If you're running games at the native resolution of your display (1600x1200), the most probable reason for the lag you're seeing is that your video card simply can't keep up. It takes a pretty beefy video card to push that many pixels per frame. Try cutting the resolution to 800x600 and see if your results improve.
Another thing to try would be toggling the "vertical sync" option in your video card's advanced properties. This option specifies whether your video card synchronizes frames with the monitor's refresh. Your CRT probably refreshed at 100Hz, and your LCD is probably just 60Hz, so vertical sync could be slowing you down even if you haven't increased your display resolution.
Re:Get an energy-efficient Athlon64 and run Linux_
on
Less Might Be More
·
· Score: 1
This is not quite the same thing, maybe I wasn't clear. CNQ allows the processor to run at the lower speed *when idling* but I want it to run at the lower speed even when fully busy. The AMD driver doesn't allow me to do that AFAIK, but presumably it's possible with a third-party utility perhaps.
This utility will let you do that. Just set the speed to "battery optimized". (This program is intended for laptops, but it works just fine on my Athlon 64 desktop.)
My new Athlon 64 box has a feature called "Cool 'N Quiet" which throttles the CPU frequency and voltage down when the processor is idle. When the processor is pegged, it runs at 2000MHz at 1.5V, but when it's mostly idle (say, while I'm typing this), it runs at 1000MHz at 1.1V, cutting the power requirement by about two thirds.
The upshot is, I have all the speed I need to crunch serious numbers (i.e., play Doom) when I need to, but I'm not burning so much power and needlessly heating my house when that much CPU power is simply not needed.
AFAIK, the Sempron 3100+ and all Athlon 64s support this feature (so long as the motherboard supports it as well).
Most laptops already do this sort of thing as well.
BTW: this feature is functional in 32-bit versions of Windows, just download the driver from www.amd.com.
Microsoft does everything it can to offer the best possible value for customers' software investments. We believe that the product's features and functionality, along with continuous improvements, are more than enough to justify its price.
Yep, Microsoft does everything it can do to offer the best possible value for customers' software investments... short of eroding their 80% profit margin.
ZFS is supported on both SPARC and x86 platforms. More important, ZFS is endian-neutral. You can easily move disks from a SPARC server to an x86 server. Neither architecture pays a byte-swapping tax due to Sun's patent-pending "adaptive endian-ness" technology, which is unique to ZFS.
Bleh. How expensive is it to byte-swap anyway? Compared with checking whether the number you're looking at is already the right endianness? Just store everything big-endian; x86 systems can swap it in a single instruction anyway. It's not like all data needs to be byte-swapped anyway, just metadata. I can't imagine the penalty would come even close to the amount of time spent doing their integrity checksums anyway.
Looks to me like nothing more than an excuse to put up a patent tollboth for anyone who wants to implement ZFS.
Um, yeah. Different boot disks for every game, being able to rewrite CONFIG.SYS from memory just to get Wing Commander II to load, the joys of HIMEM.SYS and the differences between extended memory, expanded memory and high memory, manually setting the command-line IRQs for assorted soundcards and trying to find a real-mode DOS mouse driver that loaded in less than 5K of RAM.
Lest we forgot, we have Microsoft to thank for all of that too.:)
Hmm... I wonder if allofmp3.com is legal in the U.S.?
From their FAQ:
Is it legal to download music from site AllOFMP3.com?
All the materials in the MediaServices projects are available for distribution through Internet according to license # LS-3-03-79 of the Russian Multimedia and Internet Society. Under the license terms, MediaServices pays license fees for all the materials subject to the Law of the Russian Federation "On Copyright and Related Rights".
Russian law might not be draconian enough for the RIAA...
Here's a lightweight solution for Win2K/XP users that provides SB Pro emulation to a DOS box:
http://www.ece.mcgill.ca/~vromas/vdmsound/
It's not a DOS emulator, and it won't let you play DOS games on Linux or Mac, but it will let DOS games have sound under Win2K/XP. It's probably faster than using DOSBox since it doesn't emulate the x86, just the sound card. Which may or may not be a good thing. The original Descent runs at 400 frames per second under VDMsound on my low-end Athlon XP.
And don't even think about server versions... $thousands, easily, once you factor in "Client Access Licenses".
Microsoft's spokeswoman is lying through her teeth though...
"[W]e have been the market leader in reducing prices while increasing the value contained in software."
Bull. When's the last time a Microsoft product's price has gone DOWN? Never. They've gone up with each iteration. Nobody was paying $300 for DOS or Windows 3.1, I can tell you that.
You can't even buy older versions of MS operating systems at reduced prices.
I wonder how long it will be before you have to buy a little box that plugs into a USB port as has, say, sixteen little sockets in it, where you can plug in a little card for each copy-protected game you have. I can't decide whether that would be a very good idea or a very bad idea.
However, you can live without SP2's obnoxious "your virus checker is out of date" (or "I can't tell whether your virus checker is out of date") warnings. Also, there are plenty of better firewall options than Windows Firewall (such as a hardware firewall...). NX support would be nice, if you had a supported processor (savin' up for my Athlon 64). Also, the new WiFi functionality could be useful, if they've fixed the bug where APs with SSID broadcast off lose connectivity as soon as any random AP with SSID broadcast on shows up (even if it can't connect to it).
By and large, however, it's mostly stuff you can live without if you know how to secure your system yourself. I'm not in any rush to "upgrade" my Win2k Pro desktop in order to get all this new cruft.
An interesting tidbit from Gene Cernan's biog is that the tanks on 13 were actually the original tanks from Apollo 10. I don't remember why they were pulled, I'd have to go find the reference.
Lovell mentions this in his book too. There were some design enhancements made to the cryo systems at the last minute, and the engineers decided to replace Apollo 10's tanks with the new versions, then retrofit and upgrade the old tanks for use in Apollo 13. Tank 2 was damaged during this process (apparently somebody neglected to remove a bolt before trying to lift the tanks out of the SM with a crane).
Establishing a flagship service without even checking if its name has been registered already?
It hadn't been registered when they started using it. Some companies noticed in Google's pre-IPO SEC report that they hadn't registered Gmail with the USPTO yet. Some small companies with dollar signs in their eyes immediately filed for the trademark, beating Google to the punch.
Why Google didn't just apply for the trademark BEFORE issuing the report, I don't know.
Apollo 13 had one advantage: it may have been severely damaged, but IIRC none of the damage was to the reentry vehicle.
True. The Command Module wasn't damaged. However, the loss of electricity and oxygen in the Service Module following the explosion did deplete the batteries and reserve oxygen tank in the CM, and these supplies had to be replenished from the Lunar Module. What saved the Apollo 13 crew was the fact that they had an second independent spaceship. Had the SM oxygen tank explosion occurred on Apollo 8, where there was no LM, the astronauts wouldn't have survived.
a free open source VOIP program becomes an illegal program, even if it doesn't interoperate with commercial VOIP...
We're not there (yet anyway). From the news.com article:
the FCC did not grant the police agencies' request to extend CALEA to cover instant messaging and VoIP programs that are not "managed"--a reference to peer-to-peer programs like the original version of Skype and Pulver.com's Free World Dialup, which do not use the public telephone network.
That doesn't mean they won't try in the future, of course, but voice chat in Unreal Tournament isn't illegal yet...
Secondly, there is really no "arguably" about it -- a dd doesn't produce any unencrypted copies. It's simply recreating the cyphertext.
True enough--but here's something else to think about. If you try to copy encrypted VOBs with Windows, you get an "access denied" error; it won't even copy the ciphertext. I don't think the MPAA would have much trouble convincing a judge that going underneath the file level to the sector level is therefore circumventing an access control, regardless of whether the control model is in Windows or the disk itself. Kind of a scary thought.
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If you're running games at the native resolution of your display (1600x1200), the most probable reason for the lag you're seeing is that your video card simply can't keep up. It takes a pretty beefy video card to push that many pixels per frame. Try cutting the resolution to 800x600 and see if your results improve.
Another thing to try would be toggling the "vertical sync" option in your video card's advanced properties. This option specifies whether your video card synchronizes frames with the monitor's refresh. Your CRT probably refreshed at 100Hz, and your LCD is probably just 60Hz, so vertical sync could be slowing you down even if you haven't increased your display resolution.
This utility will let you do that. Just set the speed to "battery optimized". (This program is intended for laptops, but it works just fine on my Athlon 64 desktop.)
My new Athlon 64 box has a feature called "Cool 'N Quiet" which throttles the CPU frequency and voltage down when the processor is idle. When the processor is pegged, it runs at 2000MHz at 1.5V, but when it's mostly idle (say, while I'm typing this), it runs at 1000MHz at 1.1V, cutting the power requirement by about two thirds.
The upshot is, I have all the speed I need to crunch serious numbers (i.e., play Doom) when I need to, but I'm not burning so much power and needlessly heating my house when that much CPU power is simply not needed.
AFAIK, the Sempron 3100+ and all Athlon 64s support this feature (so long as the motherboard supports it as well).
Most laptops already do this sort of thing as well.
BTW: this feature is functional in 32-bit versions of Windows, just download the driver from www.amd.com.
Future models will have to support DRM via a broadcast flag. :-(
Hopefully the broadcast flag will prove every bit as effective as CSS.
Apparently the engine has only one developer who can supposedly drop the project at anytime.
:)
Even if that happens, you have the source code, so you can maintain it yourself.
Granted, if the project went under you wouldn't get any new bug fixes or patches, but for what you paid for it ($0), what can you expect?
Looks to me like nothing more than an excuse to put up a patent tollboth for anyone who wants to implement ZFS.
Lest we forgot, we have Microsoft to thank for all of that too.
I can't help but think the real reason for abandoning Direct3D is to force everyone to "upgrade" to the train wreck known as Longhorn.
At least we still have OpenGL...
It's not possible with AGP, but have no fear. PCI Express to the rescue!
From their FAQ:
Russian law might not be draconian enough for the RIAA...
Here's a lightweight solution for Win2K/XP users that provides SB Pro emulation to a DOS box:
http://www.ece.mcgill.ca/~vromas/vdmsound/
It's not a DOS emulator, and it won't let you play DOS games on Linux or Mac, but it will let DOS games have sound under Win2K/XP. It's probably faster than using DOSBox since it doesn't emulate the x86, just the sound card. Which may or may not be a good thing. The original Descent runs at 400 frames per second under VDMsound on my low-end Athlon XP.
$295 for the full version of XP Professional.
And don't even think about server versions... $thousands, easily, once you factor in "Client Access Licenses".
Microsoft's spokeswoman is lying through her teeth though...
Bull. When's the last time a Microsoft product's price has gone DOWN? Never. They've gone up with each iteration. Nobody was paying $300 for DOS or Windows 3.1, I can tell you that.
You can't even buy older versions of MS operating systems at reduced prices.
Funny, I was under the impression that Ashcroft pilfered a huge pile of hardware because it was being used for P2P.
A walk around the block with a WiFi-enabled iPaq finds no less than nine access points, zero of which are unencrypted.
Maybe the sample size is too small...
I wonder how long it will be before you have to buy a little box that plugs into a USB port as has, say, sixteen little sockets in it, where you can plug in a little card for each copy-protected game you have. I can't decide whether that would be a very good idea or a very bad idea.
It wouldn't be the first time.
However, you can live without SP2's obnoxious "your virus checker is out of date" (or "I can't tell whether your virus checker is out of date") warnings. Also, there are plenty of better firewall options than Windows Firewall (such as a hardware firewall...). NX support would be nice, if you had a supported processor (savin' up for my Athlon 64). Also, the new WiFi functionality could be useful, if they've fixed the bug where APs with SSID broadcast off lose connectivity as soon as any random AP with SSID broadcast on shows up (even if it can't connect to it).
By and large, however, it's mostly stuff you can live without if you know how to secure your system yourself. I'm not in any rush to "upgrade" my Win2k Pro desktop in order to get all this new cruft.
An interesting tidbit from Gene Cernan's biog is that the tanks on 13 were actually the original tanks from Apollo 10. I don't remember why they were pulled, I'd have to go find the reference.
Lovell mentions this in his book too. There were some design enhancements made to the cryo systems at the last minute, and the engineers decided to replace Apollo 10's tanks with the new versions, then retrofit and upgrade the old tanks for use in Apollo 13. Tank 2 was damaged during this process (apparently somebody neglected to remove a bolt before trying to lift the tanks out of the SM with a crane).
Yes but they had Tom Hanks
And Apollo 13 managed to come home safely, despite being piloted by Forrest Gump. You really have to give credit to the ground team.
Establishing a flagship service without even checking if its name has been registered already?
It hadn't been registered when they started using it. Some companies noticed in Google's pre-IPO SEC report that they hadn't registered Gmail with the USPTO yet. Some small companies with dollar signs in their eyes immediately filed for the trademark, beating Google to the punch.
Why Google didn't just apply for the trademark BEFORE issuing the report, I don't know.
Apollo 13 had one advantage: it may have been severely damaged, but IIRC none of the damage was to the reentry vehicle.
True. The Command Module wasn't damaged. However, the loss of electricity and oxygen in the Service Module following the explosion did deplete the batteries and reserve oxygen tank in the CM, and these supplies had to be replenished from the Lunar Module. What saved the Apollo 13 crew was the fact that they had an second independent spaceship. Had the SM oxygen tank explosion occurred on Apollo 8, where there was no LM, the astronauts wouldn't have survived.
Did anyone else think of the other TCPA when they read this article?
You mean there's another TCPA besides that one?
Time to write my representatives again...
the only sure way we know to run an attachment that OE deems unsafe is to copy it onto a non-NTFS drive
Sounds like XP disables execute permission on saved attachments. Copying it to a FAT volume works because FAT doesn't support permissions.
Just like you have to chmod u+x before you can run something you download in Linux. Not a bad idea, but nothing new either.
a free open source VOIP program becomes an illegal program, even if it doesn't interoperate with commercial VOIP...
We're not there (yet anyway). From the news.com article:
the FCC did not grant the police agencies' request to extend CALEA to cover instant messaging and VoIP programs that are not "managed"--a reference to peer-to-peer programs like the original version of Skype and Pulver.com's Free World Dialup, which do not use the public telephone network.
That doesn't mean they won't try in the future, of course, but voice chat in Unreal Tournament isn't illegal yet...
Secondly, there is really no "arguably" about it -- a dd doesn't produce any unencrypted copies. It's simply recreating the cyphertext.
True enough--but here's something else to think about. If you try to copy encrypted VOBs with Windows, you get an "access denied" error; it won't even copy the ciphertext. I don't think the MPAA would have much trouble convincing a judge that going underneath the file level to the sector level is therefore circumventing an access control, regardless of whether the control model is in Windows or the disk itself. Kind of a scary thought.