We had metered cpu usage at college. It was a constant, annoying nightmare. Though the "money" was supposedly "fake" to students, you had to beg the admin assistants in the CS department to get more when your account ran low. The administrators of the Computer Center claimed it was actual money charged to each department. The school also gave out free accounts to students with small money allocations in them which gamers borrowed and stole to play GalTrader on the VAX.
I thought it all went away until I started working for IBM. Every time you log out of the mainframe the computer told you how much money your session cost the company. That turned out to be real money that was charged to the department you worked for. We eventually reverted to using X Terminals connected to massive, rack-sized RS/6000 machines instead of the mainframes after that.
I was reading this until I got to the description of the PPP link and remembered the days of UUCP over serial lines. Since the modem took care of the error correction they could send much more data more quickly by using straight serial UUCP instead of trying to get a PPP handshake to get TCP/IP working. A UUCP chat script was always faster than PPP in my experience.
With the upcoming DTV and HDTV formats you need not worry about your existing TiVo, VCR's and televisions if you have a digital satellite system. Many of the Digital TV signals will simply be the same old NTSC-like format crammed into the space of one channel, so these work fine on old sets with a decoder box. When you have DirecTV the signals are always converted into a compatible format for your equipment. Don't believe the hype that all television channels will be in HDTV. THey will be in DTV.
They should kill Minidisc while they're at it. Another great and superior Sony technology--this time crippled severely by MagicGate copy protection and utter consumer indifference.
Arial Unicode doesn't look too much like Arial. It seems to be a different font entirely that's intended to be used in place of Arial when Unicode glyphs are called for.
Part of SecurID's security is that you need RSA to create the seed for you unless you can copy that seed for your home network and use it there. Since this is your own home network anyway, use S/Key instead for a similar one-time pad security solution: http://www.ece.nwu.edu/CSEL/skey/skey_eecs.html
I threw out several domain "renewal" notices from at least two registrars--Verisign and one called "Domains USA" or similar. Why aren't the FTC going after all of them? It's not unique to Verisign. I feel bad for those companies whose accounts payable departments paid these "bills" and got "slammed" into another registrar. It's just like the old sweepstakes entry form slam-scam that long-distance telephone companies still do.
We totally solved this by using IP-to-serial concentrators which makes every host's serial console reachable via telnet. The only limitation, of course, is not being able to see BIOS messages when using cheap PC hardware. Better PC hardware like Intel server boards lets you see the BIOS on the serial port. Naturally all the major Unix systems already do this. If you're using Windows, well, driving into work to fix your machine is the price you pay for the "convenience" of Windows.
Last time I looked at Watcom and Symantec's compilers they had distributed build systems. Couldn't that reduce an 8-hour build time on one 4-way machine to less than 1 hour on several?
I run Solaris x86 on several computers and Solaris SPARC on many times more, and I think the main reasons that Solaris x86 is much slower than the SPARC version is due to non-support for UDMA mode IDE, and the super-tiny processor caches on the x86 systems. The UDMA IDE support and the full-speed processor cache in the 400 MHz Ultra5/10 systems can show you this when stacked next to 1 GHz Pentium 3 systems.
Tivo is great if you want to watch TV programs. If you want to channel-surf, Tivo really sucks for that, since it takes seconds for the machine to change channels--even more if you have DirecTV, Dish Network, and Digital Cable since they also take a few seconds to switch channels.
There is a new Tivo machine coming out called "Tivo Series 2". Joe Montana and Ronny Lott told me that a few months ago. It has USB which presumably is what the ethernet support would be used with.
If the games are cause for concern then the internet cafe should use internet terminals that do not have the computing power to play such games. The Windows Policy Editor and Windows NT/2K/XP security is not enough to prevent this. Why wouldn't they do this? Simple: Internet terminals have lousy versions of internet browsers and cost nearly as much as real computers.
Power consumption and heat is a big problem with Athlons and Durons. I read on a hardware reviewer site that Athlon consumes 36 watts and Duron only a little less. Compare that to Celeron at about 20 watts.
Hold on there... All the all-in-one motherboards have the standard ports included -- two USB external, two internal USB headers, one external serial port, one internal serial port internal header for IRDA, a printer port, two PS/2 ports, VGA out, line-out/speaker-out/line-in/mic-in.
If you want more ports then you're in the wrong market. Of course you'd want to add a modem and FireWire... but nothing beats an all-in-one computer for a server or internet terminal.
SiS has their work cut out for them. The SiS 530 for Super Socket7 isn't the fastest integrated chipset, either. I'm waiting for the VIA chipsets with the integrated S3 video to come out for Socket A, personally.
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Umm, threading != MP.
Kris
We had metered cpu usage at college. It was a constant, annoying nightmare. Though the "money" was supposedly "fake" to students, you had to beg the admin assistants in the CS department to get more when your account ran low. The administrators of the Computer Center claimed it was actual money charged to each department. The school also gave out free accounts to students with small money allocations in them which gamers borrowed and stole to play GalTrader on the VAX.
I thought it all went away until I started working for IBM. Every time you log out of the mainframe the computer told you how much money your session cost the company. That turned out to be real money that was charged to the department you worked for. We eventually reverted to using X Terminals connected to massive, rack-sized RS/6000 machines instead of the mainframes after that.
Kris
Heheh, I'm not imagining it--I'm doing it.
Kris
Taint checking? Scratch and sniff?
Kris
I was reading this until I got to the description of the PPP link and remembered the days of UUCP over serial lines. Since the modem took care of the error correction they could send much more data more quickly by using straight serial UUCP instead of trying to get a PPP handshake to get TCP/IP working. A UUCP chat script was always faster than PPP in my experience.
Kris
With the upcoming DTV and HDTV formats you need not worry about your existing TiVo, VCR's and televisions if you have a digital satellite system. Many of the Digital TV signals will simply be the same old NTSC-like format crammed into the space of one channel, so these work fine on old sets with a decoder box. When you have DirecTV the signals are always converted into a compatible format for your equipment. Don't believe the hype that all television channels will be in HDTV. THey will be in DTV.
Kris
NetMD seems to take only a few minutes for an hour's worth of music.
Kris
They should kill Minidisc while they're at it. Another great and superior Sony technology--this time crippled severely by MagicGate copy protection and utter consumer indifference.
Kris
Arial Unicode doesn't look too much like Arial. It seems to be a different font entirely that's intended to be used in place of Arial when Unicode glyphs are called for.
Kris
Part of SecurID's security is that you need RSA to create the seed for you unless you can copy that seed for your home network and use it there. Since this is your own home network anyway, use S/Key instead for a similar one-time pad security solution:
http://www.ece.nwu.edu/CSEL/skey/skey_eecs.html
Kris
I threw out several domain "renewal" notices from at least two registrars--Verisign and one called "Domains USA" or similar. Why aren't the FTC going after all of them? It's not unique to Verisign. I feel bad for those companies whose accounts payable departments paid these "bills" and got "slammed" into another registrar. It's just like the old sweepstakes entry form slam-scam that long-distance telephone companies still do.
Kris
We totally solved this by using IP-to-serial concentrators which makes every host's serial console reachable via telnet. The only limitation, of course, is not being able to see BIOS messages when using cheap PC hardware. Better PC hardware like Intel server boards lets you see the BIOS on the serial port. Naturally all the major Unix systems already do this. If you're using Windows, well, driving into work to fix your machine is the price you pay for the "convenience" of Windows.
Kris
Oh, is that why the Asus A7V comes with a Promise controller even though it has a perfectly good ATA-100 controller on-board?
Kris
Hrm, my motherboards don't recognize drives over 120 gigs due to some weird LBA limit of 132 gigs.
Kris
Last time I looked at Watcom and Symantec's compilers they had distributed build systems. Couldn't that reduce an 8-hour build time on one 4-way machine to less than 1 hour on several?
Kris
Just pick the one that has C-SPAN Radio. We have that locally here on a super-strong, mono FM signal, so I don't need to bother getting XM yet.
Kris
I run Solaris x86 on several computers and Solaris SPARC on many times more, and I think the main reasons that Solaris x86 is much slower than the SPARC version is due to non-support for UDMA mode IDE, and the super-tiny processor caches on the x86 systems. The UDMA IDE support and the full-speed processor cache in the 400 MHz Ultra5/10 systems can show you this when stacked next to 1 GHz Pentium 3 systems.
Kris
Tivo is great if you want to watch TV programs. If you want to channel-surf, Tivo really sucks for that, since it takes seconds for the machine to change channels--even more if you have DirecTV, Dish Network, and Digital Cable since they also take a few seconds to switch channels.
There is a new Tivo machine coming out called "Tivo Series 2". Joe Montana and Ronny Lott told me that a few months ago. It has USB which presumably is what the ethernet support would be used with.
Jacking your fee? Who in God's name doesn't immediately sign up for lifetime service?!
If the games are cause for concern then the internet cafe should use internet terminals that do not have the computing power to play such games. The Windows Policy Editor and Windows NT/2K/XP security is not enough to prevent this. Why wouldn't they do this? Simple: Internet terminals have lousy versions of internet browsers and cost nearly as much as real computers.
Kris
Erm, my "climate-warming SUV" is ULEV certified.
Bleah!
Kris
Kriston J. Rehberg
http://kriston.net/
If you want more ports then you're in the wrong market. Of course you'd want to add a modem and FireWire... but nothing beats an all-in-one computer for a server or internet terminal.
Kris
Kriston J. Rehberg
http://kriston.net/
Kris
Kriston J. Rehberg
http://kriston.net/