This is a hard area to get right. The problem is that about 95% of the time (just a straw poll figure from a defence lawyer I know) the government got it right, and the person charged is guilty. So there is alot of effort in keeping (mostly) the 5% of non offenders out of jail.
Its always been considered that it was better to let alot of guilty people go free than to convict one innocent - and that is the principal which gives the accused so many rights (in the first world, at least).
The disadvantage of this approach is that it means that you will let some guilty people go free. Its an acknowledgement of lack of sensitivity and specificity of the legal process as a tool for justice.
In the context of the recent terrorist attacks, society has become alot more afraid or letting a few guilty people go free, and there is a big push to strengthen laws and reduce certain freedoms.
How you feel on this is your own business.
The problem I see is that the justice system and the law remain lacking in sensitivity and specifity. They tend to pick up people after the fact. Many things are being pushed forward here in the name of improving safety and security for all, but when you think it through few if any of them really have any relevance to what happened, or would have prevented it.
Countries around the world are tightening their legislation in response to September 11. The people expect something done, and the government will do.
Removing someones right to counsel isn't really going to help the situation. It isn't going to prevent terrorist attacks. It will mean that the small percentage of those detained will be reluctant to get advice, and therefore may not defend themselves properly. Ultimately, innocent people may well be imprisoned because of this loss of confidential advice. Certainly, guilty people may end up convicted of far worse crimes than they actually did.
It strikes me that having internal firewire connections (which doesn't seem to happen much) would make alot of sense rather than using an IDE bus for DVD/CDRW and probably even for your HDD.
Its fast, hot swappable, autoconfiguring. It has no limitations on the number of drives or issues with accessing multiple drives concurrently. It could be configured to allow transfer between devices without intervention from the mother board.
Do any of these newer technologies provide a compelling advantage over this for most internal devices - at least in the world of PC's?
You should learn to think before you engage your mouth. Or perhaps even read. You say:
Not to mention that AIDS drugs right now don't save lives, since they don't cure it.
Where is your evidence for this? You just made that up, didn't you?
How about the role of antivirals in preventing children getting aids from their mother during pregnancy? I think the evidence for that is pretty compelling, and it is one reason why third world countries wanted anti retrovirals - to prevent mothers from passing on HIV to their children, even if they couldn't be salvaged themselves. If there is one thing more distressing than an AIDS orphan, its and AIDS orphan with AIDS themselves, and that is (partially) preventable.
There is also the role of anti retrovirals in preventing new infections - short courses after exposure can prevent infection.
Not to mention (in the first world) combination therapy reducing viral loads to undetectable and probably unspreadable levels for at least very long periods.
And yes, IAAD. But you don't need a medical degree to know this - its written up in enough consumer publications (eg., New Scientist) to not be considered expert knowledge (its certainly not anywhere near my speciality).
Regional codes make sense when your business is regional - eg., your local video store, or even the local head office of an international business. Likewise the.gov.au makes alot of sense as compared with.au.gov.
So, in my opinion, regionalisation makes sense for regional stuff. Which is why you need and have a.us, althogh it is underused.
I'm hoping that all the dot.com startups that bought out every.com/.net name are running out of money by now and will at least open up the chance everyone getting a more memorable TLD than MyPreferredURLIsAlreadyTaken.com
Michael
Re:better than a shutdown
on
AMD And THG update
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
I'm sure a 1.5GHz cpu could function at a low temp if reset to a 66mhz bus (or even 33) and lower multiplier, just enough power to save any data and exit gracefully.
You wouldn't need to throttle back that much at all, and I suspect that there would be little need to throttle back the motherboard bus speed.
You would definately want to throttle back the multiplier to slow down the CPU. This would be more efficient as you would reduce memory bottlenecks at the slower CPU speeds.
Probably equally important, you would need to reduce the voltage to the CPU - as CMOS gets higher performance with higher voltages but at the cost of higher wattage.
Probably just dropping the speeds back to a few hundred MHz would suffice - certainly many CPU's of that ilk don't have fans, just heatsinks (and smaller ones than the current AMD's do at that)
My 1c worth (After allowing for the Aus/US exchange rate)
My electric burner can not heat up that fast let alone burn that hot.
Its probably a case of energy density - Your electric burner doesn't try to heat up one or two square cm of silicon. Put another way, a magnifying glass can burn paper in seconds when sunlight takes years.
Which is why a heatsink with the fan off will still protect a CPU for a while - it spreads the heating over a much larger area.
Monitors with USB support seem to cost a lot more than without USB support though. There is no good reason for this in my opinion...
There is a good reason for this - bandwidth. Sure you can run 127 devices off a USB port, but the data rate to each one isn't going to be great. Certainly if you must get a USB CD burner, you would want to run it off a different USB node to your USB sound system or scanner.
I don't know how many USB ports modern computers have, as opposed to the number of plugs you get - any one know how most computers do 4 usb ports?
A single speed DVD drive is about 8-10x CD speeds.
The rate of data transmission varies on all drives greater than approx 12x CD as they use constant angular velocity (ie., the drives dont spin up and down as the 8x CD roms did) rather than constant linear velocity - it depends on how close to the centre data is. Stuff near the edge reads fastest as there is more data stored around the edge than at the center, but the spin speed is the same. Constant linear velocity was originally used because the first generation CD's required it to play music - you expect your sound to come out at the same tempo/pitch, and not start slow and end fast. (The data is stored from the centre out to reduce the risk of damage from the edge).
The biggest limitation in most drive use on computers is that the seek time is _much_ slower than the read speeds. Typically a few hundere milliseconds, and I don't think there is much difference between DVD and CD in this regard.
Its funny how a simple thing like gestures has polarised/. Its really an extension of the keyboard versus mouse debate. There are purists who decry the mouse, saying that everything can be done better and faster by keyboard. They prefer the command line and never having to lift their hands from the keyboard. It works best for text and numerical applications (Coding, Word Processing, Spreadsheets, etc). If you are in this category you probably wont like gestures much either. You have more than enough commands at your disposal.
Obviously there are proponents for the visual (WIMP) interface of the Mac, Windows and X. The mouse provides a limited set of options, but does not require learning a command set as its all on the screen. In highly visual settings this interface is more efficient than the keyboard. Few would argue the superiority of the mouse in playing 3D Games or for drawing images - Although better devices exist for these than either keyboard or mouse. If this is the style of work that you do, you are going to have a hand on the mouse at all times. To not be slowed down by the keyboard you have a few options:
1. Use a one handed keyboard - a very productive combination with some training. (eg: http://halfkeyboard.com/)
2. Assign all functions to an area of the keyboard used by your non mouse hand - some gamers take this approach. (eg., DiabloII)
3. Add to the command set of the mouse (eg., with gestures and additional mouse buttons)
The aim of all these approaches is to prevent you moving your hand from mouse to keyboard.
Taken in this context, you can probably see why the responses have been so varied. Gestures are either useless candy or invaluable additions to how you interact with programs.
I have (temporarily) given up on my linux box because X doesn't really support USB. Simple little thing, but I use a USB mouse and keyboard on a switch box over several computers at home. Windows copes just fine with the mouse appearing and disappearing. Cant say the same for X. I actually had to reboot X to have it find the mouse again.
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This is a hard area to get right. The problem is that about 95% of the time (just a straw poll figure from a defence lawyer I know) the government got it right, and the person charged is guilty. So there is alot of effort in keeping (mostly) the 5% of non offenders out of jail.
Its always been considered that it was better to let alot of guilty people go free than to convict one innocent - and that is the principal which gives the accused so many rights (in the first world, at least).
The disadvantage of this approach is that it means that you will let some guilty people go free. Its an acknowledgement of lack of sensitivity and specificity of the legal process as a tool for justice.
In the context of the recent terrorist attacks, society has become alot more afraid or letting a few guilty people go free, and there is a big push to strengthen laws and reduce certain freedoms.
How you feel on this is your own business.
The problem I see is that the justice system and the law remain lacking in sensitivity and specifity. They tend to pick up people after the fact. Many things are being pushed forward here in the name of improving safety and security for all, but when you think it through few if any of them really have any relevance to what happened, or would have prevented it.
Countries around the world are tightening their legislation in response to September 11. The people expect something done, and the government will do.
Removing someones right to counsel isn't really going to help the situation. It isn't going to prevent terrorist attacks. It will mean that the small percentage of those detained will be reluctant to get advice, and therefore may not defend themselves properly. Ultimately, innocent people may well be imprisoned because of this loss of confidential advice. Certainly, guilty people may end up convicted of far worse crimes than they actually did.
Michael
It strikes me that having internal firewire connections (which doesn't seem to happen much) would make alot of sense rather than using an IDE bus for DVD/CDRW and probably even for your HDD.
Its fast, hot swappable, autoconfiguring. It has no limitations on the number of drives or issues with accessing multiple drives concurrently. It could be configured to allow transfer between devices without intervention from the mother board.
Do any of these newer technologies provide a compelling advantage over this for most internal devices - at least in the world of PC's?
Michael
Ok, now I'm annoyed.
{Flame ON}
You should learn to think before you engage your mouth. Or perhaps even read. You say:
Not to mention that AIDS drugs right now don't save lives, since they don't cure it.
Where is your evidence for this? You just made that up, didn't you?
How about the role of antivirals in preventing children getting aids from their mother during pregnancy? I think the evidence for that is pretty compelling, and it is one reason why third world countries wanted anti retrovirals - to prevent mothers from passing on HIV to their children, even if they couldn't be salvaged themselves. If there is one thing more distressing than an AIDS orphan, its and AIDS orphan with AIDS themselves, and that is (partially) preventable.
There is also the role of anti retrovirals in preventing new infections - short courses after exposure can prevent infection.
Not to mention (in the first world) combination therapy reducing viral loads to undetectable and probably unspreadable levels for at least very long periods.
And yes, IAAD. But you don't need a medical degree to know this - its written up in enough consumer publications (eg., New Scientist) to not be considered expert knowledge (its certainly not anywhere near my speciality).
{Flame OFF}
Michael
Regional codes make sense when your business is regional - eg., your local video store, or even the local head office of an international business. Likewise the .gov.au makes alot of sense as compared with .au.gov.
.us, althogh it is underused.
.com/.net name are running out of money by now and will at least open up the chance everyone getting a more memorable TLD than MyPreferredURLIsAlreadyTaken.com
So, in my opinion, regionalisation makes sense for regional stuff. Which is why you need and have a
I'm hoping that all the dot.com startups that bought out every
Michael
I'm sure a 1.5GHz cpu could function at a low temp if reset to a 66mhz bus (or even 33) and lower multiplier, just enough power to save any data and exit gracefully.
You wouldn't need to throttle back that much at all, and I suspect that there would be little need to throttle back the motherboard bus speed.
You would definately want to throttle back the multiplier to slow down the CPU. This would be more efficient as you would reduce memory bottlenecks at the slower CPU speeds.
Probably equally important, you would need to reduce the voltage to the CPU - as CMOS gets higher performance with higher voltages but at the cost of higher wattage.
Probably just dropping the speeds back to a few hundred MHz would suffice - certainly many CPU's of that ilk don't have fans, just heatsinks (and smaller ones than the current AMD's do at that)
My 1c worth (After allowing for the Aus/US exchange rate)
Michael
My electric burner can not heat up that fast let alone burn that hot.
Its probably a case of energy density - Your electric burner doesn't try to heat up one or two square cm of silicon. Put another way, a magnifying glass can burn paper in seconds when sunlight takes years.
Which is why a heatsink with the fan off will still protect a CPU for a while - it spreads the heating over a much larger area.
Hope that helps.
Michael
Monitors with USB support seem to cost a lot more than without USB support though. There is no good reason for this in my opinion...
There is a good reason for this - bandwidth. Sure you can run 127 devices off a USB port, but the data rate to each one isn't going to be great. Certainly if you must get a USB CD burner, you would want to run it off a different USB node to your USB sound system or scanner.
I don't know how many USB ports modern computers have, as opposed to the number of plugs you get - any one know how most computers do 4 usb ports?
Michael
A single speed DVD drive is about 8-10x CD speeds.
The rate of data transmission varies on all drives greater than approx 12x CD as they use constant angular velocity (ie., the drives dont spin up and down as the 8x CD roms did) rather than constant linear velocity - it depends on how close to the centre data is. Stuff near the edge reads fastest as there is more data stored around the edge than at the center, but the spin speed is the same. Constant linear velocity was originally used because the first generation CD's required it to play music - you expect your sound to come out at the same tempo/pitch, and not start slow and end fast. (The data is stored from the centre out to reduce the risk of damage from the edge).
The biggest limitation in most drive use on computers is that the seek time is _much_ slower than the read speeds. Typically a few hundere milliseconds, and I don't think there is much difference between DVD and CD in this regard.
Hope that helps.
Michael
Its funny how a simple thing like gestures has polarised /. Its really an extension of the keyboard versus mouse debate. There are purists who decry the mouse, saying that everything can be done better and faster by keyboard. They prefer the command line and never having to lift their hands from the keyboard. It works best for text and numerical applications (Coding, Word Processing, Spreadsheets, etc). If you are in this category you probably wont like gestures much either. You have more than enough commands at your disposal.
Obviously there are proponents for the visual (WIMP) interface of the Mac, Windows and X. The mouse provides a limited set of options, but does not require learning a command set as its all on the screen. In highly visual settings this interface is more efficient than the keyboard. Few would argue the superiority of the mouse in playing 3D Games or for drawing images - Although better devices exist for these than either keyboard or mouse. If this is the style of work that you do, you are going to have a hand on the mouse at all times. To not be slowed down by the keyboard you have a few options:
1. Use a one handed keyboard - a very productive combination with some training. (eg: http://halfkeyboard.com/)
2. Assign all functions to an area of the keyboard used by your non mouse hand - some gamers take this approach. (eg., DiabloII)
3. Add to the command set of the mouse (eg., with gestures and additional mouse buttons)
The aim of all these approaches is to prevent you moving your hand from mouse to keyboard.
Taken in this context, you can probably see why the responses have been so varied. Gestures are either useless candy or invaluable additions to how you interact with programs.
Michael
Lets be fair to microsoft.
They make excellent keyboards as well.
Michael
I'd have to agree.
I have (temporarily) given up on my linux box because X doesn't really support USB. Simple little thing, but I use a USB mouse and keyboard on a switch box over several computers at home. Windows copes just fine with the mouse appearing and disappearing. Cant say the same for X. I actually had to reboot X to have it find the mouse again.
Do I care that the pipes are faster?
Go figure.