From what I understand, Windows 8 will run on most contemporary hardware. I installed it on a 3.8GHz P4 system and it ran fine. But it looks like if you want Microsoft Certification, then you need a BIOS that contains the UEFI code. But what if a manufacturer doesn't care about Microsoft Certification and elects to install Windows 8 on a PC with a UEFI BIOS? Then Linux or other operating systems should have no problems dual booting with Windows 8. I conclude that market conditions may cause some PC OEM's to eschew this BIOS extension altogether. Especially if it annoys their potential customer base.
I have had machines with both graphics chips. ATI and Nvidia are really the only viable solutions left. The ATI drivers I had for Windows were always problematic. My laptop is an HP/Compaq NX9420 with a dual core processor, 4G ram and an Nvidia Quadro NVS 510M. HP made sure that the only Windows driver which works on this chip is an Nvidia driver that they specially"tweaked". So the last %$^&& Windows driver HP made available was 4 stinking years ago. The generic ones that I can download from the Nvidia website do not work. This is HP's fault. This option cost me $1200 when it was new!!!! Frickin idiots. But.....................All the generic Linux drivers work. YES!!! Really! Heck, I even got the BSD Unix driver to work...All these drivers work awesome. I had another laptop of the same model but the ATI graphics chip. Not so good. I must admit though, I have had better experiences with both chips on a desktop. Nvidia was still better. Intel graphics chips are as slow as a snail. They're awful. OpenGL works great in Linux with all the machines I support, and I like making life easier. So they're all Nvidia, and all Linux whenever possible.
I think Microsoft might use Apple's success as a legal foil to avert anymore monopolistic trouble. Apple's market cap is bigger than theirs and Apple is left alone by the DOJ. Also, MS wants to start a Microsoft store, just like Apple's iTunes store. I'll also be there are a few Microsoft branded mobile phone prototypes sitting in a dark research cave somewhere. Why else would they be working so hard on a port of Win8 to ARM? Windows for Mobile phones has been an irrelevant disaster. Branding their own phones might finally give them a better chance......maybe. Besides, Linux has become the alternative to Windows that never existed when all the legal troubles really started getting hot. I can't wait to try Steam on my Linux Mint 13 KDE installation. If this isn't a viable alternative to Windows, I don't know what ever will be.
Then again, Valve could just be using as a threat to extract some concessions from MS. I hope this is not true.
Now then, you can't play arcade games too well on a tablet PC either. It really is ergonomically superior to use a keyboard. So MS could just put Win8 on the Xbox and voila! Their own branded PC.
Do yourself a favor, folks. Check out Linux Mint 13 KDE. I installed it in an empty partition on my laptop and desktop with Win7 as a primary OS. Grub will let you choose which to boot. I'm using it right now. If it weren't for the fact that work is using Exchange and another vertical application, I wouldn't even need Windows.
http://linuxmint.com/
Oh, and regarding the spelling Nazi, I turned on spell check.:-)
I think this is a Microsoft strategy to take control more and become a PC OEM theselves like Apple. I think they're success will be limited. If I were a PC OEM, I would be real concerned by The Surface and Xbox.
So, I mean like, does this mean if you have, like, a liger, cleaning his cat box will, like, blow up the whole, like, neighborhood? Or maybe, like, the parasites will, like eat my face? Gosh. Idiots! I'm sure.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liger
This is an absurd argument. Netflix is providing something to be consumed for a fee. They throw it out there and say, here's our food. This is what we are serving and here is the price. So, let's say I have a gluten allergy. I can't walk in to the local bakery and scream that they are obligated to provide me with gluten free bread? I am not entitled to any of the products or services of the bakery. I can either buy it or not. Same with Netflix. I have sympathy for the deaf, but private business does not have to change to accommodate their disadvantage.
Nokia is also circling down the drain. There are many articles today detailing their cutbacks and business losses. In order to ensure Windows Phone will not be an utter failure, I would not be surprised to see Microsoft buy Nokia. A bankruptcy for Nokia would be very bad PR for Windows Phone.
The first part of your post was okay. I actually think it would be handled better by companies like Spacex rather than NASA. But then you yourself plunge into ideology and political discourse. Then again, unfortunately the reality of science is that it does not exit in a vacuum. I dislike the political and ideological baggage tossed in there by all sides. It won't go away either.
Dude, after I did my post I read yours. I could not agree with you more. I have done essentially the same thing you advised long ago. Putting a rack in a house is ludicrous.
Good grief. If you're going to run a home network, what the heck do you need a fire breathing data center for? I have done this at my house for my family. I have Cat5 cable running through the house. But no matter how hard I have tried to predict the future of technology, I have missed the boat too often. Forget all the big power hungry servers and resources. It's ridiculous to build a home system that requires active external cooling. The most I have needed was sharing files, printers, DHCP, firewall, webserver, domain controller and a few misc goodies. I have done this all on some tiny super low power Via based mini-ITX based motherboards. The darn things together use fewer watts than my workstation. Most of them run notebook 2.5 inch low power drives. An enclosed area can get pretty hot, but these don't. My one big main server for sharing video, music and other stuff does run some 7200 RPM 3.5" drives, but they go into hibernate when they haven't been used for a while, then do a wake a request is made. Those are 2TB SATA drives that are mirrored. I do want more storage though. I connect my computer, my kids computers and all the TV's. I use some of the TV's for monitors too. I connect the Sony PS3's and I also have a wireless network for my laptop. I have 2 printers. A standard B&W laser printer and a nice color inkjet . I only have 1 RJ45 per room. I use a hub or switch there if I need more. I can control all the security via the main server. I run my own domain too. Anyway, it let's me control what my kids can do or guests. My network is controlled by Linux too. I don't need a rack, or special cooling or any of that stuff. Beware of over engineering. It's all a few tiny cases sitting sideways on a closet shelf. I have ripped my favorite movies and stored them on my servers. I also ripped my entire CD collection of music. It never skips on music or video. I have 2 external USB interface drivew for a backups that I rotate. I always keep one of these at the office in case the house burns down. This is an on going project that has been a lot of fun. Keeping it all cool and the electricity bill is negligable.
I wish solar energy was the end all be all solution to our energy problems. But it is not. Simply put, when the sun isn't shining, you have no power. It is fine as a backup system or one to augment the grid. But reliable it is not. The cost per kilowatt hour is also too high. Most electricity in the US is still produced from coal. That is because it has the lowest cost per kilowatt hour. The best solution I see is building Thorium reactors. Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactors (LFTR's) do not have the problems that plague uranium and plutonium fueled reactors. Fusion sounds cool, but so far it has been nothing but a huge government "make work" project. It is nowhere near ready for commercialization. LFTR's would be clean and cheap. They should be competitive with coal per kilowatt hour cost. You don't have to depend on the huge thermonuclear reactor in the sky being obscured by clouds or it being night either.
I always thought the specs touted on hybrids was a "best case" scanario which exagerates reality. I'm going to hold out for my Mr. Fusion powered vehicle. Maybe Marty McFly will let me borrow his.
http://backtothefuture.wikia.com/wiki/Fusion_Industries:-)
So what I eat drink and ingest can affect my cerebral cortex? Beer, librium and crack can affect me? Gosh, I never knew that. Thank God for these articles.
Though I think fusion is not a short term viable option for commercial energy production. There is another way of doing this though. Fusion using helium 3 is most likely to produce a commercially viable reactor. But the problem is, there is hardly any helium 3 on the earth. We can produce it in another reactor, but the cost would be beyond commercial sustainability. However, there is theoretically a considerable source of helium 3 on the moon. Helium 3 is a product of solar wind that is mostly deflected by the earth's magnetic field. So it does not accumulate here. But the moon has no way of deflecting solar wind, so helium 3 can and does accumulate in the lunar regolith. This could actually make a return to the moon economically feasible. The most likely candidate for a commercially feasible fusion reactor would use helium3. It appears to be the most efficient means of creating distributable energy from a fusion based energy economy.
But I still think thorium is a better and cheaper solution.
This will mean more and more hydrocarbons will have to be used to sustain the German economy. This is a hysterical political response from form uniformed and misguided environmental do gooders. I made an earlier post in another article about thorium reactors. These have no where the dangerous consequences of uranium/plutonium reactors. Thorium reactors have already been built in the US. But the reason why they never went commercial is because you cannot produce nuclear weapons from them in a practical sense.They better hope that fusion becomes viable soon. But I doubt it. People need to be more educated themselves and stop listening to lying politicians and self serving demagogues of fanciful ideologies.
While I understand your concerns about nuclear waste. The problems of thorium vs uranium reactor waste is substantially different. Much of the fuel in a uranium reactor leaves fissionable products that must be reprocessed into new fuel. This processing also allows for the production of weapons grade materials. If it is not processed, it remains hazardous for many thousands of years. This is not the case with a thorium LFTR reactor. As a matter of fact, an LFTR can actually utilize some of the waste left over from a uranium reactor and burn it up as fuel too. Yes, there will be some products left over from an LFTR that will be hazardous. But it is a tiny fraction of the waste from a uranium/plutonium reactor. The little that does remain from an LFTR would only be hazardous for a few centuries, not countless millenia.
Fusion is probably going to take huge expensive and sophisticated facilities to produce an economically viable power reactor. To some point (not completely though) I think much of this has been just government works projects. On the other hand thorium nuclear reactors could be exploited for far less money and much quicker. Thorium is a fairly abundant element that does not have many of the negative properties which a plutonium or uranium based react would have. We have to do something to beef up the electrical grid. I read an article that said if 10% of the cars in the USA switched to electric, it would collapse the capacity of the grid. Besides, most electricity here is now generated by coal. Please look into the more promising technology of the liquid fluoride thorium reactor (LFTR).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LFTRhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AZR0UKxNPh8
I'm not saying we should stop research on fusion, but we have to have a quickly viable alternative.
Women that preferred oral sex over genital sex were at a disadvantage in the gene pool. It doesn't matter what porn movies portray. Get real dudes. Ever wonder why it's really so hard to get her to do it? Its in the genes.:-)
While I agree with much of what you say. The uranium 233 that would be produced from an LFTR also contains a significant amount of U232. This stuff emits strong gamma rays as it decays. It is very deadly to handle. It would quickly ruin any electronics and many other materials in close proximity to it. There's enough of it in the U233 to be a significant obstacle to weaponize it. Though the ionic separation of it would leave you with only U233, but how tough would that be? It would be easier to separate the U235 out of naturally occurring uranium. In a practical sense, making weapons from this type of reactor would be overly costly, time consuming, and just plain dumb.
Uranium based reactors do create Plutonium. But in a Thorium based reactor for all practical purposes you do not. The reason why Uranium was preferred over Thorium for energy production is only BECAUSE of nuclear weapons. You cannot make practical weapons using a Thorium reactor. The chemical separation of actinides from spent fuel could also be used in a Thorium to create more energy from it. Elaborate and expensive ionic separation on not required.
The basic idea a fusion is seductive, but so far it has only been a government make work project. Thorium reactors have actually been built and are functioning. Of course the most advanced to of a Thorium reactor would be e liquid fluoride thorium reactor (LFTR). The only reason these have not been built in mass quantities is engineering details. Fusion reactors are still pie-in-the-sky.
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From what I understand, Windows 8 will run on most contemporary hardware. I installed it on a 3.8GHz P4 system and it ran fine. But it looks like if you want Microsoft Certification, then you need a BIOS that contains the UEFI code. But what if a manufacturer doesn't care about Microsoft Certification and elects to install Windows 8 on a PC with a UEFI BIOS? Then Linux or other operating systems should have no problems dual booting with Windows 8. I conclude that market conditions may cause some PC OEM's to eschew this BIOS extension altogether. Especially if it annoys their potential customer base.
I have had machines with both graphics chips. ATI and Nvidia are really the only viable solutions left. The ATI drivers I had for Windows were always problematic. My laptop is an HP/Compaq NX9420 with a dual core processor, 4G ram and an Nvidia Quadro NVS 510M. HP made sure that the only Windows driver which works on this chip is an Nvidia driver that they specially"tweaked". So the last %$^&& Windows driver HP made available was 4 stinking years ago. The generic ones that I can download from the Nvidia website do not work. This is HP's fault. This option cost me $1200 when it was new!!!! Frickin idiots. But.....................All the generic Linux drivers work. YES!!! Really! Heck, I even got the BSD Unix driver to work...All these drivers work awesome. I had another laptop of the same model but the ATI graphics chip. Not so good. I must admit though, I have had better experiences with both chips on a desktop. Nvidia was still better. Intel graphics chips are as slow as a snail. They're awful. OpenGL works great in Linux with all the machines I support, and I like making life easier. So they're all Nvidia, and all Linux whenever possible.
I think Microsoft might use Apple's success as a legal foil to avert anymore monopolistic trouble. Apple's market cap is bigger than theirs and Apple is left alone by the DOJ. Also, MS wants to start a Microsoft store, just like Apple's iTunes store. I'll also be there are a few Microsoft branded mobile phone prototypes sitting in a dark research cave somewhere. Why else would they be working so hard on a port of Win8 to ARM? Windows for Mobile phones has been an irrelevant disaster. Branding their own phones might finally give them a better chance......maybe. Besides, Linux has become the alternative to Windows that never existed when all the legal troubles really started getting hot. I can't wait to try Steam on my Linux Mint 13 KDE installation. If this isn't a viable alternative to Windows, I don't know what ever will be. Then again, Valve could just be using as a threat to extract some concessions from MS. I hope this is not true. Now then, you can't play arcade games too well on a tablet PC either. It really is ergonomically superior to use a keyboard. So MS could just put Win8 on the Xbox and voila! Their own branded PC. Do yourself a favor, folks. Check out Linux Mint 13 KDE. I installed it in an empty partition on my laptop and desktop with Win7 as a primary OS. Grub will let you choose which to boot. I'm using it right now. If it weren't for the fact that work is using Exchange and another vertical application, I wouldn't even need Windows. http://linuxmint.com/ Oh, and regarding the spelling Nazi, I turned on spell check. :-)
I'm not really offended. I have been online long enough to have somewhat of a thicker skin. Oh, and actually, Dutch is my first language. :-)
I think this is a Microsoft strategy to take control more and become a PC OEM theselves like Apple. I think they're success will be limited. If I were a PC OEM, I would be real concerned by The Surface and Xbox.
So, I mean like, does this mean if you have, like, a liger, cleaning his cat box will, like, blow up the whole, like, neighborhood? Or maybe, like, the parasites will, like eat my face? Gosh. Idiots! I'm sure. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liger
This is an absurd argument. Netflix is providing something to be consumed for a fee. They throw it out there and say, here's our food. This is what we are serving and here is the price. So, let's say I have a gluten allergy. I can't walk in to the local bakery and scream that they are obligated to provide me with gluten free bread? I am not entitled to any of the products or services of the bakery. I can either buy it or not. Same with Netflix. I have sympathy for the deaf, but private business does not have to change to accommodate their disadvantage.
Woohoo! I agree with your assesment of the UN! They are useless.
Nokia is also circling down the drain. There are many articles today detailing their cutbacks and business losses. In order to ensure Windows Phone will not be an utter failure, I would not be surprised to see Microsoft buy Nokia. A bankruptcy for Nokia would be very bad PR for Windows Phone.
The first part of your post was okay. I actually think it would be handled better by companies like Spacex rather than NASA. But then you yourself plunge into ideology and political discourse. Then again, unfortunately the reality of science is that it does not exit in a vacuum. I dislike the political and ideological baggage tossed in there by all sides. It won't go away either.
Dude, after I did my post I read yours. I could not agree with you more. I have done essentially the same thing you advised long ago. Putting a rack in a house is ludicrous.
Good grief. If you're going to run a home network, what the heck do you need a fire breathing data center for? I have done this at my house for my family. I have Cat5 cable running through the house. But no matter how hard I have tried to predict the future of technology, I have missed the boat too often. Forget all the big power hungry servers and resources. It's ridiculous to build a home system that requires active external cooling. The most I have needed was sharing files, printers, DHCP, firewall, webserver, domain controller and a few misc goodies. I have done this all on some tiny super low power Via based mini-ITX based motherboards. The darn things together use fewer watts than my workstation. Most of them run notebook 2.5 inch low power drives. An enclosed area can get pretty hot, but these don't. My one big main server for sharing video, music and other stuff does run some 7200 RPM 3.5" drives, but they go into hibernate when they haven't been used for a while, then do a wake a request is made. Those are 2TB SATA drives that are mirrored. I do want more storage though. I connect my computer, my kids computers and all the TV's. I use some of the TV's for monitors too. I connect the Sony PS3's and I also have a wireless network for my laptop. I have 2 printers. A standard B&W laser printer and a nice color inkjet . I only have 1 RJ45 per room. I use a hub or switch there if I need more. I can control all the security via the main server. I run my own domain too. Anyway, it let's me control what my kids can do or guests. My network is controlled by Linux too. I don't need a rack, or special cooling or any of that stuff. Beware of over engineering. It's all a few tiny cases sitting sideways on a closet shelf. I have ripped my favorite movies and stored them on my servers. I also ripped my entire CD collection of music. It never skips on music or video. I have 2 external USB interface drivew for a backups that I rotate. I always keep one of these at the office in case the house burns down. This is an on going project that has been a lot of fun. Keeping it all cool and the electricity bill is negligable.
I wish solar energy was the end all be all solution to our energy problems. But it is not. Simply put, when the sun isn't shining, you have no power. It is fine as a backup system or one to augment the grid. But reliable it is not. The cost per kilowatt hour is also too high. Most electricity in the US is still produced from coal. That is because it has the lowest cost per kilowatt hour. The best solution I see is building Thorium reactors. Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactors (LFTR's) do not have the problems that plague uranium and plutonium fueled reactors. Fusion sounds cool, but so far it has been nothing but a huge government "make work" project. It is nowhere near ready for commercialization. LFTR's would be clean and cheap. They should be competitive with coal per kilowatt hour cost. You don't have to depend on the huge thermonuclear reactor in the sky being obscured by clouds or it being night either.
I always thought the specs touted on hybrids was a "best case" scanario which exagerates reality. I'm going to hold out for my Mr. Fusion powered vehicle. Maybe Marty McFly will let me borrow his. http://backtothefuture.wikia.com/wiki/Fusion_Industries :-)
So what I eat drink and ingest can affect my cerebral cortex? Beer, librium and crack can affect me? Gosh, I never knew that. Thank God for these articles.
Well said. You are so right.
Though I think fusion is not a short term viable option for commercial energy production. There is another way of doing this though. Fusion using helium 3 is most likely to produce a commercially viable reactor. But the problem is, there is hardly any helium 3 on the earth. We can produce it in another reactor, but the cost would be beyond commercial sustainability. However, there is theoretically a considerable source of helium 3 on the moon. Helium 3 is a product of solar wind that is mostly deflected by the earth's magnetic field. So it does not accumulate here. But the moon has no way of deflecting solar wind, so helium 3 can and does accumulate in the lunar regolith. This could actually make a return to the moon economically feasible. The most likely candidate for a commercially feasible fusion reactor would use helium3. It appears to be the most efficient means of creating distributable energy from a fusion based energy economy. But I still think thorium is a better and cheaper solution.
This will mean more and more hydrocarbons will have to be used to sustain the German economy. This is a hysterical political response from form uniformed and misguided environmental do gooders. I made an earlier post in another article about thorium reactors. These have no where the dangerous consequences of uranium/plutonium reactors. Thorium reactors have already been built in the US. But the reason why they never went commercial is because you cannot produce nuclear weapons from them in a practical sense.They better hope that fusion becomes viable soon. But I doubt it. People need to be more educated themselves and stop listening to lying politicians and self serving demagogues of fanciful ideologies.
While I understand your concerns about nuclear waste. The problems of thorium vs uranium reactor waste is substantially different. Much of the fuel in a uranium reactor leaves fissionable products that must be reprocessed into new fuel. This processing also allows for the production of weapons grade materials. If it is not processed, it remains hazardous for many thousands of years. This is not the case with a thorium LFTR reactor. As a matter of fact, an LFTR can actually utilize some of the waste left over from a uranium reactor and burn it up as fuel too. Yes, there will be some products left over from an LFTR that will be hazardous. But it is a tiny fraction of the waste from a uranium/plutonium reactor. The little that does remain from an LFTR would only be hazardous for a few centuries, not countless millenia.
Fusion is probably going to take huge expensive and sophisticated facilities to produce an economically viable power reactor. To some point (not completely though) I think much of this has been just government works projects. On the other hand thorium nuclear reactors could be exploited for far less money and much quicker. Thorium is a fairly abundant element that does not have many of the negative properties which a plutonium or uranium based react would have. We have to do something to beef up the electrical grid. I read an article that said if 10% of the cars in the USA switched to electric, it would collapse the capacity of the grid. Besides, most electricity here is now generated by coal. Please look into the more promising technology of the liquid fluoride thorium reactor (LFTR). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LFTR http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AZR0UKxNPh8 I'm not saying we should stop research on fusion, but we have to have a quickly viable alternative.
Women that preferred oral sex over genital sex were at a disadvantage in the gene pool. It doesn't matter what porn movies portray. Get real dudes. Ever wonder why it's really so hard to get her to do it? Its in the genes. :-)
Okay. So having sex with ugly girls will cure my colds and I'll live longer? Maybe the big cave in the sky is better.
Hey! That's what I was going to say! LAME!
While I agree with much of what you say. The uranium 233 that would be produced from an LFTR also contains a significant amount of U232. This stuff emits strong gamma rays as it decays. It is very deadly to handle. It would quickly ruin any electronics and many other materials in close proximity to it. There's enough of it in the U233 to be a significant obstacle to weaponize it. Though the ionic separation of it would leave you with only U233, but how tough would that be? It would be easier to separate the U235 out of naturally occurring uranium. In a practical sense, making weapons from this type of reactor would be overly costly, time consuming, and just plain dumb.
Uranium based reactors do create Plutonium. But in a Thorium based reactor for all practical purposes you do not. The reason why Uranium was preferred over Thorium for energy production is only BECAUSE of nuclear weapons. You cannot make practical weapons using a Thorium reactor. The chemical separation of actinides from spent fuel could also be used in a Thorium to create more energy from it. Elaborate and expensive ionic separation on not required. The basic idea a fusion is seductive, but so far it has only been a government make work project. Thorium reactors have actually been built and are functioning. Of course the most advanced to of a Thorium reactor would be e liquid fluoride thorium reactor (LFTR). The only reason these have not been built in mass quantities is engineering details. Fusion reactors are still pie-in-the-sky.