The collected works of bri3d - Page 5

bri3d
From Boulder, CO
Who joined June 28, 2008, 11:08 a.m.

Wrote on the subject of Intel wants to charge you extra to unlock features at Sept. 19, 2010, 9:09 p.m...

Every enterprise house ever has done this for ages with mainframes, fibre channel fabric switches, etc. - IBM being the most glaringly obvious example with all of their mainframe gear.

I don't think it'll work for Intel as I don't think many (or any) of the kind of people who buy a low-end janky CPU will care about unlocking its potential, but who knows, there could be a secret hidden market of people who don't know what they want when they buy a PC, then suddenly want to upgrade and know enough to hunt down an upgrade card.

However, while I do think it's a completely idiotic idea I don't think it's "immoral" like various pundits have been claiming - you still buy exactly what's on the sticker, and the fact you can upgrade it is really just icing on the cake. If they were claiming the higher-end spec and then requiring the card to unlock, *that* would be immoral, but that's not what's happening.

bri3d
From Boulder, CO
Who joined June 28, 2008, 11:08 a.m.

Wrote on the subject of Intel wants to charge you extra to unlock features at Oct. 8, 2010, 2:19 p.m...

mattst88 wrote: Do you really have to use Blue fonts?

Switch to italics , just for SkyWriter

bri3d
From Boulder, CO
Who joined June 28, 2008, 11:08 a.m.

Wrote on the subject of iPad at Oct. 18, 2010, 10:43 a.m...

I'm waiting for SkyWriter to jump in and tell us about how it's the Second Coming, but even in my humble opinion, yes, the iPad is a worthy product.

I got mine expecting to develop apps on it and make a few bucks, rather than use it very frequently, but I quickly found myself using the device whenever I was home and lounging around. My roommates love it too - it's great for playing some casual games / making conversation when people are over, and it's fabulous for quickly picking up to look something up online.

It's also not half-bad for more extended browsing sessions, although heavy foruming or e-mail use gets tedious without a keyboard, at which point you might as well break out the laptop.

It's pretty much useless for actual work for me (I need more screen real estate and multitasking to do anything), but it's fantastic as an anti-distraction tool - all distractions go on the iPad, and no distractions on the desktop display means I have to notice and consciously decide when I'm drifting off task.

I'd get the WiFi model and not the 3G (although I think SkyWriter thinks differently) - I find carrying the iPad around on my person to be horribly inconvenient and thus I naturally find myself only using it where I have WiFi (work/home). 3G wouldn't help me much and I don't regret saving the money and not getting it.

bri3d
From Boulder, CO
Who joined June 28, 2008, 11:08 a.m.

Wrote on the subject of iPad at Oct. 18, 2010, 4:32 p.m...

From what I've seen the Galaxy Tab takes the Android UI and applies a judicious helping of Apple UI elements to it (the e-book reader being the most obvious example), so it probably is pretty comparable to the iPad if the smaller Android tablet is your cup of tea.

Listen to Steve Jobs rant about the 7-inch tablet formfactor on today's earnings call, though, and you'd think the Galaxy Tab will bite your fingers off or something!

And I agree with you on the mobile apps, which is why even though I work at a shop with a mobile product I stick to back-end and algorithms

bri3d
From Boulder, CO
Who joined June 28, 2008, 11:08 a.m.

Wrote on the subject of iPad at Oct. 18, 2010, 8:23 p.m...

eMGee wrote: What I really hate is that my iPad can't be ‘jailbreaked’ (at the moment), with the current software version/revision.

It can; look up limera1n. In one click you can be jailbroken on any current Apple device.

bri3d
From Boulder, CO
Who joined June 28, 2008, 11:08 a.m.

Wrote on the subject of Solaris 11 Express is out at Nov. 15, 2010, 4:34 p.m...

Only if you choose it, and it's in the default Ubuntu mode ("some effects") rather than full-on wobbly 3D BS mode.

I really, really, really wish Compiz never happened - the pressure to create dumb 3D effects in the first place completely borked X.Org even more than it was previously broken, and the push to get said dumb effects out the door instead of doing things right led to the boneheaded mess that is AIGLX.

I might try installing the x86 version on my play machine later on - I've always enjoyed Solaris but never enough to put up with it for too long.

bri3d
From Boulder, CO
Who joined June 28, 2008, 11:08 a.m.

Wrote on the subject of Sgi still alive ? at Nov. 29, 2010, 10:01 a.m...

Too bad the 1600SW output is a lie

bri3d
From Boulder, CO
Who joined June 28, 2008, 11:08 a.m.

Wrote on the subject of stripped Onyx2 rack in Los Angeles: free at Feb. 15, 2011, 10:46 a.m...

Ah, the West Coast, still the hotbed of smoking SGI deals.

Whoever gets this will be very lucky.

bri3d
From Boulder, CO
Who joined June 28, 2008, 11:08 a.m.

Wrote on the subject of Bake your graphics card! at Feb. 21, 2011, 7:23 p.m...

I've (temporarily) repaired a lot of xbox 360s using a large toaster oven - since the design flaw that leads to their demise in the first place persists, it doesn't fix them forever, but it's a new lease on life for free.

I can't imagine this wouldn't work in a lot of situations. However, reflowing BGA via home equipment (like toaster ovens or especially heat guns) is horrendously imprecise, so I'd only try it with low-value hardware for which a real fix (via a reflow shop) isn't worth it, since screwing up with too high a temperature or the wrong rate of cooling risks destroying more joints on the board or even worse frying the components.

And personally I'd prefer the toaster oven approach to the heat gun approach - while it is exposing the entire board to heat rather than just the affected area (and such risks frying the whole thing) it's also quite a bit more precise and less likely to cause localized board warping. Plus a toaster oven doesn't get nearly as hot as a heat gun, so one slip of the hand doesn't blow things away.

bri3d
From Boulder, CO
Who joined June 28, 2008, 11:08 a.m.

Wrote on the subject of [Poll] Which do we have more of singles or multiprocessors? at March 1, 2011, 9:43 p.m...

My only remaining SGIs are multiprocessor: one chassis unit of Origin2000 (with SI graphics) and my Origin 350 / VPro setup.

I think many hobbyist SGIs are uniprocessor because there were a lot more of them to begin with, and they were more likely to end up on desks where they were resold or taken rather than in server rooms where they were carefully monitored and recycled, auctioned, or scrapped.

bri3d
From Boulder, CO
Who joined June 28, 2008, 11:08 a.m.

Wrote on the subject of Mega MIPS system on The Register at March 10, 2011, 5:05 a.m...

Godson/Loongson 2F was available in a variety of commercial netbooks, most notably the French Gdium and Chinese Lemote Yeeloong (along with some Leemote net-tops). It has strange hardware bugs, notably surrounding branch prediction (pretty important, I'd think), and the errata wasn't translated into the English manual (!!!).

Stallman carried a Lemote netbook for a while as the entire hardware/software stack from the ground-up was open-spec and open-source. Sadly they were also garbage.

bri3d
From Boulder, CO
Who joined June 28, 2008, 11:08 a.m.

Wrote on the subject of Looking for some SGI equipment in Colorado at March 13, 2011, 7:18 a.m...

Hi; I'm in Boulder and I have an Indy R4600SC I'd be willing to give you if you come up and get it. It's sat idle in storage for a year or two now as I've moved on to other hobbies (and bigger and better SGIs) - PM me to let me know if you want it and I can go fetch it and we can set something up.

bri3d
From Boulder, CO
Who joined June 28, 2008, 11:08 a.m.

Wrote on the subject of WHat do we all do (occupation)? at March 29, 2011, 3:48 p.m...

I work at a startup (my third in a row now) - technically, I'm an "engineer," but since there aren't many of us I wear all hats: code in Ruby/Java/Scala, debugging C and C++, occasional sysad, product development, input on UI decisions, and so on. It's definitely a blast and I love being able to shape the product I'm writing, plus I work with an awesome team.

I used to do sysad and IT security consulting on a freelance/short-contract basis - that was fun but I'm sure glad I'm doing more now. Sys-ad especially got incredibly old incredibly fast.

bri3d
From Boulder, CO
Who joined June 28, 2008, 11:08 a.m.

Wrote on the subject of Youtube coming to IRIX? at April 25, 2011, 8:47 a.m...

duck wrote: Hmm, html5 was/is supposed to replace flash, and it should be able to with integrated scripting and svg canvas support; the compression format behind video playback seems a little unrelated, couldn't it just use ogg if the requirement is free implement/use (AFAICT ogg/theora/vorbis/FLAC are BSD-licensed)? Well, I speculate and CBA to find out, but it still seems like an existing solution was there so as to avoid reimplementing wheels.

Theora was based on On2's VP3 (with improvements from the open source community) while WebM is VP8 (with improvements from the community and Google). WebM is basically the natural evolution of the Theora community idea but with a better codec at its core.

What it boils down to is that WebM is technically superior so Google are pushing it instead - it makes sense to me: get the best open-source / unencumbered IP out there to compete with the very, very good patent-encumbered solution that a major competitor is pushing (Apple with H.264).

And as for "HTML5" (really animated SVG/canvas) replacing Flash, that'll have to wait until all browsers support SVG animation, canvas, and video *consistently* enough to be useful.

bri3d
From Boulder, CO
Who joined June 28, 2008, 11:08 a.m.

Wrote on the subject of Hwy 101 on Wednesday at April 25, 2011, 9:04 a.m...

Every time I end up on the 101 I remember why the train is there.

bri3d
From Boulder, CO
Who joined June 28, 2008, 11:08 a.m.

Wrote on the subject of Origin350 | 2x700MHz | 2GB | V10 Graphics | RAD Audio at April 25, 2011, 11:55 a.m...

Your solution is definitely a lot cleaner than mine - to put it lightly. My V10 may or may not be secured to the top of my O350's chassis by a piece of cardboard from a box of dish detergent over the matching screw hole... and my fans are secured by gravity and crossed fingers.

Mysteriously I've never had a single issue, even when running my system for 48+ hours at decent load, so I guess the ghetto engineering gods smiled on me.

fu wrote: reminds me of a graphics(?) board with hawaiian words i saw here some days ago.

That's an XTown - used to connect LEGO (Origin/Onyx2xxx) to a G-Brick for IR graphics. They say "The Best Pictures in the World" on them in Hawiian, because they were used to connect to "KONA" (the codename for Infinite Reality).

I miss the days of exciting stencils on SGI boards - once they got to the O350 the fun seems to have gone away.

bri3d
From Boulder, CO
Who joined June 28, 2008, 11:08 a.m.

Wrote on the subject of Fake obama certificate online at April 29, 2011, 11:18 a.m...

It's a byproduct of crappy OCR software trying to pull the text off the background layer and doing a poor job.

Alex Jones has to be one of the biggest nutjobs around these days - as soon as he sees an explanation that might sound viable, he trumpets it as a massive conspiracy with no acknowledgement to other possibilities (9/11 WAS A BOMBING etc).

bri3d
From Boulder, CO
Who joined June 28, 2008, 11:08 a.m.

Wrote on the subject of WWDC, Lion (Mac OS X 10.7), etc. at June 7, 2011, 3:29 p.m...

I'm loving iOS 5 so far. The new notification center really cleans up the OS and eliminated my only hang-up to wholeheartedly recommending iOS to everyone who asks me for phone advice. Yes, it's a rip-off of Android's notifications systems, but that's a good thing - if there's one thing Android nailed, that's it, and since iOS pretty handily sweeps every other core phone feature, it's now my OS of choice. Apple even made notifications uncharacteristically user-customizable, one-upping Android in the process.

iCloud is a fantastic idea - I'm not very convinced of the iCloud music offering's superiority to Google Music/Amazon Cloud or to Rdio/Rhapsody/Zune Pass et. al., but every other aspect seems to have nailed the promise of networking perfectly: use data without needing to deal with physical boundaries. And the provided key/value and document storage APIs will spawn some sweet apps with seamless Mac/PC/Phone sharing capabilities.

bri3d
From Boulder, CO
Who joined June 28, 2008, 11:08 a.m.

Wrote on the subject of node.js, JSDB; Which one compiles under Irix? at June 7, 2011, 3:30 p.m...

https://github.com/paul99/v8m-rb

(our very own bplaa-yai did some work to make this work on IRIX: https://github.com/paul99/v8m-rb/pull/1 )

bri3d
Who joined June 28, 2008, 10:08 a.m.
and authored 669 notes

Wrote on the subject of New MacBook Pro advice... at July 19, 2011, 9:50 p.m...

Got a 15" high-res after my 13" died. The higher pixel density on the high-res display option is a must in 15" (if you're getting more inches on your display, you might as well get the real estate to go with) and makes even the 13" look horribly blurry.

I'm in iOS app development right now and I'm getting spoiled by staring at an iPhone 4 every day - displays I formerly thought of as "beautiful" now look grainy and the previous-generation iDevice displays, which I always thought were pretty good, now annoy me.

Other than the high-res matte display (which I can't live without) I'd rather have the 13" - I prefer the size, weight, and especially the hour or two better battery life I got out of the 13". Too bad it's only offered with the iffy glass screen...

Also, get an SSD, whatever you do. It'll make your system feel ten times faster if you do almost anything people usually use a computer for. Unless you're doing something strictly numerical (sci, algos, etc.) or something graphics intensive, the SSD will help you more than the last 2-3 generations of MacBook Pro. It really is amazing. Chrome gets a huge speed boost from having its cache and databases on SSD, XCode gets a huge boost from being able to quickly seek to autocomplete indexes and debug symbols, and sleep/wake get truly enormous boosts from writing the hibernate file much faster. Especially if you're used to using a 5400rpm hard drive it'll be like another world.

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bri3d
Who joined June 28, 2008, 10:08 a.m.
and authored 669 notes

Wrote on the subject of Lion, new Macbook Air, and new Macmini are here at July 20, 2011, 10:41 a.m...

XCode in fullscreen would be amazing... if it didn't completely omit multiple monitor support. I don't get it: Apple give us Thunderbolt and the possibility of monitor chaining, and then release an OS which completely spits in the face of multiple monitor users.

I'm glad Apple finally got the idea and gave user preferences for most of the new features, though: the reversed scroll direction would make me murderous, except it was easy to swap back to sanity.

So far it's okay: fullscreen I can avoid, I never used Address Book or iCal anyway, although they are disgusting now, the new Mail is sweet, Safari is actually usable (although I'll stick to Chrome, thanks) and I'm excited about the way Apple have done sandboxing, app state, ARC, CoreStorage, and full-disk crypto. The tech side of Lion seems like a very sound upgrade - it's just the way the UI was done that bugs me a bit.

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