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All of these names are incorrect by chemical standards.

Alcohols and ethers are organic molecules by definition. If you take a look at that link you will notice that the formula for an alcohol is generally R-OH and an ether is R-O-R'. The "R" in those formulas stands for at least one carbon atom, and possibly an entire structure of carbon chains and branches. Since HOH doesn't have any carbon atoms it is almost definitely excluded from being called an alcohol or an ether.

Hydroxic acid is sort of a misnomer. While H2O would be considered an acid according to the Lewis definition and the Bronsted-Lowry definition of an acid, it is not considered an acid by the Arrhenius definition of an acid. So it all depends on how you look at it. One major thing that holds chemists back from calling water an acid is that generally something is considered to be an acid if it is in an aqueous solution. For water that's a bit of a circular definition and so it's not really used.

All of these names are incorrect by chemical standards.

Alcohols and ethers are organic molecules by definition. If you take a look at that link you will notice that the formula for an alcohol is generally R-OH and an ether is R-O-R'. The "R" in those formulas stands for at least one carbon atom, and possibly an entire structure of carbon chains and branches. Since HOH doesn't have any carbon atoms it is almost definitely excluded from being called an alcohol or an ether.

Hydroxic acid is sort of a misnomer. While H2O would be considered an acid according to the Lewis definition and the Bronsted-Lowry definition of an acid, it is not considered an acid by the Arrhenius definition of an acid. So it all depends on how you look at it. One major thing that holds chemists back from calling water an acid is that generally something is considered to be an acid if it is in an aqueous solution. For water that's a bit of a circular definition and so it's not really used.

All of these names are incorrect by chemical standards.

Alcohols and ethers are organic molecules by definition. If you take a look at that link you will notice that the formula for an alcohol is generally R-OH and an ether is R-O-R'. The "R" in those formulas stands for at least one carbon atom, and possibly an entire structure of carbon chains and branches. Since HOH doesn't have any carbon atoms it is almost definitely excluded from being called an alcohol or an ether.

Hydroxic acid is sort of a misnomer. While H2O would be considered an acid according to the Lewis definition and the Bronsted-Lowry definition of an acid, it is not considered an acid by the Arrhenius definition of an acid. So it all depends on how you look at it. One major thing that holds chemists back from calling water an acid is that generally something is considered to be an acid if it is in an aqueous solution. For water that's a bit of a circular definition and so it's not really used.

Here's a HardwareCentral review of the Celeron 2 (today must be the day NDAs were lifted; look for other butt-kicking sites like Thresh's and Sharky's to maybe have something on it later today.

Here's BP6.com, an excellent reference for those of you with that funky Abit board. Check out the video preview of the Powerleap FC-PGA adapters - basically they plug into Coppermines and allow two of them (new stepping ONLY) to run in SMP mode. Of course, your BP6 would be running at 100MHz FSB by default - and overclocking well past 100MHz (which is what is required to unlock the true potential of Coppermines) is flaky on any BX board.

Coppermines seem, for me, an excellent buy. I have a 500E running at 733Mhz (147MHz FSB) on an MSI MS-6309 Apollo Pro 133A board. Excellent performance, and super stable.

The 66MHz FSB for these new Celerons is a double-edged sword. It's good that the 66MHz+ gap is open, which is really what made the original Celerons such good overclockers; but besides the performance hit (naturally), the lower FSB means a higher multiplier. The internal multiplier (locked by Intel) for the 600MHZ Celeron 2 is 9.0x. That's ass-high, people. I don't think many motherboards currently support that. At the very least I think a BIOS upgrade is in order, unless you're absoluely sure the board can handle that high a multiplier - but getting back to the performance hit, not only is your memory, etc. running at only 66MHz, but with the high multiplier your chip is running 9 times faster than your system. That's a low of waiting on its part.

My advice? Get a 500E or 550E (both can be had for around $200, if you know where to look) and overclock them beyond insanity. 150MHz FSB is not out of the question for these chips, especially the ones with the new core stepping. I'll be going for a 600E (FC-PGA) as soon as school lets out for me for the Summer.

For a truly bent journalistic look at the Coppermines, check out this piece I wrote for the fantastic Overclockers.com over Winter Break.

• New Stuff

  Napster and other bandwidth hogging programs can cause slow Internet connections for everyone

  The Chronicle of Higher Education published the following article in the issue dated February 25, 2000. Salisbury State University is facing similar bandwidth issues with the proliferation of Napster and similar programs, plus other bandwidth stealing applications such as Spinner, Real Player, WinAmp (when used to receive Shoutcast Stations) and Instant Messenger programs such as AOL Instant Messenger, Yahoo Instant Messenger, and ICQ. As a consideration, please be aware that using these programs during peak hours (usually 9 AM to 9 PM) causes the network to slow significantly, so please try to limit your use of these programs (especially the Napster-like programs and the streaming audio programs like Spinner, etc) to non-peak hours. In this way, we can ensure that the Internet is available at an acceptable level of speed to everyone that needs it.

  "Napster, a tool for finding MP3 audio files online, is causing headaches among network administrators -- not because of its potential for copyright infringement, but because when students use it en masse they can clog even high-bandwidth campus Internet connections.

  A growing number of universities have responded to the resulting congestion by cutting off the software's access to the Internet.

  The program runs on personal computers and allows a user to share his or her collection of MP3 files. MP3's on users' hard drives are made available for both searches and downloads over the Internet by anyone else who runs the program. At peak times, this network of Napster users can offer access to several hundred gigabytes of data, or hundreds of thousands of individual files.

  At any given time, each user can be sending and receiving dozens of files. Multiply that by hundreds of students on one campus, and the consequence can be a serious traffic jam.

  "We found that, on average, that particular program was using 10 to 40 percent of our campus Internet bandwidth," says Marjorie F. Proell, communications director for Saint Cloud State University, in Minnesota. "There were times it peaked even at 60 percent."

  Such high traffic can slow down everyone else's use of the Internet, whether for surfing, for transferring scholarly journal articles, or even just for sending mail. "It was reducing the speed and reliability of our Internet services, which is something that's felt by everyone on campus --students, staff, and faculty," says Ms. Proell. In October, network engineers at Oregon State University noticed increased Internet traffic, which they traced to Napster. "It was using 5 percent of O.S.U.'s total bandwidth going out of the university," says Christopher White, the administrator for the university's residential network. That percentage "doesn't sound like a lot, but it is -- a real, real lot," he says. By November, Napster was using up 10 percent of the bandwidth.

  At first, administrators responded by calling students who were using the program and telling them that such bandwidth-hogging programs violated the university's policies on acceptable use of the network. But when it became clear that hundreds of students were using the program, officials decided to block the network channel that carries Napster traffic.

  "If we had let it go much longer, I think we definitely would have had serious problems," says Mr. White.

  Other institutions have reported similar traffic problems. Institutions that have reportedly banned the program include Boston, North Carolina State, and Northwestern Universities, and the Universities of New Hampshire, Pittsburgh, and Texas. Institutions don't just face slow Web connections as a result of Napster -- they can face significant Internet access costs as well. According to Curtis R. Pederson, Oregon State's vice provost for information services, Napster was costing the university about $1,500 per month at the time it was shut off.

  The university normally spends $12,000 to $15,000 a month for Internet access. Mr. Pederson says the university is planning to hold a forum with students to talk about "Internet use and ethics, and the reality of the budget." Other institutions have had similar meetings.

  Administrators who have blocked access to Napster say that bandwidth is their main concern, rather than the continuing controversy over MP3 files, which are often used to illegally transmit copyrighted music. The Recording Industry Association of America is pursuing a lawsuit against the makers of Napster because of the ease with which the program lets users share pirated music.

  The association also regularly requests that colleges shut down online archives of illegal MP3's on campus networks and has created an educational campaign intended to teach students about copyright law.

  Oregon State's Mr. White says the decision to block the program was definitely made easier by Napster's illicit uses. "If it was a program that had real educational value to it, it probably would have been a lot harder," he says. But, he adds, "we wouldn't have even noticed it if it wasn't for the bandwidth issue."

BTW, I received this mail from my school account - one "powered" by Groupwise - but that's all I use that account for, because it's literally down as much as it is up. But I guess that's another story...

There's always something hidden. My school offered "free" OEM copies of Microsoft software this past semester (Win 98 SE, Win NT Workstation 4.0, FrontRage 98, etc.) through this agreement and naturally I was interested in picking up a few "legit" copies of Win NT. You guessed it, it wasn't exactly free - they weren't letting people take the CDs as they please.

Instead, you paid $5 for the "media" (although I don't believe it costs MS $5 to burn a CD in volume). Fair enough, I say, here's a $5 bill. Now hand me my NT!

Nope, you have to sign a contract first. Oh, this is some fun shit. I'm supposed to use it only on one machine, and only when it's in the best interest of the school, and I can forget about reselling it, or anything else...so I sign the contract and get my CD. Part of the contract I signed said that I'm only able to buy one copy - I guess MS isn't sympathetic to people with more than one PC, because if I can't buy more than one copy, and I can only use the one copy I do get on a sinlge machine, I'm SOL. Now was the software *really* free, or was it equal to the cost of the media plus agreeing to the contract?

Anyway, I got four friends to each buy me a copy and I slipped them each a $5 bill as soon as I got out of the university bookstore.

[bs]By the way, I have a couple copies of NT workstation available, $15 OBO :) Just kidding. I saw an anti-piracy expo at a recent computer fair this past weekend and it turned me into a fine Internet citizen(TM). I even destroyed those other four semi-legally acquired copies of NT as per the agreement I signed.[/bs]

There's always something hidden. My school offered "free" OEM copies of Microsoft software this past semester (Win 98 SE, Win NT Workstation 4.0, FrontRage 98, etc.) through this agreement and naturally I was interested in picking up a few "legit" copies of Win NT. You guessed it, it wasn't exactly free - they weren't letting people take the CDs as they please.

Instead, you paid $5 for the "media" (although I don't believe it costs MS $5 to burn a CD in volume). Fair enough, I say, here's a $5 bill. Now hand me my NT!

Nope, you have to sign a contract first. Oh, this is some fun shit. I'm supposed to use it only on one machine, and only when it's in the best interest of the school, and I can forget about reselling it, or anything else...so I sign the contract and get my CD. Part of the contract I signed said that I'm only able to buy one copy - I guess MS isn't sympathetic to people with more than one PC, because if I can't buy more than one copy, and I can only use the one copy I do get on a sinlge machine, I'm SOL. Now was the software *really* free, or was it equal to the cost of the media plus agreeing to the contract?

Anyway, I got four friends to each buy me a copy and I slipped them each a $5 bill as soon as I got out of the university bookstore.

[bs]By the way, I have a couple copies of NT workstation available, $15 OBO :) Just kidding. I saw an anti-piracy expo at a recent computer fair this past weekend and it turned me into a fine Internet citizen(TM). I even destroyed those other four semi-legally acquired copies of NT as per the agreement I signed.[/bs]