Torrent Woes

The worst thing about pirating tons of free movies, TV shows, and music….er I mean downloading open source content like Linux distributions, is the fact that torrents have a tendency to hose your friggin connection when it comes to doing much else with it that is the slightest bit latency sensitive. Like gaming maybe? But the goombas that built this blog page (that looks more like a site advertising a couple of ambulance chasing lawyers) have some interesting insight to what the actual cause is and how at least part of it could be fixed.

After running these tests, I am beginning to conclude that it isn't so much the amount of data that causes excessive latency; it's the uniformity of data transmission. If the transmissions are spaced evenly, other packets from other applications can slip in between the packets rather than getting stuck behind multiple packets in the transmit queue. So would it be possible to engineer BitTorrent to transmit data uniformly and what would be the effect? I came up with the following chart to illustrate what this could mean for peaceful coexistence between VoIP/Gaming and BitTorrent/P2P.

I would have posted this 6 minutes ago but I could not work the post in between a shaky-cam version of Iron Man. And aren’t these guys old enough to get their own places and not worry about a “roommate” situation? Thanks Kevin!

Discussion

Link This Bee-yotch

Oldie points out this patent issue that has to do with image linking.

A Singapore company has laid claims to a technology that Web sites across the globe deploy to link images to other Web pages, and sent out notification letters to several companies demanding to be paid licensing fees.

I highly suggest clicking the image linked below to make sure we are doing it right.

Discussion

Email of the Day

From: don

Sent: Saturday, May 31, 2008 2:01 PM

To: kyle@hardocp.com

Subject: News on 5/31/08

Hi,

Just wanted to let you know you suck at the news! Year old cookie? Please stop doing the news. Make Steve work on weekends please.

Thanks,

Don

I think Don has some man-love issues.

Asshat Overload Imminent

Now while I am a YouTube fan, probably like most of you, you do know that there are enough YouTube asshats to go around for everyone. If you don’t agree with me, have no fear, because JVC just solved that. Now you don’t even have to be a somewhat technically proficient asshat to get your mug on YouTube now.

The GZ-MS100 records video to an SD card (not included) and has a special upload button that cuts off the video at the 10-minute mark to conform to YouTube’s rules, and then automatically uploads it to YouTube when the camera is connected to a PC.

Please just kill me now, before it starts.

Discussion

Mystery UMPC Processor

ExtremeTech has some scoopage on a UMPC device that has a somewhat unknown CPU in it! Guess NVIDIA is not the only one that can make an ARM! This device looks to not really be a notebook though, and you might gather from the suggestion as to the processor architecture, but as long as I have a connect and remote desktop into my box at home, that is really all I want… that and battery life.

"The CPU appears to be a RISC chip, that's supposedly their own. If I had to guess I'd either say it's an ARM, or OpenRISC; I'm not sure how the WinCE development tree is put together, so I couldn't say with certainty if you could compile WinCE with OpenRISC as a target," said Dean McCarron, principal at Mercury Research, in an email. "Well under the radar, this is certain!"

Discussion

Upgrade for the Eee

One of the reasons I have not put my hat in the ring as far as the Asus Eee PC is concerned is the reported terrible battery life. Seem UK Eee PCers will get a chance to upgrade on the cheap, but what about us here in the USA? Till we see this thing be able to pull 8 hours of light usage at a meeting table, I will stay with my Sony Ultralight that has been at the sub-3lb mark for a couple years now. Of course, you could buy 4 Eee PCs for the Sony cost.

Asus has confirmed that it will offer British buyers of the Eee PC the chance to upgrade their battery for £10 - but only if they send their old battery back.

What I really want to get my hands on is an MSI Wind.

Discussion

Softmodding a 9600 to 8800

This article is very specific, but interesting none the less. Part 1 – Part 2 – Part 3 I have not had a chance to read through the entire piece yet. I think it is interesting that he found a card with a full 512MB on it although not advertised. Many Galaxy video cards are sold under the KFA2 branding here in the states, so you might be able to find a couple of these close to home to play around with.

The first question is: "Hey, 9600GSO has only 384MB memory, where does the 128MB comes from?"

Very good question, that is why you cannot buy just any 9600GSO and try to mod. You need this specific model, specifically the Galaxy 9600GSO OverClocked edition. Because this card contains 8 memory chips instead of the usual 6, making a 512MB 256-bit configuration.

Discussion

Eat My Board

This is a year old, but I don’t think I have seen it before. If you have seen this, do not look at it, and do not send me mail telling me how I suck at doing the news.

[H]ardForum User Gets Hands-On Atom Too!

I had not seen this, but pxc pointed it out. Seems as though our own oDii has an Atom board down New Zealand way. A D945GCFL complete with Atom.

Ongoing Discussion

Fudo Gets Some Atom Hands-On Time

No matter what you think about Fudzilla and the brand of journalism that the site pushes out, I had a chance to speak with Fudo on Friday and he gave me a recount of his hands-on Atom experience. He shares it with us and is worth a look if you give a damn about this kind of thing.

We didn't really have much time to play with this Atom N230-based setup, but as you can see the CPU doesn't really do well in multi-media applications. It doesn't even render that well, as Cinebench was incredibly slow, slower than we've seen in years.

My thoughts on this is that Atom is about to get put into a bunch of applications better cut out for processors like the VIA Nano and that the Atom will be more at home in much more mobile-esque devices. But wtf do I know?

Discussion

How Times Have Changed

Remember when workstation conjured up images of this hugely expensive ugly boxes? I thought it was interesting that this guy was making the case of going with off-the-shelf Dell laptops to fill those 3D CAD needs. But you knew that already…

Given the cost of these three options, it is hard to not justify “going mobile” with your next engineering and high-end 3D workstation. The two Dell Precision laptops performed well along side what is a above average engineering workstation in the traditional sense. The added ability to take you design tasks with you wherever you need is a huge added benefit.

Discussion

Free Thermaltake H2O Cooling

I saw where TechwareLabs was giving away a ThermalTake ProWater 850i. Get you some.