The solution - screw what others are doing and just engineer the best sounding album you can. Most people will rip the CD into iTunes (or something similar) anyway. iTunes can then analyse the track and adjust the volume setting so that it is at the same "loudness" setting as the crap CDs that are being engineered. I believe there is a tag in the mp3/aac file that is set to determine this setting. The end result is that your track will sound better and be just as "loud" as the competition.
One thing to remember about this new Ford getting 65 mpg is that they will be using UK gallons for that rating - it is for Europe after all. So considering that there are ~1.2 US gallons for each UK gallon, that Ford would be rated for 54.2 mpg in the US. Sure it's good, but not nearly as good as it first appears.
Yes, but it would do so more efficiently. For example, it can take 1 watt to dissipate 2 watts of heat using a heat pump. So that's equal to 3 watts of energy placed into our environment for every 2 watts of work. Now by just pumping ocean water you can likely get away with only 0.1 watts used to dissipate every 2 watts of heat. So the difference is 2.1 watts vs 3 watts of energy placed into the environment - ocean cooling is better.
Now there is one other point to consider. With ocean cooling you can not make use of the lost heat. When a data centre is on land that heat can be used for other purposes - like heating residential water or running greenhouses. So while ocean based cooling is not optimal, it is an improvement over how we do things right now (at least in North America - we typically do not make use of the waste heat).
There's a strange irony to this, because during the 90s, everyone believed that RISC would cream existing x86 chips. What was not accounted for, was that x86 chips would be RISC, with an instruction converter - and the cost of having the convertor is compensated by a more compressed instruction format.
The x86 chips perform better because of economies of scale and more R&D. The fact of the matter is that they are harder to design and they do require additional transistors. But once designed and the fabs are configured they can push out more chips at a lower price then any of the competition. And due to the high volume of sales their designs are continually updated - a sore spot for Apple wrt the PPC alliance. I would love to see what could have been accomplished if the same resources were placed into a PPC, SPARC, or MIPS design.
Oh, and a compressed instruction format isn't that big a deal. In practice it just doesn't make a difference. A CPU spends very little time transferring instructions from memory to the CPU. The vast majority of information is data that requires processing. The instructions stay in the cache for the most part. If it were really an issue they would simply compress the instructions in memory like they do with GPUs.
But the original poster had a good point. If there was not such a big investment in x86 software, the x86 would have died long ago. The death would have likely been spearheaded by Intel themselves. We would now have faster hardware that consumes less power.
Personally, I blame Windows. Actually, all commercial software is to blame but the majority of the blame goes to Windows. Just look at what Apple accomplished with their 68k->ppc->x86 transitions. They proved that if developers are given proper resources and tools then even third parties can support multiple architectures. With open source this is even less of an issue. If we were all using Linux then new CPU architectures would instantly have a potential market. More competition makes for better end products.
What Apple has really done is they have killed DRM. Because they hold such a command on portable players (i.e., ipods) and they are the only ones that can provide legal music for their players, the record labels are forced to negotiate with Apple in order to have online sales. But with Apple it is their way or the highway - the labels don't like this. So in order to undermine Apple, the labels now offer DRM free music to other providers. The hope is that with multiple providers they will not have to worry about Apple forcing upon them term that they don't like.
It is because of DRM (or more specifically, DRM that they did not control) that the labels were forced to do this. You can bet that if they could do it all over again they would still use DRM, but it would be licensed for use with multiple retailers and devices.
It's funny - they force Apple to use DRM and now Apple has put them into a position where they have to allow non-DRM sales. Imagine if Microsoft won the format wars with their "plays for sure" format? We would all be stuck with it forever as it allowed for multiple different device manufacturers and music retailers.
Hard to do a direct comparison. Notice that the wireless cards are different. There might also be other differences. But I agree with your point - the simple fact that ultimate is a $150 upgrade from the standard Vista says plenty.
I don't know which would be worse -- a government run telco/internet service or letting the abusive service providers keep on abusing.
How about a hybrid system? Imaging a government owned infrastructure rented out to various different providers. The reason for a government owned infrastructure is that due to the population density in various parts of Canada, it is not economically feasible to provide service. But a government mandate to provide equal service at break-even cost would solve this problem. Granted you wouldn't benefit from competition like you would with private enterprise - but private enterprise isn't working so great for us right now. Better to have slightly more expensive service then no service at all.
Once one has an infrastructure it can be rented out to various different service providers. This is where consumers will save their money. With only a small cost to enter the market, numerous providers will jump on board and prices will drop substantially. Remember when the telcos were forced to allow third party providers to provide long distance? The same would happen with cell access on a public infrastructure. No longer would providing Canada wide service require negotiating (and paying fees) to multiple different providers.
Now the problems associated with government owned infrastructure can be resolved for the most part. Setup and maintenance of the towers would simply be contracted out - likely to the same people to do that work for Telus/Bell/Rogers. Due to the global nature of cell technology, there is no need to develop anything (a sore spot for any government organization). Simply adopting and implementing new global standards is enough.
Now I normally hate anything that is government run - I believe in private enterprise. But for private enterprise to work you need competition. The high cost of entering the current market prohibits competition. So let the government create an environment that negates that high cost. The competition that results should lower the cost to Canadian consumers. Even if costs are not lowered, it would result in far better services being offered.
Young people have skeletons that are flexible due to the fact that they are still growing. Here is a quote from wikipedia:
Early in fetal development, the greater part of the skeleton is cartilaginous. This temporary cartilage is gradually replaced by bone (Endochondral ossification), a process that ends at puberty. In contrast, the cartilage in the joints remains unossified during the whole of life and is, therefore, permanent.
A bit different for the BBC. I am not from the UK, but I believe that tax dollars pay for much of what is produced by the BBC. So actually you are not free to choose not to pay for it because the government is taxing you.
This is the entire reason for putting the content up on the web for free in the first place. The BBC is not trying to maximize their profit - they realize that UK citizens have already paid for the content. (Note that those outside the UK are not allowed to see it.) Being government run, they have a different mandate. This is why people are mad about the DRM - paying for something and then not getting it sucks.
The cooling tower has a very important job in any heat cycle engine since energy = hot side - cold side. Take away the cold side, and you've got bumpkiss.
With respect to a power plant, it's more like energy = high pressure - low pressure. It's an important difference as it shows where the loss of energy comes from.
On one side of the turbine you have the boiler producing hot steam. The steam passes through the turbine transferring much of its energy to the turbine. The other side of the turbine has steam at a lower temperature (hopefully just above 100c). But to get the low pressure on the other side, the steam must be condensed to water - this is where the energy is lost. The high latent heat of vaporization of H2O must be overcome in order to convert the 100c steam into 100c water. Once done, it can be pumped back into the boiler (the steam can not be efficiently pumped).
So the job of the cooling tower is simply to allow the steam to be condensed and pumped back into the boiler. If a demand for hot water existed, the cooling tower could be replace with a heat transfer unit which could condense the steam while heating water for neighbouring businesses.
One interesting avenue of research would be to find an alternative to H2O. Should a substance with a lower latent heat of vaporization be used, the efficiency of these plants could double.
Anyway, you probably already know about everything I have discussed in this post. I'm writing it mainly for the benefit of others who do not understand the process.
Your house in the US gets about 10 kilowatts from street power lines, that's 110 volts with a 20 amp rating. You might get 15 kilowatts if you have a 30 amp feed.
Sorry for replying twice, but I just have to comment on this point. You are wrong. Power = current times voltage. 110 volts @ 20 amps is actually only 2200 watts - or 2.2 kilowatts. But this is not your only mistake.
The 10 kilowatt rating is for the average power consumed per household in the united states. But in reality, it's more like 13 kilowatts. Now again, this is the average power consumed, useful if you are, for example, trying to determine the amount of coal required to power a populous for a year. It does not represent the peak power distribution potential of the system. You see, most people use power at the same time. As a result, the "grid" is designed to support delivering power during these peak times. Most proponents of electric vehicles note that one would not charge their vehicles during these peak times. Instead, they would charge their vehicles when the grid is essentially not in use, storing this energy in a supercapacitor. As such, the grid would not require any upgrading to support the use of electric vehicles. Even most power stations would not need any upgrading, they would simply use more fuel at night then they currently do.
Now there are other errors - like the use of kWatts (which is a measure of the rate of energy use) when it should be kWhours (also known as 3.6x10^6 Joules - a measure of energy) but alas, I don't want to correct it all. In fact, I repeated the errors just for the sake of consistency. I believe that your assumptions are also inaccurate but I'm not one who should be correcting you. The point is, many smart people have been looking into this and they all agree that electric cars are feasible with only minor changes to the current infrastructure. The only real problem is how do you store electric energy in a vehicle while still being affordable. Supercapacitors solve this problem - that is assuming you believe the claims made by those developing them. The problems that you appear to be worried about really aren't problems at all.
In the wikipedia article (or one of the links) it suggests putting an additional supercapacitor in the home to charge slowly overnight. The energy from this supercapacitor can then be used to charge your vehicle in ~10 to 15 minutes - assuming you have really thick power cables.
Charging at home will greatly reduce the demand for fuelling up at gas (service) stations. For those few stations that still have plenty of customers, additional power will be required but it is not unreasonable to suggest that they pull it from the grid. New lines might be required but it is still just a small change in infrastructure.
For electric cars to have a long range, gas stations will have to be refitted with a tool to swap out battery arrays.
While this is true for batteries, I do not believe that batteries will power the future electric cars. Do a wikipedia search for Supercapacitors to see what is on the horizon. They are not yet perfect but MIT has demonstrated capacitors that offer 1/4 of the storage capacity of Li-Ion batteries.
There are many advantages to using capacitors in place of batteries - mainly due the the greatly reduced internal resistance. First, the charge time is reduced to under 10min. Second, when used in a hybrid vehicle, one does not encounter the loss associated with "charging" the batteries so regenerated power can actually be reused. Thirdly, they will not go bad like batteries. They are typically rated for ~10000 charge cycles. There are also many other reasons why these new capacitors are desirable - just read the wikipedia link.
Well, having an AI zoom the camera onto points of interest is one way to help solve the problem. Even if you have high resolution cameras, having an AI that can zoom the camera allows the camera to cover a wider area.
Don't know why you got modded a troll.. It makes perfect sense. The data is stored via a magnetic field - these fields eventually degrade. The smaller the field, the quicker it might degrade. (all in theory as I am not a physicist)
If I were designing a HD I would not be concerned with loss of data. It would be easy to occasionally refresh the data - just like dynamic memory. The firmware could monitor disk access and simply refresh those parts of the hard drive that are not used regularly. A refresh every 12 months would not be noticed by the user. So long as the user was using the hard drive the way it was designed to be used there would be no problems.
An "open" spec (by my definition) will have the following properties:
- stable (not changing every year), - easy to implement (relative to the task at hand), - not designed to accept proprietary extensions (ie, ooxml binary blobs), - defined update policy (third parties have to have a say in future versions).
The third point is critical as it allows for vender lock-in with an open format.
Now an "open" spec that lacks the requirements you mentioned isn't necessarily bad. If the single vendor is good enough with their implementation and there lacks sufficient motivation to produce alternatives then that's OK. So long as the properties I mentioned exist then there is nothing stopping an alternative implementation from being created when required.
Ok, I just went over your original posting again and wanted to address the issues you spoke of.
There's no reason you couldn't power down entire sections of the graphics card that you aren't using.
There is a price to pay for powering up/down sections of a chip. It takes time and power. One needs to limit the number of times this is done. But the basic idea is good and I believe this is exactly what the card in question does. However, it is not as simple as implied.
Most video cards support changing the clock speed on the card.
This is a good solution because it does not incur a time or power penalty unlike the previous suggestion. However, it still results is sections of the chip being left on when not in use. In addition, with leakage current being such a big deal in modern transistors, you really can't clock it down too much. One risks loosing state in the dynamic elements of the chip. (At least this is how I understand it - but it is not my field, others here would know for sure.)
I am willing to bet that the chip in question utilizes both of the techniques you suggested. So they were good suggestions. However, I still don't believe that the 3D accelerator would ever be "turned off" completely on a modern desktop computer. So implementing such techniques is essential as one can not rely on a Voodoo II type solution.
I agree, my point was that it is better to have a 3D accelerator that can scale down (as the one in the article) then to completely bypass the 3D accelerator (as the Voodoo II did.) This is because most desktops will have the 3D accelerator activated at all times regardless of whether or not it is being used extensively.
But all modern operating systems support 3D accelerated displays. MacOS has their Quartz Extreme, Windows has Aero (I think), and even Linux has one (although the name escapes me.) Your solution would have worked well 5 years ago but times have changed. The 3D component is now always on.
Absolutely correct. Exercise balls are great for.... exercise. If one has to sit for extended periods of time then a reclining chair is preferred as it relieves the pressure on your lower back. Essentially the spine can rest in its natural position when the body weight is supported along the entire back. But setting up a recliner for computer use is difficult.
First, you have to have a keyboard / mouse tray that can be positioned over your lap.
Second, you have to have your monitor positioned slightly above you, facing down (at ~45 deg). The arm like device dentists use to position their x-ray machines would work great.
As others have mentioned, standing (and possibly even walking) is also good for your body while having the added benefits of being cheaper and promoting mental alertness.
I do not like sitting at a desk in a comfortable chair for extended periods if I'm trying to get work done (even though it is great for movies.) The idea of standing is much preferred. But as Joel mentioned, you don't want to stand all day. The solution Joel talked about was to have the entire desk raise and lower - preferably with an electric motor. How about using a "bar stool" like chair with a stationary table? It would save a lot of money and allow for storage space under the table surface.
Regardless, one needs to be active throughout the day if they are going to be productive. Spending 8 hours in a recliner is not healthy and will not lead to a productive day. Some physical activity is a must. I never get any work done if I let myself get too comfortable.
Nothing special - just a very basic model airplane. Some of the more advanced ones are very impressive.
Oh, this just came to mind. Yamaha has several impressive paper models on their website. They're all free so you should check them out. I believe there was even a/. article about them a few years back. Anyway, here they are:
You can purchase (and sometimes download) paper models of various different planes. Just print, cut, and glue. A very inexpensive way to get introduced to building. If a child shows enough interest then they will likely be able to handle building one out of balsa. Only after all of this should you get the radio gear and a motor.
Remember that it is the building that is important to a child. ARFs are just expensive toys and should be avoided.
Most of the paper models appear to be from eastern Europe - not so popular in the western countries. Oh well, the following link is one example distributer of such models (just found it on Google - I can not vouch for them.)
Slashdot Mirror
powerbook - so I'm guessing no...
The solution - screw what others are doing and just engineer the best sounding album you can. Most people will rip the CD into iTunes (or something similar) anyway. iTunes can then analyse the track and adjust the volume setting so that it is at the same "loudness" setting as the crap CDs that are being engineered. I believe there is a tag in the mp3/aac file that is set to determine this setting. The end result is that your track will sound better and be just as "loud" as the competition.
One thing to remember about this new Ford getting 65 mpg is that they will be using UK gallons for that rating - it is for Europe after all. So considering that there are ~1.2 US gallons for each UK gallon, that Ford would be rated for 54.2 mpg in the US. Sure it's good, but not nearly as good as it first appears.
Yes, but it would do so more efficiently. For example, it can take 1 watt to dissipate 2 watts of heat using a heat pump. So that's equal to 3 watts of energy placed into our environment for every 2 watts of work. Now by just pumping ocean water you can likely get away with only 0.1 watts used to dissipate every 2 watts of heat. So the difference is 2.1 watts vs 3 watts of energy placed into the environment - ocean cooling is better.
Now there is one other point to consider. With ocean cooling you can not make use of the lost heat. When a data centre is on land that heat can be used for other purposes - like heating residential water or running greenhouses. So while ocean based cooling is not optimal, it is an improvement over how we do things right now (at least in North America - we typically do not make use of the waste heat).
The x86 chips perform better because of economies of scale and more R&D. The fact of the matter is that they are harder to design and they do require additional transistors. But once designed and the fabs are configured they can push out more chips at a lower price then any of the competition. And due to the high volume of sales their designs are continually updated - a sore spot for Apple wrt the PPC alliance. I would love to see what could have been accomplished if the same resources were placed into a PPC, SPARC, or MIPS design.
Oh, and a compressed instruction format isn't that big a deal. In practice it just doesn't make a difference. A CPU spends very little time transferring instructions from memory to the CPU. The vast majority of information is data that requires processing. The instructions stay in the cache for the most part. If it were really an issue they would simply compress the instructions in memory like they do with GPUs.
But the original poster had a good point. If there was not such a big investment in x86 software, the x86 would have died long ago. The death would have likely been spearheaded by Intel themselves. We would now have faster hardware that consumes less power.
Personally, I blame Windows. Actually, all commercial software is to blame but the majority of the blame goes to Windows. Just look at what Apple accomplished with their 68k->ppc->x86 transitions. They proved that if developers are given proper resources and tools then even third parties can support multiple architectures. With open source this is even less of an issue. If we were all using Linux then new CPU architectures would instantly have a potential market. More competition makes for better end products.
What Apple has really done is they have killed DRM. Because they hold such a command on portable players (i.e., ipods) and they are the only ones that can provide legal music for their players, the record labels are forced to negotiate with Apple in order to have online sales. But with Apple it is their way or the highway - the labels don't like this. So in order to undermine Apple, the labels now offer DRM free music to other providers. The hope is that with multiple providers they will not have to worry about Apple forcing upon them term that they don't like.
It is because of DRM (or more specifically, DRM that they did not control) that the labels were forced to do this. You can bet that if they could do it all over again they would still use DRM, but it would be licensed for use with multiple retailers and devices.
It's funny - they force Apple to use DRM and now Apple has put them into a position where they have to allow non-DRM sales. Imagine if Microsoft won the format wars with their "plays for sure" format? We would all be stuck with it forever as it allowed for multiple different device manufacturers and music retailers.
Hard to do a direct comparison. Notice that the wireless cards are different. There might also be other differences. But I agree with your point - the simple fact that ultimate is a $150 upgrade from the standard Vista says plenty.
How about a hybrid system? Imaging a government owned infrastructure rented out to various different providers. The reason for a government owned infrastructure is that due to the population density in various parts of Canada, it is not economically feasible to provide service. But a government mandate to provide equal service at break-even cost would solve this problem. Granted you wouldn't benefit from competition like you would with private enterprise - but private enterprise isn't working so great for us right now. Better to have slightly more expensive service then no service at all.
Once one has an infrastructure it can be rented out to various different service providers. This is where consumers will save their money. With only a small cost to enter the market, numerous providers will jump on board and prices will drop substantially. Remember when the telcos were forced to allow third party providers to provide long distance? The same would happen with cell access on a public infrastructure. No longer would providing Canada wide service require negotiating (and paying fees) to multiple different providers.
Now the problems associated with government owned infrastructure can be resolved for the most part. Setup and maintenance of the towers would simply be contracted out - likely to the same people to do that work for Telus/Bell/Rogers. Due to the global nature of cell technology, there is no need to develop anything (a sore spot for any government organization). Simply adopting and implementing new global standards is enough.
Now I normally hate anything that is government run - I believe in private enterprise. But for private enterprise to work you need competition. The high cost of entering the current market prohibits competition. So let the government create an environment that negates that high cost. The competition that results should lower the cost to Canadian consumers. Even if costs are not lowered, it would result in far better services being offered.
Willy
Young people have skeletons that are flexible due to the fact that they are still growing. Here is a quote from wikipedia:
Early in fetal development, the greater part of the skeleton is cartilaginous. This temporary cartilage is gradually replaced by bone (Endochondral ossification), a process that ends at puberty. In contrast, the cartilage in the joints remains unossified during the whole of life and is, therefore, permanent.
A bit different for the BBC. I am not from the UK, but I believe that tax dollars pay for much of what is produced by the BBC. So actually you are not free to choose not to pay for it because the government is taxing you.
This is the entire reason for putting the content up on the web for free in the first place. The BBC is not trying to maximize their profit - they realize that UK citizens have already paid for the content. (Note that those outside the UK are not allowed to see it.) Being government run, they have a different mandate. This is why people are mad about the DRM - paying for something and then not getting it sucks.
actually, that's 100-200 amps at 240v.
With respect to a power plant, it's more like energy = high pressure - low pressure. It's an important difference as it shows where the loss of energy comes from.
On one side of the turbine you have the boiler producing hot steam. The steam passes through the turbine transferring much of its energy to the turbine. The other side of the turbine has steam at a lower temperature (hopefully just above 100c). But to get the low pressure on the other side, the steam must be condensed to water - this is where the energy is lost. The high latent heat of vaporization of H2O must be overcome in order to convert the 100c steam into 100c water. Once done, it can be pumped back into the boiler (the steam can not be efficiently pumped).
So the job of the cooling tower is simply to allow the steam to be condensed and pumped back into the boiler. If a demand for hot water existed, the cooling tower could be replace with a heat transfer unit which could condense the steam while heating water for neighbouring businesses.
One interesting avenue of research would be to find an alternative to H2O. Should a substance with a lower latent heat of vaporization be used, the efficiency of these plants could double.
Anyway, you probably already know about everything I have discussed in this post. I'm writing it mainly for the benefit of others who do not understand the process.
Sorry for replying twice, but I just have to comment on this point. You are wrong. Power = current times voltage. 110 volts @ 20 amps is actually only 2200 watts - or 2.2 kilowatts. But this is not your only mistake.
The 10 kilowatt rating is for the average power consumed per household in the united states. But in reality, it's more like 13 kilowatts. Now again, this is the average power consumed, useful if you are, for example, trying to determine the amount of coal required to power a populous for a year. It does not represent the peak power distribution potential of the system. You see, most people use power at the same time. As a result, the "grid" is designed to support delivering power during these peak times. Most proponents of electric vehicles note that one would not charge their vehicles during these peak times. Instead, they would charge their vehicles when the grid is essentially not in use, storing this energy in a supercapacitor. As such, the grid would not require any upgrading to support the use of electric vehicles. Even most power stations would not need any upgrading, they would simply use more fuel at night then they currently do.
Now there are other errors - like the use of kWatts (which is a measure of the rate of energy use) when it should be kWhours (also known as 3.6x10^6 Joules - a measure of energy) but alas, I don't want to correct it all. In fact, I repeated the errors just for the sake of consistency. I believe that your assumptions are also inaccurate but I'm not one who should be correcting you. The point is, many smart people have been looking into this and they all agree that electric cars are feasible with only minor changes to the current infrastructure. The only real problem is how do you store electric energy in a vehicle while still being affordable. Supercapacitors solve this problem - that is assuming you believe the claims made by those developing them. The problems that you appear to be worried about really aren't problems at all.
In the wikipedia article (or one of the links) it suggests putting an additional supercapacitor in the home to charge slowly overnight. The energy from this supercapacitor can then be used to charge your vehicle in ~10 to 15 minutes - assuming you have really thick power cables.
Charging at home will greatly reduce the demand for fuelling up at gas (service) stations. For those few stations that still have plenty of customers, additional power will be required but it is not unreasonable to suggest that they pull it from the grid. New lines might be required but it is still just a small change in infrastructure.
While this is true for batteries, I do not believe that batteries will power the future electric cars. Do a wikipedia search for Supercapacitors to see what is on the horizon. They are not yet perfect but MIT has demonstrated capacitors that offer 1/4 of the storage capacity of Li-Ion batteries.
There are many advantages to using capacitors in place of batteries - mainly due the the greatly reduced internal resistance. First, the charge time is reduced to under 10min. Second, when used in a hybrid vehicle, one does not encounter the loss associated with "charging" the batteries so regenerated power can actually be reused. Thirdly, they will not go bad like batteries. They are typically rated for ~10000 charge cycles. There are also many other reasons why these new capacitors are desirable - just read the wikipedia link.
Well, having an AI zoom the camera onto points of interest is one way to help solve the problem. Even if you have high resolution cameras, having an AI that can zoom the camera allows the camera to cover a wider area.
Don't know why you got modded a troll.. It makes perfect sense. The data is stored via a magnetic field - these fields eventually degrade. The smaller the field, the quicker it might degrade. (all in theory as I am not a physicist)
If I were designing a HD I would not be concerned with loss of data. It would be easy to occasionally refresh the data - just like dynamic memory. The firmware could monitor disk access and simply refresh those parts of the hard drive that are not used regularly. A refresh every 12 months would not be noticed by the user. So long as the user was using the hard drive the way it was designed to be used there would be no problems.
Willy
Your point is valid but there are exceptions.
An "open" spec (by my definition) will have the following properties:
- stable (not changing every year),
- easy to implement (relative to the task at hand),
- not designed to accept proprietary extensions (ie, ooxml binary blobs),
- defined update policy (third parties have to have a say in future versions).
The third point is critical as it allows for vender lock-in with an open format.
Now an "open" spec that lacks the requirements you mentioned isn't necessarily bad. If the single vendor is good enough with their implementation and there lacks sufficient motivation to produce alternatives then that's OK. So long as the properties I mentioned exist then there is nothing stopping an alternative implementation from being created when required.
Ok, I just went over your original posting again and wanted to address the issues you spoke of.
There is a price to pay for powering up/down sections of a chip. It takes time and power. One needs to limit the number of times this is done. But the basic idea is good and I believe this is exactly what the card in question does. However, it is not as simple as implied.
This is a good solution because it does not incur a time or power penalty unlike the previous suggestion. However, it still results is sections of the chip being left on when not in use. In addition, with leakage current being such a big deal in modern transistors, you really can't clock it down too much. One risks loosing state in the dynamic elements of the chip. (At least this is how I understand it - but it is not my field, others here would know for sure.)
I am willing to bet that the chip in question utilizes both of the techniques you suggested. So they were good suggestions. However, I still don't believe that the 3D accelerator would ever be "turned off" completely on a modern desktop computer. So implementing such techniques is essential as one can not rely on a Voodoo II type solution.
I agree, my point was that it is better to have a 3D accelerator that can scale down (as the one in the article) then to completely bypass the 3D accelerator (as the Voodoo II did.) This is because most desktops will have the 3D accelerator activated at all times regardless of whether or not it is being used extensively.
But all modern operating systems support 3D accelerated displays. MacOS has their Quartz Extreme, Windows has Aero (I think), and even Linux has one (although the name escapes me.) Your solution would have worked well 5 years ago but times have changed. The 3D component is now always on.
Absolutely correct. Exercise balls are great for .... exercise. If one has to sit for extended periods of time then a reclining chair is preferred as it relieves the pressure on your lower back. Essentially the spine can rest in its natural position when the body weight is supported along the entire back. But setting up a recliner for computer use is difficult.
First, you have to have a keyboard / mouse tray that can be positioned over your lap.
Second, you have to have your monitor positioned slightly above you, facing down (at ~45 deg). The arm like device dentists use to position their x-ray machines would work great.
As others have mentioned, standing (and possibly even walking) is also good for your body while having the added benefits of being cheaper and promoting mental alertness.
I do not like sitting at a desk in a comfortable chair for extended periods if I'm trying to get work done (even though it is great for movies.) The idea of standing is much preferred. But as Joel mentioned, you don't want to stand all day. The solution Joel talked about was to have the entire desk raise and lower - preferably with an electric motor. How about using a "bar stool" like chair with a stationary table? It would save a lot of money and allow for storage space under the table surface.
Regardless, one needs to be active throughout the day if they are going to be productive. Spending 8 hours in a recliner is not healthy and will not lead to a productive day. Some physical activity is a must. I never get any work done if I let myself get too comfortable.
Quickly looking at the site I found one free model for download:
/. article about them a few years back. Anyway, here they are:
http://www.e-papermodels.com/arado-381-curves.pdf
Nothing special - just a very basic model airplane. Some of the more advanced ones are very impressive.
Oh, this just came to mind. Yamaha has several impressive paper models on their website. They're all free so you should check them out. I believe there was even a
http://www.yamaha-motor.co.jp/global/entertainment/papercraft/index.html
You can purchase (and sometimes download) paper models of various different planes. Just print, cut, and glue. A very inexpensive way to get introduced to building. If a child shows enough interest then they will likely be able to handle building one out of balsa. Only after all of this should you get the radio gear and a motor.
Remember that it is the building that is important to a child. ARFs are just expensive toys and should be avoided.
Most of the paper models appear to be from eastern Europe - not so popular in the western countries. Oh well, the following link is one example distributer of such models (just found it on Google - I can not vouch for them.)
http://www.e-papermodels.com/
Willy