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14 Oct 2026 23:23:01 EDT (-0400)
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From: Nicolas Alvarez
Subject: Re: Yet another Doctor John rant
Date: 31 Mar 2008 14:59:50
Message: <47f142b6$1@news.povray.org>
Orchid XP v8 escribió:
> Wait - Wine attempts to perform emulation at the API level?

Yes, that's the ONLY thing it does. Well, and some tweaking for the PE 
executable format, but not much more.

> Damn, that's even harder than hardware emulation! o_O [At least the 
> hardware is mostly documented somewhere...]

Correct, it doesn't emulate hardware. It's not an emulator. WINE = Wine 
Is Not an Emulator.


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From: Orchid XP v8
Subject: Re: Yet another Doctor John rant
Date: 31 Mar 2008 15:01:02
Message: <47f142fe$1@news.povray.org>
>> [What's it made of? Lead??]
> 
> Silicon, mostly. a few threads of gold, maybe a ceramic outer case, with 
>  a very small possibility of a heat-conducting metal pad. :D

AMD Athlon64 X2 4200+?

Have you *seen* the heat sink??

It's bigger than the damn CPU - by at least an order of magnitude!

I'm presuming the whole thing is encased in solid metal to promote heat 
dissapation or something...


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From: Darren New
Subject: Re: Yet another Doctor John rant
Date: 31 Mar 2008 15:02:00
Message: <47f14338@news.povray.org>
Nicolas Alvarez wrote:
> Darren New escribió:
>> Tht was an answer, not a question. :-)
>>
> 
> You were talking about the slow-ass GMail web interface?

No, I was talking about how many people use supercomputers to read email.

-- 
   Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)
     "That's pretty. Where's that?"
          "It's the Age of Channelwood."
     "We should go there on vacation some time."


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From: Orchid XP v8
Subject: Re: Yet another Doctor John rant
Date: 31 Mar 2008 15:02:10
Message: <47f14342$1@news.povray.org>
>> It's a direct dump of the binary format internal structure into XML. 
>> When you see a tag called <useWord97LineBreaks>, what should your 
>> implementation do?
> 
> I would assume you would need to know what the behavior difference in a 
> Word97 linebreak versus a normal line break.

...which, conveniently, isn't defined in the standard document.

IIRC, this is why the standard was rejected until M$ redraft it...


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From: Nicolas Alvarez
Subject: Re: Yet another Doctor John rant
Date: 31 Mar 2008 15:03:36
Message: <47f14398$1@news.povray.org>
Orchid XP v8 escribió:
>>> In which universe is a machine with a 200 GB HD and more than 1 GB of
>>> RAM considered "moderate"? That sounds pretty high-end to me...
>>
>> My 3+ year old desktop is slightly higher spec'ed than that.
>> High end today is quad core processor, 4 GB+ memory and 1/2 TB disk 
>> space.
> 
> Damn - what on earth could you possibly use 1 TB of disk for?? o_O

http://cad-comic.com/comic.php?d=20030103
Last panel.

Or, yeah, illegal downloads. (Those are overlapping categories anyway.)

Or how about PNGs from every single POV-Ray animation you do, including 
test renders? :)


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From: Darren New
Subject: Re: Yet another Doctor John rant
Date: 31 Mar 2008 15:03:40
Message: <47f1439c$1@news.povray.org>
Orchid XP v8 wrote:
> That's using a supercomputer - or more accurately, an entire cluster of 
> perfectly ordinary computers - to *store* your email, not read it.

Given that computers can't read (as such), I think you're reading too 
much into "read your email".  Certainly without the google computer 
cluster, you wouldn't be using gmail to read your email. That the email 
text actually has to be delivered to your screen is kind of irrelevant, 
IMO. :-)

> I still contend that AmigaDOS was easier than any version of Windoze 
> I've ever touched. But I'm minority like that...

I agree. A shame it didn't keep up with the times.

-- 
   Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)
     "That's pretty. Where's that?"
          "It's the Age of Channelwood."
     "We should go there on vacation some time."


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From: Orchid XP v8
Subject: Re: Yet another Doctor John rant
Date: 31 Mar 2008 15:04:19
Message: <47f143c3$1@news.povray.org>
>> Wait - Wine attempts to perform emulation at the API level?
> 
> Yes, that's the ONLY thing it does. Well, and some tweaking for the PE 
> executable format, but not much more.

I am seriously surprised that something like CSS - which is a little 
unstable with a *real* copy of Windoze - could be coaxed to actually 
work properly using any kind of emulation technology. I mean, just think 
of the level of low-level performance-squeezing trickery that goes into 
a headline games title like that... it's staggering! o_O

> Correct, it doesn't emulate hardware. It's not an emulator. WINE = Wine 
> Is Not an Emulator.

Did I ever mention that I really *hate* recursive acronyms?


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From: Darren New
Subject: Re: Yet another Doctor John rant
Date: 31 Mar 2008 15:05:07
Message: <47f143f3$1@news.povray.org>
Orchid XP v8 wrote:
> Damn - what on earth could you possibly use 1 TB of disk for?? o_O

Anything having to do with processing media, yes.  Certainly any company 
can easily fill a terabyte without too much effort.

I mean, come on, you can go down to the corner store and by a 750G disk 
drive for ... well, way cheap, here.

> Dual-core is becomming common, but I don't think I've met anybody yet 
> who can afford quad-core. (Since that almost necessarily requires you to 
> buy Intel, who are still quite expensive.)

Again, for businesses, it's not an issue.

-- 
   Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)
     "That's pretty. Where's that?"
          "It's the Age of Channelwood."
     "We should go there on vacation some time."


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From: Orchid XP v8
Subject: Re: Yet another Doctor John rant
Date: 31 Mar 2008 15:05:55
Message: <47f14423@news.povray.org>
>> I still contend that AmigaDOS was easier than any version of Windoze 
>> I've ever touched. But I'm minority like that...
> 
> I agree. A shame it didn't keep up with the times.

It would *hardly* be the first time a superior technology has vanished 
for reasons unrelated to technology... sadly... :-(


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From: andrel
Subject: Re: Yet another Doctor John rant
Date: 31 Mar 2008 15:07:35
Message: <47F144A5.2010200@hotmail.com>
Darren New wrote:
> Orchid XP v8 wrote:
>> That's using a supercomputer - or more accurately, an entire cluster 
>> of perfectly ordinary computers - to *store* your email, not read it.
> 
> Given that computers can't read (as such), I think you're reading too 
> much into "read your email".  Certainly without the google computer 
> cluster, you wouldn't be using gmail to read your email. That the email 
> text actually has to be delivered to your screen is kind of irrelevant, 
> IMO. :-)
> 
>> I still contend that AmigaDOS was easier than any version of Windoze 
>> I've ever touched. But I'm minority like that...
> 
> I agree. 
me too
> A shame it didn't keep up with the times.
> 
yes


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From: Orchid XP v8
Subject: Re: Yet another Doctor John rant
Date: 31 Mar 2008 15:07:55
Message: <47f1449b$1@news.povray.org>
>> Damn - what on earth could you possibly use 1 TB of disk for?? o_O
> 
> http://cad-comic.com/comic.php?d=20030103
> Last panel.

170 GB of porn?? o_O

But... porn files are always compressed to a mess of pink pixelly bits 
so it downloads faster... to actually fill *one* GB of space wit- uh, 
never mind...

> Or, yeah, illegal downloads. (Those are overlapping categories anyway.)

Hmm. Indeed.

> Or how about PNGs from every single POV-Ray animation you do, including 
> test renders? :)

Well, given that a typical PNG file is between 1 KB and 500 KB, 
that's... A LOT OF FREAKIN' FRAMES!!


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From: Gail Shaw
Subject: Re: Yet another Doctor John rant
Date: 31 Mar 2008 15:10:34
Message: <47f1453a@news.povray.org>
"Orchid XP v8" <voi### [at] devnull> wrote in message
news:47f141b7@news.povray.org...
> >> In which universe is a machine with a 200 GB HD and more than 1 GB of
> >> RAM considered "moderate"? That sounds pretty high-end to me...
> >
> > My 3+ year old desktop is slightly higher spec'ed than that.
> > High end today is quad core processor, 4 GB+ memory and 1/2 TB disk
space.
>
> Damn - what on earth could you possibly use 1 TB of disk for?? o_O

My home server has close on 500GB of drives and is over half full.
Assorted downloads, pdfs, Virtual PC images, ripped CDs (mine), Ripped DVDs
(mine), backups of the other machines
It adds up

> My current motherboard doesn't even *support* more than 4 GB of RAM.
> Although I guess RAM is much cheaper now than it used to be.

Most of the higher end ones support 8GB

> Dual-core is becomming common, but I don't think I've met anybody yet
> who can afford quad-core.

Hi Andrew. Nice to meet you.....
Or did you mean meet in person?

The quad core 2.4GHz is around R2000, the quad 2.66 is R4500. (The dual core
3.0 is R1800, Dual core 3.16 is R2500)
I'll leave you do do the curency conversions if you like (current exchange
rate - R16.1 = 1 pound)


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From: Orchid XP v8
Subject: Re: Yet another Doctor John rant
Date: 31 Mar 2008 15:10:47
Message: <47f14547$1@news.povray.org>
>> Damn - what on earth could you possibly use 1 TB of disk for?? o_O
> 
> Anything having to do with processing media, yes.  Certainly any company 
> can easily fill a terabyte without too much effort.

Like... what? Storing the entire season of Friends in uncompressed RGB 
format? Even that surely wouldn't come close...!

> I mean, come on, you can go down to the corner store and by a 750G disk 
> drive for ... well, way cheap, here.

£109.99. It was on special offer. I bought one 3 days ago.

I didn't actually need one that big. 160 GB would have been fine. I just 
need slightly more space for my C: partition. I foolishly tried to 
install Komplete 5, which takes up 36 GB of space... [And people 
complain that M$ produces large products!]

>> Dual-core is becomming common, but I don't think I've met anybody yet 
>> who can afford quad-core. (Since that almost necessarily requires you 
>> to buy Intel, who are still quite expensive.)
> 
> Again, for businesses, it's not an issue.

Oh, no, for a business it wouldn't be. I was thinking more for the 
casual comsumer.

I guess "high-end" and related terms are necessarily somewhat 
subjective. If you want, you can buy yourself a Sun system with 32 
UltraSPARCs in it or something insane like that...


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From: Darren New
Subject: Re: Yet another Doctor John rant
Date: 31 Mar 2008 15:13:52
Message: <47f14600$1@news.povray.org>
Warp wrote:
> Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
>> This is what happens when you have support for dozens of versions of a 
>> program in your file format. Not unlike C++.  "How about defining a 
>> source input format that can't be checked for syntactic correctness 
>> without a potentially infinite storage space?"  ;-)
> 
>   It's incredible how you find ways to bash C++ in every possible context.

Oh come on. I'm poking at you. :-)  C++ is just generally easy to poke 
at.  Any sufficiently crufty specification is going to have 
under-specified parts to it.

Making something too simple can be just as annoying. My latest annoyance 
at Erlang:

To receive a message, you write
   receive guard1 -> value1; guard2 -> value2; ... end.
That means when you get a message, it matches against each guard in turn 
until it finds one that matches. If it finds it, it calculates the 
associated value and consumes the message. If there's no match, it 
leaves it in the queue and idles until another message comes along.

Because of this, each [guard] has to not have any side-effects. In 
practice, this means you can only call certain built-in functions the 
compiler knows have no side effects (is_integer(), list_length(), test 
for equality, etc).

Sadly, the "if" statement (and "case" statement, slightly different) 
also use guards.
    if guard -> value; guard -> value; ... ; true -> value end
(the last if you want to guarantee a match, like "else").

The sad part is that it's the same guard, hence no side-effects, hence 
no user-defined functions. If you have three methods that might match, 
increasingly more expensive to calculate, and you want to know which it 
was, you can't write

   if my_cheapmatch(X) -> cheap;
      my_medium(X) -> medium;
      my_expensive(X)->expensive;
      true -> nope
   end

You have to write
   C = my_cheapmatch(X),
   if X -> cheap;
      true -> M = my_medium(X),
              if M -> medium;
                 true -> E = my_expensive(X),
                 if E -> expensive;
                    true -> nope
                 end
              end
    end

Kind of deeply nested for such a simple concept, and afaict there's no 
real reason to prohibit side-effects in the if statement since (unlike 
receive) it doesn't get retried in any sense.

-- 
   Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)
     "That's pretty. Where's that?"
          "It's the Age of Channelwood."
     "We should go there on vacation some time."


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From: Orchid XP v8
Subject: Re: Yet another Doctor John rant
Date: 31 Mar 2008 15:15:05
Message: <47f14649$1@news.povray.org>
>> Damn - what on earth could you possibly use 1 TB of disk for?? o_O
> 
> My home server has close on 500GB of drives and is over half full.
> Assorted downloads, pdfs, Virtual PC images, ripped CDs (mine), Ripped DVDs
> (mine), backups of the other machines
> It adds up

Wait, back up... virtual PC images?

OK, that'll do it by itself. The default install of Windoze XP eats well 
over 1 GB of space. Add Office for an additional 1 GB of space gone. It 
wouldn't take very many PC images to fill even the most cavernous disk...

BTW... it's possible to rip DVDs??

>> My current motherboard doesn't even *support* more than 4 GB of RAM.
>> Although I guess RAM is much cheaper now than it used to be.
> 
> Most of the higher end ones support 8GB

When I bought mine, it *was* high-end. Brand new chipset, supporting the 
new socket-939 standard for the then-new Athlon64 series, allowing you 
to break into this new-fangled "64-bit computing" thingy that everybody 
was so excited about.

Jesus, my PC is old. o_O

>> Dual-core is becomming common, but I don't think I've met anybody yet
>> who can afford quad-core.
> 
> Hi Andrew. Nice to meet you.....
> Or did you mean meet in person?

That can be arranged. ;-) Or... I like to delude myself that it could 
be. I think that would be kinda neat anyway...

> The quad core 2.4GHz is around R2000, the quad 2.66 is R4500. (The dual core
> 3.0 is R1800, Dual core 3.16 is R2500)
> I'll leave you do do the curency conversions if you like (current exchange
> rate - R16.1 = 1 pound)

Doesn't mean you can buy it for that over here. E.g., Adobe Acrobat 
Standard costs $400 US or £400. (Guess which price we bought?)


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From: andrel
Subject: Re: Yet another Doctor John rant
Date: 31 Mar 2008 15:15:12
Message: <47F1466E.5040309@hotmail.com>
Orchid XP v8 wrote:
>>> In which universe is a machine with a 200 GB HD and more than 1 GB of
>>> RAM considered "moderate"? That sounds pretty high-end to me...
>>
>> My 3+ year old desktop is slightly higher spec'ed than that.
>> High end today is quad core processor, 4 GB+ memory and 1/2 TB disk 
>> space.
> 
> Damn - what on earth could you possibly use 1 TB of disk for?? o_O
> 
Storing patient ECG data.

And one of my former PhD students has also some use for it (can't 
remember if I already mentioned that, so excuse me if it is old news)
http://www.sgi.com/company_info/newsroom/press_releases/2008/january/udm.html


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From: Orchid XP v8
Subject: Re: Yet another Doctor John rant
Date: 31 Mar 2008 15:16:18
Message: <47f14692$1@news.povray.org>
>> Damn - what on earth could you possibly use 1 TB of disk for?? o_O
>>
> Storing patient ECG data.

Yeah, that'll do it...


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From: Warp
Subject: Re: Yet another Doctor John rant
Date: 31 Mar 2008 15:18:25
Message: <47f14711@news.povray.org>
Orchid XP v8 <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
> Damn - what on earth could you possibly use 1 TB of disk for?? o_O

  Video editing. It's not even enough for serious work on that field.

-- 
                                                          - Warp


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From: Darren New
Subject: Re: Yet another Doctor John rant
Date: 31 Mar 2008 15:19:41
Message: <47f1475d$1@news.povray.org>
Orchid XP v8 wrote:
> It would *hardly* be the first time a superior technology has vanished 
> for reasons unrelated to technology... sadly... :-(

I think the lack of ability to do multiuser work and the lack of ability 
to get beyond TV resolution were at least as deadly as Commodore marketing.

These improvements were added after it was too late.

-- 
   Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)
     "That's pretty. Where's that?"
          "It's the Age of Channelwood."
     "We should go there on vacation some time."


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From: Nicolas Alvarez
Subject: Re: Yet another Doctor John rant
Date: 31 Mar 2008 15:19:59
Message: <47f1476f$1@news.povray.org>
Orchid XP v8 escribió:
>> Or how about PNGs from every single POV-Ray animation you do, 
>> including test renders? :)
> 
> Well, given that a typical PNG file is between 1 KB and 500 KB, 
> that's... A LOT OF FREAKIN' FRAMES!!

You never did big renders, with frames +1MB?


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From: Orchid XP v8
Subject: Re: Yet another Doctor John rant
Date: 31 Mar 2008 15:20:09
Message: <47f14779$1@news.povray.org>
>> Damn - what on earth could you possibly use 1 TB of disk for?? o_O
> 
>   Video editing. It's not even enough for serious work on that field.

Perhaps I'm not understanding correctly - video data typically eats a 
few GB per minute. So why do you need 1,000 GB? That's, like, several 
*hours* of video data. You'd have to be producing a feature film or 
something to need more, surely?


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From: Darren New
Subject: Re: Yet another Doctor John rant
Date: 31 Mar 2008 15:21:34
Message: <47f147ce$1@news.povray.org>
Orchid XP v8 wrote:
> Like... what? Storing the entire season of Friends in uncompressed RGB 
> format? Even that surely wouldn't come close...!

You would be surprised. Say you have (oh, I don't know) a program that 
listens to 70 radio stations in a city, and you want to save a week 
worth of audio for some reason.  Calculate out what 70 channels of 
CD-quality uncompressed audio comes to.

> Oh, no, for a business it wouldn't be. I was thinking more for the 
> casual comsumer.

Right.

-- 
   Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)
     "That's pretty. Where's that?"
          "It's the Age of Channelwood."
     "We should go there on vacation some time."


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From: Nicolas Alvarez
Subject: Re: Yet another Doctor John rant
Date: 31 Mar 2008 15:22:06
Message: <47f147ee$1@news.povray.org>
Orchid XP v8 escribió:
> BTW... it's possible to rip DVDs??

Sigh.


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From: Gail Shaw
Subject: Re: Yet another Doctor John rant
Date: 31 Mar 2008 15:24:24
Message: <47f14878@news.povray.org>
"Orchid XP v8" <voi### [at] devnull> wrote in message
news:47f14649$1@news.povray.org...
> >> Damn - what on earth could you possibly use 1 TB of disk for?? o_O
> >
> > My home server has close on 500GB of drives and is over half full.
> > Assorted downloads, pdfs, Virtual PC images, ripped CDs (mine), Ripped
DVDs
> > (mine), backups of the other machines
> > It adds up
>
> Wait, back up... virtual PC images?

Yup. Virtual PC (or virtual server). Both free downloads (From MS). Allows
you to install an OS and run a virtual machine as an application.
I use them for Beta software mostly. Also have a couple of software that
wouldn't play nice on the same machine, or that I don't trust fully.
The 'harddrives' of these are just files.
Very much like VMWare, just free

> OK, that'll do it by itself. The default install of Windoze XP eats well
> over 1 GB of space. Add Office for an additional 1 GB of space gone. It
> wouldn't take very many PC images to fill even the most cavernous disk...

The base Server OS image is about 3 GB. My SQL 2008 beta is about 1 GB.
Biztalk's a lot bigger.
They all base off the same server image, so it's not so bad.

> BTW... it's possible to rip DVDs??

Um, sure. You know those .iso files you see from time to time....

> > The quad core 2.4GHz is around R2000, the quad 2.66 is R4500. (The dual
core
> > 3.0 is R1800, Dual core 3.16 is R2500)
> > I'll leave you do do the curency conversions if you like (current
exchange
> > rate - R16.1 = 1 pound)
>
> Doesn't mean you can buy it for that over here.

Probably cheaper. Hardware's notoriously expensive here.


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From: Orchid XP v8
Subject: Re: Yet another Doctor John rant
Date: 31 Mar 2008 15:25:07
Message: <47f148a3$1@news.povray.org>
>> It would *hardly* be the first time a superior technology has vanished 
>> for reasons unrelated to technology... sadly... :-(
> 
> I think the lack of ability to do multiuser work and the lack of ability 
> to get beyond TV resolution were at least as deadly as Commodore marketing.
> 
> These improvements were added after it was too late.

The Amiga has always been able to work at resolutions other than TV. 
That's just the default settings.

Commodore had a new chipset in development that was wildly ahead of its 
time - true 24-bit graphics, in an era when the PCs were just beginning 
to experiment with more than 16-colour video. Realtime blitting of 
24-bit graphics - apparently they had running silicon. Beaffed up sound 
capabilities too. But, for whatever reason, the project was shelved.

There then followed a series of phantom products that never actually 
made it to marked, until eventually CBM just ran out of cash and shut 
down. Several people bought the technology, continued to ship it, but 
didn't "do" anything with it, until eventually the PC marked was so far 
ahead of anything the aging Amiga could offer that it was pretty much 
game over.

I've yet to see any group of people as fanatical about a technology as 
the Amiga users though. Everybody seemed to utterly convinced the Amiga 
would fight back and retake the world, any day now... it just never 
came. Interesting social dynamic there...


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From: Nicolas Alvarez
Subject: Re: Yet another Doctor John rant
Date: 31 Mar 2008 15:25:19
Message: <47f148af$1@news.povray.org>
Orchid XP v8 escribió:
>>> [What's it made of? Lead??]
>>
>> Silicon, mostly. a few threads of gold, maybe a ceramic outer case, 
>> with  a very small possibility of a heat-conducting metal pad. :D
> 
> AMD Athlon64 X2 4200+?

I have one o' those :)

> Have you *seen* the heat sink??

I still haven't opened my computer case since I got it...


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From: Orchid XP v8
Subject: Re: Yet another Doctor John rant
Date: 31 Mar 2008 15:26:26
Message: <47f148f2$1@news.povray.org>
>>> Or how about PNGs from every single POV-Ray animation you do, 
>>> including test renders? :)
>>
>> Well, given that a typical PNG file is between 1 KB and 500 KB, 
>> that's... A LOT OF FREAKIN' FRAMES!!
> 
> You never did big renders, with frames +1MB?

If I'm rendering something in an animation, it's to put it on a DVD. 
DVDs only support extremely low spatial resolutions. (Even with the new 
HD technologies which will one day become commonly available, resolution 
is still extremely low.) Small images don't take up much space.

Now, large stills for Zazzle can get pretty big...


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From: Orchid XP v8
Subject: Re: Yet another Doctor John rant
Date: 31 Mar 2008 15:28:47
Message: <47f1497f$1@news.povray.org>
>> BTW... it's possible to rip DVDs??
> 
> Um, sure. You know those .iso files you see from time to time....

OK, I rephrase: Can you actually *do* something useful with this data 
once you have it?


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From: Eero Ahonen
Subject: Re: Yet another Doctor John rant
Date: 31 Mar 2008 15:30:06
Message: <47f149ce@news.povray.org>
Orchid XP v8 wrote:
>>> [What's it made of? Lead??]
>>
>> Silicon, mostly. a few threads of gold, maybe a ceramic outer case, 
>> with  a very small possibility of a heat-conducting metal pad. :D
> 
> AMD Athlon64 X2 4200+?

That, too.

> Have you *seen* the heat sink??

He was talking about the little metal pad on the top of the CPU. The 
one, that connects the CPU to the heat sink.

> It's bigger than the damn CPU - by at least an order of magnitude!

Yes. OTOH, my C2D T5600's heat sink is 'bout same size as the CPU 
itself. It's connected to 'bout same-sized radiator with heat pipes. 
Then again, it's installed in a laptop...

> I'm presuming the whole thing is encased in solid metal to promote heat 
> dissapation or something...

The heat sink usually is one part of solid metal. But it's still is it's 
own part and not part of the CPU.

-- 
Eero "Aero" Ahonen
    http://www.zbxt.net
       aer### [at] removethiszbxtnetinvalid


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From: Nicolas Alvarez
Subject: Re: Yet another Doctor John rant
Date: 31 Mar 2008 15:30:42
Message: <47f149f2$1@news.povray.org>
Orchid XP v8 escribió:
> OK, I rephrase: Can you actually *do* something useful with this data 
> once you have it?

Yes, like burning it to another disc... Additionally, the DRM in DVD 
movies has been broken since 1999.


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From: Orchid XP v8
Subject: Re: Yet another Doctor John rant
Date: 31 Mar 2008 15:32:59
Message: <47f14a7b$1@news.povray.org>
>> I'm presuming the whole thing is encased in solid metal to promote 
>> heat dissapation or something...
> 
> The heat sink usually is one part of solid metal. But it's still is it's 
> own part and not part of the CPU.

No, I meant I think the CPU die is encased in solid metal to promote 
heat transfer from it to the heat sink.


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From: andrel
Subject: Re: Yet another Doctor John rant
Date: 31 Mar 2008 15:35:18
Message: <47F14B24.5020607@hotmail.com>
Orchid XP v8 wrote:
>>> BTW... it's possible to rip DVDs??
>>
>> Um, sure. You know those .iso files you see from time to time....
> 
> OK, I rephrase: Can you actually *do* something useful with this data 
> once you have it?
Like creating MP3 from a music DVD?


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From: Gail Shaw
Subject: Re: Yet another Doctor John rant
Date: 31 Mar 2008 15:37:04
Message: <47f14b70@news.povray.org>
"Orchid XP v8" <voi### [at] devnull> wrote in message
news:47f1497f$1@news.povray.org...
> >> BTW... it's possible to rip DVDs??
> >
> > Um, sure. You know those .iso files you see from time to time....
>
> OK, I rephrase: Can you actually *do* something useful with this data
> once you have it?

Mount it as a virtual dvd and treat it as if it was a disk. (Daemon tools,
etc)
Most DVD writing software will let you take an iso and burn to a DVD so that
the burnt disk looks like the original.

I wouldn't exactly be storing ripped DVDs if I couldn't do anything with
them...


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From: Eero Ahonen
Subject: Re: Yet another Doctor John rant
Date: 31 Mar 2008 15:40:17
Message: <47f14c31$1@news.povray.org>
Orchid XP v8 wrote:
> 
> Wait, back up... virtual PC images?

Yes. Next question?

Oh, did anyone yet mention the rootshares for machines that boot from 
the network (who would want a HD to spin around near sleeping facilities 
(=the bed console) or in a HTPC?)?

> BTW... it's possible to rip DVDs??

Yes. dd if=/dev/dvd of=dvd.img

> Jesus, my PC is old. o_O

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-98377375624850470

Here's the lyrics:
http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/weirdalyankovic/itsallaboutthepentiums.html

-- 
Eero "Aero" Ahonen
    http://www.zbxt.net
       aer### [at] removethiszbxtnetinvalid


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From: Eero Ahonen
Subject: Re: Yet another Doctor John rant
Date: 31 Mar 2008 15:42:36
Message: <47f14cbc@news.povray.org>
Orchid XP v8 wrote:
> Perhaps I'm not understanding correctly - video data typically eats a 
> few GB per minute. So why do you need 1,000 GB? That's, like, several 
> *hours* of video data. You'd have to be producing a feature film or 
> something to need more, surely?

First of all, you'll have easily more than twice the data you'll 
actually need. While shooting video you'll get *a lot* of misshoots.

Secondly, you'll need some scratch space. So the 1000GB can be divided 
by 3 or 4 in the first place - 250 or 333GB ain't so much anymore...

-- 
Eero "Aero" Ahonen
    http://www.zbxt.net
       aer### [at] removethiszbxtnetinvalid


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From: Warp
Subject: Re: Yet another Doctor John rant
Date: 31 Mar 2008 15:44:03
Message: <47f14d12@news.povray.org>
Orchid XP v8 <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
> >> Damn - what on earth could you possibly use 1 TB of disk for?? o_O
> > 
> >   Video editing. It's not even enough for serious work on that field.

> Perhaps I'm not understanding correctly - video data typically eats a 
> few GB per minute. So why do you need 1,000 GB? That's, like, several 
> *hours* of video data. You'd have to be producing a feature film or 
> something to need more, surely?

  Do you remember our talk about layers in image editing software?

  Video editing software don't have layers per se, but tracks, which
is almost the same thing.

  Usually the video editing process consists in having hundreds, if not
even thousands of video clips from which you create the whole video.

-- 
                                                          - Warp


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From: Orchid XP v8
Subject: Re: Yet another Doctor John rant
Date: 31 Mar 2008 15:49:19
Message: <47f14e4f$1@news.povray.org>
>> OK, I rephrase: Can you actually *do* something useful with this data
>> once you have it?
> 
> Mount it as a virtual dvd and treat it as if it was a disk. (Daemon tools,
> etc)

Oh... I wouldn't have expected that to work due to copy protection.

> Most DVD writing software will let you take an iso and burn to a DVD so that
> the burnt disk looks like the original.

Isn't the DVD copy protection designed expressedly for the purpose of 
completely preventing this from ever happening?

> I wouldn't exactly be storing ripped DVDs if I couldn't do anything with
> them...

Well, hence my surprise... ;-)


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From: Orchid XP v8
Subject: Re: Yet another Doctor John rant
Date: 31 Mar 2008 15:50:37
Message: <47f14e9d@news.povray.org>
Warp wrote:

>   Do you remember our talk about layers in image editing software?
> 
>   Video editing software don't have layers per se, but tracks, which
> is almost the same thing.
> 
>   Usually the video editing process consists in having hundreds, if not
> even thousands of video clips from which you create the whole video.

GAH! o_O

No wonder all the video I create looks rubbish...


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From: Nicolas Alvarez
Subject: Re: Yet another Doctor John rant
Date: 31 Mar 2008 15:54:09
Message: <47f14f71$1@news.povray.org>
Orchid XP v8 escribió:
> Oh... I wouldn't have expected that to work due to copy protection.

Few discs have real copy protection.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DVD-Video#Restrictions

"CSS does not make it more difficult to copy the digital content, nor 
possible to distinguish between legal and illegal copies of a work, but 
it does restrict the playback software that may be used."

"After DeCSS ripping software became available, companies developed 
techniques to introduce errors in DVD-Video discs that don't normally 
affect playback and navigation of a disc, but can cause problems in 
software that attempts to copy the entire disc."


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From: Eero Ahonen
Subject: Re: Yet another Doctor John rant
Date: 31 Mar 2008 16:03:04
Message: <47f15188$1@news.povray.org>
Orchid XP v8 wrote:
> 
> No, I meant I think the CPU die is encased in solid metal to promote 
> heat transfer from it to the heat sink.

Ah, yes. Would sound pretty reasonable.

-- 
Eero "Aero" Ahonen
    http://www.zbxt.net
       aer### [at] removethiszbxtnetinvalid


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From: Gail Shaw
Subject: Re: Yet another Doctor John rant
Date: 31 Mar 2008 16:28:08
Message: <47f15768@news.povray.org>
"Orchid XP v8" <voi### [at] devnull> wrote in message
news:47f14e4f$1@news.povray.org...
> >> OK, I rephrase: Can you actually *do* something useful with this data
> >> once you have it?
> >
> > Mount it as a virtual dvd and treat it as if it was a disk. (Daemon
tools,
> > etc)
>
> Oh... I wouldn't have expected that to work due to copy protection.

What I'm generally ripping doesn't have copy protection.
SQL Server DVDs
Conference proceedings
Game demo disks (from magazines)
etc

I never said I was ripping DVD video (which is just as possible, but
slightly more difficult and doesn't result in an iso file)


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From: Stephen
Subject: Re: Yet another Doctor John rant
Date: 31 Mar 2008 17:23:57
Message: <tuo2v35igqn31gi5op6if64b0vplej67gc@4ax.com>
On Mon, 31 Mar 2008 23:28:43 +0200, "Gail Shaw"
<initialsurname@sentech sa dot com> wrote:

>
>I never said I was ripping DVD video (which is just as possible, but
>slightly more difficult and doesn't result in an iso file)
>
It can, if you are that way inclined :)
Just about any illegal activity can be done, if you are that way
inclined.
Not that I am but I had a hard milk round :) and I know a few dubious
people.
-- 

Regards
     Stephen


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From: Darren New
Subject: Re: Yet another Doctor John rant
Date: 31 Mar 2008 22:01:25
Message: <47f1a585@news.povray.org>
Orchid XP v8 wrote:
> The Amiga has always been able to work at resolutions other than TV. 
> That's just the default settings.

Sorry. I never saw the A1000 plugged into any monitor more resolute than 
a television. Maybe in theory, yes, but not something you could buy off 
the shelf.

(IIRC, not even in theory, tho. :-)

> I've yet to see any group of people as fanatical about a technology as 
> the Amiga users though. 

It was very awesome technology. I still have all the textbooks. I still 
think it's a great way to build an OS.  It's just hard to do it 
multi-user. :-)

-- 
   Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)
     "That's pretty. Where's that?"
          "It's the Age of Channelwood."
     "We should go there on vacation some time."


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From: Darren New
Subject: Re: Yet another Doctor John rant
Date: 31 Mar 2008 22:05:01
Message: <47f1a65d$1@news.povray.org>
Orchid XP v8 wrote:
> Perhaps I'm not understanding correctly - video data typically eats a 
> few GB per minute. So why do you need 1,000 GB? That's, like, several 
> *hours* of video data. You'd have to be producing a feature film or 
> something to need more, surely?

I took nine hours of video on my vacation to Africa. Editted down to (I 
think) 2.

It's sitting on tapes, waiting for me to pull it in to burn to DVD, now 
that I have that capabilitiy.

-- 
   Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)
     "That's pretty. Where's that?"
          "It's the Age of Channelwood."
     "We should go there on vacation some time."


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From: Darren New
Subject: Re: Yet another Doctor John rant
Date: 31 Mar 2008 22:27:55
Message: <47f1abbb$1@news.povray.org>
Warp wrote:
>   It's incredible how you find ways to bash C++ in every possible context.

Actually, I'd like to apologize.

If, for some reason, you're taking my C++ comments as a personal 
offense, I'd like to point out they weren't made with that intent. I 
think you, Warp, are an extremely skilled and intelligent person. While 
I haven't seen any of your code, I expect I would hire you to work on 
mission-critical software my livelihood depends on without a second 
thought. Your comments are usually insightful and thought-provoking, 
enough so that I went out and bought a couple of C++ books to re-learn 
its capabilities in case it would be appropriate in my future. When my 
opinion differs from yours, it's almost always simply a matter of 
preference or opinion rather than something factual. (Windows sucks! 
Linux is hard to use! :-) In the rare case where it's something factual 
and I think I happen to be right, it's something where I have recent 
experience and you don't and the "common folklore" is out of date.

I bash C++ because its power excuses it for many of the flaws I see. I 
could equally bash Perl or PHP or any other language I've ever used, 
probably easier, because they have so few other redeeming qualities. 
It's easy to bash a lame language that's lame because the designers 
didn't care. It's more fun to bash a powerful language that seems lame 
because of complex intentional restrictions on its design.

I bash C++ for the same reason I'd mock someone who fells trees with 
dynamite: If you can manage it, hats off to you, but let me stand way 
over there and watch the fun while you do it... :-) It's certainly most 
effective, as certainly as it's inappropriate for inexperienced people.

If you think that when I'm making fun of C++'s shortcomings I'm also 
making fun of those who use C++ effectively, let me just say I'm not, 
and I am sorry if my being silly upset you.  If so, let me know, and 
I'll knock it off here, and only be serious about it.

-- 
   Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)
     "That's pretty. Where's that?"
          "It's the Age of Channelwood."
     "We should go there on vacation some time."


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From: Invisible
Subject: Re: Yet another Doctor John rant
Date: 1 Apr 2008 04:25:20
Message: <47f1ff80$1@news.povray.org>
Darren New wrote:
> Orchid XP v8 wrote:
>> The Amiga has always been able to work at resolutions other than TV. 
>> That's just the default settings.
> 
> Sorry. I never saw the A1000 plugged into any monitor more resolute than 
> a television. Maybe in theory, yes, but not something you could buy off 
> the shelf.

I've had my A1200 plugged into a monitor running at 960 x 720 for ages. 
It's just that games tend to not like it very much. :-(

[That's kind of the Amiga's downfall. Too many applications bypass the 
OS because "the hardware is always the same". This fails epically when 
the hardware changes...]

> It was very awesome technology. I still have all the textbooks. I still 
> think it's a great way to build an OS.  It's just hard to do it 
> multi-user. :-)

It *was* nice to feel all smug watching those PC guys struggling along 
with 16-colour VGA graphics when I had a machine that would display 
*millions* of colours simultaneously. ;-)

But then the hardware stood still for 10 years...

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*


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From: Phil Cook
Subject: Re: Yet another Doctor John rant
Date: 1 Apr 2008 06:21:02
Message: <op.t8xi0wgmc3xi7v@news.povray.org>
And lo on Fri, 28 Mar 2008 21:21:46 -0000, Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom>  
did spake, saying:

> Doctor John wrote:
>> Why is it that so many M$ users (present company excepted) defend their
>> choice by pointing to the success of M$ as a company rather than being
>> able to rationally discuss the pros and cons of Windows (all variants)
>> as a stable and secure OS?
>
> Because non-technical people don't know about that stuff. They just know  
> that it can't be *too* bad if that many people are using it.  I.e., they  
> look at the users, and trust the opinion of those who most got it right.
>
> It's not science, it's politics.

Another conversation

"Millions of people can't be wrong!"
"Why not?"
"Um well because er if something was wrong then people would stop using it"
"And the first person who tries that gets told 'Millions of people can't  
be wrong'"
"Um"

-- 
Phil Cook

--
I once tried to be apathetic, but I just couldn't be bothered
http://flipc.blogspot.com


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From: Phil Cook
Subject: Re: Yet another Doctor John rant
Date: 1 Apr 2008 06:34:03
Message: <op.t8xjmljwc3xi7v@news.povray.org>
And lo on Mon, 31 Mar 2008 08:27:22 +0100, scott <sco### [at] laptopcom> did  
spake, saying:

> I would far rather trust MS with that than a group of voluntary  
> workers.  MS has a brand name to protect and shareholders to please,  
> they are not going to do anything stupid.

Vista? Sorry cheap shot ;-)

-- 
Phil Cook

--
I once tried to be apathetic, but I just couldn't be bothered
http://flipc.blogspot.com


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From: Mike Raiford
Subject: Re: Yet another Doctor John rant
Date: 1 Apr 2008 06:49:45
Message: <47f22159$1@news.povray.org>
Orchid XP v8 wrote:

> 
> Damn - what on earth could you possibly use 1 TB of disk for?? o_O
> 

Video comes to mind. I use my 0.5TB external drive to store photos (in 
raw format, JPEG is inferior, much better to have the full-res 14bit 
file) It's nice to know I have breathing room, though, but it is slowly 
shrinking. I'll probably need to buy another one in a year or two.


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From: scott
Subject: Re: Yet another Doctor John rant
Date: 1 Apr 2008 07:14:53
Message: <47f2273d$1@news.povray.org>
>> I would far rather trust MS with that than a group of voluntary  workers. 
>> MS has a brand name to protect and shareholders to please,  they are not 
>> going to do anything stupid.
>
> Vista? Sorry cheap shot ;-)

Hehe, but would have been stupider not to release Vista (what would happen 
to MS once everyone owned a copy of WinXP?).


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