Honestly, I hope they find some better way for teens (or anyone, really) to send small bits of text to others with mobile devices in the near future. Text messaging with tiny numberpads/keyboards is a royal pain in the ass. I know that people like the portability of smart phones and the like, but at the same time, I really do feel privileged to have stuck by my desktop for as long as I have given the comparative robustness of communications options it has offered over the years.
I'm thinking we need some kind of stripped-down EEG device for mobile phones, because it's obvious that increasing the size of the interface/keypad isn't going to work out terribly well (unless they use something like a virtual keyboard that projects onto common surfaces and uses a scanner/camera to record keystrokes).
Kinda had this thought some time ago . . . plus, locally, we have numerous "brown fields" that are so loaded down with industrial waste from the 19th and 20th century that they aren't entirely safe for humans and certainly can't grow much of anything, outside of maybe, oh I don't know, gypsum weed. Or maybe jatropha curcas, I hear that stuff is pretty hardy.
I don't know what plants like gypsum and/or jatropha would actually pull out of soil like that, aside from water and some other nutrients, but if they could be used to leech toxins/industrial waste out of the soil, they could then be "piled high" to create a combination CO2 heap and toxic waste dump. Of course, you'd just be moving some of the nasty crap that made "brown fields" possible from one "brown field" to the next, and I would expect the NIMBYs to be rather upset about that. Still, seems like an okay idea. Let's face it, if you've got an area cordoned off to be your CO2 dump, it's not like you want anything disturbing it anyway, so may as well infuse it with horrible toxic waste that would cost a fortune to dump elsewhere.
$12/hour for a fast food employee? Are you out of your gourd? In a place like South Carolina (or where I live: Tennessee), most fast food employees will make $8/hr or less (down to the federal minimum). VW is setting up shop to manufacture mid-sized sedans here in Chattanooga, and their wages start at $14.50/hr + benefits (and, admittedly, the benefits look pretty nice) for production workers, with the wages scaling up to $19.50/hr or so if production goals are met after something like 12-18 months.
VW is going to hire around 2k production workers once production is in full swing, and they currently have over 65k applications on file for those jobs. I'm hoping to be one of the lucky few . . .
Probably a multi-billion dollar study on three-legged dogs. If the EU can do it, so can we! And, yes, I know the EU study isn't actually a multi-billion dollar study (but rather a small part of a multi-billion dollar fund allocation), but in the US of A, we do things bigger.
AMD has no problems with reliability. Performance? Sure. Reliability? No.
If you have suicidal K8s in your department, I wouldn't be pointing the finger at AMD (or you either, I'm thinking OEM or vendor). They don't have a reputation for dieing at stock clocks after years of use. Sounds like someone, somewhere, cheaped out on the PSU or mobo.
And how you intend to draw any meaningful conclusion about AMD when basing your assumptions on the heat output of k5s or k6s is anyone's guess. Have you examined the thermals from any processor AMD released in the last, oh I don't know, two years?
And do you even know WHY AMD releases CPUs with disabled cores? Here's a hint: it has nothing to do with their products exhibiting poor reliability.
I want you to go to AMDzone and post this somewhere, anywhere, on their board, just to stir them up. That would be hilarious.
Seriously, AMD has historically produced processors that run hot? What? There was the T-bird but other than that . . . are you sure you aren't confusing them with Cyrix?
. . . and you're STILL spreading the FUD from the Tom's Hardware video in which an Athlon XP burned out when the HSF was disabled? Do you have any idea how long it has been since AMD produced processors that can die like that, much less take a board with them in the process?
. . . and your employer is complaining about failure rates among x86-64 capable processors from AMD after 4 years of usage? I have a fairly early processor from that generation (Sempron 2800+, s754 . . . yes I know x86-64 was superficially disabled on that chip, but it was the same uarch as the 130nm Hammers on the then-new 90nm process and minus some L2 cache) that I put into a system in 2005 and IT STILL RUNs. I ran it overclocked to 2.32 ghz for years, using the stock HSF. Unreliable my ass. Athlon 64s, X2s, and the like do not have a rep for high failure rates. Who was the vendor or OEM who supplied you with your systems?
Furthermore, most - if not all - of those AMD processors about which your employer is complaining should be able to underclock themselves. It's called Cool n' Quiet.
The competing processors Intel sold from those days were based on Netburst, and when it came to Prescotts and Smithfields, PLENTY of them either failed or just throttled like hell at stock because OEMs had problems keeping them cool.
FYI, the unlock rate on Phenom II X2s and X3s to quad-core processors has been calculated to be around %72.9, possibly by less-than-scientific methods, but that's the number that's bandied about in circles where people care about such things.
That's what collector's editions and in-box premiums are for. People who bought Ultima IV got a nifty little ankh in the box to keep with them while playing the game. Ultima V had awesome box cover art (Denis Loubet rocks) and a coin with the symbol of the Codex of Ultimate Wisdom on it.
Also, in a more sane universe, legally-owned copies of software are generally more convenient and easy-to-use than pirated copies. Someone pass that memo along the Ubisoft, please.
Infinite fireball was the best trick ever (though it didn't work in every patch . . . I forget which patch broke it and if it worked in the final official patch).
Anyway, neat trick:
Go to the spellmaker thingy and create a targeted AoE spell that has the Calm effect. Make the duration however long you want since it doesn't matter (I don't remember of Calm effects had a duration anyway).
Go to whatever dungeon and use it on enemies, repeatedly, while playing a character with the magic absorption in darkness advantage (which operates at 100% success rate when you're exposed to your own ranged AoE spells). You never run out of mana unless you really screw up, and after being tossed around by AoE Calm (yes, enemies hit by non-damaging AoE still get thrown around by the "blast") enough times, they will inexplicably die from . . . overexposure I guess. Feed someone enough magical valium and I guess it's fatal.
It's an excruciatingly slow way to kill enemies, but it does work.
Unless, of course, you join a 25-man raid. Then you're still stuck with the "server community" feeling whether you want it or not. If you join Wintergrasp, then things get even more "massive".
You also wheel and deal with your server's population in trade chat and/or on the auction house, so it's not like the entire game has been whittled away to random heroics.
I don't know if the guards would let you stash the 100000000000d6 you'd need to play a game of Shadowrun to completion. Besides, if you really want a game that would hack off a prison warden (or any number of other people), let the inmates play HoL.
RAMBUS, Inc. is the very definition of a patent troll. They're just smarter, and more brazen, than most. It will take years to undo the damage they did to JEDEC memory standards, and by then, who knows how else they will infect memory standards with their patents?
That's a faulty comparison. Cars and houses take many well-trained hands to build, whereas a PC can be built by a single individual with little to no training in a few hours time (or less). I don't change my oil, I don't paint my house, hell I can't even fix the leaky faucet downstairs, but I can certainly build my own PC.
I could never get 56k modems to retrain to 33.6, and 56k downloads always seemed to be hosed if any kind of uploading was necessary. So basically you had 56k (and due to line noise, frequently 48k instead) down or 28.8 down/up, but never 33.6 up.
My trusty old 33.6 did 33.6 up/down in its sleep, all day long if necessary. I think I actually played EQ phase 2 beta over that thing . . . oh the memories.
And 33.6. I had a 33.6 modem and I swear it provided better latency than any 56k modem I used afterwards. The other thing I hated about 56k modems is that they were only 56k down, not up; a 33.6 could do 33.6 bi-directional whereas a 56k could do 56k down or 28.8k bidirectional, or something like that. All I know is uploading anything significant on a 56k would kill download speed. My 33.6 was much more consistent, even if it couldn't achieve the hallowed 7kBps download.
Oh yeah, there was also the whole V.FC vs v.34 thing on the 28.8/33.6 modems, where basically, V.FC sucked.
At least we now know the identity of Dr. Claw and why he was able to leave his arm with a bomb in an armchair like in the intro. But will Gadget ever figure it out? Probably not.
I am not an expert in the field or otherwise well-informed about the subject matter at hand, but it seems to me the major differences here are that it's wireless and that it communicates with a glasses-mounted camera that would hopefully be less obvious to a casual observer than the Borg-like implants that have been used to provide limited sight to the blind in the past. The article is somewhat lacking in the details department.
Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong; I've merely arrived at these conclusions via assumptions based on the post and the article.
All I can say is that if you trash your engine tuning too aggressively, say goodbye to your warranty coverage; likewise, if your NOx output shoots upward because you're running your car too lean, then your local emissions testing station will fail you and order you to go get the problem "repaired" (most tuners have ways around this but I digress). Anyone who tunes should know the risks before they do it.
Point being, people are already tuning ECUs without much (if any) help from OEMs. At least this way, if you want a tune, you will have an easier chance of getting one regardless of the size of the enthusiast community surrounding your vehicle-of-choice. Or at least, that's what I would assume.
I have the 2.2 litre 4-cylinder. So far as I know, the 2.4 litre engine wasn't introduced to the Ion except as an option in later model years, but I digress.
Anyway, it's the 2.2s that are hard as hell to tune.
Various manufacturers have been making it difficult, if not impossible, to correct problems with ECUs/ECMs aside from doing simple stuff such as restarting them or forcing them to retrain/relearn. That is to say, if you're unlucky enough to have a car that is not beloved by hordes of tuners/ricers/etc., then no 3rd party will show the interest in figuring out how to reprogram your ECU/ECM to give it a proper tune. The car I own (Saturn Ion 1, 2004, Sedan) has an ECU that is widely unsupported by 3rd-party tuning apps, for example. If there's something wrong with any of the sensors or the ECU itself, better take it to the dealership.
And this doesn't even touch on the notion of aftermarket tunes for better performance and/or fuel economy.
If the manufacturers are forced to give up the goods on all the computerized components of autos, will this mean that any car, anywhere, will now be tunable by your local mom-and-pop repair shop or performance shop or what have you? Or, more importantly, will most of the 3rd-party tuning packages now work on anything provided you have a lappy and can hook up to the OBD2/CAN port? Will this be retroactive? Does that mean that my '04 Ion 1 will FINALLY be tunable?
This might not be a big deal around here, but any number of performance enthusiast sites out there had better be jumping for joy over this.
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Honestly, I hope they find some better way for teens (or anyone, really) to send small bits of text to others with mobile devices in the near future. Text messaging with tiny numberpads/keyboards is a royal pain in the ass. I know that people like the portability of smart phones and the like, but at the same time, I really do feel privileged to have stuck by my desktop for as long as I have given the comparative robustness of communications options it has offered over the years.
I'm thinking we need some kind of stripped-down EEG device for mobile phones, because it's obvious that increasing the size of the interface/keypad isn't going to work out terribly well (unless they use something like a virtual keyboard that projects onto common surfaces and uses a scanner/camera to record keystrokes).
Kinda had this thought some time ago . . . plus, locally, we have numerous "brown fields" that are so loaded down with industrial waste from the 19th and 20th century that they aren't entirely safe for humans and certainly can't grow much of anything, outside of maybe, oh I don't know, gypsum weed. Or maybe jatropha curcas, I hear that stuff is pretty hardy.
I don't know what plants like gypsum and/or jatropha would actually pull out of soil like that, aside from water and some other nutrients, but if they could be used to leech toxins/industrial waste out of the soil, they could then be "piled high" to create a combination CO2 heap and toxic waste dump. Of course, you'd just be moving some of the nasty crap that made "brown fields" possible from one "brown field" to the next, and I would expect the NIMBYs to be rather upset about that. Still, seems like an okay idea. Let's face it, if you've got an area cordoned off to be your CO2 dump, it's not like you want anything disturbing it anyway, so may as well infuse it with horrible toxic waste that would cost a fortune to dump elsewhere.
$12/hour for a fast food employee? Are you out of your gourd? In a place like South Carolina (or where I live: Tennessee), most fast food employees will make $8/hr or less (down to the federal minimum). VW is setting up shop to manufacture mid-sized sedans here in Chattanooga, and their wages start at $14.50/hr + benefits (and, admittedly, the benefits look pretty nice) for production workers, with the wages scaling up to $19.50/hr or so if production goals are met after something like 12-18 months.
VW is going to hire around 2k production workers once production is in full swing, and they currently have over 65k applications on file for those jobs. I'm hoping to be one of the lucky few . . .
Probably a multi-billion dollar study on three-legged dogs. If the EU can do it, so can we! And, yes, I know the EU study isn't actually a multi-billion dollar study (but rather a small part of a multi-billion dollar fund allocation), but in the US of A, we do things bigger.
AMD has no problems with reliability. Performance? Sure. Reliability? No.
If you have suicidal K8s in your department, I wouldn't be pointing the finger at AMD (or you either, I'm thinking OEM or vendor). They don't have a reputation for dieing at stock clocks after years of use. Sounds like someone, somewhere, cheaped out on the PSU or mobo.
And how you intend to draw any meaningful conclusion about AMD when basing your assumptions on the heat output of k5s or k6s is anyone's guess. Have you examined the thermals from any processor AMD released in the last, oh I don't know, two years?
And do you even know WHY AMD releases CPUs with disabled cores? Here's a hint: it has nothing to do with their products exhibiting poor reliability.
I want you to go to AMDzone and post this somewhere, anywhere, on their board, just to stir them up. That would be hilarious. Seriously, AMD has historically produced processors that run hot? What? There was the T-bird but other than that . . . are you sure you aren't confusing them with Cyrix? . . . and you're STILL spreading the FUD from the Tom's Hardware video in which an Athlon XP burned out when the HSF was disabled? Do you have any idea how long it has been since AMD produced processors that can die like that, much less take a board with them in the process? . . . and your employer is complaining about failure rates among x86-64 capable processors from AMD after 4 years of usage? I have a fairly early processor from that generation (Sempron 2800+, s754 . . . yes I know x86-64 was superficially disabled on that chip, but it was the same uarch as the 130nm Hammers on the then-new 90nm process and minus some L2 cache) that I put into a system in 2005 and IT STILL RUNs. I ran it overclocked to 2.32 ghz for years, using the stock HSF. Unreliable my ass. Athlon 64s, X2s, and the like do not have a rep for high failure rates. Who was the vendor or OEM who supplied you with your systems? Furthermore, most - if not all - of those AMD processors about which your employer is complaining should be able to underclock themselves. It's called Cool n' Quiet. The competing processors Intel sold from those days were based on Netburst, and when it came to Prescotts and Smithfields, PLENTY of them either failed or just throttled like hell at stock because OEMs had problems keeping them cool. FYI, the unlock rate on Phenom II X2s and X3s to quad-core processors has been calculated to be around %72.9, possibly by less-than-scientific methods, but that's the number that's bandied about in circles where people care about such things.
That's what collector's editions and in-box premiums are for. People who bought Ultima IV got a nifty little ankh in the box to keep with them while playing the game. Ultima V had awesome box cover art (Denis Loubet rocks) and a coin with the symbol of the Codex of Ultimate Wisdom on it.
Also, in a more sane universe, legally-owned copies of software are generally more convenient and easy-to-use than pirated copies. Someone pass that memo along the Ubisoft, please.
Infinite fireball was the best trick ever (though it didn't work in every patch . . . I forget which patch broke it and if it worked in the final official patch).
Anyway, neat trick:
Go to the spellmaker thingy and create a targeted AoE spell that has the Calm effect. Make the duration however long you want since it doesn't matter (I don't remember of Calm effects had a duration anyway).
Go to whatever dungeon and use it on enemies, repeatedly, while playing a character with the magic absorption in darkness advantage (which operates at 100% success rate when you're exposed to your own ranged AoE spells). You never run out of mana unless you really screw up, and after being tossed around by AoE Calm (yes, enemies hit by non-damaging AoE still get thrown around by the "blast") enough times, they will inexplicably die from . . . overexposure I guess. Feed someone enough magical valium and I guess it's fatal.
It's an excruciatingly slow way to kill enemies, but it does work.
Unless, of course, you join a 25-man raid. Then you're still stuck with the "server community" feeling whether you want it or not. If you join Wintergrasp, then things get even more "massive".
You also wheel and deal with your server's population in trade chat and/or on the auction house, so it's not like the entire game has been whittled away to random heroics.
I'm surprised they didn't play them recordings of Mark David Chapman.
Seriously. Oleic acid marinades may be the next big thing if they aren't already.
So Dennis Kucinich and Bernie Sanders aren't "leftist"?
I don't know if the guards would let you stash the 100000000000d6 you'd need to play a game of Shadowrun to completion. Besides, if you really want a game that would hack off a prison warden (or any number of other people), let the inmates play HoL.
RAMBUS, Inc. is the very definition of a patent troll. They're just smarter, and more brazen, than most. It will take years to undo the damage they did to JEDEC memory standards, and by then, who knows how else they will infect memory standards with their patents?
More importantly, will it run Crysis?
(trick question; nothing runs Crysis, at least not smoothly at hi res with all the settings maxed out)
That's a faulty comparison. Cars and houses take many well-trained hands to build, whereas a PC can be built by a single individual with little to no training in a few hours time (or less). I don't change my oil, I don't paint my house, hell I can't even fix the leaky faucet downstairs, but I can certainly build my own PC.
No, ATI/AMD does not make LGA1156 or LGA1366 motherboard chipsets. Nobody but Intel does, in fact.
I could never get 56k modems to retrain to 33.6, and 56k downloads always seemed to be hosed if any kind of uploading was necessary. So basically you had 56k (and due to line noise, frequently 48k instead) down or 28.8 down/up, but never 33.6 up.
My trusty old 33.6 did 33.6 up/down in its sleep, all day long if necessary. I think I actually played EQ phase 2 beta over that thing . . . oh the memories.
And 33.6. I had a 33.6 modem and I swear it provided better latency than any 56k modem I used afterwards. The other thing I hated about 56k modems is that they were only 56k down, not up; a 33.6 could do 33.6 bi-directional whereas a 56k could do 56k down or 28.8k bidirectional, or something like that. All I know is uploading anything significant on a 56k would kill download speed. My 33.6 was much more consistent, even if it couldn't achieve the hallowed 7kBps download.
Oh yeah, there was also the whole V.FC vs v.34 thing on the 28.8/33.6 modems, where basically, V.FC sucked.
At least we now know the identity of Dr. Claw and why he was able to leave his arm with a bomb in an armchair like in the intro. But will Gadget ever figure it out? Probably not.
All your wallpaper are belong to us.
I am not an expert in the field or otherwise well-informed about the subject matter at hand, but it seems to me the major differences here are that it's wireless and that it communicates with a glasses-mounted camera that would hopefully be less obvious to a casual observer than the Borg-like implants that have been used to provide limited sight to the blind in the past. The article is somewhat lacking in the details department.
Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong; I've merely arrived at these conclusions via assumptions based on the post and the article.
All I can say is that if you trash your engine tuning too aggressively, say goodbye to your warranty coverage; likewise, if your NOx output shoots upward because you're running your car too lean, then your local emissions testing station will fail you and order you to go get the problem "repaired" (most tuners have ways around this but I digress). Anyone who tunes should know the risks before they do it.
Point being, people are already tuning ECUs without much (if any) help from OEMs. At least this way, if you want a tune, you will have an easier chance of getting one regardless of the size of the enthusiast community surrounding your vehicle-of-choice. Or at least, that's what I would assume.
I have the 2.2 litre 4-cylinder. So far as I know, the 2.4 litre engine wasn't introduced to the Ion except as an option in later model years, but I digress.
Anyway, it's the 2.2s that are hard as hell to tune.
Various manufacturers have been making it difficult, if not impossible, to correct problems with ECUs/ECMs aside from doing simple stuff such as restarting them or forcing them to retrain/relearn. That is to say, if you're unlucky enough to have a car that is not beloved by hordes of tuners/ricers/etc., then no 3rd party will show the interest in figuring out how to reprogram your ECU/ECM to give it a proper tune. The car I own (Saturn Ion 1, 2004, Sedan) has an ECU that is widely unsupported by 3rd-party tuning apps, for example. If there's something wrong with any of the sensors or the ECU itself, better take it to the dealership.
And this doesn't even touch on the notion of aftermarket tunes for better performance and/or fuel economy.
If the manufacturers are forced to give up the goods on all the computerized components of autos, will this mean that any car, anywhere, will now be tunable by your local mom-and-pop repair shop or performance shop or what have you? Or, more importantly, will most of the 3rd-party tuning packages now work on anything provided you have a lappy and can hook up to the OBD2/CAN port? Will this be retroactive? Does that mean that my '04 Ion 1 will FINALLY be tunable?
This might not be a big deal around here, but any number of performance enthusiast sites out there had better be jumping for joy over this.