Don’t worry, just a little bump - $70 is just around the corner. Short traders just keep making those margin calls, mortgage the house if you have to. Fortunes await you! PO is for pansies and doomers. At $70 short some more ..... it is going back to $22 .... the world is awash with oil ........ reality has nothing to do with it, its all in those charts!!!!!!!!!!
Posted: Mon May 05, 2008 12:40 am Post subject: Re: How durable is the internet?
Eh, in a few months there will just be a two mile crater there.
etch-a-lon meanes LEVEL OF POWER
They know full well, and that is what it is for a few months. soon you will be roasting chicken over a campfire on the westcoast, or pushing up daisies on the east.
Posted: Mon May 05, 2008 6:41 am Post subject: Re: How durable is the internet?
GASMON wrote:
I remember reading somewhere that ALL traffic routes via the USA, and is monitored / recorded.
That use to be true, but not anymore. Other countries have or are going to have their own main nodes. _________________ Fighting technobabble and Woo Woos.
Posted: Sun Jun 01, 2008 11:43 am Post subject: Re: Need Low-Energy Computing Info/Forum
I bought a Linutop 2 computer for surfing and e-mail purposes, where one of the links in the first post go. It's very nice. 8W power consumpton and makes no noise. It had an annoying bug when it booted itself on in the middle of night but I got it fixed in an software update.
The Linutop is a French company, and the computer is priced in euros, so it would be rather expensive for an American visitor of po.com with current exchange rates. It cost 370 euros to deliver it to Finland with all shipping costs and taxes which is currently 575 USD and it's even higher to deliver it to USA due to higher shipping costs.
Posted: Sun Jun 01, 2008 12:04 pm Post subject: Re: Need Low-Energy Computing Info/Forum
There has been a lot of development recently in effecient processors. The Atom processor is grabbing all the headlines today. They even have a dual core version.
Seems like the main offender in power consumption going forward will be the screen, not necessarily the base PC. Everyone's waiting on OLEDs that won't wear out so fast.
Joined: Feb 27, 2008 Posts: 57 Location: Washington State (US)
Posted: Sun Jun 01, 2008 11:28 pm Post subject: Re: Need Low-Energy Computing Info/Forum
TommyJefferson wrote:
I want to build an energy efficient Linux workstation. It only needs to be able to run Firefox, Thunderbird, and Open Office. I want a fat desktop like KDE or Gnome, not Xfce.
I was afraid the mini-itx format might be lacking in performance for that.
...
First off, there will be tradeoffs. Just like if you want to get 80 mpg, a dualie F-350 isn't gonna get you there.
I built a mini-itx system about 5 years ago or more -- a 1ghz Nehemiah processor. I used to run Redhat 9 on it with KDE -- but this was KDE from a few back. Anyway, it's still running performing firewall duty with Ubuntu. It has a Gnome desktop but I run it headless and do any GUI stuff by remote X forwarding over SSH. That runs snappy, but then, since the display work is done on my local machine, it ought to be.
Here's the tradeoff -- it probably isn't going to run compiz fusion with breathtaking speed. It will certainly run a standard Gnome or KDE desktop however. You just aren't going to get the bestest compiz eyecandy. That's your tradeoff.
Although it should be noted that Via has open sourced all its video specs so open source drivers just might work some magic when coupled with 5 years of performance enhancements since I bought mine. If so, you'll have eyecandy out your ears (I know this -- I have Mac laptops and Linux desktops -- compiz fusion wins).
Performance wise, my mini-itx felt equivalent to an AMD Duron 800 mhz system I had running concurrently. Speaking of reliability, the board for the AMD burned out, it was replaced by a board for an Athlon XP 2200+, which developed leaky caps, and is now a core2duo system.
In the meantime, I've had no issues with the itx board at all. I did have a powersupply go -- not a DC supply, a small AC supply -- but that was made by Antec, not Via. It's been rock solid for 5 years or more now. If my old mini-itx board is indicative of current quality, then I'd say mini-itx boards rule.
Joined: Feb 27, 2008 Posts: 57 Location: Washington State (US)
Posted: Sun Jun 01, 2008 11:34 pm Post subject: Re: Need Low-Energy Computing Info/Forum
tsakach wrote:
...
For a low-powered linux server, OpenWrt is an embedded linux platform that can be installed on many mass-produced wireless routers that use the broadcom/mips chipset. ....
Except he won't be running a fat desktop on that setup -- although being competent on the CLI is a prerequisite for true geekhood.
Posted: Mon Jun 02, 2008 2:28 am Post subject: Re: Need Low-Energy Computing Info/Forum
max_in_wa wrote:
First off, there will be tradeoffs. Just like if you want to get 80 mpg, a dualie F-350 isn't gonna get you there.
The tradeoff is more about costs than performance IME. For instance, nabbing a Via C7 combo, an 80plus PS, a gig of DDR2, a dvd-burner, and a CF-card/adapter for storage is just about the cheapest computer money can buy in terms of initial costs and operating costs. But, that being said, for more cash, someone can get something that can use similar amounts of power and cost the same to run, but is much faster at stock (or higher) voltages/speeds. Undervolting/underclocking my 754 Sempron64, w/ the same hardware as my VIA system, resulted in the same amount of power, while performing better on benchmarks, so sometimes something similar in overall costs can still have noticeable performance differences. In short, YMMV. The best bet as usual is to thoroughly research the system/components before purchase. _________________
Joined: Jun 21, 2006 Posts: 1196 Location: Burgundy, France
Posted: Mon Jun 02, 2008 3:00 am Post subject: Re: Need Low-Energy Computing Info/Forum
I'm surprised nobody has mentioned the ASUS Eee PC.
Off the top of my head they have a peak power usage of 11 Watts (and a new one will be seven watts).
They come pre-installed with Linux, and use solid state flash drives instead of hard drives. They'd be great as a home web/mail server if you didn't expect lots of computational speed or huge files. The latest one with 20Gb of solid state storage could also be useful as a long-term personal library device (you'd possibly want to buy a few just in case).
...As Peddie observes, it was only 11 years ago that the U.S. government spent approximately $33 million to build ASCI Red, one of the first supercomputers to achieve 1 teraflop. The new graphics chips offer similar power to the 1997-era supercomputer for a fraction of the cost.
"Now we can go down to Fry's or Best Buy and buy a graphics board that has 1 teraflop of processing power for $600 or less," says Peddie.
I think we should put the populations of China and India to work programming these damn things.
No cars. No highways. No American lifestyle. But they get an internet connection and they can telecommute!
Parallel programming is way behind the hardware capability. But a bunch of universities have gotten together to do something about that.
I'm trying to imagine what the average geek's computing experience would be like IF the software were up to speed - which is bound to happen eventually. _________________ Documentary: "Oil, Smoke & Mirrors" Engineers Question 911
Posted: Sat Jun 21, 2008 1:41 pm Post subject: Re: Supercomputing Power Hits the Desktop, Minus the Softwar
Is there really any need to have a super computer on your desktop? Each one of those 280gtx cards has four core GPU and the desktop with three of these cards means 12 processing cores just for the graphics. Plus the computer also has multi-core CPU with up to 4 more cores of power. The computer in the article is about 20 times more powerful than my 2006 model Pentium D with a modest 8800gt card. That is way out of line considering the progression on Moore's Law.
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