I know, and I live in Regina currently and you are correct, these were one of the first two cities in North America to have DSL.
What I am really getting at is that in other countries and states it is rural areas that are largely left behind. I wanted to use an example of a province that has a significant rural population and was still able to deliver broadband to a significant portion of its populace.
I said 500 population in my initail post. In my talks with Sasktel representatives they have stated any community with more than 40 people.
I suspect that many Americans can look around and see communities of 500 or larger in states that are not predominantly rural and still have poor broadband access.
Given Saskatchewans population and that population's distribution it SHOULD be behind other provinces and states. The fact that is not is a testament to crown corporation investment, Sasktel's innovation.
The lack of access in other areas is due to the, very reasonable, unwillingness of a private corporation to provide services that are not profitable. Urban customers definitely subsidize the delivery of services to rural areas.
Rather long winded, but that's why I chose Saskatchewan as my example.
Odd as it may seem this is not really about improving access for Canadians to broadband. In many provinces, Saskatchewan included, most communities over 500 people have DSL. Seriously.
What this is really about is allowing Rogers and Bell to compete on 2 levels with Telco's in other provinces with a minimal investment in infrastructure. This is a comparatively minimal investment because they do not have to trench lines to every house to provide service.
It will allow them to: A) Provide high speed internet access in markets they couldn't access before B) Allow them to provide VOIP service in markets they couldn't access before C) If they can get wireless VOIP handhelds... they will have coverage about as good as GSM based cell phone services in Canada.
Its a very strategic move. As it stands the individual telcos, which either WERE or ARE publicly owned put the physical infrastructure in. There have been a series of rulings by the CRTC (our FCC equivalent) regarding what fees must be paid by competing organizations to access that infrastructure, but this bypasses all of that.
Yes I want to be informed regarding new or previously unknown distributions but is simply letting anyone submit their own review really the solution to the problem?
Personally I want to see: professional, balanced, comparitive reviews between multiple distributions OR indepth reviews of the major and minor distributions. That rarely seems to be the case with user submitted reviews.
To be fair most websites focused upon reviews grapple with this kind of challenge, and in fact with anyone who does reviews of any kind.
I was briefly affiliated with a poor quality hardware review site where I ended up editing a lot of the articles. I started to discuss the need for quality indepth reviews, rather than rushed brief articles that all seemed to receive 9/10 or 10/10. The primary reviewer bluntly informed me that we need to get the reviews out the gate rather than take the time to do a good job, nor can we risk offending the manufacturers supplying us with products.
I do not believe it is possible to be unbiased, but an attempt at balance & depth would go a very long way and this website does not seem to provide it with the content currently on their site. It is currently an excercise in subjectivity, although I suppose my opinion is subjective too.
Please don't misunderstand me. There is a place for user reviews, but I wish there were more places for indepth and balanced reviews.
Re:OT: where'd all the 4/5 comments go?
on
Xbox 360 for $300
·
· Score: 2, Informative
I think it has a lot to do with summer actually. I suspect a lot of the readers who get the opportunity to moderate are probably not logging in right now and therefore theirmoderation points are expiring.
As I understand it, Slashdot probably won't issue more moderation points until those ones are used or they expire. So we're probably going to be in this position on and off during the summer. Unless something actually was broken with moderation over the last week.
I don't think we have to look hard to see companies that have declared bankruptcy, and therefore addressed all of their debtload at a far reduced rate, and been able to come back and be competitive.
http://www.beyond3d.com/previews/nvidia/g70/Beyond 3D as always has a fantastic writeup including information on: CPU Utilization for video decoding, noise, power consumption, etc.
Seriously. This is the level of usage that I'm trying to achieve, not UT (World of Warcraft). But I do want to be able to queue up a few torrents, rip and encode my movies (for a media centre setup) and play a game at the same time while running Itunes (Decoding lossless).
Back in the day, and I have posted this before, when I had a friend running an Abit BP6 (Dual Celeron board) he could burn a CD, encode MP3s, host a dedicated UT server and then join it. Dual Cores / Dual CPU setups have always been for us hardcore users and this is a remarkable step forward.
- George Bush's Re-Election - Paul Wolfowitz as Head of the World Bank - The US Intervention in Iraq - The Structure of the U.N. Security Council - Voting Structures of the Bretton Woods Institutions - 'West is Best' Mentality in Development and Aid Agencies [This is admittedly shifting] - Current Price of Oil and the inability of America to reduce its dependency upon it. - The DMCA - RIAA efforts against file-swappers and its inability to adapt in the face of change. - Health Spending (as a % of GDP [2001]) is 0.3% less in the United States than in Canada and its free here. - The State of Public Education in North America - The 'CNN Effect' [short term intense immediate media coverage reduces long term awareness of issues] e.g. When was the last time you heard about the Tsunami? - The Health and Wealth Dispairites between the Developed and Developing world.
Giving up my mod points here but seriously this is a non story.
The AMD's system configuration is using the Radeon Xpress 200 chipset so it is using an integrated graphics chipset with only 32 dedicated (64 shared). (See the link in original article to the AMD system information) AMD does not make a chipset with integrated video so how is it that their choice of an ATI solution, a low end one at that, is unreasonable?
AMD chose a 2ghz Turion vs a 2ghz Centrino (with latest chipset @ 533mhz), same amount of RAM, same hard drive, and otherwise a very similar configuration.
The criticism of the Turion being unable to match the Ultra Low Voltage Centrino's is also B.S. The ULVs run at less than 1.2ghz they are not in the same performance league.
I am running an IBM Thinkpad T41 with a Centrino (1.4ghz), and I'm impressed with it a great deal. But when two different CPU architectures are being compared there is only so much you can do to ensure a common configuration, looking at the configurations that was attempted and the comparison was not 'fiddled with' as The Reg is implying. The article on the whole is media hyperbole.
I own a Thinkpad T41 which has this feature. One of the coolest things, to my friends, is that you can set the applet, which monitors harddrive shocks, to display the laptop in real time. It doesn't display vertical movement, however, it will show you flipping it upside-down, angling it in any direction, etc. It is pretty neat.
I've had the pleasure of using a number of friends Dual CPU systems across the years.
The most relevant one to this discussion is my friends Abit BP6, Dual Celeron, setup. At the time he was running Dual Celeron 300s. Not that impressive right? Except that he was able to host our Unreal Tournament Server - and then join it with no lag for any of the players. Running Unreal Tournament by himself showed a 50% load on each processor. He was able encode MP3s, burn CDs, and play games simultaneously. Something I was not able to do, and wanted to for the sake of time saving. I did not want to choose one activity over another - a 'leisure' productivity issue if you will.
Fast forward to now. A nice dual cpu system would allow me to play games, encode movies / my audio files, simultaneously while running Distributed.net. Are dual core's absolutely necessary? No, but when you are doing some very intensive applications you can't do anything else. As well even though not all games are multi-threaded, various aspects of the game may be, the networking code/the sound code etc, meaning that the game may run somewhat better on a dual cpu setup.
This is exactly what http://www.rottentomatoes.com/ does. I'm not sure if its an automated process on their end or not but it is functionally identical and in an easier to access format for current movies.
WOW That's interesting - some small insight here - the King James Version is not the original written word of God. The Bible is in Hebrew, Aramaic, some Arabic, and Greek (Koine to be exact).
So the KJV is just a translation - its not even the first translation. The Vulgate predates the KJV by centuries, and is in latin.
The frequent, and incorrect, assertion that older translations are more accurate is false. Currently we have access to manuscripts, such as the Dead Sea Scrolls, and other manuscripts found since the 1700s which improves the accuracy of current translations. As well peer review and improved methodology etc.
The KJV is not the best translation. It is however, the most poetic and many people find it the easiest to memorize verses from. As someone whose taken Ancient Greek as their second language at University - YOU need to get a concordance and a Greek New Testament because anything else is "reading cliffnotes"
I don't normally respond to this sort of thing but I'll bite.
First, I am a HEALTH researcher. It is my job on a daily basis to try and find ways to save lives and improve the quality of life for the developing world.
Second, I am a Canadian, but the decision making process of political elites within the United States is fairly clear.
Third, I just got back from an interesting but sometimes depressing Military and Strategic Studies Conference. Much of the policy discussion surround such issues was this blunt and cared that little about the lives which would be impacted by their proposals.
Is it horrible - absolutely. I abhor the loss of human life, but the fact of the matter is that policy decisions regarding such issues are made on the depressing argument I just made all the time.
70k people were killed in the Iranian earthquake last year - do you care? Did you remember?
Thousands of people die daily from AIDS, TB, Malaria, Typhoid, the list goes on and on. Do you care? Did you donate?
"Stop sermonizing here if you cant relate to a global view."
I can relate to a global view, the sad thing is that much of the world cannot. How much coverage has the Tsunami received in the media in the last week or so? The flow of information ensures that a 'truly' global view is very difficult.
Lives matter more than $ but that is not reflected in higher level policy. This is horrible and tragic and depressingly a Stalin quote is quite applicable "A single death is a tragedy, a million is a statistic." (Apologies if its slightly altered)
"Even if they did, they would be lucky if any of their missles could hit the continental US. Sorry Hawaii"
Everyone is sort of missing the point. Their missile tech probably isn't good enough to hit the continental United States 'but' is sufficient to damage the American Economy. What about a well placed nuke in Japan? What about Taiwan and destroying most of the world' s chip fabrication capacity? Or Hong Kong? Or South Korea?
A direct hit upon the United States is not required to damage the United States attacking its interests are 'sufficient'. By those measures - Japan, Taiwan, and Hong Kong (as a global financial centre, etc.) certainly qualify.
There is a reason why South Korea is attempting to MOVE thier Capital. Seoul is within artillery range of the DMZ. If NK marches south... Seoul can be leveled before the war even really starts.
Traditional discussions of territoriality are less important in an (and I hate to use this cliche) increasingly globalized world.
If you read the Wired article you will see that we too pursued pebble reactors, but due to the fuel rod type being more viable for military applications (like for navy ships) that is where the research dollars went and voila that's why we are where we are right now.
Second, China is not the only one to pioneer this. There have been working Pebble Reactors in Germany and, get this, South Africa soon as well.
Simultaneously its not that they want to improve their country more than we do its a question of logistics.
China has relatively few, intact, natural resources and everything is imported from much further away than it is to the United States. There still is significant coal, oil, and natural gas production in the United States, while its mostly just coal within China, very dirty and quickly being depleted.
As well the United States borders on the pacific and atlantic, making it easier for us to get goods from different parts of the world. China is 'mostly' landlocked and in a situation of future conflict (North Korea, Taiwan, Japan is not the sleeping creature many perceive, etc.) it would be very difficult for China to rely upon shipping lanes for necessary resources, hence the push for domestic capacity.
Finally, China and India simply are out educating the rest of the world. They both put out more engineers per year than exist within the United States. They do not have as much resources 'yet' but its pretty fantastic when you stop to think that an engineer in his EARLY 30s could be the head of China's space program. That being said, when you can pick the best of the best from 1.2 billion people - you get some amazing individuals.
The Western World's technological dominance will not last forever. If you want to see this as the first harbinger of that, feel free, but it is not the only sign.
Slashdot Mirror
I know, and I live in Regina currently and you are correct, these were one of the first two cities in North America to have DSL.
What I am really getting at is that in other countries and states it is rural areas that are largely left behind. I wanted to use an example of a province that has a significant rural population and was still able to deliver broadband to a significant portion of its populace.
I said 500 population in my initail post. In my talks with Sasktel representatives they have stated any community with more than 40 people.
I suspect that many Americans can look around and see communities of 500 or larger in states that are not predominantly rural and still have poor broadband access.
Given Saskatchewans population and that population's distribution it SHOULD be behind other provinces and states. The fact that is not is a testament to crown corporation investment, Sasktel's innovation.
The lack of access in other areas is due to the, very reasonable, unwillingness of a private corporation to provide services that are not profitable. Urban customers definitely subsidize the delivery of services to rural areas.
Rather long winded, but that's why I chose Saskatchewan as my example.
Odd as it may seem this is not really about improving access for Canadians to broadband. In many provinces, Saskatchewan included, most communities over 500 people have DSL. Seriously.
What this is really about is allowing Rogers and Bell to compete on 2 levels with Telco's in other provinces with a minimal investment in infrastructure. This is a comparatively minimal investment because they do not have to trench lines to every house to provide service.
It will allow them to:
A) Provide high speed internet access in markets they couldn't access before
B) Allow them to provide VOIP service in markets they couldn't access before
C) If they can get wireless VOIP handhelds... they will have coverage about as good as GSM based cell phone services in Canada.
Its a very strategic move. As it stands the individual telcos, which either WERE or ARE publicly owned put the physical infrastructure in. There have been a series of rulings by the CRTC (our FCC equivalent) regarding what fees must be paid by competing organizations to access that infrastructure, but this bypasses all of that.
I'm very intrigued.
Yes I want to be informed regarding new or previously unknown distributions but is simply letting anyone submit their own review really the
solution to the problem?
Personally I want to see: professional, balanced, comparitive reviews between multiple distributions OR indepth reviews of the major and minor distributions. That rarely seems to be the case with user submitted reviews.
To be fair most websites focused upon reviews grapple with this kind of challenge, and in fact with anyone who does reviews of any kind.
I was briefly affiliated with a poor quality hardware review site where I ended up editing a lot of the articles. I started to discuss the need for quality indepth reviews, rather than rushed brief articles that all seemed to receive 9/10 or 10/10. The primary reviewer bluntly informed me that we need to get the reviews out the gate rather than take the time to do a good job, nor can we risk offending the manufacturers supplying us with products.
I do not believe it is possible to be unbiased, but an attempt at balance & depth would go a very long way and this website does not seem to provide it with the content currently on their site. It is currently an excercise in subjectivity, although I suppose my opinion is subjective too.
Please don't misunderstand me. There is a place for user reviews, but I wish there were more places for indepth and balanced reviews.
I think it has a lot to do with summer actually. I suspect a lot of the readers who get the opportunity to moderate are probably not logging in right now and therefore theirmoderation points are expiring.
As I understand it, Slashdot probably won't issue more moderation points until those ones are used or they expire. So we're probably going to be in this position on and off during the summer. Unless something actually was broken with moderation over the last week.
http://www.nhl.com/lineups/player/8459534.html
I don't think we have to look hard to see companies that have declared bankruptcy, and therefore addressed all of their debtload at a far reduced rate, and been able to come back and be competitive.
http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=2451 Anandtech has an excellent review which includes power consumption information and a good overview of technology in the new chip.
d 3D as always has a fantastic writeup including information on: CPU Utilization for video decoding, noise, power consumption, etc.
http://www.beyond3d.com/previews/nvidia/g70/Beyon
"For those of us who remember spending quality time in a dark room with Kodak Rapid RC paper and a bottle of Dektol"
During photography class certainly the RC paper and bottle of Dektol were present but the 'quality time' was being spent in another direction.
Bah its not worth it its just a '6 digit id' ;)
Seriously. This is the level of usage that I'm trying to achieve, not UT (World of Warcraft). But I do want to be able to queue up a few torrents, rip and encode my movies (for a media centre setup) and play a game at the same time while running Itunes (Decoding lossless).
? i=2397Anandtech
? i=2388 ? i=2389
Back in the day, and I have posted this before, when I had a friend running an Abit BP6 (Dual Celeron board) he could burn a CD, encode MP3s, host a dedicated UT server and then join it. Dual Cores / Dual CPU setups have always been for us hardcore users and this is a remarkable step forward.
Here is the Anandtech AMD Dual-Core Review (I prefer it slightly to the FiringSquad articles)
http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx
Here is Part I of the Intel Dual Core Article
http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx
Here is Part II of the Intel Dual Core Article
http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx
That should provide some useful information.
Ah - a World of Warcraft subscriber eh?
- George Bush's Re-Election
- Paul Wolfowitz as Head of the World Bank
- The US Intervention in Iraq
- The Structure of the U.N. Security Council
- Voting Structures of the Bretton Woods Institutions
- 'West is Best' Mentality in Development and Aid Agencies [This is admittedly shifting]
- Current Price of Oil and the inability of America to reduce its dependency upon it.
- The DMCA
- RIAA efforts against file-swappers and its inability to adapt in the face of change.
- Health Spending (as a % of GDP [2001]) is 0.3% less in the United States than in Canada and its free here.
- The State of Public Education in North America
- The 'CNN Effect' [short term intense immediate media coverage reduces long term awareness of issues] e.g. When was the last time you heard about the Tsunami?
- The Health and Wealth Dispairites between the Developed and Developing world.
Giving up my mod points here but seriously this is a non story.
The AMD's system configuration is using the Radeon Xpress 200 chipset so it is using an integrated graphics chipset with only 32 dedicated (64 shared). (See the link in original article to the AMD system information) AMD does not make a chipset with integrated video so how is it that their choice of an ATI solution, a low end one at that, is unreasonable?
AMD chose a 2ghz Turion vs a 2ghz Centrino (with latest chipset @ 533mhz), same amount of RAM, same hard drive, and otherwise a very similar configuration.
The criticism of the Turion being unable to match the Ultra Low Voltage Centrino's is also B.S. The ULVs run at less than 1.2ghz they are not in the same performance league.
I am running an IBM Thinkpad T41 with a Centrino (1.4ghz), and I'm impressed with it a great deal. But when two different CPU architectures are being compared there is only so much you can do to ensure a common configuration, looking at the configurations that was attempted and the comparison was not 'fiddled with' as The Reg is implying. The article on the whole is media hyperbole.
If you have a Thinkpad, with Active System Protection, do the following:
Control Panel
IBM Active Protection
Real Time Status
I'm running version 1.23 of the software and it is there that it displays the Notebook as you rotate it in realtime.
"At least this robot might create the opportunity to go play outside."
But how will the Microsoft made robot react when it looks straight up on a cloudless day to the very large blue screen of death?
I own a Thinkpad T41 which has this feature. One of the coolest things, to my friends, is that you can set the applet, which monitors harddrive shocks, to display the laptop in real time. It doesn't display vertical movement, however, it will show you flipping it upside-down, angling it in any direction, etc. It is pretty neat.
I've had the pleasure of using a number of friends Dual CPU systems across the years.
The most relevant one to this discussion is my friends Abit BP6, Dual Celeron, setup. At the time he was running Dual Celeron 300s. Not that impressive right? Except that he was able to host our Unreal Tournament Server - and then join it with no lag for any of the players. Running Unreal Tournament by himself showed a 50% load on each processor. He was able encode MP3s, burn CDs, and play games simultaneously. Something I was not able to do, and wanted to for the sake of time saving. I did not want to choose one activity over another - a 'leisure' productivity issue if you will.
Fast forward to now. A nice dual cpu system would allow me to play games, encode movies / my audio files, simultaneously while running Distributed.net. Are dual core's absolutely necessary? No, but when you are doing some very intensive applications you can't do anything else. As well even though not all games are multi-threaded, various aspects of the game may be, the networking code/the sound code etc, meaning that the game may run somewhat better on a dual cpu setup.
This is exactly what http://www.rottentomatoes.com/ does. I'm not sure if its an automated process on their end or not but it is functionally identical and in an easier to access format for current movies.
A very worthwhile site.
WOW That's interesting - some small insight here - the King James Version is not the original written word of God. The Bible is in Hebrew, Aramaic, some Arabic, and Greek (Koine to be exact).
So the KJV is just a translation - its not even the first translation. The Vulgate predates the KJV by centuries, and is in latin.
The frequent, and incorrect, assertion that older translations are more accurate is false. Currently we have access to manuscripts, such as the Dead Sea Scrolls, and other manuscripts found since the 1700s which improves the accuracy of current translations. As well peer review and improved methodology etc.
The KJV is not the best translation. It is however, the most poetic and many people find it the easiest to memorize verses from. As someone whose taken Ancient Greek as their second language at University - YOU need to get a concordance and a Greek New Testament because anything else is "reading cliffnotes"
I don't normally respond to this sort of thing but I'll bite.
First, I am a HEALTH researcher. It is my job on a daily basis to try and find ways to save lives and improve the quality of life for the developing world.
Second, I am a Canadian, but the decision making process of political elites within the United States is fairly clear.
Third, I just got back from an interesting but sometimes depressing Military and Strategic Studies Conference. Much of the policy discussion surround such issues was this blunt and cared that little about the lives which would be impacted by their proposals.
Is it horrible - absolutely. I abhor the loss of human life, but the fact of the matter is that policy decisions regarding such issues are made on the depressing argument I just made all the time.
70k people were killed in the Iranian earthquake last year - do you care? Did you remember?
Thousands of people die daily from AIDS, TB, Malaria, Typhoid, the list goes on and on. Do you care? Did you donate?
"Stop sermonizing here if you cant relate to a global view."
I can relate to a global view, the sad thing is that much of the world cannot. How much coverage has the Tsunami received in the media in the last week or so? The flow of information ensures that a 'truly' global view is very difficult.
Lives matter more than $ but that is not reflected in higher level policy. This is horrible and tragic and depressingly a Stalin quote is quite applicable "A single death is a tragedy, a million is a statistic." (Apologies if its slightly altered)
"Even if they did, they would be lucky if any of their missles could hit the continental US. Sorry Hawaii"
Everyone is sort of missing the point. Their missile tech probably isn't good enough to hit the continental United States 'but' is sufficient to damage the American Economy. What about a well placed nuke in Japan? What about Taiwan and destroying most of the world' s chip fabrication capacity? Or Hong Kong? Or South Korea?
A direct hit upon the United States is not required to damage the United States attacking its interests are 'sufficient'. By those measures - Japan, Taiwan, and Hong Kong (as a global financial centre, etc.) certainly qualify.
There is a reason why South Korea is attempting to MOVE thier Capital. Seoul is within artillery range of the DMZ. If NK marches south... Seoul can be leveled before the war even really starts.
Traditional discussions of territoriality are less important in an (and I hate to use this cliche) increasingly globalized world.
A few things.
If you read the Wired article you will see that we too pursued pebble reactors, but due to the fuel rod type being more viable for military applications (like for navy ships) that is where the research dollars went and voila that's why we are where we are right now.
Second, China is not the only one to pioneer this. There have been working Pebble Reactors in Germany and, get this, South Africa soon as well.
Simultaneously its not that they want to improve their country more than we do its a question of logistics.
China has relatively few, intact, natural resources and everything is imported from much further away than it is to the United States. There still is significant coal, oil, and natural gas production in the United States, while its mostly just coal within China, very dirty and quickly being depleted.
As well the United States borders on the pacific and atlantic, making it easier for us to get goods from different parts of the world. China is 'mostly' landlocked and in a situation of future conflict (North Korea, Taiwan, Japan is not the sleeping creature many perceive, etc.) it would be very difficult for China to rely upon shipping lanes for necessary resources, hence the push for domestic capacity.
Finally, China and India simply are out educating the rest of the world. They both put out more engineers per year than exist within the United States. They do not have as much resources 'yet' but its pretty fantastic when you stop to think that an engineer in his EARLY 30s could be the head of China's space program. That being said, when you can pick the best of the best from 1.2 billion people - you get some amazing individuals.
The Western World's technological dominance will not last forever. If you want to see this as the first harbinger of that, feel free, but it is not the only sign.
" Would it be too much to speculate that Apple can easily come out with a iGame console similarly sized like a Mac Mini?"
No but it already exists. Its called a Gamecube.
Hey look this fax's header is "ebola" oh #$@!
Well I guess I've lived long enough for my 3 digit UID to prove me "rare and wise" :) Although the moderators seem to disagree :)