3D performance isn't "perfectly good", its acceptable for most circumstances. "Perfectly good" 3D performance would be drivers written by ATI/nVidia for Linux of equal caliber as those written for Windows; and no, they don't need to be open-source for there to be good performance, although some would prefer that they were.
Before I start, let me just say that I DO NOT think the Hummer is an "environmentally friendly vehicle". The current incarnation of the Hummer (the H3) is nothing but a GMC Canyon, a rather small pickup truck.
While the Canyon comes in both inline-4 and inline-5 cylinder models, the H3 comes with the I-5 by default, at 242HP. Five cylinders, people.. in a configuration that is known to be more efficient than V* models. Most cars have more cylinders than this "truck". And when it comes to trucks, believe me, there's a huge difference between this and a 5.7L V8.
Towing capacity. When we needed a truck to tow our new boat (3500lbs wet-weight, which was the max for our van.. doable, but barely) we specced these out of curiosity. Unfortunately I don't have the number on hand, but an H3 could not tow our boat; it had a towing capacity near 2500lbs. This is not a heavy-duty truck.
Frankly it gets to me when people tout the "OMG ITS AN SUV" line; don't get me wrong, they are not what we should be driving to save the environment; but take a look at the number of half-ton pickups out there with 5.7L V8 engines. We don't see this as a problem, because these full-fledged trucks are perceived as working vehicles.. But go ahead, take another look. Look at the number of trucks on the road with pristine paint jobs and sexy aluminum rims. Working vehicles? I think not. The truck has been made into one of the most beautiful vehicles to drive, but they are also one of the most costly to our environment.
There are lots of examples out there for us to use to show how insensitive we're being to the environment.. The Humvee, the H1 and even to a lesser extent the H2 are all good examples. The H3 is not. Pick something with a little more gusto, like an Avalanche or a Suburban/Tahoe/Yukon. A Yukon Denali was on par with a Hummer H2, in terms of both the niche it filled and the gas it consumed (minus the v-peen factor). The Denali is still here, the H2 is not. Its time to move on.
Please, pick your battles and stop whacking this dead horse just because its name is Hummer. There's a lot worse out there, and believe me, there's a lot more Avalanches and Yukons on the road than there are Hummers.
Just my $1.35.
-Aikon
p.s. I'm not picking on GM, I just choose to write about what I know.
1. I don't consider myself an expert in the field, but I have completed several combustion dynamics classes in University. The flow of fuel is only important if you want a stationary flame; a fire in a server room has an expanding flame front. If you put yourself in the reference point of the flame front, the "flow" rate of fresh air is equivalent to the velocity of the front. Other popular elements in combustion are adiabatic flame temperature (which I don't recall for Oxygen off the top of my head), the fuel/air ratio (which is what is being reduced here), and the nature of the fuel (mixed vs. unmixed).
2. The were using the 6000ft metric as an indicator of the ability for humans to breath the atmosphere in the server room; as many have stated before, fire works differently than our lungs; our lungs depend on the partial pressure of O2 in the air, while fires do not.
3. This wasn't really a new point, just a continuation of #2.
4. I don't run a server room, but I would think it would be more desirable to prevent a fire from occuring than to allow it to start and then prevent it from propagating.
5. With the reduced Oxygen content of the air, this "flashing over" is precisely what the designers want to prevent; if there's no enough fuel then the fire will flameout before it reaches anything else flammable. As for a geek opening the server room door, if you're paying $X to pump the Oxygen out of your server room, don't you think there might be a basic airlock at the door?
6. There most certainly WILL be added construction costs, and it will be up to the individual clients to decide whether the added protection this system affords is worth the added capital required to make it work. This is a standard business decision and is irrelevant; if the need is sufficient, then the funds are available.
7. Yes, this system does require added power input, and again it will be up to the individual client to determine whether that requirement is too large for their particular needs. You are also correct about the O2 exhaust having to be managed carefully for safety reasons, however I don't see this as a major obstacle; we have plenty of ways to deal with and dispose of excess gasses of ANY kind.
Sorry, the miscommunication is my fault; lelt me try and clear up a couple things about my post (which was rushed, I admit). First, I was using spamming as another example but of someone we all WISH would be sued for all the hastle they cause us; just pointing out that sometimes people can go for the throat for all the wrong reasons. Second, if he well and trule did not engage in file sharing, then protest the suit based on that; a footnote that he is a stroke victim would be sufficient, it doesn't need to be touted in the headline.
Maybe my view is different from a lot of others, but I felt that the headline and summary were a tad sensationalist, and the reference to his subsequent stroke detracting from the real root of the problem with the lawsuit in question.
No, I did not read the article; but at the same time, I wasn't trying to comment on the article. My reply above was directed more towards the Slashdot headline and summary, and my personal feelings about how they portrayed this case. Mouths foaming is a good thing, but only if the reason is the injustice of filing suit against the innocent. Being the victim of a stroke does not exonerate oneself from the responsibilities of one's actions, assuming there is something to be responsible for.
And why shouldn't they file suit against him, just because he had a stroke? Not that I agree with the *AA suing people left right and centre, but if a known spammer had a stroke, would you want them to get off the hook just because something bad happened to their health?
This is pure shock-factor feeding to the masses, propaganda against the *AA. If we're going to lobby against these kinds of actions, can we please do it on a valid basis, such as fair-use etc.?
Except that when you have a very high ranking, you are typically somebody who cares alot about winning, and you're generally pitted against teams of equally high ranking as you. There would be significantly fewer of these, and you do indeed get to know the teams and see the same people over and over again. To be able to check up on all your big opponents before you start the arena day, and see if any of them have changed their build/spec/gear, would give a lot of insight into how you will play against them.
Having said that, since the other teams can do the same, it doesn't really constitute an unfair advantage.. but I'm still not sure I'm sold on this =/
Shrug.. I went to www.puretracks.ca (same as.com) and right on the front page, under "New Releases", you can see the new album by BNL and two little buttons, "WMA" and "MP3". So, in my humble opinion, you can buy tracks without Windows-media crippleware. I did notice, however, that the MP3 versions of the songs are $0.20 more expensive than the WMA versions.
Maybe its just because I'm IN Canada.. I don't know, but I certainly do see a (relatively) wide selection of music available in MP3. Not surprisingly, a lot of the artists available in MP3 seem to be on the Canadian Music Creators Coalition
Then you've been buying from a poor manufacturer, as according to Wikipedia, not to mention my own experience, fluorescent lamps 10-20 times longer while using less energy than incandescent bulbs. I don't have the math with me, unfortunately, but I remember calculating the equivalent cost of the bulbs and was surprised at how much cheaper fluorescent bulbs were to use. By your logic (which I happen to disagree with as a generalization, but I'll leave that for now), then this does indeed mean less of a strain on the environment.
On top of that there's the heat that incandescent bulbs produce; if you're living in a warm climate where you use air conditioning, you are going to have to remove this waste heat through the air-conditioner, adding another cost onto the use of incandescent bulbs.
Fluorescent bulbs are like hybrid-electric cars: we're not all the way there, but its a helluva start.
The parent brings up an important point about a user's tendency to avoid risky game purchases, but just a thought to add to that.. I would venture that a large number of gamers out there wouldn't hesitate to download the latest <insert genre> game just to see if its any good; if its not, they don't buy the game. But if it IS good, how many of those gamers are then going to turn around and buy the game now that they've already downloaded it? Barring, of course, subscription-based games like WoW or other features that require you to actually buy a legit copy.
Just something that caught my attention while reading your post.
I don't care about race in real life, so why should I care about it in-game?
Having said that, when one thinks about different races in a game having different stats, I would venture to guess that the large number of these references to "race" are actually references to "species"; to use a popular example, a Tauren is different from a Troll in much different ways than a [African(-American)|Chinese|Japanese|Native-Americ an] is different from a Caucasian.
I don't know about you, but after reading the first two paragraphs my brain started to asplode...
declare @num int SELECT @num = count(1) FROM article WHERE text LIKE '%rollable display%'
Arithmetic overflow error converting expression to data type int.
On a more serious note, its about time.. although the article is rather scant on details, the device looks like a quite acceptable first-generation portable information booklet. Next time I want to see the display actually roll up into a cylinder, without the need for a hard-plastic backing to support it.. maybe some kind of electro-sensitive memory strands that can make it stiff or pliable on demand?
WoW works well enough on Linux under Wine for chatting and basic questing, but I need the responsiveness+ventrilo+audio I can only get in Windows when PvP and Arena time rolls around =(
Aikon-
Re:I know what happened....
on
Jim Gray Is Missing
·
· Score: 2, Informative
Which is one of (but not the only) reason I explicitly declare my joins. I would have written this query as:
select pb.phone_number
from phone_book pb
inner join address_book ab
on ab.address = '12 Pear Tree'
and ab.name = pb.name
Yes.. I can see that would work extremely well when your window manager is broken and you can't click anything..
If my Windows session is wrecked enough but I still have the ability to use the Start menu, I use it to shutdown the computer so I can boot into Linux.
I don't know about your school or the University/College you'll be going to, but I'm a fourth-year Aerospace Engineer at the University of Toronto.. I had a TI83+ in high school and loved it, simply because it was quick and easy to use. But at University, it never left my drawer at home! On quizzes, tests, and exams, graphing calculators were explicitly prohibited, you had to use one of their three approved models of basic scientific calculators or show the examiner that your calculator was equivalent. Because of this, I found myself using the simpler scientific calculator in normal class time and homework as well, I mean why not practice with what I was going to need to perform?
Furthermore, at the University level, in most quality programmes/courses it becomes less about getting a final, specific answer that's correct to 8 sig-figs than it is to show that you know how to apply the theorems, formulas, concepts etc. and that you have the mental faculties to perform all the basic trig/PDEs/ODEs/systems of equations needed to solve the problem. Half of my answers consisted of demonstrating my result in a simplified set of equations with parameters that matched up to the "givens" in the questions.. I rarely bothered to sub these values in to get a numerical answer.
On top of that, a University's goal is not to produce a trained monkey capable of solving a question as long as it lines up with a model they saw in school. They are teaching you the concepts you need to understand the problems, and to be able to analyze new problems as they come up. In the real world, you'll be using high-end mathematical simulation programs such as MatLab, Maple or Mathematica to do most of your analysis (I'm sorry if these examples don't line up for you.. They are the three primarily used mathematical software suites used in Ontario).
Look, if it helps all the naysayers, claim you're being patriotic, claim that you want to wean your country off the petrochemical teat, claim that you want to save you glorious forests and lakes for "the kids". You don't have to say you're doing it because you've changed your mind about global warming, you just have to do it.
That's like giving in and saying "I love really thin pancakes!" When you get down to it, you're still talking about crepes.
Slashdot Mirror
3D performance isn't "perfectly good", its acceptable for most circumstances. "Perfectly good" 3D performance would be drivers written by ATI/nVidia for Linux of equal caliber as those written for Windows; and no, they don't need to be open-source for there to be good performance, although some would prefer that they were.
Aikon-
Before I start, let me just say that I DO NOT think the Hummer is an "environmentally friendly vehicle". The current incarnation of the Hummer (the H3) is nothing but a GMC Canyon, a rather small pickup truck.
While the Canyon comes in both inline-4 and inline-5 cylinder models, the H3 comes with the I-5 by default, at 242HP. Five cylinders, people.. in a configuration that is known to be more efficient than V* models. Most cars have more cylinders than this "truck". And when it comes to trucks, believe me, there's a huge difference between this and a 5.7L V8.
Towing capacity. When we needed a truck to tow our new boat (3500lbs wet-weight, which was the max for our van.. doable, but barely) we specced these out of curiosity. Unfortunately I don't have the number on hand, but an H3 could not tow our boat; it had a towing capacity near 2500lbs. This is not a heavy-duty truck.
Frankly it gets to me when people tout the "OMG ITS AN SUV" line; don't get me wrong, they are not what we should be driving to save the environment; but take a look at the number of half-ton pickups out there with 5.7L V8 engines. We don't see this as a problem, because these full-fledged trucks are perceived as working vehicles.. But go ahead, take another look. Look at the number of trucks on the road with pristine paint jobs and sexy aluminum rims. Working vehicles? I think not. The truck has been made into one of the most beautiful vehicles to drive, but they are also one of the most costly to our environment.
There are lots of examples out there for us to use to show how insensitive we're being to the environment.. The Humvee, the H1 and even to a lesser extent the H2 are all good examples. The H3 is not. Pick something with a little more gusto, like an Avalanche or a Suburban/Tahoe/Yukon. A Yukon Denali was on par with a Hummer H2, in terms of both the niche it filled and the gas it consumed (minus the v-peen factor). The Denali is still here, the H2 is not. Its time to move on.
Please, pick your battles and stop whacking this dead horse just because its name is Hummer. There's a lot worse out there, and believe me, there's a lot more Avalanches and Yukons on the road than there are Hummers.
Just my $1.35.
-Aikon
p.s. I'm not picking on GM, I just choose to write about what I know.
Allow me to respond to your concerns in turn:
1. I don't consider myself an expert in the field, but I have completed several combustion dynamics classes in University. The flow of fuel is only important if you want a stationary flame; a fire in a server room has an expanding flame front. If you put yourself in the reference point of the flame front, the "flow" rate of fresh air is equivalent to the velocity of the front. Other popular elements in combustion are adiabatic flame temperature (which I don't recall for Oxygen off the top of my head), the fuel/air ratio (which is what is being reduced here), and the nature of the fuel (mixed vs. unmixed).
2. The were using the 6000ft metric as an indicator of the ability for humans to breath the atmosphere in the server room; as many have stated before, fire works differently than our lungs; our lungs depend on the partial pressure of O2 in the air, while fires do not.
3. This wasn't really a new point, just a continuation of #2.
4. I don't run a server room, but I would think it would be more desirable to prevent a fire from occuring than to allow it to start and then prevent it from propagating.
5. With the reduced Oxygen content of the air, this "flashing over" is precisely what the designers want to prevent; if there's no enough fuel then the fire will flameout before it reaches anything else flammable. As for a geek opening the server room door, if you're paying $X to pump the Oxygen out of your server room, don't you think there might be a basic airlock at the door?
6. There most certainly WILL be added construction costs, and it will be up to the individual clients to decide whether the added protection this system affords is worth the added capital required to make it work. This is a standard business decision and is irrelevant; if the need is sufficient, then the funds are available.
7. Yes, this system does require added power input, and again it will be up to the individual client to determine whether that requirement is too large for their particular needs. You are also correct about the O2 exhaust having to be managed carefully for safety reasons, however I don't see this as a major obstacle; we have plenty of ways to deal with and dispose of excess gasses of ANY kind.
Sorry, the miscommunication is my fault; lelt me try and clear up a couple things about my post (which was rushed, I admit). First, I was using spamming as another example but of someone we all WISH would be sued for all the hastle they cause us; just pointing out that sometimes people can go for the throat for all the wrong reasons. Second, if he well and trule did not engage in file sharing, then protest the suit based on that; a footnote that he is a stroke victim would be sufficient, it doesn't need to be touted in the headline.
Maybe my view is different from a lot of others, but I felt that the headline and summary were a tad sensationalist, and the reference to his subsequent stroke detracting from the real root of the problem with the lawsuit in question.
No, I did not read the article; but at the same time, I wasn't trying to comment on the article. My reply above was directed more towards the Slashdot headline and summary, and my personal feelings about how they portrayed this case. Mouths foaming is a good thing, but only if the reason is the injustice of filing suit against the innocent. Being the victim of a stroke does not exonerate oneself from the responsibilities of one's actions, assuming there is something to be responsible for.
Aikon-
And why shouldn't they file suit against him, just because he had a stroke? Not that I agree with the *AA suing people left right and centre, but if a known spammer had a stroke, would you want them to get off the hook just because something bad happened to their health?
This is pure shock-factor feeding to the masses, propaganda against the *AA. If we're going to lobby against these kinds of actions, can we please do it on a valid basis, such as fair-use etc.?
Aikon-
Well, there goes my pharma...
Oy
Let me be the first to say, I hope he doesn't drown on the project, lest these waves wash up his decaying Carcas.
Annnnnnnd, I'm going home.
Except that when you have a very high ranking, you are typically somebody who cares alot about winning, and you're generally pitted against teams of equally high ranking as you. There would be significantly fewer of these, and you do indeed get to know the teams and see the same people over and over again. To be able to check up on all your big opponents before you start the arena day, and see if any of them have changed their build/spec/gear, would give a lot of insight into how you will play against them.
Having said that, since the other teams can do the same, it doesn't really constitute an unfair advantage.. but I'm still not sure I'm sold on this =/
Aikon-
I should hope that, being an article published by AT, that it would appear there before here.. Can you say "aggregator"?
Aikon-
I, for one, welcome our new robotic bully overlords.
Aikon-
And here I was expecting to learn something about how Apple's iPhone is susceptible to minute changes in the gravimetric field..
/sigh, its early yet
Aikon-
Shrug.. I went to www.puretracks.ca (same as .com) and right on the front page, under "New Releases", you can see the new album by BNL and two little buttons, "WMA" and "MP3". So, in my humble opinion, you can buy tracks without Windows-media crippleware. I did notice, however, that the MP3 versions of the songs are $0.20 more expensive than the WMA versions.
Maybe its just because I'm IN Canada.. I don't know, but I certainly do see a (relatively) wide selection of music available in MP3. Not surprisingly, a lot of the artists available in MP3 seem to be on the Canadian Music Creators Coalition
Aikon-
You can get Halo for the PS3 now?!?
Aikon-
And here I thought they implemented PCI to make it easier to attach peripherals to your computer O_o I can't keep up with the world today.
Then you've been buying from a poor manufacturer, as according to Wikipedia, not to mention my own experience, fluorescent lamps 10-20 times longer while using less energy than incandescent bulbs. I don't have the math with me, unfortunately, but I remember calculating the equivalent cost of the bulbs and was surprised at how much cheaper fluorescent bulbs were to use. By your logic (which I happen to disagree with as a generalization, but I'll leave that for now), then this does indeed mean less of a strain on the environment.
On top of that there's the heat that incandescent bulbs produce; if you're living in a warm climate where you use air conditioning, you are going to have to remove this waste heat through the air-conditioner, adding another cost onto the use of incandescent bulbs.
Fluorescent bulbs are like hybrid-electric cars: we're not all the way there, but its a helluva start.
Aikon-
The parent brings up an important point about a user's tendency to avoid risky game purchases, but just a thought to add to that.. I would venture that a large number of gamers out there wouldn't hesitate to download the latest <insert genre> game just to see if its any good; if its not, they don't buy the game. But if it IS good, how many of those gamers are then going to turn around and buy the game now that they've already downloaded it? Barring, of course, subscription-based games like WoW or other features that require you to actually buy a legit copy.
Just something that caught my attention while reading your post.
Aikon-
I don't care about race in real life, so why should I care about it in-game?
Having said that, when one thinks about different races in a game having different stats, I would venture to guess that the large number of these references to "race" are actually references to "species"; to use a popular example, a Tauren is different from a Troll in much different ways than a [African(-American)|Chinese|Japanese|Native-Americ an] is different from a Caucasian.
Aikon-
I don't know about you, but after reading the first two paragraphs my brain started to asplode...
On a more serious note, its about time.. although the article is rather scant on details, the device looks like a quite acceptable first-generation portable information booklet. Next time I want to see the display actually roll up into a cylinder, without the need for a hard-plastic backing to support it.. maybe some kind of electro-sensitive memory strands that can make it stiff or pliable on demand?
Well I'll be damned.. and here I thought he was just an eccentric man who's son traveled back in time to save his marriage :O
Aikon-
WoW works well enough on Linux under Wine for chatting and basic questing, but I need the responsiveness+ventrilo+audio I can only get in Windows when PvP and Arena time rolls around =(
Aikon-
Which is one of (but not the only) reason I explicitly declare my joins. I would have written this query as:
But that's just me..
Aikon-
Yes.. I can see that would work extremely well when your window manager is broken and you can't click anything..
If my Windows session is wrecked enough but I still have the ability to use the Start menu, I use it to shutdown the computer so I can boot into Linux.
Aikon-
I don't know about your school or the University/College you'll be going to, but I'm a fourth-year Aerospace Engineer at the University of Toronto.. I had a TI83+ in high school and loved it, simply because it was quick and easy to use. But at University, it never left my drawer at home! On quizzes, tests, and exams, graphing calculators were explicitly prohibited, you had to use one of their three approved models of basic scientific calculators or show the examiner that your calculator was equivalent. Because of this, I found myself using the simpler scientific calculator in normal class time and homework as well, I mean why not practice with what I was going to need to perform?
Furthermore, at the University level, in most quality programmes/courses it becomes less about getting a final, specific answer that's correct to 8 sig-figs than it is to show that you know how to apply the theorems, formulas, concepts etc. and that you have the mental faculties to perform all the basic trig/PDEs/ODEs/systems of equations needed to solve the problem. Half of my answers consisted of demonstrating my result in a simplified set of equations with parameters that matched up to the "givens" in the questions.. I rarely bothered to sub these values in to get a numerical answer.
On top of that, a University's goal is not to produce a trained monkey capable of solving a question as long as it lines up with a model they saw in school. They are teaching you the concepts you need to understand the problems, and to be able to analyze new problems as they come up. In the real world, you'll be using high-end mathematical simulation programs such as MatLab, Maple or Mathematica to do most of your analysis (I'm sorry if these examples don't line up for you.. They are the three primarily used mathematical software suites used in Ontario).
My recommendation: a good Sharp D.A.L. scientific calculator should be all you will need.
Aikon-
That's like giving in and saying "I love really thin pancakes!" When you get down to it, you're still talking about crepes.
Aikon-
Did anyone else read that headline as "Sigourney Weaver"?
I'm going to go crawl into my hole now...
Aikon-