Re:Ok, can we just put more empty space in now?
on
Intel Makes 45nm Chip
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· Score: 1
Can't I have a chip that runs relatively fast, does everything a modern computer is used for, sans games, and I *don't* have to water-cool? Something like what the VIA Epia series does, but with Intel's backing?
Sure, it's called the Pentium M low voltage. Does not run as fast as it's higher voltage sibling, but is quite powerful for a minimum power draw.
Conversionnally, any notebook chip today would be MUCH faster than yours and use less power, what with their dynamic clock speed and turning off unused parts. Just grab a Centrino notebook or build a Pentium M computer and surf away!
"If you'd like to contact the AFP newswire about their story, you can do so via this form and selecting the "Contact news department" option for the first drop-down."
I lived with a family of 6 whose yearly average of taxable income of $14,000 (c.2000).[...]We had 2 color televisions with cable.[...] A one-time cost of $200 and a monthly cost of $25 is damn reasonable[...]
So, let me get this straight. You are with a ploor family, desperate for money, below the poverty line and getting helped by the state BUT they blow 20% of their income on cable? Did they also eat out at McDo regularly and buy cigarettes? Because for entertainment value, it does not get any better either.
However, i have new for you: Entertainment does not further anything. It does not allow you to grow, get better and get out of a bad situation. It is just a legal drug that helps you forget your trouble. Troubles dont go away by themselves, you need to face them to solve them, so staying in front of a TV wont solve anything. Neither will bitching or posting on/.
I know people that started with nothing (kicked out of their family home at 16 after being beaten by their dad), but they are successful today. How? They made their choice, got loans and credits, got an education and worked it out. Worked to pay their tuitions and boards, worked in class to succeed and worked and innovated to pay their bills. They could do it, but of course, it was a LOT more difficult than sitting on their butts watching TV and saying how desperate they were.
Life does not always deal you a fair situation and some needs to make more efforts to reach a given point, but USA is a land of opportunities. You can get an education and a job, but it will need LOTS of efforts if you dont get any help (family mostly).
Hope is how you look at things, not what is passed down to you. Every problem has a solution. Some required ungodly efforts to reach it...
In other news, PowerDVD and WinDVD are not free either...
ie: the nVidia PureVideo is the heir of the nVidia nV-DVD. It is a software DVD player that takes advantage of DirectX8 hardware for acceleration.
I would have found this comparison more useful if they had added PowerDVD or WinDVD, as you will always get *some* DVD player with a new graphic card (retail). It would be interesting to test the couple graphic card/DVD player instead of doing an artificial test on their drivers.
Sure, both lines include MPEG1/2/4 hardware acceleration, but most 3rd party software already take advantage of this.
I would have liked to see how well they all act, on each hardware.
And PureVideo is not free because of the DVD decoding. The ATI DVD player is not free either, it is bunddled with some ATI cards (AIW mostly), like PureVideo, WinDVD or PowerDVD are for nvidia cards.
the fun part is that lots of MB using ATI chipset use ULI southbridge as ATI still has a way to go for SATA, usb ans sound.
The real story is that it gives nVidia a good office in Taiwan and will strengthen their ties with taiwanese and chinese design house, mostly for MB and especially for laptops.
China also devalues their currency, further imbalancing trade.
No, actually China has linked their currency to the dollar. That means that $1 is ALWAYS 125 yuan (or some other number, i dont have the quotation), be that $1 at 0.85Euro or 1.25Euro.
This fix exchange rate played against the US during their "recovery" in the past few years. The US $ lost value against the euro in the past few years, which helped them gain economic leverage. However, as the yuan is fixed, it did not help to resolve the growing trading gap between the US and China. Right now, for every $ that the US exports to China, they import $1.5.
China has for goal to be the manufacturing plant of the world and they are making great stride towards it. They have the means to reach that goal.
But I wonder how they are going to force that to an non-U.S. company?
A non-US company that advertise in the US would better have some business in the US, otherwise, the advertisement would be a waste of money.
If they do business in the US, they can be hit with fines and lawsuits in that same country or be banned there.
If they dont do business here, why the hell would they call you? Just for the fun of it?
The good thing for the Japanese: the barrier of entry for cheap Chinese and Taiwanese manufacturer will be high. There will be the need to put in place "secure" production lines , making sure that keys are not leaked and that no clone are produced. The huge liabilities that the OEM will face if they screw up will be enough to give Pioneer, Sony etc.. time to make a buck on BluRay.
The problem in making it hard for China and Taiwan to produce or even make a buck on those players is that it will make the available players expensive (japanese electronics is far from cheap in price, if not in quality).
Add to that the licensing issue. The chinese are already complaining about the $3 that they have to pay on each DVD player, just to pay for the codecs and security schemes. Blu-Ray and HD-DVD are way more patent encumbered, so those royalties will be even more expensive.
Now, think about the fact that China is developping its own HD format to suplant DVD and fight the next gen. they WILL produce those and distribute those in China first (it will be forced by law) and their studios will have to release on it. Those will be WAY cheaper. Think that could tempt consummers? Especially with weaker DRM?
The next gen battle has not started and yet, no one really cares. Like the battle of SACD and DVD-Audio. The public has voted that mp3 was enough and the multi channel standards are dying. Will it be the same for video?
The Radeon X1800 XT trails the GeForce 7800 GTX 512 in overall performance, but Radeon X1800 CrossFire may hit the streets at prices as much as $150 lower per card than the 7800 GTX 512. (Radeon X1800 XTs are already widely available at $599 or less.) In the rarefied air of big-money graphics subsystems, that potential $300 price difference--if indeed it develops--could make a Radeon X1800 XT CrossFire system a, uh, er, uhm, solid value.
It *could* indeed. The difference is that the GF7800GTX512 is available and sold right now, even if very expensive and hard to find (a proof of its success and popularity) while the RX1800 Crossfire is still nowhere to be seen.
Vaporware will *ALWAYS* look more promising than real products...;^)
And you can be suer of one thing: if nVidia is retiring the GTX512 in February, it will have a replacement for that segment at that time. So far, nVidia's execution has been flawless for the GF7k family (GTX, GT and GTX512), having the 3 cards available at launch in quantities and before the competition.
Anyway, those are like the Ferraris of the graphic world. Too expensive for most people... But competition is good and fast cycles push the trickle down. Right now, hardware capabilities grow faster than the software can use them (even latest games can be run at high rez with eye candy on the upper cards).
Sounds like somebody is working in the wrong industry. Games should try to be games, not try to be films.
Actually, it depends on the effect they want to achieve. If they are aiming to create a render closer to grainy black and white film, this is the way.
Moreover, games hardly want to emulate life. They want to emulate the glorious, exhilerating part of some topic. Those same parts that have already been glorified for several decades by the film industry. So, aiming your game to present and react as would movie heroes is not a bad choice.
Let's take an easy example: Pirates. We would all like to play pirates, right? However, most people prefer to play the romantic and heroic pirates that Herol Flynn portraied in movies that the scums dying of scurvy pillaging defenseless towns. See what Sid Meyer's Pirates look like for a case in point.
It is not so much that designer cannot imagine what women want, it is more a problem of how to integrate it into a game. The article is very critical of Holliwood portrayal of the women, but forgets to tell that women flock "en masse" to the latest holliwood chick-flick. Games are based on interaction and game play. Today, the designers know how to transpose violence, destruction and puzzles into games. No one really knows how to port emotion or make a good game just based on interactions (with the computer, not a MMO like 2nd life). So, when they want to include some female forms, they will still fit within those parameters. It is easier to include T&A in a given formula than to develop a character and make her conflicted.
Anyway, i'm not sure I agree to any of the logic saying that girls will play when the games will present tham as strong characters and avatars. I mean, i did not play mario because i dreamed to be a plumber or sonic for its hedgehog. Lots of games have aliens characters (Abe's Odyssey) and it is the game mechanics that draw the public, not the "confidant characters", although don't we all dream to be a hero?
Retrocoder Limited as the copyright holder, has the right to say who may or may not have its program. If someone has its program without permission, are they not guilty of a criminal offence?
For example, if you have a copy of Windows without MicroSofts permission, is this not a crime?
Actually, the answers are NO and NO. When you buy a copy of Microsoft windows in a store, you enter a tacit sellin contract with that store. Then, on TOP of that, Microsoft tries to limit your possible use of that good, which may or may not be legal. But the only restriction that Microsoft places legally and in an unchallenged way is that you have to BUY their product.
In the same way, once you have allowed people to download the software, you cannot restrict who can use it or not. It would be discrimination.
Microsoft does not prevent researchers or black people or foreigners to use their software, they just prevent people WITHOUT a LICENSE. Then, on top of that, they want to restrict your rights to only USE the software. Here, you grant a license to all (free download) and then say that some kinds of people (anti spyware researchers) are not allowed to use it. It is like saying that french people could not use it. Or any group of people. It is discrimination, pure and simple.
Even restricting a type of use for a product you have the right to use may or may not be legal. A court maintained the right of a company to disassemble a program they had bought to keep it working and improve it.
Privacy are 2 things:
- how can one company collect and use your data
- who can they share it/sell it to
Google depends only on the 1st one. They just need to enter a contract with you (through eula/term of use of their service) for you to grant them some of this and then you can GIVE them your data. Most people wouldn't mind a restriction on the usage of those data to what was agree upon.
I personnaly would like stronger laws on the sharing. In the US, any company owns YOUR data and can do as it pleases them.
Europe already has such law, where you have a right to know what data they have on you, can change/update that data and can ask to erase it (and they have to do it, no run around). They also cant share it without your approval. MUCH better for your privacy...
The day I give them any cash so they can use it to buy my representatives is the day Satan's snowplow crews start making money.
So i urge you to give them most of your money to keep that promise.
Most demons have been wearing scrafs for a few months now, since apple introduced a 2 button mouse and followed up with a switch to x86.
I hope you had no other plan for that cash...
Do parents really have the right to decide what is appropriate for their kids? Is it ok if they decide alcohol consumption, drug use, pornography or physical abuse are appropriate? Where's the line between what is "up to parents" and what is prohibited by society for all children?
Yes, all of this is up to the parents, which is why any adult (society consider only adults to be parents) can buy those things and offer them to its child. The sale of those articles to minors is restricted, but what parents offer to their children is up to them.
In that same logic, i would not oppose a law that would enforce the ESRB ratings. The ratings themselves are great, a lot more detailed that the movie ones and so far, they have been quite exact (even for GTA: SA. What part of Strong sexual content is not clear to those people?).
Yup, nothing truly exists until Microsoft 'Innovates' it into existence. Nope, nobody ever thought of sending video over IP until today, thank God Microsoft is out there inventing the future for us.
Yup, in Microsoft world, nothing exist until THEY "invent" it.
I mean, nothing that frenchISPsdocounts...
Ah... the wonderful world of Microsoft...
By the way, on the internet connection and service side, the US is really backward. In Europe, you can get ADSL (ADSL2+ up to 20Mbps) + IPTV + VOIP for 30euros/month. Wish i could get that here...
When I see crappy half-assed pinball games going on US phones for $5, the distance between the two standards really starts to show.
If only you alreay could get easily $5 games on your cell... On mine, with a java machine (so, theoretically easy to port and write games), i can only access those that my provider allows and then i need to pay $1 to $5 PER MONTH to access and play those, when they are just downloaded once and played locally. A SUBSCRIPTION for crappy games.
the $40Billions of cash is a good estimation. As a smart company (as far as money management goes), MSFT does NOT keep loads and loads of cash (although some could argue that $40B is already loads and loads...). So, they invest most of what they get. Sometime, it pays and sometime not.
By all accounts they are extremely aggresive, suggesting they don't see themselves as prey and know no predators.
If you read the article, you'd know that the scientists found this giant squid by following some sperm whales (cue the jokes), that actually feed on those creatures. They found some carcasses of squids after the whales left and then started their research near the same place.
So, giant squids DO know predators. The sperm whale is one of them...
yes, emule is a sharing network instead of a leeching network. It rewards you for sharing and uploading, allowing others to benefit.
Emule usually starts slow (except on the really popular files, that have thousands of sources) and you need to build your credentials by uploading. The more you upload, the more credits you have with other people and they will repay the favor when you'll need.
If you are an occasional consummer, it pays to let emule run just uploading. It means that when you will download, latency will be greatly reduced.
Think of it as the same system as Netflix. The persons that share more than they leech will get priority in their downloads in the same way that the occasional renter gets the latest DVD.
Rightfully those clauses are invalid in European Law, because there is a high imbalance in power between the two parties.
Actually, those clause are legal in Europe (at least in France) if the company PAYS for your unemployed time.
Basically, it says it is fair if they dont want you to work for their competition, but then, they have to continue dedomaging you, as it prevents you to work.
Strangely enough, few companies use those clauses...;)
And part of the reason for that is that a doctor will talk to you for 2 minutes (or maybe just have his secretary talk to you on the phone, take notes, and call you back) and diagnose you. You, on the other hand, have spend hours looking into what might be wrong with you.
A lot of people are fed up with doctors, and not always for bad reasons.
Opinion seconded. It is all a matter of trust. How can you trust someone that will see you cursorily for a few minutes, barely talk to you and be more more interested in your credit card number than in your sympton?
Moreover, in this lawsuit happy society, they will NOT even take a stand and they'll say "you may" or "probably"... Sorry, that does not inspire trust.
My last experience with US medicine was dismal. I went to see a doctor after resting home for 4 days (acute sore throat). She said i *MAY* have a throat infection, took samples and put me on 10 days of antibiotics. One week later, i was cured and got a phone call telling me the analysis was back and i had NOT a strep throat. By that time, i did not care anymore. I finished the treatment (never stop an antibiotic treatment in the middle) and i've not had any problem since.
How can you trust such people? Fine when you only have a cold/the flu, but for real problems?
You bet that when i went home, the first thing i did was look on the web what the prescription was and the sympton for what she diagnosed (it matched fairly well).
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So, let me get this straight. You are with a ploor family, desperate for money, below the poverty line and getting helped by the state BUT they blow 20% of their income on cable? Did they also eat out at McDo regularly and buy cigarettes? Because for entertainment value, it does not get any better either.
However, i have new for you: Entertainment does not further anything. It does not allow you to grow, get better and get out of a bad situation. It is just a legal drug that helps you forget your trouble. Troubles dont go away by themselves, you need to face them to solve them, so staying in front of a TV wont solve anything. Neither will bitching or posting on
I know people that started with nothing (kicked out of their family home at 16 after being beaten by their dad), but they are successful today. How? They made their choice, got loans and credits, got an education and worked it out. Worked to pay their tuitions and boards, worked in class to succeed and worked and innovated to pay their bills. They could do it, but of course, it was a LOT more difficult than sitting on their butts watching TV and saying how desperate they were.
Life does not always deal you a fair situation and some needs to make more efforts to reach a given point, but USA is a land of opportunities. You can get an education and a job, but it will need LOTS of efforts if you dont get any help (family mostly).
Hope is how you look at things, not what is passed down to you. Every problem has a solution. Some required ungodly efforts to reach it...
(now, let's start the karma bashing...)
In other news, PowerDVD and WinDVD are not free either... ie: the nVidia PureVideo is the heir of the nVidia nV-DVD. It is a software DVD player that takes advantage of DirectX8 hardware for acceleration. I would have found this comparison more useful if they had added PowerDVD or WinDVD, as you will always get *some* DVD player with a new graphic card (retail). It would be interesting to test the couple graphic card/DVD player instead of doing an artificial test on their drivers. Sure, both lines include MPEG1/2/4 hardware acceleration, but most 3rd party software already take advantage of this. I would have liked to see how well they all act, on each hardware. And PureVideo is not free because of the DVD decoding. The ATI DVD player is not free either, it is bunddled with some ATI cards (AIW mostly), like PureVideo, WinDVD or PowerDVD are for nvidia cards.
the fun part is that lots of MB using ATI chipset use ULI southbridge as ATI still has a way to go for SATA, usb ans sound.
The real story is that it gives nVidia a good office in Taiwan and will strengthen their ties with taiwanese and chinese design house, mostly for MB and especially for laptops.
No, actually China has linked their currency to the dollar. That means that $1 is ALWAYS 125 yuan (or some other number, i dont have the quotation), be that $1 at 0.85Euro or 1.25Euro.
This fix exchange rate played against the US during their "recovery" in the past few years. The US $ lost value against the euro in the past few years, which helped them gain economic leverage. However, as the yuan is fixed, it did not help to resolve the growing trading gap between the US and China. Right now, for every $ that the US exports to China, they import $1.5.
China has for goal to be the manufacturing plant of the world and they are making great stride towards it. They have the means to reach that goal.
The problem in making it hard for China and Taiwan to produce or even make a buck on those players is that it will make the available players expensive (japanese electronics is far from cheap in price, if not in quality).
Add to that the licensing issue. The chinese are already complaining about the $3 that they have to pay on each DVD player, just to pay for the codecs and security schemes. Blu-Ray and HD-DVD are way more patent encumbered, so those royalties will be even more expensive.
Now, think about the fact that China is developping its own HD format to suplant DVD and fight the next gen. they WILL produce those and distribute those in China first (it will be forced by law) and their studios will have to release on it. Those will be WAY cheaper. Think that could tempt consummers? Especially with weaker DRM?
The next gen battle has not started and yet, no one really cares. Like the battle of SACD and DVD-Audio. The public has voted that mp3 was enough and the multi channel standards are dying. Will it be the same for video?
It *could* indeed. The difference is that the GF7800GTX512 is available and sold right now, even if very expensive and hard to find (a proof of its success and popularity) while the RX1800 Crossfire is still nowhere to be seen.
Vaporware will *ALWAYS* look more promising than real products...
And you can be suer of one thing: if nVidia is retiring the GTX512 in February, it will have a replacement for that segment at that time. So far, nVidia's execution has been flawless for the GF7k family (GTX, GT and GTX512), having the 3 cards available at launch in quantities and before the competition.
Anyway, those are like the Ferraris of the graphic world. Too expensive for most people... But competition is good and fast cycles push the trickle down. Right now, hardware capabilities grow faster than the software can use them (even latest games can be run at high rez with eye candy on the upper cards).
Actually, it depends on the effect they want to achieve.
If they are aiming to create a render closer to grainy black and white film, this is the way.
Moreover, games hardly want to emulate life. They want to emulate the glorious, exhilerating part of some topic. Those same parts that have already been glorified for several decades by the film industry. So, aiming your game to present and react as would movie heroes is not a bad choice.
Let's take an easy example: Pirates. We would all like to play pirates, right? However, most people prefer to play the romantic and heroic pirates that Herol Flynn portraied in movies that the scums dying of scurvy pillaging defenseless towns. See what Sid Meyer's Pirates look like for a case in point.
It is not so much that designer cannot imagine what women want, it is more a problem of how to integrate it into a game.
The article is very critical of Holliwood portrayal of the women, but forgets to tell that women flock "en masse" to the latest holliwood chick-flick.
Games are based on interaction and game play. Today, the designers know how to transpose violence, destruction and puzzles into games. No one really knows how to port emotion or make a good game just based on interactions (with the computer, not a MMO like 2nd life).
So, when they want to include some female forms, they will still fit within those parameters. It is easier to include T&A in a given formula than to develop a character and make her conflicted.
Anyway, i'm not sure I agree to any of the logic saying that girls will play when the games will present tham as strong characters and avatars. I mean, i did not play mario because i dreamed to be a plumber or sonic for its hedgehog. Lots of games have aliens characters (Abe's Odyssey) and it is the game mechanics that draw the public, not the "confidant characters", although don't we all dream to be a hero?
This is a way for geeks to describe/experience something they dont understand
Actually, the answers are NO and NO.
When you buy a copy of Microsoft windows in a store, you enter a tacit sellin contract with that store. Then, on TOP of that, Microsoft tries to limit your possible use of that good, which may or may not be legal. But the only restriction that Microsoft places legally and in an unchallenged way is that you have to BUY their product.
In the same way, once you have allowed people to download the software, you cannot restrict who can use it or not. It would be discrimination.
Microsoft does not prevent researchers or black people or foreigners to use their software, they just prevent people WITHOUT a LICENSE. Then, on top of that, they want to restrict your rights to only USE the software. Here, you grant a license to all (free download) and then say that some kinds of people (anti spyware researchers) are not allowed to use it. It is like saying that french people could not use it. Or any group of people. It is discrimination, pure and simple.
Even restricting a type of use for a product you have the right to use may or may not be legal. A court maintained the right of a company to disassemble a program they had bought to keep it working and improve it.
Privacy are 2 things: - how can one company collect and use your data - who can they share it/sell it to Google depends only on the 1st one. They just need to enter a contract with you (through eula/term of use of their service) for you to grant them some of this and then you can GIVE them your data. Most people wouldn't mind a restriction on the usage of those data to what was agree upon. I personnaly would like stronger laws on the sharing. In the US, any company owns YOUR data and can do as it pleases them. Europe already has such law, where you have a right to know what data they have on you, can change/update that data and can ask to erase it (and they have to do it, no run around). They also cant share it without your approval. MUCH better for your privacy...
Yes, all of this is up to the parents, which is why any adult (society consider only adults to be parents) can buy those things and offer them to its child. The sale of those articles to minors is restricted, but what parents offer to their children is up to them.
In that same logic, i would not oppose a law that would enforce the ESRB ratings. The ratings themselves are great, a lot more detailed that the movie ones and so far, they have been quite exact (even for GTA: SA. What part of Strong sexual content is not clear to those people?).
I mean, nothing that french ISPs do counts...
Ah... the wonderful world of Microsoft...
By the way, on the internet connection and service side, the US is really backward. In Europe, you can get ADSL (ADSL2+ up to 20Mbps) + IPTV + VOIP for 30euros/month. Wish i could get that here...
If only you alreay could get easily $5 games on your cell...
On mine, with a java machine (so, theoretically easy to port and write games), i can only access those that my provider allows and then i need to pay $1 to $5 PER MONTH to access and play those, when they are just downloaded once and played locally. A SUBSCRIPTION for crappy games.
no, thanks...
Kids get easily taken in the latest mass media hysteria, but rejoyce! They are far from being the only ones...
The whole american culture is shaped through the whims of the network, themselves shaped uniquely to rake in ratings.
So, i commend you for actually discussing the news with your kids. I wish more adults could actually discuss with you too...
the $40Billions of cash is a good estimation.
As a smart company (as far as money management goes), MSFT does NOT keep loads and loads of cash (although some could argue that $40B is already loads and loads...).
So, they invest most of what they get. Sometime, it pays and sometime not.
You can find MSFT cash flow easily online:
http://finance.yahoo.com/q/cf?s=MSFT
If you read the article, you'd know that the scientists found this giant squid by following some sperm whales (cue the jokes), that actually feed on those creatures. They found some carcasses of squids after the whales left and then started their research near the same place.
So, giant squids DO know predators. The sperm whale is one of them...
yes, emule is a sharing network instead of a leeching network. It rewards you for sharing and uploading, allowing others to benefit.
Emule usually starts slow (except on the really popular files, that have thousands of sources) and you need to build your credentials by uploading. The more you upload, the more credits you have with other people and they will repay the favor when you'll need.
If you are an occasional consummer, it pays to let emule run just uploading. It means that when you will download, latency will be greatly reduced.
Think of it as the same system as Netflix. The persons that share more than they leech will get priority in their downloads in the same way that the occasional renter gets the latest DVD.
Actually, those clause are legal in Europe (at least in France) if the company PAYS for your unemployed time.
Basically, it says it is fair if they dont want you to work for their competition, but then, they have to continue dedomaging you, as it prevents you to work.
Strangely enough, few companies use those clauses...
Opinion seconded.
It is all a matter of trust. How can you trust someone that will see you cursorily for a few minutes, barely talk to you and be more more interested in your credit card number than in your sympton?
Moreover, in this lawsuit happy society, they will NOT even take a stand and they'll say "you may" or "probably"... Sorry, that does not inspire trust.
My last experience with US medicine was dismal. I went to see a doctor after resting home for 4 days (acute sore throat). She said i *MAY* have a throat infection, took samples and put me on 10 days of antibiotics. One week later, i was cured and got a phone call telling me the analysis was back and i had NOT a strep throat. By that time, i did not care anymore. I finished the treatment (never stop an antibiotic treatment in the middle) and i've not had any problem since.
How can you trust such people? Fine when you only have a cold/the flu, but for real problems?
You bet that when i went home, the first thing i did was look on the web what the prescription was and the sympton for what she diagnosed (it matched fairly well).
Netcraft says the gameboy advanved is dying.
There... it had to be done...