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User: VinylPusher

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  1. Privacy? Yeah, we've heard of it. on Intel To Offer Custom Xeons With Embedded FPGAs For the Data Center · · Score: 1

    "Bob, we're glad you Intel boys have finally come around".
    "Hi Jeff. Yeah, well we just about got the marketing boys convinced enough to run with it. They managed to find an angle that flies pretty well. Gets us off the hook and gets your boys into a heck of a lot of servers!"
    "Hey, it's a win-win so far as I'm concerned. Wish it could have been sooner though, but what with all this pressure from the purse-holders, we couldn't bankroll it for you".
    "Times are getting tough, huh? It wasn't that long ago you NSA boys had infinitely deep pockets".
    "The times we live in, Bob. What can you do?".
    "You need any help with the rootkit code? Some of our wizards are pretty good"
    "Thanks, Bob, but we already have it covered".

  2. Re:Give 'em your Kool-Aid on Should Microsoft Give Kids Programmable Versions of Office? · · Score: 1

    Throughout various jobs and companies over the past [many, many] years, I've used VBA *extensively* to automate or otherwise add polish to Excel and Word. Being able to use VBA to a semi-pro level enables some unique opportunities for advancement in many office based jobs.

    I have hardly used Visual Studio within the workplace.

    It depends what job you're going to be in, but there are a lot more 'standard' office/admin workers than there are software developers. Not everyone wants to break in to software development, but if you can demonstrate some unique capabilities within the office... assuming your employer isn't a jerk, you can do very well from it.

  3. Re:memo to hardware producers on Samsung Laptop Bug Is Not Linux Specific · · Score: 1

    That argument stands up rather well. ... until you factor eMachines laptops into the equation. Lowest of low quality components. You still can buy EEPROMs that are designed for fewer than a thousand erase/write iterations.

  4. List of bugs fixed... on Firefox 10 Released · · Score: 0

    ...is IMMENSELY LONG!

    Which just tells me that Firefox is a really, really buggy piece of software.

  5. Re:It's not dead, it's fun! on Is Overclocking Over? · · Score: 1

    My server spends /some/ time idle, but a lot of the time it is handling 4 Java processes.

    These processes do low-latency transactional stuff. Typically, each tick of a job is so small that it doesn't trigger a frequency stepping of the CPU. Windows doesn't schedule these very well, typically making the single threads hop between CPU cores and actual CPU's.

    It all conspires to make performance suck unless I keep the CPU's running at full speed.

    Yes, I've tried setting processor affinity. It's of limited use.

  6. Re:Maybe, maybe not... on Is Overclocking Over? · · Score: 1

    Your great, my great and everyone else's great may be entirely different ;)

    I've been waiting for true curved surfaces in games since... well, since there were 3D cards that did both 2D and 3D.

    Improved lighting, reflections (including reflected light/shadow casting), caustics and fluid motion... these are things I want to see in games. These are also all things not requiring much more effort from modelers and artists but /do/ require more horsepower from GPU's.

  7. Re:Maybe, maybe not... on Is Overclocking Over? · · Score: 1

    Would you prefer that we take e.g. the new ATI 7xxx series GPUs, set that as a "this is fast enough and has as many features as we ever need" benchmark and focus any future advancement on making GPU's that are exactly the same, only they use less power?

    The 'need' for advancement comes not just from making players feel more immersed, it's about meeting the requirements of HPC in order to provide realtime data visualisation and rapid number crunching. A lot of drug research is done via simulation of protein interaction, which lends itself perfectly to running on GPU's (hence the Folding@Home project).

    In 10 years time, most of us will be enjoying our Super-HD screens. Some of us may be enjoying our Super-HD, QLED, 48 bit colour, 120Hz, 3D, high dynamic range screens. Some of us may even have 3 of them in a multi-monitor config. That could potentially mean a GPU having to drive a (virtual) display resolution of 12288x2560. That is a minimum 180MB frame buffer needing to be refreshed 120 times per second.

    It's the difference between having to process 7GB/s versus today's reasonable maximum of 0.35GB/s. That will require some advancements in (GDDR) memory technology as well as obvious improvements to GPU performance. If we maintain the current pace of advancement, this may be possible within the next 5 years.

  8. Re:Overlocking was only ever a dick waving contest on Is Overclocking Over? · · Score: 1

    Pardon?

  9. Re:Most people don't understand that it's a bad id on Is Overclocking Over? · · Score: 1

    Perhaps they are content to derive £800+ from CPU's that run at a nominal 3.33GHz for now.

    If you think marketing and pricing strategies are so simple, perhaps you ought to tell us more about how you could improve Intel's market position and profitability by making some simple changes to the way they do things?

  10. Re:It's not dead, it's fun! on Is Overclocking Over? · · Score: 5, Funny

    All I do these days if I'm feeling daring is activate the 'high performance' power profile in Windows.

  11. Re:Maybe, maybe not... on Is Overclocking Over? · · Score: 1

    I've only recently swapped my 7800GTX 256MB for a GT440 (a nice GDDR5 version).

    New card uses half the energy and performs quite a lot faster. When was a 7800GTX brand new? I paid >£300 for it, that much I can remember.

    Next upgrade will be when I can buy a card requiring no more than 75W (i.e., no external PCIe power) yet runs slightly faster than a GTX580.

    IMHO games to be more visually appealing need to ditch the idea of polygons altogether and be comprised of voxels or truly curved surfaces and implement at least some elements of ray-traced lighting and material properties.

    Fairly sure this will be happening within 20 years.

  12. Re:Pointless in most cases on Is Overclocking Over? · · Score: 1

    Buy the new Intel Core i7 2800K 4.5GHz!!*

    *New PSU required. TDP = 200W

  13. Re:No, it simply doesn't provide the extras it use on Is Overclocking Over? · · Score: 1

    It's costing you in power usage.

    I read some recent CPU / system reviews and the increase in power consumption whilst overclocking some of the latest CPU's and GPU's is... scary.

  14. Re:Most people don't understand that it's a bad id on Is Overclocking Over? · · Score: 2

    I'm sure it's more to do with the fact that Intel do not want to advertise a CPU with a TDP of 200W.

  15. Re:Overlocking was only ever a dick waving contest on Is Overclocking Over? · · Score: 0

    Actually, my hearing range is a little bit extended at high frequencies. I can tell the difference between CD quality and 96KHz/24bit.

    I wish I couldn't, because I'm still paying for my sound system :-(

  16. Re:Let the bloating begin...? on Microsoft Security Essentials 2.0 Released · · Score: 1

    DDR1 RAM is expensive. Many machines still use it.

    The answer isn't always 'just buy a cheap ', especially when someone is short of cash but has an old PC in the loft.

  17. Re:v2 has been giving me crashes. on Microsoft Security Essentials 2.0 Released · · Score: 1

    I'm not in the US. Also, sarcasm.

    Not only am I going to look after their IT, I'm going to be jointly responsible for writing and enforcing their compliance policy.

    Personal data is currently secured by dint of everyone using Remote Desktop to get into the Win 2008 server, where the full-on policy, claims, accounting and document management software resides. They're still going through a transition to this new software, away from a Citrix Metaframe accessible remote provider (which was utterly debilitating, having only been provisioned with 1Mb of access bandwidth and some clearly overtasked servers on the other end).

    Unfortunately, the incumbent 3rd-party IT support company fail to recognise any of the already problematic malware attack vectors. The main one being that people are using the RDP shortcut from personal laptops with no control whatsoever. I took on the role a little over 1 full week ago and already there have been 2 instances of laptop users bringing in malware resulting from their home internet activity. My real job is explaining to the directors the why's and how's of this being a really bad idea.

    Oh, and the Win 2008 server hasn't even got BitLocker switched on.

  18. Re:v2 has been giving me crashes. on Microsoft Security Essentials 2.0 Released · · Score: 1

    I do hope I don't get to work tomorrow to find MSE has updated itself to V2.

    I'm in the process of taking over responsibility of our entire IT and it's a nightmare of mis-matched, outdated hardware and utterly pathetic security policies (lack thereof). There are Win 2000 machines on the network with no AV installed and there are XP machines with MSE installed, a terminal services server (Win 2008, the 'Vista' version) with AVG on it.

    Oh, and the company I work for is an insurance broker. Security somewhat essential.

  19. Re:Free MS Security Essentials on Antivirus Firms Short-Changing Customers · · Score: 1

    MSE nags a little. It whines if you don't run a full scan every now and then. It also brings PC's to a crawl during any sort of scan. This I know because my PC at work goes into slow-ass mode at 11am every day.

  20. Re:Windows - Microsoft on Antivirus Firms Short-Changing Customers · · Score: 1

    AVG has also seen its fair share of false-positive-fuck-your-system-up debacles. So has Norton/Symantec and McAfee.

    NOD32 and Kaspersky might have, but I don't remember.

  21. Re:Windows - Microsoft on Antivirus Firms Short-Changing Customers · · Score: 2

    Did you not do a little research before you jumped on the Symantec train? Everyone's heard of Norton, but that isn't necessarily a good thing.

    If you want a high-class solution, it's Kaspersky, NOD32 or F-Secure.

    Currently, I like NOD. Previously, I liked MSE. Next month, I'll probably like Kaspersky.

  22. Re:Just remember on Best IT-infrastructure For a Small Company? · · Score: 2, Interesting

    For mercy, sir!

    You want to muck about with user training to get them to use OpenOffice? I know it's mostly compatible and lookey-likey with MS Office, but 'mostly' doesn't cut it with office workers. Office workers despise change, hate the unknown and will go into mutiny if you take the usual and replace it with something different just to save a little (OK, a lot of) money.

    Dell server, DROBO filestore and a bunch of really cheap desktops will cover many usage needs.

  23. Re:Only one week to go! on Windows 8 To Be Released In October 2012 · · Score: 1

    Windows 2003 was never a workstation OS. Windows 2000 was. The upgrade path from 2000 for professionals was to XP SP1, and that is exactly what happened.

  24. Re:What TheDirt.com should do on Woman Wins Libel Suit By Suing Wrong Website · · Score: 1

    What are you doing every time you visit a web page? WWW = double u double u double u = 2*(2+1) 2*(2+1) 2*(2 + 1)

    What?

  25. Re:Designed to create opportunities on Market Data Firm Spots the Tracks of Bizarre Robot Trading · · Score: 1

    It's also potentially a low-bandwidth way of broadcasting encoded messages.