It's not USB2 or SATA that cannibalized Firewire's supposed market... It's Ethernet. I have to disagree. Ethernet is good, but it does not support isochronous transfer. With Firewire, isochronous mode creates dedicated timeslots for devices that produce steady streams of data. DV and DCAM camera interfaces, multiple ADAC audio interfaces, you can theoretically load the bus to very close to 400MBit, and never have to worry about collisions or jitter, indeterminism, latency, or packet loss.
When you compare Firewire to Ethernet, I'm assuming you are only referring to the SBP-2 protocol of Firewire (which is what hard disks use) which is a asynchronous mode.
Note that if you have 350MBit of isochronous traffic, and use a SBP2 hard drive on the same bus... the isochronous data stream WILL NOT be affected - the hard drive will just have reduced bandwidth in the empty spaces in the schedule. You cannot say the same for Ethernet. Ethernet QOS might be able to reserve bandwidth, but does nothing for jitter or latency.
Also, FireWire plugs aren't pseudo-symmetrical like USB plugs. Not having to try several times untl you figure out which side is up is a big plus. Agreed for 6 pin connectors. MAJOR disagreement about the 4 pin connectors. Unlike most connectors in the DB line, usb, mini usb, even HDMI, the 4 pin firewire connector does not auto-seat if you get it close enough. Trying to blindly connect a cable to one is more difficult than any other common connector, in my opinion. With USB, you have to flip it around half the time. With 4 pin firewire, even if the orientation is correct it rarely seats.
Also, firewire support in Windows is terrible, and there are a bunch of non-compliant firewire controller chips in circulation, which pretty much doomed the standard except for DV cams on the Windows side. Delayed Write Failure anyone? I've found that replacing the Windows drivers completely with the free ones from Unibrain takes care of this issue on one laptop I have... Other people have other Voodoo that works. Sometimes...
Agreed. I am nearly red-green colorblind. For most things the color is obvious, red firetruck, brown grass, and I can tell that apart.
For red/green bicolor LEDs... I have the hardest time figuring which is which. I often have to resort to comparing the angle of light coming out of the LED, since it differs slightly depending on which color is active.
The problem is that typical bicolor LEDs have 'red' as 625nm, and Green at 565nm for a difference of 80nm. (Perhaps this is to reduce manufacturing cost?)
Tricolor INGaN LEDs have green at a more useful 525nm, and red at 630nm for a spread of 105nm. (Blue is at 465nm, but that doesn't count in this discussion).
This is enough for me to be able to distinguish the colors in a typical tricolor LED, but not the older bicolors.
So, that 8 port Gigabit router I bought that uses green for 100MBit, Red for 1Gbit (or the other way around) as a link indicator? No clue.
No. First, of all, if you slam on the brakes, the balloon flies to the front of the car. The balloon only flies to the back if you slam on the gas. I'm sorry. Your argument on the pressure is correct, but the reaction of a helium balloon to acceleration and deceleration is incorrect.
The balloons do indeed go rearwards as you stop as per the gp, and forwards as you accelerate. The reason is also "because of Newton's first law". Deceleration changes the direction of the net force exerted on all objects in the car. The net normal force, which is what the balloon cares about, is rearwards and up. In other words, buoyancy pushes the balloon backwards in the car as the air moves forward, creating a slight (depending on the deceleration) pressure differential between the front and rear faces of the balloon.
You should try it sometime:-) tie the string down so the balloon is not touching anything, and watch it lean into turns, and prove your statement incorrect for accel and decel.
This is the same thing that causes you to feel colder or warmer in a car, while turning sharply in the wintertime with the heat on low. Cold air "sinks" normally. Apply a centrifugal (I know... imaginary) force in a turn, and the cold air sloshes towards or away from you, similar to gas vs air in the fuel tank.
Your calculator is broken. Notwithstanding the binary/decimal conversion you are off by an order of magnitude++ on the second calculation. Bandwidth is decimal, not binary.
Namely, if Thread A writes to a value foo and Thread B reads from that value, Thread B will never get half-stale data. It will always get either the value before Thread A set foo, or the value after Thread A set foo. It would be nice if this was true... And it is for most things. However per the language spec...
17.7 Non-atomic Treatment of double and long Some implementations may find it convenient to divide a single write action on a 64-bit long or double value into two write actions on adjacent 32 bit values. For efficiency's sake, this behavior is implementation specific; Java virtual machines are free to perform writes to long and double values atomically or in two parts. For the purposes of the Java programming language memory model, a single write to a non-volatile long or double value is treated as two separate writes: one to each 32-bit half. This can result in a situation where a thread sees the first 32 bits of a 64 bit value from one write, and the second 32 bits from another write. Writes and reads of volatile long and double values are always atomic. Writes to and reads of references are always atomic, regardless of whether they are implemented as 32 or 64 bit values.
VM implementors are encouraged to avoid splitting their 64-bit values where possible. Programmers are encouraged to declare shared 64-bit values as volatile or synchronize their programs correctly to avoid possible complications.
"16 gigawatt hours (16 million kilowatt hours) of electricity annually"? Thats an odd measure of power. Why not measure it in horsepower, or catpower? How many library-of-congress*m^2*sec^-3 is that?
For the record: (16GWh/year) * (1day/24h) * (1year/365.25day) * (1000MW/1GW) = 1.825MW (average generation)
Panasonic CF-M34 ruggedised ultraportable* with original, reconditioned battery: XP Only Battery life on XP: little over 4.5 hours with wireless off, screen max brightness, typing in notepad. Running F@H (100%CPU) wireless on... ~2 hours
You mention that you have twin PCMCIA ports though, and USB2, so your M34 must be a different submodel, or a hackbook. Mine does have the wireless modem, and minipci modem removed, and uses a CF as SSD, so it is a bit more optimized for runtime and quietness. The CPU clock cycling circuitry is audible under very quiet conditions. Also, mine has long since been waterproof, since the CDPD antenna snapped off, and the case bottom is missing several screws, the docking connector rubberized foam is torn, and the screen latch cracked off. Still runs like a champ:-)
And... running Blender? at 800x600? with a 2D Vid Card? Ouch! That is not my choice in S&M. At least with Povray, all you need is a text editor on screen.
Movies are filmed at 24fps (double flashed in theatres at 48Hz - but still just 24 frames/sec). This is generally not noticeable since the shutter speed is set during filming to blur each frame except in certain high-action scenes (Bourne comes to mind) where the producer wants the added anxiety produced by a high shutter speed, no blur, stark, high contrast scene.
NTSC is 60 half frames per second - a rate also considered the MINIMUM for a CRT monitor refresh rate. 60Hz CRT monitors gives me a headache. 60fps is not fast enough for certain things - for instance, watching downhill skiing. One half frame the skier is on the right half of the screen, the next, almost to the left side. For a split second it appears that there are 2 skiers, since the blob of darkness is not connected in the two frames, since the shutter speed is high and he is hurtling down the mountain at 150km/h. For this reason I am saddened that the HD spec didn't include a 120Hz rate, perhaps as a 720i 120Hz. Some TVs support 120Hz - though only through interpolation. I don't think there are any that accept 120Hz sources over HDMI, etc.
The 60Hz LCD refresh rate is different since, except for a very few "Gamer" LCDs, the screen does not go black between refreshes. In the Gamer LCDs, switching all the pixels off momentarily is supposed to reduce motion blur - I'm not sure how well this works since I have never seen it in person.
However all of those are steady state - head stationary, object stationary - rates. When you get fast motion, and combine that with persistence of vision, things break down. Especially at night. Especially for red, bright red, on a field of darkness. Taillights. At 100Hz, you cannot see the LEDs blinking, but movies your head back and forth burns copies of the tail light into your retina, like mouse trails. Alternatively, if you are stationary on the side of the road, a passing car leaves a ramjet-esque punctuated string of red taillights in your vision. This is very distracting. If only one could rewire them to spell out words as you are driving by... Hmm...
The only Notepad specific "file type" is a.LOG text file, where the ASCII '.', 'L', 'O', 'G' is the file magic in the first four characters (might require after, I forget). It appends the date and time whenever you open the file. It's still "ANSI" format, but it does special stuff if it is there.
Yes, but only the 60GB model. The 40GB model doesn't even have the Graphics Synthesizer. The lack of an emotions chip is not a great disadvantage, though, since (through emulation) attitudes other than "Depressed", "Paranoid" and "Gloomy" are selectable.
Actually, it seems most modern BIOSes do NOT have this option. I have not tested it, but I assume that even if the option is set, it can only trap calls made through the BIOS int13h. (DOS, Windows 3.1, Windows 9x/Me in legacy disk access mode only) Once you transition to protected mode and the 32bit realm, the BIOS is out of the loop for disk access. It is possible that somehow the Southbridge, or disk controller can get programmed to look for LBA 0x00000000 or CHS 0,0,1 accesses and block them, but I do not believe this is the case.
Are you sure your monitor just doesn't have reverse ordered pixels? Most LCDs have BGR color ordering... but some have RGB. Sounds the same? It is very different! The following is a very zoomed in example of some backwards y letter I just made up. In the first, the font algorithm (Cleartype) thinks (correctly) you have BGR color order. In the second, the screen has RGB color order, and Cleartype thinks it is BGR (which is BAD!). Notice that the first one looks like a backwards y, like it should. The second one has separated pixels. On screen, this would look like a color halo "fringing" around the letter. Remember that in both examples, that 3 letters make up a single pixel, and the letters in each group that are turned "on" are the same in the first and second example.
BGR..RBGR .GRBGRB.. ..RBGR... ...BGRB.. ....GRBGR
RGBR..RGB RG.RGB..B R..RGB... ...RGB..B ...RG.RGB
If your video driver supports screen rotation, try inverting the screen, then looking at the result of Cleartype upside down. (temporarily of course... it is not very comfortable to hang from the ceiling and type). If this is significantly better, look for the MS Cleartype Tuning utility, which can change the logical pixel ordering, and gaussian values to make the text look good when the screen is right side up.
The BIG pain is when you have two monitors, one is BGR (my laptop) and one is RBG (external SONY) in dual head. Windows XP cannot set the logical pixel ordering for the monitors separately, meaning one looks good (I can pick which, of course), the other like ass. To remedy the situation, I currently have the SONY monitor propped upside down on my desk and have the screen rotated on it. Sounds dumb, but it works.
Best of luck! (and I hope my monospaced example does not get messed up)
It sounds like you are in favor of punitive damages, and I would think that most of the/. community would not argue with reasonable punitive damages. Damages in this case are not punitive, but statutory, and far beyond reasonable punitive damages. Refer, perhaps to the following:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punitive_damages "In response to judges and juries which award high punitive damages verdicts, the Supreme Court of the United States has made several decisions which limit awards of punitive damages through the due process of law clauses of the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution. In a number of cases, the Court has indicated that a 4:1 ratio between punitive and compensatory damages is broad enough to lead to a finding of constitutional impropriety, and that any ratio of 10:1 or higher is almost certainly unconstitutional."
Slashdot Mirror
You must be new here :-)
(UID notwithstanding)
When you compare Firewire to Ethernet, I'm assuming you are only referring to the SBP-2 protocol of Firewire (which is what hard disks use) which is a asynchronous mode.
Note that if you have 350MBit of isochronous traffic, and use a SBP2 hard drive on the same bus... the isochronous data stream WILL NOT be affected - the hard drive will just have reduced bandwidth in the empty spaces in the schedule. You cannot say the same for Ethernet. Ethernet QOS might be able to reserve bandwidth, but does nothing for jitter or latency.
Also, firewire support in Windows is terrible, and there are a bunch of non-compliant firewire controller chips in circulation, which pretty much doomed the standard except for DV cams on the Windows side. Delayed Write Failure anyone? I've found that replacing the Windows drivers completely with the free ones from Unibrain takes care of this issue on one laptop I have... Other people have other Voodoo that works. Sometimes...
I love firewire when it works.
Agreed. I am nearly red-green colorblind. For most things the color is obvious, red firetruck, brown grass, and I can tell that apart.
For red/green bicolor LEDs... I have the hardest time figuring which is which. I often have to resort to comparing the angle of light coming out of the LED, since it differs slightly depending on which color is active.
The problem is that typical bicolor LEDs have 'red' as 625nm, and Green at 565nm for a difference of 80nm. (Perhaps this is to reduce manufacturing cost?)
Tricolor INGaN LEDs have green at a more useful 525nm, and red at 630nm for a spread of 105nm. (Blue is at 465nm, but that doesn't count in this discussion).
This is enough for me to be able to distinguish the colors in a typical tricolor LED, but not the older bicolors.
So, that 8 port Gigabit router I bought that uses green for 100MBit, Red for 1Gbit (or the other way around) as a link indicator? No clue.
The balloons do indeed go rearwards as you stop as per the gp, and forwards as you accelerate. The reason is also "because of Newton's first law". Deceleration changes the direction of the net force exerted on all objects in the car. The net normal force, which is what the balloon cares about, is rearwards and up. In other words, buoyancy pushes the balloon backwards in the car as the air moves forward, creating a slight (depending on the deceleration) pressure differential between the front and rear faces of the balloon.
You should try it sometime
This is the same thing that causes you to feel colder or warmer in a car, while turning sharply in the wintertime with the heat on low. Cold air "sinks" normally. Apply a centrifugal (I know... imaginary) force in a turn, and the cold air sloshes towards or away from you, similar to gas vs air in the fuel tank.
Your calculator is broken. Notwithstanding the binary/decimal conversion you are off by an order of magnitude++ on the second calculation. Bandwidth is decimal, not binary.
(5*10^9)*8 / 768*10^3 = 52083s = 14.47hr
(40*10^9)*8 / 15*10^6 = 21333s = 5.92hr
17.7 Non-atomic Treatment of double and long
Some implementations may find it convenient to divide a single write action on a 64-bit long or double value into two write actions on adjacent 32 bit values. For efficiency's sake, this behavior is implementation specific; Java virtual machines are free to perform writes to long and double values atomically or in two parts.
For the purposes of the Java programming language memory model, a single write to a non-volatile long or double value is treated as two separate writes: one to each 32-bit half. This can result in a situation where a thread sees the first 32 bits of a 64 bit value from one write, and the second 32 bits from another write. Writes and reads of volatile long and double values are always atomic. Writes to and reads of references are always atomic, regardless of whether they are implemented as 32 or 64 bit values.
VM implementors are encouraged to avoid splitting their 64-bit values where possible. Programmers are encouraged to declare shared 64-bit values as volatile or synchronize their programs correctly to avoid possible complications.
Well, the Atari may have been plastic... but at least it had a wood grain finish :-P
...your Quixotic reference :-) Perfect amount of subtlety there.
"16 gigawatt hours (16 million kilowatt hours) of electricity annually"? Thats an odd measure of power. Why not measure it in horsepower, or catpower? How many library-of-congress*m^2*sec^-3 is that?
For the record:
(16GWh/year) * (1day/24h) * (1year/365.25day) * (1000MW/1GW) = 1.825MW (average generation)
4*1.25MW = 5MW (max nominal generation)
13GWh/year = 1.48MW (average city consumption)
1.48MW * (1341hp/1MW) = 1984.7hp
I will leave the library-of-congress-meter-squared-per-second-cubed calculation as an exercise for the reader.
Dragon's Lair would never be produced in todays market. Wait, did I just consider a laserdisc player to be a console?!? AAAArrgghh!
Think Lubrication.
The cake is a lie.
Panasonic CF-M34 ruggedised ultraportable* with original, reconditioned battery:
:-)
XP Only
Battery life on XP: little over 4.5 hours with wireless off, screen max brightness, typing in notepad.
Running F@H (100%CPU) wireless on... ~2 hours
You mention that you have twin PCMCIA ports though, and USB2, so your M34 must be a different submodel, or a hackbook. Mine does have the wireless modem, and minipci modem removed, and uses a CF as SSD, so it is a bit more optimized for runtime and quietness. The CPU clock cycling circuitry is audible under very quiet conditions. Also, mine has long since been waterproof, since the CDPD antenna snapped off, and the case bottom is missing several screws, the docking connector rubberized foam is torn, and the screen latch cracked off. Still runs like a champ
And... running Blender? at 800x600? with a 2D Vid Card? Ouch! That is not my choice in S&M. At least with Povray, all you need is a text editor on screen.
Movies are filmed at 24fps (double flashed in theatres at 48Hz - but still just 24 frames/sec). This is generally not noticeable since the shutter speed is set during filming to blur each frame except in certain high-action scenes (Bourne comes to mind) where the producer wants the added anxiety produced by a high shutter speed, no blur, stark, high contrast scene.
NTSC is 60 half frames per second - a rate also considered the MINIMUM for a CRT monitor refresh rate. 60Hz CRT monitors gives me a headache. 60fps is not fast enough for certain things - for instance, watching downhill skiing. One half frame the skier is on the right half of the screen, the next, almost to the left side. For a split second it appears that there are 2 skiers, since the blob of darkness is not connected in the two frames, since the shutter speed is high and he is hurtling down the mountain at 150km/h. For this reason I am saddened that the HD spec didn't include a 120Hz rate, perhaps as a 720i 120Hz. Some TVs support 120Hz - though only through interpolation. I don't think there are any that accept 120Hz sources over HDMI, etc.
The 60Hz LCD refresh rate is different since, except for a very few "Gamer" LCDs, the screen does not go black between refreshes. In the Gamer LCDs, switching all the pixels off momentarily is supposed to reduce motion blur - I'm not sure how well this works since I have never seen it in person.
However all of those are steady state - head stationary, object stationary - rates.
When you get fast motion, and combine that with persistence of vision, things break down. Especially at night. Especially for red, bright red, on a field of darkness. Taillights. At 100Hz, you cannot see the LEDs blinking, but movies your head back and forth burns copies of the tail light into your retina, like mouse trails. Alternatively, if you are stationary on the side of the road, a passing car leaves a ramjet-esque punctuated string of red taillights in your vision. This is very distracting. If only one could rewire them to spell out words as you are driving by... Hmm...
Was that intended to be a Beowulf reference? If so... it does not meet the /. form and should be rejected.
Speaking of which - Why hasn't anyone come up with a Beowulf Cluster Bomb?
Screw the batteries - those only last for like five minutes at the most. Throw a Super Solenoid Engine in it.
For information about their prime data center locations, the best reference is here:
http://www.google.com/jobs/lunar_job.html
Global Warming on the other hand, is permitted, and even encouraged. Tbppp.
The only Notepad specific "file type" is a .LOG text file, where the ASCII '.', 'L', 'O', 'G' is the file magic in the first four characters (might require after, I forget). It appends the date and time whenever you open the file. It's still "ANSI" format, but it does special stuff if it is there.
Yes, but only the 60GB model. The 40GB model doesn't even have the Graphics Synthesizer. The lack of an emotions chip is not a great disadvantage, though, since (through emulation) attitudes other than "Depressed", "Paranoid" and "Gloomy" are selectable.
Actually, it seems most modern BIOSes do NOT have this option. I have not tested it, but I assume that even if the option is set, it can only trap calls made through the BIOS int13h. (DOS, Windows 3.1, Windows 9x/Me in legacy disk access mode only) Once you transition to protected mode and the 32bit realm, the BIOS is out of the loop for disk access. It is possible that somehow the Southbridge, or disk controller can get programmed to look for LBA 0x00000000 or CHS 0,0,1 accesses and block them, but I do not believe this is the case.
Like everything XML - While it may be compliant it is never the right tool for the job. Correcting this..:
"I have no idea how all this works, but I'm much smarter than the guys who get paid megabux to design this stuff so foo."
Are you sure your monitor just doesn't have reverse ordered pixels? Most LCDs have BGR color ordering... but some have RGB. Sounds the same? It is very different! The following is a very zoomed in example of some backwards y letter I just made up. In the first, the font algorithm (Cleartype) thinks (correctly) you have BGR color order. In the second, the screen has RGB color order, and Cleartype thinks it is BGR (which is BAD!). Notice that the first one looks like a backwards y, like it should. The second one has separated pixels. On screen, this would look like a color halo "fringing" around the letter. Remember that in both examples, that 3 letters make up a single pixel, and the letters in each group that are turned "on" are the same in the first and second example.
BGR..RBGR
.GRBGRB..
..RBGR...
...BGRB..
....GRBGR
RGBR..RGB
RG.RGB..B
R..RGB...
...RGB..B
...RG.RGB
If your video driver supports screen rotation, try inverting the screen, then looking at the result of Cleartype upside down. (temporarily of course... it is not very comfortable to hang from the ceiling and type). If this is significantly better, look for the MS Cleartype Tuning utility, which can change the logical pixel ordering, and gaussian values to make the text look good when the screen is right side up.
The BIG pain is when you have two monitors, one is BGR (my laptop) and one is RBG (external SONY) in dual head. Windows XP cannot set the logical pixel ordering for the monitors separately, meaning one looks good (I can pick which, of course), the other like ass. To remedy the situation, I currently have the SONY monitor propped upside down on my desk and have the screen rotated on it. Sounds dumb, but it works.
Best of luck! (and I hope my monospaced example does not get messed up)
It sounds like you are in favor of punitive damages, and I would think that most of the /. community would not argue with reasonable punitive damages. Damages in this case are not punitive, but statutory, and far beyond reasonable punitive damages. Refer, perhaps to the following:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punitive_damages
"In response to judges and juries which award high punitive damages verdicts, the Supreme Court of the United States has made several decisions which limit awards of punitive damages through the due process of law clauses of the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution. In a number of cases, the Court has indicated that a 4:1 ratio between punitive and compensatory damages is broad enough to lead to a finding of constitutional impropriety, and that any ratio of 10:1 or higher is almost certainly unconstitutional."