I think opening up the source code to Windows would just rule! I mean, who COULDN'T resist a chance to poke and prod and mess around with it? I tell you, if that day comes, I'll be getting me a copy and modify the hell out of it, just to see what would happen. Besides, if Microsoft actually opens itself up to an open source community, imagine all the bugs and problems they'd have fixed, as well as happier people because they've got a more stable OS going!
If you all want to know what kind of crack I'm on, sorry, I don't share.
Digital signal processing is a technology used to take an analog audio or video signal, convert it to digital format (duh), and then takes advantage of its digital state to perform modifications to the signal: ie filtering out noise, or enhancing a video stream, etc. I'm willing to bet that video cards that have some sort of video input or a TV tuner built on-board have DSP chips to process the information.
With 3D audio, there is a sound card that will output sound to a Dolby Pro-Logic Surround Sound capable receiver: Creative Labs' SoundBlaster Live! series, including the original card, the value edition, the MP3 edition, the platinum edition, etc. The first main software upgrade to the sound card (LiveWare 2.0) included the ability to encode audio in Dolby Surround format, so you can plug it right into your favorite home-theater stereo and blast yourself away. Believe me, it's fun. =)
I worked for a year and three months in the IT department for a company out of Casper, Wyoming. My supervisor - the administrator of the network - was paid a measly $19,200/year when I started there, and has since been raised to $24,000. He's got over two years of experience, has MCP+I and MCSE, and has worked his tail off for that company, but they won't pay him any more. They've been pulling in millions in profit. Maybe it's just a bad company, or maybe it's just Wyoming, but IT jobs here suck. Me, I'm just a techie, so I was only paid $12,000/year, but I KNOW there are places I could go and get easily three times that. Oh well, now I'm a poor college student - one of these years I'll be up with you guys. =)
(rant) WHY DO PEOPLE THINK THAT POSTING "FIRST POST" IS SO DAMN COOL WHEN IN REALITY IT JUST MAKES THEM LOOK LIKE MORONS BECAUSE THEY'RE ADDING JACK TO THE CONVERSATION?? (/rant)
Okay, anyway, I think this is a great decision on Frankenberg's part. For him to go out and pick FreeBSD from all of his available choices says a lot for his character. He COULD have picked Novell because of past relations - he COULD have picked Linux to smack Microsoft upside the head - but he didn't want to play politics with companies - he just wanted what was best for his company and their needs. Also, FreeBSD IS awfully flexible, so if a minor change is needed to customize something to fit them better, then it's just a matter of fixing the code.
I find it highly respectable to see a man who analyzes what he needs and picks the best tool to fulfill those needs without taking into consideration what other people or companies are going to think. It's his dream - let him make it happen with the tools of his choice.
Re:Okay, so I was wrong - now I know I'm REALLY wr
on
Disposable Cell Phones
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· Score: 1
Using a pay phone is different, though. Pay phones have phone numbers that can be traced. Investigators then know exactly where the call was made from. Any little tiny clue whatsoever - including someone seeing you at that phone - could bust your ass. With these disposable phones, though, you could be sitting in your room in your house or crusing down the street yacking like all the other morons who drive and yack. True, pay phones are just as good, but they leave the authorities a clue, and sometimes a person can be tripped up that way.
Okay, so I was wrong - now I know I'm REALLY wrong
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Disposable Cell Phones
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· Score: 2
I just thought of something that could spur from this that just turns my stomach. If the calls are truly anonymous, what's going to stop people from making threatening and harassing calls? I mean, you pick one of these things up, and you have sixty minutes of time to spend making bomb threats and death threats and whatever else you've got in mind. Sound farfetched? Not even close. What's going to stop anyone from making a bomb threat to the establishment that has pissed them off lately? Not a thing. It can't be traced to them.
I'm interested to see what thoughts anyone has on this particular angle of these phones.
There are several issues to consider with the disposable cell phones. Well, maybe only two. But anyway, I'll lay 'em out for you.
First of all - probably what drove the creator to make them in the first place - they're convienient as hell. You get one of those things, toss it in your car, and BOOM - instant emergency communication wherever you're at. Going on a backpacking trip? Pick one up at the store on your way out - if you get lost, you won't be without help. You're a poor college student who needs to be able to call the professor when you're snowed out somewhere? Take one with you. The creation of these makes having communication when you need it - without the hassles of signing contracts and paying outrageous bills - easily accessible.
On the other hand, they could create a waste problem. I would certainly hope that the company(ies) who market the phone would have some sort of recycling program going, so that they're just returned somewhere (like maybe the store you got it from) so they can be reactivated and resold. It would just be good business practice to do that, really - lesser manufacturing costs.
I'll admit that if I see one of these at Wal-Mart someday, and I've got some extra cash, I'll probably pick one up and toss it in my car. Never know when I might need to call someone out in the middle of nowhere, especially living in Wyoming. Excellent idea on the creator's part.
There is only one thing I can say. Without the experiences I've had online (especially IRC), I wouldn't be who I am today. This is largely in part to the online relationships I've had. Since everyone is laying out their stories here, I'll take my turn to toss in my two cents into the jar.
The first serious relationship I ever had was during my junior year in high school. Not too surprisingly enough, it was online. One evening when I was goofing off on IRC, a friend of mine messaged me, and asked me if I would message this person and find out who it was. I later figured out that he was trying to see if it was this girl he was chasing, but it wasn't. Anyway, I messaged her, and we got to talking. It was interesting to see how alike we were. We got along great. We started talking regularly, which eventually turned into "whenever we could". There were several phone calls, letters, pictures, and tapes of music sent back and forth over a period of time. Our conversations became more deep, more personal, and one night when we were talking on the phone, I admitted how I felt. Her reaction was somewhat similar. We were inseparable after that. We talked all the time, I was always thinking of sweet things to do for her, to show her that my love was real.
The one thing that I'll never forget was what she did for me not long after my birthday. I had written her a poem, and she loved it, but she was feeling bad because she really didn't go out and do things like that for me. Well, what she did do was this. She sent me an mp3 - it had some strange name - and told me to get a pair of headphones. Well, I did, and after the mp3 was done downloading (gotta love them DCC downloads over a 28.8 modem), she told me when to start playing it. The song was "Unchained Melody" by the Righteous Brothers. Her words I'll never let escape my mind - "Love, Guy - to you - from 1100 miles away."
As all good things go, though, this one came to an end. When we were still friends, another one of her online friends had asked her to go to Prom with him. Since he was there before me, I didn't care, so I wished her well. I had the worst feeling, though. Turns out it wasn't too far off. She came home, and told me a story that sent me into depression for a long time. It took me forever to get over her - even now, a year and a half since it ended, I still hurt. That's how I knew I was in love with her.
Those experiences taught me a lot about relationships that I easily applied to real life settings. My once non-existant social life began to perk up. I was making friends more easily. I was able to talk to people I didn't know. Best of all, when I walked up to a girl to start something, I knew what to say. And it worked. I've had several relationships in person since. Even though most of them sucked, there were a few special ones I'll never forget.
Don't miscount what you learn online when it comes to real life. My time online (five and a half years so far) has taught me so much about life, and how to deal with people. Take the experiences you have - good as well as bad - and keep them close to your heart, because the experience will help you in some way in the future as you search to find The One.
Granted, they may have made the claim it was a 3D board, but what they didn't do was make it compatible with some sort of common 3D API, such as Direct3D or OpenGL. They've since seen the light, so I don't expect to see many problems with that in the future.
It seems that pretty much everyone replying to this topic has some sort of death wish against ATi. I really don't understand why. Sure, their performance may lack a little behind 3Dfx, which I would probably agree to, but that doesn't mean that their products are trashy. The first really powerful video card I ever bought was my ATi All-In-Wonder Pro, which sports the ATi Rage Pro chipset and 8 megs of RAM. Let me tell you, I've been rather pleased with this baby. It comes with a built-in TV tuner and video capture. I had it record a favorite TV show of mine one night, and the video quality and sound was excellent. Also, it's performance in Direct3D accelerated games has been rather impressive. Final Fantasy VII, Star Wars: Episode 1, and Half-Life run AWESOME on this thing. My configuration, you ask? A simple PII/266, LX chipset, with 64 megs of RAM.
If I get this good of performance with a Rage Pro, I can't wait to get my Rage 128. Sure, a Voodoo3 3500 would be nice, but who has 200+ to shell out for that? I can get me a nice All-In-Wonder 128 for $140 through ATi's Trade-Up Program. It may lack a bit in performance compared to the Voodoo3, but who cares? Those extra few frames per second aren't going to make a phenomenal difference in your play of Half-Life or Homeworld. Sure, they're slow in updating drivers - I'm still waiting for an update that fixes their latest edition - but they were kind enough to point back to an older set of drivers that works just fine with my games.
There has to be some reason why ATi's CEO was named Canadian Entrepreneur of the Year last year. I don't think it's because they make crappy video cards. Sure, an ATi board may be a Celeron when compared to a Voodoo3, but for some people, the power of a Celeron is enough. I, for one, am happy with my ATi, and unless I win the lottery, I don't intend to stray from their products.
I've always been one who hasn't worried much about posting personal-ish information in various places, because if someone really wanted to find out information on me, they could get it somehow, so why bother hiding it? Nevertheless, things like this piss me off. Companies who assign you a number and then track the things you do with their software without EXPLICTLY informing you of their intentions BEFOREHAND are way out of line. It doesn't matter how valuable the information is in their endeavors to earn money via advertising and whatnot - it's blatantly infriging upon our personal rights. It might be more acceptable for them to state that before you are able to install the software (ie - software agreement), because then that way you know what you're getting into, and you can make a choice then based upon what they're collecting and what they're doing with it.
It is of my opinion that companies should be mandated to include these statements in licensing/software agreements. Having RealNetworks finally come forward with this after getting poked in the ass is not acceptable. Remember when Microsoft used to send hardware information when you'd register online? How many people's feathers did that one ruffle? Use of RealPlayer is almost as broad as that of Windows 95/98 (it's on this computer I'm using now in a computer lab on campus, even). People need to take a serious look at what's going on, and take measures to deal with it.
And I thought my 62-hour record connection to an ISP I used to be with was good... heheh... staying connected to them was a pain in the rear.
Anyway, I tend to agree with the financial institution notion - they have to keep things open so us people can make our transactions 24/7. Although I have met a few people on IRC who would tend to push that record a bit... hehe.
Regardless of what Intel does to motherboard manufacturers, AMD is still going to rock with the Athlon. There are other motherboard manufacturers out there cranking out boards other than just Asus. Just for an example, Biostar-USA has one right on their site - http://www.biostar-usa.com - look for yourself. I run a Biostar motherboard at home, we run them here at my place of employment for servers - they haven't given us any trouble. Plus, I'd just like to know where our good buddy Tom got his information for all the claims he made in that article. Has anyone been able to verify some of his claims?
Personally, I'm going to relax. AMD's Athlon will still come out in full force, motherboards are already available, the chips probably are too if you know where to look. Everyone should just chill about the whole situation and laugh and cheer as Intel slips behind the awesome power of Athlon.
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I think opening up the source code to Windows would just rule! I mean, who COULDN'T resist a chance to poke and prod and mess around with it? I tell you, if that day comes, I'll be getting me a copy and modify the hell out of it, just to see what would happen. Besides, if Microsoft actually opens itself up to an open source community, imagine all the bugs and problems they'd have fixed, as well as happier people because they've got a more stable OS going!
If you all want to know what kind of crack I'm on, sorry, I don't share.
Digital signal processing is a technology used to take an analog audio or video signal, convert it to digital format (duh), and then takes advantage of its digital state to perform modifications to the signal: ie filtering out noise, or enhancing a video stream, etc. I'm willing to bet that video cards that have some sort of video input or a TV tuner built on-board have DSP chips to process the information.
With 3D audio, there is a sound card that will output sound to a Dolby Pro-Logic Surround Sound capable receiver: Creative Labs' SoundBlaster Live! series, including the original card, the value edition, the MP3 edition, the platinum edition, etc. The first main software upgrade to the sound card (LiveWare 2.0) included the ability to encode audio in Dolby Surround format, so you can plug it right into your favorite home-theater stereo and blast yourself away. Believe me, it's fun. =)
I worked for a year and three months in the IT department for a company out of Casper, Wyoming. My supervisor - the administrator of the network - was paid a measly $19,200/year when I started there, and has since been raised to $24,000. He's got over two years of experience, has MCP+I and MCSE, and has worked his tail off for that company, but they won't pay him any more. They've been pulling in millions in profit. Maybe it's just a bad company, or maybe it's just Wyoming, but IT jobs here suck. Me, I'm just a techie, so I was only paid $12,000/year, but I KNOW there are places I could go and get easily three times that. Oh well, now I'm a poor college student - one of these years I'll be up with you guys. =)
First of all...
(rant) WHY DO PEOPLE THINK THAT POSTING "FIRST POST" IS SO DAMN COOL WHEN IN REALITY IT JUST MAKES THEM LOOK LIKE MORONS BECAUSE THEY'RE ADDING JACK TO THE CONVERSATION?? (/rant)
Okay, anyway, I think this is a great decision on Frankenberg's part. For him to go out and pick FreeBSD from all of his available choices says a lot for his character. He COULD have picked Novell because of past relations - he COULD have picked Linux to smack Microsoft upside the head - but he didn't want to play politics with companies - he just wanted what was best for his company and their needs. Also, FreeBSD IS awfully flexible, so if a minor change is needed to customize something to fit them better, then it's just a matter of fixing the code.
I find it highly respectable to see a man who analyzes what he needs and picks the best tool to fulfill those needs without taking into consideration what other people or companies are going to think. It's his dream - let him make it happen with the tools of his choice.
I found this on the Wired News site - gives some more information on the subject: Your Rights Online: FTC Petitioned on Data Profiling
Using a pay phone is different, though. Pay phones have phone numbers that can be traced. Investigators then know exactly where the call was made from. Any little tiny clue whatsoever - including someone seeing you at that phone - could bust your ass. With these disposable phones, though, you could be sitting in your room in your house or crusing down the street yacking like all the other morons who drive and yack. True, pay phones are just as good, but they leave the authorities a clue, and sometimes a person can be tripped up that way.
I just thought of something that could spur from this that just turns my stomach. If the calls are truly anonymous, what's going to stop people from making threatening and harassing calls? I mean, you pick one of these things up, and you have sixty minutes of time to spend making bomb threats and death threats and whatever else you've got in mind. Sound farfetched? Not even close. What's going to stop anyone from making a bomb threat to the establishment that has pissed them off lately? Not a thing. It can't be traced to them.
I'm interested to see what thoughts anyone has on this particular angle of these phones.
There are several issues to consider with the disposable cell phones. Well, maybe only two. But anyway, I'll lay 'em out for you.
First of all - probably what drove the creator to make them in the first place - they're convienient as hell. You get one of those things, toss it in your car, and BOOM - instant emergency communication wherever you're at. Going on a backpacking trip? Pick one up at the store on your way out - if you get lost, you won't be without help. You're a poor college student who needs to be able to call the professor when you're snowed out somewhere? Take one with you. The creation of these makes having communication when you need it - without the hassles of signing contracts and paying outrageous bills - easily accessible.
On the other hand, they could create a waste problem. I would certainly hope that the company(ies) who market the phone would have some sort of recycling program going, so that they're just returned somewhere (like maybe the store you got it from) so they can be reactivated and resold. It would just be good business practice to do that, really - lesser manufacturing costs.
I'll admit that if I see one of these at Wal-Mart someday, and I've got some extra cash, I'll probably pick one up and toss it in my car. Never know when I might need to call someone out in the middle of nowhere, especially living in Wyoming. Excellent idea on the creator's part.
There is only one thing I can say. Without the experiences I've had online (especially IRC), I wouldn't be who I am today. This is largely in part to the online relationships I've had. Since everyone is laying out their stories here, I'll take my turn to toss in my two cents into the jar.
The first serious relationship I ever had was during my junior year in high school. Not too surprisingly enough, it was online. One evening when I was goofing off on IRC, a friend of mine messaged me, and asked me if I would message this person and find out who it was. I later figured out that he was trying to see if it was this girl he was chasing, but it wasn't. Anyway, I messaged her, and we got to talking. It was interesting to see how alike we were. We got along great. We started talking regularly, which eventually turned into "whenever we could". There were several phone calls, letters, pictures, and tapes of music sent back and forth over a period of time. Our conversations became more deep, more personal, and one night when we were talking on the phone, I admitted how I felt. Her reaction was somewhat similar. We were inseparable after that. We talked all the time, I was always thinking of sweet things to do for her, to show her that my love was real.
The one thing that I'll never forget was what she did for me not long after my birthday. I had written her a poem, and she loved it, but she was feeling bad because she really didn't go out and do things like that for me. Well, what she did do was this. She sent me an mp3 - it had some strange name - and told me to get a pair of headphones. Well, I did, and after the mp3 was done downloading (gotta love them DCC downloads over a 28.8 modem), she told me when to start playing it. The song was "Unchained Melody" by the Righteous Brothers. Her words I'll never let escape my mind - "Love, Guy - to you - from 1100 miles away."
As all good things go, though, this one came to an end. When we were still friends, another one of her online friends had asked her to go to Prom with him. Since he was there before me, I didn't care, so I wished her well. I had the worst feeling, though. Turns out it wasn't too far off. She came home, and told me a story that sent me into depression for a long time. It took me forever to get over her - even now, a year and a half since it ended, I still hurt. That's how I knew I was in love with her.
Those experiences taught me a lot about relationships that I easily applied to real life settings. My once non-existant social life began to perk up. I was making friends more easily. I was able to talk to people I didn't know. Best of all, when I walked up to a girl to start something, I knew what to say. And it worked. I've had several relationships in person since. Even though most of them sucked, there were a few special ones I'll never forget.
Don't miscount what you learn online when it comes to real life. My time online (five and a half years so far) has taught me so much about life, and how to deal with people. Take the experiences you have - good as well as bad - and keep them close to your heart, because the experience will help you in some way in the future as you search to find The One.
Granted, they may have made the claim it was a 3D board, but what they didn't do was make it compatible with some sort of common 3D API, such as Direct3D or OpenGL. They've since seen the light, so I don't expect to see many problems with that in the future.
It seems that pretty much everyone replying to this topic has some sort of death wish against ATi. I really don't understand why. Sure, their performance may lack a little behind 3Dfx, which I would probably agree to, but that doesn't mean that their products are trashy. The first really powerful video card I ever bought was my ATi All-In-Wonder Pro, which sports the ATi Rage Pro chipset and 8 megs of RAM. Let me tell you, I've been rather pleased with this baby. It comes with a built-in TV tuner and video capture. I had it record a favorite TV show of mine one night, and the video quality and sound was excellent. Also, it's performance in Direct3D accelerated games has been rather impressive. Final Fantasy VII, Star Wars: Episode 1, and Half-Life run AWESOME on this thing. My configuration, you ask? A simple PII/266, LX chipset, with 64 megs of RAM.
If I get this good of performance with a Rage Pro, I can't wait to get my Rage 128. Sure, a Voodoo3 3500 would be nice, but who has 200+ to shell out for that? I can get me a nice All-In-Wonder 128 for $140 through ATi's Trade-Up Program. It may lack a bit in performance compared to the Voodoo3, but who cares? Those extra few frames per second aren't going to make a phenomenal difference in your play of Half-Life or Homeworld. Sure, they're slow in updating drivers - I'm still waiting for an update that fixes their latest edition - but they were kind enough to point back to an older set of drivers that works just fine with my games.
There has to be some reason why ATi's CEO was named Canadian Entrepreneur of the Year last year. I don't think it's because they make crappy video cards. Sure, an ATi board may be a Celeron when compared to a Voodoo3, but for some people, the power of a Celeron is enough. I, for one, am happy with my ATi, and unless I win the lottery, I don't intend to stray from their products.
I've always been one who hasn't worried much about posting personal-ish information in various places, because if someone really wanted to find out information on me, they could get it somehow, so why bother hiding it? Nevertheless, things like this piss me off. Companies who assign you a number and then track the things you do with their software without EXPLICTLY informing you of their intentions BEFOREHAND are way out of line. It doesn't matter how valuable the information is in their endeavors to earn money via advertising and whatnot - it's blatantly infriging upon our personal rights. It might be more acceptable for them to state that before you are able to install the software (ie - software agreement), because then that way you know what you're getting into, and you can make a choice then based upon what they're collecting and what they're doing with it.
It is of my opinion that companies should be mandated to include these statements in licensing/software agreements. Having RealNetworks finally come forward with this after getting poked in the ass is not acceptable. Remember when Microsoft used to send hardware information when you'd register online? How many people's feathers did that one ruffle? Use of RealPlayer is almost as broad as that of Windows 95/98 (it's on this computer I'm using now in a computer lab on campus, even). People need to take a serious look at what's going on, and take measures to deal with it.
And I thought my 62-hour record connection to an ISP I used to be with was good... heheh... staying connected to them was a pain in the rear.
Anyway, I tend to agree with the financial institution notion - they have to keep things open so us people can make our transactions 24/7. Although I have met a few people on IRC who would tend to push that record a bit... hehe.
You're forgetting the iMac IIsi =)
Regardless of what Intel does to motherboard manufacturers, AMD is still going to rock with the Athlon. There are other motherboard manufacturers out there cranking out boards other than just Asus. Just for an example, Biostar-USA has one right on their site - http://www.biostar-usa.com - look for yourself. I run a Biostar motherboard at home, we run them here at my place of employment for servers - they haven't given us any trouble. Plus, I'd just like to know where our good buddy Tom got his information for all the claims he made in that article. Has anyone been able to verify some of his claims?
Personally, I'm going to relax. AMD's Athlon will still come out in full force, motherboards are already available, the chips probably are too if you know where to look. Everyone should just chill about the whole situation and laugh and cheer as Intel slips behind the awesome power of Athlon.