Look for any info you can find on the GeForce 2/4 Go - I believe these have the GPU and memory and not much else on a chip-like substrate, everything else is on the system board and doesn't change with video card upgrades.
GF4 Gos are $150 - That's DIRT CHEAP considering the performance that card delivers and the fact that it's a low-volume laptop part. Probably because 50% or more of the video card is on the motherboard.
For that extra money, he is probably getting extra service and security.
I've been an avid Pricewatcher, but I've started eating significant price differences by going to Best Buy instead because it seems as if the quality of Pricewatch vendors has been dropping like a rock - Return policies have become much worse, and the number of items I've received DOA from Pricewatch vendors has skyrocketed in the past few months.
Yes, there are better reputable vendors on Pricewatch (Like NewEgg), but often they don't have nearly the price advantage that others have, and once they do, I'm willing to spend the $10-20 extra for an item that I can return for an exchange in 30 minutes rather than 2 weeks. (Thank God I bought my LCD monitor at BB - It had a defect, I brought it back the next morning and had a perfect replacement in 30 minutes.)
On a related note, I haven't seen a card in years that didn't have VESA compatibility. But VESA only provides an interface for the most basic featureset of a card. If you're using VESA compatibility mode instead of getting a proper driver, you're throwing away everything that sets a $250 GeForce4 Ti from a $20 S3 or Trident POS video card.
Same goes for SB16 compatibility - Lots of cards have this. Would I want to use it? No way, not with all of the benefits that newer cards offer.
Keyboards w/o "internet keys" - Hmm? I've never had any problems with such keyboards. Don't touch the "internet keys" and the rest of the keyboard is 100% identical to a normal PS/2 keyboard. In the case of "Internet Keys", usually they're just extra scancodes which the driver has no problem understanding and it's a simple matter of mapping the keys to a useful function in X or wherever.
As I mentioned in my post, things may have changed.
At one time, MySQL was the speed king, hands-down.
From various things I've heard, Postgres may have caught up in the speed arena by now. But at this point, people are most familiar with MySQL and will continue using it unless they need more because that's what they're comfortable with.
Unless the new company has pretty comprehensive site licenses for the software. Basically, all MS software we have that isn't covered by our new parent company's site license but was covered by our old one must be deleted from all company computers ASAP.
For us, that means we can keep all Office components (We have a site license for them) except for Access (Which the new company doesn't).
As far as I can tell, our licenses for most other software (Matlab, Microwave Office, various CAD/ECAD tools, etc.) were not a problem to transfer.
I'm assuming since you said Qualcomm you meant the pdQ.
It seems like the pdQ got bashed by reviewers and by users, and overall just sucked. Didn't help that they were all single-band digital only.
The Kyocera 6035 (Essentially the pdQ version 2) had FAR better phone/Palm integration and is a VERY slick device. http://www.smartphonesource.com/ is the place to go for info and user comments on the phone.
Note that SMS won't even touch the pdQ. I think a total of 1 member used it and said it was a pretty crappy unit. Everyone LOVES their 6035s (including myself), and are drooling over the upcoming 7135.
I remember a while ago, someone mentioning that the Linux libdvdcss implementations have three modes.
The first two are "normal" and require the hardware to cooperate.
The last mode brute-forces the key by using a known-plaintext attack - Most DVDs start with a small amount of black screen, which encodes predictably with MPEG2. From this, it's possible to bruteforce the key. (I could be wrong about the basic details, it's something I remember from a/. post)
In short, any Linux player capable of playing encrypted DVDs should have no problem with region coding. It might take a bit longer if your drive doesn't cooperate, but you should be able to play the discs.
If you got yours back in Oct 2000, you don't know what you're missing. Back then, the standard UXGA was the only one available. (The USUXGA wasn't available in Aug 2001 either).
The UXGA screen is pretty nice. The UltraSharp UXGA is simply amazing.
Desktop LCDs are usually pretty decent, except for the (usually) lower resolutions. I have a 17" MAG LCD, while it only does 1280x1024, it makes up for it by having the brightest screen I've ever used (Brighter than even my old Trinitron-tube monitor) and wonderful viewing angle (Beats even the UltraSharp, which is quite difficult...)
Although near the end of all these posts someone did a good side-by-side comparison of the two laptops - The gist of it was, if you're willing to deal with a slightly larger and heavier laptop (not much larger or heavier), the Best Buy laptop was more bang for the buck. ($100 less, more RAM, more HD space, faster CPU, etc.), it's not significantly improved enough to be notweorthy...
Has the same crap display as the TiBook. 1280 pixels horizontal is nothing special in a 15" laptop these days. Dell has been shipping 1600x1200 laptops for over a year now, and the new UltraSharp UXGA screens are REALLY beautiful. (After getting my Inspiron 8200, I would never want to go back to the standard UXGA screen in my dad's I8000) If they'd put in a display 1400 or 1600 pixels wide it would've been more newsworthy...
The only time I've seen Linux mentioned on mainstrem TV is in IBM commercials. This is a Good Thing. (The fact that it's being featured in commericals, not the fact that these are the only mainstream media references to Linux)
Also, as you increase speed, the signal processing capabilities of the receiver on both your phone and the base station are taxed more. One of the biggest restrictions in downlink capacity and bandwidth is multipath performance - Lucent was doing a LOT of research into new types of multipath filters that would increase capacity. Many of the 3G standards specify lower peak data rates for "mobile" phones as opposed to "stationary/on-foot" phones because of this.
This combined with multiple towers being tagged at once REALLY makes things tough for the entire system.
Once forged headers become illegal, sending to the wrong people WILL be wasted money.
Not the initial mailing, but the retaliation it will provoke.
There's one big problem with opt-out - So many spammers have abused "opt-out" systems that using an "opt-out" system is considered the best way to get your email propagated to new spammers - No one trusts it anymore.
On the other hand, if a central database is enacted AND stiff penalties are enacted for those that ignore it, it could work. Unfortunately, spammers will likely just move offshore.:(
In addition, the law must *SPECIFICALLY* specify the string to be used.
I believe a California law required spammers to put ADV: in their subjects. (Maybe not Cali, but elsewhere)
Spammers interpreted this as allowing: A.D.V A D V A_D_V etc, etc. - Specify BULK MAILING in that exact format with no additional spaces or other characters.
If you don't give a damn about quality (i.e. one-off burns, not too concerned about speed), you'd better not be paying more than "free after rebate" - Subscribe to a few sales circulars and you should be able to grab a free 25 or 50-pack every 2-3 weeks.
Glowing effects - You can probably see that if you go to various sites (camelot.allakhazam.com, daoc.stratics.com, etc.) - Since these are already implemented on dropped items. It just happens that soon players will be able to customize them.
There used to be a really good friar staff shot at camelot.mmorpg.net, but they've reorganized the site and I can't find it anymore. (Entire staff glowed red. My staff only has a green glowing ball at the tip.)
Alchemy: Ability to craft armor dyes cheaply Ability to add particle effcts to weapons (Make em' glow - Pretty much useful for eye candy) Ability to make statbuff potions (Adds points to an attribute for 10 minutes) Ability to add "procs" to weapons/armor - A weapon with a proc will cast a certain spell when it hits in melee combat. (A guildie of mine has a sword that procs a fire DD spell, aka fire nuke pretty often). Reverse procs will cast spells (5-sec armor buff, etc) when armor is hit in melee.
There's a lot of info on spellcrafting/alchemy on the Herald, and on many other sites. (People have been playing with it on the DAoC test servers a lot)
Um... Putting all APs on one channel is Bad. Very Bad. They will all interfere with each other and performance will suck.
Take, for example, 9 rooms. (I'm sure the house has far more than this, which makes the problem far worse). 1 AP per room means that each nonoverlapping channel (1,6,11) will have 3 APs on it. Each of these groups of 3 will interfere with each other.
Put em' all on one channel, and you have 9 APs all interfering with each other.
Bell's house probably has 20-30 or more rooms. The problem gets even worse.
Where I work, we have a total of 4 APs for a medium-sized office building.
Supposedly Catherine Bell's house will have one AP per room
Considering that there only 3 non-overlapping 802.11b channels, this means that her APs will most likely be interfering with each other. In a house like that, probably at least 3 APs on each channel in close proximity to each other.
The problems won't be as much if she's using 11a - More nonoverlapping channels and shorter range. But in many cases so short as to cause room coverage issues in a larger room...
Currently, player-made items in DAoC cannot be the best in the game. Armor can have the best AF, and weapons can have the highest damage, but they don't have the magical bonuses that people REALLY want. As a result, especially thanks to the "epic armor" received after a quest at level 50, there's only a demand for 2 of the 4 tradeskills.
This all changes in 6 days, when Spellcrafting and Alchemy (The ability to give items magical bonuses and make potions) finally goes live. At that point, Mythic's original promise that players would be able to MAKE the best items in the game will finally become reality.
That said, DAoC's economy is a bit more robust than EQ's - The problem with EQ was that certain crafted items sold for more than they cost to make. This is what the free-money exploits take advantage of. In DAoC, EVERYTHING is a loss except for one of the lowest items, which will net you 7 copper per build. (Note: Macro this all you want, it would probably take a day just to make one gold, whereas a player could make that much in a few minutes solo farming.)
Also, DAoC has a couple of inherent "cash sinks" built into the game. While EQ's economy primarily consists of buying "rare items" that enter the game but rarely exit, probably 50% or more of the cash in DAoC's economy is used to buy wood.
Wood, you say? A key part of DAoC's endgame is realm vs. realm battle. Part of RvR is taking over enemy keeps and holding them.
Upgrading a door to level 5-6 usually costs a few hundred gold worth of wood. Holding a keep for two weeks against attacks can make an entire guild go flat broke. (This happened to my guild - People are just beginning to recover their cash reserves well over a month later.)
As someone else pointed out, Battle.net is something akin to Napster - It just keeps track of clients and tells them where to connect with each other. It might store some information, like character data. (i.e. act as a savegame repository, in the case of D2)
Napster had no problem commanding massive bandwidth overloads all over, but their servers themselves were not strained much at all.
MMORPGs require the client to be connected directly to the server, which means the server and connection have to be a LOT beefier.
DAoC definately does NOT cost as much as a single-player game initially.
When I bought my first copy, it was $30 - Most good games are $50+ these days.
When I bought my second copy recently, it was only $20 - Take into account that the game comes with a free month ($13 if paid a month at a time), and that means the game cost $17 and later $7 initially.
You have two options: a) Hope that Avaya supports VoIP with Partner. I don't remember if it does. Back when I worked for Lucent BCS (Before it spun off to Avaya), VoIP was bleeding edge and Lucent was still developing their VoIP systems. b) If Avaya doesn't support VOiP with their Partner systems, you'll most likely have to junk the Partner system and get a key system that does do VoIP.
a) is more likely, since I recall the Partner being reasonably expandable, albeit nowhere close to the venerable Definity - Its expandability has allowed the platform to survive for over 20 years and still be one of the best PBX systems out the. (Definity was one of the first implementations of hot-swappable hardware - Swapping circuit packs in/out of a running system was a favorite demo to customers when the system was first introduced.)
As another poster mentioned, the Definity (He refers to it as G3, which is just the current variant of the Definity platform) can be given VoIP capability. Not sure at what size company a Definity becomes justifiable - My company started at around 80-100 people at 2 locations and had a Definity, but that could be partly because of anticipated growth and the fact that it was a Lucent spinoff. We're now a part of a different large company.) We had direct dialing-by-extension between Warren, NJ and Columbus, OH via a VoIP connection. I believe we now have VoIP links to other company locations too.
But I believe Slashdot has covered 1-2 different hacks using these mice as the core. (Or if/. hasn't covered it, it was linked to from discussion - Anyone remember the article on the AI machine road rally contest from somewhere in California to Vegas? There was a link to an open-source helicopter autopilot project that used the electronics from these mice as an attitude sensor.)
Slashdot Mirror
Look for any info you can find on the GeForce 2/4 Go - I believe these have the GPU and memory and not much else on a chip-like substrate, everything else is on the system board and doesn't change with video card upgrades.
GF4 Gos are $150 - That's DIRT CHEAP considering the performance that card delivers and the fact that it's a low-volume laptop part. Probably because 50% or more of the video card is on the motherboard.
For that extra money, he is probably getting extra service and security.
I've been an avid Pricewatcher, but I've started eating significant price differences by going to Best Buy instead because it seems as if the quality of Pricewatch vendors has been dropping like a rock - Return policies have become much worse, and the number of items I've received DOA from Pricewatch vendors has skyrocketed in the past few months.
Yes, there are better reputable vendors on Pricewatch (Like NewEgg), but often they don't have nearly the price advantage that others have, and once they do, I'm willing to spend the $10-20 extra for an item that I can return for an exchange in 30 minutes rather than 2 weeks. (Thank God I bought my LCD monitor at BB - It had a defect, I brought it back the next morning and had a perfect replacement in 30 minutes.)
VESA = Stone Age.
On a related note, I haven't seen a card in years that didn't have VESA compatibility. But VESA only provides an interface for the most basic featureset of a card. If you're using VESA compatibility mode instead of getting a proper driver, you're throwing away everything that sets a $250 GeForce4 Ti from a $20 S3 or Trident POS video card.
Same goes for SB16 compatibility - Lots of cards have this. Would I want to use it? No way, not with all of the benefits that newer cards offer.
Keyboards w/o "internet keys" - Hmm? I've never had any problems with such keyboards. Don't touch the "internet keys" and the rest of the keyboard is 100% identical to a normal PS/2 keyboard. In the case of "Internet Keys", usually they're just extra scancodes which the driver has no problem understanding and it's a simple matter of mapping the keys to a useful function in X or wherever.
As I mentioned in my post, things may have changed.
At one time, MySQL was the speed king, hands-down.
From various things I've heard, Postgres may have caught up in the speed arena by now. But at this point, people are most familiar with MySQL and will continue using it unless they need more because that's what they're comfortable with.
While this may have changed, a few years ago, Postgresql was a non-competitor for one reason and one reason alone: It was slow.
/. - It was the fastest choice available at the time.)
MySQL had a reputation for being VERY fast. (In fact, this is why it was chosen for
Again, this may have changed, but in the past, MySQL was the speed king if you didn't need all of the other features that Postgres offer.
So in short, the one users reason is, "I picked a database with less features/reliability because I need speed more than features/reliability."
Unless the new company has pretty comprehensive site licenses for the software. Basically, all MS software we have that isn't covered by our new parent company's site license but was covered by our old one must be deleted from all company computers ASAP.
For us, that means we can keep all Office components (We have a site license for them) except for Access (Which the new company doesn't).
As far as I can tell, our licenses for most other software (Matlab, Microwave Office, various CAD/ECAD tools, etc.) were not a problem to transfer.
I'm assuming since you said Qualcomm you meant the pdQ.
It seems like the pdQ got bashed by reviewers and by users, and overall just sucked. Didn't help that they were all single-band digital only.
The Kyocera 6035 (Essentially the pdQ version 2) had FAR better phone/Palm integration and is a VERY slick device. http://www.smartphonesource.com/ is the place to go for info and user comments on the phone.
Note that SMS won't even touch the pdQ. I think a total of 1 member used it and said it was a pretty crappy unit. Everyone LOVES their 6035s (including myself), and are drooling over the upcoming 7135.
I remember a while ago, someone mentioning that the Linux libdvdcss implementations have three modes.
/. post)
The first two are "normal" and require the hardware to cooperate.
The last mode brute-forces the key by using a known-plaintext attack - Most DVDs start with a small amount of black screen, which encodes predictably with MPEG2. From this, it's possible to bruteforce the key. (I could be wrong about the basic details, it's something I remember from a
In short, any Linux player capable of playing encrypted DVDs should have no problem with region coding. It might take a bit longer if your drive doesn't cooperate, but you should be able to play the discs.
If you got yours back in Oct 2000, you don't know what you're missing. Back then, the standard UXGA was the only one available. (The USUXGA wasn't available in Aug 2001 either).
The UXGA screen is pretty nice. The UltraSharp UXGA is simply amazing.
Desktop LCDs are usually pretty decent, except for the (usually) lower resolutions. I have a 17" MAG LCD, while it only does 1280x1024, it makes up for it by having the brightest screen I've ever used (Brighter than even my old Trinitron-tube monitor) and wonderful viewing angle (Beats even the UltraSharp, which is quite difficult...)
Although near the end of all these posts someone did a good side-by-side comparison of the two laptops - The gist of it was, if you're willing to deal with a slightly larger and heavier laptop (not much larger or heavier), the Best Buy laptop was more bang for the buck. ($100 less, more RAM, more HD space, faster CPU, etc.), it's not significantly improved enough to be notweorthy...
Has the same crap display as the TiBook. 1280 pixels horizontal is nothing special in a 15" laptop these days. Dell has been shipping 1600x1200 laptops for over a year now, and the new UltraSharp UXGA screens are REALLY beautiful. (After getting my Inspiron 8200, I would never want to go back to the standard UXGA screen in my dad's I8000) If they'd put in a display 1400 or 1600 pixels wide it would've been more newsworthy...
The only time I've seen Linux mentioned on mainstrem TV is in IBM commercials. This is a Good Thing. (The fact that it's being featured in commericals, not the fact that these are the only mainstream media references to Linux)
Also, as you increase speed, the signal processing capabilities of the receiver on both your phone and the base station are taxed more. One of the biggest restrictions in downlink capacity and bandwidth is multipath performance - Lucent was doing a LOT of research into new types of multipath filters that would increase capacity. Many of the 3G standards specify lower peak data rates for "mobile" phones as opposed to "stationary/on-foot" phones because of this.
This combined with multiple towers being tagged at once REALLY makes things tough for the entire system.
Once forged headers become illegal, sending to the wrong people WILL be wasted money.
:(
Not the initial mailing, but the retaliation it will provoke.
There's one big problem with opt-out - So many spammers have abused "opt-out" systems that using an "opt-out" system is considered the best way to get your email propagated to new spammers - No one trusts it anymore.
On the other hand, if a central database is enacted AND stiff penalties are enacted for those that ignore it, it could work. Unfortunately, spammers will likely just move offshore.
In addition, the law must *SPECIFICALLY* specify the string to be used.
I believe a California law required spammers to put ADV: in their subjects. (Maybe not Cali, but elsewhere)
Spammers interpreted this as allowing:
A.D.V
A D V
A_D_V
etc, etc. - Specify BULK MAILING in that exact format with no additional spaces or other characters.
If you don't give a damn about quality (i.e. one-off burns, not too concerned about speed), you'd better not be paying more than "free after rebate" - Subscribe to a few sales circulars and you should be able to grab a free 25 or 50-pack every 2-3 weeks.
None that I have.
Glowing effects - You can probably see that if you go to various sites (camelot.allakhazam.com, daoc.stratics.com, etc.) - Since these are already implemented on dropped items. It just happens that soon players will be able to customize them.
There used to be a really good friar staff shot at camelot.mmorpg.net, but they've reorganized the site and I can't find it anymore. (Entire staff glowed red. My staff only has a green glowing ball at the tip.)
6 days. :)
The new crafting types to go live on DAoC's servers on the 29th (note: www.camelotherald.net has lots of DAoC news) are Spellcrafting and Alchemy.
Spellcrafting:
Adding magical bonuses to crafted items. (Equipping item gives +5 intelligence, +2 Cold Magic, etc.)
Alchemy:
Ability to craft armor dyes cheaply
Ability to add particle effcts to weapons (Make em' glow - Pretty much useful for eye candy)
Ability to make statbuff potions (Adds points to an attribute for 10 minutes)
Ability to add "procs" to weapons/armor - A weapon with a proc will cast a certain spell when it hits in melee combat. (A guildie of mine has a sword that procs a fire DD spell, aka fire nuke pretty often). Reverse procs will cast spells (5-sec armor buff, etc) when armor is hit in melee.
There's a lot of info on spellcrafting/alchemy on the Herald, and on many other sites. (People have been playing with it on the DAoC test servers a lot)
Um... Putting all APs on one channel is Bad. Very Bad. They will all interfere with each other and performance will suck.
Take, for example, 9 rooms. (I'm sure the house has far more than this, which makes the problem far worse). 1 AP per room means that each nonoverlapping channel (1,6,11) will have 3 APs on it. Each of these groups of 3 will interfere with each other.
Put em' all on one channel, and you have 9 APs all interfering with each other.
Bell's house probably has 20-30 or more rooms. The problem gets even worse.
Where I work, we have a total of 4 APs for a medium-sized office building.
Supposedly Catherine Bell's house will have one AP per room
Considering that there only 3 non-overlapping 802.11b channels, this means that her APs will most likely be interfering with each other. In a house like that, probably at least 3 APs on each channel in close proximity to each other.
The problems won't be as much if she's using 11a - More nonoverlapping channels and shorter range. But in many cases so short as to cause room coverage issues in a larger room...
Currently, player-made items in DAoC cannot be the best in the game. Armor can have the best AF, and weapons can have the highest damage, but they don't have the magical bonuses that people REALLY want. As a result, especially thanks to the "epic armor" received after a quest at level 50, there's only a demand for 2 of the 4 tradeskills.
This all changes in 6 days, when Spellcrafting and Alchemy (The ability to give items magical bonuses and make potions) finally goes live. At that point, Mythic's original promise that players would be able to MAKE the best items in the game will finally become reality.
That said, DAoC's economy is a bit more robust than EQ's - The problem with EQ was that certain crafted items sold for more than they cost to make. This is what the free-money exploits take advantage of. In DAoC, EVERYTHING is a loss except for one of the lowest items, which will net you 7 copper per build. (Note: Macro this all you want, it would probably take a day just to make one gold, whereas a player could make that much in a few minutes solo farming.)
Also, DAoC has a couple of inherent "cash sinks" built into the game. While EQ's economy primarily consists of buying "rare items" that enter the game but rarely exit, probably 50% or more of the cash in DAoC's economy is used to buy wood.
Wood, you say? A key part of DAoC's endgame is realm vs. realm battle. Part of RvR is taking over enemy keeps and holding them.
Upgrading a door to level 5-6 usually costs a few hundred gold worth of wood. Holding a keep for two weeks against attacks can make an entire guild go flat broke. (This happened to my guild - People are just beginning to recover their cash reserves well over a month later.)
As someone else pointed out, Battle.net is something akin to Napster - It just keeps track of clients and tells them where to connect with each other. It might store some information, like character data. (i.e. act as a savegame repository, in the case of D2)
Napster had no problem commanding massive bandwidth overloads all over, but their servers themselves were not strained much at all.
MMORPGs require the client to be connected directly to the server, which means the server and connection have to be a LOT beefier.
DAoC definately does NOT cost as much as a single-player game initially.
When I bought my first copy, it was $30 - Most good games are $50+ these days.
When I bought my second copy recently, it was only $20 - Take into account that the game comes with a free month ($13 if paid a month at a time), and that means the game cost $17 and later $7 initially.
You have two options:
a) Hope that Avaya supports VoIP with Partner. I don't remember if it does. Back when I worked for Lucent BCS (Before it spun off to Avaya), VoIP was bleeding edge and Lucent was still developing their VoIP systems.
b) If Avaya doesn't support VOiP with their Partner systems, you'll most likely have to junk the Partner system and get a key system that does do VoIP.
a) is more likely, since I recall the Partner being reasonably expandable, albeit nowhere close to the venerable Definity - Its expandability has allowed the platform to survive for over 20 years and still be one of the best PBX systems out the. (Definity was one of the first implementations of hot-swappable hardware - Swapping circuit packs in/out of a running system was a favorite demo to customers when the system was first introduced.)
As another poster mentioned, the Definity (He refers to it as G3, which is just the current variant of the Definity platform) can be given VoIP capability. Not sure at what size company a Definity becomes justifiable - My company started at around 80-100 people at 2 locations and had a Definity, but that could be partly because of anticipated growth and the fact that it was a Lucent spinoff. We're now a part of a different large company.) We had direct dialing-by-extension between Warren, NJ and Columbus, OH via a VoIP connection. I believe we now have VoIP links to other company locations too.
But I believe Slashdot has covered 1-2 different hacks using these mice as the core. (Or if /. hasn't covered it, it was linked to from discussion - Anyone remember the article on the AI machine road rally contest from somewhere in California to Vegas? There was a link to an open-source helicopter autopilot project that used the electronics from these mice as an attitude sensor.)
For many people "AC Adapter" = "Charger"
In fact, automotive power adapters for laptops are often marketed as "chargers", even though they're just a power supply for the laptop.
I had an NEC laptop that had an external charger. Haven't seen one for Dell or Acer/TI though.