I have two AMD XP 2500+ systems, one running FC3 and one with XP. They're both quick, and do everything I need. However, 90% of the time I'm running FC3 on my PII 300 Notebook with 256MB/ram and a 6GB HD. It's plenty for everything I do. The screen is nice, the keyboard is nice, everything loads fairily on par with my other FC3 system (except for Firefox, but once it loads it works well), It's portable, Everything on it is supported by FC3 and even wireless works well.
Everyonce in a while I find myself looking at newer PC parts, thinking a Dual core would be great, or an upgraded video card or something, but I always come back to the fact that this little PII does everything I do well, and I don't just surf, I write php/mysql driven web pages, I work with gimp on large images, I chat, I program/compile C and C++ programs. It's not a big deal. And if I need extra speed (like for rendering video/photos) I just ssh over to one of the 2500+ systems and X-forward. In all honesty, it comes down to this
Until something breaks, I'm quite happy with what I have.
After all, what I already have works, and it's free/already paid for.
I will have to agree with this poster, while there are a few games here and there that are interesting, most of the titles lately are either: A. Obivous sequels adding nothing but another number on the end of the title and promises for better graphics, or B. Wannabe other games. You know, the knock off GTs, or GTAs, the reworked old NES/SNES Game come to next gen consoles, etc...
Everytime a new console comes out I think "Wow, hopefully this new amazingly fast processor and next gen power inspires people to build new and different games that are both challenging and fun in ways they couldn't do before" but usually it comes out as "oh, wow. another Madden game."
I still play my NES on a regular basis. It honestly looks sweet on my HD TV and some 21st century audio processing gives it an interesting spin. All 8 bits seem to still be enough for fun.
/*it may be off topic, but the only beef I have is that I can't seem to get the zapper to work on the HD Screen. I have tried two "known good" zappers and they don't work for somereason... any ideas?*/
an ET could broadcast malicious data, after having picked up a copy of the SETI software and analyzing it
How do we know the ET isn't running SETI@Home? Maybe they want to help us out!
But seriously, if they can hack into the internet (through a sat. or something) figure out that it's binary and figure out the instruction sets and figure out the typical TCP/IP header. Then figure out the ascii set encoding, learn our language, develop a NIC to interface with it and start creating a web-browser (and therefore figure out all the encoding/interaction schemes required for that) then, they could just order themselves up a Dell and grab some Sony Rootkit code and just go right on to hack our computers! And after they went through all that, they still have to get through my firewall...
Basically this is about as probable that MS wrote all their code using random number generators to create binary files. . .
Damn, I'm gonna have to tighten my firewall, the aliens are probably half the way to internet domination already!
You forget one thing in your equation. I don't work at home (which means I'm not there from 8am to 6:30pm = 10.5 hours). I also don't take showers at night, I try to sleep then (so on a bad night, that's no hot water necessary between the hours of midnight and 7am = 7 hours). For every day when I need hot water to be ready for me. So for 17.5 hours of the day, I could care less if I had hot water sitting in a tank.
infact, I really only need hot water when I'm taking a shower in the morning for 5 min, and when I'm doing the dishes at night for 30 min (dishwasher) So I'm basically heating water in a tank 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, for 35 minutes. Even if it were to retain heat well, it would not only stay stagnant, but it would also require re-heating as the heat dissipates into the house. While it may be useful that the heat is in the house, I bet that my furnace does a better job at heating the house than the hot water heater does.
Enter 99% Effecient, On Demand Gas Hot Water. I turn on the faucet and it's hot with in seconds. I take my 5 min shower, I shut it off, and the heater shuts off too (heck, there isn't even a pilot light!). I only wish I would have done this sooner.
So while I agree that technically there can be difficulties with wireless, as of yet (knock on wood) I have not had any troubles... It just works, you fire up the WAP, you change the password and setup your WPA, you fire up your laptop, you put the same info in there, it makes a connection and everything is peachy.
Now I bring up the point that I live in a wireless dense apartment complex. I believe the last time I counted, I found well over 15 different WAPs in the area with about half wide open ("linksys" is listed multiple times), Linux currently tells me that I have 119% reception, and if I move out of this room and into our bedroom on the otherside of the apartment, it may drop to 95% on a bad day. I still get full speed, I never notice any glitches and life is still peachy.
I used to travel A LOT, like 60-70% of the time during the year. I've been to wireless enabled hotel after hotel. Again, I haven't had any issues (baring one time when the most powerful WAP in the hotel had a routing issue so anytime I connected to that one I could't get to the net, so I had to sit by the door to pickup a different one). I got good bandwidth (as good as can be expected from free hotel wireless) and good reception.
Now also keep in mind, I didn't spend a lot on this setup. I have a netgear router I got for 20 bucks at Best Buy, and a Netgear WG511 PCMCIA card I got for 25 on sale at best buy when I was on site in california. No MIMO or anything.
I again, agree that wireless may be problematic in the future, and I think we (manufacturers and users/admins) need to think through the potential issues that we'll no doubt come to. However, we all have to realize that as long as something works so nicely and is still thought of as "hip" (and believe me, when new laptops get bigger batteries, soak up less power and last longer and longer wireless just gets more and more "hip"), everyone will continue to want it. And while some of us know how to crimp cables and run wires through our houses, John Q. Public and Jane Doe don't and don't care to learn if they can drop $20 bucks and have it all work.
I for one will continue to enjoy my problem and teather free life style.
It depends on what they're compressed at (though I can't imagine it's a very high rate since it's on a 128MB stick) In my car I can tell a huge difference between 128k and 192k, but on my home theater setup, there's a big difference up until 256k for most pop songs. Unless it's overly dynamic, that's usually around where you stop telling a difference. (since it's not much bigger than 256, I usually go with 320), if it was at 256, it might be acceptable. Any one know what it was encoded at or was it VBR? how does it sound in a good system? Just wondering.
You know, this whole Sony rootkit wouldn't be so bad if it was Cool software. I'd love to throw in a CD I just bought, only to be prompted to install a free version of 3D Studio Max, or the latest version of Adobe Studio.
I just block everything. I kinda think of it as a game, how many can I block today!? The more I block, the more perfect my ad protection becomes and the better the surfing!
Anyone know if there are sites that share what addresses to block? I think it'd be a cool colaboration site idea where you could simply import a filter into your adblock software/firefox and be able to block all the ads that you haven't found yet, but other people have.
I'm running FC3 on my laptop, have a Netgear WG511( it's based off the Prism chip and does 802.11a/b/g) and it works on linux PERFECTLY. I just had to install the prism drivers in the right place and when I insert the card (if you watch the dmesg) it says:
That's it. I can run with DHCP or manually set an addres, it's fast and it always has a great connection no matter which way I point it. Best part was I got it at Best Buy on sale about a year ago for $20 bucks. If I remember there's a pretty good list up on the prism drivers download site, just google for that and it'll tell you what cards work with it.
Don't forget that these are the opinions of humans other than yourself. Frankly, Other than the LOTR series, I can't remember the last time I liked an award winning movie or CD.
And remember, 68.5% of all statistics are made up on the spot.
Actually, motion bluring in games is nothing new. I can think of one game that was very convincing because of it, Need for Speed Underground 2 (for X-box). I don't remember if the first one had it, but basically as your driving along, everything is pretty darn clear, until you start going fast. lines, lights, buildings, everything started to blur a bit and it really started to feel like you were moving fast! While I don't think the effect was quite perfect, it was definately a good start and one of the first racing games I saw exploit this effect. There's a big difference between knowing your going at 150mph because that's what the speedo says when you enter a turn, and feeling like you're going too fast for the turn without having to even look at the speedo.
That is highly unlikely as BitTorrent is a 'stupid' protocol in that it doesn't decipher/alter the data it is designed to transmit. If the BitTorrent protocol could be made illegal, then why not HTTP or SSL? SSL is only used by terrorists, you know... (sarcasm)
Yeah, why not HTTP? Or FTP for that matter? I remember years back I used to pull files from FTP sites. Heck, back in 97-98 I used to get MP3's from public HTTP sites. Now, I can see that legal preasure may have pushed them underground, but the point is that you can transfer the same data many different ways. BitTorrent, Kazaa, Napster, etc... just being some. If I really wanted to, I could just use ICQ/AIM to pass files around. Are they going to shutdown ICQ/AIM, (S)FTP and HTTP now too?
Be it text, picture, pr0n, mp3s, whatever, it's all data, there will always be a way. Is the RIAA ready to shut down the multitrillion dollar industry that is the internet just because of a few million in lost profits due to artists making crappy CDs that no one wants to shell out money for so people donwload them instead?
I had this happen on an Asus motherboard I got in 2001, noticed it when I was swapping out RAM in 2003. Board still works to this day, but you can see a line going from one of the regulator caps down to the PCI slots. I wrote down what kind of cap it was in case I was bored and wanted to replace it.. but honestly, after almost 5 years with this T-Bird board, it's not a big worry of mine. Still running, still over clocked, still a heck of a Linux system.
Hopefully Symantec/McAffee will just go ahead and detect this worm/virus and we'll never have to worry about it... or better yet, my hardware firewalls will just block it, log it, and move along. If it didn't I would have to complain to those companies... I mean, if it lets in this traffic I don't want, what other traffic is it letting in that I don't want?
You know, thinking about that, this seems like a darn small amount of mass to have a big enough gravitational pull to do anything. I suppose if the asteroid/meteor is small enough it'd work, but it seems like a miniscule amount. Especially when the existing shuttle weighs anywhere from 60-100 tons (if you look at other slash-dot posts, I don't remember off the top of my head). Seems like we should just go on our way, developing a new shuttle, use that, and keep a few of the current ones in launching order. Then, when this threat comes about, launch one of the old ones out there as a "gravity well"... a fitting end to a well traveled space craft is to send it into space. Heck, put some instruments on it so it can keep going and maybe do something useful after it deflects the asteroid.
How exactly does that help the adoptation of Linux on the desktop?
I think the important thing is not to push linux onto the desktop, but to continue to make it better and more useful so that it becomes the desktop of choice.
I think too much time is spent thinking "what can we do to make linux like windows" or "what can we do with linux to make more people use it"... If it's a better product, people will use it. Making a windows clone won't make it part of the everyday desktop, making it better than windows will.
That being said, I think which ever option comes out to be the best in the long run as far as stability, and usefulness, is what's important. Personally I'd much rather not have a driver for some hardware and beforced to use a generic one I can count on, than to have a binary unstable driver available that causes system crashes all the time. (and honestly, when I've had the choice between the two, I usually go with the generic one).
Oh come on, dude, you said one flew into your house, well, if you read TFA:
The TMA vertical axis design flows with the wind, at the speed of the wind. "It looks like a building to the bird," said Taylor. "We've never seen a dead bird at our test site." Likely this is because birds don't normally fly into solid walls.
Are you sure it wasn't a rabbit with big pointy teeth? Or maybe a large wooden badger? I mean, obviously, birds don't normally fly into solid walls-- so maybe your house was TAUNTING THE BIRD!!
My office building taunts birds all the time, they smack into the building to get the voices in their heads to stop, I think.
A north bridge/southbridge on chip would be cool... but let's not forget the tail of the TV/VCR Combo's... When the TV Breaks, what do you do with the VCR?
Personally, I think putting many things that intercommunicate on the chip is cool, but I'd rather not have a GPU on the same chip. For one, It't not going to be cheap when MS comes out with Dx10 and everyone has to support it hardware (as is happening with 9), now I'd need a new CPU chip and it can't be cheap being that video cards are so darn expensive. Or if I decide I want to go dual core, I have to buy the video card again because it's on the chip.
Seems like there needs to be a line drawn somewhere.
Ok, so I get that $300 every few years on a PC is better than tha ton a console... but if $300 is the video card alone, then tell me how you put a brand new PCI-E video card in your ISA slot...
I Like PC gaming just as much as the next PC Gaming nut... but I still don't like dropping $300 on a vid card alone... I gotta up the proc and ram and everything else once a in a while too.
I agree... This is insanse (sic). The last video card I bought was a Radeon 7500, for 45 bucks. And that was 3 years ago. It's still playing the games I choose to play. Raven Sheild, Warcraft, UT, etc...
So this is my delema, do I get a new card so I can play new games? or do I just say screw it, I'm happy with the games I've got. Or do I just drop 30-40 bucks on an x-box/ps2 game and not even worry about video cards. If I have to buy a video card just to play a game, that makes the game cost=card+game == expensive.
I don't know why anyone would want to spend more than maybe 100 or 150 on a card period. Is it that much of a difference? and if so, why are the low end cards still so much?
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On a similar note, linux is not very mature since it doesn't even have a BSOD...
I have two AMD XP 2500+ systems, one running FC3 and one with XP. They're both quick, and do everything I need. However, 90% of the time I'm running FC3 on my PII 300 Notebook with 256MB/ram and a 6GB HD. It's plenty for everything I do. The screen is nice, the keyboard is nice, everything loads fairily on par with my other FC3 system (except for Firefox, but once it loads it works well), It's portable, Everything on it is supported by FC3 and even wireless works well.
Everyonce in a while I find myself looking at newer PC parts, thinking a Dual core would be great, or an upgraded video card or something, but I always come back to the fact that this little PII does everything I do well, and I don't just surf, I write php/mysql driven web pages, I work with gimp on large images, I chat, I program/compile C and C++ programs. It's not a big deal. And if I need extra speed (like for rendering video/photos) I just ssh over to one of the 2500+ systems and X-forward. In all honesty, it comes down to this
Until something breaks, I'm quite happy with what I have.
After all, what I already have works, and it's free/already paid for.
I believe there is an entire genre devoted to your demands... it's called porn.
I will have to agree with this poster, while there are a few games here and there that are interesting, most of the titles lately are either: A. Obivous sequels adding nothing but another number on the end of the title and promises for better graphics, or B. Wannabe other games. You know, the knock off GTs, or GTAs, the reworked old NES/SNES Game come to next gen consoles, etc...
Everytime a new console comes out I think "Wow, hopefully this new amazingly fast processor and next gen power inspires people to build new and different games that are both challenging and fun in ways they couldn't do before" but usually it comes out as "oh, wow. another Madden game."
I still play my NES on a regular basis. It honestly looks sweet on my HD TV and some 21st century audio processing gives it an interesting spin. All 8 bits seem to still be enough for fun.
/*it may be off topic, but the only beef I have is that I can't seem to get the zapper to work on the HD Screen. I have tried two "known good" zappers and they don't work for somereason... any ideas?*/
But seriously, if they can hack into the internet (through a sat. or something) figure out that it's binary and figure out the instruction sets and figure out the typical TCP/IP header. Then figure out the ascii set encoding, learn our language, develop a NIC to interface with it and start creating a web-browser (and therefore figure out all the encoding/interaction schemes required for that) then, they could just order themselves up a Dell and grab some Sony Rootkit code and just go right on to hack our computers! And after they went through all that, they still have to get through my firewall...
Basically this is about as probable that MS wrote all their code using random number generators to create binary files. . .
Damn, I'm gonna have to tighten my firewall, the aliens are probably half the way to internet domination already!
You forget one thing in your equation. I don't work at home (which means I'm not there from 8am to 6:30pm = 10.5 hours). I also don't take showers at night, I try to sleep then (so on a bad night, that's no hot water necessary between the hours of midnight and 7am = 7 hours). For every day when I need hot water to be ready for me. So for 17.5 hours of the day, I could care less if I had hot water sitting in a tank.
infact, I really only need hot water when I'm taking a shower in the morning for 5 min, and when I'm doing the dishes at night for 30 min (dishwasher) So I'm basically heating water in a tank 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, for 35 minutes. Even if it were to retain heat well, it would not only stay stagnant, but it would also require re-heating as the heat dissipates into the house. While it may be useful that the heat is in the house, I bet that my furnace does a better job at heating the house than the hot water heater does.
Enter 99% Effecient, On Demand Gas Hot Water. I turn on the faucet and it's hot with in seconds. I take my 5 min shower, I shut it off, and the heater shuts off too (heck, there isn't even a pilot light!). I only wish I would have done this sooner.
So while I agree that technically there can be difficulties with wireless, as of yet (knock on wood) I have not had any troubles... It just works, you fire up the WAP, you change the password and setup your WPA, you fire up your laptop, you put the same info in there, it makes a connection and everything is peachy.
Now I bring up the point that I live in a wireless dense apartment complex. I believe the last time I counted, I found well over 15 different WAPs in the area with about half wide open ("linksys" is listed multiple times), Linux currently tells me that I have 119% reception, and if I move out of this room and into our bedroom on the otherside of the apartment, it may drop to 95% on a bad day. I still get full speed, I never notice any glitches and life is still peachy.
I used to travel A LOT, like 60-70% of the time during the year. I've been to wireless enabled hotel after hotel. Again, I haven't had any issues (baring one time when the most powerful WAP in the hotel had a routing issue so anytime I connected to that one I could't get to the net, so I had to sit by the door to pickup a different one). I got good bandwidth (as good as can be expected from free hotel wireless) and good reception.
Now also keep in mind, I didn't spend a lot on this setup. I have a netgear router I got for 20 bucks at Best Buy, and a Netgear WG511 PCMCIA card I got for 25 on sale at best buy when I was on site in california. No MIMO or anything.
I again, agree that wireless may be problematic in the future, and I think we (manufacturers and users/admins) need to think through the potential issues that we'll no doubt come to. However, we all have to realize that as long as something works so nicely and is still thought of as "hip" (and believe me, when new laptops get bigger batteries, soak up less power and last longer and longer wireless just gets more and more "hip"), everyone will continue to want it. And while some of us know how to crimp cables and run wires through our houses, John Q. Public and Jane Doe don't and don't care to learn if they can drop $20 bucks and have it all work.
I for one will continue to enjoy my problem and teather free life style.
The temple tap (slapping both top front corners of the NES at the same time) always worked for me, give that a shot!
It depends on what they're compressed at (though I can't imagine it's a very high rate since it's on a 128MB stick) In my car I can tell a huge difference between 128k and 192k, but on my home theater setup, there's a big difference up until 256k for most pop songs. Unless it's overly dynamic, that's usually around where you stop telling a difference. (since it's not much bigger than 256, I usually go with 320), if it was at 256, it might be acceptable. Any one know what it was encoded at or was it VBR? how does it sound in a good system? Just wondering.
You know, this whole Sony rootkit wouldn't be so bad if it was Cool software. I'd love to throw in a CD I just bought, only to be prompted to install a free version of 3D Studio Max, or the latest version of Adobe Studio.
Ads on Slashdot? Oh, oops, musta blocked those.
I just block everything. I kinda think of it as a game, how many can I block today!? The more I block, the more perfect my ad protection becomes and the better the surfing!
Anyone know if there are sites that share what addresses to block? I think it'd be a cool colaboration site idea where you could simply import a filter into your adblock software/firefox and be able to block all the ads that you haven't found yet, but other people have.
Best part was I got it at Best Buy on sale about a year ago for $20 bucks. If I remember there's a pretty good list up on the prism drivers download site, just google for that and it'll tell you what cards work with it.
Don't forget that these are the opinions of humans other than yourself. Frankly, Other than the LOTR series, I can't remember the last time I liked an award winning movie or CD.
And remember, 68.5% of all statistics are made up on the spot.
Actually, motion bluring in games is nothing new. I can think of one game that was very convincing because of it, Need for Speed Underground 2 (for X-box). I don't remember if the first one had it, but basically as your driving along, everything is pretty darn clear, until you start going fast. lines, lights, buildings, everything started to blur a bit and it really started to feel like you were moving fast! While I don't think the effect was quite perfect, it was definately a good start and one of the first racing games I saw exploit this effect. There's a big difference between knowing your going at 150mph because that's what the speedo says when you enter a turn, and feeling like you're going too fast for the turn without having to even look at the speedo.
Be it text, picture, pr0n, mp3s, whatever, it's all data, there will always be a way. Is the RIAA ready to shut down the multitrillion dollar industry that is the internet just because of a few million in lost profits due to artists making crappy CDs that no one wants to shell out money for so people donwload them instead?
I had this happen on an Asus motherboard I got in 2001, noticed it when I was swapping out RAM in 2003. Board still works to this day, but you can see a line going from one of the regulator caps down to the PCI slots. I wrote down what kind of cap it was in case I was bored and wanted to replace it.. but honestly, after almost 5 years with this T-Bird board, it's not a big worry of mine. Still running, still over clocked, still a heck of a Linux system.
Yeah, and even if they were able to hit escape veolcity, I wonder if they tried an atmospheric re-entry test.
Tosty mold, coming right up!
Hopefully Symantec/McAffee will just go ahead and detect this worm/virus and we'll never have to worry about it... or better yet, my hardware firewalls will just block it, log it, and move along. If it didn't I would have to complain to those companies... I mean, if it lets in this traffic I don't want, what other traffic is it letting in that I don't want?
You know, thinking about that, this seems like a darn small amount of mass to have a big enough gravitational pull to do anything. I suppose if the asteroid/meteor is small enough it'd work, but it seems like a miniscule amount. Especially when the existing shuttle weighs anywhere from 60-100 tons (if you look at other slash-dot posts, I don't remember off the top of my head). Seems like we should just go on our way, developing a new shuttle, use that, and keep a few of the current ones in launching order. Then, when this threat comes about, launch one of the old ones out there as a "gravity well"... a fitting end to a well traveled space craft is to send it into space. Heck, put some instruments on it so it can keep going and maybe do something useful after it deflects the asteroid.
Food for thought I 'supose.
I think too much time is spent thinking "what can we do to make linux like windows" or "what can we do with linux to make more people use it"... If it's a better product, people will use it. Making a windows clone won't make it part of the everyday desktop, making it better than windows will.
That being said, I think which ever option comes out to be the best in the long run as far as stability, and usefulness, is what's important. Personally I'd much rather not have a driver for some hardware and beforced to use a generic one I can count on, than to have a binary unstable driver available that causes system crashes all the time. (and honestly, when I've had the choice between the two, I usually go with the generic one).
Are you sure it wasn't a rabbit with big pointy teeth? Or maybe a large wooden badger? I mean, obviously, birds don't normally fly into solid walls-- so maybe your house was TAUNTING THE BIRD!!
My office building taunts birds all the time, they smack into the building to get the voices in their heads to stop, I think.
A north bridge/southbridge on chip would be cool... but let's not forget the tail of the TV/VCR Combo's... When the TV Breaks, what do you do with the VCR?
Personally, I think putting many things that intercommunicate on the chip is cool, but I'd rather not have a GPU on the same chip. For one, It't not going to be cheap when MS comes out with Dx10 and everyone has to support it hardware (as is happening with 9), now I'd need a new CPU chip and it can't be cheap being that video cards are so darn expensive. Or if I decide I want to go dual core, I have to buy the video card again because it's on the chip.
Seems like there needs to be a line drawn somewhere.
Ok, so I get that $300 every few years on a PC is better than tha ton a console... but if $300 is the video card alone, then tell me how you put a brand new PCI-E video card in your ISA slot...
I Like PC gaming just as much as the next PC Gaming nut... but I still don't like dropping $300 on a vid card alone... I gotta up the proc and ram and everything else once a in a while too.
Cool, So I'm ahead of the gang, I just jumped right over Mac and went straight to Linux.
I agree... This is insanse (sic). The last video card I bought was a Radeon 7500, for 45 bucks. And that was 3 years ago. It's still playing the games I choose to play. Raven Sheild, Warcraft, UT, etc...
So this is my delema, do I get a new card so I can play new games? or do I just say screw it, I'm happy with the games I've got. Or do I just drop 30-40 bucks on an x-box/ps2 game and not even worry about video cards. If I have to buy a video card just to play a game, that makes the game cost=card+game == expensive.
I don't know why anyone would want to spend more than maybe 100 or 150 on a card period. Is it that much of a difference? and if so, why are the low end cards still so much?