They definately were going for "teh snappy" with the 7 release. Try it out, it's quite a bit better.
That's because the dumb thing has a process running in the background eating resources so it starts faster. If you disable it the reader will still take a while to load unless you disable most of the plugins that they include with it.
we should be generating a database of "acceptable and non-questionable" stable websites that would be acceptable for general viewing.
And thanks to the wonders of the Internet, the kid friendly site "jigglygelitan.com" (exploring the wonders of gelitan) goes under and is replaced with hardcore porn without anyone noticing initially.
I used to like the Maxtor drives because they were really quiet by comparison to the noisy drives they were replacing, but unforutnately every one we bought ended up being crap. One computer had a Maxtor drive that one day, for no apparent reason, just stops spinning when the computer is turned on.
The one I was using in my computer recently kept doing weird things when it was powered on after being slightly chilled. The first time I did this, some files at the beginning of the drive were a little messed up, but other than the drive freaking out and reporting a string of garbage for its name on power up, it worked just fine. The second time I started it up cold really killed some important data on it. Basically killed the beginning of the drive. Still trying to recover data from the image.
I may be a nerd, but I like to think of my page design [andreweckford.com] as "clean" and "fast-loading", thank you very much.
Import a CSS on every page and you can get a nicer looking layout with little cost. "Small in size" and "fast loading" does not necessarily mean "default color scheme."
I wasn't thinking of compilers. I was mostly talking about the people who have to write the software. Assuming there's no compiler that knows about HT, I stand by my assertion that it would generally be a bad pratice to get people to worry about it. Especailly these days. Another point that I was trying to make is that even if there were compilers who knew about the HT issues, I still think it's exceedingly stupid that Intel went ahead with HT despite the glaring problems that were mentioned. If people want multiple of threads of execution on the same processor then they should get one with two cores.
Lots of programs are designed with the multiple thread model in mind. Programs should not be designed with the multiple thread model plus cache limitations in mind.
It depends on what your goals are. I do realize that was a fairly general statement, and it does not apply to every application. For something like lets say MS SQL server without a compiler that does it automatically, it would be an unreasonable expectation. If someone was writing an application for an embedded system, however, it might make sense if they chose the HT enabled processor. Are there any compilers currently that will do HT optimizations? I was under the impression that most commercial apps were basically compiled for the lowest common denominator anyway.
That's lame. It seems like an exteremely BAD idea to get programs to worry about the total cache usage on the CPU. If this is the case, then no wonder performance is suffering. There should be no reason for any programmer to write a threaded application so it's "hyperthreading optimized," especially since HT was seemingly created as a transparent mechanism to increase performance.
When unruly computers and uncooperative technology threaten your home or office, call in Geek Squad! Whether you come to them or they come to you, Geek Squad Agents are sworn to rid the earth of inferior computer behavior.
Or can anyone else actually feel money being pulled from their pocket everytime they print out full page color anything? There must be a better way to do this than spitting out so much ink. Ugh.
Hey, I think the commercials that they're running now are good. Especially that one with the water ballons. The only other time I've seen that many water ballons being thrown around on TV with well matched music was on an episode of the Simpsons where Bart wages war on the local bully.
who won the dvd format war? +r or -r? ahh thats right, they both won and every drive sold now includes both technologies.
For modern computer DVD drives, yes, but everything was not always so equal. For the uninformed customer who has a DVD player or drive that can read the +R format but not the -R format the whole thing just seems like a big pain in the butt. It also leads the manufacturers of media to print compatibility warnings on their stuff. I read something that was specifically talking about the issue that certain types of discs (+R/-R) might not work equally in all players. The actual difference is that the data is stored on the two formats in slightly different ways, but functionally, they are equivalent.
It's a bad idea to dismiss these types of format struggles for media that perform the same function as not being a problem. It ultimately makes life more annoying for the end user because compatibility issues are real when the technology is new. Notice that you now have DVD drives that can read all the different DVD formats, but it took long enough to reach that point, much later in the life of the technology than it should have been.
Hopefully not on web sites. I hope the days of embedded music are long gone.
I think you're looking at the wrong technology. Some of those linked sites to the hacked up MIDIs are cool and everything, but MIDIs have their limitations and they seem like a particularly clumsy technology to me.
What MIDIs these days do is work with a set of digital samples then apply fancy transformations to the PCM data to give you instruments with different pitches, frequencies, etc. My first big problem with this is that MIDI is pretty much stuck with a single set of samples for the instruments unless you use something like Creative's SoundFont where you can change the sound of every instrument in the set. The problem being is that now you can't distribute the original MIDI and expect a consistent listening experience from all of your users. You're forced to record the audio to an MP3 or something on your machine before distributing it.
Which leads me to my next point. Incase you were not aware, a new type of music has existed since the days of the Amiga that fixes the problems of the gimped MIDI standard. I'm talking about digital modules (MOD, S3M, IT, XM, 669, etc.) These modules work on the same priniciples as MIDI but they have some distinct advantages:
Runs on the cheap hardware and low end systems. Just needs a sound card capable of.. Outputting sound..
The digital samples used for the music are saved within the file itself. Sounds the same on everyone's system.
Better quality than MIDIs if they're done right. Some formats (XM and IT especially) have some pretty slick advnaced features for instruments.
The audio processing for most of these is fast enough to be run in real time alongside some other processor consuming task. (Doesn't really matter these days, however.)
My second largest problem with MIDI back in the day was that by comparison, the software MIDI emulators drained the computer of most of its resources.
So there you have it. I recommend diving into this world instead and stay clear of those icky MIDIs. Here are some resources if you don't know where to get started:
MODPlug Central popluar player and tracker. And yes, you can use your MIDI keyboard to compose music with a lot of these trackers.
Nectarine Shoutcast streams of a lot of these modules
The Mod Archive Could forget the good old MOD Archive! A modern repository for this type of music.
chiptune.com A great resource for Chiptunes! (really, really small modules.) And music in other formats (including Adlib music.)
Aminet Has a lot of the older ("classic") modules that first appeared on the Amiga with the popular ProTracker
Fasttracker 2 Just for completeness. The trakcer that introduced the XM file format. The same functionality is in ModPlug tracker.
Impulse Tracker Included for completeness. Another excellent tracker like Fasttracker. Introduced the IT file format. The same functionality exists in ModPlug tracker.
ScreamTracker Only including a link to information about it because of the nostaliga involved with it. It's lacking in the features that Fasttracker and Impluse Tracker have but it's really easy to use.
The Hornet Archive Another nostaliga site. Music and programs from the Demoscene.
Also, if you're interested, there has been some development relatively recently with "Buzz trakcers"(?) I don't have as much knowledge with these but from what I saw with Jeskola Buzz, it's really very
"You see, wire telegraph is a kind of a very, very long cat. You pull his tail in New York and his head is meowing in Los Angeles. Do you understand this? And radio operates exactly the same way: you send signals here, they receive them there. The only difference is that there is no cat." ()
I though having those pins on the socket was a stupid idea, but it's interesting to note that even if you did damage the pins on the motherboard, chances are it will be cheaper to replace it than the processor itself. Although only replacing the processor would be much more convenient.
Yeah, they lost me after the GeForce 4. And by the way, I'm still using a GeForce 4 because of the cryptic scheme and lack of comprehensive reviews for the cards that don't cost a fortune. It's the same with AMD and Intel and their new naming schemes. It's harder to tell now which components are newer than the others.
This is great, but this title seems like an oxymoron at first (NVIDIA = Cheap?) They used to make cheap video cards in the past that were crippled and preformed poorly (the GeForce 4 MX cards.) A good NVIDIA card used to cost 1/2 the price of an affordable computer, around $400. The last time I checked, all the value cards were around this $100 price range. I hope they can actually make something that's cheap and decent.
You can probably get that previously $400 GeForce 4 card now for around $80. Probably would be more than enough for most people.
That's an amazing list of coincidences, but it won't be Dreamcast 2.0 until they use VMU-like devices that plug into the controllers (mini computers with an LCD, input device, and a buzzer.)
Complaint #4 is dumb. A lot of people were still using dial up and as such the online games were designed to work well over dial up (and they did!) Some Dreamcasts actually shipped with a 33.6Kbps modem instead.
Complaint #7 is dumb. The games on the Dreamcast were really good, and a lot of them were very original. I didn't find the games available for the XBOX to be very impressive. And then they go on to compare ONE GAME (which is a SEQUEL I might add) to the entire Dreamcast library? That is not only wrong, but incredibly stupid.
And just for the record, the controller might not have looked very futuristic, but it fits my hands very nicely.
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Really, I just assumed they would use a FIFO queue to order submissions. Seems like the logical choice anyway.
Sony's out to change their image by giving us candy and snacks. Be careful, and don't take sweet, sweet candy from strangers.
That's because the dumb thing has a process running in the background eating resources so it starts faster. If you disable it the reader will still take a while to load unless you disable most of the plugins that they include with it.
And thanks to the wonders of the Internet, the kid friendly site "jigglygelitan.com" (exploring the wonders of gelitan) goes under and is replaced with hardcore porn without anyone noticing initially.
I used to like the Maxtor drives because they were really quiet by comparison to the noisy drives they were replacing, but unforutnately every one we bought ended up being crap. One computer had a Maxtor drive that one day, for no apparent reason, just stops spinning when the computer is turned on.
The one I was using in my computer recently kept doing weird things when it was powered on after being slightly chilled. The first time I did this, some files at the beginning of the drive were a little messed up, but other than the drive freaking out and reporting a string of garbage for its name on power up, it worked just fine. The second time I started it up cold really killed some important data on it. Basically killed the beginning of the drive. Still trying to recover data from the image.
Import a CSS on every page and you can get a nicer looking layout with little cost. "Small in size" and "fast loading" does not necessarily mean "default color scheme."
You might be right, but it's not every day that you can put tape or other marks on the data side of a CD and actually have it work better.
Lots of programs are designed with the multiple thread model in mind. Programs should not be designed with the multiple thread model plus cache limitations in mind.
It depends on what your goals are. I do realize that was a fairly general statement, and it does not apply to every application. For something like lets say MS SQL server without a compiler that does it automatically, it would be an unreasonable expectation. If someone was writing an application for an embedded system, however, it might make sense if they chose the HT enabled processor. Are there any compilers currently that will do HT optimizations? I was under the impression that most commercial apps were basically compiled for the lowest common denominator anyway.
That's lame. It seems like an exteremely BAD idea to get programs to worry about the total cache usage on the CPU. If this is the case, then no wonder performance is suffering. There should be no reason for any programmer to write a threaded application so it's "hyperthreading optimized," especially since HT was seemingly created as a transparent mechanism to increase performance.
They're apparently very proud
How is something like 300GiB not enough for you? It sure beats the 50GiB on the prototype Blu-Ray discs.
Or can anyone else actually feel money being pulled from their pocket everytime they print out full page color anything? There must be a better way to do this than spitting out so much ink. Ugh.
Then the PS3 comes out, yadda yadda...
Won't work.
Well, not with that attitude, mister!
It better dang well not be the MicroComputer ..
Hey, I think the commercials that they're running now are good. Especially that one with the water ballons. The only other time I've seen that many water ballons being thrown around on TV with well matched music was on an episode of the Simpsons where Bart wages war on the local bully.
For modern computer DVD drives, yes, but everything was not always so equal. For the uninformed customer who has a DVD player or drive that can read the +R format but not the -R format the whole thing just seems like a big pain in the butt. It also leads the manufacturers of media to print compatibility warnings on their stuff. I read something that was specifically talking about the issue that certain types of discs (+R/-R) might not work equally in all players. The actual difference is that the data is stored on the two formats in slightly different ways, but functionally, they are equivalent.
It's a bad idea to dismiss these types of format struggles for media that perform the same function as not being a problem. It ultimately makes life more annoying for the end user because compatibility issues are real when the technology is new. Notice that you now have DVD drives that can read all the different DVD formats, but it took long enough to reach that point, much later in the life of the technology than it should have been.
I think you're looking at the wrong technology. Some of those linked sites to the hacked up MIDIs are cool and everything, but MIDIs have their limitations and they seem like a particularly clumsy technology to me.
What MIDIs these days do is work with a set of digital samples then apply fancy transformations to the PCM data to give you instruments with different pitches, frequencies, etc. My first big problem with this is that MIDI is pretty much stuck with a single set of samples for the instruments unless you use something like Creative's SoundFont where you can change the sound of every instrument in the set. The problem being is that now you can't distribute the original MIDI and expect a consistent listening experience from all of your users. You're forced to record the audio to an MP3 or something on your machine before distributing it.
Which leads me to my next point. Incase you were not aware, a new type of music has existed since the days of the Amiga that fixes the problems of the gimped MIDI standard. I'm talking about digital modules (MOD, S3M, IT, XM, 669, etc.) These modules work on the same priniciples as MIDI but they have some distinct advantages:
My second largest problem with MIDI back in the day was that by comparison, the software MIDI emulators drained the computer of most of its resources.
So there you have it. I recommend diving into this world instead and stay clear of those icky MIDIs. Here are some resources if you don't know where to get started:
Also, if you're interested, there has been some development relatively recently with "Buzz trakcers"(?) I don't have as much knowledge with these but from what I saw with Jeskola Buzz, it's really very
Nope. Sorry. Your attempt at classification of this duck is in violation of the Duck EULA for passive observers.
"You see, wire telegraph is a kind of a very, very long cat. You pull his tail in New York and his head is meowing in Los Angeles. Do you understand this? And radio operates exactly the same way: you send signals here, they receive them there. The only difference is that there is no cat." ()
I tried looking at it but all I got was a blank page for the source code. It might be the server, but that really IS a small program!!
I though having those pins on the socket was a stupid idea, but it's interesting to note that even if you did damage the pins on the motherboard, chances are it will be cheaper to replace it than the processor itself. Although only replacing the processor would be much more convenient.
Yeah, they lost me after the GeForce 4. And by the way, I'm still using a GeForce 4 because of the cryptic scheme and lack of comprehensive reviews for the cards that don't cost a fortune. It's the same with AMD and Intel and their new naming schemes. It's harder to tell now which components are newer than the others.
You can probably get that previously $400 GeForce 4 card now for around $80. Probably would be more than enough for most people.
Complaint #4 is dumb. A lot of people were still using dial up and as such the online games were designed to work well over dial up (and they did!) Some Dreamcasts actually shipped with a 33.6Kbps modem instead.
Complaint #7 is dumb. The games on the Dreamcast were really good, and a lot of them were very original. I didn't find the games available for the XBOX to be very impressive. And then they go on to compare ONE GAME (which is a SEQUEL I might add) to the entire Dreamcast library? That is not only wrong, but incredibly stupid.
And just for the record, the controller might not have looked very futuristic, but it fits my hands very nicely.