For you, that's a drawback, and you're probably not their target market. perhaps a better designed case that completely folds open flat would help there!
Anyone know how many people (in the population as a whole) actually modify ANY part of the inside of their PC?
Here's a link to a google newsgroups search for all the mentions of Macintosh up until January 24 1984. It's all the same rumormongering that goes on before Apple's releases today, just shifted a fifth of a century back.
Some things don't change:)
Re:Other Mac Mod'ing Resource...
on
Upgrade Your eMac
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
If anyone wants to overclock an older mac (yes, way back into the 68k machines) take a look at http://homepage.mac.com/schrier/.
Case in point, my fiance used to suffer from terrible migrains. She tried cutting out caffeine with some success, but when she cut out corn syrup from her diet (a tough thing to do) The migraines went away.
I have to add my say here in a mildly offtopic way. It's more often than not the accepted medical viewpoint that caffeine is a bad bad thing for those who do suffer from migraines. After going through years of trying just about everything dietary from vegetarian to atkins, I found the simplest thing was to reserve caffeine as a cure. When a migraine is coming on, which is easily detectable by the light sensitivity, blind spots and auras in circular patterns for 20 minutes or so before pain starts, if I can get to strong caffeine, sugar and aspirin together in one hit, I'll be back to normal within another 40 minutes. Under an hour for something that used to linger for a day or more is WELL worth it. Mine are fewer now too, being many weeks apart, usually.
Strangely, it's difficult to convince others it's worth trying as the "caffeine is bad!" thing is so ingrained, but there's a few of us around who HAVE benefitted from using it well.
Now I'm not saying your fiance should be using caffeine instead of cutting down corn syrup, as obviously the corn syrup thing has worked wonders for her, but in the same manner as you searching for every little environmental extra was WELL worth doing. It took me perhaps 12 years to get to find my fix, and it's heaven (not to mention a lot more effective and cheaper than any migraine medication).
I think the entire Human Interface field is so completely different to the Early 80s, that it could be almost irrelevant in that form. Comparing a trashcan on desktop and a trashcan in the dock is getting a bit pedantic when both work, and to a new computer user they are both A Trashcan.
"Ahhh! That must be how you get rid of something!". That, and a trashcan with a 'full' or 'empty' look is as far as the "intuitive" level of an interface goes, all the rest is learned. As Steve jobs said in his MWSF keynote - "We had to teach people how to use a mouse". That was the time when initial UI intuitiveness was truly an absolute necessity, and what followed on from there was familiarity and consistency.
With children being taught how to use windowing systems, keyboards and mice from kindergarten (Age 3 or lower, if they're at home) the initial "intuitive" aspect of a UI is becoming less and less relevant, and for Joe Everydayuser, the most important part is consistency. After all, he's probably been using a computer of some kind for 10 years or more, probably 15.
> SCO is, in effect, attempting to use their claimed > copyright (unproven and untested) over linux's header > files as a way to say "If you use our UNIX, you may not > use Linux at all" because, in effect, all Linux contains the > code they allege is theirs.
They also mention the possibility of terminating their license to use SCO's product if you don't certify to them. They're forcing people to choose Unix or Linux, one or the other, not both.
Since Linux is far more popular and prevalent, I'm guessing there'll soon be a lot fewer UNIX licensees, with only those four people left who absolutely can't get by without their Unix
OK apart from the world's wishlist of "5GB iPod for $99", what's the reality of storage costs when it comes to RAM, flash RAM and HD?
presuming a 2GB low end model, with flash memory, what kind of price would that be?
And slightly off to the side, is the flash memory chips (the raw logic level itself) the same in Compact Flash as opposed to memory sticks, or SD or some such?
How about a HD? iPods started with 5GB drives, and now are up around 40. What's the cost for just one of the base base level drives? even IBM's microdrives?
I've seen a lot of theorising about this but not much in the way of reality to back it up. Even many arguments on Spymac were that the new iPod would be sub $99 with 5GB of flash memory. Is that even possible?
I remember back in the late 1980s listening to my parents and their disgust at commercial television stations now having up to THREE advertisements in ad spots, when before it was one, or maybe two on a slow night.
Now, on pay television and free to air, I'm seeing 8-12 advertisements in each slot, and massive amounts of the shows I watch being cut out. Last time I watched X-Files (only because I know it used to be 43 minutes per episode when first shown) the entire show was cut down to 35 minutes. that's eight minutes of the show I want to watch gone, and over 80 advertisements.
Now. What's the difference? What's so pricey nowadays that requires so many advertisements constantly?
Pricey reality television shows. blah.
Re:A better way to avoid this problem
on
Source Code Escrow
·
· Score: 4, Funny
Programmers don't need food. That's what Caffeine and Beer were invented for, to keep legions of coders alive.
The first project underway in BOINC is to have everybody's machine submit news about BOINC to slashdot, which is so far happening succesfully. This is the first dupe of many.
The sheet of plastic he used looked pre-drilled when it was being cut, but then suddenly it has the pattern of holes filled in around power/cd/usb ports. perhaps filling in the pre-cut standard sheeting was easier than doing it all manually.
It doesn't even seem "cool" at this point (beyond the obvious pun). Wasting hundreds of watts, taking up way too much room (extra-large form-factor, anyone?), needing a fork-lift to move it... How does any of that benefit the PC or user?
Some things have an upper limit to what still constitutes "bigger/better/faster/harder". This definitely crosses that line with regard to chip cooling techniques.
It's the fun of it - not just because anyone can go grab a refrigerator, pay for the price of running it, and get something like this done. But if you have a good grasp of engineering cooling systems, and a clue about how a PC works, hey why not combine the two. Two hobbies in one, twice the geekness.
I guess it's a bit like when the first D&D guy also became a computer guy and made the first RPG.
> I finally gave up "believing" in 2000 when I sold my > A4000/060 and bought a real machine.
I did the same in 2000. The world had just moved too far ahead, and despite having a fast PPC Amiga (well, relatively fast, compared to other Amigas!), I was working with machines that SO killed it in real speed, and realised how much time I spent serving the Amiga OS, instead of having it work for me. I'm still not at the bleeding edge, but a 1.2GHz computer with a modern OS I don't have to continually play with to keep working is heaven. I might wait for a new AmigaOS if I thought it'd be something special, but its presentation at recent roadshows haven't impressed me.
Anyone know much of the non x86 small machines or boards? I know of pegasosppc and their micro-ATX boards, and an upcoming (hopefully) AmigaOne that's a full G3 or G4 Mini-ITX board, and rumours of ARM Mini-ITX.
Any PPC Mini-ITX boards that won't be lumbered with Amiga licensing fees?
I worked in a print shop a few years ago, and people would bring in large.ppt documents to print
not as slides, mind, but they'd laid out BOOKS in powerpoint. Yes, blue shaded background in landscape mode and all, with large yellow text, they'd write a small booklet in powerpoint and come to us to have it printed in a professional looking booklet.
Of course they didn't want it to look like it did onscreen, they wanted it to look like any other novels.
Upper management were the worst, when they worked on something themselves, and would bring in a.ppt slide to be printed as a poster.
An embedded 72dpi powerpoint image does NOT scale up well at all to an A1 poster.
All other app users, from Quark XPress, pagemaker, acrobat, word, whatever... they knew what to expect and how to (generally) lay out a document, and when we'd have to do adjustments, they'd be relatively minor, but powerpoint people were bottom of the barrel.
Except for the guy who laid out all his print jobs in Frontpage. I think he was on acid.
Re:How does this help us, or Sun
on
Solaris 9 x86 Review
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
I'm genuinely interested as a bit of a *ix geek (netbsd, osx, linux, across x86, ppc and 68k platforms) - what does solaris offer? Whether on sparc or x86 I'm not fussed, but what's it's focus?
Always been curious, but never found a Sun person sit still long enough to grab them and get a good layman's answer:)
> a 400MHz machine with 64MB RAM, Win98, Office 2000, Photoshop 6
My sister works at a print house, and I pop in there from time to time. When it comes to photo editing and photoshop, there are still some fully decked out 1994 powermacs that do the job every bit as well as anything new. They have multiple decent-performing 2D graphics cards, gobs of RAM, and are used to for photomanipulation, a task that's often fairly light on CPU time but intensive on the skills of the operator. Not only that but repairs on those boxes cost the business a few dollars when things do break.
Wordprocessing could be seen as the same. Needs virtually no CPU time, but a good typist and writer can bring out far more on a 1980s wordprocessor than a moron on XP with Office 2010 (or whatever it's called now)
LCDs certainly have it on clarity. In the small patch of well-coloured screen on an LCD, It's beautiful. Crystal clear, font smoothing works well, and there's no LCD flicker. Problem is to me that usable area is about an 8" circle in the middle of the screen, with the corners quickly fading to such a dark inversed colour, I physically need to move my head to the corners of the screen to read a clock. That neckstrain is horrid compared to anything I've had on a CRT, and it's what makes me think that people don't see LCDs the same.
I guess it's like the flicker problem. I can get used to almost any screen from 70Hz up, except those around 79-80, which give me headaches in minutes.
As for the other weak points of LCDs like (on some) response time and being locked into just one resolution, those don't bother me. It's the extreme lack of consistent brightness across the field.
I've only just started looking at LCDs and need to know if anyone else sees them ALL looking like trash? I'm rarely up on new hardware tech, 3D stuff doesn't impress me and the ancient 17" CRT I have has done me well. However looking at several brands of LCDs I'm wondering whether I just see them different to other people, or if they truly only have one advantage, clarity. I've taken a look at the screens on Dell, Acer and Apple laptops, 15 & 17" screens from Dell Samsung and BenQ, and a few Apple Cinema Displays. I can only say I see the BEST of them as under a quarter the quality of even an average CRT. I couldn't see any reason to pay even HALF the price of a CRT for one, let alone MORE. Anyone else see LCDs like this, or are my eyes just plaine fucked?
Slashdot Mirror
For you, that's a drawback, and you're probably not their target market. perhaps a better designed case that completely folds open flat would help there!
Anyone know how many people (in the population as a whole) actually modify ANY part of the inside of their PC?
Here's a link to a google newsgroups search for all the mentions of Macintosh up until January 24 1984. It's all the same rumormongering that goes on before Apple's releases today, just shifted a fifth of a century back.
:)
Some things don't change
If anyone wants to overclock an older mac (yes, way back into the 68k machines) take a look at http://homepage.mac.com/schrier/.
Case in point, my fiance used to suffer from terrible migrains. She tried cutting out caffeine with some success, but when she cut out corn syrup from her diet (a tough thing to do) The migraines went away.
I have to add my say here in a mildly offtopic way. It's more often than not the accepted medical viewpoint that caffeine is a bad bad thing for those who do suffer from migraines. After going through years of trying just about everything dietary from vegetarian to atkins, I found the simplest thing was to reserve caffeine as a cure. When a migraine is coming on, which is easily detectable by the light sensitivity, blind spots and auras in circular patterns for 20 minutes or so before pain starts, if I can get to strong caffeine, sugar and aspirin together in one hit, I'll be back to normal within another 40 minutes. Under an hour for something that used to linger for a day or more is WELL worth it. Mine are fewer now too, being many weeks apart, usually.
Strangely, it's difficult to convince others it's worth trying as the "caffeine is bad!" thing is so ingrained, but there's a few of us around who HAVE benefitted from using it well.
Now I'm not saying your fiance should be using caffeine instead of cutting down corn syrup, as obviously the corn syrup thing has worked wonders for her, but in the same manner as you searching for every little environmental extra was WELL worth doing. It took me perhaps 12 years to get to find my fix, and it's heaven (not to mention a lot more effective and cheaper than any migraine medication).
I think the entire Human Interface field is so completely different to the Early 80s, that it could be almost irrelevant in that form. Comparing a trashcan on desktop and a trashcan in the dock is getting a bit pedantic when both work, and to a new computer user they are both A Trashcan.
"Ahhh! That must be how you get rid of something!". That, and a trashcan with a 'full' or 'empty' look is as far as the "intuitive" level of an interface goes, all the rest is learned. As Steve jobs said in his MWSF keynote - "We had to teach people how to use a mouse". That was the time when initial UI intuitiveness was truly an absolute necessity, and what followed on from there was familiarity and consistency.
With children being taught how to use windowing systems, keyboards and mice from kindergarten (Age 3 or lower, if they're at home) the initial "intuitive" aspect of a UI is becoming less and less relevant, and for Joe Everydayuser, the most important part is consistency. After all, he's probably been using a computer of some kind for 10 years or more, probably 15.
Yes. Almost. Pamela Jones.
:)
Close enough
> SCO is, in effect, attempting to use their claimed
> copyright (unproven and untested) over linux's header
> files as a way to say "If you use our UNIX, you may not
> use Linux at all" because, in effect, all Linux contains the
> code they allege is theirs.
They also mention the possibility of terminating their license to use SCO's product if you don't certify to them. They're forcing people to choose Unix or Linux, one or the other, not both.
Since Linux is far more popular and prevalent, I'm guessing there'll soon be a lot fewer UNIX licensees, with only those four people left who absolutely can't get by without their Unix
The Amiga is coming back too. don't forget the Amiga.
OK apart from the world's wishlist of "5GB iPod for $99", what's the reality of storage costs when it comes to RAM, flash RAM and HD?
:)
presuming a 2GB low end model, with flash memory, what kind of price would that be?
And slightly off to the side, is the flash memory chips (the raw logic level itself) the same in Compact Flash as opposed to memory sticks, or SD or some such?
How about a HD? iPods started with 5GB drives, and now are up around 40. What's the cost for just one of the base base level drives? even IBM's microdrives?
I've seen a lot of theorising about this but not much in the way of reality to back it up. Even many arguments on Spymac were that the new iPod would be sub $99 with 5GB of flash memory. Is that even possible?
Any relevant answers will be appreciated
I remember back in the late 1980s listening to my parents and their disgust at commercial television stations now having up to THREE advertisements in ad spots, when before it was one, or maybe two on a slow night.
Now, on pay television and free to air, I'm seeing 8-12 advertisements in each slot, and massive amounts of the shows I watch being cut out. Last time I watched X-Files (only because I know it used to be 43 minutes per episode when first shown) the entire show was cut down to 35 minutes. that's eight minutes of the show I want to watch gone, and over 80 advertisements.
Now. What's the difference? What's so pricey nowadays that requires so many advertisements constantly?
Pricey reality television shows. blah.
Programmers don't need food. That's what Caffeine and Beer were invented for, to keep legions of coders alive.
The first project underway in BOINC is to have everybody's machine submit news about BOINC to slashdot, which is so far happening succesfully. This is the first dupe of many.
The sheet of plastic he used looked pre-drilled when it was being cut, but then suddenly it has the pattern of holes filled in around power/cd/usb ports. perhaps filling in the pre-cut standard sheeting was easier than doing it all manually.
It doesn't even seem "cool" at this point (beyond the obvious pun). Wasting hundreds of watts, taking up way too much room (extra-large form-factor, anyone?), needing a fork-lift to move it... How does any of that benefit the PC or user?
Some things have an upper limit to what still constitutes "bigger/better/faster/harder". This definitely crosses that line with regard to chip cooling techniques.
It's the fun of it - not just because anyone can go grab a refrigerator, pay for the price of running it, and get something like this done. But if you have a good grasp of engineering cooling systems, and a clue about how a PC works, hey why not combine the two. Two hobbies in one, twice the geekness.
I guess it's a bit like when the first D&D guy also became a computer guy and made the first RPG.
> I'm with Taco on the iPod.
I'm not. Every bastard I know already has one!
except me!
> I finally gave up "believing" in 2000 when I sold my
> A4000/060 and bought a real machine.
I did the same in 2000. The world had just moved too far ahead, and despite having a fast PPC Amiga (well, relatively fast, compared to other Amigas!), I was working with machines that SO killed it in real speed, and realised how much time I spent serving the Amiga OS, instead of having it work for me. I'm still not at the bleeding edge, but a 1.2GHz computer with a modern OS I don't have to continually play with to keep working is heaven. I might wait for a new AmigaOS if I thought it'd be something special, but its presentation at recent roadshows haven't impressed me.
One I forgot to mention too:
http://www.terrasoftsolutions.com/products/briQ/
The Terrasoft Solutions BriQ. a G3 or G4 in a box that fits in a 5.25" drive bay
Anyone know much of the non x86 small machines or boards? I know of pegasosppc and their micro-ATX boards, and an upcoming (hopefully) AmigaOne that's a full G3 or G4 Mini-ITX board, and rumours of ARM Mini-ITX.
Any PPC Mini-ITX boards that won't be lumbered with Amiga licensing fees?
I worked in a print shop a few years ago, and people would bring in large .ppt documents to print
.ppt slide to be printed as a poster.
not as slides, mind, but they'd laid out BOOKS in powerpoint. Yes, blue shaded background in landscape mode and all, with large yellow text, they'd write a small booklet in powerpoint and come to us to have it printed in a professional looking booklet.
Of course they didn't want it to look like it did onscreen, they wanted it to look like any other novels.
Upper management were the worst, when they worked on something themselves, and would bring in a
An embedded 72dpi powerpoint image does NOT scale up well at all to an A1 poster.
All other app users, from Quark XPress, pagemaker, acrobat, word, whatever... they knew what to expect and how to (generally) lay out a document, and when we'd have to do adjustments, they'd be relatively minor, but powerpoint people were bottom of the barrel.
Except for the guy who laid out all his print jobs in Frontpage. I think he was on acid.
I'm genuinely interested as a bit of a *ix geek (netbsd, osx, linux, across x86, ppc and 68k platforms) - what does solaris offer? Whether on sparc or x86 I'm not fussed, but what's it's focus?
:)
Always been curious, but never found a Sun person sit still long enough to grab them and get a good layman's answer
thanks
> a 400MHz machine with 64MB RAM, Win98, Office 2000, Photoshop 6
My sister works at a print house, and I pop in there from time to time. When it comes to photo editing and photoshop, there are still some fully decked out 1994 powermacs that do the job every bit as well as anything new. They have multiple decent-performing 2D graphics cards, gobs of RAM, and are used to for photomanipulation, a task that's often fairly light on CPU time but intensive on the skills of the operator. Not only that but repairs on those boxes cost the business a few dollars when things do break.
Wordprocessing could be seen as the same. Needs virtually no CPU time, but a good typist and writer can bring out far more on a 1980s wordprocessor than a moron on XP with Office 2010 (or whatever it's called now)
2ft, or about an arms length is comfortable for me.
LCDs certainly have it on clarity. In the small patch of well-coloured screen on an LCD, It's beautiful. Crystal clear, font smoothing works well, and there's no LCD flicker. Problem is to me that usable area is about an 8" circle in the middle of the screen, with the corners quickly fading to such a dark inversed colour, I physically need to move my head to the corners of the screen to read a clock. That neckstrain is horrid compared to anything I've had on a CRT, and it's what makes me think that people don't see LCDs the same.
I guess it's like the flicker problem. I can get used to almost any screen from 70Hz up, except those around 79-80, which give me headaches in minutes.
As for the other weak points of LCDs like (on some) response time and being locked into just one resolution, those don't bother me. It's the extreme lack of consistent brightness across the field.
I've only just started looking at LCDs and need to know if anyone else sees them ALL looking like trash? I'm rarely up on new hardware tech, 3D stuff doesn't impress me and the ancient 17" CRT I have has done me well. However looking at several brands of LCDs I'm wondering whether I just see them different to other people, or if they truly only have one advantage, clarity. I've taken a look at the screens on Dell, Acer and Apple laptops, 15 & 17" screens from Dell Samsung and BenQ, and a few Apple Cinema Displays. I can only say I see the BEST of them as under a quarter the quality of even an average CRT. I couldn't see any reason to pay even HALF the price of a CRT for one, let alone MORE. Anyone else see LCDs like this, or are my eyes just plaine fucked?
Many quadras could do more than 128MB, including the Quadra 605 at 132mb, Quadra 650 and 800 at 136MB, and Quadras 900 and 950 at 256MB each.
840AVs were discontinued in 1994. They were released mid 1993.