ALL of the VAX machines that came after the 11/780 were designed as reduced cost versions of the original. Alas, DEC never DID bring out a model with MORE speed, and the model numbers show this. (the higher the model number, the greater the performance). DEC gave up on the VAX when they started the Alpha chip program. They realized that the day of the CISC computer was fading, and RISC was the future. Alpha emulated both the VAX and the PC instruction sets with more clock cycles to spare.
Damn Compaq and HP for killing off the Alpha chip.
Actually Intel processors DO have some microcode, and it CAN be replaced (though the download process is NOT trivial due to anti virus protection). However this 'back door' is intended more as more of a 'patch' process rather than a way to re-write the cpu's instruction set. It allows Intel to 'fix' bugs in the processor via a download. Remember the Pentium floating point bug? Well if it ever happens again, Intel might be able to fix cpus's out in the field rather than having to replace them.
There IS another way, and it has been done, many times. It's called don't raise the bridge, lower the river.
When new, faster, more powerful machines come out, an emulation layer is written that allows the new machine to emulate the old one in a sandbox. Then the old, non-portable apps are run on the emulator. IBM did this many times (360's emulating 709's etc....).
The odds are that SOME form of optical or opto-magnetic storage media with a 120mm diameter disk will be around as a standard for quite some time. This is a very familiar format that's easy to use and holds the right amount of data (the storage capacity has increased from 550mb to over 800mb, then to 4.7gb right on up to over 15gb and will increase further.
The CD audio format may very well be on its' last gasp (for popular music anyway. I'm not so sure that classical music sales have shifted to download format as much). As long as DVD video remains popular (video download is still a new thing, and not worth trying over a modem! If you don't have cable or DSL, furgetaboutit!) the same carrier works well for audio. The new dual disks are a step in this direction, and could be the savior for CD's as they offer more value for the buyer. The problem is that if you don't have a newer player these disks might not work.
Another feature that saw little use was the 'index' marks. Few players today even offer display of this (even software players). I had an early Sony player that did show index marks, but only one or two cd's in my collection have them. I don't remember if the player had the ability to 'goto' an index point (probably only would 'goto' a track mark), but the index marks were nice for classical pieces to identify points in the music for commentary in the liner notes.
Also the size of the CD was derived from the fact that it needed to be able to hold, on a single disc, a 78-minute long Mozart concert which was the favorite of the wife of one of the developers.
No, the reason for the 74 minute playing time is because THAT is the playing time of the longest recording of Bethoven's ninth symphony.
The universe may have less than 100 billion years to go. Some theories predict that the current expansion rate will continue to increase due to dark energy. As this happens gravity will no longer be able to keep the clusters of galaxies together and as stated, only our own galaxy will be visible to us. However as the dark energy increases, gravity won't even be able to keep the galaxies and stars together and our solar system will fly off on its' own. Soon after that, the atomic forces that keep the atoms together will fail and the sun, earth, and all atoms will fly apart in 'the big rig'. Nothing will be left of the universe but a thin soup of sub-atomic particles. The end time for this...about 37 billion years from now.
Two days after the iPhone went on sale somebody lost theirs in the local K-Mart parking lot. One of the K-mart employees turned one in to the manager after he found it lying on the pavement in the parking lot. Must be one real upset dude out there!
When CD's first came out many audiophiles refused to give up their LP's because they thought that CD's didn't sound as good. (Early CD's DIDN'T, because it took awhile to figure out how to mix and press GOOD CD recordings). Now many revisions of hardware later the CD is much better than LP's in sound quality. But MP3 files (the most popular form of digital downloads) are highly compressed and limited compared to the original 'wav' files used by CDs. Just as audio cassettes were once good enough for the unwashed masses while audiophiles bought CD's, today the MP3 has replaced the audio cassette as the 'good enough' format. But we still need an audiophile format. Maybe DVD-A or SACD disks, which are better that CD thanks to a higher sample rate that eliminates Nyquist artifacts present in CDs due to their 'low' sample rate (compared to their frequency response).
My kids are happy with their iTunes. I still like buying CD's, but then my tastes in music these days is more into classical music then popular (with the exception of 'Weird Al').
Actually by using Mars as a test bed we might be able to figure out HOW to undo the damage we've done to the Earth. The advantage here is that we can make mistakes on Mars, and then fix them without destroying ourselves in the process. On Earth, we'd have to get it right the first time.
Well in my case I think it was different. At least it would seem that way, as my younger brother might be a few points above me. It could also be that he simply applied himself more in school. We both ended up as engineers, but he got into MIT, while I took a slightly less glamorous education route.
I general the service people that come out to your house (in my area anyway) do a good job. They do get booked up and sometimes you have to wait a week for a service appointment, but they always give me credit for the times my cable is out (and take MY word on the fact that it IS out).
They've replaced a cable drop from the pole to my house twice, and the second time buried it (which helped). Recently some major piece of network hardware went bad and the cable with on and off every 15 minutes for a week. We got a full credit for the days it was like this off on our bill, no questions asked.
Biggest problem with them is the lack of choices for programming packages and the cost. Wish they had an a-la-cart system. Their on demand (which is free with many levels of service) is great, but access to it can be spotty in high demand periods. They need to build out the network for this more.
I wouldn't touch their internet with a 10 foot pole. I have DSL from Ma Bell. It rarely goes out (though their email and news link feeds do crap out briefly from time to time). Why doesn't the cable have battery back up on their line amps like Ma Bell does?
A single pole low pass filter will roll off at 6db/octave. 2 poles at 12db/octave. 3 pole filter at 18db/octave (etc.... get the idea?) Anyway, if you want to sample at 44100 hz, what is the highest frequency you can record? While 20049 hz might be the absolute answer, with only a single pole filter this won't sound very good. So how good a filter DO we need? Given the CD's dynamic range of about 100db, we'd probably need something like a 16 pole filter to do the job. Building such a filter using active elements with RC constants would be quite the challenge. Digital filtering tricks however, combined with less complex active / rc filters do a good job.
When you consider all the grief that the crime of identity theft (or is it identify hijacking?) causes, I think we should make it a capital crime. Take over someone's life, lose yours.
In his heyday Jean Shepherd wrote some of his best humor stories for submission to Playboy. If you've never read 'Shep' or heard his radio shows you need to. He is the 'Mark Twain' of the 20th century. Go to www.flicklives.com right now!
YES. LG makes a blue-ray player that ALSO plays HD-DVD's. Downside is the price.... $1200, plus it is NOT a full feature HD-DVD player. Still it is the first of (hopefully) many such machines to come.
If the only reason for Wine is to run a Windows app on Linux for which there is an open source app available (IE: MS Office vs OpenOffice) then Wine is NOT the answer. But... there are many Windows apps that do NOT have a replacement under Linux. Many of these are cross development tools (such as AVR or PIC tools from Atmel or Microchip). Using Wine to run these makes sense since you don't have to poison your computer with a drek OS. It would be better if ALL vendors supported Linux but they don't. (Some are under Bill's evil spell, others just don't have the resources to support two platforms).
Actually the Hudson north of Albany is not much more than a creek. I didn't think it made it all the way to Canada. There are quite a few rail tunnels under the Hudson between NJ and Manhattan.
Slashdot Mirror
ALL of the VAX machines that came after the 11/780 were designed as reduced cost versions
of the original. Alas, DEC never DID bring out a model with MORE speed, and the model
numbers show this. (the higher the model number, the greater the performance).
DEC gave up on the VAX when they started the Alpha chip program. They realized that the
day of the CISC computer was fading, and RISC was the future. Alpha emulated both the
VAX and the PC instruction sets with more clock cycles to spare.
Damn Compaq and HP for killing off the Alpha chip.
Actually Intel processors DO have some microcode, and it CAN
be replaced (though the download process is NOT trivial due to
anti virus protection). However this 'back door' is intended more
as more of a 'patch' process rather than a way to re-write the cpu's
instruction set. It allows Intel to 'fix' bugs in the processor via
a download. Remember the Pentium floating point bug? Well if it
ever happens again, Intel might be able to fix cpus's out in the field
rather than having to replace them.
There IS another way, and it has been done, many times. It's called
don't raise the bridge, lower the river.
When new, faster, more powerful machines come out, an emulation layer is
written that allows the new machine to emulate the old one in a sandbox.
Then the old, non-portable apps are run on the emulator. IBM did this many
times (360's emulating 709's etc....).
in the state of Hawaii.
So there!
The odds are that SOME form of optical or opto-magnetic storage media with a 120mm
diameter disk will be around as a standard for quite some time. This is a very
familiar format that's easy to use and holds the right amount of data (the storage
capacity has increased from 550mb to over 800mb, then to 4.7gb right on up to over
15gb and will increase further.
The CD audio format may very well be on its' last gasp (for popular music anyway.
I'm not so sure that classical music sales have shifted to download format as much).
As long as DVD video remains popular (video download is still a new thing, and not
worth trying over a modem! If you don't have cable or DSL, furgetaboutit!) the same
carrier works well for audio. The new dual disks are a step in this direction, and could
be the savior for CD's as they offer more value for the buyer. The problem is that
if you don't have a newer player these disks might not work.
Another feature that saw little use was the 'index' marks.
Few players today even offer display of this (even software players).
I had an early Sony player that did show index marks, but only
one or two cd's in my collection have them. I don't remember if
the player had the ability to 'goto' an index point (probably only
would 'goto' a track mark), but the index marks were nice for
classical pieces to identify points in the music for commentary in
the liner notes.
Also the size of the CD was derived from the fact that it needed to be able to hold, on a single disc, a 78-minute long Mozart concert which was the favorite of the wife of one of the developers.
No, the reason for the 74 minute playing time is because THAT is the playing time of the longest
recording of Bethoven's ninth symphony.
The universe may have less than 100 billion years to go.
Some theories predict that the current expansion rate will
continue to increase due to dark energy. As this happens
gravity will no longer be able to keep the clusters of
galaxies together and as stated, only our own galaxy will be
visible to us. However as the dark energy increases, gravity
won't even be able to keep the galaxies and stars together and
our solar system will fly off on its' own. Soon after that,
the atomic forces that keep the atoms together will fail and
the sun, earth, and all atoms will fly apart in 'the big rig'.
Nothing will be left of the universe but a thin soup of sub-atomic
particles. The end time for this...about 37 billion years from now.
Two days after the iPhone went on sale somebody lost
theirs in the local K-Mart parking lot. One of the
K-mart employees turned one in to the manager after he
found it lying on the pavement in the parking lot.
Must be one real upset dude out there!
When CD's first came out many audiophiles refused to give up their LP's because they
thought that CD's didn't sound as good. (Early CD's DIDN'T, because it took awhile
to figure out how to mix and press GOOD CD recordings). Now many revisions of hardware
later the CD is much better than LP's in sound quality. But MP3 files (the most popular
form of digital downloads) are highly compressed and limited compared to the original
'wav' files used by CDs. Just as audio cassettes were once good enough for the unwashed masses
while audiophiles bought CD's, today the MP3 has replaced the audio cassette as the 'good enough'
format. But we still need an audiophile format. Maybe DVD-A or SACD disks, which are
better that CD thanks to a higher sample rate that eliminates Nyquist artifacts present
in CDs due to their 'low' sample rate (compared to their frequency response).
My kids are happy with their iTunes. I still like buying CD's, but then my tastes
in music these days is more into classical music then popular (with the exception
of 'Weird Al').
Actually by using Mars as a test bed we might be able to figure out HOW to
undo the damage we've done to the Earth. The advantage here is that we
can make mistakes on Mars, and then fix them without destroying ourselves
in the process. On Earth, we'd have to get it right the first time.
Well in my case I think it was different. At least it would seem that way, as
my younger brother might be a few points above me. It could also be that
he simply applied himself more in school. We both ended up as engineers, but
he got into MIT, while I took a slightly less glamorous education route.
Well if they are willing to go drm-free, how about a site
to buy their 'tunes if you are NOT running M$.
We need an itunes for Linux.
Yeah, some of their employees are like Jim Cary ('cable guy'). Others
are great.
I general the service people that come out to your house (in my area anyway)
do a good job. They do get booked up and sometimes you have to wait a week
for a service appointment, but they always give me credit for the times
my cable is out (and take MY word on the fact that it IS out).
They've replaced a cable drop from the pole to my house twice, and the second
time buried it (which helped). Recently some major piece of network hardware
went bad and the cable with on and off every 15 minutes for a week. We got
a full credit for the days it was like this off on our bill, no questions asked.
Biggest problem with them is the lack of choices for programming packages and the
cost. Wish they had an a-la-cart system. Their on demand (which is free with
many levels of service) is great, but access to it can be spotty in high demand
periods. They need to build out the network for this more.
I wouldn't touch their internet with a 10 foot pole. I have DSL from Ma Bell.
It rarely goes out (though their email and news link feeds do crap out briefly
from time to time). Why doesn't the cable have battery back up on their line
amps like Ma Bell does?
Like NOW. LG has one.
A single pole low pass filter will roll off at 6db/octave. 2 poles at 12db/octave.
3 pole filter at 18db/octave (etc.... get the idea?)
Anyway, if you want to sample at 44100 hz, what is the highest frequency you can
record? While 20049 hz might be the absolute answer, with only a single pole filter
this won't sound very good. So how good a filter DO we need? Given the CD's
dynamic range of about 100db, we'd probably need something like a 16 pole filter to
do the job. Building such a filter using active elements with RC constants would be
quite the challenge. Digital filtering tricks however, combined with less complex
active / rc filters do a good job.
When you consider all the grief that the crime of identity theft
(or is it identify hijacking?) causes, I think we should make
it a capital crime. Take over someone's life, lose yours.
Of course, they could start by blocking youtube... that'll make them really popular.
Next big lawsuit, Google vs AT&T
In his heyday Jean Shepherd wrote some of his best humor
stories for submission to Playboy. If you've never read
'Shep' or heard his radio shows you need to.
He is the 'Mark Twain' of the 20th century. Go to
www.flicklives.com right now!
'cause MS Word is a clone product of Word Perfect!
(and Wordstar).
YES. LG makes a blue-ray player that ALSO plays .... $1200, plus
HD-DVD's. Downside is the price
it is NOT a full feature HD-DVD player. Still it
is the first of (hopefully) many such machines to come.
If the only reason for Wine is to run a Windows app on Linux for which
there is an open source app available (IE: MS Office vs OpenOffice) then
Wine is NOT the answer. But... there are many Windows apps that do NOT have
a replacement under Linux. Many of these are cross development tools
(such as AVR or PIC tools from Atmel or Microchip). Using Wine to run these
makes sense since you don't have to poison your computer with a drek OS. It
would be better if ALL vendors supported Linux but they don't. (Some are under
Bill's evil spell, others just don't have the resources to support two platforms).
He wasn't worried about Eric's mouth, his GUN was the problem.
Actually the Hudson north of Albany is not much more than a creek.
I didn't think it made it all the way to Canada.
There are quite a few rail tunnels under the Hudson between NJ and Manhattan.