AFAIK Windows itself has never had that provision - Office has. (Did in 2003, haven't looked at 2007 or 2010. But only for retail licenses - Education & Volume licenses didn't have that provision.)
The counter to that is that it isn't in the company's best interest to allow a well-known-to-be-corrupt government have full access to the company's network and therefore the company's strategic data. As it would destroy their advantages (if its based on information/trade secrets) in not just that market, but anywhere Indian companies (or anyone bribing Indian officials) compete.
Park high on a hill near where you'll be hiking, hook that thing up, throw an antenna on the roof, solar to keep it charged, and have THAT be your repeater. With the voicemail feature you can even leave messages as to your current location, and then just have any rescue crews start there.
UT3 client WAS promised - "at or shortly after launch" we'd have Linux binaries. Icculus has shown pictures of it on his blog, and any attempts to ask about it on the UT3 forums results in your thread getting nuked almost immediately. IIRC its even in the FAQ to not ask about Linux support at all, on the UT3 forums.
As with most SDHC devices, they test with what's available when first manufactured - and list that. Probably would support 16GB and 32GB cards. (Nokia's N900 lists 16GB MicroSDHC card support, because that was all that was available at the time, as an example)
I haven't heard of a device supporting *some* SDHC cards and not all...just what the manufacturer (of that part or the whole machine) has tested. Is possible though, but that should violate the SDHC spec...
I have been wondering for quite some time - do regular joe consumers really need all those cores? OR is everyone buying into the marketing hype of processor manufacturers without thinking whether we would actually need that many cores??
First of all, any computer organization text will inform you that as the number of cores increase - scheduling amongst those cores becomes an exponentially costly issue in itself. This scheduling/load balancing of course has to be ultra low latency to maintain a reasonable throughput. Not to mention the fact, that on software side managing threading and choosing instructions to parallelize is a big headache. Many decent programmers cannot get it right so that in itself defeats the presence of different cores.
Is it any surprise then that both Intel and AMD are advertising technologies to power down three cores, boosting the power for the other three?
Nope, not at all.
This gives us the best of both worlds. When doing something massively parallel, we get 6 cores. (or 8, or whatever)
When we're doing something that is more linear (say the latest Grand Theft Auto or whatever game we enjoy) we get half the cores running faster. I don't know of any games that'll take advantage of more than 3 cores anyway - so I want it to run fast.
With this feature I don't *HAVE* to pick Fast Cores or Many Cores. I can have both. And it will optimize itself for me, nothing I have to toggle.
I love it.
Simply because most end-users will rarely utilize all six of their cores simultaneously. Yes, that is even true no matter if you are doing heavy video transcoding or running multiple servers, and playing games simultaneously - you will still leave your cores without any task simply because unless the bandwidth of the memory bus catches up, your cores will be waiting for data to process. This is why Intel's i-series architecture is superior to AMDs and likely the fact their processors cost more, because they have addressed the memory bus issue.
You have to realize your computer acts like a chain and it is only as fast as its weakest link.
Agreed. These days the weakest link technologically are the programs we use (not always optimized to be speedy when they can just eat more CPU cycles), the storage mediums we use, and the connection to the internet for some folks.
I have been advising people that any new dual or quad processor will suffice - they should instead spend that extra money on buying a better motherboard, speedier RAM, and of course high-speed HDD.
Trust me when I say that just that approach above will yield systems that are actually much faster than coupling an i7/Mega-core behemoth with an old hard-disk and crappy RAM.
It is an altogether different matter that computers are already so speedy that most users cannot for the love of God discern between the speeds of any recent dual-core and a top-of-the-line processor - and it is not their fault -- the advantages now we are talking about are incremental. The power is present but cannot be harnessed. So any gloating is moot.
Agreed, spending more on CPU at some point isn't worth it. Make sure you've got enough for your apps (some want 2.5GHz on 1 or 2 cores, but can't thread out past that) and enough cores for your apps and a background thread or two, and that should be plenty for quite some time.
When I buy a car, I don't buy it to be "fast enough" for commuting. I buy it for the intention of commuting, but I want some extra margin, for safety. I want to have "Oh shit" power, not "Oh shit + 5" power. Also I want it to last. At this point the only things worth potentially upgrading in a new quad-core box would be storage devices if the price/GB comes down on SSDs. Otherwise I'll probably stay with my 1TB fast drive and 1.5TB storage drive in my quad-core (2.8) box with 8GB of RAM.
I'd love to have a page set up that I can just click through a set of links to verify each app is current when checking PCs. If the update process is painless enough, just have friends and family run through it every so often, or when they hear of a "java exploit" or "flash bug" or whatever. (I train most of 'em well enough that they can do this, or I automate the system to check regularly)
The major browsers (except IE, that's tied to Windows) update themselves on Windows boxes - what links are useful to ensure the rest of the browser-accessible ecosystem is current?
RMS is saying what we're pondering in our own minds, but don't dare say without sounding crazy. Then down the road, society realizes perhaps "That GNU lunatic" was right - and start arguing against that which has already been implemented/released/forced upon us...
I am currently running with an Eyefinity setup - Radeon HD5770, with 3 20" displays at 1600x1200 each. (Traded up from a HD4850, brought down the idle temp and fan noise, and gained Eyefinity capability) So I'm running at 4800x1200, when it is set up as a "single panel." I've got the left and right monitors set up at a slight angle.
Most games work fine with it, some that aren't designed to scale to such a ratio I have to keep at a single monitor's resolution - but when it detects something running fullscreen, at say, 1600x1200 (each monitor's native display) it just mirrors it across all three.
Some games like RTSes have a GUI interface at the bottom - some just move the corners (unit details, commands) and leave plenty of space in between - others 'stretch' - so games will have to be patched or designed with this in mind, to fully work. (If it doesn't, at least it degrades relatively gracefully)
Some games don't scale at all - and when they go above a certain resolution, just stretch in general, or zoom their interfaces based on the aspect ratio it can generate. These ones I have to keep at a lower resolution.
So far all of the Source engine games from Valve work great - I haven't tried Counter-Strike: Source, but everything newer works fine, giving me peripheral vision. I just hope Valve updates these to allow the HUD to be movable - only downside to them that I've encountered yet.
Fallout 3 works with it, with some tweaking - had to edit the configuration file to move the HUD interface options, and fix the PipBoy 3000 interface - it zoomed too close to see the top and bottom.
So as we discover more games that do or don't work - let the developers know, hopefully they'll update their games to support the aspect ratio. At a minimum at least it degrades gracefully if it can't use the extra monitors - and by making it available on all of the 5xxx series cards, it will become a standard. Hopefully nVidia is able to implement a similar feature so that it isn't a manufacturer-centric feature that some developers won't support since it isn't 100% usable...
Might, but not for long. If I were building such a system, I would have it simply keep a picture of any plate (or object it attempted to scan) for me to manually check as a means to see how the system isn't working - perhaps it is certain angles that don't work, or during some lighting situations - I can design around it. Oh, put it upside down? Just try flipping the image, and see if that 'scans' - if so, enter entry into database. If not, take picture and document as 'processing error' (for the same reason as above)
Dear GOD YES. I was wondering when someone would mention Star Trek: Legacy...hey, lets not put in ANY in-game system for rebinding keys, reference the 360 controller in all the tool tips, oh and not bother binding these 4 keys that you NEED to complete the campaign, oh and it is a space game in 2-D space. (Sure you can fly "up" about 10 feet)
New system? I recommend 64-bit, as it is where everything is going. Office 2010 will be 64-bit native, might as well keep up with the times. No cost difference, and lets the OS use more for whatever. 32-bit only makes sense if the system won't support 64-bit, or has a stupidly low memory limit - non-upgradable memory, for example.
32-bit = 4GB (You're building a new machine, 2GB sticks are a decent density. Windows will use leftover stuff for cache, and RAM is cheap enough)
64-bit = 4GB (You're building a 64-bit machine, 4GB is a good basis - and if it isn't enough later, you can double that)
RAM is the fastest way to make a PC run smoother (along with optimizing the config, nuking useless apps, etc). Might as well toss a nice 4GB at it, then it will be fast for the life of the machine. Games *have* in the past brought 2GB systems to their knees (Hellgate: London would eat 2GB for breakfast, and they had a 64-bit client; since then I just say 4GB as a minimum, that way the OS has plenty of RAM to work with outside the game - man did it swap with only 2GB...until they fixed the memory leak, but even then 2GB was pushing it)
Panasonic Toughbooks? Yeah, but they start at several thousand dollars for the rugged ones...
Personally, I'd just as soon buy 3 of these (even at the $300 they'll come out at) than spend 4 times that for the 'rugged' one. That, or I'd pick up a used Toughbook.
Agreed. Great concept, I'll wait for someone else to develop something similar and release it. The two advantages of the OLPC stuff thus far has been rugged design (when closed, no ports are exposed, as well as being more towards the Toughbook-style design than the cheap flimsy laptops we're used to), and an open spec with Free Software. (I think they had to compromise on their wireless card, but their goal was 100% open)
Slashdot Mirror
AFAIK Windows itself has never had that provision - Office has. (Did in 2003, haven't looked at 2007 or 2010. But only for retail licenses - Education & Volume licenses didn't have that provision.)
I'd much rather have to only worry about MY government - its one I can (theoretically, living in the US) influence.
I know I'd prefer this, and for some industries it IS a requirement - see US Export Controls.
The counter to that is that it isn't in the company's best interest to allow a well-known-to-be-corrupt government have full access to the company's network and therefore the company's strategic data. As it would destroy their advantages (if its based on information/trade secrets) in not just that market, but anywhere Indian companies (or anyone bribing Indian officials) compete.
Park high on a hill near where you'll be hiking, hook that thing up, throw an antenna on the roof, solar to keep it charged, and have THAT be your repeater. With the voicemail feature you can even leave messages as to your current location, and then just have any rescue crews start there.
From the summary: "The creators of the mod were hired by Valve, and they've helped turn it into a stand-alone game running on the Source engine."
They hired the team that made it for the Unreal engine, and had them re-create it with the Source (Half-Life 2 etc) engine.
Is there any penalty for the telcos (such that they have to pay this money back, with penalties) if they fail to meet the goals this time around?
Last time we gave them money we didn't get what we paid for, and they just shrugged their shoulders.
Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice... and I'm tempted to steal a quote from someone else.
"It's Tuesday, get a rope!"
UT3 client WAS promised - "at or shortly after launch" we'd have Linux binaries. Icculus has shown pictures of it on his blog, and any attempts to ask about it on the UT3 forums results in your thread getting nuked almost immediately. IIRC its even in the FAQ to not ask about Linux support at all, on the UT3 forums.
Ah, yes - THAT would be awesome. Greasemonkey script, perhaps?
You can. Click on the number after the post info (yours is #32640042 - that is the comment ID - and you can bookmark that page)
Then you can click back to 'parent' to see more/the article.
Post title also works, and will give more information (sometimes) for the bookmark.
I just linked another person to this in this thread:
http://it.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1663346&cid=32362936
http://www.google.com/enterprise/search/gsa.html
Or the 'mini' (Up to 300,000 documents)
http://www.google.com/enterprise/search/mini.html
Here's the relevant wiki page:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Search_Appliance
As with most SDHC devices, they test with what's available when first manufactured - and list that. Probably would support 16GB and 32GB cards. (Nokia's N900 lists 16GB MicroSDHC card support, because that was all that was available at the time, as an example)
I haven't heard of a device supporting *some* SDHC cards and not all...just what the manufacturer (of that part or the whole machine) has tested. Is possible though, but that should violate the SDHC spec...
I have been wondering for quite some time - do regular joe consumers really need all those cores? OR is everyone buying into the marketing hype of processor manufacturers without thinking whether we would actually need that many cores??
First of all, any computer organization text will inform you that as the number of cores increase - scheduling amongst those cores becomes an exponentially costly issue in itself. This scheduling/load balancing of course has to be ultra low latency to maintain a reasonable throughput.
Not to mention the fact, that on software side managing threading and choosing instructions to parallelize is a big headache. Many decent programmers cannot get it right so that in itself defeats the presence of different cores.
Is it any surprise then that both Intel and AMD are advertising technologies to power down three cores, boosting the power for the other three?
Nope, not at all.
This gives us the best of both worlds. When doing something massively parallel, we get 6 cores. (or 8, or whatever)
When we're doing something that is more linear (say the latest Grand Theft Auto or whatever game we enjoy) we get half the cores running faster. I don't know of any games that'll take advantage of more than 3 cores anyway - so I want it to run fast.
With this feature I don't *HAVE* to pick Fast Cores or Many Cores. I can have both. And it will optimize itself for me, nothing I have to toggle.
I love it.
Simply because most end-users will rarely utilize all six of their cores simultaneously. Yes, that is even true no matter if you are doing heavy video transcoding or running multiple servers, and playing games simultaneously - you will still leave your cores without any task simply because unless the bandwidth of the memory bus catches up, your cores will be waiting for data to process.
This is why Intel's i-series architecture is superior to AMDs and likely the fact their processors cost more, because they have addressed the memory bus issue.
You have to realize your computer acts like a chain and it is only as fast as its weakest link.
Agreed. These days the weakest link technologically are the programs we use (not always optimized to be speedy when they can just eat more CPU cycles), the storage mediums we use, and the connection to the internet for some folks.
I have been advising people that any new dual or quad processor will suffice - they should instead spend that extra money on buying a better motherboard, speedier RAM, and of course high-speed HDD.
Trust me when I say that just that approach above will yield systems that are actually much faster than coupling an i7/Mega-core behemoth with an old hard-disk and crappy RAM.
It is an altogether different matter that computers are already so speedy that most users cannot for the love of God discern between the speeds of any recent dual-core and a top-of-the-line processor - and it is not their fault -- the advantages now we are talking about are incremental. The power is present but cannot be harnessed. So any gloating is moot.
Agreed, spending more on CPU at some point isn't worth it. Make sure you've got enough for your apps (some want 2.5GHz on 1 or 2 cores, but can't thread out past that) and enough cores for your apps and a background thread or two, and that should be plenty for quite some time.
When I buy a car, I don't buy it to be "fast enough" for commuting. I buy it for the intention of commuting, but I want some extra margin, for safety. I want to have "Oh shit" power, not "Oh shit + 5" power. Also I want it to last. At this point the only things worth potentially upgrading in a new quad-core box would be storage devices if the price/GB comes down on SSDs. Otherwise I'll probably stay with my 1TB fast drive and 1.5TB storage drive in my quad-core (2.8) box with 8GB of RAM.
One less device to manage, power, and locate space for. Why not simplify things?
For Java, here's a quick link to see what version you have installed, and if there's a new version available or not:
www.java.com/en/download/installed.jsp?detect=jre&try=1
Here's one for Adobe Flash Player:
http://www.adobe.com/software/flash/about/
What other plugins are there links for like this?
I'd love to have a page set up that I can just click through a set of links to verify each app is current when checking PCs. If the update process is painless enough, just have friends and family run through it every so often, or when they hear of a "java exploit" or "flash bug" or whatever. (I train most of 'em well enough that they can do this, or I automate the system to check regularly)
The major browsers (except IE, that's tied to Windows) update themselves on Windows boxes - what links are useful to ensure the rest of the browser-accessible ecosystem is current?
At least ;-)
Then you don't have to get close enough to possibly become tainted, or smell them. (Corruption stinks, badly!)
Note to FBI/CIA/Conspiracy theorists: The above is meant as humor.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I25UeVXrEHQ
Simply Google 'RMS eats foot' - you'll find articles on it.
Exactly.
RMS is saying what we're pondering in our own minds, but don't dare say without sounding crazy. Then down the road, society realizes perhaps "That GNU lunatic" was right - and start arguing against that which has already been implemented/released/forced upon us...
I am currently running with an Eyefinity setup - Radeon HD5770, with 3 20" displays at 1600x1200 each. (Traded up from a HD4850, brought down the idle temp and fan noise, and gained Eyefinity capability) So I'm running at 4800x1200, when it is set up as a "single panel." I've got the left and right monitors set up at a slight angle.
Most games work fine with it, some that aren't designed to scale to such a ratio I have to keep at a single monitor's resolution - but when it detects something running fullscreen, at say, 1600x1200 (each monitor's native display) it just mirrors it across all three.
Some games like RTSes have a GUI interface at the bottom - some just move the corners (unit details, commands) and leave plenty of space in between - others 'stretch' - so games will have to be patched or designed with this in mind, to fully work. (If it doesn't, at least it degrades relatively gracefully)
Some games don't scale at all - and when they go above a certain resolution, just stretch in general, or zoom their interfaces based on the aspect ratio it can generate. These ones I have to keep at a lower resolution.
So far all of the Source engine games from Valve work great - I haven't tried Counter-Strike: Source, but everything newer works fine, giving me peripheral vision. I just hope Valve updates these to allow the HUD to be movable - only downside to them that I've encountered yet.
Fallout 3 works with it, with some tweaking - had to edit the configuration file to move the HUD interface options, and fix the PipBoy 3000 interface - it zoomed too close to see the top and bottom.
So as we discover more games that do or don't work - let the developers know, hopefully they'll update their games to support the aspect ratio. At a minimum at least it degrades gracefully if it can't use the extra monitors - and by making it available on all of the 5xxx series cards, it will become a standard. Hopefully nVidia is able to implement a similar feature so that it isn't a manufacturer-centric feature that some developers won't support since it isn't 100% usable...
The key words in your entire statement, are the last three:
"...if you try."
Might, but not for long. If I were building such a system, I would have it simply keep a picture of any plate (or object it attempted to scan) for me to manually check as a means to see how the system isn't working - perhaps it is certain angles that don't work, or during some lighting situations - I can design around it. Oh, put it upside down? Just try flipping the image, and see if that 'scans' - if so, enter entry into database. If not, take picture and document as 'processing error' (for the same reason as above)
Dear GOD YES. I was wondering when someone would mention Star Trek: Legacy...hey, lets not put in ANY in-game system for rebinding keys, reference the 360 controller in all the tool tips, oh and not bother binding these 4 keys that you NEED to complete the campaign, oh and it is a space game in 2-D space. (Sure you can fly "up" about 10 feet)
New system? I recommend 64-bit, as it is where everything is going. Office 2010 will be 64-bit native, might as well keep up with the times. No cost difference, and lets the OS use more for whatever. 32-bit only makes sense if the system won't support 64-bit, or has a stupidly low memory limit - non-upgradable memory, for example.
32-bit = 4GB
(You're building a new machine, 2GB sticks are a decent density. Windows will use leftover stuff for cache, and RAM is cheap enough)
64-bit = 4GB
(You're building a 64-bit machine, 4GB is a good basis - and if it isn't enough later, you can double that)
RAM is the fastest way to make a PC run smoother (along with optimizing the config, nuking useless apps, etc). Might as well toss a nice 4GB at it, then it will be fast for the life of the machine. Games *have* in the past brought 2GB systems to their knees (Hellgate: London would eat 2GB for breakfast, and they had a 64-bit client; since then I just say 4GB as a minimum, that way the OS has plenty of RAM to work with outside the game - man did it swap with only 2GB...until they fixed the memory leak, but even then 2GB was pushing it)
Panasonic Toughbooks? Yeah, but they start at several thousand dollars for the rugged ones...
Personally, I'd just as soon buy 3 of these (even at the $300 they'll come out at) than spend 4 times that for the 'rugged' one. That, or I'd pick up a used Toughbook.
Agreed. Great concept, I'll wait for someone else to develop something similar and release it. The two advantages of the OLPC stuff thus far has been rugged design (when closed, no ports are exposed, as well as being more towards the Toughbook-style design than the cheap flimsy laptops we're used to), and an open spec with Free Software. (I think they had to compromise on their wireless card, but their goal was 100% open)