Fanless would always be preferred, but I should also say that on the cards in which ATI does use fans, they appear to be of higher quality than the fans Nvidia uses. I've had two GeForceTi cards that I've had to replace the fans on when they died as opposed to four ATI cards in which the fans are still going strong. The other frustrating issue with Nvidia is support. When you call them about support for bad fans, they refer you to the OEM manufacturer (Apple in this case) whose response to a bad fan was to replace the whole card!!! Now, I have been a fan of Nvidia's performance (thus my purchase of them in the dual G4's), but their cooling needs some more attention and in my latest dual G5, ATI got the nod with their 9800.
Of course, if you don't care about low battery life, aren't fond of jogging, have ample disposable income, don't need to record/encode music portably, and want to purchase music downloads only from the iTunes Music Store, then the iPod is the best the way to go.
Well, I routinely get 5 to 6 hours on my iPod and that is plenty for me. I have never had to have more battery life even on cross country plane flights or drives. I jog routinely with the iPod and have never had a problem and I tried the other music outlets for downloadable music. The iTMS is simply the best there is so.....What is his point?
And then at the bottom of this rant, the author saysWhile not ideal for some niche activities, it's still hands down the best-designed MP3 player in the world.
So what if "Bluetooth enabled" devices are selling? I've *never* seen anybody using Bluetooth in real life. Hell, I don't know anybody who even knows what in the hell it is.
Well, considering that the last five Macintoshes I purchased (including this sweet dual G5), have Bluetooth built in, I would say that a significant number of folks have the functionality. The question now is are they going to use it? I know I do for phone synching and small file transfers. Bluetooth file transfer in OS X is super easy.
It's easier shield a whole facility against EMPs though - just make sure that the structure contains a faraday cage and that all vital electronics that need connections to the outside world pass those connections though em filters.
Do you have any idea how expensive this is? Doing this can easily quadruple the cost of a building. If there are basements, count on five to six times the cost if not more.
maybe I'm barking up the wrong tree on a subject that I'm not too familiar with, but as I recall most military applications are shielded against EM pulses (to protect against the EMP effects of nuclear weapons).
No, most military applications are *not* shielded against EM pulses. This tends to be quite expensive. For instance, I remember when we got a couple shielded Macs. They were hyper expensive (but also TEMPEST sheilded as well).
Wouldn't it then stand to reason that "e-bombs" would be more useful on civilian infrastructure/targets?
Bluejacking is on the edge of being cool. Things like this will be used by folks to contact others or be useful for a number of tasks until they become widely available and then the marketers will come in and take advantage of this. At that point, unless it continues to serve a useful function (like email), it will become more of a nuisance and folks will turn off "Bluetooth Discoverable".
MTV dropped the ball big time and they should have seen the writing on the wall as soon as Apple released iTMS. Besides, I spent some time watching MTV a couple weeks ago and all the music they were playing was "do me baby rap" and commercials. I remember when MTV first started out when they billed themselves as 24 hour commercial free music. Nah, MTV has lost this game. Apple is ideally situated to provide just this sort of music video service. They already have the infrastructure in place to deliver movie previews (and have had for some time), and have been interested in expanding the content available to folks who are interested in downloading music with album covers etc....
The other thing I would like access to with the music is lyrics, liner notes etc... My guess is that all of this is coming.
Re:What about the dangers?
on
Hackers On Atkins
·
· Score: 1, Informative
From what I've heard, Atkins is extremely harsh on your kidneys, with some seriously bad side-effects when you use it for prolonged periods. Surely getting thin is not worth dying or having permanent renal damage for...
Beyond the potential damage to renal systems, (which occur as a result of glomerular scarring) there are other risks to not ingesting enough fruits and veggies. I like some blood red rare meat as much as the next guy, but fruits have many anti-oxidant compounds in them that scavenge free radicals. Veggies, have fiber in them that in addition to keeping you regular, reduce incidence of a number of cancers of the GI tract.
On top of all of that, diets high in proteins and fats (Like the Atkins diet) predispose folks to heart disease, strokes and diabetes.
However, the long term ecological effects of reducing evaporation in lakes or reservoirs is not yet clear as evaporation prevention can increase water temperatures and affect the exchange rates of gases such as oxygen, nitrogen and carbon dioxide."
Don't forget possible changes to the weather. For instance, there are a number of areas whose climate and micro-climate are influenced by nearby bodies of water.
A battery powered implant tried in a group of people with retinitis pigmentosa had close to a 50% success rate
Reference? I am not aware of any peer reviewed work that has passed muster. There has been lots of "cold fusion" style reporting on this issue from a number of companies using the popular press as a means to disseminate their work, but the fundamentals are not in the literature.
In a recent study, puppies with CSNB were able to have their vision restored simply by feeding them RPE65 from birth.
You are most correct here. I was at the ARVO meeting when they presented these data and they absolutely *did* rescue vision in this model. Tremendously exciting.
But these same issues occured in consideration of the cochlear implant. I work with its creators. People supposed that it NEEDED thousands of stimulation points and had to work perfectly.
You are perfectly correct here. The problem with the retina is that it is a massively parallel processing device that has lots of inherent circuitry that starts rewiring itself when it is deafferented from losing its photoreceptor input.
If you try instead to imagine and solve all the possible problems ahead of time, it'll take forever.
Absolutely true and spoken like a true engineer. However, the big fundamental issue is that many of the folks currently engaged in retinal prosthetic research are not aware of some biological fundamentals.
BTW, did you work with Normann?
No, but I know him well and he will be at my dissertation defense tomorrow. Wish me luck!
Dick Normann is rather excited at our work because it essentially supports his way of approaching the engineering problem. I will most likely take a biological approach, but he may beat me to a solution from an engineering implant perspective.
Ya know. I could not figure out if this was a troll or if you were being serious. I decided that you were being serious so I will simply say that there is always going to be someone that is going to bitch and moan about something. Apple gave VT the best deal going (out of IBM, Dell, HP etc..) and they also got an educational discount. What more do you want from a company that gives you the fastest for the cheapest?
Not really, I suspect pretty decent retinal prosthetics will be available within 5 years.
Whoa dude. You are talking to the wrong person if you maintain that. Read my dissertation to find out why.
Like the cochlear implants, they will be horribly imperfect at first, but will dramatically improve the lives of their users. If you cannot see at all, even a few pixels makes like a lot better.
This is true. In fact, if one could maintain even a small "grid" of say, 128 pixels, that would be tremendous.
For the retina the challenges are 1) minimal heat production. The eye doesn't cool really well, and stimulating electrodes are gonna generate heat
This is true, but the other big problem (aside from those I outline in my dissertation) is going to be exact stimulation of appropriate neural circuits (even if they are not corrupt, which they are). What I mean by this is that you are going to have to stimulate ganglion cells. But there is no way that stimulating ganglion cells is going to not also stimulate other cells in the network. This is complicated by the fact that ganglion cells are coupled by gap junctions to amacrine cells.
2) hermetically sealed. The eye will be cut open, the implant inserted, and the eye will be sewn shut, and the outside of the eye will heal. Then, you have to remotely power the implant, while generating minimal heat, and convert visual input to stimulation of retinal neurons.
Again, read the dissertation. There are going to be problems with breaching of glial seals within the retina itself.
But even these issues are completely tractable with current technology
Perhaps.
And, there is a ton of money being thrown at it, with 4-5 centers nationwide working on it, and a company called 2ndSight.
This is very true. Don't forget Optobionics and others. But again, the problem is that everyone is missing some very fundamental issues with retinal degenerations. The retina degenerates, andremodels itself. Current approaches to vision rescue will have to be refined.
Seriously though, thank you for your input. I would love to be able to go back and do another degree in history at some point in my life, and a study of Shakespeare would be most rewarding.
And they would require all computers assembled in Vietnam to be sold with open-source products installed on them."
Well, that could lose the country some contracts for companies that might want to build facilities there to assemble computers..... As much an advocate I am for open source, this sounds like a bad implementation of law.
"Have you read the relevant case study in 'Anthropologist on Mars' by Oliver Sacks?"
I've not yet read that title. Although other works of his such as "The man who mistook his wife for a hat" is wonderful reading. Oliver Sacks is a wonderful author and uniquely gifted communicator of neurology to both the layman and the expert. Thanks, I'll have to look into that title.
The other significant problem with assigning "value" to more current achievements is that we have yet to find out what the implications of much research is. For instance, many people do not know who Mario Capecchi is, as he has yet to win a Nobel prize (but he will given his contributions to genetics). Furthermore, folks like Shakespeare were not recognized as the geniuses they were until long after their time on earth had passed.
They made a fake ear that actually allows people to hear, effectivly curing deathness when the ear is the problem. When you get it installed, which is a surgical process, everyone and everything sounds like daffy duck until your brain gets to know how it works.
Cochlear implants actually do work to some degree, and the limitations can be overcome by better amplifiers/more channels etc... The problem with cochlear implants is relatively simple with some causes of deafness. Vision rescue is a different beast however, and will require a more intimate knowledge of pathological processes and normal retinal functioning.
Come on now. This is nothing new. The U.S. has been conducting biological warefare research for years with no abatement as evidenced by a number of facilities in the west desert of Utah, and high level facilities all over the U.S. I should add that the U.S. is not the only country doing this, but given the cost of biological research, we are most likely at the forefront. Why do you think that the DOD has been so interested in AIDS research? As much as I would like to believe that the Whitehouse's goals and ambitions for AIDS work are good, there are obvious biological questions that are being examined with respect to induced autoimmune deficiency. There are many other potential viral and bacterial questions that could also inform biowarefare research as well.
Hmmm. Aside from the rather rediculous suggestions that ended up in the NYTimes, why not spend the ink space and advocate some suggestions for real innovations that could change peoples lives. Like bionic/biological/cybernetic retinas that actually work?
So, what was the deal? Was Microsoft genuinely spooked at his revealing what building he was in, or were they upset that it was revealed they purchase Macs? They do have a Macintosh business unit, so I would guess the former, but it does appear a little extreme.
Well, I have been hearing most of the new music I am interested in via Internet broadcasting via iTunes. Between that and listening to NPR, the radio is almost useless for me now.
Interestingly, for those users of OS X, there is also a new shareware release of a very promising looking Internet broadcast application that easily shares your iTunes library. Check it out here. It's called Nicecast.
Slashdot Mirror
Fanless would always be preferred, but I should also say that on the cards in which ATI does use fans, they appear to be of higher quality than the fans Nvidia uses. I've had two GeForceTi cards that I've had to replace the fans on when they died as opposed to four ATI cards in which the fans are still going strong. The other frustrating issue with Nvidia is support. When you call them about support for bad fans, they refer you to the OEM manufacturer (Apple in this case) whose response to a bad fan was to replace the whole card!!! Now, I have been a fan of Nvidia's performance (thus my purchase of them in the dual G4's), but their cooling needs some more attention and in my latest dual G5, ATI got the nod with their 9800.
Of course, if you don't care about low battery life, aren't fond of jogging, have ample disposable income, don't need to record/encode music portably, and want to purchase music downloads only from the iTunes Music Store, then the iPod is the best the way to go.
Well, I routinely get 5 to 6 hours on my iPod and that is plenty for me. I have never had to have more battery life even on cross country plane flights or drives. I jog routinely with the iPod and have never had a problem and I tried the other music outlets for downloadable music. The iTMS is simply the best there is so.....What is his point?
And then at the bottom of this rant, the author saysWhile not ideal for some niche activities, it's still hands down the best-designed MP3 player in the world.
What gives? Is this guy totally out to lunch?
So what if "Bluetooth enabled" devices are selling? I've *never* seen anybody using Bluetooth in real life. Hell, I don't know anybody who even knows what in the hell it is.
Well, considering that the last five Macintoshes I purchased (including this sweet dual G5), have Bluetooth built in, I would say that a significant number of folks have the functionality. The question now is are they going to use it? I know I do for phone synching and small file transfers. Bluetooth file transfer in OS X is super easy.
It's easier shield a whole facility against EMPs though - just make sure that the structure contains a faraday cage and that all vital electronics that need connections to the outside world pass those connections though em filters.
Do you have any idea how expensive this is? Doing this can easily quadruple the cost of a building. If there are basements, count on five to six times the cost if not more.
maybe I'm barking up the wrong tree on a subject that I'm not too familiar with, but as I recall most military applications are shielded against EM pulses (to protect against the EMP effects of nuclear weapons).
No, most military applications are *not* shielded against EM pulses. This tends to be quite expensive. For instance, I remember when we got a couple shielded Macs. They were hyper expensive (but also TEMPEST sheilded as well).
Wouldn't it then stand to reason that "e-bombs" would be more useful on civilian infrastructure/targets?
That is mostly the idea.
Bluejacking is on the edge of being cool. Things like this will be used by folks to contact others or be useful for a number of tasks until they become widely available and then the marketers will come in and take advantage of this. At that point, unless it continues to serve a useful function (like email), it will become more of a nuisance and folks will turn off "Bluetooth Discoverable".
MTV dropped the ball big time and they should have seen the writing on the wall as soon as Apple released iTMS. Besides, I spent some time watching MTV a couple weeks ago and all the music they were playing was "do me baby rap" and commercials. I remember when MTV first started out when they billed themselves as 24 hour commercial free music. Nah, MTV has lost this game. Apple is ideally situated to provide just this sort of music video service. They already have the infrastructure in place to deliver movie previews (and have had for some time), and have been interested in expanding the content available to folks who are interested in downloading music with album covers etc....
The other thing I would like access to with the music is lyrics, liner notes etc... My guess is that all of this is coming.
From what I've heard, Atkins is extremely harsh on your kidneys, with some seriously bad side-effects when you use it for prolonged periods. Surely getting thin is not worth dying or having permanent renal damage for...
Beyond the potential damage to renal systems, (which occur as a result of glomerular scarring) there are other risks to not ingesting enough fruits and veggies. I like some blood red rare meat as much as the next guy, but fruits have many anti-oxidant compounds in them that scavenge free radicals. Veggies, have fiber in them that in addition to keeping you regular, reduce incidence of a number of cancers of the GI tract.
On top of all of that, diets high in proteins and fats (Like the Atkins diet) predispose folks to heart disease, strokes and diabetes.
However, the long term ecological effects of reducing evaporation in lakes or reservoirs is not yet clear as evaporation prevention can increase water temperatures and affect the exchange rates of gases such as oxygen, nitrogen and carbon dioxide."
Don't forget possible changes to the weather. For instance, there are a number of areas whose climate and micro-climate are influenced by nearby bodies of water.
A battery powered implant tried in a group of people with retinitis pigmentosa had close to a 50% success rate
Reference? I am not aware of any peer reviewed work that has passed muster. There has been lots of "cold fusion" style reporting on this issue from a number of companies using the popular press as a means to disseminate their work, but the fundamentals are not in the literature.
In a recent study, puppies with CSNB were able to have their vision restored simply by feeding them RPE65 from birth.
You are most correct here. I was at the ARVO meeting when they presented these data and they absolutely *did* rescue vision in this model. Tremendously exciting.
But these same issues occured in consideration of the cochlear implant. I work with its creators. People supposed that it NEEDED thousands of stimulation points and had to work perfectly.
You are perfectly correct here. The problem with the retina is that it is a massively parallel processing device that has lots of inherent circuitry that starts rewiring itself when it is deafferented from losing its photoreceptor input.
If you try instead to imagine and solve all the possible problems ahead of time, it'll take forever.
Absolutely true and spoken like a true engineer. However, the big fundamental issue is that many of the folks currently engaged in retinal prosthetic research are not aware of some biological fundamentals.
BTW, did you work with Normann?
No, but I know him well and he will be at my dissertation defense tomorrow. Wish me luck!
Dick Normann is rather excited at our work because it essentially supports his way of approaching the engineering problem. I will most likely take a biological approach, but he may beat me to a solution from an engineering implant perspective.
Ya know. I could not figure out if this was a troll or if you were being serious. I decided that you were being serious so I will simply say that there is always going to be someone that is going to bitch and moan about something. Apple gave VT the best deal going (out of IBM, Dell, HP etc..) and they also got an educational discount. What more do you want from a company that gives you the fastest for the cheapest?
So, the other really cool thing they are doing is open sourcing the code for error checking and connectivity.
This is in addition to consulting where they are helping others build similar clusters.
Not really, I suspect pretty decent retinal prosthetics will be available within 5 years.
Whoa dude. You are talking to the wrong person if you maintain that. Read my dissertation to find out why.
Like the cochlear implants, they will be horribly imperfect at first, but will dramatically improve the lives of their users. If you cannot see at all, even a few pixels makes like a lot better.
This is true. In fact, if one could maintain even a small "grid" of say, 128 pixels, that would be tremendous.
For the retina the challenges are
1) minimal heat production. The eye doesn't cool really well, and stimulating electrodes are gonna generate heat
This is true, but the other big problem (aside from those I outline in my dissertation) is going to be exact stimulation of appropriate neural circuits (even if they are not corrupt, which they are). What I mean by this is that you are going to have to stimulate ganglion cells. But there is no way that stimulating ganglion cells is going to not also stimulate other cells in the network. This is complicated by the fact that ganglion cells are coupled by gap junctions to amacrine cells.
2) hermetically sealed. The eye will be cut open, the implant inserted, and the eye will be sewn shut, and the outside of the eye will heal. Then, you have to remotely power the implant, while generating minimal heat, and convert visual input to stimulation of retinal neurons.
Again, read the dissertation. There are going to be problems with breaching of glial seals within the retina itself.
But even these issues are completely tractable with current technology
Perhaps.
And, there is a ton of money being thrown at it, with 4-5 centers nationwide working on it, and a company called 2ndSight.
This is very true. Don't forget Optobionics and others. But again, the problem is that everyone is missing some very fundamental issues with retinal degenerations. The retina degenerates, and remodels itself. Current approaches to vision rescue will have to be refined.
Ahhh. A pox on me for my ignorance.
Seriously though, thank you for your input. I would love to be able to go back and do another degree in history at some point in my life, and a study of Shakespeare would be most rewarding.
And they would require all computers assembled in Vietnam to be sold with open-source products installed on them."
Well, that could lose the country some contracts for companies that might want to build facilities there to assemble computers..... As much an advocate I am for open source, this sounds like a bad implementation of law.
"Have you read the relevant case study in 'Anthropologist on Mars' by Oliver Sacks?"
I've not yet read that title. Although other works of his such as "The man who mistook his wife for a hat" is wonderful reading. Oliver Sacks is a wonderful author and uniquely gifted communicator of neurology to both the layman and the expert. Thanks, I'll have to look into that title.
The other significant problem with assigning "value" to more current achievements is that we have yet to find out what the implications of much research is. For instance, many people do not know who Mario Capecchi is, as he has yet to win a Nobel prize (but he will given his contributions to genetics). Furthermore, folks like Shakespeare were not recognized as the geniuses they were until long after their time on earth had passed.
They made a fake ear that actually allows people to hear, effectivly curing deathness when the ear is the problem. When you get it installed, which is a surgical process, everyone and everything sounds like daffy duck until your brain gets to know how it works.
Cochlear implants actually do work to some degree, and the limitations can be overcome by better amplifiers/more channels etc... The problem with cochlear implants is relatively simple with some causes of deafness. Vision rescue is a different beast however, and will require a more intimate knowledge of pathological processes and normal retinal functioning.
Come on now. This is nothing new. The U.S. has been conducting biological warefare research for years with no abatement as evidenced by a number of facilities in the west desert of Utah, and high level facilities all over the U.S. I should add that the U.S. is not the only country doing this, but given the cost of biological research, we are most likely at the forefront. Why do you think that the DOD has been so interested in AIDS research? As much as I would like to believe that the Whitehouse's goals and ambitions for AIDS work are good, there are obvious biological questions that are being examined with respect to induced autoimmune deficiency. There are many other potential viral and bacterial questions that could also inform biowarefare research as well.
Hmmm. Aside from the rather rediculous suggestions that ended up in the NYTimes, why not spend the ink space and advocate some suggestions for real innovations that could change peoples lives. Like bionic/biological/cybernetic retinas that actually work?
a new Berekley study (PDF) shows that five exabytes of data were created in 2002,
:-)
Shoot, it felt like my doctoral dissertation was responsible for at least 2 of those 5 exabytes.
So, what was the deal? Was Microsoft genuinely spooked at his revealing what building he was in, or were they upset that it was revealed they purchase Macs? They do have a Macintosh business unit, so I would guess the former, but it does appear a little extreme.
Bah, I should have said "except for NPR", the radio is almost useless for me now.
Well, I have been hearing most of the new music I am interested in via Internet broadcasting via iTunes. Between that and listening to NPR, the radio is almost useless for me now.
Interestingly, for those users of OS X, there is also a new shareware release of a very promising looking Internet broadcast application that easily shares your iTunes library. Check it out here. It's called Nicecast.