I had been using DriveImage 2002 (6.0) and liked it, except for the need to reboot to do the imaging. Acronis TrueImage solved that problem, and I bought it, but it has a fatal (to me) flaw - no ability (or at least when I bought it) to schedule backups - you had to do it manually. Also, TrueImage has very few options.
A few weeks later, DriveImage 7 came out and I am quite happy with it. It does online, unattended backups AND has a wonderful feature for me - a "keep at most N copies" setting if you're backing up to another disk (as I am). I can also set up different schedules for different combinations of partitions.
I have saved and restored XP systems using DriveImage, including one it burned to multiple CD-ROMs with a self-loading restore program included, and it worked just fine.
I do wonder what will happen to DriveImage in the future, but today, it is my solution of choice for this category.
Why is VLIW not more popular? Because compiler technology isn't yet good enough and current VLIW designs have restrictions that get in the way of the best performance.
Over the years, there have been many attempts to use techniques such as VLIW, which sound great on paper, but don't do well in practice. What have worked the best, at least through the 90s, are architectures that do a lot of simple things fast.
You can make VLIW fast, Intel has managed that, but at great cost in both silicon and software.
Be careful when making generalizations about a processor line such as the P4 - there have been quite a few P4 generations, each better than the last. Latencies have gone down.
I think that parallelism (eg. HyperThreading, multicore, etc.) is where the real-world performance gains will come from. Single-threaded benchmarks don't accurately reflect realistic workloads.
Yes, the Bureau of Engraving and Printing has supplied test samples to the makers of recognition devices so that they can update as needed. Current models are software-updateable, but it will be a bit of a pain regardless. There are quite a few machines which accept $20s - I've seen them in Post Offices and at laundromats!
Disclaimer: I work for Intel (in an area having nothing whatsoever to do with Vanderpool), but the comments here are my own personal opinion. That said...
I saw a demo of Vanderpool at Intel Developer Forum last month. In the demo, the system with a single processor was simultaneously running some version of Windows playing a media clip (a Simpsons episode) while at the same time on another monitor, another copy of Windows was running and was rebooted in order to update a device driver. The video clip played on.
My take on this (having never heard of it before I saw the IDF demo) was some sort of hardware-assisted VM. It is definitely nothing to do with multicore, as another Intel compatriot noted here.
You can read the transcript of Paul Otellini's Keynote where he presented Vanderpool at http://www.intel.com/idf/us/fall2003/conf_info/key notespeakers.htm#tuesday
I don't know if there were specific presentations on Vanderpool Technology at IDF - if there were, you'll be able to find them at http://www.intel.com/idf/us/fall2003/index.htm after November 2.
no 320x320 resultion (need it to use as an ebook reader)
quite heavy
no bluetooth?
Perhaps you would be interested in a Palm Tungsten W, then. It has 320x320, isn't really heavy, and Bluetooth can be added (an aftermarket retrofit puts it inside. The same site offers to intergrate a microphone and speaker, or one can use an "audio flip cover" available from palm.com.)
I have the Tungsten W, and while I can think of various things I'd like to see changed, overall it's a pretty good PDA with phone product, as compared to the Treo which is a phone that's secondarily a PDA.
There's a lot to like about the Tungsten W, not the least of which is its incredible battery life. One drawback is that US domestic models are locked to the AT&T service, but you can buy unlocked models meant for use elsewhere. It's a tri-band GSM phone with fast GPRS.
I don't see how validating the received chain helps. That will detect forged headers, but not a forged From address, which is what the viruses do. There is no way to reliably detect a forged From address by looking at the headers.
Consider - I, and a lot of you too, I'm sure - routinely send out e-mail with a From address that has a domain unrelated to that of the outgoing SMTP server we are using. How can you tell the difference between such messages and those forged by viruses?
I think what happened was that Amazon.com jumped the gun and put Firefly up on their store for pre-order before getting official word from the distributor. Not sure how that happened, but I note that none of the other online DVD sources I checked had any mention of it at all.
So amazon collected some pre-orders, and then had to backtrack a bit, resulting in the strange message.
This is, of course, just my theory, which is mine.
Yes, you should give it a chance. I am not familiar with the other shows you mention, but Firefly is definitely worthwhile on its own. Depending on when you caught it, a first impression could well be negative - it didn't help that they took one of the weakest episodes and showed it first. But watch two or three of the episodes, especially if you start with the real pilot ("Serenity"), and you may become as enthusiastic about it as I am.
Most "Series 1" standalone TiVos can be used manually without a subscription. The DirecTV combo boxes and "Series 2" boxes require a subscription for recording, though for the combo boxes, the subscription is only $4.95/month per account, or free if you have the high-end programming package.
Hacking has nothing to do with this aspect of TiVo.
Intuit's solution may or may not have been draconian, but it wasn't destructive except in the overactive imagination of some people. Intuit's biggest mistake was in not properly communicating what they had done. I have to assume Symantec has learned from Intuit's mistakes and has set out procedures to avoid them.
It would appear that few here have bothered to go look at Symantec's web site to see what they have to say about activation. Some of the things people have complained about, based solely on reading the Slashdot blurb, have no basis.
Interesting points are:
You get 15 days after first install to activate
You can activate over the phone
You can transfer to an upgraded or new PC without repurchase
As a commercial software developer myself, I can understand why Symantec is doing this, though I too am amused at the "for your protection" approach that is so common. I also see activation is becoming more common (PowerQuest's new DriveImage 7 has it too), especially in products that people tend to buy once and install on multiple systems.
If formal and informal piracy wasn't so pandemic, such things would not be necessary. But it seems so many people believe that it's their RIGHT to steal software (or music), if they don't feel like paying for it. I know this is heresy for Slashdot, but there it is....
The creator of that little gem was Dick Hustvedt, a brilliant engineer with a wicked sense of humor. He was one of the inventors of VAXclusters, as well as of the SD730 Solar Horologue Option - see end of this post.
When in the VMS SYSGEN utility, and you asked for a list of the parameters, the list included the units. The TIMEPROMPTWAIT parameter was unusual in that values in one range did one thing, while values in another range did something else. Dick wanted to encourage users to go read the manual for the full explanation, so he had the units listed as microfortnights, hoping that puzzled readers would go search out the details.
Sadly, Dick suffered severe brain injury in a car accident many years ago, and was unable to return to work. We named a conference room in his honor at the Nashua, NH facility where VMS engineering lives, and if you visit it, you can see the prototype SD730, which was introduced as an April Fools joke one year. Here's the text from the "Product Information Sheet" for the SD730.
VAX-11/730
SD730 Fixed Head Solar Horologue
Overview
The SD730 is an option for the VAX-11/730(TM) that provides an inexpensive solution to the problem of setting system time correctly following a power failure. An astronomical reference is used to assure accuracy. Reliability is assured by the simple, elegant design which employs well-proven technology.
Description
The SD730 is a gnomonic high noon detector that provides a simple, but elegant solution to the problem of setting system time correctly following a power failure. This option is particularly valuable for processors lacking battery backup for their time-of-year (TOY) clock.
Highlights
- Gnomonic interference high noon detector - High accuracy assured by low-drift astronomical reference - Connects to existing DR-11C port on VAX-11/730 - Proprietary high-moon rejection design - Offline mode for standalone time measurement - User installable and maintainable - Reliability assured by minimal component count and proven technology - Heavy duty construction resists solar wind - Anti-corrosion coating prevents gnomonic plague
Description
The SD730 provides a single bit of data via the DR-11C port of the VAX-11/730 that encodes all of its sensory information. Decoding is accomplished by measuring the on/off intervals of this sensor channel. Derivation of the time and date is accomplished by the SD730 Shadow Processing Support Software.
Accurate high-noon sensing is obtained by measuring the solar transit time and computing the midpoint. This algorithm also corrects for variations in gnomon width, latitude and season. In the event that a cloudless night permits a high full moon to be seen, it will be differentiated from an authentic high noon by comparing observed transit time against a reference solar transit time.
Within 24 hours following power restoration, the SD730 driver software will restore the correct system time.
Power outages in excess of 24 hours can be accomodated once a reference year has been accumulated. Day length, solar transit time and their rates of change are used to recognize the day within the year.
Installation
The SD730 is user installable and comes complete with an installation kit consisting of a lensatic compass. All software is self-installing and self-calibrating. The only requirement is that system time be set correctly and that at least one clear day be allowed for self calibration.
The SD730 will not operate reliably when installed at latitudes greater than 60 degrees.
Maintenance
While the SD730 is simple and reliable, some environments may necessitate periodic cleaning of the gnomon and photo-detector. Although the gnomon shields the photo-detector from debris, this may not be sufficient for particularly hazardous locations subject to overflights by large flocks of migratory birds. To assist in problem detection, error log entries will b
MIT Technology Review did a nice article on the development of LED replacements for light bulbs in the May 2003 issue. However, you need to be a paid subscriber to read this online.
The article focuses on the often secretive research going on at competing companies to develop a cost-effective white LED, which is needed to replace general illumination. Most white LEDs today are actually UV emitters with a white phosphor, reducing the efficiency. The other standard approach is to have red, green and blue LEDs together with a diffuser.
The Pilot Pen company sued Palm (then 3Com or was it US Robotics at the time?) for trademark infringement - and the agreement was that the name "Pilot" would not be used for the PDAs.
I'll keep calling my Tungsten-W a "Palm" (though my wife refers to it as "your nag".)
The initial list is said to be restricted to UNIX variants that are certified UNIX98 compliant. I have no clue whether or not IRIX meets that requirement for inclusion.
The standard logging TiVo does is just remote button presses. Thumbs data and season passes wouldn't be a part of this in general. I do know that TiVo has, in the past, release data on which new shows had been most often added to Season Passes, but I don't know if they got this from button press logging or actually looking at the SP list. My guess is the button press log.
A few months ago, TiVo enabled, on an invite-only and opt-in basis, the ability to collect individual data for use with Nielsen monitoring.
Actually, your TiVo is on all the time - it doesn't know whether or not the TV is on.
So to be useful, they need to ignore information about units where no remote button has been pressed in some period of time (perhaps the 30 minutes it uses now to decide whether or not to ask you about recording suggestions.) Since the typical TiVo user DOES use the remote (to skip ads, if nothing else), this should work fairly well.
How many of you are aware that you can pay Slashdot to stop serving you ads? I do this - I consider it an enlightened balance between the need to pay the bills and my desire to not see the annoying ads.
Over the past couple of days I've had an exchange with a guy who runs a web site for owners of a particular marque of cars (which includes me). The site is full of banner ads, both at the top of the screen and down the sides. I run Norton Internet Security at home which blocks all of these.
The site is sponsored by a number of companies, and I went to the page listing the sponsors as I wanted to visit some of them. But all I saw were text descriptions of some of the sponsors, no links. Hmm. So I send the site owner mail, asking that these be made text links, and when he realizes I'm using an ad blocker, he flies off the handle accusing me of stealing his service and violating his terms of use (which are not published anywhere you can find them.) He threatened to block me from the site if I used an ad blocker (he has scripts that test for this and log IP addresses.)
I explain to him that I do support the site, in fact I had just bought a $25 classified ad there, and wanted to patronize his sponsors. I also mentioned how other sites handled this, through ordinary donations or selling a "no ad" service, such as Slashdot. I even volunteered to make a donation in lieu of viewing ads and did so. (One site I visit a lot asked for donations towards a new server and raised some $5000 that way!)
Nevertheless, he persisted in saying that I was trying to "pay selectively" for his service, and he didn't accept my view that he had offered a service freely and then got annoyed when people skipped the ads. I asked if he read every ad in his newspaper or ever fast-forwarded through ads on TV shows. (FWIW, I'm an avid TiVo user!)
In the end, he "thanked" me for my "brilliant" insights and said that the site would survive despite me. Sigh. I was trying to be constructive...
I understand the need for ads to pay the bills, but making them annoying and intrusive is counterproductive - I'll either find a way to block them or I'll go elsewhere. There are sites I've stopped visiting because the ads are so annoying. I am willing to pay for content or service I find valuable, if I'm offered a chance to do so.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, a full version of DriveImage 2002 comes with DI7, as DI7 doesn't support older versions of Windows.
I had been using DriveImage 2002 (6.0) and liked it, except for the need to reboot to do the imaging. Acronis TrueImage solved that problem, and I bought it, but it has a fatal (to me) flaw - no ability (or at least when I bought it) to schedule backups - you had to do it manually. Also, TrueImage has very few options.
A few weeks later, DriveImage 7 came out and I am quite happy with it. It does online, unattended backups AND has a wonderful feature for me - a "keep at most N copies" setting if you're backing up to another disk (as I am). I can also set up different schedules for different combinations of partitions.
I have saved and restored XP systems using DriveImage, including one it burned to multiple CD-ROMs with a self-loading restore program included, and it worked just fine.
I do wonder what will happen to DriveImage in the future, but today, it is my solution of choice for this category.
You're not wrong. Macromedia and Macrovision are entirely separate and distinct companies.
Why is VLIW not more popular? Because compiler technology isn't yet good enough and current VLIW designs have restrictions that get in the way of the best performance.
Over the years, there have been many attempts to use techniques such as VLIW, which sound great on paper, but don't do well in practice. What have worked the best, at least through the 90s, are architectures that do a lot of simple things fast.
You can make VLIW fast, Intel has managed that, but at great cost in both silicon and software.
Be careful when making generalizations about a processor line such as the P4 - there have been quite a few P4 generations, each better than the last. Latencies have gone down.
I think that parallelism (eg. HyperThreading, multicore, etc.) is where the real-world performance gains will come from. Single-threaded benchmarks don't accurately reflect realistic workloads.
Yes, the Bureau of Engraving and Printing has supplied test samples to the makers of recognition devices so that they can update as needed. Current models are software-updateable, but it will be a bit of a pain regardless. There are quite a few machines which accept $20s - I've seen them in Post Offices and at laundromats!
Disclaimer: I work for Intel (in an area having nothing whatsoever to do with Vanderpool), but the comments here are my own personal opinion. That said...
y notespeakers.htm#tuesday
I saw a demo of Vanderpool at Intel Developer Forum last month. In the demo, the system with a single processor was simultaneously running some version of Windows playing a media clip (a Simpsons episode) while at the same time on another monitor, another copy of Windows was running and was rebooted in order to update a device driver. The video clip played on.
My take on this (having never heard of it before I saw the IDF demo) was some sort of hardware-assisted VM. It is definitely nothing to do with multicore, as another Intel compatriot noted here.
You can read the transcript of Paul Otellini's Keynote where he presented Vanderpool at http://www.intel.com/idf/us/fall2003/conf_info/ke
I don't know if there were specific presentations on Vanderpool Technology at IDF - if there were, you'll be able to find them at http://www.intel.com/idf/us/fall2003/index.htm after November 2.
I was looking forward to it, but:
Perhaps you would be interested in a Palm Tungsten W, then. It has 320x320, isn't really heavy, and Bluetooth can be added (an aftermarket retrofit puts it inside. The same site offers to intergrate a microphone and speaker, or one can use an "audio flip cover" available from palm.com.)
I have the Tungsten W, and while I can think of various things I'd like to see changed, overall it's a pretty good PDA with phone product, as compared to the Treo which is a phone that's secondarily a PDA.
There's a lot to like about the Tungsten W, not the least of which is its incredible battery life. One drawback is that US domestic models are locked to the AT&T service, but you can buy unlocked models meant for use elsewhere. It's a tri-band GSM phone with fast GPRS.
I don't see how validating the received chain helps. That will detect forged headers, but not a forged From address, which is what the viruses do. There is no way to reliably detect a forged From address by looking at the headers.
Consider - I, and a lot of you too, I'm sure - routinely send out e-mail with a From address that has a domain unrelated to that of the outgoing SMTP server we are using. How can you tell the difference between such messages and those forged by viruses?
I think what happened was that Amazon.com jumped the gun and put Firefly up on their store for pre-order before getting official word from the distributor. Not sure how that happened, but I note that none of the other online DVD sources I checked had any mention of it at all.
So amazon collected some pre-orders, and then had to backtrack a bit, resulting in the strange message.
This is, of course, just my theory, which is mine.
...was it's Friday night time slot.
Oh, was that when it was on? I have no clue when shows are on anymore, I have TiVo!
Yes, you should give it a chance. I am not familiar with the other shows you mention, but Firefly is definitely worthwhile on its own. Depending on when you caught it, a first impression could well be negative - it didn't help that they took one of the weakest episodes and showed it first. But watch two or three of the episodes, especially if you start with the real pilot ("Serenity"), and you may become as enthusiastic about it as I am.
Most "Series 1" standalone TiVos can be used manually without a subscription. The DirecTV combo boxes and "Series 2" boxes require a subscription for recording, though for the combo boxes, the subscription is only $4.95/month per account, or free if you have the high-end programming package.
Hacking has nothing to do with this aspect of TiVo.
Intuit's solution may or may not have been draconian, but it wasn't destructive except in the overactive imagination of some people. Intuit's biggest mistake was in not properly communicating what they had done. I have to assume Symantec has learned from Intuit's mistakes and has set out procedures to avoid them.
It would appear that few here have bothered to go look at Symantec's web site to see what they have to say about activation. Some of the things people have complained about, based solely on reading the Slashdot blurb, have no basis.
Interesting points are:
As a commercial software developer myself, I can understand why Symantec is doing this, though I too am amused at the "for your protection" approach that is so common. I also see activation is becoming more common (PowerQuest's new DriveImage 7 has it too), especially in products that people tend to buy once and install on multiple systems.
If formal and informal piracy wasn't so pandemic, such things would not be necessary. But it seems so many people believe that it's their RIGHT to steal software (or music), if they don't feel like paying for it. I know this is heresy for Slashdot, but there it is....
The creator of that little gem was Dick Hustvedt, a brilliant engineer with a wicked sense of humor. He was one of the inventors of VAXclusters, as well as of the SD730 Solar Horologue Option - see end of this post.
When in the VMS SYSGEN utility, and you asked for a list of the parameters, the list included the units. The TIMEPROMPTWAIT parameter was unusual in that values in one range did one thing, while values in another range did something else. Dick wanted to encourage users to go read the manual for the full explanation, so he had the units listed as microfortnights, hoping that puzzled readers would go search out the details.
Sadly, Dick suffered severe brain injury in a car accident many years ago, and was unable to return to work. We named a conference room in his honor at the Nashua, NH facility where VMS engineering lives, and if you visit it, you can see the prototype SD730, which was introduced as an April Fools joke one year. Here's the text from the "Product Information Sheet" for the SD730.
VAX-11/730
SD730 Fixed Head Solar Horologue
Overview
The SD730 is an option for the VAX-11/730(TM) that provides an inexpensive solution to the problem of setting system time correctly following a power failure. An astronomical reference is used to assure accuracy. Reliability is assured by the simple, elegant design which employs well-proven technology.
Description
The SD730 is a gnomonic high noon detector that provides a simple, but elegant solution to the problem of setting system time correctly following a power failure. This option is particularly valuable for processors lacking battery backup for their time-of-year (TOY) clock.
Highlights
- Gnomonic interference high noon detector
- High accuracy assured by low-drift astronomical reference
- Connects to existing DR-11C port on VAX-11/730
- Proprietary high-moon rejection design
- Offline mode for standalone time measurement
- User installable and maintainable
- Reliability assured by minimal component count and proven technology
- Heavy duty construction resists solar wind
- Anti-corrosion coating prevents gnomonic plague
Description
The SD730 provides a single bit of data via the DR-11C port of the VAX-11/730 that encodes all of its sensory information. Decoding is accomplished by measuring the on/off intervals of this sensor channel. Derivation of the time and date is accomplished by the SD730 Shadow Processing Support Software.
Accurate high-noon sensing is obtained by measuring the solar transit time and computing the midpoint. This algorithm also corrects for variations in gnomon width, latitude and season. In the event that a cloudless night permits a high full moon to be seen, it will be differentiated from an authentic high noon by comparing observed transit time against a reference solar transit time.
Within 24 hours following power restoration, the SD730 driver software will restore the correct system time.
Power outages in excess of 24 hours can be accomodated once a reference year has been accumulated. Day length, solar transit time and their rates of change are used to recognize the day within the year.
Installation
The SD730 is user installable and comes complete with an installation kit consisting of a lensatic compass. All software is self-installing and self-calibrating. The only requirement is that system time be set correctly and that at least one clear day be allowed for self calibration.
The SD730 will not operate reliably when installed at latitudes greater than 60 degrees.
Maintenance
While the SD730 is simple and reliable, some environments may necessitate periodic cleaning of the gnomon and photo-detector. Although the gnomon shields the photo-detector from debris, this may not be sufficient for particularly hazardous locations subject to overflights by large flocks of migratory birds. To assist in problem detection, error log entries will b
MIT Technology Review did a nice article on the development of LED replacements for light bulbs in the May 2003 issue. However, you need to be a paid subscriber to read this online.
The article focuses on the often secretive research going on at competing companies to develop a cost-effective white LED, which is needed to replace general illumination. Most white LEDs today are actually UV emitters with a white phosphor, reducing the efficiency. The other standard approach is to have red, green and blue LEDs together with a diffuser.
The Pilot Pen company sued Palm (then 3Com or was it US Robotics at the time?) for trademark infringement - and the agreement was that the name "Pilot" would not be used for the PDAs.
I'll keep calling my Tungsten-W a "Palm" (though my wife refers to it as "your nag".)
Not only that, but using any image of Albert Einstein for commercial purposes requires a license from the heirs of Einstein.
http://www.albert-einstein.org/contact3.html
The initial list is said to be restricted to UNIX variants that are certified UNIX98 compliant. I have no clue whether or not IRIX meets that requirement for inclusion.
It records standard DVDs playable anywhere a DVD-R/RW disc is accepted.
The standard logging TiVo does is just remote button presses. Thumbs data and season passes wouldn't be a part of this in general. I do know that TiVo has, in the past, release data on which new shows had been most often added to Season Passes, but I don't know if they got this from button press logging or actually looking at the SP list. My guess is the button press log.
A few months ago, TiVo enabled, on an invite-only and opt-in basis, the ability to collect individual data for use with Nielsen monitoring.
Actually, your TiVo is on all the time - it doesn't know whether or not the TV is on.
So to be useful, they need to ignore information about units where no remote button has been pressed in some period of time (perhaps the 30 minutes it uses now to decide whether or not to ask you about recording suggestions.) Since the typical TiVo user DOES use the remote (to skip ads, if nothing else), this should work fairly well.
How many of you are aware that you can pay Slashdot to stop serving you ads? I do this - I consider it an enlightened balance between the need to pay the bills and my desire to not see the annoying ads.
Over the past couple of days I've had an exchange with a guy who runs a web site for owners of a particular marque of cars (which includes me). The site is full of banner ads, both at the top of the screen and down the sides. I run Norton Internet Security at home which blocks all of these.
The site is sponsored by a number of companies, and I went to the page listing the sponsors as I wanted to visit some of them. But all I saw were text descriptions of some of the sponsors, no links. Hmm. So I send the site owner mail, asking that these be made text links, and when he realizes I'm using an ad blocker, he flies off the handle accusing me of stealing his service and violating his terms of use (which are not published anywhere you can find them.) He threatened to block me from the site if I used an ad blocker (he has scripts that test for this and log IP addresses.)
I explain to him that I do support the site, in fact I had just bought a $25 classified ad there, and wanted to patronize his sponsors. I also mentioned how other sites handled this, through ordinary donations or selling a "no ad" service, such as Slashdot. I even volunteered to make a donation in lieu of viewing ads and did so. (One site I visit a lot asked for donations towards a new server and raised some $5000 that way!)
Nevertheless, he persisted in saying that I was trying to "pay selectively" for his service, and he didn't accept my view that he had offered a service freely and then got annoyed when people skipped the ads. I asked if he read every ad in his newspaper or ever fast-forwarded through ads on TV shows. (FWIW, I'm an avid TiVo user!)
In the end, he "thanked" me for my "brilliant" insights and said that the site would survive despite me. Sigh. I was trying to be constructive...
I understand the need for ads to pay the bills, but making them annoying and intrusive is counterproductive - I'll either find a way to block them or I'll go elsewhere. There are sites I've stopped visiting because the ads are so annoying. I am willing to pay for content or service I find valuable, if I'm offered a chance to do so.
For the past several years, anyone can get a .org (or a .net). Nobody asks what kind of organization you are.
Yes - a wireless monitor.