Why do you want to compare a wireless solution to a wired SIPphone? Yet, yes, you can get a good bluetooth headsets AND a USB bluetooth dongle for less than $129.
About ICQ, I'm sorry. I thought that the Java version supports voice. Yet, you know better than me about the freely available voice-chat programs in Linux.
1) get a headset. it's even easier than holding the handset. yet, if you really insist there are handsets available in many places that can be connected to a soundcard
2) Use ICQ. It features directory, voice, messaging. It's free and available on any platform.
Yet, I don't understand why you want to pay for someting that is already free....
But if you two already have got a broadband connection (seems SIPPhone needs an ethernet connection), then why in the world you need to pay for such thing to just do some type of voice-chat with your girlfriend? Get yahoo messengar (or ICQ or anything else) for free and you can even use your webcam:)
As I see you agree that besides the weight of the iron, there are other important factors too. Fine! This is a development.
So, I uderstand from you posts that in your opinion these three factors are important:
1- mass
2- price
3- recognition of the brand
I doubt that later, when comparing two similar products from recognized brands with similar prices you would not add new parameters. There is why reviews can help. First, to "recognize" the brands (where in the first you learned Antech and Enermax are good?) and then to objectively compare the specific products (not all products from a good company are good).
But again, wasn't it all so obvious from the begining?
Power supply unit (PSU) in modern PC is much more complex than what you think. Also, switching PSUs can be designed in so many different ways with so many different parameters in mind that simply refering to the weigth of the iron in the coil is meaningless. About the compoenents, I don't think that better componenets should necessarily weight more (why should a better MOSFET weight more than the other one??)
Generally speaking, as the CPUs are more power hungry today, Graphic cards consume so much power that they need a dedicated connection to the PSU besides what they get from the AGP bus, modern HDDs consum so much (and get so hot) and even RAMs in high-speed systems are power hungry, exceeding the classical 300W is nothing strange, considering the fact that you always need a margin for the safety (usually 85% of the rated value) and place for future exapnsion. And did you know that even in 300W class, may of the cheap PSUs can't even devliver beyound 250W withouth a significant drop in output voltages? A good, high power PSU is really a beast to design....
I think there are ways to reduce false alarms a lot. But basically the way is to have a very narrow antenna pattern. On the other hand, how many accidents are of the type that you hit something directly in front of you? Also what if you're sleepy and suddenly a tree 'jumps' in front of the car? All in all, while I think it's possible yet I don't think it can be very helpfull considering all possible scenarios.
You don't know? It's pretty simple. It's for those who like to pay money for the free software! And guess what? you have to pay each year, again and again to access all those free software over the net....
Wish instead of investing so much time and money to promote MemoryStick, Sony would switch to something that is more widely used like CF or SD. I like Sony products and even have a sony digital camera (that uses MS as memory) but yet I think a broader standard like CF or SD is much better for the end user. I really don't see the point when Sony insists so much to promote it's own standard when in reality it is "just another" flash memory standard... That way me, who owns a PocketPC would also buy that TVtuner but now I guess it's market is limited to that of Sony mobile phones and Palm devices.
When will Mozilla be able to fit on a memory stick?
Mozilla, IE, even the whole linux kernel already fits very well on a memory stick! After all it's a memory card and now it's available in sizes up to 512MB so what do you mean by fitting a software (i.e. a series of byte codes) in a memory device?! Maybe what you like to do is to run Mozilla on small device? Well, then you can as well go and fetch a PocketPC or a SmartPhone.
if a computer programme which adopted a human approach to chess playing, eg calculating no more than three or four moves ahead rather than nine or ten, evaluating a dozen potential decision branches rather than thousands, beat a human grand master
In reality human players do go much deeper than 4 or 5 move, sometimes upto 30 moves! (to compare with your chess program, each move == 2 ply and generally chess programs go downto 13~15 ply deep. Now 30 moves == 60 ply...) The difference is that computers also consider a large number of weak branches that a grandmaster throws out in a blink as it's knowledge of the game is much more limited. Another difference is that computer chess has limited or no planning for the game but just rely on the tactical elements where human players are much more positional and grandmasters sometimes even start from back, consider a position as the goal and try to reach it. Grandmaster certainly knows how to do tactical calculations and also knows when switch to positional evaluations; things that computers are far from even considering such factors. Usually what happens in computer-grandmaster game where the grandmaster looses is that human player overlooks something but as far as I know there has not been a single game that computer has won because of a better plan.
Humans are bad looser to many things, not only chess:
Sports cars, as they are much faster.
Submarines, as they can hold their breath much longer.
Bulldozers, as they can push much harder.
Cranes, as they can lift much heavier things.....
So, aren't all these good examples of superior AI?!!
I've been busy with computer chess for a few years and I can tell you it's no AI, at least from academic point of view. It's yet a very interesting problem and lots of academic works are done round the world related to this matter (even PhD thesis...). Basically you do a tree/graph search (chess search is something in between as you have a tree with some memory from past levels of the search on the same tree). Also there are some very well-definded knowledge from the opening (and possibly endings) and that's all! The greatest effort is to write a good static positional evaluation function which is rather tricky and there are lots of research on adjusting the coefficients of such an evaluation function using Genetic Algorithms or other (more) advanced optimization methods. All in all you don't need to be an AI expert to write a good chess program and it's not comparabale to other applications like NLP. Tree/Graph search is used in many applications from databases to CAD tools and we don't call them AI applications, so why should a chess program be an AI application? Just because human being does chess too can not signify that as human being deos simple math too but nobody calls a calculator an intelligent machine! At least GO could be a better example as the programs do not just run a simple search (from theoritical standpoint) but should take into account elements of pattern recognition.
As I see PC architecture has long ago taken the most difficult steps to cut off the legacy PC architecture. Don't you remember PC99 and PC2000? ISA was the backbone of the PC and cutting every single relation to that old bust was the movement that PC99 did, years ago. ISA was so essential in the legacy PC architecture. From the keyboard controller to PC speaker, serial and parrallel ports, BIOS and even the sytem clock and timer were all devices connected to the ISA bus. Even inside the chipsets back into 90s these parts of PC were actually connected to the ISA bus. PC99 declared that every trace of ISA bus was not acceptable. Devices that could theoritically departure from the ISA bus, were removed from the ISA bus inside the chipset and the remainings were pushed over the PCI-ISA Bridge. IDE drives were nolonger connected to the ISA bus at all and hence could reach much higher transfer rates. Slower devices and ISA slots that could be found in late 90s motherboards were all on the other side of that Bridge and not on the system bus which was PCI. In todays PC architecture, PCI has been pushed like ISA was pushed onced. The real bus that devices talk to each other on the mother board are now names like V-Link that connect the south and North chipsets. internally there is nothing similar to PC99 today, let alone ISA bus and also there is absolutely nothing ISA in today's PC (it's a requirement of the specifications actually!). So why do we have yet Legacy Ports? First, Legacy ports != Legacy PC. We need ports because we have lots of preferals that use them. Yet internally the ports do not work the way they did 20 years ago and are not a requirement of the design. They are now features, not integral parts of the PC and if needed can be eliminated without any trace. PC back in 90 was orders of magnitued simpler than what it is today and complexity of today's chipsets reval the CPU itself. Those parts of the logic supporting 'Legacy Ports' is much less than %1 of the North+South chipsets... The last thing legacy, one would complain, was the BIOS and its not far from being totally replaced very soon....
Yet there is a long way to have an API with DirectSound/DirectSound3D/DirectMusic/DLS features in Linux. (I don't know about EAX support in Linux, anyone can help?) Sound is one of the major obstacles for the games to come to Linux....
No, JPEG2000 is a different beast. Also, to my knowledge apart from JPEG2000, there is no other widely used standard to replace JPEG and this is why that patent is so annoying as in fact JPEG has a very wide academic background that it is totally unfair to patent it to a signle coorporate. About PNG, have to say PNG has a lossless compressor and belongs to a different class of algorithms (and applications).
PNG was not made to replace JPEG as it has a lossless compression method which in practice means a much bigger filesize over JPEG or JPEG2000. Yet, PNG is invaluable for lossless storage of images where even smallest degredation of the image quality is unacceptable (like image editing intermediate files). All in all, PNG and JPEG are apple and orange....
The is always bad and good tools to write a program. Over the years I've been busy writing programs in Maching code (yeah, writing hex codes directly), Assembly, C, C++, Basic, Prolog, Pascal, VB, Java, VHDL, Ada... and yet I try to write the program in hand, with the right tool. It's not a good idea to write a progam mainly doing a fancy GUI in assembly but it as bad to write a numeric application in Java (Speed, Libraries, Templates, IEEE754 floating point...) It much simpler to write a symbolic processing appliction in Lisp or Prolog than in VB and writing simulation models in VHDL is not at all comparable to what you can do in C. It really depends on the application and VB/Java/C# is not a good answer to all programmers.... Is it obvious? so what were you talking about when you ruled out C and worse than that, C++?
Slashdot Mirror
Why do you want to compare a wireless solution to a wired SIPphone? Yet, yes, you can get a good bluetooth headsets AND a USB bluetooth dongle for less than $129. About ICQ, I'm sorry. I thought that the Java version supports voice. Yet, you know better than me about the freely available voice-chat programs in Linux.
1) get a headset. it's even easier than holding the handset. yet, if you really insist there are handsets available in many places that can be connected to a soundcard 2) Use ICQ. It features directory, voice, messaging. It's free and available on any platform. Yet, I don't understand why you want to pay for someting that is already free....
But if you two already have got a broadband connection (seems SIPPhone needs an ethernet connection), then why in the world you need to pay for such thing to just do some type of voice-chat with your girlfriend? Get yahoo messengar (or ICQ or anything else) for free and you can even use your webcam :)
As I see you agree that besides the weight of the iron, there are other important factors too. Fine! This is a development. So, I uderstand from you posts that in your opinion these three factors are important: 1- mass 2- price 3- recognition of the brand I doubt that later, when comparing two similar products from recognized brands with similar prices you would not add new parameters. There is why reviews can help. First, to "recognize" the brands (where in the first you learned Antech and Enermax are good?) and then to objectively compare the specific products (not all products from a good company are good). But again, wasn't it all so obvious from the begining?
Power supply unit (PSU) in modern PC is much more complex than what you think. Also, switching PSUs can be designed in so many different ways with so many different parameters in mind that simply refering to the weigth of the iron in the coil is meaningless. About the compoenents, I don't think that better componenets should necessarily weight more (why should a better MOSFET weight more than the other one??) Generally speaking, as the CPUs are more power hungry today, Graphic cards consume so much power that they need a dedicated connection to the PSU besides what they get from the AGP bus, modern HDDs consum so much (and get so hot) and even RAMs in high-speed systems are power hungry, exceeding the classical 300W is nothing strange, considering the fact that you always need a margin for the safety (usually 85% of the rated value) and place for future exapnsion. And did you know that even in 300W class, may of the cheap PSUs can't even devliver beyound 250W withouth a significant drop in output voltages? A good, high power PSU is really a beast to design....
check this list. As you can seen there are mostly *nix based systems and also Win2K listed as EAL4 and no, XP is not there!
I think there are ways to reduce false alarms a lot. But basically the way is to have a very narrow antenna pattern. On the other hand, how many accidents are of the type that you hit something directly in front of you? Also what if you're sleepy and suddenly a tree 'jumps' in front of the car? All in all, while I think it's possible yet I don't think it can be very helpfull considering all possible scenarios.
You don't know? It's pretty simple. It's for those who like to pay money for the free software! And guess what? you have to pay each year, again and again to access all those free software over the net....
Seems all Sony wanted to do was to get slash/dotted again! Well, now thay have succeeded!
Wish instead of investing so much time and money to promote MemoryStick, Sony would switch to something that is more widely used like CF or SD. I like Sony products and even have a sony digital camera (that uses MS as memory) but yet I think a broader standard like CF or SD is much better for the end user. I really don't see the point when Sony insists so much to promote it's own standard when in reality it is "just another" flash memory standard... That way me, who owns a PocketPC would also buy that TVtuner but now I guess it's market is limited to that of Sony mobile phones and Palm devices.
Humans are bad looser to many things, not only chess: Sports cars, as they are much faster. Submarines, as they can hold their breath much longer. Bulldozers, as they can push much harder. Cranes, as they can lift much heavier things. ....
So, aren't all these good examples of superior AI?!!
I've been busy with computer chess for a few years and I can tell you it's no AI, at least from academic point of view. It's yet a very interesting problem and lots of academic works are done round the world related to this matter (even PhD thesis...). Basically you do a tree/graph search (chess search is something in between as you have a tree with some memory from past levels of the search on the same tree). Also there are some very well-definded knowledge from the opening (and possibly endings) and that's all! The greatest effort is to write a good static positional evaluation function which is rather tricky and there are lots of research on adjusting the coefficients of such an evaluation function using Genetic Algorithms or other (more) advanced optimization methods. All in all you don't need to be an AI expert to write a good chess program and it's not comparabale to other applications like NLP. Tree/Graph search is used in many applications from databases to CAD tools and we don't call them AI applications, so why should a chess program be an AI application? Just because human being does chess too can not signify that as human being deos simple math too but nobody calls a calculator an intelligent machine! At least GO could be a better example as the programs do not just run a simple search (from theoritical standpoint) but should take into account elements of pattern recognition.
As I see PC architecture has long ago taken the most difficult steps to cut off the legacy PC architecture. Don't you remember PC99 and PC2000?
ISA was the backbone of the PC and cutting every single relation to that old bust was the movement that PC99 did, years ago. ISA was so essential in the legacy PC architecture. From the keyboard controller to PC speaker, serial and parrallel ports, BIOS and even the sytem clock and timer were all devices connected to the ISA bus. Even inside the chipsets back into 90s these parts of PC were actually connected to the ISA bus. PC99 declared that every trace of ISA bus was not acceptable. Devices that could theoritically departure from the ISA bus, were removed from the ISA bus inside the chipset and the remainings were pushed over the PCI-ISA Bridge. IDE drives were nolonger connected to the ISA bus at all and hence could reach much higher transfer rates. Slower devices and ISA slots that could be found in late 90s motherboards were all on the other side of that Bridge and not on the system bus which was PCI.
In todays PC architecture, PCI has been pushed like ISA was pushed onced. The real bus that devices talk to each other on the mother board are now names like V-Link that connect the south and North chipsets. internally there is nothing similar to PC99 today, let alone ISA bus and also there is absolutely nothing ISA in today's PC (it's a requirement of the specifications actually!).
So why do we have yet Legacy Ports? First, Legacy ports != Legacy PC. We need ports because we have lots of preferals that use them. Yet internally the ports do not work the way they did 20 years ago and are not a requirement of the design. They are now features, not integral parts of the PC and if needed can be eliminated without any trace. PC back in 90 was orders of magnitued simpler than what it is today and complexity of today's chipsets reval the CPU itself. Those parts of the logic supporting 'Legacy Ports' is much less than %1 of the North+South chipsets...
The last thing legacy, one would complain, was the BIOS and its not far from being totally replaced very soon....
Yet there is a long way to have an API with DirectSound/DirectSound3D/DirectMusic/DLS features in Linux. (I don't know about EAX support in Linux, anyone can help?) Sound is one of the major obstacles for the games to come to Linux....
No, JPEG2000 is a different beast. Also, to my knowledge apart from JPEG2000, there is no other widely used standard to replace JPEG and this is why that patent is so annoying as in fact JPEG has a very wide academic background that it is totally unfair to patent it to a signle coorporate. About PNG, have to say PNG has a lossless compressor and belongs to a different class of algorithms (and applications).
PNG was not made to replace JPEG as it has a lossless compression method which in practice means a much bigger filesize over JPEG or JPEG2000. Yet, PNG is invaluable for lossless storage of images where even smallest degredation of the image quality is unacceptable (like image editing intermediate files). All in all, PNG and JPEG are apple and orange....
Is there anyone to explain me if it's finally April's dupe or IP's fool??
Well, what to say? Have not seen such meaningless statement over the years....
The is always bad and good tools to write a program. Over the years I've been busy writing programs in Maching code (yeah, writing hex codes directly), Assembly, C, C++, Basic, Prolog, Pascal, VB, Java, VHDL, Ada ... and yet I try to write the program in hand, with the right tool. It's not a good idea to write a progam mainly doing a fancy GUI in assembly but it as bad to write a numeric application in Java (Speed, Libraries, Templates, IEEE754 floating point...) It much simpler to write a symbolic processing appliction in Lisp or Prolog than in VB and writing simulation models in VHDL is not at all comparable to what you can do in C. It really depends on the application and VB/Java/C# is not a good answer to all programmers.... Is it obvious? so what were you talking about when you ruled out C and worse than that, C++?