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Comment Not impressed with Netgear 802.11N (Score 1) 300

by borgasm (#29652631) Attached to: Netgear WNR3500L Open Source Router Announced

I have a WNDR3300 running dd-wrt and an Asus WL-520GU as a print server. I am not impressed with the range of the 5GHz WNDR3300 in N mode. In a room where I receive decent G coverage, I get almost no N coverage. My old router used to reach up to the third floor, but the Netgear fails to do so (hence the Asus as a print server and G repeater).

DD-WRT, however, is one of the coolest things I've seen in a long time. I remember manually editing IPTABLES back in the day to make my computer be a router, and I never thought I'd see it on something so embedded and cheap.

Comment Re:As opposed to the current generation.. (Score 1, Interesting) 177

by Patoski (#28893211) Attached to: Next Console Generation Defined By Software, Not Hardware

The Xbox department turned profitable in early 2008... Given that the first Xbox finished as a loss, that would mean the 360 would have to have had to recoup its losses AND the first xbox's for the department to turn profitable. The reason for the delay in turning profitable was due to the 2 billion dollar RROD investment.

I think investors are really only looking for a return on their investment for a single generation of hardware. I believe almost everyone overlooks the loss the first XBox took as the price of admission into the console market.

Also, blaming the RROD is pointless since initial execution has NEVER been MS' strong suit. MS constantly has these sorts of big issues when they ship major revisions of their product. Writing this incident off as a singular mistake ignores MS' long history of shipping initially buggy products.

On the other hand, the longer this console generations life cycle drags on, the more it plays into MS' hands. If nothing else MS is good at steadily improving their products over time (e.g. the old "don't buy MS software until SP2" rule of thumb).

Comment Re:As opposed to the current generation.. (Score 2, Interesting) 177

by Patoski (#28892701) Attached to: Next Console Generation Defined By Software, Not Hardware

It's a nonsense comment. The software ALREADY defines the consoles. You can have the latest hardware in the world, but if you have no decent games, your system is a paper weight.

Yes, software the console with the best software library wins (e.g. PS1, PS2, and Wii). And yes, none of the those consoles had the best hardware of their generation.

However, I think you're missing the new nugget of information here. The software playing field has been stretched and MS is relying on software other than games (which are mostly cross platform now) to be their key differentiator. We've already seen some of this, but it looks like we'll be seeing a lot more.

MS has wanted to be the home entertainment hub for about a decade now (WebTV, Media Center PCs, etc.) but has failed so far. It will be interesting to see how successful MS will be at pushing the Xbox into the center of our home entertainment centers. I also wonder how much more time MS has (maybe a one more generation?) before their shareholders revolt due to the 360 hemorrhaging cash over its lifetime.

Comment Re:A virtual environment then. (Score 1) 470

by Patoski (#27868461) Attached to: Court Sets Rules For RIAA Hard Drive Inspection

So as long as you wipe or erase the hard drive before litigation begins, or before you become subpoena'ed (aware of the litigation), you're protected if you destroyed any evidence of your activities?

No, that is not a viable strategy. The duty to preserve data arises when litigation has commenced or is reasonably anticipated. The judge would likely hit you with sanctions, an adverse inference (i.e. you destroyed it so the court will assume the worst), or in the worst case a default judgement (i.e. you lose).

All of this stuff is very essential to eDiscovery and best practices.

Comment Re:Introduced me to Slashdot (Score 2, Interesting) 94

by Patoski (#27023407) Attached to: RIAA Santangelo Case 'Settled In Principle'

This was also the case that introduced me to Slashdot. One day I discovered that people on some crazy place called "Slashdot.org" were going nuts analyzing the transcript of Patti's court appearance. I couldn't understand what I was seeing. It looked like an online Talmudic debate. The people seemed a little like lawyers -- but they clearly were not lawyers -- and many of them seemed to be smarter than lawyers. So I asked a few people, and eventually found one -- my youngest son who is a techie -- who explained it to me.

Since discovering Slashdot, my life hasn't quite been the same.

Thanks a bunch Ray. I know a lot of people here have the same warm feeling towards you. It's a great feeling knowing that there are others out there fighting for justice.

It's also really pleasant to see a principled and eminently competent lawyer getting some exposure. Keep up the good fight!
Intel

Submission + - Intel CTO: Computing's future in multicore machine (computerworld.com.au)

Submitted by JohnnyUtah
JohnnyUtah writes: For much of his 34 years at Intel, Justin R. Rattner has been a pioneer in parallel and distributed processing. His early ideas didn't catch on in the market, but the time has come for them now, he recently told Computerworld's Gary Anthes. Rattner answered questions on a wide range of issues, some of which included: Are we at the end of the line for microprocessor clock speeds? We'll see modest growth, 5% to 10% per generation. Power issues are so severe that there won't be any radical jumps. If you get a 2% improvement in clock speed but at a 5% increase in power consumption, that's not a favorable trade-off. I keep reassuring Bill Gates that there is no magic transistor that is suddenly going to solve his problem, despite his strong desire for such a development. So the only way to keep Moore's Law going is to add more computing cores to a microprocessor chip? The only way forward in terms of performance — but we also think in terms of power — is to go to multicores. Multicores put us back on the historical trajectory of Moore's Law. We can directly apply the increase in transistors to core count — if you are willing to suspend disbelief for a moment that you can actually get all those cores working together. How many cores might we see on a chip in five years? We have been talking about terascale for the past couple of years, and we are demonstrating an 80-core [processor chip]. Our [future] product is Larrabee. It's not 80 cores; we can do things like that in research because we don't care how much it costs. Our hope is that that will stimulate software developers to bring terascale applications to market. We are talking about early production [of Larrabee] in 2009. b>What's the future of spintronics, in which information is based on the spin of an electron rather than on its charge? Charge-based electronics is going to run out of steam. The memory guys have already hit that point, basically. They can't make those memory cells any smaller. So researchers are looking at quantum effects like spin, and some early results aren't bad. Spin has some nice things about it, both in terms of performance and power. Could we have working computers based on spin in 10 years? Yes, but I wouldn't be more aggressive than that. We'd want to make the transition seamlessly. We wouldn't want to say, "OK, there will be no new microprocessors for five years while we figure out spintronics."
Programming

Submission + - Gaining Non-Trivial Programming Experience

Submitted by AvailableName
AvailableName writes: I have been working as an IT Manager for a small non-IT company for the past 3 years. This is my first job since graduating from college with a Computer Programmer/Analyst diploma. My role does contain some development (C#, PowerBuilder 10.5, MS SQL 2000 programming), but the projects are, what I would consider, trivial. My other responsibilities include every other facet of IT (from printers all the way to budgeting). I find my job increasingly unfulfilling. I am uninterested and feel unqualified for some of my responsibilities. What I am interested in is software development and computer science in general. However, when I look at job postings for developers, I notice requirements often include experience with tools for testing, building and collaboration. My question is: How do I go from all the trivial software I have created (either at work or through working through textbooks) to gaining experience in creating non-trivial software with sophisticated tools?
Portables

Submission + - Immobile Slashdot 4

Submitted by
saphena
saphena writes: "This is the 21st century, why is Slashdot not yet mobile friendly?

I use a Palm TX running Blazer 5.3. Page load usually aborts with "page too big" but even if it doesn't I still need to scroll through acres of bumpf to get to any substantial content.

Can't we have a mobile.slashdot page, please?"
Censorship

Submission + - Ron Paul Nation Banned from Digg (ronpaulnation.com)

Submitted by
An anonymous reader writes: Without notice, political campaign site Ron Paul Nation has had its Digg account cancelled. From the Ron Paul Nation website's complaint:

This development should, but sadly doesn't, come as a surprise. Upon reading more into the Digg culture there are a definite large surge of positive Ron Paul diggers, but more recently there has been a large surge of activity from members of the "Bury Brigade," as they are known ... for their efforts to bury all Ron Paul related stories bearing a positive spin.
Graphics

Submission + - AMD Delivers First Stream Processor @ 500 GFLOPS

Submitted by
Godsmack74
Godsmack74 writes: "AMD FireStream 9170 The AMD FireStream 9170 will be the world's first Stream GPU with double-precision floating point technology tailored for scientific and engineering calculations. Competitively priced at an MSRP of $1999 USD, it features up to 500 GFLOPS of compute power, rivalling many of today's supercomputers, and providing dramatic acceleration for critical algorithms. This second generation Stream Processor is built with 55 nm process technology and consumes less than 150 watts of power — delivering an exceptional performance per watt. In addition, the reduced heat dissipation allows it to function in dense design configurations. The FireStream 9170 is a single card solution with 2GB of onboard GDDR3 memory to compute large datasets without CPU traffic. The asynchronous direct memory access (DMA) ensures data can flow freely without interrupting the stream processor or CPU. At $1999 USD it may be one of the most expensive graphics processors on the planet. Although it's not really competitively priced against anything on the "normal" graphics market, for the high end market it fits right in. Of course where else can you pay $1999 and get 500GFLOPS of compute power? With the power of graphics cards rivaling and surpassing that of average processors the migration of the entire industry to graphics architectures and line of thought is not far away. Are we once again seeing AMD's forethought and planning in action? Acquiring ATI may prove to be a genius move in the long run. Pictures and more information can be found at TechwareLabs"
Yahoo!

Submission + - Lawyers roast Yahoo over China dissident testimony (computerworld.com.au)

Submitted by Arashtamere
Arashtamere writes: Yahoo aided the Chinese government in the arrest of a Chinese journalist, then its general counsel deliberately or negligently mislead the U.S. Congress about the company's role during a 2006 testimony, a senior lawmaker accused the company this week. Shi Tao, arrested in November 2004, had used his e-mail account to forward information about a Chinese government ban on reporting about the Tiananmen Square crackdown on the 15th anniversary of the protests. He is serving a 10-year prison sentence. Representative Tom Lantos, a California Democrat and chairman of the House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee, ripped into Yahoo and General Counsel Michael Callahan for failing to notify the committee when the company discovered his February 2006 testimony about Yahoo's role in the arrest of Shi. And he questioned why a company with Yahoo's resources has not come to the aid of Shi's family. Callahan, in February 2006, testified that he did not know the nature of the investigation when Chinese authorities demanded Yahoo China turn over the IP (Internet Protocol) address for the person who turned out to be Shi.
Movies

Submission + - Uncrackable BlueRay BD Cracked (fastsilicon.com)

Submitted by mrneutron2003
mrneutron2003 writes: The new protection scheme Sony was banking on as a scheme good for at least a decade, has fallen to the obvious stupidity of that statement, courtesy of Slysoft . Giancarlo Bettini, boss at Slysoft , in an interview with German Reports said he expects his company to have software out by the end of the year. We suspect Sony needs a new calendar. Ten years apparently isn't what it used to be. http://www.fastsilicon.com/latest-news/uncrackable-blueray-bd-cracked.html?Itemid=60

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