I would guess that your Thinkpad is running at 1400x1050 (seemed to be a semi-common resolution for a while)? I have a Toshiba Tecra which is 1400x1050 (roughly 126ppi).
To be honest, there are a lot of days now where I'm considering switching back to a 96ppi display. Every graphical image on the web is ~25% smaller with the 126ppi display. Every website designer thinks it's a bright idea to specify font sizes in pixels rather then points. (Thank goodness for Mozilla's ability to specify minimum font size.)
After a while, it gets tiring to constantly swim upstream, fighting the idiots who don't know how to layout web pages for multiple browsers. Plus software writers who don't know how to deal with "large fonts" in Windows (which screws up spacing on user dialogs).
If I didn't have to deal with the web designers who are hacks, it would be a much more enjoyable experience to run at 126ppi. The extra dot density makes reading properly sized text a real pleasure. I wish there were commercially available 150ppi or that the 200ppi displays were more mainstream.
So for the Opterons, the 165 and 170 chips are roughly the same price as a dual-CPU configuration. You just get the advantage of getting that performance (roughly) in a single chip instead of 2 chips. The dual-core / dual-CPU capable chips (265 / 270 / 275) are more expensive (but easier to obtain).
Figure you're paying for both performance (more power in a smaller package) and being able to put 4 cores in places where you could only fit 2 cores before. Definitely a bit of a price premium for these since they're on the leading edge. The 270/275s are priced higher then what I'm comfortable spending for a home machine, but not that bad if I was building a dual-CPU / dual-core server.
That's how I interpret the SQL Server licensing as well from various conversations and research. At the time, we managed to get a SQL Server 2000 CPU license for ~$3000, which wasn't too bad.
But inside the firewall, we went with MySQL/InnoDB (with plans to migrate to pgsql). Once we get up and running on pgsql inside the firewall, there's a good chance that we'll switch over to running our public side on it as well. Hopefully prior to the date that we'd have to migrate to SQL Sever 2005.
I'll echo what the other folks have said. Win2000 takes a long time to boot and a long time to show a useable desktop after login. (I had a Win2k laptop that routinely took ~10min to get up and running.) Microsoft did improve this quite a bit in WinXP. I'd estimate that you can be up and working in about half the time as a Win2000 system.
(WinXP shows the desktop sooner. But you still have to wait a bit for the desktop to be interactive.)
One of the tricks that I relied on with my Win2000 laptop was Standby mode. It almost always worked (99% of the time) and was moderately quick at resuming (about a minute or so). I had much better luck with Standby then I did with Hibernate. And even though Standby used more battery power per hour then Hibernate, I was generally only putting the thing on Standby for a few hours at a time.
On the Linux side, there have been a few articles over the past few years about improving startup times. Some of the distros do things like startup multiple tasks at the same time (rather then processing sequentially). I haven't followed that side closely enough to tell you which distros or exact details though.
i agree, the current desktop pc-s take forever to start. even my 3000+ rated laptop takes a long time before kde shows up (stock kernel, about 30-40 seconds i guess).
30-40 seconds?
That's *fast* in the desktop world.
I should take you back to the days of Win95 / Win98 / WinNT and Win2000. Average boot time for those beasts were 2+ minutes. Longer if you had lots of programs installed that loaded bits and pieces during startup. Even old 3.1/3.11 was slow once you started to get more complex configurations (LAN connections are a large delay).
My old Win2000 laptop used to take around 8-10 minutes after power up in order to get logged in and functional. Fortunately, a reboot was only a weekly or every two weeks event. I just had to be careful about planning out whether it was worth the reboot time in some situations and I made heavy use of Standby/Hibernate.
WinXP has been better in that regard (boot times). It at least shows the desktop sooner, although you're still waiting another minute for things to settle down enough to work.
AMD really became suitable once NVIDIA rolled out their nForce2 chipsets (AthlonXP CPUs) and gave VIA something to cry about. Prior to that, it was definitely more hit/miss for finding a good AMD chipset. Ever since the AthlonXP days, I've been plenty happy with the AMD side of the equation (less expensive, good performance, good chipsets).
The last Intel box I built was a BX chipset (440BX?). I have (2) AthlonXP systems still running (one is a VIA chipset the other is an nForce chipset). Plus 3 Opteron systems running a variety of chipsets.
VIA has gotten a lot better at their chipsets too (I used the VIA KT800 in the one Opteron system).
As for video processing, one of my systems is a dual-CPU Opteron 246. Works fine and is speedy.
The real shocker to me is that folks don't put anywhere near enough emphasis on RAM. Look at the percentage who are using 256MB or less (~52%) with another 42% with only 512MB. Only 5.5% had 1GB or more RAM in their systems.
The PCs we've been buying for work? 1GB minimum since late last year. We always bump the CPU freq down a notch and double the memory. (Standard advice for folks who ask me for close to 10 years now. Running low on RAM is a really bad thing and will affect your "experience" more then having a 10% slower CPU will.)
And given the data on the O/S in use (WinXP with ~95%), we're not talking older machines here. Service Pack 2 penetration of 73% isn't bad at all, but that still means 1:4 machines aren't up to date. I would have expected folks interested in Valve's software to be more driven to keep their drivers and O/S up to date.
85% had DVD drives. That's pretty substantial. I'd have guessed 50-75%.
Okay, I'm curious what "living on a scheme" is. Google isn't being too useful. I reckon it's either:
- some sort of assisted living building
- a building where the residents share common areas
- a typo
- getting by via an illegal scheme (fraud)
- some other obscure meaning
I'm not so sure about the useful bit either, but then my typical usage pattern isn't that of a typical commuter. (Which is why I don't own an iPod. I'm simply not mobile enough since I work from a home office 99% of the time. Coupled with an MP3 CD player in the car for when I travel. The nano is tempting becaues that might be useful for the quarterly business trip, but would still be an expensive toy.)
As for portable video... could be useful on business trips. You would probably get less eyebrows raised by toting around an iPod then by carrying a stack of DVDs to stick in your laptop. Granted, you can stealth the DVDs by putting them in a nylon case. But the iPod is going to be smaller.
Might work in a family car where you have video screens for the kids to watch. Having 20-40 DVD movies on-hand in the size of an iPod would be easier then managing 20-40 DVD discs. Plus, less wear and tear on the DVDs. (Shakes head... in *my* day you had to read books in the car if you wanted to be entertained!)
But like I said... I'm probably not the target market for such a thing.
Yes, I still have my old Santa Cruz PCI card laying around. Nice to see that they're still making newer cards.
What I'm curious about is whether the Turtle Beach cards now support front audio jacks on the newer cases. (One of the reasons my game box is currently using the on-board sound.) Once I started using cases with front audio ports, it became a bit of a pain to use my old Santa Cruz card.
4. Flash-based ads eat up too much CPU power. On single-CPU systems, this causes issues with responsiveness.
(For those who use AIM, I encourage you to make use of Task Manager and take a look at the "CPU Time" column on the process list. For a tool that is minimized, sitting in the system tray, rarely being used, it sure as heck uses up a LOT of CPU time. Is most of this from their ad technology? Maybe not, but AIM is ad-supported and it didn't used to be that much of a CPU pig.)
What I think will happen though, is that studios will create hybrid-DVDs that will play in both current DVD players as a standard DVD, and have a separate layer that will only be visible to the High Definition player. This is already done in Blu-Ray which may be what is making it more appetizing to studios. They sell one movie, and it's compatible with standard and high definition players. It makes the new disks more like an extension to DVD.
Interesting, I thought only HD-DVD supported the "hybrid" disc mode (where you have both regular DVD content and high def content on the same disc).
Assuming that production costs aren't outrageous, hybrid discs might work in the marketplace.
Ah yes, the joys of thinnet. OTOH, it was very easy to debug if you knew how the thinnet was routed from cubicle to cubicle. When you had a broken segment, you went halfway down the line and terminated it off. If the segment started working, your problem was farther away from the bridge (repeater?). Otherwise, you would head back upstream towards the head of the segment and try again. Where you typically ran into trouble were users who constantly moved equipment (test labs, laptop users). User training fixed most of those issues due to the informal posse of coworkers who would hunt down the frequent offender.
The previous topology in that office had been thicknet (where you had to manually tap the cable). Thinnet was seen as better. Or at least easier to build a network out of in a cubicle environment.
Token Ring wasn't all that bad. Unlike thinnet, the physical wiring was more of a topology like today's ethernet where you had a dedicated cable running from the patch panel to the workstation's network jack. At least, it was wired that way in the buildings where I've seen it. So it was easy enough to plug/unplug stations from the network in a central location. The topology was also designed to deal with a single break (the stations before/after the break would loopback).
The usual problems we had with TR were the fragile connectors (problematic for test environments / laptop users with frequent plug/unplug). Plus the issue that you only had 4Mbps (later 16Mbps) and a 4Mbps card wouldn't work on a 16Mbps network. Ethernet hubs/switches did a much better job of handling the upgrade path automatically where one port might be 10Mbps another 100Mbps and a third port running at 1Gpbs without redoing your entire network topology.
Dig back a few months in the coverage of this. I'm pretty sure there was an arbitrary decision as to who would be allowed to attend this year as well. I seem to remember some noise back in the spring / early-summer.
DARPA Announces 2005 Grand Challenge Semifinalists DARPA announced 40 semifinalists for the 2005 Grand Challenge autonomous robot race today. Notable remaining teams include the Carnegie Mellon University Red Team, Stanford Racing and a high school team, the Palos Verde Road Warriors. 78 teams missed the cut.
Depends on where you're connecting from. I was able to hit Penny Arcade from Long Island, NY but not from Pennsylvania or Virginia.
I've seen a few other sites (ucomics) that are on the "other side of the rift" that I haven't been able to get to today. Fortunately, the office was not one of them (or I'd have had to drive the 5 hours into work).
Well for me, i's not that Wal-Mart doesn't do high-end sales.
It's that I think their competitive practice stink and that their company already has gotten too large. (Large companies wield too much power in a free market.)
Therefore, I choose to shop anywhere *but* Wal-Mart.
(I used to shop at Wal-Mart a lot. Until I started thinking about whether I preferred shopping at large stores or small businesses. Low prices aren't worth being treated like cattle in a store where you can never be recognized as a regular customer. It's well worth the price premium to go someplace smaller where repeat business is encouraged and you get treated like a customer rather then a consumer.)
Mine's not quite that crazy, but it's definitely diverse. I've bought an awful lot of off-the-wall books just because I've seen them mentioned here (or in other internet communities). Or I'll get it in my mind to read up on some event or topic so I'll order a few books.
Things on my bookshelf at the moment, ordered from Amazon.
- sci-fi / fantasy fiction
- DVD movies from multiple genres
- books on Vietnam
- a few books on cult psychology
- literary stuff
- computer books (from O/S's to security to programming)
- japanese language
- some cold-war fiction (Quiller)
My recommendations from Amazon lately
- Chef, Interrupted : Delicious Chefs' Recipes That You Can Actually Make at Home
- Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
- Inside Mac OS X
- Spider-Man 2
- Hacking Exposed 5th Edition
Amazon's recommendations aren't too bad. But if I had only ever bought what Amazon recommended based on my buying pattern, I doubt that I would have as wide of a selection as I ended up with. I have bought things in the past based on "others have bought X with Y" and it can be useful when I don't quite know what I want.
Still not as fun as wandering through a flea market and buying whatever used books you come across.
I'd suggest that you start reading up on 1-factor, 2-factor and 3-factor authentication systems. (Bruce's books cover this as do a bunch of security texts from the 70s and 80s.)
A 3-factor authentication system is:
1) Something you know (passwords, PINs)
2) Something you are (biometrics)
3) Something you have (tokens, keys, ID card)
This has been discussed since at least 1990 (my earliest brush with the concept) and probably at least 10+ years prior to that. If you rely on a single factor (passwords), your security is going to be relatively weak. If you use 2 factors, your security gets better but your costs go up. Three factors, your security goes up a bit more but your costs also go up again.
The big problem with #2 and #3 is that of standardization. Any system that interacts with the user can implement #1 (PINs/passwords). No extra cost required other then CPU and developer time. But to implement #2 and #3 requires hardware that isn't present on every system. Worse, the companies who have developed #2/#3 authentication hardware use extremely proprietary systems where you can't use fingerprint reader X and have it work with company Y's security system.
(It's not quite that bad anymore. There probably are some common inter-op standards now, but then you get into the issues of it only works with a particular O/S. Or, the hardware isn't under your control and you don't trust, such as a customer communicating with your website.)
The next step in large-scale security is probably going to be #1 (passwords, pins) combined with #3 (smart tokens or a card of security numbers). That moves us up to 2-factor authentication for cases where 1-factor authentication isn't good enough. Biometrics (#2) are probably only going to work in situations where you have control over all of the hardware used in the authentication process.
I'll even go out on the limb further and would not be surprised if Intuit works with banks to get a 2-factor system up and running. They would have the advantage that they could get multiple banks on board at the same time. It could even be marketed as a competitive advantage. (The precendent for this line of thought would be the process of getting online banking started back in the mid-90s. Used to be tricky to get online banking up and running, now it's almost taken for granted.)
I'm sure there are some true fans of the Harry Potter books but the majority of sheeple just let themselves be dragged mindlessly into the craze purely because it's a "cool" thing to do because everyone else does it.
The reality and sadness of the matter is had these people read any Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Philip Pullman, Roald Dahl or even Terry Pratchett, they'd realise that there's hardly a single iota of an original idea in any one of Rowling's books.
/yawn
I specifically avoided the first Harry Potter book (and the 2nd and 3rd) for a while due to the "hype". However, after the 3rd volume came out on paperback (2002?), I picked up the 1st book on a whim.
Not a bad read. Basically a coming of age story, with enough whimsy in it that it's a fun read and a nice way to escape for a few hours. This is not graduate level material, by any means. It's not meant to be. Not everything has to be Tolkein in order for it to be enjoyed. (I read the first 3 books over the space of 2 weeks.)
There are a few structural issues in some of the books (plot holes, feels a bit formulaic in places), but the book is overall very well written and edited. (As a contrast, look at the horrid Snow Crash, which was poorly written and needed a severe round of editing.) The tragic character in book 4 was mis-managed a bit, so that when they meet their fate towars the end of book 4, it's anti-climatic.
There's also something to be said for material that is approachable by the masses. Rowling has done a good job of writing a fantasy series that is somewhat engaging, definitely enjoyable, but without dumbing it down or pandering. Which means that the kids enjoy it and there's some enjoyment there for the adults as well.
And if it gets kids excited about reading, it's kinda odd to complain that it's written in a fluffier style then Tolkein. Let the kids get a taste and in a few years they'll be ready to tackle meatier tomes.
Back when I left EQ1 in 2003 (after close to 2 years of playing to the mid-50s on a few toons), I swore I'd never play another SOE game. But, I picked up EQ2 on a whim the week after it launched.
EQ2 corrects a lot of the issues that were in EQ1, but also introduces a few new ones.
The high points:
- Trial of the Isle, which is a downloadable demo of the first zone in the game. Which will introduce you to the first 6 levels, the 4 archetypes, and how the quest system works. Near as I can tell, it's a free download and a good way to find out if your system can handle the EQ2 graphics. That GeForce3 card probably can't do it.
- Quests are numerous. Some are soloable, some are group, some are epic. One of the mid-spring patches added a level indicator, and a future patch will add a flag that tells you if the quest is soloable or requires a group or raid.
- Decent gear at a low level. With a bit of footwork, you can have decent gear in your low levels.
- Vitality system, double XP until you run out of vitality. Takes maybe 10 hours of grinding to drain your vitality pool, and a week to fill.
- All classes can solo, some a little better then others. The 'overland' zones (outdoors) are filled with solo mobs, most group content is in the dungeons.
- Only 2 starting cities. Which makes it more likely to find groups at low levels.
- Crafted gear is viable and desireable.
It's not a bad game, if you accept it for what it is rather then forcing pre-conceptions on it.
Grind-wise, it's as much of a grind as you make it. If all you do is camp in the corner of zone and pull, it's a grindfest. OTOH, if you kill a few mobs here, a few mobs there, and finish this quest, get a few for this other quest, it's less of a grind.
There's a lot of mid-game content, so not a lot of reason to grind to 50 ASAP. In fact, you're likely to outlevel a lot of content unless you actively seek it out.
Not really, because you only need for the FAT to be unreadable (CDs/DVDs don't normally have multiple copies like hard disks often do) and then the data will still be there but you'll have a helluva time trying to access it.
Depends one which parity program you use. Best bet is to put all of your data in the root folder (zip it up if you have directory trees to preserve) and make a set of parity data using QuickPar. I usually fill 5-15% of the disc with parity, netting me about 4Gb of storage per DVD+/-R.
Now as long as the inner ring of the DVD/CD isn't too badly scratched (the ToC area), you can always recover this data. If the ToC area gets trashed, you'll need a special drive to recognize the disc (consumer DVD drives will refuse to load the disc).
If the directory gets hosed, you can rip the disc to an ISO file using ISOBuster, copy the image and rename it as PAR2. Then fire up QuickPar. QuickPar will scan the PAR2 file and the ISO file and find all of its parity blocks and the matching data blocks. It will then reconstruct the original files.
I've pulled more then one disc back from the brink using this method. Takes a while, but worth the peace of mind.
The big advantage of parity files is that it gives you a larger recovery window. Low-level errors are hardly ever noticeable by the end-user until it's too late. The built-in ECC on the disc fixes the issue on the fly, but doesn't alert the user that the media is failing. So when the ECC fails, the user is left with no option to recover. However, if you have parity files, once you notice that the ECC is failing, you still have a shot at using the parity files to recover your data.
Usually the reason for this is because that person has been burned by one company or the other in the past and have switched. Or, they've had exceptionally good performance from one brand and see others having abysmal performance in the other.
Exactly. I was burned by ATI's horrid Catalyst drivers for Windows 2000 with their Radeon All-In-Wonder 128 card. It's not that they didn't work, it's that it was a lot of black magic and voodoo to get things up and running and then hoping that it wouldn't break the next time you touched the box.
So... my next 3 cards have been nVIDIA. Partly because I now understand nVIDIA numbering scheme (and I'm not familiar with ATI's), but mostly because I've had very little issue with their video drivers (very forgiving, easy to install/uninstall).
Will I buy an ATI in the future? Maybe, but only if nVIDIA fails to meet my needs or burns me.
Ah yes, Compu$erve, where you were charged by THE HOUR to use their service.
And back around 1990-1995, it was *the* place to go and get hardware/software support for a lot of things. Not to mention the lively crew in the CANOPUS forum, which was a good place to find out tech news 1-2 months ahead of when PCMag would report on it.
I used to spend $50-$100/mo on CompuServe. For the time, it was money well spent as it kept me up-to-date on all sorts of technical topics. The signal-to-noise ratio was quite good (moderated forum) and discussions were very informative.
It helped immensely if you used an offline reader (TapCIS). Which kept your hourly charges to a reasonable amount. Off-line readers also allowed you to track which messages you had read and skim large volumes of posts quickly.
I don't think it's a question of whether Studio Ghibli can save Disney's soul, it's a question of whether Studio Ghibli will be able to retain theirs.
I've seen the interviews with the folks from Studio Ghibli talking about how wonderful it is to be partnering with Disney for these releases. They come across in that interview as being very very naive about what working with/for Disney is really like.
It's like watching lambs being led to the slaughterhouse.
Slashdot Mirror
I would guess that your Thinkpad is running at 1400x1050 (seemed to be a semi-common resolution for a while)? I have a Toshiba Tecra which is 1400x1050 (roughly 126ppi).
To be honest, there are a lot of days now where I'm considering switching back to a 96ppi display. Every graphical image on the web is ~25% smaller with the 126ppi display. Every website designer thinks it's a bright idea to specify font sizes in pixels rather then points. (Thank goodness for Mozilla's ability to specify minimum font size.)
After a while, it gets tiring to constantly swim upstream, fighting the idiots who don't know how to layout web pages for multiple browsers. Plus software writers who don't know how to deal with "large fonts" in Windows (which screws up spacing on user dialogs).
If I didn't have to deal with the web designers who are hacks, it would be a much more enjoyable experience to run at 126ppi. The extra dot density makes reading properly sized text a real pleasure. I wish there were commercially available 150ppi or that the 200ppi displays were more mainstream.
Prices on the AMD dual-core stuff isn't all that bad. I happened to be shopping around for dual-core chips this week.
Opteron 165 (2x1.8Ghz, 2x1MB cache, 939pin) - $475
Opteron 170 (2x2.0Ghz, 2x1MB cache, 939pin) - $540
Opteron 244 (single core, 1.8Ghz, 1MB cache, 940pin) - $240
Opteron 246 (single core, 2.0Ghz, 1MB cache, 940pin) - $235
Opteron 248 (single core, 2.2Ghz, 1MB cache, 940pin) - $340
So for the Opterons, the 165 and 170 chips are roughly the same price as a dual-CPU configuration. You just get the advantage of getting that performance (roughly) in a single chip instead of 2 chips. The dual-core / dual-CPU capable chips (265 / 270 / 275) are more expensive (but easier to obtain).
Opteron 265 (2x1.8Ghz, 2x1MB cache, 940pin) - $725
Opteron 270 (2x2.0Ghz, 2x1MB cache, 940pin) - $900
Opteron 275 (2x2.2Ghz, 2x1MB cache, 940pin) - $1100
Figure you're paying for both performance (more power in a smaller package) and being able to put 4 cores in places where you could only fit 2 cores before. Definitely a bit of a price premium for these since they're on the leading edge. The 270/275s are priced higher then what I'm comfortable spending for a home machine, but not that bad if I was building a dual-CPU / dual-core server.
That's how I interpret the SQL Server licensing as well from various conversations and research. At the time, we managed to get a SQL Server 2000 CPU license for ~$3000, which wasn't too bad.
But inside the firewall, we went with MySQL/InnoDB (with plans to migrate to pgsql). Once we get up and running on pgsql inside the firewall, there's a good chance that we'll switch over to running our public side on it as well. Hopefully prior to the date that we'd have to migrate to SQL Sever 2005.
I'll echo what the other folks have said. Win2000 takes a long time to boot and a long time to show a useable desktop after login. (I had a Win2k laptop that routinely took ~10min to get up and running.) Microsoft did improve this quite a bit in WinXP. I'd estimate that you can be up and working in about half the time as a Win2000 system.
(WinXP shows the desktop sooner. But you still have to wait a bit for the desktop to be interactive.)
One of the tricks that I relied on with my Win2000 laptop was Standby mode. It almost always worked (99% of the time) and was moderately quick at resuming (about a minute or so). I had much better luck with Standby then I did with Hibernate. And even though Standby used more battery power per hour then Hibernate, I was generally only putting the thing on Standby for a few hours at a time.
On the Linux side, there have been a few articles over the past few years about improving startup times. Some of the distros do things like startup multiple tasks at the same time (rather then processing sequentially). I haven't followed that side closely enough to tell you which distros or exact details though.
i agree, the current desktop pc-s take forever to start. even my 3000+ rated laptop takes a long time before kde shows up (stock kernel, about 30-40 seconds i guess).
30-40 seconds?
That's *fast* in the desktop world.
I should take you back to the days of Win95 / Win98 / WinNT and Win2000. Average boot time for those beasts were 2+ minutes. Longer if you had lots of programs installed that loaded bits and pieces during startup. Even old 3.1/3.11 was slow once you started to get more complex configurations (LAN connections are a large delay).
My old Win2000 laptop used to take around 8-10 minutes after power up in order to get logged in and functional. Fortunately, a reboot was only a weekly or every two weeks event. I just had to be careful about planning out whether it was worth the reboot time in some situations and I made heavy use of Standby/Hibernate.
WinXP has been better in that regard (boot times). It at least shows the desktop sooner, although you're still waiting another minute for things to settle down enough to work.
AMD really became suitable once NVIDIA rolled out their nForce2 chipsets (AthlonXP CPUs) and gave VIA something to cry about. Prior to that, it was definitely more hit/miss for finding a good AMD chipset. Ever since the AthlonXP days, I've been plenty happy with the AMD side of the equation (less expensive, good performance, good chipsets).
The last Intel box I built was a BX chipset (440BX?). I have (2) AthlonXP systems still running (one is a VIA chipset the other is an nForce chipset). Plus 3 Opteron systems running a variety of chipsets.
VIA has gotten a lot better at their chipsets too (I used the VIA KT800 in the one Opteron system).
As for video processing, one of my systems is a dual-CPU Opteron 246. Works fine and is speedy.
Interesting survey.
The real shocker to me is that folks don't put anywhere near enough emphasis on RAM. Look at the percentage who are using 256MB or less (~52%) with another 42% with only 512MB. Only 5.5% had 1GB or more RAM in their systems.
The PCs we've been buying for work? 1GB minimum since late last year. We always bump the CPU freq down a notch and double the memory. (Standard advice for folks who ask me for close to 10 years now. Running low on RAM is a really bad thing and will affect your "experience" more then having a 10% slower CPU will.)
And given the data on the O/S in use (WinXP with ~95%), we're not talking older machines here. Service Pack 2 penetration of 73% isn't bad at all, but that still means 1:4 machines aren't up to date. I would have expected folks interested in Valve's software to be more driven to keep their drivers and O/S up to date.
85% had DVD drives. That's pretty substantial. I'd have guessed 50-75%.
living on a scheme miles from a bank
Okay, I'm curious what "living on a scheme" is. Google isn't being too useful. I reckon it's either:
- some sort of assisted living building
- a building where the residents share common areas
- a typo
- getting by via an illegal scheme (fraud)
- some other obscure meaning
I'm not so sure about the useful bit either, but then my typical usage pattern isn't that of a typical commuter. (Which is why I don't own an iPod. I'm simply not mobile enough since I work from a home office 99% of the time. Coupled with an MP3 CD player in the car for when I travel. The nano is tempting becaues that might be useful for the quarterly business trip, but would still be an expensive toy.)
As for portable video... could be useful on business trips. You would probably get less eyebrows raised by toting around an iPod then by carrying a stack of DVDs to stick in your laptop. Granted, you can stealth the DVDs by putting them in a nylon case. But the iPod is going to be smaller.
Might work in a family car where you have video screens for the kids to watch. Having 20-40 DVD movies on-hand in the size of an iPod would be easier then managing 20-40 DVD discs. Plus, less wear and tear on the DVDs. (Shakes head... in *my* day you had to read books in the car if you wanted to be entertained!)
But like I said... I'm probably not the target market for such a thing.
Yes, I still have my old Santa Cruz PCI card laying around. Nice to see that they're still making newer cards.
What I'm curious about is whether the Turtle Beach cards now support front audio jacks on the newer cases. (One of the reasons my game box is currently using the on-board sound.) Once I started using cases with front audio ports, it became a bit of a pain to use my old Santa Cruz card.
4. Flash-based ads eat up too much CPU power. On single-CPU systems, this causes issues with responsiveness.
(For those who use AIM, I encourage you to make use of Task Manager and take a look at the "CPU Time" column on the process list. For a tool that is minimized, sitting in the system tray, rarely being used, it sure as heck uses up a LOT of CPU time. Is most of this from their ad technology? Maybe not, but AIM is ad-supported and it didn't used to be that much of a CPU pig.)
What I think will happen though, is that studios will create hybrid-DVDs that will play in both current DVD players as a standard DVD, and have a separate layer that will only be visible to the High Definition player. This is already done in Blu-Ray which may be what is making it more appetizing to studios. They sell one movie, and it's compatible with standard and high definition players. It makes the new disks more like an extension to DVD.
Interesting, I thought only HD-DVD supported the "hybrid" disc mode (where you have both regular DVD content and high def content on the same disc).
Assuming that production costs aren't outrageous, hybrid discs might work in the marketplace.
Ah yes, the joys of thinnet. OTOH, it was very easy to debug if you knew how the thinnet was routed from cubicle to cubicle. When you had a broken segment, you went halfway down the line and terminated it off. If the segment started working, your problem was farther away from the bridge (repeater?). Otherwise, you would head back upstream towards the head of the segment and try again. Where you typically ran into trouble were users who constantly moved equipment (test labs, laptop users). User training fixed most of those issues due to the informal posse of coworkers who would hunt down the frequent offender.
The previous topology in that office had been thicknet (where you had to manually tap the cable). Thinnet was seen as better. Or at least easier to build a network out of in a cubicle environment.
Token Ring wasn't all that bad. Unlike thinnet, the physical wiring was more of a topology like today's ethernet where you had a dedicated cable running from the patch panel to the workstation's network jack. At least, it was wired that way in the buildings where I've seen it. So it was easy enough to plug/unplug stations from the network in a central location. The topology was also designed to deal with a single break (the stations before/after the break would loopback).
The usual problems we had with TR were the fragile connectors (problematic for test environments / laptop users with frequent plug/unplug). Plus the issue that you only had 4Mbps (later 16Mbps) and a 4Mbps card wouldn't work on a 16Mbps network. Ethernet hubs/switches did a much better job of handling the upgrade path automatically where one port might be 10Mbps another 100Mbps and a third port running at 1Gpbs without redoing your entire network topology.
Dig back a few months in the coverage of this. I'm pretty sure there was an arbitrary decision as to who would be allowed to attend this year as well. I seem to remember some noise back in the spring / early-summer.
DARPA Announces 2005 Grand Challenge Semifinalists
DARPA announced 40 semifinalists for the 2005 Grand Challenge autonomous robot race today. Notable remaining teams include the Carnegie Mellon University Red Team, Stanford Racing and a high school team, the Palos Verde Road Warriors. 78 teams missed the cut.
DARPA Grand Challenge Teams Submit Videos to DARPA
DARPA Grand Challenge 2005 Rules Announced
Depends on where you're connecting from. I was able to hit Penny Arcade from Long Island, NY but not from Pennsylvania or Virginia.
I've seen a few other sites (ucomics) that are on the "other side of the rift" that I haven't been able to get to today. Fortunately, the office was not one of them (or I'd have had to drive the 5 hours into work).
Interesting. Wish there was an announcement mailing list that I could sign up for. (If there is, it wasn't anywhere obvious.)
Ah well, hopefully it gets a decent amount of press when they get to the release point.
Well for me, i's not that Wal-Mart doesn't do high-end sales.
It's that I think their competitive practice stink and that their company already has gotten too large. (Large companies wield too much power in a free market.)
Therefore, I choose to shop anywhere *but* Wal-Mart.
(I used to shop at Wal-Mart a lot. Until I started thinking about whether I preferred shopping at large stores or small businesses. Low prices aren't worth being treated like cattle in a store where you can never be recognized as a regular customer. It's well worth the price premium to go someplace smaller where repeat business is encouraged and you get treated like a customer rather then a consumer.)
Mine's not quite that crazy, but it's definitely diverse. I've bought an awful lot of off-the-wall books just because I've seen them mentioned here (or in other internet communities). Or I'll get it in my mind to read up on some event or topic so I'll order a few books.
Things on my bookshelf at the moment, ordered from Amazon.
- sci-fi / fantasy fiction
- DVD movies from multiple genres
- books on Vietnam
- a few books on cult psychology
- literary stuff
- computer books (from O/S's to security to programming)
- japanese language
- some cold-war fiction (Quiller)
My recommendations from Amazon lately
- Chef, Interrupted : Delicious Chefs' Recipes That You Can Actually Make at Home
- Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
- Inside Mac OS X
- Spider-Man 2
- Hacking Exposed 5th Edition
Amazon's recommendations aren't too bad. But if I had only ever bought what Amazon recommended based on my buying pattern, I doubt that I would have as wide of a selection as I ended up with. I have bought things in the past based on "others have bought X with Y" and it can be useful when I don't quite know what I want.
Still not as fun as wandering through a flea market and buying whatever used books you come across.
I'd suggest that you start reading up on 1-factor, 2-factor and 3-factor authentication systems. (Bruce's books cover this as do a bunch of security texts from the 70s and 80s.)
A 3-factor authentication system is:
1) Something you know (passwords, PINs)
2) Something you are (biometrics)
3) Something you have (tokens, keys, ID card)
This has been discussed since at least 1990 (my earliest brush with the concept) and probably at least 10+ years prior to that. If you rely on a single factor (passwords), your security is going to be relatively weak. If you use 2 factors, your security gets better but your costs go up. Three factors, your security goes up a bit more but your costs also go up again.
The big problem with #2 and #3 is that of standardization. Any system that interacts with the user can implement #1 (PINs/passwords). No extra cost required other then CPU and developer time. But to implement #2 and #3 requires hardware that isn't present on every system. Worse, the companies who have developed #2/#3 authentication hardware use extremely proprietary systems where you can't use fingerprint reader X and have it work with company Y's security system.
(It's not quite that bad anymore. There probably are some common inter-op standards now, but then you get into the issues of it only works with a particular O/S. Or, the hardware isn't under your control and you don't trust, such as a customer communicating with your website.)
The next step in large-scale security is probably going to be #1 (passwords, pins) combined with #3 (smart tokens or a card of security numbers). That moves us up to 2-factor authentication for cases where 1-factor authentication isn't good enough. Biometrics (#2) are probably only going to work in situations where you have control over all of the hardware used in the authentication process.
I'll even go out on the limb further and would not be surprised if Intuit works with banks to get a 2-factor system up and running. They would have the advantage that they could get multiple banks on board at the same time. It could even be marketed as a competitive advantage. (The precendent for this line of thought would be the process of getting online banking started back in the mid-90s. Used to be tricky to get online banking up and running, now it's almost taken for granted.)
I'm sure there are some true fans of the Harry Potter books but the majority of sheeple just let themselves be dragged mindlessly into the craze purely because it's a "cool" thing to do because everyone else does it.
/yawn
The reality and sadness of the matter is had these people read any Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Philip Pullman, Roald Dahl or even Terry Pratchett, they'd realise that there's hardly a single iota of an original idea in any one of Rowling's books.
I specifically avoided the first Harry Potter book (and the 2nd and 3rd) for a while due to the "hype". However, after the 3rd volume came out on paperback (2002?), I picked up the 1st book on a whim.
Not a bad read. Basically a coming of age story, with enough whimsy in it that it's a fun read and a nice way to escape for a few hours. This is not graduate level material, by any means. It's not meant to be. Not everything has to be Tolkein in order for it to be enjoyed. (I read the first 3 books over the space of 2 weeks.)
There are a few structural issues in some of the books (plot holes, feels a bit formulaic in places), but the book is overall very well written and edited. (As a contrast, look at the horrid Snow Crash, which was poorly written and needed a severe round of editing.) The tragic character in book 4 was mis-managed a bit, so that when they meet their fate towars the end of book 4, it's anti-climatic.
There's also something to be said for material that is approachable by the masses. Rowling has done a good job of writing a fantasy series that is somewhat engaging, definitely enjoyable, but without dumbing it down or pandering. Which means that the kids enjoy it and there's some enjoyment there for the adults as well.
And if it gets kids excited about reading, it's kinda odd to complain that it's written in a fluffier style then Tolkein. Let the kids get a taste and in a few years they'll be ready to tackle meatier tomes.
Back when I left EQ1 in 2003 (after close to 2 years of playing to the mid-50s on a few toons), I swore I'd never play another SOE game. But, I picked up EQ2 on a whim the week after it launched.
EQ2 corrects a lot of the issues that were in EQ1, but also introduces a few new ones.
The high points:
- Trial of the Isle, which is a downloadable demo of the first zone in the game. Which will introduce you to the first 6 levels, the 4 archetypes, and how the quest system works. Near as I can tell, it's a free download and a good way to find out if your system can handle the EQ2 graphics. That GeForce3 card probably can't do it.
- Quests are numerous. Some are soloable, some are group, some are epic. One of the mid-spring patches added a level indicator, and a future patch will add a flag that tells you if the quest is soloable or requires a group or raid.
- Decent gear at a low level. With a bit of footwork, you can have decent gear in your low levels.
- Vitality system, double XP until you run out of vitality. Takes maybe 10 hours of grinding to drain your vitality pool, and a week to fill.
- All classes can solo, some a little better then others. The 'overland' zones (outdoors) are filled with solo mobs, most group content is in the dungeons.
- Only 2 starting cities. Which makes it more likely to find groups at low levels.
- Crafted gear is viable and desireable.
It's not a bad game, if you accept it for what it is rather then forcing pre-conceptions on it.
Grind-wise, it's as much of a grind as you make it. If all you do is camp in the corner of zone and pull, it's a grindfest. OTOH, if you kill a few mobs here, a few mobs there, and finish this quest, get a few for this other quest, it's less of a grind.
There's a lot of mid-game content, so not a lot of reason to grind to 50 ASAP. In fact, you're likely to outlevel a lot of content unless you actively seek it out.
Not really, because you only need for the FAT to be unreadable (CDs/DVDs don't normally have multiple copies like hard disks often do) and then the data will still be there but you'll have a helluva time trying to access it.
Depends one which parity program you use. Best bet is to put all of your data in the root folder (zip it up if you have directory trees to preserve) and make a set of parity data using QuickPar. I usually fill 5-15% of the disc with parity, netting me about 4Gb of storage per DVD+/-R.
Now as long as the inner ring of the DVD/CD isn't too badly scratched (the ToC area), you can always recover this data. If the ToC area gets trashed, you'll need a special drive to recognize the disc (consumer DVD drives will refuse to load the disc).
If the directory gets hosed, you can rip the disc to an ISO file using ISOBuster, copy the image and rename it as PAR2. Then fire up QuickPar. QuickPar will scan the PAR2 file and the ISO file and find all of its parity blocks and the matching data blocks. It will then reconstruct the original files.
I've pulled more then one disc back from the brink using this method. Takes a while, but worth the peace of mind.
The big advantage of parity files is that it gives you a larger recovery window. Low-level errors are hardly ever noticeable by the end-user until it's too late. The built-in ECC on the disc fixes the issue on the fly, but doesn't alert the user that the media is failing. So when the ECC fails, the user is left with no option to recover. However, if you have parity files, once you notice that the ECC is failing, you still have a shot at using the parity files to recover your data.
Usually the reason for this is because that person has been burned by one company or the other in the past and have switched. Or, they've had exceptionally good performance from one brand and see others having abysmal performance in the other.
Exactly. I was burned by ATI's horrid Catalyst drivers for Windows 2000 with their Radeon All-In-Wonder 128 card. It's not that they didn't work, it's that it was a lot of black magic and voodoo to get things up and running and then hoping that it wouldn't break the next time you touched the box.
So... my next 3 cards have been nVIDIA. Partly because I now understand nVIDIA numbering scheme (and I'm not familiar with ATI's), but mostly because I've had very little issue with their video drivers (very forgiving, easy to install/uninstall).
Will I buy an ATI in the future? Maybe, but only if nVIDIA fails to meet my needs or burns me.
Ah yes, Compu$erve, where you were charged by THE HOUR to use their service.
And back around 1990-1995, it was *the* place to go and get hardware/software support for a lot of things. Not to mention the lively crew in the CANOPUS forum, which was a good place to find out tech news 1-2 months ahead of when PCMag would report on it.
I used to spend $50-$100/mo on CompuServe. For the time, it was money well spent as it kept me up-to-date on all sorts of technical topics. The signal-to-noise ratio was quite good (moderated forum) and discussions were very informative.
It helped immensely if you used an offline reader (TapCIS). Which kept your hourly charges to a reasonable amount. Off-line readers also allowed you to track which messages you had read and skim large volumes of posts quickly.
I don't think it's a question of whether Studio Ghibli can save Disney's soul, it's a question of whether Studio Ghibli will be able to retain theirs.
I've seen the interviews with the folks from Studio Ghibli talking about how wonderful it is to be partnering with Disney for these releases. They come across in that interview as being very very naive about what working with/for Disney is really like.
It's like watching lambs being led to the slaughterhouse.