Seriously is there anything worth shopping for in a mobo?
Yes. Obviously it doesn't matter for a fileserver, but there are differences in terms of peripherals (does it have USB3? SATA3? how many of each?), chipsets, on-board graphics/sound performance, and aesthetics. You also get ATX vs. micro-ATX. Different brands and boards may be more prone to failure. For gamers, the number and arrangement of PCIx16 2.0/3.0 slots can be important. Manufacturers like to add their own power and performance tweaking into the BIOS, so that can be a factor. Some BIOSes are better for overclocking. The number and location of on-board fan headers needs to be appropriate for you case.
That's off the top of my head. There may be other things I've forgotten.
Aside from a couple of great indie games, the majority of the games I've enjoyed in the past few months are not available for Linux.
If anyone wants a list, here's what I've played in the last several months on Steam:
Max Payne 3 Deus Ex: Human Revolution Alan Wake + American Nightmare S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Call of Pripyat Spec Ops: The Line The Binding of Isaac (also on Linux because it's really a Flash game underneath) Dishonored Deadlight Skyrim
I'm currently checking out DayZ, an ARMA II mod. In the next few months, I might try:
X-COM: Enemy Unknown (the new one) Far Cry 3 StarCraft 2: Legacy of the Void Tomb Raider (the reboot)
Plus whatever else catches my eye. I'm most interested in The Last of Us for the PS3, though. I also play console games, and my choice of platform is determined mostly by whether keyboard+mouse or gamepad are better for the game.
Aside from games, I also use PlayClaw for game recording, iTunes for music and iPod/iPhone syncing, DipTrace for circuit design, and Sony Vegas for video editing. The latter two probably work under Wine, but since I'm on their native platform I might as well take advantage of it. Honestly, if you strip all the cruft out of the interface (i.e. make it look like Win95), WinXP and Win7 aren't bad. I'm not sure what I'm supposed to gain by using the same software on a different OS. I love the Linux command line, but the GUIs have never felt as consistent or responsive. I recently spent several hours helping a friend get Steam mostly (!!) working under Wine in Ubuntu, which didn't help my opinion either.
The summary, like the article, jumps straight into "OMG CONFLICT" without bothering to tell us what's going on. From later in the article:
Researchers at the LHCb detector have dealt a serious blow to [supersymmetry]. They have measured the decay between a particle known as a Bs Meson into two particles known as muons. It is the first time that this decay has been observed and the team has calculated that for every billion times that the Bs Meson decays it only decays in this way three times. If superparticles were to exist the decay would happen far more often. This test is one of the "golden" tests for supersymmetry and it is one that on the face of it this hugely popular theory among physicists has failed....
The results are in fact completely in line with what one would expect from the Standard Model. There is already concern that the LHCb's sister detectors might have expected to have detected superparticles by now, yet none have been found so far.
But it sounds like this is only a problem for some variants of supersymmetry:
"If new physics exists, then it is hiding very well behind the Standard Model," commented Cambridge physicist Dr Marc-Olivier Bettler, a member of the analysis team. The result does not rule out the possibility that super particles exist. But according to Prof Parkes, "they are running out of places to hide". Supporters of supersymmetry, however, such as Prof John Ellis of King's College London said that the observation is "quite consistent with supersymmetry". "In fact," he said "(it) was actually expected in (some) supersymmetric models. I certainly won't lose any sleep over the result."
What has Obama done that actually leads you to think that he is significantly less likely to engage in Bush-style military interventions than Romney?
I'm don't like the drone strikes or Guantanamo, but the neocons were/are out for active conquest. Libya was an intervention to stop a dictator from slaughtering a popular uprising, and I am totally okay with that. Romney may just be serving red meat, but he will be expected to live up to it if he wins.
I agree that the extension of Bush's terror and assassination policies is Obama's biggest failure. I'm just offering an explanation for why the rest of the world mightp prefer Obama. I suspect the lack of xenophobia is more important than anything else.
Taking a hint from the last election, if the news outlets all say that Obama will win, then everybody will vote for Obama because everybody loves to vote for the winner.
I know conspiracy theories are fun, but it is possible to measure this stuff. The aggregate polling data has pretty consistently shown Obama ahead for the entire election. The news media are currently overstating Romney's chances by calling it a toss-up (and indeed, they are still doing so). They had no qualms about reporting Romney's huge gains after the first convention. Poll aggregators have actually been drawing flack from mainstream pundits who like to pretend there's a neck-and-neck horse race when there isn't. The media's interest is in a close race where they have something to talk about.
Nate Silver puts the odds at around 87%, largely based on the chance of there being a systematic offset in the polling data. Still looks pretty good for Obama, though. Fingers crossed.
You know there's no way to "private message" someone on slashdot, right?
I did not. I've mostly ignored the new features that have been added over the years. Collecting old Unix installation kits seemed like a hobby someone on here might have, and posting without logging in is a mistake people sometimes make. Guess I missed out on a joke. Oops.
I've been... oddly, collecting original installation CDs, and licenses (valid) for dozens and dozens of OSes for years. I have early versions and later ones, slackware, unixware, irix, and many others.
Maybe Disney will release HD Blu-ray versions of the non-special edition episodes 4-6. It would save us the trouble of downloading Harmy's editions, at least.
I'm going to hold out foolish hope for a movie adaptation of the Thrawn trilogy.
Are they going to turn to someone else TSMC for fab?
TI already uses TSMC for a lot of its advanced process nodes. So does the rest of the industry. If you're a large company, you can work closely with the fab to tweak their process.
Hellmouth (WTF does that mean anyway? Is that even a word? Is it a reference to something? What?)
It's a reference to a TV show called Buffy the Vampire Slayer that was popular at the time. In the show, the Hellmouth is a sort of demonic portal that attracts evil creatures to torment the town of Sunnydale. The concept originally comes from medieval art.
Voices from the Hellmouth was one of Slashdot's greatest contributions to actual news. I'm shocked that the terrible political stories took top billing instead of this.
A local brick and mortor store that does custom jewelry is also a good place to try. They'll have sources that aren't available to the general public and can also help you with the mounting.
Do you even know a woman? She would not like this. She wouldn't like the truth and she wouldn't like you lying to her.
Obviously you don't lie about it -- that's a terrible way to start a marriage. There are lots of women who are fine with lab-created gems. I'm dating one right now.
This was my first thought, as my girlfriend knows to expect something shiny in the relatively near future
Get a lab-created diamond. A huge, high-quality stone costs a fraction of the price of a natural one. Being real diamonds (carbon crystals), they're indistinguishable without special equipment. There's no reason to pay a fortune for gemstones today (unless you're rich or are stocking a museum, I guess). Find a good local jeweler; they can tell you more.
The overwhelming majority of the article is specific criticisms about Udacity Statistics 101, not a general criticism of online math classes. The specific criticisms seem valid to me -- I didn't take Thrun's stats class, but I did take the AI class, which had the same issues. I urge anyone who's interested in online learning to read the full article since anyone could make any of these mistakes very easily.
Here are the bits from the end of the article that talk about online learning in general:
So in theory, any of the problems that I've noted above could be revisited and fixed on future pass-throughs of the course. But will that happen at Udacity, or any other massive online academic program? I strongly suspect not – likely, the entire attraction for someone like Thrun (and the business case for institutions like his) is to be able to record basic lectures once and then never have to revisit them again. Or in other words: All the millions of students using these ventures will be permanently experiencing the shaky, version-1.0 trial run of a new course, when the instructor is him- or herself just barely figuring out how to teach it for the first time, and without the benefit of two-way feedback or any refinements.
Based on my review of the Udacity Introduction to Statistics course, I see some compelling strategic advantages for live in-class teachers, that will not be soon washed away by massive online video learning. Chief among them are the presence of actual two-way communication between teacher and students, such that the instructor can modify, expand, and respond to questions when appropriate (in regards to clarity of presentation, quiz questions, missing pieces, and rationalizing difficulty levels); and the ability to engage in a cycle of constant improvements and refinements every time the course is taught by a dedicated teacher. Also, I feel that written text is ultimately more useful than videos, being more elegant and precise, easier to search and index key terms and examples, suffering fewer technical problems, easier to update, and generally being truer to the form of mathematical written presentation in the first place. In addition to these, Thrun's lectures at Udacity have a stunning number of critical flaws (in regards to planning, sequencing, clarity, writing, and missing major topics) that leave me amazed if any actual intro-level student manages to make their way through the whole class.
Perhaps the upshot here is a restatement of the old saw: “You get what you pay for.” (Udacity being currently free, with a mission-statement to remain that way). Or else another: “Don't take a class from a world-famous researcher, because they don't really have time or interest for teaching.” Obviously, Sebastian Thrun is not just a teacher-by-online-video; he's also a Google Vice-President and Fellow, a Research Professor of Computer Science at Stanford, former director of the Stanford AI Laboratory, head of teams competing in DARPA challenges, and leads the development of Google's self-driving car program. How much time or focus would we expect him to have for a freshman-level introductory math course? (Not much; in one lecture he mentions that he's recording at 3AM and compares it to his “day job” at Google.) Some of these shortcomings may be overcome by a more dedicated teacher. But others seem endemic to the massive-online project as a whole, and I suspect that the industry as a whole will turn out to be an over-inflating bubble that bursts at some point, much like other internet sensations of the recent past.
My own summary would be "the current state of the art in online learning does not justify the hype, and probably won't for some time".
Slashdot Mirror
Seriously is there anything worth shopping for in a mobo?
Yes. Obviously it doesn't matter for a fileserver, but there are differences in terms of peripherals (does it have USB3? SATA3? how many of each?), chipsets, on-board graphics/sound performance, and aesthetics. You also get ATX vs. micro-ATX. Different brands and boards may be more prone to failure. For gamers, the number and arrangement of PCIx16 2.0/3.0 slots can be important. Manufacturers like to add their own power and performance tweaking into the BIOS, so that can be a factor. Some BIOSes are better for overclocking. The number and location of on-board fan headers needs to be appropriate for you case.
That's off the top of my head. There may be other things I've forgotten.
I'm not much of a solderer, but isn't the operating (or at least max) temperature of a cpu above the melting point of soldering tin?
According to section 6.4 of the Core i7 datasheet, you can actually reflow the CPU as long as you adhere to JEDEC guidelines.
Aside from a couple of great indie games, the majority of the games I've enjoyed in the past few months are not available for Linux.
If anyone wants a list, here's what I've played in the last several months on Steam:
Max Payne 3
Deus Ex: Human Revolution
Alan Wake + American Nightmare
S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Call of Pripyat
Spec Ops: The Line
The Binding of Isaac (also on Linux because it's really a Flash game underneath)
Dishonored
Deadlight
Skyrim
I'm currently checking out DayZ, an ARMA II mod. In the next few months, I might try:
X-COM: Enemy Unknown (the new one)
Far Cry 3
StarCraft 2: Legacy of the Void
Tomb Raider (the reboot)
Plus whatever else catches my eye. I'm most interested in The Last of Us for the PS3, though. I also play console games, and my choice of platform is determined mostly by whether keyboard+mouse or gamepad are better for the game.
Aside from games, I also use PlayClaw for game recording, iTunes for music and iPod/iPhone syncing, DipTrace for circuit design, and Sony Vegas for video editing. The latter two probably work under Wine, but since I'm on their native platform I might as well take advantage of it. Honestly, if you strip all the cruft out of the interface (i.e. make it look like Win95), WinXP and Win7 aren't bad. I'm not sure what I'm supposed to gain by using the same software on a different OS. I love the Linux command line, but the GUIs have never felt as consistent or responsive. I recently spent several hours helping a friend get Steam mostly (!!) working under Wine in Ubuntu, which didn't help my opinion either.
Uhm, many console shooters support M+KB input.
Examples?
The summary, like the article, jumps straight into "OMG CONFLICT" without bothering to tell us what's going on. From later in the article:
Researchers at the LHCb detector have dealt a serious blow to [supersymmetry]. They have measured the decay between a particle known as a Bs Meson into two particles known as muons. It is the first time that this decay has been observed and the team has calculated that for every billion times that the Bs Meson decays it only decays in this way three times. If superparticles were to exist the decay would happen far more often. This test is one of the "golden" tests for supersymmetry and it is one that on the face of it this hugely popular theory among physicists has failed. ...
The results are in fact completely in line with what one would expect from the Standard Model. There is already concern that the LHCb's sister detectors might have expected to have detected superparticles by now, yet none have been found so far.
But it sounds like this is only a problem for some variants of supersymmetry:
"If new physics exists, then it is hiding very well behind the Standard Model," commented Cambridge physicist Dr Marc-Olivier Bettler, a member of the analysis team. The result does not rule out the possibility that super particles exist. But according to Prof Parkes, "they are running out of places to hide". Supporters of supersymmetry, however, such as Prof John Ellis of King's College London said that the observation is "quite consistent with supersymmetry". "In fact," he said "(it) was actually expected in (some) supersymmetric models. I certainly won't lose any sleep over the result."
In the day of the "brogrammer"...
You're the second person in the thread I've seen use this word. Is this really a thing now?
What has Obama done that actually leads you to think that he is significantly less likely to engage in Bush-style military interventions than Romney?
I'm don't like the drone strikes or Guantanamo, but the neocons were/are out for active conquest. Libya was an intervention to stop a dictator from slaughtering a popular uprising, and I am totally okay with that. Romney may just be serving red meat, but he will be expected to live up to it if he wins.
I agree that the extension of Bush's terror and assassination policies is Obama's biggest failure. I'm just offering an explanation for why the rest of the world mightp prefer Obama. I suspect the lack of xenophobia is more important than anything else.
No, religious organization are definitely not exempt. But enforcement is... somewhat lax.
As a Brit, I honestly have no idea whether this is parody or not.
It's a reference to a church sign seen in rural Texas:
http://gawker.com/5953608/quaint-texas-church-tells-people-to-vote-for-the-mormon-not-the-muslimyou-should-stop-by-and-pray-sometime
Whether the commenter was taking it seriously, I have no idea.
Taking a hint from the last election, if the news outlets all say that Obama will win, then everybody will vote for Obama because everybody loves to vote for the winner.
I know conspiracy theories are fun, but it is possible to measure this stuff. The aggregate polling data has pretty consistently shown Obama ahead for the entire election. The news media are currently overstating Romney's chances by calling it a toss-up (and indeed, they are still doing so). They had no qualms about reporting Romney's huge gains after the first convention. Poll aggregators have actually been drawing flack from mainstream pundits who like to pretend there's a neck-and-neck horse race when there isn't. The media's interest is in a close race where they have something to talk about.
What's in it for the rest of the world if Obama wins?
An American President who isn't xenophobic and war-crazy. It's not that complicated.
Nate Silver puts the odds at around 87%, largely based on the chance of there being a systematic offset in the polling data. Still looks pretty good for Obama, though. Fingers crossed.
You know there's no way to "private message" someone on slashdot, right?
I did not. I've mostly ignored the new features that have been added over the years. Collecting old Unix installation kits seemed like a hobby someone on here might have, and posting without logging in is a mistake people sometimes make. Guess I missed out on a joke. Oops.
Thanks for the heads-up.
I've been ... oddly, collecting original installation CDs, and licenses (valid) for dozens and dozens of OSes for years. I have early versions and later ones, slackware, unixware, irix, and many others.
Send me a message ...
You know you posted as AC, right?
Maybe Disney will release HD Blu-ray versions of the non-special edition episodes 4-6. It would save us the trouble of downloading Harmy's editions, at least.
I'm going to hold out foolish hope for a movie adaptation of the Thrawn trilogy.
It's an ARM CPU, but with only 96KB of RAM. That's very small for a CPU of that power.
Not for a Cortex-M3 it isn't. This isn't a high-end application processor like they have in the iPhone. 96 kB of SRAM is a lot for a microcontroller.
Are they going to turn to someone else TSMC for fab?
TI already uses TSMC for a lot of its advanced process nodes. So does the rest of the industry. If you're a large company, you can work closely with the fab to tweak their process.
OMAP is only one small part of TI's integrated circuit business.
Yes. Editors, please fix this. TI's "chip business" is 98% of the company (the rest is calculators).
I just thought it odd that it would return something in connection with nuclear weapons for me while I'm parsing some nerdy flamewar.
It's probably the only other subject where phrases like "entire cities dead" feature prominently.
Hellmouth (WTF does that mean anyway? Is that even a word? Is it a reference to something? What?)
It's a reference to a TV show called Buffy the Vampire Slayer that was popular at the time. In the show, the Hellmouth is a sort of demonic portal that attracts evil creatures to torment the town of Sunnydale. The concept originally comes from medieval art.
Voices from the Hellmouth was one of Slashdot's greatest contributions to actual news. I'm shocked that the terrible political stories took top billing instead of this.
A local brick and mortor store that does custom jewelry is also a good place to try. They'll have sources that aren't available to the general public and can also help you with the mounting.
Do you even know a woman? She would not like this. She wouldn't like the truth and she wouldn't like you lying to her.
Obviously you don't lie about it -- that's a terrible way to start a marriage. There are lots of women who are fine with lab-created gems. I'm dating one right now.
This was my first thought, as my girlfriend knows to expect something shiny in the relatively near future
Get a lab-created diamond. A huge, high-quality stone costs a fraction of the price of a natural one. Being real diamonds (carbon crystals), they're indistinguishable without special equipment. There's no reason to pay a fortune for gemstones today (unless you're rich or are stocking a museum, I guess). Find a good local jeweler; they can tell you more.
The overwhelming majority of the article is specific criticisms about Udacity Statistics 101, not a general criticism of online math classes. The specific criticisms seem valid to me -- I didn't take Thrun's stats class, but I did take the AI class, which had the same issues. I urge anyone who's interested in online learning to read the full article since anyone could make any of these mistakes very easily.
Here are the bits from the end of the article that talk about online learning in general:
My own summary would be "the current state of the art in online learning does not justify the hype, and probably won't for some time".