lot of them, to create a fast SSD. Besides a good controller and software for that controller of course. Besides that, 256 MB is so low that I wonder if RAM would not already perform most of the caching, even for writes.
Actually, my S300 Thinkpad does have a second SATA connector - it's used by the rather useless DVD writer. I've looked everywhere but I cannot find anybody that sells a simple slim-DVD drive bracket. I cannot even find a cable that is suited. There is a site that build their own cable, but the cable that they build it out of is hard to get and I'm not that great at soldering electronics either.
The problem is of course that there are a few different connectors out there (3 to 4 is my current estimation). Furthermore, people would whine about the looks of the drive bay (not in the right color or form). And for high end laptops vendors already sell so called multi-bays that fit hard disk drives. Still, since a bracket would basically consist of a well ventilated bracket with two cables, I cannot fathom why there is nobody in the entire world manufacturing these - especially if you have a look at the oodles of components and cables available that fill other niches.
If you really want two disks you'll have to opt for a desktop replacement with 2 bays or a high end with multi-bay (and pay about 50 dollars for the plastic bracket). Or go for one of many external options of course.
Yeah, but this is about a *software* implementation using an SSD as cache for one or more HDD. So there are two drives by definition.
OK, but CPU L1/2/3 is a data cache. Of course it will help but it's just not configured as a disk cache. Multi-processor systems for instance would not benefit from the CPU caches.
Furthermore, I don't know about you, but my disk is certainly not used for network or internet cache. For network resources there is no such thing as configuring life-time and the browser disk cache is the first thing I disable (using a spinning system disk for internet cache is stupidity IMHO).
Besides all that, it's just an example to provide an explanation to microbee, nitpicking on my response does not make for a better answer. Of course, this being Slashdot, I could have expected it to happen :)
What's wrong with VIA or Intel based boards? For fully embedded you don't need multi-media features or SATA and where you do you have the x86 based boards. Especially VIA is interesting there; their processor is maybe less powerfull, but their southbridges are much much better than anything Intel has. Power usage is low enough to warrant fanless designs. ARM will use less juice, but they don't seem to have the chipset to go with it.
The beagle board seems to have no (S)ATA. It does seem to have DVD-D, but XGA output won't please too many people. Interesting board, but hardly a Mini-ITX as most people know it (I mean, not comparable with full featured VIA or Intel designs).
Uh, 2) things are not evil because they are blocked for the reason of being evil? That's, um, interesting. If I plan to kill somebody and the cops stop me, I'm not being evil?
As for 4), if other companies were able to "inch into the niche", wouldn't they be doing so already? Look at the Intel atom. It's pretty good regarding power usage for an x86 platform, but it is nowhere near some of the ARM designs. Stepping into that nich might be pretty hard. Of course, eventually somebody would, but it might take a lot of time before they even get into the spot where ARM is now. And all the while Apple would be making mince-meat of the competition.
This is about doing double caching: cache to fast but limited RAM (L1) first and then have a much larger but slower cache, that being the SSD (L2). Difference being with other caching systems that the SSD of course holds state if power is down (so often use sectors may never be written do disk).
Is there really a need for this? Intel 40 GB SSD still has a read speed of 170 MB/s and costs about 100 euro here in NL. Why have some kind of experimental configuration while prices are like that? OK, 35 MB/s write speed is not that high, but with the high IOPS and seek times you still have most of the benefits.
I can see why you would want something like this, but I doubt the benefits are that large over a normal SSD + HDD configuration.
No, you don't understand. The problem is that there are many products, especially application services, that use port 80 or 443 for something that has little or nothing to do with web pages. E.g. port 80 is used for server to server communications using SOAP. SOAP is basically calling remote procedures on the other side.
Now you've got to understand that many companies leave port 80 and 443 open because people can use those for connecting to outside web-pages. Nowadays, this means that you can connect to almost any web-service out there as well. So this is a security hole from client to server so to speak.
Of course it is worse if you configure each and every service on port 80 on the server side. Normally you open port 80 for just web-pages. You can for instance configure a state-full firewall to catch anything that is not web related. You cannot distinguish between your services anymore using the port.
This is all mitigated by the fact that just having security using ports is a terribly bad idea anyway. And you still block ports to that SSH port you mistakenly opened on the server. But it still weakens the overall security.
My provider (xs4all.nl) has SSH running on port 443. Most proxies forget to look if 443 is really used for SSL instead of SSH. Together with their web-proxy it is very very easy to break out of company firewall rules as long as you are allowed to run (port forwarding) applications. This is a huge convenience if you've got an IT dept that tries to block porn by disallowing the word "sex" in URL's (processexplorer.com). It certainly took me a moment to figure out why zallmanusa.com was blocked.
In that case you are already in trouble. Firewalls are good at keeping things out. If the malware is already in, you're too late. Besides, on what PC are you proposing to view the firewall settings? On the already pwned PC? And what do you think the end-user will understand when he views the firewall settings page?
I know a shop that also sells laptops with the Intel 40 GB SSD in high quantities. Don't forget, these cheap things (100 euro *retail* here) still push 170 GB read times. Together with higher reliability, these drives make lots of sense for businesses. Consumers of course are more interested in movies and pictures - and they don't know SSD's - so they care more about GB than speed and reliability.
That's because programming C++ is hard. Lessons start in Java for a good reason. BTW, I've not seen that problem with switching to C unless you are talking about designing a large software package in C. Of course, when I started, many persons still knew how to program assembly and basic and other non-OOP languages.
I'll never forget the compiler and linker errors I got when I started learning how to program using C++. That almost made me quite straight away. If that (and makefiles) was required for app. development, I could not see me pursuing a career in it. (oh, and programming had to be done in VI or Emacs of course with CLI compilers and linkers, just to make the experience even more fun).
And then it doesn't work. Sorry, I'm typing this on 64bit Ubuntu, and flash may work now and then. No guarantees. There are problems with Firefox interaction, sound and video (e.g. try it with compiz).
Some shithead is of course going to argue that this is all me. Well, I've been using computers since MSX, have got 8 slackware CD's distro's, numerous versions of RH/fedora and Suse and I cannot get it to work reliable. I'm both a power user and a programmer.
So if flash is high on your list of must have features (and for many people it is, using youtube/flashy newssites or tuning in to a flash based radio station is common use), don't install 64 bit Ubuntu or you'll be sorry.
Desktop Linux has a long way to go, unfortunately that requires even more industry support.
It was a nice sunset here in NL, but nothing wildly spectacular. Then again, sunsets rarely are that. It did look a slight bit more red than usual.