This is the only link i could find with such figures, but the numbers are a tad high; i think that's the power consumption for the whole system rather than the CPU alone.
Anyway, all modern CPUs increase their power consumption under load; P4s and Athlon XPs do a passable job, Dothans (Pentium-M) do a terrific job there, and Atlon-64s are said to scale power very well with load.
It was, sorry. Actually, Intel DOES know how to make excellent peforming CPUs without outrageous power consumption (Pentium-M). If only they were cheaper...
As CPUs dissipate more power, they become more prone to failure, and need a more complex cooling solution to boot. That means jetplane-sounding-like coolers or watercooling kits. Never mind having a small heater in your bedroom. Besides, some people (I, for one) care about power consumption and electrical bills.
The thing is a dual-cpu system would (Intel or AMD based) would perform comparably without stressing a single die by forcing it to dissipate twice the power. There's no point for a dual core cpu if it's two older cores just stappled together.
At least Intel appears to miss this goal. Documents released to system builders specify the Thermal design power (TDP) of Smithfield processors at 130 watts. This represents an increase of more than 13 percent over today's Pentium 4 5xx (Prescott) and the upcoming 6xx (2 MByte L2 Cache), which post 115 watts. Maximum supply current climbs from 119 ampere to 125 ampere. The new chips also consume more power than Pentium 4 Extreme Edition 3.46 GHz processor (116.7 watts) and Intel's most demanding chip: The Itanium 2 1.6 GHz consumes 122 watts.
I'm baffled by these numbers - specially considering AMD offerings perform comparably while consuming less power. I know these are dual-core designs, but it's still awfully high.
I always found hard to find how much of that consumed power translates onto wasted power (heat dissipation), but in any case, i wouldn't want to be in a room with a couple of Sonoma servers.
Well, the thing WiFi adapters are basically computer-controlled radio emmiters, on a tightly controlled band - releasing full specs for these devices could enable them to transmit in unwanted frequencies, which means they would have problems with organisms like the FCC.
Of all the hardware whose manufacturers refuse to release specs, WiFi adapters are perhaps the more justified. Still, atleast partial specs (enough to have a basic, working driver) would calm the OSS zealots and give a start to developers.
Seriously. There was a great article posted some months ago here about this very issue (the rewrite-everything vs. don't-fix-if-it-ain't-broken argument), and i agreed with it's conclusions: rewrites should be done when they're needed and no when they can be done.
The Linux kernel is very good as it is, why rewrite it from scratch? It's been evolving these past 10 years, it's not like no one touched the code ever since.
Seriously. I understood that Valve was releasing the source for the CS bots... for a good two minutes i was baffled. "VALVE is releasing source?!?! Weeeeeeeeeeeee!"
Re:I will resume my opinion of Xfce in three words
on
Xfce 4.2.0 Released
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· Score: 1
I'm not bashing Flux, at all - i used to use it a lot. But XFCE gives you the "GNOME-look-and-feel" without the bloat that's been plaguing it lately. Flux looks, more... well, elite:)
As for the filemanager, it has improved a lot but it's still a little weird to use. It tries to mix the best of dual pannel filemanagers and "explorer" ones, with mixed success. I use it every now and then, but i still preffer XNC better.
Re:I am a developer on the Xfce 4.2.0 release
on
Xfce 4.2.0 Released
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· Score: 0
Thank you for your hard work on XFCE!
Re:How lightweight, if it requires gtk+?
on
Xfce 4.2.0 Released
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· Score: 1
The only real dependency it has is, as you said, GTK+. As for DEs not requiring a toolkit i'm not aware of any - there's a lot of assorted WMs though. You could try IceWM or Fluxbox, both very lightweight but excellent, well-featured window managers.
As for light DEs, look no further: XFCE is the best. And by far. Give it a shoot, it runs very well on an old PII of mine.
I will resume my opinion of Xfce in three words...
on
Xfce 4.2.0 Released
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· Score: 3, Informative
...it's the shit:)
Seriously, give it a whirl, specially if you're unenchanted with KDE/GNOME's last offerings or have older hardware and want to run something better looking than Fluxbox. XFCE has got an increased number of users since version 4, and with good reason. It's great.
The 4.2 version fixes a number of issues with the previous 4.x ones - namely, session management, better configuration options and interface polish, specially in stuff like the taskbar and the panel. The only thing i imagine lacking from XFCE are desktop icons, and they're scheduled for a future version.
SATA is every bit as good (or bad:) as PATA... on a thin, easy to manage cable. Otherwise, the interfases are structurally very similar; you can even get PATA -> SATA convertors for cheap.
As for the 10k RPM IDE drives, they're out there (parent post suggested one by Western Digital), but they're prohibitely expensive. I mean, c'mon, 10k RPM SCSI drives have been avaiable since what, 1995? It surprises me IDE drive manufacturers haven't catched up.
The reality is that the hard drive, in addition to the floppy drive, is reaching extinction. The density of flash memory is increasing so rapidly that, within 10 years, the hard drive will not be necessary. IBM saw this inevitable demise of the hard drive and sold its hard drive business to a competitor.
Flash memory has still a lot of improvements to do in the write cycles department (the number of times you can write to it before it fails), which basically hasn't changed a lot since it was introduced to these days. The exact number dpendens on the manufacturer, but it ranges between 10k and 100k. It's also still very slow.
But i agree, hard drives will be phased out in the short term, probably by new technlogies like MRAM memory, which doesn't have the limited write cycles problem and is as fast as DRAM.
Make that both reilabilty and speed for me. PATA/SATA disk are still lagging horribly behind stuff like SCSI disks and their 10k RPM offerings.
PS: If you want reilabilty for cheap, check the Seagate Barracuda series (i own this one) - cheap, VERY reliable and also damn quiet. I can't tell if the thing is running or not by listening to it.
Actually, you can hear a looping pattern in the background, constantly, at least for the first half of the clip. I don't know if it's very "realistic", but still, it's kinda cool to listen to sounds of another planet.
The article mentions it was ran on ISPs with no capabilities to monitor their users' Internet usage. I wonder how many they are; for starters, mail is a no brainer to monitor, unless it's webmail on remote server (Hotmail, f.ex.). And even then, the conection is encrypted.
Check this little image from the article. "Carnivore's official logo shows bload-soaked incisors closing over a stream of data". EVIL!
It's a packet sniffer that reconstructs data (mail and web sites, as it seems from the article), not a boogieman! I agree, it can be a dangerous tool for privacy in the wrong hands, but still, it's not like you can just put it in your PC and start reading your neighour's mail.
OO.o does a reasonably fine job of reading Office file formats, particularly Word files. This considering that even Word sometimes have problems opening files created with different versions, or corrupt files. Which, by the way, OO.o handles much better; opening a Word file with OO.o and saving it again is a sure way to fix borked Word files for mom and dad.
As for the Word file format opened, i also hope it happens. Word is a defacto standart, and it's files are used everyday for tons of important documents. We're just too reliant on Word. Of course, the boys at Redmond love this;)
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This is the only link i could find with such figures, but the numbers are a tad high; i think that's the power consumption for the whole system rather than the CPU alone.
Anyway, all modern CPUs increase their power consumption under load; P4s and Athlon XPs do a passable job, Dothans (Pentium-M) do a terrific job there, and Atlon-64s are said to scale power very well with load.
It was, sorry. Actually, Intel DOES know how to make excellent peforming CPUs without outrageous power consumption (Pentium-M). If only they were cheaper...
As CPUs dissipate more power, they become more prone to failure, and need a more complex cooling solution to boot. That means jetplane-sounding-like coolers or watercooling kits. Never mind having a small heater in your bedroom. Besides, some people (I, for one) care about power consumption and electrical bills.
The thing is a dual-cpu system would (Intel or AMD based) would perform comparably without stressing a single die by forcing it to dissipate twice the power. There's no point for a dual core cpu if it's two older cores just stappled together.
Wasn't the bulk of the power waste due to the high frequency switching of the (lossy, at those scales) transistors?
...sheeze.
At least Intel appears to miss this goal. Documents released to system builders specify the Thermal design power (TDP) of Smithfield processors at 130 watts. This represents an increase of more than 13 percent over today's Pentium 4 5xx (Prescott) and the upcoming 6xx (2 MByte L2 Cache), which post 115 watts. Maximum supply current climbs from 119 ampere to 125 ampere. The new chips also consume more power than Pentium 4 Extreme Edition 3.46 GHz processor (116.7 watts) and Intel's most demanding chip: The Itanium 2 1.6 GHz consumes 122 watts.
I'm baffled by these numbers - specially considering AMD offerings perform comparably while consuming less power. I know these are dual-core designs, but it's still awfully high.
I always found hard to find how much of that consumed power translates onto wasted power (heat dissipation), but in any case, i wouldn't want to be in a room with a couple of Sonoma servers.
Touche. I thought radio devices in the US were regulated in some way (readed it in ./ sometime, what do you know :). I stand corrected.
Well, the thing WiFi adapters are basically computer-controlled radio emmiters, on a tightly controlled band - releasing full specs for these devices could enable them to transmit in unwanted frequencies, which means they would have problems with organisms like the FCC.
Of all the hardware whose manufacturers refuse to release specs, WiFi adapters are perhaps the more justified. Still, atleast partial specs (enough to have a basic, working driver) would calm the OSS zealots and give a start to developers.
The bottom of the barrel does look funny.
Porn is important everywhere, you insensitive clod! *hugs his porn box*
Indeed, thank you!
Seriously. There was a great article posted some months ago here about this very issue (the rewrite-everything vs. don't-fix-if-it-ain't-broken argument), and i agreed with it's conclusions: rewrites should be done when they're needed and no when they can be done.
The Linux kernel is very good as it is, why rewrite it from scratch? It's been evolving these past 10 years, it's not like no one touched the code ever since.
When i played CS a lot, i was very fond of de_nuke and de_italy. Prodigy is also fun to play, and no, it's not new. I played it on CS 1.5
Seriously. I understood that Valve was releasing the source for the CS bots... for a good two minutes i was baffled. "VALVE is releasing source?!?! Weeeeeeeeeeeee!"
I'm not bashing Flux, at all - i used to use it a lot. But XFCE gives you the "GNOME-look-and-feel" without the bloat that's been plaguing it lately. Flux looks, more... well, elite :)
As for the filemanager, it has improved a lot but it's still a little weird to use. It tries to mix the best of dual pannel filemanagers and "explorer" ones, with mixed success. I use it every now and then, but i still preffer XNC better.
Thank you for your hard work on XFCE!
The only real dependency it has is, as you said, GTK+. As for DEs not requiring a toolkit i'm not aware of any - there's a lot of assorted WMs though. You could try IceWM or Fluxbox, both very lightweight but excellent, well-featured window managers.
As for light DEs, look no further: XFCE is the best. And by far. Give it a shoot, it runs very well on an old PII of mine.
Seriously, give it a whirl, specially if you're unenchanted with KDE/GNOME's last offerings or have older hardware and want to run something better looking than Fluxbox. XFCE has got an increased number of users since version 4, and with good reason. It's great.
The 4.2 version fixes a number of issues with the previous 4.x ones - namely, session management, better configuration options and interface polish, specially in stuff like the taskbar and the panel. The only thing i imagine lacking from XFCE are desktop icons, and they're scheduled for a future version.
SATA is every bit as good (or bad :) as PATA... on a thin, easy to manage cable. Otherwise, the interfases are structurally very similar; you can even get PATA -> SATA convertors for cheap.
As for the 10k RPM IDE drives, they're out there (parent post suggested one by Western Digital), but they're prohibitely expensive. I mean, c'mon, 10k RPM SCSI drives have been avaiable since what, 1995? It surprises me IDE drive manufacturers haven't catched up.
The reality is that the hard drive, in addition to the floppy drive, is reaching extinction. The density of flash memory is increasing so rapidly that, within 10 years, the hard drive will not be necessary. IBM saw this inevitable demise of the hard drive and sold its hard drive business to a competitor.
Flash memory has still a lot of improvements to do in the write cycles department (the number of times you can write to it before it fails), which basically hasn't changed a lot since it was introduced to these days. The exact number dpendens on the manufacturer, but it ranges between 10k and 100k. It's also still very slow.
But i agree, hard drives will be phased out in the short term, probably by new technlogies like MRAM memory, which doesn't have the limited write cycles problem and is as fast as DRAM.
Make that both reilabilty and speed for me. PATA/SATA disk are still lagging horribly behind stuff like SCSI disks and their 10k RPM offerings.
PS: If you want reilabilty for cheap, check the Seagate Barracuda series (i own this one) - cheap, VERY reliable and also damn quiet. I can't tell if the thing is running or not by listening to it.
Actually, you can hear a looping pattern in the background, constantly, at least for the first half of the clip. I don't know if it's very "realistic", but still, it's kinda cool to listen to sounds of another planet.
The article mentions it was ran on ISPs with no capabilities to monitor their users' Internet usage. I wonder how many they are; for starters, mail is a no brainer to monitor, unless it's webmail on remote server (Hotmail, f.ex.). And even then, the conection is encrypted.
Check this little image from the article. "Carnivore's official logo shows bload-soaked incisors closing over a stream of data". EVIL!
It's a packet sniffer that reconstructs data (mail and web sites, as it seems from the article), not a boogieman! I agree, it can be a dangerous tool for privacy in the wrong hands, but still, it's not like you can just put it in your PC and start reading your neighour's mail.
OO.o does a reasonably fine job of reading Office file formats, particularly Word files. This considering that even Word sometimes have problems opening files created with different versions, or corrupt files. Which, by the way, OO.o handles much better; opening a Word file with OO.o and saving it again is a sure way to fix borked Word files for mom and dad.
;)
As for the Word file format opened, i also hope it happens. Word is a defacto standart, and it's files are used everyday for tons of important documents. We're just too reliant on Word. Of course, the boys at Redmond love this