Posts by Random Coolzip68 posts • joined Friday 18th August 2006 17:59 GMT
More like "lacks the surface area". Although 15W in a package that size is pretty impressive. I assume it's a Class D amp? They're pretty, but also pretty pricey. I think I'll stick with my old boom-box that I modified to hold my MP3 player in the cassette door -- it's got bigger speakers and a handle. I'd rather that than hauling around a bag full of bits and cables.
I'm disappointed you didn't benchmark a contemporary phone. I think any of the latest dual-core models would put up a respectable showing.
I had one go wonky too -- about one month in, it suddenly started shooting the cursor to the far left side of my desktop at random intervals, and would spuriously deny it knew anything about a Y axis. Sometimes unplugging and replugging it would help, but not always. After three days I unplugged it for good and took it back. I've have gotten another one, but they were out so I just went back to my old Logitech. I'm tempted to try another one, but the blush is off that particular rose, and I suspect the price will keep me away.
Nah, it'll be a 3S instead of a 4. Only incremental improvements, don't'cha know.
Yeah, just what we need -- more junk floating around in LEO.
And here I thought Zilog never pushed the Z800 into production...
Just interviewed a chap this morning whose CV listed Aviva, claimed he developed their presentation tier and web services. Wasn't too keen on him to start with, think I'll just bin that 14-page resume he sent...
Samsung lists the MTBF for the 830 series drives at 1,500,000 hours. I don't know where they're getting that number from, but it's way out of line with the lifetimes I've observed. Everyone I know with an SSD just budgets for a replacement drive every 14-18 months, and keeps good backups.
Most customers will judge the Fire against the iPad and will find the Fire significantly cheaper. When you're hungry and all you've got is a pocketful of change, a $2 hot dog looks better than a $5 sandwich.
The Kindle Fire is supposed to ship on the 15th, when's this thingie supposed to materialize? Are we supposed to pre-order for a mid-December delivery? And who'd be dumb enough to do that?
Bah, no mention of George Harrison's "Got My Mind Set On You" -- surely the banal, inane song this side of a toddler's jukebox...
Older versions of Windows aren't really a concern, because they won't work without a BIOS. I haven't heard anything about UEFI providing a "compatibility mode" or any other accommodation for older software. Recent Windows software will probably work because MS abstracted all that away in the HAL, but I seriously doubt they'll ship a HAL for XP that speaks UEFI. And no more booting up with that old copy of DOS 6.22, either.
I've got an older TX-NR801 and it's quite annoying that it doesn't support NTSC for the OSD and video switching. Does this new kit support NTSC, or am I going to have to go back to Pioneer's Elite series?
Anyone know what the MTTF distribution looks like across SSDs? If it's fairly tight, then once they start to fail you're going to have a pretty busy IT team as they rip and replace a cascade of dying boards. As well as a significantly less busy back office waiting for the volumes to rebuild.
On-the-fly data compression and advanced wear-leveling, I'd expect. Some kind of failure prediction would be nice too, but I doubt there's much that can be done there.
Starship battles using trench warfare tactics? Uh, thanks, I'll pass.
I'd chip in a couple of bucks for a short indie around the "Retief" series, though.
So, we're heading back to the mainframes, then? One vertically-integrated stack with networking, apps, database and storage?
Why was this a bad thing, again?
More like "we'll redefine what you thought was permissible".
Heat build-up can lead to rounds "cooking off", or firing unexpectedly when the gunpowder ignites due to heat. This can make the other members of your squad very unhappy when you're behind them covering their advance...
Aren't "dreadnaught-class" ships equipped with hulls on the order of a dozen or so feet thick? ISTR that the *Iowa* class battleships were supposed to have the ability to withstand several direct torpedo hits (from WWII-era torpedoes). Aren't most submarines just damp missile platforms nowadays?
As I understand it, one of the biggest problems with high-speed helicopters is the fact that the advancing blades provide all the lift, while the retreating blades provide very little, torquing the craft along the longitudinal axis. I don't see anything in this design that seem geared towards countering this force. If they're planning to use those stubby little wings, they're going to have to crank those trim tabs pretty hard, resulting in a lot of drag.
I'm also not convinced this design is significantly simpler than the X2. You're going to have three power shafts all linked together, two of which will be multi-piece units with associated gear assemblies. That's a lot of drive train to keep adjusted, lubed and balanced.
Maybe it's not for the main CPU, but an aux I/O processor(s). This could offload some work from the main CPU, possibly enabling the use of a lower-powered (=cooler-running) chip in that position.
At one PPOE, we got close to 40% of our heat during the winter from an IBM 1130[0]. The building was designed with that in mind, and simply had a large "hood" that collected the heat and pumped it into the ductwork (or directly outside, during the summer). Low tech, but it worked well and allegedly saved a significant amount of money.
[0] I think it was one of the last two or three still being used (this was in 1992), they finally decommissioned it and sold it to the US Army (who operated the rest of the still-functioning 1130s).
PowerPoint is the current "golden hammer" of the not-quite-ready-for-business-software set. Much like early users used to type documents in 1-2-3 or couldn't send a screen capture without wrapping it in a Word document (after saving it as a bitmap, of course). The majority of .ppt documents I get sent are just containers, apparently prized for the animations between slides and the clip-art more than the actual ability to present anything.
If you actually *need* animation and sound effects to present some information, I question the need to share the information in the first place...
The flash is used to hold the most-frequently-accessed files. It doesn't appear to be a cache, as the files aren't written through to the disk, they just get stored in the flash area. The manufacturer claims it's "adaptive", so presumably files migrate back and forth between disk and flash, based on some usage metric.
That's exactly what a modern combine/harvester does with corn. It chews off the corn stalk, grinds everything that's grindable (pretty much everything but the corn kernels) and blows it out the back, where it eventually gets tilled back into the soil.
That's for seed corn, anyway -- not sure what they do with the edible stuff.
Took close to a damn hour to upgrade my 3G. I've got some 5GB of stuff on an 8GB model, can't understand why it took so long. And afterwards, all my ringtone assignments are gone (just like after every other OS upgrade). Makes me wonder just what *does* get backed up, and what doesn't.
Other than that, upgrade went flawlessly.
...and that's been dead since 2006. Hmmm, about the time BumpTop (am I the only one who thinks that sounds like a lame pinball game?) got started.... Hmmm....
Does anyone know if PRAM is subject to the same R/W cycle limitations that Flash has? Does it require similar wear-leveling and related tech, or is it a more robust technology?
So you've got a rocket in your pocket?
"So how does one stand on a patent infringement?"
With one foot on the neck, leaving the other foot free to get the boot in.
Mine's the one with the matching Doc Martens.
Just sounds to me like somebody doesn't want to participate in a cross-functional team!
Mine's the one with the Beretta tucked behind the green card in the pocket.
I was intrigued by Project Wonderland when I first heard of it, but I had some serious doubts when I found out i couldn't access it on my Ultra 20 because they didn't have a Solaris client...
Tried it a few months ago on a PC, and it was so laggy I couldn't do squat. Reminded me of the time I implemented a 3-D wireframe browser on a 286, except without the fun.
@DLZ: Oh, you mean learn to isolate and produce virus toxins which they then spray indiscriminately about to slaughter fuzzy bunnies by the truckload? I'm guessing there isn't an analogous highly-communicable fatal disease that affects the little buggers.
So how much longer until some safety-freak connects the dots and realizes that the hardware for the "eco-graph" could be re-purposed to analyze the current driving style and switch the current artist from AC/DC to Enya if too many 0.5G-magnitude events are recorded in a minute?
"what is really required is a file system that can map across both SSD & HDD partitions and place files according to appropriate access patterns."
I think it won't be long now before we start seeing disk migration utilities that act something like meta-defragmenters. They'll do exactly what you describe: examine your access patterns and migrate frequently-accessed files to the SSD, others to HDD, and possibly even create burn groups so you can archive unused files to DVD.
"Compare this with electricity meters where you can (I assume) buy an electricity meter and mod it so it doesn't count the juice, but you cannot then connect it to the national grid in place of your authorized meter."
Heh, I just ran across something like this last week. I'm shopping for a new house, and one I was looking at had evidently had a second electrical meter installed at some point. The meter had subsequently been removed and a cover placed over the box. Inside the house the second line had been run to a separate panel which was obviously in use. My guess is the owner somehow jumpered over the contacts to enjoy a good 60-100 amps of free service. Too bad I didn't like the house, I think that knowledge would have made a good negotiating tool...
I wonder if the architecture even supports FP. Naturally, trapping to an FP library won't be viable for any FP-intense code, but for ordinary code it should suffice. However, if the arch doesn't even have the data types and opcodes to support it, it's going to make it that much more expensive to layer on top.
Or rather, yet another re-confirmation of the same reason -- they can't be trusted. Just wait until they require you to furnish your national ID card number in order to access your account. Don't think it won't happen just because it hasn't happened yet...
"one doesn't have "white energy" and the other "black energy"."
But what about all that talk about "black power" back in the early 70s? I believe it required an attenuator called "The Man" to keep it down.
"He is not the ONLY person in the world with a problem."
Ah, but he's the only person in HIS world with a problem. Planet Jack's a pretty rocky place, and could do with a good suck on the media teat.
When I was in college, the department I worked for hosted the Agricultural Info-Data Service. When the director brought it up to the board that perhaps a name change would be in order, given the public's growing awareness of the then-new disease, he was roundly ignored. It actually took several years of continued abuse and ridicule before the board wised up.
A drought is more commonly associated with crop failures and mass starvation / exodus. Providing drinking water to people in the desert, while laudable, still doesn't mitigate the fact that they can't grow enough food to feed themselves.
"When your car gets zapped by lightning its body work acts as a Faraday Cage"
And apparently its tires have stopped working as insulators... (or it's sitting on cinder blocks next to your trailer).
If the reserve really is to protect the battery, then I suggest sticking it under the bonnet, or perhaps in the boot (presumably where the battery is). Stick it under a cover with "FOR EMERGENCY USE ONLY" on it.
If abuse is a serious worry, stick a bright red counter next to it that decrements at every push. When the counter gets to zero, you need to take the car to the shop where they'll do some rediculously expensive "reserve capacity recertification". Until you do, no more reserve-tapping.
ISTR BMW did something like this with one of their models. They had a special "sport launch" mode you could activate while pressing the brake while in drive. Once you released the brake, the engine would rev to several thousand before the transmission would engage, hurtling you forward at levels of acceleration approaching acceptable. The mode could only be activated a fixed number of times (10?). I don't believe there was any indication of a counter, at some point it would simply become disabled. If it was possible to reset the counter, I imagine it was forbidden at a factory shop, and considered a warranty violation if performed elsewhere.
"Laugh all you like about hp's printer biz" -- What's to laugh about? Except, of course, that HP continues to teeter on the edge of being a printer company that also sells some other computer stuff. Anyone still think Aglient wants to be associated with their former home?
"hp's successes in other areas allow it to weather through the delays in Itanium" -- Yeah, good idea to turn your chip design over to another company and let them tweak it. Especially when that other company won't fail if they don't deliver. If Intel decides Itanium's "no longer a strategic direction" (i.e., their supplier agreements expire), HP's going to have to go hat in hand to IBM and beg for a little Power pie. Too bad they let Alpha die, they might at least have had a fall-back position there.
"hp's customers will consider waiting" [for Itanium] -- HP themselves already gave up on Itanium as a workstation-class chip, how much longer before they drop it entirely? I see SGI's moving to x86 chips for their next generation of systems, Dell dropped out early, Microsoft walked away -- who's left (that matters)?
"Slowaris" -- Rummaging around in the bottom of the bag, are we? I haven't heard anyone complain about Solaris performance since Solaris 8 came out. It's a lot quicker than Windows Server on the same hardware; which may not seem like a feat, but it's quite a shock to a lot of the middle-tier shops I work with.
Just yesterday I was working on a presentation for the office when ppt just "evaporated" -- no error dialog, no chance to save my work and no apologies. I swore and slapped the desk. Immediately, my cat jumped up, walked on the keyboard, stuck its tail in my face as it sniffed the screen, then turned around, meowed at me, jumped back down and commenced to licking its butt. Almost exactly the same response I'm accustomed to from our Helldesk, except they don't aspire to the same level of personal hygiene.
I think the film you're thinking of is "Damnation Alley" (George Peppard, Jan-Michael Vincent).
I also want to throw in a plug for the original "Rollerball", if we're bumping dystopian 70's flicks (must....not....remember..."ZPG"...argh!) Agreed that "E.T." is misplaced, I'd yank it and shift "Star Wars" and everything after down a notch and put the '54 "War of the Worlds" in there.
Full props to "Metropolis", but I'd rather see John Carpenter's remake of "The Thing" on the list, if only because it's a little more "accessible" (read: has more action) than "They Live".
"I know a man who had a fight with some steps in a police station."
I understand steps have been taken to prevent that happening again.
