No kidding. Just think of all the space used to store formatting data. I just typed the expression "Blah." (minus quotes) in a.doc file, it's 19,456 bytes in size to store 5 bytes of information.
I'm not saying that formatting data is entirely without worth, but there's definitely some improvements to be had WRT efficiency.
Yeap, I was aware of that. My router (Billion 7402) supports bandwidth prioritisation for certain IP's, and I already use it to prevent my Linux server from swamping my connection when it updates or downloads email with large attachments (I'd rather it just slog away in the background). It also has a pretty comprehensive set of firewall features.
The main reason I don't do it is that setting it up and ongoing monitoring would be a time commitment I'd rather not have. I'd want to watch it regularly because I am rather paranoid (as you may have gleaned from my post), and because DSL connections in Australia do not have unlimited download quotas (mine is about 20GB in total). Basically, I'd rather just protect it with WPA and MAC filtering and forget about it, then have to monitor bandwidth usage every day.
I haven't opened up my cranium either but I have a fair idea it will hurt;) .
My tone about "the morons" was probably a little harsh. You should also bear in mind that plenty of polite people can leech accidentally. I've dealt with people who's laptops have defaulted to using their neighbours AP instead of their own. They've been leeching away happily assuming they're wasting their own bandwidth, whilst their neighbours connection goes down the tubes.
Those are perfectly valid ideas, but if you're going to go to that much hassle, why open it in the first place? Especially the last part about having DHCP leases point to the wrong gateway. That essentially means only you can use the connection, unless you tell everyone about it in which case everyone will know. Why not just close the access point?
I've often thought about openning my AP, but I just know that after a week or two some jerk is going to use my DSL connection as his own personal torrent link. If I was using someone's DSL connection I'd limit myself to just normal browsing and light email. Those morons ruin it for everyone else.
With regard to securing access points, I've thought of a better way of setting things up properly (someone may already have thought of it). You plug your computer in to the AP for the first time via an Ethernet cable. You go into the settings, and click an option to setup the AP. The AP creates a secure WPA key using random characters. It then spits out a small script for you to download. You execute the script as Administrator or root, and it automatically configures your OS for the AP, with the right key and everything. After this you can use the AP wirelessly.
There would be some problems though, mostly checking the OS type and having to write scripts for Windows, OS X and Linux. But I reckon it could be done.
Generic white-box 500MHz AMD K6-2 128MB RAM 8GB HDD running Debian 3.1. - Basic WWW, mail, DNS and syslog server.
Self-assembled AMD XP2500+ 512MB RAM 40GB HDD running Ubuntu 5.10. - Used to be my primary computer, now for people who come to visit, and for testing.
Self-assembled AMD Athlon64 3500+ 1024MB RAM 40GB + 80GB HDD running WinXP and Ubuntu 5.10 in dual-boot. - My primary workstation.
Billion 7402 4 port ADSL router.
Dlink DI-524 wireless router (currently on the way back to Dlink to be repaired, only 2 months old:/ )
HP Ipaq Rx1950 PDA. Using this and the Dlink I can read Slashdot from my couch.
Don't have a Playstation or anything, but I do have an ancient SNES:D .
That's kind of like saying the Wright Brothers should have skipped the Wright Flyer and just built a 747. It doesn't work that way, it's not that simple.
Gearing up for a processor run can't just be done overnight. A fabrication line has to be created, and chip designs crafted to build certain chips at a certain process. This takes time (ask AMD). Whilst this is being done, the next process would be being researched, and ways would be discovered to make the new process profitable and not ridiculously expensive. Then, to build chips at the new process, new chip designs and fab lines have to be done. This takes time. Whilst this is being done, the next process would be being researched, etc etc. If Intel perpetually waited for "the smallest possible process" we'd never get any chips.
There probably is an element of truth to your argument, I'm sure Intel does try to milk the most out of it's existing run to benefit from economies of scale. But scaling to the next process is not a simple task.
I work for an ISP as well and the phrase "Does your computer run Norton products?" is one of the first things hammered in to new staff.
In addition to the previously mentioned faults, NAV can be so goddamn slow scanning attachments that it causes the mail client to stop responding and the connection to the mail server to time out. I've also been unable to configure client's modems because Norton Firewall has steadfast refused to allow me to connect to the configuration address, despite hitting the "Permit" button.
What's worse is that Symantec has instilled a level of paranoid fear in it's users that when asked to turn off Nortbomb they act all cranky because the "don't want to be hacked!". I want to send them an email with "5yM4nt3c 0wnz j00!" in it.
In addition, you can already do things such as underclock video cards, and disable certain boards such as NICs and sound cards via software. I can't see why it couldn't be added to a power management function.
Wasted energy from a wall outlet is still wasted energy. Transferring the energy-saving mindset to the desktop would likely have some positive results, especially for all those people using a 3GHz machine to play Freecell and send a few emails.
IBM Page on p5 Systems. Seems that the page is already up with the new info. Note the stats regarding the Power 5 chips:
POWER5 systems running Linux have beaten the best-of-breed performers in SPECweb99 by 27%, SPECsfs by 158%, and NetBench® by 55% proving the power of Linux on POWER systems. Best of all, a 4-way System p5 550 running DB2® has established leadership TPC-C benchmarks versus other Linux platforms.
I'd like more info about the "best of the breed" part. If you click on the Performance heading on the above page you can find a PDF to read about the tests, but as in a lot of these cases it's pretty cryptic. I'd love to see a comparison between the newest Opterons and Power 5.
It's nice to have a solid competitor to x86 though, especially seems how SPARC seems to be losing momentum with Sun using AMD in it's new X series.
I heartily agree. I currently work on Helpdesk for an ISP, and I'm seriously considering sending Symantec a bill for my time. I deal with approximately 5 users a week who experience issues that can be traced back directly to Norton products.
Typical problems: - Norton choking on scanning inbound mail, causing a timeout to the mail server. - Norton outright blocking outbound SMTP connections, even after checking firewall rules. - Random timeouts on web pages. - Causing dialup PPP connections to authenticate and then drop suddenly. Sometimes ADSL PPP connections as well, for those that operate their routers in bridged mode.
A complete removal of Norton products for those people that use them will cure the above problems 9 times out of 10. I say complete removal because a standard Norton removal tends to leave behind various resident programs such as ccapp.exe , which lingers on to throw up random errors and be a pain in the ass.
- DRM rootkit to stop piracy: $50,000,000 - Patch to water-down DRM rootkit: $5,000,000 - Top notch lawyers to sue pirates: $100,000,000 - Being sued by the only legitimate users you have: Priceless.
There are some thought processes money can't buy. For everything else there's MasterTard (tm).
I can't believe the way that some people think it's OK to put in massive subwoofers in their home and car without the slightest thought to insulation. News flash dickwads: the rest of the neighbourhood does not want to hear your noise. And contrary to popular belief, subwoofer size is inversely proportional to penis size. Besides, if the rest of the neighbourhood was making the same noise levels with subwoofers of their own, it'd be pretty damn hard for anybody to enjoy their heavy bass.
Subwoofers above a certain power should only be allowed to be sold if they are installed in an insulated environment, and it should be the buyers responsibility to ensure their noise doesn't bother anyone. Something like this should never be sold commercially at all, seems how insulating it would require the construction of a concrete bunker or something. Some of you may argue it's your right to buy stuff like this, but what gives you the right to fill my home environment with your noise?
For those of you particularly worried about privacy (like me), I found this in the FAQ:
To make Mobility more secure, we'd like to develop a system log-in application that encrypts your profile and email until you enter a password (as you can imagine, this would make losing your USB key with Mobility Email on it less of a problem).
That's an excellent idea. USB keys are so easy to lose, I don't like the idea of carrying around a whole bundle of potentially compromising emails on them. I think I'll be waiting for this functionality before I start using it, but so far I like the direction the team is taking.
It's cool to hear Andreessen is behind it; this gives it a little more legitimacy than it would otherwise have (ie, less likely to disappear thanks to not having a business model).
Why? Didn't Netscape mostly disappear? Admittedly, it was more due to Netscape sucking and having their business model conquered by MS free giveaways than not having a business model.
The innovation is in new stuff, not in ripoffs of existing sites.. will be interesting to watch whether Ning will really make this possible.
Don't count on it. The entire point of this "Ning" (stupid name) thing is to make it EASIER for other people to rip off existing social sites and start their own. IMHO and observations, the really innovative sites are developed by people using their own tools, because prepackaged sets like this one tend to limit what they can do to the preconceptions of whoever created the tools. Slashdot with it's "Slashcode" is a good example. Slashdot was innovative, but all the sites based off it aren't really. There are exceptions, of course.
Pro sees no benefits whatsoever in this environment; it's no more stable, functional or secure.
It is more secure. The Pro version supports Encrypted File System, which is quite useful because it's not a cooperative security measure like NTFS permissions. If I use NTFS permissions to secure a folder, then browse the folder under Linux, I can read everything. This doesn't work if you encrypt the file with EFS, unless you take the time to crack it somehow. EFS has it's faults, but IMHO it's a useful feature that Home lacks.
Me too. I left mine in my pants pocket, and sent the pants through the washing machine. It was a Legend brand USB drive, 128 meg.
I left it sitting on my desk overnight with the cap off to let it dry out, then plugged it in to a computer I didn't care about to test it. Worked like a charm then, and still works like a charm now, 1 year later. The fact that it managed to survive being immersed in a relatively caustic mix of water and detergent makes me think it would do OK in a short dip in the river, as long as your river doesn't act as a tailing stand for the local industrial company.
The results wouldn't necessarily fit in a single SMS though, if you include a summary, an address and some kind of code that the customer can quote to indicate which result they want to browse to. I mean, "best pizza in new york" (including quotes) yields over 6000 results. There's no way you could include all of them in one SMS. Even 100 messages would be stretching it.
If they were going to allow querying of search engines via telephone, how where they going to have the results returned to the customer? Where they going to have the computer at the other end "read-out" the results? Surely that would take a large amount of processing power, be hard for the user to take in (too much information being spoken without the ability to ask to repeat, like you would with a human), and take forever (computers talk slow: "You...have...(pause) [new voice]three[/new voice] (pause)...search...results. (pause)To...read...aloud...press...). If they were planning on using it with mobile phones and displaying the results on the screen, why not just browse with WAP (or a similar tech) to Yahoo's site and search the normal way?
Unless, of course, they meant for users to query by microphone whilst sitting at the computer. In that case, why not just use existing voice recognition software to tell your computer to go to Yahoo! and search for what you want?
Doesn't make sense to me. IMHO, it's redundant and it's not even finished yet. I can see why the engineers left.
I was just thinking, wouldn't mineral oil submersion solutions like this and this be a solution to noise? Would it not be possible to somehow seal the entire PSU, fill it with mineral oil and have some kind of heat exchanger system? If powered the exchanger with natural convection instead of a pump (ie allow the warm oil to rise into the exchanger at the top of the supply, cool and then drain back in to the bottom), it could be extremely quiet. You might need a small fan to encourage circulation in really hot PSUs, but I'm guessing it could be quite low power, and the oil could dampen a lot of the vibration, and thus noise.
This could conceivably also reduce dust problems, and increase reliability as there would be very few, if any, moving parts.
Your trains have power points? I've never seen a train with a power point before. What country do you live in?
I agree with you about the books. The other advantage would be that if the book gets obsolete, you can just download the latest version onto your device. I hate when a tech book gets old, so you get a newer version and then have two dead tree monstrosities.
I don't think that's what they're saying. I mean, if they're going to be sending people to Mars, that's going to involve some long term habitation. And they're going to have to send a lot more than just robots into space to get them there.
I'm not saying your opinion isn't valid, I just don't think you and NASA are reading from the same page.
Slashdot Mirror
No kidding. Just think of all the space used to store formatting data. I just typed the expression "Blah." (minus quotes) in a .doc file, it's 19,456 bytes in size to store 5 bytes of information.
I'm not saying that formatting data is entirely without worth, but there's definitely some improvements to be had WRT efficiency.
Yeap, I was aware of that. My router (Billion 7402) supports bandwidth prioritisation for certain IP's, and I already use it to prevent my Linux server from swamping my connection when it updates or downloads email with large attachments (I'd rather it just slog away in the background). It also has a pretty comprehensive set of firewall features. The main reason I don't do it is that setting it up and ongoing monitoring would be a time commitment I'd rather not have. I'd want to watch it regularly because I am rather paranoid (as you may have gleaned from my post), and because DSL connections in Australia do not have unlimited download quotas (mine is about 20GB in total). Basically, I'd rather just protect it with WPA and MAC filtering and forget about it, then have to monitor bandwidth usage every day.
Gimme a break, will ya? The G and J keys are like right next to each other! I'm surprised more people haven't mentioned it really :) .
I haven't opened up my cranium either but I have a fair idea it will hurt ;) .
My tone about "the morons" was probably a little harsh. You should also bear in mind that plenty of polite people can leech accidentally. I've dealt with people who's laptops have defaulted to using their neighbours AP instead of their own. They've been leeching away happily assuming they're wasting their own bandwidth, whilst their neighbours connection goes down the tubes.
Those are perfectly valid ideas, but if you're going to go to that much hassle, why open it in the first place? Especially the last part about having DHCP leases point to the wrong gateway. That essentially means only you can use the connection, unless you tell everyone about it in which case everyone will know. Why not just close the access point?
I've often thought about openning my AP, but I just know that after a week or two some jerk is going to use my DSL connection as his own personal torrent link. If I was using someone's DSL connection I'd limit myself to just normal browsing and light email. Those morons ruin it for everyone else.
With regard to securing access points, I've thought of a better way of setting things up properly (someone may already have thought of it). You plug your computer in to the AP for the first time via an Ethernet cable. You go into the settings, and click an option to setup the AP. The AP creates a secure WPA key using random characters. It then spits out a small script for you to download. You execute the script as Administrator or root, and it automatically configures your OS for the AP, with the right key and everything. After this you can use the AP wirelessly.
There would be some problems though, mostly checking the OS type and having to write scripts for Windows, OS X and Linux. But I reckon it could be done.
Generic white-box 500MHz AMD K6-2 128MB RAM 8GB HDD running Debian 3.1.
:/ )
:D .
- Basic WWW, mail, DNS and syslog server.
Self-assembled AMD XP2500+ 512MB RAM 40GB HDD running Ubuntu 5.10.
- Used to be my primary computer, now for people who come to visit, and for testing.
Self-assembled AMD Athlon64 3500+ 1024MB RAM 40GB + 80GB HDD running WinXP and Ubuntu 5.10 in dual-boot.
- My primary workstation.
Billion 7402 4 port ADSL router.
Dlink DI-524 wireless router (currently on the way back to Dlink to be repaired, only 2 months old
HP Ipaq Rx1950 PDA. Using this and the Dlink I can read Slashdot from my couch.
Don't have a Playstation or anything, but I do have an ancient SNES
That's kind of like saying the Wright Brothers should have skipped the Wright Flyer and just built a 747. It doesn't work that way, it's not that simple.
Gearing up for a processor run can't just be done overnight. A fabrication line has to be created, and chip designs crafted to build certain chips at a certain process. This takes time (ask AMD). Whilst this is being done, the next process would be being researched, and ways would be discovered to make the new process profitable and not ridiculously expensive. Then, to build chips at the new process, new chip designs and fab lines have to be done. This
takes time. Whilst this is being done, the next process would be being researched, etc etc. If Intel perpetually waited for "the smallest possible process" we'd never get any chips.
There probably is an element of truth to your argument, I'm sure Intel does try to milk the most out of it's existing run to benefit from economies of scale. But scaling to the next process is not a simple task.
Wise man Feyr speak much truth.
I work for an ISP as well and the phrase "Does your computer run Norton products?" is one of the first things hammered in to new staff.
In addition to the previously mentioned faults, NAV can be so goddamn slow scanning attachments that it causes the mail client to stop responding and the connection to the mail server to time out. I've also been unable to configure client's modems because Norton Firewall has steadfast refused to allow me to connect to the configuration address, despite hitting the "Permit" button.
What's worse is that Symantec has instilled a level of paranoid fear in it's users that when asked to turn off Nortbomb they act all cranky because the "don't want to be hacked!". I want to send them an email with "5yM4nt3c 0wnz j00!" in it.
Email sent. Thanks for the reply :) .
AMD's Cool 'n' Quiet technology supposedly intelligently scales.
In addition, you can already do things such as underclock video cards, and disable certain boards such as NICs and sound cards via software. I can't see why it couldn't be added to a power management function.
You are correct about the flatpanel one AFAIK.
Why just the emphasis on laptops?
Wasted energy from a wall outlet is still wasted energy. Transferring the energy-saving mindset to the desktop would likely have some positive results, especially for all those people using a 3GHz machine to play Freecell and send a few emails.
I'd like more info about the "best of the breed" part. If you click on the Performance heading on the above page you can find a PDF to read about the tests, but as in a lot of these cases it's pretty cryptic. I'd love to see a comparison between the newest Opterons and Power 5.
It's nice to have a solid competitor to x86 though, especially seems how SPARC seems to be losing momentum with Sun using AMD in it's new X series.
I heartily agree. I currently work on Helpdesk for an ISP, and I'm seriously considering sending Symantec a bill for my time. I deal with approximately 5 users a week who experience issues that can be traced back directly to Norton products.
Typical problems:
- Norton choking on scanning inbound mail, causing a timeout to the mail server.
- Norton outright blocking outbound SMTP connections, even after checking firewall rules.
- Random timeouts on web pages.
- Causing dialup PPP connections to authenticate and then drop suddenly. Sometimes ADSL PPP connections as well, for those that operate their routers in bridged mode.
A complete removal of Norton products for those people that use them will cure the above problems 9 times out of 10. I say complete removal because a standard Norton removal tends to leave behind various resident programs such as ccapp.exe , which lingers on to throw up random errors and be a pain in the ass.
Norton - Security through non-usability.
- DRM rootkit to stop piracy: $50,000,000
- Patch to water-down DRM rootkit: $5,000,000
- Top notch lawyers to sue pirates: $100,000,000
- Being sued by the only legitimate users you have: Priceless.
There are some thought processes money can't buy. For everything else there's MasterTard (tm).
I can't believe the way that some people think it's OK to put in massive subwoofers in their home and car without the slightest thought to insulation. News flash dickwads: the rest of the neighbourhood does not want to hear your noise. And contrary to popular belief, subwoofer size is inversely proportional to penis size. Besides, if the rest of the neighbourhood was making the same noise levels with subwoofers of their own, it'd be pretty damn hard for anybody to enjoy their heavy bass.
Subwoofers above a certain power should only be allowed to be sold if they are installed in an insulated environment, and it should be the buyers responsibility to ensure their noise doesn't bother anyone. Something like this should never be sold commercially at all, seems how insulating it would require the construction of a concrete bunker or something. Some of you may argue it's your right to buy stuff like this, but what gives you the right to fill my home environment with your noise?
That's an excellent idea. USB keys are so easy to lose, I don't like the idea of carrying around a whole bundle of potentially compromising emails on them. I think I'll be waiting for this functionality before I start using it, but so far I like the direction the team is taking.
Why? Didn't Netscape mostly disappear? Admittedly, it was more due to Netscape sucking and having their business model conquered by MS free giveaways than not having a business model. Don't count on it. The entire point of this "Ning" (stupid name) thing is to make it EASIER for other people to rip off existing social sites and start their own. IMHO and observations, the really innovative sites are developed by people using their own tools, because prepackaged sets like this one tend to limit what they can do to the preconceptions of whoever created the tools. Slashdot with it's "Slashcode" is a good example. Slashdot was innovative, but all the sites based off it aren't really. There are exceptions, of course.
It is more secure. The Pro version supports Encrypted File System, which is quite useful because it's not a cooperative security measure like NTFS permissions. If I use NTFS permissions to secure a folder, then browse the folder under Linux, I can read everything. This doesn't work if you encrypt the file with EFS, unless you take the time to crack it somehow. EFS has it's faults, but IMHO it's a useful feature that Home lacks.
Me too. I left mine in my pants pocket, and sent the pants through the washing machine. It was a Legend brand USB drive, 128 meg.
I left it sitting on my desk overnight with the cap off to let it dry out, then plugged it in to a computer I didn't care about to test it. Worked like a charm then, and still works like a charm now, 1 year later. The fact that it managed to survive being immersed in a relatively caustic mix of water and detergent makes me think it would do OK in a short dip in the river, as long as your river doesn't act as a tailing stand for the local industrial company.
The results wouldn't necessarily fit in a single SMS though, if you include a summary, an address and some kind of code that the customer can quote to indicate which result they want to browse to. I mean, "best pizza in new york" (including quotes) yields over 6000 results. There's no way you could include all of them in one SMS. Even 100 messages would be stretching it.
If they were going to allow querying of search engines via telephone, how where they going to have the results returned to the customer? Where they going to have the computer at the other end "read-out" the results? Surely that would take a large amount of processing power, be hard for the user to take in (too much information being spoken without the ability to ask to repeat, like you would with a human), and take forever (computers talk slow: "You...have...(pause) [new voice]three[/new voice] (pause)...search...results. (pause)To...read...aloud...press...). If they were planning on using it with mobile phones and displaying the results on the screen, why not just browse with WAP (or a similar tech) to Yahoo's site and search the normal way?
Unless, of course, they meant for users to query by microphone whilst sitting at the computer. In that case, why not just use existing voice recognition software to tell your computer to go to Yahoo! and search for what you want?
Doesn't make sense to me. IMHO, it's redundant and it's not even finished yet. I can see why the engineers left.
I was just thinking, wouldn't mineral oil submersion solutions like this and this be a solution to noise? Would it not be possible to somehow seal the entire PSU, fill it with mineral oil and have some kind of heat exchanger system? If powered the exchanger with natural convection instead of a pump (ie allow the warm oil to rise into the exchanger at the top of the supply, cool and then drain back in to the bottom), it could be extremely quiet. You might need a small fan to encourage circulation in really hot PSUs, but I'm guessing it could be quite low power, and the oil could dampen a lot of the vibration, and thus noise.
This could conceivably also reduce dust problems, and increase reliability as there would be very few, if any, moving parts.
Your trains have power points? I've never seen a train with a power point before. What country do you live in?
I agree with you about the books. The other advantage would be that if the book gets obsolete, you can just download the latest version onto your device. I hate when a tech book gets old, so you get a newer version and then have two dead tree monstrosities.
I don't think that's what they're saying. I mean, if they're going to be sending people to Mars, that's going to involve some long term habitation. And they're going to have to send a lot more than just robots into space to get them there.
I'm not saying your opinion isn't valid, I just don't think you and NASA are reading from the same page.