Be first, or be second and be happy with that, or go play elsewhere.
You cannot underestimate the value of being first into the market with a new gadget. The '360 and PS3 are 'new generation', and therefore I'll define them as new gadgets.
Few will care if MS titles aren't *that* strong at the get go - the graphics will apparently be awesome. And, for a while anyway, that will be important.
Easy to fix. Use XROST. It works like this: you buy a prepaid code from XROST (you actually end up paying via paypal). You enter that code into allofmp3.
Its nice because the russians can't get your credit card number, and the money is paid to paypal which is relatively reputable.
Yes, Allofmp3 has by far the best combination of UI (just brilliant, kudos to the programmers), selection and price.
But it's legality is quitedubious and the RIAA has had a couple of goes at it. At the moment it lives in a loophole of the russian copyright system that is unlikely to be closed - those russians have bigger problems to deal with first.
So I guess it depends on how squeeky clean do you want to be???
He's got 5 mobos, 28 hdds and something like the equivalent of about 3633GHz of processing power. (yeah I know you can't just add them like that, especially when youve got 4 copies of windoze sucking the life out of your CPU, but still...)
All that for the power usage of a typical gaming system. 500W when all active, 235 with HDD spindown.
I run a via system for my PVR - loaded up its 72W at startup, and stabilizes to 30-40W when running. Equivalent to a dim bulb - very nice.
Via mobos only have 2 ide chains = 4 drives max.
And one PCI slot (although you *can* run two
cards on it).
How does he get 8 drives onto some of these
things?
If its IO bound, these may function just fine. Given they run cool (low cooling requirements), quiet and with low power usage, they may provide a good mips-per-operating-$$. They are not that cheap on a $/mips from a capex point of view though.
It just about makes me cry to read our "defender of the little guy" (from TFA)
The Commerce Commission appears to agree with Telecom that 128kbit/s is fast enough for business users.
Has anyone tried to connect to MSExchange using outlook over 128kbits? If I'm VPN'ing in, I'm getting 128kbits download from the exchange server. Its just not pretty.
Microsoft dont do anything out of the goodness of their hearts. They are a corporate entity with a fiscal responsibility to their shareholders.
He will be brought on board to continue the MS strategy of embrace, extend (in a proprietary fashion) then replace. MS do not want to support linux in any way, they want to kill it. Dead. Every linux box sold represents money ripped from their pocket.
My guess is that this could be something like: - get linux to run well on MS virtual machines, so linux can become just an app running under 2k3, and therefore slowely sink into oblivion. - work on their command line tools. Looks like they have finally realised that the {Li,U}n{u,i}x way of providing powerful command line utilities is actually pretty useful (perhaps learned from the struggle when they first tried to convert hotmail to NT:-).
unlike religion, science is self-correcting over the long term. If someone fudges the data and comes up with a wrong conclusion eventually someone else will discover that and get it right.
Unfortunately this is not true due to the sheer volume of dross being released. Here is an example: Japan want to hunt whales. Most of the world dont want them to. Japan agreed to stop hunting in 1986, but then started hunting whales for 'science' - yes, lets slowelykill many hundred rare, relatively intelligent, very majestic creature to learn about them. Oh, and lets eat them, no sense in them going to waste now is there.
To back up the science, Japanese researchers are releasing large numbers of research papers to back up their hunting. The numbers are so large that most of them have not been peer-reviewed (for a start, *who* will objectively peer review a research paper on such a politically charged topic). What is now happening is that 'data' from these papers is being quoted and accepted as defacto truth, when in some cases they are outlandish falsehoods.
I strongly recommend you also get the student handbook that goes with the "Art Of Electronics". Turns the theoretical stuff into lab-style practical examples. **very** useful.
(I am a private pilot). If you are flying in IMC (Instrument Meteorological Conditions - on instruments alone), you have placed the lives of your pax in the hands of the pilot and his instruments. There are no outside clues when things go wrong. See here for the top 100 air disasters. Two of them were purely ILS failures.
I'm not so confident that it can't happen. There are numerous anecdotal stories in the industry of NAV equipment wandering off course. In 1999 there were 76 reported incidents of possible cellphone interference. On IMC, and especially when on approach, these have the potential to end in disaster.
I totally agree. I have been down the Netgear MP101 and can I say that the box is a big load of rubbish. It continually skips. Netgear keep releasing patches, and keep saying "on the next release we promise to fix streaming problems" (see here). But they dont (at least not yet).
I tried using their own software - XP based. rubbish. I tried the twonkyvision server. Nope.
Then I bought a squeezebox. What a joy. The server runs on anything (perl). The box is reliable, quick, slick. The boxes can be controlled from the server (turn on, change look etc). The boxes are *really* easy to configure. I have my music on the mythbox which streams it to my stereo and PC. I have squeezeboxen in the bedroom and garage.
My advice - dont waste time with the cheap crap. The extra few dollars for a squeezebox is worth it .
I agree. Just to be clear - MS bank about $1bn per month at the mo. They have enough of a warchest for rev to drop to $0 today, and the company will still be alive and kicking for 3 years.
Knocking out that sort of company can't be done with a single thrust (like a cheap computer).
For example, with that sort of money on hand, I recommend they buy Intel (or AMD) and Seagate, then almost give the CPUs/disks away - make the whole box a commodity. TCO drops and everyone can afford MS software. The software becomes the key factor again. MS continue to extend their protocols to ensure non-interaction (as they constantly do now).
And then again, lets remove the dumbing-down and try to figure out what they *really* did...
"...We report the observation of a spin-flip process in a quantum dot whereby a dark exciton with total angular momentum L=2 becomes a bright exciton with L=1. The spin-flip process is revealed in the decay dynamics following nongeminate excitation. We are able to control the spin-flip rate by more than an order of magnitude simply with a dc voltage. The spin-flip mechanism involves a spin exchange with the Fermi sea in the back contact of our device and corresponds to the high temperature Kondo regime. We use the Anderson Hamiltonian to calculate a spin-flip rate, and we find excellent agreement with the experimental results...
I built a silent box based around an MII 12000 and silverstone LC06 (drool). Heat has been an issue, and I finally relented to have a silent fan inside. But it has only 2 PCI ports - hence the PVR-500 looks like the way to manage multiple tv streams.
I have been waiting for people to start talking about how well the PVR-500 works, and how hot it gets before I "invest":-).
Get a tuner card first - especially something like PVR-350 that can encode TV to MPEG and simultaneously decode MPEGS to S-video/composite for playback.
My 1.2GHz machine uses 10-15% CPU encoding/recording one channel and, at the same time, playing something previously recorded at 1366x768 (with ads removed of course:-)
Also, unless you have done some significant work around dealing with heat, you have a pretty noisy machine in your living room. Ick.
If anyone starts this type of project, get a low spec and very quiet machine, such as one based on an EPIA MII10000 (1.0GHz) or fanless Eden600. Add a PVR-350 and a *quiet*/fast/big disk (I have 550GB), and you are away.
Oh, and use KnoppMyth for a quick and painless install.
Slashdot Mirror
Didn't happen with firefox :-)
Noted. :-)
slash dotted.
There's an old marketing adage...
Be first, or
be second and be happy with that, or
go play elsewhere.
You cannot underestimate the value of being first into the market with a new gadget. The '360 and PS3 are 'new generation', and therefore I'll define them as new gadgets.
Few will care if MS titles aren't *that* strong at the get go - the graphics will apparently be awesome. And, for a while anyway, that will be important.
Sony: you have *got* to release the PS3.
Well, if you come from NZ like I do, then you pay per megabyte.
Unsecure WLANs can be *real* expensive.
Its nice because the russians can't get your credit card number, and the money is paid to paypal which is relatively reputable.
But it's legality is quite dubious and the RIAA has had a couple of goes at it. At the moment it lives in a loophole of the russian copyright system that is unlikely to be closed - those russians have bigger problems to deal with first.
So I guess it depends on how squeeky clean do you want to be???
He's got 5 mobos, 28 hdds and something like the equivalent of about 3633GHz of processing power. (yeah I know you can't just add them like that, especially when youve got 4 copies of windoze sucking the life out of your CPU, but still...)
All that for the power usage of a typical gaming system. 500W when all active, 235 with HDD spindown.
I run a via system for my PVR - loaded up its 72W at startup, and stabilizes to 30-40W when running. Equivalent to a dim bulb - very nice.
Via mobos only have 2 ide chains = 4 drives max. And one PCI slot (although you *can* run two cards on it). How does he get 8 drives onto some of these things?
Perhaps - depends on the application.
If its IO bound, these may function just fine. Given they run cool (low cooling requirements), quiet and with low power usage, they may provide a good mips-per-operating-$$. They are not that cheap on a $/mips from a capex point of view though.
Has anyone tried to connect to MSExchange using outlook over 128kbits? If I'm VPN'ing in, I'm getting 128kbits download from the exchange server. Its just not pretty.
Microsoft dont do anything out of the goodness of their hearts. They are a corporate entity with a fiscal responsibility to their shareholders.
:-).
He will be brought on board to continue the MS strategy of embrace, extend (in a proprietary fashion) then replace. MS do not want to support linux in any way, they want to kill it. Dead. Every linux box sold represents money ripped from their pocket.
My guess is that this could be something like:
- get linux to run well on MS virtual machines, so linux can become just an app running under 2k3, and therefore slowely sink into oblivion.
- work on their command line tools. Looks like they have finally realised that the {Li,U}n{u,i}x way of providing powerful command line utilities is actually pretty useful (perhaps learned from the struggle when they first tried to convert hotmail to NT
Interesting times ahead.
Unfortunately this is not true due to the sheer volume of dross being released. Here is an example: Japan want to hunt whales. Most of the world dont want them to. Japan agreed to stop hunting in 1986, but then started hunting whales for 'science' - yes, lets slowely kill many hundred rare, relatively intelligent, very majestic creature to learn about them. Oh, and lets eat them, no sense in them going to waste now is there.
To back up the science, Japanese researchers are releasing large numbers of research papers to back up their hunting. The numbers are so large that most of them have not been peer-reviewed (for a start, *who* will objectively peer review a research paper on such a politically charged topic). What is now happening is that 'data' from these papers is being quoted and accepted as defacto truth, when in some cases they are outlandish falsehoods.
(rant off)
that MS is firing a few thousand patents a year at the USPTO - protecting themselves.
You gotta have some sympathy for MS about this.
I strongly recommend you also get the student handbook that goes with the "Art Of Electronics". Turns the theoretical stuff into lab-style practical examples. **very** useful.
I agree. Consider Apple as linux with a robust, well designed UI. Imagine how that could take the corps by storm in a way that Linux can't quite yet.
(I am a private pilot). If you are flying in IMC (Instrument Meteorological Conditions - on instruments alone), you have placed the lives of your pax in the hands of the pilot and his instruments. There are no outside clues when things go wrong. See here
for the top 100 air disasters. Two of them were purely ILS failures.
I'm not so confident that it can't happen. There are numerous anecdotal stories in the industry of NAV equipment wandering off course. In 1999 there were 76 reported incidents of possible cellphone interference. On IMC, and especially when on approach, these have the potential to end in disaster.
I totally agree. I have been down the Netgear MP101 and can I say that the box is a big load of rubbish. It continually skips. Netgear keep releasing patches, and keep saying "on the next release we promise to fix streaming problems" (see here). But they dont (at least not yet).
I tried using their own software - XP based. rubbish. I tried the twonkyvision server. Nope.
There's lots of unhappy MP101 users out there.
Then I bought a squeezebox. What a joy. The server runs on anything (perl). The box is reliable, quick, slick. The boxes can be controlled from the server (turn on, change look etc). The boxes are *really* easy to configure. I have my music on the mythbox which streams it to my stereo and PC. I have squeezeboxen in the bedroom and garage.
My advice - dont waste time with the cheap crap. The extra few dollars for a squeezebox is worth it .
The squeezebox is not compatible with the MythTV backend. However, they coexist.
You put all your music in a folder on your Myth PC, and then have both Myth serve it to MythFrontEnds, and SlimServer serve it to Squeezeboxen.
Its very cool and works well - I am doing exactly this with myth and 2x squeezeboxes.
Knocking out that sort of company can't be done with a single thrust (like a cheap computer).
For example, with that sort of money on hand, I recommend they buy Intel (or AMD) and Seagate, then almost give the CPUs/disks away - make the whole box a commodity. TCO drops and everyone can afford MS software. The software becomes the key factor again. MS continue to extend their protocols to ensure non-interaction (as they constantly do now).
ummmm.....
Just post torrents to it.
You'll be able to retrieve it any time you want from the gazillion people who downloaded it.
Course you'll have to lie low from the RIAA for a while.
I need pills for my headache after looking at the device.
Have a look at this picture of the unit - you need a magnifying class to read the web pages.
The PVR-500 looks very cool.
:-).
I built a silent box based around an MII 12000 and silverstone LC06 (drool). Heat has been an issue, and I finally relented to have a silent fan inside. But it has only 2 PCI ports - hence the PVR-500 looks like the way to manage multiple tv streams.
I have been waiting for people to start talking about how well the PVR-500 works, and how hot it gets before I "invest"
Do you have any feedback on its performance?
Get a tuner card first - especially something like PVR-350 that can encode TV to MPEG and simultaneously decode MPEGS to S-video/composite for playback.
:-)
My 1.2GHz machine uses 10-15% CPU encoding/recording one channel and, at the same time, playing something previously recorded at 1366x768 (with ads removed of course
Also, unless you have done some significant work around dealing with heat, you have a pretty noisy machine in your living room. Ick.
If anyone starts this type of project, get a low spec and very quiet machine, such as one based on an EPIA MII10000 (1.0GHz) or fanless Eden600. Add a PVR-350 and a *quiet*/fast/big disk (I have 550GB), and you are away.
Oh, and use KnoppMyth for a quick and painless install.