New Opterons Aim Low

Tom’s IT Pro has a look at the new AMD Opteron 3200 series processors that are taking aim at web hosts and other low-power usages.

Starting at under $100 and having both 4 and 8-core options, I like where AMD is headed here. At least it puts some pressure on Intel in at least one segment of the processor market.

I know that the most pleasing spec has to be the 45W and 65W TDP for the processors. That is low, and at the price, is going to be hard to beat.

Categories
Technology

Phoneography

Harry Marks posted over at Curious Rat an article title ‘Phoneography’. In it, he takes issue with the idea that ‘phoneography’ is ruining photography.

I agree with everything he wrote.

Phone cameras are getting better and better, and have two HUGE advantages over dedicated cameras of any shape or size:

  1. your smart phone is (almost) always with you
  2. the sharing options on a smart phone are plentiful and easily accessed

I can take a picture with my iPhone almost anywhere and share it almost anywhere. By choice I usually post things to Twitter, and Apple has made that stupidly easy. No matter what, you can’t do that with my wife’s Nikon DSLR without going through multiple steps, and usually I don’t carry a DSLR along with me.

‘Phoneography’ isn’t ruining photography, that’s an absurd statement.

Categories
Business Technology

Just. Not. Getting. It.

Trevor Gilbert wrote The Midwest Mentality for Pando Daily and is, to put it bluntly, a terrible closed-minded look at Chicago specifically and “The Midwest” in general. It is probably the most disappointing piece of “journalism” I’ve read on the internet for quite some time (I don’t include most things about Apple here because it is almost systematically terrible).

Matt Moog has written a rebuttal of sorts over at Built in Chicago, so make sure you read that retort.

Here are some choice quotes:

Instead of working on a startup 24/7, employees take the weekend off and don’t work through the night. It doesn’t help in the creation of amazing technical feats, but it does allow people to have lives.

Yup, not burning your staff out is definitely something that should be avoided. Also, don’t forget that good stuff only happens to those who sacrifice themselves to a startup.

Not high school marriages, but rather the idea of getting married at age 21 is no big deal. That’s fine, but it also means that the ecosystem can’t rely on the insane work hours of the independent, no responsibilities generation. Instead, you have a number of people who would normally be able to work into the night, but instead need to go home at 7 or 8 to spend time with their kids and families.

Once again, let’s kill ourselves when we’re young so that we can get married later! Spending time with family is a bad thing because you are not worshipping at the alter of the startup and burning yourself out!

Yes, many people see this as a plus. “You work too much” is something I hear all too often from my non-startup inclined family members. That is a valid argument, but it also is the type of argument that holds an entire ecosystem back.

Riiiiiiight. Not burning yourself out is definitely going to hold the ecosystem back. Isn’t it just as likely that an ecosystem is being held back because its members work themselves to the point of being incapable of doing any good, real, meaningful work after a short time?

I can’t believe this article. Truly meaningless tripe.

Cinematic Gaming Scores

IGN has an opinion piece from Kym Dillon on cinematic gaming scores and whether they are the best option for the video game medium. It is worth the read.

I’m a sucker for awesome music and tend to believe the only redeeming quality of the Star Wars Prequels is John Williams (and Ewan McGregor’s Obi Wan). I also love good video game music, but I ended up nodding to a lot of what Kym was writing.

Showing Navigation

Go read Andy Clarke’s post on needing a standard for showing navigation in mobile. Just go read it.

Needless to say, I agree with his final recommendation.