Scew Augustine, Head for the Moon

The great and wonderful Augustine Panel has released its final recommendations for NASA. With all due respect, I must disagree with the conclusion that we must skip the moon and head for Mars.

An obvious reason is that we’re not prepared for long-term space flight. Rocketing off to comets and asteroids won’t do anything for us either –except maybe provide a basis for a Bruce Willis sequel.

We need to establish our presence on the moon before China, Russia, India, and probably Botswana do it. We need the moon as a staging area for our mars missions, just as the ISS should have been a staging area for moon exploration. (Don’t worry, we’re going to throw the ISS into the Pacific ocean in 2015.)

We can ship the parts to the moon, build the rockets there for our trip to Mars, and avoid all the extra crap we’d otherwise need to escape the earth’s orbit.

Can we do it in a year? Five years? Ten years? We could get to the moon within that time easily and establish a base. (Let’s not call it “Alpha.”) It would be ten years from there to Mars provided we’re not peeing money away on unneeded social programs –or haven’t gone broke should current spending intentions be realized.

Why? At the very bottom of the list, it’s the same reason we came out of Africa, across Europe, and over to America. We need space. We tend to fight with each other when we’re crowded together. At the top of the list is the simple fact that exploring is what we do.

So, Mr. Augustine, stick your recommendation in a black hole. Let’s give the money earmarked for Acorn to NASA instead, let it get on with the development of the Ares 1, and let us boldly go where no man has gone before.

I Wrote a Note To AMD…

It was in response to a proposed CPU delivery.

I’m always on the lookout to tell people about faster processors. This whole green thing where we shrink die sizes to decrease pathway distances while lowering clock speeds to reduce power requirements is, in my opinion, the product of an over-estrogenized R&D department. It may work for the server guys so they can save $4.38 a day on electricity but, for most plain old guys, we want enough horsepower and clock cycles to choke on them and die with smiles on our faces.

My particular testing relies on video rendering. There’s no graphics card trickery involved or software compiler switch manipulation –it’s grunt and groan heavy lifting. Over the years that AMD and I swapped spit about CPUs, no matter how popular they were in gaming platforms, there wasn’t one AMD processor that could hold its own against a comparative Intel product in that venue. Before I’d mention that in my (then) column or a review I’d go back to AMD to find out if I’d done something wrong or could do something else to improve performance but I hadn’t and there wasn’t. I think that constantly having my finger in its eye is what probably annoyed AMD most.

Of the 7 active computers I currently run, only two have AMD product inside (the 9600 and a 6000). One of the seven is an old Intel legacy TV/video system that I really should replace with a Maui platform because it doesn’t need to do editing, just capture, but, to be honest, I’m too lazy to re-learn. (Don’t get cocky. Whoever thought up that speaker wire header arrangement for Maui should be taken out to the north 40 and summarily dismissed with prejudice.)

On the other hand, Antec has just sent me a brand new case and 850w power supply; I have two 2TB hard drives sitting in a drawer; although I had to return the 46-inch NEC monitor I still have my little 30-inch Dell LCD; I have a variety of digital tuner cards on hand; and if AMD has a Charles Atlas CPU (Athlon, Phenom, Opteron, Octomom -it doesn’t matter) that will kick Intel’s butt in video rendering I’d be more than happy to pull together the other components I’d need to system build. At almost 58 years of age, I find a certain heady exuberance in watching a video render at faster than real-time speeds –and the faster the better. (I know… Sad, isn’t it?)

I want AMD to be better than Intel. It’s not because I like you guys better (or vice versa) but, if you are, then Intel will have to become better than AMD… and so on, and so on, and so on. It’s in my best interest. And lets face it, if things aren’t better for me, why should I bother?

More than you wanted to know, betcha….

-O’B.

The Tuner Challenge

I have a Vizio 37-inch HDTV that can locate all of the existing TV signals, analog and digital, running down the cable, tell which are viewable and which are encrypted, and put them all in a semblance of order so I don’t have to jump from here to all of the way over there to get from analog channel 4 to digital channel 4.1. The Scientific Atlanta cablebox I have is a dual-tuner system of sufficient quality that is capable of screening out the “busy backgound” that my analog channels exhibit. (What ever happened to the crystal clear cable signal of 30 years ago?)

So here’s the challenge: Will somebody please build me a tuner card capable of doing both of those things –analog and clear QAM reception plus proper channel organization– that will work in Windows and ignore any attempts at enforcing DRM? I ask this only because, as is, the situation smacks of familiarity with my 25-year old VHS (or Beta, I have both) VCR and that doesn’t seem to be indicative of two to three decades of progress.

So It Begins: The Windows 7 Pricing Debate

It’s not that I mind a good price war. Before the Centrino, Intel had them all the time –with itself. Now Microsoft is poised to release Windows 7 (on my birthday, of all dates –which means they should send me a free copy) and the company just released the prices for the various versions. And here come the pundits: “The prices are too high, the prices are too low, the prices are just right, heck, what do you think about the prices?”

Here’s the deal: Shut up already. Whatever the price is that’s what it is. If we, the consumers, think it’s okay (and Windows 7 is actually better than Vista) we’ll buy it in droves. If not, we will boldly flash Microsoft the fickle financial finger of disdain and that will be that. It’s how things worked for Vista

The Curious Case of the Cable

I’ve been trying to review an AVerMedia Duet dual-tuner x1 PCIe tuner card all week. God has it been tough. The darn thing kept acquiring only four digital channels and I have 21 available on my Hauppauge HVR-2250. I tried everything –new drivers, rescanning, prayer, hopping on one leg while waving a rubber chicken over my head… Nothing worked. I always got the same four channels.

In desperation, I had AVerMedia send me another card to rule out a hardware defect on the one I was using. Shazaam! Same thing!!!!!!!!

Background: The AVer TVHD Duet needs a an analog card installed for Vista or XP. To do that, I got a Cablevision approved 1:2 splitter and I purchased two cables from Radio Shack. One was a house brand and the other was a Monster cable (the one used to connect the AVer card) . The TVHD Duet reacted the same way –every time– under those connection conditions.

I was ready to slam the card and then a thought occurred to me. (They sometimes do.) I had already tested it under XP, Vista, and Windows 7. According to AVerMedia, in Window 7 it doesn’t need a companion analog card. So I pulled it. Things were till the same.

Then I pulled the splitter and the cables and connected the card directly to the line. Life suddenly became wonderful. Media Center found all 21 channels automatically, the picture was crystal clear, and I could watch one channel while recording another. (Apparently a high priority in America today.)

I haven’t had a chance to determine if it was the splitter or the Monster cable yet. Gut instinct says it’s probably the Monster cable because the analog card reception stayed the same but that’s not a conclusion –just an assumption. I’ll update if I have the time.

The bottom line here, however, is don’t be quick to blame the hardware and defintiely don’t pull out your gun and shoot holes in it unless you’ve tried everything possible to eliminate the problem.

Tags: After thoughts

Kudos to Newegg

I ordered a Hauppauge HVR-2250 (my second) from Newegg on Tuesday, June 23rd. According to the tracking number, it will arrive here today, June 25th. Now I know that living in the same state as a Newegg shipping center means I’m paying sales tax as well as shipping fees, but when you can receive your order in two days (and the prices are low to begin with), it’s not such a big deal.

Tags: Consumer

SSDs I Have Known

Myth 1: A Solid State Disk will boot faster than mechanical hard drive.
This is true but it’s partially smoke and mirrors as well. When SSDs first appeared, they were rather pathetic 8GB and 16GB devices. Not much fits in that size. Even at 32GB you’ll still be somewhat cramped if you have hardware drivers and applications.

In fact, that’s where SSDs got their initial reputation for fast boots. With no drivers or background software to load, most of what you had to wait through was your portable’s BIOS, which probably took about 20 seconds, and then maybe another 35 seconds or so for the operating system.

But when you get to 64GB or 80GB or 128GB –and you have some room to feel confident about carrying the additional software you need around with you—you start to add time to the boot process. Depending on just how much you’re loading, you’ll probably be waiting at least an extra 15 seconds. To be fair, a similarly stocked mechanical drive can carry on for an additional 20 – 30 seconds and that’s what you’re paying to avoid with an SSD.

Read more…

Whacky Windows Tricks

Haven’t been able to find out much about this yet (still):

If you press the Windows and Tab keys simultaneously, all windows are cascaded as you see above. You can select the one you want with your mouse or with some finger trickery involving the tab key while still holding the Windows key.

The funny thing is that it’s been part of the Mac OS forever. Are we really headed for a universal operating system?