The media isn't covering it much because there's nothing special about it. Every year, the Correspondent's Dinner has a comedian, and every year they make fun of the president to his face. Colbert was a bit...harsher than usual (IMO because he's not a stand-up comic but a comedic character actor, and he was in character). Believe it or not, this really does happen every year.
Oh, and the crowd definitely laughing, you can see it when the camera pans on them. You can't hear them because there were no microphones in the audience. If you're ever in a "live studio audience" for the taping of a show...look up, there are dozens of mics hanging from the ceiling.
Itunes takes ten seconds to open on my computer, that's 84 gigs of music on a 2.8Ghz P4 running XP (and it took five seconds the second time I opened it). I know you're talking about Windows, but that's the same amount of time as it takes to open on my dirt-slow 700Mhz G3 iBook (albeit with a much smaller library).
So if I consider 10 seconds on my "reasonably fast" PC to be slow, maybe you should see what's wrong with your computer.
Probably not, because only expensive server processors like the Opteron and Xeon can be used in multi-CPU systems. While there are a few gamers who use the Opteron- probably they just like to spend money- they don't have the volume to justify producing such a thing. It would cost $5000 like the FPGA in the article, and probably not be updated as often as regular GPU's.
Now, a programmable co-processor on a PCIe x16 card... I'd like to be able to encode a movie in five minutes.
Norton and Mcaffee both suck. I mean, they're both terrible, poorly written, resource-intensive programs. The best anti-virus software I've found is AVG Free Edition. Though, realistically, you only need AV software if you open email attachments and download stuff from websites that aren't obviously trustworthy.
For antispyware software, the only ones to use are Spybot and Ad-Aware. Again, you only really need those programs if you use Internet Explorer. Don't. Get Firefox instead.
What else is good and useful? VLC has been mentioned, it's the best media player. Some of these Powertoys are useful, especially TweakUI. For Instant messaging, Trillian is the best, though GAIM gets better all the time.
Other than that...games. I don't have any recommendations for those, you'll just have to find what you like. Have fun.
As someone with pretty good drawing skills (I can sketch a human that looks human), I've found that I am totally unable to use graphic design software. I can't even draw a proper stick figure in Paint. Does anyone else have a similar experience? Must someone who is good at one be bad at the other?
No, nukes are not a quick fix. But they (barring a breakthrough in fusion, which I wouldn't bet on) may still be our only hope, because changing the lifestyles of billions of people isn't possible.
Nuclear power does reduce emissions by helping us eliminate coal and oil power plants. Something's better than nothing, and nuclear waste is infinitely easier to contain than a cloud coming out of a smokestack.
Moreover, nuclear power scales better for the future. Like it or not, our energy usage is only going to go up. Nuclear also makes possible other technologies that reduce emissions- where do you think the hydrogen for fuel cells comes from? The easiest way to generate it is in a reactor.
We'll see...but the benchmarks for GMA950 are just sad. Apple is going to have to make far more efficient use of the chip than Intel's Windows drivers, and I don't think the performance is there.
I just hope the Macbook non-Pro has a discrete graphics chip...even an x600 or an x1300 would be good.
Well, I was thinking of a friend of mine, who really wants a new Mini so he can play WoW on his HDTV. It's almost certainly going to be unplayable at those resolutions; it is for my friend now with the current Mini, and the graphics are not much of an improvement (the computer should be faster for everything else, though).
And yeah, the system requirements for WoW are a bit higher...although it's really not very demanding as far as modern games go.
It's roughly equivalent to the Radeon 9200 in the old Mini, and about 10% as powerful as the x1600 the other new Macs use. In other words...enjoy getting 10fps in World of Warcraft.
I downloaded the User Agent Switcher extension, which looks like it should work for you. I just set my Windows/Firefox agent to be the same as on my Mac:
Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X Mach-O; en-US; rv:1.8.0.1) Gecko/20060111 Firefox/1.5.0.1
You can just click on Tools>User Agent Switcher>Options and add a new one. It should work until Google starts giving away Mac/Linux native versions of their video player...at which point the non-DRM files will probably go away.
Google forces people who use Windows download the.gvp file, which will only play in the Google Video Player. Change your user agent to a Mac or Linux browser and go to the link in the summary- it will let you download the.avi
Out of curiosity, I tried running OS X x86 on my desktop (don't yell at me! I own a Mac laptop and I'm going to buy a new one soon.). My PC is mostly Intel hardware; it was a network driver and a video driver away from being fully functional under OS X. Conveniently, I ran the exact same benchmark TFA mentions.
The first two, and indeed most of the benchmarks, were very close:
Windows- cpu (float) mandelbrot (sqrt) 1 thread 872.91 megaflops OS X- cpu (float) mandelbrot (sqrt) 1 thread 890.36 megaflops
Three of the seventeen benchmarks weren't very close, but that's what I get for using beta software on unsopported hardware:
Windows- cpu (float) mandelbrot (sqrt) 4 threads 1.10 gigaflops OS X- cpu (float) mandelbrot (sqrt) 4 threads 598.65 megaflops
Windows- cpu (integer) blowfish (cache) 1 thread 70.02 megabytes/sec OS X- cpu (integer) blowfish (cache) 1 thread 672.46 megabytes/sec
Windows- memory (stdlib) fill 1 thread 1.60 gigabytes/sec OS X- memory (stdlib) fill 1 thread 3.26 gigabytes/sec
Unfortunately, the lameness filter won't let me copy-and-paste the whole thing here, so you'll have to take my word for it that all the rest of the benchmarks are like the first one, very close but not exactly the same. So, comparing Apples to... er, non-Apples, it looks to me like there isn't much difference.
I went back and re-read the paragraph on eyecandy, and I can't make much case for it. A live preview of minimized programs is nice (it's one of the few visual effects I like in OS X), but I fail to see why that would require 3D hardware.
Aero is being developed for the sake of adding a new feature to Windows. Most new computers will run it, and most people won't bother turning it off. I suppose that's Microsoft's standard for innovation.
Seriously. Not that I plan on ever buying Vista, but if I do, I will run it in classic mode just as I do XP. I have a high-end graphics card that could easily run "Aero Glass," but why the hell would I want to use it to render OS effects? When the card is under load, it uses a lot of power, generates a lot of heat, and makes a lot of noise (the fan spins up). I accept these things when I play games, I don't want them when I'm at the desktop.
And I don't know about WP5.1, but I still use WordPerfect 6.1 for Windows, and it is indeed fast on modern hardware. No current word processor offers me an incentive to upgrade.
No. VPC is fine for running office apps, but for me, the whole point of putting Windows on one of these computers is for games. The virtual solutions all emulate 2-d video cards; if I've got a Radeon x1600, I'm damn well going to use it.
And if you actually read the product descriptions, it says those devices have HDCP-compliant in and out. They're just signal boosters for really long cables, they don't remove HDCP from the signal.
According to the impact effects calculator, a 1-meter, 1000-kilogram object hitting rock at a 90-degree angle at 150000kps would (assuming the atmosphere had no effect on it) release about 1410 megatons of energy. Splat.
Slashdot Mirror
The media isn't covering it much because there's nothing special about it. Every year, the Correspondent's Dinner has a comedian, and every year they make fun of the president to his face. Colbert was a bit...harsher than usual (IMO because he's not a stand-up comic but a comedic character actor, and he was in character). Believe it or not, this really does happen every year.
Oh, and the crowd definitely laughing, you can see it when the camera pans on them. You can't hear them because there were no microphones in the audience. If you're ever in a "live studio audience" for the taping of a show...look up, there are dozens of mics hanging from the ceiling.
Itunes takes ten seconds to open on my computer, that's 84 gigs of music on a 2.8Ghz P4 running XP (and it took five seconds the second time I opened it). I know you're talking about Windows, but that's the same amount of time as it takes to open on my dirt-slow 700Mhz G3 iBook (albeit with a much smaller library).
So if I consider 10 seconds on my "reasonably fast" PC to be slow, maybe you should see what's wrong with your computer.
Probably not, because only expensive server processors like the Opteron and Xeon can be used in multi-CPU systems. While there are a few gamers who use the Opteron- probably they just like to spend money- they don't have the volume to justify producing such a thing. It would cost $5000 like the FPGA in the article, and probably not be updated as often as regular GPU's.
Now, a programmable co-processor on a PCIe x16 card... I'd like to be able to encode a movie in five minutes.
Only Apple engineers get free booze, silly.
Norton and Mcaffee both suck. I mean, they're both terrible, poorly written, resource-intensive programs. The best anti-virus software I've found is AVG Free Edition. Though, realistically, you only need AV software if you open email attachments and download stuff from websites that aren't obviously trustworthy.
For antispyware software, the only ones to use are Spybot and Ad-Aware. Again, you only really need those programs if you use Internet Explorer. Don't. Get Firefox instead.
What else is good and useful? VLC has been mentioned, it's the best media player. Some of these Powertoys are useful, especially TweakUI. For Instant messaging, Trillian is the best, though GAIM gets better all the time.
Other than that...games. I don't have any recommendations for those, you'll just have to find what you like. Have fun.
I've tried using a tablet, and I just couldn't get used to looking at the screen instead of my hand. It is better than using a mouse, though.
Hmmm. Maybe a tablet PC, writing on the screen itself...
As someone with pretty good drawing skills (I can sketch a human that looks human), I've found that I am totally unable to use graphic design software. I can't even draw a proper stick figure in Paint. Does anyone else have a similar experience? Must someone who is good at one be bad at the other?
cmdrtaco.net won't load either, now that's irony.
No, nukes are not a quick fix. But they (barring a breakthrough in fusion, which I wouldn't bet on) may still be our only hope, because changing the lifestyles of billions of people isn't possible.
Nuclear power does reduce emissions by helping us eliminate coal and oil power plants. Something's better than nothing, and nuclear waste is infinitely easier to contain than a cloud coming out of a smokestack.
Moreover, nuclear power scales better for the future. Like it or not, our energy usage is only going to go up. Nuclear also makes possible other technologies that reduce emissions- where do you think the hydrogen for fuel cells comes from? The easiest way to generate it is in a reactor.
We'll see...but the benchmarks for GMA950 are just sad. Apple is going to have to make far more efficient use of the chip than Intel's Windows drivers, and I don't think the performance is there.
I just hope the Macbook non-Pro has a discrete graphics chip...even an x600 or an x1300 would be good.
Well, I was thinking of a friend of mine, who really wants a new Mini so he can play WoW on his HDTV. It's almost certainly going to be unplayable at those resolutions; it is for my friend now with the current Mini, and the graphics are not much of an improvement (the computer should be faster for everything else, though).
And yeah, the system requirements for WoW are a bit higher...although it's really not very demanding as far as modern games go.
It's roughly equivalent to the Radeon 9200 in the old Mini, and about 10% as powerful as the x1600 the other new Macs use. In other words...enjoy getting 10fps in World of Warcraft.
8 ,00.asp
Here's some tech specs: http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1697,182180
Maybe he'll break Alan Shepard's record for the longest drive ever.
I downloaded the User Agent Switcher extension, which looks like it should work for you. I just set my Windows/Firefox agent to be the same as on my Mac:
Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X Mach-O; en-US; rv:1.8.0.1) Gecko/20060111 Firefox/1.5.0.1
You can just click on Tools>User Agent Switcher>Options and add a new one. It should work until Google starts giving away Mac/Linux native versions of their video player...at which point the non-DRM files will probably go away.
Google forces people who use Windows download the .gvp file, which will only play in the Google Video Player. Change your user agent to a Mac or Linux browser and go to the link in the summary- it will let you download the .avi
Well, it does take two hands... not very porn-friendly.
Out of curiosity, I tried running OS X x86 on my desktop (don't yell at me! I own a Mac laptop and I'm going to buy a new one soon.). My PC is mostly Intel hardware; it was a network driver and a video driver away from being fully functional under OS X. Conveniently, I ran the exact same benchmark TFA mentions.
The first two, and indeed most of the benchmarks, were very close:
Windows- cpu (float) mandelbrot (sqrt) 1 thread 872.91 megaflops
OS X- cpu (float) mandelbrot (sqrt) 1 thread 890.36 megaflops
Three of the seventeen benchmarks weren't very close, but that's what I get for using beta software on unsopported hardware:
Windows- cpu (float) mandelbrot (sqrt) 4 threads 1.10 gigaflops
OS X- cpu (float) mandelbrot (sqrt) 4 threads 598.65 megaflops
Windows- cpu (integer) blowfish (cache) 1 thread 70.02 megabytes/sec
OS X- cpu (integer) blowfish (cache) 1 thread 672.46 megabytes/sec
Windows- memory (stdlib) fill 1 thread 1.60 gigabytes/sec
OS X- memory (stdlib) fill 1 thread 3.26 gigabytes/sec
Unfortunately, the lameness filter won't let me copy-and-paste the whole thing here, so you'll have to take my word for it that all the rest of the benchmarks are like the first one, very close but not exactly the same. So, comparing Apples to... er, non-Apples, it looks to me like there isn't much difference.
Does Aero come even close in utility for a user?
I went back and re-read the paragraph on eyecandy, and I can't make much case for it. A live preview of minimized programs is nice (it's one of the few visual effects I like in OS X), but I fail to see why that would require 3D hardware.
Aero is being developed for the sake of adding a new feature to Windows. Most new computers will run it, and most people won't bother turning it off. I suppose that's Microsoft's standard for innovation.
Seriously. Not that I plan on ever buying Vista, but if I do, I will run it in classic mode just as I do XP. I have a high-end graphics card that could easily run "Aero Glass," but why the hell would I want to use it to render OS effects? When the card is under load, it uses a lot of power, generates a lot of heat, and makes a lot of noise (the fan spins up). I accept these things when I play games, I don't want them when I'm at the desktop.
And I don't know about WP5.1, but I still use WordPerfect 6.1 for Windows, and it is indeed fast on modern hardware. No current word processor offers me an incentive to upgrade.
No. VPC is fine for running office apps, but for me, the whole point of putting Windows on one of these computers is for games. The virtual solutions all emulate 2-d video cards; if I've got a Radeon x1600, I'm damn well going to use it.
And if you actually read the product descriptions, it says those devices have HDCP-compliant in and out. They're just signal boosters for really long cables, they don't remove HDCP from the signal.
Apple has already take sides in this fight. Not that HD-DVD would be any better, the two formats are identical from a DRM-standpoint.
According to the impact effects calculator, a 1-meter, 1000-kilogram object hitting rock at a 90-degree angle at 150000kps would (assuming the atmosphere had no effect on it) release about 1410 megatons of energy. Splat.
Give you $50 for it.
.3? Thirty percent taxes? Try more like six percent.