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Comment Talk to us first if you wish to patent the changes (Score 1) 63

It's very common these days for companies to allow universities to use their technology at the cost of tying the company into the university's patent revenue. And of course this is often publicly-funded research, so not only is the taxpayer paying for the development of patents used to sue that same taxpayer, the patents go directly to a company from academia.

The net effect is to feed intellectual property centered companies at the expense of the technology sector in general and small technology companies in particular.

Comment Re:Specced too low, weird form factor (Score 1) 174

This is the *mobile* i5, not the full blown desktop i5. It's basically the Broadwell successor to the Haswell 29xx series. 15W TDP or less. The BRIX runs 8W idle (not sleeping) and 20W at 100% cpu (all 4 threads full out). Intel is playing fast and loose with their naming schema for Broadwell.

-Matt

Comment Re:Specced too low, weird form factor (Score 1) 174

All the older haswell-based boxes have dropped in price significantly. They make decent boxes too as long as you are not compute-heavy. E.G. the 2957U is 2-core, no hypthreading, 1.4 GHz, no-turbo, and no AESNI (so https and other crypto is slow). Whereas even the Broadwell i3-5200U is 2-core/4-thread, 2.2 GHz with Turbo to 2.7 GHz, and has AESNI.

I have an Acer C720P chromebook running DragonFly (BSD) with the 2955U in it, which is very close to the 2957U. I would call it decent for its purpose and it can certainly drive the chromebook's display fairly well. Firefox is not as snappy as I would like, though.

On the i5-5200U even unaccelerated video decoding can run full frame at full speed on my 1920x1050 monitor and firefox is quite snappy.

If I had to make a cost-concious decision on using the older Haswell based cpu and giving up some cpu power I would say that it would still be a reasonable choice *BUT* I would compensate at least a little by throwing in more ram (at least 4GB).

-Matt

Comment Specced too low, weird form factor (Score 2) 174

It's specced way too low to really be useful as a general computing device, and the form factor is 'weird' to say the least. It's too big to really be called a stick, and too small to be able to pack a decent cpu. There's plenty of space behind the monitor for a somewhat larger device in a better form factor. The stick is a play toy that you will become disappointed with very quickly (think the old 'netbook' concept Intel tried to push a few years ago... that's what the stick feels like).

Honestly, the 'compute stick' makes zero sense for a TV-mounted device. It is far better to just go with a chrome cast stick or an AppleTV for airplay and using a pad or cell in your hand to control it if you want to throw a display up on the TV. Otherwise you will be fumbling around with a horrible remote or you have to throw together a bluetooth keyboard (etc...) and it just won't be a fun or convenient experience.

My recommendation... don't bother with this gadget. Instead, spend a bit more money and get an Intel NUC or Gigabyte BRIX (both based on Broadwell). And get at least the i5 version, the lack of turbo in the i3 version is telling. e.g. i5-5200 based box or better. It will cost significantly more than the stick, but it packs a decent cpu, can take up to 16GB of ram (2x204pin SO-DIMM DDR3), and depending on the model might even have room for a 2.5" SSD or HDD in it. The broadwell i5-5200U makes for quite a reasonable compact workstation and boxes based on it will be almost universally dual-headed. Of course, whatever floats your boat but I would definitely say that the lowest-priced Intel NUC or Gigabyte BRIX that is haswell-based or broadwell-based is still going to be an order of magnitude better than the compute stick.

I have one of the Gigabyte GB-BXi5H-5200's myself ('H' version fits a normal 2.5" SSD or HDD) and packed 16GB of ram into it. It is dual-headed so I can drive two displays with it and the box is small enough to mount on the back of a monitor if you so desire (it even includes a mounting plate and most monitors, such as LG monitors, are ready to take it). And if mounting it on the back of a TV doesn't make sense, mount it on the back of a monitor instead or just let it float behind the monitor. It's a small box, after all, it won't get in the way of anything. 4-thread (2-core), 2.2 GHz turbo to 2.7 GHz. Dual-head. Decent.

-Matt

Comment Re:The answer has been clear (Score 1) 390

I see consistently faster times with my IPv6 vs IPv4 with my native service at home, even with just pings. This seems to be the norm with most networks. If you are using a tunnel broker, such as he.net or otherwise you are most likely going a longer path with those artificial midpoints. Also, your browser may be broken as it doesn't implement rfc6555 properly.

Comment Re:Waiting for the killer app ... (Score 4, Informative) 390

Perhaps you missed world IPv6 day when they both jumped at the same time to enable their front pages? There are a lot of things that don't work right in an IPv6 only world, such as Skype but the list of things that doesn't work is getting shorter. If you take a look at the statistics it's quite encouraging to see a steady growth curve.

https://www.google.com/intl/en...

Comment Re:The answer has been clear (Score 2) 390

[citation needed] for your assertion. Been deploying IPv6 at a major ISP/carrier for 13 years now. If you bought the wrong stuff or didn't ask for IPv6, you may be right but the proper gear is out there and doesn't cost any more. I can even get IPv6 over my VPN connection.

The issue is one of mentality and training. Above someone says "turned off IPv6, problem went away". That's certainly one way to say "I blame IPv6". They didn't troubleshoot the problem. Perhaps it's a DNS problem or something else they haven't properly diagnosed. Without actually understanding how the protocols work, one is doomed to failure and blame.

When you look at the major players who have deployed IPv6, including Netflix, Google, Yahoo to name but a few and compare that with the statistics on the cellular side... VZ Wireless sees over 60% IPv6 traffic. With the coming "great mobile demotion" tomorrow, it's more likely those devices if they come over 3GPP/LTE will perhaps visit you via IPv6 than via IPv4 if you properly enable your front door. If you are a CDN customer, it's a button to turn on IPv6. Cloudflare has it on by default, Akamai you have to ask, same for Limelight.

The edge protocols have only really reached maturity in the past 2 years to deliver a connection to the edge or your home. CPE lifetime is somewhere in the 3-7 year range, we are still another generation away from having the home properly IPv6 enabled, but it's more often just going to be there and "just work". There are a lot of IT workers who haven't invested enough to learn about the subtle differences in V6, such as NDP vs ARP, etc and will block all ICMPv6 not understanding they are blocking NDP so can't see a response to their NS. This too will pass much in the same way as those who only knew appletalk or IPX routing.

Comment Re:My B.S. Detector is Going Off (Score 2) 76

If the end of the coil that is hanging is grounded (earthed), it becomes an autotransformer. As it's shown, it's a variable inductor and the disconnected end is irrelevant and has no meaningful physical effect at the frequency a spark transmitter could have reached.

This comment seems to get closer to what they actually mean in their scientific paper. But the article about it is garble and the paper might suffer from second-language issues, and a lack of familiarity with the terms used in RF engineering.

Comment Re:Latency vs bandwidth (Score 5, Interesting) 162

That's isn't correct. The queue depth for a normal AHCI controller is 31 (assuming 1 tag is reserved for error handling). It only takes a queue depth of 2 or 3 for maximum linear throughput.

Also, most operating systems are doing read-ahead for the program. Even if a program is requesting data from a file in small 4K read() chunks, the OS itself is doing read-ahead with multiple tags and likely much larger 16K-64K chunks. That's assuming the data hasn't been cached in ram yet.

For writing, the OS is buffering the data and issuing the writes asynchronously so writing is not usually a bottleneck unless a vast amount of data is being shoved out.

-Matt

Comment Re:ISTR hearing something about that... (Score 2) 162

Actually, large compiles use surprisingly little actual I/O. Run a large compile... e.g. a parallel buildworld or a large ports bulk build or something like that while observing physical disk I/O statistics. You'll realize very quickly that the compiles are not I/O constrained in the least.

'most' server demons are also not I/O constrained in the least. A web server can be IOPS-constrained when asked to load, e.g. tons of small icons or thumbnails. If managing a lot of video or audio streams a web server typically becomes network-constrained but the IOPS will be high enough to warrant at least a SATA SSD and not a HDD.

Random database accesses are I/O constrained if not well-cached in ram, which depends on the size of the database too, of course. Very large databases which cannot be well cached are the best suited for PCIe SSDs. Not a whole lot else.

-Matt

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