Yes, I thought the same thing. The obvious question is about the CPU power and capability to play HD content.
Other things I've read about the Atom processor mention speeds in the realm of 1.6GHz. Depending on the type of core, this may be enough, but probably not.
Dual core Atom processors have also been announced, but the low cost Asus box will probably not have that.
The other factor is the GPU. If it used one of the newer Intel integrated GPUs, there would be a chance of using XvMC or possibly VAAPI to accelerate MPEG2 playback. With acceleration, it could be an excellent HD Mythfrontend.
There is a forum on Roku's site which has threads discussing this device:
http://forums.roku.com/viewtopic.php?t=16685
Unfortunately, it appears it is built as a "closed" device. But, if it could be hacked, the chip it's based on looks quite nice: http://www.nxp.com/#/aip/aip=[aip=416]|pp=[t=aip,i=416]
The device is at least partially based on free software, so that may help in loading an alternate OS: http://forums.roku.com/viewtopic.php?t=16691
Roku had a really cool HD Media Player box, which was Linux based and extensible. If this thing is derived from that same platform (with hardware accelerated HD MPEG2 playback) this is a huge bargain.
If it is a closed box, which only does Netflix, it is not so interesting.
There are quite a few Mini-ITX options out there today.. Many of them are based on VIA CPUs (low power x86 compatible). Since the form factor is nothing groundbreaking, what is the advantage of this board?
Is the "Atom" faster than a VIA C7? The C7 is not far behind the Atom in power consumption. With those CPUs, the power usage of all the other components makes the couple watts difference pretty negligible.
To be really intersting, they need a few things:
- Lose the fan. Low power, low heat, low noise.
- Upgrade the GPU. The CPU is relatively slow, but with decent video offload, it could make a great MythTV frontend.
- Add an HDMI, or at least DVI port.
- Shrink the size. Yeah, a parallel port is interesting for a couple people out there. But, how about giving them a header on the board and the option to buy a cable for it. For the rest of use, lose the obsolete stuff and shrink the board.
I do use databases for various apps and projects, but only enough to do what I need. I am by no means a DB expert.
So, can someone more DB-literate explain some of the new features?
- Disk based clustering: I assume this means I can dynamically expand the size of my database by adding more disks. Is this correct? Does PostgreSQL also support this (my project where this would be handy currently uses pgsql)?
- Partitioning: I can think of several things this could mean.. Splitting data among several tables at some logical dividing point. Or, limiting the size of tables so they can't overrun the complete storage space. What does this mean in MySQL 5.1 terms?
I've worked for several networking startups. Every one of which has used Linux as the OS for the device.
The large enterprise customers which bought it didn't need to be aware of the Linux under the hood. The management interface was a simplified CLI or Web-UI. But it was Linux.
In some companies, they asked us to not mention the Linux OS in the box, as that would create support problems for them. They just called it an embedded system, and it didn't raise alarms.
"The result: Joltin' Joe's record is not merely likely, it's basically a sure thing. Every alternate universe produced a steak of 39 games or better; one reached 109 games. Joe DiMaggio was not the likeliest player in the history of the game to accomplish the record, not by a long shot."
Is this just poorly written, or is their conclusion really this silly? The article seemed to say that they just took the player's batting average, and calculated how likely it is that he would get at least one hit in a game. How is this worthy of an academic paper? Basically, their outcome is: The higher a player's batting average, the more likely he is to have a streak longer than Dimaggio.. genius.
It doesn't account for any of the subtleties which make this type of streak rare and special. Off the top of my head, these include:
- Batting (and athletic performance in general) is streaky. Players always have a hot streak, where they bat.400 for a month,.300 for a few months, and a month at.156 thrown somewhere in there.
- Everyone has an "off night", which is all it takes to break the streak.
- If you're playing that well, they pitch around you. You might get intentionally walked, or thrown garbage and walked. So, you get less real at-bats to work with in some games.
- Some pitchers you just don't match up well against. That left hander with nasty junk is all but un-hittable.
- As the streak gets longer, the pressure gets higher, which impacts your performance. Just ask Paul Molitor, who had a 39 game streak in 1999, or Roger Maris who had health problems related to the pressure of beating Babe Ruth's single season home run record in 1961.
- As the streak gets longer, pitchers are more aware of it and pitch to you differently because of it.
Any of the above can put an end to a streak, all it takes is one game.
A conclusion of "it's basically a sure thing" is obviously horseshit, given the fact that the only guy who has even come close enough to the record to talk about is Molitor, and he wasn't even close. If your computer simulation says it's a sure thing, common sense says you have a flawed computer simulation.
The guys who dominated their simulations, in real life never approached a streal of DiMaggio's duration:
Ty Cobb: 40 Willie Keeler: 44
And, the one that should have been a real big clue to re-asses their analysis:
To me, 10 Watts seems like a huge savings for a hard drive.
But, if you look at the article, the savings they claimed were more like 5-6 Watts. That is still quite a large savings from a hard drive, but it's not 10W. Maybe compared to the highest power usage drive, like a 15K RPM drive the savings may be 10 Watts.
The article in silentpcreview.com put these green WD drives at about 7.5 Watts, and the highest of the other quiet drives was 11.6 Watts. Quite a huge improvement.
As a long time HTPC user, these drives are perfect for my uses. HUGE capacity, whisper quiet operation, and low power/heat -- leading to easier cooling of the system and fewer fans. The performance of these drives may be a bit lower than other drives, but I have been using a USB 2.0 connected 320GB laptop hard drive as the primary storage for my MythTV DVR, and that keeps up fine recording 2 HD streams while playing a third. So, the performance of this drive should be a non-issue.
As someone who recently moved back to Mountain View (Google-ville) and used Google WiFi initially, my experience is that it is not ready to replace wired ISPs.
Indoor access via laptop is problematic, for all the normal coverage reasons. The Google router is right across the street on a lightpost, but it is tough to get a strong enough signal indoors. A wireless bridge place in the window facing their router solved the signal strength issues.
With a strong signal, it worked well much of the day. Not blazingly fast, but fast enough to be useful (~1Mbps). But, during high usage times, 7PM-10PM, it became unusable. Packet loss was terrible, so performance was too, and many sessions timed out completely.
And this is with a very mixed environment, most people I have talked to used Cable or DSL internet access. So, Google WiFi wasn't supporting the whole street. But, even with the subset of users, it was too much for their service to handle. I quickly decided to go for cable internet, and this is definitely the right choice for anyone needing Internet for business / critical usage.
Maybe it could work with other improvements, I don't know enough about their infrastructure to say for sure. Some thoughts:
- Uplink issues: I think Google routers hub back into their network via wireless links. Maybe that is the piece that is not holding up at peak times. If so, a better network back to the ISP may help.
- 802.11N may help: More bandwidth, longer range. Operating on the 5GHz band may also be less crowded with other networks, at least for now.
The TV is here to stay, if for no other reason than being a good display device for the living room. Nobody is doing to switch to a computer display as their primary video display (other than slashdotters).
So, that nice big HDTV will be there, and some Internet-enabled device will be attached to give access to a wide range of video.. something like the AppleTV - but better. With some aggressive pricing plans (Netflix model: View all you want for $20/month) they give cable big problems.
But, that TV will also have an integrated HDTV tuner, ensuring your local broadcaster's value. They provide all the big sports programs, and expensive-to-produce TV shows.. It's there, it's free, and it's better quality than downloads. So, it will continue to be used.
I have never seen a reasonable solution for viewing live TV via the web. Specifically, sports programming. The various trials for this ( Masters coverage, NCAA Final Four ) have been unreliable, and very low quality when it did work.
Bandwidth will help this situation. But, we're still a LONG way from being able to service the equivalent of a TV viewer market for a big sporting event -- in HD. The total bandwidth required for that is off the charts.
I think my MythTV PVR with two ATSC tuners will continue to be used for quite a while. But, Internet services could supplement it, making it even easier to avoid expensive Cable/Satellite services.
That's the model I'm expecting.. My TV stays, regardless of the method for getting the content, the HDTV display device is needed. I continue to get the bulk of the programming I watch (NFL Football, NCAA Basketball, etc.) via ATSC broadcast, and Internet services fill in the rest (some cable shows (commercial free) via iTunes - such as The Daily Show, Sopranos, The West Wing, etc., HD Movie Downloads via iTunes or Netflix)
> Well, RMS is an active Emacs project developer/patch-coordinator, as anyone on emacs-devel would know, acting in a similar role to Linus' linux role, sooo... who are you talking about?
I think he's talking about the hordes of commenters in places like Slashdot, who have jumped on the bandwagon and have come to the conclusion that GPL2 is not "open" enough. It strikes me as a bit silly when all these kids, who have never contributed a single line of code, criticize the creators of software on their openness for only going as far as GPLv2.
The digital conversion doesn't free up spectrum. If that was the gov's only concern, they would have just stayed SD, and maybe juggled some channel assignments around. Digital stations use the exact same amount of bandwidth as analog, 6MHz. In the transition overlap time, broadcasters were allocated both an analog and a digital channel because there was no way to do a snap cutover. The analog end date just gets them back to where they were before the transition.
The intent of the conversion from analog to digital in the first place was to move the technology along, so move from an analog broadcast standard which originated in the 40's. While it's true that HDTV was not mandated in the change, and stations can use the digital location any way they please (such as several SD sub-channels instead of HD), but the reality is that the major broadcasters HAVE switched a large, and growing, percentage of their shows to HD. Other benefits include DD5.1 surround sound and integrated guide data.
> I suspect most folks are like me and think the current picture delivered is quite exceptional quality
Well, that would be a big no. If that was true, DVDs and their quality increase over VHS/SDTV would have never taken off. And since HDTV has 5x the resolution of DVDs, the quality difference versus SDTV is obvious to most people.
And, while I don't think the incentives were necessary, I also don't agree with your assessment of the changeover. You're arguing for a free market solution, where a free market doesn't exist. The airwaves are (by necessity) tightly controlled by the FCC, and broadcasts are tightly controlled by the networks. The broadcasters are given access to spectrum, and supposedly provide a public benefit. If there was unlimited spectrum, or no problem with interference, then free market forces would be fine.. A new broadcaster would come in and broadcast in HD, stealing customers away from the broadcasters stuck in their 1950's SDTV technology. That type of competition may become reality as the Internet matures, but not on local broadcast spectrum.
The other half of the equation is that broadcasters would be fine keeping the analog spectrum and continuing to broadcast. But, the government wants that spectrum back, so they can license it for other uses. The proceeds from that re-use are what they justify the $40 transition coupons with.
I picked up one of those cheap upconverter DVD players recently. I was a little skeptical, but I thought I would benefit from all the industry development, which pulls all the once exotic features down into the low end.
After using it for less than two days i boxed it up and went back to my 5 year old Panasonic RP56 Progressive Scan DVD player. The picture was much better on the RP56 than on the cheapie upconverter. The general usability and responsiveness was also much worse on the cheap upconverter.
Of course, my old RP56 died a week or two after bringing it out of retirement. Rather than getting another cheap one, I picked up an HD-DVD player instead. It was under $200, and does a much better job as an upconverter than the cheap one. The HD-DVD playback is also a nice side-benefit. I added that to my Netflix account, and now get HD-DVDs when available. (The one drawback of the HD-DVD player is that it is painfully slow at bootup and disc recognition)
But, my purchase was not really a show of support for the HD-DVD format, it was more of a stopgap until a real solution comes along.
I have run into some similar issues with using drives in Mac OS.
I put a 250GB Western Digital drive in my MacBook Pro, and apparently Mac OS doesn't set the power management settings correctly, because it seems to be constantly trying to park the heads. ( http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1226956 )
I have been unable to find any way in Mac OS to set the power management or acoustic settings. There are some old tools for pre-Intel Macs, but none worked on my MBP.
> Only if one considers employees of such companies as "Geek Squad" to be "professional."
Well, yeah. I don't think many people employ a staff of PhD's to remove viruses and re-install Windows for neophyte users. Geek Squad is as good as you'll get for that. Hide your porn.
"it is not repairable without professional intervention"
Well, for a huge percentage of PC users, a boot failure would definitely fall into that category.
The percentage would be lower for gamers, as this issue concerns, but I would still say the odds are pretty good they wouldn't be able to fix it.
The people reading this article are working from the advantage of knowing exactly what the problem is. The people running into the problem have just corrupted their primary means for finding what the problem is. And, if the game company's tech support is typical of that industry, phone support will not do much either.
At least with the Open Source software, you can easily give your students a way to use them outside of class and continue to use and grow their knowledge.
With the commercial software, especially the packages you mentioned, the costs are prohibitive for high school students. So, they would get started in your class, then have no easy way to continue learning or put it to practical use.
I would try to stick with software that has good multi-platform support, including Windows support, so students can easily run it without installing Linux on their parents' computer. Or, if not, work from a Linux LiveCD environment, which the kids can replicate at home.
And, if the open source alternative doesn't measure up, stick with some commercial software and do a mixed class. It doesn't have to be either/or.
I have never actually played WoW, but I have seen others playing it, and the graphics didn't look like they were all that intensive.. Does WoW really need the high end SLI graphics capabilities?
On that Dell laptop, what accounts for the ridiculous cost? The basic specs didn't look like anything exotic.. 160GB 7200RPM drive, 2GB RAM, 2.2GHz Core2Duo, not exactly pushing the limits with that.
The only exotic pieces were the SLI video, and the "physics accelerator". Would those two things really add $2,500 on to the price of a laptop?
It becomes an issue when the memory grows at the alarming rate shown in the test. Considering the browser is the one app I have open all the time, and keep open for days/weeks at a time, memory usage does become a concern.
Also, considering some other applications I often have open are memory hogs too (Microsoft Word / Excel / Powerpoint, Apple Mail, VMware Fusion) memory efficiency becomes more concerning. Even with 2GB of RAM, I run into problems at times.
I have not found any really compelling Java apps on my desktops (Linux and Mac OS), are there really any reasons for needing them on my phone?
Especially given the fact that getting a java port relies on having an open SDK for the iPhone -- meaning native apps can be produced. So, if there are native apps, why would we want Java?
Also, is my impression of Java outdated? Is it not slow, bloated (JRE + app), and have an ugly UI?
This is easily detectable and rejectable.. Unless they are going to have different certificates for each site they are intercepting, and are willing to forge (and the CA is willing to forge) the certificate info to mask what is really happening.
It's also probably illegal, and definitely unethical, to circumvent the network security this way.
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, I thought the same thing. The obvious question is about the CPU power and capability to play HD content.
Other things I've read about the Atom processor mention speeds in the realm of 1.6GHz. Depending on the type of core, this may be enough, but probably not.
Dual core Atom processors have also been announced, but the low cost Asus box will probably not have that.
The other factor is the GPU. If it used one of the newer Intel integrated GPUs, there would be a chance of using XvMC or possibly VAAPI to accelerate MPEG2 playback. With acceleration, it could be an excellent HD Mythfrontend.
There is a forum on Roku's site which has threads discussing this device:
http://forums.roku.com/viewtopic.php?t=16685
Unfortunately, it appears it is built as a "closed" device. But, if it could be hacked, the chip it's based on looks quite nice: http://www.nxp.com/#/aip/aip=[aip=416]|pp=[t=aip,i=416]
The device is at least partially based on free software, so that may help in loading an alternate OS: http://forums.roku.com/viewtopic.php?t=16691
Roku had a really cool HD Media Player box, which was Linux based and extensible. If this thing is derived from that same platform (with hardware accelerated HD MPEG2 playback) this is a huge bargain.
If it is a closed box, which only does Netflix, it is not so interesting.
There are quite a few Mini-ITX options out there today.. Many of them are based on VIA CPUs (low power x86 compatible). Since the form factor is nothing groundbreaking, what is the advantage of this board?
Is the "Atom" faster than a VIA C7? The C7 is not far behind the Atom in power consumption. With those CPUs, the power usage of all the other components makes the couple watts difference pretty negligible.
To be really intersting, they need a few things:
- Lose the fan. Low power, low heat, low noise.
- Upgrade the GPU. The CPU is relatively slow, but with decent video offload, it could make a great MythTV frontend.
- Add an HDMI, or at least DVI port.
- Shrink the size. Yeah, a parallel port is interesting for a couple people out there. But, how about giving them a header on the board and the option to buy a cable for it. For the rest of use, lose the obsolete stuff and shrink the board.
I do use databases for various apps and projects, but only enough to do what I need. I am by no means a DB expert.
So, can someone more DB-literate explain some of the new features?
- Disk based clustering: I assume this means I can dynamically expand the size of my database by adding more disks. Is this correct? Does PostgreSQL also support this (my project where this would be handy currently uses pgsql)?
- Partitioning: I can think of several things this could mean.. Splitting data among several tables at some logical dividing point. Or, limiting the size of tables so they can't overrun the complete storage space. What does this mean in MySQL 5.1 terms?
I've worked for several networking startups. Every one of which has used Linux as the OS for the device.
The large enterprise customers which bought it didn't need to be aware of the Linux under the hood. The management interface was a simplified CLI or Web-UI. But it was Linux.
In some companies, they asked us to not mention the Linux OS in the box, as that would create support problems for them. They just called it an embedded system, and it didn't raise alarms.
"The result: Joltin' Joe's record is not merely likely, it's basically a sure thing. Every alternate universe produced a steak of 39 games or better; one reached 109 games. Joe DiMaggio was not the likeliest player in the history of the game to accomplish the record, not by a long shot."
.400 for a month, .300 for a few months, and a month at .156 thrown somewhere in there.
Is this just poorly written, or is their conclusion really this silly? The article seemed to say that they just took the player's batting average, and calculated how likely it is that he would get at least one hit in a game. How is this worthy of an academic paper? Basically, their outcome is: The higher a player's batting average, the more likely he is to have a streak longer than Dimaggio.. genius.
It doesn't account for any of the subtleties which make this type of streak rare and special. Off the top of my head, these include:
- Batting (and athletic performance in general) is streaky. Players always have a hot streak, where they bat
- Everyone has an "off night", which is all it takes to break the streak.
- If you're playing that well, they pitch around you. You might get intentionally walked, or thrown garbage and walked. So, you get less real at-bats to work with in some games.
- Some pitchers you just don't match up well against. That left hander with nasty junk is all but un-hittable.
- As the streak gets longer, the pressure gets higher, which impacts your performance. Just ask Paul Molitor, who had a 39 game streak in 1999, or Roger Maris who had health problems related to the pressure of beating Babe Ruth's single season home run record in 1961.
- As the streak gets longer, pitchers are more aware of it and pitch to you differently because of it.
Any of the above can put an end to a streak, all it takes is one game.
A conclusion of "it's basically a sure thing" is obviously horseshit, given the fact that the only guy who has even come close enough to the record to talk about is Molitor, and he wasn't even close. If your computer simulation says it's a sure thing, common sense says you have a flawed computer simulation.
The guys who dominated their simulations, in real life never approached a streal of DiMaggio's duration:
Ty Cobb: 40
Willie Keeler: 44
And, the one that should have been a real big clue to re-asses their analysis:
Hugh Duffy: 27
To me, 10 Watts seems like a huge savings for a hard drive.
But, if you look at the article, the savings they claimed were more like 5-6 Watts. That is still quite a large savings from a hard drive, but it's not 10W. Maybe compared to the highest power usage drive, like a 15K RPM drive the savings may be 10 Watts.
The article in silentpcreview.com put these green WD drives at about 7.5 Watts, and the highest of the other quiet drives was 11.6 Watts. Quite a huge improvement.
As a long time HTPC user, these drives are perfect for my uses. HUGE capacity, whisper quiet operation, and low power/heat -- leading to easier cooling of the system and fewer fans. The performance of these drives may be a bit lower than other drives, but I have been using a USB 2.0 connected 320GB laptop hard drive as the primary storage for my MythTV DVR, and that keeps up fine recording 2 HD streams while playing a third. So, the performance of this drive should be a non-issue.
As someone who recently moved back to Mountain View (Google-ville) and used Google WiFi initially, my experience is that it is not ready to replace wired ISPs.
Indoor access via laptop is problematic, for all the normal coverage reasons. The Google router is right across the street on a lightpost, but it is tough to get a strong enough signal indoors. A wireless bridge place in the window facing their router solved the signal strength issues.
With a strong signal, it worked well much of the day. Not blazingly fast, but fast enough to be useful (~1Mbps). But, during high usage times, 7PM-10PM, it became unusable. Packet loss was terrible, so performance was too, and many sessions timed out completely.
And this is with a very mixed environment, most people I have talked to used Cable or DSL internet access. So, Google WiFi wasn't supporting the whole street. But, even with the subset of users, it was too much for their service to handle. I quickly decided to go for cable internet, and this is definitely the right choice for anyone needing Internet for business / critical usage.
Maybe it could work with other improvements, I don't know enough about their infrastructure to say for sure. Some thoughts:
- Uplink issues: I think Google routers hub back into their network via wireless links. Maybe that is the piece that is not holding up at peak times. If so, a better network back to the ISP may help.
- 802.11N may help: More bandwidth, longer range. Operating on the 5GHz band may also be less crowded with other networks, at least for now.
The TV is here to stay, if for no other reason than being a good display device for the living room. Nobody is doing to switch to a computer display as their primary video display (other than slashdotters).
So, that nice big HDTV will be there, and some Internet-enabled device will be attached to give access to a wide range of video.. something like the AppleTV - but better. With some aggressive pricing plans (Netflix model: View all you want for $20/month) they give cable big problems.
But, that TV will also have an integrated HDTV tuner, ensuring your local broadcaster's value. They provide all the big sports programs, and expensive-to-produce TV shows.. It's there, it's free, and it's better quality than downloads. So, it will continue to be used.
I have never seen a reasonable solution for viewing live TV via the web. Specifically, sports programming. The various trials for this ( Masters coverage, NCAA Final Four ) have been unreliable, and very low quality when it did work.
Bandwidth will help this situation. But, we're still a LONG way from being able to service the equivalent of a TV viewer market for a big sporting event -- in HD. The total bandwidth required for that is off the charts.
I think my MythTV PVR with two ATSC tuners will continue to be used for quite a while. But, Internet services could supplement it, making it even easier to avoid expensive Cable/Satellite services.
That's the model I'm expecting.. My TV stays, regardless of the method for getting the content, the HDTV display device is needed. I continue to get the bulk of the programming I watch (NFL Football, NCAA Basketball, etc.) via ATSC broadcast, and Internet services fill in the rest (some cable shows (commercial free) via iTunes - such as The Daily Show, Sopranos, The West Wing, etc., HD Movie Downloads via iTunes or Netflix)
Couldn't this story have waited until AFTER they had to close?
> Well, RMS is an active Emacs project developer/patch-coordinator, as anyone on emacs-devel would know, acting in a similar role to Linus' linux role, sooo... who are you talking about?
I think he's talking about the hordes of commenters in places like Slashdot, who have jumped on the bandwagon and have come to the conclusion that GPL2 is not "open" enough. It strikes me as a bit silly when all these kids, who have never contributed a single line of code, criticize the creators of software on their openness for only going as far as GPLv2.
The digital conversion doesn't free up spectrum. If that was the gov's only concern, they would have just stayed SD, and maybe juggled some channel assignments around. Digital stations use the exact same amount of bandwidth as analog, 6MHz. In the transition overlap time, broadcasters were allocated both an analog and a digital channel because there was no way to do a snap cutover. The analog end date just gets them back to where they were before the transition.
The intent of the conversion from analog to digital in the first place was to move the technology along, so move from an analog broadcast standard which originated in the 40's. While it's true that HDTV was not mandated in the change, and stations can use the digital location any way they please (such as several SD sub-channels instead of HD), but the reality is that the major broadcasters HAVE switched a large, and growing, percentage of their shows to HD. Other benefits include DD5.1 surround sound and integrated guide data.
> I suspect most folks are like me and think the current picture delivered is quite exceptional quality
Well, that would be a big no. If that was true, DVDs and their quality increase over VHS/SDTV would have never taken off. And since HDTV has 5x the resolution of DVDs, the quality difference versus SDTV is obvious to most people.
And, while I don't think the incentives were necessary, I also don't agree with your assessment of the changeover. You're arguing for a free market solution, where a free market doesn't exist. The airwaves are (by necessity) tightly controlled by the FCC, and broadcasts are tightly controlled by the networks. The broadcasters are given access to spectrum, and supposedly provide a public benefit. If there was unlimited spectrum, or no problem with interference, then free market forces would be fine.. A new broadcaster would come in and broadcast in HD, stealing customers away from the broadcasters stuck in their 1950's SDTV technology. That type of competition may become reality as the Internet matures, but not on local broadcast spectrum.
The other half of the equation is that broadcasters would be fine keeping the analog spectrum and continuing to broadcast. But, the government wants that spectrum back, so they can license it for other uses. The proceeds from that re-use are what they justify the $40 transition coupons with.
I picked up one of those cheap upconverter DVD players recently. I was a little skeptical, but I thought I would benefit from all the industry development, which pulls all the once exotic features down into the low end.
After using it for less than two days i boxed it up and went back to my 5 year old Panasonic RP56 Progressive Scan DVD player. The picture was much better on the RP56 than on the cheapie upconverter. The general usability and responsiveness was also much worse on the cheap upconverter.
Of course, my old RP56 died a week or two after bringing it out of retirement. Rather than getting another cheap one, I picked up an HD-DVD player instead. It was under $200, and does a much better job as an upconverter than the cheap one. The HD-DVD playback is also a nice side-benefit. I added that to my Netflix account, and now get HD-DVDs when available. (The one drawback of the HD-DVD player is that it is painfully slow at bootup and disc recognition)
But, my purchase was not really a show of support for the HD-DVD format, it was more of a stopgap until a real solution comes along.
I have run into some similar issues with using drives in Mac OS.
I put a 250GB Western Digital drive in my MacBook Pro, and apparently Mac OS doesn't set the power management settings correctly, because it seems to be constantly trying to park the heads. ( http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1226956 )
I have been unable to find any way in Mac OS to set the power management or acoustic settings. There are some old tools for pre-Intel Macs, but none worked on my MBP.
> Only if one considers employees of such companies as "Geek Squad" to be "professional."
Well, yeah. I don't think many people employ a staff of PhD's to remove viruses and re-install Windows for neophyte users.
Geek Squad is as good as you'll get for that. Hide your porn.
"it is not repairable without professional intervention"
Well, for a huge percentage of PC users, a boot failure would definitely fall into that category.
The percentage would be lower for gamers, as this issue concerns, but I would still say the odds are pretty good they wouldn't be able to fix it.
The people reading this article are working from the advantage of knowing exactly what the problem is. The people running into the problem have just corrupted their primary means for finding what the problem is. And, if the game company's tech support is typical of that industry, phone support will not do much either.
At least with the Open Source software, you can easily give your students a way to use them outside of class and continue to use and grow their knowledge.
With the commercial software, especially the packages you mentioned, the costs are prohibitive for high school students. So, they would get started in your class, then have no easy way to continue learning or put it to practical use.
I would try to stick with software that has good multi-platform support, including Windows support, so students can easily run it without installing Linux on their parents' computer. Or, if not, work from a Linux LiveCD environment, which the kids can replicate at home.
And, if the open source alternative doesn't measure up, stick with some commercial software and do a mixed class. It doesn't have to be either/or.
I have never actually played WoW, but I have seen others playing it, and the graphics didn't look like they were all that intensive.. Does WoW really need the high end SLI graphics capabilities?
On that Dell laptop, what accounts for the ridiculous cost? The basic specs didn't look like anything exotic.. 160GB 7200RPM drive, 2GB RAM, 2.2GHz Core2Duo, not exactly pushing the limits with that.
The only exotic pieces were the SLI video, and the "physics accelerator". Would those two things really add $2,500 on to the price of a laptop?
It becomes an issue when the memory grows at the alarming rate shown in the test. Considering the browser is the one app I have open all the time, and keep open for days/weeks at a time, memory usage does become a concern.
Also, considering some other applications I often have open are memory hogs too (Microsoft Word / Excel / Powerpoint, Apple Mail, VMware Fusion) memory efficiency becomes more concerning. Even with 2GB of RAM, I run into problems at times.
> I read the same kind of article when XP came out. People didn't want to leave 2000 to upgrade to XP, and as we all know that happened.
Yeah, and I read similar things when Windows ME was released.
Even Microsoft's BOB product was initially disparaged, and we all know what happened there.
I have not found any really compelling Java apps on my desktops (Linux and Mac OS), are there really any reasons for needing them on my phone?
Especially given the fact that getting a java port relies on having an open SDK for the iPhone -- meaning native apps can be produced. So, if there are native apps, why would we want Java?
Also, is my impression of Java outdated? Is it not slow, bloated (JRE + app), and have an ugly UI?
This is easily detectable and rejectable.. Unless they are going to have different certificates for each site they are intercepting, and are willing to forge (and the CA is willing to forge) the certificate info to mask what is really happening.
It's also probably illegal, and definitely unethical, to circumvent the network security this way.