My First ever pop maths book was Fermat's Last Theorem by Simon Singh, damn good romp through the history & philosophy of maths and that spacific problem.
Yes but good fiction is a mirror with which we see our very nature, & science fiction is often the mirror we turn on the uglier aspects of our selves.
From black people in space in TOS to the morality of suicide bombing and questions about the nature of humanity in BSTG, Scifi writers have used the genre to point out the inconsistences in the prevailing moral zeitgeist, the constant falling back on magic is just sloppy writing & robs the story of any teaching power it might otherwise have had.
I thought you were going to complain about all the spiritual bollocks in the story lines.
Why is it that in fiction, fortune tellers are always correct, where as IRL they're such obvious charlatans.
For this reason I use JFS on my MythTV recording partitions but ext3 everywhere else. When I set it up 3 years ago I found a very comprehensive set of Linus FS benchmarks that included deletes of large files, JFS was the fastest at this and not far off the fastest at most other tasks, can't find the page now.
What I've been doing for years is, as soon as I get a machine, taking an image of the install with knoppix, dd, ntfsimage and an external hard drive, then if it needs work, I backup the running install/s, zero / urandom the drive, restore the original and send it back with the exact original install on it so they can't wiggle and blame updates or any other rubbish.
I've done this twice with SWMBOs little Sony TR2 laptop on which you can't remove the harddrive without voiding the warranty, it's usually dual boot Debian XP, both times it's come back with various updates installed, which I just over write with my old install.
The whole principal aspect of it never occurred to me before, but I absolutely see your point and in future will return all my broken PCs with fresh linux installs on them, irrespective of what they usually run, out of shear bloody mindedness.
I have 3 SATA Seagate 500GB 7200.10s hanging of a Sil3124 with no problems, Silicon Image provide specks for the Linux driver (which I always like to support) and they're supposed to play nicely with FIS based port multipliers so in theory this controller can have 60 drives hung off it.
Nice, I like the cradle system, I lacks an SPDIF output though.
How do your Shure e500s work, is it active noise cancellation (I see they have a push to hear function) or passive noise isolation? If passive how much?
I've had a pair of Koss "The Plug" ear buds for more than 5 years now and they still rock, 18dB isolation, great fidelity and now they only cost $15. (I paid double that but don't regret it in the slightest)
A mate has a pair of Etymotic ER4s and loves them, but he only got them because his wife, who I was advising, thought $15 was too little to spend on a birthday present. Now he won't let me use his, in the same way no one gets to use my Koss Plugs, so I can't compare directly, but in use, I start to hear ambient noises, just before he does, but I'm younger and my hearing is better, and my Koss Plugs were an order of magnitude cheaper.
The only problem is they are far more sensitive than standard headphones so when listening to the move on a plane I have to turn the volume down to its lowest setting and even then it's a bit too loud, then the intercom kicks in, which you can't turn that down below %50, you get your brain blown out.
I solved this problem by purchasing an in-line volume controller, I have this turned right down and the movie right up, when the intercom comes on, you can hardly hear it.
Gahhh I'm probably so late no one will see this but here is a list of features I want from my next player, I've currently got an old 60GB Creative Nomad Jukebox Zen Xtra.
Essentials.. user changeable battery, Zen can Ogg and FLAC support, big 60GB + harddrive, Zen has USB mass storage device, SPDIF and headphone output
Nice to have but we'll see.. User changeable harddrive, Zen can OS firmware, Video player,
The best things about my Zen are the sound quality and the user changeable battery, this is really handy, I have an everyday battery that's old, lives in the device and only works for a few hours (fine for most days) and a new one that lives in the fridge in a tupperware box with some other Li-Ion batteries and a silica gel pack, that lasts about 9 hours, (I do the same thing with my cameras & laptop) its biggest failings are its lack of Ogg / FLAC support, no digital output, and the clunky interface which, Creative may have patented, but Apple implemented better.
Next next gen.. Wifi, support for external display via a digital link, support for USB keyboard and mouse, full OS and apps (laptop replacement), portable game platform
In fact what I want is a cross between that Archos player that had Wifi (PMA400 or 604) and the GP2X but with SPDIF and mini DVI.
The OpenChrome project may support DeltaChrome for AGP and GammaChrome, Chrome S25 & Chrome S27 for PCI Express one day. I'm vaguely following progress and here are the useful / relevant posts so far.
Although that sounds a bit negative I love these cards, they're cheap and drive my desktop at 2560 x 1024 flawlessly, in Linux or Windows and the OS drivers seem very reliable, my only complaint would be the lack of a second DVI port and the slightly undersized heat-sink sapphire permanently glued onto the GPU, even with that I'm happy enough that I plan to build my next system around one using the ASRock 939Dual-SATA2 and some dual core Athlon 64.
If / when the OpenChrome project supports the standalone GPUs I'll finally have an alternative to the undeniably ageing R200 RV280 chip.
What you need is a Flash harddrive but with a ram cache, have the firmware set up so it doesn't update the flash drive unless the cache is being purged by either a big read - write when the flash can't keep up, or a sync command for system shutdown, I wonder how big a capacitor it would need to do and emergency sync in the event of a power failure.
In London I liked the odd shawarma, In Hong Kong I'd pop of for some Dim Sum, in Singapore the Cantonese food isn't so good but I have an excellent Shanghainese down the road that specialises in Xiao Long Bao and other dumplings, or I can go for Hainan Chicken.
But a lack of belief means that God isn't going to save you, or fix global warming, or provide for your children, you have to take responsibility for these things yourself, and that's hard work.
6 months ago I was a moderate atheist with no axe to grind against religion, in fact, on the whole, I thought it was a "good thing" TM, but I've been in Manila for the last six months and while god is not responsible for all the ills of the Philippines the fact that you can't buy contraception is responsible for children being born into a life where they will have to start begging at traffic lights from the age of 4, this creates a drive through brothel for pedophiles and these kids are routinely abused.
The fact that there is no legal mechanism for divorce, is partially responsible for the thousands of Philippino women working their butts of as cleaners all over the world, sending all the money home to feed and clothe their kids, which their lazy ass husband spends on hookers and beer, in full view of his mother and farther in law, who would never condone any move by their daughter to break her marital vows.
This race of people are being spectacularly failed by their overseers, both political and spiritual and it's tragic because they're delightful.
I still think religion does a lot of good and would fight to the death for peoples freedom to belive whatever the hell they want, but it's not as simple as Fox says it is.
It was a facetious comment, but if I believe that when I die that's it, there's no after life or sole or anything and we are just glorified monkeys, self aware bags of meat, and in some cases wind, then is it not logical that I'll let the pious go down with the boat as, if I'm right, they'll never find out, and if I'm wrong, then they'll be laughing it up with their god and won't mind.
I would say the reverse is true, it is humans natural condition to believe in gods and spirits, it's how our primitive ancestors explained events they couldn't understand, and due to the callous indifference of fire or mud-slides it's also understandable that our supernatural overseers should be a bit vengeful and require appeasing, but as our understanding grows the realm of God shrinks.
It take intellectual effort to believe in nothing, and makes it much harder to console you kids when the dog dies, I for one, miss the days of my naive youth when my dog and Granny, where up in heaven smiling down on me benevolently, possibly playing a game of French cricket.
when the boats going down I'll be calling for atheists first then women and children, it's not like we've got anywhere to go.
But wouldn't it be possible to pipe the input of one 1394 port to the output of another and vice versa putting them through one of the Tee commands mentions up ^^ there? If this was possible the devices at each end would just see each other with out the need for a snoop - promiscuous mode.
You've never been to Bangkok, Beijing, Hanoi, Shanghai or any other Asian city have you?
In fact here in Manila the pirate copies are so prevalent and cheap that virtually all the movie rental stores have gone out of business and the only 2 left survive buy renting out pirated DVDs. This is a problem for me because the people who profit from piracy are usually organised criminals for whom copyright theft is often the least of their crimes, I don't want to buy their drugs, f**k their whores, stay in their hotels or use their golf courses any more than I feel like subsidising their lifestyles by buying their pirated DVDs.
The upshot of this is I don't watch any movies at the moment (anyone want to buy an Optoma H56 beamer?) and I'm looking forward to going back to HK where I can at least rent the original DVD.
I hear the rental market in HK is losing ground to the pirates, buying a copy usually costs the same as renting the original (about 25 HKD) but with a 3 meter screen poor quality knock offs are not an option for me. When all the rental stores go I'll be forced to pay loony Hollywood prices for *everything* I want to watch, Grrr.
Oh well, I guess all the cumbersome heavy handed DRM we're having forced on us is for our own good after all.
I have a pair of KOSS and they rock. The only problem is they are far more sensitive that standard headphones so when listening to the move on a plain I have to turn the volume down to its lowest setting and even then it's a bit too loud, then the intercom kicks in and you can't turn that down below %50 so you get your brain blown out.
I have now solved this problem by purchasing an in-line volume controller, I have this turned right down and the movie right up so when the stewardess comes on the intercom to tell you all about the retail opportunities they offer, you can hardly hear her, this drastically reduces the urge to throttle her.
You've obviously got to have, screwdrivers, soldering iron, multimeter X 2, CD/DVD storage solution for install media, KVM, a bunch of angle-poise lights, ditch the CRT and get a couple of LCDs on the wall, (I still have a big CRT for photo editing but other than that I use LCDs) and a USB backup solution, I have an adaptec USB2 -> SCSI adapter and a DDS4 tape drive (except I can't find a SCSI 50 pin High Density (HD50) Female to Wide SCSI-3 High Density 68 (HD68) Male converter here so at the moment I have to drop in a PCI SCSI adapter) and it works a treat Bla Bla Bla...
I'd add to the standard kit, an LED torch or 2 (flashlight if you must) that takes AA batteries and is operated by a button on the back, taped to one or both (more comfortable) of the ear arms of some safety goggles or glasses frames, these have the advantage of giving good spot lighting in those hard to reach bits without you having to stick said torch in you mouth causing you to dribble allover the place, they also make you look *SO* geeky people are afraid to ask you questions.
For my mouse mat I have an A3 pad of black on white ruled paper (spine towards me) that gives very accurate response with my current cordless light mouse and the cordless ball mouse before it (also my mouse rollers never got dirty), you're never short of something to write on and when the page gets dirty just write the date on it, tear it off and file it as it will be covered in useful phone numbers and back of a fag packed calculations.
I also have a naked test rig in the detachable motherboard bay of an old case, the cards get all the lateral support they need and you don't have to have the MB on the edge of the table.
I'd like to have a sillyscope, a frequency generator and some other bits of cool but my desk is too small and my pockets are too shallow.
Slashdot Mirror
The first LCD TV I brought 12 years ago was a 720p Sharp Aquos that worked exactly like this, even with detachable external speakers on either side.
I didn't think the Encode capabilitys of the chip were exposed.
My First ever pop maths book was Fermat's Last Theorem by Simon Singh, damn good romp through the history & philosophy of maths and that spacific problem.
Not actually very mathsy tho
I hear you brother, as the other poster said it poisoned the back story for me, see my similar post.
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1853080&cid=34121402
Yes but good fiction is a mirror with which we see our very nature, & science fiction is often the mirror we turn on the uglier aspects of our selves.
From black people in space in TOS to the morality of suicide bombing and questions about the nature of humanity in BSTG, Scifi writers have used the genre to point out the inconsistences in the prevailing moral zeitgeist, the constant falling back on magic is just sloppy writing & robs the story of any teaching power it might otherwise have had.
I thought you were going to complain about all the spiritual bollocks in the story lines. Why is it that in fiction, fortune tellers are always correct, where as IRL they're such obvious charlatans.
For this reason I use JFS on my MythTV recording partitions but ext3 everywhere else. When I set it up 3 years ago I found a very comprehensive set of Linus FS benchmarks that included deletes of large files, JFS was the fastest at this and not far off the fastest at most other tasks, can't find the page now.
What I've been doing for years is, as soon as I get a machine, taking an image of the install with knoppix, dd, ntfsimage and an external hard drive, then if it needs work, I backup the running install/s, zero / urandom the drive, restore the original and send it back with the exact original install on it so they can't wiggle and blame updates or any other rubbish.
I've done this twice with SWMBOs little Sony TR2 laptop on which you can't remove the harddrive without voiding the warranty, it's usually dual boot Debian XP, both times it's come back with various updates installed, which I just over write with my old install.
The whole principal aspect of it never occurred to me before, but I absolutely see your point and in future will return all my broken PCs with fresh linux installs on them, irrespective of what they usually run, out of shear bloody mindedness.
I have 3 SATA Seagate 500GB 7200.10s hanging of a Sil3124 with no problems, Silicon Image provide specks for the Linux driver (which I always like to support) and they're supposed to play nicely with FIS based port multipliers so in theory this controller can have 60 drives hung off it.
Nice, I like the cradle system, I lacks an SPDIF output though.
4 1&cid=13554900
How do your Shure e500s work, is it active noise cancellation (I see they have a push to hear function) or passive noise isolation? If passive how much?
I've had a pair of Koss "The Plug" ear buds for more than 5 years now and they still rock, 18dB isolation, great fidelity and now they only cost $15. (I paid double that but don't regret it in the slightest)
A mate has a pair of Etymotic ER4s and loves them, but he only got them because his wife, who I was advising, thought $15 was too little to spend on a birthday present. Now he won't let me use his, in the same way no one gets to use my Koss Plugs, so I can't compare directly, but in use, I start to hear ambient noises, just before he does, but I'm younger and my hearing is better, and my Koss Plugs were an order of magnitude cheaper.
The only problem is they are far more sensitive than standard headphones so when listening to the move on a plane I have to turn the volume down to its lowest setting and even then it's a bit too loud, then the intercom kicks in, which you can't turn that down below %50, you get your brain blown out.
I solved this problem by purchasing an in-line volume controller, I have this turned right down and the movie right up, when the intercom comes on, you can hardly hear it.
We went over some of this here
http://hardware.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1621
Gahhh I'm probably so late no one will see this but here is a list of features I want from my next player, I've currently got an old 60GB Creative Nomad Jukebox Zen Xtra.
Essentials..
user changeable battery, Zen can
Ogg and FLAC support,
big 60GB + harddrive, Zen has
USB mass storage device,
SPDIF and headphone output
Nice to have but we'll see..
User changeable harddrive, Zen can
OS firmware,
Video player,
The best things about my Zen are the sound quality and the user changeable battery, this is really handy, I have an everyday battery that's old, lives in the device and only works for a few hours (fine for most days) and a new one that lives in the fridge in a tupperware box with some other Li-Ion batteries and a silica gel pack, that lasts about 9 hours, (I do the same thing with my cameras & laptop) its biggest failings are its lack of Ogg / FLAC support, no digital output, and the clunky interface which, Creative may have patented, but Apple implemented better.
Next next gen..
Wifi,
support for external display via a digital link,
support for USB keyboard and mouse,
full OS and apps (laptop replacement),
portable game platform
In fact what I want is a cross between that Archos player that had Wifi (PMA400 or 604) and the GP2X but with SPDIF and mini DVI.
"Ms Jones, print this internet of for me so I can read it on the train."
(emacs-sucks '(my-cock))
Wow, I knew it was feature-full but that's amazing.
The OpenChrome project may support DeltaChrome for AGP and GammaChrome, Chrome S25 & Chrome S27 for PCI Express one day.
s ers/2005-November/000038.htmls ers/2005-November/000043.htmls ers/2005-November/000048.htmls ers/2006-March/000821.htmls ers/2006-February/000648.htmls ers/2006-February/000649.html
I'm vaguely following progress and here are the useful / relevant posts so far.
http://wiki.openchrome.org/pipermail/openchrome-u
http://wiki.openchrome.org/pipermail/openchrome-u
http://wiki.openchrome.org/pipermail/openchrome-u
and
http://wiki.openchrome.org/pipermail/openchrome-u
are relevant to DeltaChrome products
http://wiki.openchrome.org/pipermail/openchrome-u
http://wiki.openchrome.org/pipermail/openchrome-u
talk about all the non-integrated S3 Chrome products.
Until then I'm stuck with my 256MB Radion 9250 for which we may one day get XVMC (yay MythTV)
http://airlied.livejournal.com/17114.html
and for which we have open source 3D drivers that apparently don't perform that well,
http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=6482
but that can change.
Although that sounds a bit negative I love these cards, they're cheap and drive my desktop at 2560 x 1024 flawlessly, in Linux or Windows and the OS drivers seem very reliable, my only complaint would be the lack of a second DVI port and the slightly undersized heat-sink sapphire permanently glued onto the GPU, even with that I'm happy enough that I plan to build my next system around one using the ASRock 939Dual-SATA2 and some dual core Athlon 64.
If / when the OpenChrome project supports the standalone GPUs I'll finally have an alternative to the undeniably ageing R200 RV280 chip.
What you need is a Flash harddrive but with a ram cache, have the firmware set up so it doesn't update the flash drive unless the cache is being purged by either a big read - write when the flash can't keep up, or a sync command for system shutdown, I wonder how big a capacitor it would need to do and emergency sync in the event of a power failure.
Mmm I like the sound of this NT-DRAM, where can I get some and which motherboards support it?
In London I liked the odd shawarma, In Hong Kong I'd pop of for some Dim Sum, in Singapore the Cantonese food isn't so good but I have an excellent Shanghainese down the road that specialises in Xiao Long Bao and other dumplings, or I can go for Hainan Chicken.
But a lack of belief means that God isn't going to save you, or fix global warming, or provide for your children, you have to take responsibility for these things yourself, and that's hard work.
6 months ago I was a moderate atheist with no axe to grind against religion, in fact, on the whole, I thought it was a "good thing" TM, but I've been in Manila for the last six months and while god is not responsible for all the ills of the Philippines the fact that you can't buy contraception is responsible for children being born into a life where they will have to start begging at traffic lights from the age of 4, this creates a drive through brothel for pedophiles and these kids are routinely abused.
The fact that there is no legal mechanism for divorce, is partially responsible for the thousands of Philippino women working their butts of as cleaners all over the world, sending all the money home to feed and clothe their kids, which their lazy ass husband spends on hookers and beer, in full view of his mother and farther in law, who would never condone any move by their daughter to break her marital vows.
This race of people are being spectacularly failed by their overseers, both political and spiritual and it's tragic because they're delightful.
I still think religion does a lot of good and would fight to the death for peoples freedom to belive whatever the hell they want, but it's not as simple as Fox says it is.
It was a facetious comment, but if I believe that when I die that's it, there's no after life or sole or anything and we are just glorified monkeys, self aware bags of meat, and in some cases wind, then is it not logical that I'll let the pious go down with the boat as, if I'm right, they'll never find out, and if I'm wrong, then they'll be laughing it up with their god and won't mind.
Intelligent Design, is that an oxymoron?
I would say the reverse is true, it is humans natural condition to believe in gods and spirits, it's how our primitive ancestors explained events they couldn't understand, and due to the callous indifference of fire or mud-slides it's also understandable that our supernatural overseers should be a bit vengeful and require appeasing, but as our understanding grows the realm of God shrinks.
It take intellectual effort to believe in nothing, and makes it much harder to console you kids when the dog dies, I for one, miss the days of my naive youth when my dog and Granny, where up in heaven smiling down on me benevolently, possibly playing a game of French cricket.
when the boats going down I'll be calling for atheists first then women and children, it's not like we've got anywhere to go.
But wouldn't it be possible to pipe the input of one 1394 port to the output of another and vice versa putting them through one of the Tee commands mentions up ^^ there? If this was possible the devices at each end would just see each other with out the need for a snoop - promiscuous mode.
Err, Chinese diaspora
The one city!!!
You've never been to Bangkok, Beijing, Hanoi, Shanghai or any other Asian city have you?
In fact here in Manila the pirate copies are so prevalent and cheap that virtually all the movie rental stores have gone out of business and the only 2 left survive buy renting out pirated DVDs. This is a problem for me because the people who profit from piracy are usually organised criminals for whom copyright theft is often the least of their crimes, I don't want to buy their drugs, f**k their whores, stay in their hotels or use their golf courses any more than I feel like subsidising their lifestyles by buying their pirated DVDs.
The upshot of this is I don't watch any movies at the moment (anyone want to buy an Optoma H56 beamer?) and I'm looking forward to going back to HK where I can at least rent the original DVD.
I hear the rental market in HK is losing ground to the pirates, buying a copy usually costs the same as renting the original (about 25 HKD) but with a 3 meter screen poor quality knock offs are not an option for me. When all the rental stores go I'll be forced to pay loony Hollywood prices for *everything* I want to watch, Grrr.
Oh well, I guess all the cumbersome heavy handed DRM we're having forced on us is for our own good after all.
I have a pair of KOSS and they rock. The only problem is they are far more sensitive that standard headphones so when listening to the move on a plain I have to turn the volume down to its lowest setting and even then it's a bit too loud, then the intercom kicks in and you can't turn that down below %50 so you get your brain blown out.
n t/SPARKPLUG
I have now solved this problem by purchasing an in-line volume controller, I have this turned right down and the movie right up so when the stewardess comes on the intercom to tell you all about the retail opportunities they offer, you can hardly hear her, this drastically reduces the urge to throttle her.
I have the predecessor to these.
http://www.koss.com/koss/kossweb.nsf/04ProductPri
You've obviously got to have, screwdrivers, soldering iron, multimeter X 2, CD/DVD storage solution for install media, KVM, a bunch of angle-poise lights, ditch the CRT and get a couple of LCDs on the wall, (I still have a big CRT for photo editing but other than that I use LCDs) and a USB backup solution, I have an adaptec USB2 -> SCSI adapter and a DDS4 tape drive (except I can't find a SCSI 50 pin High Density (HD50) Female to Wide SCSI-3 High Density 68 (HD68) Male converter here so at the moment I have to drop in a PCI SCSI adapter) and it works a treat Bla Bla Bla...
I'd add to the standard kit, an LED torch or 2 (flashlight if you must) that takes AA batteries and is operated by a button on the back, taped to one or both (more comfortable) of the ear arms of some safety goggles or glasses frames, these have the advantage of giving good spot lighting in those hard to reach bits without you having to stick said torch in you mouth causing you to dribble allover the place, they also make you look *SO* geeky people are afraid to ask you questions.
For my mouse mat I have an A3 pad of black on white ruled paper (spine towards me) that gives very accurate response with my current cordless light mouse and the cordless ball mouse before it (also my mouse rollers never got dirty), you're never short of something to write on and when the page gets dirty just write the date on it, tear it off and file it as it will be covered in useful phone numbers and back of a fag packed calculations.
I also have a naked test rig in the detachable motherboard bay of an old case, the cards get all the lateral support they need and you don't have to have the MB on the edge of the table.
I'd like to have a sillyscope, a frequency generator and some other bits of cool but my desk is too small and my pockets are too shallow.