which means I won;t be able to comfortably watch it fro many distance. It will be either "I can only see part of the picture without turning my head" or "Hmm, I think if I watched this movie on my cell phone with 320x240 screen, I would see more detail".
Sound system I couldn't get away with playing at that volume without the neighbors complaining in any urban/suburban neighborhood.
No way to turn it down either.
I can get a half dozen friends with their families into a movie theater comfortably.
I would do the same as I did before I had high speed internet connection (and before stuff like divx and mp3 was created allowing me to download on a dial up connection) - record from radio. I now have a VCR too and I have recorded a lot of TV shows that are not available for download. Oh, and I still record from radio. When I listen to radio at home, I have a blank or partially recorded cassette in my tape deck that is set to record-pause mode. If I hear a good song I record it.
Oh, by the way, I still buy records and tapes with music on them, even though I could download most of them.
My download is 4mbps, so if I use public trackers (usually a lot of people want to download that torrent) I can give back what I have taken quite easily (it helps that I don't saturate my download speed 24/7, my average download is less than average upload). Once I had a 1024/128 connection. With that, it was impossible to have a decent ratio and still be able to download anything.
However, I archive almost everything I download, so I won't need to download it ever again. This way, as my collection grows, I'm downloading less and less, but my upload speed is always saturated.
you don't have an inherent right to just take stuff any more than I have an inherent right to "borrow" anything from you without asking first.
Compare: "Oh crap, someone stole my car. The police probably won't find it and I didn't have insurance against theft. Now I'll need to buy another car"
"Oh crap, someone downloaded my movie. All of my copies are gone, even the backups. The police probably won't find who did it, so now I need to hire the actors again and make the movie again from scratch"
You're right, downloading a movie is like stealing a car, that's why all of the movie makers keep making the same movies over and over again. Once someone downloads, the creators need to make the movie yet again.
How can more than one people download the same movie in unknown. It is probably some super secret technology that lets them make two movies from one cheaper than it would be to film that movie again. At least car thieves are not as lucky - two people can't steal the same car and each have a car. They can cooperate and steal that car more efficiently, but still the car won't be able to be in two separate locations at once. Movies somehow can, strange...
Sure you can. Make a copy to a removable medium, delete the original. And backups. And backups of backups.
For example, I could actually steal a recorded song by breaking into the studio, taking the master tape and leaving a reel of identical, but blank tape in its place. The artist will need to record that song again. For best effect, do that before any copies of that tape are made (for example, a CD master).
Me too, but I think that I should start looking for a new public torrent index. I really liked mininova and used it together with TPB, but now only TPB and private trackers are left and I'd rather use public torrents (not because I don't want to seed, I seed until ratio is >=1, but in private trackers, nobody wants to download the files, so I'm stuck trying to seed a 1GB file to ratio =1 for days, even though with my (slow) upload speed of ~90KB/s it should take less than 4 hours. During that time I cannot delete that file or move it to another hard disk to free some space on my downloads disk (seeding when the file is stored on a network disk usually leads to problems like "the specified network path was not found" error once in a while even though all switches, network cards and the file server works OK).
Interesting, I really liked Borderlands, liked it enough to finish it alone, then finish it with a friend in coop. Probably has something to do with guns that set enemies on fire and my characters ability to make that fire hurt more...
Also, old cars look better. New cars are designed to be as aerodynamic as possible so as to use less fuel, but the truth is if you can afford to buy a new car, you can also afford the fuel.
$100k for a more efficient car would buy you ~64000L of gas (~$1.55/L in my country) for your current one. And the new car still needs gas. To be fair, new car will require less maintenance than an old one, but repairs on a new car are usually more expensive, since the electronics are expensive.
I trust mechanical systems more than I do some software. Yes, the mechanics also fail, but they can be inspected better ("It looks like this this linkage is rusty/cracked. I should replace it just in case") and people seem to be able to design mechanics better than software (a TV or a tape recorder does not need constant patches to fix various bugs like Firefox or other software do, it works right the first time). Mechanical systems are not affected by small intensity cosmic rays like microchips are.
I did not know where to find the actual statistics.
In any case, WinXP (DX10 GPU) and DX9 (sm2b + 3) make up 21.55% + 12.64% = 34.19%, while DX10 systems (compliant GPU + Win7 or Vista) make up 53.18% + 3.29% = 56.47%.
So, a DX9c game runs on 56.47% + 34.19% = 90.66% of the systems, while a DX10 only game runs on 56.47$ of the systems. Who wants to restrict themselves to 56% of the potential market instead of 90%?
If Windows XP supported DX10, then DX10 systems would be 78.02% and most of the games would be DX10 by now, just like the games went to DX9c almost as soon as it was released.
As for the CPU/multicore - I have a 2x dualcore PC and agree with you.
I'm not an huge gamer, but my preference is to sit in front of my TV on my XBox 360 or Wii when playing games.
And my preference is to use my monitor to play games. I don't have a lot of free space in my room, so instead of haveing a separate TV and PC monitor, I only have the monitor. So, if I wanted to play games on a console, I would need to connect it to the monitor, but I doubt that consoles have VGA ports, which means that I would need converters to do that. Also, I think keyboard+mouse is better for the games I play (FPS + adventure), but I know there is an adapter for that too.
So, xbox360 + VGA adapter + keyboard/mouse adapter = a lot of $$$ to play the games just like I do now. Oh, and my PC has a 3 year old VGA (Radeon HD2900XT) and still plays new games at 1600x1200 resolution (everything on high except AA, which I don't use) without problems.
In truth I couldn't give a rat's derrière about the graphics of the games I play so long as I find them compelling and fun.
Same for me. Sometimes, when I play an old game I wish it could have better graphics (so I could see things more clearly), but the game is good nonetheless.
Also, Windows XP does not support DX10 or 11.Microsoft did this thinking that it will cause the gamers to upgrade when new games need the new version (in the past games used the newest DX version that was available). However, since DX10 was on Vista, people did not upgrade, so the game companies continued to make games that work on XP since this way they can have a larger customer base (DX9 game runs on XP, Vista and 7), since intentionally restricting your customers is stupid.
Windows XP is still on ~50% of PCs (I don't know what part of gamer PCs is XP). The company has to make a decision - make a game that runs on, say, 80% of gamer PCs or make a game that runs on, say, 40% of gamer PCs. The second option means that if your game is equally as good, you will only get half the money you would if you used DX9.
Companies that make games that use DX10 still must make them compatible with DX9, so DX10 cannot be used for the main part of the game, and is only used for stuff like enhancing the graphics a bit.
People with color blindness cannot do some things that others can (for example, be commercial pilots) and the color blindness does not give a big advantage over "normals". Yes, IIRC color blindness allows a person to see trough normal camouflage (I suppose a camouflage that works on both "normal" and color blind people could be made though).
Parents forcing a cure on a child can be just as bad in some cases
And yet again, I managed to condense my thought into one sentence that has almost the opposite meaning form the one that I intended.
What I meant, was that it would be wrong to tie a deaf person up and drag him to a doctor, who would restore his hearing. If the deaf person does not want to hear, he can remain deaf.
Also, it is accepted that children mostly cannot think for themselves, so the parents do the thinking for them. If the medical procedure will affect the kids quality of life in a meaningful way (removing disabilities for example), then the parents should be able to give consent for the kid. The parents should not be able to modify the kid to make it worse (for example, making the kid deaf), also the parents should not be able to modify the kid for purely cosmetic reasons or due to religious beliefs ("I want my kid to have blue eyes and blond hair"; "My religion commands me to make my kid to be white with black spots"). The parents should be able to select an embryo which has the requires characteristics, but they should not be able to modify the kid (when he grows up, if he still wants to be like the parents wanted, he can modify himself).
Vaccination should be compulsory (and it probably is in my country) for very dangerous and possibly incurable diseases, like polio, smallpox etc. If the kid grows up and wants to die, there are other ways to accomplish that without contracting an infectious disease and spreading it to others.
Mental diseases are a different matter. If the disease makes the person a danger to himself or others, he should be cured without asking for permission (or you could give him a choice - mental hospital or cure). If the does not make the person dangerous and the person is able to function kinda normally, then you should ask for consent. I mean things like Aspergers. If the disease does not make the person dangerous, but makes him unable to function normally without a lot of help, he should be cured so as not to be a drain on others*.
*now someone will attack me about this point, but I meant this: if the person is unable to live without a lot of help from others (basically, without the help, he will die because he cannot go to work, buy or grow food etc), then he should be fixed so he is able to survive without the extensive help, because then the resources used to continually help him could be used to help a person who cannot be fixed. This should apply both to physical and mental defects.
This assumes that the procedure is very low risk. If the procedure is risky, then it's wither the parents consent (if the procedure is only possible or less risky for a kid than adult) or the consent of the person himself.
Forcing someone to undergo a medical procedure is wrong, especially if their condition is not life threatening or dangerous to others (some mental diseases).
However, forcing the person to remain disabled even though it is possible to fix them is also wrong.
"I'm sorry, sir, but you must remain color blind and unable to get your pilots license/do some other work, because we cannot allow you to change your genes, because there is at least a slight possibility of you color blindness gene to have some unintentional benefits. You won't get those benefits though, but maybe humans in a few hundred years will."
That's stupid.
Also, if people hate other people because of some minor differences (skin color, religion, sexual orientation) that do not give any actual (dis)advantage, imagine how much telepaths would be hated, since they would have an advantage over mundanes.
Orange and red colors on a resistor are very similar indeed. Now,, if both colors are on the same resistor then it's easy, but different resistors usually are painted in slightly different colors and what was supposed to be very dark orange on one resistor ends up being very light red on another. Also, if the resistor is a bit darker because of dust it also "helps". Also blue/violet sometimes look the same. Or at least it looks like this to me, I can see all three primary colors normally.
But I suppose they had the guy tested and he was red/green colorblind.
The moral dilemma is because of the implicit assumption that color-blindness is a fault that should be cured. It's just a societal notion that this is a flaw to be corrected; what if we figured out that there was a way to correct all those faulty brown eyes so that they were perfectly blue instead?
Color blindness is a defect, the affected people cannot distinguish two colors, which may cause problems sometimes. Let's say that there is a light which can either be green or red depending on some conditions. A colorblind person wouldn't be able to see the difference.
Brown or blue eyes do not affect any function. But if someone wanted to change their eye color, why not? They can dye their hair, why not let them dye their eyes?
Similarly, there are segments of the deaf population who do not feel that being deaf is a flaw that needs fixing.
It's their choice and we should respect it. But I think that there are a lot of deaf people who want to be able to hear things. The first group should not be able to force the second group remain deaf.
Color-blindness is not blindness, one can still see and distinguish colors.
Not all of them though. It would be the same as me saying that if a VGA cable has one pin broken and does nto show one color, then it is perfectly OK, because the image is still in color (but with a cyan/yellow/magenta tint).
If there's a problem in some configuration of lights or shades, then perhaps the fault lies with design that excluded a significant fraction of the populace.
No. Designing everything for colorblind people would leave the majority in almost the same situation. I have fully functioning color sensors, why can't I use them and encode 3 options on a single light (green/yellow/red for normal/warning/critical)? However, since the color blindness is not a choice, we should try to make the colorblind people be able to function almost normally. But the fact remains that color blindness is a disability, even though it is a lesser disability than most.
So you'll make the DC-DC converter on the SSD hot instead? Also, you will lose more energy heating both the SSD and the power supply, even though the power supply will be a half degree colder.
Transmission losses are P=I^2*R, so if you halve the current you have 4 times less power heating the wire.
The voltage on the wire is quite small (U=I*R), even though the voltage between the wire and another wire (or ground) is 750kV or more.
However, as to the actual device that uses power, it can use whatever voltage and current it is designed to use.
Now, power loss in a chip depends on the voltage (and frequency, and duty cycle), that's why new CPUs use less than 1V. Flash chips work on 5V or 3.3V and making ones that work on 12V would probably be expensive or impossible, which means that if you want an SSD that works on 12V, the SSD will have a voltage regulator which converts the 12V to 5V or 3.3V.
Powerful DC-DC converters are more efficient than small ones, also, dual conversion (220V->12V->5V) is less efficient than converting straight from 220V to 5V.
However, SSDs do not use a lot of power, I can't say how much exactly, but my 750GB 7200RPM hard drive uses ~15W, so a SSD would use less than that, but let's say 15W.
At this power, it's 3A at 5V or 1.25A at 12V. The wires from the PSU to the SSD are short and quite thick so they won't lose much power as heat. A SSD that works on 12V (and has a DC-DC converter to step it down to 5V) would be less efficient because you would lose more energy in heating the DC-DC converter than you would lose passing those 3A on the wire.
My newest hard drive is 3 years old (7200RPM, 750GB). All others are older, and are on almost 24/7. For example, a 40GB Maxtor drive reports that it has been spinning for ~58k hours, so that's ~6.6 years. Here's a report from speedfan. Oh, and the UDMA error count has been like that for a few years now.
And here's another report. This 120GB hard drive has been spinning for ~39k hours.
The drives are much older than the hours they have been spinning because a few years ago I used to turn off my computer at night, so the "Power on hours" number is lower than the age of the drive. Now, both these drives are on almost 24/7, I also have some newer and bigger drives, but none are younger than 3 years old, becasue 3 years ago I stopped buying new hard drives. I use LTO1 and 2 tapes for stuff I don't access frequently so I don't need more hard drives.
Take a 25W resistor and pass a 10 amp current through it and it gets VERY hot; pass a 1 amp current at 10 times the voltage, and it doesn't.
Actually, no.
Let's say I take a 1Ohm resistor and connect it to an ideal 1V source. The current will be 10A, and the dissipated power will be 1V*10A=10W. Or, I can take a 10Ohm resistor and connect it to a 10V source. The current will be 1A and the power will be 10V*1A=10W.
In both cases the resistor will be at about the same temperature, assuming both resistors are the same size and shape.
Depends on the purpose, really. As the basis for your OS, the number of writes might be an issue, but for general user data it's less so.
This sounds kind of backward to me. The advantage of SSD over HDD is speed (especially seek time), but only the OS really benefits from reduced seek time, and what benefits the most is the pagefile, which gets written often. Only in certain circumstances user data would benefot from reduced seek time mostly video editing etc. Movie files not intended for editing, Office documents, audio files and photos won't benefit from reduced seek time, but SSDs will be more expensive per gigabyte than HDDs for some time.
So, it's more likely for one to have a small, but very fast SSD as a system drive and one or more slow, but big hard drives for data. This is almost what I use. System drive is 36GB 15000RPM HDD and files reside on a bunch of 5400-7200RPM 40-750GB hard drives. When I want to safely store files that I don't plan to access often I write them to LTO2 tape.
Slashdot Mirror
50 Foot screen.
which means I won;t be able to comfortably watch it fro many distance. It will be either "I can only see part of the picture without turning my head" or "Hmm, I think if I watched this movie on my cell phone with 320x240 screen, I would see more detail".
Sound system I couldn't get away with playing at that volume without the neighbors complaining in any urban/suburban neighborhood.
No way to turn it down either.
I can get a half dozen friends with their families into a movie theater comfortably.
I'll give you that.
I would do the same as I did before I had high speed internet connection (and before stuff like divx and mp3 was created allowing me to download on a dial up connection) - record from radio. I now have a VCR too and I have recorded a lot of TV shows that are not available for download. Oh, and I still record from radio. When I listen to radio at home, I have a blank or partially recorded cassette in my tape deck that is set to record-pause mode. If I hear a good song I record it.
Oh, by the way, I still buy records and tapes with music on them, even though I could download most of them.
My download is 4mbps, so if I use public trackers (usually a lot of people want to download that torrent) I can give back what I have taken quite easily (it helps that I don't saturate my download speed 24/7, my average download is less than average upload). Once I had a 1024/128 connection. With that, it was impossible to have a decent ratio and still be able to download anything.
However, I archive almost everything I download, so I won't need to download it ever again. This way, as my collection grows, I'm downloading less and less, but my upload speed is always saturated.
you don't have an inherent right to just take stuff any more than I have an inherent right to "borrow" anything from you without asking first.
Compare:
"Oh crap, someone stole my car. The police probably won't find it and I didn't have insurance against theft. Now I'll need to buy another car"
"Oh crap, someone downloaded my movie. All of my copies are gone, even the backups. The police probably won't find who did it, so now I need to hire the actors again and make the movie again from scratch"
You're right, downloading a movie is like stealing a car, that's why all of the movie makers keep making the same movies over and over again. Once someone downloads, the creators need to make the movie yet again.
How can more than one people download the same movie in unknown. It is probably some super secret technology that lets them make two movies from one cheaper than it would be to film that movie again. At least car thieves are not as lucky - two people can't steal the same car and each have a car. They can cooperate and steal that car more efficiently, but still the car won't be able to be in two separate locations at once. Movies somehow can, strange...
You can't take IP
Sure you can. Make a copy to a removable medium, delete the original. And backups. And backups of backups.
For example, I could actually steal a recorded song by breaking into the studio, taking the master tape and leaving a reel of identical, but blank tape in its place. The artist will need to record that song again. For best effect, do that before any copies of that tape are made (for example, a CD master).
Me too, but I think that I should start looking for a new public torrent index. I really liked mininova and used it together with TPB, but now only TPB and private trackers are left and I'd rather use public torrents (not because I don't want to seed, I seed until ratio is >=1, but in private trackers, nobody wants to download the files, so I'm stuck trying to seed a 1GB file to ratio =1 for days, even though with my (slow) upload speed of ~90KB/s it should take less than 4 hours. During that time I cannot delete that file or move it to another hard disk to free some space on my downloads disk (seeding when the file is stored on a network disk usually leads to problems like "the specified network path was not found" error once in a while even though all switches, network cards and the file server works OK).
Interesting, I really liked Borderlands, liked it enough to finish it alone, then finish it with a friend in coop. Probably has something to do with guns that set enemies on fire and my characters ability to make that fire hurt more...
Also, old cars look better. New cars are designed to be as aerodynamic as possible so as to use less fuel, but the truth is if you can afford to buy a new car, you can also afford the fuel.
$100k for a more efficient car would buy you ~64000L of gas (~$1.55/L in my country) for your current one. And the new car still needs gas. To be fair, new car will require less maintenance than an old one, but repairs on a new car are usually more expensive, since the electronics are expensive.
I agree.
I trust mechanical systems more than I do some software. Yes, the mechanics also fail, but they can be inspected better ("It looks like this this linkage is rusty/cracked. I should replace it just in case") and people seem to be able to design mechanics better than software (a TV or a tape recorder does not need constant patches to fix various bugs like Firefox or other software do, it works right the first time). Mechanical systems are not affected by small intensity cosmic rays like microchips are.
I did not know where to find the actual statistics.
In any case, WinXP (DX10 GPU) and DX9 (sm2b + 3) make up 21.55% + 12.64% = 34.19%, while DX10 systems (compliant GPU + Win7 or Vista) make up 53.18% + 3.29% = 56.47%.
So, a DX9c game runs on 56.47% + 34.19% = 90.66% of the systems, while a DX10 only game runs on 56.47$ of the systems. Who wants to restrict themselves to 56% of the potential market instead of 90%?
If Windows XP supported DX10, then DX10 systems would be 78.02% and most of the games would be DX10 by now, just like the games went to DX9c almost as soon as it was released.
As for the CPU/multicore - I have a 2x dualcore PC and agree with you.
Good to know if I ever buy an xbox360. I could buy a banned xbox cheaper, so that leaves the keyboard+mouse adapter.
But the fact remains that I can play games just as well on my PC.
I'm not an huge gamer, but my preference is to sit in front of my TV on my XBox 360 or Wii when playing games.
And my preference is to use my monitor to play games. I don't have a lot of free space in my room, so instead of haveing a separate TV and PC monitor, I only have the monitor. So, if I wanted to play games on a console, I would need to connect it to the monitor, but I doubt that consoles have VGA ports, which means that I would need converters to do that. Also, I think keyboard+mouse is better for the games I play (FPS + adventure), but I know there is an adapter for that too.
So, xbox360 + VGA adapter + keyboard/mouse adapter = a lot of $$$ to play the games just like I do now.
Oh, and my PC has a 3 year old VGA (Radeon HD2900XT) and still plays new games at 1600x1200 resolution (everything on high except AA, which I don't use) without problems.
In truth I couldn't give a rat's derrière about the graphics of the games I play so long as I find them compelling and fun.
Same for me. Sometimes, when I play an old game I wish it could have better graphics (so I could see things more clearly), but the game is good nonetheless.
Also, Windows XP does not support DX10 or 11.Microsoft did this thinking that it will cause the gamers to upgrade when new games need the new version (in the past games used the newest DX version that was available). However, since DX10 was on Vista, people did not upgrade, so the game companies continued to make games that work on XP since this way they can have a larger customer base (DX9 game runs on XP, Vista and 7), since intentionally restricting your customers is stupid.
Windows XP is still on ~50% of PCs (I don't know what part of gamer PCs is XP). The company has to make a decision - make a game that runs on, say, 80% of gamer PCs or make a game that runs on, say, 40% of gamer PCs. The second option means that if your game is equally as good, you will only get half the money you would if you used DX9.
Companies that make games that use DX10 still must make them compatible with DX9, so DX10 cannot be used for the main part of the game, and is only used for stuff like enhancing the graphics a bit.
People with color blindness cannot do some things that others can (for example, be commercial pilots) and the color blindness does not give a big advantage over "normals". Yes, IIRC color blindness allows a person to see trough normal camouflage (I suppose a camouflage that works on both "normal" and color blind people could be made though).
Parents forcing a cure on a child can be just as bad in some cases
I don't think this is the case.
And yet again, I managed to condense my thought into one sentence that has almost the opposite meaning form the one that I intended.
What I meant, was that it would be wrong to tie a deaf person up and drag him to a doctor, who would restore his hearing. If the deaf person does not want to hear, he can remain deaf.
Also, it is accepted that children mostly cannot think for themselves, so the parents do the thinking for them. If the medical procedure will affect the kids quality of life in a meaningful way (removing disabilities for example), then the parents should be able to give consent for the kid. The parents should not be able to modify the kid to make it worse (for example, making the kid deaf), also the parents should not be able to modify the kid for purely cosmetic reasons or due to religious beliefs ("I want my kid to have blue eyes and blond hair"; "My religion commands me to make my kid to be white with black spots"). The parents should be able to select an embryo which has the requires characteristics, but they should not be able to modify the kid (when he grows up, if he still wants to be like the parents wanted, he can modify himself).
Vaccination should be compulsory (and it probably is in my country) for very dangerous and possibly incurable diseases, like polio, smallpox etc. If the kid grows up and wants to die, there are other ways to accomplish that without contracting an infectious disease and spreading it to others.
Mental diseases are a different matter. If the disease makes the person a danger to himself or others, he should be cured without asking for permission (or you could give him a choice - mental hospital or cure).
If the does not make the person dangerous and the person is able to function kinda normally, then you should ask for consent. I mean things like Aspergers.
If the disease does not make the person dangerous, but makes him unable to function normally without a lot of help, he should be cured so as not to be a drain on others*.
*now someone will attack me about this point, but I meant this: if the person is unable to live without a lot of help from others (basically, without the help, he will die because he cannot go to work, buy or grow food etc), then he should be fixed so he is able to survive without the extensive help, because then the resources used to continually help him could be used to help a person who cannot be fixed. This should apply both to physical and mental defects.
This assumes that the procedure is very low risk. If the procedure is risky, then it's wither the parents consent (if the procedure is only possible or less risky for a kid than adult) or the consent of the person himself.
Forcing someone to undergo a medical procedure is wrong, especially if their condition is not life threatening or dangerous to others (some mental diseases).
However, forcing the person to remain disabled even though it is possible to fix them is also wrong.
"I'm sorry, sir, but you must remain color blind and unable to get your pilots license/do some other work, because we cannot allow you to change your genes, because there is at least a slight possibility of you color blindness gene to have some unintentional benefits. You won't get those benefits though, but maybe humans in a few hundred years will."
That's stupid.
Also, if people hate other people because of some minor differences (skin color, religion, sexual orientation) that do not give any actual (dis)advantage, imagine how much telepaths would be hated, since they would have an advantage over mundanes.
How is telepathy supposed to work anyway?
...like waking up one morning to learn that ketchup is really green.
I saw green ketchup in the store one time. I think Heinz makes it.
Orange and red colors on a resistor are very similar indeed. Now,, if both colors are on the same resistor then it's easy, but different resistors usually are painted in slightly different colors and what was supposed to be very dark orange on one resistor ends up being very light red on another. Also, if the resistor is a bit darker because of dust it also "helps". Also blue/violet sometimes look the same. Or at least it looks like this to me, I can see all three primary colors normally.
But I suppose they had the guy tested and he was red/green colorblind.
The moral dilemma is because of the implicit assumption that color-blindness is a fault that should be cured. It's just a societal notion that this is a flaw to be corrected; what if we figured out that there was a way to correct all those faulty brown eyes so that they were perfectly blue instead?
Color blindness is a defect, the affected people cannot distinguish two colors, which may cause problems sometimes. Let's say that there is a light which can either be green or red depending on some conditions. A colorblind person wouldn't be able to see the difference.
Brown or blue eyes do not affect any function. But if someone wanted to change their eye color, why not? They can dye their hair, why not let them dye their eyes?
Similarly, there are segments of the deaf population who do not feel that being deaf is a flaw that needs fixing.
It's their choice and we should respect it. But I think that there are a lot of deaf people who want to be able to hear things. The first group should not be able to force the second group remain deaf.
Color-blindness is not blindness, one can still see and distinguish colors.
Not all of them though. It would be the same as me saying that if a VGA cable has one pin broken and does nto show one color, then it is perfectly OK, because the image is still in color (but with a cyan/yellow/magenta tint).
If there's a problem in some configuration of lights or shades, then perhaps the fault lies with design that excluded a significant fraction of the populace.
No. Designing everything for colorblind people would leave the majority in almost the same situation. I have fully functioning color sensors, why can't I use them and encode 3 options on a single light (green/yellow/red for normal/warning/critical)? However, since the color blindness is not a choice, we should try to make the colorblind people be able to function almost normally. But the fact remains that color blindness is a disability, even though it is a lesser disability than most.
So you'll make the DC-DC converter on the SSD hot instead? Also, you will lose more energy heating both the SSD and the power supply, even though the power supply will be a half degree colder.
Because we are talking about different things.
Transmission losses are P=I^2*R, so if you halve the current you have 4 times less power heating the wire.
The voltage on the wire is quite small (U=I*R), even though the voltage between the wire and another wire (or ground) is 750kV or more.
However, as to the actual device that uses power, it can use whatever voltage and current it is designed to use.
Now, power loss in a chip depends on the voltage (and frequency, and duty cycle), that's why new CPUs use less than 1V. Flash chips work on 5V or 3.3V and making ones that work on 12V would probably be expensive or impossible, which means that if you want an SSD that works on 12V, the SSD will have a voltage regulator which converts the 12V to 5V or 3.3V.
Powerful DC-DC converters are more efficient than small ones, also, dual conversion (220V->12V->5V) is less efficient than converting straight from 220V to 5V.
However, SSDs do not use a lot of power, I can't say how much exactly, but my 750GB 7200RPM hard drive uses ~15W, so a SSD would use less than that, but let's say 15W.
At this power, it's 3A at 5V or 1.25A at 12V. The wires from the PSU to the SSD are short and quite thick so they won't lose much power as heat. A SSD that works on 12V (and has a DC-DC converter to step it down to 5V) would be less efficient because you would lose more energy in heating the DC-DC converter than you would lose passing those 3A on the wire.
My newest hard drive is 3 years old (7200RPM, 750GB). All others are older, and are on almost 24/7. For example, a 40GB Maxtor drive reports that it has been spinning for ~58k hours, so that's ~6.6 years. Here's a report from speedfan. Oh, and the UDMA error count has been like that for a few years now.
And here's another report. This 120GB hard drive has been spinning for ~39k hours.
The drives are much older than the hours they have been spinning because a few years ago I used to turn off my computer at night, so the "Power on hours" number is lower than the age of the drive. Now, both these drives are on almost 24/7, I also have some newer and bigger drives, but none are younger than 3 years old, becasue 3 years ago I stopped buying new hard drives. I use LTO1 and 2 tapes for stuff I don't access frequently so I don't need more hard drives.
Take a 25W resistor and pass a 10 amp current through it and it gets VERY hot; pass a 1 amp current at 10 times the voltage, and it doesn't.
Actually, no.
Let's say I take a 1Ohm resistor and connect it to an ideal 1V source. The current will be 10A, and the dissipated power will be 1V*10A=10W.
Or, I can take a 10Ohm resistor and connect it to a 10V source. The current will be 1A and the power will be 10V*1A=10W.
In both cases the resistor will be at about the same temperature, assuming both resistors are the same size and shape.
Depends on the purpose, really. As the basis for your OS, the number of writes might be an issue, but for general user data it's less so.
This sounds kind of backward to me. The advantage of SSD over HDD is speed (especially seek time), but only the OS really benefits from reduced seek time, and what benefits the most is the pagefile, which gets written often. Only in certain circumstances user data would benefot from reduced seek time mostly video editing etc. Movie files not intended for editing, Office documents, audio files and photos won't benefit from reduced seek time, but SSDs will be more expensive per gigabyte than HDDs for some time.
So, it's more likely for one to have a small, but very fast SSD as a system drive and one or more slow, but big hard drives for data. This is almost what I use. System drive is 36GB 15000RPM HDD and files reside on a bunch of 5400-7200RPM 40-750GB hard drives. When I want to safely store files that I don't plan to access often I write them to LTO2 tape.