The boards with the VIA KX-133 chipset, which does 133mhz RAM and AGP 4x, are hitting the market this week. You can get them in Japan now, but they may take a few weeks to make it to the states. They are a 4 layer design, so they will actually be cheaper in the long run than the Fester style boards.
Also, the DDR chipsets should be coming out this summer, which will allow the RAM to run at 266 Mhz, which should be even better.
The fact that this program exists for Windows has nothing to do with the playback issue. We should have a right to play back DVD's without a license, regardless of the operating system. What if I want to write an open source player for my Windows box? Or what if I want to dual boot and use the same player on both sides? Do I have any less right to write a rightfully written player under Windows than Linux? The issue here is that source code is free speech, and that we have the right to view the things we own, regardless of whether it's Linux, Windows, Macintosh, BSD, or Bob's Quick and Dirty Operating System (that Bob wrote for himself and his friends).
If I stole a dozen credit card numbers, and published the numbers on the web, I can't claim a right to do so based on the right to free speech.
I'm not implying you should go do this, but actually this is speech. This is what we're ultimately fighting here - the inalienable rights of free-thinking entities in the universe, versus the financial interests of our social system. I personally don't believe in "imaginary" money, such as credit cards, etc. I personally choose not to use them. Telling someone your credit card number, or someone elses, is an act of speech, just like any other kind of speech. However, the act of stealing them in the first place is not. In other words, you could be punished for the act of stealing them, but giving them out after you stole them is not illegal, because it is an act of speech. What we are dealing with here is a company trying to vanquish the speech of others for its own financial interests. I can understand why they're doing this - if they lose the ability to charge license fees for playing, duplicating, and producing content for DVD's, they will lose millions of dollars. However, that doesn't mean they are right.
The part I am the most upset about is the inability to produce independent content on DVD without getting a license. This makes it impractical for independent movie studios and recording studios to produce DVD's. I own part of a small recording studio. If I wanted to do music videos on DVD, for example, I would either have to pay astronomical fees to a licensed duplicator, or fill out mountains of paperwork and sign away my free speech on this issue. The first I don't have the resources to do, and the second I refuse to do.
If the DVD-CCA wins this case, the same conditions will apply to playback. To get a license to produce a player, you have to sign away your rights to free speech on this issue, which is against everything I believe in.
However, even if we lose based on the Xing License Agreement issue, we can start over with a cleanroom implementation. We can write a program to do a distributed brute force, much like the RSA/DSA distributed.net project. If they argue about HOW we did it, all we have to do is do it again with different people and clean reverse engineering. Then when they sue us again, we can go back and fight for our rights some more.
On some FIC motherboards (which I assume is what you're talking about), the floppy drive was disabled in the BIOS by default. There is two options you need to change in the setup program to enable it. With about 30 seconds, and a little knowledge, you probably would have been able to keep the motherboard you already had.
I admit this is kinda stupid. But it's not a quality program. It's just the defaults they selected in the setup program. And the person you bought the board from should have been smart enough to tell you that. But if you want to blame the chipset manufacturer, you're welcome to.
200 Mhz K6-2's never WERE on the market. The K6-2 started with 300. The K6 was available from 166-300, but was replaced fairly quickly by the K6-2 at 300, 333, and 350.
I think the 200 Mhz K6-2 must be a typo. I think these are actually 450 Mhz K6-2's.
The reason they switched from part numbers to names is because part numbers can't be trademarked. They got tired of all their competitors making "486" processors. They even make sure the name is original, so that they can assure a trademark. However, I don't think it has really made a difference in the market.
I agree. This is pure anti-competitive bullshit. Intel has never actually proven any IP violations by VIA, so they have no legitimate cause for banning import. I think the motivation for this could be that VIA is the main third party manufacturer for Athlon chipsets, as well as 133 Mhz Aluminummine chipsets. Intel likes to have a stranglehold on the high end of the market. If they can't win by competing fairly, they just try to cut off the supply of competitors' products.
If you troll with your real ID, maybe we'll all chip in and get you a fishing pole. I bet Rob is numb to you by now, so I'm not sure if you just do this to irritate everybody, or whether you're just bored. Anyhow...
The effect of the cache depends mostly on the application you are running. Some applications will benefit more from higher megahertz, others will benefit more from a faster clock rate. With an overclocking card, you can actually go from one state to the other fairly easily, depending on the application you are running. Some applications are more memory or cache dependent, others are more megahertz dependent. Also remember that the Athlon has 128K of L1 cache, and a damn good branch predictor, so on some apps the L2 cache may make very little difference.
Some other points:
1. This is not the first overclocking device of this type. There are a couple of others, the most prominent being one from Trinity Micro.
2. There is also a 2/5 cache divider option, which allows you to get to higher megahertz without going all the way to 1/3. Also, there is a way to set the divider in software, so you don't have to solder to change the divider. I think that is why AMD didn't give access to the cache divider on the "golden fingers" connector on the top of the processor. The program to do this is still not posted in a public spot on the net, as far as I know. "Soon"
3. The L2 cache is sometimes more than a little bit of a limitation. Let's suppose your processor only does 600 mhz at 1/2, but it does 900 mhz at 1/3. That's a 50% increase in megahertz, both ending with a 300 mhz cache, so in this case you would DEFINITELY be faster.
4. Athlons should soon have onboard cache, at full speed, so you won't need to do this. There is supposed to be a version of this with up to 2 megabytes of cache, called the Mustang, or "Athlon Ultra". This chip should kick some serious ass.
The Honeywell mouse that existed long ago also tracked on any surface. It did not have a ball, but had two little "feet" with optical sensors in them. I don't think it was far behind the MS optical mouse as far as tachnology.
It was actually an Obi Wan Kinobi (sic) costume. I think a pirate costume, with a sign that says "I'm a developer, not a pirate", would be interesting.
If I was moderating, I would have called that "funny" instead of "troll", but anyhow. I probably deserve a -1 for bitching about moderation.
They weren't the first with an Ergonomic Keyboard or the Optical Mouse. The ergonomic keyboard was around way before Micosoft had one, and Honeywell had an optical mouse about 5 years ago. I think someone else also had a PC phone doohickey.
Now the paper clip guy, I'll give them credit for. But all I do is close him first chance I get. If I'm forced to use MSOffice in the first place.
Just as a note, Honeywell had an optical mouse about 5 years ago. I think people tend to give Microsoft credit for inventing this. I admit that Honeywell never had much market share - I'm not even sure if they make mice anymore. But they had it first.
One person's vileness is another person's humor. I thought that was the funniest damn comment I've read all day. But I guess you're entitled to your opinion, as well.
I'm not sure if this really has anything to do with Y2K, or if it's just general lip service PR by our beloved (sarcasm) president.
I think maybe the reason we "hired out" much of the Y2K work, is simply because there's a lot of technical people that didn't WANT to work on Y2K issues. We are already doing things that are probably a lot more fun. Just my personal opinion, though.
Of course, as an individual, you can choose NOT to invest in a mutual fund with Microsoft, and NOT to buy Microsoft stock. I have personally made both of these choices and I still say fuckem.
If a large corporation decides to steal your idea, and say it was theirs in the first place, a patent will not protect you. "Prior Art" invalidates any patent. You make it sound like getting a patent is the end all of legal protection for your product. This is not true. You not only have to get the patent, you also have to protect it.
I disagree with your take on software patents. If I invented some sort of compression or encryption algorithm, which I may actually do, I believe that I should seek my rewards from patenting it, but from having a complete, quality product that has value in its own right, outside just the underlying algorithm. I don't have to think of software development as "another point of view", because that's really what I do for a living. Most of what I write is either internal software, with its own inherent value, or is open source. And I don't have a problem affording pizza.
The problem with patents, however, is that they protect your product not only from reverse engineering, but simultaneous or independent development. That is the inherent problem with patents, especially software patents. If I invent something independently, I have to check for a patent to see if anyone else has "dibs" on the idea. That is why I think patents are bad for the software industry, and any other industry where an idea is just a small part of a much larger product.
On a separate note, drug patents have their own unique problems. It is very common for drug companies to create a chemically patentable product when an herbal or natural alternative is already available. These products often have side effects the original natual remedy did not. The financial rewards of drug patents provide much of the motivation for the "drug war". Even the education of our doctors often has a base in the latest greatest patents rather than long term health of patients. Also, the herbal or natural alternative would often be cheaper for the patient than the patented chemical product. So for drug companies, patents are great. But for the patient trying to get well, they are often a really Bad Thing.
In short, patents are rewarding for a few, but bad for most.
I'm in the same boat. I have 2 DVD players, but my VCR is broken, and I do not have immediate plans to fix it. I probably won't buy too many VHS tapes anytime in the future. Every movie I have bought or rented in the last few months is on DVD. Basically what it comes down to is - any chance that I would have gotten this is now zero. I thought the character development sucked bad, but my three year old nephew is a Darth Maul freak, and I might have bought it just for the surround sound.
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The boards with the VIA KX-133 chipset, which does 133mhz RAM and AGP 4x, are hitting the market this week. You can get them in Japan now, but they may take a few weeks to make it to the states. They are a 4 layer design, so they will actually be cheaper in the long run than the Fester style boards.
Also, the DDR chipsets should be coming out this summer, which will allow the RAM to run at 266 Mhz, which should be even better.
The fact that this program exists for Windows has nothing to do with the playback issue. We should have a right to play back DVD's without a license, regardless of the operating system. What if I want to write an open source player for my Windows box? Or what if I want to dual boot and use the same player on both sides? Do I have any less right to write a rightfully written player under Windows than Linux? The issue here is that source code is free speech, and that we have the right to view the things we own, regardless of whether it's Linux, Windows, Macintosh, BSD, or Bob's Quick and Dirty Operating System (that Bob wrote for himself and his friends).
If I stole a dozen credit card numbers, and published the numbers on the web, I can't claim a right to do so based on the right to free speech.
I'm not implying you should go do this, but actually this is speech. This is what we're ultimately fighting here - the inalienable rights of free-thinking entities in the universe, versus the financial interests of our social system. I personally don't believe in "imaginary" money, such as credit cards, etc. I personally choose not to use them. Telling someone your credit card number, or someone elses, is an act of speech, just like any other kind of speech. However, the act of stealing them in the first place is not. In other words, you could be punished for the act of stealing them, but giving them out after you stole them is not illegal, because it is an act of speech.
What we are dealing with here is a company trying to vanquish the speech of others for its own financial interests. I can understand why they're doing this - if they lose the ability to charge license fees for playing, duplicating, and producing content for DVD's, they will lose millions of dollars. However, that doesn't mean they are right.
The part I am the most upset about is the inability to produce independent content on DVD without getting a license. This makes it impractical for independent movie studios and recording studios to produce DVD's. I own part of a small recording studio. If I wanted to do music videos on DVD, for example, I would either have to pay astronomical fees to a licensed duplicator, or fill out mountains of paperwork and sign away my free speech on this issue. The first I don't have the resources to do, and the second I refuse to do.
If the DVD-CCA wins this case, the same conditions will apply to playback. To get a license to produce a player, you have to sign away your rights to free speech on this issue, which is against everything I believe in.
However, even if we lose based on the Xing License Agreement issue, we can start over with a cleanroom implementation. We can write a program to do a distributed brute force, much like the RSA/DSA distributed.net project. If they argue about HOW we did it, all we have to do is do it again with different people and clean reverse engineering. Then when they sue us again, we can go back and fight for our rights some more.
Melinda Gates: Honey, when I said we needed to buy China, I meant dishes.
K6-2/450's are 100 Mhz bus. Other than that, your post sounds accurate.
On some FIC motherboards (which I assume is what you're talking about), the floppy drive was disabled in the BIOS by default. There is two options you need to change in the setup program to enable it. With about 30 seconds, and a little knowledge, you probably would have been able to keep the motherboard you already had.
I admit this is kinda stupid. But it's not a quality program. It's just the defaults they selected in the setup program. And the person you bought the board from should have been smart enough to tell you that. But if you want to blame the chipset manufacturer, you're welcome to.
200 Mhz K6-2's never WERE on the market. The K6-2 started with 300. The K6 was available from 166-300, but was replaced fairly quickly by the K6-2 at 300, 333, and 350.
I think the 200 Mhz K6-2 must be a typo. I think these are actually 450 Mhz K6-2's.
It probably doesn't do SMP. For the details they've released, look here:
http://www.viatech.com/products/cyrjoshprev.htm
The reason they switched from part numbers to names is because part numbers can't be trademarked. They got tired of all their competitors making "486" processors. They even make sure the name is original, so that they can assure a trademark. However, I don't think it has really made a difference in the market.
I agree. This is pure anti-competitive bullshit. Intel has never actually proven any IP violations by VIA, so they have no legitimate cause for banning import. I think the motivation for this could be that VIA is the main third party manufacturer for Athlon chipsets, as well as 133 Mhz Aluminummine chipsets. Intel likes to have a stranglehold on the high end of the market. If they can't win by competing fairly, they just try to cut off the supply of competitors' products.
If you troll with your real ID, maybe we'll all chip in and get you a fishing pole. I bet Rob is numb to you by now, so I'm not sure if you just do this to irritate everybody, or whether you're just bored. Anyhow...
The effect of the cache depends mostly on the application you are running. Some applications will benefit more from higher megahertz, others will benefit more from a faster clock rate. With an overclocking card, you can actually go from one state to the other fairly easily, depending on the application you are running. Some applications are more memory or cache dependent, others are more megahertz dependent. Also remember that the Athlon has 128K of L1 cache, and a damn good branch predictor, so on some apps the L2 cache may make very little difference.
Some other points:
1. This is not the first overclocking device of this type. There are a couple of others, the most prominent being one from Trinity Micro.
2. There is also a 2/5 cache divider option, which allows you to get to higher megahertz without going all the way to 1/3. Also, there is a way to set the divider in software, so you don't have to solder to change the divider. I think that is why AMD didn't give access to the cache divider on the "golden fingers" connector on the top of the processor. The program to do this is still not posted in a public spot on the net, as far as I know. "Soon"
3. The L2 cache is sometimes more than a little bit of a limitation. Let's suppose your processor only does 600 mhz at 1/2, but it does 900 mhz at 1/3. That's a 50% increase in megahertz, both ending with a 300 mhz cache, so in this case you would DEFINITELY be faster.
4. Athlons should soon have onboard cache, at full speed, so you won't need to do this. There is supposed to be a version of this with up to 2 megabytes of cache, called the Mustang, or "Athlon Ultra". This chip should kick some serious ass.
We also need "ModerationWhiner -1", for people that make comments about nothing but moderation. I think it's better if it's a little more transparent.
The Honeywell mouse that existed long ago also tracked on any surface. It did not have a ball, but had two little "feet" with optical sensors in them. I don't think it was far behind the MS optical mouse as far as tachnology.
It was actually an Obi Wan Kinobi (sic) costume. I think a pirate costume, with a sign that says "I'm a developer, not a pirate", would be interesting.
If I was moderating, I would have called that "funny" instead of "troll", but anyhow. I probably deserve a -1 for bitching about moderation.
They weren't the first with an Ergonomic Keyboard or the Optical Mouse. The ergonomic keyboard was around way before Micosoft had one, and Honeywell had an optical mouse about 5 years ago. I think someone else also had a PC phone doohickey.
Now the paper clip guy, I'll give them credit for. But all I do is close him first chance I get. If I'm forced to use MSOffice in the first place.
Just as a note, Honeywell had an optical mouse about 5 years ago. I think people tend to give Microsoft credit for inventing this. I admit that Honeywell never had much market share - I'm not even sure if they make mice anymore. But they had it first.
50 Million votes would be 20% of 250,000,000. 5% would be 12.5 Million.
But I don't disagree with your overall point. Peace.
One person's vileness is another person's humor. I thought that was the funniest damn comment I've read all day. But I guess you're entitled to your opinion, as well.
Point 1: Sorry, you're tenth. neener neener.
Point 2: By having FIRST POST as your subject, and not posting anonymously, you'll probably lose karma. Neener Neener.
Point 3: For being a smartass, I probably will too. Neener, neener.
I'm not sure if this really has anything to do with Y2K, or if it's just general lip service PR by our beloved (sarcasm) president.
I think maybe the reason we "hired out" much of the Y2K work, is simply because there's a lot of technical people that didn't WANT to work on Y2K issues. We are already doing things that are probably a lot more fun. Just my personal opinion, though.
Of course, as an individual, you can choose NOT to invest in a mutual fund with Microsoft, and NOT to buy Microsoft stock. I have personally made both of these choices and I still say fuckem.
If a large corporation decides to steal your idea, and say it was theirs in the first place, a patent will not protect you. "Prior Art" invalidates any patent. You make it sound like getting a patent is the end all of legal protection for your product. This is not true. You not only have to get the patent, you also have to protect it.
I disagree with your take on software patents. If I invented some sort of compression or encryption algorithm, which I may actually do, I believe that I should seek my rewards from patenting it, but from having a complete, quality product that has value in its own right, outside just the underlying algorithm. I don't have to think of software development as "another point of view", because that's really what I do for a living. Most of what I write is either internal software, with its own inherent value, or is open source. And I don't have a problem affording pizza.
The problem with patents, however, is that they protect your product not only from reverse engineering, but simultaneous or independent development. That is the inherent problem with patents, especially software patents. If I invent something independently, I have to check for a patent to see if anyone else has "dibs" on the idea. That is why I think patents are bad for the software industry, and any other industry where an idea is just a small part of a much larger product.
On a separate note, drug patents have their own unique problems. It is very common for drug companies to create a chemically patentable product when an herbal or natural alternative is already available. These products often have side effects the original natual remedy did not. The financial rewards of drug patents provide much of the motivation for the "drug war". Even the education of our doctors often has a base in the latest greatest patents rather than long term health of patients. Also, the herbal or natural alternative would often be cheaper for the patient than the patented chemical product. So for drug companies, patents are great. But for the patient trying to get well, they are often a really Bad Thing.
In short, patents are rewarding for a few, but bad for most.
I'm in the same boat. I have 2 DVD players, but my VCR is broken, and I do not have immediate plans to fix it. I probably won't buy too many VHS tapes anytime in the future. Every movie I have bought or rented in the last few months is on DVD.
Basically what it comes down to is - any chance that I would have gotten this is now zero. I thought the character development sucked bad, but my three year old nephew is a Darth Maul freak, and I might have bought it just for the surround sound.